<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<posts>
  <row Id="1" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:40:32.857" Score="31" ViewCount="1734" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always wanted to start writing (in a totally amateur way), but whenever I want to start something I instantly get blocked having a lot of questions and doubts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there some resources on how to start becoming a writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking something with tips and easy exercises to get the ball rolling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2019-02-10T04:06:33.283" LastActivityDate="2022-02-11T14:02:41.020" Title="What are some online guides for starting writers?" Tags="|resources|first-time-author|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2019-09-09T15:44:30.727" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:42:31.513" Score="24" ViewCount="10605" Body="&lt;p&gt;What kind of story is better suited for each point of view? Are there advantages or disadvantages inherent to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, writing in the first person you are always &lt;em&gt;following&lt;/em&gt; a character, while in the third person you can &quot;jump&quot; between story lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-29T19:35:55.850" LastActivityDate="2018-04-29T19:35:55.850" Title="What is the difference between writing in the first and the third person?" Tags="|fiction|grammatical-person|third-person|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:43:28.903" Score="36" ViewCount="871" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished my novel, and everyone I've talked to says I need an agent. How do I find one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-04T11:04:09.610" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T11:04:09.610" Title="How do I find an agent?" Tags="|publishing|novel|agent|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="5" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:43:59.693" Score="35" ViewCount="4523" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want my short story to have a specific point, to highlight a certain truth. But I wonder in which order I should proceed: make the plot, characters etc. first and worry about fitting my theme into the story later, or start with the point I'm trying to make and build my plot and characters around it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the plot needs to be engaging in any case. But my instinct is to build the story around the theme/meaning, and I'm wondering if that is considered a good practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A potential downside is that the story will feel more artificial, but the other way around it might feel as if I'm shoehorning in my point into a story that does not support it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a response to some of the answers, I might also add that I have a specific theme in mind - so an emerging theme is not what I'm interested in, really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11" LastEditorUserId="36826" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2019-04-10T07:29:49.297" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T20:32:12.107" Title="Decide on a theme/overarching meaning before writing a short story?" Tags="|plot|short-story|planning|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="85" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:45:44.067" Score="24" ViewCount="1175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep hearing about literary fiction, and how it is so much better than genre fiction. What exactly is literary fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2010-11-18T21:16:41.767" LastActivityDate="2022-02-22T20:14:44.663" Title="What is Literary Fiction?" Tags="|fiction|genre|categories|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="8" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:45:45.533" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180818160037/http://beginningwriters.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BeginningWriters.com&lt;/a&gt; (via archive.org) has some good articles for beginning writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-02-11T14:00:34.613" LastActivityDate="2022-02-11T14:00:34.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:46:37.327" Score="69" ViewCount="17337" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I attempt to write something, I do it in a common word processor (like Microsoft Word), but I was wondering if there is a special software for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that would help me keep track of the story lines, times, and characters in an easy and organized way as to not get lost in my own story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastEditorUserId="743" LastEditDate="2011-03-28T16:24:40.850" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T07:57:45.760" Title="Is there a special software for writers?" Tags="|software|organization|" AnswerCount="24" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:56.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="10" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:46:43.780" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a point that you do want to convey, this is certainly a legitimate practice.  You shouldn't make artificial points just to have them, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to ensure that your point does not become too contrived, as well.  There are cases where everything should be a microcosm of your main theme, but they are rare, even in a short story.  You do need to have a strong plot and characters and setting as well.  The point will be lost if the writing falters because of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many stories are written as an allegory of a specific point, but even if you do not take it so far as to be that obvious, there is nothing wrong with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T20:46:43.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="11" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:47:28.260" Score="27" ViewCount="1233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard a writer talking about pantsing a story. What does that mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T17:54:42.237" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T17:54:42.237" Title="Pantsing a story?" Tags="|terminology|preparation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="14" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:49:53.847" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the sense you mean, it probably stands for general fiction, i.e. not romances, science-fiction, or mysteries. (Fiction that is &quot;literary&quot;.) There's a lot of genre fiction that has excellent character development, but like anything else, the vast majority of anything is usually pretty bad. It may have other meanings as well. An agent I know uses this term &quot;literary fiction&quot; to refer to anything she handles that's not non-fiction. (Including graphic novels.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T20:49:53.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="15" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:50:16.683" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm thinking about where I learned most how to write, I think that &lt;em&gt;reading&lt;/em&gt; was the most important guide to me. This may sound silly, but by reading good written newspaper articles (facts, opinions, scientific articles and most of all, criticisms of films and music), I learned how others did the job, what works and what doesn't. In my own writing, I try to mimic other people's styles that I liked. Moreover, I learn new things by reading, giving me a broader background that I need when reflecting a certain topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every now and then I still read the free, local tabloid and recognize many mistakes I would have made when I would not have read quality material earlier in life. Of course there are books about journalistic writing and I read some (titles will be added later), but I guess that reading forms the best learning school until today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I now see that I didn't answer your actual question about online guides, but I hope it's helpful after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2010-11-18T21:04:08.450" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:04:08.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="16" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:51:07.537" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;With a story in first person, you are intending the reader to become much more attached to the main character.  Since the reader sees what that character sees and feels what that character feels, the reader will have an emotional investment in that character.  Third person does not have this close tie; a reader can become emotionally invested but it will not be as strong as it will be in first person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrarily, you cannot have multiple point characters when you use first person without extremely clever craftsmanship.  You could not subtly move from one perspective to another, and even risk confusing the reader when you do so, which is one of the most egregious crimes any writer can commit.  First person stories cannot have the main character die except at the very end, whereas third person stories may be able to use the possible imminent death of any given character as a means for suspense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, it's a case of emotional attachment vs. utility.  It is plain easier to write in the third person, but if you can pull off first person and your story is a good fit for it, it can be a very powerful tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T20:51:07.537" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="18" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:55:11.123" Score="38" ViewCount="1412" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write a daily piece and have been doing so for over 8 years. I think my writing has gotten better, but I still find mistakes at times, or more likely, my readers find mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have good tricks for self-editing? Any tools? I spell check and use Word for grammar checking, but it doesn't seem to work so well and the pace of writing makes it hard to use anyone for editing on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2019-08-23T18:25:02.000" Title="Self Editing tips/tricks" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="19" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="34" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:55:59.683" Score="15" ViewCount="466" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently began writing poetry again.  I would like to look into submitting my poems to a magazine.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where can I find a list of literary magazines through which I could sort to find a possible fit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T16:25:39.707" Title="Lists of Suggested Magazines to Submit To" Tags="|poetry|publishing|magazines|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="21" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:57:01.450" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some tricks here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2008/04/07/how-i-write-a-novel-revisited/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2008/04/07/how-i-write-a-novel-revisited/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tobias tends to work offline, using post-its for notes. He then organizes these and uses them as a starting point for an outline. He then uses Scrivener for organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastEditorUserId="33" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T00:02:19.210" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T00:02:19.210" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:56.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="22" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11" CreationDate="2010-11-18T20:57:47.880" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Pantsing&quot; refers to simply writing a story without much, if any, preparation or pre-writing -- just writing down whatever comes to you, and letting the story go (and wander) wherever it feels like at the moment you're writing it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for etymology, I'm not sure where it comes from. In general, &quot;pantsing&quot; refers to a prank in which you pull someone's pants down, but I'm not sure how that plays into the idea of writing (aside from the fact that both can be surprising).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T20:57:47.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="24" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:00:16.077" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pw.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Poets &amp;amp; Writers&lt;/a&gt;. It is a bi-monthly magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as it says on their home page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If you’re looking for writing competitions, or literary magazines and small presses that welcome both new and established writers, begin here.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="2074" LastEditDate="2014-01-01T16:25:39.707" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T16:25:39.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:00:46.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writer's Cafe&lt;/a&gt;. It has many features that support writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a description from the website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Writer's Café is a set of power tools&#xA;  for all fiction writers, whether&#xA;  experienced or just starting out. The&#xA;  heart of Writer's Café is StoryLines,&#xA;  a powerful but simple to use story&#xA;  development tool that dramatically&#xA;  accelerates the creation and&#xA;  structuring of your novel or&#xA;  screenplay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Writer's Café also&#xA;  includes a notebook, journal, research&#xA;  organiser, pinboard, inspirational&#xA;  quotations, daily writing tips,&#xA;  writing exercises, name generation,&#xA;  and a 60-page e-book, Fiction: The&#xA;  Facts, distilling 20 years of writing&#xA;  experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Runs on small laptops such as the Eee&#xA;  PC - Windows and Linux.&#xA;  Writer's Café is designed to be a&#xA;  playground for the imagination, making&#xA;  writing fiction fun and fulfilling.&#xA;  But it's also a serious tool for&#xA;  professionals, with highly&#xA;  configurable formatting, import/export&#xA;  and reporting facilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="228" LastEditDate="2011-03-26T21:10:04.493" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T21:10:04.493" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:56.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="26" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:03:57.600" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than focusing on a single point as if you are writing an essay, you may want to focus on an ethos you want to create.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;View your story as &lt;strong&gt;world-building&lt;/strong&gt; (this is something you will find Orson Scott Card, author of &lt;em&gt;Ender's Game&lt;/em&gt; reference frequently).  The world you are building will reward certain behaviors by your characters and punish others.  The world you are building may have a certain &quot;bent,&quot; to it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, the in Ellison's &lt;em&gt;The Invisible Man&lt;/em&gt;, all sorts of random things happen to the protagonist that end up making his life more complicated.  The result is a story that leaves the reader feeling as if the entire world of the story was meaningless and nihilistic.  Rather than hitting the reader over the head with nihilism, Ellison &lt;em&gt;showed&lt;/em&gt; the reader a nihilistic world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible to construct an absolutely wonderful story that does not try to move the reader towards seeing the world in a different way.  In writing these stories the author is usually focused on showing the reader a specific character in all of his or her loves, wants, needs, desires, dreams, and fears.  These characters don't necessarily have to drive towards a point in their existence in the story.  They have to &lt;em&gt;be themselves&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can combine both of the above, or use just one for a successful story.  In many ways Victorian novels and good science fiction or fantasty epitomize world-building, while modern short stories such as &lt;em&gt;Olive Kitteridge&lt;/em&gt; move towards the opposite end of the spectrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then again, you can write a plot-driven work of pure action fiction - it works for some writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T13:25:18.900" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T13:25:18.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="27" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:04:15.230" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;, which is available as a free beta for NaNoWriMo participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a writer's project organizational tool that allows you to have many different associated files, and to view more than one on the same screen. For example, you could open a file about a particular character while writing about them, have an outline open while you work on non-fiction, etc. You can also move pieces (smaller files) around easily to rearrange parts of a work. When you're done, you can compile your manuscript to multiple formats: plain text, Word, et cetera. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="38" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T05:15:26.283" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T05:15:26.283" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:56.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:05:58.607" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can read the story aloud. Some errors are better found when you hear them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also record your own voice and listen to it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, is to have somebody else read the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:05:58.607" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="30" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="71" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:08:44.787" Score="13" ViewCount="9982" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a NaNoWriMo participant, I've been trying to meet a rather ambitious 1667 word/day goal. I've heard that professionals do a lot less, but the first two days of this month, I actually wrote 5000 words/day, so I know it's possible. Quantity over quality? What's a reasonable, sustainable word count?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="38" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-11-18T21:12:40.800" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T18:03:17.573" Title="What is a good daily word count goal?" Tags="|discipline|daily|goal|nanowrimo|wordcount|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="31" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:08:45.487" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try and find a list of agents who write in your genre. Check out their websites!&#xA;Find out if they are accepting new clients. If they aren't, then check out another agent. But if they are, try sending them a few chapters from your story, a brief, and a short cover letter asking them to represent you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the cover letter mention your previous publication credits. If sent via post, then I suggest you give them a means of reply, whether it be an email or a stamped, addressed envelope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agents will try their best to improve your chances of getting a book published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-02-15T21:14:37.910" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T21:14:37.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="32" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:09:39.277" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's not possible for your specific predicament, the question you actually ask is much broader than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put the writing away long enough to forget your state of mind while you were writing it, then re-read it.  For some people this could be as short as a day, but I have to wait closer to a month before re-reading what I've written for all the subtle things I could have done better to stand out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that professional author Stephen King says he adheres to a strict schedule when writing.  He writes all morning, then reviews all of the previous day's work that afternoon.  This way he has plenty of time and other writing-related activities between writing and revising that piece of his story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:09:39.277" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="34" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:10:41.973" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writer's Market publishes a few different books, including one for poets, which include listings of publishers, agents, magazines, contests, anthologies, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find them in most major bookstores. They come out once a year, but there are also listings available on their paid-subscription website: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersmarket.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.writersmarket.com/&lt;/a&gt; . It's worthwhile noting that when you buy the book, you get a paid subscription for a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking it focuses on the American/Canadian markets, and I'm not sure if there's something similar for the UK/Australia/New Zealand/Other English Markets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:10:41.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="35" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:11:03.723" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Print your work.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found that proof-reading a hard-copy is much more effective than proof-reading off a computer screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:11:03.723" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="36" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="30" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:14:00.333" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be an extremely subjective answer, but i find it easiest to get a chapter or two done, rather than a word count. It means there is a complete section to get a family member to read over, and if there is spare time in my sitting, i can go through and edit it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't finish the chapter, just try finishing it (and the next chapter) the next day!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:14:00.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="37" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="30" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:14:29.757" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;An apocryphal story about Joyce&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;A friend once found him sprawled across his desk, a figure of utter despair. &#xA;&#xA;&quot;How many words have you written today?&quot; he asked him.  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&quot;Seven,&quot; the great man answered. &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&quot;But that’s good for you, isn’t it?&quot; &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&quot;I suppose so,&quot; Joyce answered. &quot;It’s just that I don’t know what order they go in.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copied from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colinfalconer.net/1/post/2010/8/ten-great-writing-tips-from-ten-great-writers.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think 1,000 a day is pretty good, if you're consistent.  A day with 5,000 is possible, but probably not sustainable for most people.  1,000 every day is better than 5,000 once every two weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:14:29.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="38" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="44" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:16:00.690" Score="27" ViewCount="985" Body="&lt;p&gt;In today's frenetic, fast-paced lifestyle (especially if writing is not currently your career or means of earning an income), it can be extremely difficult to &quot;make&quot; or find the time that can be set aside and dedicated to writing.  Not only that, but in this information age, there are &lt;em&gt;so many&lt;/em&gt; distractions ready to destroy what focus there is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this hinges on motivation and drive, but nonetheless I have to ask: what means and methods do others use to foster and maintain discipline around their writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T13:55:11.323" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T13:55:11.323" Title="Writing discipline" Tags="|discipline|technique|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="39" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:18:49.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing in the first person is harder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that in the first person writing, the main character is also the narrator. He shouldn't be all knowing. It is easier to put down your (character's) thoughts and you can also deceive and lie! (That I like the most. :) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also cannot see onto other characters minds, so we can't know how they really feel about our narrator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="46" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-01-19T13:23:59.493" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T13:23:59.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="40" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="160" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:19:19.843" Score="25" ViewCount="473" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to write a synopsis to submit to an agent. Are there any guidelines for writing a good synopsis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2010-11-26T13:06:53.777" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T14:11:51.830" Title="How do I write a synopsis?" Tags="|publishing|agent|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="41" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="101" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:23:19.410" Score="43" ViewCount="166031" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always had trouble determining whether my chapters are within the same size realm as chapters in standard books.  Since it isn't exactly feasible to count the number of words in a chapter of published work, I've always just guessed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, my chapters have been between 3000-5000 words.  How does this compare to chapters in published novels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-02-10T07:26:22.363" LastActivityDate="2020-02-13T15:43:03.680" Title="What is a normal length for a chapter?" Tags="|wordcount|" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="42" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="30" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:23:31.273" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends. Personally, I aim for one to two thousand words a day. I know of one professional writer who goes for three thousand words a day (but, as she pointed out to me, this is her day job).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:23:31.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="44" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="38" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:23:51.493" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I rely on two tactics to achieve steady progress in writing (I'll answer twice for voting ease).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is sort of obvious - &lt;b&gt;write every day&lt;/b&gt;. I fell into a trap at one time where I felt that if I couldn't block off at least a few hours for writing that it was better to not bother. As a result, I would sometimes go for weeks without writing (that doesn't make editors too happy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, I forced myself to write every day - even if I knew I could only write for 15-30 minutes (which almost always expanded into longer chunks of time). Now, when I have writing projects, I make sure I write every day - even if it's just edits or a sentence or two. For me, a lot of writing happens somewhere in the back of my mind when I'm away from a keyboard, and writing every day keeps those ideas moving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:23:51.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="45" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:25:50.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard from pro writer friends that Scrivener is very good, but it is only only for the Mac right now. I've also heard that there is a Windows version coming out soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:25:50.567" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:56.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="46" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="38" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:29:14.590" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second thing that has helped me is &lt;strong&gt;the 10x5x2 approach&lt;/strong&gt; (it may have another name). The theory is that you write for 10 minutes, take 2 mintues off, then repeat 5 times (filling an hour). The idea is that the schedule will make you focus, but give you time to deal with necessary distractions if necessary - often I use the two minutes to stare at the ceiling and think. I wrote a little timer application to help me and use it every time I write now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of an hour (if I'm going to write more), I'll take a bio-break or get some coffee. I found that I can string up to 3 of these back to back before I need a longer break, but that I can do up to 6 in a day if I'm really pushing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:29:14.590" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="47" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="58" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:29:59.953" Score="11" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it too late to jump on the zombie bandwagon? There are loads of stories about the possible popular outcome of an apocalypse, is it possible to squeeze anything more out of it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, maybe it would be a good idea to make a parody of the genre after it's all squeezed out dry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="46" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T20:30:21.357" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T20:30:21.357" Title="Jumping on the Zombie bandwagon" Tags="|fiction|genre|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="48" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="38" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:30:15.990" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite simply: Block off the Internet as you write.  For me, that involves turning off my secondary monitor so I can't see the taskbar.  For you, it might involve physically unplugging the ethernet cable from the back of your computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't even begin to describe the difference this makes for me when I write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:30:15.990" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="49" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="38" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:31:20.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My most available writing time is between &quot;waking up&quot; and &quot;leaving for work&quot;, that usually gives me between 30 and 60 minutes each day, usually good for 300-400 words (and a quick read of the last two days worth of writing). However, I suspect that is not a scalable method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:31:20.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="50" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="62" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:36:29.573" Score="33" ViewCount="5355" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing is writing, but I am not confident enough to take on creating a whole world from scratch.  Will writing fanfic or writing in other shared world spaces be beneficial, or will it simply allow me to get into some bad habits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:57:18.380" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T22:21:09.160" Title="Fan Fiction: a crutch or a good start?" Tags="|fiction|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="19" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="51" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:37:38.917" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the other answers suggest, this is largely an approach to be decided upon by the author – it will work for some, and not for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen King said in &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt; that he preferred to get the story out and focus on theme afterwards.  In fact, he considered it a part of revising and editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to agree with him, in that I have discovered that the more I focus on the moral point or theme or moral of the story being told, the less I focus on the really meaningful interaction of the characters with each other and their world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-29T19:28:53.823" LastActivityDate="2018-04-29T19:28:53.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="52" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:40:58.450" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick counting in my ebooks shows 3000-4000, of course there are authors who prefer extremely short or extremely long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself write about 2000 words per chapter, it seems 'just right' for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="46" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:40:58.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="53" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="265" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:41:00.643" Score="12" ViewCount="340" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing is something that I have wanted to do for some time, and I know that I don't currently have the skill set to do more than putter.  Are there any shared world story sites that exist?  A collaborative site for me to get my feet wet handling a supporting character or two, rather than trying to wrangle the whole plot, would be ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="31570" LastEditDate="2018-05-31T14:34:13.673" LastActivityDate="2018-05-31T17:32:38.780" Title="Shared worlds: are there any good collaborative sites out there?" Tags="|fiction|collaboration|shared|world-building|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="54" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="109" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:41:41.570" Score="39" ViewCount="5639" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the major mantras of writing fiction is &quot;show, don't tell&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ever okay to tell?  When?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-07T08:56:10.440" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T08:56:10.440" Title="When is it okay to &quot;tell&quot;, instead of &quot;show&quot;?" Tags="|style|description|showing-telling|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="55" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:44:05.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other answers address the differences between first and third person narration but ignore the last type of narration available to a writer - second person narration. Telling a story by dictating to the reader what he or she (the reader) is doing, can create an uncanny, mysterious, eerie and hypnotic effect on the atmosphere of the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is a difficult effect to achieve and if done poorly it can make a story difficult to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See Carlos Fuentes' short story &lt;em&gt;Aura&lt;/em&gt; for a great example of this type of narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:44:05.617" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="56" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="301" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:47:22.867" Score="18" ViewCount="3185" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a very visual person, I have always considered plotting a story to be somewhat like knitting or macrame.  How do series authors handle multi novel story arcs?  Do they just keep throwing out lines and pick them up when they feel the need to pull together a connection, or is it all planned out well in advance?  Is there a technique for keeping track of the loose threads or plotting out a series that is better than notecards/stickies/or a huge whiteboard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T09:39:29.937" Title="What techniques are used to plot long (multi-novel) story arcs?" Tags="|fiction|plot|series|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="57" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:50:29.863" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have encountered numbers of excellent fanfics out there which could stand out on their own, and be excellent works by themselves if the author just didn't constrain himself into the pre-created world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that you should always create your own worlds, but when you're confident about your work and people start to appreciate it, it might be a good time to whip up your own universe and make a recognition for yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="46" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:50:29.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="58" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="47" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:52:40.520" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it too late to jump on the zombie bandwagon?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's never too late to jump on the zombie bandwagon.  You just have to make your work stand out.  Perhaps it would be better to think of it not as jumping on the zombie bandwagon, but rather claiming your own unique bit of territory in the vast zombie jungle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Or, maybe it would be a good idea to make a parody of the genre after it's all squeezed out dry?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with this theory is that modern zombie works are often already a parody of the genre.  Would you watch a parody of &lt;em&gt;Scary Movie&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:52:40.520" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="59" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="54" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:53:53.030" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has to be OK to 'tell' at some point, because everything comes back to the fact that you are telling a story.  At the same time, fiction is powerful precisely because it creates a world and characters to whom the reader relates and uses those to help the reader see through another's eyes and imagine another's world.  Telling the reader too much moves you closer to essay territory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific instances of when to show something are far too varied to cover, but here are some general guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Background scene information that isn't helpful to setting up your mood, tone, theme, plot, and most especially characterization should be ignored or, if it cannot be ignored, told or shown very briefly.  You don't want to go on and on describing a scene that isn't providing any movement to your plot or information for your characters.  Be punchy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Background details about your character can also &lt;em&gt;sometimes&lt;/em&gt; be summarized.  This must be done very careful.  Things you want to stick with the reader or hit the reader most powerfully should be shown.  Things that help move the story without being absolutely critical can be told.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In general novels will contain more information, more words, and therefore more telling than a short story or a short-short.  Novels are designed to encompass more characters and more action, and so the compression of detail needed for a short story isn't so great.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For every guideline I have written, someone may come up with a counter example.  In general you should not be looking for an excuse to tell.  When you are inclined to tell, see if you could leave the detail out or paint it more concretely with your words.  Still, at some point you have to tell the reader something!  &lt;strong&gt;The general point is to prefer the concrete.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:53:53.030" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="60" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="70" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:57:59.920" Score="15" ViewCount="1907" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the &quot;genre&quot; a piece of fiction belongs to determined by the author, or by the editor and publishing house?  Is there an established definition for each genre, or is it largely ad hoc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask because the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersandartists.co.uk/&quot;&gt;Writer's and Artist's Yearbook&lt;/a&gt; gives contact details for many publishers, sorted by the type of genre they will publish and/or are known for...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2019-05-31T11:45:34.993" Title="What determines genre?" Tags="|publishing|genre|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="61" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="63" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:59:26.423" Score="33" ViewCount="1249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a lot of ideas for things I want to write, but I usually end up getting lost in a stream-of-consciousness and either lose interest in the idea, or suddenly feel overwhelmed by the breadth of the subject I wish to cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some way of recording my ideas which is less restrictive than outlining, but perhaps more useful than simply writing random sentence fragments on a paper which will be meaningless to me later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-12-07T22:36:55.853" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T16:43:47.630" Title="What are the first things I should do with an idea?" Tags="|planning|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="62" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2010-11-18T21:59:40.843" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you approach it with good writing practices and treat it as you would your own real writing project, it can help you practice the art of putting words on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it will not prepare you for, however, is world-building, which is the other half of the battle when you write, and is just as important as your ability to write.  You can be a brilliant wordsmith, but without a story to tell and a world to tell it in, your talent is wasted.  At the same time, you can have the most compelling story ever conceived, but if you don't know how to put it in words, there's not much you can do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, writing fan fiction only partially prepares you for the &quot;real deal&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T21:59:40.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="63" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="61" CreationDate="2010-11-18T22:05:32.797" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The unfortunate part of any answer to this question is that &lt;em&gt;you have to find what works for you.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I have heard from several writers that having a small notebook in a pocket, purse, or other bag that goes with you all the time is an ideal way to keep track of ideas.  This might be ideas for starting a story, snippets of conversation that you know would perfectly come from a character's mouth, a sudden motivation for the defining fear your protagonist has that will make or break who she is in your novel, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you categorize such a book would be up to you.  You might have a section in the front or back for general ideas and then keep a segment for each work you have concurrently.  Or you might get very small notebooks (Moleskine, for example, sells three tiny pocket books in one pack) and have one for ideas and one for each specific work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within that making it more than a random idea that you won't understand later is &lt;strong&gt;entirely up to you&lt;/strong&gt;.  You have to write down enough that you will remember.  Maybe just write down a quick snatch in the moment, and then the next time you have long enough, write down enough so that you know what you meant before, and then finally when you get back to it start writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T22:05:32.797" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="64" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-11-18T22:14:56.513" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;yWriter&quot;&gt;yWriter&lt;/a&gt;. Free, easy to use, all the features you might want, free, and pretty compact. And it works on OSX and Linux under Mono.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it's free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To elaborate on its features: It allows you to divide a story into chapters and to subdivide those chapters into scenes. In each scene, you can keep track of what characters are in the scene, where it takes place, what time of day it takes place; pretty much every conceivable detail is an option.** If you really like organizing down to the most minute bits of information, yWriter is a good idea for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;** I'm sure it has more features, but to be honest I've never explored it that much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastEditorUserId="60" LastEditDate="2010-11-23T01:27:32.250" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T01:27:32.250" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:56.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="65" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="61" CreationDate="2010-11-18T22:23:22.713" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As justkt said, everyone is gonna have their own method. This is mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to summarize the idea into short, detailed sentences. What works for me is to fit in as much of the premise as possible. Then, following that, put down any minute details that you want to include. The idea here is to include everything you'll need to rebuild the idea exactly as you had it, even if you've forgotten it in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I recently wrote a short story about a man who lives his life waiting for his big break, expecting it to come to him as his birthright, dying alone having done nothing in his eighty years. My original note to myself was along the lines of &quot;man waiting for American Dream, expects it without working for it, dies unloved&quot; &amp;lt;- that there is the premise part. Then -&gt; &quot;man takes unprofitable major in college like film studies, smokes lots of pot and drops out; man works at walmart; doesn't get good grades as a kid&quot; which are the original details that came to me. I saved all that stuff and came back to it a few days later, and from that skeleton I was able to reconstruct my original idea and write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T22:23:22.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="66" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="60" CreationDate="2010-11-18T22:30:01.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;quoting &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia:&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Genre ... &quot;kind&quot; or &quot;sort&quot;, from&#xA;  Latin: genus (stem gener-), Greek:&#xA;  genos, γένος) is the term for any&#xA;  category of literature, as well as&#xA;  various other forms of art or culture&#xA;  e.g. music, based on some loose set of&#xA;  stylistic criteria. Genres are formed&#xA;  by conventions that change over time&#xA;  as new genres are invented and the use&#xA;  of old ones are discontinued. Often,&#xA;  works fit into multiple genres by way&#xA;  of borrowing and recombining these&#xA;  conventions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So genres evolve as they come and go, and based on current cultural state - we could say there is a &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; established definition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="46" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T22:30:01.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="67" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="127" CreationDate="2010-11-18T22:31:44.090" Score="14" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a writer (yet!), but I have been working in the computer field for over 10 years and would love to put in some time volunteering my services as a subject matter expert (SME) for programming and computer related story components.  Is there a central place that such SMEs can peddle their knowledge?  Is anyone in need here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T04:11:15.803" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T11:33:57.407" Title="Where can subject matter experts volunteer to work on proofing the technical details in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|genre|terminology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="69" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-11-18T22:50:29.650" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writeroom&lt;/a&gt; for Mac is what I use. Nice and simple with as little distraction as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T22:50:29.650" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:56.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="70" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="60" CreationDate="2010-11-18T22:51:46.590" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, what genre your work is published in is usually up to the publisher, as a tool for bookstores and other retailers to label and categorize your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen a lot of arguments about particular books being labeled in a specific genre and readers not really considering it to fit there. An example would be &quot;The Sparrow&quot; by Mary Doria Russel, which was published as 'sci-fi' and usually found in that section, but I've heard many impassioned arguments for it to be placed in fiction/literary fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy/Sci-fi seem to have a lot of books that are both, so you tend to see books with both labels on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for submitting your work publishers, it might be best to see what books they've labeled as what genres in the past. That might give you a better idea whether or not they'll consider your work as part of the genre that you intend it to be, or if they might consider it something else. (For example, if they consider your Steampunk novel to be sci-fi, or fantasy, or speculative fiction, or historical AU.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T22:51:46.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="71" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="30" CreationDate="2010-11-18T22:56:24.877" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies a lot - and by type of writing. I can do casual non-fiction writing fairly quickly, but more structured or formal work takes me longer (not just in the editing, but in the actual writing process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professional writers I know point out that burning out is a bad thing (as above: 1000 words each day - or even 250 words a day - is a lot better than 3000 or 5000 or whatever words once every two weeks.) Also that it's much easier to get started if you stop when you know what the next piece is (i.e. don't stop when you run out of stuff: try to stop when you have one thing left that you know. Then, the next time you sit down, you can start with that, and build momentum.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="63" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T22:56:24.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="72" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:06:31.387" Score="25" ViewCount="8223" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;style guide&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;style manual&lt;/strong&gt; is a set&#xA;  of standards for the writing and&#xA;  design of documents, either for&#xA;  general use or for a specific&#xA;  publication, organization or field.&#xA;  The implementation of a style guide&#xA;  provides uniformity in style and&#xA;  formatting of a document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the most popular such manuals? Which are considered &quot;standards&quot; for writers to follow? Are they used by specific professions, industries, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:07:26.840" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T13:34:41.780" Title="What are the most common style manuals?" Tags="|style|resources|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="73" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:08:12.790" Score="25" ViewCount="2957" Body="&lt;p&gt;Late October I decided to take the plunge and attempt &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nanowrimo.org/&quot;&gt;NaNoWriMo&lt;/a&gt;. I haven't done much writing in some time and thought it would be a fun attempt to jump back into things. So far it's been pretty fun getting back into writing about something I hashed together from a weird dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm also woefully under the NaNoWriMo average at 8111 words. Most of my writing happens during my train commutes to and from work via train. I've averaged to about 400ish words a day, which wont get me anywhere near 50,000 in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My problem&lt;/strong&gt; is that as soon as I get home again, I'm hit by a huge bout of lazyness. My afternoons and weekends are spent slacking off or doing other things around the house. It's not that I don't have things to write; as soon as I sit down at my desk I'm hit by a huge desire to do anything and everything outside of being creative. It's like some sort of lingering nerosis from avoiding homework as a child or something. This sort of thing has also plagued me in the areas of drawing as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do to overcome this almost aggressive form of lazyness? Should I rearrange my desk/room? Should I leave my PC off and just focus on my MacBook (the one I use for writing on the train)? Should I go to a different room entirely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I want to note that I'm not actually stressing out over the 50,000 word thing. That may be the &quot;goal&quot; of NaNo but it's not the &lt;em&gt;true&lt;/em&gt; goal behind the event, if you get what I mean. This is more about me being disappointed in myself that I have had the time in which I could have caught up (2 weekends) that I totally wasted due to this problem of mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Okay, so to rephrase this question: &lt;strong&gt;For someone who has had a similar experience, how did you overcome this type of inability to devote time to writing when at home?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T18:39:40.480" LastActivityDate="2023-07-12T05:19:20.390" Title="How do I overcome a lack of motivation to write at home?" Tags="|wordcount|nanowrimo|writers-block|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="75" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:12:43.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your work falls into the &quot;genre&quot; category, then the following sites might be useful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.duotrope.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Duotrope&lt;/a&gt;: has lots of genre entries, but also general/literary markets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ralan.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ralan's&lt;/a&gt;: predominantly SF/F/H markets, but is a great site (not the greatest looking site, but good content)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T23:12:43.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="76" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="77" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:13:03.893" Score="13" ViewCount="869" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am curious which is better for a beginning writer (or writer) starting a new story. Pen and paper or the computer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pen &amp;amp; Paper is a lot more sketchy (like the layout of this site) which gives the feeling of a prototype and may allow ideas to flow better. Ideas are jotted down as they come and can be refined at a later date. Using a word processor on the other hand is neater and can make text look polished when it is not or make the writer feel the need to polish something before its sufficiently fleshed out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-04-10T04:03:52.547" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T21:36:19.853" Title="Initial Writing Medium" Tags="|style|medium|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="77" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="76" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:15:53.770" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is completely a matter of personal preference. I always write on the computer, unless pen and paper is all that's available; it just works better for me. I know someone who can't work at all unless he's writing physically. I know people who really don't care. A beginning writer should just mess around and find what's best for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T23:15:53.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="79" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:19:33.157" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I particularly like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Snowflake Method&lt;/a&gt; and most of what Randy writes, including his book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T23:19:33.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="80" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="54" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:20:15.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The boring parts... if you absolutely must include them at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T23:20:15.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="81" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="76" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:21:23.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Maulrus pretty much summed things up: whatever lets you get the words down. I'd add that if pure productivity is required (assuming you can type at a reasonable speed), directly onto the computer is going to be a much faster way of working. You type faster than you write, and eventually you're going to type it up anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I still like writing freehand first because I can do it anywhere, I like the physicalness of it (&quot;look what I made!&quot;), and the process of typing up actually becomes the first edit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T23:21:23.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="82" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="83" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:23:38.633" Score="13" ViewCount="530" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any podcasts that can help with writing skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(One per answer please, I'll add my own fave to get started.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:23:17.043" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T00:17:33.757" Title="Podcasts useful for improving writing skills" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T16:07:00.907" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="83" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="82" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:33:31.780" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;My favourite is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing Excuses&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;15 minutes long because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus is on fiction (especially spec fiction) and advice for aspiring writers. The hosts are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brandon Sanderson (&lt;em&gt;Wheel of Time, Mistborn,&lt;/em&gt; etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Howard Taylor (&lt;em&gt;Schlock Mercenary&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dan Wells (&lt;em&gt;I Am Not a Serial Killer, etc&lt;/em&gt;) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mary Robinette Kowal (&lt;em&gt;Shades of Milk and Honey, etc&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And they have guest stars and stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More about it on &lt;a href=&quot;http://mgowen.com/2010/11/12/writing-excuses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="67" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T00:17:33.757" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T00:17:33.757" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T16:07:00.907" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="84" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="203" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:34:27.617" Score="31" ViewCount="918" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am very keen to get into writing, and have come up with several outline plots for short stories, novels and even trilogies. However, one hurdle, which I expect is not uncommon for most new authors, is that I am put off by the difficulties of publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything I have ever read about publication points to the fact that it can take years, if at all, to get your work published. Often quoted is that the Harry Potter books were rejected by many publishing houses before a small firm took a chance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I have been introduced to the possibility of self-publication, via Kindle or similar devices. This seems to take out the difficulty of finding someone willing to take on your work. But, is this a good idea? Should this be last resort, or is this the future of publishing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really am new to all this, so any advice would be greatly received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="69" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2010-11-21T16:19:42.573" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T20:54:53.770" Title="Publishing for Kindle" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|ebook|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="85" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:34:38.910" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's always the good old wikipedia definition: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_fiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_fiction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My take on it is that it is often used to mean &quot;serious&quot; fiction (whatever that is), as opposed to fiction that is merely &quot;entertainment&quot;. It often seems to be thrown about in the context of snobbery (that is, someone may not &quot;read that airport bookshop rubbish&quot; because they like literary fiction), but I don't know if people really say those sorts of things, or if it's just the impression that the other side (&quot;genre&quot; people) think they might say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's just one of those terms that means different things to different people (as @neilfein's answer suggests).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For a quantitative answer, how about: the average number of metaphors per paragraph?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-29T19:26:50.553" LastActivityDate="2018-04-29T19:26:50.553" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="86" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="73" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:35:56.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Change of scene is good, I think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe a park?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I have the same problem, though it's more about being too busy at home with family/housework. I write on the train too.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T23:35:56.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="87" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="73" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:45:14.320" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find this a lot with projects I work on, and not necessarily just novels. I have this problem when starting software projects, websites, pretty much anything creative. Usually, the problem I have, is that I just don't know where to start, and that is because I don't have a plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I sit down and properly think about what I am trying to achieve in the next hour, afternoon, evening, whatever, I actually find I can knock out a few pages, chapters, because I have a reference point to work from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By not having a plan, I distract myself with other things, until something comes to me that I can rush off and write down. But, with a plan, I know what I need to do next, and I just get it done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, whilst a change of scenery may help you, or indeed other focusing techniques, if you don't know what you need to do next, you will find new inventive ways to procrastinate. And when I say plan, I don't mean, write 1000 words tonight. I mean&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;develop character A&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;build subplot B&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;introduce the unexpected twist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="69" LastEditorUserId="69" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T20:47:42.927" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T20:47:42.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="88" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:46:06.847" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I prefer to read stories where there are no overt themes&lt;/strong&gt; being highlighted by the author (or else they're so subtle I can't tell, or not noticeable because the characters and what's going on are too interesting). Choosing themes first then constructing a story to illustrate them will probably end up sounding contrived.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I find that when I focus on coming up with characters, plots and settings that I think are interesting, and then just write about them, &lt;strong&gt;the themes emerge by themselves&lt;/strong&gt;. These  organically-grown themes seem to usually end up working better than deliberately pre-chosen themes (and, as @foggyone said, I can usually then improve the story by identifying and working with those themes from that point).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-29T19:27:59.243" LastActivityDate="2018-04-29T19:27:59.243" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="89" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="76" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:47:34.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My approach is to get my thoughts down on paper first. So, I often use mind maps and diagrams to sketch out my thoughts for my stories. Once I have a good understanding of the direction I want to take the novel, I move to the computer and start writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="69" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T23:47:34.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="90" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="73" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:55:09.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've learned to write when I feel like writing, as in leave other stuff as much as you can and just write. Let it flow, then go back and clean up later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I can't write I go take care of stuff that needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I need to write (daily piece due here), I often head to a Starbucks or Borders, by myself, but in a change of environment. If I need headphones, I take them, but having some away time helps me focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T23:55:09.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="91" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="76" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:56:20.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I hate writing anything on paper, because I can't do anything with the words later.  I always use a computer (desktop or laptop).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastActivityDate="2010-11-18T23:56:20.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="92" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="40" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:57:31.597" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A really useful website you might want to look at is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20100306171618/http://www.essortment.com/all/synopsiswriteb_rqmx.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20100306171618/http://www.essortment.com/all/synopsiswriteb_rqmx.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry i can't really summarise :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="14490" LastEditDate="2017-01-22T06:56:45.253" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T06:56:45.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="93" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="485" CreationDate="2010-11-18T23:57:59.977" Score="6" ViewCount="307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing for a video game, and I have noticed that there is a gap between plot and gameplay. Most times there is a plot to a story, but it takes place either only in cutscenes or in reminders of your objectives. The gameplay is separate from the story, thus the player feels detached from the game, and has no emotional stake in the plot. Are there any ways to involve your audience to the point where they stop feeling detached from the game that they are playing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="73" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T00:21:15.770" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T02:26:51.530" Title="How do I involve my audience with my story?" Tags="|plot|videogame|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="95" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="84" CreationDate="2010-11-19T00:10:24.557" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend JA Konrath's blog on this. While he hasn't abandoned print publication, he sees e-books as a very valuable way to not only make money, but get your work out quickly and with more control over it. Here's a good take from him on publishing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/08/changing-face-of-publishing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/08/changing-face-of-publishing.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest thing is that you need to build a little network of people to help. You need &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an artist, or contract artists (maybe&#xA;99designs or something similar) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;an editor or two that you can trust good&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;friends for plot/structure/enjoyment feedback&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual conversion process of moving to Kindle/ePub format isn't that hard, and the simpler and more consistent you keep your writing formatting, the easier this is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T00:10:24.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="96" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="38" CreationDate="2010-11-19T00:10:31.983" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Blocking out distractions is the key to doing anything productive. In the case of writing you need to put yourself in a situation where all you can do is write. There are two methods I like to employ, one digital and the other analogue. On my computer I use an application called &lt;a href=&quot;http://pyroom.org/&quot;&gt;PyRoom&lt;/a&gt; which places a black fullscreen interface over my entire monitor with only a green box in the middle where I type. There is no option to use it in windowed mode, so you can't see notifications happening in the background. PyRoom is a Linux only application, but the paradigm of blacking out the rest of the screen is one that many application developers build upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other method is to take a notepad somewhere and sit down to write. A good place to go is a coffee shop, or a park, or perhaps even oscillate between both. Being away from your computer like this with a non-interactive medium such as paper is a great way to get yourself focused on the task at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, some lyricless music is also good. It stops your mind from picking up on every little noise that is happening around you. The human mind has a really annoying habit of filling silence with it's own noise when it's not tired, and silencing that noise with music works really well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, hide your distractions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user75" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T00:10:31.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="97" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="93" CreationDate="2010-11-19T00:12:04.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the game is developed well, the player should have a strong attachment to their character. The story should somehow outline what the player is to do in the next section of gameplay, rather than simply showing a video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This message could be communicated through a character (voice or actions) or simply describing an obvious problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry i can't explain better, but it greatly depends on the gameplay, and what type of game it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T00:12:04.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="98" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="38" CreationDate="2010-11-19T00:15:44.587" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Moving to a location that your mind doesn't associate with leisure is a good method to focusing it on the task at hand. I find it impossible to work at home because it has  lot of leisurely baggage hanging around it's neck. I host parties, movie nights, read, play computer games, etc, and this is what my mind, when at home, gears itself up for doing these things. Head out to a library, or an office if you have one, and sit down and do some writing there, or to a coffee shop, or just anywhere at which you don't usually pursue leisurely activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even just setting up a dedicated office in your home can be enough for some people. Closing the door behind them and shutting out the bedroom and living room is enough for many work-at-home writers to get themselves focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user75" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T00:15:44.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="99" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="120" CreationDate="2010-11-19T00:17:43.210" Score="10" ViewCount="2984" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm telling a story in third-person objective, the first part being basically an objective description of events around a certain character.  I got to a brief action scene, and it fell flat.  What the character does is of interest to the progression of the story, but the more interesting stuff (I think) is her decision-making and brief thinking and emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the first part of the story will be about this character.  There will be later scenes where she is not present, including one where the characters involved will be dead at the end of the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do I present thoughts and emotions in an action scene in third-person objective?  Or should I switch to a more personal third-person viewpoint (I'm not above rewriting everything I've written in another viewpoint)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T00:47:12.113" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T17:03:45.500" Title="Third-person objective in action scene" Tags="|fiction|viewpoint|tenses|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="47" CreationDate="2010-11-19T00:41:24.103" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've got something original to say involving zombies, write it.  A different point of view, maybe a twist like Matheson's &quot;I Am Legend&quot;, something unexpected that might follow from an apocalypse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't, try something where you can add something personal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T00:41:24.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2010-11-19T00:46:39.000" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is feasible to count the number of words in a published chapter:  count the number of words in several lines, count the number of lines per page, count the number of pages in the chapter, and multiply.  You won't get exact, but you're wondering whether 3-5K is reasonable, so you don't need exact.  Try it on some books with chapter lengths you like, and don't be surprised if it varies considerably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was a kid, books tended to have about seventy thousand words, and a table of contents that filled one page, so figure about 4-5K.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd think that the right length for a chapter would be one that could be read at a sitting conveniently, and would provide a useful chunk of story.  That can vary wildly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T00:46:39.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="30" CreationDate="2010-11-19T00:53:54.597" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the extreme side, Lester Dent was able to write a whole Doc Savage novel in about two weeks, perhaps less.  We're not talking great literature here, but he is generally considered to have written the best Doc Savage books (all of them were published under the name &quot;Kenneth Robeson&quot;, and they came out monthly).  They weren't all that long, so figure about thirty-five hundred words a day, sustained, as the high end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some authors seem to be able to write a novel of maybe eighty thousand words a year, of good quality.  That's more like three hundred words a day on the average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T00:53:54.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3693" CreationDate="2010-11-19T01:11:01.017" Score="10" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;When people ask me about what to look for in MFA (Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing) programs, I often draw a blank.  Many programs like to flaunt their &quot;celebrity&quot; staff writers and the success of their graduates, but I don't believe these are reliable indicators of a quality program.  What should prospective enrollees look for when examining a program's offerings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="56" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-21T22:19:45.823" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T13:56:29.133" Title="What are good criteria to consider when looking to enroll in an MFA program?" Tags="|degree|mfa|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="99" CreationDate="2010-11-19T01:23:10.863" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should be pretty simple to write her decisions if they are truly brief. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vala whirled to face her attacker, checking him over for potential weaknesses. She noted a gap in his armor just above his waist. &lt;em&gt;Gotcha!&lt;/em&gt; she thought. A quick jab with her dagger tore a scream from his throat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emotions and thinking should be just as easy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jane arrived home to find her computer beeping, announcing the arrival of an urgent message. She mused that she was almost busier on the weekends than when she was on call during the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Facing the enormous ogre at last, Sular felt a tiny spark of anger growing in his chest. What gave this beast the right to come barging in at this time of night?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the content of these examples is nil (I came up with all three of them just now), but I hope I've given you ideas for introducing a character's thinking into a third-person narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T01:23:10.863" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2010-11-19T01:59:33.740" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;del&gt;The problem with fan fiction is that it will always be tied down to the source material, and can't really become more than what it is. They're a sidetrack rather than a stepping stone.&lt;/del&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Okay, to reword that first paragraph:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you are going to draw from a source material, be aware that you are creating a branch of the source material. You're creating something that is anchored in someone else's fiction. As HedgeMage illustrated in her answer, sometimes this is a good thing in specific cases, but in general &quot;fanfic&quot; use it leads to bad habits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself having trouble creating your own fiction, ask yourself what it is specifically about this source material that you like. It won't help to wholesale copy characters/settings/etc from a source, but it's certainly okay to find inspiration from the elements that compose your favourites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're having trouble world building, perhaps you can draw inspiration from real world locations. Every fictional city/street/country draws something from one or more counterparts in the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastEditorUserId="12" LastEditDate="2011-01-20T04:14:22.333" LastActivityDate="2011-01-20T04:14:22.333" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="73" CreationDate="2010-11-19T02:14:34.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get away. Sometimes its easier to go somewhere where you can't have your normal distractions. Parks, Coffeeshops, etc, are fine and dandy but if they're in city, or have WiFi, it can be too easy to get distracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rent a cabin in the middle of nowhere or a hotel room, and leave your cell phone, laptop, at home, and essentially give yourself nothing to do but write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, airplane flights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to get a lot of work done on flights, and also have heard of one writer who used to go to the airport and buy a cheapest, long-distance round-trip ticket he could find. Something like fly from LA to South Carolina and back. It'd essentially give him 16 hours where he couldn't be bothered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T02:14:34.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="217" CreationDate="2010-11-19T02:17:23.407" Score="53" ViewCount="17713" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, the beginning of any story needs to capture the attention of the reader, so he continues and wants to find out what's happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Confederacy of Dunces starts &quot;A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.&quot; and gives you just enough to visualize the character yet so little to make you want to continue to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques are there to come up with a line to simply capture a reader's interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T17:31:29.020" Title="How can I write an attention-grabbing first line?" Tags="|attention|openings|technique|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="108" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="269" CreationDate="2010-11-19T02:25:32.870" Score="21" ViewCount="521" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any places or ways a group (general public or individually invited) of people can individually contribute to a communally developed story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a website or collaboration tool (besides Word files emailed back and forth).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T22:15:52.747" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T22:15:52.747" Title="Are there any places to have community story development?" Tags="|tools|planning|collaboration|community|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="54" CreationDate="2010-11-19T02:29:57.693" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's too easy to get blindly hung up on mantras. If you look at the great authors, they break the rules all the time. With that said, there isn't a predetermined time when it's okay to tell rather than show. You have to decide on the fly which method provides the clearest picture to the reader. &lt;strong&gt;Conveying a clear picture is an optimal goal&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason they say &quot;show, don't tell&quot; is so that you, as the writer, will work harder to convey the proper mental image to the reader. It's harder to show something in words than it is to just tell it. It is also more enjoyable for the reader to see it. Sometimes you can convey the best mental picture by simply telling however. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Example: you're describing something&#xA;  that the reader has never seen in the&#xA;  real world or even imagined. In that&#xA;  case you might have to spend five&#xA;  pages trying to show something that is&#xA;  quite simple and should really just be&#xA;  explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="86" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T02:43:35.930" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T02:43:35.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="108" CreationDate="2010-11-19T02:37:49.833" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could start your own wiki - if you need hosting, there are plenty of resources available for cheap/free wiki hosting (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pbworks.com/&quot;&gt;PBWorks&lt;/a&gt; comes to mind.); you could use any of the browser-based shared document editing tools (Google Docs, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zimbra.com/&quot;&gt;Zimbra&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://writer.zoho.com/&quot;&gt;Zoho&lt;/a&gt;); collaborative editing software (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_real-time_editor#List_of_current_editors&quot;&gt;see this Wikipedia article for some examples&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="87" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T02:37:49.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="107" CreationDate="2010-11-19T02:42:48.097" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find the best opening lines to involve either very strong imagery (as your example above,) or some sense of anticipation - something important is about to happen, or perhaps already has happened and we're dumped immediately into the after-effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="87" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T02:42:48.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="72" CreationDate="2010-11-19T02:51:19.243" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience indicates that the &quot;big three&quot; are: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_MLA_Style_Manual&quot;&gt;The MLA Style Manual&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style&quot;&gt;Strunk and White&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicago_Manual_of_Style&quot;&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="87" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T02:51:19.243" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="113" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="117" CreationDate="2010-11-19T02:51:31.063" Score="16" ViewCount="631" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I have an excellent idea for a story, would it be wiser to write on paper first or start directly on the computer? There are many different reasons for beginning stories on paper as well as on the computer and I'd like to know about the different advantages of each side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T18:29:04.150" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T23:30:56.327" Title="Should I start writing on paper first or start directly on the computer?" Tags="|tools|medium|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="47" CreationDate="2010-11-19T02:52:49.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;2 years ago I would have said it's a great idea. Evil Dead was a great movie and the world needed more classic tales. This year Cracked.com shared &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_18683_7-scientific-reasons-zombie-outbreak-would-fail-quickly.html#ixzz15h0vCcdF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly)&lt;/a&gt; and ever since then, Zombies have been dead to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T02:52:49.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5" CreationDate="2010-11-19T02:53:20.190" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;If you want to send a message, use Western Union.&quot; – Can't remember who first said that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself changing anything in a story to make a point, you're probably making the story worse.  If you make the story bad enough, nobody will want to read it, and anybody who does will be annoyed at an author trying to pound a point home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write a story with characters you can believe in, doing things you can believe in, and with results you can believe in, then whatever truth you're believing in will probably come out in the story.  The story will be better, and it will have more influence over anybody who reads it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-29T19:29:44.710" LastActivityDate="2018-04-29T19:29:44.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="113" CreationDate="2010-11-19T03:11:26.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, the advantage of using paper is that I often make rash editing decisions early in the process, and lose things I may have wanted to hang on to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using some sort of version control might be an interesting solution to &lt;em&gt;that particular problem&lt;/em&gt; though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other reason I use paper is that it forces me to go over the text at least once in order to find major problems while entering it into a computer.  I suspect a more professional writer than I would be doing that a few times anyway, regardless of which medium he or she started on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T03:11:26.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="113" CreationDate="2010-11-19T03:48:32.457" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend to just go with what you find most productive for yourself, but since you wanted a list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pros:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can be used almost anywhere&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cheap, simple, reliable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to arrange how you want it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No sudden data loss (unless actually lost)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lets you draw a little sketch on the side&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Won't die on you if it gets a bit wet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Probably wont get stolen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cons:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can cramp your hands faster&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Harder to edit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Often doesn't leave room for inserting new things in the middle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increases in bulk over time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Digital:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pros:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insert, update, rearrange (or the dreaded delete) at any place in the document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quick access to spell check, dictionary, thesaurus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When combined with something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTcwMDcwNTE5?src=7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt;, all your internet-enabled devices can be used&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also works as a backup&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instant word count&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can format it right then and there (if you're into that)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instantly sharable over the internet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When combined with a Version Control System (&lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Git&lt;/a&gt; is a favourite of mine), it's easy to branch/fork/draft a story in multiple directions.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also lets you share and edit with multiple authors easier&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cons:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Need to keep a device on you and charged up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distractions said device can bring along with it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can sometimes be a little &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; helpful (red squiggle invasion!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gives you too many formatting options to waste time on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When it's gone, it's gone! Backups might not always be there&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inadvisable to use in wet environments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could get stolen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microsoft Word is a terrible file format (don't use it!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself prefer digital (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTcwMDcwNTE5?src=7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt; + iPhone!), but YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastEditorUserId="12" LastEditDate="2017-01-11T23:30:56.327" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T23:30:56.327" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="99" CreationDate="2010-11-19T04:01:33.840" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to look at it: how do people in real life present thoughts and emotions? Either through their actions (facial expressions, body language) or they say something. You could get across emotions by describing these things (something like the &quot;universal expressions&quot; in the TV show Lie to Me come to mind).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think objective third is pretty difficult to do this though, especially for &quot;ironic&quot; emotions, where the character does something but the means something different to what that action normally implies. As per @Voyagerfan's answer, you can duck into a &quot;close&quot; third for particular thoughts, but move back to the camera view for pure action/description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0898799279&quot;&gt;Characters and Viewpoint&lt;/a&gt; by Orson Scott Card has a good section on moving in and out between &quot;hot&quot; close third person thoughts/details and &quot;cooler&quot; more external/descriptive stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T04:01:33.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="113" CreationDate="2010-11-19T04:02:27.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For writing fiction I always start on paper (with the unfortunate disadvantage of typing it later).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for using paper is because the computer is a distraction and it's harder to become fully engrossed in the story I'm spinning. The temptation to jump on the internet is far too great. The importance of getting into a zone of creativity while writing far outweighs the negative of retyping later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T04:02:27.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="108" CreationDate="2010-11-19T04:03:42.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a Yahoo group, now apparently inactive, at &lt;a href=&quot;http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rr-storybook/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rr-storybook/&lt;/a&gt; that was set up for round robin stories.  The last hint of activity seems to be around 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nothing else, you can look at what we wrote, and how it seemed to work.  The files seem to be outside the members-only area.  I don't know if there's any group administrator who could get it going again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T04:03:42.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-19T04:25:03.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading a lot and loving to read are most important of course, but have you tried writing-related podcasts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing Excuses&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; got me into writing fiction again. It's a short podcast about how to write fiction well and how to &quot;break in&quot; to the industry, from 3 guys who do and did. (I wrote a bit more about it on &lt;a href=&quot;http://mgowen.com/2010/11/12/writing-excuses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my blog&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T04:25:03.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="124" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-19T04:28:40.520" Score="14" ViewCount="347" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any websites that list writing groups by geographic location, or genre? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I try libraries or something? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fan forums of a favourite author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there &quot;virtual&quot; writing groups (by email or chat or whatever, as opposed to in person)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2011-07-23T17:51:53.183" Title="How do I go about finding a writing group?" Tags="|writing-groups|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="136" CreationDate="2010-11-19T05:28:05.227" Score="21" ViewCount="620" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to go about making a habit of writing to a journal or blog on a daily basis. What techniques or patterns have been the most useful in accomplishing this task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastEditorUserId="92" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T13:50:18.880" LastActivityDate="2017-08-11T22:45:17.700" Title="Best Way to Develop a Daily Writing Routine?" Tags="|daily|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="124" CreationDate="2010-11-19T06:24:00.187" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard about &quot;virtual&quot; writing groups; I have no experience with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For meeting other writers in your area:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.meetup.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Meetup.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just search for your location and your interest (in this case writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Libraries and other community spaces often offer writing workshops so it might be a good idea to look there too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T06:24:00.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="67" CreationDate="2010-11-19T06:46:56.750" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For better or for worse, writers that need fact checking generally do their own research (or ask a friend). This may have to do with the fact that writers don't like &quot;outsiders&quot; meddling in the creative process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But...people who have access to a unique cultural context or deep understanding in a specific area of knowledge often have compelling and insightful perspectives to volunteer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't wait for others to come to you, find your literary voice and produce your narrative!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T06:46:56.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="128" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="285" CreationDate="2010-11-19T06:52:02.510" Score="11" ViewCount="2282" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it advisable to use slang and euphemisms as a narrator, in addition to the main characters who use it? Are there arguments for and against it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I were to write about street thugs and their exploits, would using slang in the narration bring the reader closer to the characters? Or would it be considered inappropriate and distracting? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="46" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T15:40:18.743" Title="Using slang as a narrator - pros and cons" Tags="|language|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="125" CreationDate="2010-11-19T06:52:25.427" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inspired by a news post about &lt;a href=&quot;http://ohlife.com/b&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ohlife&lt;/a&gt; I set up a small script that sends me an e-mail message each day asking me about my day. I just reply to that message with my daily journal if I have something interesting to say. This trick (or mind hack) works great for me because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm in a position to write my journal when I get the reminder to do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My journals are collected in one folder with a simple filter rule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My e-mail is backed-up regularly so I don't have to worry about loosing my journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My journal is portable (I can write it on my laptop, phone or in my webmail interface).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T06:52:25.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="130" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="363" CreationDate="2010-11-19T07:26:36.453" Score="10" ViewCount="328" Body="&lt;p&gt;By &quot;background&quot;, I mean the dialects, habits and culture of the community. Also, I wonder if it is even possible to write about a community without being a part of it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am only asking this in terms of writing fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="2358" LastEditDate="2011-12-19T00:16:22.327" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T00:10:39.207" Title="How deeply should I study the background of a community before writing about it?" Tags="|fiction|style|research|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="130" CreationDate="2010-11-19T07:55:52.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on what you are writing I guess. If you are writing an article on that specific subject, I would dive pretty deep into the matter. You usually get to a point where you feel confident about what you are saying is right. Don't throw out assumptions. If someone later came and told you &quot;that's wrong&quot;, and you have no way of defending it, you obviously haven't dug deep enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand you just need it to emphasize a character or a specific environment in a bigger story, I would talk to someone who really knows the field and get them to come up with a few typical examples of behavior/descriptions/word that only someone really into it would know, that at the same time comes as a natural extension of some preconception that most people have about the subject/area/culture/thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T07:55:52.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="47" CreationDate="2010-11-19T08:02:41.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put one foot on the zombie wagon, and another one in a completely different field. Combine things that haven't been done before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would a zombie story be like if it was set in a typical Jane Austen setting? Write 'Brains and Prejudice'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T08:02:41.087" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="128" CreationDate="2010-11-19T08:09:45.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using dialect or slang can work very well, but it usually doesn't. (Mark Twain is the only example I can think of where it was done well.) Slang is another matter, with some of the same pitfalls. Having characters using slang and the narrator &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;, that &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be distracting. I'd suggest writing a chapter or three, putting them aside for a bit, then reading them to see how it worked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T08:09:45.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="141" CreationDate="2010-11-19T08:14:23.670" Score="25" ViewCount="2619" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really want to begin my first novel, but I'm just not sure how clear of an outline I should have before I start. Is a detailed synopsis of each chapter really necessary, or is it enough to just go in with an outline and key events?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2015-08-29T10:11:19.190" Title="How much planning should go on before beginning writing?" Tags="|goal|planning|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="47" CreationDate="2010-11-19T08:23:35.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just add a twist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let the sympathy of the reader move from the people to the zombies. (They &quot;lived&quot; for centuries undisturbed in the caves until the humans started their mining destroying the source of energy of the zombies and now they have no chance then to feed on the humans).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T08:23:35.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="125" CreationDate="2010-11-19T08:24:56.140" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start a &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret&quot;&gt;Seinfeld calendar.&lt;/a&gt; Basically, you have a calendar set up somewhere that you see everyday. Each day you write, fill the date with a big red X, or another distinguishing mark.&#xA;After a few days you'll have a chain. The chain just keeps getting longer and longer. Dont break that chain. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Thats the way to keep pushing yourself to write as frequently as you can. You won't want to break that chain no matter what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T08:24:56.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="134" CreationDate="2010-11-19T08:37:46.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It strongly depends on yourself, how much you need a synopsis to stay focused. One thing in my opinion is really important to plan before: You should know your main story arc and clearly know how to end it. Some novels I read had no really end to it, that was somewhat frustrating as a reader. Sidestories on the other hand will also come to mind, while writing the novel and you get a clearer image of your world and your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your world is complex and you have multiple important characters it may be helpful to have a cheatsheet. Every time you make a decision about the world, the story or character traits you note it. That way you stay consistent throughout your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As said before, you may adjust the planning to your personal needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T08:37:46.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="138" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="142" CreationDate="2010-11-19T08:47:28.403" Score="61" ViewCount="12183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it hard to name my characters. Every normal name sounds funny if applied to a product of my fantasy. If I take a common name, I may get the image of someone I know into my head. And that may influence my vision of the character in a way I didn't intended. If I choose an uncommon name or invent a name (for a fantasy story for example) it sounds silly to me. How do you name the characters of your story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-12-21T15:07:32.847" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T06:20:07.740" Title="Choosing character names is a constant difficulty" Tags="|style|naming|characters|" AnswerCount="23" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="99" CreationDate="2010-11-19T09:20:09.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Third person objective works best for screen plays. Are you writing for print or film?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read in a number of places that experimenting with perspective, or using anything other than first person or third omniscient/limited for print, as an unpublished writer, is a quick path to an editors trash can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="86" LastEditDate="2010-11-23T03:46:41.407" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T03:46:41.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="130" CreationDate="2010-11-19T09:28:05.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you write a documentation about this community you should naturally investigate deeply into the topic. But I think you mean using characters or elements from this culture in your fictional story. In that case you must see, that most of your readers possibly don't know more about the community than you does. So you don't need too much investigation, in the end it should suffice, that you know a little more than most of your readers. Members of this community on the other hand, will always know more than you, even if you investigate strongly. It happens all the time in novels or movies, that a community is shown partly wrong. It doesn't matter, if the main story is good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But one thing you should consider: you may don't want to offend members of the community. So you might learn about offending stereotypes you should avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T09:28:05.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="134" CreationDate="2010-11-19T09:33:46.193" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only thing that matters in planning, is doing it long enough to make you feel comfortable writing about your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two types of writers, &quot;With an Outline&quot; and &quot;Without an Outline&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try both styles and see which works best for you. It's important to figure out if you do your best writing with constraints or without them. Find a middle ground between the two types that helps you stay on track while maintaining creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel your creativity being sucked dry by trying to stay with the outline, then you over planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="86" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T09:40:04.797" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T09:40:04.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2010-11-19T09:37:29.047" Score="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;So Sméagol, Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins do not sound silly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, don't care too much, if they sound silly or not. First, you can change them, second, I've read some great stories with very silly named characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want make up fantasy names and have no good idea how to start, here is what I do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find out what the profession/status of this character is (Let's say, he is the elder of a village)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Play with this profession/title. Put it in reverse: elder -&gt; Redle - Would that be a good name?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Play with the acronym: The elder of the village -&gt; TEOTV -&gt; Teotev? Totav? Teotive? Totiv? Theotrev?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put some accent and apostrophes in it. People love that: Téo'tev, The'òtrev&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Translate the profession/title into a different language (I prefer Latin). Play with that word accordingly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Well, just play :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2010-11-21T20:08:32.517" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T20:08:32.517" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="146" CreationDate="2010-11-19T09:40:04.657" Score="12" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should one split up the work between two people? Should one write the even-numbered chapters and the other the odd-numbered? Does each person tell the story from the point of view of a different character or write different story-subarcs? In general, how do one organise the work in a team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2013-06-01T19:33:57.273" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T12:44:43.443" Title="How to share the work, if writing fiction in a team?" Tags="|fiction|organization|collaboration|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="113" CreationDate="2010-11-19T09:45:41.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on you. What are you more comfortable with writing? Which way you can avoid distractions better? Or which gives you enough distraction to get inspiration or overcome writing block if needed (if it helps)? I think you should try it out, if paper or computer, or a mix of both works best for you. Sorry, that I cannot give a simpler answer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T09:45:41.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="128" CreationDate="2010-11-19T09:52:50.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who is the narrator? Was he a street thug? If he was, then it wouldn't make much sense to have him narrating using the Queen's English. The narrator should talk in their voice, not yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't distract from the story though. As in don't spell words in weird ways or go overboard with things the reader might not understand without referring to urbandictionary.com. That would distract the reader from the main points of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use just enough to setup the character, then pull back so we can understand what you're talking about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="86" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T09:59:27.253" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T09:59:27.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="143" CreationDate="2010-11-19T10:02:49.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a few short stories with friends via email, with each person chipping in a section. It yields some interesting and fun results, but not what you'd call a particularly coherent story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an example of how one pair of pros did it, take a look at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfsite.com/02a/wd121.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;interview with Sean Williams and Shane Dix&lt;/a&gt;. Basically, they worked on a story outline together, Sean did the first draft, Shane rewrote/edited, and Sean did one last pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting together for the outlining or vision at the start seems like a really important step. I could see something like odd/even chapters by different writers ending up with a conflict in styles...which might work really well in some cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T10:02:49.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2010-11-19T10:10:27.333" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that strongly depends on the what the author likes. One novel of Stephen King (can't remember the name at the moment) has no chapters at all. My mother - who always reads to chapter-ends - was half through the book as she noticed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do completely ignore chapters if I read. I use a book mark to remember where I was, but stop reading also in the middle of a chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For writing I would conclude, that some readers - like my mother - use chapters to plan the time for reading. If you want to make it comfortable for them, count the length of a chapter in novels you like. Take the difficulty level of the story and the used language into account. More complicated books are read slower, so the chapters should be shorter to complete a chapter in around the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you have a good idea about it, the chapters may also used to make an 'effect'. Changing lengths of an chapter may reflect the increase pace in your story. Or you could use absurd long or short chapters to astonish your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T10:10:27.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="148" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-19T10:17:26.293" Score="58" ViewCount="3880" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you recommend as reading material to improve writing for beginners? If one recommendation is put per answer and can be voted separately a good list of resources should build up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:57:11.707" LastActivityDate="2022-02-11T14:19:12.290" Title="What are good reads about writing?" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="41" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T15:58:56.623" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-19T10:25:54.630" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;To start the list: I myself found '&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1439156816&quot;&gt;On writing&lt;/a&gt;' from Stephen King very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastEditorDisplayName="user2686" LastEditDate="2012-08-31T18:35:41.533" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T18:35:41.533" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T10:25:54.630" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-19T10:27:00.893" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0877733759&quot;&gt;Writing Down the Bones&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good start, nice lessons to improve your skills, just ignore the Zen stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T10:27:00.893" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T10:27:14.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-19T10:27:42.867" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;And also good in my Opinion: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0046LUCGG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'Gold'&lt;/a&gt; from Isaac Asimov. It's not completely about writing, but also contains stories and essays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastEditorUserId="94" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T11:42:59.900" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T11:42:59.900" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T10:27:42.867" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-19T10:28:05.393" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/020530902X&quot;&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T10:28:05.393" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T11:50:43.480" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-19T10:33:59.927" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0062735233&quot;&gt;On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction&lt;/a&gt; by William Zinsser&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T10:33:59.927" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T15:58:56.623" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="154" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="169" CreationDate="2010-11-19T10:42:51.880" Score="4" ViewCount="2697" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to go about translating various materials. For example, while subtitling videos from a different language into english, is it better to (or more acceptable) to do a literal translation of what is said, or to change it and write it in a way that is more appropriate for english? Or is this usually subjective to the person writing the translation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T15:45:43.263" Title="Is there an accepted (or 'correct') way to write translations/subtitles for different materials (videos, articles, books, etc)?" Tags="|translation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="229" CreationDate="2010-11-19T10:50:19.780" Score="8" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;An early story I did I edited again and again to make it better. But in  the end, I got the feeling the result was worse than before. Recently I tried to write (short-stories) in one go and only check for wrong spelling and grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good amount of editing? How should I know when to stop and simply publish the result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T17:50:30.670" Title="When and how often edit the style and content of a story?" Tags="|style|editing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="130" CreationDate="2010-11-19T10:53:21.047" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on your intent; if your work be it fictional or factual, hangs on details about this community, its customs and practices,then you need to research scrupulously. &#xA;If it's broad strokes, background characterisation, or local colour, then a more general level of knowledge is acceptable.&#xA;In either case, you cannot give the same level of insight as a member of that community but you should be truthful, avoid lazy stereotypes, and if your research shows that your initial ideas about that community or culture was inaccurate you should rethink your approach. Also, while you cannot describe it as an &quot;insider&quot; you can give an objective point of view that is just as valuable and interesting if you try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T10:53:21.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="157" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="232" CreationDate="2010-11-19T10:58:50.097" Score="7" ViewCount="360" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am German. Can I apply the hints for style or story-building given here, or by English authors, without a second thought to my own work written in German? Or are there differences in how style or storyline is understood by readers in different languages or cultures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2013-06-01T19:34:15.993" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T19:34:15.993" Title="Are different styles/storylines prefered in different languages/cultures?" Tags="|style|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="128" CreationDate="2010-11-19T11:00:02.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on who the narrator is. For example in Wuthering Heights, there are two narrative voices; the first is a gentleman and written accordingly while the second is a housekeeper and she speaks in a more common, local dialect with different characterisation than the first voice. &#xA;If the narrator is of a particular rank or class the writing should reflect that (but beware of overdoing it.) If the narrative point of view is the omnipotent, anonymous voice then it shoukd generally be more standard, more formal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T11:00:02.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-19T11:39:40.577" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really liked &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/193152016X&quot;&gt;Storyteller&lt;/a&gt; by Kate Wilhelm&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="94" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T11:39:40.577" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T15:58:56.623" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="40" CreationDate="2010-11-19T12:22:09.340" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most important part is, reducing the story to the core plot. Some say you should only need three pages to summarize your story, some say one page should be enough. But if you can reduce its core to three &lt;em&gt;sentences&lt;/em&gt;, then you are on the right track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Impossible? Only three sentences? Imagine a friend asks you to summarize the Lord of the Rings for him. He never read one of the books or saw one of the movies. Do you really need three pages/one page to do it? Or can you do it with only three sentences? See, and LotR are three volumes, so you can condense your story, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it from the agent's perspective. He gets 30 synopsis a day. He must flip through them and decide, which one is worth it. He cannot delay it, because tomorrow he'll get another 30 synopsis. Look at what you have written and ask yourself: Would I choose this, if I were an agent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt;, put your three sentences summary into the cover letter and your one page summary into the synopsis ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: Randomman159's link says that the editors usually read your sample chapters first. That's not true. They read your cover letter first. Better make it good. And short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T12:22:09.340" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-11-19T12:25:31.940" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;strong&gt;emacs&lt;/strong&gt;, editing LaTeX files, with a text editor I am used to (as in 20+ years &quot;used to&quot;). This has some advantages and some disadvantages. It allows me to separate text in whatever &quot;file chunks&quot; I find convenient (usually chapters) and allows me to re-arrange these in the document as a whole (by having a series of include statements, referring to the chapter). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It allows me to generate decently-typeset output in the end. I also have some conversion tools that allows me to generate other formats. However, it does not fit well with any publisher's work-stream and this is a potential problem for the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't already have a substantial amount of time invested in a specific tool, I have heard good things about Scrivener (as in, it allows you to do the things I find to be a &quot;win&quot; with LaTeX+text editor, with &quot;integrates better with publishers&quot; as a big win).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T05:16:55.610" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T05:16:55.610" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:56.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2010-11-19T12:29:37.323" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find much easier to first imagine the character, see it wading through the planned story-line, get emotionally involved with its (mis)adventures, then I can think a name that matches that stronger image of the character I've built.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't really feel your character alive, it really doesn't call for a proper name (yet).&#xA;Also it may be easier, for supporting or eventual characters to just give any name, and rename it later, when it gains truer life in your imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="108" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T12:29:37.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="103" CreationDate="2010-11-19T12:38:59.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can start by searching universities, rankings for MFA programs, and in general, advice from experienced people on how to choose programs (Google is your best friend here). In the end, I think you will have to settle on your own criteria after considering what the others have to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastEditorUserId="103" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T13:56:29.133" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T13:56:29.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="128" CreationDate="2010-11-19T12:47:32.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think using slang in the narration can be quite a powerful tool. One example is Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy. In it, he has a number of core characters. A group of 5 to 6 people who are key to the development of the storyline throughout the three books. Depending on from which perspective each chapter is written, the narration changes. It is a clever and difficult technique. It helps the reader to attach themselves to the perspective, and adds more atmosphere to the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="69" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T12:47:32.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="125" CreationDate="2010-11-19T13:11:38.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to write a minimum of three pages of freewriting every morning (from The Artists Way) which allows the removal of cruft from our brains and eventually promotes more creativity and more writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T13:11:38.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2010-11-19T13:14:44.733" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another writer friend of mine went through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nanowrimo.org/&quot;&gt;NaNoWriMo&lt;/a&gt; last year, writing furiously to make her 50,000 words, without naming her characters at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naming isn't easy.  Sometimes a character will have a name that fits, perhaps, but often not.  If you find it difficult &lt;em&gt;put it off&lt;/em&gt;.  Don't let it get in the way of your writing.  Instead write.  If necessary, get all the way to the end of your story.  Then tackle the naming problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you tackle it?  Do it with a baby name book.  Use an online baby naming resource.  Take a name and change it up a little in your head as if you are a parent who simply has to have a unique name for Baby X.  Pick the name you always thought you were going to call your daughter until your spouse overrode it.  Use the middle name of your friend who least or most resembles the character.  Flip through your college yearbook and pick the kid who most looks like your character.  These are just a few ideas.  There are tons more.  Just write.  Then name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T13:14:44.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="170" CreationDate="2010-11-19T13:15:23.460" Score="6" ViewCount="2140" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some authors (a la Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code) use an expected twist and unanswered question at the end of every chapter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some (a la Stephen King) build deep characters that simply draw you in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What ways (besides just telling a genuinely good story) are there to keep a reader engaged throughout the story?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2010-11-21T16:23:48.683" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T01:15:44.863" Title="How to keep the reader engaged throughout the novel?" Tags="|attention|audience|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-19T13:16:26.010" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0385480016&quot;&gt;Bird by Bird&lt;/a&gt; by Anne Lammott&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T13:16:26.010" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T15:58:56.623" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="154" CreationDate="2010-11-19T13:23:17.290" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two special issues regarding subtitles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;space limitations, i.e. you cannot put enough letters in a row (or two) to cover everything that's said;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;time limitations, i.e. you cannot translate everything literally as you have to expect that viewers can't read fast enough to read all those words, especially not when someone is talking fast.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the times, you'll have to summarize a bit when writing subtitles, without losing the meaning and emotion of what's been said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a classic example of a Dutch subtitle that went wrong: in an episode of &lt;em&gt;The Bold and the Beautiful&lt;/em&gt; someone said over the phone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After all he put you through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Dutch, this was translated as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hij heeft je tenslotte doorverbonden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, someone connects someone to somebody else on the phone. Of course, it was about an emotional affair (don't know what) and someone helped her to cope with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T13:23:17.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="167" CreationDate="2010-11-19T13:23:30.140" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unexpected twists can work in plot driven novels where the readers are expecting to move quickly - but without a lot of mental effort or interest in the characters - through a story.  Your example author Dan Brown writes pretty much the same characters in every novel.  He also spins absolutely fascinating mysteries that people must know the end of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plot twists can also feel cheap to the reader.  For example, O. Henry's short stories seem a little less than serious because as a reader you go along through the story until you get to a plot twist at the very end that you didn't see coming at all.  Instead of being able to see yourself as clever for anticipating this twist you feel like the author held important pieces of information from you.  If you do a plot twist, you have to give the readers clues along the way to the twist that it is coming, dropping hints of what it will be.  This keeps your reader engaged.  Edith Wharton does this in an absolutely stunning way in her short story &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/ewharton/bl-ewhar-roman.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roman Fever&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;quot;  There is a twist at the end, but if you are paying attention she hints at what it might be all throughout the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of my writing professors during college preferred that we turn in character-driven fiction.  In character-driven fiction, the thing that draws the reader in is the protagonist's wants, needs, fears, dreams, hopes, and loves.  What do your characters want?  What keeps them from getting it?  What do they fear?  What is making their fears realized?  Write a compelling character.  Make your readers care about him or her.  Take one of his or her deepest desires and thwart it.  Bring it all to a conclusion where the character changes - his or her desires change, he or she breaks from the hope deferred, whatever you like.  You'll have engaged readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T13:23:30.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="171" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-19T13:42:19.993" Score="8" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you recommend a good reference book about the basics of English writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastEditorUserId="30832" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:57:04.220" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:57:04.220" Title="Books about English Writing" Tags="|resources|book-rec|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="172" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="181" CreationDate="2010-11-19T13:51:41.663" Score="7" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live in Argentina, and I've always wondered if (given the case of having something worthy) I'd be able to submit it to publishers in, for example, the USA. Of course the writing would be in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible? How can it be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2010-12-08T05:30:30.297" Title="How can you submit your writings internationally?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|submitting-work|international|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="175" CreationDate="2010-11-19T13:58:29.430" Score="4" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;When an article is submitted to a conference or journal, is it better to use British or American spelling? Does it have to be according to the conference or journal's style (based on where it is being held or who hold it) or is it up to the writer to choose and stick to one style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T21:44:56.743" Title="Spelling style in academic papers" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="171" CreationDate="2010-11-19T13:59:53.840" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060891548&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0451627210&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;100 Ways to Improve Your Writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastEditorUserId="28" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T15:31:12.313" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T15:31:12.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="173" CreationDate="2010-11-19T14:02:24.853" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd think that the writer wouldn't be expected to change his or her writing style based on the style of a particular publication.  I've seen both styles in the same journal before, so I'd suggest writing at your comfort level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T14:02:24.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="128" CreationDate="2010-11-19T14:09:42.660" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the narrator. Is the narrator a character in the story or not? If he's not: If you're trying to foster the idea of an unreliable narrator, it helps to use slang. If he's more of a classical narrator, don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he IS a character, then just write how he'd talk. Done and done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T14:09:42.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="47" CreationDate="2010-11-19T14:09:54.830" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good horror stories tend to restate the common fears of the times, don't they? Why not pick a fear and restate it with zombies instead? It might make the genre fresh enough to be interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, terrorism became a concern of society in the US after 9/11. Even though, as JMC says, a zombie apocalypse is unlikely, what about terrorists using zombies rather than suicide bombers? It could be interesting, especially if they received the support of some governments and that support backfired - badly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="102" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T14:09:54.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="215" CreationDate="2010-11-19T14:20:50.963" Score="29" ViewCount="5991" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently write in Russian, but I think of switching to English to gain more audience and to play with both languages and linguistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So could I ever reach the level of native English writers and maybe even gain some honor as a good one? I know that writing doesn't stick with language, but what is the price of switching? How much I'll have to learn?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While answering, please abstract from Russian and English, let them be Hindi and Japan, or something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2021-10-18T15:13:14.960" Title="Could I reach the level of good writing style as non-native language speaker?" Tags="|style|language|" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="178" CreationDate="2010-11-19T14:24:01.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's certainly possible, it's just more difficult, because a writer needs to get the idioms and subtle differences in connotation that a casual speaker may miss and still get his or her message across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can, spend some time in an English-speaking country, or at least consume their media and talk to native speakers online.  The more you use it, the better you'll get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T14:24:01.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="182" CreationDate="2010-11-19T14:28:57.770" Score="9" ViewCount="458" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very strange to read the narrative from second person, but there are examples! Maybe there are a number of situations which are good for using second-person view?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2010-11-21T16:20:36.723" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T23:53:59.617" Title="When the second person *view* is not an uninvited guest?" Tags="|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="172" CreationDate="2010-11-19T14:29:47.123" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's absolutely possible.  If you already have a good idea of the publishers you would like to work with, check their web sites for submission information.  If not, try subscribing to something like Writer's Market to get the info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do be aware that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; publishing houses shy away from publishing international authors because they aren't sure how to parse the legal issues.  We don't exactly get a ton of Argentinian authors around here, so they have to be willing to invest in the legal expenses for covering all their bases.  However, some publishers are quite used to these sorts of things, and won't take it into account much when evaluating your manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also might look at Argentinian publishers that are affiliated with or have distribution agreements with American companies.  I don't have direct experience in this area, but I've seen it bring things into the US pretty smoothly, and I'd imagine that since we have such a huge market, it's not an uncommon thing for foreign publishers to be prepared for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T14:29:47.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="180" CreationDate="2010-11-19T14:38:33.433" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You're reading the advertisement: an&#xA;  offer like this isn't made every day.&#xA;  You read and reread it. It seems to be&#xA;  addressed to you and nobody else...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the opening words of Carlos Fuentes' &lt;em&gt;Aura&lt;/em&gt;, the only example of second person narration I've read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Fuentes' case, I think the second person narration contributes to an impression that the protagonist's actions (your actions) are happening in the context of a hypnotic or dream-like state. In Fuentes' story, the technique is effective and compelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T14:38:33.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="178" CreationDate="2010-11-19T14:43:30.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is definitely possible. As an example, Hannu Rajanemi has recently had his first novel-length work published, written entirely (well, there are the occasional Finnish word in there, but that is due to one of the viewpoint characters being Finnish-ethnic) in English. His mother tongue is Finnish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it probably requires a fair bit of work on behalf of the writer and probably benefits from immersion in &quot;the target language&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastEditorUserId="51" LastEditDate="2010-11-24T11:33:27.107" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T11:33:27.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-11-19T14:50:46.950" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've tried many of the things mentioned above, but they never really worked for me.  I have a tendency to get distracted by the shiny.  So, when writing at my computer instead of with my fountain pens or typewriter, I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://pyroom.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pyroom&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pyroom is a free, open source editor with no bells and whistles.  It runs in fullscreen mode only, providing you with an eye-strain easing green box of text on a black background.  The colors, box dimensions, font, and autosave behavior are configurable, and that's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Freemind&lt;/a&gt; (also free and open source) to manage my notes.  Keeping them on separate desktops, I can shift back and forth as needed without getting distracted when I'm writing in Pyroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write in &lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Markdown&lt;/a&gt;, because it's easy to deal with in plain text mode and does not distract me from my writing.  I put together a script to translate from Markdown directly to LaTeX for when HTML isn't my target output, and may add other formats down the road.  I do use &lt;a href=&quot;http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Markdown Extras&lt;/a&gt; to get support for footnotes, fenced code blocks, definition lists, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T14:50:46.950" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:56.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="180" CreationDate="2010-11-19T14:52:21.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Choose your own adventure books often use the second person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="41" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T14:52:21.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="76" CreationDate="2010-11-19T14:56:35.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;try&lt;/em&gt; to write primarily at the computer, for the sake of revision control.  However, when I'm stuck I find that switching to fountain pen or typewriter can help me push through the block.  Just the fact of changing from one medium to another can get my brain to &quot;reset&quot; sometimes, and I find it easier to get out of a rut and into a rhythm with the increased tactile feedback.  Also, since I work at the computer for a living, getting away from backlit screens when I can helps fight eye strain, and my typing is fast enough that transcription is an almost-trivial task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T14:56:35.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="213" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:08:13.523" Score="23" ViewCount="626" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any specific signs (singular or groups of) that I should pay attention to when it comes to publishers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read about publishing houses that charge their authors quite large amounts of money, while not providing much in the way of return for the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other signs I should be aware of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T22:01:53.647" Title="Warning signs that a publisher may be shady?" Tags="|publishing|self-preservation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="178" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:18:19.683" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Knowing some native speaker/writers, I'd say it's certainly possible.  What kind of writing are you doing?  I can see pros and cons for literary versus genre fiction.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Literary fiction is, I think, much more dependent on the words used to get the story across.  I think of it as long free-form poetry, a poetic prose.  Perhaps others would disagree, but the language itself is important to the reader.  As someone who would have to think carefully about word choices, I could see writing as a non-native speaker might be helpful because you'd have to be intentional.  The phrasing differences between English and Whatever could either help or hinder the writer's work.  It could either be fresh or confusing for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In genre fiction, however, the language of the writing is not quite as important.  Obviously if something is too &quot;off&quot;, the reader will pick up on it (I would note that this is the case for me even between British and U.S. English).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you might get into the idiomatic issue depending on your setting.  I think you'd be safer placing your writing in a context that would be familiar to you, even if you're writing in a non-native language.  So your story would take place in Russia if you're a Russian speaker, as opposed to setting it in pre-World War II Japan, for example.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you're writing in a first person perspective and your main character isn't a native speaker, then people might be a little more forgiving as readers.  To join along with the struggles of another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T15:18:19.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="207" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:18:26.753" Score="23" ViewCount="680" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the legal issues when submitting work to publishers? is there a risk of having my work stolen? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you protect yourself from this?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Is there an international &quot;law&quot; for this or is it country-specific?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastEditorUserId="8" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T16:22:59.850" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T18:05:18.993" Title="Do I need to register my work to retain copyright?" Tags="|submitting-work|self-preservation|legal|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:18:57.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you're writing. For example, if you are writing screen plays (or even stage plays), Final Draft Pro is absolutely the way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm working on prose, I do tend to just use my standard word processor of choice (Microsoft Word 2010 on Windows, 2011 on Mac), but I keep my notes, timelines, outlines, etc. in a series of OmniOutliner documents -- think a combined outliner and spreadsheet, and you pretty much get the gist. (And also, you'll probably figure out why it's so darned useful while writing!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="115" LastEditorUserId="115" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T15:31:19.287" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T15:31:19.287" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:56.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="171" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:24:36.267" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T15:24:36.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:25:45.390" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.celtx.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Celtx&lt;/a&gt;. It's a free open source script writing tool but I find it really helpful for regular writing too. There are lots of add-ons available to specialize it to your specific needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T15:25:45.390" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:56.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="194" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:29:56.697" Score="5" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;A response to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/books-about-english-writings&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What short stories, poems or other works of the literary art reflect (directly or indirectly) an author's experience as a writer? What messages do these pieces convey? How should/can these works affect my own writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T18:53:46.157" Title="Works of literature that are (ostensibly) about the act of writing" Tags="|book|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="155" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:30:48.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edit it until you're comfortable with the result.  If you feel that your story needs to be edited more because something was left out, or you don't like the direction that the story is taking, or whatever the reason, then edit it.  If you're happy with the story, then don't edit it.  After all, it's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T15:30:48.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:31:00.737" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I feel that fanfic is a crutch that keeps a lot of people from honing their craft and moving on to original fiction.  After years of NaNoWriMo and some side work with an editor, I've only seen one person start with fanfic and graduate to doing their own, thoroughly original work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like they're just too scared to ever leave their comfort zone, and why wouldn't they be?  The fanfic community tends to do its own thing, not overlapping much with other types of writing, so it's easy to feel like a big fish in a small pond -- to go from there to being a guppy in the ocean of original fiction is probably a jarring experience to say the least.  Plus, if you are writing fanfic, we all &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; you aren't writing for publication, so it's not like not getting published would be a &lt;em&gt;failure&lt;/em&gt; you might have to cope with.  By not trying, you feel like you can't fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I said &quot;in general&quot; at the beginning, and I meant it.  Here's the exception:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once something has found its way into the popular consciousness, and simmered there awhile, it can be the basis for a new work that, if not original fiction per se, is at least legitimate and useful fanfic.  Some examples that come to mind are the Disney retelling of classic fairy tales, Wicked (a retake on the Oz world), and Treasure Planet (not sure if this is Disney or not, but it's a resetting of Treasure Island in the future, in space, with a cyborg).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference here is that instead of creating fanfic of Harry Potter, Twilight, or some other thing fresh off the presses (which in addition to the issues above does not make you look like you are serious about your craft) -- the authors took something that has had a generation or two (or more) to sink in, and instead of trying to ride the coattails of other storytellers, the authors have used the archetypal status of the characters as a tool for their own craft, playing on our preconceptions.  Or, the work has been made more accessible to a new audience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Adults who have read the original Alice in Wonderland see the Disney cartoon in a different light than children seeing the cartoon for the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure Wicked even makes as much sense if one is not at least conversant in the original Wizard of Oz.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Treasure Planet was mostly an update, both for new cultural norms in how we tell stories to children (not that my son doesn't get to hear the originals, but I know we aren't the norm) and because I'm not sure a kid born in the age of GPS units, Coast Guard cutters, satellite beacons, etc. is likely to find the same danger factor in Treasure Island that someone born in the book's time would have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, thanks for stranding me on this deserted island, but I have a SPOT with me, so I'll just turn on the emergency beacon and tweet to all my friends about what a traitor you are.  The Coast Guard will be here to get us before I run out of Snickers bars.&quot;  -- Yes, I can tell my little one that there were no Coast Guard, satellites, GPS, or Snickers back then, but he won't really grok it until he's older.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T15:31:00.737" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="180" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:31:09.833" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Text Adventure games use a second-person narrative, as do many games that have been inspired by them, including some first person shooters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are in a dark room. You might be eaten by a grue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastEditorUserId="117" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T15:58:07.043" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T15:58:07.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="199" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:35:44.323" Score="13" ViewCount="850" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to write many different genres in my fiction writing but I think that this would be confusing as an author's name becomes somewhat of a brand. Is it therefore a good idea to invent pen names where genres don't really gel so that the audiences aren't thrown off if they pick one of the books under a different genre they expected? Or is it possible to generate sub-brands for an author so that the readership are clear on which genre a book is under?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other methods are there for achieving this separation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-10-19T00:11:47.943" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T23:02:13.397" Title="Writing different genres" Tags="|genre|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="194" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:37:10.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Eudora Welty's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0674639278&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;One Wrtier's Beginnings&lt;/a&gt; weaves together in an absolutely lovely way the story of her journey as a writer.  Along the way she shows how her own sensibilities as a writer were shaped.  This book helped me think about my own journey as a writer and also is helpful in directing future journeys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anne Lamott's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0385480016&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bird by Bird&lt;/a&gt; is ostensibly a non-fiction work on writing, but contains many autobiographical elements.  The autobiographical elements not only keep the work engaging and the reader interested, but also help to make the instruction in the book concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T15:37:10.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="201" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:39:36.477" Score="12" ViewCount="1638" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many video games have deep storylines. This has been the case since the early text adventures where creative writing was all that existed to keep a player engaged in the game. I believe that some stories are better served by this interactive medium rather than say a novelization or a movie script and I'd love to give it a try, but without having any contacts in that industry or real experience working in that medium, I was wondering what it takes to get started? Find or start an open source game project? Send some kind of treatment to an established game publisher or developer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T15:35:59.217" Title="How do I get involved in writing for video games?" Tags="|videogame|script|getting-started|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="84" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:55:53.680" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a &lt;strong&gt;huge&lt;/strong&gt; fan of self-publication and small-press publication, and I think the stigma attached to both is fading.  (It's worth noting that my only experience being published is non-fiction with a big publisher, but a girl's gotta start somewhere, and I do a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; with self-publishers in my job as head of a web development shop focused on small business.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-publishing is viable now in a way it never was before, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Distribution channels for literature are more centralized than ever.  While you used to have relationships with thousands of book stores and small chains across the country to get any notice, now once you are in one or more of the big listings you will be on Amazon.com, Borders, and Barnes and Noble's web sites before long.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You used to have to shell out big $$$ to do large print runs.  Now, electronic publishing and one-off printing let you limit your up-front costs to whatever it takes to write, edit, lay out, create cover art for, and advertise your book.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Advertising used to mean big $$$ and relationships to put together print ads, TV commercials, and radio spots.  Now, a professional-looking web site, a good social media strategy, and giving away a copy or two on Goodreads will get your foot in the door.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the gap between &quot;self publishing&quot; and traditional publishing is closing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tips you should know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Invest in a professional website, whether just for you as an author, or putting your work out under a small press name.  You can start with something as simple as a blog and expand from there, but people need to know where to go to find you and your latest work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In addition to selling via the big eBook outlets, offer sale of DRM-free (but watermarked, if you like) ebooks in multiple formats on your web site and/or through outlets specializing in DRM-free ebooks.  There are a growing number of ebook consumers who are tired of DRM, and their desired rate of consumption, at least in the fiction market, is far higher than the supply serving them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Learn how to leverage social media: Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Identi.ca, your own blog's RSS feed, etc. to promote your work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a print-on-demand service (I like Lulu.com) to offer print copies -- it doesn't cost you anything and not everyone reads ebooks.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid to pound the pavement.  If you are doing tech writing, speak at a conference.  If you are writing YA fiction, offer to spring for popcorn and do a reading at a local school or youth center.  If you are writing any fiction, talk to local bookstores about doing a reading and/or book signing (most love promoting local authors when they believe in the work).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give away a copy or three to people (Goodreads is a good channel for this) to get those first good reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spend time on great layout and typesetting.  You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do it yourself, and there are plenty of free, open-source software and fonts to help you.  If your book is hard to read, it doesn't matter how good a read it is, it won't get popular.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once your books hit Amazon, etc. make sure to go back and click the &quot;I am the publisher&quot; option to get your book and author info in shape.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T15:55:53.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="199" CreationDate="2010-11-19T15:55:54.667" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One famous author who has done this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.noraroberts.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nora Roberts&lt;/a&gt; (romance) / &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jdrobb.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;J. D. Robb&lt;/a&gt; (mystery).  I can see that a reader who appreciates a great thriller might not be interested in picking up a book that they associate (rightly or wrongly) with the author of a bodice-ripper.  In the case or Roberts/Robb, it probably makes a lot of sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mbbp.com/resources/iptech/pseudonyms.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; on pen names goes through pros and cons of using a pseudonym in general.  It points out that historically pen names were used for switching genres, but that some authors, such as John Grisham, have crossed genres using their own names with success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T15:55:54.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2010-11-19T16:02:42.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, LitFic is fiction that is not a &quot;page turner&quot; (i.e. a story with only very direct surface themes, that gets you to the next page via suspense, but doesn't make you think about anything outside the context of the book itself), and is written to have serious shelf life (i.e. is both relevant and understandable to future generations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LitFic can also be genre fiction (some of Heinlein's work comes to mind, scifi but definitely LitFic), but isn't usually (it's harder for genre fiction to remain relevant to a wide audience over time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T16:02:42.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="189" CreationDate="2010-11-19T16:09:09.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One method I heard of to protect yourself is to mail yourself a copy of your work before you submit it. That way you can have a sealed and postmarked copy of your work in case of plagiarism.  I am not sure if this also applies to digital media but archiving a copy of any emails sent out containing your work might be a good idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T16:09:09.377" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="189" CreationDate="2010-11-19T16:10:07.130" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I am not a lawyer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  The observations below apply in the US, I don't know much about international copyright law outside the specific area of software copyrights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here in the US, if you wrote something, you own the copyright on it, period.  All you need in order to assert that copyright is proof that you wrote something, and when.  There are many ways to do this.  I tend toward digital signatures but that's the geek in me.  Some people mail themselves a copy of their manuscript in a tamper-evident envelope so that they have the dated postmark on it and can prove it existed on the day it was mailed (note: keep it unopened until you get to court, so the judge sees you open it).  Some people give a copy to their lawyer to hold.  Some people simply share the work with enough friends/family that they figure enough witnesses will crop up if someone claims to have created the work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't already familiar with cryptographic signatures, and a group of people or trusted neutral party who will sign your manuscript, the tamper-proof envelope is probably your most reliable, cheapest bet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you live outside the US, US copyright law will work differently for you, depending on what treaties we have with your country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't trust a publisher not to steal your work, why do you trust them enough to do business with them in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T16:10:07.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="56" CreationDate="2010-11-19T16:25:01.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I've never actually written a series before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just had a project I was working on kind of explode.  It was originally intended to be a short story -- just a pre-NaNoWriMo writing exercise.  Then all of a sudden, I realized that I had too many notes for a short story -- this would be a novella if not a full-fledged novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started laying out plot points in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WritersCafe&lt;/a&gt;, but I'm too easily distracted for an app with so much going on.  I ended up writing out bits on index cards and sitting in my son's playroom one day, laying them out on the carpet until I had what seemed like a coherent timeline.  Then I transferred it all to &lt;a href=&quot;http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Freemind&lt;/a&gt;, where most of my notes end up living.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been tempted on and off to write a stand-alone timeline app that I can use outside my favorite &lt;a href=&quot;http://pyroom.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;minimalist editing environment&lt;/a&gt;, but as my free time is currently microscopic, not much non-paying work is making it on to my plate these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T16:25:01.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="124" CreationDate="2010-11-19T16:26:30.547" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second The &lt;a href=&quot;http://meetup.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Meetup.com&lt;/a&gt; recommendation, but would like to add that participating in &lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NaNoWriMo&lt;/a&gt; has always seemed a great way to meet up with other writers in your area and online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T16:26:30.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="210" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="222" CreationDate="2010-11-19T16:28:14.243" Score="10" ViewCount="617" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some experience writing stories, but would like to beginning screenwriting. Are there any online guides to show how to get started and transition into writing for the stage, where ideas need to be presented through dialogue and props, rather than narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:56:43.833" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:56:43.833" Title="How can I get started screenwriting/playwriting?" Tags="|screenwriting|playwriting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="124" CreationDate="2010-11-19T16:32:37.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you live in or close to a big city, especially one with a big writing scene (theatre or novel), there should be many writing groups. Besides Meetup as has already been mentioned, there may be online local forums (Chicago used to have ChicagoImprov.com which was a forum for improvisers and sketch writers/actors). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking a writing class would also help you meet other writers and join a group or create your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T16:32:37.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="173" CreationDate="2010-11-19T16:33:24.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I write papers, I usually try to write in American English. I say try because not being a native speaker (I'm Belgian), i have a natural tendency to mix up stuff. So when I'm not sure, I take a dictionary and look up the possible spellings and will settle for a consistent choice, which is most of the time American English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important is to be consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T16:33:24.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="187" CreationDate="2010-11-19T16:39:38.320" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;On evaluating a good publisher:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your publisher shouldn't charge you anything, period.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your publisher should explain exactly what your contract terms are, then give them to you in writing for your lawyer / best friend / psychic / mom / whomever-you-like to review before you sign.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your publisher should have a verifiable list of successful titles with a similar market to yours.  (This isn't to say that new publishers are bad, but they are outside my risk tolerance unless there was an introduction by someone I trust).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your publisher should be able to lay out for you exactly what they will be doing to earn their keep, and it should be included in the contract just as your obligations are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your publisher should respond courteously to questions about the process, especially since you've told them you are new at this.  If they are defensive or give you the brush-off, they are hiding something.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your publisher should be offering a deal that both of you feel is fair.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extras that make for an amazing publisher:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experience in digital publishing, examples of great ebook production.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Willingness to consider releasing work under a &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org&quot;&gt;Creative Commons&lt;/a&gt; license, either at publication time or a set number of years afterward.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shares my aversion to DRM, and will sell DRM-free ebooks from day-1 as well as pressure DRM-addicted outlets to let my titles be sold DRM-free if at all possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gives me a single, easy-to-reach point person regarding my project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T16:39:38.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="201" CreationDate="2010-11-19T16:45:35.710" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first advice is -- don't.  There's an attitude in the gaming industry that working on games is so cool they shouldn't have to pay you a fair wage.  Working conditions in the game industry tend to lag behind other sectors.  Salaries for graphic artists and coders in the game industry are about 1/3 of what those same people would make in any other sector, and I suspect it is the same for writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must get into the game industry, though, find a company with a history of treating its people fairly, and that use an open-source engine under their games.  The business argument for a company to use an open-source engine is persuasive, but for you as a writer the biggest difference is in corporate culture and willingness to give you a fair shake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've figured out who you want to work with, put together a proposal, send it in, and cross your fingers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T16:45:35.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="178" CreationDate="2010-11-19T16:50:16.240" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is certainly not easy, but I'd like to point to a possible advantage of coming from a different culture with a different language: it might also give you an edge! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read manga (japanese comic books) for instance, I always gravitate towards the type of manga which draws its inspiration from western culture. The manga that talk about eastern culture, like ninja or samurai stories don't interest me. It's the ones about pirates and bounty hunters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the comic books treating the same themes do not interest me at all. Why? It's precisely because of the refreshing look of japanese manga artists on our culture. They view it totally differently, bring in aspects from their own culture into it, and that's what makes it so very fresh and entertaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something similar must be true for literature. Wasn't Nabokov, the great Russian writer, writing in English, French and Russian? Often drawing inspiration from the various languages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly, the task ahead is not an easy one, but nothing worthwhile is easy, don't let it discourage you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastEditorUserId="11428" LastEditDate="2016-08-04T19:10:14.790" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T19:10:14.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="194" CreationDate="2010-11-19T16:51:17.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stranger Than Fiction is a movie that comes to mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T16:51:17.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="107" CreationDate="2010-11-19T16:58:53.027" Score="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience has been lack of context and mystery most quickly grab my attention.  I believe this has to do with the need of the human mind to create order and solve problems.  Perhaps examples will illustrate this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a bright cold day in April, and&#xA;  the clocks were striking thirteen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cold April day, northern hemisphere... clocks striking... what?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;They shoot the white girl first.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Shooting girls?  Because of their race?  Or is it incidental?  Where is this?  What is happening?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I write this sitting in the kitchen&#xA;  sink.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The sink?  Writing?  How?  Why?  WTF is going on here?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so forth.  YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T16:58:53.027" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-19T17:02:53.523" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not strictly about writing, but useful for any creative process: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0446691437&quot;&gt;The War of Art&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user79" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T17:02:53.523" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T17:02:53.523" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="189" CreationDate="2010-11-19T17:04:29.277" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the legal issues when submitting work to publishers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your work must be &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; work. Don't submit anything that someone else has written, not even if you just copied a few sentences. Even if you changed them. There are companies out there that can run automated checks on your work to see if they can find something in it that even remotely looks like someone else wrote it. If that happens, your reputation can be ruined before it even started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is there a risk of having my work stolen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not really. Think about it from the thieves point of view. If you work is bad, it won't sell so it doesn't make sense to steal it. If it's good, and they make a fortune, you will surely sue to get your money. Chances are that you will make it in court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, if your work is incredibly good or bad, there is only a small chance that someone will steal it. Stop worrying, put your energy into making your work better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can you protect yourself from this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone really sets his/her mind to ripping you off, then there is little you can do. The point is not to be paranoid. What are the &lt;em&gt;realistic&lt;/em&gt; chances that someone will steal your work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also another side of the coin: If a publisher is accused to steal, that is very bad for their reputation as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there an international &quot;law&quot; for this or is it country-specific?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no International law and you should be happy about that. Copyright is a tool to make &lt;em&gt;publishers&lt;/em&gt; rich, not you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1800 in Germany, there was no copyright. England, OTOH, had a very strict copyright. The net effect: Ten times more books were published in Germany, they were cheap and many authors could live from their work (high demand for books -&gt; better bargaining power for authors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In England, only a few authors could live from their work, books were very expensive (one quarter of your monthly income for a single book). Publishers set the prices, there were many authors but only a few books got ever published because they sold so bad because they were so expensive, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/33/33092/1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wem nutzt das Urheberrecht?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[EDIT]&lt;/strong&gt; If you need a cheap and reliable way to prove that something is your work, here is an idea: When you mail the work to someone, mail a registered copy to yourself. Do not open the envelope, don't tamper with it in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to go to court, you can present the letter there and &lt;strong&gt;have the court open it&lt;/strong&gt; to prove that the work is yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@HedgeMage: Some flaws in your argument:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With copyright, authors have to sell their work to publishers. If there is no copyright, authors can switch publisher at any time. In the first case, the position of the publisher is stronger. They decide who and what gets published. In the latter case, the authors are in power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say all copies of your book have been printed and your current publisher doesn't want (for whatever reason) print more. Today, your work is lost. Even if you could have more readers, you won't. It's out of your control.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With copyright, no one can publish your work against your will. So you can create an artificial demand, which drives prices up. But only for those who are in demand. If anyone can print any book, authors can't sit back. They have to write more and more books. So that's better for the readers: Fewer books will go out of print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you'll argue that authors won't get any money if anyone can pirate their work any time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How so? If a book isn't published at all, no one can pirate it. So only published books can be pirated. When a book is published, you need to make a copy of it (scanning, proof-reading, etc). So pirating isn't free, it costs money, too. And time. Eager fans will buy the book as soon as possible, so the author will always get money from the first time publisher. But since there is no copyright, the author can have their book printed by a second publisher, too - and get money from two sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a publisher doesn't want to ask for permission, well, you can't force them. There is nothing preventing them to print any book. But there must be a market, too. So their copy must have some unique value to the readers. Maybe its much cheaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an author that gets me thinking: &quot;If my current publisher is so expensive, that means fewer people buy my books &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; I could get more per copy if that other publisher printed it ...&quot; Not something your publisher will want to hear, I'm sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your publisher offers you better service than the &quot;cheap pirate&quot;, you can still stay. But now, it's a &lt;em&gt;decision&lt;/em&gt;, not something forced by the law. It will hurt your feelings if someone makes a lot of money with a re-print but fact is that this money could have been yours if you had the guts to pick it up. You don't want to take the risk? Then on what grounds do you demand a share?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that there won't be problems, I'm saying is that as the author of my work, I get more say in the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article linked about gives a lot more reasons why copyright is basically a well sold lie. Yes, it makes a select few very rich (first of all the publishers and then a few best-seller authors) but I'm pretty sure even Mrs. Rowling would agree: It would be better if a million authors more could live from their work rather than she make a few billions more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastEditorUserId="121" LastEditDate="2010-11-22T08:55:43.833" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T08:55:43.833" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-19T17:04:40.873" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few of my favourite writing books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steven King's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0743455967&quot;&gt;On Writing&lt;/a&gt; - hands down the most inspirational read on writing I've read (and his process is different than many).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1592402038&quot;&gt;Eats, Shoots, and Leaves&lt;/a&gt; - a witty read on punctuation, great for sharpening that part of your brain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0767903099&quot;&gt;Sin and syntax&lt;/a&gt; - a book of examples of good and bad syntax, some of the most fluid writing I've seen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="76" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T17:12:46.297" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T17:12:46.297" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T17:04:40.873" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="221" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="592" CreationDate="2010-11-19T17:08:51.150" Score="18" ViewCount="678" Body="&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; make an effort to write every day, and usually succeed, but I just have too much going on in my life right now to give my writing the time it would like to have.  When I do have time, blog posts, tech papers, etc. try very hard to crowd out the fiction I do for fun (not that I'd mind publishing it some day, I just don't have the time to put in to pursue that goal in earnest right now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can't always take &quot;just&quot; a half hour or an hour or two more to get to a stopping point.  I hate stopping when I'm on a roll, but it's just a fact of life.  How do you grab what you had when you left off and lose as little of the &quot;juice&quot; as possible when you sit back down to write?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How can one shorten the time from &quot;sitting down to write&quot; to &quot;oh, yeah, that's where we were...&quot; and productive writing?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there any productivity tools you recommend to make the planning process less disjointed?  I'm happy with my editor; however I'm using mindmapping software for general notes, and paper index cards for rearranging timeline, and would like to replace the index cards, or possibly both, with something better suited to the task.  (I'm not interested in an IDE-like all-in-one such as WritersCafe.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other tips re: productivity despite limited writing time would be appreciated, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T18:12:59.140" LastActivityDate="2020-06-02T07:24:31.220" Title="What can one do to get the most from limited writing time?" Tags="|fiction|habits|process|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="210" CreationDate="2010-11-19T17:16:20.800" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Screenwriting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.screenwriting.info/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.screenwriting.info/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0028639448&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Complete Idiot's Guide to Screenwriting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Playwriting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/introtoplaywriting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/introtoplaywriting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205412971&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing for the Stage: A Practical Playwriting Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T17:16:20.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="221" CreationDate="2010-11-19T17:18:29.180" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In college I had a writing professor who was a published novelist, mother, and had worked in web design while getting her Masters of Fine Arts and writing.  She told a story of another novelist who did most of her &quot;writing&quot; while doing chores.  This novelist had a great memory and would come up with the next stage of her plot while folding laundry, on walks, in the shower, etc.  When she got a moment, she wrote it all down.  Because she was so immersed in her story, it stuck with her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This won't work if you don't have that kind of memory.  It is, however, how very some prolific authors get books written.  They write in their heads until they can write on paper/the computer/the typewriter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T17:18:29.180" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="72" CreationDate="2010-11-19T17:21:27.443" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add on to TML's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journalists generally use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press_Stylebook&quot;&gt;AP Stylebook&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing for the web, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://styleguide.yahoo.com/&quot;&gt;Yahoo! Style Guide&lt;/a&gt; is often used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T17:21:27.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-19T17:29:00.277" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060391685&quot;&gt;Story&lt;/a&gt; by Robert McKee is one of my favorites. It's about screenwriting, but has a huge amount of information on storytelling in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T17:29:00.277" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T17:29:00.277" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="107" CreationDate="2010-11-19T17:33:58.913" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;First lines, like &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/138/how-to-name-the-characters-of-your-story&quot;&gt;character names&lt;/a&gt;, are hard.  Don't let them keep you from writing your story.  In fact you may find that you write a better first line by writing your story first.  Edith Wharton's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0375753206&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Age of Innocence&lt;/a&gt; opens with a scene that is in many ways a microcosm of the whole novel.  It begins:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On a January evening of the early seventies Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interesting thing is that Christine Nilsson goes on to become completely unimportant in the work.  The setting of the opera, however, is absolutely critical to showing Wharton's &quot;old New York&quot; as it was.  The opening line does encapsulate some interesting things - Faust and connotations of adultery, the upper crust lifestyle of opera attendees in the late 19th century, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So one good way to write a great opening line is to write your story and then write a line that &lt;em&gt;sets the stage for your entire story by setting up a scene that shows your story in miniature&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T17:33:58.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3" CreationDate="2010-11-19T17:38:50.860" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I seem to recall that either Writers Digest or Writers Market keeps a list you can subscribe to of agents, what genres they work in, query guidelines, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T17:38:50.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="155" CreationDate="2010-11-19T17:45:20.073" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's easy to get that feeling, but it doesn't necessarily mean the story is worse (or that it's better).  For this reason, I keep all my work under revision control (I prefer &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot;&gt;git&lt;/a&gt;, but there are others).  That way, I can actually compare any revision that has ever existed to any other (to see if it's really worse or if I'm just tired of it), I can roll back to a previous revision (if a set of changes was actually a bad idea), and most of all see what is going on with my changes (to keep from going through cycle after cycle of editing over just a few phrases, which either means other parts of the work are being ignored, or I'm &quot;done&quot; and just didn't feel it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T17:45:20.073" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="155" CreationDate="2010-11-19T17:50:30.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no single answer for this. I recently was working on a short story that I was happy with in its first incarnation. I asked a former teacher to look over it, and he suggested a change in the style; I went with it for the sake of editing. After three days of hopelessly hacking at the story, I realized that all of the changes I made were making it &lt;em&gt;worse&lt;/em&gt;, and what I really wanted all along was the first draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moral is: don't be afraid to stick with your first draft if your edits aren't working for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T17:50:30.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="194" CreationDate="2010-11-19T17:51:36.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two short stories that seem (to me) to be obvious metaphores for the author's relationship with writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Albert Camus', &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Artist_at_Work&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jonas or the Artist at Work&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kafka's, &quot;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lundwood.u-net.com/ahunga.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hunger&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hunger_Artist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Artist&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Spiolers to follow]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both stories depict artists who were at one time famous and respected but overtime become forgotten and frail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Camus' story is about an artist who completely dedicates himself to coming up with the most perfect piece of art and after weeks of ceaseless labor produces an almost completely empty canvass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kafka's story describes a &quot;starving artist&quot; whose talent is so innate that it pretty much enslaves him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T17:51:36.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="157" CreationDate="2010-11-19T18:00:07.050" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing style, in that a huge portion of it involves choice of how you word things, varies greatly from language to language and culture to culture.  For example, I meet &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; people here in the US who have serious issues with my letting my son read &quot;The Adventures of Tom Sawyer&quot; by Mark Twain, because it uses a word for persons of color that was normal and common in Mark Twain's time, but is considered an epithet in America today.  (Ironically, Mark Twain was one of the more progressive people in his time when it came to race relations.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story lines are about the same.  The story line itself may be universal: striving to meet a goal, falling in love, etc., how it is interpreted by readers will depend a lot on cultural context: i.e. the reader's beliefs and experience and how that makes them view your setting, characters, and plot.  Sometimes, they get so hung up on the setting or a particular belief of a character that they never even &lt;em&gt;notice&lt;/em&gt; the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean that you can't write for multiple audiences, just realize that they are different audiences, write &lt;em&gt;well&lt;/em&gt; and let the marketing department figure out the rest. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T18:00:07.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="73" CreationDate="2010-11-19T18:32:59.503" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I have other things on my mind, I &lt;em&gt;force myself&lt;/em&gt; to write two sentences before getting up from the computer/writing desk/typewriter.  At least half the time, two sentences is enough to get me into some sort of rhythm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I do a variation of the 10/2/5 rule (work/write 10 minutes, do something &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; else for two, repeat 5 times to total an hour, take a bio or other break).  Mine's 12/3/4 -- same concept, just adjusted to the fact that I take a minute or two to &quot;reset&quot; sometimes when changing tasks.  It really does help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T18:32:59.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-19T18:47:30.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0312010443&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to write a damn good novel&lt;/a&gt;. The name might sound shallow, but the book is so packed with great information that it makes for a great source of knowledge, especially for the beginner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Eric Fortier" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-02-11T14:14:42.493" LastActivityDate="2022-02-11T14:14:42.493" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T18:47:30.987" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="257" CreationDate="2010-11-19T18:48:23.530" Score="33" ViewCount="19918" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously this question has a lot of different answers. I'm interested in the typical total profit that a writer might expect to see from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A NYT Bestseller&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A diet or self-help book that sells 100,000 copies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A romance novel that sells 10,000 copies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A self-published novel that sells 5,000 copies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the typical rev shares for new authors? How are the deals structured? Do you always get royalties, or is flat fee more typical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="122" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-12-13T06:13:15.213" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T18:19:17.390" Title="How Much Can You Make From Writing a Book?" Tags="|money|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="237" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="243" CreationDate="2010-11-19T18:49:46.650" Score="11" ViewCount="7658" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel wherein there are many characters whose thoughts are key to telling it properly.  In an earlier draft, I attempted to have any given chapter told from the point of view of exactly one character, but that turned out to be problematic.  Usually it led to chapters I found uncomfortably short, or I would wind up writing mostly about nothing as I forgot that character was no longer important for the current scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current draft, I decided to go with a pseudo-omniscient narrator to solve these problems.  It could only step into one character's head at a time, but it would be able to switch characters mid-scene, if necessary, rather than waiting for a section or chapter break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the transitions from one character to another have felt a bit awkward, though.  Most of the better ones I have involve dialogue; it's easy to switch the frame to another character naturally after that character has just spoken.  Are there any other techniques that can make these transitions flow better?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2019-09-14T16:41:03.807" Title="How to switch pov characters mid-scene without jarring the reader?" Tags="|viewpoint|third-person|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="241" CreationDate="2010-11-19T18:54:56.663" Score="18" ViewCount="9890" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen &quot;New York Times Bestseller&quot; written across the top of more books than I can count.  It seems every other book I look at has this advertisement, so much so that I discount it as a meaningful accomplishment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what does it really mean?  Is it based on number of copies sold?  Does the NYT actually have editors read the books and only choose ones that they enjoyed enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-07-14T16:50:03.303" LastActivityDate="2019-10-15T23:28:03.013" Title="What is the requirement for a book to be a NYT Bestseller?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-19T18:56:44.677" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Christopher Vogler's summary of Joseph Campbell's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Monomyth&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;A Practical Guide to The Hero With a Thousand Faces&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="102" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T18:56:44.677" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T18:56:44.677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="239" CreationDate="2010-11-19T18:58:49.477" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It means that a book has been - for any length of time - on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/overview.html&quot;&gt;New York Time's Best Seller's List&lt;/a&gt;.  This list aggregates sales data from thousands of venues in the United States for several different genres of books.  It gathers data weekly and the data is published two weeks after data gathering (so the November 28 print edition contains the November 14th data).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a New York Times best seller is not necessarily an index of quality.  It is an index of &quot;hotness.&quot;  A book is moving fast to make it onto that list.  The idea behind advertising it is to help the book pick up even more steam.  If a book spends several weeks on the list, this is an indication of a book that sells extremely well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason that it seems like this encompasses so many books is that you hear about books that are NYT best sellers because they are being purchased, read, and talked about.  The reality is that this list contains fewer books than you would think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T18:58:49.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="239" CreationDate="2010-11-19T18:59:15.437" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/overview.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/overview.html&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rankings reflect sales, for the week&#xA;  ending November 7, 2010, at many&#xA;  thousands of venues where a wide range&#xA;  of general interest books are sold&#xA;  nationwide. These include hundreds of&#xA;  independent book retailers&#xA;  (statistically weighed to represent&#xA;  all such outlets); national, regional&#xA;  and local chains; online and&#xA;  multimedia entertainment retailers;&#xA;  university, gift, supermarket,&#xA;  discount department stores and&#xA;  newsstands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T18:59:15.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="237" CreationDate="2010-11-19T19:06:12.163" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, first off I would try to avoid that if you can, but that's not always possible, so here's one thing that I've found worked for me in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had both characters looking at something and thinking about it (and in this case, each other). I started with one character's thoughts, then moved to a mix of both of them as they overlapped, then finished in the other character's head. It took a couple tries to get it really working. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My real goal with this was to make the reader only realize that things had changed after it had happened, they would just find themselves naturally in the other character's mind and not question it. Though I admit it took a few tries to get it working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T19:06:12.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="237" CreationDate="2010-11-19T19:06:26.690" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Character jumping can be done gracefully, but it's important to master the concept of one character perspective per scene first. It's tempting to jump around, but you will find that your writing gets better when you slap a constraint of no head jumping mid-scene. The writing is better because you're forced to build intimacy with the current character instead of trying to show everything at once. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Head jumping jars the reader naturally because you're breaking the intimacy with the current character, and forcing your audience to understand the situation through a whole new perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your specific issue, try picking the most important character in the scene so it doesn't fall flat. The issues you ran into by staying with one character (short chapters or no impact) seem like a core issue in the approach toward the story. When the story requires so many characters to tell their thoughts in one scene, imagine the potential for reader confusion as they try to relate to the concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="86" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T19:25:58.040" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T19:25:58.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-11-19T19:16:19.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many tools you can use, as listed above, though in the end the best thing to use is what works for you. Try out what looks good and see if it helps you out. If something gets in the way of your writing it can't be to helpful, can it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Myself, for many years I used TextPad to do all my writing in. Useful application that did plain text and did it very well. Over the last couple of years I've been moving to Word 2007, mostly because it has a homogenize checker, something that is still a problem for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T19:16:19.680" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:56.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="73" CreationDate="2010-11-19T19:28:53.807" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of different ways you can overcome a lack of motivation, here are a few that I've come up with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write somewhere outside of your usual places. This can be a coffee shop or a home office, but it has to be the sort of place you don't do other things at. The idea is to take you out of the familiar places where you can fall back into the usual patterns. This shouldn't be the sort of place (or computer if you can afford it) that you use to play games or watch TV. It's a place for writing, and you go there to write.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Schedule a block of time. Sometimes just writing an hour everyday can help. It's worked for me when I've been in a longer slump.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Goal and Rewards. This is a simple one, how much do you want to write every day/week? Set the goal for that and then set your reward for meeting that goal. Not only are your bribing yourself you're setting a deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or another take on the same idea, Competition. Last year another writer friend of mine and I entered into a deal. The first person to miss their weekly writing goal before the end of the year had to by the other a DVD boxset of their choice. At the time we were both sipping all over the place. For the next six months neither one of us missed our goals... so neither one of us got a boxset. Well, the word count was more important.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T19:28:53.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="143" CreationDate="2010-11-19T19:33:42.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;They way my last few collaborations worked was a bit like this, though these were all for short stories. Together we would come up with the story and work out the plot points for the story, the main character beats and the over all plot and events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that was all settled one of us would sit down and write the draft (we would trade off of this each story). Then give to the other who would review and clean up the story a bit more. The back and fourth until we were both happy with that, after that it was posted for the online group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually you can tell who did the heavy lifting on the writing as they got top billing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T19:33:42.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-19T19:53:23.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470530707&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing Fiction for Dummies&lt;/a&gt; - I really enjoyed that one. I also found &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0826415687&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach&lt;/a&gt; very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T19:53:23.573" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T19:53:23.573" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="73" CreationDate="2010-11-19T19:57:14.687" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't like having pending tasks (I use Outlook for them), so a good way I found to motivate myself (for doing anything actually) is adding tasks to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before doing anything else I try to complete these tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding tasks for writing at least a few paragraph (to start) would be a good way to accomplish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T19:57:14.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="253" CreationDate="2010-11-19T20:03:23.937" Score="9" ViewCount="523" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that when I structure my poetry according to an accepted form such as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villanelle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;villanelle&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sestina&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sestina&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sonnet&lt;/a&gt; I am able to think more clearly because of the boundaries of the form, and believe my best poetry is in fixed verse form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm concerned that fixed verse form poetry seems old fashioned (especially given the number of people who think writing a sonnet gives them license to torture the English language).  Are there readers for this type of poetry?  Are their editors or magazines who would welcome it?  Should I work on perfecting my un-structured poetry instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-11-21T18:29:59.067" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T22:11:40.457" Title="Is there a Market for Poetry with a Fixed Verse Form" Tags="|publishing|poetry|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="134" CreationDate="2010-11-19T20:03:32.357" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was studying sketch writing, we were taught to not worry about storylines and events, but rather about characters, relationships, and their motivations. The motivations then lead to some conflict and the personalities lead to a resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sketch (essentially a five minute play that tells a short story), the arc was pretty much, introduce characters, relationships, and environment by 1:00. Build up towards conflict by 2/2:30. The conflict brings out each characters needs and thereby actions, which drives towards a resolution around 4:00, and then wrap up at 5:00.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following this method, each character would have a reason he does something, and the dialogue would write itself. This holds not just for comedy, but also other types of theatre, and on a larger scale (ie: novel, three-act play) the same concepts hold within each scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every week we had to write a story, and the way we always started was by having some general idea and some characters and their motivations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characters then defined what happened. Often time, the end turned out to be entirely different from what was in the back of my head initially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen King talks about the same thing in &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt;, where when he starts a book he has no idea what's going to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michael Crichton (&lt;em&gt;Jurassic Park&lt;/em&gt;) had also said in an interview many years ago that he used to get into the heads of velociraptors by pretending to be one in his office just so he could understand what they were going to do next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T20:03:32.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="251" CreationDate="2010-11-19T20:07:28.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.duotrope.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Duotrope&lt;/a&gt; also lists poetry markets; that might be the best place to start looking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2013-05-24T22:11:40.457" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T22:11:40.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-19T20:09:56.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.writersdigest.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writer's Digest&lt;/a&gt; has many good articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-02-11T14:02:41.020" LastActivityDate="2022-02-11T14:02:41.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-19T21:13:32.227" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following were very informative for me, for various reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/089879045X&quot;&gt;How to Write Best Selling Fiction&lt;/a&gt;, by Dean Koontz: no-nonsense, practical, full of real-world examples, though a bit dated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0898796008&quot;&gt;The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells&lt;/a&gt;, by Ben Bova: examines the mechanics of what the &lt;strong&gt;craft&lt;/strong&gt; of writing good fiction consists of (note Bova was an editor for many years, so his insight is doubly valid).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0743455967&quot;&gt;On Writing&lt;/a&gt;, by Stephen King: more of a biography of how he did it (as he admits), but incredibly insightful and very well written. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T21:13:32.227" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-19T21:13:32.227" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2010-11-19T21:17:42.057" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the characters are strong, the name gets molded to the character; if they're weak, it's the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The World According to Garp&quot; makes a pretty big deal about Garp's name - both the word &quot;Garp&quot; and why Garp's mother selected that name play important roles.  Nonetheless, I don't think the story would have had a significantly different impact on me if Garp had been named &quot;John&quot;.  We identify with characters based on who they are - their name becomes a convenient flag for that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastEditorUserId="44" LastEditDate="2010-11-19T21:42:43.723" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T21:42:43.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="236" CreationDate="2010-11-19T21:26:52.803" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;A NYT Bestseller&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably you'll make a good bit here, but generally, if you make it this far, it's not going to be your first book, and you're going to have worked it out contractually before hand. Mind you, you can be on the list for selling ~5000(hardcover) copies a week. If you write something that makes the list, you'll probably bring down $50,000+, but the numbers vary wildly depending on what rights you sold the publisher, what your contract stipulates, etc, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A diet or self-help book that sells 100,000 copies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In what time period, in how many printings, etc, etc? Is it hardcover or paperback? This is pretty hard to judge. For books that aren't pegged on religion, fad diets, or new age mysticism, 10,000 copies would be considered a great run for this kind of book. 100,000 is pretty rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A romance novel that sells 10,000 copies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chances are, you'll make the same for selling 1 copy as for 1 million copies. Romance novels are almost all commissioned. The company sends you the exact outline, and you write it to their spec, for a flat fee. You probably don't get to put your name on it, but why would you want to? Now, if you're writing your own novel, it'll make the same as any other type of book, depending on your contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A self-published novel that sells 5,000 copies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, you'll make like 10 bucks a book, but on the other hand, you'll have to spend your life wandering from bookstore to bookstore trying to get them to buy 5 copies at a time. So in terms of hourly wage, eh. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T21:26:52.803" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="199" CreationDate="2010-11-19T21:31:26.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem I've seen is that all the authors books aren't in the same spot in the store, so your more casual fans aren't going know that you have a book out unless they read from multiple genres themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise I don't think you'll have many issues. Hardcore fans will get the information from your website, and straddling genres will bring some people to your other work who wouldn't be exposed to it otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T21:31:26.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="76" CreationDate="2010-11-19T21:40:26.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neal Stephenson famously &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nealstephenson.com/photos.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;writes his books out longhand&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, he also only publishes a book every 4 years or so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never been able to understand people who preferred longhand or typewriters, but this is mostly because I can't stand losing something I've written, and this is all too easy with hardcopy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T21:40:26.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="173" CreationDate="2010-11-19T21:44:56.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only time you'd have to choose is if you're submitting to a journal or publication that has a list of writing standards to which applications must adhere, and one of their standards is preferred spelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T21:44:56.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="171" CreationDate="2010-11-19T21:53:34.797" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strunk and White: &lt;A HREF=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style&quot;&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T21:53:34.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="187" CreationDate="2010-11-19T22:01:53.647" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/187/warning-signs-that-a-publisher-may-be-shady/213#213&quot;&gt;HedgeMage's&lt;/a&gt; answer, which provides a nice summary of the issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of online resources and discussion places on the topic of dodgy publishers, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writer Beware&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Preditors and Editors&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Absolute Write&lt;/a&gt;. You can search these for general tips or to check on specific publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sff.net/people/victoriastrauss/beware.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article by Victoira Strauss&lt;/a&gt; provides a good summary of things to look for (agents as well as publishers) and links to other resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T22:01:53.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="128" CreationDate="2010-11-19T22:07:40.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a good, modern example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1594489580&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao&lt;/a&gt;. The entire story is told by a narrator who speaks, not only with slang, but with impenetrable, culturally specific slang, largely in Spanish. It gives the whole book an immediacy, and you feel almost as if you're sitting on the steps with a beer, listening to this crazy dominicano telling you the story as he paces back and forth on the sidewalk, making big hand gestures. Quality book, won a lot of awards, sold a lot of copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is absolutely, with the caveat that, if it's not done well, it's better not to do it at all. And it should (imho) only be done in the first or second. Even if you're using some Gatsby-esque first-person-pretending-to-be-third-person device, that's fine, but impersonal narrators speaking in slang is a little weird, again, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastEditorUserId="125" LastEditDate="2010-11-22T15:40:18.743" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T15:40:18.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="201" CreationDate="2010-11-19T23:22:54.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bioware had a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bioware.com/biozone/articles/2005_11_30_WritingContest/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;contest&lt;/a&gt; several years ago to hire a writer.  Certainly not an appealing way to go about applying for a job, but that contest did leave behind some potentially useful tips for what sort of writing game companies might be looking for, eg:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some additional guidelines to keep in&#xA;  mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Dialogue should be no longer than 2-3    lines at a time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The dialogue must be    fun, easy to read, and not overly    verbose. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;We will also be judging the    structure of your dialogue. Does the&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  dialogue flow logically? Does the player feel in control of the conversation? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Avoid dialogue where    the player has very little    interaction. The&#xA;  player should feel    that he is&#xA;  talking to an NPC, not    being talked&#xA;  at.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Avoid modern    sounding dialogue. Do not use modern    anachronisms or&#xA;  slang. Fantasy    characters shouldn't&#xA;  sound like they    come from the 21st&#xA;  century. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Make the    first character interesting. The    first character&#xA;  the player talks to    sets the tone&#xA;  for the entire module.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating a Neverwinter Nights module would definitely be something you could do in order to get a feel for the flow of writing if you want to get involved in writing for &lt;em&gt;RPGs&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastActivityDate="2010-11-19T23:22:54.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="53" CreationDate="2010-11-20T00:09:05.630" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of a few shared world out there, some are more open then others it really depends on what sort of genre you're looking to write in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up here in Pacific Northwest is a setting called &quot;New Cascadia&quot; which is one of those community sent back in time thing... though in this case it most of western Washington and Oregon. I know there is quiet a bit of writing in that setting, and it's large enough to have room to do something without any trouble, but for the life of me I can't find any website for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll have to ask around with some of the people who I know have worked on it, though that won't be until the next convention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T00:09:05.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="210" CreationDate="2010-11-20T00:13:05.830" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say start by reading some scripts. You need to see the style they have, and the best thing you can do (other than start writing yourself) is to read the work of successful writers. You can learn how to write good scenes, and, in the case of screenplays, you can watch the movie as well to see how it all looks once done. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailyscript.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Daily Script&lt;/a&gt; is a great website to read screenplays for both TV shows and movies. I'm sure there are similar sites for plays.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Good luck and have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T00:13:05.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-20T00:18:16.307" Score="11" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Orson Scott Card: Characters and Viewpoint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keith Johnstone: Impro for storytellers (intended for improv actors, but energizing to read and it gives useful tips about what makes a story roll)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jerome Stern: Making shapely fiction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paul Matthews: Sing me the creation (exercises intended for poets, but useful for prose writing, too)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="127" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T00:18:16.307" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-20T00:18:16.307" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="210" CreationDate="2010-11-20T00:21:26.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following applies more to playwriting than screenwriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stuart Spencer's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stuartsspencer.com/guidebook.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Playwright's Guidebook&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is the best book I've seen on the subject.  It's practical and accessible but not dumbed-down, and built from his own experiences in the theater world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of reading books and studying plays, I would say start going to the theater regularly.  Plays are meant to be experienced, not read.  To go even further, donate your time to a local small theater group.  This might mean setting up and tearing down sets, lighting, even acting, but that's part of the deal.  Not only will you see how theater &quot;works&quot;, you'll also make contacts with the very people who produce the work of young playwrights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="56" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T00:21:26.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="108" CreationDate="2010-11-20T00:26:44.907" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The largest communities I found  are &lt;a href=&quot;http://storymash.com&quot;&gt;Storymash&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.protagonize.com&quot;&gt;Protagonize&lt;/a&gt;.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_fiction&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on collaborative fiction&lt;/a&gt; mentions some other sites, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="127" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T00:26:44.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-20T01:31:43.080" Score="8" ViewCount="2074" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1582971404&quot;&gt;Flip Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;, a Thesaurus, my trusty Strunk&amp;amp;White, and I use the almighty GOOG(le) should I ever be unsure of the definition of a word. What does everyone else use? Is there some handy reference that I'm missing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not really concerned with style books...I see we've got two threads on those already. I want to know about word references and such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-11-24T04:00:38.883" LastActivityDate="2011-12-26T07:48:00.410" Title="What linguistic tools do you use?" Tags="|resources|dictionary|thesaurus|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="54" CreationDate="2010-11-20T02:18:42.350" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to go ahead and disagree, and I'll tell you why. The problem with telling, with clarity, is that you're no longer letting the reader's imagination do the work. Clarity is great for technical documentation, but a lot of highly regarded fiction is anything but clear. Hell, if you're a postmodernist, then &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=8iS04PaSssQC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=ulysses&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=5rllbHvD4n&amp;amp;sig=qj_9k7YYXnymPy6hYDep60ti53Y&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=oS3nTOO8McT7lweuxOmeCQ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=6&amp;amp;ved=0CFoQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;clarity is your enemy&lt;/a&gt;. You fight it to the death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take a simple example, think about horror movies, and horror fiction. How scary is it when you actually &lt;i&gt;see&lt;/i&gt; the monster clearly? It's usually a bit of a joke at that point. But that precious time when the monster is hidden? When all you catch is the fleeting glimpse, all you know of it is its sinister handiwork? That's magic. That's where all the scary comes from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's just like that with character description and character interaction. You need to have the reader filling in the blanks themselves to really engage them. They're going to do a much better job of pulling &lt;em&gt;themselves&lt;/em&gt; into the story than you ever could, and you have to give them that space. Hell, even scenery description is better when it's vague(1). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't ever say, &quot;Such and such is boring. Such and such is annoying. So and so is sad. So and so is happy. So and so is socially inept.&quot; It's quick, it's clear, it's &lt;em&gt;boring&lt;/em&gt;. Those things are easy to show via dialog and description. Show them, and give the reader the space to empathize, and to color the scene with their imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) My favorite example is from &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/novellas/colouro.htm&quot;&gt;The Colour out of Space&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Lovecraft. Just a short story, so his space for description is pretty much nil. He sets the entire scene in the first 6 paragraphs, and never touches it again for the rest of the story. I can forgive him his favorite words (unknown, miasma, and infinite) for those 6 elegant paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T02:18:42.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="272" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-20T02:30:12.070" Score="12" ViewCount="854" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I started, I had a nasty habit of hopping from perspective to perspective to perspective. I forced myself down to one perspective per chapter, but I still wonder if it's acceptable to do it &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt;. There are plenty of good authors who never switch and plenty who do, and it seems to me that those who don't do a much better job of character development, and those who do are really more plot focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I'm wondering if that's what it boils down to...Is switching perspective killing your character development in the name of plot development? Or are you doomed to character driven plots if you lock the perspective? Is it worth it? Is there some way to get both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T17:31:51.967" Title="Switching POV: Should it ever be done at all?" Tags="|style|discipline|perspective|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="273" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="275" CreationDate="2010-11-20T02:33:22.957" Score="6" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the different points of view one can write from? I understand the basic first person (I) and third person (he/she), but I hear the term &quot;limited&quot; and &quot;omniscient&quot; a lot in point of view discussions, and I don't really understand what that means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="85" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T02:50:37.303" Title="Different Points of View" Tags="|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="180" CreationDate="2010-11-20T02:33:24.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Self-help books come to mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And thanks to random internet people, we have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-person_narrative&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list of notable second person narratives&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T02:33:24.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="273" CreationDate="2010-11-20T02:40:48.797" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Third limited is from a single point of view, but not from the &quot;I&quot; (first person) point of view. He said, he saw, he knew. You're sitting on his shoulder, seeing everything from his perspective, with limited, but not personal, access to his thoughts. &lt;em&gt;Alice in Wonderland&lt;/em&gt; is told from third person limited (or third person subjective, as some people call it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third omniscient is a gods-eye view. You see everything. You see everyone. But you're not seeing it from behind anyone's eyes. You're seeing the whole scene from the perspective of someone who can see everything that's going on. &lt;em&gt;The Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; is in 3rd person omniscient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also Second Person, which is pretty uncommon. That's where the reader is included in the story as a character. Instead of &quot;I&quot; and &quot;We&quot; or &quot;He&quot; and &quot;She&quot;, you get a lot of &quot;You&quot; and &quot;Your&quot;. Think &lt;em&gt;Choose your own adventure&lt;/em&gt; novels. Or a number of things by Iain Banks, who is pretty fond of it. In &lt;em&gt;The Player of Games&lt;/em&gt; the story is told in Third Limited, but the narrator occasionally breaks out of the story and offers editorial content to the listener via Second Person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastEditorUserId="125" LastEditDate="2010-11-20T02:50:37.303" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T02:50:37.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="270" CreationDate="2010-11-20T02:52:05.833" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to use the book &quot;The Synonym Finder,&quot; though it is rather bulky to have lying around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="85" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T02:52:05.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="272" CreationDate="2010-11-20T02:56:27.343" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the simple answer is yes, if your story needs it you should switch POV as often as needed. Naturally of course it's more complicated then that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of view is are windows into the story, we see it through those eyes and learn all that happens via it. If the story is small, where one character can see and interact with most events, it makes sense to stay with one POV. Many mystery novels are written like this, we see everything from the detectives POV and rarely, if ever, move out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand if the story is a large sprawling epic, it becomes much harder for one person to be involved with everything. This sort of thing will naturally lead you to having more then one main character and more then one POV. Think of Lord of the Rings, or the Honor Harrington series both use multiple POV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, it goes back to one of the core rules of story telling, does having this advance the story. If having more then one POV makes the story better and your characters more interesting people, it maybe worth doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T02:56:27.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="270" CreationDate="2010-11-20T02:57:52.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I admit, I mostly stick to dictionary.com (and the app version from my iPod) for most of my look ups. I also use Google for any words my spellchecker chokes on. 9 times out of 10 it will suggest the correct spelling, even if I give it something a bit off the wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T02:57:52.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="270" CreationDate="2010-11-20T03:40:45.483" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordnik.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wordnik&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dictionary.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Urban Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;, Google Dictionary. And Google search as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T03:40:45.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="281" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="311" CreationDate="2010-11-20T03:44:54.287" Score="11" ViewCount="2401" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has anyone come across any really good rhyming dictionaries?  If so, what makes it worth having/bookmarking?  (eg. completeness/ease of use/absence of really sketchy suggestions)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-11-24T04:00:18.837" LastActivityDate="2019-12-16T21:22:51.883" Title="A rhyming dictionary worth bookmarking online or purchasing?" Tags="|dictionary|poetry|resources|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:18.857" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="270" CreationDate="2010-11-20T04:04:48.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My window manager, Xfce, has a handy little taskbar app that will query a configurable list of dictionaries, thesauri, and other references -- everything from the Jargon File (a hacker lexicon) to Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary to Moby's Thesaurus, The CIA World Factbook, a legal dictionary, and dozens of other sources (you can also add custom ones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't seem to have a name, just &quot;Dictionary&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T04:04:48.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="272" CreationDate="2010-11-20T04:17:27.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are obvious times when it should be done, for instance, when you have more than one main character. Asking, should it ever be done at all (current question title) is more subjective than answerable since published authors do it effectively on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking a shot at summarizing your last paragraph into one question, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;How can I lock character perspective without sacrificing plot development?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Is that what you want to discuss? That's difficult to answer in the stackexchange format, but it's a thought provoking question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="86" LastEditDate="2010-11-20T07:05:10.573" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T07:05:10.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="128" CreationDate="2010-11-20T08:12:42.453" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agreed that it all depends on who the narrator's supposed to be, and, frankly, what tone you're trying to bring across to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two of my favorite opening paragraphs of all time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When age fell upon the world, and&#xA;wonder went out of the minds of men;&#xA;when grey cities reared to smoky skies&#xA;tall towers grim and ugly, in whose&#xA;shadow none might dream of the sun or&#xA;of Spring's flowering meads; when&#xA;learning stripped the Earth of her&#xA;mantle of beauty and poets sang no&#xA;more of twisted phantoms seen with&#xA;bleared and inward looking eyes; when&#xA;these things had come to pass, and&#xA;childish hopes had gone forever, there&#xA;was a man who traveled out of life on&#xA;a quest into spaces whither the&#xA;world's dreams had fled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;H.P. Lovecraft, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/athoth.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Azathoth&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast with... this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after&#xA;that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth&#xA;and saying, the first step to eternal&#xA;life is you have to die. For a long&#xA;time, though, Tyler and I were best&#xA;friends. People are always asking, did&#xA;I know about Tyler Durden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps not a lot of &lt;em&gt;slang&lt;/em&gt; in either, but talk about different tones. Lovecraft famously wrote of stuffy, deliberate intellect clashing with cosmic horror, and his narration is somewhere between sonnet and scientific-journal entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Palahniuk, meanwhile, reads like a wild-eyed young man, slightly out-of-breath, who's just flung an arm around your shoulder and started telling you a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about how you want your story to &lt;em&gt;sound&lt;/em&gt; - like the confession of a learned man, or like the antics your buddy related to you at the bar, and let that guide the way your narrator &lt;em&gt;speaks&lt;/em&gt;. And the emphasis on sound and speech brings us to a classic tip: &lt;strong&gt;read your narration out loud.&lt;/strong&gt; Nothing else will make the awkward bits quite so obvious quite so quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="126" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T08:12:42.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="154" CreationDate="2010-11-20T14:07:30.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would always go the way of changing it and writing it in a way that is more appropriate for English. Literal translation could confuse the viewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a clever translation of a saying or an idiom will delight viewer who understands both languages (spoken and subtitled).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="46" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T14:07:30.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="287" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="288" CreationDate="2010-11-20T14:24:32.143" Score="16" ViewCount="5860" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common practice for a story for children to have a happy ending. Would it be considered inappropriate and disappointing for the young reader if his hero/heroine will suffer a horrible tragedy in the end? Or maybe not a horrible tragedy, but just a small misfortune?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an example of such a book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="46" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-18T12:46:45.470" LastActivityDate="2019-03-21T21:57:42.280" Title="What is the effect on the young reader when there is no &quot;Happy Ending&quot; in a story for children?" Tags="|resources|children|ending|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="287" CreationDate="2010-11-20T15:20:40.173" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to be something which has fallen out of practice, but many fairy tales were originally written with horrible gruesome endings, mainly in order to scare children into good behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original &lt;em&gt;The Little Mermaid&lt;/em&gt;, for instance, would have emphasized the importance of being an obedient daughter and not accepting favors from shady characters.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://listverse.com/2009/01/06/9-gruesome-fairy-tale-origins/&quot;&gt;Several other examples here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt you'd sell a lot of copies of such a children's story these days with the way parents try to shield their children from any sort of disappointment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be interesting to know if anyone has any successful modern examples, but I suspect there are none.  It seems to be a lost art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: Actually, Robert Munsch does come to mind as an author who has been highly successful writing endings which are not stereotypically happy.  &lt;em&gt;The Paper Bag Princess&lt;/em&gt;, for instance, has a very neutral ending, with the princess realizing she is better off not having rescued the prince.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastEditorUserId="42" LastEditDate="2010-11-20T15:50:10.230" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T15:50:10.230" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="289" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="296" CreationDate="2010-11-20T15:29:30.960" Score="85" ViewCount="9314" Body="&lt;p&gt;As writers, do you use any version controlling software to track and monitor what you write? For example, if you accidentally deleted or overwritten a paragraph that you'd like to have it back?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually what I do is to save multiple copies with incremental numbers, but I find that this isn't a good method because I end up with a folder full of word documents of the same file + changes. It isn't really easy to organise because of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Storyname 1, Storyname 2, Storyname 3, ...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't necessary a question about programs, but version controlling software used for writing/writers, methods, tricks, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastEditorUserId="163" LastEditDate="2010-12-06T07:37:08.193" LastActivityDate="2018-05-19T03:37:12.913" Title="Do You Use Any Version Controlling Software/Methods As Writers?" Tags="|software|version-control|" AnswerCount="21" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2016-02-09T17:24:19.133" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="287" CreationDate="2010-11-20T15:30:50.133" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;mootinator makes a good point. But I can imagine a public that, while not interested in unfortunate endings per sé, might be interested in &quot;neutral&quot; endings, namely the skeptic community. Real life is not supposed to suck, neither is it supposed to be good to us, it's rather &quot;indifferent&quot; to our fortunes, although the word &quot;indifferent&quot; is a bit too antropomorphic to my taste here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is a real challenge to write a story that is appealing to humans, yet is not taking an either all is good or all is bad view. Most interesting stories are interesting because they appeal to our prejudices in some smart way, and yeah, a public will want to see a nice ending, another public will crave for an apocalypse... but the public for &quot;things happen&quot; is certainly not so broad. Just write down what a typical week of your life is and try to sell it in bookform, fail guaranteed. Yet, I think there's something there. There must be a way to combine the two forms. After all, many history books are just that. If history books for the great public or books inspired on historical facts were just as dry as the academic stuff, nobody would read them. They somehow manage to be interesting by weaving a story out of the otherwise boring succession of chance and necessity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many classics that are &quot;morality neutral&quot; in this way. For instance Dostoievski, although he was a fervent but doubting christian, writes in a fairly a neutral style. I've never felt that he pushed his own ideas onto me. Yet, his books are all about ideas. There are no good or bad endings in his stories, for some characters, things turn out well, for others things don't. And the distribution of good and bad outcomes is not correlated to the goodness of the characters in any way. Of course, Dostoievski is quite high level literature, not accessible to children, but I was just looking for an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastEditorUserId="58" LastEditDate="2010-11-20T15:36:06.713" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T15:36:06.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="291" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="293" CreationDate="2010-11-20T15:31:12.643" Score="21" ViewCount="22162" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are names of characters copyrighted by authors? For example, the character &quot;Eragon&quot; from the Inheritance Cycle series, or a name that you've generated using an online name generator that you'd like to use (Which, &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be copyrighted if names of characters are copyrighted by authors.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T18:28:55.993" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T12:40:09.597" Title="Are Names of Characters Copyrighted by Authors?" Tags="|legal|naming|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="272" CreationDate="2010-11-20T15:39:01.960" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you ever read &lt;em&gt;Trainspotting&lt;/em&gt;? That, IMO, is an example of tons of perspective changes executed &lt;em&gt;perfectly&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really though it depends on the kind of story you're trying to tell, because lots of perspective changes definitely changes the tone. A more nonlinear story favors perspective changes, for example. Also, don't assume you're going to be losing character development. If you're telling from a first-person or non-omniscient narrator's point of view, then that character might be distorting the facts about himself, and it can be good to see them from multiple points of view to get the full picture of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T15:39:01.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="291" CreationDate="2010-11-20T16:16:09.213" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL disclaimer but generally character names themselves cannot be copyrighted.  They may be &lt;em&gt;trademarked&lt;/em&gt; but only if the literary work/movie/or a related product were named after the character.  So, trademark would only come into play for secondary characters in widely merchandised works.   In theory you'd be completely safe as long as your characters aren't similar to characters of the same name, and they aren't widely known characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publaw.com/article/protection-of-fictional-characters/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;There's an interesting essay here.&lt;/a&gt;  Here is one of the key points respecting copyright:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Copyright:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;to warrant copyright protection, a&#xA;  fictional character must be&#xA;  specifically described and fully&#xA;  developed. At times overcoming this&#xA;  &quot;description hurdle&quot; may be difficult&#xA;  to achieve. This is because some&#xA;  courts are very skeptical of&#xA;  protecting &quot;word portraits&quot; since they&#xA;  are unable to &quot;see&quot; the differences&#xA;  between one fictional character and&#xA;  another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastEditorUserId="42" LastEditDate="2013-10-17T18:21:41.567" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T18:21:41.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2010-11-20T16:27:13.627" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should really just grab and try any version control software presented on the market. This soft is not really more than controlling text files, and text files is what we do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://mercurial.selenic.com/&quot;&gt;Mercurial&lt;/a&gt; and I am very happy about it. It's easy to use for writing alone, as Mercurial tracks all your changes through local repository, and easy to use when collaborating, because it is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_revision_control&quot;&gt;distributed version control system&lt;/a&gt;. There is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://tortoisehg.bitbucket.org/&quot;&gt;good Mercurial user interface&lt;/a&gt; for Windows presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I warn you that file merging is not available, or will be hardly possible, when you're using some kind of text processors (Word i.e). This is problem of all version control systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2010-11-20T16:58:33.010" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T16:58:33.010" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="295" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-20T16:28:23.283" Score="16" ViewCount="1586" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’ve read humor like &lt;em&gt;Three Men in a Boat&lt;/em&gt; and PG Woodhouse, but those comes nowhere close to folks like Dave Barry or Rory Blyth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some sources, blogs, books, articles, authors, etc. that you should be reading if you wanted to add humor in your writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="129" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T14:13:38.530" LastActivityDate="2018-08-20T21:14:14.413" Title="What are the best authors to read if you want to get better at humor and comedy in writing?" Tags="|humor|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2010-11-20T16:46:54.667" Score="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a programmer in real life, so using a version control software was a no-brainer for me.  I write stuff in plain text, with each chapters in a separate text file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://subversion.apache.org/&quot;&gt;Subversion&lt;/a&gt; on them, with &lt;a href=&quot;http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/&quot;&gt;TortoiseSVN&lt;/a&gt; on Windows, and &lt;strong&gt;also&lt;/strong&gt; use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dropbox.com&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt; for backing up my repository. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way I have my changes versioned, I can comment the changes I commit, and if my hard drive decides to die, I can be back really quick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="46" LastEditorUserId="8116" LastEditDate="2014-03-03T18:31:25.687" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T18:31:25.687" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="307" CreationDate="2010-11-20T16:53:28.130" Score="13" ViewCount="634" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nabokov was very discouraged when he translated his &lt;em&gt;Lolita&lt;/em&gt; into Russian. And he spent half a year on it. So should I try the translation myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T20:38:07.723" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T06:29:16.623" Title="Should I translate my own writings into a second language I also know well?" Tags="|language|translation|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2010-11-20T16:53:34.187" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fossil&lt;/a&gt; because it's light weight and easy to backup by just copying the database file to a new location. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T16:53:34.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="299" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-20T17:09:56.383" Score="7" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;After a little googling I found this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0898795125&quot;&gt;The Complete Book of Scriptwriting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are other good examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T07:23:02.347" Title="Are there some good books about scriptwriting to study?" Tags="|script|scriptwriting|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:30.060" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="299" CreationDate="2010-11-20T17:37:12.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060391685&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Story&lt;/a&gt; by Robert McKee is good. It may not go into some of the technical details you may want, but is a great book on how to tell a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T17:37:12.380" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:30.060" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="56" CreationDate="2010-11-20T17:40:44.220" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;After short brainstorming and small talk with myself, here is what I got:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) You are inventing the next part of arc while working on current.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While writing I frequently experienced a feeling that told me: &quot;Yes, I'm going to use this in the further scene\book&quot;. If you feel so, you already should have a next-things list, and put all resembling feelings there. If you haven't got that list, then acquire one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the simplest &quot;technique&quot; available and I think you should use it instead of anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) One big arc for all novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it, you've got to invent a one big arc. And you are not going to write a word in any of your novels, belonging to this arc, until you've finished it. I think this plan should be used only for &quot;project-of-my-life&quot; type of things. If you're not going to make something as epic as &quot;The Lord of The Rings&quot;, don't bother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the comparison with the World War II will be appropriate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;WWII was the one whole world massacre, that changed people mind-basis. (One big integral thing, your arc);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Campaigns of WWII are your novels (or even series of novels, if you will look to Eastern Front);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Belligerents and neutral countries are your characters;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Battles are your plot, and key battles are your culminating points;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Local conflicts and controversies are your fillers (and you should not give them much attention).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here, you have to look through the eyes of all your participants to see the big picture. And yet you are not going to fully discern it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you got me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Hooking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sweet part of series-writing and desired talent of every bad TV-show script writer is the scheduling talent. But their scheduling is different from standard project-manager scheduling. I guess that subject I'm going to talk about is one of TV-showers community dirty little secrets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do we know about TV-shows and series? Well, the Dumas &quot;Three Musketeers&quot; was a series one day, wasn't it? Series have many peculiarities, and one of them is that scripters should give some hooks to future cases in the universe they creating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you should consider that hooking may quickly turn into a big disaster, if you will try to bind something to every of your previous hooks. If you have many related events, your bond would be looking awful, unnatural and made up out of whole cloth. &quot;Lost&quot; TV-show looked bad in the end because of too many ties. So did &quot;Prison Break&quot; script. I think 80/20 rule is appropriate here: with 20% of hooks you bind to something and 80% of hooks you leave unused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all I've came to in my little inmind research. I hope others also will have something to add, because the subject is interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2010-11-22T09:39:29.937" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T09:39:29.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-20T18:42:09.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1444103180&quot;&gt;'Get Started in Creative Writing'&lt;/a&gt; tremendously inspiring. A good quick intro that covers several genres and media, and has a lot of good exercises for creativity and getting started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T18:42:09.503" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-20T18:42:09.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="299" CreationDate="2010-11-20T18:45:33.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0385339038&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'Screenplay - the Foundations of Screenwriting'&lt;/a&gt; by Syd Field is considered to be &quot;The Bible&quot; in this area. Great book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T18:45:33.167" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:30.060" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2010-11-20T19:18:21.843" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot;&gt;git&lt;/a&gt;.  There are a number of popular GUIs for it, though I tend to prefer the command line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My backup service of preference is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rsync.net&quot;&gt;Rsync.net&lt;/a&gt; because they are reliable, fairly priced, support (and encourage) you to encrypt your stuff and not give them the keys, and really care about their users' privacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T19:18:21.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3" CreationDate="2010-11-20T19:44:38.233" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to add a few things to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3/how-do-i-find-an-agent/31#31&quot;&gt;Randomman's answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have that list, check if the agents are reputable! Google them. There are a lot of black sheep out there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to the homepage of authors of the same category you write in. Some are mentioning their agents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow Vatine's advice in his comment to Randomman's answer. If you do not find a guideline, do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; send anything to them without asking. First write an email and ask for permission, if they are interested in your stuff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they have no formatting guidelines, look up the industry standard, how your sample chapter and synopsis should be formatted. (In Germany it's the maximum of 30 lines a page with 60 characters each line in Courier, but that could differ in your country.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T19:44:38.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="199" CreationDate="2010-11-20T20:02:16.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends a lot on what genres you write -- if you do both mainstream and historical fiction, or suspense/thriller and scifi, stick with one name.  If you do erotica and YA fiction, you probably want two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T20:02:16.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="297" CreationDate="2010-11-20T20:10:26.003" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have the time to do so, and there is a want for the translation, I say it wouldn't be a bad idea. By being able to do the first translation yourself you can be sure all the little things that make it through, that way some important piece of characterization doesn't get lost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though in the end, it's also about time. If you don't have the time to do the work it might be better to supervise it instead of doing it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T20:10:26.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="299" CreationDate="2010-11-20T20:24:21.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;William Goldman, author of The Princess Bride and the script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_in_the_Screen_Trade&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adventures in the Screen Trade&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_in_the_Screen_Trade&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Which Lie Did I Tell&lt;/a&gt;, both of which are essentially memoirs that have insights into how he became a successful screenwriter. (They're also a lot of fun to read.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T20:24:21.520" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:30.060" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="295" CreationDate="2010-11-20T21:23:12.770" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Off the cuff I would've said Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Dave Barry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though to be honest, I have to say I &lt;em&gt;truly&lt;/em&gt; believe that true humour is more a talent than a skill - it is possible to learn the rudiments, but to excel at it you have to be born with and to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you listen to the sage advice of those in the industry and succeeding at it, you will hear them say time and time again: &quot;write what you know&quot;.  Surely that applies equally to humour?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T21:23:12.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="295" CreationDate="2010-11-20T22:39:12.800" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on your sense of humor, whether you have one, and who your audience is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're aiming your writing at adults, Terry Pratchet is a great read.&#xA;If you're aiming at children (around 8) then Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend you read joke books. But DO NOT use the jokes in your stories, just read them for the laughs. Find out what about the jokes makes you laugh, and what doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try Checking out&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://writetodone.com/2008/07/30/how-to-write-funny/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://writetodone.com/2008/07/30/how-to-write-funny/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And just remember, absurd characters, settings and plot can be just as funny (if not funnier) then a well said joke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-09-14T22:05:01.127" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T22:05:01.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="281" CreationDate="2010-11-20T22:47:58.110" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rhymezone.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.rhymezone.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You just type in a word, then select one of the following. Then you have a full list of things to use!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rhymes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Near Rhymes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Synonyms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Antonyms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Definition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Related words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Similar sounding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Homophones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Match consonants only&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Match these letters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check spelling of&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a word Search for pictures &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search in Shakespeare&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search for quotes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2010-11-20T22:47:58.110" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:18.857" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="312" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="313" CreationDate="2010-11-20T23:12:20.660" Score="12" ViewCount="3561" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exactly how much sex would would most publishers allow to be in a today's novel? Does it vary from publisher to a publisher? I'm not talking about romance novels where apparently everything goes. I think explicit scenes could be cut if needed by a publisher, because I don't think they can advance the storyline in most cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But say, for example, that a thug character in a crime novel goes on to solicit services of a prostitute - how much detail can go into the act to be considered publishable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="46" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T04:23:55.307" Title="How much sex is allowed in a non-romance novel?" Tags="|publishing|sex|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="312" CreationDate="2010-11-20T23:29:59.320" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, outside of romance novels, things like this are best left to the reader's imagination.  There are exceptions (a traumatic rape being one that I can think of, and even then you would want to focus on the emotions rather than the actions), but for the most part, the scene will come out better having left it vague than being explicit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this doesn't answer your question as to how much different publishers allow, but as far as the actual content of your writing, it will be stronger if you only hint at it than if you go over the sexual acts in great detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastEditorUserId="7" LastEditDate="2010-11-21T00:12:19.830" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T00:12:19.830" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="314" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="316" CreationDate="2010-11-21T00:21:43.483" Score="7" ViewCount="410" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all know clich&amp;eacute;s are bad[1] and that fresh, inventive and &quot;fitting&quot; phrases will delight and entertain our readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques can be used to invent such phrases? Sometimes they just &quot;fall out&quot; while you're writing, but other times require intense effort. You could do things like throw random words or direct opposites together and see if that inspires something, but I suspect this has a relatively low return on investment (time wise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What successful techniques have you used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Here's a link to a site with a great colour scheme that talks about &lt;a href=&quot;http://wsuonline.weber.edu/wrh/cliches.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;types of clich&amp;eacute;s&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;[1] Unless you want one of your bad guys[2] to spout clich&amp;eacute;s as a character trait&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Because good guys are never clich&amp;eacute;d...&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="65" LastEditDate="2010-11-21T05:54:55.097" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T05:54:55.097" Title="What techniques do you use to invent snappy turns of phrase?" Tags="|technique|cliches|originality|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="314" CreationDate="2010-11-21T00:43:49.673" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The random word approach is not as bad as you think:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide a piece of paper into three columns&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write nouns randomly in the first column and cover it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write verbs into the second and cover it (same amount as nouns)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write adjectives into the third column (same amount as nouns)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phrase a sentence which each row&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write ten sentences each day of one week and you will be surprised about the return on investment. If you're an &quot;adjective killer&quot; you can skip that column ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T00:43:49.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="314" CreationDate="2010-11-21T00:47:58.023" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing in your own original world, try to think of the kinds of things that are present in that world. I actually spent quite a while thinking about what possible phrases could exist in various areas of my current fantasy world.  Try to imagine how the idiom you are trying to create could have come about in the setting.  Include imagery that would be important to the people involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, someone who lives in a society with an evil necromancer overlord might say &quot;to work like the dead&quot; meaning to work tirelessly.  Obviously, if your story doesn't have necromancers, you can't use that example, but the point is to think about the society you're working with and make the idioms make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T00:47:58.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="312" CreationDate="2010-11-21T01:34:12.553" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How much detail can go into the act to be considered publishable?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much of the detail is relevant to the plot?  If the answer is &lt;em&gt;all of it&lt;/em&gt; you probably have a romance novel.  If you can cut the whole thing out and have the same novel, it probably isn't necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastEditorUserId="42" LastEditDate="2010-11-21T01:39:42.623" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T01:39:42.623" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="312" CreationDate="2010-11-21T01:49:20.113" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;For specific publishers, you can use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What they say in their guidelines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at the level of sex (or profanity, or violence, say) in other titles from that publisher&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the general case, it depends on the novel. If you take Chuck Palahniuk's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choke_%28novel%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Choke&lt;/a&gt; as an example, you can have lots of descriptions of (often weird) sex - and it's definitely not a romance novel. But the characters are recovering (or not!) sex addicts, so in this case having details fit with the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T01:49:20.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="314" CreationDate="2010-11-21T02:01:47.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...angelheaded hipsters burning for the&#xA;  ancient heavenly connection to the&#xA;  starry dynamo in the machinery of&#xA;  night&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I listen to readings of Allen Ginsberg poetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGoY9gom50&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Howl&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBUcp3--ojk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Supermarket in California&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T02:01:47.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="272" CreationDate="2010-11-21T03:00:05.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it fascinating when a story swaps between 3rd and 1st person. In 3rd person it is a mainly Objective writing. When 1st person, it becomes an extremely subjective writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It brings along the facts, as well as letting you feel the characters emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first person chapters, you get shocked when the character does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the third person chapters, you have all the dramatic irony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When put together, you can get a really interesting story. I mean, ever wondered why that character did that? Or what was happening while the character was thinking about his girlfriend?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having multiple perspectives to the story give you a range of views, and therefore a better understanding of the story and it's characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T03:00:05.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="281" CreationDate="2010-11-21T03:43:24.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0452006783&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Song-Writer's Rhyming Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Cahn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sammy Cahn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of print, worth looking for. The introduction alone, an essay by the author about the process of lyric writing, is worth the purchase price. The dictionary itself feels like it was hand=picked, and I suspect it was whittled down from a longer list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T03:43:24.410" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:18.857" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="281" CreationDate="2010-11-21T04:00:32.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0028626265&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Webster's New World Rhyming Dictionary: Clement Wood's Updated&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the rhyming dictionary I turn to first. It's an update to &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0440212057&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clement Wood's classic 1943 reference&lt;/a&gt;. The phonetic distribution of words took me a while to learn, but it's a great, fast system once you get a feel for it. My only complaint about this update is that it's too large to fit in a guitar case. (I'm comparing it to my paperback of the original Clement Wood.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part I of this book is the rhyming dictionary itself. Part II is titled &quot;Guidelines for Effective Rhyme&quot;, and the first chapter is the closest I've seen to an Elements of Style for poets and lyricists. Later chapters are a little dry, but they covers the history of rhyme forms, and definitions of stanza forms. Clement Wood could have learned to &quot;omit needless words&quot; here, but it is a good reference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T04:00:32.460" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:18.857" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="312" CreationDate="2010-11-21T04:10:19.640" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking your example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But say, for example, that a thug&#xA;  character in a crime novel goes on to&#xA;  solicit services of a prostitute - how&#xA;  much detail can go into the act to be&#xA;  considered publishable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect the important parts for story development would be the initial solicitation and the aftermath of the sexual act (the payoff, the brushoff, the sendoff) rather than the actual sex unless there is something revealing about the manner in which the thug goes about it that develops the thug character or the plot.  End a chapter at the door and start another when they are getting dressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T04:10:19.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="295" CreationDate="2010-11-21T04:29:07.870" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Harry Harrison with the Stainless Steel Rat series and Robert Asprin with Myth Adventures are two others that would be good. It would also probably be worth watching Charlie Chaplin movies, the studied simplicity of his comedy is brilliant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T04:29:07.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="325" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="379" CreationDate="2010-11-21T04:29:22.627" Score="15" ViewCount="1395" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most Crime/Thriller Novels usually have a sudden, unexpected plot twist that puts the main character in a really hopeless situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to resolve this is by using a &quot;Deus Ex Machina&quot;, that is a character that suddenly appears out of nowhere and has the solution. It could be that FBI Agent who is part of secret government project, the secretary of your enemy that gives you access to some codes, a long lost friend/relative who was believed to be dead, or the wife/child of the enemy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see the appeal of DXM resolutions as they don't require much preparation and are seemingly surprising, but nowadays I just find them annoying. But on the other hand, they do offer to introduce a completely new scenario for the rest of the story. That FBI Agent allows us to show a whole secret government facility, the lost relative has a hiding place somewhere, and the secretary/wife/child gives us an entry into the facilities of the enemy. Also it allows to bring in a ton of new people easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand we introduce the saviour early in the story and have him/her resolve the hopeless situation, it feels a bit boring. It is hard to introduce new people and places if they have to be attached to the early-introduced sidekick, which leads to a reaction like &quot;If you had an Uncle that can do that, why didn't you already go to him 150 pages ago when you first encountered that problem?&quot;. Also it then feels a bit like a journey, constantly watching 2 or 3 characters - a bit like the Sherlock Holmes novels that only had these two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with Sherlock Holmes of course (Especially since it was written in the 1880's), but I'm trying to understand how people like Ken Follet manage to avoid this effect mostly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what are ways to avoid a Deus Ex Machina resolution without throwing away the opportunity to introduce a new scenario for the rest of the story, and without being boring?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2018-03-12T20:32:02.437" LastActivityDate="2018-03-12T20:32:02.437" Title="Avoiding Deus Ex Machina resolutions?" Tags="|style|turning-point|deus-ex-machina|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="154" CreationDate="2010-11-21T04:36:03.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that what was done for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Mononoke&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Princess Mononoke&lt;/a&gt; is what should be done more, hire a author (Neil Gaiman in that case) to re-interpret the story rather than a translator to translate the text.  Having an interpreted version as the primary and a secondary literal translation version of subtitles and an would satisfy both the purist and the average viewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T04:36:03.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="327" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="331" CreationDate="2010-11-21T04:41:48.300" Score="33" ViewCount="3103" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing, I always have tons of ideas about the universe I'm creating as a whole: People, Places, Timelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just struggling to organize it. I'd like to avoid inconsistencies in later stories, requiring the need for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retcon&quot;&gt;retcon&lt;/a&gt; or embarrassing reactions from your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I try a Wiki like MediaWiki? That requires a Web Server and database and is just very &quot;heavy&quot;. Should I use the Master Catalog in &lt;a href=&quot;http://celtx.com/&quot;&gt;Celtx&lt;/a&gt;? That keeps everything in once place and I can easily share it and take it with me on my laptop, but it's not exactly a great interface. Should I just have a ton of Word Documents? That is even worse, now I can't really link between them properly. One big Word Document? Really hard to keep a good overview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do YOU use to keep track of your world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-11-23T01:06:39.673" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T13:58:52.993" Title="Organizing your Universe?" Tags="|organization|world-building|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="328" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="337" CreationDate="2010-11-21T04:48:18.997" Score="20" ViewCount="3835" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a fantasy novel, would it be best to include a map of the geography that the story takes place in at the beginning of the book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen quite a lot of fantasy books (Redwall series, Swordbird, ...) while other fantasy books omit the maps and allow the readers to visualise the lands themselves. (Graceling, Last Dragon Chronicles, ...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your opinion on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastEditorUserId="163" LastEditDate="2010-12-10T03:31:30.890" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T00:22:29.987" Title="For Fantasy Stories, Should You Include a Map At the Beginning of the Book?" Tags="|fantasy|novel|artwork|" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="329" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-21T04:55:40.303" Score="20" ViewCount="592" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm native German, but trying to write in English for various reasons. One of the big points in a story is to keep the characters very distinct from each other, and that requires some knowledge about the culture. As said, I'm native German, so it's easy for me to envision a character that comes from Cologne and how different that one would be from someone who comes from Bavaria, Hamburg or Berlin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there resources for various countries? For example, If I wanted to know how an American from Arkansas is different from someone in Southern California, or if I have two Serbian characters that come from different backgrounds and no idea what realistic backgrounds for Serbian people are (Is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niko_Bellic&quot;&gt;Niko Bellic&lt;/a&gt; really a believable Serbian or is he just a summary of eastern european cliches that westerners have?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing there is no easy answer for this since culture has to be experienced first hand to truly understand and &quot;feel&quot; it, but I still wonder if there are known and trusted reference books or website that summarize some truths and false myths, that characterize people's accents and typical word/slang usage and just give an overview, preferably with some real existing people that fill these stereotypes and that can be studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:24:49.210" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T19:52:15.607" Title="Resources about different people types?" Tags="|resources|characters|cliches|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="325" CreationDate="2010-11-21T04:56:37.693" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a series of 'clues' that come about throughout the course of the novel can help avoid the one big solution coming out of nowhere. They don't have to be the typical detective style clues, just random pieces of the plot that the main character can put together towards the end of the novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T04:56:37.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="327" CreationDate="2010-11-21T04:56:39.587" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; help me out a lot. It lets you build one workspace that contains character profiles, scene descriptions, notes (and of course, your story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T04:56:39.587" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="167" CreationDate="2010-11-21T05:06:21.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't tell the readers too much. Have them wanting to learn more. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a great example of this. The story switches with each chapter from following the girl, Lisbeth, and the other main character. Lisbeth is an incredibly interesting character, and you want the pages following her to keep going. This gets you through reading the perspectives of the other characters, which helps build the plot. The trick is to not let them wait for too long, or they'll get bored or uninterested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T05:06:21.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2010-11-21T08:43:33.073" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think without one it would be too hard for readers to envision, then yes. I can't stand books that push countless places with indecipherable names upon you and expect you to remember all of them. &lt;br&gt;&lt;Br&gt;&#xA;If you're worried about the readers that would rather visualise it themselves, you could have the map sparse on detail, just showing the layout of the geography and not features of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T08:43:33.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2010-11-21T08:48:49.913" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it all depends on whether the map adds to the overall experience for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in the writing you are able to clearly identify location and distances in relation to other geographical locations, then no. If you don't and you think the story would be enhanced if the reader could easily visualise the world you are creating, then yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I like maps. I think it adds to the grandeur of the travels that the adventurer/army/group etc go through. If your world is a complex one, with may locations, and their locations are important (north/south/east/west etc), then I think you almost have to add a map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also find that having a map helps you as a writer to visualise your fantasy world. Even if you don't include it, I would create one for reference during your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="69" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T08:48:49.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="312" CreationDate="2010-11-21T12:40:33.377" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would also add to the advice above ; most unpublished or unsigned authors send their manuscripts to agents trying to get taken on. One agent will not baulk at heavily graphic sex while another will consider it crass or gauche. The same is true of publishing houses. By making the novel extremely graphic you risk marginalizing yourself especially unless the rest of the elements of your novel from characterisation to originality are excellent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T12:40:33.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2010-11-21T13:10:54.727" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you already have a map? The answer depends a bit on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, for example, you find yourself drawing maps for yourself already, then yes, it might be useful to beef that one up a bit and include it as reference material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you don't already have a map, then don't feel pressured into thinking that you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; a map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T13:10:54.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2010-11-21T13:23:21.840" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It often helps because fantasy books often involve quite a bit of travel.  It is not strictly necessary for the novel to be coherent, but I have found the ones that I've read that lacked maps to be worse off because of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Namely, &quot;The Blade Itself&quot; by Joe Abercrombie is a good example of a book that lacks a map that really needed one.  He talks about wars from the north and the south and cities far and wide, and the reader has no reference to where any of this is or how imminent of a threat it is.  It goes a long way towards making that book fall flat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a world where the characters travel or where threats are coming from afar, I would say that you should also have a map.  If you're writing a fantasy story set in one city that only deals with the politics or something in that one city, then a map isn't strictly necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T13:23:21.840" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="327" CreationDate="2010-11-21T13:27:53.583" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have used a Wiki to help me organize my thoughts for a novel I was writing in the past.  It is actually in quite a helpful format, because you can so easily link from one concept to another.  Having pages for separate characters, groups, locales, etc. is extremely helpful.  When writing chapter outlines on the wiki, you can easily link to all settings and characters present in that chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I would recommend this method.  It can take quite a while to fill out all the details in the wiki, but that is honestly a good thing because you are able to think through everything so thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T13:27:53.583" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="327" CreationDate="2010-11-21T13:30:33.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A MediaWiki installation isn't &quot;heavy&quot;, or at least doesn't require anything more complicated than your standard webserver and MySQL that any decent host will already have. If anything, it's less complicated and memory-intensive than a Wordpress install.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If hosting is a problem though, I have heard of a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiddlyWiki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TiddlyWiki&lt;/a&gt;&quot; that can be stored anywhere easily, even on a USB stick. There's also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wiki_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;large range of other wiki platforms available&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MediaWiki is a good versatile platform to start on though, I use one myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need a consistent place to keep all sorts of related files, then I'd recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTcwMDcwNTE5?src=7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt;. It's a nice free cross-platform storage solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would &lt;strong&gt;warn heavily&lt;/strong&gt; against Word documents though. That's a whole mess of proprietary nonsense and a bad fit for the data storage you need. You need some sort of database, and Word is horrible for that purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T13:30:33.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2010-11-21T16:10:14.490" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an artistic aid, I think maps are great.  Beyond that, they become crutches, or worse - detriments to the reader's experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a writer cannot explain (using the tools of their trade!) the world eloquently enough for you to have a clear idea in your mind's eye - then the world is too complex for their skill level.  Period.  Tacking on pictures in order to assist in telling the story means we'll have well-intentioned but inferior stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the largest portion of an enjoyable reading experience is the use of the reader's imagination.  If I had pictures of all the characters in the book, it would really take away from my experience, because in all likelihood they will not be interpreted by that individual artist in the same way I pictured them in my mind.  This is one of the reasons it is a good idea in fiction of all sorts to limit the depth of detail on any given object, to allow the reader to more fully engage with their imagination and &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; the shared experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, very general and largely vague maps just to show major trade routes or destinations and geographical location would be a simple aid for readers to quickly get oriented in the world.  So again, if there isn't too much detail... it adds to rather than detracts from the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T16:10:14.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="341" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="376" CreationDate="2010-11-21T16:32:08.653" Score="13" ViewCount="620" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found an interesting private online journaling website: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.750words.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;750words.com&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &quot;About&quot; section of the website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've long been inspired by an idea I first learned about in The Artist's Way called morning pages. Morning pages are three pages of writing done every day, typically encouraged to be in &quot;long hand&quot;, typically done in the morning, that can be about anything and everything that comes into your head. It's about getting it all out of your head, and is not supposed to be edited or censored in any way. The idea is that if you can get in the habit of writing three pages a day, that it will help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried it for about a month or so, but still unsure whether such an exercise is useful or I should better spend this time on writing something, that is supposed to be edited or censored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can writing down everything out of the head without editing (or maybe even rereading) be useful for developing creative writing skills?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="18" LastEditDate="2010-11-21T17:46:47.077" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T09:36:34.320" Title="Are &quot;morning pages&quot; useful?" Tags="|technique|tools|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-21T16:41:38.253" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.750words.com&quot;&gt;750words.com&lt;/a&gt;, maybe you'll find it useful. At least it's all about &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt;, not &lt;em&gt;reading&lt;/em&gt;. (I agree with @John Smithers' comment)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T16:41:38.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="341" CreationDate="2010-11-21T16:44:14.197" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a subjective question as its usefulness as an exercise will vary from person to person.&lt;p&gt;&#xA;Fwiw I'd say that there is some value in doing this exercise, more so for novice writers than experienced ones. It is better to write something than nothing, so to speak, and it can serve as an aid to those unsure where to start or what to write.&#xA;However without some editing and revision there is a danger of not learning from what you wrote and improving.&lt;p&gt;&#xA;There is an exercise I do most years -Nanowrimo.com - where you attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Because of time constraint one writes without immediate revision or editing and the work takes shape. However once finished one is supposed to revisit it and edit etc it can be illuminating when reading back over it to see the unconscious mistakes one makes and the errors to which one is prone.I find that more useful than morning pages, personally.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T16:44:14.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="341" CreationDate="2010-11-21T17:46:27.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most definitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually read the Artist's Way a number of years ago, and wrote morning pages for a while until I got sidetracked by other things. My journal still sits on my coffee table wanting to get written in again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind morning pages is more than just freewriting. When the author explains it, and what to do, it's:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, yes, freewrite at least three pages of what's in your head, but more importantly, don't reread what you write for at least one year after you write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we wake up in the morning, there's enough cruft in our heads (either from dreams, good or bad things that are happening in our lives) and we continue to dwell on that cruft throughout the day. Having that cruft prevents us from performing as well as we should, and as writer's prevents our creativity from being pure as it should. If we reread what we wrote, we simply reinforce the cruft. However, by writing our thoughts down and getting them out, we clear are heads to be able to do the things we really want it to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, morning pages seemed more like early morning meditation than freewriting for an idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, and she goes into this in the book as well ... If every morning yo clear your head so you don't have any cruft, you'll wake up one morning, and you'll realize that your mind just feels free, and then when you write, it'll be coming from your imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author goes on to give an example of a fiction writer who had had writer's block for months, and had been so caught up on personal issues she had been having that she couldn't focus enough on just being creative. After a few months of writing morning pages and removing that cruft, she realized that what she was writing was becoming a new character, and, essentially, a new story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, I have definitely found morning pages to be beneficial to my creativity, but more importantly, my life in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T17:46:27.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="345" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-21T18:08:39.537" Score="15" ViewCount="1317" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two I do most are dialog and description related. When I meet a person or I'm just sitting people watching, I try to write their description in my head as if I was describing a character in a novel. I focus on the physical - tall, short, weak chin, high cheek bones, etc, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other one I do is I try and couch conversations I am party to as dialog. I focus on how words are spoken, nuances of expression, tone, word choice, etc. I then try to convey the natural language in text as close to how it was spoken as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've gotten a lot of positive feedback since I started this. What other exercises or techniques do other writers have that they use to improve their style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastEditorUserId="163" LastEditDate="2010-12-06T07:35:41.750" LastActivityDate="2010-12-06T16:13:00.247" Title="What helpful writing exercises do you use?" Tags="|style|technique|exercises|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-22T16:48:11.717" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="329" CreationDate="2010-11-21T19:24:23.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know of a resource that breaks things down like that, but I'm sure I and other Americans here would be happy to answer questions about particular character concepts or areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine that it would be supremely difficult to write such a guide...there are too many exceptions and communities-within-communities to cover it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Texas is extremely Christian, dominated by &quot;mega churches&quot; where parishioners are encouraged not just to worship together, but to only socialize and school their children through the church, only read approved material, etc.  Folks in Texas are generally very prejudiced, and a loud and active minority is quite violent, toward members of different religions or those who live in ways they disagree with (single parents, homosexuals, women who breastfeed their infants, etc.).  &lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt; there are places in Texas like the city of Austin, where religious tolerance is the rule, and many gay people, non-Christians, etc. live openly, women can breastfeed without fear of reproach...you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, Illinois is thought of as socially very liberal/socialist (huge welfare rolls, high taxes, a constant battle to limit 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th amendment rights, a constitution that gives the state unlimited power, etc.).  &lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, while people in the population centers generally feel their state is behaving appropriately in these and other regards, the majority of the state (by area) and a sizable minority (by population) is much more conservative (firearm ownership is common, people take pride in being self-sufficient, ignoring the Bill of Rights is not considered acceptable for any reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, even in the most extreme areas in terms of fitting their own stereotypes, there are drastic exceptions.  That makes it very hard to create a near-comprehensive reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T19:24:23.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2010-11-21T19:38:59.290" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://celtx.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Celtx&lt;/a&gt; as my main writing tool and have subscribes to their Celtx Studio which gives version control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not exactly great because you have to be connected to the internet all the time (there is no &quot;Work locally and sync when you have internet again&quot;) and it's slow if you add tons of graphics/media to the file (because everytime you save the entire file gets uploaded), but it's there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some other stuff I'm using git and a private GitHub repository because I work as a software developer and just use whatever tools I know and somehow make them fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T19:38:59.290" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="134" CreationDate="2010-11-21T19:47:32.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the initial planning happens in my head - I have a 20 Minute walk to work every day, so over a week that's a lot of time to think. I then write out the outline and some points without any further planning. Just 3 or 4 pages to get the story itself nailed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, the planning starts. Checking if the plot itself makes sense, then adding the facts, fleshing out the people, constantly trying to find references for each claim I make - unless it's SciFi in which case I try to make it believable and consistent, but obviously not necessarily real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm not a professional Author and I only ever written Short (&amp;lt;100 Pages) Stories, but that approach - Think, Write, Research - worked well enough for me as a hobbyist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T19:47:32.313" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="349" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="368" CreationDate="2010-11-21T19:55:36.897" Score="12" ViewCount="14545" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed that my softcover/paperback books are all roughly the same size, but have slight differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there standardized sizes (and are they different between US and Europe, just as US Letter and Din A4 are different?) or does each publisher decide it's own size?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm sorry, I don't mean Number of Pages, I mean physical Page Size/Dimensions :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastEditorUserId="68" LastEditDate="2010-11-21T20:21:35.463" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T05:25:44.997" Title="Is there a standardized size for Books?" Tags="|book|printing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="349" CreationDate="2010-11-21T20:10:57.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What? I have paperbacks form 200 to 1000 pages. So I say no. (The books are in German, but many of them are translated form English authors.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T20:10:57.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="349" CreationDate="2010-11-21T20:17:45.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no hard-and-fast size, but it costs publishers more to produce a larger book, and you're going to have to convince an editor that the extra text is worth it. You'll often see an authors books expand in size as they get to be more successful, and more capable of overriding their editors. Sometimes this can be good, but there are notable instances where the author clearly needs an editor riding herd on him, and doesn't get it...To the detriment of the finished product(1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for a standard mass-market paperback, you're probably going to see the text fall squarely in the 400-500 page range. Exceptions happen, but they're rare. For more established authors, the sky is the limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The best example I can think of is Stephen King's &lt;em&gt;The Stand&lt;/em&gt;. The original version was tight and punchy, but, once he got famous enough, he had it reprinted with about 300 extra pages that added nothing to the plot, which he felt had been pulled unfairly by his editor. The difference, however was between ~800 pages and ~1100 pages, so clearly even Stephen King of 1978 had enough pull to get an 800 page novel published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T20:17:45.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="352" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3414" CreationDate="2010-11-21T20:25:06.163" Score="21" ViewCount="4634" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be considered a &quot;real&quot; book, is there a rule of thumb about the number of pages one should have? If it has too few then people call it a short story (e.g., Fahrenheit 451) and if it has too many then it's either a Magnum Opus or split into multiple volumes/books (War &amp;amp; Peace, Lord of the Rings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there such a rule of thumb?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-11-23T01:15:33.957" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T12:42:55.953" Title="Is there a rule of thumb about the number of pages a work of fiction should have?" Tags="|book|pages|book-length|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="352" CreationDate="2010-11-21T21:01:26.787" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to say; length is usually measured by word count and not page count or thickness. Layout and font choice can change the number of pages a book has without changing the length of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I believe 50,000 words is still the minimum to scratch by as a novel, though most run between 75k and 100k words of late, though it used to be shorter. You can go longer than that but it's harder to sell unless you are established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastEditorUserId="7" LastEditDate="2010-11-21T23:57:28.290" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T23:57:28.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="345" CreationDate="2010-11-21T21:20:05.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask a friend or someone for a random word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write it down on the top of a sheet of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then with a one minute time limit, try writing down as many related words as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that fun, and it gets you thinking!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T21:20:05.973" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-22T16:48:11.717" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="345" CreationDate="2010-11-21T23:41:30.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Set a stopwatch. I usually do 10, 20, or 30 minutes; don't do less than 5. Take a pen and some paper, or a computer, and start writing. Don't stop until the stopwatch hits zero. Write whatever you have to write to keep writing, even if it's mindless filler. By the time you finish writing &quot;I don't know what to write&quot; you'll have another idea. I find that this really gets my brain working, and the ideas are usually flowing afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A less extreme alternative is the above, but you can stop writing. (However, don't go back and edit anything.) This is an interesting way to write a short story; the ideas can start to chain up pretty wildly. I find it less effective than the first exercise, but it &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; more fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastActivityDate="2010-11-21T23:41:30.883" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-22T16:48:11.717" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2010-11-22T00:17:53.963" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bitbucketlabs.net/flashbake/&quot;&gt;Flashbake&lt;/a&gt; is a command line interface for a git repository that had some potential but I think it never really took off.  It works in the background and is designed to record ambient data as well like the weather at your physical location and the music playing on your computer at the time you are writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the brainchild of Cory Doctorow and was intended not really as source control but more as an archival tool that future historians could dig through since personal diaries and the like are no longer prevalent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an intriguing idea and it would be cool if something like this became the standard for working writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user24" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T00:17:53.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3" CreationDate="2010-11-22T00:30:05.987" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may not be an exact answer to your question, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget that &lt;strong&gt;you don't always need an agent&lt;/strong&gt; (in fact, depending on the agent and your situation, &lt;em&gt;it can be a lot worse than having no agent&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to read a bit about &lt;strong&gt;what exactly an agent can do for you&lt;/strong&gt; and decide &lt;strong&gt;what kind of agent you want to hire&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also be aware that some &quot;agents&quot; advertising on line are 100% scam (&quot;hey, I can make you a star, pay me an up-front fee!&quot; then nothing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of good info out there from very experienced authors, especially two articles by Dean Wesley Smith:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=720&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=720&lt;/a&gt; (this is the second one, but the other is linked in it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this Writing Excuses podcast: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/01/31/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/01/31/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="67" LastEditDate="2010-12-08T00:43:38.423" LastActivityDate="2010-12-08T00:43:38.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2010-11-22T00:30:49.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know why, but I like naming conventions of Post-Modern writers like Pynchon's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crying_of_Lot_49&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oedipa Maas and Dr. Hilarius&lt;/a&gt; or DFW's  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hal Incandenza&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're absurdist, but suggest additional meaning which makes them intriguing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose, though, that naming conventions are tied to genre.  An example that comes to mind is that I've seen characters referred to as only a letter in shorter fiction, but that may become tedious to the reader in a full length novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user24" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T00:30:49.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="329" CreationDate="2010-11-22T00:39:18.337" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetype&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Archetypes&lt;/a&gt; may be a good place to start.  They won't really help with details about dialect but as archetypes they (supposedly) transcend culture and are a foundation on which all personalities are based.  They could certainly be useful in understanding the psychology of your characters if not their mannerisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user24" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T00:39:18.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2010-11-22T00:41:57.680" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use variations on names from Ancient history/mythology&lt;/strong&gt;. Greek, or Norse, or Mayan, or whatever, pick your flavour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can give you a very wide variety of fictional names that are still similar to each other (for a rich, &quot;realistic&quot; feel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of my &quot;fantasy world&quot; style character/place names come from my &lt;strong&gt;old testament reading&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a complete list of Bible place/person names:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biblical_names&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biblical_names&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I change them around a bit (try different letters and syllables, to get a different sound).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Hale, Marish, Baltasar, Elam, Kir, Addramalech, Sherd, etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get some good metaphors too, but I don't have a link to a list of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&#xA;The Sword Bathed in Heaven, fed their enemies on the bread of affliction and the water of affliction, a shadow from the heat, a refuge from the storm, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Old Testament in particular can give a very &lt;strong&gt;authentic &quot;ancient civilisation&quot; feel to native English readers&lt;/strong&gt;, probably because of the influence the Bible has had on English speaking culture (including fantasy novels) over the centuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="67" LastEditDate="2012-01-30T00:51:08.417" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T00:51:08.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="352" CreationDate="2010-11-22T00:57:33.567" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick look at Baen and I found their &lt;a href=&quot;http://baen.com/FAQS.asp#Manuscript%20Submission%20Guidelines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Manuscript Submission Guidelines&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Preferred length: 100,000 - 130,000&#xA;  words Generally we are uncomfortable&#xA;  with manuscripts under 100,000 words,&#xA;  but if your novel is really wonderful&#xA;  send it along regardless of length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-10-03T12:42:55.953" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T12:42:55.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2010-11-22T01:36:56.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that it is fiction written in an elevated style. Note, by &quot;elevated&quot; I do not mean necessarily superiour. Heinlein was mentioned above, and he falls into a second category: books that transcend their time period. If you write crappy genre fiction, and people are still reading it 200 years later, it magically becomes literature (just ask Alexandre Dumas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The particular subject doesn't really matter very much. Most people would place obvious sci-fi like &lt;em&gt;Farenheit 451&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;1984&lt;/em&gt; in the category of literature. Likewise more modern and geeky literary fiction like &lt;em&gt;The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell&lt;/em&gt; are classed as literature solely because of style, not subject. A good number of postmodernists write novels that would fit into scifi or fantasy (like David Foster Wallace's &lt;em&gt;Infinite Jest&lt;/em&gt; or Thomas Pynchon with &lt;em&gt;Gravities Rainbow&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Mason and Dixon&lt;/em&gt;(1)) but you won't ever find them there because the &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt; doesn't fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like it or not, most genre fiction, be it romance, or thrillers, or scifi, or fantasy...It's written plainly, without a lot of embellishment. There are exceptions, of course, like when Steven Brust got stuck in French Romance mode for 10 years, but other than that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Psychics and talking dogs respectively, are fantasy. Even if the dogs speak poetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T01:36:56.060" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="130" CreationDate="2010-11-22T01:46:39.367" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Explain something in detail&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;on Writing Excuses, they recommended that in this situation you &lt;strong&gt;take one thing and explain the heck out of it, then take another and don't explain it at all&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For cultures, you can put in one or two things from your study of the culture, and really go into detail to the point where it &lt;em&gt;looks like&lt;/em&gt; you know what you're taking about. Then you won't have to go into as much detail for other aspects, but you'll still (hopefully) have a very authentic feel. The result is that it looks like you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; have described everything in more detail, but, like any good fiction author, you're focusing on the action/characters/story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In a fight scene set in ancient Japan, study up on some etiquette and weapons, describe those in detail (&quot;Yojimbo drew his sword and dropped into a fighting stance, waiting mutely for his opponent to acknowledge the challenge by doing the same&quot; and &quot;the sword was his grandfather's &lt;em&gt;katana&lt;/em&gt;, forged from fine steel folded a hundred times for tensile strength&quot;), and then leave out explanations for the other details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I haven't actually studied ancient Japanese etiquette and weapons for these examples, but hopefully I've illustrated the point).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Expert alpha reader&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's pretty important (if a significant portion of your audience knows as much or more about the subject than you do) to have an &lt;strong&gt;alpha reader who is an expert in the subject matter proof-read it&lt;/strong&gt; when it's &quot;done&quot; and correct any glaring problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="67" LastEditDate="2011-03-26T23:49:07.123" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T23:49:07.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="178" CreationDate="2010-11-22T01:56:15.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proof:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_and_Guildenstern_Are_Dead&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead&lt;/a&gt; A famous, brilliant comedy play by Tom Stoppard, who wasn't a native speaker of English (admittedly, he did learn it when he was an older child, not as an adult).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(but don't dismiss the idea of writing in Russian and then finding a really good translator - that would certainly be &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; easier. I speak Japanese pretty well, but I'd never try to compose a novel in it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T01:56:15.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="365" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="366" CreationDate="2010-11-22T05:00:13.153" Score="8" ViewCount="2069" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read loads of books where the reaction and development of characters seems to extreme for the events that effect them in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However not having any development makes the character boring, or at least harder to relate to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So i was wondering how much development do you think makes the character look fake or over acted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;Randomman159&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="163" LastEditDate="2010-12-06T07:33:10.923" LastActivityDate="2017-09-23T00:12:12.757" Title="Character Development - How much is too much?" Tags="|planning|characters|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="365" CreationDate="2010-11-22T05:05:11.357" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking fake isn't a factor of &lt;em&gt;too much&lt;/em&gt; character development, it's a factor of &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; character development. Use as much as you need to show every facet of the character that you deem important. The way you make sure they don't seem fake is to just keep it consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T05:05:11.357" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="365" CreationDate="2010-11-22T05:21:04.723" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Character development is what makes a character memorable and real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character development should offer your readers psychological insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character development is not something external to a story - it is the center of any story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything that happens, anything that your character says or does can and should be character development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character development is not a scalar quantity that can be measured. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character development lies is in the subtle mannerisms, the akward silences, the childhood memories and the humming that no one but your reader can hear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T05:21:04.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="349" CreationDate="2010-11-22T05:25:44.997" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there standardized sizes?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mass market paperback appears to be standardized in North America at 4.25&quot; x 6.75&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the other economical standard North American sizes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trade Paperback &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5.5&quot; x 8.5&quot;     &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;6.0&quot; x 9.0&quot;     &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Textbook &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;7.0&quot; x 10.0&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Large &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;8.5&quot; x 11.0&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fonerbooks.com/paper.htm&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There does seem to be some evidence that a larger mass market size is starting to appear in grocery stores, etc. But I was unable to find a reference to what that size would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;** Are they different between US and Europe**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would appear to be correct.  The Wikipedia page for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paperback&amp;amp;oldid=395274301&quot;&gt;Paperback&lt;/a&gt; currently has information which deals with the standard sizes in the UK.  That page refers to an interesting article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/aug/11/gettingpublished&quot;&gt;prestige&lt;/a&gt; associated with larger sizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;** Does each publisher decide it's own size?**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also true to &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; extent.  (Just form the number of odd/oversized/specially shaped books I own.)  There are good reasons to stick to standard sizes in most cases though, not least of which is that retail outlets appreciate the predictability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T05:25:44.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="365" CreationDate="2010-11-22T05:43:28.143" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your character is in a bad emotional state (near a nervous breakdown) then it's perfectly justified to have them overreact, i.e. they get wet because it rains and destroy a car or shoot someone with a gun can be very believable if setup correctly - Overreacting only means it's not justified well enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every action has a reason and leads to a reaction. If you want to have your character be short fused and easy to trip, set him or her up that way. Give them problems, small nagging problems here and there. You wake up late because a Power Outage turned off your alarm clock, you jump out of bed and trip over some clothing, you can't see in your bathroom because there is no power for the light, the freezer's ice turned into water and left a little sea in your kitchen, someone almost runs you over on your way to work, the taxi/bus driver is very unpleasant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character than has a meeting with his boss and the companies CEO because the header of a Report is missing a minor detail. Really, nothing important, the character is just supposed to quickly redo the report. Except that because of all the other stuff that happened, the character now yells as his Boss and the CEO for being such pedantic pricks and finds himself unemployed half an hour later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overreaction? Absolutely, but it's justified and the reader can relate, because we all had such days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T05:43:28.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2010-11-22T09:05:24.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe every little bit helps. My skill with world and place description is not what I like and I don't feel I can do much about it, so my solution is to add images to make it easier for readers to follow me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And don't forget that the map can be a great tool for yourself. If you have a complex plot, it probably makes sense to create a detailed map and place tokens on it so you can see with a glance which character is where right now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you spend so much time with the map, it becomes part of your work. That also means that you might forget that the reader doesn't have a map handy when they read the story (even if it's reproduced somewhere in the book, they still have to leave the story and leaf through the book to look it up). So don't forget that and make sure your story still makes sense even without the map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, don't forget that you have different readers. For me, the story starts after the book ends. I pull back the memory and emotions and re-enact the story in my mind. I become the author of my own fan-fiction based on your work. Maps help to dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T09:05:24.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="329" CreationDate="2010-11-22T09:14:33.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it sounds like a good idea, I'm not sure the result will be what you expect. Some examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write about something that really exists, there will be people who know a lot, even more about it than you. To avoid alienating these people (or being ridiculed by them in a blog), your description must be really accurate. That means a lot of time must be spent on research. And chances are that you won't get it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then be aware of the effect you want to achieve. If you want to make characters distinct, they must be distinct in &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; head. They don't have to be real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To achieve what you want, is it really necessary that the guy comes from Austin, Texas, 1137th Red Street, 2nd story, firth room to the left of the elevator? How about &quot;Southern US&quot; instead? Gives you much more leeway and readers won't mind unless the story spends a lot of time in the flat of the guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T09:14:33.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="352" CreationDate="2010-11-22T09:15:06.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Guardians of Ga'Hoole&quot; series is relatively short but the series as a whole is quite long. (The stories span over 12-13 books.) Depends though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T09:15:06.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="341" CreationDate="2010-11-22T09:17:56.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone is different. So how could a single rule apply to all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you come across something that seems to make sense, try it. If it works out, keep the habit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If it doesn't work out, drop it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we're not you and you give no reasons to keep/drop it, you must make that decision yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that no decision in life is final. If you find after half a year that it did help, nothing is stopping you from trying it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or doing it with your personal twist like playing loud music while you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T09:17:56.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="93" CreationDate="2010-11-22T09:25:20.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try looking at and playing the Assassin's Creed series by Ubisoft Montreal. Amazing story + amazing graphics + amazing engine = Perfect game. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is truly amazing and really well written, starting on from the 2nd game. The first one was more like a tech demo, but it introduced the dual sided story and the sci-fi part of it, along with the historical story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T09:25:20.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="341" CreationDate="2010-11-22T09:36:34.320" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides what you can &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/341/are-morning-pages-useful/344#344&quot;&gt;learn for life&lt;/a&gt; from morning pages, this habit is very useful for developing creative writing skills. (But for that, I don't think you have to do them in the morning.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you learn with this approach is the essential &quot;write, don't edit&quot; principle. Most people learn to write and edit at the same time. That was maybe helpful in school, writing a test, but it is not helpful in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever started to write a paragraph, found a spelling/grammar error in the beginning, corrected it and you've totally forgot what you wanted to write in the next sentences? Well, that does not happen, if you teach yourself to write things without editing them. You have plenty of time doing that, after you've written down everything what was in your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It needs practice to kick your personal editor out of your head. Then you can concentrate on what you want to do: that's writing, not editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T09:36:34.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="327" CreationDate="2010-11-22T10:45:10.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written my own tool: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/epen/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ePen&lt;/a&gt;. It comes with an automatic wiki: If it finds a character name in the text, you get a link. It's not for the faint of heart but I'm using it to write on my story &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pdark.de/haul/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Haul&lt;/a&gt;&quot; ATM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before that, I used the &lt;a href=&quot;http://moinmo.in/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MoinMoin wiki&lt;/a&gt;. I prefer MoinMoin over MediaWiki for these reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More simple syntax&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fast (I hate it when I have to wait after a click)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No database! It's just a bunch of files which you can easily back up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Written in Python&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Runs locally on your laptop or on your web server. If you need to, you can have both and synchronize the two.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T10:45:10.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="134" CreationDate="2010-11-22T11:14:35.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different people do different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to plan, by starting off at blabbing at a piece of paper until i have the general idea of what the story shall be about, then plan it out a bit more and then i actually write the first draft of the story using my plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2010-12-15T18:07:47.740" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T18:07:47.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="325" CreationDate="2010-11-22T11:29:59.663" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;DXM is often a sign that the author has written himself into a corner. How to avoid it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your scene requires DXM solutions, maybe the scene doesn't belong into the story in the first place? If you like the scene so much, put it in your archive, maybe it will fit into another story. Otherwise, delete it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't find a different way out because a lot of your story plot would need to change, then you must revisit the plot. Maybe you can change it a bit to fix the problem. If that doesn't work, start to spread clues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one scene, I needed an inside man. Instead of suddenly introducing him, I added a scene at the start where he discovers the plot and starts thinking &quot;I can't do this alone; I need help.&quot; At this time, I'm not revealing the plot, the reader finds the inside man stunned by his findings. &quot;What do I do now?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when the character appears on the radar, the inside man tracks him like he tracks the antagonists. There will be little incidents. Say a group of thugs is sent out but the inside man switches the address. Or the inside man really wants to help the hero but he fears to be exposed. So I suddenly have a new conflict that I can use: There is just one inside man but there might be another hero eventually. So how much risk is the inside man willing to take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see, DXMs are red flags. They point you towards weaknesses in your current story. At the same time, they offer you ways to improve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T11:29:59.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-11-22T13:53:42.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://they.misled.us/dark-room&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dark Room&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For windows users wanting a distraction free writing environment something (similar to Writeroom on the mac) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17" LastEditorUserId="17" LastEditDate="2010-11-22T13:59:38.803" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T13:59:38.803" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:56.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="345" CreationDate="2010-11-22T14:00:49.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pick a city that you've never been to and do some research about it.  Then write about going there and try to describe what you see, hear, smell, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take a piece of your writing, go through it and look for non-descript words, such as 'nice', 'beautiful' and 'wonderful'.  List these words, and detail what they are actually supposed to be describing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the left side of the page, list tangible nouns.  On the right side of the page, list intangible nouns.  Combine them in a phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I like to go to public places and listed to conversations.  Then, I write down some bits of dialogue that I hear and try to &quot;guess&quot; what that person is really like by writing down what I think they're like.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T14:00:49.717" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-22T16:48:11.717" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="382" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="398" CreationDate="2010-11-22T14:01:37.053" Score="44" ViewCount="20651" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm quite interested in the LaTex/TeX system and am wondering if any other fellow writers use it frequently to write in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastEditorUserId="163" LastEditDate="2010-12-06T07:36:45.120" LastActivityDate="2017-03-04T20:58:04.323" Title="Do Writers Use LaTex/TeX for writing?" Tags="|software|latex|" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="299" CreationDate="2010-11-22T14:02:49.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Screenwriting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0028639448&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Complete Idiot's Guide to Screenwriting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Playwriting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205412971&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing for the Stage: A Practical Playwriting Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T14:02:49.000" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:30.060" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="199" CreationDate="2010-11-22T14:08:05.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think it's a good idea.  I like to keep different types of work separate by genre, although I think one name can be used for similar genres as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, John Doe (suspense/mystery) and Bob Smith (fantasy/sci-fi)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T14:08:05.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="385" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="389" CreationDate="2010-11-22T15:14:04.987" Score="41" ViewCount="2528" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having majored in writing in my undergraduate studies, I spent lots of time getting critiques from my fellow students, some of whom are now published and many of whom were excellent writers.  The group dynamics of some of my classes could get quite harsh.  From the perspective of learning, the harshness was a positive.  From the perspective of wanting anyone to ever look at my fiction again, the harshness was completely negative.  It has hampered my love of writing for many years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to get back into writing fiction again, but my confidence is completely shattered.  Whenever I get an idea for a story I find myself second guessing it.  How can I recover my confidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2018-10-29T01:18:04.043" Title="How do I recover my confidence after a harsh writing group?" Tags="|writing-groups|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2010-11-22T15:26:38.373" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Meditate over these thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rome wasn't built in a day. The first version of your story sucks? So what? Just improve it. Some people can write perfect prose first time, some have to fight for every word. All of them can get rich/famous/happy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He who complains cares. If they didn't bother, why would they take the time to give you lengthy and useful feedback? If I thought you're a total XXXXXX, I'd just say &quot;Oh, forget it. You'll never make it&quot;. But when I say &quot;Don't do this, try that,&quot; there is still hope.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who says you have to &lt;em&gt;publish&lt;/em&gt; your work? If you want to have fun writing, write for yourself! Ignore grammar, typos, whatever you want. Have fun. if you ever come across a story that is &lt;em&gt;worth&lt;/em&gt; publishing, then you can start worrying about making it as great as it can get. But that doesn't mean you have to live in misery all the rest of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perfection is a nice goal. It's simple, easy to make out, shiny. And unattainable. You want to start with perfect results? How boring ... no way to improve, try out new things. Feel lucky that you have so many things to improve! Other people don't get published and they don't know what they could do better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T15:26:38.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2010-11-22T15:27:14.237" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only thing to do is get back on the horse. You're going to get harsh critiques, and some times they're not going to be justified, and sometimes they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt;. Learn from the ones that are, ignore the ones that aren't and don't let anyone keep you from doing something you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T15:27:14.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2010-11-22T15:28:10.100" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. I want my work look as good as possible and I've yet to find anything that even comes close to TeX. HTML is nice &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.pdark.de/2010/11/19/printing-web-pages/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;but printing it ...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T15:28:10.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2010-11-22T15:29:20.750" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You are not your story.&lt;/strong&gt; Your story may really, really suck. However, that doesn't mean that you're a bad writer or that you'll never write anything worth reading. It just means that this particular story needs work. If you're ever going to have a measure of success as a writer, you have to learn to disassociate your self-esteem from negative feedback you get about any particular story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which leads to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Allow your writing to suck.&lt;/strong&gt; Guess what? Pretty much everyone's first drafts suck. Second drafts, too. You may have to go through ten drafts to get to the one that works. You may also have to go through ten terrible short story ideas before you start writing the one that's going to be great. Don't sweat the fact that what you're doing right now isn't as beautiful and perfect as you want it to be--you can come back later and make it better, and if you don't have those skills right now, you can work on something else and come back when you have the perspective and the experience to write your story the way you've always imagined it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T15:29:20.750" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2010-11-22T15:31:35.757" Score="15" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Yes.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write everything in Vim with LaTeX, using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcdemarco.net/sffms/&quot;&gt;sffms package&lt;/a&gt;. As the name indicates, the sffms package was written for SF, but manuscript style is pretty much universal. I highly recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T15:31:35.757" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2010-11-22T15:31:44.950" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use it, but mainly because I hate Word. It's a little tricky to get started in, but in the long run you'll be happier. It's much easier to make things look professional, and there is no &lt;em&gt;fighting&lt;/em&gt; with the stupid program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T15:31:44.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="392" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-22T15:36:00.217" Score="18" ViewCount="1296" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm weak at building characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What resources are there to create rich characters? I'm thinking beyond name generators: Quirks, biography, diseases like allergies, hobbies and jobs, wealth, omens, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T17:51:17.073" Title="Resources for character development" Tags="|planning|characters|resources|" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="134" CreationDate="2010-11-22T15:36:50.170" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do a rough outline, detailing things that need to happen as the plot progresses, but then I try to let the characters lead the way from one place to another. You really need some kind of outline in order to build the plot correctly. Certain things will need to happen to move it along, and it feels less contrived if you build up to those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One negative with this is sometimes the damn outline stops matching the way the plot needs to move for the characters to be true to themselves. Then you have to stop and figure out what the hell to do to make it all work out...I've read many a book where the author clearly had this happen to them, and forced the characters to follow the plot, even though they'd written them away from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me though, I can't really plan a character until I start writing them. Sometimes I'll do a few throw-off character sketches, and short stories, and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; write my plot outline, and that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T15:36:50.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="392" CreationDate="2010-11-22T16:25:25.117" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was taught to do character writing exercises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest questions you need to answer about your characters are along the lines of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does she want most out of this situation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is his deepest fear?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does she love?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does he hate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What motivates her to do [thing]?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does he want from her?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically you need to find the motivations for your characters' actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that your biography should fit naturally with the motivation.  If your character fears technology will ultimately render humans useless, how interesting would it be to have him pulled into a tech support role at work unwillingly?  If your protagonist has an omnipresent fear of death, a serious allergy to peanuts would provide a great tension in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T16:25:25.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="392" CreationDate="2010-11-22T17:39:06.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;justkt's answer pretty much covers my thoughts. Here's something that may not be obvious (took me a long time to figure it out at least): develop the character as fully as you can, but &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; feel compelled to demonstrate every facet of the character that you decide upon, or to elaborate in the story on every little trait. My earlier writings, as well as those of a lot of my peers, would be a futile exercise in trying to stuff as much of my predetermined character build as opposed to using that build as an outline to determine their actions (as justkt said).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T17:39:06.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="392" CreationDate="2010-11-22T17:45:42.677" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing you could try is looking at the Player Hand Books (PHBs) of some paper Role Playing Games like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wizards.com/DND/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dungeons and Dragons&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.palladiumbooks.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Palladium&lt;/a&gt;. Some of these have tables that you are able to roll various dice against to get a random character. You can find games like these for almost any genre, but it really doesn't take much to modify from the fantasy books. Palladium has several tables based on character flaws, addictions, phobias, etc. if I remember correctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can even use the tables as examples and substitute more applicable traits into your own tables. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may even be online applications for these games (created by players) to automate character generation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T17:45:42.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2010-11-22T18:27:46.587" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;For longer pieces, especially those with figures, tables, contents, or internal references, or citations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For shorter pieces (such as an essay) I'd do it in Word or OpenOffice, since I normally don't need the power of Latex and getting it laid out properly won't involve much work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any writing of decent size, I use LaTeX because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I only worry about content and not layout. If I'm writing a scientific paper, thesis, or dissertation, there is usually a latex style that I can apply once the content is there. If I need to apply a different layout (ie: change from two-column to one column), change figure titles, etc) this is as simple as applying a different style. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Managing internal references. Word does it but it's always been a pain personally to use. Latex handles it elegantly. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Citations. BibTex is awesome and works with pretty much every reference management software out there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No mouse necessary. Latex has one hell of a learning curve. Making changes to layout can drive you to bang your head against a wall. However, once you've become comfortable with it, your output can speed up heavily. You stop thinking about formatting while you're writing. You don't worry about selecting the correct bullets, or making sure things are indented properly. You simply write text and put markers that define what that content is (chapter, section, caption, etc). Your style handles the rest. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Version control. Because Latex files are pure text, they go very easily with version controls and diff. Seeing changes between versions shows you exactly what changed. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cross platform and repeatability. Because it's all text, you can edit it anywhere. Including vi through a shell. Latex will also always produce the exact same document, as a PDF if desired, so you don't have to worry about how someone is going to open it. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Equations. If you're writing equations, it really can't get much easier and much nicer output than Tex's math mode.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I absolutely don't use it for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scriptwriting. Final Draft is much better suited to that task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastEditorUserId="3620" LastEditDate="2015-06-25T08:59:38.173" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T08:59:38.173" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="325" CreationDate="2010-11-22T18:58:08.677" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a say I heard ages ago that I think applies here. Paraphrased it's something along the lines of &quot;If you're ending isn't working, fix the middle.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Deus Ex Machina is something that happens when you find yourself stuck in a corner with your story and you're have a problem bringing it to a close. Usually this isn't something you plan for so you have to go back and fix the problem. In this case I would go back and look over your plot to see how your plot-line got into the place it is and see how to adjust it to fix the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fixing it can be as simple as setting up something minor in the middle of the story so you can use it at the end, or it could result in a major rewrite of the last third of your story. Don't be afraid to do either one of them, which ever one works best for your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the whole you can get away with a small amount of foreshadowing to set up and end so the reader doesn't feel cheated. One of the best examples of this is &quot;The Hunt for Red October&quot;, both the book and movie. Something is set up early in the story and then it's allowed to follow to the side. When it pays off at the end of the story it feels like it's both a surprise and a natural part of the plot, and it ramps up the stakes in the climax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T18:58:08.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="392" CreationDate="2010-11-22T19:01:41.903" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, J. Michael Straczynski said he had three basic questions to help build the core of a character. They also provide something from which to build interpersonal conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do they want?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What will they do to get it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What will someone do to stop them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the rest of the character, there's always the issues of what they like to do when they aren't in the story. Hobbies and interests, but is it worth mentioning if it doesn't come into play with the story at hand? Then again, you should always know more about your character than your readers do, it helps make them feel fleshed out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-08-17T01:29:07.067" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T01:29:07.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2010-11-22T19:04:18.880" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; fan of LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though I usually write in something ultra-minimalist (markdown syntax in pyroom lately), before actually showing it to anyone, I'll convert to LaTeX for better formatting control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that counts as &quot;writing in&quot; TeX or LaTeX -- I find anything other than a plain text editor too distracting to the &quot;get this down on screen or paper&quot; phase -- but LaTeX  is at the heart of my &quot;make this presentable&quot; phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T19:04:18.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="345" CreationDate="2010-11-22T19:04:29.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's one I do. Grab a random book, flip to a random page and pick a single sentence from it (assuming that it makes sense). I find this works well if there is some dialog to go along with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, start with that sentence and start writing from it for about twenty minutes. Don't follow the story that it came from,see what you can come up with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this works really well if you're feel like you can't come up with new and interesting ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T19:04:29.640" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-22T19:04:29.640" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="405" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="411" CreationDate="2010-11-22T19:20:20.507" Score="31" ViewCount="5579" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're like me, you get story ideas anywhere and everywhere. If I'm at a computer, I'll write down the idea in onenote or outlook or scrivener (depending what's open). If I just have my phone, I'll send an email to myself, or use the voice recorder app to spew some thoughts. If neither are handy, I'll write down ideas on the back of business cards or on whatever paper I can find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you'd expect, I find myself losing track of these little ideas. I find most of them eventually (I think), but would like to hear some ideas on how others keep track of random story ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T13:41:21.637" Title="How do you track random thoughts and ideas?" Tags="|organization|ideas|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="405" CreationDate="2010-11-22T19:21:14.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I simply have a google doc, and I can almost always access it since it's stored a server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T19:21:14.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="407" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-22T19:22:47.210" Score="12" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while ago, I played around with a short story idea in a genre I don't normally write (Young Adult fiction).  The story took on a life of its own, growing quickly to a novella, and now is definitely a novel, trying to stretch itself to a series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story itself is going great, I'm just not sure where/how to break it up for a YA audience.  Specifically, I expect the content to be most appealing to the pre/young-teen crowd (12-14).  So far (it's still not completely mapped out) there are seven 'parts' -- that is, major plot arcs secondary only to the main series-long arc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were I writing for adults, I'd combine parts 1-3 into Book I, parts 4-5 into Book II, and parts 6-7 into Book III.  However, this might be too long for a YA audience, putting each book at 500+ pages with the longest at about 700 (guesstimated, of course, all but the first part are mostly notes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It probably seems a bit early to try breaking things up, but one of my New Year's resolutions will be to make real time for my writing.  To set goals, I'd like some idea of at which point in the plot Book I is &quot;done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2010-11-22T20:07:08.107" LastActivityDate="2020-05-20T01:12:50.840" Title="How to go about breaking up a looooong YA story?" Tags="|planning|book-length|young-adult|series|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="345" CreationDate="2010-11-22T19:22:47.377" Score="9" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take the opening sentence from a short story that you have not yet read (this likely won't work as well if you have read it).  Write a story starting with the opening sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find a painting, post card, or photograph.  Describe it with as much &quot;showing&quot; as possible.  Try to incorporate all five senses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pick a relative whom you don't know very much about.  Starting with what you do know and common traits in your family, create a character portrait.  Focus more on motivation questions (loves, hates, wants, desires, fears, needs) than on facts (job, age, sex, location).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write your dreams down.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take a scene from a work of fiction that you admire.  Try re-writing from a different point of view, from a different character's perspective, or against a different back drop.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try writing a piece of extremely short fiction in which you manage to convey an interesting character in 55 words or less&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T19:22:47.377" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-22T19:22:47.377" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="405" CreationDate="2010-11-22T19:25:43.337" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always have a notebook with me.  When the notebook is full, I go through it page by page, digitizing the ideas that are &quot;keepers&quot; (and transferring those I want to mull some more into my new notebook).  Of course, if I happen to be at the computer, I will often just throw things right into my notes file -- I have a branch set aside just for &quot;unsorted&quot; notes which I clean out on occasion the same way I do my notebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T19:25:43.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2010-11-22T19:26:34.137" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems there a significant bias in the responses - people who do use are much more likely to care about this question than people who don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only use TeX when I'm writing something with lots of equations or figures (I'm a physics student/teacher, so I do that sometimes).  Otherwise a word processor is easier for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T19:26:34.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="405" CreationDate="2010-11-22T19:31:03.510" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep a good old fashion Moleskin notebook with me, one that is hard back so it can survive in my pocket (as well as a pen). It's useful not only for writes notes but for everything else I need to jot down while away from the computer. It also comes with a band to hold it closed, which is useful so I can keep cards in it and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also something satisfying about being about to pull the notebook out and open/close it with the snap of the elastic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T19:31:03.510" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="407" CreationDate="2010-11-22T19:37:18.563" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing I would do is see what the normal length for a YA book is. It seems to me they are around 50k to 60k words. They can be much longer, but you have to be established. Even the first Harry Potter book was a fairly normal length of the genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know the normal length you can shoot for the first book to hit around that mark, then go from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T19:37:18.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="405" CreationDate="2010-11-22T19:39:35.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like the idea of a small notebook, and I'd recommend that. However, this one might be more convenient, and it's what I do. If you have a phone that you're comfortable with typing on, send yourself a text, email, make a reminder for when you get home, whatever works best for you. In that message, type up whatever details you need to remember. Again: it's not the best option, but it's very convenient if you have a phone (which, as a generalization, you probably do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T19:39:35.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="407" CreationDate="2010-11-22T19:45:50.093" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is kinda obvious but it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; definitely affect breaking up the story, so I think it deserves emphasis. Being a recent graduate from the Young Adult market, I strongly recommend that you divide it in such a way that each standalone book ends on some kind of incredibly surprising cliffhanger, or an ending that has the reader ferociously needing to know what happens next (thanks Fox Cutter). Nothing got me and my friends wanting a sequel more than a blatantly overdone shocker ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastEditorUserId="60" LastEditDate="2010-11-22T19:51:38.040" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T19:51:38.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="405" CreationDate="2010-11-22T20:23:38.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a fan of carrying a notebook, because when I really need it, I have forgotten to take it with me anyway. Therefore I solve the issue the other way round. I keep a pencil and small pieces of paper on my desk (home and office), in my bedside table, the kitchen, the bathroom and my car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T20:23:38.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="405" CreationDate="2010-11-22T20:50:51.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a Mac/iPhone app called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TaskPaper&lt;/a&gt; to track most of my ideas. It can sync between the phone and multiple Macs, which I find useful when moving between home and work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T20:50:51.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="418" CreationDate="2010-11-22T20:58:05.233" Score="12" ViewCount="411" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have plans for a fantasy trilogy in which the main characters defeating the threat in each book simply makes way for the new threat of the next book.  This way, the main characters can continue to grow and take on more powerful threats as the story progresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I have laid out the story so far ends with each book having a resolution.  For example, the characters defeat the evil cult and celebrate.  I plan on having this play into a twist, however, when they find out the cult actually was trying to prevent a catastrophic event from occurring that now the characters have to deal with personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, where would it be ideal to reveal a twist of this nature?  Should I reveal it at the end of the book where they destroy the cult so that the reader is more likely to pick up the next book?  Or should I reveal it towards the beginning of the successive book where they are going to actually have to clean up after the mess?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, I am not sure whether leaving such a gaping cliff-hanger between novels is a good idea, because it could lessen the sense of accomplishment from the recent resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-11-24T04:08:53.773" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T04:08:53.773" Title="Where is the best place to &quot;twist&quot; a series?" Tags="|planning|series|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="417" CreationDate="2010-11-22T21:04:44.683" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is a tricky question, there is a good reason for a cliffhanger at the end of the first book to increase the interest in the second one, but that might be hard if it's your first book sale. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to go about it, at least in the case of your first book, is to hint that there is something bigger in the background. Both through out the book and at the end, leaving the readers wondering what's really going on, then have the big twist in first chapter or two of the second book. That way, if the worst happens and the second book gets cut, you still have a whole story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I would go the other way with the second book. End that one with the direct twist to that leads into the third book. Of course even that may not be what it seems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T21:04:44.683" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2010-11-22T21:06:02.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Spoken as a reader, I usually look at the map at begin of the reading, but mostly ignore it while reading. The map may be nice and artful, but for me it's the same as the cover. A good story I can enjoy without it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some novels the travels of the character are so confusing, that I need the map, to keep track. But mostly I think, the author should avoid this confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At last I have an examples, where I thought the map was really useful and really part of the book. That are the Metro-novels by Dmitri Glukhovsky. The story plays years after a catastrophic war and the survivors are living underground in the Metro of Moscow. So the map contains the Metro-plan, but it is altered to show the new political zones, that have established after the war. It was really fun to follow the travels of the character through the map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my conclusion is: Include a map as an art-object but not as a necessity. If you feel, that your reader cannot follow the story without a map, you should try to simplify the locations. And if you really have a plan to make a map part of the read, then go ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T21:06:02.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2010-11-22T21:08:16.120" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I either use an existing name and change something like adding a letter or swapping two: Boris -&gt; Borsi. Ken -&gt; Kan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that fails, I pay this site a visit: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/index.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T21:08:16.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="417" CreationDate="2010-11-22T21:15:22.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your idea is perfect as the end of the first book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are bad cliffhangers, which do not end the story satisfyingly, because they have no real end. That's what disappoint your readers. But if you have a real ending for the plot (defeating the cult) and show the reader &quot;Oops, maybe what they did was not that bad and now someone has to clean up the mess&quot;, then the twisting end satisfies, surprises and makes the reader curious for the next book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mention from the beginning, that it is a trilogy/series (what not all books do), I do not see any problem putting the twist at the end of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T21:15:22.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2010-11-22T22:39:17.150" Score="19" Body="&lt;h1&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org&quot;&gt;NaNoWriMo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Tens of thousands of lunatics collectively deciding to write an entire novel apiece in 30 days.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My hang-ups came from a different place, but I had the same apprehensions as you.  I'm a coder; in the computer world, there is a &lt;em&gt;right way&lt;/em&gt; and a &lt;em&gt;wrong way&lt;/em&gt; to write something, and I kept over-analyzing my writing looking for an objective measure of elegance or perfection that doesn't exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for the first time, the quantity-not-quality focus did wonders for me.  Not only did the volume of my writing increase, but (surprisingly) so did the quality, because I was forced not to over-analyze.  After all, as long as you make your word count &lt;em&gt;during&lt;/em&gt; NaNoWriMo, you can always edit out the garbage in December. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's probably a little late to try for 50,000 words this November, but small groups or individuals often do off-season NaNoWriMos in other months, and each summer there is NaNoScripMo (like NaNoWriMo but for plays/screenplays).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also use the same mentality outside of NaNoWriMo: take a period of a few weeks and focus solely on ridiculous word count goals, to the exclusion of all else.  See how it changes your perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T22:39:17.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="423" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="424" CreationDate="2010-11-22T23:00:11.943" Score="12" ViewCount="550" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have certain people in my life who insist on reading &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; too much into my writing.  As it is, I do my best to avoid giving my characters initials or names or appearances that coincide even a little with anyone I know.  Still I get &quot;clearly $character was modeled after $person&quot; or &quot;so-and-so said you modeled $character after me...I'm nothing like that!&quot;  These meddlers are driving me nuts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you do with such people?  I don't care what &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; think per se, but they occasionally stir up trouble with others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-11-23T01:12:49.887" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T22:40:46.977" Title="What to do about readers reading into things?" Tags="|readers|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="423" CreationDate="2010-11-22T23:07:49.363" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's hard to say, there are always going to be people reading more into things then you intended. Look at all the dissections of Shakespeare saying his plays are all about supporting the royal family, or making fun of them. The same thing is true about Moby-Dick, Catcher in the Rye and any other popular book. Even Harry Potter has been subjected to this, both for support witchcraft, and as an attacking on the previous government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even worse there is a group of thought that these things are still there even if the writer didn't intend for them, or actively tried not to put them there in the first place. The idea that the intent of the author doesn't matter personally bothers me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would take them aside and tell them that wasn't the case at all, that you didn't base anyone on anybody, and the fact that they acted 'wrong' helps prove this. And that, in the end, it's just a story. If they have a sense of humor about it, tell them it's all wrong and given them the craziest explanation you can think of, but from the sound of it that wouldn't work for these people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end though, all you can do is tell them that they are wrong, and then try to ignore them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T23:07:49.363" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="405" CreationDate="2010-11-22T23:35:21.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was in college/grad school I kept a bunch of index cards to write poems or ideas on.  I had the problem of having scribbled ideas in the middle of my school notes.  Keeping them all in one place worked (and grabbing an index card in the middle of a lecture looks like I'm paying attention).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have little index cards kept on a ring that could easily fit in a pocket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T23:35:21.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="352" CreationDate="2010-11-22T23:45:49.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the genre or audience, I believe.  I've seen lists all over the place.  Googling will give you some answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen 80-110,000 for an adult novel, but sci-fi, for example, often goes longer.  Young adult will be less, children's even less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2010-11-22T23:45:49.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="427" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="428" CreationDate="2010-11-23T08:30:47.917" Score="11" ViewCount="1131" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am starting to write a fantasy story. For the first time, i am using computer software to help organize my story. The program confronted me with a question. What is the birthday of a character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a fantasy world, swords, bows and axes style. So obviously medieval. Yet... It is not on earth. It has goblins, dwarves, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So saying it's in the 5th century is a bit... well, weird. Why would a totally different universe just happen to have the same weaponry at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So i was wondering how you give time into your stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually my stories don't have a specified time, OR they fit in with an existing / future time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="35" LastEditDate="2012-01-01T03:23:34.060" LastActivityDate="2012-01-01T03:23:34.060" Title="Out of this world... Giving it time?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|setting|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="427" CreationDate="2010-11-23T08:57:29.117" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Time is based on an Event. We are in the year 2010 because someone inaccurately took the birth of Jesus Christ as the base (hence b.c. And a.d. denominations). Other cultures have other years, I believe either the China or the Arabian countries have a completely different year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Star Wars Extended Universe, the battle of Yavin is the base for their calendar. That was the destruction of the first Death Star, and you will find dates given as &quot;4000 BBY&quot; (Before battle of Yavin) or &quot;130 ABY&quot; (after battle of Yavin)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A calendar is only there to put events into perspective, and mainly for the reader. How long is a year? Most fictional works still use the earth year, or the character says something like &quot;it happened 8000 years ago,in your culture that's 200 earth years&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you don't need to have an absolute year. It doesn't matter if you are in the year 2000 or 5128, because it's just a number. Maybe you just start telling your story and when you refer to past/future events, you just use relative time: He was born 200 earth years before he met the girl of his dreams. The galactic elections will be in 2 months from now, and the elected chancellor will be in office for 5 years. With this description you just set an &quot;epoch&quot;: a man and woman meet. All other dates are relative to this point in time, wherever it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you can just make up a number. Pick an event, either one that happens in the story or one that has/had a great impact on the fictional universe. You don't have to give that date to the reader if you don't want to, but it will help you greatly to keep consistency, otherwise you will encounter that a character is too old or that an event happened too long ago to be witnessed by your character. Having a calendar helps greatly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some Universes did fine without a consistent calendar.Star Trek's Star Date for example is completely inconsistent between the various incarnations and doesn't translate. Most people don't care, I think it's sloppy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my recommendation: pick an event as your epoch (year 0), plan all other events against this one, and decide if you want to disclose it to the reader or if you just want to give relative dates based on that event. You can have both options of course: year 0 is when the war ended and the first chancellor reunited the tribes, but your story happens 500 years later when your character meets his future wife when he tries to rob her store, and all events you describe in the book are relative to the failed robbery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastEditorUserId="68" LastEditDate="2010-12-10T19:24:18.850" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T19:24:18.850" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2010-11-23T08:58:02.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find maps will help fans to get a stronger idea of your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look how detailed LOTR is getting!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, like movies, if you read the book first, and have images of the world in your head... That map can totally destroy the readers own view of your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T08:58:02.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2010-11-23T09:07:09.203" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a big universe and plan on having multiple stories, then a map is a nice touch. Bout it's also limiting. If your first book only focuses on a small part of the world and you include a full world map, then your second book has more constraints to it as you can't just invent another continent, at least not without a good explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, showing only a region or simply retconning the map are options, but the former is more a &quot;nice bonus&quot; as regional maps shouldn't be needed to understand the story, and the latter is just bad for a reader (I know, retcons aren't unusual, but I hate them)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So only put a map if either a) you carefully planned the contents and know it won't have to change a lot in future stories or b) it just looks badass and is something the reader will just want to experience as a piece of art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T09:07:09.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2010-11-23T09:49:44.740" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to take a look at this:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/book-in-national/30-famous-authors-whose-works-were-rejected-repeatedly-and-sometimes-rudely-by-publishers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;30 authors whose works were repeatedly and sometimes rudely rejected by publishers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;Br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The first two names on the list are Stephen King and William Golding, both of whom are incredibly respected and talented authors. George Orwell is also amongst it. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The point is, many talented writers experience rejection and criticism. It probably goes a long way to making them great. The only tragedy in receiving a bad response is if you don't act on it. Look at the harsh comments as sure-fire ways to improve, especially if they come from extremely talented writers. They have doubtlessly been there before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T09:49:44.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="407" CreationDate="2010-11-23T10:12:38.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Tomorrow When the War Began series is probably very similar to what you are describing. It's seven (brilliant) novels, following one major story arc. What the author, John Marsden, did was to give each story its own resolution, but still leave the reader wanting to know more. This was usually done by leaving something about a character unanswered, so that the next novel was still appealing. The major arc could then unfold throughout. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T10:12:38.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="433" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="442" CreationDate="2010-11-23T12:26:52.973" Score="18" ViewCount="953" Body="&lt;p&gt;What tools (software or otherwise) or procedures do you use to track the progress of submissions to publishers or other markets? How do you reduce the chance of accidentally (and embarrassingly) submitting the same thing twice to the same market?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T20:52:45.797" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T20:52:45.797" Title="How do you track submissions to publishers/markets?" Tags="|software|tools|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="433" CreationDate="2010-11-23T12:30:24.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a combination of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacejock.com/Sonar3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sonar 3&lt;/a&gt; (a submission tracking tool); and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tagging submitted files in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://subversion.apache.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Subversion&lt;/a&gt; repository&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sonar 3 is a nice little desktop app that let's you define stories, markets, and create &quot;submissions&quot;. Each submission links a story to the market it was sent to, records responses from editors, acceptances/rejections, and allows some filtering of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subversion is a version control tool generally used in software development. It stores all my documents in a single central repository, and allows any particular revision of a file to be retrieved exactly as it was. (It works well enough but I'll be moving to &lt;a href=&quot;http://mercurial.selenic.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mercurial&lt;/a&gt; as soon as I work out some &quot;issues&quot; with my current repository). There is an existing question that has &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/289/do-you-use-any-version-controlling-software-methods-as-writers&quot;&gt;more details on version control tools&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T12:30:24.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="433" CreationDate="2010-11-23T12:30:33.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Em. Could be an agent taken as a tool? If so, I guess you can use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2010-11-23T12:41:03.620" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T12:41:03.620" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="436" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="438" CreationDate="2010-11-23T12:40:35.460" Score="10" ViewCount="944" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always… feel… so… expressive when I see this little nicy dots!.. I just can't stop to put them more… and more… and more… Please teach me how to stop!..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I guess people misunderstood me. I know when and where to place them. I'm talking about ellipsis as styling element. So I'm turning the question another way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2010-11-23T14:11:43.133" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T14:11:43.133" Title="How not to overuse ellipsis?" Tags="|style|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="436" CreationDate="2010-11-23T13:47:31.687" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, ellipses are used when a word is omitted, when there is a pause in speech, or when there is an unfinished thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T13:47:31.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="436" CreationDate="2010-11-23T14:03:31.147" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;With every possible stylistic element in writing, use it as if you will &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; be the genius who breaks all the rules.  Start by keeping every single rule thoroughly.  Minimize your use of all stylistic elements and focus on conveying your meaning in the simplest words possible.  Use the fewest words possible to paint your description, sketch your characters, and set your scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day, after practicing this until you have it down cold, you will find that you just &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; an ellipsis (or other stylistic element or larger descriptive word) will absolutely make a sentence.  Use it then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general the rule is to focus on simplicity.  Once you have mastered the rule, you may begin to break it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T14:03:31.147" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="439" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="440" CreationDate="2010-11-23T14:05:52.170" Score="31" ViewCount="2179" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've come across this Mark Twain quote: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them -- then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can &quot;use modifiers rarely&quot; be accepted as a rule in writing? What are other &quot;rules of thumb&quot; in using adjectives and adverbs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T17:42:28.817" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T22:09:24.063" Title="When should modifiers be avoided?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="439" CreationDate="2010-11-23T14:11:10.933" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason that Mark Twain is warning against adjectives (and adverbs) is because they are &quot;lazy&quot;.  When you say someone did something &quot;stupidly&quot;, you're drawing the conclusion for the reader.  You're &lt;em&gt;telling&lt;/em&gt; the reader what he should be thinking, rather than &lt;em&gt;showing&lt;/em&gt; the reader what's happening and letting him figure it out on his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's much harder for an author to show the character doing the thing, and then the consequences, and doing it convincingly enough that it generates the same result: the reader figure out it was stupid.  But when done properly, the effect is a thousand times better than if you had just told the reader outright.  Instead of trying to remember for later, the reader &lt;em&gt;knows&lt;/em&gt; now the conclusion he drew and won't forget it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally a detail is minor enough that you don't want to waste the time showing.  In that case, try to remove the detail completely.  Only if you can't remove it do you then want to tell the reader by using an adjective or adverb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T14:11:10.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="405" CreationDate="2010-11-23T14:32:00.610" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_OneNote&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OneNote&lt;/a&gt; and I think it's the best computer program ever happened. You can track your ideas and thoughts in the most easier way I've seen. As much as I love paper, I should really own oneself with the paper beaten over the person with this beautiful little soft gem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a mathematician I organized my notebooks strongly, and I will to publish it, if I suddenly will become a celebrity. But, to tell the truth, this program just forces you to organize, and does this by imperceptible way. Chaos in my head is productive at last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also other electronic notebooks presented, and most imminent for ON is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2010-11-24T03:29:35.017" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T03:29:35.017" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="433" CreationDate="2010-11-23T14:46:29.173" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;For tracking short stories and direct submissions to publishers, use &lt;a href=&quot;http://duotrope.com&quot;&gt;Duotrope&lt;/a&gt;, a free online tool that contains every market you've ever heard of and a multitude that you haven't, complete with submission history, links to websites, etc. Also, be sure to donate to them, because they deserve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For tracking agent queries, use &lt;a href=&quot;http://querytracker.net&quot;&gt;Query Tracker&lt;/a&gt;, which has a similar feature set but is geared towards literary agents (which Duotrope doesn't cover). They also have a premium subscription for 25$ that gives you a bunch of additional nice features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T14:46:29.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="443" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="451" CreationDate="2010-11-23T16:12:52.183" Score="28" ViewCount="3360" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing, I tend to want to use words or phrases that have meaning in the real world, but wouldn't necessarily have meaning in the world in which I'm writing.  For example, in a fantasy world, a character can't (metaphorically) &quot;rocket across the room&quot; because there is no such thing as a rocket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example that came up recently with someone reviewing my writing was &quot;tug of war&quot;.  &quot;Do they have tug of war in your setting?&quot; he asked.  I was using it as an example of the effect made when one person let go of something another was trying to grab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main question here, I think, is this: Should I write as if the story is being translated from some unknown language into English (i.e. I can use words like rocket and tug of war without issue)?  Or should I write in the language that the actual characters would be using in the story?  The answer would be clear if the story were in first person, but since I'm writing in third person it's a little hazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastEditorUserId="7" LastEditDate="2010-11-23T16:19:49.153" LastActivityDate="2022-07-24T02:39:00.793" Title="Should I avoid modern words/phrases in fantasy writing?" Tags="|style|fantasy|third-person|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="423" CreationDate="2010-11-23T16:21:13.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Politely point out that the noticed facet is just a fraction of the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People like to simplify things. No matter how hard you try, they will always believe that some facet of your character is modeled after real person X -- even if all other facets don't fit at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way, they are right; no author can make up something from nothing, especially not when it comes to characters. We only ever combine our experience and memories in new ways. But that doesn't mean character Y &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; person X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T16:21:13.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="443" CreationDate="2010-11-23T16:24:08.787" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most compelling things about fantasy is that reading a work of fantasy transports you to a different world.  Not only are you the reader seeing life through another perspective, you are seeing a completely different possibility for what life might be like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the change in possibility is part of what makes fantasy a compelling genre, I would write what would exist in that world (unless you are in the first person of a character from 21st century Earth).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T16:24:08.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="443" CreationDate="2010-11-23T16:25:22.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an omniscient third person narrator, I think it's fine to use common English idioms such as &quot;rocket across the room&quot;, because it's so common that it doesn't sound any more idiomatic than &quot;flew across the room&quot; or &quot;scrambled across the room&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T16:25:22.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="417" CreationDate="2010-11-23T16:25:30.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put it at the end of book one. If there is no book 2, it becomes an open-ended story. If there is a book 2, you can continue as planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As usual, keep the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3 act structure&lt;/a&gt; in each book and in each chapter: Exposition, rising action, climax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[EDIT] Try to come up with something different for the second book; readers will think you try to trick them into buying book 3 if you reuse the idea. Like &quot;I can't believe they fell for the same trap &lt;em&gt;again&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T16:25:30.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="443" CreationDate="2010-11-23T16:28:37.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to invent a whole language up from scratch or go and study ancient English or something like that, you can always write in modern English but let it be implied that the characters are really speaking in their own language, the modern English being just there for the conveniency of the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your public, it will either not care or avoid your texts. People who are deeply into fantasy might want more &quot;realism&quot; in the sense of more detail about the languages of the fantasy world. People who are casual readers just care about a good story, regardless of the genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T16:28:37.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="221" CreationDate="2010-11-23T16:56:45.767" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't always plan ahead a lot in my writing, but I've taken to adding something at the end of my word document to let me know where I'm heading.  It might be plot, it might be an emotion or a line of dialogue I don't want to forget but I'm not ready to include yet.  One might call it an outline, but it's very rough.  I don't always end up using everything I write there.  Sometimes the plot turns unexpectedly as I'm writing, but it gives me a direction I'm heading to.  Then I delete as I reach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typing a quick sentence to let you know what you were going to do next might help you get back to where you were and get writing NOW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T16:56:45.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="443" CreationDate="2010-11-23T17:13:57.210" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should avoid using these expressions in dialogue, but it's fine to use them as a narrator. Characters wouldn't say &quot;rocket across the room&quot; but you can; instead of thinking you're translating from ancient English, treat it as your contemporary telling of an ancient story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, if you don't use &quot;rocket across the room&quot;, you would end up with a somewhat plain narration, or you'd have to invent equivalent expressions in &quot;ancient&quot; English, in which case your reader could have a hard time interpreting your made-up sayings. A good compromise would be to substitute more neutral expressions, such as &quot;flew across the room&quot; as Maulrus suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T17:13:57.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="443" CreationDate="2010-11-23T17:14:32.110" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at Stephen Brust's &lt;em&gt;Taltos&lt;/em&gt; series. All fantasy, written in a modern voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think as long as you're not using obvious modern idioms, it's fine to write in a modern voice. If you want to put in the time and effort to use a vernacular, that's fine, but it's more often done poorly than well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about it this way: when you're trying to write idiomatically in a dialect from another period, you're trying to make your reader read it from the perspective of a modern reader. It's not how the people of the &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; hear the language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T17:14:32.110" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="433" CreationDate="2010-11-23T18:26:28.843" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For each story I have a spreadsheet set up that not only has the usual information about a story (Word count, summery and the like) but also information about all my submissions, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What magazine it was sent to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The editor at the time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When it was sent out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When it came back&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the results were&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any notes about the submission&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not fancy, but it does the job pretty well and it's easy to set up/move around. I make a point of keeping the editors name because it can change how I submit a story. If an editor rejects a story saying that they liked it, but it's not right for that magazine and then they move to a magazine that's a better fit, it's worth sending it in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T18:26:28.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="221" CreationDate="2010-11-23T18:59:32.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That will not be &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; advice for every writer, but if you have limited time, you could spend it for polishing your work. Every single literary fiction act is polished to crystal clearness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T18:59:32.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-11-23T20:51:23.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've started my own tool since I didn't like yWriter and Storybook. You can get it here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/epen/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ePen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main idea behind ePen is to be as unobtrusive as a pen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no &quot;Save&quot; button or menu - what you type is saved automatically.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It has some features of a Wiki but 95% the links are created automatically. No need for WikiWords or odd brackets or stuff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastEditorUserId="121" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T07:57:45.760" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T07:57:45.760" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:56:56.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="427" CreationDate="2010-11-23T21:26:45.007" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you look to Tolkien, you see no time. Everything is long ago, far away, in the past, whatever. I am a dork of the numeric kind, so I'm forever trying to squash my tendency to use &quot;real&quot; numbers, because I think it's mostly unnecessary, limiting, and a little jarring...When you speak, you never use exact time. The closest you're going to get is &quot;a few days/months/years ago&quot; and after that it's just &quot;a long time ago&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I never use exact time, for that reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt; if you &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt; read Tolkien, all the way down to the indexes, you'll find that he has detailed...&lt;em&gt;to the year&lt;/em&gt;...chronologies. Very specific. And I think this is a good thing. Peg your world on a detailed chronology, so you know who could have known who, when, and don't get messed up. Very easy to get confused if you hold your timeline in your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T21:26:45.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="439" CreationDate="2010-11-23T21:31:42.160" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/439/when-modifiers-should-be-avoided/440#440&quot;&gt;StrixVaria&lt;/a&gt; is right: too many adjectives are a sign that you are probably lazy&amp;nbsp;– and less &lt;em&gt;precise&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard example why killing adjectives/adverbs is worth considering:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;The man moved slowly.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What image popped up in your head, when you read this sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we try again:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;The man sneaked.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;The man strolled.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;The man limped.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What images popped up now? Was one of them identical to the first one? All of these three sentences can be described lazily as &quot;moved slowly&quot;. But the sentences have all different meanings. They are much more &lt;em&gt;precise&lt;/em&gt; than the first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of killing adjective-noun or adverb-verb combinations is finding an expression which produces a better image in the reader's head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T22:09:24.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="423" CreationDate="2010-11-23T21:33:14.950" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once sat in on a class on Tolkien, where the professor extrapolated everything into an extended metaphor on World War 2. Now, I'm pretty much equally geeky on Tolkien and World War 2, and I had a number of objections to this. Sure you can draw parallels, but he wrote the books during WWII, of course it affected the writing. That doesn't mean that he drew from one to create the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I eventually realized was that, as an artist, you have no control of what the reader/viewer/whatever will draw from your work. When they work it into their worldview, anything can come out. And will. They'll draw inferences that you never intended, they'll see similarities that you didn't create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing that you can do is keep your mouth shut, and smile a little smile. If you produced a truly enduring work, people will still be agruing over what you &lt;em&gt;meant&lt;/em&gt; long after you're dead, and if you let on that &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; you were thinking about the hot barrista at your favorite coffee shop...That'll ruin the whole thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastEditorUserId="7" LastEditDate="2010-11-23T22:40:46.977" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T22:40:46.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="345" CreationDate="2010-11-23T21:40:03.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep a diary. Try to make it more fun. I, for example, use &lt;a href=&quot;http://ohlife.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OhLife.com&lt;/a&gt; for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T21:40:03.383" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-23T21:40:03.383" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="459" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="467" CreationDate="2010-11-23T22:46:50.707" Score="23" ViewCount="11539" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some stories tell well from beginning to end, all in a neat little line...and some don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When can a story be improved by using a different order in the telling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head, I'd say flashbacks are great when something doesn't make sense out of the context of what is happening &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; in the story, or when something that happened long ago (before the story's timeline begins) is important to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in a project I'm working on, the story begins at a point where it is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; hard to introduce the characters well, so I started at a point after that, then transitioned to a flashback on how they got to that point.  It &lt;em&gt;seems&lt;/em&gt; to be working out well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-11-24T03:56:28.310" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T16:23:40.647" Title="When should one *not* present events in chronological order?" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="459" CreationDate="2010-11-23T23:12:18.503" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you found one of the big uses: Character introductions. There are many books that have a segment along the lines of &quot;As they were riding the train to Lyon, he couldn't help but to look at her and her perfect auburn hair. It was this hair that immediately caught his eye when he first saw her 6 years ago. It was the graduation party at her brothers house...&quot; and from there you're in the middle of a flashback that serves as introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crime Novels can benefit from this as well. You start with the Police investigating the crime, and then you intermix the story of the Murderer, how he meets his victim, how she disappointed him, how he plots the murder and how it is executed - constantly switching between present (Police) and past (Murder) until the point you merge them (After the murder, the Murderer goes hiding and from here we don't hear his story until the police (who found enough clues in the meantime) find him shortly after).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if the type out-of-sync telling that is sometimes used in movies for great effect (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irr%C3%A9versible&quot;&gt;Irréversible&lt;/a&gt; is told backwards and the ending has a weird impact when watching it after the rest of the later events) works in books as well, but I think that occasional out of sync telling is extremely commonplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know a book that's completely avoiding a traditional timeline storytelling though. The Wikipedia Article about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_%28arts%29&quot;&gt;Nonlinear narrative&lt;/a&gt; contains some examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T23:12:18.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="459" CreationDate="2010-11-23T23:59:46.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Call me boring, but, at least for now, I only disobey the chronological order for historical-based interludes. In my current novel, which spans for thousands of years, I need to sometimes describe events that happened a long time in the past, so that I present them as sources or motives for events in the present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character introductions is another area when you can benefit from this, but you shouldn't abuse it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that it is very difficult to write a novel which makes often use of multiple time layers. That is because usually, the brain perceives time linearly. It's a technique which is hard to master. But if you only use it sparingly, you should definitely take advantage of your inner time machine ::- D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="112" LastActivityDate="2010-11-23T23:59:46.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="464" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-24T03:38:10.333" Score="9" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need a checker and some kind of beta-test editor and critic. Is there a resource out in the web, where I can find myself one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2010-11-26T01:29:36.277" Title="Is there a resource where I could find myself a checker and critic, or check somebodies else text to exercise?" Tags="|editing|resources|criticism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="472" CreationDate="2010-11-24T03:44:22.297" Score="11" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a usual or favorite place to write at home, what makes it so good?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like having multiple places to write -- sometimes I find a change of scenery helps break a block -- but my most-used space is my desk at home.  Big, clicky ergonomic keyboard, a good spot for my tea, and the office adjoins my little one's playroom so I don't feel like I have to abandon him to write. :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also plenty of room on the desk for my typewriter when the mood to go analog strikes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T20:40:00.973" Title="What makes a great writer's space?" Tags="|habits|tools|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="459" CreationDate="2010-11-24T03:56:08.420" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the most important thing that your readers need to know right way? What's the scene that will drag them into your story? The answers to those questions will tell you what should come first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's certainly possible to write a convoluted, insanely complex story, jumping back and forth in time. Kurt Vonnegut &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/538&quot;&gt;wrote&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;Start as close to the end as possible&quot;, and he was amazingly skilled at writing such a book. Neil Gaiman writes stories nested within other stories, and then you find out you've been in another story all along. There's an entire &lt;em&gt;genre&lt;/em&gt; of fiction based on the non-linear narrative, and its called detective fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you making it easy for your reader to follow along? If so, there's no reason not to make your story more interesting by using non-linear narrative tools. If you're using them just to add spice to your story, then its going to be obvious that you're trying to pull one over on the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up, it all depends on the story you're telling. What is the absolute core of the story? Use whatever techniques will drive the story forward, including this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T03:56:08.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="466" CreationDate="2010-11-24T04:14:04.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like my computer, a notepad, a pencil and something to fiddle with (usually my magnetic ball, a compass (which is now facing west because the magnet stuffed it up) or a toy car :D )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically paper for ideas, computer for writing, and something to do while im thinking (that isn't too distractive)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T04:14:04.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="464" CreationDate="2010-11-24T04:20:10.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try checking out&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.critiquecircle.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if it is good, sorry havn't used it (I'm waiting for the confirmation email now)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T04:20:10.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="466" CreationDate="2010-11-24T04:41:13.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to keep away from my usual computer, as well as away from the games or other such distractions. Usually I also have a cup of coffee to drink and either music or a DVD to fill in as white noise. The upshot is that the whole mess is portable if I need to move. Lack of distractions is also key for me, or at least distractions I can filter out, so if my roommate is at home, headphones are a must. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big thing though is that it's not the same computer as I use for everything else. Just the fact that I'm able to move away from my usual day to day computer usage helps me to focus on the task at hand instead of, not to put to fine a point on it, goofing off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T04:41:13.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2010-11-24T05:55:55.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an author you have to be able to tell when your work sucks. It's a crucial skill that also leads to knowing when your work is actually good. Everybody writes crap at some point, usually on the first draft, so you have to know in advance when it needs revision and when it is ready for peer review.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you want your confidence back&lt;/strong&gt;, look back over the negative criticism with an objective mind and determine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was the criticism valid?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I improve in the validly criticized areas?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you answer yes to #2 then just move on and keep practicing to get better. People who criticize story ideas have no valid place in a peer review group, so the valid criticism was targeted at your technical abilities, not your creativity. When you go to write, don't worry about the technical side. Just let the thoughts flow. Worry about the technical criticisms during the revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T05:55:55.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="466" CreationDate="2010-11-24T06:31:42.683" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, even without studying some dubious horoscopic sciences as feng shui, everybody at least feels that having your own work place for each kind of work you're doing is a significant efficiency boost. I think undisturbable place to write is not an option — it is a precondition. Once you have it, you can begin to write and at least be sure that you'll &lt;em&gt;finish&lt;/em&gt; your work. But there are also some modifications that could help even more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Dual monitors.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most powerful boost for everybody who's writing or drawing something with help of the computer. I contrive a new usage for them every week or two for all fringes of my doings. Here are some examples that I just invented or used before: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drawing a fantasy map based on text or back to front;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Looking to wikipedia while writing about tough subjects (i.e medical drugs);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Modifying text from one screen on another;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Cup of a drink.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've already knew it before :) But I'll add my pair of cents. I think people underestimate smells. There are not so many people working in a smell or taste art, but this &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; art. And changing taste of a drink lying in front of you will often reflect good on your creativity. So go and buy that new sort of black, green, red, white, {put your colour here} tea or learn how to make a mocha at last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Use the notebooks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, what a disappointment that ideas only come to you when you've already gone to bed, and not in your writers space. Not anymore! Check &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/405/how-do-you-track-random-thoughts-and-ideas&quot;&gt;this great question&lt;/a&gt; for details. And using of software notebooks is another option for the first point of this list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Adorn your space.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world is built the way that new ideas are coming from some set of previous. The more your place is yourselfish, the better. Some people are wild about junk collections and some can spend hours on looking into details of some large painting. Just don't let your place look vacuous for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P.S.&lt;/strong&gt; As I remember, Stephen King wrote some good advices about writers space building in his book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0743455967&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;On Writing&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T06:31:42.683" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="473" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="479" CreationDate="2010-11-24T06:40:01.303" Score="17" ViewCount="4296" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, I know - it is important. But my question is: does it influence the speed only? Do &quot;two finger typing&quot; and &quot;peek typing&quot; eat part of writer's attention and destroy creativity?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the method of typing affect somehow the overall quality of text, regardless of the time spent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about the type of keyboard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can typing on touchscreen devices become a preferable kind of text input? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="361" LastEditDate="2011-03-06T21:30:24.693" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T21:39:17.447" Title="Is touch typing skill important for being a good writer?" Tags="|technique|typing|" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="473" CreationDate="2010-11-24T06:53:41.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is influencing the speed only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know the case where the speed of doing something delicate were reflecting well on the quality of work? Touch typing will make you a faster writer, not a good one. Neither it will make you a bad one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know people who think of touch-typing as a useless skill. &quot;I'm thinking slower&quot;, — they say. But the key moment is that you should think and write &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Touch typing really helps, because I have to rewrite my text 4-5 times before the final version. On the second time I already know what this text is about, so I only do some clarifying editing. In this case I think exactly faster than I type. And the quality of final text is based on your editing work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/687/keyboard-for-programmers&quot;&gt;this epic thread&lt;/a&gt; about keyboards for choosing one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/10/the-keyboard-cult.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; for touch-screen to keyboard comparing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:40:35.973" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T06:53:41.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="473" CreationDate="2010-11-24T07:10:16.030" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Touch typing is a good skill to have, but it's not essential for being a good writer. If you're writing a novel on the computer, chances are that after a small while, with all the practice you're getting, your typing speed will improve. It may not become lightning fast touch typing, but it won't need to be to keep up with your train of thought. Most people think in sentences anyway, and you have more than enough time to type the first sentence out before your mind can form the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, while it's good to have, its not &lt;em&gt;essential&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T07:10:16.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="476" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="493" CreationDate="2010-11-24T07:30:29.363" Score="13" ViewCount="2090" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this name generator:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fakenamegenerator.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.fakenamegenerator.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I'm wondering if maybe there are others? Has anybody found this kind of tool useful? What about tools for fantasy names? Should I think up names in a creative way, as answers for &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/138/how-to-name-the-characters-of-your-story&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; are mentioning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T07:15:42.153" Title="Tools for generating characters' names" Tags="|tools|software|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:57:03.613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="459" CreationDate="2010-11-24T07:39:25.403" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously if you need to withhold something from the readers, such as the background of a character or past events that have relevance for the plot, you will need to use a flashback. Flashbacks about a character that is not the main focus of the novel can help to reveal motives and help enhance the plot. This is because the reader than can better understand their actions and what drives them, without having a first-person view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T07:39:25.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="476" CreationDate="2010-11-24T08:23:17.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick google search would probably find you a few. &lt;br&gt;&lt;Br&gt;&#xA;For fantasy town names, you could use: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beavervalleysoftware.com/rpg/randomtowns.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RPG Tools: Random Towns&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt; Or there's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordlab.com/name-generators/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; one or &lt;a href=&quot;http://baby.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Baby_Name_Generator_with_Parents_Names&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one as well.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T08:23:17.670" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:57:03.613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="473" CreationDate="2010-11-24T09:04:53.937" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, for a very simple reason: If you can type blind, that means you have moved all the necessary control to move words from your brain into the computer into your backbone -- where it doesn't need conscious control anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means your conscious is free to concentrate on your work instead of &quot;Where is the letter &lt;code&gt;w&lt;/code&gt;? Press &lt;code&gt;w&lt;/code&gt; Where is ... &lt;code&gt;o&lt;/code&gt; ... &lt;code&gt;r&lt;/code&gt; ... &lt;code&gt;d&lt;/code&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: You still lose 10-30% of your brain power if you have to operate a keyboard, even if you can type blind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simple experiment: Call a friend over and have him type. Watch how fast your ideas flow and how fast he can type. Switch. Repeat several time. You should notice how your brain suddenly slows down when you have the keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T09:04:53.937" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="459" CreationDate="2010-11-24T09:09:43.357" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just be aware, why flashbacks are considered bad: Many people cannot follow them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take as example the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/&quot;&gt;Pulp Fiction&lt;/a&gt;. There is a character which is shot during the movie (I do not want to spoil). Later in the movie you see him alive again for an (for me) obvious reason: the movie is now showing a scene which took place later (like a flashback).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that Tarantino made that crystal clear. This scene is introduced like a new chapter. Nevertheless there a lot of people who did not get, why this character is now alive again. They could not follow that jump into the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even if you think the readers should be able to follow your flashback, some won't. That does not mean you shouldn't do it. It means, you should be aware, that these readers will close your book and say &quot;Man, what a stupid plot. That sucks!&quot;. You cannot satisfy them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also can reduce your chances getting your book published the traditional way (publisher know, that some people do not like flashbacks, i.e. less money for the publisher). It makes things for you a little bit harder, but if you think it's worth it, go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T09:09:43.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="466" CreationDate="2010-11-24T09:11:40.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No interruptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No phone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Door can be locked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sign on door: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disturb at your own peril&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T09:11:40.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="464" CreationDate="2010-11-24T09:18:14.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been a member of &lt;a href=&quot;http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror&lt;/a&gt; for a couple of years. I left because I didn't have enough time but the service was very good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/howitworks.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How it works&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T09:18:14.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="297" CreationDate="2010-11-24T09:20:34.230" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually translate my work for these reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It gives me a good reason to read it again (and you always find something if you read your own work).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I translate, I often find better ways to express myself in the original language.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T09:20:34.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="93" CreationDate="2010-11-24T10:47:46.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Videogame audience attracting effectiveness may be based on many things that are game-development issues. But there is one question that should be mulled over by all media industry manufacturers. I'll sound it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does your product attracts customers by its &quot;mechanical&quot; part or by its &quot;art&quot; part?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'll explain: that mechanical part of mine can be illustrated by movie industry. There are kaboom movies, with bangs and booms on the whole screen and detailed explosions sended to your three-dimensioned eye. That's your &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Avatar&lt;/a&gt;. Let's be serious, this movie is supposed to produce emotions through great visuals, and not by a plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But without a plot, it's just a series of explosions, maybe even more boring than a documentary about maize cultivating. So, the plot is needed, but not so much, and it can just be adapted from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114148/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another media-product&lt;/a&gt;. The plot is just a glue here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But remember &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120338/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another movie&lt;/a&gt; from the same director. It contained much &quot;explosion&quot; part, but that part was not the leader. It just supported the big love story. The &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I can call both movies work of art. That's not I can say about myriads of less-talented genre films.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The game will retain the same rule. If you're doing something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Crysis&lt;/a&gt;, you'd better forget about plot. But if you're doing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hill_2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Silent Hill 2&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_%28video_game%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy)&lt;/a&gt; you'd better sharpen your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T10:47:46.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="93" CreationDate="2010-11-24T11:43:18.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer: give the user a chance to affect the outcome of the story (or at least give them the impression that they have this power).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends a lot of the game genre. I wrote my master's thesis on immersion in computer games, and gave an analysis of Knights of the Old Republic (an excellent game with a great story by the way). Therein I found some evidence that giving people the option to choose within constraints, will give the player a deeper involvement in the story, but at the same time let you craft a story that is somewhat coherent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was a RPG, which is probably the most suited genre for conveying rich stories that involves the user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Games like Starcraft (both I and II), also have a great story, but I don't feel involved in the story while actually playing. I never get the feeling that I &lt;em&gt;am&lt;/em&gt; Raynor&quot; running around in the battlefield. The game keeps me immersed because of damn good gameplay, and the cutscenes keeps me in because of a great story and good animations, but I never feel that my actions brings the story forward, other than that they &quot;unlock&quot; the next scene.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T11:43:18.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="54" CreationDate="2010-11-24T12:25:40.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another point you might want to consider is the voice of your narrator. Even if you are writing from third-person point-of-view, that narrator has a certain voice and a personality that your readers will pick up. Ask yourself if it would be suitable for the narrator, in that particular situation, to 'tell'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T12:25:40.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="491" CreationDate="2010-11-24T12:30:48.483" Score="29" ViewCount="3725" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been a developer for some years now, but I've realized that I need a job where I can be more creative (and hopefully work more with people (except dba's)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I love writing, but at the same time have both an education and experience in the software industry, I was wondering if there is a way to combine these two, and actually make a living out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of, or can think of a position or role within the realm of software development that would involve creative writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And before anyone says &quot;technical writer&quot;, I would like to repeat the word &lt;em&gt;creative&lt;/em&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastEditorUserId="97" LastEditDate="2010-11-24T17:33:09.300" LastActivityDate="2020-07-25T19:03:17.830" Title="Are there jobs that involve creative writing in the software industry?" Tags="|software|career|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="488" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="490" CreationDate="2010-11-24T12:50:28.007" Score="10" ViewCount="949" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I read someone else's scene that describes a situation in my own work if adapted to fit my characters and plot, would it constitute plagiarism if I so use it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="134" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T15:09:22.000" Title="Would it be plagiarism if you use a changed scene?" Tags="|plagiarism|scene|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="492" CreationDate="2010-11-24T12:57:28.220" Score="27" ViewCount="15134" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually get quite a lot of ideas for stories, but every time I want to develop them into a full fledged story, I get paranoid about how it might not be an original idea, and how it might be dismissed by people as a copy and not worth spending time on. Same thing happens with character names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One solution to this would be to Google search the idea/terms, but then the further paranoia stems from this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you guys feel like this when writing, or is it just me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T18:28:29.580" LastActivityDate="2021-11-16T02:02:23.007" Title="Any Technique to See if Your Idea is Original?" Tags="|plot|naming|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="488" CreationDate="2010-11-24T12:57:49.190" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/plagiarism&quot;&gt;Plagiarism&lt;/a&gt;: The act of&#xA;  plagiarizing: the copying of another&#xA;  person's ideas, text or other creative&#xA;  work, and presenting it as one's own,&#xA;  especially without permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically, stealing an idea is plagiarism just as much as stealing their words.  However, as another old adage goes, &quot;There's nothing new under the sun.&quot;  Everything you ever write is going to be influenced by other things you've read in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure that the story you're telling is your own, and not somebody else's.  Let yourself be inspired by other writers and what they do, but don't go stealing their work wholesale and trying to claim that it's yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T12:57:49.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="487" CreationDate="2010-11-24T12:59:10.577" Score="24" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Games Industry&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly the most creative industry that you can write for. This is displayed through the excellent storyline in the Assassin's Creed series. It consists of a dual storyline that spans throughout the history of mankind (Due to their excellent implementation of the sci-fi mechanism combined with historical emphasis on events.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read through the storyline/canon of Assassin's Creed (... Or play through the game) yourself, you'll find that the series is really different from other games. Not only does it have excellent graphics, character modelling, and a game engine that allows all the visuals of the buildings to happen, it has decent voice acting, it has an &lt;em&gt;awesome&lt;/em&gt; and believable storyline. I believe that every game should be like this. Unfortunately, some people would disagree with me on this, as well as the majority of gamers who prefer action or first-person-shooter games. :|&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the Games Industry is the most creative, because it combines many different kinds of creative processes and meshes it together - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing (Storyline, script, ...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3D Modeller for characters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creative Directing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Graphic Design (For the 2D sprites/physical objects within the game.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Voice Actors for the characters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Architecture, for big budget games like Assassin's Creed that attempt to show a world that is historically accurate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastEditorUserId="88" LastEditDate="2010-11-24T13:18:46.230" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T13:18:46.230" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="489" CreationDate="2010-11-24T13:15:01.430" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's original to you, it's original enough.  Even if someone else coincidentally made something similar, you will still have your own twist on it enough that it will be yours entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is different from inventions, where the first person to conceive it is the person who gets credit for it.  In writing, so long as you're not out-and-out copying from someone else, you're good to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop worrying so much and just write.  Everything anyone could ever write is a copy of something, somewhere, that's already written.  Just enjoy yourself and write for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T13:15:01.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="476" CreationDate="2010-11-24T13:22:31.657" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index-name.php&quot;&gt;Seventh Sanctum&lt;/a&gt; is an excellent one. &lt;a href=&quot;http://nine.frenchboys.net/&quot;&gt;Serendipity&lt;/a&gt; also does good names for fantasy stories. Wizards of the Coast also has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20010208b&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt; on their own site as well. (Could be an invaluable resource for people who play Dungeons &amp;amp; Dragons and other roleplaying board games that require names. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/&quot;&gt;RinkWorks&lt;/a&gt; also has some interesting name generations. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thewingless.com/forge/&quot;&gt;TheForge&lt;/a&gt; has one as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T13:22:31.657" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:57:03.613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="270" CreationDate="2010-11-24T13:29:14.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dictionary on Mac. Has a dictionary, thesaurus, and built-in formatted Wikipedia browser. I can switch between the definition of a word, the thesaurus, and the wikipedia entry for the word within immediately using keyboard-shortcuts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T13:29:14.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="495" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="498" CreationDate="2010-11-24T13:32:55.910" Score="15" ViewCount="716" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the time when I get ideas for a story, I first get really excited about it, start writing it immediately and get roughly 1-2K words. Afterwards, it starts to fizzle, the idea, inspiration, and motivation for it dies down. I keep adding it to my todo list, but in the end I procrastinate it and the story is dead and long forgotten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has happened to countless stories throughout the years. How do you keep motivated when writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T18:07:16.740" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T18:07:16.740" Title="How do you deal with procrastination when writing?" Tags="|psychology-of-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="466" CreationDate="2010-11-24T13:37:53.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer to write in a notebook first and then type everything up (doing minor edits during typing).  I also prefer to be comfortable when writing and am not the type of person to fall asleep just because I'm reclining on a couch.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favorite place to write is &lt;strong&gt;my favorite comfortable couch&lt;/strong&gt;, either in the notebook or while typing on a laptop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some day I'd like to have a place with a big comfortable chair and an inspiration board of the type designers use to tack pictures on to, but that will have to wait until I have more living space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T13:37:53.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="488" CreationDate="2010-11-24T13:40:56.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;During college, with my professor's permission, I re-adapted a short story that I'd read to be from the point of view of another character, changing elements of the story.  It was a great exercise for my writing skills and proved to be one of the best things I've ever written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without substantially changing the story so that the original author couldn't recognize it, I wouldn't submit the story to a magazine or journal.  While I'd added characters and modified many pieces, the original story was still recognizable.  It was a good exercise, but too close for comfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel the original author of your scene would not recognize it, you have probably &quot;owned&quot; the idea enough to make it your own idea.  If, however, you have not been able to change it substantially, I would shy away from using it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T13:40:56.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="495" CreationDate="2010-11-24T13:46:42.427" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://2nfactory.blogspot.com/2008/10/7-creative-principles-of-pixar-by-john.html&quot;&gt;7 creative principles of Pixar&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Never come up with just one idea.&lt;/strong&gt; Regardless of whether you want to write a book, design a piece of furniture or make an animated movie: At the beginning, don't start with just one idea - it should be three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is simple. If a producer comes to me with a proposal for a new project, then usually he has mulled over this particular idea for a very long time. That limits him. My answer always reads: 'Come again when you have three ideas, and I don't mean one good and two bad. I want three really good ideas, of which you cannot decide the best. You must be able to defend all three before me. Then we'll decide which one you'll realise.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with creative people is that they often focus their whole attention on one idea. So, right at the beginning of a project, you unnecessarily limit your options. Every creative person should try that out. You will be surprised how this requirement suddenly forces you to think about things you hadn't even considered before. Through this detachment, you suddenly gain new perspectives. And believe me, there are always three good ideas. At least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Remember the first laugh.&lt;/strong&gt; A big problem in the creative process is related to the enhancement of your ideas,&quot; cautions Mr Lasseter. &quot;Revising, retouching, refining is very important, but it carries a danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If you have a story, a joke, a thought, which you write down, it loses its effect over time. It wears itself out. When you hear a joke for the second time you still laugh heartily, on the third or fourth occasion already less so, and when you hear it the hundredth time, you hate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say to my authors: 'Take notice of the first laugh, write it down if necessary.' This may at times be bothersome, but it is important. Many times, good things got lost because people could not remember anymore how it felt when they heard the idea for the first time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T13:46:42.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="499" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="500" CreationDate="2010-11-24T14:09:18.483" Score="5" ViewCount="2025" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know there are some great books told by animals: i.e &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Beauty&quot;&gt;Black Beauty&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Fang&quot;&gt;White Fang&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to write a good story told by a traffic lights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I need a good example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there another books told by animals? Or maybe even from some lifeless object point of view (that would be most interesting)?  What makes these books successful?  What common traits could I use to create my own successful story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2010-11-24T14:36:01.547" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T08:23:12.007" Title="What books should I read before writing a non-humanoid point of view story?" Tags="|viewpoint|book|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-12-16T19:29:26.850" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:57:11.337" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="499" CreationDate="2010-11-24T15:03:26.833" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The tricky act to walk with telling stories from a non-humanoid perspective is that of combining the traits your readers &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; from that animal or object with the traits readers &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; from a narrator.  With animals this means getting inside the {dolphin|wolf|horse|whale}'s head.  It means knowing that a horse lives life poised between flight and fight.  It means knowing that dogs and wolves sleep much less deeply than humans.  It means using all the animal science available.  It also works best with more intelligent animals.  Examples would include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0452284244&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Animal Farm&lt;/a&gt; - in which the animal's un-human traits serve to illuminate the author's view of communism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0061537969&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Art of Racing in the Rain&lt;/a&gt; - in which a man has unbelievably (perhaps literally) bad luck, but his narrator dog still wants to be a man&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1406574031&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Servant, a Dog&lt;/a&gt; - in which a friendly dog is the narrator and the author attempts to actually mirror the dog's thought processes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0441005489&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Redwall Series&lt;/a&gt; - in which animals basically are the humans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20091108075451/http://www.helenjbeal.com/?p=569&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A list with more&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helenjbeal.com/index.php/animal-narrators/10-books-for-grown-ups-with-animal-narrators/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;And another&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With inanimate objects you have a bit more freedom, because you are creating a personality and intelligence level for something people have fewer preconceptions of in terms of personality.  At the same time, there is a reason many books with inanimate narrators are written for children - it's hard to make this completely believable.  Sometimes a third person omniscient narrator might step into an object (for example, something watching a changing world throughout centuries), but other than that you don't get a whole lot of examples for adults.  When they are used in literary fiction for adults the purpose is often mostly to make a point about the human characters or the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0399236252&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I, Doko: The Tale of a Basket&lt;/a&gt; - a children's book in which the basket serves to show family life around it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1120160340&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Autobiography of a Lump of Coal&lt;/a&gt; - in which the lump of coal is used to show the capacity for human empathy and a panthestic view of the divinity of all nature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/221967&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Story of my life / by a Submarine Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; - a thinly veiled homage to the author, the inventor of the submarine telegraph, which teaches about how it works&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1582340722&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scepticism, Inc&lt;/a&gt; - contains some narration by a shopping cart who is looking for God designed to make people think about their religion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B000H2NB1Q&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Collector Collector&lt;/a&gt; - a 6,500 year old Mesopotamian bowl serves as the narrator, which allows all sorts of intimate details about the characters to unfold, since nobody minds what they do in front of a bowl&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2014-12-16T08:23:12.007" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T08:23:12.007" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-27T07:57:11.337" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="487" CreationDate="2010-11-24T15:35:09.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Outside of games, I'm not sure there are many places you can write in software other than technical. As an industry it always seems rather limited (I've been a part of it myself for many years). It seems like most of the time, where there is an overlap, people do their creative writing outside of the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I can think of a couple of places where you might be able to write at, but it depends on the size of your company. That would be user profiles and usage cases. Big companies usually have a number of idolized user profiles for how their product works. One of the best well know is Wizards of the Coast with Timmy, Johnny and Spike. Microsoft does this as well, but they don't usually leave their groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There needs to be someone to write up these characters and how they use the product. If your company is one that does this sort of thing you might be able to volunteer to write them up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2011-01-31T18:24:59.673" LastActivityDate="2011-01-31T18:24:59.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="487" CreationDate="2010-11-24T16:01:57.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is definitely a growing market for software based books. Take Alice in Wonderland on the iPad for instance. Granted that's a rendition of an existing book, but these kinds of stories will be coming forth more in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if all you want is a chance to use your creative mind, look at startups. Even if it's standard business software, designing a large application from scratch requires a good sense of creativity as well as engineering in order to built the best architecture for your problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That side of the question may belong in programmers.stackexchange.com though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T16:01:57.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="489" CreationDate="2010-11-24T16:06:06.740" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter what idea you have, The Simpsons have already done it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So take your idea and put your own voice behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about Hollywood and especially it's summer blockbusters. They are all a rehash of the same basic premise, but with a different directorial eye. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T16:06:06.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="487" CreationDate="2010-11-24T16:38:40.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the company I work for has a writer on staff to do revisions to site content, create whitepapers, write press releases, etc.  If by 'creative' you mean fiction, then the answers dealing with Games are correct.  If by 'creative' you mean original, then you can certainly put those skills to use building marketing material or blog entries relating to technical subjects.  Test cases and use cases for new products are story telling as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T16:38:40.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="473" CreationDate="2010-11-24T16:48:31.653" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure Shakespeare was terrible at typing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that was helpful, because it took me ten minutes to write this response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T16:48:31.653" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="473" CreationDate="2010-11-24T16:55:09.340" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had people suggest you write long-hand first drafts because it makes you slow down and think about your writing.  I don't know if that's a plus.  I like writing long-hand because I don't always have a computer and/or it's faster to just pick up a pen and get to work.  I don't like then having to type legal-pads-worth of writing into the computer.  But I do touch-type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to learn, perhaps using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard&quot;&gt;non-QWERTY&lt;/a&gt; setting on your computer keyboard might increase your speed.  There are various keyboards.  I did a quick search and there are even some keyboards &lt;a href=&quot;http://hothardware.com/News/A-NonQWERTY-Keyboard-For-HuntandPeckers/&quot;&gt;for hunt-and-peck&lt;/a&gt; people.  Realize that the QWERTY keyboard wasn't designed ultimately for speed (most of us are right-handed but the major keys are in the left hand), but since most people learn to type that way, it's tough to switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I couldn't imagine having to hunt-and-peck to actually capture a story I'm working on.  I get frustrated enough with the mistakes I make as I touch-type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as touchscreen technology, again if it's set up like QWERTY, I can't imagine it's going to make that much difference for speed, accuracy, or ultimate &quot;text quality&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T16:55:09.340" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="507" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="508" CreationDate="2010-11-24T17:39:30.023" Score="13" ViewCount="448" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen it mentioned in software development the concept of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000576.html&quot;&gt;Fail Early, Fail Often&lt;/a&gt;.  Using failure as a learning process is important to get better at any craft.  In my writing, I have a habit of beating on story for a while, hoping to get them to the point their presentable.  I wonder if I spend to much time working on stories I don't think are working when I could start something fresh.  When is it a good time to start over with a new idea, or at least do major rewrite on an existing project?  Is it better to stick with the current story and completely exhaust my patience and ideas for it before moving on to something new?  Is sticking with an existing project and doing a major rewrite better then starting something new?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I have finally put something aside since because it seems to be going towards a dead end, I never go back to it.  Do some people later revisit their abandoned projects and bring them to completion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2010-11-24T17:50:10.627" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T18:03:35.517" Title="When is it a good time to move on to another project?" Tags="|technique|discipline|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="507" CreationDate="2010-11-24T17:48:43.353" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you write a book (or whatever) you &lt;strong&gt;have to&lt;/strong&gt; rewrite it several times. Your first draft is shit! Period! There are some jewels buried in this shit and you need a shovel to dig through to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a good idea, to wait some time after you &quot;finished&quot; a project before revisiting it again. Then you have a clear mind and some distance. You need that to rewrite/edit/tear apart what you have written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you should finish a project. If you haven't finished one, you cannot tell when to stop a project and when to go through to the end against all inner forces (laziness mostly) which want to keep you away from what you really want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T17:48:43.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="507" CreationDate="2010-11-24T18:03:35.517" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of those things where there are no easy answers but there's always advice you can use as a guideline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, if a story isn't working, or I'm finding myself dreading working on it every time I sit down, I'll but it aside for a bit. That can be as short as a week or so (sometimes writing something else can help clear the cobwebs) but sometimes it can be longer. Usually though if a story isn't working I'll at least step back and look at it, try to understand why I'm feeling frustrated by working on it. Though that has lead to large rewrites in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I've found that putting a finished story aside for a time helps with the editing processes, letting you look at it with fresh eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend never fully giving up on a story, even if you put it aside because you just couldn't finish it. After three or four years of doing other writing you might be able to look back on an idea and see what needs to be done to fix it. I once had a story take seven years and three false starts before I found the right way to tell it, so don't give up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the rules of being an author, never thrown anything out, just file it away for later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T18:03:35.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2010-11-24T18:46:07.167" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read it backwards. That's what many newspaper editors do. You overlook mistakes, because your brain knows what there should stand and put it together correctly. You have to fool your brain. If you read backwards, the words do not make sense and you read more accurately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T18:46:07.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="511" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1145" CreationDate="2010-11-24T20:47:46.433" Score="13" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are specific requirements, a writer should follow, when writing something that is going to be (or just can possibly be) not only read but listened as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T19:57:38.520" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T04:37:22.303" Title="Writing for an Audio book. What are specifics?" Tags="|style|technique|audiobook|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="511" CreationDate="2010-11-24T20:51:32.707" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well you will probably want to avoid very long place or character names. A lot of the names used for fantasy novels don't really lend themselves to spoken expression. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-11-24T20:51:32.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="511" CreationDate="2010-11-25T00:53:20.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;An interesting story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard both fiction and non-fiction audiobooks.  The only thing that's really required is interest.  The reader can add a lot, but if there's nothing worth knowing or experiencing then people aren't going to want to listen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T00:53:20.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="167" CreationDate="2010-11-25T01:15:44.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that short chapters keep me moving along, even if I'm only somewhat interested in the story.  Sometimes it's enough to keep me there until something really hooks me.  Probably not useful in all genres or writing styles, but a suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Un Lun Dun&lt;/em&gt; by China Meiville is one example.  Possibly &lt;em&gt;The Elegance of the Hedgehog&lt;/em&gt; by Muriel Barberry, too, but I didn't finish that one and it was a while ago so I don't remember clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T01:15:44.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="130" CreationDate="2010-11-25T01:30:49.833" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be very careful with dialect.  It's difficult to do well (if it's even possible).  It's easy to offend.  And, most importantly in my mind, it's very annoying to read.  Word choice is going to show your character just fine -- if you want ignorant or affected, rich or poor -- as opposed to actual dialect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T01:30:49.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="54" CreationDate="2010-11-25T02:05:23.717" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if a good addendum to the rule would be, &quot;Don't show AND tell.&quot;  There are times when you can tell, as people say, but you most definitely don't want to ruin your showing by telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Kyle's fingers shook over the keyboard.  Sweat stung his eyes but he didn't dare take his hands away long enough to wipe his brow.  He was nervous.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you really need to be told he's nervous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T02:05:23.717" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="40" CreationDate="2010-11-25T02:16:21.030" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that helped me was to look at each chapter and write down the big plot elements that happened in that chapter.  I don't outline before I write so it was kind of after-the-fact to do this, but it helped me so I could just flesh out a little bit when writing my synopsis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T02:16:21.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="518" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="519" CreationDate="2010-11-25T06:38:13.840" Score="5" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you think a writing can always benefit from the use of a visual illustration? If so, how to find for free or buy an appropriate picture, photo, drawing etc.? What are practical recommendations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T07:06:16.483" Title="Where and how to look for a picture for illustration?" Tags="|technique|artwork|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="518" CreationDate="2010-11-25T06:54:43.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how you want to use it. If you're just looking for inspiration, Deviant Art is a good place to start, or someplace else if your interests have their own art site. On the other hand, if you're looking for art to put in your story that's going to be different, though believe it or not Deviant Art is a great place for that as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you're just look to put the picture on your website and link back to the artists, they maybe willing to let you use an existing piece for free. On the other hand if your looking to put it in a book things are going to be more complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quick switch of hats, I used to be an editor and publisher of a small press magazine, Deviant Art was the first placed we looked for artists. We almost never used existing art we found on the site (though there was one cover) but we were always willing to commission something from an artist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most quality artists are willing to talk about commissions, but the prices might be more then you expect. Most of our covers cost around $150 each, some more then that, and to be honest we got some fantastic deals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here are some things to keep in mind when you're talking with an artist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will cost more then you think, at least at first. In fact the picture you want might be well out of range so be welling to negotiation or to find a different picture. Oh, and &quot;getting their name out&quot; isn't a good substitute for decent pay. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treat them how you want to be treated. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just like you with your stories, they want to keep the basic rights. When doing the magazine we always got exclusive rights for one year after the (firm) date of publication. After that we had reprint rights for both the original issue and collections.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Offer them a few contribute copies as well as payment, they did contribute after all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have an agent, maybe let them do the legwork on this one, they are less likely to hit a pitfall.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, depending where you get published, you might not have say on the illustration for your story. That is usually the editors job...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T06:54:43.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="518" CreationDate="2010-11-25T07:06:16.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, illustrations can have a good effect on your writings, just don't turn your book into glance journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, your publisher could take illustrating work on himself, but if you want to furnish your book yourself, here are some advices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Find a good image for cover of your book.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the most important illustration of your book, perhaps, because it brings readers attention. Pictures suitability really depends on genre. I prefer unusual beauty drawings with a mystery slice like works of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Salvador Dali&lt;/a&gt;. You can find great book covers &lt;a href=&quot;http://bookcoverarchive.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Inspire some picture artists&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Present your book to some artists around you, and maybe they'll become inspired so much that will draw or make a photos specially for your work. With our digital era it is not that hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Look on image art resources (but not image hostings)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This advice should be combined with second. Yes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flickr&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deviantart.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;deviantART&lt;/a&gt; are here for you. You've found a great picture? Well, just ask an author, and promise to reference him. Most of them will gladly give you rights to use their works free or for a very low fee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Don't use prohibited images even if you liked one very much.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Courts are bad for business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T07:06:16.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="521" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="542" CreationDate="2010-11-25T08:56:53.930" Score="18" ViewCount="996" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm on a bit of a Myers-Briggs spree at the moment (which is dangerous, because it is so easy to read way more into it than you are supposed to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those of you who are not familiar with it, it is a personality test based on theories by Carl Jung, to determine how you are &quot;wired&quot;, and find your preferences within work, relationships etc. A free test for those of you who are curious is found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MBTI Test&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question popped into my mind while listening to an episode of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing Excuses&lt;/a&gt;, where they discussed their different approaches to writing: two of the guys were discovery writers, that just started writing and then let the story go wherever the characters and their minds took them. The third guy was an outliner who had to have the whole story planned up front; all the structure laid out before he filled in the meat on the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This got me thinking about a correlation with the MBTI, where the last of the four letters (J or P) indicate whether you are more of a &quot;happy-go-lucky&quot; person (P) or in need of more plans and structure (J).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a strong P myself, and a discovery writer to boot (not in the start-your-computer sense), I feel there might be a connection here, but have no evidence to support it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know more about this, or may share their personality/writing style combo to give the theory some data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(MBTI may also be a good place to look for inspiration and for finding specific traits when creating characters.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-19T11:38:49.917" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T11:38:49.917" Title="Is discovery or outline writing connected to personality type (e.g. MBTI)?" Tags="|style|myersbriggs|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="521" CreationDate="2010-11-25T09:13:32.120" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tests like that can only be effective up to a certain extent. The problem is, in a room of 10 writers you would probably have 10 different writing styles. Tests like the one you mention cannot hope to be able to categorise people that effectively, so it is very variable. How someone writes could be due to any number of things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T09:13:32.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="524" CreationDate="2010-11-25T10:09:02.473" Score="12" ViewCount="1058" Body="&lt;p&gt;An opinion exists that overusing of the passive voice can make writing harder for reading and understanding. Is it true for all kinds of writing? How to follow this advice without  overemphasizing it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there ever a good time to use passive voice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-30T13:23:18.597" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T13:23:18.597" Title="When should I avoid the passive voice?  When might I use it?" Tags="|style|voice|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="523" CreationDate="2010-11-25T10:31:39.627" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mark the passive use in your text. Read them aloud. Change the sentences to active. Read them aloud. What sounds better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the passive form it is harder to visualize your story to your reader - less &quot;action&quot;. &quot;Philip was killed by Martin.&quot; sounds less dramatic than &quot;Martin killed Philip&quot;. What picture do you want to create in the head of the reader? Answer that question and you can decide for each passive use, if it is appropriate or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With active voice you can drive a story. Passive voice often sounds like you are just a bystander, watching something what you're not involved to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T10:31:39.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="525" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="595" CreationDate="2010-11-25T10:35:41.363" Score="16" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any specific signs (singular or groups of) that I should pay attention to when it comes to agents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read about agents who work for less reputable publishing houses, charging fees for representation and then just passing the submitted manuscript to their vanity publisher backer. What would be typical warning signs I should look out for, to avoid agents like this and other shady agents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, an agent that doesn't ask for money and have multiple publishing authors in her/his stable is probably a good choice, are there other signs of a good agent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastEditorUserId="51" LastEditDate="2010-11-25T17:22:10.910" LastActivityDate="2022-01-11T13:39:00.343" Title="How to figure out if an agent is &quot;on the straight&quot; or &quot;shady&quot;?" Tags="|self-preservation|agent|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="521" CreationDate="2010-11-25T10:37:22.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As any part of cognitive process, writing just can not be based only on the authors personality type. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, even if you know what certain type in some specific test one person is and he wrote a book, you can be sure of that another person of this type &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; write completely another thing, in another genre, style, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The equation of &lt;strong&gt;thinking&lt;/strong&gt; has just so many variables that human mind will never know them all. To begin I can mention experience, ability to dream up, knowledge, feelings at moment of writing, another art components surrounding you at the moment of writing, etc., etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T10:37:22.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="527" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="528" CreationDate="2010-11-25T13:03:31.537" Score="11" ViewCount="4036" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it is appropriate to use the diary form for a novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which are the most effective published examples? (I mean &lt;em&gt;fictional&lt;/em&gt; diaries, so not Anne Frank's diary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="138" LastActivityDate="2021-05-26T18:02:34.743" Title="Fictional diary for a novel" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="527" CreationDate="2010-11-25T13:36:47.847" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistolary_novel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Diary form&lt;/a&gt; is used when a deep immersion of reader is wanted. Yeah, we all want to immerse readers into our universes, but it comes with a price, and not a small one. With diary form you can reveal only one point of view: of character who keeps a diary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I guess, this is the rule: You should use diary as a narrator, when you want to bring more realism, but ready to neglect different viewpoints on your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_Jones%27s_Diary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bridget Jones diary&lt;/a&gt; (it's really ok)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Folk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Poor Folk&lt;/a&gt; (letters used instead of diary, but a very good example)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_Type&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Survivor Type&lt;/a&gt; (a very good example, and a short story though, so read it just now)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T13:36:47.847" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="531" CreationDate="2010-11-25T15:53:24.423" Score="45" ViewCount="17296" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always had a problem with travel in my stories.  Since I'm writing an epic fantasy novel, travel is a big theme as characters often have to move from where they are to where the plot dictates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one of the difficulties I have is that the travel itself is often not important to the plot.  In the novel I'm reading now (Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind), there is a huge amount of travel, and the author adds needless encounters with various magical beasts just to keep tension high.  The story I'm writing is already large enough in scope without needless extra diversions.  I am not a fan of action scenes just for the sake of having something happen; I want everything that happens to advance my main plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the acts of the characters dealing with innkeepers, staying the night, paying for their food, eating, etc., is boring both to write and to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make my current dilemma even more frustrating, the two characters who are traveling together in this specific instance have just met each other and should be forging their relationship during the travel.  So while I don't want to focus too heavily on the travel, I do want to be able to expose their interactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I gloss over the uninteresting parts while still keeping enough to show this character development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2020-01-06T20:17:57.257" Title="How to make travel scenes interesting without adding needless plot diversions?" Tags="|fantasy|character-development|" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="529" CreationDate="2010-11-25T16:32:21.743" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, the inner purpose of the journey is to forge the relationship between the two characters, show the reader how they interact with each other, and also show the reader who each character really is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflicts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There doesn't need to be any major conflict, but even a minor conflict, just to show how each character reacts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pulling this out of my head as an example, not knowing anything about your story or the characters, but what happens if they get to an inn, and it's not there, or it's closed, or all the rooms are taken? How does each respond to this news, how does this change how they treat each other? Do they go with the flow, get aggravated and stressed out, try to offer more money to get a room?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if the wagon breaks down on a path far away from town? Or they pass a hitchhiker. Or one gets sick for a day and slows the travel down?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every minor conflict (with each other, environment, themselves, whatever) has a chance to show each characters true personality and also gives each personality a chance to interact with each other. This could be as small as a paragraph, or as long as a chapter, but still relatively separate from the primary plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later in the story, this will also give you events to call back to as the characters are interacting with each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2010-11-26T07:42:37.727" LastActivityDate="2010-11-26T07:42:37.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="529" CreationDate="2010-11-25T17:03:28.503" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I'm following you, it seems that &lt;em&gt;the travelling itself&lt;/em&gt; isn't important, but that the characters &lt;em&gt;have traveled&lt;/em&gt; is advancing the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can cut out most of the actual journeying, showing the quest in what the characters do when they stop moving. You can have characters refer to the travelling enough to make it clear how far they traveled -- gods damn it, my feet hurt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bonus, if you have on-the-road scenes after setting up this pattern, they'll come across as fresh and different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T03:24:24.173" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T03:24:24.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="529" CreationDate="2010-11-25T17:06:32.227" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your story is large in scope as you say, it should be fairly simple to switch scenes for the majority of the boring travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jumping to other characters and happenings and back again means you will be able to put in just enough about the travel to show some character development through interaction, while also advancing plot in other areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T17:06:32.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2010-11-25T17:49:47.933" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try this to put the importance of character names into perspective: Begin with nothing more than a person's name, and then write the story. Does she truly end up typecast as the similarly-named girl you knew in fourth grade? Or does she take on different attributes - do you give her reactions and thoughts fit for the character you're creating? More likely the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naming your character might be the least important thing you do with respect to what that character becomes and how you (the author) think of her. When the character's name actually plays a role in defining who she is, however, or when the name is representative of something that defines her (such as Garp's name in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084917&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The World According to Garp&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;), keep in mind that in life we don't usually choose our names: our parents do. Give the charater's father a moment's thought: would he have named his daughter Chaersogih, Purple Sunlit Mai Tai, or Katie?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, take the undue pressure off of your mind about having those corrupting outside influences infect your creative vision. There's nothing wrong with allowing someone you know lend a trait or two to one of your characters. While you're still getting to know the character, go ahead and let the name give you ideas. If you're dead set on who and what she is, the name won't be able to stop you even if it (or if Chaersogih from fourth grade) tried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-02-08T12:03:02.313" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T12:03:02.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="473" CreationDate="2010-11-25T18:00:29.277" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having taken typing back in high school, I find it amazing when I encounter people who uses computers through out the day who can't touch type.  I consider being able to touch type an example of efficiency.   First, if you know how to touch type, you can spend less time transcribing things you've written down on paper.  Second, it should reduce the amount of frustration you have about typing and lets you concentrate on the work you're doing.  If you're less frustrated about the physical act of having to type, this should let you work for longer periods of time at the keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, when editing, you're looking at what you've written and making changes.  You're not looking at what you need to change and then looking down at the keyboard to change it.  I think that's a huge incentive to learn how to actually touch type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2010-12-10T16:24:45.970" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T16:24:45.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="473" CreationDate="2010-11-25T18:07:39.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In all honesty it could only help your ability to write. Don't under estimate the ability to be able to type without thinking about 'how' to type. When you can get it down it's like the keyboard isn't even then. You can see the same thing in a car, you just decide to turn left, you don't think about how to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to learn there are a number of tying tutors online that can teach in both the standard US QWERTY as well as Dvorak. There's no harm in taking half an hour each day to work through the lessons to learn, or improve, your skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for Dvorak, I do use it myself along with an ergonomic keyboard. I find that it makes typing for long stretches easier on my wrists. On the other hand it might be frustrating to change over if you know how to touch type on QWERTY. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T18:07:39.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="489" CreationDate="2010-11-25T18:24:25.130" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to easily quantify how original something is.  Everything has been done before in some way. Your goal is to bring a new voice to the table and have that voice be novel in some way.  You don't have to create an entire new world, language, or species to make something original.  Some of the most fascinating things I've written start with well worn ideas and insert interesting novel elements into them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start writing and go from there.  If your feel your rehashing or doing something to similar to others works, change it.  NEVER, copy someone else's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T18:24:25.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="525" CreationDate="2010-11-25T19:23:51.123" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my own experience to discover a black sheep:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you've found and agent, google him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google harder!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you think, he is reputable, change your keywords and google again!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, not kidding. I found an agent who was very promising. Professional homepage, listed all the things you look for (you have to pay no money, best publishers, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I googled him and found nothing. Nothing good, nothing bad. If you only seek for the established ones, the new guys never have a chance, so I thought I give it a try. But I always sleep one night, before making a final decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next day his homepage was gone. Not accessible. So I googled again, this time harder. And then I found a forum discussion about this agent, demonstrating that he was a bad apple, with newspaper article and everything your cold heart wishes. So, yes, I'm serious about my three points above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T19:23:51.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="489" CreationDate="2010-11-25T21:57:06.347" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It isn't just you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Storytelling is an old art. (Anyone with a need to look that up could let us know just how old.) When you worry that your newest mind-blowing twist has been seen before, it's probably not for nothing. The same goes for themes and character traits. Even Grendel's mother can't be credited as the first character ever to lose her life in seeking revenge for her child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that a plot-without-precedent is your most important story element, then go ahead and remain paranoid, remain vigilant, and be aware that you might never complete a thing until (if ever) you've hit upon what only you could've plotted. That parenthetical is not entirely cynical advice. A writer who encourages another writer to abandon the search for originality is doing no one a favor. You might very well achieve that perfect, original plot one day. Keep in mind, though, that even a popular plotter like Dan Brown wrote less than popular, less than unique plots when he began. And what lies behind his plots-- conspiracy, adventure, puzzles-- is not new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, when your compulsion to monitor newsfeeds makes you write faster every time an author’s new publication or, worse, &lt;em&gt;real life&lt;/em&gt; begins to mirror what you’ve been planning; when you look over your shoulder because current events are catching up with the plot you built from nothing but imagination; when you have to get the story out there before “out there” beats you to it... well, that's the groundbreaking plot you seek. Maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because once you get it out, of course, tons of your readers will blog, “It was great and fresh. Reminds me exactly of that novel by...” Sigh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, how much we stress out toward the aim of blazing a trail is up to us. Throw out every piece you write the moment you begin to worry about it, if you want, but know that you aren't assured to ever complete a title; expect very little recognition for how fantastically original your work is. Or you can writer-up and work through the doubt. Readers don’t require fantastic originality. Readers require good stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(By the way: I think you can do it. When you do come up with that most original of plots, let everyone know. We'll be sure to imitate it for you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2010-11-25T21:57:06.347" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="464" CreationDate="2010-11-26T01:29:36.277" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This list comprises well-known online critique and discussion groups that require varying levels of paticipation in exchange for feedback:: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing-world.com/links/critique.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writing-world.com/links/critique.shtml&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2010-11-26T01:29:36.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="523" CreationDate="2010-11-26T02:16:38.407" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fiction, I find active voice will usually lead to a more direct connection from the characters and action to the reader. Passive voice can be useful when the writer wants to demonstrate emotional detachment or distance. Re-casting a passive sentence in the active voice can occasionally lead to a convoluted mess; in these cases, I'd just write the sentence passively (and clearly) and move along. Unless you're generating business, technical or legal writing, you'll get better results by using active voice more often than not, particularly paired with a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/54/26&quot;&gt;show, don't tell&lt;/a&gt; approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Someone will produce a masterpiece of emotionally intimate fiction written almost entirely in the passive voice now, I expect.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2010-11-26T02:16:38.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="521" CreationDate="2010-11-26T02:27:12.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the test, I'm in the &quot;slight&quot; category on three out of the four axes, which includes the judging - perceiving one that you're concerned with. I tend to work with outlines, but if the story takes me elsewhere, I don't force it. I usually find myself in the wild west when I'm getting near the end of a project. (I write song lyrics.) This &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; support your theory. &lt;a href=&quot;http://magnificentnose.com/contact/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Contact me privately&lt;/a&gt; if you'd like numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2010-11-26T02:27:12.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="521" CreationDate="2010-11-26T09:19:46.140" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Psychological research suggests that personality type is correlated to word patterns (Pennebaker &amp;amp; Graybeal, 2001). Personality is also known to be strongly related to creativity (Wolfradt &amp;amp; Pretz, 2001). Some aspects of personality (neuroticism, extraversion) can be accurately judged from writing (Argamon, Dhawle, Koppel &amp;amp; Pennebaker, 2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in a way personality influences writing style quite a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem you face is that MBTI is a rather old test (so be careful with judging too much from it ;) and is not used in research anymore. People tend to use the NEO-PI more these days. There are correlations with extraversion (pretty much the E/I scale on MBTI). But otherwise people tend to find relationships with traits that have no direct equivalent in MBTI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="140" LastActivityDate="2010-11-26T09:19:46.140" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="543" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="546" CreationDate="2010-11-26T18:31:03.153" Score="18" ViewCount="692" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just had to edit a 40 page paper and I'm not kidding, there were paragraphs where every sentence started with &quot;This.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do good writers learn to vary their sentence length and wording to flow?  I don't feel I have this problem when I'm writing from scratch, but when editing, I found myself struggling to come up with new ways to start sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29" LastActivityDate="2010-11-28T02:48:51.060" Title="How to vary writing style?" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="543" CreationDate="2010-11-26T19:13:51.283" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably not the fast and easy answer that you (or me for that matter) want, but I guess it just comes down to editing; again and again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reread the paragraphs out loud, and you will often feel where the problem is. Then it becomes a matter of restructuring the sentence. It's easy to just focus on the start of the sentence, but see the whole sentence as one. What are you trying to say? Is there another way of expressing the same thing? Could the information revealed be combined with the sentece before or after?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give it some time, put the text away for a while. Over time it will get better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2010-11-26T19:13:51.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="297" CreationDate="2010-11-26T19:50:31.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think languages are very different in a lot of subtle things, so I wouldn't trust a third party to translate my thoughts, the way I write, and my subtle hints and intentions into another language I know well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd really try hard to translate it myself as to not lose any of those traits upon doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a language you don't really know well, you'd have no choice though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastActivityDate="2010-11-26T19:50:31.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="543" CreationDate="2010-11-26T19:51:50.220" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt;, Stephen King said to write how you speak. When we're talking to somebody you don't say &quot;This ...&quot; every sentence. It tends to flow smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your story is your conversation with the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that that advice was probably one of the most informative in making my writing style very accessible and free-flowing for the gentle reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastActivityDate="2010-11-26T19:51:50.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="487" CreationDate="2010-11-26T21:14:46.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a full time job as an editor for a community site owned by a software company, and I write regularly on various topics. I think that many companies could use something like this, and perhaps you can get a part time position approved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'd suggest is that you look to build a blog-like writing project, where you can tell stories about your job, or the technology, and relate it to the company. You can bring some notice to the company, perhaps even engaging people and customers in an interesting way. I think 37 Signals does this well on their blog, and there are other examples as well. Since most developers/IT people I know don't like to write, you can &quot;ghost write&quot; things for them, and perhaps even turn it into a full time job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2010-11-26T21:14:46.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="297" CreationDate="2010-11-26T23:05:17.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your English writing skills could use a little smoothing out, if the question above is representative. However, that will improve in time with practice and the help of a good editor. If you have the ability, it'd be a shame not to use it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2010-11-26T23:05:17.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="543" CreationDate="2010-11-26T23:55:00.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Learn grammar.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more you know about grammatical constructions in the language you are writing in, the more interesting sentences you will be able to create.  Remember to vary your constructs from simple &lt;em&gt;noun verb noun&lt;/em&gt; to more complicated &lt;em&gt;leading clause, noun verb noun&lt;/em&gt; and other constructs.  When tempted to use a pronoun, especially one which will result in a general reference rather than an obvious connection to a noun, think about a way to use an interesting noun instead.  Make sure to read over your work looking for the same noun too close together in a paragraph and restructure those sentences for interest.  The more you know, the more you can vary your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, &lt;em&gt;don't overcomplicate&lt;/em&gt;.  You want your writing to be simple and direct.  As you edit your writing make sure that you remove everything except what is essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-26T23:55:00.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="550" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-27T06:12:55.340" Score="14" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you vary dialogue within stories? I often find myself writing &quot;'sentence/dialogue' said character&quot;, and it sometimes gets really repetitive. How is this managed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the only words that I can think of that can be used alternatively, but I don't find this problem when reading books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;said&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replied&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;agreed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastEditorUserId="163" LastEditDate="2010-12-10T03:33:48.610" LastActivityDate="2010-12-11T01:34:20.567" Title="How do you vary dialogue within stories?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2019-02-04T11:51:44.377" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="529" CreationDate="2010-11-27T06:51:21.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sitting around a campfire discussing the highlights of the day's events is a good mechanism for character development during travel. It also gives your characters a chance to bond. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leave out all the tedious encounters such as checking into the inn. Think how they do it on TV. All the mundane is left out because there is only a short programming window. Readers will assume your character checked into the inn if you tell them, &quot;Creepo Widowmaker sat on the uncomfortable cot in the Ogre's Brew inn staring into the dim candle.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2010-11-27T06:51:21.387" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="550" CreationDate="2010-11-27T07:06:08.407" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be repetitive and stay with &quot;said&quot;, but don't overuse it. Write in a way so it is implied who is speaking. You normally don't have to identify the character that said the last speaking line. Try to keep your conversation between two people whenever possible to keep the dialog interesting and simple for the reader to follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Said&quot; is read automatically by the mind and ignored, which is a good thing. Changing forms constantly to keep out redundancy jars the reader. Try going through your dialog scenes and remove all unnecessary character identifiers after the actual speaking and you'll notice the person talking is usually obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2010-11-27T07:06:08.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="550" CreationDate="2010-11-27T08:18:13.893" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @JMC: try to avoid the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SaidBookism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;said-bookism&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative to &quot;said&quot;, you can always insert a physical action by (or thoughts of) the speaker. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Let's see here.&quot; Jimmy flicked through the survival guide. &quot;Damn. I could have&#xA;sworn there was an entry on how to outrun a greased Scotsman.&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the topic of dialogue, I have a great memory of reading the novella &lt;em&gt;Memorare&lt;/em&gt; by Gene Wolf. At some point through it I thought: &lt;em&gt;this is some great dialogue&lt;/em&gt;. He often has characters, while having a conversation, talk to each other about different topics or on different wavelengths, yet it is all perfectly understandable to the reader. Worth checking out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2010-11-27T08:18:13.893" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="554" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="557" CreationDate="2010-11-27T09:33:54.900" Score="18" ViewCount="1076" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are various ways for mapping out the storyline that you will use for a story. One of them is to create a bullet-point outline, which would theoretically be useful because of the hierarchy system that you can make, but as it goes along you can't really visualise how the story goes along. Another system would be to use mindmaps to map out the storyline, because subsets of one idea could be branched off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What ways do you use to map out your storyline/content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T05:47:20.720" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T05:47:20.720" Title="How do you map out your storyline?" Tags="|style|planning|plot|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="523" CreationDate="2010-11-27T15:29:55.693" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you want to emphasize?  If it's the person doing the action, by all means use active voice.  &quot;Heinrich Schliemann ate a sandwich&quot; emphasizes Schliemann, while &quot;the sandwich was eaten by Heinrich Schliemann&quot; emphasizes the sandwich.  Contrast this with &quot;Heinrich Schliemann excavated Troy&quot;, which seems more at home in a biography of Herr Schliemann, versus &quot;Troy was excavated by Heinrich Schliemann&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, the person and the action are the more interesting parts of the sentence, and people identify more with the person than the object.  This typically means that active voice is more interesting and easier to read.  (This holds even when the object is the more important part, which is one reason scientific papers are often unpleasant to read:  &quot;The correlation was found to be significant at p &amp;lt; 0.01&quot;  is dryer than &quot;We found the correlation to be significant a p &amp;lt; 0.01&quot;, even though the important part is the correlation and not the investigators.)  &quot;Troy&quot;, on the other hand, grabs much harder than &quot;Hermann Schliemann&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastActivityDate="2010-11-27T15:29:55.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="489" CreationDate="2010-11-27T15:32:56.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your idea isn't original, trust me.  Don't worry about it.  Just write it your way, trying to see the story from your own point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastActivityDate="2010-11-27T15:32:56.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="554" CreationDate="2010-11-27T15:33:45.797" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;One technique that I've used has been a simple spreadsheet. I make a number of columns, one for every major thread of the novel, and I color each column differently to make them stand out. Then I write a one-sentence summary of each scene and put it in the appropriate column, in chronological order from top to bottom, so that it looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;X  Y  Z&#xA;*&#xA;   *&#xA;   *&#xA;      *&#xA;*     *&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that X, Y, and Z are characters or subplots, and the asterisks are short scene summaries. In this outline, the action starts with X, moves to Y for two scenes, then to Z, then X and Z are in a scene together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, I can read the chronological sequence of events by reading down all the columns, but I can also which threads aren't getting enough attention, and how the action moves from thread to thread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2010-11-27T15:33:45.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="558" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="560" CreationDate="2010-11-27T16:07:07.843" Score="6" ViewCount="571" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the pros and cons of using first person/second person/third person perspective in your story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastEditorUserId="163" LastEditDate="2010-12-10T03:35:02.073" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T03:35:02.073" Title="Pros and cons of using perspectives?" Tags="|style|perspective|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="554" CreationDate="2010-11-27T16:30:56.433" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I still do this analog...plot points go on index cards, different plot lines are in different colors, cards get laid out on the carpet until I'm happy with the arrangement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-27T16:30:56.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="558" CreationDate="2010-11-27T21:06:27.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few main points are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First person - you (the reader) have a closer relationship with the character. You are more likely to feel what they feel. (I guess :P)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second person - you are in the story, used commonly in the &quot;pick your path&quot; stories because it is YOU in the sticky situation, so YOU must pick the path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third person - Gives a larger view of what is happening in the world. You can find out things about multiple characters because you are not restricted to the eyes of a character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2010-11-27T21:06:27.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="543" CreationDate="2010-11-28T02:48:51.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first tip is one I only recently discovered: use a thesaurus. I don't know what it was; maybe I was afraid to use it, like it's admitting that I don't know everything, or maybe I just didn't realize how helpful they were. But as soon as I conceded and started using a thesaurus whenever I felt that my word choice wasn't flowing properly, I found that my writing became a lot more satisfying to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second tip is less clear-cut, and is probably not for everyone. Read some postmodern authors like Pynchon or Nabokov, masters of really varied writing. If you already have, do it again. See what they do to make their writing stand apart. Try to write like that. It's going to be a very poor simulation, but eventually you'll incorporate the bits that you like into your own style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="60" LastActivityDate="2010-11-28T02:48:51.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="567" CreationDate="2010-11-28T14:21:44.073" Score="13" ViewCount="270" Body="&lt;p&gt;As in all other fields I'm interested in, I love to have a subscribtion that makes sure some hugely inspirational material gets dropped into my mailbox once in a while. I'm not looking for magazines that prints stories submitted by users, but rather one that focuses on the process of writing and writing technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any such out there, or is online the only place to be in these matters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2018-04-12T14:55:31.310" Title="Are there any good magazines about writing?" Tags="|technique|magazines|inspiration|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="563" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="573" CreationDate="2010-11-28T15:36:39.187" Score="74" ViewCount="6023" Body="&lt;p&gt;My problem is that I basically suck at writing. Especially prose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of it is basically because I don't practice as much as I could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of it is because I'm just not talented in that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However (seemingly) brilliant ideas for stories keep invading my head bugging me to write them and develop them. I hope you understand the brutal strength of the need of self-expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is it a viable approach to write in a freeform, style-less way to get the basic ideas and plot down and then try to go trough it again and try to force some style (and essentially Beauty) upon it? Is this nuts? Do you have experience with such a way to produce literature? Success stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="140" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T20:57:43.653" Title="How to overcome the fact that I can't write?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="21" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-11-28T16:25:33.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's absolutely normal. It's called editing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first draft is not going to be a masterpiece. Even professional authors use editors to read and reread their work, to make it better and tighter writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will all get better and easier as you write more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastActivityDate="2010-11-28T16:25:33.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-11-28T16:26:11.483" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written this before, but I like to emphasize it, because it is really important. So here we go again:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first draft is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; (no matter if your name is Stephen King or Jakub Hampl) a big pile of &lt;strong&gt;shit&lt;/strong&gt;! Yes, it is. Writing means re-writing. Again and again and again. Your approach is exactly how writing works. Plot down and loop through your refinement process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;James Frey wrote an anecdote in the first or second book of his &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/James-N.-Frey/e/B001HCS5QQ/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1&quot;&gt;How to Write a Damn Good Novel&lt;/a&gt;&quot; series. Year after year a woman came to his writing class, who showed that she was totally untalented. He was asking himself, why she didn't give up. But she was stubborn. And she got better every year. Lastly she published a novel which was a success. In opposite to many more talented participants, who knew they were good, but didn't turn that benefit into any real outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Hard work always beats talent!&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or as Eric Sink put it: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ericsink.com/Career_Calculus.html&quot;&gt;Focus on the first derivative!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2010-11-30T13:04:10.453" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T13:04:10.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="562" CreationDate="2010-11-28T16:38:43.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you know German:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.textartmagazin.de/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.textartmagazin.de/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-11-28T16:38:43.700" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-28T16:38:43.700" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="562" CreationDate="2010-11-28T19:41:51.460" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is always the classic, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/&quot;&gt;Writers Digest&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-28T19:41:51.460" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-11-29T02:07:06.073" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write a lot. By a lot I mean a few hundred thousand words, over a couple years. The only way to become better is to write, and keep writing. Everyone sucks at it at first, it's just how it is. It takes time and practice to become a really good writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is like any other skill, if you don't use it regularly it will waste away. Getter better means doing it more often and stretching yourself regularly. The more you do the better you'll get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastEditorUserId="124" LastEditDate="2015-10-08T18:26:47.913" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T18:26:47.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-11-29T04:18:55.717" Score="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two people in your head as you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of you is writing.  The other one is reading what you write and trying to make it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lock this second person in the deepest darkest depths of your brain as you write.  Gag his mouth, forget he exists, lock him in a cage, and don't let him out.  When you are writing, just write.  Let the words flow out from you.  Get everything on paper.  Don't let anything interrupt your train of thought; just keep going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you finish, either your session, your entire work, or however much is a comfortable amount for you, then you can let this second person speak up and do what he says.  Only once you're finished... &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; while you're writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T04:18:55.717" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-11-29T05:07:18.057" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Practice practice practice practice and, as much as practice, you must READ. Read other peoples writing, not just to enjoy the story, but to envy their phrasing, to lust for their characterization, to weep for their descriptive imagery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know people who work, who practice. Prolific writers. Yet their work is flawed because they don't read. You must read. To paraphrase King, you must be a glutton for words. You must want to read, to roll around in other people thoughts like a cat in a field of nip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you're not a natural genius (and only 1 in a billion is), practice, and read. Practice and read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T05:07:18.057" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-11-29T05:31:25.423" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Freeform is the best way to write the first draft. If you can't edit, but you are great at coming up with ideas, then hire a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_writer&quot;&gt;ghost writer&lt;/a&gt;. How do you think Sarah Palin keeps writing published books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this only works if you can afford a professional writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T05:31:25.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="550" CreationDate="2010-11-29T09:38:40.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to get to a point where the reader can understand who is speaking at which time, and avoid the use of 'said' after the first couple of lines. Obviously name the character who starts speaking, and the second character when they reply, but after that you shouldn't need to explain who it is (especially if there's only two people speaking), just have each part of dialogue on a new line. Don't make the mistake of trying to vary it so much you end up with 'he expostulated' and 'she inferred'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T09:38:40.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-11-29T15:43:43.827" Score="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing is one of the areas in which it is the most dubious that there exists such a thing as latent talent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few important pieces of evidence for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writers frequently get better and better as they mature into middle age in contrast to disciplines traditionally considered talent-based, like sports or mathematics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no child prodigies in writing.  There are children who are very good for their age, but there are no children producing good literary works by the criteria used to judge adults.  Even good literary work by somone in their late teens or early twenties is unusual (again in contrast to talent-based disciplines).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writers do not always start at a young age.  Many excellent writers began as adults.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/6.055/readings/ericsson-charness-am-psychologist.pdf&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on expert performance if you believe you do not have the innate talent to write well.  You almost certainly do, but it may take years of concentrated effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T15:43:43.827" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-11-29T16:31:05.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd also add in addition to some other great advice, is that you need to get feedback. Ask people you trust, a few of them, to regularly look over your stories. A short blog is a great way to do this. Drop scenes up there, let a few friends subscribe, and tell you if the story doesn't make sense, the characters shallow, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then look at what you might be doing wrong, re-read your work with their comments in mind, think about how other writers build their stories up, and see if you can learn to avoid making mistakes and improve the way you tell your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T16:31:05.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="575" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="576" CreationDate="2010-11-29T17:49:14.737" Score="17" ViewCount="883" Body="&lt;p&gt;So there's an editor who has accepted a story of mine for publication... but he wants me to change the ending. Normally I'm pretty open to editorial changes, but in this case the proposed changes alter the timbre of the piece by changing the ending from a &quot;downer&quot; ending to something more upbeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a reasonable request from an editor? What are the pros and cons of accepting this request?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2013-10-27T15:35:27.277" Title="When to accept an editor's rewrite request?" Tags="|short-story|publishing|revision|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="575" CreationDate="2010-11-29T17:57:41.580" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't say if it's reasonable or not, but it's not unheard of. There is also the fact that the editor does like your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest pro of going through with this is that you get your story published, but is it worth it? As you said, you are changing the timbre of the piece, and if it makes it something you're not happy with it might not be worth doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I would suggest, ask the editor why he thinks the ending needs to be changed. There is always the possibly that he has a very good reason why he think the upbeat ending is better, maybe there is something in the story that he believes leads to the happier ending. Once you know why he wants it you can try to sell him on your original ending or work out what needs to be tweaked in the story to make the downer ending work for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working with an editor is a two way street, and it's always better to work with them for this sort of thing to find something that works for both of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T17:57:41.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="575" CreationDate="2010-11-29T18:28:51.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can always shop it to someone else. The bottom line is, are they going to pick up your story without that change? If they are, then you can ignore the request, and if they're not, you have to decide if you need the money more than you want the ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T18:28:51.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="527" CreationDate="2010-11-29T19:01:36.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an example &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alberto Moravia, L'attenzione (Attention)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It tells the story of a man who wants to write a novel and decides to start a diary to rework it later into novel form. He ends up writing about his own life and his seeming lack of attention for what is happening around him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T19:01:36.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="527" CreationDate="2010-11-29T21:39:33.700" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would investigate &lt;em&gt;The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigg&lt;/em&gt; by Rainer Maria Rilke. It is a proto-Modernist text that deals with the interiority of the narrator, and his gradual retreat from the social sphere into the mental sphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the diary form is a device used to foreground the unreliability of the narrator's perspective. It does not necessarily have to be used with unreliability in mind; however, it is a way to emphasize the inherent subjectivity in narrative perspective. Remember, though, that diary and epistolary devices serve different purposes: the diary speaks often to the self, or a fictional audience; the epistolary speaks to a specific, definite audience. &lt;em&gt;Dracula&lt;/em&gt; is pre-dominantly epistolary, insofar as many passages are intended to relate information to particular individuals. As is the case with Shelley's &lt;em&gt;Frankenstein&lt;/em&gt;. I very much hope that no one strikes Stoker's masterpiece from their Reading List, as it is a fantastic read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for appropriateness, that depends entirely on the author, and the tone they wish to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T21:39:33.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="527" CreationDate="2010-11-29T21:42:12.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As neilfein pointed out, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flowers for Algernon&lt;/a&gt;. I think what makes it particularly effective is that the very viewpoint of the narrator is itself a major plot point, so the diary form is a logical choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure this counts as a diary, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curious_Incident_of_the_Dog_in_the_Night-Time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time&lt;/a&gt; is also told from a single (and very interesting) perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="148" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T21:42:12.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="297" CreationDate="2010-11-29T22:16:46.727" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that translation is an art in itself, not unlike writing in that it's also a creative endeavor. If you want to do it because you think you'll get something out of the creative experience, I'd recommend you go for it--with help from a professional translator. But if you just want your work out there, I'd recommend someone who is a translator because they won't be emotionally tied to the work like you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="156" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-01-08T11:28:48.883" LastActivityDate="2011-01-08T11:28:48.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="582" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="686" CreationDate="2010-11-29T22:18:08.770" Score="20" ViewCount="911" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, I have recently taken to analyzing all my characters within the scope of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Myers-Briggs Type Indicator&lt;/a&gt;.  I already had my characters in place; I just used this test as a tool to get in their heads, to try to understand how they perceive the world and how they make decisions, so that when I'm writing them, they can make decisions closer to the personality I have laid out for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other tools you can use to get into your characters' heads?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T02:16:11.763" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T02:16:11.763" Title="What are some ways to get to know your characters?" Tags="|technique|character-development|myersbriggs|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="583" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="584" CreationDate="2010-11-29T22:18:38.577" Score="16" ViewCount="2151" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had an interest in writing for years, but I don't know where to start or how to organize the process of &quot;becoming a writer.&quot;  I have plenty of time, but don't know what to do first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This past week, I decided that I want to try to write thriller novels.  I spent some time brainstorming my basic approach to how I'll do it, and am satisfied that I have some vague idea of how I want to write.  The problem is, now I can think of a million reasons not to do it, and without a serious plan, I'm afraid I'll just end up doing what I've done in the past:  nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read parts of several books on writing, but none seem to address the question of what you do to actually get motivated and able to make progress as a writer.  I know I should just dive in and start writing something, but every time I've done this before, the writing has been so bad that I get terrified of failure and stop writing altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here are a series of related questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How can I overcome the fear of failure/being terrible?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How can I craft a plan for becoming a writer and actually getting things done beyond brainstorming?  (What should &quot;step one&quot; be?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you read masters of the genre (I started reading John Le Carre today) that interests you in a way that doesn't lead to the reaction, &quot;I'll never be this good, so why try?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user153" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2019-02-17T01:20:54.007" LastActivityDate="2019-02-17T01:20:54.007" Title="What should step one in writing a novel be?" Tags="|creative-writing|psychology-of-writing|motivation|" AnswerCount="17" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2010-11-29T22:22:59.657" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are myriad questions on this site that already address this issue, and the consensus is always the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just write.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write for yourself.  Don't even read what you've written.  Don't even look back as you're writing.  Write until you're finished.  Once you're finished, look back over your work.  Only then can you begin to be critical of style, grammar, flow, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more often you write, and the more volume you write, the better your writing will get.  As you look back on things you have written, you will see mistakes you have made and you will understand how not to make them in the future.  You will improve over time.  Nobody becomes a famous writer thinking about writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just write.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practice makes perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T22:22:59.657" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2010-11-29T22:26:51.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hum, good question, sometime motivation is hard but I can at least try to provide some answers to your three main questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: Give your self permission to suck. Nothing is going to be easy the first go through, that's what rewrites and edits fore. Accept that it's not going to be the best and write it anyways, knowing that the more you write the better your writing will become.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: How to get more done then just brainstorming. Write, just sit down and write. Set up a time to write and write that time every day, set up your goals, just do what ever it takes for you to sit down and write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3: The correct thing to say is &quot;I'm not this good yet, but someday I'll be better.&quot; It's hard to believe that, but believe it you must. Once again, the more you write the better you will be and the less intimidating professional writing will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T22:26:51.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="582" CreationDate="2010-11-29T22:30:46.283" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, I like to interview them. I have a series of loose questions that I like to have them answer. It helps me not only round out there backstory but get an idea how they will react to situations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the questions I use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something that embarrassed them when they where growing up?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did they get along with your parents?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have they ever been so mad they couldn't help lashing out?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have they ever been in a fight, if so, what about and did they win?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do they want more then anything?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How far are they willing to go to get that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. The idea is that each question requires me to find something in their back story to answer it. It makes them more real and lets me understand how they see the world and they will face hard questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T22:30:46.283" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="527" CreationDate="2010-11-29T22:34:55.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dangerous Liaisons&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is originally told through the letters that the various characters send to each other (mainly Valmont and The Marquise). This makes it possible to mix several points of view (as opposed to with single diary, as mentioned by Daniel Excinsky's answer), but it makes it also more difficult to read for some people. Not sure if it fits what you're looking for (&quot;diary as a novel&quot;) but it sure fits the more general &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistolary_novel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;epistolary novel&lt;/a&gt;&quot; category that you may want to look into for more options and storytelling techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T22:34:55.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="221" CreationDate="2010-11-29T22:40:41.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;@justkt - I think your writing professor had the right idea. I find that the mental work done when not writing is just as important as the work done in front of the computer. If you do a little mental prep before you sit down--thinking about where you left off and what you're going to write when you start, then you can maybe use your bits of writing time more effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="156" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T22:40:41.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2010-11-29T22:47:11.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing &lt;strong&gt;something&lt;/strong&gt; every day can be a huge boost. For facilitating this, I've recently become a big fan of &lt;a href=&quot;http://750words.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;750words.com&lt;/a&gt;, but anything you do to get yourself in the daily habit would work just as effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="87" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T22:47:11.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="582" CreationDate="2010-11-29T22:51:00.427" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes like to write a short autobiography of my characters. I'll start with a sketch describing them physically, then write bits of their life story. I like to focus on struggles the characters are having or have had in their past because to me, that's what makes a character interesting. One of the great things about writing these background pieces is that often bits of them make it into my actual fiction work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="156" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T22:51:00.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="575" CreationDate="2010-11-29T23:03:03.500" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm both an author and an editor. As a writer, I would be uncomfortable changing the ending to my story if it seemed wrong to me. Sure, the editor has the right to make that suggestion, but if it doesn't sit well with you, I would rethink it. It depends on your degree of opposition. Does the new ending sound terrible to you or does it sound like a reasonable alternative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you said, you've already approved the new change, but as an editor, I'm concerned that your editor wanted to make the ending more &lt;em&gt;positive.&lt;/em&gt; IMO, that's changing the direction and the tone of your story. It's not something that I would do. Sigrid&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="sigrid macdonald" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T23:03:03.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="221" CreationDate="2010-11-29T23:08:04.933" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm on a roll writing, I always make sure I stop &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the roll ends. In other words, if my &quot;writing time&quot; is almost up, and I have a great idea and I know what I want to say, I will often stop before I'm done, take a few notes on how I want to complete the idea, then stop for the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While on one hand it may be stupid to ignore the flow, this approach allows me to get started quickly the next day - I scan where I left off, and have little problem getting right back to the pace of the previous day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't do it every day, but I do it when I can because it has never failed to get me into the &quot;writers zone&quot; quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T23:08:04.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2010-11-29T23:09:58.640" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an editor and I agree with the previous posts. Printing hard copies is a terrible waste of paper, but it's an excellent way to identify mistakes that we miss on our PCs. Taking time away from the piece also works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, I eliminate all distractions. I used to listen to music and reread my writing at the same time. Not anymore! I unplug the phone or let it go to voice mail, and will only proof important documents when I'm feeling alert. Maybe there's a particular time of day when you are more alert than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, often I magnify my screen up to 150 or 175 percent. It's downright embarrassing, but helps me to catch a lot of little errors. And I will spell-check the document in several places. Maybe I will check it once in my e-mail reader and again in Word. Sometimes things slip past me in Word that are picked up elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck. Sigrid&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS Don't accept all of the suggestions by the spell-check in Word. It can often be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="sigrid macdonald" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T23:09:58.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="297" CreationDate="2010-11-30T00:08:09.080" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would always seek help from a professional translator, no matter how proficient I deem myself in the target language. A professional translator has &lt;em&gt;studied&lt;/em&gt; the intricacies of both languages (and probably a few more); he has linguistic tools at his disposal I might not even imagine existed; he can look back at years of professional experience; and he is getting &lt;em&gt;paid&lt;/em&gt; to get it right, it's his entire &lt;em&gt;job&lt;/em&gt;. He will deliver a better result much faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, though, you can always &lt;em&gt;talk&lt;/em&gt; to him. In fact, a professional translator will always be proactive about talking to &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; should he have any questions. And even if he's totally happy with his output, you can still say, &quot;nope, that's not quite what I had in mind. You've translated the name X as Y where I would have preferred Z, and in this sentence here you are actually implying something that is not true to my original&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; saying that you should never even think of translating any works of yours yourself. If you feel like trying, by all means do. It's a fascinating experience. However, the thing is that if you do the translation yourself, you will &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; need to show it to a professional &lt;em&gt;editor&lt;/em&gt; afterwards, or at the very least have it proofread by a few native speakers of the target language (one is &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; enough). So you will &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; have to work together with another person of five, except that it will be much more cumbersome and take forever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, even if you invest a few years and achieve true mastery in translation, it will still be a trade-off: never forget that you could be spending all that time writing &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; works instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T00:08:09.080" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="525" CreationDate="2010-11-30T00:13:24.770" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The place to start when checking out agents is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.absolutewrite.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Absolute Write&lt;/a&gt;. In particular, I'd start with their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bewares, Recommendations &amp;amp; Background Check&lt;/a&gt; forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good resource is &lt;a href=&quot;http://pred-ed.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Preditors &amp;amp; Editor's&lt;/a&gt; list of Literary Agents (site under reconstruction, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140209031837/http://pred-ed.com/pubagent.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;archive.org&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's an agent that the folks there haven't heard of, it's likely that that person won't be able to be much help to you (or your work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-01-11T13:39:00.343" LastActivityDate="2022-01-11T13:39:00.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="527" CreationDate="2010-11-30T00:38:20.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could also consider having a diary-form be only part of your novel. Lately I've read fiction that changes point of view from first to third person as the book moves forward. At first I found it a little disconcerting. But if the changes have their own rhythm to them, and they are somewhat predictable, then I think it can work well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="156" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T00:38:20.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="597" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="598" CreationDate="2010-11-30T01:51:42.817" Score="8" ViewCount="2625" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking to learn how to write good short stories, what are some good instruction manuals I should use to learn from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="168" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:56:38.087" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:56:38.087" Title="What are some good instruction manuals for writing short stories?" Tags="|short-story|resources|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-15T17:25:08.077" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="597" CreationDate="2010-11-30T02:11:44.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the Modern Library Writer's Workshop by Stephen Koch. It's not limited to Short Stories, it covers fiction in general. But it's small and approachable and full of helpful ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="156" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T02:11:44.387" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-15T17:25:08.077" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="93" CreationDate="2010-11-30T02:26:51.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tell your story through gameplay, not just through cutscenes. Include as much of the character development as you can in the gameplay animations and mechanics. Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In an RPG, make a character's battle abilities match well with their personality. For example, a helpful, caring character might have healing abilities. Or, use this in a deeper way, allowing a character's abilities to foreshadow their eventual development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include characters' personalities in your gameplay animations. If someone's clumsy and unsure, don't make them suddenly epic in battle. A picture's worth a thousand words: awkward-looking sword swinging can define a character almost instantly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lay out levels in a way that forces, for the sake of solving the puzzle, a character to do something. Bonus points if the &quot;something&quot; is traumatic and the player feels the necessity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ico&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ico&lt;/a&gt;; they integrate of story and gameplay very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="148" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T02:26:51.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="601" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="604" CreationDate="2010-11-30T03:21:07.237" Score="5" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that the RPG  genre of books and stories have standard components, that fans have come to expect to see from authors. Is there a definitive guide somewhere to these components, with instructions for a starting author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="168" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:56:32.607" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:56:32.607" Title="Are there any useful guides to writing stories based in RPG universes/aimed at a role playing audience?" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="597" CreationDate="2010-11-30T03:21:35.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This one's kind of &quot;out there&quot;, but unbeatable if you'd like to take the organic, from-the-heart, not-the-head kind of approach: Robert Olen Butler's &lt;em&gt;From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction&lt;/em&gt;. Rather than old-fashioned, technique-based instruction, Butler really encourages you to go to your &quot;dream space&quot; (almost &lt;em&gt;becoming&lt;/em&gt; the character) to the point where you are walking around in your fictional world. You will soon &quot;discover&quot;, he says, what is supposed to naturally happen next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another excellent one, which is more practical and down-to-earth: &lt;em&gt;Ron Carlson Writes a Story.&lt;/em&gt; I love this one not just because it's a short read, but because Carlson actually takes you through pretty much the exact thought process he used to write one of his most popular stories. He pauses and tells you what he was thinking at each moment of the story-writing process, and tells you where he added content, debated about character choices, etc. One of the most unique elements of this book though, is that he also gives tips about your external environment, not just the story itself. He tells you how he got rid of distractions, set himself up in a good place to begin writing, and importantly, when he let himself take a break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="172" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T03:21:35.030" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-15T17:25:08.077" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="582" CreationDate="2010-11-30T03:47:16.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I just close my eyes and have them walk around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your character's leading center? As in, when they walk, do they lead with their head? Their chest? Are they slumped over? Squinting into the sun, looking around at their environment, or trying to avoid eye contact? Do they move with a purpose, or do they wander aimlessly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once your character starts walking, you'll probably start to envision their environment. If you've already chosen a setting, which particular details about it do they notice? What a character sees is EVERYTHING. (By the way, if you have NOT chosen a setting, it's a perfect time to throw them outside, have them walk past other people, buildings, nature, whatever, and imagine how they'd respond.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to get my character moving, and then see if I can glean anything about the character's personality and mood by imagining how they'd perceive obvious things, like the weather. Or the greenery. Do they see bare trees as barren, colorless and dead, or do they delight in the crunch of the leaves that have fallen off of them? Does he choke on the wind blowing in his face and get annoyed that it's drying out his contacts, or is she relieved to feel a breeze against her cheeks, especially with that heavy sweatshirt crowding her neck? (And as you can see, other details about their clothes, their hair, even whether or not they wear contacts and stuff like that, will follow.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="172" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T03:47:16.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="601" CreationDate="2010-11-30T05:42:39.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not exactly a definitive guide, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pensandswords.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kameron M Franklin&lt;/a&gt; might have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pensandswords.com/2008/06/04/turn-your-dungeons-and-dragons-campaign-into-a-novel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a few ideas&lt;/a&gt;. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="126" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T05:42:39.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2010-11-30T09:00:12.957" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you want to be a writer? No offense, seriously. But for me, I want to write because stories come to me and need to be written. It's not &quot;I want to be writer&quot; so then I have to struggle with how to be a writer and then struggle with what I want to say (since writers have to say something) and then struggle with story ideas, all so I can be a 'writer'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me it's more just going through my day, watching and participating in life, something happens, or I reflect on something, and suddenly the idea for a story pops into my head. I spend some time thinking about it and it grows, then I have to write it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to write, or be a 'writer'?  They're different. Here, let's look at your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you have any advice for&#xA;  overcoming the fear of failure/being&#xA;  terrible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you have any thoughts on how to craft a plan for becoming a writer and&#xA;  actually    getting things done beyond&#xA;  brainstorming? (What should &quot;step one&quot;&#xA;  be?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you read masters of the genre (I started reading John Le Carre&#xA;  today) that interests you in a way&#xA;  that doesn't lead to the reaction,&#xA;  &quot;I'll never be this good, so why try?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) You shouldn't worry about pleasing anonymous strangers. Try to write stuff that you think is good. Then show it to people and listen to feedback. Some will be good and some will be bad. Learn to distinguish. If you write based on 'fear of failure' you will base your writing on trying to figure out what will be popular. That's the surest way to fail that there is. You're an artist. An artist is one mind, one vision. Listen to yourself.  The key to being a writer is trusting your own judgment about what is good. If you keep looking to other people to tell you about your own writing, you'll fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Plan for becoming a writer? Ok, here: Write a book, get it published. That's it. At that point, you're a professional writer. If you mean a plan on how to write, here it is: you sit down at your computer and write. If you don't know what to write, then you need to think about it. There's no substitute for thinking. If you want to write thrillers, then think of a cool thriller plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, I'll give you one I thunk up 10 seconds ago: A woman wakes up to discover she's undergone a sex change operation and is now a man. More, her whole family has been murdered. She discovers that she is part of a UN experiment on gender meant to unify the sexes into one unisex type and relegate all reproduction to the authority of the UN, part of their evil plan to take over the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you take that, or some idea you thunk up, and turn it into a book? If not, why not. What I just wrote is the kernel of a thriller story that you, as a thriller writer, will think up, fill out, and turn into a book. When you get an idea for a book, it will take that form. That's what an idea for a story looks like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) No, I never think &quot;I'll never be this good.&quot; because I never think that writing has only one measure, one dimension. Le Carre  has his strengths and weaknesses. So does any writer. Personally, I think Le Carre's characterization is weak. I don't find his people worth knowing. Again, I keep coming back to one thing: what do &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; want to say? What do you want people to feel when they put down your book? Do you have any idea? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you want to be a writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastEditorUserId="7" LastEditDate="2010-11-30T12:44:46.577" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T12:44:46.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-11-30T09:35:38.840" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to find a partner to write with. The sad truth is that some people with great ideas don't have the discipline to become good writers, and some people with the discipline to write everyday can't come up with great plots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing, like all art forms, has two parts: the creative part and the technical part. Sometimes they don't always live in one person, but can thrive synergistically in a partnership. This is fairly common is songwriting, where on person will write music and the other lyrics. But it is also not rare in writers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T09:35:38.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="607" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-30T11:58:07.190" Score="6" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm publishing a tales book and I don't have a title for it. It's not for children and it's in spanish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the titles of the tales:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;El hijo del escritor&#xA;Celular&#xA;El pelo en el jabón&#xA;El último en la cola&#xA;Instante cero&#xA;La máquina de los cuentos&#xA;La entrevista&#xA;La Oficina Media&#xA;Schwarzweiss&#xA;Personajes&#xA;Dulce Poppy&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="124" LastEditDate="2010-11-30T17:30:57.003" LastActivityDate="2018-04-12T20:15:25.670" Title="How to choose the title for a tales book?" Tags="|publishing|book|titles|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="601" CreationDate="2010-11-30T16:36:38.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, some reality: books written in a copyrighted RPG setting are almost always commissioned by the owner of the RPG property, and those publishers very rarely accept unsolicited manuscripts. So before you write your awesome D&amp;amp;D adventure novel, you really ought to go to the WotC website and determine if they'll even look at your manuscript. (Assuming you want to get published. If you just want to have fun, go ahead, but be aware that it's illegal for you to then publish the story.) If you do get a contract to write a tie-in novel, the publisher will give you their guidelines with exactly what they expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're merely hoping to write an RPG-&lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; epic fantasy adventure, then there is no better advice than just to read lots and lots of them. There is no written formula; you'll pick up the unwritten formulas just by being well-read in the genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T16:36:38.780" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-11-30T16:44:53.923" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following are the books I have found especially helpful over the years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative&#xA;Craft (8th Edition) by Janet Burroway&#xA;et. al. This is the first book on the&#xA;craft I bought based on the&#xA;recommendation of the instructor in&#xA;the first fiction writing class I&#xA;took back in college.  It is now in&#xA;its 8th edition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Points of View edited by James Moffett &amp;amp; Kenneth R. McElheny.  This&#xA;is a collection of short stories&#xA;written from different points of&#xA;view.  I find it helpful now and then&#xA;to go back and help find the&#xA;narrative voice for a piece I am&#xA;working on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T16:44:53.923" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-11-30T16:44:53.923" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="554" CreationDate="2010-11-30T18:14:10.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often called a &quot;beat sheet.&quot; Lists the &quot;beats&quot; of the storyline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excel is a good way to do this. From the bare outline of JSBangs above, you can start adding columns with the time (date), main character in the scene, how that scene will move the story along, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots easier to do it electronically; index cards, etc., are okay. Just don't drop them. I've done that a couple times with computer punch cards (late 1960s). It's not fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Bruce H. Johnson" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T18:14:10.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="611" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="614" CreationDate="2010-11-30T18:16:20.023" Score="9" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;What kinds of schooling should a teenager, trying to decide on a college, consider, if she is looking to grow to become a successful writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="168" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T18:27:36.460" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T18:27:36.460" Title="What are the most appropriate types of degrees (or kinds of schooling) that a would-be successful writer should aim to obtain?" Tags="|career|education|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2010-11-30T18:35:11.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this particular teenager is looking to be educated in writing, a bachelors of arts in creative writing, or English with a writing concentration, or something along those lines (different schools call the major different things) would teach her many of those skills.  A major in English literature on the other hand would give her even more time to read lots of great writers.  The writing part of a literature degree focuses more on criticism than on creative writing, however.  A writing degree will have some reading to it, but less than a literature degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For even further schooling, this aspiring writer could get a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in writing.  As far as I know, there is no PhD in writing.  An important thing to consider is that a master's degree in a liberal arts subject such as writing is often of dubious value economically - whatever the value to her writing.  It is improbable that the MFA program will pay for itself by giving her a better salary from her writing.  However it may provide opportunities that she would not otherwise have had.  It's just not likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A writing degree is of course not necessary to being a successful writer.  Since many writers do not support themselves from their writing, this young teenager may look to gain skills from her college education that can allow her to have a day job while she finds her feet as a writer.  Even if she does not want to do this, in general the aspiring writer should focus on the liberal arts in the oldest sense - a focus on getting a broad education and seeing how different disciplines interact.  The more knowledge this young woman can draw on, the richer her imagery and metaphors will be.  The tasks of a liberal arts education will also help to broaden and stretch her mind to give her a richer mental life from which to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T18:35:11.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2010-11-30T18:59:55.320" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From talking to people in the classes I took the following 3 creative writing programs came up repeatedly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sarah Lawrence College&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University of Iowa&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Columbia University&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never had the money or time to go back for an creative writing degree but I found a lot of good teachers at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingclasses.com/&quot;&gt;Gotham Writers Workshop&lt;/a&gt;.  They also have online classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From experience the two things that have helped improve my writing the most were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a lot (one of my teachers recommendation was write 10 pages a week no matter what) - probably the single best piece of writing advice I ever got.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a workshop where every member is &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to give feedback and it should be in the form of: &#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One good aspect about your work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On aspect that needs improvement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They can only judge your work - not you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T18:59:55.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2010-11-30T19:45:28.463" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are about 1,000 times more English majors in the US than there are jobs in anything such a degree could prepare you for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are one of the few who will make a living from writing, you are talented enough that you can afford to major in something else and pursue your writing as a minor, or through electives, or outside university altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are one of the many who will not make a living from writing, you must have more in-demand skills so that you can work a 9-5 (or less) and leave time for your writing, instead of working two jobs trying to scrape by on a burger-flipping salary and never having time to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, unless you are going to teach, don't be an English major.  It's probably not best for you or for your writing career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T19:45:28.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2010-11-30T19:47:09.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at it in another way. Don't let your desire to write choose what your education will be. Let your education define what your writings will look like. Just remember that every single person has a different knowledge, and the more specific or broad this knowledge will be, the better his writings will be covered with interesting details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a master of mathematics and the logical consequence of the field helped me a lot. No. &lt;strong&gt;A lot.&lt;/strong&gt; In the art of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should choose whatever you've always wanted, it is really hard to gain useless knowledge. Even the meanest sociology has its beauty and could be adopted manywhere. Get a great knowledge in the one field, let it bring money to you, and then &lt;strong&gt;write&lt;/strong&gt;. And then begin to study other fields. You can start with reading the wikipedia's &quot;did you know&quot; list every couple of days (they even had a feed for the topic once, but now it's gone somewhere). If you'll find the power of knowledge exciting, you'll finish with the academic books in your hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T19:47:09.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="616" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="617" CreationDate="2010-11-30T20:24:08.247" Score="9" ViewCount="4319" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was using a book in a writing group that talked about set pieces, but I never really got a clear idea of what it is or how they're supposed to appear in writing.  My impression was that you have a few major scenes that you work up to and away from.  Would this be accurate?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much space do they require?  Is it something you would have one for each chapter or so, or is it something that would build over a few chapters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2014-12-27T07:06:06.340" Title="Can someone explain set pieces?" Tags="|fiction|technique|tools|organization|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="616" CreationDate="2010-11-30T20:45:08.190" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A set piece is a big moment in a story, usually quiet a bit of the story builds up to it and it has a large effect on the plot. You'll see it a lot in video games and movies. For example, the lobby sequence in The Matrix is a well know set piece. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set pieces are usually large and memorable and often the plot pivots around them. You can write a story by connecting two or three set pieces, but it might feel a bit hollow unless you can create a good plot connection between each one. I think they are less common in books, or at least less obvious, but I'm sure you can find them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't have one each chapter or so in a book, usually you need time to build up to them so they have the full impact that you want. There would probably only be three or four in a book, and I suspect they would herald act changes as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T20:45:08.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="527" CreationDate="2010-11-30T21:23:25.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some good ones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dracula by Bram Stoker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn - not really a diary but you really get inside the protagonists head and it is tremendously moving.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enjoy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T21:23:25.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="597" CreationDate="2010-11-30T21:39:18.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For writing short stories try this one: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found it really helpful to read a lot of short stories. Two anthologies I really liked were: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Points of View edited by James Moffett and Kenneth R. McElheny&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, Shorter 7th Edition by Richard Bausch and R. V. Cassill&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of authors whose short stories I found inspirational were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anton Chekov&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leo Tolstoy (his novellas e.g &quot;Kruetzer Sonata&quot; and &quot;Death of Ivan Illyich&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;O' Henry&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Guy DeMaupassant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Edgar Allan Poe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more recent short stories you can pick up the last couple years of &quot;Best American Short Stories&quot; - which collects the best short stories by year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastEditorUserId="6247" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T14:20:47.457" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T14:20:47.457" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-15T17:25:08.077" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="620" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="624" CreationDate="2010-11-30T21:57:38.367" Score="21" ViewCount="1176" Body="&lt;p&gt;The context is a technical document that is written by one person and then sent out for review by others.  The reviewers change word tense, change from active to passive voice, and make other style changes.  Is that a valid job for an editor, or am I reacting correctly when I claim that is completely unprofessional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought that an editor should fix spelling errors and very minor grammatical errors, and simply points out other errors so the author can fix them.  That way the style, good or bad, of the original author is preserved.  Is it appropriate for a reviewer to change the style as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="208" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-12-03T03:42:56.163" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T06:27:36.180" Title="When editing for a person, how much can be changed?" Tags="|editing|business-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="616" CreationDate="2010-11-30T22:07:28.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the plot of Mission Impossible 3 is a good example. It's like the author thought of a list of exciting locations for scenes (sets) (A weapons factory in Berlin! A kidnapping in the Vatican! An attack on a long bridge! A heist in Hong Kong!) and figured out a way to tie them together in a coherent story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T22:07:28.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="622" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-30T22:33:35.100" Score="13" ViewCount="11495" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a technical book about one programming technology and would like to compare how much time other authors spend on one page (on average). I rarely write a page and am done with it, quite usually there is a lot of restructuring, refining and formatting going on after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say I spend about 1.5 - 2 hours on every page, that time being roughly divided this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;~1&lt;/strong&gt; hour writing (creating the original rough content)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;~0.5h&lt;/strong&gt; refining and improving style&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;~0.25h&lt;/strong&gt; formatting (applying styles, creating screenshots etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your usual times?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: I feel that the question has been misunderstood or possibly not very well written so I'm adding these points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm interested in your &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt;, not estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm interested in the &lt;em&gt;average time&lt;/em&gt; - a single number, hopefully with some insights into how that time is split. You've written a book with 300 pages and it took you e.g. 1000 hours - that's what I'm after.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where I live, the page is defined as 1800 characters with spaces but it doesn't matter. See the point above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for all who answered so far, although this question has quite a few downvotes I am still interested in your experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="211" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2011-05-03T14:04:39.300" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T14:04:39.300" Title="How much time do you spend writing one page on average?" Tags="|technical-writing|metrics|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2011-05-04T01:33:01.993" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="622" CreationDate="2010-11-30T22:58:24.387" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry, but about all I can say is: it varies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a particular publisher/series this is for? That would help me give a general estimate. For instance, it should take less time to (imo) write a page for a &lt;em&gt;Dummies&lt;/em&gt; book than a &lt;em&gt;Head First&lt;/em&gt; book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to your list, I really tend to burn up hours in two other areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What do people commonly want to know about this particular topic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tasks/Examples&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For programming books, I need code to demonstrate usage and syntax—so add on time to invent examples, and then code and debug them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found that these can take up as much time again as all the actual writing parts put together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course, what's one page in a word processor will only occasionally translate into one printed book page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T22:58:24.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="620" CreationDate="2010-11-30T23:47:34.223" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I can't be sure of your exact context, the things you've listed seem entirely reasonable activities for the role of &quot;editor&quot; (in a general case). Whether or not it's appropriate for the role of &quot;reviewer&quot; depends on what powers a reviewer has in your organisation. (Keeping this in mind, I'll answer in terms of how I see the role of &quot;editor&quot;, since it sounds like that's what your reviewers are actually doing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An editor may make anything from major structural and/or content changes down to fixing typos and grammar. Usually I would expect these to be in the form of &lt;i&gt;suggestions&lt;/i&gt;, rather than outright changes that you (as the original author) have no control over. Is it the changes themselves that are the problem, or perhaps the &lt;i&gt;way&lt;/i&gt; those changes are made that is annoying you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally an editor is going to maintain both the style and intent of the original author, assuming these are appropriate for the target audience. In fiction you probably wouldn't want an editor changing your &quot;style&quot; (because the style is often part of the art), but in technical writing you want the style to be clear, concise and standardised (basically, to not get in the way of the reader's understanding).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If changing from passive to active voice removes words and makes something clearer, that can only be a good thing. Changing word tense would be reasonable to ensure the consistency of tense throughout the document. If an editor changes a word's tense and it is then inconsistent with the rest of the document, I would feel entitled to ignore/revert that change altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think the editor's suggestions make things worse, you could either ignore the suggestion, go back to the editor to plead your case (negotiate), or accept it (if the editor is the &quot;boss&quot; and won't negoatiate anyway). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, if something is published with your name on it, you need to be happy with the finished product. If your editors aren't helping make things better, it may indicate problems beyond the technical changes they're making, but higher-level problems such as agreeing on who the target audience is, or whether they're competent editors in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final note, this may be an opportunity for you to develop a style guide for technical documentation in your organisation (if you don't have one). As long as you get everyone to agree to it, you can point at it for any &quot;edits&quot; you don't like. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T23:47:34.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="620" CreationDate="2010-11-30T23:53:19.603" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had editors do everything from just say, &quot;it looks great as-is&quot; to heavy-handed edits that moved sections around with tweaks to nearly every word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of this is the difference between copy editing (e.g., spelling, grammar, punctuation) and development editing (e.g., content, style, format). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't say whether this project is short or long form, and whether it is freelance or in-house—those can make a difference as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About all I can suggest is that you learn to love (and use) the word &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;stet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2010-11-30T23:53:19.603" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-12-01T01:38:02.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like Liquid Story Binder.  It's not free but totally worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I second yWriter.  I have found it to be unreliable though :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user223" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T01:38:02.257" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-01T01:38:02.257" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="607" CreationDate="2010-12-01T02:07:46.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really should be up to you. But how about: 'Juanjo Conti: a collection', translated obviously. I'm assuming you're the author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T02:07:46.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2010-12-01T02:30:41.557" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to think of chapters as the 'beat' or 'rhythm' to the book.  I'm not sure that there's a right or wrong answer to the question - it just depends on what you want for a particular story.  A faster paced story probably won't have quite so long of chapters (though that's not necessarily true, but I've often found it to be the case), while slower paced stories might take more time to delve into each scene (or more deeply into a character in each scene).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to prefer something of a middle ground.  Some scenes require a depth that goes beyond my ideal word count, some scenes require me to get through them more quickly for action's sake.  Even though I ignore chapters while reading, and I'm not sure one can fully structure a story based on when a reader might stop (everyone reads at a different pace, after all), every chapter heading is definitely a breaking point in the story.  Even if just for a split second, it takes the reader out of the story - it tells him that there's going to be a shift of some kind, a change, either in character, plot, setting - whatever it might be.  He mentally expects it and adjusts for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the &quot;beat&quot; - the mental adjustment.  The pause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that's also why it's a good idea to try and read one's novel in its entirety in one sitting at least once in the revision process - not always possible with longer stories, but still worth trying.  You get a feel for that &quot;beat&quot; to the story.  You see where chapters maybe should be expanded - or shortened.  That's what I've found, anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T02:30:41.557" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="622" CreationDate="2010-12-01T02:40:06.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is a page? These days, unless you're doing layout, too, a manuscript page can be any length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Dori in that creating and documenting examples is probably the most time-consuming part of the writing process. (It's &lt;em&gt;killing me&lt;/em&gt; on a book I'm working on now.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On books that are strictly how-to, without having to provide tutorial-style exercises, I can run through a printed page of a Visual QuickStart Guide (with layout) in about an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="226" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T02:40:06.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2010-12-01T02:44:45.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it matters what degree you have. What matters is whether you know how to write and can give editors what they need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only degree, a BBA, is in accounting. My writing career began after 8 years as an auditor and financial analyst. I took two creative writing courses in college -- that's the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; formal training in writing that I ever got. Yet I still managed to build a very good career as a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Degrees don't matter. Skills do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="226" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T02:44:45.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="607" CreationDate="2010-12-01T02:48:21.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're not the publisher, I wouldn't sweat it. The publisher will come up with a title; they always do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="226" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T02:48:21.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-12-01T02:54:49.327" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with practice and read.  One thing that sort of intersects those two is Malcolm Gladwell's book &quot;outliers&quot; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://tinyurl.com/22rn2fc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tinyurl.com/22rn2fc&lt;/a&gt;.  In outliers, Gladwell claims that developing world-class expertise in a subject area takes around 10,000 hours.  That's 20 hours a week, every week, for about ten years.  (Gladwell is also an incredibly strong popular writer who writes for &quot;The New Yorker&quot; magazine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to write one place to start is a blog.  My friend John Bruce has been blogging for years and it's been a pleasure watching his writing improve - &lt;a href=&quot;http://mthollywood.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://mthollywood.blogspot.com/&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lately his writing as been political and analysis of his publishing adventures, but go back to 2004-2007 and you'll see piles of writing - thousands and thousands of words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mthollywood.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_archive.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://mthollywood.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_archive.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that your early writing might not get you very far.  You might not feel progress. It probably won't take ten years, but it might take a lot, lot of time to get something published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't make it about the publishing.  Make it about the writing.  So let me borrow one more idea from Jerry Weinberg, who has written forty-odd books (including &quot;Weinberg on Writing&quot;; great read - &lt;a href=&quot;http://tinyurl.com/2eddcl8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tinyurl.com/2eddcl8&lt;/a&gt; ). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jerry's suggestion is to get a glass jar, and count the words you write.  Every so many words (1,000?  5,000?) you take a penny and put it in the jar.  Make a little ritual of it.  Celebrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And watch your jar grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no certainty, but if you read, and study (final suggestion &quot;On Writing&quot;, Steven King -  &lt;a href=&quot;http://tinyurl.com/34co7e&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tinyurl.com/34co7e&lt;/a&gt;), and practice consciously, and revise, and seek feedback, by the time that jar is full -- I bet this post no longer applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could be wrong, but &quot;I've got a feelin'...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="216" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T02:54:49.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-12-01T02:55:17.997" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first step to learning how to write is to &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt;. Read as much as you can. Read as often as you can. Think about what you're reading. Pay attention to author style, tone, rhythm. Understand point of view, character development (assuming fiction), plot, theme. Read quality work; not junk. Read work similar to what you want to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, as others here have said, practice writing. Write those stories to the best of your ability. Put each one aside and then, a week or month or year later, write them again. Experiment. Practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't get good at anything without practicing, so &lt;em&gt;practice writing&lt;/em&gt;. And since you can't know how to practice without learning, &lt;em&gt;read to learn&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="226" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T02:55:17.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="82" CreationDate="2010-12-01T07:31:24.790" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to add &lt;a href=&quot;http://isbw.murlafferty.com/&quot;&gt;I Should be Writing&lt;/a&gt; my Mur Lafferty. It was the first writing blog I ever listen to and I've gotten quiet a bit of good advice from Mur over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mur has also done a number of interviews with different professionals, including people like Neil Gaiman. It's worth your time to check it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T07:31:24.790" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-01T07:31:24.790" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="582" CreationDate="2010-12-01T11:34:12.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, it is important to keep in mind that different methods work for different writers, so it might be a process of trying a few to see what works for you personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Me, I opt for the minimum amount of force. Let me explain. With a lot of exercises, I feel I am still forcing the character out, as a writer, sculpting them by racking my brain - so, what did he/she do when he was eight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I like to do is a method I learned from John August, I place the character in an interesting situation and then just follow it as it evolves. I try not to push it, only to go with the flow of it, and hopefully I will discover something new about the character - Oh, so that is what he/she would do!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation you set up can be one that is completely unrelated to the actual story, whether it be a short story, novel or script of any kind. It can be a banal situation - the character goes out to buy milk, travels to work and meets someone on the subway, anything. Even these ordinary situations can bring amazing characteristics to light and they help flesh out the characters as just people, what they do when they aren't chasing after that treasure or evil wizard. The purpose is to observe the behavior of the character as a third party, and you will often find that what you discovered plays well into and influences the main story as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="232" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T11:34:12.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-12-01T11:53:31.947" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; for most of my writing. I see some have touched on it already, but I think Scrivener deserves an explanation, because it is truly a great piece of software (and even though it isn't free, the price isn't that hefty, either).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is a writing tool that is great whether you write short stories, novels, scripts and even essays or scientific articles. One of the big features of scrivener is that you can organize the project however you want, by chapter, by scene, anything. In the end, when you are ready to export, it all comes together into a single text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can append all the research files you need to the project, for fast in-application reference. You can add labels, status and even your own meta-data to separate pieces of text, so you have a say on how it all will be sorted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have two parts of text viewed side-by-side, for comparison or reference, you can even have that second chapter in the same window where you are just writing chapter nineteen, because their events are closely linked - all without any copy-pasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find Scrivener a very streamlined piece of software for writers and am happy with it. I use it for almost all my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="232" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T11:53:31.947" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-01T11:53:31.947" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="607" CreationDate="2010-12-01T13:10:57.780" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pick the story that represents the whole collection best and call it [That Story] &amp;amp; other tales, as someone already suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or pick a completely different name - try to figure out what it is that connects your stories, is it a theme, character? Is it anything at all? Do these tales work together, or is the only thing connecting them that they were written by you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="232" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T13:10:57.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="488" CreationDate="2010-12-01T13:26:40.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are evidently aware of plagiarism and seem to consider it something that isn't right. In that case, to a certain extent, I would go with my gut feeling. Is what I wrote too much of the original text for my own comfort? Then I have probably stepped over the line. Am I not sure? Well, why not? I should probably reexamine my text. Do I feel that the source text was more inspiration than anything? Probably fine. Of course, you shouldn't take this rule as an excuse to steal, but generally speaking, I find it applicable most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will be affected and inspired by books you read, films you see and everything else you take in, whether you like it or not. Probably the best recommendation would be to give credit where credit is due.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="232" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T13:26:40.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="562" CreationDate="2010-12-01T13:32:20.063" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writers Digest is a fine magazine; another to consider is &quot;the writer&quot; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writermag.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writermag.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend magazines that include writing you consider &quot;good&quot; that can be inspiring; Inc. Magazine (http://www.inc.com/ ) comes to mind.   You can generally get a subscription for Inc. for $10/USD per year if you shop around, and most of the website is free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another place to look is /podcasts/ - the &quot;Writing Excuses&quot; podcast is a 15-minute free weekly audio-show treasure trove - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writingexcuses.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="216" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T13:32:20.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="489" CreationDate="2010-12-01T13:52:03.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;It isn't just you.&quot; +1!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issac Asimov's collection &quot;Gold&quot; has an essay called &quot;Originality.&quot;  In the essay, Asimov says that his most original story was probably nightfall ... at least he thought it was, until 20-odd years later he read an old magazine he had read as a child ... and noticed the same plot line!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the classic &quot;rip off&quot; of fantasy is Lord of the Rings was ripped off by the Sword of Shannara - consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Shannara#Sword_and_The_Lord_of_the_Rings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;So if I were worried about something like that, the first thing I would do is to find two peers who were deep into the genre, maybe a third who was into &quot;general&quot; literature.  Then I would ask /them/ to read the plot outline and express any concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why did Asimov get away with it and Terry Brooks got hammered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One, Terry Brooks ripped off a /recent best seller/.  Two, Terry Brooks ripped off the world /AND/ the plot.  Three, Terry Brooks didn't really include any character development -- his characters were wooden.  Four, Terry Brooks did not include any twists or real changes, whereas Asmimov did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you might borrow some elements from various stories.  The problem is if you don't contribute anything original.  To borrow one of my favorite lines from a co-worker about fantasy &quot;Look, it's a fantasy novel man.  You're going to have an enemy that needs to be defeated, so you have to find an object - a sword or something - to defeat him.  But to find the sword you need to find the map, or find the old lady with the clue, or whatever.  It's your classic 'quest', it's been done a million times.  So why do you read it?  CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, man, that's the difference between a terrible fantasy novel and a good one.  (I believe was talking about R.A. Salvatore, probably the icewind dale trilogy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a lot more about originality, I'd highly recommend the essay &quot;originality&quot; from Asimov in his anthology &quot;Gold.&quot; You can probably get it free from inter-library loan or on &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0046LUCGG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amazon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="216" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-02-26T20:03:19.290" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T20:03:19.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2010-12-01T15:36:31.327" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over time I have found the only way to write in an uninterrupted flow from beginning to end is to write the thing as a text file in the text editor of choice (Notepad is perfectly suitable). Mucking about with notes organisers and chapter defabulators and character combobulators as I'm writing the actual novel itself just slows me down. However I spend months and months and months on notes beforehand so by the time I sit down I'm literally fishing the thing out of my head as if I'm recalling it rather than trying to create it fresh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an approach rather than a bells and whistles laden killer app, sure. But I thought a luddite view might provide counterpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T15:36:31.327" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-01T15:36:31.327" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="622" CreationDate="2010-12-01T16:26:47.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't work in pages, and don't know many technical writers that do. They work in sections, which can vary. I think that on average I probably spend an hour or hour and a half on a page writing/rewriting. After that, post copy/tech edit, it can be higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This excludes research/ screen shots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T16:26:47.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2010-12-01T16:31:54.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contend with the fact that the chances of you becoming even moderately successful as a writer are so slim that if they were to be a dress it would be size -100&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must face up to the worst case scenario and that is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may pour months of free time into painfully nursing a written product into a shape where you feel about as proud of it as anyone ever possibly could feel about anything that wasn't their actual child. You can take it out to the world and shout to anyone who will listen about how wonderful it is and how you're sure that it has some commercial legs. You can do these things and most people won't even look at it, or read it, and people who offer to read it to be nice will criticize it in extremely painful ways and people in the actual publishing industry will reject it and reject it and reject it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fully integrate into your psyche the fact that the people whose names greet you from the best seller's list at Barnes &amp;amp; Noble have done the equivalent of winning the lottery for every consecutive week for a month. If after that you can still even be bothered then do whatever you feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the worst case comes to pass, and you believe you will still be glad that you wrote it then what does it matter &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you wrote it? The only reason to write anything is to please yourself, if you are sitting down to write for any other reason then you stand a high chance of ending up bitter, disappointed and unhappy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T16:31:54.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-12-01T16:32:22.530" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing since I was very young.  Honestly, its true what they say.  Just as we grow as individuals as we age and experience life, so too does our craft as writers mature as we work at it.  Most writers have to work at or massage the text to make it the way they want it to be.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once came across some prose I wrote back before I was even in High School. It was utter crap.  Later found some writing from nearly 14 years ago, it was crap too.  What does that mean?  It means we learn as we do as writers.  There is no substitute for writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you get an idea what do you do?  First carry a note book and pen with you at all times.  I have a little pocket size compositions book I carry with me and try to jot ideas down in for writing.  That helps a ton.  Write till you've got the ideas out of your head.  Then later pick them up, revise, expand or ignore if you decide they aren't worth continuing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then when you find time, write, write about whatever comes in your head.  I once saw a guy who wrote fifteen hundred words just on the grooming routine of this one character.  It was crazy!  But at least he was writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been writing, for quite some time now, and while I've not had anything yet I want to publish, I've found that I have grown as I've written.  I've mentored other young writers, and I always tell them to write as often as they can.  The more time you spend writing, the better it becomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how to improve your writing?  Get a grammar handbook.  Review the rules of the English language.  Then read!  Read a lot of different genres and styles.  There are so many ways to express an idea.  Relish it, experiment, and then don't be afraid to try new ideas of constructing your writing when you have the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately there is no substitute for sitting down and doing it.  One more thing, sometimes it helps to find a muse, a focus.  Maybe its cooking, maybe its science fiction, or history, whatever it is find a subject and start writing.  Look online for others who are interested in writing similar things.  I for one am part of several groups that write collaborative fiction and we learn a lot from each other too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this advice helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="239" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T16:32:22.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-12-01T17:17:58.067" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must add to the praise for Bird by Bird. I've been a professional, full-time writer and editor for 18 years, but I found Bird by Bird immensely supportive (especially her advice about getting the words written down first, without worrying about editing) and laugh-out-loud funny. It's not only for beginners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a fiction writer, but my husband was quite fond of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0898799279&quot;&gt;Elements of Fiction Writing - Characters &amp;amp; Viewpoint&lt;/a&gt; by Orson Scott Card and Beginnings, Middles &amp;amp; Ends by Nancy Kress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own &quot;Wow, that helped!&quot; book was The Art and Craft of Feature Writing, which helped me figure out the difference between &quot;that's an idea&quot; and &quot;that's a story.&quot; It was a gift from a mentor/editor and I just gave a copy to a mentee of my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="202" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T17:17:58.067" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-01T17:17:58.067" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="620" CreationDate="2010-12-01T17:37:42.737" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a professional editor as well as writer. As other say: It depends. Mostly it's an issue of expectations, since &quot;reviewer&quot; can mean anything from &quot;someone who will admire me whether or not I deserve it&quot; to copy editor (the role wherein the editor is checking for accuracy of spelling, grammar, and -- these days -- URLs) to line editor or development editor (responsible for the article overall, not just the words used).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;right&quot; answer is a matter of what each of you expect from the other. If you thought someone would make suggestions in the margins (so to speak) using Word's comments feature, or perhaps just an overall evaluation, then I can imagine that you'd be dismayed that they changed the text (for good or ill, though in my experience I've learned that writers often don't recognize you changed anything when they agree with the improvements). Ideally the changes are made in a &quot;revision marking&quot; way so the author can accept or reject them, or at least you can see what terrible things were done to your perfect prose before they're published. In the real world (at least in news-centric journalism) that doesn't always happen, which is one reason that one should choose an editor carefully (which sometimes means, &quot;Get hired by the right person&quot;) and establish the ground rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="202" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T17:37:42.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="647" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-01T17:58:14.507" Score="25" ViewCount="1014" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to write bits of stories out of order.  If I have a great idea for a scene, I want to get it down it while I have it, even if it doesn't come until three chapters later than the part I'm on right now.  I also have smaller bits lying around -- a line of snappy dialog I haven't figured out where to use yet, things like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I keep running into is where to keep it all, so that I can find the pieces I need when I need them, or easily rearrange the pieces I have as I try to figure out how events will play out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When doing major plot organization, I usually work with plot points on index cards, but this becomes unwieldy when I add in scenes (which are often too long for a card), and snippets of description and dialog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love to hear how others manage this.  I'm open to digital or analog solutions, but digital ones need to run well on Linux.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T22:41:29.223" Title="How can one effectively organize scenes and snippets?" Tags="|tools|organization|notes|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="647" CreationDate="2010-12-01T18:07:37.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only speak for myself, but I do believe Open Office has a version of the outline mode that word has, so this should work well on Linux as well as Windows. It's been a while since I've used Open Office, so not 100% sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I give every section a header with the proper formatting, usually something short and descriptive of the scene. In the outline mode I can collapse the story down just to the headers. In this mode I can rearrange the headers easily, which will also rearranges all the text under the header, allowing me to move all the pieces around willy-nilly without to much trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't use the outline mode, I would do the same header trick but this time number them (something unique so you can search for them) the copy all the headers into a text file or other document. I would then rearrange the headers there until I know roughly how I want the blocks placed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once that is done I would save the original file then create a new blank file. I would they cut and paste out everything from the original to the new file to piece it all together. It would be tedious and is hard to quickly adjust, but it would get the core of the work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T18:07:37.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="647" CreationDate="2010-12-01T18:25:52.567" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The great piece of software that makes exactly this possible is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately though, it is only available on Mac and now a beta-version for Windows PC. I still mention it in case anyone on any of those platforms interested in the question ends up here, as the title doesn't mention the Linux-specificity. I wrote more about Scrivener in my answer to this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9/is-there-a-special-software-for-writers/636#636&quot;&gt;Is there a special software for writers?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A piece of software I heard is very similar in features, and is supported on the Linux platform as well, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writer's Cafe&lt;/a&gt;. I cannot compare them myself, as I lack any experience with the latter, but it should be worth testing out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though I cannot directly help with Linux software, I will elaborate on analog options. These will always be less streamlined than using dedicated software, as the organization has to be done manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way would be to have folders with printed out/jotted down text, organized by project. So, if you have a scene that you want to use in a certain project, only later on, get it on a piece of paper and file it in the folder. You then always know where to look. It is also a good idea to color-mark, or otherwise mark the papers for sub-sorting, and you can clip small cards with a synopses in the top corner for even more clarity. Again, the exact system is up to you, and will have to be manually maintained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally I would recommend to have one folder per working project, plus a 'Misc' folder for all those great ideas that you have had which aren't strictly part of an already existing project (maybe they will become seeds of future projects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps a little and good luck organizing and sorting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. You can of course use boxes instead of folders, or anything else that suits you personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="232" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T19:13:58.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="650" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="659" CreationDate="2010-12-01T23:43:02.143" Score="13" ViewCount="388" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do, normally, only words which are eventually to be kept count, or do you also count rewrites? For example, if I rewrite a 50 word paragraph 10 times, is my daily count up to 50 or up to 500?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="168" LastActivityDate="2010-12-02T13:34:13.967" Title="What are the usual methods for getting a daily word count?" Tags="|style|wordcount|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="650" CreationDate="2010-12-01T23:45:51.217" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer to your question, I personally count only the initial revision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why: It's generally more productive to write without going back to edit, keeping all self-criticism held in until you're done with the session.  Even better, wait a day or two before revising at all.  You'll come at it fresh and be able to see problems you wouldn't have noticed right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-12-01T23:45:51.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="650" CreationDate="2010-12-02T00:02:57.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally I base my word count on what's in the file when I finish my session. I don't count any minor tweaks or changes. If I spent the day rewriting a single paragraph I would end up only counting the final result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand if I'm doing a big rewrite, like a full scene or a whole chapter I will usually count those changes. There's no hard and fast rule for this, but usually if I'm cutting out enough to save it's enough to be worth counting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-12-02T00:02:57.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="653" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="655" CreationDate="2010-12-02T01:20:08.180" Score="26" ViewCount="2676" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking back through my texts, I noticed that I often use a lot of the same words and resort to using quite a basic vocabulary. I was wondering if there are any good exercises or anything else for expanding my active vocabulary. I know that the first thing to do is to read more, which definitely helps, at least with passive vocabulary, but any other suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="232" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2019-08-05T08:34:32.850" LastActivityDate="2019-08-05T08:34:32.850" Title="Tips for expanding my vocabulary?" Tags="|style|discipline|vocabulary|exercises|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="653" CreationDate="2010-12-02T04:02:10.910" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading is probably the best way, but there are a few others that have worked for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way is to keep a dictionary handy. From time to time, pick a random word, learn how to pronounce it, and write it in a sentence or two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use a thesaurus in a similar manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you find words you like, add them to a journal (print or text). Refer to the journal when you write - try to add your &quot;new words&quot; to your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastActivityDate="2010-12-02T04:02:10.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="653" CreationDate="2010-12-02T06:25:43.273" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the reading or using a dictionary or thesaurus, you can also look at various Words of the Day.  Depending on what you are reading, these may expose you words you may otherwise not encounter.  A quick &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/#hl=en&amp;amp;expIds=25657,27743,27868,27936&amp;amp;sugexp=ldymls&amp;amp;xhr=t&amp;amp;q=word+of+the+day&amp;amp;cp=6&amp;amp;pf=p&amp;amp;sclient=psy&amp;amp;site=&amp;amp;source=hp&amp;amp;aq=0&amp;amp;aqi=&amp;amp;aql=&amp;amp;oq=&amp;amp;gs_rfai=&amp;amp;pbx=1&amp;amp;fp=e69b4d9c5dd710f6&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Search for 'word of the day'&lt;/a&gt; showed sites like Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, WordThink, NY Times, The Quotations Page, and Wordsmith.org having this feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:  I could only enter a single link when I first posted as I had just recently joined.  Here are some other useful sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.visuwords.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Visuwords&lt;/a&gt; - This online graphical dictionary is a flash app that graphically displays related words.  You can enter the starting word or have it select a random word.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Merriam-Webster - This part of the M-W site allows searching for a word in a picture or diagram.  This would allow you to see other related parts of an object.  For example, if searching for 'tread,' one link may also identify the bead of a tire.  Another link may also identify the riser of a step.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writerhymes.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;write rhymes&lt;/a&gt; - This will let you find words that rhyme with the selected word.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;OneLook Reverse Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; - With this site, you describe a concept and it provides a list of related words and phrases.  For example, when searching on 'characteristic of a forest,' the first word in the returned list is sylvan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="159" LastEditorUserId="159" LastEditDate="2010-12-03T23:05:50.317" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T23:05:50.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="653" CreationDate="2010-12-02T08:10:18.890" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever you encounter a word you do not know, write it down (in that little notebook that you of course always keep on you, as all good writers should). When you get home, look it up. It could also be useful to write down who said/wrote it, and in what context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you will not only learn a new word, but you will also have a setting in which it is used, and therefore probably get a better understanding of when and how the word is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, since you have actively pondered on this word for a bit before you look it up, you will be at a more teachable moment when you finally do. Its meaning and use will probably stick better, as opposed to just looking up random words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2010-12-02T08:10:18.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="653" CreationDate="2010-12-02T09:09:20.980" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out the visual thesauruses out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just follow an interesting path and your knowledge of words is bound to expand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you might find yourself in a very limited area... Sooo....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The random word tool is very useful :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="7" LastEditDate="2010-12-02T12:12:57.367" LastActivityDate="2010-12-02T12:12:57.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="650" CreationDate="2010-12-02T09:58:36.467" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why does it matter, if your word count is 50 or 500 after a rewrite? You should ask yourself, why do you want to count your words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use the number to motivate yourself (&quot;Look, I wrote 100 words. What a good day!&quot;), then count the rewrites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need the number to show someone your progress (like your publisher who pays you to finish the book), then he is probably not interested in the rewrite-count, but that's a thing you should clarify with your publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is only for you. I would say, it does not really matter. Keep (re)writing. Every word, rewritten or not, takes you one step further to your main goal. I do not count my daily words. I only count all words of the finished novel, because I put that info into my cover letters/synopsis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-12-02T09:58:36.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="650" CreationDate="2010-12-02T13:34:13.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're trying to hit a deadline by doing x words per day, then you have to compare the word count of your written work before the edit and after. Some people use pages for this rather than words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to see how much effort you're putting in or you have a goal for each individual writing session to say &quot;this was a successful session&quot; or &quot;okay, this session is done&quot;, count the words you typed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a hard-and-fast rule on this, it really is up to you and what you're trying to achieve by knowing the word count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastActivityDate="2010-12-02T13:34:13.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="653" CreationDate="2010-12-02T13:53:05.777" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking from personal experience, probably the best way to improve your vocabulary is by studying a foreign language, as many languages borrow vocabulary from each other. One of the most difficult tasks when trying to find that &quot;perfect word&quot; is knowing where to start looking, and knowing (for example) Latin, French, or German synonyms can help when scanning the dictionary or thesaurus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, signing up for services such as a &quot;word of the day&quot; RSS feed, particularly those that offer context and etymology over a bare definition, can be very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="144" LastActivityDate="2010-12-02T13:53:05.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="487" CreationDate="2010-12-02T17:10:52.847" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been a computer industry journalist for most of the past 20 years, and I can assure you that it's plenty creative. This isn't &quot;tech writing&quot; in the sense of describing how to use a product, but rather offering useful advice (such as &quot;which of these tools is worth your money&quot; or &quot;here's some tips on how to use it well&quot;) that offer LOTS of opportunities for you to include your personal voice. Long ago a friend described the difference saying, &quot;A tech writer tells you to turn the screw 1/4 turn to the left. I give you inspiration so that you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to turn it 1/4 turn to the left.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all &quot;creative&quot; writing is fiction, after all. I love writing feature stories that help people understand the meta-issues in a given area (e.g. the current state of affairs in mobile software design) or fun nostalgic articles (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itworld.com/development/124541/programmers-who-defined-the-technology-industry-where-are-they-now&quot;&gt;Programmers Who Defined The Technology Industry: Where Are They Now?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of folks try out this sort of thing with a blog. But if you're interested in something with a deadline... well, send me a private message. I happen to have an opportunity for developers and testers to do a bit of this sort of writing. (No money for this gig, but you'd be edited by, cough, someone with a reputation for constructive editing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="202" LastActivityDate="2010-12-02T17:10:52.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="620" CreationDate="2010-12-02T20:19:35.540" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to bear in mind that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; changes made by an editor are &lt;em&gt;suggestions meant to help you.&lt;/em&gt; The editor (at least, not the kind of editor we're talking about here) is not your boss. They are finding (what they perceive to be) problems with your writing and, in many cases, providing a sample way in which you might fix it. Sometimes an editor will completely misread something and find the wrong or even a non-existent problem. It happens. Editors are humans, not gods. As the writer, the final piece is always &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; responsibility, so it is left to your discretion how to handle each edit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your question, how much help would you rather an editor provide? A little? Or a lot? And why would you be &lt;em&gt;offended&lt;/em&gt; when someone provides more help than you were expecting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, additional edits may be necessary at the publication stage (for example, to fit allotted space or to make a particular line hyphenate more nicely), and these will be made without your consent, but they will usually be quite minor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an editor (the other kind of editor, one who is responsible for acquiring materials for publication) &lt;em&gt;won't buy&lt;/em&gt; your piece without certain changes, that is a somewhat different matter, assuming you want him or her to buy your piece. These will usually be a more general nature, however: more support is needed for this point; your conclusion isn't working. If you disagree, perhaps you would rather withdraw it and send it elsewhere; the final say is still yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2010-12-02T20:19:35.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="487" CreationDate="2010-12-03T02:34:41.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if this is the answer you're looking for but this is what I'm doing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dayjob is software development (try smaller shops - more variety, more control. Architecting new apps can be more creatively fulfilling than coding small pieces to precise requirements)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write fiction in spare time (laptop on the train, early mornings, weekends, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a good novel (or screenplay, script, short stories, first webcomic, whatever) done, use your technical skills to market and sell it (blog, website, podcast, forums, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T02:34:41.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="665" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-03T03:56:03.877" Score="21" ViewCount="2006" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a professor, once upon a time, a guy named &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_L._Guetti&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jim Guetti&lt;/a&gt;. He was possibly the best writing coach I've ever had. You took his classes for the privilege of submitting works for him to gut with a red pen. If you turned in a thousand words you'd get 800 back; or 600 if you were a wordy bastard like me. He was without mercy: if the word did not add something worthwhile, he'd cut it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;memoria&lt;/em&gt; of a magnificent bastard and a fellow Wittgensteinian, here are two wholly unpolished paragraphs from my rough draft folder...Help me find the unnecessary words. (I may not be able to resist jumping in and putting up my own comments...I know that's tacky, but it's taking a ton of self control not to fix the obvious problems.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I used to love running on the beach. It was best in the winter, when the grey skies and cold air kept the beaches clear. Run as far as you could, marking the perfect sand with the print of your shoes, and then turning, and following your prints home. Alone with the waves and the birds.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I remember running, and finding myself racing a storm. The wind blew hard at my back, but I ran pace with it, so the air seemed still and silent. The world was quiet, and yet the storm was rolling in across the ocean. A violent storm, stacked black clouds walking on stick-legs of lightning. And it was frightening, and yet I laughed with the joy of it. Of being young and fleet and running to beat the wind.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to be mean. I can learn from mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2011-12-29T09:10:29.743" Title="Something different: Help me find the unnecessary words." Tags="|style|technique|criticism|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="665" CreationDate="2010-12-03T10:31:09.583" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to love running on the beach. It was best in the winter, when the grey skies and cold air kept the beaches clear. &lt;em&gt;&amp;lt; This is fine&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Run as far as you could, marking the perfect sand with the print of your shoes, and then turning, and following your prints home. &lt;em&gt;&amp;lt; This, on the other hand, is clumsy. It's something I'm terrible for, cramming too many concepts into one sentence. It causes problems because in this sentence you start with &quot;Run&quot; but then you are &quot;turning&quot;. To stick with the concept it should read: Run as far as you can, marking the perfect sand with the print of your shoes, then turn and follow your prints home. Conceptually I would tend to mark the experience out differently. The joy of marking the perfect sand with your prints is one experience, the experience of following the prints home is entirely another. Both are equally valid in mood terms, so I would actually make care to give them each a separate sentence.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alone with the waves and the birds. &amp;lt; &lt;em&gt;Not a sentence. Also maybe ocean instead of waves? I realise the sensory intention is auditory. Also you come back to talking about yourself in the head of the next paragraph whereas you've just been saying &quot;you&quot;. This sentence is trying to bring it back to I, sort of, and also adding another leayer of experience into the first paragraph.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ironically I think that this first paragraph probably needs revising and expanding. You have a soup of concepts, experiences etc. and they're all running over one another. Concision is not just about being efficient it's also about choosing the appropriate amount of words for your communication. I think that you have more to say to set up the final paragraph. Maybe, like a person who is running in the sand the prose should start a bit slow and then rev up to pace itself into a clean finish.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If so I would go for a structure like Paragraph One: experiential paragraph talking about tactile things like sand in your toes. Paragraph two: mix the tactile with the auditory go from the wind whipping over your skin to the sound of the waves to the cries of the birds. Paragraph three: Finally, visual mixed with memories. Racing the storm and seeing the black thunderheads and the soupy water of the ocean. Just a suggestion for expansion should that be your desire. Then at least you will be able to shoot for a concise style while at the same time parcelling up what you are trying to get across by sensory experience across nicely flowing paragraphs.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember running, and finding myself racing a storm. &amp;lt; &lt;em&gt;I remember when I found myself racing a storm. We get that you are running.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wind blew hard at my back, but I ran pace with it, so the air seemed still and silent. &amp;lt; &lt;em&gt;The wind blew hard at my back, I ran pace with it to make the air still and silent. (Avoid things &quot;seeming&quot; like other things a strenuously as possible, language without seemed is almost always more evocative and dynamic. I am terrible for this and have had to close crop work for the word seems, seemed and seeming so many times.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world was quiet, and yet the storm was rolling in across the ocean. &amp;lt; &lt;em&gt;Slight re-order: The storm was rolling across the ocean, yet my world was quiet. (Might use &quot;calm&quot; instead of quiet, but this is up to you. Just seems more lyrical to me.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A violent storm, stacked black clouds walking on stick-legs of lightning. &amp;lt; &lt;em&gt;This one was violent, stacked black clouds on stick legs of lightning. (Although I'm not sure about the lightning thing... but this is personal preference. To me it makes me think of the storm being a daddy long legs or something. Personally I experience ropes of lightning thrown from the bottom of black thunderheads but this is an entirely different image, so I guess it proves yours is evocative. Probably best to leave as is.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it was frightening, and yet I laughed with the joy of it. Of being young and fleet and running to beat the wind. &amp;lt; &lt;em&gt;It was frightening, yet I laughed with the joy of it. I was young and fleet and could run to beat the wind.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T10:31:09.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="665" CreationDate="2010-12-03T10:37:38.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just don't like your sudden switch from the first to the second persona in the first paragraph. Stick to the first persona. And can't you just say &quot;I loved to run&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T10:37:38.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="665" CreationDate="2010-12-03T11:07:21.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to love running on the beach. It was best in winter, when grey skies and cold air kept the coast clear. I'd run as far as I could, marking the sand with my shoe prints before turning to follow them home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once raced a storm. The wind blew hard at my back, so I ran until the air seemed still and silent, chased by stacked black clouds on stick-legs of lightning. I was scared, yet I laughed with joy. The joy of being young and fleet. Of racing the wind and winning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Changed to first person, emphasised the race against the storm, and simplified sentence structure.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I used to love running on the beach. It was best in the winter, when the grey skies and cold air kept the beaches clear. Run as far as you could, marking the perfect sand with the print of your shoes, and then turning, and following your prints home. Alone with the waves and the birds.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I remember running, and finding myself racing a storm. The wind blew hard at my back, but I ran pace with it, so the air seemed still and silent. The world was quiet, and yet the storm was rolling in across the ocean. A violent storm, stacked black clouds walking on stick-legs of lightning. And it was frightening, and yet I laughed with the joy of it. Of being young and fleet and running to beat the wind.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="258" LastEditorUserId="258" LastEditDate="2010-12-03T11:25:57.223" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T11:25:57.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="669" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="678" CreationDate="2010-12-03T12:13:31.303" Score="4" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gather.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gather&lt;/a&gt; service in the webz. It's been said that this service is for writers. How exactly can it help me as a writer? Cause I didn't get anything meaningful from their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gather.com/about.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;about&quot;&lt;/a&gt; page, and I want to gather knowledge from people who've used it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-12-08T20:52:16.953" LastActivityDate="2010-12-08T20:52:16.953" Title="What is a &quot;Gather&quot; service for?" Tags="|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="669" CreationDate="2010-12-03T13:27:03.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I can see it's a bit like Suite 101. The site asks you to write short topical pieces that orient to good SEO results and garnishes your article pages with ads. You get a cut of the click-through revenue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T13:27:03.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="653" CreationDate="2010-12-03T16:09:49.420" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've moved to mostly e-reading on the Kindle and Nook apps on my iPhone/iPad. My wife uses her Android, and even my son has an old iTouch he uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of us have learned to use the built in dictionary, so as soon as you're not sure of a word's meaning, you click it, get the definition, and learn something. The more I do this, the more I find that I can incorporate new words into my writing. Not forcing them in, but as I learn new words and see them more often, I incorporate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing that I recommend is that when you find yourself using a word more than once in a paragraph, use a Thesaurus and find another word. Do that a few times and you'll start to have a variety of word choices to use in situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T16:09:49.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="665" CreationDate="2010-12-03T16:22:02.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to love running on the beach in winter.  Grey skies and cold air kept the beaches clear. Marring the {[perfect] &lt;em&gt;may not be an unnecessary word but an unhelpful one.  What does it mean? find a more concrete word&lt;/em&gt;} sand as I ran as far as I could, alone with the waves and the birds, I would turn and follow my footprints home. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember racing a storm. Wind hard at my back, I ran pace with it, so the air seemed still and silent.  Despite that quiet, the storm rolled in across the ocean. Stacked black clouds walked on lightning-stick-legs.  It was {[frightening] &lt;em&gt;another word that doesn't mean enough.  Is there a way you can show the fear?&lt;/em&gt;}, and yet I laughed.  I was young and fleet and running to beat the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T16:22:02.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="665" CreationDate="2010-12-03T17:06:07.280" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I &lt;strike&gt;used to love&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;loved&lt;/em&gt; running on the beach. It was best in the winter, when the &lt;strike&gt;grey skies and&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;(1)&lt;/em&gt; cold air kept the beaches clear. &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strike&gt;Ru&lt;/strike&gt; *ra*n as far as &lt;strike&gt;you&lt;/strike&gt; I could, marking the &lt;strike&gt;perfect&lt;/strike&gt; sand with &lt;strike&gt;the print of your shoes&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;shoe prints&lt;/em&gt;, turn&lt;strike&gt;ing&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;ed&lt;/em&gt;, and follow&lt;strike&gt;ing your&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;ed my&lt;/em&gt; prints home &lt;em&gt;, a&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strike&gt;A&lt;/strike&gt;lone with the waves and the birds. &lt;em&gt;(2)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember &lt;strike&gt;running, and&lt;/strike&gt; finding myself racing a storm. The wind blew hard at my back &lt;em&gt;.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strike&gt;, but&lt;/strike&gt; I ran pace with it&lt;strike&gt;,&lt;/strike&gt; so the air seemed still and silent. The world was quiet &lt;strike&gt;, and yet t&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;. T&lt;/em&gt; he storm was rolling in across the ocean. &lt;strike&gt;A violent storm, s&lt;/strike&gt; Stacked black clouds walk&lt;strike&gt;ing&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;ed&lt;/em&gt; on stick-legs of lightning. &lt;em&gt;(3)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strike&gt;And it was frightening, and yet&lt;/strike&gt; I laughed with the joy of &lt;strike&gt;it. O&lt;/strike&gt; of being young and fleet and running to beat the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doesn't seem like the key detail in the sentence.  Cold air is enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the tenses consistent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't tell me it was violent.  Don't tell me it was frightening.  Don't use general reference pronouns.  Describe what you saw.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T17:06:07.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="677" CreationDate="2010-12-03T20:09:54.407" Score="10" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a story set in a fantasy-Africa, in which the protagonist must make her way from her rural home to a coastal city in order to seek medical treatment that will save her life. One beta reader for the story was concerned about potential colonialist implications of this. I understand the commenter's concern, but it had never occurred to me because I know that there is no colonization in this setting, and there is no racial difference between the protag and the people that she seeks help from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I make this clear without beating the reader over the head with an &quot;As you know, Bob&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T20:46:07.837" Title="Expositing a lack of racial difference" Tags="|technique|fantasy|exposition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="82" CreationDate="2010-12-03T20:13:39.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in writing speculative fiction, I highly recommend the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sff.net/odyssey/podcasts.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Odyssey Podcasts&lt;/a&gt;, which are recorded sessions from the annual Odyssey Writing Workshop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T20:13:39.490" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-03T20:13:39.490" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="675" CreationDate="2010-12-03T20:46:07.837" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there's anything distinctive about the people of the area?  Something that you could show in her rural location and then have her find familiar or comforting in the city?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, cities tend to have a wide range of people in them, so maybe there is some element of the xenotic (apparently not a word) that you could use to contrast with everyone else to highlight their uniformity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T20:46:07.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="669" CreationDate="2010-12-03T23:36:25.960" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I went to their about page, and that pointed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://socialwrite.gather.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;socialwrite.gather.com&lt;/a&gt;, which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Payment&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Socialwriters are paid in the following ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Per Article&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;: $2.50-$10 for any articles posted on Gather that receive a minimum of 250 unique page views&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Monthly Bonus&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;: $25-$100 based on the popularity of their writing throughout the month&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Socialwriter Requirements&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Socialwriters must be U.S. residents… Gather recommends Socialwriters write 20 posts per month so they can actively learn the content guidelines and sharpen their writing skills for search engine pick-up. Seventy-five percent of their posts should cover topics in their assigned writing category, twenty-five percent of posts can be in other categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds like their writers are supposed to generate SEO-friendly copy &lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(pfui)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; and in return Gather &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; pay them. Or maybe not. Depends on how honest their bookkeeping is, and I doubt their contracts include letting writers audit their books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that they don't pay a penny until/unless you break that 250 page view mark, I recommend blogging for yourself instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T23:36:25.960" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="665" CreationDate="2010-12-03T23:52:10.917" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inspired by your second-person turn, I switched the whole thing over to that voice. I fear that in my reworking I may have made it too much &amp;quot;mine,&amp;quot; however. Still, maybe you'll find something worthwhile here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beach-running is best in the dead of winter. Mark the perfect sand with your shoe-prints; later, follow yourself back home. Commune in solitude with the waves and the gulls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now race the approaching storm. Run with the wind until the gusty air falls still and silent at your back. Roiling black clouds advance across the sea on stick-legs of lightning. Laugh uneasily with the joy of being young and fleet and running to beat the storm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2010-12-03T23:52:10.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="647" CreationDate="2010-12-04T15:31:30.097" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html&quot;&gt;yWriter&lt;/a&gt; is a free program that can be helpful in this regard.  It runs on Linux.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For commercial applications, though, I think Scrivener is probably the only &quot;real&quot; choice.  There are others, but I have yet to find one that can beat Scrivener.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/11/scrivener-for-linux-ubuntu-download-deb/&quot;&gt;It also runs on Linux, even natively&lt;/a&gt;; you can find help on Scrivener's forums on how to get it working.  I know it can also run in WINE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-04T15:31:30.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="476" CreationDate="2010-12-04T15:43:04.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I, personally, use the &lt;em&gt;Character Naming Sourcebook&lt;/em&gt; by Sherrilyn Kenyon, as well as &lt;a href=&quot;http://babynamesworld.parentsconnect.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BabyNamesWorld&lt;/a&gt;.  When it comes to fantasy names, though, I've never found a generator that worked as well as taking a real name and altering it.  It especially helps if you have a general idea of how names in your world should sound.  Read through lists of names from Ireland, China, India, Zimbabwe, and other locations around the world.  You'll come to identify patterns, and it will help you to create your own names with similar patterns or sounds, while still being unique and appropriate for a fantasy setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can also be a helpful skill to have when creating names for different locations in your world.  It emphasizes their differences - not only in culture, but in speech, as well.  And it adds to the realism of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's something that a generator simply cannot do.  Not well, in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-04T15:43:04.950" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-04T15:43:04.950" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2010-12-04T15:50:46.890" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would strongly recommend these three books for any author, published or aspiring:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt; by Stephen King&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Plot &amp;amp; Structure&lt;/em&gt; by James Campbell&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Characters&lt;/em&gt; and Viewpoints by Orson Scott Card&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also commend the yearly &lt;em&gt;Writer's Market&lt;/em&gt; books - they have great articles in there for writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you can't beat Strunk and White's &lt;em&gt;Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt;.  You don't have to follow every single rule, but it's a good idea to know them anyway, if for no other reason than to know when to break the rules for maximum emphasis.  It's the difference between sloppy writing and truly creative writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-04T15:50:46.890" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-04T15:50:46.890" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="685" CreationDate="2010-12-04T17:01:20.887" Score="6" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just listenend to an episode of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/07/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing Excuses&lt;/a&gt; where they discussed genre blending. I found the topic very inspirational, but as one tend to only read books of certain genres, I was wondering if there are resources that gives good overview of &quot;all&quot; genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consulted Captain Obvious on the matter, and he replied: &quot;Read multiple books of each genre&quot;. Sound advice indeed, but then there is something called time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a quick way to see the main ingredients, so I can deceide if the genre has elements that can work with my other ideas. If it has, I can start reading some books to pick up the nuances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2010-12-04T17:31:55.887" Title="Good sites for descriptions/rules of different genres?" Tags="|genre|resources|inspiration|rules|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="684" CreationDate="2010-12-04T17:31:55.887" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a very scientific approach to something that's not a science. :-) In any case, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre_fiction&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's article on Genre Fiction&lt;/a&gt; is probably as good a place to start as any.  From there, you can click on links for more detailed analyses of genres that look interesting to you.  That said, you're not actually going to be able to effectively mix genres until you've read a bit (or a lot) from each one.  It may take a lot of time, but, hey - nothing good in life ever comes easy. :-) Good writing takes years to develop, which also means years of reading.  It may take time, but so does mastering any other trade.  Get ready to put in your 2,000 hours - because that's what it'll take!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-04T17:31:55.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="582" CreationDate="2010-12-04T17:56:50.510" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to exert a lot of time and effort to creating extensive character biographies and doing things like personality tests.  I think all of this is very useful, but in the end, the way one gets to know their character best (I think, anyway) is simply by writing the story.  The truth is, you'll never know or understand your character as well as when you see them in action, making their own decisions, even doing things that you didn't necessarily plan for them to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating scenario-based character profiles that have nothing to do with the story can be helpful, too, and I wouldn't discourage it - but I would ask: Why put forth so much time and energy creating things that have nothing to do with the story? After all, if the story doesn't turn out &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; the way you wanted it, that's why the rewrite was invented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that its really in the rough draft that we meet our characters for the first time - even if we have a 100 page biography prepared beforehand.  Which is part of the reason the phrase &quot;writing is rewriting&quot; is so true.  Because once you finish that rough draft, you know your characters so well, you can finally go back through and make them consistent and deep from beginning to end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the rough draft's most important roles is to help the writer get into the characters' heads.  I'm just not certain it really, truly happens before then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-04T17:56:50.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2010-12-04T18:43:08.363" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;No parent takes naming their child as an indifferent thing.  Before the baby is even born, the name we give the child is an &lt;em&gt;identity&lt;/em&gt; that will stick with him/her for the rest of that baby's life.  Or to quote Orson Scott Card: &quot;A name is part of who a person is.  It's the label that stands for everything you've done and everything you are.&quot; (Characters &amp;amp; Viewpoint, p. 41)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest taking a &quot;parental&quot; role to naming characters - just like a parent doesn't know who their child will ultimately be before they're born, that doesn't stop them from giving the baby a name.  An identity.  A label that stands for everything they are and have done and will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you choose your names, here are some tips that I've found very helpful over the years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Buy a naming book, like Sherrilyn&#xA;Kenyon's &lt;em&gt;Character Naming&#xA;Sourcebook&lt;/em&gt; or a baby naming book. &#xA;There are websites that help with&#xA;this, too.  I prefer books that give&#xA;meanings to the names (even though a&#xA;good sound is usually more important&#xA;than an appropriate meaning).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sometimes&lt;/em&gt; looking for an&#xA;appropriate meaning to a name can be&#xA;a starting point.  If a character is&#xA;brave, then looking for names that&#xA;suggest bravery or heroism in their&#xA;meaning can be good.  But I wouldn't&#xA;get too bogged down with that if you&#xA;don't find anything.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Think of a characters nationality&#xA;and ethnicity.  That will almost&#xA;always suggest certain names and cut&#xA;off others.  If your world is a&#xA;fantasy world, think of the speech&#xA;patterns you might like them to&#xA;exhibit.  Are their names more&#xA;&quot;sing-songy&quot; or perhaps harsher? &#xA;You can use (altered) real names to&#xA;create good sounding fantasy names. &#xA;Russian or Polish might work well&#xA;for gutteral harsher races, if&#xA;that's what you're aiming for. &#xA;Indian / Hindi names are more&#xA;flowing and pleasing to the ear. &#xA;Irish names tend to suggest a gaiety&#xA;that make people smile.  These names&#xA;almost always draw certain images&#xA;into our minds, certain associations - which can be particularly helpful in establishing a mental picture of&#xA;the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you hear names that you&#xA;like, be sure to &lt;em&gt;write them down&lt;/em&gt;. &#xA;Keep a custom &quot;naming dictionary&quot;&#xA;for yourself and update it as often&#xA;as possible with names you like.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you can't think of a &quot;real&quot;&#xA;name for a character just yet, then&#xA;try to think of a single nickname. &#xA;It might suggest a real name to you.&#xA;If you do have a real name, I still&#xA;suggest thinking on whether there&#xA;are any good nicknames for the&#xA;character.  It adds to their&#xA;realism.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vary the first letter of the main&#xA;characters' names, and try to vary&#xA;their syllables, as well.  If you&#xA;have two one syllable names, then&#xA;try not to use anymore of those - go&#xA;for two and three syllables.  That&#xA;will also help to narrow down the&#xA;field and suggest other names to&#xA;you.  This makes it easier for&#xA;readers to keep track of them, and&#xA;it also makes them more real.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The fact that somewhat more&#xA;common names remind you of people&#xA;you know isn't always bad. I have&#xA;noticed what I think are common&#xA;characteristics of the Rachels,&#xA;Jeffs, Mikes, Annas, etc. that I&#xA;know.  I've heard the same&#xA;observations from others, too.  You&#xA;don't have to copy your friends'&#xA;traits - but they might suggest some&#xA;characteristics that you hadn't&#xA;otherwise thought of.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're having difficult&#xA;getting past the names and the&#xA;strong associations with people you&#xA;know, you might try writing a list&#xA;of every single person you can think&#xA;of with a given name - friends,&#xA;family, celebrities, authors, etc. &#xA;Instead of focusing on their common&#xA;characteristics (as in #7), focus on&#xA;all of their differences.  Put it&#xA;into your mind that, though they all&#xA;share the same name, they are all&#xA;individuals in their own right - and&#xA;so is your character who shares that&#xA;name, too!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have a particular&#xA;personality in mind for the&#xA;character, you have two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Choose a name that &lt;em&gt;sounds&lt;/em&gt; like it fits.  A action powerhouse hero named Walter doesn't fit quite as well as Bruno or Mike.  A prim, proper, and beautiful princess would sound weird named Gretchen as opposed to, say, Allegra or Serena.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do just the opposite.  Name the muscle strapped action hero Milford, Benedict, or Lawrence.  Though, if you do that, it should definitely be something that other characters poke fun at, or is seen as an oddity as some way or other.  The name becomes part of the character's identity in a way he might not necessarily enjoy.  Think Johnny Cash's &lt;em&gt;Boy Named Sue&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastEditorUserId="225" LastEditDate="2010-12-04T19:02:20.723" LastActivityDate="2010-12-04T19:02:20.723" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-04T18:43:08.363" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="689" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="692" CreationDate="2010-12-04T19:41:14.560" Score="27" ViewCount="2630" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a &quot;reread reader&quot; - that is, I like to read the same book more than once. The books I have the most fun reading again are the ones that effectively foreshadow what comes later in the book. This is something I'm terrible at doing, unfortunately.  Here are some questions I have regarding this topic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should foreshadowing be used for all or most events, or should some events in stories be (seemingly) random?  How do you know when it should be used and when it shouldn't?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the most effective literary techniques for foreshadowing events?  Is it best done in dialogue, description, character actions, etc.?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does an author effectively foreshadow future events in the story without giving so much away that the reader sees the events coming?  What are techniques for making effective foreshadowing subtle?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any times when foreshadowing ought to be blunt and obvious?  If so, why might an author consider this route?  What, if any, would be reasons for wanting readers to know what's going to happen in the future?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does foreshadowing lend itself better to some genres than others?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can an author effectively foreshadow across an entire series?  Without leaving the reader frustrated that all the questions raised in one book (especially the first book of a series) haven't been answered?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-27T12:42:07.743" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T12:42:07.743" Title="How does one implement effective foreshadowing?" Tags="|technique|plot|planning|foreshadowing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="476" CreationDate="2010-12-04T19:44:12.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few years ago I created a tool called The Gibberizer: &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/gibberizer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://code.google.com/p/gibberizer/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You give it a bunch of words, and it invents new words that sound somewhat similar. If you give it a bunch of words/names from a given culture, it will invent new words/names that sound like they come from that culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For documentation, see the Wiki tab at the link I posted above. Especially the WaysToPlay page. (I'd paste the link myself, StackExchange limits new users like me to only one link per post.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2010-12-04T19:44:12.613" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-04T19:44:12.613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="689" CreationDate="2010-12-04T20:03:26.777" Score="6" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It shouldn't be random. Make it important. You want to do it to be more dramatic, so be sure, it is a dramatic point in your story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I prefer one single sentence at the end of a section. (&quot;He poured in another glass of whiskey. But he should never taste the golden fluid again.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just be imprecise enough here. Look at real life. Imagine you have to forecast, if you neighbor dies by a car accident. How could you do that? When do accidents happen? Is the road icy? Is it foggy? Is he drunk? You mentioned that &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; will happen with these clues. But you do not mention, if he dies or his little daughter on the back seat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Senator Graham walked to the microphone. This would be the last speech of his life. He would be dead this afternoon. Why do I know that? I'm his murderer.&quot; This in the beginning of a book, will make the reader curious, why the narrator wants to murder him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Genre independent. At least you do not tell the reader, that the murderer is the gardener on the first page ;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Note every open loop in your notebook, and make the heck sure, that you resolve them in within the next books. If you add one, you should already know where you will answer it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-12-04T20:03:26.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="689" CreationDate="2010-12-04T20:28:59.337" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories with foreshadowing that I like most are the ones that make the foreshadowing appear random at first or at the very least like an extra but unimportant detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I can smell that a certain event is foreshadowing, I won't be too happy unless it takes some thinking. But if I can't understand that an event was foreshadowing in retrospective, then it was not useful to put the foreshadowing in in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So implementing foreshadowing is like walking a tightrope. There's a delicate balance between too obvious and too hidden. More importantly, you can't implement this well if you don't have clearly in mind how your story is going from A to C through B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: If I had to define foreshadowing I would say it is the partial, but often cryptic, disclosure of information pertaining to as-of-yet unrevealed (most of the time future) events. This can happen to the reader only, or to the characters. It can be done by the storyteller or by a character in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your last question, the events should subtly point to Y while the character has only limited information which makes him conclude X should happen. So, in your story, you need to implement two types of information about the events, let's call them A and B. Information type A is accessible to the reader and the character. Information type B is only accessible to the reader, but possibly in a coded form. Or possibly, B could be accessible to the character as well, but so coded that he doesn't manage to decypher it. Don't take my use of the word 'coded' here too literally. It could simply be a feature of a room that you describe to the readers which contains a clue, but not obviously so, and that your character overlooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastEditorUserId="58" LastEditDate="2010-12-05T17:58:11.540" LastActivityDate="2010-12-05T17:58:11.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="582" CreationDate="2010-12-04T21:10:08.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to interview my characters. The main idea is to start with a question that invites the character to tell me something new, then &quot;follow the energy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a slightly longer explanation, and links to some examples, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20161006143905/http://dalewriting.dale.emery.name/2008/09/interviews/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Interviewing Characters: Follow the Energy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2018-12-19T18:37:49.560" LastActivityDate="2018-12-19T18:37:49.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-12-04T21:13:52.393" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Peter Elbow, in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0072378735&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Being a Writer&lt;/a&gt;, recommends something like: &quot;First make a mess. Then clean up the mess.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your way seems to fit that nicely. Trust your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2010-12-04T21:13:52.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="523" CreationDate="2010-12-04T21:31:42.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's how I think about all writing rules that tell me what I should or should not do: What is the effect of doing this? How does it affect the reader? When would I want those effects? When would I not want them? What effects do I want to create right now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what are the effects of passive voice? Passive voice deemphasizes, hides, or ignores the actor and the actor's responsibility for the action. As a result, it gives greater emphasis to what remains: the act, and the recipient of the act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Mistakes were made.&quot; This hides the identity of the people who made the mistakes, in such a way as to almost deny their responsibility. This kind of phrasing is a common refuge of scoundrels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;My car was stolen.&quot; This is useful when I don't know the identity of the actor. It also emphasizes the effect on me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Hiroshima was destroyed by a nuclear bomb on August 6, 1945.&quot; This directs attention to Hiroshima and the effect of the bombing. Though we know who dropped the bomb, the identity and responsibility of the actor may not be important to what we are trying to say.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2010-12-04T21:31:42.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-12-04T21:48:32.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a story wants to get out, you can't stop it. Also note: It doesn't matter if you suck at writing &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;. First of all, you will get better with every word you write (but at the same time, this progress will seem so slow that you'll only notice when you take a text that is a year old).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, you don't have to &lt;em&gt;publish&lt;/em&gt;. Writing in itself is fun and rewarding. There is no rule you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to become a famous/rich/whatever writer. Just write for yourself. Eventually, you may rethink your decision but again, no pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-12-04T21:48:32.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="554" CreationDate="2010-12-04T21:50:30.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My favorite tool is &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;. It's full-featured writing software that organizes a larger manuscript as a set of documents, each representing a chunk of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is great for plotting. You can view your chunks as index cards on a corkboard. Each index card shows the title and summary of a document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to chunk my manuscripts into scenes. I create create a document for each plot point/scene, view them on the corkboard, and drag the cards around around. This allows me to try out different sequences of action, notice plot holes, and generate new ideas from the juxtapositions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also group documents into folders, view the folders as index cards, and drag those around on the corkboard. I use one folder per chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener gives me exactly the kind of flexibility and organization I want. It used to be Mac only, but Literature and Latte has a beta version for Windows. Search for scrivenerforwindows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2010-12-04T21:50:30.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="698" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-05T00:11:05.113" Score="7" ViewCount="225" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in finding more online resources for memoir writing. Any ideas? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="274" LastActivityDate="2011-07-09T06:53:10.457" Title="What are some helpful blogs for memoir writing?" Tags="|resources|blog|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="698" CreationDate="2010-12-05T05:11:06.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took the liberty of bing'ing &quot;How to write a memoir&quot; and read through some of the better links (I skipped the ehow.com stuff).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theamericanscholar.org/how-to-write-a-memoir/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; by William Zinsser was my favorite. It's not a blog, but has what looks like some good tips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also liked &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/great-tips-on-how-to-write-your-memoir/article112510.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; - specifically for the tips on the second page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I haven't written my memoir, and don't know if I ever will. Someone who's done this sort of thing is likely to have much better advice. In the meantime, I hope you find these useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastActivityDate="2010-12-05T05:11:06.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="237" CreationDate="2010-12-05T08:55:04.717" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would &lt;strong&gt;highly&lt;/strong&gt; recommend section breaks, even if it is happening mid-scene. This isn't an alien technique - many authors have used it. All you really need is a double character return. The reader barely notices it, but it's at least an indicator that we're changing character viewpoints. If you don't use the double return for anything else in your story, then the reader will quickly become accustomed to seeing it and knowing what's happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you go for long stretches in one character's head, and then you decide to jump around a bit, and then you go for long stretches again without doing this, it will probably seem somewhat sloppy.  You'll probably want to try and dedicate a fairly even amount of time (as much as possible) to each character - or at least divide up the scenes into even chunks, even if you revisit certain characters on a more regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend checking out Orson Scott Card's &lt;em&gt;Characters and Viewpoints&lt;/em&gt; - he addresses this very topic, and he does an absolutely &lt;strong&gt;magnificent&lt;/strong&gt; job describing the strengths and weaknesses of various viewpoint options, as well as how to use them most effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-05T08:55:04.717" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2" CreationDate="2010-12-05T09:29:08.120" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First person has the unfortunate side-effect of being &lt;em&gt;narrated&lt;/em&gt; in an extreme sort of way. While it's true that the reader has more emotional investment (if done well) in the character, it can also be true that first person can potentially pull the reader out of the story over and over again with side comments that have little to do with what is currently taking place. That's not always bad, but if you have such interruptions (the thoughts of the narrator &lt;em&gt;as he's writing&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;as he's in the story&lt;/em&gt;), then you &lt;strong&gt;HAVE&lt;/strong&gt; to make up for it with an engaging writing style. Which is one of the greatest difficulties with first person. If you have such an engaging style, though, then by all means - go for it! If you slip-up, though, it will be much more noticeable and annoying to the reader. You can't just &quot;tell&quot; - you have to tell &lt;em&gt;as your character, who ought to be interesting and fun to listen to&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genres that especially employ first-person today tend to be more comedic or memoir-based.  If the reader goes in with a good laugh, or with the understanding that this is more like someone's diary, then they're willing to deal with occasional stints away from the immediate story when the narrator wants their attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are actually two types of third-person to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Third-Person Omniscient: This allows you to jump from character to character, sharing thoughts and attitudes from all of them. This kind of story is usually much more action-based. You don't get deeply attached to the characters, but instead just want to know: &quot;What happens next?&quot; That doesn't mean the story or characters should be shallow; the reader will simply always be aware of an ever-present narrator (like in first-person), but without the close attachment to the characters. Good stories can be written from this viewpoint, but &lt;em&gt;very bad&lt;/em&gt; ones can be, as well. It's not very popular today, especially since it doesn't emphasize character-driven stories as much as contemporary readers tend to like. A good choice for this one might be a &quot;setting-based story&quot; - like Tolkien's &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Third-Person Limited: Most modern stories are written from this viewpoint. It has the strength of being much closer to one person in the story (like first person) while also engaging the action in a way that can be difficult with first. Plus, if your prose isn't the greatest, many &quot;literary sins&quot; will be forgiven by writing in the third-person. A great style is always good, but it's not &lt;em&gt;as&lt;/em&gt; necessary in third as it is in first, and the reader will be more willing to forgive you for some slip-ups. This one is closer to the characters, while allowing you to retain a bit more flexibility in your prose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are actually shades of depth to all of these, as well, from deep character penetration to more action-based descriptions, which an author can learn to employ throughout the course of the book, for whichever scene needs them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-05T09:29:08.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="702" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-05T17:00:18.707" Score="12" ViewCount="1426" Body="&lt;p&gt;After some feedback &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/392/resources-for-character-development&quot;&gt;from this site&lt;/a&gt; and a training course, I developed a little tool to help with character generation. It's called &quot;20 Questions&quot; and works just like that: It picks 20 questions (or more) which you can then answer to build an image of your character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pdark.info/20q/20q.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;find it here&lt;/a&gt; (or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pdark.info/20q/20q.zip&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;download it&lt;/a&gt; to run it offline).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Is that a useful approach? Or does it distract more than it helps?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T21:56:14.957" Title="Is this character generator useful?" Tags="|resources|tools|character-development|software|characters|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2" CreationDate="2010-12-05T17:04:41.980" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually disagree about as heartily with the marked answer to this question as it is possible to. First person does not, in fact, make you emotionally closer to the narrator. A lesson I learned the hard way when I wrote an entire novel in the first person only to have the chief criticism come back at me that the main character seemed whiny and self-obsessed; when I was looking for cool and distant but ultimately virtuous and heroic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was at that point that the room (for the criticism was delivered in an eight-person writer's circle and the one thing seven people could agree upon was that my heroine was a whiner) dissected the uses of first person perspective. We discovered the following things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Men cannot, in general, write female first-person. One of the few examples of success is Stephen King's &quot;Dolores Claiborne&quot;. Most other attempts have failed. Draw your own conclusions as to why this might be.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The main purpose of first-person is to tell stories in a technique known as &quot;the unreliable witness&quot;. &quot;The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time&quot; is an example where the viewpoint character is understood by the reader to have a high-level of autism and the author attempts to relay the experience as the narrator experiences it. The reader can then interpret what is &quot;really&quot; happening for themselves. In third person it is presumed that, even if the author is not using third person omniscient, there is some objective truth to reported thoughts, actions and events. In &quot;third person limited&quot; sentences like &quot;Bob would not even admit to himself...&quot; may be used to tell the reader about things that even the viewpoint character does not know about their own state of mind. The unreliable witness, on the other hand, expects the author to write in a voice as if they are the viewpoint character. The reader must infer the things Bob doesn't want to admit to himself by reading between the lines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some would argue that there is a neutral form of first-person in which the viewpoint character is a witness, but not an unreliable one. In fact, the most powerful way to utilise first-person in this mode is when the viewpoint character is a &quot;rube&quot; someone who is naive and does not understand the full implications of the situation in which they find themselves. Pulp thrillers of the 30s, 40s and 50s often used this technique because limiting story to one viewpoint allows for punchy efficiency. The main characters in pulp stories are often rubes who are being played for fools by their clients and the antagonists. This tends to creep in to any first-person narrative that isn't explicitly intended to utilise an unreliable witness. Note that the narrator remains an unreliable witness if only because they are never privy to all the information necessary to inject the situation with any measure of objectivity. For example, other characters the viewpoint character meets can have their descriptions coloured by the supposed mood of the viewpoint character.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For these reasons it tends to be the case that reading a novel in third person limited becomes a more intimate experience for readers in which they can more easily become attached to the characters and hence feel more positively about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In first person the reader is encouraged to form an opinion about the narrator as a very distinct and separate person from them. In a pulp thriller the side-effects of this are minimal because people really mostly care about what is happening to the hero as opposed to being encouraged to care about the hero themselves for purely emotional reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact if a viewpoint character in first person keeps referencing how they feel it tends to come across as whining. Thus it is encouraged to keep first-person novels on a lighter less personal basis. For this reason we have to work out a viewpoint character's motivations, feelings, shortcomings that they are unaware of etc for ourselves. This additional burden on the reader to recontextualise the story subtracting the viewpoint character's personal quirks is a distancing experience absent from third-person limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ever since that writer's circle session I have been very careful about employing first-person perspective and would now only do it if I had a very specific reason to convey an unreliable witness or a rube perspective. Generally speaking heroes of genre do not come across as sympathetically in first-person as third. I would not use the first-person to portray a heroic character because nothing takes the shine off a hero like getting deep inside their internal monologue. In third person limited it is much easier to excuse a hero's shortcomings as &quot;features of their personality&quot;. In third person it is easier to root for a deeply flawed hero. First person viewpoint characters tend to seem more flawed no matter how much they are outwardly a paragon of virtue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-05T17:04:41.980" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="702" CreationDate="2010-12-05T17:07:07.187" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what all these questions mean.  For example, one of them was &quot;Dying?&quot;  Is it asking whether this character will die?  Is it asking how this character would react if someone else died?  How is this character related to the dying person?  That will have a big effect on the impact it has on the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that it's a great idea for helping with character building in theory, but I think that the questions need to be quite a bit more specific as well, so I can spend time reacting and answering the questions as my character rather than trying to decipher the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Overall I think this idea has potential if the questions are cleaned up a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastEditorUserId="7" LastEditDate="2010-12-05T18:12:30.960" LastActivityDate="2010-12-05T18:12:30.960" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="689" CreationDate="2010-12-05T17:46:12.987" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very &quot;simple&quot; way is to distract the reader. For example the hero(es) are sent to kill a demon. It hides in a church which is full of &quot;good&quot; symbols. There are powerful spells to prevent entrance but none of them lethal. Since everyone concentrates so much on the goal (destroy evil), they don't notice that they destroy a place which has been built by the good forces to fight evil - and that their employer is in fact the demon they were sent to destroy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the time, the hero(es) will wonder how the demon could &quot;spoil&quot; such a place. How he got past all the traps and spells without breaking them, etc. The reader sees the place through the eyes of the characters. If she can take part of their thoughts and discussions, that gives you a great tool to control what she &quot;notices&quot; and if the story is exciting enough, that will prevent that she notices what is going on before it's too late -- even if it feels pretty obvious to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what you need is to run &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; stories alongside each other. One is what the characters see and one is what is really happening. You show the reader one and glimpses of the other (as the characters encounter them). Or you can add a character that lies, plain and simple. Small lies tend to get overlooked because people aren't 100% perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the liar says &quot;I saw one armed person&quot; and it turns out it's a mother carrying her child on the shoulder, readers are bound to accept that, especially if the liar weeps &quot;I was so sure! I'm so sorry!&quot; afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-12-05T17:46:12.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="647" CreationDate="2010-12-05T17:59:44.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I usually write it in another file and keep it in the same directory.  Either that, or I skip ahead in the file and leave a comment for myself to fill in, if I'm not skipping ahead too much.  (Yes, my software-writing habits have pervaded my general writing habits.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastActivityDate="2010-12-05T17:59:44.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="665" CreationDate="2010-12-06T10:16:36.853" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;In contrast to others here, I don't think specific edit questions are appropriate for this site, so I will answer your question in a general (do-it-yourself) way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a method from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Eschbach&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Andreas Eschbach&lt;/a&gt;. If you know German, read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.andreaseschbach.de/schreiben/page96/page96.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;original text&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I will only summarise it here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First print out your text (yes, you need it on paper). Pick a small text passage you can easily overview and go through all of the following 10 points with this passage. Then pick the next one. Use different colours for marking your text and for editing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 10 marking steps by Andreas Eschbach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strike through the first paragraph of a scene from upper left to lower right.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Think&lt;/em&gt;: Do you really need it? Often the first paragraph is used to &quot;warming up&quot; while writing. Could you put the info into later sections?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strike through all adjectives and adverbs&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Think&lt;/em&gt;: Can you use a more precise noun/verb instead using the adjectives/adverbs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark all dialog decorators (like he said, he replied, ...) with wavy lines.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Think&lt;/em&gt;: Can you delete them without puzzling the user? Can you replace them with actions (instead of: &quot;Are you sure?&quot; asked Peter =&gt; use: &quot;Are you sure?&quot; Peter scratched his head. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark filler words and imprecise words (some, quite, rather, several, few, ...) by drawing a box around them.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Think&lt;/em&gt;: Normally you can just delete them or make them more precise (Only a few people ... =&gt; Only ten people ...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross out concurrency indicators (during, while, ...)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Think&lt;/em&gt;: Often it could be better to write things that happen simultaneously in two different sentences: &quot;She cried while he beat her.&quot; =&gt; &quot;He beat her. She cried.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark passive sentences with a small &quot;P&quot; above them.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Think&lt;/em&gt;: Often the active form is better (more action): New Orleans was devastated by a hurricane. =&gt; The hurricane devastated New Orleans.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark long sentences with an &quot;L&quot; above the sentence.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Think&lt;/em&gt;: Make them shorter! No-one likes to read long sentences (except your English teacher in school maybe).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark long dialogs with an &quot;LD&quot;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Think&lt;/em&gt;: Can you shorten them or divide them into several parts?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark indirect perception with a jagged line, like &quot;watched&quot; and &quot;asked&quot; in these examples:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;He watched, how the woman crossed the street joining the spectators there. He asked himself, what was going on there.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Think&lt;/em&gt;: Do you really need it? Why? Does this sound better: &quot;He watched the spectators on the other side. Another woman crossed the street to join them. What was going on there?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search paragraphs where you wrote the same thing with different wording. Mark it with wavy lines at the sheet margin:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;She hit him a second time. Another time she stroke the club on his head.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Think&lt;/em&gt;: This looks like you were searching for the right expression while writing. Nothing wrong with that, but only keep one of them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have done that, you have to edit your text according to these markings. Main goal: Deleting! Get rid of the crap!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then take your correction and read it aloud. Does it sound good? No? Change it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last step is comparing the new with the old version. If you find out, that you edited this paragraph to death, use the old version ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Translated by me by courtesy of Andreas Eschbach&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2010-12-06T20:22:05.837" LastActivityDate="2010-12-06T20:22:05.837" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="713" CreationDate="2010-12-06T11:52:50.770" Score="10" ViewCount="1263" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the main types in which a scene can be classified, and what are the key concepts for each type?&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;I am thinking something along the following (guessing the descriptions):&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;suspense - scene builds up to and ends with a situation where the protagonist is facing some dire threat that seems insurmountable&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;romantic - scene plays with love/hate ambivalence in some fashion&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mystery - scene describes an activity, happening or situation that provides clues &amp;amp;/ red-herrings towards solving some puzzle (may be coupled with suspense?)&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;action - real-time blow-by-blow description of cause &amp;amp; effect / chain of events&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;adventure - ?(not sure if this belongs here - this seems more a genre-type created by a collection of scenes?)&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...?...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing the type &amp;amp; definition of a scene will enable me to make use of the tried &amp;amp; tested techniques and key concepts to produce 'correct' material for the type. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[edit]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/761/134&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; is in the same direction as mine, with very good answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="134" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T06:45:59.107" Title="How to identify a scene type?" Tags="|fiction|categories|scene|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="251" CreationDate="2010-12-06T15:33:10.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always preferred well-executed structured poetry to free verse, and it should be welcomed by open-minded editors. The real question is, are you really willing to change your style in order to capture more of a market that's not very large to begin with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="285" LastActivityDate="2010-12-06T15:33:10.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="345" CreationDate="2010-12-06T16:13:00.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I've seen a few people do on Twitter is post 3 words, ask for a sentence. You get some silly ones, but it actually makes you think and exercise your mind. Someone took that further and asked for a page of writing that incorporated 3 ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would it was an interesting way to force yourself to be creative while at the same time incorporating constraints. Just as you might have in a story you're writing. You can move in new directions, but you're constrained somewhat by what has already happened in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2010-12-06T16:13:00.247" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-06T16:13:00.247" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="714" CreationDate="2010-12-06T18:34:50.870" Score="12" ViewCount="710" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mean under 100k, probably less than 50k because it's a short story.  Actually, I'm not sure how many words a short story has so I have two questions.  How short is a short story and is it worth the effort to write a short story if your goal is to be published?  If all is good can anyone recommend a publisher for short stories (scifi type)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit:  based on comment.  I thought as a book but never really thought about the other places.  Maybe the question should be &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; can a short story hope to get published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2010-12-06T20:54:30.527" LastActivityDate="2010-12-07T18:07:34.270" Title="Is there any hope of a fictional short story being published?" Tags="|fiction|wordcount|short-story|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="708" CreationDate="2010-12-06T20:10:38.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mary lowered her eyes. Should she really look up again. She wasn‘t sure. Was she prepared for that? Her heart pulsed like crazy. She had to do it. Now! Or it would be too late. With all the braveness she has left, she looked up. And there she still saw it: His bright smile, his warmful eyes. Yes, he was looking at her. The best day of her life!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mary lowered her eyes. Should she really look up again. She wasn‘t sure. Was she prepared for that? Her heart pulsed like crazy. She had to do it. Now! Or it would be too late. With all the braveness she has left, she looked up. And there she still saw it: The glowing eyes in the darkness just beyond the door. She was paralyzed. She had to close that door. But woud that save her?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mary lowered her eyes. Should she really look up again. She wasn‘t sure. Was she prepared for that? Her heart pulsed like crazy. She had to do it. Now! Or it would be too late. With all the braveness she has left, she looked up. And there she still saw it: The bright red light beam. Her grandpa told her, she should just jump into it, as soon as she sees it. It would bring her to unknown places, wonderful, undescribable. It would be the best trip of her life. She was born to do that, he said. But she was afraid. The light was flickering. She jumped.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, I just have written that down in fifteen minutes, so bear with me. I did this mainly for clarification. I hope you find out easily, which of these paragraphs is what kind of &quot;genre&quot;. Do you now what to know, how you recognise that, or what wording do you have to use, how you can accomplish that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-12-06T20:10:38.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="708" CreationDate="2010-12-06T20:36:16.857" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though the question title mentions scene level, the start of the question is about fiction categories.  To flesh out the list of categories in the original question, Laura Whitcomb, in &lt;em&gt;Your First Novel&lt;/em&gt;, mentions these categories of fiction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Armchair Mystery - general mystery, but with less sex and violence and milder language&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chick-Lit - not a traditional romance, but often centered on love and sex&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Children's - target ages of seven to twelve years old&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Erotica - explicit sex&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fantasy - Worlds other than our own, often involving wizardry and/or fantastic beasts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Historical Romance - non-contemporary, prehistory to early twentieth century&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Horror - supernatural or real, antagonist terrorizes other characters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Legal Thriller - plot centers around a trial&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Literary - writing viewed as more sophisticated, Pulitzer Prize level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mainstream - crossed out of a genre into popular readership&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Military Thriller - action, adventure, suspense set in military life&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mystery - centers on solving a crime&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Romance - centers on relationship of two people who fall in love&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Science Fiction - set in future reality, includes technology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suspense - suspenseful drama with dark threat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Western - non-contemporary adventure in the American West&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Young Adult - readers grade seven through twelve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend reading the book for a bit more detail on these categories and much other good advice.  I mention this list because I am currently reading this on my Kindle and happened upon this section not too long ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re: individual scene typing within a genre category&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reader, I have never considered the specific type of a scene separate from the genre of the work.  I asked my wife about this and she has never thought this way either.  It is much more important that a scene fit the characters and story as a whole regardless of type.  For example, just because two people in love are having a dialog doesn't mean that scene has to follow a traditional romance scene formula if the overall genre is something else.  Let the actions of the characters determine individual scene direction instead of trying to fit them into set formulaic molds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="159" LastEditorUserId="159" LastEditDate="2010-12-06T21:04:10.173" LastActivityDate="2010-12-06T21:04:10.173" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="711" CreationDate="2010-12-06T20:52:40.480" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard initial market for a short story is a literary magazine.  Famous examples include &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The New Yorker&lt;/a&gt; for literary fiction and poetry.  For science fiction and fantasy genres, notable options include &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fantasy &amp;amp; Science Fiction&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asimovs.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Asimov's&lt;/a&gt;, and others.  As a general rule more prestigious magazines are able to be more choosy on what they end up publishing.  Beyond some of these few links, there are tons of places to find magazines of all sorts to submit to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersmarket.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writer's Market&lt;/a&gt; is a yearly publication with a subscription website you can check out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ralan.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ralan's&lt;/a&gt; is specifically geared towards science fiction, fantasy, and humor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.duotrope.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Duotrope&lt;/a&gt; has some great search features for their database of publications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From these magazines it might be possible that your short story could go on to end up in something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pushcartprize.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pushcart&lt;/a&gt;.  There's also the annual &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/hmh/site/bas&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Best American Short Stories&lt;/a&gt;.  You can look into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=short+story+contests&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla%3aen-US%3aofficial&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;short story contests&lt;/a&gt; (even narrowing the search to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=short+story+contests&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla%3aen-US%3aofficial&amp;amp;client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&amp;amp;hs=Eoi&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla%3aen-US%3Aofficial&amp;amp;source=hp&amp;amp;q=science+fiction+short+story+contests&amp;amp;aq=f&amp;amp;aqi=&amp;amp;aql=&amp;amp;oq=&amp;amp;gs_rfai=&amp;amp;pbx=1&amp;amp;fp=4824b41ba0d4cfd8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;science fiction short stories&lt;/a&gt; only).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of options.  Just don't get discouraged by potential rejection letters along the way and keep polishing, editing, revising, and submitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2010-12-07T18:07:34.270" LastActivityDate="2010-12-07T18:07:34.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="715" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="718" CreationDate="2010-12-06T21:04:30.513" Score="16" ViewCount="3190" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been about five years since I last submitted any of my work for publication, and my memory of what I was taught then to put in my cover letter is getting rusty.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of information should I provide when sending a short story to a small literary magazine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-05T08:58:22.453" LastActivityDate="2018-05-05T08:58:22.453" Title="What should be in a cover letter for short story submission to a magazine?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|short-story|submitting-work|cover-letter|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="715" CreationDate="2010-12-06T21:24:49.613" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two tips for submissions (no matter how short the story is):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write just a letter/email and ask for permission to send them your story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In this letter (like in every cover letter) you should describe your story and yourself shortly and you should put in there, &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; they should publish &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; story. Why is it fantastic? Why do people really want to read it? What's different from all these other boring 50 submissions they got?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, I know, the second one is harder than the first ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;To be more specific about &lt;em&gt;describing your story&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not about: &quot;It's a crime story about incest.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It's about: &quot;It's about a woman killing her ex-husband to conceal that she has married her own son.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2010-12-06T21:36:48.830" LastActivityDate="2010-12-06T21:36:48.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="622" CreationDate="2010-12-06T22:27:26.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;1 page = 1 hour&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Jakub Vrána" LastActivityDate="2010-12-06T22:27:26.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="715" CreationDate="2010-12-06T23:59:00.573" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the magazine. Many publications have submission guidelines, and you might check those for what anything required in the cover letter. I found an interesting variety of requests with a few minutes of googling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asimovs.com/info/guidelines.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Asimov's Science-Fiction&lt;/a&gt; is clear on what they want: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your cover letter should contain the length of your story, your publishing history and any other relevant information (e.g., if you send us a story about a medical disaster and you happen to be an emergency room nurse, mention that.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.briarcliff.edu/campus/bc_review/bcreview_new/submit.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Briar Cliff Review&lt;/a&gt; is a little vaguer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please send a cover letter and short biographical note with all submissions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcsweeneys.net/submit/print.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;McSweeny's&lt;/a&gt; is nearly as vague, but more interesting: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please keep [your cover letter] brief, though we do like to hear from people who read and like the magazine. We're not concerned about writing degrees or past publications, though, so don't be daunted if you don't have an MFA or much in the way of previously published work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, make certain to read the submission guidelines. (Online and print requirements may differ, even within the same publication.) A manuscript in the wrong format is not going to be read quickly, if at all. I don't know if the tone of the cover letter matters or not, although if I were submitting to McSweeny's I'd spend more time on that letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-12-07T02:14:33.920" LastActivityDate="2010-12-07T02:14:33.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="194" CreationDate="2010-12-07T03:55:34.583" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Art is obsession, and how well (or badly) it's dealt with seems to fascinate artists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ernest Hemingway&lt;/strong&gt; was the focus of Dan Simmons's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crook_Factory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Crook Factory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, a faux-historical novel set mostly in Cuba; and also Joe Haldeman's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hemingway_Hoax&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Hemingway Hoax&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, where the eponymous hoax is interrupted by the ghost of Hemingway itself (maybe, the story isn't all that clear on that). The former book is more about the writer and his effect on the protagonist, an FBI agent, the latter about his writings and he process of writing (even though it's the process of forging prose that will fool experts). Both books are concerned with the effect of Hemingway's strong personality on the viewpoint characters. He was a colorful figure, and I wouldn't be surprised ol' Ernest is a character in many more books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three installments of Neil Gaiman's &lt;em&gt;Sandman&lt;/em&gt; graphic novel concern &lt;strong&gt;William Shakespeare&lt;/strong&gt; and the act of writing: more specifically, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gestaltmash.com/2010/10/sandman-meditations-men-of-good-fortune/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Men of Good Fortune&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman%3a_Dream_Country#A_Midsummer_Night.27s_Dream&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Midsummer Night's Dream&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman%3a_The_Wake#.22The_Tempest.22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Tempest&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; are three issues that concern The Bard and his deal with Morpheus. This mini-arc echoes throughout the rest of the 75-installment tale and concerns preserving great stories, and the sort of immortality an artist can achieve. My favorite line from the entire work is &quot;The price of getting what you want, is getting what you once wanted.&quot; (Typed from memory.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll round this out with a fictional example: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilgore_Trout&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kilgore Trout&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is perhaps the most well-known hack writer in American literature. &lt;strong&gt;Kurt Vonnegut&lt;/strong&gt;'s creation was actually based on Theodore Sturgeon, and the character's most significant appearance is in Breakfast of Champions, where he finds out that he is the creation of another writer, and he &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vonnegutweb.com/vonnegutia/trout/kt_interview.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;meets his maker near the end of the novel&lt;/a&gt;. Trout writes what seems would be terrible stories, and has published dozens of them in his life. However, he has his fans, who seek out their idol's work in porn shops and bargain bins. This endlessly fascinating character has written books he's never even seen a copy of, but are published &lt;em&gt;somewhere&lt;/em&gt;. The message seems to be that life is a pointless farce, and there is no message except for what we may read into it. Life may be dreary, but let's laugh at it anyway! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also find that, while I'm reading any story with Kilgore Trout in it, I find myself more conscious that this is a book written by a writer, and that these are words on a page. I somehow still care about the characters, especially the &quot;minor&quot;, insignificant bit-parts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sooner or later, I think most artists will create a work that's meta to at least some degree. Pete Townshend wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoderelict&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Psychoderelict&lt;/a&gt;, the story of an aging, artistically failing hippie rocker in the modern world; Pink in &lt;em&gt;The Wall&lt;/em&gt; nearly dies of a drug overdose before playing a concert; Federico Fellini made the wonderfully confusing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_1/2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;8 1/2&lt;/a&gt;, a film about a director creating a film that cannibalizes his own life; and (my favorite), &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_of_Show&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[Title of Show]&lt;/a&gt;, A broadway musical about two guys writing a musical about writing a musical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the theme of mining life for artistic inspiration comes up often. In Gaiman's &lt;em&gt;The Tempest&lt;/em&gt;, Shakespeare notes that when his son died, he mourned, but was also glad: Now he could write of true tragedy and make the pit weep true tears. In &lt;em&gt;The Crook Factory&lt;/em&gt;, Simmons notes that everything in Hemingway's life was secondary to Hemingway. Kilgore Trout is the only writer on this page who did not let his art consume his life, and he's fictional. Similar themes are veined throughout the three non-literary works I mentioned above, and are resolved with varying degrees of healthy outcomes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-09-14T21:53:58.430" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T21:53:58.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="620" CreationDate="2010-12-07T10:44:42.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different kinds of editing.  &lt;em&gt;Proofreading&lt;/em&gt; is traditionally the last check of a text that has been prepared by typesetters, where it is assumed that the text is pretty much ready for publication.  Then it is a matter of &quot;fix spelling errors and very minor grammatical errors&quot;, but calling attention to the author of wider difficulties is entirely inappropriate.  This is because time is usually very tight, because the publishers has a deadline, and large fixes cause costly work for the typesetter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With editing before that stage, generally called &lt;em&gt;copy-editing&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;developmental editing&lt;/em&gt;,  bigger changes to the text are appropriate, and discussion with the author becomes useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reviewers generally aren't given the source of the texts they review, and aren't invited to make changes to the text, although some do.  Their job is to comment on whether a text is worth publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's generally good for an editor to jump in and fix problems, rather than point out their existence because (i) editors can usually fix the problem faster than the author, and (ii) the author can judge whether the fixed version is better than the original.  If you don't think an edit improves the text, you should do as Dori says and say &quot;stet&quot;.  With my clients, I will add notes to edits where I think it might not be obvious to the author why the edit improves the text.  If there is time, I like to discuss changes with the author.  But there often is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastActivityDate="2010-12-07T10:44:42.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="711" CreationDate="2010-12-07T10:47:00.763" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If &quot;100k&quot; and &quot;50k&quot; are word-counts (and in this context, that's certainly what I'd expect), that's &quot;novella&quot; (for ~50k words) up to &quot;novel-length&quot; (at 100k words).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fictionfactor.com/articles/wordcount.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FictionFactor's word-count page&lt;/a&gt;, a &quot;short story&quot; is typically between 1000 and 7500 words, &quot;novel&quot; spans the 50k to 110k word span and novellas clock in at the 20k to 50k word mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to finding a market for your story, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/20/justkt&quot;&gt;justkt's&lt;/a&gt; excellent answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2010-12-07T10:47:00.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="723" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="724" CreationDate="2010-12-07T18:12:37.027" Score="45" ViewCount="2776" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've completed my first novel and done as much editing as I think I can as the author. What should I do next in order to get this out there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T02:32:40.523" Title="I have written my first novel and I think it's ready. What next?" Tags="|publishing|editing|novel|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="723" CreationDate="2010-12-07T19:11:04.170" Score="47" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Agents&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, you would begin querying agents.  Agents offer a number of benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some will help you polish up your novel further&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They know the marketplace and have access to editors at publishing houses.  &lt;em&gt;Many publishing houses these days refuse to look at unsolicited manuscripts sent by the author.&lt;/em&gt;  If they're good at their job, they'll have an idea of which editors will be most receptive to your work.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They will help you with the contractual complexities of publishing, which are very complex indeed.  What sort of publishing rights are you selling?  To whom, and for how much?  Will they revert back to you if your book goes out of print?  Etc., etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They will support you in myriad other ways.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost of an agent is a commission on your work, &lt;strong&gt;if&lt;/strong&gt; it sells (and not before!).  Usually this amounts to 15%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT:&lt;/em&gt; As MGOwen points out, there are some incompetent and/or exploitative people in the agenting business too.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://pred-ed.com&quot;&gt;Preditors and Editors&lt;/a&gt; is an award-winning website that can help you check up on agents to make sure they're on the up-and-up.  You should also look for agents that are members of AAR - the Association of Author's Representatives.  This is the primary professional organization for literary agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Querying an agent usually involves sending a query letter and the first few (rarely more than 5) pages as a sample.  Agents will specify the exact format they desire, and they will almost all be slightly different.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersmarket.com&quot;&gt;Writers Market&lt;/a&gt; is one of the better-known resources for agent listings.  Note that they are a paid service.  (They also have print editions).  For the most part, agencies are all on the web these days, and they should describe their preferred formats on their site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great resource for learning about how to craft effective query letters is &lt;a href=&quot;http://queryshark.blogspot.com&quot;&gt;Query Shark&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://misssnark.blogspot.com&quot;&gt;Miss Snark's Blog&lt;/a&gt; also says quite a bit on the subject (though that blog is no longer updated).  I'm sure there are other good resources out there too, if you do a little searching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your query piques the interest of the agent, they will usually request a &quot;partial&quot; - basically a larger chunk of your manuscript, like 30 to 50 pages.  Then, if they still like what they're seeing, they'll request the whole thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if the agent likes the entire work, they will offer representation.  Alternately, they may ask to see a rewrite &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; offering representation.  There are a number of things to consider at this stage, namely how well you and the agent &quot;fit&quot;.  Numerous agents offer advice about this on their blogs, but I won't go into detail here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've signed a contract with the agent and gone through any revision, they'll begin shopping your book around.  Hopefully everyone loves it, there's a huge multi-house auction, and you can retire!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Alternatives&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While querying agents is the most well-known way to get a book into print, there are alternatives you can explore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some publishers will accept queries or full manuscripts.  You may choose to submit directly to these publishers.  Small presses may be more likely to look at your unrepresented work.  If your book does garner interest, you may choose to deal with contract negotiations and the rest of the business side of publishing on your own.  A better alternative is probably to get an agent at this point.  It won't be hard when you tell them you already have a publisher who wants to buy your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option, &quot;Vanity&quot;/self-publishing, is more popular than ever.  &lt;strong&gt;Be extremely wary, however!&lt;/strong&gt;  &quot;Vanity&quot; publishers will disguise themselves as small presses, large presses, and anything else they think will get you to fork over your hard-earned cash.  In traditional publishing, the money always flows &lt;em&gt;toward the author&lt;/em&gt;.  If you see anything about up-front fees, you're typically looking at a vanity publisher.  Most of these businesses make their money from authors, who pay significant sums to have their books published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your main concern is seeing your book in bound form, and you don't mind paying for it, this path may be for you. Just be aware of what you're getting into.  Vanity presses make their money from authors, so they have little incentive to actually sell books.  They offer no marketing support, and your book will not generally be stocked on bookstore shelves or get reviews.  Most books published through these companies sell only a handful of copies.  It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; possible to sell large quantities through self-publishing, but it generally requires a lot of hard work on the author's part, promoting and marketing.  A platform, such as speaking engagements, can also help.  Even then, it's a bit of a long-shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, print-on-demand is an emerging alternative which allows books to be printed one-by-one, rather than in large runs.  Companies that offer this service typically take a cut of each book sold, and are able to remain profitable by keeping minimal inventory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing through print-on-demand shares some of the pitfalls of &quot;vanity&quot; press, namely the lack of any support from the publisher.  Print-on-demand is probably even less likely to assist with formatting the manuscript for publication.  However, the cost of entry is generally much lower in print-on-demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Do Your Homework&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This post has already gotten rather long, and it's nowhere near being exhaustive.  Publishing is a complicated business, and it pays to do your research.  Find some author, agent and editor blogs that talk about the business.  There are literally hundreds of them these days.  Read up.  Ask questions when knowledgeable people are willing to answer.    You can never be too prepared!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2010-12-16T17:47:35.687" LastActivityDate="2010-12-16T17:47:35.687" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="723" CreationDate="2010-12-08T02:18:05.087" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to write your second novel, and then maybe even a third, before doing anything else.  You'll learn SO MUCH from writing two or three, that it will help you to go back and make your first one even better (or, if you're like me, recognize it for the heap of rotting garbage that it is and toss it).  As far as I know, it is incredibly rare for someone to sell their first novel.  And I've read on more than once occasion that this is a good thing.  Writers grow as they write, and it's not always good for readers to see us in our very early, learning stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying you shouldn't try and market it, mind you!  I hope you can; I hope it's good enough and does great and we all get to enjoy it someday. :-) But you might very seriously consider writing a bit more before you do anything else with it just yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-08T02:18:05.087" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="134" CreationDate="2010-12-08T02:49:04.340" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some writers produce better stuff when they plan and outline and world-build a lot. They're  sometimes called &lt;strong&gt;outliners&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some work better by just jumping in and writing (&lt;strong&gt;discovery writers&lt;/strong&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone is different, but you can learn which one you are (or rather, where you sit on the continuum between the two extremes) by &lt;strong&gt;trying both&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a recent story, I began by planning plot, setting and characters enough until I could see key scenes appearing in my imagination. At that point I made myself stop outlining and &lt;em&gt;actually wrote&lt;/em&gt; some of those key scenes to &quot;flesh them out&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting the whole scene on paper helped me learn a lot about my plot, and characters. I saw some problems and had some great ideas. So I went back and changed my outline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did the opposite, too - after writing a few more scenes out, I returned to the outline to see if I liked the direction I was going. I fiddled with the outline to improve a few things, then used that to chop and change the written scenes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problems you need to avoid are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outlining too much and never getting started with the actual writing (the Writing Excuses guys call this &quot;World-Builder's disease&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jumping in with no planning and writing thousands of words that never go anywhere&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I ended up doing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://mgowen.com/2010/12/13/writing-fiction-outliner-or-discovery-writer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;more detailed post&lt;/a&gt; about this on my blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="67" LastEditDate="2015-08-29T10:11:19.190" LastActivityDate="2015-08-29T10:11:19.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-08T04:09:54.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;John Smithers's comment is spot-on.  Start writing now, and you can work on being a better writer as you go.  It's like running competitively.  Professional runners run a lot, every single day.  They don't worry too much about if they're reading the right books about running, they just practice.  Practice writing, then practice editing what you wrote, again and again.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are a lot of resources out there that can make a fine supplement to your writing practice.  A couple of my favorites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/index.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Uncle Orson's Writing Class&lt;/a&gt; - A series of short essays on various writing topics by Orson Scott Card.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&amp;amp;vol=mette_ivie_harrison&amp;amp;article=_index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chopsticks&lt;/a&gt; - Writing Advice by Mette Ivie Harrison&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, I would add that the second best way to improve your writing is to join a good critique group.  This sounds scary to a lot of new writers, but it doesn't have to be.  A good group is supportive and polite, while not being afraid to offer criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting your work critiqued helps you improve, and it also helps you develop a thick skin.  As a writer, you need to be able to accept criticism and use it to your advantage.  And critiquing other people's work will probably improve your writing even more than being critiqued.  It helps you develop a strong internal editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of groups out there.  Some meet in person.  If you're in a metropolitan area, there's probably one or two nearby.  Otherwise, there are many on the web too.  As a spec-fic author, I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critters.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critters&lt;/a&gt;, one of the larger online critique groups.  Conveniently, Critters is currently in the process of expanding to cover genres other than sci-fi/fantasy/horror, so you may want to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critters.org/c/switch.php?redirect=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;check it out&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2010-12-08T04:09:54.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="172" CreationDate="2010-12-08T05:30:30.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting an agent and/or getting published in your own country may be easier than trying to sell your work overseas by yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know the details of how literary agents operate in countries outside the US, but I believe it is fairly common for US literary agencies to have &quot;partner&quot; agencies in other countries.  Then, if a book does well in the US market, the partner agencies can pitch it to publishers in their respective countries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2010-12-08T05:30:30.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="723" CreationDate="2010-12-08T09:38:23.663" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the days of the Internet, where anyone can publish anything he wants (mostly), you can also consider building up your own community of readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is hard work (as everything else) and I do not even want to recommend it. But it is a possibility and you should consider it. A big advantage wold be, that you knew your readers. You do not do that when getting published the traditional way. You will get some fan mails, but are these representative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seth Godin is blogging about digital publishing and community all the time. So he is not publishing fictional books, which is a considerable difference. I prefer a book in my hands when reading fiction. But you also can publish them digital &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; on paper yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read these two blog entries to get an idea:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/08/moving-on.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/08/moving-on.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/12/the-domino-project.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/12/the-domino-project.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-12-08T09:38:23.663" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="723" CreationDate="2010-12-08T15:49:24.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First&#xA;Get some close friends, preferably a variety of types of people, to read it and give you feedback. There's nothing like other perspectives. I've also been a fan of Stephen King's advice to let it sit a bit and then go back and read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publishing&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I'd suggest a multi-prong approach. J.A. Konrath has some interesting advice on &lt;a href=&quot;http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;his blog&lt;/a&gt;. I might hold back my ebook rights and self-publish on Kindle/Nook and see if you can get some sales. You never know if that might help you get a deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/723/i-have-written-my-first-novel-and-i-think-its-ready-what-next/724#724&quot;&gt;The post on Agents&lt;/a&gt; is excellent, and I'd read that a few times. It's probably worth trying to see if there is any interest from agents and if there is a possibility of sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Blog&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I've seen a number of writers use a blog to talk about their book, their craft, discuss their motivations, etc. in the non-fiction world. If you can write something interesting that keeps readers engaged, even teasers from the book, you can build some grass roots interest. This likely isn't going to get you profitable, but it might help you generate some sales, and perhaps more motivation to keep writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2010-12-08T15:49:24.697" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="134" CreationDate="2010-12-08T15:56:21.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you haven't written a novel before, then I would actually recommend doing both the &quot;outliner&quot; and &quot;non-outliner&quot; method that others have talked about here.  And even if you know you're one or the other, I'd still recommend trying to break that routine every once in a while - just to shake things up. I'm a hardcore outliner, but I find that writing stories off the top of my head every once in a while (even if they turn out bad) really helps my creativity and writing ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-08T15:56:21.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="742" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="743" CreationDate="2010-12-09T01:28:53.303" Score="18" ViewCount="19446" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading on here about passive voice but didn't really know what active voice was.  I read some examples but was hoping for more insight.  What does it mean to write with the active voice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T11:34:00.047" Title="What does active voice mean?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="742" CreationDate="2010-12-09T01:40:26.613" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you write in active voice, it means that you're using a standard [subject] [verb] [object] sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jack killed Mary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you use the passive voice, it means that you reverse the subject and the object from the active form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mary was killed by Jack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meaning of the sentence is the same: Jack is doing some killing.  Yet Jack is not the subject and killing is not the main verb.  The sentence emphasizes all the wrong parts of itself by being put in this order.  It uses more words and the picture it gives isn't as clear.  When an action is performed, make sure you use that word as the action verb, and you will do just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-12-09T01:40:26.613" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="754" CreationDate="2010-12-09T04:00:52.397" Score="8" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you finish a story, say a short story, not really intending to publish.  Do you go back and revise it or let it be, starting on another story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastActivityDate="2010-12-09T16:53:08.310" Title="Do you always revise your stories or do you sometimes move on?" Tags="|revision|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="745" CreationDate="2010-12-09T07:04:52.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some stories that are just there to get thoughts out of your head.  For me, if it's a complete story and something that I have the slightest interest in after I have finished a draft, I'll revise it.  It may not happen right away, but give it a while and go back for a revision.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My reasoning behind this is it helps with the stories you ARE intending to publish.  If you can learn to cut out the stuff you don't need and find what is missing in every story you write, even ones you don't necessarily care about, the ones you do care about will be that much better.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="310" LastActivityDate="2010-12-09T07:04:52.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="749" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-09T08:45:18.690" Score="10" ViewCount="4520" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many Movie scripts use a Structure where there are 3 Acts (Setup, Climax, Resolution) with 2 Plot Points (end of Act 1 and end of Act 2) (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_act_structure&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Three Act Structure&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if there are standards for organizing Novels? Most (Fantasy or Sci Fi) Novels that I've read seem to have a lot more Acts and Plot Points and simply a lot more going on, which doesn't surprise me as there is so much more Room for Content in a Novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I just not looking hard enough, or is Act 2 (The Act after all the main Characters are introduced and we move forward towards the finale) simply extremely long?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-26T11:29:37.887" LastActivityDate="2020-10-12T14:37:35.177" Title="Do Novels follow a 3 Act/2 Plot Point structure like most Movie Scripts?" Tags="|novel|structure|3-acts|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="749" CreationDate="2010-12-09T10:39:00.090" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Novels follow that structure, more or less. Following a structure does not mean you have to be its slave. And yes, Act 2 could be that long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at what is important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction: Introduce your characters in the beginning. Coming up with an important character in the last third of the book is disturbing at best.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rising action: You do not have to introduce that much, but describing the main conflict, should take a while. Why do you think have the readers bought your book?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resolution: Your happy end, your sad end, your cliffhanger (well, that's not resolving, but a possibility).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The points sound all straightforward? They are! But you need some structure to keep them in mind. Straightforward things can be easily forgotten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in a more detailed plot structure, maybe you want to have a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hero's journey&lt;/a&gt;. I will not describe the details here. Sounds like a different question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="1053" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T02:07:57.293" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T02:07:57.293" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="751" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-09T11:49:15.067" Score="4" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bachelors and masters degree in Civil Engineering(Final yr Master's student). My hobby is playwriting. Now, I would like to pursue a career in arts. So, I'm looking for some universities which offer degree in playwriting/screen-writing and direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no clue about where to get started. So, I request you guys to guide me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I don't have any degree pertaining to arts now. So, I don't know if I'm eligible for masters. May be I need a bachelors degree first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="312" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T18:26:38.897" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T18:26:38.897" Title="Suggest some arts schools for post-graduate in other field?" Tags="|career|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="751" CreationDate="2010-12-09T14:35:55.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you ought to understand that outside of professional degrees, engineering degrees, and a few others masters degrees are often a negative return on investment - they cost more than they benefit.  Make sure to do a careful analysis before deciding on such a degree, or have a cash flow source that you're willing to spend for little return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide that you want to pursue such a degree, you will want to start searching for a masters of fine arts in playwriting or screenwriting.  Websites such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.universities.com/edu/Masters_degrees_in_Playwriting_and_Screenwriting.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;universities.com&lt;/a&gt; will list school programs, and you can use that information to go to the program site and see what the requirements are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than limiting your focus to masters degrees, however, I would investigate the career path that most successful playwrights or screenwriters have taken and see if an MFA is absolutely required, because it is quite likely to not be a net gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-12-09T14:35:55.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="749" CreationDate="2010-12-09T15:03:51.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The three-act structure is extremely common in novels, although not universal.  I would guess that part of what makes a novel feel different to you is simply the overall length.  Even if you are a fast reader and it's a short novel, reading the book will generally take a lot longer than watching a movie.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the book is longer, all the acts are stretched out.  However, the second act is the &quot;meat&quot; of the story, and it will generally get more than a proportional share of this additional story time.  Even in a very large novel, some readers will be frustrated if the setup or resolution are too long.  Most novels will have a longer second act (proportionally) than movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as with everything, there are exceptions.  Lord of the Rings, for example, has extremely long setup and resolution phases, even in proportion to its impressive length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2010-12-09T15:52:17.297" LastActivityDate="2010-12-09T15:52:17.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="745" CreationDate="2010-12-09T15:24:30.057" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is almost always worth editing.&lt;/strong&gt;  Even if it's Murder She Wrote / Star Wars crossover fanfiction that there will never be a market to publish, it's still worth practicing the art of editing.  You took the time to write the story in the first place.  Why not craft the best story you can?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think something that's often overlooked by inexperienced writers is that there are very different skill sets involved with writing a first draft, vs. repeatedly editing that draft into a tight, well-constructed story.  It took me years of writing before I really began to see how vital editing is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to be more than a &quot;first-draft writer&quot;.  If you find yourself frequently writing a single draft of a story, then tossing it aside, you're missing out on half of the writing experience.  I believe that developing skill at editing your work is considerably harder than getting good at writing first drafts.  Don't miss an opportunity to practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, if there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a market out there for your story, you may realize that after a few revisions, it's worth trying to publish after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2010-12-09T15:48:53.803" LastActivityDate="2010-12-09T15:48:53.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="745" CreationDate="2010-12-09T16:25:12.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I edit everything I write. But this is because if I can't bring myself to care enough about sitting and nursing it after the first draft then I don't care enough to write it in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-09T16:25:12.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="745" CreationDate="2010-12-09T16:53:08.310" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll throw out the need for some space.  I might not go right back to something, so, yes, I'd move on to another story.  But that doesn't mean you abandon it completely.  There's a balance you must strike.  If you get stuck revising something to the point you can't work on something else, I don't see that as helpful.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Revisit the story later.  You never know what you might find with a fresh eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2010-12-09T16:53:08.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="489" CreationDate="2010-12-09T20:45:32.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, you need not be overly worried about originality.  It's all been done before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to know how original your ideas are is to be well-read, especially in the genre(s) you write in.  Read voraciously.  As an added bonus, lots of reading is almost guaranteed to help your writing, too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2010-12-09T20:45:32.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="758" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="760" CreationDate="2010-12-09T20:51:29.997" Score="3" ViewCount="16752" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find myself using the word &quot;that&quot; too much.  How do you really know when you need that &quot;that&quot; word there?  Like just now.  I don't think I need &quot;that&quot; there.  Do you have words you overuse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T14:56:24.243" Title="Do you use the word &quot;that&quot; too much?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-05-19T20:10:29.560" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="489" CreationDate="2010-12-09T21:06:50.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worry more about using phrases and descriptions that I've read somewhere.  They're not trite but I know I've seen them somewhere, describing some thing, and I am afraid I never made it up to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastActivityDate="2010-12-09T21:06:50.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="758" CreationDate="2010-12-09T21:22:28.867" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plenty of writers have little tics like this.  You may find a turn of phrase that you just fall in love with, or it may be something that carries over from the way you speak.  At various points in my life I've found myself overusing parataxis, 'although' and 'however', and probably a few others I can't think of off the top of my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To a certain extent, this is a matter of style.  Only if a particular phrase or word is heavily overused, to the point where it becomes noticeable to the reader, is it a bad thing.  However, there's no obvious line that you cross where style stops and bad writing begins.  It's something you just have to keep your eye on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've already taken the first step by noticing that you frequently use a particular word.  In some cases, you may not realize it until someone points it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to not worry about it too much while you're writing.  It's already in the back of your head.  If you notice that you're really abusing it while you're in the process of writing, feel free to make some adjustments, but don't pause for half an hour just to decide if &quot;this&quot; is really necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best time to work on these tics is after you've written a chunk of prose.  Go back through what you've written and look for the tic.  All modern word processors have a Find feature (usually ctrl-F or command-F) that you can use to quickly find all examples of a particular word or phrase.  As you edit, you can double-check each spot by trying to rewrite it without the word, and comparing it to the original.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really have a hard time deciding, it pays to have a few trusted readers who can take a look as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2010-12-09T21:22:28.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="761" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="988" CreationDate="2010-12-09T22:00:27.400" Score="223" ViewCount="31223" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;axioms&lt;/a&gt; that get tossed around in creative writing courses, books on writing, and of course, the Internet.  Often, these little gems are explained to new writers as though they were fact, to be taken for granted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as often, experienced writers will respond by saying &quot;there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to writing&quot;, or &quot;rules are made to be broken&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the purpose of this question is to provide a place where we can list these axioms or &quot;rules&quot; of writing, and also weigh in on whether they are really self-evident truths or utter garbage (or maybe even something in-between).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please limit each answer to a single &quot;rule&quot; and express your thoughts on it in the answer itself, or in a comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list so far (alphabetically):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/812#812&quot;&gt;Cut adjectives and adverbs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/826#826&quot;&gt;Don't go into great detail describing places or things&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/802#802&quot;&gt;Give yourself permission to suck&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/884#884&quot;&gt;Know the end before you begin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/1388#1388&quot;&gt;Miscellaneous&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/762#762&quot;&gt;Show, don't tell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/774#774&quot;&gt;Stay off the internet while writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/830#830&quot;&gt;Use correct grammar, punctuation and spelling&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/795#795&quot;&gt;Write, don't edit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/991#991&quot;&gt;Writing is rewriting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/1412#1412&quot;&gt;You have to read, and read all the time&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/1427#1427&quot;&gt;You must learn to walk before you can run&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="44041" LastEditDate="2020-06-07T14:45:58.053" LastActivityDate="2022-03-27T17:30:13.657" Title="The &quot;Rules&quot; of Writing" Tags="|technique|style|rules|" AnswerCount="26" CommentCount="7" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-10T00:56:55.640" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2010-12-09T22:01:37.007" Score="184" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Show, Don't Tell&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This may very well be the most popular &amp;quot;rule&amp;quot; of writing.  It refers to the idea that it's better to &amp;quot;show&amp;quot; an event as a scene, rather than simply &amp;quot;telling&amp;quot; the reader what happened.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this is mostly sound advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; us the 5000-year history of your fantasy setting in the prologue.  &lt;em&gt;Show&lt;/em&gt; it to us throughout the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; us the protagonist's girlfriend is beautiful.  &lt;em&gt;Show&lt;/em&gt; us her flowing black hair, her lips perpetually on the verge of smiling, her brown eyes with those eerie golden flecks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; us the thief was nervous.  &lt;em&gt;Show&lt;/em&gt; us how he has to close his eyes and breathe, just to stop his hands from shaking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, sometimes there is information that the reader needs to know to understand the story, but forcing that information into a scene would divert the plot or bore the reader to tears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; us the Senators explaining to each other how the seat of the US government is Washington D.C.  They have no reason to tell each other what they already know.  Instead, just &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; us.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; the young wizard taking a tour of the magical staff factory, when he has no business being there.  Just &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; us that all magical staves are carved from the wood of the whump-whump tree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More discussion can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/54/when-is-it-okay-to-tell&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2020-06-28T01:45:27.447" LastActivityDate="2020-06-28T01:45:27.447" CommentCount="9" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-10T00:56:55.640" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="134" CreationDate="2010-12-10T01:24:42.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, more or less, nothing is actually &quot;necessary&quot;.  Rules are there to be broken, well, maybe.  But they are certainly not there to be followed slavishly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most important for (almost?) all stories are your characters.  Flesh them out.  Maybe... write their detailed biographies.  Including stuff that never will feature in your novel.  Because it gives them background, it puts flesh on the (fictitious) bones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then (and that's what I've read again and again (and again!) being said by any number of famous writers) your characters may surprise you, doing things you wouldn't have expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... plan.  As a rough sketch.  And then &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt;, and see if what you write is actually going where you though it would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But find you &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; way.  Which may require some experimentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T01:24:42.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2010-12-10T04:24:16.257" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A map can be a nice touch, or it can be a hindrance. Are there are particular scenes where a map would let you snip out several paragraphs of tedious explanation? If there are only one or two such scenes, this need might be better served by simply putting a rough map in those places, possibly even inline with the text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that a lot of fantasy books have maps in the front of the book because Tolkien Did It First. It's worth keeping in mind that Tolkien created the languages and terrain of Middle Earth before writing the story, and Lord of the Rings grew out of his intense world-building efforts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, there's no shame in using a map to save yourself some work, but only use a map if there's a good story reason to have one. If a map is tacked on and not needed, it's just ornamentation and a mood-setting element; these are good and valuable things, but you're best off not spending energy now on what may be an art director's call down the road. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-12-10T05:36:35.180" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T05:36:35.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2010-12-10T05:59:59.607" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice is to start collecting names in a file on your computer. I've have categories of names that have appealed to me over the years. For example, one of my favorite categories is &quot;computer generated names&quot;. Some of them are hilarious: Zhamak Boobs, Parveen Farmiloe, Jimbo Razi, Hercules Hook. I got these from computer generated spam who's 'sender' names were obviously created by a computer program choosing to combine list elements from various lists of peoples names and objects. But I collect real names too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T05:59:59.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="758" CreationDate="2010-12-10T09:49:02.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to know, if you use particular words too much, count them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I gave &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/665/something-different-help-me-find-the-unnecessary-words/707#707&quot;&gt;one answer&lt;/a&gt; where I explain a revision process from Andreas Eschbach. At point four (marking filler words) you also can mark words like &quot;that&quot; or other suspicious candidates. When you have done that, count them and put that info into an Excel sheet. Over time you will see which word you use how often, especially compared to the other words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find out, that you use &quot;maybe&quot; 1000 times when you used in the same text &quot;perhaps&quot; 10 times, then &lt;em&gt;maybe&lt;/em&gt; you use &quot;maybe&quot; too often. You can decide , if you want to replace it with alternatives (like &quot;perhaps&quot; if appropriate) or just remove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T09:49:02.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="189" CreationDate="2010-12-10T12:27:46.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a little research on UK copyright, and there is a small amount of information at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-about/c-auto.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UK Intellectual Property Office website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It recommends sending a copy by post (special delivery) and leaving it unopened to prove the date it was in your possession. Whilst this does not prove you created it, or own it, it does prove that you had the work in your possession at a fixed date and time, which when use in court will help prove your ownership. It also suggests sending it to a solicitor or lawyer or bank, but this will cost money, and does not add any extra evidence (apart from it maybe more securely held, and less likely to be lost!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="69" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T12:27:46.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2010-12-10T13:46:35.890" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;One bit to add about names: if you use fantasy names (because you are, like, writing a fantasy story ;-), take care to make them &lt;em&gt;consistent&lt;/em&gt;.  Meaning names of people belonging to the same race/people/whatever need to sound/feel &quot;similar&quot; in style.  Hard to give an example (I'm bad at finding fantasy names myself :D), but... well, if you give all characters that come from the same region of your world names with lots of accents, then it would look &lt;em&gt;weird&lt;/em&gt; (and feel wrong) if suddenly someone from that regions shows up and is called &quot;Bruno&quot;.  Except...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastEditorUserId="317" LastEditDate="2011-07-24T03:01:19.463" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T03:01:19.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2010-12-10T15:28:18.220" Score="96" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Stay off the Internet when you're writing.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's no timeworn tidbit, but I'll venture it's axiomatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A timely example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ten minutes ago I was primed to cap off a chapter. Now here I am, chapter-capless, browsing and clicking and typing and web-clipping, pasting notes that will make great endings or even greater stored kilobytes I'll never again ask my CPU to recall. All because I took a moment's peek into the web to see if Liu Xiaobo is trending this morning. Same goes for &lt;strong&gt;You&lt;/strong&gt;, about to comment on what I posted: If this is your dedicated writing time, go away. Get offline. Online's wonderful and time-pilfering diversions will still be here when we return during less valuable hours-- such as while we set about our day jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T15:28:18.220" CommentCount="8" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-10T15:28:18.220" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="775" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="778" CreationDate="2010-12-10T15:29:16.360" Score="6" ViewCount="1283" Body="&lt;p&gt;By &quot;How long&quot; I'm assuming from the time they actually start trying to actively publish to the time they finally get published. For example, I've been writing since I was 10 years old - but if I ever (finally) publish a book one of these days, I'm certainly not going to tell people that it took me 20 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that the time frames will also vary, but I am wondering if there are any general patterns. I've known far too many people who have churned out a book in six months and expected to become a famous, published author right away. I don't expect that - I've been trying for three years. But it can become discouraging sometimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not interested in self-publishing, by the way. This is a question specifically addressing the 'traditional' publishing industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would especially be interested in hearing from people who have actually gotten a book published - how long it took them to get to that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Edited the title question for clarity's sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastEditorUserId="225" LastEditDate="2010-12-10T15:36:31.363" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T11:09:25.400" Title="How long can a writer expect to write before publishing his/her first novel?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="775" CreationDate="2010-12-10T15:43:46.913" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I published my first book after about 11 months. This was a technical book, I was approached by a publisher after I had written a number of articles in different places. I spent a hard 7-8 months writing and then 3 months later it was published and released. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The computer/technical industry operates on a fairly tight schedule, they typically approach authors, a schedule is agreed to, they often need to find replacement authors, and you have a bounded subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think for fiction and other types of non-fiction, schedules/timelines may be much different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T15:43:46.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="775" CreationDate="2010-12-10T15:56:34.037" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would encourage you to not compare yourself to other authors. I understand you're just trying to get a ballpark estimate, but in this case, the ballpark is gigantic.  The figures aren't really useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long you've been writing, in terms of days, weeks, months and years, is just not a very useful figure for comparison.  How much have you been reading?  Do you write every day?  How much do you write per day?  Do you write short stories in addition to novels?  Do you get critiqued regularly?  What genre are you writing?  How much do you edit each page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even two people who have the exact same answers to these questions could have wildly different outcomes.  You might have a harder time getting your book in front of the right publisher.  Your book may have a smaller or larger market, and thus be easier to sell.  The variables are endless, and each difference can change the equation by years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all get discouraged.  It's just what happens in a profession as variable as writing, with people as unstable as writers.  Buck up.  You're not alone, not by a long shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When professional writers are asked about the most important trait for a new writer to develop, almost all of them say the same thing: persistence.  Keep writing, editing and submitting.  Once you submit something, get to work on the next project.  And the next.  If you care enough to try to improve and you keep sending things out, you will eventually succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get hung up on numbers.  It would be a shame to decide that it will take three years (or somesuch) to get published, and then give up if you don't hit that mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T15:56:34.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="775" CreationDate="2010-12-10T15:57:34.217" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends &lt;em&gt;highly&lt;/em&gt; on the genre. @Way0utwest has responded with a technical non-fiction article. For novelists, the numbers are a lot longer, and the number I hear tossed around a lot is &quot;ten years&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jimchines.com/2010/03/survey-results/#Overnight&quot;&gt;Here's a detailed post&lt;/a&gt; that surveys a wide variety of published novelists and asks them that question, with an extremely informative breakdown of the responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T15:57:34.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="189" CreationDate="2010-12-10T16:02:25.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I post a copyright notice on things I publish/blog on the Internet. IANAL, but AFAIK, it's copyrighted when you write it and release it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proving that is something else. Ultimately it would be a judgment call in court. did you write it first, and can you prove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are really worried, get a lawyer and use them to hold copies of your work with some type of signature/affadavit on the vessel storing the work, or even use a safe-deposit box and do the same thing, with recorded dates of entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T16:02:25.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="178" CreationDate="2010-12-10T16:27:14.320" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably the greatest example of a non-native speaker who wrote in English would be Joseph Conrad: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad&lt;/a&gt;. Also, Oscar Wilde wrote in French (Salome) as did Samuel Beckett (after Waiting for Godot).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be: listen and read. Hear as much spoken English as you can to get the rhythm and flow; read as much as you can to see it put together. Journal in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But yes, you will be rediscovering both your style and your voice in English. The process may come faster, but it's going to be a process similar to what you have already completed in Russian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An aside on translators: Translation is, in of itself, a creative act. A &quot;good translator&quot; is very hard to find, and as subjective as &quot;good art&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was fluent in French, and have written some in French when it was appropriate for what I wanted from the piece, but I never quite felt I reached the clarity of style or voice I have in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the English language may have simple rules, but the exceptions are near endless. I suspect that would make it a difficult language in which to achieve a fluid style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="321" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T16:27:14.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="312" CreationDate="2010-12-10T16:43:02.273" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not just write the story the way the story needs to be written, and &lt;strong&gt;then&lt;/strong&gt; worry (if at all) about if it's palatable to some hypothetical publisher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T16:43:02.273" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="178" CreationDate="2010-12-10T17:38:52.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You absolutely can be a success as a writer if you don't speak (or write) English as a native language. One of my &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; freelance writers is German. I think he spoke English fluently before he began writing in English, but that may not be the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may mean that you have to work harder during the edit process. But working hard isn't a bad thing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="202" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T17:38:52.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="758" CreationDate="2010-12-10T17:45:09.597" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In editing hundreds (maybe thousands) of articles, I've found all authors have some kind of authorial tic: expressions that they use a lot, a tendency to use one verb tense over another, etc. Sometimes this is part of their personal voice; other times it's too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're writing, don't worry about it. Just get your thoughts written down on the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time to remove your Needless Words is during the edit process. Nearly always I have to take out the word &quot;really&quot; from my own essays; that's the word I'm most likely to overuse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="202" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T17:45:09.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="758" CreationDate="2010-12-10T18:31:59.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you ever come across a website called autocrit.com into whose web forms you surrender your latest draft so that the site may return a list of excessivenesses from your prose: things like, “You used six initial ing words. Try to remove at least four”? Or “You had only two instances of &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; and four of &lt;em&gt;was/were&lt;/em&gt;. Good job!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one writing forum, the algorithm got reviews along the lines of “don’t believe what it tells you” and “AutoCrit will ruin your writing!” I never purchased the large-scale AutoCrit service, but I feel okay surmising that it was less a prose killer than a tool that took care of CTRL+F for you and offered a statistical reminder of the line that @sjohnston was talking about in an earlier answer, an indistinct line separating style from unmindful recurrences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it’s a good thing you do, watching out for &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; the pronoun, &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; the conjunction, even &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; the adjective and adverb. With so many uses for the little tyke, it in particular needs an eye (or an ear) on its lookout (or soundout).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T18:31:59.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="236" CreationDate="2010-12-10T19:41:02.780" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't really comment accurately on your particular examples, but royalties and payments can become quite complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, there is often an &lt;em&gt;advance against royalties&lt;/em&gt; to consider initially.  This advance is up-front money for the author, and is typically paid when the book goes to print.  I have read that publishers will often shoot for an advance to equal what they expect author royalties to be in the first year the book is out.  However, bigger names get larger advances, and a good agent may be able to wheedle a slightly better one as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When royalties start coming in, they first go against the advance.  (If the book never sells enough copies for the royalties to reach the advance amount, the author still keeps the full advance.) Until the author profit reaches that advance number, they don't actually see any of it.  Once the author's earnings exceed the advance, they'll begin getting payments on a schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Royalties can also be tiered, meaning that if you sell X number of books, the royalty rate increases, and if you sell Y books above that, it increases again, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, the royalty rate depends largely on the type of print run.  Hardcovers have higher royalties (and higher prices), so hardcover runs will be more profitable at an equal number of sales.  Trade paperbacks typically have lower royalty rates, and mass market paperbacks even lower.  Adding to the complication is that a book that has an initial hardcover run is often reprinted a while later in one or more paperback forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E-books are still a new product, and as such, the rates are in subject to fluctuate.  E-books may be released simultaneously with hardcover or paperback editions, or separately, and their pricing varies considerably depending on that release timing, the publisher, the author's name, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeff Bezos's&lt;/a&gt; mood and the current celestial alignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some &quot;average&quot; royalty rates, that you should take with a grain of salt, for all the reasons already stated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hardcover: 10 - 15%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paperback (Trade and Mass Market): 7.5 - 12.5%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E-books: 25% (many in the biz suspect this could soon go as high as 40%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also remember that agents will typically take 15% of the author's portion as their commission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sources (by no means comprehensive): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fictionfactor.com/guests/advancesroyalties.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royalties#Book_publishing_royalties&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2007/02/basics-of-publishing-contracts.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T19:41:02.780" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="787" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="822" CreationDate="2010-12-10T21:57:10.973" Score="10" ViewCount="2436" Body="&lt;p&gt;How many words are normal for a children's novel? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say 5th - 8th grade, if that's the best way to measure it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastEditorUserId="7" LastEditDate="2010-12-11T15:52:55.367" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T18:49:13.580" Title="What's a normal word count for a children's novel or collection?" Tags="|wordcount|children|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="189" CreationDate="2010-12-10T23:06:15.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copyright laws tend to be similar everywhere, because most countries adhere to the Berne Convention.  Details may vary, and of course enforcement can also between countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T23:06:15.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="189" CreationDate="2010-12-10T23:31:55.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the U.S. and other Berne Convention signatories, you own the copyright in a creative work as soon as it is fixed in a tangible form (e.g., a computer file). You do not need to register to have a valid copyright. However, you do need to register before you can file suit against someone for copyright infringement. You do not need to have registered before the infringement occurred, but if you did not, your claim is limited to your actual damages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Registration is considered &lt;em&gt;prima facie&lt;/em&gt; evidence that you own the copyright, which means that the court will consider you the owner of the work unless compelling evidence to the contrary is offered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, mailing yourself a copy of your manuscript does not hold up in court because it does not provide evidence of authorship of the work, merely of its existence at a particular time, and not even strong evidence of that (since you can mail unsealed envelopes, steam them open and reseal them, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2010-12-10T23:31:55.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="236" CreationDate="2010-12-11T00:23:27.153" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two answers here, both from established writers. These are not necessarily any sort of average, but more they are specific cases to understand where you could stand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lynn Viehl had a 100k print run and a NYT bestseller in fiction. She wrote about her experience &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.genreality.net/the-reality-of-a-times-bestseller&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.genreality.net/more-on-the-reality-of-a-times-bestseller&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and I'm waiting on the next one. She received a $50k advance, with sales of roughly 61k. She has not earned back her advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second thing is JA Konrath, who has done a lot of Kindle publishing (also has print deals). He has written a lot of posts on his sales, but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/12/ebooks-sales-slowing-yes-and-no.html&quot;&gt;latest post&lt;/a&gt; has him earning $26k from his book sin the last six weeks. That extrapolates to $200k. Note that he has multiple titles selling here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2010-12-11T00:23:27.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="550" CreationDate="2010-12-11T01:34:20.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's best if the dialogue can convey what needs to be expressed rather than relying on dialogue tags.  It's a variation of show-don't-tell.  Let me hear what the character wants, feels, or is thinking, rather than telling me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the dialogue tells me the character is upset, there's no reason to add more information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I can't stand the way he treated me,&quot; she said.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I can't stand the way he treated me,&quot; she complained.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I can't stand the way he treated me,&quot; she complained bitterly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gets worse as you go down the list.  Even the first &quot;she said&quot; is unnecessary if the reader already knows who's speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One writer who practiced effective dialogue was James Cain.  His dialogue is spare and direct, often with no &quot;she said&quot; or &quot;he asked&quot; at all.  Because he could set up a scene well and get his characters to express themselves in vivid and powerful language, they could do all the talking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="56" LastActivityDate="2010-12-11T01:34:20.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-11T07:27:05.087" Score="25" ViewCount="3057" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write non-fiction articles for my website and a weekly paid newsletter, and I’m doing that for some time now. However, I still struggle a lot with self-criticism, and find it hard to regard an article as “good”, let alone something I’m proud of. Rationally, I know that I am competent at writing, and often I look forward to writing something. So, I'm motivated to write, and procrastination isn't a very big issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as soon as I sit down to actually write something, I discard a lot of ideas as “not good enough&quot;. When I do start writing, I criticize my own article, which more often than not results in not finishing it or not publicizing it. This greatly limits my productive output, and more important, my joy in writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did a search on this site for self-criticism and perfectionism, and found little to no answers. I don’t think I’m the only (article) writer who struggles with this, so I can’t imagine how tough writing a complete novel would be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So my question is:&lt;/em&gt; how do you deal with self-criticism? And how do you prevent perfectionism limiting your productive output and joy in writing? I know the obvious answer would be ‘just write’, but I find that just writing something is often not sufficient (but perhaps I'm wrong in that assumption). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="324" LastEditorUserId="4091" LastEditDate="2012-11-09T03:28:45.783" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T03:28:45.783" Title="How to deal with self-criticism?" Tags="|technique|publishing|habits|criticism|" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2010-12-11T11:29:48.263" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Just write&quot; is the first part of your answer. You have to kick your personal editor out of your head while writing. He is silencing your voice of creativity, so silence him! You need him &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you have written everything down, not before and not while you are writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part is: find other critics. Not your friends, not your family. People who tell you the truth! You will hate them for telling you the truth and you will trust them for doing it. Then you've found a much better indicator for the quality of your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-12-11T11:29:48.263" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2010-12-11T11:44:13.697" Score="100" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Write, Don't Edit!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important rule of all. Everything else is secondary. Even &amp;quot;Show, don't tell&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the editor in your head you have to fight. He is nagging you: &amp;quot;You can't do that! What garbage have you written here? Are you serious? You will never be a good writer if you keep doing scribbling this nonsense!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, you can do, you are serious and you scribble all the &amp;quot;nonsense&amp;quot; you like. &lt;strong&gt;You have to!&lt;/strong&gt; Every idea that flashes through your head, write it down. Kick out your editor, kick him hard. The truth is, that more than 90% is garbage, what you are writing. But you will never write down the 10% which are really brilliant if you listen to your editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever started to write a letter or a paragraph of your book, found a spelling error, a grammar error, and stopped writing? Have corrected the error, thought about how you can formulate that better? And after you let your editor interrupt yourself, have you tried to finish your paragraph and did not know, what the hell you wanted to write? It was all gone. You were sitting there for twenty more minutes to make something up, when you knew what you wanted to write, when you started. But you listened to the bastard in your head, the editor, and now it's all gone. Silence him! Write, don't edit. You have plenty of time editing, when everything is written down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2020-06-28T01:47:58.017" LastActivityDate="2020-06-28T01:47:58.017" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-11T11:44:13.697" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="796" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="798" CreationDate="2010-12-11T14:17:39.543" Score="55" ViewCount="5222" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a planner in the extreme. I tend to drift toward fantasy oriented novels when writing; it's just what comes out. This means that I do quite a bit of planning for the world that the story will be set in. I know that's not a bad thing, but I have noticed that I have a tendency to get bogged down in specific events - especially historical events. I'll find myself describing entire battles or diplomatic missions or even important local events as though they were the story itself - and almost none of that is &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; going to even show up in the story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really enjoy that preparation, but eventually my notes become so unwieldy, it's hard to actually sit down and write the story while keeping it all straight. Not to mention that it's kind of wasting time when I could be writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are: Is there a helpful way to gauge when &quot;enough is enough&quot;? How do I put an end to this world builder's syndrome I've got? Or at least keep it in check? Does anyone have any advice on how know when it might be necessary to do some more fleshed-out preparation and when it's just wasting time (and accumulating too many notes)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, my average preparation results in something on the order of 150,000+ words (the most I've ever written is 300,000). In other words, I consistently find myself writing a novel before I even write my novel. And I &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; it's hindering more than helping me. I just don't even realize I'm doing it most of the time until it's too late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[And, of course, less than a month after asking this question, there is a wonderful post which answers most all of my questions on Patricia Wrede's blog: &lt;a href=&quot;http://pcwrede.com/blog/obsessive-overbuilding/&quot;&gt;http://pcwrede.com/blog/obsessive-overbuilding/&lt;/a&gt; - it is well worth reading if you're interested in this topic.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T23:42:53.063" LastActivityDate="2019-12-05T22:51:32.393" Title="How does one deal with world builder's syndrome?" Tags="|planning|world-building|discipline|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2010-12-11T14:42:45.967" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/brainstorm_block.htm&quot;&gt;Overcoming Writer's Block&lt;/a&gt;. It's hard as hell, but you have to push past it and keep writing. You've got be prepared to let your first draft suck. Finish it, and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; edit it. Maybe leave yourself little notes as you work through it: &quot;This sucks, but I'll &lt;strong&gt;fix it in the redraft&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, and keep going. Whatever you do, keep going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="329" LastActivityDate="2010-12-11T14:42:45.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="796" CreationDate="2010-12-11T15:48:55.753" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having more details than you need, is not a bad thing per se. Many writers do that, and it often leads to an authentic world, even if the reader isn't aware of all these details. It is especially helpful, if you plan a long series of books for the same world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you are describing procrastination. You do not want to start, so you do other things, which seem more important. That's how I find the time to clean my bathroom. It's a useful thing to do, but the truth is, you are deferring your real work: writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two suggestions for your situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Short term approach: Despotic rule: Start writing your novels without any rules. Play the capricious Almighty of your fantasy world and make rules up as you go. If you have become obsessed with one thing, try the complete opposite approach. Then hopefully you find the middle course yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Long term approach: There are a lot of books out there dealing with procrastination. Pick one (and only one; do not read one after the other; that's procrastination again). Look at the advice and take out of the book what you need. There will be no single book, which is exactly suitable for your situation.  They are only useful to give you some ideas, how to get back to work. (If you have no idea, which book you should take: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0142000280&quot;&gt;Getting Things done&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is one of the most popular - meritedly or not).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="3147" LastEditDate="2012-01-21T14:29:40.330" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T14:29:40.330" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2010-12-11T17:35:24.973" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you ever looked back over your old writing?  With a &lt;strong&gt;positive&lt;/strong&gt; look?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I caught myself going &quot;This is a great turn of phrase&quot; in some old email and then realized that email was &lt;em&gt;mine&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... go back over your previous stuff and try to find the &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; bits.  Don't dwell too much on the bad bits (you won't, very likely, be able to totally ignore it, natch).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-criticism isn't bad per se.  Being hindered, nay, &lt;strong&gt;paralyzed&lt;/strong&gt; by self-criticism, that's bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also the bane of all perfectionists... but being a perfectionist is &lt;strong&gt;good&lt;/strong&gt;.  Just being paralyzed is bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastActivityDate="2010-12-11T17:35:24.973" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2010-12-11T19:04:43.620" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To give a more philosophical point of view, your opinion of your own work as a whole really doesn't matter.  Finding out what you're doing relatively better and worse is important, as is having some way of knowing whether you're improving or not.  Write, and let other people decide how good it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastActivityDate="2010-12-11T19:04:43.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="796" CreationDate="2010-12-11T19:10:42.133" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're still getting novels written, and don't have a pressing need to write them faster, I'd just go with what you're doing.  Make the world real to you, and it'll show up in the story.  Have maps (just don't be afraid to mess with them as needed) and backstory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things that stands out in Tolkien's work is the feel that Middle-Earth is a real place, and that is because of all the back story he did.  You may not be as good a writer (most people aren't), but you can still emulate some of the good stuff he did.  Another fantasy writer who had a truly extensive background is M.A.R. Barker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastActivityDate="2010-12-11T19:10:42.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2010-12-12T01:29:18.600" Score="120" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Give yourself permission to suck.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say just write bad stuff, but don't stress about the quality of your writing when you are writing it. Stressing about the quality of the work can keep you from writing and even cause writer's block. You have to accept that what you write won't be perfect at first, but you can fix it when you do your edits and rewrites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2010-12-13T18:57:53.883" LastActivityDate="2010-12-13T18:57:53.883" CommentCount="9" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-12T01:29:18.600" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="806" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-12T13:46:37.220" Score="4" ViewCount="2968" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on how to convince your publisher that your story is good, and that it would be a good idea to publish it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T23:20:24.027" Title="How do you convince your publisher that your story is good?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="807" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="814" CreationDate="2010-12-12T17:21:13.647" Score="13" ViewCount="1222" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main character of a YA story I am working on is fast becoming a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath&quot;&gt;polymath&lt;/a&gt;, i.e. someone with a broad base of skills and interests across unrelated areas of endeavor.  I really like how this character is developing; I feel that the experience of having to pick up so many things in his first year living in a new environment sets the stage for adaptations he'll have to make later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that, as a pretty extreme polymath myself, I don't know how to gauge whether he is becoming &quot;too much&quot; of one -- to the point that readers who aren't polymaths would find him unrealistic or hard to identify with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His early development will have effects that ripple through the rest of the story, so I'm not sure that finishing this part (it heading toward the 200 page mark) then rewriting the whole thing if he strikes a few well-chosen reviewers the wrong way, is how I should proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T20:33:06.240" Title="The polymath's dilemma...?" Tags="|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="807" CreationDate="2010-12-12T18:22:32.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've run across enough polymaths in Real Life to be both empathetic and (a bit) jealous. Keep him in there; maybe even find Yet Another Interest to explore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Bruce H. Johnson" LastActivityDate="2010-12-12T18:22:32.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="806" CreationDate="2010-12-12T21:55:55.703" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the publisher does not want to publish your story, then at least one of these is true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The goodness isn't in the text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The text is good, and the publisher doesn't recognize it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The publisher's idea of &quot;good&quot; differs from yours in ways that matter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The publisher has reasons that outweigh the goodness of your story (e.g. more than enough stories that better fit their needs).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd focus on #1. To convince the publisher, you'd have to say something that isn't in the text. If there's something relevant to say that isn't in the text, that is a sign that the text does not yet sufficiently convey the goodness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice for #1: Improve the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for #2, proceeding under the assumption that the publisher doesn't recognize the goodness of your story is fraught with peril. If the assumption is true, that means they don't know what they're doing. If they do know what they're doing, then your attempt to persuade will be at best a waste of time, and at worst insulting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice for #2: Whenever you catch yourself imagining that a publisher just can't see the goodness in your story, try to find another interpretation. If you can't find another interpretation, reconsider whether you really want to publish with a publisher who doesn't know what they are doing. And make note of how often you insist on this interpretation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for #3 and #4, those are all signs that this is not the right publisher for this story at this time. If a story comes close to meeting a publisher's needs, they'll usually tell you that, and clearly. Otherwise the story probably is not within range of persuasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice for #3 and #4: Seek publishers whose current skills, preferences, and business model match your story more closely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2010-12-12T21:55:55.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="807" CreationDate="2010-12-12T22:15:34.657" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In stories that I have read involving similar characters, I never had a problem with the absorption of skills as long as the scope and depth were appropriate for the time spent.  For example, someone who already plays several string instruments picking up a new one in an hour is fine, someone who has never played music doing the same is not (well, to be honest, one such latent talent per customer is still probably OK as long as it is well done).  If you are concerned about believability, lay some ground work or bump up the internal dialog during skill discovery.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the character really learning totally new skills, or is he applying current skills to new situations in novel ways by drawing parallels that a more average individual would not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2010-12-12T22:15:34.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="796" CreationDate="2010-12-12T22:30:18.413" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reuse the worlds!  Force yourself to write novels within the worlds you have created until the number of background pages is eclipsed by the number of story pages.  Surely that much detail will give you more than one story.  Let the stories be unrelated, you don't have to write a series, just stay on the same planet/in the same universe.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has the additional benefit of allowing readers to be shown the rules one time and then never have to be told again. Specific examples include using Tolken elves, dwarves, etc. without having to explain what it means to be an elf/dwarf.&#xA;credit =&gt; Nathan C. Tresch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-04-29T19:16:27.643" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T19:16:27.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2010-12-13T01:12:51.433" Score="104" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Cut Adjectives and Adverbs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &amp;quot;rule&amp;quot; is often stated more forcefully as &amp;quot;remove all adjectives and adverbs,&amp;quot; but, like most of these rules, I don't think it should be blindly followed.  Sometimes, an adjective or an adverb is the best way to get across exactly what you're trying to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main time to avoid using them is when a stronger noun or verb would get the same point across.  This is really just a specific application of a broader rule: &lt;strong&gt;never use two words when one will suffice&lt;/strong&gt;.  Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Replace &amp;quot;The &lt;em&gt;huge man&lt;/em&gt; loomed over him&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;The &lt;em&gt;giant&lt;/em&gt; loomed over him.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Replace &amp;quot;John &lt;em&gt;ran quickly&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;John &lt;em&gt;sprinted&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, however, that in most of these cases the two-word combination will have slightly different connotations than the single-word replacement.  These differences are worth thinking about.  Just ask yourself if what you're trying to say is worth that extra word.  Think especially hard if you're using more than one adjective or adverb, as these can really stand out to readers as being overly verbose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, adjectives and adverbs shouldn't be cut simply on principle, but a good rule of thumb is to look at each one and double-check that it's really worth having.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More discussion &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/439/when-modifiers-should-be-avoided&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2020-06-28T01:46:43.663" LastActivityDate="2020-06-28T01:46:43.663" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-13T01:12:51.433" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="807" CreationDate="2010-12-13T03:03:55.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;When has the character picked up too many skills and interests to be found realistic?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the point you seem to be describing, he already has. In this reader's view, anyway. But that does not mean readers can't identify with him or like him or that he can't carry us through the book. We have a large capacity to not just love MacGyvers and da Vincis but to also root for and feel for them, in both created life and real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character out of control might truly be in need of a down-dressing or a heartbreaking deletion. If you're writing about, say, Paul Robeson, however, the key might not be to downplay his talents but to let readers know how he earned them. Even if the character is unbelievably polymathic, the solution might be to let her go on being that way while making sure readers have reason to gladly suspend disbelief. You have all of the tools of story at your disposal for reinforcement or, if you choose to go about it as such, for diversion: themes, plot, interactions, setting, other characters, the same character's other and perhaps less than revered traits, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As readers, we're content-- sometimes thrilled-- to let plenty of clearly fictional qualities slide when we're enjoying the rest of the fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2010-12-13T03:03:55.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="807" CreationDate="2010-12-13T04:14:11.853" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're asking yourself this question, you may well have a problem, or... this could be normal writers' insecurity.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sherlock Holmes, say, was a polymath who was believable &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; he was an unbearably obnoxious person who loved to show off his genius; James Bond is also a bit of a polymath in ins field, but impatient, careless, and a misogynistic womanizer; in both cases, these characters are pretty much infallible in their fields. (Almost.) We suspend disbelief, but Holmes and Bond are firmly two-dimensional. Does your character have vulnerabilities that would make them three-dimensional and believable?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can this character have reasonably picked up these skills within a normal human lifetime?  Is it believable that this character has skill A &lt;em&gt;as well as&lt;/em&gt; skill B, and so on? If the skills are somehow related, you'll have an easier time selling them to the reader. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a few options when it comes to fleshing out such a character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rewrite the character to either take out a few skills, or better yet, make the character a little shaky in some of them. Why should life be easy? If all problems are solvable, there's less conflict and danger. The skilled pilot is less interesting than the guy who's taken a few lessons having to &lt;em&gt;land that plane&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cast the character as two or more characters. That introduces other problems, and could kill any momentum you've got going. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add some backstory to make these skills believable. Be careful with this one; you want to hint at why the protagonist knows how to fix a jet engine with a Leatherman &lt;em&gt;while it's running&lt;/em&gt;, not tell an unrelated story about that time in a B-52 flying over hostile territory with an enemy agent trying to sabotage the mission. See how distracting that is? A fun backstory can easily take away from the main story unless it's very carefully crafted to move the main plot forward.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask yourself, since this character has picked up skills [foo], what would have driven someone to know all these things? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still can't make up your mind about whether or not you have &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue&quot;&gt;a problem character&lt;/a&gt; in your story, you could decide to temporarily not worry about it, take advantage of the momentum you have going and finish the book, put it in a drawer, and look at it with fresh eyes in a week or two. (Number one piece of advice for writers: keep writing!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this advice is a shot in the dark without reading your work, of course, so please read this with several large salt licks handy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2010-12-13T04:14:11.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="807" CreationDate="2010-12-13T05:29:41.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't worry about it. Being sorta good at a few different things is very believable, and quite common. A real polymath is pretty rare. For example, I know a guy who has had a painting in the Philadelphia Museum, a scientific invention in the LA Museum of Science and Industry, 20+ scientific papers published in top scientific journals and a patent sponsored by NASA on one of his inventions, 2 essays of his in textbooks on creative writing, written over 50 songs (music and lyrics) and performed them on TV, radio, and in such venues as the Whiskey in LA (playing lead guitar and keyboards). He has both a degree in Fine Arts from the top Art School in the US, and a PhD in a hard science for one of the top 10 universities in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's a true polymath, having achieved master-level skill at many different fields, as his record demonstrates. (BTW, he is very shy and hides his accomplishments. You have to know him for years before he will talk about himself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This person is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; believable (although a real person), and writing about someone like that is a mistake. But writing about someone like, for example, James Bond, or Roarke from the J.D. Robb books is not a problem. Most of what is called 'polymathic' is not, it is simply someone with a few skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastActivityDate="2010-12-13T05:29:41.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="817" CreationDate="2010-12-13T08:27:13.150" Score="10" ViewCount="986" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the procedure if you want to set a story in a world created by someone else?&lt;br/&gt;If, after reading someone else's novel I came up with some neat plot that would fit into that novel's world, but would be a separate story from the original, with maybe some peripheral contact with some of the originals characters; is it allowed? Can I do it without explicit permission (I think doing this would at the very least be extremely discourteous)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My gut-feel is that it involves some kind of IP that requires permission/deal of some kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="134" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-12-14T06:44:26.163" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T00:52:12.227" Title="Using a world created by someone else for your own fiction" Tags="|world-building|plot|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="816" CreationDate="2010-12-13T09:01:08.607" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I promise you, if you do it without permission and get published nonetheless, they will sue the shit out of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to ask for permission, there will be legal contracts, because the world's &quot;owner&quot; wants money, your story must really fit and must not disrupt anything the owner wants to do in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you have a name and are already published, you maybe have a chance, if you are a nobody, then I suggest finding your own world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are Universes which are written by several authors (e.g. Shadowrun). If you want to write for one of these worlds, contact the organization owning the rights to this Universe. They can tell you what they expect and what you have to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="5085" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T20:14:01.180" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T20:14:01.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="816" CreationDate="2010-12-13T09:44:39.070" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are writing it to make money: don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the world created gives you inspiration and makes you sit down and write for hours, then go ahead and do it. It's your mind, and you can write whatever you want as long as it's not published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let people/editors/whoever read it, and if the feedback tells you it is really, really good, the you can contact the author/publisher of the original story and let them read it. Maybe they are willing to cut you a deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They probably won't though, but hey, you got inspiration enough to write a whole story. Your skill and experience as a writer probably got knocked up several notches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2010-12-13T09:44:39.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2010-12-13T13:59:07.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Subversion and Git as sort of a front end to Subversion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using version control has saved my ass several times. I definitely recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One advantage is that it becomes easy to work on a piece of writing on several different computers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do all my writing in text files rather than Word or Pages or Scrivener or anything like that. Version control and plain text go hand-in-hand. However, you can use non-text formats with version control if you prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastActivityDate="2010-12-13T13:59:07.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="796" CreationDate="2010-12-13T17:21:22.623" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people like just reading about fictional worlds. Most readers care about people they can relate to. Your problem is to make people who live in these immense worlds you write about characters people can relate to who are reading in this world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you limit yourself in terms of handing out information to the bare minimum to let an audience understand why we should care about character x's situation and motivation that should help draw a line between what is necessary and what is indulgent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course that does depend what you are trying to achieve through your writing but it seems you want a good, honest fantasy adventure yarn. In which case sympathetic characters are a must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-13T17:21:22.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="529" CreationDate="2010-12-13T18:50:48.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Uninteresting is subjective, of course.  Even &quot;unnecessary&quot; is.  You &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; write just for your own amusement, right?  Yes, that was sarcasm right there, because if you aren't, then some (many?) may not like your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mundane makes the story &lt;em&gt;live&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is not a straight answer, but then sometimes it's the wrong question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastActivityDate="2010-12-13T18:50:48.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="787" CreationDate="2010-12-13T22:16:24.553" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Colleen Lindsay (former agent), a middle grade novel has on average 35K words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-word-counts-and-novel-length.html&quot;&gt;http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-word-counts-and-novel-length.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2010-12-13T22:16:24.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="816" CreationDate="2010-12-13T23:07:50.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I liked &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/50/fan-fiction-a-crutch-or-a-good-start&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; which is a similar question. There's no reason not to go with your idea, see how it turns out. You could always edit things later, even core elements. If you have a story in you, get it out there :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="348" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2010-12-13T23:07:50.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="824" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="848" CreationDate="2010-12-13T23:16:09.393" Score="16" ViewCount="1095" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I hope to present a unique style to the world, as I am not especially tolerant of being told I'm doing things &quot;wrong&quot; when that's a subjective statement related to writing style, and as I've never been published, I'd like to understand what to expect from my first publisher-required editor cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much leeway are they going to allow for me to be an original author... not just in the content of the ideas, but in how I structure the language in which it's presented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some example sentences attempting to illustrate my point (exhaustive listing not possible):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was a cold night, frigidly so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;That wasn't the issue at all,&quot; she said. Vehemently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The wind threw itself down from the mountains at us; the howl was immense, deafening.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I really care about is what readers think, not a close-minded editor. Maybe I'm full of prejudice as well as vim and vigor. Am I off base that they will think they know best and ask me to bend to their will?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="348" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T17:08:12.163" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T17:08:12.163" Title="How much leeway can be expected from an editor regarding my preference for nonstandard punctuation?" Tags="|style|publishing|editing|punctuation|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="824" CreationDate="2010-12-14T00:22:56.453" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you'll get leeway. You'll get something either better or worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The editor's response will depend on how your punctuation style affects their reading experience. If it enhances the experience, they'll appreciate it. If it detracts, they'll dislike it, even if other elements of your writing compensate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's unlikely that nonstandard punctuation will have a neutral effect on their experience. They will notice it. So you're left with either enhancing or detracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, so what? They can ask you to bend to their will. Then you get to decide how to respond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T00:22:56.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2010-12-14T00:28:54.377" Score="50" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Don’t go into great detail describing places and things&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of Elmore Leonard's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/1388/2754&quot;&gt;Ten Rules&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; I selected it from the list almost at random -- all ten are worth heeding. I love it because it's so counterintuitive -- you want to add color and detail to your story, right? No, you don't. You want to add &lt;strong&gt;story&lt;/strong&gt; to your story, and just enough descriptive detail to bring it to life, which is generally a lot less than you would think. One brilliantly-chosen detail is worth half a page of description, no matter how beautifully it was written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T20:36:10.717" CommentCount="8" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-14T00:28:54.377" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="816" CreationDate="2010-12-14T00:33:40.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most books have this page with small-print at the front or back which usually goes like (example from the book nearest to my bed):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;copy; Dan Simmons 2004&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Hyperion&lt;/em&gt; copyright &amp;copy; 1989;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;All rights reserved&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that the book has specific copyright claimed to it. In most countries (I am not a lawyer, don't &lt;em&gt;blame/believe&lt;/em&gt; me, yada...) copyright is implicit so the fact that a book doesn't have such a page doesn't mean there is no copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now a book may be in the &lt;strong&gt;public domain&lt;/strong&gt; and these are either very old books - 200 years to be on the safe side or books that have been explicitly released to the public domain (with something like &quot;I, Jakub Hampl, author of this post, hereby release it to the public domain.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you may use the characters, the world, hell even the storyline anyway you wish. So if you were greatly inspired by the &lt;em&gt;Diamond Sutra&lt;/em&gt; you can freely use a world with Subhūti chatting of with Budha all you like. Alas the &lt;em&gt;Hyperion&lt;/em&gt; of Dan Simmons will stay forbidden for quite a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="140" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T00:33:40.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="189" CreationDate="2010-12-14T01:39:41.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While an answer has already been selected, I wanted to add some further points.  In the US, you must have registered your copyright to  begin an infringement lawsuit.  You can register your copyright either before or after the date of infringement.  However, registering copyright before an infringement provides for additional benefits not available when filing after the infringement.  This affects what must be proved and the amount that can be awarded.  For more information, read this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publaw.com/advantage.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Advantages of Copyright Registration&lt;/a&gt; article at publaw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="159" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T01:39:41.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="824" CreationDate="2010-12-14T02:40:49.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally wouldn't call it a style because it goes against common rules. There's a reason why most writers write with standard punctuation and grammar. Because it works and is readable and digestible to the major population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a cold night, frigidly so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with this is it doesn't really work. Frigidly means &quot;extremely cold&quot; so you're almost doubling up here. Not to mention you're essentially saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a cold night, coldly so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sense. This makes none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That wasn't the issue at all,&quot; she said. Vehemently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no reason to put a period between the vehemently. It makes the reader pause when they shouldn't. You should be attaching the adverb to the verb &quot;said&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That wasn't the issue at all,&quot; she said vehemently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can clearly understand how she said the sentence, instead of reading &quot;vehemently&quot; and thinking, &quot;wait, so she said it &lt;em&gt;vehemently&lt;/em&gt;... okay.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The wind threw itself down from the mountains at us; the howl was immense, deafening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, you're going against the grain for the hell of it which is never a good reason to break the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The semi-colon should be a period. You are starting a new sentence. Also, the &quot;deafening&quot; is a little bit of a repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The wind threw itself down from the mountains at us. The howl was immense, deafening almost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or alternatively:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The wind threw itself down from the mountains at us and the howl was immense, almost deafening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm showing you the reason why you shouldn't use &quot;your own style&quot; when it actually works against the reader's immediate and natural understanding of written English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I said, there's a reason why professional writers write by the &quot;rules&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2010-12-15T00:30:56.360" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T00:30:56.360" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2010-12-14T02:55:07.627" Score="35" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Use correct grammar and punctuation (and of course, spelling)&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Style doesn't mean squat if your manuscript doesn't flow due to incorrect spelling, grammar and punctuation. There's a reason why the &quot;rules&quot; are there to be followed. They &lt;em&gt;work&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought of this is after making my own contribution to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/824/how-much-leeway-can-be-expected-from-an-editor-regarding-my-preference-for-nonsta&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastEditorUserId="41329" LastEditDate="2019-12-10T18:16:26.937" LastActivityDate="2019-12-10T18:16:26.937" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-14T02:55:07.627" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="824" CreationDate="2010-12-14T04:45:37.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why stop there? Why not apply non-standard spelling? This is do much more interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;That wasent tha isyou at al,&quot; she sard. Vearmentlee.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of writing is to make your meaning understood. The &quot;rules&quot; are a common understanding of how the language works. Anything that gets in the way of that dilutes your work. Just my humble opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T04:45:37.357" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2010-12-14T06:24:47.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wish there was a single reference book for given names from around the world, but I haven't been able to find one. I have a couple of books on my shelves that have been quite helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concise Dictionary of First Names (OUP)&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198662594.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198662594.do&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;African Ethnics and Personal Names (Ariko) &#xA;[ new user, so I can only post one link - google it! ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of 'baby naming' websites out there; they tend to be pretty poor quality and unhelpful, but others may have better luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for fantasy names, Tolkien was a linguist (or 'philologist' as they said then), and the reason there is such a strong consistency in the names is that they are part of languages he not only spent a long time on, but applied his knowledge of real languages to them. You can tell when people have taken short cuts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T06:24:47.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="107" CreationDate="2010-12-14T07:21:32.997" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here, use this: &quot;Call me Ishmael.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Lolita. Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think one very important quality that a good opening sentence has to have is that it is musical (not sing-songy). If you don't know what I mean, then you should forget my comment. To me, the best writers are aware of the rhythm and flow of their sentences, and will reject one if it feels awkward, ungainly, too this or too that to flow effortlessly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that, tho, you need to have a well developed ear. I'm not sure how to get one of those, to be honest. Some people I've tried to explain this concept to see unable to grok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it's like Kurt Vonnegut's comment about Billy Pilgrim's huge penis: &quot;You never know who's going to get one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T07:21:32.997" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="834" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="841" CreationDate="2010-12-14T07:46:42.153" Score="13" ViewCount="2399" Body="&lt;p&gt;Me and a friend of mine has been thinking about joining forces and make a comic. She is an excellent drawer/illustrator while I perform better in the story/character/writing part of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the best way to start would be to throw ourselves into it, but I like to read about things first, to get some inspiration and hints about common pitfalls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are there any good books (or online resources) about making commics? Would be particularly interesting if they focus on collaboration between writer and drawer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2010-12-14T21:27:12.360" LastActivityDate="2017-08-11T23:10:07.487" Title="Good books on writing for comics?" Tags="|resources|collaboration|artwork|comics|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="835" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="842" CreationDate="2010-12-14T08:10:07.347" Score="5" ViewCount="686" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a couple pieces that take place in imaginary worlds. They involve made-up cities, countries, rivers, history, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the level of technology and the social structures in the made-up world are similar to our own contemporary world. The characters drive around in cars and make phone calls. The settings and technological level are sort of like our world of the 1950's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are supernatural elements in the stories. In one of them there are witches, and in the other the devil intrudes into the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what the genre does all that amount to? Could it be fantasy? Urban fantasy? Maybe urban fantasy/supernatural horror?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It matters to me because when I interact with other writers and people involved with publishing I want to be able to say something coherent about what I've written without two hours of explanation. I want to be able to talk about my writing without being all weird and confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T08:27:28.160" Title="What genre is my writing?" Tags="|genre|fantasy|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="835" CreationDate="2010-12-14T09:32:23.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fantasy based on the technology of the 1950s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's precise enough to have an idea what you do, and vague enough to make them curious and ask more questions. If it is for a cover letter, add two more sentences to explain witches and stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T09:32:23.257" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="835" CreationDate="2010-12-14T10:01:47.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering your comment &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;the level of technology and the social structures in the made-up world are similar to our own contemporary world. The characters drive around in cars and make phone calls. The settings and technological level are sort of like our world of the 1950's&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking that into account and the fact that both super&#xA;natural entities you have specified i.e. witches / devil fit into the Horror theme more specifically - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I probably would lean more towards &quot;Horror&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="341" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T10:01:47.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="834" CreationDate="2010-12-14T15:02:35.020" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best books you can read on the subject is Scott McCloud's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/index.html&quot;&gt;Understanding Comics&lt;/a&gt;.  The book itself is written as a comic, so it can illustrate the techniques it discusses.  One of the topics covered is word-picture dynamics, which seems pretty close to what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T15:02:35.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="835" CreationDate="2010-12-14T15:43:54.577" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is significant overlap in genres, and nowhere more so than speculative fiction.  There are few hard and fast rules to identifying genre, and one man's Urban Fantasy is another man's Supernatural Horror.  To a certain extent, you can choose the genre you want to claim for your story.  What aspects of this story do you consider to be the most important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's designed to scare or be troubling, call it Horror.  If supernatural elements are paramount to the story, call it Supernatural Horror.  If it's fantasy emphasizing a gritty urban setting, call it Urban Fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you're in the ballpark (i.e. not advertising your serial-killer police procedural as romance), you're not going to annoy agents or editors.  They'll decide for themselves what genre they think it fits, anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you might also try your hand at writing a back-cover summary or synopsis.  There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2007/08/how-to-write-synopsis.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justaboutwrite.com/A_Archive_WritingBookSummary.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;guides&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;online&lt;/a&gt; that you can use.  Forcing yourself to consolidate your story like this will make it easier for you to pick out the vital points, and hopefully make it easier to describe in conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T15:43:54.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5" CreationDate="2010-12-14T17:21:20.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of the critically acclaimed authors definitely &lt;strong&gt;do have a point&lt;/strong&gt; (propaganda?), and they are using a story to convey that point. Who's to say how they go about it without asking. But, it seems very likely that Aldous Huxley's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brave New World&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; was predicated on theme first. As well, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1984&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with some of what Zayne is saying, though. For some stories, or authors, it might be easier to get the story out, and then do the craftman's work of sanding it down and polishing so that a theme becomes more apparent. Sticking to a theme would seem to me to be a difficult chore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="348" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T17:21:20.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="61" CreationDate="2010-12-14T17:35:58.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try creating an outline&lt;/strong&gt;, and then using that as a reference to write the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the first books I wrote as a teenager, I actually did this. I just wrote down an outline first; pencil on paper. Not chapter by chapter, but event by event. When a major event came to mind, I would use the top-level outline numbering and indent level, and then drill down into what would transpire. It was a great exercise to help train my mind how to write books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I wrote the story, perhaps a year later, I remember finding it easier to write about one event at a time. It was more like writing a series of short stories. Of course, I changed things at whim. Through several rounds of rewrites, the book did eventually come together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hate to say it, but if you're writing a story, don't be afraid to just outright use a formula. I don't do this any more, but have certainly used it as a mechanism to help get ideas out when I was younger. Just think about how you think the basic story should flow, and then fill in the blanks with passes of ever-increasing detail, sketchy outline, detailed outline, rough draft of events, piece together into short stories, and then craft a draft novel (or series, depending on the amount of stuff you're covering).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Opening scene&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plot development 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plot development 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ending climax&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking back, this may not have been the easiest way to create a book, but it was a way that worked for me, given being wont to overfocus on details and then actually lose focus on the story as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that anything you do that helps you get out the stories you have inside is a good practice. Your talents will develop better as you write than if you're thinking about writing, but not actually doing it :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="348" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T17:35:58.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="855" CreationDate="2010-12-14T17:57:43.823" Score="18" ViewCount="901" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the barrier to having a publisher sign a new author seemingly high, especially without prior success or experience, are there any good author-funded alternatives out there to the repeated mailing of manuscripts out to additional publishing houses after facing rejection?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a businessman, especially since I have a bit of savings, and since I am familiar with the practice of procuring investors for other types of ventures, is there a way I could put up $10k of my own money with $25k from other sources to help grease the wheels of this process? If the book doesn't become popular, I understand the risk, but I'm willing to face that possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since someone will no doubt bring it up -- &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, I don't mean some kind of random run on a POD website like Lulu or whatever. I'm asking about a reputable company taking on the mechanics of getting my book into Borders, and/or wherever else possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="348" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-03-22T14:52:01.307" LastActivityDate="2021-09-21T06:56:05.900" Title="Can I self-publish on a reputable publishing platform, and how much would it cost?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|money|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="845" CreationDate="2010-12-14T19:16:14.547" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect the sort of company you are looking for isn't out there, but I will happily retract my answer if someone can point out an example.  I would be interested to find out such a company exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're looking for seems to be along the lines of the standard self-publishing model, but with two caveats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to attract investors for a book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to get the book into the big chain stores&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that both investors and chain stores want some level of assurance that the book can sell enough to make them money.  The author being able to afford a few thousand dollars is not a good indicator that his/her book will be successful.  I don't see how a company could attract investors or get books placed in chain stores without a strong editorial process to sift out the books that will sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if their submission process is just as rigorous as the traditional publishers, why would anyone want to go through it when the traditional publishers offer the same thing for free?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T19:16:14.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="824" CreationDate="2010-12-14T19:45:25.853" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;None of the examples you gave seem to be non-standard in a way that's likely to bother a fiction editor. Fiction depends on a strong narrative voice, and voice is conveyed by punctuation as much as word choice. A news editor at the NYT might squawk, because the stylistic constraints of journalism are much tighter--but the rules that are appropriate for journalism are not appropriate for fiction and vice-versa. I doubt there are any working fiction editors that don't understand this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you should be prepared to accept editorial feedback on any/all of these stylistic quirks, especially if it seems that they're distracting from the story rather than adding to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T19:45:25.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="824" CreationDate="2010-12-14T21:57:22.207" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of the time it comes down to one thing: consistency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your whole text is made of sentences like this, then it can be seen as your style. If you pepper your text with just a few of these, they will be more likely to become an editor's target, and reasonably so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you differentiate between actual style and just doing something because, &quot;you know, that sentence is so cool that way.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am usually a fan of the former and see the latter as lame showing off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="232" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T21:57:22.207" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2010-12-14T23:55:20.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Skip the map. Maps in books are pretentious and dumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a passage like, &quot;...and so they travelled South, crossing the Mountains of Grimstorm at Thousandwolf Pass then bent their way Westward to the Parchnoth Desert,&quot; and a reader gets upset because he doesn't know where all those places are, then don't worry about that reader. Maybe he thinks there's going to be a quiz after he finishes the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter where those places are. What matters is that the characters crossed some mountains (story) then changed direction (story) and headed for a desert (more story). In a &lt;strong&gt;story&lt;/strong&gt; what matters is &lt;strong&gt;story,&lt;/strong&gt; not maps or illustrations or how it's bound or whether the title is embossed on the cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it another way, if the story is weak then a map isn't going to help it. If the story is great then &lt;a href=&quot;http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs40/f/2009/035/4/0/Map_First_Law_v2_by_Scubamarco.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;your fans will create maps&lt;/a&gt; and post them to their fan blogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastActivityDate="2010-12-14T23:55:20.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="806" CreationDate="2010-12-15T07:00:28.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For nonfiction, write a good proposal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched the web for an explanation of what publishers would expect in a proposal and created mine from what I found. Basically I used a one page explanation of my idea and why I was the best person to write it. To that, I added a ten page chapter-by-chapter description of the entire manuscript, and then three sample chapters. This was my proposal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started sending it out with a one page cover letter where I tried to offer a short reason why I was sending to the particular editor/agent. Use a spreadsheet to track who you send it to and when you sent it. If you don't hear back in 6-12 weeks, assume the worst. Always try to keep it out to at least two or three at a time. If someone rejects your work (or the time to live on the proposal expires), have a few places in mind where you can send it next. Look for similar works from small publishers and query them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what worked for me. A small publisher who had published a similar title picked up my book on the basis of the proposal. I'm almost finished writing the first draft. It's tentatively titled Dopefiend (apologies to Mr. Goines) and forthcoming from CRP in Sept 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="359" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T07:00:28.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="824" CreationDate="2010-12-15T10:34:37.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The punctuation in all of your examples is defensible, and only the second is non-standard &amp;mdash; you are using the full stop to mark a pause, but the stop has a semantic role that you don't want.  Using an em dash would avoid this and emphasise the pause even more, although it would still be non-standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the first two examples have defects and can be improved:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;It was a cold night, frigidly so.&lt;/em&gt; &amp;mdash; I don't think &quot;frigid&quot; is effective here, and the sentence can be given more energy: 'The night was icy cold.'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;That wasn't the issue at all,&quot; she said. Vehemently.&lt;/em&gt;  &amp;mdash; Adverbs don't have the stand-alone force I think you attribute to &quot;vehemently&quot; here.  How about '&quot;That wasn't the issue at all.&quot;  She was vehement.'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My claimed improvement has nothing to do with punctuation, but it gives simpler language, so eliminating the need for punctuation tricks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third example is good, effective English, and the punctuation makes use of a familiar and completely respectable device, the asyndeton, whose name is less well known than it should be, and which introduces a series of parallel parts of sentence without a conjunction.  You need to watch that the parallelism between the parts is clear, if so, as it it is in this example, then it is perfectly readable. It allows images to build up one upon another, just as the two adjectives do in example three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I entirely agree with JSBangs about what you should expect.  Though deadline pressure can make publishers, and so their editors, cranky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T10:34:37.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="824" CreationDate="2010-12-15T16:17:36.617" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as an editor for three different houses and also have books published with two houses, so this question is right up my alley!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to an author's style, you have a lot of leeway. When an editor reads over the manuscript, they're going to make sure that what you've written is understandable and isn't going to throw your readers for a loop. If the editor has a hard time understanding what you're trying to say, they'll most likely ask you to change it. But if what you're saying is easily understandable and you just have a unique way you want to say it, then they'll most likely go with what you've got. Editors at publishing houses are also readers, they know what other reads are going to want to read and they know what sells. If they want you to change something, most likely it's because they believe the book and you will benefit from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-09-19T16:09:59.437" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T16:09:59.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="189" CreationDate="2010-12-15T16:27:48.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, my post comes from my experience working in the publishing world. It's also only what I know of the US copyright laws, not any international ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Purchasing a copyright isn't required. You own the copyright to your  work, no matter what. The &quot;poor man's copyright&quot; (mailing yourself a seal copy of the manuscript) is no longer a valid way to prove copyright. If the manuscript in question is published, the contract you sign with your publisher is all the proof you need to prove that it's your intellectual property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide not to register your copyright with the US Copyright Office, you can't recover court costs.  You can recover damages for the actual violation, but not any legal fees incurred pursuing the case. (Meaning lawyer fees, general court costs, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T16:27:48.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="806" CreationDate="2010-12-15T16:38:37.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to impress a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most obvious and effective way is to show them that you're a professional. Make sure your manuscript and cover letter has been proofread and edited. Make sure there aren't any typos or glaring editing problems, those are sure signs that you're not a professional. Make sure you have a neutral third party go over your manuscript and give opinions and look for errors. Your close family and friend don't count, they're going to tell you the love it and that's not what you need. Never /ever/ send them a first draft. You should go through at least a half dozen drafts before you even consider sending it to a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step is to make sure you do your homework about the publisher. Make sure they accept the genre of manuscript you have. Don't send a mystery publisher your romance novel. Also make sure that they are accepting manuscripts. Some publishes only accept new submissions at certain times of the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the publisher does reject your manuscript, move on. Don't try and argue with them, you're not going to win and you'll be making sure that they never want to publish anything of yours. And publisher do speak to each other. Especially in the smaller houses, at lot of staff work for multiple publishers. So if you make an ass out of yourself to Publisher A, and they happen to work for Publisher B and C as well, you can bet they've passed along the memo to them not to consider you. A lot of editors and publishers have blogs and Facebooks, and you can bet there will probably be a post saying &quot;Guess what this jackass just said to me...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, acquisitions editors know what they're doing. If they reject your manuscript, it most likely means they don't think it will sell very well with them. Most of the time (unless you make a jackass out of yourself like I mentioned earlier) rejections aren't personal. Publishers are in it to make as much money as they can and if they don't feel they can make money off of your manuscript, they won't try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And don't let that discourage you. 99% of writers have tons of rejections under their belt before they finally get an acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T16:38:37.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="845" CreationDate="2010-12-15T16:47:38.447" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're thinking of is vanity publishing. A vanity publishing house is one that will publish your book, but you pay all of the costs. You pay for the marketing, the editing, the cover art, etc. Basically all they do is print the book and put it in stores for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to be honest, if you go this route, you're going to be laughed at in the publishing world. Money is supposed to flow to the author, not the other way around. If you then decide to go into traditional publishing, they most likely won't count that book as a prior publishing credit, since anyone with a couple thousand dollars can have their books printed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book isn't good, a traditional publisher isn't going to take it on no matter how much money you wave at them. Not only does the publisher need to be able to sell the book, but they need to maintain their reputation. If they start publishing poor quality manuscripts, they'll get less submissions and their sales will drop as well. So unless you plan on funding them with quite a bit of money, they're not going to blink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T16:47:38.447" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="312" CreationDate="2010-12-15T16:57:32.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many factors to this question. Does the sex enhance the novel? If it does, most likely it will be kept. If it doesn't, it'll be up to each individual publisher. Some don't mind explicit scenes, others would rather not have them. It's also going to depend on the genre of the book and who you're targeting. If you're writing YA, Middle Grade or Children's books, it'll be nixed right off the bat. While sex may occur in these books, it is 99% of the time fade-to-black. Similarly, if you're targeting old ladies or heavily religious people, it'll most likely get nixed. If you're targeting adults, however, you have much more leeway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to check each publisher's submission guidelines. If their guidelines don't mention anything or are unclear, don't hesitate to send them an email and ask. 99% of the time they won't have any problems answering questions from authors who are considering their house. And as far as I know, unless the book is extremely heavy on sex, they most likely won't reject it just for that. If they do have a problem with explicit scenes, they'll work with you on that in the editing phase of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T16:57:32.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2010-12-15T18:29:33.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the wikipedia definition gets quite close to the essence. Additionally, you might think about the type of fiction meant to have an &lt;em&gt;aesthetic&lt;/em&gt; value/quality, that is what literary fiction hopes to achieve in my view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T18:29:33.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="807" CreationDate="2010-12-15T19:26:42.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think most people identify better with someone who has failings - as noted by other respondents. Keep in mind the trope &quot;Jack of all trades, master of none&quot;. Most &quot;average&quot; people gain a little bit of knowledge in a whole lot of subjects (I know how a hydroelectric power plant works, I can cross-stitch, I know the basics of nutrition and exercise physiology, I am trained in first aid, and I am decent with a watercolor brush... but I am not an engineer, a seamstress, or a doctor, let alone an artist! And our knowledge tends to be extremely specific to one environment or situation. I know people who can use a windows computer at home but not one running a different windows version at work, and if handed a mac they would freeze up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd believe a character who mastered three or four different skills, but if he's coming up with pro-level knowledge of everything he has to do, you might want to scale back. It's fine that he's learned survival skills, but maybe he learned them in an area where staying warm isn't a problem - so if he needs to survive somewhere cold, he'll have to take a moment to reassess before he can get on with survival. Or he knows the basics of growing food, but when faced with a particularly arid or wet or acidic growing environment he has trouble until he learns to apply his skills a different way. We all like characters who have problems, because they make us feel better about our own failings!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Faerunner" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T19:26:42.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="863" CreationDate="2010-12-15T20:18:15.800" Score="8" ViewCount="1710" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm working on a novel, I have a tendency to write short chapters (1k-3k words).  This is not a problem, per se, but I sometimes feel the need to have one or two longer chapters to slow down the pacing.  I have a hard time doing this in a satisfying way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, my novels follow two or three characters or groups of characters.  Each chapter focuses on a single character or group, and the chapters are ordered so they rotate between all the groups (so there are rarely two chapters in a row that follow the same group).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried merging chapters by simply concatenating two chapters that follow the same group, replacing the chapter break with a scene break.  This tends to feel like two chapters forced uncomfortably together, for obvious reasons.  It also usually requires a fair bit of rearranging adjacent chapters to keep a somewhat even rotation between character groups.  Combining chapters that follow different groups feels even worse.  It stands out as odd when the other chapters follow only one group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other option I see is making chapters longer.  I'm hesitant to go down that road.  It's not worth adding boring filler to try and get the pacing right, and dropping in five or ten pages of new, compelling material can be extremely difficult, and tends to require adjustments in the surrounding chapters as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what technique would you recommend for adjusting chapter length?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2019-10-18T18:05:46.630" Title="Techniques for lengthening or merging chapters" Tags="|editing|wordcount|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="862" CreationDate="2010-12-15T20:50:07.103" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go through it and work with description. Find places where your description of things (the settings, a character's look, how someone is feeling, etc.) are weak and strengthen them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Action descriptions: &quot;She ran down the street to get away from him.&quot; could be replaced with &quot;Her breath was labored as she sprinted down Main Street. Every couple of steps she glanced over her shoulder, checking to see if he was following. By the time she was satisfied that he wasn't following her, she was out of breath and ducked into the nearest store for cover.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting descriptions: &quot;The building was tall and formidable.&quot; could be &quot;The office building that housed all of Dream Computing jetted up into the sky. In the afternoon sun, the shadow it cast was enough to blanket half of the town in its shadow. Jamie was glad she wasn't the one who had to hang hundreds of feet in the air to clean the massive windows looking out over the town.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feeling descriptions: &quot;Jamie's fear of heights kicked in when she got close to the window.&quot; &quot;Jamie's heart thudded in her chest as she approached the window. When she was only a few feet from the large sheet of Plexiglas, her palms were soaked with her own sweat and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Gazing down at the little dots milling around on the ground, she became light-headed and quickly backed away. She prayed the one day she might overcome her fear of heights.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is going to be your best bet for lengthening chapters without adding new scenes or useless information. Make your reader feel like they're in the story. If the character is scared or nervous or excited, the reader should be able to feel it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2019-10-18T18:05:46.630" LastActivityDate="2019-10-18T18:05:46.630" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="134" CreationDate="2010-12-15T21:32:46.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is this &quot;outlining&quot; you speak of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a seat of the pants-er. I almost never outline things, and when I do, it's usually &quot;I kind of think that maybe I should do this here&quot; and never anything concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really does depend on the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="PhantomGamer" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T21:32:46.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="865" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="877" CreationDate="2010-12-15T22:12:05.397" Score="13" ViewCount="619" Body="&lt;p&gt;My publisher currently does a lot to advertise my books, but what can I do to help spread the word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: Here's what my publisher said they do to promote their books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Dreamspinner invests 10% of our income on marketing and promotion. We have tables at events one to two times per month. In 2009 we distributed more than 15,000 promotional CDs with excerpts of all of our titles. We actively keep a Facebook and Twitter presence as well as our own blog and yahoo group. We currently have banner and cover ads running on 42 internet sites (review sites, fan fiction sites, romance and gay lifestyle sites). Our titles are carried by six international distributors, including one that serves the North American public library system for both print and digital titles. We sponsor events like Saints &amp;amp; Sinners in New Orleans and the Rainbow Book Fair in New York. We have a stipend that our authors can use toward vendor fees at local Pride events and festivals if they wish to promote their work and Dreamspinner Press.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="361" LastEditDate="2010-12-16T14:59:15.707" LastActivityDate="2020-02-28T12:48:31.740" Title="What should I do to promote my books?" Tags="|marketing|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="865" CreationDate="2010-12-15T22:40:59.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the things that help raise your profile as an author (going to events related to your topic/genre, blogging, etc.) help promote your books, too.  Also, coordinate with your publisher: they may have ideas, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T22:40:59.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="806" CreationDate="2010-12-15T23:20:24.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start a blog and post an excerpt from your story in serial form on the blog. Do some minor promotion but don't go overboard. Gather thousands of readers for your blog who post comments like, &quot;I'm really into this story. Hurry up and post the next installment!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then go to the publisher and show them a Google Analytics report of your blog's traffic and say, &quot;Here's hard proof that people will respond to this story. Look at all these readers and comments.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T23:20:24.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2010-12-15T23:37:09.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Literary fiction is fiction you read so you can brag about having read it. If it ain't raining, you ain't training. If you aren't getting flak, you aren't over the target. And if you're enjoying a book, it isn't literary fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some famous literary fictionists who are actually terrible writers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cormac Macarthy&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Chuck Palahniuk&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Don DeLillo&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Alice Walker&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T23:37:09.187" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="134" CreationDate="2010-12-15T23:40:35.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people seem to like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Snowflake Method&lt;/a&gt;; maybe you can check that out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="306" LastActivityDate="2010-12-15T23:40:35.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="865" CreationDate="2010-12-16T00:44:36.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could start a blog. A lot of writers do that, I've noticed. But the blog has to be interesting or it won't help. You can also go on Twitter and FaceBook. Same story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first rule of promotion is that you have to define your target audience. Who do you think will want to read your book? Picture that person clearly in your mind. Then design your promotional campaign around &lt;em&gt;that specific person.&lt;/em&gt; Metaphorically speaking, go to where he or she hangs out, get right up in his or her face, and say, &quot;Hey! You! Read this book!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastActivityDate="2010-12-16T00:44:36.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="865" CreationDate="2010-12-16T02:29:39.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have a good short story? Get it published somewhere that has an audience that might like your stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, my master plan is:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finish my first good-enough-to-be-publishable novel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Really polish my best one or two short stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get one onto Escape Pod or Podcastle &lt;em&gt;(podcasts with very large audiences of sci-fi - 10k+ subscribers - and fantasy fiction, respectively. This may involve having it featured in another respectable publication first)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask them to mention my new book (as well as my website etc) in the brief author bio that they read out just before the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like that should get some attention for your stuff from a group likely to buy it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="67" LastEditDate="2010-12-16T02:59:04.533" LastActivityDate="2010-12-16T02:59:04.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="527" CreationDate="2010-12-16T11:26:19.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question about published examples, some of Sue Townsend's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Mole&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adrian Mole&lt;/a&gt; series are deceptively clever and very funny all in diary form&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2010-12-17T16:42:42.910" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T16:42:42.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="527" CreationDate="2010-12-16T11:51:15.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0671744003&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Autobiography of Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes&lt;/a&gt; is one of my favourite novels in this form. It's a spin off from the Twin Peaks television series and highlights the idiosyncrasies of one of the series's most idiosyncratic characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the features of this type of form is that you can cover a lot of time in a single novel in a relatively short period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-16T11:51:15.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="865" CreationDate="2010-12-16T11:58:16.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about links in your profile to where members of this group can buy copies of your book or even to your own website. You're talking to people who have an interest in books and reading (or should) and are community minded. So why make them work to find copies of your work to buy? Admittedly they can Google the pen name in your bio but still if there's a rulebook for successful selling one of them must surely be: Don't put obstacles in the way of a potential customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-16T11:58:16.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="845" CreationDate="2010-12-16T17:16:21.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're willing to take a rather unorthodox approach, you could try using a micro-investment service like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kickstarter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kickstarter&lt;/a&gt; to attract investors.  This isn't the full-service company you're looking for, but it could get you some venture capital to put toward publishing and marketing costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2010-12-16T17:16:21.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="865" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:04:31.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might consider approaching local bookstores to do readings and/or signings.  These types of events let potential readers meet you, and people who might otherwise pass over your book may decide to pick it up.  (I have purchased books due to reading/signing events that I would never have purchased otherwise.)  Additionally, the bookstore may order more of your book than they otherwise would have, in preparation for the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do decide to try this, don't limit yourself to the big stores.  There are still a few independent bookstores in most metropolitan areas, and they may be more open to hosting an event, especially by a local author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2010-12-16T18:04:31.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="878" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:21:26.483" Score="31" ViewCount="1139" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Most&lt;/em&gt; of what I write is non-fiction -- technical books, blog posts on open source topics, political stuff, etc.  Lately, I find that some of the topics I am trying to present are much more technical than the intended audience is used to.  I already plan to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Explain terms the first time they are used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide helpful asides (sidebars or footnotes, as appropriate) with explanations of concepts the reader might not already have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use analogies to experiences already familiar to my readers whenever possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else can I do to help a decidedly non-tech audience better understand a technical topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-03-23T20:06:35.567" Title="How can one make technical issues more accessible to a non-technical audience?" Tags="|technique|technical-writing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="878" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:30:04.843" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;A non-technical test reader would be a helpful resource. Because of your knowledge you are blind for so many details, which you take for granted and couldn't believe that other do not know them. Listen to a test reader, what he does not understand, is the way to identify these blind spots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with this approach: you need regularly new test readers, because the old ones know too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explaining terms at first use is a good thing. But don't forget a glossary where each term can be looked up. People tend to forget things, especially when they pause reading your book for one or two days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and you need an index. There are too many technical books out there without an index. Unbelievable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-01-20T09:11:47.227" LastActivityDate="2011-01-20T09:11:47.227" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="878" CreationDate="2010-12-16T20:41:06.530" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Emphasize effects over causes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this I mean don't lead your readers through the tall weeds, pointing out every individual weed. Walk them around the edge, showing them the size and shape of the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your non technical reader cares about and understands things like &quot;the server crashed and the website was down for six seconds, resulting in a ten million dollar loss and several lawsuits.&quot; They don't want to hear the details of the off-by-one error that caused the crash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know who's great at this is Neal Stephenson. If you want a good example to follow of someone who makes technical arcana interesting to liberal arts majors, Neal's your man. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html&quot;&gt;In the Beginning Was the Command Line&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is particularly good in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That thing you said about defining terms when they're first used&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do nothing else besides this to help your readers, you're 90 percent there. I have read so many technical books that are incomprehensible because the writer couldn't be arsed to explain what a jank flinky is before going on for three pages about it. I think they just don't realize. So it's a great idea to get a non-technical reader to go through your MS and highlight any baffling terms that inadvertently slipped through unexplained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2010-12-16T21:04:55.357" LastActivityDate="2010-12-16T21:04:55.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="194" CreationDate="2010-12-16T21:00:28.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Shining&lt;/em&gt; by Stephen King.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What messages do these pieces convey?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The message of &lt;em&gt;The Shining&lt;/em&gt; is that if you try to write a story you won't write a story. Instead, you'll go mad and attack your family with an axe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should/can these works affect my own writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Shining&lt;/em&gt; should affect your own writing by inspiring you to distill all of your thoughts, ideas, emotional insights, and observations into a single sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastEditorUserId="343" LastEditDate="2010-12-17T23:13:03.593" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T23:13:03.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-12-16T21:27:51.867" Score="12" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Best question ever.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one else on here or on any writing forum or critique circle that I've ever seen has had the humility to ask the fundamental question: &lt;em&gt;what if I just suck.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any person who is considering tormenting and embarrassing their friends and relatives with their dull, poorly-conceived, unimaginative drivel &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; ask this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By having the insight and the courage to ask it, you have just leapt a hundred miles ahead of every half-assed writer's group jackoff on the planet. &lt;strong&gt;Way to go!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to find out the answer is to &lt;em&gt;write your stories&lt;/em&gt; and see if people like them. When I say people, I don't mean other writers who are reading your story in exchange for a critique of their own story. I mean real, everyday people. People who have kids. People who are tired, busy, and distracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screw writers. If you can get a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;real person&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to read your story and ask you when the next part will be finished so they can read it, then you may be on to something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the talent/no talent debate, don't be absurd. &lt;strong&gt;Of course&lt;/strong&gt; writing requires talent and &lt;strong&gt;of course&lt;/strong&gt; some people have it and some don't. Come on. What area of life isn't like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if what you say about having ideas is true, then you may very well have a knack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is, is it a viable approach to write in a freeform, style-less way to get the basic ideas and plot down and then try to go trough it again and try to force some style (and essentially Beauty) upon it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Absolutely yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you know what's even more viable? Write down your story in your &quot;style-less&quot; way and just skip the &quot;Beauty&quot; part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because no one has a story. &lt;strong&gt;No one.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you happen to actually have one, for God's sake don't fuck it up with style or beauty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastEditorUserId="343" LastEditDate="2010-12-17T02:35:18.987" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T02:35:18.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="878" CreationDate="2010-12-16T22:46:09.687" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your short list is pretty good - especially the last point. I wrote a technical book, but wanted my mother to be able to read it (she has). I used analogies - mostly cooking to relate to software engineering terms, and they were helpful. Our editor wasn't a technical person either, and I think that helped too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also made sure the book had a lot of side notes with practical applications of the concepts. The goal was to take some complex information and make it accessible to a wide range of experiences, and the feedback has been positive in this regard. I imagine a similar approach would be successful in other technical areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastActivityDate="2010-12-16T22:46:09.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2010-12-16T22:55:02.543" Score="40" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Know the end before you begin.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything has to lead up to the end.  The climax is the culmination of &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; in the story.  By knowing the end, you can include powerful foreshadowing and ensure that you don't go off on useless tangents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-12-16T22:55:02.543" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-16T22:55:02.543" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="527" CreationDate="2010-12-17T02:32:43.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A classic example of the diary form is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0140341455&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Henry Reed's Journey&lt;/a&gt; by Keith Robertson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When it is appropriate to use the diary form for a novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you feel like it. When you, for reasons even &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; don't fully understand &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; like writing your story, or some part of it, in the form of a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's how you feel, then you have no other option but to use the journal form. To use another form would be an act of self-betrayal. If you don't feel like it, then you must not it because in that case to doing so would be phony and pretentious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More to the point, you're going to have to live with this thing until you finish it, so you'd best write it in the form you find most interesting, regardless of whether it's journal, third person omniscient, &quot;close third,&quot; epistolary, ePistolary, tweets, or something you just made up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastEditorUserId="343" LastEditDate="2010-12-17T06:35:55.530" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T06:35:55.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="862" CreationDate="2010-12-17T02:46:21.173" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a tendency to write short chapters (1k-3k words)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there's your answer. Most writers would love to have a naturally-occurring tendency of any kind other than sucking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You describe a process of struggle and literary engineering in which you attempt to subvert your own natural way of writing. Just reading the question is almost painful. Why are you torturing yourself like that? Where did you get the idea that your chapters should be longer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did someone in a writing group tell you that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it because other writers' chapters are longer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do either of those sound like a good reason for doing anything?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me as though your chapters are exactly the proper length. Just keep at it and perhaps someday people will be reading your stuff and then asking how they can break up their long, cumbersome chapters into shorter ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T02:46:21.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="796" CreationDate="2010-12-17T02:53:28.513" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;my average preparation results in something on the order of 150,000+ words (the most I've ever written is 300,000). In other words, &lt;em&gt;I consistently find myself writing a novel before I even write my novel.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dude, that is so freaking awesome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Haven't you pretty much answered your own question? You think of the 150,000 words as &quot;notes,&quot; thus freeing yourself lavish care and attention and all of your imaginative energy on them. Since, being merely notes, they have a sort second-rate status -- not real writing -- there's no anxiety attached to them or to the process of writing them and you can go wild.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, perhaps, the notes become the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastEditorUserId="343" LastEditDate="2010-12-17T02:58:31.283" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T02:58:31.283" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="130" CreationDate="2010-12-17T03:16:51.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on your own goals and priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maybe it is even impossible to write about community without being part of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about your own community. Imagine someone from a completely foreign culture reading up on it for a few weeks and then attempting to write a novel based on it. No matter how hard they studied, they would inevitably get things wrong -- some of them being plain old mistakes, and others being subtle things that can't really be explained but have to be experienced to understand why they're wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it might not matter. Stephanie Meyer knows sweet fuck-all about Native Americans, but that didn't stop her from exploiting them ruthlessly in her novels and she's doing alright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T03:16:51.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2010-12-17T03:32:27.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Matter of opinion and all that, but I prefer plain text with no formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing and typesetting are separate activities that are not relevant to each other. When you're writing a story your focus should be the characters and the story, not what font you're using or whether your chapter titles should be centered. If you get wrapped up in text formatting while you're writing it's a distraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can also be a trap. You can get into a thing of turning the formatting decisions into a major part of your creative effort. Then you might want to express something -- a mood, an atmosphere, an emotion -- and you'll slip up and express it using formatting rather than words because in that moment the formatting happens to be easier somehow, or more appealing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just stick with .txt. Of couse that means I can't use bold or italic. But C.S. Lewis said (somewhere) that a good writer has ways of indicating bold or italic using word choice and sentence structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is regarding fiction -- if you're writing a scientific paper with equations that's another story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T03:32:27.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="890" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="892" CreationDate="2010-12-17T04:11:57.837" Score="19" ViewCount="1406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not delusional about the nature of the science fiction novel I'm (very) slowly working on. A brief run down might be as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set 10's of millennia in Human's future but in a neighbouring  galaxy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discovery of ancient artifact&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Artifact turns violent on the discoverers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More discoveries by different people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-human race who built them come back to claim ownership of the galaxy from inhabitants (through violence, they believed they &quot;owned&quot; it and placed beacons when they left due to their own reasons)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seriously technologically advanced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Benevolent race who lived around the same time appear to aid humans as they foresaw this happening&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bilbo Baggins lives happily ever after to the end of his days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't a review of my particular story/plot, but I was wondering if it's really so bad to end up (by accident, you might say) with a plot that, while unique, has been done similarly before? Even though I feel I could do my particular idea justice, I can't help but notice it becoming more and more generic as I think about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I try to differentiate it as much as possible to the &quot;generic&quot; or just &lt;em&gt;get on with it&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T12:13:29.030" Title="Is it so bad to end up with a &quot;done before&quot; plot?" Tags="|fiction|genre|plot|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="890" CreationDate="2010-12-17T04:24:26.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will find, if you look over all the novels you have ever read, there are key similarities. These will not be in the specifics in the individual plots, but in the paths they take. How many movies do you think encorporate 'Boy meets girl. Something bad happens and it looks like it isn't to be. They reconcile. Cue credits'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason this happens is because that is how plots tend to lend themselves to concluding. It's only natural, really. There can be either a happy ending, or a sad ending, and anything too far removed does seem out of place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not suggesting you have to stick to cliche storylines, but if that is how your plot unfolds, let it happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T04:24:26.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="890" CreationDate="2010-12-17T04:28:00.313" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything has been done before. Seriously. I've taken two Ancient Literature courses and it's amazing how many plots are basically recycled versions of older plots. Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Twilight, Harry Potter - their plots all model older books and plays from hundreds of years ago. Even parts of the Bible are found in manuscripts that predate Christianity by many many years. As long as the plot isn't a carbon copy of another book, you're pretty much good to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T04:28:00.313" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="890" CreationDate="2010-12-17T06:33:21.913" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no new plots. You can't be original. You wouldn't want to be. True originality, if it existed, would be nearly unbearable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is to take an old story that's been told a million times, and tell it &lt;em&gt;again.&lt;/em&gt; But tell it so brilliantly that it seems like an entirely new story that no one has ever heard before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, don't just make your story sort of like &lt;em&gt;2001.&lt;/em&gt; Actually retell &lt;em&gt;2001,&lt;/em&gt; but so imaginatively that it's &lt;em&gt;unrecognizable.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People say about a book or movie, &lt;em&gt;Oh it was crap because it was just a ripoff of this or that.&lt;/em&gt; That is such a weak and lazy criticism and it amounts to nothing. Of course it's a ripoff. What isn't?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T06:33:21.913" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="890" CreationDate="2010-12-17T07:00:14.853" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh no, it's not bad at all. As many other people have said, it's all be done before, what really matters is HOW you do it. Find some interesting ways to put the pieces together and interesting characters to go along with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, sit down and get it written. Once you have it down you can see how the story flows and what might need to be changed or rewritten to make it stand out as more then just the same as whats come before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T07:00:14.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="890" CreationDate="2010-12-17T09:41:56.227" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at Joseph Cambell's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Hero with a Thousand Faces&lt;/a&gt;, and you will see that most myths and most religions are basically the same story told with small variations. The same applies for a lot of epic modern stories already mentioned here (LOTR, Star Wars, Harry Potter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good stories a driven by characters, and if the reader gets involved in the characters, they won't even notice (or at least mind) that they are being told the same story one more time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T09:41:56.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2010-12-17T17:15:56.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yeah, I think there's a lot of bias in this community towards technical writing, since StackExchange seems to attract that type of community.  However, the question isn't clear on the type of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, assuming you were writing fiction, you might want to consider a tool like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;. Fiction writers, and even non-fiction writers, like it because it lets you write your story or article in sections or scenes and re-arranging your sections is a breeze. You can also easily keep notes within the same document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for those who still like LaTex/Tex, I believe there is an option for exporting your finished document to LaTex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="joshaidan" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T17:15:56.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="787" CreationDate="2010-12-17T17:20:55.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you write a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; good story like Harry Potter, you can get away with making kids read an almost infinite amount of words.  Although, you'll notice with the Harry Potter books the length of each book increases with each release in the series. So if you're writing a series, start small, then increase the word count with each release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishers are probably more open to this approach, since when you become more established, there's less risk for them with bigger books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="joshaidan" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T17:20:55.437" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="312" CreationDate="2010-12-17T17:46:26.170" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all about the story, my friend. The level of detail in your sex scenes doesn't matter. Just write the scenes how you need to write them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; thing that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T17:46:26.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="702" CreationDate="2010-12-17T19:22:14.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Question: Is that a useful approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or does it distract more than it helps?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with this approach is that it causes the writer to think carefully and intelligently about their character, which the last thing in the world he should be doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're writing a story, you're attempting to create a work of art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;You can't create art by filling out a form.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;But at least it can help you get started.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No it can't. Not even a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many ways, characters are like real people. They're capricious, illogical, and contradictory. They have traits, which they betray and subvert at every opportunity. They do the last thing you'd expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You, the artist, can't discover these things about your character until you actually live with him. It takes time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to bypass that time-consuming, uncertain, and somewhat painful process with some sort of tool, your characters will not be anything like real people. Instead, they are certain to be boring, predictable, and utterly implausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T19:22:14.550" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="702" CreationDate="2010-12-17T19:40:02.983" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some tool such as this could be useful, but I believe you are &lt;em&gt;asking the wrong questions&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/392/resources-for-character-development/395#395&quot;&gt;my answer&lt;/a&gt; to the question you linked and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/392/resources-for-character-development/401#401&quot;&gt;another answer&lt;/a&gt; in that question by Fox Cutter, the questions we posed weren't life detail questions.  They were &lt;strong&gt;motivation&lt;/strong&gt; questions.  There's a key difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might create this shell man who gets up at 6:45 on the dot every morning, drives a car that is so small that his head constantly rubs up against the ceiling of it to work every day, drinks a cup of coffee at precisely 3 hour intervals, and leaves at precisely 5 p.m. every day, unless he has to stay late working on a presentation.  Why should you care about this guy, though?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, what if I tell you that this character has a deep-set drive to feel that his every moment is contributing to the cosmic good, and his job consists of him merely editing the sales team's answers to customer questions.  At most at the end of the day he can drive home in his too-small car telling himself that he made sure the customer was clear on the order of instructions written by someone else.  He's desperately afraid that he will never be able to find significant work at his current salary, which he needs to support his wife and child.  All of a sudden there's a &lt;strong&gt;struggle&lt;/strong&gt;.  People might even identify with this guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your questions need to be about&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fears&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;desires&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hopes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;motivations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dreams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;passions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;doubts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;goals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;not about daily habits.  We &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; things because we &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; things because we &lt;strong&gt;want&lt;/strong&gt; things.  Your tool should encourage me as an author to think about what my character wants, which starts the whole process off, and why he or she might not be able to get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T20:50:48.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="392" CreationDate="2010-12-17T19:42:52.373" Score="-1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What resources are there to create rich characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are only two: memory and imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T19:42:52.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="915" CreationDate="2010-12-17T20:05:59.240" Score="12" ViewCount="5313" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a comment on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/890/is-it-so-bad-to-end-up-with-a-done-before-plot/893#893&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, a valuable community contributor suggested that it is possible to be totally original in writing, despite the fact that other valuable community members have stated that it's not.  Since the comment was in the context of asking about original plots, it got me wondering if there really are modern original plots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By an original plot, I mean either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of the broad classes of plots as defined by those standard plot lists you see that was first done since 1900, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A twist or combination of those plots such as reimagining them in a radically new genre that changes the plot's structure or a similar &lt;em&gt;structural&lt;/em&gt; change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are examples of novels or short stories published since 1900 with original plots&lt;/strong&gt; and what made those plots original?  In your opinion, was the original plot successful as a plot?  Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T14:12:53.493" Title="What are some examples of modern original plots?" Tags="|fiction|plot|short-story|novel|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2010-12-17T20:53:31.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it probably depends on how much you simplify the plots. You can boil any plot down to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scene is set.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problem arises.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problem is resolved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the book Prey by Michael Crichton is about some nanobots that are unleashed, begin evolving, and start threatening humanity, etc. I bet no one has written about nanobots in particular, with having the story develop the way it does, but the idea is the same: motives cause people to do stupid things, a creation turns on its masters, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote some random short stories which might be considered original plots. But maybe more so because of a lack of a plot... but it is surreal, and surrealism has been done before. Here is one as an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surrounded by water. Completely submerged. Swimming upwards, but the world is slowly darkening. Which way is up? That way which was left was up, but now going upwards the compass has reversed, the poles of the earth have reversed. A homing pigeon flies through the water next to me and drowns. I stare at its lifeless body as it transforms into a flounder and swallows me whole. A voiceless scream emanates from my body but the fish doesn’t hear me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Riding in a bus, I realize I have just woken up. We’ve almost arrived at the Tsarskoe Selo. But in the stupor after brutally being awaken, I don’t know this yet. I inquire of my neighbor, “Hey dude, where are we?” He replies in a soft whisper, the sound waves wrapping themselves around my head: “We’ve almost arrived at the Tsarskoe Selo.” “Thanks,” I reply half-heartedly, already bored with the conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bus, speeding at several hundred versts per hour, smashes through the side of the Catherine Palace and we tumble out into the entrance hall to meet our tour guide. Her head is a perfect sphere with a diameter of three feet – “Thank God she’ll be easy to see,” I think to myself, my only anxiety about the trip alleviated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we look on, she begins describing various aspects of the palace. None of us ever move; her head is a dense black hole which distorts reality. Rooms fly by – bedrooms, dining rooms, studies, and finally, the Amber Room. A spectacle all of its own, a wonder of the modern world, thirty seven slightly distinguished shades of amber combine in an astoundingly scintillating conglomeration of yellows and browns. Numbers jet out from the guide’s head, slamming into us, directly driving the realization into our heads of the vast wealth expropriated for its construction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We travel back through time briefly to watch how the German Fascists stripped every chamber in the abode of the tsars… a misfire, and we’re returned to the present directly above the serene blue lake in the center. As we plunge into the water, with growing horror I realize that my earlier hallucinations on the bus were in fact a prophecy. A pigeon flies past me through the water…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that an original plot? I bet those particular events have never been written about in that way...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="306" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T20:53:31.163" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-17T21:50:12.197" Score="44" ViewCount="15930" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seeing this site and reading some of my ridiculous stories that I wrote a while ago makes me want to start writing again. I know I'll be more enthusiastic if I have people reading my work and commenting on it, and that will also be great feedback to improve my writing. I also don't want to pester my friends incessantly =P.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, can you recommend some websites where I can share my work, that have an active community of people reading, rating, and writing each other's works? I'm not asking for professional review... just a way to have a chance at getting an audience that would be greater than me starting a random blog, putting up stories, and linking friends to it (although that could work now that I think about it =). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: This question is about websites, not &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/124/how-do-i-go-about-finding-a-writing-group&quot;&gt;local writer's groups&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/108/are-there-any-places-to-have-community-story-development&quot;&gt;collaborative story sites&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/954/what-are-some-regular-contests-unpublished-short-story-authors-might-enter&quot;&gt;writing contests&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1021/writers-communities&quot;&gt;forums &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; writing&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="306" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2022-01-08T03:55:38.593" Title="What are good places to post your work where it will be read by others?" Tags="|publishing|websites|criticism|audience|" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2010-12-17T21:53:14.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In german language &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kurzgeschichten.de/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;kurzgeschichten.de&lt;/a&gt; worked well for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T21:53:14.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2010-12-17T22:25:12.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations by Georges Polti I would say about zero. Interesting and new settings, characters? Yes. Twists, turns? Sure. But at the core the basic plot is based on an archetypal situation that has been explored many times before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="232" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T22:25:12.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2010-12-17T22:31:43.660" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fictionpress.com&quot;&gt;Fictionpress&lt;/a&gt; is a popular website that allows anyone to upload stories, read those stories, and comment.  As the site is wide open, the quality of comments varies wildly, along with the quality of stories.  Earlier in my life, I frequented the site, but I eventually left, as I wanted more constructive feedback than I tended to get there.  It does have the advantage of being easy to use and having a large user-base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick google search indicates there are also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ficwad.com/&quot;&gt;number&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing.com/&quot;&gt;of&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://storywrite.com/&quot;&gt;clones&lt;/a&gt;.  I cannot comment as to their quality, having never tried them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for more critique and less friendly chit-chat, as I was, I would recommend joining an online critique group like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critters.org&quot;&gt;Critters&lt;/a&gt;.  Critters is designed to encourage participation (you have to give about 3 critiques per month to have your stories critiqued).  It is also designed to encourage useful, constructive, and in-depth feedback.  I typically get 10-20 critiques on any story submitted, with 90% or more being very useful.  The science-fiction/fantasy/horror portion of the site has been around for some time, but the other genre sections are new, so I don't know how populated they are at this point in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, be aware that making a story freely available to anyone on a site like Fictionpress effectively uses your First Electronic Rights, and possibly others.  This means you are no longer able to sell those rights.  This can be a big turn-off to publishers.  You may want to do some research on publishing rights before putting a story online, if you plan to submit it for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2010-12-17T23:28:06.007" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T23:28:06.007" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="908" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-17T22:43:42.490" Score="9" ViewCount="3349" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to figure out what genre the following is, if any. (I asked a similar question, but this is different now, and more detailed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The story takes place in an imaginary world. It's more or less like our own mid-century world, except the countries, names, history, and geography are all made up. For example, some of the action takes place near the &quot;River Shanga.&quot; As far as I know there is no such river. (So that makes it some type of fantasy, right?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The events take place in a rural area, mostly. A city is mentioned here and there, but it isn't the main setting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The story is pretty dark. The point of view is grim and pessimistic. There's a fair amount of action and violence, and it's integral to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist is not likable. You don't necessarily root for him or want to be like him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are some elements of &quot;thriller&quot; type horror (as opposed to supernatural horror). I mean thriller like &lt;em&gt;Misery&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Cujo,&lt;/em&gt; not supernatural like &lt;em&gt;Carrie&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Salem's Lot.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering what existing genre that is closest to? I'm thinking probably urban fantasy, but that's just a guess. I've never really read anything in that genre. (By the way, what are some great urban fantasy books I should read?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What novels fit that description? Made-up world, but similar to the real world. It seems like there have to be some, but for some reason I can't think of any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T06:22:45.237" LastActivityDate="2020-05-19T00:38:09.330" Title="What genre is a book in an imaginary world but no other fantasy element?" Tags="|fiction|genre|fantasy|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2010-12-17T23:16:03.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's &quot;fantasy.&quot; Note that genre is mostly useful as a tool for book sellers to know where to shelve your work and for the marketing campaign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For authors, it's not as important. In fact, there are lots of examples which don't really fit into their genre - the books just ended up there because they have to have one. &quot;The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy&quot; (D. Adams) is a parody or maybe fantasy, not science fiction (since it's not based on hard scientific facts, theories or findings). Yet most people think &quot;space ship == science fiction.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More genres: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Literary_genres&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Literary_genres&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastEditorUserId="121" LastEditDate="2010-12-17T23:29:33.873" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T23:29:33.873" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2010-12-17T23:25:19.320" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writer's Digest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/write-first-chapter-get-started/20-master-plots-exclusive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lists all 20 plots&lt;/a&gt;. That's all there are. If you find a story, it will use one (or several of them) but for many centuries, this list hasn't changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the nanobot story mentioned by Claudiu has the same basic plot as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Golem&lt;/a&gt; (16th century) or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein&amp;#39;s_monster&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Frankenstein's monster&lt;/a&gt; (1818) or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Icarus&lt;/a&gt; (ancient greeks). There are minor differences (Golem doesn't fall into love, for example) but at the core. From the list, that's plot #10 TEMPTATION and #18 WRETCHED EXCESS and a bit of #20 DECENSION.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the list (in case the link breaks again):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quest - Character has a specific goal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adventure - Focus on the journey instead of the goal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pursuit - Focus on the chase&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rescue - Focus on the action&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Escape - Focus on getting out of something instead of getting somewhere specific&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revenge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Riddle - There is a conflict between what happens and what seems to have happened.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rivalry - The irresistable force meets the immovable object, i.e. both sides should have the same power.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Underdog - Like rivalry but with a mismatch in power.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Temptation - Examines motives, needs and impulses of the character&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Metamorphosis - One important aspect changes. Think of the old tales about people getting cursed and saved by love.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transformation - The main character changes, evolves, matures in many ways.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maturation - Confused, unclear character becomes sound, resolute, reliable. Basis for many stories which show how a child becomes an adult.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Love - You want it but you can't have it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forbidden Love - Like love but others don't want you to have it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sacrifice - Character achieves goal at great personal cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discovery - Plot about making a great discovery. Similar to adventure (the journey is the goal).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wretched Excess - Watch a character undo itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ascension - Character solves a moral dilemma in a positive way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Descension - Character tries to solve a moral dilemma and fails.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Seven Basic Plots&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailywritingtips.com/types-of-plots/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Types of Plots&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastEditorUserId="121" LastEditDate="2016-09-05T13:05:38.630" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T13:05:38.630" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="890" CreationDate="2010-12-17T23:37:04.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe what you feel is &quot;story is unrealistic.&quot; If a race is so advanced, why would it need war? If they can build robots, they can build a self-replicating plant on some planet and wait until the robots have overwhelmed the enemy be sheer number. A million can't do it? You can build billions from the material of a single planet and that number is so low because you don't mine for every speck of ore. And if one planet isn't enough, take ten. Or a hundred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've always felt that &quot;advanced&quot; means &quot;can't be forced to kill/harm/hurt.&quot; So how about this twist: Artifact appears friendly but starts to corrupt humans. Old race comes back to fix its mistake but the humans (dumb as they are) try to stop them, supported by the sentient artifact that doesn't want to &quot;die.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2010-12-17T23:37:04.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2010-12-18T00:38:20.457" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a few from my bookmark collection. I don't have deep knowledge of any of them, though I have posted a story on the first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onlinewritingworkshop.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Online Writing Workshops&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-01-08T03:52:50.873" LastActivityDate="2022-01-08T03:52:50.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2010-12-18T02:56:13.360" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no completely original plots. There are authors who have managed to put an original spin on an old idea, however. But when you boil the basic plot down, it's going to be the same as thousands, if not millions, of other stories out there. The trick to writing a good book is to take an existing plot and add your own personal spin to it to create an original work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="361" LastEditDate="2010-12-19T03:22:29.807" LastActivityDate="2010-12-19T03:22:29.807" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2010-12-18T13:03:47.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The need for self-expression&quot;.  That is the important bit.  If you have that need, and &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; is what marks the great writers (honestly, and I'm not the first to say so, if you want to become a writer to become rich and famous, forget it and looks for another job), it will find its way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now... when an idea for a plot enters (forces its way into) your mind... do you just see plot (&quot;X does Y in such a way and this leads to Z and the butler is the murderer&quot;) or do you also see &lt;em&gt;scenes&lt;/em&gt;.  If you &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; them before your mind's eye, then... write them down.  Then rewrite them until they match what you see.  I'd say (and I'll get flamed for this) if you see a scene, in detail, then writing that down is all that's needed.  No editing, in some cases.  &lt;em&gt;Yes&lt;/em&gt;, sometimes the first draft is the final version (compare to film: some directors use the very first take of a scene, some do few takes, some shot a scene umpteen times before they're still unsatisfied)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that editing is unneeded.  Not for a whole novel, at any rate.  But &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; scenes are just... perfect at first attempt.  Trust me on this.  Or don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do see someone else suggested looking for a partner who does the actual &quot;putting the idea into words&quot; bit.  That could be a good idea.  &lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt; you really only see the plot, and no details.  But if you do see details... even if you only see your characters (cf Rowling who's on record that the first time she thought of Harry Potter, he was there, fully formed, in her mind)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastActivityDate="2010-12-18T13:03:47.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="834" CreationDate="2010-12-18T13:14:46.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with any other application of &quot;writing&quot;, it's recommended to &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; voraciously.  The more I think about it, the more I think that reading is at least as important as practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... you do love comics?  Have a large comic collection?  Or at least read lots and lots of (different style/genre preferably) comics?  Know whatever genre you want to do in your comic inside and out (or at least pretty well)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you answered &quot;yes&quot; to all of these, then jump right in.  If not, then, well, I think you know what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this wasn't too harsh...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastActivityDate="2010-12-18T13:14:46.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2010-12-18T21:23:46.873" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are writing science fiction, fantasy or horror, then you should check out the Online Writers Workshop specifically for those genres -- Ethan posted the link above. Elizabeth Bear, Josh Palmitier and CC Finley all came out of OWW. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write erotica, then you'll want to check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.erotica-readers.com/ERA/index.htm&quot;&gt;Erotica Readers and Writers Association&lt;/a&gt;. They host a Storytime mailing list where you can post your work for critique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when you get to the point of sending out queries, make sure you list your membership to this kind of group (especially OWW or Critters!) It is a major selling point for agents and editors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2010-12-18T21:23:46.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="921" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="927" CreationDate="2010-12-18T22:21:38.253" Score="16" ViewCount="1299" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the best non-fiction writers, in terms of sales at least, seem to be able to write in a really engaging and easy to read style that makes their work hard to put down.  For example, author/journalist Malcolm Gladwell (author of &lt;em&gt;The Tipping Point&lt;/em&gt; and others) comes to mind as someone who is very fun to read, even if his claims are occasionally dubious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is:  Has there been any work or writing directed at trying to dissect the process of writing really engaging, bestseller-quality nonfiction?  I'm sure someone has dissected the process of writing good hooks, at least...but I don't know where to turn for this kind of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know of any specific references regarding how to write engaging non-fiction, I'd still be very interested in advice that anyone can offer on this subject.  I particularly liked &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/107/how-can-i-write-an-attention-grabbing-first-line&quot;&gt;the advice in the accepted answer on this question&lt;/a&gt;, which indicated that in fiction, lack of context and mystery can work well for &quot;first lines.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user153" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T15:15:24.687" Title="What are some ingredients of really engaging non-fiction?" Tags="|style|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="922" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="932" CreationDate="2010-12-19T03:38:41.947" Score="23" ViewCount="6745" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that some of the most successful writers refrain from using profanity, such as Stephanie Meyer and Norman Mailer. Are readers turned off by swearing in books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, is it &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; to use profanity? Is it bad writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I replace my shits with &quot;sh*ts&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-03-01T08:47:46.617" LastActivityDate="2019-03-01T13:50:09.610" Title="How much swearing is TOO much? (And how much is not enough?)" Tags="|word-choice|profanity|" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2010-12-19T05:27:00.970" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if there's a &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; answer for this question, but as a reader, I don't mind seeing a &quot;shit&quot; in a book used appropriately. Language can help establish character or set a mood. The line from enough to too much is grey (to me at least) - if it was one character, they could potentially swear in every scene. However, if every paragraph contains swearing, it could be distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastActivityDate="2010-12-19T05:27:00.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2010-12-19T06:58:34.890" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Stephen King's comments are helpful in this regard.  He says to write what you know.  If you work or live around people who swear, quite frankly, you're probably going to have a hard time keeping it out of your books.  In which case, I'm not sure you should even try.  People swear - that's life.  That's just the way things are.  If a person doesn't want to read that, then that's entirely up to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are certain scenarios in which it's almost a must.  If you're writing a war story and a guy gets his leg blow off, then he better darn well not be lying there yelling, &quot;Oh sugar, it hurts.&quot;  If an old grandma stubs her toe on the other hand, then she might say just that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in a factory, and if I was going to depict life in the factory, I couldn't do it without throwing in some foul language.  In all honesty, it actually makes me a bit uncomfortable to hear how some of the guys talk sometimes - but my views of decency and propriety don't change the way the world actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I want to avoid that, then I probably just won't write those kinds of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also mention briefly that if, on the other hand, you don't swear, you're not ever around people who swear, and it's very awkward for you to be around or write about those sorts of things - well, then it's probably going to come across in your stories as awkward and unnatural.  Just like if you try to avoid using foul language when it seems very appropriate for you - if a character is screaming something bad in your mind, but you purposely don't put it down on paper, well, I think that tends to show.  But if your characters wouldn't swear and you force them to just to try and make them seem more real, then it will seem unnatural, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's an answer of &quot;too much&quot; or &quot;not enough&quot; to this question.  It depends on the story, the context, the characters, and even what comes most naturally to you as a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: There are a lot of popular authors who have written stories with quite a bit of profanity.  Stephen King, as mentioned before, being a prime example.  It fits his books.  There are definitely people who have a problem with it.  He gets hate mail sometimes over it.  Honestly, I think that's just ridiculous.  If the reader doesn't want to read the F-word, then he just shouldn't read King's stories.  The point being: don't try to write popular books.  Write what you know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-19T06:58:34.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2010-12-19T07:02:02.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are two things you need to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your audience? If you're writing for grade schoolers, possibly YA, Christian fiction, etc. you may want to avoid swearing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you believe the swearing would not be a problem for your audience, then you need to consider the character who would be doing the swearing (including the narrator, if it would be in the narration). The dialogue should stay true to te character speaking it. If that person is someone who peppers their speech with expletives, then put them on the page. It's going to seem really absurd if your mass-murdering bike gang leader hangs around the prison exercise yard saying &quot;I'm gonna shank that gol-dern, no-good Bill at lunch tomorrow.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, cutting all expletives or leaving them are better than censoring, as far as I'm concerned. We all know what the * in sh*t means. Even the twelve-year-olds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2010-12-19T07:02:02.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="824" CreationDate="2010-12-19T07:05:41.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PLEASE, please; -Please- don't ever use the second example in writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That wasn't the issue at all,&quot; she&#xA;  said. Vehemently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using adverbs to explain a character's actions is lazy, and to top it off, the period adds extra emphasis to the lack of effort by the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The wind threw itself down from the&#xA;  mountains at us; the howl was immense,&#xA;  deafening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is an interesting sentence, and could be viewed as style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an unpublished author don't expect any leeway unless your story is so great it begs to get published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2010-12-19T07:05:41.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="921" CreationDate="2010-12-19T09:08:42.223" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO, everything you need to know can be found in Kathy Sierra's &lt;a href=&quot;http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/01/crash_course_in.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Crash course in learning theory&quot;&lt;/a&gt; article. If you end up wanting more (references or otherwise), she has a reading list in the comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2010-12-19T09:08:42.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2010-12-19T10:29:52.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zoetrope.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zoetrope&lt;/a&gt; to be a useful resource for critique. They do Short Stories, Screenplays, Flash Fiction (uber short stories) and Novellas. Novellas tend to have fewer critics hanging around. It's a well known website though so there's always plenty to get involved with. You have to criticise to be able to post and that ensures at least one criticism for everything you put up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-19T10:29:52.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2010-12-19T13:27:57.820" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could you tag that with a country?  Because things are quite different here in Germany (and most of Europe, the Brits excluded ;D) than in, say, the US (where most participants here are likely to hail from).  So, for questions of &quot;What's publishable/what can audience stomach&quot; it's not unimportant to know &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; things are to be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, let's get to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others (and I myself) have said: read read read.  It's at least as important as the practice of writing.  And if you do, you'll see examples.  Lots of em.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a huge fan of Terry Pratchett.  He... does use swearing, even though you get the feeling his characters don't.  Sometimes it does feel a bit too little, especially in the context of Ankh-Morpork and the City Watch.  But on rereading, I found an &quot;oshitoshitoshit&quot; in Eric, and other bits.  But, yes, in some books for some characters not enough.  (Still like 'em though)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there's the character of Mr. Tulip in &quot;The Truth&quot;.  Who swears pretty obviously.  But... it's &quot;--ing&quot; this and &quot;--ing&quot; that (yes, there's a pause, and the other characters are wondering why it's there.  Like when profanity isn't bleeped but blanked :D)  Showing that you can put in &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of swearing without swearing, and everyone knows it's swearing, and you get a nice comedic effect, and there's no &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; swearing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, I'm rambling.  Let me just, in closing, agree with much of the answers.  The only thing that's really important is that it feels &quot;right&quot;, or natural.  Oh, and if your characters swear, let them swear right... which may need some &quot;method writing&quot;, meaning, getting to know (or knowing) people who swear like that ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastActivityDate="2010-12-19T13:27:57.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="930" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="931" CreationDate="2010-12-19T15:02:49.090" Score="11" ViewCount="735" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a story in first-person that has a connection to a series of external events - things that the main character has no way of knowing but are vital to the progression of the overall storyline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been toying with two ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Put a brief third-person snippet at the beginning of each chapter, kind of like a teaser. This short narrative would make sense by the end of the chapter, or several chapters later. Some happen concurrently, some happen in the past but have thematic ties to the current chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benefit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reader will become familiar with this regular change in viewpoint.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drawback:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some of the third-person narratives are longer than a 'snippet' should be.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create separate chapters for each third-person narrative. This alternate point of view would make it clear that the character focus has changed, and would allow me to advance a parallel story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benefit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reader will be able to see two complete stories develop in parallel (until they meet near the end)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I wouldn't have to provide a third-person chapter on ever other chapter, just as needed.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drawback: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some of these third-person chapters are quite short, especially early on when they are more teaser-like than a fully-developed chapter should be. Is it reasonable to create a three-paragraph chapter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I'm not fond of is a combination of the two. I tried this out when I was writing the early chapters, but the result was not what I was looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, with the change in viewpoint comes a change in perspective as well. The third-person narrative is darker. I don't want the reader to understand the character motivations early on (like I would for the first-person sections). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="142" LastActivityDate="2020-08-11T15:11:41.910" Title="How can multiple viewpoints be used without breaking the flow of the story?" Tags="|style|viewpoint|perspective|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="930" CreationDate="2010-12-19T16:04:35.270" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card did something like this, although they weren't quite integral to the plot.  The entire story was told from Ender's point of view, but the beginning of each chapter had a radio transmission or other news-type broadcast that was talking about the current events in the rest of the world, outside his secluded space station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it seems like you actually need to have developed characters and narrative in your brief sections.  There's nothing wrong with a short chapter, but if you're going to get more detailed than a quote or two you probably shouldn't stick it at the beginning of another chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the options you're toying with, I like number 2 because it doesn't force you to come up with some kind of snippet every chapter when there really shouldn't be one.  I once wrote a novel with a similar forced format to your first option, and it resulted in a lot of fluff and a lot less tension.  That's probably a lot because I was a terrible writer at the time, but it is also partially because of the restriction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2010-12-19T16:04:35.270" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2010-12-19T22:10:55.533" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that technically the only reason &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; to use profanity in your writing &lt;em&gt;when you want it&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;if censorship will prevent you from reaching your target audience&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you want tweens to read your book but their fucking parents won't let them because of the fucking swearing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Swearing is like salt on food though, too much or on the wrong dishes can just make you seem like you don't know what you're doing.  If there's too much salt then you can get tired of the taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a book called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0312318715&quot;&gt;Watch Your F*cking Language:  How To Swear Effectively&lt;/a&gt;.  I haven't read it myself but I've been wanting to pick it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't try to pander to people's tastes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your writing will appeal as a whole to your audience.  If you cut out the swearing for the sake of the few who don't like swearing, then you may degrade the quality of expression of your work.  At the same time, removing the swearing does not necessarily please the people who would already dislike your work anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="389" LastActivityDate="2010-12-19T22:10:55.533" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2010-12-20T01:04:31.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used www.writingforums.org to post some of my writing and have received some good advice. You review two pieces of work and then you may post your own to be reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T01:04:31.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2010-12-20T01:41:00.037" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that you can easily &lt;strong&gt;swear without swearing&lt;/strong&gt;. Try one or both of these, where appropriate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Indirect swearing:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say that someone swore, just don't go into detail. For example, if J.K. Rowling has her characters swear, what's written is something like: &quot;Ron swore loudly&quot; rather than the word(s) he/she actually said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;In-world swearing:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For sci-fi, fantasy, historical, etc, use exclamations to further immerse the reader in the setting. For example: in the wheel of time books &quot;Light help us&quot; is used instead of &quot;God help us&quot; - because the Light is the concept of God in that culture/setting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in a contemporary setting, see if you can invent an interesting idiom to make the character more colourful, rather than using common swearing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most writers seem to add explicit swearing to get a certain shock value or &quot;gritty realism&quot; if your book is set in a contemporary English-speaking culture setting. In other settings, for example, a science fiction or fantasy world, or a different culture and/or historical period, swearing can actually &lt;em&gt;hurt&lt;/em&gt; the sense of realism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T01:41:00.037" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2010-12-20T01:45:26.713" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see the rationale behind the idea expressed in many of these answers, to stay true to what you think your characters would actually realistically say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two things I'd like to add though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just as with sex and violence, you can shrink your audience by including swearing. Avoiding offensive language is not just for the prudish and pretentious, a lot of people will skip your book - especially if children comprise any part of the audience. &lt;strong&gt;Consider work-arounds that cut it out without the story losing anything&lt;/strong&gt; (these can actually work quite well for some writing, see my other answer).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With explicit sex, violence, and swearing (and other things large numbers of readers have reason to find offensive) it can be just as effective (sometimes &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; effective) to not describe it explicitly, but &lt;strong&gt;leave some of it to the imagination&lt;/strong&gt;. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/312&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T01:45:26.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="921" CreationDate="2010-12-20T01:49:39.050" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Humour can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Everything&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bill Bryson's &lt;em&gt;A Short History of Nearly Everything&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T01:49:39.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2010-12-20T06:31:17.730" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a writer. I am a reader. You need my opinion. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By all means swear but it should be natural. Don't swear just because you want to or don't avoid it just because you don't want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also think about your target audience. Do NOT swear if the book is intended for youngsters. &#xA;Because if you do so &quot;target audience&quot; like it BUT their parents don't. So, book won't sell (at least openly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing books for 18+ please please swear it turns people on in a strange way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rule of Thumb: Excess of everything is bad.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="390" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T06:31:17.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="921" CreationDate="2010-12-20T08:38:19.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Totally an opinion here but I have to agree with MGOwen's answer above. Just to elaborate and maybe add a bit to it, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Humour is one of the things that makes the most boring facts eminently readable as well as memorable. One of the way that Bill Bryson incorporates it in his books is by presenting the facts with very relatable and atleast to me inherently funny examples &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another way that I find particularly absorbing is to involve the human element as an integral part of the facts itself and not just to focus on the facts. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A particular example of this is Simon Singh's - Fermat's last theorem - which essentially being a book about mathematics - makes it a lot more interesting by giving a picture of the mathematicians themselves and their lives . It talks not just of Andrew Wiles, who cracked the theorem but of events and circumstances of relatively obscure mathematicians like Evariste Galois who was killed but spent the night before his death putting down everything he knew on paper so that it would not be lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="341" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T08:38:19.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="939" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-20T10:31:58.990" Score="8" ViewCount="4726" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love funny comparisons in newspaper articles or other texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am talking about things like &quot;exciting like a winter morning&quot; (except funny - I don't know any good English ones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the funniest or best ones you have come across?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="391" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T22:27:41.230" Title="Best humorous exaggerated comparisons" Tags="|humor|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="940" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-20T11:14:37.720" Score="3" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you grow your writing from short-stories, to longer stories and novels you will have to create more content. Most of it will be more detailed description of settings, people and plot. Also you will add more obstacles to create a longer main-story. But another possibility is to add side-stories. That can be somewhat difficult, as too much side-story might be distracting, the reader not longer knows whats the writing is about. Are there any rules of thumb, how much side-story is acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2010-12-21T03:48:26.160" Title="Which amount of side-story is acceptable?" Tags="|rules|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="939" CreationDate="2010-12-20T11:17:06.510" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read Pterry (Terry Pratchett), he's got lots. One I like is how he states the difference between erotic and pornographic: it's like using a feather instead of the whole chicken. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="134" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T11:17:06.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2010-12-20T11:24:29.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to the basic number of plots this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2366/what-are-the-seven-basic-literary-plots&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2366/what-are-the-seven-basic-literary-plots&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from The Straight Dope said everything I ever needed to know about the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl; dr = Seven? Twenty? Three? Pick an integer. There's no definitive answer to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T11:24:29.967" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="930" CreationDate="2010-12-20T11:28:16.153" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;An idea: instead of re-hashing the same scene(s) from different viewpoints, let them feed progressively off each other. A real-time description of an event can use something inherent to the event itself that moves on and touches on each involved character: a simplistic example: a rolling wheel from an accident - a character involved in the accident sees the wheel role away; another doing something else needs to dodge the wheel; and so on, with at a later time yet another character encounters the same wheel where it finally came to rest. The idea is to have a flowing description of a situation/event that naturally moves into the different characters experience, giving the opportunity to add their vital bits to the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="134" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T11:28:16.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="953" CreationDate="2010-12-20T13:06:04.380" Score="8" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any ISBN yields a DOI.  For example, the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. has ISBN &lt;code&gt;978-0-226-10420-1&lt;/code&gt;, which maps to &lt;code&gt;doi:10.978.226/104201&lt;/code&gt;, allowing any book to be digitally identified in a reference list by either ISBN or DOI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which should be preferred?  Some considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DOIs aren't necessarily unique.  Neither ISBNs, but duplicate ISBNs are rare.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DOIs come with a nice URL scheme for obtaining authoritative publisher information on the text, using the dx.doi.org site.  E.g., &lt;em&gt;The Cambridge Shakespeare&lt;/em&gt; maps to &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511701207&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511701207&lt;/a&gt;, although note that only the DOI containing &quot;CBO&quot; maps in this way, the one derived from the ISBN, &lt;code&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.978.0511/701207&lt;/code&gt; doesn't.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ISBNs are shorter and, for books, more ubiquitous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DOIs are very rapidly becoming dominant in scientific publishing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2010-12-20T15:14:06.980" LastActivityDate="2020-12-01T17:57:44.853" Title="Should DOIs ever be preferred to ISBNs?" Tags="|rules|citations|isbn|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="72" CreationDate="2010-12-20T13:18:23.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 2010, APA Press.  Very accessible style guide, probably the easiest style guide to get into for scientific writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New Hart's Rules, 2005, Oxford University Press.  The OUP house style, good overview of book publication.  Popular in Britain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Butcher's Copy-editing, 2006 (4. ed.), Cambridge University Press.  The House style of CUP and the &lt;em&gt;Society for Editors and Proofreaders&lt;/em&gt;.  Well-respected by editors, not really known outside of publishing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Style guides such as these, &lt;em&gt;Chicago&lt;/em&gt;, the AP stylebook, and the MLA handbook explain the structure that documents should have, and provide detailed instructions about such things as capitalisation of titles.  They are much less widely read than usage guides such as Strunk &amp;amp; White's &lt;em&gt;Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Fowler's&lt;/em&gt;, which are references for writing effectively, but which don't care about the purpose of the writing, or whether it will ever be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T13:18:23.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="878" CreationDate="2010-12-20T13:54:00.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pay attention to graphic design, i.e., non-textual, spatial organisation of material.   Putting your helpful asides in boxes is effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other matters of layout:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure there is plenty of space around text elements that organise material, such as subsection headings, quotes, &amp;amp;c.  Lowering the density of information helps readers avoid feeling overwhelmed;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set off key ideas in the text.  Distinguishing the text in this way accents the importance, and makes it easier for readers to come back to the point;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use diagrams to present the relationship between concepts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analogies are good, if your reader will be able to relate to them.   If your readers will have difficulty, explaining an example will help: without them, readers are likely to have parsed your explanation without having formed a mental picture of what is going on.  A running theme to relate to your examples together can make them more digestible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many mathematicians are good at expositional writing.  Take a look at the answers to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://mathoverflow.net/questions/1722/free-high-quality-mathematical-writing-online&quot;&gt;Free, high quality mathematical writing online?&lt;/a&gt; question at Math Overflow.  Children's textbooks are sometimes good as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:54.503" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T13:54:00.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="947" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-20T14:15:59.297" Score="14" ViewCount="4312" Body="&lt;p&gt;When reviewing a text to shorten it beneath a fixed, externally imposed word limit, which strategies are available  for shortening the text?  What kind of shortening can be expected?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most obvious is to find passages whose purpose isn't essential, such as discursive explanations.  But there are only a limited number of such opportunities for shortening a text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2010-12-20T15:15:06.900" LastActivityDate="2022-03-25T12:21:33.763" Title="Strategies for shortening texts" Tags="|editing|wordcount|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="72" CreationDate="2010-12-20T14:45:41.517" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;MLA (Modern Language Association) is the style guide used in the academic world in essays and term papers. It's generally used in English, History, Literature, and similar classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;APA (American Psychological Association) is the style guide used in the academic world for Psychology and Science type courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CMOS (Chicaco Manual of Style) is the style guide used by 90% of publishing houses. Most houses also have their own style guide that takes its information from the CMOS and shows only the relevant information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T14:45:41.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="944" CreationDate="2010-12-20T14:51:41.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the publishing world, ISBNs are the standard. They're rarely reused (though it does happen on occasion) and it's how most booksellers and the like will be able to find a book quickly. I've never heard of someone using a DOI over an ISBN. Most people wouldn't even know what a DOI is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T14:51:41.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="947" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:22:02.430" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a novel, memoir, or literary essay&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compress your description.  Take the most pertinent details, the most stand-out images, and use only those.  Remove all other description.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider whether each sentence, each detail, is critical to plot or character development.  Make sure each scene or paragraph is advancing your purpose, whether it is a fast-paced plot, a compelling character, proving a thesis, or world-building.  If not, cut it entirely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For poetry:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compress your description.  Poetry is the most compressed form of writing.  You want each syllable serving a purpose&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If removing words to fit a form with syllable count, consider entirely restructuring your lines to get your idea across in a more specific way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For technical writing and scientific publishing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For each section and chapter, ask yourself &quot;does the reader need to know this?&quot;  If yes, think about the bare minimum that must be done to prove your point or educate the reader.  Trim anything else.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This answer has been marked community wiki to encourage others to add to the list.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T15:22:02.430" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-20T15:22:02.430" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="947" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:22:46.013" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Follow these steps: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/665/something-different-help-me-find-the-unnecessary-words/707#707&quot;&gt;Something different: Help me find the unnecessary words.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They will help you to find unnecessary words/sections and get rid of them. I reduced the word count of my novel by ten percent with these steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T15:22:46.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="940" CreationDate="2010-12-20T16:43:07.620" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; no answer.  &quot;3&quot; (if you can actually count them) side-stories can be too much.  Even &lt;em&gt;1&lt;/em&gt; can... if you want to write (or rather, if the story demands to be) a simple story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 can be too many.  But 100 can be just right.  It &lt;em&gt;depends&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Haven't read the Wheel of Time yet, but I've heard it contains &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of side-stories.  Too many?  Some surely think so, but then they're not the audience for it.  Given it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a success, it looks like it didn't contain too many tangents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... as I always say: write your story the way it demands.  If it's an intricate, multi-level plot, then there will automatically be &quot;side&quot;-stories (some of them, or even most of them, won't really be tangents, it just won't be obvious how they're all connected for some time, see &quot;Pulp Fiction&quot; for a great (non-linear, too) example)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastEditorUserId="317" LastEditDate="2010-12-20T17:18:18.430" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T17:18:18.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="944" CreationDate="2010-12-20T17:51:07.820" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you say, DOIs are becoming dominate in scientific publishing, so it would be useful to have one in that arena.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand ISBN (And it's cousin, the ISSN) are still the main way to identify a publication. There is also a lot of useful things that the ISBN number is used for. Right now you can put an ISBN number into pretty much any bookseller (or search engine) and it will get you to the right publication. Even my library lets me search by ISBN number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The average book fan also knows what an ISBN number is and have some idea how to use them. They are useful and ubiquitous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your questions, unless you are doing a scientific paper or working in a field that has a strong reliance on DOIs, I would stick with ISBNs. And, as you say, you can make a DOI from the ISBN number, that provides better coverage if you just use the ISBN number. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2010-12-20T19:01:44.930" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T19:01:44.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="954" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="955" CreationDate="2010-12-20T18:29:25.947" Score="12" ViewCount="444" Body="&lt;p&gt;One good way for new authors to become recognized is a contest.  What contests exist that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept &lt;strong&gt;short stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Occur on a &lt;strong&gt;regular&lt;/strong&gt; (annual, semi-annual, bi-annual, etc.) basis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are friendly to &lt;strong&gt;unpublished&lt;/strong&gt; authors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ideally provide a good amount of &lt;strong&gt;publicity&lt;/strong&gt; within the target market.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the contest caters to a specific genre or has important entrance criteria, those would be helpful to note.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2010-12-20T19:28:19.810" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T22:24:51.653" Title="What are some regular contests unpublished short story authors might enter?" Tags="|short-story|contests|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="954" CreationDate="2010-12-20T18:54:51.317" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersofthefuture.com/&quot;&gt;Writers of the Future&lt;/a&gt; is for SF/F, but it's the longest-running contest in the genre, and carries significant fame and prestige. No other contest comes close. WotF is specifically for unpublished writers, and occurs once a quarter. Check the website for entrance dates and other information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2010-12-20T22:30:04.127" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T22:30:04.127" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="956" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="957" CreationDate="2010-12-20T19:09:55.247" Score="7" ViewCount="5348" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a fairly experienced writer, but I have little experience in journalistic writing and no formal education in journalism.  I believe I can pick up the craft aspects of this form of writing.  However, I don't really know where to begin in terms of career path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, I would like to know what options are available to a skilled beginner without a diploma whose goal is to become a professional magazine or newspaper journalist.&lt;/strong&gt;  Should I write freelance articles and submit them where I can?  Should I apply for some sort of junior/intern/coffee-delivery position at publishers?  I understand that any path will probably take years, and I am alright with that.  I am just looking for general advice on where to get work when first starting out.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am also curious if the lack of degree will hurt me significantly.  Would four years back at school benefit me more than four years trying to break into the field without that degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:56:26.477" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:56:26.477" Title="Breaking into journalism without a degree" Tags="|publishing|journalism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="956" CreationDate="2010-12-20T19:49:45.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The degree is less important than your clips and prior work experience. However, journalism is very hierarchical. Bigger papers have a higher status, higher pay, better jobs, etc, and they only hire reporters with good clips, and experience at larger papers. So you're going to have to start at a smaller paper, and work your way to bigger papers. I know a guy who went from a tiny crap paper to one of the best papers in the country in about 6 years (of course, then he burned out, and is now working back at a smaller paper again).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stringing is a good way to start, but it's often deadly boring. If you're thinking more about magazine journalism, thats a bit different. Many magazines work on a contract basis, but that can make it even harder to break in, as they produce less content, and what they do produce they farm out to specific people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T19:49:45.447" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="956" CreationDate="2010-12-20T19:58:39.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard once from a relative who knows a lot of professional journalists (and is a published nonfiction writer) that a journalism degree is actually a waste of time, because field experience matters more than an academic degree in the field.  I'd say, four years in the field is a much better use of your time.  I'd say start out trying to intern at a small paper, do your best, get some good experience and published clips, and go from there.  (Just as a caveat, though, I'm speaking based on my impressions alone...I'm not a journalist!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user153" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T19:58:39.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="959" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="961" CreationDate="2010-12-20T20:12:14.710" Score="13" ViewCount="1038" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just wondering: at which point do you have to deal with the editor, and what are the (possible) consequences?  That is, when is the editor's involvement greatest?  After or before a deal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suspect after, since before something is agreed upon, it would mean cost for the publisher who pays the editor's wage without any benefit, not even the &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt; benefit of making money from selling the book (potential because you can never be &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt; something sells, at least not with an unknown author)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what &quot;recourse&quot; do you have then?  The contract is signed... what could or does usually (as per said contract) happen if you don't agree to some or all of the editor's (proposed) changes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have googled (yes, just now) and haven't found much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-19T08:09:42.280" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T08:09:42.280" Title="At what point does an author deal with an editor?" Tags="|publishing|editing|contracts|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2010-12-20T20:23:55.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Mercurial (see Daniel's answer for a link).  I do my (little, atm) writing in pure text files (with my trusty Emacs ;-D), but in a self-designed (and ill-designed at that, for the moment) &quot;novel&quot; format.  That way I have pure text with almost no (currently at least) formatting (which is recommended, according to this very site ;-)) but can generate TeX (or other formats, later) when needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T20:23:55.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="959" CreationDate="2010-12-20T20:31:53.323" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Editors don't get involved until a contract is assigned and your manuscript is sent to them for editing. The amount of leeway you have regarding their changes is going to vary on a couple things. The first being your reasoning. Why don't you want to go with their change? If you have a justifiable reason (ie not &quot;I just don't like it) then they'll most likely go with you. If for some reason the author and editor can't agree on something, it'll go up the chain to the Editor-in-Chief or another senior member of the editing staff. They tend to side with the author unless it's something that's going to reflect poorly on the manuscript or the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most contracts have a stipulation in them that the publishing house cannot make major changes to the manuscript without permission from the author. This means they can't rewrite entire scenes, add/subtract a character, etc. without your okay. But this doesn't mean they need your permission to add a comma here or a semi-colon there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If for some reason you just can't work with an editor, don't hesitate to email the publisher and request a different editor. Sometimes an author and a specific editor just don't mix well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, at least three different people should be looking over your manuscript to look for ways to improve it. The first person would be a copy editor or a content editor. They're going to look at the overall picture of the manuscript. Does a character magically disappear? Are there plot holes? Does this chapter add to the manuscript? The next person is the line editor. They're going to go over it line by line for grammar/punctuation/spelling. They will sometimes make content related notes if something jumps out at them. (IE something doesn't seem realistic, etc.) The last person is a proofreader. They're mostly looking for anything that the other two missed - namely, typos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2010-12-20T20:31:53.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="959" CreationDate="2010-12-21T00:52:06.600" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're looking at this wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good editor helps you &lt;strong&gt;genuinely improve&lt;/strong&gt; your book. If your editor wants changes that might, in some way, be detrimental to the book, &lt;strong&gt;you need a different editor&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think about 90% of a decent editor's suggested changes to a book should make you think something like &quot;Wow, that's a &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; great idea.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the major reasons to publish through &quot;traditional&quot; means is to get a good editor to help improve the book (if I ever publish my own book online, say, I'll still get a good editor to help me work on the final drafts). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="67" LastEditDate="2010-12-21T05:47:40.407" LastActivityDate="2010-12-21T05:47:40.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="653" CreationDate="2010-12-21T01:45:12.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Choose your newspapers to read. Here in Melbourne, we have the 'herald sun' which has the vocabulary of a 10 year old, 'the age' with the vocabulary of a 15 year old. It is rare that I'll come across a word I don't know. I find the nytimes stretches my vocabulary a bit more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that there is little point learning a word that noone else uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to do the whole word-of-the-day thing but found myself accumulating a bunch of words I had no use for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" LastActivityDate="2010-12-21T01:45:12.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="940" CreationDate="2010-12-21T03:48:26.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure there is a hard and fast number, but there are other ways you can measure if the side story is acceptable. What does having it in your story achieve. If it's just there to fill out the word count is it worth having it there at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the story story helps move the plot along or helps develop the characters it might be worth having in the story. Sometimes major characters can't be there for all the important events, so having a secondary set to see what's going on can help flesh out the world and increase the tension. It also lets you break up the flow of the main story to help with the placing. And there's always the option of ending a chapter on a cliff hanger then jumping to the side story for a chapter or two.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing a world spanning epic it might make sense to have dozens of side stories. If you're doing a small story that never leaves the local neighborhood you might only have one or two, or none at all. It really all depends on how much the help the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes side stories are useful to show how bad things are going. Disaster stories and war stories both do this. It allows you to show how bad things are, and if done right you can kill off one of this minor characters after building them up enough that reader will feel the loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2010-12-21T03:48:26.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="969" CreationDate="2010-12-21T09:37:41.417" Score="13" ViewCount="1350" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the implications, if I choose a Creative-Commons-license for my work? &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow&quot;&gt;Cory Doctorow&lt;/a&gt; seems fine with this. Is this exceptional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T06:52:36.823" Title="What are advantages/disadvantages to use a CC-license for your writings?" Tags="|publishing|creative-commons|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="959" CreationDate="2010-12-21T09:46:42.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;When&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an agent, they are quite likely to want the text to be edited before it is sent to the publisher, with many agents doing the editing themselves; you should consider hiring a freelance editor if you do not have an agent at this stage.  Developmental editing is generally done before submission to potential publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the publisher wants your work, they will assign a project editor who will usually be the same person as the commissioning editor who accepted the text.  They will be responsible for your manuscript through to when the book is launched, and they should appoint a copy-editor who does the lion's share of the editing of the text.  The project editor should then do a second edit, and assign a typesetter to turn the text into a form that can be printed, and traditionally there was a third editing stage, proofreading, that checked that the whole editing process from submitted manuscript to print-ready text had not introduced any errors.   Sophisticated automation in typesetting and diminished margins in publishing have led to this being seen as a dispensible step; in academic publishing, which tend to have a rather sloppy copy-editing stage, the proofreading stage is necessary and is typically &amp;quot;delegated&amp;quot; to the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Consequences&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is such a thing as over-editing, just as, per Nick's comment, in music there is such a thing as over-production.  It generally happens when editors are not given enough time to get a feel for your style, and so don't respect it when editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's your responsibility to check that you are happy with the edits.  Ask to look over the edits in full (this should go without saying, but it doesn't).  With Word, this should mean looking at a text with all changes tracked.  Go over the edits one-by-one, if you can make the time.  Ask to have any edits explained that you are unsure about.  Discuss things until you are both happy with it, if there is time.  This is time-consuming, especially if either you or the editor are inexperienced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your publisher takes responsibility for ensuring that your manuscript's editors have the right resources, you should be grateful to have such editorial attention.  It is quite likely that no-one who reads your work will do so with as much close attention as your editors: they are among your best readers.  In my experience, most writers do appreciate their editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2010-12-21T10:02:49.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="966" CreationDate="2010-12-21T10:22:39.860" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd be hard pushed to think of any other well-known authors who do this at present but I think it may become, as they say, a thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my perspective. Kindles and the like are becoming more and more popular, so electronic distribution of books is becoming easier. The author has two enemies, the enemy of the popular author is piracy or thievery, people accessing their popular work without paying for the privilege. The budding author has an entirely different problem obscurity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you start out you are vying for people's attention with thousands of other products and you need something to appeal to readers. Just allowing people to read your stuff for free is a great way to combat obscurity at the present time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the only practical way to do this is via downloads. One day I imagine there will be many free books to download (as in books intentionally designed to be freely downloadable from the outset) there already are a significant number of classic texts on sites like the Project Gutenberg ones. It's only a matter of time before some authors become of the mindset that, at least to begin with, fame is better than fortune to start out with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it's not so special to be offering a free download of a book an author will have to think of even more ways to attract what the marketing fraternity charmingly refers to as &quot;eyeballs&quot;. Until then there's a small upcoming niche available for those who capitalise on the wider distribution channels for electronic texts and the relative rarity of offering CC licensed materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people, I should point out, believe I am crazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-21T10:22:39.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="966" CreationDate="2010-12-21T10:23:36.873" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Cory Doctorow it has attracted a great deal of attention to his work that he would likely not have received otherwise.  If he has twenty times as many readers, but the proportion who pay for the text they read drops from, say, 70% to 10%, there is still about three times the turnover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it good for you?  Some considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you care about reaching readers, free texts with money put into marketing are hard to beat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If people are to pay for a book they could have browsed on their machine or printed out themselves for free, the physical product had better be a more rewarding thing to own.  There's no way, for instance, I would want to print out a full English dictionary for myself, and I find it hard to work from textbooks from screen.  But for a novel that one does not expect to reread, what makes the physical book so great?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most books attract very few readers, whilst some are written by J.K.Rowling.  Free content can help build up momentum for your work, though it is unlikely to make the need to market your work go away, but it will make exploiting the pockets of your readers harder.  And how else will the expensive marketing campaign be paid for?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not many people can be well-known as &quot;the author who releases their books for free&quot;, so Cory's marketing bonanza can't be shared by all that many people.  If you're looking to make money, you have to think about just how many new readers CC-ing your work will attract.  I'm guessing CC-ed content can work very well for reference works, where lots of people will be attracted to your website, and will want to refer to your work many times, but not so well for fiction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've wondered about the idea of releasing texts as minimally formatted text files under a CC-AS-IS license, with a beautifully typeset version available as, say, a paid e-Book or printed.  This would be trying to exploit point #2.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My work is mostly concerned with scientists who want to reach as many readers as possible.  This might seem to make CC publishing ideal, but in fact it is troublesome: to attract readers, they need to publish in prestigious journals, which are not CC and want copyright assignment.  So the goal of reaching readers here speaks against the CC route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastEditorUserId="137" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T09:05:51.110" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T09:05:51.110" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="970" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-21T10:58:49.363" Score="16" ViewCount="23840" Body="&lt;p&gt;100,000 words makes a novel. For a perfectionist each line is poetry. How long should it take to write a novel? Not a bestseller. Just enough income to survive in the city. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question subjective? Maybe. Answerable? Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T20:25:32.587" Title="How long should it take to write 100k words?" Tags="|book-length|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2010-12-21T12:30:53.990" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;To produce something no more nor less publishable than some bestsellers bare minimum would be about a year broken down like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two Months: First Draft (taken as 2xNaNoWriMo some people do produce 100k+ in this month but 50k is generally thought to be achievable)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two Months: Cool down time. Maybe first draft a completely separate project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three Months: First Pass. Most of the good work is done here. By the time you've finished all that should be left is grace notes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three Months: Cool Down Time. More important. Get a lot of distance, should definitely work on something else consuming here, try to forget as much of the detail about your work as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two Months: Second pass and final polish. Time to murder the darlings, hoover up most obvious typos etc. By the time this is finished the book will still have mistakes of various types but none that can be spotted without an editor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should be ample time to produce one book and get underway on a couple more. If you have any talent and dedication what you produce should be up to the quality of what sits on many bestseller lists (midlist sales will not allow you to &quot;survive in the city&quot; you have to glean a large advance or respectable sales for that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether your offering will fare as well in the world's most Kafka-esque lottery (AKA the publishing industry)... well, that's another matter entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-21T12:30:53.990" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2010-12-21T16:01:08.707" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;How long it takes you to produce 100K words depends greatly on how quickly you write, how much time you have for writing, and what level of polish you want your words to be at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;first drafts&lt;/strong&gt;, most writers can produce 100K words in 3-6 months, depending on the amount of time per day allotted. The truly fanatical (like those 2xNaNoWriMo maniacs mentioned in @One Monkey's answer) can finish that amount of writing in one month, while an upper limit might be about a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every writer I've ever talked to recommends taking at least a month off after finishing the first draft in order to get some critical distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that comes editing, which is a highly idiosyncratic process. Some people make multiple passes over the draft, making small tweaks each time. Some people rewrite whole chapters at once. Some people only write one second draft, which changes everything at once. How you decide to edit is up to you, but again I'd suggest that 3-6 months is a reasonable time frame for editing. Note that some people spend a &lt;em&gt;long&lt;/em&gt; time in this phase--Patrick Rothfuss famously spent 14 years editing his Kingkiller trilogy before finding a publisher for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, the novel process takes about a year if you work consistently, maybe more or less depending on how much time you can devote to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2010-12-21T16:01:08.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="973" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="975" CreationDate="2010-12-21T16:05:17.647" Score="8" ViewCount="694" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've begun writing a small fable in verse for my girlfriend, whereas she gets one part of the story for each day before Christmas starting December 1st. She likes it, however she tells me nearly each time what I write is not good German. The fact that it isn't my mother tongue doesn't help, but it is mainly due to the fact that I am taking some liberties with the structure of my verses so I could get my verses to rhyme and still move the story forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard that many artists used to take those liberties. At which point would such liberties be accepted? (If in need of context: children literacy, or simply casual writing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="397" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T18:53:58.253" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T18:53:58.253" Title="How many liberties can one take with syntax and grammar rules when writing poetry?" Tags="|style|poetry|translation|grammar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="653" CreationDate="2010-12-21T16:15:30.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read. Old books, new books, complicated stuff, whatever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, get this program, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.supermemo.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SuperMemo&lt;/a&gt;. I have no affiliation with them, but it is awesome. Basically it shows you flash cards, except it works based on a model of human memory that maximizes your retention. I have found it to be really effective. Any time you look up a new word, just add it to the program. Soon you'll have hundreds of entries, all of which you'll be able to remember thanks to its algorithm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="306" LastActivityDate="2010-12-21T16:15:30.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="973" CreationDate="2010-12-21T16:16:36.470" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer, like most things in writing, is that &lt;em&gt;it depends.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own poetry writing I've found that I am greatly helped by first &lt;strong&gt;learning&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;strictly following&lt;/strong&gt; all stylistic guidelines.  I have often been drawn towards formal verse structures such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villanelle&quot;&gt;villanelle&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet#English_.28Shakespearean.29_sonnet&quot;&gt;Shakespearian-style sonnet&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sestina&quot;&gt;sestina&lt;/a&gt;.  By forcing myself to follow these guidelines, I really challenge my own creative process.  I also learn what the rules &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; to the poem.  I learn the impact of, say, repeating the same line at the end of every other stanza or how a certain rhythm and rhyme scheme hits the ear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The really famous uses of all of these formal structures for poetry usually, although not always, end up breaking the rules or at least bending them.  The key is that there is a structure to be twisted, and in knowing what the impact of that structure is and how twisting it in certain ways has certain impacts.  For example if the poem is in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iambic_pentameter&quot;&gt;iambic pentameter&lt;/a&gt; and there is an additional syllable on the line to make it longer or the stress falls on two syllables back to back, the reader will notice that line or those syllables more than other parts of the poem which might be comfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way of breaking the rules that novice poets often fall into and shouldn't is using antiquated language or awkward language constructs because &quot;that's the way poetry is written.&quot;  Actually, it is not.  A poem by John Donne reads the way that it does because John Donne was writing somewhat in the vernacular of his time but also in a time before the English language was as standardized as it is now.  The modern poetry-reading public does not tend to have a high tolerance for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetic_license&quot;&gt;poetic license&lt;/a&gt; with grammatical constructs unless it really has a great, positive impact on your poem.  You can't just re-structure sentences to fit a rhyme scheme and call it good poetry - you have to fit the rhyme scheme in a way that serves the grammar of your sentence, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most revered modern poets often (not always) write very compressed language that also seems modern and moves smoothly.  When they break these patterns, the impact adds to the theme and feel of the poem, it is not capricious.  As a poet you'll have to learn how to do this as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest reading some current German poets to get an idea of what's being done in the field and learning what impact different structures have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-12-21T16:16:36.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="976" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-21T16:27:01.770" Score="7" ViewCount="12603" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a big fan of Terry Pratchett, and he doesn't use chapters (mostly).  Are there any other authors who tend to not use traditional chapters or chapters at all in novels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-12-06T16:39:23.137" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T16:39:23.137" Title="Examples for books that don't use (traditional) chapters?" Tags="|style|fiction|novel|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2013-12-12T09:46:42.853" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-21T17:09:43.287" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="976" CreationDate="2010-12-21T17:19:20.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0374153892&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gilead&lt;/a&gt; by Marilynne Robinson does not use chapters.  Sections are broken with an additional line or two of whitespace.  The entire pace of Gilead is intentionally slow, inviting you in to the mind of an aging, dying man.  The lack of chapters helps to keep this slow pace along with the beautiful description.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B002N2XHU8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Home&lt;/a&gt; by Marilynne Robinson uses the same technique, but in the last case the lack of chapter breaks encourages you to continue moving through the story because of the use of more dramatic tension.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0385313098&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;To the White Sea&lt;/a&gt; by James Dickey has no chapters.  It has been variously described as a first person poem in novel form as well as harrowing.  The story of a white man's escape from Japan in WWII.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect of not having chapters on a novel can, as the three books above show, be various.  In some cases it will slow the book down.  In other cases it will grip the reader and keep them turning the pages.  As long as your prose, plot, and characters fit your reasoning for the unique pacing a book without chapters provides, it can be a great decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2010-12-21T17:19:20.310" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-21T17:19:20.310" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="976" CreationDate="2010-12-21T18:19:44.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;David Gerrold has always shied away from numbering chapters; he just puts in a section break and keeps writing. Of particular note are his books &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_HARLIE_Was_One&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;When HARLIE Was One&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Folded_Himself&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Man Who Folded Himself&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flying_Sorcerers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Flying Sorcerers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, his collaboration with Larry Niven; all of these have no numbered or named chapters, just chunks of text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2010-12-21T18:19:44.827" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-21T18:19:44.827" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="973" CreationDate="2010-12-21T19:22:33.983" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that German is not your first language, In this case, I suspect that you're modifying the syntax of the sentence in ways that native speakers would not, and thereby violating the rules of German poetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All languages have different registers, and it is extremely common for a language to allow constructions in poetry which aren't allowed in prose. This is often referred to as &quot;poetic license&quot;. However, despite the common misconception, poetic license is not a &lt;em&gt;carte blanche&lt;/em&gt; to do whatever you want. Rather, it simply enables a certain set of poetic conventions that violate the norms of everyday speech and prose, but which still conform to internal regulations of their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when your girlfriend says that you're not writing good German, it's probably not because she fails to appreciate your poetic license, but because your attempts at poetry are violating both the norms of speech &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the norms of poetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(BTW, don't feel bad. I speak Romanian fluently, and my wife and I use it every day at home, but I still wouldn't venture to write poetry in Romanian.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2010-12-21T19:22:33.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="980" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1007" CreationDate="2010-12-21T20:13:51.150" Score="10" ViewCount="1688" Body="&lt;p&gt;I originally posted this question at SO, but two users there suggested that I take it here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing a scientific research paper, and I want to know if it is appropriate to cite bash, and if so, how should I do so? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am having trouble finding a citation for bash because bash is relatively ubiquitous in programming and it is often just referred to as the 'command line'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a key or foundational reference for this program? What citation should I use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="228" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:21:38.013" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T19:21:38.013" Title="What is the key reference documentation and how should I cite BASH?" Tags="|citations|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="980" CreationDate="2010-12-21T23:44:57.370" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maintainer home page:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/bash/bashtop.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/bash/bashtop.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BASH is part of the GNU project:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2010-12-21T23:44:57.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="647" CreationDate="2010-12-22T02:07:33.570" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually don't answer my own questions, but... wow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just discovered Emacs &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org&quot;&gt;org-mode&lt;/a&gt;, and I am stunned.  The tools for catching bits as I think of them, then organizing them on the fly are both powerful and customizable.  Like all of emacs, it is keyboard-driven (no extensive dragging and dropping to irritate my RSI when using the laptop), and looks great in CLI mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I've fallen in love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-12-22T02:07:33.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="930" CreationDate="2010-12-22T12:54:00.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered doing away with chapters?  See &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/976/examples-for-books-that-dont-use-traditional-chapters&quot;&gt;my more recent question&lt;/a&gt; about chapters, or rather the lack thereof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, you at least don't have to worry about &quot;short chapters&quot; anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2010-12-22T14:05:42.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="987" CreationDate="2010-12-22T13:06:57.343" Score="5" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have at my disposal some kind of searchable content with all the references from many books and papers. How would a source reference would be typically written/formatted? Is it dependent of the subject? If yes, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some clarification: I want to know what kind of format I should expect so it would make my search for a particular reference easier.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="397" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-01-22T01:14:41.967" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T01:14:41.967" Title="How would a source be referenced in the typical paper/book?" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="984" CreationDate="2010-12-22T13:34:06.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends how many sources we are talking about. The most standard procedure is to have an alphabetical list at the end of the book, possibly organized per chapter with letter tags or number tags for each source. These tags are then placed in the text whenever it is needed to refer to the source material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have too many source references and it doesn't disrupt the page lay-out too much, you can place the sources in footnotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastActivityDate="2010-12-22T13:34:06.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="984" CreationDate="2010-12-22T13:47:38.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you are referencing, and quite importantly, where as well. There are several different systems (APA, MLA...) for quotations and references. If it is a paper you are writing, find out which of these does your university, college, institution etc. recommend or require.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing a book, it can be worth checking whether your publisher uses one specific referencing system or if you can choose one at your own leisure (or create your own).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these systems have extensive guidelines (when to use a footnote, as opposed to an end note, how to format these etc.) that can be found online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="232" LastActivityDate="2010-12-22T13:47:38.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="984" CreationDate="2010-12-22T16:10:30.647" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, various institutions prefer different formats.  On a broader scale, a particular style is often favored by specific disciplines or groups.  (For example, APA is popular in the social sciences, while CSE is used in the physical sciences.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if there are only a few sources to cite, it's done in footnotes or parenthetical citations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/within/mla.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Modern Language Association (MLA) in-text parenthetical citations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/within/turabian.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Turabian Footnotes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/within/apa.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Psychological Association (APA) in-text parenthetical citations&lt;/a&gt; (Social Sciences)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/a&gt; (see &quot;author-date&quot; tab)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/within/cse.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Council of Science Editors (CSE) Manual&lt;/a&gt; (Physical Sciences)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more numerous citations, an in-text marker is typically used, which references a bibliography at the end of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Psychological Association (APA)&lt;/a&gt; (Social Sciences)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aallnet.org/committee/citation/ucg/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Association of Law Libraries (AALL)&lt;/a&gt; (Legal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/within/cse.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Council of Science Editors (CSE) Manual&lt;/a&gt; (Physical Sciences)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Modern Language Association (MLA) - &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/05/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;basic&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/07/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;periodical&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/08/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;electronic&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/09/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;other&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2010-12-22T16:10:30.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2010-12-22T17:27:42.110" Score="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;The list so far (alphabetically):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/812#812&quot;&gt;Cut adjectives and adverbs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/826#826&quot;&gt;Don't go into great detail describing places or things&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/802#802&quot;&gt;Give yourself permission to suck&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/884#884&quot;&gt;Know the end before you begin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/1388#1388&quot;&gt;Miscellaneous&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/762#762&quot;&gt;Show, don't tell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/774#774&quot;&gt;Stay off the internet while writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/830#830&quot;&gt;Use correct grammar, punctuation and spelling&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/795#795&quot;&gt;Write, don't edit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/991#991&quot;&gt;Writing is rewriting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/1412#1412&quot;&gt;You have to read, and read all the time&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/1427#1427&quot;&gt;You must learn to walk before you can run&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T02:56:43.953" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-22T17:27:42.110" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="989" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="990" CreationDate="2010-12-22T17:45:46.703" Score="19" ViewCount="11218" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty good at creating compelling characters with decent personalities and motivations. I like the comradery vibe, so they're generally already part of a posse of some sort at the beginning of my stories. However, I can only really think of two ways to introduce them to the reader, neither of which is smooth or interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;... Bob asked Jerry to hand him the lug wrench. He dropped it from his flipper (because he was a walrus).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;... Jerry turned and looked at Bob, and thought of the time they'd met. Bob had just been a walrus pup then...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Exaggerated for simplicity's sake.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I smoothly introduce a whole cast of characters &amp;amp; their backgrounds/motivations/etc. within the flow of the story? &lt;i&gt;They've&lt;/i&gt; been hanging out with each other for years, so there's no real reason for them to remark on each other's character traits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="400" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T06:52:39.777" Title="How should I introduce my characters?" Tags="|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="989" CreationDate="2010-12-22T18:05:00.347" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no need for the characters to remark on each other's traits because your prose should be &lt;em&gt;showing&lt;/em&gt; those traits as the story moves along.  You already do some showing in &lt;code&gt;He dropped it from his flipper.&lt;/code&gt;  The same kind of showing can be used to illustrate an angry character:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lug wrench clanged to the floor as Jerry dropped it from his flipper.  Jerry's whiskers sank.  Bob glared at Jerry and began shaking.  &quot;You,&quot; he enunciated, &quot;never manage anything, now do you?  Do you?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also no need, when introducing a posse of characters, to introduce them in a group.  Introduce your group naturally as your story moves along.  One way to do this is have the characters in several scenes involving large groups.  Victorian novels with their world-building focus, did this often.  For example in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Innocence&quot;&gt;The Age of Innocence&lt;/a&gt; Wharton starts in a crowded opera house, introducing characters as they look at each other across boxes and move into boxes to visit.  Additional characters are introduced via Old New York gossips sharing tidbits about supposed shady dealings or at dinner parties as they naturally show up and are included in the circle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A modern novel involving a close knit group is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0316016381&quot;&gt;Then We Came to the End&lt;/a&gt;.  Set in the first person plural, this novel about most people in an office being fired has a setting where it is natural for characters to ruminate on each other (who is going to be fired next?).  It also shows - from it's unusual point of view - different people at different times, since it can jump into any member of the &quot;we.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your reader doesn't need to know all the pertinent details about the character right away.  When a character detail is needed, show the person acting that way, or have someone's dialog show the action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2010-12-23T02:44:30.383" LastActivityDate="2010-12-23T02:44:30.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2010-12-22T19:16:12.817" Score="54" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Writing is Rewriting&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've completed your first draft. Congratulations! Next step is to send it to an agent or a publisher, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not quite yet. Especially if you are relatively new to the writing game, you will spend a lot more time revising your manuscript than you did writing the first draft. More than you think it needs now. More than you think anyone in history has ever spent. Not to sound discouraging, but you will likely need to revise it multiple times before it is saleable, and you will probably need to take breaks in between. (These can be spent working on other projects.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With experience, you will need fewer rewrites, and less input from others on what needs to be changed to make your manuscript acceptable to a publisher. Even so, the number of writers who can sell their first drafts (or even their early drafts) is minuscule. The most successful writers still make glaring continuity errors, suffer from style inconsistencies from one part of the novel to another, have characters with unbelievable motivations, and so on, and publishers will insist that these be corrected. Some seasoned pros even have trouble with basics like grammar, spelling, and punctuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My sister, who has published a few romance novels, has been heard to say, upon finishing the first draft of one of her novels, &quot;now the real work begins.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastEditorUserId="251" LastEditDate="2010-12-22T20:15:29.567" LastActivityDate="2010-12-22T20:15:29.567" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2010-12-22T19:16:12.817" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="989" CreationDate="2010-12-23T03:07:07.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to what justkt said, there's no reason why characters who have known each other for years and years wouldn't &quot;comment&quot; on each other's character traits - in fact, those are &lt;em&gt;precisely&lt;/em&gt; the kind of characters who would. Maybe not directly to one another, but at least in their thoughts and actions. Something like (from George's POV): &quot;George picked up the check. He always paid for dinner, because Fred was a miserly bastard.&quot; (Kind of bad writing, but it's just an example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because George has this thought about Fred doesn't mean he doesn't like Fred, but it does show George's attitude toward Fred on this particular matter, and it also tells us something about Fred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As justkt said, that's not the only way to &quot;introduce&quot; characters or help your reader learn more about them - but don't let the fact that your characters know each other well stop you from writing their thoughts on each other and commenting (gossiping, even) on one another. The truth is, friends and family are far more likely to do this &lt;em&gt;accurately&lt;/em&gt; - acquaintances and strangers can only give impressions, which may not be accurate at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of how you do this depends most upon whether you've chosen Third-Person Limited, Omniscience, First-Person, etc.  If it's Third-Person Limited, then we're always going to see everyone else through the eyes of one person (even if the viewpoint changes from chapter-to-chapter) and we'll be much closer to that characters attitude and his view of the others.  If it's Omniscience, then you have room to move around from person-to-person, giving us a broader sweep of thoughts and attitudes, but at the expense of not letting the reader get too close to any one character. It's up to you, and whatever best serves your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-23T03:07:07.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="993" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="995" CreationDate="2010-12-23T03:48:05.133" Score="13" ViewCount="1550" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prologues tend to get a bad rap on the internet, and sometimes for good reason.  They're often used by as an excuse to start a novel with an info-dump.  However, it seems to me that people often criticize prologues, but rarely explain when they are useful.  Many published books have prologues that add to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what are the criteria for a good prologue?  What clues might indicate a bad prologue, or one that should be cut completely?  (If you can, cite an example that illustrates your answer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T21:34:48.963" Title="When is a prologue useful?" Tags="|style|prologues|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="993" CreationDate="2010-12-23T04:07:33.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use a prologue when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;trying to bring up to speed readers who haven't read previous books in a series, while staying out of the way of the real beginning of the book for those who have been following the series all along&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;offering context that would be of most interest on second and subsequent readings, but not important to the sort of surface enjoyment taken from a first/only read&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, I avoid them.  I hate to see prologue used as an info-dump, i.e. exposition that doesn't &quot;have to&quot; be good because it's not &quot;really&quot; part of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2010-12-23T04:07:33.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="993" CreationDate="2010-12-23T05:13:16.467" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that a properly used prologue can be an incredibly powerful tool. The &lt;em&gt;Wheel of Time&lt;/em&gt; series begins with a prologue for every book - some of them are great, some you pretty much just have to plow through as fast as possible to get to the main story (they're info-dumps). However, I think that the best prologue I've ever read is for &lt;em&gt;The Eye of the World&lt;/em&gt; (first book in the series). I can still remember picking the book up in a bookstore, never really having read much in the way of fantasy, and just being amazed. Sometimes, I still pick up the book just to read the prologue. Here's what I think it did well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It sets the tone for the entire series, showing the main protagonist and antagonist (though thousands of years in the past from the date of the series itself) engaged in one of their many 'eternal' conflicts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is movement oriented. Not necessarily &lt;em&gt;action&lt;/em&gt; (per se), but it takes place in the midst of great strife, both (kind of) action but especially emotional. In other words, it hooks. I found it entirely impossible &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to care about the character Lews Therin and what happened to him and his family.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It shows something about the world itself with its use of the author's own particular magic &quot;system&quot; - which is different and strange and intriguing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It foreshadows the story to come.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's faster paced than the first chapter of the book, which is a &lt;em&gt;great&lt;/em&gt; first chapter &lt;em&gt;following&lt;/em&gt; a prologue, but would have been a rather slow first chapter without the prologue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That last point is one I've heard a lot.  If you have a first chapter that you just absolutely &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; change, but you know it doesn't move quite fast enough to thrust the reader into the story and hook him, then one might consider a prologue (even a short one) to help accomplish this task - so long as the prologue actually has something to do with the story and isn't just there as a hook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also a lot of authors who have prologues, but without entitling them as such. I think it has to do with the stigma many have against prologues, the idea being that if a reader picks up a book in the store and reads &quot;Prologue&quot; he's just going to put it down, assuming it's going to be an info-dump before getting into the real story. That's a valid concern, so one way some authors have gotten around this is by starting in Chapter 1, but Chapter 1 is &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; the &quot;Prologue&quot; - just without saying so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I love the Prologue to &lt;em&gt;Eye of the World&lt;/em&gt;, Jordan also has some terrible ones that run on for 50+ pages and are nothing more than a collection of scenes intended to dump information on you before you get into the book. It's almost always necessary information, but I can't help but wonder if there isn't a better way of getting it to the reader. On the whole, Jordan is one of my favorite authors of all time, so I hate to be critical of him in this regard, but if you want some examples of truly stunning &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; truly awful prologues, I highly recommend &lt;em&gt;The Wheel of Time&lt;/em&gt; series. Also, the books are a great read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-23T05:13:16.467" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="993" CreationDate="2010-12-23T10:41:28.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a big fan of the &quot;Juxta-prologue&quot; taking a scene that is going to provide contrast to or comment upon the main body of the story in some way. It's not an excuse to add your world-building notes to boost the word count and if I ever came across one that's a recap of previous titles I'd just skip it because I always read series in order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two times I've used a prologue I was trying to show some kind of key moment that for whatever reason didn't fit in the main body. In one case the protagonist was a refugee from a grandfather paradox. He had killed his own father (it was complicated) to prevent the father doing something horrendously evil. He expected to disappear in a puff of paradox but, instead, the universe just rolled on, like it didn't care. This was a key character note but had nothing to do with the story itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other time I introduced the means by which an antagonist gained power to do something evil. The entire rest of the book took place around Nottingham in the UK. This one scene took place on the isle of Haiti so it was a kind of break in the unity of setting. Also there were structural reasons why the book had a prologue and and epilogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether any of this is valid would be up to a reader to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-23T10:41:28.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="998" CreationDate="2010-12-23T13:24:52.007" Score="14" ViewCount="6711" Body="&lt;p&gt;I absolutely loved Joshua Ferris's debut novel &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0316016381&quot;&gt;Then We Came to the End&lt;/a&gt;.  Critics highly praised his use for the first person &lt;em&gt;plural&lt;/em&gt; as a narrator.  The work is set in an office and the &quot;we&quot; used represents the group of employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of several ideas that seem like they would be candidates for a first person plural narrator - a group of neighbors, students in a high school class, soldiers in a battle unit, any sort of cohesive group you can think of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the pitfalls that I have to look out for when writing in the first person plural?  What will jolt the reader out of his or her enjoyment of my story and characters and make him or her focus too much on the narrative voice?  What can the first person plural voice not realistically convey?  If I were to use the first person plural to write about a group of characters, when should I consider breaking out of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T10:00:19.363" Title="What makes first person plural a tricky narrative voice?" Tags="|fiction|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="997" CreationDate="2010-12-23T15:36:17.850" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's hard because it's hard for readers to relate with a group of people. A group very rarely feels the same things and thinks the same things. So it's not going to be easy to accurately portray what the characters are thinking and feeling throughout the piece in a way a real person can relate to it. One of the benefits of First Person is the chances to really get into the character's head, see things as they do, and relate to how they're feeling. I don't think you really get that same chance for First Person Plural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some authors can pull this off, most cannot. It's a very tricky POV and it's very easy to screw up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2010-12-23T15:36:17.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="997" CreationDate="2010-12-23T15:59:58.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Ralph highlighted the biggest challenge of first person plural in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a more general sense, because 99% of the books we read are in &quot;standard&quot; first person or third person singular form, &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; else will stand out to the reader.  An unusual point of view is similar to a narrator with an accent or strange mode of speech (Everything is Illuminated, Fight Club).  It draws the reader's attention to the words, and away from the story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an author, you now have an additional burden.  The narration has to be so seamless that the reader gets used to it quickly and can then be sucked in by the story.  Any little oddity in the narration risks bringing them &quot;back out&quot;, reminding them of the unusual format.  Granted, you always have to work hard to achieve smooth narration, but I would argue that an unusual tense or other affectation puts you at an additional handicap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2010-12-23T15:59:58.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2010-12-24T02:02:54.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Country_for_Old_Men&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;No country for old men&lt;/a&gt; (book, haven't seen the movie) had a killer and a guy who found some money. Don't want to &lt;strong&gt;spoil&lt;/strong&gt; it, but I don't think it can be fit into any of the tradional plots - no resolution of a problem, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind of left you unsatisfied, at the &quot;end&quot;, which is perhaps why the traditional plots are so ubiquitous - they &quot;work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2010-12-24T02:02:54.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="997" CreationDate="2010-12-24T02:10:45.413" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't read &lt;em&gt;Then We Came to the End&lt;/em&gt;, but other successful works that used first-person plural are &lt;em&gt;The Virgin Suicides&lt;/em&gt; and &quot;Watch the Animals&quot; by Alice Elliot Dark.  What I take away from these stories is that the first-person plural is similar to the first-person peripheral: although the story is told by an &quot;I&quot; (or a &quot;we&quot;), the true subject of the story is an individual outside of the group, and their words and actions are filtered through the narrator.  (For examples of first-person peripheral, think of &lt;em&gt;The Great Gatsby&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My feeling about first-person plural is that because there's no individual &quot;I&quot; telling the story, it's difficult to write a story about the group as a whole (without relying on generalizations or sweeping declarations, which is often unsatisfying).  But if the &quot;we&quot; are focused on an external individual, there is room for real exploration, development, and change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="56" LastActivityDate="2010-12-24T02:10:45.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1002" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1003" CreationDate="2010-12-24T09:50:56.110" Score="7" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are my:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;options&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;caveats / pro's &amp;amp; con's&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reasonable expectations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for publishing my work digitally as e-books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember Stephen King did something along these lines with his 'Dark Tower' series, but cannot find a breakdown of his experiences &amp;amp; outcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="134" LastEditorUserId="7" LastEditDate="2010-12-24T12:17:05.407" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T19:09:25.690" Title="Publishing and selling ebooks" Tags="|self-publishing|ebook|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-03-23T00:43:18.700" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1002" CreationDate="2010-12-24T13:57:14.503" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ebook publishing is no different than traditional print publishing. You're going to have to write a decent manuscript, find a publisher, go through the submission process, work with an editor and cover artist, and have your work released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The are lots of  benefits of being with a publisher that puts their books in ebook format. Ebooks are generally (supposed to be) cheaper than DTBs, allowing more people to be able to afford your book. You also (should) get a much higher royalty percentage since it doesn't cost the publisher as much to produce your book. More and more people are using ereaders, so having your book in ebook formats helps encourage more people to read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What many people think of as &quot;ebook publishing&quot; is skipping the publisher and putting their book directly in the marketplace for the Kindle, Nooks, Kobo, etc. This is a /bad/ idea. Unless you already have a following, you're not going to get many sales from self-publishing your ebook. There are hundreds of thousands of books in the Amazon Kindle store. Without spending a lot of time advertising and promoting your book, it's not going to sell more than a handful of copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people don't realize the work that actually goes into making a book publishable. No matter how good of a writer you are, you're book is going to require editing from a 3rd person. And no, your best friend/parent/sibling doesn't count. You're going to require an eye-catching cover art. You're responsible for copyrighting your book, for getting an ISBN, and for making sure it's available in the most popular marketplaces. This is all stuff the publisher is supposed to be taking care of to earn their cut of your royalties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2010-12-24T13:57:14.503" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2010-12-24T20:18:30.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keeping track of lists of plots and trying to figure out if we can make unique ones or not is, in my humble opinion, entirely useless. Story isn't plot, and it's unhelpful to think of story in that way. And I refuse to think in terms of &quot;there are no original plots&quot; - because when I think that way, I end up seeing every story as a regurgitation of another story, just put in a different light. There certainly are those stories. Not every story is original. Not every story can be. Mine certainly aren't - not yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a depth to the world around us, indeed to humanity itself, that is nearly endless. And every story (no matter how mundane or how fantastic) is, I think, part of our way of fleshing out the world and ourselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that means that there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;can be&lt;/em&gt; unique stories, because we certainly don't understand everything about the world, nor do we understand everything about ourselves. And I think &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; constitutes a unique &quot;plot&quot; - a revealing of ourselves and the reality in which we live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can look at the world around me and find patterns everywhere - and that's fine. But if I miss the unique, the original, and all I ever see are the patterns, then I'm not really seeing the world, and I'm not really understanding the patterns, and I'm missing a fullness to a world that is otherwise a very dull and empty place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think plot is found in the patterns - the lists of 20 or 7 or whatever lists basic plots. Whenever we enter a new story and see these patterns, what we're really doing is the equivalent of travelling from California to England. OKAY - we just took a big step. But when you look around, it's not &lt;em&gt;totally foreign&lt;/em&gt; to us - we still know that we're on planet earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I talk this way sometimes, too, but I don't even like the language of &quot;putting a new twist on an old plot&quot; - it's too synthetic sounding. It's like saying, &quot;Well, if I can't leave California, then I'll just plant some different trees in my backyard to make it a bit more exotic. It's California with a &lt;em&gt;twist&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather, I prefer to think of moving from the patterns to the original - because &lt;em&gt;life&lt;/em&gt; is original. And so our stories (our plots!) must be, too, if they're to have anything to say about life and the world we inhabit. Tons of forests may look the same on first inspection, but not one of them actually is. When we read a story about character traveling from A to Z to stop bad guy X, I don't think &lt;em&gt;that's&lt;/em&gt; the plot. Because I don't think we can just boil down stories to the largest possible pattern. That's the most unhelpful way to think about a story that I could think of. The plot is in the details - the plot &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; in the originality, the uniqueness of the story. It's in the character interactions, the world, the conflict, the emotions, the dialogue, etc. It's in the &lt;em&gt;truth&lt;/em&gt; of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, here are (I think) some modern original plots (stories, if you will):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;To Kill a Mockingbird&lt;/em&gt; by Harper Lee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; by J.R.R. Tolkien&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; by J.K. Rowling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jurassic Park&lt;/em&gt; by Michael Crichton&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;1984&lt;/em&gt; by George Orwell&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Grapes of Wrath&lt;/em&gt; by John Steinbeck&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these books have their own literary merit, their own pitfalls, their own larger patterns, etc. And there are a lot of people who haven't been able to do much more than copy them, unfortunately, coming up with nothing unique of their own. But I think these are &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt;, and they are so precisely because of the the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you create an original plot, an original story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah. You'll always have larger patterns that are familiar to us as a people, to our own common history (which is full of the same patterns) - but the plot is in the details. It's in the very originality, the uniqueness. In fact, it's the originality which &lt;em&gt;informs&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;enlightens&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;reveals something new and never before seen&lt;/em&gt; about the patterns. And this is, I think, what every author ought to really strive for. And what every author, as an &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; human being within the larger &lt;em&gt;pattern&lt;/em&gt; of humanity, has inside of him/herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-24T20:18:30.127" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2010-12-25T17:06:57.603" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want the minimum practical time for publishable fiction, Lester Dent (who wrote most of the Doc Savage books) is likely the best example.  He wrote 159 short novels over 16 years.  Figure probably about 50K words per novel, and he was typically publishing twelve Doc Savages a year.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://altuspress.com/lesterdentproperties/the-master-fiction-plot/&quot;&gt;Master Fiction Plot page&lt;/a&gt; credits him with over 200K words a month, and tells how he did it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The maximum practical time appears to be limited by lifespan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastActivityDate="2010-12-25T17:06:57.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1002" CreationDate="2010-12-26T11:36:31.297" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although Ralph is 100% correct in his statements I notice his answer kind of assumes your expectations, when you have asked what your expectations should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to deal with your bullets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Options: Anything from producing a PDF using OpenOffice to as complicated as you want to make it. You can publish e-books on Lulu, Amazon or directly into a &quot;sharing&quot; service like Scribd. What you do rather depends on what you want out of it. For which reason I'll slightly reorganise your bullets:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reasonable Expectations: Maybe three readers if you give your stuff away free. I'm being unkind actually. If you really pimp your stuff I imagine you might be able to get twenty or thirty people to read for free. I don't push my stuff on anyone and the downloads of my entirely free e-novels are non-existent. Just because it's free people don't browse and download accidentally, it doesn't happen, that's a fantasy. If you want people to read your book someone has to grab them by the collar and shout &quot;read this!&quot; into their faces insistently; metaphorically speaking. People in the modern world just don't have the time to read obscure stuff, I know I'd be hard pushed to find a slot for a new author I have a reading list good for about four or five months at present and no shortage of new stuff to get through after that. I'm a keen, open-minded reader and I'm a very rare breed. Most people just won't care about your stuff at all; you will always lose to established names. It's what publishers have spent the last century training the readership to and the problem with independents is they don't have the marketing muscle to retrain the audience. The Kindle/Nook explosion may have an impact but it's still early days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Caveats: See above. Do not expect to be buying a country house and signing the dotted line for a multi-million dollar six book deal any time soon. Expect to work hard and feel unfairly treated no matter what you do. It's all a matter of degree. Seeing a Stephen King or a Dan Brown gives new authors a sense of entitlement I see over and over. Lose it. Lose it quick. Those guys are the exception not the rule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cons: If you DIY e-publish you will have a lot of work of your own to do to get very few readers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pros: If you publish via what people would describe as a &quot;legitimate publisher&quot; you must subscribe to a world view which states that surrendering control of the means and method of production of your product, how its bought and sold and how you, therefore, interact with the world as a writer is just part of being a writer. If you retain control you are almost 100% certain to kiss goodbye to the dreams of multi-million dollar success but you have a chance at winning success as a writer on your own terms. The difficulty with that is that you have to know what your own terms are. One day I would like 100 people to buy one of my books. Not one of the ones I have available currently, one of the ones I have written but not finished. One of the ones I'm really proud of. That's all. Or at least, that's my current goal. If I achieve that goal I'll work on something else. I don't want someone else to control the way my work is presented and I am happy to remain a hobbyist because of that. If that's not for you then this e-publishing lark isn't either.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-26T11:36:31.297" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="980" CreationDate="2010-12-27T22:39:03.737" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sources in the reference list generally validate particular claims that are made in the body of the text.  Some style manuals support putting software resources in the reflist, like &lt;em&gt;APA&lt;/em&gt;, some don't, like &lt;em&gt;Chicago&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;APA&lt;/em&gt; (6th ed., section 7.08), the reference should look something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Free Software Foundation (2007).  Bash (3.2.48) [Unix shell program].  Retrieved from &lt;code&gt;http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/bash-3.2.48.tar.gz&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, the FSF is identified as the rights holder, and the version used for the results in the paper is identified, and the URL for downloading that version of Bash is given.  This form is appropriate when the software is used to generate results that are the source for claims in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to cite a particular claim about Bash that comes, say, from a web page, then cite that web page specifically, with a literal quote.  If you just generally want to identify Bash through a webpage, then use a footnote or endnote, and link to the project webpage at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/&quot;&gt;http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/&lt;/a&gt;.  Don't put anything in the reflist in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastActivityDate="2010-12-27T22:39:03.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1002" CreationDate="2010-12-27T23:12:34.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you ask this question and you hope to make money, it is probably not going to work for you, but have a client (yes, one client) who has had some success doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marketing a self-published book is the first hard part, if we assume that you had something worth saying, and did a good job of committing it to text.  Practically no one writes reviews of self-published books.  Still, you can market yourself if you are well connected; the best marketing opportunities are open to those who are prominent within well-established, active communities of expertise (my one success story fits this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality is the other hard part.  If you want a professional-looking finished product, you will need to make substantial use of the skilled services of an independent editor &amp;mdash;better two, most preferably three&amp;mdash; a graphic designer and a typesetter.  There are some bureaucratic issues associated with publishing a book, namely getting an ISBN (you may be able to get away with a cheaper, ISBN-less DOI), assembling a copyright page, and ensuring that front matter is properly structured.  Marketing a quality product without a publisher's good name and sales infrastructure is hard; marketing an obviously shoddy product without it is an exercise in desperation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is that there are options that make distribution and sales easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you can land a contract with a major-league publisher only to have them put your manuscript through hoop after hoop and then either decide their contract doesn't oblige them to publish anything by you, or publish it and make zero effort, besides putting your book in their list of publications, to market it.  Investing a bit of effort into a weblog that drums up interest in your writings has to beat this, and the good thing about self-publishing is that you should acquire the DIY ethic to make the most of the resources you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only self-publish if you can afford to see no income on a big investment of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastEditorUserId="137" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T13:46:38.020" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T13:46:38.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1009" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-29T02:54:58.377" Score="14" ViewCount="575" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some movies and some stories that are enjoyable when they're released - but they don't stand up to the test of time very well. I've been wondering about what makes a story timeless, one that can be passed on from generation to generation and &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; be recognized as a story which holds key truths that are important for us. One that immediately comes to mind from the previous century is &lt;em&gt;To Kill A Mockingbird&lt;/em&gt;, but there's also Shakespeare, and even many of the Greek classics which go much farther back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: what sets these stories apart and makes them timeless? How does one take inspiration from current events or events they've lived through and make them applicable to all people at all times, not just a specific generation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To expound further, after the 9/11 attacks, there were a lot of stories (written or otherwise) floating around that might have been inspired by the attacks, but did little more than copy what happened on 9/11 and try to create an emotional response for those who remember the events of that day. They're not going to be timeless in the same way that &lt;em&gt;To Kill A Mockingbird&lt;/em&gt; is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find myself doing this in my own writing - an event in my life or in the life of friends and family end up in my stories. Okay, that's fine. But I feel like &quot;the event&quot; itself isn't enough to make it have that &quot;eternal&quot; quality, the truth for all times and all places. How do I take something that has happened and not just copy it, but rather get at the truth / reality behind it, and draw that to the fore so that others, anywhere, the common humanity (if you will) can experience it and grow from it, too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I know that this is a subjective question and there is not &lt;em&gt;one method&lt;/em&gt; for accomplishing this feat, but there must be a huge number of &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; ideas and methods out there, and I'm hoping for a good number of responses that might help in this regard.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2010-12-29T12:50:26.653" Title="How can a specific (current) event be made timeless?" Tags="|plot|inspiration|originality|ideas|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1009" CreationDate="2010-12-29T10:35:16.773" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the main issue here is &quot;accessibility out of context&quot; i.e. how accessible is the raw emotion behind the event to someone viewing it with very little context to go on. The most immediate and easily accessible example of accessible emotion is the killing of Bambi's mother in Bambi, it's one of the most popularly referenced moments of movie sadness in the history of cinema and storytelling. You don't need much set up, Bambi had a mother, she was rather needlessly shot by hunters, Bambi was left alone and afraid in an unforgiving world. Everyone finds themselves feeling sorry for Bambi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an aspect of storytelling that Pixar have managed several times most notably in Finding Nemo and at the beginning of Up. Essentially the context of the story itself provides all the information we need to feel the emotion. In Finding Nemo all we know is that an average father and average son lose their average wife/mother within the opening moments. Could be anybody, was just one of those things. In Up we know that two bright, spirited, normal people were very much in love and had dreams and that one lost the other and had a feeling he had somehow let her down. It's easy to see and relate to how that situation might occur to anyone at any time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficulty with something like 9/11 is that the weight of the circumstance is such that it needs a hell of a lot of context to make it make sense. When you say to someone that someone flew commercial airliners into some of the world's tallest and most important buildings the weight of the event is such that you can't take it as a personal tragedy, it's too huge for one person to process all at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you can take a world changing event and make it timeless is when you have found that personal nugget that simultaneously marries the global with the personal. For example Julius Caesar's death would be too difficult to really comprehend until you boil it down to one guy who maybe went a little too far being summarily executed by a dozen of his best friends including his very closest companion: Et tu Brute?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shakespeare, in fact, does several things in Julius Caesar which make that event timelessly tragic. He is careful to portray Caesar as ambitious but urbane and possibly reasonable; he might possibly be the best God-King Rome never had, he is portrayed as the perfect statesman rational, emotionally stable, charismatic and comfortable in power. Then Shakespeare drops in Brutus, quiet, thoughtful, considered, if he is Caesar's very best friend then that speaks well to Caesar's counsel. Finally, Mark Antony is here portrayed as the violently passionate young man who idolises Caesar. The vigour with which he supports Caesar and is outraged by the cold and calculated acts of the senate is infectious. His passion literally rouses the rabble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Shakespeare does is make all of these characters human. None of them are perfect, all of them are likeable in some sense. It is only Cassius who is a pure pantomime villain, snake-like and predatory. He gets to Brutus by appealing to the reason that Brutus is proud to possess, the turning of Brutus is pure politics and from there the rest of the events seem, somehow, inexorable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Julius Caesar boils down the events upon which the Roman empire turned to a series of quite understandable human choices. Each piece in that puzzle is vital, and it comes down as far as making Brutus quite likable. If Cassius had been the clear villain, not requiring Brutus to do his dirty work then we instantly lose a whole dimension. In the final battles of Julius Caesar we understand the point of view of both sides, we understand why everyone did what they did and the real tragedy is that we can't see how people could have acted another way without significantly betraying their sense of identity. Of course, Cassius should have just shut his trap and kept his nose out, but we don't have to care about him so that's unimportant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that this leads onto a final point. We understand why the hunters shot Bambi's mother (possibly less so in the modern era but still enough to make the tragedy), we understand why the big fish ate the little fish, we understand why Carl and Ellie put living a life before the childish dreams of exploration. We understand the whole situation and that's what provokes the emotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With 9/11 (and I come back to this because it's the example you give) most people would claim, and I have had arguments with people who have put this perspective to me, that we shouldn't want to understand or sympathise with what would make a man fly a plane full of passengers into a building. I'm not here to argue that case either way. All I will say is that when you can tell a story that stands for ages you do give everyone air time and you make it quite plain why it's a tragedy for everyone except the cold and calculating serpentine intelligence that lurks, Machiavellian to the core, in the shadows and whispers in the ears of those who would be tempted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion until you can make the audience feel, or at least understand, all points of view surrounding an event the story of that event cannot be timeless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2010-12-29T10:35:16.773" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1009" CreationDate="2010-12-29T12:50:26.653" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a story becomes timeless, I think it is because it tells some universal &quot;truth&quot;. The story is just an example of this truth, while the underlying morale can be applied to almost any time in history. And what was present on the earth 2000 years ago, and still is today? People. Human beings. Characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the example of 9/11, what mechanisms of human nature was at work there? What part of that attack could have happened 50 years ago? 200 years ago? 500 years into the future? And why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As One Monkey says (referring to the user name, not trying to be rude ;), there is a lack of lasting stories about 9/11 because &quot;we shouldn't want to understand or sympathize with what would make a man fly a plane full of passengers into a building&quot;. And that's the problem, because is think this is where the timeless lesson lies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing timeless is writing about people. Technology change, but people don't. You could probably tell the story of 9/11 set in the middle ages, where a small village in the east felt oppressed by the tyrannic kingdoms in the west. They hi-jack a carriage bearing the Kings Symbol, set fire to it, and ride it into the wooden town hall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let the characters drive the story. Humans will always be humans, and as long as you let them behave as humans always has, what they say and do will always reflect past, present and future alike. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2010-12-29T12:50:26.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="405" CreationDate="2010-12-31T19:40:48.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds as if you're well prepared to take a note at any time. For that, I use the same tools you do: Scrivener, Moleskine, and digital recorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So our tools are the same, but I add two bits of process: First, I always transcribe notes from the Moleskine and recorder into my idea file in Scrivener.  All of my notes quickly end up in one place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been experimenting with iPhone/iPad apps instead of my Moleskine notebook. Yesterday I was on an airplane and had an idea. I fired up PlainText (which synchronizes across devices and computers via Dropbox). But because I was not connected to a network, PlainText spit up some kind of warning or error, which I dismissed. I was able to create a document to take my note, but by that time I'd forgotten the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for now I'm likely to forego newer technology in favor of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second bit of process: In Scrivener, I often tag my ideas. For non-fiction, I tag them with topics. For fiction, I tag them using the CLOSAT scheme (Character, Location, Object, Situation, Action, Theme). Over time, this scheme alerts me to some interesting patterns, e.g. that most of my ideas about about situations, some are about themes, and very few are about characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By always transcribing notes to one place, and by tagging my ideas (when the tags are obvious), I give myself the best chance of finding ideas when I need them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2010-12-31T19:40:48.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1014" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1462" CreationDate="2011-01-01T13:36:27.840" Score="8" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;Robert Darnton, an accomplished scholar and important name in the open access movement, has a piece in the current &lt;em&gt;New York Review of Books&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/dec/23/library-three-jeremiads/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Library: Three Jeremiads&lt;/a&gt;, where he mentions that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;publishers usually insist on keeping the terms [of any library's subscriptions to their journals] secret, so that one library cannot negotiate for cheaper rates by citing an advantage obtained by another library.  A recent court case in the state of Washington makes it seem possible that publishers will no longer be able to prevent the circulation of information about their contracts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What was the court case, and does the judgement suggest that there will be better information about journal subscription prices in future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastEditorUserId="137" LastEditDate="2011-01-01T16:20:29.773" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T18:38:09.760" Title="Journal subscription secrecy" Tags="|publishing|money|scientific-publishing|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1014" CreationDate="2011-01-01T15:27:09.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't going to affect the subscription price for readers to purchase the journals, nor will it most likely affect writers in anyway. When a library wants to receive a subscription to a journal or magazine, they have to pay a higher price since more people will be reading them. Even when they purchase books they pay a higher price than an average reader would pay. What this court case allows the libraries to do it talk to each other about how much they paid for their subscription. If Library A finds out Library B paid less, they can try and negotiate with the publisher to give them the same price as Library B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-01-01T15:27:09.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="976" CreationDate="2011-01-02T00:15:36.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald consists of a handful of paragraphs, each of 50 or so pages. Many sentences are several pages long. This suits well the fluid and urgent first-person relation of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="436" LastActivityDate="2011-01-02T00:15:36.907" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-01-02T00:15:36.907" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1002" CreationDate="2011-01-02T19:16:06.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought I would add a little perspective as someone who has had some experience on both ends of this. I will try to be as honest as possible, so that you can see any bias that I may have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, I had an idea for a book and started writing. Sought to a publishers, found one and started the journey. However, I soon started to far outpace my editor. I was writing maybe 15-20 A4 pages a week. It was draft, but my editor failed to keep up. I was one of many books she had on the go.&#xA;I was also writing a technical book, and although she had some experience, technology moves so quickly, she did not fully understand the subject matter, and this made it difficult. It felt very much one sided. I even started editing the book myself, so as not to let the process get too slowed down. I printed a copy, read it over and over, looking for grammatical errors, and good prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To cut a long, painful story short, we parted company when the book was nearly complete (or at least I thought it was, the editor felt otherwise). The main reason was that the book was not in the publisher's style, and I did not want to do a re-write when I felt I could have been guided much earlier in the process, and wasted a lot of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I decided to publish as an eBook. I made very few changes after parting company with the publisher, saved my book as a PDF and wrote a small website and implemented a little shopping cart and sold it myself. I manually emailed the book to buyers. &#xA;I advertised the book on the technology's technical forum, and sold 20+ in the first day. I quickly changed from my own emailing solution to using Lula.com as the provider. They charge a lot more (take 20%, plus about £0.66 for credit card charges and hosting), but they handle distribution for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main reason for moving to Lula though, was that I did not realise that eBooks were liable for VAT in the UK. Made me wonder what else I was missing? So, I went with a professional solution that just handled everything for me. It also gives me the option to sell as a paperback book quite easily in the future quite easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A week on, I am still making steady sales, I won't make a huge amount, but I feel totally in control of my own work. The feedback I have had is excellent, so the concern that I cannot publish quality work without an editor has been unfounded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found the self publishing route, albeit for a niche technical book with a very targeted audience, fulfilling and rewarding and very glad I chose to do it. I do not, and will not make a living from it, but my self esteem, and security are far far higher! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="69" LastActivityDate="2011-01-02T19:16:06.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2011-01-03T06:33:06.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;for exercises, check out the gotham writers' workshop &lt;em&gt;writing fiction&lt;/em&gt; guide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for inspiration, i really like brian lamb's &lt;em&gt;booknotes&lt;/em&gt; books in which lots of great writers talk about their habits and processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="323" LastActivityDate="2011-01-03T06:33:06.777" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-01-03T06:33:06.777" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1021" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1022" CreationDate="2011-01-04T13:38:46.520" Score="15" ViewCount="692" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't mean writers' circles, or &amp;quot;auditioning sites&amp;quot;, although some of these have forums tacked on as a by the by. Usually places to talk about the beardy philosophy of writing are moribund places as many writers are just not joiners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of a healthy writers' community that talks about the imponderables of writing and does polls etc.? I am particularly interested in one for writers of genre fiction and ones with a particular bent towards storytelling and experimentation in that field but I'm sure that Writing SE's lit fic authors and technical writers could benefit from knowing if there are communities for them too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Incidentally I know also about Nanowrimo. I find many of the healthy discussion among Nano participants is all about getting that 50k done, not my issue I can get stuff done, I mean something like experimental role playing forum &amp;quot;The Forge&amp;quot; but for storytellers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-08-23T12:37:33.400" LastActivityDate="2023-08-24T05:17:08.313" Title="Writers' Communities?" Tags="|creative-writing|resources|websites|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1021" CreationDate="2011-01-04T15:00:57.730" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://forums.nanowrimo.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NaNoWriMo forums&lt;/a&gt; are pretty good. They're generally fairly slow during the off-season though. Their IRC chatroom, however, is always busy year round. I hang out there quite often an it's a great place to chat with other writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are tons of good groups for writers on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/group&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Goodreads&lt;/a&gt;. There are groups for every genre and a lot of them have specific areas for writers to talk with each other and interact with readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youngwriterssociety.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Young Writer's Society&lt;/a&gt; is also a pretty good place for 21 and under. There are places to chat and discuss with other writers and there are also places to post poetry/shorts/novels for critique and feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-08-23T12:00:10.683" LastActivityDate="2023-08-23T12:00:10.683" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1023" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1029" CreationDate="2011-01-04T22:15:20.863" Score="13" ViewCount="6691" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently rereading bits of Pride and Prejudice and the dialog is absolutely brilliant. How can I learn to write dialog that sounds like it is from this general era? For example are there any lists of words that I should try to substitute or differences in the grammatical constructs used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="453" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-15T16:29:55.413" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T16:29:55.413" Title="Writing 19th century upperclass English dialog" Tags="|style|dialogue|language|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1024" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2011-01-04T22:49:12.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anyone who hasn't been to any Stack Exchange site may want to check out our &lt;a href=&quot;http://writers.stackexchange.com/about&quot;&gt;About&lt;/a&gt; page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt; &#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers - Stack Exchange is for authors, editors, reviewers, bloggers, copywriters, professional and aspiring writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of wading through a lot of random discussion-board chat to get to the good stuff, the best answers are always voted to the top! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a web forum, it's a question and answer site. The difference can be subtle, but here's the short version: This is not a place where people pose questions to spark discussions; this is a place set up do you can ask specific questions that can be answered definitively and clearly. Forums are awesome, and we love them! But this is a place meant to post canonical questions and answers. So while &quot;what should I write&quot; is a fine question for a forum, it won't attract clear, definitive answers here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the limits of art may include all sorts of topics, themes, and means of expression, the limits of StackExchange are stricter.  Please do not include &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/22233/revisions&quot;&gt;expletives&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22194/should-i-edit-a-question-or-answer-with-offensive-content&quot;&gt;offensive&lt;/a&gt; content as part of your question, even if such is part of your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing critique questions are also welcome here, provided you provide details and context for your writing, as well as some direction on what type of feedback you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to get a more detailed break down of how the site works or why a certain question is on or off topic, then you can browse the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.writers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/on-topic-definition&quot;&gt;questions tagged [on-topic-definition] on the discussion site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt; &#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What is this place? How is it different from any other forum?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This site is about writing, and is designed to be useful to writers. If you have questions about the act of writing, about being a writer, or how to use writing techniques, your questions are welcome here. Specific types of questions that are allowed are listed just below this section, but questions about grammar or asking us to proofread stuff will be closed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What's on-topic here?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the topics allowed and not allowed, taken from both &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.writers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/faq&quot;&gt;community discussion&lt;/a&gt; on the matter as well as the original site definition when it was launched: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Questions on these topics are welcome here:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-fiction, technical, or scholarly writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing fiction, poetry, song lyrics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General copywriting &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professional-level blogging&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The publishing and editing process itself &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A writing critique, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.writers.stackexchange.com/questions/166/what-are-the-guidelines-for-asking-for-a-critique-of-my-work&quot;&gt;properly scoped and framed&lt;/a&gt; (If you find those guidelines unclear, or need a quick summary, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.writers.stackexchange.com/a/489/26&quot;&gt;this chart&lt;/a&gt; will help)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;On the other hand, these kinds of questions aren't allowed here:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions seeking to interpret or analyze &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.writers.stackexchange.com/questions/242/are-literature-questions-appropriate-on-writers-se&quot;&gt;an existing work&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.writers.stackexchange.com/questions/301/should-we-allow-grammar-proofreading-questions&quot;&gt;Proofreading requests&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The strictly interpreted correctness of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.writers.stackexchange.com/q/4/26&quot;&gt;English grammar or syntax rules&lt;/a&gt; (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;ask those on English Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;, instead)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finding a professional to write for you, be your agent, etc.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A specific, localized shopping recommendation as described &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Asking &quot;what should I write about&quot; (more about this &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.writers.stackexchange.com/questions/397/should-we-be-answering-questions-about-what-to-write-about&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that a &lt;strong&gt;critique&lt;/strong&gt; is more extensive than a one-line question asking for vague improvements. &lt;strong&gt;Questions asking for us to make a line or two better will be closed.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T14:05:06.180" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T15:48:37.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1021" CreationDate="2011-01-04T22:54:39.847" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://absolutewrite.com/forums/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AbsoluteWrite&lt;/a&gt; is another forum that looks interesting.  There are sub-forums for different interest areas, publishing, genres, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="159" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-08-23T12:00:36.553" LastActivityDate="2023-08-23T12:00:36.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="976" CreationDate="2011-01-04T23:08:48.260" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read an interesting novel by Lionel Shriver called &lt;em&gt;We Need to Talk About Kevin&lt;/em&gt;.  This book didn't have any paragraphs at all, it was a series of letters written from the main character to her husband.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this sort of technique doesn't work for the vast majority of novels, it can be a good way to keep your readers reading.  Short blurbs of information (like letters or journal entries or even just short paragraphs) are a good way to make you lose track of time when you're nose deep in a good book.  It also makes it easy to stop reading when need be, without the pressure of getting to the end of the chapter in a hurry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-01-04T23:08:48.260" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-01-04T23:08:48.260" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2011-01-05T00:22:20.850" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another way of asking the question might be: how much should I aim to write every day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think 1000 words a day is a good number. Here's why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It works even if you're not a full-time writer -- even if you're writing in the morning or evenings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's consistent w/ some of the other data points above. At 1000 words a day, you'll finish a first draft of a novel in ~3 months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's achievable!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That last one is really important. The way you finish a novel is by keeping at it, day after day. It's easier to do that when you feel like you're meeting your goals &amp;amp; making progress -- not disappointing yourself every time you sit down to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="462" LastEditorUserId="462" LastEditDate="2011-01-05T01:35:28.650" LastActivityDate="2011-01-05T01:35:28.650" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1023" CreationDate="2011-01-05T01:11:32.117" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to read a lot of the literature written in that time period. Those authors have an advantage over you - they lived then and knew how people spoke. When writing a historical piece an etymology dictionary is your best friend. It'll tell you if the word you want to use was in use back then and if not, when it came into usage. But you're going to want to do a lot of research into classes in that time period. An upperclassman wouldn't speak the same as a lowerclassman. But reading a lot of books from that era can help you get a pretty good feel for things. Literature can often be the best forms of history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-01-05T01:11:32.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="984" CreationDate="2011-01-05T01:13:53.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just take a look at any book that cites references in the manner you want to study--that is, just open the book and observe how the author has done it and copy the format.  Otherwise, you can purchase a style manual that will give you loads of examples and answer all your questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="dab" LastActivityDate="2011-01-05T01:13:53.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2011-01-05T01:59:39.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Online forums are a great way to get reviews and writing advice.  All forums are different, so poke around before joining and read their submission guidelines.  Do a Google search for &quot;writing forums&quot; to find some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Places I've been: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingforums.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing Forums&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersbeat.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Writer's Beat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://poetsanctuary.proboards.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Poet Sanctuary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although a blog does seem like it wouldn't attract a lot of attention, it's an easy way to link to your work and promote yourself.  Share your blog on a social networking site.  Maybe someone will see a piece they like and read more.  It's a way to start a following.  And since blogs are customizable, people can get to know the author and will appreciate the work more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-12-25T18:42:27.903" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T18:42:27.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1023" CreationDate="2011-01-05T12:00:20.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read scenes out loud, learn to speak like that. A key part of writing dialogue is being able to hear it back in your head like people actually speaking to one another. It's a skill George Lucas never bothered to acquire. They call it having an &quot;ear&quot; for dialogue for a reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-01-05T12:00:20.043" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1023" CreationDate="2011-01-05T13:16:16.347" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't try to imitate exactly the style of dialogue in the era of Austen unless you are planning on imitating everything about the historical era very well.  As Ralph Gallagher &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1023/writing-19th-century-upperclass-english-dialog/1029#1029&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt;, Austen and others have an advantage over you - they were just writing how they spoke or heard others around them speak.  If you manage to only get part of the whole historical ethos - some of the words and a bit of the dress with anachronisms from our own time thrown in - your readers will be continuously jilted out of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to write historical fiction using the languages of our own day.  No one would write a work of historical fiction set in Chaucer's time and attempt to use his language because readers would largely not understand it.  Instead the language would be modernized.  If you can't do the Romantic era perfectly, you might be best off doing the same.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible for dialogue written in modern English or any language to be brilliant.  What matters is an ear for cadences, for apt words, for truths about life as they really are.  Whether you write in Middle, Romantic, Victorian, or modern English, it's what you say that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;TL;DR version:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do historical dialogue extremely well or not at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-01-06T13:24:57.330" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1038" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1063" CreationDate="2011-01-05T20:46:24.533" Score="2" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't seem to find any essay contests out there. Is there a list of essay contests somewhere? Does anyone have suggestions for contests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="491" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-01-12T14:45:43.570" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T15:54:35.840" Title="Essay writing contests" Tags="|non-fiction|contests|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-01-05T20:46:56.697" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="989" CreationDate="2011-01-06T00:03:55.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Boris and Guido walked in the room. The crew was already there: Max the Fridge, holding his tommy-gun; Claude, the knife-worker; Bobby the Weasel in a Goodwill suit and worn hat; Pat the Rat, whose bulbous nose even eclipsed his billard-ball smooth head. In the corner, Betty was leaning on a crassy desk, fat ashtray at hand. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See? I introduced seven shady types in 60 words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to read what happens next, don't cha? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to trigger the reader's imagination to fill in the details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="492" LastActivityDate="2011-01-06T00:03:55.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="989" CreationDate="2011-01-06T06:15:13.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This hasn't explicitly been mentioned but one good way to introduce characters is for existing characters to act and react in ways that show they already know the new character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example. Early in one of my works, I had a military commander (and a minor character) show extreme prejudice against one of my main characters in front of the other. But both of my mains clearly knew him, knew he was like this and knew calling him on it would achieve nothing. So they didn't. That was maybe an extreme example, but it works well with all sorts of mannerisms, such as liking to sleep late, or preferring milk over whiskey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When an existing character clearly knows more than the reader about a new character, it shows the world has been running before the story started. Readers usually like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastActivityDate="2011-01-06T06:15:13.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1042" CreationDate="2011-01-06T07:34:27.027" Score="5" ViewCount="667" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always get stuck trying to work out what the high-point of the story should be, especially when writing sci-fi/fantasy. There seem to be just a few climaxes that get recycled through this genre - not sure if this is good or bad, necessarily, but this has been my experience so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd appreciate it if someone could share resources on how to come up with something original - is there a way to do this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are various methods to go about this - even if it's for a different genre, I'd appreciate your sharing how you get around this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to keep within guidelines, please also share how well whatever you use works for you and perhaps for a genre if it's specific to 1 or 2. Or if you've come across something different a published author has used, would be great to get those references too please!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;~&lt;/em&gt; sorry everyone, only checked back now, will try to clarify &lt;em&gt;~&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm trying to say is that there seems to be a trend, specifically in sci-fi / fantasy, for everything to lead up to the classic battle as a climax. What I'm looking for is info of whether this is just how the genre works, or if there are different climaxes or methods of putting one together - ie, guidelines or loose &quot;rules&quot; that can be adapted to your story...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really appreciate the answers I got - many thanks to you both!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="494" LastEditorUserId="494" LastEditDate="2011-01-10T06:21:06.180" LastActivityDate="2011-01-10T06:21:06.180" Title="original story climaxes - rules / guidelines for this?" Tags="|technique|plot|originality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1041" CreationDate="2011-01-06T21:41:14.407" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The essence of a good climax starts with good conflict.  You need two (at least two) forces which are going to clash with one another.  These need not be warships, or wizards, or anything titanic, if you're not writing Sci-Fi.  Or even if you are...remember the classics:  'Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Self' that they used to teach in school.  Once you have forces moving, it's going to be a lot easier to see where they can collide and can create the climactic moment you're looking for.  If you start small and subtle, you're likely to find more original climaxes than the traditional 'Battle Royale' at the Death Star/Asteroid Belt/Hidden Base/Whatever.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I refer you to Lois Mc Master Bujold's science fiction:  her conflicts are almost always character-driven, and rely on the nature of people to drive them to the climax instead of technology.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cliche' climaxes in too many movies happen when characters are insufficiently developed and faceless, and all that's left is Force A against Force B, and you don't really care about any of the individuals, only that the 'good' guys win.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So...develop your characters, define your conflict, and drive the main characters into one another at high speed.  See what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="500" LastActivityDate="2011-01-06T21:41:14.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1043" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1141" CreationDate="2011-01-06T22:32:15.083" Score="18" ViewCount="3450" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I'm published with smaller publications, getting reviews is often one of the best ways to make sales. But what professional book review sites out there will write a review in exchange for a copy of the book? I don't want ones that'll give you a good review just because you gave them the book, but ones that give honest reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-06-29T01:55:31.117" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T17:19:48.093" Title="What book review sites allow authors to send a copy of their books for reviews?" Tags="|book|reviews|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1044" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1050" CreationDate="2011-01-07T11:03:13.370" Score="13" ViewCount="926" Body="&lt;p&gt;I discussed a book with a friend, and he disliked that the author described a person who is dying shortly after and has no further effect on the story over a page or more. The same would go for things; if I describe a room, should I include things that have no importance for the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many of these story-irrelevant descriptions are too much? Would they annoy the reader? And if I completely avoid this, would the story have to less 'flesh'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastEditorUserId="7" LastEditDate="2011-01-07T12:22:41.550" LastActivityDate="2011-10-10T20:19:37.970" Title="How much should I describe things or persons, that are not important for the story?" Tags="|style|description|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1045" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1052" CreationDate="2011-01-07T11:08:50.907" Score="2" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;In technical writings are good established standards for formatting literature references. But that doesn't work this well for URLs. How should these references be formatted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2011-01-07T16:11:30.173" Title="How should be the format for literature references that are websites (URLs)?" Tags="|technical-writing|websites|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1046" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1051" CreationDate="2011-01-07T11:13:18.470" Score="3" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;Electronical publishings could include multimedia, like videos or music/soundsnippets. How well does that go together with fictional writing? Could that add something to the atmosphere? Or would it distract the reader too much and should be avoided?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T18:25:07.140" Title="Do multimedia-objects work well in electronical publishings of fictional writing?" Tags="|ebook|electronic-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1044" CreationDate="2011-01-07T11:59:49.970" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strunk, White, King and the editor on the paper King interned at all agree, the key to successful writing is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Omit Needless Words&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a further note Chekhov pointed out that if you place a loaded gun over the mantelpiece and nobody fires it before the end of the story it shouldn't ever even have been there. He was talking about plays but the principle is valid in all storytelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-01-07T11:59:49.970" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1048" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1049" CreationDate="2011-01-07T12:00:23.890" Score="11" ViewCount="399" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually write on the web and I would like to license my writings using one of the Creative Commons licenses, but I can't understand how that license can protect our works. We really like to share our thoughts, but they should be protected somehow. Is using the CC license a good way to do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other licenses or counter-measures exist for protecting one's intellectual property in writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="504" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-07T08:45:10.340" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T08:45:10.340" Title="Does the Creative Commons license protect my writing on the web?" Tags="|copyright|legal|creative-commons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1048" CreationDate="2011-01-07T12:26:10.060" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creative Commons licenses are about sharing your work. The basic right you grant with one of these licenses is, that every noncommercial user can copy your work and give it to others, even over filesharing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, CC-licenses have some restrictions, that can be applied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BY (attribution) - the creator has to be credited (all CC-licenses include this restriction)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NC (non-commercial) - the work cannot be used in a commercial way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ND (non derivate) - the work cannot be altered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SA (share alike) - if the work is altered, it must retain the same license&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These additions can be combined (except ND and SA, that are not compatible with each other). Naturally the creator of the work can give exceptions to all these restrictions. So if you don't want, that someone else alters your story or use it as part of a bigger story, you should add ND. If you don't want someone else making money with your work without asking you, you should add NC. In that example your choosen license would be CC-BY-NC-ND. Keep in mind, that non-commercial copying of your work is always permitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read more about that here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;For more information about the implication, you might want to read the answers to my question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/966/72&quot;&gt;What are advantages/disadvantages to use a CC-license for your writings?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-01-07T12:26:10.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1044" CreationDate="2011-01-07T14:57:56.890" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your friend is right. Don't describe things that aren't important for the story. However, keep in mind that things can be important for a variety of different reasons. You may want to describe to establish:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setting. This is obvious, and it's what most people think of.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Character: &lt;em&gt;Peter's apartment was full of empty pizza boxes crusted with dried cheese.&lt;/em&gt; Neither the boxes nor the cheese are important to the story per se, but this detail tells us that Peter is a slob.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mood: Think of the opening chapter of &lt;em&gt;Dracula&lt;/em&gt;, where Bram Stoker describes the approach to the Count's castle. Most of the things described are not important in themselves, but they establish the mood of mystery and menace.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theme: In a war story, you might not need to describe the bullet-riddled body your protag finds in the field. On the other hand, doing that might be crucial to illustrating that War Is Hell.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-01-07T14:57:56.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1046" CreationDate="2011-01-07T15:41:00.753" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's going to make the reader stop reading, don't do it. Your goal as an author is to absorb the author into your world and make them forget about anything going on around them. If a reader has to stop reading to watch your video or listen to a sound snippet, you're not accomplishing that goal. Instead, you'll annoy your reader and they won't want to finish reading your book or read any more. Electronic publication is also still new and with a lot of glitches still. If you throw in multimedia, you're just asking for more trouble. Readers also get frustrated if things don't work properly, so insert multimedia and having it break, will lose you readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-01-07T15:41:00.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1045" CreationDate="2011-01-07T16:11:30.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/72/what-are-the-most-common-style-manuals&quot;&gt;What are the most common style manuals?&lt;/a&gt;, find the one that is pertinent to the intended publisher of your piece of technical writing, and look up how they suggest you format a URL.  Make sure you have a recent edition, but all style manuals I know of should offer you their canonical way to handle URLs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-01-07T16:11:30.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1053" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1054" CreationDate="2011-01-07T16:24:10.507" Score="6" ViewCount="344" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a native speaking german and learned english in school. So I will probably never be writing and speaking english on the same level as a native speaker or as I do in german. That's why I write in german. I wrote some stories and published them myself for free reading on my website. Now I think, if I should translate them myself into english, to gain a bigger audience? Is that a good idea, or would my terrible english actually a downside and I should stay with german?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T15:41:52.747" Title="Should I translate myself my writings into english to get a bigger audience?" Tags="|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1053" CreationDate="2011-01-07T16:44:27.640" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stick with what you know. If your English isn't fluent, you're most likely going to annoy more readers than you attract. This is why when a publishing house puts out a book in another language they hire a professional to do it instead of having the author try and do it. Translation can be confusing and there aren't always words that translate accurately, so it takes someone who knows both languages in and out to do accurate translations. So I would recommend sticking to German since that's the language you're fluent in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-01-07T16:44:27.640" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1055" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1058" CreationDate="2011-01-07T18:45:23.663" Score="30" ViewCount="5829" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a person writes a novel, grammar alright, decent story, word count, etc. everything okay, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a crap shoot for that person to get published?  Is it just like the lottery or maybe better chances?  Is it like a band hoping to get discovered or a little better than that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-03-05T18:49:00.423" LastActivityDate="2019-12-31T15:28:06.097" Title="Do most novels not get published?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|novel|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1046" CreationDate="2011-01-07T19:42:47.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Multimedia&quot; can include illustrations, which have been used to accompany text for centuries. In that sense, using multimedia for fiction is well-established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using music or video to accompany a story is a very interesting idea, and personally I'd encourage you to experiment, as it could be extremely effective. At the same time, doing this sort of experiment severely limits the ways in which you can present your story, as you need online storage, and a place where people can access your story and its accompanying materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-01-07T19:42:47.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1044" CreationDate="2011-01-07T19:51:30.757" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;should I include things that have no importance for the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything you include in your text is by definition part of the story and will affect the reading of every other part: Every part is automatically important whether you want it to be or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The factors to take into account when considering whether to include something are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is it interesting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is it relevant/consistent?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider two extreme cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An unrelated character who is about to die is described at length. The reader's mind may now be seeded with thoughts of death, mortality, futility, tranquility, etc. (depending on the nature of the description) while they read the next part of the text, and their interpretation of it will be coloured by these themes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A book that consists of a slim plot, riddled with tangential and meandering asides. This has the effect of exposing the reader to a vast field of disparate subjects. They are free to draw their own connections between topics and become very active in their interpretation of the text. They will judge the action of the main plot within the context of the wider world. In fact, the plot can even be so slim as to appear non-existent: The best example I can give of this is the film Koyaanisqatsi, but The Instruction Manual by Julio Cortázar and Life A User's Manual by Georges Perec are good examples in literature. You may not even have to try to make the deviations relevant to each other: the human mind will find stories in the most minimal stimulus, as shown by the experiments of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_Effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lev Kuleshev&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These illustrate that relevance is a complex and sometimes unintuitive issue. Further, relevance trumps interestingness. Consider The Princess Bride by William Goldman, ostensibly a rewriting of another book in which &quot;tedious&quot; parts of the &quot;original&quot; text form a sub-plot about its author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="436" LastActivityDate="2011-01-07T19:51:30.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1055" CreationDate="2011-01-07T21:56:57.360" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anyone who actively pursues publication can get published. Sometimes it can happen easily, other times it may take month or even years. Just because it's well written and is a decent novel, doesn't mean every publisher wants it. It may not be right for some publishers, and others may not think they can market a certain novel well. But if you keep trying, eventually someone will give you a shot. Sometimes you need to put that novel away for a while and work on another one; maybe that one will have better chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to try your best and never give up. Make sure your novel is well written, make sure you're querying the correct publishers, make sure you're being professional, and make sure you do your homework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="1053" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T02:07:50.680" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T02:07:50.680" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1055" CreationDate="2011-01-07T22:53:13.957" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question literally: most novels that are written will never be published. Thousands of people write a novel every year, and probably less than 1% of those novels are ever read by anyone other than the author's friends and family. Publishers and agents turn down many thousands of manuscripts a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it does not follow that publishing is a matter of getting lucky. The novels that &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; published are the ones that are at the top of the heap in terms of quality, so you can vastly increase your chances of being published by writing a really spectacular book. It's not enough to make no mistakes--you have to absolutely &lt;em&gt;kill&lt;/em&gt; at some aspects of your story. (And if your story is very strong in some areas, weaknesses in other areas may be overlooked.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an element of luck: there are all kinds of reasons that a publisher may turn down your story other than the fact that it sucks. But this is not really a big deal. If you've written one professional-quality novel, you can write another, and once you're writing at a professional level, it's only a matter of time before someone stands up and takes notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-01-07T22:53:13.957" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1043" CreationDate="2011-01-08T01:36:42.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Goodreads.com does that -- even better, you can get attention from as many individuals as you give out copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-01-08T01:36:42.677" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1055" CreationDate="2011-01-08T11:29:57.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything I ever needed to know about these topics is contained in two free pdf downloads by respected UK author Michael Allen. One is an actual book, the other an extended essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're not pleasant reading but for any writer they are essential:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Truth About Writing, On The Survival Of Rats In The Slush Pile&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT 03-02-2012: As the old links no longer work here is a link to the author's Smashwords page. Where all of his work can be found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/michaelallen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/michaelallen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T09:25:55.517" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T09:25:55.517" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1062" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-01-08T20:58:17.027" Score="11" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;Freelance writers have a lot of opportunity to write online, but in some cases the rates are less than the same writing project might command offline. Assuming that there are enough advantages in taking online writing gigs to offset the disadvantage of a lower rate, should a freelance writer attempt to keep their online writing business separate from their offline writing business?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How far should something like this be taken? Multiple business names? Pseudonyms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, is it unnecessary, and a professional writer can just move back and forth between two worlds without much difficulty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update: In response to some of the answers, I am attempting to make what I am getting at more clear, which unfortunately, makes the question much longer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, freelance writing relationships with local businesses involve a certain amount of overhead that does not exist in a similar online relationship. For example, most of my local clients call on the phone, some require occasional meetings, and a handful require some work to be done on-site. All of these things increase the time to accomplish writing the actual words. Whereas, many online clients communicate via email, assignments can be found/claimed without meetings, and I never have to work on-site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, for my business at least, it would not be worthwhile to take on writing a 500 word press release for a local client who wants to meet before the project and after to review it without charging perhaps double what I would charge to write a 500 word press release for an online client who just posts a job on a freelance writing website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, the local client were to discover that that discrepancy, would they want the lower rate in the future, or worse, be upset at what they were charged in the past? I know that it &lt;em&gt;should not&lt;/em&gt; matter and that clients &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; understand. What I wanted to know is &lt;em&gt;do they understand&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The catalyst for asking this question was that I realized that on some online venues there is a way to look at the history in such a way that someone could notice that ArcticLlama Freelance Writing had written a technical white paper for a certain amount (actually for a certain range). If that someone was a new local client doing research before contacting me, would that amount color their perception of what I would/should charge them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For existing clients with whom I have a relationship, this is a non-issue because they would talk with me about it and I could explain. For prospective clients, they might make some assumptions and decide not to work with me without ever saying what the issue was. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I left the question more open than that because I had never thought of this before, and I was wondering if other freelancers had come across other factors that I hadn't considered that might arise in this situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of the question is asking if other freelance writers in similar situations had dealt with this issue and, if so, how they had made it work out, or if I was making a mountain out of a molehill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="508" LastEditorUserId="4566" LastEditDate="2013-03-15T15:08:59.143" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T15:08:59.143" Title="Should freelance writers keep their online business separate from offline?" Tags="|money|business-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1038" CreationDate="2011-01-08T21:12:28.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &quot;Contests &amp;amp; Awards&quot; section in the Writer's Market book that is published every year. There are several essay contests in the Non-Fiction category in that section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a much bigger list, you can do a Google search for essay contest or the like. Be sure to click &quot;More Search Tools&quot; and choose to limit the search to within the Last Year so that you aren't wasting your time on old, out of date, contests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a specific arena you are interested in, the best thing is to find the essays through professional groups in that field. For example, if you wanted to write essays about law, the Bar Association website lists ABA Essay and Writing Competitions &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abanet.org/lsd/competitions/writing-contests/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.abanet.org/lsd/competitions/writing-contests/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm sure you will find plenty of websites out there with lists of contents, none of them will be exhaustive and many will be out of date. You'll just have to go fishing :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One word of caution: Charging a fee for entries to writing contests is a very lucrative business. Make sure that the contest is worthy of your entry. The more well-known and reputable the organization running the contest, the better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="508" LastActivityDate="2011-01-08T21:12:28.273" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-01-08T21:12:28.273" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1062" CreationDate="2011-01-09T00:50:16.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see why a freelance writer would need an online/offline business. A person can easily work for physical print magazines and website publication without any problems. And in today's market, it's extremely hard to work as a freelance writer without an online presence unless you live in a big city - Seattle, New York, Chicago, etc. - where there are a lot of publications based. Most magazines and the like want all online submissions, they're easier for them to go through and to work with writers. Email is a lot easier than trying to do business through snail mail or over the phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Your best bet is to either not put your prices on your webpage or to only give a general amount. If you're going to be doing more work, then you deserve to be paid more. Clients generally understand that. A 500 word opinion or basic research piece is going to cost a lot less than a 500 word research intensive piece. Plus, what you charge is between you and your client. No one else, including other clients or future clients, needs to know what you charged them. There are quite a few reasons you'd charge two different prices - perhaps you know the one client personally and gave him a deal, perhaps you do a lot of work for him so you cut him a deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="361" LastEditDate="2011-01-10T04:09:18.443" LastActivityDate="2011-01-10T04:09:18.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1062" CreationDate="2011-01-09T03:22:08.017" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question appears to have an implied assumption that there are two types of freelance writing: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Print&lt;/strong&gt;: High profile literary work that's difficult to get (aka “real writing”)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Example: writing for the &lt;em&gt;New Yorker&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Online&lt;/strong&gt;: low paying and low respect, but work that's easy to do/get&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Example: blogging for other people for pennies/post&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If those were the only two options, then yes, it might make sense to keep the two separate—you wouldn't want the low-paying gigs to damage your reputation and keep you from getting the &quot;real writing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that's a false dichotomy, which makes the question as-is somewhat meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2011-01-09T03:22:08.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1055" CreationDate="2011-01-09T19:37:06.620" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The truth is that most novels never will be published by another party. There are a limited number of publishers in the world and only a very few books will be selected to be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative in the last few years self-publishing - particularly in e-books - has become a viable and cost-effective measure for new writers to ge their works out to as wide an audience as possible.  There are many sites in the world that will allow you to upload your own novel and release it as an e-book for free, then pay you a portion of every sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sites such as Amazon.com and Smashwords.com will both do this for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just have to see your book in a printed and visual form, look up Do-it-yourself book binding and bind your own copies of your books. It is labor intensive, but you can make a paperback form of your novel for just a few dollars and sell them yourself, but your audience is much smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I bound my own novel &lt;em&gt;Future Useless&lt;/em&gt; and made 75 paperback copies. Each copy cost me about $1.50 to print and bind, and took many hours from start to finish. I sold most of them for $5.00 each and gave away about 25. Still, I managed to clear a good profit from the books and it helped pay some bills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Online I published both at Smashwords.com and Amazon.com. So far I've managed to sell over 150 copies of the novel and didn't have to pay a dime to do so. It took me less than five hours to prepare the manuscript to their approved formats.  Much more profitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, After trying for 5 years to get published, my book is being read, and I'm receiving valuable feedback on my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a stigma to self-publishing that carries over from older times and regards the quality of the books, but in the last few years, the digital revolution and the sale of more affordable e-reader devices have started to change that perception.  Now a self-published novel is not just due to poor quality, but can be seen as the author's choice of marketing instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="510" LastActivityDate="2011-01-09T19:37:06.620" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1062" CreationDate="2011-01-09T20:07:23.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is only a problem if you advertise rates, such as $160 per 1000 words for print work but $120 for online work, so that the two sets of rates stand out and demand awkward justification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend instead linking to some society's fee advice page and saying that your rates are in keeping with their recommendations.  This has some advantages: there is a lot of looseness in such pages; the rates tend to be slightly highball, making them a good starting point for negotiation; and they have collective credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risk is that price uncertainty will deter clients who you would be happy to have.  I use the offer of free editing samples with quotes, which involves some wasted work, but allows me to talk to potential clients about what I offer before they feel they have to make a commitment.  I'm not sure how this would work for freelance writing; I think that portfolios are an awkward place to hand a fee structure from, and rub against any assurance of confidentiality you might wish to portray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the whole question of how to communicate your fee structure is hard, and it is worth joining an appropriate professional organisation —be it only a mailing list— and participate in discussions.  I think the problems of a freelancer with multiple marketing disorder are worse than these, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Example fee advice pages:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-efa.org/res/rates.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Editorial Freelancers Association&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.londonfreelance.org/feesguide/index.php?&amp;amp;section=Print+media&amp;amp;subsect=All&amp;amp;subsubs=All&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;British National Union of Journalists&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vfll.de/pages/honorare/honorare.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Verband der Freien Lektor(inn)en&lt;/a&gt; - (German, my reference fee structure for editing work)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rockablepress.com/minibooks/freelance-statistics-report/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Freelanceswitch survey&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-01-09T20:07:23.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1041" CreationDate="2011-01-10T00:10:45.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I learnt the hard way that you need conflict, often just at a low level, for a mere scene to progress. Just something as idiotically simple as &quot;the characters need to quietly open an old door&quot;. Here, the conflict is doing an action that would normally make sound noise as quietly as possible. How they solve that is what makes the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same way, the overall plot needs a conflict: something to accomplish, something to overcome, something to learn. In a horribly technical way, a common-or-garden-variety plotline needs a &lt;em&gt;turnaround&lt;/em&gt; about half-way where the protagonist discovers or learns something that changes what happens in the second half, and a &lt;em&gt;climax&lt;/em&gt; which is the outcome of him responding to the turnaround (sometimes it is his response and the intervening story is him getting there to do it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, that is a very bald summary and requires liberal interpretation to apply it. But the reason I've described it this way is because thinking about the story this way is what makes it possible for me to think up original story points. Put another way, it makes it more character-driven. It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; cliched for the hero to turn out to be the long-lost son of the despotic king. So? You know this ahead of time, but let him build up a character and nudge events a little and how he gets to the end will surprise you. In fact, it could surprise you so much that the new climax could turn out to be something entirely different. He might still be the long-lost son, but that's incidental to how he treats his friends when everyone finds out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastActivityDate="2011-01-10T00:10:45.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1074" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1076" CreationDate="2011-01-11T10:22:24.510" Score="14" ViewCount="186" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read somewhere that putting your story, or a piece of it, on the internet would make it difficult (not to say impossible in some cases) to find a publisher wanting to publish your script. Would I encounter such difficulties if say I let my story be bound in a book as a present to somebody (so only one exemplar), and decided later I wanted this story to be published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="397" LastActivityDate="2011-01-11T23:30:21.173" Title="Are already privately bound books a deterent for publishing houses?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1074" CreationDate="2011-01-11T15:01:37.927" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will defer to some of the editorial folks, who may know better, but I believe you'd be okay.  If you head on down to the local Kinkos and get your work bound nicely, nobody will ever know.  The main issue with rights is if a work has been made &quot;publicly&quot; available.  On a webpage, anyone with a computer can see it.  A single copy in the hands of a single person isn't a big deal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-publishing and POD packages, however, often include getting an ISBN for your work, and that will probably raise some flags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-01-11T15:01:37.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1074" CreationDate="2011-01-11T15:49:37.047" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a copy bound, either from a Do-it-yourself kit or through a place like Kinkos doesn't pose any problems. The problem with putting a book on the internet or by using a self-publisher or PoD publisher lies in the contract and the rights. By making a single copy and not actively distributing it or signing any contract, you haven't used any publication rights. When you sign on with a self-publisher or PoD publisher you sign a legal contract (even if it's just by pressing that you accept their ToS) and you effectively use up your first publication rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you're allowed to post an excerpt of your story on your webpage. As long as it's not a significant portion of the story, you're okay. &quot;A significant portion&quot; does vary by publisher and there is no set &quot;rule&quot; for how much that is, but as long as you stay under 50% you shouldn't have any problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="361" LastEditDate="2011-01-11T23:30:21.173" LastActivityDate="2011-01-11T23:30:21.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1077" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1078" CreationDate="2011-01-11T19:40:10.733" Score="11" ViewCount="9832" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do publishers give you an advance as some sort of earnest money for your manuscript?  If your work doesn't sell very well do you have to give the advance back to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they ever just buy your work and you get some money plus royalties?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T02:59:48.467" Title="If you get an advance do you ever have to give it back?" Tags="|publishing|money|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1077" CreationDate="2011-01-11T19:56:56.063" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt; That's the meaning of the word &quot;advance&quot;: these are monies that the publisher is willing to give you up-front with the belief that your work will sell enough copies to cover the advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that the advance is not &quot;free money&quot;: it's a portion of the royalties for your book that you receive ahead of time. You won't receive any further royalties for your book until it's sold enough copies that the royalties you would have earned cover the advance. If your book fails to &quot;earn out&quot; the advance (sell enough copies to cover the advance), you can expect to have a hard time getting another contract with that publisher, and possibly with other publishers as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-01-11T19:56:56.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1079" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1882" CreationDate="2011-01-12T03:39:06.220" Score="7" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the formatting rules for scripts?  Are there significant variations?  What differences are there between stage plays, television, and movies?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T00:20:35.850" Title="Formatting for stage, television, and the silver screen" Tags="|script|scriptwriting|formatting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1090" CreationDate="2011-01-12T03:55:34.443" Score="11" ViewCount="825" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the old days, books went out of print shortly after it stopped being profitable for the publisher to print new runs.  My understanding is that good contracts had clauses that caused the rights to the book to revert to the author once it had been out of print for a certain length of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, e-books seem to be a standard part of contracts.  E-books essentially put all the publisher's costs up-front, and make it very inexpensive to keep the electronic version of a book in print indefinitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this allow publishers to keep books &quot;in print&quot; forever and prevent the rights from reverting to the author, even when the book isn't selling?  Is it common for modern contracts to include language that allows the rights to revert if sales drop below a certain threshold?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-19T08:13:42.043" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T08:13:42.043" Title="Will e-books prevent books from going out of print (and rights from reverting)?" Tags="|publishing|ebook|contracts|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1080" CreationDate="2011-01-12T05:51:57.853" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Books go out of print when the contract runs up an either the author or the publisher doesn't opt to renew it. Books don't get pulled just because they're not making the sales, but if the books aren't making the sales, the contract most likely won't be renewed. Contracts can last anywhere from 2-7 years or longer, depending on negotiations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a contract runs out, there are two options. It can either be renewed, or it can end. If it ends, all rights revert back to the author and the publisher has to stop selling all books. They are allowed to sell off any remaining print books, but they're not allowed to print any more. Ebook sales stop immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If for some reason an author is unhappy with their publisher and wants their rights back, it is possible to cancel a contract earlier if the publisher is agreeable. But, if the publisher is making money off the books, they're most likely not going to agree unless the author has a lot of pull or they're on very good terms. That means the author is stuck with them until the contract expires. Publishers don't own the rights to books indefinitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-01-12T05:51:57.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1080" CreationDate="2011-01-12T09:47:36.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never seen an expiration date on a tech book contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/ch03.html#rightsgrant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here are the O'Reilly standard book contract terms&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You grant us the exclusive right to print, publish, distribute, and sell copies of the book, and works derived from the book, in printed form and in electronic media such as CD-ROM, and to license others to do so, for the duration of the copyright in the book, in all languages, throughout the world. Your name will appear on the title page of the book as its author, but we'll obtain copyright for the book in our name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the contracts I've signed say my rights will revert back to me when the book goes out of print. And just like you mention above: between ebooks and POD, publishers now say that nothing's ever out of print, so rights never revert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2011-01-12T09:47:36.273" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1079" CreationDate="2011-01-12T09:52:25.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pretty much what I've heard about script formatting is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buy &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.finaldraft.com/products/final-draft/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Final Draft&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no step 2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2011-01-12T09:52:25.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1084" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1089" CreationDate="2011-01-12T10:30:18.280" Score="10" ViewCount="1957" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the &quot;write, don't edit&quot; rule in mind, how should one handle mistyping?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually stop or go back to fix the error as soon as I spot it, but often I feel this breaks the flow of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should one keep going, or stop to correct? I'm afraid I might miss some errors if I don't. And the thought of going back to fix everything in the end seems overwhelming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why should I prefer one over the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-01-12T14:44:53.663" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T10:20:58.027" Title="Correct spelling errors while writing or after you've finished?" Tags="|editing|typing|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1077" CreationDate="2011-01-12T10:59:59.060" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe&lt;/strong&gt;. If, for some unforeseen reason, the book is cancelled between the time the contract is signed and the publication date, the publisher may request that any paid-out portion of the advance be repaid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, it might happen if the first half of the book is amazing, but the second half is a complete turkey. Or if the second half never gets submitted at all. Or a million other reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the contract should say what happens, or at least what the publisher is allowed to ask for and when.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2011-01-12T10:59:59.060" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1084" CreationDate="2011-01-12T12:39:59.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rule I vaguely stick to is that if I actually spot a typo while writing, I'll fix it. Otherwise, I'll (hopefully, but in practice it seems not) spot the typo when re-reading whatever I wrote (be it after the next typing break, the next day or whenever). Then, when I have a sufficiently-substantial chunk, I run a spell-checker (with the ability to use a per-work dictionary, so I can insert unusual work-specific spellings (names, mostly) there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that fixing typos as you go impacts your flow, I'd suggest you don't fix typos as you go, as &quot;flow&quot; usually results in more words written per time unit and you'd probably still need to spell-check afterwards, no matter if you fix as you go or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastActivityDate="2011-01-12T12:39:59.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1084" CreationDate="2011-01-12T14:15:53.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I fix as I type if I notice them.  I've also heard that it's helpful to read the manuscript outloud when you're coming down to the final edit, because that will help catch the vast majority of spelling mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2011-01-12T14:15:53.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1084" CreationDate="2011-01-12T14:39:45.837" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are struggling between two possiblities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixing typos but having your concentration on the forward movement of your writing broken, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Moving on but facing a daunting task of catching all of your errors during editing and re-writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I would be driven crazy by &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; fixing a mistake I knew was there, and that would break my concentration far worse than going back, re-typing a word, and moving on.  You may be totally different, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have already tried fixing typos, try working on a segment for about 3/4 of your normal writing time without fixing typos.  Then use the last quarter of your time to go back and fix typos - read the work out loud to yourself, read backwards, do whatever you need to do so that the brain's automatic comprehension features don't kick in and keep you from spotting errors.  See if this way of working is better for you than fixing typos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to try both ways of working more than once.  As you work you might come up with a hybrid approach.  Perhaps you want to write short segments and then fix all the typos in them while deciding what to write next.  Perhaps you want to figure in some time spent fixing basic typos.  Perhaps you want to leave it all for your first round of editing, or even your last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, make sure it keeps you writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-01-12T14:39:45.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1080" CreationDate="2011-01-12T18:21:10.803" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definition of terms is always crucial.  As Ralph Gallagher says, books go out of print when the contract is ended.  That point may be defined differently with different authors and publishers, perhaps 'one print run' or 'when sales drop to less than X dollars per annum' or even 'until there's been no interest for one full year'.  I believe an author I know of received a ten-year term in her contract, and when it was up she renegotiated for some other deal with an omnibus edition of several works.  I'll have to see if I can dig up the details.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question though is Exhibit A on why you &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; an agent when dealing with a publisher.  An agent will be able to advise you on this and will negotiate an effective ending date of the contract in the age of e-books.  A good agent will protect your interests (and your profits) from publishers who will claim (correctly, as it happens) that nothing is out of print and try to hang on to rights forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="500" LastActivityDate="2011-01-12T18:21:10.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1079" CreationDate="2011-01-12T19:48:39.937" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're a Mac user, buy Scrivener.  It's $45, and while it still costs something, it's a lot less than Final Draft.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to its website: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...its familiar scriptwriting features&#xA;  make formatting a script&#xA;  straightforward. So you can draft your&#xA;  script inside Scrivener using the&#xA;  unique research and structural tools&#xA;  and then export it to&#xA;  industry-standard scriptwriting&#xA;  software such as Final Draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also has a terrific 'notecard and corkboard' interface which allows you to write in snippets and reorder them at will.  You can also drag just about anything into it and use it for reference.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a Windows user, there's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;yWriter&lt;/a&gt;.  While there's no 'script' mode, you can at least write in scenes and focus on that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are really dead set on only using a word processor, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vcu.edu/arts/playwriting/screenformat.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;'s info on just the manuscript format.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="500" LastActivityDate="2011-01-12T19:48:39.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1080" CreationDate="2011-01-13T01:49:20.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the contacts that I've signed (granted, they were for short stories in anthologies), rights reverted to me after a specific period of time (one year, five years, etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2011-01-13T01:49:20.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1093" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1097" CreationDate="2011-01-13T02:23:46.057" Score="43" ViewCount="26463" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've occasionally thought about trying the Dvorak keyboard layout to improve my writing speed.  However, I wonder if the speed gain is really worth the initial learning curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious if anyone knows of studies that tested people switching from Querty to Dvorak.  Specifically, how long does it take the average person to recover their previous speed, and how much does their speed improve overall?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also be interested in any anecdotal evidence by those who have made the switch (or attempted it and reverted back to Querty).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2022-01-11T19:36:06.117" Title="Is it worth switching to Dvorak?" Tags="|typing|" AnswerCount="20" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2011-01-13T02:36:06.107" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been a while since I've seen research on this, but the consensus that I hear from other programmers who have tried Dvorak (we tend to spend all days in front of keyboards and therefore tend to be picky about the keyboards we use) is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is little difference in speed, or if there is, it isn't enough to justify the cost in learning it in and of itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; provide significant benefits in terms of preventing repetitive strain injury (carpal tunnel and the like).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to take into consideration is that Dvorak keyboards are somewhat hard to find.  So when you get used to it, it's difficult to say, go to the library and use the keyboard there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="526" LastActivityDate="2011-01-13T02:36:06.107" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1084" CreationDate="2011-01-13T04:16:28.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look, like most of these things, the answer is &quot;what works for you&quot;.  Personally, I have to keep pushing on -- if I look back, my Inner Critic starts asking for other changes, and as Satchel Paige said &quot;never look back; something might be gaining on you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I know people who practice the shitabrick method, and have to get each paragraph exactly right before they can go on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how about this: try some freewriting -- write as fast as you can, ignoring errors and all, and see if you get into that nice warm-bath feeling of &quot;flow&quot;. If so, forget the spelling, that's why God made spell correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, after you give it some time, it doesn't work, then try fixing errors as you see them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no one looking over your shoulder saying &quot;you're not right the Correct Way&quot;, except possibly you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="527" LastActivityDate="2011-01-13T04:16:28.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1080" CreationDate="2011-01-13T04:20:10.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The contract says what the contract says.  I've had some shown to me that were amazingly bad; all rights in perpetuity, all media.  Nowadays, if you die, your heirs can break one of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of editors will show you a default contract in their favor -- and change terms instantly as soon as they know you caught'em.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're concerned, write in a reversion clause, but remember with technical books especially the lifetime of a book is relatively short.  If it reverts after 5 years, it may not make any difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="527" LastActivityDate="2011-01-13T04:20:10.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2011-01-13T04:54:17.657" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I switched to Dvorak about six years ago, and I've found it to have been a net positive over all. My typing speed is about the same as before, though oddly my error rate has gone down. On the other hand, I haven't had any serious wrist pain since I switched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some downsides to switching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It seems to take about two months to get back up to the speed you were before changing over.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your QWERTY typing speed will suffer unless you put time into working with both. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're also going to have to learn how to type without looking at the keyboard as the odds are pretty good you're not going to be able to change the key labels. (You can find blank keyboards if the mismatch is a problem)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do try to change over, I'll warn you that the third week or so will be the worst. You'll kind of know where everything should be but you'll have a hard time finding it. Typing will be a huge pain for a few days as everything starts to properly shift around in your head. If you can get through it though, it will get better after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-16T11:40:12.243" LastActivityDate="2018-04-16T11:40:12.243" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2011-01-13T08:43:42.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a programmer and I made the switch about six months ago. Switching has increased my speed significantly, but I think that this is because I couldn't touch type before hand. The main difference though, has been that typing in the dvorak layout is much more comfortable than qwerty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to buy a dvorak keyboard in order to switch. My keyboard has the qwerty layout printed on it. I think that it would actually be counter productive to get a keyboard printed with dvorak's keys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside as others have noted is that it is annoying to have to use qwerty on other computers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do decide to switch then make a complete break from qwerty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="372" LastActivityDate="2011-01-13T08:43:42.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1084" CreationDate="2011-01-13T09:42:39.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I've already answered this question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/795#795&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, tell me, if you &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; had this scenario:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You have this sentence in your mind:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;I have always stood up at 4 o'clock after starting my job at the bakery.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You start typing:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;I have alwas stoo...&quot; darn, typo! It's &quot;always&quot; not &quot;alwas&quot;. Hit the left cursor key till you are at the right position, hit &quot;y&quot;, hit &quot;end&quot; and ... what did I want to write? Damn! I forgot. A second ago I still knew it. What the hell did I want to write? &quot;I stood up to begin early in the bakery&quot; No, no, it was different. F*cking shit!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you never had this scenario, go on, correcting as soon as you see it. If you have it had only once, you should see, that this is a dooming approach. If you do not want to forget, what is in your mind, then &lt;strong&gt;write&lt;/strong&gt;, do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; edit!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-01-13T09:42:39.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2011-01-13T10:12:01.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trying to switch is totally worth it. I tried to switch form qwertz to Neo (a German variant of Dvorak). I practiced it several weeks, but then decided against it and switched back to qwertz. I touch-typed before that switch, nevertheless my writing speed enhanced significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I try it again. Because programming with qwertz is a PITA. Look at it as brain calisthenics. It won't hurt ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-01-13T10:12:01.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2011-01-13T17:07:38.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a developer and blog writer.  I switched to Dvorak 10 years ago and never looked back.  It took a little bit to teach myself how to type but it was totally worth it.  Speed has increased a great deal and the amount of pain in my wrists and shoulders was drastically reduced within weeks, and stayed that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speed increases relate more to standard language typing rather than programming due to the fact that Dvorak actually puts some commonly used programmer keys in odd places.  The ';' for instance is in an inconvenient place and it's like '.' to developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is VERY worth switching.  Was for me anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastActivityDate="2011-01-13T17:07:38.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1084" CreationDate="2011-01-13T17:59:41.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to be a big fan of just write it out and spell check later, the problem is that 'later' turned out to be a few months down the line when I'm getting ready to edit a story. Suddenly spell checking became a large time investment just so I could get into editing the story proper. It got in the way of getting the job done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I started writing in Word (I used to be 100% text) I started taking time to go back and fix my errors soon after I made them. It was a bit of a break in my flow at first, but it had an interesting side effect, I started improving my spelling. So now I make significantly fewer errors in my spelling and have to go break my flow far less often to fix them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I guess the short answer is, yes I think it's worth fixing your errors as you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2011-01-13T17:59:41.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1105" CreationDate="2011-01-13T18:16:58.083" Score="8" ViewCount="4558" Body="&lt;p&gt;For stories that are highly non-linear, or that use multiple simultaneous sub-plots, what are some techniques for creating and managing the different items?  An example that comes to mind is Steven King's Under the Dome...since I just read it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine that with simultaneous plots that it is probably best to outline the general flow for the entire piece.  However, would you consider writing the entire perspective of one character at once, even if it is going to eventually be split into multiple pieces?  Writing an entire perspective might lead to awkward situations when you incorporate other pieces of the story unless you really have a good idea of how to merge the subplots.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="411" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2019-09-13T15:05:06.893" LastActivityDate="2019-09-13T15:05:06.893" Title="What techniques are used to create non-linear stories?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1104" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1107" CreationDate="2011-01-13T21:09:31.293" Score="4" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;While studying in my first term as EPIR student I had to prepare several papers. I gave those to my family and friends, to read and comment upon. I was surprised when they advised me to publish them. So here I am, thinking how to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[politics]&#xA;&#xA;Did nuclear weapons bring the world to the edge of war or did they&#xA;help ensure the peace?&#xA;https://gist.github.com/c826c3597eeccfca835b&#xA;&#xA;Do you agree with the view that “democracy is the worst form of&#xA;government except all those other forms that have been tried from time&#xA;to time”?&#xA;https://gist.github.com/257ccf9db51bb22507d5&#xA;&#xA;[economics]&#xA;&#xA;Why did the most powerful computer in the world have an ashtray?&#xA;https://gist.github.com/21dc25762c1a66c8b35f&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the length of those articles, I would agree to trim them before publishing. I would appreciate your help and/or criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gajus Gabrielius Kuizinas&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="533" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-01-14T13:53:59.133" LastActivityDate="2011-01-14T13:53:59.133" Title="What is the process for publishing academic papers?" Tags="|publishing|non-fiction|magazines|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1103" CreationDate="2011-01-13T21:10:41.750" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that highly non-linear plots are rather different than simultaneous sub-plots, so I think I will address them separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Simultaneous Plots&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I do longer work, I usually have multiple sub-plots running.  I never write one sub-plot all the way through.  I always go back and forth, usually switching every chapter.  This question actually inspired a bit of self-analysis, as I'd never really thought about why I do it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A somewhat minor reason is simply keeping fresh.  By bouncing back and forth, moving between characters and settings, I can keep my own interest.  I stay fairly close to all my characters and plot-lines, and when sub-plots intersect, I don't have to go back and remind myself what each character was up to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the biggest consideration, however, is that &quot;story time&quot; and &quot;reader time&quot; are very different things.  A year may pass in the story, denoted only by a chapter end or page break.  That year passes in a moment for the reader.  By writing the various sub-plots in (roughly) the order they're going to be read in, I can get a feel for that pacing that I couldn't get by writing them separately and then fitting them together.  I can make little adjustments on the fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were to write each subplot separately and then merge, the key would be to know where those plots intersect one another.  The parts far from the intersections are easier to modify, because they'll only have an effect on their sub-plot.  Closer to the intersections, changes to one sub-plot may affect others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Non-linear Plots&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-linear plots will almost always require more work than their linear counterparts.  If you're someone who doesn't mind outlining, life will probably be easier.  You can outline the events in order, then work on a second outline that takes those events and rearranges them.  This way, you can still write the first draft in the approximate shape you want it for the final draft.  Ideally, I prefer to take this route (though that doesn't always happen).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to outline up front, it probably pays to write the story linearly first, then go back and reorder things.  This is going to take more editing, but that's usually the price you pay for not outlining up front (this isn't necessarily a bad thing - some people find this is the only way they can work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-01-13T21:10:41.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1106" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1109" CreationDate="2011-01-13T21:44:12.597" Score="5" ViewCount="2345" Body="&lt;p&gt;Occasionally I've seen novel excerpts published in short story venues.  They're usually sections of a recent or forthcoming novel that also hold together as a self-contained story.  Alternately, sometimes an author starts with the short story, which is later expanded into a novel and sold.  (I believe Ender's Game is one such example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are these typically handled between the author, the novel publisher, and the short story publisher?  Do novel publishers seek out these deals?  Do the authors seek them out and then have to &quot;OK&quot; them with the novel publisher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I sold an excerpt as a short story, how would that complicate trying to sell the whole novel?  If I've already sold the novel, how does that complicate selling the excerpt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT for clarification (hopefully): If I sell rights to the short story/chapter/excerpt, then go on to try and sell the whole novel (which contains that same bit), are those short story rights likely to conflict with the whole novel rights that the publisher is going to want? If, for example, I sell First North American Serial Rights for the short story, does that also exercise the same rights for the novel containing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-01-14T19:45:12.773" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T02:50:43.593" Title="How to sell novel excerpts as short stories" Tags="|publishing|short-story|novel|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1104" CreationDate="2011-01-14T13:52:38.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to look into academic journals in your subject areas, although the authors in academic journals are often professors or graduate students.  Professors at your university should be able to tell you if you can qualify, what journals are available, what would be a good fit, and how the submission process works.  At many universities students are assigned academic adviser in their major.  Your adviser is an advocate for your academic success.  He or she should be your first resource; you want to develop a good relationship with your adviser to further your professional success as well, so start now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One route that might work for publishing in an academic journal, if you are not currently a graduate student, is to work with a professor whose name will appear on the paper alongside yours for publication.  This will work best if your paper is in the area of interest of the professor you approach.  Your adviser or the professor who taught your class where you wrote the paper may be able to provide names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information on academic publishing, check out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep02/publish.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to publish your journal paper&lt;/a&gt; from the APA monitor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.roie.org/how.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to publish in top journals&lt;/a&gt; from the Review of International Economics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that your work does not qualify for a peer-reviewed, academic journal, you can look into publishing in other magazines.  More information on query letters, proposals, and other steps you might want to take can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://freelancewrite.about.com/od/getpublished/Freelance_Writers_Guide_to_Getting_Published.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot emphasize too much that as a student you have access to a large number of people who are most likely published (that's part of what professors get paid to do) who can walk you through this process in your fields of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-01-14T13:52:38.513" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="511" CreationDate="2011-01-14T18:29:51.243" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Straightforward sentence structure will help. Try listening to some radio drama or the BBC Radio 4 &quot;Book at Bedtime&quot; (a slightly abridged version of a existing novel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="537" LastActivityDate="2011-01-14T18:29:51.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1106" CreationDate="2011-01-14T18:48:42.420" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, in the case of a short story that is expanded into a novel everything works pretty much the same as before. This is simply because you have written a self contained short story and would sell it as such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for an excerpt... well that depends on the editor and the magazine. I'm pretty sure you can't sell an excerpt with the promise that it will be a full novel soon or that it may come out someday. For an editor, publishing an excerpt with nothing attached to it really isn't a way to attract readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case I would say that you pretty much have to have the book sold before you can even think about getting at excerpt published in a magazine. In that case then this is probably something your publisher or agent would set up, the publisher might even have a deal with a magazine for this sort of thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if you want to see an excerpt in print you should check with your agent (if you have one) to see if it's okay, and make sure your contract allows for it as well. If you have an agent they might be able to do all the leg work to get it print without it getting lost in a slush pile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it's possible that running an excerpt might not count a sale, and you might not get much money from it as such. There might also be restrictions in your contract about how you can publish the excerpt. Back when I was an editor, if we had decided to publish an excerpt we would have made a different deal then for a normal story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, this is mostly from my view of having both made a few sales and having been a publisher on a small magazine, so take it with a bit more salt then usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2011-01-14T18:48:42.420" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1110" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1115" CreationDate="2011-01-14T20:02:40.833" Score="10" ViewCount="2043" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard of some (rather successful) writers incorporating - that is, creating a corporation of which they are the sole member.  What are the potential advantages (or disadvantages) of doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this probably varies a bit by location, I am specifically interested in how this applies in the United States.&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Also, I know this veers rather close to being a legal question, but I am not asking for legal advice, nor am I asking if&lt;/em&gt; I &lt;em&gt;should incorporate.  I am merely wondering why people consider this option.  Obviously someone seriously considering this would want to consult a lawyer and/or accountant.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If people still think this is &quot;too legal&quot;, we can talk on meta or chat.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-01-14T21:09:47.210" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T04:17:58.230" Title="What are the advantages of incorporation for a writer?" Tags="|career|legal|money|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1122" CreationDate="2011-01-14T22:49:31.203" Score="13" ViewCount="119979" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing feature articles and trying to adhere to AP style, but I'm not sure how to attribute a source. I'm familiar with academic citation (APA, MLA), but have never done this in journalism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the preferred way to completely acknowledge a source? Quotes I can do, but stuff from sites, other sources, etc baffles me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="419" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-18T04:26:25.533" LastActivityDate="2023-01-08T16:16:51.060" Title="Citation in AP style journalism" Tags="|style|citations|journalism|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1084" CreationDate="2011-01-14T22:53:28.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should &lt;strong&gt;totally&lt;/strong&gt; wait to correct them until the end. Higher-order concerns, right-brain thinking, and creativity run best without left-brain concern barriers. I think you'll get better content, albeit with errors you have to fix later (unavoidable), by not stopping until you've got the main bits hashed out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="419" LastActivityDate="2011-01-14T22:53:28.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1112" CreationDate="2011-01-15T00:09:07.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The AP Stylebook is the ultimate resource when it comes to AP style.  You can purchase it in several forms through the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apstylebook.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AP Stylebook website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The print version for $18.95 plus shipping&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The online version for $25.00&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The iOS version for $24.99 (in the App Store).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Libraries and universities with journalism programs may also have group subscriptions that you can use if you are a member or student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the AP folks apparently want your money, as they do not offer a free reference.  There are a couple sparse summaries online - such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/2664713/Associated-Press-AP-Style-Guide-the-basics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://journalism.about.com/od/writing/a/apstyle.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, but they do not specifically address citation rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-01-15T00:09:07.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1110" CreationDate="2011-01-15T00:34:49.213" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Officially, the reason to incorporate is to protect your personal assets if someone decides to sue you over your writing. If you're incorporated, they would instead have to sue the corporation, and your personal property can't be touched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own reason for incorporating was to get access to only-somewhat-ridiculously-priced health insurance. Buying health insurance is a pita if you're self-employed. In California, though, corporations (with two or more employees) are what's called “guaranteed issue”—i.e., insurance companies have to offer you a plan. The two employees of the corporation just happen to be my husband &amp;amp; myself, allowing us access to insurance options we couldn't otherwise get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also some advantages in terms of non-fiction writing opportunities. Corporations these days are very leery of hiring freelancers who might appear to be employees, and they're more likely to hire you if they can pay a corporation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an individual who writes fiction and doesn't have serious assets? I'm not sure what advantages there would be, if any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2011-01-15T00:34:49.213" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1116" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1118" CreationDate="2011-01-15T01:17:03.350" Score="8" ViewCount="833" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often decide to parody songs to adapt them to different contexts -- mainly for fun, for improving my English and causing an healthy amount of groans into people who read my creations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I also care about putting some quality in my work. Sometimes, the subject matter of the original piece and the new context differ too much to simply change words. For example, from my &quot;I'm on a boat&quot; Die2Nite-themed spinoff:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HEY VERVE, IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW (SEE ME NOOW)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  EYES LOOKING OUT AT OUR FAKE TOWN (OUR FAKE TOWN)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  GONNA TURN THIS HOUSE IN A CASTLE SOMEHOW (CASTLE SOMEHOW)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  LIKE LEROY JERKINS&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ANYTHING IS POSSIBLEEEEEE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(original: &lt;em&gt;Hey ma, if you could see me now/ Arms spread wide on the starboard bow/ Gonna fly this boat to the moon somehow/ Like Kevin Garnett/ anything is possible&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second verse makes me cringe, but I really can't pinpoint why. Is it because I couldn't reproduce the same sentence structure (the original used a past-participle, I'm not), a possible syllable miscount or simply because the words are too different from the original?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I generally worry more about being acoustically faithful to the original?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="540" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:56:19.633" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:56:19.633" Title="When parodying a song, how important is it to replace words with homophones thereof?" Tags="|technique|language|lyrics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1116" CreationDate="2011-01-15T14:25:28.150" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good parody requires a similar structure and a similar melody while altering certain words and, thus, the intention of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of the posted verse, the syllable distribution disrupts the flow of particular sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hey &lt;strong&gt;Verve&lt;/strong&gt;, if you could see me now | Hey &lt;strong&gt;ma&lt;/strong&gt;, if could see me now&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Verve&quot; is potentially too bulky to replace the simple &quot;ma&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eyes &lt;strong&gt;looking&lt;/strong&gt; out at our &lt;strong&gt;fake&lt;/strong&gt; town | Arms &lt;strong&gt;spread&lt;/strong&gt; wide on the &lt;strong&gt;starboard&lt;/strong&gt; bow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you replicate the same quantity of syllables, but you replace a monosyllabic word with a disyllabic (two syllables) word early in the sentence, and vice versa near the end. This dramatically disrupts the delivery of the sentence vis à vis the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gonna &lt;strong&gt;turn&lt;/strong&gt; this house &lt;strong&gt;in&lt;/strong&gt; a castle somehow | Gonna &lt;strong&gt;fly&lt;/strong&gt; this boat &lt;strong&gt;to&lt;/strong&gt; the moon somehow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the original, the hard &quot;T&quot; sound is used in the middle of the sentence to push into the second half. You use the hard &quot;T&quot; early (in contrast to the soft &quot;F&quot; of the original), and the midway point is replaces the hard &quot;T&quot; &quot;to&quot; with &quot;in,&quot; a soft vowel sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Like Leroy &lt;strong&gt;Jenkins&lt;/strong&gt; | Like Kevin &lt;strong&gt;Garnett&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is more a matter of poetic meter. &quot;Jenkins&quot; is trochaic, in that it is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. &quot;Garnett&quot; is iambic, in that it is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Your new line does not recreate the meter of the original, and thus loses its rhythm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parody is a great method of interrogating language and words, and that you are using it to develop your understanding and mastery of the English language is a laudable goal. I hope you view this criticism as constructive, and only as humble advice towards the improvement and furtherance of your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-01-15T14:25:28.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="834" CreationDate="2011-01-15T17:21:29.560" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scott McCloud is a good starting point in terms of understanding the potential of what comics as a hybrid medium can accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, in response to your interest in writing, as opposed to drawing or inking, I would recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The DC Comics Guide to Writing - Dennis O'Neil&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alan Moore's Writing for Comics - Alan Moore&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both provide interesting insight into the work habits and philosophies of two very successful (and very different) comics writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Ten-Cent Plague - David Hajdu&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do Anything - Warren Ellis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comic Book Culture - Matthew J. Pustz&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These three provide some fascinating context for the history and culture of comics; they have helped make me aware of the tradition in which I am writing, an awareness I believe to be invaluable to any person interested in writing comics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck to you and to your friend!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-01-15T17:21:29.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1112" CreationDate="2011-01-16T15:59:19.763" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this page after searching the web: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_2305165_reference-book-ap-style.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Reference a Book in AP Style&lt;/a&gt;. It outlines how to cite sources, but annoyingly enough, doesn't cite the information it gives. I suspect it's from the AP web edition, as my print version doesn't have anything like this. I commented on this article, and I'll update this answer if I get more information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2011-01-16T15:59:19.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="742" CreationDate="2011-01-17T12:03:11.867" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A verb is in the active voice if the agent of the verb (i.e., the pronoun/noun phrase that does the verb) is in the subject position (usually, but not always before the verb); it is in passive voice if the agent is in object position.  Not all verbs are in either the active or the passive voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Examples&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Geoffrey Pullum has three examples of sentences wrongly characterised in Strunk&amp;amp;White as passive in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;50 years of stupid grammar advice&lt;/a&gt; anniversary polemic, the first of which is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here there are two verbs, the first of which has no agent (it is a modal verb), the second of which is a participle, with its agent in subject position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all verbs are in either the active or passive voice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;If six was nine.&lt;/em&gt; — &amp;quot;was&amp;quot; is here, I think, most widely considered to be not an agentive verb but a stative verb, so this sentence has neither agent nor patient, instead it has a stative subject and a predicative object.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;To boldly go where no man has gone before!&lt;/em&gt; — Infinitives are agentless;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Keep it to yourself!&lt;/em&gt; — The agent of a command is presumed to be whomever the command is addressed to, and need not be specified.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How to choose&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The active voice has a built-in advantage that it is almost always simpler and briefer, because you don't need an auxiliary verb, which passive constructions need in English.  So use the active unless there is a compelling reason not to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two most important reasons why the passive might be appropriate are, first, it can give finer control over information conveyed (e.g., &lt;em&gt;Mary was killed!&lt;/em&gt;) or secondly, it can change emphasis by giving control over the order in which information is presented (e.g., &lt;em&gt;It was Mary who Jack killed.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-01-17T21:09:48.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1112" CreationDate="2011-01-17T20:38:50.993" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that although AP Style is used by many different publications and media, it is FOR journalists writing news articles. As such, there really is no such thing as attribution to sources because that doesn't really occur in news writing. Instead, AP Style uses in-text attribution generally in the form of direct or indirect quotations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Revenues are up 10,000 percent,&quot; said&#xA;  CEO John Smith.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to SEC filings, company&#xA;  revenues are up 10,000 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exceptions within the AP Stylebook are Photo Captions where the format is (Publication/Photographer) -- (AP Photo/Bill Smith).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When attributing to a specific article, video or other piece of content on another site, it is generally recommended to link to the item, unless the content might be objectionable to readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="508" LastEditorUserId="5002" LastEditDate="2013-04-09T18:27:25.540" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T18:27:25.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1110" CreationDate="2011-01-17T20:44:29.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure how much the insurance thing applies outside of California, although that would be an important consideration there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, keep in mind that corporations are subject to a different tax structure and are harder to setup than other forms of incorporation including limited liability companies, or LLCs, which offer the same liability protection as a corporation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you will want to have some form of business organization, even if it is just a sole proprietorship, so that you can use a tax ID number for reporting purposes. Otherwise, you have to give out your social security number to everyone you earn more than $400 from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote up a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makemoneywritingonline.com/writing-business-start-up-guide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;thing&lt;/a&gt; about it in more detail on one of my sites a while back. (Hopefully linking via the word &quot;thing&quot; keeps anyone from freaking out about it being some sneaky SEO trick.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="508" LastActivityDate="2011-01-17T20:44:29.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1124" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1135" CreationDate="2011-01-18T02:53:16.687" Score="12" ViewCount="5851" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen the thoughts of a character written in a few different ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 1: Indirect&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ender liked it better, though, when two boys played against each other.  Then they had to use each other's tunnels, and it quickly became clear which of them was worth anything at the strategy of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 2: Direct, in italics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It has to be Hawat,&lt;/em&gt; she thought.  &lt;em&gt;Suspicion such as this could come from no other source without being discarded immediately.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be more formal terms for these that I don't know.  In the first example, the thoughts of the character are simply stated, without any explicit &quot;he thought&quot; tag.  In the second example, the thoughts are in italics and they are attributed to the thinker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the advantages and disadvantages of using one or the other of these?  Are there situations where it is better to use a particular one?  Are there any other ways of expressing a character's thoughts that I've missed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2021-03-03T07:35:42.733" Title="Techniques for writing internal monologue" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1128" CreationDate="2011-01-18T03:16:48.537" Score="10" ViewCount="1040" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a parent with a full-time job, I usually have a limited amount of time to write each day.   What are some tricks I can try to reach a specific word count in a specific time (e.g. 500 words in an hour).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I've seen some things like this posted on NaNoWriMo forums, but it seems like those folks tend to offer ideas that increase word count at the expense of quality, like writing out your character's grocery list or having characters mishear one another, requiring them to repeat themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T18:50:15.317" LastActivityDate="2021-01-27T19:13:00.123" Title="How do you meet a writing quota?" Tags="|wordcount|goal|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-01-18T03:55:25.003" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is going to be to try and improve your typing speed. The fast you can type, the more you can write in a short amount of time. Also, you can try carrying a small notebook and pen with you during the day. Then you can write a bit during small bouts of free time - waiting in line at the grocery store, stuck in traffic, etc. Another way to get more &quot;written&quot; might be to carry a voice recorder or a voice recording app on a smart phone and dictate writing when your hands are busy and transcribe the recordings in your free time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T03:55:25.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1124" CreationDate="2011-01-18T04:02:24.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a lot of ways, it depends on the narrative distance of the narrator. I would say, though, your goal should be to get out of the reader's way as much as possible. Adding italics and using thinker attributions excessively (ie, she thought) only draw attention to the writing and take the reader out of the story. I'd avoid it and go with option 1, almost always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T04:02:24.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-01-18T04:07:21.220" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I don't think those NanoWriMo tricks are good -- just trying to increase word counts -- I think there is something you can take away from NaNoWriMo: just write. Don't stop to edit yourself. Sit down with a kitchen timer, or the timer on your iPhone and set it for say, 20 minutes. Start writing and don't stop until that timer dings. Will this first draft be Pulitzer Prize material? Probably not. But good writing comes from rewriting anyway. Getting that first draft down is half of that battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T04:07:21.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1112" CreationDate="2011-01-18T04:11:15.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's pretty simple. Use in-line citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to stackechange.com, blah, blah blah&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Text of quote goes here,&quot; John Doe wrote in The New York Times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T04:11:15.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1110" CreationDate="2011-01-18T04:17:58.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's usually about taxes and protecting your assets. A corporation is a person under the law, so it can be sued and can defend itself and pays it's own taxes. If you set up a corporation, you become an employee of your corporation and it pays you a salary. It also pays the gov't a share of your employment taxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to get the benefit of asset protection, without the hassles of paperwork requirements that come with corporations, is to form an LLC, or limited liability company. The IRS will, if you tell it to, treat your LLC as a &quot;disregarded entity&quot; -- which means you are taxed as though you're a sole proprietor, report your business income and expense on schedule C but still get the legal protections that come with having an LLC. The IRS will, also, at your request, treat the LLC more like a corporation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T04:17:58.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1143" CreationDate="2011-01-18T11:22:12.883" Score="8" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard a few people recommend &lt;strike&gt;doing time&lt;/strike&gt; volunteering as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slush_pile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;slush reader&lt;/a&gt; (for a small press magazine, say), as the experience can be helpful for your own writing. What benefits do you get out of the experience of being a slushy? Are there any cons (other than that you have to give up some time to do it)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T16:16:16.780" Title="What are the benefits of being a slush reader?" Tags="|publishing|magazines|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1131" CreationDate="2011-01-18T11:45:00.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't read slush &lt;strong&gt;for&lt;/strong&gt; anyone, I read self-published stuff and other submissions to locations considered above and beyond the &quot;writer's circle&quot; for fun. What I get out of it is full perspective on the actually unspectacular nature of what someone might call &quot;their killer idea&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should point out I read a lot of SF/Fantasy/Horror and thrillers. In these books you want what Stewie from Family Guy once called a &quot;compelling protagonist&quot; and you also want some kind of hook idea which the protagonist encounters. A large number of authors have a serviceable hook idea but the wisdom and perception of the human condition one might expect from a breeze block. This has served to remind me since then that I'm not ready for even the small time until people like the people I write no matter how great my pontificating gets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T11:45:00.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1508" CreationDate="2011-01-18T12:09:15.693" Score="11" ViewCount="352" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to start writing a webcomic, but as my talent as an illustrator is limited, I would only write the scripts and let to someone else the task to bring my script into picture. The only problem is that I don't know anyone who could do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is twofold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where is it possible to find illustrator? (Is it the right term, by the way?)      &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should I prepare? I mean some people wouldn't agree to collaborate if I can't prove I'm serious about it. How many scripts should I write in advance? Should I write Character Design? If yes what kind of information should be in?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="397" LastEditorUserId="554" LastEditDate="2011-01-19T16:04:11.513" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T22:09:57.607" Title="How should I go with hiring an illustrator for a webcomic?" Tags="|money|collaboration|preparation|comics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1084" CreationDate="2011-01-18T13:35:07.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another suggestion: Today, you write for an hour, finish, close the document, walk away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Tomorrow&lt;/i&gt;, the first thing you do is take 15 minutes to re-read what you wrote, fix typos, correct grammar, and make edits. By the time you're done straightening up, you should be back in the flow of the story, and you can write for another session. This also gives you the perspective of a day's distance from your work, which makes it easier to &quot;kill your darlings.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I become hysterical about typos and could not proceed without fixing them. But, as others have noted, this issue is very individual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T13:35:07.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1124" CreationDate="2011-01-18T13:46:22.960" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't use italics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I was taught as a writing student was to avoid italics for direct internal monologue, and simply let the &quot;he thought&quot; or &quot;she thought&quot; or other similar clues in the text alert the reader to the originator of the monologue.  When we as writers start using punctuation like italics to do our work for us, it can &lt;em&gt;tend&lt;/em&gt; (though this is not always the case) to cause us to be lazier with our words themselves.  We should be able to convey a thought to our readers without the extra punctuation in the form of italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's going to depend on narrative POV&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When expressing a characters thoughts, some of how the expression is formulated will be based on point of view.  In the first person singular point of view you are always expressing the thoughts of your narrator and never directly expressing the thoughts of other characters (although your narrator may guess at them).  A first person plural point of view wouldn't necessarily ever get to direct thoughts of an individual, as it would be expressing what a group thinks.  A second person point of view also wouldn't show direct thought, unless it purports to show the reader's thoughts.  This contributes to it's rare use in storytelling.  A third person omniscient or limited narrator can dive into heads (depending on which heads the narrator is allowed to dive into) with impunity.  This contributes to the popularity of the third person narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use indirect internal monologue for longer thoughts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Direct internal monologues in a third person point of view should be used only for short statements.  To try and use them for long descriptions of a character's thoughts will require either over-using he/she thought and similar phrases or allow for the reader to get lost as to who is thinking.  On the other hand an indirect form of internal monologue can span paragraphs because it weaves into the storyline better.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use direct internal monologue for emotional impact&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What indirect internal monologue lacks is a really strong connection to the character who originates the thought.  For situations where you want to strongly associate a particular thought - especially the emotions and volition that goes with it - with a character, go direct.  Just don't do this too often, or it will lose its force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note for those who enjoy defying rules amongst us - these are simply guidelines of what I believe each form is likely to do to a reader, rather than hard and fast rules that I am attempting to impose&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-01-18T15:19:24.847" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T15:19:24.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-01-18T14:10:34.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the tools that I have used for NaNoWriMo is &lt;a href=&quot;http://writeordie.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Write or Die&lt;/a&gt;. Read about it &lt;a href=&quot;http://writeordie.com/about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  It motivates you to keep writing at a steady pace by turning red, playing an obnoxious noise, or even starting to delete your words if you stop writing for a certain amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-01-18T22:26:27.540" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T22:26:27.540" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1133" CreationDate="2011-01-18T14:15:19.567" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you really looking for a collaborator, or just someone to illustrate your vision? That can affect how you search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I hire illustrators and I have something very, very specific in mind that I simply want executed. Other times, I have a general guide and I want them to put their own spin on it and give me options, come up with ideas. Being clear up front with exactly what you want is the best way to find a good fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, Craigslist is always a good option to start. The &quot;gigs&quot; section will let you post ads for free, and a lot of freelancers in that category watch those pretty closely. Potentials should be able to provide you with a link to their portfolio so you can get a feel of their style. You can also find a lot of talented artists on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deviantart.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Deviant Art&lt;/a&gt; -- though they vary in experience and many may not be set up to handle a professional partnership. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-01-18T15:16:41.370" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T15:16:41.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1131" CreationDate="2011-01-18T14:20:10.870" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The pros-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get a sense, really fast -- of what works and what doesn't&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You see all the stupid mistakes writers make when they submit and get a pretty clear idea of what not to do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reading a lot just makes you a better writer in the long run&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cons-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can be laborious. It's fun to read a really great submission. It's hell to slog through a 50,000 word piece of trash.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have to be careful about reading when you're also actively writing and developing. Any publisher that accepts on spec should make it clear that the submitter is waiving the right to sue over copyright, but you don't want to get slapped with a suit somewhere down the road because you wrote something similar to something someone once submitted and you read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T14:20:10.870" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1106" CreationDate="2011-01-18T14:35:00.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you sale a book, the publisher usually asks for something like world rights, or north american rights or world-english rights. The right to publish part of a novel before publication in a magazine or journal is called first serial rights (the term applies to any time a story first appears in a periodical, not just excerpts from forthcoming novels, ie -- magazines also buy first serial rights for stand alone short stories). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've sold your first serial rights, they're gone. No one else can buy them from you. Should it affect the sale of a novel if the first serial rights to a portion are already gone? Not really. It will depend on the publisher and you should be as clear as possible about the history of the piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who sells the rights? If you're under contract with a publisher, it depends. Your contract should specify who can sell which serial rights and when under the heading of subsidiary rights. If the publisher has claimed that right, then it's up to them to sell and collect the proceeds and then split them with you according to the contract. If serial rights aren't mentioned, then they are yours to sell. It'd be nice to at least give the publisher a heads-up, even if they didn't claim the right to sale them themselves because timing can be important. If you can get a magazine to publish an excerpt, you want to maximize the potential exposure so you can turn it into sales of your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-01-18T15:07:01.253" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T15:07:01.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1077" CreationDate="2011-01-18T14:42:09.823" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;really, really depends on your contract&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. There may be some situations, such as you refuse to edit the book or make requested changes and the publisher cancels the contract. The best idea? Negotiate with your publisher so that the advance (against royalties) is yours. If you're contract isn't clear enough about this, press for it to be made more clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T14:42:09.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1043" CreationDate="2011-01-18T15:59:10.910" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might not get the publicity you're looking for from these kinds of sites. Many don't have focus or the eyeballs that make giving away your product a good financial decision. Genre sites for genre books, are a good exception to that though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibpa-online.org/articles/shownews.aspx?id=2905&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; spells it out better and has some advice on getting some real reviews in real publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T15:59:10.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1079" CreationDate="2011-01-18T16:05:14.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a really good free option for Mac users : &lt;a href=&quot;http://celtx.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CeltX&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why buy or use software as opposed to MS-Word or Pages? It does the formatting for you, so you don't even have to think about it and instead, can focus on your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T16:05:14.977" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1131" CreationDate="2011-01-18T16:16:16.780" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of pros and cons to doing this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll be exposed to a lot of bad writing and you'll know what not to do in your own work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll be exposed to some good writing as well and know what you should do in your work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll have a chance to learn insider tricks about what to do and what not to do during submission.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a chance to network in the publishing world and find connections that could help down the road.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll most likely be working for free. Unless you've got experience in the publishing world, they're most likely not going to hire you to read through their slush pile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll be reading a lot of bad writings. Too many writers don't put the necessary work into a manuscript before submitting it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's going to be long and tiring. You'll most likely have to meet a quota and it can be time consuming to read through manuscripts and queries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T16:16:16.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1146" CreationDate="2011-01-18T16:36:25.223" Score="10" ViewCount="1517" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually keep a notepad and pen with me at all times. So, if I'm out thinking about a story and a scene or a bit of dialogue comes to mind, I write it down for recall later. I also keep a list of things that need to be added or changed in the story in other places. Say, I'm working on chapter five -- writing or rewriting -- and I realize that what's happening there requires a change in chapter one, I write down the change in a list in my notebook to make later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lately, though, I've been using Evernote as sort of a digital journal for my writing. There are iPad and iPhone versions, too. I'm kind of torn, because I love having the handwritten notes to look at later. So, my question, is do you keep a writing journal to help organize thoughts and ideas and -- what do you use? A Word file, a paper notebook or something like Evernote? Are there any apps out there specifically for writers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastEditorUserId="554" LastEditDate="2011-01-18T20:20:54.937" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T02:11:48.267" Title="What tools do you use for your writing journal?" Tags="|editing|software|organization|ideas|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="511" CreationDate="2011-01-18T16:52:44.943" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best advice I can give: read aloud what you've written. When you write a book, you're writing for the eye. When you write an audio piece, you're writing for the ear. If it doesn't sound good when you read aloud, then it won't sound good to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some specific tips&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be concise and keep sentence structure simple. We're listening,&#xA;not reading so we've got to&#xA;comprehend quick and fast.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write the way you speak.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write as though you're communicating with one person at a time, that's how people will listen after all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use more present participles than you would for a book or text-on-paper kind of piece. For a book, it's good to avoid the verb &quot;to be&quot; -- but for an audio piece, it works because we use &quot;to be&quot; in speech constantly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T16:52:44.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1144" CreationDate="2011-01-18T17:16:04.643" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Applications: I cannot say enough good things about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;, from Literature &amp;amp; Latte (for Mac). It's not a word-processing program, it's a &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; program. You can organize notes, drag &quot;notecards&quot; and folders around, block out the rest of your screen, paste in photos and movie clips, and use a virtual corkboard to rearrange thoughts. It was THE main tool which got me unblocked and writing again, because it just made the entire process so easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paper: I love the old-fashioned black-and-white-marbled bound notebooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T17:16:04.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1144" CreationDate="2011-01-18T19:59:00.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/124/fox-cutter&quot;&gt;FoxCutter&lt;/a&gt; has said &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/405/how-do-you-track-random-thoughts-and-ideas/411#411&quot;&gt;elsewhere&lt;/a&gt;, for many of us &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moleskine.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Moleskine&lt;/a&gt; is hard to beat.  You can pick a size that works for you to carry anywhere, ranging from just smaller than an iPad to one that fits in a pocket and clutch.  The fact that it is a notebook lets you keep everything in one place.  The fact that you can get it in a &quot;to-go&quot; size means you can have it with you whenever an idea strikes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And personally I find that I seem to think better with a pen on paper than in any other medium.  It's just a personal quirk.  I collect ideas on paper and often do my first drafts there.  If you work better with a screen and typing, this won't work so well for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T19:59:00.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1166" CreationDate="2011-01-18T21:28:14.300" Score="9" ViewCount="424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've taken some classes at Mediabistro.com -- both nonfiction -- and while the teachers have been pretty good (one gave me some excellent advice that led to publication in national magazines) ... the students have been, well, really bad. And part of the online class experience (or any class experience for that matter) is the people you're studying with. What online writing classes have you taken, and would you recommend them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T15:37:22.877" Title="What are the best online writing classes?" Tags="|technique|resources|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-01-18T21:33:58.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with most of the answers here: put all that effort and creativity into your own work, instead of standing on someone else's. Aside from that, some authors get very upset at the idea of other writers taking their creations and putting them into stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T21:33:58.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1144" CreationDate="2011-01-18T21:38:43.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://springpadit.com/home/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Springpad&lt;/a&gt; as an alternative to Evernote lately. I also use a simple to do list program on my Mac called Things that lets me organize the todos into projects. Works really well for keeping lists of edits that need to be made on any given writing project, especially long ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="558" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T21:38:43.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-01-18T21:47:02.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried tracking your progress? Setting up a spreadsheet that graphs how many words you do each day, shows you averages, etc.? It's an awesome way to motivate yourself, as you see those numbers and totals going up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="558" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T21:47:02.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1152" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1154" CreationDate="2011-01-18T22:05:45.550" Score="40" ViewCount="3647" Body="&lt;p&gt;I try to watch out for bland, overused adjectives and I keep adverbs to a minimum but -- I hear this phrase a lot and I'm not even sure what it means?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="558" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T14:19:33.473" Title="How do you avoid purple prose?" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1153" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1158" CreationDate="2011-01-18T22:09:26.840" Score="8" ViewCount="1294" Body="&lt;p&gt;I come from a journalism background and am very interested in the dying style of narrative journalism, or creative non-fiction. I was discussing a project with a potential editor and said I didn't want to do any composite characters because, while I get that narrative techniques (scenes, dialogue, plot) are the crux of this type of writing -- it's still non-fiction. She seemed to think that composite characters are the norm and expected which just makes me shudder a bit. What do you think? Are composite characters in a non-fiction piece ethical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T15:32:36.690" Title="Are composite characters in creative non-fiction okay?" Tags="|non-fiction|technique|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2011-01-18T22:13:06.040" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're off to a good start by killing the adjectives and adverbs. Overuse of modifiers are the #1 reason I reject a piece of fiction writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a specific, active verb is worth a&#xA;dozen adjectives &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;adverbs more often&#xA;shore up weak verbs (ie &quot;he ran&#xA;quickly across the room&quot; ... how&#xA;about &quot;he bolted across the room&quot; or&#xA;something like that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I see a lot of beginning writers use adjectives that just aren't very descriptive (cold vs. frigid or red v. burgundy). I also see a lot of beginning writers try to use exotic adjectives just to sound exotic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastEditorUserId="554" LastEditDate="2011-01-19T13:43:54.223" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T13:43:54.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="976" CreationDate="2011-01-18T22:39:13.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0743224736&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alternatives to Sex&lt;/a&gt;. It has chapters, but they're not what you'd consider traditional chapters -- much shorter and they broken by the shape and pace of the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T22:39:13.320" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-01-18T22:39:13.320" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2011-01-18T22:47:22.127" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In its broadest sense, I would define purple prose as &lt;em&gt;excessive and imprecise description&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adjectives and adverbs often qualify, as Final Draft illustrated, because a weak adjective + noun combo can be replaced by a single, stronger noun, and a weak adverb + verb combo can be replaced by single stronger verb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This principle can be applied to almost anything, not just adjectives and adverbs.  Look for vague or overly verbose phrases and try to come up with precise, tighter alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-01-19T00:32:49.600" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T00:32:49.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1144" CreationDate="2011-01-18T23:01:39.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my writing journal I use a regular notebook that I write in when I'm away from my computer or when I'm just tired of typing. I take it if I'm going on a trip or to school or to a friends house so I can always write in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For actually writing the story I use either MS Word or Scrivener depending on my mood. Shorter pieces I tend to use Word because I don't need most of the Scrivener functions. But if I'm writing a novel or something with a lot of planning or research I'll use Scrivener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For notes I use MS OneNote. I use it to write down plot idea for later, character/setting sketches, deadlines, etc. I also use it for writing down notes for things I need to remember - books I wanna check out, movies I wanna watch, songs I liked, etc. It's also what I use for taking notes in my classes. I have an HP Tablet PC so I can write or type my notes in it and it works for everything from English and History to Math and Sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For editing I use MS Word. I haven't found anything that's as clean and straight forward as Word for editing. Also, when I'm editing for work and not my own manuscripts, it has Track Changes features and allows for comments. Each user's edits and comments also come up as different colors to make it easier to differentiate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T23:01:39.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1153" CreationDate="2011-01-18T23:17:07.827" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would encourage you not to do something you find unethical.  The writing will suffer, and it probably won't be worth the rewards to put out a product you regret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.creativenonfiction.org/thejournal/articles/issue%2016/16clark_theline.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on the subject of creative non-fiction is a good one.  The &quot;cornerstone principles&quot; it describes are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not add.&lt;/strong&gt; This means that writers of nonfiction should not add to a report things that did not happen. To make news clear and comprehensible, it is often necessary to subtract or condense. Done without care or responsibility, even such subtraction can distort. We cross a more definite line into fiction, however, when we invent or add facts or images or sounds that were not there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not deceive.&lt;/strong&gt; This means that journalists should never mislead the public in reproducing events. The implied contract of all nonfiction is binding: The way it is represented here is, to the best of our knowledge, the way it happened. Anything that intentionally or unintentionally fools the audience violates that contract and the core purpose of journalism to get at the truth. Thus, any exception to the implied contract even a work of humor or satire should be transparent or disclosed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going by these rules, I would say that if the work purports to be nonfiction, any fictional elements within should be declared as such.  This might be as simple as a little blurb at the start or end of the book.  The amount of detail in such a disclosure would largely depend on what satisfies your own ethical sense of being honest to the reader.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself this: &quot;If someone were to write a detailed analysis of how my account differs from actual events, would any of it make me ashamed or embarrassed?&quot;  If so, you need to remedy that by adjustments to the text, through disclosure of these differences to the reader, or maybe even by giving up the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T23:17:07.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2011-01-19T01:37:09.977" Score="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Purple prose&quot; is overwrought metaphors, melodramatic and clich&amp;eacute;d phrasing, and cartoonish actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;She gasped, her snow-white breast heaving, and her emerald eyes filled with tears. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;How could you! You vile beast!&quot; she sobbed. &quot;I loved you and you &amp;mdash; you used me!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I never loved you,&quot; he announced, cool as a glacier in January. &quot;You were the pleasure of an hour, my dear, and that doesn't include commercial breaks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even as he crushed her with his dismissal, she could not help but feel an ache in her throbbing loins to watch him stride across the room like a bored panther. The masculinity rose from his tanned skin in waves, like the scent of the Drakkar Noir she had given him on his last birthday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm leaving you, Neaveh. I've found... someone else.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;No, Biff!&quot; Her heart-shaped face contorted with grief and jealousy. &quot;It can't be!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Don't act so surprised,&quot; he sniffed, pulling on his butter-soft leather jacket and slipping on his Ray-Ban sunglasses. &quot;You know I can't be tied down to any one woman. I'm a free spirit. Gone with the wind.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;No &amp;mdash; please &amp;mdash; don't go &amp;mdash; I love you!&quot; she cried, but the door closed with the final, echoing thud of a guillotine, cutting her off from love, from light, from warmth, for her reason for existence. She crumpled to the floor, her fiery red hair spilling around her onto the carpet, and wept until she thought her heart might shatter in her chest.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-01-19T12:36:14.533" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T12:36:14.533" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1153" CreationDate="2011-01-19T14:02:48.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see where your potential editor is coming from - a few years ago there were a slew of stories about supposed memoirs being half fictional and half true.  It certainly makes an interesting piece when authors do that, and it can be done quite well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The catch is, that's not non-fiction.  It's something halfway between fiction and non-fiction.  For writing like that we ought to revive another old genre - the tall tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T14:02:48.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1161" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-01-19T14:10:14.063" Score="17" ViewCount="1051" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it simply defined by its short word count? Or are there other accepted conventions in flash fiction? If it's just the word count, how short is too short? How long is too long?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="558" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-01-19T15:22:53.483" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T01:25:19.350" Title="What is flash fiction?" Tags="|style|fiction|genre|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1161" CreationDate="2011-01-19T14:26:42.567" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zoetrope.com/&quot;&gt;Zoetrope&lt;/a&gt; defines flash as a short piece of between 200-1000 words. That's the only restriction they have on submissions to their flash fiction workshop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T14:26:42.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1161" CreationDate="2011-01-19T14:39:14.210" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written flash fiction as short as 50 words and seen submissions in the range described by &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1161/what-is-flash-fiction/1162#1162&quot;&gt;OneMonkey&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flash fiction is largely defined by the word count, but doing flash fiction well is more than just getting the right word count.  Imagine telling an entire compelling story in 200 words.  That's an extreme compression of the rising action, climax, falling action sequence.  Because of the compression, flash fiction often shares characteristics with poetry.  In poetry each word often has multiple tasks and each phrase and image has multiple layers of meaning.  Flash fiction is the same way.  Flash fiction doesn't necessarily carry the same emphasis on the lyrical quality of the writing as poetry, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the short nature of flash fiction, it is often very well suited to intriguing revelations close to the end of the work.  The most compressed part of the piece is usually the falling action, which often is less and less important to a story as the word count decreases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T14:39:14.210" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1161" CreationDate="2011-01-19T15:28:59.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen items as short as 50. That seems to be the bottom of the barrel, so to speak. I think there's even a specific contest for pieces of 50 or 51 words. I can't remember the name though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="561" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T15:28:59.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1153" CreationDate="2011-01-19T15:32:36.690" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you start making things up, then it's a bit disingenuous to try and call it non-fiction, right? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="561" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T15:32:36.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1148" CreationDate="2011-01-19T15:37:22.877" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been pretty happy with &lt;a href=&quot;http://writingclasses.com&quot;&gt;Gotham's online classes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="561" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T15:37:22.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1171" CreationDate="2011-01-19T16:08:04.443" Score="6" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;How often should a writer be sending queries to establish a consistent flow of work?  Currently I have a goal of trying to send out one query a day and at least two a week to places I've never worked with before to try and broaden my portfolio of clips.  Is this enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of return can I expect on this level of effort?  What will I need to do in order to up the return on my time investment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="561" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-01-19T18:31:06.723" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T18:31:06.723" Title="How many queries do you send to editors a week?" Tags="|money|preparation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1161" CreationDate="2011-01-19T16:28:02.353" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Flash fiction is primarily determined by its word count. The max word count I've seen for flash fiction is 1000 words but could be as low as 300 words. For it to &quot;count&quot; as flash fiction it has to be a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end and not just an excerpt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other sub-categories of flash fiction though:&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Micro fiction - Anywhere from 50-250 word max depending on the site&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Drabble - exactly 100 words&#xA;&lt;br&gt;69er - Story in exactly 69 words&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Nanofiction - A story of exactly 55 words&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Twitfiction - A story in 140 characters or less&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="361" LastEditDate="2011-01-19T19:03:30.790" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T19:03:30.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1169" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-01-19T18:08:11.987" Score="15" ViewCount="3575" Body="&lt;p&gt;My biggest problem is that I'm often at a dearth of ideas. I can target a publication or radio show or whatnot once I've got it, but I'm just not good at coming up with them. Tips?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="561" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-01-19T18:20:14.720" LastActivityDate="2018-05-01T07:26:03.903" Title="How do you come up with non-fiction story ideas?" Tags="|non-fiction|preparation|brainstorming|ideas|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2011-01-19T18:19:38.027" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to start coming up with creative non-fiction stories that are from your own life is by finding lists of journaling questions.  For example the author of the blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://livewithflair.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Live with Flair&lt;/a&gt; (who was interviewed not too long ago by NPR) is posting a journaling question at the bottom of her posts daily.  These questions can help you think of an event in your own life that you can spin out into a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dig through old family letters.  I've been amazed at the stories within my own genealogy that sound like they ought to be in a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For stories that are not from your own life, look at what is currently in the news.  Find a story that relates - can you interview people connected with the story or who might have similar stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also think of things that are currently catching your interest.  Did you recently see a shooting star?  Find a story within the astronomy community today.  Did you recently watch an awesome sports game?  Start there.  Read a great book?  See if the storyline of a fiction book can suggest a real-life story that might be out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T18:19:38.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1167" CreationDate="2011-01-19T18:21:58.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a query day with no set goals in terms of numbers, other than to send at least one. My day is usually Monday, because that's the most work I can get out myself that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're asking how frequently you should be sending out queries, the answer is enough to get you enough work. If you're writing for a living, then -- a lot of queries, especially at the beginning when you're taking shorter and lower paying assignments. Later on in your career, when you're landing features that pay upwards of $5,000 or such, you won't need to send as many queries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T18:21:58.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1172" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1186" CreationDate="2011-01-19T20:18:08.110" Score="9" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some good newsletters writers can sign up for? I signed up for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fundsforwriters.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Funds for Writers&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldwidefreelance.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Worldwide Freelance Writers&lt;/a&gt; because they have some excellent tips and advice for both freelance writers and fiction writers.  What would be other newsletters along these lines that I should sign up for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T18:50:12.393" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T18:50:26.890" Title="What are good writing newsletters to sign up for?" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1174" CreationDate="2011-01-19T20:18:32.807" Score="6" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you put in the letter? What if you have no experience, or only very limited experience. Should you write about yourself in the third or first person when explaining your experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-01T08:43:24.107" LastActivityDate="2018-05-01T08:43:24.107" Title="How do you write a fiction or non-fiction query letter to an editor?" Tags="|fiction|non-fiction|grammatical-person|queries|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1173" CreationDate="2011-01-19T20:26:41.233" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple parts to a query letter. The first part is you. What kind of writing experience do you have? Have you published four books already? Do you have a dozen short stories in various magazines? Have you won any writing awards? Do you have any experience in the publishing world - editing, lit agent, etc. This is where you want to &quot;sell&quot; yourself. If you're writing non-fiction include what gives you the authority to write a book. Are you an emergency room nurse and you're writing about first aid tips or what live in the emergency room is like? This would be written in first person, unless the publisher specifies otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next part is about your book. You're going to want to give them a summary about what the book's about, who the characters are, and how it ends. Yes, they want to know how it ends. Don't leave them with a &quot;Will Bobby survive his detention-from-hell?&quot; That's going to annoy any publishers or agents reading the query. If the book has been published before, you'll want to let them know that, where, how long ago, and if rights have reverted to you. If it's been published before you'll also want to let them know if it's won any awards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like you'd want someone else to look over your novel for errors and mistakes, have someone proof read your query letter too. Nothing will sink your chances of getting published like a query filled with errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T20:26:41.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1181" CreationDate="2011-01-19T21:29:47.953" Score="22" ViewCount="2961" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's hard to make a character standout and embody their traits without becoming cliched or cartoony. How do you do this? What are some tips to enlivening a character and making them memorable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-05-01T07:18:14.880" LastActivityDate="2018-05-01T07:19:26.303" Title="How do you make a character quintessential, but not cliched or cartoony?" Tags="|fiction|technique|character-development|characters|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1176" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-01-19T23:00:43.013" Score="18" ViewCount="1636" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love using writing prompts to come up with story ideas. I'm looking for good sites that have a lot of good writing prompts. One that updates fairly often would be best. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="563" LastEditorUserId="3496" LastEditDate="2012-05-19T12:50:00.580" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T20:46:23.617" Title="Where is a good place to find writing prompts?" Tags="|brainstorming|writers-block|ideas|preparation|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1176" CreationDate="2011-01-19T23:14:38.387" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing Excuses&lt;/a&gt; has a writing prompt at end of each weekly show. Usually they are related to the topic of the show as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-12-01T18:18:54.980" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T18:18:54.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1176" CreationDate="2011-01-19T23:38:25.970" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/158297411X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Writer's Book of Matches&lt;/a&gt; for fiction writing prompts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2011-01-19T23:38:25.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1175" CreationDate="2011-01-20T01:52:15.823" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make them human. Too many people make their characters perfect and without flaws – those aren't realistic characters. Real people have flaws, they make mistakes, and they learn from those. This isn't just referring to your protagonist, but your antagonist too. Too many authors make their bad guys absolutely evil. There are very few people in the world that are 100% bad. Many do have some good qualities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you read through your manuscript, ask yourself if you could see this person walking down the street. If you saw someone acting like them in real life, would you think they're being fake? Or would it seem natural?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-05-01T07:19:26.303" LastActivityDate="2018-05-01T07:19:26.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1175" CreationDate="2011-01-20T03:01:06.337" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the best advice I've heard on characterization involves the motivations of your characters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to create characters that are dead-set on a single goal, but this isn't very realistic.  Most people have multiple motivations and multiple goals.  Characters with various interests and desires feel more real.  This is a great way to flesh out a character that seems to fall flat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, people frequently have goals and motivations that conflict with one another.  We have internal conflicts, uncertainties and doubts.  A character with conflicting goals is usually far more interesting than one who wants only one thing, or even one with diverse desires, but no inner conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine a story about a police detective who is trying to take down a gang.  He has a vested interest, because he believes they're responsible for the drive-by that killed his son.  Now imagine his wife has a painful disease that can only be cured with expensive surgery.  The gang, knowing that he's on to them, try to bribe him to look the other way. Accepting the bribe would allow him to pay for the surgery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, it's a bit clichéd, but you can see how a character with conflicting motivations is more interesting than a single-minded one.  Characters with conflicting motivations have to make a &lt;em&gt;choice&lt;/em&gt;, and when they make that choice, they're going to lose something.  That choice, and the accompanying loss, can be very powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-01-20T03:01:06.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1175" CreationDate="2011-01-20T11:09:42.890" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's two issues here. In no particular order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid cliche&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make Quintessential&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the best advice I ever had about making quintessential characters came from James N. Frey author of &quot;How To Write Damn Good Fiction&quot;. In that book he gave two essential pointers to making a good protagonist which is a great start. Again in no particular order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make them capable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make them universally sympathetic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going to the current market leader in quintessential but accessible characters Pixar if we look at Woody from Toy Story, Pixar nail that. He is shown to be a great leader with a balance of energy, humility and kindness. However he is also afraid of being abandoned, obsolete, finished with. Being made redundant, in all senses is a basic human fear and Pixar tap into that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This dichotomy between capability and sympathy is a useful one. Most characters could do with having one attractive quality and one sympathetic one, even those supposed to be antagonistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To go deeper, however, many writers give characters &quot;flaws&quot; in the hope that this will add dimension. While it's true that perfect characters are grating in the extreme a flaw doesn't automatically avoid cliche. For example the self-destructive cop, the neurotic beauty and the anti-social genius all present some attractive qualities and some flaws. All are cliches. Not only that but it is possible to write characters like this who are not at all quintessential, in these instances they seem like cardboardy facsimiles of their quintessentially fun but cliched counterparts in other stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to leave us up a tree. We can make a character capable, sympathetic and flawed but still cliched and possibly not even very convincing (although the more they are sympathetic the less they may seem unconvincing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final part of a really complex character is to go into the business of archetypes. There are many weighty articles available on the topic of archetypes but the one I found most revealing actually dealt with hero character archetypes in romantic fiction. There are two articles one about &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20060215033542/http://allaboutromance.com/eight.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;male archetypes&lt;/a&gt; and one about &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20060211032142/http://allaboutromance.com/78.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;female archetypes&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you tune out. Yes, romance novels use cliche like a baker uses flour, but like many things complex constructs are made of simple ones and I found the hero archetypes discussed in these articles to be like a list of primary colours for character building. What occurred to me is that a proper multi-dimensional character uses these character archetypes like paint makes a beautiful picture, mixing, blending and shifting. Where as colour and tone are positional on a canvas a character's tone and shade are defined by the context in which they find themselves in the story. A deep character sees themselves as various archetypes in different contexts, one archetype for work, one for relationships, one for being a parent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To go even deeper maybe certain common situations cause them to use other archetypal behaviours in certain situations within those contexts e.g. mostly they are a &quot;chief&quot; type parent but when it comes to discipline they find themselves unable to be authoritarian and instead fold to become the &quot;best friend&quot; type giving their own children mixed messages about authority and morality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key thing is that hero archetypes often relate to the way a person sees themselves as an actor in their own life. People are constantly trying to live up to their own expectations of what they &quot;should&quot; be doing. Most people don't see their lives as one story, people change their own archetypal make up within single relationships, within life situations and even within the stuff of life such as marriage, parenthood or education. As my wife put it after reading the list of archetypes: &quot;I can be all of those within a period of four hours&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact although the articles linked above talk about &quot;male&quot; and &quot;female&quot; archetypes I would tend to rather classify them as &quot;rational active&quot; and &quot;emotional passive&quot; archetypes allowing the sixteen of them to be unisex. So a very male character could find himself resorting to a &quot;female&quot; archetype in a certain situation or even in a single archetype about a particular emotional topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final factor to consider is that although in a hero's story a hero's behaviour is correct and proper the lines between &quot;good&quot;, &quot;evil&quot;, &quot;right&quot; and &quot;wrong&quot; are a lot blurrier in reality. So most people&#xA;behave as if they are some kind of hero, whether it is appropriate for the situation or not. On such rocky ground are the foundations of self-justification laid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in our quest for quintessence without cliche we've gone from the simple business of vetting our characters for properties of capability and relatability to the need to make characters a melange of different archetypal flavours and colours. I think the &quot;attractive/sympathetic&quot; dynamic is the most important part to making characters people want to spend time with. Sympathetic is essential at all times. Giving people random flaws which can't be attributed to any realistic motivation is what tends to let characters fall flat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-01-15T02:51:46.727" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T02:51:46.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1187" CreationDate="2011-01-20T11:27:38.383" Score="31" ViewCount="3803" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just been reading a bunch of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books. Although they were the most enjoyable read I'd had in ages I always found myself skimming long segments that described involved battles or fights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often find that when the swords are drawn in a story I tend to tune out. A good author always provides a summary of what the hero has lost or gained as the result of a battle after the fight anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as the story becomes paragraph after paragraph of description along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alonso dropped to his right knee swinging the dagger in his  left hand up at Bardolph's ribs. He was dextrous but not quite fast enough Bardolph swung his right arm down deflecting the dagger with his grieves, a defiant snarl emerging from between his lips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bardolph stepped back, grounding himself with feet shoulder width apart, the left leg slightly back to aid stability. He swung his left hand in a vicious hook and connected with the side of Alonso's head. Pain exploded in the smaller man's ear drums at the crushing blow...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These things can go on for ten or twelve pages when they get really involved. They seem to say nothing of value and they're not even as inolving as the commentator's patter on wrestling shows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what makes a good fight scene? Other than brevity, of course? How does one write an epic battle that doesn't have people skipping to the post-match report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The first answer to this question I got from John Smithers makes it seem like you could all put it down to taste, which is fair enough as I first put the question. Let me be more specific on the Dresden thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost every fight in vols 1-7 of the series I skimmed through. I always start out trying to read them but then get bored and skip. In vols 8-9 &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; clicked and I read the fights, mostly, without even realising that I hadn't been jarred out of the narrative.It's not 100% but certainly something had changed. I just don't know exactly what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I'm looking to pin down. What makes a combat scene a compelling read? Some people like any combat scene sure but I'm talking about the kind of person who has no objection to a combat scene in principle but is choosy about which ones they commit to reading all the way through. What are the ingredients of that kind of scene?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2023-09-06T12:48:52.330" Title="What's Essential In A Combat Scene?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|description|combat|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1182" CreationDate="2011-01-20T12:02:26.813" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I thought about this topic, I came to the conclusion: There are people who like combat scenes, and there are people who don't. That's it. I love these scenes and I know many people who skim these exact scenes I like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the easy answer: Know your audience and then write them like other do ;) Even easier: You don't like them, then don't write them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of the LotR books is your favourite? Mine is &lt;em&gt;The Two Towers&lt;/em&gt;, because of the battles. I love the Helm's Deep scene. When I needed a battle scene, I read this one again and then wrote it down with my own words. After that I compared it with the original. That teaches you, how to write them. If you want to write a combat scene, do the same thing. Read one which you like and try to rewrite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-01-20T12:02:26.813" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1182" CreationDate="2011-01-20T12:47:47.753" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the important thing is to keep the combat interesting (as trite as that sounds).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;Alonso dropped down on his right knee, swinging his dagger upwards, just like the Italian maestros. Bardolph stepped back fractionally, uncannily anticipating the thrust. Bardolph snarled and slammed his fist into Alonso's face.&#xA;&#xA;Staggering back, Alonso felt a flicker of fear in his chest. He'd not measured himself against someone with Bardolph's gift for several years. Spitting bloody froth, he swept the dagger, slicing across Bardolph's ribs.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously needs work, but it removes some of the &quot;this is only the mechanics of a fight&quot; and injects a small smidgen of emotion, maybe some back-references and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastEditorUserId="51" LastEditDate="2011-01-21T10:31:15.300" LastActivityDate="2011-01-21T10:31:15.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1172" CreationDate="2011-01-20T13:31:02.957" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like Randy Ingermanson's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://advancedfictionwriting.com/ezine/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Advanced Fiction Writing&lt;/a&gt;&quot; monthly e-zine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can look at back issues of the e-zine to see if it fits the kind of newsletter you're looking for. He also writes a blog at the same site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="570" LastEditorUserId="734" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T18:50:24.737" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T18:50:24.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1182" CreationDate="2011-01-20T17:44:46.007" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Combat scenes need to be written in a way to engage the reader. They should be more fast paced and emotional. You're not going to want to be describing every little bit of detail like you would in a slower-paced scene. The character isn't focused on the scenery or what's going on around him, he's focused on the fight. Sentences will be shorter and more compact and not include a lot of flowing details. You need to pick and choose your imagery so that your reader's heart is pounding in their chest and they can feel like they're in the fight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way, fight scenes are a lot like sex scenes. They need to be more engaging than the rest of the story or a reader will skip right over them. They should be emotional and full of feeling. You're going to want to make it easy for readers to visualize themselves in the action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-02-18T21:41:56.253" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T21:41:56.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1188" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1193" CreationDate="2011-01-20T17:52:15.307" Score="18" ViewCount="2453" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most important things for writers to do is to back up their work so that in the event of a computer failure, their work isn't lost. But where's a good place to do that? A lot of storage sites have little details in their TOS that gives them the right to use/modify anything uploaded to their servers. This can really pose problems for writers. Are there any that are free of legalese that won't hamper writers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the ToS for Google Docs is &quot;By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services&quot; which could potentially bite a writer in the butt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-09T08:07:18.670" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T08:07:18.670" Title="What's a good way to backup your writing?" Tags="|legal|software|process|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1182" CreationDate="2011-01-20T18:55:27.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Again I think it is mostly about characters. If you really care for at lest one of the characters involved, you will automatically be drawn into the scene, because you have some emotional interest in the outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point related to that would be to be detailed, especially regarding the people the reader is attached to. Describe in detail the fight in which you main character is involved, and draw a short, general overview of the rest of the battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a group of people attacking, make sure it is &quot;King Dredabloids horsemen&quot; or &quot;Baltrasims archers&quot;, not just &quot;a large group of horsemen rode into the battle from the west flank.&quot; Attach it to someone whom the reader has an enotional attachment to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2011-01-20T18:55:27.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1188" CreationDate="2011-01-20T18:57:43.750" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try this, it's easy, fast and portable: &lt;a href=&quot;http://igousb.com/post/Perfect-tool-for-writers.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iGoUSB&lt;/a&gt;.  It runs the backup in just 20 seconds if you run it daily.  It also saves (encrypted or not) your old versions if you need to access deleted portions of your documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: creator of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="573" LastEditorUserId="573" LastEditDate="2011-01-20T21:22:25.027" LastActivityDate="2011-01-20T21:22:25.027" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1188" CreationDate="2011-01-20T19:31:01.933" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dropbox.com&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt; works also very well and it offers 2GB free (enough for most writers).  It also stores old versions for 30 days for the free accounts...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="573" LastActivityDate="2011-01-20T19:31:01.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1188" CreationDate="2011-01-20T20:42:00.203" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;USB drives are notoriously unreliable. To use only USB drives for backups is enormously risky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dropbox is great... for synchronizing files. I use Dropbox to synchronize files between my two computers, and to make my files available on my iPad and iPhone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm concerned about using Dropbox as the sole backup system, and here's why. A few months ago, the disk on which I store my writing died. While I was trying to sort that out, I did something (but I don't know what) that led Dropbox to conclude that I'd deleted all of my files. Dropbox (being focused on synchronization, not backup and restore) dutifully &quot;deleted&quot; its copy of my files from its server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I made another mistake: I ran to my other computer (which had copies of all my files), and tried to restore from there. But Dropbox (being enormously dutiful) said, &quot;Hey, Dale deleted all these files from one computer. I'd better delete them from this one, too!&quot; And it started deleting the files from my second computer. I was able to disconnect Dropbox before it had done much damage, but some damage had been done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in addition to storing the current state of your files, Dropbox also stores earlier versions of those files. If you accidentally delete a file, Dropbox makes it easy to retrieve the file. But I had &quot;lost&quot; more than 10,000 files, and Dropbox offers no easy way to restore huge numbers of files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean any of this to be a knock on Dropbox. For one thing, I made several mistakes that led to the disaster. But (you'll have to trust me on this) I'm a reasonably smart dude, and the mistakes I made were not obviously boneheaded. For another thing, Dropbox is terrific for synchronizing files.  For its intended purpose, Dropbox is fast, reliable, and painless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not (yet) great for backup, but that's because Dropbox was not designed for backup. Until Dropbox adds features specifically designed for backup and restoration, it is only moderately safe for those purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... my backup system consists of several layers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source code control.&lt;/strong&gt; I use a tool called Git to take frequent snapshots of each writing project. I can easily roll a project back to any earlier moment. Git is a pretty darned geeky tool, designed primarily to manage code for software developers. I recommend it highly, but only for folks who are comfortable with esoteric, geeky command line tools. There are other tools that are more user-friendly, such as TortoiseSVN for Windows. But even that is technically quirky enough to befuddle most non-geeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Git (the way I use it for my writing projects) stores its copies on the same disk as my writing project. If that disk dies, I lose both the current files and the earlier versions. So...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Local backup.&lt;/strong&gt; I use a built-in Mac tool called Time Machine to make backups to an external disk every hour. These are &quot;incremental&quot; backups, which means that it copies only the files that have changed since the last backup. Time Machine allows you to look at the state of your computer at any time in the past, and restore files, folders, or whole disks to any given moment. For Windows users, numerous similar tools are available (though I can't make any recommendations there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my external disk sits beside my computer. If some physical disaster hits my room (flood, earthquake, puppy), I could lose both my computer and the external disk. So...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Offsite backup.&lt;/strong&gt; I use a service called JungleDisk to back up my files &quot;to the cloud&quot; every night. My files are copied to an external data center (in my case, one of Amazon's data centers). The initial backup can take a long time (perhaps days, depending on your connection speed and the number of files you want to back up). But once the initial backup is done, the nightly incremental backups take about five minutes. JungleDisk/Amazon charge based on how much data you store and how much you transfer each month. My monthly bill runs between $2 and $3 per month. About the cost of four paperback books per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this &quot;cloud-based&quot; offsite backup is on the same planet as my computer. If some disaster hits Earth... Well, I'll live with that. Or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-01-20T20:42:00.203" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1194" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1199" CreationDate="2011-01-21T03:51:47.083" Score="10" ViewCount="516" Body="&lt;p&gt;Occasionally, novels will include song lyrics in the story, or start out chapters with songs or quotes.  In many cases, these lyrics or quotes are from copyrighted materials and would presumably require royalties be paid to the original author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the publisher typically negotiate the purchase of these rights, or is it the responsibility of the author?  Who actually pays the necessary fees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T17:23:36.297" Title="Who pays for lyrics or quotes?" Tags="|publishing|money|lyrics|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2011-01-21T07:42:41.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a variety of tools:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tinderbox&lt;/a&gt; (pricy but powerful) for planning story arcs and other details - I'm a very visual thinker and I like something where I can build rich structures, more than with simple tools like Freemind&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://instaviz.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Instaviz&lt;/a&gt; for sketching out little diagrams of relationships whilst I'm on the move, on my iPhone, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marinersoftware.com/products/storymill/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;StoryMill&lt;/a&gt; for fiction writing, a competitor to the Scrivener tool recommended in other answers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, the most powerful tool I'm using right now is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt; because it lets me write little inspirations, scenes and ideas on any of my systems including my iPhone and iPad and they are all synchronised. I also collect all my odd snippets of research in there using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evernote.com/about/download/web_clipper.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;web clippings&lt;/a&gt; - the fastest way to grab a portion of a web page along with the URL and a reasonable amount of formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="581" LastActivityDate="2011-01-21T07:42:41.440" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-01-21T07:42:41.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1194" CreationDate="2011-01-21T16:27:11.357" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quotes from real people and books are generally considered fair use so they can be used without paying anyone. Song lyrics and poems are a gray area. Some people will tell you you can use portions of song lyrics - a line or two - but others will say you can't use any without permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not using the whole song, you'd probably be able to get permission to use it without paying anything. It'd be free publicity to the owner of the lyrics - most likely the record company. If you're using the entire song, that's completely different and you might be require to pay for permission to use them. How much and whether it's a flat fee or royalties will depend on how it's negotiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you're a NYT Bestselling author and the publishing house really really wants you, the author will have to pay this out. Publishing houses aren't going to cut into their own profits unless they really have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-01-21T16:27:11.357" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1202" CreationDate="2011-01-21T17:02:53.123" Score="7" ViewCount="703" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a new M/M romance novel about a guy who's trying out nudism and an experience nudist. Does my opening paragraph succeed in drawing in the readers attention and making them curious? Does it give too much information or not enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My public speaking professor from freshman year always told us to picture our audience naked when we got nervous. It was her no-fail technique for over coming your nerves. Well, apparently that doesn’t work so well when they actually &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; naked. And when you're about to be naked as well. My heart skipped a beat as I walked past one of the signs proclaiming the beach clothing-optional. It sent both a thrill and a jolt of fear through my body. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T06:48:59.490" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T06:48:59.490" Title="Does my first paragraph grab your attention?" Tags="|openings|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1188" CreationDate="2011-01-21T17:09:15.063" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simple solution is to send yourself an email containing important or recently changed files. If your email provider is something like Gmail then you have essentially limitless space for ever. Gmail doesn't (afaik) assert copyright claims on your email content beyond what is necessary to store and display your email. But if you ARE concerned, you can always encrypt your data first then send out the encrypted files. Then you only need to back up the key for the encryption (which is probably short enough that you could print it on paper and store it in a safety deposit box).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my own backup purposes I store my data on a hard disk which is removable. Yes, the hard disk itself is vulnerable to failure and I could have both drives fail in the case of a house fire or theft. But if you are worried about that, make TWO hard drives and store one at a friend's house. Hard drives are cheap and relatively reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, for text you can always resort to printing it on paper and storing that somewhere. It's extremely reliable and simple, though a tad annoying to restore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2011-01-21T17:09:15.063" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1200" CreationDate="2011-01-21T17:12:10.503" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is solid in concept but flawed in execution. I can't help but wonder if you started out with something else about the dream where you suddenly realise you're naked and how it doesn't help if everyone else is too but thought that was too cheesy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with the whole &quot;audience&quot; thing is that I am presuming that your main guy is, at the outset, about to enter the nudist colony nude for the first time. Although I get the emotional beat of him feeling like the other nudists are an &quot;audience&quot; who will be assembled to criticise his body I don't think it's appropriate to compare the expected nudist audience with a literal audience sat in chairs and observing so directly. At least not all jumbled up in one paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's a show stopper but I'd be tempted to simplify and pick apart this emotional experience of going somewhere you'd expect to be clothed without your clothes on. This is the age of the interwebs, surely you could hunt down a &quot;nudist blog&quot; that begins with someone describing their own first time sans apparel to get your head in that mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that I can't think of a better place to start a story like this than in the &quot;Undressing Room&quot; before the first foray into the world of nudism. It's just I feel you don't have to put so many concepts in one place. It will work better if its simpler IMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-01-21T17:12:10.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1200" CreationDate="2011-01-21T19:02:12.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's my suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My public speaking professor from freshman year always told us to picture our&#xA;  audience naked when we got nervous. It was her no-fail technique for&#xA;  overcoming your nerves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But was it the protag's technique? I don't care as much for what the professor thought worked--did it work for the protag until now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well,&#xA;  apparently that doesn’t work so well when they actually are naked. And when&#xA;  you're about to be naked as well. &lt;strike&gt;My heart skipped a beat as I walked&#xA;  past one of the signs proclaiming the beach clothing-optional. It sent both a&#xA;  thrill and a jolt of fear through my body.&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sentence &quot;when you're about to be naked as well&quot; is a great closer. The following sentences serve only to dilute the hook. Plus, it seems like there is a change of setting here: the opening sets us up to have the protag speak to a large group of naked people, while the closing sentences suggest that it's actually a nude beach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-01-21T19:02:12.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1204" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1207" CreationDate="2011-01-21T20:44:36.397" Score="18" ViewCount="6636" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a short story, and the main character is referred to as &amp;quot;he&amp;quot; right the way through - the idea being that this character is very guarded and mysterious.&#xA;My plan was to not reveal the name of the character because that would be too personal and would allow the reader to &amp;quot;get to know&amp;quot; the character, which is undesirable when trying to maintain an aura of mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm not sure I'm pulling it off as well as I'd like to - I feel I'm overusing the word &amp;quot;he&amp;quot; and I'm stuck for ways to refer to &amp;quot;himself.&amp;quot; I've attached a small extract for you to perhaps see what I mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alarm on his watch beeped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His eyes crept open as he was slowly roused from his light slumber, he knew he had work to do, and now he felt ready to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His job was very stressful and had little rewards, but he did as he was told; just a pawn a very large game of chess. It was however, not a large company, which is why a lot of the stress landed on him and it's terribly difficult working for a boss you've never seen nor heard. Strange as the concept was, he and his boss kept in touch by e-mail and text messages. It wasn't ideal, but it was definitely necessary; being that his field of work was a slightly less than reputable one. He only knew his boss by one name, and he knew it was an alias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone offer any assistance, perhaps give me some ideas on how to reword some sentences, help that I may then be able to apply to the rest of the short story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-07-05T16:51:04.177" Title="How do I better handle my nameless main character when trying to retain mystery?" Tags="|character-development|short-story|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1204" CreationDate="2011-01-21T22:24:35.123" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The man&quot; also works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The man's job was very stressful...The man only knew his boss by one name...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you give him any other identifiers, like &quot;tall&quot; or &quot;with sunglasses,&quot; that will allow you some variety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(also, use a semi-colon after &quot;slumber&quot; in the first sentence, not a comma.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-01-21T22:24:35.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1200" CreationDate="2011-01-21T23:57:44.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't start out your first sentence the way you did.  The problem with the sentence, is that &quot;picturing your audience naked&quot; is such a well known and oft repeated technique, that it borders on being cliché.  I do think it's alright to reference the technique, but I wouldn't use it as your leading sentence.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="154" LastActivityDate="2011-01-21T23:57:44.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1204" CreationDate="2011-01-22T07:29:36.597" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some Preliminary Words...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure that withholding a character's name is the best way to go about producing an aura of mystery. In fact, this is something that I've seen in a lot of early writers (and I even did it a few times myself back in high school), but which almost never works. Usually, the reader just finds it incredibly annoying. Even if you can pull off the &quot;no-name mystery&quot; grammatically so that it doesn't sound awkward or repetitive, the reader would almost always like &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; to remember him by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of writers (I struggle with this, too) decide to retain little details - name, location, &lt;em&gt;whatever&lt;/em&gt; - to try for an air of mystery. While we have all probably read books that do this at the beginning, it's usually not for very long - rarely for entire stories. If the aura of mystery hinges on these details, then it's not going to be mysterious enough to keep the reader reading. It will just be annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Answer, Though...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would work on making sure your story has such a strong &quot;mystery&quot; element to it that you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; reveal more about your character if you wanted to, without destroying that element. Then, you can decide what you want to reveal and what you want to withhold, and perhaps the mystery elements themselves will lend you ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, you wouldn't need to give his real name. He could have an alias, too, just like his boss. Just one idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another is to consider the first person perspective. Difficult, but if he is always thinking of himself in terms of &quot;I&quot; and &quot;me&quot; and doesn't run into anybody who uses his name, then that could work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of whether you add an alias or write from first person, I would (if I were you) make sure that your information you're giving has more of his attitude behind it. If we aren't allowed to know your character, we should at least &quot;experience&quot; him. Rather than simply being told about his job, we should almost definitely find out about his work via his attitude about it - or &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; along those liens. If you want to maintain that aura of mystery, then we'll have to be invested in the character enough to care about him, even if we don't know his name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely eliminate any unnecessary words - include &quot;he&quot; and &quot;him&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, without a name, you gotta pull double duty to keep the reader sucked in! That alone could potentially overcome the repetitiveness of &quot;he&quot; and &quot;him&quot; and such. If done well enough. This won't be great (and it definitely has my tone and attitude thrown in), but here's a quick example of what I mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The alarm beeped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His eyes crept open as he slowly roused himself from his light slumber; he had work to do, and it was time to begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The damn job was too stressful, with too little rewards, but it wasn't like he had a choice.  Just a little pawn in a large game of chess.  A pawn who doesn't even know his king.  As one of the few members of such a small organization, most people would have assumed he knew his boss.  He'd never even met the man.  No, he was expected to do the work of ten men, communicate solely by e-mail and text, and chug along as best he could with the orders he was given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know your story, though, so I'm sure you can think of something much more imaginative (and mysterious!) than that. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2011-01-22T07:29:36.597" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1182" CreationDate="2011-01-22T20:15:44.877" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fight scenes involve fast action.  A fight scene that's slow to read misses the point.  Moreover, the details are mostly irrelevant.  I'm not a martial artist, and I don't care what fighting technique those two are using.  Like sex, the exact details of who's doing what to whom are much more interesting for the participant than the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try looking at the fight scene and its relevance to plot and characters.  Cut it down to the bare minimum of detail.  Something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alonzo launched himself at Bardolph, wielding his father's dagger.  With practiced moves, Bardolph defended himself from the furious onslaught, hitting back when he could.  After a minute [a long time in a fight], the combatants separated, Alonzo shaking off stars and blood running down Bardolph's arm.  &quot;Okay,&quot; Bardolph said, &quot;I apologize.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="74" LastActivityDate="2011-01-22T20:15:44.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1209" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1239" CreationDate="2011-01-22T22:07:22.097" Score="12" ViewCount="84714" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't been able to find an answer to this question for a while now. What is the proper way to write time in a manuscript? I'm referring mostly to A.M. and P.M. Should it be written in caps? With or without the dots? Should it be omitted all together and be stated? ex. &quot;eleven in the morning.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2018-04-13T14:44:10.207" LastActivityDate="2020-12-04T02:30:57.190" Title="What is the proper way to write time in a manuscript?" Tags="|novel|formatting|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1209" CreationDate="2011-01-23T01:02:21.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess it depends on how it's being presented. If a character is speaking the time it would be whatever flows naturally. Most of the time people talk about time in relation to now, so three in the afternoon could just be 'three o'clock'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, when reading a clock (more so a digital clock) it might work best to be very exact with the time like &quot;8:00 AM&quot; because that is how digital clocks normally read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how to write AM/PM? It seems like all caps without the dots is the most common, but most permutations are allowed. Officially they are abbreviations but most people don't use them that way (much like PIN or ATM they are almost words in themselves). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2011-01-23T01:02:21.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1200" CreationDate="2011-01-23T02:54:32.877" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fun idea. The professor's advice isn't the interesting part--get to the naked! I'd almost write your article in reverse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My heart skipped a beat as I walked&#xA;  past one of the signs proclaiming the&#xA;  beach clothing-optional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sets up immediately the where and hints at the what. From there, you can get to the nerves, though I'd cut out the unnecessary freshman year detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My public speaking professor from&#xA;  freshman year always told us to&#xA;  picture our audience naked when we got&#xA;  nervous. Well, apparently that doesn’t&#xA;  work so well when they actually are&#xA;  naked. When you're about to be&#xA;  naked as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I removed the &quot;And&quot; from the last sentence as well. If you're going to write a fragment sentence, then just do it. &quot;And&quot; seemed to dillute the impact.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can jump into the action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="598" LastActivityDate="2011-01-23T02:54:32.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1218" CreationDate="2011-01-24T07:49:21.840" Score="13" ViewCount="1185" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always receive the same critique when I write fiction.  The critique is good for my characters and plot, but I am told that my writing style is stiff, awkward and amateurish.  When I wrote academic papers for university, I was often praised for my eloquence, but apparently that writing style does not work for fiction.  What resources can I turn to, or what can I do in order to develop a strong writing style for fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I posed this question to a handful of experts, I was told to read a lot of fiction.  I read fiction rather obsessively, and I have done so ever since I was a child, so that does not appear to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user602" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T17:13:44.150" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T17:13:44.150" Title="How can I transition from academic writing to fiction writing?" Tags="|fiction|style|academic-writing|resources|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1214" CreationDate="2011-01-24T09:21:03.313" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm also working on increasing my fiction writing skills (I do mostly technical writing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My approach is taken from my previous life as a musician. The best way to learn to play a style in music is to listen, practice, and listen again. Translated to writing, this means reading, but not just for pleasure. When you read a passage that draws you in, analyze the passage and figure out &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it draws you in. Then try writing a similar passage, a parallel story, or an alternate story using some or all of the techniques you discovered. Try it with some different authors and see if it helps you break out of your academic rut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend reading some books about writing - my favorite by far is Steven King's &quot;On Writing&quot;. It is filled with example after example of why some writing works and why some writing stinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastActivityDate="2011-01-24T09:21:03.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1204" CreationDate="2011-01-24T13:25:11.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a story where none of the characters have names (well, one minor character has a name). To make it readable each character was given a nickname which described one tiny aspect of the character. For example, you might have &quot;The man in green&quot; or &quot;The girl from Toronto&quot; or something along those lines. In my case it wasn't meant to add mystery per se, and so the detail which identifies the character might also be that character's stereotype. In this way you can vary how the character is referred to in your text and in dialog, by changing the way you describe the character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The man in green&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The man&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The man with the green coat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These nicknames can also be used by the other characters who might not know the character's name or might be talking to someone who doesn't know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does get tricky after a while making sure that the dialog and narrative reads smoothly. Luckily for me it was only a short story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2011-01-24T13:25:11.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1214" CreationDate="2011-01-24T13:26:02.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing is not a single task, as made plain by the fact that your plots and characters work but your style doesn't. In just the same way as a sportsman can work on a part of the game he plays so a writer can work on parts of the writing process that concentrate on strengthening weaker parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was younger the dialogue I wrote completely sucked, it just didn't sound like stuff people would say. I wrote a lot of scripts, specifically screenplays. It made things better. Screenplays also help with identifying the way to make something more show and less tell. For this reason I think that writing a screenplay could also be of use to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a screenplay a writer has to be constantly asking if the scene gives a cast words to say and a director pictures to shoot. A great director can shoot loads of people talking a room and make it visually compelling but the writer can help by ensuring that pure exposition is eliminated wherever possible. Screenwriting mavens have a term for it: &lt;em&gt;Turn your exposition into ammunition&lt;/em&gt; meaning take the things you have to explain to the audience and work out how to demonstrate that principle visually instead of just having a character explain it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never got caught in the exact situation you describe as I've only ever written fiction. One thing that revolutionised my writing style was when I chose to tell what I considered to be &quot;a simple story&quot;. My key aim was to describe the protagonist journeying from point A to point B to do a thing, a quest story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time I was trying to give myself an easy ride for the first time I ever attempted &quot;National Novel Writing Month&quot;. The process of telling a story I figured I should be able to tell standing on my head opened up a whole number of opportunities for me to develop my general writing skills. For this reason you may want to write a story you feel should be well within your capabilities, your take on the saga of Beowulf for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is to do some work that forces you to concentrate on the weak point. The work should be simple enough to support you in your efforts and I imagine, although I have no actual proof even anecdotal beyond my own experiences, that going through that process will allow you to flex your skills at storytelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-01-24T13:26:02.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1214" CreationDate="2011-01-24T15:38:49.943" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've already read a lot, which is a good thing. I suspect what you're missing at this point is reading to learn: taking something that you love which is well-written, and tearing it apart to see how it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to do this is to find a book or story that you admire not just for its characters and plot, but specifically for its prose style. Read a chapter or so to get it fresh in your mind, then go and write something of your own &lt;em&gt;imitating the other author's style&lt;/em&gt; as closely as possible. You really want to do everything you can to pass off your work as the work of the other author. When you're done, go back and compare your writing with the other, and look at what the differences are and how you can adapt your style to better match theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of this exercise is not actually to copy the style of another author. Rather, it's to gain a deep, inside understanding of &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; that author does what they do, how they knit their sentences together in that amazing way that they have. After doing this a few times, you can go back to your real writing with an appreciation of that author's techniques and tricks, and hopefully apply them in service of your own style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-01-24T15:38:49.943" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2011-01-24T17:46:07.413" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing you can try (something I have just started trying), is the &quot;fieldstone&quot; method (cf. &lt;em&gt;Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method&lt;/em&gt;). The analogy goes that when you are building a wall, as you walk in the field if you find a good stone, you put it in your pocket. Writing kind of works the same way: as you go about your day, you read things, you find something that interests you or bothers you, you take note of it, and over time you will see the idea for the next idea form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="521" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-05-01T07:24:43.120" LastActivityDate="2018-05-01T07:24:43.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1209" CreationDate="2011-01-24T21:13:20.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's for a novel, then I would say your characters should express the time in the most natural way for them to be doing so.  The retired colonel would refer to 'dishes done by oh-nine-hundred' and the slacker teenager would say 'dude, around 8-ish'.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems rare to me in everyday living that we talk about A.M./P.M, but in caps with dots is technically correct.  I suppose like the colonel and the teen, there's room in a book for the punctilious and punctual. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My other thought as it occurs to me about time and this:  If you have an omniscient third person narrator telling the reader what time it is (I have no proof or suspicion, just tossing it out) I would re-examine and see if there's a way to put it into a character's voice.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="500" LastActivityDate="2011-01-24T21:13:20.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1188" CreationDate="2011-01-25T20:01:18.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've also tried huddle.net.  There is a decent amount of space for free and you can pay for more if needed.  This site is built for business applications, so you can actually invite others to log onto your site, giving them access to whatever you want - easy for an editor to make changes that way.  Maybe not perfect, but it's free and seems pretty secure so far.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="618" LastActivityDate="2011-01-25T20:01:18.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2011-01-25T21:41:21.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I'm writing something in a plaintext format, like LaTeX or HTML, I'll generally use version control. For example, when I wrote my undergraduate thesis (in LaTeX) I used Mercurial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For stuff written in a word processor, I generally don't. I do keep backups (using Apple's Time Machine software) so I can jump back in time to any day. And if I start another draft or a major revision, I'll manually make a copy. For minor revisions, I'll use my word processing software's change-tracking functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2011-01-25T21:41:21.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1204" CreationDate="2011-01-26T02:45:06.833" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Nathen nailed it above, however)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have written a short story, and the main character is referred to as &quot;he&quot; right the way through - the idea being that this character is very guarded and mysterious. My plan was to not reveal the name of the character because that would be too personal and would allow the reader to &quot;get to know&quot; the character, which is undesirable when trying to maintain an aura of mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can give the character a alias via some plot device. Then he would be &lt;em&gt;nameless&lt;/em&gt; but still have a easy handle you can use. The alias can be some very plain and amusing such as &quot;the hatless one&quot; or something equally random. You can then change the alias depending on his environment to confuse the reader; though I don't know how much good that will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My honest opinion is that a character is created to be presented. A character that is &lt;em&gt;unknown&lt;/em&gt; should not exist, or be simply on the sidelines until he is able to take the position of character in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ever do go with hiding information idea, I would suggest you be very subtle about it (put the character in a position where he can't say his name). As others have mentioned it is not the most awe inspiring characteristic of a story by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="589" LastActivityDate="2011-01-26T02:45:06.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1209" CreationDate="2011-01-26T02:56:53.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep it in context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use it express draw out the personality of the character, by for example omitting the minutes or, going by the other extreme, give full to the second time in a military sounding notation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's not a work of fiction, refer to the locale of your target audience and their preferred format (ie. where you live, what you're writing to and their standards). I don't think there is any particularly wrong way, as long as it flows with the text, but for anything international avoid ambiguities such as the month (ie. write &quot;6th of Jan, 2011&quot;, &quot;06-01-2011&quot; which depending on your location may be read as &quot;01-06-2011&quot;). Similarly readers used to the 24-hour system on daily basis can be confused by AM/PM (ie. they swap their meanings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="589" LastActivityDate="2011-01-26T02:56:53.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1209" CreationDate="2011-01-26T02:57:43.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the off chance that this &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; a novel, just be consistent. Some writing (academic, non-fiction, and news, for example) is edited to a style guide, and most style guides will have a preferred way to format times and dates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fiction, and particularly in dialog, you specifically &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; want to come up with a consistent system unless you want everything to seem the same and uninteresting. Characters who are inconsistent in little things like this seem more human and accessible. (For example; As it's now ten o'clock in the evening where I am, I need to get off the web within the hour because I need to get up at five in the a.m.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2011-01-26T02:57:43.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2011-01-26T03:15:20.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Usually what I do is to save multiple copies with incremental numbers, but I find that this isn't a good method because I end up with a folder full of word documents of the same file + changes. It isn't really easy to organise because of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a version control system you can perform such things as &lt;code&gt;diff&lt;/code&gt;s to basically get a view showing changes from one version to another. You can also create branches, merge branches, and so on. Depending on where you host and what you use, you could also have comments at certain lines (all the way to the extent of discussions). This is usually outside the realm of the source version control, and usually in the webview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantages go beyond single user use. You could for example have a proof read copy and do a diff to check what the person changed. Similarly you could coordinate work with other people responsible for certain aspects of how your writing is suppose to look, proof reading, editing, and so forth, and all this with out going though a iterative time consuming &quot;pass me the last copy&quot; process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally recommend something like &lt;code&gt;git&lt;/code&gt; for the simple reason that unlike subversion you can work completely locally anywhere, anytime ie. if it's not too clear, with out Internet, or any server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes with out saying, people tend to find it hard to explain (and the ones I've had to were from a technical background no less). This is particularly true when it comes to the command line tools, but GUIs fair no better. One very key problem is junk getting uploaded, I suggest if you're going to use this as a collaborative system you make sure to set some very clear rules, as seeing unnecessary junk files in the repositories is infuriating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="589" LastActivityDate="2011-01-26T03:15:20.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1172" CreationDate="2011-01-26T19:23:46.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Posted my OPML &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.workingstorage.com/Writing.zip&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a good mix of feeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="419" LastEditorUserId="734" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T18:50:26.890" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T18:50:26.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1214" CreationDate="2011-01-26T19:25:06.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love &quot;Self Editing For Fiction Writers&quot;; get it here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/eKcfJP&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://amzn.to/eKcfJP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="419" LastActivityDate="2011-01-26T19:25:06.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1055" CreationDate="2011-01-26T20:26:05.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;eBooks are not all self-published.  There are a number of legitimate publishers out there who publish eBooks exclusively, or predominantly.  They may be a bit easier to get published with, as their costs are lower and they can publish more in a given time period.  Some of them, in fact, may have pretty low standards, which isn't necessarily good for those who get published through them.  However, others are perfectly respectable.  And all of them are, imo, preferrable to going the self-published route.  At the very least, they'll provide a credential for other published works, and if you're lucky, you'll get one that has good editors.  (One of the hallmarks of eBooks seems to be bad grammar and overlooked typos.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user626" LastActivityDate="2011-01-26T20:26:05.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1230" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-01-27T13:32:09.313" Score="8" ViewCount="425" Body="&lt;p&gt;English language has a number of popular manuals of style. There's Chicago Manual of Style, Elements of Style etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know any such resource for the Polish language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="629" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:10:35.463" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T21:29:33.833" Title="A Polish manual of style." Tags="|resources|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1237" CreationDate="2011-01-28T04:38:39.313" Score="10" ViewCount="26313" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen ellipses written out both with (&quot;Well . . . gosh . . .&quot;) and without spaces (&quot;Well...gosh...&quot;) between the dots. I've also looked at several different online writing style sites, and found no consensus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which way do editors of fiction prefer? Or is it more a matter of consistency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T02:24:45.957" Title="What is the preferred way to type out ellipses?" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1231" CreationDate="2011-01-28T04:46:18.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no generally accepted ruling on this that I know of, and it's the sort of thing easily handled with a search-and-replace during typesetting should your publisher care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worry about content, not typesetting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-01-28T04:46:18.443" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1182" CreationDate="2011-01-28T06:37:13.917" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your example, what's wrong is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Too much detailed description&lt;/strong&gt;. We don't need to know how Bardolph was standing, and it takes so long to read it that we lose the excitement. You just described 2 seconds in 2 paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not enough feelings&lt;/strong&gt;. describe how the characters are feeling: fear as they duck a blade, desperation as they lunge, surging confidence as they push their opponent back, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a book with good fight scenes like Mistborn, the &lt;strong&gt;action description is minimal&lt;/strong&gt;; just enough so you notice what the character notices about the scene. But there are &lt;strong&gt;plenty of clues as to how the character is feeling&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2011-01-28T06:37:13.917" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1231" CreationDate="2011-01-28T08:55:29.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &quot;consensus&quot;, but you shouldn't care about that. &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1231/what-is-the-preferred-way-to-type-out-ellipses/1232#1232&quot;&gt;HedgeMage&lt;/a&gt; is right, care about content, you can replace the ellipses afterwards, if you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is, that you normally write ellipses with three dots (...). But there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2026/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;special character for ellipses&lt;/a&gt; (&amp;hellip;). So for every font there is this character, which makes the text easier/more pleasantly to read. But typesetting is not your job. It's much easier to use the three dots while writing instead of searching the special character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-01-28T08:55:29.470" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1231" CreationDate="2011-01-28T14:20:49.847" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking as a writer, editor, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; typesetter: use three dots, no spaces. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The spaces are unattractive and potentially allow the line to break mid-ellipsis. As far as the &quot;high ASCII&quot; character, those occasionally get chewed up in file translation (I just got a file from a client where all the smart double quotes had turned into random accented characters). Three periods together (or four, at the end of a sentence) will never be broken or changed into anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-01-28T14:20:49.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1231" CreationDate="2011-01-28T15:59:00.680" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;AP Style says to treat an ellipse as one word by using 3 periods (dots) with a space on each side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This sentence ... with an ellipsis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is for journalism and based on what looks proper in that medium.  Without any spaces, an ellipsis is considered &quot;one word&quot; by many computer systems and therefore will not be split up properly at the end of a line.  The space before and after ensures that there isn't a huge word wrap if both words and the ellipsis were all treated as a single word and dropped together to the next line.  No spaces in between the periods ensures that the ellipsis won't get word wrapped in the middle of the punctuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chicago Manual of style says to use three spaced periods.  This is based on punctuational accuracy and would be considered the &quot;real&quot; way to use an ellipsis in a grammar bar fight (if there were such a thing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This sentence . . . with an ellipsis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing, is that virtually everyone in publishing says do NOT use the special &quot;ellipsis character.&quot;  Microsoft Word uses it to &quot;auto-correct&quot; your work by default.  (While we are at it, you should also not use smart quotes either.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all an interesting theoretical discussion, but in the real world of fiction publishing, here is how it breaks down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your unsolicited manuscript can use ellipsis with or without spaces and it will not matter to the agent or publisher you send it to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you are actually working with the publisher, they will give you very specific formatting guidelines for how they want your submissions to be done for everything you send to them.  These guidelines will encompass much more than just how to type ellipsis, and they will be the only rules that matter when submitting to that particular publisher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can look up the manuscript format submission guidelines for individual publishers, but you will find that most of them don't say anything about ellipsis.  That isn't an omission; they don't care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as how an ellipsis comes out when printed in hard copy, that is entirely dictated by the font and typeset used by the printing company, so it doesn't help to look in published books for examples of how to type it into the computer (or on the typewriter :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="508" LastActivityDate="2011-01-28T15:59:00.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1209" CreationDate="2011-01-28T16:11:22.510" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;AP Style requires a.m. or p.m. -- lower case, separated by periods.  There is no need for an additional period if the sentence ends with the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The briefing began at 2:30 p.m.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be the correct format for anything journalistic (newspaper, magazine, wire service, etc.)  In addition, many other publications and websites will ask for things to be written in AP Style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style agrees, except it allows for a.m. or p.m. to be written in &quot;small caps&quot; font.  In that case, the periods are not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In formal non-fiction writing, using normal capital letters is never acceptable, nor is using lower case letters without periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For unsolicited novel manuscripts, I've never seen submission guidelines that address the issue. You can check with individual publishers, but I don't think that it matters until you are actually working with them, at which time, they'll give you very detailed specifications for everything you send them in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="508" LastActivityDate="2011-01-28T16:11:22.510" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1240" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1401" CreationDate="2011-01-28T18:49:53.297" Score="41" ViewCount="3600" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common problem for novice fiction writers, and one that I feel that I myself haven't quite graduated from, is always writing characters who are like the author.  Each character is merely some facet of the author, at worst a caricature and at best a well-rounded reflection of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read a quote at some point that I can no longer find to the effect that the best authors can actually write people who are other than themselves.  These people get inside the heads of their bosses, co-workers, siblings, parents, friends, spouses, lovers, etc. and pluck out real reasoning, real fears, real desires, real loves, and real hatreds to make realistic characters who are alien to themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would I go about doing this?  I understand that it takes empathy and an active interest in other people, but once I have insight into friends, how do I go about writing it?  Is there a writing exercise I could use?  Is it even a valuable pursuit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2018-06-27T20:14:01.360" Title="Getting Inside Someone Else's Head" Tags="|fiction|character-development|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1240" CreationDate="2011-01-28T20:13:11.243" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a valuable pursuit. If you can learn and enhance your writing, it is valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writing exercise:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write down, how you characterise yourself. Your profession, habits, feelings, traits. Then write about a person with all these characteristics but the opposite sex.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss with friends/spouse how realistic this person appears to them. Learn your lessons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Next change the profession of this fictitious person and change the profession to something you would never do. You hate lawyers? Then a lawyer. Bookkeepers are boring? Take a bookkeeper. Write about the person. Discuss.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go on changing the person to someone totally different from you. You hate green trousers? Let the person wear them. You love staying at home? Let the person travel all over the world. You get the idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best authors are the best, because they have experience doing this. Catch up!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-01-28T20:13:11.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1240" CreationDate="2011-01-28T23:36:07.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you understand enough about psychology and are rational enough, this sort of thing can be approached from an analytical perspective. On a fundamental level, everything that a person or character does is done for a particular reason. They key to getting into the mind of a character who is unlike yourself is to understand those reasons. Keep in mind that the reasons themselves are not always rational.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, a certain character might suddenly burn down an apartment building. They did this because they have schizophrenia and voices in their head told them to do so. They have a reason for burning down a building, albeit one that does not apply to others. This is also a very blatant example; well constructed characters will typically be a lot more subtle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best ways to come up with a character who develops different reasons to do things than your own is to develop a different rationalization system. Everybody has certain needs, and many of them are the same (think money, food, shelter). However, different people use different rationalizations that let them determine the actions they will take to obtain these things. If you have low moral standards, than theft may be your primary course of action to fulfill your need for food. Or, alternatively, if you are in a dire situation, other, more extreme actions may then become more &quot;rational&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, you can design a character as a type of system. They have needs and desires, which are then processed by a series of rationalizations which then lead actions that they take in order to obtain what they need or want. Sometimes just making a character ignorant to certain actions can create vastly different scenarios because they are not able to take the same actions as a character who &quot;knows better&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people will probably argue that this method is too sterile or boring and subsequently shouldn't be applied to realistic characters, but psychology is a regimented science and can absolutely be broken down systematically in a manner just like this. All of the flavor and substance that makes a character interesting needs to be added in &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you've developed a proper understanding of their psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="611" LastActivityDate="2011-01-28T23:36:07.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1244" CreationDate="2011-01-29T01:06:17.413" Score="5" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been offered work translating some creative works into English. Is this kind of work likely to push my creative boundaries, and teach me how to be a better write of my own original creative writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will having this kind of work under my belt buy me any kind of credibility, as part of attempts to approach publishers with requests to publish my own creative work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="168" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-05-01T07:15:01.220" LastActivityDate="2018-05-01T07:15:01.220" Title="Is translation work likely to help me develop my own writing abilities?" Tags="|fiction|translation|learning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1243" CreationDate="2011-01-29T01:25:34.827" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about creative, but I imagine it will help strengthen your facility with the language. You will be working to re-create a thought, an image, a sound from a foreign language into English, keeping faithful to the original somehow while making it work in the new language. Your vocabulary and diction will certainly get a workout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-01-29T01:25:34.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1230" CreationDate="2011-01-29T01:55:51.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that there is a generic manual of style for the Polish language. Different universities and government bodies may publish style manuals for specific publications (such as official government documents, or paper submission), but nothing general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth noting that there are several dialects of Polish in use, which may influence the writing style of the author in ways that won't be compatible with a common style-document&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="168" LastActivityDate="2011-01-29T01:55:51.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1240" CreationDate="2011-01-29T01:59:33.150" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also just try to expand your source materials - expand your own experiences!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work as many different kinds of jobs as you can fit in, always speaking to the people you work with, trying to learn how they think, what they think, how they speak. Travel, and spend significant time with the locals, learning their habits, ways of thinking, ways of speaking. Keep a detailed journal of notes you take along the way. Write down interesting phrases you hear in use along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you learn about the people around you, try writing them up, and then provide your writing to them. Get their feedback - see if they recognize themselves in your writing, and learn from their reactions and thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="168" LastActivityDate="2011-01-29T01:59:33.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2011-01-29T03:00:35.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found Google Reader to be a useful source for non-fiction story ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've created an account which is subscribed to a large number of feeds – news feeds, interesting blogs, cutting edge research feeds, and local information/events info. When I lack for inspiration, I'll go through the feeds, and through their recommendation engine, and have a long stream of fairly random potential nudges to my creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="168" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-05-01T07:26:03.903" LastActivityDate="2018-05-01T07:26:03.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1248" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-01-29T04:08:32.933" Score="1" ViewCount="730" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some good examples of urban erotica? I am looking for a less explicit version of 9 and half weeks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for my interest is that I am very interested to take apart the elements of what we call 'chemistry'. It has been a mystery to me so far..how or why it happens( or not). So I wish to start a pet research project as a hobby and hopefully write some erotica in my spare time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing is that I am looking for a flavor of writing that appeals more to women than men. I am a male and I know what kind of erotica appeals to me:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="593" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2021-02-09T04:30:05.397" LastActivityDate="2021-02-09T04:30:05.397" Title="Urban erotica and authors" Tags="|erotica|book-rec|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-09-22T19:32:58.683" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-01-29T05:07:30.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In theory&lt;/em&gt; I have no problem with fan fiction, however the fact that the fan fiction community's standards are absymally low is enough to dissuade me from ever associating my work with them. Using another writer's characters, setting, and themes is perfectly reasonable though and has been used by professional and accomplished writers throughout history. I would just avoid categorizing anything as &quot;fan fiction.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user608" LastActivityDate="2011-01-29T05:07:30.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1253" CreationDate="2011-01-29T05:16:52.573" Score="24" ViewCount="3017" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always loved creative writing, but honestly do not see software engineers that write fiction all that often. Heck, I do not see software engineers that &lt;strong&gt;read&lt;/strong&gt; fiction all that often either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To those who have done it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did the transition from coder to novelist come as a result of laborious study and training(professional/self), or did you employ some other strategy?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What characteristics of the coder mind set lend themselves to writing fiction well, and which ones are a hindrance?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any habits or &quot;mind hacks&quot; that you can recommend for getting the coder mind in shape to do serious fiction writing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="593" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-01-30T03:05:03.937" LastActivityDate="2015-08-29T12:44:55.083" Title="How does a code monkey become a novelist?" Tags="|creative-writing|career|" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1252" CreationDate="2011-01-29T08:59:28.230" Score="21" ViewCount="862" Body="&lt;p&gt;My English level is average. I can write fluently and my vocabulary is not too limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the thought in mind that the end result must be perfect, is it better for me to write my long text (100 pages) in English and then get copyedited by a native English speaker, or write in French (my native language) and then get translated by a professional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm concerned about the quality of translations. Long texts (such as reports, offers, books, etc.) that have been translated into French from English are usually done very poorly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also concerned by my inability to use English correctly, especially with expressions and with typical ways of constructing sentences in particular contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Pierre 303" LastEditorUserId="163" LastEditDate="2011-01-29T12:04:59.877" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T08:24:19.523" Title="As a non-native English speaker, Is it better to get translated or get copyedited for long texts?" Tags="|style|translation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1251" CreationDate="2011-01-29T10:50:41.780" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Translation really is an art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend writing in the language where you have the largest vocabulary and where you feel most comfortable. In your case, that would be French. Then a translator can take your words, figure out how to say the same thing in English, and make readers feel &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; the way French readers react to the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wrote in English, though, you might use a word that has a different meaning in that particular context, or use a word you think exists that doesn't, and so on. And then the editor would have to guess at what you actually wanted to say—which isn't playing to anyone's strengths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice: write in your strongest language, and then let translators do their magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2011-01-29T10:50:41.780" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-01-29T12:11:28.123" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, a disclaimer: I'm not a novelist, not by a long shot. I've written some (local award winner) short stories as a teenager and I'm working on my first novel, but that's it. On the other hand, I've been practically born an engineer :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I guess there are many different approaches to writing, as many as there are people. As a programmer you probably have developed rational thinking an analytic skills, that can be extremely handy when attempting to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm approaching writing from that perspective. I'm very interested in books that deal with narrative structure - in a way, I'm trying to figure out &quot;how stories work&quot;. For example, &lt;strong&gt;The Writer's Journey&lt;/strong&gt; deals with the classical myth structure and archetypes. I also liked &lt;strong&gt;Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the book I connected with most is &lt;strong&gt;Writing Fiction for Dummies&lt;/strong&gt;. Yes, it's a For Dummies book, but it's written by a guy who is both a published, award-winning novelist AND a PhD in astrophysics and/or math (not sure). His approach is called &quot;The Snowflake Method&quot;, in reference to the fractal structure of snowflakes, which he uses as an analogy for the structure of fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has a very interesting &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/blog/&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; and website with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; (just ignore the ugly design). I'm in no way affiliated with them nor with the books, I'm just a reader and fan :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, I think as engineers wearing the fiction writer hat, we should definitely take advantage of our strengths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2011-01-29T12:11:28.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1254" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1261" CreationDate="2011-01-30T01:32:37.983" Score="6" ViewCount="1126" Body="&lt;p&gt;While reading up the characteristics of a byronic hero for my research, I discovered the following link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byronic_hero&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byronic_hero&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, some elements on this list seem to be contradicting each other;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For example: How does cynicism contribute to a power of seduction? &#xA;Were Don Juan or Casanova cynics? Or maybe my understanding of cynicism is not correct. When I hear the word cynicism...I think of the characters of the standard American sitcom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="593" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-01-30T16:26:40.207" LastActivityDate="2011-01-30T16:26:40.207" Title="Byronic Hero characters" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-01-30T02:52:22.120" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the high levels of the hacker ranks, I've found many &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;polymaths&lt;/a&gt;.  In these cases, at least, there isn't really a transition &lt;em&gt;from&lt;/em&gt; coder &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; novelist.  One just gets tacked on without altering the other. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to just jump in the same way you do to any new area of endeavor: look at work product (fiction) you like and try to figure out what makes it as good as it is; read about the art and craft of creating it.  Practice, get feedback from peers, and practice some more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the hardest thing for a programmer dealing with writing fiction for the first time is the total lack of metrics with which to self-evaluate.  Learning how to evaluate your own writing is most easily learned from experience evaluating others' writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-01-30T02:52:22.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1256" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-01-30T04:49:42.300" Score="12" ViewCount="3211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always learn a lot about about writing by reading other works and following their examples. Right now I'm very bad at writing action scenes; the best I can do is write around them, describing the situation and the outcome without ever delving into the details of the physical action. So now I'm on the lookout for anything that could serve as an example for me to study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last book I read with action scenes still vividly in my memory is &lt;em&gt;Dune&lt;/em&gt;. I liked it because it did a good job at describing the nuances of the scenes while always keeping every detail relevant and crucial to the overarching story. Overall though I've read very little in the way of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user608" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-05-29T15:43:16.273" LastActivityDate="2019-05-29T15:43:16.273" Title="Where to find some good examples of combat or action scenes?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|technique|description|combat|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1256" CreationDate="2011-01-30T12:21:21.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well... I've tended to find that action scenes vary a lot across genres, but here are some books with a few of my favorites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mistborn&lt;/em&gt; by Brandon Sanderson: This has some GREAT action scenes with a very unique magic system. Quite frankly, I think they're some of the best described action scenes I've ever read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Eye of the World&lt;/em&gt; by Robert Jordan: First book to his &lt;em&gt;Wheel of Time&lt;/em&gt; series; there's plenty of action in this one, ranging from scenes with a few people to an entire battle (or two). I think Jordan is at his best in this book, and he does a great job of stirring up emotions in the reader through his action.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rainbow Six&lt;/em&gt; by Tom Clancy: a modern spy / espionage / special forces book with some great military action. The action scenes here are always incredibly detailed, yet fast paced. They're also very tense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jurassic Park&lt;/em&gt; by Michael Crichton: maybe he has other books with better action, but I've always been particularly fond of this one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know exactly what genre you're going for (or if you even care), but those are a few that jump to mind. I think they all have a great range of scenes, from &quot;tense&quot; (action, but non-combative) to outright fighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2011-01-30T12:21:21.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-01-30T13:19:03.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a book (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.momentumpress.net/books/social-media-engineers-and-scientists&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Social Media for Engineers and Scientists&lt;/a&gt;) on this subject and I'm about two weeks from finishing the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Engineers and computer scientists (of which I am one) are, for the most part, left-brained thinkers by nature, by education, and by occupation. This means that we excel at detailed, sequential, textual, analytical thinking, which are all purveyances of the left brain. The right brain, conversely, deals asynchronously with putting things into context within the big picture. These processes are the power tools of the creative process that sculpt shapes and colors into eye popping presentations and words into creative writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s true, creating compelling content requires skills of artistry, but these skills can be learned, practiced, and improved upon. Understanding the way in which our brains respond to images and stories, for example, are a great advantage when creating content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My transition occurred over a period of years, during which I read a number of books on writing and creativity. It does require that we a) learn how to write stories and b) adopt a lifestyle and routine that lends itself to creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a reading list I would strongly recommend (I'm a new user so the system wouldn't let me post links):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Story&quot; by Robert McKee is THE definitive work on how construct stories. It deals very specifically with screenplays but its principals can be adapted to other fiction media. If you're going to read one book about writing fiction, make it this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;A Whole New Mind&quot; by Daniel Pink discusses left vs. right brain skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Understanding Comics&quot; by Scott McCloud fills in many of the cracks between the written word and visual communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The First Five Pages&quot; by Noah Lukeman offers advice from a frustrated publisher's point of view on how to tighten up a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="642" LastActivityDate="2011-01-30T13:19:03.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2011-01-30T13:37:50.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important aspect for creativity is, as others have suggested here, the &quot;raw material&quot; that is critical to coming up with new ideas. Creativity and innovation are not a process of coming up with something completely new out of a vacuum - they occur when our brains combine two ideas together to form a third (our brains our exclusively binary operators). This can occur at any time and is usually a subconscious process that leads to those &quot;Eureka!&quot; moments. I scan about 800 - 1200 articles every day in my RSS reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's critical that in addition to reading A LOT, you have a collection system for your ideas. It's a mindset that I call &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.domesticatingit.com/abc-always-be-collecting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Always Be Collecting&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Make sure you have a system in place to collect the raw materials (blog posts, pictures, new articles, presentations, etc...) and (most importantly) to record those ideas as soon as they occur to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also important to write - whether or not you have anything to say. You should be writing at least 300 words per day. It can be meaningless blather that nobody but you will ever read. If you have absolutely nothing to write about, just do a diary-like recount of your previous day with some commentary or forward-looking ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="642" LastActivityDate="2011-01-30T13:37:50.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1256" CreationDate="2011-01-30T15:09:03.370" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just now reading the &lt;i&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/i&gt; series by George R.R. Martin, which has plenty of good swordfights and describes the mechanics pretty well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mercedes Lackey is good at describing tactics of army movements (at a swords-and-sorcery tech level) with generic fighting descriptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-01-30T15:09:03.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1254" CreationDate="2011-01-30T15:17:24.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Short answer:&lt;/em&gt; cynicism is a version of &quot;playing hard-to-get,&quot; which some people find attractive. You seduce by allowing yourself to be chased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Long answer:&lt;/em&gt; Someone who's cynical can be an attractive target for a na&amp;iuml;ve person who wants to &quot;save&quot; or &quot;fix&quot; the Byronist. &quot;I know Charlie is so world-weary, but if he fell in love with me, I just know I could soften his heart and soothe his hurts! I could take away his pain and make him happy!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, the Byronist is cynical after heartbreak, or betrayal, or anything else which sours one on optimism. The na&amp;iuml;f's point of view may be exactly what the Byronist used to think pre-heartbreak, and s/he is sneering at what s/he used to be. The na&amp;iuml;f chases the Byronist, they sleep together, and the Byronist either really doesn't care about the na&amp;iuml;f or feels disgusted at him/herself for using the na&amp;iuml;f the way s/he was used, and the na&amp;iuml;f gets dumped.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And after like the third or four na&amp;iuml;f tries this, the Byronist, not pursuing emotional intimacy, might think this was a pretty decent tactic to get some action, and cultivate it deliberately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-01-30T15:17:24.363" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1262" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-01-30T17:16:54.337" Score="6" ViewCount="1152" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I maintain a virtually unknown personal blog about videogames, I like the idea of writing blog-style content that can reach a wider, more general audience. Recently a Facebook friend of mine started blogging for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;huffingtonpost.com&lt;/a&gt; which seems to be pretty open to submissions as long as they're well written and interesting. Are there any other really big blogs where I could have a chance in submitting something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user608" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-01-31T18:23:55.167" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T16:26:55.687" Title="What are some popular blogs that accept submissions?" Tags="|submitting-work|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-01T15:51:38.230" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1256" CreationDate="2011-01-30T19:54:53.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I pretty vividly remember the fight scene in about all of &lt;strong&gt;Robert Ludlum&lt;/strong&gt;'s novels.  If the name doesn't ring a bell: he wrote the Jason Bourne novels (&quot;&lt;strong&gt;The Bourne Identity&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; is the first in the series).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure which to recommend, probably the Bourne Identity (if you've seen the movies, the hand-to-hand scenes are on the same level in the books).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastActivityDate="2011-01-30T19:54:53.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1248" CreationDate="2011-01-31T01:30:58.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might need to define urban erotica. I know that I'm not familiar with that particular subset of the genre, and I am an erotica writer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what flavor of writing appeals more to women, you're looking at more plot-driven writing, something with a story to it. PWP (Porn without plot) does have its allure, but for the most part, you can't go wrong with telling a good story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, you might want to check out the book &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0743226232&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Write a Dirty Story&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, by Susie Bright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2011-01-31T01:30:58.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1265" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-01-31T21:21:39.673" Score="1" ViewCount="1659" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one were to distill memoir writing to a formula, what would the formula be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is inspired by the following quote from the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/01/31/110131crbo_books_kolbert?currentPage=3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;America's Top Parent&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She knows enough about the conventions&#xA;  of memoir-writing to understand that&#xA;  some kind of transformation is&#xA;  generally required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="649" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-06-23T04:40:48.480" LastActivityDate="2018-10-11T19:55:31.973" Title="Formula for a memoir" Tags="|structure|memoir|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1266" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1274" CreationDate="2011-02-01T00:37:16.703" Score="13" ViewCount="1320" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose you have a character who has a rank in a foreign military - say, Feldwebel Hans. That's the equivalent of a Sergeant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one hand, having people call him &quot;Herr Feldwebel&quot; gives some flavor and authenticity to the story, and I'd really like to do this. On the other hand, most readers won't know for sure what a Feldwebel is (I found out thanks to Wikipedia!) and what's his relationship to, say, an Oberst (Colonel) who berates him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you handle this? I rather use the original names for flavor, but I can't figure a non-contrived way to explain the native language equivalent rank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-15T00:05:25.310" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T00:05:25.310" Title="How to handle foreign military ranks?" Tags="|fiction|language|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1266" CreationDate="2011-02-01T01:40:18.850" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of ways of handling this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The obvious way is to have a wall of text at some point explaining the foreign military ranks. A variant is to have two (or more) characters discuss the ranks and how they map. You could take this in all different directions: &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; purpose is to inform the reader, but the characters could easily have other motivations for the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third is for some characters to use a near equivalent, even though most of them use the foreign word. This is a cute little hook for enhancing characterisation, but you do have to think about how the subject would react to the -- to him -- alien designation. This could lead to a discussion of comparitive ranks, of course, but you could get away with a potential discussion that doesn't actually happen. Except, of course, you've told your reader just enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fourth option is to not explain the equivalences at all. This works if you can clearly delineate throughout the novel what his duties and responsbilities are as well as how he interacts with those above and below him. This avoids the preconceptions of the English terms, but you have to work harder to describe the non-English structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-02-01T18:56:40.263" LastActivityDate="2011-02-01T18:56:40.263" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1266" CreationDate="2011-02-01T02:08:39.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One option is to implicitly or explicitly translate the ranks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your characters are, say, German, and presumably speaking German to one another, but you are writing their dialogue in English, then you're already implicitly translating. The reader understands that the English dialogue is actually German being translated for their benefit.  Using English-language equivalents may lose you a little flavor, but it's unlikely to perturb the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explicitly would be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hai, Shogun,&quot; she said.  &lt;em&gt;Yes, General&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a little more intrusive, but it allows you to use the translated word from that point forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-01T02:08:39.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1266" CreationDate="2011-02-01T02:26:41.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you only have one or two ranks to explain to the reader&lt;/strong&gt;: Simply explaining it in the text may be your best option; i.e., exposition may be the lesser of the evils. The clumsiness will be over quickly, and you can then move on with the plot. (If this is particularly difficult, you can always use a footnote; it pops the reader out of the story juust a bit, but that will also make the reader remember this if its important. Footnotes aren't usually the best idea in fiction, but one or two can be fine if you keep them very short.  (sjohnston's &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1266/how-to-handle-foreign-military-ranks/1268#1268&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; is essentially an inline footnote, and can work very well if you want to be less obtrusive.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If there are many such ranks&lt;/strong&gt;: You can set the flavor of the work with a Table of Millitary Ranks, similar in flavor to a Dramatis Personae but less troublesome than a glossary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have the option of using exposition, which can work only where it's done very, very well indeed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-02-01T02:26:41.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1265" CreationDate="2011-02-01T03:09:59.217" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Memoirs aren't formulaic. If they were, they'd all be the same. Memoirs are a person's experiences and people don't have the same experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-02-01T03:09:59.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1266" CreationDate="2011-02-01T17:33:56.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A number of good answers, indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But why not just leave it as &quot;foreign&quot;?  Flavor indeed.  Don't think it's too hard to find out, and it gives not just flavor but authenticity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare original-language (for the character) parts in movies: they can be left subtitled, or just not translated at all.  And if it's just some ranks, well... I'd really at least try leaving it at that, without explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastActivityDate="2011-02-01T17:33:56.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1273" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1276" CreationDate="2011-02-01T18:47:07.877" Score="2" ViewCount="571" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where would you recommend a new author of technical books (operating systems, programming, networking, etc) to go to in order to get help in promoting his work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any good reviewing services or other types of promotion services?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user654" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-22T03:54:19.527" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T03:54:19.527" Title="Where are the best places to promote tech books?" Tags="|non-fiction|resources|book|marketing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-02T16:40:24.583" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1266" CreationDate="2011-02-01T19:57:56.530" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't explain, demonstrate.&lt;/strong&gt; You can show the meaning of a rank by what people of that rank typically do, and by the way characters of different ranks react to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an Oberst berates a Feldwebel, and the Feldwebel reacts as if berating is within the bounds of their relationship, readers will understand that Oberst is a higher rank than Feldwebel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a gaggle of Gefreiters buzz with alarm and excitement upon learning of &quot;The Oberst's&quot; imminent arrival, you can be sure that an Oberst is someone of importance, and that Gefreiter is such a low rank that one would very rarely interact with an Oberst.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To whom does each rank issue orders? To whom does each defer? With whom does each typically work? With whom does each typically hang out socially? (The latter can help to differentiate officers from enlisted.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some other elements of the relationships between ranks? If you can name them, you can demonstrate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can demonstrate rank by the nature and scope of decisions on which each rank is focused, by the kind of orders they give and receive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note how people react to receiving a given order. Are they proud to be given that responsibility? That suggests a responsibility usually given to someone of higher rank. Do they feel insulted? That's a responsibility usually given to a lower rank. Chagrinned that they're still doing this menial work after so long in their current rank? That's a sign of a responsibility typical of their rank. And if they've been in their rank &quot;too long,&quot; that likely suggests higher-ups see them as unsuitable for promotion (which hints at the meaning of the next rank).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-02-01T19:57:56.530" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1204" CreationDate="2011-02-02T00:01:51.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a similar story recently, leaving the character nameless as a method of dehumanisation as opposed to implimenting mystery. I think the best way to do it is to use more thought-based 1st person interjections. This makes events more interesting, with added variation in the form of narration and allows the reader to get some idea of the character, limited by the way you choose to portray his monologues. If you are trying to incorporate mystery as a theme, you could always make his thoughts conflicting, giving the reader added interest and questioning as to why he is like he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user656" LastActivityDate="2011-02-02T00:01:51.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1273" CreationDate="2011-02-02T03:48:15.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of any legit reviewing services for tech books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the proposals I've seen from people who do promotions want to charge an arm and a leg, and still expect you to tell them where to promote your work. Don't bother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some recommendations, off the top of my head:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure your publisher's marketing people know that you want to work with them on promotion. Let them know what you're doing for promotions as well, as you don't want to blow any deals that they're trying to cut.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to people you know in the target audience (and you should know plenty if you're a subject matter expert, right?) and ask them where they get their recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find the on-topic blogs with the largest number of readers and offer them a free review copy (or copies).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to any on-topic user group who'll let you speak. Bring books along for giveaways. Bring along a few more to give to the user group leader afterwards to be given away at future meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find the popular podcasts (if any) in the field, and let them know that you'd like to be a guest on their shows.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find popular on-topic mailing lists and answer questions. Always have info about your book in your sig. But &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; mention your book in the body of an answer unless the question is about book recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2011-02-02T03:48:15.757" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-02T16:40:24.583" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1273" CreationDate="2011-02-02T05:11:55.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is one (probably less traditional) approach, which covers the whole process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ashmaurya.com/2011/01/meta-principles-i-learned-from-running-lean/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ashmaurya.com/2011/01/meta-principles-i-learned-from-running-lean/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea here is to couple audience discovery and promotion to the actual writing of the book in an iterative process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="521" LastActivityDate="2011-02-02T05:11:55.787" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-02T16:40:24.583" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1204" CreationDate="2011-02-02T20:20:19.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about using the second person instead of the third person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2011-02-02T20:20:19.047" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1279" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-02T20:44:02.207" Score="24" ViewCount="40309" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a reason or is it arbitrary/tradition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-04-18T03:07:35.603" LastActivityDate="2019-11-21T17:40:43.047" Title="Why are papers printed in a two column format?" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2011-02-02T21:34:35.880" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Long lines of text can be hard to read, so doing multiple columns breaks the lines up to something more optimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2011-02-02T21:34:35.880" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1265" CreationDate="2011-02-03T05:31:00.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quote seems to be cynically alluding to the cliched quest motif and personal transformation tropes that pop culture tends to attach to literary memoirs. There is no formula, simply literary tropes and conventions that an individual uses to enhance the narrative framework of their life story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The underlying assumption is that a story must possess a narrative, and insofar as a literary memoir is a story, it must present its information within the framework of a narrative. This genre, either sincerely or ironically, puts into practice the maxim that every person is the hero of their story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-02-03T05:31:00.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1282" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1289" CreationDate="2011-02-03T09:08:37.510" Score="7" ViewCount="2186" Body="&lt;p&gt;What should we write in a movie review? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T19:44:53.330" LastActivityDate="2021-07-31T12:49:32.627" Title="How to write great movie review?" Tags="|style|reviews|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1282" CreationDate="2011-02-03T14:07:23.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Snappy headline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compelling lead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Say what you liked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Say what you didn't like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optional: a little analysis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optional: compare some aspect of the&#xA;film, actors, or director to&#xA;something else in the genre or the&#xA;person's body of work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solid close.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write it as though you were&#xA;addressing a good friend who wanted&#xA;to see the film, either to recommend&#xA;it or warn against it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-03T14:07:23.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1284" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-03T15:31:44.250" Score="100" ViewCount="3371309" Body="&lt;p&gt;What guidelines and language should be used to write a prompt email? Ideally I would like it to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Respectful&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not too formal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular I am thinking in terms of business, and communication between businesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastEditorUserId="7986" LastEditDate="2020-04-15T20:39:38.127" LastActivityDate="2020-04-15T20:39:38.127" Title="How to write a prompt email?" Tags="|email|letter|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1284" CreationDate="2011-02-03T18:03:48.600" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, makes sure you're clear what you're asking about and don't assume they have the same information that you do. If you're following up on a submission make sure you tell them the title of the story and when you sent it off. It's possible that lost/misplaced your submission so this information well help them find your work. Just remember to give them enough time to reply, I usually suggest waiting twice the listed average response time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one I've actually sent in the past. It's a little bit to terse but I was quickly banging it out, but it does cover the very basics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm just sending in a query for the&#xA;  submission &quot;Changing the Way&quot; I sent&#xA;  it in on the 5th of October 2009. I do&#xA;  not believe I have yet to receive a&#xA;  response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did get a quick response back on this. It turns out that they had misplaced it and quickly found it once I asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2011-02-03T18:03:48.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1273" CreationDate="2011-02-03T18:36:05.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Dori To answer your points: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The marketing department of my publisher doesn't seem to take any active action in promoting my book. They are letting me do things by myself mostly. No outside the box thinking, special help, etc. They focus mostly on distribution and maybe some deals for some of their series of books with some retailers, but nothing else and nothing truly tailored to each author and/or book.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The second &amp;amp; third tip - i already did some stuff on that. What I've discovered is that the effectiveness differs a lot, based on how each blog/site owner has developed his community. Few communities are truly strong.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regarding podcast - i just managed to find a promising one, still a start-up but promising: &lt;a href=&quot;http://authorscast.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://authorscast.com&lt;/a&gt; Others might find it useful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks all for sharing your suggestions. :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user654" LastActivityDate="2011-02-03T18:36:05.283" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-03T18:36:05.283" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1240" CreationDate="2011-02-03T20:53:33.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've heard of this thing called imagination, right?  It always surprises me when people are surprised at a writer's ability to &quot;get inside&quot; someone else.  You're making up the rules, so you get to be or do or see whatever you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting to know you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pretend you're on a first date with your character.  Ask questions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about where your characters came from.  How will this influence their speech?  Do all your characters talk the same way?  Have the same vocabulary?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wind them up and let them go.  Once you know who they are, a lot of what you see will be reaction to events.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leave room for surprises.  You can't really know everything about someone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveats: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't get caught up in this.  It's easy to spend all your time with your characters and never get to your story.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just because you know something about your character doesn't mean it has to come out in your writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing about your friends isn't any better than writing about yourself (and could probably get you in  more trouble).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-03T20:53:33.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1256" CreationDate="2011-02-03T21:10:02.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;David Gemmell and Bernard Cornwell are both well-known (in certain circles at least) for their excellent battle scenes. Simon Scarrow also does an excellent job with combat scenes. Robert Low is actually a bit too gorey for my tastes, but he has some excellent battles at sea and on land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scarrow, Cornwell, and Low all write historical fiction and are therefore more realistic. They also have a good mix of individual combat and full-scale battles between armies. Low writes about Viking warfare. Scarrow writes about the Roman Legions in ancient Britain and the Middle-East as well as novels following the lives of Arthur Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte. Bernard Cornwell has written books about the American Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, Arthurian Britain, Alfred the Great's Britain, The Hundred Years War...Well, you get the idea. He also has excerpts available on his site here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bernardcornwell.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bernardcornwell.net/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naomi Novik also writes good action scenes. She writes about a draconic air force during the Napoleonic Wars, but there are many good naval and ground fights as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conn Iggulden is good too. He's written a tetralogy retelling Julius Caesar, and is currently writing a series about Genghis Khan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lee Child's Jack Reacher series is very good. He can make any scene suspenseful. His writing style is somewhat unique as well. The series is about a former MP living off the radar, but usually getting involved in trouble of some sort in every town he passes through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of so many more...Brent Weeks, Rafael Sabatini, Jim Butcher, Lois McMaster Bujold....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="308" LastActivityDate="2011-02-03T21:10:02.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1282" CreationDate="2011-02-03T23:10:31.193" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you write a movie review, you are giving a recommendation to strangers.  Were your best friend asking about whether he or she would like a particular movie, you could base your answer on your knowledge of his or her likes and dislikes.  You can't do that when writing for a general audience.  So the focus of a movie review is less &quot;You'll love/hate this&quot; and more &quot;I loved/hated this and here's why.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roger Ebert has written that a reader should ideally be able to tell whether he or she will enjoy a movie regardless of whether the reviewer did.  Part of the trick to that is providing an accurate description of the film.  Tell your readers what genre the film is in, who made it, who is acting in it, and any other relevant information that will help them decide if it's the kind of movie they would enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, you relate your own reaction to the movie.  This means not just saying what you thought of the movie, but why you feel that way.  The more you can explain your reactions to a movie, the more your readers will be able to trust that you know what you're talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you don't have to mark the movie you're reviewing as either a gem or junk with nothing in between, you do want to leave your readers with an understanding of how you feel about the film and whether you think it's worth seeing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-08-13T01:19:46.627" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T01:19:46.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="921" CreationDate="2011-02-04T06:38:11.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some things that grab my attention in good nonfiction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A slow revelation of facts that raises questions at the beginning of an article or passage and answers them toward the end&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A balance of factual information with anecdotes that bring the information to life&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Judicious background information that enhances the relevance or importance of the information, but does not draw attention away from the main point&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T06:38:11.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1291" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1308" CreationDate="2011-02-04T07:16:29.910" Score="5" ViewCount="1039" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an idea for a series of science articles, but I don't have a strong background in the particular field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's a good way to identify experts who I could interview to shore up the details and make sure I get the facts straight? The local college might be a good start, but where do I go from there if I need more information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastEditorUserId="84" LastEditDate="2011-02-04T13:06:17.693" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T08:20:52.047" Title="How do I find good interview subjects?" Tags="|non-fiction|research|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1262" CreationDate="2011-02-04T10:13:21.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written for &lt;a href=&quot;http://uxbooth.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UXBooth.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://1stwebdesigner.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1stwebdesigner.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onextrapixel.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;onextrapixel.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://webdesignerledger.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;webdesignerledger.com&lt;/a&gt; and a bunch more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a look around almost all technology sites welcome submissions. Many will let you pitch an idea first, and some will ask for you to submit a finished article for them to review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, just have a look around sites you are interested in, look for an email address, and pitch an idea. The worst answer you can get is a no, and if you've got some interesting ideas, they are more than likely to get picked up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="664" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T10:13:21.953" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-04T10:13:21.953" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1294" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1570" CreationDate="2011-02-04T13:07:15.420" Score="6" ViewCount="5837" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm planning to shoot and direct my own short, small budget science fiction movie as a long term project to learn more about movie making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm at the very start where I need to write a draft story for others to provide feedback on and my question is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I first write a traditional short story and then adapt that into a screenplay or, since this is for a movie, go straight into writing a detailed screenplay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="671" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-09-13T21:58:40.503" LastActivityDate="2021-11-30T15:50:35.370" Title="Short Story first or skip to Screenplay" Tags="|short-story|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1266" CreationDate="2011-02-04T13:18:32.740" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First remember that for many readers &quot;Colonel&quot; and &quot;Sergeant&quot; are just as alien as &quot;Oberst&quot; and &quot;Feldwebel&quot;.  A civilian who doesn't know rank may well assume both are just some kind of soldier.  To truly understand the rank dynamic, show how the two interact, or how one person reacts when he is preparing to meet (or surprised by) someone of another rank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do they think about each other?  Sergeants worry about whether the colonel who is coming is a good or bad officer; Colonels don't have time to worry about the sergeant they are about to meet.   Lieutenants worry about themselves, and occasionally about the next officer up the chain, while Captains worry about their lieutenants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do they act around each other?  Use the right verb to convey the tone and intent. A lieutenant may question a captain or correct a sergeant but may feel the need to instruct an airman.  A Major, on the other hand, will not explain much of anything - he will order or direct and then probably leave, unless he's recently promoted and still falling back into the habits of a Captain.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking is pretty simple because you have the honorifics and shortcuts that make military speech so efficient.  But even the difference between &quot;yessir&quot; and &quot;yes, sir!&quot; lets your reader understand the speaker a little more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show the work that they have to do.  A sergeant's job is greasy, muddy, back-breaking, or tedious.  A lieutenant's job might be more accurately described as titchy, stressful, or never-ending.  A colonel's job might not seem like work at all until you realize he's doing it from the time he wakes up until the time he sleeps, for months on end.  Describe the tasks they are working on when the narrative interrupts them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you put enough clues about their clothing, work habits, and relative moods, the reader will understand the people and not just their relative ranks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user684" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T13:18:32.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1294" CreationDate="2011-02-04T13:32:43.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a movie expert, but I think you should start by writing the traditional short draft story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, you have something to show to people and get feedback of the story and they even can help you with some ideas for the screenplay and the footage. People often can imagine the story they are reading, inside their heads (that's one of the good reasons to read the book instead of seeing the book's film adaptation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, you can tie up your ideas for the movie before minding with the details of the screenplay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user688" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T13:32:43.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="487" CreationDate="2011-02-04T13:47:39.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can even write programs, putting your creativeness not only into code quality, performance and other issues -- this is called &quot;literate programming&quot; and proposed by Don Knuth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T13:47:39.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1294" CreationDate="2011-02-04T13:53:17.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a movie expert either, but for all the same reasons Bernardo suggests, I think you should create a detailed outline and storyboards rather than either a short story or a screenplay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to tell the story before filming it. You need feedback to make sure the story works. However, the details you can use in a short story (where visuals are no object) are very different from those you use in filming. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say your villian is the traditional Bug-Eyed Monster (BEM) with a whole bunch of slimy tentacles. In a short story, you can describe how the BEM slithers and squelches across the room, how the muscles undulate in each limb as it heaves its stinking bulk forward, how the acidic slime sizzles as it eats away the carpet. Scary, dramatic, effective. As a writer, you can keep piling on impossible details (the BEM can become invisible, it has basilisk eyes which turns its prey to stone, it can sing Russell Watson songs) to your heart's content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as a &lt;i&gt;filmmaker,&lt;/i&gt; you have very different constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a budget for SFX. You have to create the BEM puppet or spring for the computer and software (and tech person) to create the monster's movement. You'll need to get a greenscreen set and several suits to make the invisibility effect work. You have to get enough ear protection for everyone in the room when the creature starts singing &quot;Faith of the Heart.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing an outline will help you make sure the plot works. Storyboards will help you ensure you can actually film the thing. &lt;i&gt;Then&lt;/i&gt; you write the screenplay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T13:53:17.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2011-02-04T14:06:33.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess would be that it is to counterbalance a cost-saving measure. They needed to have the words be below a certain size so they could fit more of them per page; and in that quantity a single column would just look like a big chunk of text. So the reasons are two-fold; one, they reduce the size of the words to save costs by using fewer pages, and two, they partially offset the visual problems associated with having text that small by breaking it up in a way that's easier on the eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="701" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T14:06:33.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1294" CreationDate="2011-02-04T14:08:39.010" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is for a short, I suggest writing a treatment first and trying to shoot directly from it. Improvise. Then, and only then, you'll have a clear idea what you will need further down the road in larger productions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a treatment is basically writing a short story, with a certain structure. Structure depends on your preference, of course. However, for your first foray you might try writing a 3 act structure. 1/4 for setup, 2/4 for confrontation and 1/4 for resolution - with first and second act ending in, so called, plot points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it might sound formulaic at first, but you can get pretty damn far with that. More info at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure&lt;/a&gt; and I suggest reading books, or attending workshops on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially recommended are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Syd Field's &lt;strong&gt;'Screenplay'&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0385339038&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Screenplay-Foundations-Screenwriting-Syd-Field/dp/0385339038/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1296828417&amp;amp;sr=1-1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Robert Mckee's &lt;strong&gt;'Story'&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060391685&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Story-Substance-Structure-Principles-Screenwriting/dp/0060391685&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="710" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T14:08:39.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2011-02-04T14:14:24.517" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It was shown, by experiment, that optimal amount of text for print material is ~60 characters per column. This was calculated by the ratio between font size and leading which were picked by humans as most comfortable to process. Higher amount of characters per column interferes with brain's ability to scan through text easily, much like you need to break text into paragraphs for same reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="710" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T14:14:24.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2011-02-04T14:18:55.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dramatica.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dramatica&lt;/a&gt; useful, and I tend to use Final Draft for my work. However, I think any word processor you're comfortable with is good enough - applications that assist you in tracking your notes and story are more important than writing app itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="710" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T14:18:55.760" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-04T14:18:55.760" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1284" CreationDate="2011-02-04T14:19:10.043" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd probably go with something on the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi [whoever]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just checking that the XXX I sent you on Xth XXX is okay. I have to [do&#xA;something] with your feedback before I&#xA;can [do something else]. Can you let&#xA;me know when you'll be able to look at&#xA;it for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, it makes it sound like you're putting yourself in their debt (whether or not that is true is irrelevant), and people on the whole tend to like people being indebted to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also doesn't actively demand that they do something immediately, just asks them when they will be able to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T14:19:10.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1251" CreationDate="2011-02-04T14:25:33.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yeah, I'm afraid I'm with Dori on this one, as much as it pains me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried my own hand at translating something into French a while back. Then I sent it to a publisher-friend. His reply was kind, but direct: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you had been a professional translator, I'd have said thanks, but no thanks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that was for something that I was particularly proud of...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know exactly what you mean about translation quality though. I've seen some things translated where the translator completely missed the point of the original. So proof-reading the text afterwards is absolutely essential. Of course, you then have to discuss to work out if the translator has misunderstood your text, or if you've misunderstood their translation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I don't need to explain to you all about the edge cases where there isn't any direct translation and they have to 'make it up'...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="718" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T08:24:19.523" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T08:24:19.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="878" CreationDate="2011-02-04T14:35:56.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe I'm missing something, or it's just so obvious no-one has bothered to mention it, but don't forget to tell them &lt;em&gt;WHY&lt;/em&gt; (or maybe that's what @Ethan means by 'showing them round the field?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, even if they don't follow the detail (or they skip it), they can still understand where you're trying to take them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="718" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T14:35:56.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1294" CreationDate="2011-02-04T14:47:22.380" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I'm not a screenwriter, but I've studied the process.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming you're talking about writing the script for the short movie, and not for a second feature-length movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you don't want to start writing your script until you absolutely know your story. There are a number of ways to get your story down: an outline, a treatment (which is basically an outline in paragraph form), or just in your head. The third is probably the toughest to do because you can't show it to anyone, and you can't store it losslessly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to first write a pitch, which is a basic statement of your characters, their motivation, and what happens in the story. Tell your pitch to some people to see if it's compelling. If it's working for you, write out an outline so you know exactly what each scene will do. From there, writing the actual script is a snap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's better to show people completed scripts. It shows you're committed to the project and communicates clearly what you want to shoot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="726" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T14:47:22.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1291" CreationDate="2011-02-04T14:47:55.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This would depend on the field, mostly, but you should be able to find references to the experts in that field through a standard Google search. I do think going to the local college is a good start as well, and chances are their library will have some good reference material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you wanted to find out more about the top astronomers, you could reference the Astrophysical Journal for articles on the subject that you want to write about, note the authors, and contact them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T14:47:55.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="878" CreationDate="2011-02-04T14:48:41.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important thing in my opinion is showing them simplified yet informative graphics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any topic and for information where you can provide graphics do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For software projects UML diagrams has become the standard in planning and modelling your software, for a good reason. Not only the programmers will understand them but also the management and clients. Storyboards (GUI-screen-shots with functionality description) also help a great deal here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;InformationIsBeatiful&lt;/a&gt; is a great example of how you can abstract very complex things, numbers and tables into easily understandable diagrams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="727" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T14:48:41.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1284" CreationDate="2011-02-04T15:10:21.627" Score="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;When following up on an e-mail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually forward the original e-mail to the original recipient, with some added text at the top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Hello [Name],&#xA;Have you had time to look into this?&#xA;&#xA;Kind Regards,&#xA;...&#xA;&#xA;Forwarded message:&#xA;From: ....&#xA;Date: ...&#xA;Subject: ...&#xA;To: ...&#xA;&#xA;...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="744" LastEditorUserId="744" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T20:10:16.200" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T20:10:16.200" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2011-02-04T15:23:55.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://storyblue.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Storyblue&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add to the list, Storyblue is a writing tool I developed. Index-card-esque, keeps your characters/scenes/notes organized and immediately available while you write. Cross-platform via Adobe AIR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets you set writing goals: Words per day, and X words by [date]. Keeps track of your progress with pretty graphs :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to keep it opinionated and simple; No long forms to fill out with character information (eyebrow color, girth), or built-in web browsers to store every page and article I find...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user752" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T15:23:55.157" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-04T15:23:55.157" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="487" CreationDate="2011-02-04T15:25:22.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is space for creativity in explaining complex computer technologies with real-world analogies. This, besides a good explanation to the wannabe technology adopter, can serve as a communication vehicle to the whole multidisciplinary teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://daverecycles.com/post/3104767110/explain-event-driven-web-servers-to-your-grandma&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;talking about a pizza delivery&#xA;instead of event driven web&#xA;servers&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2009/07/31/understanding-load-averages&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;talking about cars and&#xA;lanes instead of sever load&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;complex&quot; ideas are not so complex anymore, are they ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People understand real world/social situations much better then abstract ones as explained in (Michael A. Nielsen Extreme Thinking (sorry can't post more than 2 links)) analogy with social situation and a card game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This I also see as a challenge for creative writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still haven't found any good real-world analogy for web technologies, ex. how to describe to a kid how does a whole process of auth/synchronous/asynchronous/ajax/http/cookie requests form a complete working web page/service. Heck, I would even use this in communication with my fellow team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then again, you are asking about jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="739" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T15:25:22.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2" CreationDate="2011-02-04T15:34:43.613" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the most basic difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First Person uses I: &lt;em&gt;I went to the store. I bought a loaf of bread.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second Peron uses you: &lt;em&gt;You went to the store. You bought a loaf of bread.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Third Person uses he or she: &lt;em&gt;She went to the store. She bought a loaf of bread.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What kind of story is better suited for each one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's entirely up to the writer. Whichever one helps tell the story the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all three cases, it is entirely possible to get closer to the character by showing their internal monologue (thoughts). So it's not necessary to tell a story in first person to develop emotional attachment. Deep POV, or Limited Third Person, provides the reader direct access to that character's thoughts and emotions, as much as if told in first person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in Jonathan Maberry's &lt;strong&gt;Patient Zero&lt;/strong&gt;, all chapters told from the main character's point of view are written in first person. All chapters told from another character's point of view are written in limited third person (Deep POV). And it works very well. The reader has access to the thoughts and emotions of each character, but only to one character at a time per chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see this used in thrillers a lot because the main character can never know enough about the events to keep the story interesting. Often, the main character isn't even able to identify the villain until close to the end, so the writer has to give the reader multiple character points of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there advantages or disadvantages inherent to each form?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not objective ones. It all depends on the writer and the story they're telling. I will sometimes write a section in two different points of view to see which one tells the story best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, writing in the first person you are always following a character, while in  the third person you can &quot;jump&quot; between story lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A writer should avoid jumping from one character to another within a logical unit. In most cases, this means sticking to a single character through a chapter, but could also work at the section or even paragraph level if the writer is skilled enough. This part of your question is more about character point of view (which character is telling the story) than point of view (first, second, third).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You rarely see pieces written in second person, but it's not unheard of: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-person_narrative#List_of_notable_second_person_narratives&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;List of Notable Second Person Narratives at WikiPedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T15:34:43.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1284" CreationDate="2011-02-04T15:36:42.347" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's how I write it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hi - this is just a friendly reminder that I'm waiting for [whatever it is]. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="760" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T15:36:42.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1291" CreationDate="2011-02-04T15:38:05.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going off what Tom said, go to the journals. I'm currently working on an article about sleep and memory, and to get my interview sources, I just googled &quot;sleep journal,&quot; went through a few studies in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, and searched for the authors' contact emails. Generally, the authors of studies are at least part-time professors, so finding their emails is rarely a challenge. &#xA;Another way to go about it is to search for centers that research and/or treat the issue you're writing about--eg, I found the Berklee Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab, and its website had a list of contacts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your piece!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="762" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T15:38:05.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1294" CreationDate="2011-02-04T16:00:05.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find a screen writing group and see how they work. It will give you a venue for feedback on your work and it will give you access to a group of people who have developed a process to get feedback on their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="775" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T16:00:05.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-02-04T16:01:08.090" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question. I'm actually working on a MA in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University, and I'll graduate in June. My thesis is a horror novel approx 80,000. In the space of 18 months, I completed two drafts. I started my second revision (third draft) last night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did the transition from coder to novelist come as a result of laborious study and training(professional/self), or did you employ some other strategy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is less about studying and more about practicing. You can read all the books you want, but the fact is that reading a book about writing is not going make you a better writing. It's not like learning how to code where you can develop your skills by studying a book. I found my best textbooks are current popular novels. Study those, not the how-to books. That's like studying the sample code, seeing how something actually works as opposed to having it described to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have only one book to suggest: &lt;strong&gt;On Writing&lt;/strong&gt;, by Stephen King.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Only writing will make you a better writer.&lt;/em&gt; Write something. Revise it. Share it. Accept any feedback with open arms. It'll suck, it always does the first time, so write something else. And then something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can, find a local writer's workshop. If you can't find a local one, then check online next. I strongly suggest finding an in-person group, as you'll get a lot more out of person-to-person interaction than in getting comments through email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What characteristics of the coder mind-set lend themselves to writing fiction well, and which ones are a hindrance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you list out the characteristics (don't assume we all share the same list), then I can comment on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any habits or &quot;mind hacks&quot; that you can recommend for getting the coder mind in shape to do serious fiction writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only habit to develop is to sit and write every day. Start small. Take a page from The Pomodoro Technique. I use Focus Booster and work in 25 minute stretches with 5 minute breaks between. I write about 90 minutes every night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T16:01:08.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-02-04T16:12:41.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two words: Neal Stephenson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, while a lot of the programmers I know do read a lot of technical manuals, they are also big science fiction fans, and I think that almost all of them would be great writers. The act of great programming is telling a story, directing a user to a goal, and showing other programmers what your code is doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ggambett mentions &lt;strong&gt;Writing Fiction for Dummies&lt;/strong&gt;, and it's a great starting point. Lawrence Block, a mystery writer, wrote a great process book called &lt;strong&gt;Writing the Novel From Plot to Print&lt;/strong&gt;. Granted it's from 1979, but it's highly accessible, and describes how he made a living writing all kinds of novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter how you do it, good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="769" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T16:12:41.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2011-02-04T16:17:53.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think when Keyframe says &quot;optimal amount of text for print material&quot; that this is related to scanning and absorbing key words, but not deeper reading comprehension levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that when I'm reading a novel or a even a non-fiction book I pay closer attention than when I'm reading the newspaper. It might be that ~60 characters per line is optimal for that level of casual reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="769" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T16:17:53.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2011-02-04T16:25:24.467" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also when writing mathematical equations, there is a tendency to have a lot of free space on the sides. Using two columns not only to make text reading more comfortable, but it also allows to make a better use of the space on the page, by reducing the white space on the side of the equations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="783" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T16:25:24.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-02-04T16:31:25.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a novelist, but I am doing more writing now than ever. I started with blogging, and then a few years ago started work on a liberal arts graduate degree (theology). When I went back to school, I ended up changing jobs, moving from solid software development work to being the technology director at a prep school. The school job does not involve the overtime I typically put in as a programmer, which leaves me time and energy for my graduate work. We also sold our house and moved into an apartment, which removes the time demand of house/yard maintenance, and lowered our expenses so I could take the lower paying job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, I've made several life-style adjustments to accomodate this change. I'm still doing technical work, including a little programming, because it is the way I know how to make a living. I am writing for my theology classes, work, blog, and other occasions. When I finish my degree, I plan to do more writing. However, I realize that it is rare for people to be able to make a living writing, so I am glad to have my technology skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="754" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T16:31:25.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-02-04T16:34:25.193" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a crutch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scariest thing about writing is the idea that nobody will like (or even understand) the stories and characters you create. Writing fanfic is an attempt to dodge that risk by using stories and characters that are &lt;em&gt;already&lt;/em&gt; well liked and well understood instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that you never learn anything without taking a risk, and so by hiding behind other peoples' characters fanfic writers stunt their own development.  The way you learn how to write good characters and compelling stories is by writing bad and boring ones.  The things you do wrong give you insight on how to do it right.  But this never happens in fanfic, because you always have that world's established tropes to fall back on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, to tell great stories you have to be willing to fail completely, and fanfic writers aren't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="786" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T16:34:25.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2011-02-04T16:45:45.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is, is it a viable&#xA;  approach to write in a freeform,&#xA;  style-less way to get the basic ideas&#xA;  and plot down and then try to go&#xA;  trough it again and try to force some&#xA;  style (and essentially Beauty) upon&#xA;  it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, absolutely.  Your first draft is the block of marble, not the finished statue. A big part of your art is knowing how to chip away at the block until all that's left is the statue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="786" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T16:45:45.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1330" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1430" CreationDate="2011-02-04T16:55:26.570" Score="4" ViewCount="2870" Body="&lt;p&gt;A personal frustration of mine is when I see a cluster of nouns sitting together in a sentence.  I usually see these in highly technical emails, but not exclusively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a particularly bad example I received this morning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Web Product Provider search print Individual Provider Map does not &#xA;      print the listing originally found [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some good strategies for breaking up these nouns while still keeping the language specific and concise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I should add a little context here as well. This statement isn't supposed to cover a complex topic.  It's nothing more complicated than the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User enters a search term&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User clicks map button on the list of results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User prints the list of results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue I am trying to tackle is that the user who experienced this problem needs to report enough specifics to be complete, but at the same time, do so in a manner that is easily parsed. There is a trend of using clusters of nouns instead of simple English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(P.S. I'm asking this so that I can become a better writer, not as ammunition — just in case you were thinking it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit #2&lt;/strong&gt;: I thought of a few more examples that might paint a better picture of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The operations review evaluation task force is responsible for this task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He doesn't know how to read the aperture adjustment calibration manual.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She started the 12-week half-marathon training regimen for beginners.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="789" LastEditorUserId="789" LastEditDate="2011-02-05T02:57:36.347" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T18:17:49.007" Title="What to do about noun clusters" Tags="|business-writing|email|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1188" CreationDate="2011-02-04T16:55:48.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I store my writing in an encrypted file on my hard disk using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.truecrypt.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TrueCrypt&lt;/a&gt; and periodically store the encrypted file on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dropbox.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DropBox&lt;/a&gt;.  I also keep all the files in a Git repository inside the TrueCrypt volume, but that isn't really for backup purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T16:55:48.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1256" CreationDate="2011-02-04T17:01:19.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a completely different kind of action scene, I recommend any of the Black Company books by Glen Cook. The Mistborn books, recommended above, are outstanding for action by individual characters and small-group fights. In the Black Company, Cook mixes scenes of individual sword swingers with scenes of larger troop-level battles. You don't get either the blow-by-blow account or the individual emotional content that you find in Dune or Mistborn. You do get a sense of seeing the whole battle at once, though, which I find rewarding. It also gives Cook at different way to delivery payoff on preparations his characters have made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="775" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T17:01:19.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1330" CreationDate="2011-02-04T17:03:01.187" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two common strategies are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rearrange words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change nouns to verbs if possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of &lt;em&gt;Web Product Provider&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Provider of the web product&lt;br&gt;&#xA;or&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The web product provides ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I've shorten your example sentence, because I do not understand it ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T17:03:01.187" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1330" CreationDate="2011-02-04T17:06:43.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Howzabout:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Web Product Provider's search&#xA;  result, &quot;Individual Provider Map,&quot;&#xA;  does not...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I in fact understood that chunk of jargon correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T17:06:43.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1176" CreationDate="2011-02-04T17:13:46.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=writechallenge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=writechallenge&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Updated every time you click&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="775" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T17:13:46.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1330" CreationDate="2011-02-04T17:29:59.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The Web Product Provider search print Individual Provider Map does not &#xA;print the listing originally found [...]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here is not the big words, but rather the sentence itself. Consider if those noun clusters as you call them were abbreviations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The WPP search print IPM does not print the listing originally found [...]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks less convoluted but the first part still doesn't make much sense. Considering some simple restructuring. &#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;If the problem persists however you have the option of using tags such as &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;abbr&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;acronym&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The &amp;lt;acronym title=&quot;Web Product Provider&quot;&amp;gt;WPP&amp;lt;/acronym&amp;gt; search print [...]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly you can make the words easier visualization as a single entity, since that's the core of the problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;Web Product Provider&lt;/code&gt; search print &lt;code&gt;Individual Provider Map&lt;/code&gt; does not &#xA;  print the listing originally found [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If dealing with plaintext only, something like this works and is a fairly simple and intuitive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The [Web Product Provider] search print [Individual Provider Map] does not &#xA;print the listing originally found [...]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on situation you could just use some form of quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="589" LastEditorUserId="589" LastEditDate="2011-02-04T17:35:54.087" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T17:35:54.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2011-02-04T17:38:34.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mac users should take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-soulmen.com/ulysses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ulysses&lt;/a&gt;, in addition to the other Mac writing tools mentioned in this thread. They offer a 60-day trial that's fully feature-enabled. They just dropped the price significantly, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener seems nice, but wasn't the right fit for me; it seems to be designed primarily for long-form fiction. The Ulysses interface is simpler and seems more generalized. For example, I started keeping several journals in one Ulysses project using collections, and it fits pretty well for that purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, as a developer geek, I'm not sure that anything beats plain text files using an editor that you're already comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="803" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T17:38:34.450" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-04T17:38:34.450" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-02-04T17:39:34.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doesn't it all depend on whether you intend to show anyone else this fanfic? If you write a story using someone else's characters or world just for your own private practice, surely that is useful for you and does no harm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might help to avoid worries over creating worlds, characters, or even a plot, if you just use an established starting point you are familiar with, and write from there as practice.&#xA;True, you won't get any practice at creating characters, but that is just one of the many facets you need to work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="804" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T17:39:34.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1284" CreationDate="2011-02-04T18:22:31.423" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually write something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was checking my mail and it looks like I didn't get a response to the mail I wrote you, am I wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found that the longer the mail, the lowest the probability that the guy actually replies back to me, so I keep emails short and polite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="816" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T18:22:31.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1330" CreationDate="2011-02-04T18:30:38.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think part of the difficulty with the sentence can be corrected by emphasizing the problem being reported:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using the print functionality after&#xA;  doing a search in the Web Product&#xA;  Provider (specifically, attempting to&#xA;  print the Individual Provider Map)&#xA;  results in the wrong listing being&#xA;  printed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parenthetical statements are not considered ideal; when they can reduce clutter in the core of the sentence, I find them useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user839" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T18:30:38.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-02-04T18:36:33.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you are first attempting to write fiction, fan fiction is a good way to practice.  It gives you existing characters and a world setting so you can focus on drama (or comedy), characterizations, writing sentences that make sense, and creating a story others can understand.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note, your first attempts will suck and will most likely (and deservedly) end up in the trash can. Expect to spend a few thousand hours writing crap before you produce anything worth showing to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have cut your teeth writing some fan fiction, you should ask yourself a question and be honest: Are you writing for the fun of it, or because you want to create something publishable (or at least something others will take seriously).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want your writing to be taken seriously, then quickly leave fan fiction behind.  Good writing requires mastering a wide variety of skills, such as creating interesting characters from scratch, building your own world with its own mythology, and so forth.  Fan fiction won’t help you in those areas, except perhaps as initial inspiration.  Relying too much on fan fiction will retard those skills and make it harder for you to branch out into other areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user843" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T18:36:33.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="993" CreationDate="2011-02-04T18:39:49.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prologues are all about &quot;laying pipe:&quot; explaining the back story and how the novel's world works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you read agents' blogs, you can see that agents are very anti-prologue these days, so I always advise writers to get right into the story and reveal back story and rules of the world slowly, over time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is easier said than done. Science fiction and fantasy in particular require world-building because the settings and their rules tend to be unfamiliar to readers. One way to ease into back story, though, is to reveal the unfamiliar world &lt;em&gt;as the protagonist discovers it.&lt;/em&gt; This technique works when the world is new to the character, such as in &lt;em&gt;Alice in Wonderland&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Through the Looking-Glass&lt;/em&gt;, where Alice discovers the fantasy world after she falls through the rabbit hole/goes through the mirror. As she explores, she describes everything she sees and everything that happens, so we learn at the same time she does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the characters already live in the fantasy world, the key is to get readers to care about them as quickly as possible (see screenwriting guru Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! books, in which he advises that your protagonist do something kind or sympathetic ASAP so we see his goodness or vulnerability and bond with him/root for him; this technique gets us hooked). &lt;em&gt;Then&lt;/em&gt; you reveal the world and the back story. Once we care, we'll be more forgiving of a few digressions--as long as they're relevant to what's going on at the time and aren't too info-dumpy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A useful trick to get readers to stick with you while you reveal back story and/or the rules of the world is to get your narrator or the viewpoint character to muse about what's going on. You can sneak explanation into the musing. For example, &quot;Of course Brunhilde wasn't allowed in the castle. The only commoners who had ever set foot inside were members of the Ningning family, and for good reason. During the wars between the barons and King Whoop-de-doo, the Ningning family was responsible for hiding and protecting the king's son and heir, Prince OMG, and his descendants, including the present king, Bling II, weren't about to forget their kindness. Only one problem: Brunhilde wasn't a Ningning.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="831" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T18:39:49.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1344" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1347" CreationDate="2011-02-04T18:49:14.720" Score="57" ViewCount="8132" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had heard some debate on this topic, and I had always learned to use two spaces after a period.  But it would seem there is an argument against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I do not understand what the issue is against this practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="793" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T20:27:48.630" Title="Should you use two spaces after a period, or just a single one?" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-02-04T18:57:08.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a crutch if you don't make it solid enough to stand on it's own. Write good stories that can be read in any context and you'll be able to mitigate that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't let yourself get stuck in niche fanfic cultures. Don't write stuff that requires people having read every other fanfic on the forum to understand. And don't let fanfic be the only type of story you ever write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand that you're just choosing the constraints and backstories of your world. People that write non-fantasy use the real world as their source material. It's not a crutch for them, it's a choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="835" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T18:57:08.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2011-02-04T19:08:25.000" Score="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, this is a disagreement based on technological generations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When everyone was handwriting things, there was no issue - the space after a period was however large the writer thought looked good.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But with the first generation of typewriters, a decision had to be made. These were monospace typewriters, and with fixed spacing it was considered that two spaces after the period set it apart and made it clearer when the sentence ended, distinguishing more clearly from a comma.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With late-70's proportional spacing typewriters, and even more with the advent of word processors, the system became intelligent enough to adjust the space depending on the letters on either side, a process known as kerning in the typographical world. This allowed the space after the comma and the space after the period to be clearly distinguished even if they were both typed as a single space.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the debate: those of us who grew up with typewriters were taught &quot;always use two spaces after a period,&quot; while younger folks who grew up with word processors were taught (frequently by Microsoft's grammar checker) to use a single space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer? I try to use a single space in documents, but two spaces when I'm using a monospace font (such as comments in computer code). And the entry field on this site, which displays monospace while I type but publishes as proportional spacing, is really confusing me. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="847" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T19:08:25.000" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2011-02-04T19:13:28.817" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used CVS, SVN, mercurial and git. All work just fine (well, maybe not CVS), but Git has one feature that's particularly handy -- the concept of a staging area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're working on something longer, say a novel, the staging area is really nice. Say you make some edits to chapter 1, some others to chapter 7. With other version controls if you commit your changes it's all one commit. That might be fine for some people, but I really like the ability to commit separately. That way if I want to keep my changes to chapter 1, but roll back the changes to chapter 7, it's easy to do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quick overview: &lt;a href=&quot;http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/#the-staging-area&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/#the-staging-area&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user795" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T19:13:28.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2011-02-04T19:48:37.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a couple of things I've done or tried over the years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.) When starting my edits or writing for the day, I make a copy of the word doc using the date in the filename. That way, I have a new copy each day and can fairly easily go back to a previous version on a day-by-day basis. This sounds like what you're trying to get away from, but it works for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.) When releasing in eBook format, I version each &quot;release&quot; with a version similar to a software product (I'm a software engineer by day). A &quot;release&quot; consists of the word doc, a pdf (for my web site, Scribd, etc.), an ePub (for B&amp;amp;N), the cover png (for CreateSpace), and the CreateSpace version. All of these files go into a separate folder. Backups are done to Carbonite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I track the release in a spreadsheet, mostly so I know which retailers have which version. It can get very confusing, very fast if you don't keep some sort of record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've entertained the idea of using SVN (source control), but haven't yet had to go to that extreme. I wouldn't recommend SVN for the novice, though. It's easy to get tangled up with it; hours will be wasted trying to make it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="858" LastEditorUserId="858" LastEditDate="2011-02-04T20:06:56.847" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T20:06:56.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2011-02-04T20:22:57.663" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agreed. The basic premise of two spaces is now an outmoded idea, however there are many people that still write like this, and many that still teach using two spaces. Most of the time this is simply due to the way that people were originally taught to format typed text, they teach it the way they were taught. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a co-worker who is twenty-two years old, and doesn't use a typewriter, but he uses two spaces at the end of every sentence because he was taught that it is the appropriate format. I suspect that this practice will be around for a long time to come, even though it is no longer necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="769" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T20:22:57.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2011-02-04T20:23:04.963" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know there is tons of disagreement out there, but I have known several people voice their frustration when they see double spaces after periods — I'm no different. It's the 21st century. We don't have typewriters anymore. We have word processors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One space after the period gets the point across. Two spaces after the period feels, to me, somewhat like adding an exclamation point after every sentence! Completely unnecessary. It sticks out like a sore thumb. One space looks more natural to the eye because we have now grown accustomed to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to use two spaces, though, then use two. Just be consistent throughout the piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="859" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T20:23:04.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2011-02-04T21:04:43.980" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like the equivalent of the &quot;tabs versus spaces&quot; fight that programmers have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, if you are being held up by the number of spaces after a period, then I'd just quit writing, because you'll never get past that first sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or take the e e cummings approach. Screw punctuation entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="875" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T21:04:43.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2011-02-04T21:16:38.257" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an old school web developer (grew up with typewriters), and I sometimes do slip and put a double space in the code.  The nice thing is that the browsers take it out for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you intentionally encode the double space like so &quot;&lt;code&gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;nbsp;&lt;/code&gt;&quot;.  And who's gonna do that!? :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user890" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T21:16:38.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2011-02-04T21:17:02.093" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, there's no &lt;em&gt;grammatical&lt;/em&gt; reason for two spaces, it's purely a mechanical issue. Since the mechanical context that led to the double-spaces (the typewriter) is pretty much gone, the practice of double-spaces should be gone, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="857" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T21:17:02.093" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2011-02-04T21:18:40.580" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2281146/&quot;&gt;compelling answer&lt;/a&gt; to this question on Slate last month. One space is correct, two is wrong. It's not a matter of preference. &lt;strong&gt;Two is wrong&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule. It's one of the canonical rules of the profession, in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men's shirt buttons on the right and women's on the left. Every major style guide—including the Modern Language Association Style Manual and the Chicago Manual of Style—prescribes a single space after a period. (The Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association, used widely in the social sciences, allows for two spaces in draft manuscripts but recommends one space in published work.) Most ordinary people would know the one-space rule, too, if it weren't for a quirk of history. In the middle of the last century, a now-outmoded technology—the manual typewriter—invaded the American workplace. To accommodate that machine's shortcomings, everyone began to type wrong. And even though we no longer use typewriters, we all still type like we do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="891" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T21:18:40.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2011-02-04T21:18:56.400" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing for publication, professional or otherwise, this is not a matter of preference. Your best bet is to consult a style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use The Chicago Manual of Style. I believe most style guides call for one space. I grew up using two spaces, but thanks to Microsoft Word's grammar and style checking, it automatically corrects when I mess up and try to put in two spaces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not writing for publication, then it is a matter of preference and no one can give you a right or wrong answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: Since one of the other answers references an online article, I figured I would do the same. See Grammar Girl's brief, informative, and rantless post, &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/spaces-period-end-of-sentence.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;How Many Spaces After A Period?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. She also says to use one space. However, she also says this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Although how many spaces you use is ultimately a style choice&lt;/strong&gt;, using one space is by far the most widely accepted and logical style. The Chicago Manual of Style (1), the AP Stylebook (2), and the Modern Language Association (3) all recommend using one space after a period at the end of a sentence. &lt;em&gt;(emphasis mine)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you plan on publishing, one space is your best bet. If in doubt, find which style guide your market adheres to and go with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="747" LastEditDate="2011-02-07T02:06:59.943" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T02:06:59.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1361" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-04T21:21:21.547" Score="6" ViewCount="16984" Body="&lt;p&gt;As everyone here probably knows, &lt;em&gt;The New Yorker&lt;/em&gt; is held in high regard for their editorial process and excellent writing. I really appreciate their content, and I feel that they provide more than just an article — they provide a great literary experience. I often use them as inspiration for writing. &lt;em&gt;The New Yorker&lt;/em&gt; also happens to be one of the few magazines I read (I only read the online version).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But is there anything out there that compares to or exceeds the quality and content offered by &lt;em&gt;The New Yorker&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't even know where to begin to look, but all suggestions are apprecaited!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Tiny FYI: I'm not as interested in politics/entertainment stuff as I am just general news and technology-related content.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="859" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T14:11:04.453" LastActivityDate="2018-04-12T15:04:34.653" Title="Magazines/Websites Similar To The New Yorker?" Tags="|magazines|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2011-02-04T21:21:55.603" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When your text is displayed as an HTML document (web pages, etc.), any extra spaces are &lt;em&gt;automatically&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#h-9.1&quot;&gt;collapsed into one space&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;even if you are using a monospace font&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When your text is displayed (almost) anywhere else in the modern world, single spaces are sufficient in most cases, but you also have the freedom to use a double space to specifically distinguish two statements from one another.  Consider your medium, choose your weapon, convey your message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="880" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T21:21:55.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="993" CreationDate="2011-02-04T21:25:09.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Never write a prologue unless:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your agent/editor insists on it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your genre demands it, such as Epic Fantasy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Develop the story as completely as possible before even thinking about writing a prologue, because its purpose is to explain things the reader must know that are otherwise unknowable by reading the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="747" LastEditDate="2011-02-04T21:34:48.963" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T21:34:48.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1364" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1383" CreationDate="2011-02-04T21:25:17.800" Score="23" ViewCount="3873" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to see a series of example paragraphs, showing before/after a rewrite, to give me specific examples of how writing can be improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anywhere that shows such things? I once read the biography of James Herriot, where they showed part of the first story he ever wrote, and you could see how poor it was compared to the final version eventually achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this very intruging, and wondered if I could learn from more examples like that. So many changes cannot be explained easily, or defined by rules, and an example is needed to illustrate how things can be improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spotted an example on this website just a moment ago too - the original example paragraph was slightly reworded in one of the answers: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1204/how-do-i-better-handle-my-nameless-main-character-when-trying-to-retain-mystery&quot;&gt;nameless-main-character&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="804" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T18:00:02.857" Title="Finding before/after examples where writing has been improved, to learn from" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2011-02-04T21:30:27.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may also be interested in the following article:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.good.is/post/good-design-daily-do-you-double-space-after-periods/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Double Spacing After Periods&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T21:30:27.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2011-02-04T21:46:33.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Word (and OpenOffice.org, at least) supports versioning - I don't recall exactly how to go about using it, but in older versions, at least, &lt;a href=&quot;http://wordprocessing.about.com/library/WordTutorials/blversions.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it seems&lt;/a&gt; you just select the 'Versions' option from the file menu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can compare different versions with essentially a pretty diff, leave comments, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="901" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T21:46:33.540" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1364" CreationDate="2011-02-04T21:49:25.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't exactly what you're looking for, but Brandon Sanderson's novel &lt;em&gt;Warbreaker&lt;/em&gt; was written publicly online. You can look at the older drafts and compare them with the current, published version. It's obviously more than just the writing that changes, though. It's a good read, IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brandonsanderson.com/book/Warbreaker/page/20/WARBREAKER-The-Free-Fantasy-Book-Download&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.brandonsanderson.com/book/Warbreaker/page/20/WARBREAKER-The-Free-Fantasy-Book-Download&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="308" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T21:49:25.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1273" CreationDate="2011-02-04T21:51:43.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to find technical books through recommendations on &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hacker News&lt;/a&gt;.  You can also submit to other, similar venues - Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel like being a bit subversive, you can try &lt;a href=&quot;http://subvertandprofit.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Subvert and Profit&lt;/a&gt;, a site that sells advertising through social media sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="901" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T21:51:43.183" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-04T21:51:43.183" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1361" CreationDate="2011-02-04T21:54:36.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some possibilities...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harpers.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harper's&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Atlantic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Economist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="786" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T21:54:36.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1372" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-04T22:39:48.767" Score="7" ViewCount="1008" Body="&lt;p&gt;In corporate life I've come across two general styles of writing: terse and cryptic or long and complete.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own writing I tend to go too much in the &quot;explain all possible interpretations&quot; direction rather than the &quot;leave as much out as possible&quot; direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to do both? Write about complex matters simply and engagingly? Or are you always torn between the two extremes: either write not enough and follow up with the reader or write too much and risk boring them or losing them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if there is such a way, how do you know when you've hit it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="911" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-02-07T14:22:14.063" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T14:22:14.063" Title="Verbosity: when's enough enough?" Tags="|business-writing|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2011-02-04T22:41:04.880" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rule is not &quot;two spaces after a period;&quot; it's &quot;two spaces at the end of a sentence.&quot; You will notice that the preceding sentence does not end with a period -- nor does this one!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use two if your text will likely be displayed in a monospace font, such as in e-mail (true e-mail is plain text), a .txt file, source code, or on USENET. It does make it more readable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since most people these days do not send true e-mail, write .txt files, or even know what USENET is, that leaves source code. Therefore, if you are not a programmer, use one space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T22:41:04.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1372" CreationDate="2011-02-04T23:30:42.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Email should be as brief as possible. Tutorials and direct answers to questions should be longer. Documentation should be longer still. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have a specific reason to believe that they &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; go down the wrong path, it's generally a poor idea to explain a line of reasoning or action that is not advised. When explaining the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; path, the appropriate depth is entirely dependent on the reader -- there is no universally correct level of detail.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="917" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T23:30:42.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1372" CreationDate="2011-02-04T23:31:39.093" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The classic answer comes from Strunk &amp;amp; White's &lt;strong&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Omit needless words.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see a lot of overwriting in my corporate life. I believe much of it stems from writers who lack confidence in their ability to produce clear prose. I also believe it stems from writers attempting to sound intelligent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-02-04T23:31:39.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-04T23:38:51.650" Score="2" ViewCount="383" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Coming from a background where I've only ever seen readings of a last will and testament in movies, what kind of style would be expected of such a document? Some personal stuff and then legalese generated from that, or something more elaborate?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In movies the structure is usually very straightforward, with &quot;If something (optional), person X gets Y&quot; style clauses. This is useful for the plot, but to me this seems to cover only the &quot;last will&quot; part of the document. So what constitutes the &quot;testament&quot; part? Are these even separable?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="899" LastActivityDate="2022-08-15T20:11:33.090" Title="Writing your last will and testament" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1251" CreationDate="2011-02-05T00:49:09.693" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience with this is two-fold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I did translation work for some time. I come from a family of professional translators (my aunt still being in the business). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working for a company routinely ordering translations from third parties and reading the translated documents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first concern is financial: translating stuff is way more expensive then editing and the better the translation, the more expensive it may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results may also be quite variable. I had experiences with translations from companies with great reputations that ended up absolutely horrendous. If you're unlucky the end result of a translation may be the same thing you would have produced yourself &lt;em&gt;sans&lt;/em&gt; the benefit of copyediting from a native english speaker (and you ending up paying a ridiculous fee).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing it yourself also has the added benefit of beefing up your experience with a foreign language which never hurts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="140" LastEditorUserId="140" LastEditDate="2011-02-06T14:48:08.167" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T14:48:08.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1055" CreationDate="2011-02-05T01:03:18.877" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you mean by published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today more than ever there is a continuum of publishing options. What used to be called self-published is often referred to as independently published now. (This can get confusing because there are also independent publishers--a whole other thing--more on this in a moment). If you choose to publish independently, you no longer have to use an expensive vanity press or bang your head against the brick walls of the chain bookstores, which tend not to carry so-called indie titles. In fact, you don't have to print your book at all. Authors like Karen McQuestion have hit the publishing jackpot after self-publishing their novels on Kindle, promoting on the Kindle boards, seeing their sales figures rise, and ultimately receiving offers from agents, publishers, and in some cases, Amazon's own publishing arm, Encore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So any novel can be published today by the above criterion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If what you mean is traditionally published, there are at least three different paths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are the majors (Random House, HarperCollins, etc., which add up to the so-called Big 6, although imprints within these 6 bring the total to between 20 and 30 depending on what you write). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there are the well-established independents (Counterpoint, Overlook, Milkweed, Algonquin, Grey Wolf, Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen, to name just a few). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are ever more brand new, very small (&quot;micro&quot;) presses cropping up. Four of these are Krill Press, Oak Tree Press, Echelon Press, and Wolfmont, but there are many others to check out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your work is good, falls within required word limits, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; you have a good marketing sense and platform established by the time you begin submitting your novel, I'd say there is a much better-than-the-lottery chance that you can at least interest the publisher of one of the new, small presses in you and your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majors will always be something of a lottery. In addition to an absolutely top drawer manuscript (ms), you have to get many people along the way to fall in love with your novel. First an agent, then other agents at that agency; then an editor; then everyone else at the publishing house, right up to the publisher him or herself, plus the marketing departments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to have a project that hasn't been done recently or isn't forthcoming at the house, while simultaneously not being different or unusual enough that it would be hard to slot into a niche. You have to have enough of an identity that you are a good marketing bet. And then there's the intangible fact of that &quot;falling in love&quot; thing. We all know love is hard to find, and subjective. The requirement that 6 or more people fall in love with the same novel sets the bar so high that I'd say getting an offer from the majors is much, much less likely than not--and that's even if you're a stellar talent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, less than stellar stuff is published all the time--again because there's a certain capricious factor that comes of requiring so many stars to align.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My short answer is that if you're willing to entertain some of the brand new presses appearing on the scene, you should be able to get your novel published, provided it's good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your heart is set on the majors, you just might be better off buying that lottery ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you win, you can start your own publishing house ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T01:03:18.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2011-02-05T01:30:11.437" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Helping my 11 yr old son with a project last night, I noticed he was two-spacing it. He just wrapped up a semester of typing at school, I'm pissed at his keyboard teacher because now I'm gonna have to break him of this habit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't believe anyone would teach that in today's world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="942" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T01:30:11.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1376" CreationDate="2011-02-05T01:53:04.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I Am Not A Lawyer, but so far as I know, you can make your will as formal or casual as you like. What matters is that it's signed as yours. I don't know the legal requirements for having it dated or witnessed. I ran through WillMaker once and it was straightforward plain language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T01:53:04.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1330" CreationDate="2011-02-05T02:43:21.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focus on the verbs (action), not the nouns. Your example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Web Product Provider search print Individual Provider Map does not print the listing originally found [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;becomes &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Printing an Individual Provider Map from a Web Product Provider search result list does not print the selected map.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get better mileage using print as a verb instead of a noun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Couple this with the use of abbreviations, and you can shorten this even more to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Printing an IPM from a WPP search result list does not print the selected map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to keep in mind when using abbreviations is to make sure you use the full term followed by the abbreviation in parenthesis on first usage. In your example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We're experiencing a problem with the print Individual Provider Map (IMP) function. Printing an IMP from a Web Product Provider (WPP) search result list does not print the selected map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you see a cluster of nouns, ask yourself which one should become a verb. And, abbreviate jargon when you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T02:43:21.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1273" CreationDate="2011-02-05T03:08:31.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contact the local users group of the technology you've written about.  Ask them to read and review your book.  Repeat for all users groups on this subject at the national level.  check Meetup.com for relevant groups.  You'll find like-minded people who are likely to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="947" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T03:08:31.183" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-05T03:08:31.183" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1364" CreationDate="2011-02-05T03:16:31.990" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two books for you to read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt; by Stephen King.  Contains an early draft of 1408 along with King's margin notes from when he revised it.  I really liked seeing that someone as prolific as King has to re-write as much as he does.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Which Lie Did I Tell?&lt;/em&gt; by William Goldman.  Contains a full screenplay and coverage on that screenplay by industry people.  Great look at how others will see your work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John August maintains a robust library of his work.  You can find original spec scripts and compare them to their final shooting counterparts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://johnaugust.com/library&quot;&gt;http://johnaugust.com/library&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="947" LastEditorUserId="947" LastEditDate="2011-02-13T20:41:31.490" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T20:41:31.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1384" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-05T03:18:04.680" Score="4" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you use readability metrics (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunning_fog_index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gunning fog&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_test&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flesch-Kincaid&lt;/a&gt;) as you're working on a piece?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, how do you use them, and what benefit do you get from using them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="163" LastEditDate="2011-02-06T06:16:49.703" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T06:16:49.703" Title="What are some appropriate uses of readability tests?" Tags="|style|metrics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1372" CreationDate="2011-02-05T03:28:14.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You must understand your audience. If you have their attention for 10 minutes, say everything you need to say in five.  Obviously shorter is better, but there are times when a longer phrase can hold a person's attention better than a short one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give the reader the core of your concepts up front (first sentence in a paragraph is a good way) and tuck more details where they fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can, I'd highly recommend finding a peer to review it briefly before you send it out. Silently measure how long they keep their attention on the piece you wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="789" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T03:28:14.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1372" CreationDate="2011-02-05T03:41:18.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not an either/or. It's a continuum from minimal to maximum. I would first ensure you have each level documented at a minimum level before moving up to the higher level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends upon the type of writing. Marketing/sales writing is as different from API reference writing as a TV script is from a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you get any reader feedback? Do you have an editor available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user953" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T03:41:18.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2011-02-05T04:15:27.027" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/304&quot;&gt;Elmore Leonard's 10 rules&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Never open a book with weather.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Avoid prologues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Never use a verb other than &quot;said&quot; to carry dialogue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Never use an adverb to modify the verb &quot;said”…he admonished gravely. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Never use the words &quot;suddenly&quot; or &quot;all hell broke loose.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Don't go into great detail describing places and things. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user608" LastEditorUserId="2754" LastEditDate="2012-07-09T20:35:13.617" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T20:35:13.617" CommentCount="9" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-05T04:15:27.027" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2011-02-05T04:57:20.620" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Yossi Farjoun pointed out on &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2544/how-many-spaces-should-come-after-a-period-full-stop&quot;&gt;the english.stackexchange incarnation of this question&lt;/a&gt;, part of the controversy here comes from a false dichotomy.  There are really two separate questions involved: one of aesthetics, one of implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should text be set with a wider space between sentences?  (‘Wider’ doesn’t have to mean ‘exactly double’, of course.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should you, when typing, type two spaces at the end of a sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to 1 is debatable: it’s a matter of taste and convention, and varies between publications, between genres, between countries, between languages, and over time.  The current consensus in English, in most genres, is &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;.  However, there are significant exceptions: Donald Knuth favoured wider inter-sentence spacing, so in communities (eg mathematics, academic CS) where TeX, LaTeX etc. are popular, readers are generally accustomed to it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to 2 then depends on how your text will be transmitted to the reader.  As html?  Then typing a double space will do nothing: if you really want a wider space, you’ll have to throw in a &lt;code&gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;&lt;/code&gt;.  Via (La)TeX?  If you like wide spacing, do nothing — so does TeX.  If you don’t like that, you’ll have to say so in your document options.  This question has as many answers as there are word processors, markup languages, etc. out there; but this is now a matter of practicality, not of convention or aesthetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="957" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T04:57:20.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-02-05T05:40:43.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think many write fan-fiction simply because they're inspired by a universe someone else created. I have no doubt it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be a crutch, but it doesn't have to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you should ask &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you're writing. If it's simply because you enjoy writing or because you want to explore a universe, then fan-fiction can be a great outlet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="960" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T05:40:43.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1173" CreationDate="2011-02-05T05:46:53.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different agents want different things. Some love innovative, chatty query letters. Others want &quot;just the facts.&quot; Your best strategy is to find an agent you would like to have represent you and read their query letter guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're having trouble finding agents and agent information on the Internet, buy the most recent copy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersmarket.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writer's Market&lt;/a&gt; you can afford.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="960" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T05:46:53.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="103" CreationDate="2011-02-05T06:18:37.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the two most important criteria are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;faculty whose writing you like and who get good recommendations as teachers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;guaranteed funding for students (through teaching or otherwise)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're already wealthy, you can skip #2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="960" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T06:18:37.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-02-05T07:25:33.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a bit of an amateur writer and I have always considered fan fic to be the bottom of the barrel. The people who write it are generally those who have obsessed over some one else's work. They may re-arrange the concepts and plot, but they are creating nothing really new. Most are also so inept at writing that in truth they detract from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As some one else mentioned, world building is a large portion of writing fiction. Without those skills, you are ruining your own potential as an author. Honestly you should take the time to write completely original short stories. Share these stories with a few friends to get their honest impressions, then toss them aside and work on another. After a few months, once the story is old and mostly forgotten, re-read it yourself, and re-write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="966" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T07:25:33.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1372" CreationDate="2011-02-05T07:50:19.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to see writers follow four stages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incompetent, verbose, terse, and effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first a writer spills forth with drivel, barely able to form a coherent work. Frequently this is stream of consciousness writing without any mental editing to what is said and no expounding upon an idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually the writer learns to express themselves better. During the verbose stage they write a lot, pages and pages of detailed and perhaps even coherent paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then they learn to trim the fat from their writing. The readers imagination should be enough to fill in the blanks, and the writer is only there to guide the reader to a destination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At last the writer can see the difference in their words and how they effect the reader. Situational choices are made to expound greatly on a single thought or to simply outline it and leave it up to the readers imagination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="966" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T07:50:19.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1330" CreationDate="2011-02-05T08:15:22.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, it seems that your examples don't include a sequence of nouns, but nouns that are more than one word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are your examples, with added quotes to delimit the nouns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Web Product Provider&quot; search &quot;print Individual Provider Map&quot; does not print the listing originally found&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;operations review evaluation task force&quot; is responsible for this task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He doesn't know how to read the &quot;aperture adjustment calibration manual&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She started the &quot;12-week half-marathon training regimen for beginners&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I'm missing something (perhaps I'm part of the problem!) but multi-word nouns are nothing new to the English language:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;time series&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;curriculum vitae&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;remote control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cameron's room&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;toenail clippers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not arguing that your original example is well written - since it didn't communicate clearly, it wasn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that my parsing of the phrase is correct, I'd rewite it this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The product provider search on the website does not print the listing originally found when I search for &quot;print Individual Provider Map&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="956" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T08:15:22.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1396" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4910" CreationDate="2011-02-05T08:23:05.557" Score="20" ViewCount="29364" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write erotica, it started out as an amusement to see how far I could go, but it became a real passion after three or four stories. I have even published a few online and those stories have become favorites of many.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few friends have tried to convince me to get my work published but I don't have the slightest idea how one would go about it. I am also worried about the content, I consider most of my work 'transgressive erotic horror'. Can I even publish that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of note, I am in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="966" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T12:36:43.247" LastActivityDate="2016-02-13T01:31:10.593" Title="How does one go about publishing erotica, and how far is too far?" Tags="|publishing|short-story|erotica|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1364" CreationDate="2011-02-05T10:16:10.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a hard question to answer. I know in my stories many times the only before drafts that were left in existence were the printed out reviewed ones, that were soon trashed. any kind of files kept on the computers were over written with each additional rewrite, so I don't expect there will be many such documents floating out there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the best source of this kind of exampes would be books describing and expanding on what was trying to be done in that excerpt. the 2 best I have read are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Description&lt;/em&gt; by Monica Wood --- this book it about trying to craft a stories through teaching you how describe. many times in this book will start out with bad examples then take you through the step to apply a descriptive style to create a new example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Make a Scene&lt;/em&gt; by Jordan E. Rosenfeld --- this book teaches you to craft a scene to fit the over all story feel as well as make this scene's objectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only last place I can think that will help is by finding sites that have writing by others, many times an out side observer will be able to find problems in others writing the writer will never see. This can also include participating in peer review groups. A couple of good sites I know of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;writing.com&lt;/a&gt; --- site for writers to gather and talk about writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://browse.deviantart.com/literature/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;deviantart&lt;/a&gt; --- site for any artist to post there work and get reviews of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though there are not many, and they are hard to find. There are sites for writing out there, just take some time and Imagination to find them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="974" LastEditorUserId="972" LastEditDate="2011-02-06T20:06:13.680" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T20:06:13.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-02-05T10:24:50.747" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know many people who started out writing fanfiction and then turned this into the basis of a professional career. Off the top of my head, both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulcornell.com/&quot;&gt;Paul Cornell&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unamccormack.com/&quot;&gt;Una McCormack&lt;/a&gt; both started by writing fanfic and are now professional authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately it can be all too easy to spend all of your time there. If you think you'll enjoy it, write fanfic by all means. You'll certainly learn lessons from it and be able to take that knowledge forward into your later, original work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd urge you, though, to remember what your aim is, and that's to write your own worlds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fanfic can be a great training ground for a writer; but it can also be a seductive echo chamber. Good fanfic, like good everything, is rare, and will receive a lot of praise. And leaving the nest can be a harsh experience if you're used to praise in the fanfic world, and find that you need other tools in your writer's toolbox to make it on the outside. Many people never write anything other than fanfic, and that's fine, but from your original question it seems you're aiming for something more than that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point you'll need to start writing original stories anyway. Whether you decide to write fanfic to get some experience first or not, I'd urge you to start on your own work sooner rather than later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="975" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T10:24:50.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1404" CreationDate="2011-02-05T10:59:42.870" Score="5" ViewCount="1270" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost all online writing workshops/classes/programs websites have scores of testimonials from students. It is very difficult to understand whether these really are students or paid testimonials. So, do online writing classes really help improve writing skills? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="972" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T18:24:41.893" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T04:39:22.750" Title="Do online writing classes really help?" Tags="|writing-groups|education|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1400" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-05T12:18:06.387" Score="5" ViewCount="602" Body="&lt;p&gt;The writing style in scientific papers in the natural sciences, e.g. chemistry and biology, seems very different from many other kinds of writing. There are usually severe restrictions on the length of the papers which calls for a compact and efficient writing style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I learn to condense my writing without making it inaccessible? Are there specific rules for writing scientific content? Any good resources for learning about scientifc writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user983" LastEditorUserId="7" LastEditDate="2011-02-05T14:13:39.667" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T21:20:02.337" Title="Rules and resources for scientific writing" Tags="|style|resources|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1240" CreationDate="2011-02-05T12:20:49.443" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing you've got to remember as a writer is that you are not, in any spiritual sense, getting &quot;inside people's heads&quot;. What you are doing is producing an artefact that &lt;em&gt;convinces other people&lt;/em&gt; that you are inside the minds of many different characters but only as long as they don't look too terribly hard. Your question poses a worry that you can see that all your characters are just variations on you, or that you are having some difficulty drawing the line between where you end and your characters begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much apart from anything else, this is a problem of things not being realistic enough. After all, there is only one you and all the people who aren't you are someone else. Therefore any exercise in writing that does not feature you as a character must feature loads of people who are not at all like you and none that are. If you produce a work which has many variations on you and no one that is not you that's a problem, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, no, not as such. You don't have a choice about lending some aspect of you to every character you write - after all, you're writing them. As I said when we looked at this problem at first glance the problem is not actually writing characters who are not you. It is making other people happy that all the characters are not you and most importantly letting you know all your characters are not you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest experimental parallel I can think of is with the experience of the actor. I was interested in acting for many years and, when taking on a part, I used to try my best to get under the skin of the character. Contrast this mental experience with the advice of most acting theorists; the most famous, Stanislavski, talks in no uncertain terms about the difference between acting something and being it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To Stanislavski, experience of reality is a completely separate thing from acting out that experience for an audience. He talks about the essential property of emotional distance from the character you are acting. The character may be overwrought, therefore the actor must act out overwrought but the actor must not &lt;em&gt;be&lt;/em&gt; overwrought because that is just self-indulgence. The actor's duty is to communicate the experience to the audience so &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; can be moved by it, the actor must try not to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stanislavski's point of view has been argued about but I think there is much of merit in it. I knew many young actors (at one point I was among them) who spent enormous amounts of time psychoanalysing the character who subsequently turned in a performance that a 2'x4' would have been proud of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another of Stanislavski's lessons which is pertinent here is called the &quot;magic if&quot;. Essentially the characters in plays have families which are not like the actor's, they experience circumstances and have histories which are not like the actor's. In order to &quot;get into character&quot; Stanislavski positively encourages actors to ask how it is they would feel in the exact same circumstances, so &quot;what if my uncle had murdered my father and married my mother, how would I tackle this situation?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of this exercise is to measure ways in which you, as a person, are similar to the character you are playing and how you are not the same at all. Essentially your sense of difference from the character as an actor helps you know how to portray them without getting confused and being them. The actor who identifies too closely with his role is a subject of dark, horrific melodrama for good reason. It's not pleasant to feel too close to your subject matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as a writer where does this leave us?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't panic about your characters sharing aspects of you, this is inevitable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your writing, like  an actor's acting, performs the job of &lt;em&gt;representing&lt;/em&gt; a world of rich and distinct personality, not actually being one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The problem here seems to be of gaining some distance and perspective from the characters you create.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 is the troublesome one. I would suggest two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a story in which you are a character. Nothing acts a distancing mechanism better than consciously trying to do something you're afraid you're doing by accident. (HINT: I expect you'll find it hideously difficult.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write about a few characters who do things that you most certainly wouldn't do and work out what motives they could have had for doing them. Comb through their motivations because characters are made from such things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully these two exercises should start giving you the distance that you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="29873" LastEditDate="2018-06-27T20:14:01.360" LastActivityDate="2018-06-27T20:14:01.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1400" CreationDate="2011-02-05T14:47:33.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people think, that scientific writing is uninspiring and boring, so be careful, which rules you follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I assume that the suggestions for making text more terse, do also apply for scientific writing. Eliminate filler words, be more precise, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As example I deleted some words of your first sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The writing style in papers in the natural sciences, e.g. chemistry and biology, seems different from other kinds of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the meaning change? Did you lose anything essential? Two or three words in each sentence can sum-up to pages over the whole manuscript. But don't remove too much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The writing style in natural sciences seems different from others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too terse could puzzle people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also read scientific papers and learn from other authors. If they get published, they did something right. Yes, maybe they got published despite their writing style, but the more you read, the more you learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T14:47:33.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1400" CreationDate="2011-02-05T14:49:42.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being concise in your writing isn't limited to scientific writing: It's always good, as Einstein said, to be as simple as possible, but not simpler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read a book by literary agent Noah Lukeman titled &quot;The First Five Pages&quot; that presented common shortfalls of manuscripts that he reviewed. There was one chapter called &quot;Adjectives and Adverbs&quot; that had in interesting exercise that helped me a lot. The exercise involved removing every adjective and adverb from the first page of my manuscript and listing them on a separate page and just see if it seemed like there were too many. The next step was to examine the words themselves and see if any of them were commonplace or cliché. Also see if any are repetitive. When I did this, I found quite a few improvements on the first page of my book that really tightened up my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a blog post titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://leftbrainhandbook.com/5-lessons-from-the-first-five-pages/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;5 Lessons from 'The First Five Pages'&lt;/a&gt;&quot; if you're interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also highly recommend &quot;The Elements of Story&quot; by Francis Flaherty. He presents 50 recommendations on writing non-fiction. It's the most valuable book I've ever read about writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="642" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T14:49:42.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1399" CreationDate="2011-02-05T15:16:40.937" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on what you're looking for. People take writing classes for several reasons: to receive instruction from a teacher; to meet other writers; to have your work critiqued by a group; to be part of a community of like-minded souls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's break down the answers according to those motivations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say at the outset that you should choose where to take your class based on the qualifications of the institution. It might be affiliated with a &quot;real&quot; as well as a virtual organization, such as New York Writers Workshop or Gotham. Or it might be affiliated with a major magazine, such as Writer's Digest. If you choose to take an online class, make sure it's with a well known, reputable outfit, and with teachers who have credentials in the kind(s) of writing they teach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for the wanting to receive instruction from a teacher motivation. The way online classes often work is that you have a set amount of time to correspond one-on-one with your teacher, the teacher will read and comment on assignments, and be available during the time of the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are limitations to electronic communication (lack of facial expression, tone of voice, etc.) but there are also advantages to it (people sometimes communicate more clearly in writing) so whether a virtual or physical classroom works best is largely an individual matter. If you're looking for critique and feedback about your work, I'd say that the skill of the teacher matters a lot more than whether you meet face to face or not. However, skill is sometimes more quickly assessed in person--several weeks can go by in an online setting before you know if you and the teacher really &quot;jell&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving on to meeting other writers...in physical workshops, the interaction often continues after the class has ended, with members of the group meeting up in a coffee shop to keep workshopping and talking. This is harder to accomplish with an online class, in part because knowing whom you click with can be harder to assess. But it has been done with online classes creating Yahoo groups to continue the interaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Group critique is often the most valuable part of taking a writing class--and it's always a hard thing to get, at least when you're talking about good group critique. Some people will have edits to offer no matter what, even if a piece is working well--they're editors and that's what they do. Some people will praise everything; others will dislike everything. Finding people who can really tap into your intent as writer and figure out where your piece hits it or goes awry is like finding gold in the California gold rush. You're as likely to find such people in an online class as a physical one--but without the extra chatting and interaction that happens in a &quot;real&quot; class it can take longer to figure out who's who.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writers community stuff is basically answered by the above. There are online communities that are at least as stable and long-lasting as physical ones. They can offer support, interaction, an exchange of ideas, and inspiration. The chance that any one class will lead to such a community is small--but so is the chance that one physical class will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if you're someone who is comfortable online, doesn't require the subtleties of physical interaction, and you can find an excellent outfit, online classes can provide instruction, critique, and even some fellow writers to meet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T15:16:40.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1399" CreationDate="2011-02-05T15:17:19.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You won't like this answer: It depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First: I've never taken a online class. But I know a German online teacher, who led his students to bestsellers. I know this, because the German writing magazines reported on his online course. Yes, now you have to trust the magazines, but well ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that you should inform yourself about the courses from different sources, it also depends on yourself and how the course is organised. During the above mentioned class, you start writing your novel and send the pieces to the teacher, he revises, sends it back, repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of authors out there, who would never show their work in progress to someone else. Not their agent, not their editor, not their spouse. So, not only must the teacher be reputable, his kind of teaching must fit with your kind of writing. Good luck searching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked this question myself. But I gave up researching and continued to write. For me it's a much better writing class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T15:17:19.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-02-05T15:26:04.737" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not a crutch. Writing is writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Jeff Atwood &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/02/how-to-write-without-writing.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;put it&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The process of writing is indeed a&#xA;  journey of discovery, one that will&#xA;  last the rest of your life. It doesn't&#xA;  ultimately matter whether you're&#xA;  writing a novel, a printer review, a&#xA;  Stack Overflow answer, fan fiction, a&#xA;  blog entry, a comment, a technical&#xA;  whitepaper, some emo LiveJournal&#xA;  entry, or even meta-talk about writing&#xA;  itself. Just get out there and write!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If fanfiction is what gets you writing, then write. It doesn't mean you have to do it for the rest of your life! But whatever you are interested in doing enough to get you writing is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a parallel, my mother wanted to discourage me from reading comics when I was a kid, but my father argued that anything which got me reading--even if it was reading with pictures--was a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People here have variously argued that fanfiction is a crutch, that it is limiting. But that is silly. It's limiting in the sense that you couldn't go and sell it, but other than that, it's an art form like any other. Some people here claimed you couldn't do world-building with it; that is wrong, because you can always build on top of the existing world the fandom is set in. You can always add characters to the ones already in the fandom, and you can always take the characters in a direction that was not obvious from the show, so good character building is also possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, there is nothing you can do in any other form of fiction writing that you can't do in fanfiction, and any skills you hone while writing the latter will help you in the former.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="701" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T15:26:04.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1396" CreationDate="2011-02-05T15:38:50.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a huge market for erotica. Sex sells, as they say. There are many respectable publication houses that will publish erotic literature, beyond self-publishers. As long as there's an actual plot to the story and it's not just two people having sex for 150 pages, it's definitely possible. My editing specialty is actually romance and erotica and I have erotic novels published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet to finding a publisher is to read some erotica novels you enjoy and find out who their publisher is. If you write male/male erotica, I'd be more than happy to recommend a few good publishing houses. If you write male/female or female/female, I can't really help you there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T15:38:50.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1400" CreationDate="2011-02-05T15:47:59.497" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One exercise that I’ve found helpful is rewriting (sections of) papers I’ve read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paper is badly written?  Rewrite a few paragraphs!  It’s easier at first than improving on your own prose, since you’re not emotionally attached to the bad version; but then whatever experience you gain from it, you’re primed to apply to your own writing later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paper is beautifully written?  Rewrite a few paragraphs!  Your version probably won’t come out as good as the original; and analysing &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it falls short can help you pick out what good qualities are lacking in your current style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="957" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T15:47:59.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1409" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-05T17:27:47.110" Score="33" ViewCount="17275" Body="&lt;p&gt;Occasionally I write sentences containing subparts with extra information. I never know how to block off this information from the rest of the sentence. Three ways I have seen are dashes, commas, and parentheses. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Bilbo sat down for a meal — his third of the day — he noticed the table was broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Bilbo sat down for a meal, his third of the day, he noticed the table was broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Bilbo sat down for a meal (his third of the day) he noticed the table was broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which way is correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1006" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2021-07-18T12:22:47.483" Title="Dashes vs. Commas vs. parentheses?" Tags="|style|structure|punctuation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1409" CreationDate="2011-02-05T18:00:18.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends entirely on the context, really -- each of them has situations in which it's most appropriate, but none are strictly incorrect (except perhaps the commas, but I'm not sure there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, I'd say the dashes are most appropriate as they preserve the flow of the sentence while clearly separating the &quot;subpart&quot; visually from the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The parentheses themselves are a little too abrupt and disruptive, while the commas seem a bit clumsy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="932" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T18:00:18.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2011-02-05T18:11:17.700" Score="77" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You have to read, and read all the time.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no iron laws of writing. I'm sure that if I told you that it was impossible to do good writing without reading much, someone could find a handful of examples of great writers who barely read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for the rest of us normal human beings, writing isn't something that happens in a vacuum. To understand writing you have to see how it's been done before. Even the really bad stuff will teach you &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So read, and don't just read one thing. Read literature, read genre, read nonfiction, read comic books; read a lot and read a lot of different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="701" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-02-06T22:30:48.880" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T22:30:48.880" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-05T18:11:17.700" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1396" CreationDate="2011-02-05T18:34:14.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to use a market listing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple free online guides to get you started:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.duotrope.com&quot;&gt;http://www.duotrope.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ralan.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.ralan.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also try WritersMarket.com, but it's fee based. You can get their annual book (Writer's Market) at the library, though. It's pretty much the authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T18:34:14.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-02-05T18:41:23.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone asked in reddit whether fan fiction can be &quot;taken seriously&quot;. Here's what &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/f774l/fanfiction_can_it_ever_be_taken_seriously/c1dxcnz?context=3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I said&lt;/a&gt; - much of the same points as others are saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go ahead and try. Simplest advice I can give is just that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you really want to get ahead with writing, go ahead and &lt;em&gt;try some more stuff.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only big problem with fan fiction that I've seen is that you're always in someone's shadow. Here's the Great Author, there's the Fan. And the Fan has to make a choice: Are they going to remain a Fan forever, or try becoming an &lt;em&gt;equal&lt;/em&gt; to the Great Author. And the Great Authors are just fine with someone else becoming as famous and awesome as they are, but they're not cool with them doing that with &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; intellectual properties. Hence, fan works are likely doomed to obscurity. Fans tend to stay in their place, whether that's appropriate for them or not. In a more sane world, open universes would be the norm and fans would always be equal to other people writing stories based on those universes, but we're not living in such a world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't to say that writing for someone else's universe would be too bad in principle. It's just like writing things based on real world and history: it may need interesting research work to make your story fit with the rest of the established world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as far as trying stuff goes, designing worlds from scratch isn't very difficult - and can be quite rewarding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as far as not having confidence trying to design worlds from the scratch goes: The dirty secret of world design is that a) it's really not that difficult and b) it's almost criminally fun when you get started. And like characters, the milieu will just keep growing when you tell the tale - it's useless to design &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2011-02-05T18:41:23.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1415" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1420" CreationDate="2011-02-05T23:34:43.853" Score="14" ViewCount="3556" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any techniques you can use while brainstorming to find humor to include in an article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1023" LastActivityDate="2019-03-23T18:29:13.223" Title="Tips for humor writing" Tags="|brainstorming|humor|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1372" CreationDate="2011-02-06T01:23:27.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read some Hemingway.  He managed to be immensely effective and sometimes immensely moving, with short simple sentences and a Flesch-Kincaide score of about 5th grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="527" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T01:23:27.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1384" CreationDate="2011-02-06T01:25:21.830" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't tend to use them while working on a piece -- among other things, one of my biggest rules is to &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; think about such things in first draft.  Afterwards, though, especially as I was first learning to write well, the scores helped because I tend to over-write.  Getting a FK score of 16th &quot;grade&quot; or so is a hulluva good reminder to ease off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="527" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T01:25:21.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2011-02-06T01:38:26.780" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's long-standing rules of thumb, and now quite good psychological research, to indicate that ease of reading requires limited line length.  The rule of thumb is somewhere in the neighborhood to 43 to 60 characters per line, or around ten words per line in English.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newspaper and magazine print is usually around 10 pitch, ie, 10 characters average per inch.  Printable space on a page is usually around 6 inches wide in a letter-sixed page, 4.5 inches in a digest, 10-12 inches wide in a newspaper (tabloid vs the other format whatever the hell it's called) and the number columns of print is somewhere around (inches &amp;times; pitch)/50.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Speaking of references, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography#Readability_and_legibility&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wiki page&lt;/a&gt; is actually quite good.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="527" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T01:38:26.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1415" CreationDate="2011-02-06T01:55:03.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;mm, I think it's hard to absorb funny material in a brainstorm without later including or at least paraphrasing it - which may or may not be the effect you are after. I have in my Reader lots of funny steams that I dip into when I need a break: lolcatz and dogs, Dilbert, Coding Horror, Worse than Failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often times I do search images for &quot;subject + lol&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1030" LastEditorDisplayName="user1030" LastEditDate="2011-02-06T02:53:32.540" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T02:53:32.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1415" CreationDate="2011-02-06T02:03:07.463" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Pick any one item and take it to an extreme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Organizing is good.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Okay, can I alphabetize my spices?&#xA;&lt;em&gt;(bad example. I actually do that.)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uh, can I sort my vegetable drawer by&#xA;size and then by color?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How about putting the living room furniture in rainbow order?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where do I file the cat, under P for &#xA;Pet, F for Felix domesticus, or O for&#xA;Ollie (his name)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Slip in some judicious puns. For example, if you're comparing shredders, you might write that you don't want to get snippy, but Brand X is really a cut above, and anyone who doesn't think so simply isn't all that sharp. (Caveat scriptor: your mileage may vary.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Take a metaphor and run it off a cliff of absurdity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Okay, so imagine that your desk is an elephant, and you're going to eat it one bite at a time. So first you start with a foot, represented by a desk drawer. The file folders are the toes, and the tabs are the toenails. Any punched-out holes, lost post-its, orphaned notes, or faded fax cover sheets would be elephant toejam. That's probably kind of nasty-smelling, but don't worry; just crumple the whole thing up and make a toejam football out of it, and throw it into the nearest wastebasket.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T02:03:07.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1415" CreationDate="2011-02-06T03:39:09.453" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read things that you find funny.  Eventually, humor will organically bubble up in your own writing.  This is the best way, as forced humor usually comes off bad.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comedy, as a genre, is hard to get right.  Drama is easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the book that had the biggest impact on humor in my writing is this: &lt;strong&gt;The Signet Book of American Humor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0451210581&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0451210581?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;tag=httpwwwgmoone-20&amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;creative=390957&amp;amp;creativeASIN=0451210581&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buy it used, stick it in your pocket and read it when you're stuck somewhere (the dentist's office, a meeting, etc...)  Don't miss the George Carlin bits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seek out humor in other writing and learn from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="947" LastEditorUserId="947" LastEditDate="2015-06-30T11:09:38.167" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T11:09:38.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1399" CreationDate="2011-02-06T05:28:53.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an online tutor.  I don't know that online writing classes &quot;do&quot; help improve writing skills, but I know they can.  It's a matter of finding a tutor who is not only skilled, but compatible with your personality.  Of course you must decide that for yourself.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You should understand that testimonials are NOT always reliable.  Many are paid for and many are selected for their laudatory content.  No tutor in his/her right mind would post a negative testimonial.  Right?&#xA;You should also have an idea of what your weaknesses are and you should ask for help specifically on that subject.  If you don't know your weaknesses, a good tutor should ask for a sample of your writing and then point out where he/she thinks you need help before you commit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1035" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T05:28:53.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1415" CreationDate="2011-02-06T09:11:09.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Terry Pratchett is the writer who springs to my mind (a product of the type of book I read I guess), and it always seems like his humor comes from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The characters having at least one defining &quot;crazy&quot; attribute, and they stay true to that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The situation being a combination of at least two separate very different but equally absurd story threads.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And mostly, his &lt;strong&gt;dialogue&lt;/strong&gt;. Wit and Stupidity together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T09:11:09.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1409" CreationDate="2011-02-06T10:41:22.037" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are all grammatically correct (as far as I'm aware), but I think they give different feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parentheses feel like an aside to the audience, like a weaker form of footnotes.  I use them a lot in technical writing — often to indicate bits that are optional or additional information/explanation, but that aren't necessary to read — and in more informal writing (like this post) in a similar sense.  They tend to be either quite short, or very long (sometimes multiple sentences, in which case they might be better as footnotes).  Just don't forget to close the parenthesis at the end — it sticks out if you don't.  I don't think they get used very often in fiction writing, possibly because they break &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the fourth wall&lt;/a&gt; and pull the reader out of the story.  It's a case of me, the author, speaking directly to you, the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dashes feel like more substantial interruptions.  I think I use them for asides that are less optional (such as the one in the previous paragraph).  Sections separated by dashes can hold less than parenthesis, usually no more than a sentence-worth. I've seen people put sentence breaks inside such sections, but it really sticks out (in a bad way).  Again, I don't think dashes get used often in fictional writing, though possibly more than parentheses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commas (in this context) are the weakest of the three.  They can &amp;quot;hold&amp;quot; the least amount of content, but they are also the least noticeable (which is probably why they can contain the fewest words).  As such, they don't stand out to the reader — they may not even be noticed consciously — but they do inform the phrasing of the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't normally consciously decide between which of the three I use, it's whichever feels right.  It also gets a bit more complicated with dashes as they can both be used in other situations, often not as a matching pair (such as the comma in this sentence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at your three examples, I would say the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first one — dashes — emphasises that it's his third meal of the day, making it at least as important an idea as the broken table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The second one, commas, downplays the idea, making the broken table more important, just leaving us with an impression about the eating.  This is the most subtle of the three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the third one (parentheses), the narrator is speaking directly to the reader and is making an out-of-character remark about Bilbo's eating habits.  This is the most blatant of the three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I would also suggest that he &amp;quot;noticed &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; the table was broken&amp;quot;, but that may just be being picky or a US/UK difference.  And I also apologise if this post has rather too many commas, dashes and parentheses.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastEditorUserId="33788" LastEditDate="2021-07-18T12:22:47.483" LastActivityDate="2021-07-18T12:22:47.483" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1409" CreationDate="2011-02-06T10:53:20.827" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to use Emdashes when I'm giving the flow a pause, making the reader stop for a moment and let the words sink in. Commas on the other hand are used to breakup a thought in to segments but still linked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parenthesis I consider a tool for the narrator speaking to the reader directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also missed ellipsis, for when you just leave a sentence hanging there, perhaps unfinished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="966" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T10:53:20.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2011-02-06T13:09:56.373" Score="21" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You must learn to walk before you can run&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important rule is, first to learn to write according to the rules. When you master that, you can break them to get better results. But, like in anything where mastering a topic is hard, breaking the rules without understanding them will get really ugly. For true beauty, following the rules however does not suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1043" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T13:09:56.373" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-06T13:09:56.373" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2011-02-06T13:34:23.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A missing point here is superstructure. Whereas you can make a mess on a short distance, you better put a bit more thought and structure in where you're going and where you come from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, a story (or even, perhaps more, a scientific argument) consists of a story line as well as the words that fill this in. If you don't know the storyline at all you are at high risk of going nowhere, or at least not where you want to go. So setting out your storyline (for example by creating an outline) is really helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The storyline drives which paragraphs and sections you have. The sections themselves can be more freeform. Just remember that paragraphs make only one point, and that paragraphs consist of more than one sentence. Bad paragraphing is a sure way to make whatever you write unreadable, a trait often seen in student's work (esp. when the topic is technical).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1043" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T13:34:23.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1330" CreationDate="2011-02-06T18:17:49.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first one was more a problem of rewording - I couldn't figure out how the sentence worked until I looked at the other examples.  Quotes on the search string are also necessary - otherwise the active verb is hard to tease out.  Rearranged, but just as brief:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;The Web Product Provider does not print the listing originally found for &quot;print Individual Provider Map&quot;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might just try to eliminate an unnecessary noun or two, where context is sufficient:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Operations review is responsible for this task.&#xA;He doesn't know how to read the aperture adjustment manual.&lt;/em&gt; (Or: &lt;em&gt;he doesn't know how to adjust the aperture.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last one was trickier: I split up the nouns into two groups instead, although it does require an extra phrase: &#xA;&lt;em&gt;She started the half-marathon training regimen.  It ran for 12 weeks and was aimed at beginners.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find acronyms just as distracting as noun clusters, as you call them - wherever possible, I'd prefer to abbreviate in some other fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1058" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T18:17:49.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1372" CreationDate="2011-02-06T20:08:02.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written 9 screenplays (one of which got made into a movie, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.solitarymovie.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Solitary&lt;/a&gt;) and I'm currently working on my first book. (I'm a programmer by trade. Writing is a hobby.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I first start writing dialog, I had a hard time. My dialog was what I call ping-pong dialog, i.e. dialog that went back and forth too much. I found that I could compress 4 dialog lines into 1 or 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the process of learning how to write dialog, I spent a lot of time reading it aloud and I still read everything I write out loud (including my book). And when something doesn't work, my first step is to REMOVE IT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nothing is lost then I've fixed the problem (BTW, I find this approach helpful in programming as well. When I'm deleting code, I'm usually doing the right thing.) And most of the time this works. But when it's a necessary piece of information, then I apply another rule of mine, Smallest change, largest impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to make the smallest change, in this case add back the fewest words necessary to convey the previously deleted idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing screenplays is an exercise in parsimony. Try reading screenplays to see how the professionals say more with less words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T20:08:02.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="124" CreationDate="2011-02-06T22:47:55.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Checking with your local library is a good option. They may sponsor a writers' group; even if they don't, the reference librarians should be able to help you find a local group. They often work with local writers, and many library employees are writers themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T22:47:55.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2011-02-06T22:49:06.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find the Ulysses (mentioned above) is a great tool for writing longer form stuff on the Mac. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For everything else I like to stay in plain text editors to keep formatting issues from distracting me while I write. My text editor of choice is TextMate, but that is probably over kill for most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1024" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T22:49:06.650" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-06T22:49:06.650" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1372" CreationDate="2011-02-06T23:06:09.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As D-Day said in his answer, being concise is key. But you need to be concise in your thoughts as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't expound on a topic if you don't need to. If you are asked a question, answer it and stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1068" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T23:06:09.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-02-06T23:41:54.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite a lot of the Sci-Fi and Fantasy authors come from, at the very least, some hard-science background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My reading of their experiences is that they:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Read a LOT&lt;/strong&gt; (Every Day)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Write a LOT&lt;/strong&gt; (Every Day)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is the same two elements just about every author, from any background, mentions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-02-06T23:41:54.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1436" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1442" CreationDate="2011-02-07T00:00:29.753" Score="13" ViewCount="372" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my biggest issues is staying focused on a single novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My imagination is always creating new and wonderful ideas. I write a few chapters on this story, a few on that story, but never finish one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What disciplines / habits can I put into place to stay focused and finish a single novel?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="46595" LastEditDate="2020-08-26T22:31:28.467" LastActivityDate="2020-08-26T22:31:28.467" Title="What disciplines/habits are used to stay focussed on one novel over a long period of time?" Tags="|novel|discipline|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1436" CreationDate="2011-02-07T01:37:59.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only one I know of is &quot;write fast&quot;.  But then I'm not known for my ability to do big writing projects either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="527" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T01:37:59.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1438" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1440" CreationDate="2011-02-07T01:48:29.423" Score="4" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live in Australia (or some place that is not the UK or the USA). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if the same percentage of QUALITY scripts get published in any place, but that in the big places, like the UK and the USA, there are many more scripts published that are of dubious quality, &lt;em&gt;making it seem as though it's &quot;easier&quot; to get published if you live in the States&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is where I live going to have a positive/negative effect on getting a novel published?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-02-07T15:03:52.123" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T15:03:52.123" Title="Is where I live going to have a positive/negative effect on getting a novel published?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1438" CreationDate="2011-02-07T02:00:01.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You live where you live. Generally, that isn't that huge a disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question you should be asking yourself: &quot;is &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; writing of dubious quality?&quot; If it isn't, you need not worry that publishers in your country don't publish such manuscripts. Maybe it just shows that they have taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on making your writing better and worry about the rest later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="232" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T02:00:01.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1438" CreationDate="2011-02-07T02:48:25.710" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, your location will not have an effect on getting published. Publishers are in this business to make money and as much of it as possible. If you have a good manuscript they'll buy it whether you live in New York City, the middle of Australia or in an underground tunnel with dwarves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the old times, location was key because you needed to be near the publishing houses or wait forever for mail. But with the internet, you can submit manuscripts instantly and have a response in a reasonable amount of time. Contracts can be emailed and either scanner or faxed back, further cutting down on the time &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T02:48:25.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-02-07T03:16:24.743" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What characteristics of the coder mind set lend themselves to writing fiction well, and which ones are a hindrance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found the systematic approach, and the skills that go with it, can help. My fiction writing process includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;a design phase:&lt;/strong&gt; I start with an elevator pitch, then a plot summary, then some sample scenes, etc &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;documentation:&lt;/strong&gt; I make a lot of notes about characters, fictional settings, magic systems, fictional technologies, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;iterative development:&lt;/strong&gt; I write down key scenes, test and debug them, then make changes to the outline based on what works and what doesn't. I do a lot of drafts - total rewrites.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;backups/source control:&lt;/strong&gt; I am very careful with backups and I keep old versions in case I decide later I lost something good in the rewrites.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="67" LastEditDate="2015-08-29T10:13:43.307" LastActivityDate="2015-08-29T10:13:43.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1436" CreationDate="2011-02-07T03:22:02.343" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) So, don't. Keep several books going at once. What's stopping you? Maybe you need to switch gears often to keep yourself fresh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Write short stories. Easier to finish in a bite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Write an outline of your novel. When you get bored working on IIA3d, move to IVE12c. Jump around within the book and write scenes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T03:22:02.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1204" CreationDate="2011-02-07T05:17:53.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there is a book and a movie adaptation :- '12 Angry Men'. That one exactly does what you have in your mind. none of the character's names are used. there are 12+ characters in the plot! Hope this link helps - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_Angry_Men_%281957_film%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;12 Angry Men&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1080" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T05:17:53.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-02-07T06:56:48.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A programmer becomes a novelist the same way someone from another profession becomes a novelist: by writing fiction. A programmer may write science fiction or novels that are heavy on technology, just as an attorney might write legal thrillers or murder mysteries. The fiction flows from the author's own background mixed with a good imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T06:56:48.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1415" CreationDate="2011-02-07T11:09:04.963" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here I roughly translate and sum up some advices from Daniele Luttazzi, an italian satirist (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danieleluttazzi.it/node/384&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;original text here&lt;/a&gt;) who learned from the best, like Lenny Bruce and Josh Carlin. (Sorry for any mistake, please edit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The punchline must be a suprise with respect to the preamble. If the surprise is weak the humor will be weak. If the surprise is awkward the humor will be weak too. The difficult part is balancing these two parts (preamble and punchline).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wordplay is difficult, more than you think (but anglosaxon humor might be quite different in this aspect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a fashion in jokes, too. What made our grandparents laugh might not be that good anymore. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep the punchline as dry as possible. Less words is better, except when this hurts the rhythm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good joke is based on an idea, not on a commonplace. If you crack a joke on something you are not well enough informed on, you won't make people laugh. On the other hand if the joke refers to very specific subjects no one, except a bunch of specialists, will get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What elicits a laugh is the technique of the joke, not its content. When you retell a joke in other words it usually doesn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="709" LastEditorUserId="709" LastEditDate="2017-06-14T13:40:00.923" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T13:40:00.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2844" CreationDate="2011-02-07T11:20:05.640" Score="19" ViewCount="6488" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for books, essays and articles on plotting mystery/detective/investigation stories (and novels). The type of story I'm aiming for is in the vein of Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, or Asimov's Robots/Elijah Baley novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that plotting out mysteries is a very distinct, specialized form of plotting, with its own tools and guidelines. Building intriguing logical puzzles; extrapolating an intriguing solution from an intriguing conundrum or vice versa; laying out clues; &lt;em&gt;discovering&lt;/em&gt; the clues and drawing conclusions from them; choosing suspects and methods and motivations; storytelling within very narrow scope, but revising it entirely with every new discovery - I can speak about these intuitively, but they seem unique and important enough that there should be a fair amount of existing discussion and advice. I haven't been able to find much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm looking for any resources you can point me to discussing the plotting, the design, of the mystery itself. I'm not looking for general writing advice specialized for the mystery genre (although a resource that has both is obviously fine). If there exist any lexicon/taxonomy-type articles, of the sort that try to identify common tropes and concepts, those would be very welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books on Amazon that looked promising included William Tapply's &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1590581156&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;The Elements of Mystery Fiction&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and Carolyn Wheat's &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1880284626&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;How To Write Killer Fiction&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;; recommendations for/against these and other books, in regards to the particular subjects I'm looking for, would be appreciated as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Bounty Notes&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In May, I posted a bounty with the following guidelines. A week after the bounty deadline expired, I got a great answer from Taryn East, so it's only fair I award her her due - the current bounty's all hers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Persuasive recommendation for a resource (print or online) that extensively discusses the &lt;strong&gt;construction of a mystery plot.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resources in which a mystery author details &lt;strong&gt;how they constructed a particular plot&lt;/strong&gt; - provided the plot is reasonably good.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recommendation for resources with advice &lt;strong&gt;that apply specifically to writing mysteries,&lt;/strong&gt; which I'll define as: advice which probably would not be immediately useful to somebody writing something other than a mystery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-04-02T02:47:56.707" Title="Resources on plotting mystery stories" Tags="|resources|plot|mystery|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1447" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-07T14:03:48.837" Score="8" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of creating a web application.  I will need some copy written for various pages in the site and some of the marketing marketing material.  I am contemplating hiring a copywriter to handle these task for me.  What is the best way to find one?  Also, since I am a programmer, what are some good attributes to look for when trying to find someone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1095" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T18:49:43.367" LastActivityDate="2011-12-26T10:48:55.853" Title="How do I find a suitable copywriter?" Tags="|business-writing|marketing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1448" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1450" CreationDate="2011-02-07T14:52:38.173" Score="3" ViewCount="27178" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I hope this is sufficiently on-topic - couldn't find anywhere else in Stack Exchange more suitable...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I am having to do a lot of reading of academic papers - some dry stuff but not excessively so. The problem is that, given the average length of a paper, it takes me about 90 mins to read, minimum, sometimes up to a couple of hours for the longer ones. I am having trouble concentrating throughout and my mind ends up wandering, making me lose some of the gist and waste valuable minutes over the course of reading several papers every week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though to a much lesser extent, I have this problem when reading normal books too (where the content is that much more engaging than your typical academic paper). So I'm looking for some techniques to improve my reading concentration (or more acutely, some way when reading of becoming aware that my mind is wandering).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, any suggestions of where else to ask this question could be helpful.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1098" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T06:38:24.240" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T08:57:40.233" Title="What can I do to improve my concentration when reading?" Tags="|readers|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2011-02-08T14:03:05.903" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1449" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-07T15:09:32.493" Score="11" ViewCount="2212" Body="&lt;p&gt;After some time of working on my research, I usually have a structured information of my results, which I can best describe in bullets/numbers. Unfortunately, this is not what academia expects. For example, I concluded my paper introduction with this paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We start by discussing the most relevant research papers. Then we discuss the composition rules we have selected and how to evaluate them. Then we discuss the optimisation method we use and camera search spaces. Finally, we discuss an example of rendering a well known film in our system and discuss the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you carefully read my concluding paragraph, you will notice that it mentions six parts (research papers, composition rules, how to evaluate them, optimisation method, camera search spaces, an example). I found it hard to combine all these information (which is not uncommon in papers' introductions) in one paragraph, and I ended up repeating &quot;then&quot; twice, which reads very boring - at least for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the methods to avoid repetitions in general? What about my specific example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="513" LastEditorUserId="21768" LastEditDate="2017-11-09T08:29:01.103" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T09:54:28.693" Title="What are the tricks to avoid repetition in writing?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1448" CreationDate="2011-02-07T15:16:48.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to define the problem before attempting a solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you distracted? (ambient noise,&#xA;music, silence, TV, someone talking)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you uncomfortable? (crappy chair,&#xA;bad posture, headache, eyestrain, bad&#xA;light, hungry, thirsty, tired)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you a restless person by nature?&#xA;Do you have trouble sitting down for&#xA;X length of time even when doing some&#xA;other sedentary activity, like&#xA;watching TV or sitting at the&#xA;computer?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A bit of a stretch, but do you have&#xA;any reading issues like dyslexia?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See if you can narrow down what's actually causing your mind to wander, particularly when you're reading something you enjoy. If you can resolve it (a white-noise machine, a better chair, more light, new glasses), or even just alleviate it, that might help with the technical papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're the type of person who just can't sit, try this: get a timer (a kitchen timer will do fine). Press start when you start to read. The moment you realize you're drifting, press stop. Make a note of how long it was. Reset and do it again. See if a pattern emerges, or take an average. If you can only sit for, let's say, seven minutes before getting distracted, then set the timer for six. When the timer goes off, get up and do something physical &amp;mdash; 20 jumping-jacks, or run up and down the stairs twice. Then sit down again and restart the timer. You will lose time in the breaks, but you will only lose one minute of six, and you know you can focus for six, so you aren't losing even more time by not knowing when the next break is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T15:16:48.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1449" CreationDate="2011-02-07T15:35:27.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's useful to write as if speaking, then restructure for formality. That will give you the necessary verbosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case, it seems thinking about the points you want to make as different things makes you try to express them as individual sentences; if you mention a link between them or make a link clear, it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, but not least, you can use different expressions with the same meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have written, instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We start by discussing the most relevant research papers, afterward discussing the composition rules we have selected and how to evaluate them. Once that's done, we discuss the optimization method we use and camera search spaces. Finally, we discuss an example of rendering a well known film in our system and discuss the results.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1100" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T15:35:27.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1447" CreationDate="2011-02-07T15:39:11.357" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many &quot;markets&quot; with copywriters out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;www.Guru.com is the one I know with the best choices. It has rating systems, so you can know how reliable they are. Usually, they will provide access to previous work, so you will be able to tell if you like how they work. If they are reliable and you like their style... well, that's all you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1100" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T15:39:11.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1251" CreationDate="2011-02-07T15:46:38.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think another aspect here is &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; you're writing, especially if it's non-fiction. Sometimes the subject matter itself has a &quot;native language&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example I would never even start writing technical, IT-related stuff in my native German language. Most of the time the original English terms are far more common than their translated counterparts which often feel clunky and forced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1101" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T15:46:38.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1399" CreationDate="2011-02-07T15:50:20.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you have someone who advises you, and get to write a lot, it will help.&#xA;Further expanding on the question:&#xA;You can only get so far with only theory or only practice; theory is necessary: it helps you write in certain ways expressly to create effect. Practice is also necessary: it helps you exercise the mindset you need to write. So the best would be to work with a tutor, write whatever assignments you get and then some more, presenting the assignments and the extra work to the tutor. They can then advise you on things you have done that might not be covered by the tutoring program, or that weren't directly treated in the normal course of the tutoring, thus helping you get farther, faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1100" LastEditorUserId="1100" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T11:49:52.737" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T11:49:52.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1449" CreationDate="2011-02-07T15:52:42.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After introducing the most relevant research papers we will look at the composition rules we have selected and how to evaluate them. Then we discuss the optimisation method we use and camera search spaces. Finally, we demonstrate the rendering of a well known film in our system by an example and discuss the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Synonyms are your friend. Not only &quot;then&quot; is your problem, you &quot;discuss&quot; a lot of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T15:52:42.440" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1449" CreationDate="2011-02-07T15:54:03.953" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Strunk &amp;amp; White's Elements of Style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This principle, that of parallel construction, requires that expressions of similar content and function should be outwardly similar. The likeness of form enables the reader to recognize more readily the likeness of content and function. Familiar instances from the Bible are the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the petitions of the Lord's Prayer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not think that varying simple expressions makes a better writer. It can and will distract the reader. In your case, I would suggest making the list even more uniform:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We first discuss the most relevant research papers. We next discuss our selected composition rules and how to evaluation them. We then discuss our optimisation method and camera search spaces. We finally discuss the results of rendering a well-known film in our system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the repetition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We first discuss...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We next discuss...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We then discuss...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We finally discuss...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These phrases become almost transparent for the reader, putting the focus on what's being discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T15:54:03.953" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1256" CreationDate="2011-02-07T16:04:07.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought the battle/fight scenes in Stan Nicholls' &lt;em&gt;The Orcs&lt;/em&gt; were pretty good. Detailed, graphic and fast-paced at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I found that you can only read so much about people/creatures grappling, hacking, slashing and hitting each other and the book quickly turned out to be just an endless string of these fight sequences, only held together by a rather ridiculous plot, which unfortunately rendered the end result quite boring despite all the superbly written action sequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1101" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T16:04:07.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1415" CreationDate="2011-02-07T16:04:26.063" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I write jokes I'll often begin with stream-of-consciousness &quot;brain vomit,&quot; putting every possible thought to paper.  I'll mark places I &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; people would laugh with an asterisk.  This is more organic than just trying to think of funny things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this you can cross out everything that lacks an asterisk, and rework your sentences so that the asterisk comes at the end.  After this you can present your laugh lines to others and learn how well you judged the asterisks.  Then practice practice practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it's a unique technique (as far as I know I'm the only one who does it) but it works well for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I'm really bad at oranges.* &#xA;I read if you put your thumb in by the stem you can pull off big chunks,&#xA;But what I do is just eat apples.*&#xA;God made convenient fruit.*&#xA;You can just bite it* and your hands don't get sticky.*&#xA;Why would you eat coconuts on an island that also has bananas?*&#xA;&quot;I didn't bring my machete to lunch.*&#xA;I wish there were an alternative.*&quot;&#xA;Banana ka-bobs,* banana creole,* banana gumbo.*&#xA;Pan fried,* stir fried,* deep fried.*&#xA;People die from coconuts.*&#xA;Apples help you discover gravity.*&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've got a presentable &quot;joke framework,&quot; I've found that &lt;em&gt;asking other people for ideas&lt;/em&gt; is a great way to improve/replace the jokes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1102" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T16:04:26.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1376" CreationDate="2011-02-07T18:16:42.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone before said, it depends on the country you live in. Nevertheless, as far as I can tell after asking some lawyers I know (working in different countries), the common thing is try to make it as unambiguous as possible and get it notarized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testament and last will are, as far as &quot;a document to legally state what you want to happen with your property when you die&quot; gets, the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1100" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T18:16:42.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1447" CreationDate="2011-02-07T18:17:03.227" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another site that offers writing and editing choices is textbroker.com. Editors are rated, as are writers, and they are matched according to compatible levels. I am an editor and have looked into textbroker but, because of my other work, have not yet chosen to participate in their service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1110" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T18:17:03.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2011-02-07T18:35:30.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Jakub: You have received some excellent advice: Read much, both about writing and books/stories in the genre you hope to enter. Write much, about anything and everything. Seek feedback from writers as well as non-writers. Ethan is right that ideas are the exceptional part of stories--so be encouraged! But careful writing and editing are still necessary to convey your ideas effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can easily find ghostwriters and writing mentors online. Find out as much as possible about anyone you are considering hiring: contact others who have worked with them and ask if they profited--figuratively and literally--from their collaboration. I would love to offer my services, but my area of expertise is non-fiction; fiction writing and editing are, in my opinion, much harder! Bon courage!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1110" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T18:35:30.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1014" CreationDate="2011-02-07T18:38:09.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The court ruling in Washington state appears to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6667426.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. The court stated that the money paid by the state university for journal subscriptions is a matter of public record, and therefore subject to open-records requests&amp;mdash;despite the non-disclosure clause in the contract. The vendor has chosen not to appeal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T18:38:09.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1449" CreationDate="2011-02-07T18:45:35.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to reduce the &quot;discuss&quot; duplication is to ask yourself: What are we trying to accomplish by discussing this? What effect are we trying to have on the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, rather than looking for synonyms, look for words that more precisely express what you're trying to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why discuss the optimization method? So that people understand it. You're explaining. So say &quot;explain.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why discuss an example of rendering a film? So that people can see how the optimization works in practice. You're demonstrating. So say &quot;demonstrate.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not as sure about your reasons for discussing other things. Why discuss other research papers? Why discuss composition rules? Why discuss the results of rendering the well known film?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you clarify what effect you are trying to create in the reader, you can likely find words that are more precise and energetic, while still fitting the tone of a scholarly paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T18:45:35.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1399" CreationDate="2011-02-07T19:01:32.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: online writing workshops can be helpful, &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you're careful to chose a good one, and &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; your level of writing and professionalism is in the same rough vicinity as the course. Additionally, almost any workshop has the immediate bonuses of A) encouraging you to write regularly, and B) getting some feedback on your work (though it might not necessarily be helpful feedback). Those are nice bonuses, but often easy to find elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me expand on those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously you want &lt;strong&gt;a good workshop.&lt;/strong&gt; You're quite right about testimonials being unreliable - they could be outright fakes, or lacking context, or from people whose opinion you wouldn't respect. So how do you find a good one? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look for recommendations (or condmenations) on &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; websites.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See if the site seems professionally managed and designed; basically if it seems respectable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the terms and rules, and consider whether the format and process of the workshop seem appealing, reasonable, and/or helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's a program costing money, consider that the more it costs - the more discussion and recognition of it you &lt;em&gt;should,&lt;/em&gt; in theory, be able to find about it elsewhere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Personally, I've had a very good experience with &lt;a href=&quot;http://critters.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critters&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's talk about &lt;strong&gt;appropriate level.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want criticism that's better (more knowledgable; more professional) than  what you could get by passing your writing around among your friends. So: not amateurs, and not even writers who know significantly less about writing and critiquing than you do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If critiquing peers' work is a major component, you want to be in the right league to be able to give helpful criticism. So: jumping in with writers you see as way, way better than you might be problematic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider, when choosing, how ready you are to deal with criticism. Some places (e.g. Critters) make a point of being very gentle, polite, and constructive. A lot of professionals, though, will prefer not to expend effort in couching their criticism kindly or elaborately. They'll assume you can receive criticism professionally and (relatively) objectively; they won't explain every reference they make. They may seem curt, dismissive or even brutal. Professional criticism can be flabbergastingly helpful - but only if you're really ready to take criticism so harsh it hurts; otherwise it may only get you needlessly upset or depressed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;strong&gt;the bonuses&lt;/strong&gt; - the very framework of a steady stream of feedback is, for many people, an encouraging, helpful one. This means the group doesn't have to &lt;em&gt;teach&lt;/em&gt; you how to write (although it might); it may be enough that it encourages you to put more effort and polish into your writing. And writing is, of course, the best way to learn how to write. So this should be a serious consideration. On the other hand, a workshop can require a lot of effort, and possibly wading through a lot of unhelpful commentary and uninteresting manuscripts. Feedback and persistence can be had elsewhere; workshops are very good sources for them, but hardly exclusive ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and one last important note - one significant bonus you can get from workshops is to hone your own critiquing skills. That's a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; benefit, because it lets you see for yourself what works well and doesn't, and gives you lots of experience editing and suggesting revisions - all of which applies wonderfully to your own work forever after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope these are helpful considerations in deciding whether a workshop can be helpful to you, and which one. Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-02-07T19:13:46.550" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T19:13:46.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1447" CreationDate="2011-02-07T20:55:27.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say start with people you know.  Always good to get a personal recommendation from someone you trust.  Other than that, I've heard good things about mediabistro.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1116" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T20:55:27.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1256" CreationDate="2011-02-07T21:47:55.533" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;David Gemmell&lt;/strong&gt; and each of the &lt;strong&gt;Druss&lt;/strong&gt; books. &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gemmell had the ability to write very simple but entertaining heroic fantasy. His Druss character was the best of them (Waylander close 2nd) because Druss was this indomitable force of will and strength on the battlefield. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Probably the best large action scene is in &lt;em&gt;The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend&lt;/em&gt; at the Skeln Pass. Gemmell was at the top of his game writing these scenes.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;JV Jones&lt;/strong&gt; and her character &lt;strong&gt;Raif Sevrance&lt;/strong&gt;. There are two specific battle scenes that completely engage me every single time I read them.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Raif at Duff's Stonehouse&lt;/em&gt;. The way Jones writes this scene and what follows is mesmerising. Raif slowly descends into a mindless rage, where all that matters are the hearts of his enemies (and hearts being a big deal).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Raif on the Bluddroad&lt;/em&gt;, when the Wagons are attacked. This is memorable not so much for the battle scene, but for the preceding buildup to the battle. The way Jones makes real the almost-slowing-down of time before the battle, spending time describing the snow, the horses, the sweat. &#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Robert Jordan&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Rand al'Thor&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Book 6, The Battle of Dumai Wells&lt;/em&gt;. One of the greatest battle scenes and culmination of &quot;tension&quot; in fantasy that I have read. Astounding piece of work that is at the very top of my memories of reading WOT years ago.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;George R R Martin (GRRM)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are so many scenes of battle / violence in his &lt;em&gt;ASOIAF&lt;/em&gt; books that serve as memorable. Even the first prologue-ish chapter in the very first book has a sword-fight. Cataloging them is too crazy. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advice: Read the ASOIAF series with the mindset of studying how he writes his action.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T21:47:55.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1448" CreationDate="2011-02-07T23:25:25.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might be a silly answer, but as an avid reader with a remarkably short attention span, I'll toss in what I've found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It helps me if I play music and/or stand up over my desk to read. That way I can fidget without actually having an excuse to get up and do something else. I just sort of vibrate and clutch the desk until I can't take it anymore. The music gives me something to flail and twitch to (believe me, it's not dancing) and also helps me not focus on other noises. No matter where you go, there will be sounds. If you're like me, if you don't recognise them, you will wonder where they come from and soon you will realise that you've read two pages concerning the origin of that weird clicky noise from the hallway, or maybe it was that closet....If all you can hear is music, you can't get distracted that way. I tend to listen to the same CD (...or song) a few (or many) times in a row. Some people can't do that. I think it helps keep me from actually paying attention to the lyrics....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's not enough, you can also try reading aloud, or reading silently in a funny voice. No, really. There have been many exams that I would not have done so well on if I hadn't made Count Dracula or pirates or my professor in a funny costume read my textbook/dry academic blah to me. It's not the sort of thing you forget quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for regular fun books, I ascribe to the school of &quot;don't fight it,&quot; which is probably useless to you. If you're more interested in remembering what you read than in saving time, just get up and do something else if you begin to lose it or if you start thinking ahead of the story. Don't try to force yourself to concentrate. You'll just get frustrated and eventually give up if you're at all like me. I have to run back and forth across my house like a moth around a light periodically whatever I'm reading. When I actually remember how terribly out of shape I am, I go back and read some more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm trying to save time, but I can't concentrate for 5 minutes straight, I use a system. Every time I walk/run/gallop/twirl across my house, I have to read a paragraph. If I can't remember a whole paragraph, I have to read the first sentence, and I have to keep rereading it until I make sense of it. By the time I make sense of it, my brain has usually congealed enough to tackle the whole paragraph...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what's wrong with me, but hopefully something in there will help someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="308" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T23:25:25.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1446" CreationDate="2011-02-07T23:31:18.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A) There is no resource in the world that will make you a writer like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, or Isaac Asimov.  You are going to be the writer that &lt;em&gt;YOU&lt;/em&gt; are going to be. Being inspired by the greats is fine and a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) The best resource anywhere for tropes is tvtropes.org, and specific mystery tropes may be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MysteryTropes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MysteryTropes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C) Now considering that you already knew the term &quot;trope&quot;, you likely already knew B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D) The butler did it. Elementary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="875" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T23:31:18.187" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1448" CreationDate="2011-02-08T00:20:30.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Summarize as you go. It works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1127" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T00:20:30.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1448" CreationDate="2011-02-08T00:31:56.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I would do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break every 40 minutes-ish for 5 minutes and &lt;strong&gt;do something completely different&lt;/strong&gt;. Exercise usually.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Verbalise as you go. I mean, &lt;strong&gt;talk your thoughts&lt;/strong&gt;. As you are reading. Sure, you might sound crazy, but that's okay :).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's non-fiction material, &lt;strong&gt;get in the shoes of the most critical mind you know&lt;/strong&gt; and think .. &quot;What would they be thinking right now?&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="1039" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T02:30:15.120" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T02:30:15.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1448" CreationDate="2011-02-08T00:57:35.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to @cchart's excellent advice about summarizing, also make notes about your reaction to what you are reading, any thoughts or feelings that arise as you read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you agree or disagree with what the author is saying? How strongly? Why?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What relevant experiences have you had?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What ideas have you had about the topic, or do you now have as you're reading?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What surprises you? What seems like old news?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If what the authors are saying is true, what would be the consequences of that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How might you test the author's claims?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What other reactions do you have as you're reading?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T00:57:35.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="749" CreationDate="2011-02-08T01:22:04.877" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The three-act structure is very common, but for longer works, the traditional second act usually becomes a series of acts similar to two and three in the three-act structure. You'll normally not see that in your average 250 page paperback, but when dealing with large novels like the later works of Neal Stephenson, or lengthy fantasy and sci-fi novels, the act structure begins tending toward this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introductory act (TAS Act 1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First conflict (rising action)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First conflict resolution, set-up of second conflict&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second conflict (rising action)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second conflict resolution, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(repeat as needed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Final/main conflict (rising action)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story resolution (TAS Act 3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is very much simplified, given that said longer works usually have several stories threaded through them (like A, B, and C plots in film and TV). Those secondary conflicts handled throughout the novel will usually focus on the main story, but some of them will tie into the other story threads, or even focus on them primarily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how you want to look at it, those points 2..7 in the list above could be seen as a very long Act 2, but the truth is, it's more like a series of acts grouped as a super-act than anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1053" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T01:22:04.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1478" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1507" CreationDate="2011-02-08T01:22:20.663" Score="4" ViewCount="1504" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to improve my writing and have been considering getting either &lt;em&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt; by Strunk and White or &lt;em&gt;Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace&lt;/em&gt; by Williams and Colomb.  What are their relative strengths and weaknesses?  Why might one be better for me than the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a graduate student in engineering, but also like writing in general.  Thus, I want to improve my writing specifically in technical settings, but also in general.  I'm considering these two books because I've heard good things about both and because they're supposed to be short and to the point.  Knowing myself, even they might be pushing the boundaries of what I'll actually get through if I find reading them to be tedious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1129" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-05-12T05:26:14.987" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T05:26:14.987" Title="Strunk and White vs &quot;Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace&quot; by Williams and Colomb" Tags="|non-fiction|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1478" CreationDate="2011-02-08T01:57:59.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not a &quot;vs&quot; thing. Get them both. Learn from both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've only read Strunk &amp;amp; White. Planning to read Williams. There's a very simple reason why you would get them both and learn from them both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 50th Anniversary Edition of Strunk &amp;amp; White is $12 on Amazon (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205632645&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 3rd Edition of Williams is $15 on Amazon (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205605354&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of them are bestsellers and you can just read the Amazon comments (but also google them to see how many people have been influenced by both).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So obviously, what is contained in both books is widely held as wisdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get them both (if you can afford it). Learn from them both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit (2):&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are already two answers here, one for what Strunk is (technical focus), and what Williams is (people focus). At least, that's my reading of what Dale is saying about Williams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="1039" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T22:28:49.353" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T22:28:49.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="749" CreationDate="2011-02-08T02:08:07.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To me, the structure comes from the nature of the story you are telling.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most stories introduce. Even convoluted stories, like the movie Memento, have an Introduction, even if it's fake-ish and multi-headed and meant to misdirect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aside:&lt;/em&gt; Single novels, technically, are not slaved as much to an Introduction as multi-volume stories. One of my favourites, Jim Butcher, has a small &quot;introduction&quot; somewhere in the beginning of each of his Harry Dresden novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you do enough world / plot building, you could theoretically write a novel that jumped right into the action without any setup, many threads going right from beginning. &lt;strong&gt;BUT&lt;/strong&gt;, you'd have to be an absolute genius at making sure it sucked the reader in from the get-go. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, who would give up the joy of writing the setup / introduction act? Seems like it would be a lot of fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T02:08:07.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1448" CreationDate="2011-02-08T03:03:01.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reading one of those accounting books that is best described by a reviewer who said it was like &quot;going through WWI trench warfare&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here is what I did thanks to a friend who suggested this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read only 3 pages at a time - that's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would do something else that needs to be done from my task list that was broken down into really small chunks so I am away for just enough of a while to encourage controlled ADD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then come back, read another 3 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now because you are accomplishing other stuff, &#xA;1) You will feel encouraged&#xA;2) Write down in the margins either a summary of what you just read in a few words, that helps tremendously and keeps you on track and brings you back because your mind is catching up with where you were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of an academic article, I would read only one page at a time because I have been there too and wish I had the strategy before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1131" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T03:03:01.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1256" CreationDate="2011-02-08T03:41:40.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For modern combat, I highly recommend anything by Stephen Hunter (his book &lt;em&gt;Point of Impact&lt;/em&gt; was developed into the Mark Wahlberg movie &quot;Shooter&quot;).  Hunter writes knowledgably about guns and combat, and primarily but not exclusively about sniping.  One of his less-well-known books with some great set-piece action is &lt;em&gt;The Day Before Midnight&lt;/em&gt;.  He also wrote a nonfiction book called &lt;em&gt;American Gunfight&lt;/em&gt;, about the assassination attempt on President Truman that cost the life of a uniformed Secret Service agent.  One of the &quot;gimmicks&quot; of the book, though I liked it, is that in the middle of the narrative about who did what when, Hunter breaks into a stream-of-consciousness description of the gunfight from the points of view of the various participants, trying to emphasize the chaos and the fastfastfast nature of events, as opposed to the nice clean narrative we're used to in fictional gunfights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1133" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T03:41:40.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1483" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-08T03:43:15.017" Score="16" ViewCount="104236" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a writer, working on a non-fiction book proposal.  Finding public, free sales numbers for comparable titles is nearly impossible.  BookScan is a subscriber service run by Nielsen.  &quot;Above the Treeline&quot; is a subscriber service that collects sales data from some independent book sellers.  But I'm looking for reliable services that I could tap into. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1135" LastEditorUserId="3199" LastEditDate="2014-10-29T16:23:21.517" LastActivityDate="2018-08-01T18:22:00.347" Title="Where can I find sales numbers for books?" Tags="|publishing|resources|non-fiction|marketing|queries|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1483" CreationDate="2011-02-08T04:10:18.487" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, you're not likely to find much of anything useful without paying. The Association of American Publishers has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publishers.org/main/IndustryStats/indStats_01.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some statistics&lt;/a&gt; for free (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publishers.org/main/IndustryStats/indStats_02.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2009 Preliminary Estimates&lt;/a&gt;), but you'll have to buy the report to get anything meaningful. Is it worth $1250? Probably not in your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sales figures for the publishing industry just aren't readily available. Slushpile.net ran an interesting post in 2007 on the matter, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slushpile.net/index.php/2007/12/17/more-on-book-sales-figures/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;More on Book Sales&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't provide a reason for the lack of availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might try developing a list of similar titles and then seeing if the publishers of those titles would share at least print-run statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T04:10:18.487" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2011-02-08T04:54:00.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only source available for the 60 characters per line experiment that I could find appears to be from &lt;a href=&quot;http://bigital.com/english/files/2008/04/web_legibility_readability.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tomás García Ferrari &amp;amp; Carolina Short done in 2002&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See Test 3 in this document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1138" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T04:54:00.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1176" CreationDate="2011-02-08T05:37:24.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://typetrigger.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Type Trigger&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;is rather fun - you get a very short prompt (one to three words) and then write up to three hundred words on that prompt. There's a new prompt every hour. It's an energetic little writing exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="1223" LastEditDate="2011-02-11T08:04:52.643" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T08:04:52.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1448" CreationDate="2011-02-08T08:57:40.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I start reading the same lines over and over again, I start skimming. Whether it's fact or fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a text stops engaging, it is either written in a way that doesn't &quot;suit my mind&quot;, or I don't have any &quot;cognitive pegs&quot; to stick the material to. Either way, reading it carefully won't help me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I start skimming, and as soon as the text gets interesting again, I will naturally slow down and pay attention. Usually I have unconsciously picked up bits and pieces along the way. I usually discard the book if the skimming continues for too long. If the book has interested me at some point, I can go on for a while. If it is unengaging from the start, I give it max 20-30 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I took me a while to understand that I don't have to read and understand everything. If I had realized that earlier, I probably would have finished 'The Lord of the Rings', instead of giving up at the council of Elrond. Twice.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are different and will convey and absorb material differently. If you find a book on a subject matter hard to read, find another one.  There are usually tons of books written on every thinkable subject - you just have to find the ones that suit your way of learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic papers are awkward since they often relate to other papers, and talk about them as if you know what they are saying. You usually read academic papers in search of specific knowledge, so I tend to read them they way I browse the internet, filtering out the parts that interest me, and following the references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life is too short to read books that doesn't appeal to you. Especially since there are so may others out there that probably will - even on the same subject. Everything can be taught and everything can be interesting, if it is conveyed in a way that appeals to YOU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T08:57:40.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1446" CreationDate="2011-02-08T10:26:34.780" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;EDIT: In reconsidering this question and a conversation I had with a colleague the other day I believe I have something to add on this. He mentioned reading about the way Agatha Christie used to construct her stories. He made the assertion that she used to write the whole thing without actually knowing who the murderer was, then analyse what she had written to find a suitable murderer as she approached the end and then quickly &quot;plant&quot; the clues along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this hearsay is true or not I cannot say but it did make me wonder if there was anything about Christie's methods on line I found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christiemystery.co.uk/method.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.christiemystery.co.uk/method.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from the same site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christiemystery.co.uk/plot.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.christiemystery.co.uk/plot.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope those help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-END EDIT-&lt;br&gt;&#xA;FINAL EDIT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to put the lid on this and make it complete, following the Christie search I just did a generic one for whodunnit plot methods and the best link, despite feeling a little spammy, was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.squidoo.com/writing_whodunit_mystery&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.squidoo.com/writing_whodunit_mystery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-END EDIT-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I wanted to write a crime novel I didn't worry overmuch about the &quot;whodunnit&quot; aspect of the novel as the crime I was describing was so bizarre it was more of a &quot;whatexactlyarewedealingwithhere&quot;. However I did want the rather surreal situation I was describing to have some sort of psychological veracity and for the police procedural details to be accurate. Perhaps these desires were born of the bizarreness of the actual incident I was describing. (It's that odd that I'm not even going to attempt to describe it here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In preparation for that I consulted the Writer's Digest volumes &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0898795184&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scene of the Crime&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/089879370X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Armed and Dangerous&lt;/a&gt;. The former was considerably more helpful than the latter and my actual weapons reference for firearms is a rather scary volume called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0786931329&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;D20 Modern Weapons Locker&lt;/a&gt; which is for a role playing game but contains a great and accurate write up of almost every firearm in the known world (I told you it was scary). The Weapons Locker also points out matters for simulating the realism of weapons in games and deals in points of fact like there being no way to silence a revolver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally for a psychological aspect I read many of the behavioural profiling memoirs of FBI Behavioural Profiler &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.johndouglasmindhunter.com/home.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Douglas&lt;/a&gt;. His books with Mark Olshaker give Douglas a chance to discuss the psychology of the criminal in depth that is more than sufficient for an author to know their criminal. He mostly talks about serial killers obviously but also about particular single murders and even a few &quot;nuisances&quot; like the profile of the kind of guy who would add a urine kicker to the office coffee pot (similar psychological make up to the unabomber for the record).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What all this taught me was that if your crime is compelling the &quot;mystery&quot; aspect kind of takes care of itself. A story in which you just ask &quot;who&quot; dunnit is not as exciting as one that asks &quot;why&quot; they dunnit and &quot;what&quot; they tried to do to cover it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that time whenever I design a crime story I always walk through the crime from the perspective of the criminal and allow the detectives to work back to the crime from the evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T09:05:06.737" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T09:05:06.737" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1294" CreationDate="2011-02-08T13:42:28.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A screenplay can be much less wordy than a short story since the screenplay is not the final product--the film is.  I suggest going straight to the script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that I have very little free time to write and film (outside of my day job).  If I let myself get bogged down in things that don't lead directly to the production of a film, then that film will never happen.  Don't get involved in something that will hurt your momentum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T13:42:28.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1176" CreationDate="2011-02-08T15:46:30.087" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't read it myself, but I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1582973512&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The 3 A.M. Epiphany&lt;/em&gt; by Brian Kitely, sounds like exactly what you're looking for. It's got very nice reviews - both in terms of score, and the actual description. Here's the first one that sounded like a great match for your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The exercises also have an additional dimension to them that most don't. Each one is &#xA;  carefully constructed to help you explore a certain aspect of your writing. These aren't &#xA;  meant to be &quot;merely&quot; inspirational--they're designed to teach technique, as well, without &#xA;  reading like a dry instructional book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are types of exercises in here I really haven't seen anywhere else, particularly in &#xA;  the sections on &quot;Internal Structure&quot; and &quot;Exercises for Stories in Progress&quot;, and I think &#xA;  you'll find them inspiring in ways that other books aren't. They'll make you think, work &#xA;  and write in whole new directions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds so tempting, I'm inclined to get a copy myself. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T15:46:30.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1176" CreationDate="2011-02-08T15:56:06.050" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a writing prompt in a traditional sense, but this has worked for me: improv comedy classes.  Every time you perform a scene, you're creating a completely new story on the fly.  It's a great way to generate ideas.  The story grows organically, and you'll get unexpected (i.e. creative) results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a fun way to get new ideas for writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T15:56:06.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1478" CreationDate="2011-02-08T16:45:38.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt; is fundamental and applies to all forms of writing. I'm not familiar with &lt;em&gt;Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace&lt;/em&gt;, so I'm unable to comment on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your interest lies with writing in a technical setting, I suggest you also look at some style guides for technical writing. Jean Weber has a fairly comprehensive list of books related to technical writing on her blog, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jeanweber.com/newsite/?page_id=4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Technical Editors' Eyrie&lt;/a&gt;. See her list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jeanweber.com/newsite/?page_id=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Technical editing and style guides&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: Based on a couple comments on the original question, I recommend checking out &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sinandsyntax.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sin and Syntax&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; if you're disinclined to use &lt;em&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt;. I read it a year or so back and I've found it more useful than &lt;em&gt;Elements&lt;/em&gt;. I keep them side-by-side on my desk, along with &lt;em&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="747" LastEditDate="2011-02-09T21:33:17.800" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T21:33:17.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1446" CreationDate="2011-02-08T16:45:48.290" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any online resources, but I would offer a couple of my own suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Before you begin the story, you MUST know how the crime was actually committed.  This is because stories of this type can require complex choreography to get the various characters into the correct positions.  If you realize too late that you have to change the circumstances of the crime, you may be in for quite a bit of rewriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Begin with the actual crime, which should be fairly straightforward.  Once that's done, you can the obfuscate what actually happened.  Work backwards, in other words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Make sure that facts that appear obvious during the setup may not be what they seem. Be sure all the characters - not just the villain - have plenty of secrets to uncover.  Why &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; the upstairs maid in the garden at 3am, anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Read lots of locked room mysteries.  There are a couple of good collections that are widely avaible, THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF LOCKED ROOM MYSTERIES AND IMPOSSIBLE CRIMES and THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF PERFECT CRIMES AND IMPOSSIBLE MYSTERIES.  An author you didn't mention is John Dickson Carr (aka Carter Dickson).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Remember, the plot isn't the story. A good story can sell a mediocre plot, and an ingenious solution can't save a bad story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastEditorUserId="1154" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T17:17:44.393" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T17:17:44.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1204" CreationDate="2011-02-08T18:06:20.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fun fact: even &quot;The Man With No Name&quot; (Clint Eastwood's character in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollars_Trilogy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sergio Leone's &lt;em&gt;Dollars&lt;/em&gt; trilogy&lt;/a&gt; of classic spaghetti Westerns) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_with_No_Name#Name&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;had a name&lt;/a&gt;. Several, in fact!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your reader needs a mental handle by which they can &quot;grab onto&quot; a character as they think about your story.  A name is a useful way of providing that, even if it's just a nickname.  This is such a big deal that if you don't provide one the reader will insist on making one up for themselves, based on some character trait or quirk of behavior or whatever other hook they can find to hang it on, no matter how farfetched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of this: in both &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club_%28film%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chuck Palahniuk's novel &lt;em&gt;Fight Club&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club_%28film%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the film adaptation of it&lt;/a&gt;, the main character (Ed Norton in the movie) is never explicitly named.  But readers of the novel consistently refer to him as &quot;Joe,&quot; because of lines like &quot;I am Joe's complete lack of surprise&quot; in his interior dialogue (the conversations he has in his head).  &quot;Joe&quot; has nothing to do with his actual name -- it's a parody of the style of old &lt;em&gt;Reader's Digest&lt;/em&gt; stories -- but readers latch onto it desperately as a way to identify the character.  In the film, the screenwriters changed &quot;Joe&quot; to &quot;Jack,&quot; and so people who know the story from the film call the character &quot;Jack.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason I would suggest that, if the &quot;no-name&quot; approach is difficult even for a writer as good as Palahniuk to pull off, you're probably best served by just ditching it and finding other ways to suggest mystery.  What does this man do?  Where does he come from?  Why is he the way he is?  These are all more interesting questions than what his name is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="786" LastEditorUserId="786" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T21:44:26.727" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T21:44:26.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1240" CreationDate="2011-02-08T18:42:23.760" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I would suggest is to try and give each character a different way of speaking.  Dialog is one of the best ways to differentiate characters on the page.  I personally talk out loud using different characters' voices, and in fact I don't feel like I have a handle on a character until I know how they talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T18:42:23.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2011-02-08T19:01:21.027" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Self-Editing for Fiction Writers&quot; is a nuts-and-bolts book that taught me an awful lot about how to write effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T19:01:21.027" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-08T19:01:21.027" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2011-02-08T19:09:20.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because a setting is made up doesn't mean it's fantasy.  For example, Ed McBain set his series of police procedurals in the city of &quot;Isola&quot;, a thinly-disguised New York.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subject matter of the story itself should determine the determine the genre, especially if the fictional setting can be fixed in general terms (&quot;the American south&quot;, &quot;19th century Russia&quot;, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T19:09:20.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="392" CreationDate="2011-02-08T19:13:47.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally don't feel that compiling laundry lists of attributes helps to develop characters. The most important thing you need to know if the character's function in the story.  Hero's best friend?  Assistant murderer?  Beyond that, each character needs a personality.  Think of your friends - you may not know what kind of ice cream they like, or what their favorite book is, but you know how they act, and how they talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the character timid or outgoing?  Serious or silly?  Do they tend to go on a bit, or are they more laconic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own advice is to shamelessly steal personality traits from people who you know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T19:13:47.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="107" CreationDate="2011-02-08T19:20:48.937" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing is just to jump right into the action, e.g. &quot;Babjack pulled to the curb and cut the engine.&quot;  The master of this form was &quot;Richard Stark&quot; (Donald Westlake), whose novels always started with lines like &quot;When the phone rang Parker was in the garage, killing a man.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the emphasis on first lines is a little exaggerated.  Most readers will read more than one line.  On the other hand, a good first line can set the tone for the rest of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastEditorUserId="1154" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T19:51:06.383" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T19:51:06.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="84" CreationDate="2011-02-08T19:48:47.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the rise of print-on-demand and (especially) e-books, self-publishing has become viable in a way that it never was before.  However, this does not mean you should publish your first efforts.  In most genres these days there are various websites that publish fiction, and these serve as a sort of minor league for up-and-coming writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a minimum, getting published at these sites shows that a disinterested third party likes your work enough to expend the effort to publish it. It's a good way to get feedback and develop a reputation within a community.  Once you do self-publish (if you decide to go that route), you'll have a much better change of making an impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T19:48:47.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1483" CreationDate="2011-02-08T20:05:19.907" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingrambook.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ingram&lt;/a&gt; is the largest book distributor in the business. You can call their automated stock check number at (800) 937-0995. Enter a book's ISBN, and you'll get back its current sales data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also get Amazon's historical data by signing up for an account at &lt;a href=&quot;http://titlez.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TitleZ&lt;/a&gt; and selecting the books you want to track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of the above are free services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to update: titlez is down, unfortunately. You can purchase an account at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ranktracer.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ranktracer.com/&lt;/a&gt; (currently $9/year for a single product or $30/month unlimited) to track Amazon SKU sales on a going-forward basis, but cannot get historical data before your subscription started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-01-12T08:43:16.240" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T08:43:16.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2011-02-08T20:36:51.050" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What &lt;strong&gt;happens&lt;/strong&gt; in your story seems, from your description, to be action/thriller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where your story is &lt;strong&gt;set&lt;/strong&gt; is an imaginary world, bearing some resemblance to the real world in the 1950-ish era.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question remaining is how central the setting is to the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the world is clearly, inherantly imaginary, blatantly contradicting real-world history or metaphysics, and the story relies on these deviations, then that's inescapably fantasy. Fantasy is a broad category, to such extent that it's seldom crucial to narrow it down further by event-genre (e.g. fantasy-romance; fantasy-thriller, etc). &quot;Dark fantasy&quot; sounds like a safe bet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want significant deviations from real-world history, but nothing else important, that could be an &quot;alternate history&quot; or an &quot;alternate earth.&quot; I'm kind of assuming it's not, because it sounds like you're not referencing real-world events, which is a staple of the genre. If you think this might be appropriate, by all means read up on the genre.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt;, then your story is less fantasy, and more &quot;this could have happened, but didn't.&quot; That doesn't define a particular genre; indeed, it raises the question why you're tossing the reader into an imaginary world in the first place. Consider: could you plausibly claim that the story took place in the real world, but be vague on precisely where and when? (Like the Simpson's &quot;Springfield&quot;... which is hardly in the &quot;fantasy&quot; genre). If there isn't a &lt;em&gt;reason&lt;/em&gt; the world can't be the real world, it probably should be.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lastly, if your story relies very heavily on a setting remniscant of mid-century earth, it might be &quot;historical&quot; or a period piece. (I find that unlikely, though, if you're describing the world as &quot;imaginary&quot;). &quot;Historical,&quot; I think, does combine with other genres, so it might be a &quot;historical thriller&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this is helpful :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T20:36:51.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1478" CreationDate="2011-02-08T20:38:50.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend Williams and Colomb's &lt;em&gt;Style&lt;/em&gt;. Throughout the book they focus heavily on three ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do readers expect?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What choices can writers make?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do the writer's choices affect the reader's expectations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, where other books might admonish not to use passive voice, &lt;em&gt;Style&lt;/em&gt; describes the effects of passive voice, and through examples demonstrates where you might want those effects, and where you might not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've applied two ideas in particular. First, begin a sentence with familiar information, and place new information at the end. Beginning with familiar information connects with readers and orients them to the topic of the sentence. Once oriented, the reader can make better sense of the new information, and relate it to what has come before. Writing sentences this way increases cohesion and narrative flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the end of a clause or sentence or paragraph is the &quot;power position.&quot; Readers tend to read the words in those positions with a little extra emphasis. So identify the information that you want the reader to emphasize, and shift that information to the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I highly recommend &lt;em&gt;Style&lt;/em&gt;. For several years I bought each new edition as it came out, partly to see what new ideas Williams and Colomb offered, but mostly as a refresher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2011-02-09T00:35:52.460" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T00:35:52.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1133" CreationDate="2011-02-08T22:09:57.607" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In nearly all cases where you're writing a webcomic, you are going to want a true collaborator. Comics are a visual storytelling medium, as evidenced by the fact that you can have a comic that has pictures but no text, but you can't really have a comic that is text without pictures. This person is going to be helping you to tell your story and should ideally have some freedom to make contributions of their own. The artist is going to be providing a service that you can't provide yourself, so you will want to find someone you can trust to not just follow your instructions, but know what is going to work visually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to Craigslist and Deviant Art, there are some sites and forums around that help writers and artists find people to collaborate with. A search for something like &quot;comics artist collaborate&quot; should turn up some possibilities. The person who draws the comic is usually just referred to as the artist; I don't see &quot;illustrator&quot; used as much in this context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest having between a week's and a month's worth of strips written before you seek out your collaborator. Aside from helping to show a potential artist that you're serious, it's just a good idea to have a lot of material ready in advance, just in case something comes up that prevents you from writing new comics for a bit. I don't know if you need to do complete character designs, but you will probably want to write short descriptions of all of the main characters and settings so the artist knows what he or she will be expected to draw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T22:09:57.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="392" CreationDate="2011-02-08T22:58:30.823" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it can be helpful to use your plot to extrapolate what the characters who are involved in it are like. Let's say you're writing a story about a long sea voyage. Right away, that tells you that the main character has some sort of reason for being on a sea voyage. And once you know what that is, you'll know a few things about who this character is. If your character is going out to explore the world, that's going to indicate certain things about his or her personality (adventurous) and possibly the resources he or she has access to (the money and supplies needed to mount such an expedition, including the ship). Then you can go a little deeper into why this character is looking to explore the world, which will suggest still more about the character. Is this a grizzled veteran sailor looking for one last chance to discover something and gain a place in history? Or perhaps a naive noble who thinks going to sea will be a fun adventure? Or maybe a sailor hoping to strike it rich and make a better life for his or her family back home? That's only a few of the possibilties, but you can see how each reason for wanting to explore at sea would suggest a different background, social status, and personality for each of these characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, just deducing character traits from the plot can lead to boring, stereotypical characters. So once you have the basics, play around with it a bit. Ask yourself &quot;What would happen if this person was A instead of B?&quot; Doing that a couple of times and picking the results that lead to the most interesting character while still giving him or her a reason and capability to do what your plot requires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a couple of other people have already said, don't add quirks just to add quirks. You will probably want to figure out the particular ways your character show certain emotions or what he or she does when there's not much else to do. But there should be a reason that makes sense in the story for everything that happens. The fact that your character is a terrible trumpet player isn't important unless your character has a plausible reason to play the trumpet or talk about playing the trumpet during the course of the story. The character's lack of trumpet playing skills may reveal how she has never really finished anything she started before or how he had a bad relationship with his father, but you still need a logical reason for it to come up in conversation or for the character to play the trumpet, let alone bring it on a sea voyage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T22:58:30.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1510" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1525" CreationDate="2011-02-08T23:25:12.100" Score="7" ViewCount="1705" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this link about character development, the author describes basic male archetypes that are found in a romance novel.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.likesbooks.com/eight.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.likesbooks.com/eight.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;My question is: although this is very helpful, the qualities described are hard to flesh out. For example...the ceo boss archetype...what would be the details of this character(likes/dislikes/hobbies/way of conduct) that would really bring alive the qualities of this archetype. How would he conduct himself around people? Around women?&#xA;I know the long answer is to read books and more books and pay close attention to thedetails of the character. But is there a guide available on this to get started?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="593" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T18:24:11.987" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T18:24:11.987" Title="Character details of male archetypes" Tags="|fiction|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1511" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1514" CreationDate="2011-02-09T00:21:36.000" Score="4" ViewCount="3088" Body="&lt;p&gt;How important is it for a writer to be fast when using a keyboard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="168" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T18:23:41.317" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T18:23:41.317" Title="How important is typing speed to a successful writing career?" Tags="|typing|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2011-02-09T01:12:11.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I liked &quot;No Plot; No Problem&quot; by Chris Baty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1172" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T01:12:11.540" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T01:12:11.540" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1511" CreationDate="2011-02-09T01:25:09.533" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is important to be able to type fast enough to focus on the writing and not the keyboard. Being able to touch type is essential, in my opinion. I don't think I could keep my train of thought if I was constantly scanning the keyboard for the next letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastEditorUserId="641" LastEditDate="2011-02-09T01:33:47.997" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T01:33:47.997" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1511" CreationDate="2011-02-09T01:49:10.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typing &lt;strong&gt;Well&lt;/strong&gt; is more important than typing &lt;em&gt;Fast&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, you need to be able to type the words as they form in your mind, as you &lt;strong&gt;think&lt;/strong&gt; them, without thinking about the actual typing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bruce is correct. If you can touch-type, you are mostly there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="1039" LastEditDate="2011-02-09T01:56:19.870" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T01:56:19.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1511" CreationDate="2011-02-09T01:58:16.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;See Dean Wesley Smith's recent article about writing speed: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=3204&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=3204&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Smith says, &quot;I don’t type faster with my little four-finger typing, I just write more hours than most... I am considered a fast writer because I spend more hours writing. Nothing more.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T01:58:16.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1518" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-09T02:16:38.467" Score="1" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As per Jeff's answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/200/can-i-use-this-site-to-get-reviews-on-my-blog-post-so-as-to-improve-my-writing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; on meta, I'm posting a Critique Question. Let me know if I'm not following the process correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My story for critique is found &lt;a href=&quot;http://stuandrews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/The-Prophet-Book-1-Awakening.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (pdf, or you could go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://stuandrews.com/stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;my story page&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Preamble&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a short story about a writer who is drawn into the world he has been writing about for many years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has 14 chapters, marking it longer than a short short story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the story is too condensed, and needs to be drawn out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this story too condensed? That is, am I trying to fit too much into a short amount of writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:03.470" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T06:49:57.867" Title="The Prophet: Part 1, Awakening .. Question about being &quot;Too condensed&quot;" Tags="|pacing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="84" CreationDate="2011-02-09T03:39:39.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishing on the Kindle is definitely a viable option. In order to have a shot at success, though, you should put some consideration into how you're going to go about promoting yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of online short fiction magazines. The ones I am most familiar with are podcast magazines like Escape Pod (for science fiction) or PodCastle (for Fantasy). Writers like Tim Pratt have managed to have a respectable amount of success online by getting a lot of their short fiction published in popular online magazines like that, building up an audience who are then more likely to buy his Kindle/not for free works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are people who podcast their novels a chapter at a time for free, then sell the written version in Kindle form. Or, like Tim Pratt again, release the written version a chapter at a time on a blog but have the whole completed version in Kindle form, so that anyone who gets impatient and doesn't want to wait for all the chapters to be released can pay to get the whole thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It used to be hard to get published, and to get noticed once you had been published. Now it is easy to get published (in electronic form) but if anything it is even harder to get noticed because so many others can publish too. So I would say that it's not matter of whether you want to go with a self-publish/Kindle option, but how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="701" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T03:39:39.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1518" CreationDate="2011-02-09T04:16:17.070" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I'm going to need some more time in order to look at this fully, I think that the answer to your question of &quot;is this too condensed&quot; is &quot;yes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing I notice from the very start is that you do a lot of &quot;telling&quot; and not a lot of &quot;showing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, the very first two sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moses was a writer. A good writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you are telling us that Moses is a good writer, but you aren't SHOWING us that he is a good writer. There are a number of ways to show this. You might reveal it in a scene where he is talking to his publisher about how well his latest book is selling. You might have another character reacting to what he read. You might have an excerpt of what it is that he is writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, the second sentence is technically a fragment. I do not know if this is a style thing for you, but I found similar fragments to be mildly distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, I think some of the concepts are introduced too abruptly, such as the garishka. One just shows up... poof! Moses's reaction felt a bit... subdued. If something kind of like a small dragon suddenly shows up on the top of a building that I'm walking into, and these sorts of things don't actually ever happen... I'm doing to need a change of shorts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="875" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T04:16:17.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1511" CreationDate="2011-02-09T04:29:41.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about how fast you need to type in order to hit your word count goals: if you can write a thousand words in an hour, then you'll have no trouble writing things quickly (only fifty hours to complete NaNoWriMo, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a thousand words an hour is less than seventeen words a minute - you don't need touch typing to reach that pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T04:29:41.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2011-02-09T04:38:29.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want motivation? Set deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a great fan of &lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Novel Writing Month&lt;/a&gt;, a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. It has the advantage of being large and well-organised, but setting yourself a firm deadline on your own might work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If self-imposed deadlines don't work, then spend the next few months planning your story and join NaNoWriMo in November to actually get yourself moving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T04:38:29.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-02-09T04:59:48.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a software developer of some decades of experience, and I've written a lot of early drafts for novels so I have form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have found helpful in my fiction writing is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;cohesiveness. Writing software teaches the need to have a complete logical progression from beginning to end. This make scene sequencing a natural thing to do, and means that plots are very likely to be cohesive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;persistence. You know that bug you spent a week chasing down? Now think about how that dedication to finding the problem will translate to debugging your plot timeline, or finding the right way to place a gun in your main character's hand at the proper time, or fixing the setting when you realise your orbital mechanics are entirely wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;extreme pedantry. I've been told by many writing friends that I generate very clean copy. Attention to detail is a useful attribute for both programming and story telling.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For myself, I identify as a writer who works in two media: code and English. So far I've only been paid for my code, that's all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T04:59:48.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="392" CreationDate="2011-02-09T07:10:30.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend Orson Scott Card's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0898799279&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Characters and Viewpoint&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. It's an excellent book (probably the best book on writing that I've read), and he discusses a lot of important issues in building characters that are very insightful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only shopping lists of details, but how the character is viewed by others; their past; their motivations. He talks about how you can choose characteristics, traits, and quirks that dovetail well with the character's role in the story, and how to portray those elements and make them significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, the details you mentioned are all good directions - and any one idea can be the germ of a great character. Actively look for interesting ideas you haven't seen much, or even commonplace ideas you haven't seen much and why they might be interesting after all. For example, one author I read wrote a story about a high-school band master; I'd never read a story about someone of that profession before, and he did really neat things with it - and got a lot of compliments from band masters who were thrilled to see a great story about one of their own :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T07:10:30.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1510" CreationDate="2011-02-09T12:02:58.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The CEO Boss archetype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is anxiously building his image as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A ruhtles utilitarian, ostensibly displaying his contempt of everything what cannot fit into account records.&#xA;He doesn't need to follow rules, he is stating them. All people - even his own family - have the only value for him: profit (financial, emotional, ... etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cold power available to the highest bidder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples of CEO Bosses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reinhard Heydrich&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Joseph Fouché&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Michael Douglas in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094291/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wall Street&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jack Thompson in &lt;strong&gt;The Assassination of Richard Nixon&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Robert De Niro in &lt;strong&gt;Angel Heart&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Francisco Rabal in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098496/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Torquemada&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I cannot imagine any CEO to be someone's &quot;best friend&quot; or a &quot;prince on a white horse&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T12:02:58.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1510" CreationDate="2011-02-09T13:39:48.623" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what many archetype systems use as a base point (consciously or unconsciously) is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagram_of_Personality&quot;&gt;Enneagram of Personality&lt;/a&gt;. Indeed a lot of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersstore.com/the-enneagram-a-power-tool-for-screenwriters&quot;&gt;writer's workshops&lt;/a&gt; and courses revolve around using the enneagram to make characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To cross reference the enneagram with the archetypes in your referenced article it breaks down like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perfectionist (Bad Boy/Lost Soul/Professor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Giver (Best Friend/Bad Boy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Achiever (Chief/Charmer/Professor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Romantic (Bad Boy/Lost Soul)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Observer (Professor/Lost Soul/Bad Boy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Idealist (Bad Boy/Swashbuckler/Warrior)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dreamer (Lost Soul/Charmer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Boss (Chief/Warrior)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peacemaker (Chief/Best Friend)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the reason why this cross referencing could be helpful is that the enneagram works on the basis of motivation whereas the archetypes work on the basis of outward behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially the archetype gives you the outward appearance of the character whereas the enneagram gives you a clue as to the character's motivations for assuming their archetypal role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bit complicated to go into here but basically the breakdown shows that people could be motivated to assume the role of the Chief because they are a Boss, a Peacemaker or an Achiever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Boss fears weakness and acts in an aggressively protective manner towards their own perceived weakness and is also strongly motivated to protect those he cares about&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Peacemaker fears conflict and always acts to appease all parties and assume control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Achiever fears inadequacy and uses roles like masks over their own inner sense of inadequacy, it is as if their role is a persona masking (quite obviously) their inner personality which the achiever fears is somehow subpar or unworthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relationships within the enneagram go a lot deeper but you can probably start to tease out how chiefs in these three different flavours will favour different outward appearances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A boss chief will be very spartan and constantly proving that he is strong, he will be a man's man, properly macho. His leadership will be portrayed as some sort of duty and he will be keen to prove that he is the only one strong enough to do the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A peacemaker chief will make much of being patrician, urbane, calm and in quiet control. He will make sure he is perceived as generous and reasonable, he will enjoy the accoutrements of peace. He will often be keen to mark out a spiritual space and repeatedly use rhetoric that indicates people obey his station not his ego. He will be the most likely to treat leadership as a burden of reponsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Achiever chief will be, bluntly, obsessed with bling. His leadership will be a self-obsessive affair and he will want sports cars, blackberries and gold chains to show that he is the boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously you could go into this very deeply but that's a jump off point for this kind of character analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T13:39:48.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="392" CreationDate="2011-02-09T13:41:54.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1510/character-details-of-male-archetypes/1526#1526&quot;&gt;Character details of male archetypes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer to that question pretty much gives a way of analysing characters by cross referencing simple archetypes with the Enneagram of Personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T13:41:54.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1510" CreationDate="2011-02-09T14:37:52.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest some of the pickup artist material that has been written over the past five years.  These guys have figured out the &quot;rules&quot; for trying to attract women.  From what I've seen, it generally breaks down men into these categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;alpha: your CEO type, used to getting what he wants.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;beta: the nice guy who finishes last.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;omega: the creepy guy in the corner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I like about this material is that it breaks men (and women) down into a set of behaviors, and these are easy to replicate in writing.  While there are tons of books available, one of the most interesting free resources I've found is &lt;a href=&quot;http://roissy.wordpress.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Roissy's blog&lt;/a&gt; [WARNING: misogyny].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T14:37:52.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1530" CreationDate="2011-02-09T18:02:27.883" Score="31" ViewCount="1962" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beta readers are important to perfecting a novel/novella/short story. They give you a fresh set of eyes, offer opinions, and can be a great moral boost. But where can you find good beta readers? Are there any sites that writers can use to find beta readers that have a reputation for having skilled beta readers? Anyone can read a book and offer their opinions, but a good beta reader knows the difference between two different styles and something that really is bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2024-03-30T11:38:06.463" Title="Where is a good place to find beta readers?" Tags="|editing|beta-readers|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1529" CreationDate="2011-02-09T19:27:49.680" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a hard one, because it really depends on the community you are working with in your writing. If you are already working with a writers group then you already have group of beta readers right there, just stand up and ask. If you're not part of an existing writers group it might get a bit tricky. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are always the on-line writers groups, places like critters.org. They are built around the idea of doing beta work, but the good ones have rules and you usually can't just sign up and ask for a beta read. With Critters it takes a few weeks to be established and a few more weeks to get your story through the pipe, so it could be a couple of months before you get your feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also look for a local writers group. Meetup.com is a good place to start for that, but once again you really need to become a part of the group before you can really ask them to beta. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there is also the choice of asking family, but they might be over inclined to give you positive feedback and gloss over the problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand a good friend, preferably one who is also a writer, can be a good source of beta work, but if they are also a writer you should be willing to beta read in return. In fact, you should probably always be open to beta reading something in return. That way one story trade solves two problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also some oddball ways to find beta readers. I've been apart of a few fangroups that have open lists for beta readers. The downside is that but they are mostly looking for fanfiction, though some are open for original work. If you're doing a fan work that might be a worth while place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you never know, just asking this question here might get you a few offers to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T19:27:49.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1511" CreationDate="2011-02-09T21:06:36.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends upon what type of work you are getting into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just because you can type fast, doesn't mean you can write well&lt;/strong&gt;. But writing fast &lt;strong&gt;does&lt;/strong&gt; have the added benefits of allowing you to quickly lay down a rough draft, tweak the hell out of it, clean it up during editing, and publish the final piece. Also, if you are going to be writing for a fast-paced publication that requires you to submit a certain amount of articles per day, you would help yourself by being able to type faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing as I write for both (I've previously written for Mashable, CMSWire, and others), I have managed to find a good blend. I can usually write 700 - 1,000 words in a rough draft in the span of 30 or so minutes (assuming I don't need to break out of my flow to do research/fact checking). But it could require an hour or two of editing and fact checking to make this blob of text into something presentable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more long-form content like editorials and essays, however, I usually take my time and pay more attention to the flow of the article. It is especially important because you have to keep the reader engaged and captivate his/her attention for a longer timespan (which is critical for the plentiful amount of readers that have ADHD in my industry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the latter case, writing speed isn't as important. Creating a story that people will want to read is critical, though, and even when I can pump out an impressive 125+ words per minute, little of that helps with the basics of crafting a well-written article. It might help get ideas out of my head faster, giving me more time to rearrange things and produce a better product, but that can only take you but so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you are a writer, right? You are always looking for ways to improve your writing. Improving your writing speed can improve your writing. &lt;strong&gt;So take it slow for now; build up your writing speed over time&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: Writing speed helps immensely in certain situations, but crafting a well-written product, in the end, requires creativity and dedication — something writing speed can't compensate for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="859" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T21:06:36.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1529" CreationDate="2011-02-09T22:56:47.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will offer an acquaintance who I already know likes to read a small amount of money to read and critique a work for me--not talking about lots of $$$, maybe $10 USD to read and comment on a short story under 50,000 words.  If a person is getting some sort of reward for reading and commenting, he/she will usually stick with it even if they are not enthralled by your writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T22:56:47.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1533" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1536" CreationDate="2011-02-09T23:48:06.980" Score="8" ViewCount="4311" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to expand my vocabulary and already do several of the things recommended in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/653/tips-for-expanding-my-vocabulary&quot;&gt;Tips for expanding my vocabulary&lt;/a&gt; question.  In addition to that, I've been spending some time with a flashcard-like program I wrote and am looking for good lists of vocabulary words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what constitutes a &quot;good vocabulary list&quot; in my eyes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The words are actually used and useful (you might run across them if you read much)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It preferably does not include words that any high school graduate &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; know&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.virtualsalt.com/vocablst.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1062 Vocabulary Words&lt;/a&gt; list, which is the best I've found looking around online.  However, I often run across words that aren't in it (e.g. asperity, cavil, debonair, frock, limpid, maudlin, persiflage, ribald, vitriolic, etc).  Where else can I find good lists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1129" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T13:42:27.783" Title="Where can I find a good vocabulary list?" Tags="|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1533" CreationDate="2011-02-10T00:09:48.623" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, you might say that my answer is a wee bit off-topic because I'm not recommending a list--well, I SORT OF am, but my first and best recommendation is that reading news articles of interest by paid journalists (not bloggers!) along with fiction by highly literary writers (ex, Nabokov, Fowles, etc) will do more to help you gain vocabulary than messing with flash cards.  Reading words in context will help your vocabulary much more than flash cards and learning things by rote.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to recommend two favorite fantasy/sci fi writers Stephen Donaldson (Thomas Covenant books) and Jack Vance (The Demon Princes) to those who wish to develop vocabulary; both these fiction writers, though their writing is very clear and direct, use tons of complex and unusual words in rigorously technical style.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do have a list to recommend, however, before you dismiss my advice as unhelpful:  The &quot;worthless word of the day&quot; list: &lt;a href=&quot;http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd/disclaim.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd/disclaim.htm&lt;/a&gt;  These words are not &quot;worthless&quot; by any means (although some are quite archaic), but quite unusual.  You can subscribe and they send you a new &quot;worthless word&quot; every day.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T00:09:48.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1533" CreationDate="2011-02-10T02:40:14.873" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Phrontistery (another good word) is a good site for vocabulary. The fellow who keeps it claims to have come across all of these words in his own reading, but omits ones that he considers needlessly obscure, specialised, etc.. He lays out his criteria on the first page. Notice that you have to click at the letters at the top or bottom to go to a list. It took me a few minutes to find where the words were the first time I was there for some reason...The rest of the site is just as interesting, and if you ever need to know something about numerical prefixes...Look no further is all I'll say. O.o&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can also say that I've come across a fair number of these myself, more than once. Some of them I haven't, but I wish I had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Link! &lt;a href=&quot;http://phrontistery.info/ihlstart.html&quot;&gt;http://phrontistery.info/ihlstart.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="308" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T02:40:14.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1511" CreationDate="2011-02-10T05:11:11.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my case, the answer was: not very important at all. I'm the author of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.negrino.com/books.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;40 books&lt;/a&gt; and hundreds of magazine articles. I've made a living as a writer since about 1990. I never learned to touch type well; my typing speed is about 30 wpm now. As my writing needs and output increased, I turned to voice recognition using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which also saved me from a nasty bout of RSI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost anyone can talk way faster than they can type. Dragon is not a perfect solution by any means, but it's really good once you learn its quirks. You must learn to use it effectively, and it's way better on Windows than on the Mac (ironically, for me, since I write mostly about the Mac and Apple products).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use Dragon to compose first drafts of book and article manuscripts. I usually then edit by typing. Things like email I usually type, unless I know in advance that it's going to be a long message, in which case I'll shift to voice recognition. I also tend to write short pieces like this answer by typing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1204" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T05:11:11.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1511" CreationDate="2011-02-10T05:28:21.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that FAST typing is important, but I do think it's important to know how to type.  Not to be able to touch-type is a handicap, not just in writing but in the job market overall.  With the internet it's easy to learn to type or get better at typing--there are LOTS of sites for typing help.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typing qualifies as a communication skill; writing is all about communication; why not have as many skills at your command as possible?  Even if your typing aint great, it is better than not being able to type at all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as far as whether being a fast typist makes one a better writer--no.  Not in my opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T05:28:21.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1511" CreationDate="2011-02-10T06:02:05.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typing fast has zero impact on your writing career. One can create clear, captivating and concise text at 12 WPM or 120. As you type more you'll naturally speed up of course, but unless you find you can't piece together a sentence because you're too busy typing it's nothing to focus on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1205" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T06:02:05.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1376" CreationDate="2011-02-10T06:06:25.387" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a lawyer from California and I can tell you there are very specific requirements to writing a valid Will. If you mess up (and people often do) the whole things winds up in Probate Court and costs a lot of money. And some people don't need a Will. They need a revocable living trust so that their estate can avoid a long and expensive probate court proceeding in the first place. But making this determination is one of the most important reasons that people should consult with an experienced estate planning attorney in their own area in the first place. To leave a lasting fulfilling legacy for your loved ones, don't rely on anything less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1206" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T06:06:25.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="890" CreationDate="2011-02-10T12:33:49.337" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take Disney. They make a bunch of wonderful stories, but a great deal of their old (and in my opinion, best) movies were based on mythological stories and old fairy tales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Beauty and the Beast was based off of Eros and Psyche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The little mermaid was based off of a Hans Christian Anderson story of the same name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are many others. They're presented differently, though, and that is the key. To make something that is essentially the same feel so new and different by the subtle ways you change it. Change motivations, characters, and delivery. Make something to give it a new feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about it this way, they make movies and stories all the time based on real events. Do you think that just because you heard about what happened in the news would make a story or movie about it less interesting? You know the story. You've heard of that plot before. But your receiving something completely different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what you need to make sure you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1211" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T12:33:49.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2011-02-10T13:04:43.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fear stops more people than anything else from writing. (Mind you, perhaps Solitaire beats fear!)  Is it fear of not succeeding which bothers you? Or is it the fear of discovering that you can't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will never know until you try. By simply writing you will learn as you go along. You do seem a bit vague about the whole process, perhaps a clearer idea of what you want to write would be a good idea.  And, write for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1212" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-02-10T15:17:56.683" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T15:17:56.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1545" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1550" CreationDate="2011-02-10T13:34:08.510" Score="10" ViewCount="4310" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a technical manual about creating database systems, and wondered what is the best verb tense for title names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My ideas are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuous (&lt;code&gt;-ing&lt;/code&gt;) form: (e.g. &quot;Creating a Cluster&quot;, &quot;Creating a Database&quot;, ...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Descriptive form: (e.g. &quot;Cluster creation&quot;, &quot;Database creation&quot;, ...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Imperative form (e.g. &quot;Create a Cluster&quot;, &quot;Create a Database&quot;, ...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other ideas?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which would be best for title names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="109" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-23T16:13:31.457" LastActivityDate="2022-10-26T17:12:04.577" Title="Verb tense for technical document titles" Tags="|style|technical-writing|titles|software-documentation|table-of-contents|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1545" CreationDate="2011-02-10T14:08:46.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Continuous form (-ing) in chapter/section titles acts refreshingly on me. So I prefer it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T14:08:46.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-02-10T14:09:18.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add one more thought that has greatly helped me as a writer, from software development perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find the right tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like in software development, you'll benefit from getting the right tools for the job. This applies both to software... and the fiction-writing thing, but mostly to software. Also, as in development world, not all tools are appropriate for all jobs. Use whatever tools you need to get the job done. Remember that there's no magic tools that can make you mysteriously not suck overnight, but everywhere around you, you can find tools that can help you learn and help you make better fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the really fun part is, a lot of the software development tools can be repurposed for fiction. I really like git, darnit, so I use git for versioning and syncing my work. If you've run across a neat program for real-world use, don't be afraid to use it to help it for fiction writing. (A recent example from my own case was that I picked up Gramps, a genealogy package, and found it to be extremely useful for character data as well.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, remember that there's always time to design and time to write code. Similarly, there's a time to plan and time to write. Writing whatever comes in mind may be a viable strategy but it can produce junk. Planning stuff meticulously may be a viable strategy but leads to the analysis paralysis. Finding the right kind of equilibrium between the two ends is probably easier in fiction writing than it is in coding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-02-10T15:15:43.287" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T15:15:43.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1545" CreationDate="2011-02-10T14:37:44.630" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like &quot;Create a Cluster.&quot; If I'm actually RTFM, I'm usually looking for instructions on how to do something. Well, what do I want to do? I want to Create a Cluster &amp;mdash; so that's what I'm going to look for. (That said, I don't mind the -ing form either.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Cluster creation&quot; seems unnecessarily passive to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T14:37:44.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1549" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-10T15:58:26.650" Score="7" ViewCount="495" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came here from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/02/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jeff Atwood's blog&lt;/a&gt; where he mentions that writing a blog can clear your own internal thought processes and that you should take feedback about your writing so that you can improve.  He also made this quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Becoming a more effective writer is&#xA;  the one bedrock skill that will&#xA;  further your professional career, no&#xA;  matter what you choose to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to achieve this I &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.matthewedmondson.info&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;created my own blog&lt;/a&gt;. My only problem is I get very little feedback over the quality of my posts. Would it be possible for some of you to gauge my writing quality, and perhaps provide pointers over where I can improve?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose you could also gauge the quality of this question&amp;nbsp;— but my blog is where I put my best quality writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1219" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2013-12-28T16:44:35.300" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T16:44:35.300" Title="Quality of my blog writing" Tags="|technical-writing|blog|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-12-29T05:52:35.043" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1545" CreationDate="2011-02-10T15:59:03.890" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;-ing. I am a tech writer, and this is typically how we word titles of sections that focus on how to accomplish a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1220" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T15:59:03.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1545" CreationDate="2011-02-10T16:20:46.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any formal guidelines, but here is my subjective take:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuous:  Seems less formal, like what I would expect from an online FAQ/guide.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Descriptive:  This seems formal, like what would be required in a dry document, e.g. a government software requirements document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Imperative:  Also informal, like continuous.  Seems more suited to step-by-step instructions, since it's telling the reader what to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would choose the appropriate one based on the target audience for the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T16:20:46.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1549" CreationDate="2011-02-10T16:22:52.040" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can engage your writing with other writers by not just having your own blog, and hoping others will comment there, but to seek out other blogs of interest written by others, and comment &lt;em&gt;there&lt;/em&gt; as well. If you have useful and interesting things to say, this can act to draw people back to your own &quot;personal corner of the web&quot; -- still the commenting is more likely to be about the subject matter, and not your quality of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're seeking more direct feedback for your writing, you can try joining a writing community where people peer-review as a matter of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's two ways to improve and they're not mutually exclusive: sheer practice (this is what you're doing, and will continue to do the more you write), and directed practice (where you get active correction and feedback).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are important. Read more, write more, and seek out communities (or build one) that can provide directed practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="711" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T16:22:52.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="107" CreationDate="2011-02-10T16:45:23.080" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good opening line gets the reader hooked and eager to read the next line. Great opening lines do that while giving the reader important information not just about the opening scene, but the entire story. Aside from the title, this is your first chance to tell your reader what your story is going to be. So you have to play fair. You can have a fantastic, intriguing opening line - like the aforementioned &quot;I write this sitting in the kitchen sink,&quot; but you have to follow through on that. The fact at the narrator is writing while sitting in the kitchen sink has to mean something. Even if the only reason the character is sitting in the kitchen sink is because the floor isn't finished and there are not chairs, that has to mean something. . If the fact that the narrator is sitting in the sink and writing has no bearing on the rest of the story, then your first sentence is false advertising. So no dreams, TV shows, or any other fantasy (in relation to the &quot;reality&quot; of your story) content as the beginning of your story unless it has a clear link to and impact on what comes afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite openings lines is &quot;What's Papa gonna do with that axe?&quot; the kickoff to E.B. White's &lt;i&gt;Charlotte's Web&lt;/i&gt;. White wastes no time on anything that might bore his readers, like explaining who Fern is and where she lives or having Fern and her mother say good morning to each other and exchange small talk. He goes right for the story. It's a question, which automatically sets up for an answer, and it's dialogue, which suggests at least two people in the scene with minimal effort on the writer's part. We don't actually know who is speaking yet, but we can make the educated guess that it's someone young, judging by the reference to &quot;Papa&quot; and the relatively informal English. The mention of an axe suggests the possibility of violence, but still retains some mystery because axes can be used for completely nonviolent tasks. (This wouldn't be a very good opening line if Fern's father was just going to cut down a tree and cutting down trees had little or nothing to do with the story. If the axe had been a knife or a guillotine, there would have been less mystery and less reason for Fern to ask about it.) And the problem set up in this first line is the central problem of the whole book: the threat to the life of Wilbur the pig. That axe is going to hang over our protagonist's head metaphorically for most of the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-03-21T03:06:50.557" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T03:06:50.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2011-02-10T16:56:57.160" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is the tools.  When it comes to fine points of typography, WYSIWYG is the wrong way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typing and most editing should probably be done with monospace fonts.  Reading should be done with beautifully typeset proportional fonts.  (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://gadgetopia.com/post/2437&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky's UI book&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details like how much wider an inter-sentence space should be than an interword space (if at all) should be a reader choice in any electronic format (e.g., ebooks, websites, etc.), and a book designer choice in hardcopy.  Writers should be able to type any number of spaces between sentences.  It's the tools' job to accommodate everyone, but most of them don't because they've been tainted by the mistaken notion that WYSIWYG is a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are situations where ambiguity can creep in.  Consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Run!&quot; I screamed.&#xA;&quot;Run!&quot;  I screamed.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This first line is a single sentence.  The second is two.  They mean slightly different things.  Without a difference in spacing distances, this distinction is lost.  Admittedly, this is contrived, and many would consider the first line as an example of bad writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2782" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T16:56:57.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1364" CreationDate="2011-02-10T17:11:03.653" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several blogs demonstrate before/after (or at least detailed line-edits on early drafts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://evileditor.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evil Editor&lt;/a&gt; often does it for query letters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Edittorrent&lt;/a&gt; covers all sorts of topics, and the archives have lots of before/after examples.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://misssnark.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Miss Snark&lt;/a&gt; no longer blogs, but her archives have many good examples.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite writing books, &lt;a href=&quot;http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Self-Editing-for-Fiction-Writers-Second-Edition/Renni-Browne/e/9780060545697/?itm=2&amp;amp;USRI=self-editing+for+fiction+writers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Self-Editing for Fiction Writers&lt;/a&gt;, shows before/after examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find before/after examples most useful on small examples, sentences, paragraphs, maybe a page or two.  Beyond that, it's too hard to see the correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2782" LastEditorUserId="2782" LastEditDate="2015-11-11T18:00:02.857" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T18:00:02.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1446" CreationDate="2011-02-10T17:21:24.863" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two biggest insights I've had into plotting a mystery are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Think about the mystery as two stories: the crime and the detection.  Obviously, these are tightly intertwined, but I've found that thinking of them as discrete stories helps spark better ideas.  If you just plot the detection story, then every aspect of the crime ends up being a straight justification for the detection plot.  By plotting the crime independently, you get a richer story to unravel, which makes the detection story better, even if the entire crime plot happens before page 1.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give almost every character a secret--any secret.  When everyone has information they are trying not to reveal, it's easier to make them look like suspects, even when they had nothing to do with the crime.  Conversations and interrogations get more interesting as they detective and the suspect dance around each other, and conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I blogged about these insights in more detail a few years ago, but the blog was lost. :-(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2782" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T17:21:24.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1364" CreationDate="2011-02-10T18:46:05.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Orson Scott Card gives a great example of 4 drafts for the opening of &lt;em&gt;Ender's Shadow&lt;/em&gt;, explaining as he goes why each draft isn't what he wants. Sounds like exactly what you're looking for - you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://hatrack.com/writingclass/lessons/1998-10-29.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;read it here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another excellent resource is Janet Reid's &lt;a href=&quot;http://queryshark.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Query Shark&lt;/a&gt;. It's a huge trove of critiqued revisions - not of fiction, but of queries to an agent, describing the book. That might not be exactly what you're looking for, but she gives advice and individual critiques on revising sales pitches - which include a fair share of flavor text - for hundreds of queries. If it's revision you'd like to learn, that would be an excellent place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T18:46:05.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1549" CreationDate="2011-02-10T20:17:50.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I firmly believe that the absolute best thing that you can do for your writing is reading.  Don't limit yourself to blogs, read books.  If you like quote them.  But there is nothing which helps literacy (&lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; prerequisite for writing) than reading good authors in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next best thing you can do is &lt;em&gt;force&lt;/em&gt; yourself to write.  Update your blog daily if possible.  If you write something which is sub-par and you don't believe that you can honestly post it, &lt;em&gt;save it&lt;/em&gt;.  You may be able to salvage it later.  I still remember of the worst books I had to read in high school was called, &lt;em&gt;Be True To Your School&lt;/em&gt; (I can't de-recommend it enough).  I disliked the story, but I can't fault the premise: if you want to be a writer, for goodness sakes, WRITE, daily, if not more often.  The advice can't be that bad -- the author went on to become an award-winning writer for the Chicago Tribune.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bit of an aside, I always find that writing is easier to read if it has a touch of personality to it.  This is your blog: you are not writing for a science journal.  Self-expression which does not diminish communication is a good thing.  (On the other hand, there are some major benefits to learning to write in a different style from how you would otherwise think).  (&quot;Never ask for advice from an elf, for he answers both yes and no.&quot; -- Tolkien)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="734" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T20:52:30.420" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T20:52:30.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1511" CreationDate="2011-02-10T21:11:44.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;... (this may be begging a down-vote, but...) Irrelevant.  For the majority of history we've had writers who didn't have access to keyboards.  I'm loath to think that the great writers from two-hundred years ago were worse &lt;em&gt;writers&lt;/em&gt; because of this.  They may have been more prolific had they been able to write faster, but that has nothing to do with the quality of their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="734" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T21:11:44.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1545" CreationDate="2011-02-10T21:33:30.057" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The choice between Continuous/Progressive form and Imperative form is one of style. Choose one form and use it consistently. In my experience, I've heard plenty of strongly held opinions about which is correct, but seen no convincing evidence that it makes any difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't back this up, but if you have a significant audience of non-native English speakers, the Imperative form might be better as it uses the more familiar form of the verb. Someone with localization experience could give you guidance on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue to consider is context. What kind of documentation are you writing? If it's proscriptive, how-to content such as a getting started guide, the Continuous or Imperative forms will be most appropriate. In this kind of doc you're typically organizing content by task, so the task should lead the title. For example, you might have chapters/pages/sections like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a Database&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage a Database&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delete a Database&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the content is reference material, you may want to organize by subject, so you'd do this instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Databases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clusters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Load Balancing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the Databases chapter you'd probably have sections on creating and deleting. (Note that Load Balancing here is a gerund form, which is different from the Continuous/Progressive form.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looping back to the beginning, these are style issues that should be documented and followed consistently. Users are far more confused by inconsistency in style and usage than even arbitrary usage if followed consistently. So you want to choose terms and forms and then use them all the time. To many users these are all different:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start the database &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Launch the DBMS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start a db instance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write down your style choices. You will forget. If you work with other people, they will need to know so your work is consistent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to make these decisions on your own, that's OK. Other people have been down this road before and already created style guides. Something like the AP style guide, for example, will take you a long way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1216" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T21:33:30.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1549" CreationDate="2011-02-10T21:46:14.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks fine.  A few problems with style (too many qualifiers, tone down the chatty way of expressing yourself), but nothing dreadful a decent copy editor couldn't fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of chatty style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;but &lt;em&gt;its pretty darn useless&lt;/em&gt; if you ask me. &lt;em&gt;Don't get me wrong&lt;/em&gt;, there are&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ditch one of them for example.  Here's some repetition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Pretty &lt;em&gt;nice&lt;/em&gt; isn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Features of the control:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;* *Nice* and smooth sliding action&#xA;* Its lightweight and simple&#xA;* Renders in all browsers &quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being your own copy editor is a pain in the bum.  One way I deal with this is to get the screenreader software included in my OS to read back wht I've written to me - it stops me from skimming, which is a bad habit I have, especially with my own writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T21:46:14.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1176" CreationDate="2011-02-11T02:19:44.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://melydia.zoiks.org/writing/writing-prompt-websites/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing Prompt Websites&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is basically a link to an existing list elsewhere. That's because I think the most important aspects of writing prompts are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A variety of compelling topics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A sense of community for peer support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of each of these will differ for anyone asking this question, so the best answer is a list with diverse topics and diverse peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1223" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T02:19:44.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2011-02-11T06:33:53.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best way to write in LaTeX, in my opinion, is to bypass it and use Org-mode in Emacs (a text editor used most commonly by programmers).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Org-mode is a feature rich multi-use outline-based editor environment that can export directly to LaTeX/PDF, among other things.  Essentially it lets you write using Org-mode's simple formatting and outline hierarchy, then the export automatically adds all of the tedious LaTeX markup for you.  Org-mode is largely responsible for the resurgence of interest in Emacs over last few years.  Read more here:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://orgmode.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A decent second choice would be to use LyX.  Not sure if anyone has mentioned LyX or whether you already know about it, but it essentially adds a layer over LaTex and lets you write your LaTeX document using a GUI application that's similar to a regular word processing app. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lyx.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.lyx.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1226" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T06:33:53.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1549" CreationDate="2011-02-11T18:29:42.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the previous comments. Also if you are writing tutorials and that kind of thing. Be very concise about the subject, don't ramble on anecdotes or rants about why microsoft hasn't written some functionality. Try to make it easy to understand so the concept can be applied easily. &#xA;I read your last article (about the combobox) and I was hoping to see some code. If I have to download a solution instead of copy/paste makes it harder (for me at least) to understand the whole concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1230" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T18:29:42.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1449" CreationDate="2011-02-11T19:02:11.313" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find the repetitive use of the same verb in a paragraph to be jarring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the responses seem to suggest that to say anything other than discuss might confuse the audience into thinking that some topics will be discussed while others are simply mentioned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My take on this paragraph would be to establish the discussion at the beginning, and then use terms of direction to show how the discussion will progress through each topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We will begin our discussion with the most relevant research papers. We then turn to our selected composition rules and how to evaluate them. Continuing forward is our optimization method and camera search spaces. We conclude with the results of rendering a well-known film into our system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is perhaps an extreme example, it would probably be okay to mention 'discuss' in the third or fourth sentence as a way to remind the audience that this is a continual discussion of all topics listed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1231" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T19:02:11.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1415" CreationDate="2011-02-11T19:17:42.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I think the most important thing is to figure out what kind of humor are YOU good at.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lauren Ipsum's and Cody Hess's suggestions are how THEY get people to laugh. Gmoore's suggestion is a good one, figure out what makes you laugh, what you think is funny, and then try to duplicate that with your own ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the way you create humor when interacting with other people, and try to deliver that into your writing. If your audience is known (friends, family, colleagues) you might find humor in inside jokes or shared experiences. If you are going for a broader (ie anonymous) audience you should figure out how your humor plays to strangers (people who don't know your brand of humor). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1231" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T19:17:42.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1415" CreationDate="2011-02-11T19:39:49.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What makes people laugh?  Then use that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are working on How-To manuals, I think the best way to make good comedy in your books is to &lt;strong&gt;explain the topic to people you know&lt;/strong&gt;, but add in jokes as you're doing it.  Chances are what your audience finds funny, others will find funny as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="389" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T19:39:49.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1549" CreationDate="2011-02-11T19:49:21.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Editing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of typos in your posts. Typos can always happen, even with professional writers, but as soon as they are noticed you should correct them. One of my challenges is going over my posts enough times to get them as error free as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't going to use the software suggested by &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/1070/singingfish&quot;&gt;singingfish&lt;/a&gt; try reading your post out loud from start to finish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more your writing is free of errors, the more likely people will come back to read your stuff again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing. &quot;Its&quot; is possessive. &quot;It's&quot; means &quot;it is.&quot; You use &quot;its&quot; incorrectly 11 out of 13 times. You only use &quot;it's&quot; once. (Correctly)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Visual:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the visual style of your blog makes it difficult to read. You have white, grey, dark grey, and really dark grey over a black background. Your main body of text is fine, but the links and dates are distractingly dimmer than the normal text.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1231" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T19:49:21.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1294" CreationDate="2011-02-11T21:17:01.240" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written 9 screenplays and have one made into a film, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.solitarymovie.com&quot;&gt;Solitary&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always write directly to screenplay format. It's a terse form that requires you to think and write visually and that form, while restrictive, helps you to create scenes that are short and to the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short stories tend to have no restrictions to what you can write and will promote sloppy screenwriting. In a screenplay, you only write what can be seen and you write mostly in the present tense, e.g. &quot;Joe runs up to the door&quot; as opposed to, &quot;Joe ran to the door&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short stories have none of these restrictions and so writing to the screenplay format will help you a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you must know your story before writing it. Some people like to &quot;discover&quot; their stories as they write them, which is just fine as long as you are prepared to do a page one rewrite once you've discovered your characters and story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no single way to write a screenplay, but I'd suggest that you read at least 4 to 5 screenplays before starting. I spent 6 months reading and learning before I embarked on my first screenplay which took another 6 months to complete with a couple of rewrites over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T21:17:01.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="939" CreationDate="2011-02-11T21:47:13.590" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drones.com/pgw.cgi/&quot;&gt;P.G. Wodehouse&lt;/a&gt; is a master of this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Big chap with a small moustache and the sort of eye that can open an oyster at sixty paces.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;His demeanour was that of a Napoleon who, suffering from toothache, sees his way to taking it out on one of his minor marshals.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T21:47:13.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="939" CreationDate="2011-02-11T22:27:41.230" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Douglas Adams has numerous examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T22:27:41.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1529" CreationDate="2011-02-12T00:43:43.667" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;scribophile.com&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. You have to build up your karma enough (by critiquing) in order to post your work for others to critique. But they guarantee results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Friends and family will always say your writing is great, even if it isn't. Other writing sites are full of people who only tell you &quot;I like it&quot; and nothing else. We're different: we guarantee at least 3 solid critiques on each work you post, and often more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't tried it myself yet, because my latest work isn't quite done yet, but I am hoping to start critiquing soon and build up my karma for when I'm ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1236" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T10:01:34.393" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T10:01:34.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1574" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-12T01:49:03.127" Score="9" ViewCount="8337" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a book that I would like to get printed. I am not looking to have it published at this time but would like to get a limited number of copies (100-200) printed up for family and friends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any good companies out there that will help me get my book printed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked at Lulu.com and infinitypublishing.com but don't know whether either of these services will truly give me what I want without taking some rights to my work in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1237" LastActivityDate="2023-08-02T16:03:26.180" Title="What is the most cost effective way for me to get my book printed?" Tags="|self-publishing|printing|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-02-12T02:52:14.497" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you use one Lulu or Infinity Publishing, you'll have self-published your book and lost your first publication rights. Definitely not a plus if you're planning on selling it to a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just wanted a couple copies printed, you can go to Kinkos or something like that to have it printed. Most online places I know of are self-publishers, not printers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T02:52:14.497" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1545" CreationDate="2011-02-12T04:22:18.850" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's often a matter of house style, if you are working with a publisher, and the style can vary within the same publisher, depending on the series. I've written many books for Peachpit Press, and they have two popular series with different styles. For example, imagine you were writing a book on PowerPoint (as I have). In their Visual QuickStart Guide series, I wrote &quot;Creating a Slide.&quot; In their Visual QuickProject series, the task was &quot;Create a Slide.&quot; Both series of books are step-by-step instructions, and I found that either form works. The Imperative tends to take up a bit less space in the header, which was important in the QuickProject series design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm more comfortable with the Continuous form (perhaps because I've written many more Visual QuickStart Guides). I think that it's friendlier and invites the reader to follow along with you; I'm personally a bit put off by the Imperative form. The Continuous form was also the one required by the Dummies books that I did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1204" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T04:22:18.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2011-02-12T20:57:07.813" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love LaTex, but I do not use it anymore simply because every editor I know uses word. Every piece I have written has required multiple rounds of editing using Word's &quot;Track Changes&quot; feature. Sending editors a PDF and asking them to mark it up via text comments (e.g. &quot;2nd graf: capitalize &quot;John&quot;) slows down the entire editing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1006" LastEditorUserId="1006" LastEditDate="2011-02-12T23:52:04.150" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T23:52:04.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2011-02-12T21:02:03.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a large number of writing books, but the only one that I really keep going back to is Artful Sentences by Virginia Tufte. The book is a collection of 1000+ beautiful sentences organized by structure. Reading each sentence and writing my own sentence in the margins using the same structure has had an incredible effect on my writing. The book added a huge number of great &quot;sentence great&quot; to my writing toolkit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1006" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T21:02:03.720" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-12T21:02:03.720" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2011-02-13T02:31:14.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two of my favorites already mentioned above: &quot;Writing Down the Bones&quot; and &quot;Bird by Bird.&quot;  The other one in my top three is &quot;If You Want to Write&quot; by Brenda Ueland.  All three of these books are always inspiring and motivating to me, time after time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1247" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T02:31:14.033" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-13T02:31:14.033" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-13T05:37:34.660" Score="4" ViewCount="418" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen writing books on characterization, plot, world-building, conflict and probably 1000 other topics. But are there any good books that focus on how to write good erotica or romance? If it's a book you've used, please say why you'd recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T12:36:48.670" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T12:36:48.670" Title="What are good books on writing romance/erotica?" Tags="|resources|romance|erotica|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1583" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-13T07:32:01.147" Score="8" ViewCount="1109" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story in plain text using Vim text editor. It doesn't contain big tables, images. However, there will be short listings of source code in several programming languages and syntax highlighting for them is a must. There may be a little amount of formulas. I want to publish it in HTML and PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there simple(!) markup language for this? What is better: embed formulas as images or use special markup? I don't want to learn something complex like LaTex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1106" LastActivityDate="2022-10-23T17:41:25.607" Title="Best markup language for a little story?" Tags="|publishing|formatting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1583" CreationDate="2011-02-13T08:51:13.023" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reStructuredText&lt;/a&gt;. It is a simple markup language which you can later convert into something else, like PDF. It might fit your use case, especially as it is a subproject of &lt;a href=&quot;https://docutils.sourceforge.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Docutils&lt;/a&gt;, a tool for source code/project documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative is &lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Markdown&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1181" LastEditorUserId="37383" LastEditDate="2022-10-23T17:41:25.607" LastActivityDate="2022-10-23T17:41:25.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1478" CreationDate="2011-02-13T16:33:04.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you cite Elements of Style in a grammar battle with an editor, you win (unless he can counter with Chicago Manual of Style.)  The same will not be true of Basics of Clarity and Grace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Basics of Clarity and Grace is a much better book to use as a way to actually LEARN grammar.  I find Elements of Style more useful as a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, as a reference get Elements of Style (and the Chicago Manual) as a learning tool, get Basics of Clarity and Grace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="508" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T16:33:04.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1593" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1594" CreationDate="2011-02-13T18:52:59.460" Score="8" ViewCount="327" Body="&lt;p&gt;all.  Please forgive me, for I'm afraid I'm a novice when it comes to writing fiction.  I wanted to get the community's thoughts and recommendations for improving the below passage.  I realize it needs tons of work and I'm looking for suggestions on how to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve the flow,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refine the style,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify any inconsistencies in the story,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase the reader's level of interest/anticipation, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve the passage in any other way that the community may deem important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, please critique the passage below and I'll be happy to return the favor.  Don't be gentle; I can take it. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You understand it’s nothing personal,” the man half-asked, half-asserted as he turned and exited Mr. Jansen’s study.  An empty silence hung in the air as Mr. Jansen lowered his gaze to the pistol on his desk below. He sighed and scooped up his Beretta .45 and swiftly walked out of his study, locking the door behind him. As he pulled out of the driveway in his red Ferrari F430, only one thing was on his mind: get the hell out of here while he still retained an ounce of his sanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Across the street, Mrs. Jansen watched&#xA;  through the bedroom window as her&#xA;  husband left. It had been only a year&#xA;  since their daughter had tragically&#xA;  disappeared. The Jansens hadn’t been&#xA;  the same since, but her husband Robert&#xA;  had been having an especially hard&#xA;  time. As Vanessa Jansen lowered her&#xA;  head in tacit exasperation, her lover&#xA;  took her in his arms and assured her&#xA;  that everything was going to be okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="434" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T06:51:47.600" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T06:51:47.600" Title="Critique: Intro/Prologue to my Novel-in-Progress" Tags="|fiction|pacing|openings|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1593" CreationDate="2011-02-13T20:42:16.747" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'm just rewriting. :) A bit of trimming, a bit of adding:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You understand &amp;mdash; it's nothing personal.&quot; It wasn't quite a question. When Robert Jansen didn't quite provide an answer, the man turned and left. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jansen lowered his gaze to the Beretta on the desk. After a long moment, he sighed, picked it up, and left the study, locking the door behind him. His too-expensive sports car waited for him in the driveway of his over-leveraged house. It was funny, he thought, how those things had meant so much at the time. Had it only been a year? Twelve painful, exhausting, bewildering months since his daughter had disappeared? Now all he wanted was to get the hell out of here while he still retained an ounce of his sanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Across the street, his wife Vanessa watched through the bedroom window as he left. She tried not to let her exasperation show, but her lover's warm arms wrapped around her, and she knew he had read the emotion in the tense lines of her body. &quot;It's going to be okay,&quot; he whispered. She wished she could believe him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T20:42:16.747" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-02-13T21:07:54.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are willing to do the grunt work, check out Lightning Source (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lightningsource.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.lightningsource.com/&lt;/a&gt;) and/or CreateSpace (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.createspace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.createspace.com/&lt;/a&gt;) by Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lightning Source is one of the cheapest I have found online when I was searching for such a solution about a year ago, and I believe Amazon's CreateSpace actually uses them for their printing services (not 100% sure). The advantage with Lightning Source is that they are the ones who actually &lt;strong&gt;DO&lt;/strong&gt; the printing. However, you will have to call them up and talk with them to get them to work with you — I have done this and they setup an account for me, but I have yet to print anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CreateSpace, on the other hand, is from Amazon. They will print out your documents for you, and I assume they act as the &quot;middle man&quot; for Lightning Source. It is slightly more expensive, but I believe it is cheaper than Lulu. They also offer a little more help for getting through the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you want some help along the way, the only suggestion I can make is Lulu. You will pay, but it is well worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="859" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T21:07:54.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1593" CreationDate="2011-02-13T21:16:58.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the flow just the way it is. I don't see any inconsistencies in these few paragraphs. And I think there is plenty here to intrigue readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several stylistic choices tripped me up as I read. My first stumble was over modifiers. Consider replacing &quot;swiftly walked&quot; with a stronger verb. &quot;Tragically&quot; is unnecessary. We know that a daughter's disappearance is tragic. I'm not sure about &quot;empty silence.&quot; Seems redundant, but I like the rhythm of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some non-simultaneous stuff is expressed as simultaneous. The man asks &quot;as&quot; he turns and exits. Are those really simultaneous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jansen walked out, locking the door. I'm especially picky about &quot;-ing&quot; verbs. I run those through two tests:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I inserted &quot;while,&quot; would it make sense? Jansen walked out while locking the door. Doesn't make sense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I reversed the order of the clauses, would it make sense? Jansen locked the door behind him, while walking swiftly out of his study. Doesn't make sense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrasing fails both tests, so the actions are not simultaneous, and &quot;-ing&quot; isn't the right form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond the simultaneity trouble, there is an overabundance &quot;this while/as that&quot; in these two paragraphs. One in each of the first three sentences, and two in the fourth. Then two more in the second paragraph. The prevalence of that construction distracted me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the narrative distance shifting in and out. In the first paragraph, &quot;an empty silence hung in the air&quot; puts us moderately intimately into Jansen's head. But &quot;only one thing was on his mind&quot; feels distant. That phrase not something he's thinking, but a comment on what he's thinking. Whose comment is it? Not Jansen's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More troublesome is the sentence that begins, &quot;The Jansens hadn't been the same since...&quot; Whose thought is that? Surely Vanessa wouldn't refer to herself and her husband as &quot;the Jansens.&quot; And the whole sentence is narrative summary. There's nothing evil about narrative summary per se, but given that the first two sentences place us so intimately in her head, the sudden shift in narrative distance is jarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes we're fairly intimate in the Jansen's heads, but they're referred to as &quot;Mr. Jansen&quot; and &quot;Mrs. Jansen,&quot; which suggests distance. From these two paragraphs alone, I can't tell whether there's a reason for that. But wasn't sure how close to feel to these two characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people will advise against the POV switch from one paragraph to the next, and characterize all such POV shifts as evil headhopping. I'm okay with POV shifts as long as they're done well and with a purpose. &quot;Across the street&quot; marks the POV shift nicely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't clear what POV we're in at the start of the first paragraph. The man's? If preceding paragraphs put us in Mr. Jansen's POV, that's fine. If this is the first paragraph of the novel, it works less well. And given that we shift POVs from one paragraph to the next, it wouldn't likely work as the first paragraph of a scene or chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T21:16:58.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1593" CreationDate="2011-02-13T21:17:32.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will say that the &quot;half asked, half asserted&quot; construction is a bit cumbersome. I then expected him to half-turn and half-exit while leaving half-empty silence in the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found the &quot;make and model&quot; of the gun and car to be a bit jarring. Lauren mitigates this in an effective way, but specifying these things might be part of your style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within this snippet, you have four characters. Two of them are unnamed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Mr. Jansen takes a little too long to have a first name, which Lauren also noticed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the &quot;its nothing personal&quot; you could go into a bit about how cliche that phrase is or how it sounds like it is from a movie or tv show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My general understanding of the situation is: somebody is shaking down Mr. J. His wife is schtupping another dude, which generally means that she is treating him with contempt, which probably means that he treated her with contempt for quite some time first (which is usually how that goes). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="875" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T21:17:32.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="723" CreationDate="2011-02-14T00:04:31.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to judge your own work.  If you think it's ready, but you're not sure, then you need to get more outside opinions.  One approach is to try to find an agent.  If a reputable agent takes it on, then it probably &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; ready.  But that approach is relatively slow.  And if you don't get any agent interest, that doesn't mean it's not ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other ways to figure out if it really is ready:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a writers' group and get some critiques.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a second novel, and then go back and look at your first.  If the second one is a lot better, then the first one probably isn't ready.  Repeat until you have two novels that are ready.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write and try to sell some short stories.  If you sell them to professional markets, then your writing is probably pretty good.  Mention the publishing credits in your agent query letters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go for it and make it available on Kindle, nook, etc.  Let the market decide if it's any good.  (This approach isn't for everyone.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you're sure it's ready, the other answers here have good information on querying agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2782" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T00:04:31.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1602" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1603" CreationDate="2011-02-14T19:34:03.807" Score="26" ViewCount="2534" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently asked about getting inside of someone else's head for writing good characters who are noticeably different from myself and received some great answers.  One answer suggested that you should absolutely not &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1240/getting-inside-someone-elses-head/1287#1287&quot;&gt;borrow traits from friends&lt;/a&gt;.  On the other hand, over on a question about how to develop characters, an answer suggested to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/392/resources-for-character-development/1502#1502&quot;&gt;shamelessly steal personality traits from others&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My earliest attempts at varied characters used the shamelessly stealing personality traits approach.  Unfortunately when I let friends read my work, it backfired badly.  The reader would  identify a character with one of his or her traits and assume I thought he or she had all that character's traits and that character was basically them.  That meant that my friends thought I had a badly skewed perception of each of them and I ended up playing damage control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what's the solution and why?  Was I just bad at masking my stolen personality traits or did I use too many items from a single real person in each character (an easy way to make a consistent character)?  Should you never think of friends during character development?  Should you think of them only to avoid them?  I had a writing professor who told us about a perfect detail from a friend that she didn't use for a character because she thought the friend would be too hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something that I think might plague myself and other writers without trait stealing.  My mom thought my favorite character of all time was modeled on her when I hadn't thought of her at all during my writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-04-27T17:26:03.117" LastActivityDate="2022-04-27T17:26:03.117" Title="How to avoid hearing &quot;that's me!&quot; from your friends when they read your characters, and that wasn't your intent?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1602" CreationDate="2011-02-14T20:12:13.277" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is: steal a little. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, your character needs to be a big spender, or a big gambler. If you have a friend who is impulsive in every capacity &amp;mdash; overly generous with money, dashes off for a weekend jaunt to Mexico on a whim, walks into a store for a pair of headphones and walks out with a new stereo, eats anything put in front of him, drives like every street is the Autobahn &amp;mdash; then pick &lt;i&gt;one&lt;/i&gt; facet of that impulsivity, like spending without thinking, and give that to your character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't copy any phrases this friend says, and don't use any real-life incidents. Just keep that person's single habit in mind when developing the character. That will help give the fictional person real texture without making an avatar out of someone who doesn't want to be so enshrined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T20:12:13.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1602" CreationDate="2011-02-14T20:18:50.757" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;While you may not be attempting to &quot;write what you know&quot; when you take a seat at the keyboard, it is bound to happen to a varying degree.  Inspiration, though sometimes spontaneous, can all the more often be traced back to something you've recently encountered in your day-to-day life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, taking too much from any particular person can run the risk of your work becoming biographical, I'd say you should consider that risk and embrace it while you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand that your most realistic and consistent characters may come from the melding together of real-life attributes with your imaginary ones. In this case, you might consider blatantly mashing together two or more of your friends.  By using John's bad temper and Jack's pension for expensive food you've essentially told both of them that you aren't basing your character entirely in either of them. Thus, any negative traits that are attributed to your character could more easily fall to another person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, however, I'd say you just embrace it.  If you've got writing that you don't want Jack to read because it might h&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1273" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T20:18:50.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1602" CreationDate="2011-02-14T20:39:50.377" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's how I see it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone you know believes that a character you wrote is based on him or her and is happy about it, you probably don't need to say anything. The only reasons I could think of that this might turn into a problem is if you plan to do something with the character that the person who thinks he or she is the inspiration for that character won't like or this person is overstating his or her role in making your story happen. It's usually fine for someone to think that he or she helped to inspire you, but if it's to the point where that person thinks he or she has as much ownership of the story as you do, you might want to nip that particular notion in the bud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone you know believes that a character you created is based on him or her and is unhappy about it, just be as honest as you can about your process. Explain that you did base some (hopefully positive) traits on this one person, but the character is a combination of various people you know and your own imagination. Of course, for this to work, you have to be careful and make sure you're not taking too many traits from any one person. If you're using a few positive aspects of someone you know as inspiration for one character, make their flaws traits that the person you're drawing from clearly doesn't share. If you're basing a negative aspect of a character on somebody you know, make doubly sure that nothing else about the character remotely resembles that person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasonable friends and family should understand once you explain to them that your characters aren't intended to be faithful portraits of people you know. People who get upset over a character you've written when you haven't given them any logical reason to and won't listen to your explanation probably aren't worth your time. Just wait until they cool off and try not to bring it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T20:39:50.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="84" CreationDate="2011-02-14T20:54:53.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Step one is to write a good book.  I'd try not to worry about the traditional publishers v. self-publishing options until I had a solid manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, although the publishing industry is in turmoil, the future for authors looks brighter and brighter.  It's also changing fast.  Even if you have a good book ready in six months, the market and options will be different then.  It's too hard to predict now.  Regardless of what the industry looks like in the future, having a good book will always be a critical ingredient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2782" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T20:54:53.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-02-14T21:27:05.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure how best to address Mr. Gallagher's comments as I can't seem to reply.  However, it is my understanding that First Publication Rights refer to the first time your book is brought to market.  Simply setting the plate at a press does not qualify, nor does making a hundred copies of your story and handing it out to friends and family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of most short-run print houses, they have attempted to augment their bottom line with a marketplace or online store. They'll help you sell the book, but this would consume your First Publication Rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even given the contract that you agree to with Lulu, I can't see any fashion in which they claim any form of publication rights when your printing is completed privately. Prevent your working from coming to market, and you preserve your First Publication Rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1273" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T21:27:05.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1182" CreationDate="2011-02-15T02:57:45.430" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently been reading an anthology of Robert E. Howard stories.  He's a pulp author from the 30s who is known largely for his action-packed adventures.  In fact, pretty much every one of his stories has at least one fight scene, and in my opinion, he writes them very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The REH system for fight scenes seems to go something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start with descriptions of the characters and their emotional states.  Are they excited?  Scared?  Angry?  How do they show it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As they leap into battle, give a few sentences of detailed description.  Swords clash, parry and counter, guns are fired, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After the first few sentences, zoom out from the action a bit.  Describe how the characters move and fight in a more general way.  Character X fights fast and wild, while character Y stays on the defensive, only counterattacking when he sees an opportunity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zoom back into detailed description as the fight finishes.  What does the killing blow look like?  What do the characters feel?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like this style for a few reasons.  The description up front reminds the reader exactly what these characters are fighting for, and it makes the fight emotional as well as physical.  The detail at the start of the fight makes it feel visceral.  By zooming out in the middle, we avoid having to sit through pages of detailed description without feeling like we missed what happened.  Then we zoom back into detail to lend excitement to the finale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend picking up some REH.  The anthology I'm reading is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0345490185&quot;&gt;The Best of Robert E. Howard, Vol. 1&lt;/a&gt;.  The stories occasionally feel a bit dated, but they work very well if you look at them as a workshop on crafting fight scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T02:57:45.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-02-15T05:49:27.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A local Border's affiliate in my town actually has a book-printing machine which they will assist you in using to the extent you need it...remember, writing is writing, but there's design and typesetting work to be done which is not at all trivial (someone close to me works as a graphic designer and is presently wrangling with an author--who is intending to self-publish--over this very issue).  That is the expertise that a publisher brings to the table and why many people engage them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you engage a printer instead of a publisher, you are still publishing the book, it's just that you are your own publisher...so basically, you have no need of a publisher's expertise, presuming you can take care of the visual elements I mentioned above.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think you are going to be selling the book to a major (or minor) house though, you would do well to shop the manuscript first before you fix it in permanent printed form, because any print run is essentially a first printing of your book, whether you are the publisher or someone like lulu.com.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="500" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T05:49:27.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-02-15T09:34:39.650" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When my daughter wrote a book, I used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.48hrbooks.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.48hrbooks.com/&lt;/a&gt; to print 25 copies.  They looked just like books you'd buy in a store.  She was thrilled and gave them out to her friends and family.  They were fast and professional.  And, if you buy a large order their prices are quite competitive.  You retain all rights to the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have an online calculator so you can see exactly what your book will cost before you ever contact a human.  The price quoted to me online was exactly what I paid at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the start of the process to having books in hand took about a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I am not affiliated with them, I'm just a happy customer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1281" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T09:34:39.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1449" CreationDate="2011-02-15T09:54:13.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my rewording:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We start by discussing the most relevant research papers.  Then, we talk about the composition rules we have selected and how to evaluate them.  Next, we consider the optimization method we use and camera search spaces.  Finally, we review an example of rendering a well known film in our system and talk about the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wanted a trick, well here's mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use Microsoft Word as my editor.  When I right click on a word, such as 'discuss', I can choose synonyms from a popup list.  Sometimes it is necessary to do this several times to find a good word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1281" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T09:54:13.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2011-02-15T14:19:33.473" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, how about this excerpt from a marketing email from thriftbooks.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;Please know that this is no whim of fancy but a sincere desire of the heart that is nearly indescribable. Since the day you lovingly wrote your email address on my login page I have kept it indelibly inscribed in the heart (of my database), never to be shared, as the thought of any other having it nearly kills me with jealousy. Just know that I think of it often and desire your love in return. &#xA;&#xA;...&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I know you cannot deny the chemistry between us. I can feel you thinking fondly of me, now, as I am constantly thinking of you. Please don't delay in logging onto my website, www.thriftbooks.com, as I fear my heart may explode in the agony of your absence. My fondness for you, if it can be believed, is even deeper now at the end of this letter than it was when I began. &#xA;&#xA;Until we connect again... &#xA;&#xA;Be Mine. - Thriftbooks.com &#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="389" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T14:19:33.473" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-15T14:20:27.390" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1614" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-15T16:15:41.157" Score="9" ViewCount="4090" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought about writing fantasy story from the perspective of the evil antagonist (think from Sauron's perspective). So my bad guy will be the protagonist and my good guys will be the antagonist. I want my main protagonist to be in general a bad guy. I don't like the idea of using the &quot;but he thinks he is a good guy&quot;. I want my character to be petty, shallow, and selfish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in this in large part because it has not been done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to this would be a fallen angel story. The good guy must become over time as brutal and mean as his opponent to overthrow him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the pitfalls of this type of story? How can I find a way to make an evil protagonist likable, so the reader does not throw away the book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1285" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T15:01:50.647" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T15:01:50.647" Title="How do evil protagonists win the reader over in dark fantasy stories?" Tags="|fantasy|" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-12-18T14:06:19.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1614" CreationDate="2011-02-15T16:48:20.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you say, it will be very challenging to create a likable evil character. A lot of people aren't going to relate to a person that does nothing but wreak misery on those around them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One danger is that most villains are so short lived in stories that they are one dimensional. Their sole purpose is to be an obstacle for the hero, and are quickly disgarded after that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories that start off with an evil character typically have them turn good at the end in some way (like Darth Vader, original trilogy), they basically receive redemption by the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Fallen Angel idea sounds a lot like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Punisher&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Punisher&lt;/a&gt;, or basically any story where the good guy falls on hard times, becomes bad, and seeks vengeance against those that turned him bad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1231" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T16:48:20.147" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1614" CreationDate="2011-02-15T17:49:44.287" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not read it but &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0375424865&quot;&gt;Soon I Will Be Invincible&lt;/a&gt; is the closest I can think of to what you're proposing, other than the excellent short story collection &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0756403847&quot;&gt;If I Were an Evil Overlord,&lt;/a&gt; inspired by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html&quot;&gt;Evil Overlord List&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, why should your main guy be &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; petty, shallow, and selfish? Do you want him to win at the end, or be defeated? I think LOTR from Sauron's perspective (or Melkor's, who was Sauron's mentor and much more powerful and evil) would be really fascinating in a skin-crawling kind of way, but Sauron is not a one-dimensional character. (Particularly if you read all the Tolkien backstory prior to LOTR.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your bad guy doesn't have to think of himself as a good guy in order for his motives to be understandable to the reader. Someone with an obsession, a burning need for revenge, a mental defect, or who's just a plain ol' psychopath can be complex while still being bad. Your main character shouldn't be paper-thin and obviously hissable. The reader should actually be torn a little because s/he finds s/he can sympathize with some of the things your evil main character did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George R.R. Martin's &quot;A Song of Ice and Fire&quot; series, the one which starts with &lt;i&gt;A Game of Thrones&lt;/i&gt; (coming to HBO soon YEAH!!! okay sorry), has an entire family of &quot;bad guys&quot; who do evil, selfish, cruel, and petty things, but there is a lot about them which is also likeable and sympathetic, and when one character ends up trapped in jail as a result of her own scheming, I was both horrified and elated. That's what you want to aim for, not Snidely Whiplash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T17:49:44.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1614" CreationDate="2011-02-15T18:29:48.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your readers will have to relate to the protagonist, even if they disagree with his moral stance and actions.  He needs clear goals and obstacles that stand in his way to establish conflict.  The same basis for any successful story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that a comedic villain would be your best bet (e.g. Dr. Evil).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainProtagonist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainProtagonist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T18:29:48.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1614" CreationDate="2011-02-15T19:02:48.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if the main character in your story really needs to be likable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some time ago I've read an interview with an 18-year old psychopath who killed a few people. It was right before his execution. His philosophy and priorities were totally different from mine or yours. As he explained, at times he got an irresistible urge to kill anyone. Being a hedonist, he immediately tried to satisfy his urge and went to hunt. It was as simple as that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have by now an image of a ruthless killer who doesn't feel any emotions, there is more to this story. He had a great sense of honor and respected law and order more than any person. In a sense it felt like a military training, but he developed this naturally. As the saddest thing in his life he points to pig slaying at a butchery. He couldn't help himself and cried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading I couldn't accuse him of any illogic but yet I felt he was totally wrong. He was repelling me from the one side, but it was interesting to see how twisted one's personality can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to the point - what about making a character that will make you wonder who is more normal in this world? Maybe contrasting dead logic of your bad hero with nonsensical motivations of his enemies would do the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm no writer so I can't technically prove it. It's just an idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1288" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T19:02:48.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1625" CreationDate="2011-02-15T21:00:28.273" Score="10" ViewCount="726" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a student at &lt;a href=&quot;http://case.edu&quot;&gt;Case&lt;/a&gt;, and while we of course have an English department, it seems the only kind of writing classes/courses available are for learning to be either a &quot;literary&quot; writer, or a &quot;scholarly&quot; writer. I'm not interested in either of those alternatives -- I'd like to write something that's simply entertaining. The best resource I have yet to find is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/&quot;&gt;LiveJournal of Jim Butcher&lt;/a&gt;, which goes over practical fiction construction in some detail (it helps that he's my favorite author :P ). I'm interested in any tips for getting started, perhaps classes or anything, which might be helpful in writing entertainment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not saying I want to be an author someday -- Programmin' is my trade. But I'd like to have a nontechnical hobby too :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1290" LastActivityDate="2015-05-31T16:35:10.813" Title="Are there good tips on being a better *creative* writer?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1621" CreationDate="2011-02-15T21:09:33.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Plot!&lt;/a&gt; It would be pulpy hyperbole to say that this is the very essence of entertaining and exciting genre fiction; but there's nothing wrong with a bit of pulp. It's a short piece that reads like being constantly punched in the face. That's because there's a lot to it. It's a &quot;how&quot; piece of writing but the depth is contained in the &quot;why&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T21:09:33.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1415" CreationDate="2011-02-15T22:51:27.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Douglas Adams was a master at it: surprising the reader (and the characters); taking clichés and pushing them to the extreme; using anthropomorphism (objects that seems to act on their own); using nonsense, absurdity, craziness. I have read the only trilogy in five volumes (H2G2) a long time ago and just re-read it in French (my native tongue) and I was delighted.&#xA;Beside the humor, the guy was good at making a global, consistent plot, which isn't to disdain...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1293" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T22:51:27.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1621" CreationDate="2011-02-15T23:35:20.857" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing Excuses&lt;/a&gt; podcast.  These guys cover topics related to composing good narrative fiction.  It is by far one of the best resources that I've found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T23:35:20.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1626" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-16T00:51:22.327" Score="2" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a personal professional goal - I want to write a thesis, build a system, change the world. That's my way of saying that my thesis needs to be something I can develop into a functional system, and the system has to be significant enough to be life-changing - for at least one person; that's what makes it a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My difficulty is that even though I can type, I can't effectively write. I find that I'm not capable of editing beyond minor corrections of mechanics. I've got over 100K words of notes and ideas, but they're &lt;em&gt;a hill of beans&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;a garden of planted saplings&lt;/em&gt;. Clearly, I need to overcome this before I can go much further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking about looking for a thesis adviser or an editor, but what I really need is better understanding. This seems like a skill a person needs to develop himself, but as &quot;A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study,&quot; so I want to ask for some guidance and direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is, what help is there for a technical researcher/writer that can't edit? How can I get better at recording my ideas - in communicating them clearly; in recording how I got to the ideas; and in working to support and develop them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1292" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-03-27T14:34:48.363" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T22:06:42.860" Title="What help is there for a technical reseacher/writer that can't edit?" Tags="|editing|technical-writing|research|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1626" CreationDate="2011-02-16T03:08:52.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not clear from your question if you're in academia or not, and my advice differs depending on whether you are or aren't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But overall: many freelance editors are looking for gigs—hire one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T03:08:52.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1614" CreationDate="2011-02-16T03:21:07.253" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another example of this as well as Doctor Evil is Darth Vader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Starts off an innocent boy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Corrupted to become evil and follow his new master under the pretense that he'll save his wife&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convinced in the last moment that there is still good in his heart and overthrows his evil master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pays for his actions by his death but ultimately died as a good man in the eyes of his son&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roughly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would gladly read about such a character's progression in a fantasy environment. I think ultimately most people don't really like to read an ending that is not positive, but it doesn't mean the character can't be malleable to the point of going against his moral beliefs for a period of time and then being redeemed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T03:21:07.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="107" CreationDate="2011-02-16T03:26:18.793" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, the &quot;opening line&quot; usually only presents itself after I've been writing at something a while. For a short story I might &quot;discover&quot; the opening line once I become brave with my editing-- I go back a day or two later and see that what I thought was an opener is not...really. the real opening line is revealed a few sentences in, or even a paragraph or two. After you've written a bit, try going back to where you started and covering up the first few sentences to see if you can identify or &quot;hear&quot; the REAL opening line. Hint: it's usually a place where you yank your reader suddenly into the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1297" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T03:26:18.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1614" CreationDate="2011-02-16T03:34:53.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Deep, convincing characters always work. Others have suggested that a comedic approach might work best.  It does not have to be broad comedy.  The darkness of your fantasy can remain pretty dark and twisted.  There is humor and irony in many &lt;em&gt;True Blood&lt;/em&gt; scripts and some of the villains there would do well carrying a story of their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dungeon Master is a video game where you, the player, are cast as an evil overlord.  The white knights come to save the day and you can gleefully stop (kill!) them.  It is humorous and somewhat twisted.  In your version, if you wanted to amp up the dark elements, you could eliminate any &quot;silliness&quot; you detect but leave the irony behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a sucker for a happy ending, my personal preference would be for some sort of redemption for the main character.  But if you provide &lt;em&gt;fulfillment&lt;/em&gt; at the end -- fulfilled goals, proven philosophies, and overcome obstacles -- you'll likely win over many readers, no matter how evil, shallow, and petty the protagonist was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T03:34:53.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1635" CreationDate="2011-02-16T03:39:27.497" Score="11" ViewCount="2490" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm curious. After reading some other questions, I've been pondering about the frequency and reason for happy endings. That is, a positive and/or hopeful ending, even if not everything went right, such as the protagonist sacrificing themselves for the good of those around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think personally, I don't like the idea of a negative or hopeless ending because as a reader essentially trying to be entertained in some fashion (intellectually, imaginatively etc), I would rather be left feeling positive at the end of a story. Something good has to continue on or else it can make me feel strange afterward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a movie with an ending not unlike this is &lt;em&gt;The Departed&lt;/em&gt;. By the end almost every character you thought you were emotionally invested in gets gunned down, even the good guys like Di Caprio's character and the sole survivor wasn't a major character in the story and certainly wasn't the nicest guy on the block (at least as far as good guys go).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, how often does a story end badly for the protagonist or the &quot;good guys&quot;? And how does it affect you as a reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-18T12:45:21.397" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T13:51:13.320" Title="How common *are* happy endings?" Tags="|plot|ending|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1549" CreationDate="2011-02-16T04:18:48.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, Matt, I'd like to offer a word of encouragement.  Writing your own blog is a fantastic exercise for someone wishing to improve his writing.  Even if you don't get feedback, you are &quot;flexing your writing muscles&quot;.  So keep it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, others have pointed out some of the flaws (the correct use of &quot;its&quot; versus &quot;it's&quot;, typographical errors, and the chatty style).  I would further suggest that you reduce your &quot;question asking&quot; approach, which I only noticed in the &lt;strong&gt;ASP.NET ComboBox&lt;/strong&gt; article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &lt;strong&gt;Assumptions in software&lt;/strong&gt; article shows that you have undeniable talent as a writer and you should not give it up (even if your coding makes you rich).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that article, proper use of a dash (especially the typesetting difference between a dash and em-dash) is about the only additional thing I can pluck out as a criticism.  When you use a dash you are setting up an expectation in the reader's mind that what follows will be emphatic or surprising.  Some authors have rules to use a dash &lt;em&gt;exclusively&lt;/em&gt; when they want to toss a non sequitur into their sentence -- rules made to be broken.  A dash is incorrectly used as a substitute for a colon.  Colons also set up an expectation: that what follows will clarify, summarize, define, or otherwise comment on what came before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember to keep at it, Matt!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T04:18:48.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1545" CreationDate="2011-02-16T04:41:21.523" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a long-time technical writer, I agree that the gerundive (continuous) form is most common in titles.  That is IBM style (at least it was while I was there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is more difficult to fathom is that the present tense (and imperative) should be used whenever possible in the text.  &quot;First, prepare your storage medium.  To get the most from your hard drive, polish the disk surface to a gleam using a mildly abrasive cleanser.&quot;  You would not say: &quot;First you will prepare your storage medium.&quot;  Nor would you use the continuous form in the text: &quot;Polishing your hard disk with a mildly abrasive cleaner is a way of getting the most from your hard drive.&quot;  Avoid passive construction if you possibly can.  Finally, there are occasions to use past tense, but they are rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Please recognize my quoted examples as pure flights of fancy.  I &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; what Vim would do to a hard drive. :-) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T04:41:21.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1631" CreationDate="2011-02-16T06:01:59.647" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Moral ambiguity = the fuel of good literature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question in more concrete, and perhaps useful, terms: As all us really old people know, there's really no such thing as a happy ending.  Things break down, everyone dies, entropy rules, and so on, blah, blah, blah. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether an ending is &quot;happy&quot; or not I've found to be negligible as far as the reading audience is concerned.  Whether the ending to a story is SATISFYING or not--there's the rub. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two types of satisfying endings, as far as human storytelling goes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The satisfying ending in which the reader's belief that &quot;good conquers all/right always wins&quot; is reinforced in a way that is interesting enough that the reader can't see it coming, and finds that his beliefs are, after all, reinforced by the author at the conclusion of the tale.  (After a lot of scary ups and downs during which belief is tested.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The satisfying ending in which the reader feels that, though the &quot;good guys&quot; didn't &quot;win&quot; there was some sort of equation adjusted, refined, or corrected; in other words, balance was achieved. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note:  If we are talking about an epic, saga, or serialization of some type, none of the above applies.  Or a manual.  That's also a different deal.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good story is not really &quot;true to life&quot; and CAN'T really be.  The only thing the reader's gonna be reacting to in your story's ending really has nothing to do with &quot;good guys&quot; or &quot;bad guys&quot;--it has everything to do with satisfaction (the reader's). Satisfaction usually is involved not with &quot;good versus evil&quot; but with BALANCE.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get some idea of what I mean here:  Look at one of your favorite paintings.  Does it matter which color/shape is &quot;winning&quot;...? or is balance more the thing that makes it satisfying...? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this was helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;!w21q2@#e%^2*(qiphjq yours in Chaos, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Scarlett&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T06:01:59.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1631" CreationDate="2011-02-16T12:41:25.463" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add a little to Scarlett's answer (which is excellent BTW):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happy endings are far more prevalent than tragic ones because they're easier to pull off badly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to understand how an ending should be executed it is necessary to understand a little about endings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It cannot have escaped your attention that in many happy endings a male and female protagonist are united in a relationship. One theory about why this is comes from Jungian psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This theory states that the uniting of a man and a woman represents, psychologically, the reconciliation of the rational and the emotional (which are not necessarily the same thing as the ego and id in Freudian theory but share some common features). Jungian theorists have put forward the notion that as we all seek this reconciliation the story of how a protagonist we identify with achieves this goal is what is of interest to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible, for various reasons, for an author to take a set of incidents, tack on an arbitrary happy ending which is completely divorced from the journey of the protagonist and still produce a story which satisfies some audience members. This could be termed a sentimental ending where sentiment is the enemy of true emotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible for an author to tack an arbtrary tragic ending on to a plot leading to a nihlistic ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases the story tends to seem stale. However people have a higher tolerance for being told a sweet lie and a greater likelihood of speaking out against a toxic one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason a tragedy must endeavour to have some sort of balance or else it is likely to be rejected by a large number of audience members. A lower number of audence members tend to reject sentimental rubbish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whoever said dying was easy and comedy was hard was speaking somewhat ironically. In truth, however, it is a lot easier to see when you have screwed up a tragedy than it is when everyone is happy at the end of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T12:41:25.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1639" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-16T13:58:49.317" Score="10" ViewCount="2255" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone here write on an iPad at all? The iPad 2G is due this summer and I have waited since March 2010 already, so I am planning to purchase one. However, I don't &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; need an iPad at all; Media consumption can be done using a phone, iPod, or a computer, and I do not usually watch movies while on the move, so that aspect would be essentially useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things that I have narrowed down on the use of an iPad would be note-taking, as well as writing. Having a device that you can pull out of your messenger bag and write immediately when inspiration strikes would be amazing. However, there are some people who say that writing on iPad is not really feasible, and that it would be better off working on a computer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any experience on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-26T11:26:37.290" LastActivityDate="2018-04-26T11:26:37.290" Title="Is the iPad a convenient medium for writing work?" Tags="|tools|medium|tablets|" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1640" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-16T14:02:12.793" Score="8" ViewCount="2853" Body="&lt;p&gt;How is it possible to avoid cliches in storylines that you are writing? Obviously, there are external sources of influences as you read more and more. It would be possible that we are subconsciously and unaware that we are crafting a story that bears similar resemblance to a story that we particularly like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T18:22:45.450" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T18:22:45.450" Title="How To Avoid Using Cliches In Storylines?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2011-02-16T14:12:07.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't use my iPad for my manuscript, but I know several authors who do. They tend to belong to the large camp of writers who prefer using plain text editors for their writing in order to avoid distraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I do use it for note-taking. I use a combination of two apps for this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springpadit.com&quot;&gt;Springpad&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/elements-for-ipad-a-dropbox-syncing-text-editor/&quot;&gt;Elements&lt;/a&gt;. Springpad is nice because it doubles as a web based, cross-platform bookmarking tool and note organizing system. I use it to capture ideas for later use. I use Elements to actually author blog posts or chapter fragments while I'm on the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you plan to do any writing on an iPad I highly recommend the &lt;a href=&quot;http://us.kensington.com/html/17835.html&quot;&gt;Kensington KeyFolio bluetooth keyboard&lt;/a&gt;. It's not quite as comfortable as a laptop keyboard but it's better than trying to type on the iPad itself - mostly because you win back the screen real estate that the keyboard steals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="642" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T14:12:07.940" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1640" CreationDate="2011-02-16T15:02:38.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find a good editor, and when you hand over the manuscript, let the editor know that this is a particular issue for you, and ask the editor to keep an eye out for it. If you know that you read a lot of one writer, mention that writer to the editor and say &quot;I like this person, but I want to make sure I'm not unduly influenced.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a reason you can't really &quot;proofread yourself.&quot; It's very hard to see your own biases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T15:02:38.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1640" CreationDate="2011-02-16T15:16:27.933" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cliche characters lack depth.  Come up with strong motivations, fears, desires, etc... and think about the implications to the character's behavior due to these factors.  Don't write the perfect &quot;good guy&quot; or the purely evil &quot;bad guy.&quot;  Make them interesting.  Give the character an unusual trait/history, and make it important to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cliche themes shift with the zeitgeist.  Vampire movies/stories have become cliche, thanks to Twilight.  Zombies are cliche as well.  If you're going to write for one of these genres and want to avoid being cliche, approach the story from a fresh angle.  &lt;em&gt;Sean of the Dead&lt;/em&gt; (zombie/rom-com) and &lt;em&gt;Zombieland&lt;/em&gt; (zombie/coming-of-age) are examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that cliche stories can be successful.  See &lt;em&gt;Avatar&lt;/em&gt;.  It's &lt;em&gt;Dances with Wolves&lt;/em&gt; set in space, with fairly shallow characters and a predictable ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a good podcast by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing Excuses&lt;/a&gt; guys on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/03/16/writing-excuses-season-2-episode-23-avoiding-the-cliche-with-tracy-hickman/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;avoiding cliches&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T15:16:27.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1646" CreationDate="2011-02-16T15:44:28.307" Score="12" ViewCount="7114" Body="&lt;p&gt;These attributes could be character archetypes or traits, attributes of the setting, characteristics of plot or pacing, and broader themes.  Essentially, I'd like to build a definition of the genre by identifying its basic components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please provide examples to back up your claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-28T22:10:59.873" LastActivityDate="2018-04-28T22:10:59.873" Title="What are common attributes of the Steampunk genre?" Tags="|setting|pacing|theme|archetypes|steampunk|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1640" CreationDate="2011-02-16T16:05:58.547" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Layered, nuanced characters and depth of story will help you avoid cliches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look, we're all writing a lot of the same stuff.  Good guys, bad guys, boy meets girl, she gets kidnapped, blah blah blah.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cliche's arise when: &#xA;1) the characters behave in a certain way without the proper background.&#xA;2) They only behave this certain way  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hank, the grizzled veteran cop who is a drunk and is just waiting to get his twenty years so he can retire... that is right out of the cliche book.  But, if your story outlines why Hank is the way he is, and also gives him more dimension, then Hank is no longer a cliche.  Hank  becomes a real character.  Making Hank a drunk cop is great, but maybe he's into racquetball or model trains or something.  Nobody in life is just one way.  Your characters shouldn't be either.  If you can make Hank's recreational racquetball somehow figure into the story so that Hank can overcome his obstacles and save the day, well, &lt;strong&gt;good times!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip side, you can't go giving every character extensive background intros and laundry lists of interests.  &lt;em&gt;This is the art&lt;/em&gt;, finding the middle ground between shallow characters and boring your reader to death.  The best do it so well that you don't even notice.  The worst, well, I'm sure you can think of some examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="947" LastEditorUserId="947" LastEditDate="2011-02-17T14:03:07.590" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T14:03:07.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1644" CreationDate="2011-02-16T19:00:23.937" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, Steampunk concerns itself with Victorian characters, themes, and technology level, while taking the technology available and creating devices that, if not impossible, are impractical. The spider vehicle in the film Wild Wild West.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For technology, Steampunk typically cannot use internal combustion engines, nor most forms of &quot;regular&quot; electricity. It is still perfectly acceptable to make use of capacitors or tesla coils, or basically anything found in Dr. Frankenstein's lab. Steam engines, hydraulics, and clockwork are the ways in which to make things. And the more impractical the better. Best example is the device that is the size of a barn that makes ice cubes in Back to the Future Part 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regular propeller airplane? Nope! Must use dirigibles, or bizarre flying contraptions out of Leonardo Da Vinci's sketchbook. Jets are completely out. See the 1961 film Master of the World.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For any device created, it is highly important to have it finely crafted and visually appealing as well as functional. For example, if one were building a rocketship to the moon, it is not simply a matter of putting dials and guages (although there should be as many of these as possible), but there should also be a rather posh and luxurious chair in which to sit while operating the levers and dials on the overly crowded control panel.  From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main sources include anything by Jules Verne, a great many things by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the television series Wild Wild West.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women and Men have Victorian clothes and Victorian traits. These include romanticism, a high regard for virtue, chivalry, and outright chauvinism. At least for the good guys. The bad guys are really bad and over the top, and usually with some sort of very fancy mustache.  The villians of this genre are much like James Bond villains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="875" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T19:00:23.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1640" CreationDate="2011-02-16T19:00:57.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TV Tropes&lt;/a&gt; is a good resource for looking up clichés in literature as well as other media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="811" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T19:00:57.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2011-02-17T01:42:24.290" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the more popular sites is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critters.org/&quot;&gt;Critters Writers Workshop&lt;/a&gt;. I participated for a year before finding a local workshop, and I found it very helpful. It used to be SF/F/H only, but it looks like it has expanded to include all genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T01:42:24.290" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-18T04:45:35.473" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1593" CreationDate="2011-02-17T01:53:04.970" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'm just posting a second answer rather than try to force this into 500 characters:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I kept your first sentence, although I punctuated it to sound like actual speech. I can certainly hear the intonation you intend, but that requires a pause. So I added an M-dash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know what you were getting at with the idea that he's both asking a question and making a statement, but you worded it awkwardly. Saying &quot;It wasn't quite a question&quot; infers that it's mostly a statement, so that also trims some words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention &quot;study&quot; twice in the same para, so I cut the first use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Mr. Jansen&quot; is fine until we find later there's a Mrs. Jansen and that both have first names, so I put Robert here, since this is our introduction to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A silence only deserves an adjective when there's some kind of emotion in it: tense, contented, aching. &quot;Empty&quot; is redundant and inapplicable. Out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we find that Robert is doing something. This would work better as a response to the other man's not-question, so I moved it up and made it parallel phrasing, which is more elegant and more vivid. It also allows there to be an exchange: speech, beat of silence, movement. This works better than words thrown over a departing shoulder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea if a Beretta is properly a pistol or just a gun, but I assumed the one on the desk was his Beretta. I trimmed that to make it clearer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We leave the study; that's fine. Then we come to the car. I added actual movement rather than have him transport from study to already moving down the street.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IF you're doing a deliberately exaggerated style of writing where part of the humor comes from over-branding, you could keep the Ferrari business. This appears to be pretty straightforward, however, so I would introduce the car description in whatever next scene it is with him, whether he's driving or arriving. My first thought here is that it's just distracting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second reaction to the Ferrari is that it's an expensive toy &amp;mdash; classic mid-life crisis, compensation for something. So I thought it would be neat to add the idea (not in your original) that he had spent too much on everything at some earlier point, and was now regretting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you mentioned the missing daughter, that tied in really well with the &quot;spend in haste, repent at leisure&quot; idea, so I connected them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kept your sanity. ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I note that the wife is not at home, but at someone else's house (her lover's?) across the street from her home. Left that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Robert is the only person named, we can simply say &quot;his wife,&quot; and then give her name as part of her introduction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Daughter's disappearance is already moved out of here. Since I established that he over-spent, and the other man and the gun also portend trouble, that shows (rather than tells) the reader that he's taken it hard. So that's out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Tacit&quot; is not the word to pair with &quot;exasperation.&quot; It's usually used with &quot;acceptance&quot; or &quot;rejection,&quot; since it means &quot;unspoken&quot; or &quot;implied.&quot; I get that you wanted to say that she was exasperated but trying to hide it, so I reworded that. At this point we're in her POV, so I gave her thoughts and perspective. She has a lover (also showing that she hasn't been the same since the daughter went missing), so she's turning to someone other than her husband for comfort, and she's going to perceive the lover's arms to be warm emotionally as well as physically. That's an important detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also added the idea that she doesn't believe her lover's assurances. She knows something of what's going on with Robert or she wouldn't be exasperated, and it's possible that she hasn't told the lover everything that's going on. So he's just giving her platitudes (maybe to make her come back to bed?) and she's not buying it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that's what was going through my head. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T01:53:04.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1640" CreationDate="2011-02-17T02:37:01.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has been said, depth and variety can turn a cliché into something engaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's interesting is the way some writers use clichés to their advantage.  It happens more in television than other forms -- and it happens in ensemble cast shows more than other television.  If there will be depth added in later episodes, the audience needs to get through the first hour (the pilot) without a huge amount of background.  Clichés become a sort of shorthand for introducing characters and even plot elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The spoiled rich girl may have deeper layers to her, but in the early part of the story she's only needed as a comic annoyance when paired against the hero.  She may come off as a cliché at first, to be given depth when her part of the story comes along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hank, the drunk burn-out cop mentioned by gmoore, may not become a &quot;real character&quot; until the reader has accepted him as a cliché and moved on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most skillful writer will introduce a quirk or two for every character so that even secondary characters never seem like clichés.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T02:37:01.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2011-02-17T04:24:10.093" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/&quot;&gt;Scribophile&lt;/a&gt; is a nicely organised site with an active community of writers. Its tools for helping with structuring critiques are quite helpful. You earn points to make submissions depending on the length of critiques and whether they are appreciated by other site members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T04:24:10.093" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-18T04:45:35.473" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1640" CreationDate="2011-02-17T11:55:26.053" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't try to avoid clichés just for the sake of avoiding them - no matter how original you think your idea is, some reader somewhere will see it coming from a mile away. Instead, try to &lt;em&gt;make people give a darn&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favourite example of this is in video game design: you can have a character X asking players deliver an item Y to location Z. The player may initially go &quot;yawn, it's a bloody FedEx quest.&quot; There's two major schools of design here: Make the video game full of boring delivery quests where nothing of interest happens (you get points while having boring old time! Whee!) or make &lt;em&gt;a few&lt;/em&gt; delivery quests where &lt;em&gt;interesting&lt;/em&gt; things take place, and the player can see that you didn't just rev up the automatic quest generation wizard built in the game editor. It's still a FedEx quest, but people actually had fun playing it, so they won't really complain. Mission accomplished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if your fascinating plotline is mercilessly picked apart by nitpickers in TVTropes, that's not a bad thing - it happens to everyone and every story. The bad thing is when &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the readers yawn in unison and join the aforementioned TVTropes nitpickery &lt;em&gt;because they know all about your story without even reading it&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T11:55:26.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1446" CreationDate="2011-02-17T13:04:33.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifically on Tapply's &lt;em&gt;Elements of Mystery Fiction&lt;/em&gt;, I bought the book, and was disappointed to find almost nothing concerning the plotting issues I raised in the question. Alas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T13:04:33.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1644" CreationDate="2011-02-17T13:10:17.297" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Steampunk is a romantic sub genre of science fiction/fantasy. The types of device typically found in Steampunk are enumerated in Ernest's answer as are the outward behaviours of steampunk characters within their universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the why of it all. The modern age is one where visions of utopian empire building are frowned upon and ridiculed. We are so close to an actual ramshackle global government no one asked for that the thought of one in modern clothing is abhorrent to most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people of the Western world in the late 19th Century had no such embarassment. The 19th Century was the last time that there were real frontiers, where empires were seen as &quot;a good thing&quot; and where man was confident that soon we would have worked out the mechanics of the universe itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People of this era saw nothing wrong with imposing their civilisation on others, they believed naively but with great fervour in the idea of a brave new world. Optimism was high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steampunk as a genre attempts to reconnect us with the idea of utopia and also allows us to satirise it almost without irony even as we embrace it. The idea of fantastical devices all built in ecologically unsound materials and manned by a people filled with bravura, boundless confidence and hope for a brighter tomorrow allows us indulgent fantasy, wry humour and an amazing design ethic in one package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is steam punk art looks gorgeous, the narrative side of the genre struggles to keep up with the imagery. &quot;Proper&quot; steampunk glories in the visual while at the same time acknowledging that utopia is trickier than the characters may believe it to be. It's very hard to depict such naive and often politically imprudent characters while preserving some respect and admiration for them. The best people at this have been, ironically, the Japanese. Much anime steampunk abandons the notion that utopia is a naive hope, I think the Japanese have had a very utopian worldview in the past few decades. The anime &quot;Metropolis&quot; presents the most coherent steampunk world view I have seen to date. Steamboy looks great but isn't quite as accessible. Howl's Moving Castle mixes steampunk with straight fantasy and suffers a little for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially if writing steampunk the authorial voice should be indulgent, expansive, epic but always tongue in cheek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T13:10:17.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1640" CreationDate="2011-02-17T14:33:47.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A renowned songwriter and artist from my country, Juan Luis Guerra, states he listens continuously to all the music on the media; he says it helps him avoid doing the same thing everyone else is doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The extrapolated advice seems to be: Read a lot, aware of what you're doing. When you write, you'll know what to avoid. If you don't read the clichés and get to know them, you won't know to avoid them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1100" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T14:33:47.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2011-02-17T15:47:46.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://literotica.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;literotica.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the focus is on amateur erotic stories, but the site has over 50,000 members and well over 200,000 story submissions. In addition to all the ones you might expect, there are &quot;non-erotic&quot; and &quot;romance&quot; story categories, and a well-written story doesn't need to be explicit to get good ratings and feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality of the stories is understandably pretty mixed, but with an easy 5-star rating and feedback system, its pretty easy to identify the cream of the crop, or to get quick feedback on your own writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1332" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-06-20T20:42:47.723" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T20:42:47.723" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-18T04:45:35.473" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="108" CreationDate="2011-02-17T16:22:48.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since it hasn't been mentioned as an answer to this relatively old question: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.panhistoria.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pan Historia&lt;/a&gt; is a casual and fun place to collaborate on writing.  The community is quite supportive, although the turnover seems high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T16:22:48.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2011-02-17T16:41:18.600" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I now write on my iPad. The thing that did it for me is the ZaggNote case and Bluetooth keyboard. Before that, I couldn't write anything on the iPad. zagg.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1334" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T16:41:18.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1614" CreationDate="2011-02-17T17:27:06.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds as though you are describing the concept of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihero&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Anti-Hero&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, this is a situation where the person whose story is being told, the protagonist, is not the standard person for whom a story is told. Whether you want to refer to Scarface or John Milton's Lucifer in &lt;em&gt;Paradise Lost&lt;/em&gt;, the anti-hero has a long standing tradition in literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1108" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T17:27:06.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2011-02-17T19:21:22.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that Pages works pretty well (Pages is Apples word process for the iPad). There are a couple extra steps to get documents out of the application, but nothing huge. Though for long term typing I would use a Bluetooth keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a book stand works well to hold up the iPad so it's comfortable to read as you type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T19:21:22.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1621" CreationDate="2011-02-17T23:31:05.440" Score="7" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read more&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write more&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also strongly recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nanowrimo.org&quot;&gt;National Novel Writing Month&lt;/a&gt;.  Not only will it give you a boost of confidence to finish, showing you that you actually are capable of writing something resembling a novel, but it should also give you a nice (very) rough draft that you can either burn and use for inspiration on #2, or spend some time crafting into something readable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find someone who doesn't know you to read your work and give feedback.  A local writing group is great if you can find one, otherwise you can find them online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out some writers' blogs - &lt;a href=&quot;http://whatever.scalzi.com/&quot;&gt;John Scalzi&lt;/a&gt; has a good one where he often talks about the act of writing, and I'm sure there are plenty more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1338" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T23:31:05.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1161" CreationDate="2011-02-18T01:25:19.350" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Flash fiction is really short. That's about it. And, well, not being real, you know. And it has to be complete. A good exercise is to start with short fantastic stories, one or two pages long, to get the gist of ending things in a short written span.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T01:25:19.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1621" CreationDate="2011-02-18T05:48:14.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creativity is in small things.  In 37 plays, Shakespeare didn't have &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; original plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Orwell said, &quot;Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.&quot;  He was talking about avoiding clichés but it's my -- okay, unsupported -- theory that creativity is just the radical avoidance of cliché.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T05:48:14.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2011-02-18T05:49:30.890" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a blog post on this last year:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.backupbrain.com/2010/08/can-you-get-real-writing-work-done-on-an-ipad/&quot;&gt;Can You Get Real Writing Work Done on an iPad?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer was yes, by the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An edited excerpt (considerably more at the link):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For casual writing (emails, mainly),&#xA;  the iPad’s on-screen keyboard is&#xA;  sufficient. When I had to work on a&#xA;  chapter of the latest book, I turned&#xA;  to one app and an Apple Wireless&#xA;  Keyboard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The app I used for writing was&#xA;  Dataviz’s Documents to Go Premium,&#xA;  which creates and edits Microsoft&#xA;  Office documents (Word, Excel,&#xA;  PowerPoint). The great thing about the&#xA;  Premium version (and justifies the&#xA;  extra $5 over the basic version) is&#xA;  that it connects with the Dropbox&#xA;  online storage service, which&#xA;  automatically syncs any document&#xA;  between your different devices. So I&#xA;  wrote the chapter in Documents to Go,&#xA;  saved it in the iPad and also to&#xA;  Dropbox (you need an Internet&#xA;  connection, of course), and the&#xA;  chapter was immediately replicated on&#xA;  the Mac at home. When I got home, I&#xA;  opened the document in Word from the&#xA;  Dropbox folder on my Mac Pro, did some&#xA;  touchups, and sent it off to my&#xA;  editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1204" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T05:49:30.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1669" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1671" CreationDate="2011-02-18T12:42:41.600" Score="10" ViewCount="603" Body="&lt;p&gt;One for the creative writers, although I suppose a lateral shift might put it within reach of journalists/technical writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As authors we all want to write, I would imagine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something that many people will love to read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something that has some intellectual worth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However accessibility and depth are, at best, uneasy bedfellows. People love Lord of the Rings because of its rich backstory but many are put off by its dense prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am frequently dissuaded from reading novels (particularly SF) because they present themselves as challenging the intellect while actually seeming to just want to be wilfully bizarre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the choice between something I can relate to and something that purports to help alter my perception of reality I will go for the former every time, and so will most other people I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even so, it is possible to confer depth upon the accessible. Weirdly The Da Vinci Code, for all its bad points, made some very dry theorising in the politics and history of religion into a bestseller. Not that I'm recommending the &quot;Dan Brown school of literary success&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All I'm pointing out is that sometimes complex ideas can be made accessible. The best way I have ever managed to come up with of making this the case in my stories is to &quot;be careful&quot; and I have to say that I'm not always successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I know that if something is just accessible without anything complex it becomes dull, an also-ran, unremarkable. So it would seem that some complexity is essential to getting the balance right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does anyone have any techniques they apply in trying to make the complex accessible? How successful do you think they are?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="30375" LastEditDate="2019-03-23T20:07:28.920" LastActivityDate="2019-03-23T20:07:28.920" Title="Are there any techniques that make complexity work?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1669" CreationDate="2011-02-18T13:32:43.880" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had an English professor once who advised me to write papers discussing a book &quot;as if you were explaining it to a slightly stupider classmate who had also read the work in question.&quot; His advice is condescendingly worded, but the general theory is sound: take your complex idea and break it down into simpler pieces. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have your complex plot carefully constructed in outline form (and you've run it by a few betas to make sure the logic holds), write it out using, well, small words. Imagine that you're trying to present your plot to a bright 10-year-old. You can always go back in a later draft and condense anything you've over-explained, but for your first or second round, keep it plain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, if you have any kind of recording device (video or audio), record yourself explaining your complex plot to a friend, and then use that as a framework for the text. You'll see in the course of explaining it verbally and the subsequent give-and-take what needs to be spelled out and what can be implied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T13:32:43.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1669" CreationDate="2011-02-18T14:22:48.480" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, that's a complex question :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's lots of different kinds of complexity, requiring different tools - a complex character is different than a complex setting; a complicated plot is different from a plot expressing a complicated idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some guidelines I can share, from hearsay and from experience. I tend towards SF/F examples; hope these are clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show, Don't Tell:&lt;/strong&gt; Though this rule of thumb doesn't &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; hold, it's particularly apt for expressing complexity. Don't &lt;em&gt;say&lt;/em&gt; that something is complex. Don't explain in detail how complicated it is, nor how to understand it. Rather, show, in the action, the complexity you're striving for. Demonstrate that the subject is not simple - maybe some characters don't understand it, or clearly struggle with it, or would like to resolve it, or appreciate its many-faced nature. And then, to explain the complex element, show different parts and aspects of it - each alone, and how they cohere into a whole - to let the reader get the sense of how they gradually come to understand the complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't Infodump Until The Reader Wants It:&lt;/strong&gt; And, when you need him to know it, make him want it. Introduce information when it's clear to the reader that this information is interesting and important; not before. &quot;I'll explain the nature of 12th century water pumps, and that will assure that the rest of the story will be entirely clear&quot; makes sense to the author, but if the reader has no &lt;em&gt;obvious&lt;/em&gt; incentive to get through the description, he won't. If that detail is truly necessary, the trick is to come up with a good reason that info will be important NOW (&quot;Dad, Dad! Jimmy just fell into a 12th century well!&quot;), and that will give you the reader's interest long enough to get across the information that you need him to have later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make The Complexity Central To The Story:&lt;/strong&gt; Self-explanatory, I should hope. There's no point in being complex just for the heck of it. If the complex element is &lt;em&gt;what the story is about&lt;/em&gt;, the reader will naturally be interested in it (assuming you've made him interested in the story), and be willing to devote effort to understanding it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example of this is the honored tradition of science fiction detective stories, like many of Asimov's robot stories. Science fiction introduces new worlds, with imaginary concepts with imaginary rules, that the author might desperately need the reader to understand completely. If the story is an investigation story, why then, the protagonist is exploring the world by his very job description. All he does in the story is explore the world; understand the rules; figure out how everything works. That's a great way to take a lot of details that might not interest the reader - e.g. how the Laws of Robotics work - and make them interesting - e.g. by having a murder investigation hinge on clever manipulations of the Laws. This is also basically what Dan Brown does - it's not an art&amp;amp;history lesson, it's a treasure hunt for a dastardly conspiracy! WE MUST DISCOVER THIS INFORMATION! IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT AND INTERESTING etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Build It Up:&lt;/strong&gt; Complexity takes time. Don't try to get it all across in the first scene (not even by showing!). It'll be tough to cram in all you want, and let's be honest - complexity is something that dawns on you gradually, with time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George RR Martin's &lt;em&gt;Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; has a vast cast, byzantine politics, huge world. But he starts out with a very tight focus - a single family, and mostly the children, who don't know much about everything that's going on. From the beginning, he gives lots of hints that things are changing and danger is afoot. Gradually, all kinds of hooks start fleshing out, and more and more threads get time in the spotlight... but never before some buildup to the fact that these threads are interesting, dynamic, important - maybe mysterious and dangerous, even. Nothing comes out of the blue. Complexity shows up only after initial interest have been established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, in &lt;em&gt;Dragonlance&lt;/em&gt;, lots of readers love Raistlin as a complex character (I know, I know - not exactly great literature... but bear with me). At the beginning, &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; you see of Raistlin is how bitter and standoffish he behaves, and his brother's love for him. Gradually, his actions show more of who he is, and more of his past is revealed. And note that not very far in at all, a &quot;complex&quot; note is tossed in - with this dark character showing compassion for a lowly, miserable creature. So pretty soon, we &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; that Raistlin is dark, but also has a more complex nature than just that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; try to convey all the complexity at once; &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; give clear indication that certain things are complex, incompletely understood, and have interesting secrets to discover later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define Clear Questions To Be Explored:&lt;/strong&gt; Complexity isn't mere richness of detail. It's things being... complicated. Unclear. A really good way to do this is to set up &lt;em&gt;questions&lt;/em&gt; about the element. Not only do questions interest the reader - by presenting the element as something complex enough to have questions about, oblique enough that figuring out the element's nature isn't simple, they demonstrate that the element is truly complex, and reinforce the sense of complexity that you're aiming for. Open questions make an element complex, intriguing, and unpredictable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My tip here is to set up such questions clearly and explicitly - make the reader anticipate the answer before he gets it (if he gets it), rather than giving it to him in the expectation that he will appreciate the added complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;House&lt;/em&gt; is a great example of this technique. House is a misanthrope, but he's also unpredictable and complex. At any given moment in the series, there are several questions open on House's personality and psyche. What was House like before his leg surgery? What is he willing to do to keep his job, or his team? How much &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; he care about his patients? We don't just grow to understand him better - the questions are posed &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; we gradually fill in the answers. And raise new questions, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Complexity Evolves:&lt;/strong&gt; The longer you spend in a single mileau, the more details and history you build up, even if it begins simply; complexity can easily evolve by continuing to extrapolate past elements into new stories, and playing existing elements off against each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of series (TV and books) bank heavily on this - think of the &lt;em&gt;Star Trek&lt;/em&gt; universe, of soap operas, of &lt;em&gt;Doonesbury&lt;/em&gt; or of &lt;em&gt;Order of the Stick&lt;/em&gt;. They start out simple, sometimes even simplistic - but with time, they grow and sprawl, and from their unique configuration of not-terribly-interesting ideas, and from the simple accumulation of time and history, they extrapolate something new and unique. That's why lots of things might &quot;only get good halfway through Season 2&quot; or whatnot - leading some to try to start off directly from mid-Season-2 to begin with.  This technique can have its own issues, but it can work very well - skip past the first 10 stories; get to the stuff that can only happen once those stories have happened - making those stories, by necessity, relying on a more complex history, and being more complex themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it, I think. Hope these observations are helpful :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-02-19T21:17:25.443" LastActivityDate="2011-02-19T21:17:25.443" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1614" CreationDate="2011-02-18T15:26:51.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think any of the main characters (I actuially hesitate calling them protagonists) in Joe Abercrombie's first trilogy could be described as &quot;good&quot; (or even be described as believing they are good). So, I'd say &quot;yes, it can be done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T15:26:51.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1669" CreationDate="2011-02-18T15:35:43.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at the work of Robert J. Sawyer and Terry Goodkind.  Both authors tend to inject philosophy into the middle of plot.  The complexity of the plot is substantial on its own as well.  I have read critical reviews of both authors saying that their philosophical diversions are not appreciated, but I have yet to see them described as &quot;inaccessible&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the idea of verbally presenting the complexity to someone and fielding their questions, it often helps to build an onion in point form: layers viewed from the outside that can be peeled away as the story progresses.  Each inner layer explains and supports the next outer layer, but at first the reader only sees the outside.  Raistlin was a great example.  The subplots and politics in David B. Coe's Forelands series are also revealed in well-crafted stages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T15:35:43.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1674" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-12-08T19:20:52.230" Score="25" ViewCount="5019" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the years, my English professors seem to have agreed on one thing: that I'm a superb technical writer, but terrible at eliciting emotional response in something like a story or an argumentative essay. The last paper I've received back had a comment saying that it was written more like an encyclopedia article than an essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I make my writing have more emotion? How can I &quot;inject&quot; personality into it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Corey" LastEditorUserId="40227" LastEditDate="2019-08-04T20:43:55.943" LastActivityDate="2019-08-04T20:43:55.943" Title="What makes writing emotional?" Tags="|style|essay|emotions|rhetoric|" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1674" CreationDate="2010-12-08T20:00:42.493" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common theme in writing today to make it dull and boring, as long sentences are praised and complicated, sesquipedalian words are placed on a lofty pedestal. Detaching all sense of self or identity from the writing is presupposed to lead to the development of good writing, the falsity of which is clearly attested to by this very sentence, which anyone reading would undoubtedly get bored of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I think the most important thing is to not filter your thoughts. Just write them down as they come. Imagine that you'll be the only one reading it. Later you can adjust for political correctness / thoroughness. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thought: &quot;I think the king's policies were ridiculous. How could he possibly think of continuing to raise taxes when his peasants were starving?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Censor: Hmm, now how to phrase this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Filtered thought: &quot;In my opinion, the king's policies were not optimal. It is difficult to understand why he continued to raise taxes when the people did not have enough money for food.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Censor: Alright, well that has to be spruced up a bit to sound better / more intellectual.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Final result: &quot;In my opinion, the king's policies were not optimal for the benefit of his people. The continual raising of the tax rate at a time when the population was struggling to provide the bare necessities of life caused them great difficulties.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you've taken an outspoken statement that clearly shows your views, doubled its length, and made it much less exciting to read. I'm not saying the original thought was ideal, but it was closer to the desired end result. In that way you'll put yourself more into your writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, general tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use germanic words as opposed to Latin ones. Makes it sound better / more &quot;emotional&quot; in English.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't use passive constructions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Really simple sentences are boring (&quot;The cow went moo. It was happy.&quot;) but overly complicated ones are boring and clunky. Find a nice middle ground. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I strongly recommend reading the essay &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm&quot;&gt;Politics and the English Language&lt;/a&gt;, by George Orwell. It covers these points and more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show, don't tell. You don't say &quot;It was greatly satisfying to complete the project.&quot; You say &quot;I finished the last edits, submitted the project, then just laid back in my chair with a sense of ease and relaxation.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="306" OwnerDisplayName="Claudiu" LastActivityDate="2010-12-08T23:08:45.507" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1674" CreationDate="2010-12-08T20:24:02.040" Score="13" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be sensual.&lt;/strong&gt; Describe how thinks feel, look, smell. In a story, put the reader in a setting and make them feel like they're really there. Include small, realistic details to further the illusion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be passionate.&lt;/strong&gt; Use metaphors, hyperbole and similes to add color to your writing. If you're making an argument, go a little overboard in your word choice. Your opponent's position isn't just suboptimal or misguided; it's delusional and destructive. (Often, people overdo this, but you might benefit from doing it a little more.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be weird.&lt;/strong&gt; Use an unnecessarily ornate word. Use an idiom or regional slang. Use an unusual sentence structure. Use some alliteration. Do something to let your reader know that they're reading something written by Corey, not someone else. I can tell when I'm reading something by Hemingway or Twain, because they each have a distinct voice that comes across in their writing. Find your voice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Joshua Karstendick" LastActivityDate="2010-12-08T20:24:02.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1674" CreationDate="2010-12-08T21:24:56.413" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alright, so to infuse personality into a paper, there are lots of things you can try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might seem silly, but it works. Read something unusual. If you're having problems because your prose is too dry, read something so soapy you could scrub the dishes with it. Do you normally read scientific articles? Read a graphic novel. Do you normally read classics? Read a thriller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try to read things by authors that have high technical skill, but are also known for something else. Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and J.R.R. Tolkien come to mind, along with many others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, vary your sentence length significantly within each paper. It helps. Fragments might be grammatically inadvisable, but for slamming home a point, they can be invaluable. If you use it too much, it just becomes a cheap trick, but at the proper place, at the proper moment, it's more of a flourish. Use sentence length to compliment your intention. Do you want it to flow smoothly, and relax the reader? Or do you want it to jolt them, and jerk them, and keep them alert? The same goes for word length. Using multisyllabic words is no bad thing, but sometimes the smaller words are better. A little asceticism can go a long way. Using words with stop consonants can also have the same effect, but it's less constant. Using lots of b's and p's doesn't really work, but k's, g's, and t's can make a sentence &quot;harder,&quot; if you will. D's are on the borderline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the previous paragraph, I wrote the sentence &quot;It helps.&quot; towards the beginning. Replace it with &quot;It will aid you immensely in manipulating the reader's emotions&quot; or something and see if you think it changes the tone. Or compare &quot;You're being stupid.&quot; to &quot;Idiot!&quot; Think of all the synonyms for &quot;idiot&quot; you know of, think of how/why you'd use them, and then try to analyze the differences between them. Unless you don't feel emotion when you insult people, of course. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As another example, allow me to shamelessly steal the example from Claudiu's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I think the king's policies were ridiculous. How could he possibly think of continuing to raise taxes when his peasants were starving?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of trying to make it sound smarter, try to make it sound harsher. You are, after all, making a rather pejorative judgement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The king's policies were idiotic. In his desire for power he continued to increase taxes, without regard or respect for his people's inability to feed themselves, let alone further fill his coffers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I replaced &quot;ridiculous&quot; with &quot;idiotic&quot; because it has a faster, staccato rhythm, partially due to the facts that it has fewer consonants overall and what few it has are all stops. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another trick I used there was stating the opinion as a fact. I don't think the policies were ridiculous, they were quite inarguably idiotic!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other answers have some excellent advice. I hope this helps as well. This is already too long, but if I think of anything else incredibly useful, I'll add it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I should have said this first. In your writing there are bound to be lots and lots and lots of little things that make your writing &lt;strong&gt;yours&lt;/strong&gt;. Look for those things. When you find them, build on them before you try to take any suggestions you find here. No matter how good someone else's advice may be, it's still someone else's, and adopting it can make your writing just seem artificial. Try to develop the personality you already have, not the one your professors think you should have. Even if it makes your writing less than &quot;perfect,&quot; if it's honestly written, they'll appreciate it. And if they don't, their opinions aren't worth taking seriously outside of how it affects your grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="308" OwnerDisplayName="kitukwfyer" LastActivityDate="2010-12-08T21:54:21.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1674" CreationDate="2010-12-08T22:09:40.590" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read. Read some more. Read good writing. Read bad writing, but not so much that it begins to seem like good writing. Read technical writing, novels, murder mysteries, blogs, the back of the cereal box. Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/&quot;&gt;Joel on Software&lt;/a&gt;. Read  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baen.com/author_catalog.asp?author=lmbujold&quot;&gt;Lois McMaster Bujold&lt;/a&gt;. Read Tolkien, but only after watching the movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've gotten enough reading under your belt, your personality will automatically inject itself into your writing, without you needing to think about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1625" OwnerDisplayName="Martha" LastActivityDate="2010-12-08T22:09:40.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2011-02-18T19:56:42.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely.  I wrote about 60% of my NaNoWriMo content on an iPad, both on the bus and at the local library, using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/plaintext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PlainText&lt;/a&gt;.  Several times, I wrote for over two hours on the device. My typing rate, while lower, was not substantially lower than with a full keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it's not as easy or comfortable as a laptop or desktop (or a Bluetooth keyboard, with is effectively a laptop with a disconnected screen).  So, like anything, you have to weigh the pros and cons of the tool for the situation.  For the scenario you describe, taking notes on the go, or having a portable device handy when inspiration strikes, the iPad exactly fits.  If you're spending all day typing, you'd be better served by having a physical keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1346" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T19:56:42.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1674" CreationDate="2011-02-18T21:45:23.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple. What makes writing emotional is when the author draws on their own emotional experiences. Trying to simulate emotion by reading other authors will not come off as genuine as using first hand experience. The depth at which one can feel emotions is the depth at which they can potentially communicate them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1348" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T21:45:23.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1685" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1785" CreationDate="2011-02-18T22:20:30.003" Score="12" ViewCount="1062" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does one go about successfully getting their movie script, or screen play, into the hands of top level Hollywood producers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does one need a literary agent? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so where does one find one that will get the job done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much can one expect to pay the best agents? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If one does not need a literary agent, what other options does one have?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1348" LastActivityDate="2015-08-29T09:07:36.953" Title="How does one go about successfully getting their movie script, or screen play, into the right hands?" Tags="|publishing|agent|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1674" CreationDate="2011-02-18T23:26:53.270" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some good advices already here, so let me summarize them to give you an easy start writing emotional:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DO NOT THINK!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, you have read correctly. If you are a good technical writer and suck at emotions, then you probably think too much. You know that one brain hemisphere controls emotions, the other controls logical thinking. You use the wrong one. (Ok, that is scientifically not correct, but it is good enough to make my point.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So trust your gut feeling. Just write, don't think and you will watch how emotions are just flooding into your fingertips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T23:26:53.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2011-02-19T12:50:01.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, writing on the iPad (without a wireless keyboard) is somewhere between writing using the pen and typing on the keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I say this: it is harder to make edits on the iPad than on the computer. That makes you want to carefully choose your words and plan ahead a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use Pages and Dropbox. The dictionary built into Pages is actually good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1352" LastActivityDate="2011-02-19T12:50:01.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1669" CreationDate="2011-02-20T05:37:09.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love writing complexity in to a universe. Frequently my stories come with thousands and thousands of facets that have nothing to do with the story. I'll expound on something for a page and a half that no one cares about and isnt particularly interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then I'll look back at what i wrote, rip it out, and just hint at it. This tends to leave the reader with a sense of something more, something grander than just the basic story i'm writing. &#xA;Some times i'll put these things down in an index or something, for interested parties to look up, but usually i just throw them away. As far as the universe goes... A reader doesn't need complexity itself, they just need to feel that there is more to the universe than the tiny sliver that you are portraying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This of course is my biggest beef with writing like in star trek, they spend 20 minutes an episode expounding on the minutiae of nonsense just to make it seems 'sci-fi' or something. And then the only people actually care about that technobabble are the same people who turn around and bite them in the ass for inconsistencies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="966" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T05:37:09.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1674" CreationDate="2011-02-20T05:42:17.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply for me, I write my most emotionally charged pieces when I'm emotional. If I'm writing something romantic or erotic, i need to be in a sensual mood. If I'm writing something sci-fi, I need to be in a techy mood. You get the idea I'm sure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="966" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T05:42:17.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1631" CreationDate="2011-02-20T05:46:04.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply the best ending:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And they lived happily ever after, at least until she died of cancer, their children got crushed by a train, and the bombs at last fell in WWIII.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously though, I think a satisfying ending is better than a good ending. A lot of writers leave off on a cliffhanger, or leave many threads of the story unfinished. Unless you are highly prolific and truly are going to finish the story, tie up the story arcs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="966" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2014-01-16T19:53:33.497" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T19:53:33.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1614" CreationDate="2011-02-20T05:55:46.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm kinda surprised no one mentioned these, but the dark elf stories written by R.A. Salvatore, excluding the drizt novels, most of these are about pretty evil people just going about their evil way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally love the stories from the evil perspective, and agreed, not the 'thinks hes good'. Of course, D&amp;amp;D's 'evil' is quite clear cut and rather shallow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with writing evil, is you have to first define evil. In reality, there is no pure definition, everything is in a shade of gray, so you need to figure out exactly what you want to portray. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most fantasy evil is short lived, either redemption or evicted from the mortal coil. Figure out how you intend to keep the story interesting without killing off your main character, or betraying the story by turning him good? reading about some dude murdering children, raping mothers, and eating grannies is going to get old quick. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might do better with a little gray. Don't make the character evil, make him/her complex. If you go down that road it gives you lots of room to fill in the back story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="966" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T05:55:46.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1529" CreationDate="2011-02-20T06:07:51.657" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I generally have a few close friends read my work. Over the years I've collected three or four people who actually give good feedback instead of just praise or incompetent gibberish. I also have my mother read my stuff occasionally. (She's an English major, and gives hard criticism.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might try putting an ad in Craigslist or a college paper for critical readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="966" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-04-17T03:46:24.707" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T03:46:24.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1693" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-20T13:34:56.033" Score="6" ViewCount="562" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something which I see all the time in (popular) science writing is the use of abbreviations to indicate concepts. For (a made up) example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So when we're dealing with Anachronistic Meta Mechanics (AMM) we have to take a wholly different approach than before in the case of Amniotic Uber Psychotics (AUP). Those in favour of AMM in fact frequently disagree with the conclusions reached by applying AUP mechanisms to the same data set...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I'm not familiar with these abbreviations from prior experience I always end up looking back to where the abbreviations were first introduced. This severely impedes the progress I can make across a text like this. However, since it is an extremely common practice I figured I'd ask if this is a problem more people have and whether there are good alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1003" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T10:32:27.620" Title="Using uncommon abbreviations" Tags="|style|non-fiction|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1693" CreationDate="2011-02-20T14:35:36.393" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If they are abbreviations which are extremely common to the field, once per work is often enough to define them. If they are rare, invented for the piece, or really jargon, I would say once per section (once per chapter, once per web page). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, a list of acronyms at the beginning or end of a piece might also be helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T14:35:36.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1194" CreationDate="2011-02-20T17:23:36.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Song lyrics and poetry can be a problem. In fiction publishing, most houses will require you to get permission to quote even as little as a single line from a copyrighted popular song or from a well-known poem that's still in copyright, because many copyright owners are extremely litigious and the legal precedents on whether a single line is &quot;fair use&quot; are not as clear as publishers would prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, many copyright holders are happy to let you use a line or two, if you can manage to track them down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1361" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T17:23:36.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1077" CreationDate="2011-02-20T17:30:16.707" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, if a pubisher gives you an advance against royalties, and then publishes your book, and the book doesn't sell well, you don't have to refund the advance. This is the normal understanding of an &quot;advance&quot; in the world of trade publishing. But read your contract carefully before you sign it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1361" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T17:30:16.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1621" CreationDate="2011-02-20T17:48:40.463" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure there are :) Here's some resources I've found to be extremely helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Orson Scott Card's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0898799279&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Character and Viewpoint&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is one of the best creative writing books I've read. He talks about character creation and &quot;interrogating&quot; you character for detail and color; about coming up with story concepts with &quot;why,&quot; &quot;how,&quot; and &quot;what might go wrong&quot; questions; about how and when to convey &quot;boring&quot; detail, and lots of other great stuff. It's the most insightful and inspiring books on writing that I've had the pleasure to come across; I really cannot recommend it highly enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jim Van Pelt teaches creative writing, and he's got &lt;A href=&quot;http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/?tag=writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a great blog&lt;/a&gt; over at LiveJournal. He's particularly good at simple exercises for constructing plots - like his &lt;a href=&quot;http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/115893.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;plot daisies&lt;/a&gt; or his &lt;a href=&quot;http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/81034.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;seven-sentence stories&lt;/a&gt;. Very worthwhile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mette Ivie Harrison has great advice on what makes stories work, about strong romantic relationships, and about the importance of dedication and persistence. You can read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&amp;amp;vol=mette_ivie_harrison&amp;amp;article=_index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;her column at IGMS&lt;/a&gt;, and/or &lt;a href=&quot;http://metteharrison.livejournal.com/profile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;her LiveJournal&lt;/a&gt; (where she also gives a unique take on some other interesting subjects). She writes about writing in a frank, practical, down-to-earth manner which I find both refreshing and helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there's a cool site addressing all kinds of questions about fiction-writing right over here :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T17:48:40.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1693" CreationDate="2011-02-20T18:26:49.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;IBM is a bastion of abbreviation use.  Three-letter acronyms (TLAs) are literally the foundation of the company -- along with the misnomer calling all abbreviations acronyms (even ones that don't spell out a new word).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In IBM style, even cutting edge research papers and journal articles used the &quot;define on first reference&quot; rule for new terms and abbreviations. The argument was that, once ingrained, an abbreviation speeds comprehension. My feeling always was that authors used the technique to shorten writing time more than as a way to help their readers.  Sentences ended up looking like alphabet soup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this age of digital content, it is a little easier to search back for the first reference, but this still &quot;impedes progress&quot; as David points out. The idea of a list of abbreviations used in a piece was never common practice, but it absolutely should have been. (Of course, in HTML each reference to an abbreviation can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.w3schools.com/html5/tag_abbr.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tagged&lt;/a&gt; so that, in many browsers, a pop-up appears with the abbreviation, obviating the need for a search.  Authoring can be done using software that matches the term against a global taxonomy so that the accurate description of even the most uncommon abbreviation is always used.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T18:26:49.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1699" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1700" CreationDate="2011-02-20T21:12:06.107" Score="43" ViewCount="3732" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently asked if I was interested in writing a book for a pretty reputable publisher, which of course I accepted. I am not a writer by trade, I am a software developer with some technical writing training. The longest thing I have ever written is a dissertation on distributed computing, which is hardly the same as a book. Of course, this book is about a programming topic and needs to be instructional and informative. My problem is how to get started; I have been sitting at my computer now for about 3 hours and have re-written my introduction about 25 times now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; as my writing tool, which I have used for other reference-type works but for some reason I just have nothing in my brain to get started, my cork board is totally devoid of notes! I don't know what to do and I am feeling totally intimidated! Does anyone have advice for a first time book author to get started? I would be interested to know what your process is for getting started and how you organize thoughts!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1218" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-09-29T01:40:47.323" LastActivityDate="2023-07-18T17:26:21.863" Title="Writing first programming book" Tags="|technical-writing|non-fiction|book|writers-block|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1699" CreationDate="2011-02-20T21:30:42.443" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;Close the intro. Promise yourself that you will write it last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start a blank Scrivener page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start writing down everything that comes into your head about the topic. Follow your thoughts wherever they lead, but make each thought a new line. Don't organize; just write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you run out of steam, go back to the top of the list, look at each thought, and see if it generates more stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep doing that until you can't think of more stuff to add to the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you have a list of stuff, start grouping it. Since I know squat-all about programming, I'll use gardening for my example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group A: planting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group B: weeding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group C: harvest&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group D: insecticides&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group E: types of plants&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group F: organic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group G: color&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group H: season&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on. Just put the letter (A) in front of any statement to do with planting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make new pages for each of the Groups. Copy everything with an A to the A:Planting page. Copy everything with a B to the B:Weeding page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lovely thing about Scrivener is that you don't have to put stuff in order yet. So once you have all your F:Organic statements together, just start writing. Do an info dump of everything you know about Organic Gardnening. When you run out of stuff, go to whatever topic strikes your fancy next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a while, you will have enough information to see how your book should be structured, or you can find an editor who can help you organize everything. You can drag your pages around any way you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is to get it all typed out. You can rearrange once you've gotten it on the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T21:30:42.443" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1699" CreationDate="2011-02-20T22:17:30.917" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote four such books. My first one was 750 pages.  The others ranged from 250-400 pages each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My technique was to budget a particular number of pages or a particular amount of time each day to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For myself, I found that if I wrote more than about 4 pages per day (6 on a good day, it varied), I would quickly get burned out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's 2000-3000 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the general structure, I wrote an outline. It doesn't have to be very detailed, just enough to guide you along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't write your introduction until you are finished. I always wrote that stuff last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't bother with perfection. Your publisher has copy editors, technical editors, and so on for a reason. Let them do their jobs.  On the flip side, remember that they are not programmers, and when you use words like &quot;OR&quot; as a verb, you will confuse them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find a part that interests you, and write it to get with your own flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are less interesting parts to write. Power through them. Do not allow yourself to get to a more interesting part without first going through a less interesting part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, even when trying to budget per day pages or words, there will come some days when you just can't write 2000 words. You try your best, but can only squeak out 1000. That's OK.  However, do not make the next day have to be a 3000 word day to make up for the lack, or you will reach a point when you need 10,000 words, which is nearly impossible to make good content for, and it'll overwhelm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a light day, spread out the shortage over 5-10 days. If you short by 1000 words, add 100 words per day until you make it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take days off. Seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you get through your budgeted words or pages, and feel like you can double it, force yourself to stop and not write anything until the next day. Trust me on this.  You can write a little bit extra, about 25% or so, but don't double. Burn out city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="875" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T22:17:30.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1702" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-20T23:01:37.930" Score="6" ViewCount="8691" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interesting in picking up a copy of Strunk &amp;amp; White's The Elements of Style. Unfortunately I'm a little overwhelmed by the minor variations. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1557427283&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon lists&lt;/a&gt; 12 different paperback formats, plus a half dozen or more other editions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in a recent, basic copy. I don't need anything fancy. I just want to make sure I'm getting the actual Strunk &amp;amp; White, and not some stupid commentary or deluxe version they're just using to milk students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific publications/editions please.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1363" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T11:06:54.417" Title="Which edition of Strunk &amp; White's The Elements of Style?" Tags="|resources|tools|book-rec|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1702" CreationDate="2011-02-21T00:04:56.850" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205313426&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1999 4th edition&lt;/a&gt; is probably your best bet, and has the benefit of being small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The newer 50th anniversary edition contains the same text as the 4th edition and costs more - its only selling point appears to be the black cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T00:04:56.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1704" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1705" CreationDate="2011-02-21T00:58:54.353" Score="10" ViewCount="15461" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it difficult to get anyone to buy a screenplay you write?  I am thinking about writing a screenplay but am concerned that maybe I shouldn't waste my time; I have no formal training in writing screenplays.  Is it harder or easier than getting a novel published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user153" LastActivityDate="2020-12-17T19:52:40.020" Title="How difficult is it to break into screenwriting?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1704" CreationDate="2011-02-21T05:10:00.077" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's extremely, extremely difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not too many people making movies. Lots of people writing screenplays. Gargantuan investment to get a movie made. Not an easy sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it depends to a large extent on what kind of screenplay you're writing, and what kind of scope you're looking for. If you're aiming for a full-length Hollywood feature, then the odds of reaching that with your first or second screenplay are pretty much infinitesimal. I'm not really at all familiar with smaller movie producers, but it's safe to assume various fringe producers and more independent studios will not be quite as inaccessible - but nonetheless, it's an awfully tough sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Harder or easier than getting a novel published&quot; is an interesting point for comparison; that can also be a pretty Herculean task, so I'm not sure the comparison will be very helpful. My guess is &quot;harder,&quot; if you're talking about a full-length movie - there are far fewer of those made every year than books published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid the state of the industry is not such that one can embark on a career with any expectation of a smooth success. Success in this field takes a long, long time; often a lot of very unrewarding work; and dedication, dedication, dedication. I'm not saying it can't be done or isn't worth pursuing; I'm saying if your consideration is that if it's too difficult than you shouldn't devote time for it, then I wouldn't start unless:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're interested in writing for the love, art, and craft of it, and will be proud of your work even if it's never sold, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're willing to devote a huge amount of time and effort to selling your work, and suffer plenty of rejections and false starts until then.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck to you, in whatever venture you choose :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited to add:&lt;/strong&gt; Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&amp;amp;vol=mette_ivie_harrison&amp;amp;article=017&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a couple&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://metteharrison.livejournal.com/158251.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;of places&lt;/a&gt; where Mette Ivie Harrison discusses the 20 novels she wrote before getting published. Now, that's not necessarily how it goes for &lt;em&gt;everybody&lt;/em&gt;, and I don't mean to be discouraging - I'm just saying, having a lot of dead-ends and unsuccessful pieces is to be expected. It comes with the territory. Accumulating talent, craft and reputation takes a lot of writing &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you've got those things. As long as that's clear, go for it if you want to, and if not - it's because you know how much it'll cost you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-02-21T23:22:41.707" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T23:22:41.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="622" CreationDate="2011-02-21T14:54:58.927" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Billing by time for technical writers is an important aspect of the work.  At IBM we used the following guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 page is 250 words (this reflects the fact that &quot;page&quot; is an outmoded concept but is still widely used for billing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 person-day is 8 hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 person-week is 40 hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 person-year is 2000 hours (useful for salaried employees being billed out or paying contractors; this includes an assumption of 2 weeks vacation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We then determined writing stage (research-only, new content, rewrite, update) and assigned a number of pages per work day based on that. (Again, &quot;page&quot; was used as a generic term describing sections of online help or other output.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most projects that I was involved with, we were doing new content for an existing product, and we ended up with an average of 2 pages per day.  That's essentially 4 hours per page, which seems incredibly unproductive, but if you take into account research, testing, editing, and production, it's not as crazy as it sounds.  Also, it is not all the same person's time (editors, testers, and production assistants are often separate from the writer).  I think the environment in which most tech writers work would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be more productive due to fewer policies and procedures&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reflect a solo effort where the writer is doing all the tasks (leading to greater efficiency but perhaps a need for more downtime in the calculation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T14:54:58.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1699" CreationDate="2011-02-21T17:20:59.073" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the initial stages I think you have to free yourself from the notion that you are meant to be producing anything that will resemble your finished book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you are writing a non-fiction volume you will, of necessity, exist in an eco system of non-fiction works which surround the topic of your work. At this stage it is not inappropriate to re-read and examine some of the books that contain the ideas which make up the basis of your own work. You should annotate your reading, provide references to the other work and then make notes about what your volume will eventually say upon that topic. (This is also a great time to note the structure of the book that you are reading for any tips, make more notes e.g. &quot;I like the structure of Volume X but the range of topics in Volume Y is closer to what I will be covering&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do this work thoroughly you will probably end up with between 20k and 50k of foundational notes. Organise these into a rough structure that you would imagine your volume following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you have a structure and a basis. Examine the notes and expand upon them until they cover what it is you want to cover in your book. This should get you to about the 75-140k mark depending how much you expand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have written too much now is the time to edit. In fact once you have this ungainly mess of note taking and explanatory text editing is essential. Be careful, look for ways to cut down the verbiage. An original reference may turn into a footnote, it may become a quotation integral to the text. Or you might remove the specific reference and just leave the notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, that's a lot further than how you start. So I'll leave off there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AT HEART: Remember your work cannot and will not exist in a vacuum. The first step of the journey is always to work out where it is you are starting from. So before you write, organise your thoughts, read, take notes, prepare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T17:20:59.073" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1702" CreationDate="2011-02-21T20:45:57.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mine is a 3rd Edition (1979). I've never replaced it because it acquired magical powers when I was in college! I carried it in the back pocket of my jeans for a couple of semesters and it got heavily creased and worn. More than once, a prof commented that although he/she might disagree with me, I must be right since I always had S&amp;amp;W with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've looked at the newer editions, but I never saw anything that made me feel like I was missing out by not having them. So my &lt;em&gt;personal&lt;/em&gt; advice is to pick up an older used copy (Amazon, eBay, etc.) for a dollar or so, and use the money you could have spent on a newer edition for something that might help you more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mHTTm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;My copy of S&amp;amp;W&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1061" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T20:45:57.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1709" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-22T00:02:17.770" Score="5" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Notes:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My audience knows that adrenaline and epinephrine are synonyms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm new!  I'm sorry if I abuse the site by posting this!  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Please critique ruthlessly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would send by Facebook message to a girl I know, who's having a bad year.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Draft:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpt from The Mechanic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the roles of cooperating hitmen, Ben Foster and Jason Statham plan an assassination attempt.  They finish each other’s sentences, amplifying a sense of magnitude, gravity, and confidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Ben Foster] Adrenaline shot to the&#xA;heart.  12cc and he’s dead in under&#xA;three minutes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Jason Statham] Adrenaline’s&#xA;unreliable.  It may only force him&#xA;into cardiac arrest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[B Foster] But when the EMTs arrive,&#xA;the first thing they do is jam you&#xA;with a shot of epinephrine...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[J Statham] Which is toxic when&#xA;combined with...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[B Foster] Adrenaline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[J Statham] So on the off chance our&#xA;adrenaline shot doesn’t kill him...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[B Foster] The EMTs will.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1372" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T06:52:25.977" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T06:52:25.977" Title="What revisions for this draft would be more readable and/or more humorous?" Tags="|style|humor|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1709" CreationDate="2011-02-22T00:51:26.183" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only thing I can see in this brief exchange to fix is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Line 2: Eh, adrenaline's unreliable. Might only give 'im a heart attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T00:51:26.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1709" CreationDate="2011-02-22T05:36:54.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because I find your dialogue interesting as it is, I tried to approach it from the other end and create something different. It's a fun exercise :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started my thought process on an idea to differentiate the characters - both of them are killers but the similarities should stop here. After a few minutes of YouTube research I depicted my impressions on the two actors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ben Foster's character would more of a maniacal/psycho, a person who rushes without thinking, ruthless and with eccentric, maybe a little crazy, ideas. This would contrast well with odd-calculating, experienced Jason Statham. Ben's carefree attitude would also throw Jason off at times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to the dialogue. With these in mind, I wrote this concept:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BF: Blow his heart with adrenaline. 12cc and he's pretty much dead right on the spot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JS: Listen. I won't go inside with a probability of leaving him alive. It's not in my style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BF: But right after the EMTs have arrived, they find your heart going to break[1]. What's the first thing they do?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JS: An epinephrine injection.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BS: So basically, even if this syringe fails to kill him...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JS: They will finish the job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] this one is a bit screwed. I haven't found anything better with simple, yet strong meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1288" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T05:36:54.450" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2011-02-22T16:21:21.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Game Master for a bi-weekly role-playing group, I write a lot of notes on my iPad. I use Pages, and sync it to a Box.net account using WebDav.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also in the process of writing my first novel, also using Pages. So far it meets all my needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that publishing a book written with Pages (digital or paper) won't be too difficult if you just focus on writing and not page making. Just write, and leave all the page makeing to the end, since every publisher has its own rules and guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T16:21:21.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2011-02-22T16:21:23.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do, quite regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially, I used it to write for classes mostly. Now, I've begun to work on more creative projects using Pages and an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though the Apple keyboard costs a little more than a non-name brand device, it fits perfectly alongside the keyboard in my bag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At present, I use a small iPad wedge stand, but I'm considering a Compass stand from TwelveSouth. They're quite nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1273" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T16:21:23.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1714" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1715" CreationDate="2011-02-22T16:22:02.520" Score="42" ViewCount="1423" Body="&lt;p&gt;I edit novels (among other works). I was having a discussion with someone (not an editor) who didn't understand my technique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do is read through the document, and the moment something occurs to me &amp;mdash; whatever reaction I'm having for good or ill, whatever I catch, any questions I have, mistakes I spot, delightful turns of phrase I notice &amp;mdash; I mark it. When I get to the end, I then go back and briefly review my remarks, so that if I wrote something like &quot;Is there a reason that Dave went to the deli?&quot; and I find later that Dave needed to be at the deli so he could overhear Sarah, I can delete that comment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My friend thought that I should read through the entire book first, &lt;i&gt;as though I were reading it for pleasure&lt;/i&gt; rather than as an editor, and then do a second round as an editor. He thought that reading it first as an editor was somehow unfair to the &quot;spell&quot; that the writer was trying to create with the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really think that it's important for a writer to get my first-read impressions. If I already know that we aren't going to return to Blandings Castle for another 150 pages, then I don't feel impatient. But if I'm reading through for the first time, as a reader I'm wondering &quot;when TF are we going to get back to Blandings Castle already? It's been over 100 pages!&quot; I think the author needs to know that the reader is feeling impatient. If that's deliberate, or if the author doesn't care, that's a legitimate choice. But the writer can't know that unless as a reader (and editor) I give her that feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I ask any other editors here: what's your technique? Mark as you read on first draft, or read and then mark? Or something else altogether?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-02-22T17:55:29.537" LastActivityDate="2018-03-30T14:10:41.617" Title="Editors: Edit on first read, or read and edit on second round?" Tags="|technique|editing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1714" CreationDate="2011-02-22T18:25:30.497" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't done actual editing, but I've done a fair bit of critique and review. I think the issues are pretty much the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standard proviso: everybody has their own system. Of writing, of reading, of editing. Obviously your system isn't &quot;wrong,&quot; even if nobody else does it; nor is it &quot;right&quot; merely because you may find that everybody does it. But that's not what you're asking, so I'll assume this point is obvious :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my take: &lt;strong&gt;the first read-through is crucial.&lt;/strong&gt; That's how pretty much everybody is going to be reading it, after all, so &lt;em&gt;that's&lt;/em&gt; the experience you want to polish, refine, and make absolutely perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What you're saying, in your question, is, &quot;The first read-through is crucial, so it's best to set down my comments and reactions &lt;em&gt;to that&lt;/em&gt;, and not rely solely on reactions to subsequent re-reads.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your friend, on the other hand, is saying &quot;The first read-through is crucial, so it's best to read it in the most pure, receptive manner you can - and constant commenting and critiquing will not enable you to get the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; first read-through experience that a real reader would have.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My own opinion, in a nutshell, is that you're absolutely right on this one - but you should keep your friend's point in mind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words (and in more of them): your technique of marking reactions during your first read-through is (IMHO) spot-on. Your friend perhaps does not understand how difficult it is to re-capture those initial reactions of yours, or how important they are to the editing process. Your friend also might not appreciate that an editor's job involves, in a very real sense, the ability to read critically &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; for enjoyment in the very same reading. You have to: your criticism is meant precisely to make the book better, more powerful, more enjoyable; how can that skill be separated from your ability to feel the power and enjoyment in the book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, that being said, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; harder to enjoy a piece when you're also trying to fix it. In my experience, &lt;strong&gt;that first pass is an attempt to capture your response to the book - &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to fix it,&lt;/strong&gt; or to make any suggestions on how to deal with it triggering those responses. Those are things you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do once you've finished the first read-through. And anything critical (and certainly active editing suggestions) that &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; wait for later, probably should. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for example, &quot;Dude! It's been 100 pages since you mentioned Blandings Castle! WTF?&quot; would be fine, if that were your reaction, whereas &quot;It's been a long time since you've mentioned Blandings Castle - is this really necessary? If it is, maybe you could at least give some ominous hints to what's going on there - maybe as news from the water girl in Chapter 17!&quot; would probably be pretty far out of I'm-A-Regular-Reader Zone. That's what I'd take from your friend's opinion: capture your reaction; leave &quot;what to do about it&quot; for later; don't break into full-out Editor Mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's really nice is that as an editor, you can jot down your most cryptic, frustrated, mocking comments - the same ones you have reading &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; book! - without needing to explain yourself. You don't need to phrase your reactions as helpful comments, or even as intelligible comments. You just need enough to get a good sense, when you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; writing your comments to the author, of what needs to be addressed - from the fresh-reader's perspective. Because you've got your own, all jotted down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You asked about my own technique;&lt;/strong&gt; it sounds like it's something similar to yours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I make a first pass with my most initial reactions - usually as comments right off the text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When I'm done with the piece, I write a long response, detailing my macro-level comments, addressing any concerns that repeated a bunch of times, and going into detail for micro-points that require it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then I go back to my initial reactions, and I edit them into clear, helpful micro-comments for the author. &quot;WTF is going on with Blandings Castle???&quot; turns into &quot;I'm getting a bit frustrated that you've left us hanging on Blandings Castle for so long. The reader may feel like you've swerved away from the 'real plot,' or just feel like the story's unraveled somewhat.&quot; By this point, I already know the ending, so I can give constructive criticism on how the point might be improved - particularly if it's not something that can be fixed by a simple &quot;I didn't like X, don't do it.&quot; I want the author to have these comments, as a record of my initial reaction, which I see as very valuable - but it's generally necessary to edit them for legibility and tact.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-28T06:32:27.847" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T06:32:27.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1716" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1718" CreationDate="2011-02-22T19:12:21.437" Score="35" ViewCount="4861" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm firmly in the camp of &quot;your novel needs an editor, and that editor better not be yourself.&quot;  But recently I was asked why that was, and I couldn't articulate an answer that was passable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Young novelists often underestimate their need for an editor, so frame your answer in such a way as to convince one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="947" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-07-28T13:39:49.130" LastActivityDate="2022-05-26T14:19:18.373" Title="Why does an author need an editor?" Tags="|editing|novel|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2011-02-22T19:27:20.107" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because you can't see your own mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know, in your head, what you want your story to accomplish. You know who you want to end up with whom. You know who you want to punish, and who you want to see succeed. You know which characters you like and which are your villains. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the challenge is writing your story so that anyone else who reads it sees the same things you do, without having you there to explain it. You need to get everything out of your head onto the page, and convincingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good editor will help you to shape what's on the page so that it guides the reader to see what you want the reader to see. A good editor will also point out where you made the heroine a wimp, the love-interest so perfect that he clearly leapt fully-formed from the brow of Tiger Beat, the villain into Snidely Whiplash, and how the final twist can be seen a mile off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without an editor, you won't necessarily see those things are there, or you won't think they need fixing. The editor is there to bring out the best in your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T19:27:20.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2011-02-22T19:35:21.433" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are my reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the author, you are too close to the material.  Writing which may seem clear in your mind could be confusing to the audience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small mistakes in grammar and poorly-worded sections need a second set of eyes to be discovered.  Advise the novice writer to re-read some of their writing after setting it aside for a month or more.  I find that when I do this, the mistakes jump out at me.  Using an editor will speed up this process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting feedback from someone else might give you new ideas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all else fails, tell them to try it out and see if it's beneficial.  (And if they don't find a benefit, it is unlikely that they will be successful as writers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T19:35:21.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2011-02-22T20:03:42.700" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me ask a question right back: Why does an author need/want to show some friends or workshop members the work he's done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not required, sure. But somehow everybody does it anyway. And they listen to what the friends have to say. Because they want and need constructive feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, an editor does the same. Except he's more thorough; devoted (by your contract) to your book; he's got a lot more professional experience than your friends do; and so on, and so forth. In this sense, an editor is &lt;strong&gt;awesome.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What a lot of people have trouble with is with that advice coming from a position of &lt;em&gt;authority&lt;/em&gt;. The editor doesn't merely &lt;em&gt;advise&lt;/em&gt; - he can make huge decisions about the book. Starting with whether or not to purchase it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the immediate sense - the author &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; need an editor in authority. Pretty much by definition, if the editor can't &lt;em&gt;convince&lt;/em&gt; the author to make a certain change, then forcing the author to make that change can't be in the author's direct benefit (I'm assuming the author has a decent idea of what's good for him; few authors will confess they don't). The editor's authority comes from the publisher, and that's who he's truly serving: the &lt;em&gt;publisher&lt;/em&gt; is the one who needs editors to find new authors, to bring the best out of manuscripts, to assure new novels are salable and appropriate to the line, etc. . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author doesn't need most of that; not directly. The author just needs the system to exist. The author doesn't &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; an editor to set him in competition with a thousand other MSs - but indirectly he does need him to do that, because otherwise nobody publishes anything. The editor serves as the publisher's sieve, its gate-keeper, its gem-cutter. Does that serve the writers being kept out or shaved off? Not directly - but it upholds the quality of the entire industry, without which nobody would have anything at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T20:03:42.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2011-02-22T20:12:23.030" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just another (abbreviated) way of saying what some have already said here... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't un-know what you know. Writers often leave out details and exposition that they fail to recognize as important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="642" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T20:12:23.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1621" CreationDate="2011-02-22T23:56:15.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to look at what you like to read and read what you would like to write, preferably from several authors. Now you have a style you can learn from, ranging from how descriptions are done to dialogue style and character development. This gives you something to aim at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also keep an eye out for things about your favourite authors you always thought could have been done better. These give you something to distinguish your writing from others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T23:56:15.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1722" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1726" CreationDate="2011-02-23T01:59:55.303" Score="21" ViewCount="1787" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking to improve my ability to edit and correct my own writing. What are some techniques I can use to help me with this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="168" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T18:49:29.730" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T11:50:03.107" Title="Which techniques can I use to become a better editor when editing my own writing?" Tags="|technique|editing|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1714" CreationDate="2011-02-23T02:00:39.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with Standback, it's agreeable that either approach could work and that there's no &quot;official&quot; way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it's advisable to try the next one the &lt;em&gt;read-then-edit&lt;/em&gt; way and see how it works any better for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one way you could try it by reaching a middle ground. Perhaps only correcting obvious errors such as spelling, punctuation and grammar, then once you have read the whole manuscript, go back and look at the story itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T02:00:39.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1725" CreationDate="2011-02-23T02:08:45.847" Score="7" ViewCount="2724" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a few episodes of House M.D., and I wonder, are the episodes written according to a fixed structural pattern?  If so, what are the details, and why does such a structure make the show popular?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The series is clearly compelling and has a large following.  I would like to study the technical details of its structure, and see if I can take advantage of them in my own writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="168" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-02-23T13:53:25.940" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T15:48:57.403" Title="Do episodes of the show House follow a constant structural pattern?" Tags="|screenwriting|structure|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1724" CreationDate="2011-02-23T02:49:36.297" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They open with a problem occurring -- an unknown disease that no one can figure out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;House has to be conned into taking the case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They sit around a room and throw ideas at each other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of the ideas are wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Patient nears death and no ideas are working.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;House has a magical epiphany and solves the case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The End.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, don't forget the sexual jokes thrown in at various times.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T02:49:36.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1722" CreationDate="2011-02-23T02:54:00.803" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a few editing tips that I use when going through manuscript for publishers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a search for the word “that.” Read the sentence aloud. If the sentence&#xA;makes sense without the word “that,” please delete this word.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a search for the word “it.” If at all possible, replace the word “it” with&#xA;a more concrete noun or phrase. Example: It didn’t matter. = The crappy&#xA;weather didn’t matter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read through your manuscript and look for overused words or phrases. If&#xA;your character is rolling his eyes three times on one page, change two of&#xA;them to something else. If you use the word “hand” six times in 2&#xA;paragraphs, find another way to describe what’s happening using other&#xA;words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read through your manuscript and look for redundancy – He shrugged&#xA;his shoulders. He nodded his head. A person ONLY shrugs their&#xA;shoulders or nods their head, so “his shoulders” and “his head” are not&#xA;needed. He shrugged. He nodded.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using these four tips should really help tighten up your manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-02-24T21:33:06.590" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T21:33:06.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1727" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-23T05:19:47.147" Score="3" ViewCount="339" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1478/strunk-and-white-vs-style-the-basics-of-clarity-and-grace-by-williams-and-colo&quot;&gt;previous question&lt;/a&gt; I asked about &lt;em&gt;The Elements&lt;/em&gt;, RegDwight posted a comment containing a link to this article by Geoffrey K. Pullum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a lengthier critique &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/ETfinalProof.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article seemed convincing and I am avoiding &lt;em&gt;The Elements&lt;/em&gt; as a result. However, I'm certainly not a grammar expert and am curious to see if others agree or disagree with Pullum's article.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you post an answer, I ask that you actually read the article first and give specifics as to why you agree or disagree.  Simple &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot; answers can be indicated by up or down voting other responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1129" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T05:19:47.147" Title="Is Strunk and White's &quot;The Elements&quot; full of &quot;stupid grammar advice?&quot;" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2011-02-25T13:31:21.523" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2011-02-23T06:38:36.473" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just starting to learn the Dvorak layout (I'm at about 15 WPM touch typing after around 5 hours of practice over the last few days), but have not yet decided whether or not I will stick with it permanently. (Edit: After 2 weeks of using Dvorak, I'm up to about 35 WPM). &lt;a href=&quot;http://learn.dvorak.nl/?lang=en&amp;amp;lesson=1&amp;amp;input=qwerty&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; has a useful trainer for learning it.  Here are my thoughts so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Bad&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the moment, Dvorak is painfully slow considering I type over 70 WPM using qwerty. Its probably not worth trying to switch to Dvorak unless you're willing to put up with it long enough get decently fast.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I use the standard Windows keyboard shortcuts (ctrl-c, ctrl-v, etc.) heavily.  Dvorak moves these keys to the right side of the keyboard, which is &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; inconvenient for people like me.  However, there seem to be some good ways to work around this.  I returned the shortcuts to their original locations by installing &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvorakqwerty/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this layout&lt;/a&gt;, which was one of several solutions posted on &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/808422/mac-style-dvorak-qwerty-command-keyboard-mapping-for-windows&quot;&gt;this thread&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After getting used to Dvorak, it takes several minutes to switch back to querty (which may occasionally be necessary).  I've been using Dvorak almost exclusively for about 2 weeks now.  I just took some 3 minute typing tests using querty and scored 25 WPM, 46 WPM, and then 55 WPM.  I'm guessing I'd be back up around 70 WPM again if I typed in querty for a good 30 minutes or so, but I'm sure my top speed in querty will degrade some over time as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Good&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So far, it does seem like Dvorak would be more comfortable to type in than querty.  I have definitely noticed that many common digraphs are more natural to type in Dvorak.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The more you type, the more potential for long term benefits.  I type a lot, so I'm willing to put in a fair amount of effort for relatively small gains.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit 2:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been a while since I wrote this answer, but if I remember correctly I stuck with Dvorak for a couple months.  I used it almost exclusively for the first 3 or 4 weeks, and then switched back to qwerty for programming on my computer at school while still using Dvorak at home.  I wasn't a fan of some of the places the symbols that are used often in programming got moved (like the semicolon).  I kept using Dvorak at home and qwerty at work/school for at least a month or two.  It was easy to switch between them since I used them both regularly, but I probably didn't get as fast at Dvorak as I would have had I stuck with it exclusively.  I think in the end I got up to about 55 WPM in Dvorak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ultimately gave up on Dvorak at home as well because there were always small, annoying side-effects of using it that would crop up somewhere sooner or later.  I refused to stick with normal Dvorak since it messes up ctrl-c and other shortcuts that I want easily accessible with just my left hand.  I tried the hybrid layout I linked above that keeps the querty virtual key codes but remaps the character codes to Dvorak.  That worked fairly well in most situations, but I ran into an application or two that I used often that ctrl-c was still messed up for (I don't remember which application).  Perhaps that program used character codes instead of virtual key codes for its internal keyboard shortcuts or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I went looking for another solution that wouldn't have that side effect.  I eventually set up an AutoHotkey script that remapped all the key-presses involving the ctrl, alt, or windows key modifiers back to qwerty.  That worked even for the application that caused problems with the hybrid layout, but ended up causing problems in computer games.  In many games, you hold ctrl or alt to do something (i.e. crouch) while pressing other keys.  But, once I was holding ctrl or alt, the script mapped all the other keys back to qwerty, effectively scrambling all my movement and other controls.  I could temporarily disable the script while playing games, but that's just another small annoyance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final gaming-related drawback is that you either have to remap all the keys for every new game (somehow they never have defaults for a Dvorak layout), or temporarily switch back to qwerty when playing games.  Games like (Starcraft II) that have bajillions of keyboard shortcuts for every command/unit/ability in the game can be a real pain to remap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1129" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:40:35.973" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T06:51:55.987" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2011-02-23T09:31:53.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150915082927/http://archive.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dnd/20100701&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a &lt;strong&gt;great&lt;/strong&gt; example of how an editor can upgrade the writer's work. The author of this article shares the draft of one of his novel chapters, and shows how the editor commented on it in order to refine and improve it. A great read, even if you're not into Fantasy and Role-playing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2022-05-26T14:19:18.373" LastActivityDate="2022-05-26T14:19:18.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1722" CreationDate="2011-02-23T10:32:44.017" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, the first thing you need to consider is WHEN to edit your own work.&#xA;I find it more productive to write until I'm done, always going forward in my writing, instead of stopping every now and then to edit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? because editing takes you back. You edit, revise, add, edit, revise again, and after a week you find that you are still writing the first chapter...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my advice is: edit when you're done writing. Shelving your work for a couple of days before editing it also helps to get a &quot;fresh&quot; look on things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T10:32:44.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1722" CreationDate="2011-02-23T10:45:54.967" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finish your draft. File it away. Walk away. Do something else for &lt;strong&gt;at least&lt;/strong&gt; three months. The less time you leave the manuscript the more important it is that you do something else that's different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have thoroughly re-programmed that part of your brain (HINT: Writing a sequel to the novel you're hoping to edit is not different enough.) you have some chance of re-reading the manuscript at one remove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently editing something I wrote in 2006/2007 in between I have written three more novels and three role playing systems. It's not a perfect system but I have no other editor to rely on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that's good, but probably only down to my own temperament, is that I am a very mean editor but I always take my own notes (heh).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T10:45:54.967" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1722" CreationDate="2011-02-23T13:47:15.043" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't overuse adverbs.  They're often unnecessary.  Mark Twain has a famous quote about the use of the adverb &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Substitute 'damn' every time you're&#xA;  inclined to write 'very;' your editor&#xA;  will delete it and the writing will be&#xA;  just as it should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T13:47:15.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1734" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1735" CreationDate="2011-02-23T14:32:13.120" Score="7" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;Greetings. I've been blogging for a while now and I do it in Russian. But, some of my English-speaking... AHEM &quot;Internet-friends&quot; are unable to read my personal blog, 'cause they're just not familiar with my native language. When I do a post or two, and share it with my Facebook account, they're often comment the pictures, but not the posts itself. So I thought about starting to blog in English, which could help few of my goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To learn English better: the grammar, the rules, words-construction and so on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To share my life with my English-speaking Internet-friends&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To improve my communication and translation skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't know, if I ever should start doing this because I don't know if my pals will be interested in reading what I write, not just looking the pictures. And if I should start doing the copy of my blog, should I do it on the same blogging service provider or should I switch to some other platform, which is more popular? What platform could it be? Currently, I use Livejournal and I like it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1381" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T05:42:18.660" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T22:38:23.163" Title="Should one blog in a few languages?" Tags="|translation|language|blog|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1734" CreationDate="2011-02-23T14:59:40.487" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, this is going to be a personal choice for you. There are a couple things you could think about when making your decision: Do you have the time to write two blogs? Are you proficient enough in English to write a blog with minimal errors where native speakers won't have many problems understanding you? Is it worth the effort you'll need to put into it? Is it worth two hours of work (just a guess) for three readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you answered yes to these questions, then go right ahead. It probably would help you improve your own language skills in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for which provider, I've used both Blogger and WordPress and I've enjoyed them both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T14:59:40.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1734" CreationDate="2011-02-23T15:09:04.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have enough cyber-friends who don't read Russian who have commented on your non-English blog, then yes, do one in English. If nothing else it will improve your facility with the language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like Blogger, but if you're comfortable with LiveJournal, stick with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T15:09:04.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1734" CreationDate="2011-02-23T15:10:50.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use the Wibiya toolbar (http://www.wibiya.com/), which allows for a user to translate a page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T15:10:50.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1724" CreationDate="2011-02-23T16:55:19.370" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, and Ralph Gallagher's answer identifies the pattern pretty well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does it make for a popular show? I think it's because it gives audiences something familiar, something they can expect to see every week, while still allowing a lot of room for variety within that structure. Most stories adhere to some kind of structure, whether it's as rigid as the one on &quot;House&quot; or something more general. You may have encountered the &quot;roller coaster&quot; model for basic story structure back in grade school: the setup, rising action, climax, falling action, and conclusion. It's a very simple model, but one a lot of stories use, whether consciously or not and often with some variations. Most hald hour TV shows work on a three act structure. Movies are generally between three and five acts, with some exceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structural nature of procedural dramas also plays in to the audience knowledge of how TV shows work. The viewers know that House and his team aren't going to solve the medical mystery in the first fifteen minutes, or that whoever the detectives on any version of &quot;Law &amp;amp; Order&quot; won't be the right suspect because there' still more than half the show to go. So it becomes a given that House's team won't guess right on the first try or the cops will initially collar the wrong suspect. There's still room to surprise the audience, though. House's initial diagnosis may turn out to be right, but other factors may lead him and his team to incorrectly conclude that it isn't. Or the detective may have the right suspect, but not the right evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of heavily structured TV shows will occasionally do a show that breaks the structure. Last night's episode of &quot;House,&quot; for example, barely had anything to do with the medical case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And every once in a very great while, it actually &lt;b&gt;is&lt;/b&gt; lupus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum: Another reason that &quot;House&quot; is able to work while still being so formulaic is that the human drama is more important than the medical mystery. &quot;House&quot; has a lot of trappings of the mystery genre (in part because it's partly based on Sherlock Holmes), but it isn't the kind of mystery where the viewer gets all the necessary clues and tries to guess the solution. Unless you're incredibly knowledgeable about rare medical conditions, you'll never guess what's wrong with the patient of the week. Indeed, the event that cause's House's epiphany is usually completely unrelated to the actual case. It doesn't matter if the patient has endocarditis or heavy metal poisoning. What matters is that the patient believes that his faith is keeping him alive or feel guilty about the death of her son or that one of the team is having a crisis of confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastEditorUserId="662" LastEditDate="2011-02-23T19:39:53.580" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T19:39:53.580" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1704" CreationDate="2011-02-23T17:02:56.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Breaking into &quot;the business&quot; by getting a spec script sold is a &lt;em&gt;long&lt;/em&gt; shot.  Write your spec scripts because you like writing and you want to improve, not because you're looking to get something sold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An easier way to break in is to move to Los Angeles.  Scratch and hustle for any writing job you can find: commercials, TV, film, whatever.  Find anyone who is willing to read your stuff and get them to do it.  Those people, if you're good, will find writing assignments for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget to practice your Oscar acceptance speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="947" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T17:02:56.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1734" CreationDate="2011-02-23T20:16:03.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the same problem, Hebrew being my native language. I chose to blog in English, because by blogging in Hebrew I limit my audience to those who can read the language.&#xA;I believe that by using English you will address a larger audience. Writing two copies of the same blog entry will probably tax you to the point in which you will drop one language, or stop blogging at all. &#xA;Judging from the only English writing sample of you I have (your question), you already have good writing skills in English, so that should not be a problem!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T20:16:03.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1724" CreationDate="2011-02-23T21:29:01.170" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ralph certainly covered the structure of individual episodes: the patient's symptoms escalate; the team tries one treatment after another (with dramatic results, in some direction or another); House solves the case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a fair description of the single-episode plotline, but there's a lot of other tools in the &lt;em&gt;House&lt;/em&gt; arsenal - and ones which, I think, are more relevant to the show's fun and success then its bare-bones formula is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a few tools &lt;em&gt;House&lt;/em&gt; uses which I think are worth taking note of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Misanthropes are more interesting.&lt;/strong&gt; House is a character crafted with the specific goal of causing conflict and tension wherever he goes, and whoever he interacts with. On the one hand, this is a lot of fun to watch - the malicious, snarky curmudgeon who does everything we'd never dare to do. On the other, more important hand - a character who causes conflict is a character who causes plot. A character like that is easy to bring into stories because he's willing to be outrageous, and because he actively encourages (or outright causes) the conflicts that create the plot. Notice how much of the plot consists of people telling House &quot;no,&quot; and his attempts to get around them - his nature of head-butting others is what gives the story substance. &lt;strong&gt;Lesson to take home:&lt;/strong&gt; create characters who can believably create conflicts or get involved in them - the bigger and more personal, the better. A trouble-maker is often a lot more interesting than a noble hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get inside your characters' heads - by force, if necessary.&lt;/strong&gt; It's often very difficult to do character exploration - it's tough to spotlight one character without ignoring the rest; often there's no good reason other characters should even know what's going on with the others; these are all particularly difficult in a series about medical professionals and a formula which doesn't really center around the characters at all. Luckily, House is a nosy bastard. And the writers spun that into &quot;willing to do outrageous things to stay in the know&quot;; &quot;happy to blurt out embarrassing personal information to anybody and everybody&quot;; and &quot;tries to test his friends with convoluted behavior tests to understand their personality and motivations.&quot; That's not coincidence - again, this is a character deliberately crafted to serve and advance the plot (and the character arcs) in interesting, convincing ways. &lt;strong&gt;Lesson to take home:&lt;/strong&gt; If character development is a goal of yours, be sure to have some element in the story that brings your characters' personality to the fore. If it's disconnected from the main plot, or purely reactive to it, it won't be interesting. Meddlesome characters are good tools for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Always have a goal.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;House&lt;/em&gt; is very good at having some big questions about the lead character juggling in the air at any given moment. It's also not shy about telling the viewers precisely what those questions are (the series, as its title character, is not known for its subtlety). &quot;How far will House go in order to [get the girl/keep his team together/flip off a figure of authority/other]&quot; is a common one. Other threads include &quot;Why is House the way that he is?&quot;, &quot;How is House affecting the doctors around him?&quot;, and others. These keep the viewers involved and curious - and rewarded when an arc does shed light on a certain point that's been built up. &lt;strong&gt;Lesson to take home:&lt;/strong&gt; defining clear directions and mysteries to explore keeps viewers hooked - you're giving them something to look forward to, and presenting them with something mysterious and incomplete right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You've got to have a team.&lt;/strong&gt; Well, not always. But House does - if he works in a vacuum, there's no show. So you've got to &lt;em&gt;justify&lt;/em&gt; the team's existence, even though House is always the one who solves the case on his own. So, the series goes to great length to demonstrate that House instinctively &lt;em&gt;needs&lt;/em&gt; a team, for feedback, brainstorming, and targeted mockery. That way, his need for a team - and his team in particular - becomes another facet of his complex personality, rather than an obvious plot device. &lt;strong&gt;Lesson to take home:&lt;/strong&gt; When there's something you really need in order to tell a story, that might not quite fit or make sense - justify it; work its necessity into the very fabric of your writing; &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; this constraint and build upon it rather than accepting it as an unfortunate necessity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what I'd take away from &lt;em&gt;House&lt;/em&gt;. Hope this is helpful :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T21:29:01.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1742" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1743" CreationDate="2011-02-23T23:41:16.300" Score="27" ViewCount="55057" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the best way to show a character speaking a foreign language in a fiction manuscript? Should the foreign words be italicized and include a translation? Should it just be included in the sentence and try and make sure the reader can guess at the meaning by using the surrounding sentences and words? Is there another way that's not coming to mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-03-11T12:41:26.057" LastActivityDate="2024-03-30T12:13:17.273" Title="What's the best way to show a foreign language in a manuscript?" Tags="|dialogue|formatting|language|translation|multilingual|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1742" CreationDate="2011-02-24T02:56:09.420" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have two options depending on context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If it's a quick exchange and can be figured out in context, put the foreign language in italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;As-tu le  livre?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Yes, I have the book here.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or inline: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You filthy &lt;em&gt;p'taQ!&quot;&lt;/em&gt; B'Elanna snarled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If it's a quick exchange without context, put the translation afterwards and italicize that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Pour ma peine, ma punition, je tourne en rond,&quot; he sighed. &lt;em&gt;For my pain, for my punishment, I pace in circles.&lt;/em&gt; Now Picard understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;inline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Qa'pla!&quot; &lt;em&gt;Success!&lt;/em&gt; the Klingon shouted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I would not have more than one or two exchanges in a foreign language. Either use a tag like &quot;she said in French&quot; so the reader realizes the characters aren't speaking English, or note in narration &quot;they discussed the matter in French for some time, but as Malcolm didn't speak the language, he had to wait for a translation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2018-04-11T19:14:07.873" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T19:14:07.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2011-02-24T05:11:34.613" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writers can't help but fall in love with their own writing. As we know, love is blind; therefore, an editor is the cool head that is needed to make the tough decisions. Apart from grammatical mistakes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An editor will make recommendations&#xA;as to where the text can be pruned.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An editor will  pick up on&#xA;inconsistencies in argument or plot,&#xA;and fallacies of logic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An editor will point out areas of&#xA;text that could be rewritten to&#xA;improve flow and cohesion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An editor knows when to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;rein&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; in a&#xA;writer who has galloped out of&#xA;control, especially &lt;strong&gt;in indulging in prose&lt;/strong&gt; that is too flowery or turgid.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An editor can do this because he or she is an impartial and experienced observer of prose. For example, an editor would almost certainly tell me to rewrite the words in bold. Most writers will benefit from having their work edited, no matter how good a writer they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1391" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T04:08:15.897" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T04:08:15.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1745" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-24T05:27:42.773" Score="3" ViewCount="1158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am just starting my first screen writing class and I got an assignment that says: Exposition and Ammunition – back story. I have been searching online but I don't get it. Can someone explain it for me please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1392" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T15:18:10.220" LastActivityDate="2020-10-01T00:25:17.323" Title="What does &quot;Exposition and Ammunition – back story&quot; mean in screenwriting?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1722" CreationDate="2011-02-24T05:52:05.610" Score="7" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make a list of your grammatical mistakes and how&#xA;often you make them. Familiarise&#xA;yourself with how to correct them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make a list of your writing&#xA;problems, such as beginning with &#xA;long dependent phrases, check&#xA;every sentence for this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check sentences that have a series of&#xA;nouns, adverbs etc., for parallel&#xA;construction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Watch for redundancy and repetition. Many writers have a habit of using two, sometimes three, descriptive words together that are very close in meaning. They like the rhythm, but fail to see the redundancy. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Watch out for poor word choices.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use the find/replace function to&#xA;look  for other problematic constructions. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many more pointers, hope these help in your quest to become a better writer.       &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1391" LastEditorUserId="1391" LastEditDate="2011-02-25T11:08:29.263" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T11:08:29.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1742" CreationDate="2011-02-24T09:03:48.140" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, if the foreign language usage is important to the story, then use it in italics.&#xA;If not, just avoid putting it explicitly in the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, assume you write a fantasy novel in which Elves always add the word &lt;em&gt;Ur-Sook&lt;/em&gt; when addressing little children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Not now, &lt;em&gt;Ur-Sook&lt;/em&gt;!&quot; the Elf waved the child away.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Not now!&quot; the Elf waved the child away.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Elf barked something in Elvish and waved the child away.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just wanted to make sure the reader understand that the Elf is busy, the second and third examples will do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, usage of the the first example can help you develop your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader will probably wonder what &lt;em&gt;Ur-Sook&lt;/em&gt; means, and maybe guess this is the child's Elvish name.&#xA;But then you can twist it around by having a mature Elf use that word when addressing another mature Elf, which will lead to a fight among the two...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case. the usage of the word and its inclusion in the text is important, so the first example is more appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T09:03:48.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1748" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2068" CreationDate="2011-02-24T09:05:25.913" Score="8" ViewCount="417" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the community/nation/country I am to be living, mentioning some themes is the best way to be ostracised for life (or for a very long time). Talking about not being published or read, not being mentioned, completely ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is someone experiencing similar dilemma - choosing between self-censorship (and confessing non-irrelevant level of cowardice/sense of caution) and de-facto social suicide (but being daring and honest)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(From those considering themselves anonymous enough, I'd welcome more specific examples of any unchallengeable taboos. Thanks.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: how to deal with the following dilemma&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write and trying to publish -&amp;gt; &lt;em&gt;social&lt;/em&gt; suicide (loss of friends, literary agent - if any, publisher, job, probably own family - I didn't try that). No &lt;em&gt;formal&lt;/em&gt; charges or persecution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;staying silent -&amp;gt; long-lasting unbearable pain and (later) a bitter taste of being coward&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both results are bad. How to choose? How to avoid or minimise unwanted consequences? (If I was a courageous man, I'd not be trying to write my thoughts down. That's the truth.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited, again:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can author conceal her/his identity while displaying the work?&lt;/strong&gt; (Fame, money, copyright and other stuff is irrelevant for her/him.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T18:22:27.107" Title="Unquestionable Taboos and Self-censorship" Tags="|conventions|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1722" CreationDate="2011-02-24T09:24:00.640" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A terrific approach is to practice one key element of writing at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some exercises for focusing on one element at a time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Draft a scene or section of about 500 words. Rewrite, focusing intently on improving the narrative flow--that is, the way one clause, sentence, or paragraph leads to the next.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Draft a scene or section of about 700 words. Delete 1/10 of the paragraphs. Then delete 1/10 of the remaining sentences. Then delete 1/10 of the remaining words. However many words you have left, that's your word limit. (If you still have more than 500 words, keep deleting words until you hit 500, and that's your limit.) Revise to replace anything important that was lost by cutting, but do not exceed the word limit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Draft a scene or section of about 500 words. Rewrite using sentences no longer than 10 words each. If this is too easy, try sentences no longer than 7 words. Rewrite again using sentences of at least 20 words. If this is too easy, try sentences of at least 35 words. Rewrite again using everything you have learned about sentence length.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fiction, some additional &quot;one element at a time&quot; exercises are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Draft a scene of about 500 words. Rewrite with only dialogue and no narrative. Rewrite with only narrative and no dialogue. Rewrite again, using everything you have learned about dialogue and narrative.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Draft a scene of about 500 words in first person POV. Rewrite in close third person POV. Rewrite in third person limited, but with a greater narrative distance. (At this point, if you haven't beaten your forehead to a bloody mess against the keys of your Olivetti, feel free to rewrite one or two more times from different characters' POV.) Rewrite one more time, using everything you have learned about POV.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few &quot;tie one hand behind your back&quot; exercises. Draft a scene or section of about 500 words. Then do one of these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rewrite, eliminating every adjective and adverb.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rewrite, eliminating every use of the verb &quot;to be.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea here isn't that modifiers and &quot;to be&quot; verbs are evil. The idea is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Notice the situations in which you habitually use modifiers and &quot;to be.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the effects you are trying to create with modifiers and &quot;to be.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify other ways to achieve those effects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weigh the effectiveness of the available choices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choose mindfully among the available choices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My writing group did one of these exercises per month for a year. We found the experience far more difficult than we expected, and worth every moment of the struggle. Everyone's writing improved markedly and immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T09:24:00.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1750" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1761" CreationDate="2011-02-24T09:45:16.077" Score="23" ViewCount="5355" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you track several plot lines woven together? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually run 2 or 3 plot-lines in parallel, so I detail those plots each in a separate document. But as the book goes on, it is sometimes difficult to make sure all those &quot;threads&quot; are woven together nicely because I have to manage 2-3 mini-books instead of one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice? I try not to rely on memory alone, because I tend to forget things I don't write down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T04:26:01.330" LastActivityDate="2023-06-22T19:10:23.897" Title="Keeping track of multiple plot lines" Tags="|fiction|novel|tools|plot|planning|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2011-02-24T09:57:17.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Israel (where I live in), I cannot think of any &quot;unchallangeable taboos&quot; (other than Pedophelia or something along those lines) that will prevent me from writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I wanted to write something while making sure I will not suffer any consequences, I will probably be using a different name, avoiding any issues with my locality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody has to know you wrote it, at least not until it's a best-seller :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T09:57:17.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1446" CreationDate="2011-02-24T10:06:10.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend reading related articles / forums in one of the many Role-Playing Games Communities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since writing adventures for a group of gamers often include mystery elements, lots of good advice on design and writing can be found there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While using a lot of Gaming Language, these resources are highly readable even to someone not familiar with Role-playing games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick search on Google yielded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/25623-how-do-you-write-mystery-adventure.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How do you write mystery adventures&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enworld.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.enworld.org&lt;/a&gt; forum, and&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20modern/fb/20031118a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mystery plots&lt;/a&gt; from one of the designers of the d20 Modern Roleplaying Game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastEditorUserId="1376" LastEditDate="2011-02-25T10:20:09.770" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T10:20:09.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2011-02-24T12:13:00.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At a work where I answered 100+ emails a day, I found that my hands hurt a lot less &#xA;after switching to dvorak. It causes less strain on the hand, in other words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1396" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T12:13:00.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1754" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-24T12:20:54.313" Score="7" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of compiling a collection of exercises in Linear Algebra, (freshman course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is mainly just a series of examples, with a short theoretical introduction to each chapter with a few broad ideas of the concepts used in the problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My audience are students that prefers to learn from reading an example, and looking at previous tests/exams rather than reading the theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any good tips about what a reader might prefer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should the solutions appear directly after the problem statement, or in the end of the book?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would a reader like references to other literature, or is that just annoying?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other tips and suggestions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1396" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-07-11T19:52:35.290" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T19:52:35.290" Title="Writing a math exercise book" Tags="|non-fiction|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1754" CreationDate="2011-02-24T12:30:14.797" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you could combine both approaches (directly after and end of book):&#xA;Directly under give the shorthand solution (just the bottom line of the answer) and at the end of the book give a more complete solution (the full solution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, the studends can make sure they have come to the right solution immediately. If they didn't, they can refer to the end of the book to review the complete solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T12:30:14.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1621" CreationDate="2011-02-24T13:01:20.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Playing table-top role-playing games is great way to work out those creativity muscles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not familiar with role-playing games, have a look &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_game&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. I really recommend this hobby as a way to enhance your creativity and writing skills (yes, it can do that to!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T13:01:20.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1742" CreationDate="2011-02-24T14:13:36.883" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to avoid using another foreign language as a stand-in for the language you're wanting to portray (like, say, using Swedish as a stand-in for Romani, as was done in &lt;em&gt;Thinner&lt;/em&gt;). I'd treat that as the most absolute requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to avoid long passages in another language. If you're finding yourself using much longer sections than &amp;quot;a sentence&amp;quot;, it will probably be too intrusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For single sentences or shorter, provide something along the lines of a translation. This should probably be to the level of understanding of the scene's viewpoint character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Ruttna som en banan!&amp;quot;, shouted Gunnar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elyse could tell that he was agitated, he only ever spoke Swedish when at the&#xA;limits of patience. She didn't know if she wanted to know what he was actually&#xA;saying, it was probably obscene and perverse, as stressed as he was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FWIW, he's shouting &amp;quot;rot like a banana&amp;quot;, pretty silly as an interjection, but at least not very offensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-03-11T12:37:30.353" LastActivityDate="2022-03-11T12:37:30.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2011-02-24T14:36:29.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can try to use the Top-down or Bottom-up approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Top-down: think about the big picture and worry about details later. For example, you can say that your story is about a lawyer that was offered a great deal of money to lose a case. Now you can refine and think about questions like: what case, how much money, why lose it etc. Those question will lead you further, and will probably help come up with new ideas and plot elements. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bottom-up: come up with one very fine detail, and build up. For example, Mr. Abraham Jonas, a lawyer, finds an anonymous letter on his desk with the words &quot;drop it&quot; and a photo of his wife and children. Now, you can think about his reaction. Does he call the police? his wife? talk with his secretary and ask her who came into his office in his absence? Detailing his actions, you can then come up with more ideas, until the entire plot comes to life.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, each approach has its own pros and cons. One approach lets you think big now and work the details later, while the other lets you focus on one fine element now and worry about the bigger picture later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best is to combine those approaches. Think about a theme, and work the details to match that theme. But focusing on one approach is probably easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T14:36:29.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2011-02-24T14:44:59.830" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publish under a pseudonym.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you might want to consider targeting a market other than your own community.  If your country does not approve of literature on certain topics, it may be difficult to find an audience willing to read your work.  Aim for foreign markets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T14:44:59.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1750" CreationDate="2011-02-24T15:23:46.567" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Notecards or post-its with chapter or scene summaries are a big help.  You can lay them out on the floor or pin them up on the wall to get a visual of your various sub-plots.  I know others who create more of a flowchart for their plots, and there is plenty of free flowchart software online that can help you with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally prefer to write parallel storylines in-place, in roughly the order I want them in for the final book, rather than trying to write one subplot all the way through, then another, and so on.  This keeps everything fresher in my mind and helps with pacing, as I explained in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1103/what-techniques-are-used-to-create-non-linear-stories/1105#1105&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T15:23:46.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1750" CreationDate="2011-02-24T15:40:38.853" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a visual person.  I have a large whiteboard which I used to draw graphs, flowcharts, etc...  If you're limited on room, like I am, take a picture of your drawing before you erase it and keep it as a digital file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also try the technique displayed in a lot of police investigation shows:  note cards and/or pictures taped to a wall with colored thread to show the connections between the characters/events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T15:40:38.853" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1745" CreationDate="2011-02-24T15:40:44.533" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Turn exposition into ammunition&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; is shorthand for a writing technique. A quick Google turns up this article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://michellelipton.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/mckee-on-exposition/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://michellelipton.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/mckee-on-exposition/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Money quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Convert exposition to ammunition … when [the] story is thick with conflict, the characters need all the ammunition they can get. As a result, the writer has little trouble dramatising exposition and facts flow naturally and invisibly into the action … when stories lack conflict, the writer is forced into ‘table dusting’.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What your assignment means is to take the backstory of your character, break it down into individual items (known as &quot;beats&quot;) and use each item in dialogue. Create some kind of conflict between the characters so that the backstory of A is brought up, and use the items either for B to attack A, A to defend against B, the reverse, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: B'Elanna's mother is Klingon and her father is human. Her parents fought increasingly during their marriage, to the point where her father gave up on her fractious mother and left. B'Elanna blames her mother's Klingon-ness for driving her father away, so she tries to repress her own Klingon instincts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tom loves B'Elanna, Klingon-ness and all, and thinks her Klingon heritage is cool. He can't understand why she won't join him in bat'telh fights or drink bloodwine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you open with the two of them having an argument about why B'Elanna will spar with Tom using any other kind of martial arts or weaponry, but not the bat'telh (the curved Klingon sword). She makes lots of excuses, Tom keeps pushing, and eventually she starts shouting at him that if he loves Klingon culture so much he can go be one. He doesn't understand this, he shouts something back, and through the course of the fight he gets her to explain what happened to her parents and why she feels the way she does. The backstory (exposition) of B'Elanna's family is now ammunition for their conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Source: &lt;em&gt;Star Trek: Voyager&lt;/em&gt;'s &quot;Lineage&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-03-12T14:16:19.213" LastActivityDate="2016-03-12T14:16:19.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1770" CreationDate="2011-02-24T17:40:48.863" Score="7" ViewCount="1018" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've noticed references to different kinds of editors such as copy editor, line editor and development editor. I'd like to know the different categories of editors and their job descriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1391" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-02-24T21:05:35.860" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T02:55:28.460" Title="Different kinds of editors" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2011-02-24T19:37:29.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Formal definitions vary. Here are some resources explaining various versions of the distinctions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.editorsforum.org/what_do_sub_pages/definitions.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An editorial services guide.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lillieammann.com/2008/01/23/editing-part-2-what-are-the-different-kinds-of-editing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An editor's blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://goodwordediting.com/?p=85&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Another editor's blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T02:55:28.460" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T02:55:28.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2011-02-24T21:07:01.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The different kinds of editing come about through differences along two dimensions: first, the role of the edit in the journey from author's first draft to final typeset; second, the constitution of the editing as a process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/620/when-editing-for-a-person-how-much-can-be-changed/720#720&quot;&gt;An answer of mine to a different question&lt;/a&gt; explains a difference in terms of role:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are different kinds of editing. Proofreading is traditionally the last check of a text that has been prepared by typesetters, where it is assumed that the text is pretty much ready for publication. Then it is a matter of &amp;quot;fix spelling errors and very minor grammatical errors&amp;quot;, but calling attention to the author of wider difficulties is entirely inappropriate. This is because time is usually very tight, because the publishers has a deadline, and large fixes cause costly work for the typesetter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With editing before that stage, generally called copy-editing or developmental editing, bigger changes to the text are appropriate, and discussion with the author becomes useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next big difference is in terms of what activity the edit unit is.  The most important difference here is between &lt;em&gt;line edits&lt;/em&gt;, which means the activity starts with the editor receiving the manuscript, who then works through the text and ends when the edited manuscript is handed back.  The alternative is an edit which involves some kind of interaction and iteration.  Proofreading almost always consists of a line edit, but earlier editing might follow one or other form.  Cheapskate publishers might have a &amp;quot;copy-editing&amp;quot; process that consists of the project editor delegating a first line edit to someone, passing the edited version back to the author to correct, and then perform a second line edit themselves.  Such a minimalist editing process would not be called developmental editing, which is more of a collaborative, exploratory process between editor and author.  Developmental editing generally is a kind of high-grade copy-editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there's lots of hedging words, like &amp;quot;traditionally&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;generally&amp;quot;, excepting only the definition of line edit.  That's because the variously named roles are not fixed, but evolve as the publishing workflow changes, as it inexorably does.  For instance, the proofreading activity is quite different now, where electronic formats allow much more automation in the typesetting process, than was the case thirty years ago, when proofreading most often meant a demanding reconciliation of the final draft approved by the project editor to the original version submitted by the author, to eliminate the many errors that the editing process was sure to have introduced.  So it is no surprise that there is difficulty finding crisp, widely agreed-upon definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T21:07:01.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1273" CreationDate="2011-02-24T21:09:44.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’ve never answered a question here before, but felt compelled to do so, if only to counter the rather uninformed opinion of “Dori” regarding &lt;a href=&quot;http://authorscast.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AuthorsCast&lt;/a&gt;. In the interest of full disclosure, I will state right up front that I am actually the owner and administrator of AuthorsCast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dori states that AuthorsCast is useful “only if your book is about writing books.” Nothing could be further from the truth -- which would be immediately evident to anyone who has actually listened to any of our content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is, our format is modeled very much after what you might hear in the mainstream media when authors do a book tour. We dedicate a portion of each episode specifically to the book, but we go well beyond that to discuss the book’s topic (and other related topics) in general terms. We also like to have guests talk about their careers, other projects they have done or may be working on (&lt;em&gt;non&lt;/em&gt;-writing ones included), and even will include some personal/lifestyle things about the guest like hobbies, family, and so forth if we think it is of interest to our audience. Our recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://authorscast.com/Episodes/Stephen-Baker-on-Final-Jeopardy-Man-vs-Machine-and-the-Quest-to-Know-Everything&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;interview with Stephen Baker&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything&lt;/em&gt;) is a great example of what we do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s true that we don’t specifically target any one technological field; however, that is something we consider an advantage for our guests. You can be assured that your book will be exposed to a widely diverging audience, many of whom would be unlikely to ever learn of the existence of a particular book except through us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are actively seeking interesting and interested authors and books to feature on our show. There is a link in our site's footer at which you may express your interest in appearing as a guest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don’t take everyone who asks, but we do promise to give every inquiry fair consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1403" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T21:09:44.777" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-24T21:09:44.777" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2011-02-24T21:25:31.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Germany, hate speech (particularly Nazism), and the production of pro-hate materials is  illegal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In many areas of the world (especially Africa and the Middle East), pro-homosexual or pro-LGBT sentiment is heavily frowned upon or outright illegal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T21:25:31.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1768" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1771" CreationDate="2011-02-24T21:40:51.557" Score="8" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a 50 page manual that I plan to release for free. I do not mind if the book is copied, translated, printed, shared, ... I just want two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am the only person who can sell a copy of this manual on Amazon (and others).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If anybody uses the material from the book that the original author (me) is mentioned somewhere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under which license should I publish the book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1404" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T22:16:02.597" Title="Which free licence to choose for my book (manual)?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1768" CreationDate="2011-02-24T23:02:01.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about creative commons &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs&lt;/a&gt;&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="642" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T23:02:01.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2011-02-25T03:37:31.863" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A copy or content editor is the main editor for a project. They're the one looking at the big picture. Are there plot holes? Are the characters consistent throughout the piece? They also do editing for grammar, spelling, typos, etc. but they focus mainly on the story itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Line editors edit the piece line by line. They're looking primarily for grammar and spelling problems. They're generally paid less than copy editors since their job is usually easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A formatting editor does all the formatting for the book. They do the headers and page numbers, line spacing, and any special formatting that the publisher wants for their manuscripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A proofreader is usually the last person who goes over the book. They're looking for anything the others would've missed. They'll look and see if a page number got messed up some how, a typo that got missed, a sentence that got cut off, etc. They're generally unpaid interns or people who are paid with a free copy of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T03:37:31.863" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1768" CreationDate="2011-02-25T07:47:47.450" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The closest fit would be Creative Commons &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0&quot;&gt;&quot;Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. That will allow translations (and expansions, clarifications, electronic versions and so forth) but prevent commercial distribution of the original or any derived version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1304" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T07:47:47.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1750" CreationDate="2011-02-25T07:59:08.070" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might sound a bit odd, but have you considered using project management software? The problem of managing parallel story lines is a lot like managing task dependencies in a large project, and dependency tracking, timeline shifting and so forth are what PM software is designed for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1304" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T07:59:08.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1773" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-25T15:11:16.763" Score="2" ViewCount="504" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written several poems, but only very few won prices. Those poems impressed people very much, so I want you to share your thoughts, what are the key things I have to focus on or I have to keep in my mind, when I write poems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I wrote short love poems, five or six lines long, then people love them very much. But sometimes those kinds of poems also become unlikeable, and that's why I shot this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1284" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-02-27T16:39:52.853" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T16:46:53.830" Title="How can I write poems in an attractable manner?" Tags="|style|poetry|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1773" CreationDate="2011-02-25T16:29:03.423" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a saying I heard in a writing workshop:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't know what you want to&#xA;say or how you want to say it, write&#xA;a novel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you know what you want to say, but&#xA;not how you want to say it, write a&#xA;short story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you know what you want to say, and&#xA;exactly how you want to say it, write&#xA;a poem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that whatever your subject, you should find precisely the right words to convey your meaning. Remove everything which doesn't belong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I might also add that in my humble opinion, I wouldn't write poetry to win a prize, but your mileage may vary, of course.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T16:29:03.423" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1773" CreationDate="2011-02-25T18:28:30.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're asking how to write poetry that people will like, which is not an easy question to answer. Writing is a form of communication, so of course you're going to want other people to read what you write and enjoy it, or at least react to it. But you need to start by writing poetry that &lt;b&gt;you&lt;/b&gt; like. Trying to guess at what other people are going to like and write based on that is an inexact science at best and it doesn't guarantee that anyone will like your poetry. I could tell you &quot;people like kittens, so you should write poems about kittens&quot; or &quot;people like rhyming poems,&quot; but not all people like those things. Even if the majority of people did like rhyming poems about kittens, if it's not something you care about, you'll have a tough time convincing anyone else to care about what you've written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my writing teachers encouraged us to read poetry aloud, both our own and peoms by other writers. I've heard poetry described as music for the speaking voice. The sound and rhythm of the words in a poem is important. If you're not good at hearing how a poem will sound in your head, try reading your work aloud to get a sense of how it sounds. Your readers should be able to get the rhythm of your poem just by reading it, since you're not going to be there to tell them how it should sound. The way a poem sounds is even more important when you're writing free verse, since you don't have a structure to adhere to and it's completely up to you to figure out a meter and words whose sound and meaning will both compliment what you're trying to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T18:28:30.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="653" CreationDate="2011-02-25T20:02:38.590" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pay attention to the origins of your words. English is a confirmed pack-rat language--an enthusiastic, perhaps obsessive, collector and creator of new words. Take, for example, the word &quot;large.&quot; Unsatisfied with just the one comparative, English has a whole platoon of others in reserve: immense, vast, capacious, bulky, massive, whopping, humongous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like immigrants to a new country, each of these words came from somewhere, and some time. Consulting Dictionary.com reveals that vast came in the mid 16th c. from the Latin vastus. Bulky is a mid-late 17th c. adaptation of bulk, which was born to the late middle English bolke in the early 15th century, which was originally bulki in Old Norse, a word meaning cargo, or ship's hold. Conversely, humongous is a much newer addition to the English melting pot, of American coinage during the 1960s. It is a slang combination of monstrous and huge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this is to say that every word we use has a history, and that studying that history is an effective way to enrich your vocabulary and improve your diction. While you're contemplating bulk, for example, you might continue browsing the Old Norse shelf for other colourful contributions such as berserk, cur, or ombudsman. English owes its ability to paint such subtle shades of meaning to this etymological diversity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources for this answer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bryson, Bill. &lt;em&gt;Mother Tongue, English and how it got to be that way.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.etymonline.com/index.php&quot;&gt;Online Etymology Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Old_Norse_origin&quot;&gt;List of English words of Old Norse Origin (Wikipedia article)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dictionary.com (Not a link, I know. I'm only allowed to post two hyperlinks as a new user.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T20:02:38.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1722" CreationDate="2011-02-25T22:02:23.387" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;An old trick is to read it out loud, and I have found having the computer read it for you works just as well and doesn't wear out your voice. Just make sure to pay attention and not get distracted by something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1422" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T22:02:23.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1789" CreationDate="2011-02-25T23:28:51.887" Score="6" ViewCount="7243" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question regarding the art of letter writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe in the old-fashioned way of maintaining pen friendships (not necessarily a relationship, but could be) through hand-written letters, sent to people I have not met. This is something that used to be popular before online dating came and killed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, while writing letters (not emails), I often find that I end up talking about my life in a boring mundane way. Sometimes to compensate for that, I will try to make a story out of it and it comes off as overly compensating.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that this highlights poor writing skills. But what are some themes I can talk about to make an ordinary account interesting? My problem is that an ordinary daily account, converted to writing, ends up as a bunch of personal opinions, biases and philosophies of life which are of no interest to anyone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want is a letter that shows emotional depth and connects rather than intellectualises.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, when someone writes such a mundane letter, how would you respond in an interesting way? For example, if someone wrote this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yeah, I was supposed to go there on Wednesday, but my flight got cancelled. Now I will fly on Saturday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you construct a story response to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="593" LastEditorUserId="163" LastEditDate="2011-02-26T02:29:37.677" LastActivityDate="2016-12-08T10:02:53.680" Title="How to make a letter interesting?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="295" CreationDate="2011-02-26T05:57:55.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Garrison Keillor and his Prarie Home Companion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although a radio show, much of the humor could translate to writing.  How information is revealed during a story, small detail by small detail, in what order, is very important for humor, and he's a master at that.  Choice of words.  Some of his show won't translate at all into writing - the excellent sound effects, tone of voice of the actors, though these things too are worthy of study in learning humor techniques.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has books, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1425" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T05:57:55.117" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-26T05:57:55.117" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1781" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1786" CreationDate="2011-02-26T11:40:55.460" Score="41" ViewCount="8772" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my creative writing, I typically am inspired by short interactions between things: An overheard conversation. A person's jealousy of a friend's talent. A humorous misinterpretation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to begin with isolated &quot;scenes&quot; and generate a story from them, often going to great lengths to convey emotion and detail. I am often proud of my writing, except when I realize most of it is fragmented, unfinished, and likely never to be expanded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that I don't think of plots. I don't generally begin from &quot;the big picture&quot; and determine what my protagonist must accomplish, or the obstacles to be overcome. I usually fail to think of an intriguing reason for the characters to be motivated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, my collection is primarily of isolated studies of character interaction (or character development) rather than an inviting story with a beginning, climax, and resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would very much like to put some of these detailed character sketches and snippets into the framework of a completed novel. What are some ways in which writers come up with the overarching storyline? How can I create the &quot;outline&quot; for my writing in a way that will bring the necessary elements to bear? Is the conception of a great story line available only to creative talent or can it be learned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an example, I have a short fantasy story in which the protagonist is a group of young adults that are given unique abilities (think &lt;em&gt;Heroes&lt;/em&gt;). But when attempting to devise challenges for them or conjure a nemesis...the creativity in me vanishes. I don't want to &quot;copy&quot; similar stories' plots, but I realize I am unlikely to think of a unique narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To pose this question in a single summary sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a method to formulate the plot of a story that can be utilized when the author has only disconnected but detailed ideas for segments of the work?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-10-12T08:22:57.220" LastActivityDate="2020-02-01T00:54:48.443" Title="How do I construct a plot out of my many setting/character details?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1781" CreationDate="2011-02-26T13:20:31.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Try flash fiction, as it has a low word count limit, and it sounds like many of the things you make would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) I often find that bringing together two story ideas that are vastly different often makes for a good, non-cliched, larger story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="875" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T13:20:31.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1779" CreationDate="2011-02-26T13:26:27.360" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I go through my life, I'm examining the various events I witness and/or am a part of, trying to find bits that are interesting stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The other day, while at work, I went to the bathroom, as so often happens after I've had two cups of coffee.&#xA;  As I approached the urinal to do my business, another man at another urinal broke wind loudly.&#xA;  I simply said &quot;I agree,&quot; the proceeded to do my business in silence. The other man said nothing.&#xA;  After conducting my business, as I was proceeding to the sink to wash my hands, a different man (not the same as the first one) had an Elmo stuffed toy with its head poking out of his pants pocket.&#xA;  I said, &quot;I'm not going to ask about the Elmo in your pocket... I'm just going to skip a sink and use this one over here.&quot;&#xA;  The man laughed and said something that I later forgot because it wasn't very interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look for these moments in life. They are there. Edit them. Tell them to others. Put them in your letters.  If your letters about your life are boring, that is a strong indicator that you are, sorry to say, boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="875" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T13:26:27.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1781" CreationDate="2011-02-26T13:57:45.040" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/193290736X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Writer's Journey&lt;/a&gt;, a writing manual which shows you how to create a Hero's Journey story structure. Seriously, you get about two chapters in and you have to stop yourself from dropping the book and rushing to your computer to start writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Hero's Journey is one of the classic story archetypes of human literature, from The Odyssey to Star Wars. Read through the book and envision how you could put your characters into it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T13:57:45.040" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1685" CreationDate="2011-02-26T16:50:45.947" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there were a golden way, everyone would do it. They do not want that everyone does it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use a literary agent. If they make a deal, they take around 15-20% of what Hollywood will pay you. Google them, google their reputation. Be aware of the indirection. You first have to convince the agent, the agent has to convince the Hollywood guys. And the best agents have a lot of work to do. Maybe they are not interested in newcomers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also can send your stuff directly to the producers. Look at their homepages to find the address you need. If there is nothing, then write emails, phone people, connect to them. Break in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds too hard? If it were easy, everyone would do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T16:50:45.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1781" CreationDate="2011-02-26T17:04:51.953" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few strategies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Until you have a &lt;em&gt;great&lt;/em&gt; plot, try writing &quot;good-enough&quot; plots. Better to be writing something with a cliche plot, than not to be writing at all. (&lt;strong&gt;Edited to add:&lt;/strong&gt; Also, sometimes once you've got an initial &quot;good-enough&quot; plot in place and fleshed out, that gives you enough substance to twist and warp into something new and exciting.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plot is conflict. Find the characters who might get involved in some conflict - whether it's &quot;let's use our powers to fight crime,&quot; or &quot;I don't like the way Justin's using his power to beat people up just because they stole a TV,&quot; or &quot;I'm not happy in my relationship ever since I can read my girlfriend's mind.&quot; You say you've got detailed character sketches - I'm sure your characters have problems. If they don't, they could. If they do, they could be more complicated than they are. Pick a conflict, a problem, an issue to be resolved. Could that be a basis for an entire story? If not - why not? Could it be developed, complicated, or twisted into something that &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; carry a story?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An antagonist is great for creating conflict, and hence, plot. Who, in your world and details, might make a good antagonist? If there are rules that must not be broken, or power resources that could be taken advantage of, or things that are important to the characters that might be taken away - any of these could be a goal of the antagonist; you could work backwards to figure out who might have such goals, and then work forwards from there to figure out what exactly he'd do to reach his goals. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look for any element that's &lt;strong&gt;unique&lt;/strong&gt; to your world, your characters, your sketches. Throw around story ideas related to those - what could conceivably happen involving those characters and concepts, that's so well-tied to them that they wouldn't be able to happen with other people, or in a different setting? Those are ideas that are probably not cliche, that may be very original or at least unfamiliar - because your ideas are your own, unique creations, so any plot highly-tailored to them and them alone will be unique as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope these are helpful :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-02-27T15:42:24.397" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T15:42:24.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1581" CreationDate="2011-02-26T17:12:18.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a romance writer, but because I hate orphaned questions, I can offer you a link which I found interesting. (Well, you probably know it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing-world.com/romance/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writing-world.com/romance/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not a book, but articles from different authors to the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T17:12:18.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="689" CreationDate="2011-02-26T19:49:40.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another form of foreshadowing is to link a single event to a greater one by making it a metaphor for what's about to happen.  For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;This little rock,&amp;quot; my guide said, &amp;quot;has had a remarkable journey--one that mirrors our own. It started out as a small piece of a larger form, perhaps even another island, far away from the one we're standing on. Over time, the erosive force of the wind and waves conspired to separate it from its home, breaking it off and casting it out to sea. Thousands of years went by, and all that time the tides were breaking it down further, softening it, rounding it down until today, when it so conveniently washed up at our feet. Here, feel it for yourself...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He handed me the pebble, and continued, his body pitched forward like a pigeon, hands folded behind his back, eyes downcast, his head nodding a bit with every step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You know, our past is not much different. Before we evolved into the cells, organs, and bodies we have now, we were all united in the primordial soup, just like pebbles locked away in a mountain. We tend to think of evolution as linear, but everything works in cycles. That rock you hold is on its way back to where it came from. Eventually it will become sand, then sediment, then bedrock, and finally melt back into the molten lava it once was, only to erupt from the depths of the earth and become part of a mountain once again.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I pondered this, staring at the rock, not looking where I was going. When would we humans become sand? Will we be reborn as mountains?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Ah, here we are. My favorite lava flow on the island!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking up, I saw that the beach had stopped abruptly, and we were just a couple yards away from the face of a cliff, a stack of hardened rock which tilted into the waves to our right. I was totally overwhelmed. When I dropped the rock, it broke in two at my feet, and I was rooted to the earth by more than just the harmless quicksand of the surf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example above, the reader doesn't know where the main character is going, or what the guide is taking him to. But the theme of their destination (the lava flow) has already been planted in the reader's mind, foreshadowed by the metaphorical implications of the pebble in the narrator's hand. When he drops it, causing it to break, he is like the ocean (relatively close to the primordial soup) against the mountainside, further linking the metaphor to the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T20:50:42.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1779" CreationDate="2011-02-26T20:34:55.347" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think writing a letter is similar to conducting a conversation. You're right to be concerned about good story-telling, as it is an essential element of communicating. Don't give up on it. The danger is to list events, much in the same manner as headline news. It is more interesting to colour the information in with a few personal details. Your personal details don't have to be too editorial or intellectual to be appealing. They don't even have to be about you. There are more basic ways to relate to your pen-pal. Use the knowledge you have of their interests and personality in order to craft a unique response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few ideas for your example:&#xA;Perhaps the person is upset their flight was cancelled. You might recount an experience you had yourself with a cancelled flight, or the general inconveniences of travelling on the weekends (as they're about to do). You could branch out a bit further, and talk about a recent trip you or a friend of yours took.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Travel is a common experience and a common source of exasperation, so it shouldn't be too hard to commiserate with your pen-pal. In so doing, you'll connect with them on a deeper level than if you were to merely acknowledge the news of their cancelled flight, and you might even give them some useful advice about what to expect when they travel on Saturday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T20:34:55.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1790" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1791" CreationDate="2011-02-27T02:43:40.183" Score="5" ViewCount="295" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are tons of &quot;official&quot; fanifction books out there for a lot of popular TV shows and movies. I've seen Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Criminal Minds, The Unit, and probably a hundred more. But how does one go about publishing one of these books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T16:25:06.953" Title="How does one go about writing &quot;official&quot; fanfiction?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1790" CreationDate="2011-02-27T03:35:03.880" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sadly, in most cases the first step is to be a published author. I've looked into a few of these, mostly the old BBC Doctor Who book line back before the series came back, but the rules seem to be the same for most of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mainly though, they want people who already have a track record. That means you're going to have to put out a few original books before you can seriously talk with them about doing the writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, assuming that you have published a few books and you do want to break in, there are different ways. One is to ask your agent to look into it (they are good for that), another is to go to a convention focused on that show if the editors for the book line will be there. You can usually tell that from the posted information about the con before going. Once there sit down and talk with them and see what you can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly the &lt;em&gt;Star Trek: Strange New Worlds&lt;/em&gt; writing contest has ended, which is too bad. They took amateur short stories and the best got published in anthologies. It launched a few careers and was fairly successful. Hopefully they will bring it back someday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-02-27T16:25:06.953" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T16:25:06.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1781" CreationDate="2011-02-27T09:19:21.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually start with a single sentence that captures the spirit of the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;em&gt;&quot;A trapped demon is trying to break free from his eternal prison by luring the most pure priest into freeing it.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This provides a distilled and easily remembered &quot;plot&quot; that wraps the story, the &quot;big picture&quot; in one line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, when writing your scenes, just make sure they relate to that one sentence. If you feel you stray – read that sentence again and think about how your scene can interact with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that not every scene must relate directly to this sentence, but you might want to have something in the scene relate to it, even if not stated explicitly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it easier to think of that one sentence, and then do what you do - write scenes that may seem disconnected, but are actually wrapped by that hidden, &quot;big picture&quot; one liner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T09:19:21.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1794" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1796" CreationDate="2011-02-27T12:12:45.623" Score="12" ViewCount="1742" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any &quot;official&quot; rule that I should keep in mind when formatting character dialog?&#xA;Line breaks, placement of quotes, mixing dialog with action descriptions etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I want to build a sentence like: &quot;Look Jones, &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; will be yours someday&quot; and describe the speaker point to some building during the word &quot;this&quot;. How would you format such a sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Look Jones,&quot; Dan pointed at the castle, &quot;this will be yours someday&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Look Jones, this&quot; Dan pointed at the castle &quot;will be yours someday&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, I have problems with comma placement, quote placement and general formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2011-08-29T13:08:11.190" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T14:11:19.300" Title="How should dialog be formatted?" Tags="|style|formatting|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1794" CreationDate="2011-02-27T13:30:38.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's totally up to you, every writer is different, blablabla...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, if you are interested in &lt;em&gt;formatting&lt;/em&gt;, pick up some novels, there are different styles, choose one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But your problem looks more like &quot;guiding the reader&quot; or &quot;building tension&quot;. See, you want to emphasize &quot;this&quot;, not &quot;look around Jones&quot;. So you should say &quot;this&quot; and point to the castle. I vote for number 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T13:30:38.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1794" CreationDate="2011-02-27T15:26:00.043" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, commas indicate pauses, so put them where a speaker or reader would naturally pause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Look, Jones,&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That one is important, because there's always a bit of a pause between a command and a name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, imagine  how your speakers are moving physically. Does Dan just point briefly? Does he only mean the castle will belong to Jones? Does  he make a sweeping gesture to take in the castle, the grounds, the cliff, and the sea? &lt;em&gt;When&lt;/em&gt; does he point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gestures mean pauses, for dramatic effect. A short pause is a comma, while a longer pause can be indicated by a period or an m-dash. If you want to emphasize the castle (as opposed to the cliff, the sea, the horses, or the knights behind them), use italics. (I'm changing &quot;Dan&quot; to &quot;he&quot; only so there's no confusion about starting a new sentence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Look, Jones.&quot; He pointed at the&#xA;  castle. &quot;This will be yours someday.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Look, Jones. This &amp;mdash; &quot; He&#xA;  pointed at the castle. &quot; &amp;mdash; will&#xA;  be yours someday.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Look, Jones.&quot; He pointed at the&#xA;  castle. &quot;&lt;em&gt;This&lt;/em&gt; will be yours someday.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sometimes trip over the m-dashes, but generally speaking, you end your quoted material with the m-dash, put your interrupter narration in the middle &lt;em&gt;as a complete sentence&lt;/em&gt;, and then  pick up the quoted material with an m-dash and a lowercase letter, not a new sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, to answer your question more specifically, to use commas around interrupter narration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The narration itself, without the quoted material, should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be a&#xA;complete sentence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The quoted material should &lt;em&gt;continue&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;a sentence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Look, Jones,&quot; said Dan, pointing at&#xA;  the castle, &quot;and you'll see what I was&#xA;  speaking of before. This will be yours&#xA;  someday.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the quoted material starts a new sentence, then end your sentence at the end of the interrupter narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Look, Jones,&quot; said Dan, pointing at&#xA;  the castle. &quot;This will be yours&#xA;  someday.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T15:26:00.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1799" CreationDate="2011-02-27T18:01:24.363" Score="8" ViewCount="172" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of people recommend agents. I've heard advice that an agent's job involves a lot more than just finding a publisher for your novel, but no one really says what else their job entails. What else does an agent do that makes them so valuable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T19:21:41.203" Title="Other than find a publisher for your work, what do agents do?" Tags="|agent|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1798" CreationDate="2011-02-27T18:29:54.533" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is crying for a link to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=860&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sacred Cows of Publishing Killing&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding a publisher is not their main task (at least it wasn't). They negotiate contracts. That's what they are/should be good at, but most authors probably not. They watch for irregularities in the publisher's payments (and you should watch the agents).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also give advice what to write and how to write. The link above raises the question, why they should be able to give that advice, because if they really knew it, they would write novels themselves and would make more money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is a debate if they are really that valuable. I don't know. I neither have an agent nor have I sold a book yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="361" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T14:49:04.500" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T14:49:04.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2011-02-27T20:14:11.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I edit a number of times, each with a different goal. I will look at a piece once for readability and to eleminate clunky phrases, once for grammer and punctation, etc. Focusing on just one type of reveiw at a time seems to help when I edit my own writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1427" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T20:14:11.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1801" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1803" CreationDate="2011-02-27T21:55:12.403" Score="7" ViewCount="507" Body="&lt;p&gt;My objective is Victorian-style tea-drinking &quot;upper class&quot; lady characters. (It's more of a writing challenge.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any useful resources or tips for creating such a character? Personality-wise everything is pretty intuitive, however the language is a little out of my reach. Namely the structure of the sentences and phrases, and ticks related to showing manners with language. The vocabulary is also its own separate headache—things like replacing certain bad words with more elegant equally-bad words, to name just the easy to grasp problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried to find a style guide, or just a intuitive way of emulating the patterns in the language; however searching for things such as manners and etiquette yielded little to nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So how does one go about creating such a character?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="589" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T20:28:45.003" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T20:28:45.003" Title="Character with extreme manners" Tags="|characters|dialogue|resources|language|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1801" CreationDate="2011-02-27T22:34:33.647" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read P.G. Wodehouse's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Wodehouses-Jeeves-amp-Wooster-Tales/lm/R1GIGISGZB6EO5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeeves and Wooster&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; stories, particularly Aunt Agatha.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-02-28T10:40:40.633" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T10:40:40.633" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1801" CreationDate="2011-02-27T23:20:26.930" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personalities might be easy for someone along those lines, but motivations will actually be a bit harder.  It sounds like what you want to write falls into the category of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel_of_manners&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;novel of manners&lt;/a&gt;.  Not only do you need to understand how they act and talk, you need to understand why.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to read up on examples telling you what is and what isn't proper.  For more modern ideas, The Preppy Handbook, The Official Filthy Rich Handbook, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, or True Prep might give you some great details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2017-08-25T21:29:09.643" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T21:29:09.643" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1804" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-27T23:36:09.233" Score="11" ViewCount="3902" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write &lt;strong&gt;technical non-fiction&lt;/strong&gt; and find that I cannot write well without first constructing a detailed (10-20 page) outline. Are there any good outlining solutions for OSX? Apps? Templates in Microsoft Word? Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1006" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T16:42:51.660" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T16:36:13.487" Title="Good Outlining Solutions For OSX?" Tags="|non-fiction|tools|technical-writing|software|outline|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1804" CreationDate="2011-02-28T00:48:31.127" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Am I allowed to beat the drum for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; again? :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is a tremendously flexible writing program which allows you to rearrange your items easily, by dragging around icons, by putting up virtual cards on a corkboard, or setting things up in outline format (the Outline view is right in the top bar). Each item of your outline is a document, which can then be filled in as needed, and moved around if you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can download a completely functional version and test-drive it for 30 days, I think, to see whether you like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T00:48:31.127" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1806" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1807" CreationDate="2011-02-28T14:25:20.500" Score="13" ViewCount="2666" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a novel, when should I end a chapter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm not talking about chapter word-count (that topic was discussed &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/41/what-is-a-normal-length-for-a-chapter&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). I'm interested to know when should I end my chapters conceptually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a rule of thumb? Examples will be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2020-02-15T13:28:02.020" Title="When should a chapter end?" Tags="|style|editing|formatting|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2011-02-28T15:05:03.967" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Follow the standard plot arc: conflict, rising action, and resolution.  This is often used to describe plots across a whole novel, but it is equally applicable to a single scene.  Each scene needs a conflict of some kind, and the action in that scene will flow from this conflict.  When the conflict is resolved (temporarily or permanently), the scene is over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is often only a single scene per chapter, but you might put several scenes in the same chapter if they are closely related, or if they illustrate some larger arc of conflict and resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternately, some authors choose to end a chapter right before the resolution.  When done well, this can add suspense and keep the reader flipping pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T15:05:03.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2011-02-28T15:36:24.300" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say at the point where you estimate your reader will get to the full stop, curse your name, curse your family's name, swear under their breath and, wearily ignoring the clock telling them they have to be up in four and a half hours for work, mumble: &quot;Go on then, just one more chapter.&quot; before looking across to the beginning of the next chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T15:36:24.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1804" CreationDate="2011-02-28T15:36:31.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been doing a lot of my outlining/pre-writing work in &lt;a href=&quot;http://workflowy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Workflowy&lt;/a&gt;. It is technically a TODO app, but I like the bulleted and nested lists for outlining and refining. I sometimes write entire papers within Workflowy, using the nested zoom to refine and re-structure sections and paragraphs. You can export (via copy-paste) to other writing apps (msword, google docs, etc.). Be careful though, it is online only and &quot;in the cloud.&quot; I've had it go down when I needed stuff I've written so I highly recommend regularly backing up your entire workflowy to a text document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1430" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T15:36:31.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2011-02-28T15:45:41.453" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One trick I just recently learned was to change the font before editing. This kinda &quot;tricks&quot; the brain into seeing the writing differently. Milage may vary in the long-term, but it works for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1430" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T15:45:41.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2011-02-28T18:35:11.730" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The last line or lines should have some reason for being there. They can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be suspenseful (&quot;What are &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; doing&#xA;here?&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be funny (&quot;Tinkerty-tonk,&quot; I said,&#xA;and I meant it to sting.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;close a scene (She slammed the door&#xA;behind her, hard enough to make the&#xA;glass rattle in the windowpanes.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bring resolution to an arc of any&#xA;size (He held John's eyes for a long&#xA;moment, then leaned over and kissed&#xA;him full on the mouth.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but don't end mid-thought or mid-scene arbitrarily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T18:35:11.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1814" CreationDate="2011-03-01T00:08:43.357" Score="3" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have created my &lt;a href=&quot;http://pali.sk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;personal about page&lt;/a&gt;, based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://weightshift.com/memo/the-personal-page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;The Personal Page&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; template. As a non-native English speaker I worry, that my attempt at &lt;em&gt;telegraphic style&lt;/em&gt; is riddled with questionable use of language. I have tried to be as clear and as brief as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you please help me make this less embarrassing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;X Y is aspiring software craftsman, designer and a father on paternal leave. On the net since 1994. Appreciates high production values and simple, thoughtful design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment he is conducting an experiment in financing &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;daughter&lt;/a&gt;'s kindergarten via App Store. That's because he often wonders what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;weather&lt;/a&gt; is like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From time to time he parrots inconsequential things on &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt;, peppered with occasional &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Instagram&lt;/a&gt; shots. Recently rediscovered passion for &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;running&lt;/a&gt; and finished a &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;half-marathon&lt;/a&gt;. He is on &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the social network&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;linked in&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I've used example.com in the links above, just to illustrate where they occur in the original copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1431" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T07:09:36.593" Title="Personal Page - review request" Tags="|style|clarity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2018-07-07T12:34:46.383" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1813" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1815" CreationDate="2011-03-01T01:38:08.483" Score="8" ViewCount="887" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently found out about full-screen writing applications like OmniWriter and DarkRoom and I'm interested in using them, but I'm skeptical as to whether or not these are actually useful for improving productivity. Based on experiences, do these applications really help one towards writing? Why or why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="539" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T20:18:32.650" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T18:21:54.350" Title="Do fullscreen writing environments help for writing? Why?" Tags="|tools|software|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-10-04T17:21:15.793" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1812" CreationDate="2011-03-01T01:45:10.867" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is nicely personal and humorous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key problem is the omission of articles (a, an, the), Articles can be tricky in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;X Y is &lt;strong&gt;an&lt;/strong&gt; aspiring software craftsman, designer, and father on paternal leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you really want to say &quot;a father,&quot; then you'll also have to say &quot;a designer&quot; to keep the three items parallel. This is a somewhat subtle point, which even English speaking writers increasingly ignore. I can explain further if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the moment he is conducting an experiment in financing &lt;strong&gt;his&lt;/strong&gt; daughter's via &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; App Store. That's because he often wonders what the weather is like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand the &quot;weather&quot; reference. Perhaps the actual link makes it clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From time to time he parrots inconsequential things ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Parrots&quot; means to repeat mindlessly what someone else has said. If you mean that you often retweet trivialities, then &quot;parrot&quot; is cute, though the metaphor may be a little off. (Do parrots tweet? I don't know.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recently discovered &lt;strong&gt;a&lt;/strong&gt; passion ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This and some of the other bits (e.g. &quot;On the net since 1994&quot;) are sentence fragments. That's not a crime in informal language like this, but it does slightly grate against the style of the full sentences. It feels like jabs of staccato in the midst of a pastoral tone poem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, it's nicely done. The humor is subtle and delightful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T01:45:10.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1813" CreationDate="2011-03-01T02:06:01.113" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're easy distracted by shiny things (or Twitter, your RSS feed, Facebook page, chat window, weather updates, email, or desktop photo) then having a program which blocks them all out may help keep you focused on your work. So it depends on your workflow and your weaknesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T02:06:01.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1813" CreationDate="2011-03-01T05:04:11.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Full-screen writing environments help me focus but I bounce back and forth between two specific tools depending on the eventual destination of the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two I use most often are Scrivener and Blogo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is a full-featured writing environment for the Macintosh only. [Edit: Scriveer is apparently available as a beta for Windows, as well. Great!] It has a quite beautiful, powerful and customizable full-screen mode. I use Scrivener to organize notes and research and write longer articles and short stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For blogging, I really enjoy using Blogo. It also has a full-screen mode that's ideal for banging out something quick but unfortunately it's not very customizable. Still, it's a much better interface for tumblr than the native, Web-based one. (I've found tumblr to be a good place for writing experiments that are easily created and easily disposed of.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drinkbrainjuice.com/blogo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Blogo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1369" LastEditorUserId="1369" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T12:20:57.570" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T12:20:57.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1813" CreationDate="2011-03-01T06:19:50.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find full screen writing environments to be very helpful, because it's just you and the page. This may be a function of my distractable nature, but any aid to focus is a good thing in my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also quite easy to simulate a full screen writing environment using any text editor with a minimal UI. I like gvim, but this should work with Notepad or even emacs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;set your screen background to something minimal, like black.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;minimise everything.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;open your text editor as a narrow strip down the centre of the screen, or placed to cover all your desktop icons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a busy desktop with more icons than can be covered while keeping the narrow strip aesthetic, then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a simple HTML page with a black background and no text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;open that page in Firefox.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;browse in full screen mode.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use that Firefox as the only other application which is open on your desktop behind your editor window.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I follow this approach when I am on a Windows machine away from my Scrivener session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T14:29:38.133" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T14:29:38.133" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1818" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-01T09:27:47.113" Score="4" ViewCount="1658" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I reference a website using the Harvard style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would this be different if no author was listed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1289" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-18T04:47:12.623" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T04:47:12.623" Title="Referencing a website using Harvard style" Tags="|style|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1813" CreationDate="2011-03-01T12:30:09.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/textroom/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TextRoom&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bean&lt;/a&gt; (plain text mode in both) - I just typed stuff in Markdown markup, converted it to HTML, and did all of the further editing in OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own theory is that when I'm writing, it's not really the distractions that count - it's the access to the features. If you write stuff in full-featured word processors, you can spend all day tweaking useless little details in formatting. In these programs, you have zero control over formatting, as it should be. When I type text, all I really care is support for UTF-8 and typography (pandoc, the tool that I use for Markdown conversions, does the smart quotes and en dashes for me, and the LanguageTool in LibreOffice does the rest of the fixups), support for text files with long lines, and a way to enter emphasis (just do &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; in Markdown).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as far as user interface goes, all I really need is that the text is readable. WYSIWYG programs force you to look at the text in the &quot;final&quot; form, which is probably not the same as the final final form &lt;em&gt;anyway&lt;/em&gt;. TextRoom and Bean, on the other hand, just let me edit the text with blue background and white text. No need to dig up WordPerfect 5.1 and run it in DOSBox. =)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in big favour of the Unix toolbox approach: there's no single tool that does all aspects well, but if you have a bunch of individual tools that do one aspect well, you get things done one way or other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T12:30:09.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1813" CreationDate="2011-03-01T12:32:53.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're an Office 2007, Office 2010 user, you can use Word with no Ribbon. I do this when I'm working on some creative writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a combination of things. I like using Word 2010 but want to see as much of the document as possible. Minimising the ribbon helps but if I'm in the thick of a writing burst I don't want to distract myself with anything on screen I don't need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Press ALT then v then u&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Press esc to make the ribbon return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1438" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-03T15:28:05.540" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T15:28:05.540" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1781" CreationDate="2011-03-01T12:57:26.677" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most reductionist view of a plot is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Equilibrium &gt; Disturbance &gt; Equilibrium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or to reduce it down to two words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something Happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even trying to subvert it by making your plot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing Happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is defeated by the fact that you noted down that nothing was what happened. In this world nothing happening is unusual enough to be noteworthy. So you find, in trying to resist the need to &quot;plot&quot; you have accidentally plotted on a meta level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So plotting, to an extent, is inevitable even if all you are noting in your writing is the unnoteworthy nature of the notes you are writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as you leave the arena of &quot;Something&quot; happening, or being satisfied that what you are describing is &quot;something&quot; or a series of &quot;somethings&quot; happening you instantly wander into an area of some permutational difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example if your story is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something happened and that one complete something was made up of this something and that something happening each of which by themselves would have been less noteworthy than either but not both of these things happening somewhere at some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then already you are playing games with the audience, even if you make the events in your two sub-somethings happen in different time periods on different continents you have still instructed the audience to view these incidents as a diptych. Any smilarities are fair game to be deemed thematic, any differences fair game to be deemed juxtapositional. You as author have spoken and bonded the events together even though there is fundamentally nothing about the events that should naturally connect them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any more complex plot is just a nested series of incidents which are inevitably related to one another if only by virtue of being described together in one place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much theory can be found about particular deliberate constructions of incidents that are deemed to be aesthetically more pleasant or congruous than others. You should view such assertions as like arguments between people who like impressionism and those who prefer surrealism. Solid structure is skilful application of technique and deliberate non-application of technique is just as valid. Poor application of technique is just as invalid whether you are trying to draw a photo-realistic landscape or a melting clock, to torture the metaphor a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people like a fine tuned five act story with impeccably separated rising and falling action. Some people delight in ferreting the hero's journey out of every protagonist's daily routine (or break from such). Some people just like describing people they deem to be &quot;interesting&quot; then putting them all into a situation they deem to be &quot;interesting&quot; and letting them bounce around until they have somehow &quot;resolved&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't a right answer about which is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can produce an adequate fictional sentence then a paragraph is just the reproduction of that process a couple of times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A page is just the paragraph process three to four times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A chapter is the page repeated a few times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking the average length of a sentence to be about 9 words contructing 6000 interrelated and adequate sentences will get you a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you plot is personal. For me I like to try to stick to well-worn arcs because I don't feel that I know them thoroughly enough to discard them. Maybe you feel that your writing is not that sort of writing. I am a genre writer and as such I want to be intimately familiar with the &quot;rules&quot; before I break them. I want to be a storyteller, an entertainer, not an artist, more a craftsman. Who you are as a writer is more down to what you want out of the experience. For that reason, until you've thought through your artistic aims a plot is just:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T14:59:02.187" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T14:59:02.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1813" CreationDate="2011-03-01T13:22:10.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've not found it helpful; I work in bursts, and need to let some steam go from time to time. Having nothing to quickly distract me from the problem at hand for a few seconds is distracting in a counterproductive (and slightly annoying way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usefulness depends on your style of work. If you find yourself stopping your work unnecessarily because chat windows pop up or so, you're better of closing the chat programs instead of working full screen; changing the work environment slows down your work until you get used to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, using those editors you mentioned would slow down some quick editing (at least I'm prone to using different fonts, bolds, italics, superscript (&lt;s&gt;like this&lt;/s&gt;), among other things, and those are usually absent in full screen text editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, it depends on the way you work. The only way to find out if it works for you is trying it for at least a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastEditorUserId="1342" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T13:30:11.813" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T13:30:11.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1798" CreationDate="2011-03-01T13:26:28.367" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edit: Wikipedia knows how to explain it better than I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A literary agent is someone who represents writers and their written works to publishers, theatrical producers and film producers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_agent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_agent&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastEditorUserId="1342" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T19:21:41.203" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T19:21:41.203" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1745" CreationDate="2011-03-01T14:01:10.520" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exposition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;As all members of the scientific community know,&amp;quot; Dr. Bigpipe said clenching his big pipe between his teeth. &amp;quot;The F'zargh of Multath V has a unique means of camouflage. It is able to assume the shape of small household items and then, surreptitiously worm its mind control tendrils into the basal ganglia and from there it's Goodnight Vienna!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Audience: &lt;em&gt;snore&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ammunition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;As all members of the scientific community know,&amp;quot; Dr. Bigpipe said clenching his big pipe between his teeth. &amp;quot;The F'Zargh...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bigpipe faltered to a stop, his skin suddenly pale, his eyes glazed. The pipe clenched between his purpling lips suddenly shivered and squeaked, it seemed to suck inwards invading the doughty professor's mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Well, well,&amp;quot; a strange slithering voice emerged from between Bigpipe's lips. His face had taken on a menacing cast, an inhuman sneer played at the corner of his mouth. &amp;quot;Looks like you chumps are about to get a lesson in F'zargh pathology 101, straight from the parasite's tendrils, so to speak.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The transformed professor of xenobiology, leaped towards them snarling, teeth bared. The crew of the Starship Redoubtable had no choice but to draw their flaz-gaz heat pistols and join in battle with their friend and mentor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Audience: &lt;em&gt;paid for whole seat, only needed edge&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: So, in case I'm not being clear enough, you could explain someone's back story by just telling people what it is but it's better for the back story to come out through action. SF has a real problem with people constantly explaining stuff so the &amp;quot;Exposition/Ammunition&amp;quot; thing is easier to explain with an SF example. It basically means show excitingly instead of explaining dully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T20:15:49.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1826" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1827" CreationDate="2011-03-01T16:16:54.520" Score="4" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;Analogies can be powerful tools in both explaining and misrepresenting a complex topic. What methodology works well for finding good analogies and how does one figure out whether an analogy is well suited for a specific audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1003" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T16:45:50.267" Title="Analogies, pitfalls and guidelines" Tags="|language|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1826" CreationDate="2011-03-01T17:11:19.277" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can eliminate many inappropriate metaphors by asking yourself a question: &quot;Will the people in this audience understand this metphor?&quot; I can't tell you how many American sports metaphors I've wanted to put into my presentations, only to take them out after a moment's pause to consider my international audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask a few members of the audience for their opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I've found that metaphors are awful for persuading. They can be useful to explain new ideas to a generally sympathetic audience. But people who are skeptical of your ideas are likely focus immediatetely in the faults in the analogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T17:11:19.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2011-03-01T17:38:24.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As usual, the answer is &quot;depends.&quot; For idea generation, capturing bits of dialog you overhear, writing copy - an iPad with an Apple Wireless Keyboard is hard to beat for portability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if you need to do a great deal of editing, nearly any desktop app will have it beat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think as a tool for observing life it's excellent (and the iPad2 will be even better).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to this is the whole plain text vs. rich text debate. Bottom line is if you are still going though a publisher, you will use what they tell you to use (Word). But if you are an authorprenur, you end product is going to be several formats: pdf, ePub, etc. Keep life simple and go plain text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1442" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T17:38:24.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1745" CreationDate="2011-03-01T19:21:13.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most exposition is a setup for the rising action or when the protagonist or villain pulls the trigger, and then the action starts. Sometimes, the exposition starts with a trigger or as Robert McKay likes to call it, an inciting incident. This is the ammunition for the resolution of the story - who wins, who loses, who gets get killed, and the dramatic action and complications to follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1443" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T19:21:13.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1818" CreationDate="2011-03-01T20:17:52.863" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have your answer &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usq.edu.au/library/help/referencing/harvard.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;at this site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;Web document, no author&lt;/strong&gt; (there is an example provided on the site):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Title Year, version number (if&#xA;  applicable), description of document&#xA;  (if applicable), name and place of the&#xA;  sponsor of the source, viewed (Day&#xA;  Month Year), URL (with either full location&#xA;  details or just the main site details).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;Web document, with author&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author (the person or organisation&#xA;  responsible for the site) Year (that&#xA;  the site was created or last revised),&#xA;  name and place of the sponsor of the&#xA;  source, viewed (Day Month Year), URL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Body Shop Australia 2003, The Body&#xA;  Shop Australia, Mulgrave, Victoria,&#xA;  viewed 31 January 2003,&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thebodyshop.com.au/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thebodyshop.com.au/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastEditorUserId="2358" LastEditDate="2011-12-19T00:16:18.363" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T00:16:18.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1834" CreationDate="2011-03-02T09:53:50.800" Score="12" ViewCount="1752" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very general question that I want to throw out there just to get some insight into different approaches used. I have my own, but am intrigued to know what others might try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering what processes you might go through in order to develop a unique 'voice' for a character? I'm concerned specifically with applying this to stage plays, although any insight into character voice development for novels or other I would also be interested in hearing about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1446" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T11:25:21.563" Title="Finding the 'voice' of a character" Tags="|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="529" CreationDate="2011-03-02T10:39:49.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that should be used as a seasoning in Odyssey tales is the idea of the false destination. The idea that where the characters thought they were going is not in fact the destination and a further journey must be undertaken to complete their objective. Also, the idea of the false arrival where the protagonists consider abandoning their quest because they arrive somewhere that offers them an alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the idea of having sub-objectives is useful to make the travel seem necessary e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to destroy the dark amulet of goomba but we have no idea how. I have heard that the Enchanter Philip knows of a way but he lives in Footrot Swamp which can only be crossed with the aid of the Footrot Guardian who requires that all whom he assists perform a task for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if someone says that then the reader actually knows what they have to sit through before anyone gets anywhere near disposing of the goomba amulet. So better to have a false expectation that it is Enchanter Philip who knows how to destroy the blasted thing and that he lives in a small village on the edge of Footrot swamp. So visit Anklemange Village and the amulet is toast, but when the heroes get there Philip's house is deserted and crawling with nasties. Only then do they find out that Philip had to relocate into the swamp and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you tell people exactly what the heroes are going to have to do then the heroes may have a heart filled with courage and conviction to get this tedious series of fetch-quests done but the audience will take their own view on whether they want to go with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're always promising that the destination is just around the next corner people commit and you have time to woo them with your excellent characters and richly populated world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like a con trick but really what you should consider is that you're making one long journey into a series of little sub-journeys, each with their own resolution. If they add to the cause of plot thickening so much the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example what happens if, when the Guardian transports them into the Footrot Swamp they are harangued by a weird sentient swamp lizard who tells them that the amulet can never be destroyed but that it can be changed from a force in service of the dark god Goomba to one in the service of the light god Abmoog. This is new information. Is it a lie? Or could it be true? Besides the legend states that Abmoog was killed by Goomba before the Aeon of the Cedarwood Badger. So having an amulet in the service of a dead god would be useless, wouldn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reasons for the quest the nature of the task and even the protagonist's own ethical framework are questioned by the journey they are undertaking it creates tension in the actual journey itself. Your audience will learn that just because it looks like a duck don't mean it won't go &quot;moo&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And all the best stories are about cows that turn out to quack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T10:39:49.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1832" CreationDate="2011-03-02T11:09:38.990" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do it by interviewing my characters. The main idea is to probe and challenge the character, then follow the character's energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask a question that invites the character to tell me something new&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listen for emotional intensity in the answer. Sometimes the emotion is subtle, and other times it’s big and obvious.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask my next question based on that emotion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a slightly expanded explanation, with example interviews: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dalewriting.dale.emery.name/2008/09/interviews/&quot;&gt;http://dalewriting.dale.emery.name/2008/09/interviews/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most of these interviews, I was surprised to find my image of the characters changing. Each one left me with a clear sense of the character's voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found the numerous character exercises in Will Dunne's &lt;em&gt;The Dramatic Writer's Companion&lt;/em&gt; enormously helpful. They're not the usual laundry list of boring questions about characters. Dunne's exercises help you dig into the characters' beliefs and attitudes about things that matter in people's lives, things that generate conflict, story, and personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T11:09:38.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1832" CreationDate="2011-03-02T11:31:54.423" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a series of common dilemmas handy allows you to specify how character x differs from character y e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character you are developing was really hungry last night but short on cash. They went to the refrigerator and found a slice of pie belonging to their flatmate. What do they do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they eat it do they scarf it quickly stood by the fridge terrified of being caught? Or do they eat it sensibly? Do they even get a kick out of the act of theft?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the next day, their flatmate discovers that their pie slice is missing. They ask loudly who stole their pie. How does character x react?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they admit to their crime? If so how do they explain their actions to their angered flatmate? Do they make a concrete promise to replace the missing pie? Do they intend to follow through if they do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose in running the character through these simple diagnostic actions is to find out whether the character would cheat. And if they would cheat how they would deal with the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheating is something human beings are attuned to be interested in and to consider carefully. A psychological experiment called the Wason Selection test shows how human beings find it easier to deal with logic tests when they are contextualised as being about people cheating or betraying social norms than when they are presented as dry facts. People are built to think about cheating and cheaters. So to find the measure of a person, or aid yourself in considering their character it is likely to help if you think about how they would cheat, whether they would cheat and how they would react if they were caught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T11:31:54.423" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1722" CreationDate="2011-03-02T12:03:05.147" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I edit on paper, rather than in the word processor. I print it out. Then I make my edits with the classic blue pen, using proofreader's marks. Then I go back and make the changes in the word processor. I can't really explain why, but it helps me take off the Writer hat and put on the Editor hat, and I find the edits come more quickly and more effectively when I use this technique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1447" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T12:03:05.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="647" CreationDate="2011-03-02T12:48:07.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work by organizing ideas on a mind map, using one mind map per work I'm handling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mind maps are sort of trees of ideas and categories, so you can have &quot;Main plot points&quot; with a branch per fleshed out point, and another &quot;Unplaced Dialogs&quot; with the pieces of dialog. You can have an indefinite amount of branches with an indefinite amount of subdivisions. I highly recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found FreeMind a useful tool for this: it helps you categorize your thoughts under different branches so that they're easily accessible, plus you can add relations among them, and fold the branches you're not working on currently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your distro should have it available from the official repos, otherwise you can find it at sf.net.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T12:48:07.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="529" CreationDate="2011-03-02T17:05:27.290" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One mistake I made early in my writing is that I felt that everything had to be described at all times.  If the bad guy was fixing a presidential election, over the course of the novel I'd continually update the polls as the bad guy's plan unfolded.  Boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Christopher Buckley does this well in his novel Boomsday.  The protagonist's actions are meant to provoke civil unrest.  Buckley does not just smash in a bunch of needless scenes to illustrate this, though.  Instead, he just updates us with a paragraph or two at appropriate times.  The reader knows what is going on in the backdrop, and we can go on reading the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the two characters who are traveling&#xA;  together in this specific instance&#xA;  have just met each other and should be&#xA;  forging their relationship during the&#xA;  travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no need to recount the entire eight-day journey across The Whatever Plains.  You can write one scene wherin our heroes are tested, and how they solve or escape the situation will result in a different relationship between the two characters.  Maybe they encounter a thief and one guy wants to kill the thief and the other convinces him to spare his life and let him go free.  The relationship has thus changed, character 1 respects character 2's council enough to change his mind on something he was otherwise determined to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The best stories&lt;/strong&gt; don't simply make this a throwaway scene.  &quot;Oh they found a thief and let him go and now the characters are cool with each other.&quot;  That's a waste of time.  Rather, the thief can crop up late in the story and provide something that spares the characters.  Or, if tragedy is your game, the thief can partner with Bad Guy and eventually cause the colossal undoing of our heroes.  The novel's moral center is thus conveyed, the reader learns some lesson, etc, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="947" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T17:05:27.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1773" CreationDate="2011-03-02T19:49:39.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most important of all, when you write, mean it; mean what you write, and how you write it as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn about all the factors you can that influence the writing, such as assonance and consonance; learn the best way to use punctuation, the way it's usually used and interpret it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn what you use, what those things do, and then use them for your own purpose. Not doing so may result in your poetry being harder to interpret and relate to, and so less attractive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T19:49:39.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1840" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-02T21:24:57.230" Score="3" ViewCount="428" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's a good program or technique for tracking submissions? I need something that'll keep track of who I've submitted to, when, if they've replied, and preferably tell me how long it's been out. Any suggestions? Preferably something that I don't need an internet connection to use. (IE, not a website.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-24T09:45:40.053" LastActivityDate="2018-04-24T09:45:40.053" Title="What's a good program for tracking submissions?" Tags="|technique|software|tools|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1840" CreationDate="2011-03-02T21:45:01.713" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried a plain ol' spreadsheet?        &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T21:45:01.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1840" CreationDate="2011-03-02T22:10:09.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like Duotrope's online submission tracker: &lt;a href=&quot;http://duotrope.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://duotrope.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bonus, they also have a large, searchable database of markets, categorized in a variety of ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe they're a market database, and the tracker is a bonus. Either way, I like 'em.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alas, it's an online service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T22:10:09.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="647" CreationDate="2011-03-02T22:41:29.223" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like tags more than categories. Years ago I tried to organize ideas by category, but software often treats categories as mutually exclusive. Tagging schemes allow you to tag each snippet with whatever tags are appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main tags are the CLOSAT scheme: Character, Location, Object, Situation, Action, Theme. I learned this scheme from Michael Rabiger's book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0240807367&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Developing Story Ideas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. I can't exactly recommend the book, but I do like the CLOSAT scheme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also often use other tags: Dialogue, Title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I have a few tags related to my feelings about the idea. Several popular science fiction writers once advised (on some podcast) to write about whatever pisses you off. So I have a &quot;pmo&quot; tag for those. Another advised writing about things you're afraid of, so I mark those ideas with &quot;afraid&quot;. I know that those are ideas I have some energy for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep my notes in Scrivener, which calls its tags &quot;keywords.&quot; Before Scrivener, I used something else (I forget what) that had no built-in tagging mechanism, but it did have search. So I added my own tags by putting @character, @theme, etc. at the bottom of the file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T22:41:29.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1826" CreationDate="2011-03-02T22:49:25.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Analogies should be things that your audience will understand, preferably something that they are familiar with and deal with regularly. For example, I tutor talmud, which consists almost entirely of concepts which are explained by analogy. When teaching kids, I use analogies revolving around sports, and XBox. When studying with businessmen, the analogies come from financial instruments and shell corporations. Just last week I was studying with a programmer so we constructed the arguments in terms of a tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1449" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T22:49:25.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1846" CreationDate="2011-03-03T07:51:20.197" Score="14" ViewCount="2031" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once in a while I get really emotional when writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing about love, jealousy or even thinking about a simple scene in which a father plays with his child can get some strong emotional responses from me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually stop writing then, fearing that all that emotional clutter might effect my writing and turn it into something different than originally intended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you say? Should I stop writing when getting too emotional or should I use that emotional response somehow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have experienced the same reaction that I speak or, feel free to share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T04:31:56.330" Title="Getting emotional while writing, good or bad?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|discipline|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1845" CreationDate="2011-03-03T09:36:16.783" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write. Let the emotion flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the emotion clutters the writing, or takes it in a direction you don't want, you can fix it later, when you can look at it with a cooler view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even if you choose not to keep the stuff written in the heat of emotion, save it somewhere. There's energy in there for you. It may be useful on another project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2011-03-03T10:26:01.157" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T10:26:01.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1845" CreationDate="2011-03-03T10:42:49.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is important to consider the purpose of the writing being undertaken. Mostly writing is a pursuit that benefits from focus, craft and discipline. An overwrought writer is no more competent than an overwrought builder, or an overwrought lawyer or whatever. Just because what you are doing is constructing something that is supposed to draw an emotional response from others does not mean to say that you should be too moved by it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen King talks about being confident that the section he has just written will &quot;get&quot; a reader e.g. moves the reader to be frightened or tense. My mother was so disturbed by Pet Sematary that she kept her copy in the freezer and sold the book as soon as she'd finished reading it(!) If Mr. King had been similarly affected by the novel as he wrote it then it would never have seen the light of day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, just because you are moved by something as you write it does not guarantee it will be as powerful for the reader. I have only ever been moved by parts of my own story when reading them back years later and having forgotten what exactly I wrote. I can quite distinctly separate out the craftsman who wrote the story and the reader who gets hit by the emotion carried in the work much later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you are seeking to write in order to inspire an emotional experience for a third party it is vital to separate the business of being the communcator from being the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that writing itself can be a therapeutic and cathartic act. If your purpose is to deal with something by writing about it in the first instance then experiencing emotion as you write is perfectly valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T10:42:49.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2011-03-03T14:42:05.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a novel a couple years ago and I have two pieces of advice for the beginning steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) You need an idea.&#xA;2) You need to persist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is everything, an idea that you can hold onto and that guides the entire story like a lighthouse. The idea could be something very small: a plot, a scene, a character, a feeling, a theme - anything that inspires you to keep going when it gets tough, and it will get tough. The idea should be the first thing always. Before you write anything, before you think about anything else you need an idea that you love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is to persist. It is very simple, just keep going no matter what, and one day you will finish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1455" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T14:42:05.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1850" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1872" CreationDate="2011-03-03T16:06:44.243" Score="26" ViewCount="15108" Body="&lt;p&gt;When creating a character, what red flags would show me that I'm creating an unbelievable or unsympathetic character?  I know that to be believable and sympathetic a character must not lean too much to a single extreme or be a caricature.  Besides paying careful attention to character traits when reading, how can I learn more about what constitutes a caricature?  What signs might there be that I'm writing an unbelievable character or one no one will care a thing about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T22:50:35.667" Title="Signs of Bad Character Development" Tags="|fiction|character-development|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1850" CreationDate="2011-03-03T16:38:02.097" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think, the worst way to introduce a new character is starting by detailed description of her/his background and motives &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the character starts acting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She was and old kind woman. Her five children and twelve grandchildern have trained her in patience and toleration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A greedy and unforgiving sociopath accustomed to be always right. His father died from heart attack when he [the character] was six so he and his two sisters were grown in poverty. He is sure that his father's alleged cowardice was the root of all bad events of his childhood.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T16:38:02.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1826" CreationDate="2011-03-03T16:45:50.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I had experienced some unpleasant moments with students complaining that they were getting prose instead of (hard) facts because I am a bad teacher. A couple of troublemakers are able to ruin the whole lesson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T16:45:50.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1850" CreationDate="2011-03-03T16:45:52.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be a good idea to base a character (atleast partly) on someone you know, or another character you are familiar with. This way there's something real about the character which atleast some readers might relate to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1406" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T16:45:52.337" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1854" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-03T18:08:46.930" Score="15" ViewCount="2384" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone once in a while while I'm out I come up with something I want to add to my story. Are there any good writing apps for Android phones and tablets? Most places that recommend mobile writing software recommend iPhone apps, but what about the thousands of people who use Android powered phones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T18:18:04.797" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T18:18:04.797" Title="What's a good writing software for Android phones/tablets?" Tags="|software|mobile|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1854" CreationDate="2011-03-03T18:49:55.577" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmmm, I used to use Documents to Go, but now that Google Docs are editable on the phone now I just use that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1458" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T18:49:55.577" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1857" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-03T19:25:57.360" Score="5" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have an annual conference, and as part of this conference, we have a curated collection of papers published. Circulation is pretty minimal, so we are working on getting out of dead tree land and into e-publishing for a roughly 250-page compilation of essentially academic papers. But we are having a lot of trouble finding an e-publisher that fits our bill. We are looking for someone that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publishes in PDF with some sort of watermark -- it's a pretty finicky crowd, so we don't want to make technology choices, especially since eReaders are still a bit wild and wide open.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does not cost a whole lot up front.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can handle all aspects of the transaction and e-delivery -- we just want to hand them the file and largely be done with this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anyone out there that can satisfy these requirements and do it well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1456" LastEditorUserId="22083" LastEditDate="2022-09-26T14:11:20.603" LastActivityDate="2022-09-26T14:11:20.603" Title="ePublishing Conference Proceedings" Tags="|publishing|ebook|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1813" CreationDate="2011-03-03T20:04:18.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I created one of my own because I have a windows computer and I like to program. I have a version on my work computer to help with notes and keeping a log of what I'm doing. The home copy is more personal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the features I added an why I like them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Typewriter 'Tap' and Carriage Return Sound - I started on a manual typewriter and this brings back a few memories and is nice feedback. Recently I purchased a keyboard that happens to be a little loud.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no formating features, bullet points, numbering, spell check or even bold type. There are only 3 font sizes and the font type is fixed. Just get words/thoughts on the page/screen and forget about formating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everything automatically saves. -&#xA;Don't have to think about it.&#xA;There's a timer and auto save on&#xA;close.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Archives to Evernote. Nice backup feature and a way to get at it from other computers/devices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is only one file that gets date/time stamped when you open/use right-click menu. This is more like diary/journal. Again, less to think about, just write. The only organization is the chronology of the entries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is full screen always, but can be made semi transparent. You can have a picture in the background if you prefer for inspiration or to breakup the monotony of a plain background.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've thought about adding a timer. This could make you keep some sort of writing schedule or free up your brain by not having to worry about making some appointment. Kind of a time management strategy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1459" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T20:04:18.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1722" CreationDate="2011-03-03T20:58:47.137" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are the four steps I follow when reviewing my work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Read it backwards.&lt;/strong&gt; Start at the last sentence in your piece and continue by reading the preceding sentences all the way back up to the beginning of your piece. You'll notice errors more easily because reading it out of order prevents your brain from filling in the gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Read it out loud.&lt;/strong&gt; This one speaks for itself. You'll be able to quickly spot issues with word choice and faulty sentence structures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Read it in print.&lt;/strong&gt; Most of us write and edit on our computers, and we get used to what our copy looks like on screen. Reading it printed on paper will give you a fresh look at your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Read it later.&lt;/strong&gt; Put it aside and let your thoughts shift to something else. When you come back, you'll look at it with fresh eyes. The length of time depends on the size and deadline of your project. For magazine articles, I try to give myself a day's break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These tips are based off of an article I read years ago, probably in &lt;em&gt;Copyediting&lt;/em&gt; newsletter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1460" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T20:58:47.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1854" CreationDate="2011-03-03T22:47:01.583" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Springpad isn't a &quot;writing app,&quot; but it's a great note taking app for Android and Chrome. Not only can you write notes, but you take pictures, record audio, and organize everything into notebooks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1461" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T22:47:01.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1861" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1862" CreationDate="2011-03-03T23:32:46.987" Score="16" ViewCount="6589" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've come across the following conventions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What’s this for?&quot; asked Jake.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Sue replied, &quot;None of your business.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  He shrugged his shoulders. &quot;Well, it looks darned funny sitting here.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;It’s still none of your business,&quot; she asserted. &quot;It’s female stuff, so don’t&#xA;  you mind.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Oh!&quot; Jake dropped it and backed away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jake&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;What’s this for?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Sue&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;None of your business.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  He shrugged his shoulders.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Jake&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;Well, it looks darned funny sitting here.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Sue&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;It’s still none of your business,&quot; she asserted. &quot;It’s female stuff, so don’t&#xA;  you mind.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Jake&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;Oh!&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Jake dropped it and backed away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also the style of placing the speaker above and centered (screenplay?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First seems to be the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crayne.com/articles/Dialogue--How-to-Punctuate,-Use-Tags,-and-Vary-the-Structure-of-Your-Dialogue.pdf&quot;&gt;canon version of writing dialog&lt;/a&gt;. The second might appear in a screenplay (but we'll ignore those) &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Typography_Style_Guide&quot;&gt;although more predominantly in games&lt;/a&gt;, where the speaker almost always gets the label (usually accompanied by a semicolon).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing something and have very dialog driven plot (in certain chapters) and the usual advice for dealing with situations like this isn't very pleasing to hear. Typically, I find the recommendation is to use speech tags (ie.&amp;nbsp;&quot;said&amp;nbsp;Sue&quot;) every 4 or so dialog lines; and if only two characters to avoid them altogether. Ironically, the recommendation also usually say you should avoid paragraphs in dialog, and instead split it on multiple lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say, for simplicity sake, I'm writing a detective story. And, there is just one main character and (in accordance with the guidline of &quot;show, don't tell&quot;) most of the plot is him conversing with other characters rather then narration. Isn't that going to lead to just   a intelligible blob of text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: &lt;strong&gt;Is it just better to go with the version that's documented in most manuals of style? (ie.&amp;nbsp;example&amp;nbsp;1) Or is there a alternative, 3rd solution?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Credits to Victory Crayne for the (initial) dialogue snippets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="589" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T09:22:35.983" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T18:25:04.983" Title="Dialog, just what's the best way to write it?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1861" CreationDate="2011-03-03T23:58:33.913" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a novel, the correct way to go is Example 1. Example two is completely wrong in novels and is only seen in amateur writers. If you send something like that to a publisher they'll most likely laugh at you and automatically reject it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern advice is to use as few dialog tags as possible. Most publishers want you to use action tags instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Susan leaned against the door jam. &quot;What are you up to?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Bill closed his laptop and turned to look at her. &quot;Nothing!&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Uh huh...&quot; Susan narrowed her eyes. &quot;Wanna try that again?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Action tags give the reader a better grasp of what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T23:58:33.913" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1861" CreationDate="2011-03-04T01:19:47.490" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like a mix of dialog tags and action tags. You should definitely break up paragraphs of speech with stage business and action tags. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dean Wesley Smith had an advice piece for writers which I ran across for &lt;em&gt;Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,&lt;/em&gt; and I don't have it to hand, but the one bit which stuck with me is &quot;The word 'said' is invisible. Use it.&quot; He thought that one should never use bookisms like asserted, insisted, sighed, etc. but I like those used judiciously. And reading back over my own work in chunks, he's right: &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt; is really invisible. It just doesn't register, any more than the word &quot;the&quot; does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T01:19:47.490" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1861" CreationDate="2011-03-04T01:43:43.163" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been some authors (even some published authors) who've gotten away with non-traditional styles.  In some cases the work demanded it, in others it just enhanced an already good work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If authors have gotten away with using a series of letters, and other similar things, you could aim for transcripts of the various interviews your character is doing.  You could either forgo action entirely for this, bring it out in comments injected by the transcriber or the detective after the fact, or find something else that naturally fits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wouldn't be locked into the style for the whole book, necessarily.  It could be interspersed throughout the more common style, or the more common style could be interspersed throughout the transcripts.  Or you could keep it for the whole story, if that works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, sticking to the norm and making it work is probably safer, but there are other options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can look into Monster by Walter Dean Myers.  Haven't read that one myself, but it's supposed to be quite good, and uses the format of a screenplay/murder trial transcript for a large part of the story, with diary entries for other parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, none of this is intended to say I &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;recommend&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; doing something like this, but if it works or is needed for your story, and you feel capable of pulling it off effectively, the option does exist.  If you want to get published, though, you may want to do some extra asking around...  I'm willing to bet that non-standard styles come with an extra hurdle or two in that regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am not a published author.  I am not even an unpublished author.  I am a programmer who just happens to have an interest in storytelling of various forms.  Judge anything I say carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1450" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T01:43:43.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1850" CreationDate="2011-03-04T02:02:15.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to discover a character like solving a mystery. Provide enough information to figure it out without giving it away. Clues can be provided indirectly. A character may reveal something about herself in one conversaton but omit it in a similar one. What someone doesn't say or do can be equally important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their past should be consistent with their actions but not predictable or way off. Indoril Nerevar had a great point on providing too much background before any action. Never thought about it before but it makes sense. That way you identify the character in the story and don't just read a bunch of facts about them with no context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's nice to base a character on what or who you know, but you have to be careful how you present them. Unless you can recall how you met this person and learned about them, you may want to have a fresh start and meet someone new. It could provide a better understanding of the discovery process. How did you know they came from a wealthy family? You don't remember seeing the Christmas card of their family in front of that massive fireplace and the dozen questions you asked about it. Now it seems like you've always known, but the reader won't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1459" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T02:02:15.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1861" CreationDate="2011-03-04T04:08:50.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second style is dominant in games mainly because there are strong reasons to show dialogues this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you read a book, you see the whole page and are able to go forward and backward a few lines. In games, you see only the current dialogue line.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In games, dialogues are voiced and anything else should happen on the stage, just like in screenplay. So no action tags.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contrasting with movie subtitles, some games don't have a method to focus your attention on a speaker, for example strategy games. Even if they had, it would still remain plain boring without characters with convincing body language. So, if stage is mostly static, you turn to the text only. Then labels, and even avatars beside the dialog line are helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main point is that &lt;strong&gt;game is not a book&lt;/strong&gt;, and because of that it has different guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1288" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T04:08:50.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1867" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-04T04:30:54.973" Score="10" ViewCount="1166" Body="&lt;p&gt;I accepted an offer from a publisher recently on a non-fiction title. It's my first book and naturally I'm excited. My agent negotiated a good deal since which time the publisher has not been in touch. Is this normal? How long can I expect to wait between accepting an offer and signing the contract?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1464" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-03-05T18:48:25.757" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T18:48:25.757" Title="How long can I expect to wait between accepting an offer and signing?" Tags="|publishing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1867" CreationDate="2011-03-04T07:48:12.697" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on your book offer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on how quickly the publisher's legal department generates and sends the contract to you and/or your agent. One service your agent should be providing is contract review to remove the onerous clauses that publishers almost invariably attempt to insert into contracts, especially with first-time authors. For example, no author should accept cross-collaterization, which is a nasty clause where revenues from subsequent books you do for the publisher (not revisions, different books), are made to pay back advances on the first book. Publishers try to stick that in, and are almost always willing to take it right out when the author objects. Similarly, a no-compete clause should be removed, as well as overly-broad rights grabs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a long relationship with my principal publisher, and it still takes them as long as a month to get a contract to me after we agree on terms. Other publishers have taken two or three months. I previously had an agent; I no longer do. Being agented did not affect how quickly a contract arrived from a publisher. It did sometimes &lt;em&gt;slow down&lt;/em&gt; the signing of the contract, as my agent would raise appropriate objections to contract clauses, requiring another round of contract revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's appropriate for your agent to query the acquisition editor on contract progress every few weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1204" LastEditorUserId="1204" LastEditDate="2011-03-04T07:55:35.997" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T07:55:35.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1869" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-04T12:43:21.907" Score="7" ViewCount="894" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you provide me with some techniques for minimizing redundancy in English sentence structure on three levels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Document Level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Paragraph Level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sentence Level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to get better at making shorter documents with more meaning and work on perfecting my elevator pitch skills.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1466" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-03-04T15:15:45.270" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T15:45:27.413" Title="Techniques for minimizing redundancy in a document, paragraph or sentence?" Tags="|technique|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1861" CreationDate="2011-03-04T14:30:38.043" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers are absolutely correct about the use of action tags, but I think there's a larger issue here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't really &lt;strong&gt;want&lt;/strong&gt; to write &quot;just&quot; dialogue. That would be a screenplay. Action tags certainly help, but if the remain at the level of &quot;the character's physical expression or action as s/he talks,&quot; then you really haven't added anything beyond stage directions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write like a screenplay, it'll read like a screenplay. So, you ask, what's the difference between a screenplay and a dialogue-centered novel? Well, it's pretty much the same as the difference between reading a screenplay and watching the movie. Straight dialogue is a bunch of talking heads; it's difficult to be exciting or engaging in the format. Plot, setting, and emotion are your friends - even when the dialogue is in the center.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jim Van Pelt just wrote &lt;A href=&quot;http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/322874.html&quot;&gt;an excellent blog post&lt;/a&gt; on precisely this subject. He demonstrates the wildly different directions the same raw dialogue can be taken - and how bland &quot;simple&quot; action tags can be, compared to a rounder, more fleshed-out scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what do you need to add to the dialogue to round out a transcript into a fullblown &lt;strong&gt;scene&lt;/strong&gt;? Here's a couple of thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The viewpoint character likely has a lot of thoughts and reactions to the conversation around him. Share them with us - they act as a counterpoint to the raw dialogue, and keep us immersed in the character and his personality. That also lets you get across powerful motives and desires that &lt;em&gt;motivate&lt;/em&gt; his side of the dialogue, that he'd never allow to slip barefaced into the conversation itself. That's what Van Pelt's second example does - he goes beyond describing what happens cinematically, into explaining &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; this dialogue is taking place, and immersing us into the viewpoint character's world and hopes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider &lt;strong&gt;where&lt;/strong&gt; the dialogue is taking place. It &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be two characters taking in their living room, or in a coffee-shop. But the scene would be a lot more colorful and active - less &quot;talking-heads&quot; - if they talked while &lt;em&gt;doing&lt;/em&gt; something. If two characters were talking during a game of bowling, that would be an entirely different scene than one where they were talking because they were the only two students in detention, or if they were talking five minutes before they were each auditioning for the same part in a musical. Each of these would give the scene a vastly different tone - and provide all kinds of events, reactions, distractions, and interruptions throughout the scene.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some additions will be extremely brief, and interspersed with the dialogue - like the action tags. Others can take a paragraph or two - the sudden musings of the viewpoint character, something interesting going on in the area, a short flashback, etc. Of course, you shouldn't be adding in content as simple padding - these are ways to add &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; substance to your writing, coloring your &quot;raw&quot; dialogue with all the personality, flavor, and action of the entire piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T14:30:38.043" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1869" CreationDate="2011-03-04T14:44:21.490" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The document level? meaning chapters and such? This has more to do with your understanding of the material, and less to do with the act of writing. You should have, in order, a title (along with date, author, etc), table of contents, abstract and definition of terms in the case of technical documents, a introductory chapter/part, the contents, a conclusion chapter/part and a bibliography in the case of technical documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the other two categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Each time you want to write analogies write a metaphor instead &amp;mdash; at most 5 words, and make sure it doesn't require explanation (it's a bad metaphor otherwise). Analogies are long and boring. When you mean to write a analogy, a lot of the time what you really intend is a metaphor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't explain yourself. What I mean is having follow up sentences like this one explaining what should have been &quot;understood&quot; in your sentences. It's better to write it out clearly: &quot;don't write about what you're currently writing&quot; or &quot;avoid meta-writing.&quot; Eliminate the follow-up or the initial sentence to fix the problem when it appears (whichever one robs the other of it's thunder).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't start a sentence with &quot;However,&quot; &quot;But,&quot; and so on; you can do so occasionally if it's for emphasis. I recommend using a semi-colon to link the two sentences together when they are related (like I have done in the previous sentence) or parentheses for a short note. Em dashes can also be used, but sparingly. If the sentence is not related, just simply start with the subject. You can also scrap the sentence altogether and rephrase it as a different kind of sentence, such as a rhetorical question opening the way to some new chain of thought.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid &quot;pleonasms&quot; (redundant or repeated terms). It doesn't have to happen in the same sentence; if you emphasize something in one sentence try not emphasize it again (just in a different way) in your next sentences. No need to beat on a dead horse.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However that's not to say true pleonasms aren't something you should worry about: 12 midnight =&gt; midnight, 12 noon =&gt; noon; 3 am in the morning =&gt; 3 am; biography of her life =&gt; biography; each and every =&gt; each; end result =&gt; result; personal opinion =&gt; opinion; personally, I think/feel =&gt; I think/feel; cooperate together =&gt; cooperate; &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/concise.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;etc&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/redundancies.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;etc&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any word, expression or sentence that doesn't add anything or change the sentence is just fluff, and you should omit it. Reduce clauses to phrases, phrases to single words. Remove intensifiers that don't intensify. Avoid words such as &lt;em&gt;really, very, quite, extremely, severely&lt;/em&gt; (intensifiers). And more importantly, use your own words. Using &quot;fancy wording&quot; just results in writing clich&amp;eacute;s, which makes your writing dull. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/concise.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;more info and examples&lt;/a&gt;) So when is it okay to use a clich&amp;eacute; construct? When it's a saying or otherwise a very popular, and well understood, metaphor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/praclutterex.htm?p=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;simple exercises&lt;/a&gt; on the net. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="589" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-03-04T15:45:27.413" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T15:45:27.413" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-04T15:23:35.420" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1850" CreationDate="2011-03-04T14:59:45.283" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, first and foremost - do &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; believe in the character? Do &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; think he/she is sympathetic? If so, you're already in a good position - because you &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; a believable, sympathetic character, you just haven't convinced your readers of that yet - meaning, if you get negative critiques on the point, you just need to figure out why &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; like the character, and focus on bringing those elements out more strongly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's not what you asked - you asked about warning signs. Here are a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;I know this sounds unlikely, but Real Person X really did that/acted this way, so it's believable.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; This logic is tempting, but it doesn't hold - your readers have never heard of Mister X; they won't be as accepting of the implausibility as you are. Either have him do something else, or justify it so it's no longer implausible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;So in chapter 15, Audrey reveals that she's actually a judo master...&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Any major revelation about a significant, well-exposed character should mesh well with the rest of the novel. For example, Audrey shouldn't turn out to be a judo master in chapter 15 if we've known her as a snarky housewife until then, with no hint of this extraordinary talent (and especially if she's been complaining about not going to the gym enough in the first five chapters). Dropping sudden, out-of-the-blue bombshells on readers can make them lose their trust, and make it feel like the character is being invented as you go along, rather than being portrayed as a believable, complete, consistent individual. Consider establishing the &quot;revelation&quot; earlier, as part of character exposition, or else providing appropriate foreshadowing so that the Big Surprise clicks together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;My protagonist is kind of an asshole. I know - I'll give him a puppy he really loves!&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; A common stratagem is to give the unlikable character a single redeeming feature. Sometimes, this can work marvelously. But if it's done as a patch, and not invested in enough, then the redeeming feature might feel artificial and unconvincing - leaving the character unlikable &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; making the author look kind of silly. Don't assume that the &quot;Asshole/Evil + Redeeming Feature&quot; formula guarantees a likable character - consider the character concept as a whole; make sure the redeeming features get real play and affect the story; make sure you haven't just laid down an embarrassingly obvious patch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Jerome is an intelligent guy, and he's also got a great sense of humor!&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Well, does he? This is a specific &quot;Show, don't (just) tell&quot; issue - when you introduce a character by &lt;em&gt;telling&lt;/em&gt; us what kind of person he is, but you don't actually &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; him acting in accordance with the description you've given us, then the character becomes less believable, and might even come off as arrogantly claiming virtues he doesn't possess. So the charming hunk had better actually act charming; the intelligent guy had better actually know a lot; the alleged bully had better do some actual, cruel bullying, or else the main characters will look awful trying to get back at him. So, whenever you find yourself &lt;em&gt;describing&lt;/em&gt; a character explicitly, make sure he matches that description (or at least, that there's a good reason he's being described misleadingly).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what I've got at the moment... Hope these are helpful :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-05T18:14:17.143" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T18:14:17.143" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1813" CreationDate="2011-03-04T15:20:20.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general I find that discussions over the tools associated with writing are distractions from writing itself, in much the same way that I used to distract myself with endlessly tweaking my IDE/text editor when I was an undergrad CS major. We do this because tweaking and experimenting is easier than doing the thing itself. It's a form of procrastination, but it's a &quot;productive&quot; kind of procrastination--unlike gaming--we're better able to fool ourselves into thinking that we've accomplished something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This phenomenon's close cousin is incessant checking of social networks, IMing people, refreshing email, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My preferred tool is determined by the type of writing I'm doing. When I'm writing fiction (rare), I like a fullscreen environment, specifically DarkRoom, because it's just me and my characters. That being said, Notepad is my favorite writing application. I compose emails, replies to people (like this one, for instance), and I even wrote ~85% of my thesis in Notepad before moving it to Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why Notepad? Well it's basically &lt;em&gt;pure&lt;/em&gt; writing. There's nothing between you and your words: no UI bells and whistles. No distractions, no formatting beyond what you can do with whitespace and capital letters. (That's really all you need when you're doing an initial draft, anyway.) But you can look at other open windows, which is helpful when I'm composing a reply to someone, or need to reference another document or webpage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of these days I'm doing to re-write it to get rid of the bugs that've been in it since at least Windows 95. One of these days...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T15:20:20.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1850" CreationDate="2011-03-04T15:25:19.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What signs might there be that I'm writing an unbelievable character or one no one will care a thing about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your character is perfect, that is a bad sign.  Your character must have weaknesses and fallacies.  If you're writing a guy who is all good (or all bad), the reader won't care about him or your story because &lt;em&gt;there really is no story to tell&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="947" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T15:25:19.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1875" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-04T19:46:32.050" Score="24" ViewCount="12986" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fiction, the main character is often the first person we meet in the story.  Given that the story is written from his/her point of view, how would you describe what they look like?  The classical tricks (they look in a mirror or see their reflection in a lake) are not allowed (too traditional and boring).  Do you have any other tips or tricks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4377" LastEditorUserId="1342" LastEditDate="2011-03-13T18:40:25.040" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T01:23:16.980" Title="How to describe the point-of-view character without using mirrors" Tags="|fiction|technique|characters|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1781" CreationDate="2011-03-04T20:13:13.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best plots, in my opinion, are &quot;connected&quot; to a high degree.  This means that everything happens for a reason, and even the smallest detail can come back later and play a crucial role in the story.  Each of the feelings of your characters has a reason (something in the past that caused it) and a purpose (a new element in the future).  Try to find hidden links between scenes.  Ask &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; things happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another, unrelated tip might be to work together with somebody who loves coming up with plot lines but needs more insight into character development.  You can then write a few stories together, both playing to your own strength but learning from each other along the way.  This can even easily happen via the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4377" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T20:13:13.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1875" CreationDate="2011-03-04T20:26:42.190" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give the character a good reason to think about or comment on one key aspect of their own appearance. Perhaps the MC is proud of achieving something related to looks. Or jealous of another character. Or concerned about what some specific person might think. Maybe something has changed, by choice or otherwise. Or perhaps the character has to consider some physical attribute in order to make some decision. The important thing is to make it a strong reason that relates to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give another character a reason to comment. Maybe something has changed. Maybe the other character is envious. Or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give the character some action that demonstrates or suggests physical attributes. Do they have to move the car seat back in order to fit behind the wheel? Or move it up to reach the pedals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leave something for the reader to fill in. Maybe leave all of it for the reader to fill in. I saw Michael Connolly speak once, and he said that there was some main character (maybe Harry Bosch, maybe some other) that he had never described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One important point: If you are going to describe some distinctive feature, do it before the reader has filled in their own image. Learning on page 112 that the character is 6'5&quot; tall can be jarring if the reader has imagined the character at average height.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T20:26:42.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1875" CreationDate="2011-03-04T20:27:19.183" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;On one side of the spectrum, some ways of describing have the particularity that, instead of describing all of the character, they define them little by little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I. You can highlight their body while they do something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Indirectly: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I gladly helped her take the book from&#xA;  the high shelf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Implying a tall character)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) Directly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even though the opening was large, I could only get my forearm through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(So clearly it's a muscular character)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;II. In the middle of a dialog, as a description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Alright, now, stop it&quot;, I&#xA;  interjected. Being burlier than him, I&#xA;  could afford to raise my voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;III. Have someone make remarks about the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I had never noticed you had blue&#xA;  eyes&quot;, she said, leaning closer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can mix those. For instance, in that last example, you could add &quot;I felt my face was getting as red as my hair&quot; or something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side of the spectrum, you could use a technique that would be applied differently depending on the psychology of the character. For instance, you could have a very self conscious teenager reflect on their appearance; this approach would apply for a trendy character, too, although with a different feel (critically checking whether they look as they think they should, for instance). As far as I can tell, there are a few more character types that can have this technique easily applied, such as a narcissistic character, or simply one with high self esteem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;main thing&quot; about this second approach is, depending on the characters' self esteem and general attitude towards life, and whatever number of factors, the general feel of the way they think about their appearance changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T20:27:19.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1857" CreationDate="2011-03-05T17:43:23.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Closest I found to what you're looking for is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.holcombepublishing.com/authors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Holcombe Publishing&lt;/a&gt;. They're specialized in publishing academic books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, they request you to lend a hand in cover design and proofreading, and that'd be the only action required from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other points you mentioned, that they handle sales and delivery, are covered. And you only need to submit the work for them to check it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T17:43:23.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1875" CreationDate="2011-03-05T18:08:23.970" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't really any different than any other important information you want to get across early. Here's a few thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A character considering how s/he might look to others is classic and pretty non-intrusive - e.g. &quot;Somehow, people just see my blond hair and my perky smile, and never imagine such a cheerful, innocent-looking person might be a private detective who's awfully good at finding the skeletons in their closet.&quot; But this works particularly well for characters who feel that their (current) outward appearance is somehow odd or misleading, so YMMV.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A character can always simply reflect on whether they look good enough for [[CHOOSE ONE: the meeting, the date, meeting his ultra-snobby friend, delivering a keynote address, impressing random passerby, not completely embarrassing oneself in front of random passerby, OTHER]]. But this could easily portray the character as somewhat vain, self-aware, or self-absorbed. Not always what you want.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The key point to understand here is that, in order to justify explaining the character's appearance to your readers, you must find some point where the character himself needs to concern himself with his own appearance. Ask yourself: under what circumstances would that be? You can probably come up with circumstances which are very, very specific to your particular character. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you cannot find circumstances when your character would actually care about his own appearance, find circumstances under which some other character (somebody important to the story - not a random walk-on or Avon lady!) would care about his appearance. His mom before he leaves the house; his snobby friend dissing his clothes; a job interview where the prospective employer is clearly concerned that his scars imply a violent personality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you cannot find circumstances where &lt;strong&gt;anybody&lt;/strong&gt; would care about the character's specific appearance, or where they would make any significant difference, then it's worth considering if they're really worth describing. A book is not a movie; there's really no harm in letting readers form their own image of how the characters look - unless, for whatever reason, there are details that it's important for you to get across. But those details are probably the ones that are unusual (and hence, will be remarked upon), and/or that have significant effect on the character (and hence, you can find good situations to demonstrate them).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this is helpful :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-14T11:07:19.350" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T11:07:19.350" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1079" CreationDate="2011-03-06T00:20:35.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, read current scripts. You can surmise many formatting rules from examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, buy &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1935247026&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Screenwriter's Bible: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script&lt;/a&gt;. This helped me out when I couldn't get my hands on scripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, there's so much more to screenwriting than just format. There is style, which can only be learned by reading lots and lots of really good scripts. But note that if you're trying to write a spec script, that the rules for you differ greatly from the professionals. Your script must be big on whitespace and short on description. It's not fair, but it's just the way things are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T00:20:35.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1885" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-06T06:10:34.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Technique&quot; is literally a method, a way of doing something. &quot;Writing techniques&quot; refers to the methods, tricks of trade, conventions and guidelines that writers use to solve specific problems while plotting a story or writing a scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag is appropriate for questions seeking a &lt;strong&gt;general solution&lt;/strong&gt; to a &lt;strong&gt;specific, common issue&lt;/strong&gt; concerning &lt;strong&gt;the content of the story&lt;/strong&gt; (or the planning and construction of it), or questions examining a specific solution in greater detail. It is less appropriate for broad issues (&quot;Where can I look for story ideas?&quot;; &quot;How do I improve my prose?&quot;), or issues that deal with anything other than the actual story content (&quot;What are good techniques for finding an agent?&quot; or &quot;What are good techniques to encourage myself to write?&quot; may seem appropriate, but do not strictly fall under the category of &quot;writing technique&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for helpful techniques, be sure to explain clearly the issue you would like the technique to help with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are asking a question about an existing technique, be sure to explain clearly what the technique is (possibly with a link to a thorough definition).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-06T18:52:42.467" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T18:52:42.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1886" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-06T06:10:34.393" Score="0" Body="Common, repeatable methods of achieving particular storytelling effects or of avoiding narrative pitfalls." OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-06T18:52:54.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T18:52:54.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1887" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1889" CreationDate="2011-03-06T08:55:42.097" Score="6" ViewCount="1345" Body="&lt;p&gt;The upcoming Mac OSX Lion operating system is touting a new file revision control system called Versions (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ853c151Jw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;demo video here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm using for version control right now is rather rudimentary - I either copy and paste the files and number them to 'back them up'/create a new version, or do the same with bulletpoints in Evernote. I've tried looking into systems like GIT, but couldn't use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Might this be a good tool for non-techs and writers? What should my considerations be in deciding whether or not to buy this system - and how do the features Apple is advertising for Versions stack up against other revision-control systems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T01:51:25.507" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T01:51:25.507" Title="Is Mac OSX Lion's Revision Control System useable by writers?" Tags="|revision|version-control|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="473" CreationDate="2011-03-06T15:07:48.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would argue that typing isn't an important writing skill at all... unless it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't write by hand, because I can't write fast enough. I can't make edits on the fly. That being said, there are a great many writers who don't type at all. James Patterson, for example, writes entirely by hand on legal pads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed I think differently when I'm typing than when I'm writing, and that typing produces better results. Quite a few others find the opposite. I learned to type at the same time I was practicing my writing, and I suspect this is why the two are so inextricably linked--each was a vehicle for the other. Basically you need to find what works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, typing is certainly an important skill to have, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's a writing skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T15:07:48.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1887" CreationDate="2011-03-06T15:15:45.187" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I'm not interested in this particular feature, but I know people that are. It's obvious why writers haven't used version control systems: until recently, they were all terrible. Svn? CVS? God help you. Mercurial isn't so bad, but it is designed around programming, and it's still pretty arcane for your average user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think Versions might bring the concept of version control to the masses in an accessible way. While I won't use it, I'm sure it'll make many people's lives easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T15:15:45.187" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="473" CreationDate="2011-03-06T18:44:14.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, touch typing is not important for writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How fast do you need to type in order to write at a reasonable pace? Most people seem to consider a thousand words in a day a reasonable rate for a professional novellist. You do not need to type at a speed of 70 wpm to write a thousand words in day. In order to type a thousand words in an hour you need a typing speed of less than 17 wpm. So much of a creative writer's time is spent thinking about what to write next rather than on data entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is important is typing fluency: not having to think about putting words into the keyboard. Learning to touch type may help achieve such fluency, but spending enough hours at the keyboard will ensure it anyway, and then you'll be fine for writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I have never learned to touch type. Most of what I spent my time writing on the keyboard early in my career was program code, which has rather too large a proportion of proportion of punctuation for touch typing to be an efficient technique. Since I can type at 60 wpm without touch typing, it would now be too disruptive for me to learn a new keyboarding method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T18:44:14.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1891" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1896" CreationDate="2011-03-06T22:52:50.870" Score="5" ViewCount="265" Body="&lt;p&gt;So sometimes I get an idea that forms specifically around some aspect of pop culture.  They're often song lyrics.  If the reader knows the song, they appreciate the symbolism and allegory or whatever other crazy stuff I didn't quite intend but they decided to see in it, and if they don't know the song they go &quot;it's nice, but what was that song?&quot;  Granted that I have eclectic tastes in music, but this has even happened with Elton John lyrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SO how do I approach referencing something that a good portion of my readers won't be familiar with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1481" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-06T23:45:00.040" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T10:13:39.977" Title="How should I approach possibly unfamiliar pop culture in fiction?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1891" CreationDate="2011-03-07T00:51:05.183" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of two suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the character sing or quote the&#xA;verse you're referencing. If you were to have this brainwave in real life, you'd have to explain it to your friends who haven't heard the song anyway, right?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put the verse as a block in italics&#xA;as a sort of one-paragraph preface. Stephen King did this in beginning of &lt;i&gt;The Stand.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T00:51:05.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1875" CreationDate="2011-03-07T05:24:45.137" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;All of the previous answers are good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One technique I didn't see mentioned is that the reader can infer some of the POV character's looks when the POV character compares him or herself to other people, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Wow, that guy has even curlier hair than I do!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;That guy must be loaded. I've been shopping big and tall shops since I was 16, and I know suits like that don't come cheap.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Her mouth looks like mine before I got braces.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1482" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T05:24:45.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="473" CreationDate="2011-03-07T07:44:03.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I learnt to touch type about 6 months ago after my wife pointed out that although I was a fast typist, half of the time, I was actually hitting backspace to correct a typo. So actually I was quite a slow typist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I can touch type, I realise that my poor typing skills before were having a small impact on my creative writing. It was like I was writing in short stutters rather than a steady stream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend you learn. If it doesn't make any difference to your writing life, it's still a useful skill to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1438" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T07:44:03.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1887" CreationDate="2011-03-07T09:46:29.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not the only one—&lt;em&gt;cool!&lt;/em&gt; I've thought about buying a developer membership to get access to the public beta of Lion just for this feature alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I figure that if &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.git-tower.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tower&lt;/a&gt; (a popular Git client) is $60, it's worth paying another $40 to get so much more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T09:46:29.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1891" CreationDate="2011-03-07T10:13:39.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To a certain extent it depends on how closely entwined your reference is to the intended appreciation of the story. To take the example of a pop song: if you need to listen to the song to really get the story then I would tend to leave that as an unspoken rule. Make sure people get what the song is so they can track down a copy but there's no need to ram it down their throats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it goes even deeper so a reader needs to understand things about the artist and the context in which the song was written, what was going on in the news when it attained its highest chart position and other ephemera surrounding the song production the situation changes. In that case you need to evaluate whether your writing could genuinely be seen as an independent piece of work, or if it is, in essence a &quot;bonus feature&quot; to the thing that you're referencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case then the best thing to do is to not really mention it explicitly. If people get it then fine otherwise, as it's an independent work in its own right, also fine. Some people will get a little added wrinkle on what is, no doubt, already a fine piece of work. You should, however, be careful to ensure that other readers don't even really think they've missed anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the latter case then be up front to your audience somehow that this is essentially a commentary upon a specific song and &quot;for psycho fans only&quot; (that's a Tenacious D reference by the way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you give your audience the information they need then nothing is really &quot;wrong&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T10:13:39.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1901" CreationDate="2011-03-07T12:48:18.770" Score="15" ViewCount="2334" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a fictional story set in a fantastical (although coherent) universe. I'm used to seeing invented languages in works like this: Tolkien's languages for The Lord of the Rings, or Paolini's languages for his Inheritance Trilogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; pretty and all that, but why would I want to use them? Or even better: What would you use them for? What's the benefit of actually inventing the language and writing (dialogs) in that language as opposed of simply specifying it exists and letting people know when it's being used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T20:30:12.547" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T20:30:12.547" Title="What's the benefit of using invented languages in-story?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|novel|fantasy|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1897" CreationDate="2011-03-07T13:25:07.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As to Tolkien, he was a linguist and his Elven language was like a linguistic toy or pet project which he wove into his mythology. I take this as the baseline for created languages. If you are a linguist then they can add a little linguistic spice to your work. I wouldn't make up a language because I wouldn't know how to go about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even so many neuro-linguistics researchers say that we have an &quot;instinct&quot; for language, so if you tried to make one up then there's a chance it could end up being a perfectly valid language e.g. Klingon. But why you would want to remains beyond me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T13:25:07.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1897" CreationDate="2011-03-07T13:45:10.433" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use a (very) few invented vocabulary words to indicate specific items which are unique to your created race, but put them in context so that the reader can quickly divine the meaning, or explain the meaning in narration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reason to have lines of dialogue in an invented language is when a character from Group A meets a character from Group B, and B character doesn't speak Group A language. Keep the invented-language lines brief, and use them more to illustrate the language barrier than to hold a conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T14:38:01.523" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T14:38:01.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1897" CreationDate="2011-03-07T13:47:28.227" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best answer is something called Suspension of Disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When your readers go through your book, especially if it’s a fantasy/sci-fi book, they &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; that the world you describe is not real. However, they &quot;suspend&quot; this disbelief in order to enjoy the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, you should do your best not to break that Suspension of Disbelief. You are to encourage it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incorporating alien languages (when appropriate) helps the reader keep his Suspension of Disbelief. What's more believable, an alien jumping in front of your protagonist yelling &quot;&lt;em&gt;Ktha'h Mortikah!!&lt;/em&gt; and blasting his plasma rifle, or an alien shouting &quot;Die you human scum!!&quot; while waving his plasma rifle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it, sporadic use of an alien language (when appropriate) can make the story more believable, and therefore more enjoyable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T14:43:28.490" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T14:43:28.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1897" CreationDate="2011-03-07T15:43:25.093" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;An invented language can be a tool for exposing the traits of a culture.  Different languages not only sound different, but they &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; different.  They shape ideas differently.  They are also shaped by their environments.  The way a language works can help illustrate the thought processes of the people who speak it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I recently saw the Star Trek episode &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Darmok&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; where the Enterprise encounters a race whose entire language is based on metaphor and comparison.  Their actions seem hostile until the crew begins to understand their language, at which point it becomes apparent that the alien captain acted with surprising selflessness in order to open the lines of communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example comes from Dune.  Paul and his family move from Caladan (a water world) to Dune (a desert world).  They are shocked when they natives spit at them, taking it as an insult.  In fact, the natives are offering their allegiance by giving away a small part of their bodies' water.  As water is a precious resource on the planet, this is a gesture of respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many stories simply use invented languages for flavor.  Sometimes this can help the world feel a little bit more alive.  Still, I feel that the author misses an opportunity if they don't bother thinking about the mechanics of the language &lt;em&gt;at least a little&lt;/em&gt;, and about how the language reflects the unique aspects of that culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also be very careful to avoid over-using an invented language.  Paragraphs of made-up words are going to be off-putting to most readers.  However, carefully used phrases, words, or even body language, can be a very powerful tool, revealing differences between cultures and their modes of thinking.  They can create barriers or ties between characters.  They can even be the cause of misunderstandings and wars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T15:43:25.093" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1902" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-07T17:01:33.440" Score="10" ViewCount="3214" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do they still make hardware-based word processors?  I would like a portable, no-frills dedicated machine for writing.  The Neo from Alpha Smart looks close but $150 seems excessive for calculator power in a big case.  A used laptop might be an option but I'm worried about the additional weight and probable lack of support/warranty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1487" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T23:27:01.063" Title="Hardware-based Word Processor" Tags="|mobile|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1902" CreationDate="2011-03-07T17:21:31.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could go for a small Mac laptop and try finding one with AppleCare. Apple does sell refurbished laptops with a warranty for less than list price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T17:21:31.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1902" CreationDate="2011-03-07T17:33:24.660" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This ebay link might get you started. With ubiquitous cheap computing power, I bet some of the older stuff can be had really cheap, so long as the owners don't have unrealistic expectations about what it's worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&amp;amp;_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&amp;amp;_nkw=word+processor&amp;amp;_sacat=See-All-Categories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&amp;amp;_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&amp;amp;_nkw=word+processor&amp;amp;_sacat=See-All-Categories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Looking through there, I'm getting a little nostalgic... I learned to type on a Brother Word Processor in 6th grade. Wrote my first &quot;real&quot; story (~30 pages) at that time. It was great because there was absolutely no distraction from the writing itself, and it did basic stuff like spell checking before outputting to a piece of typing paper. You could also use it as a typewriter if you wanted to. Of course, it wasn't really portable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T17:33:24.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1905" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1912" CreationDate="2011-03-07T17:37:09.213" Score="16" ViewCount="1418" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble portraying religious, devout characters as protagonists or viewpoint characters. When I try, I get the sense that the reader - not sharing the characters' beliefs - will have trouble accepting the characters' non-rational beliefs and obligations. More crucially, even if he accepts that, &quot;yes, OK, the character believes in this stuff,&quot; I think a reader would have trouble ascribing &lt;strong&gt;importance&lt;/strong&gt; to those beliefs in the way that the character himself would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put this as bluntly as possible, I want to write about characters who are firmly committed to obeying a set of rules. They don't need to like all the rules. They don't have to find reasons the rules are worthwhile. They certainly don't need or attempt to convince the readers of anything - and probably share their opinion that some of the rules are pointless, or even horrible. But they follow the rules, or try to; they see the rules as being axiomatically important; upholding the rules is a value in and of itself - not just a value among many, but one of the very highest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that this type of character naturally clashes with the reader's expectations of what a character &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be doing. And while there are plenty of fictional characters who act in ways most readers would find unwise or outright abhorrent, a good author usually manages to get across the viewpoint, personality, and motivation that explain why the character acts this way - essentially, what is important enough to him to elicit so radical and unusual a reaction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen this done with religiously observant characters. And I don't know how to do it without sounding as though I'm preaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples I'd have difficulty with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A person who gives up on the chance for a romantic relationship with somebody whose religion is different than his own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An Orthodox Jew who can't join his friends for meals because their food isn't kosher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A fantasy story focusing on a religious ceremony which is purely ceremonial, and yet is also truly, genuinely important to the character.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel as if in all these cases, the reader's own values and beliefs will keep him from feeling &lt;strong&gt;invested&lt;/strong&gt; in the things which are important to the character. (I may be wrong on this! But that's my instinctive response.)  If the readers come out feeling the protagonist should get over his beliefs, and focus on &quot;the important things,&quot; then I haven't immersed them in the character and what's important to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast with viewers wanting to see Rachel and Ross together even if they don't particularly like Rachel and/or Ross, or accepting Dexter's need to murder despite the fact that it's an irrational, arbitrary urge. Usually, when something is important to a character, we can get readers to accept that. We may &lt;em&gt;criticize&lt;/em&gt; the character for his priorities and choices, but we'll still care about what's important to him. For some reason, I feel that this doesn't work with a religious character - that the (arguably) arbitrary and immutable nature of his beliefs makes them difficult to accept as significant or worth attention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How, then, can I portray such a character sympathetically? Examples and examinations of such portrayals are very welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HEAVILY EDITED 7/3/11 for improved focus.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T09:14:15.863" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T05:16:42.923" Title="Sympathetic portrayal of devout, rule-abiding characters" Tags="|characters|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1905" CreationDate="2011-03-07T18:04:39.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Show, don't tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the religion is that important to the character, then it will be apparent in almost every aspect of the person's life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Physically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clothing: men and women (and don't forget the Mormon &quot;garment&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hat/turban/skullcap/scarf/veil&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hair: length (that is, when is it&#xA;allowed to be cut), style, hidden&#xA;under a wig, hidden under veil&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Face: for men, beards/no beards; for&#xA;women: how much can be shown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Food taboos:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Various animals are or are not&#xA;allowed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mixing meat and dairy (I know one&#xA;Jewish woman who couldn't be bothered&#xA;to figure out meat vs. dairy so she&#xA;always ate vegetarian for lunch at&#xA;work)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Behavior:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resting on the sabbath (Orthodox Jews&#xA;can take this to staggering lengths. &quot;Not operating machinery&quot; can be parsed to &quot;turning a doorknob is okay, turning a deadbolt is not.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attending services&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some people attend services daily,&#xA;not just weekly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Crossing oneself when passing a&#xA;church&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tithing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does the person swear?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does the person speak? (I've&#xA;known fundamentalists who, without&#xA;exaggeration, manage to work the name&#xA;of Jesus into every third sentence.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;House d&amp;eacute;cor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pictures of saints/popes/Jesus/Mary&#xA;etc. on the walls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Crucifix/Mezzuzah/Buddha&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...You get the idea. Once you've established that this is A Religious Person, and if you write about the varying rituals from a kind perspective rather than a mocking one, your reader will grasp the importance of the religion to the character, and will understand why s/he does whatever it is you're trying to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T18:04:39.163" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1905" CreationDate="2011-03-07T18:20:58.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know what specific issues you ran into; nevertheless, general advice I can give you is: imagine you're writing a person with foreign customs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to &lt;em&gt;state&lt;/em&gt; the beliefs (implicitly or explicitly, but they have to be noticeable), and possibly their reason or origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Portraying the characters as feeling uncomfortable around situations that run against their beliefs helps stating them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having someone get curious as to the character's behavior will give it a chance to state their reasons, and their attitude while talking or rejecting the activities that go against whatever they believe in will give them depth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nelaf was led to the tent used as dining room. So far her travel was faring well, even though it was too early to say so. She was glad she'd been taken in by this fine caravan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She felt an odd smell, too much like charred flesh. Her stomach revolted as she tried to detect the source. Whoever had sustained such a harsh burn had to receive healing urgently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Wait!&amp;quot;, her escort called, but the urge to stop the suffering was to great. She ran into the kitchen, following the smell, and what she saw made her burst to tears: rows upon rows of animals were being roasted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;How could you?&amp;quot;, she screamed. She was surrounded by monsters. Who could kill a brother and eat it? Nature provided food... why would anyone commit such cruelty? It was inhuman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wanton massacre committed by these men made them unholy: who could kill their mother and live with it? The laughter and talk from the dining hall only made everything worse. She had to get away from these people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very hasty, but the basic theme is there: you can portray it as heavily as needed. And work on it, because it might sound exaggerated until you polish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T18:20:58.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1902" CreationDate="2011-03-07T18:33:41.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have an existing smart phone, iPod Touch or similar device, you may be able to hack up a solution using a portable bluetooth keyboard and word processing app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1488" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T18:33:41.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1905" CreationDate="2011-03-07T18:34:52.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good question. I would also tie the religious / spiritual side in with the social aspect, creating a wider &quot;common ground&quot; for people to relate to who do not necessarily relate to the belief system. As a matter of fact, &quot;going against ones' religious beliefs&quot; is generally not very far from &quot;going against the social system one was raised in&quot;, and stressing the social aspects may make it easier for a wider range of readers to deal with.&#xA;Of course people from the same background will relate to the character that much more (Orthodox Jews as per your example). It's probably unavoidable. But if you do a good job of portraying the protagonist's wants, conflicts and emotions - and if you are careful to ensure that the character is not defined ONLY by his / her religious beliefs, but by a wide range of traits which will create understanding and empathy - there should be no problem in getting the message across loud and clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would love to read some of your stuff, incidentally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1489" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T18:34:52.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1910" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-07T19:08:14.403" Score="5" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently composed a blog post about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.matthewedmondson.info/2011/02/key-to-another-world.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;World of Warcraft Authenticators&lt;/a&gt; and would love for some feedback as per the quality of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously no matter how many times I read it there's no substitute for others to cast their eye over it, so I would love to know the answer to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it easy to follow?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it convey the technical information concisely?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you enjoy reading it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any anything else regarding the quality of the post would be much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1219" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T07:09:00.823" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T07:09:00.823" Title="Feedback on technical blog post" Tags="|technical-writing|blog|clarity|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1897" CreationDate="2011-03-07T19:20:26.550" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would limit the use of invented languages as much as possible.  I'm not saying this to play devil's advocate, but because I often find that exotic names and words distract from the story.  In fact, I've written short stories in which all the characters had names like Brown (has brown eyes), Lightning (very fast with the sword), etc.  This somehow keeps the image of these characters more clearly in my mind than if they were called Eldorick or Zarmagoth or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same goes for creatures (e.g. &quot;Soulstealers&quot; has much more power than an invented name), towns (e.g. &quot;Donkeytrot&quot; lies one day's travel on donkey back from the capital), plants (think of the many plant names in the Harry Potter series) etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, keep in mind that pulling off a fake language is not easy (Tolkien is one of the very, very few who succeeded).  It's a huge investment that keeps you from your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4377" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T19:20:26.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1905" CreationDate="2011-03-07T19:32:12.610" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;While you might personally have issues with the three items you listed, calling religious belief arguably arbitrary and irrational and letting that viewpoint seep into your writing is going to make your task very difficult.  You yourself need to learn to sympathize with a religious viewpoint first.  You don't need to accept it, but you need to believe that someone can be fully using their mental, emotional, physical, and other capacities and still believe in God/gods/reincarnation/the spirit world/what have you.  If you can't get yourself past this issue, you should reconsider the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll walk through the three situations that you listed as difficult and describe how I write the character:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A person who gives up on the chance for a romantic relationship with somebody whose religion is different than his own.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, don't make this an easy, obvious choice.  You could write this character many ways.  Take a conservative Christian character, perhaps, who winds up in a romantic relationship with a committed agnostic who, while not opposed to her beliefs, is confident that he will never share them.  The Christian might remember days in her self-assured youth where she could never imagine herself dating (or, to be very conservative, courting) anyone but someone who shared her views on God and Christ.  Then she might remember being totally bowled over by the experience of this guy - all the amazing things about him.  Make the decision agony.  At the same time, you have to make God and her belief in him compelling.  Show what she loves about her faith - the fact, perhaps, that she can rest in God working all circumstances for good in her life and his unconditional acceptance of her.  If you were to write such a conservative Christian character, you would need to find out what Christians love about their God, or at least their church.  You can certainly put in pressure from a legalistic family or church, but while that's realistic it's far less likely to be sympathetic than a young woman who cannot imagine going against what she believes God has told her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An Orthodox Jew who can't join his friends for meals because their food isn't kosher.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about the character Danny in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chosen_%28Potok_novel%29&quot;&gt;The Chosen&lt;/a&gt;.  We readers initially see Danny through the unsympathetic viewpoint of Reuven.  However as Reuven gets to know Danny, he finds out things that make this character sympathetic - the coldness of Danny's father, the voracious mind Danny has, etc.  Reuven even comes to respect Danny's cold, extremely conservative father Reb because of the congregants great love for Reb and the sense that Danny's cold father really loves his son.  Chaim Potok, the author, does an excellent job of bringing us inside motivations and showing the cost of following one's beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the case of an Orthodox Jew keeping kosher, make kosher matter.  Associate it with good memories of family, tradition, and G-d (to use the Jewish form of respect).  Also explain the friendship and make it matter, perhaps more to the Orthodox Jew than to his friends who won't eat kosher for a night to allow him to join in.  You can even make this character noble, someone who is true to his values and deserves respect.  Make him upright in all areas of his life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A fantasy story focusing on a religious ceremony which is purely ceremonial, and yet is also truly, genuinely important to the character.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what a purely ceremonial ceremony is as opposed to a regular religious ceremony.  Still, let's take an example of Passover.  Passover represents G-d's rescue of the children of Israel from Egypt long, long ago.  Dig into what it means to the Jewish people and you should be able to make it matter to your readers, as long as you can see why it would matter to a character.  Or what about the example of Christian baptism of an adult convert to the faith?  Dunking in water or being sprinkled by it doesn't really seem like much on the surface.  You have to understand what's behind baptism - the symbolism of dying to self and doing wrong and coming up into new life in Christ where one strives to serve God because he is great and worthy of honor and do right to other people because it's what we ought to do.  Baptism represents a very serious milepost in the life of Christians and understanding it will help you significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; - first you have to be sympathetic with the characters and see both the value of their faith to them and the ways that it motivates them in the world, then you can write them in a sympathetic way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example books to read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0374153892&quot;&gt;Gilead&lt;/a&gt; by Marilynne Robinson&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0449213447&quot;&gt;The Chosen&lt;/a&gt; by Chaim Potok&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0142437301&quot;&gt;The Power and the Glory&lt;/a&gt; by Graham Greene&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0812972228&quot;&gt;Father Brown&lt;/a&gt; by G. K. Chesterton&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0374530637&quot;&gt;Wise Blood&lt;/a&gt; by Flannery O'Connor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T19:37:27.783" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T19:37:27.783" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1910" CreationDate="2011-03-07T19:33:35.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it easy to follow?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't really find this paragraph to be very clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So if I was somehow able to obtain someones log-in code as above, and I knew what its separate components were.  I could just take off the first 4 digits (1237) and substitute in the current time whenever I wanted to generate a verified code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I wasn't sure why you had the scare quotes around &lt;em&gt;synchronize&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you first receive your device you must &quot;synchronise&quot; your online account with the serial no&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You generally have to enter at least one or two codes in a row in order to synchronize the authenticator, because it uses a time based function, rather than the actual date and time (it updates every 30 seconds in reality), and the server needs to determine where you are in the sequence of valid serial numbers.  So it is &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; synchronizing something and as such doesn't need the scare quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have a few single-sentence paragraphs which don't seem to convey a complete thought you might consider combining, for instance the one beginning &quot;To mitigate this. . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did enjoy reading it, aside from the middle where the information seemed to be quite disjoint, and it does have the potential to be a great article after some work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T19:33:35.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1905" CreationDate="2011-03-07T21:19:41.447" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll admit outright that it's late and so I won't read all of the rigorous Q&amp;amp;A presented here. However, I would like to present you with a few examples, off the top of my head, that may be of use to you in your quest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First thing that pops to mind is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Slave_%28book%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Slave&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. I'll assume you've read it, since if you hadn't it is an inconceivable wrong you must right at once. The main character faces the exact same dilemmas you are talking about, and the book is beautifully written and extremely moving (&lt;em&gt;sobs&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;em&gt;sobs&lt;/em&gt;) - even a sarcastic feminist heretic such as I couldn't force her own set of beliefs on the character, and wouldn't expect him to act any other way, tragic as it was. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mad Men is a good example of characters having different sets of beliefs and ideas about life than our own, and still being totally believable in their actions - even if those are sometimes quite terrible by our standards. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, URGH! I've looked for half an hour for another very specific story and I'm trying to remember it's name, or the author, or where I came across it. &#xA;But it was also by one of those Jewish-Polish authors, so it's a good thing to brush up on some of those. These dilemmas are their bread and butter. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Something I'll bet you hadn't come across. The anime series &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino%27s_Journey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kino's Journey&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;A very good series, really. Kino travels between fictional cities, and each city has a strange culture or tradition of it's own. Explaining will ruin it. Go find a DVD somewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Murakami has plenty of characters that are terribly obsessed with cleanliness, order and cooking, to the point of those becoming rituals. Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, maybe. (I must reluctantly admit I hadn't finished that book. boo-hoo on me). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look at &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Penal_Colony&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;In the Penal Colony&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Though that might be taking it a notch too far. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule, though, a character undergoing a process is more interesting than a character staying in the same spot. Someone who decides not to have a complicated romantic relationship isn't as interesting as someone who has it and regrets it. &#xA;But I guess if it's not really the main or only focus in the story, it won't be a problem. &#xA;The ceremony example is actually quite interesting, btw. I'd read that story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1491" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T08:52:18.987" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T08:52:18.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1910" CreationDate="2011-03-07T22:46:10.007" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This started short, and then got long pretty quickly. Feel free to use as many of my suggestions as you want, or none at all. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) First off, I find your site VERY hard to read. White on black works for a small group of people, but dark on light is more universally accessible according to every usability study... ever. I also had trouble distinguishing bolded text from non-bolded. Outside the scope of what you're asking, but something to think about for later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Abbreviating &quot;number&quot; as &quot;no&quot; is pretty jarring. You're not space-constrained (a la Twitter), so you should probably write the whole number out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) You've got some missing commas, missing apostrophes, and a missing letter. I fixed them in my reworded sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) I've never played WoW, but found the article interesting nonetheless. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for some re-phrasing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original:&#xA;Since time is universal and the serial no never changes both the WoW server, and the device now have access to the two same variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reworded:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Since time is universal and the serial no never changes, the WoW server and the device both have access to the same two variables.&lt;/em&gt; (&quot;two same&quot; is more awkward than &quot;same two&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original:&#xA;The server (when you log in) and the authenticator (when you press the button) both generate a code based on the current time and the serial no. Using these both parties concatenate them together so they end up with a sum of all of those values like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reworded:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;The login server and authentication fob both generate a code based on the current time and serial number. These are then concantenated together to come up with one long sequence of numbers, like so:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; I know what concantenate means, but a lot of people don't. You could use a word like &quot;stitch&quot; instead, depending on who your audience is. &quot;These are then stitched together to come up with...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Sum of know[N] values = [Current Time] + [Authenticator Serial No] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Known values = 12:37 + 1412668222&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;gives you the following sequence of numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[numbers]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sequence could be generated by the login server or the authenticator fob for any given time.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original:&#xA;The small problem with this is if anyone could capture this number,  by looking at your screen, keylogging, phishing or any number of other attacks it would be trivial pick apart the separate values and modify it so that it would work any time they required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reword:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;The problem with this is that this number can be captured by anyone through a variety of methods: looking at your screen, installing a keylogger, phishing, or any number of other attacks&lt;/em&gt;. [Usually, if something is trivial, you don't need to say it, so omit the last part of this pharagraph.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;So if I was somehow able to obtain someones log-in code as above, and I knew what its separate components were.  I could just take off the first 4 digits (1237) and substitute in the current time whenever I wanted to generate a verified code.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Redundant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Content:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&quot;To mitigate this the number is encrypted  using either DES, 3DES or AES as supported by the device which will turn it into something meaningless, such as: 63634545.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know this for sure? It seems more likely that they'd use a one-way hashing algorithm instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original:&#xA;To mitigate the user taking a while to submit their code it's likely the WoW server will accept a number of codes corresponding to a couple of minutes prior the actual time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reword:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;To mitigate the user taking a while to submit their code it's likely the WoW server will accept a range of numbers, from a couple of minutes prior to the actual time.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original:&#xA;Therefore I hope I've demystified how these devices work, and shown how its possible to manufacture these devices for mere pennies whilst thwarting many sophisticated attempts to gain access to users WoW accounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reword:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;I hope I've explained how these devices work, and shown how it's possible to manufacture these devices for pennies while thwarting a range of attack vectors.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastEditorUserId="1467" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T22:51:36.510" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T22:51:36.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1910" CreationDate="2011-03-07T23:31:51.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found the white text on the black background to be very difficult for me to read your post. I did my best to get through the content and thought the material itself was fine, but the choice of text and background made it strenuous for me to stay focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot comment on if the material was concise, because I don't know much about the material in general. But if you wanted brevity you could probably cut it in half in order to get the information you want delivered. I would suggest that you might want to cut it in half anyway, and do a &quot;Part 1&quot;, &quot;Part 2&quot;, maybe even more parts, and make a short series. That way you get extra posts out of one topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="725" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T23:31:51.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1897" CreationDate="2011-03-07T23:44:41.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should take the time to try to learn a new language in a class context. I say this because most decent language teachers will teach about the language's culture as well as the language. And &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; is because some constructs and words won't make sense unless you know the corresponding culture. The different levels of deference in Japanese verbs is a good example of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you will understand when I say that the best use of an invented language is to convey a cultural difference. You don't even need to use the language in your story; it can be enough just to talk about it. In my current novel, I'm using language barriers to help define a few different cultures. My main two protagonists know several languages, one of which is actually not even recognised as spoken words by the main antagonists who largely only speak another. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T23:44:41.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1905" CreationDate="2011-03-07T23:45:03.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an excellent example of a sympathetic and devout character, I'd recommend The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_Long_Sun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Book Of The Long Sun by Gene Wolfe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1493" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T23:45:03.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1905" CreationDate="2011-03-08T00:41:03.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting predicament, I agree with the answer above that you might face difficulties in realising a justifiably, strict religious character if you don't identify with the religion yourself at all. It will no doubt affect your writing if you yourself find the beliefs the character holds with such esteem as &quot;arbitrary and immutable&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding what, in the world around us, drives people to hope/believe that there is something more than this is key. Immerse the reader with the optimism and promise of divinity and describe any deviation from this in the harshest light possible, but make the internal conflict clear as to not completely alienate the reader. Initially most non-religious readers will find your character hard to identify with but bring his humanity and flaws into contact with his pursuit of divinity; most readers will then, hopefully, begin to understand and identify with what motivates your characters choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1495" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T00:41:03.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="473" CreationDate="2011-03-08T00:48:47.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can touchtype and spend as assign the least amount of brainpower possible to the actual physical typing, there is undoubtedly less of a barrier for your creativity and ideas to translate across onto the screen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dedicating a pen to paper and writing longhand often leaves me with an uncertainty about what to write; I find myself censoring my thought processes far too much, it seems too permanent. With touchtyping I can farm out raw ideas and arrange them how I please in a short period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1495" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T00:48:47.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1905" CreationDate="2011-03-08T03:30:31.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try an experiment: take one aspect of that person's faith and go into ridiculous emotional detail.  Maybe have flashbacks.  Maybe take everything slowly.  Obsess over that aspect until it is itself a reflection of the character.  It's possible that once you've established that one small facet, everything else can be seen through that perspective even if you don't go into too much detail, and the reader will have more respect for the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although probably a bit more juvenile than you're aiming for (and in sequential art form as opposed to written text), your description immediately brings to mind for me &quot;Hereville&quot; by Barry Deutsch (can be read here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hereville.com/webcomic/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hereville.com/webcomic/&lt;/a&gt; ).  At one point there's an interlude where everything stops for Shabbat, including the plot itself.  It' rather well-done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1481" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T03:30:31.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1905" CreationDate="2011-03-08T16:57:17.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion is that if you want to express the view point of a &quot;eccentric&quot; character, and not just present it, the only way to achieve it is to think in a &quot;subjective&quot; way. It's hard to express a subjective element in a objective light IMO, so just ignore your feelings and find that sweet spot between truth and lies that makes it stick but not stink. Then when writing, pretend that's absolute truth. You don't have to show miracles in a story to somehow make some imaginary gods semi-believable in a work of fiction. If you can't, then I'd have to guess the beliefs of your character are too shallow, or your setting and background for your character needs more work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cases I faced were not (directly) religious characters, so take it with a grain of salt, but it may still work for you. My advice though is that when in doubt on how to write, the solution is usually: write until you get it right. You can only theorycraft these things so much… and even then it's only useful if you can make the theory work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="589" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T16:57:17.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1887" CreationDate="2011-03-08T18:30:03.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Celtx offered version control several years ago.  I got excited about that, and then I never used it.  Version control systems are popular in software because rolling back in time is not uncommon (and, at worst, frequent).  Writing, though, usually pushes forward.  You almost never roll back to an early version of a file.  Draft, perhaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="947" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T18:30:03.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1928" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1931" CreationDate="2011-03-08T18:38:16.727" Score="9" ViewCount="646" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it worth it for writers to give away free short stories (or entire novels)? I've heard people say that having freebies on your site can boost sales of your books. I'm not talking about giving away free copies of Novel X to improve Novel X's sales, but writing a completely unrelated story and offering it up as a freebie. Is there any &quot;evidence&quot; that this actually does improve your sales?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="361" LastEditDate="2011-03-09T00:25:48.113" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T11:09:57.787" Title="Does giving away free stories boost sales?" Tags="|short-story|marketing|sales|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1928" CreationDate="2011-03-08T19:05:13.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can offer no evidence, but speaking as a reader, it would make me more likely to purchase a book if I had read and enjoyed the writer's freebies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because I've already seen the&#xA;writer's skill, style, and&#xA;characters, and decided whether the&#xA;writer was appealing to me&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After a coupla freebies I start to&#xA;feel like I owe the person&#xA;something, and should support the&#xA;generous writer with some money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Particularly if the writer is&#xA;posting freebies in some interactive&#xA;manner, so I could feel like I was&#xA;part of a community, and thereby got&#xA;a little invested in &quot;seeing my&#xA;cyber-friend's work do well.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T19:05:13.683" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1928" CreationDate="2011-03-08T19:16:57.537" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your work is appealing, it should work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever asked for a book to a friend, read it, fell in love with it, and started buying everything by that author? It happened to me with the Wheel of Time series, and with Jules Verne's works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, by giving away the books, you're doing what a friend would do: give you the chance to know the author, the chance to fall in love with the work, to appreciate it, and to buy it. On the other hand, it helps your public relations and gives you a &quot;this guy's really cool and down to Earth&quot; image that many a reader likes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastEditorUserId="1342" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T20:31:30.077" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T20:31:30.077" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1928" CreationDate="2011-03-08T22:51:22.620" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tread with caution. A &lt;strong&gt;lot&lt;/strong&gt; of caution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Free stories to promote the author is a marketing strategy. As such, there are situations where it can be wonderful; situations it can be disastrous; situations it can be utterly harmless and entirely insignificant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think these are the central questions you've got to ask yourself when considering writing freebies for the web:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this webpage likely to gain more exposure than the story would get if I sold it to available, attainable markets?&lt;/strong&gt; If it's not - you've gained nothing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Am I certain this story is of high enough quality to represent my work positively and enticingly to the outside world?&lt;/strong&gt; If you're not - your free pieces may drive readers away. Recall also that anything you post on the internet is basically going to stay there forever. You'd better be sure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I expect readers to come across my free offerings?&lt;/strong&gt; The web is full of free fiction. Most of it is sheer drivel. Unless you promote your free fiction somehow, there's no reason to think anybody will find it, come looking for it, or pass it on to friends.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What non-free writing of mine are the free pieces promoting?&lt;/strong&gt; If you can't point easily to precisely what works of yours you expect the reader of the free pieces to march out and buy, you can't expect the readers to bother and figure out for themselves how to send you some money. You've got to be clear, at least to yourself, on what it is you're promoting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most likely result of publishing pieces online is that nothing in particular will happen with them. They will likely fall somewhere between &quot;nobody will read them because they'll never hear of them&quot; and &quot;some people will read them, enjoy them to some extent, maybe share with friends, but they won't be enthusiastic enough to go out and hunt for the author's other stuff.&quot; At the higher end of the spectrum, you've got &quot;a lot of people who read this might be more favorably inclined to buy something of the author's if they run into it in the future.&quot; For most authors, that doesn't get them very far towards where they want to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the situations where I think publishing free stories online sounds like a good marketing strategy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The free work is intrinsically linked to the promoted work (e.g. same characters, same setting). The free work basically serves as a direct teaser, ad, or prologue for the larger work. Sometimes, an author will even rework an extract of a larger work as a stand-alone story for this purpose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author is established enough to attract some interest from readers, and has a fair number of works available for purchase. Visitors to the author's website are people who have read one or two things by the author, and are interested in finding out more; free stories are a great way to encourage this most welcome interest. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author believes he has enough existing fans (or can entice some) to spread around his free stories, eventually raising general awareness of the author.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author intends to devote substantial energy and effort into promoting his work; the free stories serve as content he can point people to, and come as a part of a wider promotion/marketing/content-producing effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's where I'd see free stories as being really useful. If you're not in any of those situations, you've got to ask yourself very seriously just how you expect these free stories to make themselves useful - particularly contrasted with the option of receiving both pay and publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A really important note: you can look for free online magazines, and try to sell some work to those. That gets around almost all the pitfalls I've touched upon here, while leaving you with a freely available story you can link to, and that adoring fans can share around. That might be a good compromise. Another option is trying to negotiate, when you sell your work, that after a certain amount of time you get to publish your story free on your webpage (or link to it on the publisher's webpage). Not as odd as you might think - since they want the publicity too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T22:57:58.853" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T22:57:58.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1928" CreationDate="2011-03-09T11:09:57.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the important part about any kind of giveaway is to make it part of a marketing plan. I know the words &quot;marketing plan&quot; are rife with tedium and the apprehension associated with the buzz word but that's just because marketing has become something done by people with no connection to the products they're trying to get people to buy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the artist or craftsman marketing is just the act of saying to people: &quot;Hey, you know what, I have this stuff here you might like to buy.&quot; Chances are if you are the author you have sought people out who, well, would probably be interested in reading what you have written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can act exactly the same as a marketdroid in this respect and just spam forums and messageboards with &quot;BUY THIS&quot; messages or you could wonder, as a writer, whose eyeballs you want scanning your work and then you can, you know, go to these communities, integrate, check them out and, when you have something of interest: mention it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point your marketing plan should be a coherent message that you can deliver to interested parties. In my experience consumers of entertainment come in two flavours. Those consumers who aren't buying what you're selling and those who like the elevator pitch but want to know more before they commit. By &quot;know more&quot; I think, particularly readers, like to cultivate some sort of knowledge or ownership of an author before they take the plunge. This requires one of two things. Either the author has to be &quot;available&quot; e.g. has a blog, visits online communities, tries to meet and greet etc. and have some good, relevant materials expanding upon the type of fiction they write. The other option is that the author implicitly &quot;promises&quot; future availability by having a large canon of work available for purchase (I would say 8-10 novels freely available for purchase would be minimum). If a reader can see that, should they buy novel x they can benefit from 7 to 10 more no-brainer book purchases then they are more likely to take the plunge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these days of the interwebs there should be some mixture of the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Free stories/books could contribute to this but only as a part of that strategy. Sometimes you end up with frustrating edge cases: I, for example, love one author's two free e-books (neither were ever considered for publication by a publisher but one was represented by an agent for a while) but his actual published works are generic detective stories while the free books are out-there speculative techno thrillers. If the dude was paid to write out there speculative techno thrillers I would be in the queue to buy each and every one but I'm not in the market for a cookie cutter crime thriller. I'm sure there are others who are happy with whatever he writes. None of it would be worth much if he didn't also blog, do speaking tours and just, generally, make himself available to fans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as a way to make yourself more available it is a step in the right direction but it's definitely not much use on its own. I offer free downloads of some novels but as they are part of a plan I haven't started to put into motion yet nobody bothers with them and they certainly don't sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T11:09:57.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1934" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-09T18:39:25.063" Score="11" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a longer work that took me a lot of effort to get through, and the moment I finished it, my life went crazy.  That was about 6 months ago, and in the intervening time I haven't been able to pick it back up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is complete, and if I may be so bold, the writing itself is solid.  But it's still unpolished: I need to add a few scenes, develop a character or two more deeply than I initially did, maybe a bit more.  But I can't focus on the story any more.  My mind tells me &quot;it's done,&quot; and refuses now to revisit it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone else been in this situation before?  How do you make old material feel fresh enough to work on again?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1481" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T02:54:28.953" Title="How does one go *back* to editing an older piece?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1934" CreationDate="2011-03-09T19:08:12.847" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hand it off. Find a good editor or beta reader and get someone else's take on it. Reading someone else's comments and suggestions may be enough to unstick your mental block and allow you to see how it could be improved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T19:08:12.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1934" CreationDate="2011-03-09T19:12:35.247" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have someone else critique the piece.  It doesn't have to be in-depth.  It could be a significant other or a critique group.  Make it clear you want to know what &lt;em&gt;didn't&lt;/em&gt; work for them.  (You might have to couch this in terms like &quot;did you get bored or confused anywhere?&quot;)  Hopefully they'll have a few comments that can give you a few places to focus on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another trick that I've found works well is to use the full piece to write an outline.  If you already have an outline sitting around, set it aside.  Read each chapter or section and then write out a summary.  Consolidating the story into its basic elements can help you see what's extraneous and what's missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T19:12:35.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1934" CreationDate="2011-03-10T02:54:28.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the two other answers but I'm also throwing out the idea that you, after re-examining the work carefully, leave it as it is. When I work on something I often leave many half-themes and subtle suggestions about characters open to wide intepretation by deciding to not follow a tangent or a peripheral concept to its end; this often (and usually inadvertently) adds an enigmatic depth and pads out the main ideas I work with. I use non-linear structure models when writing so this may not be workable for your piece but I felt that it would be useful to bear in mind that you have the choice; I always follow my gut when it comes to editing, if it reads well and you have something telling you &quot;it's done&quot; then maybe its fine as it is (but make inaction your last resort, seek critique and a fresh examination of your work)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1495" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T02:54:28.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-10T07:21:21.950" Score="1" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1794/how-should-dialog-be-formatted&quot;&gt;How should dialog be formatted?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing dialogue has been a challenge. &#xA;From the punctuations to the tags, it all still very confusing for me.&#xA;Some stuff I want to know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are good tags to use?&lt;/strong&gt; I've been told &quot;he said&quot; is perfectly fine to use but I shouldn't overuse it. The likes of &quot;he asked&quot; and &quot;he exclaimed&quot; should be avoided.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How should I punctuate?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to break up dialog?&lt;/strong&gt; Do I insert action in there somewhere? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to break dialog midsentence?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other useful tips and tricks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Correct this:&#xA;&quot;I've come to offer you a gift,&quot; he paused and sensing that she wasn't going to say anything, continued &quot;your money and position back.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;/*&#xA;How do I make this a community wiki?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I'm hoping this can be like a summary of important tips for dialog writing.&#xA;*/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1295" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-11-18T19:03:24.860" LastActivityDate="2018-11-18T19:03:24.860" Title="What are good dialog writing tips?" Tags="|style|dialogue|formatting|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2011-03-11T17:22:54.437" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1902" CreationDate="2011-03-10T07:37:25.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can find one, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Z88&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Z88&lt;/a&gt; might be a good choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full size keyboard with a pretty good feel, very reliable and it's nigh on impossible to out type it (though the display might take a second to catch up, I've never had a keystroke lost on mine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="956" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T07:37:25.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1794" CreationDate="2011-03-10T07:43:12.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possible correction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I've come to offer you a gift.&quot; He&#xA;  paused and, sensing that she wasn't&#xA;  going to say anything, continued.&#xA;  &quot;Your money and position back.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need a period at the end of the first quotation. Otherwise, it reads as if he &lt;em&gt;paused&lt;/em&gt; those words, which doesn't make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... continued, &quot;Your money and position back.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were writing this without a pause, I might write it with a colon (though colons seem kinda awkward in casual dialogue):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I've come to offer you a gift: Your money and position back.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see a good way to stuff both the colon and the pause into the paragraph. This doesn't seem right:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I've come to offer you a gift:&quot; He paused and, sensing that she wasn't going to say anything, continued, &quot;Your money and position back.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T07:43:12.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1902" CreationDate="2011-03-10T08:12:22.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used a Neo for several years for NaNoWriMo. I loved it for writing first drafts. The features I loved the most:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is (more or less) good only for typing. You can't play World of Warcraft or Angry Birds on it. So the Neo itself doesn't offer swarms of distractions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is cumbersome for editing. Yes, this is a feature (as I'll describe at the end of this bullet). Its keystroke-based way of selecting, cutting, and pasting is functional, but awkward. Also, the screen shows only four lines (or six at most, and only using a special font that you have to find in the dark corners of the internet), which makes it tricky to see things in context while editing. What makes this a feature: The awkwardness discourages me from editing, which keeps me focused on drafting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's very small and light, which makes it terrific for writing on airplanes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It turns on instantly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its full-size keyboard feels terrific. Just the right amount of finger resistance, and a quiet but satisfying clack.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I lost interest in my Neo when I bought my first smartphone. Though the Neo itself wasn't distracting me, its primary benefit—its &quot;good only for typing&quot; feature—was less useful to me now that my phone was a readily available, ultra-portable distraction machine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, by that time I had learned to get myself into a drafting mood. So I could now write without interrupting myself for a few hours at a time, and I'd learned to draft without editing (much).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I had bought a MacBook Air, which wasn't much heavier, and which allowed me to write with the awesome power of Scrivener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I've moved on. Still, every now and then—when I find myself contorted in coach class behind a reclined seats, unable to fully open even my tiny MacBook Air—I find myself pining for my old Neo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2011-03-10T08:20:58.260" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T08:20:58.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1794" CreationDate="2011-03-10T14:40:44.660" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to learn who to properly write and format dialog is to read. Go sit at the bookstore and see how everyone does it. There are exceptions to every &quot;rule&quot; and reading a lot of different books will help you learn what works and what doesn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also recommend reading Stephen King's &quot;On Writing&quot; since he covers tips on writing good dialog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T14:40:44.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1902" CreationDate="2011-03-10T14:42:58.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In defense of laptops (specifically netbooks) :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a pretty decent choice would be a netbook that is underpowered enough to keep you from using it for anything but word processing, and there are a variety of tools out there to block those kinds of activities if you so choose. I'm sure for typing that'd be a tricky prospect, but some of them have extraordinarily comfortable keyboards, you just have to find the right manufacturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion it to look into ChromeOS or another super-lightweight operating system (I personally prefer Ubuntu Netbook Remix, but Linux isn't for everyone) that will allow your computer to boot up in record time and still let you just write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally ended up getting a used Dell XT2 from a friend for about 10% of what it costs new. I use it for a lot of things but it's a great little writing tool. The battery lasts about five hours if I keep the settings low and it boots up in about 30 seconds, so I like being able to just go straight to work on it and take it with me everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick Google search showed about 50+ sites where you can get netbooks for around a hundred dollars that come with a variety of warranties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="586" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T14:42:58.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1945" CreationDate="2011-03-10T18:13:06.650" Score="1" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to reword this:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Along the way, we see how the faults&#xA;  Jacob made earlier in life are&#xA;  repeated back on him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;repeated back on him&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;doesn't sound correct, but I don't know what to replace it with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1524" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T05:15:29.573" Title="How to reword this: repeated back on him?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1944" CreationDate="2011-03-10T20:23:45.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;first of all, it's &quot;the mistakes&quot; he made &amp;mdash; one doesn't make faults&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are revisited upon him&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;return upon him&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;come back to bite him in the [tuchus]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;come back to haunt him&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;come home to roost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;beat a path back to his door [a play&#xA;on &quot;if you build a better mousetrap,&#xA;the world will beat a path to your&#xA;door&quot;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T20:23:45.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1887" CreationDate="2011-03-10T22:42:33.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I put some of my writing work in a git repository, but because my colleagues use msword, that's not terribly helpful. I solved that pub putting a directory called plaintext in the repository root, and use a pre-commit script to dump a plain text version of the file into the plaintext directory, so that I get good diffs.  It's not perfect, but for the most part it works ok.  I use antiword (installed via macports to do) the dirty work.  Here's the script:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;#!/usr/bin/perl&#xA;use warnings;&#xA;use strict;&#xA;use Path::Class;&#xA;use File::Basename;&#xA;use File::Path qw/make_path/;&#xA;use String::ShellQuote;&#xA;&#xA;# get the root dir of the repository&#xA;my $git_root = `cdup=&quot;\$PWD/\$(git rev-parse --show-cdup)&quot; &amp;amp;&amp;amp; test -n &quot;\$cdup&quot; &amp;amp;&#xA;&amp;amp; echo \$cdup`;&#xA;chomp $git_root;&#xA;chdir $git_root;&#xA;$git_root = Path::Class::Dir-&amp;gt;new($git_root);&#xA;&#xA;my $txt_dir = $git_root-&amp;gt;subdir('plaintext');&#xA;mkdir $txt_dir unless -e $txt_dir;&#xA;&#xA;my @doc_files_to_commit = `git status`;&#xA;&#xA;chomp $_ for @doc_files_to_commit;&#xA;&#xA;@doc_files_to_commit =&#xA;    grep { /^#\s+(new|modified).*?doc$/i } @doc_files_to_commit;&#xA;&#xA;for (@doc_files_to_commit) {&#xA;    $_ =~ s/^.*(?:new|modified)(?: file)?:\s+(.*?)$/$1/;&#xA;}&#xA;&#xA;my @extra_commits;&#xA;&#xA;foreach (@doc_files_to_commit) {&#xA;    my $dir = dirname($_);&#xA;    my $new_file = basename($_, qw/.doc .DOC/) . &quot;.txt&quot;;&#xA;    push @extra_commits, [Path::Class::File-&amp;gt;new($git_root, $_), Path::Class::Fi&#xA;le-&amp;gt;new($txt_dir, $dir, $new_file)];&#xA;}&#xA;&#xA;foreach (@extra_commits) {&#xA;    my ($doc, $txt) = @$_;&#xA;    my $txt_dir = dirname($txt);&#xA;    make_path($txt_dir) if !-e $txt_dir;&#xA;    $doc = shell_quote_best_effort(&quot;$doc&quot;);&#xA;    $txt = shell_quote_best_effort(&quot;$txt&quot;);&#xA;    my $cmd = &quot;/opt/local/bin/antiword -f $doc &amp;gt; $txt &amp;amp;&amp;amp; git add $txt&quot;;&#xA;    system $cmd;&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T22:42:33.690" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1944" CreationDate="2011-03-11T00:50:44.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;we see how the faults Jacob made earlier in his life begin to bleed back into his existence, recurring endlessly like an abyss in trepidation, an inflatable nightmare; draining through fading, whispered telephone conversations in the winter drear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1495" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T00:50:44.767" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1944" CreationDate="2011-03-11T05:15:29.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about &quot;...we see how Jacob repeats the mistakes he made earlier in life?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1529" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T05:15:29.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1949" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1952" CreationDate="2011-03-11T08:33:01.667" Score="6" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering about tone in articles lately. My articles don't tend to be interactive. It feels like most of them are just flowing one way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does actually tone contribute to the quality of an article? How can we write content that could most likely end up in interaction with the reader? Can you please share your experience with building interactive tone in articles? Any pointers would help me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1525" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T09:07:34.733" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T21:20:59.383" Title="How can you build an interactive tone into articles?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1950" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-11T13:47:01.103" Score="6" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking to improve my writing. I would love to know if anyone has any tips on developing an engaging conversational writing style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Herr Char" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T14:03:54.580" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T14:03:54.580" Title="Could anyone point me in the direction of some resources on conversational writing?" Tags="|style|resources|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1950" CreationDate="2011-03-11T14:09:32.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best advice I can give you is to study the works of writers who have mastered the lively, conversational style. There are many to recommend in this regard, such as Robert Parker, Elmore Leonard, Charlie Huston - the list is long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="The Raven" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T14:09:32.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1949" CreationDate="2011-03-11T15:02:56.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tone contributes to quality by establishing the writer's persona for the reader. As others have noted, above, the meaning of &quot;interactive&quot; or &quot;interaction&quot; is hard to determine, because often the terms refer to mechanical attributes of the media you're using. Generally, however, when you want to solicit response and agreement from the audience, you can make your tone less formal and more conversational. Instead of asking, &quot;How would I say this if I were talking to a group of experts?&quot; you might ask, &quot;How would I say this if I were talking to an average person?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are different dimensions of &quot;quality&quot; that I think you also want to clarify - the quality of your prose could be understood as the level of craft it displays, the scope of the result it produces, or the sharpness of affect (&quot;affect&quot; refers to the emotional response of the reader, kind of like how the &quot;quality&quot; of a love story is different from a horror film - each produces different emotional responses from the audience). These attributes aren't unrelated, of course: a passionate plea to act may stir a lot of emotions in the reader when it's well-written, but it's also going to be effective when the reader is inspired to action. The language you use within that plea will establish how the audience views you, as a speaker - your persona. How approachable you are depends quite a bit on what strategies you use: do you use contractions and slang, or is the style formal and technical? Do you write as if you want response, or are you telling people how it is? These factors contribute to how welcoming - how interactive - your writing comes off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, if we're just talking about how your prose can be more interactive, you might think about building a more conversational tone. You might worry that a conversational tone won't produce the persona of a technically astute, specialist writer - a persona that builds ethos, or the character of the author. But if a conversational tone produces a higher quality article by building empathy with the reader, we might well say, &quot;the prose is much more effective because the reader sees that interaction between audience and writer is not only possible, but a priority.&quot; Then you've established a reader-centered tone, and you encourage response.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're talking about tone and interaction by referring explicitly to, say, the mechanical ability of readers to respond with some immediacy to your writing, the above isn't going to be what you're looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1532" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T15:02:56.930" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1949" CreationDate="2011-03-11T15:47:19.550" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's not hard at all. Pick up a copy of &quot;Self-Editing for Fiction Writers&quot; and read the bits about dialogue. Usually you can massage quotes into that format for a more effective piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="419" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T15:47:19.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1794" CreationDate="2011-03-11T15:48:58.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should buy &quot;Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.&quot; It's one of the best dialogue books for both fiction and non-fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060545690&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Self-Editing-Fiction-Writers-Second-Yourself/dp/0060545690/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1299858506&amp;amp;sr=8-1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="419" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T15:48:58.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1781" CreationDate="2011-03-11T16:24:09.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I go brainstorming by mapping out different scenes on a page, and trying to connect them. Joining them often gives rise to better and new ideas as well, which would give you a complete plot. In essence, just write out whatever you can think of from these points, and try connecting them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T16:24:09.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1781" CreationDate="2011-03-11T19:47:54.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to have the same problem.  I got out of it slowly, in steps, by starting out with stories that relied heavily on processes.  More than a &quot;plot,&quot; I had the idea that I needed to get from point A to point X, and the pre-knowledge that, although not all letters between B and W were necessary, when I finished with one step the next would be obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take something that happens, say, over a period of three days, not necessarily consecutive days.  Before you start writing, think of what has to happen on the first day, and the second, and the third.  Have them work in a sequence that makes sense.  Possible example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first day is a couple's first date, and have it be a cute story of them being awkward.  Write that as a vignette like you'd normally do, doing exactly what you've been doing.  Then you know what the second day has to be: the second date. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another vignette with the same characters.  Now they're more comfortable, and you can tell they've changed their tone with each other from day 1.  Be sure to convey a clearly different emotion for day 2.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Day 3!  Surprise!  They're cousins!  Or one's on a watch-list!  Or they find out that her name is Montague and his name is Capulet!  Write another vignette, this time examining how they deal with whatever happened to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there you've taken three ideas that can theoretically stand alone as cool little scenes, but are more poignant when taken together.  You can think of them compartmentally like you're used to, but it gives you the structure to get the feel of how a more flowing work should be written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then work up from there.  Longer processes, more steps, start blurring lines between different steps.  Take it at your pace, and don't worry if they seem not-so-great when you read them back.  That can happen.  Use these stories as learning tools so that you can get used to the idea of plotting out longer stories in your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondary advice: although I'll crank out the occasional longer story, my work of preference today is still 2,000 words and less.  It's definitely a good idea to try to expand on your horizons, and doing the above I think will help your skills as a writer in general, but you may just find that after a few long-form experiments, you simply prefer to go back to your little one-off vignettes.  And that's perfectly fine, too :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1481" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T19:47:54.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1963" CreationDate="2011-03-12T13:36:12.600" Score="2" ViewCount="571" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is my first short book, it wrote it to give social awareness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would also like to make some money (to avoid dying of hunger).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T10:05:39.947" Title="How to make easy and fast money selling a short book (which is available for download)?" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1958" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-12T04:18:59.553" Score="2" ViewCount="2276" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted clarification on what techniques are employed in the following quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was benevolent and good but misery made me a fiend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an example of high modality, antithesis - or is there something more specific?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Gatsby" LastEditorUserId="40227" LastEditDate="2019-08-04T07:40:21.540" LastActivityDate="2019-08-04T07:40:21.540" Title="Rhetorical devices in Frankenstein" Tags="|text-analysis|figures-of-speech|rhetoric|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1958" CreationDate="2011-03-12T05:01:17.473" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty classic example of &lt;em&gt;antithesis&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a figure of speech in which an opposition or contrast of ideas is expressed by parallelism of words that are the opposites of, or strongly contrasted with, each other, such as “hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all&quot; [NOAD]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is additionally a slight chiastic structure, a reversal of order: &quot;I was X ... something made me Y ..&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well, there is some hint of prosody and symmetry: The first clause has four strong beats, and so does the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, finally, there is some alliteration: &quot;misery made me&quot; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" OwnerDisplayName="Robusto" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T05:01:17.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1957" CreationDate="2011-03-12T16:02:37.150" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishing and writing is not a get rich quick scheme. If you're looking to make a lot of money very quickly, give up now and find a new profession. Writing and publishing take a lot of time and a lot of effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T16:02:37.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1957" CreationDate="2011-03-12T16:15:46.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fastest and easiest to make the first couple bucks: Sell to your family and friends, get them to recommend them. Post them on a Site and work some SEO on it. Offer the capacity for reading it online and place ads on the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ProjectWonderful works great for this, 'cause they pay you by second a person is in the page of the ad. Spread the word actively so that people get to your site and read, therefore translating that into money. It's basically the scheme used by many webcomic writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else you can do, if you plan on writing a lot of short stories, is selling merchandise relative to your work (I know of some webcomic guys who make a living this way, selling through topatoco).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, do work on it and post an answer with whatever worked for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T16:15:46.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1965" CreationDate="2011-03-12T16:35:13.350" Score="4" ViewCount="277" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a first-person narrative, I’d like to use the following sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It took me nearly a decade to write this script, and now I’d pitch it to the top producer in Hollywood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m not following strict grammar rules here (for starters, I should use “It had taken me”), but I’m going for a tone that is both informal and immediate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assume this sentence appears in a novel written in first person (narrated like a memoir), so the speaker talks about something she expected to do at that specific point in time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could I improve this sentence with these goals in mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T23:14:47.753" Title="Please help me improve this sentence..." Tags="|style|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1957" CreationDate="2011-03-12T17:21:10.173" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Easy and fast money in publishing? I'll teach you all the secrets for the low, low price of $99.95.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just visit: &lt;strong&gt;www.its-gonna-be-a-cold-day-in-hell.com&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the harsh sarcasm, but &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;there aren't any shortcuts&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for marketing advice, it would be more helpful if you could describe the specifics of your book: the topic, its intended audience, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you’re planning on a career as an author, assume that it will take you at least 10 years before publishing books will sustain you financially (if ever). In the meantime, you will need your “day job” to support you. You could take on freelance writing assignments to earn some extra cash, but that won’t count as “fast and easy,” either. Writing is a long-term investment, and by attempting to take shortcuts will do a huge disservice to your book and your writing career.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="1415" LastEditDate="2011-03-12T18:14:21.953" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T18:14:21.953" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1957" CreationDate="2011-03-12T17:51:05.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While there are various venues and services which make it &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; for you to make a bit of money off your book, it is unlikely in the extreme that you actually &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt;. The only way any of these services will return any significant cash is if your book becomes wildly, extravagantly popular - which is unlikely to happen unless you've got an amazingly good book and some superb marketing and advertising. And probably not even then. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or look at it this way: how many free, online books, providing some sort of revenue to their author, have you had occasion to read? Assume that's average for readers and web-surfers. Now, what's the odds they'll be reading &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; book specifically? Please note that if your answer to the first part of the question was &quot;zero,&quot; then so is the answer to the second part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the only way for self-published works to achieve any financial success is with a &lt;strong&gt;lot&lt;/strong&gt; of self-promotion. (This makes sense - after all, who would promote your book but the people who would benefit from its success? If you're publishing yourself, nobody's promoting your book but you.) That's hard work, and returns are dubious at best. Selling your work to a publisher is basically convincing somebody else to take this risk - and a lot of the responsibilities of marketing and production, and some creative control over the book - in return for guaranteed income. You wouldn't expect all that to be necessary if somebody could really make money simply by posting the story online according to some simple, revenue-generating process, would you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, I suggest you publish your book online, and make a few bucks babysitting or flipping burgers. As Ralph answered more succinctly, there is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; way to make fast, easy money by writing, save by miraculous serendipity and/or acts of god.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T17:51:05.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1962" CreationDate="2011-03-12T18:05:23.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It took me nearly a decade to write this script, and now I was about to pitch it to the top producer in Hollywood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T18:05:23.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1962" CreationDate="2011-03-12T18:24:55.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've spent a decade of my life writing this script, now it will pay off. Hollywood I'm coming. (or: Hollywood is waiting.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: past tense&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I spent a decade of my life writing this script, it was time to pay off. Hollywood was waiting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-03-13T19:37:50.340" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T19:37:50.340" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1962" CreationDate="2011-03-12T18:52:58.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ten years of windup. Today was the pitch. I was going to throw Hollywood a curve ball like they'd never seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T18:52:58.030" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1962" CreationDate="2011-03-12T18:54:36.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you could also make it more immediate and informal by getting rid of &quot;decade&quot; - &quot;It took me ten years to write this script, and now...&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The length of time and the role of expectation also suggests the sentence could be made more immediate by expressing something internal, or psychological. Is the speaker expressing frustration? &quot;It took me ten fucking years to write this damn thing, and I was ready to shove it down the throat of the first producer I saw...&quot; Excitement? &quot;Ten years of hard work, and I was finally rewarded with a meeting at Hollywood's top studio.&quot; Note that you're doing that anyway: getting excited about going to the &quot;top producer&quot; adds a shade of naivete to the speaker's voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest confusion comes in the second part of the sentence, where the the modal &quot;would&quot; introduces another temporal element. &quot;Would&quot; indicating imperfective structure (an ongoing action, brought from the past to the present) is different from the conditional. So you could either be saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It took me a decade to write this script; now, [after I finished] I would [shop it around].&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It took me a decade to write this script; [conditional upon its completion], I'd pitch it to the top producer in Hollywood.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the &quot;now&quot; working with the &quot;would&quot; that does it. Short answer: I think it'd be more clear if the temporal perspective were firmly established by the grammar; since it's memoir, you could just stay in the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1532" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T18:54:36.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1962" CreationDate="2011-03-12T18:55:05.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are probably an infinite number of ways to rewrite this sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After spending nearly a decade working on this script, I could finally start pitching it to the top producers in Hollywood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It had taken nearly a decade to perfect the script, but now it was ready to be pitched to the top producers in Hollywood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I spent nearly a decade working on this script, now I can finally start pitching it to the top producers in Hollywood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would definitely try and eliminate using &amp;quot;was.&amp;quot; Writing the sentence without using &amp;quot;was&amp;quot; tends to make it stronger and flow better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T18:55:05.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1971" CreationDate="2011-03-12T20:36:46.737" Score="4" ViewCount="805" Body="&lt;p&gt;Screenwriting has a very strict format that Microsoft Word cannot fully match. Are there any good screenwriting word processors out there that are free?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1548" LastEditorUserId="1342" LastEditDate="2011-03-13T18:37:32.827" LastActivityDate="2017-09-18T20:32:23.583" Title="Are there any free programs for screen writers" Tags="|tools|software|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1970" CreationDate="2011-03-12T20:38:22.460" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yep - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.page2stage.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Page 2 Stage&lt;/a&gt; is available for free. You can even download the source code to it. (Disclaimier - I wrote P2S. But it's 100% free with no hooks or anything.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1548" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T20:38:22.460" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1970" CreationDate="2011-03-12T21:49:34.900" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a non-spam answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend Celtx. One of my friends and I decided to write short plays last summer and this was the program I used and I loved it. I found it very easy to use and figure out and I had never really written plays before then.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.celtx.com/index.html&quot;&gt;http://www.celtx.com/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T21:49:34.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1974" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1975" CreationDate="2011-03-13T03:27:12.007" Score="7" ViewCount="250" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, I get confused as I add more and more ideas and scenes in a plot, is there any way of arranging these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2011-03-13T04:44:49.333" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T14:47:54.963" Title="Simple way/techniques of arranging all the ideas and scenes in a plot?" Tags="|organization|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1974" CreationDate="2011-03-13T05:06:30.643" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Buy a bunch of 3x5 cards and write plot elements on them, then organize them into a line or a tree or some other visual representation that makes sense to you.  Play around with orders: put everything chronologically, then put it how you intend to tell it.  When doing this, you can also decide what &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to tell by removing cards and seeing if the action still makes sense.  You can use highlighters to color-code different cards: either by character or by importance or by storyline, or whatever criteria you feel is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, not everything that happens needs to be known to the reader.  It might make things easier to write if you can figure out how to decide what they won't see.  Certainly make cards for every event that happens, but remember that just because you made a card does not mean you have to write about it in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1481" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T05:06:30.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1974" CreationDate="2011-03-13T16:00:01.157" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend using Scrivener. It's an amazing Mac program that now has a Windows beta version. It takes Turnips' flash card idea and lets you do that in the program. You can also write the scenes and rearrange and add scenes as you need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T16:00:01.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1979" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1980" CreationDate="2011-03-13T23:55:26.430" Score="13" ViewCount="684" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested to know what the publishing process exactly entails for future reference. I'm in my last year of school and I recently finished my first substantial piece of creative writing (a subject I chose for an exam related project). I presented my novel to an audience  of school faculty and English Literature teachers and I was encouraged to find a publisher for the work. The feedback for what I have written is generally very positive and after I'm finished with exams, I want to polish the work and attempt to get it published: For future reference, how would I go about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate answers from those well versed in the rigours of what I understand is a difficult and frustrating process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1495" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T10:23:21.600" Title="What exactly do I do to get published?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1979" CreationDate="2011-03-14T00:21:57.250" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing you want to do is find a neutral beta reader. These are people who don't know you at all and will give you honest feedback. Teachers and friends might be great for cleaning up grammar, but they're not going to tell you if it's absolute crap. I've had some good experience with the ones at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perfectimagination.co.uk/&quot;&gt;Perfect Imagination&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step is to research publishers. Make sure you pay attention to their submission details and make sure they publish the type of novel you have. You don't want to send a romance novel to a mystery publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step is to write out a query letter. Most publishers will have guidelines on what they want from you in this letter. Common elements include a full synopsis (including the ending), any writing credentials that you may have, and why you want to publish with them. Some will ask for you to send a sample (usually the first couple chapters and the last) others will tell you not to and if they're interested in it, they'll request it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember to proofread this letter and have someone else look over it. Always be professional and follow a publisher's guidelines to the letter. Keep it in your mind that editors often can work at multiple houses and that editors talk to each other. Trust me, we like to gossip about people who give us problems. Mouthing off or acting like an amateur with one editor, could cost you at a dozen houses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After your query letters are off, pray to the Publishing Gods that someone accepts it. After you get contract offers, then you can seek out an agent or a lawyer to read over it and help negotiate to get you the best contract possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're researching publishers and agents, make sure you check them out. Look at sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://pred-ed.com/&quot;&gt;Predictors and Editors&lt;/a&gt;, ask around in publishing circles, or at the very least Google the publisher's name and &quot;complaint&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T00:21:57.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1979" CreationDate="2011-03-14T07:47:37.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.malindalo.com/2009/06/qa-how-do-i-get-published/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;good essay by Malinda Lo&lt;/a&gt; on the process. One of many, I'm sure, but that's the first good one I found on a cursory browse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to point out that knowing the general process is probably not enough; at every step along the way, you should read and research and learn as much as possible. Publishing is an arduous, difficult field, full of slush. If you're committed, you want to do everything you can to avoid being slush.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's individual steps along the way that I suggest you learn about as much as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Polishing and rewriting your book.&lt;/strong&gt; Honing your craft, seeking out critiques and understanding what to take from them, and the painful art of revision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finding an agent.&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll want an agent who's professional, capable, trustworthy, and whom you work well with. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll want to avoid scams, ripoffs, and incompetents. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll need to understand which agents do what and which is appropriate for your book (and possibly for a future writing career). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll need to learn how to query an agent - both general guidelines for the field at large, and the specific requirements and preferences of each and every agent you query.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The agent will probably suggest a lot of changes and revisions to your novel, so another rewrite here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finding a publisher.&lt;/strong&gt; By this point, you've got the agent to rely on, but the agent will need to find you a publisher, and you'll need to negotiate a contract. The editor will have further changes for the book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the general outline. If you're serious about getting published, read everything you can about these steps, so that you know what you're getting into, how to present yourself and work with others, and what you're entitled to expect and demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck to ye :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T07:47:37.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1983" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-14T11:14:46.270" Score="1" ViewCount="9955" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you please give me a sample metaphor for cycling, specially when pedalling uphill and sweating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I'd like an example of a metaphor to describe the opposite situation: riding downhill, with the wind is blowing into the driver's face and the speed is increasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm composing a speech project with a requirements of using metaphors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: I want to have a metaphor for an uphill ride and a downhill ride experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1556" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2018-09-12T13:05:16.700" LastActivityDate="2019-11-11T14:28:18.063" Title="Sample Metaphor for Cycling" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2019-11-11T23:10:44.580" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1985" CreationDate="2011-03-14T16:36:59.710" Score="3" ViewCount="488" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if I'm doing something wrong (according to writing standards) in the following conversation and how to improve it to help readability, quality and feeling (making it more interesting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introduction part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Uhm...excuse me, are you Dr. Aide?” she asks with a shy voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Yes.” he replies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“My...my name is Luna, I a new nurse here. I will assist you from tomorrow.” she says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I see.” he replies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then he continues, “please take a sit.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She sits in front of him feeling a bit awkward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Do you wanna some?” he says while holding the bottle of vodka.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“OK, but...just a little.” she replies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He fills the glass until the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They keep in silence for some seconds while drinking, then Luna breaks the silence, “Do you always stay so late Mr Aid?.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Yes, I spend almost 24 hours in this place.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You must love your job.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Not really.” he says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some seconds he continues. “Actually I’ve been thinking of quitting.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“So what’s your definition of a mental illness?.” he asks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She thinks for a while and replies, “someone who can’t adapt himself to society.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He holds the bottle and says, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Jiddu Krishnamurti.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“What does that mean?.” she asks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“What if a society is sick already by itself? Then we need another meaning; any behaviour that threatens humanity and the ecosystem in direct and indirect ways.” he replies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I've haven't corrected grammar yet.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T11:44:53.393" Title="First conversation scenes I've written (looking for errors, conventions, and improvements according to writing standards)" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1984" CreationDate="2011-03-14T16:56:29.757" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are using adverbs and to tell us how the characters are acting and feeling.  Instead consider showing us their body language.  Help me hear them speak.  Let me see for myself that Luna is nervous and Dr. Aide is worn out, jaded, or whatever it is that he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a grammar perspective (although those questions are best asked on &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;English.SE&lt;/a&gt;), a sentance in quotations that ends in a period and is before &amp;quot;he says&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;she says&amp;quot; or the like is usually ended with a comma, not a period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious why everything is in the present instead of the past tense.  I am much more used to reading &amp;quot;he said&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;she said.&amp;quot;  That doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with present tense in fiction, but you should &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=present+versus+past+tense+in+fiction&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;look into&lt;/a&gt; the effect it has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, don't overpunctuate within the dialogue.  Consider leaving out ellipses, for example.  Instead break it up with your character attributions (&amp;quot;he says&amp;quot;) or through showing me the pauses by the action.  The punctuation can become visual clutter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've made some minor changes, but not necessarily incorporated all of my suggestions, below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Uhm, excuse me, are you Dr. Aide?”&#xA;she asks.  Her voice is soft and&#xA;tentative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Yes,” he replies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“My...my name is Luna, I a new nurse here. I&#xA;will assist you from tomorrow,” she&#xA;says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I see,” he replies, “Please&#xA;take a seat.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She sits in front of him&#xA;feeling a bit awkward. He waves his&#xA;bottle of vodka.  “Do you wanna some?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“OK,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;just a little.” He&#xA;fills the glass halfway They drink in&#xA;silence.  The seconds fill like&#xA;minutes.  Luna breaks it. “Do you&#xA;always stay so late Dr. Aide?.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Yes,&#xA;I spend almost 24 hours in this&#xA;place.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You must love your job.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Not&#xA;really,” he says, then pauses. “Actually I’ve been&#xA;thinking of quitting.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you do not follow a question mark directly with a period.  It stands on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“So what’s your definition of a mental illness?” he asks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She thinks for a while and then replies, “someone who can’t adapt himself to society.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He looks out of the window and says, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Jiddu Krishnamurti.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“What does that mean?” she asks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“What if a society is sick already by itself? Then we need another meaning.  I think it is any behaviour that threatens humanity and the ecosystem in direct and indirect ways.” he replies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T17:10:18.107" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1984" CreationDate="2011-03-14T17:28:25.390" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;I'm just rewriting. You need more narration and action tags:&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She stood in front of his desk for a full minute before he noticed her. When he looked up at last, his only greeting was a raised eyebrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Uhm...excuse me, are you Dr. Aide?” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Speak up. You're muttering.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She cleared her throat twice. &quot;Are you Dr. Aide?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Yes.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“My...my name is Luna, I a new nurse here. I'm &amp;mdash; I'm going to be your assistant. As of tomorrow.&quot; When he didn't respond, she added, &quot;If that's all right?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I see.” he replied. She looked down at her hands, clutching the folders in front of her like a shield. &quot;Please take a seat,&quot; he continued, surprising her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She pulled out the wooden chair, wincing as it scraped on the linoleum, and sat, her arms still wrapped around the case folders. The doctor reached down and opened a desk drawer, producing a bottle of vodka. Her eyes widened as he topped off what she had taken for a water glass. There was a second, empty glass beside it. He motioned the bottle towards her and raised an eyebrow again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Drinking on the job... what kind of man is this?&lt;/em&gt; She wet her lips. &lt;em&gt;He's probably testing me.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Okay, but... just a little.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He filled the glass halfway and pushed it towards her. She took it, proud to see that her hand only shook a little. The vodka was unexpectedly smooth, but she didn't trust herself with more than a sip. Dr. Aide took two healthy slugs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The silence lengthened between them. Luna began to feel desperate, wondering if she was failing the test. &quot;Do you always stay so late, Doctor?&quot; she ventured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His mouth twisted up in a smirk. &quot;I'm here almost 24 hours a day.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You must love your job.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Not really.” His eyes swept the papers, the antiquated computer, the dusty file cabinets, the hospital-green paint peeling from the cinderblock walls. “Actually, I’ve been thinking of quitting.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T17:28:25.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1987" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-14T17:35:34.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Critique Guidelines&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Critique requests are extremely useful for any writer, but they're  a tricky proposition for a Q&amp;amp;A site. Writers.SE does its humble best. Before posting a critique request, please familiarize yourself with &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.writers.stackexchange.com/questions/166/what-are-the-guidelines-for-asking-for-a-critique-of-my-work&quot;&gt;our critique guidelines&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A particularly important point in the guidelines is: we require that you ask us &lt;strong&gt;a specific question&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;a specific focus&lt;/strong&gt; to the critique. General requests for any and all comments on a piece will garner edit requests and may be closed. Some examples of requesting a specific critique include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Where are the unneeded words?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Does this character introduction seem smooth?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;How can I show more and tell less in this instance?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Does this paragraph make you want to keep reading?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;How can I improve this dialogue to create a sense of suspense?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yzt1q.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Licence and Copyright of publicly-posted critique pieces&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All user contributions to this site are licensed under cc-wiki with attribution required.  Please note this license for publication considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T03:56:24.657" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T03:56:24.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1988" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-14T17:35:34.010" Score="0" Body="TAG IS SOON TO BE DEPRECIATED. Please use tags describing the content of the critique request instead: character-development, plot, etc. " OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T19:26:10.927" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T19:26:10.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1989" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1996" CreationDate="2011-03-14T18:04:56.077" Score="3" ViewCount="489" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A clock is striking 4:00am at a&#xA;  psychiatric clinic. The darkness, the&#xA;  silence, and absence of people makes it&#xA;  look like a morgue. A young mental&#xA;  health professional is sitting in a&#xA;  chair drinking a cheap vodka alone.&#xA;  He doesn’t resemble a&#xA;  person who is certified in treating&#xA;  mental disorders. He has dark&#xA;  straight hair that is long enough to&#xA;  give him a teenage look. The only&#xA;  qualification seems to be is his sharp&#xA;  and intellectual look in his eyes. He is sitting in the middle of the clinic's cafeteria. The moon is the only thing that illuminates his emotionless face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="14925" LastEditDate="2015-08-15T11:21:22.363" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T11:21:22.363" Title="How to improve this introductory paragraph (to fit writing standards and grab the reader's attention)?" Tags="|fiction|openings|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1989" CreationDate="2011-03-14T19:37:18.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use &lt;em&gt;four a.m.&lt;/em&gt; (or just &lt;em&gt;four&lt;/em&gt; as it becomes clear the scene is at night).&#xA;(Also, most clocks don't strike differently for a.m. versus p.m.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A young mental health professional&lt;/em&gt; -- Toss it and introduce him by name, instead. The next sentence implies his profession, and we get he's young from &lt;em&gt;teenage look&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simplify:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dark, silent and deserted, it looks like a morgue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to say &lt;em&gt;alone&lt;/em&gt;, since you've already told us there is nobody else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a &lt;em&gt;sharp and intellectual look&lt;/em&gt;, especially in the eyes of someone who is getting drunk in the darkness? And it's not a qualification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;He is sitting in the middle of the clinic's cafeteria&lt;/em&gt; -- You said &quot;He is sitting&quot; earlier, so just drop this sentence and combine with the earlier one to establish the setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T19:37:18.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1991" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-14T20:15:48.373" Score="5" ViewCount="1532" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel my punctuation is all over the place, and the adjectives are not as charming as I think they are. If anyone has watched the beginning of the first Lord of the Rings, where the hobbit is lying in that green meadow, and you think to yourself that that is where you want to be, that's kind of the environment I attempted to describe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Writers these days don't often get the&#xA;  luxury of lying in a green meadow,&#xA;  with tall trees and green grass, and&#xA;  birds chirping silently and lakes&#xA;  drifting calmly, and the sky blue-er&#xA;  than blue. This would be the most&#xA;  wonderful environment to write in, as&#xA;  there can be no distractions, and so&#xA;  much inspiration lies everywhere&#xA;  around you. Today, the ones who love&#xA;  to write away all their fears and&#xA;  hopes are stuck in a loud noisy&#xA;  environment, filled with distractions&#xA;  and annoyances. Every writer needs&#xA;  their own &quot;writing spot&quot;, a place&#xA;  where they can come write without&#xA;  worrying about anything else. It’s&#xA;  their green meadow, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1564" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T07:06:14.510" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T07:06:14.510" Title="Can my paragraph use better adjectives and descriptions?" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1991" CreationDate="2011-03-14T20:20:28.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to capture the feel of drifting on a summer's day in a perfect green glade, then if anything you need to be even more stream-of-consciousness than you are now. Read up on Gerard Manley Hopkins and &quot;sprung rhythm&quot; and see what you can do with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T20:20:28.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1991" CreationDate="2011-03-14T20:23:49.623" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remove anything you can from your writing. If a word isn't doing work, get rid of it. Use verbs, not adjectives. For example, your first sentence could look like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Writers don't get the luxury of lying in a lush meadow, with swaying willows, green grass,  birds chirping, waves washing ashore, and the sky radiating blue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1461" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T20:23:49.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1722" CreationDate="2011-03-14T20:40:37.283" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Automattic wrote a great tool called &lt;a href=&quot;http://afterthedeadline.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;After the Deadline&lt;/a&gt; that helps style, grammar, and spelling. It's not a silver bullet, but it will definitely catch things that are easy to miss, like clichés, passive voice, and redundant phrases. It won't replace a good editor or any of the techniques mentioned here, but it helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1461" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T20:40:37.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="878" CreationDate="2011-03-14T20:48:39.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use plenty of examples. It's way easier to remember how a function works or the proper usage of a command if it's presented as an example. Show the example input and a sample result to complete the illustration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And make the examples readily available online or on a CD so that readers don't have to recreate them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1461" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T20:48:39.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1989" CreationDate="2011-03-14T21:23:33.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At four o'clock in the morning, the psychiatric clinic is dark and silent and empty, like a morgue. In the middle of the cafeteria, a lone young man sits in a chair drinking cheap vodka, his emotionless face illuminated only by the moon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I removed the striking of the clock. Psychiatric clinics aren't likely to have clocks that strike, especially at four in the morning, especially in the cafeteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I switched from present progressive to simple present tense. That feels more engaging to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what to do with the three sentences in the middle. I can't figure out the viewpoint. It can't be omniscient, because the narrator judges too many things from a narrow perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;He doesn't resemble...&quot; The narrator holds a limited model of what a mental health professional looks like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;... give him a teenage look.&quot; The narrator presumes that only teenage males have long hair.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The only qualification seems to be ...&quot; The narrator fantasizes that he can usually determine psychiatric qualifications from a person's appearance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These judgments are wholly unreliable. So is the narrator an actual, unreliable person observing the lone young man? If so, the young man isn't alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is this an omniscient narrator telling us that &lt;em&gt;we readers&lt;/em&gt; might judge the young man in these ways? If so, that's mighty condescending of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not knowing what the viewpoint is, I didn't know what to do with those three sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it turns out, I think the paragraph reads delightfully without those observations and judgments. Perhaps the information about the young man's looks could be restored into the paragraph somehow. But it might be better to add it in subsequent paragraphs—either without the judgments, or after we are more clearly introduced to the narrator who is doing the judging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T21:23:33.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1989" CreationDate="2011-03-14T21:25:18.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4AM at a psychiatric clinic packs a fair punch as an opening. Nothing interesting &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be happening there and then, but if something &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt;, it would probably be awfully interesting! The improbable hour is a very nice touch, IMHO, that potentially takes this a step above merely using a clinic to show off a socially sensitive character or expose some character conflicts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What bothers me most about the opening is that it is extremely cinematic. By &quot;cinematic&quot; I mean that the text describes to the reader what he would &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt;, e.g. if he were watching this scene on film. Sometimes, cinematic writing is appropriate and excellent. Oftentimes, though, it isn't. What most readers expect from a book - and particularly from the opening pages - is to be immersed in a particular character's viewpoint; to ride around in his mind. Cinematic is the opposite of that - look how, in your description, the reader is placed firmly &lt;strong&gt;outside&lt;/strong&gt; of the single character present. The reader may instinctively feel distant from the character - maybe no more than in any movie, but far more than in most books. Unless you intend to be writing much of this novel in cinematic tone, I strongly suggest that you find your point-of-view character and voice for this scene, and use it from the very first line.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A major effect of cinematic viewpoint is that there's no actual character doing the talking - it's all meant to be visual (or sensory, anyway), with no subjective interpretation. That means it's tough to get away with lines like &quot;he doesn't resemble somebody who would treat mental disorders&quot; - who is it who's making this observation? &quot;Doesn't resemble&quot; in whose opinion? How do you get away with &quot;His only qualification seems to be...&quot;, when in the story, there's no one looking for qualifications and nobody in whose eyes the seeming takes place? &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If this is something you &lt;strong&gt;want&lt;/strong&gt; to do throughout your novel, you should read up on omniscient narration - that's where you've got a particular narrator voice, not necessarily tied to a concrete character, but with some measure of personality, interest, and awareness. And the narrator &quot;sees&quot; everything - basically an artificial construct to do all the seeing and opinionating. I'm not sure this is a direction you intend to be headed, though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another big difference between movies and books is that in the movies, you just see a psych clinic, or a figure. In a book, unless there's a good reason to do otherwise, you can (and should) name things explicitly; make them specific. It makes no sense for a disembodied voice to tell me, the reader, that something happened at &lt;strong&gt;a&lt;/strong&gt; clinic without knowing and telling me &lt;strong&gt;which&lt;/strong&gt; clinic. Now, you don't have to give proper names for everything - but referring to them as &quot;the clinic,&quot; &quot;the figure,&quot; etc., gives a sense of describing something specific and immediate - rather than a disembodied narrator introducing the scene to an implied reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I didn't like the phrasing of &quot;a person who is certified in treating mental disorders&quot; - it seems very long and awkward. I also didn't like &quot;The only qualification seems to be is his sharp and intellectual look in his eyes&quot; - attributing great significance and deep characterization to the way somebody's eyes look is a particularly unconvincing cliche. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I apologize that this is more criticism than direct recommendations for improvement; hopefully I've pointed out what needs to be improved, and made it clear roughly how. If I can, I'll be back later to give an example of a rewrite according to my above comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope these comments are helpful :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T21:25:18.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1991" CreationDate="2011-03-14T22:07:19.830" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mohabitar,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Tyler suggested, it's best to stick with strong verbs and nouns that don't need any help from modifiers (adverbs and adjectives). Modifiers unnecessarily pad your verbiage, and they act as a sort of barrier between your reader and your message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you do use modifiers, remember a little goes a long way and avoid redundancy. You never need to say something is both &quot;loud&quot; and &quot;noisy.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even with two such similar nouns as &quot;annoyances&quot; and &quot;distractions,&quot; you probably should pick just one and omit the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I think you should pay close attention to the imagery your writing creates: Birds don't chirp silently. Lakes don't drift, although a slow river or stream might. Little discrepancies like these can be enough to detract from your message even when the reader can't quite put his finger on what's bugging him about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1563" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T22:07:19.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1999" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2000" CreationDate="2011-03-15T06:14:30.513" Score="3" ViewCount="322" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first one is a suggestion I got from &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1989/how-to-improve-this-introductory-paragraph-to-fit-writting-standards-and-grab-th&quot;&gt;my previous question&lt;/a&gt;. The second one is a version based on the character's viewpoint. Which version is more likely to attract the interest of the reader (and yours)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;('No one' is also a valid answer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At four o'clock in the morning, the&#xA;  psychiatric clinic is dark and silent&#xA;  and empty, like a morgue. In the&#xA;  middle of the cafeteria, a lone young&#xA;  man sits in a chair drinking cheap&#xA;  vodka, his emotionless face&#xA;  illuminated only by the moon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Its four o'clock in the morning. The&#xA;  psychiatric clinic is dark and silent&#xA;  and empty, like a morgue. No, maybe&#xA;  the only thing that is dead in this&#xA;  hall is my hope of healing anyone.&#xA;  Anyways, do I really care about them?&#xA;  (he takes a sip of his vodka, and thinks for a while) Did my disease make me stop caring or&#xA;  stop caring gave birth to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(They don't show exactly the same elements, but every word is connected with the ending).&#xA;(I'm not really sure how to properly insert the parenthesis part).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T22:22:34.280" Title="Which version of these three lines is more likely to attract the interest of the reader ? (character's viewpoint vs omnicient narrator)" Tags="|style|fiction|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2011-03-15T07:43:27.263" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like that you're playing with different viewpoints here. The first one is (in this one paragraph) an aloof third person. If it stays aloof, it may be tricky to engage the reader. But this narrative distance may be temporary, and perhaps subsequent paragraphs will move us closer to the lone young man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first version does raise some intriguing questions. Why is he drinking alone in the cafeteria? Why are the lights off? I want to know about those, so I'm hooked at least enough to read the next few paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second version nicely takes us almost directly into the character's head. We see right away that his life is at some kind of turning point, or maybe a crisis or even an existential quandary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This version also raises questions, but they're different from the first version: Why can he no longer heal people? What disease? How did he stop caring? And will he stop caring that he's stopped caring? Again, I want to read on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bit about him thinking for a while is tricky to do in first person present. You're trying to summarize, which requires some way to get a bit of narrative distance, but it's in the midst of a highly immediate point of view. You can sometimes do that with past tense, as if the character is telling the story long after it happened. For example, you can sometimes carefully pull back from the character's immediate experience in order to summarize--e.g. &quot;I took a sip of my vodka and thought for a long while.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But with first person present tense, there's no distant perch from which to observe the character. I suspect it's possible to do this, but I don't read enough first person present tense to know how good writers manage it. I'm sure other folks can advise well here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it's done, the shifts in narrative distance will have to be both rare and gentle. Frequent or jarring shifts will pop the reader out of the trance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're up for some more experimenting, try several more versions: first person past tense, close third person past tense, close third person present tense, ...  Notice how each viewpoint makes some things easier to say, and some things harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T07:43:27.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2011-03-15T08:22:10.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely, I like the first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no problem with omniscient narrator viewpoint but the second example looks a little bit jerky. (Maybe, the narrator is mentally ill or just loaded with something. I do not know the context.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T08:22:10.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2002" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2010" CreationDate="2011-03-15T09:50:10.910" Score="5" ViewCount="1657" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if I should write my first book in the present or past tense.&#xA;The book is about a doctor in a clinic who is analysing his patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I said, VS I say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought for a while VS I think for a while etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The house was empty and I was sitting in the kitchen VS The house is empty and I'm sitting in the kitchen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My story won't be not very long (190~220 pages) and this is my first book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which tense you recommend me to use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T15:17:59.370" Title="Pros ans cons of writing a plot based on the present and past tense (character's point of view)?" Tags="|style|fiction|tenses|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1970" CreationDate="2011-03-15T09:55:05.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if you're interested in writing in the &quot;cloud&quot; by using online browser based software, but if you are, here are some of the top free online solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scripped.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scripped.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scriptbuddy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scriptbuddy.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google &quot;Plotbot&quot; (I'm limited to only two hyperlinks it seems)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefits of using online writing tools is that you won't lose your work to computer theft or malfunction...almost every keystroke is automatically saved as you write. The corollary is that you aren't tied to any particular computer...you can login to ANY internet enabled computer to access your screenplays...and some of them (for an extra monthly fee in most cases) will allow you to collaborate in real time with other writers if you grant them access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1571" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T09:55:05.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2014" CreationDate="2011-03-15T03:46:28.303" Score="10" ViewCount="28348" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen people indent their poems like below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writing on wall&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was just plane writing on wall&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  I must have taken it a serious call&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  She was on and off repeating same thing&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  There was hidden message through something&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There may be long wait&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  All dependants on fate&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  How can one think and rate?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  It is difficult to state&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or I've seen some like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writing on wall&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was just plane writing on wall&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  __I must have taken it a serious call&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  She was on and off repeating same thing&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  __There was hidden message through something&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There may be long wait&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  __All dependants on fate&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  How can one think and rate?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  __It is difficult to state&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there other possibilities? When should I use which?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1557" OwnerDisplayName="trVoldemort" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-15T12:02:04.737" LastActivityDate="2018-05-22T21:04:34.230" Title="What's the indent rule of poetry?" Tags="|formatting|poetry|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2004" CreationDate="2011-03-15T11:46:44.620" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's poetry. So it is totally up to the poet how to indent the poem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;It was just &#xA;     plane writing &#xA;  on wall&#xA;I &#xA;       must &#xA;   have taken it &#xA;             a serious call&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he thinks that's the way it should be, then that's the correct indenting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T11:46:44.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1983" CreationDate="2011-03-15T12:14:54.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine the situation: You pedal uphill, your muscles are aching, your face is a grimace of pain. There is resistance (called gravity) which does not want that you reach the top of the hill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where do you feel resistance in other situations? Where else is a force you have to overbear, to conquer? Use that as metaphor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now going downhill: It's easy riding downhill. You feel free. Gravity is on your side (The force is with you). When do you feel like that? Parachuting? Find out and pick your metaphor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T12:14:54.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2002" CreationDate="2011-03-15T12:28:03.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really doesn't matter as long as you are consequent and do not mix the tenses up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most books I've read are written in past tense. If you are unsure and there is no compelling reason for you using present tense, I would go with past tense. But it is up to you. There is no wrong or right here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T12:28:03.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2002" CreationDate="2011-03-15T13:22:11.390" Score="11" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to do present tense do it for a good reason and mitigate the downsides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Long version&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Present tense lends a sense of immediacy to the work and also may make it feel like you are reading a screenplay or drama as opposed to a typical past tense novel.  That's the good part.  If you want urgency and a sense of being close to the action, present tense can help.  Present tense is naturally suspenseful because it gives readers a sense that nobody, not even the narrator, knows what is coming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the present tense comes with lots of downsides.  It is not typical in English language novels.  Charles Dicken's Bleak House in the mid-19th century written half in present tense is probably the first example of the present-tense in novels, which have a history going back to the 17th century.  Your readers will &lt;em&gt;notice&lt;/em&gt; your use of present tense, and that may make it difficult for them to read your book unless it's done quite well.  Any time you step out of fiction norms it's best to do it artfully because readers will notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When something is happening in the present tense readers aren't going to expect a lot of narration.  If your character is monologuing in the present tense while going through a car chase readers aren't going to believe it.  Who has time to monologue while they are driving the wrong way down a one way at 30 miles per hour over the speed limit?  On the other hand readers can believe a bit of a monologue if they know the narrator is not &lt;em&gt;currently&lt;/em&gt; driving in the car chase, but rather remembering it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Present tense flattens the story as well.  Your present tense narrator is very close emotionally to the characters, especially if the narrator is present tense and first person singular.  The first person singular, present tense narrator is mostly focusing on what is happening to him or her, and not the other characters.  Your readers will have tunnel vision on your single main character.  Even a present tense third person limited or omniscient narrator  won't be believable opining on and on about how characters are feeling or even dwelling too long on actions that show how your characters are feeling.  Present tense also keeps the story firmly rooted in the present, minimizing your ability to freely use the past and future.  After all, how do you convey past information without changing tenses in this case?  Future?  How does time move?  Do you use awkward phrasing like &quot;later she does..?&quot;  This can be mitigated by having another narrator interwoven in your story using past tense, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do note that present tense is, if last year's controversy over Pulitzer Prize candidates using too much present tense is any example, becoming more popular and may therefore be becoming more acceptable to average readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest reading some well-known present tense works before deciding to use the present tense.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bleak House by Charles Dickens&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rabbit, Run by John Updike&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Siege by Helen Dunmore&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T13:49:09.947" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T13:49:09.947" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2011-03-15T14:23:25.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer the first one, too, although I don't think it's the POV making the difference. In the second version, it feels like you're trying to cram too much information into a short paragraph. It might be more effective to pick just a couple of key details and present those in a way that makes a big impact. You can &quot;reel out&quot; the other information later in the piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1563" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T14:23:25.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2004" CreationDate="2011-03-15T16:01:23.967" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A short answer: The rule is there is no rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, saying some useful stuff:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you want to fit some &quot;standard&quot;, the indentation, as most of the punctuation, is yours. Emily Dickinson was heavily criticized for her use of punctuation in her time, although she's widely appreciated nowadays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a bit on the standards: every now and then a group of people say &quot;Hey! What if we write poetry that conforms to this and that rule?&quot; And start writing poetry that fits together, and can be recognized as similar. They may or may not include indentation as part of the requirements for the poems to &quot;belong&quot; in the movement (or to be acknowledged by the group).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other such requirements may be case rules (such as starting every verse with upper-case), punctuation rules, or even require a refrain (or lack of one). A particular such rule I've used consists in repeating the same phrase at the end of every stanza.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can see, you aren't trying to &quot;fit&quot;. So write it as it flows best, as it feels best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T16:01:23.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2004" CreationDate="2011-03-15T16:10:18.283" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because a poem is more compact than prose, indentation (and line breaks, spacing, leading, and anything else you can think of) can add additional meaning to the poem. So unlike prose, go ahead and indent however you like... as long as there's a reason for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your second example, if the poet likes the idea of pairing the couplets visually, that's the reason for the indent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In John Smithers's excellent example, you can see how breaks and indentations create a much different poem than the plain straightforward verse in your first example. Neither is &lt;em&gt;wrong.&lt;/em&gt; They are just expressing slightly different things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T16:10:18.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1983" CreationDate="2011-03-15T16:13:39.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pedaling uphill is like swimming against the current; downhill gives you the brief instant of going over the waterfall.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uphill is like a sweaty, physical manifestation of how I felt dragging myself into the office every morning for five years. Down is the horrible moment you realize that being fired is even worse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you're pedaling uphill, you're eight years old again, lugging around the lawnmower to make five bucks. Then you rush downhill - that's when you've got the five dollars, and you're soaring to the candy store as fast as your little legs can carry you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T16:13:39.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2016" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2018" CreationDate="2011-03-15T16:48:45.717" Score="1" ViewCount="303" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically I need some critics regarding the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this description essay archive its goal (a creepy story with a 'sappy' ending)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is the 'rhythm' of the story (is there sometimes too sudden or too long?).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pets make you feel safe, useful, and&#xA;needed. Mine was an exception (at&#xA;least that's what I thought.) She was&#xA;a shy little kitten named Luz. My mom&#xA;gave her to me for my fourteenth&#xA;birthday. She was the cutest baby cat&#xA;I had ever seen. Her fur was smooth&#xA;and dark gray, and it always used to&#xA;reflect the sun and shine. But when&#xA;she started getting older, her fur&#xA;became very thick. It was getting&#xA;darker and darker until one day, it&#xA;became totally black. I really started&#xA;to hate her. Even thought she was like&#xA;a black curse, as time passed, she&#xA;turned out to be the shiniest spark I&#xA;ever had in my life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She never made&#xA;a single noise when she was walking in&#xA;my old house. She just suddenly&#xA;appeared everywhere I was. She become&#xA;almost like a creepy version of my&#xA;shadow. She was always so silent even&#xA;when she was hungry. The only moment I&#xA;used to hear noises from her was at&#xA;night. She was like a baby ghost&#xA;crying her sadness through the hall.&#xA;Her sound was a mixture of sadness,&#xA;anguish and frustration. Her cries&#xA;were always in my mind, drilling in my&#xA;thoughts, detaching me from&#xA;consciousness, and driving me slowly&#xA;into a strange state of melancholy and&#xA;panic. The night was never silent the&#xA;time she was around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After she stopped crying, she used to come to my bedroom to stay in the&#xA;darkest place of the room; The exact&#xA;place where moonlight never touched.&#xA;Then, she started to stare at me with&#xA;her big, yellow and hellish eyes. Her&#xA;stare was so creepy that sometimes I&#xA;felt like she could see the deepest&#xA;fears that were hidden in my mind. She&#xA;could pass through my eyes and immerse&#xA;herself directly into my thoughts. Her&#xA;evil eyes were always haunting me in&#xA;nightmares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her eyes weren't the&#xA;only creepy part of her body. Every&#xA;time I petted her, I felt like I was&#xA;touching the corpse of a dead&#xA;creature. Her body was just bones and&#xA;tissues. Her skin was the same color&#xA;of raw meat. It was so colorless, with&#xA;no sign of life. It was so cold that&#xA;sometimes it really made me wonder if&#xA;that thing was really alive.   The&#xA;only thing that made me feel that she&#xA;was alive was her smell. But it wasn't&#xA;pleasant, because it was like the&#xA;smell of a animal in decomposition. It&#xA;was like blood, cat food and fish put&#xA;together. At the beginning I really&#xA;couldn't stand it, but as time passed,&#xA;I got used to that smell. It was&#xA;weird, but it filled the room with the&#xA;sensation that someone was there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time passed and the black and&#xA;creepy Luz was getting old, until one&#xA;day she died. In the beginning, I was&#xA;so happy because the curse of my days&#xA;was finally gone. But later on, I&#xA;started to have sleeping problems. The&#xA;nights became so empty. No one was&#xA;following me, watching my steps,&#xA;watching my sleep and my dreams&#xA;anymore. Luz was gone forever, and for&#xA;the first time in my life, I was alone&#xA;in the dark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-08-31T13:56:31.963" Title="Critique of short essay" Tags="|essay|description|goal|flow|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2018-08-31T18:29:13.823" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2011-03-15T16:49:50.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested to note that the users who expressed a preference went with the first version. I will add my vote for the first to the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A writing tutor once pointed out to me that the first person is easier for authors, it involves getting into a mental groove and just stream-of-consciousness monologuing in the viewpoint character's voice. However, the down side is that the character runs the risk of coming off as a whiner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When someone says &quot;I don't care about this&quot; then you immediately evaluate that as someone separate from you making a statement about something. So you judge the statement and the person as if it were something outside of you that you are reacting to directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you say &quot;he wondered if he had become numb to this&quot; then you, the narrator, are presenting an absolute fact for consideration. The reader avoids the psychological trap of instant reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character explaining why he doesn't care sounds like someone rationalising. In fact, a character explaining anything kind of &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; rationalising. A narrator explaining things the character may or may not be aware of is presenting a fact and it doesn't reflect poorly on the character unless it is meant to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, first person perspective necessarily introduces the risk of reflecting poorly on view point characters even if it's not meant to. Third person gives the narrator more control about how to present a character but is a tougher mental groove to get into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason when a novel is in first person I &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; feel a bit depressed and wonder if I'm going to end up with that grating feeling. Whereas in third person I always know I've got a better chance of not being irritated by the material. That's just because I'm a technician about these things, though. It's like asking a painter to comment on a painting style they've decided that they personally have difficulty with as a practitioner; they're unlikely to be able to get beyond that unless the execution is particularly masterful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T16:49:50.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2016" CreationDate="2011-03-15T17:01:54.400" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your writing style is stream-of-consciousness, which can be hard to digest. (On the internet this is labeled &quot;tl;dr&quot; for &quot;too long; didn't read.&quot;) I &lt;em&gt;strongly&lt;/em&gt; suggest breaking this into several paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you start out with how despite your objection to her color, she became an emotional bright spot &amp;mdash; but you don't get to that until the end, and then you quickly hurry past it. You spend most of the essay dwelling on the &quot;before&quot; part of your feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should structure it roughly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intro: pets are great. mine wasn't,&#xA;until she was. Cute baby cat to all-black&#xA;cat whom I hated, and then loved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Para 1: Silent by day, loud&#xA;distressing cries at night&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Para 2: How she felt and smelled&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Para 3: How my feelings changed and&#xA;why [this is the part you're missing]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conclusion: Luz is gone and I miss her&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T17:01:54.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2016" CreationDate="2011-03-15T17:53:53.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just some remarks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; touching any corpse, anytime? Because this metaphor smells foul.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Alone in the dark&quot;. I think it is a cliche. It is the name of well known legend among computer games, so this phrase induces feelings of a dangerous situation, not loneliness, loss and deprivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T17:53:53.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2020" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2023" CreationDate="2011-03-16T06:32:19.197" Score="4" ViewCount="1369" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't want to scare the reader, but I would like to produce a dark and nostalgic feeling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty much the feeling that gives you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGhNglgwnpw&amp;amp;feature=related&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; (both image and music).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The setting of my novel is a psychiatric clinic (always at night).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T17:49:26.787" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T11:40:06.883" Title="How to achieve a dark and nostalgic feeling/setting in a novel?" Tags="|style|fiction|tone|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2021" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2022" CreationDate="2011-03-16T07:55:43.230" Score="11" ViewCount="389" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes when I write a plot I get confused about the motivations of the characters and how events connect as I change elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea to write a summary first in order to organise things in a simple way? And then writing the actual novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T17:24:21.147" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T23:39:23.800" Title="Is it a good idea to write a summary of a plot before writing the full version?" Tags="|style|planning|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2021" CreationDate="2011-03-16T12:52:35.673" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write the summary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write an outline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write it on notecards so you can rearrange things and reconnect elements in different ways. Use string. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write up briefs of your characters. Know their backgrounds, their personalities, motivations, likes and dislikes, fears and loves. &quot;Brief&quot; is a misnomer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise you don't have a novel. You have logorrhea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T12:52:35.673" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2020" CreationDate="2011-03-16T13:07:40.233" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Place emphasis on uncomfortable things. Depending on the level of realism you're aiming at, you might want to imagine some upsetting situations that &quot;could&quot; happen, and let the people &quot;see&quot; them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, make sure to give a long space to angsty thoughts, and only a fleeting space to happy thoughts or situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're ever going to talk from the perspective of someone in there, you may want to use particular techniques according to whether they are right or wrong in the head. It is very easy to portray bleakness through the eyes of a crazy person, as well as sadness through the eyes of a sane person dealing with insane people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try several techniques, read out loud and read to others. Ask them what they think to know what works best. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T13:07:40.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2026" CreationDate="2011-03-16T13:24:52.553" Score="4" ViewCount="349" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a web designer.  The first rule in design is KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about writing a novel? Is simplicity fundamental or just an option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T14:40:09.557" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T13:54:44.623" Title="Simplicity is fundamental in design. How about in writing a novel?" Tags="|style|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2025" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-16T14:12:02.357" Score="3" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a blog post a long time back. For this post I chose a writing style very different from what I'd read or what I'd seen before. Some guys did criticize me and others did acknowledge me for the same. Now this is not a publicity stunt, but could you guys provide critical comments on my writing style and the content too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theobscureintellect.blogspot.com/2009/08/tete-tete.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; the post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[EDIT]&lt;/strong&gt; : I am a budding writer and I love to write tidbits of philosophy. Can my post be judged on the following guidelines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the flow of my words smooth? In general, is the writing style appealing, does it make you want to read the post in completion?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I know the vocabulary may not be up to the mark, but does it make me appear inadequate with words?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I know the starting and ending portions of any creation in writing are extremely important. Does my opening grab you?  Does my ending leave an appropriate sense of resolution without being simplistic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the tone of my writing give an impression that I'm well read or am I just another budding writer off the block?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I'd love if you could cite text from the post that would be support your arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" OwnerDisplayName="n0nChun" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T07:02:26.697" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T07:02:26.697" Title="Critical review of blog post" Tags="|word-choice|blog|flow|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2023-12-29T10:13:25.780" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2024" CreationDate="2011-03-16T14:28:31.470" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this depends a lot on what you're setting out to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, clarity is most highly valued in genre writing. Plot is often very important in genre writing. Genre writers often try to keep their writing structurally simple, to the point where the reader can forget that they're parsing words and focus on the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Literary writing (as ambiguous as that term is) tends to be less obsessed with simplicity or clarity. A significant percentage of &quot;literary&quot; work is at least partly an experiment in language. When you begin using language in new and strange ways, you're &lt;em&gt;purposely&lt;/em&gt; making the text harder to read, but you're doing it to achieve a specific effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing strictly wrong with either approach, and there are even works out there that employ both techniques. Hemingway is the classic example of simplicity to the point of sparseness, but he uses that structural simplicity to achieve profound effects. Joyce employed dense, challenging prose, and he is greatly admired for the layered complexity of his work. Some readers enjoy a variety of styles, others love one and hate the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your final question: yes, simplicity is an option, not a requirement. Your personal style may lead you in one direction or the other. You might go back and forth between projects, and certain plots or characters may cry out for a particular approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid to experiment. Writing multiple drafts of the same story, in different styles, can often be a helpful exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T14:28:31.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2027" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2032" CreationDate="2011-03-16T14:54:30.510" Score="13" ViewCount="2827" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, I find myself in the dilemma that I come out with a plot that tells exactly what I want to say. But then, I try to modify it in order to make it more original (at least, less similar than current novels).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes is the the way around (I come out with something original but adding 'more meaning&quot; makes it more similar to other works).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel that questions the sanity of some people. At first, I placed these patients in the rooms of a clinic. Then, In order to make it original, I made the doctor himself a patient too (not sure if its very original but I tried). Later, I made the doctor realise this only at the ending, because someone gets affected by his (violent) psychiatric procedures. Now, I'm getting more and more confused by my own plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This have been the main reason I never finish a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions to deal with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T15:26:34.010" LastActivityDate="2017-09-06T14:05:39.103" Title="What to do if I end up confused by my own plot because of 'trying to be original' or 'trying to make the story more deep'?" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2024" CreationDate="2011-03-16T15:14:13.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the core of the novel has to be simple - In general, I believe in the rule that you should be able to explain the basic premise of your story in one sentence.  But I think you can build onto that core with as many complications and elaborations as you can come up with, as long as you (and your readers) don't lose sight of the core idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T15:14:13.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2027" CreationDate="2011-03-16T15:17:39.400" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Originality is generally overrated and never more so than in the case of a first-time novelist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about it. Most published works achieve very little in the way of originality. You are trying to do something which is difficult i.e. sustain enthusiasm, concentration and some sort of narrative through-line for circa 50k words minimum. Now you want to write something the like of which the world has never seen into the bargain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean the former task is foolish and difficult as it is. The latter is foolish and so difficult it is very nearly impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice, for what it's worth, is to get some novels done first and worry about innovating in the novel form in your chosen language second. Or, more succinctly, don't run before you can walk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T15:17:39.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1722" CreationDate="2011-03-16T15:23:45.963" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A weird technique that I use is to change the font that I write in when I edit.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started doing this because I was always finding that I'd catch annoying issues with my work when it was at the galley proof stage (when it's really too late to change anything that isn't a total, clear ERROR).  I tried to figure out why I saw the problems then rather than at any of the many times I'd read my work through the rest of the process, and I decided that part of it was the time gap, but part of it was the appearance.  Once it looked like a real book, I read it differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now I try to do a read-through of my MS at a larger font, and a different one than the font I write in.  It sounds stupid, but it somehow makes my brain see the words differently, and I catch things that I didn't catch at the old font.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T15:23:45.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2027" CreationDate="2011-03-16T15:24:13.073" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're trying too hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put the structure of your novel together. Don't worry if it's been done. It's &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; been done. There are something like forty plots in all human literature. Trust me, whatever you're doing, it's been done. &quot;Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back&quot; is done twelve times a day and a few extra on Friday nights, but oddly, neither the romance novel business nor the chick-flick industry are collapsing. The point is to do it &lt;em&gt;well&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write the best novel you can. Have it edited repeatedly. Ask your editors to point out anything which seems painfully derivative, and focus your improvements there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T15:24:13.073" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2027" CreationDate="2011-03-16T15:30:31.430" Score="17" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finish them anyway.&lt;/strong&gt; You get good by writing; plotting alone isn't enough. And yeah, your first novel or two will probably be unpublishable. That's fine - those will be your practice novels. If you never write anything because they'll be less than perfect, I'm afraid you're likely not to write anything at all. Not only will finishing your imperfectly-plotted novels help hone a whole bunch of &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; writing skills, it will give you hands-on experience with translating a plot into a story - which is crucial to understanding how to write a plot to begin with. It will give you the sense of where the originality and freshness might still come in even in a familiar plot, and of how to add extra layers without devolving into cliche. Practice, practice, practice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't pander to the imagined masses.&lt;/strong&gt; It sounds like you're saying you've got Plot A that you yourself are perfectly happy with, but you've got the sense that Plot A &quot;should&quot; be more original/more meaningful. Don't bend yourself out of shape over what your novel &quot;should&quot; be like, particularly when you haven't written it yet. If you yourself feel that Plot A is terrific, then changing it in response to perceived criticism that you yourself don't understand and/or agree with is unlikely to be an improvement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most stories aren't very original.&lt;/strong&gt; They really aren't. This may not be particularly inspiring, but it's kind of comforting to know you don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to invent a new type of wheel. There's plenty of room for &quot;familiar&quot; stories with new characters, or new twists on old tropes, or just the joy of reading a story done well - even if it is similar to others we've read before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stories don't have to mean things.&lt;/strong&gt; They really don't. If you've got a cool idea, something that excites you and would be interesting to write about, then why twist it into a &quot;message&quot; or a &quot;meaning&quot;? You're not writing an editorial, you're writing a story. In other words, things happening. What's wrong with letting 'em happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your writing is more original and meaningful than you think it is.&lt;/strong&gt; Although not necessarily in the ways you might expect. The unique thing about your writing is that its &lt;em&gt;yours&lt;/em&gt;, and nobody else would write the same characters and events in quite the same way. You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; bring originality and meaning into your stories, even without intentionally doing something to be deliberately original or meaningful. By pouring your self, your thoughts, your feelings, your observations and understanding of the world, into your work - you'll be doing something unique. By improving your craft - your skill at portrayal, your eye for detail, your intriguing cast, your gripping scenes - you'll be polishing up that unique aspect until, eventually, it shines. Shakespeare wasn't original, but he was damned good at what he did.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess my advice here boils down to saying: it sounds like you're worrying about this more than is warranted. I understand your difficulty, because you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; your books to be original and meaningful - and isn't that why we read books to begin with? And it's true - your books &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be cliche or incoherent enough that they'll be awful. But it's important to understand that these two values are not the be-all and end-all of writing, and they certainly shouldn't &lt;em&gt;stop&lt;/em&gt; you from writing entirely. You've staked out where you want to get to - because you know you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; write stories that will have everything you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep going. You'll get there. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T15:30:31.430" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2027" CreationDate="2011-03-16T15:35:28.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Theme development should be natural.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The art of writing fiction is the art of building a world.  It may be a very small world, such as a ride up an elevator with a character reflecting on his life.  It may be a very large world such as J. R. R. Tolkein created in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and other stories set in Middle Earth.  It may be somewhere in between.  It is not going to be an original world, but it will be &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; world through &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; eyes.  Why else do we read but to get the author's window on the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiction works which set out to prove a point or support a thesis are very rarely well received by modern audiences, who often view them as overly moralistic or trying to bash people over the head with a point.  If you do have an idea in mind, such as questioning the sanity of certain types of people, try and build a world in which they will naturally demonstrate the fact that they aren't quite sane as most would describe sanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Originality is overrated.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't stress about being original.  Just don't.  First of all, if originality were really a big thing, genre fiction would have died out an age ago.  Even in the world of literary fiction there is a lot of hashing and rehashing.  Plus if you are confused by your own originality and &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are the author, just try and picture a reader who didn't know what you are getting at figuring it all out.  Just because Joyce's Ulysses is famous even though it was declared unreadable doesn't mean the rest of us should try and be James Joyce!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T15:35:28.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2020" CreationDate="2011-03-16T17:44:33.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focus on descriptions. Describe the setting vividly so that the reader feels like they're there. If you were in a psychiatric ward at night, what would you be scared of? Try and put those things into your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humans are naturally fearful and cautious creatures. You can easily prey upon those natural fears to make the novel seem dark. If you'd really like to scare the reader, don't be too specific. What their imaginations add to fill in the blanks can often be more terrifying than anything you can write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T17:44:33.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2021" CreationDate="2011-03-16T20:16:20.653" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some writers are outliners. Some writing advisors are adamant that outlining is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other writers are &quot;discovery writers,&quot; because one of the reasons they're writing is to discover something (the story, the characters, what the author really thinks about some theme, etc.). Also known as &quot;pantsers,&quot; because they write &quot;by the seat of their pants.&quot; Also known as &quot;organic&quot; writers. In my experience, discovery writers tend not to be so adamant that it's the only way to write. But they do say, &quot;If you aren't surprising yourself, how are you going to surprise the reader?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, Richard North Patterson was reading and answering questions at my local Borders. I loved the string of books he wrote in the middle of his career, so I went to see him. In response to a question from the audience, he said, &quot;Writing without knowing where you are going and how you are going to get there is authorial malpractice.&quot; Alas, he has published two novels since then, and I guessed the &quot;surprise&quot; ending to each about 20 pages in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I've started three novels without knowing the ending. I've written 50,000 words on each (can you guess in which month I did my writing? ;-), and I still don't have an ending for any of them. I did outline the beginnings, and found that there were plenty of ways to surprise myself as I wrote the scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen King is famous for being an organic writer. Some readers say that's obvious from some of King's endings. But you gotta admit that whatever he's doing is working for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What will work for you? Dunno. It's a good idea to &lt;strong&gt;try outlining at least once&lt;/strong&gt;, to see how it works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally outline at the scene level: One &quot;card&quot; per scene. (I use Scrivener for this, but you can use physical cards or any other way to capture and organize scene ideas.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you outline or not, try sketching out each scene before you write it (perhaps immediately before you write it). Before I write a scene, I usually know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the viewpoint character&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what the viewpoint character wants, and why they want that—i.e. how it relates to their larger story goal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who opposes the viewpoint character&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what that opponent wants, and why they want that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the outcome of the conflict—usually the viewpoint character doesn't get what they want; often they end up even worse off than at the start of the scene&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's enough guidance to keep me focused. Related to your question, this sketch makes the characters' motivations clear. At the same time, I usually don't know the details of how each character will go about trying to get what they want. So the sketch leaves plenty of room for me to surprise myself as I write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T20:16:20.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2036" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2040" CreationDate="2011-03-16T20:43:28.640" Score="6" ViewCount="386" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a character that I want to sound very intelligent, well educated, someone who always uses the correct words with no unnecessary filler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found the word 'meretricious' which has the perfect definition I'm after but I wonder if it's just 'a bit too much' - maybe too obvious that I've used a thesaurus and would result in unrealistic dialog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it seem sensible? if not - what alternatives would one recommend? &lt;em&gt;Gaudy&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;brazen&lt;/em&gt; don't have quite the effect I want to reveal this guy's inner workings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1562" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2011-08-29T13:07:50.943" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T09:13:10.597" Title="Meretricious - A bit too fancy?" Tags="|dialogue|thesaurus|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2036" CreationDate="2011-03-16T20:53:36.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your readers won't know what it means right away, don't use it. Readers should be able to read through your books without having to stop and look words up. If they have to stop, it throws them out of the story. You want reading to be a smooth process in which the reader is completely absorbed in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for getting advice on other words to use, that'd be more suited for the English.SE rather than the Writers.SE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T20:53:36.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2021" CreationDate="2011-03-16T23:39:23.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Couldn't agree more with the &quot;use string&quot; tip. I use a big A1 sheet of cardboard, little Post-It notes, and lengths of ribbon to join things together. Don't know quite how I'd figure a plot out without it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1581" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T23:39:23.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2036" CreationDate="2011-03-17T00:28:14.310" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you saying your character is describing someone as meretricious? If that's the word he would use, by all means use it. I have absolutely no problem making the reader work a little to expand his/her vocabulary. I have actually learned words from stopping and looking something up (&quot;gravid&quot; meaning pregnant and &quot;guerdon&quot; meaning gift are the two which leap to mind, both from Anne McCaffrey). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's the right word, use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;The difference between the right word and the almost right word is really a large matter — it's the difference between a lightning bug and the lightning. — Mark Twain&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T00:28:14.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2036" CreationDate="2011-03-17T00:30:56.763" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends who will use the word. If it's one character talking or thinking about another, it's a great word, and will help to characterize both characters in one swell foop. It will also trigger many readers to react in ways that enhance what you're trying to say. Readers who understand the word will get the intent. Readers who have to look up the word will &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt; meretriciousness. Readers who don't know what the word means, but choose to keep reading without looking it up, will at least know that one character is using such an awfully big word to describe another, which will give them approximately the right meaning anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the narrator utters the word, and the narrator is not a character, that doesn't characterize the characters, it characterizes the author, and to some extent the author's relationship to the reader. It says that either you expect your readers to know what the word means, or you intend to use words whether or not the readers understand. If that's what you want, go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, then show the character being meretricious, and the consequences of that (in the way other characters react), and let readers come to their own conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T00:30:56.763" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2045" CreationDate="2011-03-17T10:32:50.043" Score="2" ViewCount="6201" Body="&lt;p&gt;... are very skilled in getting men to like them, men really easily fall in love with them, but they (the women) are not interested in anything more than a sexual relationship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1583" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T12:43:30.127" Title="Know any metaphors about women that...?" Tags="|poetry|sex|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2041" CreationDate="2011-03-17T11:33:00.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What about &quot;Lady vamp&quot; or - better - &quot;succuba&quot; (not &quot;succubus&quot;)? &quot;Succubian lady vamp&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T11:33:00.827" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2011-03-17T12:18:56.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem is that your second example isn't really in pure first person - the bits in the bracket are in third - which makes it feel awkward and, as someone else said, jerky.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But assuming that you're trying to chose between either distant third/omniscient or tight third/first person, I don't think you can make this decision based on two short excerpts.  What are the demands of your story?  Are you trying to get right inside one character's head and show how the events affect just him, or are you looking for a more dispassionate, removed examination of a strange situation and its effects on a variety of characters?  DO you want readers to feel as if they, like your MC, don't have enough information to fully understand things, or do you want the readers to see the big picture and watch as the characters figure it out?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choice of POV isn't just about the way that individual paragraphs feel, it's about the goals for the whole book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T12:18:56.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2036" CreationDate="2011-03-17T12:25:53.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To whom is your character speaking?  You want your character to use &quot;the correct words&quot; - I'd say the most correct words are the ones that will convey the most meaning to the listener.  So if your character is talking to someone else who's well-educated and has a large vocabulary, I think this could be the right word.  If your character is talking to someone with less education, I think the smart thing for your character to do would be to use a word that will be understood by the listener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T12:25:53.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2041" CreationDate="2011-03-17T12:41:02.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you trying to make the women look good, or bad?  Like, are they deliberately hurting the men who fall for them, or have they been honest about their intentions and just can't help it if men don't believe them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for a negative metaphor, I think the Greeks could probably help.  Helen of Troy springs to mind, but maybe also Pandora, the Sirens, most of the women in the Odyssey, etc.  The Greeks weren't big fans of independent women.  Or something more modern, although maybe overused - the black widow spider (lures males into her web, mates, kills them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for a more positive perspective...could you pull something out of nature?  Anything that can be pleasant but that ultimately follows its own path should work, right?  Like, the warmth of the sun that lasts only a while before it fades to night, the cold moon that men stare at and dream about but can't control...that sort of thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T12:41:02.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2041" CreationDate="2011-03-17T12:43:30.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &quot;Gone With the Wind&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Melanie: That's not fair. The men naturally flock to her. Scarlett's just high spirited and vivacious.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Sue Ellen: Men may flirt with a girl like that but they don't marry them. &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T12:43:30.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2011-03-17T12:48:24.507" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recode as science fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dune was about the battles over a large deserted area in which were the largest (in fact sole) deposits of a resource vital to the transportation logistics of an entire civilisation. There are many people who love that series that still don't get the relevance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact almost everything that could be considered science fiction is really just lateral social commentary. Science is humanity's method for measuring reality and our tool for attempting to change it to suit ourselves. Whatever issues are prevalent can be extrapolated, placed into a futuristic or imaginary setting and discussed at length. Often, the people you are trying to reach with your communication will receive, decode, understand what you're trying ot say. People who would silence you if you spoke directly will not even know that you spoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just stay away from children's fantasy cf. The Pope first condemning Harry Potter and then supporting it in preference to His Dark Materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adult oriented science fiction can dramatise your message, deliver it in an exciting form to open minded individuals and hide itself from those who would seek to suppress commentary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DISCLAIMER: I'm not in a position to have to resort to these tactics. I speak as someone who has observed the effect only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T12:48:24.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2025" CreationDate="2011-03-17T12:53:37.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have some good ideas, and I think it's great that you're taking the time to experiment and explore.  But in terms of writing style, I think you need to keep working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first paragraph opens with a cliche - &quot;In times like these&quot; - has there ever been a time when people DIDN'T think they were living in unusual times?  You're right, your opening counts, and I think you could make this one count for more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then I like the idea of all the parallelism in the first paragraph, but you've got to be careful to make it fit.  You start with &quot;You find yourself&quot;, and then your first two items fit that structure &quot;You find yourself in a strange city,&quot; &quot;[You find yourself] miles away from college,&quot; but then you lose the structure.  &quot;[You find yourself] just swarming with people you don't know&quot;?  No.  You started off describing yourself, but then you start describing the city, and then you start describing the people, etc.  By the end of the list, I'm not really sure WHAT you're describing.  Parallelism can be a really effective structure, and you're almost there, but you need to be a bit more disciplined about it.  You could still keep most of the ideas, but break them down into tighter sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And after that huge, flowing list, I wasn't too happy to see another use of the same stylistic device at the start of the next paragraph.  Variety creates interest.  Some short, tight sentences would be welcome there.  The sentence &quot;Today I choose to write about myself&quot; really worked, for me, because it was such a break from the long, convoluted and not entirely clear sentences that came before it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's as far as I got.  Good luck with it, and keep working!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T12:53:37.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2052" CreationDate="2011-03-17T13:28:45.033" Score="9" ViewCount="716" Body="&lt;p&gt;For those that are just starting out, what are key skills they should have or learn to be a good technical writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="1342" LastEditDate="2011-03-17T20:10:16.640" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T20:10:16.640" Title="What are the key skills for a new technical writer?" Tags="|non-fiction|technical-writing|getting-started|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2055" CreationDate="2011-03-17T13:47:54.307" Score="9" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;For all of my editing work I'm currently using Microsoft Word. But I've heard a bit about Adobe's InCopy being good for editing and publishing. Is it really better? What makes it better than Word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="1342" LastEditDate="2011-03-17T20:11:49.947" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T14:09:29.043" Title="I'm an editor who generally uses Word to communicate changes with my authors. Is Adobe's InCopy better for this task?" Tags="|editing|tools|software|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2049" CreationDate="2011-03-17T14:39:37.360" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be clear. Write simply and plainly. Define your jargon and your acronyms, even if you think everyone knows them already, and use jargon as sparingly as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine handing your document to someone outside your field (or better yet, try to get an editor outside your field) and aim for your work to make some kind of sense to that person. Obviously an extremely sophisticated technical paper isn't going to make complete sense to a lay person, but that person should at least be able to get the gist of what you're saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T14:39:37.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2049" CreationDate="2011-03-17T15:56:57.470" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Knowing who your audience is makes for a good first step. Writing end user documentation isn't the same as documenting an API, and shouldn't be approached the same way. Your audience defines everything that comes after, and how simply you need to present concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Lauren noted, writing simply and plainly is solid advice, no matter who you audience is. Simplicity is determined by your audience, but the &quot;plainly&quot; side isn't. Along similar lines, pictures, diagrams, and screenshots are wonderful. Never say with words what you can illustrate with a screenshot. Remove any cruft from a screenshot that's tangential, or could distract from the message. I think this is a decent example from my own personal stuff that demonstrates &lt;a href=&quot;http://rianjs.net/2010/11/how-to-pin-eclipse-to-the-windows-7-taskbar&quot;&gt;an appropriate mix of illustration with text&lt;/a&gt;, and snipping out cruft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the work I do is end-user documentation. As such, I try to keep my mom in mind when I'm writing it. She's smart, but not technically inclined. Could she understand the concepts and do what I'm explaining?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things to avoid:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed a lot of software developers use words like &quot;trivially&quot;, &quot;obvious&quot;, and other off-putting vocabulary when they're writing technical content. This is bad. You're not doing math proofs; there is no QED in technical communication. No one cares how smart you are, or how easy it was for you to figure out the solution. I've gotten to the point where I just close the browser tab if I see too much of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perfectionism is another pitfall. Technical writing needs to be good enough. It doesn't need to be perfect. You're not trying to be James Joyce. Technical communication is about accomplishing a task, not winning the Pulitzer. (Not that you shouldn't actively try to get better at your craft!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't include too much detail, unless you should. This goes back to your audience again, but your job as a technical writer is not to impress the engineers who built the system with how clever you are. I was writing some documentation for an iOS client a few months ago, and I started explaining how the back end works in the quick start guide. The developer mentioned that the first draft was a little more complicated than he was looking for, and he was right. End users didn't care how the client chose a connection mode; they just wanted it to work. Save that stuff for the in-depth documentation that'll be put in a KB, not a quick-start guide. Similarly, what you find interesting about what you're documenting is not necessarily what the audience will find useful. Scope creep isn't just limited to engineering projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid devices that distract from your message. If you're telling someone how to set the clock on their VCR (heh), you don't need to tell it in story form. I feel ridiculous for even mentioning this, but I've seen it done(!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastEditorUserId="1467" LastEditDate="2011-03-17T17:39:15.580" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T17:39:15.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2053" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2058" CreationDate="2011-03-17T17:02:42.130" Score="10" ViewCount="4867" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does a technical writer need a technical background?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2020-04-10T20:21:03.277" Title="Does a technical writer need a technical background?" Tags="|non-fiction|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="17" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2053" CreationDate="2011-03-17T17:29:57.000" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, not explicitly. But a technical writer does need to understand what they are writing about in order to communicate it effectively. &#xA;If you'd like a book on the subject, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0312692161&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Technical Communication&lt;/a&gt; by Mike Markel is an excellent resource for all aspects of technical writing and communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1461" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T17:29:57.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2050" CreationDate="2011-03-17T19:22:36.403" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think to some extent the question is moot.  I don't think it really matters what software is BETTER (and you can get into endless debates about that from proponents of all different products), it matters what's Industry Standard.  And MS Word is still absolutely the industry standard, in my experience.  All serious writers have and use MS Word, all serious editors have and use MS Word, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just checked the price for InCopy, and it looks like it costs about $250.  If you want to use it yourself, for in-house work, I think it might be an interesting experiment, but I don't think it's realistic to expect everyone you work with to buy their own copy, at that price.  Not when everybody's already paid for their copies of MS Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: As a writer, I'd be unimpressed if my editor expected me to not only buy, but also spend the time learning to use a brand new piece of software.  I want to WRITE, not play around with my computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T19:22:36.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2049" CreationDate="2011-03-17T19:59:28.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you write other things (id est, assuming you have ease of written expression), there are four skills to polish that apply to all of technical writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simplicity through division: Break complex ideas in many simple ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simplicity through vocabulary: Use everyday words whenever possible without sacrificing precision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simplicity through organization: Set the text up in a way that every concept is readily supported by previously explored concepts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simplicity through tidiness: develop an unobtrusive way of explaining terms. Sometimes a footer is a distraction, sometimes it is the most appropriate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Through practice and observance of those principles, technical material can become enjoyable reading material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you develop those skills, there are some &lt;em&gt;steps&lt;/em&gt; (not skills) you need to follow in order to be a good technical writer. Others that answered before me mentioned some of them (such as knowing your audience), but as I think that's not the spirit of the question I'll not address them. They are, of course, key for successfully writing technical articles, so you should heed those answers too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T19:59:28.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2050" CreationDate="2011-03-17T20:14:08.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a matter where the software quality is not the issue. Instead there are two questions: what your writers have and use, and which features you use for editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your answer to the second question, the first issue may be relatively minor. I use Word for all my editing for the simple reason that its revision marking features and comments are the best I've encountered... and most of my authors have it. The articles I assign have little in the way of formatting, other that italics and bullets; all the formatting comes from the Web content management system. So the &quot;word processing&quot; features are not stressed at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, most of my writers can do their editing in the Author Review in Open Office or most tools that import and export RTF... if they don't already have Word. And most of them DO have Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="202" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T20:14:08.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2053" CreationDate="2011-03-17T20:19:14.053" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, it's a plus. It is good to have a deep knowledge of the field you write about, so your documents have more weight and insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd choose, given the same writing skill level, a person with technical background over one with no technical background, if what I'm looking for is technical documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not have the edge, if you can? Make sure you're a great writer, or get work with whatever subject you're going to write about, but do land the gigs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T20:19:14.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2063" CreationDate="2011-03-18T02:21:00.027" Score="6" ViewCount="426" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the idea of single-sourced documentation dead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2020-03-05T18:53:55.893" Title="Is the idea of single-sourced documentation dead?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2060" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-18T02:24:34.797" Score="16" ViewCount="19889" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like being able to take my work anywhere with me, but sometimes my laptop is just too big to take with me. Battery life on tablets seem to be much better than laptops as well. Are there any tablets that would be good for writers and editors? Please explain any recommendations. (Any operating system is fine - Android, Windows Mobile, iPad, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-26T11:26:32.507" LastActivityDate="2018-04-26T13:35:16.840" Title="Are there any good tablets out there for writing/editing?" Tags="|tools|medium|tablets|" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2060" CreationDate="2011-03-18T03:39:32.677" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The iPad is pretty good, but I would suggest getting a USB keyboard as well. You can find some nice cases that have the keyboard built in so you can open them up and type. I usually get 10-12 hours on my iPad, though I don't use the blue tooth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for laptops, I have a netbook myself, and I can get six hours out of that without much trouble if I set the brightness to low and turn the wi-fi off. You can also get a bigger battery that can take you to ten hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The netbook is a good size to travel with, easy enough to stick into a small bag. Same with the iPad, in fact I usually keep both with me when I fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T03:39:32.677" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2060" CreationDate="2011-03-18T13:42:03.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The iPad is fabulous. I have written a 120,000 word novel on one. Buy the little Apple keyboard. All highly portable. You can save your files on Dropbox and your writing is accessible anywhere, or email each chapter to yourself. I used the Apple programme Pages. It works well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1591" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T18:20:12.487" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T18:20:12.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2059" CreationDate="2011-03-18T13:50:39.213" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not know, why it should be dead. Writing and updating several sources with the same content is tedious, error-prone and will cost a lot of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to separate content and design. You write the content one time and you generate with different designs/formats websites, PDFs, books, eBooks, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main approach is to store the content with its meta-information (e.g. paragraph begins here, paragraph ends there) into an &lt;a href=&quot;http://xmlpress.net/&quot;&gt;XML&lt;/a&gt; file, the design information into a different file (style sheet) and let a computer program combining them. (You will have different style sheets for different formats.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;DocBook&lt;/a&gt; is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook&quot;&gt;semantic markup language&lt;/a&gt; designed exactly for this purpose. You use it to define the content and the logical structure and generate the final product (book, webpage, ...) with different style sheets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T13:50:39.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="72" CreationDate="2011-03-18T15:39:14.450" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The style manual or guide depends on the audience. Journalists will use the AP Stylebook. Academic writers have a few more options depending on their field. Most English or Literature focused writing will use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_MLA_Style_Manual&quot;&gt;MLA&lt;/a&gt; and social science writing will likely use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APA_style&quot;&gt;APA&lt;/a&gt;. For other kinds of writing, especially for an academic journal, check what style they prefer. They may have their own style (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACS_style&quot;&gt;ACS&lt;/a&gt;) or use something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicago_Manual_of_Style&quot;&gt;Chicago&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1461" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T15:39:14.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2060" CreationDate="2011-03-18T15:42:56.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want a Windows option, HP and Dell both have great tablets. HP's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_store&amp;amp;category=notebooks&amp;amp;a1=Brand&amp;amp;v1=HP+TouchSmart&amp;amp;series_name=tm2t_series&amp;amp;a1=Brand&amp;amp;v1=HP+TouchSmart&amp;amp;jumpid=in_R329_prodexp/hhoslp/psg/lateralnav_tablet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tm2&lt;/a&gt; (shopping link) and Dell's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-duo/pd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Inspiron duo&lt;/a&gt; (shopping link) are good, consumer-focused models. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1461" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T15:42:56.180" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2066" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2072" CreationDate="2011-03-18T16:36:10.383" Score="9" ViewCount="3024" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to get a better picture of a manuscript I've written, especially in regards to word usage patterns and potentially overused terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious whether anyone can recommend a document analysis tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, is there a program that takes a Microsoft Word document and produces a spreadsheet of all the words contained in the document and the number of times the word appears?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;cat    23&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;said   15&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;jumped 12&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;dog    7&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T20:51:59.723" Title="Software for analyzing a manuscript?" Tags="|software|tools|text-analysis|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2059" CreationDate="2011-03-18T17:26:31.753" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joining John Smithers, single-sourcing is not only &lt;strong&gt;not dead&lt;/strong&gt;, but increasingly vivid. There are new standards under revision right now. &lt;em&gt;Darwin Information Type Architecture 1.2&lt;/em&gt;, for instance, was so anxiously expected that the OASIS team voluntarily leaked the working specification for users to implement, August 2010.&#xA;Every single, serious, content site is based on single-sourcing: Newspapers, radios, TV stations. Not to mention the bulk of government agencies.&#xA;Checkout the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oasis-open.org/&quot;&gt;OASIS&lt;/a&gt; site and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xml.org/&quot;&gt;XML.org&lt;/a&gt;. You will find plenty of action there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1389" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T17:26:31.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2011-03-18T17:43:10.787" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publish online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start an anonymous blog, and if you're &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; worried about your name getting out, see what you can do about uploading from public computers.  If you really don't care about personal rewards and only want the work to be out there, the internet is a good outlet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, that doesn't guarantee it will be read, and considering you're going to want to distance yourself from it, it probably won't be read by very many people.  But it will be out there.  And maybe you can publicize it anonymously on websites and forums that would go for the sort of thing you wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should say, though, that this kind of sounds like the sort of thing that you're writing for a very specific and very small audience.  Consider who you really want to read this, and if it's just a handful of people that you personally know, consider writing it with the end-goal in mind of only showing it to those people.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1481" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T17:43:10.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2066" CreationDate="2011-03-18T18:27:43.090" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't precisely what you're looking for, but it's interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordle.net/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.wordle.net/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T18:27:43.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2066" CreationDate="2011-03-18T18:56:10.607" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The writing program yWriter has this function. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html&quot;&gt;yWriter&lt;/a&gt; is basically a downgraded version of Scrivener for Windows. It allows you to create multiple scenes and rearrange them easily. It will also analyze those scenes or the entire document for word usage, word goal, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T18:56:10.607" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2060" CreationDate="2011-03-18T19:00:59.167" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a tablet, but a mini notebook sounds like it meets your size and battery life requirements. I have a Toshiba NB 205. 10&quot; screen, less than 3 pounds with 7 hour battery life. Windows 7. Powerful enough to run Office, but I choose not to. I carry it in a backpack on the train daily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1459" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T19:00:59.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2066" CreationDate="2011-03-18T19:24:25.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bing search for word frequency gets these two promising programs. Not for Word documents, but that's not a huge problem since you can save as text or copy-paste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wordfrequencycounter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wordfrequencycounter.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.primitivezone.com/primitive-word-counter.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.primitivezone.com/primitive-word-counter.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm actually writing a writing app for Windows now. It'd be pretty easy to add frequency in as a tool... Hmm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T19:24:25.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2073" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2076" CreationDate="2011-03-18T20:39:30.900" Score="7" ViewCount="5679" Body="&lt;p&gt;When is it acceptable to use the first person (&quot;I&quot;, &quot;we&quot;) in technical reports?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-03-05T20:28:14.260" LastActivityDate="2018-03-05T20:28:14.260" Title="When is it acceptable to use the first person (&quot;I&quot;, &quot;we&quot;) in technical reports?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2073" CreationDate="2011-03-19T00:22:31.597" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It probably depends on what you mean by a &quot;technical report&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See, one of the first rules about writing is that context is really, really important.  So when you ask us if the first person can be used in a technical report, it leads me to wonder who your audience is (just your boss?  everyone at the company?  the general public?), what the story is behind this question (you must think that first person is a viable option for some reason), and what this technical manual is supposed to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, we need you to give us more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1594" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T00:22:31.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2073" CreationDate="2011-03-19T01:15:24.537" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that technical reports are generally written in the passive voice.  So, unless there's a reason to use first person, I'd avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think it's pretty rare that you'd be called upon to write a spontaneous, context-free technical report, so I'm with user1594 in thinking that you need to look at the individual situation.  Most large companies and universities will have some form of in-house style sheet that you could consult. Smaller organizations probably have a person to whom you could speak about the issue.  Or you could just look up previous examples of technical reports written for that body and see what format was used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if in doubt, I'd go with passive voice, but I'd also try to get rid of the doubt, where possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T01:15:24.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2077" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2095" CreationDate="2011-03-19T08:21:20.660" Score="0" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;For instance I wrote this thing that is real&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;God’s love is like your parents love /&#xA;  except for the ‘‘burning, crying, and&#xA;  screaming for eternity in hell&quot; part&#xA;  / if you don’t obey them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and funny (well that's arguable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way of listing the elements that makes a real fact, fun?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Well I'm trying to add humour but the main point of these writings is to tell my feelings and have social impact).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By elements I mean the connection between words or literary tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T22:52:48.043" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T22:52:48.043" Title="Is there a way of listing the elements that makes a real fact fun?" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2078" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-19T08:31:25.923" Score="3" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example I wrote this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;!Paying! for exams, and also books&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  to pass them is only a &lt;strong&gt;small price&lt;/strong&gt; /&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  to give &lt;em&gt;poor people&lt;/em&gt; the opportunity /&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...to contribute for the MANSIONS of the people in charge of the edu|ca|tio|nal system&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some ideas there but since it is irony I'm getting a bit confused by my own writing (I'm a heavy drinker). Is there any technique to underline and list the ideas in this short text? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paragraph have a meessage for the reader, I want to find a way of arranging those ideas or group them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-03-20T18:47:38.513" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T18:47:38.513" Title="Are there any techniques to arrange or list ideas from a short text?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2011-03-22T18:39:48.283" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2079" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2081" CreationDate="2011-03-19T18:57:18.147" Score="21" ViewCount="142681" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of people are either on the side of first person or the side of third person. But what are the advantages and disadvantages of writing in first person for fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T18:59:09.833" Title="What are the advantages and disadvantages of writing in first person?" Tags="|fiction|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2079" CreationDate="2011-03-19T19:32:21.983" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First person makes it easy to show a character's motivations, and using it with an unreliable narrator can add a nice twist of ambiguity. With highly sympathetic narrators, it can forge a strong connection between reader and protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand: (Most of this assumes the point point-of-view character is the protagonist, which is the option I've seen most often.) The reader can't witness any action that the protagonist doesn't. It's more challenging to describe the point-of-view character (both physically and otherwise). The reader doesn't get the benefit of multiple perspectives on the same events. It tends to distance the reader a bit from the other characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Disadvantages&quot; might not be the best word, because some or all of them can be advantages in certain types of stories. For instance, suspense might hinge almost entirely on the reader's only being privy to a limited view of events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that, generally, first-person works best with a point-of-view character who is either extremely identifiable (reader feels at home in the character's head) or not identifiable at all (reader needs an especially deep insight into the character's motivations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1563" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T19:32:21.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2079" CreationDate="2011-03-20T06:40:32.667" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First person narratives also have a much easier time garnering empathy from your audience,   since they end up spending so much time in your character's brain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If done well, it can give logic and motivations to characters that would seem otherwise&#xA;evil, immoral, or otherwise not relatable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It more easily fleshes a character on the page by allowing the audience to listen to their voice for long periods of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A beginning writer often finds it easier to keep consistent tone, style, and prose when writing in first person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some ways, a first person narrator can more easily &quot;dump&quot; information on the reader. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disadvantages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many authors discount this, but I think it's important: the narrator needs to have a clear reason to be telling or documenting the story in the first place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describing the protagonist clearly (let alone honestly and objectively) is very difficult, and usually requires tacky tricks (like staring into a mirror).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perspective and perceptions are extremely limited.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First person narrators, unless they are telling the story far in the future, are less inclined to understand the gravity of any situation. In general they are more grounded in the immediacy of any given moment and less able to see its place in the grand scope of things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T06:40:32.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2082" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-20T06:55:20.907" Score="49" ViewCount="50757" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write mostly speculative fiction, and use Scrivener for writing and note-taking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm looking to start crafting timelines to keep track of the exact year and months events in the distant and close past occurred. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a perfect world: I'd like for the software to be easily manageable, relatively low-maintenance or easy to deal with, automatically &quot;sorting&quot; (or &quot;pinning&quot; the event in the correct place on the line) and easily scalable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of anything at all like this? If not, what do others use to create time-lines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-03-20T18:35:43.030" LastActivityDate="2017-10-26T18:30:28.767" Title="Is there any good time-line software out there?" Tags="|creative-writing|software|notes|" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1188" CreationDate="2011-03-20T07:09:17.460" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order for backups to really work, you need multiple factors in place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automation: If you forget to put a document or a document's version on a USB or email it to yourself, it is effectively not backed up. Dropbox is your best bet for this, with Mozy a close second.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Off-Site: Unless you have a system to regularly store copies in one of those indestructible black boxes, something as simple as a spilled coffee can ruin paper or external digital copies. Again, Dropbox, Mozy, or Amazon S3 server can accomplish this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Version Control: If you have an automated system set up to back up a file that gets corrupted, you will have perfectly safe copies of a corrupted file. Version control ensures that you never lose any changes, no matter how small. My suggestion is mercurial (hg) and bitbucket, which fulfills the off-site requirement as well. But the earlier mention of git and github works just as well. A matter of preference, and easy to learn with a little knowledge of terminal navigation. Commit early, commit often. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy retrieval: it's pointless to have a backup if you can't find it or get easy access to it. Using a repository system like mercurial or git would allow you to not only to easily retrieve the documents, but also every change ever committed. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally use a combination of dropbox, mercurial, and bitbucket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T07:09:17.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2024" CreationDate="2011-03-20T13:54:44.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a purely plot standpoint, it is also relatively dependent on the genre you're writing. People return to certain genres/sub-genres because (and these exist in the first place because) people enjoy having certain specific emotions evoked. Like Sci-Fi/Fantasy = Wonderment and Immersement. Crime/Mystery = that feeling that the reader can &quot;figure it out first,&quot; or &quot;see it coming.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So readers of certain &quot;popular fiction&quot; genres generally expect (and enjoy) a high complexity of plot: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Crime/Detective/Mystery (in a labyrinth / plot twist kind of way)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Historical Fiction / Fantasy / Science fiction (in its breadth of scope, vision, and often multiple POVs / plots weaving together)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the expectation is often for less complexity of plot (as the focus is elsewhere) in: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Action-adventure / Western (more about fun and suspenseful, heroic moments)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Horror (more about setting up terrifying, suspenseful situations)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Romance (the complexity is in the play between different inter-personal relationships)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inspirational (which is more about hitting heart strings with &quot;universal&quot; experiences)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But these are, of course, not hard-fast rules. And as for literary fiction, the umbrella is just too large to really have any solid answer one way or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T13:54:44.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2011-03-20T14:59:14.413" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other than Scrivener :) I find Excel (or another spreadsheet program) works surprisingly well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First column: Year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second column: Month&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Third column: Day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Insert more columns as needed.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last column: event&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have multiple items on the same Day, repeat the Day data and use a 24-hour clock, so you would have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;1898|July|Holmes and Watson move into 221B Baker Street&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;1898|October|Adventure of Irene Adler, aka That Woman&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;1899|March|23|2:47|Holmes and Watson break into C.A. Milverton's house&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;1899|March|23|3:15|Holmes and Watson escape with goods&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;1899|March|23|12:22|Milverton discovers the theft&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;1899|March|23|14:36|Lestrade is called&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;1899|March|23|17:56|Holmes explains all to Lestrade, Watson goggles anew&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;1902|June|Watson marries third wife&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T14:59:14.413" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2011-03-20T16:32:35.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just want to recommend a really amazing book that addresses this fear (among every other kind of fear writers feel throughout the entire process from blank page to published work): &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0805074678&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T16:32:35.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2087" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-20T15:53:41.073" Score="13" ViewCount="379" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Question:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone please give me a list of things to check when reviewing a document to make sure that it is &lt;strong&gt;atomic&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Atomic?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meaning that anyone can start reading at any section in a document and not have other portions of the document be dependent on some other portion of the document. (Unless it is explicitly stated within the section they are reading, to read another section)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1466" OwnerDisplayName="leeand00" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T18:20:48.807" Title="Checklist for making sure your writing is Atomic?" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2088" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-20T19:17:16.130" Score="1" ViewCount="519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the following website page that I need to reference using Harvard style: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/science/what-is-genetic-engineering.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/science/what-is-genetic-engineering.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a correct way to reference this page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Is Genetic Engineering? [online] Available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, how can I reference it &lt;code&gt;in-text&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1289" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:02:25.063" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T19:02:25.063" Title="Referencing a website in-text using Harvard style" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2087" CreationDate="2011-03-20T20:37:52.767" Score="14" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All terms are defined within the&#xA;section.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Either no outside references or&#xA;optional ones, or include the&#xA;information so the reader doesn't&#xA;have to reference anything.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any background or history necessary&#xA;to understand the material in the&#xA;section is included.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If applicable, include a paragraph&#xA;with predictions about the future of&#xA;the material or potential uses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optionally, any potential&#xA;controversies or questions regarding&#xA;the material are at least&#xA;acknowledged, if not necessarily&#xA;debunked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final check, compile your document with random&#xA;   sections, hand off to a beta reader,&#xA;   and ask the reader if anything led to&#xA;   a term which wasn't defined.&#xA;   Re-compile with different sections,&#xA;   lather, rinse, repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-03-21T12:09:34.510" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T12:09:34.510" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2020" CreationDate="2011-03-20T20:55:23.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I simply believe that there is no technique to follow to achieve the goal you say you're aiming for, provided that you really want to convey such an emotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mere fact of thinking about a 'how to' shows that it is likely that your approach to the story could appear as too deterministic and cold, hence very likely not to produce the expected result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in genre / 'pop' literature (quite silly distinction, btw), some areas are best left coming freely to your writing rather than issued by some rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some otherwise very dry list / descriptions of mundane infos in gifted writers (i.e. David Forster Wallace comes now to my mind) that convey precisely nostalgia, the sense of how time is past etc ... while other less gifted writers induce boredom at best, hilarity at worst, while trying to be 'intense'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sincerity above all, as well as reading a lot of good literary examples can make wonders, while precooked schemes tend to fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not see precisely the connection between fear and nostalgia, but scaring the reader is a higly commendable task, really difficult to achieve ! :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1606" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T20:55:23.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2004" CreationDate="2011-03-20T21:06:48.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The obvious is that there is no rule, apart the ones set by the poet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us generalise what you call 'indenting' as 'positioning text' in a poem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some observations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A visual 'movement' of the text can be a hint to the specific &lt;em&gt;meter&lt;/em&gt; of the poem, hence strengthening what could be not so blatant to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, while most of western/middle-eastern tradition produces poetry working on sound, meaning and rhythm (aforementioned meter), the cultures whose writing is based on ideograms rely more heavily on how and where to place signs; in poetry this sometimes is essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about Japanese haikus, as well as how text is interwoven with images in classic Chinese poetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it is not 'indenting', but for sure it is 'placing' following the author's needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last but not least, in more experimental poetry, often text is developed not in a linear fashion (i.e. pear shaped poems, Oulipo automatic poetry and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1606" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-08-22T05:55:01.693" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T05:55:01.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2093" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-20T21:17:25.257" Score="10" ViewCount="2618" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has anyone experienced the transition from writing plots/stories for comics to writing a script viable for films? If so, what are the main differences and challenges?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1606" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T18:40:18.967" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T19:13:57.790" Title="What are the structural differences between scripts for comics and scripts for films?" Tags="|screenwriting|comics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1266" CreationDate="2011-03-20T21:29:03.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In case foreign definitions occur more than once or twice, I would keep foreign names in the text, with no explanation or footnote. &#xA;It would be then convenient to provide a glossary of all foreign definitions at the end of the novel, and may some additional infos for further reading / bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1606" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T21:29:03.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2077" CreationDate="2011-03-21T03:36:25.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short Answer: Read a book on writing stand up comedy. They'll help you with this, as a major factor in stand up com is that you're the sole speaker: The narrator, as it were, of whatever you find you need to tell and channel through amusing the listeners (often with stories or the like).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for some useful stuff:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd listen a bit to George Carlin or other such comedians you might find funny, and take what there is to be grasped from them. I'd not be able to explain how to do it, but that particular theme you're touching was addressed by Carlin in one of his shows. If memory doesn't fail me now, the lines were similar to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;God is all powerful and watches every movement every person does undertake, ever. He has these ten little things he'd like you to do, or else he'll send you to a place of eternal pain, suffering and torment and you will never die. But He loves you. Yes, He loves you and He need your money&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is but a matter of finding the most ridiculous way of putting things, in some cases. In others, a matter of self deprecation, or smartly talking about &quot;bad things that happened&quot;. It'll depend on what you need to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T03:36:25.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1897" CreationDate="2011-03-21T10:01:41.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In genre narrative (mostly), If invented languages are used to add flavour to the story, it is likely that the plot itself is needing a deep review and such languages are an easy escape to draw the reader attention out of the plot / character inherent weakness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it the use of invented languages stems from a genuine need of expression, clearly the above risk will not apply, even if the effort of building a coherent linguistic  system (even if in short) is a further burden for the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An invented language could be totally coherent and with no need in explanation in other domains, i.e. poetry. or theatre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, see grammelot technique in both ancient and modern plays:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammelot&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammelot&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where sounds and meaning interact in a new but seamless way with the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1606" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T10:01:41.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2079" CreationDate="2011-03-21T13:08:00.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to highlight an advantage that first person gives when writing a text: the emotional edge in describing lists, enumerations and so on. Things are rendered as integral to your personal memories: you could easily build a &lt;em&gt;crescendo&lt;/em&gt; where otherwise a detached description would induce other emotions in the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a common trick for rhetorical speeches (i.e. preachers, politicians), but some splendid examples belong fully to literature. One example in contemporary literature is '&lt;em&gt;Je me Souviens&lt;/em&gt;' by Georges Perec&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1606" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T13:08:00.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2066" CreationDate="2011-03-21T13:49:43.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrivener, a program by literature and latte, will help with this. This is just one of the features--it's super-advanced and a complete lifesaver for anyone writing anything. I use it for scripts and novels, and sometimes just for its organization and fullscreen for my papers. It's amazing. Free trial lasts a while, but it's always in beta so you can usually get it w/o paying :)&#xA;scrivener: www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1610" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T13:49:43.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2102" CreationDate="2011-03-21T14:29:14.940" Score="11" ViewCount="619" Body="&lt;p&gt;About three months ago, an agent that I had queried responded with a request for the full manuscript of the novel that I had written to her about. It's now been nearly three months, and I haven't heard anything back. What's a reasonable amount of time to wait before pinging her and inquiring about the status of the manuscript? What's an appropriate way in which to query?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T22:01:52.940" Title="Waiting for response to full MS" Tags="|agent|queries|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2100" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-21T14:54:57.190" Score="46" ViewCount="3644" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really want to write, but as soon as I sit down and set pen to paper, my mind goes blank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't think of anything to write. Sometimes I stare at my screen for hours; doesn't help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; think of something, it feels stupid, it won't work, it's cliche, etc. Can someone tell me what to do? Am I too anxious, have too high expectations, or trying to think too hard? I simply cannot write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I get over this? Have other people coped with this problem successfully? How?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1610" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2022-12-03T14:41:58.737" LastActivityDate="2023-10-27T15:40:16.903" Title="Help! I've got Writer's Block" Tags="|writers-block|" AnswerCount="25" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2099" CreationDate="2011-03-21T15:08:15.983" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally 90 days is the standard wait time before sending an inquiry. You might want to check the agent's website and see if they have something in their submission guidelines that says how long you should wait before sending an inquiry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally a simple email asking the status of your submission is acceptable. It may be that they just haven't gotten to it yet, or they replied and the reply got lost in cyberspace. Just remember to be polite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-03-21T22:01:52.940" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T22:01:52.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2099" CreationDate="2011-03-21T15:08:24.730" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's perfectly reasonable to follow up at this point. I've read numerous agents' and editors' opinions on this, and never have I seen anyone claim you should wait longer than three months (&lt;a href=&quot;http://editorialass.blogspot.com/2009/12/writer-question-editor-requested-my.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one such example&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest you follow up with an email, reminding the agent of your previous correspondence and asking politely when you can expect a response. Email nicely rides the line between slow (snail mail) and too immediate (phone).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T15:08:24.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2011-03-21T15:11:26.853" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can't think of a story idea, you either need to step away from writing or give up completely. There are story ideas everywhere. At any given time a fiction writer generally has a few WIPs that they're working on, and if not ones they've started, they've usually got a list of story ideas they'd like to work on in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T15:11:26.853" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1176" CreationDate="2011-03-21T15:12:32.327" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/2011/03/guest-post-an-infinite-supply-of-writing-prompts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; describes an interesting system for coming up with infinite writing prompts through Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T15:12:32.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2011-03-21T15:25:38.863" Score="32" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turn off that censor. You have to come to terms with the fact that you will &amp;quot;write shitty first drafts&amp;quot;, as Anne Lamott says in the writing/life guide I would highly, highly recommend: &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0385480016&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bird by Bird&lt;/a&gt;. It helped me and many others get over fears like you're having right now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are stuck in the middle of a novel, take a look at where you are at and where you're going. Deduce any of the pivotal scenes that need to happen between now and then, and work your way quickly toward one of those.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're coming up with a total blank at the very beginning of a short story or novel, then you need a catalyst in the first place. Look at some newspaper headings, read a few books, thoroughly examine pivotal, dramatic moments in your life. Start writing with a striking line of dialogue and go from there. Find a moment in time where something dramatic is happening between two characters. You don't have to know exactly what you're writing when you sit down. Just explore. Start writing something. Even if what you end up writing is going straight to the garbage, most often you'll find a glimmer of something buried in that garbage. So then you start over again, this time with the glimmer in mind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just as a rule, you can't rely on other people to tell you what to write.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2023-10-27T15:40:16.903" LastActivityDate="2023-10-27T15:40:16.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2011-03-21T15:44:32.110" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have two issues: writing, and what to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put aside the &quot;what&quot; for a second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go get a timer. Set it for ten minutes. Press start. Start writing. It doesn't matter what you write. You can type the alphabet, song lyrics, Schoolhouse Rock, stream of consciousness, what you had for dinner last night, it doesn't matter. Don't edit, don't fix typos, don't save, don't stop. You are even allowed to write &quot;I have no idea what to say next so I am just typing until something occurs to me.&quot; Just GO until the timer dings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There. Now you don't have writer's block. You've just proved to yourself that you can still write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;oldrobots has some excellent suggestions on getting you unstuck on the &quot;what.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also add as a general suggestion that you keep a journal (I love the black-and-white marbled composition books) and jot stuff down as it occurs to you. Descriptions, characters, lists of things (Things I like, things I hate, superpowers I would never want, why the color orange annoys me, which items I have had at my favorite restaurant), just write it down. In one of your stuck moments, going back over your journal can sometimes give you a spark. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T15:44:32.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2011-03-21T16:12:48.633" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself: &lt;strong&gt;why do you want to write?&lt;/strong&gt; That may help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1611" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T16:12:48.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2011-03-21T16:55:08.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice is don't write just to write. Write when you have something to say. Then you won't have this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1455" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T16:55:08.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2011-03-21T23:03:48.177" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;You already turned the table around by writing about your writer's block. Continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T23:03:48.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2110" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2114" CreationDate="2011-03-22T00:08:28.547" Score="29" ViewCount="16173" Body="&lt;p&gt;To what extent can you use locations, businesses, etc. from the real world in fiction? I know someone cannot copyright a city, but what about a particular location in the city that's private. Can I talk about the Denver Convention Center and use the actual building layout in a novel? Can I use a particular business, say Hacienda Colorado, in a book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-02-28T22:02:16.617" LastActivityDate="2020-10-11T00:17:15.797" Title="Using the real world in writing" Tags="|fiction|copyright|legal|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1188" CreationDate="2011-03-22T00:20:10.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the computer field, and slightly paranoid about backups of everything. For my writing, I actually keep 3 copies minimum of everything. There are a few things I've done that work well for me, and I understand that for others these might not work, but there are similar services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I use Live Mesh and Dropbox to keep two computers in sync. I haven't completely decided which one I like better, so I have some things with Live Mesh and some with Drop Box. In both cases, they keep a copy in the &quot;cloud&quot; so that if I lost both machines I could still get it, but this at least gets me partially protected and keeps notes, text, Word, etc. in sync. If I change a document on the road, or upstairs, by the time I hit my desktop 5 minutes later, it's usually in synch.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Windows Home Server - It's not the most reliable piece of software, but I have a Windows Home server that backs up the PCs in the house (and the iMac). It's a turnkey solution from HP if you want one and it keeps versions of files as well. I don't give it high recommendations, but if you get one, get 2-3 extra drives (min 4) so that you have multiple copies of stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Evernote - I like to work in text, and make lots of notes for writing, so I use Evernote on my phone. It syncs with the Evernote service, and I can also access it from my computer. I have started to drop text documents there (like speeches/talks) as well as ideas for writing when I'm on the computer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Burn DVDs - I know this isn't great, but for short term, 1-2 years, I think it's fine. What I might recommend is that you burn two Cds weekly of your work.  Why two? Media can fail, and while you might not like losing a week's worth of work, you will hate losing two. Today's burners are quick, and I usually go one speed slower than they're rated and just make two copies periodically. I do this less with #1 and #2 above, but it still gives me another backup. Plus these are easy to take offsite.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thumb drives - They aren't reliable, but if you keep two separate, you ought to be OK in the short term.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to use something like Google Docs but are concerned about their using your work, or licensing, get a small encryption program. Not a password protection, but a real encryption program like FolderLock (http://www.newsoftwares.net/folderlock/). Encrypt your work, then put it in the &quot;cloud&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note I would also recommend that you password protect all your devices (PC/Mac, Phone, etc). Just for casual security to prevent your kids, friends, etc. from messing with your computer and accidently wrecking your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T00:20:10.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2053" CreationDate="2011-03-22T00:23:23.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do technical writing and publishing in the computer field, and to an extent I'll say yes. You must have some idea of the technology if you are writing original material about a technology. If you are writing technical details about work someone else has done, I think you can get by on good communication skills with a person that does understand the details of the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do think you need some technical aptitude or interest so that you can pick up on the jargon and general application of the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good rapport with a subject matter expert is going to be required in any case so that you can get a second opinion on what you have written and have a check to see if it conforms to the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T00:23:23.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2110" CreationDate="2011-03-22T00:33:52.650" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fiction writing, it is commonplace to use real life businesses and locations. It's also becoming commonplace to include a section in books that tells the reader who owns the trademark to those businesses. If you don't acknowledge trademarks, you can open yourself to lawsuits from businesses that are trying to protect their trademarks. If a business doesn't protect their trademark, they can lose it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you're using real life businesses or people - be very careful what you say. If you say negative things about them or untrue things, you can open yourself up to libel lawsuits as well. (The bigger the company, the bigger the legal department they have.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="44281" LastEditDate="2020-10-11T00:17:15.797" LastActivityDate="2020-10-11T00:17:15.797" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2110" CreationDate="2011-03-22T00:59:10.930" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use of trademarked names in fiction does not violate intellectual property laws. There are a couple of things to be wary of nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful with the light in which you depict real businesses. As explained &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailywritingtips.com/use-of-trademark-names-in-fiction/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, if you have a character die from a bad hamburger at Burger King or hurt himself because of a defective pair of Reeboks, then prepare for a libel suit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, as discussed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailywritingtips.com/are-you-guilty-of-genericide/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, don't turn a trademarked brand name into a verb or a non-proper noun (which lawyers call &lt;em&gt;trademark dilution&lt;/em&gt;). In other words, don't have characters &quot;&lt;em&gt;hoovering&lt;/em&gt; the living room,&quot; &quot;drinking a &lt;em&gt;coke&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; or &quot;&lt;em&gt;googling&lt;/em&gt; their names.&quot; Instead, make sure they're &quot;vacuuming the living room with Hoover's wonderful appliance,&quot; &quot;enjoying a Coca-Cola,&quot; or &quot;performing a search on their names using that awesome Google.&quot; Or better yet, stick to &lt;em&gt;vacuum cleaner&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;soft drink&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;search engine&lt;/em&gt;. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the portrayal is innocuous, and brand names are capitalized and not &quot;genericized,&quot; there is no harm and no need for any kind of acknowledgment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1563" LastEditorUserId="1563" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T01:42:17.557" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T01:42:17.557" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2011-03-22T01:13:33.803" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there's another question (which I ask myself all the time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does the romantic notion of writing a long winded novel allure you only to find you somehow can't invest your time in such a huge undertaking, possibly resulting in writer's block and procrastination?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done some writing, and I love it. I even have a huge story which I think has a lot of potential, but in months and months I have only achieved two ten page chapters. I haven't even touched it for a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think, for myself, the other activities I'm involved in are much more of a priority, and that writing is more of a pastime, even if it doesn't seem so at the time. In fact, the most time I spent working on it was while I was bored at work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not trying to stop you from writing, but this is what I've found in my own experience. Maybe it might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T01:13:33.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2116" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2119" CreationDate="2011-03-22T04:06:25.190" Score="8" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write on a computer topic which isn't covered by many existing books out there. What is the process of getting your book published? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1616" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T06:27:38.417" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T00:28:39.867" Title="Is there a legitimate step by step guide to getting your book published?" Tags="|publishing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2011-03-22T11:03:52.957" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with most of the other posts on this topic, but I have a little bit to add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the answer will be different depending on whether you're an established, experienced writer having a dry spell, or if you're an aspiring writer who can't get started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a fairly experienced writer: I find it helpful to read back over my old books.  I either get caught up in the story and build my confidence and enthusiasm that way, or I find a million things I could have done better, and THAT inspires me to go on and write something new so I have a chance to fix the mistakes I made the last time.  I also like to have a target publisher in mind for each book; they might not be the people I end up submitting the story to, but I can keep them in mind while writing, as inspiration.  &quot;I wonder what the cover will look like?  Wouldn't it be cool to have a book for sale from the same publisher as author X?&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a new writer: I agree with Nick Bedford - maybe you like the IDEA of writing, but the actual writing ITSELF isn't that much fun.  If that's the case, I'd ask yourself why you want to write.  If you're looking for fame and fortune, I'd try something else - this isn't an easy field to break into, and it's even harder to rise to the top.  And I'll bet most of the people sitting on top of the writing world didn't have a whole lot of trouble finding things to start writing about.  On the other hand, if you want to write because you think you have something to say, or because you have a passion for it, and just HAVE to do it - great, just try to remember that passion when you sit down to write!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more concrete suggestion - try to get something written and get some feedback on it, as much and as soon as possible.  Yes, it's a way to improve your work, but more importantly, it feels GREAT.  Writing a novel is a ridiculously long slog with no feedback, no rewards, and no guarantees.  It's VERY hard for a first-time writer to stay motivated through all that.  Whatever you're writing, make sure you find ways to share it early and often, to keep yourself enthusiastic about the work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T11:03:52.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2116" CreationDate="2011-03-22T11:48:15.300" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer: yes, there is such a guide. There are many such guides, at the publishers' websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now on to the dessert:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the topic is on computers, no doubt you'd like a publisher like O'Reilly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/intro.csp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; they have a step-by-step guide to getting published by them. I'm pretty sure several other computer science/technology related publishers will have guides on their sites, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, being the publisher the author, I think we can count it as legitimate. And it is pretty straightforward, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write the book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Propose it (they have a &quot;list of dos and don'ts&quot; for proposing in the site I linked you to)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you haven't written the book, it is recommended you read the &quot;So you want to write a book&quot; article. (Link available at the site I linked to)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said before, if you're writing something that hasn't been covered, no doubt you'll want O'Reilly. &lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt; they'll ask &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;: why are you uniquely qualified for writing that book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was asked in a comment: what about fantasy or sci-fi? Answer: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tor.com/page/submissions-guidelines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tor dot com&lt;/a&gt; might be what you're looking for. I linked directly to their submissions guidelines' page. They don't want novels, just short fiction. But they link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://us.macmillan.com/Content.aspx?publisher=torforge&amp;amp;id=255#ctl00_cphContent_ctl30_lblQuestion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tor Books' submission guidelines.&lt;/a&gt; in case you have a longer work. Good luck and have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastEditorUserId="1342" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T00:25:44.020" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T00:25:44.020" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2110" CreationDate="2011-03-22T13:27:37.433" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another technique, specifically for fiction, not mentioned above is to create a fake brand from the ground up. A perfect example is Toy Story's &quot;Pizza Planet.&quot; It clearly paints a picture reminiscent of Chuck E. Cheese and Showbiz Pizza and just kid-laden arcades in general. But it does so by creating something unique, rather than just changing/genericizing the name of something that already exists. Though, if it is a rather different / hodgepodge concept, it may take up a lot of page-time (as Pizza Planet did) fleshing out its intricacies. So make sure its importance in the story is directly proportionate to its complexity/difference from what the reader is familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T13:27:37.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2122" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2127" CreationDate="2011-03-22T13:28:50.910" Score="15" ViewCount="3561" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having difficulty with the research aspect of my historical novel.  This question was originally going to be &quot;how much research should one do to write a historical novel?&quot; to which, answering my own question is, &quot;as much as you need to&quot;.  Thinking about this some more, it's not the 'what' or the 'how much' I'd like to explore, but rather the 'how'.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far my approach has been very scattergun.  I know the time period I am interested in, and know roughly the themes and places I wish the novel to include, so I've been reading books that match these parameters, but other than that it's pretty random.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everytime I go to write a sentence, I find myself asking - &quot;wait a minute, is that right?&quot;.  Everytime someone looks at a building, or walks down a street, or eats some food, or interacts with the structure of society in any way, I'd struck with a fear that I've just typed complete nonsense and have to go away and research it.  So far I've read 30 reference books and typed just one chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming from a an engineering background, I'm used to applying methodologies, ie structured approaches to work.  I have seen plenty of methodologies with regard to how to plan, plot and write, however none yet on how to research for a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone assist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1570" LastEditorUserId="47470" LastEditDate="2020-12-24T09:39:39.340" LastActivityDate="2020-12-24T09:39:39.340" Title="What is a good methodology for researching a historical novel?" Tags="|fiction|technique|novel|research|historical-fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2122" CreationDate="2011-03-22T13:42:36.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer is rather: &quot;as little as you can get away with&quot;. If you were to sit down to write an actual history textbook then the peers who would assess the value of your work would look for &quot;rigor&quot;, that is evidence that you have considered all previous work on the topic and are trying to draw some conclusions that are not way out of the realms of possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that all historians understand that beyond a certain point in empirical evidence it's all speculation. Ever been entertained by a History Channel documentation about the life of Henry VIII? Well, any and all assertions about Henry's state of mind are speculation drawn from the opinions of other commentators, any diary entries Henry might have written or, in the absence of these primary sources records of the king's next action. Essentially, we may, occasionally, come close to knowing something of Henry VIII's mind but we are never going to be certain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good summary of the facts, such as those to be found on Wikipedia, are valuable. As an author you should be particularly keen on &quot;moot points&quot; where different historians have contrasting views on an event. Other good things are annotations of things that may or may not have happened and are generally regarded as &quot;woolly&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these are licenses to pretty much make it up. As long as you join the dots from empirical fact A to empirical fact B in a plausible manner even respected academics will agree they have no clue about your relative rightness or wrongness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an author of fiction your job is to be entertaining and accurate in that order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I'm currently researching the period of sub-Roman Britain, there aren't many primary records of that time and a lot of the sources there are conflict and are vague or confusing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am negotiating this minefield with the help of Wikipedia (re-checking sources and sources of sources where necessary but WP is good for a first run). With this info I am constructing a fictional timeline, a chronicle of events that occur in the order in which they occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timeline concentrates on the actions of all actors and needs to collate the research on each indivdual into a coherent whole so that I can see what events are happening on top of one another or concurrently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I am happy that the chronicle is done I use it as the basis for the story. I fill out historic events with narrative ones in the wobble points. I always choose the more narratively satisfying interpretation of events and motivations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep individual notes on each character and give them all their own personal timeline which is the basis for their character arc. I try to keep some separate notes which just remind me of the relationships between characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also keep notes about things I'm just plain making up in a separate place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep a list of authentic names. Try to get a map of the locations from around the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these resources I plot the story and I start writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I'm writing I may well come to a point where I want the character to do something but am not sure of the appropriate language. At this point I mount a little mini-topic research expedition and get exactly what I need. Then I get back to the story. I keep each topic research article, usually about 300-600 words with the rest of the notes in case I need a refresher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what I would call the minimum. A general overview, specifics on real people, a good line between reality and fiction and only ever specific research when I know I'm going to need it. This research approach is made possible only with the internet but the tool is there, so I use it. I suggest you do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T11:08:37.573" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T11:08:37.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2011-03-22T13:46:32.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an internal wiki. Best option for me, because the stories are set in a fantasy world, and you can't have a fantasy world without a weird calendar system (which none of the apps support), can you? No sorting, but hey....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for purely Earth-based stories, I liked the scene arrangement system in &lt;a href=&quot;http://storybook.intertec.ch/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Storybook&lt;/a&gt;. You can set the dates for specific scenes, then look at the stories in chronological order so that different scenes that happen at the same time are nicely grouped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1010" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T13:46:32.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2122" CreationDate="2011-03-22T13:47:34.620" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perfection is your foe. If there is anyone out there, who thinks the stuff in historical novels is 100% percent accurate, then I pity him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research is often a scattergun approach. Keep writing and if a detail is wrong, so what? No-one will crucify you for that. You should tell a good story and sometimes you have to tweak reality/history to do so. Don't force every detail to be right. It will lead you nowhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T13:47:34.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2126" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2129" CreationDate="2011-03-22T13:49:50.997" Score="18" ViewCount="515" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read the assertion that many great works of fiction were chiefly down the contribution of a good editor. I must admit I was a little taken aback by this statement. I had never really thought of the writer and editor as being like the musician and producer. To what degree is this really true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always liked to think that as the author I am the writer and the &quot;producer&quot; of my story an editor is just there to clean syntax glitches and polish spelling (they are also free to point out bits of the story they don't like but surely in most cases this is a matter of opinion). If I were to read the work of others and tell them &quot;x doesn't work&quot; I feel I'd probably get a bunch of abuse. I try always to appraise work as &quot;I feel this is currently a problem because...&quot; or &quot;this would work better if...&quot; I always think of this as critique, is this editing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess this question comes down to &quot;What is an editor? How would one know a good one? What behaviour from an editor is appropriate?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2018-03-12T10:07:24.987" Title="What exactly is an editor?" Tags="|authorship|editing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2122" CreationDate="2011-03-22T13:51:58.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to just ignore this and write on. In your spare time, do gradual research. Now hear me out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other historical fiction set in, or around your time period. No matter what themes or subjects it addresses, what social classes it follows, you will inevitably learn a lot about every aspect of life, as well as story structure and plot specifically set in that time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First or second hand accounts from the times. These are likely very boring, so it could be done a bit at a time, but will give you an idea of how people talked, acted, and thought in general. Plus you will find sparkling gems of all sorts hidden in the drudgery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Historical analysis books. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write your whole first draft doing as little research as possible. Just tank through the thing, and in your spare time, work through the reading above. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pause your writing for only easy-to-find, relatively trivial details. Trust wikipedia.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every time you come across a detail in your reading that alters something you've already written, make a note of it, keep in mind the repercussions of any necessary changes, but do not go back and rewrite.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By the time you've written your first draft, you will likely have done enough research to fix all your mistakes the second time through, and you'll have a list of things to fix.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T13:51:58.097" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2126" CreationDate="2011-03-22T14:27:20.670" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're the ones who take your manuscript and make sure you've succeeded in getting an idea from your head onto the paper. We look for plot holes, grammar mistakes, and things that just don't make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any good editor also knows what sells. They will offer suggestions and advice on parts of your book that a majority of readers may not like. They'll look for places where you need more details to paint a clear picture for your reader. They Looks for parts of the story that are boring or rambly and offer advice to tighten it up and make it more engaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, our job is to help you perfect your manuscript. We're here to help you succeed in writing and make sure your readers keep coming back for more. We're not just there to correct your grammar and find your typos but to offer advice that we feel will improve the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T17:29:37.953" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T17:29:37.953" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2126" CreationDate="2011-03-22T14:30:45.407" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different levels of editing which are lumped together under the same term, which might be what's confusing you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Syntax glitches and spelling&quot; is &lt;b&gt;line editing&lt;/b&gt;, aka proofreading, sometimes called copyediting. Similar to this is &lt;i&gt;fact-checking,&lt;/i&gt; where the editor is looking up anything based in reality or researching anything made up for plausibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pointing out things which don't work in terms of plot, character, setting, world-building, etc. is &lt;b&gt;content editing,&lt;/b&gt; also called &lt;b&gt;developmental editing.&lt;/b&gt; Whether phrased nicely as a suggestion or bluntly as a direction, the editor is saying that something about the story itself has to be changed. (This is what you're calling &quot;critique,&quot; which isn't totally inaccurate, but critiquing leans more towards style and less towards mechanics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The assertion which you heard refers to the idea that a writer and editor (one single editor) work together over multiple drafts to shape a book. The writer is the person coming up with the main idea, the plot, the characters, and the actual words. The editor points out what is and isn't working, suggests moving this bit to over there in that chapter, points out where foreshadowing could be inserted, objects to out-of-character behavior, and chops out chunks of unnecessary narration (among other things). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good editor is someone who works &lt;i&gt;with&lt;/i&gt; you, someone who respects your style and your ideas but pushes you to improve. Speaking as both a writer and an editor, I think what goes on the page is ultimately the writer's privilege and responsibility. So an editor's job is to suggest, and make arguments in support of suggestions, but the writer gets the final decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2018-03-12T10:07:24.987" LastActivityDate="2018-03-12T10:07:24.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2155" CreationDate="2011-03-22T08:50:24.473" Score="15" ViewCount="10138" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also, why has it spawned an award for bad writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1623" OwnerDisplayName="Kaustubh P" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T16:39:45.763" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T17:35:22.510" Title="Why is &quot;It was a dark and stormy night..&quot; not a good opening?" Tags="|openings|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2131" CreationDate="2011-03-22T09:28:21.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's the opening of the novel &lt;em&gt;Paul Clifford&lt;/em&gt; by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, which has become a textbook example of purple prose, an overly extravagant writing style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia: It was a dark and stormy night&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase is used repeatedly by Snoopy in his efforts to start a novel, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daysofleisure.com/writing/the_complete_text_of_Snoopy_s_novel%3a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;final result&lt;/a&gt; is naturally an example of purple prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Guffa" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T09:28:21.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2131" CreationDate="2011-03-22T09:38:28.880" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although the traditional pointer is to Edward Bulwer-Lytton's purple prose, it may be better known in Britain as a school playground story for the unimaginative which starts something like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a dark and stormy night and the Captain said to the Mate, &quot;Tell us a story, Mate.&quot; So the Mate began, &quot;It was a dark and stormy night and the Captain said to the Mate, 'Tell us a story, Mate.' So the Mate began, 'It was a dark and stormy night ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but sadly I do not have enough space here to finish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Henry" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T09:38:28.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2131" CreationDate="2011-03-22T10:06:28.330" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The opening sentence is bad for a number of reasons. First, aren't all nights dark? Why say that? But it is not so bad that a good writer couldn't have recovered from it and gone on to write a good book. This author did not, however. His works are regarded by most critics as terrible. Pretty much no one but a grad student in English reads a novel like &lt;em&gt;Paul Clifford&lt;/em&gt; today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The contest you refer to is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulwer%E2%80%93Lytton_Fiction_Contest&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bulwer-Lytton&lt;/a&gt; contest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (BLFC) is a tongue-in-cheek contest that takes place annually and is sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University in San Jose, California. Entrants are invited &amp;quot;to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels&amp;quot; – that is, deliberately bad. According to the official rules, the prize for winning the contest is &amp;quot;a pittance&amp;quot;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulwer%E2%80%93Lytton_Fiction_Contest&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; or $250.[2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The contest was started in 1982 by Professor Scott E. Rice of the English Department at San Jose State University and is named for English novelist and playwright Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, author of the much-quoted first line &amp;quot;It was a dark and stormy night&amp;quot;. This opening, from the 1830 novel Paul Clifford, continues floridly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything that is so universally mocked you would probably be wise to avoid, unless you are entering such a contest yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" OwnerDisplayName="Robusto" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-11-02T02:58:34.260" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2131" CreationDate="2011-03-22T15:09:59.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It gives you no sense of character or urgency or anything. In my opinion, it is just not intriguing to start a story with the weather. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T15:09:59.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2011-03-22T17:54:45.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a point of time where i was able to use Microsoft Project to do my time line work. Sadly though I no longer have access to it, and the program itself is... excessively priced. Which is to bad, even in the simplest way I found it worked really well to keep my time lines in sync, it made working with a ton of characters a lot easier. I could also make events dependent on each other so I couldn't accidentally invert them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never really looked into other project management systems sense then, but I suspect that any decent one will let you do this sort of thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T17:54:45.967" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2011-03-22T18:01:13.167" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess it depends on how the blank page is overwhelming you. If you can't think of anything at all to write, I do have a couple ideas. These are really more ideas to just start running with something so you can get some writing done, sort of as a way to get the gears unstuck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go to your bookshelf, pick up a book, flip to a random page and pick a random line of dialog. Copy that dialog down into your story, and start writing off of that. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take a story line from a show you like and use it to write a story in a different setting. Don't write it as fanfic, just lift the start of the plot, and change it as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask a friend for three to five random words, the write a paragraph around them, and go on from there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To reiterate, these are ways to get you writing anything to break loose the mental crud. If you can get a good story out of these so much the better (I've gotten at least one great sci-fi story out of this process). Once you get writing on SOMETHING, writing something else will become easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:01:02.070" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T19:01:02.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2143" CreationDate="2011-03-22T19:06:55.143" Score="15" ViewCount="1703" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am revising the manuscript for a novel. About a third into the story, a major turning point occurs when the main character (through whom the reader follows the story) realizes that things are not at all how she perceived them to be, and that she has been duped by another character (let’s call him Ryan). For an entire chapter, she looks back at the events and pieces together Ryan’s moves and intentions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, this feels too much like what I would call a “mid-story info dump.” We all have been told to avoid dumping out a truckload of back story at the start of a book before the actual action gets going. Here, in a similar fashion, I’m putting the main character’s actions on hold while she analyzes Ryan’s actions. There is little dialogue, just narration. It sounds a bit like the end of a Sherlock Holmes mystery: “And here is how I solved the crime.” Except in my case, it comes a third into the book, but it is a necessary step to launch off the remaining part of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better way to handle this type of narration? Or should I simply not worry about it and count on the suspense created by the build-up to carry the reader forward? (If I’ve done my job correctly as a writer, the reader -- who has been duped just like the main character -- will be dying to find out what &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; happened).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T18:05:51.187" Title="How do I avoid a “mid-story info dump?”" Tags="|novel|structure|turning-point|exposition|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2140" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2159" CreationDate="2011-03-22T19:11:29.227" Score="6" ViewCount="1177" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some popular guides regarding structuring a novel, specifically what turning points the story should hit and approximately at what point in the manuscript?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for something more detailed than the classic three-act structure. One resource I've found is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth&quot;&gt;Hero's Journey&lt;/a&gt; by Joseph Campbell, which seems to have enduring appeal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:45:39.833" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T22:42:48.287" Title="Guideline on turning points in a novel?" Tags="|novel|structure|turning-point|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2141" PostTypeId="3" CreationDate="2011-03-22T19:14:57.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag is not in use, due to its ambiguous name. Please use another tag instead, as appropriate to your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;reference-book&quot; if your question pertains to the writing or editing of a reference book of some type.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;citations&quot; if you're asking about the way to refer to something in your text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;resources&quot; if you're looking for a guide, manual, or resource on the subject of your question, or are discussing a particular existing resource.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:16:17.910" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T19:16:17.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2142" PostTypeId="3" CreationDate="2011-03-22T19:14:57.783" Score="0" Body="This tag is not in use, due to its ambiguous name. Please use another tag instead (e.g. &quot;citations&quot;, &quot;resources&quot;, or &quot;reference-book&quot;)." OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:16:18.940" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T19:16:18.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2139" CreationDate="2011-03-22T19:17:33.693" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give hints along the book. Make the character notice stuff. It will make the &quot;dump&quot; shorter, even convert it into a short reference to scenes that happened.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a way to imbue feelings or actions in the section.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More on that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Include at least some action. Surely there is something that sets off this train of thought. Try and be as brief as possible with the explanations, and make the realization go hand in hand with events that happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character could have a moment of clarity while, for instance, riding on a horse. Or a donkey. Or watching the scenery from a really beautiful vantage point. Then they could reflect on some things, then notice something else in the scenery, maybe even link it with what they are thinking, and carry on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also helps to place the feelings in the right place, so it feels as if the character is evolving through the insight gained... outrage, envy, anger, shame... they could be feeling any or many of those while they have that moment of noticing what happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, structuring it like thoughts of the character helps give it pace... you could transmit racing thoughts, or slow-boiling, raging machinations. Either way, the character can make the info dump an interesting part of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do avoid anything like the description of the vices Dorian Gray had fallen to. Those pages are a painful read to anyone, no matter how awesome the rest of the book may be. The mistake in there is nothing happens. You get the raw information; no emotion, no action. This is a perfect &quot;how not to&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastEditorUserId="1342" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:23:53.860" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T19:23:53.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2158" CreationDate="2011-03-22T19:37:12.127" Score="9" ViewCount="548" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/14876&quot;&gt;similar question on EL&amp;amp;U&lt;/a&gt;, I asked about suggestions for indicating that a quote is &lt;em&gt;written&lt;/em&gt; instead of &lt;em&gt;spoken&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/14876/use-quotation-marks-or-italics-for-written-quotes/14883#14883&quot;&gt;Robusto's answer&lt;/a&gt; suggested several possible approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For longer quotes of written text, use a form of block quote&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shorter sections can be highlighted in a special font or all caps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DO NOT ENTER, the sign seemed to scream at me as I approached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first thought was to simply italicize the quoted text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I know who the killer is&lt;/em&gt;, she wrote, but she never managed to send her message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to pose this question to this community, as it relates to &lt;em&gt;writing style&lt;/em&gt; more than the formal conventions of English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What approach would you recommend? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T22:10:42.943" Title="How to emphasize a quote is written, not spoken?" Tags="|style|novel|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2145" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-22T19:49:56.600" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:49:56.600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T19:49:56.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2146" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-22T19:49:56.600" Score="0" Body="Citations are references to published or unpublished sources other than the work one is currently reading.  This tag should be used when asking for proper formatting for citations or information about the ethics of citations." OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:49:56.600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T19:49:56.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2147" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-22T19:51:05.897" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:51:05.897" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T19:51:05.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2148" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-22T19:51:05.897" Score="0" Body="A book recommendation provides a source which discusses a particular area of writing or existing works which demonstrate a particular technique." OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:51:05.897" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T19:51:05.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="329" CreationDate="2011-03-22T19:52:15.607" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any resource that deals with regional or national qualities, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1582973903&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writer's Guide to Character Traits&lt;/a&gt; is a great resource for defining typical qualities of people across many different strata (like profession, sexual preference, mental/social disorders, birth order, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T19:52:15.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2150" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-22T19:52:43.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag should be used for questions about resources such as style guides, instruction manuals, podcasts, blogs, articles, and other means by which experts provide writing information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should consider further tagging your question with tags that can clarify what medium and what style you are looking for. For example: &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/software&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;software&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;software&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tools&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;tools&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt; for possible tags concerning the medium, and &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/creative-writing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;creative-writing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;creative-writing&lt;/a&gt; or  &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/academic-writing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;academic-writing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;academic-writing&lt;/a&gt; for possible tags concerning the style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2018-01-26T21:52:49.523" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T21:52:49.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2151" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-22T19:52:43.540" Score="0" Body="Resources that one may wish to ask about on Writing include style guides, instruction manuals, podcasts, blogs, articles, and other means by which experts provide writing information." OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T08:20:21.990" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T08:20:21.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2131" CreationDate="2011-03-22T20:08:18.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One problem is that the sentence is heavy-handed and melodramatic. The dark is a metaphor. The storm is a metaphor. Yeah, yeah, we get it. We're in for a dark and stormy story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Madeleine L'Engle begins &lt;em&gt;A Wrinke in Time&lt;/em&gt; with It was a dark and stormy night. I haven't read it, but I suspect she uses the sentence playfully, deliberately tapping into its long association with heavy-handed melodrama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T20:08:18.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2144" CreationDate="2011-03-22T20:26:23.697" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who is opposed to using punctuation in non-standard ways to emphasize quotes and who prefers using words to explain what's going on, I say you should skip the italics.  Let the story clearly indicate that what the reader is reading is written communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Breathing heavily she plunked leaned over her desk and grabbed a pen from the wicker container.  I know who the killer is, she scribbled, but that was all that was all she got to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your readers can't understand what the source of the quote is when reading it aloud I don't think you've communicated as well as you possibly could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of longer quotes, perhaps quoting an entire letter, I could see an inline block quote simply because it's standard in writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T20:26:23.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2140" CreationDate="2011-03-22T20:59:05.463" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know it's frustrating, but in general, I'm not familiar with many resources that go into a lot of detail about abstract plotting and story structure. That's because plot varies so tremendously between stories - the twists and turns of a mystery story are worlds apart from the twists and turns of heroic action, and a romance will be different than both of them. And within any one genre, you can &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; tell so many unique, individual stories, that it's extremely difficult to give generalizations more significant than &quot;first things start moving, then they get really bad, then everything comes to a compelling conclusion.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do is examine existing story structures - understand how &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; stories work, so you can do similar things with your own work. That's not &quot;what points the story should hit and when&quot; - but you can find some tried-and-true examples of structures that work. Just as an example, we recently discussed &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1724/do-episodes-of-the-show-house-follow-a-constant-structural-pattern/1741#1741&quot;&gt;the recurring structure of &lt;em&gt;House&lt;/em&gt; episodes.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two resources on story structuring that I can recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0898799465&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Plot&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, by Ansen Dibell, of Writers' Digest &quot;Elements of Fiction Writing&quot; series. Dibell discusses some great structural tools, including set-piece scenes and mirroring.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Orson Scott Card's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0898799279&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Character and Viewpoint&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and his &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/158297103X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; both describe his &quot;MICE Quotient,&quot; which is a simple categorization of plots and stories by their central focus (Milieu, Idea, Character, Event); this division makes clear how a different focus leads to a very different plot, structure and story - and can help you fit your story structure to its primary focus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope these are helpful. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T20:59:05.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2131" CreationDate="2011-03-22T21:12:33.313" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's an unsubtle cheat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(That doesn't necessarily mean it's not good. Bear with me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author wants to get across that Really Important Things are Happening. He wants to hook you with the beginning of his book. How does he manage to impart the tremendous significance the reader should be seeing right from the start?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer: by giving a dramatic, atmospheric, visual. That'll be enough to give readers a striking opening, to get across that Big Stuff Is Happening. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a cheat, in this case, because the visual really has nothing to do with the story. It's powerful, but irrelevant - the author is invoking the visual just to draw you in, not because it fits the story or is actually significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it's unsubtle because he hits you over the head with it. &quot;It was a dark and stormy night&quot; - that's just a hair away from writing &quot;It was a dramatic, suspenseful night,&quot; which I think you'll agree would be absurd. The author's trying to &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; you the story is significant, and doing so quite bluntly, instead of actually demonstrating its interest and significance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in moderation, those would be legitimate cheats. You can definitely get away with that kind of stuff; often it's to your advantage, as long as the reader doesn't notice outright what you've done. The difficulty is, &quot;Dark and stormy night&quot; is both such an egregious example, and so oft-quoted and overused, that it completely loses its effectiveness on the one hand, and calls fatal attention to its flaws on the other. It's both a cliche (because a stormy night is an effective image) and a useless one (as opposed to cliches which have true power because their core idea is so significant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others have responded regarding the contest. I don't think that the tiny snippet is the inspiration for the contest; the full paragraph and Bulwer-Lytton's prose in general are to blame for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T21:12:33.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2157" CreationDate="2011-03-22T21:46:02.930" Score="14" ViewCount="2011" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of novel writing, I tend to avoid my own genre, at least for the most part.  Some of the reasons why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genre Blindness / Genre Trap:&#xA;Too much reading of your own genre blinds you to the tropes and clichés used by the genre which then pervade your own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing Style Influences&#xA;Here your own writing style and language use subconsciously begins to take on elements often found in the genre making your work less unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Losing your Ideas&#xA;Perhaps paranoia, but seeing ideas you have or even half-formed ideas fully can kill them.  A new idea is delicate thing and needs to be incubated from such things.  Avoiding your own genre avoids this danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, not reading your own genre is also making a sacrifice in terms of exposure to what works and what doesn't.  Particularly with historical fiction this also means missing out on the tacit research performed by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do others think?  Am I doing the right thing here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1570" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T13:21:28.470" Title="Should you read your own genre?" Tags="|fiction|technique|novel|genre|research|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2156" CreationDate="2011-03-22T22:09:06.877" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is what you're doing working for you?  Like, are you achieving your goals following this method?  If so, then I'd keep doing it.  If not, I'd switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that's a bit vague, but I think it might be pretty accurate.  I agree that there's a risk of becoming derivative if you read in your own genre, but I also agree that you're missing out, not only on research and seeing 'what works', but also on understanding the market and what different publishers are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's kind of hard to know what to recommend without knowing what areas of your writing you think you need to be working on.  If you're having a tough time understanding your genre, I'd say you need to read more from the field.  If you're having a tough time being original, maybe you should avoid it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal experience: I write romance, but I don't read it.  It DOES make it a bit harder to decide where to submit my stories (I guess this wouldn't be a problem if you work with an agent), but I think it keeps me fresh. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T22:09:06.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2144" CreationDate="2011-03-22T22:10:42.943" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the italics.  No justification of that, just - a vote.  It seems clearest to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T22:10:42.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2140" CreationDate="2011-03-22T22:42:48.287" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are few guides specifically for novels, but there are numerous books about story structure for screenwriters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0865479933&quot;&gt;The Anatomy of Story&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by John Truby. This is my favorite of the bunch. He describes 22 steps that successful movies often follow. The steps follow several interweaving arcs, including an outer problem, an inner &quot;what the character has to learn&quot; arc, and subplots in which other characters give feedback to the main character, and otherwise advise or illustrate the wisdom of various strategies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1932907130&quot;&gt;The Moral Premise&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Stanley D. Williams, Ph.D. Williams focuses on the &quot;what the character has to learn&quot; story thread, but he also talks about other story elements, and turning points along the way. Despite the title, this isn't about how to be blatantly moralistic. And despite Williams including Ph.D. as part of his byline, it isn't the least bit academic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0978812913&quot;&gt;Inside Story&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Dara Marks. Simpler than either Truby or Williams, but also somewhat richer in ways that I can't put into words. Focuses on three storylines: The outer story, the character's inner arc, and a &quot;relationship&quot; story through which the main character learns key lessons to apply to the other two storylines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1932907009&quot;&gt;Save the Cat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Blake Snyder. This is something of a recent classic, though it feels more formulaic than the others, with less depth. Snyder includes a 15-step &quot;beat sheet&quot; that seems more appropriate to (formulatic) movies than to novels, but you can probably find something useful for novels here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1582979987&quot;&gt;Story Engineering&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Larry Brooks. I found Brooks's tone enormously annoying, and his content mostly short on detail. Still, I did find a few nuggets here. This book focuses more on novels, though many of its examples are from movies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, most of these are about screenplays and not novels. If you've ever read a great book, then seen the movie, you'll know that advice about screenplays applies to novels only with a good deal of adaptation. But the first three books on this list are quite rich in ideas about the structure of stories, and what makes the structure work. The three authors reach similar conclusions, though they each emphasize different elements of their common ideas. I highly recommend the first three. If you want more, take a peek at the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T22:42:48.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2053" CreationDate="2011-03-22T23:58:45.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, an &lt;em&gt;effective&lt;/em&gt; technical writer will have enough technical background knowledge and experience to create &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt; content from the (often sparse) source material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, more important traits of effective technical writers are strong writing/communication skills and a deep curiosity about the subject matter and the audience. These will take a not-very-technical writer a long way in the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;technical writer&quot; title covers a broad range of job descriptions. As a result, in the field, working technical writers have a broad range of technical skills and knowledge requirements. The less technical the subject, the less stringently technical acumen applies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers working with end-user documentation and help often have less need for deep knowledge of programming, for instance, though knowledge of the field in which the product is to be used is often expected. A background in user experience design (cognitive psych) is often a plus. And there are typically requirements around the production tools used by the team (Office, HTML, XML, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the definition of &quot;technical&quot; may vary with the subject, audience and team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, more deeply technical content requires deep understanding of the subject matter. I don't think a writer with no programming experience could write useful API docs, and the usefulness of the docs probably increases with the experience and knowledge of the writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked with technical writers who did not have particularly technical backgrounds. For the most part they could fake it by following forms and styles and reusing bits and pieces from other sources. This is, really, just glorified editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be fair, however, I have also worked with writers with deeply technical backgrounds who also could not writer useful docs because they were not effective communicators. They understood the subject matter extremely well, but were unable to clearly and succinctly convey how it worked or what to do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So technical knowledge is a requirement, but not the only one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two scenarios where one could argue&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1216" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T23:58:45.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2156" CreationDate="2011-03-23T00:27:33.007" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on your attitude. Juan Luis Guerra, a famous musician from my country, I've heard state he listens to his genres so he is aware of what's being used too much, and avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T00:27:33.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2163" CreationDate="2011-03-23T02:04:11.617" Score="8" ViewCount="3358" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I train myself to think in &quot;multiple personalities&quot; so I can use these personalities for character development in writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1622" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T13:10:42.267" LastActivityDate="2020-05-26T20:03:15.423" Title="&quot;multiple personalities&quot; for character development in writing?" Tags="|fiction|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2162" CreationDate="2011-03-23T02:24:09.723" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quick side note: Role Playing Games such as Dungeons and Dragons helped me out with this. Playing make believe, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need what many call a brief, although stating &quot;brief&quot; is just the name, being a rather longish document. In a character's brief, you write down their characteristics. A good thing to do is write down their traits (easily angered, quick to laugh, spontaneous), then when writing a scene, look back at these traits and check for incongruousness. You might find, or not. In any case, you don't have to &quot;think&quot; in multiple personalities. You give the characters traits. They take life and you follow them and their actions. Write what you think first, then check back on the character's traits and edit the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have written the character as slow to anger in a scene, but given it (at the moment of fleshing out) a quick temper. You need to change accordingly, &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; the character is growing out of their quick temper; in that case, you should take note appropriately in the place you have those traits written down. &quot;She starts learning how to control her temper in this and that scenes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This helps a lot to keep track of character believability, and also with character development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T02:24:09.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2156" CreationDate="2011-03-23T02:30:49.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will vary depending on what your objective is; do you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; your stories to fit within genre conventions? Do you want your stories to buck conventions, but not totally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find myself in the second category, so my reading regimen is about 70:30 outside versus inside the genre, and the materials in the second group tend to be the more odd specimens. In particular, I try to read books that challenge me - in terms of style, characterization, description, plot development or structure, and to do so it requires searcher beyond the borders of what I write myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1607" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T02:30:49.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2165" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2176" CreationDate="2011-03-23T04:06:21.437" Score="4" ViewCount="428" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm learning English as a foreign language. In one of my writings, one paragraph goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But it's not saying we just indulge ourselves and turn into wild beasts. We train our brain hard so that we are able to control the burst of our emotions. We go to schools, take courses and repeatedly remind ourselves to be rational, noting that impulsive acts often causes troubles, and constant emotion explosions are childish behavior deviating us away from the road to success. After about two decades, maybe, we finish our process of “growing up” and finally think we have the ability to control our emotions. We know we can not leave without apology when feeling the call of nature in conducting conferences, or we know even if the person you hate the most is standing right in front of you, you are not supposed to pull a dagger and just start to stab him/her. But thats all trivial in compare to the skills we learned to analyze a problem and reach the answer using an intellectual process, and limit the participating of raw emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I smell uncomfortable in this one, do you guys have any suggestions to polish it a little? I feel that my vocabulary is not so accurate and my rhythm for sentence is not good enough too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find the complete writing here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_60d9f9bc0100pq3y.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_60d9f9bc0100pq3y.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1557" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T07:00:35.687" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T07:00:35.687" Title="Please help me polish this paragraph." Tags="|non-fiction|word-choice|essay|blog|flow|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2021-01-09T07:26:30.287" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2162" CreationDate="2011-03-23T07:58:40.023" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One technique, as suggested by the author David Mitchell (who is known for his 1st person prose) is to write a whole bunch of autobiographical letters from your characters to you, the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You won't use these letters verbatim in your writing, but even if your character is narrated in the third person they will be valuable as a tool for getting in the mind of your character.  Not only will you explore your character's bio (which is the traditional way of character exploration), but by writing the letters in the first person you'll also explore their language use, which in turn helps you understand their mentality and perspective on the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used this technique and can vouch for it.  It's pretty effective, though requires a bit more time investment than the traditional character brief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1570" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T07:58:40.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2011-03-23T08:13:14.247" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If setting your story in the real world, be careful of the social connotations of choosing foreign names.  In the US, Billy Bob and Chuck carry certain connotations (southern and down-to-earth respectively).  Likewise in the UK, Charles and Oliver will have social connotations. If you are an English speaker, you're probably aware of these already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, be aware that the same is true for other countries.  Eg, Jens, Pierre, Bjorn all have social connotations too.  If in doubt, ask a native speaker of the language you go for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1570" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T08:13:14.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2156" CreationDate="2011-03-23T10:06:59.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading the questions, I have one question: Are you serious? You want to sell cars, but you have no clue about the different brands, the different models, which series is very often in the garage, because it's crap, which cars are reliable even after 200,000km, what extra is worth paying for and why and and and.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who, who is right in his mind, would buy a car from you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading the existing answers, I was puzzled even more. You do not know your market, you do not know your readers, but you want write for them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot write in a genre, if you do not know the genre. Only exception: you invent your own genre. (And that's a questionable idea.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a genre you dislike. Romance, thrillers whatever. Sit down and write a novel in it. I'm interested how far you will get. And no, half knowledge is not any better. A writer reads a lot. A lot in the genre he writes in. (Yes, also in other genres, which include non-fiction for fiction writers and fiction for non-fiction writers. But that's only a bonus.) Know what you write about or do not write about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T10:23:09.177" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T10:23:09.177" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2162" CreationDate="2011-03-23T10:50:51.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've sometimes taken online personality tests, answering the questions as my characters would.  I particularly like the Myers-Briggs version - there's one available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; that works for me. The test itself can be helpful, as you have to really think about your characters in order to answer some of the questions, but the summary at the end is what I like the best.  It classifies each character as one of sixteen personality types, and then reflects on how people of that type get along with others, view themselves and the world, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not foolproof, but I find it helpful, and it's kind of fun, too! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T10:50:51.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2156" CreationDate="2011-03-23T11:28:28.457" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think reading is important (as I said before: maybe more important than writing (as in &quot;write, write, write, whatever and whenever, even if it's crap&quot;)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, your concerns are valid.  Lets take them on one at a time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Genre Blindness&lt;/strong&gt; As other answers here have said, I think you'd mostly gain the opposite from reading genre books: you see what works (as you said yourself), which requires that you see what is &lt;em&gt;used&lt;/em&gt;.  (And &quot;seeing what works&quot; implies &quot;seeing what doesn't&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Style Influences&lt;/strong&gt; Always an issue, sure, but... you cannot eliminate influences completely anyway.  Just read sufficiently different authors, and it will balance itself out ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Losing Ideas&lt;/strong&gt; Could be a concern.  But then, no-one tells/told you to read &lt;em&gt;all the time&lt;/em&gt;, even while writing your own stuff.  Just separate your reading from your writing sufficiently.  And of course, don't read when an idea grabs you: your idea, your own creation, has priority.  Set everything else (not just reading ;-) aside and work on it until your satisfied that it's stable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I learned ages ago that when I write lyrics (I'm a (wannabe ;-)) songwriter too), I don't do so &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; after having listened to some music, because the influence of what I just heard is too strong (actual experience).  So, I take a break.  And then get my mind into songwriting mode (actually, it does this on its own, whenever it feels like, damn thing ;-))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T11:28:28.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2156" CreationDate="2011-03-23T11:35:26.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your considerations are spot-on. Very nice question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You should definitely be familiar with your genre.&lt;/strong&gt; If you know enough to place your work within a specific genre, then it had better fit there well. Each genre has its own rules, guidelines, conventions, expectations, cliches, and fatal faux pas. Writing with little personal familiarity with the genre is very likely to be blundering around; even if you write a good &lt;em&gt;book&lt;/em&gt;, it's very unlikely to be a good &lt;em&gt;genre&lt;/em&gt; book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;strong&gt;you do not need to be an academic expert,&lt;/strong&gt; and furthermore &lt;strong&gt;you do not need to be up to date with the cutting edge&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to be an expert because most of your readers won't be, and won't care about the academia - they'll care about the story. To take an example from my own home territory of SF/F, you don't need to be able to pinpoint precisely whether your story is a &quot;proper&quot; science-fiction piece and whether it has literary merit, or whether it should be categorized as &quot;magic realism&quot; or more &quot;slipstream&quot;. You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt;, but you don't need to in order to write, nor in order to be read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nor do you need to be extremely up-to-date on your genre, aware of all the latest stories and authors and ideas. Partially because, again, a lot of your readers won't be, so they won't care. Partially because it's safe to assume that anything that's your own unique idea will be distinct enough from other things going on that it will have merit on its own. You should be aware of &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; things, works that are massively popular (or notorious) - I can tell you that urban paranormal is &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; after &lt;em&gt;Twilight&lt;/em&gt;, even though I've never read the books and I'm not a fan of the genre. When there's something big and current, you should be aware of that, and figure out if it affects your own work - it might; it might not. &lt;em&gt;The Matrix&lt;/em&gt; didn't affect time-travel stories much, &lt;em&gt;The Time Traveller's Wife&lt;/em&gt; did. But huge changes like that are pretty rare, and fairly easy to keep up with (particularly because you don't have to actually read even the genre-changing ones unless they directly pertain to your own specific work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So,&lt;/strong&gt; you should be familiar with your genre - to the extent that you could read a genre book, and express an opinion on whether or not it was a good genre book. That's the same judgment you'll be using to examine your own work. But you don't need to be constantly reading in your genre - it just doesn't change that fast. And if you personally find that reading in genre can cause problems for you, like the ones you detailed in your question, then IMHO you're quite right that it isn't necessary and can be avoided, if so you choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd consider reading in-genre very occasionally, just to &quot;keep in touch,&quot; as it were. From your description, I don't think that would cause the problems you're concerned about, and I think it would be beneficial. But as long as you remain a good judge of how your writing will work within your chosen genre, anything else is entirely a question of what you like and what works well for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T11:35:26.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2165" CreationDate="2011-03-23T12:41:54.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the actual content and overall style is fine, but you're having some trouble with consistent grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &quot;We train our brain hard so that we are able to control the burst of our emotions.&quot; - we don't share a common brain.  So it should be 'brains'.  Or: &quot;impulsive acts often causes troubles&quot; should be 'cause', since acts is plural.  And you switch to second person late in the paragraph, talking about the person &quot;you&quot; hate the most, when the rest of the selection has been in first person ('we').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T12:41:54.510" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2156" CreationDate="2011-03-23T13:21:28.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say 100% you should be well read in your genre. There are several reasons why, but the most important is because you should become familiar with conventions in your genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this important? Because you know what readers are likely expecting when they read your book. By being familiar with what those are, you are able to know when you can and can't break those conventions. Just like any master craftsman who knows their trade inside out can start tampering with the basics to create something new, so too can a writer who knows their chosen genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, too, that you are writing for an audience, not just yourself, and that audience will be well-read, and are going to have expectations when they buy your book based on the fact that it's &quot;Science Fiction&quot;, or &quot;Crime&quot;, or &quot;Horror&quot;, or whatever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you mention genre blindness, and writing style, but this is a result of you only ever reading one genre, which is not the same as being widely read in that genre. Reading widely in different genres is, in my view, essential to the craft of writing because then you can cross-pollinate different ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being widely read in a genre means you know what's gone before, and that can only be a good thing. I understand you said that you shouldn't crush half-formed ideas, but there is nothing worse as a writer to come up with an idea that you think is interesting and unique, only to be told, &quot;So-and-so did this in the classic book XYZ.&quot; By reading widely in your genre, you should be inspired to tweak your ideas, change them so that they're not the same as someone else, build on them. Ideas are never static, and you should never be so rigid in your ideas as to fall over at the first hurdle when you discover someone has done something similar. Don't be crushed, be inspired! Do it different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T13:21:28.470" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2162" CreationDate="2011-03-23T13:59:41.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Base the characters off amalgamations of people you know well. Or people that you have spent enough time with to know how they would react in various different situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also make an effort to really pay attention to people. Rather than engaging yourself in conversations, observe them, noting: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what people are saying and not saying&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how they're saying what they're saying &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how they react to other people's opinions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how they respond to others&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how they gesture &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being an extreme introvert, this is how I have (sadly) always engaged in conversations. But I've suggested it as a writing exercise before and have heard good results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T13:59:41.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2165" CreationDate="2011-03-23T14:07:16.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What Kate said, plus the word &lt;em&gt;participating&lt;/em&gt; in the last sentence seems awkward. You might consider &quot;the &lt;em&gt;impact&lt;/em&gt; of raw emotions,&quot; or &quot;the &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt; of raw emotions,&quot; or &quot;the &lt;em&gt;role&lt;/em&gt; of raw emotions.&quot; Better yet, I would rephrase and say something like: &quot;. . . and curb raw emotions&quot; or &quot;. . . and hold raw emotions in check.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1563" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T14:07:16.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2165" CreationDate="2011-03-23T14:39:56.527" Score="7" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In English &quot;brain&quot; typically refers to the organ itself. The gray and white matter; the neurons. You probably want to say that we train our &lt;em&gt;minds&lt;/em&gt;. In English, the mind is what controls our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. The brain is merely the vehicle for our cognitive processes. I don't know if other languages account for the difference between the brain and the mind in this way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emotional explosions are generally referred to as &quot;outbursts&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Deviating us&quot; doesn't really make sense. It might be correct, but it doesn't &quot;feel&quot; right.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Cannot&quot; is one word.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't be afraid to use contractions. A lot of English teachers tell folks not to use them when they're writing, but they're wrong. Not using contractions leads to stiff writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're missing an apostrophe in &quot;that's all trivial&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Schools&quot; should probably be singular.: We're not talking about a specific school or schools we attended, but rather the &lt;em&gt;idea&lt;/em&gt; of school.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Same for &quot;troubles&quot;. Trouble is an idea; we're not interested in the specifics unless we're telling a funny story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You do some weird hashing with your subjects by alternating between &quot;we&quot; and &quot;you&quot;. You need to be consistent; &quot;we&quot; probably works better in this case, because you're talking about the human condition, and you are, after all, one of us. :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specific problems can be &quot;trivial&quot;, but concepts are usually &quot;easy&quot;. I don't know why this distinction, and I suppose both are technically right, but when writing, probably stick with this rule of thumb.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how I would re-write your paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's not saying that we should just&#xA;  indulge ourselves and turn into wild&#xA;  beasts. We train our minds so that&#xA;  we're able to control our emotional&#xA;  outbursts: we go to school, take&#xA;  classes, learn, and remind ourselves&#xA;  to be rational, noting that impulsive&#xA;  acts often lead to trouble, and that&#xA;  letting our emotions control us is&#xA;  childish, and distracts us from our&#xA;  goals. After two decades or so, we're&#xA;  done &quot;growing up&quot;, and we think we&#xA;  finally have the ability to control&#xA;  ourselves. We know we can't interrupt&#xA;  a meeting without apologizing, and we&#xA;  know that even if the person we hate&#xA;  the most is standing right in front of&#xA;  us, we can't give in to our baser&#xA;  instincts.* But this is easy compared&#xA;  to the skills we learn to analyze a&#xA;  problem and come to a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Alternatively, you could stick with what you've written, modified a little bit: ...even if the person we hate the most is standing right in front of us, we can't pull a dagger to stab him or her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastEditorUserId="1467" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T14:46:49.223" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T14:46:49.223" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2177" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-21T18:38:01.463" Score="22" ViewCount="6072" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote my opinion essay using a lot of different complex grammatical structures, linking words and so on, and some of the sentences were even over 4 lines long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I was afterwards told by my English teacher that this is a bad habit, and any sentence one has to read twice to grasp is simply badly formulated. I was told to use short sentences instead, always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, I was a bit disappointed by that, and it also seems a bit strange to me: If I'm able to formulate lengthy sentences in a good manner, why shouldn't I do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are complex sentences uncommon or unwanted in English?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dafr" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T18:18:36.483" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T22:14:50.393" Title="Are complex sentences uncommon or unwanted in English?" Tags="|style|structure|conventions|" AnswerCount="17" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-21T18:50:52.357" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to opine on this without some examples of the sentences you wrote. But generally, you shouldn't write complex sentences just because you can do it well. When a particular idea really requires a complex sentence in order to be conveyed accurately and fully, then I see no problem with it. But this is rarely the case. I can't tell you how many elegantly convoluted sentences I've hacked to pieces in the editing phase of a paper. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to consider: Sometimes, needing to use a complex sentence structure indicates you don't yet have the best grasp on the ideas you're writing about. Being able to whittle that sentence down to a more readable length means your understanding has matured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1563" OwnerDisplayName="Kelly C Hess" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T18:50:52.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-21T18:51:46.117" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing inherently wrong with using rich phrasing and complex structure in English.  Doing so correctly can indeed enhance your writing and the enjoyment of people reading it.  That said, your teacher has a very valid point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of language, broadly speaking, is to communicate.  If your writing style is so convoluted that it gets in the way of people understanding what you've written, then it isn't achieving that aim.  Long sentences packed with ideas are particularly prone to causing problems.  People can in general only hold a limited number of things at the front of their minds, ready for immediate use, and it's quite easy for a long sentence to exceed this limit.  If by the end of the sentence the reader has forgotten what the beginning of the sentence was about, you've got trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is to be moderate!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Rhodri" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T18:51:46.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-21T18:52:26.333" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short, forceful, sentences are clear and pleasant to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long sentences (full of description and unnecessary circumlocution), while capable of containing more information than a much shorter sentence, have a tendency to indulge in bad habits like the passive voice, and oftimes the reader, upon reaching the end of a monstrously long and verbose sentence, doesn't remember what the sentence was supposed to be about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" OwnerDisplayName="Satanicpuppy" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T18:52:26.333" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-21T18:53:27.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; on the preferences of the individual reader, editor, or teacher. There is nothing inherently wrong with long, elaborate sentences in English, and many of the best writers in English are known for using sentences of this type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the more complex your sentence is, the more difficult it will be for others to understand. Therefore it may be advisable for less experienced writers to try and keep things simple and not to overestimate their skill at composing such elaborate sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" OwnerDisplayName="JSBangs" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T18:53:27.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-21T18:53:38.687" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming that an opinion essay is one where you articulate your opinion about something or attempt to persuade others to share your opinion. In such an essay, using complex grammatical structures can be a liability rather than a benefit, as the complexity of the language distracts from the message you are trying to get across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I disagree with your English teacher. I don't think all sentences should be short. The best writing I've read has a good variety of sentence lengths, with each sentence representing a relatively complete thought. Using a short sentence to represent a long thought can be as detrimental to your purpose as using a long sentence to represent a short thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="quanticle" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T18:53:38.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-21T18:53:59.950" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Complex, long sentences are less common in modern English than in modern German, or in the English of a century ago, or in Latin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most style guides agree that a sentence that one has to read twice in order to understand it is inferior to rephrasing the same such that one may understand it in one read. (Did you enjoy reading the previous sentence? I think it is a bit ugly, but I feel too lazy to make it easier to read.) However, there are some topics that might be nearly impossible to understand without reading several sentences twice. Nevertheless the ideal must always be to save the reader as much time and effort as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, complex sentences can be quite readable if structured well; linking words help a lot, as do conjunctions. There are many authors who can get away with very long, complex sentences without forcing their readers to reread anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose it all depends on how you do it; perhaps it might prove useful if you added a few examples to your question of complex sentences that your teacher disapproved of. On the one hand, the modern trend of writing in very short sentences by using full stops everywhere, depreciating semicolons and colons, has always seemed excessive to me, as you can see; on the other, I do agree that many writers of dubious skill tend to write sentences that are too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1803" OwnerDisplayName="Cerberus" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T00:33:08.673" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-21T19:27:37.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some good answers above, especially satanicpuppy's. Also, consider the matter of register. What is appropriate to one setting may fail in another. If the requested format is &quot;short and concise,&quot; then write to that requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your dissertation on Victorian phrasing in the instruction manuals of penny-farthing velocipedes will probably let you stretch your literary legs a bit longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="The Raven" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T19:27:37.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-21T20:19:21.327" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A rich and full application of English is the tapestry of poetry and well written prose. Its uses include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making text more interesting and entertaining to read&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To fully or more concisely express the attitude or opinion of the writer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The application of a specific rhythm or timbre to improve the &quot;sound&quot; of the text (e.g. Shakespeare, poetry, rap)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most failures occur in texts that are not appropriate for its use. Complex and delightful arrangements of English are &lt;strong&gt;primarily&lt;/strong&gt; for entertainment. As an example, this type of language would not be suited to technical documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good way to check for poorly applied complexity is to look for tautologies (repetitions of the same meaning) and ways to express your meaning using less words. &#xA;It might be that your English is describing things in a &quot;round about&quot; fashion as opposed to being direct and concise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Quibblesome" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T22:23:07.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-21T21:57:49.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Long sentences contain a lot of opportunities for ambiguity, which is a potential source of intrinsic confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you avoid the ambiguity trap, there is a less concrete issue: when you use a very complex sentence, you are making certain assumptions about the readers ability and willingness to pay attention. Look at it this way, if you are an expert on some subject and still have to concentrate to form a information dense sentence correctly, are your readers going to be able to grasp the whole idea in one pass? If not, you can—and should—make it easier for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other side of the issue is that a few long, difficult sentences may contain more information in fewer words than a lot of short choppy sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you need to judge your audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25412" OwnerDisplayName="dmckee" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T05:25:03.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-21T23:01:41.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are hitting an interesting question here. I am a native French speaker and I struggled with the same issue when I learnt English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My English writing used to reflect my French upbringing. It is considered a skill to be able to craft long, complex sentences in French, using encapsulations and appositions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately enough, my English teacher explained to me that he was more interested in the substance of my arguments rather than by my ability to show off grammatical skillfulness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I now get strange looks from French colleagues when I use four-word sentences to answer their queries. My word of advice: value concision over circumlocution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" OwnerDisplayName="Fr." LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T23:01:41.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-21T23:09:10.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, it's nice to see such a question and after reading it I think that your teacher actually told you to write the sentences that are easy to understand because what is required is to facilitate the reader; however it depends how long you want your sentence to be but conciseness is always appreciated and it may be that your teacher only told you to write small sentences because (s)he thought that at that time that you are unable to write long sentences in simple way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you've noticed the above paragraph I wrote is a single sentence. &#xA;So now decide yourself how you'd feel about writing it? No matter what language we're talking about, the purpose when writing is to avoid being overly complex to serve readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Hafiz" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T05:24:19.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-22T00:47:23.320" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've done a fair bit of tech writing and would put a lot of effort into writing simple, short sentences devoid of ambiguity and profligacy. I am currently reading a Richard Ford novel (The Sportswriter) and it is the total opposite. The sentences twist and turn, they infuse exposition in the descriptions, feelings in the narrative and vary the sentence structure making it impossible to skim. In short, his book is a joy to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Context is everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="351" OwnerDisplayName="dave" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T00:47:23.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-22T02:50:50.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading a book written in the USA during the 1890s, and there were some very long sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example on page 17;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;After the different ceremonies of the Indians were over, Sir Alexander made a speech to them, acquainting them with the fact, that he was clothed with authority from the Great King George, who loved them, and that he had come a great way to demand of Moy Toy (the Chief of the Cherokees), and all the Chieftains of the nation, to recognize the authority of the King and become his subjects.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Colonial and Revolutionary History of Upper South Carolina, by John Belton O'Neal Landrum)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One advantage to shorter sentences is that the subject gets referenced more often. Repetition aids learning. Longer sentences sometimes loose track of the subject. For example: Try remembering who made a speech to the Indians in the above sentence (no peeking). On the other hand, Longer sentences allow for better narrative; What happened in the above (long) sentence about the Indians? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use short sentences for facts and figures and when emphasizing the subject. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Employ longer and more complex sentence structure when narrative is the purpose. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Peir" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T03:01:55.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-22T10:49:48.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been very good answers before, but I'd like to point out that English doesn't use lots of commas. (E.g. compared to German, from where I started to learn English and which is infamous for endless sentences. It was pretty hard for me not to put commas into English sentences at the beginning. For example, a common mistake is putting a comma before &quot;that&quot;.) &#xA;So complex sentences can get very confusing in English because you don't know exactly where dependent sentences start or end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the accepted post was a sentence I had to read several times: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most style guides agree that a sentence that one has to read twice in order to understand it is inferior to rephrasing the same such that one may understand it in one read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that was a German sentence, it would contain 6 commas: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Die meisten Anleitungen für guten Stil stimmen überein, dass ein Satz, den man mehrmals lesen muss, um ihn zu verstehen, schlechter ist, als denselben Satz umzuformulieren, so dass man ihn beim einmaligen Lesen verstehen kann. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is still a pain to read, but rather because you're thinking &quot;come to a point!&quot;; you don't necessarily have to read it twice to understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="ladybug" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T12:19:33.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-22T13:27:23.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read Hemingway. Then read Henry James. These are both considered great English writers, so presumably both have acceptable writing styles. I looked at the first paragraph of two of their most famous stories, and extracted the first two sentences of each. Compare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;James:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The story had held us, round the fire,&#xA;  sufficiently breathless, but except&#xA;  the obvious remark that it was&#xA;  gruesome, as, on Christmas eve in an&#xA;  old house, a strange tale should&#xA;  essentially be, I remember no comment&#xA;  uttered till somebody happened to say&#xA;  that it was the only case he had met&#xA;  in which such a visitation had fallen&#xA;  on a child.&#xA;  The case, I may mention, was that of&#xA;  an apparition in just such an old&#xA;  house as had gathered us for the&#xA;  occasion—an appearance, of a dreadful&#xA;  kind, to a little boy sleeping in the&#xA;  room with his mother and waking her up&#xA;  in the terror of it; waking her not to&#xA;  dissipate his dread and soothe him to&#xA;  sleep again, but to encounter also,&#xA;  herself, before she had succeeded in&#xA;  doing so, the same sight that had&#xA;  shaken him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hemingway:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4994" OwnerDisplayName="Peter Shor " LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T13:27:23.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-23T02:05:23.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As always, think of your audience.  Would you rather read something brief and clear, or long and convoluted?  As a writer, it is harder to be brief, but I think your readers will appreciate the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is more than just a matter of personal preference.  In many cases your reader may not be a native English speaker.  Keeping it short and simple can avoid misunderstanding and frustration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="gauss256" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T02:05:23.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2194" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2196" CreationDate="2011-03-23T14:54:09.687" Score="23" ViewCount="26525" Body="&lt;p&gt;About ten years ago an agent told me not to submit manuscripts in fonts other than Courier (or Courier New) and to double-space lines. He said editors were prejudiced against manuscripts that looked like they were written on a word processor (as opposed to a typewriter, I guess).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming this was ever true, do editors still expect to see the monospace Courier font?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2020-09-12T20:44:19.167" Title="Submitting a novel for publication: do editors still expect Courier font?" Tags="|submitting-work|editing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2194" CreationDate="2011-03-23T15:07:32.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For reading purposes, stick to a good, well-known serif font (like Times New Roman), or slab serif font (like Courier). The reason I say this is because - regardless of your manuscript looking like it was written with a typewriter font - serif fonts are much easier to read in print than sans-serif fonts (like Arial). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a writing course I've done, they gave the following recommendations as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely stick with the double spacing of your lines. Use a new line for paragraphs rather than a spaced gap i.e. the spacing between the previous paragraph and the new one is the same as your line height. Indent each paragraph / new line, except the opening paragraph of the chapter/section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also recommend using single quotes for speech, rather than double quotes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Note that these are likely UK-based styles, particularly the single quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2012-04-22T11:43:30.543" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T11:43:30.543" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2194" CreationDate="2011-03-23T15:24:41.797" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;A significant proportion of agents and editors still want submissions in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/the-obligatory-manuscript-format-article/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Standard Manuscript Format&lt;/a&gt;, which includes using a serif monospace font such as Courier. Many of them have become less fussy about the particular font and will also accept a proportional font such as Times Roman. However, in no case should you use a non-serif font, or anything that you wouldn't use in business correspondence. Double-spacing is still pretty much a universal requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you'll always be safe by sticking to the most conservative standard, as no one will be bothered by it, and some people still require it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastEditorUserId="8535" LastEditDate="2016-04-04T04:06:48.303" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T04:06:48.303" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2197" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2201" CreationDate="2011-03-23T15:37:33.667" Score="10" ViewCount="9651" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the movie &quot;Stranger Than Fiction&quot; the professor of literature makes quite a big deal about the phrase &quot;little did he know.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've written papers on &quot;Little did he know.&quot; I've taught classes on &quot;Little did he know.&quot; I once gave an entire seminar based upon &quot;Little did he know.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this phrase as relevant and studied in writing as it is implied in that movie?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1231" LastEditorUserId="1231" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T16:06:10.060" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T16:14:43.637" Title="Little did he know" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2197" CreationDate="2011-03-23T15:46:47.217" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The phrase &quot;little did he know&quot; has no particular significance to English Literature or writing in general. The only reason that it was significant in that movie is because the author character had a penchant for using the phrase, and the professor was able to use it to identify the voice in Will Farrell's head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T15:46:47.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1262" CreationDate="2011-03-23T16:26:55.687" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been an on-again, off-again writer for &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ars Technica&lt;/a&gt; for nearly ten years. (Mostly off for the last four.) Periodically, they solicit submissions from new writers, usually in a few specific subject areas. I don't know that video games is one of them, because Ben, Casey, and Andrew seem to have that on lockdown both in terms of volume and quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, they pay, because they believe that good writing (and journalism) deserves to be compensated. The EIC (Ken) is a stand-up guy, and &lt;em&gt;really cares&lt;/em&gt; about his people. The ME (Eric) is really great, too. If you want to cut your teeth doing online journalism, I can't think of a better group to learn with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think you want to write about video games, you should drop Ben an email. He's the gaming editor, and he can tell you more. (Even if it's a no.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T16:26:55.687" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-23T16:26:55.687" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2194" CreationDate="2011-03-23T17:16:51.963" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was doing work as an Editor I loved the Courier font, or any fixed pitch font for that matter. As nice as Times New Roman looks, after reading 100+ first pages it starts to wear on the eyes. A fixed pitch font just makes it easier to read page after page and in the end readability wins when it comes to formatting and fonts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as for what an editor expects. If they say they want it in Courier send it in as Courier (it goes back to the rule of &lt;strong&gt;Always Follow the Submission Guidelines&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T17:16:51.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2197" CreationDate="2011-03-23T17:43:22.470" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's true that the phrase has no great significance, it does have connotations associated with slightly old fashioned fairy-tale style narration, such as you might find in Alice and Wonderland, Pooh Bear, Grimm's Fairy Tales, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You probably wouldn't use the phrase in regular writing unless you were making a deliberate ironic nod in this direction, which is what the narration style in Stranger than Fiction does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comment about once giving an entire seminar on this phrase is a lighthearted joke at the expense of English Lit academics who have a reputation for massivily overanalysing the smallest aspects of litrature and writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1570" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T17:43:22.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2202" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-23T17:53:02.523" Score="8" ViewCount="2540" Body="&lt;p&gt;How often are fountain pens and dip pens are used today by writers, and why do they use them? Or, if applicable, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1628" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T02:15:13.447" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T02:15:13.447" Title="How many writers use fountain pens/dip pens today?" Tags="|tools|writing-instruments|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2018-12-28T16:37:32.033" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2177" CreationDate="2011-03-23T19:16:02.060" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem with long sentences is not length &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;, but poor construction. A well-written long sentence carries you along with it, and is a joy to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this long sentence, the opening line of John Irving's &lt;em&gt;A Prayer for Owen Meany&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's fifty four words, and you're never lost for a moment. Not only that, but by the end of the sentence, you know you're in the hands of an author who's a master of his craft. (Though, to be fair, you probably knew that when you saw his name on the cover.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a longer sentence from Audrey Niffenegger’s &lt;em&gt;The Time Traveler’s Wife&lt;/em&gt;. Prior to this sentence, Clare has bumped into Henry in the library. She’s met him many times, but he’s never met her. (It’s a time-travel thing, yo.)  Clare asks Henry out to dinner. Then comes this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We plan to meet tonight at a nearby Thai restaurant, all the while under the amused gaze of the women behind the desk, and I leave, forgetting about Kelmscott and Chaucer and floating down the marble stairs, through the lobby and out into the October Chicago sun, running across the park scattering small dogs and squirrels, whooping and rejoicing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This delightful sentence, fifty-nine words long, skips and dances and flutters in exactly the same way that Clare skips and dances and flutters. It's lyrical and rhythmic and floaty. Try to do that in a short sentence. Again, as you read this, you are never lost even for a moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As these two examples show, there are things you can do with long sentences that you simply cannot do with short ones (and vice versa). The question is: &lt;strong&gt;What are you trying to accomplish with sentence length?&lt;/strong&gt; Or: &lt;strong&gt;What are you trying to accomplish that can be accomplished only with long sentences?&lt;/strong&gt; Finally: &lt;strong&gt;Are your sentence length choices achieving the effects you want to achieve?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few years ago I created this exercise for my writer's group, to explore the effects of sentence length, and to be mindful of our choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sentence Length Exercise&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First draft.&lt;/strong&gt; Draft a scene or section in your usual way, about 500 words. Include activity of some kind, but no dialogue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First rewrite: Short sentences.&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite the piece using sentences no longer than 10 words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second rewrite: Long sentences.&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite the piece using sentences no shorter than 25 words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Analyze the effects of sentence length.&lt;/strong&gt; Analyze your three drafts to identify the effects of sentence length. Make notes about what you observe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Final draft.&lt;/strong&gt; Write your final draft however you wish, but give particular attention to sentence length. Apply everything you have learned about sentence length during this exercise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional guidelines for the exercise&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As you revise&lt;/strong&gt;, notice the changes you make about how to shorten, lengthen, slice, or combine sentences. Notice the effects of each choice, and whether you like each effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If writing 10-word sentences is too easy in step 2, use a maximum of 7 words per sentence. If 25-word sentences are too easy in step 3, use a minimum of 30 words, or 35. The idea is to &lt;strong&gt;challenge yourself&lt;/strong&gt;. Within these restrictions, write the best sentences, the best paragraphs, and the best piece you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When you've finished revising&lt;/strong&gt;, consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What challenges did you experience? What was difficult? How did you solve the problems?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What surprised you? What meaning do you make of your surprise?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What patterns do you notice in the structures of your short sentences? Of your long sentences?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What patterns do you notice in the types, lengths, and arrangement of phrases and clauses in your long sentences?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In your final version, what similarities and variations do you notice in sentence lengths and structures? What patterns do you see in the arrangement of short and long sentences?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read each version aloud. What makes a sentence easier or harder to read?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did focusing on sentence length affect other elements of your writing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T19:16:02.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2202" CreationDate="2011-03-23T19:47:57.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: I have no exact number. I doubt anyone has an exact nomber at the moment. Maybe some site should run a survey...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Christopher Paolini has stated he's used them recently. But they're not often used, as far as I can tell. I'd use them for the same reason Paolini's stated to: it gives a nice feeling, sets the mind in the right mood, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's not practical. So, as I'm not that good a writer, I like to stick to the place where I can write my ideas the fastest (so they won't go flying out the window to the corners of Neverland).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastEditorUserId="1342" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T13:52:08.720" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T13:52:08.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2205" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2206" CreationDate="2011-03-23T21:23:29.387" Score="19" ViewCount="5041" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read books for fun and to help my writing. I want to remember the cool things I read, but I don't want to distract from the enjoyment of reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on how to take notes or better recall plots/characters/interesting facts/random ideas while reading? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1630" LastEditorUserId="1630" LastEditDate="2011-05-30T19:20:01.977" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T19:20:01.977" Title="Taking notes while reading" Tags="|notes|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2205" CreationDate="2011-03-23T21:35:35.257" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;When reading any book (fiction or nonfiction), I usually take a piece of A4 paper, fold it in half along its longest edge, and use it as a bookmark.  I write directly on the bookmark, jotting down anything I find amusing or interesting.  The bookmark always stays inside the book (which is necessary because I'm often in the middle of reading several books).  After I finish reading, I put the book away with the bookmark inside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some time passes, I pick up one of those books again and enter all my notes from the bookmark into the computer.  This allows me to quickly get an overview of the book again.  It is like a second reading, &quot;reader's digest&quot; style.  Quick, no details, but it brings me back into the atmosphere of the book very easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, I can always come back and read the electronic summary.  It is often interesting to read several summaries after each other, when the books have a common theme (e.g. physics).  You start seeing connections between the books.  You get multiple perspectives on the same material.  This often even allows me to make summaries of the summaries, giving a lot of insight and bringing up deeper questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I know, I'm a book freak ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still keep the bookmarks inside the books, because they often have little drawings on them or have a specific &quot;feel&quot; to them that is harder to capture in a text file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4377" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T21:35:35.257" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2197" CreationDate="2011-03-23T21:38:44.460" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever you write &quot;little did (s)he know&quot; in fiction, you're probably writing too much from the omniscient author perspective, rather than from the character's perspective.  This may indicate a violation of the &quot;show, don't tell&quot; rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4377" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T21:38:44.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2205" CreationDate="2011-03-23T22:33:44.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The editor from shurtugal.com wrote a book recently; he based it on the notes he'd taken from the Inheritance Cycle books. To make a long story short (you can read the full account of how he wrote the book, which is titled &quot;The Inheritance Almanac&quot;, by the way), he took many notes using sticky paper, attaching them to his &quot;working copy&quot; of the book. He also highlighted the relevant parts. He did that after having reading it several times, though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I remember many things with relative ease, and do not take notes whatsoever. And I buy only one copy of my books, for that matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is: read the books the first time (or first few times) &quot;for fun&quot;. Then you can get serious and take notes or highlight. Or, if you're like me, after a couple reads you'll remember most of the details that are interesting by heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are middle spots. But I don't know about those...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T22:33:44.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2011-03-23T22:43:52.483" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a wonderful book by Dorothea Brande called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0874771641&quot;&gt;Becoming A Writer&lt;/a&gt;, published in 1934, but still widely read today and often cited.  In it Brande talks about developing two selves for the writer, a split personality, with one self being a creative, sensitive and artistic person and the other being a detail-obsessed sharp minded editor.  The two personalities are both needed for a good work, but they should never meet and you should be able to turn them on and off at will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this applies here.  You need to turn off the Creative, Artistic side and whip out Spock the Editor when dealing with criticism.  Then, when it is time for more first drafts and creativity, bring out the Artist again and send Spock back to his closet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1570" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T22:57:49.163" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T22:57:49.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2205" CreationDate="2011-03-23T23:28:21.110" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I normally keep a pencil with me whenever I am reading something, and will just lightly underline text that I like: phrases, words etc. Then, when I reach a natural conclusion in the book (end of the chapter/section), I'll make a note of it in my pocket-sized journal, which I keep with me at all times. If you can't underline, write it straight into your journal. (I like the previous poster's comment on using an A4 piece of paper in half, that's a nice idea, and I may try that myself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If something I'm reading triggers any idea at all, I will immediately write it down in my journal once I reach the end of the sentence, typically with the date, book name, and page number (if necessary). I dread the idea of letting ideas go to waste! I find that, once you get used to jotting down brief points quickly, it doesn't stop the enjoyment of the book. If anything, it increases it because I'm free to concentrate on reading instead of letting my mind worry about trying to remember things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I recommend writing a review of the book as soon as you're finished, referring to your notes if necessary. Try summarise the book in a few lines, then look at what you liked/disliked both as a reader, and as a writer. Doing it immediately is important, because the things that stayed with you after you finished are, generally speaking, the most important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T23:28:21.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2093" CreationDate="2011-03-24T02:33:02.600" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Comic scripts usually include dialogue and location/background descriptions, maybe some directions for character placement. Movie scripts focus more on these details, and add elements of staging, camera placement and angles, and may have guidelines for post-production sound and visual effects. The biggest challenge is thinking of how to visualize how a scene will play out in a film, and what cannot be taken for granted (like sounds or surreal elements).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1461" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T02:33:02.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2202" CreationDate="2011-03-24T14:14:59.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you were going to write a piece that you planned to publish, writing it by hand is going to be the long way around. You aren't going to be able to submit it to the publisher that way, so you're going to end up having to re-type it anyway! I don't think any major publisher is going to be willing to deal with a hand-written manuscript, no matter how good your handwriting, and no matter how good your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="679" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T14:14:59.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2202" CreationDate="2011-03-24T17:56:08.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it depends a lot on the paper you're writing on. Printer paper of course won't even keep a line from a standard felt tip pen, and therefore is relatively useless for notes or other short-lived things. If you're using a heavier grade though, a dip pen will give a better, more expressive line. Whatever you are writing then becomes more interesting to look at due to the line weight and quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1637" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T17:56:08.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2093" CreationDate="2011-03-24T19:13:57.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been a while since I've looked into comic scrips, but here's what I remember. There are a lot of differences between a script for a Movie/TV, a stage play and a comic. The biggest one is that in a comic there isn't a director (though the author or artist can fill that role depending on how you work together).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a movie the majority of the camera work and shots are set up by the director. As a rule you wouldn't have a close up or a wide shot listed in the script because, as the writer, that's not your job. That's not to say you can't do it when it's needed for the story but that's outside the scope of this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when you are writing a comic script you need to think more about the layout and the arrangement of the characters and the scene. How much of this work you do depends on the artist you're working with. If the artist is really good with that sort of thing it might be better to leave it a bit vague and let them work it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comics have other issues that you will need to think about. The first two are thing things that really make a comic a comic, panels and word balloons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard comic book usually has 9 panels on a page, though that can change depending on what you are doing. What you write needs to fit in that limitation. Also keep in mind that the gaps between panels usually allow for time to pass (even if it's just a moment), which is what makes comics sequential art. Read Scott McCloud's &lt;em&gt;Understanding Comics&lt;/em&gt; for an in depth look at this. Because of this your scenes would be broken down into both pages and panels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Word balloons are a surprising limitation. The normal balloon can hold maybe 25-30 words and you might be able to get away with 3 or so per a panel. This limits the space you have for people to say something, and lot of dialog on one panel can make it feel cramped. This makes for an interesting balance between space and verbosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also things like caption/narration boxes and the sound effects, but those work pretty much as you expect them to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T19:13:57.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2215" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-24T19:35:10.353" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T19:35:10.353" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T19:35:10.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2216" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-24T19:35:10.353" Score="0" Body="Short form writing, often focused on the aesthetics of words as much as the meaning. This tag should be used for any questions relating to poems, including poetry formatting and technique, poetry critiques, and the publishing of poetry." OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T19:36:41.133" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T19:36:41.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="113" CreationDate="2011-03-24T19:37:45.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always write on the comuter because frankly, I can type about as fast as I think.  The same cannot be said for writing with a pen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can type, there's no reason to start on paper unless you're just jotting down random notes etc.. which are easier to scratch out or just doodle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T19:37:45.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2218" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-24T19:41:38.677" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T19:41:38.677" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T19:41:38.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2219" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-24T19:41:38.677" Score="0" Body="Style defines the form that a piece of writing takes (as opposed to the message it conveys). This tag should be used for questions about how to achieve specific effects through form, structure and tone." OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T20:22:39.130" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T20:22:39.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2220" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-24T19:46:15.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fiction is a form of prose writing that deals with at least partly artificial or imagined events and characters. This tag should be used for any questions relating to fiction, including fiction &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/formatting&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;formatting&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;formatting&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/technique&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;technique&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;technique&lt;/a&gt;s and &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/publishing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;publishing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;publishing&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should state where you are having problems, such as whether you are still working on &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/planning&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;planning&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;planning&lt;/a&gt; your fictional story or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/editing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;editing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;editing&lt;/a&gt; it because your &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/beta-readers&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;beta-readers&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;beta-readers&lt;/a&gt; said there are some things that need to be changed or if you are close to &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/publishing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;publishing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;publishing&lt;/a&gt; and wondering about differences between traditional publishing and &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/self-publishing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;self-publishing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;self-publishing&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/submitting-work&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;submitting-work&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;submitting-work&lt;/a&gt; or finding an &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/agent&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;agent&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;agent&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-04T11:52:20.787" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T11:52:20.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2221" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-24T19:46:15.210" Score="0" Body="Fiction is a form of prose writing that deals with at least partly artificial or imagined events and characters. This tag should be used for any questions relating to fiction, including fiction formatting, techniques and publishing." OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-04T11:52:20.787" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T11:52:20.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1704" CreationDate="2011-03-24T19:46:48.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is extremely difficult to break into anything like screenwriting, remember that it's a sellers market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great material is the key to get in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contacts help.  Nepotism really helps, but if you write an awesome script, you will have no problem getting in.  Seriously, 99% of scripts are awful.  Of course I pulled that number out of my butt but it's true.  The vast majority of screenplays are garbage.  Most are doomed from the start with boring ideas and even worse execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write a great script, enter it into some contests and you'll be on your way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T13:33:03.653" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T13:33:03.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2223" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-24T19:49:54.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishing is the act of printing and distributing writing in physical or electronic form. It may refer to the commercial publishing industry, small press, self-publishing and on-demand publishing. This tag should be used for any questions regarding the publishing process in any of these forms. When asking such a question you should mention in which field you want to publish, such as &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/academic-writing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;academic-writing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;academic-writing&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/creative-writing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;creative-writing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;creative-writing&lt;/a&gt;, if it's applicable you should mention the genre you are interested in, such as &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/crime&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;crime&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;crime&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/horror&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;horror&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;horror&lt;/a&gt; or where you want to publish, such as mentioning &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/amazon&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;amazon&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;amazon&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-16T11:37:26.840" LastActivityDate="2018-04-16T11:37:26.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2224" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-24T19:49:54.910" Score="0" Body="Publishing is the act of printing and distributing writing in physical or electronic form. It may refer to the commercial publishing industry, small press, self-publishing and on-demand publishing. This tag should be used for any questions regarding the publishing process in any of these forms." OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T20:22:36.087" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T20:22:36.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2225" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-24T19:58:59.833" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T19:58:59.833" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T19:58:59.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2226" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-24T19:58:59.833" Score="0" Body="Non-fiction is a form of prose writing that factually describes real events and people, sometimes offering additional commentary. This tag should be used for any questions relating to non-fiction, including non-fiction formatting and technique, non-fiction critiques, and the publishing of non-fiction." OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T20:22:33.620" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T20:22:33.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2227" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-24T20:05:07.753" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T20:05:07.753" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T20:05:07.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2228" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-24T20:05:07.753" Score="0" Body="Editing is the act of improving a piece of writing. Questions with this tag should focus on specific editing techniques or ways to improve editing skills. Critiques or proofreading questions are off-topic here." OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2021-01-04T19:53:44.023" LastActivityDate="2021-01-04T19:53:44.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2229" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-24T20:11:05.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Novels are long-form prose &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/fiction&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;fiction&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;fiction&lt;/a&gt;, typically over 40,000 words. Questions that use this tag can relate to writing, &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/editing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;editing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;editing&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/publishing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;publishing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;publishing&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/formatting&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;formatting&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;formatting&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/technique&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;technique&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;technique&lt;/a&gt;s as applied specifically to novels. If the question applies to more than just novels, it should probably use the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/fiction&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;fiction&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;fiction&lt;/a&gt; tag instead and if the goal is to have an even broader scope you may wish to use the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/creative-writing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;creative-writing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;creative-writing&lt;/a&gt; tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T08:28:45.613" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T08:28:45.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2230" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-24T20:11:05.003" Score="0" Body="Novels are long-form prose fiction, typically over 40,000 words. Questions that use this tag can relate to writing, editing, publishing, formatting or technique as applied specifically to novels. If the question applies to more than just novels, it should probably use the Fiction tag instead." OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T20:22:36.897" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T20:22:36.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2205" CreationDate="2011-03-24T20:13:17.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question didn't explicitly mention that you read paper books. For this reason, I feel it necessary to bring up &lt;em&gt;digital book readers&lt;/em&gt;, such ad the Kindle, Kobo and iPad (with which I am writing this response). Digital annotations distinguish themselves from paper annotations in three important ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many of them allow you to annotate and to highlight what you read all without the inconvenience of irreparably marking an original paper book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Digital annotations are &lt;em&gt;searchable&lt;/em&gt;. If you make a lot of notes, being able to search through them quickly is a valuable feature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Digital annotations can often be shared across several devices or backed up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="210" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T20:13:17.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1813" CreationDate="2011-03-24T20:20:51.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that full-screen writing on a computer, which is designed expressly to allow you to multitask, helps to eliminate distraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with becoming distracted is not in seeing the edge of your Facebook window behind your writing app: it's having Facebook open at all, or letting it invade your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do, however, find it visually pleasing to write in a full-screen editor, and use them for &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="210" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T20:20:51.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2233" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-24T20:22:44.603" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T20:22:44.603" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T20:22:44.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2234" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-24T20:22:44.603" Score="0" Body="Tools include any physical devices or artifacts used in the writing process, as well as software tools (which should additionally include the Software tag). For questions regarding process, methodology, or organization, use the Technique tag." OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T20:23:00.253" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T20:23:00.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2235" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-20T08:43:41.473" Score="14" ViewCount="2159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I know the answer to this, and my guess is &amp;quot;No&amp;quot;, but I don't have a definitive reason what that guess is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you see on the cover of a book, not from a newspaper or reviewer, but from another author, something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Gene Wolfe is so good he leaves me speechless.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;- Ursula Leguin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did she get paid for this, did she write this somewhere in a public forum, or was it just a verbal quote taken down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a question about novels in general, but applies to SF &amp;amp; Fantasy as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1359" OwnerDisplayName="benstraw" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T06:28:56.510" Title="Do authors get paid for quotes and attributions used on book covers?" Tags="|publishing|marketing|reviews|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2235" CreationDate="2011-02-20T08:55:58.240" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishers send advance reading copies of books to other authors asking for their quotes. They're generally happy to provide favourable quotes, having benefitted from this practice themselves. No money changes hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25836" OwnerDisplayName="Mike Scott" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T08:55:58.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2235" CreationDate="2011-02-20T16:43:57.953" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Mike Scott says above, publishers and editors solicit favorable quotes from popular authors of work broadly similar to the book at hand. But that's not where all those quotes on book covers come from. Some are simply quotes from things authors have said in other public venues, like in the course of a review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, there's a quote from Stephen King lauding the science fiction writer Robert Charles Wilson; I've put it on the cover of several of Wilson's books. It's actually from an installment of King's column in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, where he was listing some of his favorite things in various categories; Wilson is his favorite SF writer, and he explained why. We never asked King's permission to quote from him, and he's never objected--our one-line quotation doesn't misrepresent King's opinion and presumably he's happy to stand by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1361" OwnerDisplayName="Patrick Nielsen Hayden" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T16:43:57.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2238" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-24T20:38:42.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag should be used For questions relating to the sequence of events of a novel, also known as its storyline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any work of fiction, there are three critical elements that must always exist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The setting (the place in which the story happens; the scope of the setting can change but ultimately broadens to a span of time within a &quot;universe&quot; in which certain things are accepted as fact which may or may not differ from the &quot;real&quot; universe),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The characters (fictional or fictionalized people who populate the setting), and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The plot or storyline (the sequence of events that happens to the characters in the setting).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plot of a story constitutes the bulk of most fiction-writing efforts; it is essentially everything that happens, whether known or unknown, internal or external to a character's mind, between the earliest time period documented by the novel and the latest. The structure of a novel or other work of fiction may involve skipping backwards or forwards in place or time for dramatic purposes, but there generally should be a single linear timeline along which all events occur (unless the subject matter itself deals with making changes to the timeline such as time travel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plot tag is for the story and structure questions in the writing process. &quot;What order should these events happen?&quot;, &quot;How do I turn distinct events into a cohesive plot?&quot;. Questions related to show-telling and the feel of the story should instead use the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/narrative&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;narrative&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;narrative&lt;/a&gt; tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33442" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T14:01:21.660" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T14:01:21.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2239" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-24T20:38:42.200" Score="0" Body="Plot typically refers to the events and their ordering in a work of narrative fiction. Use this tag for questions regarding plotting, outlining, and narrative arcs. Be aware that questions asking users to come up with plot details for you are off-topic." OwnerUserId="296" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2021-01-08T18:49:05.827" LastActivityDate="2021-01-08T18:49:05.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2240" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-24T23:18:39.590" Score="9" ViewCount="739" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a romance YA novel, how explicit can it be? Are there certain descriptions or words that shouldn't be used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2021-06-01T18:05:26.333" Title="How explicit should a YA novel be?" Tags="|young-adult|romance|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2240" CreationDate="2011-03-24T23:46:34.313" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a good thread on this over at Absolute Write - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=184551&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=184551&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general consensus there seems to be that there is definitely a limit on how explicit YA sex should be.  They suggest going for the more 'poetic' approach rather than an explicit or erotic one, and I think that makes sense.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA:I didn't see any sign of a list of 'banned' words, or anything, and I wouldn't think there would be.  Context is probably going to make a lot of difference in something like this.  As long as you're writing to serve the story rather than to titillate, I think you'll be fine.  If editors don't like something specific, they can let you know.  (apparently one writer's editor insisted that in YA sex, there must ALWAYS be mention of a condom.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T23:46:34.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2240" CreationDate="2011-03-25T02:31:21.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no hard set rule, and the boundaries are constantly expanding. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0375843051&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tender Morsels&lt;/a&gt; deals with incest, molestation, gang rape, abortions, and many other extremely adult issues. But it does so with implications and metaphors more often than gritty details (don't get me wrong, the book is &lt;em&gt;amazing&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So many of the issues could be glossed over by a reader who does not have a seed of awareness towards them. But one who is &quot;ready&quot; to meet or beginning to grasp the issue will be able read between the lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T02:31:21.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2240" CreationDate="2011-03-25T11:36:17.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've published quite a few novels for younger readers but my Y/A novel Gobshite, despite being enjoyed and even admired by most of the editors who read it, was declared too near the knuckle for publication -however, it did get me the contact I needed to publish my first series for younger readers, Sebastian Darke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1639" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T11:36:17.470" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1399" CreationDate="2011-03-25T14:17:02.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a big supporter of any kind of online writing community. Classes give you a chance to meet others, work with experts, and it gives you deadline pressure to write (which a lot of writers benefit from). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have provided my top five suggested online writing classes in a post on &lt;a href=&quot;http://missgoodonpaper.blogspot.com/2011/03/top-5-online-writing-classes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1640" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T16:47:02.550" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T16:47:02.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2011-03-25T14:23:25.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write on my ipad using a bluetooth wireless keyboard. It's great if you're travelling by train or in a hotel room, but I generally email whatever I've written to my desk top computer and do the editing there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1639" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T14:23:25.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2246" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-25T22:47:51.040" Score="4" ViewCount="2569" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to the book, and not sure where to start. How should I as a writer use this tool to improve my writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1120" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-03-24T14:43:26.663" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T14:43:26.663" Title="What is a systematic way of using Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases?" Tags="|creative-writing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2246" CreationDate="2011-03-25T23:21:18.440" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't use it.  I would caution against others using it, or any other thesaurus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that a large, varied vocabulary is a great thing, but the problem with gaining your vocabulary from a reference source rather than from reading prose is that you don't really get the more subtle meanings and shadings.  Somebody once said that there's no such thing as an exact synonym, and while I'm not sure if that's true, I definitely think that thesauri go way too far in claiming that words are synonyms when they really aren't.  I just looked at the word 'home' in an online thesaurus, and there's not one of the suggested synonyms that would work even in a simple sentence like &quot;I want to go home,&quot; and some of the suggestions are just plain wacky.  (http://thesaurus.com/browse/home).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that thesauri treat writing as if it's a science, when really it's an art, or at least a craft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: But after some thought - maybe a thesaurus would be useful when you just need your memory jogged.  Like, not as a way to learn whole new words, but rather as a tool for times when you know that the word you've used isn't quite right (either because of repetition or because the connotation isn't quite what you're looking for), and need suggested replacements.  I can see a thesaurus being useful in that context, as long as you restrict yourself to only using words with which you're already familiar.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, with that understanding - I'd say the best time to use it would be when you're reading over your work, and find a word that doesn't quite work.  I wouldn't use it for first drafts, when you're just trying to get the big ideas down, but I can see it being useful for fine tuning.  Interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T23:28:50.663" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T23:28:50.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2246" CreationDate="2011-03-26T00:30:35.897" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;A thesaurus is helpful when the word you want is &quot;on the tip of your tongue.&quot; I look up whatever word I can think of that is closest in meaning to the word I want, and then from there, I &quot;surf&quot; the thesaurus, flipping from word to word, coming closer in approximation to the desired word. I find the exact word I had in mind probably 80% of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A thesaurus isn't really a book of synonym lists, and you treat it as one at your peril. It lists words that &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; convey the shade of meaning you're looking to express. But they're just as likely not to -- more so on average. It's up to you, the writer, to hear through the static.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Kate noted, one way to &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; use a thesaurus is for learning new words. The way to learn new words is to read, read, &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1563" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T00:30:35.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-03-26T14:57:00.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beginning writers often get this tip:  Don't give up your day job.  You won't be able to make a living out of your writing for a few (or even many) years.  For software engineers, there is always a lot of demand, so you may be able to save some money and then take a sabbatical, which may make it easier to focus on your writing.  You may be able to combine a full-time job with the preparation phase (collecting ideas, drawing the high-level plot line, making detailed descriptions of characters).  But once you actually start writing, it is much easier if you can just put your job aside for a while.  Software is a profession that allows this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4377" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T14:57:00.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2260" CreationDate="2011-03-26T20:42:42.700" Score="5" ViewCount="2079" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there rules about whether or not to put text between section and subsection headings (in scholarly works)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1 section heading&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;text / no text here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.1 subsection heading&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;more text&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.2 subsection heading&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1647" LastEditorUserId="1647" LastEditDate="2011-03-26T20:47:59.857" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T01:06:17.510" Title="Put text between section and subsection headings?" Tags="|structure|outline|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="476" CreationDate="2011-03-26T20:57:57.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your own imagination, in collaboration with your memories and, perhaps, communication with others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="228" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T20:57:57.640" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-26T20:57:57.640" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1400" CreationDate="2011-03-26T21:20:02.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the classic books for scientific writing is Dey's &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=2a0XBLl8GPwC&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;dq=%22How%20to%20write%20and%20publish%20a%20scientific%20paper%22&amp;amp;pg=PP1#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;How to write and publish a scientific paper&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. It gives almost step by step instructions for writing and publishing a research paper, as well as advice on other scientific writing formats, including proposals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="228" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T21:20:02.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2253" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2403" CreationDate="2011-03-26T21:50:08.720" Score="21" ViewCount="2151" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am finding it challenging to transform an early draft into a finished product.  My biggest challenges are putting the prose in the proper order and using topic sentences and transitions so that the reader can easily follow my train of thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most effective methods that I have found for revising are to either rewrite from a paper draft or to reverse engineer an outline and then re-organize and re-write. This feels like it is overkill, but sometimes it is the only way that I can get my head around what has become a sea of words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if the answers will be specific to a particular type of writing, but I am a scientist writing journal articles and proposals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate advice on effective methods that can be used for revising, perhaps an algorithm. Is there a set of steps that I can follow each time I need to revise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;notes&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't consider this a duplicate of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/1722/228&quot;&gt;a previous question about editing&lt;/a&gt;, because that question and its answers focus on grammar and copy-editing, which is not my concern here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An answer to another question provides good advice on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/665/something-different-help-me-find-the-unnecessary-words/707#707&quot;&gt;shortening a text&lt;/a&gt;, so I have excluded this aspect from my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="228" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T12:54:46.490" Title="What methods can I use to revise my writing?" Tags="|technique|editing|revision|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2253" CreationDate="2011-03-26T22:33:31.683" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to be too specific without seeing your writing, and I certainly have nothing close to an algorithm for you, but I was caught by your idea of &lt;em&gt;reverse-engineering&lt;/em&gt; an outline.  Does that mean that you didn't write from an outline to begin with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, and if you're having trouble with organization (as I assume you are, since you mention order, topic sentences and transitions), then I'd strongly recommend that you START with an outline, and THEN write your paper.  If you already have all of your ideas, evidence, etc. set up in the outline, then you just need to base your work off that and your organization should almost take care of itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I've misinterpreted, and you outline, write, and then re-outline?  I'm not sure, but I'd definitely recommend an outline as the first step for anyone struggling with organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T22:33:31.683" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2255" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-26T22:44:35.823" Score="6" ViewCount="1403" Body="&lt;p&gt;In writing a novel, often flashbacks are difficult to manage: if too long and detailed, they can appear as second class (at worst, aborted) plots whose only task is to sustain the main plot line; if too short, they can create unwelcome confusion to the overall story flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1606" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T23:11:29.397" Title="What is the most effective way to deal with flashbacks in a novel structure ?" Tags="|style|structure|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2162" CreationDate="2011-03-26T23:01:59.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go the other way round: any tried 'multiple personality' voice, which really does not resonate on paper once written, should be at least strongly questioned when revising your text. Only those passing this test are likely to work for the reader; the same applies to the relevant characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, to keep a proper balance in narration perspective, among characters and their voices, it helps to stick to the simple rule of using the third person whenever possible, as in Franzen ten 'serious rules':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Write in the third person unless a ­really distinctive first-person voice ­offers itself irresistibly.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1606" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T23:01:59.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2255" CreationDate="2011-03-26T23:08:19.650" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's several tricks I have used to handle flashbacks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vary their length and use them more often. If you think of flashbacks more like memories of varying length, it becomes apparent that they can be as short as one sentence or as long as an entire chapter. Humans are constantly bombarded with moments of past experience. Some are just a single second of time and others span whole years. Everything reminds someone of something else, so take advantage of this common human experience. Among other things, this technique makes it less obvious to the narrator when you are making an extended jump in time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a flashback appear due to a logical trigger. In Stuart Dybeck's short &quot;Pet Milk&quot; the entire story is a flashback of a lost love triggered by the sight of milk swirling in coffee. The coffee reminded him of his love's favorite drink at a restaurant they always used to frequent, which leads to the intense memory of their last meeting. So using trick ties like this can make the flashback's surfacing seem more warranted/realistic and less like a tool to get across backstory.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A flashback can also appear more warranted if information communicated within it is pivotal to (or informs) the situation at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use flashbacks during a moment of inactivity when you would imagine the character logically calling up that memory. For instance: walking/driving/riding a bike/performing some menial, rote task/waiting a long time for whatever reason/etc. This not only makes the flashback seem more natural and less jarring, but the reader is more willing to &quot;go along&quot; with an extended flashback if there's not some moment of action/activity &quot;waiting on another line.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T23:08:19.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2255" CreationDate="2011-03-26T23:11:29.397" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best advice I ever read regarding flashbacks was from the excellent book, &quot;How To Write A Damn Good Novel&quot; by James N. Frey. He commented that flashbacks are very much overused and misunderstood, and speculated that writers often use them because they get anxious about the characters they themselves have created, and are trying to avoid conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, the advice he gave regarding the use of flashbacks is this: they are necessary &quot;if your character is about to be plunged into a situation in which he will act contrary to the way he has been acting up to that point in the story ... In other words, the antecedent action must be relevant to the present story.&quot; He goes on to say that a flashback may also be necessary if your character in the present is quite loathsome, and you want to try and put him/her in a better light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This always made the most sense to me, as well as his caveat: always &quot;ask yourself if you can make the same impact on your reader through conflict in the &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; of the novel.&quot; I must admit, ever since, I've tended to try and avoid flashbacks unless absolutely necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T23:11:29.397" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2250" CreationDate="2011-03-27T00:22:14.053" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it makes sense, by all means put text there. It’s not strange at all. Neither is not having text there and just starting a subsection immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="589" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T00:22:14.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2250" CreationDate="2011-03-27T01:05:04.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick check of a dozen nonfiction books from my bookshelf suggests that it's unusual to start a section with a subsection. In all but one book (an economics book from 1956), each chapter and section begins with some text that introduces the topic and sets the stage for what follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's not against the rules to start a section with a subsection, but it's unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T01:05:04.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2250" CreationDate="2011-03-27T01:06:17.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you feel like the section needs an introduction, go ahead and put a little text there. If the heading is comprehensible on its own, then don't bother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: 1.1 has introductory text; 1.2 does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Star Trek&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Star Trek was a television show which originally aired from 1966 to 1969. It struggled in the ratings and was eventually canceled despite a small but ferociously loyal fanbase. Years of repeats and syndication proved that the concept had legs, and four sequel series have aired to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;1.1 Star Trek: The Original Series&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry and pitched as &quot;Wagon Train to the Stars.&quot; It starred William Shatner as the charismatic Captain James T. Kirk. Leonard Nimoy as the half-Vulcan Mr. Spock, and DeForrest Kelley as the cantankerous Dr. Leonard &quot;Bones&quot; McCoy. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;1.2 Star Trek: The Next Generation.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After years of anticipation, several movies, and a failed &quot;Star Trek II&quot; series, Star Trek finally returned to the (syndicated) small screen. Led by Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart, a diverse ensemble cast including LeVar Burton from &quot;Roots&quot; once again walked the decks of the &lt;em&gt;Enterprise&lt;/em&gt;. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T01:06:17.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2253" CreationDate="2011-03-27T01:12:02.030" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a job for... &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;! :D &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building on Kate's question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create your outline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write each section of your outline as&#xA;a separate Scrivener document. Label&#xA;them appropriately. (II/A/3,&#xA;III/B/4/i)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once it's all on paper, you can&#xA;rearrange the sections however you&#xA;need.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you find yourself writing extra&#xA;analyses, create new individual&#xA;documents, and then they can be moved&#xA;around at the end. You can add them&#xA;to the existing outline structure, or append&#xA;them in the middle. There's nothing&#xA;wrong with an outline which goes I,&#xA;II, IIa, III, IIIa, IIIb, etc. if it&#xA;helps you keep track.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compile the document and read it in&#xA;order several times as you go. This&#xA;will help you to see if sections need&#xA;to be reorganized.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T01:12:02.030" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2253" CreationDate="2011-03-27T01:49:37.043" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The technique that has been most useful to me is to begin each section, paragraph, and sentence with information that readers already know, and move new information to or toward the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I learned the technique from Joseph M. Williams's terrific book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205747469&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Style&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, which is chock full of ideas about how write with clarity and grace. Similar is Martha Kolnn's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205706754&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rhetorical Grammar&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Despite the scary title, it's not about grammar &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;, but about how to use the grammatical structures you already know to create the effects you want to create in your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T01:49:37.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2253" CreationDate="2011-03-27T15:18:41.800" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just speaking for myself, I have found it most helpful and useful to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;be merciless to eliminate all of the words that I can, including especially those pesky adjectival embellishments;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;locate and expunge all of the multisyllabic Latinate words, replacing them with their Anglo-Saxon equivalents.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To apply those rules to the lines above, I do a first pass to yield:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;I write better when I throw away words I don't need; and when I write plain English.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;And a second pass might give:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;I use the fewest and the plainest words possible.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;&lt;em&gt;And I keep iterating on those principles&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;And I go over it again and again until it's right.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This refining process clarifies my thought so that leading the reader as I wish becomes almost automatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a software engineer and a lot of my writing is technical description or software proposals. The more I apply these rules, the clearer it becomes to the reader. And to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;me!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T12:54:46.490" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T12:54:46.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2194" CreationDate="2011-03-27T16:11:21.070" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I edit MSS, I find it easy and natural to work on copy that's 'typed' in Courier and double spaced. Another fixed-pitch font might be OK, I guess, but Courier is by far the most familiar and the easiest to edit, AFAIAC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's impossible to edit matter set in a variable-spaced font;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; there's just not enough room&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; to insert proofreaders' marks quickly and accurately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why not give an editor what she's used to? It can't hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- pete&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Times is the worst, the total pits.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Because it's a virtue to set variable-spaced fonts tightly, in the least horizontal space. For example, try to correct the spelling of 'spellling' as it's set here. Can you even &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; the error?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastEditorUserId="1645" LastEditDate="2011-04-17T16:59:22.807" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T16:59:22.807" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2267" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2270" CreationDate="2011-03-27T21:08:24.390" Score="5" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you defend the integrity of your work while maintaining a cooperative and friendly rapport? Specifically, how can one work with an editor who is perhaps a bit overzealous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1563" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T18:48:01.963" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T18:48:01.963" Title="What are effective ways of working with a nonfiction editor?" Tags="|publishing|editing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2194" CreationDate="2011-03-27T23:09:01.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First step: check the publisher's web site for their specific submission guidelines! They probably say right there how they want to receive your manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="679" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T23:09:01.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2267" CreationDate="2011-03-28T03:40:18.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I answered over at  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/620/when-editing-for-a-person-how-much-can-be-changed&quot;&gt;When editing for a person, how much can be changed?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About all I can suggest is that you learn to love (and use) the word &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;stet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T03:40:18.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2267" CreationDate="2011-03-28T04:02:17.857" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's difficult to say without seeing the writing in question (and the editor's comments), I've tried to answer this in a general sense, assuming the editor in question is reasonable and can be approached. If you're faced with, say, a proofreader who's doing rogue line editing, you have a major disconnect and this needs to be corrected.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest communicating with an overzealous editor early and often. Make it clear that you understand what an editor can provide (if you do), and ask for clarification on what the this editor considers to be within their scope; ask why they're making changes, so you'll understand for next time. (I assume there may be a next time.) Keep in mind that they're trying to make your writing better, and you may need to spend some time understanding what &quot;better&quot; means to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your comment on relentlessly rewriting passive voice, I'm guessing you may have a newbie editor on your hands. Passive voice is sometimes the simplest way to communicate something, and suffering through a few rounds explaining that may, in the end, end up making a better editor out of this person. (I learned that lesson at the beginning of my short freelance career. I butchered a few chapters and then had to redo my work, hat in hand.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you considered the possibility that this editor is at least partially correct? Maybe they're following an internal style guide that you don't know about? Perhaps they've been told they're doctoring the book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, if you're stuck with this editor, build a relationship where you can and learn from each other. If time is limited, revert the changes, explain why you're doing it, and communicate later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T04:02:17.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2274" CreationDate="2011-03-28T07:22:57.240" Score="2" ViewCount="172" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote this but it really doesn't read nicely. How could the following paragraph be improved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the increasing green movement, subsidies for energy produced by solar panels installed on households and the possibility of a carbon tax will mean that a wider range of households will be able to invest in solar power technology and that heavy polluters may have little choice but to cover their buildings in cheap organic solar power technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1655" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T07:00:04.627" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T07:00:04.627" Title="How could this paragraph of writing be improved" Tags="|flow|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-05-02T06:55:11.323" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2271" CreationDate="2011-03-28T07:58:59.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I'd break it into more sentences. It is very difficult to read and understand that four-lines sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, how can an imminent carbon tax increase someone's ability to spend more money? It deserves more specific explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastEditorUserId="624" LastEditDate="2011-03-28T08:04:31.737" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T08:04:31.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2271" CreationDate="2011-03-28T08:16:32.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My revision isn't great, but I think it make things clearer by splitting the effects of subsidies and taxes into separate sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The increasing green movement will create subsidies for energy produced by solar panels installed on households, and may lead to a carbon tax. The subsidies will allow a wider range of households to invest in solar power technology. The tax would leave heavy polluters little choice but to cover their buildings in cheap, organic solar power technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few things I don't understand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you mean that the green movement will lead to subsides for the &lt;em&gt;energy&lt;/em&gt; produced by solar panels? Or that it will lead to subsides for &lt;em&gt;installing&lt;/em&gt; solar panels?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why would the tax lead polluters to choose solar power technology that is &lt;em&gt;organic&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps these questions are answered elsewhere in the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T08:16:32.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2271" CreationDate="2011-03-28T08:16:46.437" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The three key points for me are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;increasing green movement&quot; doesn't make sense to me. It sounds like &quot;green&quot; is moving around more. Also, it's not clear what exactly they're responsible for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split the long sentence up into two or more sentences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The subsidy has made it cheaper and encourages adoption, but the penalty (tax) affects heavy polluters, so make that distinction clearer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possible suggestion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The growth of the green movement has&#xA;  meant the introduction of a number of&#xA;  measures to encourage household&#xA;  investment in solar power. In&#xA;  particular, subsidies for energy&#xA;  produced by solar panels installed on&#xA;  households have made it more&#xA;  affordable, and the possibility of a&#xA;  carbon tax means that heavy polluters&#xA;  may have little choice but to cover&#xA;  their buildings in cheap organic solar&#xA;  power technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T08:16:46.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2202" CreationDate="2011-03-28T08:22:36.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt that anyone could post a serious answer to the question. I find myself leaning to pens while writing poetry because, as stated above, it gets you in the right mood and setting. Also it has the additional advantage of not creating distractions (facebook, friends, mail etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T08:22:36.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2276" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-28T09:24:53.353" Score="1" ViewCount="1179" Body="&lt;p&gt;After using a Logitech Internet Pro keyboard for the past several years, as well as an Acer OEM keyboard occasionally, I'm seriously thinking about getting a new keyboard. I write upwards of 7,000 words a week, and I'd like something that just feels really good to type on. I typically prefer low profile keyboards when I've used them, and definitely want something with thinner keys than the Internet Pro. I had considered getting the Apple Wireless keyboard so I could use it with my iPad, but seems odd to get it considering I use a Windows 7 PC most of the time and don't own a Mac.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, what is your favorite keyboard and why? I'd really like to know what keyboards other writers love. Hopefully that'll help me make a better decision. I'd rather not spend &lt;em&gt;too much&lt;/em&gt; on one, but sometimes quality is worth paying for. I just want to make sure I'm getting something I'll use for a long time for the price!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="177" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-26T11:26:27.667" LastActivityDate="2018-04-26T11:26:27.667" Title="What's your favorite keyboard?" Tags="|tools|typing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2011-03-29T20:49:52.570" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2271" CreationDate="2011-03-28T10:24:35.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know that polluters wrapping their buildings in cheap solar has a place in this paragraph; and there's more solar stuff than just panels. But, as the OP makes clear, homeowners must invest in solar for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more subsidies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more carbon taxes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is this a possibility? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The increasing acceptance that we must finally go green means a growing carbon tax on polluters and their customers and, at the same time, greater subsidies for home solar. No homeowner can refuse ever-cheaper solar technology in the face of these tidal forces.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- pete&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastEditorUserId="1645" LastEditDate="2011-03-28T10:43:54.267" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T10:43:54.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1714" CreationDate="2011-03-28T10:58:19.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mark upon first impression because, for me, on second reading the remarkable writing becomes stale and the bad writing becomes acceptable and commonplace. When I get that &lt;em&gt;frisson&lt;/em&gt; at a nice phrase, or the ennui and discouragement that arises from bad writing, that's the time I have to note it. Just MHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- pete    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T10:58:19.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2276" CreationDate="2011-03-28T11:20:01.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My keyboard has to be hard (I want to feel typing) and heavy (not to fly away when I cough). It is enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T11:20:01.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2280" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2283" CreationDate="2011-03-28T12:45:28.307" Score="1" ViewCount="303" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which verb should I use here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He opened the stove and the fire from the stove [engulfed/jumped on/covered/devoured] him. &quot;Help! Help!&quot; - he shouted at once. &quot;I'm on fire!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1659" OwnerDisplayName="brilliant" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T06:54:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T06:54:22.183" Title="&quot;...and the fire from the stove engulfed him&quot; or &quot;jumped on him&quot; or &quot;covered him&quot; or &quot;devoured him&quot; or what?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2280" CreationDate="2011-03-28T12:48:54.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say either &lt;em&gt;engulfed him&lt;/em&gt;, if you want to imply that he was completely surrounded with flames, or &lt;em&gt;jumped on him&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;jumped toward him&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, most importantly, I would talk about “&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;the flames&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;” rather than “&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;the fire&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="F'x" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T12:48:54.450" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2280" CreationDate="2011-03-28T13:18:53.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you want to say/imply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Engulfed&quot; implies the fire completely surrounded him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Jumped on&quot; is an odd one, because it implies that it only affected a particular part of his body. It doesn't sound severe, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Covered&quot; is similar to engulfed, but isn't as strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Devoured&quot; also has a similar connotation to engulfed, but is probably stronger, and it also implies that he was &quot;eaten&quot; by the flames (which raises questions as to how he is still able to shout for help).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I'd use &quot;engulfed&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T13:18:53.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2280" CreationDate="2011-03-28T13:40:22.780" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;How big is this stove? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not asking idly. &quot;Engulfed&quot; means (as noted by others) &quot;completely surrounded.&quot; If a fire engulfs someone, he is surrounded, head to foot, in flames. How can he be yelling that he's on fire if he's burning everywhere? And how can he be swallowed by fire if it's just a cooking fire from something burning in an oven? (I assume &quot;oven,&quot; as you don't open a stove. A stove is a rangetop of freestanding burners.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe your problem is that it's not that &lt;i&gt;he&lt;/i&gt; is on fire. It's one or a few body parts which are burning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so howzabout this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;He opened the oven to check on the [food/dish]. Flames roared out, catching him full in the face. He shrieked and batted at his burning hair and skin with the oven mitts. Hot grease ran down the gloves to his thin sleeves, where it started to smoke. &quot;Help! I'm on fire!&quot; he shouted.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T13:40:22.780" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2284" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-28T13:51:27.130" Score="12" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2100/help-ive-got-writers-block&quot;&gt;Help! I&amp;#39;ve got Writer&amp;#39;s Block&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the past few weeks I have had this &quot;itch&quot; to write something - anything. As soon as I try to put pen to paper, though, my mind goes blank. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody have any thoughts on where to start? The last time I wrote something &quot;read-worthy&quot; was back in high school (and that was 7 years ago).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1658" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T18:47:39.733" Title="Where should I start if I'm feeling the urge to write something?" Tags="|writers-block|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-05-17T21:55:47.370" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2011-03-28T14:13:14.183" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key point with writing is that writing should be a habit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would go so far as to say that what you write (initially) is probably not as important as the fact that you write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many authors have confessed to sometimes sitting down and just writing &quot;The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog&quot; and other inane phrases over and over again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? Because this is what helps to release your subconscious, which is where you want to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is exceptionally rare that you'll ever sit down and be able to write something &quot;read-worthy&quot; immediately. Most writers develop and incubate ideas over long periods of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would therefore say that the right place to start is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a small journal you can take with you everywhere. Doesn't have to be fancy or expensive, just something good, portable, and sturdy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get into the habit of jotting down observations: things you see, read, hear - everything.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get into the habit of cutting out clippings from newspapers that you like, or photographs that trigger ideas, and then writing down what you liked about them, or how you may use them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get into the habit of using your journal like a diary as well. Write down things that you did that day, the things that struck you as interesting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get into the habit of writing about writing, and about what you've read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get into the habit of writing about your own memories and thoughts: things you remember happening to you, to friends and family. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start looking at and listening to people, and think of them in terms of possible characters: their flaws and contradictions; their habits; their appearances. Make small character sketches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try writing early in the morning just when you wake up and before you've done anything. Just get up and write. It doesn't matter what it is, just follow your stream of consciousness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also look at using word association. If you come up with an idea like &quot;I want to write a story about a ghost&quot;, then write down the word ghost. Start writing words that pop in your head with relation to that, and create a word tree with branches. If something you write down triggers an idea, write a branch from that word. (Believe me, this does work!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll notice the key element through all this is: write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soon, you'll start to come up with ideas of what to do with what you've written, and you'll write some more ... and that's where the magic is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T14:13:14.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2290" CreationDate="2011-03-28T15:56:26.547" Score="13" ViewCount="1032" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a native English speaker, but I write in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm now visiting the US, and I have made some very interesting observation regarding the way ordinary life goes on here. It made me think of the way I write about ordinary life in my book (ordering food, driving on a highway, renting a car etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that my books have lots of tiny mistakes, probably very noticeable to any but me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, where I come from, when ordering food in a restaurant you ask for the drinks and main course in one shot. Here (in the US), it seems that drinks go first, and after they are served the waitress asks you about food...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small thing, but it might matter to a keen observer. So how do I avoid those cultural differences when writing fiction in English? Any work-arounds worth mentioning? I don't want my readers saying &quot;oh, he's never been to the states before, otherwise he would not write THAT..&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1376" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T18:19:25.750" Title="Avoiding cultural differences" Tags="|style|technique|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2276" CreationDate="2011-03-28T16:21:50.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had terrible tendonitis in both arms for a while, and I had to get a mega-customizable ergo keyboard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comfortkeyboard.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.comfortkeyboard.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are not cheap, but I didn't have to get CTS surgery either. :) You can rotate each of the three pieces to the point where you can almost type vertically. It takes a while to get used to, and most of my coworkers couldn't figure out how to use the thing (which is a bonus if you don't like other people touching your keyboard). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T16:21:50.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2286" CreationDate="2011-03-28T16:24:41.827" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would think that immersing yourself in American mainstream fiction (i.e., not science fiction or fantasy) -- TV shows, movies, novels, and short stories -- would give you a good store of general knowledge about how American life works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be careful with workarounds, unless you can fit them very naturally into the story. With your food-ordering example, for instance, you could simply gloss over the chronology of things and say something like &quot;they ordered drinks and sandwiches and then got down to the business at hand.&quot; Only if the ordering process was somehow germane to the story would this not work. Yet another caveat is you might not always know when you need to gloss over something; you don't always know what you don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1563" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T16:24:41.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2286" CreationDate="2011-03-28T16:54:56.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's really important to have your work beta-read/pre-submission-edited by someone who IS familiar with the culture you're using.  They can catch the little details about culture at the same time as they're catching other errors or giving other useful feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is especially important with a huge market like the United States.  If you get a few details wrong about Sweden, or wherever, there won't be that many readers who notice, but there are a lot of Americans out there, and they have a lot of money to spend on books!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's a good idea to start glossing over things, since, as Kelly says, you don't always KNOW what you don't know, and your work will suffer if you gloss over EVERYTHING.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T16:54:56.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2286" CreationDate="2011-03-28T17:11:04.587" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Little things like this are called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shibboleths&quot;&gt;Shibboleths&lt;/a&gt; and they can be very hard to spot.  See, for instance Inglorious Basterds where the spy is shot for ordering whisky with the wrong number of fingers.  Sometimes it won't even be as specific as country to country, but could vary from state to state, or even city to city.  For instance two large UK supermarkets are &quot;Tesco&quot; and &quot;Asda&quot; but a working class Londoner would almost always refer to these as &quot;Tescos&quot; or Asdas&quot;, pluralising them for no real reason other than it fits in their pattern of language and syllable use better. If you didn't live in the UK, you would have no reason to know this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best bet for something like this is to find a native to proof read your MS, specifically looking for shibboleths.  If you can't get hold of a native because your story is set in an obscure place, then you're probably OK as the number of people that would spot it is much smaller.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1570" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T17:11:04.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2280" CreationDate="2011-03-28T17:19:34.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Flames are commonly said to &lt;em&gt;leap out&lt;/em&gt; in this context. You don't need a word to specify exactly how the flames actually &lt;em&gt;interacted&lt;/em&gt; with the person because your narrative continues with him saying (in no uncertain terms) that he has also been set ablaze.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1662" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T17:19:34.447" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2276" CreationDate="2011-03-28T19:08:54.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a Microsoft ComfortCurve keyboard at work. I was skeptical at first, but was surprised at how comfortable it actually was after I bought it. It has a fairly simple layout, and I find that I can reach all the important keys with ease. What I really like about it, though, is the way it feels when I type. The keyboard does not slide around (as some do) and each key press is smooth. I do not have to strain my fingers to press down on a key either, unlike some of the OEM keyboards that tend to favour the clickety, typewriter-ish feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to choosing the &quot;right&quot; keyboard, I think it's a personal choice. Like choosing a musical instrument or a car. You have to try out different types then choose the one that complements you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1658" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T19:08:54.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2293" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-28T21:52:31.457" Score="10" ViewCount="2154" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep a writing journal that I enjoy writing in. I also have a lot of old journal with writing that I'd love to digitize but am too lazy to retype. What is a good, accurate, OCR program that would let me scan my writings and would then convert it to a word document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-06-05T03:16:32.813" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T03:16:32.813" Title="What is a good OCR program?" Tags="|software|tools|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2060" CreationDate="2011-03-28T22:03:04.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EnTourage_eDGe&quot;&gt;enTourage eDGe&lt;/a&gt; looks like an amazing tablet for writers and editors. It opens like a book and on the left is an ereader with an e-ink screen and on the right is an Android powered tablet. The EE can be folded completely back so that only one screen is visible. The e-ink reader side also lets you use a stylus to write on the document you have open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Editor-in-Chief has one and she says it's amazing for both writers and editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-02-29T02:02:00.687" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T02:02:00.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2276" CreationDate="2011-03-28T22:21:15.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer a buckling-spring keyboard like the old IBM Model M or the ones made by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clickykeyboards.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clicky Keyboards&lt;/a&gt;.  I only wish I could find that feature in a more ergonomic layout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buckling-spring keys provide better tactile feedback than bubble keyboards, and I find that causes me to type faster and more lightly (rather than mashing the keys), easing strain on my hands and wrists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T22:21:15.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2293" CreationDate="2011-03-28T22:27:09.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that &lt;a href=&quot;http://finereader.abbyy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ABBY FineReader&lt;/a&gt; is the best one I ever met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastEditorUserId="624" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T03:19:58.027" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T03:19:58.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2293" CreationDate="2011-03-29T02:03:52.023" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're using a PC, one program you may already have that's quite good at OCR is &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft OneNote&lt;/a&gt;. Just import a scanned image, right-click and select &lt;em&gt;Edit Alt Text&lt;/em&gt;. You can then copy the OCRed text to any program you want. It's not as good as a professional, dedicated OCR program, but it's quite good for quick and cheap conversion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="177" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T02:03:52.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2202" CreationDate="2011-03-29T04:22:46.490" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; use fountain pens regularly, as do my friends over at &lt;a href=&quot;http://fountainpennetwork.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fountain Pen Network&lt;/a&gt;.  I'm not sure how common it is, but writing longhand with a fountain pen certainly isn't dying out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I became a fountain pen lover when I realized how much easier they are to write with (my &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;RSI&lt;/a&gt; improved immensely when I switched from ballpoints, roller balls, and gel pens to fountain pens).  Writing with a fountain pen just feels good, and my handwriting is better.  I spend less on writing instruments than when I used ballpoints and such, while I have a greater variety of inks available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, working at the computer comes with a host of distractions.  I can retreat with my paper and pen to some distraction-free place and get more writing done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T04:22:46.490" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-29T04:22:46.490" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1266" CreationDate="2011-03-29T07:17:22.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also use an appendix.  These don't have to be as dry and as detailed as they have the reputation for.  (I think Lord of the Rings put many writers off using an appendix).  For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0755349709&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Simon Scarrow&lt;/a&gt; writes incredibly successful fiction about a pair of Roman warriors, one a Centurion and the other his Optio.  Understanding the structure and the ranks of the legion is fundamental to enjoying the story, so he includes a simple two page appendix explaining this at a level of detail appropriate for the story (that last part is key).  He also includes his appendix at the start of the novel, so it's almost more like a non-fiction prologue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side of the scale, you can just not explain them at all and assume that either the reader knows them (which they might if they are well-read or well-travelled) or just that a detailed understanding of the hierarchy is not important to the story.  It might be enough to know that Oberst is higher ranking than the Feldwebel and that's all you need to know.  This is the approach &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0749397543&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Louis de Bernières&lt;/a&gt;, who writers higher brow fiction and often sets his books in foreign countries, takes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1570" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T07:17:22.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2300" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2305" CreationDate="2011-03-29T07:39:54.527" Score="19" ViewCount="56830" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of axioms here.  Firstly, most people agree that you should write your first draft quickly, without too much care on quality, and get something down on paper first.  The real writing begins with the second draft.  This is the approach that most writing books try to teach, and I'm taking this as a given for this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly writing is more than just typing (no matter what Truman Capote says), so there has to be some level of thought into the first draft.  I'm no professional typist, but I can at least manage 40wpm when copy-typing.  Clearly though I'm not going to reach 2400 words per hour on the first draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what sort of figure should I be aiming for?  At the minute I'm around 250 words/hour which I'm worried is veering into 2nd draft territories for slowness.  Are there any de facto guidelines here from the professionals?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1570" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-12-20T01:39:05.783" LastActivityDate="2017-12-20T01:39:05.783" Title="How many words/hour should you aim for when writing your first draft?" Tags="|wordcount|money|time-management|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2304" CreationDate="2011-03-28T22:54:46.173" Score="7" ViewCount="1395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am rather useless at writing formal English and sometimes find that I can come across informal with my choice of words. So I wondered what common words and phrases should be avoided when writing an essay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1676" OwnerDisplayName="msanders" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-29T13:43:50.350" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T03:17:19.127" Title="Common words to avoid when writing formally" Tags="|non-fiction|essay|word-choice|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2301" CreationDate="2011-03-28T23:01:55.187" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some guidelines that might help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid contractions. Prefer &lt;em&gt;It is interesting to note...&lt;/em&gt; over &lt;em&gt;It's interesting to note...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid use of the 2nd person. Prefer &lt;em&gt;One might think that...&lt;/em&gt; over &lt;em&gt;You might think that...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is probably not useful to list examples of &lt;em&gt;slang&lt;/em&gt; here, but when in doubt, check the dictionary. If it defines the word/phrase as slang, then choose another.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Michael Easter" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T23:07:32.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2301" CreationDate="2011-03-29T00:17:28.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When there's a choice of particular word, favor the Latinate one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1809" OwnerDisplayName="Mitch" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T00:17:28.143" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2301" CreationDate="2011-03-29T02:32:39.390" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if there's a good, quick fix for this. I learned how to write English in an intelligent, formal manner from learning German, and reading lots, and lots, of English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyhow, avoid &quot;kind of&quot; and &quot;sort of.&quot; That used to drive my English teachers crazy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also avoid the verb &quot;to be&quot; when possible. Sometimes &quot;to be&quot; is the best option, but not as often as many people use it. If you can restate some &quot;is adjective&quot; as a verb, do it and see if it works. If it does, keep it. If it's too painful...still try to think &quot;it hurts&quot; before you give up. ;) The same can be said of &quot;is verbing.&quot; Sometimes that's the best construction to use, and if you think it is, don't hesitate, but if you think using just a single verb works just as well, do that. If nothing else it will give your sentences a little more variety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore: Not having lots of unnecessary &quot;to be&quot;s scattered around your paper will make it cleaner, and by extension, more &quot;formal.&quot; As can be seen in the comments, there are a number of people who don't agree with me on this, or the converse that having too many &quot;to be&quot;s can make your writing seem immature. So, Note: I'm not saying &quot;to be&quot; is some hideous disease that needs to be rooted out of all writing. It's a good verb. I'm rather fond of it myself. I'll give you an example of what seems to me an unnecessary &quot;to be&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Bob is always careful when driving his kids to school.&quot; I think this would be better rewritten without the is: &quot;Bob always takes care when driving his kids to school.&quot; or &quot;Bob always drives carefully when taking his kids to school.&quot; It's a small thing, and the effect is negligible in one sentence, but imagine reading how Bob &quot;is&quot; 50 different adjectives. I, personally, would grow to dislike Bob rather quickly. Reading that Bob does 50 different things is not the same thing at all, in my opinion. I hope I've made myself clearer on that. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid the first and second person like the plague... I would honestly advise against bringing the anonymous &quot;one&quot; and that poor, exhausted &quot;reader&quot; into it as well. Find some way to rephrase the sentence. There seems to be some odd stigma against passive voice, but I, personally, prefer it to using &quot;one.&quot; IMHO, &quot;it might be thought that...&quot; sounds better than &quot;one might think that...&quot; but &quot;it might seem that...&quot; is even better. (Another case where replacing &quot;to be...&quot; with another verb is an improvement, both because it gets rid of the passive voice, which will make some people happy, and because it's just that slightest bit easier to read.) Better yet would be to leave all &quot;might&quot;s out of it. Imply every action you can to the author/whatever and be definite about it. &quot;It seems (based on blah) that...&quot; is better than &quot;it might seem that...&quot;...Being specific gets rid of a lot of ambiguity wherein lies much informality. (...Or should I have said &quot;specificity?&quot; Which one sounds more &quot;formal?&quot; ^.^)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as I noted in a comment, use the word that works best, regardless of origin, apparent intelligence, etc.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get a better handle on what word works best, I suggest reading some classics. The best way, IMHO, to learn &quot;classy&quot; vocabulary, is to read classy, English fiction....Anything (and everything) will help, but it's pretty safe to consider Dickens and his ilk to be a crash-course in good &quot;formal&quot; writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="308" OwnerDisplayName="kitukwfyer" LastEditorUserId="308" LastEditDate="2011-03-30T03:17:19.127" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T03:17:19.127" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2300" CreationDate="2011-03-29T08:36:59.753" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Slow and steady wins the race.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cliché's out the way (although I do think it's true), one of the things I find with writing is that you should always stick to what you're comfortable with, unless you're finding it detrimental to your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you're doing 250 words/hour, and feel that's too slow, then I would suggest you set yourself an easy target. Double it to 500wph, or increase it to 1000wph, and try achieve that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can sustain it, and feel that it's easy, then up the ante again. If you find yourself struggling, then lower it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing really is to experiment, and find the level that you feel most comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I also wanted to add that, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/how-to-write-your-first-novel-in-under-4-weeks.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, author Dean Wesley Smith says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Most professional writers can average&#xA;  about one thousand words an hour, when&#xA;  going on a novel. Not in the struggle&#xA;  of the beginnings, but once the novel&#xA;  is underway. So, simple math says that&#xA;  to write a 90,000 word novel, you have&#xA;  about 90 hours of work.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would suggest that you should set your own expectations based on where you are in the process of writing your novel, but I still recommend sticking with what you feel comfortable with. With practise, your wph will likely start to increase naturally by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-03-29T10:14:39.707" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T10:14:39.707" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2306" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2307" CreationDate="2011-03-29T03:14:28.827" Score="4" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to write something sort of poetic sounding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Instead of memories let's discover the&#xA;  present that we wanted to search for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking that maybe I should write the word &quot;moment&quot; after &quot;present&quot; to make it unambiguous. I would rather not though, because I don't want to limit the meaning of &quot;present&quot; to &quot;this moment.&quot; I would like to leave it open so that it can mean &quot;this day&quot; or &quot;this time.&quot; But then if I don't add the word &quot;moment&quot;, I think that this might bring up images of searching for presents during Christmas, and I don't want that to happen. What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1671" OwnerDisplayName="language hacker" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T06:53:32.903" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T06:53:32.903" Title="Is this sentence ambiguous?" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2306" CreationDate="2011-03-29T04:01:57.033" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a strictly grammatical point of view, I think the context of &quot;memories&quot; establishes the expected temporal sense of &quot;present&quot; rather than leaving any reasonable possibility that it could be interpreted as a gift; so you shouldn't run into any difficulties due to ambiguity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Although this is technically off-topic, from a poetic point of view, while the sentiment is nice the phrasing is somewhat lacking.  Perhaps something like &quot;Let us not live well only in our memories; rather let us create the present that we have desired.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Hellion" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T04:01:57.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2300" CreationDate="2011-03-29T10:44:18.043" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really wouldn't worry too much about words per hour. I agree with Craig (and Dean Wesley Smith) that 1000 words an hour is a good, sustainable rate, at least for some genres, but I don't think professional writers got there by trying consciously to write faster - I think that the faster writing comes naturally as you get more comfortable with your craft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, there are always parts that go smoothly and quickly, and parts that drag a little. Sometimes it's because I've thought things through so much ahead of time that I'm essentially just typing what I've already written in my head, but I think there are other reasons, too.  I write romance, and the big dramatic conversations flow out of me as fast as I can type, but sex scenes take me forever.  I think it's because there are millions of ways to make dialogue sound fresh and original, but sex -- well, unless I get kinky to the &lt;em&gt;extreme&lt;/em&gt;, there are only so many ways to write it.  So I have to slow down and really think it through in order to make it original and avoid the cliches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, really - I'd pay attention to writing speed as one tool to get feedback about what you're comfortable writing and what you aren't, but I'm wary of making a conscious effort to increase your speed.  It takes as long as it takes.  Focus on the content, not the extraneous details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T10:44:18.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2276" CreationDate="2011-03-29T15:01:12.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pfusystems.com/hhkeyboard/hhkeyboard.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Happy Hacking Keyboard Lite2&lt;/a&gt;. Though it's not cheap, I have many reasons why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small: it's half the size of a piece of 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fewer Keys: they've &quot;hidden&quot; nearly half of the normal amount of keys (many of which are useless 99.9% of the time) behind a Fn + Key combination.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solid / Deep Contact: it's almost impossible to strike adjacent keys on accident, as is so common with shallow striking keyboards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross Platform: I use an Ubuntu machine at work and a Mac at home, and it saves me even the slightest bit of mental stress to use the same keyboard with the same key mapping.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Durable: It's extremely durable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;USB: x2 ports easily accessible on the back. With a very long cord, this is great for desktop machines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pleasing sound: the loud but beautiful sound of the keys constantly reminds me that I am very serious about the writing I am doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T15:01:12.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2286" CreationDate="2011-03-29T20:41:20.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really agree with the answers above but most of all I think that Kate hits the spot. Best way as I see to spot the small errors is to get your drafts read by the target group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By having these draft reviews/pre-readings and go through the changes suggested you will spot some of your errors quite early and learn to overcome them. Not only this however; reviewers will find many of those small errors which you would never find yourself and by doing so strengthen your written language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1666" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T20:41:20.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2312" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2316" CreationDate="2011-03-29T20:47:15.820" Score="5" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to state that a particular question is not annoying, but its frequency is. I have come up with the below sentence, but I feel like it could be worded better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is an annoying question only in the&#xA;  frequency in which it is asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="40" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T07:13:28.103" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T07:13:28.103" Title="Trying to indicate that the frequency is annoying" Tags="|editing|structure|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2011-03-29T20:53:10.730" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all; Craig had some really good advice in his post! Thank you Craig for these, I must try out the association tree. Anyway, I thought I'd share a tip of mine about how I practice my flow of words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I feel the urge to write I have set up a journal which I can reach over the internet. I write what ever comes in my mind and I have one and only one rule; I am not allowed to go back and change or delete anything I've written. This simple rule has changed my way of writing a great deal to be honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I used this rule for my journal I tried numerous times to write down ideas and short stories but I always got caught up in the work of re-writing and re-touching before I was done. This of course led to that I did not finish of anything I wrote which made me think I could never write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By using the rule of no re-write in my journal I have eradicated the pressure of writing anything &quot;wrong&quot; since all I write is as it is. My only way of change it is to continue to write and by doing so change the context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice to you on how to start to write is simply, just write and don't look back while your doing it. Let your thoughts and feelings flow and then read what you've written afterwards. By doing this the writing itself will become more and more natural for you and you will have an easier task of writing an actual story in a more relaxed way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1666" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T20:53:10.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2312" CreationDate="2011-03-29T20:55:05.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The question is annoying only because of the frequency of its use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always try to avoid awkward phrasing or complicated grammar structures; most readers won't get it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1461" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T20:55:05.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2312" CreationDate="2011-03-29T20:56:27.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The question itself is not annoying but the rate of it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an alternative, it might sound to harsh in your context though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1666" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T20:56:27.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2312" CreationDate="2011-03-29T20:58:45.220" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The question itself isn't annoying, but it is being asked too often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this is clearer, and I hope a bit nicer -- assuming that's the effect you're going for. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1563" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T20:58:45.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2301" CreationDate="2011-03-29T21:01:45.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Avoid clichés. Use the right word, and make sure each word is doing work. Keeping your prose clean is one of the best ways to achieve a formal style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And focus on your audience: formal to an editor may not be formal to a committee or an employer, etc. If you're writing for a class or for work, see if there is a style guide or manual that you use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1461" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T21:01:45.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2312" CreationDate="2011-03-29T22:06:29.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could there be some way to use indirection? The narrator in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ae-lib.org.ua/salinger/Texts/N6-ForEsme-en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;For Esmé -- With Love and Squalor&quot;&lt;/a&gt; tells of his training in April 1944: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Rainy days, I generally sat in a dry place and read a book, often just an axe length away from a ping-pong table.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we could write like that we wouldn't be on StackOVerflow. But you know what I mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- pete&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T22:06:29.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2312" CreationDate="2011-03-29T22:12:23.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question itself was not unreasonable, but was asked too often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="434" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T22:12:23.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2312" CreationDate="2011-03-29T22:33:55.330" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the question initially seemed pleasant enough, somewhere around the 127th utterance it took a nasty turn towards annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question was reminiscent of a top 40 pop song.  The lighthearted head nod it inspired at first disintegrated all too quickly into the self-inficted banging of one's head into a concrete wall.  (This wall, like most concrete walls, features nooks and crannies seemingly straight from a Thomas's English Muffin.  Or are they all nooks?  All crannies?  After all, who can really tell the difference between nooks and crannies?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characteristics of that question's aging are more comparable to milk than to wine. While mostly agreeable in the beginning, it soured over time and failed to develop the delicious subtleties and complex notes of intellectual flavor that embroider deeper interrogatives much like ivy on the walls of an august New England academic building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question did not bother me - at least not the first hundred times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1678" LastEditorUserId="1678" LastEditDate="2011-03-29T22:53:23.683" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T22:53:23.683" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2139" CreationDate="2011-03-29T23:01:05.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have the main character stare at one of those posters where you let yourself go cross-eyed until you see a 3d image and finally &quot;get it&quot; right as he pieces together the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1678" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T23:01:05.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2139" CreationDate="2011-03-29T23:24:29.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The common way to remove info dumps is to sprinkle the knowledge throughout the book, as the character encounters it or thinks about it. Might that work here? That is: Sprinkle some of the revelations and the MC's doubts earlier into the story. The MC might have a puzzle, then let it go without resolving it. Or experience a moment of doubt, but then talk herself out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility (depending on the character) is to use dramatic irony. Sprinkle the information earlier into the story, so that the reader understands some of the meaning and significance even if the MC is slow to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third possibility is to arrange for the MC to realize that everything she knew was wrong, but have her sort it out over the course of a few chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T23:24:29.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2331" CreationDate="2011-03-30T01:29:29.323" Score="18" ViewCount="2763" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for techniques specific to a story with an unsympathetic main character. Confederacy of Dunces, for example. Why does that work, and why wouldn't that work with a likable hero?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorUserId="1600" LastEditDate="2011-03-30T16:35:55.060" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T20:18:35.593" Title="How do you make a story succeed in spite of an unsympathetic main character?" Tags="|fiction|technique|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2323" CreationDate="2011-03-30T01:48:51.143" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't read Confederacy of Dunces, but I think in general, it's not as important that your main character be sympathetic as that s/he be compelling.  I can read a book about reprehensible characters and love it as long as I'm &lt;em&gt;intrigued&lt;/em&gt; by the main character: Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs, etc.) is super-intelligent and creepily charming; Patrick Bateman (American Pyscho) is, well psycho, but also clever and just intriguing; Macbeth could have been so much more, etc.  As long as they hold my INTEREST, they don't have to hold my affection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like any character, you need to be sure than an unsympathetic character isn't flat, and isn't a cliche.  Can you introduce an element of humour, so that the character is wryly aware of his/her own shortcomings?  Or can you show the character growing and changing through the story?  It doesn't have to be a complete about-face, but just a little improvement can go a long way.   Or could you give us enough background on the character so that we understand the nastiness, and manage to care about him/her anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think one important aspect of writing with unsympathetic characters is making it clear that the author KNOWS the character is unsympathetic.  Nothing makes me throw a book across the room faster than finding a character that I can't stand but that the author seems to think is great.  (I'm thinking of some of the alpha males in some romance novels, for example - if I'm yelling, &quot;that's rape, you jackass!&quot;, the author shouldn't be going on about the character being a dashing rogue.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T01:48:51.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2325" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2327" CreationDate="2011-03-30T01:50:11.770" Score="9" ViewCount="1833" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there ever a good time to use passive voice in nonfiction? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorUserId="84" LastEditDate="2011-03-30T17:52:04.263" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T21:04:14.030" Title="When *should* I use passive voice?" Tags="|non-fiction|voice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2323" CreationDate="2011-03-30T02:28:29.873" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As usual, Kate is spot-on. Also, you can make your unsympathetic main character more human and believable by going deep into his head, perhaps even using first-person point of view, to fully explore his motivations. Remember that even Hitler and Stalin did not consider themselves evil. They thought their actions were justified and considered their enemies the evil ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1563" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T02:28:29.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2325" CreationDate="2011-03-30T02:35:20.580" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can effectively use passive voice when the action is more important than the actor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you were writing about the effect of pollutants on a river, you might introduce the facts in the passive voice, because in terms of the effects, it doesn't MATTER who did the action:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The pollutants were released into the lake in 1979.  Significant amounts were detected in the last test of the area, in 2010.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this was an expose on the SOURCE of the pollutants, maybe you would want to avoid the passive voice, and say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Company X, Company Z, and Farmer B released the pollutants into the lake in 1979.  While the govnerment said that it was all cleaned up immediately, independent labs detected significant amounts in the area in 2010.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or there's the old &quot;John Smith found the body on the courthouse steps,&quot; vs. &quot;The body was found on the courthouse steps.&quot;  If John Smith is just a passerby, he's not really important to the story, and it's distracting to have him in there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there's also a tradition of using passive voice in lab reports, to make things seem less personal.  &quot;I turned the burner on&quot; vs &quot;The burner was turned on.&quot;  Again, I guess it's trying to de-emphasize the importance of the actor.  It doesn't matter WHO turned the burner on; the important thing is the act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T02:35:20.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2011-03-30T06:18:45.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your mind goes blank because you're censoring yourself. Your Inner Critic is at work here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should start with words. Yes, just words. Write them down first. Also, don't ignore sentence fragments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have the ideas that those words and sentence fragments suggest, you then write the sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's as simple as that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Li Xiao Loong&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1684" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T06:18:45.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2325" CreationDate="2011-03-30T06:57:23.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2325/when-should-i-use-passive-voice/2327#2327&quot;&gt;Kate&lt;/a&gt;, it is best used when you are trying to illustrate something where the actors are less important than the action being performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best analogy I can come up with is &quot;cold and impersonal&quot;. So it's probably best used when writing reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, like Kate &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2325/when-should-i-use-passive-voice/2327#2327&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt;, if you need to place emphasis on the actor(s) involved, then it is better to use the active voice. Then it becomes more a case of &quot;&lt;em&gt;They&lt;/em&gt; did it&quot; instead of &quot;&lt;em&gt;Something&lt;/em&gt; happened&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1658" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T18:16:15.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2323" CreationDate="2011-03-30T07:59:45.820" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both Kate and Kelly have some brilliant answers. To add my two-cents worth, I agree with both of them. Part of what makes a story so compelling to read (at least, for me) is the character development. Unsympathetic characters, as in your case, make a story interesting, as long as there is some insight into the character's motives and background. And yes, nothing is more frustrating than an author who doesn't know his characters well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example that I have found is in George R. R. Martin's &quot;A Song of Ice and Fire&quot;. The characters are beautifully presented. Not a single one is &quot;perfect&quot; and most of them border on downright ruthless. But what made it brilliant was the fact that you &lt;em&gt;understood&lt;/em&gt; their motivations, even though you did not necessarily identify with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another great thing is the slight &lt;em&gt;changes&lt;/em&gt; in their personality, usually brought about by their interaction with particular scenarios or people. For example, an angry, bitter person &quot;softens up&quot; when he is in the company of the woman he loves. And &lt;em&gt;he knows it&lt;/em&gt;. It is the introduction of these slight changes in personality, and what brings them about that allows us to really get to know a character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently watched the movie &quot;Greenberg&quot; with Ben Stiller. His character is highly unlikable and at times I was really frustrated with the way he acted. But after a while he slowly opens up and you get to know what he is really about. It is a good movie with much attention given to the characters. Worth a watch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1658" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T07:59:45.820" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2323" CreationDate="2011-03-30T11:21:20.700" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some great answers, but I disagree in some regards: interesting and compelling and understanding are not enough for someone to carry on reading about a main character. I can find a serial killer interesting and understand his motives, but if he's killing children, it's extremely unlikely I want to keep reading about him unless the author has tricked me into sympathising with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any good book, the reader must sympathise, identify and empathise with the main character, and must want to be completely sucked into their shoes. Without these elements, your main character likely won't appeal, except perhaps as a villain, which is different (but avoid the &quot;absolute evil&quot; approach, as this simply makes him a caricature). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's impossible to get the reader to sympathise with all manner of &quot;anti-heroes&quot;, no matter how reprehensible. If your main character is so reprehensible that there is no sympathy at all for him from the reader (or even you, as the writer), then you probably should reconsider how your character is portrayed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is because the reader needs to follow this character every step of the way, and will him to succeed in his endeavours. If we have no sympathy for him, we will not want him to succeed. If we don't identify with him, we cannot relate. If we don't empathise, we don't care enough about him to want him to succeed. Worse, we don't care enough to want to even know whether he will or won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, consider The Godfather. Right in the beginning, we are introduced to a man in court watching the men who raped and beat his daughter get off with a slap on the wrist. Justice has not been done. So he goes to Don Corleone who is at his own daughter's wedding, and asks the Don for his help. Don Corleone agrees to carry out justice on behalf of the man. We see the respect that Corleone and his family command from people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right there, in that instant, you as a reader have taken the side of Don Corleone. You sympathise with him, you can identify and empathise with him. Here is a mobster, head of a powerful crime family, responsible for the murder of many people, yet you sympathise with him, because he's a man of justice, a man with a code of honour that allows the reader to will him to succeed. You want to be drawn into his world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common way of invoking sympathy is by putting the character in danger: their life could be in danger, they could be under threat of losing their job, their wife - all manner of devices that immediately invoke sympathy from the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you can portray the character in a way that everyone can relate to: perhaps he's experienced some hardship like divorce, a death in the family, some &quot;wrong&quot; has been committed against him that immediately gets the reader on their side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another trick is to use the character's reprehensible traits in a morally justifiable way. For example, consider the example I gave earlier about a serial killer. What if the serial killer only kills serial killers? That's exactly what happens in Dexter, and we are interested because, even though he's a serial killer, he kills only bad people. Suddenly, his actions take on a different moral light, and we actually will him to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are other ways. Pick up Confederacy of Dunces, and rethink how the characters are portrayed to induce sympathy in the reader. I haven't read it, but I'm sure you'll find what trick the writer used to get you onto the character's side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T11:21:20.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2332" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2355" CreationDate="2011-03-30T12:23:48.193" Score="4" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an outro narrative I wrote for our movie we're working on and I was wondering whether someone could provide a critique. Anything what would help improve it before we pass it to the recording stage.&#xA;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything that we think about,&#xA;everything that we do every day, all&#xA;the people we meet, all the places we&#xA;go to, everything that happens to us,&#xA;everything we feel, all of that is&#xA;predicated on the idea that we can&#xA;choose things and that the future&#xA;isn't written yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to believe&#xA;in free will, because otherwise&#xA;everything we do would have no&#xA;meaning, although according to the&#xA;fundamental law of the universe, there&#xA;doesn’t appear to be any reason why&#xA;free will should really exist. We’d&#xA;need to think higher than science,&#xA;would need to get spiritual, introduce&#xA;a higher power into our equation. God,&#xA;for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether God exists or&#xA;not, I don’t know, but I believe there&#xA;is some force that runs through the&#xA;universe. Some call it God, others&#xA;call it fate, destiny. I don’t really&#xA;feel like giving it a name. I’m not&#xA;even sure what happened this morning,&#xA;but as crazy as it sounds, I think&#xA;I’ve seen what is supposed to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somehow I’ve seen the progress of my&#xA;story and I don’t really like where it&#xA;ends. So what are my options here?&#xA;Does destiny want me to lose, or does&#xA;God want me to win? Or is it neither,&#xA;just me and my choices? What do I&#xA;choose?  Having the luxury of choice,&#xA;I’d want life, freedom, time. A lot of&#xA;time. Time to live. Time to think.&#xA;Time to be free. Even if it means to&#xA;be alone forever. But there’s one&#xA;thing I know for sure - that now we’re&#xA;both awake and now we’re both alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More info as requested in comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spoken by a 20-year-old person after he awakes from a dream where he dies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should be sad at first, but end with some hope to it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he also leaves her girlfriend, as he's afraid there's not much time to live and he wants to spend it with things he wants to do = he wants to be free = use all his remaining time for his own good = not share it with someone else&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1669" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T16:45:30.167" Title="requesting a review/critique of an outro narrative" Tags="|script|ending|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2312" CreationDate="2011-03-30T13:50:28.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is no. Quit asking me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T13:50:28.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2332" CreationDate="2011-03-30T15:15:46.857" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't sound hopeful to me. Also, is there any reason why this has to be so universal and not more personal? It comes across as kind of preachy. Introspective might be both more powerful and moving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first sentence could benefit by the rule of threes. List three things, not six.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this statement confusing:&#xA;&quot;although according to the fundamental law of the universe, there doesn’t appear to be any reason why free will should really exist.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the fundamental law of the universe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd delete this part of the sentence entirely, it accomplishes nothing:&#xA;&quot;Whether God exists or not, I don’t know, but&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, punch up the last sentence. If it needs to be hopeful, maybe make it a resolution, not just a realization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T15:15:46.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2306" CreationDate="2011-03-30T15:48:16.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could replace &quot;present&quot; with &quot;now&quot; (or something similar) and remove the potential for ambiguity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T15:48:16.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2336" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2337" CreationDate="2011-03-30T15:58:17.017" Score="17" ViewCount="3831" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've  been writing a novel that addresses some very current themes. My belief is that if I can get it out there quickly, it will succeed well. I'm working on it frantically, but will agents consider representing a work in progress?  At what point is it close enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T14:42:38.110" Title="Can I shop an unfinished novel?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|novel|agent|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2011-03-30T16:29:57.827" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you are already an established name in the industry and one known for timeliness and reliability, you will have a hard time shopping around an unfinished book. There are a tremendous amount of &lt;em&gt;finished&lt;/em&gt; manuscripts piling up on agents and editors doorsteps already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But keep in mind, the publishing industry is a slow moving machine in general. Consider how many years these vampire and zombie trends have lasted. My advice would be to finish your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T16:29:57.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2011-03-30T16:39:35.773" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you rush your novel, it will be crap. You're better off taking you time and making sure you do everything correctly. You can't just pump out a first draft and send it off to publishers. They'll laugh at you. Instead take your time; publishers will still be there when you finish the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only established authors can shop unfinished manuscripts. Publishers aren't going to take a chance on a novel that's not finished by an unknown author. There are thousands of finished manuscripts being shopped around at any given time. Why should a publisher take a chance on a novel that may never get finished, or once it does, might suck, when they have tons of complete choices to pick from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T16:39:35.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2332" CreationDate="2011-03-30T19:35:13.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like it a lot, reminds me a little bit of what &quot;Enter the Void&quot; would be like if it was narrated. I also like the sadder aspects of it; I can imagine it'd be a really profound and impactful way to finish your story. However, it could possibly do with some polish on a few of the syntax and lexical choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One's obvious: in &quot;We’d need to think higher than science, would need to get spiritual&quot; you need to either put &quot;we would need to get spirtual&quot; or change the sentence, it's fragmented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the issues I find with it are personal however, but if I were writing it I wouldn't choose the phrase &quot;progress of my story&quot; to describe the course of a life, although it's fine&amp;nbsp;— to me it just sounds a bit shallow (as if he has a usual disaffection to it, not reverential enough&amp;nbsp;— especially considering the regrets he has). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what you're trying to put across is the narrator's thought of &quot;Is this really all there is? I don't think so, I think there's something more... (this is where you want to convey the optimism)&quot;. And I think it's pretty cool, I'd probably enjoy to see it, but I think, in places, the way you bring across these ideas could be slightly improved. (But as the comment somewhere above states, we don't have much indication about your narrative voice i.e. background, mannerisms etc., so once again it's a personal, slightly blind viewpoint I'm giving here... some of my gripes may be totally misjudged.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1495" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2013-12-28T16:45:30.167" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T16:45:30.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2011-03-31T02:49:03.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ommwriter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OmmWriter&lt;/a&gt; is my favorite. It's a full-screen editor similar to Writeroom, but is designed to inspire creativity. It has calm backgrounds you can choose to see behind your text, as well as music that helps you zone out and get your writing flowing. I personally &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; enjoy writing in it. Runs on Windows and OS X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="177" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T02:49:03.870" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-31T02:49:03.870" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2343" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2344" CreationDate="2011-03-31T05:02:17.090" Score="7" ViewCount="968" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, not always, when searching for my next position or project, I make an effort to write an interesting cover letter, one intended to convey images and passion, a story.  I want it to be a great read.  For most mundane jobs, an ordinary letter will do, but for the special cases I want the letter to have zing.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I hand over a copy to a friend who's not a professional writer, I typically get no constructive feedback.   I'm not looking for someone to proofread (though I do need that), or judge it in terms of job search advice or the technical jargon used in the particular industry.   I want someone who gets good storytelling, who can recognize where an attempt at painting a vision fell short or the pacing isn't right.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are not the things that cover letters ordinarily have, but I am not trying to land work on ordinary projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to find someone to provide such a critique?  (For money, a beer, ...?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1425" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-05T14:30:23.727" LastActivityDate="2018-05-05T14:30:23.727" Title="How to obtain a thoughtful critique of a job application cover letter?" Tags="|letter|career|feedback|resume|cover-letter|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2343" CreationDate="2011-03-31T13:33:04.130" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cover letters are tricky, because if you're writing a CL for a traditional job you're probably competing with somewhere between 50 and 300 other applicants. This means HR has to find a fast way of filtering the wheat from the chaff. Your resume is generally the first thing an HR person looks at. If you make it past the first screening, your cover letter may have a chance of getting read. Unlike its name implies, the cover letter isn't the first thing to be read anymore. (Was it ever?) Some places only look at the cover letter if they're feeling strongly about a few candidates, and need a tie-breaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, you've got two fundamental problems you need to overcome when angling for a job:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of third-party buy-in&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Attention scarcity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have somewhere between 5 and 25 seconds to get someone's attention; to get them to see you as a human being rather than text on a page wasting their time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People don't read monologues (even clever ones!) because they're being bombarded by messages every day, and they have other things competing for their attention. If they want to read long-form content, they're gonna read a book or a magazine, or you better be solving an acute problem that they need help with &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt;. Don't believe me? When was the last time you wrote a long-form business email to someone you already knew, and it was obvious that they didn't read it the next time you interacted with them? And this is someone who knows you and has some investment in the relationship already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of cover letters, I've learned to love &lt;strong&gt;brevity&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;whitespace&lt;/strong&gt;, no matter how badly I want to write an amazing essay explaining why I'm perfect for their company and their opening. Generally that means 2-3 sentences, 2-4 short bullets, and 2-3 sentences to close, and that's it. (And every cover letter is custom-written for each job I'm interested in.) This is an information-dense format, and the use of bullets breaks up the look and the flow of the cover letter. Bullets are better than a wall of text because they tell the reader that there's a discrete piece of information here, instead of needing to start at the beginning which is the subconscious message of a wall of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to do the long-form thing. My response rate was less than 10%. Now my response rate is damn near 50%, which very, very good. As with all non-fiction writing, it's about understanding who your audience is, and the context in which they're likely to be reading what you've written. Your message is pointless if it never gets heard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remember:&lt;/strong&gt; You're not trying to seal the deal with your cover letter. You're just trying to get them to pick up the phone and call you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And if this sounds like marketing/copywriting advice, that's because it is. When you write a cover letter, you're absolutely marketing yourself.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T13:33:04.130" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2343" CreationDate="2011-03-31T15:18:02.767" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're in a bit of a bind here. I think you'll have an easy time getting &quot;does this work for you?&quot; feedback, which is crucial. However, I think you'll find it very difficult to find constructive, &quot;here is how you can make your letter &lt;em&gt;awesome&lt;/em&gt;&quot; feedback. Let me explain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're trying to be attention-grabbing and evocative. Notice that this is basically a self-marketing strategy that you yourself are selecting; you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; choose a different one (as rianjs wrote), but this strategy &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be good for you. Attention-grabbing is what you want, right? Well, yes - but it's also a strategy that could misfire pretty horribly. Because if the recruiter &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; fall for your letter hook, line, and sinker, he's very likely to reject it outright for being unprofessional, gimmicky, and/or inappropriate. It's basically an all-or-nothing gamble, and potentially a very risky one. Here's an article about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&amp;amp;vol=carol_pinchefsky&amp;amp;article=003&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;absurdly inappropriate manuscript submissions&lt;/a&gt;; it's fun reading on its own, but I'm linking it here to illustrate that a lot of peoples' idea of &quot;unusual&quot; and &quot;creative&quot; can be a major turn-off for the person at the other end. Not only that, the weirdos are so weird and unprofessional, they often make the recruiter allergic to any sign of mold-breaking &quot;creativity.&quot; &quot;Just FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS,&quot; they are muttering to themselves, &quot;don't be like the guy who sent his submission in inside a pizza box. Don't be &lt;em&gt;anything like him.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; That can be a lot to get past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;So,&lt;/b&gt; you're looking for two things. You're looking for a reliable indicator of whether or not something you wrote is absolute dynamite. And if it isn't, then you want someone who will turn it into dynamite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is easy. Ask a bunch of friends. People whose opinions you trust and respect; people with different tastes and sense of humor; people who won't be afraid to tell you if your letter isn't as awesome as you want it to be. You don't need professional writers - you need friendly dynamite-detectors, and your friends are fine for that. If they don't really like it, you can rest assured that the recruiter is likely to be far, far harsher than your friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is near-impossible. There's nobody who really does what you're looking for as an occupation or a hobby, except maybe advertising executives... And you're trying to create something really unique, that has to be as near to 100% effective as possible. Even if someone &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; give you constructive advice, you need to make sure that advice really really works. And frankly... if there &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; somebody out there who could spin up unique application cover letters from not-so-great into pure dynamite... well, I don't know about you, but I know &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; couldn't afford him. :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might be misunderstanding just what it is you're trying to do with your letter; maybe it falls into some category of writing that has an established community of practitioners. If my above comments didn't hit home for you, then consider the following question: what categories of fiction, non-fiction, or marketing might fall &lt;em&gt;closest&lt;/em&gt; to what you're trying to do with your letter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T15:18:02.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2348" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2359" CreationDate="2011-04-01T20:06:28.460" Score="5" ViewCount="2225" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a great deal of flash fiction, &amp;lt; 1000 word stories. I know I can send them out to literary journals and online literary journals, but are there paying markets for this sort of thing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorUserId="1679" LastEditDate="2011-04-01T20:13:14.337" LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T21:31:29.913" Title="Where can I find paying markets for flash fiction?" Tags="|publishing|flash-fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2348" CreationDate="2011-04-01T20:35:47.567" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are very few, if any, paying markets for Flash Fiction. There's not really a large market for readers of flash fiction, so it's not worth the investment for most places to pay for them. A lot of authors usually only write flash fiction with the intent to give it away for free. It's a marketing tool. It gets the author's name out there and can get them readers for their paying fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T20:35:47.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2325" CreationDate="2011-04-01T21:04:14.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've struggled with this in my technical writing. When I read a technical article entirely in the passive voice, it feels like the writers are either: a) just doing what everyone else does, or b) trying to sound more authoritative than they are. In either case, it certainly comes across as dry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if I'm writing a paper on something I alone did, it sounds egotistical to say, &quot;I examined the data and found...&quot;. I much prefer &quot;We examined the data and found...&quot; if it's a team effort, or &quot;When we look at the data...&quot; using &quot;we&quot; to refer to myself and my readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still wrestling with that one...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1705" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T21:04:14.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1804" CreationDate="2011-04-01T21:10:32.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not enough points to add to Lauren Ipsum's answer, but I really do like Scrivener. It takes some time to get your head around, really. As you're calibrating to it, it can at first seem too simplistic, or overly complex, but it's really a whole bag of amazing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only will Scrivener allow you to outline and rearrange, but it also lets you store reference material, and add notes to your text, so it's way more than simply outlining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1705" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T21:10:32.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2011-04-01T21:30:34.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing fiction, you're asking for trouble by using LaTeX. There are no real advantages to it, except perhaps that since it's only ASCII it will probably never fall into the same black hole as that .xyz file you created years ago in some word processor whose name you can't remember anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For technical writing, especially if it includes equations and funky formatting requirements, it's a good tool. Even then, I'd try to use a GUI like LyX as the front end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an intriguing and brilliant tool which makes some complex tasks simple, and provides a beautiful consistency. On the other hand, some simple things are nearly impossible, and other things require a degree and practical experience in programming to figure out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1705" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T21:30:34.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2011-04-01T21:54:38.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't find it right now, but I'm pretty sure that one or more of the various free mind mapping tools can support timelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many authors might like them for their mind mapping capabilities alone. Sort of like 2D outlining with graphics and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FreeMind&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1705" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T21:54:38.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2358" CreationDate="2011-04-01T23:31:29.347" Score="7" ViewCount="3819" Body="&lt;p&gt;When trying to strengthen my writing on how to correctly describe a location I try to write a small text on each location I am. (These are then saved in Evernote so that I can search for them) I found a tip in a book (can't remember name, will look it up) which said a good way to practice is to write a small article with the following headings in it. SEE, HEAR, SMELL &amp;amp; FEEL. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of the format I use today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SEE&lt;/strong&gt; From the window of my apartement I see the ocean. Baots tied&#xA;  at the shoreline slowly moves by the&#xA;  gentle rock of waves...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HEAR&lt;/strong&gt; Birds looking for food are loudly competing with the&#xA;  fishing-boats for the catch of the&#xA;  day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SMELL&lt;/strong&gt; The sea water release its salty touch in all and everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;FEEL&lt;/strong&gt; There is a feeling of hard labour in the air and it is almost as&#xA;  one can feel the sad hugs as fishermen&#xA;  leave land to go hunt on the ocean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other ways are there to document and keep locations for later use in stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1666" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T01:44:06.370" Title="How to practice location descriptions" Tags="|technique|resources|tools|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2332" CreationDate="2011-04-02T01:54:01.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the first paragraph, make the list stick to only one repetition, either &quot;everything&quot; or &quot;all&quot;. The conflict really detracts from the message; the repetition is important style device but mixing the two words or phrases negates the benefit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second paragraph has its sentences run too long. It would benefit from being chopped up, giving the paragraph more of a punch (if that's your goal). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your third paragraph, the line about &quot;Some call it God, others call it fate, destiny&quot;, could be rewritten. Since you reference destiny later -- and keeping with the repetition theme -- an alternative is &quot;Some call it God, some call it destiny.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last paragraph doesn't sound hopeful to me. A reorganization might solve that, but a whole rewrite might be better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1461" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T01:54:01.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2354" CreationDate="2011-04-02T09:48:37.180" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is excellent advice, and is definitely the right way to go about observing your environment and locations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other good advice to expand on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't forget &quot;taste&quot;. This is just as powerful as the other four senses e.g. &quot;You could just taste the fresh saltiness of the fish being hauled onto the boats.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before you start writing, spend some time observing your immediate surroundings, then move outwards in scale and look at the &quot;bigger picture&quot;. Sometimes, we get caught up or fixated on particular things, so a good idea is, once you've jotted down some observations, look again and cover some other topics/details you've missed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you've spent some time observing, you could try writing stream of consciousness rather than formal &quot;see/smell/hear/feel/taste&quot; categories. This can be useful in not imposing restrictions to your train of thought.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you start writing, look at describing things as accurately as possible, without paying too much attention to making the sentence &quot;correct&quot;. Try catch the scene as immediately as possible without hindering yourself to the correctness of your writing, but rather concentrate on capturing the essence of what you see.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't just take note of what you see, also think of comparisons (but don't force them). If something reminds you of something else, make a note of the comparison. Similes and metaphors are extremely valuable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't have time to write down what you see, take a photo, and try write using that as soon as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another tip is to pick out one particular thing you've described, and then try and describe it according to other senses. So, in your example, you could pick out, say, the boats on the shoreline, and repeat the process by trying to cover the same topic in a different way. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T09:48:37.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2253" CreationDate="2011-04-02T12:49:08.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Caveat: I assume you have a backup of your work (using a version control software would be also beneficial here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go through every section/sentence. When you find stuff that could belong to a different chapter, name or number it and put this name into a reference list for this different chapter. E.g. the chapter is about cars from Porsche, then name the references POR01, POR02. The names must be easily retrievable with the find operation of your editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you got through the whole text, start moving the sections where they belong to. Pick one at a time from your reference list, use &lt;em&gt;Find&lt;/em&gt; and keep moving (and probably rewriting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in doubt what to do with a sentence, paragraph or section, then delete it. If you find out the next day, that you really need it, retrieve it from your backup or write it anew. But don‘t let it remain in a hideous spot in your text. Get rid of the crap. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These lists are like mini-outlines for each chapter or idea you have. This is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; resorting your train of thought(s) yet. Only taking one thought at a time and look what belongs to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For putting together the train of thought correctly (and the overall outline), you should keep in mind, that you want to convince the reader. (I use &lt;em&gt;convincing&lt;/em&gt; in a very broad sense here. If you write a manual for a video recorder, you try to convince the reader to use the recorder correctly.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To convince him, the reader needs to know all necessary preliminaries before you can make your point. So what has the reader to learn upfront? Put it in the beginning of your text. What is the point you really want to make? Place it at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the real challenge begins. How do you get from start to end? This is what &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2253/what-methods-can-i-use-to-revise-my-writing/2263#2263&quot;&gt;Lauren's answer&lt;/a&gt; is about. At this point you should be able to follow that advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have problems, how to bridge the gap from one paragraph to the following, I suggest, that you post the problematic paragraphs (two or three of them) in a second question. With a concrete example the community can help you much better there. And you get ideas how to solve the other paragraphs. If you stuck again, post them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T12:49:08.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2354" CreationDate="2011-04-02T13:56:50.183" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sensual observations are all well and good, but there is also the landscape of the mind to consider. What associations do you make when you see/hear/feel/taste a scene? What makes that scene come alive &lt;em&gt;in your mind&lt;/em&gt;? And above all, what does the scene mean and to whom? Remember that landscapes are like stages: they are inert until an actor strides out upon the boards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the opening paragraph from Joyce's &quot;Two Gallants&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;THE grey warm evening of August had descended upon the city and a mild warm air, a memory of summer, circulated in the streets. The streets, shuttered for the repose of Sunday, swarmed with a gaily coloured crowd. Like illumined pearls the lamps shone from the summits of their tall poles upon the living texture below which, changing shape and hue unceasingly, sent up into the warm grey evening air an unchanging unceasing murmur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole evening has a persona; it is at once the stage and the actor upon that stage. The impression is both literal and figurative, the weather and the type of day have a personality, which interacts with the personality of the crowd. Joyce repeats the adjectives &quot;warm&quot; and &quot;grey&quot; and reverses their order, giving the impression of undulation, and this is reinforced with the alliteration of &lt;em&gt;m&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;em&gt;mild&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;memory&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;illumined&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;summits&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;murmur&lt;/em&gt;) and numerous sibilances (&lt;em&gt;descended upon the city&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;streets ... shuttered ... Sunday, swarmed&lt;/em&gt;, etc.). This is not just a scene but an impression of a scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another landscape, this one from a poem, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;The Snow Man&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; by Wallace Stevens. Observe how evocative this scene is, how it draws a response from the reader simply by citing objects and connecting them to emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;One must have a mind of winter &#xA;To regard the frost and the boughs &#xA;Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;&#xA;&#xA;And have been cold a long time &#xA;To behold the junipers shagged with ice, &#xA;The spruces rough in the distant glitter&#xA;&#xA;Of the January sun; and not to think &#xA;Of any misery in the sound of the wind, &#xA;In the sound of a few leaves,&#xA;&#xA;Which is the sound of the land &#xA;Full of the same wind &#xA;That is blowing in the same bare place&#xA;&#xA;For the listener, who listens in the snow, &#xA;And, nothing himself, beholds &#xA;Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the scant use of adjectives: a handful serve for the entire poem, yet the picture of isolation and desolation is complete and poignant. Who is the actor here? The listener, the observer, who becomes, finally, the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's narrow the focus to a single room, with a scene from Arturo Perez-Reverte's &lt;em&gt;The Club Dumas&lt;/em&gt; (translated by Sonia Soto):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She was asleep. He stretched out an arm, carefully so as not to wake her, and searched for a cigarette inside his coat. When it was lit, he propped himself up on an elbow and stared at her. She was on her back, naked, her head tilted back on the pillow spotted with dry blood, breathing gently through her half-open mouth. She still smelled of fever and warm flesh. In the glow from the bathroom, which traced her outline in light and shadow, Corso admired her perfect body ... He saw the pulse at her neck, the almost imperceptible beat of her heart, the gentle curve from her back to her waist, widening at the hips. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two actors here, one male and one female. There are scant few details about the room (a pillow spotted with blood, glow from the bathroom) but these are enough to paint a picture. The focus is confined to the actors, as if they were illuminated by a pencil spotlight, bringing them into sharp detail. The sleeping woman's body becomes the real landscape, and its texture is revealed through the impressions it makes on Corso's imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point I want to leave you with is that writing is about people, what they do and feel. Your example starts to get interesting when you bring on the actors and their conflicts: birds fighting fishermen for the catch of the day, the feeling of &quot;hard labour&quot; and &quot;sad hugs&quot; of those going to work upon the sea. I sense that you feel those things innately, but I want to make clear that those are the things that speak to the reader more than any bright aperçu you may make about boats and waves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T13:56:50.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2348" CreationDate="2011-04-02T15:14:49.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily disagreeing with @Ralph's answer, but if you're interested in genre fiction you might want to search at &lt;a href=&quot;http://ralan.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ralan's&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.duotrope.com/index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Duotrope&lt;/a&gt;. (For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailysciencefiction.com/submit/story/guidelines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Daily SF&lt;/a&gt; pays 8c a word for flash.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many markets have upper limits but not necessarily lower limits for word counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T15:14:49.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2354" CreationDate="2011-04-03T01:44:06.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Robusto, you are right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Description of settings depend on the perceptions and mental states of the point of view character or/and narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;James Garner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1710" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T01:44:06.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2011-04-03T04:41:49.370" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;La/TeX is a &lt;em&gt;typesetting&lt;/em&gt; markup language. I wouldn't imagine ever actually &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; in a TeX environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are obviously lots of people above who do!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm also voting to make this a CW since the answers are by natu highly subjective, unless someone cites an empirical study.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="210" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T04:41:49.370" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-04-03T04:41:49.370" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2348" CreationDate="2011-04-03T05:58:44.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not familiar with markets that &lt;em&gt;specialize&lt;/em&gt; in flash fiction, though these may exist. However, if you feel you've got a worthwhile, marketable story, I think most venues are happy to &lt;em&gt;consider&lt;/em&gt; flash fiction submissions. So if there's a market that would be appropriate for a story &quot;if it were longer,&quot; it might be appropriate as-is, as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen stories that could be described as flash fiction in, say, The Magazine of Fantasy &amp;amp; Science Fiction. Flash fiction has a certain advantage in that it's short, and can be used as a sort of &quot;filler,&quot; making it easier to juggle page count and not incurring much cost to bring aboard. On the other hand, as Ralph touched upon, many readers find flash fiction unsatisfying and uninteresting, and there may be a certain glut because (presumably) it's easy to churn out a lot of mediocre flash. My guess would be that in total, if it's very good you can probably sell it (eventually), and if it isn't then you probably can't. Just like pretty much any story :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T05:58:44.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2363" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2365" CreationDate="2011-04-02T19:27:26.897" Score="4" ViewCount="12236" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I write an abstract for a formal essay?  I've heard from different sources that I should, although my instructor didn't specify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if I should, where are some resources that I could use to write an abstract correctly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I am writing in MLA format&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1709" OwnerDisplayName="alexy13" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T16:49:46.030" LastActivityDate="2021-09-23T11:43:54.233" Title="Should I write an abstract for a formal essay?" Tags="|academic-writing|resources|essay|mla|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2363" CreationDate="2011-04-02T19:44:40.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're being over-paranoid. If there are no actual requirements specified, then choose a solution that you think feels right-- essentially you want some kind of &quot;introduction&quot; that summarises the purpose of what you're writing and the main thrust of your discussion/results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &quot;abstract&quot; is usually associated with a paper/thesis in a fairly standard format (e.g. introduction-methodology-results-discussion-conclusion or variants thereof) and will usually try to summarise elements of all of these sections (or at least as far as the results). Its purpose is broadly to allow the reader to decide if the article is truly going to talk about the matter that they're interested in. But depending on the context, an abstract could be a 150-word paragraph at the beginning of a journal article or a 1000-word submission to a conference etc. There's no single 'correct template'. There's also no mystery-- you can look at the abstract of practically any recently-published journal article free on the Internet, so why not just have a look at some actual examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Neil Coffey" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T19:44:40.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2363" CreationDate="2011-04-03T11:25:14.890" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't try to guess on this one, and I wouldn't trust the opinions of people on the internet, unless for some reason you can't get your information from the most logical source - your instructor!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some reason you can't ask him/her for clarification on the expectations of the assignment?  You need to know if you even &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; an abstract, and if you do, you need to ask for clarification on the format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If for some reason you can't communicate with your teacher, you could probably get a more accurate answer here if you told us your level and field of study, and maybe your general location - academic traditions vary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2011-08-30T20:08:04.790" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T20:08:04.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2363" CreationDate="2011-04-03T14:02:07.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If no abstract is specified and you go to the trouble of writing a 200-250 word abstract, then you're not going to do yourself a disservice&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T14:02:07.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2363" CreationDate="2011-04-03T15:21:50.867" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does your academic institution follow a style guide? If so, it's probably APA or MLA. Check with either of those. Purdue University has an excellent &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Online Writing Lab (OWL)&lt;/a&gt;, which you should explore for definitive answers to questions like these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T15:21:50.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2368" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2371" CreationDate="2011-04-03T15:28:44.387" Score="12" ViewCount="71784" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I have a 100 page manuscript in Courier, 11pt, double-spaced.  How many paperback pages is this roughly equivalent to?  Is there a better font/spacing to use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-26T13:42:12.923" LastActivityDate="2018-02-26T13:42:12.923" Title="How many pages would my manuscript be in paperback?" Tags="|formatting|book-length|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2368" CreationDate="2011-04-03T16:23:24.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's really hard to say, books are usually measured by word count and not page count. That being said you can usually assume about 250 words per a printed page. This means that a 75,000 word novel would be around 300 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even so, that's not a very good calculation. Different books and publishers have different layouts for their pages. For example, a YA novel might use a larger font size to increase readability leaving only 200 words on the page. On the other hand, a modern fantasy novel might have a much smaller font and tighter margins then you expect to cram 400 words on a page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one point in time My roommate collected the &lt;em&gt;Shadownrun&lt;/em&gt; tie in novels. All the books are about the same page count, but the layout varies depending on the length of the story. In fact one of the books has a tremendous amount of padding all over the page to expand a much shorter story to the correct page count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the long and short of it is that your layout and printed page count probably have very little to do with each other. I would recommend the word count trick from above to get a fairly close idea, but even that can be wildly inaccurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T16:23:24.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2368" CreationDate="2011-04-03T16:26:40.017" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard font that I've seen in my experience has been Times New Roman 12pt with 1.5 spacing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, there is no way to calculate how many pages your book will be until the publisher does all of their unique formatting and prints the book. Books are printed in all different sizes - some large, some small. Publishers also use different margin sizes- some like 1 inch all around, others like 1 inch on the sides and .5 in the headers. It varies from publisher to publisher. Some publishers also use different fonts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even Fox Cutter's estimate is 250 words per page isn't useful. If you have a lot of dialog, you may have pages with a lot less than 250 words on them. If you're a wordy writer, you may have pages with a lot more than that. Even the complexity of the words you use affects how many words are on a page. You 50,000 word manuscript may be half the page length of another authors 50,000 word manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer: Don't worry about page length. Worry about word length. That doesn't change no matter how the book is formatted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T16:26:40.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2368" CreationDate="2011-04-03T16:27:34.100" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The software I use, Scrivener, offers &quot;Project Statistics&quot; which list words, characters, and estimates how many paperback pages (and printed pages) the manuscript will generate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a screen shot of the statistics for a project I'm currently working on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SFb6Q.png&quot; alt=&quot;Statistics from Scrivener, a Literature &amp;amp; Latte product&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see that this is a little less than 400 words per page in paperback. But don't forget that publishers employ different font sizes and leading depending on how long a book is in words. They'll pad out a short manuscript with large type and more leading, but lengthy manuscripts will correspondingly be compressed. I presume what I have here is an average of some kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; Here is the manual's explanation of how it calculates paperback pages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pages by paperback uses &lt;strong&gt;an industry standard formula (for English language publishing)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  of taking the average number of words per page and multiplying it by the average&#xA;  number of characters per word (five including a space, for six total), the product of which&#xA;  is then used to divide against the total character count of the project. By example, a book&#xA;  with 720,000 characters with an estimate set to 250 words per page will produce a result of&#xA;  720000 / 2506 = 480.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Emphasis added.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far Scrivener has been a Mac-only application A Windows version is supposedly going to be available this year. You can try out the beta here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastEditorUserId="633" LastEditDate="2011-04-03T16:50:13.410" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T16:50:13.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-03T22:04:07.533" Score="4" ViewCount="2200" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could you Please recommend me interesting non-technical books i could read which will help me improve my writing skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1718" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-05-05T04:02:26.170" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T02:23:37.980" Title="Books to improve writing skills" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2374" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-03T22:17:31.097" Score="7" ViewCount="287" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to use WordWeb as a pop-up dictionary/thesaurus while I wrote, but I found it lacking, particularly in its inability to let me define my own terms per context (for example, when writing about roller derby, I used particular words and synonyms that weren't generally known or suggested by the software).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you use, and what benefits did you get?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="419" LastEditorUserId="361" LastEditDate="2011-04-04T01:06:48.500" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T14:07:19.553" Title="Do you use a pop-up dictionary/thesaurus on Windows? What are your criteria?" Tags="|resources|tools|software|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2373" CreationDate="2011-04-03T22:39:03.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure whether you're looking for how-to-write books or just books in general.  Based on your writing in this short question, I'm going to say that I think it's a bit early for how-to books, and recommend that you just read a lot of anything you can find in English and work on getting the general vibe down.  After you've done that for a while, it may be time to start writing and working on refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that you're already at the point for how-to books, it would help if you'd let us know what type of writing you want to do.  The rules are different depending on whether you're writing fiction or non-fiction, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T22:39:03.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2376" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2386" CreationDate="2011-04-03T22:46:01.697" Score="2" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;This post is continued at &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2392/how-can-i-make-this-sound-better-part-2&quot;&gt;Does this sign-up email announcement sound friendly and conversational?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks for signing up for the Tip for&#xA;  Tip beta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We’re really excited about the launch&#xA;  and we wanted to let you know hat&#xA;  you’ll be the first to get in when we&#xA;  pull back the covers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also wanted to mention that we're&#xA;  stoked you’re on board already and to&#xA;  show our appreciation we want to let&#xA;  you know you’ll all be VIP members.&#xA;  While we don’t exactly know the scope&#xA;  of what that entails yet, we do know&#xA;  that when we want to distribute a&#xA;  special feature, pricing, or other Tip&#xA;  for Tip community advantage y’all will&#xA;  be the ones who get the special&#xA;  treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We’re going to make everyone who has&#xA;  signed up in the system a VIP member&#xA;  when the time the countdown timer ends&#xA;  at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tipfortip.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.tipfortip.com&lt;/a&gt; , so be&#xA;  sure to spread the word so others get&#xA;  this one-time opportunity to be the&#xA;  first group and VIP in the next big&#xA;  thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks again!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cheers, Kirk and the Tip for Tip team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="535" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T16:03:48.510" Title="Feedback on sign-up email announcement" Tags="|email|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2376" CreationDate="2011-04-03T23:34:29.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd simplify it quite a bit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We’re really excited about the launch&#xA;  and we wanted to let you know hat&#xA;  you’ll be the first to get in when we&#xA;  pull back the covers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We ARE really excited, we WANTED to let you know - verb tense issues.  Pick one, and stick with it. And mixed metaphor - 'get in' and 'pull back the covers' sound like a bed...but beds don't launch, right?  Again, pick ONE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also wanted to mention that we're&#xA;  stoked you’re on board already and to&#xA;  show our appreciation we want to let&#xA;  you know you’ll all be VIP members.&#xA;  While we don’t exactly know the scope&#xA;  of what that entails yet, we do know&#xA;  that when we want to distribute a&#xA;  special feature, pricing, or other Tip&#xA;  for Tip community advantage y’all will&#xA;  be the ones who get the special&#xA;  treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop 'wanting to let people know.'  You're WAY overusing that phrase.  Even once is a bit redundant, since the fact that you're sending them a message makes it pretty clear that you want them to know something.  Just go with &quot;We're stoked you're on board already, and to show our appreciation we've made you all VIP members.&quot;  And you've got parallelism issues, I think, with 'pricing' jumping out of nowhere.  I'd simplify that sentence, too, and make it more like &quot;We aren't sure of all the details yet, but we plan to reward our VIPs with things like special features, lower prices, and other advantages.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We’re going to make everyone who has&#xA;  signed up in the system a VIP member&#xA;  when the time the countdown timer ends&#xA;  at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tipfortip.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tipfortip.com&lt;/a&gt; , so be&#xA;  sure to spread the word so others get&#xA;  this one-time opportunity to be the&#xA;  first group and VIP in the next big&#xA;  thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I honestly didn't understand the first part of this paragraph at all.  Did you mean to delete either &quot;the time&quot; or &quot;the countdown timer&quot;?  Maybe try: &quot;This offer is limited to those signed up by the end of the countdown at http:etc.  Be sure to spread the word so your friends can also take advantage of this opportunity to be VIPs in the next big thing.&quot;  Or something.  Like I said, I didn't really understand the paragraph, so I'm not sure if that's what you were trying to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall - extra words just get in the way.  If they aren't doing a job, they need to get kicked out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T23:34:29.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2376" CreationDate="2011-04-03T23:39:26.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Kate's answer, you start with &quot;we&quot; then shift to &quot;I&quot; then go back to &quot;we&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, until you decide what being a VIP member means, what's the point in offering it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And get rid of the &quot;ya'll.&quot; It's not cute, it's annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T23:39:26.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1284" CreationDate="2011-04-04T01:17:32.010" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like suggesting that they may have already done it, in case they have!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear xxx, &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  If you haven't already, please take a moment to ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you have, thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regards, &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  xxx&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T07:45:27.933" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T07:45:27.933" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2381" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2383" CreationDate="2011-04-04T01:18:14.597" Score="4" ViewCount="733" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that this question relates more to wikipedia than it does writing but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was going to use wikipedia for a source for a research project (for example) would the information be correct?  I know that anyone can go on there and edit it, but the Internet has other invalid information that isn't on wikipedia.  I'm thinking that over time as an article matures on wikipedia, it would have gone through a large amount of edits and be correct, but I could be wrong.  The reason I want to use wikipedia is because all of the information is consolidated in one place with references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do believe that I should use google to search my information (which I do) and might come off as &quot;lazy&quot;.  This question may be closed because it is off-topic as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1709" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T01:03:48.777" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T01:03:48.777" Title="How credible is wikipedia?" Tags="|technique|research|wikipedia|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2019-04-29T03:07:42.017" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2373" CreationDate="2011-04-04T01:20:09.807" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easiest way to improve your writing skills is to read, and read a lot. The best writers are also avid readers. Reading helps you learn grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, world building, characterization, and so much more. You should read as many books as you can - both good books and bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By reading good books you're able to see what works. You'll see deep characters and learn techniques to make your own characters deep. You'll learn how to write well and keep your readers engaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By reading bad books, you'll learn what doesn't work. You'll see what flat characters are like. You'll learn what loses a readers attention and what confuses them. You'll see bad grammar and sentence structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic message: Read. A lot. Whatever you can get your hands on. Whether you read a book a day or a book a week, just read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T01:20:09.807" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2381" CreationDate="2011-04-04T01:24:53.923" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do /not/ ever, under any circumstances use Wikipedia as a source for an academic paper. Because it can be edited by anyone and there is nothing validating Wikipedia's articles, they're highly unreliable and not acceptable in any professional or academic circles. Internet sources in general are frowned upon unless they come from professional or academic sources - colleges, academic journals, government studies, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say Wikipedia is entirely useless. It's a great starting point. It can give you a great overview of a topic and help you get a basis for your paper/project/whatever. And the best part? Lots of it is sourced, so you don't have to go find information for yourself. If you want to say That George Washington did not return to military life until the outbreak of the revolution in 1775, that's fine. But instead of citing Wikipedia, click on the source and cite the source that Wikipedia uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T01:24:53.923" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2381" CreationDate="2011-04-04T01:26:40.130" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this for academic research?  If so, the problem isn't that it's Wikipedia, the problem is that it's an ENCYCLOPEDIA.  The founder of Wikipedia himself &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/wikipedia-founder-discourages-academic-use-of-his-creation/2305&quot;&gt;has been quoted saying&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that he gets about 10 e-mail messages a week from students who complain that Wikipedia has gotten them into academic hot water. “They say, ‘Please help me. I got an F on my paper because I cited Wikipedia’” and the information turned out to be wrong, he says. But he said he has no sympathy for their plight, noting that he thinks to himself: “For God sake, you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're in university, use Wikipedia to get a general idea, and then do some damn &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt;.  If you don't know how to do real research, ask the librarians at your school to help.  You may even have to open a book or two.  Shocking, but true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-04-04T14:31:57.490" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T14:31:57.490" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2373" CreationDate="2011-04-04T03:56:59.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1723" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T03:56:59.703" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2376" CreationDate="2011-04-04T10:22:03.810" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, it's clear that you're writing this in a web-based context, so my recommendation is based on the fact that I'm a web-designer first, and a writer second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite simply your text is far too long to be useful in any way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a sad fact of internet life that people just do not read long-winded instructions/emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steve Krug, in his book &quot;Don't Make Me Think&quot;, notes that brevity is far, far more effective when writing for the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His number one tip is to write what you want to say, and then rewrite it so that you halve the numbers of words. (At which point he suggests you try halve it again, because it's probably still too long).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use short, snappy sentences. Remove as much of the &quot;fluffy&quot; bits as possible. Question every sentence and every word. Don't repeat what you've already said in the title, or what the reader already likely knows. Brevity is your friend! Remember: it isn't perfect because there's nothing left to add, it's perfect when there's nothing left to take away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it were me, I would simply write something like this (and even this is too long, and I'd spend time trimming it down).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks for signing up for the Tip for&#xA;  Tip Beta! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We'll email you as soon as the beta&#xA;  begins. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alternatively, visit &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tipfortip.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TipForTip&lt;/a&gt; to&#xA;  see how much longer until we start the&#xA;  Beta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And because you signed up early, we'll&#xA;  be making you a VIP Member. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What does that mean? Well, we can't&#xA;  tell you yet; it's a secret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oh, and if you get your friends to&#xA;  sign up before the countdown finishes,&#xA;  we'll make them VIP Members, too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks again!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cheers, Kirk and the Tip for Tip team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T10:22:03.810" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2387" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-04T11:13:48.990" Score="8" ViewCount="296" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I lay out a plot consisting of interwoven threads, one of the most annoying things is to manage effectively the factual, logical consistency of the whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to be more effective and disciplined, are there techniques / suggestions ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1606" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T12:12:42.580" Title="What are tips / techniques to manage the consistency of a plot encompassing several subplots ?" Tags="|technique|editing|plot|organization|discipline|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2387" CreationDate="2011-04-04T12:12:42.580" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, here are my own suggestions - I hope they're helpful :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep a timeline&lt;/strong&gt; for every character (or small group). Keep track not only of what's going on onstage, but also what's hidden from the reader - if the hero thinks his wife is dead, but actually she's studying with Tibetan monks and engineering a playful assassination attempt for every anniversary of theirs, then you want to follow her major moves and actions even if the reader doesn't know what they are yet - in some cases, even if he'll &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; know. Continuing the example, she probably couldn't get in five years of monk-training &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; spend a year establishing a fake persona in NYC within a five-year span. You'll never &lt;em&gt;explain&lt;/em&gt; when she did what, but you've got to make sure it pretty much fits, and isn't absolutely absurd. Similarly, yhe villain can't lay a trap for the hero in Taiwan in Chapter 5 and then turn out to have been in hiding in Switzerland for the past year in Chapter 23. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be sure you can &lt;strong&gt;view your story at different resolutions.&lt;/strong&gt; Describe your story in two sentences; in a paragraph; in three; in a page. Yes, literally write down descriptions of these lengths. This is important because it helps you stick to your focus. If your chapter doesn't have an obvious role in your one-page outline, it might feel like something of a side-trek. If 50 pages go by without touching your two-sentence description at all, stop and consider whether you're straying from the story's core.  If your &quot;second act&quot; isn't relatively easy to sum up into a coherent whole, it might be poorly focused, or simply lacking structure. &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Obviously, though, don't be a slave to outline. Maybe the outline needs to change. Or you've got a good reason a certain segment doesn't have a clear place in the outline. If you &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; the reason, you're probably OK; if you don't, you might want to reconsider.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Know what your threads are.&lt;/strong&gt; Write a list of your major threads, so you know what it is you're keeping track of. Defining clearly what your threads &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; can help you keep track of them. Some could be major (&quot;things happening to Hero A&quot;), and others minor (&quot;things happening to Hero A's kid sister&quot;); some might be faction- or location-based (&quot;things happening in/to Hero A's favorite pub&quot;, &quot;politics in Hero A's city council&quot;). You need to decide which of these are &lt;em&gt;threads&lt;/em&gt;, recurring and reappearing through the story as significant, ongoing elements, with change and action advancing them through the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interrogate your threads.&lt;/strong&gt; As often as you need to (say - every 5 chapters, or some length appropriate to your work's length), you can take stock of where the story is at the moment. Ask yourself where your story really is at that point in the story. Here are questions I find helpful:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What does the reader **know&lt;/strong&gt; at this point in the story?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do I know, that the reader doesn't,&lt;/strong&gt; about what's already taken place?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What reactions do I want the reader to have&lt;/strong&gt; at this point? What do I want him focused on and thinking about? How does the story, as written, encourage those reactions? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the reader interested in&lt;/strong&gt; - why is he going to turn the next page? What is he excited about, looking forward to, in suspense regarding?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9/is-there-a-special-software-for-writers&quot;&gt;Writing programs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; like Scrivener &lt;em&gt;et al&lt;/em&gt; often help organize your story flow and your work. YMMV regarding how helpful those specific organization systems are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get &lt;strong&gt;nit-picky friends&lt;/strong&gt; to read your work, or at least your outline. That'll catch your most egregious errors, and be particularly tailored to your story's specific challenges and weak points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T12:12:42.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2389" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-04T12:13:15.443" Score="6" ViewCount="481" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can writing in the third-person limited omniscient POV include internal monologue and character thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1724" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-04-04T14:32:17.647" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T10:20:27.110" Title="Third person POV" Tags="|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2253" CreationDate="2011-04-04T12:17:39.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting journal/conference articles ready for submission is a little different than for research proposals, but it is easier to talk just about articles because of their standard format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A journal article will typically exist in four states of compression: the introduction will be a precis of the whole article, and the abstract will distill the original contribution laid out in the introduction.  The title should at least be suggestive the contribution described in the abstract.  The shortness of the these stages of compression is inversely proportional to how often they will be read: titles and abstracts are very widely read; introductions are read by those interested enough in the abstract to want to read more, but most people who read the introduction through will not care to get to grips with the body of the work.  Each of these more compressed stages can be seen as an invitation to progress to the next stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your problem sounds like you do not see how the content at the last stage relates to one of the earlier stages.  There are several ways I can think of that may cause this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have certain things you want to say in the body of your article that don't relate particularly well to your abstract.  For instance, suppose you are writing about a drug trial of a therapy for some disorder and you happen to know a lot of interesting history of the treatment of that disorder.  Your text might be full of discussion of changes in best practice that aren't obviously related to the drug trial that you set out to write up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might set out to write up your demonstration establishing some fact, and then discover that your demonstration was not as watertight as you thought, or that the argument is immensely tricky, hard to follow, or tedious when written up in full.  Then writing up starts to involve new research, and the text evolves in an unexpected way as part of a process that does not seem to end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each case, you can impose sanity by turning to the abstract.  In the first example, you need to decide if your historical part is going to be part of the article at all: try writing two alternative abstracts, one including it and one that doesn't, and decide which will make for a better article; perhaps you will end up with abstracts for two articles.  In the second case, you should be asking whether you can find an abstract that will give a worthwhile article without need for further research, and if not, it is time to stop writing up and start deciding what the research problem is that should be working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of asides: If you are going to be breaking up text and putting sections of text on ice, distributed version control software, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_%28software%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;git&lt;/a&gt; can be useful, although the learning curve for this software is (still) steep.  Then, while many guidelines to writing research papers suggest up to 300 words (more words than are normally found on an undecorated page) for an abstract, abstracts should very rarely be more than 150 words.  The shorter the better, provided the constraint about all significant contributions being recorded is respected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T12:17:39.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2389" CreationDate="2011-04-04T12:28:45.337" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on what your &quot;limit&quot; is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are limiting yourself to one character, then yes: the Harry Potter series is told in third person limited omniscient, and we get Harry's thoughts, but no one else's (other than two or three specific chapters in the entire series). But if something doesn't happen to Harry, or if he doesn't see it or hear about it, then the reader can't know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If by &quot;limited&quot; you mean that you are telling the story as though you are describing a movie, so the reader can see actions going on at any place or time and focused on any character, but can only observe the action through the five senses, then no: you aren't giving &lt;i&gt;anyone's&lt;/i&gt; POV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick one and stick with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T12:28:45.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2392" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2393" CreationDate="2011-04-04T15:06:33.877" Score="3" ViewCount="410" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is version 2 of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2376/how-can-i-make-this-sound-better/2386#2386&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The intended audience is from 16-45 m/f, they have given me their email address and will recieve this email because they signed up for a mystery service I'm creating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should sound conversational and have the feeling that you're a part of the team who's making it happen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want it to be approachable, friendly, and inspiring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should feel like a friend wrote it to you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An acceptable answer &lt;em&gt;if upvoted enough&lt;/em&gt; would be, &quot;yah, this sounds great&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm trying to pass this thru layers of criticism so I can make sure it sounds the best to everyone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it comes off a little playful, that's great too, I want the message to live in a disarming context.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, if you know a better structure for the line spacing of the words it would be great to see recommendations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks for signing up for the Tip for&#xA;  Tip beta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We'll email you when the beta begins,&#xA;  you can see our countdown &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tipfortip.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because you signed up early, we'll be&#xA;  making you a VIP Member. What does&#xA;  that mean? We aren't sure yet, but we&#xA;  plan to reward our VIPs with special&#xA;  features and other advantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oh, and if you get your friends to&#xA;  sign up before the countdown finishes,&#xA;  we'll make them VIP members, too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cheers,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Kirk and the Tip for Tip team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="535" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T07:15:41.737" Title="Does this sign-up email announcement sound friendly and conversational?" Tags="|business-writing|email|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2392" CreationDate="2011-04-04T15:26:43.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;1st paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use parenthesis instead of the comma:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We'll email you when the beta begins&#xA;  (you can see our countdown here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you say you're not sure what those special features are, it suggest lack of vision, and that you have no idea what you plan on doing in the future (which comes across as being negative).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest perhaps writing it something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because you signed up early, you are&#xA;  now a VIP Member, which means special&#xA;  features and other advantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T15:26:43.390" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2253" CreationDate="2011-04-04T17:31:10.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;@Kate The first time around, I have a nice outline with a logical flow, the second time around, the flow has been lost, and I am interested in knowing the steps and order of steps required to put Humpty back together again. – David 14 hours ago&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;For the future:&lt;/b&gt; Your problem is that you start editing and fixing your second round &lt;i&gt;with the prose version&lt;/i&gt; instead of the outline. That's why you keep getting into trouble. You have an orderly first draft which works from an outline, with nice transitions, and then you start adding things pell-mell without regard for how they fit. Stop doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are reading through your first draft and you think of things to add, add them to the outline instead. Keep adding everything to the outline. When you have no more to add, &lt;i&gt;then&lt;/i&gt; you start rewriting your second draft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;For now:&lt;/b&gt; Yes, you are going to have to reverse-engineer some of your work. Here's how:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take every sentence or thought &amp;mdash; two or three sentences at the absolute most &amp;mdash; and make it a bullet point. Do this for the entire piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When all your sentences are bullet points, start putting them &lt;i&gt;back into&lt;/i&gt; the outline. Add your III/a, IV/2/b/47 extra sections as necessary. Your outline is going to look like this, with the bold section representing something new added in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I. Gardening &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;   A. Planting&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;      1. Choose your plants&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;         &amp;bull; Decide whether you want to plant flowers, ornamentals, vegetables, or fruit-bearing plants.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;1a. Start your own from seeds, or buy seedlings?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;a. Benefits of starting from seeds&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;1) Cheaper&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;2) Educational&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;b. Benefits of buying seedlings&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;1) Who has the time to raise plants from seeds? I work for a living. &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;2) Seedlings are generally sold when it's time to plant them, so you don't risk getting them into the ground before they're ready.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;3) Supports local business&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;bull; Buy your seedlings.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;2. Read the planting instructions.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;3. Choose a location.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;a. Considerations&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;bull; Sun vs. shade&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;bull; Acidity of soil&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;bull; Watering: Are you depending on rain, or will you water regularly?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;b. Sunlight&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;bull; Sunny &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;bull; Shady&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do this as many rounds as you need to. Once you're satisfied that you have no more to add, THAT'S when you start smoothing out to prose and adding transitions and topic sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T17:31:10.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2389" CreationDate="2011-04-05T10:20:27.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Constant switching between third-person and character thoughts is definitely considered bad style (advice taken from here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0061357952&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Write-Novel-Them-Misstep-Misstep/dp/0061357952&lt;/a&gt;, funny and useful book btw)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are telling someone's story throughout the novel - then is acceptable if you would also write down the protagonist's thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write several character thoughts constantly the reader might start feeling like he's going mental :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="505" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T10:20:27.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2397" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2400" CreationDate="2011-04-05T10:26:42.547" Score="9" ViewCount="453" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supposedly I'm offered 16% royalty rate and the book store-price is 15$. How much would that be in royalty amount per sold copy? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would that be just 16% out of 15$, or is 16% out of (15$ - reseller discount - whatever book tax - whatever publisher fees) ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="505" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T11:13:15.547" Title="Royalties - how to calculate author's take from the end-price?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2397" CreationDate="2011-04-05T11:13:15.547" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a really certain answer, you'd need to look at the contract.  16% is a sort of unusual rate (at least for the fields I work in) - it's a little high to be a % of list, but quite low to be a % of net.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you working with an agent?  One of their useful features is their familiarity with publishing terms (and scams), so they can explain the individual terms of your contract to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're working on your own, you REALLY need to read the contract, and to ask for clarification on exactly what's meant if the royalties are paid on net.  (this might just be the deduction of the bookseller's discount, but it could also include printing costs, etc.)  Some of the writers' associations have model contracts online for your to compare yours to.  I like the one at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epicauthors.com/contract.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EPIC&lt;/a&gt; for e-book contracts, and I know the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/information-center/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SFWA&lt;/a&gt; has some up for their genre, as well, although I've never used that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry it's not a more concrete answer, but I don't want to steer you wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T11:13:15.547" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2253" CreationDate="2011-04-05T14:15:50.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;All of the answers to date are good. You may also need to review and change your original outline and your train of thought. Its possible that you may simply be attempting to put a quantity of ideas and supporting material in one paper that deserves two or more papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1427" LastEditorUserId="1427" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T19:16:03.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T19:16:03.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2253" CreationDate="2011-04-05T18:46:09.827" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without going back to an outline, you could do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Print your draft on paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take some fluoresecent &lt;strong&gt;colored pens&lt;/strong&gt; and mark all the words that are specific to your paper.  Not words like &quot;the&quot; and &quot;research&quot;, but words like &quot;unification algorithm&quot; or &quot;eukaryotic cell&quot;.  Use different colors for different topics in your paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you see the same words/colors in many remote places, &lt;strong&gt;move those sentences closer together&lt;/strong&gt; (you're obviously back behind your computer now ;-).  Ideally, each section talks about a single topic, so it should have more or less only 1 color.  Since your paper was a &quot;sea of words&quot; to begin with, you lose nothing by moving things around.  Never mind the &quot;flow&quot; for now: just the topics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now that the topics are &quot;sealed&quot; into sections, &lt;strong&gt;remove all duplicate sentences&lt;/strong&gt;.  Keep only the ones that give new information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Order the sentences&lt;/strong&gt; so that new terminology/ideas are introduced in a logical order, i.e. new words/concepts are defined before they're used.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From each group of sentences, &lt;strong&gt;make a temporary title&lt;/strong&gt; and put it in front of the group.  It may not make it as a title into the final paper, but it brings an outline back into the paper for yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now, and only now, start looking at the grammar and the flow.  Turn each group of sentences into a few paragraphs right there underneath their temporary title.  Make sure that each group expresses &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; the idea in their temporary title.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For better &quot;flow&quot;, start larger sections with a summary of what you explained in the previous section, and then show the connection to the new section.  You can quickly see what you explained in the previous section by going over their temporary titles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end, take all your temporary titles and turn them into a summary.  You can use this as the &lt;strong&gt;introduction&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;strong&gt;conclusion&lt;/strong&gt; of the paper, or even both if you rewrite it slightly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then remove most of the temporary titles, keeping only the &quot;big&quot; ones to structure the paper for your readers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of which technique(s) you use from the many excellent answers, let us all know how it worked out for you!  Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4377" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T18:46:09.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2404" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2405" CreationDate="2011-04-05T18:48:20.187" Score="10" ViewCount="3059" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing bulleted items, what are the rules for placing periods?&#xA;Presumably bulleted items that aren't sentences wouldn't require punctuation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Orange&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apple&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Banana&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how about sentence bullets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am happy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She was happy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He is happy still&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should that be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am happy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She was happy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He is happy still?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And how do I distinguish between cases? What happens if there are multiple sentences per bullet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;This is actually going to be published from a corporate website, so the house rules are less clearly defined in that case, but I think that is a great point regardless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T15:29:19.903" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T15:29:19.903" Title="When should I use punctuation with bullets?" Tags="|formatting|punctuation|business-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2404" CreationDate="2011-04-05T19:02:09.927" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to use periods with full-sentence bullets, but it depends on the house style of wherever you're submitting your writing. My only caveat is that if you have a list where some items are full sentences and some are not, you have to be consistent: either they all get periods (even the phrases or single words) or they all don't (even the full sentences). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are multiple sentences per bullet, I would end the final one with a period (or whatever the appropriate punctuation is), and if it's house style not to, I would ask the person to whom I'm submitting it how s/he wants you to handle that instance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T19:02:09.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2404" CreationDate="2011-04-05T19:47:52.310" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of ways I've seen this done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For single word items, I suggest either use no punctuation, or use semi-colons, with a period for the last item. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apples;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pears;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oranges.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use the same type of structure for sentences as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am happy;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She was happy;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He is happy still.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, use full punctuation for single sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if each bullet is more than just one sentence, then I would follow full punctuation rules, since it's quite clear that I'm using bullet points for a very complicated list of items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, however, as Lauren says, it's best to ask for the house rules first. And the number one rule is: be consistent in whatever you choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I found this article which you may find helpful: &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/formatting-vertical-lists.aspx&quot;&gt;http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/formatting-vertical-lists.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the article is based on a book called the &quot;Chicago Manual of Style&quot;. I won't duplicate what is written there, but it is extremely comprehensive. Also, it's worth pointing out that, while the writer doesn't like the usage of semi-colons, in a footnote she says, 'commas are optional in some lists and allows the conjunction &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; after the penultimate list item if you are using semicolons at the end of each list item and closing the last item with terminal punctuation'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T19:55:19.263" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T19:55:19.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2381" CreationDate="2011-04-05T20:30:01.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my own experience Wikipedia is very credible. In 2005 already it has been compared to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Encyclopedia Brittanica&lt;/a&gt; I am always amazed when people start complaining about the quality of Wikipedia. The idea behind wikipedia is that it is managed by the community. If you find an error, just correct it. The success of wikipedia lies in the fact that people do edit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding using wikipedia as an original source. Don't! That is to stop reading and cite. A well written wikipedia article contains various citations to resources to backup the assumptions. Use these references. There is an example where a scientific journal even requires its authors to also submit their content to Wikipedia (http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081216/full/news.2008.1312.html).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My general recipe to find proper reference and get a brief introduction into a novel topic is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the Wikipedia article on the topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow references of this Wikipedia article and read these articles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once I have some understanding on the topic I use a scientific literature search engine to fine additional references. Scholar is just one of these services, but depending on the topic there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pubmed&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://portal.acm.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ACM&lt;/a&gt;, and many others&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Browse social networks on citations like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citeulike.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CiteULike&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.connotea.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Connotea&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the main message would be yes, Wikipedia is credible, but like with the scientific literature don't take one source for granted and look for alternatives&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;just my 2cts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT&#xA;This might be an interesting read on this topic: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1000941&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1000941&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1741" LastEditorUserId="1741" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T05:57:47.243" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T05:57:47.243" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2374" CreationDate="2011-04-05T20:37:22.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being active in three language I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google's translate&lt;/a&gt; a lot. For a thesaurus I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.interglot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Interglot&lt;/a&gt;. Just translate from english to english and you will get your synonyms. I don't know how it compares to WordWeb, but this is what I use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1741" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T20:37:22.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2293" CreationDate="2011-04-05T20:59:48.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is maybe not considered OCR. But you could consider using crowd sourcing for this task. There are two websites that facilitate this. There are Amazon's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mturk.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mechanical Turk&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vworker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;vWorker.com&lt;/a&gt;. In the first you pay pennies to let anonymous workers do small fractions of your text. At vworker you could just upload all the work and let the workers decide what they want to get paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1741" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T20:59:48.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2410" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2411" CreationDate="2011-04-06T00:48:14.570" Score="7" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;My novel includes excerpts of things like text from websites, tweets, and internet chats. I'm using Courier for the main novel font. Does switching to a san serif font make sense to represent the web stuff? It doesn't look good. Can you think of better ways to handle this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T10:16:03.297" Title="What's a clear way to simulate web text in a story?" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2410" CreationDate="2011-04-06T01:13:31.363" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd be inclined to just do a block indent for the web text.  If it was pretty short, I might single space it, too, but if it's longer, I think I'd keep it double spaced.  And I'd be consistent with that, so if you have ANY longer bits that you're going to want double spaced, I'd double space them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T01:13:31.363" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2410" CreationDate="2011-04-06T04:02:15.143" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Web fonts are all over the place these days; I wouldn't stress that. As Kate S. said, block indent. I think you'll get a lot of mileage out of recognizable formatting and context hints, also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To:Lynn&lt;br&gt;&#xA;From:Erik&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Subject: Blah blah blah&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a recognizable email format. Block-indented, it would be crystal-clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Erik&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ErikRobson RT @Lynn If I use Twitter, I can tell right away that this is a tweet. (7 minutes ago)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actual web site text is just... text. Usually nothing interesting about that. And, of course, forum posts have their own distinctive formatting, which varies across forum software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also second Robusto's comment - not specifically for bad spelling and shortening, but it's worth noticing how people write across media. I've seen people who are perfectly capable writers but resort to shorthand and zero-punctuation when doing what they consider to be &lt;em&gt;informal&lt;/em&gt; writing. Based on the online community, there are micro-dialects that community members use to fit in and identify each other. That's the sort of detail that &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; would be looking for from any Internet excerpts in a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1582" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T04:02:15.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2410" CreationDate="2011-04-06T08:40:00.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preferring to italicise &quot;external sources&quot; as thoughts, inner voices, memories, fragments from newspapers, books, letters, ... etc. I think it'd fit well to web fragments, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T08:40:00.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2410" CreationDate="2011-04-06T10:16:03.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely avoid sans-serif fronts in print, except perhaps for headings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indentation is probably the best idea, as others have suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to differentiate even more from other text, then perhaps try changing the font like this. Since your manuscript is written in Courier, then choose a serif font like Times New Roman for the emails, newspaper clippings, website etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, the change is quite noticeable, but not so distracting as to be unpleasant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't recommend using italics if they're long texts, because it could be tedious to read, plus you have the problem that, if you decide to use italics for a character's unspoken inner thoughts/thinking process, the reader may think you're referencing a quote from an email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T10:16:03.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2418" CreationDate="2011-04-06T15:55:35.160" Score="10" ViewCount="15066" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like most veteran coders in the IT industry, I have an out-of-date website that I use to link to different activities I'm involved with online, like Twitter and Stack Overflow. Up until now, I haven't gotten around to working the address into my resume, but now is as good a time as any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the best practice for an IT worker to display a website in their resume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it better for the eyes to center the url at the top?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should it be above or below a horizontal rule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should it be close to, perhaps above or below an email address?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the most common, acceptable way for a personal website to be include in a resume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="333" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-01-05T18:10:51.197" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T12:34:50.213" Title="What's the best practice for displaying a personal website url in a resume?" Tags="|style|formatting|websites|resume|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2417" CreationDate="2011-04-06T16:09:35.870" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the purpose of including that URL in the first place. If it is a &quot;here's more info about me&quot; site, I'd say put it with your name, address, and email.  If it is an example of work you did for a particular employer, then then that block of your employment section makes sense.  If it is for a portfolio site, maybe front and center, under your name, at the top of the resume. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not use a horizontal rule on a resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T16:09:35.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2417" CreationDate="2011-04-06T16:46:27.117" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My resume has, centered up top in the header: my name | email | phone. If I were going to put in my URL, I would add another pipe and put it in, probably omitting the &lt;code&gt;http://&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, I sometimes put it in my cover letter/intro email if I feel it's relevant. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Regards,&#xA;&#xA;First Last&#xA;Phone&#xA;URL&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T16:46:27.117" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2417" CreationDate="2011-04-06T17:31:13.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking about doing it with &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my name aligned (justified?) to the &lt;strong&gt;top left corner&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my website minus &lt;code&gt;http://&lt;/code&gt; aligned to the &lt;strong&gt;top right corner&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;remaining contact information below this aligned to one side or the other in left, right, left sequence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to upvote or downvote my answer so that I can get a feeling for whether or not this is generally a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="333" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T17:31:13.497" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2422" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-06T21:06:10.720" Score="3" ViewCount="182" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past, there has been famous cases of translations becoming works on their own. Many dramatic plots were copied from country to country (Elizabethan dramatists used to translate Spanish plays for instance, many french plays started as an adaptation of Latin and Greek standards). And the final result ends up very different from the original, and may have greater posterity than the model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this process still alive today in literature? (Please provide examples you may know.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you already considered translating an existing novel or play as a starting point for a new work of fiction you would write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the current laws on plagiarism interfering and making all this more risky than before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1619" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T17:52:49.870" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T17:52:49.870" Title="Translation as the starting point of a new work of fiction" Tags="|translation|inspiration|playwriting|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2422" CreationDate="2011-04-06T21:53:25.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to have express permission from the author before you can translate a book into another   language or adapt it into another format -- otherwise, you're liable for copyright infringement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Works that are in the &lt;strong&gt;public domain&lt;/strong&gt; are exempt from this. The rules how a work passes into the public domain vary, but generally it's 70 years after the author's death. So Shakespeare and Jane Austen are fair game -- you can do whatever you want with &lt;em&gt;Romeo or Juliet&lt;/em&gt; and re-create &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice&lt;/em&gt; with zombies, if you must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generic plot elements and ideas are not covered by copyright, but the distinction is not always clear. When in doubt, consult with an intellectual property attorney. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another exemption is &lt;strong&gt;parody&lt;/strong&gt;: You can write about Gary Rotter's adventures at Hogfarts School of Magic if your intent is to poke fun at the original work, but the requirements are quite narrow, and there is no guarantee you won't be sued. Claiming that a derivative work is a &lt;em&gt;parody&lt;/em&gt; is a defense against a claim of infringement, not an absolute right, and proving it in court will likely be an expensive undertaking.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="1415" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T22:04:41.347" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T22:04:41.347" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1804" CreationDate="2011-04-06T22:01:38.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;OmniOutliner. It is an absolutely amazing and flexible outlining tool for OS X. It also works well with OmniGraffle, say if you want to generate a graphical representation for the outline. More here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnioutliner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnioutliner/&lt;/a&gt;. The professional version is better than the standard, as I recall, in particular because it allows folding the parts you are not working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1747" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T22:01:38.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2425" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2433" CreationDate="2011-04-07T08:52:31.733" Score="23" ViewCount="11209" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to lean towards science-fiction and fantasy, so world building matters a lot to me. A while ago, there was a question which asked how to go about &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/327/organizing-your-universe&quot;&gt;organizing your universe&lt;/a&gt;, which was interesting, but what I would like to know is: are there tools available that help with the world-building process itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't just mean from the perspective of just suggesting ideas, but rather would like something from a more science-based perspective. Ideally, I would be looking for a tool that could take data like circumference, moons, distance from the sun, tilt, and so on,and then be able to get data back like gravity, day/night/season/year etc. cycles, the planet's climate, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it helps organise that information as well, that would be a bonus, but I don't mind a single, stand-alone tool that focuses specifically on what I'm looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I've been digging around a bit on Google to see what I could find, and have come across an interesting piece of software called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.profantasy.com/products/ft.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fractal Terrains&lt;/a&gt; from ProFantasy that allows you to randomly generate a world. I've played around with the demo version a little, and you can change things like tilt, average rainfall, greenhouse, and a few other variables, as well as get different maps showing climate, altitude etc., but it doesn't seem to take into account its relationship with any nearby suns, or moons etc., or work out the seasons/cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, it's pretty close, and it seems that it can partner with another piece of software they've developed called Campaign Cartographer, which makes the whole package pretty interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if anyone else has got something similar to recommend, that would be brilliant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2019-02-04T13:57:16.407" Title="Tools for science-based world building?" Tags="|tools|software|world-building|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1709" CreationDate="2011-04-07T17:56:26.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;well I am a medic and everyone should be using the term epinipherine anyway so the previous suggestion, from moroz, slightly amended would be great, just substitute the word adrenaline with epinipherine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;however it would be a big assumption to assume the EMT's will inject him with more epinipherine anyway TBH.  It's not indicated routinely in myocardial infarction.  they would most probably give him aspirin and streptokinase, oxygen, nitrates and morphine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1750" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T17:56:26.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2430" CreationDate="2011-04-08T01:35:48.737" Score="17" ViewCount="7404" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had to write a scholarship essay, wherein I wrote this sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the ensuing years I read as much as I could, &lt;em&gt;trying&lt;/em&gt; to increase my knowledge and understanding of my own language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sent it to my mom to look over in case I did something stupid, and somehow it ended up being sent to an English major I know vaguely, and I got this reply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...instead of &quot;trying,&quot; I would suggest something like &quot;in order to&quot; or &quot;in an attempt to.&quot; This &quot;-past action- , -ing verb&quot; structure is, for more advanced writers, considered a bit weaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I trust her judgement on such things implicitly, partially because I've never taken any formal writing/grammar course, partially because I know she's an excellent writer, and, in that particular case, partially because I was stressed out of mind and didn't think to question an all-knowing English major.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now it occurs to me, why does using that construction make my writing weaker? I realise she qualified her statement, but I happen to use that construction quite a lot because one of my first favorite authors, who massively influenced my writing, does as well. I've never heard this anywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone please tell me what the problem with that construction is, or where to find out? As you may have gathered from the title itself, my knowledge of writing, style, and grammar is rather eclectic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: I'm posting this on Writers instead of English because I'm interested in the grammar less than I am in its impact on my writing. Forgive me if I've made a mistake. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; It seems that most people think &lt;em&gt;trying&lt;/em&gt; is the least of this sentence's problems! I thought I'd go ahead and give some more context so people can see exactly what purpose the sentence serves and what-not. I respect all of the answers given based on what I initially posted, but... Well, lesson learned. :) Sorry if I should have done this from the outset. I'll italicise the sentence itself and bold the word in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Tolkien’s constructed languages and his insight into English so beguiled me that I began spending my afternoons researching his field of philology. I soon learned that it was a subfield of linguistics, which only expanded my curiosity. &lt;em&gt;Over the ensuing years I read as much as I could, &lt;strong&gt;trying&lt;/strong&gt; to increase my knowledge and understanding of my own language.&lt;/em&gt; As soon as my high school schedule allowed it, I began taking French and Latin, in addition to German, in order to independently gain further insight into the foundations of the English language. I often felt frustrated, however, by my own lack of training in the subject of linguistics and the relative obscurity of the field. Although my interest never waned, it stagnated...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hardly my best writing (unfortunately). Funny how you always realise that after it's too late... :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="308" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-12T15:51:07.670" LastActivityDate="2019-02-12T15:51:07.670" Title="Why does using this &quot;-ing&quot; verb construction make my writing weaker?" Tags="|style|word-choice|essay|grammar|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2428" CreationDate="2011-04-08T02:16:20.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I would've written the same thing you did. As I re-read your version several times, I began to feel that there's a jump after the comma. To try to see it more clearly, I distilled the two versions down:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I read ... trying to...&quot; versus&#xA;&quot;I read... in order to...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it does feel like a bit of a mismatch in the original version. I'n not an expert and can't say much beyond that, but I can sense their point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1706" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T02:16:20.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2428" CreationDate="2011-04-08T02:44:38.570" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Participles are not -past action- unless they are actually past tense. Your English major friend should learn more about English. &quot;Having tried&quot; would be the past action. What you used was a &quot;verbal adjective.&quot; The structure you used is called a participial phrase. While they are valid grammatical structures, they are somewhat antiquated in the modern vernacular and while papers need to be formal, it is not always a good idea to choose a more antiquated structure when other more succinct and easier to read structures exist.&#xA;In this case, I would have used &quot;in order to&quot; as well as it better conveys the purpose of your decision to read more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T02:44:38.570" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2425" CreationDate="2011-04-08T03:30:54.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not really software, but a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.web-writer.net/fantasy/&quot;&gt;good guide&lt;/a&gt;. If you want something to do a lot of it for you, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/worldbuilder/&quot;&gt;open source project&lt;/a&gt; is a good place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T03:30:54.837" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2428" CreationDate="2011-04-08T12:47:24.753" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of the problem comes from the fact that you have &quot;ensuing&quot; followed by &quot;trying&quot; — which makes the sentence sing-songy and metrically weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as it stands the sentence is wordy and therefore weak. Certainly you could improve it by dropping the &quot;trying&quot; altogether:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the ensuing years I read as much as I could, to increase my knowledge and understanding of my own language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's try to hack off a few more words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After that I read as much as I could, to increase my knowledge and understanding of my own language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we can still do better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After that, to improve my skill in English, I read a great deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll notice I substituted &quot;English&quot; for &quot;my own language&quot;; if your own language is not English, substitute whatever language applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T12:47:24.753" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2425" CreationDate="2011-04-08T13:45:07.730" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimEarth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SimEarth&lt;/a&gt; might work well for you. As I remember, in addition to the Earth simulation, there was Martian terraforming as well. It is an old DOS game; I wish Maxis had updated it for modern computers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that might also be interesting is &lt;a href=&quot;http://edgcm.columbia.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EdGCM&lt;/a&gt;, the only global climate model I know of that will run on a PC. Changing the forcings in model can provide some interesting effects - global cooling, global warming and so on. For science fiction scenarios set in the distant past, (try the Iceball Earth scenario) an alternate present, or set in the future, it should provide some climate related ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although they are not software, older RPGs like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_%28role-playing_game%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Traveller&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Opera_%28role-playing_game%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Space Opera&lt;/a&gt; included systems for generating solar systems and planets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For terrain, try &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistaPro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;VistaPro&lt;/a&gt;. Also an older program, it works quickly and can use real-world DEM data (sections of the Earth and Mars are included) or randomly generate landscapes. Try using something like part of the southern US and raise the sea level a hundred feet or so for an interesting effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="102" LastEditorUserId="102" LastEditDate="2011-04-08T14:14:35.630" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T14:14:35.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2425" CreationDate="2011-04-08T17:26:49.690" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding climate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I struggled with climate on a fictional world for a long time.  What I eventually realized is that all the climate models we have are generated in reference to a single example. In other words: things like albedo effect, cloud cover, precipitation and seasonal weather patterns are entirely dependent on the specific shape and configuration of the earth's landmasses, it's size, density, orbital characteristics, and the current position of our single, relatively large moon. Change any of those and you radically change the weather systems. Some general rules hold true (like the Coriolis effect), but only the most general.  Everything else is interdependent--and interdependent in ways that we don't precisely understand because we only have access to a single reference. So unfortunately, if you want a realistic fictional world that isn't merely an alternate Earth, there are no existing models that are capable of generating even moderately detailed climate systems: you have to figure it out (or make it up) yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which, of course, isn't necessarily a bad thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T17:26:49.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2428" CreationDate="2011-04-08T20:33:14.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see this as a matter of style that is a generational perspective. When I took my writing lessons in high school and college, Strunk &amp;amp; White's Elements of Style book was well-known and well-regarded. I also kept William Zinsser's On Writing Well close at hand for many years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In those books, short, definite statements hold a lot of expressive power, especially when mixed with sentences that are longer by necessity. Brevity, it is argued, forces the reader to slow down, or even stop, and consider your point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With your sentence, the sing-song quality establishes a tone and flow that seems personal, but also timid. It's as if you're worried that someone who knows you well might contradict you or plague you with mincing what-ifs, so you mute the main idea and qualify the strong words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an idea of what I mean. My first sentence below carries my sense on what's happening in yours. The second is how I'd edit it, once I read the first back to myself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer the general idea of leaving out words that do no meaningful work, and using one word in place of two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I omit words that do no work once I find them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a like manner, I might try changing your sentence like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since that time, I have read as much as I can to increase my knowledge and understanding of my language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or even:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I now read as much as I can to improve my grasp of language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1755" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T20:33:14.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2436" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2437" CreationDate="2011-04-08T23:29:15.010" Score="9" ViewCount="434" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do critics review first, second, and third novels differently? And if so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do critics think is the significance of the birth order of novels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T18:51:44.397" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T02:48:46.303" Title="How do critics review an author's first and second and maybe third novel differently?" Tags="|novel|criticism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2436" CreationDate="2011-04-09T08:03:38.080" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, a first novel is like an introduction, both for the author to the world of novels and to himself, and for the readership to the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's consider if the first novel is a complete clanger. Those who read it didn't like it, and not many did read it. It may be that the author thought they could write, wanted to test that theory, and with the complete failure of the book, decides not to pursue the hobby further. This isn't even a one-hit wonder, it's a one-hit miss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, the author takes on board comments received about why the book was rubbish, and pursues writing a second novel. In other words, the author views their first novel as a stepping stone, a learning process to move onto bigger and better things. This makes the first novel part of a bigger learning process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when the first book is a success, this comes with its own set of problems; in some ways, you're in a more difficult spot than someone whose first book flopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, your book has been published in a particular genre, dealt with certain themes, had a particular style. These now have placed some boundaries on the author, particularly because it's likely you'll feel some pressure from the publisher to follow up on the success on the first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you write something similar for your second? The publisher wants something as good, the readership you've gained may be expecting something similar. But how do you differentiate it enough to not be accused of simply copying your first work, yet still appeal to the same readership? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you stay in the same genre? Some genres are notoriously difficult to break out of e.g. science-fiction. If you have a readership that enjoyed your science-fiction novel, and suddenly your second book is a romance, your publisher may be at a loss to market you, and your readership will be terribly confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, for me, the first novel is an introduction to an author: their style, favoured genre, themes, etc. It's like meeting someone for the first time, and you get a general idea of what they're about. All I really expect this time is a good story well told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I expect from the second novel would be something similar, but different enough to show me that the author is versatile to not repeat past success be copying the same formula. I want to see progression from the author, too: depth, new characters, better detail, more writing skill. If you met someone for a second time, and they were completely and utterly different from the person you thought you knew, most of the time you'd be confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, many first time successful novelists spend a lot of time and effort on their first work, but when it's successful, they think they can duplicate that success by using a similar formula. This almost always fails in the sense that the writer hasn't grown, and it's likely that their audience won't, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I suppose you could say that the critical difference between the first and second, then, is one of expectation: from the readership, the publishers, even the author himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond the second novel, I would say that the third is probably what cements your career: were the first two just flukes? Can you sustain it? Also, as you start writing more novels, you can sometimes become a bit freer in tackling other subjects, perhaps under a different name, like Ian Banks does when he writes science fiction as Ian M. Banks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T08:03:38.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="76" CreationDate="2011-04-09T18:39:22.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first principle is this: the essence of writing is rewriting. The media that encourage you to rethink what you rewrite are better choices than ones that don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like that computers and software help create a distinction, even a divide, between rewriting and mere word processing. As we rewrite, most of us do both to varying degrees. The rate at which we can change what we've made visible has a feedback effect of one sort or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while it is easier and faster to execute on a computer, it also feeds my impatience and occasionally helps me make fast decisions at the expense of a better one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I want to feel what I'm writing, which calls for a typewriter. Sometimes I want the sense of what I'm writing to burn into my memory, at which point I write on paper. Sometimes I want to carry around something in a notebook, not a file folder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose what I am speaking to here is the act of writing itself as a multi-dimensional experience. I vote for all of them; each one is a means for self-discovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My last word on word-processing: if what you've written or machine-typed really needs to get to an electronic form, you may be utterly surprised at the effect of someone else typing your words in has on you. I urge you to try it at least twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1755" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T18:39:22.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="76" CreationDate="2011-04-10T01:45:39.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pen and paper. No batteries needed.&#xA;Convert to electronic form using speech-to-text software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1759" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T01:45:39.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2443" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-10T07:31:56.563" Score="1" ViewCount="10653" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wish to convey to prospective employers that I not only want to use my skills, but hone and sharpen them as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the below paragraph do justice to it? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have any suggestions? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the paragraph sound boastful?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To obtain a position and work environment, that will not only enable&#xA;  me to use my strong organizational skills, educational background, and&#xA;  ability to work well with people, but sharpen them as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1623" OwnerDisplayName="Kaustubh P" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T07:16:56.523" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T07:16:56.523" Title="Write a resume objective that expresses my desire to hone and sharpen my skills" Tags="|style|word-choice|business-writing|resume|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2428" CreationDate="2011-04-10T09:20:06.597" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a few ideas and please don't be let their brusque ungentleness discourage you. You write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Over the ensuing years I read as much as I could, trying to increase my knowledge and understanding of my own language.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do you want wishy-washy &quot;trying?&quot; Or prolix &quot;in order to?&quot; How about:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Over the ensuing years I read as much as I could to increase my knowledge and understanding of my own language.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;All of your years were &quot;ensuing&quot;; and your work was clearly &quot;over&quot; or &quot;in&quot; them so perhaps:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Later, I read as much as I could to increase my knowledge and understanding of my own language.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Well, of course it was &quot;later,&quot; so consider:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I read as much as I could to increase my knowledge and understanding of my own language.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You might want to lean on the idea of &quot;increase;&quot; perhaps &quot;strengthen&quot; or &quot;deepen&quot; is better:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I read as much as I could to deepen my knowledge and understanding of my own language.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Maybe the goal of the reading goes better at the front the sentence:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To deepen my understanding of my own language, I read as much as I could.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aw, c'mon; I don't think you have a dialect all your own, your own language:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To deepen my understanding of the language, I read as much as I could.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Will any reader buy that you set the goal of understanding the language? How about just saying what you did and what happened?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My understanding of the language deepened as I read as much as I could.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pretty extravagant to claim that you read as much as you could! You can easily avoid any quantifying; and any raised eyebrows. Perhaps:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My understanding of the language deepened as I read more and more.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is &quot;understanding&quot; the right verb form? How 'bout something more active:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The more I read, the more deeply I understood the language.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Uh-oh! 'Deeply' doesn't work all of a sudden, so maybe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The more I read, the better I understood the language.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Somhow the idea of your reading a lot of stuff has disappeared, so maybe a little drama here:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The more and more I read, the better and better I understood the language.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Ah, dang it all, I screwed it up by letting the idea of  your reading tons and tons It  of stuff disappear. OK, let's try it this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I read whenever I could. And the more I read, the better I understood the language.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hey! A little bit of internal rhyme! It couldn't hurt.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Still&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; not the finished sentence you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as I say, just a few of my thoughts you might use to test your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastEditorUserId="1645" LastEditDate="2011-04-10T09:53:04.173" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T09:53:04.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2445" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-10T10:38:21.243" Score="0" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often work on lessons for ESL students - texts, dialogues, etc. I'm not a native speaker and I don't have any friends abroad. I often need copyeditors for my lessons, but I seem to have trouble finding the right people for the job. I need editors who could not only point out spelling and grammar mistakes, but also find any inconsistencies in the texts and make them easier to read. I tried hiring editors from different &quot;proofreading&quot; websites, but none of them did a really thorough job on my texts. Any tips as to where should I look for the right people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1761" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T17:45:32.460" Title="Where to look for ESL writers and copyeditors?" Tags="|fiction|business-writing|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2011-04-12T14:18:02.000" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2443" CreationDate="2011-04-10T11:42:32.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As usual, simple is better, and this is a bit wordy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are 'position' and 'work environment' so different that they need to be expressed separately?  I'm not sure on that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in terms of the rest, I think the same meaning would be conveyed by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To obtain a position and work environment that will enable me to use and sharpen my strong organizational skills, education, and ability to work well with people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T11:42:32.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2443" CreationDate="2011-04-10T12:30:27.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I seek a position in which I can use and strengthen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My proven technical ability, organizational aptitude, and social skills;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could that work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastEditorUserId="1645" LastEditDate="2011-04-10T13:12:54.577" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T13:12:54.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2293" CreationDate="2011-04-10T13:02:04.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My five-year-old &lt;strong&gt;HP scanject 5400c&lt;/strong&gt; came bundled with OCR software that's as good as any I've seen. Are you sure your scanner doesn't have something similar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T13:02:04.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2443" CreationDate="2011-04-10T13:52:18.327" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Evaluating resume stuff in a vacuum is really hard. That being said, a couple of thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In general, I think you're approaching the problem incorrectly. You're trying to write an Objective statement. Everyone knows you're looking for a job, otherwise you wouldn't be submitting your resume, so re-stating this is redundant.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your style is overly stiff; you're trying too hard. Believe it or not, you're talking to a person, so &lt;em&gt;talk to them&lt;/em&gt;. You wouldn't use your sentence in a conversation, so don't use it in your resume, either.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't mention your educational background. They'll see it further down anyway. At best it's redundant. At worst, it's orthogonal. What you don't need is someone thinking &quot;I don't see what a degree in Economics has to do with making widgets...?&quot; before they even talk to you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would try to say something meaningful about myself rather than trying to say what I think an employer might want to hear. Without knowing more about you or the work you're looking for, I can't be more specific. I don't use Objective statements anymore, but here's an example that served me well in the past:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I like working with smart, motivated&#xA;  people doing interesting work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People in mediocre work cultures think this is a meaningless platitude, so they'll call me out on it during an interview which is an excellent conversation starter. Indeed that's the whole point: &lt;em&gt;to start a meaningful dialog&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, companies with strong cultures understand what you're talking immediately. In this case it's a signalling mechanism: &lt;em&gt;I'm one of you&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T13:52:18.327" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2451" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-11T12:52:53.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is a flexible, powerful writing program from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Literature and Latte.&lt;/a&gt; Available for the Mac with beta for Windows and Linux. Inexpensive and easy to use, it's packed with features like outlining, a corkboard to rearrange notes, full-screen blockouts, word frequency count, and script formatting. Allows you to export easily so your text is never held captive to a proprietary format. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-04-11T13:06:14.160" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T13:06:14.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2452" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-11T12:52:53.003" Score="0" Body="Scrivener is a flexible, powerful writing program for Mac (Windows version in beta). " OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-04-11T13:06:12.320" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T13:06:12.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1699" CreationDate="2011-04-11T12:53:58.820" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a dozen of these. Nowadays what works best for me is mind mapping. Similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1699/writing-first-programming-book/1700#1700&quot;&gt;Lauren's suggestion&lt;/a&gt;, I write down everything about the topic I need to and want to cover in a mind map. (Give &lt;a href=&quot;http://MindMeister.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MindMeister&lt;/a&gt; a try.) Start grouping things into major topics with minor, related topics clustered around them. Keep tweaking, and soon you'll have your chapters, and even the order in which you need to write about them will become apparent (i.e. you have to know how to create a database before you can insert records into one.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nice thing about breaking things up this way is that when you're done, you'll have all your topics in small chunks. Breaking your project up into smaller pieces makes it much simpler. Instead of thinking, &quot;how on earth will I ever finish this massive thing,&quot; you can focus on the small pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T14:30:52.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2445" CreationDate="2011-04-11T17:45:32.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't a bad question, and it is a problem. TBH, I'm not sure how to get around it, either. That being said, the normal places you'd go for this kind of thing is the 800lb gorilla: Elance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble with this is that most clients (the ones buying freelancer services) are price-buyers. That is, all they care about is how cheap they can get someone to do X or Y. Quality is a distant second or third consideration. That means a lot of the freelancers that are drawn to places like Elance aren't very good. (Because the good ones have a steady stream of work, or work for someone else.) You can't really expect high quality work when you're paying crap wages. (The equivalent of $10/hr isn't enough to entice anyone but the really desperate, or people who live in other countries whose primary language isn't English.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the same, you don't have enough work to justify contacting a translation agency, and you don't have the funding to post a job ad on a quality board. (Writers.StackExchange doesn't have a careers section like StackOverflow.) So that leaves you with creative approaches to getting quality people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact an English professor at a US university, explain your situation and ask if s/he's aware of any talented students that might be interested in doing some editing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Post on Craigslist, and be completely open about what you can afford to pay.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at some of the top posters here, and see if they have contact information in their profiles, and email a few of them, and explain how you found them, and be open about what you can afford to pay.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whatever else you can think of&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with these approaches is credibility, particularly because people are rightly skeptical of overseas work with &lt;a href=&quot;http://motherboard.tv/2011/4/5/the-sakawa-boys-inside-the-bizarre-criminal-world-of-ghana%E2%80%99s-cyber-juju-email-scam-gangs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sakawa&lt;/a&gt; being so prevalent, so be prepared to be rejected quite a bit, and be prepared to have to make a substantial up-front, good-faith deposit before getting someone to commit. Be prepared to lose a bit of money if people bail on you. (These are mitigated a bit with approach #1 and #3.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T17:45:32.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-04-11T18:38:08.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think fanfic can a very good training ground. They have provided characters, settings and most importantly audience. That lets you focus on hone your other skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest advantage is that it has a built in audience that tends to review what you've done. You get feedback and that is the most valuable thing you can get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it as a form of deliberate practice. You can practice dialog with existing characters or describing existing settings and so on. You can even create new characters and settings and insert them into the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1422" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T18:38:08.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2443" CreationDate="2011-04-11T18:40:23.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A sentence fragment is fine, as complete sentences usually aren't necessary on résumés. How about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To use and continue developing my organizational skills, education, and ability to work well with people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a résumé. You use it to look for a job. So it's redundant in a way to say you want to &quot;obtain a position.&quot; I changed &quot;sharpen&quot; to &quot;continue developing&quot; because you don't &quot;sharpen&quot; your education or your ability to work well with people. That metaphor only works with &quot;skills.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having made the suggestion, though, I would also suggest thinking about &lt;em&gt;whether you really need to state an objective&lt;/em&gt;. I am no career counselor, but I do follow several career blogs. The latest in conventional wisdom says career objective statements aren't necessary and, at worst, they can pigeonhole you. Your objective is so generic that, while it might not pigeonhole you, it's not saying a whole lot either. Is it really adding anything to your résumé?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1563" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T18:40:23.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2425" CreationDate="2011-04-11T18:43:45.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on where you live you might want to consider going to &lt;a href=&quot;http://ltue.org/LTUE_2011.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Life The Universe and Everything&lt;/a&gt; @ BYU. I've gone to a few and they have an excellent World Building track. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A warning, world building can be so fun that you forget to write your story and that would be a shame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1422" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T18:43:45.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1699" CreationDate="2011-04-11T23:11:48.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually combine what Lauren and Lynn suggest, in that I list every phrase or statement I know about the topic, group them together, and then organize into a rough outline. I have used Scrivner, and Freemind and other mind-mapping tools, but lately, I find myself using &lt;a href=&quot;http://workflowy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Workflowy&lt;/a&gt; to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1693" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T23:11:48.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2459" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-11T23:22:05.423" Score="6" ViewCount="819" Body="&lt;p&gt;Action, in any storytelling medium, is the relationship between build up and pay off.  While cinema may emphasize the payoff (pyrotechnics play well to theater-going crowds) it seems that the written word has the best potential for getting the most from the build-up, especially because an author can let readers inside a character's head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What elements are most universally conducive to a great action scene (regardless of medium or genre)? How might they be used differently in scriptwriting vs. writing a novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1767" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T04:11:01.787" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T08:22:24.707" Title="What makes a good action scene?" Tags="|technique|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2460" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2465" CreationDate="2011-04-12T11:15:34.077" Score="6" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a novel and I was having some trouble finding the best solution for this question. I understand that both dialogues and conflicts are needed in a good proportion to cook a bestseller. But I would like to experiment on my work. Will be much appreciated if you can throw some light on this. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-04-13T11:43:36.757" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T17:01:52.397" Title="What is the Priority in an Action/Adventure Novel: Dialogues or Conflict?" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-04-12T11:20:29.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a main feature to action is suspense; so, you can let the reader/viewer know what's happening, but almost hold back in a certain way. Thus, during the down fall, you can expand on what happened during the action scene. And with that it will become more memorable and vivid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example would be: In some movies they show short flashes of the storyline, and then expand on them, and show the full outlook; and even sometimes share other point of views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1769" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T16:40:58.523" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T16:40:58.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2460" CreationDate="2011-04-12T11:37:58.463" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure you should be thinking of them as mutually exclusive.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good dialogue will add to the conflict, not take away from it.  If the characters aren't talking about something important, the conversation probably has no place in your book; if the characters ARE talking about something important, you can use their emotions and their word choices to add to the sense of urgency, and to make us care about the characters so that we care about the outcome of whatever crisis you're putting them through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you meant to contrast dialogue with narrative?  I think THAT can be a more difficult balancing act, but dialogue and conflict work together really well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T11:37:58.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2460" CreationDate="2011-04-12T11:44:49.480" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two are not mutually exclusive in an action adventure novel. If you think that conflict in a purely physical sense eliminates the need for dialogue, you're limiting yourself. Dialogue very often creates conflict. Without it, you'd just be describing a bunch of events that happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the film Ronin, for example. While not a novel, the principle is still the same. It's the terse dialogue in the film that helps set up some of the most memorable conflicts between the characters (for example, Robert De Nero and Sean Bean).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without dialogue, you have no idea of who people are, or why they do what they do. You are essentially ignoring characterisation. Too often, novels and films focus on the action element to the detriment of their characters. (You'll also find that a LOT of action is being used in the hopes of obscuring the fact that the characters are weak).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't avoid dialogue in the hopes that it makes it more of an action story. On the other hand, make sure your dialogue is relevant in creating conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T11:44:49.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2392" CreationDate="2011-04-12T11:51:53.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like @Craig Sefton's idea, the parenthesis do look a-lot better than just a simple comma. Also, may I suggest, in the third sentence thinking about changing &quot;you&quot; to &quot;you've&quot; aside from that, it looks okay;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1769" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T11:51:53.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-12T11:58:41.467" Score="4" ViewCount="9580" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing lyrics for quite some time now (at least five years). Although there have been several of those moments when I've thought I'd have an act for music making, I'm just not sure I'll ever get around to it, or be good enough. I'd like to know how I could share my lyrics I've written, and whether I should give them away, or try to sell them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1769" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-09-21T15:59:25.120" LastActivityDate="2022-09-21T16:02:11.097" Title="How could I share my lyrics?" Tags="|self-publishing|lyrics|money|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2011-04-12T14:07:13.837" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding selling your lyrics, this is apparently not how the music industry works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across this interesting &lt;a href=&quot;https://songmd.com/mollys-column/selling-songs-selling-lyrics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article written by an Emmy-nominated song writer&lt;/a&gt;, which warns against the idea of selling your lyrics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Selling lyrics is never done in the&#xA;legitimate music business.  There are&#xA;smarmy  scumbags in every business who&#xA;will gladly tell you what you want to&#xA;hear for a price, so if someone offers&#xA;you a contract for the purpose of&#xA;selling lyrics, tear it up.&#xA;Immediately.  It might feel good for a&#xA;day or so to be “wanted”, it might&#xA;feel great to have someone finally&#xA;“like” something you’ve created, but&#xA;it will feel awful forever when you&#xA;realize you’ve been taken by a shark.&#xA;Buying lyrics and selling lyrics is&#xA;never, ever done in the real music&#xA;business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marketing lyrics is just like&#xA;marketing songs:  you write a lyric,&#xA;you find a composer to set it to&#xA;music, you record the song&#xA;professionally and competitively, then&#xA;you set out to market the finished&#xA;song, which includes pitching your&#xA;work to music publishers and A &amp;amp; R&#xA;people at record labels, who, in turn,&#xA;pitch your songs to singers and bands&#xA;looking for hits in your genre.  When&#xA;your songs are recorded, you receive&#xA;quarterly royalties for each copy&#xA;sold, as well as performance royalties&#xA;from countries all over the world&#xA;based on the number of times your&#xA;songs are performed for profit on&#xA;radio stations, online, in&#xA;commercials, in movies, and TV shows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for sharing your lyrics, there seem to be a number of forums on-line geared towards this purpose. An example would be something like &lt;a href=&quot;https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deep Underground Poetry&lt;/a&gt;. There are probably many others out there (just Google for something like &amp;quot;share lyrics poetry&amp;quot; or something similar).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally wouldn't recommend giving your lyrics away, as they're yours. You never know when you may want to use something you've written down, and you also never know what someone may do with your lyrics. If you're thinking of sharing, and want other people to use your work, but to still control it to a degree, consider attaching some &amp;quot;copyleft&amp;quot; to it, perhaps something like a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.creativecommons.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Creative Commons license&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-09-21T16:01:23.993" LastActivityDate="2022-09-21T16:01:23.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2050" CreationDate="2011-04-12T14:09:29.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;AFAICS, Incopy is almost only used in the production of periodicals for whom the workflows and editing interface is tailored.  For this situation it is ideal, allowing assignment of responsibilities at the editing stage, version management, separation of content from layout, and concurrent proofing of texts at the typesetting stage in a typesetter-friendly manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is entirely unreasonable to impose the requirement of working with Incopy on a non-employee, and I have never heard of anyone being asked to.  So the answer is no, Word is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T14:09:29.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2011-04-12T14:16:45.857" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether to give away or sell your work depends on your resources and the goals you have for your work.  Here is how I would approach the situation were I in your place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'd release my best work under a &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Creative Commons&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;by-sa&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;by-sa-nc &lt;/a&gt; license.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This helps your work gain exposure, and gives something to the community, without sacrificing ownership of your work.  With a &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;by-sa (attribution, share-alike) license&lt;/a&gt;, others may use your work in any way that they like &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; if they use it to create another work (say, they record a performance that uses your lyrics), they must release it under the same terms you did -- AND give you credit in a manner you have specified.  This way, every use of your work gains you exposure, and you can in turn use, for example, the melody someone else wrote to go with your lyrics (just give them credit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, &lt;em&gt;you still own your work&lt;/em&gt;, so if someone would like to use it on different terms (like a company wishing to use it in a product they will not release under Creative Commons) they must receive specific permission from you (and, if you like, payment of some kind that you negotiate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are against &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; use of your work for profit without specific permission/payment, you can instead opt for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;by-sa-nc (attribution, share-alike, non-commercial) license&lt;/a&gt;.  This is similar to the by-sa license above, except that &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; for-profit use requires specific permission from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Once it's released, I'd promote the heck out of it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Creative Commons&lt;/a&gt; site and your friends here at writers.SE can offer great tips on specifics.  Just do whatever you can to become more visible.  This can lead to paid licensing of your existing work, commissions to do new work, opportunities to market non-cc-licensed work, or just a beer from an appreciative user of your stuff every now and again.  Either way, in my humble opinion, getting it out there is better than keeping it in a drawer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T14:16:45.857" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2373" CreationDate="2011-04-12T15:29:02.303" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are looking at how-to books, both Stephen King and Orson Scott Card have some excellent books on the subject. Don't be put off by their genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading is very important, but don't ever forget to spend time doing deliberate practice writing. Do short pieces that focus on setting, descriptions, dialog, &amp;amp;etc. Set limits like 100/10,000 words, or imitate someone who has a distinctive style like Tom Clancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1422" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T15:29:02.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2443" CreationDate="2011-04-12T15:43:11.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your objective is too self-centered - provide benefits to your prospective employer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To use and develop my strong organizational and interpersonal skills for mutual benefit in a challenging and stimulating environment.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1745" LastEditorUserId="1745" LastEditDate="2011-04-13T19:13:43.500" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T19:13:43.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2474" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2484" CreationDate="2011-04-12T21:58:24.973" Score="11" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm creating some copy describing new web-app features for a number of different audiences (users, managers of sections of the site, owners of sub-sites which use our platform etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm finding myself using 'users' constantly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Users will now be able to...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...opens up the creation of $feature&#xA;  to users...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...excited to see the creative ways&#xA;  our users will...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm getting sick of the word. It feels ugly to me, and a bit jargony, and sort of unfriendly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any good alternatives? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases I can replace 'users' with 'you'. But for two of these pieces, I'm addressing audiences who wont be using the features themselves, so the second person wont be appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1717" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-04-13T03:16:19.203" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T22:23:55.263" Title="An alternative to saying 'users' when describing features" Tags="|non-fiction|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2474" CreationDate="2011-04-12T22:42:06.977" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Users are usually categorized by their role, so you could write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Managers will now be able to...&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some processes use a hypothetical first person to write about features, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;As a manager I should be able to...&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1773" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T22:42:06.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2474" CreationDate="2011-04-12T22:43:10.627" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, a user is probably the best generic term since it is an accepted convention. However, depending on the context, look at using more specific words. For example, use the word &quot;developer&quot; when talking about something that is likely to be used by that particular group. Consider using &quot;partners&quot; as the term you use for the audiences you mention. When features overlap in usage with different groups you can then say, &quot;developers and partners can then ...&quot;. Being more specific about who you are addressing will make your text more meaningful and personal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T22:43:10.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-04-12T23:30:14.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think another aspect of a good action scene is to not overload the reader/viewer with too much at once. Like you said, there's areas in an action scene which can totally isolate themselves for a short period from the rest of the scene to emphasise things like shock, awe, pain, victory and such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off the cuff example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;James ran down the hill into the valley where the enemy troops had been spotted. His rifle flicked left and right to find enemy targets. The noise, smoke and the dense forest made it difficult for him and his soldiers to see properly, and bolts of light rained down from bombers overhead. Their large hulls blocked the sunlight to and fro, increasing the confusion. Firing off some shots into the forest, masses of gunfire returned, striking two soldiers off to his right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As he was about to yell, &amp;quot;Medic!&amp;quot; when he heard a buzzing sound from above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an instant his vision went white and his ears ringed loud. He felt himself hit the tree next to him and fell to the ground, blind and deaf. Minutes seemed to pass as he struggled to regain his senses. It was as if he was in a bubble, watching blurred shapes rush over head and shout muffled words at an unknown enemy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yelling came from in front of him but it was muffled and he couldn't see who it was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T23:30:14.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2474" CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:02:42.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;people&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;those using $feature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;one (instead of &quot;you&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;we&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T00:02:42.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2460" CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:07:00.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An action/adventure novel requires both to be compelling, but they need to flow together in whatever proportion you're currently writing them in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your story may need a breather and so you position your characters in a relaxed, personal situation, such as having a drink at a bar. Perhaps your characters have just met and one is a naturally curious person and begins to question the other. This is where your dialog needs to take preference. This doesn't mean you can't cut straight to action, but for a &quot;satisfying&quot; period, you need to allow your characters to open up and talk about things, such as their history, their goals for &quot;the mission&quot; (for example), perhaps even talking about issues they have regarding the events in the story. This not only lets the other character but lets the &lt;em&gt;reader&lt;/em&gt; in on things in an implicit way. You want to describe some of the back story to the reader? Use a dialog scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often an easy way to end the dialog scene is to introduce an event that interrupts them, leaving some dialog behind to be able to expand on later. Have the characters &quot;skim the surface&quot; then be pulled away to action, then later on when you need to give your readers a break, bring them back. Perhaps a companion wanted to know more about why the protagonist thinks they shouldn't be going on the mission or soemthing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A novel with only action or only dialog can get boring. You need a mixture of both, whether it's a dialog scene, an action scene, or an action scene with intermittent dialog to keep the character's &quot;in the scene&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Action needs to be relevant just as much as dialog needs to be when used in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T00:07:00.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2482" CreationDate="2011-04-13T02:25:19.427" Score="9" ViewCount="907" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a science fiction story and it's based in another galaxy, colonised by humans originally on a geographically equivalent &amp;quot;Earth&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current usage refers to it as &amp;quot;Earth&amp;quot; and provides a short description of why. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sun was shining high in the sky, not quite as warm as a summer on Earth but the temperature was inviting none the less. Earth of course, referred to the geographical equivalent planet colonised in the Sicilian galaxy, originally known as Messier 33. The planet was initially titled New Earth however the prefix was dropped in the fourth century following a public vote as many believed it was clear that with two and a half million light years distance between them, it was hard to confuse the two, not to mention that many people called it &amp;quot;Earth&amp;quot; by default.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earth in the Sicilian galaxy was only two percent larger than Earth in the Milky Way and was mostly equivalent in geography, flora and fauna, affording the settlers an unexpected sense of familiarity when they first arrived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(bear in mind I haven't revised anything yet, this is first draft material)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, do you think in this and possibly other circumstances, it could be confusing to call it &amp;quot;Earth&amp;quot;, despite the reason why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; I ended up revising the names, both to latin words which have something to do with them at least. Not only that, but I've removed the info dump in favour of a briefer, more character sensitive passage of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sun was shining high in the sky, not quite as warm as a summer on the home world of Solum however the temperature was inviting none the less. Pexus, literally name after the Latin word for “new”, was smaller and lighter than Solum, about eighty five percent of its mass. This made all the difference when it came to the size of the flora and fauna on the planet. Trees grew metres taller than similar trees on Solum and leaves were significantly larger, attributed to the relatively cooler climate. The few animal species that had been studied were sizable compared to that of Solum. It was like he’d stepped out into a different era.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also revised my idea of the relation to original Earth. The issues facing Earth (that we currently observe... and debate) have been overcome through some means, and at the present time, it has become the intergalactic capital. Being both the original human world and the capital of Mankind, it's reverred. As such, when colonisers settled &amp;quot;New Earth&amp;quot;, they decided to use the Latin word for &amp;quot;earth&amp;quot;, both to distinguish it but also to pay homage to &lt;em&gt;our&lt;/em&gt; Earth, given it was essentially the &amp;quot;homeworld&amp;quot; of this new galaxy, not to mention being very similar to Earth (within 95% of it's geography and ecosystem).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T00:02:10.620" Title="Potential confusion: referring to home planet as &quot;Earth&quot;" Tags="|science-fiction|naming|world-building|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2480" CreationDate="2011-04-13T02:31:46.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it might be confusing &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; the original Earth ever appears in the story. If the citizens of the new Earth never have any contact with the old earth, it should be OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T02:31:46.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2480" CreationDate="2011-04-13T02:48:08.430" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just from the information you've provided, it seems you're creating a convoluted and potentially confusing situation for no good reason. If, however, this is important to the story, you can always refer to &quot;Earth&quot; (formerly &quot;New Earth&quot;) and to &quot;Old Earth&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a slightly different version of the word would work, but I believe that's already been done: Gene Wolfe's &quot;Urth&quot;, and possibly elsewhere. I'd rename the new planet to something else if possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T02:48:08.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2480" CreationDate="2011-04-13T03:22:16.453" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This passage reads like an info dump—a lecture from the author to the reader, with no strong purpose in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you could name the planet something else with no loss to the story, that tells me that the name isn't important to the story. If I'm right about that, then call it something else, and delete this passage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the name &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; important to the story, find some way to impart this information through a character, at a time when it matters to the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2011-04-13T05:54:33.003" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T05:54:33.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2474" CreationDate="2011-04-13T07:48:16.403" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered (re)using Personas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A well defined persona can make it much clearer to talk about features as you remove a &quot;layer of abstraction&quot;, making it easier for non-technical readers to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your examples might change (with a little introduced context) from ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Users will now be able to...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...opens up the creation of $feature to users...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...excited to see the creative ways our users will...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... to ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Debbie from the Helpdesk will now be able to ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;... opens up the creating of Incidents to Tony the Help Desk Manager.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;... exciting to see the creative ways that Julie Homeowner will ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="956" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T07:48:16.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2480" CreationDate="2011-04-13T10:18:37.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rule of thumb: you want to avoid confusing the reader. A confused reader is not enjoying your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;But,&lt;/em&gt; that doesn't mean &quot;never do anything that might confuse the reader.&quot; It means, &quot;&lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you want to do something that might confuse the reader, make sure to take steps to make sure it's not confusing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds as though, in your particular case, the name choice wasn't particularly crucial to your world-building, so just changing the name is a perfectly easy and simple solution. I'd like to talk for a moment about the more interesting case - where referring to the planet as &quot;Earth&quot; &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; important in some way, and the author is interested in keeping that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, there's a lot of examples in SF of appropriating words like &quot;Earth&quot; or &quot;human&quot; for other planets and races. This can be done for various reasons; I think most common is to get across that these people see &lt;em&gt;themselves&lt;/em&gt; as normal. Aliens from planet Glooglag won't think of themselves as exotic &quot;Glooglagians,&quot; as far as they're concerned, they're just people. They might even &lt;em&gt;call&lt;/em&gt; themselves &quot;Glooglagians,&quot; but that word, to them, means what &quot;human&quot; means to us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience with such stories is that this kind of substitution can definitely work. It creates a certain dissonance, but it's really not a tough concept for a reader to wrap his head around, so as long as the dissonance is clearly the author's &lt;strong&gt;intention&lt;/strong&gt;, and he makes it clear pretty much upfront that &quot;Earth&quot; isn't our Earth, this is definitely workable. SF readers are particularly open to unusual world-building and re-definition of common concepts; if you tell them the planet's called &quot;Earth,&quot; then they'll usually take that in stride - &lt;strong&gt;particularly&lt;/strong&gt; if the unusual naming serves some purpose which, by the end of the story, they'll come to appreciate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're not trying to achieve any particular effect by the &quot;confusing&quot; naming, it's simpler to avoid it. Just like you wouldn't arbitrarily decide to name two characters &quot;Bob,&quot; even though in real life that'd be pretty plausible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; trying to achieve a particular effect, go for it. This isn't something so confusing that it should stop you. Just make sure the reader understands what you want to be clear.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there are interactions between &quot;New Earth&quot; and &quot;Old Earth,&quot; the double-naming can actually do some pretty awesome things - much in the same way that a time story where present-time Bob meets future Bob, or a family drama where Bob Jr. faces off with his dad. In this case, you've got to work harder to make sure your readers always understand exactly who you're referring to - but, with some effort, that's usually quite possible to achieve by attention to context, additional tags that are specific to one or the other, etc. So you can decide for yourself whether the trade-off is worthwhile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T10:18:37.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2480" CreationDate="2011-04-13T12:00:51.627" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it's been answered already (and it's a good answer), I'd recommend you reconsider your chosen course of action and think about the implications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, it would be highly unlikely for people who were originally from &quot;our&quot; Earth to only mention &quot;Earth&quot; using the Latin phrase. All their history books and reference materials - anything to do with Earth - are likely to use the word Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the reader is not going to associate &quot;Solum&quot; with &quot;Earth&quot;, unless you explicitly mention this linkage to them. In the example you've given, it just sounds like Solum and Pexus are any old planets, and there is no linkage between the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, you're overly confusing things for yourself and the reader. It is far more likely that &quot;Earth&quot; will still be called &quot;Earth&quot; (or some derivative close enough for the reader to know it's Earth), but the current planet will adopt its own name. If they referred to it as &quot;New Earth&quot;, over time this could shorten &quot;Newurth&quot;, or &quot;Nurth&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're better off keeping things simple and clear for yourself and your readership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final point related to what you've written: if the characters on this new planet have no first hand knowledge of Earth, it's highly unlikely they would make any reference at all to a comparison between &quot;New Earth&quot; and &quot;Earth&quot; as you've done with regards to trees/gravity and so on. The comparison you're making comes across as if someone from Earth is writing the story or is our point of view, and unless that is the case, you are breaking my sense of realism as a reader. I know I'm from Earth, I know I'm reading a story about somewhere far away that's different. Let me work it out through inference, rather than have you tell me flat out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T12:00:51.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2293" CreationDate="2011-04-13T13:49:55.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adobe Acrobat Pro&lt;/a&gt;. I will warn you, though, that it's expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a translator and often receive documents from clients that are either un-tagged, image-only PDFs or paper documents. One thing I like about Adobe's OCR is that it will recognize many source languages (which may not be useful to the OP, but may be useful to someone reading this answer later).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="210" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T13:49:55.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2460" CreationDate="2011-04-13T17:01:52.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to examine the novels you like, and analyze their construction. Rather than worrying about what the genre as a whole does, hone in on what resonates with you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T17:01:52.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2428" CreationDate="2011-04-13T17:05:10.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard on several occasions that it is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerund#Gerunds_in_English&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gerund&lt;/a&gt; that makes the -ing &quot;weak&quot; and should be avoided. The argument, I suppose, is due to the fact that gerunds are inherently imprecise because they have multiple meanings and fit multiple categories.  They're verb-like, noun-like, and adjective-like... and present-participles which also use the -ing suffix can act like adverbs and adjectives and are completely different than gerunds.  It does seem odd to allow -ing to be a past-tense gerund while simultaneously saying only present-participles have -ing (past-participles are -ed, -en, and similar).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality I suspect they hate gerunds because it makes it difficult for them to map a sentence they can understand the meaning of so easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1776" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T17:05:10.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2425" CreationDate="2011-04-13T20:20:30.473" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice?  Skip the world building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus instead on your characters.  Tell the story as it happens to them.  Invent the world around them as you need to in order to tell their story.  If you introduce inconsistencies, clean them up in a later draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing on the axial tilt of the planet your characters live on rather than who your characters are and what they want is a great way to never get any actual writing done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="786" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T20:20:30.473" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1284" CreationDate="2011-04-13T20:31:25.827" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write it as if &lt;em&gt;you're&lt;/em&gt; the one apologizing to &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know that they're the one who is dragging their feet.  Pretend like you were instead.  Frame the message in terms of &quot;I must have missed an email somewhere, sorry&quot; rather than &quot;why haven't you sent me an email?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lets them take the action you want without accepting blame for the delay, which for some people is psychologically important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="786" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T20:31:25.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2492" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-14T13:50:17.207" Score="1" ViewCount="1988" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for all-around advice on this essay (I'm a foreign student, and learning English), but primarily, I wanted to ask is whether my essay is well-organized and clear enough. I mean, the first question to judge the quality of an essay should be “is everybody understand what the author wanted to say,” right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also, I think some of my sentences are verbose and lacking expressiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;TOPIC: Whether group learning is the best way to learn for every individual?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real geniuses don't exist.  I'm sorry, but those in history said to have the ability to figure out things all by themselves are make-believe.  In our journey of discovery, it would not only be helpful to accept assistance from other people, but in some cases, the only path to enlightenment.  However, I'm not saying studying with companions is inadvisable.  In fact, the time we spend alone practicing and meditating can be equally important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studying with partners sometimes illuminates us.  When studying alone, learners will often encounter the situation where even though they can tell they're puzzled by something, they aren't fully aware of what it is.  This is when experienced learners would immediately realize it's time to seek help.  If there are something that can only be found in group learning, it would be the communication between humans.  Self-study, be it extracting knowledge from books or from other materials, is one-sided information flowing process, meaning that we only accept facts from the material while our feedbacks are not supervised by it.  This kind of process is in sharp contrast with human-to-human communication.  In which case, with a series of information exchange and mutual observation, the learners would quickly locate the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what makes it an issue, is that studying with other people creates more than communication, they also brings reliance — our reliance on others expecting them to tell us every exact step.  In discussions, we spend much more time on expressing and understanding, but much less time on meditating these ideas and digesting them.  Our understanding always stays on the linguistic layer and never digs into the core.  The finial result often is, well, it seems that we've studied a lot, but we've actually learned little.  Even though group learning help us deal with problems we cannot work out all by ourselves, it doesn't negate the fact that the productiveness of the time we spend alone in studying concludes the final result.  True mastery of a skill asks for independent thinking.  Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had been enthusiastic in discussions and even debates, but that didn't make them less of great independent thinkers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, the proportion of the time we should allocate to study in group is highly dependent on our personality, the subject we are studying and also, our age.  People that are good at communication, who feels more comfortable catching information via talking apparently should spend more time in group learning than those who are not so attracted to social activities and prefer reading books quietly.  Comparing with philosophy, theoretical physics and pure mathematics, learning languages, sports and special skills may also require more time in group learning .  And more energetic younger learners are supposed to spend somewhat more time in group learning than their older counterparts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a conclusion, group learning has its irreplaceable importance, but we ought to spend proper amount of time in it.  I've stated that working in group creates good atmosphere for communication, and communication helps a lot not only in problem solving but also in motivating every member in the group.  Meanwhile, I've also pointed that working alone for meditating and review is equally important because group learning won't help you anything in digesting all the information acquired.  Finally, I've mentioned the flaw in the speakers statement that no fixed rule is perfect for everybody, the time we should spend in group learning is highly depend on the particular situation of the special individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1557" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T07:18:14.430" Title="Is my essay on group learning clear and well-organized?" Tags="|essay|organization|clarity|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2493" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2494" CreationDate="2011-04-14T19:20:02.340" Score="4" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like my document as I am writing it to be independent of software layouts as I think it would be a better decision to make at the end of the process. What would be good ways to denote stylistic notes within the text for later use. For example say I wanted to publish this text you are reading and I wanted for there to be a quick tip box on the right margin of the page. How would I denote this, something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Margin-Right:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quick Tip Box&#xA;&amp;quot;This is my Quick Tip Box&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some different ways to achieve this during the initial stages of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1473" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T00:03:47.287" Title="What are some ways to denote presentation style outside of written text." Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2493" CreationDate="2011-04-14T20:35:23.333" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I want to leave formatting notes throughout the page, I use Microsoft Word's comment feature. I'll leave notes that something should be formatted as a sign, or that something should be formatted as a letter or email or IM. This way its out of the way of the main text, but it's still noticeable and won't be missed when you go through at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also how we're asked to do it for publishers as well. We're asked to mark things like trademarks, letters, email, IMs, etc. using the comment feature so that the ones that do the formatting at the end of the process know what needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T20:35:23.333" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2495" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-14T20:59:13.627" Score="2" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the indirect narration style (as in: 'Surely she was going to ask him out tomorrow.')  directly fall into the classification of Narration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="C_P" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-02-14T20:01:21.890" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T20:01:21.890" Title="Indirect Narration Style" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2495" CreationDate="2011-04-14T22:25:50.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If by indirect narration you mean indirect speech, yes, I believe it is a style of third person narration. e.g. He said he would of course help. You also get free indirect speech, which is a combination of both third and first person narration by dropping the &quot;he said&quot; e.g. He would of course help. See here for more: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_indirect_speech&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_indirect_speech&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T22:25:50.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2493" CreationDate="2011-04-15T00:03:47.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highlight that sort of thing. Quick, easy, impossible to miss. When I'm finished, I go back through and address them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T00:03:47.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2495" CreationDate="2011-04-15T01:15:18.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically it's still the narrator (author) saying what the character may or may not be thinking so I would say yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In narrated films, the narrator might add their own thoughts about events here and there like this and it would fall under &quot;narration&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T01:15:18.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2499" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-15T01:21:50.867" Score="9" ViewCount="894" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I designate the footnotes that are mine inside a quote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried &quot;our note&quot;, &quot;note ours&quot; and &quot;remark is ours&quot;. Which one is the correct one and most commonly used?&#xA;Or is there some other way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;He provides an argument for it:&#xA;   &quot;Before the Greeks, the ancient Egyptians &#xA;   used it[1] in the construction of their great pyramids.&quot;&#xA;&#xA;------&#xA;[1] The Golden Section - note ours. &amp;lt;-- this is MY (drozzy's) note, not the original author's &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can see there is my note inside a quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or if I have something without a footnote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;He provides an argument for it:&#xA;&#xA;   &quot;Before the Greeks, the ancient Egyptians &#xA;   used it (Golden Section - note ours) in&#xA;   the construction of their great pyramids.&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Note where I use &lt;strong&gt;note ours&lt;/strong&gt;, to clarify that &lt;strong&gt;it&lt;/strong&gt; is a &lt;strong&gt;Golden Section&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1782" LastEditorUserId="1782" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T22:30:18.173" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T22:30:18.173" Title="Our note in footnote of a book" Tags="|book|footnotes|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-04-15T02:54:20.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The pacing of the writing &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; match the pacing of the scene.  For a love scene, you need avid and languorous description.  In an action scene, you need short, almost breathless wording.  Here's how I would re-write Nick's example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;James ran down the hill.  The enemy were in this valley, somewhere.  Where, dammit?  He flicked his rifle, left, right, left again. Noise and smoke and dense forest made it hard to see. Shots rang out.  Two men beside him dropped, crying and streaming blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His yell &amp;quot;Medic!&amp;quot; was drowned by the sudden buzzing overhead.  Everything went white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See?  Short sentences, mostly monosyllabic and disyllabic words.  If this were a movie, they'd use very short shots, lots of close-up and obstructed views.  Try for the same effect with words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T02:54:20.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2373" CreationDate="2011-04-15T03:08:48.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read anything by Orwell, anything Nabokov.  If you like something just a little down-market from there, Martin Cruz Smith and Scott Turow both write thrillers but with lovely use of language and characterization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter how ridiculous a lie is if it's your only chance of escape.   It doesn't matter how obvious the truth is if the truth is that you'll never escape.  -- Martin Cruz Smith, &lt;em&gt;Gorky Park&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T03:08:48.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2499" CreationDate="2011-04-15T03:19:28.673" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand you, you are writing a book and you have both your own citations and quoted material with citations and you want to distinguish the two types of citations.  Is this correct?  I don't see much need to distinguish them -- they are all just reference material, put them all in the end-notes (I hate numbered foot-notes personally, they're very distracting).  If, as an ethical matter, you feel obliged to make the distinction, just write &amp;quot;citation in the original&amp;quot; in the end-note.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or do you mean you have parenthetical material that was in foot-notes in the original?  I would be inclined to omit them altogether in most cases, and if one were vital, I would include it in the main text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hamlet famously soliloquized&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be or not to be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and Shakespeare added in a foot-note &amp;quot;That is the question&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have &lt;em&gt;so many&lt;/em&gt; quoted foot-notes that it becomes distracting, well, what the hell are you doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T03:19:28.673" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2492" CreationDate="2011-04-15T03:34:35.687" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your first sentence is &lt;em&gt;great&lt;/em&gt;, it grabs the reader.  Sadly, it has almost nothing to do with the rest of the essay, which therefore becomes kind of a let-down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In handling such an abstract concept, you need to concretize it.  Think of how it would be done in a magazine: &quot;Bob Smith, a freshman at a well-known Ivy League school, had troubles studying on his own...&quot;  Use real-life examples and vivid description to make your point (if you try relying on just being right, you'd be dry as dust).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware of falsely specific phases like &quot;irreplaceable&quot; and &quot;highly dependent&quot;.  They don't mean much and they're a major cause of what reporters call MEGO: &lt;em&gt;My Eyes Glazed Over&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;strong&gt;shorten it&lt;/strong&gt;.  Ruthless weed every paragraph of unneeded sentences and every sentence of unneeded words.  Almost anything anyone writes can be improved by being trimmed and this particular example is no exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T03:34:35.687" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2499" CreationDate="2011-04-15T08:27:17.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming here that you mean you've got your own footnotes, but some of the citations from the original work contain their own footnotes from that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the case, the first question to ask is: do you need the original footnote? If not, then remove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do need it, then I would suggest you make it your own footnote by doing something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title of the article uses « novamente», while in the journal’s table of contents — « nuovamente»&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shakespeare noted &quot;That is the question&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would use footnotes very sparingly, if at all. They can be very annoying and make your text difficult to read. In the majority of cases, turning footnotes into endnotes works much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Another possible solution you could try is to just include the original footnote verbatim, and then include a reference at the end to demonstrate it's from the original work. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;That is the question.&quot; (A. N. Author, 2000, pg. 150)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T12:00:41.933" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T12:00:41.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2506" CreationDate="2011-04-15T09:56:48.640" Score="4" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited&lt;/strong&gt; to incorporate @Craig Sefton's &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/2506/26&quot;&gt;suggestions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About a book that I admire, I wrote in an SE computer-programming group: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The material seems old -- well, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; old -- because it's been around for long and, while by no means trivial, is well understood. A solution you can lift is published in W. Richard Stevens's superb and unparalleled book (read &quot;bible&quot;), &lt;a href=&quot;http://tinyurl.com/6eoufdc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, Second Edition&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;The book is the rare treasure that's clear, concise, and complete; its every page gives real, immediate value.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the emboldened phrase, I want to convey that the book is in contrast to other 1200-page doorstops because it has no fluff, no extraneous or off-topic matter. Almost every other programming book should be of 256 pages; this book justifies its length on every page. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Should I even try to include that idea? Maybe I should just let the contrast go and talk about the book itself. &#xA;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, how can I do it concisely? I'm afraid that too many words will bore the reader and weaken the contrast.&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" OwnerDisplayName="Pete Wilson" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T07:41:38.020" Title="Help write a book review, please" Tags="|reviews|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2505" CreationDate="2011-04-15T10:08:42.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I think you've already used the word I would use in your question: concise. I would also perhaps split the overall sentence into two lines. A possible suggestion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A solution you can lift is published&#xA;  in W. Richard Stevens's superb and&#xA;  unparalleled book (read &quot;bible&quot;),&#xA;  Advanced Programming in the UNIX&#xA;  Environment, Second Edition. It is one&#xA;  of those rare books that is clear and&#xA;  concise, which gives every page real&#xA;  and immediate value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Based on the update to the question, I think including the idea is necessary. Concise and clear programming books are invaluable, so that's a big strength. Don't worry about boring the reader; you'll only do that if your review isn't ... umm ... clear and concise. Oh, and I would probably drop either tangible, or real, since they essentially mean the same thing (I've edited my recommendation above to reflect this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T10:27:43.853" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T10:27:43.853" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2507" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2508" CreationDate="2011-04-15T10:13:58.220" Score="5" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story that constantly shows what the characters are writing.&#xA;I would like to know how to format that. Right now I'm doing it like this&#xA;(please ignore the grammar, it is a rough draft):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The young women dressed as a nurse&#xA;goes to the bar and orders a sandwich.&#xA;After that, she check around looking&#xA;for a sit. She finally decides to sit&#xA;in one which is in front of the young&#xA;man. He completely ignores that action&#xA;and keeps writing. After some minutes,&#xA;he finally stops to see what he has&#xA;written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Imaginary Interior Being Disorder. The patient loses contact with&#xA;symbiosis and one-ness with nature and&#xA;universe. Since he loses this&#xA;connection, he doesn’t know what will&#xA;happen if he dies, this makes the&#xA;patient to be terrified of death. So&#xA;he finally creates a invisible,&#xA;eternal being to compensate that.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T17:31:15.773" Title="What's the proper way of formatting writing from a character in a novel?" Tags="|novel|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2507" CreationDate="2011-04-15T10:31:30.823" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;See this question, since I think the same principle applies:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2410/whats-a-clear-way-to-simulate-web-text-in-a-story&quot;&gt;What&amp;#39;s a clear way to simulate web text in a story?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, block indent the text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also avoid the italics, if possible. Too much of it, and it becomes a pain for the reader to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T10:31:30.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2474" CreationDate="2011-04-15T11:02:54.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, you could say &quot;visitors&quot; but honestly I think it's better to stick to one name for users, namely &quot;users&quot;, else a reader will certainly get somewhat confused:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;My God, he was talking about 'users' before, and now I read 'visitors'. Is there a difference? Certainly the words are different and can mean different things, but is there a &lt;strong&gt;real&lt;/strong&gt; difference?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Users&quot;, consistently, gets my vote. Yes, you might be uncomfortable with its repeated use, but in this case clarity trumps stylistic nicety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastEditorUserId="1645" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T11:48:48.890" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T11:48:48.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2474" CreationDate="2011-04-15T11:18:05.637" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately, I've been favoring the term &quot;you&quot; because, after all, the doc is addressed to the reader, to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;YOU&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, no question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've &lt;s&gt;used&lt;/s&gt; &lt;s&gt;employed&lt;/s&gt; &lt;s&gt;written&lt;/s&gt; hidden behind the third-person &quot;users,&quot; I think, because I haven't had the writing balls to address the target of the writing directly. For me, it takes courage to speak confidently and directly and sometimes forcefully to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;YOU&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; but when I read something that's addressed to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;ME&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; I'm happy and satisfied. There is no way I can misunderstand the writing. Second-person writing doesn't equivocate, it's not wishy-washy or queasy-squeezy or spongey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare two versions that aim to instruct:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The actor should speak the speech as I pronounced it to him, trippingly on the tongue.&#xA;But if the actor should mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the&#xA;town crier spoke my lines. Nor should the actor saw the air too much with his hand,&#xA;thus ...&#xA;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. &#xA;But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke &#xA;my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand ...&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second-person writing is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;strong&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. There's no missing the meaning behind &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;YOU&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastEditorUserId="1645" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T18:36:56.167" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T18:36:56.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2505" CreationDate="2011-04-15T12:26:32.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, I really like your 1200-page doorstop comment. That's not boring, and it's evocative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you use that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a big book, but unlike&#xA;  1200-page doorstops, this book&#xA;  justifies its length. It is the rare&#xA;  treasure that's clear, concise, and&#xA;  complete; its every page gives real,&#xA;  immediate value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T12:26:32.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2492" CreationDate="2011-04-15T14:58:39.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The structure of your essay is fine, but your intro is irrelevant and your conclusion is redundant. I know the advice runs &quot;Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em, tell 'em, and then tell 'em what you told 'em&quot; but you don't &lt;i&gt;literally&lt;/i&gt; use the words &quot;I said X.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For shortening it, let's just try the first paragraph: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Studying with partners sometimes illuminates us. When studying alone, learners &lt;strike&gt;will often encounter the situation where even though they can tell&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;may find that&lt;/b&gt; they're puzzled by something, &lt;strike&gt;they aren't fully aware of what it is.&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;but they can't articulate what.&lt;/b&gt; This is when experienced learners would &lt;strike&gt;immediately realize it's time to&lt;/strike&gt; seek help. &lt;strike&gt;If there are something that can only be found in group learning, it would be the communication between humans.&lt;/strike&gt; Self-study &lt;strike&gt;, be it extracting knowledge from books or from other materials,&lt;/strike&gt; is one-sided information &lt;strike&gt; flowing process&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;gathering&lt;/b&gt;, &lt;strike&gt;meaning that we only accept facts from the material while our feedbacks are not supervised by it.&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;without getting feedback on our understanding or perception from others.&lt;/b&gt; &lt;strike&gt;This kind of process is in sharp contrast with human-to-human communication. In which case, with a series of information exchange and mutual observation, the learners would quickly locate the problem.&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;Exchanging information and observations with others can allow students to locate what they're having trouble with.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, you have an awful lot of fluff there. I know English is not your first language, and you're obviously working hard. :) Your grammar is mostly fine (although &quot;something&quot; is singular and would take &quot;is,&quot; not &quot;are&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remove phrases like &quot;the situation where&quot; and &quot;it's time to.&quot; You can show the contrast between A and B without having to say &quot;In sharp contrast.&quot; You don't have to specify what medium a person is getting information from; it's irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T14:58:39.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2499" CreationDate="2011-04-15T15:11:37.013" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen the citation &quot;(&amp;mdash;ed.)&quot; short for &quot;editor,&quot; meaning &quot;the editor added this on top of what the author wrote.&quot; The format is something like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TEXT&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;One of the best-known quotes from Star Trek is &quot;Scotty, beam me up!&quot;(1) This basic command has become a cultural meme, and occasionally a frustrated commuter's lament.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FOOTNOTE&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;(1)Although much like &lt;i&gt;Casablanca&lt;/i&gt;'s &quot;Play it again, Sam,&quot; this line was never actually spoken verbatim. &lt;i&gt;&amp;mdash;ed.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T15:11:37.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2443" CreationDate="2011-04-16T00:04:53.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Objective statements are generally old school these days.  I'd eliminate it altogether.  If you think its important, you can simply state the objective title at the top of the resume (i.e. MARKETING ANALYST).  After that, I would focus on highlighting what you bring to the table.  Its common (though not always used) to start with a summary paragraph that highlights how amazing you are and your accomplishments and a few highlight reel bullets below that before then going into the traditional Chronological or Functional formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1789" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T00:04:53.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2518" CreationDate="2011-04-16T07:49:22.333" Score="1" ViewCount="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think about cheating on you...with a&#xA;  girl who I used to have random&#xA;  romantic moments with, a girl who no&#xA;  longer exist, a girl which was you,&#xA;  the first days we met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a little bit confuse about writing the last part. I'm not very sure how to convey the fact that the girl that I'm talking to, is &quot;she&quot; but from the first days we met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how to do this in the second tense, and in simple words.&#xA;Or is what I wrote good enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T16:11:55.600" Title="How to convey the fact that the person that I'm talking to, is &quot;she&quot; but from the past?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2515" CreationDate="2011-04-16T10:17:49.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;I think about cheating on you-- with a girl whom I used to have random romantic moments with, a girl who no longer exists, the girl that you were... in the days when we first met.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1792" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T10:17:49.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2515" CreationDate="2011-04-16T11:53:31.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I'd built the first part up bigger, so that the second part comes as more of a kick.  (although I'm not really sure how the person is going to cheat with someone who doesn't exist anymore...) (and I don't really know that 'random' is the right adjective for 'romantic moments', but - okay...):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find myself dreaming of another girl.  A girl from my past, who I used to have random romantic moments with, who used to make me laugh, who made me understand what love really means.  I feel like I'm cheating on you, with a girl that no longer exists - the girl that you were when we first met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T11:53:31.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2515" CreationDate="2011-04-16T13:40:37.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure of the context: do you want to cheat on her with the woman she was in the past, or do you want to cheat on her with someone &lt;i&gt;like&lt;/i&gt; she was in the past?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's the first option, then I'm not sure about &quot;a girl&quot;. You're talking about someone specific (who she was), so &quot;the girl&quot; seems a better fit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's the second option, then &quot;a girl&quot; makes a bit more sense, but you'd need to ensure the reader understands the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the clarity issue in your question, in both cases I'm not sure about the placement of your ellipsis. It breaks the flow at the beginning. I'd rather shift it towards the end of the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to achieve your objectives, the first option could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think about cheating on you with the&#xA;  girl I remember. The one I had&#xA;  romantic moments with, who seems to no&#xA;  longer exist ... the girl you were,&#xA;  when we first met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second option, which is similar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think about cheating on you with a&#xA;  girl like the one I remember. The one&#xA;  I had romantic moments with, who seems&#xA;  to no longer exist ... the girl you&#xA;  were, when we first met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, my personal preference would be to drop &quot;when we first met&quot;, and just leave the last bit as &quot;... the girl you were.&quot; Seems to carry more punch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T13:40:37.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2515" CreationDate="2011-04-16T16:11:55.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think about cheating on you with&#xA;  the girl you used to be. The girl who&#xA;  I used to have random romantic moments&#xA;  with, the girl who no longer exist,&#xA;  the girl which was you, the first days&#xA;  we met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added in the clause &quot;the girl you used to be&quot; to clear things up. I'd also used &quot;the girl&quot; repeatedly, rather than &quot;a girl&quot; to further limit it to one particular girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T16:11:55.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2520" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2538" CreationDate="2011-04-16T19:35:55.220" Score="6" ViewCount="28861" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that when I write, I'm not always sure how to refer to the character of focus. You can only say &quot;he/she&quot; so many times before it feels choppy and repetitive. Constantly referring to character by name feels unnatural. I've tried using the profession of the character as well, but sometimes that just feels wordy if it is unusual (say if the character were a taxidermist).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with all the different ways to define the character you are describing action for, is there any methodology for choosing which particular reference to that character you use as the passage progresses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-04-17T05:17:14.850" LastActivityDate="2021-09-07T22:57:57.863" Title="How to refer to character of focus in a story" Tags="|characters|word-choice|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2520" CreationDate="2011-04-16T19:42:30.373" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does feel weird when you're writing, but you don't notice it when you're reading.  Use the name the first time in a paragraph and the pronoun thereafter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T19:42:30.373" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2522" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-16T20:52:28.257" Score="0" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure which one is correct:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the beginning of the book&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the beginning of the book&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in the sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the beginning of the book Marco describes his early life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1782" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-07T10:12:27.323" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T10:12:27.323" Title="&quot;In the&quot; vs &quot;At the&quot;" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2011-04-17T12:54:57.320" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2522" CreationDate="2011-04-16T21:21:55.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Either is fine to my ear/eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T21:21:55.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2522" CreationDate="2011-04-17T00:56:54.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;In the&quot; sounds like it's going on for a while &amp;mdash; a chapter or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;At the&quot; sounds like a point on a line: he describes everything in one or two paragraphs and then moves on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are grammatically correct, but I think they have slightly different shades of meaning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T00:56:54.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2522" CreationDate="2011-04-17T01:37:56.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think of things happening in sections of books, not at (which implies a location) sections of books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also tried changing it around:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marco describes his early life in the&#xA;beginning of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marco describes his early life at the&#xA;beginning of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In&amp;quot; is my choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T01:37:56.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2528" CreationDate="2011-04-17T07:45:13.437" Score="5" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;p&gt;In programming we often use syntax highlight in order to have a better picture of what the role of particular bits of code is (using different colours).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if writers do something similar - while writing a work-in-progress, using some unusual formatting (bold, italics, colors, etc.) in order to mark certain concepts and make ideas clearer during the writing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do, how do you do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-04-17T22:25:53.070" LastActivityDate="2018-09-22T15:09:29.917" Title="Do writers use highlighting to clarify ideas in their work in progress?" Tags="|fiction|formatting|organization|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2526" CreationDate="2011-04-17T10:05:54.727" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard of a number of uses for colors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Highlight each character's dialogue in a different color.&lt;/strong&gt; This allows you to quickly read through each character's dialogue to see whether the character's voice is consistent (or perhaps whether it changes the way you want it to). It also allows you to read quickly through all of the dialogue in the story, to see whether it is vivid and compelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Highlight dialogue in one color, action in another, description in another, ...&lt;/strong&gt; This can draw your attention to balances and imbalances among these elements of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that these techniques are more useful when you're preparing to edit or rewrite. It would be horribly distracting to attend to this stuff while drafting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2011-04-17T10:47:04.630" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T10:47:04.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2535" CreationDate="2011-04-17T10:08:06.950" Score="11" ViewCount="1029" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a few chapters of a book several years ago. How do I find an affordable editor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1788" LastActivityDate="2021-09-19T16:59:15.417" Title="How do I find an affordable editor?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2522" CreationDate="2011-04-17T11:09:19.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Either is fine.  But they have slightly different... connotations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In the beginning&quot; makes most people in the western world think/associate that ancient book called the (Christian) Bible.  Which starts out with &quot;In the beginning&quot; ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it gets a more epic feel right off the bat than if I started with &quot;At the beginning&quot;.  &quot;At the beginning&quot; is more modern-sounding (to my ears, anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &quot;At the beginning&quot; makes me automatically think of a state more than a process (&quot;In&quot; is more neutral that way).  So, &quot;At the beginning of our tale, Marco is standing in his workshop&quot; is something I would expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hmm, come to think of it some more, this sounds like a synopsis more than an actual book.  Or maybe it's not a question about writing fiction but about writing non-fiction?  Or writing non-fiction about fiction? ;-)  If so, then my answer is probably way off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T11:09:19.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2533" CreationDate="2011-04-17T11:31:38.827" Score="7" ViewCount="2887" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I still have to make some grammar and writing corrections but I would like to know if this dialogue Has this has enough suspense to engage the reader (so that he or she wants to read more)?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Excuse me, have you seen a girl that looks like this coming here?” he said while showing the picture of the girl. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Sorry,” the bartender said apologetic, “I’m new, I don’t know many people here,” the bartender replied. “As you can see, there are not many people around,” he continues, “You are the first person I’ve seen for a while.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He continued cleaning some glasses for some minutes. “Is this person lost?,” he finally asked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Not sure, but...Well, I can’t find her.” he replied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Maybe you should report to police.” the bartender said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“No, she is just someone I...someone that I used to be with,” he continues, “We lost contact for a long time. We used to come to this place frequently. We used to drink vodka and eat Mexican chicken here, then we walked in that bridge over there,” he said pointing to a big window. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Reconciliation with a past lover, uh?” the bartender said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Well, actually, I already have a girlfriend,” the young man added. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Cheating, uh?” the bartender joked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The young man seemed to ignore the comment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After an uncomfortable silence, the bartender finally added, “Why don’t you just call her?” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The young man thought for a while,“I did many times, but...each time I call, she doesn’t pick up the phone”, he said while taking another shot, then he continued. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Well few days ago, she called, she said that she would meet me in that bridge...but she never showed up.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After finishing that sentence the young looked out of the window, while the bartender kept quite. Suddenly, the silence was broken by the ring of the phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would you suggest any improvements?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T07:18:55.133" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T07:18:55.133" Title="Has this dialogue enough suspense to engage the reader?" Tags="|fiction|suspense|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2532" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2553" CreationDate="2011-04-17T13:26:36.267" Score="8" ViewCount="531" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been a computer programmer for thirty years and an expert in some niches. I was a technical editor before that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to be a free-lance editor again if the pay is right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does a technical editor charge for the service? What can I expect to be paid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T08:36:45.537" Title="What can I earn as a technical writer or technical editor?" Tags="|editing|freelance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2531" CreationDate="2011-04-17T14:21:47.540" Score="19" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;too much dialogue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;too much information about what you want the reader to guess (that is, the suspenseful bit).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not &lt;em&gt;enough&lt;/em&gt; information about the&#xA;&lt;em&gt;characters&lt;/em&gt; to care.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of suspense is to leave the reader wondering &lt;i&gt;what else is going on? what's going to happen next?&lt;/i&gt; This is talky without making us interested. We should get enough information to wonder, but &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; enough information to figure it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should read more like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man came in, looking worried and a bit windblown. He glanced around the bar, wiping the palm of one hand repeatedly on his jacket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a long moment, he approached the bartender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What can I get you?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Nothing, thanks. Listen &amp;mdash; you haven't seen this girl, have you?&quot; The man pulled a tattered photograph out of his pocket. She was young, dark-haired, pretty. Wide expressive eyes and a broad, inviting smile. From the clothes and hair, it might have been ten years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;No, sorry. I'm actually kind of new here,&quot; the bartender apologized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;But you haven't seen her? You're sure?&quot; the man persisted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bartender gestured to the room. There was one guy at the far end of the bar watching a hockey game on the TV, and two men at a table in the corner having lunch. Other than that, the room was empty. &quot;We don't get a lot of people here. I'd've seen her if she came in.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man fidgeted. The bartender picked up a glass and began to polish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Is she lost?&quot; the bartender finally asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't know,&quot; the man admitted. &quot;She won't answer my calls.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Sounds like she wants &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; to get lost, buddy,&quot; the bartender said, not unkindly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man shook his head. &quot;We were supposed to meet here a few days ago and she didn't show. She doesn't answer her door either.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bartender pointed to the shiny black phone on the bar next to the register. &quot;So call the police.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I can't.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Why not?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man didn't answer. The bartender went back to polishing glasses while the man stared out the window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abruptly the phone rang, shatteringly loud in the quiet bar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Worried and a bit windblown&quot;: why is he worried? was he running? running from someone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;wiping his palm&quot;: wiping off sweat? nervous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;tattered photograph, ten years old&quot;: He's held on to this for a LONG time. It's a last memento, it's the only link he has to this woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;pretty, inviting&quot;: she's inviting us from the photograph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;persisted&quot;: the guy REALLY wants to find her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;fidgeted&quot;: nervous. maybe hiding something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;finally&quot;: the bartender has to draw him out. He has to pull the information out of the man. that heightens tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;admitted&quot;: He didn't want to have to say that he didn't know. he's hoping she's okay, but she might not be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;she doesn't answer her door&quot;: a hint that in fact there IS something bad going on. most people would be willing to let a call go to voicemail, but people rarely flat-out refuse to answer the door if they're home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I can't call the police&quot;: Now that's &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; interesting. Why not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;shatteringly&quot;: to emphasize how tense the man is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-04-17T18:29:26.050" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T18:29:26.050" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2526" CreationDate="2011-04-17T16:37:40.230" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a terrible idea.  If &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, who wrote the damned thing, are having trouble telling characters apart, keeping track of scenes, identifying key ideas, reflect on how much more trouble your reader, whose only source of insight will be the black-on-white text, will have!  Seriously, if things are that dense and confusing, time to back up and rethink what you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a little skeptical even of ordinary organizational tools like time-lines and outlines.  Again, how can the reader digest all this information and keep it in his head if the writer can't?  The only reason I give them a pass is because the much greater &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; involved in the process of writing compared to that of reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I see a novel of fiction with a map, a family tree, or, God help us, a glossary, I'm strongly inclined to discard it unread.  Although certainly fine novels have had these features (many people enjoyed the &lt;em&gt;Lord Of The Rings&lt;/em&gt; books, which had maps; &lt;em&gt;I, Claudius&lt;/em&gt; started with a tree of the Claudian family; later editions of &lt;em&gt;A Clockwork Orange&lt;/em&gt; came with a nadsat dictionary) but I think those are the exceptions rather than the rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general the reader's, and the the writer's, understanding of a work should come from the text.  We are writers, not typographers, illustrators, genealogists, or cartographers, and we should be doing what we are (supposedly) best at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T16:37:40.230" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2529" CreationDate="2011-04-17T16:46:18.130" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most widely used method of finding a freelancer is by asking around for recommendations from friends and associates.  The great advantage of working this way is that you can get some rather credible information about the freelancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several job boards for finding freelancers, including freelancers, online:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.upwork.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Upwork&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also directories of editors provided by professional societies and online communities.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyediting-l.info/freelance.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Directory of CE-L Freelancers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ciep.uk/directory/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have specialist requirements, searching broadly on Google (do look at Adwords results), or on networking sites like Linkedin may work well for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside of finding an editor this route is that you won't know whether they are any good, although some professional societies, such as the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading, do have substantial accreditation programmes giving weight to these names.  Asking for a sample edit is valuable here: the information you gain here is much more useful to you if the editor will edit a small sample of your work than provide a highly selective portfolio of their past work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Postscript&lt;/strong&gt; - I should add that I don't use resources such as Upwork to try to find work, because the offers that win tend to be so lowball that I do not consider them to be at sustainable rates for professionals.  I advise against using these services unless you have a strategy for ensuring that the winner of the contract will perform adequately for your job requirements.  Browsing directories of editors and getting in touch with them seems to me to be a better route.  Of the above methods, the route that gets me most business is online search, especially via AdWords.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-09-19T16:59:15.417" LastActivityDate="2021-09-19T16:59:15.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2507" CreationDate="2011-04-17T17:31:15.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a sentence or a fragment of a sentence, quotation marks.  For a few paragraphs, block indent.  For substantial material, put it inline with a square-bracket explanation a few words in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He completely ignores that action and&#xA;  keeps writing. After some minutes, he&#xA;  finally stops to see what he has&#xA;  written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Imaginary Interior Being Disorder &lt;strong&gt;[it ran]&lt;/strong&gt; The&#xA;  patient loses contact with symbiosis&#xA;  and one-ness with nature and universe.&#xA;  Since he loses this connection, he&#xA;  doesn’t know what will happen if he&#xA;  dies, this makes the patient to be&#xA;  terrified of death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as Craig said, be wary of italics.  They quickly become tiresome to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T17:31:15.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2526" CreationDate="2011-04-17T19:58:22.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mostly agree with Malvolio's first paragraph. I think color-coding might be useful in early drafts as you're settling pieces on the chessboard, but you should have each character's distinct voice very early on. You shouldn't allow yourself to use it as a crutch. You need to experience your writing as the reader does, as best you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@alexchenco, given the writing samples you've showed us here, I think for &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; it would be useful in the first or second draft to flag dialogue vs. narration, as Dale suggests, so you can balance your scenes better. But again, this is a crutch, and shouldn't be used later on as your drafts become more sophisticated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T19:58:22.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2520" CreationDate="2011-04-17T23:27:53.537" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a technique that can help: Identify each instance of &lt;em&gt;he saw&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;he heard&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;he thought&lt;/em&gt;. If you're writing a close third person POV, you can often eliminate those by simply saying what he saw or heard or thought. Instead of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He saw Sandra cross the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you can say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sandra crossed the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other times the edit isn't quite so simple, but even then you can often eliminate them by recasting the sentence or paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T14:43:19.127" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T14:43:19.127" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2532" CreationDate="2011-04-18T00:49:33.737" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on your particular niche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a hot new field with few experts, then you can name your price. If it's a common segment and there are a lot of people (even if they just look good on paper) trying to move to the tech writing/editing side, then they'll often work for nothing just to get the credit—bringing the perceived value of the work down for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know people who are currently working in the field as authors or editors? Ask the authors to introduce you to their editors. Ask the editors if they're hiring freelancers and what their pay rates are like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience (having done tech writing &amp;amp; editing since 1997) is that the field is a trailing indicator of the economy. That is, if the economy has been going up for the last &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; months, the writing biz will have been good for at least the later part of that time period. If the bubble then bursts, writing takes the hit ~six months later. The result: you're always trying to figure out what's &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; to be popular, but your gigs are based on the economy of a few months ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how have the economics of your tech niche been for the last few months? That should give you an idea of what the writing side will be like for the rest of year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T00:49:33.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2531" CreationDate="2011-04-18T12:01:40.177" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suspense is all about &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;anticipation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you've done very nicely is set up an immediate problem, probably a threat - the missing girl. You've also established a mystery - the guy's past and present relationship with the girl. The reader can anticipate both of these being developed and, eventually, resolved. So that's a good start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But suspense can get you a lot farther than that. Consider - after reading the dialogue, does the reader know what to expect from the next page? If he does not, I'd argue that he's not in a lot of suspense - he can't anticipate what will happen over the next few pages, so obviously he can't look forward to whatever is happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd further say that you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; provide the reader anything to anticipate immediately. We don't know what the guy's going to try next (asking more people, I guess). We don't know what the next step with the girl will be, because we know nothing about what's going on with her. We don't know why the ringing phone should interest us. The reader is likely to trust the author long enough to find out the answers to those questions, but &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt;, he's not anticipating anything in particular - just trusting the author that, whatever winds up happening, it'll be interesting. That doesn't mean the piece isn't good, but it's not very suspenseful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what would add suspense would be making clear to the reader what he can anticipate, what he should be looking forward to. Here's some examples of details you could add in that I think would provide readers with the sense of immediate anticipation that you're looking for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The worst thing the guy thinks might have befallen the girl is...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If he doesn't find anything out here, the guy will have to try...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If he doesn't find the girl soon, that'll be bad for the guy because...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the girl got in trouble with anybody, the guy thinks it was most likely with...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The guy does/doesn't think it likely the girl deliberately stood him up to hurt him, because...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The thing that worries the guy most about asking questions in this bar right now is...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice how all of these set up possibilities for the next scene, or that might affect the next scene, or some scene very soon. If the worst thing that could have happened is the girl being stalked by her &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; ex-boyfriend, then the next scene might be a confrontation with him. If the guy's tense because there's some danger to him in being in the bar and asking his questions, the next scene could see that danger come to fruition. That's the feeling you want to be encouraging, if suspense is what you're after: that the reader &lt;em&gt;knows&lt;/em&gt; what's going to happen next, is looking forward to it, is dreading it. They just don't know how it'll turn out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other major way to increase suspense is to focus on the hooks you've already got, and get the reader invested in them. You can do this by increasing their investment in the characters - if the reader cares about a character, then any threat to that character creates suspense - and, if this is the tone you want to take, by ramping up the possible threat to the girl (from &quot;I can't reach the girl I haven't been in touch with for years&quot; to &quot;a girl I've got a complicated relationship with is in clear and present danger.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this is helpful :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T12:01:40.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2542" CreationDate="2011-04-18T15:06:38.337" Score="6" ViewCount="402" Body="&lt;p&gt;For instance, I'm writing a novel where the main character is wandering in a city which represents his wife (symbol number one), but then the places he visits within the city also represent the bad relationship he is having with his wife (e.g. a boring office) (symbol number two). The city also represents how nasty his relationship has become (e.g. There is blood and hair everywhere) (symbol number three). Now, at this point, I'm getting a little bit confused about how to balance all those symbols, and I'm no longer sure if one can contradict or affect the another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if I should just remove some symbols or if there is a good way of organizing them to avoid confusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T13:59:12.540" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T13:59:12.540" Title="How to avoid getting confused while adding symbols within symbols (novel writing)?" Tags="|fiction|symbolism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2541" CreationDate="2011-04-18T15:21:53.977" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, what you're describing are not really metaphors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simile is where you say, &quot;He walked into the room, looking like a giant fish, with a gaping mouth and bulging eyes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A metaphor would be where you describe him as if he really was a fish: &quot;He walked into the room, a giant fish with gaping mouth and bulging eyes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You appear to be talking about symbolism, which is something else entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is when an object, location, event - whatever - represents something else entirely. For example, a character could break their glasses, and this would represent the fact that they are blinded to the truth. In other words, the object symbolises some deeper meaning or concept related to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as a rule of thumb, anything that you (the author) finds confusing, your readers will definitely find confusing. Therefore, keep things simple. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My instinct suggests that you should avoid getting bogged down thinking in terms of symbolism for now, and concentrate on writing your story: flesh out the places, the characters, their relationships etc. Symbolism generally arises naturally from the novel itself, or can be added/elaborated during the revision stage, rather than being forced in the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; To elaborate further, based on your comment below. I understand you want to use the city as a symbol of their relationship, but the symbol will likely arise because of how the character(s) relate to the city based on their relationship. To make symbols work, the symbols need to mean something to the characters themselves, not just the reader. So what I meant by the symbols arising naturally from the story is because, if you've told the story of the relationship between characters, the symbols you want to express should become clear to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a random example based on a man and a woman: a man is walking down the street when he passes by a restaurant that has been gutted by fire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On its own, it means nothing, but when we learn that this is where he had his first date with his ex-girlfriend, and that he's now down in the dumps, become an alcoholic etc. because she left him, the restaurant begins to take on the appearance of a symbol. To make it more powerful, perhaps he is a property developer, and on a whim decides to buy the gutted building, and attempts to rebuild it and open his own restaurant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the story concludes, and he's moved on, perhaps found someone else, the restaurant is rebuilt and doing well ... the restaurant has now become a life symbol. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important part here is that the restaurant has meaning to the character, and thus has meaning to the reader. Don't fall into the trap of just inserting symbols that have meaning only to the reader. These are generally not worth your time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to reduce confusion, I would make sure that your symbols have meaning to the character(s), rather than the reader.  Limit your symbol(s) to a specific goal, too. In my case, the restaurant was symbolic of the man trying to piece his life back together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T18:15:09.763" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T18:15:09.763" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2499" CreationDate="2011-04-19T05:35:25.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can put the quotes in a boxed text which includes the quoted footnotes.  This way the quoted footnotes are in boxes, whilst your footnotes are at the bottom of the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T05:35:25.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2544" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-19T05:40:15.883" Score="11" ViewCount="340" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2499/our-note-in-footnote-of-a-book&quot;&gt;Our note in footnote of a book&lt;/a&gt;, Malvolio writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hate numbered foot-notes personally, they're very distracting&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which I agree with, but his recommendation, to use endnotes, I find much more more distracting: what havoc is played with ones grasp of the thread of a text when one fumbles in the back of the book for several seconds finding the note in order to see whether it is the one footnote in ten that is essential to the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are good policies to make footnotes more manageable in text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T22:30:22.577" Title="Avoiding foot&amp;note disease" Tags="|footnotes|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2544" CreationDate="2011-04-19T06:25:55.100" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use foot-notes, if at all, for explanatory material that cannot be fit in-line, but that would help the reader with understanding what he is reading; end-notes are for &lt;em&gt;citations&lt;/em&gt; -- the dead-tree equivalent of hyperlinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T06:25:55.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2544" CreationDate="2011-04-19T08:23:25.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Footnotes should* be used for things like side commentary. They can also be used for brief references, if you wish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Endnotes should* be used when describing extended research material, an annotated bibliography/extended references and other longer notes that aren't considered brief side comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*I say &quot;should&quot;, but it comes down to what you're comfortable with, what is least distracting to the reader, and (importantly) what you do consistently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T08:23:25.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2547" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2548" CreationDate="2011-04-19T15:00:24.190" Score="4" ViewCount="531" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my story, there are two characters: a schoolgirl and a strange person with a creepy mask who gives her a tour in an art museum at night. Well, actually there is a third character; the boyfriend of the girl, but he only answers the phone at the beginning to tell her that he will come later (but never does), and she talks about him all throughout the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will this short novel (approximately 200 pages) be boring to my readers because it only has two characters, and because the whole novel is set in that art museum? Will it be better if there are more? Or should I just stick with the plot without caring about that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-26T04:23:44.753" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T04:23:44.753" Title="Is it possible that my short novel will be boring to my readers because it only has two characters and the location doesn't change?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|readers|novella|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2547" CreationDate="2011-04-19T15:12:50.450" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use as many characters you need. Don't add extra characters unless they relate to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Old Man and the Sea only had two characters (three if you include the marlin).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, remember that these individuals will know of other people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they may not appear in the novel directly, they will have an influence on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Old Man and the Sea mentioned three other characters that never appeared directly, but we know of them through Santiago and Manolin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Also, just to add, even though things take place in a museum, a museum consists of many different rooms and places, so although it's one location, it contains many different locations, too. Even then, having only one location is not necessarily a bad thing (think of the film &quot;Alien&quot;, for example, where the majority of the film takes place on one space ship). If you story calls for one location, then stick with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T15:21:44.670" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T15:21:44.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2547" CreationDate="2011-04-19T15:19:52.553" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once read a book with a cast of thousands and an epic sweep that covered centuries of mythical action, bloody wars, magical happenings and whatnot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read about four chapters and gave up because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The characters were lame.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The dialogue was stilted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The plot was generic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The infodumps were deep, long and seemingly without relevance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read another story about a man dreaming he was climbing to the top of a mountain, where he promptly fell off. That's about all there was to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gripped me from beginning to end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything's possible. It's the story that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T15:19:52.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2499" CreationDate="2011-04-19T15:48:26.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Close to one of the other answers, it is quite common to use&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;EN: meaning Editor's Note&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AN:  Author's Note&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TN:  Translator's Note&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PN:  Publisher's Note&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but make sure to write them in full the first time they are encountered in your book&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another solution is to use a different kind of symbol (for instance numerical for one kind and alphabetical for the other) and different typography (not the same font, block of notes separated by a short rule) for original notes and for added notes.  This is sometimes used in critical editions of ancient texts: one separates notes about the &quot;edition&quot; : choice of words and readings, interpolation of missing words, notes about the &quot;translation&quot;, &quot;meaning&quot;, &quot;context&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can soon become really complex or distracting, eating up a lot of space.&#xA;If you want to do a good job of it I would advise you to choose carefully your word processor program.  For this kind of job I use TeX or XML based systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are both the original author and the translator, why don't you decide to adapt your own text as a new edition incorporating as much as possible in the flow of the sentences ?  It will be easier on the readers.  Just keep invisible (non printable) notes for yourself to keep track of your changes and your evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As many people, I feel that in general books, except for references and unescapable precisions needed for the intelligence of the text by someone who is not the original author, footnotes are best avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Footnotes were particularly useful when texts were typeset using lead characters and a press: it allowed to change and extend text without reworking the copy too much, it was the equivalent of an afterthought of the author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1619" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T15:48:26.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2547" CreationDate="2011-04-19T16:01:08.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why would you add extra &lt;i&gt;anything&lt;/i&gt; if your plot doesn't need it? Most writers have trouble taking things &lt;i&gt;out&lt;/i&gt;, and you're trying to stuff things &lt;i&gt;in?&lt;/i&gt; We should all have such troubles. ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T16:01:08.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2436" CreationDate="2011-04-19T16:10:15.860" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, many reviews mention whether the book is the first, or second novel by this author. Good critics usually take care of knowing the basics about an author they review. A careful publisher has sent the book together with information material where it can be stated. But this information can be misleading, and as others remarked, many writers use pseudonyms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it is perfectly natural to review the first, second, third, ... novel of an author differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a novel is tough. Most of the time, it changes you. There is also an element of craftmanship and lifelong learning in it. You can expect writers to grow with their activity and it is natural to expect more from a second or a third book than from a first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good critics write to be read not only by potential readers but also by authors, to give them perspective, to make them discover implicit relationships between their work and others. You could say the same about good editors. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But there is a point which has not been touched already. Your first published novel might not be your first written novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is well known it can be quite difficult to convince a publisher. And many authors succeeded only with their second, third or even fourth work. Then the question arises of what to do with the previous ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the troubles is that your are probably not the same writer who wrote the older ones. But if you decide to edit them, you take the risk of making it duller to conform to your current personality. It is a point where having a good editor is important. He or she will tell you if it has worth as is, needs a little editing or if you should start something new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is another reason for a review to be different for a second or third book than for a first. A discerning reviewer can guess a lot about the exchange (or lack thereof) between the author and his/her editor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1619" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T02:48:46.303" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T02:48:46.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2532" CreationDate="2011-04-19T16:22:36.800" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on how much work you want to do. If you're willing to put in the time and effort, you can make a decent amount of money doing freelance editing. But it takes time to build up a portfolio and a reputation. You're not going to jump into the field and start making a six figure salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also going to matter how long it takes you to go through pieces accurately. Does it take you an hour to go through twenty pages? Or can you do it in half an hour? This will affect the amount of assignments you can take on without overloading yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a fiction editor, so I'm not sure how much my personal experience can help you but I'll give it a shot. I generally charge a per page rate for my manuscripts. Some places like to charge a per word rate. I generally make about $1700 for 40 hours of work and I've been doing this for about two years now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T16:22:36.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2547" CreationDate="2011-04-19T16:40:53.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A million word novel can be boring and a 500 word story can be gripping. What matters is that it is written well and has a worthwhile story to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heart of Darkness is just 25-30 pages and almost universally appears on any Top 100 literature or novel list. It has plenty of characters and locations, but its power comes from who those characters are, and how they are written, not from the fact that it is set in the jungle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="508" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T16:40:53.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2555" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2557" CreationDate="2011-04-19T16:54:14.273" Score="11" ViewCount="3730" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I avoid legal repercussions for writing a story based on events in my life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mainly, I have experienced events that I would like to share with the world. These events are somewhat disturbing and would expose the truly spiteful side of an individual who has impacted my life in ways that have only made me stronger. I do not plan to focus on that individual, rather on the way my life was altered (and a big portion due to this individual's actions). This story would cover the struggle faced by women (by other women), culture and religion in the workforce. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I have moved on, I continually recount my experience verbally and feel as though it would do better to spread the message and make an impact through the use of the written word. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I accomplish this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Edit: The legal repercussions I refer to include those from the individual, perhaps even the company that I worked for even though they are in no way at fault (except for having such an individual on their payroll).]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1806" LastEditorUserId="163" LastEditDate="2011-04-22T00:18:33.400" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T22:57:04.567" Title="How do I avoid legal repercussions for writing a story based on events in my life?" Tags="|non-fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2474" CreationDate="2011-04-19T16:57:43.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending upon the type of web application the follow may all be useable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Users, visitors, people, customers, associates, managers, professionals, developers, readers, advertisers, subscribers, employees, members, teammates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of generic third-person ways to describe the people who would be using it and sprinkle those in. Keep in mind that users is probably the best overall generic word to use here, so it should be the most frequently used descriptor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="508" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T16:57:43.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2555" CreationDate="2011-04-19T17:19:02.373" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before I give some suggestions, the best advice I can give you is speak to a lawyer directly about your personal situation. Unless there is one on the forum, I really wouldn't take any other advice as gospel, including what I'm going to say below. Also, legal issues will differ from country to country, so what's true in the US may not hold true in the UK (for example, if a book is published in the US and the UK, many authors and publishers are sued in the UK because of very favourable libel laws).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no substitute for good legal advice, so if you're serious about writing your work as a piece of non-fiction, pay for it. You won't regret it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, if you're afraid of repercussions from the individuals you mention in your book, I imagine the usual strategy is to change names, places, and appearances, at least enough so that they cannot easily be associated with the individuals in question. Also consider writing under a pseudonym. Girl With A One Track Mind was written with both of these strategies I believe. But, be warned, it can backfire when/if your name is leaked. The author of that book lost her career, and it deeply affected her personal life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T17:19:02.373" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2558" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-19T19:00:49.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions to do with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to write criticism (e.g. movie reviews)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to interpret and respond to criticism of one's work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to obtain constructive criticism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and any other questions pertaining to writing criticism and receiving it for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please do not use this tag for critique questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T18:36:42.553" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T18:36:42.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2559" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-19T19:00:49.923" Score="0" Body="Questions dealing with writing criticism, and with receiving criticism from others. Please do not use this tag for critique questions. " OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T18:36:09.677" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T18:36:09.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2547" CreationDate="2011-04-19T19:04:22.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. It will not be boring &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; of your character count or your locations. Neither of these have strict requirements to satisfy before you break through the excitement barrier. The quality of dialogue, characters, locations and events will have a larger impact on excitement than the mere count of those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1516" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T19:04:22.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2547" CreationDate="2011-04-19T19:30:11.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only real answer is whether or not you can write a 200 page story in a museum that is interesting. Those circumstances don't necessarily disqualify you but, I personally would have trouble with a plot that stays there for 200 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That above statement doesn't really mean anything to your circumstance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1808" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T19:30:11.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="312" CreationDate="2011-04-19T19:36:06.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a hard question to answer, it will vary based on your genre. Young teen fiction, probably none or very vague scenes left mostly up to the imagination, there have been many answers to this effect already though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you asking for the maximum amount? Well it varies, with adult fiction as much as is necessary but there's a reasonable ceiling to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as your circumstance goes I would say it depends on how important it is to the story. Is it necessary to say how the sex went down between the thug and the prostitute or is it enough that he went to a prostitute. In the second case, gloss over details, in the first case I can still recommend vagueness, but if your story calls for explicit sex then that is what you have to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all comes down to the story and what you want to achieve with this scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1808" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T19:36:06.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2555" CreationDate="2011-04-19T19:41:57.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definetly suggesting that you talk to a lawyer, it's simply the perfect advice. Alternatively, make sure you do not defame anyone and an especially safe move would be to change the names entirely to not make the individuals identifiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If if everything you say is true and unaltered it can still cause messy trouble down the line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, talking to the lawyers is the best idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1808" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T19:41:57.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2520" CreationDate="2011-04-19T19:54:29.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very hard question to answer clearly, I typical reread passages and anytime it becomes unclear who I'm referring to I will use their name and whenever it feels excessive use pronouns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1808" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T19:54:29.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2547" CreationDate="2011-04-20T00:45:57.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember there is always a journey in a story. Many writers will call this the &quot;plot&quot;, but the two don't co-incide compeletely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've put your two characters on a journey with each other through the museum. What will they encounter about themselves and each other? What will they learn? How will they react? How will they change? How will their reactions change? What about the journey you take the reader on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, too, that an art museum has all the artwork as additional &quot;characters&quot;. If one character is giving a tour, then the art &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; play an important role in what happens. Or at least, that's what the tour guide is going to clearly expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T00:45:57.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2566" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-20T02:47:50.517" Score="6" ViewCount="749" Body="&lt;p&gt;This should be probably cross-posted to tex.stackexchange.com. However, since my question is more oriented towards writers who also have a firm grasp of technology, I'm posting it here in hopes of getting a better answer. (I hope the collaboration part won't stir up a hornets' nest, it's merely meant to facilitate discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LaTex provides a really good document preparation system, but the specifics can be a bit stiff for newbies to learn. Similarly, UNIX tools like git, etc. provide a good form of version control for something like a novel (This concept has been already explored in Flashbake - &lt;a href=&quot;http://bitbucketlabs.net/flashbake/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://bitbucketlabs.net/flashbake/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering whether there was a tool that combines both of these with a newbie-accessible frontend, so an author can generate the complete manuscript of his work whenever needed, and rollback if needed as well. Is there such a tool in production; or have people on this board ever thought of making one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1811" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T22:14:22.737" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T22:14:22.737" Title="LaTex + version control writing package" Tags="|software|tools|latex|version-control|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2570" CreationDate="2011-04-20T03:53:31.127" Score="33" ViewCount="2335" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He worries – well, not worries, but laments a little – that he senses people don't read Henry James anymore&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(sentence source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/19/135508305/the-sad-beautiful-fact-that-were-all-going-to-miss-almost-everything?sc=tw&amp;amp;cc=share&quot;&gt;Monkey See, NPR Blogs&lt;/a&gt; ) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used this style myself occasionally. But it really doesn't go well with the purist in me. It seems more like how the author would speak this sentence, not write it. If you were to correct something, why would you not just correct it in the first place and remove the error altogether?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thought is that the author illustrates his flow of thought to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1498" LastActivityDate="2011-07-23T03:47:15.703" Title="Explicitly correcting yourself while writing - how appropriate is it ?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2567" CreationDate="2011-04-20T08:05:17.190" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think, in the right context, it's perfectly acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a character telling the story, then the conversational style you refer to would probably be fine if it suits the character. It's personal, adds a bit of colour to the piece, and introduces an almost informal, friendly tone. Even if the author is the central narrator, it can work, but it depends on the overall style of the piece itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of style can also be used to demonstrate uncertainty or unreliability on the part of the narrator, which can be a useful device i.e. they're not sure about certain facts. However, I would say readers like certainty as they don't want to doubt the story, so you'd need to be cautious how you use this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T08:05:17.190" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2566" CreationDate="2011-04-20T08:55:15.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been playing around with Scrivener (for Windows) for a few days now because of * ahem * Lauren Ipsum's almost evangelical zeal regarding the product ; I must admit I'm quite impressed with it so far, and am seriously considering using it permanently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener 2 does have a form of version control in the form of &quot;Snapshots&quot;. I haven't used it as yet, but it is available in the Windows version. From the blurb on their website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Take a snapshot of the document before&#xA;  you embark on an edit or major rewrite&#xA;  and you can always roll back to the&#xA;  previous. This is a much more complete&#xA;  version control as compared to the&#xA;  collaboration tools you find in other&#xA;  text editors. You can actually saving&#xA;  the whole document rather than just&#xA;  tracking changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I've just started with Scrivener, I can honestly say it's been very, very easy to grasp and use (spent about 5 minutes just having a look at the introductory video, and off I went). Definitely easy for newbies to grasp immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generating the manuscript when you're ready appears to be very straight forward, too, and you can also send it to different formats (PDF, Word .doc and .docx, printer, .odt ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must say, I've found it very useful, easy to use, and a great way to help you structure and plan your work. One nice thing about it is that it's not cluttered with things I don't actually need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm still trying it out, but so far, thumbs up, and would recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T08:55:15.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2567" CreationDate="2011-04-20T11:26:19.437" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Correcting yourself in mid-sentence is not only grammatically and contextually fine, it is one of the classical rhetorical figures, called &lt;strong&gt;metanoia&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his book &lt;em&gt;Classical English Rhetoric&lt;/em&gt;, Ward Farnsworth defines it thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Metanoia&lt;/strong&gt; (met-a-&lt;em&gt;noi&lt;/em&gt;-a) means correcting onself; the speaker is, to take the old Greek name of the device literally, changing his mind about whatever has just been said. Of course it might seem more efficient to just say the thing right the first time, but metanoia can have attractive rhetorical consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. To stop and correct oneself usually is unexpected; it slightly disrupts the flow of a piece of writing or speech. The disruption attracts attention and gives emphasis to the revised claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. The device allows the speaker to say something and then take it back, thus avoiding some responsibility for the utterance while still leaving it to linger with the listener; retracting a statement does not entirely erase the experience of hearing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. Metanoia can have a mild persuasive value. The speaker may utter a less controversial claim, then revise it to make it stronger. This brings the reader along more gently than announcing the stronger claim on its own. Or conversely the stronger claim may be offered first but then reduced to something less ambitious that seems easy to accept by comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d. Metanoia, like an &lt;em&gt;aposiopesis&lt;/em&gt;, often creates the impression that the speaker is working out his words — that he is thinking, not just repeating something already thought out and polished. Sometimes the device more specifically suggests a conflict within the speaker. Different views or impulses audibly struggle for mastery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e. Metanoia can create an impression of scrupulousness, as the speaker starts to say one thing but then feels obliged to take the initiative in correcting it. (It also can suggest overscrupulousness, as when the speaker fusses too much.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T11:26:19.437" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2571" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2573" CreationDate="2011-04-20T12:13:58.413" Score="12" ViewCount="1352" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm very responsible when I'm writing a tech book or article under contract. I have a deadline, my editor is expecting my work, and I turn it in on time. Sometimes I put it off a bit, but I pride myself on making deadlines, and I will do whatever is necessary to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But without this external motivation, when I'm writing for myself, I don't have the same urgency. It's too easy for me to tell myself that I'll do it later. What I need is a deadline for my novel, or parts of my novel.  How can I simulate that same sense of urgency in a way I can take seriously?  Just promising myself isn't good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T18:06:51.873" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T18:06:51.873" Title="How can I create my own deadline?" Tags="|process|psychology-of-writing|motivation|habits|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2571" CreationDate="2011-04-20T12:50:41.857" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tell your friends, family, spouse that you will finish your novel in October, 15th (or whatever). Or tell it only your first draft readers. They will expect your work to be finished then. They will nag. You have a deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T12:50:41.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2571" CreationDate="2011-04-20T12:51:43.247" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suffer from this all the time. My wife says I always write better to a deadline, but I struggle to figure out how to set deadlines and stick them. Some ideas I've been thinking about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get someone you know to set a deadline for you, and behave as if you're writing for them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find writing competitions on-line and write towards meeting that deadline. You may win something, you may not, but it will help condition you to write towards a deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write stories for people you know based on dates e.g. you want a story ready for Christmas, a gift for someone's birthday.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write with the purpose of submitting to a magazine for a particular issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're prepared to spend the money, find some creative writing courses and do them, not with the objective of getting the qualification, but more because they are geared towards enforcing some discipline to meet deadlines for submitted work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, no-one except yourself can commit to a deadline, and enforce the discipline to meet that deadline (trust me, I know), but hopefully this could help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T12:51:43.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2571" CreationDate="2011-04-20T14:56:01.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need the heart attack feeling of an approaching deadline to turn in good work how about setting interim deadlines, in effect multiple mini heart attacks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing that you can give yourself a daily reminder (or nag) by going to habitforge and set up a daily email reminder. This will ask you if you did what you said you'd do by answering only yes or no. So maybe you need to set a goal of writing 10 minutes a day, every day. Set this up and track it in habitforge. Most people don't like answering no so you get some automatic extrinsic motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1814" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T14:56:01.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2566" CreationDate="2011-04-20T15:42:06.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://celtx.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Celtx&lt;/a&gt; for writing screenplays, since it takes care of all of those messy formatting details.  And it's free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had to manually incorporate version control in my writing process, since it doesn't appear that Celtx is capable of version control at this time.  I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://mercurial.selenic.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mercurial&lt;/a&gt; for version control.  Every time I commit changes to the repository, I export a separate text version of the document and check it in alongside the original file.  The text document is the version which I use to diff against, since the diff tool won't recognize the Celtx format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a hack of a solution, but it works for me.  Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T15:42:06.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="620" CreationDate="2011-04-20T16:16:24.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For technical documentation JPL has actually defined &quot;The Levels of edit&quot;. There are nine in all. Well worth reading: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.technical-expressions.com/learn2edit/levels-of-edit/levels_of_edit.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.technical-expressions.com/learn2edit/levels-of-edit/levels_of_edit.pdf&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1814" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T16:16:24.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2579" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2582" CreationDate="2011-04-21T13:10:16.283" Score="5" ViewCount="514" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always find myself trying to make dialogues perfect. For example, the perfect advice, the perfect punch line, the perfect joke or irony. OR maybe if the characters talk continuously without stopping, without making coherent phrases or having breaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if the reader feels that the story is kind of fake if every dialogue is really too perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;So you are a kind of super hero? she asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Maybe.&quot; he said, after putting on his glassed, his leather jacket, and getting on his motorbike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;So you are a kind of super hero? she asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm — not very sure,&quot; he said, &quot;I'm not sure if I can save anyone.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2011-04-21T13:21:48.110" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T20:35:17.173" Title="Is a novel less credible if the dialogues are too perfect?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2579" CreationDate="2011-04-21T13:16:14.000" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;People should talk as people talk. If the flow is in character with, well, your character, then it's ok, it won't be less credible. But if, say, a street though is talking like a Duke... well, that'd not happen in real life, would it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be &lt;em&gt;always perfect&lt;/em&gt; for a character that is that kind of person; it would add to the story, let people know about the characters. It can be occasionally perfect for someone who has the right level of education, the right personality. Could be mock perfection, or ironic perfection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T13:16:14.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2555" CreationDate="2011-04-21T13:35:35.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides getting legal advice, which is a sound move, I suggest you make it happen somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw you reply that it would take some of the luster, but think of the possibilities: you can change the place entirely (say, another city or country), you could enhance factors that would help your message come through. You'd have to set up the atmosphere just right, and having an invented place, or a half imagined one, would help you: a much too familiar site for the story might make you trip over the descriptions, and or skip some details, just because of the deep familiarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest changing even the industry of the company you work(ed) at, if possible, and the gender of some people involved. Names being changed should only be the beginning, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's delicate matters, and your lawyer does recommend changing names and other stuff, then the best you can do is leveraging the changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, just the way the setting in which you lived helped your situations happen, so can the setting you create in the book help the character's situations happen... so you'd have to set them parallel enough to carry your message. And your message, which is born of these situations, is what I think is most important, and is what can be best transmitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T13:35:35.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2579" CreationDate="2011-04-21T14:06:24.887" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your two examples are from very different people. The first guy is confident, mocking, and ironic. The second guy is insecure, nervous, and looking for validation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as iajrz points out, it depends on your characters. Would that particular character always have &lt;i&gt;le mot juste&lt;/i&gt; on the tip of his tongue, or does he suffer from &lt;i&gt;l'esprit de l'escalier&lt;/i&gt; like most people? As long as you're consistent, whichever one you pick is fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would caution that if all your characters speak perfectly all the time, unless you're doing it that way on purpose and tipping your hand to the reader about it somehow (for example, if you were writing about a kind of utopia where everyone was trained to speak beautifully), I think it will start to sound fake. If you feel like you can't tell, mention it to your beta readers when you hand off your first draft that it's a weakness and you would like them to be on the lookout for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T14:06:24.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2579" CreationDate="2011-04-21T14:06:38.517" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find this question strange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the dialogue is the perfect thing for the character - in other words, if that character was a living, breathing person, and this is 100% exactly what they would say - then you've achieved something most writers would kill for. I don't quite see how that could ever detract from your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the dialogue is perfect because it's what you, the author, wants to say, then that's a big problem. Don't put your words in the character's mouth, because it will never ring true, and that's when the reader smells a fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T14:06:38.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2579" CreationDate="2011-04-21T14:56:36.467" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think allowing your characters to share these perfect quips would be helpful.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I love when characters can dish it out as well as take it.  I don't feel like it's unreal.  If anything, it makes more sense for witty people to hang out with other witty people.  You start to develop chemistry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have just one character who gets all the good lines, I think you'll have to work to make sure that people are going to really LIKE that character or s/he is going to get annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realize that the story world is not real world.  We don't want to read how people &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; talk.  We want something more.  Hyper-reality.  Otherwise we'd just go talk to our neighbors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T14:56:36.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2585" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-21T22:30:08.467" Score="5" ViewCount="679" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the formats I've seen for writing a bibliography, the author is always put first, and then the title. Are there some bibliographies where the title is put before the author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1671" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-21T01:00:21.200" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T17:02:43.330" Title="Writing a bibliography" Tags="|academic-writing|citations|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2585" CreationDate="2011-04-21T22:42:59.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chicago Style states that bibliographic list entries should be of the format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Author last name, Author first name. &lt;em&gt;Title&lt;/em&gt;. Location of press: Press name, Year Published&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See here for more:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isr.bucknell.edu/img/assets/6535/chicago.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.isr.bucknell.edu/img/assets/6535/chicago.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick scan through my bookshelf, and I can't find a single bibliography that puts the title first before the author, so I would suggest this is not usual. However, there may be some styles out there that allow it. I imagine that, as long as you're consistent, it should be okay, but I would probably stick to the more well known format above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T22:42:59.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2585" CreationDate="2011-04-21T23:12:35.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The person or group for which you're writing the bibliography probably has a required style, so you should go by that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm familiar with APA and MLA, and they both put the author first.  You need to have the first word in the bibliography consistent with the word you use in your in-text citations (or footnotes, if you're still doing those), and most styles that I'm aware of use the author's name in the citations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If no author is available, things change a little, but it's pretty rare to find a truly reputable source of information for which you can't find an author or authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T23:12:35.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1962" CreationDate="2011-04-21T23:14:47.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I’m not following strict grammar rules&#xA;  here (for starters, I should use “It&#xA;  had taken me”), but I’m going for a&#xA;  tone that is both informal and&#xA;  immediate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's absolutely nothing in the grammar of English that would compel you to use the past perfect in this example, Jen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1827" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T23:14:47.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2592" CreationDate="2011-04-22T05:00:15.080" Score="15" ViewCount="2070" Body="&lt;p&gt;What kinds of things need to be included in a corporate style guide that can't already be found in S&amp;amp;W, AP, Chicago Style, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="323" LastEditorUserId="296" LastEditDate="2011-04-22T14:22:09.860" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T00:39:04.987" Title="What needs to be included in a corporate style guide?" Tags="|style|editing|resources|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2591" CreationDate="2011-04-22T06:51:04.057" Score="9" ViewCount="753" Body="&lt;p&gt;The traditional way of presenting a novel is in a book. I know about e-books too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know another digital ways of presenting a novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, a blog, a twitter novel or something like the mixture of a website and a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having links and images in some places or something like that? (Something that could have also a bit of web design).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-04-22T22:45:09.623" LastActivityDate="2013-05-04T02:25:26.603" Title="New digital ways of presenting a novel in 2011?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2590" CreationDate="2011-04-22T10:10:59.733" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many different ways of presenting books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blogs have been used to present work. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Orwell Diaries&lt;/a&gt; presented complete pages of George Orwell's work for each day in his diary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Twitter can present work one sentence at a time, or snippets with links to longer work elsewhere. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_novels_not_big_success_stories.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ReadWriteWeb&lt;/a&gt; for some info. For tips on how to write a Twitter novel, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitip.com/how-to-start-a-twitter-novel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blogs can also be used to create interactive books that allow individuals to comment on individual sections, chapters, sentences etc. For example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CommentPress&lt;/a&gt; for Wordpress (examples &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress/examples/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mediawiki.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MediaWiki&lt;/a&gt; (and other Wiki software) can be used for open collaborative works. At &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WikiBooks&lt;/a&gt;, for example, they're generating collaborative text books. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wearesmarter.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;We are Smarter than Me&lt;/a&gt; was written as a collaborative effort, too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The recent book, Visit from the Goon Squad, which won a Pulitzer Prize, had &lt;a href=&quot;http://motherjones.com/media/2010/05/mojo-interview-jennifer-egan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sections written as Power Point presentations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The classic &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Choose Your Own Adventure&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_Fantasy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fighting Fantasy&lt;/a&gt; style of books have found a good place on-line, as it makes this style quite easy to follow. Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dmoz.org/Games/Video_Games/Adventure/Browser_Based/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a list&lt;/a&gt; of some of these.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://sophieproject.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Sophie Project&lt;/a&gt;, which is specialist software for reading, writing, and distributing complex networked multimedia documents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T10:10:59.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2589" CreationDate="2011-04-22T12:24:57.150" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished working on a 150-page Corporate Style Guide, so while I can answer this question in &lt;i&gt;great&lt;/i&gt; detail if you want, my answer is not for WritersSE, I think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AP and Chicago are mostly about the construction of writing &amp;mdash; when to use a semi-colon, how to capitalize, the placement of someone's title. A Corporate Style Guide, also called Corporate Standards, is much more about &lt;em&gt;design&lt;/em&gt;. It covers fonts, colors, logos, graphics, branding, positioning of elements, and maybe specific phrases used by the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of 150 pages, six cover wording, and there's only one grammar rule. Everything else is about how to create a document in InDesign or Quark or PowerPoint so that everything is &quot;on brand.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/b&gt; Since you requested it, I'm grabbing information from several style guides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Typography:&lt;/i&gt; font, size, leading, kerning, and space before for body text, heads, subheads, text after subheads, bulleted text and the bullets, footnotes, legal copy, disclaimers, pull quotes, page numbers, and company contact information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Colors:&lt;/i&gt; Corporate colors, product-specific colors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Logos:&lt;/i&gt; Approved corporate logos, non-approved logos. How big the logo should be. Where the logo should be placed on the page. Partner logos and where they go in relation to the company logo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Photos and Credits:&lt;/i&gt; If a photo of a writer is used, what size, color, and position. Type specs for bylines. If stock photos are being purchased, guidelines about what imagery is appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;What paper can be used:&lt;/i&gt; General paper preferences and special paper used for certain pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Table of Contents:&lt;/i&gt; font, size, leading, kerning, space before, tab stop, width of box&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Charts:&lt;/i&gt; font, size, leading, kerning, and space before; approved colors and tints; visual examples; how to represent negative numbers; when to use percentages; how to handle footnotes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Layout:&lt;/i&gt; Examples of every conceivable kind of printed piece the company distributes, including stationery. Placement of logos, titles, text, margins, and page numbers are specified. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;PowerPoint:&lt;/i&gt; Everything in the previous sections, but for PowerPoint slides rather than printed piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Word:&lt;/i&gt; How to create stationery in Word. Position of the logo, fonts to use, margins, what information goes in the footer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Emails:&lt;/i&gt; Font and size. Instructions about subject line, who to CC, and the signature block to append.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The phone:&lt;/i&gt; The exact wording of what to say on your voicemail, and what to say if you are on vacation. How to answer the phone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Wording:&lt;/i&gt; Special phrases the company uses. Grammar quirks. When to use the serial comma. Spelling out numbers. How to format certain phrases in body copy. How to format phone numbers and times of day. How a press release is structured and worded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T00:39:04.987" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T00:39:04.987" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2585" CreationDate="2011-04-22T17:49:37.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Craig knows of no &quot;title-author&quot; citation styles; neither do I. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a pragmatic reason not to put the title first: since titles may be long, titles are often permitted to be shortened on second and subsequent mention.  To avoid the alphabetical ordering with title-author of the references to completely change from the full version to the short version, it would be necessary to forbid omission of words at the beginning of the title, which would be a very awkward constraint.  With author-title, the &quot;jumping around&quot; of references is much smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So besides the absence of evidence, I think we have reason to believe there are no such styles.  Not that foolish construction of citation styles is unheard of, mind...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="137" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T17:49:37.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2589" CreationDate="2011-04-22T20:46:23.687" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As another example, you can look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/userexperience/conceptual/APStyleGuide/APSG_2009.pdf&quot;&gt;Apple Publications&#xA;Style Guide&lt;/a&gt; (2009 version; 224 page PDF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It includes information such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their funky capitalization&lt;br&gt;&#xA;ex: Mac mini vs. Mac Pro&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The right way to spell Blu-ray&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When to use &lt;em&gt;camcorder&lt;/em&gt; versus &lt;em&gt;video camera&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use of &lt;em&gt;dialog&lt;/em&gt; versus &lt;em&gt;dialog box&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General language usage&lt;br&gt;&#xA;ex: &quot;&lt;em&gt;comprise&lt;/em&gt;: A whole &lt;em&gt;comprises&lt;/em&gt; parts. Parts &lt;em&gt;constitute&lt;/em&gt; a whole. Don’t use &lt;em&gt;is comprised of&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When to use the em dash, en dash, hyphen, and minus characters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, it contains a little of everything from general English usage to specific information about products. If you write about tech, it's a very handy resource to keep around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T20:46:23.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2595" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-24T00:50:12.710" Score="7" ViewCount="291" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I assume that the rights to my history book &lt;em&gt;Frontier Theatre&lt;/em&gt; (Sono Nis 1983) reverted wholly back to me when the book went out of print around 1992? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The contract was a standard pre-digital royalty book contract. People can access my book piecemeal via Amazon and Google books or whatever, by paying (much to my disdain, as I am getting zero remuneration for what has become a standard academic reference work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I &quot;Kindle&quot; the book myself? Should I approach the existing online re-publishers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1829" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-04-26T09:44:20.090" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T09:44:20.090" Title="Can I ePublish my out-of-print history book?" Tags="|legal|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2480" CreationDate="2011-04-24T02:49:17.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As another side to Standback's answer, in scifi, you don't want to -explain- things, you want the explanation to come out as a matter of how people talk. Most of the fun of scifi is figuring out exactly whats going on. That is to say, -some- confusion is OK, giving the reader a chance to figure it out; you don't want to confuse the reader unintentionally (in your example, by having the reader not knowing which Earth is which (unless that of course is a major point of the story that they are actually confused).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1809" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T02:49:17.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2595" CreationDate="2011-04-24T03:04:20.170" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing is: Not all publishers wrote their contracts to revert the rights back to the author just because the book went out of print! The fact that they were doing nothing with the book does not necessarily mean that the rights revert to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to have your lawyer look over your contract. If you can't get hold of your contract (you lost your copy, for instance), then you might have to go back to the original publisher (or better, your agent if you had one) to ask for a copy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't have one either, then you'll need to work out with them whether the rights reverted or not. It's possible they completely do not care, and thus may be willing to say 'yep, all yours!', but you won't know till you ask. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't get hold of the contract one way or another, then proceeding without getting the publisher to say it's yours is risky - they could suddenly (and stupidly) decide to hassle you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="679" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T03:04:20.170" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2598" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2600" CreationDate="2011-04-24T06:45:24.660" Score="9" ViewCount="8118" Body="&lt;p&gt;For instance I'm describing the park of an art museum in a foggy day. I'm not sure if I should start with the fog, wind, grass, threes, walking paths, buildings, stairs or something else. Is there a good order rule to describe a setting (so that the reader get a clear picture of the where the story is located)?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2018-02-03T13:04:20.517" Title="In what order should I describe a setting?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|description|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2598" CreationDate="2011-04-24T07:15:06.880" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if there's a rule, but I have a meta-rule: the description has to follow an eye-line.  That is, everything is described in the order that a person might see it.  So I might start with the sky, then the trees then the dirt; or the outside of the building, then the doorway, the foyer, the corridor, and then the room.  Something to give the user a sense of &lt;em&gt;movement&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm basically aping the camera motion from a movie, which may or may not be a good thing in itself, but at least it give me -- and maybe the reader -- some structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T07:15:06.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2598" CreationDate="2011-04-24T08:04:50.863" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;You almost certainly want to avoid a shopping list of details about the park. You're not describing the wind &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the trees &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the building &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt;... You're describing one unified moment in space and time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to focus on &lt;strong&gt;what the reader needs to know for the story to make sense&lt;/strong&gt; (he needs to know the scene is in a park, and not in out of space; if there's going to be anything happening in or around the park's pond, you want the reader to be aware that the pond exists), and on &lt;strong&gt;what you can use to create atmosphere&lt;/strong&gt; (this scene is going to be calm and serene, like the park; or: the park is wilting and poorly-kept, emphasizing the story's squalor and disorder). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There must be millions of ways to describe setting, but a simple one is this: start with an establishing shot; one or two clear sentences that tell the reader &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; the scene takes place, and maybe touches upon the mood. Then pick two or three details that are easiest for you to use for &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; of the goals I mentioned (e.g. you choose the pond because it's important to the location, and you describe it as being peaceful and smooth because that's the atmosphere you want to convey). Since the establishing shot has conveyed the most immediate and crucial information, these details won't be confusing, and can be mentioned in any order - unless one of those details is unusual (&quot;the pond was smooth, the trees swayed in the wind, and the hieroglyphic-covered merry-go-round tinkled a jolly tune&quot; - you want unusual details &lt;strong&gt;first&lt;/strong&gt;, just as a person's attention would be drawn to them) or particularly important to the plot (in which case you want to prevent the reader from skimming over it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way is to go the opposite route - focus on one small detail, and ripple outwards from there, explaining how that one detail ties in with important elements of the larger setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing here is to understand there's no &quot;right order,&quot; because you're not filling out a list. You're conveying an experience; the correct order is whatever conveys the experience best. That might be &quot;the experience of entering the park and looking around,&quot; or it might be &quot;the experience of looking for a restful spot away from that hideous museum,&quot; or &quot;the experience of being chased through a museum by radioactive zombies&quot;. Each of these will describe the setting differently, focusing on different details, and in a different order. If you don't know what experience your description is trying to convey, then stop and figure it out - if you don't know why the reader should be interested in your description, then he probably won't be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited to add:&lt;/strong&gt; A helpful and easy exercise: choose a few setting descriptions in books you've enjoyed. See if you can list the &quot;order&quot; the author describes different details in, within each description. See if you understand the structure the author's chosen for that description - and why it's a good fit for that scene. I suspect you'll find some very interesting techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T14:29:48.397" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T14:29:48.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2598" CreationDate="2011-04-24T09:39:16.787" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Describe first whatever will pull the reader into the scene. Period. There is no canonical order you should follow. If there were such a thing, it would make for a lot of dull repetition, and even fewer books would get read than they do now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, try to find the detail that will pull the reader in: the telling detail that makes an emotional connection with what is about to be described. Who cares what the sky looks like if it has no bearing on what the scene is about? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, consider this paragraph about an escape:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A beam of light lanced through the darkness, immediately followed by the sound of dogs baying and snarling on a leash. Pain shot through his damaged ankle as he rose to his feet, and he squelched the scream of anguish that pushed into his throat. He peered through the murk, trying to judge how much free ground still lay between him and his pursuers. Stay or run? It was still an uphill mile, a treacherous scrabble over rocks like the one that had twisted his foot, till he could reach the border and safety. And they might even pursue him beyond, maybe for miles. How long could he keep going if they did?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the details essential to story are revealed, and the focus is on the details that are important to the character and, hence, the reader. It is that kind of detail that you must find and reveal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T09:39:16.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2595" CreationDate="2011-04-24T13:38:51.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to contact your publisher and ask.&#xA;I'm in a similar situation. I contacted my publisher and am awaiting an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorUserId="1679" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T17:48:38.937" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T17:48:38.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2603" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2605" CreationDate="2011-04-24T17:50:27.547" Score="6" ViewCount="423" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been writing an action/adventure novel and am having a tough time deciding whether the voice of the writer should undergo a slight/moderate but not a complete change with the point of view character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came up with this question when I was thinking of a more efficient way to connect with the reader and make them feel what the character is feeling (inclusive of the tools of interior monologues etc.), but unfortunately, it did not work and the exclusiveness of the writer's voice was fading away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my first literary piece and I do not have any prior experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please throw some light!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="1768" LastEditDate="2015-06-28T18:53:37.213" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T18:53:37.213" Title="Voice of the author changes with the pov a good idea?" Tags="|fiction|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2604" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2616" CreationDate="2011-04-24T18:28:22.717" Score="11" ViewCount="518" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel. I also have good drawing skills. I would like to add illustrations of the setting, locations, and characters. I may include 8 or 10 illustrations (the novel is approximately 200 pages long). I have never seen a novel with illustrations. I wonder if readers will feel like they are reading a children's storybook if I include them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T17:57:17.437" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T17:57:17.437" Title="Will my readers feel like they are reading a children's storybook if there are illustrations in my novel?" Tags="|fiction|novel|artwork|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2603" CreationDate="2011-04-24T18:49:25.003" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's probably a good idea to make a distinction: The writer and the narrator are two different &quot;people,&quot; one real and one fictional. Most of the time, you don't want the writer's voice in the novel. Tell the novel through the voices of either the POV characters or a narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, here's another matter altogether: Whether the narrator and the POV character are the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an intimate POV, the narrator kinda melts away, and each scene is told in the voice of the POV character. In a more distant POV, the story is told in the voice of the narrator—a fictional, not-directly-mentioned, observer with some kind of attitude toward the story and its characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So use a narrator when you want to comment on the story and its characters, either explicitly, or implicitly through the narrator's tone, diction, choice of words, and so on. If you're not trying to do that, use the characters' voices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer's voice is rare in novels, sometimes used for experimental, self-referential stuff. Perhaps other folks can give examples of novels written in the writer's voice, rather than the voice of a narrator or characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T18:49:25.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2604" CreationDate="2011-04-24T19:21:16.283" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen novels with illustrations. But I wouldn't care too much about it, because I'm sure your publisher will tell you, if he thinks it is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to self-publish, I would include them. I see no harm and you can use it as unique selling proposition. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T19:21:16.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2604" CreationDate="2011-04-24T22:32:35.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;They do exist, although they are a rarity. You need to ask yourself if the illustrations serve a purpose beyond that of letting you use your artistic skills. Will they distract or add? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T22:32:35.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2604" CreationDate="2011-04-25T13:39:57.203" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jurassic Park&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Flatland&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Cryptonomicon&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Dead or Alive&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;The Last Oracle&lt;/em&gt; (at least) all have illustrations in them that do not detract from the story - and in many ways may enhance it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1317" LastEditorUserId="1317" LastEditDate="2012-03-23T12:55:05.870" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T12:55:05.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2604" CreationDate="2011-04-25T14:57:05.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, people won't feel like its a children's book. As other people said, it is relatively common in adult literature. But know that it is unlikely to actually happen unless you are well-established. It increases the cost of printing tremendously, since images have a much higher printing quality necessary to &quot;look good&quot; than words do. Typically only with &quot;guaranteed successes&quot; like Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings do publishers take the risk of including decent illustrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is not possible, an alternative is posting them in full glory on your web page as an extra, and referencing the page in the book. Invested fans will seek out that material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T14:57:05.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2474" CreationDate="2011-04-25T16:29:58.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across some advice on technical writing that said you should talk about users - that is, real people by using &quot;you&quot;. You can then refer to the system in the third person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem occurs often in the unix system admin world that you need to create user accounts for different purposes. For example instead of using &quot;root&quot; you may need to create a separate system account (for example, &lt;em&gt;appuser&lt;/em&gt;) to own certain processes but that nevertheless does not have root level rights to the entire system. Developers often refer to these types of accounts as users as well just to confuse things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1814" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T16:29:58.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2617" CreationDate="2011-04-25T16:59:52.863" Score="7" ViewCount="1055" Body="&lt;p&gt;For instance, If I write a novel which has the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The universe goes through a gradual&#xA;  transition from one condition, to a&#xA;  different condition,  without any&#xA;  abrupt changes.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After reading the inscription, Maru&#xA;  closed her eyes, and tried to imagine that for&#xA;  while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Things in the universe are&#xA;  ever-changing. They have been&#xA;  undergoing a continuous change for&#xA;  billions and billions of years, and&#xA;  they will keep like this forever. What&#xA;  once was an plant or an animal will&#xA;  transform in something else in the future.” Icaro&#xA;  said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases like this, should I simplify the words so that a 10 years old kid can understand the novel? Should I give practical examples? Or connect that idea to the characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2011-04-25T17:21:52.320" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T07:28:11.173" Title="How to attract the average reader to an &quot;intellectual&quot; novel?" Tags="|novel|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2613" CreationDate="2011-04-25T17:13:05.570" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The average person can understand what you wrote. The average reader is smarter than the average person. You're in no danger of losing people intellectually, at least not with that passage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T17:13:05.570" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2604" CreationDate="2011-04-25T20:38:28.703" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you need to worry about &quot;seeming like a kid's book,&quot; I think you need to worry about making a professional submission. On two points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why do you think your novel &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have illustrations, when most don't? Do they add anything more to your story than similar illustrations would to other books in your genre? If not, then whatever considerations apply to illustrations in most books, probably apply to yours as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While &quot;good drawing skills&quot; are great to have, even if a publisher is persuaded he &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; want to include illustrations, that by no means implies that he wants &lt;strong&gt;yours&lt;/strong&gt; specifically. Illustrations will be a huge element of book design and presentation, and it's generally very important to the publisher that he keep complete control over that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're self-publishing, then neither of the above apply, and I see no reason why illustrations shouldn't be a colorful addition to your work. But the same considerations the publisher might have should still be considered: you want to make sure your illustrations are really appealing and look professional enough to include in your book, and that they're inserted well into the overall design and layout. If not-so-great artwork is inserted in a careless manner, that might make the whole book seem very shoddy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T20:38:28.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2613" CreationDate="2011-04-25T21:33:39.487" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess there's different schools of thought on it, but for me, I'd say you should worry about attracting readers after you've written the novel the way you think it should be written.  What are the demands of the plot?  What do you characters need to do, or understand?  Tell the story in the best way you can, using the words that work best for you, and THEN worry about who's going to be reading it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can fine-tune as needed, and tweak areas where your betas get confused, but if you try to write a book based on what you think some poorly-defined 'average reader' wants, you'll likely end up with an unoriginal mess.  In my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T21:33:39.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2595" CreationDate="2011-04-26T00:21:46.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an old saying: it's easier to ask forgiveness than seek permission.  A book you wrote has been out of print for nigh 20 years?  What are the odds the publisher, if it even exists and even if it found out and even if they did in fact retain the rights, would &lt;em&gt;care&lt;/em&gt; whether you put the book online?  And in the unlikely case they do, they'll send you a C&amp;amp;D (cease and desist) letter, which you will obey promptly and politely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T00:21:46.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2613" CreationDate="2011-04-26T05:31:55.940" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Intellectual&quot; often means a labyrinth of language. (Try reading any doctoral dissertation.)  Try this instead: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The universe changes gradually, from one condition to another, without any abrupt changes.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same concept, same meaning, but more fun to read. If you want poetic imagery, you could use something specific that nails down the same concept. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your original text, while hardly difficult, is needlessly complex, almost as if it were trying to sound sophisticated by using big words. Using simpler language can fool a reader into reading something. By the time they realize the concepts are complex and (hopefully) interesting, they're hooked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because you're using simpler words doesn't make the concepts themselves simple. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T05:31:55.940" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2544" CreationDate="2011-04-26T10:26:24.663" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't mind footnotes if they are of the sort that are shown &lt;em&gt;at the bottom of each page&lt;/em&gt;, so I only need to move my eyes down a bit to figure out what the footnote is trying to tell me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for endnotes, the ones that are only explained at the end of the chapter or, worse, at the end of the &lt;em&gt;book&lt;/em&gt; -- I can't fathom who actually reads these because they are so much work for the reader. You'd have to be quite dedicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, footnotes are at best a novelty and should be used with restraint. The reader should be (pleasantly) surprised every time they see one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="84" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T10:26:24.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2623" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2624" CreationDate="2011-04-26T13:29:43.233" Score="-2" ViewCount="250" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, I know that it depends of what it is written. But I believe that human brain responds to a certain amount of words in different ways. Based on that, how many words (or lines) you think are long enough to make someone think about his life but short enough to hook lazy reader? And what examples of that type of writing exist? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T13:55:59.320" Title="How many words (or lines) are long enough to make someone think about his life but short enough to hook lazy readers?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2011-04-26T21:12:15.743" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2623" CreationDate="2011-04-26T13:55:59.320" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hemingway did it in six. &quot;For sale: baby shoes, never worn.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T13:55:59.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2613" CreationDate="2011-04-26T17:15:50.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO, the average reader is not reading a novel to be intellectually stimulated on that level - they are reading to be entertained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roping readers into following complex, &quot;intellectual&quot; concepts works best as an underlying theme subtly explored through the plot and environment, not directly through thinly-veiled pseudo-philosophical exposition of any sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, those that are inclined towards abstract thought and dissection of the authors intent can do so, while those just wanting a good read are more likely to get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T17:15:50.160" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-04-27T08:22:24.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use extremely short sentences. Emphasise seemingly irrelevant details (carefully).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A feldgrau uniform in the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Triggrer pulled. &lt;em&gt;Serves you right, Fritz.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;em&gt;potato masher&lt;/em&gt; lands the concrete floor. Bloody patches on its handle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T08:22:24.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2604" CreationDate="2011-04-27T12:53:49.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love it when a book I'm reading has illustrations, but I'd trust my publisher on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1846" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T12:53:49.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2630" CreationDate="2011-04-27T13:03:02.000" Score="3" ViewCount="1650" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently started writing book reviews. I am doing this for numerous reasons, most importantly perhaps is to be able to express in a clear and concise manner. English is not my first language and I do feel that I often struggle to convey my meaning. Writing reviews turned out to be a lot harder than I thought so I am hoping that the &lt;em&gt;Writers&lt;/em&gt; community would have some tips and pointers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what are the ingredients for a good book review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try and structure my reviews like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why did I read this book?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is the main character and what are they like?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A brief introduction of the story, and what challenges are the main character facing next&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My analysis of the book, the plot, world building, dialog, characters (examples not all of them usually in one review)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My recommendation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything I have left out? Anything that should not be in there?&#xA;Any other tips you may have!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1846" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T18:50:30.433" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T18:50:30.433" Title="What are the ingredients for a good book review?" Tags="|reviews|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2629" CreationDate="2011-04-27T16:06:24.717" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your list is pretty good, but it's missing something a bit fundamental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most reviewers tend to think that they're trying to help someone make up their mind whether or not to buy a book based on the what they think of the book's contents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is only half the equation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What a reviewer also needs to do is show that their opinion is worth a damn. Who cares if you didn't like the book? Lots of people like and dislike books, so why should I care what you have to say? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A successful review is one that demonstrates to me that the writer is an authority that I should pay attention to and, perhaps more importantly, someone I can identify with in terms of likes and dislikes. If the reviewer has similar tastes to mine, it's a sure bet I'll be a lot more interested in what they have to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, these are some of the questions you need to answer for the reader:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What other work can you compare this book to that I may have read? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does this book stand in relation to its genre?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the author established enough that I may have read some of his previous work, and if so, how does this book compare to those other works?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the book is derivative, unoriginal, or isn't good, what would you recommend as being similar, but far superior?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these give me hints and clues as to what your preferences and tastes are, which in turn helps me decide whether your opinion actually matters. That's the trick of a good review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T16:11:53.870" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T16:11:53.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2629" CreationDate="2011-04-27T18:29:21.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're reviewing fiction, which I rarely touch.  IMO, more subjective; in addition, I prefer to keep my tastes in recreational reading private.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;+1 here:  someone I can identify with in terms of likes and dislikes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell me why it is that you responded / reacted the way you did.  &quot;The book wasn't about the parrot in the title, but the dysfunctional family that never figured out how to take care of the parrot they thought they needed to have.&quot;  &quot;I found it strange that the author insists on systems, yet punishes wait staff for not living up to his uncommunicated expectations by leaving a tiny or no tip.&quot;  &quot;This book exclusively addresses 'breed-standard' photography, and every dog in the pictures has a string of letters in front of its formal name.  No mutts allowed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers can chose to agree or disagree with the # of my stars, but it's clear why I selected the # I did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of all?  Keep at it.  I almost always disregard the reviews of people who have written fewer than one page of reviews in Amazon.  I'll pay much more attention to someone who has &gt; 100.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1848" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T18:29:21.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2011-04-27T18:33:52.763" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Artists Way, Julia Cameron:  three pages a day, longhand, first thing in the morning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott:  Start with a 1&quot; picture frame and describe what you see.  (Also, shitty first drafts.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zen &amp;amp; the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:  Start with the brick in the corner of the building.  Describe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're all saying the same thing.  On Writing, Stephen King.  Art &amp;amp; Fear, Bayles &amp;amp; Orland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do it, and do it again, and again, and again, and again.  I've been at it since 1973.  Disconnect &quot;having a pen in your hand and paper on your desk&quot; from &quot;having anything to say.&quot;  Get the pen moving, and when it's ready, you'll start having something to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1848" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T18:33:52.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="921" CreationDate="2011-04-27T18:37:05.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read books on screenwriting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I liked Jon Franklin's &quot;writing for story,&quot; but it's a bit old.  That kind of advice doesn't date.  Same content, essentially:  The Elements of Story, by Francis Flaherty.  See also Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules for Writing, although that's more about fiction than narrative non-fiction.  (and a book you should look at before ordering on line--I thought it was worth the money but not everyone does.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1848" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T18:37:05.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1950" CreationDate="2011-04-27T18:40:09.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;+1 to Elmore Leonard, esp. his 10 Rules for Writing.  (Read the reviews or get it from the library before you buy new; some people think it's a waste of money.  I think it's priceless.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly?  Listen to what people say.  Take notes.  You don't need to write in dialect, but chances are, you need more periods.  My written sentences are way longer than my oral ones.  Hardly anybody ever speaks a semi-colon in conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1848" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T18:40:09.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-27T19:40:06.203" Score="2" ViewCount="791" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like help re-writing this sentence.  I would like the overall tone of the language kept intact, and I would like it to be as concise, eloquent and well written as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the event you feel like that this study is not a match for your qualification, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have come up with two versions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Version 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the event you feel that this study is not a match for your qualification, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Version 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the event you feel this study is not a match for your qualification, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does either of these have an advantage over the other?  Is there another, better way to write it and meet the goals I've given?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1850" OwnerDisplayName="KandadaBoggu" LastEditorUserId="3523" LastEditDate="2012-05-07T19:56:38.277" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T19:56:38.277" Title="Help me rewrite this sentence" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-05-02T07:19:58.610" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2639" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-27T20:12:44.183" Score="5" ViewCount="543" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I'm pretty confident in my English, I'm not a native English speaker. I need to write a short introduction for a symposium; I'd like to know if you think this paragraph feels like 'natural' English:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following paper showcases the various ways through which modern information technologies can be used to spread environmental awareness and teach the general public about the importance of conservationism, as well as present one of the many ways new technologies aid envoronmentalists in gaining a better understanding of the natural world.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1583" OwnerDisplayName="Paul" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T16:03:58.790" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T20:52:28.630" Title="Does this feel like natural English?" Tags="|technical-writing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2639" CreationDate="2011-04-27T20:38:44.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it feels like natural English to me (native English speaker). If I may suggest a change, it would be to break it into more sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1886" OwnerDisplayName="JeffSahol" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T20:38:44.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2639" CreationDate="2011-04-27T20:39:39.867" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It feels like natural academic English to me.  The verb &quot;present&quot; should agree in number with the subject (&quot;paper&quot;).  I would also put a more definitive break after conservationism, either a semicolon or a period and a new sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following paper showcases the various ways through which modern information technologies can be used to spread environmental awareness and teach the general public about the importance of conservationism&lt;strong&gt;;&lt;/strong&gt; it also &lt;strong&gt;presents&lt;/strong&gt; one of the many ways new technologies aid envoronmentalists in gaining a better understanding of the natural world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="PSU" LastEditorUserId="1851" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T21:31:44.497" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T21:31:44.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2613" CreationDate="2011-04-27T21:15:14.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You attract readers with a clear, immediately understandable hook, something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did that get your attention? It's the first sentence in Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like a good ad that's selling something, your goal should be to give the reader a reason to read the next line. Tolstoy definitely achieved that goal! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your relationship with a reader is very intimate and will know that you are writing at the level that you think a 10-year old might understand. Focus on the essence of your idea first, and its meaning will come out on its own. Don't be afraid to write, edit, and rewrite - and write for yourself, not for an unseen reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1745" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T21:15:14.080" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2604" CreationDate="2011-04-27T21:28:18.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you read &lt;a href=&quot;https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_Little_Prince&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Little Prince&lt;/a&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book is in the public domain in Canada and you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://wikilivres.info/wiki/The_Little_Prince&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;read it here&lt;/a&gt; -- it lots of hand drawn pictures and is considered to be among the top 100 books of the 20th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1745" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T21:28:18.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2635" CreationDate="2011-04-27T22:05:34.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you don't feel you qualify for this&#xA;  study,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T22:05:34.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2639" CreationDate="2011-04-27T23:40:48.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds natural, it is good grammar. It is fine the way it is....but...&lt;em&gt;(you knew that was coming)&lt;/em&gt; I am a big fan of &quot;short and to the point&quot;, with that preface here is how I would rework it. Feel free to take all, none or any bit of my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your meaning the sentence fragment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...modern information technologies&#xA;  can...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;might be better phrased:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;modern information technology can&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Information Technology is a singular&#xA;field of study or occupation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Information technologies are an ever&#xA;changing collection of knowledge,&#xA;opinions and paradigms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it continues: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;spread environmental awareness and&#xA;  teach the general public about the&#xA;  importance of conservationism&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spread environmental awareness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teach the general public about the importance of conservationism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the difference? (what do you mean it to be?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;maybe (IMHO) &lt;em&gt;spread awareness to general public of the importance of conservationism.&lt;/em&gt; would be more concise? (also, break on the period...start a new sentence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;,as well as&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is good sign that you have a run on. After the period try&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technology (or these technologies) are but one of the many ways environmentalists gain a better understanding of the natural world.&#xA;(note: when you say &quot;as well as present one of the many ways new technologies&quot; &quot;one&quot; does not agree with the plural &quot;technologies&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following paper showcases the ways&#xA;  through which modern information&#xA;  technology spreads awareness to the&#xA;  general public of the importance of&#xA;  conservationism. This technology is&#xA;  but one of the many ways&#xA;  environmentalists gain a better&#xA;  understanding of the natural world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1854" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T23:40:48.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2646" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-28T06:27:09.773" Score="2" ViewCount="3180" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you all realize, the term 'Writer' is very broad and general. So my quick question is: I'm trying to help my young aspiring writer friend find a job in PA, but the term writer is really general. What kind of jobs can a writer apply to, really? There are jobs in journalism, sure, but even that is too broad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, even in a job application adding 'Writer' seems too broad for a recruiting agency to take seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you all think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1858" LastEditorUserId="33846" LastEditDate="2021-12-30T23:29:15.650" LastActivityDate="2021-12-30T23:29:15.650" Title="What types of jobs can a writer find?" Tags="|career|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2629" CreationDate="2011-04-28T08:02:19.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distinguish between a review and a critique. A review is meant for people who haven't read the book, and is largely intended to help them form their opinion of it; a critique is a discussion of the book which assumes the reader is familiar with the book (or, at least, is willing to read significant spoilers, because he's interested in the critique).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's a review, a major component should be introducing the piece to the reader. Let him know what it's about (no spoilers!), tone, theme, why it might (or might not) be interesting. I usually make an effort to leave the introduction largely unbiased in either direction - I think that helps readers be able to judge both the book and my review in proper context and on their own merit. It also helps ground them - if they don't know what I'm talking about, it'll be hard for them to understand my opinion and comments!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Back up what you're saying whenever you can. Don't hesitate to quote passages that demonstrate the parts you adored, hated, or found problematic. Look for passages that you feel will give an accurate representation of the piece. Give details - not &quot;Character A is a complete airhead,&quot; but rather, &quot;Character A is portrayed as being obsessed with clothing and cars, and he shows no empathy when Character B is in trouble - coming across like a complete airhead.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider what the author was trying to achieve. If the author was aiming for a blockbuster thriller, then complaining that the characters were dull and superficial is legitimate criticism, but might be missing the point. It's fine to mention faults that the author might have accepted willingly - but do devote some attention to the goals the author was actually aiming for. Again, this also helps readers with different tastes than you figure out where their tastes diverge from your own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this is helpful :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T08:02:19.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2649" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2650" CreationDate="2011-04-28T10:21:17.527" Score="6" ViewCount="29393" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a review for a fiction book and I'm using a lot of terminology that is specific to the book and I feel that it has to be given some context and explanation. Otherwise any reader would be left in the dark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have so far tried this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laurent and Phil had to go see the Pope, &lt;strong&gt;the leader of the Catholic Church&lt;/strong&gt;, and warn him of a conspiracy to steal his hat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just inserted it between commas after the word I wanted to explain was used. Is that the correct way to do it? If it is are there other good techniques you can use to vary your style a bit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1846" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T18:50:45.533" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T02:41:21.843" Title="How to explain something mid sentence" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2649" CreationDate="2011-04-28T10:33:25.367" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this construction is fine, but you're right, if you overuse it you may find that your writing seems monotonous.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would first work on cutting as much of the extraneous information as possible.  Reviews aren't summaries -- they generally include a &lt;em&gt;brief&lt;/em&gt; synopsis (leaving out the ending, of course), but especially in a book with a convoluted plot or complicated setting, I think less is more.  I personally don't like it when book reviews reveal much more than the blurb on the back of the book does.  So maybe you don't need as much information as you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you DO need it all, I'd suggest mixing the structure up with a few sentences that are just background information, and also including a bit more information in your main clauses.  eg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and is based in a heavily defended fortress of faith, the Vatican.  Satan assigns Laurent and Phil the task of stealing the Pope's jewel-encrusted ceremonial hat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T10:33:25.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2649" CreationDate="2011-04-28T10:45:15.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you have done is fine. You can also change the order, and provide the explanation first. Example: ... had to go see the head of the Catholic Church, the Pope, and warn ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you can also use hyphens. Example: ... had to go see the Pope - the head of the Catholic Church - and warn ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T10:45:15.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2646" CreationDate="2011-04-28T10:53:58.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My short answer - your friend can find any sort of job s/he is interested in and qualified for.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your friend can work at a coffee shop or a law firm, be a ditch digger or a surgeon, and still be a writer.  S/he might not write for a living, and at first that seems unfortunate, but the further I go with my own writing, the more convinced I am that writing works best for me as an avocation; I suspect this may be true for others, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are millions of people out there who want to write, and a significant number of those people are talented and intelligent enough to do it very well.  Most of the employers with jobs in which writing is a major component are fully aware of this glut of talent -- so they don't pay a lot, and the jobs are not easy to get.  There's freelancing, which works for some people, but it sounds like your friend is looking for something more stable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your friend is at the stage where s/he is defining their skill set as generally as 'writer', I'm guessing it's not a very developed/educated set of skills, and that means that there are a lot of people further up the queue toward the few jobs there are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yeah, this may sound a bit bleak, but as I said, I'm coming to believe that for all but a very few, writing is better as a hobby.  I spend my day at work in a job I enjoy but don't love, and I come home BURNING to write.  I use the emotions and experiences that I had through my day in the world, and that I've gathered from a lifetime of working a variety of non-writing jobs, and I pour all of that into my stories and characters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure others can give you more specific recommendations, but these are my thoughts based on what I read in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T10:53:58.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2646" CreationDate="2011-04-28T10:57:06.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in IT and we often need skilled writers to help with documentation and promotional material. Pretty much every company I worked for has had at least one &lt;strong&gt;Technical Writer&lt;/strong&gt; and most more than one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1846" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T10:57:06.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2649" CreationDate="2011-04-28T14:07:53.757" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three ways to insert an aside mid-sentence like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commas: &quot;Laurent and Phil had to go see the Pope, the leader of the Catholic Church, and warn him...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#Parenthetic_and_other_uses_at_the_sentence_level&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Em  or En Dashes&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#En_dash_versus_em_dash&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NOT the same as a hyphen&lt;/a&gt;): &quot;Laurent and Phil had to go see the Pope — the leader of the Catholic Church — and warn him...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Parenthetical aside: &quot;Laurent and Phil had to go see the Pope (the leader of the Catholic Church) and warn him...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people will argue that one of these is best for a particular situation, but they are largely interchangeable, so you can usually just use the one that feels best to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="296" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T14:07:53.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2649" CreationDate="2011-04-28T16:53:23.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the record, this is called the appositive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/appositive.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/appositive.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1863" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T16:53:23.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2646" CreationDate="2011-04-28T19:26:24.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For those who want to work with writing there are plenty of job opportunities out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they'd like to work with fiction, there are tons of jobs you can get. You can go the standard author job and write books for a living. Or you can work in editing, as a literary agent, or any number of publishing jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they'd like to work in the corporate world, big businesses are always looking for writers. These are the people that write company wide memos, come up with slogans, do company newsletters, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are thousands of magazines a person can work for writing articles. They could write on any subject that interests them - birds, hiking, fishing, cars, sports, etc. Magazines are always looking for writers and editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also work in the technology field. Companies are looking for people to write manuals, FAQ pages, About Us pages, and a bunch more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, if your friend wants to work with writing for a living, there are plenty of job opportunities out there, you just have to find one you like and go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T19:26:24.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2646" CreationDate="2011-04-28T19:39:25.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It makes sense to find a job that involves things you enjoy. Your friend should play up their ability to write in &lt;em&gt;a specific style.&lt;/em&gt; While some people are good at prose, others may be good at PR, ad copy, summarizing, etc. Even if it's not the kind of writing they &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to do, they should figure out what kind of writing they're &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; at and push that heavily in applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the ability to translate complex and jargon-filled topics into plain, easy-to-understand English is very important in technical fields. Science writers are essentially journalists who make science available to the masses, and they have to be able to take very complex topics and boil them down into something simple. If your friend has a passion for that, then that may be an avenue worth pursuing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1867" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T19:39:25.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2660" CreationDate="2011-04-28T19:49:59.637" Score="6" ViewCount="1668" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to write a long expository piece and cannot figure out which information should come first.  Here are three candidates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;summary&lt;/strong&gt;/abstract lists the main points, without necessarily explaining what they mean.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pros: gets the main information out rapidly if you already understand context.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cons: Unintelligible if reader doesn't already know background information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt; information explains the key prerequisite terms and facts, which are necessay for understanding a conclusion or summary.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pros: if the reader reads this first, then s/he will definitely be able to understand the summary and conclusions when they arrive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cons: it will take a long time to read through the background in order to get to the conclusions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Justification&lt;/strong&gt; states a challenging situation, explains why someone should care about reading the document or looking for a solution.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pros: reader understands why it's worth reading the document, frames subsequent content&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cons: makes the reader have to read through the justification (which s/he may already know) in order to get down the solution/conclusions summary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which do you think should come first, or in what order?  Is there any other information that would be more valuable to introduce the document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts &lt;em&gt;greatly&lt;/em&gt; appreciated.  Thank you!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1865" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T18:51:03.630" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T18:51:03.630" Title="Which goes first: summary, background or justification?" Tags="|non-fiction|technical-writing|structure|essay|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2658" CreationDate="2011-04-29T00:43:16.520" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your three scenarios were great; apply the same thoughtful analysis to determining the requirements of your audience, then I think you'll answer your own question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some example audience requirements, illustrated from the reader's point of view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which of these grant applications should I recommend to the committee for approval?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which of these feature article proposals is likely to entice readers to buy the magazine?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I follow the steps on this help page, will I complete the task successfully, get the boss off my back, and get back to what I'd rather be doing? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this the right pharmaceutical to prescribe to my patients? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in doubt, be the proposed audience for your work, see what else is out there, and evaluate how well it meets your needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1871" LastEditorUserId="1871" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T18:43:54.467" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T18:43:54.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2474" CreationDate="2011-04-29T00:47:45.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talk &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; the user, rather than &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; the user. Unless &quot;the User&quot; is someone other than the person reading your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think users appreciate it more when it seems like the writer understands &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; problems and wants to help them be successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also the possibility of confusion if you talk about &quot;the user&quot; -- with potential safety implications: Exactly &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; is supposed to do &lt;em&gt;what, when?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1871" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T00:47:45.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2053" CreationDate="2011-04-29T00:57:26.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with teaching, technical writing can be described as &quot;the art of imparting information without knowledge.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are the advocate for the end user. Your technical skills in this case are simply to get the necessary information from the experts, then present that information to your readers, in a way that both the experts and the readers are pleased with the results. I kid, I kid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously, given the necessary interviewing, research and writing skills (without which you'd be one of the experts, not one of the writers), a genuine interest in the topic area is helpful. Experts generally love to talk about their favorite subjects, and welcome a sympathetic audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1871" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T00:57:26.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2059" CreationDate="2011-04-29T01:14:24.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Single sourcing is definitely not dead. Its best application is within some kind of content management system so that the content not only has a variety of output options, but can be remixed and recycled for other uses. As another answer pointed out, you must separate content from formatting for single-sourcing and content management to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software developers have been using a similar model for ages. If you're going to be doing the same procedure in multiple places, use a function call instead of rewriting the code every time. Put your especially useful functions into a module that you can use in other programs. Keep your source code in a source control repository so you can revert if needed, and prevent conflicting edits to the same bit of code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1871" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T01:14:24.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="878" CreationDate="2011-04-29T01:32:36.940" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A major pitfall to the &quot;define on first use&quot; model is that users will flip through a book (or its e-equivalent) to find the information they're looking for to complete the current task, then leave. If it's electronic, hyperlink the term to the glossary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never, ever assume people will be reading your book from the beginning to the end. Eschew &quot;how to use this manual&quot; chapters especially; they're insulting, if nothing else. Many people start with the index because it's (perceived as) quicker than slogging through the TOC. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume for an electronic document that people will be using a text search to find what they want, and accommodate them with a bit of helpful SEO (not just for spammers any more). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make your subject headings describe the task, so they're easier to find in the table of contents or index (or by searching a PDF or a web page). Build a good index -- the lazy (but good enough) way is to auto-tag all your carefully-precise subject headings and &quot;see also&quot; pagerefs. Some doc tools will do this for you, AuthorIt for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody reads this stuff for entertainment (at least we hope not). Nevertheless, everyone on the planet has a trophy wall of awful instruction manuals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1871" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T01:32:36.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1724" CreationDate="2011-04-29T05:44:01.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other answers above are good, but it's worth adding that in the best episodes of House (as well as Scrubs) the medical condition and the wider social situation are interconnected.  Medical symptoms create a compelling initial problem, but the solution is never a mere chemical prescription or surgical procedure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are at least two resolutions to the medical problems: either the team (primarily House) solves the mystery by insight outside of strict medicine, or the team confronts defeat and has to learn how to deal with it somehow.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The extra-medical insight is usually that the team investigates the social situation of the patient, or the team has antics among itself, and those interpersonal struggles illuminate some key fact about the patient and her disease.  Call this the &quot;social-to-medical&quot; structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And likewise on the other end, both solving the mystery and failing to solve the mystery often teaches the team (primarily House) about their own characters and situations.  This can also teach the patient or the patient's family about themselves.  Call this the &quot;medical-to-social&quot; structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also episodes where the specific medical resolution is irrelevant to the main story, but these are harder to generalize about.  Usually the medical situation simply precipitates social events, or the medical setting is just a general backdrop to bring out the curious personailties of the team.  These I suppose would be &quot;social-to-social&quot; story lines, which are constantly refreshed by the rotating team cast and their different combinations of interactions with different patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that provides some food for thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1865" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T05:44:01.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2544" CreationDate="2011-04-29T05:51:43.983" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edward Tufte proposes a fascinating idea of sidenotes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000ld&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(link)&lt;/a&gt; which are literally over on the side of the page, next to the text they're related to, rather than at the bottom of the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have enough control over the layout of the page, sidenotes can be very pleasantly readable  and minimally disruptive to one's train of thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1865" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T05:51:43.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="878" CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:30:23.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also make it entertaining. Use humor. Keep your reader interested. Present things in unorthodox ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use storytelling. Introduce characters, scenarios, and conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Challenge your reader with questions. Make the content interactive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider your point of view. You can use first person and relate your own experiences with the topics you are covering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out the Head First series by O'Reilly to see some groundbreaking ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T13:30:23.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2544" CreationDate="2011-04-29T14:02:37.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way you're avoiding notes depends on the type of writing you're doing. Most of the time it is painful and not worthwhile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can explain facts in parenthesis, do so. If you can explain with some background information that will void the need for notes, do so. If you can integrate into the prose what needs to be said in the notes, you should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said in the beginning, avoiding footnotes can be painful in many cases. For instance, if providing context for the incursions of the Europeans into the Middle East, you'd have to carve a place for an explanation of, say, the start of the Templars. It might not be plausible, in which case a footnote would be best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&#xA;Painful to write, I mean. The cited example might be poor, but it was the first thing that popped into my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are cases where footnotes are best: when their information is not enough in context to write inline, but too compelling to omit. If the reader doesn't read the note, they miss out, but not so much that the meaning of the text is lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastEditorUserId="1342" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T14:13:47.113" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T14:13:47.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2598" CreationDate="2011-04-29T14:12:11.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why should your description of a scene occur at an instant in time, like a photo? I had written so much here yet felt this first paragraph from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1272/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rothschild's Fiddle by Anton Chekhov&lt;/a&gt; captures it best:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The town was a little one, worse than&#xA;  a village, and it was inhabited by&#xA;  scarcely any but old people who died&#xA;  with an infrequency that was really&#xA;  annoying. In the hospital and in the&#xA;  prison fortress very few coffins were&#xA;  needed. In fact business was bad. If&#xA;  Yakov Ivanov had been an undertaker in&#xA;  the chief town of the province he&#xA;  would certainly have had a house of&#xA;  his own, and people would have&#xA;  addressed him as Yakov Matveyitch;&#xA;  here in this wretched little town&#xA;  people called him simply Yakov; his&#xA;  nickname in the street was for some&#xA;  reason Bronze, and he lived in a poor&#xA;  way like a humble peasant, in a little&#xA;  old hut in which there was only one&#xA;  room, and in this room he and Marfa,&#xA;  the stove, a double bed, the coffins,&#xA;  his bench, and all their belongings&#xA;  were crowded together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chekhov’s description ignores time and space, yet we get a clear sense of the town - it’s wretched and in the shadow of a fortress like prison. There’s nothing else we need to know about the town’s physical appearance to understand the scene. The same is true of Yakov’s home, a hut with just one room crowded with his and his wife’s belongings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s tough to write like this, yet descriptions like this bring you and your readers much closer to the scene as you experience it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1745" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T14:12:11.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2670" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-29T15:18:30.403" Score="7" ViewCount="4467" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a professional presentation, I'm looking for a good title for the ToC page (some humor allowed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have so far is &quot;What am I going to talk about&quot;, which frankly kind of sucks.&#xA;Your suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1882" OwnerDisplayName="chaoticdawn" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T21:07:28.860" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T19:16:41.450" Title="What's a good title to a presentations' table of contents?" Tags="|business-writing|titles|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2670" CreationDate="2011-04-29T15:22:33.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) The next 30 minutes ....&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(or whatever is the duration of your presentation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) This discussion is about ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4601" OwnerDisplayName="Arjun J Rao" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T15:30:42.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2670" CreationDate="2011-04-29T15:28:14.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the start of your presentation, show&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is going to be legen - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wait%20for%20it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wait for&#xA;  it, wait for it ...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and at the end, instead of &lt;strong&gt;&quot;THE END&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, put&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DARY!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1937" OwnerDisplayName="pageman" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T15:28:14.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2670" CreationDate="2011-04-29T15:33:04.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today's menu. Obstacle course. Things to come. Bad ideas. The sheet of music. (The last one would support a snarky intro, &quot;just so we're all on the same sheet of...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider not having a TOC. Just jump right in. If you want a header slide to your deck, pull out three to five key concepts and just show those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The art of presentations now is leaning toward very bare, stripped down slides that support your talk, but do not detail it. Hard to describe, but when you see it done well, you know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="The Raven" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T15:33:04.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2674" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-29T16:40:58.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Poster has a problem and needs feedback, suggestions, guidance, or other assistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T16:40:58.210" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T16:40:58.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2675" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-29T16:40:58.210" Score="0" Body="help! I need somebody, help!" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T16:40:58.210" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T16:40:58.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2676" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-29T16:43:43.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about how many words should be written in a given time period, how long a specific piece should be, how to lengthen or shorten a piece to reach a specific goal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T16:43:43.760" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T16:43:43.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2677" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-29T16:43:43.760" Score="0" Body="Reaching goals, standard lengths" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T16:43:43.760" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T16:43:43.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2670" CreationDate="2011-04-29T16:46:42.337" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why You Might Want To Leave Now&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead Of What You Wanted to Hear About, I Am Going To Talk About&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All The Things I'm Going To Try To Tell You If You'll Just Be Quiet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Stuff Standing Between You And Lunch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm Going To Talk About The Following Because I Have The Remote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Table of Contents, If You're Lucky&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; I got some more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I Swear This Won't Be A Boring As It Looks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Moose Bit My Sister&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Now is the table of our discontent.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shut Up And Pay Attention&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T23:31:51.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2679" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-29T16:48:39.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag is used for questions about how the text looks. When to use bold or italics, when text should be indented, when to change spacing, how to handle bulleted text, how to set off a chunk of text which falls outside the standard flow of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T16:48:39.200" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T16:48:39.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2680" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-29T16:48:39.200" Score="0" Body="Questions about text appearance: styling, placement, fonts, indents, bullets." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T16:48:39.200" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T16:48:39.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2246" CreationDate="2011-04-29T17:33:19.813" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purplest prose comes from writers who rely on a thesaurus to choose synonyms, without fully understanding nuance and context. It's a bit like equipping your car with every available gadget from the local auto parts store -- the effect is rarely harmonious, and often unintentionally hilarious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better to read Roget in the bathroom than use it as a reference while you're writing. You'll expand your vocabulary in a nice, general way, safe from the temptation to over-accessorize your writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wrong synonym creates an impersonal level of abstraction that distances you from, and subtly annoys your audience. Better to write honestly, using the words you already know, while striving still to increase your knowledge and appreciation of the language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Careful diction creates believable characters: the naive but earnest social climber who tries to impress with a not-quite-right word choice; the persuader who uses words to orchestrate emotional, rather than intellectual agreement; the warm, likable character whose words connote wisdom gained more from experience than from formal education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really good writing, whether fiction or nonfiction, comes from those who are comfortably intimate with the language. The right word choice depends not only on definitions, but also fluency, emotion, rhythm, harmony, diction, and character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1871" LastEditorUserId="1871" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T18:41:50.770" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T18:41:50.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2658" CreationDate="2011-04-29T18:15:57.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the important insight, I hadn't thought to explicitly consider the audience.  Here is my speculation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business readers (my actual audience in this case) care about justification (&quot;why should I care?&quot;) first, then summary (&quot;get to the point!&quot;), then background.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academic readers traditionally put a summary/abstract first, and then background/justification.  Usually the justification is that there was a hole or flaw in existing knowledge, so the background is the justification, and vice versa.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can't think of an example off the top of my head that really wants pure background information first, unless it's a sort of combined entertainment-education where the piece is interesting because it's leading the reader down an intellectual journey without revealing the destination ahead of time.  Intellectual mysteries/adventures or whatnot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what I've got so far.  Thanks for your help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1865" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T18:15:57.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2598" CreationDate="2011-04-29T18:30:03.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way you choose to describe the setting depends entirely on what's at stake for the narrator. You are writing the story; the narrator is telling the story. It's important to understand the distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is your narrator a godlike character who sees all and knows all, including the private thoughts of all the characters, and details known only to narrator and reader but not the characters? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it someone more objective, who reports only on things that are directly observable, without access to anyone else's thoughts?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it an active participant in the story, who can observe and describe, but also articulates his own thoughts? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do various characters take on the narrative role at different points in the story?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your story step into the land of metafiction and postmodermism, where the narrator expounds on the nature of fiction itself?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The narrator's role will help you choose which details to reveal when you describe the setting. With that, there are ways you, as the author, can have fun with your characters. For example, what your narrator &lt;em&gt;fails&lt;/em&gt; to notice can be as interesting to your readers as what he does describe. A seemingly objective narrator can turn out to be unreliable, inducing the reader to reflect on the story so far, and work to uncover the actual truth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there's no specific order, or list of items to include. Do what you need to do to build the necessary tension to advance the story, and reward the reader for sticking through to the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1871" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T18:30:03.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2443" CreationDate="2011-04-29T19:18:42.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend leaving the &quot;objective&quot; off the resume, and saving it for your cover letter. Use the limited space in your resume to summarize your experience and qualities in two or three short paragraphs, then follow the general reverse-chronological format for experience, education and skills. I also concur with Mary Aho, about simply stating your name and the job title at the top of your resume. I can't say this is the right way for everyone, but it's worked well for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cover letter is your opportunity to explain why they should bother looking at your resume. Your cover letter can be more conversational in tone than your resume, but avoid inappropriate informality, txt-speak, etc. Use a spell checker and have an English-savvy person read through it before sending. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My cover letter goes more or less like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Para 1:&#xA;  Please consider my resume for (job opening). I have (years of experience or educational qualification) as a (job title).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Para 2:&#xA;  My recent work experience includes (highlights of your history relevant to the type of business, paraphrased to match the requirements from the ad).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Para 3:&#xA;  (Related experience, relevant but not necessarily specific to requirements).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Para 4:&#xA;  My goal is to add value to your company by delivering (your work products) that ensure your customers' success. I'm mature and dependable (or whatever other positive EEOC-appropriate descriptors you can honestly use), with a strong work ethic and a dedication to customer satisfaction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Para 5: &#xA;  I currently live in (where I live), but am willing to relocate for the right opportunity (only include this if it's true). I'd like to talk with you further about the position, and show you how I can contribute to your success. (work samples, if applicable) Professional references are available on request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Para 6:&#xA;  You may contact me by (email, phone, mobile). I'm looking forward to hearing from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Closing:&#xA;  Best regards,&#xA;  (your name)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Attachments: Resume, samples, if applicable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you success in your job search. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1871" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T19:18:42.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2670" CreationDate="2011-04-29T19:51:58.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider removing the ToC page. I never use them any more, and nobody misses them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T19:51:58.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2670" CreationDate="2011-04-29T20:22:13.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Menu&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;egg and bacon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;egg sausage and bacon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;egg and spam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;egg bacon and spam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;egg bacon sausage and spam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spam bacon sausage and spam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spam egg spam spam bacon and spam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1886" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T20:22:13.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="237" CreationDate="2011-04-29T22:58:47.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going through the same thing now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had excellent responses from readers and negative responses from my editors. My editors want me to use the traditional section break or just write from one character's POV per chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought about that but decided to stick to my style of head-hopping. Ultimately, I am responsible to myself, my story and my readers. To me, it's all about message and audience. So far, my test readers love the story. To me, that's all that counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not easy breaking rules. You have to understand and respect the theory behind the criticism, before you decide to disregard it. Most importantly, if you're going to break the rule, you better be damn good at it. I am. I have technical reasons for head-hopping and I've had great reader response. If something was missing or just not working, I'd relent and rewrite as per my editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found that head-hopping works best for me when it's limited to 2 characters at a time (usually no more than 3, although in one scene I jumped into the minds of 5 of my characters - and yes, I rocked it). I find it works well with he said/she said and inner/outer dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life's short; do what brings you joy. If that's how you want to tell your story, then do that. Test it out. Find some readers you trust. What do they think? Is it working for them? Is it working for you? If so, then good for you succeeding! If not, then good for you for trying!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps.  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1887" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T22:58:47.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2613" CreationDate="2011-04-29T23:16:53.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;How?  By not trying... you seem to be asking &quot;Should I make an 'intellectual' novel attractive to an [ill-defined/undefined] average reader by making it less intellectual&quot;.  But that's &quot;dumbing down&quot; and not &quot;attracting&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Me, I always say: write it the way it has to be written.  Let your characters speak the way they'd speak if they were real people (for some in-universe definition of real, of course ;-)).  If one of your characters is a university professor who's notorious for being hard to understand even for his peers (intellectually), then... write him  that way.  But maybe add someone who's able to translate ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; try, do &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; try to make your novel/story attractive to &lt;em&gt;everybody&lt;/em&gt;.  Because that way madness (and failure or mediocrity (if there's a difference)) lies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="317" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T23:16:53.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2658" CreationDate="2011-04-30T01:29:25.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;All of the above, and none of the above. You need to capture the reader's attention, summarize why this had to be written, and give them a reason to keep reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="740" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T01:29:25.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2555" CreationDate="2011-04-30T06:40:11.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short &amp;amp; simple: State only facts that &lt;strong&gt;you can prove&lt;/strong&gt; and how that factual occurrence affected you; DO NOT give opinions or interpretations on the character and motives of the other person - not even through adjectives describing what you perceived the other's emotions or reasons to be, or what you thought about it, stick to the affects that provable factual occurrences had on you. If you let malice or thoughts of revenge rule what you write, you had better be prepared for the stick you will be hit with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="134" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T06:40:11.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2670" CreationDate="2011-04-30T17:42:24.817" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like this advice that I heard long ago:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tell 'em what you're gonna' tell 'em.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tell 'em.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tell 'em what you told 'em.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adjourn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; moved from a comment and added to this answer at the suggestion of @Neil Fein: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a professional presentation, you're a professional, so act like one. The best opening, imo, is &quot;what I'm going to talk about.&quot; Anything else looks like you're apologizing for stealing their valuable time; if that were true, they wouldn't be in the audience. If you try for humor, it had better be sure-fire and guaranteed to bring a laugh, otherwise you will look as foolish, inept, and unprofessional as every other presenter who ever tried the exact same thing. Just imo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastEditorUserId="1645" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T18:41:49.080" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T18:41:49.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2649" CreationDate="2011-04-30T17:49:02.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps even: &quot;The Pope is the head of the Church and Lauren and Phil trembled when they were sent to see him.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this example is fictitious and you don't feel you have to tell your readers about the Pope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T17:49:02.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2639" CreationDate="2011-04-30T18:20:05.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heartily second @Cos Callis's suggestions. But I am more heartless than he, more savage; I would cut further. He suggests: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following paper showcases the ways through which modern information technology spreads awareness to the general public of the importance of conservationism. This technology is but one of the many ways environmentalists gain a better understanding of the natural world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take just the first sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;s&gt;The following&lt;/s&gt; paper shows &lt;s&gt;cases the ways through which&lt;/s&gt; how &lt;s&gt;modern&lt;/s&gt; information technology helps  &lt;s&gt;spreads awareness to the general&lt;/s&gt; the public &lt;s&gt;of&lt;/s&gt; learn the importance of conservation&lt;s&gt;ism&lt;/s&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gives us;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This paper shows how information technology helps the public learn the importance of conservation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's not good: &quot;helps the public learn?&quot; Ewwww! So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This paper shows how information technology helps teach the importance of conservation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now for the second sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;s&gt;This t&lt;/s&gt; Technology is but one &lt;s&gt;of the many ways environmentalists gain a better understanding of the natural world.&lt;/s&gt; we learn about the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technology is but one way we learn about the world.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's enough blood and Gore for today :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastEditorUserId="1645" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T11:43:08.613" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T11:43:08.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2635" CreationDate="2011-04-30T18:23:54.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;If you are unqualified [ or overqualified or underqualified ] for this study ... &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T18:23:54.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2603" CreationDate="2011-04-30T18:30:37.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, it's a &lt;em&gt;terrific&lt;/em&gt; idea to change the voice to accord with the POV. Good for you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T18:30:37.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2639" CreationDate="2011-04-30T18:37:18.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's (almost) grammatically correct, but it doesn't seem &quot;natural&quot; to me at all. It seems artificially passive and impersonal. Who uses the technologies to spread awareness and teach the public? The only two actors in the sentence are &quot;this paper&quot; and &quot;new technologies.&quot; Where are the people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, scholarly publications often seem to prefer a passive, impersonal style, which lends an appearance of objectivity. I think that style is slowly becoming less common, even in scholarly writing, but it may be exactly appropriate for this symposium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T18:37:18.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2699" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2700" CreationDate="2011-05-01T09:03:55.890" Score="6" ViewCount="806" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a short piece for a technical audience.  In essence I have three main points, each with sub-points.  A few of the sub-points themselves have sub-points.  I cannot help but find it clearer when I visually outline the hierarchy (as below), however I have been told that such an outline is overwhelming and to be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there guidance on when one should or should not use such an outline?  I am looking for evidence-backed research or an official style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts greatly appreciated. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of the points is one sentence or less, and relatively self-explanatory.  Putting them into paragraphs and complete sentences just seems to pad and dilute the content, not particularly to clarify it or make it easier to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example outline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Point 1, e.g. &quot;company policy for what to eat&quot;)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(1.1 &quot;eat your veggies&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(1.2 &quot;eat protein&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(1.3 &quot;also drink water&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(e.g. &quot;how to deal with earthquakes&quot;)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(&quot;earthquakes can strike at any minute, so:&quot;)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(&quot;always carry your earthquake hat&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(&quot;buy earthquake insurance ahead of time&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(&quot;when an earthquake occurs, try to avoid falling into the center of earth.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1865" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T14:48:29.503" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T14:48:29.503" Title="Is an overview clearer when outlined with bullet points, or when written in paragraphs?" Tags="|non-fiction|style|organization|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2699" CreationDate="2011-05-01T11:39:41.887" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only study on bullet points I could find was done by Chris Atherton looking at the usage of bullet points in Power Point slides, and this concluded that they did not work when it came to the audience remembering the information presented. However, in written form, this study would likely not apply since it's a completely different setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that could help is a study that was done in the fifties of the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two&quot;&gt;magical number seven&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, which suggests that the number of objects or chunks of information a person can hold in working memory is around seven, plus or minus two (in reality, the number is probably in the region of three or four).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would suggest that long bullet point lists such as what you propose could hamper learning, and possibly understanding. Although they're brief, and bullet points are useful for scanning, the quantity and hierarchical organisation of that information may not lend itself well to cognitive performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth pointing out, too, that the example you've given suggests you are grouping together items in a list that are not related. For example, it doesn't make sense to have &quot;Company policy for what to eat&quot; and &quot;how to deal with earthquakes&quot; in the same bullet point list. Those are better served as headings for each section, since these are not for &quot;remembering&quot; something, but rather used for &quot;finding&quot; the information you need to know. I would therefore rethink about what actually needs to be in my bullet points, and then number your headings into sections and subsections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would then suggest two strategies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is to present three or four bullet points that outline a particular section, and then include your paragraph(s) of text. In other words, the bullet points can be viewed as a summary of what follows. You're therefore outlining in brief the central points a person needs to understand, but also providing more in-depth information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;1. Company Policy for what to Eat&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Eat your vegetables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Eat protein&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Drink&#xA;  water&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eating vegetables is vital to your&#xA;  body because blah blah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Protein is an important ingredient&#xA;  because ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drinking regular water helps maintain&#xA;  alertness, and improves cognitive&#xA;  abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;2. How to Deal with Earthquakes&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;2.1 Be prepared beforehand&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Carry your earthquake&#xA;  hat&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Buy earthquake insurance&#xA;  ahead of time&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since earthquakes can strike at any&#xA;  time, it's advisable to carry your&#xA;  hard-hat with you at all times, since&#xA;  there is a large amount of debris that&#xA;  could fall from the ceiling. It is&#xA;  also recommended that you insure&#xA;  yourself and your building against&#xA;  earthquakes, just to make sure your&#xA;  are better protected financially no&#xA;  matter what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative to bullet points could be to &lt;strong&gt;bold certain information&lt;/strong&gt; in the paragraph since this would break the paragraph into manageable chunks to &lt;strong&gt;help understanding&lt;/strong&gt; and memory retention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;1. Company Policy for what to&#xA;  Eat&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is vital to &lt;b&gt;eat plenty of&#xA;  vegetables&lt;/b&gt; because they are&#xA;  extremely important in helping your&#xA;  body to blah blah. Also &lt;b&gt;eat&#xA;  protein&lt;/b&gt; because it is necessary&#xA;  for ... Finally, we recommend you&#xA;  &lt;b&gt;drink water&lt;/b&gt; regularly, because&#xA;  it helps maintain alertness and&#xA;  improves cognitive abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;2. How to Deal with Earthquakes&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;2.1 Be prepared beforehand&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since earthquakes can strike at any&#xA;  time, it's advisable to &lt;b&gt;carry your&#xA;  hard-hat with you at all times&lt;/b&gt;,&#xA;  since there is a large amount of&#xA;  debris that could fall from the&#xA;  ceiling. It is also recommended that&#xA;  you &lt;b&gt;get earthquake insurance&lt;/b&gt;&#xA;  for yourself and your building, just&#xA;  to make sure your are better protected&#xA;  financially no matter what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Oh, and obviously, the third option is to just present bullet points with headings, and no paragraphs. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;1. Company Policy for what to Eat&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Eat your vegetables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Eat protein&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Drink&#xA;  water&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;2. How to Deal with Earthquakes&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;2.1 Be prepared beforehand&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Carry your earthquake&#xA;  hat&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Buy earthquake insurance&#xA;  ahead of time&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-05-01T11:45:34.567" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T11:45:34.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2702" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2703" CreationDate="2011-05-02T11:11:08.643" Score="3" ViewCount="1553" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my thesis and in many cases I want to take the reader through an example. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Besides the advanced composition rules, it is also important to have a set of&#xA;  basic rules to help in controlling some of the elements of the frame. For&#xA;  example, I may want to have a river across the diagonal of the frame yet I&#xA;  want some animals near the river to be in the top-left corner of the frame. I&#xA;  can use the diagonal dominance rule on the river to assure that it is shown&#xA;  diagonally but the other advanced rules cannot be of any use for placing the&#xA;  animal in the top-left corner of the frame. For this, I have implemented the&#xA;  following basic composition rules and found them to be enough for most&#xA;  applications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, I am talking the reader through an example to help distinguish how basic composition rules are also important. So which is better to use here, &quot;I&quot; or &quot;We&quot; meaning I and the reader? Or actually, is the second case even understood in English writing or it will be understood as there are many authors, or the author is showing off?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't feel comfortable with &quot;I&quot; because it gives a personal feeling to the statement. In other words, how am I important here? So it is some experiment that I have done so that I must say I.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="513" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T14:48:10.487" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T15:06:27.500" Title="Can I use &quot;We&quot; to refer to me and the reader?" Tags="|non-fiction|grammatical-person|readers|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2702" CreationDate="2011-05-02T11:28:20.870" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer for this is going to depend on your audience.  &quot;I&quot; and &quot;We&quot; are both first person, and the use of first person is usually considered more casual, and not suited for formal writing in many academic fields.  But I think this rule is relaxing, and your instructor may or may not want you to follow it.  I'd check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you're allowed to use first person, my personal preference would be to use &quot;I&quot;.  &quot;We&quot; is more vague - who are &quot;we&quot;, exactly, and why are you speaking for us?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also re-write this passage in third person: &quot;For example, the artist may want to have a river across the diagonal of the frame and also to to have some animals near the river in the top-left corner of the frame.  The diagonal dominance rule would apply to the river, but the other advanced rules cannot be of any use...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I think the example you gave sounds like a personal reflection, while the rewrite sounds more like a statement of universal truths.  Which effect are you going for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T11:28:20.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2702" CreationDate="2011-05-02T11:48:20.073" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to ask your thesis adviser about this specific case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We&quot; can be completely acceptable in formal documentation, e.g. business communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We&quot; can also be acceptable in informal problem solving, e.g. it's frequently used during academic lectures while explaining an example, as I expect you're mirroring in the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether &quot;we&quot; is acceptable in a document that is both formal and academic probably depends upon your department and the ultimate destination of the thesis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(E.g. my undergrad sociology thesis probably would not have cared.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1865" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T11:48:20.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2702" CreationDate="2011-05-02T12:02:26.167" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is going to depend on context, and the consistency of your usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;I&quot; in your example quote clearly refers to you, the author, and does not include the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Replacing &quot;I&quot; with &quot;we&quot; does indicate you are referring to both you and the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you have to be cautious, because the context could change. For example, you could reach a point where you need to refer to you and someone else other than the reader, in which case using &quot;we&quot; could confuse the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, if you are addressing the reader, and you want to take the reader through an example, I would consider using &quot;you&quot; directly instead of &quot;we&quot;. Remember: the example is for the benefit of the reader, and not yourself. Therefore, use &quot;you&quot; and &quot;I&quot; so that there is no ambiguity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example rework of what you've given:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Besides the advanced composition&#xA;  rules, it is also important to have a&#xA;  set of basic rules to help in&#xA;  controlling some of the elements of&#xA;  the frame. For example, you may want&#xA;  to have a river across the diagonal of&#xA;  the frame, yet also want some animals&#xA;  near the river to be in the top-left&#xA;  corner of the frame. You can use the&#xA;  diagonal dominance rule on the river&#xA;  to assure that it is shown diagonally,&#xA;  but the other advanced rules cannot be&#xA;  of any use for placing the animal in&#xA;  the top-left corner of the frame. For&#xA;  this, you should implement the&#xA;  following basic composition rules,&#xA;  which I found to be enough for most&#xA;  applications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T12:02:26.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2702" CreationDate="2011-05-02T15:06:27.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always use 'we' in academic writing to avoid the over-personal 'I'. In this context, 'we' stands for 'us, the people that conducted this research and are writing this paper'. There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;amp;q=%22we%20present%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many examples&lt;/a&gt; of this use in published papers, frequently with just one author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1901" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T15:06:27.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1745" CreationDate="2011-05-02T22:12:06.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Drama is conflict, while exposition are facts.  All stories have facts, but the facts themselves are not the storytelling.  Sometimes I use this analogy.  If storytelling is motion, facts are the brakes.  Hit the brakes too often and the whole thing grinds to a halt.  This creates one of the big dilemmas of storytelling.  How many facts can safely be provided (or how can they be conveyed) without disrupting the story itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The principle of exposition in ammunition (facts in drama), is a strategy for safely providing factual information without disrupting or pausing the storytelling.  If two characters are old friends, inform the audience by having the characters argue.  If their insults suggest an intimate knowledge of each other, than the audience catches their established relationship without the author explicitly informing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of this approach is to merge fact and storytelling together.  This avoids the 5 pages of story.  Pause.  2 pages of information.  Pause.  7 pages of storytelling...  You get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure what your teacher meant by backstory in this context save that authors often struggle to convey the facts of a character's backstory through exposition - often leading to the dreaded prologue or flashback both of which tend to become story-stopping, data-dumps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1904" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-05-03T07:33:25.677" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T07:33:25.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2670" CreationDate="2011-05-02T22:17:16.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could go old &quot;school&quot; and stick with &quot;Objectives&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T22:17:16.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1409" CreationDate="2011-05-04T04:37:05.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;None of these are correct or incorrect, but my optimal way to say it would be without parentheses &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; dashes; the former are hard to use well, and the latter are overused in modern fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When Bilbo sat down for his third meal of the day, he noticed the table was broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parentheses can be enormously effective at conveying &lt;em&gt;short&lt;/em&gt; snippets of background information, and in my opinion they will, &lt;a href=&quot;http://magnificentnose.com/2011/05/04/parenthetically/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in specific situations&lt;/a&gt;, break the flow of the writing less than dashes will. Although I freely admit that seeing text surrounding this example quote could change my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T06:15:04.037" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T06:15:04.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2639" CreationDate="2011-05-04T18:30:47.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following paper showcases the various ways through which modern information technologies can be used to spread environmental awareness and teach the general public about the importance of conservationism, as well as present one of the many ways new technologies aid environmentalists in gaining a better understanding of the natural world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;should be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper shows ways modern information technology helps spread awareness of the environment and the importance of conservation to the public, along with one way environmentalists use technology to better understand the natural world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="492" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T20:52:28.630" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T20:52:28.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2635" CreationDate="2011-05-04T20:24:43.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your qualifications don't match this study,...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this study does not match your qualifications,...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But wait, how could a study truly match someone's qualifications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="492" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T20:24:43.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2713" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-04T21:07:59.070" Score="11" ViewCount="848" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a common flaw that I can easily detect in amateur writing, (and of course my own) which essentially boils down to all the characters &quot;sounding the same&quot;, dialogue-wise anyway. Trying to overcome this problem, however, I find myself going to opposite end of the spectrum, overcompensating, adding so much accent/slang it gets annoying. (&quot;i fancy me some cider, what ya'll say we pounce on over to the ol' waterin' hole&quot;, etc). How do you give each character his/her own unique voice without making it sound forced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1912" LastEditorUserId="1912" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T21:18:42.597" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T09:04:11.787" Title="How do you avoid the problem of all the characters in your story sounding the same?" Tags="|style|dialogue|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2713" CreationDate="2011-05-04T21:40:08.077" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to avoid this problem is to understand your characters as deeply as possible, and remember that it is the character who should speak, and not you, the author. The things characters say and the way they say them are products of who they are, so knowing as much about them as possible will dictate their speech. This covers the usual gamut of physical, social, and psychological aspects that make people who they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they educated, or school drop-outs? Is this language they're speaking their first language? What age group? Who are their friends? What is/was their family setting like? Any physical defects that could affect their speech? How do they behave in different social settings? When around strangers, they may guard their speech, but when around friends, they're free and open. What type of people do they like, or hate? Are they confident around men, and not women? Do they like to show off to be the centre of attention? Do they clam up to avoid attention? Are they thoughtful and slow to anger, choosing words carefully, or are they quick tempered? Rude? Polite? Indifferent? Friendly? Suspicious? Do they have particular phrases that they like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this (and a hell of a lot more) will change how and what is said by each character. Slang and accents are not needed (and can become very annoying) unless the character requires it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Delve into your characters, ask questions about them, understand them, and see the world through their eyes, not your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T21:40:08.077" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2713" CreationDate="2011-05-04T21:59:37.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally use tricks like making one character speak in riddles, or in short cryptic answers, or even starting with a tick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mike cleared his throat. &quot;She was&#xA;  wrong! I never said that!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jane looked annoyed. &quot;Blah, blah,&#xA;  blah...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that works sometimes is to make someone very dull, or too intellectual. Or immature, or overtly sexual. This has to fit in the character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mike turned to Jane. &quot;I suppose you&#xA;  know what happened. Were you there?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You know very well I'll never&#xA;  participate in your twisted little&#xA;  bedroom games.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The arbiter raised his voice. &quot;That's&#xA;  enough you two.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to also purposedly mingle the two. An old couple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Margherit, sitting next to Henry her&#xA;  husband, lifted her glass of cherry.&#xA;  &quot;To the new child!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And to his parents!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or twin boys playing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's mine!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No, it's mine!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You take the green&#xA;  stick!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No, you take the green stick!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't want the green stick!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't want it! I want the other&#xA;  one. It's mine!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, it actually doesn't matter which one is speaking... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The old man and his old wife:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Harold began. &quot;When I was your age, I&#xA;  used to walk to school in the snow.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maude piped in from the other room&#xA;  &quot;... uphill both ways!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gentlemanly teen with an older girl:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I could not, I mean, I dare not ask&#xA;  this, this simple thing&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Emma smiled brightly. &quot;You dare not&#xA;  ask me for a kiss?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paul reddened and his fingers shook.&#xA;  &quot;I dare not.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Then don't ask...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot is revealed of each character by what they will say and won't say. A seasoned sailor, a gent and a port girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;'been at sea so long you'll do.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How dare you sir? This lady is not--&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;300&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characters are never speaking to the reader, but to each other. It's up to the reader to follow along. Sometimes the mystery is more interesting than the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Bo, did you bring it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah, Boss&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Where is it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Trunk.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And ammo?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah, Boss&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader wants to be able to associate mentally with the characters. Those that open themselves up more, that make themselves more vulnerable, are more likely to feel real to the audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Ben, I've never felt the way you make&#xA;  me feel before...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ben remained silent, his brown eyes&#xA;  fixed on Meg's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Is your heart so cold that you cannot&#xA;  speak to me?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He clenched his teeth. His hands&#xA;  gripped hers tighter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you so hurt you cannot speak of&#xA;  love?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He let go and turned aside, burying&#xA;  his face in his hands. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She held him gently and whispered &quot;Oh,&#xA;  Ben, it's all right...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll notice Ben did not speak, and yet much was said. Ben, the silent one, speaks with gestures and emotion. That's his voice, and his spoken words would only support his overall demeanor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each character must find his own voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="492" LastEditorUserId="492" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T22:09:15.130" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T22:09:15.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2474" CreationDate="2011-05-04T22:23:55.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When dealing with company people, I like to use colleague, associate, employee, coworker, etc. When dealing with customers, I like to say, customers, clients, vendors, prospective customer, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For business writing, I feel it's very important to establish the relationship context of the interaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might say something like this: &quot;When a database administrator performs the nightly backup, the customer will either see delayed data or be alerted that the system is unavailable for maintenance. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a manual for the end user, I say &quot;You&quot;: If you need to save at this point, click the &quot;Save&quot; on the upper right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="492" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T22:23:55.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2713" CreationDate="2011-05-04T22:28:21.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Craig's answer is solid, but in terms of getting the balance right, one trick I use is to read  the dialogue out loud.  It works even better if you can rope someone else into reading one of the characters, and treat your MS like a script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't usually do it for the entire book, just for a few key scenes until I have the character's voice in my head.  After that, I still make sure that I 'play' the dialogue in my head, like watching a movie, but I don't generally have to read out the entire book.  If I get stuck, then I jump back to reading out loud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T22:28:21.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2544" CreationDate="2011-05-04T22:30:22.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I say that you should follow the style your audience is used to. Technical writing? Academic writing? Footnote and endnote and sidenote away!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Novel? Don't even think about it. You want people to get lost in the linearity of the narrative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to add some background info that might be interesting to some readers but not to most, add an appendix. If it is in fact relevant to the tale, weave it in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="492" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T22:30:22.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2373" CreationDate="2011-05-04T23:01:39.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read some interesting passage in a book, I'll sometimes pull out the notepad and copy it down. Gives my fingers good habits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, writing longhand on plain paper makes it seem too informal to matter much so the self-critic is dismissive and I can write more freely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="492" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T23:01:39.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2713" CreationDate="2011-05-05T09:04:11.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe in creating &lt;strong&gt;dialogue touchstones&lt;/strong&gt;: find each major character a couple of lines that &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; would say, that &lt;em&gt;no other character&lt;/em&gt; would say. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these might be catchphrases, or might sound like catchphrases (&quot;Elementary, my dear Watson,&quot; &quot;Le- gen- wait for it!&quot;, &quot;Everybody lies,&quot;). That's fine, because catchphrases are often attempts to represent the character and his voice. But it can also be something more specific, or less bombastic - simply an example of the way this person talks. The trick is to find &lt;strong&gt;distinguishing examples&lt;/strong&gt; - there are lots of things two characters &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; say precisely the same way; those won't be as helpful here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the examples in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2713/how-do-you-avoid-the-problem-of-all-the-characters-in-your-story-sounding-the-sam/2715#2715&quot;&gt;Christopher Mahan's answer&lt;/a&gt; would serve admirably. And a lot of the points in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2713/how-do-you-avoid-the-problem-of-all-the-characters-in-your-story-sounding-the-sam/2714#2714&quot;&gt;Craig Sefton's answer&lt;/a&gt; will help you find situations where two characters will speak differently. A succinct rule of thumb might be this: a person's personality is revealed by his speech. If you write a line that tells you nothing about a character, consider how that character's personality might make him phrase it differently. An obnoxious character will say it obnoxiously; a worried character will be tense and nervous; somebody confident will speak with certainty and authority. So: find a few lines that you're able to shift around and polish until you're able to say, &quot;Yes, yes, that's exactly how this character would say this; that's &lt;em&gt;him&lt;/em&gt; speaking.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've got those lines as touchstones, they're helpful in finding the voice. They jump-start you into that character's way of expressing himself. You can imagine the character speaking the touchstone line to somebody else, and then turning back to the scene at hand for his next line; for me, once I've spoken &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; line that gets me into the character, I find that the next lines flow much more easily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is actually an insight I picked up from amateur acting. I'd find my character's voice by warming up with some of his loudest, most melodramatic, most distinctive lines - the ones I found easiest to act &quot;well,&quot; the ones most obviously &quot;in character.&quot; From there, continuing into less-distinctive lines while retaining the character's distinctive voice was a lot easier than starting cold.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T09:04:11.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2721" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-05T09:31:57.347" Score="0" ViewCount="1218" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9/is-there-a-special-software-for-writers&quot;&gt;Is there a special software for writers?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What IDE's do writers typically write in?  I'm aware of Microsoft Word, but surely that is not something that a professional writer uses (one that's writing for a book publisher)?  Would they be using something like LaTeX?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1757" OwnerDisplayName="KerxPhilo" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T11:40:12.033" Title="English writers IDE" Tags="|tools|software|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2011-05-05T11:40:30.910" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2721" CreationDate="2011-05-05T09:35:56.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For longer works I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;. But this is really more of a question for Writers.SE. See one &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2368/how-do-you-calculate-the-length-of-your-manuscript/2372#2372&quot;&gt;answer I posted there&lt;/a&gt;, as well as several others on this topic at that site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" OwnerDisplayName="Robusto" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T09:35:56.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1396" CreationDate="2011-05-05T21:59:03.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your erotica is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LGBT&lt;/a&gt;-related, these sites post calls for submissions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://qlit.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Qlit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lambdaliterary.org/category/writers/subs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lambda Literary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1923" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-02-09T16:41:02.657" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T16:41:02.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2727" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-05T22:06:23.773" Score="6" ViewCount="348" Body="&lt;p&gt;anyone aware of or can recommend online training courses for technical writers to improve your technical writing skills?  I'm looking for courses that provide video or audio lectures, and teachers that provide interactive training, review your work and provide feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1757" LastEditorUserId="361" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T01:49:02.567" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T02:23:01.397" Title="Online technical writing classes" Tags="|resources|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2730" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2742" CreationDate="2011-05-05T18:22:47.313" Score="22" ViewCount="11946" Body="&lt;p&gt;So much of Sci-Fi and Fantasy requires the viewer (or reader) to suspend their disbelief: The speed of light can be circumvented, magic works, vampires are real (and may or may not sparkle), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sort of things break suspension of disbelief?  What do good works do to maintain it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2012" OwnerDisplayName="Jeff" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-05-20T14:03:32.087" LastActivityDate="2018-10-13T11:51:06.400" Title="What breaks suspension of disbelief?" Tags="|fiction|technique|style|fantasy|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2011-05-05T18:28:35.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, it boils down to: Are the sentences and paragraphs well structured and is there enough detail? Too many &quot;He said&quot; or &quot;said so and so&quot; and I have trouble staying in the realm of the story. R.A. Salvatore is definitely an author that keeps me in his stories with great sentence structure and a wealth of details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Ryan" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T18:28:35.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2011-05-05T18:43:14.163" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems to me that consistency is a big thing. Internal consistency and external consistency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;External consistency: on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numb3rs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Numb3rs&lt;/a&gt;, they use real mathematical jargon assuming people will not understand it and will accept it at the Wikipedia level of understanding. But I actually do understand many of the techniques they talk about and they simply cannot be used in the manner they describe, crashing my belief to the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Internal inconsistency: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bones_%28TV_series%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bones&lt;/a&gt;, where they work in the present day with overall present-day technology, except for this holographic display that has elaborate animations programmed into it by an artist. Huh? If the show was full of futuristic technology in some secret government lab, or if it took place in the future, and if the artist were not the only non-geek on staff, it might be believable, but it stands out like a sore thumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1706" OwnerDisplayName="Wayne" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T19:00:01.780" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2733" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2735" CreationDate="2011-05-06T02:24:57.400" Score="5" ViewCount="1278" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished reading the annotated edition of &lt;em&gt;Lolita&lt;/em&gt;, and Nabokov hid references to other works of literature everywhere. Lately I've also been considering ways to work in lyrics and other oblique references in my own work. Is there an accepted way to go about referencing or repurposing bits of other works without it becoming plagiarism? Should I try and contact the original authors first? And have any of you had negative experiences using these sort of references in your own work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1895" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T02:57:25.293" Title="plagiarism vs. reference?" Tags="|inspiration|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2733" CreationDate="2011-05-06T02:31:47.193" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;reference&quot; (e.g. a paraphrase or a discussion of a theme from another work).  Short direct quotations (a few sentences) can just be attribute, in the text or in a footnote.  Anything longer you should get permission from the rights-holder (which is typically the publisher).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T02:31:47.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2733" CreationDate="2011-05-06T02:57:25.293" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Allusion is a time-honoured writing technique. Copyright only protects the expression, not the idea itself, so as long as the expression is yours (you are saying things in your own words), you should be in the clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short quotes will generally be okay as well, under a &quot;fair use&quot; or similar policy, but should be properly attributed and sourced, if possible, in non-fiction writing. When writing fiction, I'd generally advise against using direct quotes as a matter of style; far better to paraphrase or otherwise hint at the relevant quote and leave it to the observant reader to spot the reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, should you find yourself wanting to reproduce a substantial or highly identifiable (something along the lines of &lt;em&gt;Jabberwocky&lt;/em&gt;, say) portion of a copyrighted text verbatim, you stand to run afoul of copyright law. Such uses should be licensed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, certain names or titles may be trademarked (this is generally restricted to media franchises), which might mean problems if you use them in the scope encompassed by the trademark; so look out for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1926" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T02:57:25.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2736" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-06T09:33:13.300" Score="12" ViewCount="2294" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a murder mystery, most of the story is generally focused on figuring out who the murderer is; in &quot;Fair-Play&quot; mysteries, it's assumed the murderer is a significant character in the book, and the fun is in figuring out which of them it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This being the case, readers familiar with the format generally try to second-guess the investigation. That is, not only do they try to solve the case along with the sleuth and the unfolding information within the story (which is fine, that's something I want); &lt;strong&gt;their guesses are often based upon their knowledge of the structure and conventions of mystery stories&lt;/strong&gt; - along the lines of &quot;Mr. X can't be the murderer, because he's the first guy the detective suspects,&quot; or &quot;It's got to be Little Miss Innocuous, because she's being portrayed as being innocent and trustworthy - so she's the one the author doesn't want us to suspect!&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, plenty of mysteries can withstand this sort of meta-interrogation, and some intentionally subvert these conventions. But I'm interested in avoiding this reaction altogether, or at least minimizing it - I want my readers' wits engaged in a duel with &lt;em&gt;the mystery,&lt;/em&gt; not with genre-savvy one-upmanship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can this problem be addressed - how can I maintain suspense and suspicion towards a wide range of suspects, and encourage the reader not to second-guess the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that I'm not looking for suggestions which will surprise the reader &lt;em&gt;despite&lt;/em&gt; his genre-savvy. I'm looking for suggestions which will keep him from relying overwhelmingly on genre-savvy to begin with.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T11:17:35.637" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T14:41:53.890" Title="Preventing genre-savvy second-guessing in murder mysteries" Tags="|structure|mystery|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2736" CreationDate="2011-05-06T10:26:02.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A popular variant of the whodunit structure is the &lt;b&gt;howdunit&lt;/b&gt; or the &lt;b&gt;howcatchem&lt;/b&gt;, in which the question isn't &lt;i&gt;who&lt;/i&gt; committed the crime - it's &lt;i&gt;how&lt;/i&gt; he managed to pull it off, and/or how the detective succeeded in conclusively proving the culprit's guilt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that this neatly sidesteps the problem, because the reader is no longer guessing which of a list of people is the murderer. So the howdunit discourages &quot;gaming the system&quot; with guesswork, similar to how an open-form question discourages guesswork far more than a multiple choice question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of mystery stories, both classic and popular, use the &quot;howdunit&quot; structure - including some Sherlock Holmes stories, and TV shows like &lt;i&gt;Monk&lt;/i&gt;. Another TV show, &lt;i&gt;Veronica Mars&lt;/i&gt;, does something similar - it frequently shifts focus away from finding the culprit and towards clearing somebody who's been unjustly accused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I personally find the howdunit variant to be less inherently compelling than the whodunit. Watching the detective fill in the blanks - clever as they may be - when the overall lines are abundantly clear simply isn't as suspenseful as the promise of the killer's identity being dramatically exposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T10:58:46.687" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T10:58:46.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2011-05-06T10:26:44.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suspension of disbelief is a requirement of most fiction, and not just because of accepting the fantastic. It's because the story the author is telling is fictitious. It never happened, but as an author you're trying to create something real enough to fool the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, if you want to break suspension of disbelief, introduce a plot hole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plot holes take on a number of forms, essentially because something integral to the story has not been explained adequately, or because there is an inconsistency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Characters behaving in a way that is illogical or unlikely, events occurring that are near impossible, facts that are incorrect, logical inconsistencies and contradictions in the storyline, things happening for no reason - all of these result in plot holes, and will cause most readers to stop dead in their tracks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take an example you gave of &quot;magic works&quot;, we suspend our disbelief because magic will have a set of rules attached that are outlined in the story. However, if the author breaks those rules without sufficient explanation, the book becomes kindling for the fireplace. And if it didn't have rules, we'd be less likely to accept it, because then anyone could do it, and anything would be possible since there are no limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example: a group of people are trapped in a warehouse with the doors bolted. There's a bomb. They spend their time trying to dismantle the bomb. It goes off, one person dies ... except we know that there's a giant window on one side of the wall, so why not smash it open, climb out, and escape to safety? (This actually happened in an episode of CSI, totally killed it for me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good fiction keeps suspension of disbelief because they are consistent, logical, explanatory, and follow the laws of the universe within which that story takes place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T10:26:44.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2736" CreationDate="2011-05-06T10:57:34.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The murder mystery is generally a mystery for four reasons: who did it, how did they do it, how are they caught, and why did they do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you only focus on &quot;who did it&quot;, then I believe you have no choice but to accept that the reader is going to try and figure out who did it the whole way. This is because that is the whole purpose of your story. You've set the question, &quot;Who did it?&quot;, and the reader wants it answered, so it's natural for them to try figure out the answer to that question. This happens in all books to a degree: how will the protagonist succeed? Will he overcome this obstacle? Will he get the girl in the end? Even if you focus on the how and why, people are likely to second-guess every step of the way that more information comes to light. (&quot;She was having an affair? Maybe he killed him because he found out!&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are still various ways you can use to get people focused on the story, however. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important is through characterisation because this raises other questions that need to be answered, above and beyond the central one of &quot;who did it&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The old &quot;whodunnit&quot; books hardly ever placed their detectives at the centre of the story. They were merely there to solve the crime. There histories were largely immaterial. However, what turned the genre on its head over the years was this idea of the sleuth's life being integral to the story. They're flawed, have conflicts that affect them, and the people around them, they've got baggage they bring to the case, there's political intrigue within the police department, bad relationships with friends, family, ex-lovers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is not just about the crime any more, but the people involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second trick is to have other events operating in conjunction with the crime that add another dimension to the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best examples of this (as well as characterisation) that I've seen in recent years was the excellent Danish crime drama &quot;The Killing&quot;, which had a murder entwined with a local mayoral election. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of political drama took place that was influenced by the murder (not least because one of the suspects was a politician). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also followed the family affected by the murder of their daughter, and how their relationships broke down afterwards. We followed the sleuth, whose own obsession was tearing apart the world around her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It emphasised the point that murders don't happen in vacuums, and they have far-reaching consequences on those involved. It is the impact of these consequences that help the reader become more interested in the story beyond just &quot;who did it&quot;. If the only question you've posited is &quot;who did it&quot;, that's the only question a reader will try to answer. If you posit other questions, like, &quot;Will he get elected?&quot; &quot;Will she leave him?&quot; &quot;Will he kill the suspect?&quot; &quot;Will she be fired?&quot; then you've given the reader a lot more to be interested in above and beyond the rather clichéd &quot;whodunnit&quot; formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Okay, so based on your comment below, I think you already answered it in your question: play with the conventions of genre, and the reader's expectations. The best way to do this is to immediately destroy a reader's expectation right upfront, because then they're put off-balance, and will know they cannot rely on the conventions of genre for the rest of the story. Make the criminal an early suspect who is released because the sleuth suspects someone else. Make the cops human, so they make errors of judgement, and incorrect assumptions. Make a character appear innocent, reveal that they've lied, or are hiding something, but then reveal that it's unrelated to the case. (The Killing used this to great effect.) Have other suspects who are guilty of something, but not what we think they're guilty of. Create a situation like &quot;the fog of mystery&quot; for the reader, so they cannot rely on what they know from previous works. Of course, that means you yourself need to be knowledgeable about the genre, and that means a lot of reading!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T11:35:57.740" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T11:35:57.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2736" CreationDate="2011-05-06T11:59:56.520" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Role Play we call this &quot;meta-gaming&quot;: analysing information as if it is slave to convention as opposed to being part of a fresh and thrilling new narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two methods of combating cynical audience members who employ this tactic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write the words &quot;All Bets Are Off&quot; on a piece of paper. Affix this somewhere you will see it whenever you pause for thought when writing. Never forget it. There are things that you think cannot happen in your story, people who will not die, people who are above suspicion, events that won't happen. There are a few that are sensible and, for some reason, are the first targets of idiot writers trying to be &quot;edgy&quot; (see &quot;murderer and detective are the same character&quot; for details, not existential, just gratingly moronic). Other than these few fairly obvious aspects, the subverting of which are most often a betrayal of a good reader not a clever twist for a meta-reader, there should be no safe place. As a writer if you don't think: &quot;How the hell am I going to work that?&quot; then how are your audience going to?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Introduce a randomiser. Dice, cards, a tombola, anything. Let chance tell you who a murderer is, what a plot twist will be. Live with the advice of decisions made by blind chance, not too many that your whole story becomes arbitrary, just enough that it is prevented from going stale. If you don't find it difficult to manage to incorporate a stunning twist that Dame Fortune has insisted you incorporate the chances are the stunning twist is predictable. People will not see coming what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; didn't see coming, and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 is really a technique for extending 1. So the tldr of the whole thing is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ALL BETS ARE OFF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the reader knows this they will stop trying to be cute and just read the goddamn story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, I've been asked for an example of how to do this so that the reader knows that you're not messing around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example that springs to mind came in an early episode of one season of 24 (years since I watched the show so can't remember even which season, I think it was 4). There was some extremely high up CIA dude who was making things difficult in CTU and a terrorist demanded that he have a bag put on his head, for him to be brought to a location and for Bauer to shoot the guy in the head. Obviously, I didn't believe that JB would be allowed to shoot some innocent guy in the head at the behest of a terrorist but, no, he did it and the guy resolutely remained dead afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point I no longer trusted my own ability to pick the writing team's choices, so I gave up and just enjoyed the thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to, essentially, grab the reader early on with some side example like this (the whole &quot;shoot this dude in the head&quot; bit was a sub-plot anyway) and show them in no uncertain terms that anything could happen. If you make an early point where you bait-and-switch the reader by signposting one thing and delivering another then they will realise pretty quick that any guesses they might make about the conclusion of your opus are just as pointless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to make readers think, right from the get go: &quot;This dude's just crazy enough to do it, too!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--END EDIT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FURTHER EDIT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make this specific to a whodunit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard plot structure of a whodunit is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) murder&#xA;b) investigation&#xA;c) revelation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to circumvent the expectation, particularly in a debut, would be to do something weird like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) murder&#xA;b) quick and obvious investigation&#xA;c) murder of the murderer&#xA;d) investigation&#xA;e) revelation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the initial murder itself is just an easily solved, by the numbers piece of plodwork. The real investigation is who murdered the murderer? This has the beauty of offering plenty of depth to the scope of the investigation. Is this murder some kind of revenge for the first murder? Or is there another issue at hand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't even require you to have an idea about making the first murderer sympathetic in some way. If they are people could be shocked that some &quot;nice guy&quot; committed the dirty deed. If the original murderer's a nasty piece of work, however, then it adds a layer of conflict for the detective who wants to solve the murder but cares little for the victim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--END EDIT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T12:58:28.597" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T12:58:28.597" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2736" CreationDate="2011-05-06T14:23:23.570" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;He who lives by the trope, dies by the trope. If your readers are trying to use metaplot to solve your mystery, they're setting themselves up for a lot of toying with, if you choose to alter the rules they're familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step to playing with tropes and conventions is to become a master of them yourself. Make a list of mystery tropes you are familiar with and have a good look at it, then have a look through the Internet for more (TVTropes.org is a good starting point, but a word of warning: it's incredibly addictive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tempting as it may be to break every rule out there, it is simply another path to predictability: the attentive reader will quickly notice that they are reading an &quot;inverse mystery story&quot; and adjust accordingly. Subvert some of the conventions, but play others straight - it will keep your readers on their toes. If you write more stories, change things around so your readers never know what to expect. If after writing several &quot;mixed-up&quot; mysteries you then write one that exploits every trope in the book, you might actually surprise them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, it's worth keeping in mind that real-life mysteries aren't anything like literary ones. Terry Pratchett makes this point in one of the City Watch books from the &lt;em&gt;Discworld&lt;/em&gt; series (can't recall which one though, anyone remember?) For every single interpretation of a clue, there are countless equally valid interpretations. When you eliminate the impossible, you aren't left with one thing, &quot;no matter how improbable&quot;; you are left with a maze of possibilities of varying probability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story takes place in a world where mystery stories exist, it's likely that your characters will also be genre savvy to an extent. Thus, your detective might point out (in coversation or as part of his musings) that &quot;real world&quot; mysteries (that is, ones he usually deals with) are nothing like the books - but make sure that they really aren't, unless you plan for them to express incredulity at the pat nature of the latest case (hey, stranger things have happened). On the other hand, the wrongdoer might try to play some tropes to their advantage, counting on life resembling literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, remember that for a mystery story to be &quot;fair&quot;, the only requirement is for the reader to receive information at the same time as the detective (no &lt;em&gt;dei ex machinae&lt;/em&gt;) and for the evidence to logically support the verdict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to stop genre-savvy readers from meta-thinking is to send them strong signals that it won't work from the outset. Target a few common tropes and show that they aren't used here. Perhaps it will quickly turn out that Little Miss Innocuous has a watertight alibi. The &quot;apparent-red-herring-but-actually-a-vital-clue&quot; might be shown to be a red herring after all. The evidence against the first person suspected might accumulate, but then some of it might be shown to be false, only for new evidence to appear later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the reader realises that they aren't reading a by-the-numbers mystery story, they'll start paying more attention to what was actually written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1926" LastEditorDisplayName="user1926" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T14:41:53.890" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T14:41:53.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2011-05-06T14:28:48.480" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, anything that the reader considers implausible &lt;strong&gt;when he's already suspending disbelief,&lt;/strong&gt; can spoil the illusion and break that suspension. The key issue to understand is that up to a certain point, your story is &lt;em&gt;exposing&lt;/em&gt; the world of the story, and explaining what's allowed and what isn't. Anything you establish clearly, the reader will be willing to accept, and suspend disbelief over. Anything implausible that you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; explain, or suggest can be explained (perhaps later), is not &quot;protected&quot;, and can prompt readers to feel that the story is nonsensical or contrived - not in the agreed-upon, &quot;protected&quot; premise, but in the reasonable flow of events and consequences from that premise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What, precisely, seems implausible may be highly individual. Here are major issues in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Setting rules are inconsistent or unclear:&lt;/strong&gt; An SF/F reader will generally be willing to accept bizarre and impossible world constructions, as long as they are internally consistent. But if your stardates don't match up with each other, or if something impossible turns out to be possible with no real justification, then the reader senses that your rules are &lt;strong&gt;arbitrary&lt;/strong&gt; and that the author does not feel bound by his own rules. The same thing happens if he can't figure out what your rules are meant to be to begin with. It's like playing a game somebody invented where he gets to change the rules all the time, and then declare himself the winner if he's losing anyway. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Excessive and/or unacknowledged inconsistency with the real world:&lt;/strong&gt; In the real world, time travel is almost certainly objectively impossible; that doesn't mean you can't write time travel stories. But if you do something that's impossible in the real world without explaining it, or making it clear that this &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an interesting difference from real-life, and you-the-author are aware of this, then you come across as &lt;strong&gt;ignorant&lt;/strong&gt;. The reader has difficulty trusting in your story. This could be scientific knowledge (&quot;you couldn't &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; do that&quot;), local knowledge (&quot;that city doesn't &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; look like that&quot;), social knowledge (&quot;people don't _really act that way&quot;), etc., etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Coincidence as a plot development:&lt;/strong&gt; If anything immensely unlikely happens, it's best for it to happen at the beginning - as part of the premise. Using coincidence as a plot development can feel &lt;strong&gt;contrived&lt;/strong&gt; - since it's not &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; a coincidence, but fiat on the author's side, the reader can sense that the author is deliberately manipulating the story in implausible, artificial directions, and he loses faith in the plot as being plausible, natural, and thus significant.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unjustified references to real-world elements:&lt;/strong&gt; In fantasy and science fiction, direct references to the real world can be very &lt;strong&gt;distracting&lt;/strong&gt;. They have no more reason to dwell on, say, 21st century politics than we have to dwell on 13th century politics. It's unlikely that 2000 years from now, all spaceships will be named for current SF writers (and no future ones...). Even things that are &lt;em&gt;similar&lt;/em&gt; can provoke this reaction - e.g. you don't want to name your fantasy princess &quot;Diana&quot; even if &quot;Diana&quot; is a perfectly fine name and it makes perfect sense for there to be a &quot;Princess Diana&quot; in your world. References to the real world, &lt;em&gt;our&lt;/em&gt; world, throw the reader &lt;em&gt;out&lt;/em&gt; of the story world.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these issues can be solved by sufficient set-up - if you establish the unbelievable premise in a clear and plausible manner, it ceases to be unbelievable. But if you don't &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; something that's tough to justify, then avoiding it to begin with is often wise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T14:28:48.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2011-05-06T16:22:56.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The creation of the universe is where suspension of disbelief is allowed. Violating the rules/laws/physics of an already created world breaks the suspension of disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, most of what James Bond does in the movies is just not possible in real life. However, because it is a James Bond movie and the world created around the character allows for it, we are willing to suspend our disbelief. However, if THOSE rules are broken, say if James Bond suddenly flies without using a specialized gadget, then that breaks the spell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to look at it is, we accept that Luke can use the Force, but we will not accept that James Bond can use the Force, because it is a &quot;real&quot; thing in the Star Wars world, but it is not a &quot;real&quot; thing in the James Bond world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="508" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T16:22:56.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2011-05-06T18:01:25.077" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two failures of storytelling that can cause me to lose my suspension of disbelief:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Violating Established Rules&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Act I through the first half of Act II, the story should establish the rules by which this fantasy or scifi world operates.  This is usually told from the perspective of the protagonist, who is thrown into this new reality along with the audience.  A mentor character will often be introduced to teach the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the latter part of the story, no new rules should be introduced nor should the established rules be violated.  The introduction of new rules at the last minute is an example of &lt;em&gt;deus ex machina&lt;/em&gt;, which is not viewed as good storytelling.  By establishing the rules early and sticking to them, it gives the audience a framework for what to expect for the rest of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NOTE: You might be able to get away&#xA;  with breaking/bending the rules if you&#xA;  provide adequate foreshadowing that&#xA;  the original rules might be false&#xA;  and/or have loopholes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Positive Example&lt;/strong&gt;:  &lt;em&gt;The Matrix&lt;/em&gt; (part I)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once Neo leaves the Matrix, Morpheus teaches him how the Matrix works.  He then provides a bit of foreshadowing: most people can't break the rules, but Morpheus believes Neo can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NOTE: These rules were broken in the&#xA;  sequels without adequate explanation&#xA;  of why.  Totally ruined it for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Negative Example&lt;/strong&gt;:  &lt;em&gt;Superman II&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lois learns that Clark Kent is Superman during the course of the movie.  At the end, he kisses her and she completely forgets this one fact (and the events that occurred during the course of the movie, I suppose).  Truly sloppy writing.  The writers set up an extremely dramatic situation--the secret of Superman's identity is out.  And instead of allowing this revelation to drive the story, they make it &lt;em&gt;completely go away without any consequences to any of the characters involved&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's just like a reset button on a video game: good for games, bad for storytelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Poorly Written Characters&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can suspend my disbelief to cover some crazy violations of physical reality as long as the characters are compelling.  When the audience is caught up in the character's emotional journey, the details just aren't as important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Positive Example&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Spiderman II&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this movie, Peter Parker loses his superpowers in a way that is never fully explained within the context of the rules of the &quot;Spiderman reality.&quot;  It turns out that the disappearing powers are a physical manifestation of the character's internal struggle--and it works!  We don't need to know more than what is given.  If the writing and acting behind this character had not been as believable, this lack of explanation would have kicked me out of the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Negative Example&lt;/strong&gt;: Nearly every Michael Bay movie&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simplistic one-dimensional characters who are parodies of themselves.  They make choices that are not believable within the context of human nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, the movie &lt;em&gt;Armageddon&lt;/em&gt;.  By the midpoint, I was noticing and getting highly annoyed by violations of physics.  I had already been kicked far enough out of the story by that point to start nit-picking the details.  I didn't care about the characters anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T18:01:25.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2727" CreationDate="2011-05-06T18:38:55.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see quite a few courses on iTunesU that look interesting in terms of writing in various genres. I might recommend you check some of those out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of teachers, I'd look at eCollege for remote working with university level classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T18:38:55.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2670" CreationDate="2011-05-06T18:41:28.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &quot;Agenda&quot; as the second slide in my presentations. First is the session title with my name, title, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't read the agenda, and the name is self-explanatory. Just mention this is what will be covered and I talk about housekeeping, but this works well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also at times used this same slide multiple times in the presentation at the beginning of each section, highlighting the area that is being covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T18:41:28.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2747" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2748" CreationDate="2011-05-07T16:08:44.353" Score="0" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I wrote the following stuff for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexchen.info/nojokethistime&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;photo web comic&lt;/a&gt; I created inspired in &quot;a softer world.&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To break up and stay friends means to&#xA;  throw away a possession and turn it&#xA;  into something that can be useful&#xA;  again...It's disturbing how the word&#xA;  &quot;recycling&quot; fits into that so well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Living a busy life, full of stress,&#xA;  sweat and sacrifice, can make us think&#xA;  ...that we are actually doing something&#xA;  worthy with our lives.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He took away the girl I secretly loved&#xA;  for years. I told him, crying, &quot;she&#xA;  was all I ever wanted!&quot; He told me,&#xA;  smiling...&quot;finders keepers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only one person liked number 1, 20 persons liked number 2, and no one liked number 3 (based on the number of Facebook likes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of them have been published for 1 or 2 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of my reader are Taiwanese and foreigners living in that country.&#xA;I would like to hear opinions from writers here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm really puzzled about the big difference. I don't see anything special about the number 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Sorry I referred them as &quot;writing,&quot; I'm not sure if I should call them 'paragraphs').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2011-05-07T16:17:01.613" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T16:43:11.233" Title="What are some possible reasons of why my readers preferred this &quot;writing&quot; over the others two?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2011-05-08T22:30:13.963" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2747" CreationDate="2011-05-07T16:43:11.233" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, as you pointed out on EL&amp;amp;U.SE, in No. 3 you mean &quot;crying&quot; not in the sense of shouting out loud but weeping. Possibly your readers are a little skeeved out at the prospect of a man weeping in front of a victorious rival for the affections of a woman. Not only that, but he wasn't even man enough to give voice to his feelings, preferring to keep them &quot;secret&quot; for years. Not only &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;, but it's really bad writing: pure, over-amped bathos. And the parallel structure (&quot;I told him, crying ...&quot;, &quot;He told me, smiling&quot;), instead of strengthening it, merely serves to emphasize what is bad about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. 2 is simpler, more straightforward, and not a bad sentence (though I don't exactly think the ellipsis works here to good effect). It also has interesting, human hooks: &lt;em&gt;life&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;stress&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;sweat&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;sacrifice&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. 1 is just opaque. The logic is muddy, there are two infinitive clauses in a row, and it's all very abstract. I doubt most readers even read it all the way through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T16:43:11.233" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2727" CreationDate="2011-05-07T18:35:43.437" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than formal training, consider getting involved with the doc team of an open source project with a strong commitment to the quality of their technical writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You'll get not just one teacher's eyes on your work, but several to dozens of experienced technical writers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You'll get feedback from consumers of your technical writing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You'll have a portfolio of CC or other open-licensed work that you can show off.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your work will be read by people with many different backgrounds, so you will get a feel for, e.g. when something that works well for a native English speaker may be hard to understand for non-native speakers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not only is it free, but people will thank you ang you get some geek cred.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The people who code, design, etc. for the project you work on will love you, want to support you, and teach you cool things.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T18:35:43.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2750" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-08T11:16:42.720" Score="4" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do readers want to read articles where the author refers to themselves and their experiences, or would they prefer the author to leave themselves out of the article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I say 'readers' I'm specifically talking about women reading high end magazines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you,&#xA;Tara&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1935" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T20:44:49.757" Title="Is it a Good or Bad thing to use 'I' Regularly in Magazine Articles?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2750" CreationDate="2011-05-08T13:11:11.747" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the topic one on which you have special experience, or is it a piece you've researched?  Is the article a column or editorial, or just a regular piece?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm reading an article written by a woman I'm familiar with, I'd be fine with &quot;I&quot;.  (eg. if Angelina Jolie decided to explain her decision to adopt, &quot;I&quot; would be good).  If the person who wrote the article is recounting a unique adventure, I'd expect &quot;I&quot;.  (eg. if the article is about a woman's solo crossing of the Sahara, I'd expect first person).  If the article is an editorial or column in which writers are expected to express their opinion, I'd expect &quot;I&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, I'd want third person.  If the article is designed to inform me, I want to hear from the experts, not from the person who has put the experts' opinions together.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also recommend that you check the style used by the magazine to which you're submitting - what has everyone else done? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T13:11:11.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2750" CreationDate="2011-05-08T15:09:46.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would ask your editor, different magazines will have different guidelines on this kind of thing and what one magazine will love another will hate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1936" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T15:09:46.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2750" CreationDate="2011-05-08T17:00:40.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's going to heavily depend on the topic you're writing on and the magazine you're writing for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the article is one of personal experience - your experience raising an autistic child, your fight against cancer, etc. - then you would use &quot;I&quot; in the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the article is primarily a research or academic type article - new diabetes medication, a literary analysis of Twilight, a weight loss place, etc - then you would write the piece in third person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't just apply to magazine writing but also for writing school essays, news articles, and the like. But if you're ever in doubt whether you should write the piece in first person or third, contact the editor of the magazine/newspaper/whatever and ask for clarification. They'd much rather answer your question than have you write it wrong and either waste their time rejecting it or asking for a rewrite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T17:00:40.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2754" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2755" CreationDate="2011-05-08T17:12:43.900" Score="3" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to say that information is the real power in the world. I want to say it in one clean (short) sentence. Is the following good enough? (My mother language isn't English.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The real power is information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1942" OwnerDisplayName="LanceBaynes" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T21:08:07.503" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T21:08:07.503" Title="Is this clearly expressed: &quot;The real power is information&quot;" Tags="|word-choice|clarity|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2754" CreationDate="2011-05-08T22:01:29.097" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;what about&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Information &lt;strong&gt;IS&lt;/strong&gt; Power&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1937" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T22:01:29.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1446" CreationDate="2011-05-08T22:07:30.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can look into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_%28film%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;how Memento was written&lt;/a&gt; and use that as a framework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stefano Ghislotti wrote an article in&#xA;  Film Anthology which discusses how&#xA;  Nolan provides the viewer with the&#xA;  clues necessary to decode&#xA;  sujet/plotline as we watch and help us&#xA;  understand the fabula/story from it.&#xA;  The color sequences include a brief&#xA;  overlap to help clue the audience in&#xA;  to the fact that they are being&#xA;  presented in reverse order. The&#xA;  purpose of the fragmented reverse&#xA;  sequencing is to force the audience&#xA;  into a sympathetic experience of&#xA;  Leonard's defective short-term memory,&#xA;  where prior events are not recalled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dHvHH.png&quot; alt=&quot;sujet vs. fabula of Memento&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1937" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T22:07:30.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2754" CreationDate="2011-05-08T23:42:17.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always wonder when I see questions like these. The person asking says, &quot;I want to say that information is the real power in the world.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Information is the real power in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T23:42:17.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2754" CreationDate="2011-05-09T08:40:30.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The real power is information&quot; only really makes sense if it's being used to contradict what is normally considered to be &quot;the real&quot; power. For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Some say true power in business is money, but the real power is information.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Magic beans are considered by most to be the source of power in business. This is not true. Information is the real power.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you're better off using &quot;Information is power&quot; (even though it's a bit trite and clichéd).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T08:40:30.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2760" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-09T10:04:22.690" Score="3" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are actually Wiktionaries for many languages and the English Wiktionary also defines and translates words of many other languages. But ignoring these other languages, have you tried &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary%3aMain_Page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the English Wiktionary&lt;/a&gt; and do you find it to be a good writers' resource? What are its best and worst points in this regard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1939" LastEditorUserId="1939" LastEditDate="2011-05-10T02:57:03.040" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T05:06:13.470" Title="Does Wiktionary supply what writers need in an online dictionary?" Tags="|resources|dictionary|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2760" CreationDate="2011-05-09T10:34:26.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've tried the Wiktionary and I really like some aspects of it, like having all the different regionalisms listed next to each other.  (eg. 'fanny' has both the benign North American definition and the less-innocent UK version).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But sometimes I go to a dictionary in need of an authority.  You know... 'Webster's says...&quot; or &quot;According to the OED...&quot;, and the Wiktionary doesn't serve too well for that purpose.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for me, it's a good resource if I'm looking for basic word meanings for my own understanding, but it doesn't work as well if I'm trying to convince someone else of what a word means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T10:34:26.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2762" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2763" CreationDate="2011-05-09T13:33:39.870" Score="1" ViewCount="1029" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reaching the final stage of my academic project work. Usual practice is to use Microsoft Office/OpenOffice/LibreOffice for preparing the final project report. As I am inclined towards FOSS I am using LibreOffice. I am aware of LaTeX/LyX but despite of greater control it offers I find them complicated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My report mainly comprises of text, several images which occupy 25-50 percent of pages and small number of equations. Number of pages would be less than 150. Automatic generation of table of contents, good font support, easy margin/alignment settings, facility to export to PDF are a must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than the applications mentioned above are there any others which will work on Linux? I am just impressed by the features offered by Scrivener for Mac users. Is an alternative for Linux available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1940" LastEditorUserId="1940" LastEditDate="2011-05-09T13:39:27.350" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T18:19:48.220" Title="Good report making software" Tags="|software|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2762" CreationDate="2011-05-09T14:10:21.013" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a Beta version of Scrivener for Linux you can use, located here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Download button is about half way down the page).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Oh, and obviously, it is a Beta version, so be sure to make backups regularly if you do plan on trying it out. Wouldn't want your academic work to disappear due to a bug!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T14:10:21.013" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2762" CreationDate="2011-05-09T14:49:31.600" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abisource.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Abiword&lt;/a&gt; is available for Linux. It's a word processor like he others you have mentioned. It also makes Latex a little bit less complicated, because it can generate Latex files. E.g. you can enter the Latex syntax for equations, if you like that and ignore the Latex syntax for the rest of your document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a small &lt;a href=&quot;http://tph16.tuwien.ac.at/cgi-bin/dwww/usr/share/doc/abiword-help/html/introduction.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;introduction&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T14:49:31.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2750" CreationDate="2011-05-09T20:44:49.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask your editor. Some publications have style guidelines for these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="202" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T20:44:49.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2727" CreationDate="2011-05-09T21:13:54.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do tech-writing classes help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to read a lot of technical, low-level software description. Most of the writing is so poor it's frightening. I got so upset that I began to ask &quot;how would I rewrite this paragraph to read as if a sane person wrote it?&quot; And then, sometimes, I &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; rewrite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After only a few months of dabbling, I noticed that I'd started to write more clearly, more strongly, more succinctly. Reading bad writing made my writing better. It was all automatic and cheaper than a class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the same sort of thing could work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastEditorUserId="1645" LastEditDate="2011-05-10T18:59:52.970" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T18:59:52.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1991" CreationDate="2011-05-09T22:03:05.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days, writers don't often get the luxury of lying in a green meadow, with tall trees and green grass, birds chirping, and a blue-er than blue sky. This would be a wonderful environment to write in, avoiding distractions, inspiration abound. But, alas, today the ones who love to write away all their fears and hopes are stuck in a loud noisy environment, filled with ringing cell phones and the honks of car horns and chatty people. Every writer needs their own &quot;writing spot,&quot; a place where they can write without worrying about anything else.  Their &quot;green meadow,&quot; so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1945" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T22:03:05.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2770" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-10T02:45:22.923" Score="2" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing my doctoral dissertation here in the United States, and quoting some text from an English-language paper written in Germany. In Germany, the convention for writing numbers is to use a comma as the decimal separator (&lt;code&gt;3,5 meters&lt;/code&gt;), but in the United States, the convention is to use a period as the decimal separator (&lt;code&gt;3.5 meters&lt;/code&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to reformat the numbers to the American convention when I quote this paper, or is it more appropriate to leave it as-is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1949" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T23:36:43.983" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T23:36:43.983" Title="Quoting text from a country with different internationalization" Tags="|academic-writing|quotes|international|numerals|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2771" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2776" CreationDate="2011-05-10T04:41:23.827" Score="10" ViewCount="6488" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Post script is usually written when a writer forgets to write something on the main body of the letter and wants to add on to what he had written on the letter.&quot; But in this age of email and word processors, why would anyone want to use P.S.? Is its usage still relevant and any particular reason for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1950" LastEditorUserId="21768" LastEditDate="2018-09-07T06:58:59.593" LastActivityDate="2020-12-05T09:45:14.390" Title="Is P.S. (Post Script) still useful in the age of email?" Tags="|word-choice|letter|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2771" CreationDate="2011-05-10T04:46:02.163" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The postscript is indeed of limited use, but it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; still be useful when one has something else to say, but doesn't want to compose the email all over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People still do compose letters from time to time, and send them on paper. I do it &lt;em&gt;maybe&lt;/em&gt; once a year, and I can see it coming up where I have something to add, but don't want to print the letter again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may well come a time where people don't know what &amp;quot;P.S.&amp;quot; means, just as some people don't realize that &amp;quot;R.S.V.P.&amp;quot; acronyms the french phrase 'répondez s'il vous plait' meaning 'please reply.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Love, Neil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S., It also might be useful if one is mimicking an old-style letter format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-12-05T09:45:14.390" LastActivityDate="2020-12-05T09:45:14.390" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2760" CreationDate="2011-05-10T05:06:13.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the perspective of an editor who does some writing on the side: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you need in a dictionary. When editing UK writers, I usually use Cambridge, I think I'd continue to use that or Merriam-Webster when trying to convince a writer, &lt;em&gt;I do not think the word you used means what you think it means.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical writers or those in other specialized fields might want a different dictionary altogether. Academic writers should be using whatever dictionary their institution favors. If you're writing or editing to a particular style guide, that guide will have a preferred dictionary. (For example. AP uses Webster, Chicago is fine with either Webster or Merriam-Webster.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to how useable it is for everyday work, I'd rather use Cambridge or Webster. Both have easier-to-use interfaces, and Wikitionary often feels a bit like overkill to me. It tends to dwell on etymology and sourcing a bit too much to be practical for what I do. It might be a good place to get the general idea of a word, similar to how Wikipedia is a good place to go to &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; research on an unfamiliar topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, while I wouldn't use it as an authority, but it has a place in my Editing &gt; Dictionaries bookmarks folder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T05:06:13.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2770" CreationDate="2011-05-10T05:13:44.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In academic writing, following style guides is particularly important for citations and notes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are you editing to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APA_style&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA style&lt;/a&gt; or another style guide?&lt;/strong&gt; I'd absolutely check that first and do as the style guide instructs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your department may also have a style guide for you to follow. (I don't have a copy of APA or I'd check.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barring any such guidance: If you're quoting &lt;em&gt;verbatim&lt;/em&gt;, I would leave the quotes as-is, keeping it clear that the quoted material's source clear, &lt;em&gt;unless it causes confusion&lt;/em&gt;. If this happens more than once, you can leave a note explaining the difference if you feel it's needed. If you're paraphrasing, use the U.S. convention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I've not worked on academic papers, and don't know APA well, so get another opinion on that last part. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-05-10T05:25:35.607" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T05:25:35.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2771" CreationDate="2011-05-10T05:38:48.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems perfectly acceptable to include a PS in a body of an email for various reasons.  The two I can think of are:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if youre in a hurry and you just thought of something, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if the postscript is not somewhat unrelated to the body of the email&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T05:38:48.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2771" CreationDate="2011-05-10T07:29:47.193" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually use it purposely to add something related to the email, but that I don't want to mix with the rest, likely to let the reader to focus more easily on the part of the email I think it's more important; I like to use it like a sort of &quot;side note&quot;, placed after the written text (lit. latin &quot;post scriptum&quot; can be translated as &quot;after the written (text)&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1951" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T07:29:47.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2770" CreationDate="2011-05-10T08:37:48.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it says above generally you should stick to the style guide you have been given. If this gives no guidelines then seek clarification from your evaluator, mentor, tutor etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they have no idea then maybe you could suggest a popular method of substituting your own words into a quotation, the use of square brackets e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Because of his internal conflict, his sanity is questioned.&quot; ~A.Quote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;becomes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Because of [Hamlet's] internal conflict, his sanity is questioned.&quot; ~A.Quote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3,5 meters ~original&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is substituted with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3.5] meters ~altered to increase context and clear cultural confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2011-05-10T10:30:31.437" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T10:30:31.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2770" CreationDate="2011-05-10T12:16:14.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about adding [sic], meaning &quot;intentionally so written,&quot; to indicate that you are quoting something which is written &quot;incorrectly&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;3,5 meters [sic]&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T12:16:32.547" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T12:16:32.547" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2754" CreationDate="2011-05-10T15:15:04.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is too short and vague. You mention 'real power', as opposed to what . . . imaginary power? And what sort of power? The power to act, buy or sell? Combining vague 'power' combined with the general word 'information' creates more questions than answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your sentiment seems to be along the line of the phrase &quot;time is money&quot; - yet this phrase is creates a much clearer picture because the reader can relate time to money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that 'power' means 'ability', you could try something like: &quot;Power is useless without information&quot; - a very relevant statement in today's economic and geopolitical state of affairs, yet I suggest you replace the word 'power' with something more specific to create a clearer picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1745" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T15:15:04.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2011-05-10T19:01:30.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Obvious plot holes - when I reach a point in the film or novel were the writer either failed to see the plot holes he was creating or worse hopes that the his audience has failed to see them that completely ruins my suspension of disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Weak or nonexistent characterizations - if I'm provided with no reason to be concerned about the characters in the film were a novel then at that point there is no reason for me to suspend my disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Too many continuity or grammatical errors - When a work of art poorly assembled and poorly edited, a completely distracts me from the story that it's telling.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1954" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T19:01:30.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2782" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2785" CreationDate="2011-05-10T20:10:51.790" Score="6" ViewCount="11224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been doing Google searches for examples or teleplays to download that may offer insight for sketch comedy writing.  Is there a specific format that those in the industry follow or is simply the same teleplay/screenplay format used by the rest of the industry?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="801" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T00:56:36.800" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T17:20:44.633" Title="Is there an accepted format for comedy sketch writing?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2579" CreationDate="2011-05-10T20:35:17.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dialog is a shortcut for conveying details about your story. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I felt like my arms were going to fall off because I was carrying those heavy grocery bags.&quot;, said Alice as she flopped down onto the sofa.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could have gone with something like this instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Alice started to pick up the bags that the clerk had filled with her groceries. This store is becoming so familiar these days - teenagers always seem to be hungry - but this beats getting dinner from some fast food place almost every night. Walking home, Alice went through her To-Do list - start dinner, get the mail, pay some bills tonight. Although Spring just started it warmed up very quickly, making everyone sluggish. Everyone except for those that ran their air conditioner at home. Electricity costs so much these days, plus the groceries are adding up too. &#xA;The sun was a little closer to the rooftops by the time Alice reached home. She heard the TV as she walked in, Bob is probably playing another game instead of doing his homework. Her arms ached as she sat down next to Bob. She was glad to see Bob - he's becoming a young man. Staring at Bob playing his game on TV, smiling a little as she drifted off to sleep.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialog is absent from the sample, yet it conveys a richer experience. Think about the world or scene you are trying to create and try to draw the reader in by telling the story as opposed to 'the facts' through dialog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of perfection when you use dialog, try to describe your character's typical traits in two or three words and drive their dialog and personality based on those words. For example, your character could be a 'born detective' so she could question everything, get easily distracted, and have a messy workspace. Your character's dialog would be more consistent without being boring because readers might be able to identify your character without you having to flag their dialog with the character's name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1745" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T20:35:17.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="405" CreationDate="2011-05-10T22:32:06.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I'm a digital person, I tend to use Evernote. It can capture audio, pictures, video, or text. I can enter something on my phone or iPad, have it sync with the service and it's available on my laptop or desktop almost immediately. Since I use multiple devices this is nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pen/paper is nice, and if you use that, I'd recommend that after you take some notes, you take a picture of the page with your phone as a backup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T22:32:06.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2782" CreationDate="2011-05-10T22:48:09.190" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I can tell from some brief research, it is the same format as when writing a script for radio, or television. For example, from this article regarding &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/22/comedy2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Comedy Sketch Writing&lt;/a&gt; (written by Richard Herring, David Mitchell and Robert Webb):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I started my professional career&#xA;  writing topical sketches for the now&#xA;  defunct Radio 4 show Weekending. I&#xA;  actually pretty much loathed the&#xA;  programme, as it was rather formulaic&#xA;  and rarely biting. Yet I stayed for a&#xA;  year, serving an apprenticeship that&#xA;  &lt;b&gt;taught me many skills: from the&#xA;  mundane business of how to format a&#xA;  script&lt;/b&gt; (for this and further advice&#xA;  see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bbc.co.uk/writersroom&lt;/a&gt;) to&#xA;  technical tricks such as how to avoid&#xA;  clunky exposition&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emphasis mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend having a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scripts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC Script Archive&lt;/a&gt; for examples of sketch comedy scripts for TV and radio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="25169" LastEditDate="2017-06-02T17:20:44.633" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T17:20:44.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2786" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-11T04:39:50.130" Score="5" ViewCount="4801" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though I disagree that characters &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to be likeable for a story to be good, I certainly do not think it hurts - nice people in stories serve as redeeming factors and give the occasional &quot;tingle down the spine&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any general principles which one can use to allow the reader to emphatize with the personalities in the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1912" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T23:33:49.480" Title="How do you make your characters likable?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2011-05-11T05:18:36.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lack of research will often break the artificial realism. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between insufficient research and the author didn't care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case in point: &lt;em&gt;The Crystal Singer&lt;/em&gt; by Anne MacAffrey. Central to the universe is the idea of a natural mineral on one planet that responds to &quot;perfect pitch&quot;. Except &quot;perfect pitch&quot; is a furphy created by human history. Nature will create octaves, perfect fourths and fifths (and maybe a few more), but the western even tempered scale is entirely artificial. when I learnt about that, it quite broke my enjoyment of the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T05:18:36.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2770" CreationDate="2011-05-11T09:34:31.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the original paper is in English but uses the German convention for decimals, and you are going to hold to that convention in the quoted material, I would put a footnote by the first use to explain you are doing so, then simply quote as is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if the dissertation is for an English audience and you feel uncomfortable using the German numerical conventions, convert them and footnote the first usage explaining &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; to your audience. Either way you've covered the bases. You could also preface your first quote with the explanation, or explain your decision in a foreword. One explanation is enough, however. The quotations will get tedious if you call out each usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, it would be a good idea to run the idea by your advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T09:34:31.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2770" CreationDate="2011-05-11T10:56:46.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking about it, and I think if you're only doing this a couple times, I'd recommend that you just not quote the original directly.  It's a total cheat, and if you can find a better answer, I'd love to hear it, but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;German researchers found that only &quot;3,5 percent of the world's population knew how to quote these numbers correctly&quot;. (Schmidt 74)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;German researchers found that 3.5 percent of people world-wide knew the correct format for translating numerical quotations. (Schmidt 74)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there are times when direct quotations are absolutely necessary, but hopefully this isn't one of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T10:56:46.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2790" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2797" CreationDate="2011-05-11T13:58:15.967" Score="33" ViewCount="7516" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is my first question on here, so bear with me, if you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is in two-parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) When writing in first-person, is it wise to choose a main character of a different gender to yourself (the author)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) What are certain pitfalls to watch out for when attempting to accomplish this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize the first part of the question may be more a matter of opinion, which is why I included the second part to make it more concrete. I was also going to ask whether a male author (like myself) should try writing a female character from first-person's, but I thought let's make the question applicable (and hopefully useful) to both genders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also not looking for a discussion on the pro's and cons on first-person writing as opposed to third-person as there are a few good questions on that on here already and I've read quite a number of books in both styles that I liked and didn't like for various reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there are some authors who have pulled off writing different-gender main characters in first person, such as Robin Hobb with her character FitzChivalry Farseer in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_hobb#The_Farseer_Trilogy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Assassin's Trilogies.&lt;/a&gt; I personally enjoyed these books and felt that she pulled off a male character fairly well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only real male author successfully accomplishing this that I know if is Stephen King's &quot;Dolores Claiborne&quot; which is also noted in another question on this site. To my knowledge it is also fairly widely held that men should not write first-person female characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only obvious pitfalls I can think of for male authors is not to become sexist or to impose too much of a &quot;male-fantasy&quot; onto your female character. Any insights would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1956" LastEditorDisplayName="user34214" LastEditDate="2019-10-10T01:46:37.980" LastActivityDate="2019-10-14T04:34:46.067" Title="Pitfalls of writing a main character of different gender to the author, specifically first-person perspective?" Tags="|grammatical-person|gender|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2790" CreationDate="2011-05-11T14:23:59.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's necessarily any more difficult than just writing about a character that is different to yourself. A male writing as a female is no different than if he wrote about someone of a different nationality, race, or creed. You'll face the same core obstacle, which is the ability to put yourself in the shoes of that person, and see the world through their eyes, not your own. Not only that, you need to see how the world views them as well. If you don't do that, then you run the risk of creating very clichéd characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I happen to have read the Assassin's Trilogies (quite a while ago), so to put it in context: if you think of the characters again, you'll notice that all the males and females in the story fulfil their gender roles according to their physical differences, social and cultural setting, their history and experiences. Nothing rings false, because the characters are true to themselves, and that is the key to portraying any character, be they male, female, Chinese, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T14:23:59.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2790" CreationDate="2011-05-11T15:58:48.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's made up to be that big of an issue, but personally, I'd stay back because I can't relate to the nuances of the female mind. Is that easy to pretend? Maybe, but I'd feel weird about doing it. Why would I write in the mind of a woman? I think people would ask questions. If you're doing it, just stay away from cliches. Play it safe and write how you would for a dude, but avoid the obvious distinctions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1958" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T21:26:08.233" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T21:26:08.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2794" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-11T21:14:10.777" Score="7" ViewCount="1819" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who is going back to college after a decade, and is quickly finding out that his/her writing skills are not up to snuff.  He/she writes in a style suited more for Facebook than business or academia.  What are some strategies they should follow to start developing basic writing skills?  I don't know that throwing them a copy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060891548&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;On Writing Well&lt;/a&gt; is the best way to get them started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Adding to the question, any useful resources on organizing thoughts/brainstorming/mindmapping/outlining in advance of writing??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1959" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T17:53:55.910" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T17:53:55.910" Title="What are some strategies for developing basic writing skills? Beginning Writing (again)" Tags="|resources|preparation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2794" CreationDate="2011-05-11T21:46:13.473" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best ways to learn is to learn from example. Get your friend to read some examples of well-written essays, paying particular attention to the language used, and construction of arguments, etc. Perhaps he/she can ask her teacher for some past examples from the course itself, or better yet, see what advice they can give related directly to the course. Other than that, reading a few basic primers on academic writing would definitely help. Check to see if the college doesn't have some publications on writing it recommends to students, too. They may even offer a course to help cover the basics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T21:46:13.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2790" CreationDate="2011-05-11T22:02:26.530" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is going to depend on the author.  Women write male MCs all the time, and I can think of several successful male author/female characters to add to your list: Michael Cunningham in &lt;em&gt;The Hours&lt;/em&gt;, Flaubert's &lt;em&gt;Madame Bovary&lt;/em&gt; and her friend &lt;em&gt;Anna Karenina&lt;/em&gt; by Tolstoy, Thackerey's &lt;em&gt;Vanity Fair&lt;/em&gt;, etc.  Although I also think there's a significant subjectivity to our judgement of the portrayals: the first time I read both Madame Bovary AND Anna Karenina, I was frustrated by the female characters and tempted to write them off as unrealistic - the next time I read them, I changed my mind!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I disagree with the idea that men, as a whole, cannot write female characters well.  But I have certainly read some messes in which men did NOT write female characters well.  I would also disagree with the idea that you should &quot;play it safe and write how you would for a dude.&quot;  I don't think we need to get into a nature/nurture debate to establish that women currently alive, and, I believe, alive at any time or place ever, have a very different life experience than men.  Pretending that these differences don't exist will lead to shallow, unrealistic characterization, in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving female authors out of it, I think every male writer looking at a female character needs to ask himself whether he understands her.  What are her general life experiences, sure, but also what are the experiences that she's had as a woman?  When she was a little girl, was she dressed up frilly, or was she a tomboy?  Was it her choice, or her parents'?  Did she feel guilty the first time she had sex?  Has she ever been called a slut, and how did that make her feel?  How does she dress now?  When's the first time she was sexually harassed, and how did she react?  When's the most RECENT time she was sexually harassed, and how did she react THAT time?  Has she ever been pregnant?  Ever had a pregnancy scare?  Ever had an abortion?  How did she feel about that?  etc. etc. ETC.  There are a LOT of differences between male and female characters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel like you have good answers for all these questions, maybe you're ready to start writing a female character.  If you don't have the answers, though, I wouldn't say you need to despair of ever writing about half of the human population!  Just do some reading, some thinking, some talking to female friends, and see if you can develop the ability to put yourself in a woman's place; it'll make you a better writer, and probably a better human being, too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T22:02:26.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2790" CreationDate="2011-05-11T22:24:43.800" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: The pro is that if you do it well, your fans will heartily appreciate it. The con is that it takes more effort, and if you resort to stereotypes or cardboard-cutouts for your female characters, it will annoy a whole lot of your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer:&#xA;First of all, who is your audience? Are you a man writing a story mainly for other men like you to read? If so, you might not mind if women roll their eyes when they see your story. If you intend to have a mixed or female audience, then you may need to put some more effort into your female characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many people who have spent a lot of time criticizing female  stereotypes and the way females are often portrayed. They have created a plethora of resources for you to examine so that you can avoid those pitfalls. To get you started:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.overthinkingit.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Overthinking-It-Female-Character-Flowchart.png&quot;&gt;The Female Character Flowchart&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FauxActionGirl&quot;&gt;Faux Action Girl&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheChick&quot;&gt;The Chick&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenActWomenAre&quot;&gt;Men Act, Women Are&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://current.com/shows/infomania/89900442_sarah-haskins-in-target-women-lifetime.htm&quot;&gt;Sarah Haskins addresses Lifetime&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can cut corners though. I actually think you can get very far by simply writing your characters in such a way that they could be either male or female. Or try this trick: If you changed the gender of that character, would the character still work? It is fine if the answer is no, but then you must be able to come up with a good reason why that personality or behaviour only works for one gender. If you answer &quot;I don't know, I just think a woman would do that/say that/think that but I have no idea why,&quot; then you have a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are already plenty of authors out there who are explicitly exploring women's issues and what it is like to be a woman. You probably will not be able to compete on that front unless it is a fascination of yours that you passionately pursue. That is fine. Not every author needs to have an in-depth understanding of every conceivable issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you educate yourself about the common criticisms of stereotypical female characters then you have done plenty. If you feel you are struggling to write a main female character because you feel that you just can't understand women enough, then do not write one. If you have learned about the stereotypes and a female character is forming in your mind, then go ahead and give her a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1960" LastEditorUserId="1960" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T22:37:53.703" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T22:37:53.703" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2786" CreationDate="2011-05-11T23:01:51.783" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say the number one method is to give them a great obstacle that they deeply desire to overcome, then show us the story of them overcoming it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the &quot;Pet the dog&quot; or &quot;Save the cat&quot; scene where you see them doing something nice. Similarly, a character who loves someone is usually more sympathetic. If you have a guy who is a jerk to almost everyone, but he would do anything for his little sister, then he just got a lot more likable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also helps if the character has to deal with everyday crap that many people can relate to. The opening scene of &lt;em&gt;Office Space&lt;/em&gt; comes to mind, where you immediately empathize with the character just by watching him wrestle with changing lanes in a traffic jam. Other common examples include getting dumped, having an annoying co-worker, being sexually frustrated, or an embarrassing moment like discovering an unzipped fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make the character active. No one likes the damsel in distress. No one likes the character who whines and moans. The ones who stand idly by while bad things happen to other people are the worst. People love the character who gets up and does something about the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simple, but not easy: give the character a unique personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1960" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T23:01:51.783" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2794" CreationDate="2011-05-11T23:11:41.737" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, revising teaches more about good writing than anything else.  Most people who are not experienced writers are putting so much effort and attention into getting something down on paper that they have no mental RAM left for phrasing and style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of worrying about your friend's &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; per se, offer to act as a sounding board to help by reading what your friend has written and offering suggested edits.  After a while, he or she should start to catch things him/herself.  It's not easy on the ego, so be sure your friend wants it, but it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could start be helping to make sure the grammar and spelling are reasonably good, then as fewer of those fixes are needed, also make sure all content is in place and well organized, then as those fixes are less often needed start working on concision and style.  This way your friend is less likely to be overwhelmed by how much needs fixing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T23:11:41.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2800" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2802" CreationDate="2011-05-11T23:44:51.920" Score="2" ViewCount="21505" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an analytical essay (for school) about a novel. I need to cite some quotes (for support), that comes from that novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the MLA style citation goes as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Quote goes here&quot; (Author Pg#)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, do I still have to write the author's name in the citation if my essay is obviously analyzing only one work of text? I just want to quote and cite something that the narrator said from the book that I'm analyzing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how would it go? It feels kind of weird to write the author names after each quote... when I'm obviously taking quotes out of the same book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is proper? What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1961" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-15T11:53:16.117" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T11:53:16.117" Title="Citing multiple quotes from a single novel" Tags="|citations|essay|mla|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2800" CreationDate="2011-05-12T01:02:42.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't take the author's name to refer to the author himself. You're using the author's name to identify the work in question (hence why you'll often find &lt;code&gt;“Quote goes here.” (Author Year)&lt;/code&gt; when using multiple books by the same author).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, the same rules should apply, even if the narrator is fictional. Quoting other people quoted in a book (real or fictional) may be another issue, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1962" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T01:02:42.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2800" CreationDate="2011-05-12T02:12:02.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;MLA says that you only need the author's name if the author isn't clear from the context. So you can refer to the author in the sentence, and say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sherwood says to &quot;quote like this&quot;. (72)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're only using one source, the context makes it pretty clear which work you're referring to, so I'd use page number only throughout the essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as always, you probably want to double check with the person who'll be marking your work, in case they have idiosyncratic preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T02:12:02.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2800" CreationDate="2011-05-12T11:21:57.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different guidelines and in the first instance ask your tutor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if there is no firm guideline on this (which I find hard to believe) there is an option to first list (author, year, page) and thereafter write: (Op. Cit. p.x)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Op. Cit. Is short for &quot;Opus Citatum&quot; trans. &quot;The work has already been cited.&quot;, an academic way of saying &quot;see above&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as I say, your tutor should be able to help you to the preferred answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T11:21:57.230" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2786" CreationDate="2011-05-12T12:50:34.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I do, is not necessarily make them likeable but make them able to be related to.  What people want in a good character is to be able to relate to them or relate them to someone that they have had a strong emotion for in the past.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what I would suggest, along with giving them obstacles to over come, is to develop the reality of who they are.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say if it is a beggar on the streets, maybe he comes up a few times in the story before he becomes a major part ofthe story, and each time he comes up he has a different sign or a different ailment.  This is something that many people can relate to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want them to have a strong feeling, good or bad, not likeable or not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1964" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T12:50:34.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="405" CreationDate="2011-05-12T13:41:21.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people need a water proof notepad for recording ideas in the shower. I needed something for recording ideas in the car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A digital audio recorder is something I carry around now because I get a lot of ideas in the car while commuting or running errands. The phone had too many buttons to push before being able to record, a dedicated recorder is simpler and is much safer. and I can transfer to the computer via USB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1422" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T13:41:21.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2786" CreationDate="2011-05-12T15:20:59.980" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want a hard blueprint for ensuring that your character is likeable the following should help if applied properly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your character should be shown to be capable. Readers like characters who can do stuff well and they don't tend to mind too much what stuff. Incompetence is shorthand for moral sloth in fiction so a doctor should be a good doctor (look at what people let House get away with because &quot;OMG great doctor&quot;), a cop should be good cop (even if he's not, you know, a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; cop, see Vic Mackey of The Shield for details), and a forensic scientist should be a good forensic scientist (see Gil Grissom of early CSI: Vegas for details).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your character should, perversely after 1, be shown to be vulnerable. People like to know that into everyone's life a little rain must fall and particularly when they are such sickeningly competent heroic noble types.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While we're at it a character should have excellent scruples and/or a clear and consistent code of ethics. They are not cheats, even if they have a vice like too much drinking or whatever. If they do something we morally disagree with they can be somewhat redeemed if it is consistent with the character's code of ethics (as long as we agree with those).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And on that subject giving your character a few human failings is fine as long as the only person who ends up hurt by them is the character themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we try to make a character heroic we should play these rules really conservatively and make the character a regular scout. On the other hand the more we bend the rules the more we venture into the realms of a character not everyone will like but who inspires strong loyalty from fans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So really, it depends how many people you want to find the character likeable as to how much you lay this on thick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T15:20:59.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2808" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-13T00:44:32.567" Score="1" ViewCount="1616" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made a program and wrote a paper on how it works. I do not quote anything, I just talk about my program. Do I still need to write a bibliography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1671" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T05:05:11.273" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T17:58:02.640" Title="Do I need to write a bibliography?" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2808" CreationDate="2011-05-13T01:20:20.800" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't understand the question.  How COULD you write a bibliography if you didn't read anything?  Or...did you read something, and just not quote it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you consulted a resource but didn't quote from it, you need to be sure whether you're working in a field that requires a 'Works Cited' page, or a field that requires a 'Bibliography'.  Generally, as the names suggest, a Works Cited page only lists those works you actually cite, while a bibliography traditionally lists all the works you &lt;em&gt;consulted&lt;/em&gt;.  So...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you didn't do any reading for this assignment, obviously you don't need either;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did some reading but didn't include anything that requires a citation, then you should check whether you're expected to create a full bibliography (list whatever you read) or just a Works Cited (don't list anything, since you didn't cite anything).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T01:20:20.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2810" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-10T00:36:01.750" Score="5" ViewCount="604" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since copy is such a key part of a startup's website, many business people would like to learn to be good copywriters personally.  Such a person would need to be a good persuasive writer, and able to convey information about their product or service very concisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone whose primary background is not writing wanted to learn to be a great copywriter, what resources would you recommend they use? Free and paid resources are fair game. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1967" OwnerDisplayName="Kenneth Vogt" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T17:15:03.823" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T17:15:03.823" Title="How can one get better at copywriting?" Tags="|resources|marketing|education|copywriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2811" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-13T11:38:54.887" Score="1" ViewCount="378" Body="&lt;p&gt;When reviewing fiction, there's a certain quality that's very important to me, which I can best describe as being &quot;solid.&quot; By which I mean: the story is well thought-out, well constructed; it flows naturally and believably; I'm never struck by something that seems overly absurd, implausible, contrived, or manipulative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though in some senses this is a basic requirement for a story - you want your story believable and non-contrived, right? - I like to mention it outright in reviews. That's because a lot of stories &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; feel solid to me, and &lt;em&gt;that's&lt;/em&gt; because writing something that's both convincing and compelling can often be very difficult. So it's important for me to recognize the pieces that do manage this, and I'd personally see this as a significant recommendation for many types of fiction (because often, a story which is solid has the minimum requirements to be enjoyable - not necessarily much beyond the &quot;light fun read&quot; tag, but at least that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My difficulty is that I feel that describing these stories as &quot;solid&quot; is damning them with faint praise. It doesn't sound like much of a compliment, somehow (though maybe I'm wrong on this?). Here's some other phrases I've used or considered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Competent&quot; is another word that, taken literally, is an accurate description of what I'm trying to praise, but actually sounds really really bad.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Flawless&quot; would be nice if taken literally, but it's much too strong a superlative for what I'm actually trying to describe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Well-constructed&quot; is a pretty close to what I'm looking for, but I don't think the average reader will understand what I mean by it - it sounds like generic praise that means &quot;this is good in some way.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you think of other ways to phrase the positive criticism I'm trying to convey? Alternatively, do you think I'm being overly-sensitive in rejecting some of the phrasings I've already considered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T11:59:46.053" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T06:33:41.487" Title="Complimenting on solid structure with no major flaws" Tags="|word-choice|criticism|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2811" CreationDate="2011-05-13T11:43:32.887" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's anything wrong with 'solid', 'consistent' or 'well-crafted'.  From the sound of things, you MEAN this to be faint praise... you're saying that the book has achieved &quot;the minimum requirements to be enjoyable&quot;.  It's what you say AFTER this that adds the shadings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book is a well-crafted, light beach read.  It won't stay with you forever, but you'll enjoy the time you spend with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book is well-crafted and truly memorable.  The prose flows easily, the characters are unique and fascinating, and the conflict is gut-wrenching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T11:43:32.887" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2813" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2814" CreationDate="2011-05-13T11:58:44.993" Score="1" ViewCount="322" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a snipped-up version of a review of an anthology I wrote a while back (&lt;a href=&quot;http://users.livejournal.com/_standback_/44439.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;full original review here&lt;/a&gt;). Most of the stories were pretty good, a few were superb, and there were a few poor ones. For an anthology, I consider that to be nothing short of spectacular, but some tepid responses gave me the sense that maybe that bottom-line recommendation was less than clear - more &quot;some stories are good and some are bad&quot; than &quot;like most anthologies, some stories are better than others, but there's some good stuff and great stuff and it's worth your time.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm leaving in more of the criticism than the praise, because if it seems overly harsh, I want to know that. I'm also cutting out all proper names, since I don't want this question to come up on searches for the actual anthology or its author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let's begin by saying that this is a strong, solid collection. Almost every story in the anthology is, at very least, an enjoyable read, and many of them do a lot more than that. Let me focus on the stories I found particularly fascinating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The strong trio that, IMHO, form the backbone of the anthology are [Story 1] [10-word description], [Story 2], [10-word description], and [Story 3], [10-word description].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each of these stories is superb. [Story 1] effortlessly submerses us in a different age and a different mindset. [Story 2] combines a very neat science-fictional premise with human pain and hurt; couching it all in the familiar geeksome pastime of collecting makes for a powerful and unusual story. And [Story 3] conveys perfectly the uncertainty and desperation of its characters, while bringing them to life - in addition to a stunning conclusion which is sure to leave readers gasping for breath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One thing this trio of stories has in common is that they are firmly rooted in an element that is firmly mundane - yet unfamiliar, lesser-known. [Elaboration on this point.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The other crucial element of these stories that I'd like to touch upon is: suspense. You're doing it right. [Elaboration on this point.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rest of the stories may not reach the mark set by [three awesome stories] but many of them have intriguing premises and interesting ideas. Many of these stories are of the simple, one-note variety - but they're interesting, unfamiliar notes. [Examples.] The remaining stories are mostly solid, well-written tales involving familiar tropes; most of these are on the enjoyable-but-forgettable side, but I particularly enjoyed [Story 4] for its creatively odd choice of details and plot twists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The anthology is not flawless - [Story A] which shuffles back and forth between three unrelated characters, and [Story B named after a poem] which is constructed around the titular poem, both felt to me to be subjugating content to structure, and I didn't much care for the experiment. [Story C] on the other hand, was far too deep in familiar territory - when the novice travellers find their first transportation is the Hindenburg right before it crashes, it's not difficult to guess the pattern, yet the protagonists take forever to realize what's going on. Particularly aggravating was [Story D] which read as generic escapist juvenile urban fantasy. You know - the kind where the teenage boy is allowed to be obsessive and stalkerish because, oh-so-conveniently, his rival is actually a troll, and all the other characters are similarly &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ColourCodedForYourConvenience&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Color-Coded For Your Convenience&lt;/a&gt;, forming a big, self-congratulatory mess. Clearly not a story meant to be given much thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In summary, [Book Name] is a fine and worthy single-author anthology, from an author certainly worth keeping track of. Only a few stories here are absolute must-reads, but a few of those and a full house of enjoyable, creative stories makes for a very pleasant collection indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks much!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T04:44:14.727" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T04:44:14.727" Title="Does this convey that I recommend the anthology I'm reviewing?" Tags="|word-choice|non-fiction|criticism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2813" CreationDate="2011-05-13T13:47:35.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I do find it a little conflicting in terms of your praise. You seem to switch between enjoyable and forgettable. The impression I get from what you've written is that you're firmly in the middle. Words like &quot;fine&quot;, &quot;enjoyable&quot; and &quot;pleasant&quot; are fairly mild in terms of their praise, in my opinion, and signify that the anthology is, on the whole, just average. It's like saying something is &quot;nice&quot;, or &quot;decent&quot;. It just doesn't excite me, nor does it convey to me that you found the anthology exciting or worth the time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare that to when you used the word &quot;superb&quot;, which made me pay attention to those particular stories. I wanted to overlook the others in comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, just to point out: in your question, you state &quot;For an anthology, I consider that to be nothing short of spectacular&quot;, yet that certainly is not the impression you give in your piece. In fact, you don't say anything of the sort. You come across as sitting on the fence, and hedging your bets, almost as if you're being non-committal. If you had started by saying that &quot;This is a spectacular anthology for the fact that the majority of stories excellent, solid and well-told&quot;, it would utterly change the tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one other point: be careful of the pink elephant. Don't put negatives in my head. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rest of the stories may not reach&#xA;  the mark set by [three awesome&#xA;  stories] but many of them have&#xA;  intriguing premises and interesting&#xA;  ideas. Many of these stories are of&#xA;  the simple, one-note variety - but&#xA;  they're interesting, unfamiliar notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with the language you've used here is that you've put it in my head that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The majority of the stories are not as good as the other three&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The majority of stories are simple, one-note stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter that you qualify your statements afterwards, you've made me think of those two facts, and that's what I'll remember. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T13:47:35.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2794" CreationDate="2011-05-13T14:58:45.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two things will help: writing and reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your friend should start writing about whatever comes to mind, and do that on a regular basis. The writing should remain private, to alleviate the anxiety that might arise if he anticipates that someone might read it later. Start with a &lt;em&gt;pencil&lt;/em&gt; and paper - or a book. I suggest a pencil because it's slower than a pen and needs a level of attention that writing with a pen does not need. Slow down, consider your thoughts, and then take the time to actually write them out by hand goes a long way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read a lot too: news, magazines, books (modern and the classics) - get a feel for what you like and, more importantly, &lt;em&gt;why you like it&lt;/em&gt;. Write about what you read. I usually have my writing book next to the book I'm reading and have a written conversation with the author, the characters, or simply just write about whatever I'm reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, once your friend is more comfortable writing, have him write articles like opinions, reviews, a short story, or even directions for using a coffee maker - something that he knows someone else will read and edit. And, like it says on the bottle: later, rinse, repeat!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1745" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T14:58:45.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2813" CreationDate="2011-05-13T17:40:48.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My reaction to the review was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There are three good stories, four bad ones, and a bunch of OK ones.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how many stories the collection contains, but if only three of the bunch are noteworthy, I might not think it worth the cost (in dollars or energy) to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rocky part really starts in the 6th paragraph. The first two sentences are set up as [negative words] but [good words]. Putting the negative stuff first weights it more heavily in my mind that they positive words. The real message is the third sentence: &quot;The remaining stories are mostly solid, well-written tales involving familiar tropes&quot;. I think this sentence is an example of the tone you're looking for. It starts positive and explains the shortcomings with gentler vocabulary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a person generally unfamiliar with the content of anthologies, three good stories in the whole bunch doesn't seem very appealing. If three out of x is actually a spectacularly high number, mention that in the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1968" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T17:40:48.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2811" CreationDate="2011-05-13T17:51:12.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're spot-on with your assessment. &quot;Solid&quot; is overly used and has become a word I simply gloss right over, it doesn't stick with me. If you were to use &quot;Flawless&quot; I would think that you were being hyperbolic and the credibility of the review would be questioned. And &quot;competent&quot; and &quot;well-constructed&quot; don't have much rhetorical punch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some words that might work as replacements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tight&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Careful&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sensible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cogent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Precise&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1968" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T17:51:12.140" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2794" CreationDate="2011-05-13T18:01:33.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading good writing is great for learning to write (what a sentence!). Reading BAD writing is even better for learning to write. Give your friend some examples of terrible writing and ask them what makes it terrible. Writing is like book design--the better it is, the less you notice it. By reading something that is well-written, we're more likely to get caught up in the content than the structure. Critiquing something poorly-written supercharges our analysis engines. The more practiced we are at analyzing the work of others, the better we'll be at analyzing our own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1968" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T18:01:33.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2811" CreationDate="2011-05-13T20:23:59.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like two words you use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;plausible and believable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T20:23:59.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2820" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2827" CreationDate="2011-05-14T07:24:47.757" Score="1" ViewCount="347" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m interested in italics in novels. Italic writings in novels have a wide variety of feelings, for example surprise, delight, anger, irony, humor, etc.  However, consulting reference books, I only find such explanations for italics as “emphasis” or “attention,” which do not always give me important information, especially in order to take in the nuance of the expression and use it in writing in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’d like to know the meaning of italic ‘loved’ in the following citation, as an “italic collector.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“But I was patient. I wrote back. I was sympathetic, I was kind. Ginny simply &lt;em&gt;loved&lt;/em&gt; me. &lt;em&gt;No one’s ever understood me like you, Tom …. I’m so glad I’ve got this diary to confide in …. It’s like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket….&lt;/em&gt;” Harry Potter AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS (p.309, US edition)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speaker, Tom Riddle, is a villain in this story. He is boasting how well he could win Ginny’s heart by becoming a kind of pen pal with her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the latter part is italicized because Tom is mimicking Ginny’s comment probably with a scornful feeling. But why is ‘loved’ written in italics? Or, if you were the writer, how would you express the same meaning without italics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Why can’t I instinctively catch the italic meaning? – Because my native language depends more on adverbs, particles, or other ways, when expressing such subtle nuances in novels. It is not because I can’t understand human emotions! So, I’d be happy if you could explain it for me as specifically as possible. )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1969" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2011-05-14T09:27:49.033" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T02:15:57.970" Title="Why is this ‘loved’ italicized?" Tags="|fiction|novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2820" CreationDate="2011-05-14T11:02:57.950" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a precise interpretation of italics.  The idea of 'emphasis' is as close to their effect as &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; can get.  If you were reading the sentence aloud, you would emphasize &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; word.  Just as we use &lt;em&gt;spoken&lt;/em&gt; emphasis to convey a variety of meanings, so do we use italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meaning needs to come from the &lt;em&gt;context&lt;/em&gt;, and the interpretation of the reader.  Sorry!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: Edited to add more &lt;em&gt;italics!!!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2011-05-14T17:30:48.377" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T17:30:48.377" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2813" CreationDate="2011-05-14T16:34:59.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your thoughts and reactions are the important things. Yet you camouflage them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Let's begin by saying that this is a strong, solid collection. Almost every story in the anthology is, at very least, an enjoyable read, and many of them do a lot more than that. Let me focus on the stories I found particularly fascinating.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May I suggest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;s&gt;Let's begin by saying that t&lt;/s&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;This is a strong, solid collection. Almost every story&lt;/b&gt; &lt;s&gt;in the anthology&lt;/s&gt;&lt;b&gt; is &lt;/b&gt; &lt;s&gt;, at very least,&lt;/s&gt;&lt;b&gt; an enjoyable read. &lt;/b&gt;&lt;s&gt;and many of them do a lot&lt;/s&gt;&lt;b&gt; Many are much more.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;s&gt; than that&lt;/s&gt;. &lt;s&gt;Let me focus on the stories I found particularly fascinating.&lt;/s&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than half your words are distracting ornament, imo, and weaken your message. The para reads like your first timid draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're convinced about this anthology; please let me hear your conviction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T16:34:59.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2808" CreationDate="2011-05-14T16:47:07.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your paper is a description of the program that you wrote. The program is your production. If an algorithm you chose to implement is controversial, you might want to cite an article or two. If you realized a process in a new, efficient way, then it would be good to mention some of the background in a citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you decided to implement one algorithm over another, and the reasons for your choice aren't obvious, then I think it's an excellent idea to justify your choice with citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T16:47:07.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2794" CreationDate="2011-05-14T16:51:11.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, the best way to improve my writing is to edit and re-edit, over and over, without mercy, deleting superfluous junk and beefing up weak ideas. I usually end up with a paper that's about half as long as I started with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no doubt about it: the way to learn to write is to write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T16:51:11.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2808" CreationDate="2011-05-14T17:58:02.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's useful to the reader, you might refer to written descriptions of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;data structures or algorithms you used (if they're unusual or important)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the overall structure or architecture of your system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the problem your system helps users to solve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your development process and practices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you refer to such descriptions, you might make a bibliography of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there aren't any written descriptions of those things, or you don't think it would be helpful to cite them, you don't need a bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T17:58:02.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2826" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-14T22:41:54.030" Score="2" ViewCount="909" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a piccadilly journal that I use for taking notes on self-taught subjects and I have an awkward structure for pagination and page structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dviPF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sample Page&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page numbers only exist on the right hand side of the page and I read the &lt;strong&gt;journal&lt;/strong&gt; from left to right; however, I read &lt;strong&gt;journal entries&lt;/strong&gt; from right to left (in pages, not words). When a journal entry only spans a single page, I write a new entry on the left side of the journal with the respective date and title on the bottom but I never write new page numbers on the left page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journal is now ~56 pages (112 physical pages) and it's becoming difficult to find entries now. I want to list all of the entries in the back as a table of contents or index of some sort but I want to be as space-efficient as possible; how should I do this to be least-redundant (least repetition of page numbers or dates)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. If I sort them traditionally by pages, some pages will have two entries and others will only have one entry that spans two pages (asymmetrical). If I sort by date, I may have multiple entries per date that spans multiple pages (since I can write more than one journal entry in a day).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1971" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-09-16T22:54:43.693" LastActivityDate="2019-09-16T22:54:43.693" Title="Best way to Write a Table of Contents for Awkward Pagination" Tags="|journalism|pages|notes|table-of-contents|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2820" CreationDate="2011-05-15T02:15:57.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the word &lt;em&gt;loved&lt;/em&gt; is italicized here for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's a gloating exultation spoken by someone who revels in the idea of the victory that this word represents.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It follows the word &quot;simply&quot;; whenever that word is used it is setting up the word that follows for particular emphasis. It's the verbal equivalent of a pitcher's wind-up in baseball. Think of all the times you've used the &quot;simply&quot; set-up. &quot;I'm simply too tired to help&quot; or &quot;That's simply marvelous&quot; or &quot;That's simply not true&quot; — you are letting the listener know that whatever follows &lt;em&gt;simply&lt;/em&gt; is simply too important to be missed, and so you feel obliged to give it a double underscore.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T02:15:57.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2826" CreationDate="2011-05-15T08:43:57.087" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to look up by both title and date, I'd list each entry as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Entry title] [Entry date] [Page Number]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where &quot;Page Number&quot; refers to your existing 2-page numbering. You'll have no trouble finding the entry you're looking for once you've opened up the right 2 pages...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T08:43:57.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2826" CreationDate="2011-05-15T14:20:26.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could arbitrarily re-number the pages. Use a prefix like A, start at the lower outside corner of the first page, and call it A1. Your next page, left or right, is A2. Continue to the end. Use that for your TOC/Index.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T14:20:26.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2833" CreationDate="2011-05-15T19:52:12.560" Score="5" ViewCount="1080" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been approached by someone to translate a foreign language into (written) English. What is an acceptable rate (preferably in UK currency, but US would be fine) per thousand words that I could charge for such a service?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-05-16T09:04:32.273" LastActivityDate="2021-11-11T19:13:57.180" Title="How much should I expect to charge someone for translation services?" Tags="|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2832" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-15T22:04:35.927" Score="4" ViewCount="3245" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a writing project I'd like to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;crowdsource&lt;/a&gt;. I imagine opening the project definition to an open call, and awarding the work to the most creative writer / thinker based on a sample of their work or on the complete deliverable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sites exist that provide a good platform for such a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1978" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-05-16T20:03:19.027" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T09:25:55.773" Title="What sites can I use to crowdsource my writing project?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2831" CreationDate="2011-05-15T22:29:27.153" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR - It's a balancing act between their budget and your experience.  Take their budget, divide by time, adjust down for lack of experience if you're not the only horse in the race = rate. /end tl;dr&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First up a disclaimer: I am not a translator.  The advice I have to give you is based on my experience as a freelance illustrator and artist.  However, I believe it is applicable due to the similarities I'll cover later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you should establish is what your client's budget for the translation is.  That's not to say that you gouge them for everything you can, of course, but knowing what they're willing to spend does two things: a) you don't overprice yourself into giving the work to someone else and b) you don't underprice yourself so far that you're losing money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, you need to remember that it's not just an hourly calculation of your time that you're charging for.  You're also charging for however many years of learning and experience you've had with the language you're translating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two aspects considered, you should be able to parlay a rate that you and your client are happy with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;example (totally off the top of my head): Client has a budget of £4000 for translation overall.  The script is 20,000 words.  Seems like an easy division of £200 per thousand words, but let's just say you've only recently become fluent in the origin language (assuming English is your mother tongue).  If you know the client's budget, and you know they are approaching other, perhaps more experienced, translators, charging the full rate might be stretching it some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There again, if you're 20 years fluent and familiar with the language (and can demonstrate things like local anachronisms rather than straight transliteration), you could fully justify and maybe push for more than the simple £200 per thousand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can query the client's budget with simply asking how much they're willing to pay you.  Try approaching it in a more roundabout way, such as demonstrating that you want to show them you're a good deal or if you're being exclusively approached (i.e. the only runner) whether it's &quot;worth your time&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said in the tl;dr, it really is a balancing act of accommodation to each other's means.  I believe it's as applicable to translation of films as it is to art because it should be more than straight Google Translation you're offering, and as such you'll be executing a kind of art in itself, giving English language nuances to foreign phrases for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;sources: my own experience as a freelancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1977" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T22:29:27.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2832" CreationDate="2011-05-16T08:00:30.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.crowdspring.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Crowdspring&lt;/a&gt;. They have several categories for crowd-sourcing Writing Projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; For more information on how the writing aspect works, see this blog post on their website: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.crowdspring.com/2010/02/crowdsourced-copywriting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Crowdsourced Writing Projects on crowdSPRING&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; never used them myself, so can't comment on the actual service, quality etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-05-16T09:11:50.897" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T09:11:50.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-16T13:23:24.960" Score="2" ViewCount="252" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of writing a research paper in Computer Science. Are there any &lt;strong&gt;free&lt;/strong&gt; tools/browser plugins/web sites/latex plugins that would help me improve my English? I am looking for some nice applications that give examples of correct English usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1982" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-05-16T19:10:14.327" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T13:52:42.003" Title="What free tools are there to help me improve my English?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|language|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2836" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-16T19:09:36.600" Score="6" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to really understand literary techniques. I want to be able to say &quot;Ah, I see this writer is making use of assonance,&quot; or &quot;I think I will use a simile here instead of a metaphor.&quot; There are glossaries for this on the internet, but I am looking for something in a textbook format, that takes me through these concepts in the form of lessons and exercises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could anyone please recommend such a book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1984" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T04:47:55.417" Title="Is there a good textbook for understanding literary techniques?" Tags="|technique|resources|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2836" CreationDate="2011-05-16T19:34:36.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not an exercise book, but a reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0495898023&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Glossary of Literary Terms,&lt;/a&gt; M.H. Abrams. The current edition is about twice the size of the one I picked up in college... maybe I need to upgrade! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T19:34:36.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2841" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-17T10:02:36.040" Score="6" ViewCount="302" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a text with some basic styles and images. I plan to use it on a blog, maybe later in a wiki. And there should be a pdf version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing about a software. So there will be screenshots, code blocks and some inline styling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to have the least possible styling/markup effort. Any tips or good tools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess what I am looking for is a tool that does the style converting for me so I don't have to do the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1989" LastEditorUserId="1803" LastEditDate="2011-06-10T04:39:00.160" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T14:20:16.960" Title="Least possible editing effort if a text is for multiple media?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2835" CreationDate="2011-05-17T12:49:43.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Public library is the cheapest source. In other words: read, read and again - read. Reading books, newspapers and magazines is the best way to improve someone's language usage. Any language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to avoid web resources, particulary twitters, facebooks and other shout-and-bark sites. Even most of weblogs are utilising some bastardised mutation of language, so I cannot recommend them as correct sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T12:49:43.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2835" CreationDate="2011-05-17T13:52:42.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no computer programs that are going to make you a magnificent writer. The only way you can learn to write is through lots and lots of practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you're going to want to do is read and read a lot. Read fiction, read non-fiction, read writing textbooks. Visit your local library and read all different sorts of books to get a good grasp on the English language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you're going to want to write, rewrite, and write some more. It helps if you work with someone with experience in the writing/editing field. They'll be able to point out any mistakes you make, help you understand those mistakes, and make sure you don't make those mistakes again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is a slow and painful process. There are no shortcuts and even in the technology age, a computer still cannot teach you how to write well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T13:52:42.003" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1446" CreationDate="2011-05-17T14:35:21.173" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working on exactly the same problem. What I've found so far are below. I've only just got these books, so I can't tell you how good they are apart from first impressions, but here goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0440506581&quot;&gt;The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is a step-by-step program to help you develop your characters, your murder, your plot and everything else. Looks fantastic and seems interesting so far&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0312304463&quot;&gt;How to Write a Damn Good Mystery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read his &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0312010443&quot;&gt;How to Write a Damn Good Novel&lt;/a&gt; which was awesome - so I figure this will be a good one to work with too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;a href=&quot;http://ticket2write.tripod.com/mysplot.html&quot;&gt;Plotting the Mystery novel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is an online description of the classic 12-chapter Mystery-novel formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/158297294X&quot;&gt;Plot &amp;amp; Structure&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is about plotting in general and helped me figure out what was important to make a good plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway - those are my recommendations. Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1988" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T14:35:21.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2847" CreationDate="2011-05-17T15:19:20.023" Score="17" ViewCount="4415" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in newer software/software stack to use in writing technical papers. For the longest time I have been use LaTeX to handle this but in looking at getting longer pieces published, such as books, other software is being used. The one that stands out the most so far is DocBook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is what software/stack of software is common for book authors of technical subjects using to write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I primarily work on Mac. While using software in a VM isn't out of the question, unless there's not alternative it wouldn't be my first choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: items indicated...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adobe.com/products/framemaker.html&quot;&gt;Framemaker&lt;/a&gt; only onWindows&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxygenxml.com/&quot;&gt;&amp;lt;oXygen/&amp;gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ptc.com/products/arbortext/editor/&quot;&gt;Abortext Editor&lt;/a&gt; was Epic, looks like total over kill now&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1991" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-02T18:42:54.540" LastActivityDate="2022-12-04T13:09:02.237" Title="Technical Writing Software" Tags="|technical-writing|software|latex|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2811" CreationDate="2011-05-17T15:33:52.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was watching a movie at the weekend that made me think about this question. I think when something is &quot;solid&quot; and &quot;well constructed&quot; whether this is proper praise or faint praise depends very much on one other criterion. Whether it is plain that the author was writing to some plan they had dug up from some where and ham-fistedly played a game of join-the-plot-points or whether they had constructed it solidly because of a thorough knowledge of their chosen genre/story and out of an implied duty of care to the reader to deliver a minimum standard of craft in their writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of these two you mean should really be conveyed before you deliver the compliment i.e. you either give the story a pasting and say that even though it was terrible it showed some knowledge on the part of the author of what a good story &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be even though they failed to convey it. Or, alternatively, that the story was filled with imagination, well-crafted characters, deftly executed plot twists and was, in addition, solid and well constructed. In the former case it is obvious the author has paid lip-service to good writing whilst cynically filling out a checklist, in the latter it is clear a dedicated artist has applied technique and garnished it with brilliance and flair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. The movie was in the latter category, solidly constructed with care and attention to detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T15:33:52.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2845" CreationDate="2011-05-17T16:27:21.827" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends a lot on what you have around you and what your needs are; assuming that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't have extensive needs beyond Latin-1 and Math character sets, or simple use of Unicode character sets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't have a need for overly-rich or complex page layouts (i.e. you're not doing page layouts that you'd see in a glossy magazine)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't have external format/structure requirements that would conflict&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your main operating environment is Windows&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, Adobe FrameMaker is probably the best, first choice for long, technical documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adobe has over the past few years orphaned pared off all the previous supported platforms for Frame (the 68K/PPC MacOS, brief flirtation with Linux, various Unices one at a time) to the point where it's not worth considering if you're not on Windows. (And sadly, historically speaking, I thought the branch of Frame they developed on Windows was not nearly as robust or as easy to use as the version of it on Mac, or Unix, but things may have improved now that they're really only supporting one platform for it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never used any tool that makes the writer's job as easy, end-to-end. There are better tools for page-layout, better tools for just the writing end of things, better tools for large scale, structured content-management, but if what you're trying to do is write a sizeable technical document, from scratch, and be able to produce reasonably flight-ready PDF you can pass to a publisher or print-house, then FrameMaker has been and still is pretty peerless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DocBook is a specification for document structure more than it's a software stack, so writing with the DocBook structure would still require you to have a toolchain of some sort. The version of FrameMaker that supported structured editing did, I believe, support using the DocBook structure and let you produce SGML output instead of, or in addition to, &quot;printable&quot; output (i.e. PDF or PS). However, using Frame's structured features were, in my experience, significantly challenging and finicky: unless you have a firm requirement for fully structured source, or for passing DocBook to your publisher system, I'd question the need for it in your shoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="711" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T16:27:21.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2845" CreationDate="2011-05-17T16:53:02.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Viktor said, FrameMaker is probably the best widely-used tool for doing what you're trying to do.  Another (Windows-only) tool that I'm using now is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madcapsoftware.com/products/flare/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Madcap Flare&lt;/a&gt;, but it's pretty pricy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DocBook is a spec, not a tool (as Viktor said).  It is XML, so you can use any XML editor to write content.  Possibilities include XML Notepad (free), XML Spy (used to be free, not now?), Oxygen ($), Epic ($$).  (Personally I just use Emacs, but my coworkers think I'm weird. :-) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get from DocBook XML to usable output you'll need some transformation step.  We use XSLTProc to generate HTML and XEP ($) to produce PDF.  (The actual chain there is XML -&gt; FO (formating objects) -&gt; PDF.)  We rolled our own build scripts for this, using style sheets and other resources downloaded from the DocBook site where we could.  There might be better off-the-shelf support now (we build this about seven years ago), but since you mentioned being willing to roll your own, I wanted to note that it is doable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2019-08-01T07:47:13.623" LastActivityDate="2019-08-01T07:47:13.623" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2762" CreationDate="2011-05-17T18:19:48.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could also take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lyx.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lyx&lt;/a&gt;. It combines the power of Latex with a usable GUI that also shows you your mark-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1994" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T18:19:48.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2841" CreationDate="2011-05-17T20:43:28.467" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any single-sourcing scheme is going to require some up-front setup in exchange for easier generation of multiple formats later.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_source_publishing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; provides a starting point for process and tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T20:43:28.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2852" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-17T04:51:35.493" Score="26" ViewCount="5770" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember learning it as a child, and I remember I was told it was important and every kid in the class had to learn it. But now that I think about it, I haven't used cursive for years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What was the point of learning it in the first place? What were the origins? Does cursive writing have any advantages over using more modern tools such as a typewriter or laptop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1998" OwnerDisplayName="Samuelson" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T05:43:42.807" LastActivityDate="2023-10-27T13:23:39.283" Title="Is there any point in learning to write in cursive?" Tags="|tools|handwriting|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2852" CreationDate="2011-05-18T13:06:10.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The original purpose of cursive handwriting was supposedly that you could write more quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another reason is that in old times, when people wrote with a quill, cursive writing meant that they did not need to lift their quill from the paper, thereby avoiding smudges and spots on the page. Of course, this is no longer an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the 16th-17th centuries, cursive writing was seen as being a more official and proper way to write and as such, was taught in schools.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1975" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T13:06:10.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2852" CreationDate="2011-05-18T13:15:58.603" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The aesthetics of writing in cursive are really a personal thing: some people appreciate the feel of a fine pen gliding over the paper, the line variation from an italic nib, and the shading of a nice ink, and some just don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the practical side: cursive writing came about because it is faster and easier to write at length than printing.  While that's not always true today (see more below), handwriting in general has several advantages over more modern methods of capturing words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's extremely portable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It doesn't require expensive or bulky equipment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It doesn't depend on electricity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It has a level of flexibility (quickly sketching diagrams, etc.) that a typewriter or the average word processor doesn't. (Of course, you could moot this point by learning TeX and/or LaTeX.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can be done with less elbow room than typing on a laptop or typewriter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unlike a laptop, it doesn't require a secondary device to produce a paper copy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's extremely durable (we have some written texts dating back thousands of years).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can be applied to surfaces not easily put through a printer (textbooks, walls, boxes, signs, etc).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is, in many cultures, considered more personal than typing, especially for correspondence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the sordid modern history of cursive handwriting in America has deprived us of much of its utility.  You see, when the movable type printing press came along, printers developed a set of fonts commonly described as &quot;looped cursive&quot; because they have more consistently placed joins, allowing printers to stock fewer pieces (fewer different joins, and fewer different versions of each letter) and thus making their work less expensive.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit: &lt;a href=&quot;http://handwritingsuccess.com/example-page-two.php&quot;&gt;Here's a good comparison of looped vs. italic cursive writing.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, looped cursive has become the standard in most American schools today, and it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; particularly good for being hand written.  This, combined with less time dedicated to handwriting skills, and the transition from fountain pens to hard-led pencils for early writing instruction (in the name of cleanliness), has caused most students to write cursive illegibly and laboriously, if at all.  Pencils (especially with hard lead like 'HB') cause more friction with the paper and require &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; more pressure to write, making clear handwriting harder to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, too, learned looped cursive with a pencil in elementary school.  Writing that way was slow and difficult.  Additionally, it caused me to constantly battle with pain from RSI (which I have something of a predisposition to).  I grew up, started using fountain pens, and learned to write in cursive italic -- the way that cursive was written before the advent of the printing press.  The difference is &lt;em&gt;incredible&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, my cursive handwriting is extremely fast and legible.  It requires almost no effort.  I no longer feel any pain from writing, even long, rambling letters or pages of computer code or other notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd add that in addition to the usefulness of handwriting in general, and the legibility, speed, and ease of a good cursive italic in particular, I would hate to see our culture lose the ability to read the many important documents first rendered in cursive script.  Do we really want the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln's speeches, and who knows what else to be lost to time the way that Egyptian hieroglyphs were for so long?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1]: Info taken from the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://handwritingsuccess.com/write-now.php&quot;&gt;Write Now by Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-05-18T13:24:20.953" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T13:24:20.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2856" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2857" CreationDate="2011-05-18T14:11:49.233" Score="4" ViewCount="361" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine writes lots of poems and some of them have even got published in local magazines here. His birthday is coming up and I am thinking of putting all those poems in a book form and giving it to him as gift. I do not have enough money to go to a designer but am willing to spend some time on this. I am looking for tips and links to resources which will help in designing a book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to use Paint.Net to design the cover and the content. Then I am trying to use a printer service for getting the book printed in the form of a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1999" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-05-18T17:37:28.590" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T04:16:07.370" Title="Designing a book" Tags="|book|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2856" CreationDate="2011-05-18T14:54:04.073" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if you're in the US, UK or somewhere else, but there are quite a few services out there that let you design and create books yourself, and give good guidance on how to get best results. Most provide you with their own software or website interface to help make the process simple and straightforward. Alternatively, you can normally upload a PDF version of your document that meets their guidelines, and they can use that for printing. Here are some for you to look at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bookemon.com/&quot;&gt;Bookemon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blurb.com/&quot;&gt;Blurb&lt;/a&gt; (don't get put off by the &quot;photo book&quot; stuff, you can do text only if you wish, and choose pictures for the covers etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com&quot;&gt;Lulu.com&lt;/a&gt; (likewise, don't get put off about the publishing stuff, you can do private, one-off prints for yourself)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively (depending on your location), have a look at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.morrispublishing.com/&quot;&gt;Morris Publishing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordclay.com/&quot;&gt;WordClay&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of them (should) have comprehensive guidelines and help sections on how to construct and format your book. I would suggest deciding on who you'd like to use to print your book first, and then look at their specific guidelines (things like bleed space, what format they want your book in e.g. PDF, and so on) as these may change from printer to printer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T14:54:04.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2852" CreationDate="2011-05-18T14:58:48.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't used cursive since graduating elementary school. We wasted so much time learning cursive. It's upsetting to think about the skills we may have lost out on because we were busying learning something outdated even then. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning cursive still has its place though. It helps you develop a signature. It also helps when you have to read handwriting from that one person you know in marketing who insists on still writing in cursive. But for goodness sakes, tone down the focus and spend the extra time teaching children something contemporary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1968" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T14:58:48.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2845" CreationDate="2011-05-18T16:19:09.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look into Lyx. This is a GUI front end that puts out document files in various formats expecially Latex. You can create a DocBook format document by exporting as SGML and then converting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/DocBook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/DocBook&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1870" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T16:19:09.737" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2810" CreationDate="2011-05-18T20:16:35.620" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might sound strange, but being a copywriter isn't really about WRITING. It's about persuasion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read books on rhetoric, argument, and logic. This will teach you the basic underlying structure of persuasive communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Listen to great speeches by influential people. This will let you see with your own eyes how basic rhetorical techniques are used to persuade and inspire. TED Talks is a great resource for speeches. I also have a particular soft spot for Daniel Dennett. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research psychology and neuroscience and how these disciplines are used in marketing. This will teach you how rhetorical techniques affect our brains. Understanding brain science will help you use your powers of persuasion more effectively (and responsibly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1968" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T20:16:35.620" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2845" CreationDate="2011-05-19T01:50:59.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;. I believe it can generate DocBook-format, though its true strength is in researching/creating a document, not editing formulas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1706" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T14:57:12.860" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T14:57:12.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2852" CreationDate="2011-05-20T01:01:41.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, I see a point to writing in cursive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write in cursive on lined paper when I'm exploring an idea or writing-out initial ideas. I find that writing in cursive forces me to slow down to consider my thoughts, and take the time to write out an idea. As I revise, I cross out and rewrite, making the idea's development more apparent, which itself can contribute to developing the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While typing quickly is nice, writing in cursive has its advantages too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1745" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T01:01:41.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2867" CreationDate="2011-05-20T03:35:03.110" Score="6" ViewCount="498" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for opinions on the effectiveness of this opening scene. It's a vision, not that he knows that at first. He thinks it a dream and won't quite act on it straight away. The vision was given to him by a sentient alien. It's basically the first of a few visions meant to kick start a bit of an adventure sci-fi plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Josh opened his eyes. He saw nothing&#xA;  though he could hear his breathing&#xA;  plainly and the beating of his heart&#xA;  thudded as if he were holding it up to&#xA;  his ear. The air, if there was any,&#xA;  felt as clean as the air in an&#xA;  untouched forest. Slowly, his eyes&#xA;  adapted to the dark and he saw the&#xA;  shapes of jagged spikes of rock in the&#xA;  distance; black and rough yet lit up&#xA;  by a ghostly white light. They were&#xA;  arranged like a passage way, reaching&#xA;  upward until they could no longer be&#xA;  seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He blinked, a subconscious automated&#xA;  blink, yet now stars shone bright in&#xA;  all directions. He felt like he was&#xA;  floating in space; a void of&#xA;  nothingness littered with sparkles&#xA;  further away than he could imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He had a mind now to seek out the&#xA;  passageway. He tried to walk though he&#xA;  felt weightless in the vastness of&#xA;  this starry void, yet he knew somehow&#xA;  that he was moving forward. Or was it&#xA;  moving to him? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Strangely, he felt at peace, curious&#xA;  even, and didn’t fear what had become&#xA;  of him. In fact, he wasn’t even aware&#xA;  of what he had previously been doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Everything disappeared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before he knew it, the sound of the&#xA;  garbage truck hit his ears, the sun&#xA;  blinded him and he felt the hard&#xA;  cement underneath his feet. Gravity&#xA;  took hold and he fell to the ground,&#xA;  disoriented. Reality came back to him,&#xA;  reeling his mind in from the far off&#xA;  place. Birds, trees, people passing&#xA;  by, staring at him on the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sci-fi setting:&lt;/strong&gt; humans in the far future, no aliens as they thought there might be, a little like a Star Wars type setting (no aliens though). I.e. normal life can be gritty, rich people, poor people, themes from modern society etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Story brief:&lt;/strong&gt; beacons are found, they signal an onslaught from an alien species that seeks to reclaim &quot;their&quot; galaxy. they left a long time ago to end a war with the species of alien this &quot;vision-giver&quot; is. The beacons were meant to signal the fact that another race had tried to inhabit the galaxy. They don't like this. Greedy aliens in other words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T16:04:41.817" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T07:47:15.017" Title="Vision/dream as an effective opening?" Tags="|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2863" CreationDate="2011-05-20T08:38:33.180" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Starting a speculative or fantasy story with a vision is a venerable tradition. As the words &quot;venerable&quot; and &quot;tradition&quot; imply the tricky part is making yours stand out and not seem cliched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The absolute top a-number-one way of doing this is to not make it seem like a vision to the reader at first. On this your opening fails. Even though you told me I was about to read a vision I didn't really need to be. The last time I started a fantasy novel with a vision I did it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Right away I made it seem that someone was in mortal danger. They were being hunted by wolves which seemed outlandish but the context of the prologue which had featured the summoning of spirits meant that it could still be the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-The protagonist was chased to a familiar place but certain little details were off from her recollection. This could be panic, or it could be some further magical weirdness, or it could be a dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Immediately I put in a character who back referenced the mythology utilised in the prologue. This took us straight from dream into proper profound vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, at the point at which the reader knows it's a vision we both know and understand why the protagonist believes it to be no more than a dream. At the beginning of the description we believed it was reality. We then were allowed to know it wasn't and at the same time the protagonist was lock stepped in with us as readers. Everyone knows it's a dream. I then dropped information which let the reader know it was definitely a vision but without making them think the protagonist was  a total dumbass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that comes to the problem here. This guy seems to have blacked out and had a very specific vision in the street. I presume you are then going to go on to tell us that he is going to shrug off his blackout as nothing out of the ordinary. Unless he is, at the very least, going to seek a medical opinion on whether he has a tumour I would think this guy was a chump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I don't really get the geographical logistics of the vision. Why is the dude floating if there's ground beneath his feet? I can count the number of times I've floated about like a steadicam in a dream on no hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were framing this I'd make it a proper dream while sleeping, not a blackout. Makes it easier for the character to shrug it off (unless you want them heading of to the doctor's in which case: strike that, reverse it). Second, I would always tend to try to convince the audience that what is happening is really happening at first. The minute you can tell from sentence one it's a dream you have a tendency to switch off or skim unless you feel that there's some compelling reason not to just get to something &quot;proper&quot; happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this makes you question whether you even want to introduce dreams or visions so directly then that wouldn't be surprising. If you remember Close Encounters Spielberg didn't really get heavy handed with the dream sequences instead Richard Dreyfus became obsessed with a shape and he didn't know why, kept seeing the symbol everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your main character rather than dipping into 3d sensurround just kept getting distracted by bright blue lights and arrangements of matter that looked like ranks of jagged rocks that might add a sense of mystery which intrigues the reader instead of ramming exposition down their throat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, I think rather than being ethereal the key to an effective dream sequence is  to make it hyper-visceral. The key to visions I would imagine is to make them symbolically strong but contextually vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T08:38:33.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2863" CreationDate="2011-05-20T08:41:15.210" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't grab me from the first sentence, which is the real beginning. I have no sense of mystery, or wanting to know more, except perhaps right at the end. I have no sense that what the character is experiencing is, in fact, unusual, except towards the end. It's also strange because the character's heart is thudding loudly, but he behaves in a completely calm and rational fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to begin with the character's bewilderment, and show the reader that what is happening is unusual. He seems to have been awake in a normal setting one minute, and then he was in some weird hallucination / dream / vision the next. It's difficult to believe that he would not remember where he was previously. Regardless, you probably create more interest for the reader by making it that he remembers. Consider this brief opening sequence (it's not going to win any prizes, it's just meant as an illustration):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The world dissolved into darkness, as&#xA;  if a black hole had sucked out the&#xA;  light. The rumble of the passing dump&#xA;  truck and chatter of people on their&#xA;  way to work vanished, replaced only by&#xA;  the sound of Josh's thundering heart&#xA;  in his chest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Immediately, we get the sense that the world has changed. Something strange has happened. Better still, our character, Josh, is in a panic. He may be in danger. What's going on? We want to read more to find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T08:41:15.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2863" CreationDate="2011-05-20T09:52:23.440" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Opening with a dream is a technique that I've seen get a lot of criticism.  I think there's a few reasons for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One, if you're using the dream/vision to immerse your readers in a world, it's asking a lot of them to get immersed in that world, and then a few paragraphs later have to jump into a whole NEW world when the dreamer returns to reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two, it may create tension, but it's a false tension.  The reader feels ripped off, only a few paragraphs into your story, to realize that s/he has ALREADY been fooled.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three, as an alternative to two - if you acknowledge that the scene you're painting is just a vision/dream, then there isn't any tension at all.  Why do I care that some character I don't know is having a dream about some place I don't know?  I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's probably a four, relating to being a cliche, etc., but those three are the ones that jump out at me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your situation, how about borrowing an idea from One Monkey and having the story open in the doctor's office?  You can establish enough about your character to make us care a little, you can establish a bit of setting, and you can have tension from the fact that he thinks he's got a tumour, or is going crazy, or something.  And then he could have the vision, right there in the doctor's office.  Just a suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T09:52:23.440" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2863" CreationDate="2011-05-20T11:27:14.517" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On the general topic of opening with a dream,&lt;/strong&gt; I'm going to second &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2863/vision-dream-as-an-effective-opening/2866#2866&quot;&gt;Kate's excellent comments&lt;/a&gt;: it's a technique that's heavily predisposed to backfire, because you're explicitly kicking off with something that is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; part of the actual story, of what's actually going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a clear connection to the actual story (e.g.: the dream becomes a plot point later on; the dream reflects the protagonist's personality and present concerns; etc.), the reader doesn't know that unless you establish it right away - and he's got little reason to stick around and find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if opening with a dream, or even having it feature fairly early on, is important to you, I suggest you establish right away why the reader should care. Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;This was the fifth time this month he'd had that dream.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; This is common shorthand for &quot;this dream sequence is significant, and not just a normal, random, meaningless dream, but I won't tell you why yet.&quot; Not terribly compelling, but it makes clear that the author has a decent reason for the dream, which will be addressed later. Likewise, &lt;em&gt;&quot;It had seemed so real and vivid - far more than just an ordinary dream.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clear ties to something going on in the protagonist's life - e.g. dreams about his family, or a big event - can segue easily from dream to reality, and then the reader feels like the dream sequence &quot;makes sense,&quot; because he knows what it's there for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One person telling another about a dream is rather different from what you've tried here, but it can get across both the dream, and all kinds of character/plot/setting details from the actual scene being played out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In reaction to your particular piece of writing,&lt;/strong&gt; I was fairly underwhelmed by it. I didn't get much more than &quot;somebody's in a weird place&quot; out of it - nothing in the description seemed particularly attention-grabbing. There's no distinctive features in the setting that I want to understand better; I don't know yet who the protag is, so I don't particularly care about him; he doesn't seem to know anything about where he is, so I didn't feel like the opening had much direction or drive; there's a lot of weaselly &quot;protagonist 'somehow' decides to do things for no particular reason&quot; lines that I find annoying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could have worked if I felt that you were going for a dream-like writing voice - disorienting, nonsensical, dream-logic stuff. That's tricky to pull off at the beginning of a story - particularly an SF story - because the reader is all set to accept whatever you tell him as ground rules, even very weird stuff. I don't think you did that here, because the narration is a straightforward, matter-of-fact account of what Josh sees around him and what he does. There's lots of ways to convey a dreamlike experience; I don't feel that you did much of that here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, from this opening, I felt neither the &quot;exciting fake-out&quot; of a dream as a false beginning, not the &quot;dreamlike experience&quot; of actually being in the middle of a dream. Neither of these would bother me in the least if we were further into the story; it's not poor writing. It just doesn't strike me as an effective opening - it doesn't ground me in the story or give me interesting things to care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this is helpful :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-05-22T06:21:36.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2863" CreationDate="2011-05-20T11:45:31.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Re this specific piece of writing: like Standback, it didn't grab me either &amp;mdash; it's not long enough. I didn't feel like I was being drawn into a setting, or a mystery. It's too brief and the protagonist is too comfortable. If you're looking for any kind of tension, saying your protagonist is &quot;at peace&quot; is a fast way to kill it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, curiosity comes from tension &amp;mdash; the tension of wanting to know what's on the other side of that hill over there, and not knowing. If he's relaxed and at peace, why would he have any interest in knowing what's on the other side of the mountains? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest longer, weirder, and yes, have him wake up in his own bed. The garbage truck can still rumble by his house and wake him up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T11:45:31.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2869" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2870" CreationDate="2011-05-20T12:58:50.510" Score="2" ViewCount="2403" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not very familiar with English world, and I want to ask a question about Email etiquette.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I sent an email to someone for help, and got a very helpful reply which completely solved my problem. When I was going to reply him, I found I have no more questions, so what I replied contains only two words 'Thank you'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I really need to send this 'Thank you' letter? I think it's polite to show my gratitude, but it may also disturb him because this letter contains no real content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for my bad English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2011" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T13:46:01.003" Title="Do I need to send an email to say thank you?" Tags="|email|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2011-05-20T16:01:52.780" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2869" CreationDate="2011-05-20T13:46:01.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting and very insightful question. Absolutely, a &quot;thank you&quot; email is appropriate when someone has helped you solve a problem, and it's very unlikely anyone would be disturbed by it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, the person who helped you is doing this as part of his or her job, and needs to know if the problem is solved, or if it requires further action. In any case, people like to feel their efforts are successful and appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only instance I can think of where a thank-you note is not strictly necessary is where the email explicitly says that your issue is considered resolved if you do not reply within a specified time. This is something you'll see with companies that use automated email tracking systems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And by the way, your English is not bad at all. You express yourself at least as well as most native English speakers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1871" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T13:46:01.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2205" CreationDate="2011-05-21T19:18:24.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think iPad is a better choice compared with other devices for your purpose. There are great apps, such as Good Reader or Student Pad, on iPad that can be use for intensively notetaking or highlighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2020" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T19:18:24.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2205" CreationDate="2011-05-21T23:36:19.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm reading for content, I use PostIt notes. I have several different colors and sizes, and I make my notes on those, then press them into place under the passage, and I label part of it with a word or two, which sticks out like a tab when the book is closed. Books I've finished are rainbow colored and ruffled with PostIts. But I can always find what I'm looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I much prefer this to making slow notes on my Kindle. I can see everything at a glance and go right to what I need. Sure, the digital search is nice, but after years of doing it the other way I'm used to it. It's also great for library books, because the notes can be removed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T23:36:19.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2876" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-22T10:26:13.477" Score="1" ViewCount="2131" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regular pens or gel ink pens? What do you say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2023" LastActivityDate="2011-05-22T10:26:13.477" Title="Which Pen Is Best For Writing/Signing Important Documents?" Tags="|style|editing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2011-05-22T21:28:15.150" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2856" CreationDate="2011-05-22T14:23:17.613" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your book will be a beautiful gift and of course you want it to look beautiful, too. Here's what many folks do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a book whose design -- trim size, layout, typefaces -- you admire&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adapt the design to fit your idea of a good-looking book&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply that design to your friend's poems&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Print the poems on your laser printer, perhaps using special paper: laid-finish paper is nice for poetry&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find some artwork you like&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Print that artwork to use as a cover&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take everything to Staples and have them bind it nicely&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the book to your friend&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bask in the certain knowledge that you've made your friend's day/month/year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2011-05-22T14:23:17.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2878" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2879" CreationDate="2011-05-23T12:23:28.113" Score="10" ViewCount="7705" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard figures like 100,000 - 250,000 books are published every year, but this probably includes already established authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any numbers for how many 1st time authors books are published every year (not including self publishing) ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: 1st time author means- 1st time ever published under any name, in any format( paper or ebook), self published or otherwise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="2024" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T10:57:50.483" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T14:59:44.193" Title="how many books by new authors get published every year?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2878" CreationDate="2011-05-23T17:48:28.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not seen any statistics on how many new authors enter the market each year. The closest statistics I could find were from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bowkerinfo.com/pubtrack/AnnualBookProduction2010/ISBN_Output_2002-2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bowker Info&lt;/a&gt; about how many books are published each year from 2002-2010. It breaks the information down by category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T17:48:28.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2845" CreationDate="2011-05-23T20:21:13.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best text editor for a text with formulas is definitely &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.texmacs.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TeXmacs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has good rendering and powerful system of macroses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TeXmacs is not a LaTeX editor but it has import and export for LaTeX format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T20:21:13.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2887" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2889" CreationDate="2011-05-24T14:20:34.060" Score="11" ViewCount="3120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have about 20 half-finish novels sitting on my computer, in my filing cabinet, or under my bed.  The story with each is the same - I start out with a full head of steam and great ideas, but about midway through I get bored.  I've told the story about a million times in my head, but it moves faster up there than I can write or type (admittedly, I can type pretty fast, too).  By the time a story's been through its thousandth re-telling, I get tired of listening to the characters and jotting down notes about their lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get bored with the story, shelve it, and move on to something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with this trend is that it's disillusioned me to writing anything new.  I'll carve time out of my day for writing, but I just can seem to get started.  A voice in my head mocks me, reminding me &quot;it will just end up like last time, forgotten in some envelope under the bed.&quot;  So I give up, let a story mold and rot in my head, and go for a run instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what is the best way to keep myself interested in my own story while my fingers struggle to catch up to my brain?  What's the best way to prevent boredom from killing a novel-in progress?  How can I preempt this negative creative trend before it evolves into perpetual writer's block?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2002" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T18:51:15.580" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T14:59:59.327" Title="How Do you Stave Off Boredom While Writing?" Tags="|technique|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2888" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-24T14:27:23.880" Score="9" ViewCount="5435" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just written a chapter in which one of my protagonists witnesses her entire family massacred during an invasion of her home city. This is obviously an extremely traumatic and horrifying event and, in writing the chapter, I realized that I'm out of my depth trying to describe a realistic human reaction to such an extreme event. I've never experienced anything remotely approaching this kind of horror, nor will most of my readers, so I need some way to present the protagonist's reactions in a way that's effective to the average reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this first draft I attempted to portray the protagonist in a state of shock, observing what was going on around her without much by way of reaction. From what I understand this is pretty realistic, but on the page it came off as very flat and two-dimensional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you recommend for making this chapter more? Are there any good non-fictional resources describing what happens to people under extreme trauma like this? Stories of people who've lived through such things? Really good fictional examples of this kind of trauma?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T19:02:20.013" LastActivityDate="2020-12-18T20:56:19.543" Title="Writing about extreme trauma" Tags="|fiction|character-development|description|resources|emotions|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2887" CreationDate="2011-05-24T14:42:28.310" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start to write before you've told the story in your head a million times, and perhaps even before you've told it once. Begin writing the story before you know what happens. Begin writing each scene before you know how the scene turns out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you start to become bored, ask yourself, &quot;What else might happen here?&quot; Find a twist you hadn't thought of, and write that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep multiple writing projects in progress. When you get bored on one, switch to another.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For a while, write shorter stories that you can finish before boredom overwhelms you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Though you've told the story a million times, you haven't yet seen a single reader react to it. So join a local writing group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2011-05-24T15:07:23.763" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T15:07:23.763" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2888" CreationDate="2011-05-24T15:46:24.820" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not that I've actually ever had to do what you describe but were I in your shoes I would tend to gloss over the moment of the traumatic event happening quite quickly. Making the happening quite matter of fact will get you (and your protagonist) through chronologically. Then, the detail, the horror, the physical impact, can be examined at length as the protagonist's brain allows the full detail to leak back into the brain in dreams, moments of reflection, unwanted recollection of detail etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The traumatic experience is not the trauma. It's an experience, in circumstance, that leads to trauma. Often in the middle of such events adrenaline and instinct kick in to get the physical body out of immediate danger. Peppering a matter-of-fact detail of &quot;what is happening&quot; with soupy visceral descriptions of heart-beating, mouth-drying adrenaline high: semi-automatic scrambling away from the next source of danger; the constant head-whipping scan for the next dangerous noise; trying to take in everything whilst painfully conscious of the poor vision provided by everything not in the direct field of vision, should get you through the chronicle of the times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bite is going to settle in when all is calm, after the fact. That's when the horror starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key word here is &quot;extreme&quot; when applied to the trauma. I think a lot of genre writers, particularly in the horror arena try to deal with common or garden trauma and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2888/writing-about-extreme-trauma/2892#2892&quot;&gt;Indoril's reply&lt;/a&gt; gives you the dramatic convention for dealing with trauma. I would warn you that there's been a lot of horror written in the last thirty years and this method of conveying trauma has become something of a trope. This could be what's troubling you so I'll move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You specifically refer to extreme trauma, and the scene you describe reminds me of the rather operatic murder of Frank Castle's entire extended family in the movie &quot;The Punisher&quot; from a few years ago. To a certain extent that movie is about the operatic notion of The Punisher as a character. The idea that his mission is born out of circumstances so ridiculously heightened that it is almost impossible for the human brain to contemplate a reaction to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that there's a scale of trauma which really depends upon the cause of that trauma. The state of mind where one finds oneself obsessing over little details is part of the process of discovering the body of one's loved one hacked up in your kitchen upon returning from work (for example). Your system floods with adrenaline but it has no where to go, you're on high alert but all is quiet. This is the experience of PTSD where people's minds have conditioned them to go into high alert at the slightest stimulus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If danger is present many descriptions of perception centre on people becoming robotic, although they still get the PTSD effect later at the time survivors tend to describe a mental space of &quot;just acting&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's in the case of a single dangerous traumatic situation being dealt with by a human being with a strong survival instinct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;extreme&quot; circumstances, I would imagine that the personal danger and threat would escalate to a level where rational thought would cease to be possible if one is to survive. In such event I would imagine that perception would shut down into a sort of systemic tunnel vision where, if someone is to survive, their hindbrain just kicks in and wipes out both ego and superego. The really intense part about such a situation would be that a person would be capable of doing anything that furthered their survival while in that state. To a certain extent their own identity would be compromised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A person in this state of mind would be able to just kill any person that threatened them, ignore the dire straits of loved ones, and lose all awareness of pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether such a mental state exists is debateable, even if anyone has a capacity for it they wouldn't be the norm. Not only that but the likely effect on the psyche when the sense of identity returns would probably leave someone who experiences it mentally ill for the rest of their life, possibly unable to effectively communicate what happened to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we are writers and we lie to entertain others. The business of dramatic license gives us the power to examine such cases as if they could be sensibly articulated; we could even invent a person who eventually bounced back from, or even leveraged, such a mental state, such as we are told Viking warriors experienced the baresark during battle. The question of what happens when humanity tries to cultivate such an animalistic state has been explored in some werewolf fiction, these are places to consider the extremity of your protagonist's mental state upon a scale from &quot;heightened awareness&quot; to &quot;running on instinct&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T18:07:32.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2891" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2896" CreationDate="2011-05-24T15:57:28.893" Score="2" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a small productivity application, &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitorious.org/tomate#more&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tomate&lt;/a&gt;. Since I'm not a native English speaker, I'm afraid the description of the project may not be clear enough for potential users. Can you help me improve it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like many of us, I suffer from attention and procrastination problems,&#xA;  especially when in front of a computer. How can one focus on the mundane task at&#xA;  hand when the appeal of the Internet is just two clicks away?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I started a quest for tools and ideas to help me concentrate (I know, I&#xA;  know...). I found a very good book, unfortunately written in French: &quot;Comment ne&#xA;  pas tout remettre au lendemain&quot;, by Bruno Koelz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It turns out the diagnosis is as follows: the hardest part of not&#xA;  procrastinating is getting to work, by which I mean staying concentrated long&#xA;  enough to really get into the problem. Once this stage is passed, you usually&#xA;  enter a state of flow and continuing to work is a lot easier and more rewarding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For this reason, I wrote a very small applet that allows me to pass a contract&#xA;  with myself: by clicking the icon, I commit to fully concentrate on a given&#xA;  problem for no less than 10 minutes. The icon becomes red for ten minutes, after&#xA;  which it turns green. I am then free to either continue working or do something&#xA;  else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The duration is voluntarily small because no matter how boring the task is, ten&#xA;  minutes is always doable. Knowing I have an escape, it is easier to commit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since tweaking productivity application parameters is a great way to waste time,&#xA;  the applet has absolutely no configuration options, dialogs, logs, etc. I tried&#xA;  to make it as simple as possible and to avoid including any feature that is not&#xA;  absolutely necessary to accomplish the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why &quot;Tomate&quot;? Tomate is the French word for tomato, or &quot;Pomodoro&quot; in Italian,&#xA;  which is the name of a similar and popular technique. The Pomodoro technique&#xA;  consists in working in sets of 25 minutes, with mandatory breaks between the&#xA;  chunks. I feel my method is more efficient, because it is a waste to take breaks&#xA;  when you're concentrated and don't need them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About the code: the applet is written in Python 2 and PyGTK. It is only tested&#xA;  on linux, but it should work on other platforms as well. Feedback welcome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2026" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T16:05:48.647" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T16:05:48.647" Title="Is this description of my small productivity application clear enough?" Tags="|technical-writing|software|description|clarity|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2888" CreationDate="2011-05-24T16:08:46.930" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Details. Out of context, fragmented details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blood on carpet. How shall I clean it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My little brother cries like a cat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Broken window. Daddy will be angry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Damaged school building. Today, we can stay up late.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clothes are torn apart. I need to thread a needle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Et cetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T16:08:46.930" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2887" CreationDate="2011-05-24T16:35:01.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am experiencing unpleasant feelings when - e. g. - writing documentation or a business text. But it is not the boredom, rather hopelessness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When discovering a story, I notice &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; important part of it, first. Stage set, situation, attitude of an character. It takes from seconds to weeks, to see the contours of whole story. During this time, I am not writing. Then, I am starting to run for I need to have the raw story finished before something pulls me away. Like the Blitzkrieg tactics: when hit a resistance (cannot find the right word or sentence) just bypass it and keep running at any cost. When the raw story is finished, it can be put aside, even for months. It will not decompose nor decay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How are you finding your stories and plots? What inspires you? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why do you need to write them down?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do your stories really deserve to be written down? Do you believe in them enough?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What have the moments you first  realise the boredom in common?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T16:35:01.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2891" CreationDate="2011-05-24T17:25:30.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds perfectly clear to me. I think your English is quite good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T17:25:30.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2887" CreationDate="2011-05-24T18:02:08.000" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Buy a tape recorder, or Dragon Dictation (for PC, Mac, or iGadget). If your fingers are too slow, start telling your stories out loud. Let the computer do the typing. Talk until you don't want to talk anymore, and then review. If you get bored with one, start a new file or tape and work on another story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T18:02:08.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2891" CreationDate="2011-05-24T18:39:10.757" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your use of English is very good, yet your arrangement could be better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The sentence near the end that&#xA;starts &quot;Why &quot;Tomate&quot;? Tomate is the&#xA;French...&quot; should be closer to the&#xA;beginning, if not &lt;strong&gt;at&lt;/strong&gt; the&#xA;beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid using generic&#xA;terms like &quot;one&quot; when referring to a&#xA;potential user (you do this in the&#xA;beginning - &quot;How can one focus...&quot;).&#xA;You use the word &quot;you&quot; later, which&#xA;is more personal and is actually the&#xA;preferred way of writing for a&#xA;description like this.   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would exclude &quot;It turns out&#xA;the diagnosis is as follows:&quot; - it's&#xA;too formal.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a really good sentence later on &quot;Knowing I have an&#xA;escape, it is easier to commit.&quot; -&#xA;try to reverse the sentence, like&#xA;this &quot; It is easier to commit&#xA;knowing I have an escape&quot; - it gets &#xA;to the point sooner in a less formal&#xA;way. You could even use that&#xA;sentence as your app's tag line (one&#xA;sentence description).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1745" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T18:39:10.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2887" CreationDate="2011-05-25T01:06:45.347" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can totally relate to this.  I have five published novels, NOW, but it took me years to get around to writing the first one.  I went through the same thing you did.  I thought I wanted to write, but it turned out that I mostly wanted to &lt;em&gt;have written&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the solution lay in getting immediate feedback on my writing.  I think the writer's group idea is solid, but unless you find one that meets a LOT, it might not be quick enough for you. You need to find an audience that will read quickly and appreciatively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on what genre you want to write in, I suppose, but you might want to consider fan fiction.  Not as an ultimate destination, just as a way to get yourself over the first hump. Find a fandom you're interested in, write something, post it, get some feedback, write something else, and then something else, and then invite a few fandom friends to read your original novel in progress.  Post regularly - once a week?  a couple times a week?  every day? and use the feedback as the incentive to keep writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could try to do the same  thing without the fandom element, but I think it's really hard to get an audience for original work by an unknown author.  The beauty of fandom is the built-in audience!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T01:06:45.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2888" CreationDate="2011-05-25T08:58:28.150" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone deals with trauma in a completely different way, depending on their character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One Monkey is quite correct in his &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2888/writing-about-extreme-trauma/2890#2890&quot;&gt;excellent answer&lt;/a&gt; that the traumatic event is not the actual trauma. It's the source of the trauma, and this (along with the personality of the character) will affect the recollection of the event, and how that event has a lingering hold on their life from that moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason that your description likely sounds flat is because it's probably an accurate description of the event, yet that's not likely what the person remembers of the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, certain things can be blanked out completely, and only resurface many years later. Perhaps the protagonist looked away, and berates herself for not helping, and only remembers sounds. Perhaps she closed her eyes, and stuck her fingers in her ears to block out noise, and hummed a song her mother used to sing. Perhaps she clammed up, and didn't move, just watched, detatched, thinking about other things like the colour of the dress someone wore, the way the eyes looked, the ticking clock in the corner, a vase that broke during the event, someone's favourite piece of clothing was ripped or dirtied ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2888/writing-about-extreme-trauma/2892#2892&quot;&gt;Indoril Nerevar's list&lt;/a&gt; demonstrates, as strange as it may sound, it's often little details that people focus on, primarily because this is the way the human mind deals with traumatic events, by withdrawing from the actual event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T18:05:25.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2904" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2905" CreationDate="2011-05-25T11:00:04.317" Score="7" ViewCount="57282" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to cite an entire paragraph taken from a book? Is it just writing the paragraph as a separate one and adding &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Author, Year)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; in the end? Will it not imply that only the last sentence in the paragraph is written by that reference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1940" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-09T22:33:14.537" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T19:28:29.687" Title="How to cite an entire paragraph?" Tags="|citations|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2904" CreationDate="2011-05-25T11:43:14.460" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;When citing large blocks of text like a paragraph, you're probably better off indenting the paragraph, and introducing the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;em&gt;How to Indent&lt;/em&gt; notes (Billy Bob, 2011):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's better to indent long pieces of&#xA;  text, because then it makes clear that&#xA;  you're quoting a lengthy piece of&#xA;  work. By introducing it with a&#xA;  sentence, you also make clear exactly&#xA;  what you are referencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; As noted in the comments, different style guides will have different rules regarding this, as none of them agree on how block indentation should be done. For example, MLA states that text of more than four lines should be indented, while Chicago rules recommend indentation with 8 or more lines, or at least 100 words or more, and APA put the cut-off at around 40 words or more. While the original question didn't mention a particular style guide, you should always check your guide for its rules regarding block indentation first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2014-01-01T15:10:10.407" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T15:10:10.407" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2904" CreationDate="2011-05-25T11:48:02.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you quoting it directly, or paraphrasing?  I guess you wouldn't bother asking if you were using a direct quote, since that seems crystal-clear - the citation would obviously apply to all the material inside the quotation marks or indented quotation.  So you must be paraphrasing... but then you're talking about the last sentence being &lt;em&gt;written&lt;/em&gt; by the other author...? I'm not clear on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, yes, in general, you only want to cite once per adopted passage.  But also, in general, you don't want to paraphrase an entire paragraph from another author. You can take the author's idea and attribute it, but are you borrowing the structure of the paragraph, as well?  Again, I'm not quite clear what you're trying to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T11:48:02.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2887" CreationDate="2011-05-25T21:24:36.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If all your stories started at chapter one and ended in the middle, then try writing the last chapter first. Then the chapter before the last. You also can jump to the first chapter in between. From last to first or jumping between end and beginning, but not your normal order. Afraid of a incoherent story? So what, keep writing. Till now you haven't a story at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn to write faster or give &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2887/how-do-you-stave-off-boredom-while-writing/2895#2895&quot;&gt;Lauren's tape recorder&lt;/a&gt; a chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silence your censor. That's this ugly voice mocking you. Imagine a virtual gun and shoot him in the head. Yell at him, he shall shut up. Write pages after pages &quot;Shut the f&lt;em&gt;ck up, shut the f&lt;/em&gt;ck up, shut the f*ck up (with an &quot;u&quot; instead of the star). Kick him, curse him, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still have trouble silencing him, there is a hardcore way to do it. Take the stuff under your bed and burn it. That will either give him an opportunity to mock you more (&quot;burn this shit like the other ones&quot;) or it'll have a healthy &quot;Phoenix out of the ashes&quot; effect. That's up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T21:24:36.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2912" CreationDate="2011-05-26T10:38:35.140" Score="12" ViewCount="481" Body="&lt;p&gt;So can we write the interesting action bits first, then add in the in between stuff, that maybe needed to understand the story or characters, but isnt so exciting by itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example the interesting scene maybe a scene where the hero fights ninjas and sharks(or ninjas on sharks ;-) ) , but there might have been a earlier scene where the hero talked to his informers to find the villains lair. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So can we write the action scene first, then go back and write the other parts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T02:17:21.027" Title="Do books have to be written in sequence?" Tags="|fiction|technique|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2909" CreationDate="2011-05-26T11:24:49.987" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can write the book in any way you choose, as long as it works for you. However, you should always keep in mind that books are good because of their characters, not just because of the &quot;exciting&quot; scene. So, while you can write down elements of your book in any order you want, you should have a very good idea of who your characters are, regardless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth mentioning that you may create more work for yourself later on down the line by writing things out of sequence. Very often characters take on a life on their own as you write, so you could find yourself jumping back to an earlier scene, writing something that &quot;works&quot;, but which could invalidate or ruin everything else you wrote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To pick a random example, maybe the hero is fighting the Ninjas on sharks, and doesn't hesitate to shoot them all to pieces. However, when you jump to an earlier bit, you decide it's a great idea for the character to fall in love with one of the killer Ninjas, or perhaps make one of the sharks his pet that he had raised for many years before it got stolen and trained into a hero-killing machine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suddenly, your action scene might not make sense, because the character would be completely conflicted in wantonly killing his lover Ninja and/or his favourite pet shark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps you suddenly realise that there's no way the evil mastermind will have Ninjas on sharks, he'd have Ninjas on leopards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, you likely have to start planning some major re-writes of your later scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally wouldn't consider writing a novel or short story in the way you describe. It's often the case that the best ideas for what happens next unfold as you write, and if you've already &quot;written ahead&quot;, you may well be boxing in your creativity. You could force yourself down a particular train of thought, and ignore other, better ideas and solutions that come up in order to stick to what you've already done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T12:45:27.700" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T12:45:27.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2909" CreationDate="2011-05-26T11:36:07.390" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always just write interesting parts (in sequence) and develop them until the whole thing makes sense without the boring parts ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or at least I try to... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T11:36:07.390" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2909" CreationDate="2011-05-26T12:13:16.777" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on Craig's suggestion, go ahead and write the exciting scenes if that's what keeps you motivated, so long as you're willing to &quot;kill your darling&quot; later on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-editing is one of the hardest parts of writing. You have to be able to jettison even the most beloved turn of phrase, paragraph, scene, chapter, plot twist, character if it doesn't serve the story. (My solution to this is to keep the original in a slush file. That way I can go back and savor it as often as I like without having it clutter up the main work.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have your scene where the hero shoots the ninjas on sharks in Chapter 47, and later on, while writing Chapter 10, you decide that the hero has fallen in love with one of the ninjas and couldn't kill him. So you stash your original &quot;Ch47/Shoot everything&quot; version somewhere, and either edit the copy or use the original as a guide to rewrite Chapter 47 so it now falls in line with your backstory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is that you have to be willing to let go of what you wrote, no matter how fabulous it is. You must be able to rewrite and/or edit. Like Craig, I generally find it easier to write more or less in sequence so that I don't have to rewrite the fabulous chapter to accommodate the previous amazing chapters, but sometimes I get hit by a bolt of lightning and the out-of-sequence scene bursts fully-formed from my forehead, and I am geased to get to a keyboard and capture it before it evaporates. Don't discount the power of inspiration. Just be aware that you may have to tweak or discard it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T12:13:16.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2786" CreationDate="2011-05-26T15:28:45.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to, rather than disagreeing with, any of the previous answers I’d like to observe that sometimes storytelling issues can masquerade as character issues.  When you think about it, fiction is filled with some pretty terrible characters that audiences never the less find compelling.  Few will admit to ‘liking’ Michael Corleone (he’s a mobster and a killer after all), but let’s face it, they do.  Audiences tend to like whatever protagonist the author places before them IF the story structure correctly supports the character and vise versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any story, the protagonist is imperfect; he or she seeks some goal to satisfy a need driven by a flaw.  This is the character’s motivation that drives the story.  As the protagonist actively seeks to satisfy this need, he or she drives events forward – causing the story to happen.  Often, (and I’ve struggled with this myself) my nice protagonists are nice only because I’ve not worked out their flaws and needs.  This makes them under motivated.  The surest sign of this – things happen to the protagonist rather than the protagonist making things happen.  Other answerers made mention of the unappealing ‘damsel in distress’ character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of all this, is that audiences usually like protagonists that they can understand and they understand protagonists only when they comprehend what they seek and why they seek it.  If they can’t figure this out, the protagonist comes across as mysterious, passive, unpredictable, or inscrutable – all characteristics that we tend not to like in real-life people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1904" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T15:28:45.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2888" CreationDate="2011-05-26T16:08:04.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of those things where I find minimalism to be a good thing. Rather then delving into detail, let the reader's imagination do most of the work. They usually can fill in far more detail then you can.&#xA;Unless you are trying to write some horror porn, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1422" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T16:08:04.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2909" CreationDate="2011-05-26T16:14:15.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, Several times I've gotten an idea for the last page of a story, NOT the climax and I build backwards from there. &#xA;Sometimes I get a climax or the key problem setup scene first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there is something to be said to rewriting your whole story all over again from the beginning once it is complete. This is a good way to turn a collection of scenes into a coherent story by glueing it all together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1422" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T16:14:15.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2909" CreationDate="2011-05-26T17:30:33.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;But if you don't,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sequence a only in writing (sometimes you have to go back and revise) option the not writer has is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hard can be that process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the same with sentences and paragraphs as it is with books. Sometimes, the end is the most important and needs to be written (or fleshed out) first. There is only one writing rule: keep writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T17:30:33.400" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2909" CreationDate="2011-05-26T18:01:42.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can write however you want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T18:01:42.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2920" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2923" CreationDate="2011-05-27T14:38:38.187" Score="26" ViewCount="18585" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had this thought running through my head and wondered what your thoughts were on it.  Can a book, a story I should say, be written without an antagonist or antagonistic theme?  I have an idea to write a story which takes place in the Judeo-Christian heaven which would not contain, necessarily, any antagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2037" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T13:35:13.217" LastActivityDate="2020-02-18T07:31:34.913" Title="Can a book be written without an antagonist?" Tags="|fiction|plot|antagonist|" AnswerCount="22" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2011-05-27T14:56:31.347" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, a book can work without an antagonist. For example, in &quot;end of the world&quot; disasters, the source of friction often comes from the disaster, and not an antagonist. (To use an example, while not a book but a film, think &quot;Armageddon&quot; as exhibit A.) Romance novels often don't have antagonists, either. The conflict could also come from inner conflict, such as drug addiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a book exist without any friction (which is what I assume you mean by no &quot;antagonistic theme&quot;)? Possibly, but I can't imagine it would be an exciting read; it may depend on the audience. Perhaps someone has an example of a book like that, but I can't think of any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-05-27T15:23:07.333" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T15:23:07.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2011-05-27T15:03:46.413" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story without an &quot;antagonistic theme&quot; is a story with &quot;no conflict.&quot; Conflict drives plot. Without plot, you have a character study. Without conflict, the character has no reason to change, grow, or develop, so there's not much to study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What in heaven's name (pun intended) could you write about without any conflict occurring?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T15:03:46.413" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2011-05-27T15:42:46.880" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why no conflict in heaven? There are a number of accounts of war in Heaven in both Jewish and Christian literature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.&quot; -- Rev. 12:7-8&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the conflict need not be so visceral.  Perhaps the conflict lies in the difference between the expectations of the newly arrived and the reality(?) of the Heavenly circumstances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T15:42:46.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2011-05-27T16:10:09.580" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certainly stories can be written without a &quot;traditional&quot; antagonist. An example that popped to mind was Daniel Abraham's &lt;a href=&quot;http://podcastle.org/2009/10/21/podcastle-giant-the-curandero-and-the-swede-a-tale-from-the-1001-american-nights/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;The Curandero and the Swede: A Tale from the 1001 American Nights&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;; this story meanders between fable-like stories, all basically dealing with how people cope with the troubles life sends their way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But really, I've seen lots of no-antagonist stories. The trick is to find out what &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; interesting in the story, if it isn't overt conflict. Sometimes it's a character portrait; sometimes it's an intriguing situation; perhaps a personal experience. Sometimes it'll be a unique literary experimentation. (In general, short fiction seems a better match for this than a novel - it doesn't need to be as compelling or as plot-driven, and you can mess around with format more because it doesn't need to hold up very long.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Angels in heaven,&quot; for example, isn't a story yet - it is, perhaps, a setting. An angel ruminating on the nature of sin and of providence might be spun into an intriguing short piece; or angels trying to learn to see the world through mortal eyes - you've got movement, development, and &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; even without an antagonist. But &quot;angels sitting around all day praising the Lord&quot; would be rather dull, whereas &quot;angels fighting demons and bringing justice to Sodom&quot; would be lively, but have clear antagonists.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited to add:&lt;/strong&gt; here's a few short stories I can readily link to which I'd describe as not revolving around antagonism:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.susurruspress.com/iamthismeat/rotting.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Rotting&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, by Shannon Dugan Iverson - character portrait of a man trying to pull his life together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.susurruspress.com/iamthismeat/badenough.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Bad Enough&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, by Kristi Petersen - a protagonist determined to starve herself to lose weight, in an absurd but compelling manner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.susurruspress.com/iamthismeat/synesthesia.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Synesthesia&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, by E.E. King - in which our narrator experiences a fantastical heightening of his senses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.susurruspress.com/iamthismeat/anatomymechanics.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Anatomy, Mechanics&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, by Jack Kaulfus - character portrait of a person on the cusp of a sex-change process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-05-29T00:46:34.183" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T00:46:34.183" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2891" CreationDate="2011-05-28T22:08:52.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very clear, but in &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; many words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Like many of us, I suffer from attention and procrastination problems, especially when in front of a computer. How can one focus on the mundane task at hand when the appeal of the Internet is just two clicks away?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My atention wanders after the first ten words: will this guy ever get to the point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you a procrastinator? Me too, especially in front of a computer. Who wants the daily slog with the Internet just a couple of clicks away?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My two cents worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2011-05-28T22:08:52.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2891" CreationDate="2011-05-29T17:12:27.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you have here is a story. I think the writing is good. The text is ideal for an about page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think your true goal is getting people to use the application. Sorry if I am making a bad assumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To influence people online you need to get to the point immediately. And you need to talk to them &lt;strong&gt;about them&lt;/strong&gt;, not about yourself. Look at the number of times you use the word 'I' in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with one or two sentences about why the person reading this right now needs to stop and download and try your application immediately. Ideally, you describe what problem your app solves, then the main reason how your particular app solves it (and how it is different from similar apps).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then offer a sentence or two about yourself and why you built the app and who the app is for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then dive into your story, though if your app is free you should offer the download button right away and then dive into your story and offer your download button again at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Real Reason You Do Not Get Things Done - And The Three Second Simple Fix&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You fail because you do not start tasks and stayed focused on them. So you never finish anything. My free app, Tomate, makes you accountable to the most important person in the world: &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt;. It works in just seconds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Download button]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Full story]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Download button]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2040" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T17:12:27.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2205" CreationDate="2011-05-29T17:23:46.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another idea to throw into the ring: blog your notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;http://sivers.org/book&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Derek Sivers' book notes online&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Koen about transferring notes into a computer. And with Craig about writing a review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combo that with a blog to help others and to better cement in your head what you've read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joe Karbo said you should RSVP important things you read and learn, to firmly internalize them and live them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Study&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Verbalize (Teach)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practice (do it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questioner asked about methods to use without getting distracted from reading, so perhaps my ideas are not overly applicable here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2040" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T17:23:46.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2810" CreationDate="2011-05-29T17:28:54.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/006124189X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Influence&lt;/a&gt; by Robert Caldini&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470051248&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The AdWeek Copywriting Handbook&lt;/a&gt; by Joseph Sugarman&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have other books on my shelf, but have not read them, so cannot recommend them yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2040" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T17:28:54.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2425" CreationDate="2011-05-29T17:37:22.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbos.com/products/astro/astro.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Astronsynthesis&lt;/a&gt; is supposed to be good. While it is not world builder software, you might find it a useful helper app for the very big picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That site offers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbos.com/products/mapper/mapper.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fractal Mapper&lt;/a&gt;, as well. However, it is not a simulator or guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2040" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T17:37:22.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="327" CreationDate="2011-05-29T17:56:59.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my own experiences, there are two separate needs writers have for organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First is structure. Do you need a pre-existing system to help guild you and flesh out your project? Writing applications, for example, have preset functions and spaces for plots, characters, scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You fill in the blanks, fill out the cards, or connect the dots accordingly. You just start using the software's set workflow and taxonomy, and you stay organized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second need is storage and access. Here, you do not want a structure imposed on you. You just want to file your stuff in a way you can reference fast and easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My preference, because I am a left-brained geek, is to use a wiki with a structure I create beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kills wikis, imho, is lack of curation. You need to tend your wiki like a garden, pulling weeds, moving plants around out of the shade or into it, planting seeds, trimming, watering. Ok, I've killed the metaphor enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point is, you've got to work &lt;strong&gt;on&lt;/strong&gt; your organization system as well as &lt;strong&gt;in&lt;/strong&gt; it, as you go, else you soon suffer information sprawl and chaos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this sounds awful to you, then go with the first option and buy something off the shelf that generally takes care of structure for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer wikis, and my favourite wiki is &lt;a href=&quot;http://pbworks.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PBWorks.com&lt;/a&gt;, which at this time is free for non-commercial and personal project use. Thumbs up, as well, on TiddlyWiki and Wikipad, mentioned by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is Wordpress. Host your own, or let wordpress.com do it for you for free. Create all the pages you want. Apply categories and tags for easy cross-referencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you prefer a Windows app, then I heartily recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.milenix.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MyInfo&lt;/a&gt;. Version 6 just released, and it offers great features that make it extremely accessible to writers looking to build a base of information for reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option, if you use MSOffice, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_OneNote&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OneNote&lt;/a&gt;. It offers more freeform organization on a page than wikis and other software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first consideration is whether you need a pre-existing structure and system, or if you want to create your own. Then go from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2040" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T17:56:59.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="327" CreationDate="2011-05-29T21:52:00.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're more a more visual thinker, you might consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thebrain.com/products/personalbrain/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Personal Brain&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;&#xA;It's a mind-mapper, but better than any other I've tried - you can easily establish categorized relationships between elements in a &lt;strong&gt;non-linear&lt;/strong&gt; way that normal text/word files don't really permit. I've used it a lot in game design.&lt;p&gt;&#xA;For example, I'll have top-level categories like Characters, Locations, and Timeline. My characters Luke and Vader are &lt;em&gt;children&lt;/em&gt; of the Characters node. Luke has two &lt;em&gt;sibling&lt;/em&gt; nodes of Hoth and Ep5. Hoth, of course, is a &lt;em&gt;child&lt;/em&gt; of Locations and Ep5 is a &lt;em&gt;child&lt;/em&gt; of Timeline.&lt;p&gt;&#xA;Then each node has an RTF file that comes up when it's selected in the view.&lt;p&gt;&#xA;The only thing the application's no good for is outputting data for presentations. However, if it's just intended for your own organization purposes, it's great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1582" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T21:52:00.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="327" CreationDate="2011-05-30T02:11:34.277" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a huge fan of &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;emacs org-mode&lt;/a&gt;, but it's not for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can be used locally, without internet access.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't have emacs org-mode available, the files are still very human-readable in a plain text editor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very revision control friendly, so you can easily track changes using &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;git&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://mercurial.selenic.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mercurial&lt;/a&gt;, or your favorite revision control system, and/or coordinate collaboration with others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you need to access your org-mode notes from multiple locations, it is extremely easy to sync them to any remote storage system to/from your various machines (or, if you are using revision control, just throw them on your &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;https://gitorious.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gitorious&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://mercurial.selenic.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bitbucket&lt;/a&gt; account).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because (like all of emacs) org-mode is heavily keybound, it is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; fast to use.  You don't have to constantly &#xA;stop typing to mouse around so that you can move something to a different place in your notes/outline or add/change tags, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Incredible feature set -- off the top of my head:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hierarchical outlining of notes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tagging (free tagging or user defined sets)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customizeable templates (&#xA;i.e. you can decide what a character entry, a setting entry, etc. should look like)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attributes (you can give all characters ages, for example, and conditionally include/exclude this data when you export or print).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Archiving&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy re-organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hyperlinks (internal and external)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark &quot;TODO&quot; items and track how many are done (by x/y or % complete)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Section folding (hide things under headlines when you don't need it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easily keep writing, character notes, wold-building notes, etc. in the same place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agenda mode can collect todos from separate files so you can easily see an overview&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Export to plain text (UTF-8 or ASCII), HTML, LaTeX, DocBook, PDF, TaskJuggler, Freemind, and more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many other things I'm not thinking of.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mobile app lets you use your org-mode notes easily from Android Devices or iThings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learning org-mode is non-trivial, especially if you aren't already an emacs user.  Expect to spend a couple of weeks with a cheat sheet next to your computer before you are using it quickly and fluidly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will probably want to turn your Caps Lock into an extra Ctrl key to avoid sore pinky finger from all that Ctrl-something hotkey use.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may eventually begin to mutter Emacs lisp in your sleep.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T02:11:34.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2937" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2939" CreationDate="2011-05-30T09:20:37.720" Score="2" ViewCount="804" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a report for college about computer games and I am wondering whether genres need to be capitalised. Usually I do not but for some reason it just feels that I should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The game is in the adventure genre.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The game is in the Adventure genre.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am tempted to go with the latter because it is the name of a genre and names need to be capitalised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shane &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2052" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-06-04T08:21:19.827" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T08:21:19.827" Title="Should Game Genre Types Be Capitalised?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2937" CreationDate="2011-05-30T09:48:25.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely - not. (With exception: when it will be common to write &quot;Thriller&quot;, &quot;Romance&quot; or &quot;Historical&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T09:48:25.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2937" CreationDate="2011-05-30T12:54:32.223" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not a proper adjective, and therefore should not be capitalized. The name &quot;adventure&quot; is generic. It's not like saying &quot;This game is in the Zork genre,&quot; referring to a particular early game. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T12:54:32.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2940" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2941" CreationDate="2011-05-30T16:01:40.887" Score="3" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;Will be writing my master's thesis in a few months. I have never written a thesis yet though. I was unlucky enough not to be required to have a thesis during my undergrad years. Anybody know some good thesis writing guides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2054" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T06:29:35.463" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T06:29:35.463" Title="Resources for thesis writing" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|resources|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2940" CreationDate="2011-05-30T21:34:21.383" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if you're looking for content or format help, but if it's format-related, I'd strongly recommend the &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University&lt;/a&gt;.  Actually, now that I double check, I see that it has a fairly comprehensive section on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/679/01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;entire writing process&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like this resource because it's comprehensive, well written, easily searchable, frequently updated, and free.  What more could you want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T21:34:21.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="327" CreationDate="2011-05-31T07:54:30.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't usually hold with anything other than a hard core of text files in a folder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when things get stupidly complex I find myself turning to &lt;a href=&quot;http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WikidPad&lt;/a&gt; which is about as complex as I like to make things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T07:54:30.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="327" CreationDate="2011-05-31T14:38:16.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just found this free online mind mapping flash software:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://bubbl.us/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://bubbl.us/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very simple to use (a little like &lt;em&gt;thebrain&lt;/em&gt; cited above but with probably less features, it's free though)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2061" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T14:38:16.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2944" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:20:46.043" Score="8" ViewCount="478" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story for my english final - I'm a junior in high school; we've already taken our AP exam, but our teacher wanted to finish the year with something meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I have been jotting some notes down on a phenomenon very personal and familiar to me.  I would like to express this in the form of a short-story.  I think it would be excellent practice for me as a writer to produce something both creative and insightful.  And of course, make it enjoyable to read!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would like feedback for my world-building work; I've described my complete process and the outline I've produced so far.&lt;/strong&gt; What do you guys think of this world I'm thinking about?  Really my only concern is that it resembles some already renowned literature (1984, for one). Do you think what I have going so far is a good start?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The unit I need to respond to is &lt;strong&gt;adaptation&lt;/strong&gt;.  The thing is, we can choose to respond in any way we see fit.  So, taking the word at face value and applying my own experience has resulted in me noting the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lack of purpose =&gt; Apathy =&gt; Failure&#xA;  to adapt =&gt; Vicious cycle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Message:  With no ultimate purpose,&#xA;  one enters a vicious cycle where&#xA;  apathy replaces drive - and an&#xA;  inability to cope with this newfound&#xA;  apathy spawns more apathy rendering&#xA;  one a hollow shell of one's former&#xA;  self.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Life becomes a game.  Not your game,&#xA;  but a game in which you let yourself&#xA;  become the controlled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Going through the motions the way life&#xA;  is supposed to be &quot;played&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Origin of the lack of purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it effected as a result of society?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or, if entirely void of society&#xA;  itself, would a lack of purpose still&#xA;  be prevalent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, I attempted to construct a world that would facilitate the delivery of such a message:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Time Period:  Post-Nuclear Holocaust&#xA;  (in the not-so-distant-future)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Setting (specifically):  A&#xA;  totalitarian society (founded by the&#xA;  Great One [Magnus] Post-Nuclear&#xA;  Holocaust to prevent the &quot;tragedies&quot;&#xA;  of Pre-Nuclear Holocaust society)&#xA;  [Opatia] advocating free choice -&#xA;  paradox?  With overstimulation,&#xA;  rejection and dissent ensues.  Leading&#xA;  us to our protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Protagonist (Salim):  Overwhelmed by&#xA;  so much freedom causes him to lose his&#xA;  mind.  Additionally, he sees through&#xA;  the façade of freedom that Opatia (and&#xA;  Magnus) advertises.  He understands&#xA;  that in reality Magnus is a corrupt&#xA;  leader who uses his control over the&#xA;  Opatians to gain capital in the&#xA;  still-existent &quot;real world&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Narration:  Third-Person Omniscient. &#xA;  Allows reader to be privy to the&#xA;  thoughts of others besides Salim. &#xA;  This also facilitates occasional&#xA;  blatant theme poundings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tense:  Present.  Past (although also&#xA;  implying a story worth telling) in my&#xA;  opinion implies an afterthought. &#xA;  Present tense also effects reader&#xA;  suspense if solely for entertainment&#xA;  purposes (à la Amusing Ourselves to&#xA;  Death).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what started out as a description of Opatia, but turned out to become a general overview of the short-story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Opatia is a realm devoid of natural&#xA;  life.  It is founded on irony. &#xA;  Despite claiming to protect its&#xA;  citizens by granting them “liberty”,&#xA;  it revokes them of this very promise&#xA;  through a strict and brutal&#xA;  totalitarian regime.  Its endless&#xA;  choices (in the very few sectors where&#xA;  choice is provided like job&#xA;  “opportunities”) lead to a massive&#xA;  decision that must be made at an early&#xA;  age (satirizing the current&#xA;  educational system).  Additionally,&#xA;  once one selects a job, one must keep&#xA;  this job for the rest of his or her&#xA;  life with nothing but a mere&#xA;  superficial promotion as an incentive&#xA;  to continue one’s work; this further&#xA;  negates Opatia’s claim of choice and&#xA;  liberty (further satire).  This all&#xA;  becomes too much for Salim, and living&#xA;  within these constraints becomes&#xA;  unbearable.  Unable to creatively&#xA;  express himself, (a fundamental&#xA;  impossibility considering what Opatia&#xA;  demands with its concrete definitions&#xA;  of jobs and lifestyles) Salim must&#xA;  either conform, or rebel and sacrifice&#xA;  the inevitable rejection he will face&#xA;  from both his peers and society as a&#xA;  whole, especially, Magnus.  Salim&#xA;  decides to live a life of quiet&#xA;  desperation where his former youthful&#xA;  passion and energy is replaced by&#xA;  apathy (must show Salim’s dynamism in&#xA;  order to achieve this effect; perhaps&#xA;  time period shall range from Salim’s&#xA;  adolescent period to early adulthood).&#xA;  After some time so bogged down with&#xA;  his own cognizance of his failure to&#xA;  adapt, his situation once again&#xA;  becomes unbearable.  Therefore, as a&#xA;  result of his cognitive dissonance - a&#xA;  mental breakdown (and possibly&#xA;  ultimate suicide) ensues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-13T09:00:19.810" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T09:00:19.810" Title="World Building critique: Building an SF society off a tangent of &quot;Adaptation&quot;" Tags="|science-fiction|brainstorming|world-building|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2944" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:58:33.730" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about &quot;it's been done before.&quot; Your goal is to do it your way, and never mind what anyone else has done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your theme (Lack of purpose =&gt; Apathy =&gt; Failure to adapt =&gt; Vicious cycle) is interesting, but I'm having some trouble connecting it to your pr&amp;eacute;cis. How does &quot;too much freedom&quot; equate to &quot;lack of purpose&quot;? I think linking it to &quot;Amusing Ourselves to Death&quot; is closer to the mark &amp;mdash; &quot;too much entertainment with nothing to strive for,&quot; like the Buy 'N' Large folks from WALL&amp;bull;E (taken seriously rather than for laughs). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think having too much entertainment would cause the protagonist to lose his mind. Lose his will, perhaps. What I would focus on is the spot between three and four: why does everyone in the society have no ambition, no competitiveness, no ability to come up with their own life's purpose? Why is &quot;life purpose&quot; an outside force imposed on the individual, which when missing is not replaced by an inner drive? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also call it a &quot;newfound apathy,&quot; but if everyone in the society is choked with ennui, then it's not &quot;newfound,&quot; it's the way things are. You're not describing people who used to have a purpose and now don't; you're talking about an entire culture of slackers. That's not a vicious cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your story has potential; I'm just picking some nits which I think need work. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:58:33.730" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2944" CreationDate="2011-06-01T08:17:16.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the &quot;lack of purpose&quot; is a welcome mindsed of our civilisation. (At least, thought mainstream is declaring it.) Those who feel an urge to be trumpeting out that &quot;there is no purpose&quot; do not seem to be apathetic. So I am afraid that your setup is a little bit unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I must admit that someone who is forced to accept the &quot;no purpose&quot; mindset sometimes feels unbearable discomfort. This can lead to various (negative) results in their minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should help to become familiar with some fiction (and non-fiction) literature dealing with nihilism, particularly with &quot;existential nihilism&quot; (e. g. F. M. Dostoyevsky, J. P. Sartre, A. Camus, P. K. Dick). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastEditorUserId="624" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T10:31:59.640" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T10:31:59.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2944" CreationDate="2011-06-01T13:46:37.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given your paragraph description, I have to admit to being somewhat unconvinced along a few points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You set up a direct connection between the regime's oppressive control of its citizens and a lack of purpose, but I think you need to nuance that connection more closely.  The currently much-analyzed phenomenon of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eyeweekly.com/article/55882&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;quarterlife crisis&lt;/a&gt; among middle and upper-middle class American 20-somethings and all the talk of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22Adulthood-t.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;emerging adulthood&lt;/a&gt; surrounding the same group provides a strong argument that an undirected, unconstrained ability to choose &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; actually leads to a lack of purpose.  Some amount of constraints - in the form of societal expectations or religious beliefs, for example - can be essential for some in finding purpose.  Your initial notes for world-building included the idea that your protagonist is &quot;overwhelmed by so much freedom causes him to lose his mind.&quot;  That idea is different than what your paragraph conveys, and I think you need to nuance the final product to include an interplay between the two ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In other dystopian works in which totalitarian regimes control the day, the hero(ine) often finds his or her sense of purpose in opposing that regime.  Because that is the literary expectation set up by books such as Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World you may need to work on providing a convincing reason for Salim's apathy.  Is it a weakness of character (something that can be written to make him extremely easy to empathize with)?  Is it the sheer brutality of the regime?  Is it the lack of any peers who will stand with him?  Why won't he fight his situation, which fight would actually provide the sense of purpose he craves?  This central tension here is what makes the story potentially extremely fascinating, but so far I haven't seen how you'll tease it out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many thinkers, from the authors of the Jewish Bible (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Joshua%2024:14-15&amp;amp;version=ESV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this part of the book of Joshua&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+2:10-12&amp;amp;version=ESV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this section of Psalms&lt;/a&gt;) to those of the Christian New Testament (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2016:24-27&amp;amp;version=ESV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this section in the book of Matthew&lt;/a&gt;) to modern writers such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://pulseperspectives.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/nyt-david-brooks-on-commencement-addresses-following-your-dreams-and-the-beauty-of-hard-tasks-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;David Brooks&lt;/a&gt; and even some advice columnists point out often that the best way to find a sense of purpose is not within in expressing one's own creativity but to look outside.  People tend to feel better when doing things for others, when they feel like they are serving gladly.  What keeps Salim from finding purpose in doing things for his family, friends, or true love?  Is it selfishness?  Is it the entire social structure stacked up against what he feels is his true calling?  If Salim's purpose is simply self-expression it's going to feel weak.  If you show a struggle to either &lt;em&gt;find&lt;/em&gt; a purpose in a purposeless society or &lt;em&gt;express&lt;/em&gt; a purpose when the odds are too great, it'll be more compelling.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like there are some interesting ideas here worth honing, but the philosophy has to be something the reader will identify with.  I think you're well on your way there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, on your note on tense, you would be well advised to read up on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2002/pros-ans-cons-of-writing-a-plot-based-on-the-present-and-past-tense-characters&quot;&gt;this discussion on present versus past tense&lt;/a&gt;.  A lot of modern fiction is being written in the present tense, and there has been some backlash against it when it is not done well and for a good reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T19:53:45.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2011-06-01T19:24:41.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Theoretically, it's possible as long as you replace the lack of antagonism with an inner conflict in the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1958" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T19:24:41.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2954" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2956" CreationDate="2011-06-01T19:39:32.227" Score="10" ViewCount="6900" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not very good at grammar. Is there someone who would go through and correct your grammatical mistakes, even if you are not good at grammar? Who would this person be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2069" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-07-08T13:46:48.513" LastActivityDate="2017-09-16T16:33:46.017" Title="Do you have to be good at grammar to get published?" Tags="|style|publishing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2954" CreationDate="2011-06-01T21:12:54.233" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is that there are so many people out there trying to get published who ARE good at grammar.  If an editor is looking at your manuscript &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; at an MS with an equally good story, characterization, writing style, etc., but  with better grammar, the editor is going to chose the story with better grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So before submission, you could try to find an editor to fix the issues for you, but you'd be VERY lucky to find anyone willing to do it for free, and you might find that some of the corrections affect the style of writing you wanted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not &lt;em&gt;impossible&lt;/em&gt; to be selected for publication even if a lot of work is needed to make your MS publishable, but everything else about your work will have to be that much better in order to make up for the grammar deficit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-09-16T16:33:46.017" LastActivityDate="2017-09-16T16:33:46.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2954" CreationDate="2011-06-01T21:57:15.947" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should be good at grammar to expect to get published. It's highly unlikely you will get your foot in the door if your manuscript has basic grammatical errors from the outset, because this will detract from your overall story. From a business perspective, poor grammar can also mean it may cost someone more money to publish your book, because it would need a lot more editing compared to someone who has taken the time edit their own work, and fix the grammar as best as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Forgot to add that, obviously, you yourself could pay someone to edit the work for you, but you definitely need your manuscript at a reasonable standard to expect to get published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T22:02:31.347" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T22:02:31.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2958" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2967" CreationDate="2011-06-01T22:44:27.473" Score="4" ViewCount="308" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this short story I'm trying to describe an unexceptional scene in an exciting and compelling way. I want to make a common ritual seem strange and a bit surreal. Does this paragraph accomplish these goals? What could be done to improve it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Great Books Program&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The desert sun lay shattered and&#xA;abstract on a shimmering pond and the&#xA;dry morning air spoke of an&#xA;oppressively hot day to come. Slippery&#xA;and speckled fish darted to the sounds&#xA;of Beethoven’s Fifth symphony which&#xA;played at high volume directly into&#xA;Buck's two ears. All around him, tens&#xA;of college students diffused casually&#xA;through the golden cobblestone&#xA;courtyard between the tall dormitory&#xA;building and the forty-eight stairs&#xA;which led up to Patton Hall. Some&#xA;students walked alone absorbed by&#xA;thoughts or squinting at the bright&#xA;rock or rubbing sleep from tired eyes,&#xA;others skipped in pairs and talked&#xA;loudly about the day's news, parties,&#xA;school work and other diversions. Each&#xA;had a copy of Homer, Joyce and the&#xA;Bible cradled with affection or tucked&#xA;studiously under each arm. Buck shut&#xA;his eyes behind his dark sunglasses to&#xA;exorcise the pain from his pulsating&#xA;forehead. When he opened them, a fish&#xA;had paused for a moment as though to&#xA;look up at Buck through a critical&#xA;eye. Buck's left hand pressed a&#xA;smoking cigarette to his lips and Buck&#xA;inhaled deeply. Moments before the&#xA;cold ichthyic stare would have&#xA;shattered the sense of serene&#xA;isolation that the morning brings, the&#xA;fish slipped away into a blur of&#xA;colorful pulsating streaks as if&#xA;disappointed in what it saw. Buck took&#xA;a sip of the bitter coffee which he&#xA;held in his right hand, stomped out&#xA;what remained of his cigarette, picked&#xA;up his books which lay at his feet and&#xA;walked off slowly toward the fiery sun&#xA;with the supernatural ecstasy of&#xA;Beethoven's strings and horns playing&#xA;loudly in both ears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amichaioneducation.com/2011/05/great-books-program.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;My blog where I originally posted it&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T13:56:48.373" Title="Does this microfiction provide a slightly surreal sense when describing an ordinary scene?" Tags="|fiction|flash-fiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2959" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2966" CreationDate="2011-06-02T00:01:49.073" Score="8" ViewCount="4741" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not long ago I wrote a short story about a mathematics graduate student on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The young student is innocent and working to finish a difficult mathematical derivation under a tight deadline. In desperation, he decides to pay an uninvited visit to the house of an older mentor mathematician who he reveres. Instead of sitting down for serious discourse in mathematics, the mentor introduces the student to a hallucinogenic drug causing the student to endure a night of paranoia and grotesque hallucinations animated by mathematical symbols and anxiety. The student awakes the next day  confused and disillusioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not satisfied with what I wrote. In working on the story I realized that I have never taken and do not intend to take any hallucinogenic drugs and I have no comparable experiences in my own life to draw upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you recommend for describing drug induced fear, paranoia, hallucinations and anxiety in a compelling way? What are some good literary techniques for exploring a blurred boundary between reality and dream, lucidity and insanity? Can you suggest any reading material to help me re-approach this project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27" LastActivityDate="2024-01-02T13:52:52.213" Title="Writing about drug induced hallucinations and paranoia" Tags="|fiction|technique|brainstorming|description|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2958" CreationDate="2011-06-02T06:13:29.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;College student (is Buck a student?) smoking a cigarette in public unpunished and enjoying Beethoven's music sounds quite strange and surreal to me. Since the paragraph doesn't explain why students were carrying those books I am not able to decide wheter it was for their interest of classic literature or for those books were just from a required reading list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is good but what unexceptional can I see?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastEditorUserId="624" LastEditDate="2011-06-02T10:26:08.833" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T10:26:08.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2959" CreationDate="2011-06-02T07:01:44.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: Forget about interviewing addicted people. Due to theirs specific conditions they would lie and exaggerate. Instead, consult a clinical toxicology books. It should be an abundand resource of objective and proven information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: Try a &quot;reality shift&quot;, something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Susie was wondering how had mr. Powell&#xA;  managed to reach a third derivative&#xA;  level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What's the rush?&quot; the antiderivative&#xA;  asked. &quot;We are just an extrapolation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Serve yourself,&quot; suggested mr. Powell&#xA;  handing over an ashtray full of&#xA;  fraction lines. &quot;These ones were&#xA;  sieved by Erasothenes. In person.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T07:01:44.377" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2965" CreationDate="2011-06-02T07:37:23.983" Score="7" ViewCount="744" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read somewhere that one should choose ones genre carefully, as it is hard to change later. Although there are exceptions, most writers, even established ones, find it hard to change genre, and have to use a pen name if they want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really true? Does one really get stuck in whatever genre you chose for your first book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-10-19T00:11:33.640" LastActivityDate="2021-10-25T06:11:26.347" Title="Is it easy to change genre?" Tags="|genre|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2962" CreationDate="2011-06-02T07:55:11.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to my experience, genre emerges from story. The bad news is that many attempts to follow genre are ending as total failure to write a viable story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, sir Golding's &quot;Lord of Flies&quot; can be considered as soft sci-fi, post apocalyptic fiction, psychological thriller or (as officially stated) allegory. However, his &quot;Spire&quot;, &quot;Pincher Martin&quot; or &quot;The Inheritors&quot; do are not suitable for most of genres mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Homer's Illias and Odyssey can be considerd as historical fiction or even fantasy genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastEditorUserId="624" LastEditDate="2011-06-02T08:59:06.603" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T08:59:06.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2959" CreationDate="2011-06-02T08:08:41.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may benefit from talking to ex-addicts, since ex-addicts are more likely to give an unvarnished truth with regards to their drug taking (if, of course, they're willing to be open to a stranger). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with Indoril Nerevar's answer about not speaking to addicted people. Interviewing addicted people does provide its own insights: how people exaggerate and possibly even lie regarding their own drug usage, its effects on their lives, and those around them. Their mannerisms and body language can also help give you ideas regarding behaviour. You'd also be surprised at how open some people can be about their drug usage, how much they justify it, enjoy it even, or how many are open and aware of their present situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also talk with normal people who have experienced or used drugs (there are plenty of those, and I've no doubt you may even know one or two people who have experimented). They don't need to be addicts to have experienced any of what you describe. If you don't know any, just go to any number of clubs or parties where there are likely to be people taking drugs, and observe their behaviour. You may even be able to strike up a conversation with some people, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of reading material, Sadie Plant wrote a fairly good book entitled &quot;Writing on Drugs&quot;, which explored both writers taking drugs and writing, and writers writing about drugs. You may also find the works of Hunter S. Thompson (such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and William S. Burroughs (Junky) helpful. Film is also a good avenue to explore, since this is obviously a lot more visual. Perhaps have a look on YouTube for videos of people taking drugs. Lastly, use Wikipedia as a starting point for pointing you in the right direction regarding reference material on drugs and hallucination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T08:08:41.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2962" CreationDate="2011-06-02T08:29:19.463" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is true, to a degree, that it's difficult. The central &quot;problem&quot;, if you can call it that, is that when you become published, and start building an audience, both your audience and your publisher begin to expect you to do things in a similar vein as what you've done before because it's easier to market work to an established audience. If your first novel was a science fiction story, and suddenly you write a historical Victorian romance novel, you can see how the marketability of your book would suddenly be difficult, since it would be almost as if you're getting published again for the first time. You also wouldn't want to alienate your existing audience who see your name, and read your book, expecting the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say it can't be done. Once you become &quot;established&quot;, it is possible to use your status to explore other avenues. For example, Iain Banks wrote three or four novels before he published his science fiction work &lt;em&gt;Consider Phlebas&lt;/em&gt; under the name Iain M. Banks. Providing a clear delineation between your different genres in this fashion can be useful, because it provides clear markers to readers that &quot;this is this&quot;, and &quot;this is that&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2011-07-25T18:20:06.343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T18:20:06.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2959" CreationDate="2011-06-02T08:50:57.373" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Read drug literature, if you get your head right around Naked Lunch, the Illuminatus Trilogy and some of Philip K. Dick's wackier work they should tell you more or less everything you need to know. Burroughs is particularly useful because he wrote &lt;em&gt;even though&lt;/em&gt; he was out of his head on drugs, not &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; he was out of his head on drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Illuminatus Trilogy is basically a compendium of the paranoid thoughts of every conspiracy loon that could be bothered to send letters on the subject of Civil Liberties to Playboy Magazine in the mid to late 60s (the book was written by the two editors in charge of that desk at Playboy and basically asks &quot;what if all of this was true?&quot;). One of the authors of the trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson, also wrote a book called Prometheus Rising which I believe depicts the internal landscape of someone whose done a lot of experimentation with hallucinogenics and pot and was exposed to much of the counter culture thinking of the 60s and 70s... he may have intended it to be the fanfare of a new era in human evolution but that doesn't do much to challenge my beliefs I suppose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Philip K. Dick famously proclaimed both that he wrote his novels after taking large amounts of amphetamines and, later, that doctors had told him that his liver had processed the amphetamines before they had reached his brain (I'm personally unsure as to the medical viability of that prognosis but hey ho). Whatever the truth his work is fuelled by paranoia and filled with symbols of the broken or shattered sense of identity that altered states of consciousness produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The key to the most effective reality breakdown scenes is that they start out seeming realistically viable and slowly descend into madness. The path downwards is usually marked out with a strong set of symbols. As an author it is your job to convey a twisted worldview propped up by surreal dream logic and, I would argue, that the only way to communicate such a state of being to a rational audience is to be sober, disciplined and have everything meticulously planned. Of course the authors I mentioned in 1. often didn't but then the incoherence they sometimes displayed is testament to the fact that they were writing from within the fugue state and were trying to communicate about things they had discovered while within that state. You are trying to communicate the experiences of a third party experiencing that mental state. These two things are not the same; I believe what you are trying to do requires practiced application of technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) If you want a laundry list of things to lean on then you might want to include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bizarrely prosaic but nevertheless ominous and eerie symbolic repetition: follow the white rabbit Neo.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing scenes out of sequence or introducing time loops: it's Groundhog day, again/Zed's dead baby&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having characters snap from rational conversation into bluntly violent or sexual suggestion: Long live the new flesh.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suggest that reality is just a layer on top of something larger and more mysterious: The owls are not what they seem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most effective and creepy piece of writing I ever read was a story by an author who is probably completely unknown called Nicholas Antosca, a short story you won't be able to find anywhere called &quot;Movies and Kids&quot;. In the story a young man pays a visit to his boss's house in a pleasant suburb of an unnamed American town. At the beginning of the story the narrator believes that there are kids running and playing in the hedgerows of these suburban houses although he cannot see them. When he goes into the house he is introduced to the boss's wife who, after exchanging a couple of pleasantries asks him if he likes movies. The narrator doesn't understand the question and suspecting it's some sort of innuendo tries to politely tell her he doesn't have much time for them. When his boss comes in and the two of them start pressuring him into committing to whether he likes movies or not he flees. Running through the streets of the suburb he believes he is being followed by the hidden children, laughing and playing, stalking through the hedges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing actually happens in the story but the author did a brilliant job of communicating paranoia and fear without ever resorting to traditional modes. Drugs were not mentioned but the technique of providing this kind of triple subtext, where there's what the audience knows, what the narrator knows and some possibility of underlying mystery is key to creating the atmosphere you're chasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T08:50:57.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2958" CreationDate="2011-06-02T09:19:37.560" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First impression: too many adverbs and descriptions, and too much detail. As Stephen King notes, &quot;The road to hell is paved with adverbs.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few lines in, and I wanted to skip ahead. What's important to the story? The music he's listening to? Forty-eight steps? The people walking around? The pond? The fish? The coffee? The cigarette? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything is &quot;shattered&quot;, &quot;shiny&quot;, &quot;dry&quot;, &quot;loudly&quot;, &quot;darted&quot;, &quot;slippery&quot;, and so on. There is too much going on here, and everything becomes a bit &quot;noisy&quot;. In fact, what you've written can almost be described as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;purple prose&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. It's also largely meaningless: lots going on, but the majority tells me nothing of the character or the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to describe absolutely everything. Focus on what's important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T09:19:37.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2959" CreationDate="2011-06-02T11:28:39.790" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can write about what is observed from the outside. You can infer much about what may be going on inside. But what you can't do is give an accurate portrayal of what goes on inside unless you have actually experienced hallucinogens for yourself. This is probably what is making your crap detector go off when you read your own work. And if yours goes off, you may be assured your readers' will be ringing off the walls as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T11:28:39.790" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2959" CreationDate="2011-06-02T12:43:01.370" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading up on the effects of various Pyschoactive drugs might help. Below is a link that could be really helpful, there are &quot;trip reports&quot; for every drug imaginable. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.erowid.org/experiences/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.erowid.org/experiences/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2073" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T12:43:01.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2972" CreationDate="2011-06-02T13:07:50.517" Score="5" ViewCount="557" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stephen King, in his book '&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0743455967&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;On writing&lt;/a&gt;' (and other writers), says one should put some gap of time between drafts. So for example, wait a month after finishing the 1st draft, before starting work on the 2nd draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this needed? Is it needed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-06-02T21:11:28.747" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T04:57:42.913" Title="Do we need a gap of time between drafts?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2954" CreationDate="2011-06-02T13:12:41.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title of the person you'd be looking for is a copy editor. And you'd have to pay them to beat your manuscript into shape. You could go to a site like elance, but you're going to get what you pay for, TBH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1467" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T13:12:41.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2970" CreationDate="2011-06-02T13:32:22.480" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say yes, you should leave a gap between the first draft and redraft, with the qualifier that you should do what you find works for yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason many authors such as Stephen King suggest this is because it allows you to come back and read what you've written with &quot;fresh&quot; eyes. It is often the case that, when you've spent a long time working on a piece of writing, constantly going back and forth, you become so used to the text that you cannot see any possible way to improve it. This can lead to frustration and/or a false sense of perfection with what you've written. By giving it a break, you can come back almost as if you've &quot;forgotten&quot; it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this may not be what works for you. I seem to recall Zadie Smith once saying that, when she was writing White Teeth, she would spend hours every day re-reading everything that she had previously written before she would carry on, editing along the way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T13:32:22.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2958" CreationDate="2011-06-02T13:46:17.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where's the conflict in this piece?  I see it as a piece of descriptive writing, perhaps a study in describing a scene, but I don't get a sense of movement and plot.  Even flash fiction should have some sort of movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a sense of the surreal cut out most of your adjectives and adverbs.  Use them judiciously in an unexpected way so that a word like &quot;shattered&quot; really shatters the reader's sense of what should be and makes him or her sit up and take note.  The words you've freed up can be used to provide movement towards a conclusion.  Flash fiction is often best at providing an unexpected conclusion, so you may want to go for something that provides an O. Henry-like twist without being over-the-top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T13:46:17.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2974" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2975" CreationDate="2011-06-02T13:48:41.387" Score="15" ViewCount="124074" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep hearing the terms &quot;character development&quot; and &quot;characterisation&quot;, but I'm still not sure what they mean? How does one &quot;develop&quot; a character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-06-02T15:20:54.653" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T15:10:09.583" Title="What does Character development actually mean?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2974" CreationDate="2011-06-02T14:03:51.583" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Character development can refer to either the task of sitting down and creating a character (working out their appearance, history, mannerisms, and so on), or it can refer to the change a character undergoes during the course of a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first instance, the idea is to create a fictional person, complete with flaws and weaknesses, history, mannerisms, hopes, fears, someone that is often even more real than people you meet in real life. This is (generally) a person you will use in your story, whether as a protagonist or antagonist. It's like you getting to know someone so well that you know absolutely everything about them. Just how much you need to know depends on how important the character is to the story, but generally speaking, the more you know about the character, the better able you'll be able to write about them in relation to your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second instance, character development describes the change an individual undergoes through the course of a story as a result of the conflict or conflicts that person encounters. Think of the character Scrooge from A Christmas Carol, who begins as a crotchety, tight-fisted, greedy old man, but over the course of the story, various &quot;conflicts&quot; force him to change his ways so that, by the end, he becomes a better man, generous and kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T14:03:51.583" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2958" CreationDate="2011-06-02T21:07:05.397" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I would break it up into more paragraphs. That enhances readability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, using the adverb &lt;em&gt;abstract&lt;/em&gt; is strange, but you do not gain surrealism doing so. You kicked me out of the story before I reached the first full stop (period, if you are an American). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking about the story: There is none! &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2958/does-this-microfiction-provide-a-slightly-surreal-sense-when-describing-an-ordina/2973#2973&quot;&gt;justkt&lt;/a&gt; pointed that out already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overusing adjectives/adverbs will bring you nowhere. If you want it to be surreal, describe the scene from an LSD viewpoint (yeah, the drug).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the protagonist has a terrible headache and needs to go to the bathroom fetching some aspirin, you could write: &quot;He was walking through honey and it sounded pink.&quot; Well, I wouldn't use &lt;em&gt;pink&lt;/em&gt;, but you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T21:07:05.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2977" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-03T00:14:51.127" Score="2" ViewCount="9407" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a formal research paper (Highschool)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have lots of statistics involving money (In fact, my whole essay is about the economy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a question arises about the format of writing money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The company spent $4.5 billion dollars.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or simply&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The company spent $4.5 billion.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to include the &amp;quot;dollars&amp;quot; at the end? Which one is more customary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1961" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T12:19:19.783" Title="Correct format when talking about money $$" Tags="|formatting|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2977" CreationDate="2011-06-03T00:52:26.377" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go with the second option.  The first is redundant - you've got $ as a symbol AND as a word.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T00:52:26.377" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2979" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2981" CreationDate="2011-06-03T02:36:20.277" Score="97" ViewCount="10809" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back in my day, I was taught to use masculine pronouns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The user chooses a password, and then&#xA;  he types it in the text box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm fine with that. but a male coworker insists on using he/she, which I find needlessly distracting and complicated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hate using they and their. I find that too convoluted, and not nearly clear enough when you want to talk about one person doing one thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like &quot;you&quot; but you can't always get away with that. Sometimes you're telling someone about what his users can do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interspersing &quot;he&quot; for some things with &quot;she&quot; for others is also distracting, but maybe the closest thing to &quot;fair&quot; that I can come up with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the current thought on this? What's the most acceptable way to go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Frankly, I wish I could get away with &quot;it.&quot; As in &quot;it puts the lotion on its skin.&quot; Creepy, right?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-03-09T07:21:02.723" LastActivityDate="2020-05-29T18:39:30.560" Title="What's the modern way to handle gender in tech writing?" Tags="|technical-writing|gender|" AnswerCount="17" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-06-03T03:13:19.277" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very few use he/she. In academia, there is currently a movement toward using the feminine pronoun at all times. That said, it is far more common (and less remarkable) to alternate pronouns as you suggested. As long as you stick with the same pronoun per example you'll be technically correct, although it is increasingly un-PC to use only male pronouns. Until we get a gender neutral (and animate) pronoun, that's as well as I can do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2057" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T03:13:19.277" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-06-03T03:41:25.067" Score="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few additional options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce a named person (perhaps fictional), and use that person's name. &quot;Terry wants to create an account. She chooses a password and types it into the text box. No, wait, Terry is a man. I think. Damn, that's a lousy example. Pat wants to create an account. Um, I mean Chris. No, wait. Maybe Dale. Er...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the imperative mood, with an implied &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; (as I'm doing in most of these examples). &quot;Choose a password and type it into the text box.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drop the pronoun whenever you can: &quot;The user chooses a password and types it into the text box.&quot; This can make the remaining pronouns less troublesome. In some cases you'll have to recast the sentence to make this work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use passive voice, and don't refer to the actor at all. Yeah, I know you've been warned against this. But sometimes it can be used with good effect, in a natural-sounding way. (Heh.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Edited to add:]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some additional tips from Val Drummond's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0133689115&quot;&gt;Elements of Nonsexist Usage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Chapter 4 is all about pronouns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the subject plural. Then use plural pronouns.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Replace gender-specific possessive pronouns with &quot;the.&quot; Instead of &quot;When the user types his password...&quot; try &quot;When the user types the password.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the word &quot;one.&quot; I personally hate this. It usually reads like a desperate attempt to claim objectivity, or add plausible deniability (&quot;Oh... I meant people in general should pick up their socks, not you specifically, sweetie&quot;), or some other such nonsense. Not that I have an attitude about this, mind one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2011-06-04T19:23:45.387" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T19:23:45.387" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-06-03T09:06:46.997" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;They/their can be used in a singular context&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The user chooses a password, and then they type the password in to the text box&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2077" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T09:06:46.997" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2977" CreationDate="2011-06-03T11:12:49.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the context, you might wish to consider specifying which currency it is, eg&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The company spent $4.5 billion (USD)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As there are many different dollars, and they all use the same $ symbol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is the only currency used within the paper then you could state that the currency is US dollars at the start rather than for every amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2077" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T11:12:49.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-06-03T12:26:14.980" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easiest rewrite is to change the sentence itself to use a plural noun. I find myself doing this a lot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; The user chooses a password, and then he types it in the text box.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; Users choose a password, and then they type it in the text box. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;i&gt;Handbook of Technical Writing.&lt;/i&gt; Brusaw, Alred, Oliu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase &quot;he or she&quot; is OK IMHO if used sparingly. While &quot;they&quot; as a singular pronoun may work, enough people dislike it that I wouldn't go that route. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="862" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T12:26:14.980" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-06-03T13:06:21.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gender-Neutral Pronouns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ze.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hir.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &quot;Invented pronouns&quot; &amp;amp; summary chart on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp; defeat gender conventions working 9-5. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="2079" LastEditDate="2011-06-04T17:17:19.597" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T17:17:19.597" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-06-04T17:17:19.597" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2832" CreationDate="2011-06-03T13:22:14.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.contrich.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Contrich&lt;/a&gt; for choosing the best writer that suits your project. You can copy a web page over there and ask potential writers to provide sample content on that page. Not only for selection purpose, you can execute your content project on Contrich and  track content progress on each web page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2080" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T13:22:14.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-06-03T18:07:01.640" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't say this has ever been a significant issue for me in twenty years of technical writing. You are rarely if ever writing &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; the user, but are generally writing &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; them, and thus the operative pronoun (often implied) is generally &quot;you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some situations, you might end up writing &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; one user &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; another user—for example, when your audience consists of system administrators or developers, who will be concerned about users of their systems or applications. But even here, the need to use third-person singular pronouns comes up less frequently than you might think.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;User:  Class representing a user account on the system.&#xA;&#xA;       FIELDS&#xA;       name          The user's full name&#xA;       mail          The user's mail address&#xA;       password      The user's password&#xA;       groups        List of groups to which the user belongs&#xA;       permissions   List of permissions available to the user&#xA;       expiry        Date on which the user's account expired or will expire&#xA;       admins        List of users who may edit or delete the account&#xA;&#xA;       METHODS&#xA;       register()    Registers a new user account in the system directory&#xA;       update()      Writes a modified user account in the system directory&#xA;       delete()      Permanently deletes a user account from the system directory&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only pronoun used in that snippet of API documentation, &lt;em&gt;which is about a user class,&lt;/em&gt; is &quot;who.&quot; It is not at all necessary to write it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;User:  Class representing a user account on the system.&#xA;&#xA;       FIELDS&#xA;       name          His or her full name&#xA;       mail          His or her mail address&#xA;&#xA;... etc.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, saying &quot;the user&quot; each time is arguably &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; because it allows the reader to skim for the information they're interested in without having to keep track of possible antecedents for pronouns.  The phrase &quot;the user&quot; in a computer manual is like &quot;said&quot; in fiction: mostly invisible, and almost always far less intrusive than attempts to avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the gender issue simply comes up infrequently enough that the well-worn workarounds suffice.  I typically just use &quot;he or she,&quot; or else recast the sentence to be plural and use &quot;they,&quot; or rewrite the sentence in some other way that usually is even clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastEditorUserId="251" LastEditDate="2020-05-29T18:39:30.560" LastActivityDate="2020-05-29T18:39:30.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2937" CreationDate="2011-06-03T18:35:27.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, don't capitalize those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you would never say that a game is in the adventure &lt;em&gt;genre&lt;/em&gt; anyway. You would simply say that it is an adventure, or an adventure game. If more explanation is needed, say it is &quot;an interactive text adventure in the Infocom tradition&quot; or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T18:35:27.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2990" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2996" CreationDate="2011-06-03T19:02:46.843" Score="13" ViewCount="22957" Body="&lt;p&gt;Guessing that there is no such example, but if there is, I'm very interested in knowing about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as a short example, just to make it clear it's possible; the example is not intended to be a work of art, but a proof of concept: &quot;The sun set in the sky, but just beneath the ocean's surface, a volcano was slowly working it's way to the light of the next day. In the morning, waves crashed against the rising lava flows.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to all who have commented, to clarify the intent of the question, it's an attempt to understand the nature of characters by removing them. My hope is that in doing so, my understanding of characters and their function will grow in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2083" LastEditorUserId="2083" LastEditDate="2011-06-03T19:57:16.210" LastActivityDate="2021-10-25T03:36:46.747" Title="Example of a fictional story without any characters (the story being 1000+ words)" Tags="|characters|structure|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2990" CreationDate="2011-06-03T19:55:36.443" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I can't think of any stories that follow your strict requirement on excluding anything that &quot;is able to reproduce&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest I could come is Ray Bradbury's short story, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jerrywbrown.com/datafile/datafile/110/ThereWillComeSoftRains_Bradbury.pdf&quot;&gt;There Will Come Soft Rains&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (note: link goes to a PDF file). Unfortunately, there are some animals in it, and humans are referred to. Also, as Lynn noted regarding the sun, you could argue that the house is a character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question does arise, however: with absolutely no characters, or reference to living things, what story is there to tell? There would be no room for character development, and I can't imagine much conflict arising from such a story, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T19:55:36.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2990" CreationDate="2011-06-03T20:14:37.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I am understandig well, you want some story without any &lt;em&gt;conscious&lt;/em&gt; character. I am afraid there is no other stories of that kind excepting various descriptions of natural or artificial &lt;em&gt;processes&lt;/em&gt; with &quot;soulless&quot; actors only (Big Bang, fusion bomb ignition, fertilisation, economic cycle).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T20:14:37.953" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2990" CreationDate="2011-06-03T20:55:41.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ursula K. Le Guin's &quot;The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas&quot; kinda doesn't have characters. Sorta. It does have people, though mostly abstractly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T20:55:41.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2954" CreationDate="2011-06-03T21:03:08.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that grammar is important, but more because you may have trouble expressing yourself in the way you intended without it.  Books are full of characters with poor or unusual grammar, but that should be a conscious choice.  Picasso may have created simple, abstract works - but he had a thorough mastery of craft first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T21:03:08.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2990" CreationDate="2011-06-04T02:49:35.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your writing sample actually looks a lot like what you might find in creative non-fiction - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_nonfiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_nonfiction&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creative non-fiction is an interesting genre because authors try to stick to the truth and reality, yet being unable to define either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of what I read focuses on nature, natural events, and the author's relationship with them. I enjoy how the authors I read avoided a lot of metaphors. &lt;strike&gt;Unfortunately I can't remember any of their names or the titles of the books (just stopped in and saw your question) -&lt;/strike&gt; perhaps someone else can offer some more suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Here's one - &lt;em&gt;The Writing Life&lt;/em&gt; by Annie Dillard &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1745" LastEditorUserId="1745" LastEditDate="2011-06-04T02:56:31.063" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T02:56:31.063" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2990" CreationDate="2011-06-04T05:25:58.370" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible to have a story without character - that is living beings that have thought processes and some amount of intelligence. This would include people, animals, aliens, robots, etc. There are two types of characters - flat and round. Flat characters are generally those that are background characters that don't evolve or change throughout the piece. Round characters will evolve and develop at the story goes on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not, however, possible to have a story without a subject. There are no characters in your example, but there are subjects - the sun, the volcano, the waves. A story's subject can be a character, but it doesn't have to be. The subject can be an inanimate object such as a house or a planet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T05:25:58.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-06-04T08:11:04.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In IT books, I frequently see &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; being used in one chapter and &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt; in the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2094" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T08:11:04.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-06-04T09:30:04.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only speak from my own experience in Australia but we have been taught to use &quot;They&quot; wherever applicable.  It is the appropriate word in the English language to use instead of he/she.  Indeed the use of &quot;he&quot; or &quot;she&quot; would be considered discriminatory in publications from the government and is very rarely seen now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it is definitely true that documents name the person and then use a gender pronoun specific to the named person: &quot;Tony wants to sign up for a license.  He goes to the front counter and fills out the XYZ form.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my teachers once said to me that every word in the English language is there for a reason, if it's the appropriate one to use then you should use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2099" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T09:30:04.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-06-04T10:25:34.650" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just use singular &quot;they&quot;. People who bleat on about it being somehow gramatically incorrect need to educate themselves, either by doing a modicum of research, or just looking up the word in a dictionay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@spence one of the problems I've encountered in the UK is that many people have been mis-educated to be indoctrinated with this rubbish that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;they&quot; is only plural&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's OK to use gender exclusive language&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and it's hard to turn around 12 years of defective schooling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I note the irony in Lauren Ipsum's comment above &quot;just because people have been doing it wrong for four hundred years doesn't make it right&quot; Sorry old bean,  grammar and syntax of language evolve over time; since &quot;they&quot; has been used as a singular pronoun over hundreds of years, then it has become part of our language and, ipso facto, correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2104" LastEditorUserId="2104" LastEditDate="2011-06-05T13:53:49.083" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T13:53:49.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-06-04T11:15:48.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest using singular &quot;they&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't like that, include in your preface &quot;mention of one gender implies all other genders&quot; (which covers non-binary gender), and alternate between using &quot;he&quot; and &quot;she&quot; (but for the same subject).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2110" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T11:15:48.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2841" CreationDate="2011-06-04T11:50:31.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Markdown&lt;/a&gt;. It may be a bit geeky (I'm a programmer/designer.), but it's what I write everything in now. It's a minimal syntax markup that you write in plain text, and then can convert it to HTML, and others. It's often used by bloggers, since a lot of the blogging software out there will let you write in Markdown, and then the blog system will convert it to the correct HTML to display on one's blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Gruber created this, and here's the syntax page: &lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd need an editor that understands Markdown and can convert it to other things (HTML/PDF), and I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;. It's so good. Export to many formats from Markdown. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php?show=new#section-compile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;It can &quot;compile&quot; your plaintext work in Markdown into other formats.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=21&amp;amp;sid=3a4db0f068bc6e8de9df17d2b0ba0830&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A link to the Scrivener forums all about Markdown (and it's varient called Multimarkdown).&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://icetothebrim.com/2010/mac-blog-workflow-scrivener-markdown-textmate/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://icetothebrim.com/2010/mac-blog-workflow-scrivener-markdown-textmate/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="534" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T11:50:31.540" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1583" CreationDate="2011-06-04T11:54:50.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second Markdown, see my answer to a similar question here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2841/least-possible-editing-effort-if-a-text-is-for-multiple-medias/3001#3001&quot;&gt;Least possible editing effort if a text is for multiple media?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="534" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T11:54:50.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3003" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3004" CreationDate="2011-06-04T11:59:48.547" Score="1" ViewCount="4580" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm developing a website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alexchen.info/brianfunshine/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://alexchen.info/brianfunshine/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My customer wrote the following in the front page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hi, I’m Brian “Funshine” Alexander.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I offer professional Music, Voices, and Shows for kids and adults!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  SCROLL DOWN HERE FOR MY DEMOS!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it look unprofessional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-10T00:46:28.700" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T00:46:28.700" Title="It is unprofessional to use double exclamation marks and CAPS in a product or service?" Tags="|punctuation|business-writing|capitalization|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3003" CreationDate="2011-06-04T12:20:33.997" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;That depends on how you want to present yourself to your audience. If you want to appeal to the 4chan crowd or put yourself on a par with, say, the local used-car dealer, by all means stuff your prose with bundles of exclamation marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you have to ask yourself if exclamation marks (especially multiples) are really doing anything to help you. For every 4chan devotee who thinks nothing of the excess, there are plenty who will be put off by this forced display of artificial enthusiasm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is, exclamation marks are seldom needed, especially in ordinary, informational prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once had a junior copywriter working for me who had a proclivity for using slammers (slang for &quot;exclamation points&quot; or &quot;exclamation marks&quot;) in her writing. I sat down with her one day and gave her a five-dollar bill. &quot;New rule,&quot; I said. &quot;Every time you use a slammer you owe me a buck. The first five are on me.&quot; She pinned the bill to her bulletin board. When she and her husband moved across the country several years later, she returned it to me unspent. Her writing, I might add, was much improved, and she thanked me for the lesson. Her portfolio was good enough by that time to get her a senior copywriter position at a large agency in her new city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastEditorUserId="633" LastEditDate="2011-06-05T12:11:50.890" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T12:11:50.890" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2073" CreationDate="2011-06-04T12:29:49.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a technical manager at an advertising agency, so often have to write client-facing documents. Generally, I either refer to my employers' company by name in something as formal as a specification document or in a write-up of a meeting, for example. In something less formal, such as an email, then I would use &lt;em&gt;we&lt;/em&gt; where it would not be ambiguous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, though, I evade the issue by using the company name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2109" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T12:29:49.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1857" CreationDate="2011-06-04T13:16:03.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure about watermarking, but for the rest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lightningsource.com/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lightning Source&lt;/a&gt; or Lulu should fit your needs. However, if by &quot;publishing&quot; you mean &quot;making papers available for free in an online repository&quot; check also &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CEUR-WS&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2114" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T13:16:03.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3003" CreationDate="2011-06-04T13:36:42.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Robusto makes a good point about knowing your audience. Beyond that, I think caps and exclamation points are used for emphasis and attention. Try to find other ways to accomplish those goals. Spacing? color? italics? placement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T13:36:42.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3008" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3009" CreationDate="2011-06-04T15:24:29.527" Score="2" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the term for something that is inferred, but not explicitly written within the text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2083" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T16:27:50.667" Title="What is the term for written expressions that lead to &quot;reading between the lines?&quot;" Tags="|terminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3008" CreationDate="2011-06-04T16:27:50.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you mean subtext? Implication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T16:27:50.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2990" CreationDate="2011-06-04T19:10:50.453" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's certainly a fair number of science-fiction and fantasy stories that describe a world, a society, or some other concept, without relying on &lt;em&gt;individual&lt;/em&gt; characters. Talking about a people, but not about anyone in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, a lot of Jorge Luis Borges stories are about describing a fantastical concept -  &quot;The Library of Babel&quot; and &quot;The Babylon Lottery&quot; spring to mind immediately. I think &quot;Library&quot; might possibly have a narrator, but it might as well not have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say this type of story has no characters, because it has no &lt;em&gt;actors&lt;/em&gt;, nobody individual we're focusing on. But there is a nebulous &quot;they&quot; - &quot;the people,&quot; &quot;it was decided,&quot; etc., - that moves the story forward; you can't point to any &lt;em&gt;particular&lt;/em&gt; character, but there are people somewhere in the picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T19:10:50.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3003" CreationDate="2011-06-04T21:09:35.337" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is absolutely unprofessional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't say it's never effective, but that's not what you asked. Professional design avoids those devices - for several good reasons, some mentioned in other answers, but give special attention to this one: &lt;strong&gt;unprofessional&lt;/strong&gt; advertising overuses CAPS and exclamation marks to a ridiculous extent. Why let yourself be associated with that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T21:09:35.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3012" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-05T06:39:29.097" Score="0" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;so i am going to recieve a random passage from the book &quot;1984&quot; and will be given 12 minutes to read it, write all over it, and then do a 4+ minute oral presentation on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My teacher also says to focus on how the style affecs the meaning of the passage and to keep connecting everything with a general thesis...... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any suggestions or guides?&#xA;Thanks!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2121" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T12:31:15.533" Title="How to close read and do an oral presentation on it in 12 minutes orl less?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-06-06T00:26:31.530" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3012" CreationDate="2011-06-05T08:16:18.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that mindmaps are terrific for that. As you read the passage, sketch a mindmap of your thoughts and observations about style, meaning, the general thesis, noting any connections you notice among these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then for your presentation, work your way around the mindmap, diving as deeply into each branch as you think you have time for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T08:16:18.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3012" CreationDate="2011-06-05T12:31:15.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd make sure you're very familiar with the book as a whole before you're given your twelve minutes.  If you already know what you think about the book, you can essentially use the excerpt your given as a source of evidence for ideas you already have.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been a while since I read 1984, but I don't remember any big style shifts.  So if you've already thought about the style and how it affects meaning in general, you've essentially already got your thesis.  Then it's just time to mine the passage for evidence, and go!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T12:31:15.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3015" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3024" CreationDate="2011-06-05T12:49:12.003" Score="8" ViewCount="863" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; Jakob Nielsen Alertbox about the top 10 weblog design mistakes. Mistake #8 was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mixing Topics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you publish on many different&#xA;  topics, you're less likely to attract&#xA;  a loyal audience of high-value users.&#xA;  Busy people might visit a blog to read&#xA;  an entry about a topic that interests&#xA;  them. They're unlikely to return,&#xA;  however, if their target topic appears&#xA;  only sporadically among a massive&#xA;  range of postings on other topics. The&#xA;  only people who read everything are&#xA;  those with too much time on their&#xA;  hands (a low-value demographic). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The more focused your content, the more&#xA;  focused your readers. That, again,&#xA;  makes you more influential within your&#xA;  niche. Specialized sites rule the Web,&#xA;  so aim tightly. This is especially&#xA;  important if you're in the&#xA;  business-to-business (B2B) sector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you have the urge to speak out on,&#xA;  say, both American foreign policy and&#xA;  the business strategy of Internet&#xA;  telephony, establish two blogs. You&#xA;  can always interlink them when&#xA;  appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes sense but I'm assuming this is only meant as a guideline and not a hard and fast rule. My question is: Is mixing topics ever the right thing to do? And if so, when? Do you know any blogs that managed to pull it off? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2060" LastEditorUserId="2060" LastEditDate="2011-06-05T16:20:52.567" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T21:05:15.490" Title="Mixing topics in a blog" Tags="|blog|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3015" CreationDate="2011-06-05T14:21:20.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that narrowly focused blogs will attract a wider audience, however I don't think it's because broadly focused blogs require more mental RAM (at least in these days of tagging and RSS feeds).  A blog that covers a wide range of topics is mostly interesting to people at the intersection of all, or at least most, of those interests.  For example, I've stopped reading tech blogs that were overtly Christian in a way that disturbed me, or business blogs that were very authoritarian and closed-source oriented when it came to technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One blog that mixes topics well is that of &lt;a href=&quot;http://esr.ibiblio.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eric S. Raymond&lt;/a&gt;, where you'll find martial arts, social commentary, open source software, tech sector analysis (currently a preoccupation with the smartphone market), libertarian politics, science fiction, and a whole lot more.  Despite the author's total failure to use tagging to allow readers to cherry-pick content of interest, this blog works well.  There is a lot of crossover in these interests, the writing is of unusually high quality for a blog, and is internally consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is mixing topics the &quot;right thing to do&quot;?  It depends a lot on the goals the blog aims to achieve.  I tend to use mine as a dumping ground for any thoughts i want to document, especially things I want to be able to refer others to, rather than explaining repeatedly.  Mixed content works fine there.  If you are trying to write a profitable blog, gain visibility in a particular niche, or raise awareness of some issue/cause, then a more focused approach would probably work better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T14:21:20.150" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-06-05T14:21:20.150" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3015" CreationDate="2011-06-05T14:58:06.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Andrew Sullivan's Dish&lt;/a&gt; (fka The Daily Dish) is about as mixed-topic a professional blog as I can imagine, and it does staggeringly well. The core may be politics, but there are a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of other ideas covered as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smaller business blogs would benefit from focus. Once you get a decent steady readership, you could try widening the topics and see how readers respond, and use that as a guide to whether or how you should expand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T14:58:06.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-06-05T17:25:24.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The whole thing is way too much trouble so I just gave up: I always use she/her. But I try also to find a way to get rid of extra pronouns: &quot;The user chooses a password and &lt;s&gt;then he&lt;/s&gt; types it in the text box.&quot; Which is more economical anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T17:25:24.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3015" CreationDate="2011-06-05T17:37:26.137" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Applying structure to prose is no more than good writing practice, after all, and not limited to blogs. Do you make an outline -- in your head or on paper -- before you start writing anything for submission? Do you sort-of stick to the outline and, as you write, do you modify the outline on the fly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the writing is stream-of-consciousness or a journal page, there's &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; sort of structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would anyone not do the same when writing a blog entry?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T17:37:26.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3015" CreationDate="2011-06-05T21:05:15.490" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what your blog is trying to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with this much of your quote: readers come back most consistently to a blog that is focused, that offers one thing consistently. The reason is that, the more you switch around the key element of your blog posts, the less likely each individual post is to be enjoyed by a regular reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But two important provisos to that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The consistent element isn't necessarily a topic.&lt;/strong&gt; Some people have great voice or wit or style, and &lt;em&gt;that's&lt;/em&gt; what keeps readers interested - and coming back. Or they're just really great at continually finding new interesting things. Or, they've achieved celebrity status and have fans for whom the fact that &lt;em&gt;that person is writing it&lt;/em&gt; is the element that interests them. Scalzi's &lt;a href=&quot;http://whatever.scalzi.com/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Whatever&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is a good example, with probably a mix of all the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And secondly, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; mixture can be excellent - it gives you a specialty.&lt;/strong&gt; For example, writer blogs are a dime a dozen, but some writers stand out because they write about writing &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; one or two other things. So &lt;a href=&quot;http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/&quot;&gt;Jim Van Pelt&lt;/a&gt; blogs about writing &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; about teaching, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://metteharrison.livejournal.com/&quot;&gt;Mette Harrison&lt;/a&gt; blogs about writing &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; running marathons. I'd probably never go looking for blogs on education or marathons - but reading about writing &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; those things gives the blog character and uniqueness - and I follow those blogs devoutly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, &lt;strong&gt;the advice not to overscatter yourself is quite correct&lt;/strong&gt; - a key of publicizing anything is to choose your target audience, and then target 'em like heck. But that doesn't mean no variety at all - it just means to keep your target audience constantly in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T21:05:15.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3027" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3030" CreationDate="2011-06-06T04:56:45.833" Score="4" ViewCount="5941" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a story in the 3rd person and I would like to switch the narrator for one of the main characters half way through so that the reader can read how he perceives the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody have any suggestions on how this can be done without confusing the reader about who the narrator is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2123" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-05T21:24:41.653" LastActivityDate="2018-02-05T21:24:41.653" Title="How to write a 1st person story with a 3rd person narrator without confusing the reader?" Tags="|fiction|grammatical-person|third-person|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3027" CreationDate="2011-06-06T07:29:48.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you want to move from 3rd to 1st person. Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have an incident in the 3rd person, like the hero goes to a bank to check his balance and later meet his girlfriend Suzy. Briefly have the hero making plans about this in the 3rd person:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;He was thinking of going to the bank, so he could withdraw some money to take his girlfriend out to that fancy 5 star hotel.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you could switch to 1st person in the next chapter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I walked into the bank. It wasnt too busy, which was great, as it meant  I could spend more time with Suzy later&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way the reader will know you are talking about the same character, you have just moved from 3rd to 1st person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T07:29:48.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3027" CreationDate="2011-06-06T08:43:30.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some options to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3027/write-a-1st-person-story-with-a-3rd-person-narrator/3028#3028&quot;&gt;Shan suggests&lt;/a&gt;, try linking the previous chapter/segment that's written in the third person to the one that's in the first person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If switching to the first person is something you want to do regularly, establish a switch in viewpoint early on, so that the reader knows that you plan on doing this switch on occasion. By establishing this convention early, it makes it much easier for the reader to follow the story, especially if the first person narration is always from one particular character.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are only going to switch narration to first person this once (and then switch back to third person), then I would say you should question whether or not it's actually necessary to use this switch. Changes in narration should have fairly strong justifications for doing so, so you should ask what you achieve from the switch, and whether or not you could achieve the same from the style you've been using. If you're doing third-person semi-omniscient narration, then there is no reason why you cannot show how that character perceives the story by sticking with that narration style, rather than switching to first person.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another option you could try is to use some trait/feature of the character to immediately indicate who is speaking in the first person. For example, maybe you showed that the character has a wooden leg, and so you could open the first-person narration with the character saying something like, &quot;My wooden leg was chafing horribly.&quot; Or maybe he suffers from hay-fever, so you could have him moaning about that ... use anything that is unique to that particular character that the reader should already know.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T08:56:31.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3027" CreationDate="2011-06-06T11:20:03.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not quite sure why you think a switch is necessary.  Or exactly what kind of switch you're proposing.  The title of your question mentions switching from 3rd to 1st, but then the text of your question is more about POV characters, and you can have different POV characters without switching from third to first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you're mentioning a narrator as if there's an independent voice, I assume that most of the story is written in omniscient third?  It's quite possible to 'zoom in' from omniscient to close third (see the Harry Potter stories for an example of someone doing this quite effectively), and you can zoom in to different characters at different times.  If you want to make it clear that you're zooming in on someone new, I think the best way to do that is to zoom back out for a little omniscient narration, and then zoom in on your new target.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A VERY rough example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jane carefully returned the goblet to the table.  There was obviously more going on here than she was aware of, and she didn't want to take any chances until she had it all figured out. [close third POV, zoomed on Jane]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She wasn't the only one looking for more information, although her intentions were certainly more innocent than those of others.  While Jane was handling antiques and old ladies, her nemesis was still dealing with Banshees and Necromancers. [omniscient third - and also, total drivel!]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Get the corpses into the boxes, now!&quot; Dorfman was not a patient man, and one more iteration of the idea that the dead were in no hurry was going to be enough to make him start adding new corpses to the waiting pile.  [close third POV, zoomed on Dorfman]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This example is a bit heavy-handed (the modern equivalent of 'meanwhile, back at the ranch'), but hopefully it gives you the idea, and as I said, you can find more subtle examples in &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;and elsewhere.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this what you're asking, though?  It's a way to switch POV characters, but it doesn't switch to first person.  I just don't think it's generally necessary to make that sort of change...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T11:20:03.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-06-06T15:56:17.453" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;For technical writing, there are really only three rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rule 1) Write short sentences that are easily understood.&#xA;Rule 2) Punctuate correctly and avoid semicolons; they make sentences longer, are almost always unnecessary and can be potentially confusing to the reader.&#xA;Rule 3) There are no other rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third-person singular pronouns in English take four classes of gender: masculine, feminine, neuter, and indeterminate. The indeterminate happens to share the same form as the masculine. This happens all the time in English, where a single form of a word performs more than one duty.&#xA;Heck, the second-person (indeterminate gender) English pronoun shares the same form for singular and plural!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;He cut the wood.&quot;  Is that past or present tense? You only know if you add context. Was the worker male or female? You only know if you add context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The wood was hard so he worked hard to cut it.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here we know that cut is past-tense because the context is past-tense (worked). We also see the adjective &quot;hard&quot; and the adverb &quot;hard&quot; share the same form and yet convey distinctly different meanings. The adjective describes tensile strength and the adverb describes intensity and effort. If we had followed regular usage and had added -ly to the adjective, the meaning would have changed dramatically. Same forms, different meanings. Of course, we still don't know the gender of the worker because the pronoun &quot;he&quot; is indeterminate (rather than neuter) in the absence of context. If gender is important, then add that content into the sentence. Otherwise, leave it alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write clearly. Everything else is just noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastEditorUserId="1752" LastEditDate="2011-06-06T16:08:45.283" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T16:08:45.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3035" CreationDate="2011-06-06T16:20:49.473" Score="9" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;With a purpose of avoiding &amp;quot;More details &lt;strong&gt;here&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; style links that do not provide any information in the link itself, what styles are common/popular/suggested?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example case (with &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt; as the potential link):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Q. claims that pigs can fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;John Q.&lt;/strong&gt; claims that pigs can fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Q. &lt;strong&gt;claims&lt;/strong&gt; that pigs can fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Q. claims that &lt;strong&gt;pigs can fly&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;John Q. claims&lt;/strong&gt; that pigs can fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;John Q. claims that pigs can fly.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. What advantages or disadvantages are known?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1516" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-06-10T04:39:52.373" Title="What style suggestions are common for which words are used in hyperlinks?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3033" CreationDate="2011-06-06T17:37:26.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I struggle with this one all the time. A lot depends on context, but in general I'd go for clarity and usability. I wouldn't use the name, as that to me would imply a link referencing the person rather than the claim. So I'd go with either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Q. &lt;strong&gt;claims that pigs can fly&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Q. claims that &lt;strong&gt;pigs can fly&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer links are more user friendly than short, single word links. Unless you have number of links that all fall one after the other, in which case I like to keep the links separated by static words to better distinguish them. If you have too many links to do that, I'd suggest rewriting that section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T17:37:26.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3033" CreationDate="2011-06-06T18:25:12.200" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think of &lt;strong&gt;hyperlinks as text designed to attract attention&lt;/strong&gt;, then it quickly becomes apparent that you should hyperlink text that could, on its own, be seen as the key point you're trying to take from the text you're linking to. From a user perspective, whenever you're reading text that has underlined text or text in a different colour, it's almost instinctive to scan through these. Therefore, &quot;John Q claims &lt;strong&gt;pigs can fly&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; is likely your best bet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is another point to make, unrelated to writing, and that has to do with the SEO implications of the text itself. If you link with the word &lt;strong&gt;claims&lt;/strong&gt;, this says absolutely nothing to search engines about the text you are linking to. &lt;strong&gt;pigs can fly&lt;/strong&gt; however, indicates quite clearly what the text you're linking to is about, and this adds weight to those keywords for that site to search engines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, the advantage of such linking is often in favour of the site you're linking to, not always your own, but when you're interlinking to posts on your own website, this can have an impact on how search engines see your site and content e.g. &quot;In an earlier post, I discussed &lt;strong&gt;how pigs can fly&lt;/strong&gt;, but ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T18:25:12.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3033" CreationDate="2011-06-06T19:06:38.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A link to the name is generally expected to link to the person, not to an article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally agree with @Craig Sefton, except that I would make &quot;claims that pigs can fly&quot; the link and not just &quot;pigs can fly&quot;.  It's a claim (by John Q), not a fact; &quot;pigs can fly&quot; could link to, say, a wikipedia page explaining the idiom.  It would also be reasonable style, though perhaps too short for good UI, to just link &quot;claims&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, think about what is on the other end of the link -- the person? the fact in question? the discussion?  Then link accordingly.  I can imagine cases where your example would actually have three links -- one for John, one for his claim, and one for airborne pigs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T19:06:38.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3033" CreationDate="2011-06-06T22:17:43.083" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A style that conforms to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20101014/H30.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WCAG 2.0 accessibility guidelines&lt;/a&gt; would ensure the link text describes the purpose of the link. You might use simply the title of the page you're linking to, or part of the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to evaluate: If the link is read out of context, does it make sense? As @Craig Sefton mentions, this has SEO implications, but it's also what users skimming will notice and it's the way users with screen-reading software will navigate quickly (by jumping to a list of links). For example, &lt;strong&gt;John Q. claims that pigs can fly&lt;/strong&gt; would make sense, or even &lt;strong&gt;claims that pigs can fly&lt;/strong&gt;, but &lt;strong&gt;John Q.&lt;/strong&gt; may be interpreted as something else (a page about John, perhaps). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1992" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T22:17:43.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3033" CreationDate="2011-06-07T00:39:12.483" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As noted in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3033/what-style-suggestions-are-common-for-which-words-are-used-in-hyperlinks/3037#3037&quot;&gt;Aedia's answer&lt;/a&gt;, WCAG 2.0 accessibility guidelines recommend that the linked text should described the purpose of the link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, I would favour linking the full sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;John Q. claims that pigs can fly.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are couple of other aspects to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are &quot;inline&quot; links the best way of avoiding links like &quot;More details&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;here&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where would the user &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; a link to go to?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly inline links are popular in blogs, but as an alternative you can consider explicitly mentioning the source of the link, at the cost of slightly interrupting the flow of your piece:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Q. claims that pigs can fly (see &lt;strong&gt;Flights of Fantasy, Porcine News, Issue 3.&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do decide to stick with inline links, users' expectations will be shaped by the consistency with which you link to various sources. Fair warning of potentially undesirable links should be given. For example, your readers may expect links to explicit content, or links to large PDFs, to be flagged, depending on where your content is appearing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find a good example of inline linking in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/philmcnulty/to&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC sports journalist Phil McNulty's blog&lt;/a&gt;. His blog targets a mainstream public audience. He uses long link anchors that describe the content of link destinations, and typically links to other sports journalism articles on the BBC website or from national newspapers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2133" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T00:39:12.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3039" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3041" CreationDate="2011-06-07T01:03:41.557" Score="12" ViewCount="835" Body="&lt;p&gt;Diving (OK, dove) into conlanging for a novel I'm working on. The conlang is atmospheric and allows for some subplot intrigue, but it's not absolutely essential to the story. I've got basic grammar, punctuation, and syntax. My question is about providing translation for the conlang pieces. Where the POV doesn't speak the conlang and he has no direct access to translation, won't provide a translation. But when the POV does understand it, and the other characters do not, I'm not sure how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leave it untranslated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In-line translate? eg. The Preacher said, &amp;quot;Gibber gibber bibber frabbish, gibber blabber!&amp;quot; [&amp;quot;Son, she's no lady. She's your wife!&amp;quot;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-04-28T12:20:07.793" LastActivityDate="2021-04-28T19:44:10.530" Title="Should a conlang be translated?" Tags="|fantasy|translation|dialogue|science-fiction|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3039" CreationDate="2011-06-07T03:45:53.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on readers you are targeting. Leaving foreign language fragments fully untranslated could be quite challenging for a reader but then they (fragments) need to be used sparsely and carefully. No matter whether the foreign language is constructed or just unknown (and unfamiliar) among your potential readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;  Content (meaning) of a foreign language fragment&#xA;  should emerge from the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example can be the &quot;Windtalkers&quot; movie where the foreign (existing but almost unknown) language fragments are untranslated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, some readers can consider this as disturbing and insulting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastEditorUserId="624" LastEditDate="2011-06-07T09:49:55.407" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T09:49:55.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3039" CreationDate="2011-06-07T08:19:57.630" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing for an English audience, your readers are expecting an English novel. From a reader perspective, it is utterly tedious to read a lot of dialogue you cannot understand. Providing translations can help, but that's equally tedious, since the POV character won't have those translations. I would recommend keeping use of foreign language to a minimum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the POV character understands the language, then I would suggest that everything should be written in English with the understanding that they're talking in Conlang, and also that the other characters don't know what is being said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We should take them to the desert and&#xA;  get rid of them,&quot; said Thrull,&#xA;  switching to Conlang. He glared at the&#xA;  three tourists. &quot;They're useless.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tourists blinked and smiled,&#xA;  confused. &quot;What did he say?&quot; asked the&#xA;  one with the camera. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He said he'll take you to the ruins.&quot;&#xA;  replied Tomas. &quot;For a fee.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the POV character does not understand the language, then I would not necessarily write the dialogue in Conlang, but rather show that the person doesn't understand what's being said. Have the POV rely on the speaker's body language, facial expressions etc. to try pick up what's being said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paul listened as Tomas and the one&#xA;  called Thrull spoke in their harsh,&#xA;  guttural tongue. Thrull's lips curled&#xA;  in a sneer, and he glared at Paul and&#xA;  his friends as he spat out his final&#xA;  words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paul tried to smile. &quot;What did he&#xA;  say?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He said he'll take you to the ruins,&quot;&#xA;  replied Tomas. &quot;For a fee.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paul looked from Tomas to Thrull's&#xA;  leering eyes. &lt;em&gt;That must be some fee.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I've overheard people talking in foreign languages, I am completely unable to repeat what was said because of the strangeness of the words, and the speed at which they talk, so it's unrealistic from a POV perspective to have conversations written down in foreign languages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say you can't put in some of the language. There are one or two words that get repeated, such as curses, swearwords etc., or short, easily-pronounced phrases, and there you can probably write them as is, because it's something that the character will likely pick up on, even if they don't understand them. Also, sometimes there are written words, signs etc. that the character can repeat. In those cases, the character can ask what they mean, or someone (knowing the character can't understand) can translate for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T08:19:57.630" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3042" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3044" CreationDate="2011-06-06T20:31:17.647" Score="44" ViewCount="755419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been wondering this for a while. What is the correct usage of &quot;P.S.&quot; in e-mails? Where should and shouldn't it be used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2138" OwnerDisplayName="tugberk" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-07T10:32:55.893" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T10:32:55.893" Title="What is the correct usage of &quot;P.S.&quot; in Emails?" Tags="|style|email|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3042" CreationDate="2011-06-06T20:44:24.293" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I think &lt;strong&gt;P.S.&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; really 'appropriate' in emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole point of a post-scriptum is it's something you think of &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the main text has already been written. By which time in the old days of pen-and-ink you'd have already written your closing lines, and most likely signed it as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With electronic writing such as emails, just go back and add the extra text in the main body. Don't insult your reader by subjecting him to badly-organised text just because you can't be bothered to organise it before you click on Send.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1662" OwnerDisplayName="FumbleFingers" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T20:44:24.293" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3042" CreationDate="2011-06-06T20:45:37.803" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P.S.&lt;/strong&gt; in e-mails is used exactly the same as &lt;strong&gt;P.S.&lt;/strong&gt; in normal letters.  It is short for the Latin &lt;strong&gt;post scriptum&lt;/strong&gt;, i.e. written &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the main script.  As such, it is written at the bottom (end) of the main script (main e-mail in this case), and generally contains information which is trivial, or tangental to what was just said.  For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm starting my new job on Monday.  Really looking forward to it.  I'm going to be working as a clothes designer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;P.S. Do you still like making clothes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13104" OwnerDisplayName="Jez" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T00:28:03.163" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3042" CreationDate="2011-06-06T21:07:01.940" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/users/2637/fumblefingers&quot;&gt;FumbleFingers&lt;/a&gt; already noted, the &lt;em&gt;post scriptum&lt;/em&gt; should appear after the main body of the text, perhaps even after the signature.  With that said, I do agree with FumbleFingers that the construct &lt;em&gt;likely&lt;/em&gt; has no place in E-mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to additionally point out that there is another use for P.S. besides adding a new thought to the correspondence: I have often seen P.S. used in E-mails to incite a new thread of conversation that is tangent to the main topic.  While I think that might be a legitimate use in other forms of correspondence, it is generally considered bad &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netiquette&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;netiquette&lt;/a&gt; when used in E-mail.  Although the rule was not written in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1855&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the original RFC&lt;/a&gt;, it is generally considered bad form to change the topic of an E-mail thread; topics should be changed by sending a separate E-mail, thus starting a new thread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, in rare cases I think the P.S. construct &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be acceptable if used like a footnote, &lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, to provide some additional clarification on something from the main body of text that is likely unnecessary, and would otherwise hamper the flow of the main text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2179" OwnerDisplayName="ESultanik" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2021-10-07T06:47:20.403" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T21:13:17.860" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3046" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3064" CreationDate="2011-06-07T14:54:59.250" Score="3" ViewCount="7944" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I check if an ISSN is properly registered with issn.org? I found a tip on wikipedia to try link like &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldcat.org/ISSN/1021-9749&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.worldcat.org/ISSN/1021-9749&lt;/a&gt;&quot; to see if an ISSN is registered, but for the ISSN in question (2032-9393) the link does not return an entry. Does it mean that the ISSN is not registered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2114" LastActivityDate="2020-03-26T22:21:53.407" Title="How do I check if an ISSN is properly registered at issn.org?" Tags="|publishing|series|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3047" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3048" CreationDate="2011-06-07T15:02:39.633" Score="3" ViewCount="975" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Hello,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I need guidance writing an artist statement for a gallery. Specifically, what's good practice, and what should be avoided?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thoughts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I'm a visual artist appearing in a gallery soon. I've written thesis statements in college. I don't want to sound like a professor, and I'm afraid to say the wrong thing and offend the academic crowd. Exposing some of my weaknesses as an artist is an other concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gallery owner want to &quot;build me up.&quot; I don't know what to think of that. It seems like the public, critics, and gallery all have their place in growing the reputation of an artist.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I can't tell the difference between good art journalism and BS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Every one has seen the Blue Dog Artist, George Rodrigue. I liked his book&#xA;and how he builds his own legend, but it doesn't sound credible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish I had a like to share. Imagine ghost stories and Cajun superstitions etc.&#xA;My work has similar lore. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any Resources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you know of any books on PR or writing that would help, please share. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2135" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T17:45:12.870" Title="Writing an artist statement , not a thesis" Tags="|style|journalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3047" CreationDate="2011-06-07T17:29:19.050" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not personally an artist, but I know many artists.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience reading their statements the intention seems to be a combination of explaining why you love art, what your credentials are (degrees, famous artists in your medium studied under, what galleries you have exhibited in, any students you have taught, positive press, etc.),  and what you seek to do with your art.  You also want to provide information on where someone might go to purchase or view your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many resources online that purport to tell you how to write a good artist's statement.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mollygordon.com/resources/marketingresources/artstatemt/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;One&lt;/a&gt; - a &quot;recipe&quot; for an artist's statement that if strictly followed will give you a rather canned result, but has some good tips&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.artbusiness.com/artstate.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Two&lt;/a&gt; - an attempt to persuade you that an artist's statement is valuable, with interesting considerations like whether or not to include your influences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nitaleland.com/articles/statement.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Three&lt;/a&gt; - suggests interviewing yourself, listing some sample questions to get you started&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ebsqart.com/Education/Articles/Business-and-Marketing/14/How-to-Artist-Statement/75/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Four&lt;/a&gt; - provides information on what should and shouldn't be in a statement as well as some tips to deal with writer's block and more sample questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consensus among them seems to be that an artist statement should represent why you do what you do and what you think is important about your work, but beyond that there is not much of a consensus.  All agree that an artist's statement is valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also examples, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ebsqart.com/Education/Articles/Business-and-Marketing/14/How-to-Artist-Statement/75/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; from an art program.  My suggestion would be to look for the websites of artists you admire and look at their statements.  Find a format or some common tactics among them that fits you as a person.  Fill in your own details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-06-07T17:45:12.870" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T17:45:12.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3049" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-08T10:38:07.057" Score="2" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People use computers for many&#xA;  different activities, from reading&#xA;  online newspapers to listening to&#xA;  music. No one can expect that people&#xA;  can use internet to make a revolution.&#xA;  The main part to the January 25th&#xA;  revolution was the internet. After the&#xA;  death of &quot;Khalid Saeed&quot; a group of&#xA;  cultural youth founded a web site on&#xA;  face book. That site played an&#xA;  important role to spread the awareness&#xA;  among youth and then they began to&#xA;  make a questionnaire to people who&#xA;  want to call for their rights to come&#xA;  to Tahreer Square. The revolution&#xA;  began with idea and completed by the&#xA;  announcement of the resignation to&#xA;  show that &quot;If the people want to live,&#xA;  the destiny should respond&quot;. Finally,&#xA;  we can sum up by saying that modern&#xA;  technology as the internet and face&#xA;  book played great role in the 25th&#xA;  revolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help me to write this paragraph correctly, with particular attention to the grammar. If you can tell me what's wrong, or rewrite the paragraph correctly, I will be thankful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2124" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-07T10:13:35.193" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T10:13:35.193" Title="How can I improve the grammar of this paragraph about the role of internet?" Tags="|style|word-choice|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2011-06-14T19:30:49.293" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3050" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-08T11:17:30.050" Score="1" ViewCount="2185" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to cite in my paper various &quot;classic&quot; works (Russian writers of the XIX century etc). In the text it is relevant to specify the year of the original novel, for example &quot;Dostoyevsky in his 'The Brothers Karamazov' (1879) [..]&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the copy I have and used is a much more recent one. What to add in the bibliography? I'd say the 2010 copy I have, but isn't it confusing to have a year in the text and a different year in the bibliography? Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2145" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T11:53:07.673" Title="Citing classics in Bibliography" Tags="|resources|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3050" CreationDate="2011-06-08T11:40:48.750" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under MLA, the year used in a citation is the date of publication for the work you're citing, not the original year of the work in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is because a number of things could change between different publications: different forewords, translations, prefaces, grammar and spelling changes ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example format for your book would be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, and Constance&#xA;  Garnett. &lt;em&gt;The Karamazov Brothers.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  Ware, England: Wordsworth Classics,&#xA;  2010. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If it helps, I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.easybib.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.easybib.com/&lt;/a&gt; for generating bibliographic references and citations.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Sorry, forgot to add. MLA uses (Author Page) for in-text citations if I'm not mistaken. If you want to use (Author, Year), it should be year published, not the original year first published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Last one, I promise! In your example, you appear to want to show the year it was first published as a fact, not as an in-text citation, so you're better off writing something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dostoyevsky, in his 'The Brothers&#xA;  Karamazov', first published in 1879,&#xA;  [..]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or alternatively:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dostoyevsky, in his 'The Brothers&#xA;  Karamazov' (first published in 1879),&#xA;  [..]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-06-08T11:53:07.673" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T11:53:07.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3052" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3061" CreationDate="2011-06-08T12:40:31.263" Score="2" ViewCount="653" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been doing some work on character development for my novel. I found that though I can write pages about the main character, other characters, who have an important role and will be there for most of the story(ie, they are not minor characters), only get a small paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: Other than the hero, should I do some work trying to develop these other characters as well? At the moment, they are just 2D figures, with little personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-06-08T14:17:52.500" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T17:19:32.923" Title="Do all main characters require equal development?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3053" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3055" CreationDate="2011-06-08T12:55:53.087" Score="3" ViewCount="660" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that editors and publishers prefer character driven fiction, where the characters grow and learn, rather than plot driven ones. Is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;In response to comments: The reason for asking this question was, because I have read far too many articles by &quot;Professor&quot; types who shouted loudly that if you want to be successful, spend a lot of time on character development. I wanted to be sure if there was any truth to this, or is this a &quot;fact&quot; that became true by constant repetition? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="2024" LastEditDate="2011-06-09T12:06:12.080" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T02:49:02.557" Title="Is character driven fiction more successful than plot driven fiction?" Tags="|novel|character-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3052" CreationDate="2011-06-08T12:58:55.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer already lies in your question: &quot;they are not minor characters ... [at] the moment they are just 2D figures, with little personality.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, you need to give them a lot more development. You want them to be 3D characters, but at the moment they're 2D characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the work put in for these other non-minor characters will be equal to the amount of development you put into your main character is hard to judge without knowing more about your story, but you should reach a point where you don't have any doubts or questions about who these people are, how they relate to one another, and their role in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T12:58:55.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3053" CreationDate="2011-06-08T14:10:21.673" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm inclined to say &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, in that any answer will depend entirely on the genre that you're writing in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some genres, such as techno-thrillers, many mysteries, and many subgenres of SF, plot-driven stories are the norm, and character development is allowed to be minimal. In other genres, especially literary fiction, character-driven stories are the norm, and a heavily plotted story may actually be looked down on. This depends entirely on the expectations of your audience, and any editor worth his salt knows this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, even if you're writing in a very plot-heavy genre, your book will rarely suffer if you spend a little more time to develop the characters and maybe throw in some personal growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T14:10:21.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3049" CreationDate="2011-06-08T15:31:57.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've made a few changes to the grammar, and tried to neaten up the text as best as I could while still keeping the essential meaning of what you wanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I used &quot;Facebook page&quot; instead of a &quot;Facebook website&quot;, since that seemed more correct&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I changed &quot;questionnaire&quot; to leaflets, as I assumed this is what you actually meant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I added in &quot;Mubarak's resignation&quot; since it made this sentence clearer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://arablit.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/two-translations-of-abu-al-qasim-al-shabis-if-the-people-wanted-life-one-day/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;translation for the quote you used&lt;/a&gt; at the end to let it read a little better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People use computers for many&#xA;  different activities, from reading&#xA;  online newspapers to listening to&#xA;  music, but no-one really expected that&#xA;  people could use the internet to&#xA;  launch a revolution. The key to the&#xA;  January 25th revolution was the&#xA;  internet. After the death of Khalid&#xA;  Saeed, a group of Egyptian youths&#xA;  started a Facebook page. That page&#xA;  played an important role in spreading&#xA;  awareness among Egypt's youth, and&#xA;  they then began to make and spread&#xA;  leaflets, calling on people who want&#xA;  their rights to come to Tahreer&#xA;  Square. The revolution began with an&#xA;  idea, and was completed with the&#xA;  announcement of Mubarak's resignation,&#xA;  showing that &quot;If one day people decide&#xA;  to live, destiny will no doubt&#xA;  respond.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps, good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Based on the comments below, I re-edited to remove the last sentence, and the quotes around &quot;Khalid Saeed&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-06-14T14:26:06.223" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T14:26:06.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3057" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-08T16:14:15.490" Score="3" ViewCount="1079" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a novel about the psychological struggle of 7 characters. It's got an ensemble cast, where every character has the same importance. I've got a structure for this that sounds good to me, but seems different than most novel structures I'm familiar with; I want to know if my structure sounds workable and effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The premise&lt;/strong&gt; is that a group of 6 travel to one city which is rumored to be safe from zombies.It isn't,and there another person saves them. Here is the catch: I want to distance myself from horror and delve into the minds of these people, who now have the time to form more intricate relationships. In the second part of the book, each character is broken, and each takes it in a different way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here's the structure I'm working with:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the first part of the book (which I've already written), the interactions are shallow with some spikes that show how they feel one for another,but in a world where you constantly run you don't even have the time to develop something more complex.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the second part (still unwritten), I want to analyze each character in one chapter. Each chapter destroys one character with a dramatic event,they discover or get past they're fears,only realising that the war for survival is not over,and so each having parts in all individual stories.The idea is that one dramatic story shakes the character completely,gives them a new enemy so to speak,a new reason to live.That conflict(which is the key part of my vision) should slowly change each chapter,and only after the final climax everybody should really know themselves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My concern with this structure&lt;/strong&gt; is that it may be confusing to readers. This structure has each chapter focusing on a different character, with the other characters developing more slowly in that chapter. Will readers &quot;get&quot; what I'm trying to do with this structure? Will they be able to follow along with so many characters, developing at such uneven paces? Are there improvements you'd suggest to my story structure, or perhaps a different structure entirely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here is an example of a single character arc&lt;/strong&gt;,of the first character to transform. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John was always a drone,doing what others say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In his focus chapter,&lt;/strong&gt; he is living with Elise(another survivor,not from the main cast,who is dying).She tells him not to go for help,because she wants the last moments of her life to be with a human.He is stubborn and against his principles tries to do something to save her,only to miss out on the last hours of her life.He is shocked and destroyed,but the best word would be lost.He is left with no path,and he must forge another.this is how his chapter ends.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chapter 2: While another character is tested,John realizes that he must serve,but not only one.he decides that he will do nothing until that special person appears.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chapter 3: the struggle doesn't go away,he just can't live alone even if he wants,so he decides to help them from the shadows.He is discovered at the end&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chapter 4: the main character of this chapter becomes that hero he wishes for,so he begins to serve again without question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chapter 5: He is reminded of his loss,so he goes berserk killing zombies,becoming again just a soulless weapon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chapter 6: again the circumstances make him struggle,he starts to feel again for another women,but he can't erase the pain from his hearth,and the fear that it will happen again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chapter 7: the last one.A lot happens here,but in the end he realizes that everyone has a place in this world.He accepts his but without a women to live,just in his memory maybe,and the story ends...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This model would apply to all 7 characters: each character would have the center position in their own focus chapter, and developing gradually along their character arc in the other chapters. Again, my question is whether this structure sounds feasible, clear, and effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) Each chapter has one person as the protagonist, but there are some bonus chapters. For example, after John's and Lily's chapters (first and second) there would be another one that focuses totally on the group and how the previous chapters affected them. This should be filled with conflict and written in a way to make people want to read further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) The second way is that the first time John plays the major role, but each chapter loses the significance of the protagonist a bit. In the second, John and Lily are the stars, in the third even Lucy has a bigger part (while others have minor parts, of course). Until the sixth chapter, where only one character gets left out a bit. And in the final chapter of course, everybody has the same role and every resolution is played out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think about these two possibilities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for helping me be a little bit better!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2146" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T13:53:42.823" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T02:16:26.333" Title="Does my story structure for an ensemble zombie story sound effective?" Tags="|characters|structure|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3057" CreationDate="2011-06-08T20:30:42.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If each character has enough development, I think that sounds fine, and interesting. &quot;Ensemble&quot; is the correct word. Would the first and last chapters star everyone? (everyone who's still alive, that is.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T20:30:42.277" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3057" CreationDate="2011-06-08T21:05:12.863" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; to say in response to this, but I won't get around to it in the next 24 hours. Until then: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Jane Austen Book Club&lt;/em&gt; has a structure &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; similar to what you're describing. (Other ensemble casts I can think of are more typical of series, but this book is an exception, methinks.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's a roleplaying game which revolves precisely around the structure you're interested in, called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13243.phtml&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Primetime Adventures&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. It's exactly what you've described: parallel story arcs for an ensemble cast, intertwining and interacting, with each character getting the spotlight at a different point. The book discusses this structure enough (particularly pointing out its strengths and advantages) that I think you'll find it valuable even without any interest in the roleplaying game itself. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'll expand on this when I have time, but my nutshell reaction is: the structure itself is great, but cramming even small developments for all 7 characters into each and every chapter sounds very dense and difficult to pull off. I'd leave myself more leeway if I were you: more than 7 chapters if you need 'em; not having &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; character develop in &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; chapter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, figure out where the climax goes in this structure. If it's during a single character's focus chapter - might that unbalance your structure, making that character more important and significant?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T21:05:12.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3052" CreationDate="2011-06-08T21:28:44.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Craig Sefton that your characters need to be more than flat, but I'm a little worried about your &quot;only get a small paragraph&quot; line.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important that your characters be rich and vibrant, but it's also important that we learn about them through their actions, NOT through you telling us about them.  If your 'small paragraph' is in your notes, that's fine, but if it's in your actual story, I would say that a small paragraph is actually more than you need, in terms of introducing a character.  Most of the characterization should be spread throughout your story, not dumped on us all at once.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's not what you meant by 'small paragraph', then I'm with Craig.  Flat characters are fine if they're incidental, but if your MC interacts with them, your story will be much more interesting if you give them more depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T21:28:44.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3052" CreationDate="2011-06-09T08:18:49.103" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Complex, well-rounded characters can add a lot to a story; on the other hand, lots of good stories manage without them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What you want to avoid&lt;/strong&gt; is characters that feel flat, unbelievable and/or cliche. That's because if the reader feels that way about a character, he feels that the story is false, artificially constructed. The reader will often react in one or both of the following ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Sheesh, that character makes no sense - a real person would never act that way!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Oh, yawn - it's another by-the-numbers (choose one: Romantic Love Interest/Kooky Friend/Vulnerable ArchVillain/etc./etc.).&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your writing isn't outright &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; (which, hey, it might be), then simple characters might work quite well for a lot of types of books. The rule of thumb is, &lt;strong&gt;the more central character, personality, and relationships are to the book - the more crucial it is for the characters to be complex and detailed.&lt;/strong&gt; In other words, your character work needs to be strong enough to bear the weight you're going to put on it - you can't let it be less; it doesn't have to be more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you can't have a deep exploration of your protagonist's soul and his relationship with his dysfunctional family, if you portray him as being deep and complex, and the family as a bunch of twits. It doesn't match up - and calling the reader's attention to the &lt;em&gt;depth&lt;/em&gt; of your protagonist's character will have them looking for the same in the rest of the cast. It'd be like watching a fight between Dostoyevsky and Bugs Bunny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;strong&gt;even when you can manage without them, having more complex characters is a major plus.&lt;/strong&gt; It contributes to a sense of depth and realism; it avoids not only bald cliches but also the familiar and not-terribly-interesting; it earns more reader involvement and investment. Of course, this too can be taken too far - you don't want to swamp your story with irrelevant details, or lose reader interest in the protagonist because you're trying to devote attention to a bunch of characters who really aren't very central.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concerns I've laid out here are, IMHO, good ones to guide you when developing and portraying characters; from here, what you need to do is be aware of these different concerns and considerations, and find a good balance them that works well for your characters and story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T08:18:49.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3099" CreationDate="2011-06-09T08:20:02.763" Score="0" ViewCount="265" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I asked a question on stackoverflow.com some time ago.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Would you please notify me possible grammatical problems of my question?&#xA;&lt;br&gt;And if possible give me tips to ask question with better expression.&#xA; &lt;br&gt;This is my question :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have very similar senario in my&#xA;  application. I want to find best&#xA;  practice in this senario. &lt;br&gt;Mostly I&#xA;  have a master GridView In my page.&#xA;  this master Gridview may perform these&#xA;  actions : &lt;br&gt; Add new record &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Adding new record&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Deleting a record&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Searching data that binded in GridView&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Displaying detail Information about selected record in GridView.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So for adding new record I'm using a&#xA;  dialog or other similar jQuery plugins&#xA;  &lt;br&gt; For Deleting records I'm making&#xA;  full postback to refresh data after&#xA;  confirm dialog and sometimes I'm&#xA;  putting target GridView in an ASP.NET&#xA;  UpdatePanel to prevent full postback.&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;Also for searching data I had to&#xA;  making full postback I think I have no&#xA;  way to doing this action without&#xA;  postback (Consider complex gridview)&#xA;  &lt;br&gt; And for displaying more detail&#xA;  information about current record&#xA;  without postback I have 2 ways : &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I'm using to loading an ASP.NET usercontrol  asynchronous, but regard&#xA;  to [this][1] thread I'm not able to&#xA;  doing ServerSide actions with postback&#xA;  because of some unsolvable reasons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;another way that often launched my work is this : for example I want to&#xA;  display a listbox and a treeview about&#xA;  a record in jQuery Dialog. I putted&#xA;  them in an updatepanel and I'm writing&#xA;  binding codes in a server side button&#xA;  and hiding this button,then I'm&#xA;  triggering click event of Binding&#xA;  button in OnOpen event of jQuery&#xA;  Dialog. &lt;br&gt; due My softwares are&#xA;  running in local and ethernet I don't&#xA;  care SEO. &lt;br&gt; As I'm a novice&#xA;  programmer please share your&#xA;  expriences with me, note me where I'm&#xA;  wrong(maybe everywhere !) and where I&#xA;  can using better ways. thanks.   [1]:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5519450/postback-in-loaded-asp-net-usercontrol-with-jquery&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5519450/postback-in-loaded-asp-net-usercontrol-with-jquery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2150" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2018-05-12T22:12:06.800" LastActivityDate="2018-05-12T22:12:06.800" Title="Help me to improve grammar of this question" Tags="|editing|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2011-06-14T19:30:11.120" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3052" CreationDate="2011-06-09T09:01:18.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long one is definitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the tl,dr of below is: If you don't have a great cast of supporting characters then the work you do on your main character runs a severe risk of being undermined, and hence wasted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To expand into the territory of &quot;why&quot;. Presumably your main character hits all the buttons for three-dimensional i.e.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dimension One: Capabable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dimension Two: Lovable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dimension Three: Flawed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you might even have gone into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dimension Four: Troubled&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dimension Five: Idiosyncratic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition your dramatic action will be conflicted. If your action is allegorical then your protagonist, with all those dimensions and that, may visit dimension four because real people in allegorical situations can find things... difficult, to say the least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your action is not allegorical then again the action will mirror the protagonist in that it will not be black and white (like allegory is) but all different shades of grey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's every possibility that some features or actions of your multi-dimensional protagonist are not what might be seen as sympathetic. Someone might just turn around and think your protagonist was a big, fat jerk for reacting to the story incidents the way they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the author you have two important weapons in your arsenal against this reaction, your antagonists and your supporting protagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of the former it is in your best interests to make those who oppose the protagonist as three dimensional as possible because a character can be judged by the strength of their enemies. If the enemies are cartoonish or not as rounded as possible, if there is nothing magnificent about them, then it reflects poorly upon the character of your protagonist. If the antagonist is, in many ways, charismatic and wonderful, but just wrong, it shows strength of character in the protagonist to respectfully stand against them. Even if a little more moustache twirling is involved the dark charisma of the villain makes the hero look even more glowing by comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of supporting protagonists this is even more so. The best gal, the sidekick, the childhood friend, the staunch colleague etc. all are really reflections on the kind of people who the protagonist associates with. All of them are people the protagonist cares about and all of them care about the protagonist. In either case the idea of being held in high regard by people with the personality of flat-pack furniture is about as unappealing as the thought of a hero who cares deeply about someone who has not even the personality of a cheeseplant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition the villains may not always disagree with the hero and the supporting heroes may not always agree with the main character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you write scenes to demonstrate why villain A and the protagonist are eerily close in one regard or another it necessarily sounds a note of warning. The hero could go bad. Drama! Horror!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you write scenes of disagreement between protagonists it serves to reinforce the previous case. But it also shows that relationships are hard and if a hero is to succeed then it will be with the assistance of those closest to them who respect them enough to fight for what's right even when their friend is being bull-headed. A note of drama, sympathy, a possible rift should be a thing too terrible to contemplate for the reader. Will friends become enemies? Will enemies become friends?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such stuff is the lifeblood of dramatic tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, your protagonist, unless you are some kind of intellectual masochist, probably embodies some ideals you find admirable or, indeed, heroic. The presence of weak antagonists and nodding yes-men in support protagonist roles shows a weakness to your belief in those ideals. To make the protagonist a paragon of unassailable virtue, the antagonist a thoroughly despicable coward and weakling and the support roles a bunch of simpering nodding dogs shows an unwillingness to counter your own ideals with anything substantial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fully developed characters, united not by ego but by a dedication to a principle that, even with flaws, is held to be correct, will aid in the construction of compelling fiction. At the end of the day real life is not even that simple, who can say, in reality, that we ever really do something wholly good or wholly bad? We just make the best of what we have at the moment. The closer your own fiction comes to giving the impression that this is what's happening in the story, whilst simutaneously presenting the gentle and entirely apprpriate lie that things can be much simpler and easier to believe in, the better for you and your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: As I say in my comment the rule of thumb, rather, should be: You can have a whole host of entertaining two dimensional characters and that's cool, or a complex and brooding network of three-dimensional characters and that's cool too. But, to borrow a metaphor from the ghostbusters, one should not cross the streams. So you either ditch the character development and simplify your main character or you beef up all the other characters. Mixing both can just seem jarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-06-09T15:53:57.877" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T15:53:57.877" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3046" CreationDate="2011-06-09T10:38:50.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.issn.org/files/issn/demander_issn/requesting_issn_english.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;guidelines for requesting an ISSN,&lt;/a&gt; I would try their contact email and ask for confirmation: issnic@issn.org . Let us know if that works :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T10:38:50.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3052" CreationDate="2011-06-09T17:19:32.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would have to say that the extent to which you develop your characters determines how &quot;main&quot; a character actually is. Even if a character with less exposition is more important to the plot, a character with more exposition is likely to be easier to identify with, and thus viewed as a main character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2149" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T17:19:32.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3066" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3071" CreationDate="2011-06-09T17:22:26.793" Score="8" ViewCount="1052" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of figuring out how to write a mostly autobiographical piece (maybe, eventually, novel) about my experiences related to dancing (Swing, Blues, and a little Hip-Hop, in case you were wondering). My basic structure follows two story lines: the first being my experience at a particular dance event, and the second being the history of how I started and progressed in dancing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that every time I get into writing any part of the second story line, I question whether it's even &lt;em&gt;interesting&lt;/em&gt;. At all. I wonder if I'm losing focus and describing too much of the personal relationships that are tangent to the main theme (dancing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, part of my reasoning for writing this piece is to describe how I relate to the world, and how dancing has shaped my personal relationships. Or, in some cases, how my personal relationships have shaped my dancing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it specifically, I'm wondering if there's a way to tell if I'm striking a good balance. Is this self-doubt simply part of the process? Is the only way to figure it out simply to write, and then go through the editing and revising processes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2149" LastActivityDate="2011-06-10T13:05:15.050" Title="How Much Exposition is Too Much Exposition" Tags="|editing|revision|exposition|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3067" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-09T17:39:49.730" Score="5" ViewCount="424" Body="&lt;p&gt;The boss owes me about $10 000, and is going to pay me in the coming months. I can live without this money for now, but I'm wondering if it is worth spending $5000 or $8000 with a subsidy publisher to get my book out to a wider audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite my main purpose is not to make money, I'm interested how much could I expect to make in return if I'll submit to a subsidy publisher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My purpose with regards to my book is to spread knowledge, not to earn money (of which I already have enough).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, my book is available for free as a download on my Web site. I'm not sure if that's a good way to spread knowledge to a wider audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've already tried to submit my book to many literary agents, but have not received a positive response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I go to vanity publishing as a last resort?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T18:51:32.163" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T03:03:34.053" Title="Is it worth spending money on a subsidy publisher?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3057" CreationDate="2011-06-09T17:58:21.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is exactly the kind of story that I enjoy, and would love to create someday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, &quot;ensemble&quot; stories are often difficult to follow. Since change of character is so frequent, change of voice is a must. I have read many stories in this vein that failed at establishing a unique voice for the characters, and thus were taxing to read. At the same time, this seems to be a favorite style of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_gibson&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;William Gibson&lt;/a&gt; - he often has several concurrent but separate plot lines toward the beginning of his books, which then merge toward the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be a very effective tool for establishing a large world, and evoking feelings of loneliness, which should fit your theme quite well. Similarly, when characters finally join forces, it often comes with a feeling of relief and joy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2149" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T17:58:21.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3069" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3093" CreationDate="2011-06-09T18:54:17.487" Score="5" ViewCount="841" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of preparing a document to be sent to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ISO/IEC WG14&lt;/a&gt;.  What is the official style used in ISO/IEC publications (if there is one)?  If there is no official style guide, is there a standard style guide that closely matches &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1548.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this document&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2151" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-07T01:04:49.633" LastActivityDate="2019-05-07T01:04:49.633" Title="What is the style used in ISO/IEC publications?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|resources|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3066" CreationDate="2011-06-09T19:05:17.750" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, self-doubt is part of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write it, polish it as much as you can bear, and hand it off to some friends who are capable of giving you good feedback. Or find a professional editor. Particularly for an autobiography, you should get an outside opinion (or six) about what in your life might interest others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T19:05:17.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3066" CreationDate="2011-06-09T20:13:09.027" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ryan, you cannot guess what will be interesting to your readers. Viktor Frankl, when he wrote his classic book &quot;Man's search for meaning&quot;, didn't want to share his personal story first, as he thought it would look like he wanted sympathy, and distract from his message. Yet because of his personal story, his book became a best seller, and helped expand his theory into a major psychological discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, if you leave out the personal story, it may just become a dance manual. The personal story is as important as the dancing part. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have self doubt, but slog through it, till you have a rough draft. Then show it to people and get their feedback - you might be surprised. You may think your life and relationships were uninteresting, but to an accountant who spends 8 hours updating commas on his spreadsheet ( apologies to any accountants here :) ), your life maybe as exciting as James Bond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T20:13:09.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3067" CreationDate="2011-06-09T20:26:34.417" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is my own opinion, but no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just want to get published, self publish. Why do you want to pay money to someone to publish your work, when you have websites like Lulu.com ?  If you have money to spare, use it for marketing - pay for ads in your target market(newspapers, magazines, online). Give free seminars, give free copies to people to review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, there are many things you can do to sell your book, other than pay that money to a vanity publisher. Keep in mind that you will have to do all this with vanity publishers anyway, as all they will do is publish your book, and nothing more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T20:26:34.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3066" CreationDate="2011-06-10T06:38:55.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a good reason for the expository sections to be in the book? If you were to remove them entirely, would the book suffer? If the answers to both of these questions is &quot;no&quot;, then I suggest removing these sections entirely, or at the least paring them down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, things are rarely so simple. Sometimes writers put scenes in a book simply for color, and while they're not necessary for the plot, the book seems les interesting and drier without them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most likely solution to this is to find small ways to &lt;strong&gt;link the two sections&lt;/strong&gt;. For example, knowing an obstacle you faced when learning dance X might lend poignancy to a scene where it was important you dance those steps and were concerned with getting them right. (You can even invert this: Say, we read a scene at a dance event, then jump back in time to where you learned something that makes the earlier scene seem different.) As long as this is done subtly, it works amazingly well. (You can even use repeated phrases to do this, or repeat locations or even colors and smells.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're concerned that your flashback scenes might read like a dance manual, why not turn this on its head and write them literally like a manual? As long as you keep them short, this is the kind of device that can let a book breathe, varying the prose and letting you play with timing. (Just keep those bits short.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, just write it and worry about making it better later on; finish the first draft and then worry about all this stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2011-06-10T06:38:55.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3066" CreationDate="2011-06-10T09:15:34.760" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think there is too much exposition, there probably is.  Then again, even if you don't think so, the reader may.  The fact that you are questioning is the important part.  Asking these questions forces you to make choices.  Making decisions (and sticking to them) is a crucial part of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that pretty much anything can be interesting if made interesting.  It's a cliché, but make sure you are showing, not telling.  If you are immersing the reader in your world by showing them what happened (as opposed to giving them a list of events), you have a much better chance of keeping the reader's interest.  Don't give them exposition, show them the events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastActivityDate="2011-06-10T09:15:34.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3067" CreationDate="2011-06-10T09:32:54.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to use a subsidy publisher, I would just use common sense.  How much are you paying per book?  Will they give you examples of books they have published in the past and/or a contact list of authors that have used their services?  If they want $60 a book and won't give references, you know something shady is going on.  But also remember that the cost per book is just that: bound paper.  All the other expenses that a traditional publisher would pick up are on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expanding on Shan's answer, if you have money to spend on your book, printing (and storing) extra copies may not be the best way to spend it.  If you've submitted to agents with no avail, perhaps your book just isn't ready.  I would recommend hiring a good editor.  This will cost you far less then what you're willing to spend on a vanity press.  After an editor has helped you identify weak points in your manuscript, then you will be ready to resubmit to agents or self-publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When looking for a editor, make sure to find someone with verifiable references.  You can check with some of those same agents, they may be able to recommend someone they trust. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastEditorUserId="181" LastEditDate="2011-06-19T10:28:58.540" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T10:28:58.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3067" CreationDate="2011-06-10T10:51:01.663" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Paying a lot to get books printed won't help you spread knowledge, it will just give you a bunch of books to clutter up your space.  The reason 'real' publishers are useful isn't their printing services, it's their publicity and distribution systems.  You may have a small local bookshop that will take a chance on stocking a couple copies of your book, if you beg, but that won't make people pick up and read a book they've never heard of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're determined to get your message out, and have that much money to spend, I would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;go with Joel's suggestion and get the book well edited, and maybe have it converted to PDF or another easily-usable e-book format;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;get a professional-looking cover, including a well-written blurb;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;post the book on any/all of the free e-book distribution sites (I've never done it, but this seems to include Amazon, which obviously has huge coverage), or even post it at a nominal fee;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;spend the rest of the money on targeted advertising.  Who do you want reading your book?  Where do these people spend time?  Find them, and advertise to them.  Make sure you have a professional-looking website with lots of information about the book, including an excerpt.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this day and age, anyone can have an e-book or even a POD print book.  So the market's flooded with crap, and it's hard to sort through it all.  So make sure your book isn't crap, and then help people find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T00:40:37.920" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T00:40:37.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3067" CreationDate="2011-06-10T12:50:58.237" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to spread knowledge to a wider audience then &lt;strong&gt;write better&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;find the right agent&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book contains knowledge that is as valuable as you say it is and you aren't getting a positive response from agents, the issue is either in your writing or in the agents.  If the agents you have contacted have provided you with any feedback at all, have you incorporated it?  If you haven't even gotten feedback, that's a strong sign that you really need to work to improve your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if your book were to be published by a traditional publishing house it still has to be good enough for people to want to read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than vanity or even self-publishing, keep polishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice especially stands if this is the online published work from your earlier, closed question.  That work needs significant format editing as well as to interact with existing scholarship which it currently seems totally ignore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-06-10T12:50:58.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3066" CreationDate="2011-06-10T13:05:15.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't write books, usually, but I have been in need to write a fair bit: what I would do if I was you is to let someone else, someone who really cares about you and will thus be honest, read it as part of the process. This will let you understand if there's anything you have left out or if something could be written differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Letting someone else in your own world is the best way to catch some feedback you would never be able to get otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Andrea&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2154" LastActivityDate="2011-06-10T13:05:15.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3079" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3081" CreationDate="2011-06-11T07:20:16.233" Score="5" ViewCount="633" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you research to find character names? Especially when it's long ago, not European, and the culture was totally different from what the region has now. For example, how would you generate names for a story set in Ancient Egyptian era (of course I can't use Arabic names)? Would you use king or nobility names (because they are available in encyclopedias etc.) for commoners?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2157" LastActivityDate="2011-06-11T13:53:06.147" Title="How do you come up with a fictional character name in a historical era/region?" Tags="|research|naming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3079" CreationDate="2011-06-11T11:45:31.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first thought would be to try to find any written records or any studies done of the time period in question. There are tombs with hieroglyphics. How much has been translated? Are there any common names among those records? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there I would look for academics, librarians, museum staff, and archaeologists who study the time period and actually contact them, and ask &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; this question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-11T11:45:31.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3079" CreationDate="2011-06-11T13:42:19.133" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to do a lot of research if you're going to write a convincing historical novel. Part of that research ought to introduce you to common names from the period. But your question might well have been rephrased as &amp;quot;How do you get the details right in historical fiction?&amp;quot; And the answer to that as well is: &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors of good historical fiction typically could write decent histories of the period their fiction covers. It would not be uncommon for them to read dozens of books on the period before producing a single word of their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here's an excerpt from a blog entry by Linda Proud, talking about the historical novelist Mary Renault:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She wrote the book from research in contemporary sources such as the histories of Thucydides, transforming the facts in the crucible of her imagination: no ordinary imagination, not the kind which pleasantly daydreams and orchestrates conversations between the famous dead, but the kind which time-travels and can experience, as if through the senses, what it is like to be someone else, in another place, another culture, another time. Mary takes us there and we become her characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is Proud giving &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historicalnovels.info/Writing-Historical-Fiction.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;advice to other would-be writers&lt;/a&gt; of historical fiction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do have to get the customs and technological details right, though. Did people use forks yet while dining? What type of head covering would your heroine have worn? Details like this can be maddening to research, because most historians focus on political structures and on changing religious and philosophical beliefs. &lt;a href=&quot;http://historicalnovelists.tripod.com/homepage.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Historical Novelists Center&lt;/a&gt; has articles and bibliographies of sources that offer a starting point in researching for the type of information historical novelists need to place their characters in an authentic day-to-day physical setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is a link to Elizabeth Crook's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elizabethcrookbooks.com/articles/historical_fiction.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Seven Rules for Writing Historical Fiction&lt;/a&gt;, which are well worth reading. An excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Historical novels usually take several years to write, as they require research at every turn. You won’t always be able to anticipate what you’ll need to know for a scene, and will constantly have to be returning to your references. This is entirely different from writing contemporary fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take, for example, in my part of the world, a trip from Austin, Texas to the nearby town of San Marcos. If you are going to write a present-day scene in which your character makes this trip, you will simply need to put him into a vehicle -- a pickup, or a Volvo -- and head him south for forty minutes on the flat terrain of interstate 35, passing strip malls and fields and the town of Buda. He will then take the exit marked “Wonder World”, named for a local cave and visitor’s center, and arrive in San Marcos. The only research needed to write this scene will be to drive the route yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if your character takes this journey in 1906, you will have to learn a few things before starting him out, and learn more things along the way. First of all, you need to know where the road is, and what’s on either side of it, and what kind of conveyance your character is driving. If it’s a flatbed wagon, what’s pulling it -- a horse, a half-lame mule, two mules? How often do mules need water? How much traffic will there be? Any cars? What kind of food or luggage do you have along? And what if a wheel breaks, and you have to fix it, and you cut yourself with a rusty tool -- how do you disinfect the cut? Do you even know about disinfection? When did people figure out where tetanus came from? And -- assuming that you eventually make it to San Marcos, what’s in San Marcos, anyway? As for the Wonder World exit -- when was the cave called “Wonder Cave” actually discovered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, did I mention research yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-06-11T13:53:06.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3092" CreationDate="2011-06-13T15:35:16.490" Score="8" ViewCount="1493" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a sci-fi novel, and it contains a lot of fictional creatures, which are in some ways separate from the novel because I came up with them a while before I actually got the idea to write a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be safe to create a wiki for my creations before the book is published (and before I've gone through the hoops of copyright etc)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For clarity in light of the answers so far:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reason for the wiki would be that basically I think others might find the creatures I've created interesting (even if I never did publish the book), and I'd like to see what others (who like fiction) would do with them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Others could use the descriptions of these creatures to create illustrations and artwork, and I and others would enjoy this I'm sure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;@Xqyz Well part of the value for me, is that in this age of everything being electronic, some things can be publicized before they are finalized. So, I guess seeing as I will likely publish first in ebook format or something, and I'm hoping to get a community around the whole concept in the novel - a wiki with the creatures would be of great value to me. If others create new species from what I've created for example, I would love that :) (&lt;em&gt;this was originally a comment&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'll add some more reasons as I get my thoughts together ;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2162" LastEditorUserId="2162" LastEditDate="2011-06-13T18:21:59.150" LastActivityDate="2020-05-07T21:05:00.527" Title="Is it safe to create a wiki for a book (or something featured in it) before the book is published?" Tags="|copyright|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3087" CreationDate="2011-06-13T17:31:16.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a writer but I would think it's not a great idea to detail out your own idea regarding a novel that you will be writing in the future for public to see.&#xA;What do you hope to gain from doing this? If you are looking for constructive criticism, I would think you can wait till at least you have a rough draft ready so that you can pretty much claim this being your idea that you already put into work.&#xA;Quick check on google shows that you have to send in your actual work to copy right office.&#xA;I would think google is your best friend but personally, I don't think it's great idea to put up a wiki before your book is secured with copy right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2163" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T17:31:16.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3087" CreationDate="2011-06-13T17:48:13.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends, it might be worthwhile to do this privately if you think it helps you keep everything in order and you use it as a writing aide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are thinking about doing it in public, I personally would recommend against it. For one thing, nothing should be set in stone until you've actually published it and therefore the &quot;value&quot; of the wiki for others is debatable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2164" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T17:48:13.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3087" CreationDate="2011-06-13T18:28:16.817" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually a wiki is used for collaboration. Is that really what you're looking for, or are you thinking about creating an online reference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're seeking collaboration, then yes that will impact copyrights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to create an online reference for yourself and your readers/fans/friends then I would suggest using a blog engine, rather than a wiki. So long as you're the author, you'll retain all copyrights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More on the wiki idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you release your creations into the commons and invite others to create, use, and extend your work then you lose copyright in ~that specific~ work, ie. the creature. Any novel you build around those creatures would be a derivative work and you would have copyrights to that novel. Of course, someone else could write a novel using your creatures and they would have copyright in their work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that sense, your creatures become like vampires, wizards, or elves. If you keep them private, then they're more like Dracula, Harry Potter, or Legolas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastEditorUserId="1752" LastEditDate="2011-06-13T18:39:09.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T18:39:09.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2841" CreationDate="2011-06-13T18:57:05.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend learning TeX and LaTeX.  TeX is the typesetting system created by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Donald Knuth&lt;/a&gt;. TeX can be converted to HTML, PDF, and countless other formats with ease.  Personally, I use LaTeX, which is a bunch of macros and extensions to TeX that let you avoid a lot of work by combining a group of commands commonly used together into one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To learn TeX and LaTeX, I'd start by visiting the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tug.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TeX User Group&lt;/a&gt; and trying one of their excellent tutorials.  I highly recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/first-latex-doc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A First LaTeX Document&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Not So Short Introduction To LaTeX2e&lt;/a&gt; in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Mr. Knuth himself wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://tug.org/books/index.html#texbook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The TeXbook&lt;/a&gt;, which is the first part of his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informit.com/title/0201734168&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Computers and Typesetting&lt;/a&gt; set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget to ask lots of questions at &lt;a href=&quot;http://tex.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange's own TeX and LaTeX site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T18:57:05.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3087" CreationDate="2011-06-13T18:59:11.873" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Define what you mean with &quot;safe&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you invented them and publish them, then no-one can use them, if your creatures are specific enough to be recognized as your creation. I.e if you created a vampire, which looks like the standard vampire around the corner, then there is nothing worth to be intellectual protected here. If you create a vampire which carries his head between his legs and uses his neck as an umbrella stand, then that's a difference to the ordinary vampire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side, if you build up a fan community (what I think is a good idea) and these guys draw pictures according to your descriptions, then they own the copyright of their work. You cannot use these illustrations in your book without their permission. Same is true for creatures they have invented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the key thing here is, to establish rules for your wiki. You have to tell people what they are allowed to do with your intellectual property, and what you want to do with their property. Then they have to agree to that treaty before posting stuff. Sounds like you need a lawyer, if you ask me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T18:59:11.873" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3069" CreationDate="2011-06-13T19:15:08.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just quick check on google popped this result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iso.org/iso/standards_development/processes_and_procedures/deliverables/iso_guide.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.iso.org/iso/standards_development/processes_and_procedures/deliverables/iso_guide.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2163" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T19:15:08.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3087" CreationDate="2011-06-13T21:42:15.853" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd be very wary of trying to create buzz and a community around an unsold novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are possible issues I see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First and foremost: you can run into copyright problems if it is not plainly clear that you are the author of your creations. For example, if anybody could edit the entries, your copyright over the entries might be severely weakened.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if your own copyright is established, many of the same issues with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_fan_fiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fan fiction&lt;/a&gt; likely apply. &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Letting people play around with your ideas - particularly in a forum you're involved in and implicitly approve of - can open you to claims that you've used others' ideas without credit and compensation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Letting people use your material in ways that may reflect poorly on your novel would make your novel very unattractive to publishers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of care enforcing your copyright could conceivably lead to you losing it. This would have to be pretty extreme - but then, you're setting this up as kind of a joint creation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bear in mind that your novel may go through substantial changes and revisions during editing and publishing. Do you really want to commit publicly to so much of your setting's detail before the novel's even finished?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along with all this, though, I'd say if a wiki site sounds cool to you - then it'd probably make for great promotion &lt;em&gt;later on&lt;/em&gt;, when you'll have the book ready and the publisher signed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you think it'd be cool &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt; - not to speak of building up a fan-base, which is &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; desirable - why not do something similar, but less inherently tied to your work-in-progress? You could even use a lot of the same ideas - with twists, and name-changes, and room for other people to put in developments you have no intention of putting in your novel. That'd &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; get you a community of people interested in the kind of thing you're doing - and they'd know you as the site's founder. And you wouldn't be risking control over the creations you intend to sell elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck to ye :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T21:42:15.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3098" CreationDate="2011-06-13T22:46:43.453" Score="3" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;Links are useful to add additional information or second meaning or special flavour to certain words. This is especially useful for informal texts. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[Some programs](wiki://Metasploit_Project) allow [users](wiki://Script_kiddie) to launch&#xA;security attacks with ease and comfort. This [certainly](wiki://Wishful_thinking) puts them&#xA;to the position of the [respectable IT security specialists](tvtropes://SeriousBusiness).&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing electronic text sometimes I can use various technical things: collapsible &quot;spoilers&quot;, usual links, formatting, that-dashy-underlined-text-with-a-tooltip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In chats all that is usually not available, so I use wiki, html or markdown syntax to show how that text expected to look (as well is made-up elements like &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;joke&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/joke&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing the text on paper we on one hand can format it (using bold/italic, subscript/superscripts, drawing frames and arrows in the text), but on the other hand can't use dynamic things like hidable sections or links or tooltips. Sometimes preceding the word with stroked &quot;implied&quot; word produce what I should attain, but it more looks like fixing something, not adding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to put links from written text? Requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should not detract from the main text too much. For example just using markdown syntax will put too many '['s and ')'s and make the link too noticeable;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The range of text which is a link should be visible. For example just using subscript looks well only for one word;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The link destination should be provided. For example, just underlining it (&quot;There's a link here&quot;) is not enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there established ways how to use computer-originated features in plain old written text? Should it be underlined, should there be any brackets or arrows?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/29548/how-its-better-to-format-links-in-text-written-on-paper&quot;&gt;Migrated&lt;/a&gt; from english.stackexchange.com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T08:30:31.900" Title="How it's better to format links to Internet in a text written on paper?" Tags="|formatting|medium|humor|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3095" CreationDate="2011-06-14T00:08:21.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) If piece is only printed:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would footnote it, and put the full link at the bottom or at the end, depending on your piece. That being said, I would only use such a construction for citing sources, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; for jokey things like tvtropes as you have above. If mentioning the website is relevant to your text, then say it that way:&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;Some programs, like the Metasploit Project, allow users to launch security attacks with ease and comfort. This certainly puts them in the position of the respectable IT security specialists &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.somewebsite.com/wishfulthinking.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.somewebsite.com/wishfulthinking.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;(pretend the link is underlined, as apparently I can't make that happen on stackexchange :) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) If the piece will ultimately be a PDF:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Underline the link and make it clickable in whatever program you're using (Word, InDesign, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T00:08:21.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3095" CreationDate="2011-06-14T07:30:15.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The immediate thing to bear in mind is that the use you're describing is something very specific and unique to hypertext documents. You might as well ask &quot;onstage I can wink at the audience, how can I do that in text?&quot; or &quot;I want my screenplay to be filmed with some equivalent of footnotes.&quot; You're not going to find a full equivalent, because you're adapting a very medium-dependent effect into a completely different medium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you can try to achieve the same &lt;em&gt;kind&lt;/em&gt; of effect, using similar tools. But the best way to do that may vary widely according to the particular piece you're writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're actually interested in referring readers to websites, in a consistent and unobtrusive way throughout a substantial document, then footnotes serve your purpose admirably.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're going for a comic effect, and doing so only once or twice, then you really need to tailor the phrasing to the punchline. Often a parenthetical &quot;(see &lt;a href=&quot;http://clever.url.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://clever.url.com&lt;/a&gt; )&quot; will do the trick. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to repeatedly use the sort of doublespeak you gave in your example - where the URLs serve as snarky subtext for your main text - URLs probably aren't your best bet to begin with. You want to convey extra meaning &lt;em&gt;somehow&lt;/em&gt;, but URLs are long and cumbersome in prose, and don't fit in naturally with the flow. (And of course the hypertext element, of being able to actually follow the link, practically disappears.) So you can look for some other way to get across double meanings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the most straightforward way to achieve the last goal would be to use footnotes here too, with snarky asides rather than URLs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some programs allow users[1] to launch&#xA;  security attacks with ease and comfort. This certainly[2] puts them&#xA;  to the position of the respectable IT security specialists[3].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[1] read: script kiddies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[2] At least, &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; seem awfully certain of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[3] They wear ties and everything!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also seen formatting where you've got typed text, and &quot;scribbled&quot; comments in the margins, or on top of particular phrases. Similarly, strikethroughs can be used to good effect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some programs allow &lt;strike&gt;script kiddies&lt;/strike&gt; users to launch security attacks with ease and comfort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But note that hardly covers all the cases you'd like it to! For example, the next line would hardly work as proposed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This &lt;strike&gt;wishful thinking&lt;/strike&gt; certainly puts them in the position of the &lt;strike&gt;Serious Business Trope&lt;/strike&gt; respectable IT security specialists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context it's worth noting Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, who employed a &quot;double meaning&quot; device heavily throughout &lt;em&gt;A Series of Unfortunate Events&lt;/em&gt;: he would constantly explain what words mean, as in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You say these programs put us in the position of respectable security specialists?&quot; Violet asked. &quot;Indubitably, said Klaus - a word which here means &quot;highly dubious.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Handler made this device very much part of his narrative voice - this isn't something you could just stick anywhere, or use inconsistently. And if you use this device verbatim, it'll mostly sound like your copying the Snicket tone. But if that's a type of humor you want to employ, then just as Handler has done, you can figure out your own device, your own running gag, and put it to good use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T07:30:15.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3062" CreationDate="2011-06-14T14:42:44.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the best practices to use in&#xA;  this senario? I have a master&#xA;  &lt;code&gt;GridView&lt;/code&gt; in my page which performs&#xA;  these actions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Add a new record&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Delete a record&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Search data bound to the &lt;code&gt;GridView&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Display detailed information about selected records in the &lt;code&gt;GridView&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For adding new records, I'm using a&#xA;  dialog or other similar jQuery plugin.&#xA;  For deleting records, I'm making a&#xA;  full postback to refresh data after a&#xA;  confirmation dialog and sometimes I'm&#xA;  putting the target &lt;code&gt;GridView&lt;/code&gt; in an&#xA;  ASP.NET &lt;code&gt;UpdatePanel&lt;/code&gt; to prevent full&#xA;  postback. When searching for data, I&#xA;  have to make a full postback. I think I&#xA;  have no way of doing this action&#xA;  without postback (consider a complex&#xA;  &lt;code&gt;GridView&lt;/code&gt;.) And for displaying more&#xA;  detailed information about the current&#xA;  record without postback, I have 2 ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Loading an ASP.NET user control asynchronously - but with regard to&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5519450/postback-in-loaded-asp-net-usercontrol-with-jquery&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; thread, I'm not able to do&#xA;  server-side actions with postback.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If, for example, I want to display a &lt;code&gt;ListBox&lt;/code&gt; and a &lt;code&gt;TreeView&lt;/code&gt; about a&#xA;  record in a jQuery dialog, I put them&#xA;  in an &lt;code&gt;UpdatePanel&lt;/code&gt; and write binding&#xA;  codes in a hidden server side button.&#xA;  Then I'm triggering the click event of&#xA;  the binding button in the OnOpen event&#xA;  of the jQuery Dialog. My software is&#xA;  running locally so I don't care about&#xA;  SEO.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I'm a novice programmer, please share your expriences with me,&#xA;  tell me where I'm wrong (maybe&#xA;  everywhere!) and where I can improve.&#xA;  Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1975" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:40:35.973" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T14:42:44.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3102" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3103" CreationDate="2011-06-15T12:19:01.920" Score="17" ViewCount="1964" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a first draft of what I want to be a novel -- aiming for 50-70K words. When the ending arrived I was at about 30K. So I essentially have to double the length. My list of notes scattered throughout the ms adds some scenes, but that's not going to fill the gap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FWIW, I started with an outline (20 chapters). Some of the early chapters are a little thin and I can make it deeper there -- these are where the bulk of my notes are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there an effective technique for bulking up a story? I don't want to pad the length, I want to make the story bigger.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have an outline for another novel that is not yet complete. How can I avoid falling short on the second one?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2142" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T14:39:33.747" Title="How can I make a story bigger?" Tags="|novel|wordcount|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3102" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:09:10.923" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put it away for a while. Long enough to not have it in mind to the level of daily obsession any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, dig it out and look through it. You may find that magically somebody has replaced all of your rich, description, amazing detailed characterisation, fascinating dialogue and lushly abundant prose with stuff that is a bit thin, doesn't always make sense and fails to really put your point across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this happens edit from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it doesn't the story is, I'm afraid, already at optimum length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: This seems to have become a really popular question and, as someone who is never short of words, I have been thinking the matter over for the last few days. If you're happy with the original answer above this won't add much more and should therefore be regarded as an optional read for those who really really care about the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing to bear in mind is that you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; make a short story longer and still have it captivate an audience... but only as long as the shorter story was captivating to begin with. The longer story will only be as captivating (or maybe a little more) as the original was. The reason for this is simple. If you have it in you to write one fascinating story the chances that you have only that one story and no more are pretty slim. Stories come from experiences, specifically your unique experience of the world. However long it takes to write a story is nothing compared to the vast amount of life you live that is not about writing that story. So you just need to mine out some more story stuff to put into the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of techniques that aid sensible expansion but none of them are a magic bullet. What these amount to is you allowing yourself room to do other things. I shall explain as I go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. Write in the third person - a first person story allows for only a single strand. With a third person story you can have multiple lead characters and essentially interweave three single-point perspective novellas into one novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CAVEAT: As soon as you do that you need to juggle timelines, consider who is doing what and when and make sure that it all hangs together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. Write the villain's storyline - You may not end up keeping it in but really getting into the villain's head helps you to notice gaps in the hero's story (and vice versa). Also there is a tendency for stories to employ villainous action in the manner of a story requirement for complications to arise. The villain has a plan, a life, a motivation and will do things whether the hero is there or not. If you know what those things are it may give you ideas for relevant and intriguing incidents in the other story tracks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. Think like the ultimate motivational pedant. The number of novels I have read where the author has done a serviceable job but left gaps in the hero's motivation for certain actions is very, very high. A hero should have impeccable behaviour and, where they don't, the explanations for why not bear serious examination. Regard your characters through the eyes of some naive but emotional moral observer and see if anything your protagonists do could be viewed as a bit wide of the mark. It's those moments that may require expansion to explain motive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d. Related to c. Ask if the beginning of the main story is really the beginning of the story. Maybe the main arc would be strengthened with tertiary action (such as subplots a relative of b.) or with background episodes. It helps to think of a story as a single moment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rudgath returned the Sword of De'ark to the Fires of Krynn. (Excuse the cheesy Sword 'n' Sorcery, quick examples require easily graspable story chunks)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is the action that rises into that incident and the action that falls away from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rising: Rudgath retrieved the sword from the Citadel of Unmak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Falling: The sorcerer Kellior screamed with rage and attempted to murder Rudgath for his actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you think of events that rise and fall into those two incidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story is a stack of incidents where the primary incident rises into a main incident or &quot;plot point&quot; and then another incident describes the consequence. The story is a tapestry of such incidents woven together to form a kind of conceptual pattern. The 30,000 words of your story form a pattern like this. As the author you can break those words down this way and attempt to weave in extra incident. All of these tips have been about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FINAL CAVEAT: What everyone has said about padding is utterly true. Part of being an author is learning to tell the difference between relative moments and irrelevant padding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;William Goldman author of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Princess Bride (among many other movies and novels) talks about a story really being about one thing, a spinal concept, the core of what the author is trying to communicate. Those things that contribute meaning to the core are relevant additions, those that do not are padding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hell, it is entirely possible that your current 30k has padding in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screenwriters approach the telling of a story this way (or at least screenwriting courses often encourage them to). The story is a number of flash card &quot;scenes&quot; each of which comments upon the story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In this scene we discover that Rudgath is driven to complete his mission because the forces of Kellior slaughtered his brother during the Aeon War.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In this scene we explore the depravity of the sorcerer Kellioth as he orders seven captured Badger Women of the Sordax Plains to be slaughtered so he can have a fur coat.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the existence of movies like Transformers 2, X Men 3, the Star Wars prequel trilogy and Terminator: Salvation attest this is not a foolproof method of writing a story but then what is? The one thing this does do is help you gain a view of your story as a communication of tidbits of information which the audience needs in order to make sense of your story, know who to root for, and what outcomes they should want out of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is entirely possible that your story has information gaps, or places where clarity can be improved. If so, that's the information you want to put in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also find there is &quot;extra&quot; or &quot;irrelevant&quot; information. That has to come out unfortunately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess this is a fascinating and popular question because there are no guarantees. But these are some concrete things you can do to attempt to add real story value to extra wordage and a short guide to things you should be looking out for. Hopefully you, and others find it helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-06-17T09:05:05.420" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T09:05:05.420" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3102" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:22:05.350" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Composition rule #13: Omit needless words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas Strunk was referring to sentence structure, I believe this applies to overall word count. Adding content in a story just to make it bigger is literary bra stuffing. Keep in mind that &quot;Of Mice and Men&quot; is commonly published at around 100 pages and it stands as one of Steinbeck's more potent works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you feel the need to expand it because the content feels thin, consider Orson Scott Card's treatment of his short story &quot;Ender's Game.&quot; He decided to expand it to novel length as a precursor to Speaker for the Dead. To do so, he had to begin the novel years before the short story. He also added the plots of Ender's siblings and their activities on &quot;the nets.&quot; By doing so, he did not dilute the content of the story but rather enhanced it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend never adding to a story just to make it longer. Though I love Les Miserables and consider it a brilliant novel, I still find Hugo's diversion into the history of the battles of Waterloo difficult to get through. Something you could try is adding content and letting someone read it. If they get bored with it and put it down at those added parts, try again. In Bag of Bones, Stephen King wrote several pages about Mike Noonan's volunteer work when he was experiencing writer's block. His wife hated it and asked why Stephen had to bore the reader with pages of content that doesn't relate to the story. He cut it out and made it better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another rule I've remembered in writing this: Second draft = first draft - 10%. Sometimes you need to add stuff but the rule of thumb should be taking stuff out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1821" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T13:22:05.350" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3102" CreationDate="2011-06-15T16:08:41.530" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even at 50k-70k words, you would still have a pretty short novel in your hands and there is nothing wrong with that.  If your novel is 30k words of pure literary bliss, adding anything to it is probably going to be a step backward.  If it still needs work, you have to ask yourself whether it's because of the length, because it probably isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My best suggestion is to have somebody (or multiple somebodies if possible) that you trust to read it over.  Have them tell you what confused them, what they would have liked to see more of and, of course, what they didn't like.  This is will be the best places to fill in the gaps (or maybe cut, if that's the best way to fix the issue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't worry about the length as you start your next novel.  Hopefully, the length that is appropriate will become evident as you work your way through it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T16:08:41.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3106" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3110" CreationDate="2011-06-16T00:07:42.257" Score="12" ViewCount="947" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a fan of Tolkien's work, but it's relevant to my question, so take it as a reference point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love linguistics, culture, and worldbuilding, but sometimes have difficulty focusing on specific characters and events to build an engaging plot. Nobody wants to read a straight-up sociolinguistic history textbook from a fictional world, no matter how interesting that world might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I convey my world, while keeping the focus narrow enough to be compelling?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just write for plot and figure out how it fits into the world as I go? I guess there can always be addenda and side materials, but I don't want them to feel retconned in; the Star Wars extended universe and prequels are good examples of worldbuilding gone horrifically out of control. I know it's often best to write sparsely and let the reader's imagination do its thing, but I guess I have trouble letting go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1851" LastActivityDate="2023-03-11T00:12:30.683" Title="How can I strike a balance between setting and plot?" Tags="|plot|world-building|setting|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3106" CreationDate="2011-06-16T02:15:39.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The same problem applies to writers who wear their research on their sleeve. Did you ever read a novel and realize that half of it could have been pared away, that half the book was unnecessary scenes were the writer just wanted the reader to know all this cool stuff they found out? (&lt;strong&gt;Cough&lt;/strong&gt; Neal Stephenson &lt;strong&gt;cough&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;World-building is similar to research in one way: It's hard throw away backstory you worked hard on, whether you dug it up or invented it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to say that, when writing, you need to keep in mind that every word you write has to be in the service of the story. It's also easy to say that you should ask yourself if the characters would really do these things you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of it comes down to experience, but a lot of it is learning how to edit your work later on. Put the work aside for a few days and then re-read it, deleting anything at all that says &amp;quot;Look at me, I did research!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No, look at me, I invented a whole world! It's so detailed!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Delete viciously. Does a paragraph or a word not help advance the story? Delete it. Are there a hundred pages that are clever and fun but don't advance the plot? Get rid of them. Maybe they can be another book later on, but they don't belong in &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, you may develop a little voice that lets you get it right on the first draft. Until that point: write, edit, repeat until you abandon the work. Next story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-03-11T00:11:33.573" LastActivityDate="2023-03-11T00:11:33.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3108" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-16T03:05:06.180" Score="8" ViewCount="346" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a (short) story set in Ancient Egypt, and the intended audience are junior high-senior high school students in the US. I am trying to use authentic Ancient Egyptian names for the character, I can find a lot &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Egyptians&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. But my colleague warned that using foreign, difficult names like &quot;Amenhotep&quot; will be unattractive to teenagers in my target audience. I disagreed because I think authenticity and exoticism is part of the attraction of a story, but I am wondering if perhaps my colleague's advice has a valid point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think using authentic, difficult name will be hard to attract teenagers? Is authenticity important when writing for non-adult audience? Which one is more important in this case, using reader-friendly names or authenticity? Do successful reading material for my audience normally use authentic or easy names? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2157" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T16:56:20.527" Title="About using authentic historical name for teenager material" Tags="|naming|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3108" CreationDate="2011-06-16T07:17:11.413" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is probably no reason why you can't aim for both authenticity and easy to pronounce. The example you gave is not actually difficult. It has recognizable characters, and reads well. The issue arises when you have strange accented characters, names that have no vowels, strange character combinations, and so on. In these cases, any reader stops dead in their tracks. Example: Xkff'tppz. Useless name. Also, don't underestimate your audience. They can speak English, so Amen-ho-tep shouldn't provide any difficult challenge to your audience. You could also consider shortened versions to make it easier e.g. Amen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T07:17:11.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3106" CreationDate="2011-06-16T08:27:15.337" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're looking for balance, so the answer is double edged:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stay compelling&lt;/strong&gt; by avoiding drifting off on tangents; don't explain about your world where it isn't relevant to the story at hand and to the readers' interest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Convey your world&lt;/strong&gt; by choosing a structure and a plot where the elements you want to convey feature heavily. If your setting elements are crucial to the plot, then the setting itself will be compelling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds as though you're pretty clear on the necessity of not boring the reader with mere detail. I've often heard this referred to as &quot;infodumping&quot;; I find the term very appropriate: what you want to avoid is not information or exposition - it's &lt;em&gt;presenting&lt;/em&gt; information or exposition in an uninteresting, non-compelling manner; it's when the reader feels like the information is being dumped upon him. So this part of the answer is simple: do not present information without a clear idea of why the scene is immediately interesting to the reader (or how you can make it so).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part of the answer is more subtle, and it works in the opposite direction. We don't want to provide any unnecessary information; that doesn't mean we need to discard all the non-crucial information - instead, we can &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; it crucial&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you do here is identify the setting elements that you &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; want to convey. Then you construct the story around those elements - so that those places, characters, customs, linguistic oddities, etc. are the building blocks of your plot; the interaction between them is the central focus of the story. Don't be satisfied with simply &lt;em&gt;involving&lt;/em&gt; these elements - setting the story in Location X will not be very effective if the story could just as easily have been set in Locations Y or Z with no real difference to the story. A character grieving over his wife might be perfectly interchangeable an engineering student who hates his advisor, if the story is about a protagonist running away from a mutant zombie. Instead, you're looking for &lt;strong&gt;situations and interactions that rely on the unique characteristics of your setting elements&lt;/strong&gt;. If you can manage that, then the solution to your question falls into place - the readers will &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to understand your setting, and the elements you've chosen, because &lt;em&gt;they're&lt;/em&gt; what the story is all about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choose the elements you want to showcase; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Construct the plot (or subplot, or flavor - anything sufficiently compelling) around these elements; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If any of your major elements could easily be swapped for something else, then you haven't involved it deeply or uniquely enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've still got a lot of work cut out for you - in order to pull off a plot relying on your unique setting details, you'll need to manage &lt;strong&gt;compelling exposition&lt;/strong&gt; so the audience will understand what's going on - and not need to sit through a lecture before the action starts. But that's a lot easier to do once the details are intertwined with the plot, rather than being entirely incidental to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great example of a writer who does this well is George R.R. Martin in his &lt;em&gt;Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; series; he's certainly constructed a complex and involved world, but he:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shows it off little by little&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creates a wide cast of characters, each exploring different parts of the world&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always (well, almost always) makes the exposition immediately relevant and compelling to the plot at hand (for example, in &quot;Hedge Knight,&quot; he describes a huge political situation and family conflict - by making the protagonist's goals dependent on watching the larger picture, and interacting with different aspects of it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, often mystery stories are great for exposing setting - because they give the reader incentive to be interested in minute details about the setting. These details can be crucial to solving the mystery, so the reader's happy to go into investigative mode!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A last related point - Orson Scott Card refers to &quot;the mileau story&quot; - a story whose entire structure is &lt;strong&gt;a journey through the setting&lt;/strong&gt;; things may happen along the way, but the journey itself, and the sights seen along the way, are the focus. This certainly is a structure that might be well-suited to conveying a setting, though I often feel this structure makes it hard to plot compellingly - a journey through a bunch of disjointed and practically non-interacting locations is hard to get across as a coherent, compelling whole. As examples, I'd point to Neil Gaiman's &lt;em&gt;Stardust&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Neverwhere&lt;/em&gt;; to &lt;em&gt;Gulliver's Travels&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Around the World in 80 Days&lt;/em&gt;; to &lt;em&gt;The Phantom Tollboth&lt;/em&gt;, and probably even to &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this is helpful :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-06-16T08:41:33.053" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T08:41:33.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3108" CreationDate="2011-06-16T08:51:42.333" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I remember from my teenage years (yes, it was some time away :) ), I would never have been turned off by hard to pronounce foreign names. . The sort of teenager who is attracted to a book about ancient Egypt is the sort of teenager who will not be turned off by foreign names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, almost everyone has seen The Mummy( the movie, not the woman who gives them pocket money ;) ), and wont find Egyptian names weird&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would find weird is, names like: David Tucker, Great king of Egypt, fighting Mary Sue, the beautiful Queen of Sudan, while John Doe, the evil wizard plans to kill both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dont underestimate you audiences intelligence. Your readers will love you for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T08:51:42.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3102" CreationDate="2011-06-16T09:04:10.587" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to have another good look at the structure of the novel. Without knowing the genre, I can only guess. Look at the main characters struggle- could you make it harder? So if the hero is searching for alien artifacts in the Amazon, could you have him clash with a group of local smugglers? Such that he is now battling not only the government, but the local mafia as well? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the hero is trying to catch a killer, maybe the killer hides in a foreign country? Then the hero not only has to catch him, but avoid the attention of jealous local cops? And win the love of the police chiefs daughter? This is not padding the plot, as you are adding to the main story line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I faced the same problem, but I find that one can always add stuff by making life difficult for your hero. Theres no reason he should have it easy!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Based on @bstpierre's comments below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a tech/thriller- how about if the geek faces physical danger as well(something he isnt used to dealing with, as he's only a IT nerd)- the terrorists track him down and send a hit team to take him out? At the same time, the FBI suspects him, and also sends agents to arrest him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you can do is, have parallel story lines- so, the hero's girlfriend is kidnapped by the terrorists. The 2nd story line will her trying to escape, and in the main story, the hero is trying to find her, while dodging both the FBI and the terrorists. Don't make her a helpless damsel in distress, have her actively fighting the bad guys, and later on, teaming up with the hero to crush them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And why stop there- the hero's brother is dying, and desperately needs a kidney transplant. The hospital is waiting for payment. But the hero cant pay, as his account has been frozen, and everyone is after him. The sooner he catches the real bad guys, the sooner he can pay for his brothers operation. This way, not only do you have extreme tension as to what will happen, but the story length will grow as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I mentioned before, I have faced(&amp;amp; still face) the same problem, but the answer always is to make the heros life difficult, to make him really work on his problems. Just as he fixes one problem, another takes its place, and he has to keep running just to stay where he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the rules of writing still apply- backup your current work, then start banging on the keyboard. Dont worry where the scenes will go, or if they clash with the older ones. Just keep writing till you have your target wordcount, then come back to edit it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="2024" LastEditDate="2011-06-16T13:14:23.877" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T13:14:23.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3108" CreationDate="2011-06-16T11:56:43.493" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't dumb down. A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a dictionary for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're that concerned, add a list of character names with pronunciations at the beginning or end of the story. (If you have a sprawling list of characters, like LOTR or Game of Thrones, a one- or two-sentence bio won't hurt either.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T11:56:43.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2841" CreationDate="2011-06-16T14:20:16.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to suggest Google Docs. It's a simple, usable word processor which allows you to &quot;Download As&quot; several formats (ODT, PDF, RTF, Text, Word, and HTML (zipped)). The only oddity is in the content licensing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, you're granting Google rights to redistribute your work free of royalties &quot;for the sole purpose of enabling Google to provide you with the Service in accordance with the Google Docs Privacy Policy.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do, however, maintain copyright. (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/google-d-s/addlterms.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Docs Additional Terms&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2149" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T14:20:16.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3108" CreationDate="2011-06-16T20:55:51.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a teenager and a writer.  Exotic, historically and culturally accurate names sometimes make or break the story.  If the teens don't connect with the culture they won't understand what makes the story the way it is.  Don't be afraid to use hard names, we like trying to figure them out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2186" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-06-17T16:56:20.527" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T16:56:20.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3108" CreationDate="2011-06-17T10:30:01.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you jeopardize your authenticity you jeopardize the trust between reader and writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the &lt;em&gt;hard&lt;/em&gt; names there are some stops that can be addressed to make foreign names more familiar&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pronunciation (when introducing a character you should explain how to pronounce in some way, footnotes, making it a part of a story, etc..)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;context (although we don't operate with meanings of every name we do have historical context for the common names, this can be addressed easily in the story e.g. explaining how someone came to their name)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2166" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T10:30:01.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3122" CreationDate="2011-06-18T03:14:40.913" Score="19" ViewCount="1222" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's common enough -- recently I was looking for Seanan McGuire's newer book only to find it was published as &quot;Mira Grant&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would an author do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1290" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-10-19T00:10:12.300" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T21:42:28.767" Title="Why do writers use pseudonyms?" Tags="|authorship|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-18T08:45:12.470" Score="3" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a blog online under a Creative Commons Attribution license.&#xA;I would like to monetize it by offering monthly content database of the blog content for sale to developers at a low price of 1 USD.  This will enable developers to build mobile and iPAD apps which have offline content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this legal under the Creative Commons Attribution license?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2193" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T09:39:50.350" Title="Can I sell a blog content database in a Creative Commons Attribution license?" Tags="|creative-commons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3128" CreationDate="2011-06-18T09:10:50.797" Score="4" ViewCount="366" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read many novels involving characters working at the NASA, Vatican, Secret Police, high government officers (Dan Brown, Stieg Larsson for example) and doing stuff that I wouldn't like being made public if it was about me. (even though this is fiction)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is writing &quot;This is a work of fiction, all characters are fictitious...etc.&quot; enough although you're talking about them working in a real entity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it depend on local laws and needs lawyer advice? (I haven't noticed any particular disclaimer in Dan Brown's and Stieg Larsson's works) Dan Brown also goes as far as saying that &quot;All the organizations [...] in this novel exist&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2061" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-19T22:22:39.533" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T22:22:39.533" Title="Disclaimer when writing about governmental entities" Tags="|fiction|legal|ethics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3119" CreationDate="2011-06-18T09:22:31.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say you write a story about an employee of Best Buy who accidentally kills his girlfriend by pushing her off a cliff whilst the two of them are dancing about like idiots stoned out of their gourd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you really expect Best Buy to sue you because you painted a picture of a Best Buy employee getting stoned and committing manslaughter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The disclaimer is more than adequate in these cases as far as the organisation is concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact the disclaimer exists for the following reason:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that your fictive BB employee was called John Larsen. Now imagine that a &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; Best Buy employee called John Larsen picks up your story and reads about himself getting stoned and accidentally killing his girlfriend. John's been married fifteen years has two kids and is a member of the temperance society. So that people don't confuse &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; John with &lt;em&gt;fictive&lt;/em&gt; John you put the disclaimer in. The organisation has nothing to do with anything, it's individuals who could conceivably suffer a tarnish on their reputation because of unfortunate coincidence that the disclaimer exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DISCLAIMER: Both John Larsens in  my example are entirely fictitious I have never been in a branch of Best Buy let alone met any employees of said company whose name was John Larsen. Best Buy, on the other hand, really exists to the best of my knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T09:22:31.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3118" CreationDate="2011-06-18T09:28:49.677" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can sell any content created by you, regardless of the copyright license (as long as you have not sold or given the rights away).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that under a Creative Commons Attribution license, so can any one else.  You might be looking for a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attribution license: &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attribution-NonCommercial license: &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastEditorUserId="181" LastEditDate="2011-06-18T09:39:50.350" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T09:39:50.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2011-06-18T09:30:48.893" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two reasons I know of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal&lt;/strong&gt; - some people are exceptionally private, especially in this day and age, and would like to remain so in their personal lives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Professional&lt;/strong&gt; - much like other artists, authors can be tied to a specific style of writing or genre. Existing fans can be upset if an author experiments in another genre, and new fans can't be picked up if they automatically assume everything the author writes is not something they'd like to read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be legal reasons, too - but IANAL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T09:30:48.893" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3123" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-18T16:29:33.847" Score="1" ViewCount="434" Body="&lt;p&gt;What literary techniques are evident in the following quote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I read each bullet scar in the Quai stonework&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  With an eerie familiar feeling,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And started at the stricken, sunny exposure of pavement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastEditorUserId="40227" LastEditDate="2019-08-04T07:34:31.357" LastActivityDate="2019-08-04T07:34:31.357" Title="What literary techniques are evident in this quote?" Tags="|technique|figures-of-speech|rhetoric|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3123" CreationDate="2011-06-18T17:56:16.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pretentiousness.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T17:56:16.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2011-06-18T19:26:19.600" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3117/why-do-writers-use-pseudonyms/3122#3122&quot;&gt;Zane hit the main ones&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;desire for personal privacy&lt;/strong&gt; the other primary reason I know is &lt;b&gt;marketing&lt;/b&gt; - same as actors, some authors will adopt snazzier-sounding names to sound good on the bookshelf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, you've got a lot of exceptional cases - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill_%28writer%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joe Hill&lt;/a&gt; is a pen name to avoid the otherwise-painfully-blatant connection to his father; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tiptree,_Jr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alice Bradley Sheldon&lt;/a&gt; probably falls under &quot;privacy&quot; but in a very extreme manner, etc. etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T19:26:19.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2011-06-18T21:12:30.170" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes pen names are used to fit with an imaginary &quot;true story&quot;.  A great example is The Princess Bride, in which the real author (William Goldman) pretends it's a &quot;true story&quot; written by someone of the era (S. Morgenstern).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, that falls under Marketing I guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason is that an author may want to be shelved with other authors of their genre, especially highly successful authors.  For instance, if you were a fantasy author it might seem attractive to have your novel sitting next to Tolkien's great works.  Thus, anyone looking for Tolkien may stumble across yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="410" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T21:12:30.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3119" CreationDate="2011-06-18T21:33:18.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most big organisations like the CIA, NSA, if they were to sue anyone who wrote anything bad about them, would have to spend their entire yearly budget every month just suing people. Besides, in a democracy, they can't really silence you unless you are writing something that affects national security, and in many cases, not even then. As @One Monkey mentions, you are more at risk from being sued by individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just write what you want, don't worry about offending anyone. Unless you live in North Korea of course. Never, ever, insult the Fearless Leader Kim Jong II. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T21:33:18.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3119" CreationDate="2011-06-18T21:54:50.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3119/disclaimer-when-writing-about-governmental-entities/3120#3120&quot;&gt;One Monkey&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3119/disclaimer-when-writing-about-governmental-entities/3128#3128&quot;&gt;Shan&lt;/a&gt; are right, that there are tons of novels/movies where entities like the CIA are the bad guys. Unlikely that someone will sue you, or even can. Right of free expression and stuff like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, because both gave the advice &quot;write what you like and only care about the individuals&quot;, I have to step in. That could be bad advice. Especially if you leave governmental entities behind, heading towards companies and trademarks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, guess what, IANAL. But there is a lawyer out there, writing about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publaw.com/article/fair-use-of-trademarks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;trademark topic&lt;/a&gt;. This is off-topic to your question, so I keep it short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Disparagement means to place the product or service in a “bad light”. You should not disparage a product or service unless you are writing a non-fiction critical evaluation of the product or service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T21:54:50.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="61" CreationDate="2011-06-19T07:51:18.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are open to other mediums, you can try a voice recorder. You can simply try the voice recorder in your phone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1434" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T07:51:18.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3135" CreationDate="2011-06-19T08:24:18.930" Score="2" ViewCount="274" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will point out mistakes like: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use of bad constructs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use of repeated words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(On a side note: if you happen to be a C programmer, I am looking for &lt;strong&gt;lint&lt;/strong&gt; for writing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1434" LastEditorUserId="1434" LastEditDate="2011-06-26T00:22:28.650" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T02:32:04.380" Title="Is there any tool which points out the common mistakes in a piece of writing?" Tags="|tools|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3132" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3133" CreationDate="2011-06-18T20:02:13.327" Score="1" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;I created this question for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if it is proper to place a comma after the word &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; (in bold) below.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This sentence is kind of clunky, like many of my sentences, and it helps if more advanced writers chop it up and express it in a more clear format. Please offer me your re-written sentence, and tell me why you changed it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;124 delegates from 12 countries attended the Symposium and were met with multiple workshops and speeches, here are a few: Scaling Conservation Ag to Confront the Upcoming Famine; Permaculture: A tool for self-reliance; &lt;strong&gt;and,&lt;/strong&gt; Opportunities &amp;amp; Challenges for Reversing Soil Fertility Depletion and Increasing Crop Productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2480" OwnerDisplayName="PeelTheOnion" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T13:45:25.753" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T13:45:25.753" Title="Please advise on this comma among semi-colons and provide a more concise sentence" Tags="|punctuation|clarity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2021-01-31T10:45:22.707" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3132" CreationDate="2011-06-18T20:09:26.040" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, both commas should be removed from that sentence. The first one is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_splice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;comma splice&lt;/a&gt;; it should be removed and replaced with a period, to create two complete sentences. That alone will help break up your unwieldy passage and make it easier to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second comma should be removed because you don't put punctuation after the conjunction near the end of a list of items: &lt;i&gt;parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme&lt;/i&gt;. (In addition, your semicolons can be converted to commas. Generally, you only use semicolons to separate items in a list if one or more of the items contain commas themselves, and you need to use the semicolon as a sort of &amp;quot;supercomma.&amp;quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the items in the list are so long and unwieldy, if it were up to me I'd probably convert them to a bulleted list, if my project style guide permitted it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;124 delegates from 12 countries attended the Symposium and were met with multiple workshops and speeches. Here are a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scaling Conservation Ag to Confront the Upcoming Famine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Permaculture: A tool for self-reliance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Opportunities &amp;amp; Challenges for Reversing Soil Fertility Depletion and Increasing Crop Productivity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="851" OwnerDisplayName="phenry" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T20:31:46.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3131" CreationDate="2011-06-19T11:33:46.667" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most word processors will pick up things like repeated words, misspellings, and some grammar issues (e.g. sentence fragments; the wrong form of there), but beyond that, they aren't going to be able to catch much else.  Things like Lint and FxCop (for .Net) are able be more prescriptive because there are fewer rules in the languages they deal with than in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is a far more subjective endeavor than development.  A compiler can only deal with its finite set of rules, but a reader can interpret a much wider range of styles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T11:33:46.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3131" CreationDate="2011-06-19T11:54:53.890" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, since writing is a very subjective thing, and many rules rarely work in real life. Thats why I always turn off the grammar check in Ms Word, as it blindly tries to apply some &quot;rules&quot; to everything I write. Like this &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sadly, writing tutors tend to ignore this moderation, and simply red-circle everything that looks like a passive, just as Microsoft Word's grammar checker underlines every passive in wavy green to signal that you should try to get rid of it. That overinterpretation is part of the damage that Strunk and White have unintentionally done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are better off allowing other human beings, rather than computers, to critique your work. You can post small snippets here on Writers exchange(subject to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/181/policy-change-writing-critique-questions-now-welcome&quot;&gt;these&lt;/a&gt; rules), while websites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critters.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critters&lt;/a&gt; allow you to post longer works for critique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:03.470" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T11:54:53.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3131" CreationDate="2011-06-19T13:30:27.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the German language something like that exists. The text processor &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.papyrus.de/Autor.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Papyrus Autor&lt;/a&gt; does that by following the marking rules from Andreas Eschbach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you write in German or not, you do need that tool, you can make the checks by hand. Yes, it is more cumbersome, so what. Who said writing is easy? If you are interested in the rules, I summarized them in this answer: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/665/something-different-help-me-find-the-unnecessary-words/707#707&quot;&gt;Marking steps by Andreas Eschbach&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that a marking does not mean, you have to get rid of it. They are just indicators. There are good reasons to kill stuff, there are good reasons to leave it as it is. Rule Number One: Think for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T13:30:27.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3138" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-19T20:18:13.253" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-06-19T20:18:13.253" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T20:18:13.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3139" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-19T20:18:13.253" Score="0" Body="Computer programs intended for writers. Questions involving the use of particular programs, or requesting recommendation for software that will help in a particular task." OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-06-19T22:07:42.067" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T22:07:42.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="921" CreationDate="2011-06-20T06:22:07.633" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A trick Gladwell frequently uses (not unique to him, of course) is to use insider jargon to make you feel like you know something that only experts know. For example, if not for Gladwell, I would not know that diaper developers call the spill they are called upon to absorb &quot;the insult.&quot;  And if not for an early-90s issue of &lt;em&gt;Car and Driver,&lt;/em&gt; I would not know that automobile designers call the way a car's finish changes appearance as light moves across it &quot;travel&quot; (except at IIRC Ford, where they call it &quot;flop&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can boil down a lot of engaging non-fiction to finding a narrative and hanging your facts onto it. In stories of scientific progress, for example, there are obvious narratives: mystery, a sense of the secret being revealed bit by bit. This works even though the people who discovered or invented the individual pieces might not have been aware that they were working toward the goal; as the writer, you pretend that progress is inevitable, and omit all the facts that don't lead to your thrilling discovery simply because they're not part of the story. Take particular care to note the roadblocks and how the participants in your story overcame them, or better yet, how a roadblock stopped someone cold but the thread was later picked up by someone with a fresh perspective. Dig for the tantalizing hints that correlation is causation (this happened, then something else happened, therefore the first event caused the second) and that there is some kind of grand plan, if only humankind's collective unconscious, behind it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a smug aphorism to the effect that &quot;writing fiction is harder than writing non-fiction, because fiction has to make sense.&quot; In reality, non-fiction has to make sense just as much: readers want to understand the motives of the murderer as much as they want to hear the lurid details of his crime. Your job as a non-fiction writer is to turn ordinary people, some of whom may be quite boring but who nevertheless play pivotal roles, into compelling characters, while  not neglecting the facts.  You must make the whole story hang together in a way that real life does not (including a satisfying sense of closure at the conclusion)... while remaining true to reality. It is a difficult line to walk successfully, and surely not every real-life story is suited to such treatment, so selection of your topic is also important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastEditorUserId="251" LastEditDate="2013-02-19T15:15:24.687" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T15:15:24.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3067" CreationDate="2011-06-20T06:36:05.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing a subsidy publisher does that a local printer can't do at much lower cost. They won't edit your book (even real publishers barely do that these days). They won't check your facts. Unless you are a top-tier author, they won't even do any marketing for you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know one guy who was once a successful columnist for a men's magazine and whose previous book had been a &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt; bestseller. I met him at an author event, and he was looking for someone to do a Web site and some Internet marketing for his latest book. I got the gig because I had done a Web site for a friend of mine who was also an author at this event, and she sang my praises to the skies. He paid me for this out of his own pocket because his own publisher (one of the big ones, not some cash-strapped small press) was doing nothing at all to promote the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A publisher will, however, change your book's title, design a cover that has nothing to do with what's inside, try to tie it in to the latest publishing fad, and press you to turn it into a series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easy to lay out a book (just look at a book, and make it like that). You can get a graphic design student from a local college to do your cover for you and help you with the insides. You can hire someone to edit your book and to fact-check it. And given that you've already done all that, local printer will make copies for you at a far lower cost than a vanity publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastEditorUserId="251" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T17:52:53.037" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T17:52:53.037" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="61" CreationDate="2011-06-20T06:42:29.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I like to do when I get an idea is run it by all my other ideas and see how they feel about each other. After all, for a  novel, you may have one seed idea that set you on the path to writing the story, but you will need dozens or even hundreds of supporting ideas to fill out the plot, the characters, and the setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So write down your ideas, and when you get a new one, try it with some of your other ones and see whether you get inspired. Maybe the idea you had for a detective with an artificially-intelligent prosthetic arm would go great with the idea of a world-spanning alien consciousness whose mate was recently murdered. The more ideas you can tie together, the richer your story will feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T06:42:29.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3145" CreationDate="2011-06-20T08:02:32.857" Score="1" ViewCount="321" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm planning to title a book &quot;Taiwan Seek.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book is about starting a classified ads website in Taiwan.&#xA;So I thought about short words that are related to classified ads: want, seek, looking for etc.&#xA;I didn't want to use want because &quot;Taiwan Want&quot; sounds horrible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to have a word that is both verb and noun at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if it would be a bad title since &quot;seek&quot; sounds similar to &quot;sick&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T21:26:08.357" Title="Will the word &quot;seek&quot; be associated with the word &quot;sick&quot; if it is present in the title of my book?" Tags="|book|titles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3144" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-20T08:40:57.753" Score="-2" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for resources on how to write an academic paper. The Web really lacks of those.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: Standback's and A. Martin's answers perfectly illustrates what I expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2199" LastEditorUserId="2199" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T11:30:05.763" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T11:30:05.763" Title="How to write an academic paper?" Tags="|resources|research|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3143" CreationDate="2011-06-20T09:02:49.350" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see no reason for concern. The two words don't look the same, or even really sound the same. I don't see any reason anybody would get the two confused, certainly not on a scope that should worry you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe if your novel gets turned into a multimillion dollar film, &quot;Taiwan Sick&quot; could be the title for the MAD Magazine lampoon :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this isn't what you were asking, but I feel obliged to mention that &quot;seek&quot; is not a noun. Perhaps &quot;Taiwan Search&quot;? More on this in the comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T09:02:49.350" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3146" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-20T09:31:08.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research is necessary for any type of writing - for accuracy; for color; in order to fully investigate the topic at hand; in order to understand the professional field and context one is operating in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag is for all questions about how to conduct research for writing, and how to use that research in the writing itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that specific research questions (&quot;I'm writing about [X], does anybody know [detail about X]?&quot;) may be considered off topic (see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.writers.stackexchange.com/questions/20/is-it-appropriate-to-ask-questions-on-specialist-knowledge-areas&quot;&gt;Is it appropriate to ask questions on specialist knowledge areas?&lt;/a&gt; ). Such questions are best answered by people knowledgeable in that particular topic, or communities devoted to such questions, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://little-details.livejournal.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Detail Oriented&lt;/a&gt;. At best, questions about identifying appropriate resources may be on-topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-01-18T06:43:07.937" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T06:43:07.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3147" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-20T09:31:08.710" Score="0" Body="Questions about how to conduct research, and how to incorporate your research into your writing. " OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-06-20T09:33:15.543" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T09:33:15.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="61" CreationDate="2011-06-20T14:37:36.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a big fan of mind mapping. Get all your ideas out, draw lines to connect them. My outlines often fall naturally out of that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T14:37:36.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3149" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3176" CreationDate="2011-06-20T15:25:55.907" Score="2" ViewCount="15592" Body="&lt;p&gt;A handful of my friends have an odd trait where they say something and immediately laugh after it in an attempt to judge its success. The topic is usually a rant along the lines of, &quot;These people have no idea what they are talking about.&quot; An example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My teacher said to make my art darker but when I made it dark he complained that it was too dark. &lt;em&gt;*Laugher*&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The emotion is very much a nervous laughter but I want to describe it so that it is separate from the nervous laughter present when someone makes a mistake or is embarrassed. This is more of an &quot;am I right?&quot; action looking for positive feedback to confirm their suspicions. In the example above, my friend was frustrated by the perceived conflicting direction given by the teacher and was looking for support. The laughter is a constant participant in this behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1516" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T21:46:41.010" Title="A more specific type of &quot;nervous laughter&quot;" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3149" CreationDate="2011-06-20T16:04:26.520" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are probably better off letting the context, dialogue and action reveal the type of laughter. A quick example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;My teach said to make my art darker,&#xA;  but when I made it dark, he complained&#xA;  it was too dark.&quot; Jim laughed, glancing at the faces around him. &quot;Damned&#xA;  if you do, damned if you don't, right?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the example you gave already suggests incredulous laughter. This sort of approach will lead to much better writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T16:04:26.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3149" CreationDate="2011-06-20T19:16:16.100" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first word I thought of was &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/titter&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;titter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, which describes a nervous, self-conscious laugh.  I associate it particularly with judgment, but something like &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/snigger&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sniggering&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; might be closer to what you are looking for.  Sniggering is more derisive than tittering, and I think the following laughter is aimed at the subject of the rant, to see if others will join in on the mockery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T19:16:16.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3152" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3155" CreationDate="2011-06-20T19:38:14.613" Score="33" ViewCount="118683" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading a thesis report of a friend and I noticed that he didn't indent the first line of the first paragraph in each chapter. I don't remember noticing it anywhere before until I saw it there and I have some OCD issues with reformatting the documents/reports and make them look awesome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would like to know, if I'm going to write a new document/report that is divided in chapters and paragraphs, what kind of indentation should I prefer? Should I indent all the first lines of the paragraphs regarding if it's the first in a chapter or not and why one method is better than the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2204" LastActivityDate="2018-07-17T11:31:14.500" Title="Should I indent the first line of the first paragraph in a chapter?" Tags="|style|formatting|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3152" CreationDate="2011-06-20T20:31:57.580" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, ask the person or people to whom you are submitting how s/he/they want the document formatted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barring that, I have seen the first line indented and subsequent paragraphs &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; indented, but not the reverse. It would look like a mistake to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would either indent everything or not indent anything. If you're not indenting, use a double space between paragraphs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T20:31:57.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3152" CreationDate="2011-06-20T20:34:53.607" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't a matter for you to worry about as a writer, but rather a matter for the publisher's typesetter, and it may vary by publisher. In your manuscript, either is fine, but be consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T20:34:53.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3152" CreationDate="2011-06-20T21:09:29.823" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been taught to always leave the first line of a chapter/section unindented, then make all subsequent paragraphs indented. I have also seen all paragraphs indented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://ask.metafilter.com/18872/No-indentation-of-initial-paragraphs&quot;&gt;a good discussion on first line indents&lt;/a&gt; which notes that, in Robert Bringhurst's &lt;em&gt;Elements of Typographic Style&lt;/em&gt;, he states that &quot;opening paragraphs&quot; should be &quot;flush left&quot; because &quot;[t]he function of a paragraph indent is to mark a pause, setting the paragraph apart from what precedes it. If a paragraph is preceded by a title or subhead, the indent is superfluous and can therefore be omitted&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(They also mention that Chicago rules state that &quot;the first line of text following a subhead may begin flush left or be indented by the usual paragraph indention.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T21:09:29.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3144" CreationDate="2011-06-21T00:25:39.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an excellent paper about what NOT to do when writing a scientific paper. Do read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0030-1299.2007.15674.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to write consistently boring scientific literature&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2208" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T00:25:39.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3143" CreationDate="2011-06-21T03:11:59.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Seek&quot; is only noun in highly technical senses.  If someone said &quot;Taiwan Seek&quot; to me, I would think &quot;Taiwan Sikh?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taiwanted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taiwan Hunt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taiwan Classified&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I like the last because &quot;classified&quot; also means &quot;secret&quot; and so the title suggests &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.A._Confidential_%28film%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LA Confidential&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_School_Confidential_%28film%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;High-School Confidential&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T03:11:59.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3123" CreationDate="2011-06-21T19:14:49.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only technique I can really suggest is one of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliteration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;alliteration&lt;/a&gt;, which is essentially the repetition of the same sound due to certain syllables within words, which form a pattern or beat of sorts, imposing a shape on the lines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you re-read the final line and place emphasis on the syllables, you notice &quot;star-ted&quot;, &quot;strick-en&quot;, and &quot;sun-ny&quot;; it seems the author is trying to put particular emphasis on the &quot;s&quot;-like syllables (the use of &quot;scar&quot; and &quot;stone-work&quot; in the first line suggests a link to the third due to this technique). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar technique is used in the second line with &quot;fam-il-i-ar feel-ing&quot; (the &quot;f&quot; sounds).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-06-22T16:31:19.393" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T16:31:19.393" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3164" CreationDate="2011-06-22T00:49:54.433" Score="22" ViewCount="6184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I get tired of &quot;he said&quot;, &quot;she said&quot;, &quot;they replied&quot;. Is there a better, but still reasonable way, to indicate dialogue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2162" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-12-25T11:05:08.663" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T22:17:48.770" Title="I'm getting tired of &quot;he said&quot; &quot;she said&quot; in dialogue; how do I get around it?" Tags="|style|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3162" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-22T01:03:20.273" Score="8" ViewCount="893" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering publishing my novel as an e-book (since I'm very techy) before I take the usual &quot;paperback&quot; route. Is this a wise choice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also what would I need to do? (steps).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2162" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-07-25T18:24:45.597" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T16:33:37.037" Title="Is it wise to publish a novel as an e-book, and how would I do it?" Tags="|publishing|novel|ebook|electronic-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3161" CreationDate="2011-06-22T01:17:18.723" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/&quot;&gt;Turkey City Lexicon&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;“Said” Bookism&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An artificial verb used to avoid the word “said.” “Said” is one of the few invisible words in the English language and is almost impossible to overuse. It is much less distracting than “he retorted,” “she inquired,” “he ejaculated,” and other oddities. The term “said-book” comes from certain pamphlets, containing hundreds of purple-prose synonyms for the word “said,” which were sold to aspiring authors from tiny ads in American magazines of the pre-WWII era.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is: &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; may be bored with it, but your reader doesn't care. If you must use something other than &quot;said,&quot; use the simplest, most common word you can get away with. But mostly, use &quot;said.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T01:17:18.723" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3161" CreationDate="2011-06-22T01:48:14.477" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to describe the &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; (explain intonation, body language) and the purpose of the dialogue, not just the fact of the speech being made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Your chest pains have not subsided, have they, Mr. Gittes?&quot; Zimmerman squints at me across the desk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How did you guess?&quot; I mumble, scanning his morose, concerned expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He arches his eyebrows, avoiding my question. &quot;I assume you're experiencing... hallucinations?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I turn to leave the office. &quot;Well, would that be expected? Just from codeine?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He shakes his head in response and releases an impatient sigh. He rises to his feet. “You can’t hide behind those sunglasses, Jake. We can all see you.” His eyes flick upwards, indicating the crowd of spectators in the gallery; we’re trapped inside a play by the Marquis de Sade. He begins to undress to jeers from the audience. Exit stage left. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1495" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2013-06-10T22:17:48.770" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T22:17:48.770" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3162" CreationDate="2011-06-22T05:17:25.150" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Should I e-publish?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends heavily on your goals, on the effort you're willing/interested in investing, and on your skill with the various abilities involved with e-publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you aim to eventually sell your book to a traditional publisher,&lt;/strong&gt; then &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; e-publish. Traditional publishers will very rarely buy manuscripts that have already been published elsewhere - including as an e-book.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you're asking about publishing an e-book &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; a traditional publisher,&lt;/strong&gt; then in this day and age, they'll probably handle that themselves. You can ask all about it when you've got an agent and a contract.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you're planning on self-publishing both e-book and hardcopy, and are hoping to achieve commercial success&lt;/strong&gt; then an e-book version is probably a good idea. Since in self-publishing you'll be doing all your own marketing and distribution, it's a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; benefit to be able to market a product you can distribute online - something potential readers can get their hands on easily - rather than a physical book that most people just won't come into any contact with. The trick here is, as with most internet marketing, you'll be starting out as a very small fish in a very big tidal wave. You'll have to do a ton of work marketing your book, making it visible, setting it apart from the millions of other self-published books. You'll also need to make sure, on your own, that your work is top-notch and professionally presented - otherwise you'll get bad responses from the people you got with your marketing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you don't care about commercial success or being traditionally published, but simply want your work available,&lt;/strong&gt; then you can whip up an e-book, and let it float around the internet. People will read it or they won't; you can put as much or as little effort as you like into marketing it; it will exist and be available - just probably nothing more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How do I e-publish?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know the details, but there's tons of services and e-book sites that'll take you through the minimum requirements. You'll probably want more than the bare minimum, though. Here's an excellent essay by Nancy Fulda offering a &lt;a href=&quot;http://nancyfulda.livejournal.com/309139.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Mini-handbook on independent publication&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, covering a lot of what you'll need (and want) to do if you decide to go the e-book route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2011-06-22T10:59:05.773" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T10:59:05.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3166" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3175" CreationDate="2011-06-22T11:54:58.377" Score="11" ViewCount="2576" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I was an avid reader in my early years (as in hard copy - books), and I still am (just now via computer)... and I never got wind of such difficulties in publishing, until now.&#xA;Is it like going up against a proverbial dragon dressed in nothing but a helmet? If it is, I'm not that interested.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway - the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;all that difficult&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to get published by traditional means? In 2011? Or is all of the negativity just done to scare off potential competition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2162" LastEditorUserId="2162" LastEditDate="2011-06-22T16:33:27.350" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T00:45:38.920" Title="Is it really so &quot;impossible&quot; to get published by a traditional publisher?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="890" CreationDate="2011-06-22T12:13:29.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just do it. If you always top to focus on the negative aspects, you never get anything done. Chances are some random person will always find some random correlation between your story and the Queen of Mar's wedding ceremony... you get the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask me, so long as you trust your own story to be worth the read, go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2162" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T12:13:29.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3169" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3174" CreationDate="2011-06-22T12:38:21.237" Score="1" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how many writers here are into the techy side of life, but I am wondering, if say. someone is writing the next star trek, is it safe to go ahead and release related material under a (restrictive of course) creative commons license?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you are writing some fantasy fiction series, is it safe to create character profiles (under a cc) (like say, as a pdf or something)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. This is not the same idea as my &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/is-it-safe-to-create-a-wiki-for-a-book-or-something-featured-in-it-before-the-b&quot;&gt;wiki question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2162" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T19:17:56.660" Title="Can I release material related to a work and maintain my rights before publishing?" Tags="|creative-commons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2011-06-22T12:48:25.480" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One unusual reason I haven't seen touched on: Some people do it to access a side of them that they want to express, creating a kind of virtual &quot;person&quot; with different attributes. Some people call it their &quot;muse&quot; and other pet names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a way of allowing themselves to overcome some mental barrier by pretending to be someone else, with special &quot;powers&quot;, like a kind of super writer with confidence they might not normally possess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Personally, I don't go in for it ;)...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2162" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T12:48:25.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3166" CreationDate="2011-06-22T16:25:16.110" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Computers and the internet have opened up writing tools to a wider audience than ever before. This means that where a publisher used to have a steady stream of manuscripts showing up from unknowns, they now have a veritable tsunami. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nothing else, the physical process of typing up, editing, proofreading (and copying) your manuscript before paying postage costs just to put it into an editor's hands, used to keep the flow of new stuff down to a reasonable level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days, everyone has a printer and FedEx office nearby, and e-mail costs almost nothing. So you not only have to compete with the current economic conditions (the downturn in general, and the rapidly changing world of publishing), you also have to compete with every other person out there who can now write their novel and get it out the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, &lt;em&gt;you can get published&lt;/em&gt;, but the sheer volume of competition is making it harder and harder. If you really want to do it, persevere - keep writing, keep submitting — and make sure you follow any relevant guidelines!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="679" LastEditorUserId="679" LastEditDate="2012-12-12T21:59:55.187" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T21:59:55.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2011-06-22T16:26:04.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say an iPad is good if you're writing a note, but not a chapter - the touchscreen lacks the tactile feedback I need to go to full touchtyping (for one, it's really easy for your fingers to wander.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding a physical keyboard solves that problem (and as others have mentioned, reclaims a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of physical space on screen). I haven't tried one of the bluetooth solutions yet, but the USB adapter on the Camera kit will let you plug any USB keyboard in. The popup says it's not supported, but it works just fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2219" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T16:26:04.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2011-06-22T17:50:27.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I carry my iPad at times when I'll be without power for a long time. My laptop will only last 2-3 hours, and sometimes I want to write or make notes for a longer time than that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have an external keyboard, but I have considered getting one. If I type in landscape, I can type almost as fast as on a traditional keyboard, but the corrections take longer. The interface doesn't lend itself well to corrections (from my perspective), so I tend to leave those to later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used the Wordpress app and Blogpress to write blog posts or observations at different times. I also use Evernote extensively to make notes or write pieces (short articles) at times and have them sync up with my other machines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T17:50:27.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3169" CreationDate="2011-06-22T19:04:39.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Howard Aiken said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a beginner writer, your challenge is to get people to notice you and take your ideas seriously, rather than someone steal from you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So feel free to share your ideas. Its not the ideas that are important, but how you implement those ideas. Rather than focussing on the wrong thing (people stealing your ideas), focus on how you can market yourself and your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: And to answer your other question: As Lauren Ipsum said, you own the rights to anything you create. But you have to ask yourself: Why would anyone steal ideas from an unknown writer? Would anyone even notice you wiki, among the millions of other sites?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="2024" LastEditDate="2011-06-22T19:17:56.660" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T19:17:56.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3166" CreationDate="2011-06-22T19:13:14.747" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's just negativity. People ask &quot;What's the secret to getting published&quot;, as if there was some secret sauce!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's true there are thousands of potential authors, it's also true that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. Most of them (I've heard figures like 90%) never finish their 1st draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. Of those who do, a huge percentage are unpublishable - either their grammar is bad, they don't correct all the spelling mistakes, they can't write dialogue, or more simply, they can't write at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't remember where I read this, but this quote stayed with me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you want to get published, write something that is publishable first. Then worry about other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2019-02-28T00:45:38.920" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T00:45:38.920" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3149" CreationDate="2011-06-22T21:46:41.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;My teacher said to make my art darker- but when I made it dark... he complained that it was &lt;em&gt;too dark&lt;/em&gt;&quot; he said, before observing our reactions with a gauging, anxious laugh. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1495" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T21:46:41.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1265" CreationDate="2011-06-23T01:56:41.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your simple answers. I was searching for an answer as I write, but realized I was on the right track when a 'beach ball' floated near my nephew as he was in my brother's swimming pool. The ball had some very unusual print on it. On it was written, 'Who is the author? What is the story about? Who are the main characters? What happens in the story? How does the story end?' Child-like, but effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I co-wrote an Urban street fiction novel, and was always trying to encourage my co-writer to write her 'true life' story. Now that I've chosen to write my own story I find it very therapeutic, but confusing at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2222" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T01:56:41.807" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3166" CreationDate="2011-06-23T07:46:46.043" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, it is a pleasant reading, how to attract and keep reader's attention, comparing this to a some sort of thought transference or even magic. But it has nothing in common with being published in &quot;standard way&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Reader is not a writer's customer&lt;/em&gt;, definitely. Reader is a bookseller's customer. Bookseller is a publisher's customer. And publisher is a writer's customer. Reader is not purchasing quality product, reader will pay for well-marketed product. Publishers and booksellers do marketing, they state what is worth paying for. This is an open secret and we have to repeat it - again and again - till we are blue in the face. (With all respect, It makes me wonder if Mr. King's novels would be so successfull without the barrage of marketers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we need to decide for either we want to write to earn our daily bread (and - possibly - become rich and famous) or wheter there is an inner urge making us to write. At least, when this decision is made, we should be set free from an - maybe - existential dilemma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Want to being published? Be nice to publishers. Being infamous and &quot;controversial person&quot; would help. Want to being read decades after your death? Forget about making money by writing. Mrs. Rowling, Mr. King or Mr. Brown are just &lt;em&gt;exceptions&lt;/em&gt; proving the rule. (They are still alive, I guess.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T07:46:46.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1265" CreationDate="2011-06-23T14:04:37.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, theoretically the process is very easy, but there is one difficulty. First, the process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;List, draw, diagram or simply take in your minds eyes all properties and attributes that you associate with memoir-writing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take each of the properties and think of canonical examples&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you are able to list at least seven examples of each property that you are satisfied with you can proceed to final step&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Apply all these to the formula for general writing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2166" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T14:04:37.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3180" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-23T15:42:45.633" Score="26" ViewCount="34822" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK, what are the equivalents to Chicago Manual of Style, the Associated Press style guide, Yahoo, APA, MLA, etc? Most importantly, what are their intended audiences? (AP is used for journalists, Yahoo for the web, APA for academia, et cetera.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm specifically asking about style guides that are structured like indexes like the above references, as well as books that compare US to UK english. (The &lt;em&gt;Economist&lt;/em&gt; style guide, for example, has a good section on this, but it's also quite short.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I'm aware of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/72/what-are-the-most-common-style-manuals&quot;&gt;this general question on style guides&lt;/a&gt;, and I'd have no objection to this question being folded into that one eventually. For now, I'm posting this as a separate question to get some attention to the question of UK usage.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-07T01:03:06.150" LastActivityDate="2021-11-12T10:39:36.210" Title="What are widely-used UK-English style guides?" Tags="|style|resources|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3180" CreationDate="2011-06-24T08:15:05.230" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as UK style guides go, what you're probably looking for is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oxford-Style-Manual-Robert-Ritter/dp/0198605641&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oxford Guide to Style&lt;/a&gt;, formerly known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart%27s_Rules&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hart's Rules&lt;/a&gt; (that link also contains a useful section outlining what the nearest US equivalents are). The University of Oxford website also provides an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ox.ac.uk/branding_toolkit/writing_and_style_guide/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;on-line style document&lt;/a&gt;, but it's nowhere near as comprehensive as the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other UK style guides as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian style guide&lt;/a&gt; (also done according to an index)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Copy-Editing-Cambridge-Handbook-Editors-Publishers/dp/0521400740&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Copy-Editing:The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Authors and Publishers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/specials/style_guide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Times Style and Usage Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/about-us/style-book/1435295/Telegraph-style-book-introduction.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Telegraph Style Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mhra.org.uk/style/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Modern Humanities Research Association Style Guide&lt;/a&gt; (mainly for writing theses).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2021-11-12T05:33:29.467" LastActivityDate="2021-11-12T05:33:29.467" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2658" CreationDate="2011-06-24T10:58:11.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is a lengthy piece, than keep in mind that presenting the structure of the document in some sort of table of contents and then writing sections in such a way that they can be read out of order can minimize your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, here are my two cents on writing expository piece:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;summary&lt;/em&gt; has to go at the beginning (if you are going to include it at all; don't reveal too much though), &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;background&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;justification&lt;/em&gt; are both part of &lt;em&gt;introduction&lt;/em&gt; (establish the interest and trust),&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;main part is where you present and elaborate your main points (discoveries that you bring to the reader),&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;conclusion recapitulates main points and draws main conclusions&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the nature and intrinsic structure of the content can justify almost any deviation from the proposed frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2166" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T10:58:11.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2011-06-24T13:21:57.093" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stephenking.com/faq.html&quot;&gt;Stephen King's website&lt;/a&gt; we learn that he used a pseudonym to be able to publish more than 1 book a year during a certain period of his carrer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I did that because back in the early&#xA;  days of my career there was a feeling&#xA;  in the publishing business that one&#xA;  book a year was all the public would&#xA;  accept [...].&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2061" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T13:21:57.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3186" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3188" CreationDate="2011-06-24T17:11:27.570" Score="10" ViewCount="17909" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have an English or Writing-related degree in any way. As of right now, I have no degree, but what I mean is that I'm not even pursuing a degree in writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does this hurt my chances? Do publishers tend to ignore writers without related degrees? What can I do to increase my chances if I don't get a degree? Should I be worried?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2017" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:56:11.083" LastActivityDate="2020-07-26T10:54:53.983" Title="No English degree, what are my chances on successfully publishing a novel?" Tags="|creative-writing|publishing|novel|education|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3186" CreationDate="2011-06-24T17:43:47.693" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, nobody in the publishing business cares if you have a degree. In fact, in the eyes of some agents and editors, having a degree in a writing-related field might actually be a drawback. It's hard to convince some people that their writing needs work when it has already been validated by a college degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I wouldn't say this is a widely-held belief or anything, and in any case, life experience tends to knock any sense of entitlement out of college graduates eventually, but certainly there are plenty of successful writers who do not have any formal training in writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers tend to buy books without regard for whether the author has an English or journalism degree. This makes publishers tend to care little as well. In the end, your book will be judged by publishers primarily based on whether they think they can sell it and/or whether it is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastEditorUserId="251" LastEditDate="2011-06-24T18:31:24.143" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T18:31:24.143" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3186" CreationDate="2011-06-24T18:28:38.557" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write something amazing. Make sure an editor looks over it for mistakes. If it's really good, nobody will care if you're a second-grade dropout or have a Ph.D. in teaching underwater basket-weaving to aardvarks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T18:28:38.557" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3186" CreationDate="2011-06-24T19:11:54.483" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you like to read books? When was the last time you said &quot;Oh My God! This writer is totally cool, but you know what, Im going to put him back on the self, coz, you know, he doesnt have a degree in English?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly, never.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like having a degree in physical education is not required for winning the Olympics, having a degree in English is not required for writing a successful book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing, like sports, is a very practical thing. Sure, you may go for coaching, ask for help on how to improve your weaknesses, but at the end of the day its not your bookish knowledge, but your practical experience that saves the day. So practice a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, looking at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jimchines.com/2010/03/survey-results/#Odds&quot;&gt;survey&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By far, the two most popular choices were conventions and writers groups, both of which were reported by more than half of our novelists.  The least popular choice?  The graduate degree in English/Writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T19:11:54.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3237" CreationDate="2011-06-25T07:42:44.293" Score="2" ViewCount="14590" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the web equivalent of formal letters? In this day and age, formal correspondence have all become digital, and it would be helpful to know the proper way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and please do highlight if there are different styles (the classic American vs British, maybe?) and how they differ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15620" OwnerDisplayName="Oxwivi" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T15:30:16.190" Title="How do you write a formal email?" Tags="|email|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3191" CreationDate="2011-06-25T08:32:21.390" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you're referring essentially to e-mails rather than anything web-specific (like filling in forms on web pages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in many languages, the notion of &quot;formal&quot; vs &quot;informal&quot; in e-mails has largely gone out of the window. My observations from business correspondence and other &quot;formal&quot; uses of e-mail would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use of &quot;Dear&quot; as the opening salutation rather than &quot;Hi&quot; or &quot;Hello&quot; (although if appropriate, things like &quot;To whom it may concern&quot;, &quot;FAO webmaster of randomdomain.com&quot; etc could also start an e-mail);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoidance of overly informal language in the body of the e-mail;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use of a short, neutral closing salutation such as &quot;Regards&quot;, &quot;Best regards&quot;, &quot;Best&quot;, &quot;Best wishes&quot; (people don't tend to use things like &quot;Yours sincerely/faithfully&quot; etc so much in an e-mail as they might in a letter);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inclusion of a signature that mentions corporate things such as a confidentiality policy etc as well as contact details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's more or less it as far as English is concerned. The e-mail medium seems to be overall less formal than traditional mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Neil Coffey" LastActivityDate="2011-06-25T08:32:21.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3193" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-25T19:18:14.327" Score="3" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a writer, but I have developed a website for them. Where can I advertise and publicize it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2232" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T15:57:26.510" Title="Where can I publicize a website I have developed for writers?" Tags="|websites|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3193" CreationDate="2011-06-25T19:45:13.540" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why, wherever writers can be found. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Various writers' forums will have places for announcements. You could try approaching writing blogs - emailing blogger, asking for a link to your site if they find it useful. There's magazines like Writer's Digest where you can advertise. Here on Writers.SE, the chat room is the most appropriate place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But really, beyond such rudimentary guidelines, you'll need to actually do some market research. I'm somewhat dubious about a site &quot;developed for writers&quot; if the development team doesn't know enough about writing to find some popular focal points. Find the places where people are talking about the problem your site solves, and advertise there. No?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-06-25T19:45:13.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3195" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-25T23:13:11.320" Score="5" ViewCount="182" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to writing. I have seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com&quot;&gt;Jeff Atwood's blog&lt;/a&gt; and I am really impressed how he writes. I have seen a similar manner on &lt;a href=&quot;http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page&quot;&gt;wordpress docs&lt;/a&gt; too. I am still confused with some issues while writing. Here they are,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I understand that important point should be made &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt; but I find that there are many important points that should be made bold.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What content should be  blockquoted?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When to use code sample except code snippets?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help me out. Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2234" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-06-26T03:42:20.443" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T10:32:34.407" Title="Formatting blog posts like the pros" Tags="|style|formatting|blog|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3195" CreationDate="2011-06-26T01:56:18.950" Score="6" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have that many important&#xA;points, make them a bulleted list instead of making them bold.&#xA;They will stand out without being&#xA;overwhelming.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blockquote is used to quote a big&#xA;block of text, as opposed to quoting&#xA;one or two sentences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-26T01:56:18.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3197" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-26T13:24:56.230" Score="3" ViewCount="37506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am to write a book &quot;review&quot; as an assignment, but really it's just a book summary. Our professor wants us to use the MLA format in this book review. Of course, the format includes rules on how to do proper citations and such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I cite anything when the entire report is a summary of a single book?&lt;/strong&gt; I don't expect to use anything from other books in the report, and I expect to basically pull out the important sentences in each chapter and rearrange them into a paragraph (because we are expected to have one paragraph per chapter). I feel like if I were to properly cite this, I would have to end every sentence with a page number in parentheses. Is this not the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, before it is brought up, I did look through the &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OWL&lt;/a&gt; and did not find an answer to this question)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2239" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-12-13T03:45:39.037" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T00:49:47.817" Title="MLA format for a book summary" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="575" CreationDate="2011-06-26T17:12:14.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't a binary choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to view this as a &quot;take it or leave it&quot; decision - this is something you can talk to your editor about. And you don't need to choose between your ending and your editor's proposed ending - you can write a &lt;em&gt;third&lt;/em&gt; ending, a fourth, a fifth, a sixteenth if need be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Odds are, both you and your editor have valid concerns about each other's preferred endings. They'll be a lot more complicated than &quot;upbeat vs. depressing,&quot; involving lots of factors and considerations, and &lt;strong&gt;once you understand why the editor isn't satisfied with your ending - odds are that you can come up with a new one that will satisfy both of you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are cases where an editor's view of a story differs vastly from the author's; sometimes you might disagree with an editor's concerns entirely, and then you'll need to decide whether publishing the work is worth the harm you feel is done to the story. (In this case, I think the two guiding principles are: how likely am I to be able to sell this to somebody else? And how do I feel about having my name signed to the revised story?.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the situation you're at right now is one where you disagree with the editor's proposal - not necessarily with his criticism. That's really not a problem, if you can incorporate those concerns and that criticism into something of your own, something that works with your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-10-27T15:35:27.277" LastActivityDate="2013-10-27T15:35:27.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3197" CreationDate="2011-06-26T21:24:07.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to go at this would be to treat it like any other writing assignment. Include the book you are reviewing in your Works Cited list, in MLA or whatever format your professor prefers. Then in the paper, when quoting or paraphrasing, you can use a parenthetical like (Surname 71). Unless the book's chapters are extremely short, a one-paragraph summary of a chapter should not have too much direct quotation or close paraphrasing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastActivityDate="2011-06-26T21:24:07.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3201" CreationDate="2011-06-27T00:03:26.137" Score="3" ViewCount="31106" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is okay to quote then how should i quote it. For example, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Many wealthy people are little more&#xA;  than janitors of their possessions.&quot;&#xA;  - Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if i don't know the writer, how should i quote it in an essay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way that come to my mind is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As someone once said, &quot;Many wealthy people are little more&#xA;  than janitors of their possessions.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anybody suggest some other effective ways to do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2064" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T11:24:17.750" Title="Is it okay to quote a saying, even if i don't know who said it?" Tags="|style|quotes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3200" CreationDate="2011-06-27T01:05:38.013" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In these days of googling, it's sloppy to not find the source of a quotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are quotes that have unclear origins, and for those, I guess you have some wiggle room.  I think the &quot;as someone once said,&quot; formulation is less than ideal because it feels casual and suggests that you just haven't bothered to investigate the origins of the quotation. This may be a time for the passive voice, ie. &quot;It has been said that&quot;, or it may be more appropriate to directly acknowledge the ambiguity, with a line like &quot;It is unclear who first said &quot;Yabba Dabba Do,&quot; but the words have been repeated often enough to suggest that they express a universal truth.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T01:05:38.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3200" CreationDate="2011-06-27T03:34:56.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been said that &quot;Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This idea reminds me of the famous quotation, &quot;Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to this particular idea, it reminds me of a certain quotation - &quot;Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions.&quot; - to which particular person I should attribute this quote to escapes me now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This idea, that &quot;many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions&quot; is perfect for this particular situation. I would like to give particular attribution to the quote - maybe someone can Google that for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1937" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T03:34:56.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3200" CreationDate="2011-06-27T08:10:10.450" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3200/is-it-okay-to-quote-a-saying-even-if-i-dont-know-who-said-it/3201#3201&quot;&gt;Kate Sherwood&lt;/a&gt;, you should be able to attribute most quotes these days by simple fact checking. I also like her suggestions for introducing the text, but you can also consider other, formal methods of citation and attribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In those cases where it's ambiguous as to who said it (for example, there's disagreement or debate over the true source), provide a citation using the title of a known work that references the quote, or debates who said it. Likewise, if the author is completely unknown, attribute it to the title of a work that has this saying in it, because obviously you must have used the quote from some existing source. (This would be in accordance with MLA guidelines. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/researchsources/documentation/mla/variationexamples.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Citing an Unknown Author&quot;&lt;/a&gt; for an example.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a last resort, perhaps attribute it to &quot;Anonymous&quot;, and provide the estimated year the saying seems to have come into use e.g. (Anonymous, ca. 1400).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the saying is so common as to be widely known, then the MLA guidelines state that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[y]ou do not need to give sources&lt;/a&gt; for familiar proverbs, well-known quotations or common knowledge. Remember, this is a rhetorical choice, based on audience. If you're writing for an expert audience of a scholarly journal, for example, they'll have different expectations of what constitutes common knowledge.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T11:24:17.750" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3197" CreationDate="2011-06-27T08:38:28.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;MLA guidelines suggest that, &lt;a href=&quot;http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/researchsources/documentation/mla/variationexamples.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;when citing an entire work&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;it is best to paraphrase the information being used. This way, the author's name (or the name of the work, if it is anonymous), is mentioned in the sentence, but there is no need for particular documentation at the end of the sentence.&quot; The example given is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Turner's study served to redirect radically the discourse on Gullah that had developed to that point.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, even though there is no parenthetical citation, you're still clearly indicating what work you are citing. Then all you need to do is reference the work in your bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, when it becomes necessary to quote from the work, or you want to make clear what page in the work you're referring to, simply provide an in-line citation referencing the page number, since you've already made it explicit what work you're referring to. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;The book &quot;Blah Blah Blah&quot; is an exploration of waffle in the 21st Century. As the author makes clear, &quot;the advent of on-line communication has made it easier than ever before to disseminate blah blah to a wide audience&quot; (5). He goes on to elaborate that &quot;blah blah is also now a load of wibble&quot; (32).&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150520053922/http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/resdoc5e/RES5e_ch08_s1-0001.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;repeated citations from the same source&lt;/a&gt;&quot; for a further example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="36395" LastEditDate="2019-01-30T00:49:47.817" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T00:49:47.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3195" CreationDate="2011-06-27T10:18:04.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you find that you need to bold too many points this suggests that either &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the content you have is very dry (equally important and factual where you can not put much emphasis)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you have not thought through what to emphasize (and why) and what are &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; your main points that need emphasis (in the context of the text)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blockquote can be used whenever you quote text (What Lauren says is true, it works better on longer, paragraph size quotes, but it should not be a problem for shorter ones, too - what &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; ugly is when you have many blockquotes of very short lines with &lt;em&gt;too little&lt;/em&gt; regular text in between)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code &lt;em&gt;block&lt;/em&gt; only for blocks of code. There is also `code formatting`, which produces inline &lt;code&gt;code formatting&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2166" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T10:18:04.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3195" CreationDate="2011-06-27T10:32:34.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On bolding:&lt;/strong&gt; Assume that on a casual browse, the reader's eye will always leap first to headers, and to words in bold. They'll help him understand the structure of your piece, and the most important bits. Here's a simple example - the bolded opening lines give structure, and a few key concepts are bolded to stand out immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Drinking MegaPop is bad for your health.&lt;/strong&gt; Its ingredients include cyanide, pesticide, cidercide and patricide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Drinking MegaPop is bad for the environment.&lt;/strong&gt; Every year, thousands of adorable bunnies are killed by MegaPop executives, and used as fuel for their ozone-depletion devices. Scientists with exceptionally big foreheads contend that merely by placing a blanket ban on all production of MegaPop, they expect that &lt;strong&gt;garbage production in the United States would drop by 170%&lt;/strong&gt; and every citizen would get a free Smokey the Bear lapel pin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Drinking MegaPop is bad for international politics.&lt;/strong&gt; The League of Foreigners Who Don't Like Us have cited the bitter breath caused by MegaPop as their #1 reason for disliking us. MegaPop has been shown to cause leaders to make irrational, unwise decisions (such as consuming more MegaPop). Remember: &lt;strong&gt;a nation that drinks MegaPop is a nation that cannot be trusted.&lt;/strong&gt; Don't let us be that nation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On blockquotes:&lt;/strong&gt; Blockquotes are generally used for presenting quotes from other work; a quote that's more than a line or two should be blockquoted because that clearly differentiates it from the main flow of the text, from your blog post addressing the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blockquotes are similarly appropriate for other snippets that disrupt the main flow of your writing. The example I gave above for bolding is blockquoted; that makes it very clear that that section is different from the rest of the text. It makes it very clear where the example begins and where it ends. So: examples, long asides, imaginary scenes (&amp;quot;Oh, yeah! I could totally imagine Agent Scully meeting Captain Picard! It'd probably go something like this:...&amp;quot;) and other such diversions can be blockquoted, particularly if they make the structure more clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On code snippets:&lt;/strong&gt; only for code, or examples of computer input/output, copy-pasting from a shell command line, etc.. It's basically a blockquote formatted specially for code (which would, as per above explanation, be a disruption of the main, prose-written flow of the post).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T10:32:34.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3208" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-27T16:45:06.347" Score="1" ViewCount="428" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I have a few questions that I'll address in a short little list. I figure it's best to include them all in one rather than dumping several questions on you guys, since they all relate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) When attempting to publish a fantasy book, how do I want to select a publisher? Is it possible to find a list of publishers that publish specifically fantasy books?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Similar to #1, but for agents. Are some agents specifically geared towards fantasy books?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Similar to #1 and #2, but for editors that don't work for the publishers. Does this matter? Should I only go with a &quot;fantasy&quot; editor?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4) Am I right in assuming that a fantasy book will garner much less interest than a realistic fiction novel?&lt;/strong&gt; On one hand, fantasy has its own market of readers that are always looking for new, great fantasy books... and on the other hand, realistic fiction is much more widely read than fantasy books (obviously with some exceptions within the genre).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5) What are some good resources for writing fantasy? Things to consider, things to do or not do?&lt;/strong&gt; I realize this question might be vague, but I wonder if you guys might be able to share some good links to some reading, or even books on the topic. I'm not asking for a list of everything possible, but any advice or resources you can share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks guys!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2017" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T12:10:18.747" Title="Publishing Fantasy versus Realistic Fiction (multiple questions)" Tags="|publishing|fantasy|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2011-06-28T15:18:32.993" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3186" CreationDate="2011-06-27T21:54:26.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;keep trying and it will work out!  write your best. I don't have an english degree and I am in the process of working with a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2186" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T21:54:26.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3212" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-28T08:50:33.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Modern Language Association (MLA) style is widely used in the liberal arts and humanities as a guideline for manuscript formatting and English usage, as well as a referencing system for bibliographies and citations. Questions with this tag should be specifically related to the MLA style, such as clarifications of rules, how to implement recommendations, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MLA Formatting and Style Guide&lt;/a&gt; at Purdue Online Writing Lab&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_MLA_Handbook_for_Writers_of_Research_Papers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers&lt;/a&gt; at Wikipedia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T08:58:39.943" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T08:58:39.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3213" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-28T08:50:33.863" Score="0" Body="Questions related to the Modern Language Association (MLA) writing and formatting style" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T08:58:37.103" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T08:58:37.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3214" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-28T10:35:39.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In writing, genre refers to the classification or categorisation given to a type of work often based on content, style or form. Examples of common genres are crime, science fiction, romance, and fantasy, all of which have their own particular conventions, styles, and content. Questions with this tag should be about writing in a specific genre, or about genres in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T10:42:02.703" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T10:42:02.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3215" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-28T10:35:39.273" Score="0" Body="Questions about writing in specific genres, such as science fiction, or about genres in general." OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T10:42:05.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T10:42:05.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3216" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-28T12:03:26.903" Score="4" ViewCount="3541" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read somewhere that authors sometimes use cards to write down information about the characters in their stories. I assume these were small cards so what was written them had to be concise. What sort of details did they write on them? Something about their appearance or their psychology/beliefs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2243" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T18:53:29.493" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T04:52:16.090" Title="Writing character cards?" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3217" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3218" CreationDate="2011-06-28T12:17:41.137" Score="4" ViewCount="396" Body="&lt;p&gt;What would be a good style for writing a story from one point of view while keeping the narration interesting? I mean you can't go into too much detail as what a person does during the day is fine for a diary but not something that is supposed to entertain people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that some of the few biographies I've read tend to skip detail or switch between events, descriptions of people and sometimes explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nicolas Hulot's &quot;Les chemins de traverse&quot; is an example of this. This examples also makes me wonder how you distance yourself from events that were emotionally charged while writing. In his autobiography he relates how his brother let himself die in the cellar without telling anyone. It's a terrible thing to live through but not everyone would have the same view of the event and it's definitely relevant as it's what got him to become some sort of adventurer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2243" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T12:23:13.960" Title="Style of writing as told from the point of view of the main character" Tags="|style|fiction|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3217" CreationDate="2011-06-28T18:30:05.867" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the simplistic answer, but you are asking a very basic question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to keep a narrative interesting in the first person (or from any POV, for that matter), is to leave out detail that doesn't advance character development or plot, or isn't interesting for some other reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writing teachers and critics will tell you never to use the first person because the minutiae of one's daily life are not necessarily interesting to readers. That's hogwash. Where is it written that first-person narratives have to include boring, irrelevant detail? The only reason to forego that POV is if you can't do it well. Plenty of great writing has been done from the first-person perspective, from the earliest novels (which were actually done in an epistolary style) to the most modern fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastEditorUserId="633" LastEditDate="2011-06-30T12:23:13.960" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T12:23:13.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3224" CreationDate="2011-06-28T19:57:27.430" Score="13" ViewCount="749" Body="&lt;p&gt;When attempting to publish a fantasy book, how will I go about selecting a publisher? Is it possible to find a list of publishers that publish specifically fantasy books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to publishers being genre-specific, does this apply for agents? Editors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2017" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T02:07:34.487" Title="When publishing a Fantasy novel, do I look for a specific Fantasy-only publisher, editor, and/or agent?" Tags="|publishing|novel|fantasy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3220" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3231" CreationDate="2011-06-28T20:02:52.357" Score="3" ViewCount="3375" Body="&lt;p&gt;Am I right in assuming that a fantasy book will garner much less interest than a realistic fiction novel? On one hand, fantasy has its own market of readers that are always looking for new, great fantasy books... and on the other hand, realistic fiction is much more widely read than fantasy books (obviously with some exceptions within the genre).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any opinions or sites that have stats would help a great deal, thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2017" LastActivityDate="2021-08-25T10:21:28.643" Title="Do Fantasy novels have less readership than a Realistic Fiction novel?" Tags="|novel|fantasy|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3216" CreationDate="2011-06-28T20:14:39.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this answers your question, but are you talking about a system &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.articlesbase.com/fiction-articles/how-to-use-index-cards-to-write-a-novel-outline-517073.html#axzz1QbTgcFor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;like this one&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found &lt;a href=&quot;http://pbackwriter.blogspot.com/2007/09/novel-outlining-101.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this resource&lt;/a&gt; about outlining a Novel that I think would be good to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are two resources I looked at in the past when I wanted to know how best to outline a novel. I understand your question, because, while Standback is correct in saying that every person is different and every bit of importance in the book is different, there are good and bad methods to writing a story, and learning about those good and bad methods might help you find one that works best to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2017" LastEditorUserId="2017" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T20:23:52.283" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T20:23:52.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3220" CreationDate="2011-06-28T21:04:11.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The plural of anecdote is not data... but speaking from my own experience, sci-fi and fantasy are just about all I read. So it doesn't matter how popular the &lt;i&gt;Girl Who Kicked the Dragon Fire Tattoo in Swedish&lt;/i&gt; books are, I am never going to read them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I buy multiple copies of books by Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey, Gael Baudino, and Isaac Asimov, to have different covers and to have copies to give to friends. I will champion &lt;i&gt;Gossamer Axe&lt;/i&gt; for years. I couldn't tell you who was on the Amazon bestseller list last week.* &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Actually I could: It was &lt;i&gt;Go The Fuck To Sleep.&lt;/i&gt; But that's the exception which proves the rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T21:04:11.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3216" CreationDate="2011-06-28T21:08:12.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term &quot;card&quot; is fungible. Your card can be a 36x48 poster or seventeen pages in Scrivener or an entire notebook of thoughts. It could be a character quiz, a playlist, a drawing, a list of favorite books, photos of actors, bullet points, quotes, or all of the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever helps you as the author to get a handle on your character so you know how the character will behave in the situation you are creating is what you put on your card. And not all the things on the card have to go into the story, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T21:08:12.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2011-06-28T21:37:43.733" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely.  Agents specialize in the genres where they know editors (or they specialize, SO they know editors) and of course some publishers don't publish fantasy at all, while others focus on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get basic information on this by looking at the books you think yours resemble. You can generally find an author's agent just by googling the author's name and the word 'agent', and you can obviously find the book's publisher just by looking at the book.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also lists available.  Assuming you're going the traditional 'agent then publisher' route, check out querytracker.net and/or agentquery.com.  You could also look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SciFi Writers of America site&lt;/a&gt;, paying special attention to their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Writer Beware&quot; section&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-06-29T07:50:30.790" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T07:50:30.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3225" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3234" CreationDate="2011-06-29T05:06:04.807" Score="14" ViewCount="6222" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable to pace my chapters in terms of an event? Can I get away with a 4 page chapter here, and a 30 page chapter there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any reason why I should or should not be sticking to a specific page range for my chapters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I basically just don't know what I should be doing with my chapters, and even if something I do is &quot;acceptable&quot;, I don't want to piss off any readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen the posts &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/when-should-a-chapter-end&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/41/what-is-a-normal-length-for-a-chapter&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/976/examples-for-books-that-dont-use-traditional-chapters&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but I could not find the answers I am looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The posts linked above highlight a typical word count for a chapter and mention that chapters should end when a scene is over, but for clarity, I want to know if it's &lt;em&gt;all right&lt;/em&gt; that a chapter ends if a scene is super quick, rather than doing the technique of &quot;line break, line break, asterisks, line break, line break&quot; etc. kind of thing to break up events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to fluff up my chapters because I feel like that's really frustrating and unnecessary. Sometimes, a scene is only 8 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that okay? Why or why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks guys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2017" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T09:58:29.533" Title="How should I break up chapters in a novel?" Tags="|novel|formatting|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2011-06-29T08:07:16.907" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no problem with that. As a child I would sometimes count the number of pages in the next chapter just to see whether it was really time for lights out (the fact it was after midnight didn't make a big impact on my decision). The reason for regular length chapters is more to do with serials being turned into novels than any stylistic necessity. Many great authors have never stood on ceremony about such things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T08:07:16.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2011-06-29T08:09:25.457" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not add unnecessary details just to fill up your page count of a chapter. The trick in fiction writing is getting rid of the unnecessary stuff, not adding it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many readers do not want to stop mid-chapter while reading. So you can think about dividing a 30 pages chapter into two chapter, but only if it makes sense to the story. Do not split mid-scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all you have to tell in one chapter fits on four, three, two, or one page(s), write it down and go to the next chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapters define the structure of your story. (Some authors don't use chapters, so it is not a must-have). This structure should follow the logic of the plot, not arbitrary page counts. If you are unsure, if a chapter has enough pages, it could be (but need not), that this chapter has other problems. Maybe it should be later or sooner in the book, or need to be re-written, or something else. If you can't figure out yet, just go on with the next chapter. After finishing the first draft, many things are clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T08:09:25.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3216" CreationDate="2011-06-29T08:41:44.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As much as you need to understand the character. This might be as simple as you want, like just the name, physical characteristics(small and thin), and a rough psychological profile(like character loses temper often and is controlling).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I've heard of authors go down to excruciating detail, like what their sun sign is, what their quirks and hobbies are, a complete Freudian psychoanalysis of the main characters , and which brand of breakfast cereal they love :) . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you are writing a literary novel, you don't need this much detail. Maybe a paragraph or two for all the minor characters, and one page for the main character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T08:41:44.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3220" CreationDate="2011-06-29T09:10:47.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With realistic novels- I assume you mean thrillers. And not 200 pages on how Betty goes to work and comes home everyday. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All selling novels have an element of fantasy and make believe. In thrillers, it maybe the hero taking on 200 Al Qaeda members alone while flirting with supermodels. In fantasy, it maybe an elf taking on 200 members of orcs while flirting with fairies. :) But in either case, the reader is expecting to leave the normal world behind, and enter a world of adventure and excitement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While its true thrillers(itself a huge genre- crime thrillers, military, legal etc) books usually top the best sellers list(at least based on my quick look in the local book stores), there are also more of these type of books, and hence more writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sci-Fi and Fantasy, while they maybe a smaller market comparatively, have a much more loyal following. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, you can't write books like a business plan- X sells most, so I will write X. It will be dishonest, and your readers will see it. Instead, write what you love. And leave the selling to salesmen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T09:10:47.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3220" CreationDate="2011-06-29T09:15:57.397" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Realistic Fiction&quot; isn't a single genre. You've got literary fiction, thrillers, mysteries, romances, and more. Each has its own target audience, some wider than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, bestseller lists might be interesting, but they may also be misleading - because most books aren't bestsellers, aren't written to be, aren't marketed to be. What you're really interested in is more along the lines of &quot;average sales of books within the genre over time,&quot; and hard statistics on those will be very difficult to garner - but professionals in publishing may be able to give a rough estimate, or compare orders of magnitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I do know: fantasy (and science-fiction) has a wide market of voracious readers, always eager to find something new and exciting, and happy to share new discoveries with the community at large (often with great enthusiasm, and physical intimidation if necessary). It's hard to stand out from the crowd, to differentiate yourself from a glut of books that may or may not be similar to your own. But if you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; gain a core fan base, you can do pretty well for yourself, compared with midlist books in other less fannish genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T09:15:57.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3220" CreationDate="2011-06-29T10:22:39.943" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming that when you say &quot;realistic fiction&quot;, what you really mean is &quot;non-fantasy fiction&quot;. Then the answer is, of course fantasy has less of a readership than &quot;realistic&quot; fiction, because you're comparing one genre against the collective power of all other genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we start looking at comparisons between genres, fantasy is probably at the low-end of the scale. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://unleadedwriting.com/2009/08/14/genre-sales-statistics/&quot;&gt;statistics on genre sales I could find&lt;/a&gt; (for US sales, 2009) suggest romance is king, with around 21% of book sales. Science Fiction and Fantasy together account for approximately 7.8% of the market, with Mystery taking up around 6.7%. I imagine if you split Science Fiction and Fantasy into separate groups, Mystery would then be higher than both. Keep in mind, that's just raw sales. If you start looking at core readership numbers, I suspect speculative fiction will be far, far lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite its small readership size compared to other genres, speculative fiction readership more than makes up for this by the fact that they hoover up just about anything good that they can lay their hands on. Orson Scott Card has written about this before in his book &quot;How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy&quot;, and goes to great lengths to point out that speculative fiction lovers reward good authors in spades. They're also more often open to the strange and the wonderful that just doesn't &quot;fit&quot; elsewhere. In short, there's a lot of opportunity for writers in the fantasy genre to have a captive audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which leads on to your question about whether &quot;a fantasy book will garner much less interest than a realistic fiction novel&quot;. You need to define what you mean by &quot;interest&quot;. Do you mean raw book sales, with huge success across the world? Massive publicity and fanfare? A book that is read by anyone and everyone, despite the fact that it's fantasy? Look at the Harry Potter books as a demonstration of just how much interest fantasy books can generate. Or Neil Gaiman's work. Or Terry Pratchett. Or the Twilight saga.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, you may say that those are just exceptions. Sure, not all fantasy books have such great success. But that comes back to what you mean by interest. Do you mean interest within the genre? A well-written fantasy book may not always be on the top best-seller lists, but it will generate a heck of a lot of interest among fantasy lovers. Consider the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, one of the best fantasy works I've ever read. Didn't make big waves outside the fantasy genre, but it sure as hell generated a lot of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long and the short of it is that you will always have a market that is interested if you write good fantasy fiction. Don't worry if that readership has smaller numbers. Write well, write what you love, and you'll be rewarded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T10:22:39.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3232" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3248" CreationDate="2011-06-29T10:42:51.103" Score="2" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if I can ask about this in this site. But anyway I'll give it a shot. (This question is a spin-off from EL&amp;amp;U.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a skit from a radio English conversation program, dealing with American English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: guest B: front desk clerk C: A's wife&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(at the front desk of a hotel)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: I have a reservation for a room under the name of Hal Lloyd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B: I can't seem to pull up your reservation. Do you have a confirmation number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: It's 7228.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B: Here it is. We don't have any more standard rooms available. I'm going to put you in our deluxe room with a kitchenette.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: That's fine with us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(in the deluxe room)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: The room is decorated very tastefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C: It's very nice! I'&lt;strong&gt;m going to&lt;/strong&gt; sit down in this plush sofa and read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hear that some people say C's “I’m going to …” line is a little strange. I'd like to know the reason &lt;strong&gt;why this sounds strange&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;how you would feel&lt;/strong&gt; from the sentence in detail. Also, I'd like to know &lt;strong&gt;what words you would use&lt;/strong&gt; to rewrite it as a scriptwriter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd appreciate it if you could help me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1969" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T14:08:27.477" Title="How should this ‘be going to’ be revised?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3217" CreationDate="2011-06-29T11:12:22.753" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see the connection between First Person and including mundane events.  You COULD include mundane events in Second or Third Person, too, if you were so inclined, but hopefully you aren't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on what you need the scene to do.  Hopefully it's designed to advance characterization and/or plot (hopefully 'and', rather than 'or').  So what is needed for that to work?  Some details may add to your story, especially if you're working on setting a vivid scene, but only if the details are significant.  If they're mundane and pointless, they have no place in a work of any POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That isn't to say that some things that seem mundane truly ARE.  If a character gets up, brushes his teeth, uses the toilet, has a shower and gets dressed without incident, that's mundane, UNLESS the character has just witnessed a grisly murder, and you're using the simple details to show that your character is a psychopath who has not been affected by the events, or something like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, everything should have a point, regardless of POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-06-29T11:28:51.183" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T11:28:51.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2011-06-29T11:46:31.357" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chapter length is often about pace.  This can apply to a single chapter (i.e. ending on with a cliffhanger), but it can also apply to your novel as a whole.  If each chapter is a radically different size than the last, it may be jarring for the reader.  You may want that though.  If you have three medium-length chapters followed by a very short one, it is going to cause a sense of urgency and surprise.  As long as that is what you are going for, it can be very effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter length, like everything in your piece, is just another tool to influence the readers experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Never &quot;fluff&quot; your writing.  No good will come from it. Your reader will be able to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; One more point: The structure of your novel is not going be the same in your first draft as when you finally submit it to an agent/publisher.  In the meantime, you will have realized some things worked, some didn't, and some things needed to be moved for clarity or suspense or pace or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry too much about chapter length in your first draft. It's by your final draft where you need to perfect it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastEditorUserId="181" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T15:56:09.043" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T15:56:09.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3232" CreationDate="2011-06-29T14:29:03.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is better suited for EL&amp;amp;U, but if you say this is a spin-off (you haven't provided the link), I'm fine with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can say, there is nothing wrong with your sentence and it does not sound strange. But maybe the &quot;people who say this&quot;, prefer the Present Continuous to express this future task (sitting down and reading).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm sitting down on this plush sofa and reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://esl.about.com/od/grammarstructures/a/future_forms.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;esl.about.com&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;going to&quot; is used for distant future intentions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-06-30T13:15:38.537" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T13:15:38.537" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2011-06-29T14:35:16.037" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;SFWA's site also has a list of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/join-us/sfwa-membership-requirements/#novel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;qualifying novel venues&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (publishers that count as a professional sale in order to qualify for SFWA membership). These publishers release most of the fantasy novels published in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many don't accept un-agented submissions, however. Those that do often have long turnaround times (very, very long turnaround times). So be patient. And good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2248" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T14:35:16.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3191" CreationDate="2011-06-29T15:30:16.190" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Formal style in email is appropriate in a variety of situations: job-seeking, academia and business (especially when writing to someone more senior), and when you make a request of someone you don't know personally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the other person or organization has set the tone first, you may want to try to match it or be only a little more formal in a response; consider email a note rather than a full letter. For example, if I dash off a message to let a webmaster know about a problem, I may use &quot;Hi,&quot; and &quot;Thanks!&quot; But my boss may send me a message without any salutation or signature and I'll nearly always use one in my response:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jane Doe —&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Body of email.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Thanks,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  My Name&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  My Automatically Appended Signature Block (other methods of contact here)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find this reference helpful, by Adam Turner, HYU CTL - it's designed for non-native speakers in academia, but I'd recommend the general guidelines to anyone:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hanyangowl.org/media/formalemail/coreformalemail.pdf&quot;&gt;English Solutions for Graduate Research Writing: Formal Email&lt;/a&gt; [PDF],  or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hanyangowl.org/media/formalemail/formalemailformat.pdf&quot;&gt;short version, a handout focusing on email style&lt;/a&gt; [PDF]. The first reference discusses subtleties in salutations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Correct punctuation is important because it can show the relationship between the speakers. It is meaningful. When I email other English professors for the first time, I often start like this:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Dear Professor Taylor:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  After we exchange email and I know a bit more about the person, such as that they are a similar age and status, I might change to&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Dear Professor Taylor,&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Finally, as we get to know each other or after we have met in person, I might change my greeting to&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Dear Robert,&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure everyone will be sensitive to all levels of punctuation here, but you're unlikely to go wrong with this format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This reference also gives some great examples of how to couch requests politely in formal email. The guidelines given seem appropriate for an American business audience, certainly. An excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don’t demand or ask for a positive result, whether it is for a job or a journal article.  Examples  ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [NO]: I am waiting for your answer soon.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [NO]: I expect that I get help from you.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [YES]: &lt;strong&gt;Thank you for considering my application.&lt;/strong&gt;  ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [YES]: &lt;strong&gt;I look forward to your reply.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [YES]: &lt;strong&gt;If you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact me at&lt;/strong&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1992" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T15:30:16.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3193" CreationDate="2011-06-29T15:57:26.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Spread it at InkPop.com. We like spreading the word on new communities and sites for writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1958" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T15:57:26.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2011-06-29T16:45:51.057" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Charlie Stross is an SF writer and tech maven. He's written quite a bit about writing on an iPad. He doesn't use it as his primary writing machine, but finds it a convenient travel device. Stross thinks the iPad can be a good writing tool -- but you &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; have an external keyboard. There's a lot of detail at the links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A first report &quot;Word Processing: Now this is currently a bad situation.&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/05/gadget-patrol-ipad.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/05/gadget-patrol-ipad.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A month later, briefly, &quot;some notes on the subject of writing with an iPad.&quot; He briefly covers word processors (both programs and workflow), keyboards, and stands. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/05/ipad-writing-stuff.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/05/ipad-writing-stuff.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Unless I'm planning on doing Serious Work, the iPad is acceptable.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/06/gadget-patrol-ipad-a-month-on.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/06/gadget-patrol-ipad-a-month-on.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;An iPad is a sufficiently powerful computer for email, web browsing, some light duty writing, and so on for a week long trip.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/02/travel-tips.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/02/travel-tips.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Stuff I can't do with the iPad? ... Research-driven writing that requires me to have a multi-tabbed browser and a word processing app open simultaneously.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/holding-pattern-1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/holding-pattern-1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Okay, suppose you have an iPad and want to shovel text into it. What are your options?&quot; Toward that end, he tests many keyboards. There's a lot of detail about his experience, and how keyboards trade off size and functionality. He prefers the Targus, but YMMV.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/06/ipad-corner.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/06/ipad-corner.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2248" LastEditorUserId="2248" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T18:48:34.317" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T18:48:34.317" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3240" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-30T05:13:57.013" Score="6" ViewCount="390" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to hear a few words about travel writing. What qualities make for the most engrossing stories, especially for readers who are just sort of gauging their interest? I've read a number of articles mostly containing general advice or regarding particular conventions, and they're helpful, but I'm looking for opinions that are a little more specific and insightful, the nooks and crannies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2228" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T02:32:05.073" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T02:32:05.073" Title="What makes for interesting travel writing/blogging?" Tags="|non-fiction|blog|magazines|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3240" CreationDate="2011-06-30T08:45:01.097" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say your question is not too open-ended, but instead that the answer is the same as most questions about interesting writing: &lt;strong&gt;you have to make it interesting.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes up the &quot;interesting bits&quot; can vary depending on the reader, but ultimately it will come down to taking your readers with you on the journey.  As always, &lt;strong&gt;show, don't tell&lt;/strong&gt;.  If you find yourself describing landscapes or interactions, then you might be in trouble.  But if you talk about what you experienced while in that place, your far more likely to capture your reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing in the first person, your audience is going to want to believe that you were there.  They are going to want to know not only what you saw, but also what you &lt;strong&gt;touched and tasted and smelled and sensed&lt;/strong&gt;.  If you are writing in the second person (which, for travelogues, is an option), they are going to want to believe &lt;strong&gt;they&lt;/strong&gt; are there. They to want to know what &lt;strong&gt;they&lt;/strong&gt; are touching and tasting and smelling and sensing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it comes down to the same ol' writing clichés: show, don't tell; and &lt;strong&gt;focus on the action&lt;/strong&gt; (and the details around it).  If you described a mountain, that's okay.  If you relate your journey climbing the mountain and how the rock felt in your hand and how the thin air tasted in your mouth and felt in your lungs, that's when they are going to want to turn to the next page...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T08:45:01.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3232" CreationDate="2011-06-30T09:25:39.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, there's nothing wrong with the English itself, so I wouldn't change it for that reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reason I can think of that would make it strange is if the meaning conveyed doesn't match what happens next. &quot;I'm going to sit down in this plush sofa and read&quot; suggests this is something C's about to do, particularly because she said it when she saw the chair. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not the case, then &quot;I'm going to&quot; would come across a bit odd. In my opinion, &quot;going to&quot; in this case does not suggest a distant future intention. For example: &quot;You're going to drop those dishes&quot; suggests it's something about to happen based on a visual clue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, perhaps something like &quot;I can't wait to sit down in this plush sofa and read&quot; would work a little better in conveying something she wants to do, but isn't going to right now. Or, &quot;I'm going to sit down in this plush sofa and read at the first chance I get.&quot; Or, &quot;I'm going to sit down in this plush sofa later and read.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just one thing I wanted to mention: &quot;sit down in&quot; is what I actually find odd in this sentence. &quot;sit down on&quot; seems more correct to me, because &quot;sit down in&quot; implies you're &quot;in&quot; the sofa performing the act of sitting down, like you sit down in a waiting room, or sit down in a lounge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T09:25:39.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3240" CreationDate="2011-06-30T09:27:20.123" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say- make it interesting for a human being, not a statistics gathering computer. Don't give the number of airports or hills, don't tell me what the currency rate is. I can find these things on Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, give your opinion. What did you see? What did you like? What wasn't so great? Was the mountain top beautiful? But did you get ripped off on the way up by the bus driver, and you recommend others take a taxi instead? I want to know what you felt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to recommend hotels/restaurants, as long as you don't make it look like a paid commercial. Readers will know if you are giving an honest opinion, or if you are just being paid to say good things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post pictures. A picture is worth a 1000 words. Rather than say the mountain was beautiful, post a picture you took of the sunset there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mention easy ways to travel. Is there a good public service transport service? The first thing I do before going to a new place, I find out how I can travel around. Official websites give useless info, like bus numbers. Give me info that is useful- that while there are a lot of buses, they have a poor service, and I'm better off walking to most places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: Don't repeat what is there on the official documents/websites. This information is often incorrect, out of date, or 'beautified'. In a good travel article, I find hope to read stuff the official website didn't tell me, and how the traveller on the ground felt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorDisplayName="user12726" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T02:11:23.660" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T02:11:23.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3240" CreationDate="2011-06-30T10:14:49.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect that what will be interesting depends on your target audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're targeting audiences that are looking to travel somewhere, then they'll probably want to know a bit about the history of the place, its people, details and places to go that are &quot;off the beaten track&quot;, and so on, and less about stories. For example, I myself rarely read travel writing, except if I'm planning on going somewhere, and so I tend to look for things that tell me about where I am going, and things I can do there. If I can find somewhere that's away from the crowds of tourists, so much the better. I'm often not terribly interested in stories about the person who went there, and what they experienced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing a piece of travel life-writing and you want to attract an audience who enjoy reading about adventures and mishaps of the writer in far-flung places and cultures, then your focus is going to be very much on your journey, the life stories you've experienced that your readership can relate to, just like in fiction writing. It's got to be personal. It may include history and details etc., but the focus is more on what you experienced at a personal level. Consider Michael Palin's TV series where he travelled around various countries, for example, which was designed more to entertain than enlighten (although it did). Or Tim Butcher's excellent &quot;Blood River&quot;. Both of these are good examples to draw ideas from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have already said, remember to adopt good fiction-writing techniques (setting, dialogue, characterisation, research) to tell your story, just as you would normally. Also remember, it can still be &quot;true&quot; to what you want to say, even if you have to make up some of the dialogue, or change some minor details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can try combine both approaches to attract both types of audiences by writing your travel stories, and then including extra information for would be travellers in a sidebar, an additional post (if blogging), or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T10:14:49.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3250" CreationDate="2011-06-30T12:32:22.633" Score="38" ViewCount="6454" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 10,000 hour rule, popularised by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_%28book%29&quot;&gt;Malcolm Gladwell&lt;/a&gt;, says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to be a good writer, you need to be a very good reader, writer and editor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of us have been reading books since we were kids, and easily have tens of  thousands of hours reading practice. Yet, most readers don't become good writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, everyone has written emails, formal documents, maybe even a few short stories. Yet most people still suck at writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how does the 10,000 hour rule apply to writing? What do we need to practice, to become experts at writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T08:23:57.183" Title="How does the 10,000 hour rule apply to writing?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3245" CreationDate="2011-06-30T13:39:57.963" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing, of course. If you want to write fiction, then writing fiction. Anything else might be helpful, but it's not practicing the actual thing you want to be getting good at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading might give you ideas, familiarity with structure and narrative convention, etc. etc. And writing emails and blogposts might give you some vocabulary, eloquence, clarity of expression perhaps - but writing needs to do much more, and entirely differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that Gladwell says &lt;strong&gt;a specific task&lt;/strong&gt;. Writing's got a whole lot of parts to it, sure, but however you break it up, there's an awful lot of those parts that really don't get exercised by anything but doing actual, real, honest-to-goodness writing. Worldbuilding, character development, crafting resonant imagery, pacing, plotting - these are all necessary skills you're not going to get anywhere else. (And no, reading somebody else who's done them is not the same, just as you can't start composing merely by listening to 10,000 hours of Mozart.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T13:39:57.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3245" CreationDate="2011-06-30T13:41:57.063" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Easy answer: You need to practice writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complex answer: You can try for decades to carve wood and assemble it to a table; if you are doing it wrong all the time, you'll never become a carpenter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another saying: You have one million words of shit in your writing. Write them down and get rid of them, then you can become an expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is not the &quot;writing&quot; part, it's the &quot;get rid of them&quot; part. You have to learn, you have to improve. Just reading a book is not enough. You have to read it in a way, so you can learn, what the author did right, what wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the same with the stuff you write. You need to know what's good, what's bad. You have to learn techniques to improve your writing. All in all, hard work with no definite outcome. Ask a carpenter, he will tell you the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T13:41:57.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3232" CreationDate="2011-06-30T13:58:25.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The English is fine, but as Janet at EL&amp;amp;U said, it does feel artificial. Not because of the phrasing, but because of the content - C is announcing her intention to do something very uninteresting (sit down and read), and is pointlessly explicit in describing the sofa. Most people wouldn't feel the need to announce something like that; they'd just sit down and start reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in language lessons, artificiality is par for the course - you want plain, simple, clear sentences, with focus on the words you're trying to teach, and not too many difficult words &lt;em&gt;besides&lt;/em&gt; the ones you're teaching. Linguistic eloquence is not a major factor, so this piece would be fine. (Also, most actors could pull this line off just fine without even seeming artificial - it just takes more consideration than the casual reader will give it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want a plausible rewrite, either strike the line entirely, or put in some obvious reason for the line, or perhaps some character:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It's very nice! I'm going to sit down in this plush sofa and read - will you come sit with me?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It's very nice! Let's not unpack right away - I want to sit down in this plush sofa an read for a while.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It's very nice! And look what a beautiful, plush sofa - oh, I just want to curl up in it with a good book this very moment!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-06-30T14:08:27.477" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T14:08:27.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3245" CreationDate="2011-06-30T15:53:16.867" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;John Smithers and I read the same proverb. :) In &lt;i&gt;The Rivan Codex,&lt;/i&gt; which is the encyclopedia/slush book for David and Leigh Eddings's Belgariad/Malloreon series, Eddings says (I'm paraphrasing from memory) &quot;You want to write? Good. Write at least one million words. Now throw all that away, because your first million words are terrible. Start writing again now that you have some practice.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ten thousand hours (of writing), one million words (of writing) &amp;mdash; the gist of it is that you must practice the craft to excel in it. Watching ten thousand hours of Star Trek doesn't make me qualified to be a starship captain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T15:53:16.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3245" CreationDate="2011-06-30T16:29:10.773" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;As everyone has said already, writing is ultimately the key.  The more you write the better you will be at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would like to also address the reading aspect of your question. You are right that most people, at some point in their lives, will have read 10,000 hours worth.  But how many people think critically about it?  How many people say, &quot;Wow, I liked that, but &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; did I like that?&quot;  Most people get through their entire 10,000 hours of reading very passively.  Even avid readers who are never without a book can often never take the &lt;strong&gt;active role&lt;/strong&gt; and really digest what they are consuming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about critics (literary or film (or food or software or mountain climbing equipment)).  The longer someone has been reviewing widgets, the better they are going to be.  But that's not just because they have seen a lot of widgets (though that helps); it's because they have thought critically about every single widget they have come across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write a hundred emails a day, but don't really think about it, you won't improve.  But if you write a hundred emails and make active decisions during each one, then you will become an email master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One more thing&lt;/strong&gt;:  Just a quick quote from Stephen King's &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastEditorUserId="2865" LastEditDate="2012-07-16T15:12:00.780" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T15:12:00.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3245" CreationDate="2011-06-30T19:47:44.157" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't read Gladwell's original book on this, so I don't want to criticize him directly, but I think the 10 000 hour rule, as I've heard it summarized, is over-simplistic.  You need to practice to get good at things, sure.  But you also need to have some basic aptitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could practice the skills required of an NFL linebacker for 10 000 hours and get much better at them, maybe even to the point that I could be considered an expert, but I still wouldn't make the NFL.  I'm 5'8&quot; tall and weigh 140 pounds.  Similarly, I could put in my 10 000 hours of practice at being a gymnast and I still wouldn't make the Olympics - again, I'm 5'8&quot; and 140 pounds!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think most people accept this in regard to physical accomplishments, but many people seem to resist it when they look at intellectual or artistic achievements. In my opinion, though, it's equally true in both areas.  Putting in 10 000 hours of conscientious, directed practice writing will absolutely make you a &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; writer, but it may not make you a good enough writer to achieve your goals (of publication, or writing the great American novel, or whatever else).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder what the totals would look like if we compared the number of people making a living from professional sports to the number making a living from professional writing.  I wouldn't be surprised if they were roughly equivalent.  Most people agree that one needs to be physically gifted AND to work hard in order to excel at sports; I would argue that one needs to be &lt;em&gt;mentally&lt;/em&gt; gifted to succeed at writing. Practice is necessary, but not sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T19:47:44.157" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1639" CreationDate="2011-06-30T21:58:54.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used my iPad to write a lot of blog posts and a few articles.  I haven't done any writing on it like for a book project.  Mostly that's because the publishers want their funky templates to be used that only work in Microsoft Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can type about as quickly on the ipad virtual keyboard as I can on a normal keyboard (about 70 WPM or so). It requires keeping a bit of a watch on the auto correct on the iPad so you don't get totally screwed up, but like anything all it takes is some practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="183" LastEditorUserId="183" LastEditDate="2011-06-30T22:07:16.677" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T22:07:16.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2011-07-01T14:50:44.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It also depends partially on the expectations of your genre too. Ex: fantasy/historical fiction generally tend to have long chapters, with many scenes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often times very short chapters make for better &quot;page turners.&quot; As the reader has more opportunities to put the book down, they often give into the temptation to read &quot;just one more chapter.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At its core, &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; has to change by the end of every chapter. The ante is upped, the character realizes something, friends are made, allies betray, the plot takes on a different turn. It doesn't necessarily matter whether this is a really minor change or a tremendous change, nor if it is after five words (&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_I_Lay_Dying_%28novel%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;My mother is a fish&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;) or fifty pages. As long as there was a clear reason for the chapter's length and its general existence, the reader will be satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T14:50:44.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3245" CreationDate="2011-07-01T15:11:10.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming one is trying the best the only possible improvement will come if there is feedback in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try to provide the feedback yourself by comparing what you write with classics or any author you consider good enough to be the target of your skill development, but for more precise and objective comparison you will have to publish or simply share your writing in the context that will allow you to evaluate yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This rule will work regarding the style, but for inspiration, the learning or exploratory process consist of enabling oneself to be inspired, and that is almost ultimately individual endeavor, for which I doubt that any commonalities exist. Except the fact that you should initially, eventually or temporary, but really honestly and deeply, care about what you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2166" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T15:11:10.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3255" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3256" CreationDate="2011-07-02T13:47:49.053" Score="9" ViewCount="5646" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently picked up several works of fiction and begun to read them. I have found that some are written using past tense while others use the present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the significance of using these different tenses while writing fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2261" OwnerDisplayName="Sarawut Positwinyu" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-07-02T15:59:51.977" LastActivityDate="2011-07-03T08:55:59.770" Title="Use of past vs. present tense in works of fiction" Tags="|fiction|tenses|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3255" CreationDate="2011-07-02T17:35:42.007" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of it is just convention.  Most people seem most accustomed to reading past tense, so it tends to not be noticed by the reader.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are exceptions to this, however.  YA, especially, has a lot of present tense writing, and in that genre it seems to be totally unremarkable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fans of present tense often argue that it gives a sense of immediacy to the story, while opponents say that it is jarring and intrusive to their reading experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal anecdote: My first two books were written in present tense; I don't remember giving it much conscious thought, that's just how the words came out.  There was some negative feedback from readers, although the books overall were fairly popular.  I thought the critics were crazy, but I wanted to sell, and so for the next couple books I tried past tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I went back to the present tense books, after having immersed myself in the past tense, the present tense DID seem awkward and intrusive to me!  I got over it quite quickly (within the first chapter of rereading), but it wasn't automatic.  So I do think there's a significant element of just being what people are accustomed to that determines their preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-07-02T17:35:42.007" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3255" CreationDate="2011-07-02T18:46:30.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write blog posts in the present tense even if I'm writing about something which happened in the past, because it's funnier to be &quot;present&quot; as the gag is unfolding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer novels in the past tense, but it's just a preference, and I could get used to a story told in the present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-07-02T18:46:30.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3255" CreationDate="2011-07-03T08:55:59.770" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's what I'm familiar with: a lot of people see present-tense as &lt;strong&gt;a description of something happening right now,&lt;/strong&gt; while past-tense is &lt;strong&gt;a narration of events that have already concluded.&lt;/strong&gt; So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some readers find present-tense more immediate and, well, tense. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some readers take issue with past-tense narration, seeing it as an unjustified device: If somebody's telling us this story, who is it? Why is he telling us the story? If the narration is first-person, that means the narrator must have made it through the story pretty OK, no? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most readers accept above issues as unimportant side-effects of convention. E.g. if a narrator dies at the end of the story, they won't shout &quot;wait, so who just wrote the whole thing?&quot; - they don't see the narration as being part of the established facts of the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a lot of people find past-tense more natural because present-tense storytelling is not something you encounter in day to day life. In real life, people tell you things &lt;em&gt;that have happened;&lt;/em&gt; it's rare to be subjected to a real-time report. Think of the exceptions - e.g. sports commentaries and on-the-spot new reports; they can be very exciting, but they're rarely personal or possessing narrative structure. And those kind of reports would probably be exhausting to listen to for too long of a stretch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fiction presents things happening &quot;now&quot; in a medium used primarily to describe things already over.&lt;/strong&gt; That's where the issue comes from. But in most cases, I think that readers prefer the comfort of more familiar phrasing over the increased accuracy of using a more appropriate tense. The familiarity makes the inaccuracies accepted and invisible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Kate said, current convention favors past-tense writing, so all other considerations aside - anything else may feel somewhat jarring or unusual to many readers. And both are popular, familiar and accepted enough that you can really pick whichever feels most comfortable and appropriate for you, as long as you remain consistent within a single piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-07-03T08:55:59.770" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3259" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-04T10:14:18.970" Score="0" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the answers to my last &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/3245/2024&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt;, got a lot of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3245/how-does-the-10-000-hour-rule-apply-to-writing/3251#3251&quot;&gt;comments&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question based on that is: Is there such a thing as talent in writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are some people naturally gifted in writing, which means everyone else is doomed to mediocrity? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is writing something that can be learned and improved with the correct practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T11:51:33.870" Title="Is there such a thing as talent in writing?" Tags="|discipline|exercises|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2011-07-04T14:51:05.777" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3260" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-04T10:54:35.463" Score="2" ViewCount="742" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there an accepted or suggested structure for writing non-fiction (specifically, popular science) books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example of the type of book I mean, there's Dan Ariely's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Predictably Irrational&lt;/a&gt;: a very successful non-fiction popular science book that is wholly engaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I adapt a typical narrative structure to fit with non-fiction (no idea how, though), or is there a recommended structure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When looking at the first chapter, I'm wondering whether this should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be a summary of the books main thesis (or should this be the last chapter?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide background information on the topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intrigue the reader with unanswered questions and the odd fascinating finding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something else?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2272" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T02:35:25.123" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T16:24:28.883" Title="Is there a typical structure for non-fiction popular science books? If so, what is it?" Tags="|structure|non-fiction|science|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3261" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-07-04T11:46:33.340" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about existing writing exercises, or seeking writing exercises appropriate to a particular writing goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-07-04T11:53:56.100" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T11:53:56.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3262" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-07-04T11:46:33.340" Score="0" Body="Writing exercises are a way to improve your skills in one particular field or task." OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-07-04T11:54:01.780" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T11:54:01.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3259" CreationDate="2011-07-04T11:47:01.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are some people naturally gifted in writing, which means everyone else is doomed to mediocrity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to ignore the second part of this question, because it sets up a false dichotomy. If we truncate it to &quot;Are some people naturally gifted in writing?&quot;, the answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can also say &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; to: &quot;Or is writing something that can be learned and improved with the correct practice?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talent and hard work both matter. In writing, as in any field, talent helps. If you're talented -- but not super-talented -- you can compensate by working even harder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From looking at your questions and answers, you have some talent. So, rather than worrying about writing, you should sit down and write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2248" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T11:47:01.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3259" CreationDate="2011-07-04T11:51:33.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an exceptionally difficult question to answer, because no-one actually knows the answer. It essentially boils down to the &quot;nature vs. nurture&quot; debate, and that's been raging for years, and is unlikely to be settled any time soon. However, current thinking has come up with some intriguing clues to the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence (such as with studies of musicians) that things are more nuanced, and that &quot;innate ability&quot; as we understand it may not work in the way we once thought. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://geniusblog.davidshenk.com/2007/01/more_on_musical.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;methodical training and deliberate practise actually alters a person's brain&lt;/a&gt; in key ways, making them even better at what they do. The key point is that this arises from development after birth, not something they were born with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That comes back to the 10,000 hours idea: while not absolutely everyone can be a Beethoven or Shakespeare (they could be physically or mentally impaired, not have the same drive or passion, may not have the necessary tools at their disposal) with enough time, passion, effort and dedication, you should be able to elevate and hone your skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember reading this article about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12140064&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;whether there is a genius in all of us&lt;/a&gt;, and I'll quote it here at length, because it describes current thinking very well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There are no genetic factors that can be studied independently of the environment,&quot; says Michael Meaney, a professor at McGill University in Canada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;And there are no environmental factors that function independently of the genome. [A trait] emerges only from the interaction of gene and environment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that everything about us - our personalities, our intelligence, our abilities - are actually determined by the lives we lead. The very notion of &quot;innate&quot; no longer holds together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In each case the individual animal starts its life with the capacity to develop in a number of distinctly different ways,&quot; says Patrick Bateson, a biologist at Cambridge University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Like a jukebox, the individual has the potential to play a number of different developmental tunes. The particular developmental tune it does play is selected by [the environment] in which the individual is growing up.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it that genes don't matter? Of course not. We're all different and have different theoretical potentials from one another. There was never any chance of me being Cristiano Ronaldo. Only tiny Cristiano Ronaldo had a chance of being the Cristiano Ronaldo we know now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we also have to understand that he could have turned out to be quite a different person, with different abilities. His future football magnificence was not carved in genetic stone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T11:51:33.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3260" CreationDate="2011-07-04T13:25:41.827" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A summary of the main thesis should be at the beginning (Probably best &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the first chapter). People want to pick up the book, read this abstract and decide if they want to go any further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book is not written in English, you also can think about adding an English abstract. That's a standard for diploma theses, so foreign readers can decide, if they want to translate the thesis or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have no specification for your book structure (from university/publisher), then it is up to you. Do you like Ariely's style/structure? Try to copy it. Don't be afraid that it can be too obvious, because copying style and structure is not as easy as you might expect. If it really ends up to be an obvious &quot;rip-off&quot;, you have learnt a lot and can still change it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the only suggested structure is: make it readable. It doesn't matter how you achieve that. It looks like a burden, but that's the fun part of being creative. There are enough dull books out there. Pick up books you like and analyse how he authors did it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T13:25:41.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3260" CreationDate="2011-07-04T14:35:08.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As John Smithers says, have a summary at the beginning. I will add that make it very short, maybe 2-3 pages. I want to quickly read through the summary to see if the book is worth buying. I have read too many books with a 20 page introduction where the author tells of his motivations for writing the book, and I haven't even decided if I want to buy the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the gold standard for engaging non fiction is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan_%28Taleb_book%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Black Swan&lt;/a&gt; by Taleb. He gives as much technical information as is needed, without boring the reader. He also uses stories to illustrate his point, and his style is humorous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen Hawking was told by the publisher for his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Brief_History_of_Time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Brief History of Time&lt;/a&gt; that every equation he put in would reduce his readership by half. While some say this is an exaggeration, I have found that too many equations turn people off. It's hard for a layman to make sense of Greek symbols. So try to keep equations to a minimum. Also, don't use big and uncommon words, especially technical ones. If you have to, make sure there is a glossary of technical terms at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the same rules as for normal fiction apply. It should be easy to read,  and you have to keep the reader interested throughout the book. If you feel something is breaking the flow of the reader, put it in the appendix. Give every reason for your reader to turn the page - don't assume that just because they read the 1st 100 pages, they will stick for the next 200.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorDisplayName="user12726" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T02:10:32.907" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T02:10:32.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3267" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3273" CreationDate="2011-07-04T16:32:34.000" Score="4" ViewCount="622" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the beginning of a short story I'm writing (I'm not a native English speaker):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was lying in the dark, looking at&#xA;  the ceiling, counting spider webs. She&#xA;  was lying right beside me. I was only&#xA;  few centimeters of of her, but it was&#xA;  actually an eternal distance. All I&#xA;  could see was her back. Her long black&#xA;  hair, and her left hand resting on her&#xA;  shoulder. I lifted my hand in an&#xA;  attempt to place it on her waist.&#xA;  Maybe she would feel my warm hand,&#xA;  turn to this side, and wrap her arms&#xA;  around me. I would feel the warm of&#xA;  her body too. I did that, but she&#xA;  didn’t even move. She was just a lying&#xA;  figure. I gave up and came back to my&#xA;  previous position. I’ve never felt so&#xA;  lonely. I felt even lonelier than the&#xA;  time I used to sleep alone in my old&#xA;  apartment. I realized that for me,&#xA;  real loneliness was to loss someone I&#xA;  had, rather than no having anyone at&#xA;  all. Well, I was kind of used to this.&#xA;  After all, it had been the same for&#xA;  more than six months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to accomplish the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should hook the reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The actions should help the reader picture the situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should help the reader feel the atmosphere (dark and silent).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T13:43:51.107" LastActivityDate="2017-10-05T04:27:22.833" Title="How can I improve this description which includes actions?" Tags="|fiction|description|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2011-07-04T18:03:04.013" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the money quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://writeanything.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/what-is-literary-fiction/&quot;&gt;a good article on the subject:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In broad terms, literary fiction focuses more on style, psychological depth, and character and tends to be multilayered stories which wrestle with universal dilemmas rather than with plot. They usually provoke the readers beliefs and thoughts, often with an outcome of changing or altering their audiences outlook on life. More often than not, literary fiction addresses what might be considered more serious issues to uncover a truth bringing its audience; by the way of the main character; to a deeper understanding about life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...) Most of these books are character centred rather than plot oriented; looking at the human condition and provoking the reader into some sort of change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a good summary, though I think it covers lit-fic's goals better than its commonplace achievements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, like other genres and streams, there isn't a one-size-fits-all definition for literary fiction, here are some other common distinguishing characteristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Literary fiction often &lt;strong&gt;eschews dramatic plot,&lt;/strong&gt; viewing it as unrealistic, contrived (even if brilliantly so...), and/or as being a &quot;cheap&quot; way of generating excitement. It's less that nothing exciting happens, and more that events don't all occur along a clear dramatic structure; the events don't tie together neatly and with clear purpose, except to advance the more subtle theme and character examination.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus is generally on &lt;strong&gt;examination of a theme&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;powerful portrayal&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;offering new insight&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Literary fiction generally &lt;strong&gt;makes little attempt to entertain.&lt;/strong&gt; It relies strongly on the reader's active interest in the theme, the portrayal, the insights, etc., and his willingness to bear with the author in order to understand what the author is trying to convey. The reader's interest in the story is aided primarily by the strength and power of the writing, and by very little else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Literary fiction generally &lt;strong&gt;is difficult to attribute to a particular genere&lt;/strong&gt; - that is, they (almost always) aren't romances, or mysteries, or sitcoms. Science fiction has seen some interesting interplay with literary fiction - e.g. Audrey Niffenegger's &lt;em&gt;The Time Traveller's Wife&lt;/em&gt;, which applies a literary-fiction approach to a classic SF trope. I suspect many other genres are more clearly distanced from it, because romances, mystery, horror, and other genres generally imply something about the &lt;em&gt;plot&lt;/em&gt; of the story, suggesting a narrative structure that lit-fic would work poorly with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At its worst, literary fiction can feel pretentious, deliberately oblique, and ultimately pointless. At its best, it can be subtle, deep, and provoking, in ways that most popular fiction simply can't reach.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as a parting shot, here's another good article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.novel-writing-help.com/literary-fiction.html&quot;&gt;What Is Literary Fiction?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T18:03:04.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3267" CreationDate="2011-07-04T19:23:13.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scene does not sound authentic. That a sleeping person is unresponsive is not that uncommon. Details are missing, what makes this situation special.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are only visual clues. What does the protagonist smell, feel (skin/fingers, not emotions), taste, hear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to show his emotions. What is the frequence of his pulse? Does he shiver? Did she put a screw clamp around his heart?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could try to use more metaphors/images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. you started with nice details like the spider webs. But I expected you get back to them, using them to describe the feelings of the protagonist (She caught me in the web of her apartment.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To describe his isolation you could use something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only a gap of twenty centimeters separated my hand from the warmth of her waist. It could have been a chasm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My hand fondled her waist. Her body responded as warmly as an iceberg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show us the loneliness, the isolation, do not describe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T19:23:13.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3270" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3294" CreationDate="2011-07-04T19:52:54.743" Score="3" ViewCount="448" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to publish a book via &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CreateSpace&lt;/a&gt;. For graphical reasons, I prefer to add the ISBN barcode myself at the size and position of my choice. How can I set it up on CS so that they don't add a barcode on my cover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2274" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T19:24:41.323" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T19:24:41.323" Title="Can I ask CreateSpace to *not* add a barcode to my cover?" Tags="|self-publishing|printing|isbn|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2011-07-04T22:46:40.947" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to +1ing a couple other answers, I'd add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the breakdown of fiction into genres (including &quot;literary&quot;) is an imperfect system that mostly serves commercial needs. Someone might read &lt;em&gt;Twilight&lt;/em&gt; and go into a bookstore looking for something similar. The booksellers want to make that process as easy as possible, and to do that they need to make bets on what &quot;similar&quot; means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So they might stick it with other books intended for a similar age group (&quot;young adult fiction&quot;), or books that have similar worlds, imagery, or themes (&quot;fantasy/horror&quot;), or even books that have a similar emotional tone (&quot;romance&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When an author says they work within a specific genre, I interpret that as: &quot;My work has deliberate commonalities with other books in this genre. Provided my writing is good enough, consumers who've read and enjoyed other works in this genre are also likely to enjoy my work. And by being explicit about the genre, it will be easier for booksellers to categorize and for consumers to locate.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of that said, here's my joke about &quot;genre&quot; vs. &quot;literary&quot; fiction, based on an actual event:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Me:&lt;/strong&gt; Where do you keep your horror?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shopkeeper:&lt;/strong&gt; It's with &quot;fantasy/sci-fi&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Me:&lt;/strong&gt; That's where I was looking, but I can't find the book. It's called &lt;em&gt;House of Leaves&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shopkeeper:&lt;/strong&gt; Oh, &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; horror is under &quot;literature&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Me:&lt;/strong&gt; [blank stare]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an imperfect system, like any broad approach to categorization of complex works, but it seems to be the best we've got. As others have observed, many books considered &quot;literary fiction&quot; could also fall into other genre categories, and it's generally the &lt;strong&gt;style&lt;/strong&gt; that overrides those other categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That, again, is the bookseller's bet: That the quality of &lt;em&gt;House of Leaves&lt;/em&gt;* which engaged me was the style, and not the haunted house theme or the mood of suspense/mystery/horror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;Just an example. If you hated House of Leaves, feel free to substitute your favorite genre-spanning book.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1582" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T22:46:40.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1754" CreationDate="2011-07-05T07:34:30.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solve the first 1 or 2 problems completely right in front of the question, so the student gets an idea of what to do. For the others, give a short answer (like final solution: x = 20) below the question, so students can check if they got the right answer, but put the complete solution at the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put reference only if its useful- to an undergraduate. My whole Degree course was full of references to books that were written for Ph.D. students, and that the Professors loved, but were completely useless to me as they were too advanced. If you must, put in references to simple books in the Appendix, with a short note on why they were useful. But yeah, in most cases its just annoying: &quot;Look at me, I read all these journals to write this book, Im so smart&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get Feedback from actual students. Have them sitting in front of you trying to solve the problems. If they do them at home, they might just skim through them, or be polite and say they loved the book, when they didnt. So have them in front of you, and see how they progress. Are they actually getting better when working through the problems, so that they are finding the later problems easier?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T07:34:30.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3267" CreationDate="2011-07-05T16:01:55.777" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing that I notice about this passage of writing is the tremendous lack of variety in its sentence structures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Of the 16 sentences, 11 have the subject &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Of those 11 sentences, 9 actually begin with the word &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;. (The other two begin with an adverb.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This creates a very monotonous cadence for the opening paragraph, and makes it feel repetitive and dull. Try experimenting with different sentence structures and focuses for each sentence, rather than just using &lt;em&gt;I..., I..., I...&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing that I would avoid is direct, repetitive presentation of the narrator's feelings. Rather than simply saying &quot;I felt lonely&quot;, convey the narrator's loneliness through the details he notices and his choice of words. You're already doing this somewhat with phrases like &quot;an eternal distance&quot;, but you could increase the indirect depiction of emotional state and eliminate the direct statements. When it comes to description of internal state, &lt;em&gt;less is more&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a perfect opportunity to expand your opening paragraph with some more vivid description that would help both of the problems mentioned above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I felt even lonelier than the time I used to sleep alone in my old apartment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could replace this with something similar to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This was worse than my old apartment, where I slept with only the cockroaches and the rusty, dripping faucet to keep me awake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it's currently written, I don't find this paragraph to be an efficient hook. And to be honest, &quot;some guy isn't getting along with his girlfriend&quot; isn't a terribly original starting point anyway, so if you want to start here the writing needs to be &lt;strong&gt;brilliant&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T16:01:55.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3274" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3279" CreationDate="2011-07-05T16:10:49.167" Score="16" ViewCount="11776" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who writes a little as a hobby, this is something that I haven't really thought about until just recently, but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it common for a writer to develop characters before actually coming up with a plot for those characters to be a part of? That is, do most writers start by coming up with a story first, then creating and developing the characters to be used in the story, or is it more common that a writer will get an idea for a character or characters and will then develop a story to use them in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking this because I noticed that, in almost all cases, I've had the idea for a character or characters first before I started actually writing anything about them, and I was wondering if there's a trend among writers about which tends to be done first. Could this simply be a side-effect of having a taste for world-building? I've dabbled in aspects of world-building in the past, even going as far as working on a constructed language for use in a story, but I'm not sure if the two are specifically related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I tend to be more detail-oriented in things as opposed to looking at the big picture; could that be part of it as well? I've noticed that once I have the characters and a (rough) setting, I often spend time on coming up with specific scenes of interaction rather than an overall plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T07:46:04.727" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T22:10:19.577" Title="How often do writers develop characters before plot, and why?" Tags="|fiction|characters|world-building|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3274" CreationDate="2011-07-05T16:51:13.857" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to be more interested in people and their interactions than in plots, so I often develop characters and then retroactively fit them into a plot. The story is really just a vehicle for the psychological &quot;profiles&quot; of the characters in the story. (As a result, my characters really make the story, whereas the plot isn't terribly surprising -- I don't write with tons of twists and turns.) I don't know how common this approach is, but a lot of writers do it. I suppose it depends on whether you're writing is character- or plot-driven (i.e., what's the interesting aspect of your story -- people or actions?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T16:51:13.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3274" CreationDate="2011-07-05T17:26:59.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Characters drive the story. That's why most (not all) writers and lecturers out there will tell you that the characters should be developed first. With all the tics and quirks which make them human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next thing is the conflict. The main character wants some candy, but the evil fairy has stolen it. How can he get the candy without shooting the fairy, because she is his aunt, and he does not want family trouble? Oh, and if it is the main conflict, he &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; should want this candy. He must be dying (or the fairy) to get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authentic characters are the key part which let readers turn page after page. If they feel with the character, identify with them, they will read &quot;just one more page&quot;. Your plot has probably been told one way or the other one thousand times before (which does not mean it can be crappy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because characters are so important, many writers start with them. Then they let them something do and look how the story develops. But for that, you should have the conflict as described before. (And no, that's not necessarily the best way to develop a story, but neither the worst. It depends on the writer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T17:26:59.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3267" CreationDate="2011-07-05T17:28:28.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your opening meanders quite a bit yet your last sentence is a great hook (I wanted to find out why it had been six months). Like the other comments point out, you're too visual - you're not directing a movie, nor are you taking photos as events unfold, so stop narrating that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than some abstract advice, I tried to rewrite your paragraph (I'm not yet a fiction writer, and this is a first draft):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Laying in the dark, the outline of her sleeping figure contrasted against the dark expanse of the room. In bed together we are only a few centimetres apart, yet the distance feels much greater. It has been almost six months now. The darkness reveals just a few details – her long black hair flowing over her back and her hand near her shoulder. I imagined reaching out, holding her by her waist, closing the seemingly infinite gap, and sleeping with her in a warm embrace. Yet, reaching out, my touch had no effect at all. I’m lonely, though not alone. How much longer can it go on like this?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm switching between narrating the event and the character's point of view, trying to erase the distinction between myself as narrator and myself as a character to make the situation feel more immediate and intimate. I moved your hook to the third sentence because I'm an impatient reader - I like to know bits about the point along the way as opposed to waiting for a point that might not appear to stay engaged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your original paragraph has some issues with spelling (&lt;em&gt;Lying&lt;/em&gt; should probably be &lt;em&gt;Laying&lt;/em&gt;), how you construct some phrases (&lt;em&gt;I was only few centimeters of of her...&lt;/em&gt;), and word choice (&lt;em&gt;...real loneliness was to loss someone I had, rather than no having...&lt;/em&gt;). These problems are relatively minor - an editor can help you correct them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you focus on your style by dropping the visuals from your descriptions, then go back and add some visuals to clarify the situation or scene. Get an editor and prepare for lots of revisions - you'll become a much better writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what books you have read, but I recommend you try reading the classics plus some more modern books. Reading the classics (in English) will help you construct better sentences and expose you to different styles of writing. If you have already read a lot, perhaps it is a good time to re-read some passages you like (in English) to figure out what you like about them and how they're constructed. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1745" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-07-05T18:39:39.893" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T18:39:39.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3274" CreationDate="2011-07-05T17:39:31.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;I think there's too much focus on characters and plot - the story is what matters and the characters and plot provide the skeleton that holds the story together and gives it shape.&lt;/strike&gt; A book like &quot;The Wasted Vigil&quot; features at least one inanimate character (a statue), and probably more depending on the reader's opinion. The statue plays a major role in the book even though it does not move, feel, speak, or do anything in particular beyond simply existing. The house in the book actually plays a major role too - it could also be thought of as a character since it shapes major parts of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more important aspect of a work is its architecture - its use of time, relationships, perspective and style that create a substrate for your characters. A novel that uses an interesting architecture is &quot;Paradise&quot; by Toni Morrison: the author uses association to weave seemingly disparate parts of the book together. You'll probably have to be patient since it takes a while to connect the dots, but it works very well in this book. Several of the characters in the book are 'shallow' yet it's not necessary to know much more about them than is revealed in the book; 'well rounded' characters would have actually been a distraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question directly, the story and its architecture drive the characters and what your reader might need to know about them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1745" LastEditorUserId="1745" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T01:22:10.203" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T01:22:10.203" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3274" CreationDate="2011-07-05T18:37:10.707" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can really change very drastically from author to author and from story to story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no doubt that developing characters and then building a plot around them is a great way to come up with a story. Characters are compelling; interactions between them are interesting; put the characters as the center of your plot, and they may drive the whole thing themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's plenty of other great ways to construct stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Author comes up with a brilliant setting, then figures out what characters are necessary to explore the setting and get the most out of it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Author comes up with a great plot arc, then figures out what kind of characters are necessary to play out the arc believably.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Author is interested in examining a theme, an issue, a real-life culture, a historical period; he comes up with characters to fit and to portray different aspects of the focus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and many more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth of the matter is, building up the elements of your story is most likely an iterative process. Location A might give you ideas for Character X, Plot Twist Y, and Set Piece Z, but Set Piece Z might require you to go back and make some changes to Character X. You're developing everything together; &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; needs to fit well with each other. That doesn't happen because you originally create everything in a perfect cohesive whole. It happens because as you go along, you keep tweaking your old ideas, keeping them current with your new elements, keeping everything together and compatible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to create any one thing first. They lead to one another, and back to themselves again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T18:37:10.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3280" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3281" CreationDate="2011-07-05T19:20:03.040" Score="2" ViewCount="10229" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many cases, I understand and appreciate what the person is writing (in each sentence), but have little to say in response, even if I &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; like what the person is saying. So when I have little to say in response, the number of replies I can make is rather limited [ah okay, oh ok, so basically, ah sure, oh interesting, oh true, good point, intriguing, nice, etc...]. Sometimes I try to repeat what they say and then say &quot;that's interesting&quot;. But then people have told me that I'm like a void. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it's not required for me to say anything substantial, but I do want them to write more (and to feel appreciated). And it can be discouraging to them if they can't tell whether or not I truly appreciate what they say or if I'm just saying it just to be nice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, this frequently happens in academic emails (especially with professors) - although the roles are reversed in this case - I might send paragraphs of replies, and the professor may only send a reply that's a sentence long (even if he appreciates everything I've written). It might actually be easier if we could just comment on emails like we can insert comments in Microsoft Word documents (or in the margins of a final paper) - but that isn't possible with the email software that we usually use&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2011-07-05T19:36:06.773" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T21:53:41.177" Title="When I'm replying to emails, what's the best way to acknowledge that I appreciated each point of someone's email?" Tags="|email|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3280" CreationDate="2011-07-05T20:47:06.260" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no rule that you have to produce an equal volume of words in order for your correspondent to appreciate you.  In fact, if you quote every sentence individually, inserting &quot;I agree&quot; or &quot;good point&quot; after each, that's going to lower people's impression of you -- it's a &quot;me, too&quot; reply, only worse because the person has to dig in case you had anything else to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's fine to just say something like &quot;thank you for all your help; I really appreciate it&quot;.  If you like, you can add &quot;your point about (whatever) was particularly helpful to me&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't quote the entire message; he already knows what it says since he wrote it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T20:47:06.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3280" CreationDate="2011-07-05T21:00:54.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;how about something like &quot;I agree with all the points you've made here. You covered this thoroughly and did an excellent job. I could not improve upon this.&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T21:00:54.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3283" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-05T21:26:08.877" Score="8" ViewCount="1169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a feature-length movie screenplay - well it's still at the story stage, so I haven't started to write the screenplay itself yet. I have been reading wordplayer and a few scripts to see the structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got one scene in mind where the POV is really important for maximum effect. I want to describe that the camera should be inside the boot of a car (trunk for the Americans here), pointing back at a character. It's similar to at the start of Pulp Fiction when Vincent and Jules get the guns out of the boot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of the story, it is obviously irrelevant where the camera is placed. But this is a comedy and the camera angle will make it funnier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I put in a camera direction for this? I don't intend to direct the film myself, so want to do whatever would maximise my chance of selling it as a spec script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2281" LastActivityDate="2018-03-01T07:48:54.447" Title="Shots in a spec script?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3280" CreationDate="2011-07-05T21:53:41.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few possibilities...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the (relatively) easier one: &lt;strong&gt;Say, &quot;Thank you.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Then stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, a more difficult one: Your reaction comes not only from what they said, but from a &lt;em&gt;connection&lt;/em&gt; between what they said and something in you. The responses you mention comment almost entirely on what they said, and add little of you to the conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: Take a moment to consider what it is in &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; that their words connected with. What need or aspiration or desire or fear or yearning or ...?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've discovered &lt;strong&gt;what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are contributing to your response&lt;/strong&gt;, consider expressing that, and how the writer's words and ideas touch that part of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T21:53:41.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3283" CreationDate="2011-07-05T22:34:22.360" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of schools of thought about this.  Some say that you can add camera directions for effect, some say never.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would say be very careful about adding any sort of direction because it can be a very slippery slope.  If you add it once, you'll be inclined to do it again.  Start directing and you'll turn off your readers and alienate potential directors/actors.  But only do it once and it'll probably feel out of place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, a director is going to make the final decisions about camera placement and angles, regardless of what you put in your script.  Any camera angles you spell out in your script are going to be suggestions at best.  You are better off convincing them that this bit is funny by showing in the action why it's funny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say do your absolute best to try and describe the scene, sans POV.  Describe the sky behind them, the way they are looking down, the darkness of the boot. Give it a few tries and let some other people read through it.  If they understand what's going on, you've done it.  If not, then you might need to fall back on straight POV.  But at least you gave it your best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T22:34:22.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3267" CreationDate="2011-07-06T02:23:02.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the opening three sentences as a hook. It makes me wonder what the problem is in this relationship.  Sure, it may not be the most original idea, but simple ideas are best, especially when you are just beginning. It is also a good concept — you are using the dark and silent atmosphere to express mood and enhance the emotion in this scene without having to detail it in words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part develops unsurprisingly into the protagonist's internal yearning.  This is reasonable and sensible. It feels like a nice transition from a scene description to an internal monologue, and it's appropriately moody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The close of the paragraph, though, feels jarringly different. The writing style shifts toward something much more like casual dialogue; suddenly, rather than &lt;em&gt;feeling&lt;/em&gt; how this person feels, it is as though someone just started talking to me.  That's because you shift from describing a situation that is painful and lonely to just saying &quot;I am lonely.&quot; Let the story explain the feeling of loss and loneliness and the lesson that is learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then the part with &quot;After all, it had been the same for more than six months&quot; just shouts &quot;I'm a very young person who has never had a relationship that lasted longer than a decade!&quot; Although it's possible that something happened in your story six months ago, I'd avoid specifying a time frame in your opening paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I don't know how you will conclude the story, I might suggest one more sentence that foreshadows or alludes to the ending.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a suggested rewrite.  I changed the part about the spider webs because it seems like the couple is living in squalor, but maybe this is what you wish to convey though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was laying in the dark, watching the moonlight trace faint lines on the ceiling.  She was right beside me. Barely a hand span separated us, but I felt it as an eternal distance. Closing my eyes, I let my mind's eye slip along her back. I breathed in the smell of her long black hair, and laced my fingers with hers, tasting the sweat on her skin. The memory of our warm nights was so palpable, I opened my eyes and stretched my hand toward her waist. Maybe in the shadows of her sleep, she would forget and wrap her arms around me. I would feel the warmth of her body again. But as my hand touched her hip, her breathing stayed quiet and regular. She did not turn to meet me as she once did, and I knew that I would never close the distance between us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T02:23:02.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3288" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3290" CreationDate="2011-07-06T11:57:14.627" Score="2" ViewCount="1392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this has been done before. In my story, the main character's wife takes the form of a town. The town represents how he feels towards his wife (mostly sad feelings and repulsion).&#xA;It shouldn't be very obvious that the town represents his wife, but  at the same time, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions to accomplish this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary (of the summary) of the story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A young man wanders in a town trying to find a girl (after receiving a call from her), which represents his wife but from a &quot;romantic past&quot;. The whole town represents his &quot;actual wife&quot; who produces him feelings of repulsion, frustration and sadness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Loneliness: The wife no longer spend time with him so there is no one in the town.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miscarriage: Her wife had a miscarriage so the rivers of the town are red.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Well I thought about female elements that fit a dark environment: menstrual blood and long strings of hair.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Infidelity: The wife has been going out with another man (I have no idea how to represent that in the town).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't think adding that will make the reader realize that the town represents the wife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will like the reader feel that the town has some female attributes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T13:49:10.320" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T15:52:49.743" Title="Using a town to symbolize/represent a character within a story (fiction)?" Tags="|fiction|symbolism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3288" CreationDate="2011-07-06T13:45:19.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exploring how we relate to a city, how the city represents the desires and feelings of the people that designed and built it, how we relate to various parts of the city, how the city affects mood and perception is probably uncommon. Even more uncommon is to relate that to a person, but I think it could be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that your story takes place within roughly the past 40 years - specifically at a time when graffiti and other forms of urban expression started to appear, you could relate the town to the wife through expressions of graffiti. For example, your character could wander the streets and come across some graffiti that expresses frustration with 'the system' and use that as a segue to thinking about his wife. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is in the distant past during times of monarchy, you could have a king/prince/other noble-person build-out the town/city as his relationship with his wife changes. For example, when initially attracted to his to-be-wife, he has builders create a waterway that meanders through and caresses the town's features. Later, when the couple has kids, he could have builders create places that nurture family values like parks, statue gardens, boulevards, libraries, etc. When the relationship gets rocky, he could have his builders create jails, or demolish slums, or maybe build up an army (things that express frustration and try to compensate). You could relate these aspects of the town to the wife's physical appearance, personality traits, etc. Obviously, making the connection effective is critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1745" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T13:45:19.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3288" CreationDate="2011-07-06T15:52:49.743" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not clear from your description what the intended genre of your story is, but I suspect that this will have a major impact on how you approach this. If the genre is fantasy or horror, then you can have the city embody your protag's wife in a much more literal or fantastic way than you could in other genres, which opens up interesting possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, your description of the town's characteristics make me think of horror, which in turn makes me think of the video game classic &lt;em&gt;Silent Hill 2&lt;/em&gt;. In this game, the protag has come to an isolated mountain town after the death of his wife of a long illness. But he finds the town mostly empty of people but filled with monsters and decay. The types of monsters he confronts, the few people that he meets, and the nightmarish, decaying locations that he has to visit all manifest elements of his experience with his wife's illness and death. The cumulative effect is &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; disturbing, and the symbolic content of the monsters and environment is actually more upsetting than the literal danger, as the monsters are relatively few and easy to kill by video game standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you can do something very familiar, even if your story has a more mundane setting. The things that you mentioned above are a very good place to start. Some additional things you might add include the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Religious references, even if your character isn't religious. Anyone familiar with Western culture should be able to understand the significance of a defaced statue of the Virgin Mary, for example. This may present a good avenue for introducing the theme of infidelity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weather and environment. This doesn't have to mean &quot;dark and gloomy&quot; either---a bright, merciless sun can be used for horror or discomfort just as well as a dark alley.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Particular buildings with significance. If your character's wife has miscarried, for example perhaps he has to visit a hospital or an abandoned school.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thing is to note that your symbols shouldn't really be about the wife as she exists, but about &lt;em&gt;your protagonists feelings about his wife&lt;/em&gt;. For example, don't try to think of ways to represent the wife's infidelity itself, but rather your protagonists &lt;em&gt;fear of his wife's infidelity&lt;/em&gt;. The latter is a much darker, more powerful, and more versatile image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T15:52:49.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3291" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3295" CreationDate="2011-07-06T17:48:41.247" Score="5" ViewCount="616" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to do a free daily podcast of the Bible. Would I need permission of the copyright holder of the translation I am reading or would this be considered fair use? Would I need to state the source or, conversely, would I be restricted from stating the source without authorization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1967" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T21:56:37.400" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T21:56:37.400" Title="Audio version of copyrighted written material" Tags="|copyright|translation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3291" CreationDate="2011-07-06T19:07:10.467" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Bible itself isn't under copyright.  A modern translation/interpretation may be, so just stick with one that's in the public domain, eg. The King James Version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T19:07:10.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3291" CreationDate="2011-07-06T19:10:07.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: Here are no lawyers around, sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: You could use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.studylight.org/info/copyright/bible/asv.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;non-copyrighted&lt;/a&gt;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journal33.org/home/translat.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;More info&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third: Why don't you just ask the copyright owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T19:10:07.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3270" CreationDate="2011-07-06T19:24:01.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should ask this question to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/en/community/index.jspa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CreatSpace community&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, you can &lt;a href=&quot;https://na5.salesforce.com/_ui/selfservice/pkb/PublicKnowledgeSolution/d?orgId=00D300000001Sh9&amp;amp;id=50170000000I1eh&amp;amp;retURL=/sol/public/solutionbrowser.jsp?search=barcode&amp;amp;cid=02n70000000DfLu&amp;amp;orgId=00D300000001Sh9&amp;amp;t=4&amp;amp;ps=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;add your own barcode&lt;/a&gt; as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://admin.createspace.com/Help/Index.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;help&lt;/a&gt; stated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T19:24:01.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3291" CreationDate="2011-07-07T01:51:42.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, yes, the (purported) author of the Bible has much better recourse than the standard Cease &amp;amp; Desist letter -- for example, He could send a plague of locusts or kill your kin and kine -- and arguments about &quot;the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_term&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;life of the author&lt;/a&gt;&quot; would probably make things worse rather than better, but, no, He probably won't take any sort of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, the translator for any particular version does hold the copyright but there are many, many translations whose copyrights have long since expired.  The King James Version (certainly the most poetic translation) saw its copyright expire before George Washington was born.  There's also the now-public-domain &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Standard_Version&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Standard Version&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are versions released under very flexible licenses.  For example, you can record the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_English_Translation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New English Translation&lt;/a&gt; without paying a dime so long as you aren't making money off it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the translation certainly does matter.  For proof, look no further than Genesis 1:2. The (free!) King James Version reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the earth was without form, and&#xA;  void; and darkness was upon the face&#xA;  of the deep. And the Spirit of God&#xA;  moved upon the face of the waters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the (not free!) New International Version is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are those who claim that Shakespeare and Marlowe helped out on the KJV.  I don't know if I believe that, but you don't have be a poet to realize that &quot;hovering over the waters&quot; is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the image you want to start your Bible with.  Makes the Lord of Hosts sound like He's in a helicopter...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T01:51:42.943" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3296" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3297" CreationDate="2011-07-07T03:14:23.120" Score="10" ViewCount="5540" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is probably a slightly vague sounding question, but I'm curious as to how &quot;stories&quot; go to the point of becoming a film production (at least to the point of becoming a script).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2162" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T06:44:56.247" Title="What is the process for turning a story into a &quot;movie&quot; script?" Tags="|screenwriting|scriptwriting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3296" CreationDate="2011-07-07T07:21:16.513" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I know, though Im not an expert: The story or book must have been published, and seen some measure of commercial success, for the producer to have read it. If the producer likes your book, and thinks it can be turned into a movie, they will approach you and offer to buy the movie rights to your book- which means only they can make a movie from that book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how good a negotiator you are, this can be for life, or for a fixed period, say 3 years. The 2nd option is better, as sometimes an idea remains frozen for years, and if you have an expiry time in the contract, you can sell your movie rights again to another producer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they do decide to make a movie, usually they will hire their own scriptwriters, as writing for the screen is completely different than writing a book. Again, depending how good your lawyer was, you might get a percentage of the movie, or get nothing, as Hollywood uses their own version of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting&quot;&gt;Creative accounting&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Winston Groom's price for the screenplay rights to his novel Forrest Gump included a share of the profits; however, due to Hollywood accounting, the film's commercial success was converted into a net loss, and Groom received nothing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T07:21:16.513" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3296" CreationDate="2011-07-08T12:18:13.407" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if you're asking how producers make movies based on stories/books or how you could do the same with a story idea you have.  For the sake of completeness I'll answer the second one (Shan had an excellent answer for that first case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've just finished taking a screenwriting module in my degree and that covered the process.  First you'd create an outline; this is a bare-bones representation of what happens throughout the movie. It runs for about 50-100 lines typically and is formatted something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Location: Harbour - Show young boy fishing with his father.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the outline you create a treatment; 'Treatment' means different things for different types of medium but for films you would expect a document outlined into Acts, Scenes, and a description of what happens in each scene leaving out any non-essential dialogue.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the Treatment and Outline are completed you start work on the script itself, going through the story bit by bit and defining the dialogue, appearance, camera angles, actions, and so on.  This is probably the longest part and relates most directly to the film that's created.  Formatted correctly one sheet of paper is equal to roughly one minute of film.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great site to find out more about all this is actually the Lights Film School: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lightsfilmschool.com/articles/treatments/index.html&quot;&gt;http://www.lightsfilmschool.com/articles/treatments/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2294" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T12:18:13.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3300" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3305" CreationDate="2011-07-08T12:24:49.283" Score="5" ViewCount="1958" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current novel I have a few characters who speak Spanish. The book takes place along the Texico border, so it happens frequently. I know that in more foreign Spanish, or when someone speaks a full sentence, it should be italicized. If they are more common words or phrases, i.e. &quot;hola&quot;, &quot;sí&quot; and &quot;señor&quot;, do I italicize them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My confusion comes when someone is saying &quot;sí&quot; and then the rest of the sentence in English. Also, when someone addresses someone else as &quot;Señor Cortez&quot; and &quot;Señorita Venegas&quot;, do I italicize just the title, the whole name, or nothing at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that long question, I now have a question to tail that: when do I use accents for those more common words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like the word &quot;si&quot; wouldn't have an accent if spoken by someone who was speaking in English, but then it wouldn't be italicized (consequently, &quot;si&quot; and &quot;sí&quot; are two different words). Same with &quot;senor&quot;. I've seen some authors spell it a bit phonetically to emphasize the character's lethargy when speaking (&quot;senhor&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would love some insight! I'm very comfortable using the language. While it is not my first language, I studied it profusely in school. Would love to use it and not look like an idiot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2293" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-15T00:07:18.367" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T00:07:18.367" Title="Italicizing and adding accents to Spanish words in an English novel" Tags="|fiction|novel|formatting|language|multilingual|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3304" CreationDate="2011-07-08T12:31:44.520" Score="9" ViewCount="24171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am editing my first novel and wherever I find a natural break in the story, I add a few spaces. I want to go back and adjust what types of breaks those are, but how best to represent those spaces in time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between using an extra space, asterisks, or a chapter break?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess (and feel free to correct me): an extra space is used when it's some time later in the same scene, or when switching POV with characters in the same scene; asterisks are used when it's essentially a different scene, with either the same characters in a different time or place, or switching POV with different characters; and a chapter break could indicate either, but it comes at the end of a dramatic scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2293" LastEditorUserId="2074" LastEditDate="2011-07-08T13:00:19.580" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T20:08:30.170" Title="Adding breaks in a novel—spaces, asterisks, or a chapter break?" Tags="|fiction|editing|novel|formatting|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3106" CreationDate="2011-07-08T12:37:39.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just another quick point to add to the already excellent answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been known to develop really in-depth worlds as well, and it can be hard to step away and only use the parts you need for a particular plot/story.  However.  The thing that always helps me come to terms with it a bit more, and a way around having done all that research and planning without using it directly, is to go ahead and make multiple stories within the same world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about it, if you've created the world already and there are huge cultures, towns, cities, languages and philosophies built up around it into a rich tapestry wouldn't it be fun to reveal it slowly from different angles in different places.  Discovery is a huge part of fiction and enjoyment, share a bit of that excitement with your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without going overboard in any one story, I agree with the others: it's better to delete, edit and chop 'extra' information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2294" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-03-11T00:12:30.683" LastActivityDate="2023-03-11T00:12:30.683" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3301" CreationDate="2011-07-08T13:05:59.890" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to your guesses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A chapter break can also be mostly for dramatic purposes; the scene can continue over the chapter break with the same characters and POV. (Think of a commercial break, which then returns to the same moment.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also use an extra space to indicate a scene change: different characters at the same time in a different location, different characters at a later time with location irrelevant. (Think of a scene change in a TV show: the scene just changes, and you have to figure out from context like time of day and scenery when and where we are.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually don't care for asterisks or hash marks. The only time I would use them is at the top or bottom of a page to indicate &quot;If this were falling in the middle of the page, I would just use an extra space, but since you can't tell that from where the copy lies, I'm throwing in these markers to let you know the next bit of copy is a new scene.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T13:05:59.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3300" CreationDate="2011-07-08T13:12:00.443" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're on the right track. The point of italics is to alert the reader that the words are not in the same language as the rest of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the logic that the English-spoken &quot;si&quot; wouldn't be italicized. I wouldn't italicize titles or single words, as those are easy enough to understand, even when the first word is Spanish and the rest is English. Add any accents as appropriate and leave it roman.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full sentences in Spanish would be italics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T13:12:00.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3301" CreationDate="2011-07-08T15:00:19.663" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to think asterisks and extra spaces can mean the same thing (be used in the same way), to indicate change of scene. I wouldn't always say, though, that you have to use this for every scene. In my experience it's sometimes difficult to pinpoint the ending of a scene, and if it runs into the next one and a space would look odd, I don't break it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree about chapters. They can either be finished at the end of a scene or in the middle of a scene, I don't think it matters. Just as long as it's not in an odd place, like the middle of a normal conversation. Perhaps at the end of a particularly dramatic line in the scene, and it could continue on into the next chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2287" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T15:00:19.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3307" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-08T15:04:01.503" Score="4" ViewCount="411" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just want to confirm if I did this correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have this reference: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;G. Burg, Das Melanom, Serie&#xA;  Gesundheit: Piper/VCH, (1993).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, want to convert it to vancouver style. In this case, this is what I did:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Burg G. Das Melanom. Serie Gesundheit:&#xA;  Piper/VCH. 1993.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be more precised. This is what I want to cite in Vancouver style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antikbuch24.de/buchdetails_9298038.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.antikbuch24.de/buchdetails_9298038.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it correct this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1289" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-04T21:32:44.520" LastActivityDate="2018-03-04T21:32:44.520" Title="How to reference a book in the Vancouver system?" Tags="|style|citations|vancouver-system|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3308" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-08T15:46:34.693" Score="1" ViewCount="179" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is this citation style called:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;P. Schmid-Saugeon, J. guillod &amp;amp; J.P.&#xA;  Thiran, Towards a Computer-Aided&#xA;  Diagnosis System For Pigmented Skin&#xA;  Lesions, Computerized Medical Imaging&#xA;  and Graphics, Vol 27, pp. 65–78,&#xA;  (2003) .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1289" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T12:21:30.423" Title="What is this citation style called?" Tags="|style|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3307" CreationDate="2011-07-08T18:14:38.293" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Burg G. Das Melanom: Wissenswertes über Muttermal, Sonne und andere Risikofaktoren: Informationen und Ratschläge Munich (Germany): Piper; 1993. (Serie Gesundheit VCH; vol 1840).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.library.uq.edu.au/training/citation/vancouv.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vancouver Style &quot;How-to&quot; guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2014-10-18T21:03:47.563" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T21:03:47.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2011-07-08T19:04:01.493" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;All fiction must have &lt;em&gt;conflict&lt;/em&gt;, but that conflict certainly doesn't have to spring from the existence of a personified antagonist.  There's man-against-nature (e.g., any survival story), man-against-himself (any kind of addiction-recovery story), and even conflicting protagonists (i.e., two characters have incompatible goals and struggle to defeat each other but the reader isn't invited to root for one over the other).  Even in traditional man-against-man stories, sometimes the enemy doesn't exist as a character, the protagonist is struggling against the villain's malign influence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are even weirder cases.  In the Sherlock Holmes short story, “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, there's no antagonist, no villain, and no crime, although I don't think Conan Doyle could have stretched it out for a whole novel without enraging his readers.  Arthur C. Clarke’s novel &lt;em&gt;Rendezvous With Rama&lt;/em&gt; similarly lacks any kind of negative character (although you could argue it lacks a plot altogether).  My wife is reading &lt;em&gt;Eat, Pray, Love&lt;/em&gt; -- I bet there's no antagonist there, but I can't be troubled to check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An interesting example from the movies (it's much easier to talk about movie plots because they are so much simpler and because there are so fewer movies made than novels, most people have seen most popular movies):  &lt;em&gt;The Fifth Element&lt;/em&gt; has a clear and heroic hero (Dallas) and a clear and villainous villain (Zorg) but the two never meet and are never aware of each others' existence.  They are in the same scene, once, but Bruce Willis walks out of frame before Gary Oldman walks in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="1125" LastEditDate="2017-02-18T16:40:31.747" LastActivityDate="2017-02-18T16:40:31.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2954" CreationDate="2011-07-08T19:17:33.523" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me be harsh but direct: I very sincerely doubt that someone who's not good at grammar is a good writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Not&lt;/em&gt; because grammar is somehow an ineluctable part of good writing -- it isn't -- but because good writing is writing that rings true in the reader's ear, and good grammar is good because it rings true.  Let me give you an (admittedly contrived) example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not knowing anyone there, the party was boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hearing that, the grammarian will shriek “Dangling participle! Dangling participle!” like a car alarm going off.  That's not, by itself, important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is important is that the reader, hearing that, will say, “What?  Huh?  ‘Knowing’ ... ‘party’ ... I doan get it.  I wonder what’s on ESPN ...”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer who dangles a lot of participles is going to get a lot of his readers watching Sports Center, because reading bad writing is a chore and it’s more fun to watch TV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The grammarian -- even that inner grammarian who complains not only about real mistakes like misplaced modifiers and subject-verb disagreement but also about split infinitives and sentences beginning with conjunctions -- that guy who sits on your shoulder and tries to suck the fun out of writing is really your early-warning system.  When he says this-or-that is ungrammatical, what you should hear is, people may not read it.  And he may be wrong, but he may be right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="1125" LastEditDate="2013-03-06T08:32:49.933" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T08:32:49.933" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2011-07-09T12:38:26.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Isn't there conflict in every story? If there's no conflict, there's no interest for the reader...what a boring story it would be! As far as an antagonist goes, I agree that it could play the part of anyone or anything, internally or externally, but there is almost always an antagonist to create conflict. By simple definition, it's that someone or something that opposes the protagonist or hero, which I think could extend to natural disasters, internal conflicts like drug addiction or depression, and divine intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2293" LastActivityDate="2011-07-09T12:38:26.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2428" CreationDate="2011-07-10T02:53:19.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both the sentence that you selected for special attention and the fuller excerpt from your opus, that you so considerately added that we might begin to understand your context, is a bit too prolix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By which I mean: it's all too wordy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Over the ensuing years,&quot; doesn't really say anything.  What you're looking for here is a conjunction to join the previous thought with the new thought.  So just use a conjunction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;So I read as much I could...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your English Major friend is right. The next bit isn't weak because it's a verbal adjective or antiquarian, it's weak because it's passive. The construction she referred to is your use of the past tense, &quot;I read,&quot; followed by an adverbial participial clause. (That's a mouthful!) In English, when you use the participle to form a clause that functions as an adverb you end up using the passive voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you heard writers advise people not to use too many adverbs? That's partly because adverbs shift the reader's attention away from the subject. In this case, &quot;trying&quot; modifies &quot;read.&quot; The last half of the sentence is all about the verb, the act of reading, and not about the subject, you! The passive voice does the same kind of thing; it minimizes the importance of the subject. Keep the focus on the subject and keep the voice active.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you want to say is that you read a lot. You also want to say something about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you read so much. Just say that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I wanted to learn more about the English language, so I read as much as I could.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not showy, but it's clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prolixity can be a used to good effect, but it's a dangerous trap. It can give a piece of writing an &quot;academic feel&quot; (although academic writing is rarely good writing), or it can give a piece a sense of style. Jane Austen, for example, did it well. Many others do not.  The biggest danger of prolixity is that it can lead you to use the wrong words, which just confuses your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;…his insight into English so beguiled me&quot; Beguiled? You were deceived? Diverted from your aims? Or intrigued? Enchanted? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;...and the relative obscurity of the field...&quot; Linguistics is not obscure. Difficult maybe, but not obscure. Or did you mean that linguistics is opaque?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the passive voice can also lead to prolixity: &quot;I began taking French and Latin, in addition to German...&quot; instead of, &quot;I took French, Latin and German.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;really do&lt;/em&gt; get a sense of style from your prose. You've got a voice and it's a good one. For instance, I really liked, &quot;...I began spending my afternoons researching....&quot; It puts me back in a world where my mornings were not my own; it's evocative. But it's passive and so it loses urgency. Beginning to do something is not as powerful as simply doing it. &quot;I spent my afternoons researching&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Although my interest never waned, it stagnated...&quot; I liked this as well. And it's active! so much better than, &quot;although my interest never began waning, it began stagnating.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep writing! I think you've got talent and you clearly have drive. Good luck with the scholarship!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-07-10T02:53:19.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2011-07-10T03:48:32.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;All plots are entirely and completely original and unique. All of them.  Every one a perfect snowflake of genius.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes as much sense as saying that all plots are derivative. I mean if that were true, you could make a movie about two dimwitted Canadian brothers, a beer truck and a haunted brewery and just call it a Hamlet remake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh... wait...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the thing is, Strange Brew &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; as original and unique as Hamlet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-07-10T03:48:32.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1754" CreationDate="2011-07-10T03:55:17.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was always very good at math and I enjoyed it quite a bit (math competitions, state awards, etc.. etc..) but I always found Math textbooks to be almost completely useless. The problem was that aside from giving sample problems, they didn't help me understand the problem. The lecture did that and the book was just a massive homework assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd say that the chapters should show explanations. Detailed walkthroughs of the lecture material. Problems with the steps explicated and answered. If I have a sheet of homework, I want to be able open the textbook and have it help me, not have it give me more homework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-07-10T03:55:17.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3317" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-11T08:47:36.583" Score="10" ViewCount="2162" Body="&lt;p&gt;How little &quot;fantasy&quot; can be in a story and it still be recognizably fantasy, and not mainstream fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;recognizable fantasy&quot; question is one I struggle with all the time.  Fantasy exists on a continuum of clearly fantastic material (supernatural beings, magic spells, etc.), to stuff that might not be fantasy at all, like Henry James' &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turn_of_the_Screw&quot;&gt;&quot;The Turn of the Screw&quot;&lt;/a&gt; or the more gentle sorts of magical realism.  I've occasionally failed to interest editors in stories because they didn't feel the fantasy element was strong enough.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you remember a Karen Joy Fowler story from a few years back, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20020806171430/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/fowler/fowler1.html&quot;&gt;&quot;What I Didn't See&quot;&lt;/a&gt;?  There was a pretty big dust up because it was published in a science fiction venue, but many people didn't think it had any kind of science fictional element.  Sometimes I think I'm pulling a Karen Joy Fowler with some of my fantasy, like this latest piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; This question was contributed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/&quot;&gt;James Van Pelt&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2017-09-29T13:56:32.927" Title="How little &quot;fantasy&quot; can be in a story and it still be recognizably fantasy?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|genre|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3317" CreationDate="2011-07-11T11:45:31.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As little as it is recognizably fantasy for the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, just kidding. First you have to be aware of the fact that the &quot;not strong enough fantasy element&quot; wasn't the real reason why the editor dismissed the book. Even editors have problems pointing always precisely to the real problem. It could just be the most obvious thing which the editor felt uncomfortable about. Maybe he would have ignored that if another part of the book were superior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to the question: As soon as you use something supernatural, you are leaving the &quot;mainstream&quot; fiction, as you call it. That does not mean that it is automatically fantasy. It could be a horror book, which can contain elements from fantasy without being declared as such. Not to mention the diminishing difference between SF and fantasy in some areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would help if we knew what that &quot;weak&quot; fantasy element was. Let us assume you write a story about a girl with a sixth sense. She knows things that will happen in the next ten minutes, she feels, when she is observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a supernatural gift (I don't have a better word). Readers of the mainstream novels could dislike it, because it is not realistic enough (which does not mean they wouldn't read James Bond novels). If you declare it as fantasy, would a fantasy fan (expecting a Tolkien story, witches, or vampires, etc.) be disappointed? Yes, probably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy readers like to &quot;escape&quot; the real world. They want to enjoy the possibilities which are not given in our world (and probably never will, to separate them from SF readers). Magic is the most obvious one. Creating fireballs out of nowhere. Meeting creatures like dragons and goblins, which you will never do on good old Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your world need to be significantly different from our world to generate a complete new feeling to walk on that world. A girl with a sixth sense does not sound that extraordinary. That does not mean you can't write a really great book with that girl, but if you disappoint the expectation of your audience, you'll fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always it's hard to draw a line. Knowing your fantasy element might help if you (James) want to share it. But be prepared that we find out that your editor is wrong ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-07-11T12:09:40.357" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T12:09:40.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3317" CreationDate="2011-07-11T12:13:38.910" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a basic boundary, Fantasy depends on what couldn't be. The amount of fantasy can be slight, or it can be grand, but that strangeness element must be there. More importantly, for a work to be recognised as fantasy, it will require someone of authority deciding that it is fantasy. Karen Joy Fowler is of sufficient status to be able to declare that her work is science fiction, and that is likely to be good enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In science fiction and fantasy, there have always been works that sparked debate about whether it is or isn't sci-fi or fantasy. However, unless you're an established author, you don't have the luxury of declaring your work to be fantasy or science fiction like Fowler does; someone else has to do that for you. That means your editor, publisher, your readership, and/or your peers and critics must declare it fantasy to be so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way you're going to achieve this is by reading a wide canon of fantasy works to be able to see how it's been done, which helps give a clear picture of what you can get away with, what people recognise as being fantasy. There is, unfortunately, no other way. I'd suggest listening to those editors, critics and readers to see why they don't consider it fantasy. Once you're established, then you can help push those boundaries of what fantasy is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-07-11T16:26:10.500" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T16:26:10.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3320" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3322" CreationDate="2011-07-11T13:13:08.350" Score="12" ViewCount="647" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished the first draft of my novel, and Im going to put it away for at least a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book has a lot of spelling / grammatical errors, as in true &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nanowrimo.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nanowrimo&lt;/a&gt; style, I kept typing without fixing anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I return, what should I focus on: Fixing the spelling and grammar first?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, should I read through the whole book, and look for plot/characterisation holes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there is &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/1714/2024&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question, but it focusses more on editing other peoples work, not your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T16:13:07.440" Title="2nd Draft- Fix spelling/grammar or plot first?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3283" CreationDate="2011-07-11T13:20:01.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing any camera directions whatsoever is considered to be intrusive by potential readers of your script (be they readers for a production house or potential directors). Try to look at your scene objectively. Does it really need a camera direction in the slug? Or, could one short sentence in the action lines serve to do the same sort of thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the script is out of your hands you are just going to have to live with what the director wants to do with it. If you are truly interested in writing for the screen you should get used to the idea that even though &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; picture a scene as being funnier/more exciting/sexier/what-have-you from certain angles, the director might not see it the same way. He or she might even cut that scene to make the movie flow better. Sad, I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2303" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T13:20:01.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3320" CreationDate="2011-07-11T13:26:38.053" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no point in polishing work that you're not going to keep for the final product.  I'd work through at the macro level first, cutting/adding/moving big chunks, and then I'd go back and look at the medium level stuff (style and flow, etc.), and then polish up whatever's left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, my first drafts are pretty clean.  If your spelling and grammatical errors get in the way of your critical reading, you may need to fix them first just so you can see what you've got for the bigger issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T13:26:38.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3320" CreationDate="2011-07-11T13:27:28.020" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to sit down after a month and read through your draft with a pen or pencil (or, if it's digital in Word format or something similar, use the note-tracking facilities available to you) and jot down all the ideas that come to you, focusing specifically on the story itself, but perhaps highlighting spelling/grammar errors along the way. Treat the grammar and spelling as secondary to the main goal of identifying problems with your story. Grammar and spelling errors are relatively quick and easy to fix, but intrinsic story problems - dialogue, characterisation, setting, plot holes, continuity, etc. - are far more demanding, and will likely alter many sections, thus altering any spelling and grammar mistakes you find anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T13:27:28.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3317" CreationDate="2011-07-11T14:10:56.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How little &quot;fantasy&quot; can be in a story and it still be recognizably fantasy, and not mainstream fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As little as your readers will tolerate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no hard-and-fast bottom line for fantasy fiction, because different readers and different editors have different expectations. One reader's baseline for &quot;fantasy&quot; might require obligatory elves and talking swords, while another might be happy with the slightest hint of counterfactuality. There is certainly precedent for &quot;fantastic&quot; stories taking place in the real world, with the fantastic elements being limited to an overlay of vampires, magic, ghosts, or something subtler yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if an editor is telling you that a story isn't fantastic enough, the most you can say about it is that it wasn't fantastic enough for &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; editor at &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; venue. It doesn't mean that it's not &quot;really&quot; fantasy. However, if you're hearing this a lot from genre editors, you might try selling it to a more mainstream literary press. The literary markets have become a lot more open to stories with elements of the fantastic, and a story with very mild suggestions of fantasy might fit in better in that sort of market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T14:10:56.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3317" CreationDate="2011-07-11T19:59:16.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key question here is: what element in your story do &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; see as being a &quot;fantasy&quot; element?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no denying we've seen plenty of fantasy published that skirts the edge of mainstream. I've seen this pretty frequently in &lt;em&gt;F&amp;amp;SF&lt;/em&gt;, in several flavors; I've seen magical realism in &lt;em&gt;Fantasy Magazine&lt;/em&gt;; Andy Duncan's excellent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/UniqueChicken.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Unique Chicken Goes In Reverse&quot;&lt;/a&gt; was published in &lt;em&gt;Eclipse One&lt;/em&gt;, and made the Nebula ballot. How little can you pull off? In a lot of venues, pretty darn little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bar isn't a lower bound on fantastic content; it's just the requirement that whatever you've got should be felt. If you yourself sense that your story &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a fantasy story, you should be able to work out why you feel that way. Would you feel the story wouldn't work well in a mainstream venue? If so - why? That's the element you should be homing in on. And if you feel like this element might not be clear, or might not be clearly fantastical (or fantasy-related), in the eyes of a potential reader - then you'll want to polish that particular aspect, give it more prominence, make sure it gets noticed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jasonsanford.com/jason/2009/01/story-of-the-week-the-radio-magician-by-james-van-pelt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;The Radio Magician,&quot;&lt;/a&gt; I would say, serves as a wonderful example. &#xA;For almost the entire length of the story, there's no real fantastical element - quite the opposite; the story is largely about Charlie's fascination with &quot;magic&quot; that's as fake and unwonderous as magic can be. And yet the story is suffused by the sense of wonder that Charlie feels; that's a worthy fantasy element, even though it isn't fantastical. And you introduce and develop the concept of a &quot;radio magician&quot; almost exactly like SF premise, taking the (well-known) phenomenon of old-fashioned radio and giving it a twist; it's &quot;mundane&quot; in the same sense that &quot;mundane SF&quot; is mundane - it's not &lt;em&gt;unrealistic&lt;/em&gt;, but it requires a certain extrapolation and flight of fancy. And again, you've put the showcasing of the &quot;radio magician&quot; concept into the very heart of the story - you made the story &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; your pseudo-fantastical concept, about showing it off and making the reader consider how very close it was to real-life parallels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel your piece is fantasy, it probably is; you just need to make sure other people know it. Figure out where the fantasy is - even if it's subtle, or just the style, or just the theme - and make that element stand out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, of course, aim for the venues that aren't looking for straight-up sword and sorcery stories :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-07-11T23:07:44.700" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T23:07:44.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3327" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3328" CreationDate="2011-07-11T20:24:01.470" Score="10" ViewCount="922" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a fantasy story about whether a teacher should be fired or not over teaching competency; most of the story revolves around the politics and the procedural process of the decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So much of fantasy seems to be about exceptionally high stakes, starting with the end of the world and going down to the loss of love or the loss of a loved one.  Losing your job sounds pretty low stakes compared to those.  How do you dramatize the mundane?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our real lives are filled with what feel like high stakes questions (can I get the committee to vote my way?  can I afford that extra car payment?  should I take six weeks off to go to Clarion?  etc.), but they don't always translate well to drama on the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was editing fiction for the California Quarterly, I used to get a lot of what I referred to as &quot;suburban angst.&quot;  These were stories about people whose lives were comfortable in all ways (and often upper middle class) who were agonizing over whether they would become their country club's president, or if their kids were achieving well enough in school, or if they should buy the red BMW or the black one.  They bored the hell out of me because the characters didn't have any real problems.  Now I'm interested in writing fantasy about these lower stake problems, and I'm trying to figure out how to do them well with fantasy elements, or at least better than the stuff I saw at the California Quarterly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; This question was contributed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/&quot;&gt;James Van Pelt&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-07-17T09:16:59.257" Title="How can I create drama in a story that is mostly political and procedural?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3327" CreationDate="2011-07-11T21:06:51.953" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Characters.  You have to make us care about the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we really care about the teacher; if we believe in the passion of the person trying to get the teacher fired; if we see the effects incompetent teaching have had on students, and not just statistics, but actual living, breathing student &lt;em&gt;characters&lt;/em&gt;, then the stakes are huge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show us both/all sides of the issue, not academically, but through the characters who really believe in what they're doing,  If they believe, you can make us believe, and once we believe, we'll care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: Ask yourself why YOU care.  That's probably why we'll care, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2011-07-11T21:56:40.663" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T21:56:40.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3320" CreationDate="2011-07-11T23:10:52.407" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Forget the grammar and spelling unless it gets in the way of fixing the other stuff in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on your characters and your plot first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also look at the overall structure of the novel before you get down to the nitty gritty. You might want to delete chapters, switch them round, write new chapters... no point spending time fixing spelling in chunks you might change in a bigger way anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2309" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-07-12T11:01:49.743" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T11:01:49.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3317" CreationDate="2011-07-12T03:27:10.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I think it also depends on how &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; personally feel about your text. Many, many years ago, I ran across this same question. The professor (Jim, I don't remember if it was you or not) took two books - &lt;strong&gt;Ender's Game&lt;/strong&gt; by Orson Scott Card, and &lt;strong&gt;Dragonriders of Pern&lt;/strong&gt; by Anne McCaffrey. The professor pointed out that so many people figured &lt;em&gt;Ender's Game&lt;/em&gt; was a science fiction story, but he claimed that it was fantasy, whereas McCaffrey always swore up and down that her series was science fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in a nut shell, if you can argue to your editor that your book has dragons, swords and sorcery, and it's science fiction, then you've got the makings of a good storyteller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2311" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T03:27:10.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3331" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-12T05:36:17.330" Score="11" ViewCount="418" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently editing a novel destined to be published primarily in e-book form, and made a list of pre-press instructions, to be followed when the final text is agreed upon. Some of these instructions were only needed &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; the text mimics the printed page, sometimes to the extent of having columns and fully-justified text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the e-books I've read use pages. The text is laid out more or less like it would be on a printed page. Why is that? Why not use scrolling text? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some advantages to laying out text like this: White space at the end of a chapter is a powerful indicator to the effect that &lt;em&gt;we're done with this bit&lt;/em&gt;. Text looks professional and classy when it's laid out on a page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this done? Is it just because users expect it? Or is there a deeper reason? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T16:17:16.490" Title="Why do ebooks often mimic the layout of the printed page?" Tags="|publishing|novel|ebook|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3331" CreationDate="2011-07-12T05:47:52.157" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;By doing a &quot;flip page&quot; style of feature in ebooks, it allows the reader a chance to catch their breath. Try this sometime. Get two copies of the exact same book (preferably in the public domain). Read one formatted for an e-reader, and the other in-line.&#xA; You'll notice very quickly that with the in-line text, you lose your place easily, your eyes tire quicker, and you may become extremely discouraged reading what seems to be an unending march of text up your screen.&#xA; Ebook formating on the surface seems to be mostly aesthetic, but there is a large chunk of psychological tricks that help keep us interested and reading the text long after we would have given up otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2311" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T05:47:52.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3331" CreationDate="2011-07-12T06:28:38.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nathan raises an excellent point. WIth scrolling text, you need to put in extra effort to track where you've stopped and where to start reading again. This may not seem like a lot of mental effort, but it's small things like that which tire the reader's &quot;eyes&quot; - a metaphor of course, it's really the brain which is tired from doing all that needless searching. There is also the fact that most ebook readers don't have refresh rates fast enough for smooth animations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1912" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T06:28:38.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3334" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3335" CreationDate="2011-07-12T07:06:23.100" Score="5" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure exactly how to ask this question in a vacuum so I'll give an example first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people are familiar with the Mitch Hedberg joke about an escalator being &quot;temporarily stairs&quot; rather than &quot;broken&quot;. You may be in a group of friends that knows his material, so if you come across a broken escalator, someone might make the joke or reference it in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In normal conversation there's no attribution. You'd say &quot;oh look, temporarily stairs&quot;, not &quot;well, as Mitch Hedberg said, ...&quot;. Conversation is very informal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question then is, how would you do something like this in fictional dialogue, keeping to the spirit of this type of casual conversation without coming across as if you're ripping someone off?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2312" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-07-12T08:49:01.230" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T17:23:37.290" Title="How do you reference pop culture in a dialogue without proper attribution?" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3334" CreationDate="2011-07-12T07:32:55.583" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd do it exactly as you've demonstrated, informal without inline attribution. You can then make mention of it in some form of bibliography at the end if you wish, but remember that commonly known phrases don't require attribution, depending on context/audience. It's also possible to include mention of the reference in an &quot;Acknowledgments&quot; section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T07:32:55.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3331" CreationDate="2011-07-12T09:27:37.623" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the theories about eye strain is completely valid and may have been part of the thought process. That said, let's not forget that many people are still not sold on the e-book experience.  Keeping it familiar will help ease the pain of switching for the uninitiated or reluctant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When computers shrunk to the size of a microwave and could &lt;em&gt;theoretically&lt;/em&gt; be put in someone's kitchen, it wasn't until they added the metaphor of a desktop (with all the fancy icons that entailed) that massive adoption started to happen. People get familiar with a particular process or methodology and can't imagine switching from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several times (because this is a debate I have a lot), people have told me they don't want to buy an e-reader because they like to physically turn the page or need the smell of the paper. I always laugh and say that's the same reason I can't get rid of my horse and buggy (it's just a more visceral experience). I also ask them how many blogs they read in a day and why they don't print them out before they read them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as the metaphor we use to interact with computers is changing (i.e. touchscreen tablets), the metaphor we use to read e-books may change.  But people need to be eased into it first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T09:27:37.623" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3331" CreationDate="2011-07-12T12:17:31.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been my experience that GUI's try to make it easy, and familiar for End Users. In web design, we try stuff that is imaginative and forward-thinking, yet still we code for familiarity: The navigation bar goes in a familiar place, the left and right side bars are scanned for tools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As traditional books have been around for ages, developers assume that people want the &quot;familiar flip of the page&quot; that says this is how many pages I've read. How many of us, when we are putting our books down, tilt the book up to look at the binding edge to see how far we've gotten. The flip is user friendly! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2313" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-07-12T16:17:16.490" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T16:17:16.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3308" CreationDate="2011-07-12T12:21:30.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears to be an APA format cite for a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2313" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T12:21:30.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3331" CreationDate="2011-07-12T15:58:40.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Eink Ereaders only spend battery when they need to refresh the page. If you have scrolling text, you have to refresh the whole page, but you show very little new text. That is very wasteful in terms of battery life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2317" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T15:58:40.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3340" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-13T01:20:41.577" Score="3" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently it's some sort of &quot;pro-am&quot; site.  I applied to be a travel writer and they, uh, picked me.  I'm curious if anybody knows where examiner.com is on a 1 to 10 scale where &quot;1&quot; is &quot;Application process?  &lt;em&gt;Everybody&lt;/em&gt; gets in, they're just scamming you for free content&quot; and &quot;10&quot; is &quot;ZOMG!  You're writing for examiner.com?  Wow, can I touch you...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T14:08:05.890" Title="Anybody know anything about examiner.com?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3340" CreationDate="2011-07-13T04:19:06.280" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;1 is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/005351_05062009.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this overview on Examiner.com&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/005364_05132009.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;individual user experiences&lt;/a&gt;. It's a pay-per-click site - it's not going to earn you fame, fortune, or even a respectable line for your CV. If you want to write such content anyway, then the platform and pocket money might be nice; if you think you can leverage or promote your writing into some sort of success elsewhere, I suppose that's about as feasible as doing so on Blogger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you're asking about prestige of the venue, selectivity, about inherent career potential? They have none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some more in-depth considerations of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2010/03/guest-blog-post-content-mills-why.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cons&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2010/03/guest-blog-post-content-mills-just.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pros&lt;/a&gt; of content mills at Writer Beware:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-07-13T14:08:05.890" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T14:08:05.890" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3320" CreationDate="2011-07-13T16:13:07.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Drafts are for refining concerns such as organization, plot, characterization, etc., not for mere mechanics. What you tackle on each draft is up to you; personally, I tend to start with a general &quot;let's see what I've got&quot; pass to fix up obvious structural problems at the sentence, paragraph, and even scene/section level, while making notes about what I need to improve in other regards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, your grammar and spelling would be just about perfect in every draft, because they've become automatic. Grammar and spelling are &lt;em&gt;bare minimum skills&lt;/em&gt; for being a writer. You wouldn't try to be a carpenter if you couldn't reliably hit a nail; you'd practice hitting nails first. Similarly, if you can't always correctly spell the word you intend to use (typos&amp;dagger; aside), you should learn to do that first. You will be a lot less frustrated by the process of revising, in my opinion, if you are not trying to deal with macro and micro issues at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My philosophy: assume that you'll run up against deadline and your current draft will end up having to be published, even if it's your first, and try to write so that you won't be too embarrassed if that happens. There are plenty of published writers who have inconsistent plots and cardboard characters, but very few who have consistently bad spelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;dagger; Typos are when a word gets scrambled (or lost) on its way from your brain to your fingers. Happens to everyone. Not knowing whether to use &quot;their&quot; or &quot;there,&quot; or how to spell &quot;minuscule&quot; (an old nemesis of mine) is &lt;strong&gt;not a typo&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T16:13:07.440" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3317" CreationDate="2011-07-13T21:29:58.587" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine, Alma Alexander, writes fantasy pretty much exclusively. Her book &lt;em&gt;The Secrets of Jin-Shei&lt;/em&gt; was, however, marketed as &quot;mainstream&quot; fiction. She considers it fantasy because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The setting is a fictionalized version of ancient China, much as the setting of much genre fantasy is a thinly disguised version of medieval England&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;About halfway into the book, it becomes apparent that a character who is said to be a sorcerer has actual magic powers (up until this particular scene, it was all hearsay and could be taken to be simply the way an ancient culture would frame such things)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her publishers disagreed with her, marketed the book accordingly, and it went on to be a reasonable international success (though, sadly, it did not do so well here in the U.S.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genre is a marketing tool that can serve publishers and readers equally well: it allows readers to easily find things they might like to read, and it allows publishers to reach an audience who will be predisposed to buy certain types of books. The question a savvy publisher will ask is not &quot;does this book have dragons in it?&quot; but &quot;would people who never go to the Fantasy section of a bookstore pay to read this?&quot; If it has dragons in it, to be sure, it's probably going to be fantasy by either definition, but give &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; credit to &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; publishers for knowing something about marketing books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To more directly address the question, although this is still pretty tangential, science fiction readers have a word &quot;sfnal&quot; which means &quot;it's not exactly science fiction, but if you enjoy science fiction you'll probably like it.&quot; I've heard it applied to nonfiction books like Douglas Hofstadter's &lt;em&gt;Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid&lt;/em&gt; and to Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, which is technically historical fiction. Some techno-thrillers are also taken to be sfnal (one definition I heard of a techno-thriller is &quot;a science fiction story with the President in it&quot;) -- Neal Stephenson in fact wrote one of those, too, under a pseudonym. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all to say that the dividing line is not necessarily sharp and may vary from author to author, reader to reader, and publisher to publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastEditorUserId="251" LastEditDate="2011-07-14T23:31:45.837" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T23:31:45.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3344" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5631" CreationDate="2011-07-14T14:22:00.800" Score="6" ViewCount="18222" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recall seeing the word &amp;quot;Ends.&amp;quot; placed at the end of documents to indicate that, obviously, nothing else follows. Is this acceptable standard usage? It feels rather archaic (not that that's necessarily a bad thing), although it does serve a purpose. Are there any alternatives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/chief-justice-statement-on-death-of-cabinet-minister/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] just and truly free South Africa will be remembered by many generations to come” said Chief Justice Mogoeng.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enquiries&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2323" OwnerDisplayName="SabreWolfy" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2021-09-29T14:35:47.103" Title="What is the use of &quot;Ends.&quot; to indicate the end of a document?" Tags="|formatting|ending|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3344" CreationDate="2011-07-14T16:03:13.257" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen two or three hash marks ## or -30- at the end of press releases and news articles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-07-14T19:11:13.763" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T19:11:13.763" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="47" CreationDate="2011-07-15T12:44:58.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can make them genetically modified, armed terrorist superzombies, that might work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1736" LastActivityDate="2011-07-15T12:44:58.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3347" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-15T18:39:14.523" Score="1" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I've briefly lived somewhere but now I want to return and stay there longer. Here is a paragraph of how I express it. Please suggest improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The new development looks really awesome. I had a brief stint (1 year) in town XXXXX  in 2003 -2004 at Great Bears development, shortly after it had been built. Loved it, but decided to move. With the emergence of this development, I just might sojourn to XXXXX once again, hopefully, &lt;strong&gt;for longer term&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Fedor" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T21:12:57.020" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T21:12:57.020" Title="What is the expression/common form to express that one will stay long term somewhere?" Tags="|clarity|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-06-03T21:12:47.660" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3347" CreationDate="2011-07-15T19:27:01.370" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to imply that you would consider staying there permanently, I'd suggest&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the emergence of this development, I just might sojourn to XXXXX once again, hopefully &lt;em&gt;to settle down there&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2011-07-15T19:27:01.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3344" CreationDate="2011-07-16T08:43:31.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's usually a full square that ends fx a news article. I believe there exist different kinds of text ending marks for different writing cultures, styles and genres. Take a look at these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080903084042AAakPtI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080903084042AAakPtI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/intermediate/a/endsigns.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/intermediate/a/endsigns.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://desktoppub.about.com/od/glossary/g/End_Sign.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://desktoppub.about.com/od/glossary/g/End_Sign.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2298" LastActivityDate="2011-07-16T08:43:31.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3352" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3353" CreationDate="2011-07-16T12:22:10.727" Score="3" ViewCount="2652" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a few paragraphs and in them I cited three short sentences from the same book, same chapter and marked them as ...(1)...(2)...(3).... My endnotes now look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;(1) Author1, ..., Author 5, Book name (3rd ed.), Publisher, City, Year&#xA;(2) Author1, ..., Author 5, Book name (3rd ed.), Publisher, City, Year&#xA;(3) Author1, ..., Author 5, Book name (3rd ed.), Publisher, City, Year&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that looks ugly. Same book with 5 authors repeated three times. Is there any guideline about multiple quotations from the same book when using the Vancouver style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2329" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-04T21:31:33.080" LastActivityDate="2018-03-04T21:31:33.080" Title="How to cite multiple sentences from the same book in the Vancouver system?" Tags="|citations|vancouver-system|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3352" CreationDate="2011-07-16T14:08:24.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you add details like the page numbers, then several end notes are useful. (2) and (3) would only contain an ibidem (or ibid.) and the differing page numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as I know Vancouver does not care about page numbers that much (and you are not showing them), also Latin abbreviations are not used with this system. Therefore only one end note should be sufficient. Why don't you use just ...(1)...(1)...(1) in your text, or ...(1)...(ibid.)...(ibid.)? Do you need for each citation one end note?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-07-16T14:08:24.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3354" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-16T15:20:33.090" Score="3" ViewCount="3844" Body="&lt;p&gt;What tense could I use when I write about a journey? Suppose if I write about a train journey and describe the countryside, would using a present tense create a deeper impact to the reader? I could make it appear as if I had been writing during the travel though the reality is I could have written it later. I would want the reader to feel the depiction and I was wondering if tense matters here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2330" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-04-30T15:29:54.820" LastActivityDate="2013-05-04T02:14:21.900" Title="Which tense should I use when writing a post about a journey?" Tags="|style|tenses|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3354" CreationDate="2011-07-16T17:43:55.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In which tense do you feel most comfortable writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that a good writer can give a sense of immediacy and impact regardless of the tense chosen.  This seems like one of those questions that we use to keep us from getting down to the hard work of actually writing - like 'what font should I use' or 'what's the best word processor'.  It doesn't really matter.  Chose one, and get going!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-07-16T17:43:55.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3354" CreationDate="2011-07-16T18:44:50.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know lots of people say that present tense creates immediacy, but as a reader I've never noticed any difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you want to give a better impression that the story is being written or told as it happens, present tense &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; help with that. That's not quite the same thing as the reader's sense immediacy. It's related, but not quite the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few caveats for present tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want the piece to read as if it were written during the journey, you'll want to make sure you would have had a reason to write it during the journey. You may not need to express that reason directly in the text, but if you're writing in present tense, the reason to start writing can't come from events later in the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you won't be able to foreshadow overtly. If you want to foreshadow, you'll have to do it subtly, perhaps via dramatic irony (describing things and events whose significance the reader understands, but the writer does not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-07-16T18:44:50.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3357" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-16T20:13:22.983" Score="2" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am required to use Endnote to manage citations. When I find an article, I am expected to create an Endnote record for it, and we have some internal guidelines as to which fields we consider mandatory (basically the ones needed for proper scientific citations). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools like Google scholar allow for a semi-automated workflow, where I can download a record which supposedly has the full bibliographical information on the text. But in fact, the information is often low quality, and I have to clean it up per hand. Inconsistent use of initials, authors sometimes given as &lt;code&gt;First name Last name&lt;/code&gt;, sometimes as &lt;code&gt;Last name, First name&lt;/code&gt; and similar problems abound. Then there is the problem of missing fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there something - an add-on or a Web service - which can perform some automatic cleanup? For example, it could search for the ISBN given the title, or vice versa, the way Calibre does. It could fill in a publisher based on the journal's name, sparing me hunting publisher names all over the Internet. I understand that such a system isn't perfect, but even if it fetched the possible matches and showed me asking for confirmation, this would be a huge improvement over the manual process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this isn't possible, is there another tool which supports it and has a reasonable Endnote compatibility allowing for seamless import and export? I am specifically interested in bibtex and other TeX compatible tools, because I plan to transition to TeX for publications in the near future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2331" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T11:42:12.180" Title="Is there a way to improve Endnote record consistency?" Tags="|tools|citations|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3359" CreationDate="2011-07-16T23:42:25.890" Score="4" ViewCount="2473" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say that I defined a new term in my writing, such as (yes, it's second-person):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You spot a Holo-Reader—a long, silver metal tube that records holograms in three dimensions for later playback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's pretty clear that the first time I mention and define the new term, it's a name, and thus should be properly capitalized (as &quot;Holo-Reader.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about subsequent uses of the term? Should I capitalize it or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel personally that maybe I should, but it draws too much attention to it and treats it as a name; whereas now, it has become part of the &lt;em&gt;lingua franca&lt;/em&gt; of the reader, of the world in which the writing inhibits; and is therefore not a name, but a &quot;common&quot; object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I deal with this in my writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1707" OwnerDisplayName="ashes999" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2011-07-18T15:51:37.287" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T01:49:56.080" Title="Defining Terms: To Capitalize or Not To Capitalize?" Tags="|science-fiction|terminology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3358" CreationDate="2011-07-17T00:04:50.603" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;My preference would lean toward no capitalization at all.  Definitely not differing caps throughout the book.  In fact, I wouldn't hyphenate it.  To treat a new word as a normally used word gives a valuable feel of reality to the object.  Isaac Asimov used this technique in his sci-fi Foundation series, and it lent credibility to the world he created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; just the preference of an avid reader.  You could probably get more authoritative suggestions and opinions from &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Writers.SE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You spot a holoreader—a long, silver metal tube that records holograms in three dimensions for later playback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2195" OwnerDisplayName="drm65" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T01:49:56.080" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3358" CreationDate="2011-07-17T00:07:17.513" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's a specific model name, such as an iPod you would, if it's just a general term 'tablet' you wouldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends how strict the lawyers are in your imaginary world! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Martin Beckett" LastActivityDate="2011-07-17T00:24:56.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3327" CreationDate="2011-07-17T09:16:59.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Kate's answer covers this nicely, but I just saw an Israeli film called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1445520/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Footnote&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; which, IMHO, does exactly what you're asking about. There are great examples here for your question (and in line with Kate's answer). Spoilers for the film (highly recommended, I'll add) follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The film is about a father and son, both of whom are professors in Talmud scholarship (to most people - an obscure academic niche; not even the religious study of the religious texts, but the academic study of them). The father is introverted, meticulous, didactic; he's been snubbed by the academic community because his single, monumental life's work was superseded by somebody else's fluke discovery. The son is outgoing, popular, something of a ham; he's charismatic, but lacking in true gravity. The movie is about the tension between father and son - the father is intensely wounded by the community's treatment of him; he is jealous of his son's success, and sees the community as superficial and worthy of scorn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So most of the film revolves around the obscure, the procedural, the political. Who got what prize when; who gets to vote on adding new members to certain organizations; all in areas that practically nobody cares about. Here are a few moments the film achieved that had amazing tension:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reactions to the politics:&lt;/strong&gt; The film opens with the son being honored in a ceremony, and giving a speech. We don't know any of the background yet. For the entire scene, all while the son is talking, the camera shows us only the father's face. The son is talking about what a brilliant educator his father is, what an inspiration he was; the father's face grows more and more sour. We don't even know what the tension is about yet, but we know this much: the father is furious; and if he's furious when his son is praising him, that praise can't be sincere or authentic - the father is angry; the son is lying. The formal, ceremonial event is very dull, but &lt;strong&gt;people's reactions to the event make the scene exciting.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stakes of the politics:&lt;/strong&gt; The key conflict in the film comes when the father is erroneously informed he's to be honored with the coveted Israel Prize - actually, it's his son it's meant for. Immediately, his entire life brightens up - he becomes more friendly and more forthcoming; he's proud of himself; we see that the recognition is &lt;strong&gt;immensely significant to him.&lt;/strong&gt; That makes it clear to us what the stakes are - not the dry result of the procedure, but what it means to the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Procedure as metaphor:&lt;/strong&gt; After some twists, the son bargains with the prize committee to give the father the award, to keep the mistake a secret. One of the caveats is that the son himself needs to write the alleged &quot;judges' comments&quot; recommending the father for the prize. The son sits at his computer, copying the judges' comments recommending &lt;em&gt;him&lt;/em&gt;, and trying to fit them to his father. They don't fit - and he keeps changing effusive words of praise to more cautious ones. &lt;strong&gt;The formal process demonstrates the distance between the two characters;&lt;/strong&gt; it's practically a metaphor for how the son &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt; to appreciate his father, but doesn't, and perhaps can't.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Politics as a tool to be used:&lt;/strong&gt; Meanwhile, the father is exulting in his newfound glory - obscure though it may be. When a newspaper reporter interviews him, he does not hesitate to castigate the community that has snubbed him for so long - and he pointedly includes his son in his criticism. Here, &lt;strong&gt;the formal procedure is a tool for furthering the characters' personal agendas&lt;/strong&gt;. Procedure is what they're all swimming in, so it can be intentionally and directly used for personal aims. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this is helpful :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-07-17T09:16:59.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3362" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3365" CreationDate="2011-07-17T09:42:18.463" Score="6" ViewCount="338" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a document using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/a&gt;. I don't have access to the full guide, only to what's provided on-line.&#xA;Now I wondering as to whether, in the main text itself, I should use the punctuation-quote or quote-punctuation sequence. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Blabla,&quot; more blabla.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Babla.&quot; More blabla.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Blabla&quot;, more blabla.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Blabla&quot;. More blabla.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, does adding a footnote change anything to the sequence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Blabla,&quot;² more blabla.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Blabla&quot;,² more blabla.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style proposes, when citing sources in footnotes with regard to articles or parts of books, to use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joshua I. Weinstein, “The Market in Plato’s Republic,” &lt;em&gt;Classical Philology 104&lt;/em&gt; (2009): 440.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see the comma is within the quote. I am ready to accept this for a title, but in a sentence of the main text, it looks odd to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your opinion in this regard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2335" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T15:23:34.683" LastActivityDate="2023-08-20T00:28:42.893" Title="Punctuation-Quote or Quote-Punctuation?" Tags="|style|citations|punctuation|quotes|footnotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3363" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3366" CreationDate="2011-07-17T10:56:00.203" Score="1" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm planning to have all the titles of my website in lowercase, as shown in the picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/e9SMc.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did it to fit the design of the black circle in the top left (Yeah stupid I know, just a designer's obsession for perfection).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know it it looks unprofessional (for instance, having my name written in lower-case as well as all the titles).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2011-07-17T11:16:34.450" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T14:10:13.063" Title="Does it look unprofessional to have my name and all the titles of my website in lower-case?" Tags="|business-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2011-07-17T23:23:10.970" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3363" CreationDate="2011-07-17T12:25:27.663" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, very old, tired, kitschy, and unprofessional. e.e. cummings died a long time ago. When I see grown people still presenting themselves like this I want to pat them on the head. I immediately think:  young; fey; pretentious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2336" LastActivityDate="2011-07-17T12:25:27.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3362" CreationDate="2011-07-17T13:29:59.817" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;CMOS says periods and commas go inside.  It doesn't make sense, to me, but that's the rule.  Bear in mind that this does not apply to question or exclamation marks, which only go inside the quotation marks if they belong to the words being quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a fairly interesting discussion on this in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2293056/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Rise of “Logical Punctuation”.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-08-20T00:28:42.893" LastActivityDate="2023-08-20T00:28:42.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3363" CreationDate="2011-07-17T13:50:22.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it looks fine.  I agree that &quot;hi there&quot; needs to be fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-07-19T14:10:13.063" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T14:10:13.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3354" CreationDate="2011-07-17T13:52:27.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you mix things up here. Present tense does not build immediacy, immediacy should be there if you use present tense. At least I expect it when present tense is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3354/which-tense-should-i-use-when-writing-a-post-about-a-journey/3355#3355&quot;&gt;Kate mentions&lt;/a&gt; the sense of immediacy is independent of the used tense. But if you use present tense, your writing should better have this sense. Just using present tense will not add it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though the tense does matter in combination with your viewpoint. You have to be consistent to avoid puzzling the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example let me use a thriller playing in a train (for your journey ;). There is a murder committed in the compartment next to the person watching the scenery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using third person view (omniscient or not is only a matter of detail here) you can use present tense and write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sybil watches the mountains of Montana. In the compartment next to her a man slaughters a woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No problem with that (besides missing suspension).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First person, present tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I watch the mountain ranges of Montana while the guy in the next compartment is slashing his girl-friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you know that? How could the first person narrator know what happens in the other compartment, or that it is his girl-friend and not his stepmother (or maybe both with one kill)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an opening scene of a book you can use this, if you answer these questions during the book. Otherwise it is an inconsistency in your perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now we try that with past tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He ripped apart her chest, while I was watching the snow on the shiny peaks of Montana. When I found the blood beneath the door one hour later, he had already left the train.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using past tense this trick is possible, because it's plausible that the narrator knows more afterwards than he did when the crime happened. If it is good style or not, I leave open for discussion (well, I like it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you stay consistent, it does not matter if you use present tense or not. A deeper impact is not created by tense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-07-17T13:52:27.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2011-07-17T19:43:00.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;anything done in excess is normally deemed an obsession. Regardless of what the quality of your writing is, you're clearly obsessed with the standard of your work. &#xA;Perhaps you should just write the articles with the notion that bad work doesnt get published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the other commentators on this page have suggested getting others, with an objective outlook, to review your work. That's probably the best advice, too. Maybe sent it to people who are au fait with the world of writing, and who can shine light on your literary&#xA;Pungent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for sharpening your skill and success as a writer, there is only two things you can do: read and write. &#xA;You cannot expect to be a good writer if you dont expend an impressive amount of time reading. Regardless of the material you're reading, just make sure you always haave a book in hand.. The same can be said about writing. Carry on practicing at every given opportunity. It really is that simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2339" LastActivityDate="2011-07-17T19:43:00.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3354" CreationDate="2011-07-17T22:01:19.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Choose the tense that suits the story you want to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like you say, if you want to create the impression that the description of the journey is from a diary, then present tense could work. However, even here you could write as past tense because perhaps you wrote in your diary at the end of the day looking back over the day's activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps the story you're trying to tell is from the point of view of a changed, wiser person looking back at lessons learned from a particular journey, and you want to contrast between that younger self and the later, older one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these options is any better or worse than the other as long as you tell the story well, and you're consistent. The possibilities are endless, but they all depend on the story you're trying to tell, and that's what you should use to dictate the tense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, trust your instincts: if you feel more comfortable with first person, present tense as a writer, then do that. If you prefer past tense, third-person, do that. The only time I would suggest present tense would perhaps be with action novels, but even there, a story well told is a story well told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-07-17T22:01:19.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3357" CreationDate="2011-07-18T01:21:44.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not that familiar with Endnote, but I did find this site. Looking over it, I think there might be something here that would help you out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csu.edu.au/division/library/research/endnote/getting/plugins&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Endnotes plugins&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2311" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T01:21:44.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3357" CreationDate="2011-07-18T11:42:12.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Endnote is truly dreadful.  I'd recommend using &lt;a href=&quot;http://zotero.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zotero&lt;/a&gt; to collect the data, then clean it up before exporting to RIS format,and then importing that into Endnote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1070" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T11:42:12.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="295" CreationDate="2011-07-18T16:02:17.397" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I had to name only one source, it would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0898795109&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;M. Helitzer - Comedy Writing Secrets&lt;/a&gt; - the best book on comedy writing I've ever read. It explains why certain things are funny, describes techniques for brainstorming and writing jokes, and it's also a pretty funny book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Books&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favourite humorists are P.G. Wodehouse (Jeeves or Castle Blandings novels and short stories), David Lodge (The British Museum Is Falling Down, Changing Places) and Woody Allen (short stories). Personally I consider T. Wolfe a very funny author, especially his latest novel I Am Charlotte Simmons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Audio&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also recommend listening to some stand-up comedy: George Carlin (he's the best), Eddie Murphy, David Cross, Bill Hicks, Dane Cook...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1957" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T16:02:17.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2011-07-18T21:25:22.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering about this a couple of weeks ago. I am bogged down in a story and self-doubt was overwhelming me. How terrible the story was, how boring it was in places, &amp;amp;etc. I think most of us know the drill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got the idea to write down the snarkiest possible review of the story. Absolutely vicious and truthful. Just doing that helped, but a little while later I eventually came up with a great comeback. It had me laughing for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it made me feel so much better. Oddly, it has lasted for quite some time, it seems to have quieted the demons for a while, I doubt they are gone forever but I'll take it one day at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1422" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T21:25:22.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2011-07-19T04:09:17.957" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the best advice for writing is: do more research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might mean reading more books, interviewing more people, taking more classes, or engaging with different points of view. Debate. Argue (in writing) the big points and the little points. The hallmark of good writing (fiction or non-fiction) is clarity. Clarity comes from knowing your subject; knowing what's essential and what isn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fiction, clarity comes from plot and character development. In non-fiction, clarity comes from detailed research. In either case, flaws are often a result of not doing enough work to get at the essentials. Style is great, but style can't save a bad plot, animate dull characters, resolve contradictions, or turn a bad argument into a good one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your subject changes regularly (as in journalism), then you need to know everything about why you've chosen that subject. What's essential about that story that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; decided to tell it &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gain confidence in your knowledge of the material and you should gain confidence in your ability to express your ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T04:09:17.957" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3334" CreationDate="2011-07-19T17:23:37.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a good way to do that is to have a second character who doesn't know about it and have the first character explain.  otherwise, i think it's ok to just use it like it's a part of a normal conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2186" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T17:23:37.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3216" CreationDate="2011-07-19T17:33:34.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made my own character cards. I simply wrote down everything important about the character so that i wouldn't mess it up later in the book.  name, age, eye color, hair color, beliefs, family, height, weight, relationships to other characters, and then I had a misc. section.  that is just for anything you think is important but doesn't really have a category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2186" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T17:33:34.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="103" CreationDate="2011-07-19T19:32:42.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0826418171&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Creative Writing MFA Handbook&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; has a lot of useful tips for students interested in a creative writing MFA, including what to look for in, and how to pick, MFA programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T19:32:42.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3166" CreationDate="2011-07-20T02:48:05.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is not &quot;impossible&quot;, I would venture to suggest that it is &quot;improbable&quot;. Publishers are like any other business in that they are looking for the next big product that will make them money. They very seldom take risks on new writers because they will have an easier time selling writers who are already known. If you have published short stories or other works that might help you to be recognized, you would likely have a much better chance. Personally, I gave up on trying to go through &quot;traditional&quot; publishers and chose to self-publish. Rather than go through all the explanations of why, I would suggest you visit the web site of an author named Joe Konrath. He presents many arguments in favor of self-publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T02:48:05.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3067" CreationDate="2011-07-20T03:03:34.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than using a subsidy publisher, I agree with the suggestion to go with self-publishing. You can use Kindle Direct Publishing to get your book published as an e-book, and it won't cost you a penny. However, it would definitley behoove you to make sure you have a good cover, that the book is well edited, and that your content is well presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to e-book publishing, you can use CreateSpace from Amazon to get your book published in a print format, again at no cost. However, the same caveats regarding a good cover, good editing, and good content still apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of people who are using self-publishing options from Amazon or Smashwords to get their books out there, and you can make it happen a whole lot faster and end up with a much more professional product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean to come off as someone trying to promote Amazon, but I have successfully published ten books and have made money off of every single one of them. I spent a couple hundred dollars getting professionally designed covers for my fantasy novels and I paid to have them edited, but in just three months I have reached break even and now every book I sell is straight profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T03:03:34.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="845" CreationDate="2011-07-20T03:13:40.943" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just joined the site, so you may have already acted on this, but I would definitely recommend going with self-publishing, as long as you don't use a subsidy or vanity publisher. You can go to sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://kdp.amazon.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Direct Publishing&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smashwords.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Smashwords&lt;/a&gt;, or Barnes&amp;amp;Noble and find information on self-publishing e-books or go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.createspace.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CreateSpace&lt;/a&gt; for print books. All of these options are free and can allow you to get a finished product out to the public in much faster time than a traditional publisher. Each of these options will allow you to publish for free, so there really isn't a cost factor involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to that, you can get much higher royalties by using any of these services than you would with a traditional publisher. You would also be better off than using a subsidy publisher, because you don't pay for these services. You might want to spend a little money to get a good book cover and to have someone professionally edit your book, but you should be spending that money anyway if you were using a subsidy publisher. Below are some ranges for these types of services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Book covers: $50-$300 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editing: $75-$500 (depends on size of book)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two fantasy novels that I self-published over the last few months, and I have already recovered the money I spent on them for book covers and editing. There are a whole lot of authors who are starting to go with this self-publishing model, and I highly recommend it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-08-04T20:22:05.987" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T20:22:05.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3162" CreationDate="2011-07-20T03:41:12.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it wise? In my opinion, yes. I have sold hundreds of e-books using a pen name, and I have recently started publishing other e-books under my own name. I have not spent much time promoting them because I am in the process of writing two new series, and that takes up much of my spare time that I used to spend on promoting and marketing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for the &quot;how&quot;. The first step, naturally, is to write the book! Once that is done, you need to create your e-book. There are a lot of different ways to do this, and there are different formats as well. I'm going to discuss two different options. One will focus on creating a mobi file to use at Amazon, the other will focus on creating a Word document for Smashwords. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to create an account at &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Direct Publishing&lt;/a&gt;, which is Amazon's e-book service. Then you will want to create an account at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smashwords.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Smashwords&lt;/a&gt;, which is an e-book distribution company. They will create multiple formats that visitors can buy and they will also distribute your book in the proper formats to Barnes &amp;amp; Noble, the Apple iBookstore, and several other places. These two services will get you the broadest exposure with the least effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With either service, if you are using MS Word, you can upload your file immediately, and they will do the conversions to the proper formats for you. However, with Amazon, their conversion process often messes up Tables of Content, page breaks, chapter breaks, etc. One way to minimize these issues is to save your Word document as a &quot;Web page, filtered&quot;. This cleans up some of the unique Word tags and usually results in a cleaner conversion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I personally use a process documented by &lt;a href=&quot;http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Guido Henkel&lt;/a&gt; which recommends modifying your html file and then converting it with Calibre software. This requires a little more work, but I have found that my conversions are spot on every time, and I have always been pleased with the results.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smashwords has similar issues with converting your Word document unless you very closely follow their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;style guide&lt;/a&gt;. I am not going to go into great detail here, because their style guide does that for you. Be warned, though, that Smashwords currently accepts ONLY Word documents. If you have the newest Word software, you'll be better off saving it in the Word 97 version after following the style guide recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have your files uploaded, then the next step is promoting and marketing. There is a lot involved there, and I will save that for another post. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-07-29T16:33:37.037" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T16:33:37.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="312" CreationDate="2011-07-20T04:23:55.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to put it in there, then put it in there. Writing is an art form, its YOUR work- I'm not happy with people giving answers about &quot;well only if the actual details are integral to your plot... if you put sex in it then it must be a romance novel anyway...&quot;. You can't create boundaries like this for somebody else's work, healthy suggestions are okay but asserting that certain aspects of someones work may be unneccessary in terms of their own &quot;plot&quot; is confusing to me. It's subjective, if it's part of your vision for your writing then leave it in- don't censor yourself, your work, to fit the mould of some imaginary publisher. Your main concern should be your own integrity as a writer (and don't spit at me with that SHOW DON'T TELL b.s.- its thrown around too much and it reeks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1495" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T04:23:55.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3216" CreationDate="2011-07-20T04:52:16.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my epic fantasy novel I used index cards to identify some of the key characteristics of most of the characters. This helped me whenever I had to reference a character that I hadn't used in a couple of chapters. I also laid out the cards in a timeline to help keep track of when the charcaters were introduced and what they were doing at the time. How you use them will really depend on what you need to accomplish with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T04:52:16.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3386" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3387" CreationDate="2011-07-19T05:03:44.713" Score="5" ViewCount="3352" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I am writing a post/blog, how should I mention myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ray Wenderlich (Site Admin)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ray is an indie software developer currently focusing on iPhone and iPad development. He’s the founder of a small iPhone development studio called Razware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now another example from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onextrapixel.com/2010/09/06/how-to-write-an-effective-about-me-page/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. They insist to write like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My name is Ray Wenderlich. I am an indie software developer currently focusing on iPhone and iPad development. I am the founder of a small iPhone Dev. Studio Razware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also observed both ways of writing on many Google+ and Facebook profiles. Some write about themselves in first person, others in third.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="sugar - Sagar Kothari" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T13:00:24.230" Title="Referring to oneself in first vs. third person in online profiles" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3386" CreationDate="2011-07-19T05:11:38.520" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's just a matter of style whether you want your &quot;profile&quot; to look as if it's written by you, or by someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow your own inclination unless you're doing it in a context where someone else (the site, your employer, etc.) sets the rules. In which case do what they say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be surprised if any Writers.SE members have refered to themselves as &lt;em&gt;He&lt;/em&gt; in their profiles. It seems a bit silly to do that if there's &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; possibility that someone else wrote the profile. But I imagine people sometimes do this to give the impression they're so busy they don't have time to do the write-up themselves, but so important someone else will do it for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1662" OwnerDisplayName="FumbleFingers" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-07-20T17:07:03.540" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T17:07:03.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3386" CreationDate="2011-07-20T17:42:34.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using third person offers the benefit, that the profile can be used by other persons referring to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E. g. you wrote a book and a newspaper/magazine is writing a review, then they also want to add a profile of the author. If your online profile is written in third person, they can just copy-paste it (with your approval). Some authors have special sections on their home pages for this press stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T17:42:34.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3386" CreationDate="2011-07-20T19:32:53.207" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a major difference is: do you want to give the reader the sense that &lt;strong&gt;you are speaking to him&lt;/strong&gt;, or do you want to give him the sense that &lt;strong&gt;he is reading about you&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First person can feel more personal, more informal, as if an actual person is standing in front of the reader - &quot;Hi, I'm Ray!&quot;. Third person is a description of the profile owner - generally aiming for a neutral, factual/descriptive tone (&quot;Ray is an experienced software developer&quot;) that can feel more professional and matter-of-fact. Sometimes, this can be humorously subverted (&quot;Ray's core competencies include vast expertise in software developement and ingenious placement of whoopie cushions when his co-workers aren't looking&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in general, first-person is great for feeling like a personal introduction; third-person is great for a straightforward, professional description of yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T19:32:53.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3390" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-29T09:26:26.967" Score="3" ViewCount="3297" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Example: an item of information that is typical of a class or group;&#xA;  &quot;this patient provides a typical example of the syndrome&quot;; &quot;there is&#xA;  an example on page 10&quot; &lt;em&gt;(Google)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I haven't understood this properly through out my entire high school career, but I think choosing examples becomes complex. In cases of literary analysis, I understand that quotations from the book are typical examples; however, in the case of general essays, what is an &quot;example&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typical paragraph structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Topic sentence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Example&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supporting sentences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transitions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would I determine whether an example is appropriate for my essay? What characteristics may I use to determine on a case-by-case scenario if an example is appropriate much like a check list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anything could be made an example, what makes a &lt;strong&gt;strong&lt;/strong&gt; example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1971" OwnerDisplayName="Gio Borje" LastEditorUserId="2298" LastEditDate="2011-07-24T15:32:32.073" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T15:32:32.073" Title="Characteristics of an &quot;example&quot; in essay writing" Tags="|structure|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3390" CreationDate="2010-11-29T11:38:24.403" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope I can answer your question. It has not been very well worded so I may have misunderstood, for which I apologise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my mind, the most important characteristics of an example are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It unambiguously illustrates the point you are making.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is related to the topic in hand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wherever possible, it does not contain too much additional information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are not &quot;rules&quot; but common sense criteria. Additional criteria for selecting examples will largely depend on the topic and nature of the essay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An engineering or pure-scientific paper could make use of hypothetical cases, either well-known in the field or constructed specially by the author, to demonstrate the principle being discussed. Such examples should be complete and coherent; as simple as possible without being trivial; requiring as little supporting material as possible to demonstrate the core principle, thus preventing distraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A practice-based topic (such as medicine, law, social work or business studies) should usually use real and referenced cases to illustrate a point. This usually requires much more extra information than would be acceptable for examples in other fields, but this can often be resigned to appendices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humanities, social sciences, languages, arts and other less prescriptive topics usually require a broad coverage of examples in order to substantiate an argument. For this reason, examples should be as brief as possible (within reason) and from as wide a variety of sources as possible. If your examples must come from a single source (as with literary analysis) then examples should be selected from the full body of the work rather than a single verse, chapter, character or whatever. Of course, if you are able to provide material from outside the work in question to support your point, this is usually very well received. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the above point about multiple examples is true when making an argument, but when making a &lt;em&gt;counter&lt;/em&gt;-argument (ie disproving a previously proposed argument) it is generally only necessary to provide a single and conclusive counter-example, unless the counter-argument is the main theme of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that it is often considered poor practice in academic works to use archetypal examples to illustrate a point. If you make reference to examples that are already very well known to practitioners in the field, your paper will come across as lacking any depth of research and therefore lacking authority. Sometimes this can be subverted, perhaps by presenting a new or unique insight on a well-established precedent, but only if you're certain you know what you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best possible advice is to read other papers in the field to find out what works and what doesn't - which you will be doing anyway as part of your research, of course!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="PyroTyger" LastActivityDate="2010-11-29T11:38:24.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1614" CreationDate="2011-07-21T11:53:50.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am interested in this in large part because it has not been done. Has anyone thought of a story like this?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, it has been done. A LOT of times. Classic fantasy example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553354485&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;R. Zelazny, R. Sheckley - Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming&lt;/a&gt;. Its protagonist is an evil daemon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the mainstream literature, there are whole genres for this - hardboiled crime fiction, mafia stories (M. Puzo - Godfather). In movies: Natural Born Killers, There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men... In computer games: Dungeon Keeper, Overlord.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding originality, there's a good rule of a thumb: &lt;em&gt;&quot;If you think you have a great original idea, hundreds of other people already had it before you.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying you shouldn't write it, but not because it's never been done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1957" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T11:53:50.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1614" CreationDate="2011-07-21T15:58:59.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first fantasy novel was told from the perspective of the good guys AND the bad guys. Each had their own respective goals and when the story was centered around one or the other, the reader was seeing what those characters were doing. My &quot;bad&quot; guys didn't necessarily see themselves as being &quot;good&quot;, but they did see themselevs as being &quot;right&quot;. I have had a number of people tell me that they enjoyed getting more into the mind of the &quot;bad&quot; guys, so I say go for it. I believe readers would welcome such a change. (I'm even considering changing up a future novel to make the main character more shady!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T15:58:59.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3395" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3396" CreationDate="2011-07-21T19:53:22.353" Score="14" ViewCount="623" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question I would like to ask is this: does anyone else have their own process (or one borrowed from elsewhere) that they use for formatting and then creating their e-books? Are you using other software tools besides Calibre to create your e-book files?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently using &lt;a href=&quot;http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guido Henkel's formatting guide&lt;/a&gt; for putting together my e-books, but I have modified it slightly. Having an extensive background in html, I didn't really need the primer on html formatting. However, once we get to the part where he has you copy everything to Notepad+ and then create the file in Calibre, I pretty much stick to everything he says. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-07T05:11:13.993" LastActivityDate="2019-05-07T05:11:13.993" Title="Best e-book formatting process?" Tags="|formatting|self-publishing|resources|ebook|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3395" CreationDate="2011-07-22T01:49:14.320" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; will export your manuscript as an e-book. I use it on a Mac, but I understand there will be a Windows version if there isn't already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;update&lt;/strong&gt; The Windows version has been out for a while now, and while it seems a tad more spartan than the Mac's, it compiles manuscripts &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; faster on my PC (which, to be fair, is newer and faster than my Mac).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastEditorUserId="633" LastEditDate="2015-01-26T08:45:00.207" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T08:45:00.207" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3397" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-22T03:21:31.863" Score="5" ViewCount="703" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the correct order of the following pages comprising a doctoral thesis: Title, Abstract, Colophon, Copyright, Dedication, Preface, Acknowledgements, Table of Contents, List of Tables, List of Figures, Prologue, Synopsis, Main Text (including Parts and Chapters), Appendices and Bibliography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2351" OwnerDisplayName="user02138" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-07-22T22:00:24.170" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T03:43:11.880" Title="Correct order for Thesis Front Matter" Tags="|non-fiction|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3398" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-22T03:26:34.810" Score="6" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a thesis, and the material of said work naturally splits into two self-consistent volumes. Which front matter (abstract, preface, dedication, synopsis, table of contents, list of tables/figures, etc.) should remain the same between the two volumes and which should differ (or stand alone with specific material to that volume)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2351" OwnerDisplayName="user02138" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-08T20:07:40.270" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T20:07:40.270" Title="Front Matter in a Work in Two Volumes" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="251" CreationDate="2011-07-22T03:58:36.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the real question should be whether or not there is a market for poetry in general. The structure is really up to the poet, but you need to keep in mind that the reader has to be able to understand it. If you do it just to be different, you risk putting off some people. However, as it was stated already, if you have a reason for it and the reader can discern that reason, then you may end up with a larger fan base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I have published eight books of poetry, and while I don't sell a whole lot, I have managed to sell some of each. in addition to that, I have gotten lots of favorable feedback and excellent reviews. I don't follow a consistent structure in any of my books. Instead, I have a wide mixture of different poetry forms. Some are rhymed, some are not. I think that by having a variety I have a better chance of reaching more people. Even if they don't like some, there is a greater chance they will like others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-07-22T04:47:31.847" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T04:47:31.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1957" CreationDate="2011-07-22T04:13:20.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can self-publish your book as an e-book using Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, and it doesn't cost a penny. You can also create an e-book at Smashwords.com, again at no cost to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of Smashwords is that they will allow you to set the price as free, while Amazon will not. You can also establsih a price at Smashwords and then generate a coupon code that you can use to send out to selected recipients so that they can download it for free, while others still have to pay for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number you sell and how fast they sell will depend on a number of factors, such as how well the book is written and how much promotion you put into it. You may not ever sell enough to get rich, but if you sell only a few, it will still be more than you sold with the book just sitting on your computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-07-27T13:49:44.937" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T13:49:44.937" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3398" CreationDate="2011-07-22T04:20:08.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer really depends on how your content is split. If you look at the entire work, I would recommend keeping the abstract, the preface, and the dedication in the first volume. Both volumes would have their own table of contents and list of tables, etc. to specify the actual content in each book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If each book is diversified enough to be consider as two distinctly separate topics, then you might consider having a separate abstract, preface, and deication for each book. Either way, they should both have their own distinct TOC and list of tables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T04:20:08.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3397" CreationDate="2011-07-22T04:22:43.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check your university library. Most will have published examples of other people's thesis, and you can use that as an example or guidline. You can also check with your advisor and see if there is a preferred layout that they desire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T04:22:43.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="124" CreationDate="2011-07-22T04:26:22.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://critiquecircle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;critiquecircle.com&lt;/a&gt; and find reading groups there. You can find people there who will read your manuscript, either complete or in parts, and offer feedback and suggestions to help improve your work. You can also go to Facebook and ask to join a group there called &quot;Indie Writers Unite&quot;. I belong to that group and there are a lot of active writers who offer advice and volunteer to be sounding boards for other writers. I know several who have formed their own reading groups as well out of that group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-07-23T17:51:53.183" LastActivityDate="2011-07-23T17:51:53.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3397" CreationDate="2011-07-22T10:20:24.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard will depend on what field you’re in — math is different from biology is different from literary critisism — and your country — UK traditions are different from US are different from Dutch, Russian, etc…  I’d suggest inquiring in roughly the following order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look at any specific requirements set out by your university or department.  Anything specified in these is probably non-negotiable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For anything these don’t settle, ask your academic advisor/supervisor!  They should know what’s expected, both in the field at large and in your specific department.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your advisor isn’t helpful (although they really should be!), look at some other theses you respect or admire within your field — especially ones from your own university, or at least the same country.  If there’s a consensus between them, then follow this example.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If these still don’t settle the matter decisively, then you’re probably free to choose it yourself; so use whatever you think presents the material most effectively.  This will be a judgement call depending on the specific content of your thesis — no-one is better qualified to judge it than you are.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="957" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T03:43:11.880" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T03:43:11.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3395" CreationDate="2011-07-22T10:31:45.373" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latex-project.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LaTeX&lt;/a&gt; for any and all writing, short, long, mathematical or otherwise. It gives fantastic control to the user and you can set the output to be any one of a myriad of types, including pdfs of all sizes. Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;showcase&lt;/a&gt; of some of its capabilities. Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://nitens.org/taraborelli/latex&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; is a nice compendium of examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2351" LastEditorUserId="2351" LastEditDate="2011-07-22T10:37:12.123" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T10:37:12.123" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3406" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3455" CreationDate="2011-07-22T12:24:38.760" Score="4" ViewCount="1353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a writer, but a technical oriented entrepreneur.. One of the barriers I always run into is that I'm also the lead guy for providing the content for marketing gigs, speaker bio's and website texts as I'm working in a specific niche market..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that what I write is correct, even well formulated English, but I'm certainly not very adept at writing good prose and attractive texts for readers..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a place where I can let others rewrite my texts into a higher quality result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my logo designs, and site designs I use sites like 99designs.com which are very attractive to me.. As a small-size entrepreneur I really like the concept, the adaptability and the diversity of the people there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there somewhere similar on the web for my problem on rewriting texts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2353" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T19:40:12.040" Title="Is there anything like 99designs for text writing?" Tags="|editing|technical-writing|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3406" CreationDate="2011-07-22T19:44:56.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scripted.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scripted.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2355" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T19:44:56.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2011-07-23T03:43:23.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Critique Circle has a random name generator, but it is more useful for modern stories than fantasy. You can choose gender and change the level of obscurity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/tools.asp?page=names&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.critiquecircle.com/tools.asp?page=names&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-23T03:43:23.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2567" CreationDate="2011-07-23T03:47:15.703" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I will actually do this as a pointer for myself to go back and add more descriptive detail about that portion of the book. It's sort of like adding notes in the middle of your content. I'll do this when I am pressed for time and trying to work out a scene. It allows me to focus on getting the story laid out so that I can come back later and work out the specifics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-23T03:47:15.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="723" CreationDate="2011-07-23T04:05:51.917" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the last several months since this question was posted, e-books have surpassed hardback books in total sales volume. Two months later, they surpassed paperbacks in total sales volume. Right now there are more e-books beings sold than ever before, and you really need to look hard at giving this a try. Yes, there is more work involved, but the benefits are numerous. There is a whole new industry starting up, and you can find graphic artists who will design your book cover professionally for less than a hundred dollars. You can find tech gurus who will format your book and create the e-book files for less than $50. There is no actual cost for publishing and distributing the e-book, so it's esier than ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a print version, the Print On Demand arena has become so much easier and more convenient. With sites like CreateSpace around, you can publish a print version of your e-book for no cost as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of the biggest advantages are royalties and speed of entry into the marketplace. For a traditionally published book, you'll be lucky to get 17% royalties, while e-books offer 70%. With a traditionally published book, the soonest you will hold one in your hands will be 12-18 months. With e-books you can have a book published and cataloged for sale in two days, and a POD book can be in your hand and ready to be sold in a week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-23T04:05:51.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1002" CreationDate="2011-07-24T02:52:04.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, there is no guarantee that you will get rich doing this, but there is a guarantee that you will have to work a little harder (or longer) to make it work. You will have to learn to do graphics to create your own cover, or else pay someone else to do it. You will have to learn how to create an e-book file or pay someone else to do it. You will have to find a beta group of readers or a professional editor to help edit your book, and that may cost money, depending on which you use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I have two fantasy novels I have self-published as e-books. I paid $100 for each of the book covers, and that was it. As an IT professional, I had no problems figuring out how to create the e-book files. I have a family member who is a professional editor, so she did that for free. I also have a group of four beta readers who helped critique and edit the book as well. So my total cost for each book was $100, and I made that back on each book in a month or less. I now make a profit on every book I sell. It isn't a large amount, but it is increasing every month by about 5-10%, and I do absolutely no promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My example is not at all uncommon. In fact, I can point you to at least 200 people who are actually doing BETTER than me, and virtually all of them started with little or no experience. (I belong to a writer's group with over 300 active members, all of whom have become self-published authors within the last six months.) You can do a Google search on names like JA Konrath, John Locke, Amanda Hocking, and Blake Crouch to find examples of people who are selling hundreds of thousands or even a million e-books! My examples are much more modest and realistic for the &quot;average&quot; unknown writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything you need to know to do this yourself is available online, and I would be more than happy to help point anyone in the right direction to get them started. (For starters, try &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/lets-get-digital/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Let's Get Digital&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by David Gaughran.) It isn't difficult, and it does NOT cost a single penny to publish. If you choose to go with print on demand (POD) service like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.createspace.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CreateSpace&lt;/a&gt;, you can still publish at no cost. (You may have to purchase the first proof copy, but you'll probably wnat your own copy anyway!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get back to the specific question, your self-publishing options that I highly recommend and that I see most authors using are &lt;a href=&quot;http://kdp.amazon.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Direct Publishing&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smashwords.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Smashwords&lt;/a&gt;. KDP is Amazon's e-book publishing service, while Smashwords is a distribution company that will create half a dozen different types of e-books for you and then distribute them to Barnes &amp;amp; Noble, the Apple iBooks Store, and Sony readers. For print services, I highly recommend CreateSpace, because it is free and easy to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros: You have full control of your e-book. You decide the cover, you decide the price, you make all the decisions. Also, once you publish, it stays out there forever. With print books, they will stay in a book store for 1-6 months (assuming you get picked up and distributed by a publisher), and the ones that don't sell get remaindered and then never seen again. Also, the royalties for e-books is 70%, compared to 6-17% for traditionally published print books. E-books currently outsell ALL paperbacks as well as hardbacks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons: Since you have full control, you also have full responsibility. You have to obtain or create the cover. You have to pay an editor or find one for free or take your chances without one. You have to do all the marketing and promotion. (However, traditionally published authors will tell you they do a LOT of this themselves anyway.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW - The best form of promotion is your next book. If people like the first one, they are going to be looking to see if you have anymore books out there. If not, you're missing a sale. My sales for my first book increased after I published my second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasonable expectations: Depends on the type of book you have written and the amount of social media buzz that gets genrated around it. For a mediocre book you can probably expect to sell a dozen or less in the first month. If you do any promotion, you might see that double the second month. From there you might get 5-10% increases each month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write a great book, then word of mouth will help you sell more than you could ever imagine. Then you could be looking at hundreds or even thousands a month. (Don't scoff, I can name at least a hundred &quot;average&quot; writers already doing this.) The key is to write a good book, make sure it has a good cover, write a catchy blurb that draws people in, and then hope and pray it catches on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T19:09:25.690" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T19:09:25.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2856" CreationDate="2011-07-24T03:22:51.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am assuming you have already acted on this, but for the benefit of others who might be considering something similar, you can use CreateSpace, which is Amazon's print on demand service, to create a beautiful book with little effort and no cost (aside from the cost of the book itself plus shipping). In addition to that, once you are done, the book will be available for others to buy online. Even if nobody ever buys it, you can say you have a published book out there! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.createspace.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T03:22:51.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="352" CreationDate="2011-07-24T03:28:57.837" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a lot of discussion about this in a couple of different writer's forums I belong to, and I made a point of writing down a consensus that many of them seemed to reach. While the actual word counts will vary and everybody will have different opinions on what the count should be, this should help to serve as a general guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short story - under 10,000 words &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Novelette - 10k-20k words&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Novella - 20k-50k  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Novel - 50k-100k &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epic Novel - over 100k&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-07-24T03:41:38.057" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T03:41:38.057" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3415" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3417" CreationDate="2011-07-24T07:06:27.650" Score="1" ViewCount="8040" Body="&lt;p&gt;E.g. here is an email I just sent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hello X,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Okay I see - thanks very much for all the code! I'll definitely have&#xA;  to take some time to study it before I can ask any questions. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also - thanks for your explanation on X [insert how X's explanation on&#xA;  X has helped me with something]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks very much! Y&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I've thought of doing: merging the &quot;thanks&quot; into &quot;thanks very much for the code and explanation!&quot; But the issue is that I want to make separate comments for the code and then for the explanation, and it's easier to do that when I separate out the &quot;thanks&quot; (and then repeat it more, which then sounds even more repetitive)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="1957" LastEditDate="2011-07-24T11:59:49.770" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T15:05:45.190" Title="Is there anything wrong with saying &quot;Thanks&quot; several times in the same email? If not, how could I correct it?" Tags="|style|word-choice|email|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1002" CreationDate="2011-07-24T09:33:54.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can find answers to all these questions, and read the e-book publishing experiences of 33 writers in David Gaughran's book Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish And Why You Should &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B005DC68NI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005DC68NI/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;You can also get a free PDF version from his blog. &lt;a href=&quot;http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/lets-get-digital/x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/lets-get-digital/x&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2357" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T09:33:54.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3415" CreationDate="2011-07-24T09:42:50.777" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Emails saying &quot;thank you&quot; for something are generally informal; style is less of an issue than simple gratitude and sincerity. So there's really no problem with your email, unless you've got a particular reason to be concerned about eloquence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do want to work in more variety, some good alternatives include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I really appreciate [X]&quot; or &quot;Your [X] is much appreciated&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mentioning how helpful the help was (as you've done) - if this is in the context of &quot;thanks,&quot; you don't even need to mention &quot;thanks&quot; for every detail. Just mention that various parts of the help were helpful or put to good use, and use &quot;thanks&quot; only once or twice - it's clear you're thanking the recipient for the whole thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complimenting the recipient on what he's done: &quot;Your explanation was very clear,&quot; &quot;your example code looks like exactly what I need,&quot; &quot;you painted my birdhouse so beautifully,&quot; &quot;I would never have thought of such an ingenious place to hide the body,&quot; etc. Again, you're expressing appreciation - and demonstrating that you've paid a lot of attention and are able to appreciate his work, and generally that he's done a good job (assuming, of course, that he has).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T09:42:50.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3415" CreationDate="2011-07-24T15:05:45.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another option would be to use different words to express your gratitude. For example, you could start out with &quot;Thank you for the code you sent . . . &quot;, and then in your second paragragh use something like &quot;Also, I appreciate your explanation of . . . &quot;. If there is a third item to mention, then you could do like Standback suggested and compliment the person on how well that item contributed to what you were trying to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T15:05:45.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-07-25T00:54:48.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things I had to do was to start scheduling time to write. It sounds a bit extreme, but it really started to work for me. My problem was figuring when I could realistically make time to write. I ended up getting up an hour earlier each day and using that time. If I wasn't able to do that, then I would try to add an hour at night after everyone else went to bed. Make a date with yourself, and eventually you'll find that you don't want to miss those dates!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T00:54:48.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3347" CreationDate="2011-07-25T01:58:48.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are so many ways you could answer this, but it really depends on what you are trying to convey. Most of the responses so far assume you intend to stay permanently. If instead you want to describe the possibility of staying without committing to a duration, you could try something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just might sojourn there again. This time I might even give it enough time to make me want to plant some roots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T01:58:48.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2011-07-25T02:07:34.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could also look into the possibility of self-publishing. If you publish your own e-book, you can choose the genre where the book gets promoted. E-book sales have surpassed paperback sales each month for the past three months, and they don't show any sign of letting up. There's a whole new world of possibilities out there!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T02:07:34.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2909" CreationDate="2011-07-25T02:17:21.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with writing out of sequence. However, it might be beneficial to have an outline that you can follow so that you know where the connections are going to be made. If you identify specific actions in each chapter, you can write them in any order you please. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T02:17:21.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="702" CreationDate="2011-07-25T02:24:02.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the questions you use might be beneficial for a writer to refer to when trying to work out the details of a character they already have in mind. I think most people already pretty much know &quot;who&quot; is going to be in their book, but they may not know all the details about that person yet. Some of your questions or those proposed by justkt could help painting a better picture of the characters you have in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T02:24:02.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2590" CreationDate="2011-07-25T02:29:02.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know a couple of people who have decided to serialize their books. One has produced several novels as podcasts and releases a different chapter every week. He has thousands of subscribers to his sight. In fact, he started out with just the podcasts and then decided to self-publish his stories as e-books, and he is doing quite well with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another guy is posting a different chapter each week on his blog. Visitors can come weekly to check out the next chapter to keep up with the story. Once he has posted about half the chapters, he will give site visitors the option of purchasing the e-book so that they can find out sooner how it all ends. Of course, he will also continue to post a new chapter each week until the entire book is online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T02:29:02.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3131" CreationDate="2011-07-25T02:32:04.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from the grammar checker in MS Word, I can't really think of any. There just isn't a good substitute for another person to read your work and critique/edit for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T02:32:04.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1144" CreationDate="2011-07-25T02:38:36.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a combination of tools to not only accomplish this, but also to do periodic updates on any work in progress I might have. I store my primary versions of my files in a Dropbox folder, and then I use the DocsToGo app on my iPhone or iPad to access the documents. I don't have all the formatting tools I might need, but the primary goal is to update the content. I can always finalize the formatting later on my desktop PC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T02:38:36.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2011-07-25T02:44:25.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let your story decide for you. Each chapter is usually a different scene or takes place at a different time or in a different location. What happens in each scene will dictate how much time you spend there, both from the character's perspective and the reader's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T02:44:25.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3053" CreationDate="2011-07-25T02:49:02.557" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think in the past, publishers tended to stick with character driven works because those were the ones that ended up winning the awards and garnering attention. However, when you look at sheer volume in sales, those weren't always at the top. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also believe that today's readers are looking for more from their books. There's no doubt that they want to be able to relate to the characters, but they definitely want there to be some kind of action going on. If the characters aren't involved in doing something meaningful or adventurous, then you start to lose your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T02:49:02.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1750" CreationDate="2011-07-25T02:54:04.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you need to create and manage a timeline. Something you might consider is using a spreadsheet to keep track of the activity on each sub-plot. Each row is a different sub-plot or the primary plot, and each row is a pre-determined time period. If you story take place over the course of a few days, then each row becomes a single day. Track what is happening in each sub-plot on any given day and then you can see where they start to intermingle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T02:54:04.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2962" CreationDate="2011-07-25T03:00:46.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is true that in the past it was hard to change genres, I believe that in the present it is much easier and more widely accepted. In the past, publishers had to figure out a game plan for how to promote their authors. It was a lot easier for them to do this if they could target a specific audience and go after them. They discouraged authors from crossing over into other genres because they were concerned with alienating the original fan base or confusing new fans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, especially with the new prevalence of self-published e-books, it is much easier for an author to get away with this, especially if you are the one doing the promoting. Most promotion done by self-published authors is done through social media, and it is a lot easier to find and identify a target audience for a specific genre. One a fan finds you, they will continue to look for more work in the genres they prefer, but if you write well enough they are more willing to consider looking at other work as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T03:00:46.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3431" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-07-25T03:27:17.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Character development pertains to anything that is involved with identifying and detailing specific information about your story's characters. What kind of relationships does your character have with other characters in the story? What motivates your character to do something relevant in the story? What are the character's strengths or weaknesses? Any of these questions can be used to help you develop a better picture of who the character is and how he will affect your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-07-25T11:32:51.520" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T11:32:51.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3432" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-07-25T03:27:17.550" Score="0" Body="Anything pertaining to developing the details associated with characters in your writing." OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-07-25T11:33:02.080" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T11:33:02.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3433" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-07-25T03:32:49.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Self-publishing covers any effort by the author of a written work to have his/her own work made available to the public. In a print format, this could include vanity or subsidy publishing, print on demand, or printing and binding one's own books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an electronic format, this would generally refer to the creation of e-books in various formats that can be sold through online venues. It may also refer to electronic files such as PDFs that are made available to download from the author's web site or other sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-07-25T11:33:46.743" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T11:33:46.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3434" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-07-25T03:32:49.590" Score="0" Body="Any effort by the author to produce his own work, whether it be in print, electronic, or other format." OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-07-25T11:33:20.067" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T11:33:20.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3441" CreationDate="2011-07-25T15:49:03.820" Score="9" ViewCount="1213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in the market for beta readers, particularly for short stories. I've finished an early draft for a contest, and I'm hoping to hear some feedback.  I'm open to reading the work of others as well. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2325" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-06-29T20:32:48.887" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T20:32:48.887" Title="What's a good resource to find Beta Readers for  short stories?" Tags="|resources|beta-readers|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3435" CreationDate="2011-07-25T16:16:37.547" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Critique Circle is a good source. You can easily find people who will read your work and give you feedback and suggestions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.critiquecircle.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T16:16:37.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3437" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3705" CreationDate="2010-09-18T20:16:49.340" Score="18" ViewCount="9890" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found myself extensively referencing parts of theses and dissertations for my own research paper. The IEEE editorial style manual suggests that they should be referenced in the following form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[1] J. K. Author, “Title of thesis,” M.S. thesis, Abbrev. Dept., Abbrev. Univ., City of Univ., Abbrev. State, year.&#xA;  [2] J. K. Author, “Title of dissertation,” Ph.D. dissertation, Abbrev. Dept., Abbrev. Univ., City of Univ., Abbrev. State, year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a 120 page paper that I reference heavily and I find it unusual that there aren't any suggestions or examples that attempt to reference parts of theses or dissertations. I feel like readers would be dissinterested to pursue the paper to locate the source information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I am confused about how frequently references are pursued by readers? When reading internet articles, or PDFs from research papers that aren't published in an academic institution, I enjoy how authors place hyperlinks to provide further reading on information that readers might wish to pursue further. Could it be that readers aren't really engaged into further pursuing references and that it's not an issue if I don't reference parts of these or dissertations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" OwnerDisplayName="kron" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-27T11:48:09.547" LastActivityDate="2020-05-27T08:46:45.953" Title="Citing parts of a thesis or dissertation using IEEE referencing" Tags="|citations|research|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3437" CreationDate="2010-09-18T20:52:06.700" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Citing specific pages of a long source is quite common. There are two ways of doing it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cite the page number(s) along with the reference number in the body of the text, e.g. [12, pp140-142], or [Smith 90, pp140-142].&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give each reference in the body of the text a different number, and then list them using &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibid.&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ibid&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[12] J. K. Author, &quot;Title of thesis&quot;, ... , pp140-142.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[13] Ibid., p42.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[14] Ibid., pp10-12.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Steve Melnikoff" LastActivityDate="2010-09-18T20:52:06.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3439" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3442" CreationDate="2011-07-25T20:16:07.767" Score="5" ViewCount="5135" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how much and deep actual school kids in the US get in touch with Latin. In Europe you can choose it in many high schools and the use of it is common in mainstream media. For some areas of studies it seems to be a prerequisite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In US literature, also scientific, it has &lt;em&gt;to my opinion&lt;/em&gt; a kind of elitist touch, as it is in principal a dead language not spoken actively anymore and never was natively over there. I don't see Latin phrases quite often here despite a simple &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; or use of acronyms like &lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;i.d.&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Of course, worst case would be a reader not noticing that it is Latin at all and supposing a spelling or formatting mistake.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases_%28full%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia: List of Latin phrases&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you do when writing a English dissertation getting corrected by mostly European professors who you want to impress with eloquence/rhetoric quality ;) , but later also read by non-Europeans or used for applying for a job in an English-speaking country? Leave out all Latin phrases and use acronyms only? How common is it in English/US bachelor/master/PhD theses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2350" OwnerDisplayName="Hauser" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T21:55:15.020" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T21:55:15.020" Title="Is it good style to use Latin phrases in English scientific literature?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|non-fiction|language|acronyms|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3439" CreationDate="2011-07-25T20:48:24.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think they would be more impressed with your ability to communicate your message than the use of &quot;fancy&quot; words. I believe you should focus on making your material as pristine as possible and not worry so much about using Latin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To lend another aspect to your observation of American high schools not focusing much on Latin: I have two kids who are currently in high school. My son (15) probably couldn't tell you where Latin comes from, let alone recognize and words. My daughter (17) is writing a YA fantasy novel and wanted to use some Latin phrases to represent a dialog from an ancient tribe of people. She went to the Latin teacher at her high school to ask for help, and the lady was completely blown away! Apparently she only teaches Latin one period a day and has about 20 students in ahigh school with about 2000 students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point in adding this is that I believe it is true that your audience in the US may not have much exposure to or interest in Latin. Having said that, if your paper is targeted towards a purely scientific audience, then they may be the exception. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T20:48:24.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3435" CreationDate="2011-07-25T22:00:34.983" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://youwriteon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YouWriteOn&lt;/a&gt;. Rather than me tell you how it works, this is from their &lt;a href=&quot;http://youwriteon.com/info/about-us.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;About Us&lt;/a&gt; page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;YouWriteOn began in 2006 to assist new writers to develop their writing. Editors for leading publishers such as Random House and Orion - who publish bestselling writers such as John Grisham, Bill Bryson and Ian Rankin - review our highest rated writers each month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YouWriteOn's premise is simple: members upload opening chapters or short stories and the YouWriteOn system randomly assigns these to another member to review. You then review another member's story excerpt - assigned to you at random - each time you want to receive a new review back in return. After 5 reviews a story enters our chart system and the highest rated writers receive free feedback each month from editors for leading publishers Orion and Random House.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feedback can be diverse, but the experience of the site over its history has been that collective feedback from a range of reviewers helps writers to get a collective viewpoint of what works well and what needs developing in their stories. The result has been that the majority of stories are higher rated as a result of revising their writing through feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T22:00:34.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3439" CreationDate="2011-07-25T22:12:27.573" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use Latin when it makes sense to use Latin, not because you want to impress, which could turn your piece into an illegible mess. Perhaps there's a specific scientific or legal phrase in Latin that you need to use because that's the accepted standard among the scientific community. I would strongly suggest researching in your particular area to see how others have written in this field. Unless you find a clear need for it from other literature, I don't recommend using Latin phrases just for the sake of it. It will likely annoy more than impress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: it is not using Latin that will make your dissertation impressive, it is clear, concise language that expresses exactly what you want to say, no more, and no less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T22:12:27.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="199" CreationDate="2011-07-26T02:32:36.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know I already gave an answer to a similar question (see link below), but I wanted to add something onto that. With self-publishing, you have the opportunity to drive your customers based on the genre you write. A lot of people I know are finding great success in writing across genres, and they are using social media to get their books out there to the public. The great thing about this is that they can target different groups to go to different pages for the genre they want. If the new visitors happen to enjoy a book in one genre, they may be willing to try out a different book in a new genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things I would recommend is to make sure you have a web site to use as your foundation. Dedicate a separate page to each genre so that folks can see what you have to offer. They don't worry about people getting their books mixed up because people are looking for a good read, regardless of genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, however, if you have genres that are extremeley different, then it might be better to go with a pen name. For example, young adult and erotica are two genres where you (hopefully) won't get too many crossover readers! Science fiction and romance might be another bad mix, but if your genres are not too extremely different, then you should be okay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW - The first man to sell over a million e-books, John Locke, writes action/suspense and westerns! He hasn't had any problems with people buying across genres. Also, JA Konrath, who has sold e-books in the hundreds of thousands, writes horror, mystery, suspense, and now science fiction. While he does use a pen name for each genre, in his books he points people back to his central web site where he reveals his true identity and exposes people to the other genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-10-19T02:30:16.600" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T02:30:16.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="67" CreationDate="2011-07-26T02:39:25.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I seem to be repeating myself a lot, but I would recommend creating an account at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;CritiqueCircle&quot;&gt;CritiqueCircle&lt;/a&gt;. This is a web site where people volunteer to read each other's work and offer feedback and critiques on the story as well as the writing in general. Your expertise might be handy for some writers, and this would be a good place for you to let people know about it. You can also take advantage of the site to find other folks who can read your work and help you out as you develop your story. The site is free and they offer a number of handy tools to help writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T02:39:25.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1106" CreationDate="2011-07-26T02:50:43.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the increase in popularity of electronic book readers, there are more and more people choosing to self-publish their short stories as individual works, and then combining them to sell as a complete collection. The most common practice I have seen is to sell short stories at .99 and then combine five or more into a collection to sell at 2.99 or higher, depending on the number of stories. The idea is to use the indiviual stories as loss leaders in order to encourage people to take the plunge for the collection. Using Kindle as an example, you only get 35% royalties for the .99 stories, but you get 70% for anything that sells at 2.99 or up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally am in the process of writing three separate suspense novellas of at least 20k words each which I will sell individually at .99, and then I will merge them together to sell as a collection for 2.99. Once I have finished them, I plan to do the same with three contemporary fantasy novellas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe a lot of people are willing to buy a small story at 99 cents (look at the popularity of iTunes). If you have multiple titles out there then you'll find that if someone likes one of your stories they will go back and look for more, and conveniently enough, you'll have some waiting for them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T02:50:43.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1077" CreationDate="2011-07-26T02:59:48.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone else stated, it depends on your contract. I had a situation where I received an advance for a book proposal, but personal issues and family matters caused me to miss my deadline, and the publisher requested the money back. I hadn't spent any of it and felt it was the right thing to do because I hadn't delivered as promised. (I was aware beforehand that if I wasn't able to finish the book within a certain time range I would have to refund the advance, which is why I still had it!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, though, once the publisher has accepted the book and you have delivered, the advance is yours to keep. If the book doesn't sell well enough, then the publisher takes a loss. That's one of the reasons why new writers get smaller advances: they are a bigger risk. By the same token, you don't receive another penny from the publisher until the book makes enough money to pay the advance back to the publisher. Only then do you start collecting royalties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T02:59:48.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="134" CreationDate="2011-07-26T03:12:03.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that for longer works, it is a lot easier for me if I have an outline. I don't bother working up a full detailed synopsis, however. Instead, I just identify the key points of interest for each chapter. This usually helps me to think through the story line before I jump right in and start working on it. My epic fantasy novel ended up with 115,000 words, but the outline was only two pages (about 500 words).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For shorter work, such as a short story or novella, I may write down a couple of key points and perhaps some details about one or more specific characters. From there I just start writing. In fact, once I write down the general idea, I usually don't look at it again until I am done or nearly done with the whole thing. As I edit I may check to see if I missed anything from my initial notes, but not always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, as a writer you need to find what works for you. Everybody is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T03:12:03.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="125" CreationDate="2011-07-26T03:16:09.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Schedule it! Find a window of time that you can block out and that is convenient for you to use, and then schedule that time to write. For me it is usually the first hour in the morning after I wake, or the last hour of the day before going to bed. If I can't do it in the morning, then I use the evening as my backup plan. Either way, I know that I am going to have at least an hour a day to write, whether it's working on my blog, working on a story, or answering questions here!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T03:16:09.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1436" CreationDate="2011-07-26T03:36:24.487" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the same problem. What I did to handle it was to start writing down an outline or synopsis of the new story ideas as they came to me. This allowed me to get them out of my head and store them off somewhere for a while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually have at least two, and usually three, projects going at any given time. Once I finish one, I will go back to my story pile and choose whichever one strikes my fancy the most. I find that by doing this, I am usually concentrating on the two or three most interesting ideas at all times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I will select one of those ongoing works as the primary, and it is usually a full length book. The one or two side projects are usually novellas or short stories. If I know I'm going to have an extended amount of time, I will work on the longer work. If I am limited for time, then I will focus on one of the shorter works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T03:36:24.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3454" CreationDate="2011-07-26T02:27:26.547" Score="4" ViewCount="418" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can you remember the last toy you ever bought?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We do.  Here at the St. Abattoir, London's largest toy store, your childhood is our business. We think of ourselves not as merely customer service representatives but as consumer psychologists—-predicting the next toy-&lt;em&gt;wunder&lt;/em&gt;. If you’re in a “gift sized fix” and in need of the latest razzler dazzler—-you call us. We want you to buy. Preferably now, but if not now, there’s a wonderful savings plan we will tailor to your needs.  And we promise, that here at the St. Abattoir, during every phone call you’re guaranteed to hear:&#xA;  “Hi there, my name is Charlie King. Thank you for calling, and how may I help you?”  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for any feedback, I hope this adheres to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166/what-are-the-guidelines-for-asking-for-a-critique-of-my-work&quot;&gt;community guidelines&lt;/a&gt;. If not,  please let me know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2325" OwnerDisplayName="Ed" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:03.470" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T21:10:48.300" Title="Does this paragraph make you want to keep reading?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3439" CreationDate="2011-07-26T04:00:41.870" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fifth of  &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.about.com/od/writersonwriting/a/OrwellRules.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;George Orwells Five Rules&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you&#xA;  can think of an everyday English equivalent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use of Latin (or French or German or any 'foreign phrase') can appear an affectation unless there is a strong justification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1946" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T04:00:41.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3439" CreationDate="2011-07-26T04:30:54.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sadly, no one else is ever as impressed with a speaker's erudition as the speaker is himself. Orwell, in this case as in so many others, was right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T04:30:54.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3450" CreationDate="2011-07-26T06:24:36.510" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two hooks here I find compelling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first two lines give this great, &quot;Why, of course we remember every toy you've ever played with, Sir&quot; vibe - it's like a toy store crossed with Wodehouse's Jeeves. That's both unusual and kinda creepy. The concept of a huge organization cataloging everybody's childhood in minute detail is bizarre and fantastical, and has this great &quot;formality/whimsey&quot; tension I really like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The paragraph ends with a very odd boast - for some reason, it's important that all the receptionists introduce themselves as &quot;Charles King.&quot; That's just weird, and obviously has a story behind it. My immediate thoughts are that this might be some kind of publicity thing, based on some kind of personality-based promotion - or, if this is in a science-fiction context, that there's some kind of cloning or personality duplication going on. All of these interest me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that's a great start :) But the middle hits what I'd consider a false note - the &quot;consumer psychologists&quot; lines. My instinct is that this mars the fantastical image I had from the first two lines - it seems to reduce a delightful impossibility to mere contemporary market research. The &quot;gift size fix&quot; and &quot;razzler dazzler&quot; phrases also don't fit with the proper, dignified facade I was imagining (perhaps entirely erroneously, of course). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd definitely read further, because this opening has at least the potential to lead to some things I'd consider a lot of fun. But the points I'd mentioned would have me worried I might be disappointed. At the very least, I'd read long enough to understand which of my interpretations are correct. I might read the whole thing even if they aren't, but I'd feel disappointed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T06:24:36.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3406" CreationDate="2011-07-26T06:48:47.690" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Elance is not only for writing and editing, but almost any kind of remote work: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elance.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.elance.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1736" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T06:48:47.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3406" CreationDate="2011-07-26T15:03:36.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For top writers: &lt;a href=&quot;http://wordfruit.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wordfruit.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I run Wordfruit -- if you have any questions, just let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2365" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T15:03:36.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3301" CreationDate="2011-07-26T21:07:46.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asterisks are used to indicate the end of a scene&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2367" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T21:07:46.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3460" CreationDate="2011-07-27T02:40:56.890" Score="11" ViewCount="4679" Body="&lt;p&gt;DRM (digital rights management) is being used in just about every electronic format, including files used in electronic readers. My question is whether this is a good thing or a bad thing for writers, or does it really matter? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since an author with a &quot;traditional&quot; publishing contract really has no control, this is really targetted more towards self-published authors who are also responsible for doing their own promotion and marketing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if not using DRM can result in your work being pirated or will it be a non-issue? If people do end up giving away copies, does DRM have the potential to lead to others buying the work out of guilt or possibly buying one of your other books? From a marketing perspective, does this make good business sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-10-26T14:50:34.633" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T14:50:34.633" Title="What are the advantages and disadvantages of digital rights management for self-published authors?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|ebook|electronic-publishing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3458" CreationDate="2011-07-27T07:37:57.353" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies for each reader, but the majority(at least the vocal majority) say that if I pay for a book, I should own it fully. It should be mine to move to another e-reader, another PC/laptop, or anywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DRM normally doesn't allow this. With DRM, you never really own any book, you just rent it, and it can be removed any time, like it happened with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle#Remote_content_removal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amazon&lt;/a&gt;. You can't give it to friends to read, give it over to charity shops or anything else you can do with paper books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if the big publishers start pushing DRM, there is little the public can do, except boycott e-books. Which is what is stopping many like me from buying an E-reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, unless you self publish, your publisher will decide the issue for you. If you do self publish, keep in mind that many books that don't have DRM, still sell a lot. People are still honest enough to pay for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="2024" LastEditDate="2011-07-27T19:21:01.273" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T19:21:01.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3458" CreationDate="2011-07-27T08:42:52.650" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is basically a question of marketing strategy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major pro of DRM is that it helps avoid pirating; the major con is that it limits accessibility and portability, and can annoy readers and users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems to me that the primary consideration should be: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Is pirating going to cost me so much, that I'm better off risking limiting and annoying users?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For most independent, self-publishing authors, I think publicity is the biggest concern. If you're popular enough that pirated copies are really costing you, that probably means you're doing &lt;em&gt;astoundingly&lt;/em&gt; well. Whereas finding readers is tough; you don't want to turn anybody off because of incompatible readers or annoying registration processes - they might easily skip your book entirely. So by default, I'd lean towards DRM free. But here are some additional considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For publishers, DRM probably makes a lot more sense than it does for a single author. If your own personal titles are being pirated, you might not be losing a lot; if you've got &lt;em&gt;hundreds&lt;/em&gt; of titles being pirated, that might be more of a dent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may have certain idealogical preferences - about pirating, or copyright, or current DRM practices - which you'd like to reflect by your choice of whether or not to use DRM. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may want to use a publishing platform which does or does not utilize DRM; if you don't have strong preferences on DRM, this issue may be secondary to publishing on the best platform you can.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-07-27T16:05:28.383" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T16:05:28.383" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3458" CreationDate="2011-07-27T14:39:04.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3458/should-an-e-book-be-published-with-or-without-drm/3460#3460&quot;&gt;Standback&lt;/a&gt; pointed out, it is mainly a marketing issue. Therefore I suggest that you test your market to find the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write a series of books and offer the first one DRM-free, you can watch the numbers and comments of your customers. After that you can use DRM for the second one (you should explain on your blog/website that you use DRM now and why and add an address where to complain). Again watch the numbers and the reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the numbers are better without DRM, apologise to your readers and offer the second DRM-free. If the DRM version is a success keep testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be mentioned, that some of the DRM problems (like giving the book to friends) are addressed with existing DRM solutions. But I haven't used them myself, I only read about it. You should make crystal clear to your customers what is possible with your chosen DRM and what not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T14:39:04.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3458" CreationDate="2011-07-27T15:19:02.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned in my edited version of the original question, this is a question that was presented to one of the other writer's groups that I am a part of, and I wanted to see what folks here thought of the issue. I thought I would go ahead and share what came out of the other discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it has already been mentioned, if you are under contract to a &quot;traditional&quot; publisher, the writer doesn't have much input on this decision. The publisher is going to do what they believe to be in their own best interests, and that makes sound business sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for a self-published author focusing primarily on e-books, it is a completely different matter. What most of them have decided is that it does not make sense to use DRM for their books. The reason, as mentioned in other answers here, is that they are more concerned about getting readers, so if anyone wants to share the book, they are okay with that. They feel that the possible benefit of obtaining a new follower outweighs the potential lost revenue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To further expand on that, a good number of them actually offer at least one book for free in the express hopes that people will enjoy it so much they will go back and buy something else the author has available. In a similar vein, many will offer a loss-leader, or a very low priced book, with the same intention. Bottom line, for them it is more important to obtain a following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, we found that a good number of more successful authors agreed with these same principles. They felt that the need to continue to increase a following coupled with the risk of alienating some people by using DRM meant that it made more sense for them to NOT use it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T15:19:02.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3463" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3465" CreationDate="2011-07-27T15:39:44.707" Score="4" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a Wiki article that explains to new developers how our product life-cycle works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Originally, my goal was to completely avoid the word &quot;you&quot; and use a more general description like &quot;the developer&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more I write though, the more useful I find the word &quot;you.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now I'm doing a mixture of both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, I may start a description of a new topic by saying the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This phase requires &lt;strong&gt;the developer&lt;/strong&gt; to obtain a firm grasp on &lt;em&gt;blah blah&#xA;  blah&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, the first sentence of the next paragraph looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the time &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; receive a Change Request, the A &amp;amp; D department will&#xA;  have a Functional Specification ready for review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My general questions is this:  Is it acceptable to jump between &quot;the developer&quot; and &quot;you&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read it, it seems to flow fine, but I would love some feedback on this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2369" OwnerDisplayName="ray023" LastEditorUserId="2369" LastEditDate="2011-07-27T15:49:16.867" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T16:45:50.407" Title="Is it acceptable to mix how you address the reader in an instructional Wiki?" Tags="|style|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3463" CreationDate="2011-07-27T16:06:17.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For formal writing, this should be avoided - consistency is key.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But wikis are new, and I'm not sure we've really decided how formal they should be, yet.  How formal do you want your wiki to be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T16:06:17.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3463" CreationDate="2011-07-27T16:45:05.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's fine, because you as a company are creating an instruction manual which is going to be used by specific people. It's not literally a public Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it as clear as possible, start with the kind of disclaimer you sometimes see in plain-English contracts: &quot;You, Your, Yourself, etc. refers to the developer.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're done writing, go back and search for any instance of &quot;the developer&quot; and see if changing it to &quot;you&quot; makes it read more smoothly or makes it clearer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T16:45:05.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3463" CreationDate="2011-07-27T16:45:50.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be bad style to publish documentation that did that, but since a wiki is designed to be edited by many people who will each have their own quirks and don't usually consult house style guides, doing this on a wiki probably won't raise eyebrows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you should go back and change those &quot;the developer&quot;s to &quot;you&quot;s as you can, to improve the readability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tech-writing circles I have contact with overwhelmingly prefer &quot;you&quot; to &quot;the (user, developer, etc)&quot; when speaking to the reader.  This also allows you to more easily write to the developer &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; his users without ending up with constructs like &quot;the developer should (do something) to allow the users to (do something else)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T16:45:50.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3467" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3468" CreationDate="2011-07-27T19:22:45.923" Score="8" ViewCount="629" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember reading this somewhere, though I cannot remember the source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When working on the 2nd draft, read through the 1st draft, looking for holes. But then throw it away, and rewrite the the 2nd draft from scratch. This will make you a better writer, and also make writing the 2nd draft easy, as you don't have to fix a broken piece of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this? Should we try to &quot;fix&quot; the 1st draft, or start from scratch again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T19:51:34.680" Title="2nd draft- rewrite from scratch?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3467" CreationDate="2011-07-27T19:51:34.680" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on the writer. You should try both ways to figure out what is the best for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One source for this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=4398&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;redrafting&lt;/a&gt; concept is Dean Wesley Smith (don't miss the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=4477&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;second part&lt;/a&gt;). Smith distinguishes &quot;rewriting&quot; (fixing a draft) and &quot;redrafting&quot; (start from scratch). His main issue against rewriting is, that most authors tend to rewrite to death and he has a point here. That's why you have to compare your rewrites with the original text (and let others compare them) to not fall into this trap. If you revised the originality out of your text, you are in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But nonetheless I suggest to rewrite your draft, if you are a beginner. Smith tells you, that you shouldn't do it, but I guess he did it in the past and he learnt his lesson. And that's my point. If you haven't done it, if you have not experienced when a rewrite is an improvement and when it is written to death, you cannot make the choice, if redrafting or rewriting suits you better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try both concepts out and keep in mind what Smith says over and over again: No writer is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T19:51:34.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3469" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3471" CreationDate="2011-07-27T21:21:10.063" Score="6" ViewCount="42595" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a presentation that will go from August 4th to the 5th. On my title slide I'd like to list the dates in the most concise and simple way possible. What's the best style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;August 4 and 5, 2011&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could also do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;August 4 &amp;amp; 5, 2011&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a &quot;correct&quot; way to write this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2373" LastEditorUserId="2306" LastEditDate="2011-07-28T20:35:54.890" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T20:36:24.353" Title="What is the proper way to write a date containing two days in a row?" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3469" CreationDate="2011-07-27T21:52:16.767" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Either of those is fine (&quot;&amp;amp;&quot; is just another way to write &quot;and&quot;) and will be understood.  Another formulation you'll sometimes see is &quot;Aug 4-5, 2011&quot;, but this is better for things that are continuous, like a convention.  I assume your presentation will be in two parts, one on Aug 4 and the other on Aug 5, and that in between you'll be doing other stuff (eating, socializing, sleeping...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T21:52:16.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3469" CreationDate="2011-07-28T00:20:04.690" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I never use ampersands in copy unless they're part of a proper company name (e.g., Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson). It just looks lazy to me. I would write it as &quot;August 4–5,&quot; because the presentation is taking place on two consecutive days. (Nobody assumes it's a 48-hour presentation.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would use &quot;and&quot; if the dates are not contiguous: &quot;The concerts will be held on August 4 and 6.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were asking this on Graphic Design SE, you could argue that you could use an ampersand as a design element, or to save room if space is at a premium. But for a slide title? No. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T00:20:04.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3458" CreationDate="2011-07-28T01:27:16.447" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;DRM has been pretty harmful in my experience with creating and selling information products.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used some fairly heavy handed DRM when I first started out.  I realized this was a mistake after taking feedback from my customers and analyzing conversion rates.  I ended up doing a lot of testing on implementations of DRM to determine what worked and what did not.  The only type of DRM currently I maintain is a very light watermark when someone prints one of my products.  I am not certain if that really counts as DRM, but it doesn't affect my sales.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ended up with much higher return purchases as a direct result of removing DRM.  This represents a higher level of trust and satisfaction based on customer feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One additional thought.  A little emotional blackmail in the eBook really helps convert people who do pirate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope my perspective is helpful. I am new to this site, so let me know if I screwed something up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2375" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T01:27:16.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1144" CreationDate="2011-07-28T02:11:48.267" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally love spiral notebooks when I'm out and about. You know, the cheaper than dirt, back to school sale, 10 for a dollar kind.  I love that I can use one per project or destroy them with a latte and not feel bad about it.  I end up importing images of the pages into OneNote if I want to keep what I've written.  I love using OneNote for a quick cache of ideas.  I have the free 20GB skydrive account that MS offers and my OneNote notebooks are all in that.  The web based OneNote works pretty well on my phone and any computer I've tried too.  It's not amazing, but it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lately I have actually been using a wordpress blog that I have set to private.  By setting up one category per project I get a lot of space out of it. I can upload sketches or ideas I've written down.  I can access it from anything with a net connection.  Tags have been amazingly useful for lateral organization.  The biggest thing that has made this so nice for me is the ability to search through mountains of information amazingly quickly.  The fact that it comes with a built in versioning system with a compare feature makes it pretty nice too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2375" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T02:11:48.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1957" CreationDate="2011-07-28T03:08:40.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: My background is not in stories or novels. I deal with information products. So everything here comes from that perspective.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not certain what you mean by &quot;short&quot; so I can't use that to give any information. A more specific question would be much more helpful. &lt;em&gt;&quot;What specific steps could I take to monetize my 25,000 word novel?&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or something like that. You said it would be available for download so I am assuming it's an eBook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a marketing question to me.  If I were asking this question, the answer I would be looking for would be tactical.  Something I could do right now.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make certain that your are trying to sell, your product, is of the &lt;strong&gt;highest quality&lt;/strong&gt; you are realistically capable of producing.  Give it an honest look. Would you buy it?  If you wouldn't pay for it, why should someone else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Goals&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider your goals. You mentioned specifically that social awareness was a key goal.  If that is the direction you are going it may make the most sense to give it away.  You don't have to rely on direct purchase for monetization, and it some cases that will hurt your goal of social awareness.  Before you move on to the tactics you need to know how you are going to monetize your eBook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tactics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll try to quickly cover a couple of tactical approaches.  These are all part of &quot;self promotion strategies&quot; and I highly suggest you Google that phrase for more ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Family and Friends:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; The simplest tactic is to sell to family and friends, as is mentioned in other answers.  Ask them for help spreading the word about your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Social Network:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  Reach out to your social network. Twitter, Facebook, blog followers, etc. Let them know what you're doing. Ask for help.  You'd be amazed how much you help you can get just by asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Teaser Marketing:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Get a particularly good couple of paragraphs that can stand alone and make the reader ask, &quot;What's next?&quot; Put those in a nicely formatted PDF that explains they are part of your eBook and how to get the rest of the eBook. Post them on your web page, facebook statuses, or anywhere else you have access to.  Give it to your friends and family to give to people they know.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you get done with all of that you might make absolutely nothing.  Measure your results, figure out what worked and what didn't, and try new things.  Nothing is guaranteed to work, and there is no easy quick fix. There is &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt; replacing hard work on the road to success.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I just joined the site today so I hope my answer isn't out of bounds. Let me know if I screwed anything up.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2375" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T03:08:40.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3458" CreationDate="2011-07-28T14:27:56.217" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If an ebook has DRM, it tends to be tied to a specific reader (actually, a specific physical reader-device). Since devices are, to some extent, short-lived and libraries are (or should arguable be able to be) long-lived, DRM directly harms the end consumer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the DRM is implemented with call-backs to a central server (not the case, as far as I am aware, with any ebook format, but quite common in computer games), the usefulness of the product is limited to the lifetime of the DRM-grant-access service. There's no real incentive for the original publisher to keep it running, once &quot;the long tail&quot; has been entered, so things protected by such a DRM are only useful as long as the publisher thinks they should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the balance, I'd say that not including DRM is the right thing. Even with DRM, it's not hard for the ebook consumer to strip the DRM (I understand it is at the &quot;install a piece of software, press a button&quot; level of complexity, these days). By slapping DRM on the published content, you are annoying legitimate customers and not deterring people wanting to illegally copy the work(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T14:27:56.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3162" CreationDate="2011-07-28T20:49:48.440" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you know how to self promote? Are you already good at it? Are you interested in learning how?  Are you highly disciplined?  Are you a DIY kind of person?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are important questions if you are thinking about self-pub. If self promotion/marketing is something you have the discipline to do and passion to excel at, then self-pub becomes a much more interesting option because it does give you a lot of personal flexibility.  Your work lives and dies on YOUR merits as a writer and promoter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I self-pub info products and I am passionate about marketing and promotions. I am fascinated by why people buy things and how to engage people so they will buy MY things.  I also really like doing things myself.  I love the idea of self-pub as a result.  Where do you stand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot more to it than what I've mentioned here, but I didn't see any other answers addressing this aspect specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2375" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T20:49:48.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3477" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3479" CreationDate="2011-07-29T05:15:22.730" Score="6" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written and had illustrated a children's picture book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of making this into an App for download from the Apple Apps store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also considering looking for a publisher to publish a printed version of the book. Perhaps via an agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm reluctant to sell the digital rights to a publisher (the rights to sell an App of the book) because I figure that since digital publishing is new, then publishers probably have lots to learn about it, and so I can perhaps do just as good a job as an established publisher can do in marketing the App. And if I publish the App myself, I would not need to give away a percentage of the revenue to a publisher. But equally, I don't know a lot about this yet, and there might be advantages that a major publisher would have, that I don't know about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a printed version, I do believe a publisher can do a much better job than I can in getting the book into bookstores, simply because of their connections with distributors, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing that an interested publisher would want the digital rights / rights to the App, if I don't first publish the App myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing that the deal would be less attractive to a publisher if I don't offer the digital rights. But that if I publish the book as an app first and get a good number of sales, then this should demonstrate that the book sells well and therefore that it's worthwhile for a publisher to take on the printed rights only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm thinking of publishing the App first, and then approaching publishers or agents to offer the rights to the printed version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this strategy sound sensible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2365" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T17:59:43.853" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T17:59:43.853" Title="Publishing a Children's Picture book -- Question about an App and a Printed version" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|marketing|children|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3477" CreationDate="2011-07-29T08:28:27.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The one consideration I would probably want to factor in is that the publishing industry remains conservative. Until your app sells well enough for them to overlook your transgression of the &quot;First Serial Publishing Rights&quot; rule no one will likely want to buy it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way it would be viewed is that your privately owned app is &quot;competing&quot; with any printed product. They would be making money out of the printed version (in return for investment) the only person making money out of the app is you. Therefore in strict game theory terms it makes more sense for you to push the app from a financial point of view. In fact if you retain control over the app you will always make more money from the app version than the paper version if it is in the control of someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a risk in an arena fraught with risks. Yours is no more foolish than anyone else's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Having said that every writer's strategy is foolish to a greater degree given the media tsunami of the modern world and the apathy of most people towards the printed word in general, let alone your specific collection of them...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-07-29T14:30:41.930" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T14:30:41.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3477" CreationDate="2011-07-29T12:48:23.600" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're going to need to figure out which is more important to you - getting traditionally published, or keeping dgital rights. Not that you can't necessarily manage both, but it'll be a long shot at best. A couple of considerations I can offer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contracts are negotiable.&lt;/strong&gt; You can shop around your book, and see if you can negotiate a contract where you keep digital rights. If that's important to you, you might &#xA;be willing to give up other reimbursement to keep the digital rights, or to get more of a share of e-book profits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First publication rights are important.&lt;/strong&gt; If you e-publish on your own, you'll never be able to meet a contract that demands those rights.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your leverage in negotiations is correlated to the quality and projected success of your book.&lt;/strong&gt; Which goes in several directions:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your book is exceptional, you might be able to get a non-standard contract right from the start.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your book does exceptionally well as an e-book, that gives you leverage to negotiate a non-standard contract. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your book doesn't do very well as an e-book, then you'll be &lt;em&gt;missing&lt;/em&gt; the leverage to negotiate for the rights you've already made impossible to offer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is a children's e-book a viable product?&lt;/strong&gt; I don't know the field here very well, but it's crucial that you check this out before committing. I don't know many parents happy to let their 4-year olds play with their iPad. Childrens' books sound like tougher sells as an eBook than other work. Or, maybe they can have animations or voice narration that make them great for kids (and that you'll want to be sure to include!) Be sure you take this into consideration, particularly if you're counting on the eBook's success for further development. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Digital rights can be re-negotiated.&lt;/strong&gt; You've made the unwarranted assumption that a publisher interested based on e-book sales won't try to negotiate for the digital rights. That's really not necessarily the case - they could negotiate for those as part of the contract.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern about your proposed strategy is that it really only works if both &lt;strong&gt;(A) your book and marketing are great enough to be a persuasive e-publishing success,&lt;/strong&gt; and also &lt;strong&gt;(B) your book is not attractive enough for a publisher to relinquish digital rights to begin with.&lt;/strong&gt; Now, there's definitely some territory there, but IMHO that's an awfully narrow target to be aiming for. Recall also that a publisher's primary function is just publicizing and distributing your book - so e-sales with a publisher and a commercially-sold real-world book might be a lot higher than if you're publicizing just the e-book all on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My inclination would be to shop around the manuscript now to agents and publishers, and see what you can get for it. If you get an offer that satisfies you, then great. If not, the self-publishing avenue is wide open. And &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you do wonderfully there, you can always go back to the publishers for a second round with more leverage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T12:48:23.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3481" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-30T10:51:22.667" Score="2" ViewCount="6438" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a children's story and had it illustrated. It's a picture book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard that publishers prefer to receive manuscript only — not illustrated, unless the author is the illustrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess this is because otherwise, the choice of illustrator is often not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My career background is in Copywriting and Creative Direction (though not for the book publishing industry). I'm happy that the work is good — story and illustrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had a few copies of the book digitally printed. I could send printed copies to publishers, though I'd like to send it to quite a few agents / publishers, and it would keep costs down to email a link to the images / story, rather than to send each agent / publisher the printed book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I was thinking of calling agents and/or publishers, pitching the book, telling them a little about my background, and asking if they would be happy to receive an email with a link to images of the pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does this sound as a strategy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice on what I should include in the pitch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do agents / publishers, in general, accept submissions by email?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2365" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T17:56:36.220" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T17:56:36.220" Title="Sending a children's book manuscript to an agent or publisher with illustrations" Tags="|publishing|submitting-work|children|artwork|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3482" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-30T11:20:08.170" Score="3" ViewCount="343" Body="&lt;p&gt;I created a book and used a commercial digital printing house to print and bind some copies, which I gave away as gifts. The book says in it &quot;Copyright 2010, Richard Clunan. Published by Wordfruit.&quot; (Wordfruit is the name of my company).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I still offer 'first publication rights' to a publisher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2365" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T09:59:48.133" Title="First publication rights still available on this?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3481" CreationDate="2011-07-30T12:33:42.283" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Calling agents/publishers before sending your stuff is a good idea. Especially when you have questions how you should submit your stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally the homepages contain hints how you should send your manuscript. Some people like email, some like snail mail. I would stick to what they describe on their homepage, even though there are enough successful examples where people ignore these guidelines willfully. So that's up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you call them (what I think you should), be prepared for their questions. It's a pitch as you said. You must be able to explain your book in two/three sentences. Short and informative. Don't talk for minutes without breathing. Give them the opportunity to ask their questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably they will not be happy, that it is already published (digitally). I assume it shouldn't be a stopper, if you only gave a few copies to friends. But they will tell you that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T12:33:42.283" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3482" CreationDate="2011-07-30T12:33:48.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might be able to convince a publisher that because you didn't sell the book you haven't created any competition (if it was a very small run, you'll have a stronger argument) and therefore they can still have first publication rights.  But considering that getting a publisher to look at your book is a uphill battle anyway, it might be a very tough sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastEditorUserId="181" LastEditDate="2011-09-08T09:59:48.133" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T09:59:48.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3482" CreationDate="2011-07-30T12:52:37.500" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once you have published it, regardless of where or how, you will never have the ability to offer &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://howpublishingreallyworks.blogspot.com/2009/03/first-publication-rights.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;first publication rights&lt;/a&gt;&quot; again. And why is that a big deal? For most publishers, if you have already published and didn't sell enough copies to stir up any real interest, then they are not going to waste their money on trying to sell it. You've already demonstrated it won't sell. So what other options do you have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first option is to go ahead and shop it anyway. If you feel your book is good enough to become a hit, then give it a try. The publishing houses aren't going to know that you published it and gave away all your copies. If you end up stirring up any interest and it gets to the point where they are willing to discuss contract, then come clean and tell them what you did. If they really liked your book, they are much more likely to agree that your efforts did not constitute a true attempt to sell the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second option is to self-publish as an e-book. Since you already have the book written, all you would have to do is &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3162/is-it-wise-to-publish-a-novel-as-an-e-book-and-how-would-i-do-it/3381#3381&quot;&gt;convert it to the proper format&lt;/a&gt; and submit it to a distributor. This won't cost you a penny to do, but now you will be responsible for promoting and marketing the book. Not an impossible task, but it can be time consuming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thrid option is to self-publish in print through a company like CreateSpace. I suggest them because you can set everything up for free (you do have to pay for a proof copy, but you'll probably want your own copy anyway). If you want to expand your distribution channels to include book stores, it will cost you about $40, but aside from that and the cost of the proof copy, you're not out much money. Again, however, you have to do the promoting and marketing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can always combine options two and three, depending on what you really want to accomplish. If you go with a publishing house, you may spend months shopping it around, then another month or two agreeing on the contract, and then 12-18 months waiting for it to be printed and distributed. If you go with either of the other options, you can make it available within 3-10 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T12:52:37.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3481" CreationDate="2011-07-30T13:17:39.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each agent and publisher will have their own submission guidelines, and many do accept electronic submissions. I don't know of any, however, who will take phone calls from new authors who have never been published. You'll most likely end up with a message left with a receptionist somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend starting out with agents by sending a link to your electronic file. (Sending the actual file may clutter their Inbox, and some companies block large files to open e-mail addresses to prevent e-mail server attacks. Again, the submission guidelines will most likely help you with this.) If an agent decides that your book has potential, they will be better positioned to suggest how to proceed from there. They would have a better idea as to whether you should try to promote the current story with the existing illustrations or go with just the story itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW - I did a Google seacrh on &quot;find an agent&quot;, and the first couple of links were to searchable databases that were free. This might be a good place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-07-31T01:26:41.207" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T01:26:41.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3386" CreationDate="2011-07-30T13:23:23.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The blurb on the dust jacket of a book that describes the author is usually in the third person, even if it was written by the author himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2262" LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T13:23:23.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3489" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-30T16:28:18.583" Score="16" ViewCount="24910" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm curious about the &amp;quot;properness&amp;quot; of using shortened links (a la &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitly.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;bit.ly&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://tinyurl.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tinyurl&lt;/a&gt;) in research papers. I haven't been able to find any sort of definitive reference about whether or not this is accepted or frowned upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://butlercain.blogspot.com/2011/03/using-shortened-links-in-research.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a blot post&lt;/a&gt; by a professor at Texas A&amp;amp;M who stated he was going to use shortened links in an upcoming paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a paper that won't be published or anything, but it's got a lot of online references that make footnotes horridly ugly, and so I'm taking the opportunity to ask about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it varies based on publishing area/type (scientific, editorial, etc.), that would be great to know as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: Since it's coming up in answers... this is a hobby project in which I'm trying to mathematically describe a multi-level marketing scheme. It seems some think it would be frustrating to see a shortened link, perhaps because the actual link would reveal some helpful information when reading a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what if it's simply a pdf that I was able to find, it's official, but it's not hosted an an &amp;quot;official site&amp;quot; anymore? For example, consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lindeen, Monica J., Commissioner of Securities and Insurance and Montana State Auditor (2010). Case No.: SEC-2010-12. Retrieved 30 July 2011 from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.starnewsonline.com/assets/pdf/WM21622123.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.starnewsonline.com/assets/pdf/WM21622123.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lindeen, Monica J., Commissioner of Securities and Insurance and Montana State Auditor (2010). Case No.: SEC-2010-12. Retrieved 30 July 2011 from &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/pBrheo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://bit.ly/pBrheo&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a huge difference here? I originally found the link from the actual Montana government site, but it's no longer there, perhaps since the cease and desist order was resolved... now it happens to be downloadable from a &amp;quot;star news online&amp;quot; site. It's the same official document, and downloading the pdf would make that clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would seeing &amp;quot;starnewsonline&amp;quot; in the url reveal that's important for the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, that edit was an aside. It's helpful to know opinions, but the actual question is still more about official acceptance or practice in the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2387" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-02-20T18:32:14.363" Title="Is it fine to use link shorteners for research paper citations?" Tags="|academic-writing|citations|footnotes|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3489" CreationDate="2011-07-30T17:08:20.520" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do both. Use the tiny URL as footnote and provide an appendix/bibliography with the long URLs. Also an accompanying website could list all URLs used in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tiny URLs have the problem that they disguise usable information for the reader. They do not see immediately if you cite Wikipedia or MIT. This is of course not the case if you mention the source in your text each time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Canadian site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slaw.ca/2009/07/14/citation-by-shortened-url/&quot;&gt;Slaw&lt;/a&gt; has a discussion about this topic. But no solution as far as I see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T17:08:20.520" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3491" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3494" CreationDate="2011-07-30T19:48:29.820" Score="4" ViewCount="944" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working on a non-fiction (mostly biographical) article that currently is about 9,000 words and I have perhaps 30% more to go, so perhaps the final article would be 12-14k words or so.  I have some ability to trim it, but it feels like its natural length ought to be at least 9,000 words even if trimmed, and beyond that it would lose a lot of interesting material.  It's aimed at a moderately intellectual readership, and I'd like to sell it to more than a niche journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is:  what can I do with it?  I notice that many general interest magazines accept manuscripts up to about 4,000 words, perhaps 6,000.  So it seems my article is too long.  I have seen that in the Best Magazine Writing 2007 the word counts (estimated by me) ranged from 6k up  to 19k, with an average at 10k, but that doesn't square with the numbers above, so I suppose these longer pieces were greenlighted based on the writer's credentials (of which I have none!).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would work quite well as a ~30 page book chapter in a book, but I don't have the rest of a book to write on this topic or related.  If I could find an editor putting together such a book from multiple authors, that would work, but I have no idea how to find that--and of course, such a collection is unlikely to exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I doomed to have to severely cut it down to a third of its current size to get it published?  Or do you think I could find a magazine that would take a 9-10k long version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2388" LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T21:36:37.493" Title="Length of non-fiction article and what to do about it" Tags="|non-fiction|wordcount|magazines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2348" CreationDate="2011-07-30T20:07:58.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are quite a few paying markets for speculative flash fiction.  Fewer for mainstream.  And when I say &quot;paying,&quot; that can mean as little as $10.  However, look around and you'll find plenty of markets.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59234&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; Absolute Write's list, but it's not all inclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2389" LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T20:07:58.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2348" CreationDate="2011-07-30T21:31:29.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience with self-publishing e-books, I have found that a lot of authors will use flash fiction or short stories as freebies to encourage people to buy their longer works. I also know several people who will sell their self-published flash fiction and short stories at a very low price, and then sell larger collections as the real breadwinners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T21:31:29.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3491" CreationDate="2011-07-30T21:36:37.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe if the material warrants it, certain magazines will make an exception and agree to publish the full work. Another option might be to offer the article as a two-parter, or perhaps even suggest it as a serialized article. If you can identify natural break points yourself, then it would be easier for you to make that kind of suggestion. You don't want to make the editor work any harder than necessary!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T21:36:37.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3481" CreationDate="2011-07-31T06:35:33.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before you start querying, you must, &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; familiarize yourself with submission guidelines - for the field in general, and for the specific agents and publishers you find are appropriate for you to query. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the strategy you suggest, you're running smack into two common guidelines. And even if your case, for whatever reason, is so exceptional that you think those guidelines don't apply, it's a safe bet that people considering your query will find these violations annoying and unprofessional, and be dead set against your submission from the start. Because, believe me, they get a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of people who think they're exceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Submit your manuscript, not illustrations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://danidraws.com/2009/01/22/how-to-find-an-illustrator-for-your-picture-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Find an Illustrator for your Picture Book&lt;/a&gt; says it all clearly and concisely. In a nutshell: &lt;strong&gt;you don't&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're submitting an MS for a picture book, &lt;strong&gt;do not submit illustrations unless you yourself are the illustrator&lt;/strong&gt;. The article goes into this in detail, but the basic thrust is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selecting an illustrator is the publisher's job, not the author's. The publisher will have a lot more experience, resources and selection than the author will.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publishers of children's books know how to read an unillustrated ms. That's what they do. I know it looks odd or sparse or incomplete. Nonetheless.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Do not call an agent&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This advice is repeated over and over throughout the web. Janet Reid is &lt;a href=&quot;http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2008/08/why-la-telefono-is-not-your-ami.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;really&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2009/07/no-you-dont-know-me-well-enough-to-call.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quite&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2009/03/talk-about-queryfail.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;emphatic&lt;/a&gt; on the subject (also &lt;a href=&quot;http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2011/01/weve-got-your-number.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;snarky&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this? &lt;a href=&quot;http://editorialass.blogspot.com/2008/03/i-have-stalker.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Moonrat touches on why cold-calling is so bad:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't call on the phone. Ever. Two reasons--1) The phone is bad for us, because we can't choose the timing. If you email us, we can address your issue thoughtfully and when we have time to. Plus the phone is super awkward--I always feel backed up against the wall when someone I'm not expecting to talk to is on the phone. 2) The phone is bad for you. If you get us on the phone and ask for the status and we didn't like it, we're going to have to reject it right there, on the phone with you. Also, maybe we were thinking &quot;maybe&quot; about your project, but now, since you've forced us to talk to you on the phone, we're suddenly thinking &quot;no.&quot; Just. Don't. Call. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing is that accepting open calls just makes agents and editors too exposed to too many people, some of them real weirdos (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://editorialass.blogspot.com/2008/03/i-have-stalker.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Moonrat's full essay&lt;/a&gt; for more on that). So this is pretty much verboten, and it's not a line you want to toe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Follow the Guidelines&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm kind of dismayed that your reaction to hearing &quot;publishers prefer X&quot; is &quot;well, I'll do X anyway.&quot; Well, if was just a &lt;em&gt;preference&lt;/em&gt; (&quot;We also prefer that your book be about vampires!), I could see that, but we're talking about an established industry standard. That's not the type of thing you want to mess with without an enormously good reason. Particularly as an unpublished author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're not very familiar with industry standards, guidelines, and processes. I &lt;strong&gt;strongly&lt;/strong&gt; recommend you get familiar with them before you start submitting anywhere. You've got a book you poured sweat and blood into, a book you're proud of, a book that's fantastic - you don't want to mess up querying, because that's just learning how these things are done, and then doing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own advice is to &lt;strong&gt;find blogs by agents and editors, read them through, and learn what works and what doesn't.&lt;/strong&gt; If there's something that seems to tick agents off, then really try to avoid doing that thing. I've found &lt;a href=&quot;http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Janet Reid&lt;/a&gt; to be helpful, as well as the sadly-defunct (yet delightfully archived!) &lt;a href=&quot;http://editorialass.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Editorial Ass&lt;/a&gt; (aka Moonrat) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://misssnark.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Miss Snark&lt;/a&gt;. But in your case, I'd take special interest in children's publishing, which has quirks of its own. I don't have anything specific to recommend, but I'm sure you can find great stuff online. The first article I linked, &lt;a href=&quot;http://danidraws.com/2009/01/22/how-to-find-an-illustrator-for-your-picture-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on illustration&lt;/a&gt;, finishes off with some links that might be a big help for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry to be discouraging, but I really hope this will be helpful. Better to do this right than to take a quick stab in the wrong direction. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-07-31T20:36:30.417" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T20:36:30.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3489" CreationDate="2011-07-31T13:15:48.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not in academia, but I would actually be annoyed to see a shortened URL as a footnote. You aren't writing it by hand; as far as I know there aren't maximum printed page requirements; if it's being posted online there are no physical maximum lengths; you aren't paying for anything by the character &amp;mdash; why would you go out of your way to hide a source? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T13:15:48.097" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3489" CreationDate="2011-07-31T20:43:33.280" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue here is that you are referencing a written piece of work, and the URL is likely to be integral to that reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the shortened URL does direct you to the location of the work you are citing, the shortened URL is (with few exceptions) not the source of that reference. At best, the shortened URL points you in the direction of the work in question, much like an index card in a library points you to a particular book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would therefore say using a link shortener should be avoided as part of a list of citations or references, unless you provide both the shortened URL, and the original URL (but providing the original makes the shortened URL redundant). I understand the &quot;neatness&quot; you are referring to, but neatness is, in my opinion, secondary to the goal of clarity of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One exception I could think of would be URL shortners that are used by the actual website you're referencing. For example, the New York Times uses its own, as does You Tube, and many others. In that case, you could probably argue that it's a legitimate link to the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One small point to make about URL shortners: their longevity is probably even less than actual URLs and can lead to &quot;linkrot&quot;. Imagine you used bit.ly or another service for all your references in all your work, and then one day they close down as a company. I certainly would not rely on them except for things like Twitter, where immediacy of information and brevity is a necessity, and you generally don't worry about how long that link will work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T20:43:33.280" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3500" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-01T11:27:54.707" Score="2" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a web developer putting together a system for writers/editors to efficiently add — fairly rich — content to a website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've previously used standard WYSIWYG editors but find that often what you see isn't what you get. I've seen this lead to frustration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone used Markdown to write articles? If so, how did you find it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love to hear any journalists experiences with previous systems or any views on what would make a perfect system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2393" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-02T18:41:32.920" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T22:28:33.597" Title="What systems provide easy article submission for websites?" Tags="|software|websites|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3500" CreationDate="2011-08-01T11:58:09.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've developed two different content management systems in the past. One was for a major corporation's internal intranet, and the other for a large government entity. In each case, I used a database driven back end to store the content and manage the permissions. The database also separated the content by topics and kept it organized. Having said all that, I would have to say that it takes an awful lot of time and effort to do all that, but 10-15 years ago that was the only way to get it done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, you can accomplish all of this with a good, well-organized blog. Wordpress, for example, allows you to add users with permissions who can add articles or posts to the site. You can categorize or tag each article, and you can even have the writers receive the comments for their own stories. I would not try to rewrite the wheel, because the progress that has been made with blogs makes it all so unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as WYSIWYG editors, look at this site! If you scroll your answer box to the top, you can see what you are typing directly below it so that you can see what your readers see as you type it. You can see the hyperlinks, the bold font, italics, everything. There are widgets available for blogs that allow you to do the same thing. I think you will find your time much better spent trying to find a suitable template and piecing together a collection of widgets to provide all the functionality you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T11:58:09.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3482" CreationDate="2011-08-01T14:05:46.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, Steven is right: once your book has been published in &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; form, you can no longer offer &quot;first publication rights&quot;, since you've used those up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you may have an out: simply getting a few copies bound to give away as gifts does not necessarily constitute &quot;publication&quot;. It depends entirely on the terms that you agreed to with the printer. If you simply contracted with a commercial printer to have some copies made, then the printer does not retain any rights to the book. This means that all of the rights have remained with you, or technically your company Wordfruit---and I assume that Wordfruit is wholly owned by you, and so doesn't actually represent any competing ownership interest. In this case, since there is no third party that has already claimed &quot;first publication rights&quot;, you should still be able to offer those rights for sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you find a publisher and sit down to write a contract with them, you'll need to make it clear at that point that you already had a very limited print run. They can probably work out the necessary contract language to cover any legal technicalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: IANA contract lawyer or IP lawyer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T14:05:46.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3503" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-01T18:55:32.900" Score="6" ViewCount="1387" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working through the preparation process before I start to write my first feature length screenplay, helped in no small part by Syd Field's books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got the three act structure fleshed out, but I'm looking for a bit of validation in regards my 'mid point', which should provide a twist in the story, yes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, does this twist have to involve the protagonist? Does he/she have to be directly involved, affected or aware?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plan is for the twist to share information with the audience that the protagonist won't find out about until the climax to act 2; plot point 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of both the visuals and the overall narrative, it works perfectly both on paper and in my mind; I suppose it is inexperience casting doubt here!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice/comment/suggestion welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;Dave&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2396" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T05:44:17.177" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T18:58:26.607" Title="The Protagonist and the 'Mid Point' of a Screenplay" Tags="|plot|screenwriting|planning|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3503" CreationDate="2011-08-01T19:14:07.133" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your audience is absolutely allowed to know more or less than your main character, but remember to consider how they are being presented the story.  If they are watching from just over the main character's shoulder for most of the film and then are pulled away into a scene without him/her, it could be very jarring.  Remember that your film has &lt;strong&gt;a narrator and a point of view&lt;/strong&gt;, even if they are not explicitly introduced and never directly address the audience.  Know who that narrator is (or maybe guide is a better term in a screenplay).  Know what their relationship is to both the story and the audience.  This will help you know whether or not various devices really work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T19:14:07.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3506" CreationDate="2011-08-01T23:51:42.643" Score="9" ViewCount="1232" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in the process of expanding my company from doing coding &amp;amp; web development to more technical writing and freelance tech journalism. Although my background is mainly in technology, throughout high school and college I put a few AP and advanced writing courses under my belt and I've gotten fairly familiar with business correspondence, and while I've done some basic instruction sets for clients, I've never had a part-time or full-time position just for writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment I've been searching career sites and reaching out to my network of contacts, however aside from those measures, is there any thing else I should be doing? For example, although I have a blog containing articles I've done, should I also assemble a portfolio of mock proposals and correspondence to show my knowledge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks very much in advance for any suggestions,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2397" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T20:22:29.407" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T20:22:29.407" Title="Breaking Into Technical Writing - Where to Start (from a programming background)" Tags="|technical-writing|career|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3505" CreationDate="2011-08-02T02:00:46.597" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different kinds of technical writing, differing in the &quot;technical&quot; part.  The logical place for you to start, coming from a programming background like I did, would be with programmer-facing documentation: APIs, SDKs, and the tutorials and guides that go with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any of your current (programming) work could benefit from either external (interface) or internal (design, architecture) documentation, you could start there to build your skills and portfolio (and maybe your first gig).  Failing that, instead of doing mock work to show what you can do, why not do real work for the open-source project of your choice?  That may also help you with the networking; when you contribute valuable documentation to Project Whatever, then (1) your stuff gets seen and (2) the other people working on Project Whatever might help you find paying gigs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also go the professional-association route.  STC (Society for Technical Communicators) is the common one, but it's a broad base -- you'll find some programming writers there, but also a bunch of people documenting UIs, hardware, and -- surprise :-) -- non-software products like medical and engineering devices.  So it's a broad group, and how deep it is depends on the folks in your local chapter.  I gave a talk on API documentation at a regional STC conference a while back and it was the only programming-related topic on the docket; however, a few years later at the national conference there were more options.  It varies.  I'm not currently a member of STC so I don't have the current sense of it.  I found more value in the documentation SIGs of ACM and IEEE, though I've also let those memberships lapse.  (Sorry, just lazy I guess. :-) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking into any new field has two key parts: demonstrating good skills and finding the right people to demonstrate them to.  If you can ease into it in your current position then you have a leg up; you already know the people.  If not, you have to build a body of work and do some networking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T02:00:46.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3503" CreationDate="2011-08-02T07:47:10.577" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m not a screenwriter, but as far as I understand 'mid-point' your approach seems problematic to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michael Hauge calls it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.screenplaymastery.com/structure.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;point of no return&lt;/a&gt;, where the hero must fully commit to his goal. If he is not involved or even aware, he cannot make his decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blake Snyder is talking about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/node/2006329&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;putting pressure on the protagonists&lt;/a&gt; to make their lives more difficult. Problematic if the hero is not aware of what’s happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not want to say that your approach will not work, just that you should be careful. Mid-point is an important turning point and there should be something or someone &quot;turned&quot;. Better someone important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T07:47:10.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3500" CreationDate="2011-08-02T15:21:12.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wordpress is a popular and excellent choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are Markdown plugins for Wordpress, if your writers choose to write in Markdown, within the CMS: &lt;a href=&quot;http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd highly recommend the plugin 'After the Deadline', that checks spelling and grammer as you type. It's very intelligent, and works really well: &lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/after-the-deadline/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/after-the-deadline/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could probably use a standard Wordpress install, and find plugins that suite your needs regarding this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="534" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T15:21:12.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3509" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3675" CreationDate="2011-08-02T19:27:01.833" Score="1" ViewCount="1060" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using bibtex to create a bibliography with xelatex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to cite a paper presented to a workshop, but not published on a book or proceedings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What @misc fields can I use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2402" LastActivityDate="2011-08-21T03:46:19.310" Title="Bibliography entry for a paper presented to a workshop" Tags="|latex|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3510" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3511" CreationDate="2011-08-02T19:48:44.203" Score="8" ViewCount="45957" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm familiar with the basic rules on inline citation, however, recently I've stumbled onto this problem numerous times so I thought I would ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When using MLA style inline citations, is it legal to use multiple citations in one sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a sentence clause based on one source (Author 101); this is a&#xA;  related sentence clause based on another source (Author 102).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this legal according to the laws of english?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or would it be something more along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a sentence clause based on one source; this is a related&#xA;  clause based on another source (Author 101)(Author 102).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone clarify this for me? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2405" OwnerDisplayName="luckycypher" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-23T09:48:19.710" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T09:48:19.710" Title="Multiple MLA inline citation question" Tags="|citations|academic-writing|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3510" CreationDate="2011-08-02T19:52:19.407" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different situations have different methods.   If the two sources cited has authors with the same surname, then the following is done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although some medical ethicists claim that cloning will lead to designer children (R. Miller 12), others note that the advantages for medical research outweigh this consideration (A. Miller 46).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, normally, multiple citations is done thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To cite multiple sources in the same parenthetical reference, separate the citations by a semi-colon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. . . as has been discussed elsewhere (Burke 3; Dewey 21).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken from MLA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2453" OwnerDisplayName="Thursagen" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T19:52:19.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3500" CreationDate="2011-08-02T22:28:33.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Judging by your comment that you've got templates and backends already running, you may want to take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TinyMCE&lt;/a&gt;, which is a pretty good Javascript WYSIWYG editor. It's open source, fully customisable, and is easy to integrate into websites and content management systems. It's used in Wordpress, and is also used by Microsoft, Oracle and a bunch of other companies and websites, has regular updates, and fairly decent support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T22:28:33.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3513" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3518" CreationDate="2011-08-03T01:51:27.600" Score="7" ViewCount="4145" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone asked this question in another forum, and I thought I'd bounce it around in here to see what kind of responses we get. If you are working on writing a new book, is it better to just write all the way through to the end on your first draft, or should you periodically stop and go back to edit? If you edit as you go, will it help reduce the amount of deviation your story takes, or will it lessen the number of changes you end up making on the second draft? Is there a clear advantage to editing as you go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T21:26:57.277" Title="Write to the finish, or edit as you go?" Tags="|editing|book|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3524" CreationDate="2011-08-03T01:57:29.963" Score="7" ViewCount="1294" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you are writing a book (or reading one for that matter), how important is it to closely detail the scenery or the setting? Does it just depend on the setting or the type of story, or is it always important? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T16:59:31.323" Title="How important is scenery when you are writing?" Tags="|book|setting|scene|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3513" CreationDate="2011-08-03T03:29:23.390" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking about this site lately, and I think this question is one of the ones that illustrates why the site isn't totally satisfying to me.  Because the answer to this question, as to so many other questions, is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends.  What works for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really don't think that writing, at least fiction writing, is a science.  It's a craft for some, an art for others, but it doesn't have the firm, straightforward rules that would make it a science.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that you do well if you edit as you go, edit as you go. If you find you have better results by spitting everything out in the manner it occurs to you and then refining later, do that.  There are just too many variables to be able to have firm right/wrong answer (a weakness, obviously, for a 'stack' type website).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, trying to be concrete:  How about a compromise?  I read and revise  the previous day's work before I start on the current day's writing.  It allows me to get back into the style of the project and be clear of where I am, and I catch lots of little problems.  Then when I'm done, I go back over the whole project and make changes as needed.  It works for me.  Does it work for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T03:29:23.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3514" CreationDate="2011-08-03T03:35:44.943" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it absolutely depends on the type of story, and on the writer's goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a romance, and it takes place in a mundane office building, why waste space on describing the cubicles?  If the setting doesn't advance the characters or the plot, gloss over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you're writing something set in another world, and you want your readers to know what it's like to live in that world, you're going to have to spend a good bit of time on description.  Hopefully you can work at least some of the details in through dialogue or hints in the narrative, but I'd much rather read a little straightforward exposition than a clunky, unnatural stretch of dialogue in which characters describe things that they really should be taking for granted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to reading, I think there's a range of preferences.  I know that I skim description, especially if it's set off in distinct blocks of text, but I know others who feel that they can't enjoy a novel unless they they can see every detail of the setting.  Just one more thing to make the author's job impossible...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2011-08-03T03:48:12.123" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T03:48:12.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3517" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3527" CreationDate="2011-08-03T09:38:10.107" Score="9" ViewCount="1058" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an attentive follower of Janet Reid's &lt;a href=&quot;http://queryshark.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;Query Shark&lt;/a&gt;, and I've learned a lot. But Reid doesn't represent speculative fiction, which seems to present wrinkles of its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particularly, Query Shark often stresses the importance of quickly introducing the main characters, and describing what &lt;em&gt;happens&lt;/em&gt; in the book, what the conflict is, what choices the protagonist needs to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in an SF/F book, if the speculative premise is complex and at the heart of the novel, this seems difficult to do without at least some explanation of the premise. The book itself, if it's good, will explain the premise gradually and with a lot of showing-not-telling. But the query seems like it might get bogged down if the premise and the worldbuilding aren't reducible to a clear one-line tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples of SF/F novels I would have trouble constructing a query for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hyperion&lt;/em&gt;, by Dan Simmons:&lt;/strong&gt; The setting is a mish-mash of genre tropes and original mythology; they all intertwine eventually, but I'd be at a loss to try to briefly introduce the setting as a whole.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Time Traveler's Wife,&lt;/em&gt; by Audrey Niffenegger&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;The City and the City&lt;/em&gt;, by China Mieville&lt;/strong&gt;: These books are, largely, explorations of their central premise. They're hardly without plot or character, but understanding these is contingent on continuous new understandings about the speculative premise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are SF/F agents more open to infodump-ish introductions? Or is there a better way to construct a query for a book whose characters and plot rely on a complex speculative premise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T14:54:45.247" Title="Querying for a setting-heavy speculative fiction novel" Tags="|fantasy|science-fiction|queries|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3513" CreationDate="2011-08-03T09:43:37.670" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the risk of trying to answer the unanswerable I will share with you something I have discovered over the course of my various writings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is a bit like building a bridge from one side of a chasm or other deep precipice to the other. By yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason beginnings are tricky, middles have their ups and downs and ends are hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can plan as much as you like but when you get about halfway out over the precipice the fact remains that all you will have is a long jetty that is halfway to being a bridge. Building the second half of the bridge, in the first instance, is always going to be a matter of compromise rather than perfect design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the reason for this is down to the fact that until you've got some way into the project you won't know for certain that you started in the right place. The chronology could be out. Characters could react to events, say things or take actions that, in retrospect, don't seem to be quite right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these matters may appear to be trifles but trifles accumulate into a cruft of creativity killing conceptual gunk. Most times when a writer becomes &quot;stuck&quot; it is exactly this kind of knot that has them in a bind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The insidious thing is that no one of these little items looks too terribly out of place by itself. It's a cumulative effect. Often there will be one key error or slip from which the others arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have often heard the advice to a mired writer that they should &quot;plug on through&quot;. I have done it myself and it is possible. It's the equivalent of doing some long, tedious and only barely productive work on the bridge until suddenly that part is done and the next major step may be taken towards completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only problem with this approach is that the bridge, upon completion, is even more the product of compromise than it would otherwise have been. It also has a tendency to be almost impossible to fundamentally alter because the fruits of the &quot;plug on through&quot; toil tend to make the prospect of serious focus shifts or re-edits seem unpalatable because then the very worst bits will have to be completely redone to nearly the point where it might seem that you were writing a whole new novel from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you get editor's block as a replacement for author's block. Not a great trade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find when I get mired it's a sign. My instincts are telling me something is wrong. I might not be sharp enough to know exactly what it is, I just know it's there, somewhere, in what's already been written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time you get stuck while writing is a time to look at what you've already written and ask some questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the story start too late (i.e. there are things you haven't explained that need to be explained in scenes that precede the current start point) or too early (i.e. are some of your early chapters strictly speaking unnecessary)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do your characters all behave &quot;properly&quot; no one does anything out of character or act in a way that could be interpreted contrary to your intentions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are all the events that have occurred so far relevant to your intended storyline? Are there any extraneous events that could be reworked or cut out completely?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to one or two of these will probably clue you in as to what needs to change before progress onwards can be smooth and natural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't personally believe this to be a matter of debate. It's not about &quot;editing&quot; per se, it's about shaping as you go. The dichotomy between adding and subtracting material is a false one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inevitably upon first attaining the other side of the chasm your work will necessarily be lopsided. Once you have a whole bridge you can go back, take some of the scaffold off the front and beef up the end. Only with a complete work can you appreciate the whole thing. Just because that is a stage in the process doesn't mean that along the way you won't have cause to switch things around as you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course one of the things that makes this possible is electronic word processing software, which is still relatively new. My father used to refer to the word processor as &quot;the padder's dream&quot; and many early adopter authors did, in fact, treat it this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real advantage of Word Processors is that they give you an unprecedented amount of control over the whole thing all the way along. Only someone with rocks in their head would fail to develop a nimble and dynamic crafting style to exploit their new advantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T09:43:37.670" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3519" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3525" CreationDate="2011-08-03T09:48:43.170" Score="3" ViewCount="1006" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen some references to commercial publishers picking up a self-published novel if it's been selling well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you point me to a few specific examples of this happening?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiction only, please. I'm particularly interested in cases where the author had no popular platform independent of his writing (e.g. not Cory Doctrow, or &lt;em&gt;Machine of Death&lt;/em&gt; which was published by several popular webcomic artists). Anything within science-fiction or fantasy would be of particular interest to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2021-08-25T16:00:22.457" Title="What are examples of fiction books picked up by publishers after being self-published?" Tags="|fiction|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3519" CreationDate="2011-08-03T10:21:04.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contest by Matthew Reilly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contest_(novel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contest_(novel&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once, long ago, I read that Dan Brown's Digital Fortress was originally self-published... but if this is true it has since been excised from the record...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T10:21:04.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3517" CreationDate="2011-08-03T11:22:01.983" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think they are open for infodumps, because they do not have the time to read them. And after the tenth infodump you get easily bored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know the books you have mentioned, so I cannot help you there. But normally the agent (or publisher) just wants to get an idea what your book is about. To do that you do not need to explain a complex plot/world in every excruciating detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I made a post here on Writers.SE, where I summarised LotR in two sentences. I only mention a dwarf-like man carrying the ring, that it must be destroyed and that the antagonist devastate the world otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this information you can show the main plot. You do not need to mention Aragorn, Helm's Deep, the towers, elves, orcs, Gollum or big birds carrying wizards. You can skip a lot of the complexity. Well, in a query I would mention some of the above. E.g. elves and orcs, they are important for the setting; Gollum, the Deep and the towers are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can say that LotR isn't such complex, but well ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can post a (lengthy) query letter of &lt;em&gt;Hyperion&lt;/em&gt; and we try to find out if it is possible to leave out information to make it shorter. (No, I do not know if Writers.SE is the right format to do that, but luckily I do not care anyway.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T11:22:01.983" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3519" CreationDate="2011-08-03T11:29:41.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amandahocking.blogspot.com/2011/05/and-yet-another-announcement.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amanda Hocking's&lt;/a&gt; the big name on this one, I'd say.  YA supernatural, as I understand it, but I haven't read her work myself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eragon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eragon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, although I recall hearing some debate about just how 'self' published the book was.  (I can't remember the details of the debate... anybody?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T11:29:41.460" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3513" CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:11:46.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are going to have to edit at some point. That editing may mean taking out huge chunks of text, entire plot lines, entire characters. If it's easier for you to do that early on, edit as you go. If you can't determine what needs to be removed until the whole thing is on the page, write it all down first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Kate and many of us say: whatever works for you. Writing is a process. Everyone has his/her own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T12:11:46.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3514" CreationDate="2011-08-03T13:01:35.047" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the spirit of Kate's answer, but it glosses over an important point.  Ultimately, it doesn't matter what you are describing as long as &lt;strong&gt;it's interesting and adds to the story&lt;/strong&gt;.  If you are writing a romance and the characters' mundane setting is what they are trying to break away from with their affair, then it is important the reader understands that.  If we are shown why they hate their cubicles, we will be even more likely to be able to connect with them when they start their passionate affair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But just because something is actually mundane, doesn't mean it can't be &lt;strong&gt;described in a interesting or engaging way&lt;/strong&gt;.  This is really the goal of every aspect of writing.  There have been plenty of seemingly interesting plots or characters that are ruined because of boring language and uninteresting details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best definition I've heard of exposition is &quot;&lt;strong&gt;It's only exposition when you realize it's there.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;  As long as your details and suggestions don't stand out (a much more difficult task than I'm making it sound, for sure), then it's probably doing it's job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am actually a big fan of thinking of setting or location as another character (though often a minor character).  All the same rules apply, including understanding it's motivation, history, goals, etc.  Even if all these details don't make it into your final story (and most probably shouldn't), it's important for you to know what they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last point: make sure that your setting is being described from a consistent point of view.  This is easier if you writing in the first person (at least in theory, any way).  But if you are writing in third person, be careful not to make observations or add details that are outside the scope of your narrator's knowledge (this is really part of a larger issue of finding your narrator's voice and vision).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastEditorUserId="181" LastEditDate="2011-08-04T16:59:31.323" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T16:59:31.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3519" CreationDate="2011-08-03T14:25:21.147" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Wallace/e/B004KAMJX2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Michael Wallace&lt;/a&gt; has just signed a five book publishing deal with Thomas &amp;amp; Mercer, the new publishing imprint from Amazon. He writes mystery/suspense and has been solely self-published until now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://riyria.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Michael Sullivan&lt;/a&gt; has signed a five book deal with Orbit Books. He writes fantasy novels and has been solely self-published until now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jcarsonblack.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;J. Carson Black&lt;/a&gt; just signed a book publishing deal with Thomas &amp;amp; Mercer. I don't recall how many books were in the deal, but I believe it was three. I believe she had been previously published but got dropped and then went into self-publishing. Now she's back in traditional publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, everyone has no doubt heard about Amanda Hocking's multi-million dollar deal to publish three new contemporary or urban fantasy novels. In addition, a couple of publishers tried to convince John Locke to sign with them, but he declined. Having sold over a million e-books on his own, I guess he didn't really feel the need to change anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several others that have done this recently, but these were the ones that immediately came to mind. I may add a couple more later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: &lt;a href=&quot;http://hauntedcomputer.blogspot.com/2011/08/nicholson-signs-book-deal-with-amazon.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scott Nicholson&lt;/a&gt;, another indie author, has just signed a two book deal with Thomas &amp;amp; Mercer. Scott writes primarily thrillers, and he does have a background in traditional publishing. However, he went indie and found success with a couple of his self-published books, and now he is back with a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23975171-writer-puts-novel-on-kindle-for-96p-and-wins-a-six-figure-deal.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Louise Voss&lt;/a&gt; shot to the top of the Kindle charts by self-publishing her book after being rejected by literary agents. It attracted the attention of publishers HarperFiction, which offered her a six-figure, four-book deal. As a result, her ebook Catch Your Death will also be printed and stocked in bookshops by a traditional publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://becomingzombies.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jessica Meigs&lt;/a&gt; self-published two zombie novellas and was picked up by Permuted Press for a three book deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Last edit, I promise!&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;JA Konrath has been an openly outspoken proponent of self-publishing for some time. I knew that he had compiled a list at one time of self-published authors with no previous experience or exposure to traditional publishing. I'll let &lt;a href=&quot;http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/01/response-to-richard-curtis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;his list&lt;/a&gt; serve as a much better compilation of success stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-08-08T18:52:32.823" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T18:52:32.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3529" CreationDate="2011-08-03T14:43:40.543" Score="3" ViewCount="3188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Word now but I would like to find a better software for laying out a magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this magazine, I would like to create columns (2 or 3 depending on the page), insert image on 1, 2 or 3 columns (like in a newspaper), independent frames on 1, 2 or 3 columns with text inside, a header and a footer different for the left or right page, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2406" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-08-03T18:05:13.583" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T10:55:23.837" Title="Software recommendations for magazine layout?" Tags="|publishing|editing|software|pages|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3517" CreationDate="2011-08-03T14:54:45.247" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your premise may be central to your story. But that doesn't mean that it requires paragraphs of explanation, or that you should sideline the characters and just talk about your awesome idea. Rather, if you find that the explication of your idea is taking too much time, you probably just aren't cutting it hard enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To illustrate, let me post the first three paragraphs from the query letter from a novel I completed last year:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Haris is an Apostle, a first-contact specialist dedicated to renewing&#xA;  ties with forgotten human colonies. He arrives in secret on the planet&#xA;  Hesychia disguised as a native, leaving his high-tech home to live&#xA;  among the crippled beggars, silk-swaddled nobles, and stern monks of&#xA;  the low-tech world. His mission is to integrate himself into their&#xA;  society and convince them to rejoin the interstellar community. But&#xA;  nothing goes as planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two different religious factions pursue him from the moment he&#xA;  arrives, and he finds himself betrayed and sold into slavery. In&#xA;  captivity he meets Layra, a slave girl who claims to be his wife and&#xA;  knows everything about his mission. Haris cannot understand how&#xA;  everyone he meets seems to know him already, but Layra explains to him&#xA;  the astounding truth: on Hesychia everyone remembers the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some who remember Haris support his goals, while others are out to&#xA;  hinder and kill him. With Layra's help Haris must find out which are&#xA;  which---if he can even trust her. And though Layra remembers that&#xA;  Haris ultimately succeeds, Haris discovers that memory can deceive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The omitted fourth paragraph has the title, wordcount, and boring biographical details.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm posting this, not because I think I have the awesomest query ever, but because I faced many of the same problems that you are facing. The setting is complex, as the book contains both an advanced space-faring society traveling from world to world, and a low-tech society that the protag visits. On the low-tech world I have to allude to the problems of the class and religious structure, including multiple religious and political factions, and somehow get across the idea of how all of these connect to &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; central idea of the story, which is a society built around a shared memory of the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I get all of this into the query letter? Mostly by leaving nearly everything out. I mention exactly &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; central characters, never mentioning the antagonist or the supporting cast at all. The POV character of the first chapter never even appears! Almost all of the setting is compressed into a single sentence in the first paragraph. And the exciting central premise is relegated to the second paragraph, with most of its implications left to the reader's imagination. It's okay to leave things unexplained in the query letter, so long as you can entice the reader to keep looking, and convince them that you have answers in the full MS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I happen to have a paperback copy of Hyperion on the bookshelf behind me, so let's look at its back cover copy. (A common querying technique is to pretend that you're writing the back cover copy.) How does it present the premise and characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man,&#xA;  there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who&#xA;  worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have&#xA;  vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge,&#xA;  brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for&#xA;  them all. On the eve of Armageddon with the entire galaxy at war,&#xA;  seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the&#xA;  answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a&#xA;  desperate hope--and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of&#xA;  humanity in his hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This copy presents the Shrike as the main character, which is an interesting choice since the Shrike is arguably the &lt;em&gt;antagonist&lt;/em&gt;. But this works because there is no one protagonist in &lt;em&gt;Hyperion&lt;/em&gt;, but all seven main characters have the same antagonist. Furthermore, we very quickly get exactly what Reid recommends: the situation (mysterious creature on a backwater planet), the plot (seven people coming to supplicate/confront him), and the stakes (fate of the galaxy). None of the seven protags gets named. The setting is almost completely omitted. The cruciform parasite, which is arguably the &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; important idea of the series, never shows up either. It's all boiled down to the absolute minimum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it can be done. For your novel, peel away the layers of complexity that you've lovingly arranged and get down to the bone. Figure out what the most interesting and most important thing is. Present that. Leave everything else out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T14:54:45.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3526" CreationDate="2011-08-03T15:29:12.497" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for software to use for making a magazine, I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scribus&lt;/a&gt;. It is open source desktop publishing software that is free. I haven't used it myself, but I know a couple of people who use it for a newsletter, and they really like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T15:29:12.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3526" CreationDate="2011-08-03T17:13:54.550" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign.html&quot;&gt;Adobe InDesign&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quark.com/&quot;&gt;QuarkXPress&lt;/a&gt;. These are desktop publishing programs, which are designed to do exactly what you want to do (among many other things): lay out printed pieces like a magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T17:13:54.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3533" CreationDate="2011-08-04T00:28:54.697" Score="12" ViewCount="2488" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a computer engineering student, programmer, avid book lover and have a very vivid (some would say &quot;screwed up&quot;) mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently thought up an idea for a very cool short/medium story. It's like a less technological version of the matrix with some elements of surrealism and Wonderland thrown in the bunch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I've never written something before ... ever. If I try to start writing something, I find myself lost at where to begin. Do I worry about structure? Do I make a plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2409" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T22:41:25.620" Title="An engineering student wants to write fiction, where to start?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3531" CreationDate="2011-08-04T02:23:47.263" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different schools of thought on this, loosely broken down into Outliners and Pantsers (seat of their pants). Great writers in both camps, so it's really just a question of figuring out what works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think I'd recommend that you jump back several steps.  Writing is a skill, and while reading widely is an important step in developing that skill, it's not enough just on its own.  Read a couple books on writing.  (I'd recommend Stephen King's &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt; and Donald Maass's &lt;em&gt;Writing the Breakout Novel&lt;/em&gt;, but everyone has their own favorites).  Do some writing exercises - keep a journal, write Morning Pages (several pages of stream-of-consciousness writing, done every day as a way to to declutter your brain), etc.  There's lots of sites that give exercises for writers.  You should also try to get some feedback on your work, so you know what's effective and what isn't.  But mostly, experiment, and see what works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you're doing all this, I'd recommend jotting down ideas for your short story.  But don't let yourself even try to start writing it.  Think about it, dream about it, but don't write it.  Not until you've A) got enough skill to write it reasonably well, and B)got enough enthusiasm for it that there's no damn way you're going to walk away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And after all this, you know what?  It may not work. You may not be a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing's hard.  Dreaming up the ideas is fun, but getting them down on paper, and then perfecting them - that's work.  It's rewarding and exciting work, but it's far from easy.  And just having one story idea is not nearly enough.  The amount of work you have to put in to developing your craft is totally disproportionate to the satisfaction that you'd get at the end of it all if you only produce a single story.  At least in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T02:23:47.263" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3531" CreationDate="2011-08-04T05:42:25.053" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a fellow engineer/programmer who's launched herself headfirst into a novel-length project, there's a few tips I've been picking up through trial and error. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Kate - write lots. Doesn't matter what. Could be an online RP, or speeches, or a journal. But keep writing, since that's how you improve and the process gets more natural. Especially if you've never really written before. I kept my skills from going completely rusty over the years by writing short stories, participating in RPs (a wonderful way to explore a character, by the way) and proofreading other people's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to planning a story, I find that it's useful to first determine your starting and ending point. If it's a character-based story, what is your character like at the beginning? Where do you want your character to be at the end; that is, how do they need to grow? From there, if you have a basic setting in place, you can start thinking about a catalyst for that growth (normally some kind of personal disaster). Piling problems upon a character is generally the way to go. :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same applies if the story is based around the evolution of a society, or a world. I found it always helps to think about the starting point, and what is wrong with it. Why does it need to change? If your answer is that it doesn't, then I don't believe you have much of a story. And then think about where it should be at the end. Maybe it doesn't grow - maybe it's a tragedy and the place self-destructs. Point is, you have a start and end which should start giving you ideas as to what happens in between. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that opening a word-processing program (any one will do!) and getting all my ideas out in a messy, stream-of-consciousness fashion normally helps to shape my thoughts. One will lead to another until ideas start forming about what I want to do. Just keep in mind that once you've decided something, it's always subject to change! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other recommendation is index cards. Put down the key events and then start playing with them. It's fun, and leaves you room to fill in additional details. This also helps when you want to see where the gaps in your planning are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this will help you get started!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T05:42:25.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3531" CreationDate="2011-08-04T12:44:32.147" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Skip structure. Don't make a plan!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have that idea rumbling through your mind. You see these pictures, even scenes. Grab a pen and paper (keyboard and word processor) and jot them down. Do it now! Don't read any further. Write! I said Write!, don't you even listen? Stop reading this!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jot down your scene, think about a beginning and an end of your story and write it down (you are still reading, aren't you. Listen, if you keep ignoring my advice and read instead of writing, then you will never become a writer, because (believe or not) &quot;writer&quot; comes from &lt;strong&gt;writing&lt;/strong&gt;, not reading. See the difference? Good. GO, WRITE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have started, you will smile and be happy seeing the story flowing. After some time you will get stuck terribly. Then you should read &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3531/an-engineering-student-wants-to-write-fiction-where-to-start/3532#3532&quot;&gt;Kate's answer&lt;/a&gt; again. Till then &lt;strong&gt;write&lt;/strong&gt;. After that, guess what, &lt;strong&gt;WRITE&lt;/strong&gt;. Oh, and during this whole process &lt;strong&gt;W.R.I.T.E&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T14:05:15.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3519" CreationDate="2011-08-04T13:08:39.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on what you are meaning by being self-published I believe that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Scott-Sigler/e/B001IGOKQA/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scott Sigler&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Mur-Lafferty/e/B002I0MP44/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mur Lafferty&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Nathan-Lowell/e/B003D54RY4/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nathan Lowell&lt;/a&gt; are examples as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2413" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T13:08:39.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3536" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3544" CreationDate="2011-08-04T19:12:58.667" Score="4" ViewCount="3862" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question came up in another forum, so I thought I'd share it here. Should there be only one POV per scene? Is it OK to go with multiple POVs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example is a scene with two characters facing off, in a tense situation. The POV shifts evenly between the two of them, and the reader gets to see that one of the characters is in full control of their emotions and their perception of control during the encounter, while the other is mentally falling apart, but manages to keep their outward appearance strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-08-05T08:34:40.193" LastActivityDate="2021-03-05T19:15:12.777" Title="Multiple POVs in a single scene" Tags="|characters|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3537" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3546" CreationDate="2011-08-04T19:17:03.313" Score="0" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know a lot of people strongly believe in having writing goals. In addition to daily writing goals, some people will have date specific target goals to ensure they finish by a specific time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do writing goals work for you? Why do they work? What are the benefits/disadvantages of having writing goals? Do some work better than others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-08-05T10:57:12.933" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T10:57:12.933" Title="Do writing goals really work--what are the pros and cons?" Tags="|book|goal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3538" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3542" CreationDate="2011-08-04T19:20:43.683" Score="4" ViewCount="5208" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should a writer include author's notes in their book that either express thanks to the reader or provide background information on the book itself? If so, should these be at the front of the book or the back of the book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To expand on this, is there any specific type of information that should be included in an author's notes section of a book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-09-14T23:48:35.980" LastActivityDate="2019-09-14T23:48:35.980" Title="Author's notes: yay or nay?" Tags="|book|appendix|forewords|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3539" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3543" CreationDate="2011-08-04T19:25:53.367" Score="9" ViewCount="2220" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there specific characteristics that one should strive for when trying to develop a strong female character? Is it truly dependent on the genre of the book, or are there certain elements that carry over across all genres? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-03-09T07:15:18.487" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T07:15:18.487" Title="How do you develop a strong female character?" Tags="|characters|gender|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3536" CreationDate="2011-08-04T19:31:39.100" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is fine with me. You can have just one POV, multiple POVs, you can even have multiple first-person POVs if you really want. (That might leave your reader confused, but that could be what you intend.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only rule might be &quot;Be consistent.&quot; If your story is consistently from one person's POV, don't show someone else's unless there's a really compelling reason for it. (Example: The Harry Potter books are all told third-person with Harry as the focus, with the exception of two or three first chapters &amp;mdash; Books 1 and 6, IIRC &amp;mdash; because the reader couldn't get the information otherwise.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story consistently shifts POV from one chapter to the next and you have multiple main characters, that's fine. If you have a chapter with two main characters, you can shift POVs between them as long as there's a reason for doing so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T19:31:39.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3538" CreationDate="2011-08-04T19:33:12.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think thanks should be in front and information should be at the back. Gratitude should be expressed early on, and homework should only be offered if the reader is still interested. Otherwise the frontspiece turns into tl;dr. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T19:33:12.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3538" CreationDate="2011-08-04T20:49:09.843" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is only one question you need to ask when considering whether to include anything in a book: will the reader find some use for it? Is it entertaining and/or interesting? If so, put it in. If it's more a chance for you to show off how much research you did, but the reader will not care one whit, leave it out. Or at least leave it for later -- when the book is as popular as Harry Potter, and fans are clamoring for anything more you might have, at which point they will pay you for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't happen, putting it on your Web site is a good idea for a few reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It allows you to write this material after your manuscript has been accepted and while it is in production, instead of being on the critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can update it when you find mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can use it as a springboard for engaging your readers in conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastEditorUserId="251" LastEditDate="2011-09-26T22:43:11.130" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T22:43:11.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3539" CreationDate="2011-08-04T21:58:38.460" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WARNING:&lt;/strong&gt; This answer contains numerous links to &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org&quot;&gt;TV Tropes&lt;/a&gt;, an irreverent taxonomy of common tropes in film and fiction. TV Tropes is highly addictive, wasting hours of &quot;just checking the definition of one more term.&quot; You have been duly warned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, &quot;strong female character&quot; can cover a lot of territory! But here's what I see as the general considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The idea of &quot;strong female characters&quot; is reactionary in nature.&lt;/strong&gt; It's reacting to the sense that these characters are something unusual to encounter in fiction; a rarity; something noteworthy. Nobody said &quot;hey, there aren't enough blind seers in my fiction!&quot;, but they did say, &quot;hey, how come my fiction doesn't have as many awesome, capable women as it has awesome, capable men?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to understand what's being asked of a strong female character, we need to understand the trope being subverted. &lt;em&gt;(I'm moving to gross generalizations here, and far less common today than they used to be.)&lt;/em&gt; Commonly, female characters serve primarily as romantic interests, as damsels in distress, and/or as &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheChick&quot;&gt;the Token Chick&lt;/a&gt;. These characters are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; strong, in the following sense: they seem to be defined entirely in relation to central male characters. They exist to enable his story; they don't have a story of their own. They are not the star. Commonly, they simply aren't as capable and talented as the male lead - or are &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FauxActionGirl&quot;&gt;Faux Action Girls&lt;/a&gt;, ostensibly as talented as the male, but in practice never doing anything heroic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the farther we manage to move from the supporting, subservient, and diminishing role that female characters are commonly assigned, the closer we are to a &quot;strong female character.&quot; Here are a few varieties:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ActionGirl&quot;&gt;Action Girl&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt; This basically subverts the trope by inverting it - making a female character awesome, strong, a skilled warrior, a deadly shot. You take the stereotypical action hero; swap genders, and &lt;em&gt;bam&lt;/em&gt;, you have produced a strong female character. Well, by some definitions. See enough of these, and they get very simplistic, and not a whole lot deeper or more representative of women in general than the original trope was. OTOH, when done well, it gets around the bad trope's biggest problems: the female character has agency and independence, and is central to the plot rather than supporting other people's stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gender Equality:&lt;/strong&gt; In much the same way, &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; &quot;typically male&quot; character archetype can be fitted to a female. So the trick is not to settle on male character just because they (allegedly...) come to mind first. Rather, populate your fiction with just as diverse a cast of female characters as your cast of male characters. Likewise, portray women in all the situations, careers and positions they can plausibly get to - not only the ones that &quot;best fit a female character.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Uniquely Female:&lt;/strong&gt; Probably the strongest characterization is that which manages to portray strong female characters, but &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; feeling these are mirror images of men. Rather, they are unique characters, individual, believable, whose personality is affected by their gender - as everyone's must be - without falling into stereotypical, belittling notions of how women's lives look.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here's the fundamental element:&lt;/strong&gt; to be a strong female character, your character must be &lt;strong&gt;capable,&lt;/strong&gt; must have some degree of &lt;strong&gt;agency&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. goals of her own and the ability to pursue them some of the time), and basically must &lt;strong&gt;earn the reader's respect in her own right.&lt;/strong&gt; She's &quot;strong&quot; in the sense that &lt;em&gt;she can do stuff&lt;/em&gt;, and no less than that - in the sense that &lt;em&gt;the stuff she wants to do is important&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, she can be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412253/&quot;&gt;sharp-tongued private sleuth&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118276/&quot;&gt;an adorable vampire hunter&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0007149/&quot;&gt;the resident control freak&lt;/a&gt;. Character can vary infinitely; that's practically the point - that females aren't reduced to a few supporting, nurturing, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Refrigerators&quot;&gt;handily-refrigerated&lt;/a&gt; roles. If she's impressive, if she's meant to gain the reader's respect and not just his tension or romantic interest or sense of accomplishment - that's a strong female character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I'm not saying, of course, that there's any expectation that all female characters in a story be &quot;strong,&quot; or even any of them - no more than all the male characters need to be. The issue is more one of total volume - one story makes no difference; when you start noticing trends across hundreds of novels, it's a bigger deal.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-08-06T17:45:14.737" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T17:45:14.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3536" CreationDate="2011-08-04T22:33:52.047" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Lauren that consistency is important, but I also think it's important for an author to consider some possible negative effects of switching POVs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big one, for me as a reader, is that I LIKE being in a POV character's head, and switching too often keeps me from settling in and getting comfortable. I can't care about too many characters at once.  I like to see the scene from one perspective, and REALLY understand it from that POV.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible draw back, one that I've become more aware of since I've started writing, is that switching POVs can detract from tension and mystery.  Character A doesn't know everything.  There are times when it's exciting, as a reader, for me to know something that Character A doesn't know, and this could certainly be achieved by switching POVs.  But there are other times when it's actually better for me to be asking the same question that Character A is asking, and having the same frustration with getting answers.  If the author has set up a pattern of switching POVs, and then doesn't switch at the exact time that I most want him/her to, I'm going to be pretty frustrated.  Not in a good way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think that too-frequent switches can be disorienting, unless the author spends a lot of words clarifying who's POV we're in, and those extra words can break up the flow of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be other problems - anybody?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I wouldn't say that it's wrong to switch POV, under all circumstances.  I just think that it's a technique that should be used judiciously, and consciously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there may be a link to the old 'show, don't tell' rule.  There are obviously times when the author should 'tell', and there are times when the author should decide to establish shifting POVs.  But often, with a little craft and effort, the author can find ways to show what s/he wants known without having to switch over to the other character and telling the readers what the character's thinking.  And spending the time to figure this out often, in my opinion, leads to tighter, more satisfying writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T22:33:52.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3513" CreationDate="2011-08-04T23:09:35.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just for reference, JRR Tolkien wrote straight through.  Took him forever (yea he was also a procrastinator) but he created... so much more than a masterwork.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to each his own really.  Depends on your goals.  I'm not published so take it with a grain of salt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2416" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T23:09:35.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3537" CreationDate="2011-08-04T23:22:17.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Benefits and disadvantages of writing goals--this is becoming a tough fight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;procrastination, ass-kicking and getting things done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in the right corner, and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;dull routine, writing with heart and originality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in the left corner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kicking the muse vs Waiting till she comes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(I am oversimplifying here. Use common sense to fill the gap. If you are unable to do that, go to another answer.)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write every day at least 1 page/100 words/whatever, you get a lot writing done. You get a lot of practice. And you write a lot of shit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing to a goal every day means, that you write when you are happy, bored, sick, have a headache, won the lottery, got divorced, buried your goldfish, shot your stepmother. Not very likely that you write brilliant prose all the time. If you are writing a novel, you will generate an awful lot of chapter rewriting--from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write in the right mood, if you put your heart in every sentence when you write, not thinking &quot;I can change it later&quot; but &quot;it’s the best I can write&quot;, your crap-rate could be reduced dramatically. If your mind is flowing, it is possible to write almost perfect pieces of prose. Doing it while celebrating the death of your stepmother could be a little bit distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the muse waits three months till she get her lazy butt into your writing lair, then you lack routine to listen to her sweet insinuations. The transfer of words from her lisping lips to your shivering hands is deranged--like your mind. You will despair, and while you cry in agony the dragon of failure will devour your soul.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now go and find your own corner. Yes, you'll catch a black-eye or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, wait, has Lauren already mentioned &quot;whatever works for you&quot;? No? Lazy muses ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T23:22:17.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3537" CreationDate="2011-08-05T02:04:58.430" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally need goals. There's a great sense of accomplishment once I've reached them. To me, that's the greatest benefit. The muse used to literally &quot;own&quot; me perhaps a year ago, but now I'm comfortable knowing I can change all of this later and it never will be perfect on the first go. For me, I know where my weaknesses are, and there's no use worrying about it until it needs worrying about (the second draft and beyond). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many writers worry about their output and its quality during the first draft, but in my opinion, what's crucial is extracting that story and getting those ideas out on paper. I've since tied my &quot;muse&quot; to an anvil and hurled her over the Atlantic. Arrivederci and so long...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2325" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T02:04:58.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3549" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3550" CreationDate="2011-08-05T13:31:13.783" Score="3" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm apart of a lot of strong and well read writer communities that mostly discuss traditional means of publishing. However, I want to broaden my knowledge on the nature of self-publishing. Are there any writers' communities that deal specifically with self-publishing? I'm interested in both avenues, and I'm trying to find a balance of information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2325" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-08-05T16:27:37.970" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T16:37:54.530" Title="What's a good writer community that mostly discusses self-publishing?" Tags="|self-publishing|community|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3549" CreationDate="2011-08-05T16:21:58.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kindleboards.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindleboards&lt;/a&gt; community. They are very receptive, highly supportive, and willing to respond to any kind of question, regardless of how it is worded. You may find a lot of cheering going on as well, but then it is more about community and less about just asking questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another suggestion, if you happen to have a Facebook account, is to look up the Indie Writers Unite group. They are also very receptive to all kinds of questions, and they are also quick to offer suggestions and advice based on their own experiences with self-publishing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both places are full of people who can and will help in anyway possible to answer questions, regardless of the platform on which you choose to publish. There are folks there who can help you with everything from formatting, book covers, promotion, and advertising. They will also help you tweet your new releases and use their own social media channels to help promote other members. Also, the IWU group has an ongoing blog tour for members who want to participate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both communities have over 500 active members who are very engaging and very supportive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-08-05T16:37:54.530" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T16:37:54.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3551" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-05T18:33:52.230" Score="2" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;[This fits somewhere between technical writing and user experience, so perhaps this is the wrong board]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm developing a modification to a popular videogame (a Playstation One RPG), with the expressed goal of making in-game interface text easier to understand. There's one particular interface message, however, that I just can't reword elegantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the situation: in the game, players may battle monster creatures. In a battle, any participant may use certain kinds of 'special abilities' by drawing on a resource called 'MP'. Each 'special ability' has a particular MP &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt; associated. Creatures and player characters choose an ability, then, a few seconds later, the game checks their MP resources and decides if it can be used. A character's MP may change between choosing and executing an ability depending on other characters' / monsters' interactions with them (in particular, one party can 'drain' the MP of another, making their turn fail).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should a monster or character fail to raise enough MP, the game displays a message:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;{Creature / character's name}'s skill power is used up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't helpful. In the game, 'skills' refer to a very specific sub-set of the abilities that actually cost MP. 'Used up' suggest that the creature has no MP remaining, when in fact it may have plenty - just not enough to execute one particularly costly ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried several rewrites, but they're all either unclear or horribly clunky. For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;X hasn't enough MP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which seems vague (though perhaps, in context, users will understand it nevertheless)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;X hasn't enough MP to perform its attack&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is prolix,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;X lacks the MP to perform its chosen move&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is precise but ugly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling to think of any better alternatives that don't mislead the player. I'm not seeking beauty, but I do want &lt;em&gt;clarity&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2421" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T21:14:50.263" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T21:14:50.263" Title="Advice on interface text in a videogame" Tags="|technical-writing|clarity|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3551" CreationDate="2011-08-05T19:40:35.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can the game do math? I might suggest &quot;X needs &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; more MP to do that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You must have &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; MP for that move.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Dammit, Scotty, I need more MP!&quot; [yeah, I know, Paraborg's lawyers will come after you]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T19:40:35.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3551" CreationDate="2011-08-05T20:03:45.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your question I assume that the player knows the term &quot;MP&quot;, i.e. it’s not for internal use only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Storm my brain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of MP for this task&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needz more MP!!!1!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;X: insufficient MP to use [name of ability]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More MP, less failure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get more MP, X, and try again&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost for manoeuvre exceeds MP (&quot;maneuver&quot; for AE)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All your MP are belong to us!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;X lacks MP for [name of ability]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;X lacks MP for its chosen move&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don’t move, we have MP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;X, you are out of MP; tough luck, buddy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MP - chosen ability 0:1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;X: MP missing for chosen tactic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;X: MP below ability threshold&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That’s it. Not very stormy tonight, sorry, need some rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T20:03:45.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3551" CreationDate="2011-08-06T12:33:17.500" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From playing way too many RPGs, here are some of the more common messages I've seen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insufficient MP &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insufficient MP for [move]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Additional MP required&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Additional MP required for [move]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your MP is too low to perform [move]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastEditorUserId="2410" LastEditDate="2011-08-06T12:35:51.727" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T12:35:51.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3551" CreationDate="2011-08-06T22:12:34.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[X]'s chosen move requires [n] MP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[X] cannot afford MP cost for chosen move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[X] doesn't have enough MP for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clear, simple. Although frankly, the examples OP gives of his own attempts look fine to me too (besides referring to the PC as an &amp;quot;it&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T22:18:37.030" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2845" CreationDate="2011-08-06T22:19:55.233" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another option is to rely purely on XML, validate against a schema, transform into HTML then apply different CSS sheets for different deliverables (i.e. web, print, mobile and embedded help).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2421" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T22:19:55.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3539" CreationDate="2011-08-07T02:34:40.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A character is a character is a character is a character regardless of genre. A character is a set of behaviors (words and actions) and reactions to those behaviors by the other characters. Even the physical description of the character can give us clues to her personality. How she carries herself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming I'm interpreting what you mean by &quot;strong&quot; in the way I would interpret it, a woman who is confident and assured, but at the same time not in-your-face aggressive, make sure her actions are well-considered. If she has to make a decision, don't make her vacillate. Make her confidence such that other sensible, balanced people don't mind deferring to her judgment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorUserId="1679" LastEditDate="2011-08-08T16:12:11.247" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T16:12:11.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3559" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3568" CreationDate="2011-08-07T14:34:38.160" Score="1" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have or know of a list of magazines (print or online) accepting submissions for short stories? It would be nice if it could be broken out by genre and payment rates (if applicable). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-07T22:18:10.970" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T22:18:10.970" Title="Magazines taking submissions for short stories?" Tags="|fiction|short-story|magazines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3560" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3567" CreationDate="2011-08-07T14:42:21.647" Score="4" ViewCount="2757" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often I read a new book only to find that the characters are flat, boring, and lacking in personality. Sometimes I even find that in my own characters, and when that happens I usually just remove it. Does anyone have suggestions on how you can keep this from happening with your own characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T22:46:58.207" Title="Tips for adding more personality to characters?" Tags="|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3565" CreationDate="2011-08-07T14:51:36.990" Score="13" ViewCount="5891" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions on where to go to get some ideas on different types of monsters that can be created for a fantasy novel? I'm not talking about different variations of zombies or vampires, but rather something more unique and original. I'd like to see some fresh ideas for mosters as antagonists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-05-27T10:20:10.563" LastActivityDate="2019-05-27T10:20:10.563" Title="Source ideas for monsters in a fantasy novel?" Tags="|characters|fantasy|ideas|monsters|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3571" CreationDate="2011-08-07T14:57:35.597" Score="7" ViewCount="848" Body="&lt;p&gt;More specifically, an e-book. I know some markets tend to have season changes which make a certain time of year more beneficial for sales, but I was wondering if anyone had noticed anything similar with books? I know there is always a big increase in sales around Christmas, but are there any other periods where writers might see an increase in sales? Also, knowing that Christmas is the biggest selling period, when would be the best time to release a new book to try to take advantage of the upswing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T15:36:25.660" Title="Best time to release a new novel?" Tags="|money|ebook|marketing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3560" CreationDate="2011-08-07T16:56:25.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two main reasons for boring characters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Missing eccentric behaviour&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Missing conflicts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eccentric behaviour:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character is too good/too bad. He has never stolen something from a friend, never smoked, never drunk too much, never lied to his mother and caused much of trouble. Is he a decorated police officer and best father ever? Then he should have drown puppies when he was twelve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character has no quirks. Does he scratch his crotch in public? No? Why not? Does he have problems when encountering women? Encountering the world? Does he stand still for a minute with his mind wandering away? Does he get easily angry, shout at people, when someone mentions politics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Characters need some imperfection to make them more like the reader. No-one is perfect. To identify with a character, he must be also imperfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflicts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you have concentrated too much on the main conflict of the story. But the character needs to solve minor problems as well, like stress with the partner, or his kid has to repeat a school year. With these extra conflicts you get a more authentic character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also look at these related topics:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2974/what-does-character-development-actually-mean&quot;&gt;What does Character development actually mean?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1850/signs-of-bad-character-development&quot;&gt;Signs of Bad Character Development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T16:56:25.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3561" CreationDate="2011-08-07T17:06:54.743" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look around for the AD&amp;amp;D 2nd Ed. Monstrous Compendium (or whatever the current equivalent is under their new rules), which listed hundreds of possible monsters (I think there were several of these books). Easy enough to get ideas from these, or other RPG books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my own part, I tend to scour around for books on myths and legends from countries around the world, as they're a great source of inspiration when it comes to gods, spirits, demons, and monsters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, look at nature, and make up your own monsters based on the weird and crazy creatures that exist in real life. Believe me, there's enough of them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T17:06:54.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3561" CreationDate="2011-08-07T17:09:35.640" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why just as antagonists? But well ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best monsters out there is a human being. A nice guy. No-one expects (i.e the reader) that he is a monster. A well known pattern with uncountable variations--use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading mythology of all kind (Greek, Northern, Indian) is a good source for monsters (Tolkien has proved that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When your kid next time is afraid of that monster in the closet, don't tell him &quot;No, there is none, I'll show you.&quot; Ask, what is so frightening. How does the monster look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insects. Get a book, look them up. Magnified they are really terrifying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T17:09:35.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3566" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3580" CreationDate="2011-08-07T17:41:37.533" Score="5" ViewCount="739" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are the paragraphs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Someone had called me at half past eleven. The phone rang six times&#xA;  breaking the silence and darkness of the room for about ten or&#xA;  twelve seconds. I didn’t pick up. Just left it ringing on the&#xA;  nightstand. My body didn't even move from its sleeping position. Why didn’t I&#xA;  pick it up? Mai, who was deep asleep facing the wall, didn’t seem to&#xA;  hear it. I tried closing my eyes, but couldn't sleep any more. Those rings&#xA;  were still inside my head. Two or three minutes&#xA;  of lying still passed after I decided to get out of bed, put on my old levi’s&#xA;  t-shirt and jeans. After thinking about it twice, I went out of the room, grabbed a cold Taiwan beer&#xA;  from the refrigerator, and exited the apartment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A dense fog was surrounding Danshui Night Market, making it impossible&#xA;  to see the end of the street. As I walked on the brick floor, I looked&#xA;  at my left, and noticed that no food stand was open. Which was weird,&#xA;  because there was still people around at this time. I walked few&#xA;  meters, and turned my head to the other side. The sea was dark but I&#xA;  could still see little waves in motion. Well, actually, what I was&#xA;  seeing was the reflection of the moonlight on the waves in motion. I&#xA;  kept walking, and after a minute or two, I reached the fishermen’s&#xA;  wharf (which was empty too), and decided to stay there. I walked&#xA;  closer to the end of the wharf, opened my beer, took a long sip, and&#xA;  watched the boats moving smoothly on the shiny waves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I started to think about those six rings. Why I’m here outside  in the&#xA;  night Is it just because of a phone call that I didn’t pick up? I thought.&#xA;  I took another sip of beer, and decided to think about something else.&#xA;  I thought about Mai. As usual, she didn’t even noticed that I had left&#xA;  the room. In fact, she had stopped noticing my presence in the&#xA;  apartment around a year ago. Each time I was sleeping beside her, I&#xA;  felt like there was a stranger lying beside me. She had become a dead&#xA;  body. Or did had I become a dead body for her? Just a mixture of skin&#xA;  and bones lying beside her. I never felt so lonely in my entire&#xA;  existence. It was like a peaceful desperation. Like a silent scream.&#xA;  Like being asphyxiated in a huge empty space. I felt even lonelier&#xA;  than the time I used to sleep alone in my old apartment with only cockroaches and mosquitoes accompanying me. I took a last&#xA;  sip of beer, and wondered where was the living and breathing Mai?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, what I want to know is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to make the narrative 'flow' more smoothly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will these introductory paragraphs attracts the reader?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there too many I's?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm not a native English Speaker, but I really want to write my stuff in English.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T21:15:47.407" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T21:15:47.407" Title="Any suggestions to improve these three introductory paragraphs of a novel I'm writing (e.g. writing style, description and flow)?" Tags="|fiction|novel|flow|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3560" CreationDate="2011-08-07T17:55:30.237" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Characters tend to be boring if they're just normal, or mundane. To generalise, people want to read about characters that are slightly larger than life. I don't mean they should be eccentric, but they're that much more real, more determined, more passionate, cleverer, more diabolical, weaker, stronger than everyday people. They need to be dynamic characters, and by dynamic I mean they must not only suffer but be able to act in the face of their conflicts and dilemmas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using the words flat and boring, it invariably means that you have not created a well-rounded character that is full of the complex and often contradicting emotions, motives and desires that bring characters to life, characters that speak of an existence long before the story you are telling. The only way to achieve that is to answer all the possible questions you can think of asking about them, questions that cover three broad areas: the physiological (physical traits); the sociological (social class, education, childhood, friends, parents i.e. the events and history that shaped the development of the character); and the psychological (the result of the other two areas, things like phobias, weaknesses, guilt, emotions, intelligence and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to accomplish this is simply understanding people. Walk in their shoes. Why do they do or say the things they do? Ask questions of your friends, family, business acquaintances, even strangers. Why does the secretary at your work like sewing? What does she hope to be one day? Why did your friend not go to that particular party when the girl he liked would be there? Also, read newspapers, and delve into the people involve in the stories. Why did this woman steal people's identities? Why did that man kill his wife? Pay attention the mannerisms that people have, the little habits and things they do without even realising. Perhaps always playing with the hair, or flicking it back subconsciously out of the eyes. Or biting the lips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've created character sketches and done background research, the other factor to keep in mind is that you need to avoid clichés and stereotypes. The model who sees a fat girl in the mirror, and has an eating disorder. The crazy scientist. The happy, plump butcher with a red face. This doesn't mean you can't use these characters, but you need to play on these stereotypes and clichés so that you surprise your reader. The crazy scientist who isn't crazy, and merely cultivates this image because he feels he's a fraud, and uses it to hide his inadequacies, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best tip, really, is to just keep asking questions. Interview your character on a piece of paper. What would they say? What would you ask? What would the character's friends say if your were asking them about your character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, too, that you should try focus on the characteristics that will have a bearing in relation to the story. This will bring out the best conflict for your characters, and help create obstacles. A basic example: a woman who is scared of dogs because of an attack in her childhood has a new neighbour that breeds pit-bulls, and she suspects he conducts illegal dog fights in an underground cellar. Or perhaps you make a male teacher so attractive that his classes are always filled with women, and no-one takes his ideas seriously. Choosing traits and characteristics with your story in mind is what will bring out the best (or worst) in your characters, and make them ooze personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T17:55:30.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3559" CreationDate="2011-08-07T18:30:32.630" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://duotrope.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Duotrope's Digest&lt;/a&gt; is just that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T18:30:32.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3561" CreationDate="2011-08-07T19:55:11.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look up &quot;encyclopedia fairies&quot; on Amazon and peruse some of the available books. Pick any being and start varying it. Cross a few. Add an unexpected characteristic. (Within reason. I think even Tolkien would be hard-pressed to pull off something like a half-vampire/half-weredragon who keeps kosher.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T19:55:11.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3560" CreationDate="2011-08-08T01:42:43.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone's mentioned the key points, but there's also a few exercises I like to use for digging deeper into those quirks and flaws of my characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I use for exploring characters is to take them completely out of their element and see what happens from there. For example, take your medieval fantasy character and put them in the middle of a Black Friday sale. What happens next? How do they react? You'd be surprised what you discover about a character when they're placed in a totally different environment, and also, what happens will be completely character-driven instead of world or plot driven. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going 'What if...' is also useful. What if they had a week off and all the money in the world? What if they had to choose between losing an arm or a leg? What if they knew the world was going to end tomorrow? What if they had to kill and skin a cute fluffy creature? What if the sports team they followed lost a key match? It can be as trite or as philosophical as you want (though I admit I enjoy the trite!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My final (and somewhat random) suggestion is to think about their sense of humour. What makes them crack a smile? Laugh uproariously (do they even do that?)? Do they have a public and private sense of humour? Again, you'd be surprised what this can reveal about your character, and it tends to give them more dimension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T01:42:43.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3562" CreationDate="2011-08-08T07:38:38.710" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;eBooks only really &quot;exploded&quot; in sales over the last couple of years, so there likely isn't enough data yet to be able to accurately say what periods of the year would be best for eBooks. eBooks may not follow the same trends as normal books, after all. I'm not sure if people are as likely to buy an eBook as a gift for a friend as they are to actually buy a physical book, for example, which would mean Christmas periods may not be as good a time for eBooks as printed books. Then again, eBook sales may correlate with sales of eBook readers, thus the period just after Christmas could be a big time for eBooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logic would also suggest that those times of year when people go on holiday would be the best time, since they would be stocking up on books to read while away. This will differ from country to country, obviously, but a tentative guess would suggest that's a good time to focus on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also worth mentioning: I recall reading that a printed book must shift in stores within 6 weeks. Unsold books will be returned to the factory within 4 months. This would suggest that getting a printed book into the stores for the Christmas period should happen around November/early December sometime, but I'm sure someone else around here involved in the industry will have better knowledge of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the best advice is that your book should be released when it's ready. Don't rush it. Finish it, be happy with it, publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T07:38:38.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3573" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3578" CreationDate="2011-08-08T09:32:15.793" Score="12" ViewCount="746" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a programmer and an aspiring writer. I love writing. Over the past year, I had been working on my first novel. Making the plot, dimensioning the characters, integrating conflicts etc. And when I started writing the novel, Snap! came a financial crisis; now I can't pay my college fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, a door of hope opened and I was invited to join a team of programmers who are working on a project and will pay me for my contribution. It will be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the real problem is, if I join them, I can be rest assured that my writing career will end prematurely. I don't want that to happen at any cost. But if I go forward with my writing, I won't be able to pay my fees. And this is India. Here, you need to have a degree to find yourself a good publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone suggest a way how I can resolve my dilemma?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-12-20T01:39:19.090" LastActivityDate="2017-12-20T01:39:19.090" Title="How do I balance work with my love of writing?" Tags="|fiction|career|time-management|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3526" CreationDate="2011-08-08T09:45:05.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;And i would suggest Corel Draw. It helps really!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T09:45:05.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3573" CreationDate="2011-08-08T10:02:35.290" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you need to make a living so you can eat, pay the bills, and support yourself. If you like the job, and enjoy programming, take the job. Being able to support yourself from just your writing from word go is a tall order indeed; I don't think there are many writers out there that are able to do that from their first book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, having a job doesn't mean you can't do writing part time. Your assumption that your writing career will end if you take the job is just not true. Many writers hold down other jobs while they write. I myself am a computer programmer, working every day, with a family to support, and a million and one things that take up my time, but I still find some time to write, because I enjoy it. Is it as much as I like? No, but it's enough to keep going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're passionate about writing, you'll find the time to feed your passion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T10:02:35.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3561" CreationDate="2011-08-08T11:31:09.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it will be particularly helpful to you, but there is a book of imaginary beings that you might consult - read more &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Imaginary_Beings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book does not offer much details in its entries and list relatively low number of creatures - however, there are two characteristics that you might find interesting - it will give a really good overview of creatures that you can find in literature and, also, gives references and entry points that you can follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: If you want true originality then recipe is not possible, except very general ones such as: study the cultures (fictional, literally or national) whose legends you do not know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2166" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T11:31:09.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3573" CreationDate="2011-08-08T11:48:54.163" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't look at it as ending your career. Think of it more as gaining more real-world experience to enrich your writing. Maybe you'll go through something that you can apply to your story. I've found that through working in an area that's not writing (in IT as well) I meet people and learn many things that have helped my writing and understanding of my plots and characters greatly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, don't stop writing. I can't stress that enough. Even if you say you don't have time, I reply that everyone needs to take a dump often enough, and surely you can write at the same time. :P &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Though, I hope you won't have to go that far!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And although you may need a degree to be published in India, the world is getting smaller with the internet. Agents are happy to take manuscripts from overseas (last I heard, anyway!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T11:48:54.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3573" CreationDate="2011-08-08T11:50:51.377" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your writing career will only end if you stop writing. Period. So don't stop writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may not have as much time as you want, or as much as you think you need. But don't stop. Write at night, write on the weekend, write over lunch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want it badly enough, don't look for excuses to stop writing. Look for excuses to &lt;em&gt;continue&lt;/em&gt; writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T11:50:51.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3566" CreationDate="2011-08-08T12:10:43.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll answer question two honestly: Sorry, but it didn't make me want to read on. My first reaction is 'So what?'. You haven't given me any reason to care that he didn't pick up the phone or that he doesn't get along with Mai any more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does he not pick up the phone because there's someone or something after him? Hint at that. Does she seem distant to him because of some dark, mysterious history between them? Hint at that too. There's just no hook that that makes me go, 'Oh? What's this? I want to know more!'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, sorry for being so brutal, but that's just how I feel about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the short answer to question one is that you need to work on improving your English first. I understand you're not a native speaker and it's great that you're working on it, but it's very jarring to read. I can't get any sense of the flow when I'm jerked out of that world by bad spelling, grammar and punctuation so often so I can't really provide any feedback there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But please don't be put off by this - writing only improves with practice, and there are flashes that appeal to me, such as how you describe Mai's distance from the narrator as them being dead to each other. Keep going!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T12:10:43.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3566" CreationDate="2011-08-08T13:38:18.783" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some thoughts; let me first tell you that they are all written rather critically - to illustrate &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; criticism. Every and each of the arguments I present can be ignored (as faults) if you have a reason (that I failed to see).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore - in writing I consider that opening paragraph (sometimes even a sentence) and the closing paragraph of the whole work are the most important parts (first paragraph, I believe, is the most important).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where narrator will win the trust and interest of the audience and &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; further reading and interpretation of the reading will depend on success of this task (the trust does not need to be indisputable, but needs to be pragmatically established in some way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;First paragraph&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Flowing more smoothly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main problem I find is that you are not consistent in your flow - you are somewhat switching the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_mode&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;voice&lt;/a&gt; between writing it as stream of consciousness and classic retelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me illustrate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The phone rang six times breaking the silence and darkness of the room for about ten or twelve seconds. I didn’t pick up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually the text flows if sensory descriptions work together with thought descriptions in a natural way; however when you say that ”phone rang six times breaking the silence and darkness of the room for about ten or twelve seconds”, this is obviously a synthesized afterthought. Also, “ten or twelve seconds” is so precise that it implies importance of this fact, but actually it is not important. Even the simple thing like “phone rang six times” denotes that this is not stream of consciousness, but that narrator counted the rings and then retold it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The phone broke the silence and darkness of the room. The phone rang again. And again, and again. I didn’t pick up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might not be what you are after, but refraining from mentioning 10-12 seconds and 6 rings, makes it more coherent to me (does the narrator really have to count how long it rings? the number of rings? does it matter for the story?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Second paragraph&lt;/em&gt;, to make it flow better loose the parentheses - don't branch the flow in such a way unless that is exactly what you are after - parsing parentheses usually requires reader to switch context - from the mainline you are given some facts which are not pertinent to the mainline of the current thought. This is rarely justified in fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you give a bit too much detail which is not strictly coherent - ”As I walked on the brick floor, I looked at my left, and noticed that no food stand was open.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How important is it really that narrator looked at the left, or that he walked on the brick floor? And again this would not be stream of consciousness - when I walk on the brick floor I don't think 'I am walking on the brick floor'; I might notice that it is a brick floor, by noticing something else about it. Ultimately I think you are just trying to describe the scene by throwing in the details. However, try to do it more naturally. Also, the type of floor does not matter much, but looking to left does; as later on narrator says: “I walked few meters, and turned my head to the other side” - this can not be understood (pictured) without remembering that he looked left before. But, none of these facts is important in themselves - the effort to understand the writing should come out of interest for the subject. I personally did not care (did not get intrigued) if the sea is to the right of the narrator's current (and unknown) orientation;  I did care why did he walk a few meters before turning his head, but I that is not explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Third paragraph&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was like a peaceful desperation. Like a silent scream. Like being asphyxiated in a huge empty space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's synthesize that: &lt;em&gt;peaceful silent desperate scream yelled (silently) while being asphyxiated in huge empty space&lt;/em&gt;. It is not easy to go through a single metaphor that employs near antonyms, let alone three of them in succession - it does not really work to make the thought any more precise or better defined. Try to be simple. For example, I personally liked the last the best and keeping only that one might be more powerful than listing many for the reader to choose from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you mention again the ”six rings” and I must say that if you are going to refer to them again or if there is some symbolism in the number of rings, you should ignore my objection to counting them in the first paragraph. Still the question remains, is the number important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another stylistic issue is that universal quantifiers turn narrator less trustworthy - avoid phrases such as 'each time', 'never', 'always' and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As usual, she didn’t even noticed that I had left the room. In fact, she had stopped noticing my presence in the apartment around a year ago. Each time I was sleeping beside her, I felt like there was a stranger lying beside me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, when you say, &quot;as usual&quot; this implies that sometimes it is not as usual, but the opposite. So, according to that, sometimes, she notices. Then comes the sentence that she had stopped noticing him a year ago. Now it is not clear if it is a permanent state between the two or just usual state. Furthermore, do they talk? If yes, is &lt;em&gt;not noticing&lt;/em&gt; the right phrase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally - as I said in the introduction the critique I presented is highly imperfect; I could refute all of the given objections and/or justify them with further development of the text, so you can (and I encourage you to) ignore any of the above objections that you already considered; except, in my opinion, the importance of the first sentence/paragraph. Here, for example, anyone who gives the trust to the text will be thinking about the phone call; the whole opening is colored with it and that does not go away: ”Someone called me at half past eleven” is a good opening - it intrigues: who and why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2166" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-08-08T16:59:02.060" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T16:59:02.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3562" CreationDate="2011-08-08T15:36:25.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why wait? The proper time is always &lt;strong&gt;now.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1736" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T15:36:25.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3573" CreationDate="2011-08-08T16:04:56.783" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like others have said, if writing is truly something you want to do, you can find time to do it. Lunch, breaks, nights (stay up an extra hour). Any time you go to turn on the TV, stop and ask, &quot;why aren't I writing instead?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also a software developer, and I have a wife and three young kids, but I've been able to write nearly 60,000 words on my first novel this summer, mainly by finding time wherever I can. Is it as much as I would like? Of course not. But writing is something I enjoy, so I make the time to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't give up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2189" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T16:04:56.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3561" CreationDate="2011-08-08T16:17:05.483" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could borrow from deep sea creatures, there's some WEIRD critters in the deeps. Or look at tiny organisms and imagine them human-sized.  Or do something with weird plants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T16:17:05.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3536" CreationDate="2011-08-09T09:25:15.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends what kind of POV switching are you doing, which depends largely on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_mode&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;narrative&lt;/a&gt; mode employed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the narrator is in &lt;strong&gt;3&lt;sup&gt;rd&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; person this is rather common; especially if narrator is established as all-knowing, omniscient entity - “where you will know more than one person's point of view”.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the narrator uses &lt;strong&gt;1&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; person's voice this should be done in a clean fashion. There are efficient devices for this purpose, for example switching at the end of chapter or a story retold through a series of letters or by following certain object (for example a camera with different owners).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are also other possible switches, from first to third for example, which can be employed for a specific effect: for example to denote different time epoch, or significantly different perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2166" LastActivityDate="2011-08-09T09:25:15.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3573" CreationDate="2011-08-10T12:25:22.663" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may not like this suggestion, and it may not necessarily work financially, but it's an idea that I'm seriously considering: how about temporarily picking up a manual labor job, like washing dishes or bagging groceries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of thinking of manual labor as being menial work for the uneducated, you could think of it as being thinking time, free from the cognitive assembly line to which you would have otherwise been assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a programmer/translator/editor/long-time degree-wanter too, in the exact same boat as you. The problem with programming is that it's too hard to switch gears mentally. Programming and writing are just way too addicting and mind-consuming to be compatible with other creative work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure some people can code from 9 to 5 and then go home to work on a novel from 5:30 to bedtime, but I'm not one of them. When I'm working on interesting code, I &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; stop; I can neither sleep nor wake up without the problem haunting me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For any creative work, my best ideas come when I'm doing something repetitive and non-cognitive, like walking, practicing scales on violin/piano, scribbling, or doing volunteer work. I'm pretty sure serving fast food or sorting inventory would be just as good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1818" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T12:25:22.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3593" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-10T17:30:48.607" Score="1" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a costume company that has a company blog intended to inspire costuming and general ideas.  We focus on Halloween sales, but we also have Renaissance and Oktoberfest themed costumes that are popular year round.  Currently, our blog has no regular commenters, and I'm hoping to change this by taking advice on the style and content of the blog.  How can I improve the blog to encourage reader participation?  You can view the blog here at &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.mrcostumes.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mr. Costumes blog.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2443" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T21:34:42.457" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:34:42.457" Title="What can I write to improve reader participation at this blog?" Tags="|style|marketing|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3593" CreationDate="2011-08-10T17:49:55.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this isn't Graphic Design SE, my first impulse is to say &quot;Change the COLOR SCHEME!&quot; White text on black is seriously painful to read. Make it black text, larger, on a white or light-colored background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want interactivity, you need to ask questions of your readers and make it worthwhile for them to respond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about running a weekly or monthly costume contest? Encourage readers to submit photos of themselves in costume, and give away, I dunno, gift certificates, a basket of cookies, movie tickets. Offer a bonus if they got the costume at your shop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If people are buying costumes, they're going somewhere and doing something in them (well, most people). Invite folks to advertise their event for free on your blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Invite your readers to submit Top 5 or Top 10 lists and argue about them. Top 5 Victorian Movie Dresses. Top 10 Authentic Cowboy Movies. Top 5 Costuming Mistakes in Star Wars. Top 10 Reasons All the Aliens on Star Trek Have Two Arms and Two Legs (Except the Horta). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Run polls; same idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if you want a dialogue, open one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T17:49:55.860" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3595" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-11T00:22:37.750" Score="10" ViewCount="1513" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a non-fiction book idea that would frequently use quotes/reviews from a specific author.  Would I need to get that author's permission to quote him/her, and to base the entire book on these quotes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2448" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-08-28T16:04:59.313" LastActivityDate="2023-08-28T16:04:59.313" Title="Do you need to get author's permission to quote him in a non-fiction book?" Tags="|copyright|non-fiction|fair-use|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3595" CreationDate="2011-08-11T01:56:05.620" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the quotes are coming from the author's works, you would not have to obtain the author's permission. However, you should attribute the quotes to the author and identify the source. Whether you do this as footnotes or as a disclaimer/notice at the beginning of the book would depend on how many quotes and how many sources you are using. If you are going to take all your quotes form a single book, then a notice at the beginning of the book should be sufficient. However, if you are using multiple books or articles by the same author, then you would want to identify each source by title and page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T01:56:05.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3595" CreationDate="2011-08-11T02:15:15.790" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd ask. If you're not using the quotes to misrepresent the author or show the author in a negative light, I can't see why the person would say no. And I'm not sure where Fair Use ends and Infringement begins in terms of copyright. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, if this person is doing a lot of your heavy lifting, it would be courteous to get the person's permission to be linked with you (or at least to give the person a heads-up).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T02:15:15.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3595" CreationDate="2011-08-11T06:04:43.480" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Proviso: I am not a lawyer.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fair-use-rule-copyright-material-30100.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a good article on Fair Use&lt;/a&gt;; it might answer your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you'd like to use many quotes from the same author; if you are writing a critique of the author's work, or a biography of him, or some similar piece &lt;strong&gt;about the author&lt;/strong&gt; which you are backing up using the quotes - then you're on pretty safe ground. If, on the other hand, you're using the quotes &lt;strong&gt;as content&lt;/strong&gt; - e.g., &quot;Quotes About Literature&quot; or &quot;Shakespeare's Greatest Zingers,&quot; that's a much bigger deal. Something in the middle - making use quotes from the author about the particular topic of your book - is a hazier area; the key consideration is whether reading your book might serve in any way as a substitute for reading the author's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, short quotes are generally not a big problem; you mention &quot;reviews&quot;, which are probably a problem. A review is generally a complete, publishable, stand-alone work; reproducing it in its entirety would infringe upon the author's copyright. If you want to say &quot;As Roger Ebert says of the last Harry Potter film: 'it's apparent again in this film that the three leads are upstaged by the supporting characters'&quot;, or the summary &quot;Roger Ebert gives the new Potter film 3.5 stars&quot;, then you are fine. But you can't reprint the whole review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1317" LastEditDate="2012-02-07T16:02:43.310" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T16:02:43.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2011-08-11T09:36:24.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If in doubt: write. If in fear: write. Whatever you are: write. If I didn't keep telling myself this I wouldn't have written anything and now my book is being published and it still feels like a fluke. I'm sure you're absolutely brilliant, just gotta let yourself go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2449" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-11T12:46:11.637" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T12:46:11.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2011-08-11T14:36:05.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, limit the number of people you solicit for feedback. The best writing in the world will still get criticism. When you ask someone to read your work and critique it, you'll get back a critique. Your reader is reading for the primary reason to hunt up something &quot;wrong&quot; with your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask that reviewers limit their comments to one facet of your writing each time. You can then focus on that one thing and not be overwhelmed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And hang in there. You will become a better writer if you keep writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T14:36:05.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3601" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3602" CreationDate="2011-08-11T22:04:35.853" Score="3" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider following sentence composed in different ways,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And the worst, when memory is full, creation of new node will return a NULL.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And the worst is when memory is full and a new node is created because it will return a NULL.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And the worst, a NULL is (will be?) returned when memory is full and a new node is created.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that creating a new node does not return a node but a NULL when memory is full. This might lead to (a) program failure if not handled correctly. To capture this sense, which one of (the) above I should prefer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2345" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T21:17:42.693" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T21:17:42.693" Title="Which is a better composition?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3601" CreationDate="2011-08-11T23:09:49.020" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of the three options that you offer, I'd say that #1 is the best. However, I'd suggest this as better yet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Worst of all, creation of a new node will return NULL when memory is full.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two things in particular to note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The adjunct clause &lt;em&gt;when memory is full&lt;/em&gt; reads best at the end of the sentence. Trying to put it earlier requires that you set it off with commas, which reads awkwardly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beginning with &lt;em&gt;And the worst&lt;/em&gt; is not exactly incorrect, but it is more idiomatic to say &lt;em&gt;Worst of all&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2011-08-12T01:12:15.810" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T01:12:15.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="865" CreationDate="2011-08-12T04:10:35.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Network, network, network. Go to places like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kindleboards.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;kindleboards&lt;/a&gt; and you will find lots of people with great advice willing to help you out. Even though the site is primarily about helping self-published authors trying to sell e-books, the tips and information is relevant to any author trying to promote a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the things that are available there are threads to help tag your book(s) on Amazon to increase the relevance in certain searches. There are also a number of threads from other authors offering to post interviews on their sites or blogs to help you get more exposure. You will also find lists of book review sites that are currently accepting books, and they are usually listed by genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To tie into the network idea, you will find threads where authors &quot;Like&quot; each other's authors Facebook page. Don't have one? There's a thread to show you how and explains the relevance of having one. There are also threads on how and why to set up a blog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a Twitter account, then create one and join one of the threads to obtain followers. You will be surprised how many people will retweet your information for you. Just as an example, I posted an interview on my blog with an indie writer and then tweeted it. That message got retweeted 14 times by my followers, and 27 times by the other author's followers! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create an account at LibraryThing and do a book giveaway in exchange for reviews. I did this and found good success with it. I spent a lot of time following all of these steps for a series of books I wrote under a pen name, and they are all doing surprisingly well. Once I finish writing my next series of books, I will start doing the same thing with the books I've published under my own name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if only I could find a few more hours in the day to do the REST of the stuff I need/want to get done!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-08-14T14:22:58.203" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T14:22:58.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3604" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-12T11:01:18.203" Score="4" ViewCount="3828" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently teaching the way to write an essay as this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 1, write the topic sentence of the whole essay. Then, in the following first paragraph, develop the ideas that you are going to expound later on. E.g., writing an essay on Macbeth, write the topic sentence &amp;quot;Shakespeare shows us through the story of Macbeth the possibility for ambition to turn to greed, and for power to corrupt us.&amp;quot; Then, write about the ideas going to be expounded &amp;quot;Macbeth's ambition for kingship made him kill the king.&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Even when Macbeth was king, he still murdered, to secure his kingship and establish his power.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 2, Write your first paragraph, and make sure that it's a paragraph on the first idea that you introduced in your introduction paragraph. That is, if you first introduced &amp;quot;Macbeth's ambition for kingship made him kill the king.&amp;quot;, then write your first paragraph on that idea. Then, write your other paragraphs expounding the rest of the ideas, in sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 3, finish with a conclusion that sums up all that you have written in the above paragraphs, and make sure that your conclusion reaffirms the topic sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering what are some other techniques I can give my students? As in, someone once suggested that including the manners, customs and practices of the time around Shakespeare to help explain some of the ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2453" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T21:04:43.700" Title="On writing an essay, what are some good techniques to teach to schoolchildren?" Tags="|technique|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3604" CreationDate="2011-08-12T11:20:36.777" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do not describe the essay like it should be &lt;em&gt;written&lt;/em&gt;, you describe it like it should be &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except for tests in school there is no need to begin &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; with a topic sentence or that the first paragraph contains the first idea. If they know how to describe the second idea and have no clue yet about the first then they shall go on writing about the second. If this essay is written at home and not in school under time pressure they can rearrange the paragraphs afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you teach them what to write in which order they will follow that way, not questioning that it could be easier for them to write about the idea which pops up first in their head. Writing in a strict order is only useful for school tests, not for real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T11:20:36.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3606" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-12T08:58:57.793" Score="5" ViewCount="1977" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a biography of a band, and have a question regarding citing quotes, such as from interviews. Is it necessary to cite everything a person (for example a band member or manager) has said, from the original source of the speech?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I ask is because an already published biography on a similar subject has quotes from people that are originally from interviews that were, for example, originally from the NME or newspaper interviews that I have located on the internet. The book has no acknowledgement (footnotes, bibliography) that these quotes are from other interviews/pieces. Is this because the author will have cleared the rights to use it with the original publisher, or are there different rules when citing speech?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you very much for your time!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2452" OwnerDisplayName="Alistair Maxwell" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-28T15:36:28.117" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T15:36:28.117" Title="Citing speech and interviews in biographies" Tags="|non-fiction|mla|biography|citations|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3606" CreationDate="2011-08-12T10:39:29.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if the rules for citing from speech are any different from those of citing from text, however, if you are to cite something or someone verbatim, you need to put it in quotes, if not also as a separate paragraph.  In cases where the article/object of the quote is tacit, you may place it in square brackets as part of the quote.  This also applies to conjunctive terms.  For example, take the following phrase:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Fred was seen leaving the crime scene.  After hours of searching, he was arrested by police.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If only the second sentence of this phrase is relevant to your discussion, you may quote it as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;After hours of searching, he [Fred] was arrested by police.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you may also omit part of the quote that is not relevant to your discussion, so long as you don't take it out of its context, and so long as you replace it with ellipses.  For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Fred was seen leaving the crime scene...[but] was later arrested by police.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice how I also added a conjunctive term in square brackets in order to join the two sentences from the original quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these rules apply only if you are citing from the original source.  If, however, you are citing from a secondary source, you must paraphrase it as well as acknowledge the source where it came from.  Using the above example, you may write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;According to the Daily Telegraph, Fred was seen leaving the crime, but was later arrested by police.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, if publishing this in a (scientific) paper, for example, you will most likely need to reference the bibliography entry of your source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2454" OwnerDisplayName="Bill" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T10:52:33.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3604" CreationDate="2011-08-12T11:54:09.867" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As John says, you've given us an okay basic structure, but not a lot of ideas about how to TEACH it.  For high school essay writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First thing I teach when I'm teaching essay writing is brainstorming, and then refining the ideas - what ideas do you have, which are interesting to you, which go together, what ideas do you have for supporting them?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then we do a group exchange - share your ideas with classmates, see what they can contribute, and what you can contribute to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once we've got ideas we like, it's time to look at structure, and for the first few essays of the year, I MAKE students do an outline.  Like, I will not mark the finished essay if I haven't already seen an outline for it.  I also sometimes say, okay, I'm only marking the outline, this time, so we're done.  Students who have skipped ahead to the writing stage, without an outline, have done extra work, AND have to go back and write an outline now.  (I do this because organization tends to be the big problem for these kids, and the outline is the best tool I know to deal with it.  Later in the year, when I start relaxing my own demands for outlines, some of the kids try to write essays without them, and I can almost always tell.  Someone will hand in a disorganized mess, I'll say, I'm not quite sure where this went wrong, let me see your outline, and the kid will get a shifty look...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have them outline in a triangular or hierarchical structure - thesis on top, then arguments beneath that, and then for each argument, the evidence that will be used to support it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the time comes to write, they've already got their ideas worked out, so they can focus on clarity and style.  We teach a basic 5-paragraph essay structure to the younger kids, and have them expand on the same structure in the later grades.  So the first paragraph has a Broad General Statement (a hook, or introduction), the Thesis, and a one-sentence summary of the arguments.  Then, as you said, one paragraph per argument, with a topic sentence that introduces the argument, body sentences that introduce and explain the evidence, and a concluding sentence that wraps it all up.  Obviously we expand on that for the more in-depth essays later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then peer editing, INCLUDING a comparison of the essay to the outline in order to make sure the student didn't wander off topic while writing. Then revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of your Shakespeare's milieu question - sure, maybe.  What's the topic of the assigned essay?  Are you asking us how to teach 'the essay' in general, or how to teach Shakespeare?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T11:54:09.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3609" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3618" CreationDate="2011-08-12T12:58:28.623" Score="4" ViewCount="244" Body="&lt;p&gt;My partner is trying to get more freelance web copywriting work and as an avid StackOverflow user I thought I would try to see what the fantastic stackexchange community thinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has to be better ways than trawling through Gumtree ect. only to find ridiculously low-paid posts obviously aimed at the sub-continent. Does a direct approach work, i.e. emailing SEO and web companies asking for work or do these subscription based job sites work? Has anybody succesfuly gotten a good 'gig' from starting out as a SEO copywriter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be interested to hear about anybody's experiences and thoughts and I apologise if this is the wrong forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2455" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-12T19:42:50.043" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T17:40:15.043" Title="Finding freelance work" Tags="|business-writing|websites|freelance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="865" CreationDate="2011-08-12T13:26:40.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems like a no brainer but have you tried contacting genre reviewers and have them review your book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1846" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T13:26:40.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3606" CreationDate="2011-08-12T14:08:54.580" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is called quoting from an indirect source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, yes, if you don't take your quotations from the original source, you need to acknowledge the intermediary.  This is in part to recognize the work that person did, but also to protect yourself in case that person misquoted the original source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know the audience for your work, so I don't know which style you should use, but in MLA, for example, you write &quot;qtd in&quot; and then give the source.  eg. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The star said he &quot;couldn't care less about the little people.&quot; (qtd.&#xA;  in Smith 273).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing something less academic, you could just explain the situation in words.  eg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Smith was the only one in the room after the show, and he&#xA;  reports that the star said he &quot;couldn't care less about the little&#xA;  people.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Responsible writing requires that you make it clear where the information comes from, in the name of integrity and accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T14:08:54.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3612" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3613" CreationDate="2011-08-12T14:52:52.077" Score="20" ViewCount="931" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading on the meta site that someone thinks we're hostile to self-publishing, and I read over some old questions looking for evidence.  I didn't really find signs of hostility, but I certainly did see several people expressing concerns about it.  I think we've danced around the question a bit, but maybe it's time to look at it directly.  What are the pros and cons of different styles of publishing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking we could look at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) the Traditional route - get an agent, sell to the biggest publisher possible;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) the small publisher route - skip the agent, find a publisher directly (maybe I'm wrong in assuming that this is likely to be a small publisher?);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) the self-published route - probably e-books, but maybe POD as well;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) the vanity publishing route;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) creative, new approaches - serialization on the web, co-operative writers' groups... what else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it's a big question, but maybe it would be good to have all the ideas gathered in one place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-21T13:26:47.720" Title="Pros and Cons of different styles of publishing" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3612" CreationDate="2011-08-12T19:16:20.807" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Traditional publishing with an agent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros: You as a writer focus on only one thing: writing. You have an agent who is responsible for shopping around your manuscript. Once it sells, the publisher is responsible for all the overhead: editing, printing, selecting a cover, distribution, marketing, and sales. There is no denying that there is a certain level of recognition that goes along with being traditionally published. It is like having a badge that says &quot;I made it&quot;! This is something that shouldn't be ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons: You must first find an agent, which will require sending out query letters and inquiries. Most agents will only represent established writers, so for a new writer, this in itself can be daunting. If you choose to skip an agent, then you still have to go through the process of shopping your manuscript. Your royalties on sales are very small, as low as 6-10% for a new author, perhaps as high as 20% for a truly established writer. The author has little or no input on the cover selection or layout of the book. The time to market is generally 12-18 months. If you receive an advance, you don't collect any royalties or further payment unless and until your book earns out the advance. Your book will usually remain in a book store for 6-8 weeks before it is returned to the publisher, so you have a very small window of opportunity. Regardless of how much money you actually earn in the end, your agent will collect a percentage based on your contract agreement. That could be anywhere from 10-25%, but is generally closer to 15%. Traditional publishers tend to price their e-books at or near the same price as their paperbacks, which makes it difficult to compete with self-published book pricing. Also, although traditional publishers receive a much higher profit on e-books, that rarely equates to a higher royalty percentage for the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Small publisher&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros: See above (with the exception of the agent shopping your manuscript)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons: See above (minus the agent comments). Also, a small publisher will have less money to spend on promotion or marketing. They will also more than likely have less clout with book retailers, which means that your book will have a smaller distribution and will likely spend less time actually in the stores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Self-publishing (e-books or &quot;Print on Demand&quot; - POD)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros: The writer has full control over the selection of cover art and the layout design. The writer does not have to share any royalties with anyone. The royalty rates for e-books is 70% (based on the Amazon KDP program, with books priced between 2.99 and 9.99). The royalty rates for POD trade paperbacks is dependent on whatever price you choose to set for your book. (The author essentially controls their royalty rate.) The time to market is less than 30 days, regardless of whether you choose e-books (which is closer to one week) or POD. If you find errors in your book or decide to change any part of it, you can do so virtually overnight, whereas this is virtually impossible with a traditional publisher. You have the potential to generate interest in yourself as a writer, and if you are successful in selling at least one of your books, then you have an advantage of other writers if you should decide to go ahead and pursue a traditional publishing deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons: The writer is responsible for all the legwork to get the book ready and to get it to sell. This means you have to either do the editing yourself or hire it out (which could cost a couple hundred dollars, depending on the size of the book). You have to either create your own cover art or hire that out (generally costs about $100). You have to do the layout and design to create the final format for your book, and it usually requires at least three different formats, or you can hire this out (usually for about $50 or less). The writer has to take responsibility for sales and promotion, which means figuring out a way to draw attention to the book and persuading people to buy it. The time involved with having to promote your own work and do the networking to try to draw attention to your work can be very debilitating to your writing. One of the biggest challenges for most new writers is finding the time to write, but if you have to spend the same or more time promoting your work, it becomes even more difficult to get anything new written. There is still a stigma attached to self-publishing that causes people to frown upon authors who opt for this choice. There is the possibility that your work will be perceived by some as inferior or inadequate, and until and unless you can generate the sales to prove otherwise, it may be difficult to rise above that perception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Vanity publishing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros: Similar to a traditional publisher in that they provide the editing (minimally), and they do the design, layout, and printing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons: Could easily cost as much as $3000, depending on the number of books ordered and the size of the book. They do not do any distribution or promotion of your book. The writer has to find a way to get people to buy the book. Most book stores, and also most online retailers, will NOT accept books directly from authors if they go through a vanity press. Royalties tend to be low because you have to price the books higher to recover the sunk costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Creative new approaches&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't really give any pros and cons on these because they are, after all, new! However, I know a number of authors who have done serialization of their novels on their web sites. They basically post a new chapter each week, while also providing readers with a link to purchase the entire book in case they don't want to wait. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also know a couple of successful authors who originally started out by providing their entire novels as a collection of podcasts. Once they reach a certain level of subscribers, they then sent the subscribers a link to purchase the complete novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently working with a group of writers to create a new novel in which each writer takes a separate chapter and builds the book from scratch. It's challenging, but so far the book is turning out better than I had imagined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also know of a group of writers who went together and created a short story collection where each writer provided their own story as well as sample chapters of other books they have written. I believe there were eight authors involved, and three of them have now been signed to traditional publishing deals!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: While I will be the first to admit that I strongly believe that the potential for success for a new writer is much greater through self-publishing, I also believe that the recognition of having been published by a traditional publishing house will garner a writer much more attention. However, I am seeing more and more examples of writers who strongly believe in their work who have managed to land traditional publishing contracts after they have proven that they can sell their own books. It is my opinion that this may be a faster avenue for obtaining the more lucrative advances and esteem that come with a traditional contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-08-14T14:19:26.660" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T14:19:26.660" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3612" CreationDate="2011-08-12T19:18:02.863" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The more work you do yourself, the more money you get to keep. It's a sliding scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full-bore old-school publishers do almost all of the work beyond the writing, and they like to keep most of the money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pro: You get to go onto the next writing project, and you get some money (your advance) up front. Once the edits are done, you are no longer particularly responsible for the thing. Note that this may also get you qualified for membership in some writer's societies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Con: You don't get too many more decisions about this work, and you only get more money if the book REALLY takes off. If you use an agent you have to split the money with the agent (on the plus side, the agent probably got you more money to split!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full-bore self publishing means you do ALL the work yourself (all the layout, manufacturing of books, deployment of e-books, marketing, etc, etc), and you get to keep all of the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pro: You get all the money!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Con: You do ALL the work. And it's a LOT of work. Which prevents you from writing the next book just yet. Especially the marketing parts - that's a hard thing, and if you want to make a big splash (adds in newspapers and magazines) it's awfully expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's relatively few people doing absolutely EVERYTHING themselves, because it's just too much.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty much no one prints their own books (they go to a printer for that). Maintaining your own printing plant is just too darn much overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of folks don't do their own layout (there are people and companies who will lay out your book for reasonable fees). The same companies may be able to do e-book layouts as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few people sell e-books from their own website - Amazon is more than happy to run servers and deliver books to the large variety of devices they support. Apple and B&amp;amp;N have systems for this as well. If you want your e-book to have DRM, you really need one of these guys to have a significant audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are folks who hire free-lance editors to edit their works before publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could hire a marketing firm to try to promote your book, if you've got the cash and you want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishers are evolving to understand the new market realities, and you can count on seeing lots of companies with new approaches as time goes by. Most of these are going to be more middle-of-the-road sort of deals (especially in the e-book only publishing world), where you do some of the work, they do some of the work and the money is a lot more favorable to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="679" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T19:18:02.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3609" CreationDate="2011-08-12T19:42:16.597" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've had a variety of people here looking for places to find writers, and here's what's come up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2832/what-sites-can-i-use-to-crowdsource-my-writing-project/2834#2834&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.crowdspring.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crowdspring&lt;/a&gt; was recommended as a place to &quot;crowdsource&quot; writing.  It's a writing version of 99designs, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/1447/20&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; was from a technical person asking for a copywriter.  Suggested sources included textbroker.com and guru.com.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obviously there are the general freelance sites, which it sounds like your partner is already familiar with, but some are covered in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2529/how-do-i-find-an-affordable-editor/2535#2535&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; on finding editors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T19:42:16.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3531" CreationDate="2011-08-14T13:24:20.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have an idea, start writing it down. For some reason ideas seem to go stale or go away if you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm an engineer, I'm a writer, they are not mutually exclusive. I took a creative writing (sci-fi) class in school, and almost failed. So I didn't think I could write well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After watching a movie, I got ideas, and being bored, started writing, and 54k words later I reached the end. It was a blast! And the story was pretty good to. I'm 74k words into another story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers write, reading is good but reading makes you a reader not a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1422" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T13:24:20.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2011-08-14T13:30:32.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, a harsh review, critique &amp;amp;etc. can be really hard on your confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it seems often to be just a confirmation of our worst fears, the story (we) are no good. &#xA;Something that helped me, a lot, was to write my own version of the worst review ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be harsh, snarky, sarcastic, but it has to be true. Then write a response, if you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes me feel more confident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1422" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T13:30:32.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3609" CreationDate="2011-08-14T16:51:51.613" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been doing freelance for a bit, and I've found that most of the sites where you have to bid for the work, the wages end up so low that it's not worth taking the project.  My biggest suggestion, what's worked best for me, is to create a website.  Once you've created a simple, uncluttered website, you can advertise your services on Craigslist or using Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.  Then clients come to you, instead of the other way around.  If your partner has any writing clips, it might be helpful to either list them on the site or build an online portfolio that potential clients can click on.  Once they're further along, they can ask for blurbs from clients and put them up on a testimonial page.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also!  Query magazines and other publications regularly with story ideas, or send out letters of introduction to SEO companies, custom publications, small businesses, etc.  You can do cold-calling if you want, but I tend not to just because I hate cold-callers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Freelance writing is 80% marketing and 20% writing, in my experience.  You have to keep marketing yourself like crazy, even when you have billable client work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your partner needs some more  insight, they can look for helpful blogs--there are tons--and check out these two sites (neither of which I am affiliated with, but I read them regularly):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makealivingwriting.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.makealivingwriting.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/&lt;/a&gt; (this site posts job opportunities, if she'd prefer to apply for jobs that are already available)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of luck!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2461" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T16:51:51.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3619" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3623" CreationDate="2011-08-15T12:38:49.673" Score="9" ViewCount="4328" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking for some insight in the publishing industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it even remotely plausible to get published in with an English-language publishing house (UK/US), when you're not a national nor a resident of either country? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The industry being so competitive I can see a publisher or agent outright rejecting my query on any of the following grounds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distrust: non-native speakers don't have a reputation of being great writers in English&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hassle: Setting up meetings, contracts etc. is more difficult.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marketing: The author would not be able to do extensive marketing tours (events, signings, what-have-you) - save for relocation. More hassle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Name: If they can't pronounce my name it's hardly recognizable/marketable (unless I go with a nom de plume)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's pretend for a while that I write an amazing, otherwise publishable novel. Do I stand a chance to get it out there? Do you know of any examples of authors who have managed to cross this barrier? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been planning and researching for a novel for about a year now, and I think this is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; story I want to get out into the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past I've written in my native Finnish and the English language. I am equally comfortable in both, but I've never written with the goal of getting published. I've chosen the language based on which has suited the story better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publishing industry in Finland is one of the most vital in the world per capita, and while competitive, first-time authors have a reasonable chance to get published if they're good. But there is no Finnish-ness to my story: The events take place in the US and continental Europe, and the characters speak English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my mind this story needs to also be written in English, but I'm afraid of writing a book that can't get published because of the way the &quot;system&quot; works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2463" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-30T10:30:32.820" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T10:30:32.820" Title="Is it plausible to get a contract with an US/UK publisher as a foreigner?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|novel|legal|contracts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2011-08-15T12:57:09.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might like to take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://pangurpad.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PangurPad&lt;/a&gt;, it is an online writing editor which has a timeline tool built in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2464" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T12:57:09.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2011-08-15T13:04:21.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might like to take a look at PangurPad, it is a web based full-screen editor for creative writing that has all of those features you ask about: keeping track of story timelines, characters  and notes etc. It also keeps all of your writing backed up automatically with a cool auto-save feature. I've been using it for two weeks now and it's fantastic. It is very new though but you can sign up for free to try it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2464" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T13:04:21.890" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-08-15T13:04:21.890" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3622" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-15T14:46:02.103" Score="2" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2336/can-i-shop-an-unfinished-novel&quot;&gt;Can I shop an unfinished novel?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assumed this question had already been answered but I found &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; regarding it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard that before publishing your first novel, you need to have it completed or you won't get any responses. If you don't already have a completed and revised copy (obviously not perfect for release but at least showing some touching up), they won't trust that you can finish the work and won't even look at your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? False?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else should I know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2017" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T15:36:42.633" Title="How much of my (first) novel should be completed before trying to find a publisher?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2011-08-15T22:45:48.827" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2011-08-15T15:03:18.147" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a publisher, so perhaps someone will correct me, but if your book is good, they'll publish it. I can't for the life of me see any good reason why not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the subject of distrust, the content of the book demonstrates your English, not the fact you don't live in the UK or the US. I would seriously doubt that anyone would be put off by the fact that you're a non-native speaker if your book is good, and well-written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these days of internet connectivity and video phone calls, it's far less of a hassle to organise meetings and discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marketing tours and suchlike are not barriers to you being published; not all published books have these sorts of events. If the book is promising enough that they want to do these sorts of events, lucky you! Angry Robot (British-based publishers), for example, published Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, who lives in South Africa, and I believe she's recently flown to various countries to promote the book on the back of its success. She didn't have to relocate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to your name (don't know what it is, so can't comment), going with an alias is an option if you think it would help, but you just need to look at crime fiction to see it littered with names like Håkan Nesser, Jo Nesbø, Arnaldur Indridason etc. and realise that &quot;foreign&quot; names certainly haven't been a barrier for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't discount publishing in your own language first, however. I can think of a number of examples of books written in foreign languages that were then picked up and published in the English language on the back of their success in their native countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, it's very easy to think of many reasons why something may not work. My advice is to write your book, and try get it published. See what happens!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-08-16T07:48:13.517" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T07:48:13.517" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2011-08-15T15:20:09.333" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's true.  It should be completed, polished, and ready to go.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) it's nearly impossible for you, a first-time novelist, to know how much more time you need until you've got the project as good as it can be.  Writing a book to a publishable level is a lot more than just finishing the first draft.  Before you submit your work to an agent or publisher, you should have written the first draft; polished it through as many subsequent drafts as are needed to make it as good as you can make it; found &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; beta readers to go through it and give their feedback (and this takes time, and it's really not right to rush people who are doing you a pretty huge favour); made whatever revisions are necessary based on their feedback; and then, ideally, pulled your attention away from the book for a while so you can come back to it with fresh eyes and give it another thorough reading/revising.  Until you've done all this several times, it's going to be really difficult to be sure how long it will all take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) it sounds cheesy, but you really do have only one chance to make a first impression.  There are &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; agents and publishers who will accept a resubmission if the work has been substantially revised, but for many of them, it's a one-shot opportunity.  You will, I assume, want to start with your 'top' candidates first.  If you send them work that isn't totally polished, you'll be ruining your chance to work with them.  And while many agents and publishers are slow to respond to queries, others are quite speedy (I was just reading about two-minute turn-arounds for some agents asking for partials), and you don't want to ruin the relationship with them by having to confess that you're not quite done with the product you've just tried to sell them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C) There are a lot of flakes out there, trying to get published, and sorting through them is a big job for publishers and agents.  You need to do whatever you can to set yourself apart from these people, and querying an unfinished MS will move you in the wrong direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I absolutely appreciate the impatience you're probably feeling.  One of the hardest things about novel writing is the long, lonely time you have to go through before getting any feedback or reward for your hard work.  But I don't think early submissions are the answer.  Join a writing group, and share your MS with them.  Post a chapter on-line, and look for feedback in the comments.  Read it to your dog, if that helps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T15:20:09.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2011-08-15T15:36:42.633" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No you can't shop an unfinished novel. Almost everyone has good ideas- for movies, books, businesses, but very few have the discipline to stick to their idea and produce something useful. Many get bored and stop half way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In books, very few people even finish the 1st draft. Those who do, never get around to revising it and producing something professional. Of those who do, very few seek feedback to see if their work is even interesting. You can see that if you are trying to sell something that hasn't even been finished yet, the odds are stacked against you. The publishers/agents know this, so why should they waste their time on you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just having a great idea or even a rough draft of a book isn't good enough. To produce something of beauty, something people appreciate and are willing to pay for, requires hard work and discipline. To misquote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rinkworks.com/said/samuelgoldwyn.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Samuel Goldwyn&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;A good book idea isn't worth the paper it is written on&quot; :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="2024" LastEditDate="2011-08-17T12:13:54.827" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T12:13:54.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3626" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-15T18:29:40.313" Score="2" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to find someone who would proof-read a Press Kit of an Mac OS X app in exchange for a license. Do you know any website / service where I could find some English native speaker, ideally technical writer, who would be interested in an offer like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2465" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-16T14:23:59.440" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T13:05:42.750" Title="Press Kit proof-read in exchange for an app license?" Tags="|beta-readers|freelance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2011-08-15T19:04:38.010" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is available for Mac or Windows, but not all timeline software is cross-platform. Which platform are you using?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the Mac, try StoryMill, which has a dedicated timeline function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the PC, there's Timeline Maker, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timelinear.com/&quot;&gt;TimeLinear&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timelinestudio.co.uk/index.php/Products-Services/create-timeline-advanced.html&quot;&gt;Timeline Studio&lt;/a&gt;... lots of choices, really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2466" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T19:04:38.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3628" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3629" CreationDate="2011-08-16T15:10:02.647" Score="11" ViewCount="3261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished the 1st draft of my book, and have put it in the freezer(as I asked about in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/2970/2024&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question). I was planning to start work on a sequel of the book in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I was told by someone that I should not work on a sequel till I have sold my first book, since if I can't sell the first book, I will never be able to sell the sequel either, and all my effort will be wasted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this good advice? As it means all the effort I put in creating the characters, themes, Universe(it was a Sci-Fi/Fantasy book) will be wasted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T02:12:31.480" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T02:12:31.480" Title="Should I start work on a sequel before I have sold my book?" Tags="|novel|planning|sequel|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3628" CreationDate="2011-08-16T15:43:04.430" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I say heed the Muse. If there's a story burning to be told, go ahead and write it. No effort is wasted. Even if your novel and its sequel are never published, you will have the experience of creating a universe and writing a sequel to an existing story, and you can always use that experience when crafting another story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, who knows how long it will take to sell your first book? And if the publisher wants a two-book deal, or the first one (a different story) gets bought, now you have two additional completed novels under your &quot;brand&quot; to offer the agent/publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T15:43:04.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3628" CreationDate="2011-08-16T16:25:04.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you go ahead and write it. If you have the story line already developed or have an outline, then go ahead and start working on it. As Lauren mentioned, if the publisher decides they want a two-book deal, then you have a head start on that. In fact, you could also suggest that the book lends itself to a sequel, which is already underway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the traditional publishing route doesn't pan out, you can always self-publish as an e-book. One of the trends that people are noticing with e-books is that if readers like the first book, they are more likely to go looking for more books by the same author. If you have another ready to go, you can start developing a following even faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T16:25:04.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3628" CreationDate="2011-08-16T18:52:06.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a different angle on it.&#xA;If you revise your first draft, you will have less revision needed as you write your second book. Consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You write your second book. You go back and revise your first, and discover major changes that will vastly improve the first, but will require huge changes in the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems like you should take another round on the first one. If you want to write a second book to give yourself a breather, maybe make it something completely different, not a sequel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T18:52:06.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3628" CreationDate="2011-08-16T19:07:25.753" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Heard Dr. Jerry Pournelle talk once about how Robert Heinlein taught him and Larry Niven to write. One of the things he told them to to do was to throw away the first quarter of their manuscript and start the book where actual stuff started happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is to say, if you can't sell the first book, that doesn't necessarily mean you can't sell the second.  Maybe the first book was the part you had to throw away! Or at least, perhaps the salient bits can be condensed into the first chapter or a prologue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest issue in my mind is what happens if a publisher accepts the first book, but demands changes that basically make the sequel obsolete, such that you would have to start over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T19:07:25.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3536" CreationDate="2011-08-16T19:34:32.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;3rd Person Omniscient is the usual course for multiple POVs in a single scene, and therefore those types of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sun hated everyone it saw. Sandy hated the sun right back, longing for a long bath and a good shiraz. Jacob watched a dust cloud in the distance while he wondered who won the pennant. Freckles was a cat, so she just sat there under the porch. Her thoughts were uninteresting, unless you enjoyed a critical assessment of pretending to sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1st person POV extremely difficult within a scene because everyone refers to themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;God, I wish I had some wine and a working bathtub. Hell a shower would be nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I bet Cincinnati won this year. They looked good last year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's so much better if you close your eyes while in the shade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing 1st person POV each chapter has been done quite well, even as well-defined sections within chapters. There's a Susan Grafton novel which tells the main story in 1st person and the sociopathic killer chapters are in 3rd person, giving a distance, emotionless feel to that character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2470" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T19:34:32.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="529" CreationDate="2011-08-16T23:28:56.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;David Weber's &lt;em&gt;The War God's Own&lt;/em&gt; has some lengthy travel scenes in it which he does quite well. I suspect this as an older book predates his Heinlenesque tendency to include huge &lt;em&gt;info-dumps&lt;/em&gt;. You can get it free from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webscription.net/p-451-war-gods-own.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Baen's Free Library&lt;/a&gt;. One of the things I like is he shows character growth and learning about each other through relatively minor interactions within the party. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="581" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T23:28:56.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1974" CreationDate="2011-08-17T01:24:49.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try using a simple spreadsheet. Use the rows to represent characters or events and the columns to represent time frames or locations. You can put each of the elements into place to get a visual representation of your story flow. This will not only help you to develop a consistent timeline, but also to make sure that you don't have any characters showing up in two locations at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T01:24:49.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3636" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3638" CreationDate="2011-08-17T04:17:57.367" Score="4" ViewCount="646" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a 3700-word essay, consisting of two case studies and some explanatory material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll be referencing a number of documents as sources for the case studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will be a full list of references at the end of the essay, done in APA style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering, how often is it necessary to cite sources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I be putting in an inline citation every time I say something, which is based on information/data from one of the sources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it sufficient to cite only when quoting or paraphrasing, or repeating facts/figures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the normal practice for an essay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2473" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T17:28:00.837" Title="How often to cite sources?" Tags="|citations|essay|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3637" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3653" CreationDate="2011-08-17T06:34:58.433" Score="14" ViewCount="696" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, a few snippets of my fiction have received critiques along the lines of 'Does not give a sense of space'. Or 'needs more description, sights and sounds'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think where I am going wrong is that in any given scene I am focusing too hard on the characters, the dialogue or the progression of events and not creating a world which the reader can feel around him/her. So would you guys have any tips on how I can get better at creating space? Any good reading material on it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T20:35:35.107" Title="How to create space" Tags="|style|fiction|description|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3636" CreationDate="2011-08-17T11:13:53.800" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anytime you mention something that isn't general knowledge, you need to explain how you know it.  So if you're using facts or ideas from a source, you need to cite the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not quite clear on the distinction between &quot;repeated facts/figures&quot; and &quot;based on information/date from one of the sources&quot;.  If by &quot;based on&quot; you mean you've drawn your own conclusions. then you wouldn't need to put a citation for the conclusion you draw - that's YOUR work.  But if it's somebody else's work, you need to cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it in terms of the reasons we cite sources.  The first is academic honesty/respect for the work of others.  If you don't cite something, the assumption is that you came up with it, and it's dishonest to let people assume this when it's not true.  But the second reason for citations is to show that you're not making crap up!  If I read a fact in an essay that I know the essay writer can't know personally, and there's no citation, I have to wonder if the writer didn't just pull the idea out of the air.  And, a lesser-used but still important reason for citations - there are times when things don't sound right, or they sound right and incredibly interesting, and I want to go read the original source material myself.  So I need to know where the info came from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-08-19T07:55:18.923" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T07:55:18.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3637" CreationDate="2011-08-17T11:56:29.910" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a scene already, right? John walks into the room, says something to Mary, Mary responds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, close your eyes and put yourself into the room. Engage all your senses &amp;mdash; one at a time, if this is unfamiliar work for you. Start asking yourself these kinds of questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does the room look like? How big is it? How does it connect to the other rooms in the house?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of furniture is in the room? Where is it? How new or old is it? What's the&#xA;decorating scheme? Which of the characters decorated it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there magazines or books on the coffee table? Whose? What are they? Are they read or for show?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the room tidy, messy, clean, dirty? Are there toys strewn&#xA;everywhere or plastic on the couches?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the floor wood, tile, linoleum, or a rug? Is it worn or new? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's on the walls? Paintings, photos, art? What color are the&#xA;walls? Paint or wallpaper? Is it peeling?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it day or night? Where are the windows? How does the light fall in&#xA;the room?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of lamps or lighting is in the room? Where do shadows fall?&#xA;What kind of lightbulbs? What color light do they throw? Do they hum?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the window open? What can you hear from outside? Traffic?&#xA;Neighbors? Kids? Dogs? Birds? Insects? Sirens? Music? A parade? Explosions? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the TV or radio on? iTunes from someone's computer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What season is it? Is the heater or A/C going? What's the weather&#xA;like outside?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are John and Mary wearing? Did he just come from the office? Was&#xA;she working in the garage? Was he cooking? Did she just get out of&#xA;the shower? Is this what they normally wear? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the kitchen smell of cookies or dinner or bleach? Are there fresh flowers&#xA;in the house? Is she wearing too much perfume? Does he smell of engine oil?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You won't use all the information (&lt;em&gt;edit to clarify:&lt;/em&gt; all in this scene), but it will help you to get a sense of the physical place of your characters. Add in whatever is useful. Save the rest as notes if you return to the room and you need other information to add, or if you want to change something to demonstrate the passage of time or a character development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-08-17T20:35:35.107" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T20:35:35.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3637" CreationDate="2011-08-17T12:31:33.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, adding more description might be all you need, I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding &quot;space&quot; may mean more than just adding description. Could be that you need breathing room. Maybe the dialog needs to meander to tell us more about your characters. Maybe you need more characters. Maybe you need a dog, or a plant, or an event for them to pay attention to and discuss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes pauses, quiet, significant stillness may help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Empty &quot;space&quot; can be just as powerful as adding in blah blah details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I really dislike the word &quot;space&quot; because it tells me almost nothing. I hate it when it's used on HGTV to refer to what I like to call a room.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T12:31:33.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3641" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3642" CreationDate="2011-08-17T10:49:59.103" Score="3" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;In relation to my question on &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/38232/usage-of-z-in-the-word-serialized-in-english&quot;&gt;Usage of 'z' in the word serialized in English?&lt;/a&gt;, it seems I was mistaken in assuming there is a generally accepted correct variant of English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/8964/which-variant-of-english-should-i-use-when-my-target-audience-is-the-world&quot;&gt;Which variant of English should I use when my target audience is the world?&lt;/a&gt; addresses the issue of what to be aware of when writing for a global audience, and the answers focuses mostly on which kind of words and expressions to use (and not use).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in which grammar to follow when writing for a global audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically which rulebook on grammar and which dictionary should I follow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2476" OwnerDisplayName="bjarkef" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T20:01:05.977" Title="Which English grammar should be followed when writing for a global audience?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3641" CreationDate="2011-08-17T11:10:39.793" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since there is no global English, most people addressing a global audience adopt one of two conventions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Either&lt;/strong&gt; just write it using the spellings &amp;amp; grammar that you are most familiar and comfortable with. As pointed out, most people using other dialects of English will understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Or&lt;/strong&gt; produce two versions, one in Commonwealth (British) English, and one in American English. This is the approach usually taken if what you're writing is going to be translated into a series of other languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third option, which also serves as a good thing to aim for if adopting the first approach, is to avoid any (or as many as possible) words or phrases that are treated differently by the different versions of English - but this is usually very hard to achieve and can result in using some forms of wording that don't sit particularly well in &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; variant of the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Waggers" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T11:10:39.793" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3641" CreationDate="2011-08-17T11:11:13.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Native speakers of English tend on the whole to write in the &quot;written standard&quot; of their native variety of English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speakers of different varieties, or at least those who are &quot;well read&quot;, are generally used to reading material in other varieties, and the difference between the written &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would suggest just picking the variety you're most familiar with and aiming towards the written standard of native speakers in that variety. If you need it, try and find a comprehensive reference grammar that deals with your chosen variety. (If you're already proficient in English, I would also suggest just getting a well-educated native speaker to proofread the first draft of your writing, and using tools such as Google searches, Google N-grams: a &quot;grammar book&quot; often isn't these days the most efficient means of resolving uncertainties.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are still some issues that are just preferences. For example, in UK English, whether you use &quot;-ise&quot; or &quot;-ize&quot; is essentially an editorial preference: both are perfectly acceptable and readers are used to seeing both, and you or your publisher just needs to decide one way or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Neil Coffey" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T11:16:13.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3644" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-17T14:31:25.740" Score="13" ViewCount="11797" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I asked this on English.SE, the question was closed; it was suggested that I ask on Writers.SE instead. To be clear, I mean the section sign § (utf-8: &lt;code&gt;0xC2 0xA7&lt;/code&gt;), which is available via &lt;code&gt;\S&lt;/code&gt; in LaTeX, &lt;code&gt;&amp;amp;sect;&lt;/code&gt; in HTML, and &lt;code&gt;Compose+s+o&lt;/code&gt; in the X Window System.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the main text of a scientific article, I write out the word &quot;section&quot;, e.g., &quot;In Section 3, I review the details of&quot;. For references, I like to specify a section to make the reference more specific and use the section sign, e.g., &quot;as in Smith &amp;amp; Bloggs (1994, §8.2.5)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this usage wrong or otherwise discouraged? I prefer using the symbol for brevity; a reference like &quot;Smith &amp;amp; Bloggs (1994, Section 30.1.5)&quot; seems awkward to me. However, one of my co-authors, who is usually right about grammar and style, disagrees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If using the symbol in this way is wrong, then when should one use the section sign, if ever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could probably sidestep the issue by referring instead to pages. Is this preferred under standard citation practices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2477" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2015-02-01T18:52:43.633" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T18:52:43.633" Title="When should one use a section sign (§)?" Tags="|formatting|academic-writing|citations|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2011-08-17T14:42:38.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anyone can &quot;shop&quot; a story/novel/script at any time. The challenge is to be successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have a track record or a recommendation from a close friend your chances of getting in to see an agent much less an editor are probably close to surviving an asteroid hit ten feet in front of your car. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jerzy Kosinski (award winning Polish American author) tried to get a novel published (it already was) by sending it out as if it was a NEW work. He received MANY rejection letters. That was years ago when it was easier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today the slush pile is bigger, the publishers trying to make money against technology, and a fickle audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt that you will succeed at anything except becoming frustrated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T14:42:38.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3641" CreationDate="2011-08-17T14:43:21.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends what you're writing.  If you're writing fiction, you need to make choices based on the setting of your story, the identity you've established for your narrator, etc.  Your characters will obviously speak with the idioms of their culture, and your narrative voice will probably be rooted in a specific tradition as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing non-fiction, I'd look at the dominant dialects used in your target market.  I'm hard-pressed to think of any piece of writing that is aimed at the entire world.  So analyze your target market.  What are they used to reading?  What will they best understand?  How are the popular/dominant works in that field currently written?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sense that you want something more concrete, though.  The North American market is huge, and due to the American media presence, it's familiar to most literate people of the world.  You could use CMOS (The Chicago Manual of Style) if you want something firm and straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T14:43:21.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1974" CreationDate="2011-08-17T14:47:54.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used various methods. Right now I'm using the &quot;Windows&quot; based POST-IT notes and have created a &quot;story board&quot; using their memoboard. I also copy the data to a flash drive to use on others PCs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T14:47:54.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1781" CreationDate="2011-08-17T14:50:13.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &quot;Twenty Master Plots&quot; by Ronald Tobias. It is a good book to examine plots and how they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T14:50:13.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3649" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-17T15:05:19.937" Score="1" ViewCount="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a book on Cash N Carry and how to establish the business.  Having authored a book on Retail Store Operations, the second venture is this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this book I am looking for the role of US in World War II.  Can anyone give me the role played by US towards the beligerent Nations as well its allies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cordially yours,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sriram B Iyer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2479" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T15:05:19.937" Title="Writing a book on establishing Cash N Carry business?" Tags="|book|business-writing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2011-08-17T16:37:53.193" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3641" CreationDate="2011-08-17T16:52:59.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seconding Kate's suggestion of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226104206&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chicago Manual of Style,&lt;/a&gt; and I'd also add Strunk &amp;amp; White's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1557427283&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elements of Style&lt;/a&gt; as another indispensable reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T16:52:59.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3644" CreationDate="2011-08-17T16:54:03.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your distinction is perfect. That's exactly how I'd do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T16:54:03.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3644" CreationDate="2011-08-17T17:10:50.853" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see the §-sign mainly used in legal texts, maybe your co-author has the same problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use the section sign, I would put a space (a small non-breaking) between the sign and the numbers (§ 8.5.2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using page numbers instead is a nice thing to do, especially if you refer to a single page in a bigger section. If you want to refer to the whole section, I prefer &lt;em&gt;section 3.5.6&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;§ 3.5.6&lt;/em&gt; instead of &lt;em&gt;p. 254-271&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be interested in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rbs0.com/lawcite.htm#anchor333333&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Legal Research and Citation Style in USA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T17:10:50.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3637" CreationDate="2011-08-17T17:33:41.847" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common mistake when people first try to work on setting or &quot;space&quot; is simply to add &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; description. This is usually the wrong thing to do, since lots of unfocused description is just clutter. What you need to do add descriptive notes that &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; contribute to other elements of the story. Having a small number of details that contribute to the overall weight of the story is much more effective than adding a large number of disconnected details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take Lauren Ipsum's example above, let's work with John entering a room and saying something to Mary. We can bring in description to add to any of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character&lt;/strong&gt;: What kind of person is John, and what does he notice? &lt;em&gt;There was new wood flooring in her apartment, straight out of last year's home show. Cheap Picasso reproductions on the walls. Paperback copies of trendy, pretentious novels were stacked on the Ikea end-table. She'd probably never even read them. Ah, but at least she had a nice leather couch, tucked there beneath her half-exposed thighs, just waiting for the two of them to screw on.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plot&lt;/strong&gt;: What's the situation, and how does the setting affect it? &lt;em&gt;The metal door bangs shut behind him, and he immediately notices there's no other way out. Mary's sitting behind a card table, and in the shadows behind her a strange man leans against a filing cabinet and smokes a cigarette. The air stinks of gunpowder and garlic.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Theme&lt;/strong&gt;: What is the atmosphere and tone of the story, and how does the environment reflect it? &lt;em&gt;Sunlight creaks in through the ancient blinds, lighting up a dusty, cluttered coffee table. Unwashed dishes are piled up in the sink. Water dripping from the faucet makes a pinging sound in an old bowl, counting down the seconds until their inevitable breakup.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, your situations are different from these. But in any scene, you create atmosphere and setting not by describing &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;, but by picking out those few details that will build up the rest of what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T17:33:41.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2011-08-18T10:51:39.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiosis.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Xiosis Scribe&lt;/a&gt;. Its got all the features I need in one app. Mind mapping, research, lots of time saving features in the editor and content separation from layout. It can also be configured to work like Dark room and can manage your document better than Scrivener. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I dumped word for it, and have never looked back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T10:51:39.757" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-08-18T10:51:39.757" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3526" CreationDate="2011-08-18T10:55:23.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try X&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiosis.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iosis Scribe&lt;/a&gt;. It has a free form layout which allows you to drag and re size paragraphs as you like. In addition to all the usual formatting features, it also keeps content separate from layout so your formatting won't affect the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T10:55:23.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3641" CreationDate="2011-08-18T12:25:28.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most often, you write according to your background. If you are American, you write using American English and if you are British, you use Brit. This is usually applicable for novels and other long material. This was the method used by old writers like Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. If you book is really popular your publisher may make conversions to make it more readable in a particular area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing for a magazine or similar source which would be marketed in a particular area say the US, then it would make sense to target the English spoken in the target area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T12:25:28.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1781" CreationDate="2011-08-18T17:46:58.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Capt Nemo. Try putting your ideas down on a paper. If you have a mind mapping tool it would be great as you can visualize the ideas and see the relations directly. Categorize the plot elements and the events that drive the plot forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A decent word processor with research and mind mapping features is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiosis.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Xiosis Scribe&lt;/a&gt;. Give it a whirl. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T17:46:58.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3667" CreationDate="2011-08-18T19:48:49.673" Score="1" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other than getting adjunct work with your shiny new MFA, what other professions like them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm gainfully employed, and while I think my MFA helps me, it is in not appreciated by my employer in any direct way. My question is the result of sitting next to the father of an MFA graduate at his graduation ceremony and hearing him complain about the uselessness of the degree. I disagree, but wanted to gather more factual info.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-21T22:19:37.633" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T04:04:36.447" Title="What are jobs that prefer or require MFAs in Creative Writing?" Tags="|career|degree|mfa|jobs|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3659" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-18T20:22:55.387" Score="2" ViewCount="483" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering what is the most acceptable way of including a large diagram in my thesis.&#xA;The diagram takes up a full page and splits a paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this bad? &#xA;Should I put the image/diagram in an appendix? &#xA;If so, how should I point the reader to that appendix? Do I just give them the appendix number?&#xA;Or is it fine leaving it in the middle of a paragraph over two pages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2488" LastEditorUserId="14946" LastEditDate="2019-06-25T18:06:13.803" LastActivityDate="2019-06-25T18:06:13.803" Title="Where to put a large diagram in a thesis?" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|graphics|appendix|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3659" CreationDate="2011-08-18T21:28:31.007" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the diagram needs to be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) full page&lt;br&gt;&#xA; b) visible to the reader to understand the paragraph&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then I would &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; put it in the appendix. Leave it where it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important question for me would be: Why does the diagram has to split the paragraph? Can't you show the whole paragraph and the diagram before or after this paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not split the diagram over two pages, just to make that sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T21:28:31.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3658" CreationDate="2011-08-19T01:53:25.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I've been able to ascertain through the years the &quot;educational&quot; institutions are about the only place that the MFA carries any weight. In a way I'm glad I didn't go for one decades ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T01:53:25.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3636" CreationDate="2011-08-19T01:56:25.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you hope to publish it- then you should research what &quot;style&quot; is required by the publication. APA style is just the tip of the iceberg. Ask publications for guidelines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T01:56:25.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3593" CreationDate="2011-08-19T02:10:16.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I doubt that I would ever seek out a blog related to a &quot;Costume Company.&quot; I suspect there might be a few others like me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, what is THEIR take-away? If you are not GIVING them something that makes them REALLY want to read it then I doubt if they'll be waiting for your next post. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you are giving away something like a discount on a regular basis THAT is the only reason they'll return- not for the &quot;warm and fuzzy&quot; content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blogs are often about information and entertainment. BTW, I've had kids and have friends with grand-kids- pictures of kids in costumes are fun for the parents but not strangers (same can be said for the adults too.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are you trying to do with your blog? New customers? If so how are they going to find you? Keep old customers? Sorry, I'd be more interested in good clean costumes than reading about others in the same costumes who proceeded me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah I'm an old curmudgeon but I suspect what you really want to do is sales and marketing and I don't think that can be accomplished by users &quot;participation&quot; in a blog. Also be wary of legal issues when you start posting photos and personal info of customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T02:10:16.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3509" CreationDate="2011-08-19T02:12:40.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who are the participants? If you are giving it to a professional group- take a look at papers published by professionals in this group. THAT is what they will expect and appreciate. &quot;We&quot; hold others to the same &quot;standards&quot; we follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T02:12:40.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3658" CreationDate="2011-08-19T08:07:12.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applied to an MFA program as a side-option last year, and I am about 90% per cent certain that I read this somewhere on the department's site/admissions portal. (The 10% uncertainty comes from not being able to recall &lt;em&gt;where exactly&lt;/em&gt;, maybe on a FAQ somewhere). Paraphrased: Our students usually are able to find part time work as editors for newspapers/magazines, and copywriters for publishing houses...while they take the evening classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I am only telling this because they seemed to suggest that being part of an MFA made it easier to get yourself into this line of work. Not the sort of jobs you were hoping to hear, I am sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T08:07:12.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3658" CreationDate="2011-08-19T19:44:25.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;An MFA would come in handy when working in the publishing world. A lot of editors for publishing houses have MFAs and even owners of publishing houses occasionally have them. I know at least one of the editors at the primary house I work for has one and I'll be pursuing an MFA myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only does the experience often help editors, it gives the publishing house a good image. Having five editors with MFAs looks better than having 5 editors with HS diplomas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="361" LastEditorUserId="361" LastEditDate="2011-08-22T04:04:36.447" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T04:04:36.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3659" CreationDate="2011-08-20T08:27:38.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that the same would apply to figures but, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books/about/Assignment_and_thesis_writing.html?id=5Bq6AAAACAAJ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thesis and Assignment Writing&lt;/a&gt; by Jonathan Anderson and Millicent Poole, a decision must be made whether to include tables in the body of the text or in an appendix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They recommend that, if the material (a.k.a. figure) being presented is essential for the understanding of the argument, or essential for the conclusions that follow, it should be put in main body of the text, and preferably after its first reference.  If it consists of supporting material, it can be placed in an appendix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aim should always be to present a smooth flowing argument or thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2454" LastEditorUserId="2454" LastEditDate="2011-08-21T00:55:52.983" LastActivityDate="2011-08-21T00:55:52.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3669" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-20T15:37:51.493" Score="1" ViewCount="10111" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I don't know if this question is appropriate here. I'm going to take a chance.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a paper according to the APA (American Psychology Association) standard and you need more than five levels of headings, what is the appropriate way to solve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the APA manual (Sixth Edition, page 63), there are five levels of headings that you can use. However, there is nothing mentioned about what to do if you need more than this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2475" LastEditorUserId="2475" LastEditDate="2011-08-20T16:41:29.580" LastActivityDate="2016-04-09T17:04:38.320" Title="What should you do if you need more than five heading when writing an APA paper?" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3670" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3672" CreationDate="2011-08-20T16:26:14.100" Score="56" ViewCount="34763" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a manuscript for a novel.  It's my first attempt, and often I find myself wanting to write &quot;suddenly&quot; or &quot;all of a sudden&quot;.  I do this when I want the scene to change in an instant, or the reader to be surprised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good way to make this happen, while avoiding the &quot;suddenly&quot;/&quot;all of a sudden&quot; clichés?  Are there words or phrases that can replace them?  Am I simply building a scene wrong?  If so, what is an effective technique for creating surprise without running into this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2493" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2011-08-21T13:18:40.217" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T19:41:16.883" Title="&quot;All of a sudden...&quot; ?" Tags="|style|fiction|cliches|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3669" CreationDate="2011-08-20T16:56:20.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am really having a hard time imagining a paper that would need more than five levels, so my first suggestion would be to give a hard look at the structure of your paper to make sure you're presenting the information as clearly as possible.  If you've done this and decided that you do need more levels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/16/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The OWL&lt;/a&gt; suggests that APA also allows numbered seriation, bullet points, and letters within paragraphs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't work for you, from my own head, I wonder if you could add categories to the other end of the spectrum via chapters, or parts.  I know that's not typical for APA papers, but I don't think it's typical to need more than five levels, either!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively - if you're writing this for school, ask your teacher/prof.  If you're writing it for publication, contact the publisher and see what they'd prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-20T16:56:20.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3670" CreationDate="2011-08-20T17:06:43.890" Score="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is one of those areas where the 'show don't tell' rule really shines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bart sat back in his chair and let himself relax.  All of a sudden,&#xA;  there was a huge explosion down the street.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bart sat back in his chair and let himself relax.  He was almost&#xA;  asleep when something made him open his eyes.  There was just enough&#xA;  time for him to roll off his chair and desperately flatten himself against the&#xA;  ground.  The cloud of debris had swept over him before he even heard&#xA;  the explosion.  He kept his head low, his hands shielding his neck,&#xA;  and tried to understand what was happening.  etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also suggest short sentences and paragraphs (I didn't do that in my example, but if I were writing this in MS format, I'd definitely consider putting a paragraph break after the second sentence).  You may want to go so far as using short, sharp words.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-20T17:06:43.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3669" CreationDate="2011-08-20T17:56:10.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The link provided by @John Smithers &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/07/five-essential-tips-for-apa-style-headings.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Five Essential Tips for APA Style Headings&quot;&gt;Five Essential Tips for APA Style Headings&lt;/a&gt; which is sourced directly from the APA style blog indicates that a student paper or lengthy article might require two or three levels of headings. However, only something on the scale of a dissertation would require use of a  fourth or even fifth level heading. The article is dated July 2009, but it pertains to the APA &lt;strong&gt;Publication Manual, Sixth Edition&lt;/strong&gt;, which remains the most current version as of August 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you were writing a paper according to the APA guidelines, you should not use more than three levels of headings, unless writing a lengthy research paper or thesis. Only in that instance would five levels be appropriate. There is no need for a sixth or higher heading according to APA guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2358" LastEditorUserId="2358" LastEditDate="2011-08-20T18:04:28.193" LastActivityDate="2011-08-20T18:04:28.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3612" CreationDate="2011-08-20T21:14:10.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Traditional Publishing&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pros&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you're in, you're doing good.&lt;/strong&gt; If you've &lt;em&gt;got&lt;/em&gt; an offer, that says a lot about your writing ability. Not that all good authors get published or all published authors are good, but being published serves as a sort of indicator that you're at least at a certain level of competence. This is important for a lot of the rest of the pros, because good editing doesn't much help a lousy manuscript. The pro here is the explicit indication that you've written something that has publishing potential - if it doesn't, then polishing your ms, marketing, etc. etc. has very little value. So that's a good thing to know :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Professional editing.&lt;/strong&gt; Good editing makes your book better. Usually, a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; better. You &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; want your book to be really really good, don't you? :P (...but see cons.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Professional marketing and promotion.&lt;/strong&gt; Publishers have access to marketing venues that an individual author can't get near. Conventions, catalogs, websites, contests, promotions; soliciting reviews from respected venues; getting media appearances and interviews. In today's glutted, over-saturated market, these are invaluable. (...but see cons.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Professional distribution.&lt;/strong&gt; E-books have changed this somewhat, particularly Amazon's distribution of self-published books. Nonetheless, an established publisher has tremendous advantages in getting books out to bookstores and libraries that an individual author can't hope to match. And this is important because the easier it is for a reader to stumble across your book and take it home, the greater the chance is that he'll read it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Industry recognition.&lt;/strong&gt; Previous published books look good on your credit list, and make it much easier to achieve future successes. You’ve made it before; that instantly sets you apart from the mass of slush who might not know how to string two words together or might go ballistic if an agent suggests that three semicolons is too much for one sentence. Doesn’t mean it’s an easy road, but they know that you know how to walk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Saleable rights.&lt;/strong&gt; Not every book has this potential, but plenty of books can earn some extra cash with translation rights, reprints, excerpts, even &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_%28filmmaking%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;movie options&lt;/a&gt; (as opposed to actually buying rights to film, which is much much rarer and less of a consideration for most). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cons&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hard to get into.&lt;/strong&gt; It’s really, really, really tough to get published. Talent and effort help a lot, but they’re hardly a guarantee, let alone a swift entry pass. And plenty of times, industry practices and trends make it very difficult for a newcomer to actually get in, even if they write at about the same level that some published authors are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Marketing effort expected from the author.&lt;/strong&gt; While publishers market their books, it’s often far from the level or visibility of marketing that the author would like or expect. And authors are often expected to promote their books, in what can be a very arduous process - &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Must work well with others.&lt;/strong&gt; Since you're working in cooperation with lots of people who get a ton of control over your book, you need to be able to deal well with cooperative efforts and possibly painful compromises concerning your work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Professional does not guarantee good.&lt;/strong&gt; Writing, publishing, and marketing are fields that are both subjective and extremely risky. Editors, publishers and marketers are not automatically and infallibly right. This means you need to find a publisher whom you trust and respect, and you need to second-guess even the professional feedback you get.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Watch out for scams.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Big vs. Small&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main difference is that the entry bar is lower, but the publisher's resources are fewer, so they're less good at getting you the pros.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Self Publishing&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pros&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No entry requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Complete control over final product&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Profits are yours to keep&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cons&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of professional input&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Amateur marketing efforts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Physical distribution difficult to nonexistent&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Negative industry recognition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Book market is super-tough&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Watch out for scams.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Self-Publishing vs. Vanity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vanity publishing, by every definition I've found, seems strictly inferior to self-publishing - it's basically the same thing, but with more (false) pretension of getting you the pros of professional publishing. See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/3677/1046&quot;&gt;What's the distinction between &quot;vanity publishing&quot; and &quot;self publishing&quot;?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Creative New Approaches&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is reducible back to the other two categories. A great marketing concept is a great asset whichever publishing avenue you choose. Probably easier to market as you like if you're self-publishing, but again, this comes along with (A) having a lot more trouble reaching wide audiences, and (B) a greater chance that your brilliant marketing scheme isn't as brilliant as you thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;In Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditional publishing offers modest percentages of a highly risky endeavor with a whole lot of quality control (which may be restricting and even mistaken). Self-publishing offers high percentages of a hugely risky endeavor with zero quality control (which many self-publishers do not properly appreciate the necessity of).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, self-publishing is most appropriate when one of the following applies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your book is such that its modest, targeted success is sufficient for you, while commercial publishers could not afford to invest in a niche product (nor an amateurishly published one, though many readers would not mind this in the least).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are confident enough in the book and in your own marketing ability that you believe it will bring you greater success - i.e., that even absent the advantages of traditional publishing, you will sell enough that the advantages and rewards of self-publishing will play out in your favor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, if you think your book has great potential but are not sure of your own ability to single-handedly bring it to fruition, then a publisher is likely to be both far better capable at that than yourself, and (when shopped to a wide range of publishers) a more informed opinion of the potential your book actually has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-08-21T13:26:47.720" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-08-20T21:14:10.040" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3509" CreationDate="2011-08-21T01:09:08.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use the @unpublished record in BiBTeX to reference an unpublished article/paper.  And, although you can get a better answer at &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Tex.SE&lt;/a&gt; as Fran said, it is more specific to technical questions relating to TeX/LaTeX/XeLaTeX/etc. rather than writing style.  Ultimately, how you cite the unpublished paper will depend on your field of study and/or what bibliography style you use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:29.717" LastActivityDate="2011-08-21T03:46:19.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3677" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3679" CreationDate="2011-08-21T12:12:25.860" Score="23" ViewCount="1542" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question came up on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3612/pros-and-cons-of-different-styles-of-publishing&quot;&gt;pros and cons of publishing avenues&lt;/a&gt; question; when I tried to look it up, I found the results confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/beware/vanitypublishers.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SFWA's explanation of publishing types&lt;/a&gt; gives the following distinction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A vanity publisher&lt;/strong&gt; prints and binds a book at the author's sole expense. Costs include the publisher's profit and overhead, so vanity publishing is usually a good deal more expensive than self-publishing. The completed books are the property of the author, and the author retains all proceeds from sales. Vanity publishers may exclude objectionable content such as pornography, but otherwise do not screen for quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self-publishing,&lt;/strong&gt; like vanity publishing, requires the author to bear the entire cost of publication, and also to handle all marketing, distribution, storage, etc. However, rather than paying for a pre-set package of services, the author puts those services together himself. Because every aspect of the process can be out to bid, self-publishing can be much more cost effective than vanity publishing; it can also result in a higher-quality product. Completed books are owned by the author, who keeps all proceeds from sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The page also contains a recent amendment to the &amp;quot;vanity&amp;quot; tag:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A vanity publisher&lt;/strong&gt; relies on its authors as its main source of income–whether by charging fees for publication or other services, or requiring authors to buy or pre-sell their own books. There’s  little if any meaningful quality screening, and adjunct services (editing, marketing, and/or distribution) are generally minimal or of dubious value. A vanity publisher claims various rights by contract, and owns the ISBN. Payment to the author is in the form of a royalty or a percentage of profits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_press&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's attempt at distinction&lt;/a&gt; is similarly vague:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With vanity publishing, the author will pay to have their book published. Since the author is paying to have the book published the book doesn't go through an approval or editorial process as it would in a traditional setting where the publisher takes a financial risk on the author's ability to write successfully. Editing and formatting services may or may not be offered and they may come with the initial publishing fee (or more correctly, printing fee) or might be offered at an additional cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-publishers undertake the functions of a publisher for his or her own book. The classic &amp;quot;self-publisher&amp;quot; writes, edits, designs, lays out, markets, and promotes the book themselves, relying on a printer only for actual printing and binding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently, companies have offered their services to act as a sort of agent between the writer and a small printing operation. In these cases, the distinction between self-publishing and vanity publishing is less obvious than it once was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm getting from all this is somewhere between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A vanity publisher offers a combined bundle of services for self-published authors,&lt;/strong&gt; whereas a &amp;quot;pure&amp;quot; self-publisher might choose services from several different venues,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A vanity publisher is a skeevy self-publishing service.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these seem to me merely particular subsets of self-publishing services, rather than an inherently different mode of publishing. E.g., for the purposes of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3612/pros-and-cons-of-different-styles-of-publishing&quot;&gt;the pros/cons question&lt;/a&gt;, a vanity publisher would be considered by exactly the same guidelines as any other self-publishing service (pertinent questions including &amp;quot;Do I trust them to do  good job with my work?&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Is the price they're offering me fair for the services they're providing?&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a clear-cut distinction, or is &amp;quot;vanity publishing&amp;quot; just a pejorative for the bad end of self-publishing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T14:41:08.517" Title="What's the distinction between &quot;vanity publishing&quot; and &quot;self publishing&quot;?" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3677" CreationDate="2011-08-21T12:39:41.790" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Vanity Publishing has gotten a bad reputation because so many of the companies involved in it use really nasty business practices, up to and including outright lying.  I have no personal experience, but Absolute Write has some horror stories about &lt;a href=&quot;http://absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=115&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Publish America&lt;/a&gt; and, with a slight twist, &lt;a href=&quot;http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62493&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writers' Literary&lt;/a&gt;, which seems to call itself an agency but also includes a vanity publishing aspect in many of its apparent scams.  Maybe there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; some legit vanity publishers out there, people who make sure their clients understand what they're getting, but the field is definitely muddied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I guess you're right, in that the services provided don't really vary between vanity presses and self-publishing.  The difference is that some/many/most vanity publishers &lt;em&gt;promise&lt;/em&gt; something more.  Which makes sense, kind of.  They need to justify the fees they charge somehow.  So they'll say they do a lot of promotion, or that they can get books into the big distribution systems.  They'll pretend the books they publish have been 'selected', when in fact they accept and print everything.  They'll promise editing, and not deliver. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as far as I can see, vanity presses do no more than self-publishing, but they promise more, and they charge writers for the privilege of being lied to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-21T12:39:41.790" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3677" CreationDate="2011-08-21T13:08:31.417" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're observing is a sea change in values and perceptions in the publishing industry, which has caused the distinction between &quot;vanity publishing&quot; and &quot;self-publishing&quot; to become very murky. This is important because &quot;vanity publishing&quot; did and does carry a heavy stigma, while &quot;self-publishing&quot; is on the road to respectability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until pretty recently, anyone taking your money to publish your book was a vanity publisher. Vanity publishers were all scams, in that they took your money on the (implicit) promise that you had a chance to make it back from book sales, but in practice no one ever did. Furthermore, the vanity publisher had &lt;em&gt;no interest&lt;/em&gt; in helping you sell your book, because they got their money from bilking the authors, not from selling books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-publishing, meanwhile, was about equally likely to fail, but as there was no middle-man the people who tried it were merely fools, not victims of a scam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past ~5 years, mostly due to the rise of e-books, self-publishing has become a plausible path to success. Lots of people are making small but respectable sums e-publishing, and a handful of people have made it big. As a result, we're now seeing &quot;self-publishing services&quot; which attempt to help people self-publish by doing some or all of the work that &quot;pure&quot; self-publishers have to do for themselves. And here's where it gets complicated: strictly speaking the business model of the self-publishing services is &lt;strong&gt;identical&lt;/strong&gt; to the business model of the vanity press. But the self-publishing services desperately want to be seen as part of the legitimate self-publishing ecosystem, and not as another scam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the terminological confusion that you're seeing is due to self-publishing services and the people who use them trying to disassociate themselves from the old vanity publishers. However, your basic observation is correct: there is &lt;strong&gt;no hard line between self-publication services and vanity presses&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a significant difference between the presentation and implicit promises made to the author between these two groups. A classic vanity publisher pretends to actually be a &lt;em&gt;publisher&lt;/em&gt;, as in an entity that actually makes its money from selling books. There existed the impression—disavowed in the fine print, of course—that your book would be professionally edited, that the publisher could actually get your book into stores, that your book would be &quot;published&quot; in the usual sense. Honest self-publication services do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; claim to be publishers, and are very forthright about the set of services they're offering (cover design, typesetting, etc.) and more importantly what they're not offering (marketing, placement in brick-and-mortar stores, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T14:41:08.517" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T14:41:08.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3677" CreationDate="2011-08-21T14:05:09.653" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3677/whats-the-distinction-between-vanity-publishing-and-self-publishing/3679#3679&quot;&gt;JSBᾶngs’s last paragraph&lt;/a&gt; nailed it, but to add to the confusion let me show a German perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People in the whole world &quot;love&quot; German for its ability to construct long names. A vanity publisher is a Druckkostenzuschussverlag (Druck-Kosten-Zuschuss-Verlag).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That’s a print-cost-subsidy-publisher. The writer subsidizes the publisher to print his book and sell it in stores (what will never happen; book stores don't take vanity press books).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fraud here is obvious if you know where the German word &quot;Verlag&quot; (publisher) comes from. It is derived from &quot;vorlegen&quot; which means &quot;advancing money&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So by definition the Verlag advances the money. The Verlag pays the cost. The publisher takes the risk, not the writer. So a vanity publisher is lying to the writer, because he tells him, that the writer has to pay money. He does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you self-publish, the writer still does not pay the money. The publisher does. The difference is, that the publisher and the writer are the same person. That's not true for vanity publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most self-publishers need help to publish their books. So they ask publishing service providers. Are these different from vanity publishers? Are security companies different from Mafia families? There are black sheep all over the place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-08-21T14:05:09.653" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3670" CreationDate="2011-08-21T20:36:29.497" Score="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I felt this was best answered by examples. A &lt;strong&gt;lot&lt;/strong&gt; of examples :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Sudden&quot; does not guarantee surprising&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is fundamental &quot;show, don't tell&quot; - describing something as being &quot;sudden&quot; doesn't mean the reader gets a sense of surprise while reading it, any more than you'd laugh at reading the line &quot;Bob is a really funny guy.&quot; So one key skill is, &lt;strong&gt;look out for writing &quot;surprises&quot; that aren't surprising.&lt;/strong&gt; Here are a few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suddenly, the train arrived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, this makes no sense. A train can't arrive &quot;suddenly&quot; - you can see it drawing near; it makes a lot of noise; clocks everywhere count down to its arrival. Describing this as &quot;sudden&quot; is either an artificial attempt to make an ordinary event seem more exciting, or else it's trying to explain something else - e.g., that the protagonist's attention was elsewhere up until now - and doing so poorly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suddenly, the patient's heart stopped beating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes sense intuitively, but in practice it's a mess - it tells us what happened, but it doesn't convey the actual experience. That's because &lt;em&gt;the protagonists&lt;/em&gt; don't experience it as &quot;suddenly, his heart stopped beating&quot; - instead, their attention is on the blaring alarms, or the patient's sudden collapse, or the steady thump falling silent. In order to convey &lt;em&gt;the experience&lt;/em&gt; of suddenness, you need to convey what the protagonist is actually experiencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suddenly, the door opened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes sense, and can work. Using &quot;suddenly&quot; gives an air of surprise and tension. But if that's not backed up by other elements reinforcing that atmosphere, you risk the &quot;show, don't tell&quot; dangers I mentioned above. Particularly, overusing this casual &quot;suddenly&quot; is what can really grate on a reader - the more you use it without clear justification, and the more you rely on it to create excitement without doing other things to help, the more obvious and artificial it seems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suddenly, Claire screamed and ran from the room. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the good example. Why does this work where the others don't? Because here, it's a sudden action, and the suddenness of it is what surprises us. If the surprise is amply clear, you can safely use &quot;suddenly.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Back it up&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using &quot;suddenly&quot; for surprise effect, it's good to back it up with appropriate portrayal of the event. Compare:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suddenly, the butler came in with the main course. It was a delicious lasagna with fresh greens and spices I didn't even recognize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suddenly, our conversation was overpowered by bustling servants clearing the table in preparation for the next course. I managed to snatch one last mouthful from my plate before it was whisked away, and before I had swallowed, the butler was proudly uncovering the next steaming dish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the second, the &quot;suddenly&quot; element is clear, and fits in just fine with the rest of the paragraph. In the first, it is perhaps not implausible, but feels out of place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Surprise does not require suddenness&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Luke,&quot; he suddenly said, &quot;I am your father!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an intuitive sense to this example: learning such a revelation provokes lots of immediate, sudden reactions. So isn't this sudden?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, of course not. The &lt;em&gt;reactions&lt;/em&gt; are sudden; those you leave to the reader (and, I guess, to Luke). The action itself isn't sudden. It doesn't rely on suddenness to be surprising. Even if the action &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; sudden, that suddenness isn't what's important, and will be more distracting than helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if something surprising happens, it might happen quite un-suddenly (like a magician, milking the trick's punchline for all it's worth), or its suddenness may be irrelevant. Convey the scene as best you can; make sure the surprise is &lt;em&gt;clear&lt;/em&gt;, and count on your reader's reaction to be where the sudden shock takes place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's very common is to put emphasis on the realization, on that moment the penny drops. &quot;Suddenly&quot; can do that - but there are other great shorthand methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The end of a paragraph: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was something in the icebox, amid the frozen marbles. Frosted itself, it took me several minutes to scrape away the ice. Then I wished I hadn't. It was a human finger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A short, one-line paragraph for the punchline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And at that moment, after all my searches, I finally understood who I'd seen in the magic mirror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Describing the reaction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Max? No, it couldn't be. It couldn't possibly. Max had been dead for years. Was this man in front of me some sort of ghost?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Surprises are great, so are other stuff&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You write you use &quot;suddenly&quot; for scene changes; that's fine. If you feel like you're overusing it, though, your problem may be less the particular phrasing and more the breakneck pace. If you feel you've got a lot of scene changes happening &quot;suddenly,&quot; that might give your story an abrupt, disjointed feel. The reader may feel you're jerking scenes around arbitrarily - that the story doesn't build naturally from one scene to the next; instead, it's constantly being interrupted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe instead of using surprise from one scene to the next, try something else. Suspense is great - that's almost the opposite of surprise; it's openly building up to a big climax. There's lots of other tools in your toolbox - try things that let your characters take the initiative; try things that give your story a change of pace (or a lull you can interrupt more dramatically later); try a ticking timebomb to increase peril over the whole story instead of a bomb going off every time the story slows down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't sweat some repetition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Suddenly&quot; is not an obtrusive word you need to be concerned about using twice in a chapter. It's also got plenty of innocuous uses - intended less to surprise than to simply describe (&quot;the deck gave a sudden lurch,&quot; &quot;I suddenly remembered I'd forgotten to hand in my homework,&quot; etc. etc.). And sometimes it's plenty useful when it does help with a surprise; that's natural and not really bothersome. So don't worry if you're not managing to weed out all of them; you can leave plenty in before they become a real problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-08-21T20:36:29.497" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="103" CreationDate="2011-08-21T23:32:12.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If they require that you have a book that is published they have some faith in the competence of the staff AND the students they select. If they have a list of the students who have graduated and their published works and where they are currently employed even better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they can't point at a majority of students who have been successful then I suggest you keep looking. The object is to improve your skill set and have a career- not to make the school richer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-08-21T23:32:12.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3685" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-22T10:32:56.617" Score="3" ViewCount="1192" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is said that &quot;To give added punch, articles are often dropped in the titles&quot; source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidappleyard.com/english/articles.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.davidappleyard.com/english/articles.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any general rule or reference about dropping articles, especially in academic research papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2442" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-22T12:42:53.980" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T14:01:51.827" Title="Dropping articles in the title (of a article or a section) or in the caption (of a figure or a table)? What's the general rule?" Tags="|titles|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3690" CreationDate="2011-08-22T12:49:22.830" Score="1" ViewCount="391" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that there are &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3658/what-are-jobs-that-prefer-or-require-mfas-in-creative-writing&quot;&gt;a few jobs&lt;/a&gt; where an MFA (Masters of Fine Arts) in creative writing is preferred as a writer or editor, is it possible figure out the ROI (return on investment) of acquiring the degree?  Obviously there are a lot of variables in figuring out the ROI of any degree - how much is the degree?   What of the possible job options does the degree land you?  However it seems like with an MFA in Creative Writing especially it gets even more complex because it is hard to quantify how much &quot;better&quot; a writer a particular MFA might get you and therefore how much more likely you will be to succeed as a writer.  It isn't quite as straight-forward as a degree such as an MBA, which is more like a simple gating mechanism.  Is there any fairly accurate way to determine if an MFA is really worth it for a given writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T21:37:45.287" Title="Is it possible to figure out the ROI of an MFA?" Tags="|career|mfa|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3686" CreationDate="2011-08-22T13:20:48.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think to some extent, you CAN simplify it the same way as for an MBA, because there are so many other (free or low cost) ways to improve your writing.  So what does the program offer, other than the letters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it gives structure and discipline.  There ARE other ways to improve your writing, but maybe some writers want to be given assignments and deadlines in order to force them to work.  Fair enough, except that learning to work on your own, without immediate external incentives, is a pretty important skill for a writer to pick up.  So the MFA programs help writers with a weakness, but they may only provide a bandaid solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MFAs also give access to professional writers and publishing insiders, but from what I've heard, the quality of these 'experts' varies greatly.  And in these days of blogs, conferences, etc., I don't think MFAs are the only way to get access to these people.  Sure, conferences cost money, but nowhere near as much as taking a year or two off work AND paying tuition to an MFA program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers groups, whether in person or on line, give as much feedback as one would get in an MFA program, and while some of the feedback isn't valuable, I think sorting through that is another skill that a writer needs to develop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean to argue against taking an MFA.  If I had the time and the money, I'd love to do it.  It would be incredible to have that much time set aside for writing, and that much support and encouragement close at hand.  But it's not necessary to become a better writer. I think an MFA is a luxury.  And luxury items don't have an ROI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T13:20:48.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3685" CreationDate="2011-08-22T14:01:51.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that there is a general rule about dropping articles from the title, esp. in academic research papers, however, according to the book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0313330409&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper&lt;/a&gt;, a title of a paper is its label, and should therefore be succinct in its description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[Specifically,] the meaning and order of the words in the title are of importance&#xA;to the potential reader who sees the title in the journal table of contents...&#xA;Thus, the title should be useful as a label accompanying the paper itself, and it&#xA;also should be in a form suitable for the machine indexing systems used by&#xA;Chemical abstracts, Indexing Medicus, and others.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also mentions that the verb &quot;is&quot; is a wasted word in that it can be readily deleted without affecting comprehension.  For example, the verb &quot;is&quot; can be readily deleted from the following title without affecting its comprehension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Beta-Endorphin is Associated with Overeating in Genetically Obese Mice (ob/ob)&#xA;and Rats (fa/fa)&quot;.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, inclusion of the verb &quot;is&quot; results in a title that now seems to be a loud assertion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no mention of removing articles from the title.  Note, however, that I have the third edition of this book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2454" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T14:01:51.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3686" CreationDate="2011-08-22T14:15:25.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one was ever published strictly because they had an MFA. If you wish to be a writer, then writing should be your first goal. If you wish to get on as an editor somewhere, show your editing experience. An MFA may get you in the door for a low-level position in publishing, but it's more likely that you will need other connections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question reminds me of something the great pianist and teacher Rosina Lhévinne is supposed to have said when asked by a student if she thought he had what it takes to be a musician. &quot;Can you do anything else?&quot; she asked him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Well,&quot; the student said, &quot;I supposed I could get a law degree if this doesn't work out.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Then do that,&quot; she said. &quot;If you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do anything else, then you should. If all you can do is music, then be a musician.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T14:15:25.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3686" CreationDate="2011-08-22T16:16:32.243" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately- no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A ROI would suggest that just the &quot;skills&quot; learned are the only skills needed. If one intends to be a &quot;writer&quot; there are considerations such as &quot;creativity&quot; and being in &quot;the right place at the right time&quot; that the MFA doesn't even attempt to teach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the same could be said for other degrees but the fact of the matter is that a degree in accounting (plus certification) are required for some jobs. I dare say that William Faulkner wasn't hired to teach at UVA because of a degree. The same thing could be said for lots of  of &quot;Top Ten&quot; book list authors. Quick! Where did Dan Brown get his degree? J.D. Salinger? Eco? Rowling? Nabokov? Puzo? and lots of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a dedicated &quot;student&quot; learn something in an MFA program? Yes. Does that translate into a ROI? It depends on the student and too many other variables. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question really should be WHAT do you want to get out of an MFA program and can the selected MFA program provide this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully most MFA programs are telling their students (before signing up) the entire publishing industry is being changed just like the entire field of journalism. With a degree in journalism (news) trying to find a newspaper that is hiring and not firing is the real challenge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T16:16:32.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3670" CreationDate="2011-08-22T19:57:53.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;a good story/novel/book shouldn't have to have a &quot;suddenly&quot; to get surprise from the reader.  a lot of times all it takes is timing.  they're going along, doing their regular thing and then something happens.  it usually helps to make your first sentence (the one you want to surprise people, remember?) a short one.  somehow this adds to the dramatic effect.  if that isn't working for you, try making it something your reader never thought would happen in a million years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2502" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T19:57:53.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3628" CreationDate="2011-08-22T20:01:14.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;it never hurt anyone to get a head start on their next novel.  in my opinion, beginning the sequel shows a lot of faith in your first novel.  you know it's good and is going to be published.  go ahead and write, we all know that writing is a contagious disease.  not to mention, if you're a true writer and storyteller at heart, once you start you can't stop!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2502" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T20:01:14.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="103" CreationDate="2011-08-22T23:21:51.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good reputation amongst actual recent alumni is the most telling factor, I've found. Most universities' published ratings can be a bit outdated and/or based on criteria that looks more impressive on paper than in the actual classroom. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, a program's worth is often subjective, relative to what the student is looking to gain. Some programs have a heavy academic bent, while others focus on industry connections etc etc. So I suppose one way to begin to answer your question is to decide what you're looking for yourself...(Do you primarily want to learn a lot about the theories of writing? Or do you mainly want tips and tricks towards becoming published? etc.) Start with that, and you'll help yourself narrow the field a fair amount. (And then you can go about researching what recent alumni have to say...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2503" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T23:21:51.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3696" CreationDate="2011-08-22T23:25:34.817" Score="8" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much contact should I expect to have with my literary agent (from a sizeable London firm, representing my first novel)? Are months of silence to be expected/endured? If so...how many?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2503" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T00:23:38.713" Title="How much agent contact should I expect?" Tags="|novel|agent|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3694" CreationDate="2011-08-23T00:02:36.233" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are really good they'll be happy if you just send them a check on a regular basis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of a clerk in a store. Their job is to make sure that when a buyer comes into the store they find what they need. Rarely (if ever) do they contact the guy in China who is making the tools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are making tools in China you want the clerk to sell them in the US of A. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need hand-holding use part of your royalties to hire someone with hands you like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T00:02:36.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3694" CreationDate="2011-08-23T00:23:38.713" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wasn't going to post an answer for this, but I've got to disagree with Joshin.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're in a business relationship with your agent.  You're entitled to respectful business communication.  There's a vast difference between you needing your hand held and you needing to know what your business partner is up to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Months of silence seem out of line.  That is, if you've sent a polite, business-like inquiry, you should have been answered.  If you've been nagging him/her daily, then maybe s/he has shut down.  But you haven't said anything to suggest that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than Joshin's manufacturer/salesperson analogy, I would try home owner/real estate agent.  (You notice the word 'agent' - it has significance).  If you allow someone else to try to sell your valuable, unique property, you are entitled to regular updates as to their progress.  If you've been reasonable, and they refuse to share this information with you, there's a serious problem with the relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of great agents out there, and there are, unfortunately, a lot of rookies and/or shysters.  If you have absolute confidence (through checking at Editors &amp;amp; Preditors and other relevant sites) that you've got a great agent, you might want to forgive the poor communication.  But if you're less than confident, you need communication to know what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T00:23:38.713" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3670" CreationDate="2011-08-23T09:28:20.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few different effects related to the phrase &quot;suddenly&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) When describing how someone else perceived something or reacted&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe that towards morning he attempted to commit suicide but did not succeed. He remained locked up till midday—and then &lt;strong&gt;suddenly&lt;/strong&gt; he ran to the authorities. He is said to have crawled on his knees, to have sobbed and shrieked, to have kissed the floor crying out that he was not worthy to kiss the boots of the officials standing before him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here there is no problem, the narrator is not asking too much from the reader and the overall effect is not of grand surprise or revelation. If the protagonist did other things in a sudden way, narrator would naturally report on them without disturbing the flow (other phrases &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt;, if appropriate, be used to avoid repetition: 'out of nowhere', 'unexpectedly', 'abruptly' and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) When you are aiming for an effect of a surprise&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case using the term &quot;suddenly&quot; can work, but heavy lifting is done by the storyline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example consider&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suddenly she lifted her face, and her eyes flashed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which can work, but requires a leap of imagination from the reader, so it is not effortless. However, the quote is incomplete, compare to the effect in the context&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was silence for a moment, during which Mrs. Goyte remained with her head dropped, sinister and abstracted. Suddenly she lifted her face, and her eyes flashed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which I feel works rather well. Another famous example is found in this passage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. (2, tr. Burton Watson 1968:49)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this might be the finest example of them all, and here I hope you share my view that the word &quot;suddenly&quot; does not substantially add to the surprise or the revelation of the idea presented. It is an objective (for the narrator) description of an action - he woke up &lt;a href=&quot;http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/suddenly?view=uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quickly and unexpectedly&lt;/a&gt;. Only the next sentence brings the actual revelation, the surprise: the two realities feel equally plausible! The effect of the surprise is somewhat supported by the context of the sudden awakening, but the main effect is achieved through the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My general feeling is that &quot;suddenly&quot; has no problems in the first case and in the second case it is not effective by itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to change the scene instantly it is justified, but it is not essential - any number of words will do as the actual change of the scene is done through dialogs and descriptions that will follow it. Here it is mainly a signal that a change will occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surprising the reader usually has nothing to do with such signal, and actually the signal might take away from the surprise - as it does serve as a warning. Zhuangzi's dream does not suffer from this problem, because here it is not used to surprise the reader by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2166" LastEditorUserId="2166" LastEditDate="2011-08-23T10:27:53.210" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T10:27:53.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3699" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3700" CreationDate="2011-08-23T18:41:45.863" Score="4" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a client who has written a (well done) synopsis of his core business proposition that reads like a great little book, but is only 15,000 words. Is this a good candidate for Amazon's Singles? Are there other similar, more business-focused platforms for publication/distribution of such a teaser? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does every book that applies for publication through the Kindle Singles platform get approved -- or are they more of a publisher than a platform provider? Do they make decisions about what type of &quot;singles&quot; are appropriate or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2460" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-08-23T20:26:23.457" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T01:17:14.603" Title="The best publishing platform for a business &quot;vanity&quot; book?" Tags="|publishing|business-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3699" CreationDate="2011-08-23T20:21:56.317" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the standard Kindle self-publishing program offered by Amazon, you can choose to create an e-book out of just about any content you desire. Amazon doesn't have a lot of restrictions, especially in regards to business books, so getting the book out there really isn't an issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the Amazon Singles do have to go through an approval process, and Amazon is much more selective about what gets released in that manner. You should think of the Amazon Singles as more of traditional publishing model in that you would have to submit your book to them for consideration and then they would decide whether or not to include it in that program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did some research in a couple of other forums, and the consensus seems to be that the stories selected for Amazon Singles seem to be selected pretty much by invitation. In other words, Amazon sought them out by either choosing stories they found through other sources (magazines or newspapers) or by soliciting well known writers to submit shorter stories specifically for this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T20:21:56.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-23T12:11:20.967" Score="8" ViewCount="84861" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm creating a parody/spoof magazine which contains some &quot;real&quot; advertisements and businesses in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I word an &quot;all persons fictitious&quot; disclaimer to include fictitious businesses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my current disclaimer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the best way to expand on it? This is a footer on every page of my Quark XPress document, by the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="AXP" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-08-23T21:41:18.137" LastActivityDate="2016-06-12T18:19:56.203" Title="All persons fictitious disclaimer — ideas regarding modification?" Tags="|style|tone|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3701" CreationDate="2011-08-23T12:20:03.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to include fictitious businesses, try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All characters and corporations or establishments appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the statement is excellent, only a small addition is needed to include the businesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2453" OwnerDisplayName="Thursagen" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T12:28:43.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3701" CreationDate="2011-08-23T12:24:23.480" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_persons_fictitious_disclaimer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;disclaimer&lt;/a&gt; has an interesting history, and tvtropes has &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThisIsAWorkOfFiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an expanded version&lt;/a&gt; of it: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not specifically mention businesses, but I feel that it is covered with &lt;em&gt;names&lt;/em&gt; (and &lt;em&gt;incidents&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;events&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, keep in mind that this is not legal advice and that you might be liable even if you include such a disclaimer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2166" OwnerDisplayName="Unreason" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T12:24:23.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3701" CreationDate="2011-08-23T14:45:38.200" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ojxeo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Martin Beckett" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T14:45:38.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3437" CreationDate="2011-08-24T01:11:08.007" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the third edition of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0313330409&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper&lt;/a&gt; that I have, one should list only significant, published references.  References to unpublished data, papers in press, abstracts, theses, and other secondary materials should not clutter up the References or Literature Cited section (i.e. Bibliography).  If such a reference seems absolutely necessary, one may add it parenthetically, or as a footnote in the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not necessarily agree with this since, I have seen theses (at least) being cited in the Bibliography, not to mention URL's to websites (where information is more transient).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the use of inclusive pagination (i.e. first and last page numbers), it makes it easier for potential users to distinguish between one-page notes and 50 page review articles.  The only time I have seen this done is to distinguish between articles/chapters in @journal, @incollection, @book or @inbook type references to say the least.  Typically, the style has been to include all pages of the reference rather than a subset of pages.  If you want to make reference to a particular page or chapter of a dissertation or thesis, however, you may do so in your text along with the citation.  For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;In chapter 1 of Micciancio's PhD thesis [1]....blah.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where [1] appears beside the reference to Micciancio's PhD thesis in the Bibliography.  At least, that's how I've seen others do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex-citing stuff, isn't it...? ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Here are a couple of examples of how referenced articles, books and theses appear in the Bibliography using the IEEE style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[1] Bart Preneel, “The state of cryptographic hash functions”,&#xA;    in Lectures on Data Security, I. Damgård, Ed.,&#xA;    Berlin Heidelberg, January 1999, vol. 1561/1999, pp.&#xA;    158–182, Springer-Verlag.&#xA;&#xA;[2] Wenbo Mao, Modern Cryptography Theory and Practice,&#xA;    Prentice Hall, 2004.&#xA;&#xA;[3] Eli Biham and Adi Shamir, Differential cryptanalysis of&#xA;    the data encryption standard, Springer-Verlag, London,&#xA;    UK, 1993.&#xA;&#xA;[4] Xiaoyun Wang and Hongbo Yu, “How to break MD5 and&#xA;    other hash functions”, EUROCRYPT 2005, pp. 19–35,&#xA;    2005.&#xA;&#xA;[5] Bart Van Rompay, Analysis and Design of Cryptographic&#xA;    Hash Functions, MAC Algorithms and Block&#xA;    Ciphers, PhD thesis, KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT&#xA;    LEUVEN, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10, 3001 Leuven-&#xA;    Heverlee, June 2004.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the first citation is from an @inprocedings type reference, while the fourth is from a @journal.  The second and third citation are @book type references, while the fifth is a thesis.  Note that the above references were generated using BiBTeX.  Although it is possible to add inclusive pagination to the @book and @thesis type references, BiBTeX will ignore them.  I have tried and tested this for the @thesis style at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2454" LastEditorUserId="2454" LastEditDate="2011-08-24T02:48:47.860" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T02:48:47.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3699" CreationDate="2011-08-24T01:17:14.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lulu&lt;/a&gt;? They've been around for many years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/publish/books/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.lulu.com/publish/books/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My husband just told me about &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blurb.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Blurb&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, another self publishing site he read about on INC magazine, but I've never heard of them before otherwise. There is even a webinar: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blurb.com/webinars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Create your Business Portfolio with a Book&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2509" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T01:17:14.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3708" CreationDate="2011-08-24T07:17:16.013" Score="6" ViewCount="1614" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a place or a type of dictionary or even a good method, that instead of searching for a word, I can search for a meaning and get more words that have similar idea or meaning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I had an idea in my mind say, &quot;walk up the bus&quot;. I can then search for this idea and then get words such as board, hop on, alight, etc. I thought that if there is such a tool, it would be very helpful in my writing because sometimes, I need to look for a particular word to describe or add effects to an action or event but I couldn't. The thesaurus  works but say in the example given, if I entered &quot;walk&quot; into the thesaurus, it may give me other words like stroll, stride, etc and not what I really want because the keyword &quot;bus&quot; isn't considered in the search. Similarly, if there is such a tool, instead of walk, I could search &quot;walk hastily&quot;, that could give me words that describe the action of walking quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2511" LastEditorUserId="2511" LastEditDate="2011-08-24T10:04:37.757" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T04:36:38.500" Title="Finding words through meanings" Tags="|word-choice|dictionary|thesaurus|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3707" CreationDate="2011-08-24T10:26:08.047" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OneLook's Reverse Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; seems to offer precisely the kind of tool you're looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't know that they're very good - I tried &lt;code&gt;get on a plane,&lt;/code&gt; but &lt;code&gt;board&lt;/code&gt; came back as result #96, well after &lt;code&gt;slip&lt;/code&gt; (#3), &lt;code&gt;touchdown&lt;/code&gt; (#50), &lt;code&gt;precession of the equinoxes&lt;/code&gt; (#66), and &lt;code&gt;fayez banihammad&lt;/code&gt; (#85).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my superficial familiarity with computer language recognition, what you're describing is a pretty tough problem. Your intuitive definitions-of-unknown-words don't correspond to any existing searchable body of text, so language recognition would need to work based on the degree words are associated with each other, and that can get pretty wonky and unexpected. I don't see a better solution than asking human beings - &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;English.SE&lt;/a&gt;, for example, is probably great for word identification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T10:26:08.047" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3709" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-24T07:14:24.380" Score="5" ViewCount="2781" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm imagining this sort of statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He's a... different... sort of person, I suppose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people would pronounce 'different' in that sentence as though it was followed by a question mark, but not the rest of the sentence. However, writing it like this strikes me as wrong:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He's a... different? Sort of person, I suppose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second sentence doesn't look grammatically correct to me. That being the case, how would I indicate the change in tone accurately in writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Fibericon" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-24T12:57:28.257" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T16:00:49.107" Title="How would one use punctuation to indicate tone changes?" Tags="|tone|punctuation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3709" CreationDate="2011-08-24T07:37:20.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the writer. However, they prefer to place a question mark at the end of the sentence. Probably to emphasize you should make a different sentence? It seems to me that...or I ...He seems to be different.. or I wonder if he.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would prefer not  using sort of a person... cause itself is in the meaning of person/ individual.. He is a different sort will be enough ..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="A.Uysal" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T07:37:20.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3709" CreationDate="2011-08-24T11:55:17.783" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the ellipses are fine, but I agree with the comment from  the original site that italics would work as well.  But neither one really shows a question, to my reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean for someone to be emphasizing 'different', I'd use italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He's a &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; sort of person. Not like the others at all.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean for someone to be using 'different' as a sort of code for 'strange' or 'unappealing', I'd use quotation marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He's a 'different' sort of person.  Not our sort at all.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean for someone to be struggling for words, I'd use ellipses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He's a... a different sort of person. I think that's what I'd call&#xA;  him.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean for someone to be questioning whether he's really different, I'd use a question mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He's a different sort of person? Is that what you're saying?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean for someone to be focusing in on the word different, while still asking a question, I'd combine things!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He's a &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; sort of person?  Is that the word you'd use?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other possibilities?  Probably!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T11:55:17.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3709" CreationDate="2011-08-24T12:56:34.857" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I wouldn't use punctuation to indicate the tone change at all.  Punctuation marks are like modifiers - use them too often and they loose their effect.  This is commonly acknowledged with the exclamation point especially, but holds true for many and perhaps all punctuation marks, with the possible exception of the period and quote marks during dialog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I wanted to convey a change in tone, I would actually describe the tone I was after or use descriptions of gestures or facial features to explain it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well he's a,&quot; she paused for a moment, her mouth working silently as she racked her brain for the right word, &quot;well just a different sort of person, I suppose.&quot;  She made air quotes with her free left hand when she said &quot;different.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All standard punctuation, but the text itself should help explain the tone and meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must use punctuation rather than words, Kate has provided a variety of useful suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T12:56:34.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3152" CreationDate="2011-08-24T19:32:09.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the answer on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragraph&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Professionally printed material typically does not indent the first paragraph, but indents those that follow. For example, Robert Bringhurst states that we should &quot;Set opening paragraphs flush left.&quot;[4] Bringhurst explains as follows ... &#xA;  Keyboarders normally indent paragraphs three to five word spaces—based on what they were taught in school—while professionally printed material such as books and magazines generally use smaller indents. For example, The Elements of Typographic Style states that &quot;at least one en [space]&quot; should be used to indent paragraphs after the first,[6] noting that that is the &quot;practical minimum&quot;.[7] An em space is the most commonly used paragraph indent.[8] Miles Tinker, in his book Legibility of Print, concluded that indenting the first line of paragraphs increases readability by 7%, on the average.[9]&#xA;   Other techniques are possible. Lines can be outdented to signify the start of new paragraphs.[10] Another technique is to insert vertical space between paragraphs. This creates what is sometimes known as &quot;block paragraphs&quot;. Some keyboarders use a double carriage return to create this break, whereas typists using word processing applications may use increased leading to create a more pleasing space between paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer? I think you can either indent it or you don't. It's up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2513" OwnerDisplayName="ChaosGamer ΕΛ-Υ ēel-ū" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T19:40:21.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3715" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3726" CreationDate="2011-08-24T18:44:22.773" Score="4" ViewCount="1566" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a programmer/engineer who has been asked to write a letter of recommendation for a colleague, who wishes it to help him pursue higher education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I feel it necessary, to be very professional and very impartial in the letter I am about to put together for him. &lt;strong&gt;And at the same time&lt;/strong&gt; I wish to bring out the best qualities which I have seen in him, namely power of analysis and clear thought, openness to novel and even left-field ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I am looking for sources&lt;/strong&gt; where I can refer to for constructing such a letter - I hit &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;stackoverflow&lt;/a&gt; by force of habit, then to &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;english.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt; and was surprised not to find any results. Some Googling gave me only mundane and glossy samples, which did not sound very authentic to me because of all the power verbs cramped together in an non-cohesive way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will edit the question summarizing your answers daily, thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on comments, here is an example, to help narrow down the question. (I cannot however put a draft here and ask for feedback, because finding any version of my letter sitting on the internet, will reduce the authenticity of it.) Here is a sample of what I did not like for the above mentioned reasons :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;X is a well disciplined, industrious student with a &lt;strong&gt;pleasant&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  personality. She is &lt;strong&gt;unstinting&lt;/strong&gt; in her efforts to keep &lt;strong&gt;abreast&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  with the latest technologies, &lt;strong&gt;indefatigable&lt;/strong&gt; in showing the&#xA;  applications of theory to practice in &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; work she does.  Besides&#xA;  academics, X as a member of the association for communication&#xA;  engineers in this college takes part &lt;strong&gt;enthusiastically&lt;/strong&gt; in various&#xA;  co-curricular activities of the department. She played a major role in&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;organizing&lt;/strong&gt; ‘SOME_EVENT’, a national level technical symposium&#xA;  conducted by the Department.           In my &lt;strong&gt;unbiased opinion&lt;/strong&gt; she&#xA;  has a rich &lt;strong&gt;blend&lt;/strong&gt; of &lt;strong&gt;creativity&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;temperament&lt;/strong&gt; and&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;discipline&lt;/strong&gt; required for a person who desires a career in computer&#xA;  engineering. I strongly recommend her to the graduate program in your&#xA;  esteemed university with full assistantship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note all the power verbs/nouns, and the general rosy smell of the text. It is so living in an ideal world, and does little to strike true to a practical CEO of a company, or the financial officer of an institution - he who decides to give financial assistance or not. Also I feel it is way too generic - See i can now replace X with anyone from a set of million students, and letter still holds up, if you call it holding up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joshin has given a valuable new perspective on this for me :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He has asked me to step into the mind of the target organization (in this case a grad school)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That LOR can be used to help resolve tough hire/fire decisions, for the organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The organization may actually be looking for letter writers, with whom they can relate to, like folks who worked for a long time in their domain, or in an influential well known (for them) organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The last section (sort of reduces the impact of the previous point) The readers may find something of value, from an unexpected direction, even if the letter writer is in an alien &#xA;domain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion, is that I will write him a LOR anyway (banking on the last point), while asking him to get one (or two) more letters from his university professors and head of departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standback put in an awesome answer himself! He has made his point well, the last two deserves reiteration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In his  last point, an honest sincere recommendation may very well be interpreted as an unenthusiastic one, or even a snub. This is a risk, which needs to be taken after researching the target audience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Priority on establishing my credentials instead of impartiality is also something I can relate to. Some words with a negative connotation, may end up in the LOR while you are trying to sound impartial, which happened in my case. This is something to be avoided at all costs in LORs as such words unconsciously such words go to the readers mind, no matter the context.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would however invite more people to give their thoughts on this. I am still looking for sources where I can refer to, and this thread may very well be it, or have links pointing to other critiques, examples and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2536" OwnerDisplayName="Zasz" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:40:35.973" LastActivityDate="2015-08-23T08:22:29.930" Title="A letter of recommendation" Tags="|resources|letter|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="796" CreationDate="2011-08-24T19:54:15.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you need to play to your strength: building detailed settings. You sound like someone who could build quite a career with franchises built around your storyworlds... and in a world where transmedia entertainment is rapidly becoming the standard model, this is an advantage, believe me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... build your worlds. In fact, always be building your worlds. At a certain point, expose them to the public and invite others to create content with your storyworld as the setting. Publish the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote about this in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://deadrobotssociety.com/2011/06/17/friday-guest-blog-matthew-wayne-selznick-what-every-modern-writer-needs-to-know/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;What Every Modern Fiction Writer Needs To Know by Matthew Wayne Selznick&quot;&gt;guest blog post for the Dead Robots Society podcast&lt;/a&gt;, if you're interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2466" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T19:54:15.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3718" CreationDate="2011-08-24T16:18:30.533" Score="2" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write an endorsement for someone. I have one line that begins like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I have no doubt that ...&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't like the negative connotation of 'no doubt'. My best alternative of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I am quite certain ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;doesn't seem to have the impact I want to communicate. Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2543" OwnerDisplayName="zundarz" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T22:26:41.163" Title="What is best way to accentuate the positive in an endorsement?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3717" CreationDate="2011-08-24T16:39:41.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case, I would use something that's a little more succinct, but not negative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Without question,&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;[product/service/person is great]&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This feels less negative to me because you aren't mentioning doubt, something that you don't want in an endorsement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2517" OwnerDisplayName="Nathan G." LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T16:48:07.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3717" CreationDate="2011-08-24T21:09:55.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To endorse a person effectively, whether in an advertisement or a letter of recommendation, some strategies are to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe positive traits&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid mentioning negative or irrelevant traits&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emphasize how strongly you support, recommend, or believe in the person and their ability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible to do this last one powerfully by saying how little doubt you have: &lt;em&gt;I have no doubt...&lt;/em&gt; or how sure you are: &lt;em&gt;I am quite certain...&lt;/em&gt; (You might try removing &amp;quot;quite&amp;quot;; adding a modifier  like &lt;em&gt;quite&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;certain&lt;/em&gt; sometimes doesn't help. In this case, it might make you sound less confident, because it could leave the reader with a bigger feeling of doubt about whether you're as sure as you can possibly be, compared with just &lt;em&gt;I am sure.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever way you prefer, try looking at some examples of recommendations, where you'll find constructions like these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and I recommend her to you without reservation... (&lt;a href=&quot;http://jobsearch.about.com/od/referenceletters/a/samplechar3.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sample recommendation letter&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am confident that... (&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jobsearch.about.com/od/referenceletters/a/personalreference.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sample recommendation letter&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1992" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T21:09:55.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3717" CreationDate="2011-08-24T22:26:41.163" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My preference: Drop the introductory phrase altogether, and simply say whatever you were going to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T22:26:41.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3721" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3725" CreationDate="2011-08-25T12:23:22.327" Score="18" ViewCount="10960" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a typical structure for a fantasy trilogy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be more specific, would they usually follow the three-act structure, with an act per book? And would each book need a self-contained story arc with a proper beginning and ending? Or could you get away without a proper resolution until the end of the third book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this could be subjective, but what are the norms when approaching this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T20:21:44.323" Title="What's a typical trilogy structure?" Tags="|fantasy|structure|plot|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3722" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3728" CreationDate="2011-08-25T02:11:46.093" Score="8" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://diy.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;DIY&lt;/a&gt; stack exchange is currently trying to make our &lt;a href=&quot;https://diy.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt; more useful to new users, and I wondered if some folks from this community could take a look and help us to define ourselves better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://diy.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/372/does-the-site-require-a-more-descriptive-faq-to-clarify-which-topics-are-on-topic/374#374&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is the suggested rewrite of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://diy.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt;.  Here is the full version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For questions related to home improvement and repair, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions you would typically ask a home contractor (or Bob Vila, Mike Holmes, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions on tools, materials, designs, and best practices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions to help identify the source or cause of a problem within your home&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions about national building codes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions you should not ask include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decorating advice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Local building codes or other advice limited to your specific city&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions about contracts with builders and rental agreements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions not related to the home, including hobby projects, cars, and landscaping&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are trying to define ourselves as &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; place to go for Home improvement advice, specifically for folks who want to do the work themselves.  We are mainly a group of people who are good with tools, but not so good with words (as you might be able to tell).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1187" OwnerDisplayName="Tester101" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T21:19:06.043" Title="Does this FAQ accurately convey the mission of DIY.SE?" Tags="|business-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3721" CreationDate="2011-08-25T13:16:47.277" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every part of your work needs to have its own logical arc and structure.  In a novel, this can be a chapter or a scene and in a trilogy or series this a book.  Each piece should have a beginning, middle, and end.  The parts don't live in isolation, though, and each one should leave give the reader enough to enjoy what they are reading but hold back enough to leave them wanting more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about the Empire Strikes Back.  By the end of the movie, all the immediate threads have been wrapped up (everyone is rescued, the Empire's motivation is made more clear, and Luke's got a new daddy).  The nerds were satiated to the point where they didn't start ripping chairs out of the floor and start tearing down screens. But practically all the big picture stuff was left unresolved and the nerds were going to have to wait three long years to get the full resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it has been mentioned in several responses I think there is one more thing to address: Just because the sequels had not been written at the time Star Wars produced doesn't mean that Lucas didn't already have the ideas marinating in his bearded head. And that's an important point for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A writer should have the universe, the background, and the character histories completely fleshed out for themselves. Even if never explicitly spelled out to the reader, it will result be a much more thorough work.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy example: Lucas knew going into production of Star Wars that Vader was Luke's father.  This not only changes their dynamic, but also their interactions with Obi-Wan, who is the only person in the film who is aware of this fact. This is never revealed during the first movie (in fact, practically the opposite is stated (that Ben Kenobi is a tricky guy)), but it definitely informed the characters and dialogue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, let's not forget the fact that a pre-destined trilogy only works if the entire thing is unleashed on the public.  This is probably less common in publishing (since the whole thing is often written before even being submitted for consideration), but in Hollywood, making one film is no guarantee that your others will be made.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fun list of dead-end franchises: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avclub.com/articles/inventory-13-failed-attempts-to-start-film-franchi,1872/&quot;&gt;http://www.avclub.com/articles/inventory-13-failed-attempts-to-start-film-franchi,1872/&lt;/a&gt; (I'm still waiting for my &lt;em&gt;Rocketeer&lt;/em&gt; sequel).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastEditorUserId="181" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T11:02:39.317" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T11:02:39.317" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3721" CreationDate="2011-08-25T13:21:37.113" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally don't like books that force me to buy another 2 books to get the whole story (and maybe wait months or years if the books haven't been published yet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More and more, whenever I see something like &quot;Part 1 of the Foo Boy trilogy&quot; I just put the book back on the shelf, unless the author is someone I know and enjoy really well(which is very rare).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think expecting your readers to buy more books to get the whole story is a bit condescending. I prefer something like the &quot;Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy&quot; series, where each book is independent, can be read separately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice is to carry elements of your first book into the second, like some of the characters, the Universe etc, but keep each book independent, so that readers can read any part and still understand the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have a common underlying theme or plot that runs through all the books, but each book must contain enough information to be read by itself. Like many people, I read the Harry Potter series out of order (at least the first few ones), but had no trouble understanding the whole plot. That, I think, is one of the reasons the series was so successful- I went back and read the other books because I enjoyed them, and not because the author left the story incomplete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T13:21:37.113" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3721" CreationDate="2011-08-25T13:36:17.840" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two main ways to structure a series: each book is essentially a stand-alone with a continuing story as part of the plot (Harry Potter), or each book is a critical part of the whole and they are difficult to read out of sequence or without the other books (Lord of the Rings). Either is fine; they just accomplish different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stand-alone books have the benefit of being easy to draw in new readers out of sequence, as Shan observes. They don't have an overall story to tell as much as they are a journey being taken with the same characters. Harry's story does have a &quot;proper resolution&quot; in the long view, but each book resolves its individual crises, particularly the first three. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A series of books is one story being told in many parts. Each book does need some kind of &quot;beginning, middle, and end,&quot; but by no means does each book require &lt;i&gt;closure.&lt;/i&gt; &lt;i&gt;Fellowship of the Ring&lt;/i&gt; ends with the Fellowship broken: one of the Nine Walkers dead and one presumed dead, two kidnapped, and two vanished off to Mordor. But the story has progressed from &quot;One Ring's discovery&quot; to &quot;Frodo accepts the quest&quot; to &quot;Frodo and Sam leave for Mordor.&quot; The &quot;proper resolution&quot; doesn't occur until the multiple ends ;) of &lt;i&gt;Return of the King.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Shan that if I'm in a bookstore and I see &quot;Book 1 of 3&quot; I may not pick it up unless Books 2 and 3 are next to it on the shelf. However, don't let that stop you from telling your story in the way that your story needs to be told. Write the best story you can, structure it however makes it the most appealing, and let the marketing folks at the publisher worry about selling it in pieces. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Eddings originally planned his Belgariad series as a trilogy, and the publisher broke it into &lt;i&gt;five&lt;/i&gt; books. George R.R. Martin planned the Song of Ice and Fire story for four novels, which grew into six and then split into seven. Yep, pain in the butt for us readers now, but when it's all over, they will all be together on one shelf for future generations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T13:36:17.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3715" CreationDate="2011-08-25T13:41:30.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you need to understand the type of organization (in this case the educational institution and program) and what THEY are looking for. In that way you will have a better idea as to what you need to &quot;market.&quot;  Also an understanding of how they &quot;view&quot; a letter like this. (Unfortunately, some are using software with key word searches and or &quot;hirelings&quot; who are just doing a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often a letter of recommendation is more of a &quot;tie breaker.&quot; If the candidate barely makes it through the &quot;qualifications&quot; then a letter can either save or kill the application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, a letter may carry more &quot;weight&quot; if the author has been a part of that organization OR works for an organization that has connections. Hint: some organizations actually care more about this because it is a test of the candidate and his/her ability to pass the test of problem solving- in other words- if you are not the right person to write the letter and you write this best letter ever it still could be a loser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should stress attributes that are skills for the successful candidate AFTER completion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW,decades ago I was involved with an institution &quot;admissions&quot; process. As an example a &quot;dental&quot; applicant who showed interest/proficiency in a mechanical area (rebuilding car motors- model building- art would have consideration over a candidate with just a good grade in say biology. Why? Because the first candidate showed a &quot;fine motor skills&quot; which let's face it is something that would serve a dentist working in your mouth well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you need to consider whether you are the right person to even write the letter. You might even decide to tell your friend to consider a better person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T13:41:30.700" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3722" CreationDate="2011-08-25T13:48:35.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The FAQ does a good job. That being said, I'd be tempted to suggest that the &quot;what questions not to ask&quot; be the FIRST part of the FAQ. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, who reads FAQs unless that is the last recourse, anyway? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T13:48:35.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3722" CreationDate="2011-08-25T13:57:30.550" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like that you open with &quot;Questions you would typically ask a home contractor.&quot; That's a great way to get across, very simply, what type of questions you deal with. You avoid needing to define specifics (though you do that to); instead, you're focusing on the &lt;em&gt;type&lt;/em&gt; of expertise you're offering, which I find very appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very minor rewrite suggestions - consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;Questions you should not ask include:&lt;/code&gt; into &lt;code&gt;We do **not** deal with the following topics:&lt;/code&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;Questions not related to the home, including hobby projects, cars, and landscaping&lt;/code&gt; into &lt;code&gt;Questions not related to home improvement projects (such as hobby projects, cars, or landscaping)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to include something about pricing being off-topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, though, I think this FAQ presents its points in a clear and straightforward manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T13:57:30.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3729" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3730" CreationDate="2011-08-25T14:29:41.170" Score="3" ViewCount="948" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but here goes -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often find myself writing out emails that follow similar themes e.g. I've read through a document and have some questions, I'm asking for feedback on a proposal etc. Every time I write such an email I struggle with how best to express what I'm trying to say. Does anyone know of an on-line repository of sample emails that I could use as a starting template? I realise that I'll have to be careful not keep sending the 'same' email to people but I think the templates might help me get over the email writers block that I frequently seem to experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2524" OwnerDisplayName="ipr101" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-25T17:33:09.497" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T17:33:09.497" Title="Email templates" Tags="|resources|email|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3729" CreationDate="2011-08-25T15:14:36.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.savvy-business-correspondence.com/SamplesBizLetters.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is a link&lt;/a&gt; that I have used in the past to generate some e-mail templates. I ended up creating several as forms in MS Outlook. This link includes links to a few other collections, so you'll find several different examples to cover just about any kind of business e-mail you may need. (These are actually samples of business letters, but you can still modify them to create an e-mail template.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just in case you are interested, I am including a link to show how to &lt;a href=&quot;http://support.microsoft.com/kb/258256&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;create e-mail forms&lt;/a&gt; in Outlook 2003. The process for Outlook 2007 is very similar. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T15:14:36.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="108" CreationDate="2011-08-25T15:28:27.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a Facebook group called Indie Writers Unite which has an ongoing thread that is attempting to do this. So far I believe they have about seven chapters completed in a fantasy novel. One person will write a chapter and then it gets handed off to the next person to write the next chapter. Last I saw they were looking for people to help contribute to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T15:28:27.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3707" CreationDate="2011-08-25T20:44:19.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reverse dictionaries being what they are[1], often your best bet is to think of &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; word that sorta-kinda fits the concept — maybe not the best fit, just something in the right ballpark — and then use a thesaurus to find a better word. (Rinse and repeat as necessary.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to ask on English.SE, make sure you show your work: describe what words you've found/tried, and why they're not quite what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] That is, more or less useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1625" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T20:44:19.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3721" CreationDate="2011-08-26T02:15:57.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very typical structure, not already mentioned, is to write a popular standalone book and realise afterwards that instead of starting afresh for your second book, you can write two more books in the same setting or with the same characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps this is more common in the world of film.  Even &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt;, an example given in another answer, wasn't conceived as part of a series until after it (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_wars#Production_history&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;). It didn't become &lt;em&gt;Episode IV: A New Hope&lt;/em&gt; until after &lt;em&gt;The Empire Strikes Back&lt;/em&gt; was released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's anything wrong with this approach. It's hard to write even one good book. If you do happen to write one, and it turns out some of your characters are still alive at the end, then it's time to consider whether you can add another book or two, and what structure the series will have.  If you start out trying to write a trilogy, you may find you've bitten off a lot more than you can chew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2526" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T02:15:57.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3734" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3737" CreationDate="2011-08-26T05:56:23.607" Score="8" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I have a few articles published, they were easy fixed rates.  Today, however, I've received this email (identifying details removed):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We need a writer to put together descriptions of --------------&#xA;  ------------------ for our -------------- website. Is this&#xA;  something you would be interested in? If so, can you please send some&#xA;  writing examples / rates for work, be they hourly or per word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does one come up with rates for this? I've found some pieces on about.com etc but they are like $10-$90 per hour, which is so vague it's almost useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestions appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2498" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T18:58:27.423" Title="How to determine rates to charge as a freelance writer" Tags="|business-writing|websites|freelance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3735" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3736" CreationDate="2011-08-26T08:07:45.767" Score="4" ViewCount="493" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine (no, really!) is well on his way of writing a unofficial/unauthorized biography of Steve Jobs. In my opinion it is a fantastic read and he did a lot of research and has a long list of sources to back the story up. He is not a professional writer and doesn't have any credentials in that regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither he, nor I, nor any of our friends have any contacts or experience with the publishing industry. He contacted some local Australian agents a while ago but all of them basically said that he needs to get at least an article published in a respected magazine or newspaper before they take a look at his book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He tried to do that for a while but I think he got frustrated because all the companies he has contacted say basically the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has since published the book as a blog. I think he did it in the hope to gain readers and a following and to use this to convince publishers to give his book a chance but I think gaining a large following is probably as hard as finding a publisher and I don't see it happening soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely there must be a big market for a book like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how can he find a publisher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="222" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T12:53:47.163" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T12:44:19.327" Title="How could my friend publish his Steve Jobs biography?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3735" CreationDate="2011-08-26T11:30:21.090" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fastest way to take advantage of the current publicity that is focused on Steve Jobs would be to self-publish your book. You can go to Amazon Kindle to get it out as an e-book and have it available to sell within a few days. If you want to make it available in print format, you can use CreateSpace (also an Amazon company). Either avenue gives you a quick and inexpensive means of getting your book published quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I would caution your friend to make sure that he includes in the title that this is the &lt;em&gt;unauthorized biography&lt;/em&gt;. Even as such, there are a lot of people who may be interested in learning more about the man, especially since he is garnering so much attention ion the press right now. He really needs to take advantage of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, it would be a good idea for him to put together some sample chapters and a query letter to sedn out to some agents here in the US. Because of the fact that Jobs is so newsworthy right now, they might have a chance to sell this manuscript to a traditional publisher. In the meantime, if he is selling it himself as an e-book, he may be able to start getting some interest stirred up in the book and maybe even make a little money while waiting out the traditional process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some who would caution that self-publishing as an e-book will prevent you from obtaining a traditional publishing contract, but that is not true. There are more and more authors today who are making this kind of move and proving to be very successful at it. The key is in having a quality product ready to sell, and from the little bit I read, I believe he does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T11:30:21.090" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3734" CreationDate="2011-08-26T18:58:27.423" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a hard question to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've set $20/hr as my personal goal for writing. And I'm making it, but it averages out strangely.  I might spend twenty hours on a short story that will only earn $60 because I want exposure to a new market - I'm essentially using the story as an advertisement, not as a tool for earning money.  I compensate for that by making more than $20 an hour for my novels, at least so far, but maybe I wouldn't if I also counted all the time I spend networking and writing promo work and whatever else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I'm essentially just playing a game, because I love writing and would do it for free.  I also have a stable, well-paid job, so I don't NEED the extra money from writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to make a living at something, you need to take things a bit more seriously.  But I'd ask yourself a few questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What can you afford?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are you taking time away from other projects to work on this one?&#xA;  Roughly how much would you earn on the other projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How bad do you want this job?  (ie. is it just another job, or would&#xA;  it give you valuable exposure, a foot in the door somewhere, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What's the market like (I know, this one is tough)? What can the&#xA;  company afford to pay you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those last ones are probably the ones you're having trouble with, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to put the question back to the people who contacted you.  Respond with a writing sample, as they've requested, but say &quot;rates negotiable&quot;.  Let them come to you with a number.  It might work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T18:58:27.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1043" CreationDate="2011-08-26T19:01:07.843" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.librarything.com&quot;&gt;LibraryThing&lt;/a&gt; is a good source for this. They have regular book giveaways where authors can specifically request a review in exchange of the book itself. This will work with a print copy or an e-book. With Goodreads, they only do giveaways with print copies. I have used LibraryThing with both of my fantasy novels and gotten some reviews as a result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consensus seems to be that you can usually expect 1 review for every ten copies you give away (at least with e-books). The ratio may be better with print books, but you are taking a bit more of a risk because you have to pay for shipping (plus the cost of the actual book). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With either type of giveaway they (LibraryThing) will give you the e-mail addresses and mailing addresses of the people that ultimately get selected to receive your book. Just make sure you follow up with the recipients with a polite thank-you/reminder for taking the time to read and review your book. If they haven't gotten around to it yet, it may help to encourage them to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW - With my first book, I gave away 100 e-books and received 15 reviews at LibraryThing, 11 at Smashwords, 8 at Goodreads, and 6 at Amazon. With my second book I gave away 75 e-books and got 12 reviews at LibraryThing, 9 at Smashwords, 8 at Goodreads, and 6 at Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T19:46:12.267" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T19:46:12.267" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3740" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3743" CreationDate="2011-08-25T16:27:07.113" Score="6" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does it sound strange to use the verb &quot;to say&quot; after a question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &quot;'Why is it called a memorial?' &lt;strong&gt;said&lt;/strong&gt; Laura.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to have written this, I would have used &quot;&lt;strong&gt;asked&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I alone in feeling that it sounds a little strange with &quot;said&quot;, or am I just imagining it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="ghshtalt" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2011-08-29T13:06:47.323" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T13:06:47.323" Title="Is it always ok to use the verb &quot;to say&quot; after a question?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3740" CreationDate="2011-08-25T16:48:49.490" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important part of telling dialogue is the dialogue itself, though many times people make a strong effort to think of &quot;exciting&quot; words to replace the word &quot;said&quot;. Using a &quot;fancy&quot; word normally makes the phrase seem cluttered and unprofessional. It detracts from the actual dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Said&quot; in the context of the question is acceptable. It seems weird, but it is technically correct.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like &lt;a href=&quot;http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/crafttechnique/qt/dialoguetags.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fictionwriting.about.com's description&lt;/a&gt; of what happens when someone goes too far with dialogue tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28663" OwnerDisplayName="jos_mh" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T16:56:58.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3740" CreationDate="2011-08-25T17:30:09.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Am I alone in feeling that it sounds a little strange with &quot;said&quot;, or&#xA;  am I just imagining it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, you're not alone. &quot;Asked&quot; is more natural sounding, although &quot;said&quot; is technically correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2544" OwnerDisplayName="kekekela" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T17:30:09.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3740" CreationDate="2011-08-25T17:43:12.093" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is 'Creative License' at work. The author feels the question is more in the nature of a statement than in the nature of a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be any descriptor, and not just 'said'. It depends on what the writer intends to convey. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Why is it called a memorial?' &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt; Laura'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eliciting no response, Laura &lt;em&gt;repeated&lt;/em&gt;, 'Why is it called a memorial?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Infuriated at the nonchalant disregard, Laura &lt;em&gt;shrilled&lt;/em&gt; 'WHY IS IT CALLED A MEMORIAL?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to answer your specific question: no, it isn't always Ok to use 'said' after a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A question can be &lt;em&gt;said, asked, sputtered, gasped, wondered, interjected, whispered...&lt;/em&gt; it really depends on the context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the usage 'correct'? Yes. &#xA;Is it good &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt;? You're the judge.Its hard to say with just one line in isolation. Perhaps a few preceding and following lines from the same excerpt (if it is an excerpt) would have helped establish the context better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11761" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T17:43:12.093" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3740" CreationDate="2011-08-26T23:30:12.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a matter of prose style, not language or grammar. &lt;code&gt;Said&lt;/code&gt; is neutral enough to use in virtually any context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw an interview with a famous writer, I think Carl Hiassen, where he gave a number of rules for writing good novels, and one of them was (to paraphrase) &quot;never use any verb other than &lt;code&gt;say&lt;/code&gt; for dialogue&quot; - the idea being to let the dialogue carry the sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="AAT" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T23:30:12.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2053" CreationDate="2011-08-27T17:41:25.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess it depends. For writing end-user oriented documents such as SAP, JDE step-by-step work instructions on how to do something you don't really need technical background. You need to be a quick learner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2534" LastActivityDate="2011-08-27T17:41:25.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3746" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3752" CreationDate="2011-08-27T21:54:43.713" Score="5" ViewCount="2624" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm fleshing out a novel which seems to have enough going on without adding an antagonist. In reality, my main character is her own antagonist. She is warring with herself, battling feelings of guilt after the death of her grandfather and must work through this in order to move on. I've read the thread on writing a book without an antagonist but it seems to be suggesting that it only works in short stories, which is not what I'm going for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a romantic sub-plot, if that helps any. Perhaps I should switch to the romance being the main idea to fix this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2535" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-08-28T00:34:32.313" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T04:09:04.533" Title="If in real life the antagonist is often oneself, shouldn't it work in a full length novel?" Tags="|antagonist|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3746" CreationDate="2011-08-27T22:26:18.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally think it should work, but I never seem to get a lot of support for this idea, so...?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, it works because I think of the protagonist as the main character, and the antagonist as being whatever gets in the protagonist's way.  I really don't believe that the antagonist has to be a person.  This is obvious in survival stories, where the antagonist is nature, or a disaster of some sort, but I think it also works in Romance, and in other genres. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your protagonist has a goal, and there are things that must be overcome before that goal can be reached.  That's your conflict and plot.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you need to be careful that there is external action in your story - having your protagonist sit there and meditate until she finds inner peace isn't going to be all that exciting.  But if she's doing things, and through these actions achieves her goal - yippee, I say!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-08-27T22:26:18.283" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3746" CreationDate="2011-08-27T23:12:31.223" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She is warring with herself, battling feelings of guilt after the death of her grandfather and must work through this in order to move on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fear, doubt, anger, blinding passion and just about any other emotion, especially if it is overpowering, can forge the foundation of an antagonistic force.  I find I enjoy the sinister nature of this type of antagonist. Emotions are often the ultimate blind spot for an individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find myself identifying with these characters.  Who can't identify with internal conflict denying opportunities in life?  I find it frustrating as a reader when the story is too internal and I get bored.  If a character can push through her emotions to move forward and find resolution without boring me then I can enjoy this type of story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not an uncommon theme in manga/anime. In those settings it is the relationships between the characters that provides the external perspective on the emotional state of the main character.  You are often left completely without knowledge until the end of what the real internal conflict is, but you spend the entire series trying to figure it out.  That makes it very engaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2375" LastActivityDate="2011-08-27T23:12:31.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2053" CreationDate="2011-08-27T23:32:20.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done quite a bit of technical writing for healthcare information systems.  There are two major categories that I can identify and each has different requirements.  There are plenty of projects between these two categories with different requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General End User Docs:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documents that non-technical people must use to understand a minimally complex technical system.  An example of this might be the user manual for a medical billing system.  When writing this type of material, very little technical knowledge is needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;API Docs&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documents that programmers use to understand a programming interface for a piece of software.  Poorly written API docs can be fatal to integration efforts.  This does require some technical knowledge, especially an understanding of programming.  You don't need to be a full time programmer, but you should at least understand the basics of programming and anything specifically important to the API you are documenting.  You should be provided a programmer, or someone who understands the API very well, as a resource on this type of project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My company provides a human technical resource when we hire a writer without a technical background in the required area.  If you can work well with a human technical resource, or even a non-human technical resource, it can drastically reduce your need for a technical background.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, it depends on how technical what you are writing is and the resources provided by the hiring entity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2375" LastActivityDate="2011-08-27T23:32:20.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3746" CreationDate="2011-08-28T02:02:23.873" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's perfectly valid to have the main character as the antagonist. &lt;p&gt;&#xA;An example I read recently was &lt;em&gt;If You Could See Me Now&lt;/em&gt; by Cecelia Ahern. The whole novel is about the main character overcoming herself and her past to move forward with her life. There is no other human (or non-human, I suppose) antagonist. The tension comes from whether the main character can get over her issues before changing circumstances mean that she loses what is important to her before she realises how important it is. &lt;p&gt;&#xA;As for romance, that's the trigger the novel uses for her main character's self-discovery. It's important, but it's not the main focus. So I think it's also possible for you to leave it as a sub-plot if you think it works better that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T02:02:23.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2053" CreationDate="2011-08-28T03:27:03.437" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an experienced technical writer specializing in API documentation.  In my experience, in order to be successful a technical writer needs enough technical aptitude to (1) understand the users' needs and (2) probe the subject-matter experts (SMEs).  If all you're going to do is parrot what the SMEs tell you, you're going to miss important details.  SMEs (in any field) have blind spots; they've been living in the depths of their code so long that they can forget that the &quot;obvious&quot; assumptions aren't obvious.  They also tend to have a particular model of how users will use their product, which might be more speculative than reality-based.  (I'm not criticizing them; they often don't have enough information.)  It's the technical writer's job to dig into all that.  (Also the tester's, if you have one.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I hire technical writers I look for a certain threshold of writing skill but then I look for technical aptitude.  I'd rather have a competent writer who understands the technology than a writer who produces excellent prose but needs lots of help to figure out what to write.  It's easier to help the competent writer improve writing than it is to help somebody deeply understand the relevant technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-12-09T03:01:54.113" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T03:01:54.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3746" CreationDate="2011-08-28T03:44:14.833" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need an antagonist. You need some way to force the MC to confront herself. The usual way to do that is to provide an antagonist who presents exactly the right problem to force that self-confrontation. But that's not the only way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story is often three stories. The inner story is about how the main character is her own antagonist. The outer story is an important, meaningful problem on its own... but even more importantly it brings the MC to the point of confronting herself. The third story (typically a relationship story) provides yet another opportunity for the MC to see herself, and at the same time offers exemplars (good and bad) of various ways other people deal with similar inner conflicts. This relationship story is often where someone directly, pointedly, and correctly points out the MC's flaws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds as if your story doesn't provide that outer story, the one the brings the MC ever closer to seeing and confronting herself. That might work... as long as &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; brings her to that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite stories is Kazuo Ishiguro's &lt;em&gt;Remains of the Day.&lt;/em&gt; In that, I'd say that Stevens (the butler MC) is the main antagonist. There is another antagonist or two in the form of his boss's political friends, but the problems they create for him are few, and they are problems only because of his own choice to value his idealized (and obsolete?) sense of duty over fully expressing himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His main problem is how to address his growing mutual attraction with Miss Kenton. Again, the problem is entirely of his own making. She certainly isn't an antagonist in this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these factors slowly but relentlessly drive Stevens into a corner (&lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt; into a corner in a heartbreaking scene in the movie), where he must choose between the risk of human connection and the safety of solitude and duty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: You don't absolutely have to have an antagonist. But you will need some way to force the MC to confront herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2011-08-28T04:09:04.533" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T04:09:04.533" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3735" CreationDate="2011-08-28T12:44:19.327" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look for an agent. Don't give up until you've exhausted everybody who's a good fit. And look beyond Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be sure you're querying agents that actually represent the type of book you're trying to sell. Google found me a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writewords.org.uk/directory/level2_pages.asp?subtypeid=81&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of agents who represent biographies&lt;/a&gt;; you could start there. Another great way is to look up books similar to what you're writing, and check if they had an agent representing them (who is open to submissions). I'll add that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sheilaableman.com/page5.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;my first name, chosen at random&lt;/a&gt; asks for sample chapters right with the initial query, so I don't think the &quot;no previous publication&quot; barrier is as insurmountable as you've made it out to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publishing online is a mistake.&lt;/strong&gt; That keeps him from being able to sell first publication rights; that can be a total and immediate deal-killer unless his blog is astoundingly successful. Again, since I think you've still got a good shot with an agent and publisher, then blog-publishing is an act of desperation. Damage-control as much as you can, if you're still hoping to land a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T12:44:19.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3701" CreationDate="2011-08-28T12:51:56.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished watching the 1976 film Network about a fictitious television network, but that mentions the other real networks (such as ABC) and real companies (e.g. Disney, IBM, AT&amp;amp;T, Union Carbide). The disclaimer at the end of the film refers to &lt;strong&gt;firms&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AwgXf.png&quot; alt=&quot;The events, characters and firms depicted in the photoplay are ficticious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual firms, is purely coincidental.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The events, characters and firms depicted in the photoplay are ficticious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual firms, is purely coincidental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of disclaimer is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.fi/search?q=The%20events,%20characters%20and%20firms%20depicted%20in%20the%20photoplay%20are%20ficticious.%20Any%20similarity%20to%20actual%20persons,%20living%20or%20dead,%20or%20to%20actual%20firms,%20is%20purely%20coincidental.&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;quite common&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2537" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T12:51:56.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3715" CreationDate="2011-08-28T21:51:12.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have much hands-on experience with recommendations. Here's my thoughts from a writing perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of a great recommendation is to explain what makes a particular person &lt;strong&gt;stand out&lt;/strong&gt;. That means you need to be able to describe, at least to yourself, what makes this one person special. One way to do that is to heap on superlatives, just generally explaining that the person is extremely extremely awesome. This approach is giving you trouble - it's exaggerated and plagued both by buzzwords and &quot;recommendation inflation.&quot; The other way is to write well enough that you manage to convey the person's uniqueness and special qualities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specific is better than vague. Refer to particular characteristics and incidents rather than &quot;general awesomeness&quot;; give &lt;strong&gt;specific examples&lt;/strong&gt; and make clear why they were impressive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sounding personal, to my mind, adds a &lt;em&gt;ton&lt;/em&gt; to a recommendation, because (to my mind) a sincere recommendation is better than a generically glowing one. Of course, you have to balance this with sounding professional. But yes, you can do both. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand, &quot;impartial&quot; may be overrated - you're &lt;em&gt;recommending&lt;/em&gt; the guy; you'd &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; be on his side, or why are you signing your name? :P What you mean by this is that you want your recommendation to sound &lt;strong&gt;sound and well-judged&lt;/strong&gt; rather than somebody cheer-leading a pal just because the pal needed a favor. So what you're going for isn't impartiality, it's establishing your own credentials. You do that by backing up your recommendation with good reasoning and demonstrations (showing that your opinion is well-considered and well-supported), and by referring to substantial achievements (both yours and the recomendee's) which show that you're experienced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The biggest concern is your target audience. The trouble is, if everybody's recommended as &quot;brilliant&quot; and &quot;enthusiastic,&quot; then a more realistic recommendation is likely to fall short, and seem like a snub, or at least an unenthusiastic recommendation. So you need to get a sense of both what the target reviewer is looking for/willing to accept, and of your own eloquence of portrayal - whether or not your honest, sincere recommendation is effective enough to be clearly positive and enticing to somebody who doesn't know you or your colleague.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I repeat the proviso: I've got no experience with writing or receiving recommendation letters. I don't know what's actually effective or expected. I just know what I myself would want to write, and to have written about me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T21:51:12.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3395" CreationDate="2011-08-29T02:53:14.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may come across as a bit odd, and like a lot of work, but I do all of my writing in a WordPress blog.  I am producing 2-4 ebooks a month for clients right now, so I needed a system that was efficient in the long run, if work intensive to set up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Organization&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I create a new category for each work and subcategories for chapters.  I use an exceptionally minimal theme that was simple to modify to use my own css class naming conventions and html tags.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Manual Workflow&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My original workflow required that I view-source and copy/paste the relevant portion into a text editor.  The benefit was everything had the correct css classes and html tags already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Beyond the Manual Workflow&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've since written a plugin that will take an pull all of the subcategories out of a main category and compile it into a single html document and embed my default styles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Tertiary Benefits&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Versioning&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using WP to write also nets me the benefit of auto version saving so I can always go back and check out where I've been.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Existing Plugins&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are also a number of WP plugins that I find extremely useful like language complexity analysis, passive voice checking and some style checkers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customization&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The immense power of WP's plugin engine means that you can really make it do just about anything you'd like it to.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I wrote a plugin that essentially does 90% of the manual work for me.  I usually end up opening the output file in DreamWeaver and customizing the css a bit before submission to my clients.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some of my clients require documents delivered in LaTeX format.  I was able to write a plugin that also exports in that format as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Body of Work&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using WP also allows me to store my entire body of work in my WP database.  It is searchable, well indexed and available on anything from my desktop to my telephone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This centralization also makes it very easy for me to ensure my work is backed up by a world class technology company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Note Taking&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also use my WP for taking notes on things I am either writing about or thinking about writing about.  I find this to be very convenient.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the manual method to be more efficient than MS Word. The automation I now have is so much better that I shudder at the thought of losing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--Edit--&#xA;I just finished reading the link that the OP gave as their process.  I basically do the same thing but I use my WP tools to handle most of it.  I agree that controlling the html and CSS is the only way to ensure that you are getting what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2375" LastEditorUserId="2375" LastEditDate="2011-08-29T11:51:39.820" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T11:51:39.820" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3759" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3760" CreationDate="2010-10-09T19:54:52.420" Score="18" ViewCount="201030" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the differences between narrative and descriptive writing? What should we keep in mind while writing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2234" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-02-09T10:37:31.667" LastActivityDate="2021-01-19T21:19:02.860" Title="What are the differences between narrative and descriptive writing?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3759" CreationDate="2010-10-09T20:56:35.750" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Narrative writing tells a story or part of a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Descriptive writing vividly portrays a person, place, or thing in such a way that the reader can visualize the topic and enter into the writer’s experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thewritingsite.org/resources/genre/narrative.asp&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thewritingsite.org/resources/genre/descriptive.asp&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in narrative writing, the writer is perfectly capable of telling you the plot of the story, while in descriptive writing there does not have to be a plot, but something has to become very easy for the reader to visualize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at the Lord of the Rings. The way J.R.R. Tolkien describes a hobbit is very descriptive, and the reason the movies were so successful was not only because the story was told correctly (the book being narrative writing also), but because the readers did not have to come up with their own imagination of a hobbit (or other figures, places, and such). They were described in detail, giving everybody a very precise framework of imagination to work from. Therefore everybody could relate to and agree upon the characters and the make-up of the artists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="malach" LastEditorUserId="3857" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T14:55:23.607" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T14:55:23.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3761" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-29T18:48:04.673" Score="6" ViewCount="8793" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a literary essay in English what tense should be used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Past as in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gatsby’s parties were ostentatious and exquisite&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or present as in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gatsby’s parties are ostentatious and exquisite&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another example:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His house is a ‘colossal affair.’ &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As opposed to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His house was a ‘colossal affair.’ &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Proffesor In English" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-29T20:45:37.573" LastActivityDate="2017-07-04T07:29:05.367" Title="Tense of Literary Essay" Tags="|essay|tenses|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3761" CreationDate="2011-08-29T20:12:25.320" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your essay is analytical (and I'm struggling to think of any other reason you'd write an essay about &lt;i&gt;The Great Gatsby&lt;/i&gt;) then I'd put it in the present tense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Gatsby loves Daisy, but Daisy is married to Tom. Gatsby doesn't have the bloodline to impress her; all he has is money. So he throws lavish affairs at his ostentatious house in a effort to show her how &lt;i&gt;riche&lt;/i&gt; he is, and only comes off looking painfully &lt;i&gt;nouveau.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though the book is in past tense, as you read it you are in the book's &quot;present,&quot; so you are in the action. When you're analyzing it, you're analyzing what occurs. You'd use past tense if you were talking about something which happened in the character's past:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Jane Eyre is hired by Mr. Rochester as a governness. When he asks her if she can play the piano, she modestly replies, &quot;A little,&quot; and proceeds to reel out some Chopin. She learned the piece when she was a child, when she lived at Lowood. Mr. Rochester snorts at how English girls are brought up to downplay their achievements.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T20:12:25.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3766" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3770" CreationDate="2011-08-30T02:43:25.157" Score="2" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have downloaded Scribe from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiosis.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.xiosis.com&lt;/a&gt; and have been giving it a go. So far its all its advertised to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is I have written a long article on Scribe and phrase suggestion is not suggesting phrases from the document. Its just suggesting normal word completion. Type assist enabled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can shed some light on how to enable phrase completion I'd really appreciate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2549" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-08-30T12:11:22.887" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T14:28:05.887" Title="Phrase suggestion on Xiosis Scribe 2011" Tags="|software|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3761" CreationDate="2011-08-30T12:57:20.743" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest past tense but with a caveat-&#xA;if the essay is for a specific publication, audience, or purpose that should be the guide as to what tense to use.  Of course make sure the same tense is used throughout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T12:57:20.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3766" CreationDate="2011-08-30T14:28:05.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scribe learns the phrases from the document when the document is saved. To have Scribe suggest phrases for completion from your article, simply click 'save' and save it. Auto saving does not count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T14:28:05.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2293" CreationDate="2011-08-30T15:01:37.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiosis.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Xiosis Scribe 2011&lt;/a&gt;. It is a word processor with an OCR feature. Its easy to use and supports OCR for multiple languages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T15:01:37.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3715" CreationDate="2011-08-30T16:20:23.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure you have a job specification on hand and relate relevant experience for the new job.  General platitudes are best avoided.  Re-read the letter thinking &quot;What justification do I have to rejecting this candidate based on this letter?&quot;.  If you cannot come with anything, you probably did a good job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, if this is a professional reference, do consult with your local HR as a &quot;bad&quot; reference could well end up with you being sued. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2520" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T16:20:23.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="295" CreationDate="2011-08-30T17:16:45.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try these classic writers: Jerome K. Jerome, James Thurber, H. H. Munro, Mark Twain, Somerset Maugham and Thackeray. The last few are pretty good at satire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want modern writers, try Terry Pratchett, Simon Rich, Allison Silverman, Woody Allen, Steve Martin and Billy Kimball. The last few have been writing for several media including television. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T17:16:45.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3636" CreationDate="2011-08-30T17:28:00.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on what quality you want to maintain. For high quality you would want to do citations every time you &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)&quot;say something, which is based on information/data from one of the sources?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) and &quot;when quoting or paraphrasing, or repeating facts/figures&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are submitting your manuscript for review by academic sources you might get accused of plagiarism if you don't. Peer reviewers would reject them. Either way, its bad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T17:28:00.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2363" CreationDate="2011-08-30T17:30:11.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is common practice to include a summary/abstract at the beginning of your document especially if it is going to be for academic purposes. Almost all peer review journal articles have them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T17:30:11.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3776" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3820" CreationDate="2011-08-30T18:38:23.030" Score="9" ViewCount="402" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am exploring engaging a Ghost writer to partner with me on the development of a non-fiction (well, mostly) business book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the critical elements of the agreement that need to be included? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2460" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T15:04:19.097" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T15:04:19.097" Title="What to include in agreement with a Ghost Writer. ." Tags="|publishing|legal|non-fiction|contracts|ghostwriter|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="295" CreationDate="2011-08-30T20:18:44.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) published a &lt;a href=&quot;http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/writing-funny.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; on writing humor that could help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There he covers topics, word-choice, analogies, and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="842" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T20:18:44.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3670" CreationDate="2011-08-30T21:13:33.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to disagree with your original premise.  I'm assuming from what you wrote (&quot;am writing a manuscript... it's my first attempt&quot;) that this is the first draft.  If it is the first draft, I would suggest that you just put in the words you think of and keep writing.  The key of this part is to get the story told, not necessarily worry about exactly how it is told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you get to the revision stage, you can look at the chapter/section/excerpt and see if you are using the phrase too often, and if you are you can decide which places you want to change, and which to leave the same.  Then you can have other readers look it over as well to give you more feedback about if they are obtrusive or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="842" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T21:13:33.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3780" CreationDate="2011-08-30T22:01:59.850" Score="12" ViewCount="1851" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been doing websites for 16 years, but am new to writing a blog. Websites pages change all the time, but it seems to me that blog posts are relatively static once they've been posted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I want to change something in a blog post, what's the accepted way of doing so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering that a blog post may get comments, some of which may point out mistakes or inaccuracies in the post, it seems to me that it should be clear where you've changed a post subsequent to any comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen the strikethrough used a fair bit, but sometimes that seems to be done for comic effect. So, is there any standard way in the blogospehere of highlighting changes to the text of a blog post?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T03:20:39.363" Title="What's the proper etiquette/format for updating a blog post?" Tags="|editing|blog|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3779" CreationDate="2011-08-30T22:13:18.770" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;For inconsequential changes you can just edit it.  For anything substantial (&quot;I meant to say I &lt;em&gt;disagree&lt;/em&gt; with...&quot;), I've often seen an explicit notation: &quot;Edited to add: ...&quot; &quot;Edit: ...&quot;, or the like.  If there have been relevant comments, you can include a timestamp for the edit so people will see it was after the comment.  This is what I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T22:13:18.770" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3779" CreationDate="2011-08-30T23:58:00.463" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;When in doubt, ask yourself: &quot;Would my readers care if they didn't know about this change? Would they think I was trying to deceive them by not pointing it out?&quot; If the answer to either of these is &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt;, note the change. If not, and you're simply making the reading experience smoother and better, make the change and leave it be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3779/whats-the-proper-etiquette-format-for-updating-a-blog-post/3780#3780&quot;&gt;Monica's answer&lt;/a&gt;: for fixing typos or maybe adding a link, no need to indicate changes. When actually adding anything of substance, it's good form to indicate the changes. This kind of transparency is particularly important for corporate blogs or news blogs, where more people are scrutinizing the posts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that seeing something published can change how writers view their own work, and I've had writers request changes minutes after posting. I generally allow a grace period for that, of a few minutes or so. Past that, I'd want to indicate changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have significant changes to make of the sort where you've changed your mind on something fundamental, perhaps you should be writing a second post. I've seem people write articles discussing how they've re-thought their position, and explaining &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;. (In that case, you can also add a link to the end of the original post, pointing at the new post.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, try to be transparent where possible and sensible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T23:58:00.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3779" CreationDate="2011-08-31T03:20:39.363" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no real rules. From my perspective there are two major keys to doing edits right.  Firstly you should remember to be as transparent as possible.  Secondly you should pick a method of doing edits that is consistent and maintained so people learn what to expect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally add edit notes to everything when I edit.  The other answers here are all good, but one thing I didn't notice being addressed is when you are correcting something referenced in a comment.  Here is how I handle that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a correct statement. This is an incorrect statement. This is another correct statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jane corrects my second statement in a comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a correct statement. &lt;strike&gt;This is an incorrect statement.&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Edit: Jane corrected me in the comment section.)&lt;/em&gt; This is another correct statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way everything is still properly referenced and people can see the changes in that situation.  I like to keep the record of the conversation as transparent as possible.  For other general edits I just use an edit note on each instance if it is substantial. If I make a series of edits that are not substantial I will add an edit note to the footer with a summary.  I don't worry too much about edit notes until the post is about an hour old or has its first comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2375" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T03:20:39.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3776" CreationDate="2011-08-31T07:20:10.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ivanhoffman.com/ghost.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;he is&lt;/a&gt;. This should be a good starting point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you also want to have a look at the ghostwriter side, visit some internet sites offering this service and read their conditions (e.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pegr.com/ghostwriter.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Penn Group&lt;/a&gt;; first Google hit, I know nothing about them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(While looking up services, I stumbled over &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanbar.org/newsletter/publications/gp_solo_magazine_home/gp_solo_magazine_index/trialprac_ghostwriter.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;. I do not understand its content, but maybe it is useful to you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T07:20:10.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3957" CreationDate="2011-08-31T15:29:05.250" Score="6" ViewCount="537" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our ~1500-page documentation set contains numerous screen shots and related graphics (schematics, flow diagrams, etc).  Sometimes the user interface changes and we have to update all the affected graphics.  The affected graphics are not necesarily all in one book; they can be spread across several.  In short, they could be anywhere, so we rely on writers' knowledge of the doc set and sometimes just paging through the whole thing looking for graphics that are no longer correct.  The first is fragile and the second is tedious (and also can be fragile).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the XML doc source itself I can (and do) embed internal tags that I can later search for.  Think of that as meta-data for the docs.  I'm looking for a way to associate meta-data with images, so I can find all the images that show such-and-such feature or such-and-such widget or whatever.  I could set up an external index file or database, but that means the meta-data is far from the images and I worry about it staying up to data (will every writer always remember to update the database when he creates or edits an image and its meta-data changes?).  Is there anything clever I can do to get the meta-data closer to the data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image formats are PNG for screen shots, GIF for line art.  Is there any tool that would let us embed, and query, meta-data right into files in those formats?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our existing relevant tools are: Perforce for source control, DocBook XML for the doc source, Ant for build targets.  On the graphics side, we use PaintShop Pro and/or SnagIt for taking/editing screen shots, and mostly Visual Thought for line-art (though we have access to InkScape and can learn it if that would help).  Our desktops are Windows (XP now, 7 later this year).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The screen shots also have text implications -- we usually don't &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; have a screen shot, but rather a screen shot and text that talks about the options or what you can do with that tool.  The screen shots are integral to the documentation, and if a screen shot has to be updated we also have to look at the places where that image is used.  Finding those points in the text is easy (I can just grep the source for the file name of each image when I update it), but finding the screen shots that have to change in the first place (because the UI changed) is much harder.  This question is about managing that process so we can keep all the documentation up to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T20:26:47.250" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T16:46:32.157" Title="How can I manage screen shots and other graphics for maintenance?" Tags="|technical-writing|software|tools|maintenance|graphics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3786" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3787" CreationDate="2011-08-31T17:17:53.833" Score="17" ViewCount="1294" Body="&lt;p&gt;For those who don't know what a Mary Sue is: see &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, there are far too many ways a character can be a Mary Sue, as seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CommonMarySueTraits&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Many websites that offer tests to see if your character is a Mary Sue give pages of questions as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a quick way to know I have created a Mary Sue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;[Please note: the above links go to the website TVTropes, which is an addictive time-suck. Visit at your own risk. &amp;mdash;ed.]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T06:32:51.190" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T17:07:31.200" Title="Is there a quick way to know I have created a Mary Sue?" Tags="|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3786" CreationDate="2011-08-31T17:47:47.597" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your character sounds too good to be true, then it is probably a Mary Sue. If your character always seems to be in the middle of everything and is always the one to resolve any issues/problems, then it could be a Mary Sue. If your character is more attractive/powerful/impressive than any other character by a mile, then it is probably a Mary Sue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your story is specifically about super-heroes, your character should not exhibit supernatural tendencies. Also, if you find yourself relating very closely to the character and feel that you are modeling it after your own traits/preferences/ideals, then you are definitely leaning towards a Mary Sue!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, just evaluate whether or not your character is realistic. If it seems to be instilled with any form of talent that gives it an unfair advantage over other characters, then you need to tone it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more important note: simply being aware of this pitfall goes a long, long way towards avoiding it in your own writing. Once you're sufficiently aware of the effect, with any luck you'll know it when you see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T06:35:35.337" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T06:35:35.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3786" CreationDate="2011-08-31T19:22:02.370" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obvious Mary Sues are easy to spot... subtle ones less so. Just as it's very hard to proofread your own work, it's often hard for us to see when we've made a character unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion: get an &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1716/why-does-an-author-need-an-editor&quot;&gt;editor.&lt;/a&gt; Or at least a beta reader. Find someone who will be honest with you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T19:22:02.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3790" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-31T22:56:22.760" Score="5" ViewCount="5350" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the references list (usually at the end of a book), I've noticed that authors like to include references to other materials. However these materials are not so-called &quot;referenced&quot; or &quot;linked&quot; at all throughout the entire book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering why did they put that list there? Are they &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to put a list of references for materials they have referred to and adopted information from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per the replies, I'm actually particularly interested in: Do we have to inform the authors of those books/materials, that we have the title of their books in our &quot;bibliography&quot; section ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2558" LastEditorUserId="2558" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T13:11:45.123" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T21:37:52.463" Title="Why do authors usually put a reference section at the end of a book when they are not referenced throughout the entire book?" Tags="|publishing|book|money|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3790" CreationDate="2011-08-31T23:44:38.477" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually a writer will include books that they either read or referred to as part of their research for their own book. Even though they may not quote specific passages from the original source, they are making sure that the reader knows that they had to seek additional information on one or more topics within their own book. They are not necessarily &quot;required&quot; to do this, but it is a good practice, just in case someone challenges you later and asks how you knew something about which you wouldn't normally have any knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T23:44:38.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3790" CreationDate="2011-09-01T02:19:03.723" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like maybe you're working through the difference between a Works Cited page and a Bibliography.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Works Cited pages are, as the title suggests, lists of the sources actually cited in the work.  Bibliographies include all the sources the author consulted in writing the new work, whether they were directly referenced or not.  This is based on the idea that the books contributed to the author's understanding of the topic, even if they weren't &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different fields have different conventions re. whether to use Works Cited or Bibliography.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T02:19:03.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3798" CreationDate="2011-09-01T03:24:13.703" Score="4" ViewCount="1638" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing in first person, if the POV character talks with a certain dialect or type of diction (eg. &quot;I ain't got all day! Hurry it up, will ya?&quot;) should they narrate with the same accent, or can they narrate in a normal voice without the accent? &lt;p&gt;&#xA;I have a POV character who talks in such a rough, uneducated manner, but I cringe at the thought of writing whole chapters that way. Does anyone have any suggestions how to approach it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastEditorUserId="2410" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T06:48:31.983" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T14:23:25.110" Title="First Person Voice - Same as speaking?" Tags="|style|characters|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3793" CreationDate="2011-09-01T04:19:46.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your POV character speaks with an accent and he is the one narrating the story, then you should be consistent with the voice, accent and all. The only exception would be if the character states very specifically that the accent is a fake and is done only for the benefit of those with whom he interacts. If this is going to be a problem, then you may want to change your story to use a different narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T04:19:46.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3795" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3797" CreationDate="2011-09-01T04:31:51.380" Score="18" ViewCount="35887" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although the use of &quot;&lt;em&gt;had had&lt;/em&gt;&quot; is grammatically correct, it doesn't read well and seems awkward to me. Take for example the following sentence: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had had enough of this nonsense and was ready to move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a better alternative to using &quot;&lt;em&gt;had had&lt;/em&gt;&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="5454" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T00:55:51.737" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T02:54:02.030" Title="Other options for &quot;had had&quot;?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-07-26T00:51:09.667" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3796" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3804" CreationDate="2011-09-01T04:35:07.317" Score="4" ViewCount="1023" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do traditional publishers always use offset printing for the books they publish, or do they sometimes use POD to make books available? If they do use POD, is it primarily for older titles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="24522" LastEditDate="2017-04-20T05:07:44.823" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T05:07:44.823" Title="Do traditional publishers ever make use of &quot;print on demand&quot; (POD)?" Tags="|publishing|printing|print-on-demand|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3795" CreationDate="2011-09-01T04:45:15.663" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rewriting to avoid &amp;quot;had had&amp;quot; is almost always a good idea. It reads even more terribly than it sounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easy way out is to use a contraction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd had enough of this nonsense and was ready to move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...but that's a little cheap. Depending on the context of the quote, you have several options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having had enough of this nonsense, I was ready to move on.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was fed up with this nonsense and ready to move on. &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Damn this nonsense and twirl my whiskers,&amp;quot; I said, fully prepared and capable of moving along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T04:45:15.663" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3793" CreationDate="2011-09-01T05:07:50.457" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;People don't hear themselves as speaking with an accent. &quot;Accent&quot; is always an outside judgment--one person's experience of another person's speech. So if you try to write first person with an accent, you create POV confusion right away. Grammatically it's first person, but it sounds like a third person account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend not trying to spell words the way the character sounds (and especially not the way they sound to someone else). That always slows the reader down, and greatly increases the chance of popping readers out of their fictional trance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, write what the character would write (if they could write). Illustrate the character's education, class, roughness, and attitude not by spelling words the way they sound to others, but by the character's choice of words and grammar. There's no need to misspell words even if the character would. (You can get away with that once or twice, but a little goes a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; long way.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, when the narrator narrates other characters' dialogue, you have a little bit of license to write what the narrator hears. You can use a tiny bit of quirky spelling, but again, a little goes a long way. And note that the narrator will hear accents and dialects only when people speak differently than the narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently read a story in which the first person narrator said &quot;would of.&quot; That simple grammatical flaw (used once or twice in a 10,000 word story) gave me plenty of clues about the character's background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final note: It seems to me that your example doesn't show accent so much as dialect or diction. Those are similarly invisible to the person who speaks them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T05:07:50.457" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3799" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-01T09:34:32.937" Score="3" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got an all persons fictitious disclaimer similar to the one mentioned at &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3701/all-persons-fictitious-disclaimer-ideas-regarding-modification&quot;&gt;All persons fictitious disclaimer — ideas regarding modification?&lt;/a&gt; but where should I place it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind, this is a parody of a real-life magazine [could be considered fan-fiction of a real-life magazine, if you look at it that way], created for a Quark XPress tutorial.&#xA;(not that Quark XPress matters here, any questions on that would be on stackoverflow or serverfault or sqa.stackexchange.com I guess).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, it's &lt;strong&gt;fiction presented in the style of non-fiction&lt;/strong&gt; (a genre mentioned in GCSE and A-Level English textbooks, for anyone reading in the United Kingdom, where I'm from!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you recommend - where should I place the notice? In the header or footer, and on every page, or just after the front cover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2561" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T12:22:37.553" Title="All persons fictitious - where to place it?" Tags="|style|fiction|non-fiction|tone|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3795" CreationDate="2011-09-01T09:50:32.783" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I was tired enough hearing of this nonsense and was ready to move on&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I was in no mood to tolerate any more nonsense and felt ready to move on.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These could work well. Let me know if they fitted in well with your sentence structure; since you've only quoted half of it, I can't really tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2561" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T09:50:32.783" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3799" CreationDate="2011-09-01T11:22:07.837" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally this kind of statement would appear by itself at the beginning of your material. With a print magazine, there are a couple of options. One option would be to place it as small print in a footer on the cover. Another would be to place it by itself in regular print on the very first page inside the cover. The latter would probably be the best option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option for the cover would be to place (A Parody of . . . ) beneath the title. That way you are informing the reader right up front that your magazine is not intended to be taken too seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T11:22:07.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3796" CreationDate="2011-09-01T11:29:53.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;They certainly don't do it traditionally, but Random House recently got some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2009/09/13400/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;press&lt;/a&gt; for launching a POD service, so maybe it's on the way. They do say that it's more of a service for consumers than an expected money-maker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishers may also use POD for production purposes (ARCs, etc.) - I'm not sure about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T11:29:53.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3799" CreationDate="2011-09-01T12:22:37.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're creating this for a Quark tutorial, it's reasonable to assume that it will most frequently (if not always) be seen in the context of &quot;someone learning Quark&quot; rather than &quot;accidentally winds up on newsstand or coffee table.&quot; So I don't think you need to put it on the cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are parodying a magazine, then a magazine has a &lt;em&gt;colophon&lt;/em&gt;, which is a statement in fine print giving information about the authors, publisher, circulation, etc. If you don't want to go that far, at the very least your magazine should have a &lt;em&gt;masthead&lt;/em&gt; listing all the staffers (whether they're real or parody is up to you). I would include your disclaimer in at least 9 pt. type in one of those two spots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[This part is probably more than you need to know, but the best parodies are the ones which parody the most details, so:]&lt;/em&gt; A masthead is usually placed towards the front of the magazine, but not the first few pages (those are too valuable to waste on house material; they're usually ads). The masthead, and TOC, are usually in the first 10 percent of the magazine. The colophon can be at the bottom of the masthead or on the bottom of the last page, depending on whether your last page is featured content or the last of the small ads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T12:22:37.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3796" CreationDate="2011-09-01T12:22:59.143" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the tech book world, I know O'Reilly is moving towards a POD model for many of their books, including a new series that is completely POD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has to do with the anticipated number of sales, I imagine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T12:22:59.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3793" CreationDate="2011-09-01T14:23:25.110" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Elmore Leonard's seventh rule of writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words&#xA;  in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apos­trophes, you&#xA;  won't be able to stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book were intended to be spoken by an actor then it would not include non-standard grammar or contractions. It is understood in theatre and film that the written script is a blueprint and it is up to the actor and a dialogue coach (if necessary) to inflect and add a specific accent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that voice has a flavour even without the use of non-standard punctuation. If you ask a UK Politician how his journey to work was he might reply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The blasted underground was closed between Pimlico and King's Cross,&#xA;  had to use the bally bus service. Most monstrous inconvenience you can&#xA;  imagine.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you asked a cleaner in the House of Commons a less-educated chap from the East End he might reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Got stuck on the tube, didn't I? I tell you what, these jokers might&#xA;  run the country but they can't manage to run the bloody trains, know&#xA;  what I mean?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just the response they give and the way they use language communicates the differences in attitude plainly without recourse to extra apostrophes and patois.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Disclaimer: I don't necessarily agree with Leonard and don't think this advice is universal. But in 99 cases out of 100 it will be. If you have some special reason for breaking this rule then do so. But you probably don't so...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T14:23:25.110" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3806" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3808" CreationDate="2011-09-01T14:24:45.153" Score="3" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know a couple of people who are co-authoring a book, and they have been debating how to go about distinguishing between the two of them in their content. They have an outline of topics that they are discussing, and each is providing their own voice/commentary on each topic individually. As they get ready to merge their content, how should they go about identifying which comments are from which author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To be more specific, the male co-author is a nature photographer, and the female is a zoologist. They met online and agreed to do a seven month trek through Africa, with each chronicling their observations independently, without seeing what the other wrote. At the end of it all, they are merging their content to show each person's perspective. Basically, each chapter is a different incident that occurred during their journey together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T14:59:31.160" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T04:47:41.213" Title="What's the best way to distinguish between co-authors?" Tags="|style|collaboration|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3807" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3809" CreationDate="2011-09-01T14:36:01.820" Score="0" ViewCount="575" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone on another forum asked for advice on a sentence she was writing, so I thought I'd share it here and see what kind of responses we could get. The sentence in question is marked by italics. (I think one or two others could use some help as well, but I'll see what you guys come up with!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fear is a strange thing. On one hand it has the ability to make you&#xA;  stronger if the circumstances are just right. Giving you the strength&#xA;  and clarity of mind to overcome whatever peril you happen to find&#xA;  yourself in. &lt;em&gt;On the other hand, it has the frightening ability to&#xA;  render the sufferer into a frozen vegetative state.&lt;/em&gt; Leaving you in&#xA;  control of nothing more than the blinking of your eyes and the sucking&#xA;  in of short, shallow breaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific question I would like to see answered is this: how can she change this sentence so that it better conveys the immobilizing impact that fear can have on a person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T21:37:47.167" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:37:47.167" Title="How can this sentence better convey the immobilizing impact of fear?" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3806" CreationDate="2011-09-01T14:46:51.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;John Cleese and Robyn Skynner actually used sectional speech headed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robyn:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make the distinction. But their book was dialectic with Cleese interviewing Skynner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general co-authored books are just presumed to be co-authored with no specific division made between who wrote what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some programming books I've read give bylines on chapters but this is usually in overview style books where many different and various topics are covered in one volume, anthology style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are desperate to have their own voice then it might be suitable to identify &quot;Common Content&quot; which is the main body of the text. Then &quot;A's Content&quot; and &quot;B's Content&quot; which are put into separate box out sections where appropriate and relevant. The box outs could be individually formatted and a key given in a &quot;How to use this book&quot; section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the parts of each author are really completely distinct then maybe it would be better to either have bylines by the chapter or even for them to write two completely separate books!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T14:46:51.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3807" CreationDate="2011-09-01T15:01:43.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First impression is that I can't understand why that particular sentence refers to &quot;the sufferer&quot; when all the other sentences talk about &quot;you&quot;. Also not sure of &quot;render you into a frozen vegetative state&quot;. &quot;force you into&quot; (or &quot;send you&quot;) seems much better, IMO (don't ask me why, &quot;render&quot; just doesn't seem right). I also think that some of these sentences shouldn't be separated. Lastly, I would write &quot;on the one hand&quot;, rather than &quot;on one hand&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fear is a strange thing. On the one hand, it has the ability to make&#xA;  you stronger if the circumstances are just right, giving you the&#xA;  strength and clarity of mind to overcome whatever peril you happen to&#xA;  find yourself in. On the other hand, fear also has the frightening&#xA;  ability to force you into a frozen vegetative state, leaving you in&#xA;  control of nothing more than the blinking of your eyes and the sucking&#xA;  in of short, shallow breaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T15:01:43.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3810" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3816" CreationDate="2011-09-01T18:54:39.603" Score="3" ViewCount="4127" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this will vary depending on the type of the story and the characters involved, not to mention the location itself. What I am looking for is some kind of guideline for identifying different aspects of the setting that should be included when you try to work it into your story. Is there some kind of checklist that an author can use to consider what they should include when describing the setting of the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2535" LastEditDate="2011-09-03T00:52:27.170" LastActivityDate="2017-09-29T15:59:27.473" Title="What elements should be included in a story's setting?" Tags="|description|setting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3811" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3819" CreationDate="2011-09-01T19:05:45.290" Score="10" ViewCount="1021" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a setting in one of my stories where a character has to describe a very long series of events, giving the history of an object so that others know more about it. This not only provides the reader with the background information they need, but also sets up other characters in the scene for something major that is yet to come. What can I do to break up this back story to keep it from becoming a long, rambling speech?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2017-08-31T13:06:56.113" Title="How can I break up a lengthy explanation?" Tags="|dialogue|setting|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3811" CreationDate="2011-09-01T19:30:03.323" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you planning to use dialogue or narrative for the description?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If dialogue, and assuming that you've been careful to avoid the 'he exposited' syndrome, in which one character tells another character something that they both know very well as an awkward way for the author to get the information across... I'd try to break up the speech with reactions from others.  We have to assume they care about this, right?  So have them be involved.  They can ask questions, make comments, react emotionally, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're planning to use narrative... I'd try to break it up if possible, to avoid having an info. dump, but I truly believe there are times when you've just got to get the information out there, and sometimes dumping it is the only way.  But if possible, you could give us the information in little bits, only as needed. Or you could bring in some dialogue or characterization to help break it up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T19:30:03.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3811" CreationDate="2011-09-01T19:51:16.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you could go back in time for a chapter or prelude and tell this object's story from a tense that is closer to the important part of it's history. Then when it comes time for the character to describe the history of the object, the reader already knows the story and you can just skip over the part where this character is doing the explaining (&quot;He explained to them the story of the &lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2562" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T19:51:16.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3811" CreationDate="2011-09-01T19:58:23.150" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interrupt the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you read The Hobbit? Gandalf had to make a lengthy explanation, which he didn't want to get boring, so he set up the dwarves and Bilbo to interrupt him from time to time. From a cat flashing by to another character getting in, there is much you can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the character unwilling to talk, but being coaxed into telling the story little by little is another way to achieve this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T19:58:23.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3806" CreationDate="2011-09-01T20:14:50.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the effect they want to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are 2 ways I think are most feasible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Don't &quot;merge&quot;. Write the book in two sections, &quot;What The Artist Felt&quot; and &quot;What The Scientist Observed&quot; are titles that strike my fancy, based on the stereotypes of a photographer and zoologist. In any case, each person gets their own section of the book. Then they'd have the introduction to narrate how they chose to have their own sections, what the  book is all about and why it is divided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Write chronologically, distinguishing points of view. First, organizing each scene in both texts chronologically, name each section a fancy title and make the subtitle the writer's name. The overlapping scenes can be written in third person, talking about them. If the texts were written in first person, or are descriptions and observations, it's fairly easy to do this kind of merging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another way that comes into my mind, but it requires more work than the previous ones: take both chronicles, and write the whole thing in third person perspective. It might or might not work, and will likely require fills-in as there are scenes that are bound to be written by one of them and not by the other. On the other hand, it provides the opportunity to think back, describe things that went unnoticed, and write afterthoughts in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T20:14:50.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3810" CreationDate="2011-09-01T21:42:54.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just the location can be a pretty broad part of the setting. From the country down to the city and then down to the buildings surrounding your characters, depending on what is important to your story. You could also consider what activities are going on around your characters. Are there are plants or wildlife that are relevant or that might add interest to your story? What about the weather or smells or sounds? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2560" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T21:42:54.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3776" CreationDate="2011-09-01T21:50:06.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should identify what your goals are and start from there. You should decide just what the ghost writer's responsibilities are and also identify a means of determining whether or not those responsibilities were met. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2560" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T21:50:06.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3811" CreationDate="2011-09-01T22:37:32.003" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Phil Farrand of &lt;i&gt;The Nitpicker's Guide to Star Trek&lt;/i&gt; called this &quot;being the cabbagehead.&quot; Certain information had to be revealed to the audience, but it was information which the characters would reasonably already know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the writers picked someone in the room to be the &quot;cabbagehead,&quot; meaning someone developed the I.Q. of a cabbage and everything had to be explained to him or her as though s/he had never gone through Starfleet training and years of spaceflight experience. (Counselor Troi got this role a lot on TNG.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practically speaking, you set things up so one or more of your characters is woefully uninformed about whatever it is, and the more informed character(s) have to enlighten the cabbageheads. As far as technique, Kate and iajrz both have excellent suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T22:37:32.003" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3811" CreationDate="2011-09-02T09:53:56.287" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're describing an &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Infodump&quot;&gt;infodump&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;warning: TV Tropes&lt;/em&gt;), and that's a phenomenon best avoided. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is this: by your own description, the explanation is not interesting enough to hold the reader's attention at length; its purpose and significance will only be clear to the reader later in the story; and in this particular instance, it's also &lt;em&gt;long.&lt;/em&gt; You can see why this doesn't make for a great reader experience. It's as though you've got a brilliant, hilarious joke, that only makes sense if you read the first 3 pages of the phone book - and you can't tell your friends why they need to read the pages until they're already through them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the key: &lt;strong&gt;Avoid writing scenes which the reader has no immediate, compelling reason to  want to read.&lt;/strong&gt; So if you're determined to write up a history lesson, you'd damn well better make sure that, at that point, the reader is &lt;em&gt;dying&lt;/em&gt; to hear that lecture. Your other main option is to avoid the lecture entirely by conveying the backstory in other, more compelling ways, usually intertwined with the story and the action. I'll touch on both these options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Prepping the reader for exposition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea here is to give the &lt;em&gt;reader&lt;/em&gt; a strong interest in the details you want to expose. Then they're perfectly happy to listen attentively - they know exactly why they should be interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mysteries of all stripes are based heavily on this approach - solving the case provides a tremendous incentive for the reader to sit through any length of otherwise-dull exposition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes you can make the lecturing character play hard-to-get - basically setting up his information as being hugely important, refusing to reveal it, etc. If you manage this effectively, such a ploy can convince the reader of the exposition's importance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The interest doesn't necessarily have to be plot-related or functional - if the details are charming, lyrical, amusing, controversial, etc., that's often enough to maintain the reader's interest and give him a justification for the piece.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;The Matrix&lt;/em&gt;, Morpheus explains to Neo what the Matrix is. This is straight-out exposition and backstory, but it's one of the coolest, most memorable scenes in the movie. Observe how well the movie establishes that this infodump will solve a question we want answered (&quot;What is the Matrix?&quot;), and that this question is crucially important and monumental (observe all the effort and intrigue and escapades that all sides expended to get Neo this information or to keep it from him). The scene itself is also beautifully presented - Morpheus doesn't just explain; he &lt;em&gt;demonstrates&lt;/em&gt;, he brings in cool, colorful stuff, he makes the explanation fast-paced and action-like even when there's nothing actually going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One proviso is this: differentiate between the reader's interest in the exposition, and a character's interest. For example, you might have a pupil-mentor dynamic between two characters, with the pupil desperately eager to win the mentor's respect by learning well. The reader will be invested in the pupil's goal - but that goal is pleasing the mentor, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; learning the material. That's the means; the details themselves don't interest the reader. If you want the reader invested in the &lt;em&gt;details,&lt;/em&gt; then you've got to give him a reason to care about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Weaving exposition into plot&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critters.org/turkeycity.html&quot;&gt;Turkey City Lexicon&lt;/a&gt; refers to this as &quot;Heinleining.&quot; The idea is that you avoid the need for a long lecture, by having the details you want to expose show up as significant details in the plot &lt;em&gt;without ever stopping the action.&lt;/em&gt; How do you do this? Well, if the details are really that significant, unique, and world-changing, then they probably affect the world in more ways than one. If the Goddess Fifthemia is locked in eternal conflict with the Thermal Demigod Extrynius, then that might well have resulted in the Mythaline Cult creating the Gem of Hypothermia, which is the focus of your story - but probably some other people have noticed and been affected by the issue too, hmmm? So you could portray Fifthemites being bigoted against Extryites, or one of the characters could be an atheist whose farm is declared as holy ground by both gods, and he needs to decide which priest to sell it to. And &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt; are scenes which justify exposition immediately, as you go along - often, trickled in bit by bit, so the reader doesn't even notice he's being exposed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Whichever option you choose,&lt;/strong&gt; I think you'll have found the answer to your question, because the explanation will no longer be a monologue that needs to be broken up into pieces. It will be a &lt;strong&gt;scene&lt;/strong&gt;, with conflict and emotion and goals and reaction; those are constantly present and keep the explanation from turning into a lecture. As a scene, intertwined into the larger story, it might also be taking place in the middle of some larger event - in the middle of a battlefield or a football game or a demonic convent or a snowy hidey-hole in which the characters are waiting for Santa Claus, and all those also serve to keep the explanation from becoming monotonous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: &lt;strong&gt;the best way to avoid boring the reader is to write scenes, not explanations.&lt;/strong&gt; The good part of this is that, with a bit of planning and creativity, explanations can be made part of scenes - and twisted into something much more interesting and compelling than they could ever be on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-09-02T09:53:56.287" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3776" CreationDate="2011-09-02T17:38:56.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of factors that come up and should be negotiated at the beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can structure your agreement for a flat fee (most common) or for a percentage of royalties (less common), or a combination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the payment arrangement, you'll also have to decide on certain legal/copyright and process issues: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;name credit (you'll either have to specify that you be included as co-author, mentioned in the acknowledgments, or are waiving all rights); &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;royalties (waive or include); &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who is doing the research (this is a big chunk of the work so be sure to sort that out before you start); &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;interview access (how many hours the client will be available for interviews/collaboration); &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;payment schedule (many ask for, say, 1/4 of the fee upfront, 1/4 upon completion of research/interviews/outline, 1/4 upon completion of first draft, 1/4 upon completion of final draft). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2546" LastEditorUserId="2460" LastEditDate="2011-09-02T18:28:30.723" LastActivityDate="2011-09-02T18:28:30.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3810" CreationDate="2011-09-03T17:14:02.600" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only do you have to take into account all the senses, but you have to understand which details your narrator would think were worthwhile to mention. When you describing your setting or location, you must think about not only what it says about the main character but also what details the narrator would include or leave out and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say your character is a banker.  They probably wouldn't notice the materials that a house was made of, but they may notice the cars in people driveways.  If your character is instead a carpenter, the type of wood used in the banisters or the sub-par job done on the basement drywall might be the first things they see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastActivityDate="2011-09-03T17:14:02.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-03T19:54:19.440" Score="14" ViewCount="886" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm very appreciative of NaNoWriMo's &quot;your first step is writing a crappy first draft&quot; credo, and I like the motivation that NaNoWriMo encourages. I'm precisely at the point where what I feel I need most is some serious butt-in-chair routine, with less emphasis on writing well, so this credo suits me well right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't feel like I can just start pounding out words at a given cue. I need some sense of plot, setting, character; I don't like &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/11/1046&quot;&gt;pantsing&lt;/a&gt; the entire thing, since my first ideas rarely interest me. I need either a ton of prep work, or else a concept that's very easy to leap straight into and work out as I go along. Right now, I don't have either of these. (I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have a few exciting ideas that require a &lt;em&gt;ton&lt;/em&gt; of prep work.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to be able to start typing real words on Nov. 1st; I don't want to risk tripping up by demanding of myself that I produce complex, meticulous prep-work beforehand (that kind of seems to contradict the &quot;just write stuff&quot; ethos). So: is NaNoWriMo a good fit for me? Is there some kind of preparation and planning that would be useful to me? Do I need to go as far as doing all the prep and planning I would for a &quot;regular&quot; novel-writing effort?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T00:57:59.277" Title="I'm not a great pantser; what kind of preparation do I need for NaNoWriMo?" Tags="|planning|nanowrimo|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3822" CreationDate="2011-09-03T20:11:01.350" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think NaNoWriMo is a great idea for beginning writers, those who just need to get their butt-in-chair time taken care of.  But I don't see a point to it for established writers who already have a system in place that works for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's your ultimate goal for the project?  Do you want something publishable, or are you just trying to get words on a page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want something publishable — have you tried to write a novel before?  What worked, and what didn't work?  You refer to your '&quot;regular&quot; novel writing effort,' but your profile says you only dabble in writing, so maybe your &quot;regular&quot; approach doesn't really work for you.  If that's the case, I don't see the point in doing it again!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never done a formal NaNo project, but I've certainly written the first draft of a novel within a month.  For me, I need to have a clear, almost passionate interest in the character and the setting, and an idea of the main conflict and how it will be resolved.  Once that's in place, for me, the details fit in as I type.  But I have no idea if this is what will work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T00:57:59.277" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T00:57:59.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3822" CreationDate="2011-09-03T20:42:38.457" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;NaNoWriMo would never ever work for me, because without the prep work, it's just logorrhea. But if you're trying to use the butt-in-chair time as a motivator, then instead of &quot;when timer dings, start typing your book,&quot; maybe it should be &quot;when timer dings, start working through your prep work.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all you want to do is get into the habit of writing, then how about &quot;when timer dings, start writing blog post&quot;? or &quot;start writing short story&quot;? Or one exercise we used to do in creative writing classes, which is &quot;when timer dings, write, and do not stop writing under any circumstances until timer dings again in five minutes. Even if what you write is 'I can't think of anything to write about and this is really stupid,' keep writing. Write the alphabet if you have to.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These exercises are not &quot;novels,&quot; to be certain, but they will get you going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-03T20:42:38.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3822" CreationDate="2011-09-04T15:58:24.277" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;So you like NaNo's credo, you embrace the idea, that you are allowed to write a crappy first draft. But it looks like you haven't understood it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know you, but interpreting your question you sound like someone avoiding the real stuff (writing) by finding an excuse that sounds reasonable (prep work). In reality it's only the little sucker in your head fooling you the whole day long. He has only one aim: distracting you from writing. And he is pretty good at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not liking pantsing is totally irrelevant, no-one cares if you're not interested in your first ideas (really, with 99% likelihood it's the little sucker who is not interested). Go, take the challenge and &lt;strong&gt;write&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can prepare as much as you want till November, but I promise you that your first thought will be &quot;I haven't prepared enough&quot; when the bell rings. If it is your first novel, skip the prep-work, skip thinking about it, just write. Because you are allowed to write &lt;strong&gt;crap&lt;/strong&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prove yourself that you can write that novel. Then trash it and write the next one. Do your prep-work for the third.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-09-04T15:58:24.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3822" CreationDate="2011-09-05T00:06:21.397" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;One planning task I find useful is listing out all the chapters and a 1-2 sentence overview for each of what happens. If I have a better idea of what it'll be about, I'll also say what I want to reveal in that chapter, eg. Shows Character A's weakness for peanuts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you end up with is a pretty good idea of the plot and how it progresses, but it's still empty and flexible enough that you can just let things happen. For example, in one of my chapters, the summary was, 'Character confronts father, they fight and don't come to a resolution.' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I finally wrote it, the character ended up walking out on her entire family (and life) at the end of the fight - completely unplanned and it changed all the subsequent chapters, but that's how it played out. At that point you just go with the flow and take it from there; pantsing, as you call it. :) &lt;br&gt;That's also part of the fun and excitement of NaNo - and writing in general, really - that planning just doesn't provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-09-05T00:06:21.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2293" CreationDate="2011-09-05T00:49:05.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand your request- there isn't one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about hand-writing and not something created by a typewriter or a computer print out the best you'll be able to do is scan it as a graphic object with a scanner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about output from a printer or typewriter it will depend on the font to some degree. Some OCR better that others. If you have printed output ABBY Finereader does a good job but will require clean-up/editing.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-09-05T00:49:05.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3828" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-05T03:36:08.887" Score="2" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for some advice on how to improve a short script that I have for an advertisement/introduction video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been revising this for two months now.  I have below two different versions.  All help is appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Version #1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welcome to PrizeTV, the easiest way to earn rewards online at the&#xA;  click of a button.  Watch videos, earn points, and chat with friends&#xA;  all at once.  All of our videos are short, entertaining, and are&#xA;  welcome to your comments. For each video watched, you earn a point.&#xA;  It’s that simple!   Don’t feel like watching videos at the moment? &#xA;  Hit up our link sharing section instead.  That’s right!  You also get&#xA;  rewarded for sending links to your friends.  Once you earn enough&#xA;  points, you can redeem them for various prizes in our store. No&#xA;  waiting, our online store is always open. But that’s not all; you can&#xA;  chance your points in our weekly lottery to possibly win that week’s&#xA;  grand prize.  Each point counts as an entry, so the more points&#xA;  chanced the greater your odds of winning. Don’t forget to check out&#xA;  the community section of our site where you can chat with friends and&#xA;  have open discussions on the forums.  Thank you for watching and&#xA;  please enjoy everything PrizeTV has to offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Version #2:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welcome to PrizeTV, the easiest way to earn rewards online at the&#xA;  click of a button.  Watch videos, earn points, and chat with friends&#xA;  all at once.  All of our videos are short and entertaining. For each&#xA;  video watched, you earn a point. It’s that simple!   Don’t feel like&#xA;  watching videos at the moment?  You can check out the community&#xA;  section of our site where you can chat with friends, chance your&#xA;  points in our lottery to win a grand prize, and much much more!  Once&#xA;  you earn enough points, you can redeem them for various prizes. No&#xA;  waiting, our online store is always open. Be sure to check out the&#xA;  number one place to earn rewards: PrizeTV!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I cover too many features of the site?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the wording on a good enough level for people to understand?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the longer version #1 more effective or less effective than version #2?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there some points where it does not flow? (Please just indicate the sentence numbers where it does not flow so that I know what to work on.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After following the advice given in the answers this is what I now have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Version #3:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welcome to PrizeTV, the easiest way to earn rewards at the click of a&#xA;  button. Watch videos, earn points, and chat with friends all at once.&#xA;  All our videos are short, entertaining, and open to your comments. For&#xA;  each video watched, you earn a point. It’s that simple! Don’t feel&#xA;  like watching videos at the moment? Visit our link sharing section&#xA;  instead. That’s right! You also get rewarded for sending links to your&#xA;  friends. Once you earn enough points, you can redeem them for various&#xA;  prizes in our store. No waiting; our online store is always open. But&#xA;  that’s not all; you can exchange your points for entries in our weekly&#xA;  lottery for a chance to win that week’s grand prize. Each point counts&#xA;  as an entry, the more points you bet the greater your odds of winning.&#xA;  Be sure to check out the number one place to earn rewards: PrizeTV!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I removed this sentence (was right before the last sentence):  &quot;Don’t forget to check out the community section of our site where you can chat with friends and have open discussions on the forums.&quot; because it does not talk about rewards and distracts from the various ways of earning points. Do you guys agree/disagree with this removal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I also remove &quot;chat with friends all at once&quot; in the second sentence and replace it with something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2570" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T06:36:30.590" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T06:36:30.590" Title="Improving Ad Script" Tags="|script|copywriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3829" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3831" CreationDate="2011-09-05T12:31:22.397" Score="11" ViewCount="2251" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to start writing a fantasy-comedy novel. A problem I found in 1-2 books of this genre is that the plot becomes weak, and the story starts to slow down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I believe this happens is that there is no big struggle or evil villain. Since there is no tension in the plot (as it is a comedy book), the plot soon loses focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story breaks down to &quot;Hero goes to place A, does something funny, then goes to B, does something funny&quot; etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I avoid this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-09-08T18:40:29.050" LastActivityDate="2019-09-09T15:52:17.470" Title="How do I keep the plot interesting in a humorous book?" Tags="|novel|fantasy|comedy|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3828" CreationDate="2011-09-05T12:58:41.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is a script being read over a video, then use #1, as #2 doesn't give enough information. It makes me want to hunt around and find actual directions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggested fixes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've never heard &quot;chance&quot; being used as a verb to mean &quot;gamble.&quot; Try&#xA;&quot;wager&quot; the first time and &quot;the more points you bet&quot; the second.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;All &lt;strike&gt;of&lt;/strike&gt; our videos are short, entertaining, and &lt;strike&gt;are&#xA;welcome&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;open&lt;/b&gt; to your comments.&quot; (No reason to use &quot;of&quot; after &quot;all.&quot; One of my pet peeves.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Query: Do you get a point just for &lt;em&gt;sharing&lt;/em&gt; the link, or only if&#xA;your friend &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; clicks on it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nitpick: &quot;No waiting [semi-colon, not comma] our online store...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;in our weekly lottery &lt;strike&gt;to possibly win&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;for a&#xA;chance to win&lt;/b&gt; that week’s grand prize.&quot; (This particular split&#xA;infinitive sounds awkward and is easily reworded.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-05T12:58:41.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3829" CreationDate="2011-09-05T13:00:52.027" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a misconception. Interesting plots are hard to write. Some people think &quot;Oh, I put in some funny jokes to hide that I totally suck at the real story.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore you find humorous books out there, which story is boring. But that has nothing to do with the humor in the book, it has to do with lazy writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to an interesting plot is paved with conflicts. There must be (at least) one huge conflict and several minor ones along the way. And it doesn't matter if there is any humor, sex, tragedy, or Pok&amp;eacute;mon dragon slayers in that book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-09-05T13:01:47.120" LastActivityDate="2011-09-05T13:01:47.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3829" CreationDate="2011-09-05T13:00:58.620" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write a plot with tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, Christopher Moore writes incredibly funny fantasy novels (demons, angels, vampires) with real plots, rounded characters, and genuine tension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So figure out a good story to tell first, and then figure out how to make it funny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-05T13:00:58.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3828" CreationDate="2011-09-05T21:42:16.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is &quot;the easiest way to earn rewards online at the click of a button&quot; a tag phrase you have to use?  It seems a bit awkwardly worded to me.  How about &quot;the easiest way to earn rewards &lt;strike&gt;online&lt;/strike&gt; at the click of a button&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would change &quot;Hit up our link sharing section instead.&quot; to &quot;&lt;strike&gt;Hit up&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;Visit&lt;/b&gt; our link sharing section instead.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &quot;you can chance your points in our weekly lottery to possibly&quot; might sound better as: &quot;you can &lt;strike&gt;chance&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;exchange&lt;/b&gt; your points &lt;b&gt;for entries&lt;/b&gt; in our weekly lottery to possibly&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like #2 better, but a lot depends on the timing of your background video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2011-09-05T21:42:16.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3822" CreationDate="2011-09-05T21:53:33.553" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps an appropriate amount of prep work would be to establish your main character (or characters).  Then you can put them into a series of situations and explore what happens to them, while keeping true to the characterizations you initially set out.  Each chapter can be a different situation, follow the characters as far as you can.  Situations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Winning the lottery&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Falsely accused of a crime&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gain a super power&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contacted by a dead relative&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diagnosed with a rare disease&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transported to a different time/place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inherit an odd collection of antique widgets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rules state that, to be an official NaNoWriMo winner, you must…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start from scratch. None of your own previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft &lt;strong&gt;(though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine,&lt;/strong&gt; as are citations from other people's works).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you're writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be the sole author of your novel. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Upload your novel for word-count validation to our site between November 25 and November 30.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0811845052&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;No Plot? No Problem!&lt;/a&gt; and follow every suggestion to the letter. :-D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2011-09-30T11:22:27.400" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T11:22:27.400" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3810" CreationDate="2011-09-05T23:47:02.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It could also be quite fun to work the history of a site into the story by playing the current protagonist as a modern 'historical figure' with a twist.  Subtle and sublime if you can do it without direct statement or allusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2011-09-05T23:47:02.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3822" CreationDate="2011-09-06T02:23:08.017" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no reason for you to not do any advance preparation for this. If you are more comfortable working out a full outline and developing out your characters, then you can do all of that in advance. The primary objective is to write your novel during the month of November. Any advance preparation you do for that will only help you to succeed at that goal. Whether your personal objective is to just motivate yourself to write or to actually complete the first draft of a workable novel is up to you, but either way, the advance preparation will help you feel more comfortable in reaching that goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your primary objective is just to motivate yourself to write, then you may want to consider another option. &lt;a href=&quot;http://aroundofwordsin80days.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Round of Words in 80 Days&lt;/a&gt; (ROW80) is a writer's challenge initiative that encourages writers to set their own personal goals, whether it is to complete a certain number of words, edit a certain number of pages, or finish a final draft. You establish your own personal goals and then report your progress back to the rest of the group twice a week. The accountability factor can be a good motivator for some, and the encouragement you receive from other writers can sometimes help you over a roadblock. I did this a couple of months ago and got a LOT accomplished. They are just about done with the current round, and a new one should be starting up soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T02:23:08.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3806" CreationDate="2011-09-06T04:47:41.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, the best co-authored books I've read there was no discernable difference in styles. Occasionally, such as in the Stephen King/Peter Straub collaboration &quot;The Talisman&quot; it could be argued that one wrote about one world while the other wrote the other. But in your case, where the authors are very different, I would probably alternate chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T04:47:41.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3785" CreationDate="2011-09-06T10:03:00.143" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madcapsoftware.com/products/flare/overview.aspx#introduction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Madcap Flare&lt;/a&gt; should help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2575" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T10:03:00.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3822" CreationDate="2011-09-06T13:20:58.357" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was under the impression that I was a great pantser and had little to say on this matter. Then I realised. All my &quot;pantsed&quot; efforts used to run into the muck about 20k in and many never came back from that terrible limbo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when I first sat down to do Nano I was determined to find a method for making sure I made the magic 50k. Here is what I did:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided to write a story I thought I would be able to tell without any difficulty at all. In that case a book for young adults about a boy who goes on a magical quest travelling from point A to point B through a fantasy kingdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never had a problem pantsing since I did that because of what it taught me. It taught me that there is no such thing as a story it's easy to tell. It also taught me that when you're stuck and need to get moving again in a hurry baths were always the answer. Nice hot baths, and quiet, and thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lie in the hot water and examine the current snarl and get out of that snarl and nothing else. Do not attempt any further planning just sit down again and keep plugging away until the next time you need to hit the on switch on the water heater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It helps to be telling a classic, archetypal story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Baths give a chance to think&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solve one problem at a time don't be tempted to try to put everything to rights at once.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Oh, and it always helps to keep in mind that there is a solution to every story problem. You just have to broaden your thinking about what could happen next. I tended to lie in the bath and think of the most outrageous thing that could happen next, something really credulity stretching and how I might seriously try to sell that to an audience. And then I worked back to a solution which was less outrageous (although, hey, a couple of them actually ended up in the story!) and provided what I hoped were some fresh narrative twists. It's just a question of giving yourself a quick mental sock in the chops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-09-06T16:08:36.330" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T16:08:36.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3829" CreationDate="2011-09-06T14:12:28.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the end it depends on your style. If you are a Douglas Adams you can make every paragraph downright hilarious. Voltaire, on the other hand, wrote satire of the society he lived in, so did Mark Twain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you give us more clues as to what you're writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T14:12:28.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3829" CreationDate="2011-09-06T15:49:18.633" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's where I think you're going wrong. You say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since there is no tension in the plot (as it is a comedy book), the plot soon loses focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would a comedic novel not require tension? Every novel needs tension. There must be a reason that the hero goes to place A and place B, something driving him, something urgent and important or scary or wonderful. (Remember the movie Galaxy Quest? Funny, and with a strong plot.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you locate comedic novels and read them to see how the humorous tone of the novel can work with a strong plot. I don't see any reason why you should limit yourself to reading only comedic fantasy novels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I think the best comedic novels aren't made up of one funny event after another. A little pathos thrown in, something heavy and serious to provide a contrast to the humor is often a good idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T15:49:18.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3842" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3846" CreationDate="2011-09-06T16:19:47.170" Score="5" ViewCount="22748" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to determine if it will be feasible to revise a manuscript for a journal that has a 6500 word limit. Currently, the manuscript is between 7500 and 8000 words long, depending on how I count words. However, it is not clear which of the following words will count toward my word count (in decreasing order of word count):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure and table legends&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abstract&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Citations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Math equations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Section headings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Numbers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of these uses count toward a word limit? Are there general rules for which words count toward a word limit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus: how strict are editors with word limits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="228" LastEditorUserId="228" LastEditDate="2011-09-06T16:44:50.597" LastActivityDate="2020-11-05T16:52:49.177" Title="What counts as a word when dealing with a word limit?" Tags="|publishing|technical-writing|wordcount|revision|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3843" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3845" CreationDate="2011-09-06T16:28:42.020" Score="1" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm documenting a block of computer code and would like to make it clear and concise. I'm describing a function that populates a field on a user input screen. Here's my best shot but it still seems confusing because the 'in the', 'on the', 'for a' seem like a lot of prepositions for one sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;This function returns the WINGNUT_SELLER_CODE that appears in the 'Vendor' field  &#xA;on the 'THREADED_NUTS' screen for a given NUT_ID. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;[1] How can I rewrite this to make it easier to understand?&lt;br/&gt; [2] What about 'that appears' vs. 'which appears' when should I use 'that' and 'which' ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2543" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-06-08T16:22:49.840" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T16:22:49.840" Title="How can I express this more clearly or concisely?" Tags="|technical-writing|clarity|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3844" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3848" CreationDate="2011-09-06T16:59:42.410" Score="3" ViewCount="1071" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe an unlikable character can be sympathetic, although that's tricky. But can you go the other way? Can your character be likable but at the same time unsympathetic? I've been trying and failing to think of examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean likable to the readers, btw.&#xA;I'd especially appreciate examples of characters you found absolutely likable but weren't sympathetic towards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorUserId="1679" LastEditDate="2011-09-06T18:20:08.813" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T18:25:44.807" Title="Can a likeable character be unsympathetic?" Tags="|fiction|characters|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3843" CreationDate="2011-09-06T17:06:33.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe break it into two sentences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you send this function a NUT_ID, it returns a WINGNUT_SELLER_CODE.  This code is from the'THREADED_NUTS' screen in the 'Vendor' field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I almost always use &quot;that&quot;. (Every copy editor I've ever encountered seems determined to eradicate all uses of &quot;which&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T17:06:33.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3842" CreationDate="2011-09-06T17:44:24.197" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you should check and see if they have any guidelines posted that will help you to be certain that you stay within their listed range. If they don't have anything listed, then you could send them an inquiry to try to find out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generally, the word count would not include the title page, if you&#xA;have one. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Words used in tables or graphs, including the legends,&#xA;would not normnally be included.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you use abstracts as part of the&#xA;body of your material, then they would be included.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Citations, on the other hand, would not.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the math equations constitute any portion of your overall content, then they would be included. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Section headings should be included. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you mention numbers, I assume you mean numbers that are used as part of your formulas or equations, in which case they would be included.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you make use of an appendix or a table of contents, then neither of those would be included in your word count. I would recommend creating a second copy of your document and removing the items that would NOT be included and see what your word processor comes up with for the word count. That would probably put you pretty close to where you need to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as editors,it just depends. Some may be flexible, especially if the content warrants it. Others, however, set limits as a hard and fast rule and are not willing to concede and additional space at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T17:44:24.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3844" CreationDate="2011-09-06T17:52:45.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is all a matter of perspective. You may have a character who is a drug dealer who uses his money to take care of residents in his neighborhood. He may provide protection from rival gangs, provide financial support, and go out of his way to keep them away from drugs. To the people in his neighborhood, he may have a personna that makes him very likeable, very respected, and perhaps even heroic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, outside the neighborhood, he may take on a completely different personna. Rivals see him as intimidating, police see him as a criminal, and in order to protect his business he may have to do things he would not normally care to do. He might even criticize a sibling for behavior that he himself exhibits. These particular behaviors may be so heinous that you find it difficult to be sympathetic with him, in spite of the traits that otherwise might cause you to like him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T17:52:45.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3844" CreationDate="2011-09-06T18:38:44.057" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have two items to consider: what makes a person likable, and why you would sympathize with someone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why you find a person appealing is a matter of taste. But when you sympathize with someone, you are identifying with him or her; you are saying &quot;yes, I could see myself in his/her shoes; I might have done what s/he did.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of scenarios I can think of where someone you like has made crappy choices which you wouldn't have made. Think of &quot;tough love&quot; situations, or &quot;you've made your bed; now lie in it.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An intelligent, well-spoken addict who ends up in jail (current fictional example: Gregory&#xA;House, MD in Season 8 of &lt;i&gt;House&lt;/i&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An alcoholic co-worker who loses his license after too many&#xA;DUIs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The pretty, popular high school girl who ends up pregnant and drops&#xA;out of school to have the baby, and then complains because she has no&#xA;more social life&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your best friend dates a jerk, and no matter how you tell him the guy&#xA;is bad for him, he insists the guy really loves him... until he finds&#xA;out his boyfriend cheated on him. Then he spends the next six months&#xA;crying on your shoulder, wondering &quot;what did I do wrong?&quot; and saying&#xA;how lonely he is&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T18:38:44.057" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3843" CreationDate="2011-09-06T18:48:40.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edited based on comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the following function declaration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;f_get_vend_code(v_nut_id varchar2) return varchar2;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would write the description as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This function takes a nut ID (NUT_ID) and returns the vendor's seller code (WINGNUT_SELLER_CODE) for this form.  If NUT_ID is not set (blah blah blah).  If the function cannot find a valid seller ID it (does something).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I'm using Java idioms because those are the ones I'm familiar with.  I'm assuming that &quot;takes (a parameter)&quot; and &quot;returns&quot; are meaningful for your audience too; you should verify that by reading other API documentation for this language.  I am also assuming that the values you originally used, e.g. NUT_ID, are meaningful even though they don't appear in the signature; if that's not the case then I would omit them in the description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that I went beyond your original question to cover invalid parameters and error conditions.  Good API documentation goes beyond what they can get from just reading the signature and tells them what they wouldn't be able to figure out otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2011-09-06T19:21:59.027" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T19:21:59.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3829" CreationDate="2011-09-06T19:41:11.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;why can't it have action as well?  some of the funniest things i have read are action packed.  the humor comes from what the characters say and how they relate to one another.  does that mean they can't be doing serious things in the process?  NO!!!!  as long as they continue to be amusing -- both to the reader and yourself -- i feel it can be counted as a comedy book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2577" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T19:41:11.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3811" CreationDate="2011-09-06T19:43:17.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;first off, i have two words...small sentences.  these provide dramatic effect and engage the reader.  on top of that, it's helpful if another character interrupts to ask questions or comment. then you can show how the two are reacting to the story as well as explaining what the reader needs to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2577" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T19:43:17.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3807" CreationDate="2011-09-06T19:47:12.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;how about this?&#xA;Fear is a strange thing.  On one hand, it has the ability to make you stronger if the circumstances are just right.  It gives you the strength and clarity of mind to overceom whatever peril you happen to find yourself in.&#xA;On the other hand, fear has the ability to bring Paralysis, leaving you in control of nothing more than the blinking of your eyes and the short, shallow breaths you need to stay just on this side of death.&#xA;I don't know.  it kind of sounds like fear that way.  whatever you think&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2577" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T19:47:12.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3853" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3856" CreationDate="2011-09-06T21:01:20.000" Score="3" ViewCount="479" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this question posted in another forum, and it didn't have any responses, so naturally I decided to bring it over here. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I realized, 80% of the way through my first draft, that I don't have a&#xA;  dominant, lead character in this book.  I believe that I can pull it off,&#xA;  managing carefully to not head-hop or change characters mid-scene, but&#xA;  I just wanted to get some feedback on that. Is it a problem for a book to lack a specific dominant character? How do other writers&#xA;  feel about not letting one character take the reins? &#xA;  When you're reading, does it turn you off a novel to not have a&#xA;  dominant lead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To make this a more SE friendly question: Could you please give me some examples of books that did not have one specific, dominant character?  Please provide information on what those books did to make the story and characters compelling without being overwhelming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-09-07T16:58:03.160" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T08:26:15.917" Title="Is it acceptable for a book to not have a dominant lead character?" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3807" CreationDate="2011-09-06T21:05:35.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always liked Stephen King in this sort of situation. All of his characters had a lot of backstory, and oftentimes the plot involved confronting or reliving this backstory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have a character who has a fear, you should try elaborating on why they have this fear. Maybe they are claustrophobic because they fell into a well or mine shaft as a child. Or maybe they have a fear of water because they lost a sibling in an icy pond. Or maybe they are an anal neat-freak who is afraid of going outside because they grew up in a super-messy household where they were abused. Or maybe they are afraid of heights because they witnessed a circus accident as a child. Or totally turn it around, maybe they have a death wish and their fear is growing old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you play it up right it can be very debilitating to the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T21:05:35.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3853" CreationDate="2011-09-06T21:12:19.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once read a Tom Clancy book, &quot;Red Storm Rising&quot;, in which he introduced a character, and a few pages into the book, killed him off. So I was thinking, ok that wasn't the main character. Then he did it again. And again. I swear to you, 200 pages into the book he introduced the lead character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never actually finished that book because it was about naval war in the north atlantic and there were a bunch of military terms I couldn't really get into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I digress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book has some common thread, like a certain theme, it may not need a main character. Sometimes in science fiction, the main character isn't necessarily a human, but something mechanical, like a space ship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have to say if you've written an entertaining book without identifying a main character, don't let anyone tell you it has to be otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T21:12:19.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3853" CreationDate="2011-09-06T21:22:00.140" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Movies and television shows can have ensemble casts; why not books?  I've seen this in SF/fantasy books where the ensemble is the members of an adventuring party, the crew of a ship, etc; often there are 3-6 core characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The novel &lt;em&gt;1632&lt;/em&gt; (and successors) has many more important characters than I'm used to.  There are a few core characters and one who may be the most important in the story, but I don't think of him as the lead character because he spends a lot of time off-stage.  So it can work, though too many key characters can be hard to manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T21:22:00.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3844" CreationDate="2011-09-06T21:23:04.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a number of movies that feature criminals that are either the protagonist or a likeable character in some way. Like John Travolta's cheeseburger-loving assassin in &quot;Pulp Fiction&quot; or Bruce Willis in &quot;The Whole Nine Yards&quot; or Bill Nighy's reluctant assassin in &quot;Wild Target&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T21:23:04.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3790" CreationDate="2011-09-06T21:37:52.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a writer has written a historical, they will frequently add references to works about the time period or subject matter. I've seen this too with nonfictions about a certain subject matter, such as Stephen King's &quot;Danse Macabre&quot; (which is about the horror fiction/movie industry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heck, I've even seen some writers write stuff like &quot;Please don't write me with x correction or whatever&quot; or instructions to send inquiries to their agent or publisher. Writers don't want questions about how they wrote a book, so the references is there so if we want we can look up such information without bothering the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T21:37:52.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3853" CreationDate="2011-09-07T02:19:51.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible but I will suggest that those who do it are very accomplished and if a publishing house buys it it will have other redeeming values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T02:19:51.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3853" CreationDate="2011-09-07T05:47:43.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it's perfectly possible to have an ensemble cast. It's a lot harder to plot and weave the narratives together elegantly, but if pulled off, it can be pretty amazing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't think of any (English) books off the top of my head, but I would highly recommend having a look at an anime called &lt;em&gt;Baccano!&lt;/em&gt;, which was actually based off a series of short novels. It has a cast of 17 or so, with many different storylines that all come together in the end to complete the main story. I absolutely love it, and from seeing it, I believe that it can definitely work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just keep in mind that with an ensemble cast, it will be very hard to keep the viewer from putting down the book in frustration or confusion early on, so you will need a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; engaging central plot to keep their interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T05:47:43.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3853" CreationDate="2011-09-07T05:57:27.173" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The recent Pulitzer winner A Visit from the Goon Squad is another example of a book like that. It is a sweeping look at the lives of inter-related characters over time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are books like these a turn off? A big 'no' to that. In fact, they can provide a fresh and exciting experience to the readers. If your narrative is not dominated by a lead character, it could be that you are exploring themes more general than what can be seen through the main character's perspective. Or you could have a complex central plot that is the centerpiece in itself. In short, you can do a lot more with a book that is not ostensibly 'about' a lead/dominant character, as compared to the more conventional books with protagonists. So do not be daunted by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T05:57:27.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3844" CreationDate="2011-09-07T09:03:35.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question it is best to look at the more commonly employed trope - not likeable, sympathetic - and see what would be required to reverse that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to be sympathetic we must have some feeling for the things someone has done and the choices they have made. We can understand why something is but we may not like it. For example if a protagonist sees his parents and siblings murdered by gangsters and survives only by running, purely fuelled by instinct and adrenaline we may sympathise with them. If this incident is when we meet them for the first time we won't have enough data to know whether we like them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the following scene we skip forward fifteen years. The same character is now shown torturing some low-level pick pocket type for information about the whereabouts and defences of a major crime lord. We understand why this chracter might have become twisted this way, we sympathise with the situation but if the torture is extreme enough we may not like the character for it. In addition we could have another character who we can both like and sympathise with attempt to intercede on the pickpocket's behalf and get summarily dismissed perhaps physically by the not-likeable but sympathetic character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to reverse this we need to not really understand why someone does something, or how they ended up in trouble but nevertheless find ourselves rooting for them. In this case I would argue that the Indiana Jones of Raiders and Temple of Doom makes a pretty good example. In fact many pulpy Saturday morning serial type characters are in the same vein. Indy is a likeable guy, flawed, sure, but he's on the side of the light. We are rooting for Indy, we like him. But when he finds a snake in the cockpit, is being chased by Nazis or finds a stone ceiling descending to crush him we are thrilled but we don't really sympathise... we can't really see why he would put himself on the line in this way, the fact he's this adventurer archaeologist is actually kind of ridiculous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sympathy in Raiders is used as a tool to make us like Indy and it's quite disposable. When Belloq takes the golden idol from him we are expected to sympathise in an everyman kind of way with the situation. But do we really sympathise with Indiana Jones specifically? Not really. He's a cipher, he's never more than a two-dimensional hero who's given some nuance by a skilled actor but as written he just is some heroic dude through whom we can live vicariously. We're almost pushing him into these crazy encounters just to get our safe audience based thrills. If Indiana Jones didn't do all this crazy exciting stuff then he would, essentially be of no further use to us. Any emotional investment we have in him is entirely selfish and not based on sympathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because Indiana Jones, and heroic characters of his type, do not appear to need our help. They are beyond us and above us already. We can only bask in their glow. Sympathy is about companionship, about helping, about realising we are together. These heroes seem untouchable, if they cannot do it then we certainly won't be able to manage it. We can admire them but we can't ever really stand in their shoes, only aspire to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T09:03:35.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3863" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-07T11:44:04.047" Score="5" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the new &lt;em&gt;Google Author markup&lt;/em&gt;, and how can I use it to build up a reputation as an online writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could it possibly work? Using self-declared information has been tried before and of course led to spamming and other problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/postpanda-content-strategy-pt2-article-structures&quot;&gt;Context&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="346" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2011-09-07T13:02:09.753" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T14:02:36.093" Title="What is the new Google Author markup?" Tags="|publishing|tools|websites|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3863" CreationDate="2011-09-07T12:09:27.477" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The author mark-up is relatively simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;Written by &amp;lt;a rel=&quot;author&quot; href=&quot;http://www.example.com/peter-mortensen&quot;&amp;gt;Peter Mortensen&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This notifies to search engines that the text being linked with is the author, and the URL is the author's page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author's page must reside on the same website as the author's content. So it doesn't make much sense to link to the author's page from a site where there is no content written by you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can link from your author page on one site to your other author pages on other websites by using rel=&quot;me&quot; instead of rel=&quot;author&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See here for more in-depth info:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-authorship-rich-snippet-markup-80455&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-authorship-rich-snippet-markup-80455&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how you can use it to build your reputation, you're notifying Google what articles you've written, and where, as well us helping Google find information about you as an author. So next time someone searches for &quot;Peter Mortensen&quot;, it may just help you collate all the data together so Google knows this stuff was all written by the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; An interesting addendum to make. While digging around, I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://theaveragegenius.net/google-using-author-credibility-ranking-signal-rel-equals-no-link-spam/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an interview with Matt Cutts and Othar Hansson&lt;/a&gt; talking about it, and Hansson suggests that the rel=&quot;author&quot; tag may also introduce a signal for credibility, and increasing the ranking of a website: &quot;we hope to use this information and any information as a ranking signal at Google…in this case we’d want to get information on the credibility of authors, from all kinds of sources, and eventually we’ll use that in ranking.  We’re only experimenting with that now, who knows where it will go&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also worth mentioning is that authors' photos appear in Google search results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-09-07T14:02:36.093" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T14:02:36.093" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3866" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-07T19:02:43.610" Score="0" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/904/what-are-good-places-to-post-your-work-where-it-will-be-read-by-others&quot;&gt;What are good places to post your work where it will be read by others?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some good sites to have your written works reviewed? I'm not necessarily talking about Profession Book Reviews, but a place where everyone can comment on the work and give their criticism? I'm just wanting it so I can improve upon my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2581" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T19:27:51.377" Title="Site for free author reviews" Tags="|reviews|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2011-09-07T23:58:08.137" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2011-09-07T19:27:51.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are looking more for critiques than reviews. If that is the case, then I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt;. You can find people there who will volunteer to read your work and give you feedback on what they have read. It is a good source for finding people who will give you pretty honest evaluations of your work as well as recommendations on how to improve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are truly looking for reviews, then there is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130118213533/http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,20049.0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;long list of reviewers&lt;/a&gt; in this thread from another forum. Please be sure to read the guidelines and respect the rules. A lot of these folks may have a long backlog, but you should be able to find a few places to get some reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-01-08T03:55:38.593" LastActivityDate="2022-01-08T03:55:38.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3386" CreationDate="2011-09-07T19:37:24.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it depends on whether you are trying to be personable or professional. If you want to have the reader feel that they are reading comments directly from you, in a personal manner, then the first person would be a better approach. If your goal is to present your skills and experiences in a professional manner, as if you were dealing with a client, then third person would be better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standback gave a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3386/referring-to-oneself-in-first-vs-third-person-in-online-profiles/3389#3389&quot;&gt;very good response&lt;/a&gt; that basically takes this same approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T13:00:24.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3386" CreationDate="2011-09-07T20:23:03.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Third person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A biography is an objective look at the person's life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First person can have overtones of subjective opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T20:23:03.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3853" CreationDate="2011-09-08T08:26:15.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not uncommon and it is not a problem at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One fine example is a great novel by Jonathan Coe, &lt;em&gt;What a carve up!&lt;/em&gt;, where there's no lead character, but a number of figures (the Winshaw family) the novel focuses on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another great book where you would be hard-pressed to find a lead character, despite its title, is &lt;em&gt;Titus Groan&lt;/em&gt; by Mervyn Peake. Actually I would consider the castle as the real protagonist here. &#xA;(On the other hand, the latter two books in the remarkable &lt;em&gt;Gormenghast&lt;/em&gt; trilogy have more recognizable plotline/roles)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2584" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T08:26:15.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3844" CreationDate="2011-09-08T16:18:45.843" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say this is &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; common in comedy, and much more difficult in drama. And even in comedy, a likable character can win sympathy very very easily even if he's totally unsympathetic - in fact, the moment he does &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; that isn't actively unsympathetic, we'll probably find him sympathetic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Magnificent Bastard&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As extreme examples, consider Barney Stinson from &lt;em&gt;How I Met Your Mother&lt;/em&gt;, or Quark from &lt;em&gt;Star Trek: Deep Space 9&lt;/em&gt;. They're very likable characters - we love them for their humor, their audacity, their ingeniousness. But at the beginning of both shows, we're not meant to sympathize with them, and we don't. They engage our interest, not our emotions. The way they're written, we're not saying &quot;Oh, poor Barney!&quot; or &quot;Wow, Quark must be so nervous now!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But once that's set up, sliding the characters into sympathetic territory is very easy. Season 1 of &lt;em&gt;How I Met...&lt;/em&gt; has an episode where we discover Barney's past, which is hugely sympathetic. Later on in the series, his loyalty to his friends, his eventual love interest, his yearning for a father are all trickled in - and the mere mention of these, no matter how despicable Barney continues to act, and no matter how warped his attempts to address these issues are, are enough to convert him into a largely sympathetic character. That's because we like him so much - we're willing to forgive all his unsympathetic-ness as soon as we get the chance. Similarly, Quark has a long arc of growth through &lt;em&gt;ST:DS9&lt;/em&gt;, and pretty much as soon as he &lt;em&gt;starts&lt;/em&gt; having a good, soft, sympathetic side, and as soon as the show starts portraying him in a sympathetic fashion, he immediately becomes a sympathetic character despite his numerous and continuous misdeeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;House, IMHO, almost comes under this category. But not quite. Because House, almost &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt;, has motives and desires that we have strong emotional reactions to. When he's being an ass, it's often to someone we feels kinda deserves it. When he's consumed by a case, sympathy with his obsession for truth and discovery is key to the show. And when he plays mind games with the people he cares about most, he's often cruel and baffling, but he also generally has a motive that the viewer is meant to sympathize with. I think the show is based very strongly indeed on viewer sympathy with House - and the tension between that sympathy and where House's life choices actually lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonhumor examples might include Littlefinger and Varys from &lt;em&gt;Song of Ice and Fire.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Likable Schlub&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A less extreme example is sitcoms. Sitcoms are full of characters we like, who do stupid things. It gets the plot moving. We're not supposed to sympathize with these characters - their problems are exaggerated; deliberately goofy and blown out of proportion. We're not sympathetic to Ross when he forgets his kid on a bus, or to Seinfeld when he preys on a fresh divorcee, or to Marshall when he insists he's going to prove the existence of UFOs. We like the characters, but at the same time, in these situations we're laughing at them, not with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Toeing the Line&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making this work with less-exaggerated, non-comic characters seems to me very, very difficult. If a character is likable, then all he needs to do is act reasonably OK, or with some clear, comprehensible rationale, and he's sympathetic. If he's likable, even a previously-unsympathetic character turns immediately sympathetic the moment such a rationale is presented (or take on a new goal which &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; reasonable). The Magnificent Bastard can, if you choose, avoid this by simply never doing anything sympathetic. But I can't think of other strategies or examples for doing this differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are willing to sympathize with somebody we don't like, but we're strongly inclined to sympathize with someone we do. Overcoming that, it seems to me, requires constant avoidance of sympathy,  and (depending on the extent and the scope at which you want to avoid the character being sympathetic) that severely limits the type of character you can construct. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this does suggest a strategy for having such a character for a short stint - take a likable character, and have him serve as an antagonist or an obstacle for some portion of the story. Portray him as being difficult and perhaps villainous - don't provoke reader sympathy for him in any way; don't emphasize his motives or his emotions. &lt;em&gt;For this portion,&lt;/em&gt; the readers will not sympathize with him; he is in their way, he is unsympathetic (right now). But he'll still be likable (and, in fact, you can even portray his &quot;good features,&quot; things readers like about him). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T16:18:45.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3844" CreationDate="2011-09-08T18:25:44.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common character archetype in Manga/Anime.  After so many great responses from other users, this is the only input that I can think to add.  Standback, The Prolific Bastard, gave an fantastic reply.  Toward the end of his answer he said this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, this does suggest a strategy for having such a character for a short stint - take a likable character, and have him serve as an antagonist or an obstacle for some portion of the story. Portray him as being difficult and perhaps villainous - don't provoke reader sympathy for him in any way; don't emphasize his motives or his emotions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will stick with a very popular example. In the manga &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleach_%28manga%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bleach&lt;/a&gt; there is a character that appears fairly early on named Zaraki Kenpachi that serves as a major antagonist and obstacle for the main character, Kurosaki Ichigo.  He is painted as a pure killer.  His motivation is to seek out the strongest opponents he can find. His joy comes from the fight. He is hard to identify with, but very likable. He is simple. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the entire encounter you know nothing about his motivations other than his love of fighting.  The story leaves you with a ton of questions and next to no answers.  He is likable, insane and very unsympathetic.  It is clear that dying while fighting an opponent stronger than himself is something he would find satisfying.  It is hard to have sympathy for him on any level, largely because of his lack of complexity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standback goes on to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For this portion, the readers will not sympathize with him; he is in their way, he is unsympathetic (right now). But he'll still be likable (and, in fact, you can even portray his &quot;good features,&quot; things readers like about him).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is exactly how Kenpachi is written.  When you learn some of his back story you may feel some sympathy for him, but it will probably be short lived.  Another character in Bleach with a similar setup is Kuchiki Byakuya.  Byakuya is much more complex than Kenpachi and is motivated by a complex mass of conflicting emotions and obligations. When he first comes on the scene he is intensely cold and completely unrelatable. Byakuya is seemingly the polar opposite of Kenpachi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I keep this up I'm afraid I am going to grow a name for referencing Manga/Anime in my answers.  Owell, could be worse. This type of character is so common in manga that it is expected most of the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this link to be interesting about the magnificent bastard archetype. &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SoYouWantTo/WriteAMagnificentBastard&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SoYouWantTo/WriteAMagnificentBastard&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2375" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T18:25:44.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3874" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3879" CreationDate="2011-09-08T20:58:43.650" Score="8" ViewCount="841" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember reading somewhere that while plots should have tension, too much tension will tire the readers out, so there should be some breathing place, where the reader can get a chance to catch their breath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, in one or two books I read recently, right after a tense scene, the authors started talking about something trivial, like psycho-analysing the hero's childhood, or the mid life crisis of a middle aged superhero. This bored me and I threw the books away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I understand that a breathing space is needed, how do I ensure that this breathing space doesn't turn into &quot;bore&quot; space?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The examples I gave are from action/thriller books, where all the psycho-analysing and &quot;characterisation&quot; really felt out of place. I understand these scenes may have been appropriate in a literary novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-09-09T12:32:02.953" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T12:32:02.953" Title="How to give the readers breathing space, without putting them to sleep?" Tags="|fiction|novel|structure|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3874" CreationDate="2011-09-08T21:33:15.007" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you can 'ensure' anything in writing.  I think every book ever written has people who love it (the author, at least) and people who hate it.  What you found boring, someone else probably found fascinating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's great to consider your audience and try to write what they want to read, but you also have to consider yourself, and consider what YOU want, in terms of writing and reading.  So read your own work with a critical eye, and see whether you'd find it interesting as a reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In slightly more concrete terms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build the tension, reach a climax, and then start building the tension all over again.  Don't psycho-analyze the hero's childhood &lt;em&gt;unless that ramps up the tension&lt;/em&gt;.  The tension could be increased because we start to care about the character more, or because it gives us clues about the current situation, or whatever else, but if it's totally unrelated, it shouldn't be there.  The tension increase may be subtle, but it should be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you aren't the sort of reader who enjoys having characterization inserted in an action story, then don't write that kind of story.  I think readers can tell when writers are faking it, so you should write the sort of book you'd like to read, and trust that you aren't unique; there are others out there who like the same sort of thing, and they're your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T21:33:15.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3876" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3884" CreationDate="2011-09-08T23:04:50.123" Score="6" ViewCount="631" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every time I try to write a poem I find myself incredibly stuck. It feels to me like poetry has so many different aspects- meter, structure, rhyming, lingual aesthetics (not to mention semantics), all crammed into a tightly confined structure (yes I know poetry can be very free style, but I'm interested in well structured, rhyming poetry)- that I can't possibly &quot;optimize&quot; them all simultaneously. It's like I can't achieve a satisfactory quality in one aspect without completely messing up the others: if I write a line that sounds nice, it'll be completely out of meter and will not rhyme with the rest, and I can't make it rhyme without giving up on that nice word I want to use, and if I try to fix the meter without changing the heart of the line then it will most likely stop making sense... It's just an endless struggle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you experience these problems when writing structured poetry? If so, how do you handle them? What would you recommend that I do to start getting over this problem? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-09-09T12:31:43.453" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T20:05:53.933" Title="How do you manage all the different aspects of writing poetry?" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3874" CreationDate="2011-09-08T23:23:28.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read a book called The Poison Throne (part of the Moorehawke Trilogy) by Celine Kiernan recently where I felt this was done incredibly well. She would build up the tension by building up the atmosphere of distrust between characters and hinting at violence to come, which would climax in said violence. Then she would give the readers a break with a scene or chapter in stark contrast to that atmosphere, where the characters are in the privacy of their own room(s) and you can see the very real, underlying love and trust between them that usually has to be hidden. It was a good way to let the reader catch their breath and far from sending them to sleep, it made the scene more powerful emotionally. Then the scene would launch another round of tension-building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what made this work was the contrast. The tension comes from the characters not knowing who they can trust, and knowing that a single misstep in a world where everyone seems to be hiding a knife behind their back could cost them not only their lives, but that of those they love. Then she gives the reader glimpses of quiet times when the characters know that they can completely and utterly trust everyone else in the room and let down their guard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously your story won't have the exact same scenarios, but you could try contrasting technique and see if it works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T23:23:28.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3876" CreationDate="2011-09-08T23:26:17.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best advice I can give you on this can be summed up in one word: practice. The more poetry you write, the easier it becomes. Of course, &quot;easy&quot; is a relative term, because it really never is truly easy. In spite of that, you will start to find that some of it starts to become more natural. I have written almost 1000 poems, published six volumes of poetry and two collections, and I'm still learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of different things you can do to help yourself improve. First and foremost, give up on being perfect. Allow yourself to focus on one thing or the other, rhyme or meter, and disregard the other. As you become more consistent with one, you can start to add the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you can do is to look into different kinds of poems and try writing them. Try a haiku instead of a nicely metered ballad. Try some free verse before going after that sonnet. Allow yourself to make mistakes and be sloppy. You may not always like everything you do, but each new poem is another opportunity to learn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I admire and respect your desire to &quot;get it right&quot;, but you can still find beauty in just getting it done!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2017-05-30T11:56:02.347" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T11:56:02.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3874" CreationDate="2011-09-09T09:04:31.643" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the phrase &quot;breathing space&quot; is misleading to the point of damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does giving someone &quot;breathing space&quot; sit with making a story &quot;unputdownable&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Changing gears&quot; or &quot;Pacing dynamically&quot; is perhaps a better way of phrasing the experience you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In movie script writing they refer to each &quot;gear&quot; or mood as a &quot;beat&quot;. If you have a movie made entirely of one kind of beat then it just becomes stupefying in some way. Like a constant metronomic pulse... think Transformers 3, yes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to give people a compelling ride you must interpolate beats to make a fascinating rhythm of events. So you have an action beat, then an emotional beat, maybe another action beat, a plot twist beat, an emotional beat, another plot twist and so on and so forth. When authors tend to be bad at this, as far as I can tell, they very much believe that they are giving the audience breathing space. &quot;Emotional Beat&quot; translates in the head of someone who prefers writing action scenes as &quot;Moment of irrelevant whiny introspection&quot;. It's also possible to make a reverse error. People who like to write twisty-turny &quot;exposition as action&quot; scenes can really stuff up physical action scenes by making them overlong, one-note, cacophonous descriptions of unemotional laundry-list active descriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hollywood scriptwriters do not believe in giving the audience breathing space. Bear in mind that screenwriters are authoring works for the most mercurial, perverse, bizarre audience in the world: Hollywood movie producers. If these guys have time to inhale the next thing out of their mouth will likely be that they're not interested in the script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am of the school of thought that, like a screenplay, &lt;strong&gt;every scene&lt;/strong&gt; should grab the reader by the scruff of the collar and keep them involved. Rather than just blaring noise into their faces, though, to achieve this, like a great actor, the prose must have its own metre, sometimes soft, sometimes loud, sometimes clever, sometimes stirring, sometimes light, sometimes dark. Like a compelling orator good prose can command a variety of moods but sustain a constant intensity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forget &quot;breathing space&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise. You do not need to give a reader breathing space. You need to give them a variety: an action scene with a sense of real stakes in which the reader is emotionally invested; a scene of emotion with a raw and charismatic intensity that seduces and fascinates the reader; a scene of revelation that hammers blows upon the reader's sense that they know where the story is going. If you just repeat any of these things over and over you will end up being tedious; loud and brash; manipulative and cynical; unsure what you are trying to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, all of this is easy to say, doing it is the challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T09:04:31.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3880" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3882" CreationDate="2011-09-09T10:45:47.050" Score="8" ViewCount="1363" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually set a word count goal for each of my chapters, say 2000 words. But sometimes I can't meet that goal, for any number of reasons. What should I do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Continue anyway, and hope to increase word count elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B. Keep working on the chapter, till I reach the word count. This will mean the creativity will suffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there is this &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/1125/2024&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; , but it talks about meeting a daily quota, but I'm talking about meeting the quota for each chapter (as I can meet the daily quota easily by writing more chapters, but then my final book is very short).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T16:30:19.263" Title="What to do if I can't meet my chapter word count?" Tags="|fiction|novel|wordcount|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3880" CreationDate="2011-09-09T11:20:03.447" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the one hand a story is a story, putting more words in it doesn't make it more the story it just makes it the story with a bunch of extra verbiage growing over it like ivy up a wall or mould on cheese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other, if you have this terrible feeling that the bit of the story you've told is too light or unfinished then maybe it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that, as the author, you have probably spent some time thinking about your story. If you haven't then problem solved, take a break, re-read the chapter fresh and &lt;strong&gt;think&lt;/strong&gt; about what you're trying to achieve in this chapter (other than some arbitrary number of words).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have thought about it a new problem comes up. A story is a very particular type of communication. A communication intended to enthrall and entertain. In order to achieve this the story must tell audiences exactly what they need to know as they need to know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nagging feeling that this chapter is &quot;a bit light&quot; is a symptom that you have been restricted from delivering necessary depth or interesting plot information because you are somehow restricted by what the audience currently knows or doesn't know. The liberty to make the chapter more complete may be found by reviewing what's already written and trying to find out where there's information missing. Essentially there's a possibility that you need a &quot;pay off&quot; but you never did the &quot;plant&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you could just be over thinking it and the chapter may just be suitably eloquent and perfectly concise. These are the problems of balance you must overcome on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T11:20:03.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3880" CreationDate="2011-09-09T11:20:23.623" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you really want to bloat a chapter just to meet an arbitrary quota?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, till you haven't finished the book, you cannot tell how many words a chapter will have. Because you will rearrange, rewrite, and (most important) delete unnecessary stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't sweat it, start a new chapter, keep writing and drop a quota for chapters. If your story is written with short chapters and it is brilliant and compelling, do you really want to make it boring and dull by adding unneeded stuff?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-09-09T12:28:46.703" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T12:28:46.703" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3874" CreationDate="2011-09-09T12:14:25.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An analogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a friend in college who was a choreographer. She had recently presented a piece to rave reviews, and was amused that one of the moments which got the most positive attention was a long, slow, sweeping movement (I don't recall what the dance term for it was).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She told me, &quot;This thing they love &amp;mdash; it was right after a big, complicated, difficult sequence. I put that arm-sweep thing in to give the dancer a chance to &lt;i&gt;rest!&lt;/i&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;You&lt;/i&gt; may know that you're putting in a quiet scene to give the reader a breather. But the quiet scene has to have purpose. It has to contribute to the story. Find a reason for the quiet scene, and the tension-release takes care of itself. If you can't find a reason for a low-key scene, then maybe you don't need one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T12:14:25.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3876" CreationDate="2011-09-09T12:19:03.990" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;1) Stop fixing everything at once.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write your first round to get it on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On your second round, pick &lt;i&gt;one&lt;/i&gt; thing to fix: sharpen your rhymes, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next round, work on the meter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let it sit for a day. Come back with fresher eyes and work on word choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;2) Kill your darlings.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editing oneself is one of the hardest parts of writing. What this phrase means is that you have to be willing to let go of the perfectly-turned phrase, the elegantly metered couplet, if it doesn't fit the particular poem it's in. Put it in a slush file and start the line over. Rewrite the entire poem if you can't extract the line that's blocking you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T12:19:03.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3891" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:45:36.703" Score="4" ViewCount="5649" Body="&lt;p&gt;How could this technical sentenced be improved for better clarity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Cannot translate the ‘name1’ concept1 to the ‘name2’ concept2 because the higher&#xA;precedence ‘name3’ concept3 also exists, which overrides it.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a technical message to a user of a computer program where I have eliminated the jargon as it is not relevant to this question.  The idea is that there are two things (concept1 and concept3) that both would translate to a single thing (concept2) and we can only use one and are picking one (concept3) and warning about the other (concept1) not being used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For style consistency with other messages, I wish to retain the structure of the pattern:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Cannot &amp;lt;do something&amp;gt; because &amp;lt;of something else&amp;gt;.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 'name1' etc. are names to uniquely identify a particular object and the 'concept' is the category of objects which 'name' chooses one.  So the original could be recast (nonsensically) as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Cannot translate the ‘Fred’ apple to the ‘John’ orange because the higher&#xA;precedence ‘Julia’ tangerine also exists, which overrides it.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, we have a machine that takes fruit and converts it into oranges, if you supply both an apple and a tangerine, only one is used, the tangerine, to create the orange, and the apple is ignored because tangerines are given higher priority over apples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question revolves around the use and placement of the phrases: 'higher precedence', 'also exists', and 'which overrides it'.  Could these be rearranged for better clarity or substituted with other phrases that might be clearer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2590" OwnerDisplayName="WilliamKF" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T22:03:37.680" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T22:03:37.680" Title="How can this technical message be made clearer?" Tags="|technical-writing|word-choice|clarity|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3885" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:54:37.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry, but you really haven't eliminated all the jargon from here. Based on what your question actually says, I think it would be &quot;Cannot translate &lt;em&gt;concept 1&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;concept2&lt;/em&gt; because &lt;em&gt;concept2&lt;/em&gt; has already been defined as &lt;em&gt;concept3&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a difference between 'name1' and 'concept1' (except in the White Knight's sense of &quot;The name of the song is called... but the song is called something else entirely&quot;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="TimLymington" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T13:54:37.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3885" CreationDate="2011-09-09T14:56:14.407" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, it's &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; a good idea to clearly indicate whether the message reflects an actual error, or simply a warning which the user may choose to ignore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, try to minimise use of &amp;quot;jargon&amp;quot; terms such as &lt;strong&gt;translate, higher precedence&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;overrides&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warning: The 'name1' concept1 is assumed to be a type of 'name3' concept3, not a 'name2' concept2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warning: The 'Fred' apple is assumed to be a type of 'Julia' tangerine, not a 'John' orange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the exact context, it might be better to replace the &amp;quot;not...&amp;quot; bit at the end with something like &amp;quot;(did you mean a 'John' orange)&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1662" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T02:36:12.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3880" CreationDate="2011-09-09T15:22:47.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Setting a word count is a personal decision. Meeting the goal is a personal decision. If you were doing piece-work and being paid for it (by the piece) it might matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be doing this in your writing but IMHO it has nothing to do with the craft of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could just as easily set a goal of X publishable/sold words. Unless you sell them each day it is just a goal you've set. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will suggest that if this is what you must do to force yourself to write each day then perhaps you don't really have the &lt;em&gt;fire in the belly&lt;/em&gt; to be a writer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-09-09T18:49:59.370" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T18:49:59.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3885" CreationDate="2011-09-09T15:26:42.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cannot translate the ‘name1’ concept1 to the ‘name2’ concept2 because the higher&#xA;precedence ‘name3’ concept3 also exists, which overrides it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are more ‘name3’ concept3 than ‘name1’ concept1 then ‘name1’ concept1 cannot be translated to ‘name2’ concept2 .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T15:26:42.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3885" CreationDate="2011-09-09T16:33:55.563" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to keep the same format, I would go with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cannot translate 'name1' concept1 to 'name2' concept2 because an existing translation from 'name3' concept3 to 'name2' concept2 takes precedence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your fruit example, it would look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cannot translate the 'Fred' apple to the 'John' orange because an existing translation from the 'Julia' tangerine to the 'John' orange takes precedence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a strong feeling that this error message will cause a lot of confusion to someone who is not already familiar with your precedence rules. It might help to add more information (especially information that will help resolve the issue). For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cannot translate the 'Fred' apple to the 'John' orange because an existing translation from the 'Julia' tangerine to the 'John' orange takes precedence. This error occurs when you create translations with different sources that have the same result. You should remove the lower prededence translation or re-evaluate your order of precedence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2593" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T16:33:55.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3885" CreationDate="2011-09-09T17:26:22.843" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Relative clauses (&quot;which overides it&quot;) make the reader work. They have to go back and forth in the sentence trying to match up the &quot;which&quot;s and the &quot;it&quot;s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the sounds of it, you are doing something very abtstract and technical so the reader is working hard enough already. Don't worry about dumbing it down! Without the relative clause it might go like this :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cannot translate the ‘Fred’ apple to the ‘John’ orange because the&#xA;  ‘John’ orange is blocked by the existance of the higher precedence&#xA;  ‘Julia’ tangerine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of &quot;the existance of&quot;, maybe try &quot;the presence of&quot;, or just leave it out altogether:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cannot translate the ‘Fred’ apple to the ‘John’ orange because the&#xA;  ‘John’ orange is blocked by the higher precedence ‘Julia’ tangerine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2595" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T17:26:22.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3880" CreationDate="2011-09-09T18:56:19.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chapters are another level of organization; just as much as you organize your story in paragraphs, sentences and (at a higher level) books and volumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're setting a goal for yourself to meet &quot;2000 words per chapter,&quot; it's up to you to define the exceptions and the additional modifications that you would require if you broke your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2596" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T18:56:19.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3626" CreationDate="2011-09-09T19:20:44.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you offer a free license, I would ask people you know directly. Easier and more promising than online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sites taking licenses as payment do not exist as far as I know. But there are free services out there. Maybe you want to check them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paperrater.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PaperRater&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.appappeal.com/app/kibin/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kibin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't tested any of them. Also take a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/4188/good-proofreading-site&quot;&gt;Startups StackExchange&lt;/a&gt; site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T19:20:44.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3895" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3896" CreationDate="2011-09-09T21:50:14.333" Score="2" ViewCount="3540" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a bit of a problem trying to substitute the words &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; without changing too much the meaning/flow of the sentence. I have tried the thesaurus, synonyms, etc with no luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I achieved a strong 2:1 in X at Y University and excelled in modules studied during my final year, &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; many of &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; I received a First. This included a Financial Analysis and Control module &lt;em&gt;for which&lt;/em&gt; I attained a strong First (72%) &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; a financial performance analysis of the Z Company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;A First&quot; (UK Grade) is like an &quot;A&quot; in the United States; I know it can be kind of bizarre when reading if you're not used to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Panicos" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T21:21:23.970" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T21:21:23.970" Title="Substitutions for 'which' and 'for which' that maintain the sentence's meaning" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3895" CreationDate="2011-09-09T22:03:57.820" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Will this do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I achieved a strong 2:1 in X at Y University and excelled in modules studied during my final year, &lt;em&gt;and received a First in many of them&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;em&gt;They&lt;/em&gt; included a Financial Analysis and Control module &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; which I attained a strong First (72%) for a financial performance analysis of Company Z.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You basically have to rephrase to get rid of &quot;whiches&quot;.  Also, there is nothing wrong with using &lt;em&gt;for which&lt;/em&gt; in moderation.  I only removed one &quot;which&quot; because the second by itself was just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2195" OwnerDisplayName="drɱ65 δ" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T22:10:20.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3880" CreationDate="2011-09-10T18:24:59.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a complication to the chapter's conflict. Make sure it's a meaningful complication—i.e. one that contributes to the story. Consider:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase time pressure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Raise the stakes for the MC.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove an option from the MC's repertoire, so that the MC has to struggle more to figure out what to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reveal something in the middle of the interaction that changes the MC's understanding of the situation, so that the MC struggles not only to overcome the chapter's obstacles, but also to understand what the heck is going on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce another character into the interaction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do something in an earlier chapter so that the interaction in this chapter is more complicated for the MC. In the earlier chapter, you might:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the MC greater knowledge of some complicating factor. That gives the MC more to think about, more challenging decisions to make, more tradeoffs to consider. So throughout the chapter, you can show the MC weighing these complicating factors. It also might increase (or decrease) the MC's choices of action, and increase the range of responses the MC gets (or fears) from the opponent, some other character, or the setting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Misinform the MC, so that the current chapter is more puzzling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put some additional MC goal or value in jeopardy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show an event in the MC's past that is somehow echoed (or otherwise relevant) in this chapter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the MC a trait or flaw or attitude that makes this chapter more puzzling or complicated or difficult.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Combine two chapters into one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a scene to the chapter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move a scene from a later or earlier chapter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-09-10T18:24:59.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3898" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3899" CreationDate="2011-09-11T04:48:25.603" Score="2" ViewCount="2812" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm applying for graduate school, and I'm considering writing to Professors whose research areas match with what I intend to pursue. I've a Masters' degree and 2 years working experience in a renowned MNC - what would be the best way to introduce myself in the first mail: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I state my credentials first, or do I state my purpose in writing to him? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to mention my background concisely, without giving too much details, while at the same time not &quot;underselling&quot; myself?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should be the salutation - I know &quot;Respected Sir&quot; sounds archaic, but was wondering if &quot;Dear Professor X&quot; sounded too informal or not!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to give a link to my resume/profile hosted on my website - should I embed the hyperlink, or is it better to write the link in plain text?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I end such a letter - the obvious ones (such as &quot;see you soon&quot; or &quot;till we meet again&quot; are not quite suitable in this case)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm basically afraid of saying too much (causing vexation) or too little (resulting in no response to my missive) - I needed a bit of guidance on that! Its okay if the answer doesn't touch on all my queries - I'm happy for every bit of useful advice that I can get!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2600" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-01-05T18:11:16.813" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T18:11:16.813" Title="What is the best way to introduce myself in a letter to a prospective graduate adviser?" Tags="|business-writing|letter|resume|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3898" CreationDate="2011-09-11T05:20:01.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, don't let yourself be intimidated by this effort. You need to be yourself and remain respectful, and you will be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would recommend opening your letter with a standard salutation: &quot;Dear Sir&quot;, or simply &quot;Professor Xxxxx&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Next, introduce yourself and briefly explain your reason for writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow up with a brief summary of your work experience or educational background, specifically focusing on anything that might be relevant to your reason for writing. (The main point here is to keep it brief!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wrap things up with a statement indicating that you are including your resume or anything else that you may deem necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Close with a standard closing: &quot;Sincerely&quot; or &quot;Respectfully&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most professors are going to appreciate that you are considering them. Keep your introductory letter simple and to the point. Any attachments, such as a resume, should follow standard form and provide the complete details that would reflect your qualifications. You won't need to provide any dialog with these because they are simply supporting documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T05:20:01.700" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2011-09-11T06:18:44.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I write, I generally just write in my own vernacular, using the diction that I use when I speak, unless it's necessary to change it a bit for a certain character. That's what I'd suggest. If you'd swear when you say what your character says, make him swear, by all means, depending on the audience at which you are aiming. That being said, having more than five words that are or are worse than $#!+ in a given two paragraphs can be off-putting sometimes, so don't over-do it. And try to avoid using anything worse than f***, which can have a similar effect. If one is writing in third person, there should be no swearing outside of dialogue, unless it is stating what a character is thinking, whether directly or indirectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And do not under &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; circumstances say something like sh*t or f*ck when you're writing, and certainly not if it's dialogue. It's just ridiculous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2601" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T06:18:44.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3901" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-11T13:19:15.460" Score="5" ViewCount="2399" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I put several lines of a copyrighted song in my text, and mention the band name, how can I be certain that my attribution is sufficient and guarantees against legal action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've been able to find, I need to list the song title, writing credit, date and company of copyright in the front matter. Is there anything else I need to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2602" LastActivityDate="2022-05-12T05:31:10.497" Title="Proper attribution of copyrighted lyrics in a story" Tags="|copyright|lyrics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3901" CreationDate="2011-09-11T13:50:40.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is fiction... it's not anywhere near that easy.  Song lyrics are copyrighted by their authors, and you're supposed to get permission (pay money) to use them.  You can use songs that are in the public domain, but I get the feeling you want something more modern.  So you'd need to track down the owners of the copyright and figure out/negotiate their fees.  It's a pretty big deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going through a publisher, they may help you with this or they may tell you that you can't use the lines.  There will almost certainly be an indemnity line in your contract with which you certify that you've got the legal right to all parts of your work.  That means that if the songwriter or music publishing company sues, you're on your own for the defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're self-pubbing, you need to get permission yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen people argue that using the lyrics comes under the 'fair use' rule, but I'm not aware of any jurisdiction that recognizes this right for fiction. You can usually use the title of the song, if that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what the rules are for non-fiction.  I think fair use has a broader scope, there, but I don't know details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Edited to clarify role of publisher)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2011-09-11T13:59:11.240" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T13:59:11.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3901" CreationDate="2011-09-11T14:51:38.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It ultimately depends on how much of the song you are using and the way in which it is being used. If you are using a couple of lines in a music review, then you don't need to get permission. You are most likely already mentioning the band, since it's a review of their music, and the use of a couple of lines would be recognized as fair use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, it starts to become more complicated. You first need to determine whether or not you need permission, and you can start by using this link from &lt;a href=&quot;http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter1/1-b.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stanford University&lt;/a&gt;. They have an online site that has a lot of information pertaining to Copyright and Fair Use. If you aren't able to decide after reading this, then you can proceed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chapter 9&lt;/a&gt;, where they go into more details regarding Fair Use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of information on this site, and it may take some time to read through it and understand it, but you can help ease your mind on whether or not you're doing the right thing by taking the time to look it over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T14:51:38.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3880" CreationDate="2011-09-11T16:30:19.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try freestyle writing for 10 or 20 minutes. Freestyle writing is when you put down any idea or thought that comes into your head and writing down without editing or correcting. Just writing. You might come across new ideas or topics that you had not written about. You can also try a mind mapping tool like Xiosis Scribe which combines mind mapping with word processing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also add some additional research into what you have written. Add some quotes or what previous authors on the subject had written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all else fails try a 16pt font, double wide lines, 4inch margins and set align to full justified :) Just kidding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T16:30:19.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3829" CreationDate="2011-09-11T16:34:57.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest reading Terry Pratchett's Disc World books. They are fantasy and pretty funny. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, fantasy writers first create their fantasy world which is kept separate from the writing and used as a reference. You put the kind and nature of creatures, trees, prominent species, interplay and history between species, culture etc. And then you create the plot using elements from the fantasy world. Finally adding the humor as dialogue and situations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T16:34:57.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3843" CreationDate="2011-09-11T16:38:20.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a given NUT_ID, this function provides the WINGNUT_SELLER_CODE that fills the 'Vendor' field on the 'THREADED_NUTS' screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your original comment is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This function returns the WINGNUT_SELLER_CODE that appears in the 'Vendor' field&lt;br&gt;&#xA;on the 'THREADED_NUTS' screen for a given NUT_ID. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T16:38:20.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-11T18:30:37.957" Score="7" ViewCount="2845" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking today that my writing station's monitor screen set-up is much worse than I had previously thought, and can be partly blamed for productivity problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write on a 2004 laptop with a 14.1&quot; LCD monitor.  Because its keyboard has poor &quot;touch&quot;, I use a separate keyboard, but this causes me to have to put the keyboard in front of the laptop, and therefore the screen is further from my face.  The usual working distance has been 2-3 feet (.6-.9 meters) from the monitor, depending if I lean back.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've now come to think this is way too far and too small of a screen.  Even if the screen were closer, a 14.1&quot; screen is probably too small for optimized productivity.  Corroborating opinions welcome.  (That I've also written 10,000+ lines of computer code on this setup is unfortunate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will getting a larger monitor, possibly with a desktop computer, make a significant difference in writing productivity?  How large is about right?  Are there other things to consider as regards to a good set-up for writing in terms of having the visual aspects optimized?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Along these lines I have noticed that having a good low-profile keyboard has been very helpful)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;  I've flipped my (tablet) laptop's screen around such that now the distance from my eyes to the screen is from 18--28 inches, and the external keyboard is placed more comfortably.  I'm also increasing vertical screen real estate by losing some toolbars, etc.  Overall, this is much more comfortable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get the point that a few people have expressed to &quot;just write&quot; or &quot;if you're a writer, you write&quot; but I think that's something of a gloss; every activity's hedonic level is affected by the conditions and we tend to go for pleasure drives in nice cars or play our music most when we have a good stereo.  I'm not saying I won't write at all if I don't have optimal conditions, but striving to have a more pleasant working environment is just sensible.  Viewing my words from 3 feet away in a small rectangle was just not good enough.  This is better, and I'll look into a new monitor when I feel if it is warranted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2388" LastEditorUserId="2388" LastEditDate="2011-09-12T16:53:49.273" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T16:53:49.273" Title="The importance of monitor size/distance for writing productivity?" Tags="|tools|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3912" CreationDate="2011-09-11T18:31:48.317" Score="7" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the time when two people write a book, one person is doing the majority of the writing and the other is critiquing or helping with the plot or providing technical information that the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; writer lacks. Other times the writing is &quot;traded,&quot; where some chapters/characters/places are written by one person and others by the other person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what I've been doing for the past several years is literally &quot;pair writing,&quot; in the sense of pair programming (a more common phenomenon that occurs when two people work on the same piece of code at the same time). I'll meet with the other author and we'll write the same document at the same time, and of course we discuss it as we go. Originally this was done with two keyboards connected to the same computer, but we've now moved to Google Docs and Skype, which allows us to work remotely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of anyone doing this before. It's really hard to attribute specific things in the book to any single person. Sometimes there'll be a pithy line here or there that I can definitely say &quot;That was mine!&quot; or &quot;That was his!&quot;, but it's fairly rare. Each of us has literally touched almost every sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now we're hitting the final stretch of writing (our third major revision; we are both perfectionists), and I have to wonder if this has been done before, and if so, was it successful? Are there any examples of work that has been written in the fashion I've described?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2467" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T21:08:21.113" Title="Has anyone tried &quot;pair writing&quot; before and been published?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3907" CreationDate="2011-09-11T18:46:28.863" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have anything scientific on this, but... I doubt it.  People have been managing to get books written for centuries, all without the benefit of a large monitor. Barring health issues that require special ergonomics, I think the details of your set-up are more of an excuse than a genuine problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write on a laptop, a netbook, or a desktop computer.  I prefer the laptop, but when I'm traveling, I still get work done on the netbook. When I'm not feeling creative, the biggest screen in the world wouldn't help me -- I just need to power through it. When things are flowing, I'll type on whatever's available, and when the power goes out and the batteries die, I'll write by hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a writer, you'll write.  Don't let the tools distract you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2011-09-11T21:01:03.030" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T21:01:03.030" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3907" CreationDate="2011-09-11T19:16:11.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The wrong position of the monitor could be a health issue, and therefore a productivity issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cramp before your monitor, best thing to happen is that you get fatigue faster. Problems with your back could be much more troublesome. If you have to lean forward to read the text on your monitor, then it has the wrong distance. If the upper edge is above your eyes, then the monitor is adjusted too high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://ergonomics.about.com/od/office/ss/computer_setup.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ergonomic working place&lt;/a&gt; is the key factor for unstressed (more productive) work. Nevertheless, I think &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3907/the-importance-of-monitor-size-distance-for-writing-productivity/3909#3909&quot;&gt;Kate&lt;/a&gt; is right and you talk mainly about procrastination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T19:16:11.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3908" CreationDate="2011-09-11T19:37:01.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure that there are successful books out there, which used this approach, even though I cannot name one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are afraid of an inconsistent style, I have to say that the different approach (each one writes his chapters separately) would make it more inconsistent, not less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the books from David and Leigh Eddings. Althalus, for example, is a good one. I like the book and I can tell you which passage was written by whom--no consistent style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best thing to do, is what every writer should do: find trustworthy test readers. Trustworthy means here, that you can trust that they tell you the truth about your work. By this definition most relatives are not trustworthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These test readers can tell you if the style is consistent, if the book sucks, or if you should publish it soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T19:37:01.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3908" CreationDate="2011-09-11T21:08:21.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've pair-written a few short articles with my colleague Elisabeth Hendrickson, and those were published in small, online trade journals. And we're pair-writing a book or two, but have not completed those. We're both used to pair programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We wrote our articles remotely but simultaneously, using Google Docs to write and Skype to talk. The way we work is this: we chat a bit about whatever idea we want to add next, then one of us takes a crack at writing it in a sentence or a paragraph. Then we both critique and edit more or less simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For our books, we've evolved a slightly different technique. We sit together, but at separate computers. We write in lots of small files--one folder per chapter, one file per section. We use a shared repository for version control (Github), and we synchronize very, very frequently--every few minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with articles, we chat until one or both of us feel like writing, then we write. The blurts of writing are usually short (as with articles), but sometimes we'll write separately for a few minutes, usually on separate but related ideas, usually in separate files. Often while we're chatting one of us will go into stream-of-consciousness mode, and the other will take notes. Then (either together or separately) we turn the notes into something more coherent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last year I co-wrote a short story with a writer friend. That wasn't pair writing, but we would each write two hundred words, then turn it over to the other, who would edit then add two hundred more words. Every now and then we would stop to talk (via email or in person) about where the story was going. With such short additions and frequent swapping and editing, we created a story where each sentence felt like it was written by both of us and neither of us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T21:08:21.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3843" CreationDate="2011-09-11T21:24:59.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given your comment to Monica, it seems to me that your original description goes way beyond what the function actually does. In particular, the function does not itself display the seller id, but instead returns it to some other code that displays it. The f_get_vend_code() function itself does not interact with either the form or the field, so there's no need to mention them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's true, describe only what the function does: &quot;This function returns the vendor code for the nut identified by NUT_ID.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: The name of the function and its parameter seem almost sufficient documentation in and of themselves. Could you improve those names so as to make the documentation unnecessary? At least spell out &quot;vendor&quot; instead of unnecessarily abbreviating it as &quot;vend&quot;. If you do that, what's left for the documentation to convey?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2011-09-11T21:36:33.273" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T21:36:33.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3907" CreationDate="2011-09-11T22:09:02.997" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The size of the monitor doesn't matter as much as the size of the text on the screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write with a MacBook Air, which has about the same size monitor you're using. I use 12 point Times New Roman, and tell my word processor to magnify the text to about 150%. That's plenty big even for my aging eyes, even at a distance. And my writing window takes up about 2/3 the width of the screen, which leaves plenty of room on the screen for notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So try this: Use a bigger font while writing, or tell your software to magnify the text so you can see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T22:09:02.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3895" CreationDate="2011-09-11T22:20:05.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like drɱ65 δ's advice for the first sentence. For the second, try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my Financial Analysis and Control module I&#xA;  attained a strong First (72%) for a financial performance analysis of&#xA;  the Z Company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This not only removes the &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt;, but also leaves the sentence with a stronger main verb--&lt;em&gt;attained&lt;/em&gt; instead of the wimpier &lt;em&gt;included.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-09-11T22:20:05.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3916" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3917" CreationDate="2011-09-12T02:07:01.140" Score="7" ViewCount="456" Body="&lt;p&gt;My employer has presented me with two books to read to help me write better technical papers and emails.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0071457089&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Essentials of English Grammar&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0071441336&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Handbook of English Grammar and Usage&lt;/a&gt;.  I have read through roughly 30% of the first book and have to say it is a painful read.  I have thumbed through the second book and I feel it's going to have the same effect.  The best way I can describe reading these books is like reading a dictionary.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a book out there that is more engaging to read and still help me hone my writing skills?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Thanks for all of the input.  I just ordered &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205313426&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/159240488X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eats, Shoots, &amp;amp; Leaves&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205747469&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1852338024&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing for Computer Science&lt;/a&gt;.  I will update this again with my opinion on the books.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2605" LastEditorUserId="2605" LastEditDate="2011-11-07T02:10:37.510" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T02:10:37.510" Title="Book recommendations for writing better technical papers" Tags="|technical-writing|business-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3916" CreationDate="2011-09-12T02:22:42.083" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205313426&quot;&gt;Strunk and White's &lt;em&gt;Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; gets a lot of love, although it's also been getting some &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497&quot;&gt;criticism&lt;/a&gt;, lately.  But it's more about style than pure grammar.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I enjoyed &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/159240488X&quot;&gt;Eats, Shoots and Leaves&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, but it's not exactly a basic grammar book.  It mostly focuses on punctuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_7?url=search-alias=stripbooks&amp;amp;field-keywords=grammar%20girl&amp;amp;sprefix=grammar&quot;&gt;Grammar Girl&lt;/a&gt; books, but again, by taking the time to make her lessons fun and interesting, she sacrifices some of the scope of her work, focusing in on fairly limited areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the weaknesses in your writing, as far as you can tell?  If it's straight-up grammar, you may have to resign yourself to working through some fairly dry material.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T02:22:42.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3916" CreationDate="2011-09-12T02:32:09.207" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205747469&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Williams and Colomb. This book more than any other helped me write with power and confidence. Also clarity and a modicum of grace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T02:32:09.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3916" CreationDate="2011-09-12T11:46:05.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do actually read certain dictionaries and encyclopedias for fun, so I won't be of much help, other than offering another vote for Strunk &amp;amp; White. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I feel like you're going about this a little backwards. You say you weren't given a bullet list of to-fixes, but you did a self-assessment. I don't know how much that's going to help you &amp;mdash; if you knew what needed fixing, wouldn't you have done it correctly in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to find an editor to go over several of your pieces and &lt;i&gt;build&lt;/i&gt; that bullet list with you, so that you have an outside, professional opinion about what you need to work on. Then you can focus on those areas, and read just those sections of the books instead of fighting through explanations which put you to sleep and don't apply to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T11:46:05.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3907" CreationDate="2011-09-12T13:40:41.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To write &quot;simple&quot; text, a 20&quot; monitor would probably be fine, those should not be too expensive either. There is usually a connector for an external monitor or such on a laptop, so there should not be any problem to hook them together. (But double check first just in case.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main advantage is that a new monitor is probably nicer to your eyes and if it a standalone monitor, it would probably be better adjusted to the right height as well, giving less strain on the neck and shoulders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to efficiency and large and/or several monitors, there is only a few research papers around (when I researched the subject about two years ago).&#xA;One was heavily sponsored (or conducted) by NEC (creates monitors among other things) and involved a lot of excel copy-and-paste, and then there is one study made by Microsoft Research, where they created a custom-built 30&quot; monitor with about the same methods and results as the NEC study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To counter any go-after-new-toys comments, 14.1&quot; is really small for a workstation, it works if you're travelling or such, but if you're going to sit 8-10 hour a day in front of it, you really need something better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1083" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T13:40:41.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3907" CreationDate="2011-09-12T14:38:57.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing productivity might be affected if you are writing for long periods of time. Of course some might argue that if you are writing for long periods of time you creativity might be affected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been using different computers,monitors,keyboards and software packages for years. I will advise that the minute you tie yourself to one device or piece of software is the day that it will become obsolete. I doubt if you can find a WANG word processor these days or an Applewriter][ software package. I've got an Apple][ that I might part with at the right price should you need one &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just write.  Heck, I've called my GoogleVoice and dictated. It transcribes my message and sends it to my email- no screen issues while driving...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T14:38:57.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2011-09-12T20:17:45.207" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;my personal opinion is: &quot;if it isn't absolutely necessary, don't use it&quot;.  I have found that I enjoy books, movies, and comedians much more when they don't swear every other word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2609" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T20:17:45.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3925" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3931" CreationDate="2011-09-13T07:40:46.200" Score="20" ViewCount="11620" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep hearing the word &quot;beat&quot; in Writers.SE, as in &quot;... break your scene into beats&quot; from &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/3880/2024&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question. What is a beat? How is it different from a scene?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2023-06-12T02:55:38.320" Title="What is a beat?" Tags="|fiction|novel|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3925" CreationDate="2011-09-13T09:44:32.583" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR: Beats are what you make scenes out of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Beat&quot; is terminology that probably came backwards into writing from acting. Essentially a scene is made of beats for an actor. To explain: I used to be an actor and one thing that I think always blows people's minds is how an actor can learn the entirety of Hamlet's part in a matter of a few months and then recall it and act it night after night for a play's run. What blows people's minds even more is that the actor can simultaneously go to the shops for milk, bread, eggs, beer, bacon and cigarettes and only recall the need for beer and cigarettes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I first started acting I always wondered what would happen when I was good enough to have more than five lines in a play. When I first got to twenty I had enough trouble remembering them. As I continued to act, though, I learned how it is that actors can be so good at memorising parts but hopeless as everyone else at remembering everything else. The secret is in the beats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The script is one part of making a performance, often compared to a blueprint. There is also a process of breaking down a scene and working through all the lines slowly and painstakingly finding out when it's a good idea to make a move across stage, when it's alright to take a pause, how your part meshes with the parts of everyone else who's in the scene. This process is called &quot;blocking&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take this beginning to Act II Sc ii of Macbeth. In this short piece of dialogue Lady Macbeth is awaiting the return of her husband from the King's sleeping Chambers. She has plotted with Macbeth to kill King Duncan in order that Macbeth may assume his crown as King of Scotland. Now she knows she has sent him to do it but is uncertain as to the state of the King. She has some concern that Macbeth will be unable to commit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Enter LADY MACBETH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LADY MACBETH That which hath made them drunk hath&#xA;  made me bold; What hath quench'd them hath given me fire. Hark! Peace!&#xA;  It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman, Which gives the&#xA;  stern'st good-night. He is about it: The doors are open; and the&#xA;  surfeited grooms Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg'd&#xA;  their possets, That death and nature do contend about them, Whether&#xA;  they live or die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MACBETH  [Within] Who's there? what, ho!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LADY MACBETH  Alack, I am afraid they have awaked, And 'tis not done.&#xA;  The attempt and not the deed Confounds us. Hark! I laid their daggers&#xA;  ready; He could not miss 'em. Had he not resembled My father as he&#xA;  slept, I had done't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Enter MACBETH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My husband!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MACBETH  I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LADY MACBETH  I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. Did not you&#xA;  speak?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MACBETH  When?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LADY MACBETH  Now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MACBETH  As I descended?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LADY MACBETH  Ay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MACBETH  Hark! Who lies i' the second chamber?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LADY MACBETH  Donalbain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MACBETH  This is a sorry sight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Looking on his hands&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LADY MACBETH  A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is always a favorite for actors to interpret, and ideal for our explanation because there are many beats of different kinds in this one section of dialogue. Here is the same broken into three broad &quot;mood&quot; beats, these are the closest to a writer's beats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beat 1: In this beat Lady Macbeth is allowed a moment alone on stage. Later in the play she famously goes mad (or more properly becomes mad in a different manner) and this is a moment in which we start the shift from a state where she is cold and megalomaniacal to a state of incoherent paranoia. This beat allows the scene to start on an off kilter note and Shakespeare inserts Macbeth's off stage comment in order to disrupt the soupy verse of Lady Macbeth's consideration. She starts the monologue truculently considering how the act of murder intoxicates her and then moves on to gloat at the thought of having sent her husband to murder the king and his heirs. After the off stage interruption she has a moment of peevishness that her husband nay be too lily livered to go through with it. This is particularly rich as she later freely admits that she didn't have the stomach for it. The mood of this beat is fairly slow, delirious, a moment of giddy trauma marked by careening mood swings of the sole character on stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Enter LADY MACBETH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LADY MACBETH That which hath made them drunk hath&#xA;  made me bold; What hath quench'd them hath given me fire. Hark! Peace!&#xA;  It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman, Which gives the&#xA;  stern'st good-night. He is about it: The doors are open; and the&#xA;  surfeited grooms Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg'd&#xA;  their possets, That death and nature do contend about them, Whether&#xA;  they live or die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MACBETH  [Within] Who's there? what, ho!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LADY MACBETH  Alack, I am afraid they have awaked, And 'tis not done.&#xA;  The attempt and not the deed Confounds us. Hark! I laid their daggers&#xA;  ready; He could not miss 'em. Had he not resembled My father as he&#xA;  slept, I had done't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beat 2: Macbeth enters and the next beat begins. The two characters are now &quot;in the moment&quot; of having just conducted an act of murder. Shakespeare shows that these two people are united only in this murderous act. They both panic and although both kind of converse they are more talking to themselves than communicating with each other. Each is alone in their own experience. They both talk about noise but in each case they are talking about something different. Macbeth is talking about the noise of the murdered as he stabbed them in their beds. Lady Macbeth talks about owls screaming and crickets crying, the natural world reacting to the death of a monarch in a more spiritual way. Again Shakespeare is telling you Lady Macbeth is going to go mad one way and Macbeth, formerly uncertain about his capacity to kill for power is already acclimatising to his new role as murderous tyrant. This beat aims for a brief flutter of panic, trying to push the audience's heart rate up a little but only for a moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Enter MACBETH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My husband!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MACBETH  I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LADY MACBETH  I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. Did not you&#xA;  speak?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MACBETH  When?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LADY MACBETH  Now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MACBETH  As I descended?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LADY MACBETH  Ay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beat 3: This is really the beginning of a longer beat rather than a whole beat, you can easily find the whole text if you want to examine this practice further. In the next sequence Macbeth and Lady Macbeth engage in a protracted examination of the act of murder, its commission, its possible consequences. The two dance around each other each on their own track. Shakespeare uses this time to convert the characters from what they were before this moment to what they become for the rest of the play. Lady Macbeth in this moment changes from the cold and calculating ice queen whose husband was never good enough into the terrified animal who will eventually snuff out her own life rather than live with the voices that attack her in the darkness. Macbeth goes from the loyal and humble warrior who fights for king and country to power-thirsty dictator with regard for nothing but his own ambition. The mood of this section as it unwinds is a kind of antiseptic stillness, the calm after a hideous storm and the fragmented dialogue pushes the audience into a distant position where they may better regard these two hideous creatures revelling in their own filthy act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MACBETH  Hark! Who lies i' the second chamber?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LADY MACBETH  Donalbain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MACBETH  This is a sorry sight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Looking on his hands&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LADY MACBETH  A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice how each beat changes the mood of the scene. Lady Macbeth foreshadows her own creeping madness in the first beat. The second beat wipes this soupy descent from attention as the two panicking murderers face each other for the first time after the deed. The third beat shifts gear again as the two, over the initial shock, fall to contemplate the act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In script writing beats are often portioned out like that. Sometimes scripts are written from improvisational work and in that case you can see that a list of beats would be like a list of mood moments the actors had worked out for the writer to turn into dialogue e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NOTES FROM MACBETH IMPROV - Scene: After The Murder&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lady Macbeth alone, already she is starting to fall into lunacy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lady Macbeth and Macbeth see each other, he is bloodied, she ennervated, a moment of panic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The two contemplate the act. Morosely revelling in their evil.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When applied to screenplay writing, as scenes are generally shorter in movies, a beat could be a single scene, it could also apply to a montage of events dislocated in space and time such as a training montage in a Rocky movie. As movies can play a little faster and looser with regard to the Greek unities of time, place and action the beats can be spread to single units of time between two and five minutes in length. Also films have far more liberty in the use of juxtaposition, see Inception for the use of juxtaposition to create a rhythm of visuals and sound that a lot of people seemed to like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming now, finally, to the writer of novels. I doubt that Dickens or Austen thought of their work as being so related to the Shakepearean plays (Ibsen, on the other hand, wrote plays designed not to be performed but to be read like novels, maybe he had more of an inkling about this). The idea of using this micromanagement technique to pace out incidents in a novel is relatively new as it has flowed from the playhouse to the  movie studio and finally back to the writers desk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a novel has beats it's more about how one should play the moods of scenes that are adjacent to one another. One chapter in a book could have one distinct mood and explore one set of ideas or aspect of the novel's theme, the next should move away from this to give the reader some variety. There are a number of techniques for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In novels broad beats can be broken down into smaller beats. In the novel of Macbeth the scene above is a &quot;Character Beat&quot; where the novel takes a chapter to explore the beginning of strain between Lord and Lady Macbeth. The preceding chapter which details the act of the murder of King Duncan is a &quot;Suspense Beat&quot; in which we want the audience to contemplate the immorality of the act and Macbeth's inevitable comeuppance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within both of these broad beats we could break the scene down into further, smaller beats. The murder beat could require a visceral moment of denial, a terrifying moment of action, and a descending moment of realisation of what has been done. Then the character beat can proceed as detailed above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-09-13T11:37:25.113" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T11:37:25.113" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3925" CreationDate="2011-09-13T09:49:17.883" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think One Monkey's answer shows the way 'beats' is used on a scene basis (and the way it was being used in the answer you referenced), but the word is also used in relation to dialogue, as a way to break up a wall of text and acknowledge the pauses and ticks of traditional conversations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without beats: &quot;I can't believe you'd do that.  I mean, we've talked about it so many times, and I really thought we had it all figured out. We knew it would be hard, but...I really thought we'd make it work.  I guess I was wrong.  So I guess now, we just have to figure out what the hell we're going to do about it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With beats: &quot;I can't believe you'd do that.&quot; She shifted in her chair, moving her body away from him.  &quot;I mean, we've talked about it so many times, and I really thought we had it all figured out.  We knew it would be hard, but... I really thought we'd make it work.&quot; Another shift, and this time her eyes left him, too.  He wondered how much longer he had before she stood up and walked right out the door. &quot;I guess I was wrong.&quot; She paused, and then her gaze returned to his, and her look was so fierce that he found himself wishing for the earlier distance.  &quot;So I guess now, we just have to figure out what the hell we're going to do about it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That example is kinda over-beated, but you get the idea.  The beats give information, but they also make speech feel more natural, and give the reader a chance to absorb the emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T09:49:17.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3928" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3930" CreationDate="2011-09-13T11:55:45.083" Score="11" ViewCount="6507" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was pondering a lot on the issue with copyrights on plots. Is having an &lt;em&gt;identical&lt;/em&gt; plot infringing someone else's copyrighted work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am fully aware that the character names are copyrighted and cannot be copied. I am also fully aware that the representation of the idea (the words themselves, in &lt;em&gt;substantial&lt;/em&gt; amounts) are copyrighted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what I'm curious about is the play, the plot points, the storyline, in other words, the idea behind which the words convey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume I hold the copyrights of the Harry Potter books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If someone took all the pages of a Harry Potter book and rewrote each of them &lt;strong&gt;in his own words&lt;/strong&gt; (when I say &lt;em&gt;in his own words&lt;/em&gt;, I mean no simple task of rewriting. Paragraphs are removed, changed, added, dialogues changed, added, removed, even the chapters are different, the entire expression is different beyond recognition), plus he had renamed all the characters (e.g. Harry Potter to Gary Potter and so on). Although the entire expression of the idea is beyond different, &lt;strong&gt;the entire idea is identical&lt;/strong&gt;. could I charge him for infringement by the copyright law? Could he publish his &lt;em&gt;plagiarised&lt;/em&gt; work and claim copyrights for it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I see that the Harry Potter movies do not use words copyrighted by the Harry Potter book (spoken words, or written words which are shown on screen). Does it mean that if the movie were to rename all its characters (while having &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; the same plot), it is fully original by the copyright law, and the publishers (or movie makers etc) do not have to pay a single cent to me (the copyright holder of the Harry Potter books)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's take another example, this time on the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If someone rewrote every single post in my blog &lt;strong&gt;in his own words&lt;/strong&gt; and publish it,  could I charge him for infringement by the copyright law? Could he publish his &lt;em&gt;plagiarised&lt;/em&gt; work and claim copyrights for it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If someone rewrote all the content of my website (keep in mind that I'm not talking about programming code/design of the webpage)  &lt;strong&gt;in his own words&lt;/strong&gt; and publish it, could I charge him for infringement by the copyright law? Could he publish his &lt;em&gt;plagiarised&lt;/em&gt; work and claim copyrights for it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2558" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-09-13T17:33:54.590" LastActivityDate="2023-05-26T22:32:43.020" Title="On copyright laws and plots" Tags="|naming|copyright|plot|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3929" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-13T12:00:33.037" Score="11" ViewCount="2163" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears to be a pretty obscure book.   It's on Amazon, but there are no descriptions or reviews.  From the cover, I'd say it was a kids book, which would put it in a different market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that this short story of mine is fit to publish, for arguments' sake, because otherwise I certainly don't mind the duplication.   I suppose what this boils down to is: will the publisher care?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2612" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T22:42:09.587" Title="Should I care if my short story has the same title as someone else's book?" Tags="|publishing|short-story|titles|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3928" CreationDate="2011-09-13T12:14:45.457" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically you cannot copyright a plot. However, you can copyright a particular instance of that plot as long as it is not based on an older work in the public domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your Harry Potter example if every chapter had exactly the same incidents and more or less the same dialogue with slightly altered character names you would probably lose in court trying to insist that yours is not just a rip-off. It's an area where the discretion of the court would come into play and you would probably be on the losing end of that discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, you wrote a story about a guy called Peter Thompson who, it turned out, was the son of the Greek god Mercury and went to &quot;hero school&quot; where it turned out there was some underlying plot to overthrow Zeus and incite war on Olympus and only Peter had the power to stop the plot with help from his two friends, a male and a female, on a jaunty magic schoolboy type quest JK Rowling's lawyers couldn't touch you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately Rick Riordan's lawyers would nail you to the wall for ripping off his &quot;Percy Jackson&quot; series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However JK Rowling can't sue Riordan for his thinly disguised Potter rip-off. He's made Jackson sufficiently different that he's safe from the courts of civil law. The court of popular opinion, however, has branded him an unoriginal hack and his stories have not impinged on the public consciousness to anywhere near the degree of the Harry Potter series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, basically it's a matter of degree, and there are more ways for your work to be a failure than to be deemed infringing intellectual property in a court of law. On the other hand Riordan's ploy did get him a publisher... make of that what you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On your second point. In the electronic arena it matters whether the blog or website presented a work of fiction in which case, see above, or if what it produced was considered &quot;news&quot;. In the latter case, well, just look at daily newspapers, they are all in the business of writing up the same source material in their own words. They call it bias. So if what you have on your website is &quot;news&quot; or &quot;information&quot; then it can be copied by someone else in their own words without issue. See also textbooks for examples of the same information rendered by different people in different words. If the work is creative, imaginative and &quot;original&quot; (such that it is not based on information in the public domain) then the rules apply as above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, to clarify one point I've now made twice. If you decide to write your own version of Snow White someone else may also write theirs with the same sequence of events and even the same character names as long as they don't steal any original elements that you added to the story (like Red Riding Hood's utility belt and addition of her sidekick &quot;Sparrow&quot; the girl wonder). Even then it gets a bit complicated and nothing is certain no matter what Disney's legal team will tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And while I was writing that paragraph I remembered one other thing. Technically if what you have written is deemed &quot;satire&quot; in some areas that gives it special protection under &quot;freedom of speech&quot; a court ruling once set a precedent that zombies were a satirical device therefore adding zombies to anything instantly protects it as satire. This is, of course, a broad interpretation but it does serve as an example that all I have written is suspect and you never can be sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SECOND EDIT: And on your point about a movie that was very similar but sufficiently different not to occasion a lawsuit see National Treasure. The story goes that Disney wanted to buy the rights to The Da Vinci Code and lost the bid, so they made National Treasure. As you may note National Treasure is so sufficiently different from TDVC that it exists now as a thing in its own right having features not shared by the original work (e.g. IMO &quot;fun&quot;). Therein lies the problem in such a ploy. People who love &quot;Lord of the Rings&quot; want to see &quot;Lord of the Rings&quot; they don't want to see &quot;Halfling and Elfboy's Bogus Questathon&quot;, so essentially by making your product sufficiently different you have also ensured it will have its own audience leaving the audience for the original pristine and unsullied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-09-13T14:52:16.040" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T14:52:16.040" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3925" CreationDate="2011-09-13T12:15:55.473" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since &quot;break your scene into beats&quot; was from my comment, let me see if I can add anything to the discussion here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You originally wrote &quot;I divide my story into scenes, and put those scenes into chapters.&quot; So you understand how to break a story into smaller pieces. Let's create an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SCENE: James just found out that he's been promoted, and is sharing the news with his best friend Sam. James didn't know Sam was going for the same promotion. Sam is both pleased and jealous, and trying to hide his jealousy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;[My original suggestion here was &quot;forget about word count, and ask yourself 'Did I accomplish the task(s) in my outline in this scene?' &quot; Let's assume that the tasks you want to accomplish are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;show James to be young, enthusiastic, ambitious, and somewhat full&#xA;of himself, but not entirely insensitive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;show Sam to both love James and see him as a rival&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;start laying groundwork to set up the big Act IV confrontation between James and Sam.]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to create beats, you kind of micro-outline your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sam is sitting at his desk working. Sam's thoughts: both he and James&#xA;interviewed. Sam has been working very hard for this position and thinks he has finally convinced Big Boss that he deserves the responsibility. Sam knew his interview was strong, but he also knows&#xA;James is a charmer. Wonders if interviewer told James that Sam was&#xA;interviewing. Wonders how James did. Wonders what it would be like if&#xA;James had to report to him, and if that would cool their friendship.&#xA;Leads to tangent reverie about happy childhood memory with him and&#xA;James.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;James comes in the room extremely excited. &quot;Sam, I got the job!&quot;&#xA;Eagerly recounts how he was just told. Starts to rattle off future plans for the position. James doesn't notice the smile&#xA;has frozen on Sam's face. Sam's thoughts racing as James bounces&#xA;around the room, oblivious.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;James finally pauses for Sam's reaction. Sam forces out something&#xA;positive. James's smile falls as he realizes Sam isn't nearly as&#xA;excited as he expected. Asks what's wrong. &quot;Aren't you happy for me?&quot;&#xA;Jumps to conclusions and starts reassuring Sam that James will&#xA;certainly insist that Sam join him in the new department as his&#xA;right-hand guy. &quot;I'd never leave you behind, Sam, you're my best friend.&quot; Adds something about refusing the promotion if Sam can't come with him, speaking with a great air of gallantry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sam recognizes James's genuine devotion to him, and is able to smile&#xA;more normally. Thanks James for his offer and reiterates his pleasure&#xA;at James's promotion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;James is up and running again, rattling off ideas, but this time it's more give-and-take, and Sam finds himself caught up in the excitement of the new project. This feels more natural, more right &amp;mdash; the two of them working together to solve a problem. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are beats. They are bubbles of action, of thought, of mood, which each contribute something to character or plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T12:15:55.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3928" CreationDate="2011-09-13T12:29:43.750" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CAVEAT:&lt;/strong&gt; I am not a lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the level you're describing, yes, this is copyright infringement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, if it's easy to demonstrate that your work is &quot;substantially similar&quot; to another piece, to which you had access, then infringement can be proved. Working with similar themes, plot elements, and tropes generally doesn't constitute such extreme similarity, but if you're talking about rewriting a piece at a paragraph-by-paragraph level, merely re-wording without changing content or theme, then that's an easy case against you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there are plenty of retellings which don't constitute infringement - but they need to add or change something substantial. &lt;em&gt;West Side Story&lt;/em&gt; 'wouldn't infringe on &lt;em&gt;Romeo and Juliet&lt;/em&gt; (even if that illustrious work weren't long out of copyright) because it's a retelling in an entirely different era and setting, and these elements change the story. &lt;em&gt;Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody&lt;/em&gt; doesn't infringe on &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; because it's a parody. &lt;em&gt;Wicked&lt;/em&gt; doesn't infringe on &lt;em&gt;Wizard of Oz&lt;/em&gt; because it retells the story from a vastly different POV, and is a riff on the Oz mythos. Also, &quot;substantial similarity&quot; can be vague and tough to prove, so even fairly blatant rip-offs can avoid infringement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a simple line-by-line rewriting - the same elements, characters and events in the same configuration - would be shot down pretty easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-09-17T18:32:41.667" LastActivityDate="2011-09-17T18:32:41.667" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3929" CreationDate="2011-09-13T12:36:44.173" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, type &quot;Time&quot;, or any other such common word, in Amazon. You will find there is more than one book with that exact title.  Certainly, when searching for books, I have found many books with the exact same title. In such cases, I use the author or genre to narrow down my search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the book is in the same genre, then it would matter, although again, maybe not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, since you say it is a different market, I would say don't worry about it. And in any case, the publisher might change the book's name anyway, because they feel they can market it better with a different name. If they feel the title duplication is a concern, they'll change the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would say go ahead and use the title, and let the publisher worry about any name clashes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: In view of @One Monkey's comment below; if the title is similar to another book, make sure it is not similar to one by a best selling author, or a famous series. So if you choose The Hobbit, or Rendezvous with Rama, you will be in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="11249" LastEditDate="2016-01-26T22:42:09.587" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T22:42:09.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3929" CreationDate="2011-09-13T13:33:19.213" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say that it doesn't matter at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Titles are not required to be unique. A little searching can reveal dozens of short stories and novels that have shared titles, all without hurting recognition or sales. I would only be concerned about this if one of two things apply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The work whose title you share is very well-known in your genre. In that case people are likely to believe that you're deliberately aping the title, and editors are likely to reject the story, or at least require that you change the title.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your title is too generic, and so is shared by many different works. In this case the problem is not primarily that your title is shared but that your title is &lt;em&gt;boring&lt;/em&gt;. You'd be better off coming up with something more interesting and distinctive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T13:33:19.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3935" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3937" CreationDate="2011-09-13T16:26:33.983" Score="1" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of working with a client on the development of a business book to support the development of a consulting business. The book will be comprised of multiple sections -- each which could stand on their own -- and together will be a nice size manual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subject is personal investing in today's market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is best practices for building an audience for the book -- prior to the publishing -- and how much that process needs to affect both the content and production of the actual book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &#xA;If we distribute initial chapters to existing clients, do we actively solicit feedback and potentially change the direction of the book?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If we post on blogs as a guest host, to what degree do we integrate comments and questions from visitors? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are other ways we could build the audience by sharing the content before publication? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2460" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-09-13T17:45:43.230" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T22:47:34.720" Title="What are the potential platforms for floating chapters of a business book?" Tags="|publishing|business-writing|marketing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3936" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-13T17:50:36.313" Score="9" ViewCount="2272" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a few different styles for technical (academic) papers.  Which is the preferred style to introducing new technical terms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here is a paragraph I have that I don't like, because I am suspicious of introducing a term inside parenthesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;But because local lighting models&#xA;do not consider other scene geometry,&#xA;its not possible to directly model the effect of&#xA;light bouncing from one piece of geometry&#xA;to the next (&lt;em&gt;interreflections&lt;/em&gt;),&#xA;or geometry that blocks light from reaching&#xA;a surface (&lt;em&gt;shadows&lt;/em&gt;).&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="389" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-03-05T20:30:40.853" LastActivityDate="2018-10-15T05:09:42.673" Title="How do you introduce terms?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|academic-writing|terminology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3935" CreationDate="2011-09-13T18:01:22.560" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One great way to promote your ideas is to turn one or two chapters into a 60- or 90-minute talk and present it at professional associations or conferences. Local chapters of professional associations are typically starved for good presenters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar: Post a few short podcasts or (better) videos in which you hit the highlights. Take a look at some of Peter Block's videos:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.designedlearning.com/hear-peter.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.designedlearning.com/hear-peter.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.designedlearning.com/see-peter.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.designedlearning.com/see-peter.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to posting on blogs as a guest host, create a blog for the book and post to that. You might also create a forum where people can discuss the ideas (though this is risky if there's not enough buzz yet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your highest priority is feedback, you might post an offer: &quot;I'll send you a free chapter if you'll give me feedback.&quot; Then people can tell you which chapter they want, and give you their email address. Asking people to make this small commitment (even if they never give the feedback) can increase their interest in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find online forums where your ideas are relevant, and &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; people there. I don't know whether it's a good idea to post about your book there. Anything that seems like an advertisement can turn off as many people as it attracts. But your signature can mention your book and a link to the book's web site. If you're helping people, they'll want more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever you have new content (chapter, blog post, video) post the link to Twitter and Facebook. It's also a good idea to post your thoughts there, so that your stream is more about offering ideas than advertising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we distribute initial chapters to existing clients, do we actively solicit feedback and potentially change the direction of the book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, but only if you're open to the idea of changing the direction of the book... which, of course, you are. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we post on blogs as a guest host, to what degree to we integrate comments and questions from visitors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the degree that their comments and questions fit your intentions. Of course, the comments and questions may shift your intentions. You're the expert on what you're trying to say. Readers are the experts on how they react to your words. So keep listening, keep probing your intentions, and trust yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my mentors, Jerry Weinberg, often includes ideas from reviewers and other contributors. If the contribution is a sentence, Jerry quotes the contributor inline, within a paragraph of his own. For a longer contribution (usually a paragraph, but sometimes two or three), he uses a block quote. And in either case, he names the contributor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many of Jerry's books, each chapter ends with exercises or ideas for further study. Many of those come from reviewers' questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to quote reviewers' comments, it's probably a good idea to let them know that before soliciting their feedback. Depending on the length of your quotations, it's probably a good idea to ask whether its okay to use their words. If people take the time to read your chapters and give feedback, make sure to list them in your acknowledgments, whether you used their comments or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T18:01:22.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3938" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3940" CreationDate="2011-09-13T18:02:39.083" Score="11" ViewCount="3321" Body="&lt;p&gt;First time novelist, long time writer here. I'm looking for creative writing exercises to help with my dialogue.&#xA;Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2589" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T10:45:14.120" Title="Dialogue writing practices?" Tags="|novel|creative-writing|dialogue|exercises|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3938" CreationDate="2011-09-13T18:27:01.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an exercise that my writing group used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think of a scene that is largely conversation. Draft the scene as usual.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rewrite the scene using only dialogue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rewrite the scene using only narrative.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rewrite the scene using everything you've learned in this exercise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I want to practice something, I like to identify some key variables and play with them. What are some of the key variables in dialogue? (Maybe: goals and agendas, characters' knowledge of each other, characters' attitudes toward each other, relative status of the characters, ...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, starting from a drafted scene with plenty of dialogue, change one of the variables and rewrite the scene:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the POV character a secondary goal or hidden agenda.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give a non-POV character a hidden agenda.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change one character's attitude toward the other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change one character's knowledge about the other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the relative status between the characters (increase or decrease the difference in status, or swap their statuses).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps other folks can offer additional variables to play with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T18:27:01.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3938" CreationDate="2011-09-13T18:59:33.857" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get a video recorder and a few friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explain to your friends what the scene is about, and what you want to have happen. (Eliot and Alec walk into a bar and order a drink. They start talking about inconsequential stuff. Their friend Nate walks in and asks Eliot for the $50 Eliot owes him. Eliot says he already paid Nate. Discussion/dispute/argument ensues.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have everyone ad-lib until you finish the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Play back the recording. &lt;i&gt;Listen&lt;/i&gt; to it. Listen to the rhythm of human speech. Listen to the ums, the ers, the pauses, the stuttering. Listen to how people talk over each other and interrupt. Listen to how a drunk guy repeats himself and slurs his words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then &lt;i&gt;watch&lt;/i&gt; it. Watch body language. Watch what happens in the silences. Watch facial expressions. Watch how the bartender reacts when Eliot gets a beer and Alec orders a gin and tonic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now transcribe what you heard and saw. Write down every um, every glare, every snort and gesture. Have your friends read over it and confirm or edit what you wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may or may not use exactly what you ad-libbed for the book, but it will give you an idea of how actual people speak to one another and how they move and react when they're talking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could do this off TV as well, but sometimes actors are working too hard at acting, and ad-libbing is more of a guarantee that you'll get spontaneous reactions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T18:59:33.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3938" CreationDate="2011-09-13T20:09:02.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;After you have written a dialogue, you can try to improve it by switching from direct statements to indirect ones. It can make the dialog more interesting (e.g. ironic or sarcastic), less dull. But don't overdo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How do you want to stop me?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;I take make pistol here and shoot you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What should stop me from walking through that door?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Oh, I could ask my friends Smith and Wesson. Maybe they want to paint the wall behind you with your blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T20:09:02.543" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3938" CreationDate="2011-09-13T20:11:45.473" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/322874.html&quot;&gt;Jim Van Pelt has a great one:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, two students talk to each other so that each speaks twice.  One of them records what they said.  That produces four lines of raw dialogue like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Are you practicing with the band tonight?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Yeah, we qualified for state, so we’re doing extra time.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Congrats! Where’s state this year?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Colorado Springs. The same place we did it last year.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The exercise is, without changing any of the dialogue, to insert thoughts, actions and descriptions so that the reader is in a scene instead of just seeing a record of speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth reading the whole entry, for student responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is that dialogue, and its effect, are heavily dependent on the surrounding description and action. You can play the same dialogue a dozen different ways - and trying to do that is a great exercise for understanding how to choose which way to play yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T20:11:45.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3785" CreationDate="2011-09-13T20:14:07.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to work on a project where we wrote a graphical UI to subversion for a group of artists. Though I can't link that particular program.&#xA;Subversion essentially should be able to do all that you need.&#xA;Example article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wensh.net/archive.php/topic/1556.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wensh.net/archive.php/topic/1556.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2589" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T20:14:07.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3938" CreationDate="2011-09-13T20:15:08.510" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;A scriptwriting exercise that always helps make a nice shape out of dialogue. Follow the instructions without reading them all the way through the first time. Just do each step one at a time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Take a sheet of paper and write in the margin down 20 lines the letters A and B. They don't have to just swap e.g. ABABABABABAB but you can have no more than two the same in a row so AABABBABABABAAB = fine but  AAABABABBBBAAABABBB = wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Now on each row that has a letter in the margin you are going to draw some dots and dashes. Sort of like quasi Morse code. You may have a combination of up to any three on each line but you are not compelled to put three on any of them. In the end your shape could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;B _ . _&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A _ _ _&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;B . _&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;B _ _&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A . _ _&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;B . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A _ .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A _ _&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Now, think of some dramatic subject for a scene. Maybe, a doctor breaking it to a patient they have a terminal disease. Or a husband telling his wife he is leaving her. Or a criminal confessing his crimes to a police detective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Finally, you are going to use the plan you have created to create a short script. By now you may have guessed that the A and the B are character assignations e.g. criminal (A) and Detective (B). The dots represent short sentences or single word exclamations. The dashes represent any normal sentence greater than three words. So to give an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Criminal: Is that recording?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Detective: Everything you say in here will be recorded. So... you were telling me about McGann.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Criminal: You've got to understand that he pushed me to this. He got greedy and the greedier he got the less scruples he had. It wasn't always that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Detective: It wasn't? How was it before McGann got greedy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did you make girl scout cookies? Help old ladies with their shopping?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Criminal: No, it... Look, I'm not trying to justify anything. I just want it to be over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Detective: I understand. It's okay. Carry on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Criminal: McGann and I, we've been running a long time. He...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was a good guy, back at the start. I know you guys don't think so but he was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can of course, do this deliberately and introduce a character C etc. Try not to think about the random part, assigning the dots and dashes, it makes a natural rhythm that mimics the way people speak as they think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-09-14T08:09:34.400" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T08:09:34.400" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3953" CreationDate="2011-09-13T20:19:05.133" Score="6" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;My English instructor said that he wants us to submit a heading and a header on our essays, taking the following form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first page only should have our name, his name, the date, the subject (not necessarily in that order) in the top left.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The top right of every page should have our last name and the page number.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is that style called? (Is it MLA?) Also, what is the order of the elements of the heading on the first page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2490" OwnerDisplayName="Moshe" LastEditorUserId="2490" LastEditDate="2011-09-13T21:28:06.087" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T20:15:39.923" Title="What is this writing standard called,  and where can I look up the exact details?" Tags="|style|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3945" CreationDate="2011-09-14T00:31:00.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you've described sounds very much like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csus.edu/owl/index/mla/mla_format.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MLA publishing guidelines&lt;/a&gt; for essays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further information/reference, have a look at the following link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mla.org/style_faq1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mla.org/style_faq1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2454" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T00:31:00.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3916" CreationDate="2011-09-14T08:11:31.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lyn Dupre's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/020137921X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BUGS in Writing: A Guide to Debugging Your Prose&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is aimed at writers in technical fields. And it's more fun to read than most writing guides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2248" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T08:11:31.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2590" CreationDate="2011-09-14T09:50:42.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a digital novelist myself, so I believe I can answer your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My opinion is that the best way of digitally presenting a novel is through the browser - browsers these days are becoming very competent, and one can create an entire site (with a little web design of course) devoted to a story, so that when a visitor visits the site, he is transported to a fictional world built by the author. In fact, strange that you should be asking about links and images - I talked about them in my blog because I am a believer of novels empowered by digital technology. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uebyn.com/topics/digital-novels/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Check them out&lt;/a&gt;, I'm sure you will find them enlightening in your search for answers/inspirations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a rather famous digital novel that you can check out: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inanimatealice.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Inanimate Alice&lt;/a&gt;. It's a YA novel though, don't know if it's to your liking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2621" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T09:50:42.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3785" CreationDate="2011-09-14T10:42:44.250" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since this is deemed on topic, I'll give my recommendation as a proper answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than recommend other tools, judging by your setup (Paintshop Pro, Windows XP or Windows 7), the easiest method is to use these existing tools to do what you need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use Paintshop Pro to add meta data to your images. You can do this by going to Image &gt; Image Information. I added metadata to the &quot;Description&quot; field for the image. This way you can add words (maybe even develop your own system of tags) that you will use to search for. You could also add other data like who took the screen shot, the date it was last modified etc. If you plan the metadata, you can build a really good system for organising your images.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once that's done, you can then use Window XP's built in Search to find the file (same should work on Windows 7, too). Simply specify the directory you need, choose &quot;Pictures and Photos&quot; only, and then select &quot;for a phrase or word in a file&quot;. Type in the phrase/tag you're looking for, click search, and it should find the image you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T10:42:44.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3958" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-14T18:22:50.590" Score="5" ViewCount="244" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not that I have a lot of writer's block, it's the mash-up of stories I'm compiling that all have to fit together in some way. I have outlines and I have a heap of unfinished stories, all going into one book(quite a mess that has amassed into 245 pages). It's been fun, of course, but I'm looking for some kind of inspiration to make the work go faster and for everything to come together in all ways and directions written of, coming full circle. I'm also obsessed with the idea that a character in a book can claim to write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how to organize these ideas into a finished book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2626" LastEditorUserId="2626" LastEditDate="2011-09-14T19:30:33.770" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T11:00:42.773" Title="Bogged Down with Legends of Wind" Tags="|fantasy|book|writers-block|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3959" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3968" CreationDate="2011-09-14T18:38:37.117" Score="4" ViewCount="295" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in the Marines from 2000-2004, and I'd say I have a love/hate relationship with my experiences therein. I'm wondering how I could incorporate them into fantasy writing. Could you tell me where I might look for other devil-dogs or branched otherwise veterans who can help me develop my stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2626" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-09-14T18:57:28.073" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T13:21:01.510" Title="Incorporating Military Experience into Fantasy Writing?" Tags="|resources|fantasy|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3959" CreationDate="2011-09-14T19:03:36.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never been a soldier, so I have no experience in that matter. But mentioning war stories and fantasy automatically Tolkien comes to my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien#World_War_I&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tolkien took part&lt;/a&gt; at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Somme Offensive&lt;/a&gt; in WWI. Many people think, that he transformed the nightmare of the war into Lord of the Rings. Which leads to comparisons like Sauron plays the role of the German Kaiser. Or that the Saruman's army, based on technical power, clearing a forest to have fuel for the underground machinery, is a symbol for the German mobilisation, tactic and the way they fought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea if these things are true, but it is easily imaginable, that he put his war experience into his books. If you haven't read LotR yet, I recommend it as inspiration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warriors/fighters have always a place in fantasy, no matter if it classic like Tolkien or if it has a more contemporary background. I'm sure you find a way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On your comment above about infiltrating the Necros: The &lt;em&gt;Shadowrun&lt;/em&gt; series is built around the idea, that in the future mega companies have taken control over Earth. They hire small teams of mercenaries (called Runners) for infiltrating (shadowrunning) other companies (industrial espionage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know, how many ex-soldiers are writing there, but as source for inspiration it's worth looking nonetheless. Maybe the series is filed under science fiction, but it is fantasy with orcs, elves, dragons, and, well, mercenaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-09-14T22:52:27.483" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T22:52:27.483" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3958" CreationDate="2011-09-14T19:04:49.263" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are trying to do too much at once. You're flailing around in a cloud. The easiest way for me to get out of the cloud is to start asking and answering hard, definable questions, and completing hard, definable tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create and define a character.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide what you want the character to do. Give the character a reason&#xA;or reasons for doing it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start the character at some distance from the goal. &quot;Distance&quot; can be&#xA;physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, any combination of the above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the character some friends. (Or don't.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the character some enemies. (This can include the character&#xA;him/herself.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish some obstacles the character has to surmount to reach the&#xA;goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Things go wrong.&quot; Lather, rinse, repeat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sketch out an outline of how the character gets around the obstacles.&#xA;Include how the friends help and the enemies hinder.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything else is details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T19:04:49.263" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3958" CreationDate="2011-09-14T19:12:01.463" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lauren has some very good advice there, but the one thing I would add would be a timeline. If the stories you already have are tied together in any way, then try to lay them out on a timeline to show the order in which they occur. Even if they are not tied together, as long as they have a common setting, you could still use a timeline to establish an order for telling the overall story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to consider is looking for a common thread. If you have one character that is common to each story, then try to organize each story based on that character's experiences and the order in which the events occurred. If each story has a common theme, then group them together based on how the different characters perceive that theme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main point is to find some way in which you can provide some consistency to your stories. From what you have posted, I get the sense that you may have a collection of short stories or perhaps each separate story is a chapter or scene from a single overarching story. Figure out how to tie them together and then start putting them into place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T19:12:01.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3959" CreationDate="2011-09-14T19:18:31.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the type of assistance you think you might need, there are a lot of different places you can go to find it. If you are looking for people to critique your work, I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt;. It is pretty easy to get your work reviewed by other writers who will give you some honest feedback on what you've written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for encouragement or support, I would suggest joining a writers group or forum. There are a couple that I frequent that I have found helpful at different times. One if the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/indiewriters/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Indie Writers Unite&lt;/a&gt; group on Facebook, and the other is the KindleBoards. The second one focuses mostly on self-published writers who are publishing for Kindle, but all authors are welcome there. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/board,60.0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writers' Cafe&lt;/a&gt; has a lot of threads that are relevant to most writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T19:18:31.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3936" CreationDate="2011-09-14T21:14:16.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the comments to your questions mention, there is no preferred way, only maybe a preferred way in your field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me sum up a few alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First&lt;/strong&gt;, the style you are already using (but do not like):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But because local lighting models do not consider other scene geometry, it's not possible to directly model the effect of light bouncing from one piece of geometry to the next (interreflections), or geometry that blocks light from reaching a surface (shadows).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, nothing wrong with that. The term and its description are at one place. Easy to read, easy to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second&lt;/strong&gt;, your style in reverse:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But because local lighting models do not consider other scene geometry, it's not possible to model interreflections (the effect of light bouncing from one piece of geometry to the next), or shadows (geometry that blocks light from reaching a surface).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Term and description are again at one place, but the text in parenthesis is longer. So you interrupt the &amp;quot;outer&amp;quot; sentence longer, which can be confusing and harder to digest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third&lt;/strong&gt;, using footnotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But because local lighting models do not consider other scene geometry, it's not possible to model interreflections&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, or shadows&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;the effect of light bouncing from one piece of geometry to the next&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;geometry that blocks light from reaching a surface&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main sentence stays short and clearly. But the reader has to move his eyes down, away from the text to read the footnote. And footnotes are normally written in a smaller font size. Pressing necessary info into small letters is neither a good practice in contracts, nor in academic papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fourth&lt;/strong&gt;, using a glossary/endnotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Text looks similar to the footnote example. You can have a bigger font, but know your reader has to flip pages to find the important information. So using a glossary as the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; explanation source isn't a good idea. It is helpful as &lt;em&gt;additional&lt;/em&gt; source. I.e. explain the term where it first appears (like in the first example) and again in a glossary, where the reader could look it up, if he forget what it means ten pages later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fifth&lt;/strong&gt;, introducing terms before usage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;interreflection: the effect of light bouncing from one piece of geometry to the next&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;shadow: area where a geometry blocked light from reaching the surface&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But because local lighting models do not consider other scene geometry, it's not possible to model interreflections or shadows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read a book like that, and it was pretty awkward. I do not recommend this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T21:14:16.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3958" CreationDate="2011-09-14T21:47:18.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I focused on the phrase &quot;a character in a book can claim to write it.&quot;  Does this mean first-person narration?  Or are you being more philosophical/theoretical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's the second, I have no idea how to help you.  But if it's the first, I think that idea could be what helps you organize things.  Let's say you want one of your characters to be telling these stories.  WHY is s/he telling them?  Think of &lt;em&gt;Arabian Nights&lt;/em&gt;, or other collections that have a framework around them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: You could have a framing story, in which your narrator encounters new people, and, in an effort to help them understand the narrator's culture, tells the strangers the stories.  The first chapter/story of your collection could be the initial encounter, the last could wrap up the interaction.  If you wanted to, you could have short vignettes between the stories giving more details about the framing story, and how the interaction is progressing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may not work - I think you need to decide what ties all your stories together.  But if the main thread is that they all take place in the same world, then this framework might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T21:47:18.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="287" CreationDate="2011-09-14T22:03:55.857" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've only read the first two, but... isn't there a whole set of books called &lt;i&gt;A Series of Unfortunate Events&lt;/i&gt;? Which make a point of saying they don't have happy endings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T22:03:55.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="287" CreationDate="2011-09-15T01:29:33.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't mistake &quot;a happy ending&quot; with &quot;defeated the monster&quot;. Fairy stories of old had several goals, one of which was to show children that the monster can be dealt with. Note that that does not mean everything will turn out alright. Sometimes it's a choice between two terrible things, one of which is worse than the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern fantasy works are spiritual successors to the old childrens' fairy tale. Things might turn out okay in the end, but there is often a lot of loss along the way. Mistakes are made. People die (or are killed). And so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T01:29:33.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3959" CreationDate="2011-09-15T11:13:11.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My usual TLDR: Worry more about getting the &quot;fantasy&quot; right than the &quot;military&quot;. Your experience will be of service to you almost without you really knowing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Rest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end you won't be able to help writing from experience, even unconsciously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is said that you should write what you know. I've never really done that consciously, but to make &quot;real&quot; characters I have always mined my current experiences of incredibly dull everyday life; which I happen to have a wealth of experience of. So when I was young my protagonists were school kids. When I was in my twenties they were people who were doing &quot;jobs&quot; and regarded their social life as their life. When I got to my thirties they were just people trying to cope with a work/life balance and thinking about families and serious relationships and stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I stuck a bunch of angels, werewolves, alchemists, vampires and old gods into their lives. The verisimilitude of the protagonists was always meant to &quot;sell&quot; people on the really wacky stuff I was including along with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first novel of mine that's at all readable is about college kids getting involved in a war between vampires and werewolves (and I wrote it in 1995 before that was a proper cliche go me!) re-reading it now the vampire and werewolf stuff is kind of humdrum, ironically, but the college kid stuff still pops because I was unconsciously writing it with a level of emotional and practical detail that was right at my fingertips. The point is that if I were you I would worry about making the story of the Necros bit compelling and the military stuff will just kind of &lt;em&gt;be&lt;/em&gt; interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't worry about trying to force your military experience out it will come out. I also wouldn't worry overmuch about your &quot;technique&quot;. Write your military fantasy as the story you think it should be. I don't think there is an ABC for all military fantasy and if there is it should be read, digested and then used as a buffet, concentrate on the bits you like and ignore the bits you don't. The thing no guide can cater to is that you have experience and that is what will come out so if you think part of some &quot;one size, fits all&quot; plan is junk, then junk it will be for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any technique you encounter in written form will be a lesson for military and non-military alike. If I wanted to write a military fantasy then I might come to you to ask about the military bits, to make them true. The part you might therefore want to consider is the &quot;fantasy&quot; part. You obviously can't organise a meet and greet with Conan to discuss how things really go down in an alternate world but you might want to see if you can digest some of Tolkein's stuff (for example) about what fantasy is all about as a genre. Compare the Cliff's Notes of that reading with your own thoughts about why you're writing a military themed story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for things like not having direct experience of being a leader within that scenario, that's not important. What is important is the fact that you have the experience of being led. I don't and so would find it immeasurably more difficult to talk about the relationship between soldier and commander. Your experiences are a way into reversing role situations via thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are all just human beings and titles like &quot;leader&quot; or &quot;soldier&quot; are roles that we play. In order to get into the head of a leader try to remember the emotional responses you have had to leaders who were, in your opinion, &quot;good&quot; or &quot;bad&quot;. Try to remember and to list the reasons that you formed those opinions. Then try to understand why they acted the way they did and treated their soldiers the way they did. Once you gain some clarity on that you will start to understand how to portray the life of a leader, at least for fictional purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were I to do the same thing I would have to start from scratch and do a hell of a lot of research. What I came up with in the end would always be from a distance and would lack the interesting features that a person who has really lived similar experiences would be able to bring to the tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just read Piers Anthony's &quot;Bio Of A Space Tyrant&quot; series and in the second book he talks about the titular Tyrant's experiences in the Jupiter Navy. Anthony did two years service in the US Army between 1957 and 1959 and that experience shows in this volume, easily the best of the five book series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think Anthony himself particularly thought that his small sliver of military experience was of all that much help to the SF series he wrote in the mid eighties but the detail he included effortlessly gives the lie to that. The other four volumes detail the protagonist's experience as a refugee, a politician and as the Tyrant of Jupiter are not nearly as strong. They're all good fun but none of the other volumes make you understand the protagonist as much as the soldier volume. The experience was key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-09-15T12:58:27.313" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T12:58:27.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3929" CreationDate="2011-09-15T17:49:47.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had the same feeling in regards to my &quot;Metaverse&quot; in my ongoing book &quot;Legends of Wind&quot;.&#xA;If you enter Metaverse into Wikipedia, you can see that it is not a new word. My definition is different of course, but one other definition, for example, is the merging of this world and the internet, where they blur together. It has also been called upon for an obscure virtual world of roleplaying. I'm sure there are others as well. My point is that there are only so many original ideas out there, and given variations. Some of them are going to bump heads. As long as people don't become stingy with them, there should be no problem, within reason. Obviously, talking about &quot;Sparkling Vampires&quot; and titling your book &quot;Twilight: Second Moon&quot; will raise more than a few eyebrows and will probably result in a lawsuit involving copyright infringment. But, by that same token, nobody holds exclusive rights to the idea of the &quot;Vampire&quot; or the &quot;Werewolf&quot;. You can be creative enough to make your own variations. If not, then just write fanfiction with the usual disclaimer. It's all in good fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2626" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T17:49:47.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3945" CreationDate="2011-09-15T20:15:39.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be careful with a format given by an instructor. Although it may be MLA, often instructors have specific tweeks they have added to suit their needs. I would ask the instructor if they want you to follow MLA before assuming that format. If the instructor says no and does not offer a name of a format, ask for examples or clarification so you are sure to meet the expectations of the instructor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2632" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T20:15:39.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3990" CreationDate="2011-09-15T20:37:01.693" Score="4" ViewCount="2210" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has anyone had any experience with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.serenity-software.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Serenity Editor&lt;/a&gt; editing software? What's the difference between the Standard version or the Word add-in? What kind of results can it get? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nobody has used it, from the description does it look like a worthwhile tool to investigate? Why or why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T15:53:50.850" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T03:06:21.633" Title="Any experience with Serenity Editor software?" Tags="|editing|software|tools|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3531" CreationDate="2011-09-16T01:52:42.463" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a long time, I was stuck on having a static beginning: &quot;My name is jon. I live in utah. This is my story.&quot; HAHA, no. I generally don't reveal what's going on or even the protagonist's name for at least a time. Everything should come out eventually, but initially be a mystery; a story unraveling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throw your character into the middle of the action, or out in the middle of nowhere with no idea what to do next. Chain up your character naked from a metropolitan traffic light at 5pm.&#xA;Go wild. It's your story, and you can do anything you want. Be God. Have fun being God. Play at it every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having structure is good too, just don't let it hinder or stifle your creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2626" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T01:52:42.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3971" CreationDate="2011-09-16T07:50:46.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at the examples they give, it looks like a good idea. However, many of the error they detect could have been detected by anyone with a good knowledge of English, which comes merely by reading a lot of books, and not necessarily by getting an English Degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.serenity-software.com/pages/new_FAQs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; page, one of the errors they give is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Good things come to them who waits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I saw the error immediately, without having to look their solution. Another example  is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My birthday was June 31, 1986.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The date is incorrect - I couldn't guess this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So overall, not a bad software, but it might be less useful to those who already are in the habit of reading. The key point is the price - do you think $55 is a fair price? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have a ten day trial- you can try that to see how it works in practice. Of course, you will need to have a fairly long piece of work to see how good the software is in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to which version you buy, if you normally use Ms Word, then you should buy the plug-in. If you use an alternative like Open Office, or any other free tool, then buy the stand alone version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just giving my personal opinion, I'm not too sure of software that claims to replace what a human can do, at least in creative fields (remember Clippy?). So be sure to use the trial before you buy the full version, and do share your results here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Ok, I actually tried the software, and it was worse than I thought. It looked like a 1990's shareware program designed by a student. The UI was weird- you have to press 2 weird sounding buttons like draft and usage to get your analysis. The analysis itself is in a small non-resizeable window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you ignore the clunky UI, the actual program isn't that great. I entered about 1200 words from my draft, and it threw out hundreds of suggestions, most of them useless. Eg, in one case it told me the word 'assistance' was pretentious (really?) and I should replace it with help. But assistance was the right word in that scene. Then it wanted to replace hoarder with boarder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can say, the writer should be able to take what he/she wants from the output, ignoring what they don't like. All well. Except that it was throwing up hundreds of suggestions for just 1200 words. If I entered my whole book, I would be bogged down for weeks trying to understand the software's cryptic messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, the price. currently, it is $55, which is more than even Scrivener. I'm not sure this software justifies the high price for the value it offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="2024" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T13:41:04.170" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T13:41:04.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3958" CreationDate="2011-09-16T11:00:42.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's always the classic: &quot;Joe walks through life oblivious to everything, wanting excitement and really wild things&quot;. Then have a short story of what he did in a day, and possibly write him into each story in a background way (He might be at a bar where a fight has broken out previously, and the barman is clearing up the mess).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T11:00:42.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3936" CreationDate="2011-09-16T12:39:16.967" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are trying to get the sentence to do two things. You might want to omit the terms in brackets until you have a chance to explain them. Trying to cram too much into one sentence makes it unwieldy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But because local lighting models do not consider other scene&#xA;  geometry, its not possible to directly model the effect of light&#xA;  bouncing from one piece of geometry to the next, or&#xA;  geometry that blocks light from reaching a surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Light bouncing from one piece of geometry to the next is known as interreflection, &#xA;  and can be modelled using [something to do with the next thing you were going to explain]...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We refer to the concept of light being blocked from reaching a surface as a shadow, &#xA;  and understand it instinctively because...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T12:39:16.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3976" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3982" CreationDate="2011-09-16T14:35:49.953" Score="3" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a pseudo-technical blog post trying to apply some game theory concepts to s/w startup industry. This is my first serious attempt at tech blog writing. Iwas left feeling disappointed by the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://anandjeyahar.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/entrepreneurship-a-view-from-game-theory-perspective-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my post&lt;/a&gt; am trying to show how some of the abstract concepts of game theory can be applied to the startup industry, to a non-academic(business/tech-founders) reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what attributes I would like critiqued:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it coherent?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do my ideas juxtapose well?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can a non-technical audience understand what I've written?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there an overall sense of clarity?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT 2:&#xA;Hi, Thanks for the feedback, i agree i didn't pay attention to punctuation and formatting. I have started on it(haven't done the whole post though).  Regarding the readability,i see i have just written down thoughts rather that how each one led to another. Am re-editing the post part by part(as i find time). Leaving the question open, as i am hoping the latter visitors might give more feedback. If you think, that it's done, drop in a comment and i'll close the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2636" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T05:30:40.720" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T05:30:40.720" Title="Is this blog post clear and coherent?" Tags="|technical-writing|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3977" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-16T14:09:46.233" Score="7" ViewCount="10205" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'The Report is to be presented in the “impersonal past tense” e.g.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Personal – I worked in the Design Department.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Impersonal – The work was carried out in the Design Department.'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm finding it hard to write in the impersonal paste tense. I keep writing things like &quot;I did this, I was given that to do&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything I can do to make the task easier on myself?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Maybe to imagine reading it from a certain perspective or maybe there are rules to abide by when trying to write something like this in the impersonal past tense, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2635" OwnerDisplayName="Adam Lynch" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T18:11:14.527" Title="Help with Impersonal Past Tense" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3977" CreationDate="2011-09-16T14:23:32.870" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sympathise with you being &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to write in the passive. Whoever stipulated that has no love of language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any tricks that apply: you're just going to have to write a lote of &quot;was done&quot;, &quot;were requested&quot;, &quot;had been checked&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Colin Fine" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T14:23:32.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3977" CreationDate="2011-09-16T14:23:50.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question seems to be about the passive: 'This was done by me' as opposed to 'I did this.' The passive is normal in scientific and some other academic writing and presumably in the organization you work for. I'm not sure I understand what the difficulty is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Barrie England" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T14:23:50.573" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3977" CreationDate="2011-09-16T14:34:22.907" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past, I have been required to write &quot;impersonally&quot; by omitting all personal pronouns, etc, which was considered the proper way to write academic research papers.  That sounds like the writing style that you are being asked to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found it useful to think of it as writing a series of instructions, but in the past tense.  In this fashion, you are telling someone how to do what you did, without saying that you were the one who did it. Here is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The task was to build a new computer program. The tools used were C++ and Visual Studio. The task was completed by creating several code files in Visual Studio and then compiling it at the command line. The code was tested thoroughly by the programmer's younger relatives at some time before dinner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" OwnerDisplayName="Kitḫ" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T14:34:22.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3977" CreationDate="2011-09-16T18:11:14.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do the report as though you were merely observing others.  Stick to the facts and keep your opinions out of it.  Do the report as though are telling a story about someone else where you do not have a vested interest.  Avoid talking about thoughts, feelings, emotions and try to write with out judgment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no easy way to depersonalize an event that was very personal to you.   The best way I find to evaluate is to put someone I care deeply about in and read it and see if it feels like I was too harsh on them.  Then put someone i dislike in and see if it feels like i was to nice to them.  If the answer is yes then I probably need to revise the report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2638" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T18:11:14.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3976" CreationDate="2011-09-16T19:44:20.127" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In response to &lt;em&gt;Is it coherent?&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Is there an overall sense of clarity?&lt;/em&gt;, I think you've got a lot of problems that boil down to simple formatting, spellchecking, and proofreading. These make the piece much more difficult to read and understand. Among the problems I noticed: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should use a spell checker. &quot;atleast&quot; is not a word, &quot;I&quot; is upper-case, and there is a space before a parenthesis. Later on: &quot;Ofcourse&quot; is not a word, there is a space after a comma.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You begin with &lt;code&gt;After recently seeing the HN post of Entreporn&lt;/code&gt;; this was unclear and offputting. Err, what? HN? Enter porn? Is that a name, or do I have to look it up on Urban Dictionary? And why is there a dot between the colon and &quot;I&quot;? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You've got some formatting oddities: &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why did you put an anchor tag around &quot;wikipedia&quot; (which is written upper-case), when it is not linked? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why don't you use headings for headings? HTML is a markup language.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your outline would be a lot more useful if the headings linked directly to the relevant sections. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, your casing in the outline is inconsistent. Sometimes it's upper-, sometimes lower-case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These may seem like minor quibbles, but they add up. Correct formatting will help your audience want to continue reading and show that you care about the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a wider scope, I also didn't feel your article was coherent or understandable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your first three paragraphs are a waste of time reading. Come to the point. The internet is a fast medium.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have no clue what you are talking about in your first section, &quot;zero-sum or non-zero-sum.&quot; And I know game theory and what zero-sum means.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By the second section, &quot;reward-risk profile,&quot; I'm already losing interest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-09-17T21:47:15.310" LastActivityDate="2011-09-17T21:47:15.310" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3983" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-16T20:34:50.223" Score="7" ViewCount="68855" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is a reasonable estimate for the minimum length, in word count, for a non-fiction book?  I'd guesstimate that non-fiction books &quot;generally&quot; (yes, this is very rough) run perhaps 150-450 pages, and at about 350 wd/page that works out to something like 50-150k words. (Correct me if I am off here). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, occasionally very short books are published, such as Harry Frankfurt's &lt;em&gt;On Bullshit&lt;/em&gt;, at 67 small pages with &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; wide margins (about 110 wds/page)...one count I saw was the whole book was only 3,000 words, as it was just a book version of a short essay.  (It spent 27 weeks on the NY Times Bestseller list).  This is obviously an extreme case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what of a book at perhaps 15-20k words?  At, e.g., 300 wds/page that could be 50-67 pages. Aside from the Frankfurt book, is there any kind of market for something too long to be an article but too short to be a &quot;normal&quot; 250 pager?  Other examples would be helpful.  And what else should one know about that market?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2388" LastActivityDate="2020-10-20T18:39:01.510" Title="Minimum (realistic) word count of non-fiction book" Tags="|non-fiction|book|wordcount|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3983" CreationDate="2011-09-16T20:43:30.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easy answer to this is &quot;it depends&quot;. The length of your book should be determined by the content, whether it is a work of fiction or non-fiction. If you have provided all the information that you feel is needed or is relevant, then you are done. The length ultimately doesn't matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/352/is-there-a-rule-of-thumb-about-the-number-of-pages-a-work-of-fiction-should-have/3414#3414&quot;&gt;word count&lt;/a&gt; goes, there was another question posted that pertained to that, and the answer I gave for that question should give you a guideline for the different types of books. Even if you don't have enough words to qualify as a &quot;novel&quot;, it will ultimately fall into one of the other categorizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T20:43:30.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3976" CreationDate="2011-09-16T20:55:26.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before one should even address the the questions you asked about it, it should be stated that this blog post reads like a dashed-off email or text message, in part because it seems that you don't care about the common conventions of written English, like capitalization of the word &quot;I&quot; and header words, spelling, proper spacing, punctuation, etc. It makes it painful to read.  There is also no attempt to introduce the game theory concepts first to a general audience so that you can then apply them to entrepreneurship.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend you reconsider the amount of time and thinking you'll need to put into such blog posts if you want your blog to be useful and read.  The topic may be quite interesting, but it demands more care than you seem to have given it on this pass.  Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2388" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T20:55:26.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3983" CreationDate="2011-09-16T21:40:28.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A non-fiction book attractive to publishers of best-sellers starts at around 75,000 words. Ideal target is probably closer to 100,000. BUT, most non-fiction publishers want to be sold the concept, and therefore be able to discuss the direction of the project, before you write the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Know your content, know your mainline pitch (and some possible permutations), create a high-level outline, write a compelling chapter and sell that. Don't worry about word count.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2641" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T21:40:28.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3938" CreationDate="2011-09-16T22:13:44.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Follow others&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware of good dialogue when you find it. If you're working in a genre, find exemplars in that genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conversations are not dialogues&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the whole dialogue between two people. Some great dialogues start on page 10 and run to page 300. The entire noir fiction genre lives on great dialogue. Watch how additional parties are included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you 'get good at dialogue' without seeing the long haul, you end up packing too much in to each conversation, and they sound camp and clever, pithy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Dialogues are workhorses&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good dialogue reveals and transforms relationships, offers information (with a personal twist), creates touchstones of insight or humor you can return to, and proves your characters' emotional trajectories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spent time practicing and using structures and methods. Like braces, I have grown out of them. You should do them. But I can tell you how I do dialogue now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Be your characters&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing dialogue is like playing chess against yourself. You spin the board and try to forget what was at stake for the 'opponent.' But the best dialogues are between whole people with whole views and epxeriences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand who the character is - background and experience, point of view&#xA;Understand where they came from before this conversation&#xA;Understand why they're having it (nothing is random)&#xA;Understand what they want&#xA;Understand what they're afraid of, or hiding&#xA;Understand what the underlying relationship is, the judgments, the histories, etc between the speakers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Understand dialogue as a tool, not a necessary hurdle&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialogue is a powerful tool to move the story forward. (Hopefully, you do this with every damn word.) I try to move descriptive and informational content into dialogue and use my own descriptive phrasing to paint images. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This converts the overbearing narration into something fluid, possibly playful. Instead of an author banging out the course of someone's day, you let them tell someone later in the day. That's cool because you add their personality and perception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Increase power through abstraction&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better, have someone else describe that person's day in their presence. Now you have two people's personalities and perceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The levels of abstraction are powerful. You can juxtapose relevant aspects of one character's personality (dour, serious cop) against those of their chronicler (angry, footloose son; relaxed, retired father; fun-loving, flamboyant new significant other; loud-mouthed bum on the street corner watching a bust).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2641" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T22:13:44.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3935" CreationDate="2011-09-16T22:47:34.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is on the cusp of all the changes in publishing that are occurring. You are asking, if I may rephrase, what strategies can we employ that will translate to a larger buying audience for a future publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many important dependencies:&#xA;Current audience/following. Obviously, if your client is Steven Covey, you're done already. If not, then ask: what strategies build the reputation of the authors? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publisher. If the publisher is Random House and this is their number one book of the season, you're already done. Show up for the interviews and signings. If not, what strategies will increase awareness of the upcoming/published book among our target audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are old world methodologies and strategies. Offer seminars, become go-to pundits for television and radio shows, advertise, send out press releases targeted for the types of media where you want to be noticed, schedule talks and signings to coincide with the publication, get yourselves into Money Magazine and the WSJ as top investors, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you've asked specifically about a set of more permeable, social media driven strategies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I offer the following 'model' as a way to proceed, but more as a way to see what's at stake:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Establish your credentials separate from any publication&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a subject like investing, people are going to be more likely to check you out and check out your other content if you provide timely, approachable, and useful information in something like a blog or podcast. But you don't want to give it all up there. Refer them back to your deeper, context-rich publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Publications are long-term content&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People want context and tools when they read a longer non-fiction piece. They are making an investment in time and want a return that should show up in their investing results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Listen to your audience, but don't jump&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The audiences' perception of an expert is closely related to how that expert responds to the audience. Your message, your tools, your expertise should be a lens through which you understand and respond to your audience and their concerns. Their successes will be nice testimonials, but how will you respond to their failures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Make your audience jump&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a means to help people invest successfully, push them to do it. Be confident. People overcoming a fear and succeeding will promote you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, have something to offer that you have absolute confidence in, and then expect people to jump on board. An audience will follow. (And if not, one can only assume you'll have a kick-ass portfolio.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2641" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T22:47:34.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="54" CreationDate="2011-09-16T22:59:45.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Show. Be sensual. Carry the reader through the scene. Most of what we experience is sensory, even how other people are feeling. Sights, smells, time of day, noises. And show, like foggyone pointed out, how the environment reflects or portends or extends the characters' or stories trajectory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell. Narrate. Explain. Detai... &lt;em&gt;yawn&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And... a rule is a matter of practice and training, but not necessarily of execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2641" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T22:59:45.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3971" CreationDate="2011-09-16T23:56:05.723" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, I gave it a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was puzzled during setup getting a message that my screen resolution is too high. Because it was a big WTF too me, I ignored the message and continued. Also does the WTF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After launching the standalone application you see a fixed-size window, not resizable. I do not know if this is some stupid limitation of the evaluation version, but this is just ridiculous. After the app has analyzed your code, three sub windows show up within the main window, one behind the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Draft Output window shows your text with numbers annotated. The Usage Output (error list) shows these numbers and the issue description. Now it would be handy to arrange these two windows side-by-side, but that is impossible, because of the fixed-sized main window. For me as software developer this is one giant WTF!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Luckily you can export the outputs and watch them in the editor of your choice side-by-side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The findings themselves are interesting and helpful--at least for me as a non-native speaker. The error list is not in ascending order, instead sorted in categories. Looks like the idea is to get through the error list and look up the corresponding number in the text, not the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get an impression I show you a section of my current novel and the analysis of the tool:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;(Caveat: I believe in &lt;em&gt;Write, don't edit&lt;/em&gt; and this is work in progress. So don't expect anything polished.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wind breathes through my wings. I’m gliding on a cushion of relief. I’ve got outside in time. Here I’m one of many crows flying around. I angle my wings and turn around. I overlook the inner yard of the temple. Witches all over the place. Can they also can fly? It would reduce my chances tremendously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which chances anyway? They are so many and I am only one. They are witches and I’m just a bird.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;»Don’t let me regret having chosen you.«&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;»Oh, don’t tell me, you forgotten me. That would hurt so much; itching my highly strung heart.«&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aren’t you too sensitive? I doubt, that demons have hearts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;»And I doubt, that ravens have brains. At least the one I know of.«&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are so smart, beast, then tell me how I, a bird, can kill the archpriest. A witch with magic, charms and stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;»Learn to think. Then learn to be more than a lousy bird.«&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wait! You cast me into this body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;»Yes, learn to use it.«&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Draft Output:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;344&amp;gt;The wind breathes through my wings. &amp;lt;345&amp;gt;I'm gliding on a cushion&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;of relief. &amp;lt;346&amp;gt;I've got outside in time. &amp;lt;347&amp;gt;Here I'm one of many crows&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;flying around. &amp;lt;348&amp;gt;I angle my wings and turn around. &amp;lt;349&amp;gt;I overlook the&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;inner yard of the temple. &amp;lt;350&amp;gt;Witches all over the place. &amp;lt;351&amp;gt;Can they&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;also can fly? &amp;lt;352&amp;gt;It would reduce my chances tremendously.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;353&amp;gt;Which chances anyway? &amp;lt;354&amp;gt;They are so many and I am only one.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;355&amp;gt;They are witches and I'm just a bird.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;356&amp;gt;The beast.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;357&amp;gt;Aren't you too sensitive? &amp;lt;358&amp;gt;I doubt, that demons have hearts.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;359&amp;gt;If you are so smart, beast, then tell me how I, a bird, can kill&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;the archpriest. &amp;lt;360&amp;gt;A witch with magic, charms and stuff.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;361&amp;gt;Wait! &amp;lt;362&amp;gt;You casted me into this body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usage Output (some numbers are not listed, reason unknown, I put them in order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;345&amp;gt; I'm&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;CONTRACTION [k]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;346&amp;gt; I've&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;CONTRACTION [k]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;347&amp;gt; I'm&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;CONTRACTION [k]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;347&amp;gt; around&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;COMMONLY MISUSED TERM; use &amp;quot;about&amp;quot; before a time [M]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;348&amp;gt; around&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;COMMONLY MISUSED TERM; use &amp;quot;about&amp;quot; before a time [M]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;350&amp;gt; Witches&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;POSSIBLE OFFENSIVE TERM? [o]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;350&amp;gt; all over the place&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;SLANG EXPRESSION [L]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;351&amp;gt; also can&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;UNIDIOMATIC PHRASE; can also? [N]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;352&amp;gt; tremendously&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;POSSIBLE EMPTY INTENSIFIER [E]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;354&amp;gt; only&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;COMMONLY MISUSED TERM: place right before word(s) it modifies [M]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;355&amp;gt; witches&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;POSSIBLE OFFENSIVE TERM? [o]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;355&amp;gt; I'm&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;CONTRACTION [k]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;357&amp;gt; Aren't&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;CONTRACTION [k]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;359&amp;gt; smart&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;COMMONLY MISUSED TERM; intelligent? [M]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;359&amp;gt; tell . . . how&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;COMMONLY MISUSED TERM; &amp;quot;that&amp;quot; unless &amp;quot;how&amp;quot; = &amp;quot;in what way&amp;quot; [M]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;360&amp;gt; witch&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;POSSIBLE OFFENSIVE TERM? [o]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;360&amp;gt; and stuff&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;INFORMAL OR COLLOQUIAL USAGE unless &amp;quot;stuff&amp;quot; is a verb [I]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T23:56:05.723" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3971" CreationDate="2011-09-19T00:29:44.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the Serenity web page, I note the following, offered as a reason for buying the software:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Inexperienced writers usually cannot identify problems in punctuation, spelling, word choice, phrasing, and style simply by looking over their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that if you cannot identify problems like these, perhaps you haven't yet acquired enough skill to write a novel in English. You become an experienced writer not by using software, but by reading and writing. Mostly reading. But writing a lot. And rewriting. And rewriting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T00:29:44.123" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3992" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-19T02:59:54.787" Score="28" ViewCount="4573" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I finished the first draft of my current novel project after a few months of work, finishing at 83,212 words. Now what should I do with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So obviously I need to edit it. Should I jump in right away with the editing? Should I let it sit for a few weeks to get some distance? Should I send the rough draft straight to my beta readers? Should I work on another project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some practical, immediate suggestions for what to do after finally finishing that first draft?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2018-04-01T12:32:11.030" Title="So I finished my novel. Now what do I do?" Tags="|novel|editing|first-draft|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3992" CreationDate="2011-09-19T09:25:18.573" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let it sit and start a new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not touch it for at least two weeks. Maybe even longer, you have to get distance. Do not give your raw draft to your beta readers. You do not want to let them point out all the obvious mistakes, which you can easily find yourself when reading it with that distance. Because it is likely that they will stop there (not reading, but telling you) and you miss the deeper problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make the novel as nice as possible for your beta readers. They should concentrate on the story. You can also think about questions you want to ask them. You probably have some chapters where you are not sure if they really work the way you want. But don't show them the questions before they read the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this you have to do &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the two weeks. Start now a new project and make a list of publishers/agents you want to show your work. Read about self-publishing, prepare the next step. That creates distance to your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And congrats :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T09:25:18.573" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3992" CreationDate="2011-09-19T10:49:23.130" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;John Smithers' advice is good, but I'd add a few details (and leave it for longer than three weeks!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you put the MS away, make a first pass at your query letter, as well.  This is good because the query needs some time away from your eyes just like the MS does, and because writing the query can really help you figure out what the book has going for it, and what it's lacking.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, after the query and MS have rested and you've forgotten about them, come back with fresh eyes and look at big stuff, first.  Write your synopsis now, I'd say, and look for pacing issues (too many chapters with no action, or too much action all the time, etc.) Make sure the book you have matches the book you wrote about in your query, and if it doesn't, change it.  Check for character consistency, development, etc.  Make sure your plot structure is solid (rising action, climax, satisfying conclusion, etc.).  There are entire books on editing out there, (&lt;em&gt;Self-Editing for Fiction Writers&lt;/em&gt; by Browne and King is one good one) so I can't give you the whole story, here, but you get the idea.  Obviously you also need to look for style issues, and typos and mechanical errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then send the book to betas.  While you're waiting for them, you can start looking at your publishing option.  Steven Drennan will probably be by shortly to recommend that you self-publish, but you may also want to consider getting an agent and going through a publisher.  You can find suitable agents by finding the agents who represent your favourite books in the same genre as your MS, or by using sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.querytracker.net/index.php&quot;&gt;Query Tracker&lt;/a&gt;.  You may want to post your query at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://absolutewrite.com/forums/index.php&quot;&gt;AW Water Cooler&lt;/a&gt; or other sites that offer query critiques, because writing queries is an art in itself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've got responses from your betas, look them over with an accepting but critical eye.  If more than one person has a problem with a certain aspect of your book, take a hard look at it.  Even if only one person finds something, give it a good look.  But don't let your betas rewrite your book for you.  You're still the author, this is still your book, and you have the final decision on how you want it to go.  If you make significant changes, I'd recommend letting the MS sit for another chunk of time before coming back and deciding whether the changes work.  Make sure you keep copies of all versions of your work so you can revert as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you've finally got the MS in the best condition possible, assuming you're not self-publishing, send out a batch of 5-10 queries to agents. Don't query them all at once, because sometimes your query won't be as good as you think it is, and you don't want to burn bridges (once you've queried, you can't re-query the same agent with the same project, generally).  You may want to include your first choice agent and a few mid-level guys in the first batch, leaving your second choice agent out of it; that way, if you decide your query wasn't strong, you can send your revised query to your second choice agent and still have a good chance at a good outcome).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't get a bite on an agent (and I'm talking about after a couple hundred submissions), you could try to submit directly to the publishers who accept direct queries, but there aren't many.  You could also look at self-publishing.  There are lots of how-tos out there on how to do a good job, but be prepared to invest some significant cash in cover art and professional editing.  You may also want to consider writing under a pseudonym; if you couldn't interest any agents, and if you're serious about writing more, you need to seriously consider that this effort really isn't good enough to be published.  (It's also possible that it's great quality but in a weird niche, or an over-crowded genre, or something else).  But once you've published under your name, your book's out there, and if you later come to realize that it's poor quality, it's too late to save your name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of this is genre specific, of course.  If you're writing erotic romance, you could jump straight to the e-pubs without an agent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR version: You've only just begun!  But congrats on an important first step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T10:49:23.130" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3992" CreationDate="2011-09-19T14:42:38.690" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of those questions where everyone is going to have a different opinion, so ultimately the final answer is up to you. We can help you consider options, but you have to make the final choices. The options presented so far by Kate and John are very good and get right to the main points: 1) set it aside, and 2) work on something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for setting it aside before editing, the amount of time is up to you. I agree that you should give it at least two weeks, but longer may be even better. If you have a spouse or family member who might be willing to help with this, then you might have them take a pass at it first. I would ONLY recommend this if you believe that person will truly look at it with a critical eye and not just tell you what they think you want to hear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for working on something else, Kate and John kind of differ there, but we all agree that you should move on to something else. Whether it is writing query letters or working on a new project is really up to you. Understand that if you are planning to go the traditional route for publishing, the query letter and synopsis are things you are going to have to do anyway, so you can work on them now. My caution there would be that you might find yourself tempted to check your manuscript for main points you would like to include in the query or synopsis, and that might lead you to start editing before truly giving it some time to sit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you do start editing, take at least a couple of passes. Read through once looking for typos or content problems, then read through again looking for plot issues. The order is again up to you, but don't try to do both at the same time. You'll find yourself getting frustrated and too easily distracted from one task or the other. Once you have finished editing, then you can send it to your beta readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how many beta readers you have, but if it's not at least three or four, you may want to consider using a site like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt; to get more feedback on your story. I have found that some of my beta readers tend to be less critical, but I can count on the folks at Critique Circle to be more honest about potential issues. While your book is out with the beta readers would be a good time to work on the query letters and synopsis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you get your responses back from everyone, go through them and decide on any additional editing or rewrites you need to do. While you're at it, you can continue sending out query letters, and look at them to see if they need revising as well. If you have to do any level of rewriting, it may impact the content of your query letter and/or synopsis, so be sure to check both of them as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, you are no longer working on writing. Now your focus is on getting published, and that is a whole different ball game. You have plenty of options to consider here as well, but for now, you need to concentrate on getting your story completely finished!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T14:42:38.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3999" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4006" CreationDate="2011-09-19T10:39:52.017" Score="2" ViewCount="938" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written the following sentence, but I am dissatisfied with its construction. In particular, the &lt;code&gt;that&lt;/code&gt; joining the two parts of the sentence reads somewhat awkwardly. Can anyone suggest a better construction for this sentence which preserves the meaning intact? Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The database layout is sufficiently similar across source data formats that&#xA;  we can write a single SQL query to export each output data format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A brief background follows. The source data is &lt;em&gt;imported&lt;/em&gt; into the database. Then the output data is &lt;em&gt;exported&lt;/em&gt; from the database. The point of the sentence is that there is essentially the same database layout for all import formats, so it suffices to have one function for each export format. On the other hand, if the database layout depended on the import format, then one would have to have a function that depended on both the database layout and the export format. Note that &quot;essentially the same database layout&quot; is vague, so I'd prefer not to use that in the actual sentence. I'm just writing that in a attempt to elaborate. &quot;Sufficiently similar&quot; or something like that better captures the meaning, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: I've gone with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The database export functions need not depend on the source format,&#xA;  since the database layout is sufficiently independent from the source&#xA;  format. Therefore the data export for each output format can be&#xA;  implemented as a single SQL query.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;based on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/1046/standback&quot;&gt;Standback&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3999/how-to-fix-awkward-sufficiently-that-sentence-structure/4006#4006&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;. I put the &quot;sufficiently independent&quot; in the second clause, because it seemed more natural in this case. I'm not sure if there is any rule to say which way around it should go. The repetition of &quot;source format&quot; is a little awkward, but no big deal. I think this is an improvement on my original formulation. Thanks to Standback and the others who replied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2422" OwnerDisplayName="Faheem Mitha" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T04:06:37.100" Title="How to fix awkward &quot;sufficiently... that...&quot; sentence structure?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3999" CreationDate="2011-09-19T10:59:58.663" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because all source formats share a sufficiently-similar database layout, we only need a single SQL query to export that shared layout to a given output data format. Writing a separate export query for each pair of input and output formats is not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have chosen to start the new wording with &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt;, to emphasise that the first part of the sentence is the reason for the second part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comma between the two parts helps to visually separate the two parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the extra sentence adds redundancy to clarify the intended meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Stuart Cook" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T10:59:58.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3992" CreationDate="2011-09-19T19:04:24.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that &lt;em&gt;&quot;rewrite 'till it's good&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is just one opinion. It's also an opinion that doesn't work well for a lot of authors. I might be unpopular for saying this, but my advice for your first novel is to just fix typos, fix mistakes, and start mailing/self-publishing(at a slightly higher price than you think you should). If it's bad and get's rejected like crazy, well, what do you have to lose? You don't have a good reputation to tarnish yet. Also, do you remember the name of the author that wrote that story you read a year ago that really stunk? I don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would you want to do this? Because no amount of rewriting is going to fix a fundamentally flawed story. If your story sucks people will stop reading it and you'll have to rewrite it from scratch anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, if your story is awesome people will buy it/publish it even if it's not &quot;the best it can be&quot; (I would argue that it probably is, but that's another topic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2562" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T19:04:24.940" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3992" CreationDate="2011-09-19T19:52:32.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your fun has just started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the first three chapters.&#xA;Look at the first sentence.&#xA;Look at the first five pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these are critical if you want to sell it. Do not even bother with a re-write of more than the first three chapters until you have an agent/publisher interested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the above are what will keep you from getting into the slush pile/or rejection pile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know the genre so you need to identify the agents/publishers who might be interested in that genre. Find them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Craft your synopsis and query letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When all of the above is done send letters and wait. With luck some agent might ask to see the first three chapters. If they do you can send that. If they ask for that then bust ass to get the rest in shape. Learn patience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to re-write the whole thing with your fingers crossed you'll at least have something to do. Sending queries and synopsis might be a better use of time and effort. Your time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then this is what I do because I have friends who are published writers and this is what their agents advise. Same with the agents I know.  Maybe others get other answers from their agents or their friends' agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastEditorUserId="2478" LastEditDate="2011-09-20T19:39:34.003" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T19:39:34.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3999" CreationDate="2011-09-19T20:00:46.567" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The database layout is sufficiently similar across source data formats that we can write a single SQL query to export each output data format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data structure of the database will allow the use of a single SQL query to access the data for output and reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T20:00:46.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3938" CreationDate="2011-09-19T20:05:15.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First choose the genre that you intend to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find a good example of this genre. (even better than the printed page is a movie or tv show)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick a scene and transcribe the dialog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might sound hokey but it will give you a sense of brevity, pacing, cadence, and interchange. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Monkey see. Monkey do.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T20:05:15.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3999" CreationDate="2011-09-19T20:12:01.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a simple reformulation which breaks you out of the structure you dislike:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the database layout is sufficiently similar across all source data formats, we can write a single SQL query to export each output data format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also rephrase for clarity, if you feel the original isn't clear enough.  This probably requires some expansion, to make sure to get in all the details and reasoning that you consider both (a) crucial and (b) not necessarily obvious to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the database layout is sufficiently independent from the source data format, our export format need not rely on the original source format. Therefore, the implementation of each export format requires only a single SQL query.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T20:12:01.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4007" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-19T20:24:59.267" Score="5" ViewCount="431" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel about someone being chased by the Russian Mafia.  A hitman is sent to save her and that's where the books takes off.  I have way too many titles floating in my brain - three to be exact.  They are &quot;Slap-Dash&quot;, &quot;Tooth and Nail&quot;, and &quot;Hang Fire&quot;.  What is the most marketable title?  Why do you think so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2659" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-06-08T16:27:51.753" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T16:27:51.753" Title="What's the most marketable title?" Tags="|novel|marketing|titles|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4007" CreationDate="2011-09-19T20:32:33.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hit Man&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just kidding. Maybe &quot;Guardian Angel&quot; since the hitman is not exactly a saint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2658" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T20:32:33.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4007" CreationDate="2011-09-19T20:43:47.430" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I rather like &quot;Hang Fire.&quot; Sounds mysterious and dangerous, it isn't quite grammatically correct as a phrase but it could be in the right context so it's got some tension pushing me towards exploring it, and it's visually evocative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also encourage you to find a phrase or proverb in Russian which makes sense when translated to English and see if that works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T20:43:47.430" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4007" CreationDate="2011-09-19T20:51:30.820" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find a phrase or topic that is relevant to your story. If any of these three pertains to something that happens or is stated in the story, then go with that. If none of them do, then try to think of something else. I like Lauren's suggestion to go with a Russian phrase that can be easily translated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, the first two sound more like titles for a comedy or a romance novel. Neither really sparks thoughts of murder and intrigue. Since the term &quot;Hang Fire&quot; refers to a failure on the part of a weapon, I could see it being relevant, considering that a hit man is usually associated with killing someone, not saving them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T20:51:30.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4007" CreationDate="2011-09-19T21:22:44.390" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;NOT Slap-Dash! Can you imagine the reviews of someone who doesn't like the book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I too like the notion of a phrase that feels like colloquial Russian, and captures the dualism of the hit man's role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2641" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T21:22:44.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4012" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4014" CreationDate="2011-09-19T23:19:24.400" Score="2" ViewCount="963" Body="&lt;p&gt;At work, I lead a small team of programmers. I often have to request equipment and services from our I.T. department, and all of those requests have to go directly to the C.I.O., which is an executive-level position (several levels above my own).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have a new employee in my team. They need a new PC and an email account. I.T. is required to provide these things, so in a way my &quot;request&quot; is not really a request at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The direct approach sounds too authoritative to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please provide a new PC and email account for John Smith&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a question also feels wrong, because the answer should never be &quot;no&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would it be possible to provide a new PC and email account for John Smith?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the correct way to approach these things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2593" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T13:17:35.883" Title="How should I phrase &quot;requests&quot; to a higher-ranked individual in another department?" Tags="|style|business-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4012" CreationDate="2011-09-19T23:37:36.000" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there's a middle ground between subservient and authoritative.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a new member of our department, John Smith, and he'll need a PC and e-mail account.  Do you need any information beyond his name, or is this e-mail sufficient to get the gears in motion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or, if you think that'll make you sound like you don't know the procedure for setting things up, how about being direct about what's needed, but less direct about telling the IT guy that he has to take care of it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Smith just started working for our department, and he'll need a PC and e-mail account.  It's nice to see the company growing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T23:37:36.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4012" CreationDate="2011-09-19T23:39:07.540" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please provide a new PC and email account for John Smith&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This phrasing is fine. You have the right to request these items, and this is a direct, respectful way to make the request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would it be possible to provide a new PC and email account for John Smith?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This phrasing says that you aren't sure you have the right to make the request, and reads as if you are cringing in fear as you ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have any doubts about the right way to ask, check with the CIO. &quot;What is the preferred way for me to request a computer and an email account for new employees?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T23:39:07.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4012" CreationDate="2011-09-20T04:34:37.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could soften it by adding a few more fluff words around the direct approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Smith has just joined the company, and I'd like to request a new&#xA;  PC and email account for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T04:34:37.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4007" CreationDate="2011-09-20T08:37:58.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would definitely avoid &lt;em&gt;Tooth and Nail&lt;/em&gt; - it's already &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;amp;field-keywords=tooth+and+nail&amp;amp;x=0&amp;amp;y=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;heavily overused&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I confess, all three titles sounded very generic and indistinct to me. They tell me this is an action-packed thriller, but nothing more specific than that. I'd recommend you consider what you find to be the most interesting, important, and/or unusual elements of your book, and try to construct a title referring to one or two of those (even if the reference oblique, it's still individual!). Of the three, &lt;em&gt;Hang Fire&lt;/em&gt; stands out most for me, but I would really consider it worthwhile to look for something a little less generic - a title that applies to your book, that wouldn't apply as easily to scads of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing more about your book - central themes, conflicts, characters, motivations, location - I'd have a tough time recommending anything suitably tailored to your particular work. Here's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/titles.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article on title-choosing&lt;/a&gt; you might find helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T08:37:58.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4018" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4019" CreationDate="2011-09-20T14:06:16.017" Score="14" ViewCount="1135" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’ve ‘completed’ three novels – a thriller, a coming-of-age story, and a mystery. I’ve had expert readers for all three including Sue Grafton who read two of them. All the expert readers have the same reaction. Sue’s, at the halfway point, was ‘We need to find you a good agent.’ By the time she reached the end, it was, ‘Hmmm. Back to the drawing board.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be more explicit, the comments tend to be: excellent writing and excellent start, but then, as the story draws to a close, the structure and plot begin to shake. There is a set of problems here I struggle with. I’ll ask about the two obvious ones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I develop a lightweight structure from the beginning of a project that I can write to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I revise effectively after writing myself into a corner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there tools you use, like spreadsheets, outlines, note cards?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2641" LastActivityDate="2021-06-16T22:37:07.683" Title="How do I successfully structure a long fiction piece?" Tags="|fiction|novel|editing|book|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4018" CreationDate="2011-09-20T14:36:00.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To save repetition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/3513/231&quot;&gt;Write to the finish, or edit as you go?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(TLDR: Writing a novel is like building a bridge across a chasm alone. After halfway getting to the other side will always require compromise. Only when you have a whole, functioning bridge can you really go back and make it less lopsided.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've chewed all that over I think what is fundamental is that what you describe definitely seems to indicate some sort of lopsidedness and you have to remember that this is natural. Weirdly I think that the quality of writing in any given work tends to go up even as the available story options go down as you will obviously be a better craftsman 50000 words later. Without being able to see the work you've done I couldn't possibly tell you why it is your stuff goes flat towards the end, and if you're paying people to read it surely they should offer some concrete advice, shouldn't they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T14:36:00.383" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4018" CreationDate="2011-09-20T15:37:23.187" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think having an outline solves all three questions you pose. In reverse order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not a &quot;discovery writer,&quot; then YES, you need an outline. In fact, you should be getting a beta or two to look over your outline and bat that around for a while before even writing anything. You may have a few vague points (&quot;John and Gertrude meet and discuss Oscar's problem&quot; or &quot;shootout at the warehouse&quot;) but the main lines of your plot should be there. You can put in notes like &quot;by the end of this scene, Robin and Chris have made up&quot; without knowing exactly how it happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effective revision: depending on the severity of the problem, you may have to back up to the halfway point, or potentially start over. Think of your story as a braided rope which has started to kink somewhere. You have to unbraid the rope to find the blockage. I think having an outline will help with this. If you don't have an outline already, try reverse-engineering one from your existing story, and that may reveal where it went pear-shaped. It will also be easier to move the pieces around in outline form than in paragraphs, scenes, or chapters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thorough, beta-tested outline IS your &quot;lightweight structure.&quot; As long as the major parts hold up, you can embroider around the bones and allow a certain amount of discovery in the writing. If you know the final destination, there are many ways to get there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T15:37:23.187" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4018" CreationDate="2011-09-20T18:01:49.143" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a hunch: The endings are not satisfying. When that's true, there's nothing for the second half of the novel to build toward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's true, then perhaps the problem is not structure &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;, but the ending. And if that's true, there's a good chance that the beginning somehow doesn't lend itself to a satisfying ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, three things make for a satisfying ending: A strong external conflict, a strong internal conflict, and an inextricable relationship between the two. The internal conflict makes the external conflict especially relevant and difficult for &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; character. The external conflict exacerbates the internal one, or the internal conflict makes the external one irresolvable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: Look to the beginning. Is there a strong external conflict? Does the main character have a strong internal conflict? Are the internal and external conflicts inextricably related?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then look to the ending: Does the ending resolve both the external and internal conflicts, in a way that gives strong meaning to the interplay between internal and external conflicts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T18:01:49.143" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="194" CreationDate="2011-09-20T18:30:28.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just read 'Wicked', by Gregory Maguire, which was about imagination and used the Oz books by L. Frank Baum as a jumping off point. Also, 'A Very Long Engagement', which was a novel, set in the Great War (who knew it'd go into sequels?) that was very self-reflective about writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2665" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2012-12-18T18:53:46.157" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T18:53:46.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2011-09-20T18:35:10.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your univere in the story turns out vast, yep, you should include a map. I read an alt-History by harry turtledove, set in a unvierse where the eastern usa lies smack dab in the middle of the atlantic ocean, and I felt that needed a map most severely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2665" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T18:35:10.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4027" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4030" CreationDate="2011-09-21T06:55:39.407" Score="25" ViewCount="16787" Body="&lt;p&gt;From an answer to this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4018/how-do-i-successfully-structure-a-long-fiction-piece/4020#4020&quot;&gt;How do I successfully structure a long fiction piece?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I can infer the meaning from the usage but some elaboration would be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2021-11-10T16:41:10.497" Title="What is a discovery writer?" Tags="|technique|creative-writing|terminology|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4027" CreationDate="2011-09-21T07:07:31.720" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A discovery writer is someone who begins writing with little or no idea of where the story will end up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternate term is &quot;pantser,&quot; referring to someone who writes &quot;by the seat of their pants.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T07:07:31.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4027" CreationDate="2011-09-21T09:31:14.280" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definitions for this term will vary wildly. I would say if you have not plotted out your story (which happens in which chapter and why) before you start writing it down, then you are a discovery writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most extreme: You have a vague idea, grab your pen/keyboard and start writing your novel. That's what I would suggest to a bloody beginner to gain some experience. But normally you are likely to get consistency problems (and other issues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more common discovery writer will draft characters with a background, has an idea where the story should go and starts writing from there. The idea is that the characters and their needs drive the story. So these writers let the characters make their own decisions during the story and adjust accordingly. Yes, that sounds weird, because it is still the writer who makes any decisions about the characters, but it really feels like that the protagonists took over and you only write down what they dictate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other variations for this writer type. I, for example, know how the story starts, ends, and have some &quot;milestones&quot; in the middle I want to reach. But sometimes they are not reached, because my protagonist has different ideas (yeah, it really feels like that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-09-21T09:40:17.003" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T09:40:17.003" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4027" CreationDate="2011-09-21T10:54:32.470" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stephen King, by my understanding, was a discovery writer. I will paraphrase what he wrote in his book &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You create some real, believable characters, put them in a challenging situation, and then let them decide where the book would go. If you have done enough work on character development, then your characters should be able to decide how they would act in a certain situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer should not then try to force the characters to act in the way he would want to act. If the characters you created would want to run away from danger, for example, you should not force them to be brave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fun in this approach is that the book can take strange, surprising turns, which can surprise both the readers and the author. The disadvantages that I know about are, it is very hard to pull off, and not a good approach if you are under a deadline by an editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this approach works well, if like Stephen King, you can easily type 300,000 words for a novel, and then trim it down. If like me, you struggle to reach even the 50,000 of Nanowrimo, this approach will fail miserably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T10:54:32.470" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4027" CreationDate="2011-09-21T13:59:17.840" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Expounding on John Smithers's excellent answer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;I would say if you have not plotted out your story (which happens in which chapter and why) before you start writing it down, then you are a discovery writer....But normally you are likely to get consistency problems (and other issues).&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, and I would take this definition even a step further: if you have not plotted out &lt;i&gt;anything&lt;/i&gt; about your story &amp;mdash; where it goes, what happens, how it ends, not just each chapter &amp;mdash; that makes you a discovery writer. I worked with a writer like this once; she told me that sat down at the keyboard and typed to see what the characters would do, because as the writer, she herself didn't know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be fun for the writer, like doing improv acting, but the result is not necessarily satisfying to the reader. (Or the editor.) A good story needs a coherent plot which hangs together from beginning to end and characters who behave believably (not just arbitrarily). This is, IMHO, hard enough to do when you &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; have a thoroughly outlined plot beforehand, so doing it on the fly is even more difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the issues I find with, for example, Stephen King's suggestion (see what the characters do) is that what real people would do in real situations may not make for a good story! :) It may be typical and believable for two friends having a disagreement to have a fight and then stop talking forever, or to talk the issue out and make up calmly, but neither of those outcomes are dramatic, or allow the story to move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would distinguish this from having a goal for a section (chapter, scene), and saying &quot;I need Peter to do this, Nathan to do that, and Claire to have this reaction&quot; and just writing to see how you get there. To me, that's being flexible and allowing your characters to be themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T13:59:17.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4012" CreationDate="2011-09-21T23:59:50.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about, &quot;I wonder if you could set up a new super-duper computer for me, so that I can turn my old computer over to our new staff person, John K. Smith?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More seriously, I suggest phrasing like &quot;Our department requires an email account be set up for new employee John K. Smith, and a workstation installed for his use.  He will start work 6 October and we'd like to have the workstation in place on that date.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you make a requisition, it should be neutral in tone and clearly phrased as a requisition, rather than as a request or a question, to avoid ambiguity that might lead to delays or an inadequate response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T23:59:50.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4033" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-22T03:24:17.397" Score="2" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I condense this sentence into a one-liner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being alone on the project, this web designer/developer held the responsibility of&#xA; - communicating with the client and the end-users,&#xA; - defining web application requirements,&#xA; - giving advice on business procedures,&#xA; - designing the web application,&#xA; - developing the web application,&#xA; - testing the web application and&#xA; - updating the web application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe there are certain words I haven't thought of which could help condense this? Also, I suppose this kind of sentence already exists somewhere because it basically describes the workload of a lone web designer/developer, but I can't seem to find anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2669" OwnerDisplayName="Shawn" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-06-08T16:29:04.357" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T16:29:04.357" Title="How can I condense a description of a web designer/developer's work into a one-liner?" Tags="|editing|business-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4033" CreationDate="2011-09-22T08:23:28.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The designer/developer will communicate with clients to define requirements and advise on business procedures in order to support their design, development, testing and updating of the completed web application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-09-22T17:28:22.187" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T17:28:22.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="835" CreationDate="2011-09-22T08:27:28.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This technology level is somewhere north of Dieselpunk (see this year's Captain America movie for many wonderful examples of a Dieselpunk aesthetic). I guess, bearing in mind that the convention seems to be to take the prevailing technological marvel of the era and put &quot;punk&quot; on the end of it, that you would probably define this as &quot;Plastipunk&quot; or possibly &quot;Tupperpunk&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T08:27:28.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4033" CreationDate="2011-09-22T08:59:12.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The web designer/developer is responsible for end-to-end web application development and maintenance, which includes liasing with clients and end-users to define the business requirements and procedures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T08:59:12.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4012" CreationDate="2011-09-22T13:07:28.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume this CIO is accustomed to receiving such requests. I'd avoid chit chat and get straight to the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My new employee, John Smith, needs a PC and email account set up. Please&#xA;  let me know if your department needs additional. &#xA;  Thank you,&#xA;  Tony Baloney&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it's someone in his department that will be doing the work. By sending him the request, you're going through the proper gatekeeper. But in all likelihood, he'll forward your request, unedited, to one of his minions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastEditorUserId="1679" LastEditDate="2011-09-22T13:18:25.903" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T13:18:25.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4033" CreationDate="2011-09-22T19:12:31.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;Designer's name here&lt;/em&gt; has &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; years of experience in successfully creating and optimizing over &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; web sites for customers across a spectrum of organizations and requirements.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like you hope to promote this designer to prospective customers. Some guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personalize it. Using the name, even if you're repeating it, to make the association of written piece to responsible party more concrete. The capacity is no longer generic, and you're also willing to put the name in your printed/online materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Offer specifics. The years and number of projects are examples. These help solidify your claims that the person is qualified and go a long way to convincing people that the person can handle the role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use strong verbs. I chose the words &quot;creating and optimizing.&quot; These are powerful. The person can create (in other words carry the whole load), but also optimize (listen, adjust, and improve).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2641" LastEditorUserId="2641" LastEditDate="2011-09-22T22:12:38.267" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T22:12:38.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4041" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-22T19:46:41.733" Score="1" ViewCount="5349" Body="&lt;p&gt;All. The biggest area I am working right now is to improve my written communications skills. It’s a tough skill to learn but a good one to have, since most of what we do is exchange email with our clients.  I personally find people do not have time to read down through a long email string so I want to send my email clearly that would make sense to my recipients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My major concern is that I do not know how to organize my thoughts and translate them into a well-structured e-mail.  How do I collect my thoughts and get them on screen in a way that makes sense to someone who will not know my intent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2672" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-09-22T23:48:47.710" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T21:49:41.997" Title="How can I improve my written communication skills the soonest?" Tags="|business-writing|email|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4042" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4043" CreationDate="2011-09-22T20:58:22.987" Score="10" ViewCount="553" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past, I've been inclined to believe that god-like characters are fun to write about. They are impossible to kill, cause omnipotent levels of destruction without consequence, and always come out on top. But lately I've been thinking it might be even more interesting for things to go horribly wrong. I find myself wanting to cause problems for my characters that reveal their humanity, and imperfection. Does this mentality make for better fantasy than the former? Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2626" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2011-09-27T17:40:03.613" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T09:12:12.287" Title="Frailties, mistakes, and imperfections" Tags="|fantasy|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4042" CreationDate="2011-09-22T21:13:50.423" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a better mentality for fiction, no matter which genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably everyone wants to be god-like one way or another (even so I doubt it would be fun if you really think it through). But reading about god-like characters is only one thing: boring!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you describe monumental battles, nothing really happens. The reader knows who will win from the beginning. There is no suspense, tension, anything worth reading on. Just imagine Superman without Kryptonite: &lt;em&gt;boring&lt;/em&gt;. (Besides that, Superman is one of the most boring characters anyway.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your character is already a god, in which direction should he develop? A good story shows how the protagonist goes from one end of the spectrum to the other. What the &quot;spectrum&quot; is, is defined by you, the author, for every new novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to read about Superman, flying around, watching kidnappers, catching them and throw them into jail, or do you want to read about that drunken bummer watching how this girl was kidnapped and no-one believes him? Who realizes that he is the only hope for that poor kid, which reminds him of his dead daughter (the reason he has started to drink in the first place)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just imagine how many obstacles will get into the bummer's way. How he develops, how he has to get rid of the alcohol to have a clear mind. How he can stand against the kidnappers, untrained and without weapons. He has to become more then he ever was, outgrow himself. That's what people want to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask me: Superman sucks! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-09-22T21:28:28.023" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T21:28:28.023" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4041" CreationDate="2011-09-22T22:04:49.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome user614.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're asking a good question, and if I may restate it: How do I write an effective business e-mail? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like most writing questions, it comes to how you think about the task. And this is the key, to think before you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are you writing? What exactly do you want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To whom are you writing? What do you know about them, their expectations, needs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a timeframe for action? Is there a consequence for missing the timeframe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your main points? Reduce these to the least number possible and state each as simply as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Draft an outline and then fill it in as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be polite. Be simple. Be honest. Be accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2641" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T22:04:49.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4046" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-23T00:38:11.253" Score="4" ViewCount="936" Body="&lt;p&gt;One use for fantasy is wish-fulfillment.  With that in mind, why is there a need for realism in creating a character in a fantasy novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2626" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T12:39:23.880" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T22:40:34.903" Title="Why should I try to create realistic fantasy characters?" Tags="|fantasy|character-development|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4046" CreationDate="2011-09-23T01:26:33.767" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends if you are after wish-fulfillment or a complex story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the realm of wish-fulfillment, there is absolutely no need to have realism. Girls (or characters) can come up to you and offer to grant you your wildest dreams for not reason in particular. The most desirable boy in school can fall madly in love with you (okay, the school wallflower) because he thinks your blood smells good. You get the idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if we're talking a fantasy novel, all fantasy is rooted in reality somewhere. You'll note that countries, cultures, customs tend to be based on existing (or extinct) ones from our world. Even when you have otherworldly races, authors still draw on cultural values from this world. Although you can have a world where the sky is orange with green polka dots and cheese grows on trees, it's a surefire way to turn off readers. They expect elements of familiarity. They expect cows to moo, gravity to exist, chairs to be used for sitting on. If in your world, cows actually bark, and there's no good reason for it, it's jarring and distracts from what should be the main focus, which is your story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same applies for characters. It's just as jarring if a character acts in a way that no normal person would act. You would never go up to someone you've never met in your life and offer to be their servant out of the kindness of your heart, for example. Why should a person in another (albeit fantastical) world do that? Just as we expect consistency in small things like cows, we expect the same of people. People are short-tempered, jealous, selfish, impatient, depressed, discontent, malicious; they're flawed. And if they act a certain way in reality, we expect them to act the same in fantasy. Unless, of course, there is a good plot reason for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other point here is that a lot of the time, it's the tension and interactions between such flawed people that drives a plot. What plot is there when all your characters are perfect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T01:26:33.767" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4041" CreationDate="2011-09-23T04:10:50.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find working backwards helps. I start by writing out the main points I want to get across. No detail, just something short and simple. &quot;I need Document X from you. I need Graphic Y from you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then fill out more details under each. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I need Document X from you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  It should be in draft form &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I need it by Wednesday at noon.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Ensure you cc: Person 1, Person 2, Person 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat for each point. From there  you should be able to structure it into paragraphs, or if it suits you better, phrase it nicely but keep it in bullet points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T04:10:50.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4041" CreationDate="2011-09-23T04:27:45.553" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have several choices, and which one you use depends on the length of the document to be written, the subject matter, and your personal preferences. All sections here are examples of the technique they describe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Outlining&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The outline of this answer would look like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction - mention options&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outlining - explain, give example&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Infodump - vomit it all onto the page, organize, edit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[x]-paragraph essay&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Combinations, summary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would then go back and use this as a guide to write the sections. (Keen eyes will notice I didn't stick to this: I decided after writing all this out that section 3 worked better after section 4, since it relies on having more experience with writing. But it was a good place to start.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The [x]-paragraph essay&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We learned this in high school (possibly earlier), and it's a great way to get used to writing in an organized way. It forces you to think about what you want to say, but it can be a bit of a straitjacket. The first one we were taught was the three-paragraph essay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first paragraph is where you write the basic idea, very much a generalization of the ideas you want to get across. You're also framing the rest of the essay, creating a lens through which the reader will see all subsequent text. Note that you're reading this with foreknowledge that it's a technique taught to children, since I mentioned that in the above paragraph. Decades after leaving school, I still find the technique useful for smaller pieces. Even if I usually don't stick to a set number of paragraphs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three-paragraph essay scales well to the five-paragraph essay, and beyond. I wrote this section as a three-paragraph essay, but that middle paragraph &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; wants to be two paragraphs - but it's a good place to start. Thinking about writing in this way can discipline you well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write like a madman, but sort it out later&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While writing an outline can help for some people, and having a paragraph structure in mind works for some stuff, these don't work for everybody or at all times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the outline approach isn't working--it rarely does for me with anything less than a few thousand words--an infodump may be what you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Type out everything you want to say. Don't worry about structure yet, just write out all the points you want to make. Then, read it over and decide what the main points are you want to say. Write a introduction and/or conclusion, as appropriate, then organize the rest of it into the &quot;middle&quot; of the piece. Summarize, proofread, and you're done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may not seem like much of a writing technique. What you're doing here is giving yourself permission to &lt;a href=&quot;http://magnificentnose.com/2011/08/03/freewriting-and-why-you-should-do-it/&quot;&gt;freewrite&lt;/a&gt; on a topic, with the knowledge that you'll organize it all later. Great for short projects or more creative work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll probably find yourself picking and choosing from these techniques, and possibly others as well. My favorite technique is the infodump combined with some quick outlining, although I pay careful attention to paragraph length and structure along the way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, try different tools, use the ones that work, and let them influence your thinking. Eventually, you'll do much of this without thinking about it. Using disciplines like these trains your brain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T04:27:45.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4042" CreationDate="2011-09-23T08:38:32.790" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add an extra perspective into the already excellent answer above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In RP we call characters on a quest to game the rules and create a sort of Mary Sue RP surrogate &quot;Minmaxers&quot; or &quot;Power Gamers&quot; (these are both derogatory terms). As irritating as these people are in a game with an extensively defined ruleset (a &quot;crunchy&quot; system) they have the potential to be even more anguish inducing in a free form system where storytelling and narrative are the goals for reasons that should be self-evident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key issues is that the game team don't want their game session to devolve into an argument about whether Steve's character could really do x, y or z and whether his achievement of said task could be deemed to &quot;break&quot; narrative plausibility. It's a nightmare that Game Masters the world over wake up from in a cold sweat. It's the archetypal case of a session getting away from the person who's supposed to be running it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is true to such an extent that game writers have traditionally gone to great lengths to curtail the possibilities for such behaviour in the writing of their systems. Players must all be managed to expect that their characters will stick within reasonable grounds and that you can't just have a flying sky fortress and an army of drones to pilot the death planes and rain down fire upon the proles if they should dare to dissent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have taken a different approach to dealing with this problem. It's called: &quot;Give them enough rope to hang themselves.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fine, I say, have your sky fortress, have your drones, rain down fire on dissenting proles. But then what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one extreme case (which was actually a character concept invented by a creative and excellent game player, not your everyday min-maxer) we had a guy who basically was Sauron, he remained Sauron, he was a proper fully fledged demi-godlike dark lord and no one had ever offered him a sensible challenge in millennia of dark sorcerous despotism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end it was the boredom that got him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end he was begging the grim reaper to sharpen his scythe and get to chopping. There wasn't any land worth despoiling, no rebellion worth quashing, no hero worth humiliating. He'd seen it, he'd done it, he'd burned the t-shirt and called it heresy. The problem was death didn't want him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end he locked himself in a tomb in his most remote castle, turned out the lights, lay down and hoped that, like some kind of epic-level insomniac he would eventually drift off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story of the character began at the point at which he, like the unsuccessful insomniac just accepted that it wasn't going to work that way and he left his castle, chastened, humbled and still very much filled with dark power and an irritating immortality and went on a quest to find death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an extreme example but the point is that the story always finds every character in the end. Superman's story isn't about the point where he's beating up criminals and saving runaway trains. That stuff's easy to deal with. Hell, even Kryptonite's just a poison, put it in a lead jar on a high shelf clearly labelled, all sorted. The problem comes when all the cool things about the character become liabilities. When his son or daughter takes his or her halfway superpowered butt out to a party during adolescence and accidentally destroys half of downtown in a drunken accident. When Lois Lane is about to die at 84 years of age and Supes still looks like he's only just creeping up on forty from the right side. These are the points of drama and you invoke them if that's what you want to talk about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to actually write about heroes then your heroes have to start out kind of lame. If you want to write about gods you will write stories of the staleness and inadequacy of godlike powers. There is always a catch to anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, early Superman stories were not about Superman. They were about the villains trying to outsmart or defeat Superman and their constant failures to do so. Superman was not there as a paragon except as a by-product. In story terms Superman is a &lt;em&gt;problem&lt;/em&gt; to the characters we can most relate to, the frail, imbecilic and criminally inclined humans. Superman arises from a culture of Crime-Does-Not-Pay fiction with an irresistible moral framework that supposed some sort of natural justice in the world. Superman, in this context, is a cautionary tale: Don't commit crimes, Superman will get you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These were simpler times, culturally speaking, less cynical times and cynical people have a much harder time with a classic Greek demigod hero like Superman. Ironically, the Greeks themselves had a very dim view of such wretched souls and they were always pawns of the gods themselves, their powers a curse attracting envious attention of jaded immortals. The crazy thing about Hercules was not his accomplishment of the 12 tasks he was set but the fact that he had to live with the knowledge that Hera had driven him mad and made him murder his own wife and children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The message of any story is that, at some point life sucks. In heroic stories it should suck at the beginning and get better. In tragedies it should start fine and inexorably move towards sucking as you approach the end. Stories about Gods are all tragedies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T08:38:32.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4046" CreationDate="2011-09-23T09:15:17.893" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;All stories are lies the participants conspire in, as opposed to the more harmful type where the liar tries to pass fakery off as the real thing leaving the recipient unaware. Stories are a currency whose only validity is verisimilitude and raw emotional appeal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What a storyteller does is to agree with the audience to tell a lie. Implicit in that contract is the idea that the lie will be of a quality that means that the audience may even believe the lie despite that they know its true nature. What the audience gets out of this is comfort, or inspiration, or hope. What the storyteller gets out of it is their own business and it varies, although possibly not as much as many would like to pretend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Sci-Fi sitcom Red Dwarf liars Rob Grant and Doug Naylor invented a lie called Better Than Life, it was a game that allowed you to travel in your mind into a completely believable fantasy world in which all your desires were taken care of, the problem being that it killed you. You would become so addicted to this perfect reality that you would never come out to eat or drink, you would never look at objective reality again. These technological lotus eaters would slowly expire of starvation, dissolving in their own filth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way the game achieved its pernicious goal was to hide from you. Early models were transparent. They would give you supermodels, ice-cream buffets and palaces of gold, they were the worst of all things, a novelty. So the developers went back and created a new version. You didn't get ostentatious, gaudy and basic wish-fulfillment, the game would burrow into your soul, find your true desires and then pitch them to you in a way that seemed convenient but entirely plausible. If you wanted to identify the fakery you could, the bait and switch is that you never did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Grant Naylor was collectively pitching was the idea of the perfect story. A story so satisfying, yet so plausible, that the audience would prefer it to any objective reality. The problem is, it's a sliding scale, the more immediately satisfying something appears to be, the less plausible it seems, because the human condition, as Buddha remarked, is to suffer. On the other hand, the more plausible something seems the less satisfying it is doomed to be. Being a successful liar is all about balancing satisfaction and plausibility in this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of lying to yourself in such a delusional manner, daydreaming, is seen as an inevitable but essentially pointless human occupation. The problem comes when people can no longer see reality because of their daydreams, or when they actually try to resolve their daydream into reality, imposing it in any way on others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The need for verisimilitude caters to the natural cynic in all human beings, if you are a story teller you must defeat this monster that guards the payload of the audience's trust and confidence. Trust and confidence are precious commodities, that's why they need guarding. To discard the mechanisms of palliating the cynicism is just to turn yourself into something no liar wants to be: bad at lying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T09:15:17.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4046" CreationDate="2011-09-23T11:05:23.243" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a thread of misogyny running through this question and some of the comments (by the OP) that I find off-putting.   OP, if you're coming off a bad break-up, your bitterness is somewhat understandable, but that doesn't make it appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it isn't a good idea to let it carry over into your writing, not if you want the story to be enjoyed by anyone but other misogynists.  (I realize that this is a pretty harsh charge to make based on the little I've seen of you, and I could be totally wrong.  if I am, I apologize, but I'm going to write the rest of this post based on what I've seen of you so far).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identifying with characters is what makes fantasy more than a collection of silly imaginary monsters.  Readers might be drawn to a story by its setting, but they stick around for the quest, to see the protagonists working toward their goals.  If readers don't care about the protagonists -- if their emotions are so foreign that there is no recognition, no concern for their wellbeing, then readers have nothing to care about.  You see it in SciFi, as well, where robots and other creatures that SHOULD be completely interchangeable and bland are given quirks and personalities and even emotions to allow the reader/viewer to identify with them.  Connecting characters to some aspect of humanity is what makes them interesting to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, back to the misogyny!  Because I notice that you aren't asking why you need to make your 'characters' realistic. No, you're focusing in on why you need to bother making the pesky wimen-folks seem like human beings.  Obviously, the reasons are the same.  Female characters are characters first, female second.  Being female is one aspect of their characterization that you work with, just like you work with all the others.  If you aren't able, for whatever reason, to write realistic female characters, maybe you should set your work in a land with only men.  Enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this is to say that fictional characters aren't often larger-than-life.  'Realistic' isn't the same as 'real'.  But you've got to keep it within certain limits in order to give readers something to hold onto.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T11:05:23.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="665" CreationDate="2011-09-23T21:26:16.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your original could be used as an example in the 'tell don't show' category of writing. Never worried about making something mine, here's my 'edit.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sound of the slamming door lodged in my spine. For a time, I stood on the lawn trapped in nothing but myself. Mindlessly I counted the blank windows on the front of the house. Seven. And seven again. Then the vision of my old running shoes spattered with tar and neglect in the trunk of the car rose in my mind. I drove to the beach without even checking that they were there and put them on again as though I'd never stopped putting them on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beach stretched away under grey skies, a blank page. A fist of storm formed in the south, fractured by lightning. Birds passed over me, escaping. I named the storm Mona and ran towards it. One foot followed the other in a memory that came from the meat of me, my hips, my breathing. As I passed under the first veil of rain and darkness, a joy welled up in me, and I thought, Maybe I'm crying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2641" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T21:26:16.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4046" CreationDate="2011-09-23T21:31:37.307" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, this question confuses what &quot;realistic&quot; means when it comes to characters in fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Characters should be realistic in the sense that they're realistic for the story itself, not necessarily realistic because they conform to our known norms, cultures or behaviours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my mind, what readers look for beyond familiarity is consistency, where the events that happen are consistent with the laws of that universe for that particular world, and the people/aliens/creatures involved fit into that universe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may not be realistic in this universe, but they better be realistic in theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T21:31:37.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="194" CreationDate="2011-09-24T00:57:36.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Saul Bellow's &lt;em&gt;Herzog&lt;/em&gt; seems to me to be about the identity of a writer: a troubled middle-aged man in the Midwest (of America) who writes letters to people he knows, but also to dead authors and thinkers. His life as reflected in the book is largely lived out in conversation with literary greats through letters he never sends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9" LastActivityDate="2011-09-24T00:57:36.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3916" CreationDate="2011-09-24T01:01:44.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Donald Knuth has an illuminating set of lecture notes for a course on &quot;mathematical writing&quot; here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://tex.loria.fr/typographie/mathwriting.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tex.loria.fr/typographie/mathwriting.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It covers some things specific to mathematics, but I think it would help with broadly technical writing too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9" LastActivityDate="2011-09-24T01:01:44.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4058" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4059" CreationDate="2011-09-24T02:19:07.983" Score="2" ViewCount="348" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my writing style, I make an outline of what I'm going to write, and I have fun in between. I was kidding myself in thinking outlining contrasted with &quot;stream of consciousness&quot; in which thoughts just flow onto the screen (paper?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal is to finish writing my book(which may or may not turn into an anthology of short stories), which has been written with both outlines and stream of consciousness in unsteady and wavering levels and combinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the above, how should I continue writing?  I want to improve, so should I try less outlining?  A more rigid format?  Something else entirely? Why?  &lt;strong&gt;What are the pros and cons of different levels of rigidity in planning?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2626" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-09-30T12:24:50.443" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T12:51:29.530" Title="How much outlining should I use in writing my book?" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4058" CreationDate="2011-09-24T03:14:18.617" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Stream of Consciousness' is usually considered a narrative mode - it's a style, more than a habit of writing.  You could absolutely write in stream of consciousness using an outline.  Think of it like intense first person, with no rational filters or structural impositions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what you're asking is 'which is more productive, discovery/'pantsing' or outlining?'.  The question has been more-or-less asked and answered, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/is-it-a-good-idea-to-write-a-summary-of-a-plot-before-writing-the-full-version&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt; The only difference with your question is the idea of productivity, and I'm not sure if that's a useful concept, really.  It may be too vague, because... what are you trying to produce?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just want a lot of words, pants it.  Sit down and write, and see what comes out.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want something of good quality, things get trickier.  I honestly think this may be a genre specific question, at least to some extent.  I write Romance, where the formula is quite rigid, and the challenge comes from trying to make the same basic story structure feel fresh and original.  It's possible to write by the seat of my pants when I'm writing Romance because the genre imposes a structure of its own.  I can be a discovery writer and let my characters explore their world because I know, at least in the largest sense, where they have to go eventually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when I try to add a mystery, with the need for clues, or a thriller with complicated plotlines, I find myself needing more of an outline in order to keep myself on track.  Some people can write complicated works without an outline, but I'm not one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it also depends how much re-writing you're planning to do.  when I write from an outline, I don't need to make serious changes before the book's ready to go, because it was already fairly structured and tight.  When I write without an outline, I need to be prepared to go back and chop or add to make things work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I think this is another area where each writer needs to explore and find out what works for him or her self.  Sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-09-24T03:14:18.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4018" CreationDate="2011-09-25T13:09:33.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best tool would be a mind mapping tool. Your can use it to visualize your ideas or organize the plot of the novel. Its very easy to manipulate the ideas and relations you want to create once everything is down and visible. There are many mind mapping software available. Including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindjet.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mindjet Mindmanager&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thinkbuzan.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ThinkBuzan's Imindmap&lt;/a&gt;. I use the mind mapping tool that comes with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiosis.com/features&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Xiosis Scribe&lt;/a&gt; word processor. All of these are fully commercial alternatives but there are also those that are free for personal use like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xmind.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;XMind&lt;/a&gt; and also an entirely open source alternative &lt;a href=&quot;http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FreeMind&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-10-02T03:24:42.253" LastActivityDate="2011-10-02T03:24:42.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4007" CreationDate="2011-09-25T13:11:58.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are asking the wrong people. Ask a sample of people whom you have imagined would enjoy the book best. For eg. If you are targeting people who likes Tom Clancy type novels, find a few of them and ask them what grabs their attention the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T13:11:58.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4041" CreationDate="2011-09-25T13:14:46.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to use bullet list form. As you have said people don't have the time to sit through and read long emails. If you are having trouble being concise use bullet lists and limit each bullet to a particular topic or point you want to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T13:14:46.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4012" CreationDate="2011-09-25T13:17:35.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a personal request you are making. I feel any polite phrasing would be fine. Explain the situation and what is needed. Normally, most companies have a standard operating procedure for things like this. Check if this is there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T13:17:35.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3959" CreationDate="2011-09-25T13:21:01.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Halo series was a very well received shooter game + fantasy novel series. I am certain your experience can be applied to a similar setting ie a sci fi story about a futuristic soldier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T13:21:01.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3929" CreationDate="2011-09-25T13:25:35.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is obscure and not in the same market or was published long ago it probably wouldn't matter. If you are aiming for something higher though and want to minimize potential problems with publishers you can rename the book to something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T13:25:35.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4007" CreationDate="2011-09-25T22:56:48.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often (not always) the publisher will suggest another title. They have a marketing group that does titles and covers etc. They may (or may not) give you a choice as to their suggestions. It is your synopsis and story that you have to sell. Agents understand this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T22:56:48.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4068" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4069" CreationDate="2011-09-26T19:21:50.820" Score="7" ViewCount="527" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had written the first draft of my book and put it in the freezer almost 6 weeks ago. Yesterday I took it out, and after going through a first read to note my reactions, I have decided to start work on the second draft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it looks like a huge task- I'm not sure where to start. Should I go chapter by chapter? If so, how much editing should I do, before moving on? There is so much work to do, and I'm worried of death by analysis paralysis.... :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-09-27T13:19:45.107" Title="How do I start editing my novel?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4068" CreationDate="2011-09-26T20:06:58.030" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do not use a version control system (which you should), then make a copy of your existing draft before changing anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your final edit (if there are no story changes left, all gaps closed, and the plot is in shape) read &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/665/something-different-help-me-find-the-unnecessary-words/707#707&quot;&gt;my answer here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this does not sound like your final edit. So whatever you do, take a chunk you can easily overview to avoid an overwhelming feeling. &quot;Chunk&quot; varies here from situation and task you want to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you only edit typos and grammar, just pick the next two or three pages, correct the errors and pick the next three pages. When editing parts of the story, you have to look at the section, which defines that part. E.g. your ending sucks and it covers the last four chapters, these chapters define your chunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it's not easy to overview four chapters. Even more complicated is the fact, that the cause for your sucking end could be somewhere in the first third of your book. If it were easy, it would be called politics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; it more easy to overview it by using an (guess what) overview. If you haven't got a short summary of each chapter, then write them now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concentrate at one task at a time, get not distracted by other problems you find on your way. Make a note, so you do not forget them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important part of editing: &lt;em&gt;After&lt;/em&gt; you made an edit, get the copy of the first draft you made at the beginning and compare your edit with the original part. Read it aloud. Both versions. The biggest problem is editing something to death. When editing, most people use their rational/logical part of their brain. That really can (but need not) ruin your story. Be aware of this trap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Avoiding this trap needs a lot of experience. I cannot say that I have mastered it. There will be always a doubt. Maybe mastering this step is the difference between an hobbyist and a professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading aloud helps to find the better text. You hear rumbling passages easily. Silently you read over them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it is so obvious when comparing the text passages, that the new one is better. If in doubt, don't change anything. Or get a second opinion by a test reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some authors say, rewriting stuff is so dangerous, you shouldn't do it all. If that is true for you, you have to figure out yourself. Get experience and become a better writer. I have no better advice, sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T22:39:13.353" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4070" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4071" CreationDate="2011-09-26T21:51:42.450" Score="12" ViewCount="1869" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I'm writing a sci-fi novel. I want to use a word which another writer has coined, which has become well-recognized outside the original book, for the name of an alien species in my story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to do something akin to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Jacob walked in the room, accompanied by Dori, who jumped on the table beside him and began sniffing the book.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&quot;What's that?&quot; said Katie with a frown.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&quot;This is Dori. She's the consulate's grok. She should be able to tell us how old this book is and who had it.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&quot;She's a what?&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Jacob chuckled. &quot;Her species has their own name for themselves, but it's practically impossible to pronounce. What they're best at is &amp;mdash; well, they sort of sniff out history. They can read all kinds of things about an object. The history of it, the age, who touched it, how many people touched it &amp;mdash;&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&quot;She &lt;i&gt;smells&lt;/i&gt; all that?&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&quot;It's not really smelling, but close enough. Anyway, when they first arrived and we found out what they could do, one of the ambassadors is a real Heinlein buff, and she started calling them 'groks.' And it stuck.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I get away with that? Considering that &quot;grok&quot; is popular enough to be known outside &lt;i&gt;Stranger in a Strange Land&lt;/i&gt;, I'm using it to mean something similar to the coined meaning, it's not an insult or derogatory in any fashion, and I'm citing the coiner of the word right there in dialogue as I introduce the word. Is that considered &quot;fair use&quot;? Or is &quot;grok&quot; so attached to Heinlein that I would still have to get permission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T10:42:49.837" Title="What's &quot;fair use&quot; for borrowing someone else's invented term?" Tags="|citations|science-fiction|copyright|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4070" CreationDate="2011-09-26T22:35:28.053" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, &quot;grok&quot; is not copyrighted; you can't copyright individual words, even made-up ones. Therefore fair use (a defense against an infringement claim) does not apply. That doesn't mean it's impermissible, in fact it almost certainly is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also not trademarked, as it is not being used by the Heinlein estate to identify a product or service. And as it is not an invention, it is also not patented. So from an intellectual property standpoint you are covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only real problem you might run into is if you wrote something so similar to &lt;em&gt;SIASL&lt;/em&gt; that your story might be legitimately considered a derivative work. Even in that situation it is not always a slam-dunk case, but your use of the word &quot;grok&quot; might be considered evidence that you were aware you were copying that specific work. But since you don't seem to be doing that, I don't foresee a difficulty there either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adoption of terminology used by one writer by others is common in the science fiction field. &quot;Robot&quot; (which was invented by a writer outside the SF field, though Asimov seems to have coined the word &quot;robotics&quot;) and &quot;ansible&quot; are two that spring to mind. Writers tend to let such borrowings happen without objection because they have certainly done their share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, this is America and you can be sued for anything at any time, for any reason or for no reason at all. The fact that any case against you for using &quot;grok&quot; in your own novel would probably be thrown out doesn't mean you can't be sued. But that's not a reason not to write it. You could be sued by someone who thinks your villain is too much like themselves too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not bother with the dialog explaining what a &quot;grok&quot; is in your story. SF readers familiar with &lt;em&gt;SIASL&lt;/em&gt; (i.e. most of them) will immediately understand, and readers not familiar with it will get it when you show them what the grok can do. If you must have such dialog, &lt;em&gt;please oh please&lt;/em&gt; for once make it so the other person &lt;em&gt;gets it&lt;/em&gt; rather than needing it explained. &quot;A grok? Oh, because her function is to understand things, right?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastEditorUserId="251" LastEditDate="2011-09-26T22:48:27.490" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T22:48:27.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4070" CreationDate="2011-09-26T22:59:27.703" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kindall tackled the legal aspect. As for reception/perception considerations, here's the rule of thumb I'd use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using the same word in the same way for the same thing, and your story is &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; that thing (or concept, or whatever) - you're crossing the line. That's like saying &quot;I'm writing a story about the same Smeerps Albert J. Jones wrote about,&quot; and that feels like you're treading on his toes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using it in a different way (e.g. verb --&gt; race name) then your referencing it, which is fine. I'd be concerned about feeling in-jokey or outright inbred if the phrase is really tough to recognize for somebody who isn't a fan, but it wouldn't feel like infringement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using it in the same way for the same thing, but your story is about something else - then that's usually fine. You're saying &quot;I've accepted your concept as a building block for my story,&quot; and that's acceptable in SF. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, to put it briefly: in general, the more your use of the phrase is &lt;strong&gt;dependent&lt;/strong&gt; on the original, the more problematic it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A slight addendum is that if a word originating from (or featured in) a particular work has entered common usage, at least in the genre (e.g. &quot;grok,&quot; &quot;robotics,&quot; &quot;hyperspace,&quot; &quot;replicator&quot;), then you can pretty much do as you like with it - that's a case where the phrase has become recognized as completely independent on the original. But I think part of what you're asking is how a word moves from &quot;unique&quot; to &quot;common usage,&quot; since somebody needs to be the first to swipe it :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-09-27T04:55:20.727" LastActivityDate="2011-09-27T04:55:20.727" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4070" CreationDate="2011-09-26T23:05:01.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL, but I don't think they can sue you (successfully) for using a word which is part of the (informal) English language:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grok&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grok&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/grok&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/grok&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even my favourite dictionary &lt;a href=&quot;http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&amp;amp;lang=de&amp;amp;searchLoc=0&amp;amp;cmpType=relaxed&amp;amp;sectHdr=on&amp;amp;spellToler=&amp;amp;search=grok&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lists it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T23:05:01.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4068" CreationDate="2011-09-27T10:58:45.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read through your draft. If anything catches your eye, fix it or flag it for fixing later. Fix whatever you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then hand it off to a beta reader. Let someone &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; mark it up for problems. I find that nothing helps me to see the problems in a work faster than having an outside perspective. Then you read through your beta's notes and decide which changes to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; know, in your head, what you want to do with the story, but you need to know if someone else who is only reading the words on the page feels that the goal has been accomplished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-27T10:58:45.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4068" CreationDate="2011-09-27T13:19:45.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have your written your synopsis?&#xA;If not that is the place to start. Writing a synopsis (which will be used to get an agent/publisher interested) will often reveal areas that need attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you written your blurb (think of it as your 30 second/elevator advertisement) if not that is another place to start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you started trying to find an agent/publisher? If you have and you don't have either of the above done and in your query letter- STOP- write them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are gung-ho to re-write then work on the first three chapters because and agent/publisher typically wants to see them first. That is where to put your re-write/editing time and effort. There is no use editing page 673 if you don't get the agent's attention with page ONE- unless you are a glutton for punishment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-09-27T13:19:45.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4041" CreationDate="2011-09-28T00:53:16.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can try a Business Writing textbook, looking through the most promising sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0007423225&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Collins English for Business: Writing&lt;/a&gt; by Nick Brieger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This brand new self-study book is the ideal way for business people to refine and perfect their written English. It is aimed particularly at executives who communicate in written English frequently or work in foreign or multinational companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Twenty 4-page units featuring key areas, such as Getting the Right Tone, Linking Ideas, Writing Quickly and Simply, Dealing with Difficult Issues and Editing the Language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Collins English for Business is a new series of self-study skills books which focus on the language you really need to do business in English – wherever you are in the world. Each title includes tips on how to communicate effectively and how to communicate inter-culturally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2550" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T00:53:16.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3916" CreationDate="2011-09-28T01:12:54.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1852338024&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing for Computer Science&lt;/a&gt; by Justin Zobel is tied to the needs of the IT field, though in the research context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2550" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T01:12:54.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4080" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-28T16:00:59.977" Score="5" ViewCount="11950" Body="&lt;p&gt;What good examples of fear/terror inducing techniques do you know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head I am thinking of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the Apache Indians scalping of dead enemies and hanging them in their horses/spears/belts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;displaying of enemy heads/skulls in various entrance places&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are mostly associated with war time and done to inspire fear of death on adversaries, but I can also think of obvious others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;creepy people in dark secluded places&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the illusion of a character's complete and non-obvious control of a situation (sort of like Hannibal Lecter when locked away in Hannibal, that captured guy in the beginning of James Bond Quantum of Solace — &quot;we have people everywhere&quot;, among many others)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the general (very very reprovable) tactics used by Anders Breivik (murdered lots of people in a youth camp and in a bomb attack in Oslo and had a very extensive right wing plan for Europe that got a lot of attention because of his infamous exposure on TV) and his general passiveness over it all&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the way the earth vanishes in the beginning of &quot;The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy&quot;, leaving the main character (and the reader) in shock&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really hate the neo-Nazi example, but it's in line with what I am searching for. I don't have many restrictions on theme/approach (I think the examples speak for themselves).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2683" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-11-02T09:44:57.373" LastActivityDate="2014-11-02T09:44:57.373" Title="Good examples of fear/terror inducing techniques used with enemies" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4080" CreationDate="2011-09-28T17:05:29.760" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ninety-five percent of the time, what you don't see is scarier than what you do see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about &lt;i&gt;The Blair Witch Project,&lt;/i&gt; even though it's a movie. You never see the villain. That ending STILL gives me nightmares. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about Voldemort and the Death Eaters rousing fear and suspicion among the wizarding world, even before his return at the end of &lt;i&gt;Goblet of Fire&lt;/i&gt;. You could never be sure if someone was Imperiused... or a Death Eater... or just dotty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fear of the unknown adds an extra layer of terror to any antagonist, so hold back your reveal as long as you can. When the protagonist is facing an enemy and doesn't even know what it is, or if &quot;it&quot; is a &quot;them&quot; or a &quot;who&quot; or a &quot;what&quot; or &quot;how big,&quot; that's one less facet your hero can prepare for, one more surprise on the antagonist's side, and that much less control your hero has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T17:05:29.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4080" CreationDate="2011-09-28T18:25:17.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Broadly, the first thing that pops to mind is a cascading series of events demonstrating the antagonist's power and the protagonist's weakness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Protagonist believes he or she has a solution.  That could be a&#xA;method of escape, or a way to counter the antagonist, or some other&#xA;plan that will move them toward resolution.  Protagonist executes&#xA;this plan.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Plan seems to be working until a critical point when it's revealed&#xA;that the protagonist's &quot;solution&quot; was really the product of&#xA;manipulation on the antagonist's part.  We (and the protagonist) see&#xA;that not only has ground been lost because of the time and energy&#xA;wasted on the plan, but that the antagonist is thinking &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; steps&#xA;ahead of the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible, it should be a surprise to both the viewer/reader and the protagonist.  When this sort of sequence is executed well, there's a wonderful sinking dread that sets in at the moment of realization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When executed poorly, it can feel predictable or contrived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1582" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T18:25:17.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4080" CreationDate="2011-09-28T20:28:11.897" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of different ways that people can invoke fear or intimidation tactics, but ultimately you will have to decide what works best for your story. A lot of times a group or individual will carry out some extreme act, and from that point on, just the mention of a repeat will be enough to cause fear. For example, a suicide bomber walks into a crowded marketplace and activates his bomb. From that point on, anyone could call and say that there is a bomb in a crowded location, and authorities are going to clear the place out even though there may not really be one. Depending on how your story goes, this could even be used as a diversion for something else that the instigator wants to cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are so many examples in plain sight, but it depends on how extreme or how mild you want your tactic to be. For example, a radiation sign on a fence tends to keep people outside a selected perimeter. A skull and crossbones on a container or on a door will prevent people from proceeding with whatever they were doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T20:28:11.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="287" CreationDate="2011-09-28T22:49:49.357" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Completely personal, subjective, emotion-based opinion follows. Your mileage emptor. Caveat when prohibited. Void may vary.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With some limits. Boy and girl don't end together, OK. Magical portal between real world and fantasy world is closed forever, OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there's some monstrosities like that Disney cartoon about the singing whale, or the Hanna-Barbera one about the Eskimo Curlew. Saw those as a kid. Am I grateful for that? &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShootTheShaggyDog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HELL NO.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know what I recommend? &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_More_Dead_Dogs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;No More Dead Dogs.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2685" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T22:49:49.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4046" CreationDate="2011-09-28T23:02:09.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Their physical characteristics don't have to be realistic, their personality has. You could make one of your characters a sentient levitating purple molibnenum tetrahedron, as long as its personality is consistent. If it's a Deadpan Snarker, keep it that way, or maybe make it slowly lose its sense of humor due to some believable cause, like a personal tragedy. If it's a stern, humorless authority figure, don't make it just start cracking fart jokes out of the blue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2685" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T23:02:09.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4080" CreationDate="2011-09-28T23:31:46.150" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been reading 'The Fire in Fiction' by Donald Maass lately. What I found useful was the following tip (paraphrased):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character must believe the danger is there. If you can build up the character as someone the reader empathises with and can connect to, then when you start to build up their fear, it comes across to the reader. Doesn't matter if the reader doesn't find an enemy head on a pike scary (and these days, many people are so inured to gore and violence a simple description would wash over them) - what matters is that the &lt;em&gt;character&lt;/em&gt; is completely creeped out and terrified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, one effective way of creating fear is to tie that emotion to the character whose POV we are seeing the scene from. We as readers are emotionally connected to that person, so even if we're not scared, seeing how scared they are will feed our fear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T23:31:46.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4080" CreationDate="2011-09-29T08:03:05.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, must wholeheartedly agree with Lauren Ipsum's observation that the unknown works best, and Lexi's point that the character also needs to be convincingly afraid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you mention enemies, I assume you're referring to antagonists. If that's the case, then there are a few devices you can employ. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is rumour and hearsay, where other characters reveal the person's character through details that may or may not be true. This demonstrates the person's reputation amongst others, and their obvious fear/revulsion helps create the mood you desire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is to demonstrate the antagonist's inhumanity, lack of empathy and feeling; for full effect, contrast it sharply with traces of humanity (as an example, someone who is a loving father and family man, contrasted sharply by his propensity to torture people to death with a pair of pliers and a blow-torch).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third device is to reveal the antagonist's actions through the objective third-person narration. In other words, show what he says and does, but don't delve into his mind. This can help create a sense of foreboding and fear while witnessing someone cold and methodical at work. It can also create foreboding since you can show him putting some plan in action (you don't know what exactly) but you know that the protagonist is in danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fourth device is to take something audiences are familiar with, and twist it to an unnatural state. There are many different ways of doing this. At a basic level, point two above is related to this, whereby someone acts contrary to some &quot;norm&quot;, and this makes us fearful of them, because they are immediately unpredictable because they behave contrary to what we expect e.g. violent outbursts; pleasure from torture or sadism; or even cold, clinical and logical thinking over-riding normal human emotions. However, there are other related methods. There is also theory called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Uncanny Valley&lt;/a&gt; (from robotics) which suggests that when &quot;human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers&quot;. This sort of fear goes beyond robotics however; consider the appearance of Voldemort - someone that is almost human in appearance, but not quite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are hundreds of other examples where the familiar has been transformed into something fearful. Alfred Hitchcock's &quot;The Birds&quot;, Stephen King's &quot;Pet Cemetery&quot; or &quot;Christine&quot; - all of these took normal, every day things (birds, pets, a car) and transformed them into something malevolent and evil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-09-29T09:20:50.427" LastActivityDate="2011-09-29T09:20:50.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4089" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-29T11:37:00.897" Score="3" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is my first post, so apologies if I'm posting this in the wrong place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been working as a freelance SEO blog/article writer for almost a year and a half. While I enjoy the job, I am getting to the stage where I feel like I'm reaching a 'plateau' and not really improving further or learning anything from it. I'd like to take a copywriting course so I could have the confidence take on some more diverse and interesting jobs and learn a little about the craft. It would have to be distance learning so I could continue working and complete the course at my own pace. Does anyone have a course they could recommend or any experience of copywriting courses they have completed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks in advance for your responses!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2688" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T05:45:58.887" Title="Copywriting Course" Tags="|career|education|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4080" CreationDate="2011-09-29T14:51:26.657" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is probably helpful not to think of antagonists as antagonists but rather as people with honest motivations (even if they are dark they can be honest) and a sense of purpose. When we truly understand a hideous enemy then we can feel that sense of intellectual disgust at their quest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good thing to give an antagonistic character is an anti-social hunger and a sociopathic ambivalence about fulfilling it. If the enemy is an addict, a sadist or a cannibal it instantly helps to mark them as the other. It is vital that their unnatural hunger should not make them weak except in the fulfilling of it. The rest of the time they should appear unassailable. A drunkard is not sinister unless he is only ever a drunken brute in the presence of those who are weak in comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The antagonist should have some lofty goal, admirable philosophy or natural charisma. There is nothing to provoke rejection more than a good thing perverted. In these instances the antagonist has &quot;heroic&quot; qualities not &quot;sympathetic&quot; ones. Heroes in the classical mode are untouchable so this helps to reinforce the untouchability mentioned in my previous point. The other thing about these qualities is that they are easily perceived as double-edged. Those with lofty goals and admirable philosophies are prey to hubris, those with a natural charisma are open to the corrupt use of their natural likeability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the antagonist is organising a campaign against the hero it must be an understandable vendetta. The more the antagonist views the protagonist as an equal the harder terror becomes. Therefore, as already explained, the antagonist must be presented in such a way that they seem superior to the protagonist in terms of raw power on any suitable fronts: money, political sway etc. The problem is then the question of why the antagonist is acting against the protagonist. If the audience do not believe the antagonist has legitimate reason to specifically be targetting the protagonist then they cease to be a threat and become, rather, a complication, or worse, they just seem unrealistic. Whatever is happening, it must be personal, and the antagonist must have every appearance of winning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The implied fate of the protagonist must be made clear. Meditate particularly on the possibilities of a &quot;fate worse than death&quot;. If it is not made plain what will happen to the protagonist while they act in defiance of the antagonist then people won't feel the tension. Threats to heroes in writing are most often to do with attacking that character's identity. If you threaten to break a PI's fingers that's a complication for the PI, his fingers will work again at some point to the required level. If you threaten to break a surgeon's fingers that could be the end of his career, a clear threat to the surgeon's livelihood and identity (it must be plain that the surgeon enjoys her work). Threatening a protagonist's loved ones is always a low trick that proves effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marrying evidence of intellect to evidence of brutality is always a winner. Look at the archetypal Batman foe, The Joker. The coupling of a quick wit and a sadistic temperament make it seem, to get Freudian for a second, that the id and the super-ego are united in attacking the ego in a pincer movement. Antagonists that combine possible genius with ugly bestial urges are always the most theatrical of the species. Going to extremes, however, can always help us to later approach the same matter with subtlety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fear must be accessible. Trying to manufacture a scare from a complex image, such as a statue of a kangaroo with a red ribbon tied around it is doomed to failure. However, simplistic cues such as an eyeless doll with a crack in the skull, are easy for an audience to visualise and therefore more likely to have an impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that last point it is always important to use such cheap tricks sparingly. It is mainly the ugliness of the perverted appetite coupled with the dangerous beauty of raw power that will push the buttons most readily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-09-29T14:51:26.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4058" CreationDate="2011-09-30T12:51:29.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you need to consider is how you do other things in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you make To-do lists and stick with them then an outline might help you write.&#xA;If you faithfully follow assembly directions on a piece of equipment you bough or furniture then you might do well with an outline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go through the motions of writing an outline and then don't really use it or make repeated changes to it as you write - I'd suggest the outline method isn't your style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T12:51:29.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4089" CreationDate="2011-09-30T13:01:49.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many good copywriting software packages, books, and even courses available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would strongly suggest that you find successful copywriters in your area of interest and geographic area and meet with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do your homework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the field your are interested in one that will provide the income you want?&#xA;Do you have the mind-set to cold-call businesses, individuals, and non-profits to get an assignment? Do you have a portfolio of work to present?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the future of copywriting in your field of expertise? In today's economic environment you may be in a race to the bottom. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many companies/groups are embracing other methods of getting the word out rather than the old traditional venues for copywriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you do your homework get a book, learn the rudimentary aspects and do a couple of free projects for the people you contacted while doing your homework. You'll learn whether you want to be a copywriter AND have something in your portfolio. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no use spending months and dollars only to learn it isn't what you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T13:01:49.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:26:43.873" Score="8" ViewCount="1235" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt; My understanding about first person / third person is this: choose a voice and maintain it throughout the piece.  However, when writing marketing-type information, I find myself switching back and forth between 1st (&quot;we&quot;, &quot;our&quot;) and 3rd (&quot;ABC Organization&quot;, &quot;The Organization&quot;).  I like to use 1st person because it feels personal and informal, but using third person allows me to (a) avoid sounding like I am bragging[1], (b) reconnect the reader with our name, and (c) speak about our historical activities -- the &quot;we&quot; now were not part of the &quot;we&quot; in 1980.  (When I do this, I don't ever call the organization &quot;it&quot; and then switch back to &quot;we&quot; or &quot;our&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The question is:&lt;/strong&gt; Is it absolutely unacceptable to do this?  Is this a matter of opinion, or a generally accepted rule among writers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ABC&lt;/strong&gt; is in the process of expanding &lt;strong&gt;our&lt;/strong&gt; monitoring and evaluation plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ABC&lt;/strong&gt; is a relief and development organization established in 1973.  &lt;strong&gt;Our&lt;/strong&gt; mission is to...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Saying &quot;we do this awesome thing&quot; and &quot;we completed this awesome project&quot; too often conveys an arrogant mentality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2480" OwnerDisplayName="Brian Dant" LastEditorUserId="2480" LastEditDate="2011-09-30T20:45:41.770" LastActivityDate="2019-08-24T13:23:33.923" Title="Is concurrent first person / third person usage absolutely unacceptable?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4094" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:49:01.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Such choices are a matter of stylistic judgement, depending on the intended readers, the topic and the means of expression. There can thus be no ready judgement on acceptability which will apply on all occasions. However, for what it’s worth, in your first example the reader might be surprised to find ‘our’ coming so quickly on the heels of ‘is’. In the second, on the other hand, the break provided by the full stop allows a smoother transition. Others, however, might see it differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Barrie England" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T15:49:01.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3822" CreationDate="2011-09-30T18:37:41.140" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do I need to go as far as doing all the prep and planning I would for a &quot;regular&quot; novel-writing effort?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends. If you really just want to develop the daily habit of sitting down and spitting out words, then you don't need any planning at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a usable draft at the end--one that you can revise into something that meets your usual standard--&lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; you usually do some planning, then you probably need to do that same planning for NaNoWriMo. Nano would at least give you a deadline for getting that prep work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T18:37:41.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4094" CreationDate="2011-09-30T19:19:28.317" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In writing &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; is absolutely unacceptable. Absolutely nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can switch your POV as often as you wish. But if you want that your readers can follow you, it should be comprehensible, or let us say traceable, for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have to read your text with the eyes of your audience (or find test readers). The problem with your first sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ABC is in the process of expanding our monitoring and evaluation plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sounds like there is a company ABC out there, which helps you and your company (let's call it XYZ) to expand your evaluation plan. But if I understand you correctly, then ABC and XYZ are one and the same company. Don't confuse your readers (in this case me; I really hate that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your second sentence the relation is more obvious to me. That &quot;ours&quot; refers to &quot;ABC&quot; looks like the most logic interpretation. So go with it if you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, I guess that keeping the right POV is more crucial in fiction writing than in marketing stuff. I could be wrong, because I try to ignore marketing stuff (Yeah, shame on me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T19:19:28.317" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4094" CreationDate="2011-09-30T19:22:52.880" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I'm usually fanatic about number agreement (like not using &quot;they&quot; as a gender-netural third-person-singular pronoun in English), Example #1 actually doesn't bother me. I think it's because I'm reading &quot;ABC&quot; as a collective noun, referring to all the staffers (who are the ones who actually have the opinions, did the deeds, and won the awards). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;ABC is expanding our mission&quot; is sort of short for &quot;ABC's executives, staff members, and volunteers are expanding the mission of the organization.&quot; Otherwise you start running into the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg9MKQ1OYCg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rufus Xavier Sasparilla&lt;/a&gt; problem. [The link is to a &quot;Schoolhouse Rock&quot; cartoon short explaining what pronouns are and how they are useful, using the example of three people with extremely long names.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I edit a lot of business copy, and I see the &quot;ABC is expanding our mission&quot; construction all the time, so it wouldn't make me blink. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2019-08-24T13:23:33.923" LastActivityDate="2019-08-24T13:23:33.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4070" CreationDate="2011-10-01T08:34:19.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually you can prevent others using your made up words by having it registered as a trademark. In your case, you can cite fair use especially since the word is now common and known outside of the original author's creation. The word 'grok' as was pointed up above is part of the common English language now and it would be difficult to find grounds to penalize you for using it without the author's consent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T08:34:19.663" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4042" CreationDate="2011-10-01T09:12:12.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indomitable heroes can bore your audience pretty quickly. When you have heroes like that, the general plot of your novel becomes somewhat predictable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Characters that have flaws and frailties allows you to create more variations in the plot and create a successful series of them. The hero can fail, be hurt, have troubled relations, self discovery or have trouble coming to terms with what ever powers he has and the responsibilities they bring. It makes it more interesting read about how the hero has to face problems just like regular humans despite having special powers or no powers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T09:12:12.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4080" CreationDate="2011-10-01T09:24:42.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are looking  at the specific devices look at look at the medieval torture devices. Skinning, salting, burning, bronze cow, crucifixion, impaling, gutting, keel hauling etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for techniques there are many ways to create suspense and horror. For example, shifting the pace at a key scene to add additional details about something would leave the reader in suspense and anticipating the continuation of the story after the descriptions. Leave the reader hanging this way but not too many times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or using the lull before the storm kind of technique where the hero is doing an everyday thing when something extraordinary takes place suddenly. For example, In the original Bram Stalker's Dracula there is a simple scene where the hero is settling down in the castle and the author is providing descriptions and the reader is lulled into a sense of normal, when the hero opens a window and sees the creature clawing its way up the wall of the castle and entering into it through a window below. simple then shocking.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T09:24:42.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="352" CreationDate="2011-10-01T13:12:53.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No there isn't. If you are contributing stories to a magazine, paper or a collection of short stories the editor might have an upper limit and you can ask him or her about it. If you are writing a novel, there is no preset limit. Most classics we read today were originally published in bits on newspapers of those days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can follow one JKR did with Harry Potter books. The first book was relatively short, and as the series became more popular the length of the books increased. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T13:12:53.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4080" CreationDate="2011-10-01T16:59:04.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try tackling some &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HorrorTropes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;appropriate&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HighOctaneNightmareFuel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pages&lt;/a&gt; from TV Tropes, and just branching out from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That should give you about a gazillion times more examples than you'll know what to do with. :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T16:59:04.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="352" CreationDate="2011-10-01T18:59:27.297" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Word counts offered by publishers are guide lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enough -good words- to tell the story and keep the attention of the audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some folks want to pronounce some magic word count/page count and will will bemoan my answer as wrong. So it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many manuscript pages/word count are in Joyce's Ulysses? Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow? Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lot's of authors can hit the word count exactly and never get published.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T18:59:27.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="352" CreationDate="2011-10-02T04:23:42.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, my work is over 73k so far, but I still have far to go before I'm satisfied. I won't even consider publishing under 100k.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2626" LastActivityDate="2011-10-02T04:23:42.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4107" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-02T13:56:56.553" Score="4" ViewCount="3447" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm starting to look at my next novel, and I'm trying to decide whether I should tell it from one POV or two.  I've used both techniques in the past, so I'm aware of the basic advantages/disadvantages, but I'm still having trouble deciding which is best for the story I want to tell.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that it's impossible to answer that question without knowing the details of my story, but I'm hunting for some sort of framework for my thoughts, so: in general, when is it advisable to stick with a single POV character, and when does it make sense to branch out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: The novel in question is looking like it'll be a Paranormal Romance.  So my decision is whether to write from just the female POV or throw the male POV in as well.  If it was a straight-up Romance, the decision would be easier - which choice would best allow me to make readers care about the characters and want them to be together?  Which choice would establish tension about whether or not they will be able to overcome the obstacles that face them?  But throwing the paranormal plot in makes it trickier.  I want the characters to be suspicious of each other, and &lt;em&gt;maybe&lt;/em&gt; I want the reader to be unsure, as well...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, maybe I should revise the question a bit.  What process should a writer go through when deciding whether to write Single POV or Multiple?  (Is that more answer-able?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2011-10-02T17:56:58.767" LastActivityDate="2011-10-02T23:41:06.907" Title="Single character POV vs. two POVs - how to decide?" Tags="|novel|creative-writing|structure|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4108" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-02T15:52:30.870" Score="6" ViewCount="716" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a lot of sub-editing jobs advertised lately and I'm wondering what qualifications (and experience?) such a role would require. Is there a particular sub-editing/proofreading course I should do? And do I need to complete an inDesign course? I've seen a few job descriptions stating the sub-editor will deal with putting the text into layout too.&#xA;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2701" LastActivityDate="2011-10-04T12:50:05.770" Title="How do I qualify as a sub-editor?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4107" CreationDate="2011-10-02T16:52:44.913" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;EDIT: As there is a specific part to the question, but the answer I already typed may be of value still I will address the specific issue as briefly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular instance if you have one viewpoint it sets you up to tell a story where the other character becomes seen as an object of suspicion and some fear that mirrors some underlying fear in the protagonist. The clearest example of such a thing, bearing in mind that I have only seen the movie, is the original Twilight where the vamp dude is clearly supposed to represent this dark and deadly unknown that the heroine yearns for but fears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go for two viewpoints and make them both the main protagonists then you are stepping into an area of a more distanced consideration of the mechanics of trust and distrust. If you are inside both of the main character's heads then the audience is placed &quot;above&quot; the characters in terms of what they know, this causes problems if you want to communicate that they distrust each other as the reader may tend to groan as they wonder why these two lunkheaded morons don't just talk to one another. That's not inevitable, but it is a risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, just to throw a little of a cat into these viewpoint pigeons. If you go for multiple viewpoints but you make those viewpoints the two main character's &lt;em&gt;sidekicks&lt;/em&gt; that gives you two things you don't get otherwise. The sidekicks are free to not know what's really going on with their best friend, they can truly hate and utterly distrust the &quot;other side&quot; and you can much more easily create a scenario where no-one except two characters whose worlds you never see really know who can trust whom. You can also put all the &quot;anti-other&quot; propaganda in the mouths of your viewpoint characters. Obviously there are multiple downsides to this compromise but it is an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to produce a &quot;traditional&quot; romance feel is to go with the single viewpoint but you have to realise that you are fated to make &quot;the other&quot; seem rather one sidedly always the shady one until the denouement. The &quot;sidekick&quot; suggestion allows both of our romancers to be equally &quot;nice&quot; and equally &quot;nasty&quot; but is a bit of a left field move in terms of narrative structuring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ORIGINAL: This answer contains spoilers for The Shining -- You have been warned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Single POV's clear advantage over multiple is the ease with which people will accept a story in either of the most popular voices first-person and third-person. The contrast between those has been discussed exhaustively elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple POV does tend to favour multiple third person narrative strands, to have multiple first person strands would usually be made more accessible with the use of a framing device e.g. an epistolary novel or some convention that told readers who's head they are in clearly at any given time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the major joys of multiple POV is the ability to have a &quot;villain&quot; track in which you can put the point of view of an odious and detestable character in the narrative. Stephen King takes full advantage of this feature of multiple POV often, usually before dispatching these pariahs with the monster du jour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different numbers of POVs do actually seem to &quot;suit&quot; various genres to differing degrees. Here's a quick breakdown:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High Fantasy: One of the few that can get away with an omniscient narrator from time to time. Usually broad fantasy favours multiple, epic, viewpoints. Single viewpoints in fantasy e.g. Conan, tend to have a &quot;grittier&quot; edge. Often &quot;Hero Chronicles&quot; have a first-person narrator, who narrates the hero's life and deeds and occasionally adds their own piquant footnotes to proceedings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Historical: Again, multiple viewpoints give an epic sweep. Also stepping through multiple viewpoints can seem to give a feeling of being less biased (even though this is nonsense) as the author can appear to be viewing a historical era from a number of different perspectives within one narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Horror: Uses multiple viewpoints in order to allow the author to lead a character so deep into the darkness they never emerge again. Horrors with many multiple viewpoints but relatively few deaths can make really important characters ultimately disposal. A masterful usage of this technique is in The Shining where the summer caretaker, a kindly old man, gets brutally murdered by Jack Torrance towards the end after the audience has had a good long time to get to know him thus making the murder more effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thriller: When a thriller employs multiple viewpoints it tends to have an epic/history-in-the-making/ripped-from-the-headlines feel. It seeks to dwarf individual participants in the circumstances that surround them. The more traditional thriller takes a much more limited point of view, in a pulpy environment it may even slide into first-person for the reason that the protagonist in a thriller where they are the centre of attention is often, on some level, &quot;the patsy&quot; i.e. Jason Bourne is very much the CIA's patsy in that series. Limiting the POV in this kind of thriller allows for the setup and execution of tortuous pot-boiler twists that the audience of such fiction loves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chick-Lit: Tends to stick to one or two POVs, part of the idea of chick lit is for the reader to emotionally engage with the character(s) in a very real sense, as if they were actual people instead of fictional, this is best achieved when the character can be some how set up to appear deep and nuanced while at the same time being every day and ordinary. The predecessors to the Chick Lit of the current day, the &quot;Aga Saga&quot; and the &quot;Bonk Buster&quot; were far more liberal and epic in their use of multiple POVs reading like historical or modern day soap operas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SF: As soon as speculative fiction limits its viewpoint it tends to go existential very quickly indeed. Speculative fiction &lt;em&gt;requires&lt;/em&gt; that we view the sciencey parts of the narrative through multiple eyes. Weirdly some SF, particularly so-called &quot;hard&quot; SF is meant to be on some level analytical and entertaining and interesting on an almost non-fictional basis as it treats its extrapolation as fact. SF novels of the &quot;golden age&quot; are often criticised for having terrible cardboardy characters but, in fact, the characters are not the point of such fiction, it's a fiction of pure ideation and the characters, to a certain extent, get away with being less than realistic for this reason. More limited viewpoint SF, think Philip K Dick, is all about the internal landscape alienated or made strange through interaction with technology, this is also a common theme in Cyberpunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to summarise, the more POVs you have the more &quot;epic&quot; your story will tend to seem. The multiple POV structure also gives you access to things like disposable one-shot characters, a certain latitude for narrative digression and other goodies that could risk your piece dissolving into a mess of self-indulgent tripe. The fewer viewpoints you employ the less this latter is a problem but the closer you come to the all important single viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Single viewpoint is comfortable with first or third person viewpoints. It allows you to really push a character on the readership, risking of course that the reader may not like your protagonist or get bored with them. The self-indulgence risk here is that you find a voice for a first-person piece that you love to write in and everyone else hates to read. The more rigorous and disciplined you are the harder it becomes to deliver every single solitary relevant piece of story information on time and at just the right pace. You have to avoid confusing readers by not being able to tell them something vital. You also have to avoid  allowing readers to see too much of the &quot;wiring under the board&quot; and leave them with a feeling that all the events that occurred did so in a manner that was just too convenient; this may be why many first-person detectives get seven bells knocked out of them throughout their every adventure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-10-02T18:14:14.317" LastActivityDate="2011-10-02T18:14:14.317" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4107" CreationDate="2011-10-02T19:55:27.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're looking to sow a lot of suspicion, I think you should use single character POV (with a judicious number of scenes outside that POV if absolutely necessary). Harry Potter is a great example of this. Because Harry can only know so much, being one person and not being an adult, we are restricted to seeing the actions of others through Harry's limited perspective. We are constrained both by what he sees and what he knows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suspicion is pretty much caused by lack of information. The easiest way to prevent the reader and the character(s) from getting information is by narrowing our access to one point: the main character's experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-10-02T19:55:27.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="352" CreationDate="2011-10-02T20:37:50.957" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, 50k and up is a novel, but in most genres for adults, 80k is the minimum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Novellas (20k-50k) tend to be very hard to sell because there aren't many markets that even look at them--they're too short to be books and too long to fit in a magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, with ebooks, length restrictions are being relaxed by some publishers, and novellas can be published as standalone books. (For example, Samhain Publishing publishes ebooks from 12k to 100k, though only those 50k and up will have print versions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2011-10-02T20:37:50.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4107" CreationDate="2011-10-02T23:41:06.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think OneMonkey's reply covers this very well. I just thought I'd add quickly that in the novel I'm working on, I started with one POV and ended up with two - the main reason being to increase the tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two main characters' paths cross because each have their own motives which they're hiding from the other. Though they genuinely care for each other, the main conflict arises from crossed wires and their key goals increasingly putting them at odds with each other (yes, it's a cliche, I know. :P)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only used one of the characters' POV at first, and it worked well enough. The tension comes from not knowing what the other character is up to. As Lauren mentioned, it sows suspicion well, and keeps the reader turning pages out of curiosity - they want to know what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But by moving to two POVs, I found that it increased the tension and changed the feel of the story by focusing more on the conflict and how they block each other either intentionally or unintentionally. It makes the reader, who is aware of both sides of the story, root for them to overcome their differences and put aside their personal goals to trust each other. In this case, what keeps them turning the pages is to see if their friendship will triumph in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really does depend what kind of story you're aiming for and what you want the focus to be on. Seems like you're aiming for both, but keep in mind that with two POVs you can still have uncertainty if there are external forces around both characters forcing them to play their hand against the other - external forces whose motives and goals we and the POV characters don't know about (yes, I use this judiciously as well). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-10-02T23:41:06.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4108" CreationDate="2011-10-03T12:04:33.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally you'd need a degree or equivalent certification in journalism or communication. Experience in writing, proof reading, doing layout, editing however minor,working with headlines, familiarity with modern styles and current events would also be a plus. Subeditor position do involve doing layout so having an inDesign course would help. There are few specific courses that get you the qualification needed to become sub editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2484" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-10-04T12:50:05.770" LastActivityDate="2011-10-04T12:50:05.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3538" CreationDate="2011-10-03T21:57:26.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally love it when an author takes the time to put an &quot;author's note&quot; into the book.  it makes it feel so much more like they're writing it for you.  if you are going to put a writer's note in the book, it should always be at the back.  Why, you ask? Because if you put it in the front, you may ruin the ending for the reader.  (Always beware of spoilers in the synopsis as well.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2704" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T21:57:26.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4115" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4116" CreationDate="2011-10-03T22:50:26.040" Score="5" ViewCount="1631" Body="&lt;p&gt;In tightening up some chapters, I began to question some of the structure of my chapters. Has anyone ever come across the method of writing scenes as breaking them down to Scenes and Sequals, and subsequently composing those parts into MRU's (Motivation Reaction Units).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Information link:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/scene.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/scene.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a big fan of learning ones own process, writing to the end, going back and editing repeatedly til one is happy with their own work. But, I do get stuck on some scenes and I was looking for information/advice and I came across this, so essentially is this good advice? Some of the concepts this person provides seem really vague or nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2589" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-10-04T09:34:54.853" LastActivityDate="2011-10-04T14:34:48.690" Title="Motivation Reaction Units?" Tags="|scene|technique|process|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4115" CreationDate="2011-10-04T00:22:02.837" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find these sorts of formulas, well... formulaic.  If I'm going to read about how to write, I want to read someone who HAS successfully written, a lot, and well.  Someone like, say, Stephen King.  And when I read his &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt;, I really don't see the craft being reduced to a math problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't say that this sort of thing wouldn't help anybody, but I know that it doesn't help me.  I spend too much time trying to twist and contort my writing to fit into the formula, or I discard things that I &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; work because they don't fit and I can't make them, and the whole thing takes the organic joy out of the process.  For me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the poster's credit, he does acknowledge that the time to use these tools is AFTER you've already written your first draft.  According to him, you write,  you analyze according to the formula, and you rewrite as needed to conform.  According to me, you write, you analyze according to the sense you've developed after decades of reading and studying well-crafted fiction, and you rewrite as needed to conform to the story you want to tell.  Maybe these two paths will take you to the same place... but I like the scenery along my route a lot better!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-10-04T00:22:02.837" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4115" CreationDate="2011-10-04T00:54:28.600" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm writing well, I don't think deliberately about MRUs. They end up in my writing anyway, but I don't think explicitly about needing a motivation or needing a reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when I'm stuck, I find MRUs really useful. I map out a few plausible &quot;motivations&quot; and a few plausible reactions, maybe a few more subsequent motivations and reactions. After a few minutes of this, I have beat that I want to write, and I write it, and continue from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-10-04T00:54:28.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4115" CreationDate="2011-10-04T14:34:48.690" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found thinking about Scene/Sequel helpful in learning to avoid pointless scenes, both while revising and during outlining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to read more about it, definitely check out the book he got it from, Dwight Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer, and also Jack Bickham's Scene &amp;amp; Structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does seem formulaic, but that can be helpful when you're trying something new, and the Bickham book in particular provides plenty of variations on the formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2011-10-04T14:34:48.690" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1044" CreationDate="2011-10-05T09:15:25.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think, Stephen King vs Dean Koontz; Stephen King is big on describing things in deep detail in all his stories. Most of these things are relevent to the plot and some of them are relevent to the character. Dean Koontz on the other hand, has a tendency to describe things about characters that you either dont care about or are way too unnesissary, try reading the last Brother Odd book or By The Light of the Moon and really observe the way he discribes his characters, thier actions, thier history etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2706" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T09:15:25.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4120" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4121" CreationDate="2011-10-05T09:26:40.363" Score="7" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel with two groups of characters. They will have their own adventures, and meet somewhere after the middle to take on the main villain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in the book, the stories will be interspersed, as they are happening at the same time and roughly the same space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I was wondering, will it be easier for me to write the sub stories separately (keeping in mind the overall picture), such that the whole story of group A is written first, then group B , and then combine them at the end? This is for the first draft of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any downsides to doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T15:10:36.967" Title="Can I write my sub stories separately?" Tags="|novel|plot|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4120" CreationDate="2011-10-05T10:59:34.353" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's totally possible.  Even in a book with only one main plot line, there's no need to write the scenes in order.  This is one of the chief benefits of writing a good outline before you start writing - you know from the start what the scenes are and how they fit together, so if you want to write the funny scenes when you're in a good mood and the sad scenes when you feel like a good cry, you can!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you will need, though, is a willingness to put the work in to integrating the scenes properly when it's time to put the novel together. You may have already worked it out at the outline stage, but if you didn't, you'll now need to pay attention to the way the scenes work with those they're being put next too.  If you have ten pages of down-time with one plot, you should probably avoid matching that to another slow spot of the other story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, you don't want the tones to totally clash with each other.  (eg. don't go from a a super-sad story to a silly, irreverent scene unless you're &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; good and can actually pull it off). You'll also need to make sure that readers are discovering things at the best time for both story lines, and that you're maximizing the impact of the way your stories are parallel (like having one storyline discover item A at the same time the other story line is discovering the importance of item A).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal Experience: I write Romance, usually from both character's POV, and I sometimes write all of one character's POV and then go back and mix the other character's chapters in.  This isn't quite the same as your situation, obviously, since my characters are interacting, but for what it's worth... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the advantage of doing it this way is that I'm able to &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; get inside the first character's head. It's easy to have him or her act as if s/he has no knowledge of the other character's perspective, because I barely have that knowledge myself. And I can keep the thread of emotion running, uninterrupted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The disadvantage, or at least the thing to be aware of, is that the second character tends to get treated as secondary, even if the outline made it look like that character got equal time and attention.  I have to really work to ensure that I'm not just having that character react to the first character, when I really want him/her to be living an independent life with independent goals and motivations that just happen to intersect with the first character. This might not apply if your characters don't really interact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T10:59:34.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4120" CreationDate="2011-10-05T11:02:41.783" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are having a huge problem getting the stories on paper because juggling both at once is confusing, then yes. I would certainly &lt;em&gt;outline&lt;/em&gt; them individually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer to write linearly &amp;mdash; in the sense of writing the story pretty much in the order it will appear in the book, with a few exceptions for inspiration or to get around writer's block &amp;mdash; so that I minimize the amount of backtracking I have to do. You would need to backtrack if you realized you forgot some bit of exposition or explanation, for example, or if you needed to put in some foreshadowing, or to shift a point of tension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have two A-plots going on at the same time, you generally want both plots to have similar levels of tension. Whether you want them both to rise and fall simultaneously or for one to rise while the other is falling is up to you and your story. For me as a writer, that would be easier to see if I were writing the scenes in the order they would appear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T11:02:41.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4120" CreationDate="2011-10-05T11:12:37.737" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The possible downside to writing the stories separately is that you may end up with two separate stories that don't inter-twine properly. The worst would be that you might write complete stories that don't inter-twine at all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say to outline them separately, then figure out (at the outline level) how you want the inter-twining to go (that is, where you will switch back and forth), then write it all out more or less linearly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="679" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T11:12:37.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4124" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4130" CreationDate="2011-10-05T12:52:53.927" Score="18" ViewCount="9587" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like something in which I can set targets - like write/edit 10,000 words a week, set a final end date for the project, set mini targets, track any lag etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only PM software I've used in Ms Project, and in my limited experience, is not very easy to use. I'm specifically looking for something:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Free &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to use - one with a fast learning curve.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ps- I know there is &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/9/2024&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question, but that talks more about software for writing your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2023-04-07T15:31:47.097" Title="Is there a good project management software for writers?" Tags="|software|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4127" CreationDate="2011-10-05T14:03:15.043" Score="6" ViewCount="555" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm rewriting a technical book that will list two authors: the original author and me. Much of the text has been changed and there are some informal parts where reader is addressed in first person: &quot;&lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; want to show you ...&quot;. I'm wondering if this should this read: &quot;&lt;em&gt;We&lt;/em&gt; want to show you ...&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think that &quot;we&quot; sounds weird (and distracting) because the book has been written on two separate occasions. For the most part I'm trying to eliminate these references, but there are a few times where it would be more trouble to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2709" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T09:45:54.860" Title="First person with co-authors?" Tags="|style|collaboration|authorship|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4120" CreationDate="2011-10-05T14:32:22.180" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A small caveat. Although you perceive the two initial plots to be unconnected they will be united in the task of delivering story information about the world of the story, especially as they come closer to one another. Writing sub-plot A may be easy enough but then when you write sub-plot B you may notice that you find yourself needing to &quot;repeat&quot; world information because it needs to exist sooner than it crops up in A, then of course you need to retroactively edit the information out of A because now it's in B. IOW it could lead to unexpected, unpleasant and unnecessary complications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T14:32:22.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4125" CreationDate="2011-10-05T14:41:31.893" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd stick with &quot;we&quot; when you have two or more authors unless it's clear that sections of the book were written by one particular author, such as in a compilation of essays. But you should ask your publisher for the final decision to save yourself pain later if they disagree with your choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T14:41:31.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4124" CreationDate="2011-10-05T15:03:22.997" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you create a user account at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt;, you can gain access to a number of online tools they have available specifically for writers. Below are some examples and the description they provide for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Manuscript Progress&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The Manuscript Progress tool can be a great motivational tool, as you will see a visual progression of your manuscript. You simply fill in the word count as you go along, and it'll give you a progress chart. You can also add goals so you can see how far you have to go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Word Meter Builder&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Put your progress on your blog on in your signature on another site. The CC progress bar is massively customizable and is absolutely gorgeous. You can link it to your Manuscript Progress tool, to your NaNoWriMo account or enter the values manually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Monthly Progress Challenge&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Do you believe in peer pressure? Do you have a competitive spirit? You can use our monthly progress challenge to set regular writing goals and measure your progress against other CCers. You can choose to have this information private, or you can have your progress chart visible on your member page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reminders&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;The reminders can be a useful tool to help you organize your time. You can set any reminds you want. This is useful for all sorts of things — everything from deadlines (self-imposed or real) to dental appointments and your mother's birthday! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to just create your own spreadsheet to track your individual goals. You can use the first column to make a list of your goals (word count, pages, etc.) and then use each column after that to track the quantity for each time period you want to measure, whether it is daily or weekly. At the end of each row, add a formula to give you a running total. You could even translate this into a graph to give a visual representation of your progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T15:03:22.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4120" CreationDate="2011-10-05T15:10:36.967" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is definitely possible, and in some cases maybe even preferable. An example would be a situation where each of the different groups knows nothing about one another and what the others are doing. I wrote a fantasy novel that had three separate sets of characters, and for the most part, it was written in this manner. It wasn't until about two-thirds of the way through that any of these groups started to interact. I rotated the storyline to relate the different perspectives, but I made sure that they were maintaining a consistent flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to doing something like this and making it a little easier to integrate the pieces later is to have a good timeline to track all the key events. For example, if you have two groups doing things on the same day at opposite ends of the earth, then it will be daytime for one group but nighttime for the other. Another example is if you have two groups operating on different sides of the city. In this case, they should both be seeing a full moon. The main point is to use your timeline to track significant events or details that each group should be experiencing at the same time. This will also help you to see points where they may begin to merge together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T15:10:36.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4124" CreationDate="2011-10-05T17:07:41.720" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My old friend &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php?show=features&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; has a number of those features, although it's not freeware. But seriously, $45 is not expensive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T17:07:41.720" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="433" CreationDate="2011-10-05T20:41:26.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.filemaker.com/products/bento/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bento&lt;/a&gt;, a personal database program from the people who make Filemaker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have one &quot;library&quot; for stories, one for markets, and one for submissions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each submission gets logged, and then I relate the market and the story to that entry. (This is where Bento falls down--a full database program would do it automatically.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now I can scan my submissions log, or I can open a story's entry and see everywhere it's been, or I can open a market's entry and see what's been sent there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each story also has a field for &quot;future markets&quot;, listed in priority order. When one comes back it takes about 10 seconds to log the rejection, look up the next market, and make sure nothing else is currently submitted there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The submissions log includes date sent, date returned (or lost, withdrawn, or sold), word count (which can change if I revised between submissions), and notes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also use &lt;a href=&quot;http://duotrope.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Duotrope&lt;/a&gt; because it tells me when I can expect to hear back based on others' reported response times, but I keep the Bento database because it's faster and more customizable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T20:41:26.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2011-10-05T20:46:03.600" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the Mac, try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribblecode.com/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aeon Timeline&lt;/a&gt;. It's being developed by a Scrivener user, so a key feature is being able to import your timeline into Scrivener. I used a very early version for my last book and it was pretty easy to use and had all the features I needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some nifty features include custom calendars (for those non-Earth settings) and a way to track which events each character is present at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastEditorUserId="1192" LastEditDate="2015-10-25T01:12:54.997" LastActivityDate="2015-10-25T01:12:54.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4166" CreationDate="2011-10-06T06:08:26.760" Score="2" ViewCount="2252" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm preparing an assignment which requires two MS Project files to be submitted, containing WBS/GANTT charts for a fictional project, and a textual explanation of what I did and why, which.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(All the files will be submitted electronically, zipped.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the assignment, I'm required to include referencing, &quot;APA style&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I figure I need to reference the attached MS Project files from within my explanation document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a proper way to reference data files using APA style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2473" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2011-10-06T07:40:08.067" LastActivityDate="2011-10-08T08:25:09.243" Title="How to reference data files, APA-style?" Tags="|style|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4125" CreationDate="2011-10-06T09:45:54.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would check with the publishers. As a general rule though if you will be listed as co-author then the correct form is usually &quot;we&quot;(If you are contracted to re-write it but it will be published only under the original title and author, you would say &quot;I&quot;.) The final decision is usually the publishers'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T09:45:54.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3538" CreationDate="2011-10-06T11:55:45.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short thanks and dedications (about a page's worth, tops) can go at the front of the book, any lengthy &quot;author's note&quot; should, in my opinion, go towards the back, as &quot;bonus material&quot; 9as it were). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's needing to be in front to make the book readable, there's more work to be done on the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, more lengthy introductions work, but the few times I've seen that, it's either been a case of &quot;early manuscript finished by new author&quot; or &quot;collection of stories&quot; and that is not your typical book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T11:55:45.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2011-10-06T13:03:54.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a plain-text file with a time-line of events, a list of the major people in the work and some notes about them (like, do they drink tea or coffee, do they take milk, how many sugars, noticeable likes/dislike, partner(s), ...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T13:03:54.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4089" CreationDate="2011-10-06T18:31:10.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While you are checking out courses and deciding, start a swipe file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subscribe to newsletters and mailing lists, and bookmark sites whose copy you like. (Evernote and ReadItLater makes this easy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have a bunch of items in your swipe file, take the ones you like best and re-write them. And re-write them by hand with pen and paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will force you to get into minute details with your favourite copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your brain will also start to learn techniques and phrases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And hopefully you will also start seeing common structures in how the copy flows - the journey good copy takes a reader on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend AdWeek's book on copywriting. Still in print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2040" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T18:31:10.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4138" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4203" CreationDate="2011-10-06T19:47:28.600" Score="6" ViewCount="3009" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've created a character named &quot;Mathias Mindblade&quot; who is trained by a wise wizard to lead a rebellion against the Darkness Empire and eventually to establish an Empire of Light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mathias has some severe obstacles to overcome and he will come into possession of some very cool powers. But I also want to be able to illustrate his humanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What I'm missing are ideas for his personality and character, and for some flaws or problems that might make him more interesting.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That last point is particularly important - in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4042/frailties-mistakes-and-imperfections&quot;&gt;a previous question of mine&lt;/a&gt;, responses made it clear that &lt;strong&gt;readers have little interest in omnipotent, &quot;Superman&quot;-like characters&lt;/strong&gt;. So what I want for Mathias is the kind of flaws that will keep him from being a boring Superman - but still allowing for him to have good points and a plethora of &quot;bad-ass&quot; abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I choose what flaws to give him, and how do I prevent those flaws from overwhelming the likable, cool core of the character&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2626" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T18:28:15.070" Title="How do I round out a powerful character?" Tags="|characters|fantasy|character-development|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="433" CreationDate="2011-10-06T19:50:13.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Spreadsheet. Easy to configure to meet my needs. Easy to update. Screen shows info at a glance. Cost? Free. I use OpenOffice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T19:50:13.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4141" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4160" CreationDate="2011-10-06T23:52:01.620" Score="2" ViewCount="707" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reasoning with a friend about why movies/novels often get highly successful while others, despite having an interesting story/topic, don't get much attention. We came to speak about &lt;em&gt;Matrix, Pulp Fiction, 12 Monkeys&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My reasoning is, those stories became über-successful as they basically offer different parallel storylines to every human, not only a single interesting perspective/topic needing specific background knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;em&gt;Matrix&lt;/em&gt; covers several fields:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;different love stories (Morpheus-Niobe, Neo-Trinity,...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;technological aspects (nerdy view)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;philosophy behind the story (am I living in a simulation, where will technological progress lead us)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;religious aspects (Neo is seen as a god)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from nerd over grandpa to a child, everybody can connect to a sub-storyline. Besides those points, of course the overall story has to be interesting, end unclear, it has to make critics think...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So bearing this in mind, if you want to write a script/book being able to connect to every audience and not only e.g. sci-fi fans besides incomplete fields above, what would be the common denominator, the structure to develop such a story without ending in a mixed grey hodgepodge? Have you tips/rules how to balance/weight different storylines (is a red thread necessary between chapters), storylines that must exist like the often mandatory love relation of characters, storylines that draw away a lot attention and you should minimize as far as possible, without missing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you start with a sub-storyline offering a common denominator to all kinds of audience? Do today's critics expect a minimum diversity of sub-storylines in a novel/script. How did successful multi-stories (no pure sci-fi/romantic novel) deal with this problem? E.g., do they focus on the harder to understand storylines in one/following chapters while breaking up the love storyline in small distributed bits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2350" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2013-12-28T16:43:39.530" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T16:43:39.530" Title="How to cover different perspectives/levels of thinking in one story?" Tags="|novel|screenwriting|plot|readers|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4138" CreationDate="2011-10-07T00:17:13.573" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, unless &quot;Mindblade&quot; is a use-name he took or was given because he has some kind of esper abilities, give him a last name that doesn't sound like it was lifted from &lt;i&gt;Shadowrun&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, if you want him not to be a superman, give him some physical challenge he has to struggle with on an daily or even hourly basis. Give him a bad leg. A club foot. Terrible scars. One eye. What the hell, give him three eyes, just to be different. GRRMartin is doing awesome things with a dwarf these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T00:17:13.573" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4138" CreationDate="2011-10-07T00:23:13.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend a character synopsis. In depth, google it. It'll force you to ask yourself some questions about your character(s)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This brainstorming may lead to some ideas, or scenes coming to you that fit the answer you seek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2589" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T00:23:13.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4145" CreationDate="2011-10-07T01:45:08.207" Score="10" ViewCount="332" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just about finished up the first draft of a piece of work I've put a good deal of love into. It's genre fiction (paranormal/supernatural horror/urban fantasy/whatever they're calling it this week), and I want to go back and put in a couple scenes as well as apply a LOT of polish, but it's only about 20,000 words - too long and complex (plotwise) for a short story, but far too short for a novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have sequel ideas - should I dub this &quot;part one&quot; and write two more parts? Or would it be better to leave it as a novella? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T09:04:28.397" Title="What to do with my odd-length work?" Tags="|fiction|editing|book-length|first-draft|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4144" CreationDate="2011-10-07T03:09:29.957" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your story is complete, then leave it as a novella. Focus on telling your story and getting it cleaned up and finalized. Don't worry about the length. If you need to add some scenes to help make the story more complete, then do so, but don't add them just to try to force the story into becoming something larger than it needs to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen a very common trend of urban fantasies that are being published as e-books that are novellas. Inevitably, a good number of them end up becoming parts of a larger story, or the author creates multiple stories featuring the same character(s). Once they have finsihed each of the separate stories, they then combine them together in a collection. I know a couple of authors who have been pretty successful doing this, so it is something that you could consider. By selling each of the novellas separately you have the opportunity to gain some exposure, and that in turn could lead to people spending a little more for the full collection. The trick, however, is getting the other stories completed once you finish the first one!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T03:09:29.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4146" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4148" CreationDate="2011-10-07T07:29:57.970" Score="10" ViewCount="15315" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing the outline for my first novel, which has three main characters. I'm very happy with their names, however I recently noticed that I was naturally referring to the first two by first name, but to the third one by his last name. I think it is because 1) I like that last name, which is a very strong and rare one, and 2) it is the name of someone I've known for long and who I've always addressed as &quot;Mr Last-Name.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is a thriller involving two members of the mafia and one old tired french cop, if it has any relevance to the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2487" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T15:18:07.387" Title="Is it OK to refer to some characters by first name and to others by last name?" Tags="|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4146" CreationDate="2011-10-07T08:11:31.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is ok, if it fits to your story, i.e. the relationships of your characters and how they address each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are good friends, it is unlikely that they use surnames to talk to each other. If it is a stranger or the boss, it is more common to use the last name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to ask yourself from which perspective you write your scene. If your POV is the wife of Mr Last-Name, then, no, it is not ok. If his student is telling the story, it is ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When using a omniscient narrator and he always refers to him as Mr Last-Name, go for it. Just do not switch surprisingly in the last chapter to &quot;Joe&quot; and puzzle your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T08:11:31.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4146" CreationDate="2011-10-07T08:27:11.233" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a set of guidelines I really like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can refer to each character by the moniker most appropriate to him, &lt;strong&gt;so long as you use the same one consistently.&lt;/strong&gt; Readers will happily accept any name that seems appropriate; the important thing is not to confuse them by referring to one individual by a dozen different tags.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can have different &lt;em&gt;characters&lt;/em&gt; refer to an individual by different monikers,&lt;/strong&gt; so long as they do so consistently. This is a natural detail in relationships - &quot;Captain Jon Smith&quot; is  &quot;Jon&quot; to his friends, &quot;Smith&quot; to his boss, &quot;Captain Smith&quot; when he's introduced in polite society, and either &quot;Captain&quot; or &quot;Ol' Waxwhiskers&quot; to his subordinates, depending whether or not he's in earshot. But again - each character is consistent in their own name for this individual.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For this purpose, &lt;strong&gt;narration is a point-of-view,&lt;/strong&gt; so when you're referring to him in narrative (rather than a character mentioning him in dialogue), the name should be consistent, and probably should be &lt;strong&gt;the name you'd most like &lt;em&gt;the reader&lt;/em&gt; to associate with the character&lt;/strong&gt;, for whatever reasons or preferences of your own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a single character is going to be addressed by several different names over the course of the story, then it's a good idea to &lt;strong&gt;introduce the character by his full name (and title, nicknames, etc.) the first time we read about him.&lt;/strong&gt; e.g.: &lt;code&gt;Today was Captain Jon Smith's first day aboard the _H.M.S. Ratatouille_.&lt;/code&gt; Then you can slip right in to your chosen moniker (&lt;code&gt;&quot;What a great ship,&quot; Smith thought to himself, when he was interrupted - a kid was running towards him, yelling, &quot;Captain! Captain! Come quick!&quot;&lt;/code&gt;), confident that from then on, the reader will be able to identify the character from any of a variety of references. (Without that, your references could be choppy and confusing - consider: &lt;code&gt;&quot;So, first day onboard, eh, Jon?&quot; said Bob. It was a nice ship, Smith had to admit - but just then, a kid burst out of nowhere, running towards him and yelling, &quot;Captain! Captain!&quot;&lt;/code&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In conclusion,&lt;/strong&gt; there's no problem referring to the third character differently then the other two, particularly since you like the name better and (it seems) feel that it suits the character well. Just be consistent in how he's referred to, and you're good to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T08:27:11.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4138" CreationDate="2011-10-07T08:32:44.500" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A plot consists of conflicts. If you do not have conflicts, you do not have a plot. Your character has to face conflicts, otherwise he is boring. Just flipping with your fingers to solve a problem, is not a conflict by definition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two kinds of conflicts: outer conflicts and inner conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outer ones are easy: battles, evil people, save the world, blablabla. Nevertheless they should make sense to your story. Just saying your antagonist wants to conquer the world is lame. Tell us why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The inner conflicts are the more challenging and interesting ones. They normally decide if you have a shallow story (= boring), or a real engaging one. The whipping cream on your book dessert is the interweavement of the inner and outer conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Mathias has to kill King Evil for what reason so ever. He needs a priest to do that and the only available one is his former girl-friend and their relation ended in catastrophe. So he really does not want to see her, but he has to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally he falls in love to the wife of King Evil. The priest knows her and hates her to death. She always tells Mathias that they have to kill them both. Cruel, hard and merciless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now rescue the world and your love with an ex-girl-friend who hates you and your dears. Have fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T08:32:44.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4138" CreationDate="2011-10-07T08:42:40.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make your hero strong, but not invincible. Superman is almost invincible, as bullets/ knives don't work on him, which is why he is boring. But that doesn't have to be the case with you. Show that it is possible for superheroes to die, maybe by killing off one early in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the hero (and the readers) knows that he is not invincible, his actions will be more real. He won't charge into the enemies lair and wind up the story in the last 10 minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for giving him character flaws, don't give him the clichéd ones. Don't make him an angsty teenager, always moaning &quot;Why am I different? No one loves me!&quot; And avoid the Freudian &quot;My puppy died when I was 5, so I find it hard to form relationships&quot;. (Yes, it is an exaggeration :) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to what flaws to give- that will depend on you and the direction of the book. My advice is, something that has worked for me, is to have a super strong villain, and a hero who is unsure of himself. It will take him a bit to realise that he can take on the bad guy. The hero doesn't have to go from a WoW playing nerd one day to unbeatable champion the next. The process can take a whole book, if need be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T08:42:40.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4146" CreationDate="2011-10-07T08:50:44.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is one of those things that are a matter of personal taste. Sometimes referring to a character by its surname implies things - eg that they are inferior or superior to their peers depending on context, that they are old schoolfriends from the type of school where people are known by their surnames, that they are mysterious and don't reveal their first name to anyone, and so on.&#xA;While consistency is good, you could also have a character whose last name is generally used except by one other character, implying a higher degree of intimacy between those two. &#xA;But yes, you can call them by first or last names, or a mixture, as you feel correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T08:50:44.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4141" CreationDate="2011-10-07T08:56:09.080" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your approach is wrong. Rather than trying to write what you love, you are trying to write for all the market segments. This almost never works. If it was so easy to cater to different market segments with a single book, publishers would have done so by now by using salaried writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you not only have vampire novels, but vampire romance, vampire horror, vampire erotica, vampire action/thrillers. The readers of one genre would not be caught dead with a book of another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do todays critics expect a minimum diversity of sub-storylines in a novel/script. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't write for the critics; write for yourself, and people like yourself who might be interested in paying for your work. And don't look at what Hollywood does- they have thousands of people working on a project, each of whom has their own agenda. Writing is a solitary task, with only the writer deciding the path of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your main question breaks down to - How do I plot a novel? The answer is, start small. Add an overall theme, a few main characters, and what their goals are. Then you plot out the actions the characters will take to achieve their goals, and what is stopping them. As to adding romance / suspense etc, it will have come automatically if your book requires it. But don't specifically try to add stuff in just because you think some granny somewhere might like it. Unless you are a psychic, you have no ideas what grannys like. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T08:56:09.080" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4144" CreationDate="2011-10-07T09:04:28.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since this is your first draft, it is no where near perfect. Put it away for at least a month. When you come back to it, you will see everything in a new light. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first book was only 30,000 words. When I came back to it, my reaction was &quot;Who the $%&amp;amp; wrote this?&quot; :) The scenes seemed to jump, characters were in a hurry to say their lines and leave, people were making decisions after only 10 seconds of looking at a situation. My comments every where were &quot;Too fast. Slow it down. Add beats. Etc etc&quot;. I am having to rewrite many scenes to make them deep and engaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the book is still too short, you still have hope. One of the books I wrote was also 20,000 words, and I didn't like it, so I never went round to editing it. But now I am using the scenes and characters from that book in another one, meaning my hard work won't be wasted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your original question- put your books away for at least a month. Then decide what you want to do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T09:04:28.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4146" CreationDate="2011-10-07T14:02:13.620" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a variation of &quot;Keep it consistent,&quot; you may change the reference to the character from last name to first if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character is not the main character, and the main character's&#xA;perception of this character changes. For example, your main&#xA;character is a college student and the professor refers to all the students&#xA;by last name. So she knows all her classmates as Smith, Jones, Johnson, etc. As&#xA;you are writing about Jane meeting &quot;Smith,&quot; you should refer to him&#xA;as &quot;Smith.&quot; Once Jane gets to be friends with him, you can change the&#xA;references to &quot;David,&quot; because &lt;em&gt;her&lt;/em&gt; perspective on him has changed. (David Eddings was very subtle about this in the Belgariad; he referred to Belgarath as &quot;Old Wolf&quot; or &quot;Mister Wolf&quot; for at least a book or so until Garion learns that Belgarath is his ultimate grandfather, at which point the narration switches over to &quot;Belgarath.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character thinks of &lt;em&gt;himself&lt;/em&gt; differently in different&#xA;situations. At work, he thinks of himself as &quot;Doctor Smith.&quot; At home,&#xA;he thinks of himself as &quot;Scott.&quot; (You still have to be consistent&#xA;within a scene, however, &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; something home-related happens at&#xA;work and he would think of himself more in home-terms than&#xA;work-terms.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T14:02:13.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4141" CreationDate="2011-10-07T14:26:43.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is a mistake to try to be all things to all readers. Most books focus on one specific genre, or maybe a combination of a couple of different loosely matched genres. That alone is going to alienate certain readers. If you try to throw in additional elements to try to appeal to readers who might not otherwise like the base genre, then all you will do is alienate the target audience that is most likely to have selected your book in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a better approach is to just tell a good story. If you stay true to the elements that define the genre and provide a compelling plot with realistic characters, then you may end up appealing to a larger audience. A classic example is the Harry Potter novels. While the original genre is YA Paranormal, it has elements that appeal to a larger audience. People who are more into action/adventure have elements they would enjoy, while people who are more into romance have elements they would enjoy. The basic appeal of the series overall is that the books are crafted well and they tell a good story. Make that your focus!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T14:26:43.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4159" CreationDate="2011-10-07T14:44:32.663" Score="7" ViewCount="1423" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if I can or should take a bit of stylistic license and italicize just part of a word:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He took a sharp turn back into a side street, and collided hard with something that sent him sprawling to the ground.  He scrambled to his feet as he realized that the it wasn’t some&lt;i&gt;thing&lt;/i&gt; he had collided with, it was some&lt;i&gt;one&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe there is a better way to do this.  Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2493" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-10-07T15:15:54.080" LastActivityDate="2020-10-13T03:59:22.233" Title="Italicize part of a word in fiction?" Tags="|style|fiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4156" CreationDate="2011-10-07T14:51:07.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe this is perfectly acceptable and does a good job of emphasising your point. I've seen this done before and it works stylistically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T14:51:07.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4156" CreationDate="2011-10-07T15:15:17.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yep, works for me. You're reproducing a speech pattern in which part of the word is emphasized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T15:15:17.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4156" CreationDate="2011-10-07T15:15:22.440" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is OK, as it allows you to emphasise certain things, that you want the readers to notice. In your example, that the character has collided with another person. By putting it in Italics, you are also letting the reader know this person is important, and may play a role later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A word of warning- don't overuse this technique( as with any technique). It can get tiring soon, and loses it's effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T15:15:22.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4141" CreationDate="2011-10-07T18:30:20.293" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I get the impression that underneath this question is a question about ideal structure. That's too philosophical a topic so you have just presumed such a thing exists and based your question on that presumption. So to reword slightly: &quot;Given the existence of an ideal plot structure and all that goes with it how do I, as a writer, take advantage of that to deliver superb writing nuggets every time?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it does exist, and I'm not saying it does, then it surely has it's root in the monomyth written about by Joseph Campbell. Many of the most popular stories adhere to the monomyth's &quot;Hero's Journey&quot; closely. Here's the rub: Many unpopular and quite terrible stories also claim to adhere to this structure, sometimes deliberately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact the 12 stage hero's journey is something aspiring Hollywood screenwriters are taught as if it was some kind of scientific formula. Movie scripts are rigorously vetted for the &quot;correct&quot; rhythm of &quot;story beats&quot; to make the story &quot;interesting&quot; and &quot;accessible&quot; (excuse the quotation-mark madness but it's the only way to communicate the intensely dubious nature of all this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it pays off movies make stupid money &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; they also become long cherished favourites that generate income due to &lt;strike&gt;slightly&lt;/strike&gt; ludicrously overgenerous copyright laws. Most of the time people identify what's been milled out of the Hollywood sausage factory as warmed over tripe of the worst variety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what's the magic ingredient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is one, and we're well into alchemy territory here, it lies in the difference between emotion and sentiment. If you genuinely care in a benign and honest way about the story you are telling, if you are just humbly trying to create the best damn story you possibly can and &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you are talented enough to produce good written work, then these structures might be the final guidepost that help you produce something wonderful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final rub is this: This is true even if you know them thoroughly, have considered them deeply and then decide to completely ignore them because your story is better served by being itself and not by adhering to some anthropological recipe. So maybe the structure isn't as important as the care, talent and genuine honesty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which leads us into the middle of nowhere and leaves us to some very hungry conceptual wolves. As it should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T18:30:20.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4138" CreationDate="2011-10-07T18:50:16.773" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1175/how-do-you-make-a-character-quintessential-but-not-cliched-or-cartoony&quot;&gt;How do you make a character quintessential, but not cliched or cartoony?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should provide some groundwork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you've mulled that over, specifically in this case there's two ways to go about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mathias is meant to be a badass hero. Stay the hell out of his head, view him through others. The amazing Celtic heroes were always viewed through the eyes of chroniclers who idealised them from a distant perspective. The only evidence of what was going on in their heads was from their deeds. A badass hero is mysterious somewhat beyond human and this is their tragedy, no regular person will ever understand them however fascinating they are. The recent reboot of Doctor Who on the BBC is really a huge treatise on this. The Doctor is not a viewpoint character and the series plays with this fact that he's benign and godlike but, at the same time, lonely and beset by tragedy. Study that hard if you're going for this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mathias is meant to be a regular joe who &lt;em&gt;happens&lt;/em&gt; to accomplish some badass feats. In this case it is important to establish his humanity in short order. A cheap shot is to give him a wholesome girl-next-door to dote upon and set him up with a desire to be a family man. Be careful the relationship is wholesome and emotionally pure and not some kind of sentimental or soft-paw corn fantasy, be careful to communicate clearly that he just wants to live a normal life, go to work, come home, kiss the wife and spend quality time with the kids, for real. Then hit him with the news that before any of that can happen he just has to, oh, defeat the evil empire and save the world. Then his quest for power is not presumed to be a quest for glory and you can show him screwing up occasionally but being devoted to defeating the evil ones because really his goal is to take Mrs Mindblade (nee Goodheart) up the aisle and retire into a job as an insurance clerk.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter case, for reference, is something Shakespeare did to make Henry V into the Elizabethan action hero. In that play Hal spends his youth getting drunk with a bunch of reprobates in a pub. Then his dad dies, a messenger arrives, delivers the sad news and Hal puts down his beer mug, sobers up, raises an army, gives the French a jolly good thrashing at Agincourt and then marries to create an alliance and lasting peace for the lands of Britain. Shakespeare is careful to set Henry up as desiring this life as an idle drinking prole who then mans up spectacularly to become a dream king who does his duty regardless of his own personal desires to party his life away. That's not a cheap shot, but then Shakespeare just worked out the shot that worked, sometimes they were cheap, in this case it happens not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T18:50:16.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4163" CreationDate="2011-10-07T21:38:28.590" Score="11" ViewCount="1205" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately, more and more fantasy books I've seen are part of a trilogy. Is this because readers like it, or is it a cynical plot by publishers to draw out the story longer, so they can make more money? :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm worried if I follow the market, I may be forced to unnecessarily drag out the book, in the way many fantasy books are. On the other hand, by not doing so, I may be ignoring an important genre expectation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: As a writer, should I plot my book so it follows the trilogy structure? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2018-01-26T18:42:05.017" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T18:42:05.017" Title="Are fantasy books expected to be trilogies?" Tags="|novel|plot|fantasy|series|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4162" CreationDate="2011-10-07T21:53:35.940" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hell no! You do not have to do it and there is no need to do it. And I am writing a fantasy trilogy ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of fantasy series which are longer than just three books. If you have a series in mind, plot it, write your first book and see how it sells. If you don't, don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage for the reader is, that he knows how many book will come when choosing to read a trilogy. Some series do not mention how many books shall come. Which sounds like (and often is) milking the reader as long as possible. These series often end someday because of quality problems, not because of a well plotted story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you plotted a single book, go for it, don't try to make it bigger as needed to follow an arbitrary structure. People won't think you are the next Tolkien just because you write a trilogy. I often read carefully before buying a book to find out if it is part of a series. Then I refuse to buy it. I do not want to start yet another series. I'm reading too many.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T21:53:35.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4162" CreationDate="2011-10-08T00:02:48.010" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your story should be only as long as it needs to be, and not a word more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your protagonist has a lot to accomplish, then sure, write more than one book. But for FSM's sake don't pad it thinking that you must &quot;commit trilogy.&quot; Just because CJ Cherryh gave that advice to Mercedes Lackey 25 years ago doesn't mean it holds for every writer. (Hell, it doesn't mean it holds for Lackey now. Her current trilogy is not getting good reviews; her Valedmar stories are running out of steam.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-10-08T00:02:48.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4162" CreationDate="2011-10-08T03:15:43.887" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; expectation that a fantasy be a trilogy. Many, many successful fantasy books are standalone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-10-08T03:15:43.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4133" CreationDate="2011-10-08T08:25:09.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at the following web site for examples on how to reference &lt;em&gt;other media&lt;/em&gt; in APA format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usq.edu.au/library/help/referencing/apa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA Referencing Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, look at the links, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usq.edu.au/library/help/referencing/apa#electronic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Other electronic media&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usq.edu.au/library/help/referencing/apa#av&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Audiovisual and other media&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, have a look at the following word document for examples on how to cite data using the APA reference style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CBsQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fweb.alfredstate.edu%2Flibrary%2FAPA%2520format-%2520Census%2520and%2520statistical%2520sources%2520Portrait.doc&amp;amp;ei=EgaQTrrAJMKViQfynbCeDg&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEhAqzL8KLo1HvzSnuQUjvALw5fng&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Citing online Census and statistical data in APA format&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2454" LastActivityDate="2011-10-08T08:25:09.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4162" CreationDate="2011-10-08T13:24:52.530" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to write any novel (or story)is to write it as if it is a standalone. By all means leave areas that can be explored in a sequel, and good characterization will enable you to pick up the story anyway, as there will be backstories, alliances, problems etc to flesh out. But by writing with one eye to a sequel or as part of a trilogy, before knowing if the first book will be published you risk short changing the reader in book one, and placing artificial, unnecessary limitations on your story and action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2011-10-08T13:24:52.530" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4162" CreationDate="2011-10-08T20:14:52.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a bit like asking how long a piece of string should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fantasy work should be as long as it needs to be, no more, no less. One book, three books, ten books, as long as that's how it should be, then great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trilogies are a classic in literature, going back to Greek plays. The reason they're so classic is because, at their simplest, they consist of &quot;beginning&quot;, &quot;middle&quot;, &quot;end&quot;, which suits story telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, Fantasy is awash with trilogies, so in a sense they've become almost clichéd. This may be because authors think it shows their success in developing a fantasy trilogy like Tolkien and others who've gone before i.e. it makes them &quot;established&quot; in the genre. No doubt there's also an appeal from a marketing perspective, as well as appeal from the author's perspective (having payment/contract for three books). Certainly, from a publisher's point of view, they would be far happier to see three books being written and selling than just one. Readers may like it because, hey, who doesn't want to read more about great characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do think things are changing though. I rarely invest time in trilogies and/or series these days unless reviews are exceptional (for example, The Malazan Book of the Fallen series). For the most part, what I expect are books well-written, and focused. My time is so limited that I simply can't invest the effort into every fantasy series that comes along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel your story warrants a trilogy, great, but always remember that it's easier to pad and bulk up a story than it is to wield a discerning scalpel and cut out the unnecessary. Ask yourself what is necessary to tell your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-10-08T20:14:52.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4162" CreationDate="2011-10-08T21:45:46.563" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the reason for the popularity of the trilogy structure in the fantasy genre is compelling, but far from expected or mandatory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's simply that &lt;strong&gt;fantasy novels tend to be &lt;em&gt;long&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, for many reasons, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fantasy novels typically require lots of &lt;strong&gt;world-building exposition&lt;/strong&gt;, explaining the setting, the mechanics of magic, central factions in the world, etc. etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fantasy novels are often interested in &lt;strong&gt;exploration&lt;/strong&gt;; showing off various fantastical elements (places, creatures, magic items...) is often a lot of the book's focus. So the narrative is designed with a lot of shifting from place to place, and introducing new elements very frequently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fantasy novels often have &lt;strong&gt;epic plots&lt;/strong&gt;, about the rise and fall of kingdoms and dragons and deities. Epic plots tend naturally to be of greater length, because this gives both time and wordcount to properly build up this epic scope. Readers will probably not care much whether the Empire of Lime can defeat the Bespectacled Dragon unless they've gotten a sense of all these elements as being rich, intriguing, and with real substance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since fantasy tends to expand into great length, multi-book structures are necessary. The moment that's a given, trilogies are a natural choice - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's a short, well-defined series; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that's a length fantasy readers will be willing to risk dipping into;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the three-book structure can, in many senses, duplicate the three-act structure; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's a short as you can get besides a duo (which - maybe this is just me - feels like an awkward length, which needs to work harder to justify the split into multiple books, and is harder to structure a single narrative around).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, &lt;strong&gt;trilogies are popular because they're &quot;short&quot; (compared to longer sagas), &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; because they're long (compared to stand-alones)&lt;/strong&gt;. I think you'll find that stand-alones are actually easier sells, both to publishers and to readers - they'd much rather buy/read something complete, self-contained, and non-risky. It's simply that such books are less common, &lt;em&gt;particularly&lt;/em&gt; when a lot of genre fans are interested in fantasy specifically for the length-inducing elements I've mentioned (world-building, exploration, epic plots).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you feel your novel works best without falling into the trilogy structure, in all probability you are correct. I would reconsider only if you yourself think there are some elements in your book that need expanding (an additional viewpoint; an important element in your fantasy setting that might be poorly understood; a character who merits more action and attention than you originally planned, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-10-08T21:45:46.563" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4146" CreationDate="2011-10-10T20:15:30.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I say go for it! As long as you remember to refer to the same person by the same name every time, it should be ok to refer to them by their last name.  Have fun and keep calling him -- or her -- by their last name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2728" LastActivityDate="2011-10-10T20:15:30.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1044" CreationDate="2011-10-10T20:19:37.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personal opinion; description is meant to place the reader in the same room with the character.  They -- the reader -- need to be able to see, hear, smell, feel the same things as the character.  If the character enters a new location the reader needs to be aware of their surroundings as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2728" LastActivityDate="2011-10-10T20:19:37.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4146" CreationDate="2011-10-11T03:15:33.757" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take care to look for patterns in how you choose which people are referred to by which names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, I reread all of Isaac Asimov's Foundation/Robot/Empire novels, and commented to my wife, &quot;All of the men are always referred to by their last names. All of the women and robots are always referred to by their first names. I wonder what's up with that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She said, &quot;Robots and women serve men.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T03:15:33.757" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2011-10-11T18:05:41.010" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the books I am always going back to and recommending:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205750346&quot;&gt;Writing Fiction: A guide to Narrative Craft&lt;/a&gt;, by Jannet Burroway - This is an awesome book that you can keep re-reading and learning new things from.  Burroway sets out a series of guidelines for your prose which remain true to all genres.  You don't have to adhere to all her advice, there is certainly room within her guidelines for experimentation, but you'd be wise to seriously consider Burroway's advice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0385480016&quot;&gt;Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life&lt;/a&gt;, by Anne Lamott - If you're looking for a bit of encouragement and life lessons, look no further.  When I was first assigned this book I was really worried.  It sounded like self help and I didn't want to read it.  These days I still look over it every now and again.  It reads more like a memoir than a writer's tips and tricks book, but certainly worth your time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0743455967&quot;&gt;On Writing&lt;/a&gt;, by Stephen King - If you in any way enjoy him as a writer, it might be another way to go.  He discusses many elements of the craft, but the first half of the book discusses his life as a writer.  The whole thing is a very fast read, and his ideas and opinions on craft decisions later in the book are certainly worth considering.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in reading a bit more about the creative process for a number of writers, check out The Paris Review Interviews.  You can find some of them &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews&quot;&gt;online&lt;/a&gt;, and the rest are published in a series of volumes.  It's always interesting to hear other people's opinions and takes on how they write.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2720" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T18:05:41.010" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-10-11T18:05:41.010" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4186" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4192" CreationDate="2011-10-11T19:36:18.207" Score="13" ViewCount="766" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love to participate in NaNoWriMo, but this year for the first time I'll have a full-time job during November. Is it feasible to write less on weekdays and &quot;make up&quot; for it on the weekend? Should I try to squish in extra time during my lunch break, or do all my writing in the evening and risk not getting to bed on time? Should I do extra prep work to try and combat writer's block? I usually &quot;pants&quot; my writing because if I plan overmuch my brain starts to trick itself into thinking &quot;You already wrote that, this is boring&quot; and refuses to actually flesh out the details. Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastActivityDate="2019-11-02T04:22:41.020" Title="How to juggle work and NaNoWriMo?" Tags="|nanowrimo|process|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4191" CreationDate="2011-10-11T19:43:08.640" Score="6" ViewCount="301" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write primarily fantasy; recently, it's been brought to my attention that I use the terms &quot;muggle&quot; and &quot;squib&quot; informally fairly often in roleplay. If I were to publish something, I'd not want to use Potterverse terms; &quot;muggle&quot; can be substituted with &quot;mundane&quot; or &quot;normie&quot;, I suppose, though they don't have the same ring to them, but is there a better, less verse-specific term I can use instead of &quot;squib&quot; to mean &quot;Someone who was expected to have magic due to magical heritage but who does not?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T20:51:32.330" Title="Less universe-specific synonyms for &quot;squib&quot;?" Tags="|fantasy|terminology|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4187" CreationDate="2011-10-11T19:56:23.293" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The word &quot;dud&quot; comes to mind, or perhaps &quot;blank&quot; (like &quot;he's a total blanker&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T19:56:23.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4187" CreationDate="2011-10-11T20:05:11.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fizz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could make anything up, though, it doesn't have to be a real word. You might want more than one term, one polite and one pejorative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T20:05:11.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4186" CreationDate="2011-10-11T20:09:54.757" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way Nanowrimo is designed, you are supposed to write by the seat of your pants. The idea is you just write, without analysing or thinking much. You can create a short 1-2 page plot summary, but plotting the whole story and all the characters will take too much time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is- most people fail at writing not because of poor plotting / characterisation, but because they fail to complete their book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to write at lunch, but it attracts too much attention (especially if you bang on the keyboard like me :) ). Unless you are willing to answer a lot of questions, I suggest you get a laptop, and find a quiet place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get writer's block, just write about not being able to write! Regards it getting boring- just add variety. Add humour, even if your book is serious, add romance, even if you are writing a zombie novel, add kung fu fighting to a literary novel. Since the goal is just to write, it doesn't matter if the story doesn't make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T20:09:54.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4187" CreationDate="2011-10-11T20:23:10.890" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Isn't one of the non-Rowling definitions of &quot;squib&quot; &quot;a firecracker which doesn't explode&quot;? So Rowling took something which means &quot;has potential or is expected to do something, and fails to deliver,&quot; and used it for slang in a very appropriate way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I've said elsewhere, copy the work ethic, not the end result. Find or invent some other term which implies &quot;fails to live up to potential or expectations&quot; and use that instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T20:23:10.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4186" CreationDate="2011-10-11T20:41:23.130" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not put pressure on yourself by saying &quot;Oh, I can write more at the weekend to compensate what I've missed during the week.&quot; You will throttle your motivation, you will strangle your creativity. You will get, what you fear most: writer's block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you write in the evening and risk to get not enough sleep? Well, why do you think they call it &quot;Thirty day and nights of literary abandon&quot;? They mean it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't do prep work, just write. That's what it is all about. Write when you find time. Learn to say &quot;no&quot; to people who want to interrupt. If there is no emergency (fire, injury), write!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you achieve your daily goal? First you have to define one. You have 30 days, 50,000 words to write. With a rough estimate of 220 words per page you have to write 7 to 8 pages per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do that. Sit down in the evening and if you haven't written enough during lunch break, write till you have 8 pages. It doesn't matter what. If you think it does not make sense, keep writing. If you think it does not fit to what you wrote yesterday, keep writing. If you know for sure, that the world will laugh at you for this moronic nonsense you are producing, keep writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot make 8 pages for what reason soever, don't sweat it. Try to write 8 pages the next day. Do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; try to add the missing pages to the work goal of the next day. The worst thing that can happen is, that you have on December 1st only 40,000 words written. Then you missed the goal, yes, but you have 40,000 words you would not have written otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T20:41:23.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4187" CreationDate="2011-10-11T20:51:32.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can cheat around it by just changing the words, but, really, you're still borrowing pretty heavily from someone else's universe just by using the concepts.  Are they absolutely necessary?  Is there some way you could come up with your own unique (or at least, somewhat less derivative) ideas of magic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not commenting on the legality or even the morality of borrowing the ideas, just the saleability.  If you borrow a lot from Rowling, or from any other runaway success, you're just one of many opportunists trying to capitalize on her popularity.  That means that you have to be better than a LOT of people, since there are a lot of people writing similar stuff.  I think you'll have better luck at getting well-published if you set yourself apart at the concept stage, and THEN write a kick-ass story using your own set-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T20:51:32.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="287" CreationDate="2011-10-12T12:45:02.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It also depends on the target age group. Conventional wisdom indicates that older children - say, preteens - can handle more complex and negative stories than small children. Hence why you get the newbery medal syndrome where the dog always dies at the end to teach children about death and moving on from tragedy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastActivityDate="2011-10-12T12:45:02.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4186" CreationDate="2011-10-12T12:48:49.317" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like you shouldn't try to plan tho story since that tends to block you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've won Nano twice. Both times I wrote by hand in whatever scrap of time I had--not typing it up until the month was over. (You'll want to type up a page or two to figure out how many words you write per page, though.) Don't worry about messy handwriting or misspelled words or editing your handwritten stuff. Just keep going. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike one of the previous responses, I think you should add missing pages to the next day--or better, keep track of how many words you have to write each day to finish on time. You start at 1,667, and if you miss too many days, you'll soon find yourself having to do 3,000 a day. That's a good motivation to not miss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2011-10-12T12:48:49.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4186" CreationDate="2011-10-12T20:24:08.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually did NanoWriMo during July and it wasn't that hard. Thinking it over via&#xA;Mathematics, a person would have to write 560 words, 3 times a day for the whole month of November. It usually took me about an hour to write 560 words and whenever I felt stuck, I usually type what I have written on paper to the computer, also to save my hand from cramping. Making NaNoWriMo into small chunks makes it easy, now its just up to the person to decide if they are will to stay committed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2658" LastActivityDate="2011-10-12T20:24:08.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4199" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4201" CreationDate="2011-10-13T01:24:22.290" Score="5" ViewCount="1405" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you decide whether to dictate, type out or hand-write a piece of writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always had a minor passion for writing, and I enjoy the process of settings ideas out and slowly filling them out, trimming them down or deleting them altogether. This is easiest to do on a computer - so easy to cut, copy paste, organise, Google and re-write. Being able to touch type makes this process an almost organic extension of my consciousness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hand writing is a different sort of pleasure. I used to get lost in handwriting in a similar way, but often I felt like my thinking slows down to match my hand-writing speed. I would re-write and draw lines to indicate which bit is meant to go in between which other bits. It was hard to transcribe my writing, but fulfilling because it was a conscious editing step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last decade, the only hand-writing I do now is writing meeting notes at work - but even then I love organising the notes as I go, and doodling! Building up small doodles to fill a page feels good too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have an iPad with a keyboard case that feels comfortable to use for short periods; I can almost thumb-touch type on my iPhone without looking at the keys.. I can easily spend the entire train trip home just writing out a message or blog post. And drawing apps make me feel like an artist, even though I blanch at every creation. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then I discovered Dragon Dictation on my iPhone - and how it gets about 70% of my words correct.. mangling names but getting the bulk of it right. I find myself stopping and starting a lot - both when I type and when I dictate into my phone. But during dictation, the pauses seem more pregnant, more expectant and I find myself stressing out at being unable to immediately go back and change a word or fix up a capitalisation. I can get out short bursts a lot faster only if I am &quot;on track&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And with Dragon Dictation on the phone - every time you hit &quot;stop&quot; you have to wait while it sends the audio up to the server for translation before giving you back the text, which I feel compelled to edit before going on. But at the same time I wouldn't like to use a recorder, because I find the process of transcribing audio to be far too odious, and lacking the potential of being a true editing step because you have to focus on just typing out what you are hearing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have such different characteristics. I love hand-writing but prefer typing.. I feel that dictation should be the fastest but can't get into the flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In what circumstances do the strengths of each method warrant their use?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2732" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T12:32:23.167" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T12:32:23.167" Title="How do you decide whether to dictate, type out or hand-write a piece of writing?" Tags="|typing|handwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4162" CreationDate="2011-10-13T02:39:19.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am answering this purely as a reader. I am not a professional writer, so I can only imagine the pressures a series would put on the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is an interesting question, as I do indeed see so many more series on the shelves - obviously a trend that many follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reader, I like trilogies etc. because if I like the story, I will get so much more with many books than I will with just one! But at the same time I don't like to wait; when I browse book-stores, I will avoid trilogies unless the whole set is out. (This is just as true for on-line shopping as it is for those other ones, you know, the off-line ones.. &quot;book stores&quot; I think they are called.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I read the first novel of a series when it comes out, it will inevitably be at least a year before I get the next. Likely I will have forgotten enough of it that my passion for reading the next is lower. Harry Potter was a notable exception (thanks to a certain wonderful seven year old). Anyway, so I love omnibuses.. complete series - or books that are definitely stand-alone: I despise it when I get a book that doesn't state clearly &quot;I am the FIRST IN A SERIES..&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2732" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T02:39:19.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4199" CreationDate="2011-10-13T03:00:12.023" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of those questions where everybody just has to go with their own personal preferences. My last choice would be trying to dictate. I tried Dragon Diction as well, but as you have already noticed, the pauses and the less than stellar word conversion rate make it too tedious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done almost all of my writing by hand and then transferred to Word once I was ready to start editing and working on the second draft. I have tried to write my original work on the computer, but I find myself losing track way too often. I feel that by writing everything out by hand it allows my thought processes to work at a more natural pace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who are into left-brain, right-brain comparisons, I read that handwriting is on the side of your brain that is more creative, while typing is on the side that is more functional. I don't know how true that is, but it certainly seems to work out that way for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another advantage of doing my initial draft by hand is that when I get ready to start typing it, I tend to have a more critical eye on what is written down on the page. I am usually more focused on trying to read my handwriting, so I end up finding a lot more mistakes than I normally would by just reading the typed out version. Ultimately, though, it really depends on what works for you as the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T03:00:12.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4199" CreationDate="2011-10-13T04:12:57.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I oscillate between handwriting and typing. I find handwriting preferable for first drafts or for getting ideas out, as I can simply scribble on the nearest piece of paper or notebook, have arrows going everywhere - it's beautifully unstructured. I like it for first drafts as well for the same reason as Steven - it slows down my thought processes, which I find gives me greater insight to the scene I'm writing. Not to mention, there's just something &lt;em&gt;organic&lt;/em&gt; about the scratching of pen on paper. It's definitely messy, though, and my pages are always full of scratched out sentences, inserted text and arrows everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if I already have a scene in mind and I know pretty much where I want to go, I will type it out. It's faster and I can get feedback more quickly and easily. I also use it when I want to braindump in a stream-of-consciousness fashion. Again, fast and easy to keep up with everything I'm thinking, though you end up with a huge block of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never dictated because I find it more distracting when it gets scattered words wrong. If we talk about just recording yourself speaking, I can't do that either as I need a visual medium in order to think properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T04:12:57.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4138" CreationDate="2011-10-13T04:29:55.540" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose he's an invincible superman with no character flaws.  But he's supposed to establish a &lt;em&gt;kingdom&lt;/em&gt;, which means that after he waltzes over and personally defeats the Dark Empire army and kills its leaders, he needs people to support him--oh, and it's supposed to be an Empire of Light.  Problem is, the power-hungry opportunists who were following the Dark Empire now want to follow him instead.  And the idealists who were thinking about starting their own revolution paint him as a murdering dictator.  Well...that's not too successful, now, is it?  There can be &lt;em&gt;plenty&lt;/em&gt; of challenges beyond simply defeating the bad guy.  If you can't come up with an interesting plot even &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; he's personally perfect, then you should think more deeply about the consequences of his status and actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you can foresee some of the problems that he'll have even if he's perfect, make him imperfect in ways that complicate things in interesting ways.  He's supposed to found a kingdom, but he's afraid of or uninterested in public speaking; he likes to act, not talk.  Or he deeply, deeply cares about his mission but gets arrogant when angry, and that tends to put off the very people who he's trying to rally.  Or he underestimates his own power and thus is terrified of the power of the Dark Empire.  (Or heck, maybe he's right to be terrified.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2085" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T04:29:55.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4204" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4208" CreationDate="2011-10-13T08:15:58.887" Score="9" ViewCount="1612" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I am currently writing a fantasy story that tends to be long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is related to the following question: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4162/are-fantasy-books-expected-to-be-trilogies&quot;&gt;related&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main difference resides in that it is &lt;strong&gt;certain&lt;/strong&gt; that the story will be longer than three books. But for publishing purposes and reader comfort is it more advisable to do multiple trilogies (for instance what Trudi Canavan has been doing with the Black Magician and Traitor Spy trilogies which develop on the same world). Is that advisable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will probably say it depends on the story, but I am on a stage where I need to decide while it is still flexible and commit to something that is more recommendable for the readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if I am making myself understood as english is not my primary language. Any questions please comment and I will reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2734" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T14:54:50.650" Title="Write multiple trilogies or make a saga?" Tags="|publishing|novel|fantasy|plot|marketing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4204" CreationDate="2011-10-13T09:38:15.013" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talking in strictly commercial terms, I would definitely say that doing multiple trilogies is an easier sell if you're a previously unpublished author. There's less commitment required on the part of the publisher and the reader - I'd be leery of starting an epic series by an author I've never heard of before, unless the author comes highly recommended. At least if it's in multiple trilogies, you know that particular story arc will end by the third book, which gives more of a reason to plough through something that's not that great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, I also don't believe in writing on strictly commercial terms. If you have a story that revolves around the same characters and will take more than three books to fully resolve, then do it as a long series. Trilogies can be linked and set in the same world, but each has a distinct story arc. A long series will have one spanning all the books, though of course there will be shorter arcs scattered throughout. Go with what you need to tell the best story, not what you believe will sell. Look at Steven Erikson and the Malazan Book of the Fallen series - it's unconventional, and even he didn't think he'd go mainstream, but he went with what he believed would work for his story regardless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T09:38:15.013" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4204" CreationDate="2011-10-13T10:08:49.983" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to write your story, and then let the story dictate the format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trilogies likely are an easier sell to publishers and readers than a ten-volume series, but you may find yourself trying to fit a round peg into a square hole e.g. deciding on a trilogy format when in actual fact you want to write at least five books, each one from a different character's point of view, or you realise early on that you only have enough for a single book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trilogy format works for Trudi Caravan in her fantasy world because each trilogy dealt with a specific story that worked with that format. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when I look at Malazan Book of the Fallen, it absolutely would not work as a series of trilogies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IIRC, Orson Scott Card didn't set out to write what became the Ender Quartet, it just naturally became that over the course of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write, as that's the most important part, and see what comes out from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T10:08:49.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4199" CreationDate="2011-10-13T11:07:05.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been keyboarding for so many years that my handwriting has deteriorated past &quot;chicken-scratch&quot; into &quot;hieroglyphics.&quot; If I write out a thank-you for a birthday gift, it's usually illegible by the third sentence. I literally &lt;em&gt;couldn't&lt;/em&gt; write without a word processor. The flexibility and ease of editing, error correction, and brain-to-page is immeasurable for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, sometimes when a keyboard is inaccessible (on the treadmill, in the shower, on the loo), I wind up coming up with entire scenes, sometimes whole pages of dialogue and narration, and I do wish I had Dragon available just to get it down before it gets away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T11:07:05.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4204" CreationDate="2011-10-13T11:49:05.157" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the others have already mentioned, you need to concentrate more on just telling your story and less on how long it will be or how many books it will take. To expand on Lexi's comments, if you do separate trilogies, make sure that you wrap things up reasonably well in each trilogy. As Craig mentioned, you will find it a lot easier to get a publisher behind a trilogy than it would to get them to support a longer series. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else to consider would be to try to make the first book a stand-alone as much as possible. If you leave the readers at a natural stopping point, yet with the possibility for something more, then you will likely find more success, and there are two reasons for that. 1) A publisher is going to feel a lot more comfortable signing an unknown writer to one book, and 2) readers are much more likely to read your book if they think it is the only one. Speaking for myself, I will not start ready a book that is identified as the first of a trilogy without knowing how soon the others will be published. If all three are published, I might buy the first and then consider the others, but if I am going to have to wait a year or longer for the rest of the series, I'm not going to bother with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if you choose to write the entire first trilogy and then try to shop all three books, you are going to have to make certain that it's the best that you can make it. A publisher is going to be very skeptical and leery about signing an unknown author to a three book deal unless they believe it is a truly fantastic storyline. If you try to obtain an agent, then your agent can help guide you on which route to take. It really depends on whether you want to wait until the first three books are completed or if you want to try shopping the first one by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T11:49:05.157" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4209" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4212" CreationDate="2011-10-13T15:38:38.620" Score="8" ViewCount="988" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I've been wanting to do NaNoWriMo for years and finally decided that this year will be the one. But I already have extensive notes and a plot outline, and I'm concerned that this might actually trip me up.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been working very slowly on a storyline for an epic fantasy novel for a few years now. It's set in a complex world to which I have dedicated much thought and note-taking. I only recently got to the point where I'm ready to start serious writing, and I have outlined what should be at least 50k words worth of plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, is NaNoWriMo still a good idea for this book? It's my first major work so the idea is appealing to me as a way to get into the habit of writing regularly, and to get a lot of words down on paper- something that I have not been able to do despite (or due to?) all of my ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not expecting this to anywhere near complete after a month, either in scope or quality. I expect that I'll have to go back over and rewrite significant parts of it anyway. But from what I'm reading about NaNoWriMo in other discussions, it sounds like it is better suited for stories that are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; planned out and come with few preconceived ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Am I better off starting fresh with something else for NaNoWriMo and continuing with this novel at my current pace, or is it OK to go into the month with this much information?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="330" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T09:18:50.837" Title="Am I too prepared to do NaNoWriMo?" Tags="|novel|planning|nanowrimo|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4209" CreationDate="2011-10-13T16:06:03.860" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no harm in starting Nanowrimo with a basic plot outline. Writing without plotting is very hard, and few people other than Stephen King can pull it off, as I said in another &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4027/what-is-a-discovery-writer/4030#4030&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason many people fail at writing is because they fail to finish anything. Everyone has great ideas, about books that will become best sellers, movies that will win Oscars, poetry that will move everyone to tears. But ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas require hard work, sweat and tears to convert them to something useful and beautiful, something that people would be willing to pay for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nanowrimo is perfect for you. You say you have been plotting for years, yet you have written nothing. Why is that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some things that cannot be done. You cannot become a writer without writing. So drop all the analysing and thinking, and start typing your book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T16:06:03.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4209" CreationDate="2011-10-13T16:37:07.960" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, actually, I think it's perfect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NaNoWriMo kills your excuses for Not Writing. You've done homework, you've done plotting, you've done character sketches, blah blah blah fishcakes, just start writing the bloody thing already. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of NaNoWriMo is that it encourages/forces you to dump onto the page. Don't worry if it's any good. Seriously. Just write. You have your structure in place. Just write. &lt;em&gt;Afterwards&lt;/em&gt; you can edit, rewrite, get help from a friend, scrap it, whatever. But get the first draft going. You can't edit what ain't there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T17:29:52.150" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T17:29:52.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4209" CreationDate="2011-10-13T17:45:48.597" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely no reason not to start the book with NaNoWriMo.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a recent discussion I was having about the writing process, someone brought up the idea that there were two types of writers, those who write like architects, and those whose writing style mirrors a plant germinating out of a seed.  The architectural style requires a great deal of planning and forethought, and the act of implementing involves adhering to and carrying out your previous plans (which is not to say that you shouldn't allow the structure of your piece to change based on revelations during your process.)  The germinating seed begins with an idea, scene, image, place, or any other spark, and the writer writes out of that spark and finds the story and it's characters through the process of writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;This is a false dichotomy, and I'm not at all convinced that these are the only two styles of writing, and I feel like the idea that you can only be one or another is absurd, but they are two very common approaches to writing fiction which are worth considering and also pertinent to this question&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NaNoWriMo does encourage the seed germination model of writing, but that shouldn't stop you from being an architect with your prose.  The nice thing about writing out from an initial spark over a short period of time such as a month is that spark-writing has a far lower barrier to entry, making it a great model for someone who wants to write a first draft of a novel in a short amount of time.  By choosing to plot out your model, you've given yourself more work before, and during, the writing process.  You've already spent a great deal of time working on your world, characters, and plots, so once you begin, you will have a set of guidelines for how your plot and characters should progress.  As you begin to write, you may find that your characters develop differently than you expected, and you might need to revise your plot because of these surprising characters.  Changing the plot you've worked so hard on might slow down your writing, and generally deter you from completing NaNoWriMo.  You may also face the problem of becoming bored with your story &amp;mdash; since you know what's going to happen, you might feel less interested in writing compelling prose.  Finally, being an architect incurs the problem of not necessarily knowing how long your piece will be.  You may have written a plot which you think will take ~65k words.  If you realize after a week that you're at ~20k words and only one tenth of the way through your plot, you might become discouraged by the goal of finishing NaNoWriMo in a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite all of those issues, I still encourage you to start your project with NaNoWriMo.  It sounds like you have a well thought through idea for your novel, and there's no reason not to start the process of writing it with NaNoWriMo.  All of the issues I've mentioned regarding the difficulties of preparation are valid, but remember that there are just as many problems with the seed germination process of writing.  The latter involves far more rewriting, cutting of unimportant scenes, ideas, and tangents in subsequent drafts;  the nice thing about these problems is that they still allow you to quickly churn out a first draft in a short amount of time.  Many of the people who I know that write off of sparks end up rewriting their second draft completely from scratch based on the ideas and concepts that came out of their first drafting process.  I know far fewer people who write from heavy outlines, but I'd imagine that their rewrites are generally less grand in scale (though I have no confirmation on this, and should spend some time finding out.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck on your novel!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2720" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T17:45:48.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4213" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4214" CreationDate="2011-10-13T17:50:08.297" Score="4" ViewCount="684" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to publish a poetry folio through my university press. My ex-poetry professor at my alma mater says that is possible, but the university will only publish me if I already have a book published elsewhere, through a traditional publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toward that end, can anyone recommend a traditional publisher to submit to? I have found lists on the internet. However I have not found any high quality lists with working links, nor any indication that these publishers are genuinely interested in publishing poetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suppose there aren't very many. I'll probably also end up doing an ebook. But... it would tickle me, and my family, if I could publish via the university press from my college. So that's a career goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good advice on how to further my objective would be much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T22:01:42.683" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T22:54:32.173" Title="Which traditional presses publish poetry?" Tags="|book|publishing|poetry|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4213" CreationDate="2011-10-13T17:56:54.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would check on &lt;a href=&quot;http://duotrope.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;duotrope.com&lt;/a&gt;.  They list a large number of publishers looking to publish individual poems, chapbooks, as well as full collections.  You will be able to sort by genre, pay scales, and acceptance rates.  Once you find a few possible publishers, find out what else they're publishing and if you think you'd fit with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2720" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T17:56:54.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4213" CreationDate="2011-10-13T18:18:18.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest going to Amazon.com and do a search for Poetry under their Books category. I did this and then sorted by Publication Date. This will give you a list of poetry books that have recently been published. I selected six and found three that are currently taking submissions, although you have just missed the deadline for one of them. Even so, you can expand this type of search and come up with a pretty sizable list if you put the time into it. Below are the three I found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chbooks.com/contact/submissions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Coach House Books&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blacklawrence.com/submissions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Black Lawrence Press&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sarabandebooks.org/?page_id=1168&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sarabande Books&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T18:18:18.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4124" CreationDate="2011-10-13T20:28:09.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using something called Clarizen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clarizen.com/MediaCenter/ProductTours.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.clarizen.com/MediaCenter/ProductTours.aspx&lt;/a&gt; .&#xA;It is project management software, not aimed at writers particularly, but it is flexible for almost any project. You need to be comfortable around a computer to use it, but because it is cloud based you can use it from anywhere. Clarizen allows you to set milestones and goals, and gives you a priority list every morning - which I find really helpful. You can do a product tour online and see what you think. Good luck with the book!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2738" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T20:28:09.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4217" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4218" CreationDate="2011-10-13T22:21:01.343" Score="1" ViewCount="968" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can you write dialog where someone is groveling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Why were you late for work? Explain yourself.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sorry&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The response would be the person groveling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this task makes no sense to me. Can anyone give a better example of groveling in dialog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2739" LastEditorUserId="330" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T22:36:16.073" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T23:16:23.957" Title="How can I write dialog to express groveling?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4217" CreationDate="2011-10-13T23:16:23.957" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't just say, go for action. Grovelling is better expressed through actions and attitudes rather than straight dialogue. Of course, you can also add speech such as rambling or begging for forgiveness and kissing up, but actions make more of an impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sorry!&quot; The word came out as no more than a squeak through a throat tightened in terror. He fell to his knees not daring to meet the mafia boss' eyes and kissed the shiny leather shoes repeatedly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T23:16:23.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4209" CreationDate="2011-10-14T07:11:38.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To counter the other answers (although I still believe they make some excellent points) I think there's something to consider here as an opportunity. Most other writers I encounter, not all but a good proportion, have &lt;em&gt;the work&lt;/em&gt; in their mind; that one piece they're backing to reach whichever heady heights they're aiming for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the other writers, myself included, have &quot;too many ideas, not enough time&quot; syndrome. Generally speaking the writers in this latter category are the ones most comfortable with being writers and doing new projects. The writers in the former category can enjoy great success but they often find they struggle with the actual writing part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are wondering if putting all your eggs in a basket this year is wise maybe it's not. Maybe it would take the pressure off you altogether to just run at it without a real plan and get something completely different done. Plus, when you succeed, you will feel that the investment in your current work isn't a burden, it's just a &lt;strong&gt;really good start&lt;/strong&gt;. You'll be confident that even if your epic fantasy doesn't work out you'll have a fallback project and another and another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least you'll discover what kind of writer you are. Like I say writers who only ever really feel comfortable with the one massive project still have the potential to be successful writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T07:11:38.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4220" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-14T07:43:57.733" Score="3" ViewCount="1860" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/327/organizing-your-universe&quot;&gt;Organizing your Universe?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some issues on the organization of my fantasy story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance there are many factions that come into play during the story and I being a very thorough person am very well aware of the discomfort caused by story &lt;strong&gt;inconsistencies&lt;/strong&gt;. I want my story to be perfect (understandable) but have some issues finding a way to achieve this in a easy manner (of course a story can't be perfect but I want to get as close as I can). I like to think of myself as organized but in reality I am half-organized sometimes chaotic sometimes organized and it has turned out it is an issue to my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get confused on which character had this and that &lt;strong&gt;characteristics&lt;/strong&gt; and his &lt;strong&gt;setting&lt;/strong&gt; because he wasn't that important at given moment of the story and he is now mentioned in a given paragraph and I myself do &lt;strong&gt;not remember&lt;/strong&gt; him! This not only happens with characters but also with &lt;strong&gt;settings&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;descriptions of environment&lt;/strong&gt;. I already drew maps that have helped me greatly at &lt;strong&gt;spatial organization&lt;/strong&gt;, but as the story lengthens and new characters appear it becomes more complicated. What suggestions do you have to solve such an issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will likely say that the problem is inherent to the &lt;strong&gt;complexity&lt;/strong&gt; of the story and that one can do a epic story being simple at the same time (I am rather skeptical about that) because I feel that a rich epic story has a complex and richly described setting. Being consistent is part of its richness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already made a &lt;strong&gt;guide document&lt;/strong&gt; but wanted to know if there is a &lt;strong&gt;standard process&lt;/strong&gt; to do this, while reading the Dark Tower Epic story of Steven King he says that he needed such a guide but he doesn't explain how did he achieve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks and sorry about the length of the question as I try to be as specific as possible to prevent unrelated answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: How to organize content of long story to avoid inconsistencies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2734" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T03:58:52.230" Title="Organization for epic fantasy writing" Tags="|characters|fantasy|plot|organization|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2011-10-14T12:10:57.923" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4209" CreationDate="2011-10-14T09:18:50.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had to laugh when I read the header of your question. We try to encourage people jumping into NaNoWriMo and &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; write, and with that we unsettle people who are already well prepared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4209/am-i-too-prepared-to-do-nanowrimo/4219#4219&quot;&gt;One Monkey&lt;/a&gt; started to counter the other answers, so I will continue this wonderful practice :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, his advice to start NaNo with a new idea for practicing is a good one. But I think the idea of the one work, the one epic you have to write, the book of your life, is a false one. If you have this idea, skip it (the idea, not the novel). I think this idea comes from inexperienced writers. People who do not know yet, that after the book they write now (or want to write) there is always a better story just waiting that you finish your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to counter the other posts so far: You can attend NaNo with your preparation, no problem with that. If you need a reason to start writing, go with NaNo. But I tell you: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Start now!&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you want to wait till November? Why don't you grab your pen, your keyboard, sit down and start writing? Just do it &lt;strong&gt;now&lt;/strong&gt;! You do not need NaNo, you do not need permission, you do not need an excuse. You know why I will not take part at NaNo? Because I am already writing a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Go&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Write&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Now&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T09:18:50.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4220" CreationDate="2011-10-14T09:50:15.427" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The method I'm familiar with is a &lt;strong&gt;writing bible&lt;/strong&gt; - a document where you're constantly recording any new information you add to the world; any new detail you want to be committed to throughout the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At its simplest, this is literally jotting down any new concrete detail you add. If your write `&quot;Jurgen's eldest brother Bob was the snootiest accountant he'd ever met,&quot; then you'll add a few notes to your bible document:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Jurgen has more than one brother; the eldest brother is named Bob.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Bob is an accountant. He's snooty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might seem excessive, but I think you'll find you're only adding in concrete details every now and then - action and interaction between the characters won't need much new detail in your bible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can browse through your bible occasionally, to make sure crucial details are fresh in your memory; you can also scan it every now and then to see if you've put in actual inconsistencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120316230127/www.write-thing.com/2010/05/12/making-a-writing-bible-an-essential-tool-for-story-writers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article about making a Writing Bible&lt;/a&gt;; it gives a lot of suggestions on what kind of details can go into it, and also how you can naturally use Word headers to help you organize your bible extremely easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this is helpful!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="14490" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T03:58:52.230" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T03:58:52.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4220" CreationDate="2011-10-14T11:56:14.500" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Far be it from me to let my fans down... ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no one standard way. I have found that my old friend &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; is great for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You start by gathering your information about your world (characters, settings/places, plot events, world-building notes) on Scrivener pages. Just infodump. Then you create folders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything about your characters goes into a Character folder (protagonists, antagonists, friends, allies, neutrals, hostiles, enemies, NPCs, people of myth, people in the government). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything about your world and its customs (eating, sleeping, housing, clothing, marriage/relationships, parent-child relationships, jobs, death rituals, money, magic, familiars, evil beasts, good beasts) can go into a World folder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes about your plot (general broad outlines, scenes which occurred to you out of sequence, character moments you'd like to include) go into a Plot folder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any research you do (how to build a world, things you like about other fictional universes, names, mythology, writing tips/tricks, the hero's journey structure) goes into a Research folder. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once of the nice features of Scrivener is that you can create internal links, like a website. Let's say my main character Abby is a mage. Her main weakness is that because she got her magical powers from a dragon, she can't attack dragons. Dragons have scales everywhere except the backs of their legs, where a poisoned dagger or arrow will kill them. You need to remember this so during a big battle, you can recall that &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt; can't attack the dragon, but her trusty sidekick Hepsibah the centaur can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have your &quot;dragons&quot; document in the &quot;beasts&quot; folder in the &quot;world&quot; folder. You just drag the &quot;dragons&quot; document right into the window in the middle of Abby's character document, and it creates a link to &quot;dragons.&quot; As you're fleshing out Abby's character and the plot, you'll have that link to remind you (even if it's six months later). You click on the link, it takes you to the dragon page, and now you're reminded of the dragon's weak spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you create your plot outline (whether it's a literal outline, a series of bullets, a snowflake, whatever), you can drop in as many links as you need to remind you of critical bits of information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T11:56:14.500" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4220" CreationDate="2011-10-14T12:07:12.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other software for making a story bible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tiddlywiki.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tiddlywiki&lt;/a&gt; - a free, personal wiki&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt; - in the cloud&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tricky part is keeping it up to date when you change things and remembering to look at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T12:07:12.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4225" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-14T13:42:49.783" Score="2" ViewCount="441" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm searching for a tool/strategy to do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a lot of text snippets (informations) which are available for creating a document in different variants.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The document has a standard structure - so some parts will always be included for all variants, while others are &lt;em&gt;optional&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is &lt;strong&gt;how to organize those &lt;em&gt;optional&lt;/em&gt; informations&lt;/strong&gt;, to be able to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have an overview which information is &quot;available&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;see which information was already used in the actual variant of my document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;store tagging information with those text snippets, because some are interesting for special target audiences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this all sounds weird to you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The document I want to create is a curriculum vitae with additional information about the working experience I've made. As I have a lot of very diverse experience, I have collected every information to avoid forgetting anything which might be relevant for a job application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is too much information, so for each job application I only want to add the really relevant information and so I'd like to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;collect all the information snippets separately&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tag them for different target groups, so that I can easily get an overview about the experience relevant to the job, I'm applying to and then can add it to my CV &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; see which information I have already used. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a tool that could help me?&#xA;I'm writing my CV etc. with LaTeX and at the beginning I thought I'd be able just to remove certain parts of the text by adding comments, but the source code gets confusing very quickly..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I nearly forgot to mention: I'm working on &lt;strong&gt;MacOS X 10.6&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2741" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-10-14T21:56:36.400" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T10:02:38.650" Title="Organizing text snippets for creating different variants of a document (customized for the reader)" Tags="|software|tools|business-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="327" CreationDate="2011-10-14T13:58:52.993" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some software for making a story bible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tiddlywiki.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tiddlywiki&lt;/a&gt; - a free, personal wiki - mentioned above. It's a single html file, so it's very lightweight. I used this for a while and it worked well. It's very easy to tag things and link items together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt; - also good for tagging, not so good for linking. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; - mentioned above, included here because it's what I actually use. Since I also plan and write in Scrivener, keeping character and world notes there makes it very fast to look things up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tricky parts are keeping the story bible up to date when you change things, and remembering to look at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T13:58:52.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4225" CreationDate="2011-10-14T17:11:17.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could actually do this in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;, if you break your jobs into individual Scrivener documents, use the Keywords function to tag each one, and then Compile in various combinations. I haven't used the Compile function a lot, but it's worth experimenting with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T17:11:17.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3686" CreationDate="2011-10-14T21:37:45.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get an MFA if you want to teach. There's some palpable ROI. Don't bother if you want to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to writing, getting an MFA isn't going to improve your skill that much more than self-study. If you're intelligent enough to write well, you're intelligent enough to learn it on your own, with a writing group, and via one-off workshops. Ultimately, it's not about how many classes you have taken. It's about how hard (and smart) you work at it. And don't forget the peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T21:37:45.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4204" CreationDate="2011-10-15T07:07:52.420" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just want to point something out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About 2002/2003 I started work on an epic saga that I believed would be a solid piece of work people would love and that would definitely be a winner. It had two killer things going for it that would make people warm to it. One: It was going to be a saga but not an open ended series, the end point would be planned from the beginning so no slowly petering out, getting worse and warmed over until just eventually they stopped being milled out. Two: As mentioned it would be rigorously planned out beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a huge plan. Copious character notes, two and a half novels, short stories, some rules for adapting the universe to D20 role-playing (at the time I knew nothing about role-playing games except as a hobby I had once tried when I was thirteen). I milled out probably in the region of quarter of a million words in the pursuit of this project. 250,000 words later I discovered that my initial idea was okay, but it wasn't as great as I first thought. The writing had taught me a huge amount about writing, but it was niche in its universal appeal. The story was epic but it missed something in the beginning and tripped over itself too much in the construction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, if I wanted to make it work then I would have to start again, from scratch, with a new approach. Unfortunately I am not an internationally renowned author who works from nine to five in his writer's studio. I am a schlub with a day job who writes in his spare time. I realised there were easier ways to connect with people through story and a greater variety of possible projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not saying that your experience is inevitably bound to be like mine, or that my experience was not deeply rich and rewarding. It's just that, I didn't really worry about it. I just did it, if I hadn't I wouldn't have learned all the things I learned and become better at being a writer. Maybe it's better to just do what you need to do now, planning for the future is fine but don't worry about it if you find you need to change the plan because of information you learn on the way. That's all part of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-10-15T07:07:52.420" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4204" CreationDate="2011-10-15T20:34:40.007" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this through my blog traffic stats--thanks to whoever linked me :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Joze: A trilogy has a very specific structure and to be honest, it's blatantly obvious when a narrative is over-stretched to reach that three-book sweet spot (this is happening more and more as the popularity of the trilogy rises). A story needs three &quot;cycles,&quot; each with its own climax, to function as a trilogy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You think your story will be longer. It's very common in fantasy to write ongoing series. Here are some of your options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Trilogies typically follow one character and their issues. Canavan did this, as you menton; Jacqueline Carey also does this successfully. Each book in this trilogy focuses on a different part of the journey, each book resolves that certain part of a journey (while posing new questions), and each book offers something new. When the trilogy is over, our character has closure. JK Rowling got away with stretching this into seven books because each had a strong self-contained storyline, and her ensemble cast was utterly engrossing/deserving of attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Ongoing series, each dealing with a different character in the same world. Anne McCaffrey's Pern series is a great example of this. These stories tend to be self-contained and there is no ongoing storyline which carries the entire series. You could pick up any book and dive straight into the world; it's accessible, and accessible sells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wheel of Time-style dragging sagas...not so much :P due to storylines that frankly take too long to meet their climax. Remember, nobody wants to wait an indeterminate amount of time for that all-important resolution (hence trilogy popularity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Ongoing series fronted by the same character a la Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series. Again, the storylines are self-contained, but the characters do tend to grow stale after a couple of books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: if you have one loooong story to tell, structure it into a trilogy (and remember that in fantasy, your word limit is a bit more elastic, so don't worry about feeling restricted. 120k would pass for a very strong book). It'll be a lot easier to handle than a long series with an ongoing story and an easier sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have lots of stories to tell about various characters, structure as a series that will offer each their own book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastActivityDate="2011-10-15T20:34:40.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4231" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-15T21:29:57.260" Score="9" ViewCount="23504" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is a paid-up-front illustrator entitled to royalties?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I hire an illustrator for artwork, and I pay up front on a per-illustration basis, what copyright gotchas should I be aware of? Does the artist own the copyright on the illustrations - or do I, since it was a work-for-hire? Can I make unlimited copies of my book without owing the artist another cent? Even if we don't agree on royalties, can she sue for them later? Should I have her sign a contract, and if so, what kind of contract? Can you point me at an example contract?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also... can I re-release my material in a different edition or format, and re-release the illustrations too, without having to sign a new contract with the artist? Let's say I print a book of poems with illustrations. Then, I produce a new anthology of poems, with selections from the first book. Could I re-use some of the artwork in my new book without running afoul of copyright restrictions, or even contacting the artist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastEditorUserId="2736" LastEditDate="2011-10-15T22:02:57.423" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T15:44:17.000" Title="How does copyright apply to illustrations and cover art?" Tags="|book|copyright|artwork|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4231" CreationDate="2011-10-15T21:47:21.957" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to obtain the copyright for any artwork, you must &lt;strong&gt;put it in writing&lt;/strong&gt;. Otherwise, the artist will retain copyright, while you will merely have a license to use the artwork in the book for which they were created, and the artist may bar you from using the artwork in other books, or even other editions of the same book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your contract should specifically state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a work made for hire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(The artist) will assign all rights in the artwork to (you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as a backup, add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in the event that copyright assignment fails as a matter of law, (the artist) grants (you) an exclusive, irrevocable, fully paid up universe-wide license to use the artwork in any work, any form and on any media currently in existence or invented in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should cover you, but please keep in mind, &lt;em&gt;I am not a lawyer&lt;/em&gt;. When in doubt, you should always seek professional advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastActivityDate="2011-10-15T21:47:21.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4233" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4234" CreationDate="2011-10-16T01:58:33.480" Score="6" ViewCount="519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on multiple pieces of fiction at the same time, and finding it very difficult.  When writing one piece at a time, I'm able to devote my passing time to thinking about the one subject I care about.  However, now that I have to work on three pieces at the same time, I'm having a hard time moving from one subject to the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having a harder time than usual getting in 'Flow' as described by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.  I think my inability to begin writing and continue to write drafts is caused by the number of different pieces I have to think about in my spare time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, when I write one piece, I can usually spend twenty or thirty minutes prewriting and then write straight for five or six hours if I need to.  Now that I have multiple pieces going at once, I am having a hard time entering the world of my fiction in less than a few hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I switch between the drafts of my writing in a shorter amount of time so that I can work more efficiently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2720" LastEditorUserId="2720" LastEditDate="2011-10-16T15:22:58.047" LastActivityDate="2019-01-17T23:02:14.813" Title="How can I work more efficiently when writing multiple pieces of fiction at the same time?" Tags="|fiction|process|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4233" CreationDate="2011-10-16T09:19:51.590" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it actually necessary for you to be working on three things at once?  Even if you have three works with the same deadline, if you find it hard to get in the groove working on them simultaneously, why not work on one for a period of time (maybe until you get stuck somewhere, but maybe not until it's actually complete), then put it away and work on something else.  This is assuming that you're working on drafts of things.  If you're responding to editors' requests for revisions, I agree that things can get a bit muddied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, though, I'd try  to avoid (for the future) having three projects in the same stage of the writing process at the same time.  For me, first drafts are where most of the creativity is required, so I try to have only one project at that stage at a time.  Revising technical things is a whole different kind of energy, and I find that it can make a good break from the pure creativity of drafting a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you can't avoid it...  I'd recommend planning your time, including your non-writing time, pretty carefully.  If you know what you need to do on all three projects, I'd set up a schedule so that you always know what you're going to work on in the next session.  Then I'd spend the bulk of a session working on the scheduled project, but spend the last half-hour (or whatever period of time you find works for you) on the project that's scheduled for the next session.  So if you have four hours to write one day, I'd spend the bulk of it on project A, but the last little bit on project B.  Then your 'down time' between writing, the time that you spend thinking and daydreaming about your work, should hopefully be focused on the last thing you wrote about, project B, which is also the thing you're going to be working on next.  Hopefully, that will mean that when you sit down to work, you're already in the project B mindset, and ready to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-10-16T09:19:51.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4233" CreationDate="2011-10-16T12:02:17.787" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Kate--focus on one thing at once. Some people can juggle multiple projects; others, not so much. No shame in not being one, but it's far more productive to manipulate your tendencies to your own advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have often referred to myself as a polyamorous writer because I always have more than one project--in my head, on my laptop, etc. But the only time I make real progress is when I focus on finishing one (on the plus side, when you go to sub that one project, you bounce straight to the next and if you get agent or publisher interest, have a decent amount of new project to show them. It looks good for you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of &quot;entering the world of writing&quot; more quickly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Switch off the internet (ahem).&#xA;2) Find your &quot;thinking space&quot; and do it beforehand. For me, this is swimming. Exercise is great thinking space because it generates lots of happy, creative hormones, and it's also great for your body, which spends a lot of time rotting in a chair when you write. I find myself &quot;writing&quot; entire scenes in my head as I swim, and as soon as I'm home (caffeine in hand), I get down on the paper (or, er, screen).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you're stalled on drafting suggests that you're struggling with various elements, and could really use some thinking space. Even if it's just a walk somewhere inspiring--go soak up some energy, some air. Enjoy thinking about your work (and do try working on one thing at a time). When you've got focus, got your energy burning, it's a great recipe for productive writing. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastActivityDate="2011-10-16T12:02:17.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4233" CreationDate="2011-10-16T13:17:36.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Kate's and Lucy's excellent advice about working on one project per work period, I suggest making sure you're &quot;cleansing your palate.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In between work sessions on Project A and Project B, spend some time not thinking about &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; of your projects. Do something non-writing-oriented which requires all your attention and your hands. Make a complicated meal. Paint a stencil on the wall. Plant seedlings. Rearrange the living room furniture. Go skiing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time &lt;em&gt;away&lt;/em&gt; from your projects can be as helpful as time &lt;em&gt;on&lt;/em&gt; your projects, because it changes your perspective and allows you to come back to something with a fresher outlook. It also gives you a break from the problem so you can recharge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-10-16T13:17:36.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4233" CreationDate="2011-10-17T06:14:21.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In programming, it is well known that context-switching is a productivity killer. Developers arrange their workdays to minimize interruptions so they can focus on one task. Once &quot;flow&quot; is interrupted, it can take a significant amount of time to get back into it. One 5-minute interruption can blow an entire afternoon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human beings can't multitask. Study after study has shown that we make more mistakes and get less work done when we try. We may feel we are being productive, but we're not. Our brains just don't work that way, and no amount of Web-surfing will make you able to multitask more flexibly. It will just reduce your attention span.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can't literally work on multiple projects at once. But you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; still have multiple projects in progress at once, and make steady progress on all of them -- you just have to make sure the amount of work you can get done in each time slice is not overshadowed by the time it takes you to switch back into the context of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it takes you &quot;a few hours&quot; to get back into each project, in other words, obviously you are not well-served by switching every day.  Try switching once a week instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T06:14:21.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4238" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4240" CreationDate="2011-10-17T08:57:58.413" Score="7" ViewCount="16076" Body="&lt;p&gt;By recommended I mean what is the standard for it to be not too long and not too short. I know I should write until I am finished but I want to take practicality into account as well. Mainly when the book spans in a series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;120k? 150k?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2734" LastActivityDate="2018-03-29T07:26:03.923" Title="What is the recomended word-count for a fantasy-fiction book?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|novel|fantasy|wordcount|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4238" CreationDate="2011-10-17T10:13:37.110" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For novels in general, the accepted word count is 70-80,000 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fantasy novels, you are allowed to go  slightly above this limit, but unless you are an established author, I don't recommend going too far above. I would limit the book at 100,000 words to be safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I usually find it hard to even reach the lower limit, and looking at the large amount of fluff in many books, I'm  guessing so do other authors :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the comments to one of the other answers here(can't remember which one), many people noted they would happily pay for a novella, just to avoid all the unnecessary padding and fluff. Keep this in mind when writing - one of the risks with a huge book is, unless it is truly great, most people will just ignore it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T10:13:37.110" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4238" CreationDate="2011-10-17T10:48:15.357" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Shan--while the word limit for fantasy is usually more elastic, you are a debut author, and a huge word count is not going to make for an easy sale. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, a lot of the fantasy submissions I see are not long enough. Paranormal and fantasy novels, nine times out of ten, require more world building and exploration than a shorter novel can carry, and readers love a rich new world. The best ones I have seen (and read, as published) are around the 100k mark--sometimes a bit more, sometimes a little less. The trick with structuring a fantasy novel is to weave in the exposition with a very light hand, so it always feels as if the action is moving things along. Joe Abercrombie, while not my thing, is very good at this. In other words--the book might look like a doorstop but it's never a slog of a read. It's an indulgence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is pretty much THE post on word counts from publishing ace the Swivet: &lt;a href=&quot;http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-word-counts-and-novel-length.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-word-counts-and-novel-length.html&lt;/a&gt; She thinks you can get away with 120k for epic fantasy. Personally, I'd err on the lower side of that, purely because as an untried fantasy author, you're probably prone to waffle (been there, done that, never letting aaaaanybody see that novel, lol). If your betas come back to you and say &quot;more here, please!&quot; then you've got wriggle room.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: the trend for novellas is not fantasy's friend, not unless you're building on an already-established world. Structure your exposition well, keep your plot moving, and aim to cycle through three acts to a sweet spot around 100-120k. If you're good...your editor will take it from  there :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T10:48:15.357" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4241" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4245" CreationDate="2011-10-17T11:05:37.040" Score="27" ViewCount="7618" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is a recommended tool for turning a completed manuscript (a Word document) into an ebook (specifically, an EPUB file or Kindle-compatible Mobipocket file)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would prefer something that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;recognizes chapters and generates a table of contents automatically&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;allows me to add front/back matter&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;gives me control over styling. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-10-17T13:38:23.930" LastActivityDate="2018-02-27T20:39:58.280" Title="Best tool to create ebooks?" Tags="|software|tools|ebook|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2011-10-17T13:57:26.480" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to try &lt;a href=&quot;http://calibre-ebook.com/&quot;&gt;Calibre&lt;/a&gt;, which is a pretty powerful ebook conversion tool. To my knowledge it won't accept a Word document directly as input, but you can convert your manuscript to another format from word first, like HTML, plain text, or even PDF, and import it into Calibre for conversion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2747" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T13:57:26.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2011-10-17T14:58:04.640" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; can compile to various formats including EPUB and Kindle formats, and gives you lots of control over formatting. Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cgJ8x-R86M&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video tutorial&lt;/a&gt; showing how it's done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is available for both the Mac and Windows, with a Beta version for Linux.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="330" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T10:34:40.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4252" CreationDate="2011-10-17T15:38:15.913" Score="6" ViewCount="6599" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I watch a good movie or documentary about a subject that interests me, it really gets my juices flowing and makes me want to &lt;em&gt;act&lt;/em&gt; on my interests (I suddenly realized that this might sound like a request for porn recommendations. It is not.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having a hard time getting anything written at the moment (well, most of the time, really), so I'm wondering if anyone has any good recommendations on movies that can help me remind me why I love writing, and make want to go BICHOK (for abbreviation explanation, listen to this wonderful episode of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/05/25/writing-excuses-episode-16-butt-in-chair-hands-on-keyboard/&quot;&gt;Writing Excuses&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-10-17T19:07:28.970" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T22:34:18.120" Title="Any documentaries or other inspirational movies about creative writing?" Tags="|inspiration|writers-block|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2011-10-17T15:45:00.647" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://calibre-ebook.com/&quot;&gt;Calibre&lt;/a&gt; to format my e-books, and I have been very happy with it. However, as PseudoCubic noted, it will not accept a Word document as input. Ideally, you should convert your file to html first and then format it with Calibre. If you convert your Word document to html, make sure you choose the Web Page, Filtered option. Otherwise, Microsoft adds a lot of extra tags and stuff that will really mess up your html file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some other suggestions on converting your file to html, I would recommend going to &lt;a href=&quot;http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/&quot;&gt;this guide&lt;/a&gt; by Guido Henkel. He will walk you through all the details for making sure that your html file is properly formatted first, and then he shows you how to use Calibre to include your cover image, table of contents, and other material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't used Scrivener, so I don't know whether or not it can create both file versions (ePub and mobi) straight from your completed document. If your book is already finished and you want to use Scrivener, then you will have to import it there first, and you may want to review your content to make sure the formatting still appears the way you wanted it. If you are a Windows user, you'll need to use the beta version for Windows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other tools that will convert your files, but all of them work better converting html documents because the tags for the formatting are clearly defined. If you are comfortable working with html, then you may want to give that a try first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-02-09T04:26:58.813" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T04:26:58.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4244" CreationDate="2011-10-17T16:43:39.703" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0792846443&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Misery.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA Allow me to explain my facetiousness. &lt;i&gt;Misery&lt;/i&gt; is a Stephen King story about Paul, a writer of a popular series set in Victorian times starring Misery Chastain. Paul finally gets tired of the character and kills her off in what he believes to be the final book of the series. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He gets into a car accident in a snowstorm and is rescued by Annie, who's a nurse, and a fan of Misery, and also rather out of her mind. Annie reads the new book, is devastated that Misery is dead, and ties Paul up (among other abuses) and forces him to write a new story &amp;mdash; with no tricks &amp;mdash; bringing Misery back. The novel features a typewriter which slowly disintegrates a key at a time until Paul, feverishly caught up in his own story, has to resort to longhand to finish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mention the story for two reasons: one (jokingly), that when you get really devoted fans, you don't &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; want to piss them off. But more seriously is a quote from Annie which I still remember. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Misery is dead and buried at the end of the &quot;last&quot; book. When the writer resurrects her without explanation, Annie is furious. She screams at him that he's cheating, the way the filmmakers of the Saturday-morning serial movies used to reset the cliffhanger endings to allow the hero to get out of the impossible scrape by making it not impossible at the beginning of the new film. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Misery's in the grave. You'll have to start from there,&quot; she tells him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That line forces Paul to be creative, to really think, in ways he had allowed himself to stop doing out of laziness. It's a challenge. If you're looking for a writing prompt, that's a good one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm adding to my answer, I'll also mention the films &lt;i&gt;Dead Poets Society&lt;/i&gt; (both for its love of language and the general goad to Seize the Day) and &lt;i&gt;Shakespeare in Love,&lt;/i&gt; to watch the process of a play (a story) being built one familiar couplet at a time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-10-18T11:07:57.433" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T11:07:57.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4244" CreationDate="2011-10-17T17:16:08.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't actually seen any movies specifically about writing that are particularly inspirational. Writing is not the most movie-friendly of activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the movies that give me inspiration are the movies that are mostly bad, but have a couple of good ideas contained within them. This tends to get me thinking in a direction of &quot;fixing&quot; the bad movie, or even inventing a new story with the same objectives, or about the same themes, that doesn't suck so bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking tightly constructed and well made movies are enjoyable but they already exist as they are so I don't get any inspiration from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish I could give specific examples but usually any end product influenced by something comes out unrecognisable. I have a lot of time for the concepts surrounding the physiology and nature of angels in &quot;The Prophecy&quot; but nothing I have ever written is an attempt to &quot;fix&quot; that movie as much as it just lifts the good concepts out of the surrounding problematic structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Television series often have loads of great unused ideas because the writers leave avenues open for taking the stories in one direction or another that, in the end, they fail to develop. I feel free to take these &quot;redundant plot concepts&quot; as well. Again, I could not point to anything specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T17:16:08.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2011-10-17T17:36:34.130" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know some of these posts are much older, but I thought I would respond.  I've been on the hunt for some time searching for a software for desktop or cloud-based (cloud was my preference) and was coming up empty until I was completely looking for something else and stumbled on the diamond in the ruff.  I wanted a simple yet effective timeline solution that would not break my wallet.  I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.preceden.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.preceden.com/&lt;/a&gt; and I will be reviewing it thoroughly in my blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://myblogz.us/anovelidea&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://myblogz.us/anovelidea&lt;/a&gt;.  Simply put...this was better than I hoped for and much less than I was expecting to spend.  For $29.00 you will receive a lifetime membership. How can you go wrong with cloud-based options these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit 19/10/12 it is now $14 a month, which makes it expensive.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit May 30, 2014. It is back to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.preceden.com/signup&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;$29 for a lifetime&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit Sept 1, 2017. It is $29.99 a year for single use&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2748" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-09-02T09:52:24.417" LastActivityDate="2017-09-02T09:52:24.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4249" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4289" CreationDate="2011-10-17T17:45:07.987" Score="8" ViewCount="876" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/14/poetry-and-ebooks-will-po_n_645677.html&quot;&gt;this article in the Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;, the Kindle discards many kinds of poem formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a lot of white space, couplets, triplets, and long lines that cannot break. The Kindle wraps text in a non-negotiable way, even when text is imported in HTML.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently many poets avoid ePublishing for this reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know if there is an ePublishing format where the author has precise and absolute control over the formatting? I would prefer the reader have to use a horizontal scrollbar, if on a small device. At least then the integrity of my pieces would be preserved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastActivityDate="2022-09-24T14:00:33.557" Title="Do any ePublishing systems honor fixed poetry formatting?" Tags="|formatting|ebook|poetry|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4249" CreationDate="2011-10-17T18:25:02.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem here is that the current assortment of e-readers &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; have the horizontal scrollbar, so the width of your e-book is always going to be fixed. To further complicate things, there are several different sizes of e-readers, especially considering that Kindle and Nook both have software apps that allow people to read e-books on their smart phones. As a result, you can't even define your width in advance to ensure how it will look. You might get it right for one e-reader, but find that it doesn't look right in half a dozen others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried using html to control the amount of indentation, and that works pretty well. I have even found some code that will indent the portion(s) of any line(s) that get automatically wrapped. That helps to make it a little easier to read, but is still pretty annoying. Unfortunately, I believe that unless and until they come out with e-readers that can scroll from left to right, we are going to be hampered with this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW - here is an example of what I mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a really long line that wraps, &lt;br&gt;&#xA;then it will usually look like this.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Then the second line follows beneath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compared to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a really long line that wraps, &lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;then it will usually look like this.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Then the second line follows beneath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not ideal, but at least it helps to identify that the wrapped line is mean to be all on one line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T18:25:02.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4244" CreationDate="2011-10-17T20:38:51.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The BBC did a great documentary series a while ago called &quot;In Their Own Words&quot;, which consisted of great interview footage with a number of famous British authors, including Huxley, Tolkein, Woolf, W Somerset Maugham, Zadie Smith, and a host of others. Some of the interview footage is available at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC Archive&lt;/a&gt;. I'm not sure if this is available to non-UK residents, but you may be able to find it on YouTube, or perhaps somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BBC have done some great documentaries on writing genres as well, such as looking at Scandinavian crime fiction in the programme &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wvcyj&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nordic Noir&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T20:38:51.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4244" CreationDate="2011-10-17T21:02:26.357" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only one I can think of was a movie called Freedom Writers, which is about a high school writing class.  Each character has to find their own voice and they learn about writing in history as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2750" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T21:02:26.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4244" CreationDate="2011-10-17T21:44:59.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out The Quills. That will get your blood pumping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you're a fan of Robert E. Howard, check out The Whole Wide World. Too much major studio sap, and the score is melodramatic, and his big relationship is overblown. Otherwise, an inspiring biography about an inspired writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following those two, I guess I'd recommend The Shining (grin).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T21:44:59.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4249" CreationDate="2011-10-18T05:12:19.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found one way to do it. Publish via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.feedbooks.com/help/self-publishing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Feedbooks&lt;/a&gt;. Their form-based upload tool has a rich text editor with more advanced controls. Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://assets1.feedbooks.net/images/help/self-pub/en/sp_05.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;screen shot&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately, you cannot charge via this distributor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An app for iOS and Android called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluefirereader.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bluefire Reader&lt;/a&gt; can download Feedbooks. Just open up the Bluefire store, browse to the poetry section, and you'll see some examples of more sophisticated text formatting. It looks quite good on my iPad. On the smaller screen of my Android phone, rather small and blurry. Still, it's hard to complain with dual-dimension scrolling and Android's pinch zoom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener can export PDFs via Adobe Digital Editions. But I'm still looking for a publisher that accepts PDFs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T05:12:19.647" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1284" CreationDate="2011-10-18T07:28:56.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this email finds you well. I'm just emailing to check how far the (xxprogram/process/proceduresxx) goes. I’ll be waiting your (xxrecommendations/reply/answerxx) regarding (xxthis matter/the __ programxx). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you require any further (xxInfo/detailsxx) about (xxxx) , I remain at your disposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a nice day Sir. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2752" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T07:28:56.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4260" CreationDate="2011-10-18T14:17:30.977" Score="16" ViewCount="3452" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't like my name. I feel like seeing my name on the cover of my novel will be an embarassment more than a moment of pride - I just can't take things I've written under my own name seriously, for some reason. On the other hand, I love my screenname, which expands easily into a psuedonym. Are there any major reasons not to self-publish under that name instead of my real one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: As asked in a comment, are there legal concerns I should worry about? What about getting paid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-10-19T00:09:34.390" LastActivityDate="2018-04-08T22:34:28.087" Title="Why shouldn't I use a pen name?" Tags="|fiction|self-publishing|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4257" CreationDate="2011-10-18T14:38:06.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked with someone who used a screen name, and we were implementing a system that used the HR system to create accounts in computer systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, he made our life a living heck, since he was John Smith to everyone in the company, but his legal name was James Madison (names changed to protect the foolish).  But he never legally changed his name.  Another company had a number of TV actors in similar circumstances, and it is a pain in the backend to make the phone book use his non-legal name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So once you start writing under a pen name, it is the thin edge of a wedge to using it more regularly, and before you know it, you will be making people like me, life a living heck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="793" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T14:38:06.710" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4257" CreationDate="2011-10-18T14:38:30.477" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is entirely a matter of choice. There are a number of famous authors who write in other genres using a pen name, and they have proven to be just as successful in their new genres. As long as you are writing under just one pen name, you shouldn't really encounter any problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, you choose to write under more than one pen name, then you might encounter some inconveniences. Let's say for example you decide to publish in two different genres and use a different pen name for each. By doing this, you will need to maintain two different personnas whenever you do any communication on the web. That means a separate web site for each pseudonym, separate Twitter accounts for each, separate promotional efforts for each. Basically, you create a situation where you are having to do twice as much work to promote yourself. This isn't really a problem, but more of an inconvenience. You may find that you spend more time marketing and promoting your different identities and less time actually writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you self-publish, then you may find problems with managing multiple accounts on different sites, such as GoodReads or LibraryThing. Another problematic site is Smashwords. None of these sites allow you to manage multiple accounts under one logon, which means you will need a separate account for each pseudonym, which means more inconveniences. Amazon is great about letting you manage multiple author accounts with a single logon, but they will only allow you to create one author page to link to your books. If you pester them enough, they will allow you to create a second one that you can link to your manegement console, but that's the limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently have about a dozen titles that I have sold successfully under a pseudonym, and I have also more recently begun to publish under my real name. The examples I have provided are based on my own experiences in trying to manage more than one identity. If you are going to write under only one pen name, then you will probably find this a whole lot less of an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T14:38:30.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4257" CreationDate="2011-10-18T17:40:53.220" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's another way to think about it. Why &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; you use your real name? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use it if... you want anyone who Googles you to read you (or more likely, your reviews).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use it if... you want everyone in your social network to read your reviews, or you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use it if... you want every prospective employer to read your reviews, or you... as part of standard screening to see if they'll give you an interview. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use it if... you want everyone from work, at every place you work, to read your reviews, or you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use it if... you want prospective dates to read your reviews, or you, before agreeing to meet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use it if... you want your high school classmates to read you, or your reviews, before the reunion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use it if... you want your future kids to read you and your reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use it if... you're okay with catalog and search sites forever marrying your name to the title, description, and excerpt of your publications, and your reviews - forever, or until a massive EMG spike wipes every hard drive on the Earth - whichever comes first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T17:40:53.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="287" CreationDate="2011-10-18T19:51:13.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about it. Just balance out the darkness with some charm. If the young reader loves your characters and enjoys the tale, he or she will put up with &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Those are grim, grim books. Death is a prevalent theme from the outset. Fully one third of the books is about someone's dead parents, or how someone was tortured, or about how the big bad is going to kill everybody, or about how many casualties occurred from dementors, Death Eaters, or Voldemort. She kills off characters you adore, on a regular basis, just to keep you guessing. And you're pretty sure anyone is fair game. Even the principals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T19:51:13.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4257" CreationDate="2011-10-18T22:08:10.250" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write under a pen name, and haven't had any problems.  The contracts are signed with my legal name, 'writing as' my pen name.  Royalty cheques are payable to and cashed by my legal name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are some US states where you can/are supposed to register your pseudonym - I &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; that if you do that, you can actually sign contracts and bank under that name, but I'm not sure about that.  It makes sense, though - it's essentially like your pen name is the name of your business, and businesses do banking all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; draw back, depending on how big the service becomes, is that Google+ seems to be insisting pretty hard that people use their legal names with them.  Not significant right now, but could be a pain if they become the Facebook of the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T22:08:10.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4265" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4269" CreationDate="2011-10-19T00:58:12.580" Score="2" ViewCount="1537" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very broadly, consider the topic of an essay being: &quot;Compare a popular culture song's lyrics to society.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have chose the song &quot;Right Now&quot; by Fort Minor to write this essay on.  To give you an idea of what the song is like, here just a few of the lyrics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But no I'm just taking it in&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Out the window of a hotel bedroom again&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Tomorrow I'll be gone, I don't know when I'll be back&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  But in this world everything can change just like that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Someone is] Scratching off a lotto ticket hoping for a real winner&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Sneaking through the border just to work and to eat a real dinner &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, the song is about the hard life of some people, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;immigrants trying to make a life in America&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;homeless trying to fend for themselves: find something to eat, find somewhere to sleep&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;families of soldiers stuck in Iraq&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and how things can change so suddenly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, given that broad essay topic, is the following a good outline?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my outline thus far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Intro&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working on a good hook&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mention song name, artist, release date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bring up that life isn't easy for some&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;thesis of the final line of the chorus: &quot;But in this world everything can change just like that.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;First Paragraph&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;introduce immigrants&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;high hopes of coming into the country&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quote: &quot;Sneaking through the border just to work and to eat a real dinner.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;describe how hopes can be given up due to the economy, things change, they're stuck once again in a tragic place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Second Paragraph&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;introduce homeless&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quote: &quot;There's somebody on the curb who really needs a jacket.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;weather, lack of shelter, lack of food, degrades their health, they may even start bad habits&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quote: &quot;[He] spent half the rent at a bar getting plastered.&quot; and now he has to walk &quot;to a shop where he's about to get fired.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do I need more here?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Third Paragraph&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;introduce soldiers and their families&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quote: &quot;For the act of freedom ... somebody is stuck in Iraq hoping that he gets shipped back breathing.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change in lifestyles for the soldier (new fears of life) and the family (begging and praying their beloved one will make it back)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;devasting when all of a sudden someone gets drafted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'm concerned that this paragraph needs to be restructured&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Conclusion&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many ways in this world where everything takes a sudden shift for the worse&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quote: &quot;I'm just taking it in, out [of] a hotel bedroom window again.  Tomorrow I'm gone, [and] I don't know when I'll be back.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working on a good way to wrap this up&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2762" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T21:19:35.127" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T21:19:35.127" Title="Is this a sound outline for an essay on &quot;Comparing a Song's Lyrics to Society&quot;?" Tags="|essay|outline|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4266" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-19T09:56:30.760" Score="0" ViewCount="581" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a computer game right now. Therefore i need a story. First of all I want to write down the plot as a short story as the game has an emphasis on story telling!&#xA;So I want to check out how exactly a short story is written. It was a subject back in school, but that is long ago. Plus, perhaps some of you could share useful links or tips (on everything that could help with that issue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2764" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T10:47:48.297" Title="How to write a short story?" Tags="|character-development|short-story|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2011-10-19T14:12:24.840" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4266" CreationDate="2011-10-19T10:47:48.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't tell you how they're written.  That's up to each individual writer.  But in terms of how they're structured...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short stories tend to have a tighter, simpler plot structure.  Conflict, Rising action, Climax, Denouement.  No subplots, not many secondary characters, etc.  You have one main character, who wants something.  Your character makes a choice, takes action, deals with the consequences.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T10:47:48.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="199" CreationDate="2011-10-19T14:27:15.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main genre line that doesn't cross well under one line is romance/erotica and anything else. Anything involving sex or romance novels tends to be seen as a blemish on the record of an otherwise well-regarded author - hence, authors like Nora Roberts and Anne Rice write erotica/romance under a different name than other genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Historically, women writing in a male-dominated genre (which was all genres if you go back far enough) would use a male-sounding penname, but I have my suspicions that's less important these days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T14:27:15.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4265" CreationDate="2011-10-19T16:31:06.823" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the question in your title: yes! The question that I don't see asked is how long is your essay supposed to be? Is there a word limitation or expectation? If so, then that will influence the length of your essay and help dictate how much you need in your outline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the outline itself, I believe you have a very good working start. I like the way that you have identified three separate talking points along with specific quotes from the song to tie into each one. I have to admit I have never heard this song, but based on the lyrics you have quoted, I believe it is something I would like to check out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as whether you need more in the second paragraph or need to restructure the third paragraph, keep in mind that this is just an outline. The final content will determine what needs to be changed. Let the outline guide you, and often I find that keeping it simple, as you have done, makes it easier for you to write. If you spend too much time and effort on the outline, you'll find yourself never progressing beyond that because you're constantly trying to perfect the outline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you have identified each separate section as a paragraph leads me to think that the overall essay is going to be pretty short in length. If that is true, then you should have plenty to work with based on what you have. If each &quot;paragraph&quot; is actually a separate &quot;section&quot;, I still believe you have enough to work with. Now start writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T16:31:06.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="199" CreationDate="2011-10-19T23:02:13.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest that you first get published in one genre more than once and then when you have a piece in another genre see if your publisher/agent wants you to consider another name to address the issue. If they think it will help market your work they will have cogent reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you are over-thinking this rather than getting the next work in another genre published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T23:02:13.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2011-10-20T02:43:04.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific question about Seanan/Mira, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://seananmcguire.com/writefaq.php#mira&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://seananmcguire.com/writefaq.php#mira&lt;/a&gt;. In her case, she's using different names for urban fantasy vs science fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also the classic midlist death spiral--author doesn't sell enough, publisher drops them, author changes name so they can sell new books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2011-10-20T02:43:04.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4280" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-21T19:45:28.770" Score="3" ViewCount="1552" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some budding authors (school aged young people) want to see their creative works in print, as books. I'm prepared to do some of the pubisher's tasks (eg, get some ISBN's for each book, if required; I'm also searching for FOSS software to convert each ISBN into a bar-code, to reduce bar-code costs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we can (together) create, combine &amp;amp; prepare electronic documents for the printers, what are the options for (&amp;amp; approximate costs of) fairly small print-runs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any low-cost printers, who offer discounts for those who order printing of several books in each order? (Being setup to do batch-jobs cost-effectively, they'd save setup &amp;amp; billing costs, etc. and pass-on their some of the savings, to be more competitive.)  Are there parts of the world where printing tends to be cheaper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2767" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-10-23T17:40:43.227" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T00:02:54.347" Title="Cheap ways a young person can get paper books printed/bound from their manuscript? (Please incl sample costs)" Tags="|publishing|tools|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4280" CreationDate="2011-10-21T20:07:50.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your best bet would be to go to Amazon's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.createspace.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CreateSpace&lt;/a&gt; print-on-demand service and take advantage of their self-publishing package. They don't charge you anything for setup or publishing, and they provide a free distribution channel for all your books. They also provide the ISBN and barcodes and they have templates you can use for the cover design. They really are a one-stop shop for publishing on a shoestring. The only cost associated with this is the purchasing of a proof copy of the book that you use to verify the finished product meets your expectations. I believe they have even started waiving that, so you actually have no costs at all. They do provide a discount to authors who want to purchase their own books for reselling locally or on their web sites, but again, that is not required. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://mickrooney.blogspot.com/2009/02/createspace-reviewed.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;review of their services&lt;/a&gt; that provides some additional information. It's about a year old, but it looks like it addresses all the key features. I also found another link that discusses &lt;a href=&quot;http://mashable.com/2011/07/19/self-publish-amazon-createspace/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;how to self-publish with CreateSpace&lt;/a&gt;. It is much more current and provides a different perspective. I really believe this will be the most cost-effective approach for your students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amazon does provide a separate option called the Pro Plan that allows you to obtain a higher discount on your own books and also provides a larger possibility for distribution. This only costs $39 and is definitely worth the cost if you plan to purchase a lot of your own books and self-promote. Other than that, there are no other costs tied to their self-publishing packages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-10-23T16:09:22.857" LastActivityDate="2011-10-23T16:09:22.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4280" CreationDate="2011-10-22T10:19:28.103" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lulu&lt;/a&gt; for about six years now. A word of caution regarding ISBNs. An ISBN changes the nature of the earnings you make from selling a book for tax purposes. I could only ever afford an ISBN once so mostly I have done without. Ironically this means that if people buy most of my books I get my money in the UK sent to me. If I sell copies of the ISBNed one I have my earnings held hostage by the IRS until I pay a notary in this country to countersign some ridiculous document stating that I don't make money in the US and therefore don't have to pay taxes in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are probably in the US yourself but the distinction remains, selling book-shaped objects that are not officially books because they have no ISBN does alter the way that the IRS views taxation on those products. So you might want to look into the tax implications of sale for US residents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to Lulu itself the core publishing part of the business has come on in leaps and bounds since 2005 and its five step publishing wizard is pretty awesome, however I would have couple of goes with it before you try something you actually want to have published just to get used to how it all works. It allows you to download preview PDFs to check everything looks okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customer service at Lulu is pretty terrible or at least it was the last time I needed anything and their knowledge base/support section is needlessly arcane and ridiculous. The best policy I have found is to have a go at something and see if it works. If it's something important Google &quot;Lulu (your question)&quot; and Google may assist you in mining information out of the broader internet where Lulu have failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been setting some Role Playing Game products over the last couple of years and Lulu's multiple PDF upload wizard, cover designer and their support for extravagant page layouts have all been very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Createspace, as mentioned by Steven above, I only checked out when it was brand new and back then it was pretty ropey. It forced you to have ISBNs even if, as in my case, you didn't want them. Also at that point they had no UK printers which Lulu got about three or four years ago. These are selling points that I'm sure are irrelevant to you. I'd guess that the poor binding and muddy print quality issues Createspace had when they first started are now also a thing of the past but I mention them because when I checked out the service people were not happy about these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: BTW making the PDFs and stuff is free. You only pay for something when you want printed copies of it, for the paper and delivery and stuff. Example price 200 page crown quarto is about $3.50 don't know about US Delivery costs but over here it's a bit more like $5 P&amp;amp;P for courier delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2011-10-23T10:45:41.717" LastActivityDate="2011-10-23T10:45:41.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2011-10-23T02:34:20.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is an answer to the question, because if your writing a scene in a prison maybe or even a high school there will probably be some swearing if your comfortable with writing it, but if you are writing a book about 'the bunny in the woods', then swearing most likely isn't appropriate. The first thing you need to ask yourself is whether your comfortable with swearing or not. If you aren't don't use it. If you are use it. If you are going to use it, though make sure you don't not use it then use it completely randomly, like in the previously mentioned Harry Potter books. I personally swear a lot, but know people who never swear and don't like it. I don't think the question is ever &quot;who your writing for&quot;, but what do you feel is right for the story. The story should be most important to you while your writing it. I am American and the way i've grown up is immersed in anything, but what you'd call &quot;Mainstream&quot;. My parents and all the people i've grew up with are bikers and i've grew up at motorcycle rallies, so it's just natural for my characters to use curse words. For you it may not be. Just use what you feel is right for your book and the characters you have in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2768" LastActivityDate="2011-10-23T02:34:20.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4124" CreationDate="2011-10-24T06:25:32.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/project/en/us/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project management&lt;/a&gt; software has a comprehensive system which allows user-controlled scheduling. The best part of the software is that it has enhanced our organization's  team collaboration by providing a baseline for tracking progress. This time reporting system can be a real benefit for you, since you're working on a tight schedule. It will help you gauge your project status and the anticipated effort needed for the project's completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2769" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T06:25:32.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4213" CreationDate="2011-10-24T13:18:20.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another publisher to look at would be Sourcebooks.  I know they have developed the largest website for poetry.  Very interesting group....think they might be able to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T13:18:20.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4213" CreationDate="2011-10-24T22:54:32.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the better (and more effective) ways to start getting published is through one of the many legitimate competitions, of which there are many in just about every genre you can think of. The best resource I know in this regard is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.winningwriters.com/contests/pci/pc_login.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Winning Writers&lt;/a&gt;. It's chock full of good information and hosts several annual, legitimate competitions of its own (including a satirical contest for the most egregiously awful pseudo-poem accepted by one of the illegitimate &quot;poetry competitions,&quot; such as poetry.com).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poetsmarket.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Poet's Market&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersmarket.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writer's Market&lt;/a&gt; are essential resources in the hunt for possible publishers, because they provide detailed submission requirements. (Do, however, take anything that looks too good to be true with a hefty grain of salt. Just because an agent or imprint has an entry in PM or WM doesn't mean they're legit. Check them on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Writer Beware&quot;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://pred-ed.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Preditors [sic] and Editors&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T22:54:32.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4249" CreationDate="2011-10-24T23:44:59.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;ePub (the broad standard used by Google Books, the iBook Store, etc.) and .mobi (used by Kindle and some others) are both HTML and CSS under the hood, with all the strengths and frailties that implies. Worse, the current standards (ePub 2 and the current Kindle) are based on a subset of late-90s HTML and CSS. You can take a look at what's inside an ePub by changing the file extension to .zip and opening it in Finder or Explorer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTML is designed to wrap to fit the available viewport, to be resized and reflowed according to user preference settings. These are inherent in the format. Print designers migrating to the web long reconciled themselves to the fact that items on a web page do not necessarily stay where the designer put them. Poets, I guess, are now having the same realization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several conundrums. You can't have a long line of text that runs off the edge of its container, any more than you could run text off the edge of a page. If the container is zoomed out far enough to fit on a mobile device screen, the text may become too small to read. You can't stop the reader (i.e., the user) from changing the text size, and text will inevitably reflow. To complicate things further, different devices have different default and available fonts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution, such as it is, is to create png (not jpeg, which doesn't do well with sharp contrasty edges) images and use those instead of live text, being careful to format to the target resolution as much as possible. Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite does exactly this for digital magazines. All of the &quot;text&quot; you read in &quot;Wired&quot; mag on a tablet is actually part of an image. You gain integrity of layout at the expense of searchability. As a designer, you also have to design every page twice &lt;em&gt;for each target device&lt;/em&gt;: a horizontal version and a vertical one, 4:3 for iPad and 16:9 for most Android tablets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that Steven Drennon's indenting tip is the traditional way of continuing lines that are too wide for a page in print and calligraphy, so this is hardly a new problem. (The traditional ballad stanza was originally a heptameter couplet. The 4+3, four line stanza we use today came much later, for convenience of formatting.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T23:44:59.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4280" CreationDate="2011-10-25T00:02:54.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A more general answer, to complement what others have said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unusual today to order a private print run of a self-published book, although I have done this with one author of a private edition because he needed special binding. Vanity presses that would charge you to print a certain minimum number of copies still exist, but they are obsolescent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current norm is what is generically called &quot;Print On Demand&quot; (POD). POD generally uses digital presses and standard paper stock (although you can ask for custom), often incorporates guts, cover and bindery in one production line, and has the huge advantage in your situation that there is no inventory to purchase or store. Setup charges are minimal or nonexistent, so you pay only the per-unit price for each book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a school-age setting such as you describe, I would look locally before considering the Lightning Source (excellent), CreateSpace or Lulu options. Google &quot;Print On Demand&quot; and look for local printers who offer the service. There are many today, and not just in the biggest cities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You gain several educational advantages by using a local printer: you can establish a relationship with the printer, who will likely take an interest in the school and possibly provide tours and/or presentations for the kids; you are likely to find one who'll give you a great discount or even donate some funds to the project; you'll have someone you can work with directly on the formatting requirements; and, not least, you can actually see the facility and talk over different options for paper stock, cover and binding styles, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T00:02:54.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1284" CreationDate="2011-10-25T10:27:30.740" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to remind someone is &quot;I think my e-mail missed your attention&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2777" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T10:27:30.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4292" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4295" CreationDate="2011-10-25T14:52:39.810" Score="6" ViewCount="657" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, There's this antagonist in my plot who is supposed to secretly frame my protagonist (due to some undecided reasons) and also help him publicly to cover his tracks.&#xA;And since I'm working with the famous 3 Act Structure as the base of the framework of my plot, I should set the goals of all the major characters of my novel by the end of Act I.&#xA;Now X has dual goals and those dual goals, like i said, are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To Frame the protagonist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To help the protagonist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting the goal for the latter one is not an issue. But setting the goal for the former one is.&#xA;If i set the goal of the former one in the end of the Act I, it doesn't look good. And if i set the goal earlier, his motives will appear right on the pages from the very start!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my first novel so you may find me silly to ask such questions but please do suggest a way out of this problem!&#xA;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="1768" LastEditDate="2015-06-28T19:00:19.233" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T19:00:19.233" Title="Should the secret antagonist have dual goals set in the ending of Act I?" Tags="|plot|structure|mystery|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4292" CreationDate="2011-10-25T15:11:28.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's going to depend on what the reasons are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the antagonist (Andrew) is framing the protagonist (Peter), then Andrew wants Peter to take the blame for something which Peter didn't do. But then Andrew is going to help Peter out of the mess which Andrew created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So does that mean Andrew wants Peter to owe him? Does Peter know Andrew framed him in the first place, or is the idea that Andrew looks like he's riding to Peter's rescue from dire but unrelated circumstances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or does Andrew intend in Act I for Peter to suffer, and then somewhere in Act II Andrew changes his mind and realizes he has to save Peter instead? In that case, Andrew would feel like he owes Peter instead, because he started the entire problem. But he can't reveal that to Peter, or Peter will be furious with Andrew for getting Peter into trouble in the first place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've resolved the Why, the When becomes clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T15:11:28.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4292" CreationDate="2011-10-25T17:49:40.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the dual goals have a lot to do with the purpose of the antagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like Lauren said, what does Andrew want out of Peter? If you show the readers Andrew's goals in the start, it doesn't necessarily show the reader his intentions, they can always deviate from the expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion: show his goal early, let the reader build an image and let them wonder as he continues reading if she is right about him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2658" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T17:49:40.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4292" CreationDate="2011-10-25T18:53:51.827" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way to play this depends heavily on what you're trying to achieve with your antagonist's secret goal. The key concept here is that &lt;strong&gt;every major thread should have some set-up and introduction in the first act&lt;/strong&gt;; how precisely to accomplish that for the &quot;antagonist's goal&quot; thread depends on the specifics of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what are your goals for this thread? What kind of story do you mean to tell; what effect are you aiming to accomplish with it? I'll give three likely examples; if these don't cover your specific case, I hope they will at least demonstrate the considerations you can use and how to deal with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Suspense.&lt;/strong&gt; Your major goal for this arc is for the reader to be aware of a developing impending threat to the protagonist. As the story proceeds, the antagonist makes things harder and harder for the hero - the hero doesn't know that yet, but the reader does, and he's anticipating the climactic eruption and showdown.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Surprise.&lt;/strong&gt; This arc is a gradual construction of a major twist which will shock and surprise both the protagonist and the reader when it comes to light. The trusted helper is dramatically revealed to be a traitor. The effect you're going for is a build-up to an &quot;OH MY GOD&quot; moment of surprise &lt;em&gt;from the reader,&lt;/em&gt; akin to the legendary &quot;Luke, I am your father!&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character.&lt;/strong&gt; The antagonist is a fully-fleshed character you want the reader to be interested in and have some sympathy for. Basically, you're giving the antagonist a story arc of his own, focused on him and his character, and putting that arc on a direct collision course with the antagonist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your own arc will probably be more detailed; intertwined with other story arcs; maybe you'll have multiple goals for the same plot and character. But just as you've described your problem as being with &quot;the antagonist's secret goal,&quot; you can figure out roughly what you're trying to achieve by setting him that goal. That's the arc you want to focus on now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Once you know what your arc is, &lt;em&gt;that's&lt;/em&gt; what you need to set up in the first act.&lt;/strong&gt; In many cases, this won't necessarily be a character goal, or it might be something else in addition to a character goal. So let's see what we need in the first act to make each of our arcs work well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Suspense.&lt;/strong&gt; The suspense arc is based on establishing an impending threat to the protagonist. So the first act needs to introduce that threat. Here, introducing the antagonist's goal in the first act is highly appropriate - you're showing us the protagonist has a threat to be reckoned with, one he won't see coming. That's exactly what sets up the suspense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Surprise.&lt;/strong&gt; If you're aiming for the antagonist's treachery to surprise the reader, then obviously that's not something you want to give away in Act I! Instead, what you want to do is set up the Shocking Revelation arc - lay the groundwork, ease in the foreshadowing. The first act of a surprise arc needs to establish a lot: the expected norm (that the surprise shatters); the first clues that something is amiss (this prepares us for a surprise later on); some of the elements that will (later on) explain the antagonist's treachery. If this is your goal, then you want to keep your antagonist's true aims a secret until the dramatic reveal. Instead, use the first act to subtly set up all the major elements you'll need later on for the surprise to be clear, interesting, and effective. In this case, &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt; (and not the antagonist goal) are the elements that need to be introduced in the first act - otherwise they'll feel disconnected and out-of-place in the later acts, when you'll need them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character.&lt;/strong&gt; If you're giving the antagonist a whole arc, then that arc will have its own structure. His goal of framing your protagonist might be central to that arc (in which case, you'll definitely want to get it in early on, in Act I); or it might be a means to a far more important end for him (for example, maybe his actual goal is helping his sick sister, and framing the protagonist is a means to that end that develops later in the story - in this case, the goal &quot;help my sister&quot; is what you want to have in Act I; that's what defines his behavior for the rest of the book).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things can get a little more complex than this - for example, maybe you're planning to start out with a surprise, and then milk it for suspense for a while; maybe you want a character arc &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; for it to be suspenseful; etc. etc. But the core principle is the same: figure out what you're aiming to do; Act I sets it up, Act II develops and complicates it; Act III is the showdown and climax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this answer sounds helpful to you, and you'd like more thoughts on how it might apply to your specific story, feel free to flag me down in the chat room and we can mull it over ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-10-25T22:56:13.647" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T22:56:13.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4296" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4299" CreationDate="2011-10-25T19:46:55.703" Score="3" ViewCount="1384" Body="&lt;p&gt;I get the feeling that this blurb is too... expositiony, not enough description. Too much &amp;quot;this happened and then this happened and then this happened&amp;quot;. But I'm notoriously bad at evaluating myself - due to a number of self-esteem issues, I tend to think anything I do is crap and find reasons to justify it. So my question is: is this actually too blunt, or am I overthinking things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lance paced the wooden floor in his front hallway, feet and chest bared – the way he usually preferred to be at home. Pants, he had discovered, were non-optional; his wife insisted that he have some sense of propriety and not “live like a heathen”. Susan was a good woman, most of the time. Everyone kept telling Lance how good a woman she was – she “tamed” him, she “made him a better man”, she nursed his wounds and supported his love of martial arts even when she would prefer he stay home and watch Phil. And she had borne him a son – an adorable toddler, curious about the world, growing and changing with every day. There was no question about that – Lance adored his son, and would do almost anything to protect him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything, he had decided, except stay with the mother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lance went over the argument once again in his mind, waiting for his father to arrive to have a “serious chat” with him. Susan had told, of course. Lance would have preferred to settle the whole thing quietly but Susan had taken Phil to his parents instead of her own, and the whole thing had come out messily. Lance could only pray she hadn’t told his uncle; the man held Lance’s respect, but he was a gruff man with a weak spot for female tears, and he doubted his uncle would take his side. Nobody would take his side; before Susan, he had been the black sheep, the wayward son. Susan had convinced him to give his parents a chance to get to know the real him; Susan had gone to great lengths to mend the family relationships, to heal the rifts inside him. Susan was a martyr that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even Susan didn’t understand the turmoil inside him now. Neither could deny the rift that had been growing between them; it seemed the more whole and mature Lance became, the colder and more distant their relationship grew. Finally, even Susan couldn’t deny that there was nothing left of the love they had once shared. She had insisted they go to therapy, thinking that by virtue of spending a lot of money, their relationship could be repaired. Lance had asked for a divorce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The car door slammed to a shut, ringing in Lance’s ears like a gunshot. He was out of time. What would he say? What could he possibly ever say to make this right? He would be lectured, told yet again why he was a selfish prick, unworthy of a good woman’s love, why he shouldn’t let a few bad experiences with exes and sisters and mothers soil his appreciation of women in general, why he should bend over backwards to keep her, until finally he was so dizzy from trying to follow the arguments that he was ordering flowers before he knew it. No, he would have to stand firm. He would politely explain to his father that he was a grown man now, not a small boy, and that he and Susan had reached this decision like mature adults, and he was very sorry if her heart was broken but he couldn’t continue to live out the lie that he loved her and wanted to be married to her. That sounded reasonable enough. And when his father refused to take that answer, he’d yell and scream and throw things and act like such a demon his father would run from the house and cut off all contact and never bother him again. A rueful smile crossed Lance’s lips. If only he was still a rebellious teenager. Life was simpler then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The knock on the door was firm – three quick raps. His father usually knocked more gently – a bad sign. Mother must have been incensed, reasoned Lance. This was going to be more painful than usual. Wordlessly, he opened the door, meeting the man there in the eye. A shock, a slight thrill, ran through him. Those weren’t the soft blue eyes of his father, wrinkles creasing the edges – the eyes of a patient, understanding man, marred more by smiles and kindness than hardship. These eyes were the same shade, but felt so much darker, just by the intensity of the gaze. This man refused to submit to the wear and tear of time, refused to let age dictate his looks or appearance. Where Lance’s father was like a willow branch, this man was an iron rod. His father’s twin brother. His uncle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lance, taken by surprise, lost the argument he had been composing in his head. He couldn’t even remember the beginning of it, or the words of common courtesy that would invite the man he practically worshipped inside. Instead, he stammered out the only thing that occurred to him to be worth saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I’m gay.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The smile that crossed the older man’s face was more of a smirk – but then, it always was. Years of practice had taught Lance to detect that nearly-invisible note of fondness in his uncle’s eye – he wasn’t laughing at Lance, merely amused by the declaration. Lance’s shoulders slumped a little. He wasn’t mad. That was good, at least. As his uncle opened his mouth to speak, Lance felt as though he might be sick on his shoes with anxiety. What would he say to that? What could he say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Tell me something I don’t know.” As Lance started, raising his head in shock, the man rolled his shoulders, stretching slightly. “You going to let me in or we going to stand here all day? Your father’s on his way, figured you might want a hand in case things get rough.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(posted to my blog here)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T19:13:22.550" Title="Is this excerpt's style too matter-of-fact?" Tags="|fiction|tone|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-07-03T20:01:54.047" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4296" CreationDate="2011-10-25T20:35:45.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like it.  If there hadn't been the twist, I would definitely have said that it went on too long, with too much telling.  The comment I was building was something along the lines of 'instead of having the character anticipate all that, just SHOW us it all happening'.  But the &quot;I'm gay&quot; changed everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It still wouldn't break my heart to see you trim it a little (just to be sure that your audience &lt;em&gt;makes it&lt;/em&gt; to the twist), but I like the way you build the anticipation as it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T20:35:45.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4296" CreationDate="2011-10-25T23:29:06.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Kate's comments, with minor exceptions:  Paragraphs 3 and 4 (&quot;Lance went over...&quot; and &quot;But even Susan&quot;) seem more &quot;on the nose&quot; than desirable; for example, the bald statement &quot;Susan couldn’t deny that there was nothing left of the love they had once shared.&quot;  Perhaps flash back, for a paragraph, to some loud dialogue between them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few minor points [not what you asked about] on wordings I'd prefer to those you have:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Par. 2, &quot;stay with the mother&quot; -&gt; &quot;stay with his son's mother&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Par. 3, &quot;told, of course&quot; -&gt; &quot;ratted him out to his parents, quite messily, he imagined&quot;, both to emphasize his point of view (not omniscient, he won't &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; it was messy) and to presage &quot;out&quot;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Par. 4, &quot;even Susan didn’t ... even Susan couldn’t ...&quot; -&gt; &quot;Susan didn’t ... Susan couldn’t ...&quot;.  As Susan seems to be the only privy party, 'even' is jarringly wrong.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;by virtue of&quot; -&gt; &quot;by dint of&quot; (unbelievable cliche that she'd believe &quot;by virtue of&quot;).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Par. 5, &quot;car door slammed ... like a gunshot&quot; = cliche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-10-26T11:35:22.343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-26T11:35:22.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4296" CreationDate="2011-10-26T12:00:37.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to disagree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4296/is-this-excerpts-style-too-matter-of-fact/4297#4297&quot;&gt;Kate&lt;/a&gt;. The &quot;I'm gay&quot; is a nice twist, but it does change nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you posted this as a blog post I wouldn't have reached the end. &lt;strong&gt;Show&lt;/strong&gt; us how the people are, what happened, do not tell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The uncle is a &quot;gruff man&quot;. Woohoo, is he? Says who? You? Who cares? And what means &quot;gruff&quot; anyway? If I open the door and a gruff man stands before me, I would either think &quot;oh shit&quot; or I would point my finger at him, laughing. And then shut the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your protagonist almost peed himself when opening the door, but the only justification you give your reader consists of the adjective &quot;gruff&quot;, an intense gaze and a cliched iron rod.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show us how dangerous his uncle is. Instead of telling the &quot;gruff man&quot; sentence, let the protagonist remember how his uncle smashed a burglar with a baseball bat. Too extreme? Then why is the protagonist afraid of him? Give us a reason!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, either show us more or shorten more. Long paragraphs are only good when they show. Telling should be short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-10-26T12:00:37.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4296" CreationDate="2011-10-26T13:07:53.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4296/is-this-excerpts-style-too-matter-of-fact/4299#4299&quot;&gt;John&lt;/a&gt; here: too much telling, not enough showing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also argue that this piece of writing suffers from a common problem whereby you think that &quot;hiding&quot; a piece of information i.e. &quot;I'm gay&quot; leads to a bigger pay off when it's revealed, like an &quot;Ah-ha!&quot; or &quot;Ta-da!&quot; moment. It normally doesn't. This sort of withholding of information from the reader rarely pays off. In this case, absolutely not: the central POV character is the person who is gay, so I find it illogical that the majority of his inner thinking doesn't even mention this. He's coming out. This is a significant event in his life. It would dominate every fibre of his being, especially if he has known he's gay for so long, and hidden it from the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're trying to show inner conflict, but think of all the conflict you're avoiding by not diving headlong into this topic of him being gay, and getting a divorce as a result? The father who has always been homophobic, the parents who are devout Christians, the wife who just saw her world shattered by something she can't control or fix. The man who's hidden the truth for so long, and has finally come out, even though he knows he's hurting people around him, people he loves or loved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The impact is far greater if you actually showed some of the events you alluded to, or if you invent some situations to show us what you want us to know about these people, and the conflicts between them. The breakup with his wife. A flashback to an incident demonstrating his father's homophobia, perhaps mixed with the Uncle somehow being involved. (Lance's behaviour during this flashback - e.g. he decides to always hide the truth from people, not stand up to his father - would contrast wonderfully with his changed behaviour when he stands up to his father.) A telephone call from Lance's mother to warn him his father is on the way. There's a million and one different possibilities to show us everything you've written here, so use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think how much more poignant the inner conflict would be while he's waiting for his father to arrive when the reader is in possession of these facts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't avoid the conflict; embrace it. Don't tell us about the characters; show us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Just to clarify, I know you don't mention anything about the father being homophobic, or the parents being Christian, I made that up purely to emphasise a way of heightening the conflict between the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-10-26T13:14:27.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4301" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-27T02:51:23.823" Score="0" ViewCount="665" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Writing a Resume for an internship at a large local CMS company. How does this preamble sound? How can I make it better/follow it up?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My name is Korvin Szanto, I'm an 18 year old programmer from Portland&#xA;Oregon. Ever since age 10, I've had a fascination with literal&#xA;interpretation of problems, which has been subsided through problem&#xA;solving in various programming languages. Growing up, I often engaged&#xA;in what is now called &amp;quot;Code Golf&amp;quot;, a game in which you attempt to&#xA;provide the shortest (bitwise) solution to the a given problem, such&#xA;as the famous FizzBuzz problem. Given this experience, I am now&#xA;proficient in several programming languages including all standard web&#xA;languages as well as Perl and (Recently) Python.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I write, I find that my sentences are riddled with commas making them short winded and uninteresting, How can I improve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;New Version&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Preamble:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My name is Korvin Szanto, I'm an 18 year old programmer from Portland&#xA;Oregon. Ever since age 10, I've had a fascination with literal&#xA;interpretation of problems, which has been fullfilled through problem&#xA;solving in various programming languages. Growing up, I often engaged&#xA;in what is now called &amp;quot;Code Golf&amp;quot;, a game in which you attempt to&#xA;provide the shortest, or fastest, solution to the a given problem,&#xA;akin to the famous FizzBuzz problem. Given this experience, I am now&#xA;proficient in several programming languages including all standard web&#xA;languages as well as Perl and, recently, Python. I recently graduated&#xA;from Rex Putnam High School and obtained a job as lead backend&#xA;developer for a local medium sized online advertisement agency. My&#xA;daily tasks involve modifying open source CMS's/CRM's such as&#xA;Wordpress, Joomla, SugarCRM, and starting yesterday, Concrete5, aswell&#xA;as upholding the integrity of the office beit a virus or a popup, I'm&#xA;the person they call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2784" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:40:01.360" Title="Resume Preamble: Sounds wrong" Tags="|resume|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2011-10-28T16:06:38.950" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4301" CreationDate="2011-10-27T05:04:18.070" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;By &quot;preamble&quot; do you mean &quot;cover letter&quot;? This is too conversational to go on an actual resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;My name is Korvin Szanto&quot; is a complete sentence and it therefore takes a &lt;em&gt;period&lt;/em&gt; afterward. (It is also most likely redundant because your name is probably already at the top of your resume or cover letter, and at the bottom of the latter.) There's not &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; awfully much wrong with the rest of it (although I don't think &quot;subsided&quot; means what you think it means!). I would strike &quot;Given this experience,&quot; and &quot;Recently&quot; should be lower-cased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the main problem is the overuse of parentheses, which I call out only because I do the same thing if I'm not careful. &quot;(bitwise)&quot; adds virtually nothing to the sentence; whoever is going to read this does not care too much about how the shortest program is measured in code golf. &quot;(Recently)&quot; would perhaps be better cast as &quot;and, recently, Python&quot;. This isn't too bad in a single paragraph but if you use parentheses twice in &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; paragraph, that will start to get old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a sometime programmer I would not even mention FizzBuzz because to actual programmers; it's not actually something to be code-golfed. The whole point of FizzBuzz is that it's such a simple problem that you're not any kind of a programmer if you even have to think about how to solve it (and yet candidates for programming jobs fail it all the time). Code-golfing it is utterly beside the point. I would mention perhaps a classical Computer Science problem like finding prime numbers or Towers of Hanoi, which was in fact posed on codegolf.com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I would raise an eyebrow to &quot;all standard Web languages.&quot; C#? JSP? ColdFusion? XSLT? ALL of them?  :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps, and good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T05:04:18.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4303" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4304" CreationDate="2011-10-27T18:02:34.730" Score="6" ViewCount="6701" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to use chapter breaks in works shorter than novel-length? I feel as though the text requires breakpoints peridocially, and if it were a novel, I'd place chapter breaks there, but in a shorter work (!25k words), I'm not sure whether that's appropriate. If not, what should I use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T20:20:35.857" Title="Should a novella have chapters?" Tags="|formatting|short-story|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4303" CreationDate="2011-10-27T18:14:20.627" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is absolutely acceptable. If your story requires a shift in scenes, for example, it would be totally appropriate to indicate that with some form of break. Whether you identify this by using extra space, an image, or any other means is ultimately a matter of personal preference. The main point is that you are using a common device to let your reader know that you are making some sort of shift in your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T18:14:20.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4303" CreationDate="2011-10-27T20:20:35.857" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, chapters are appropriate for the most part. If you're writing genre fiction, your editor will almost certainly separate into chapters if you don't, anyway--readers often rely on them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not writing genre fiction, of course, you can do whatever the heck you like :) but what is important to keep in mind is that novellas are notoriously hard to structure, and chapters (or purely separating into three parts--beginning, middle and end) can aid your construction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T20:20:35.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4306" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4310" CreationDate="2011-10-27T20:28:29.027" Score="3" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a sequel to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4296/is-this-excerpts-style-too-matter-of-fact&quot;&gt;Is this excerpt&amp;#39;s style too matter-of-fact?&lt;/a&gt;. Rather than rewrite the same snippet, I decided to write a second, adjacent snippet. I attempted to add scenes demonstrating each character trait I wished to portray rather than baldly state anything - but now I'm worried that there's too much bloat, that the story meanders between points in time and that the reader may lose attention. Is it too unfocused?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gregory was getting too old for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Looking at his son, Lance, made him feel his age like he rarely did when alone with his wife. Mentally, he still considered himself his son’s age; sharp of wits, brimming with youthful energy. But his son never had the stiffness he’d get in the cold winter mornings when climbing out of bed. His son floated easily through a world that no longer seemed simple and straightforward to Gregory. His son had half as many memories to wade through, half as many associations to every object; his son had twice as much energy left to fight this battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And a battle it would be. Lance had always been a fighter, since the day he was born, screaming defiance into the world with newborn lungs. Gregory had done his best to instill a sense of honor into the boy, a sense of fair play; despite his admonishment that violence was not the answer, that being sweet to the other children would get him further in life, six-year-old Lance still was sent home early at least once a week for fighting with the other children on the playground. Gregory had assumed at first that this was boyish mischeif – pigtail-pulling and taunting, the sort of childish games he remembered well from his own playground days. Not that he had ever participated as a child; he was more likely to be bullied than to be the bully, but every boy was different, and surely it wasn’t too late to turn his son from the violent path into a way of peace and good will. A parent-teacher conference shattered that illusion, however: he hadn’t merely yanked Lucy’s pigtails, he had punched her clear in the face, knocking her down into the mud. Gregory’s son was a bully, and worse, one that picked on the weak and helpless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gregory had never in his life hit a girl. When he was six, his mother had already establishedc roles for him and his twin. He was the kind one – a phrase he suspected later in life of secretly meaning “homosexual”, given that he took pride in his long hair and had no interest in the rough-and-tumble games the other boys played. At six, he had embraced the distinction; he put more of his allowance into the collection plate than his mother asked, made sure to give coins to beggers, and always had a smile ready on his lips for a crying girl. He rarely talked back to his elders, and readily basked in the glow of a simple pat on the head or a compliment from an adult on how well-behaved he was. He opened doors for his mother’s friends, primarily to hear them coo over what a nice young man he was becoming; he did his best to bring home top marks in his classes, delighted to hear his mother insist that he was “so smart!”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His twin brother Obsidian, on the other hand, was not told to be kind. He was told to be strong. “You have to protect your brother,” their mother had admonished him. “He’s too kind to stick up for himself.” Obsidian had taken that to heart; when they changed schools in the third grade, Gregory was teased for only a week before Obsidian took on four bullies himself, striking fear into their hearts. He, like Lance, was often suspended for fighting; each time, however, it was to protect himself and his brother from their classmates, and soon he gained a reputation that earned him, if not friendship, at least respect. Gregory had hoped that his twin would mellow with age, but as teenagers, while he was in his room studying, Obsidian was working after school to save up for a motercycle. It wasn’t that his brother was lazy or unmotivated; Obsidian had always worked as hard as Gregory did. But while Gregory had worked at his schoolwork, Obsidian had taken up martial arts, perfecting his body rather than his mind; while Gregory had worked at being kind and sweet and gentle, earning praise for his efforts, Obsidian had worked at perfecting his image, earning fear from their peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The births of their sons, four years apart, had had opposite effects on each brother. Like everything else in Obsidan’s life, his son Kumo was hard-won after a long battle; against medical advice, they had decided to try “one more time”, winning for their efforts an underweight, premature, yet otherwise healthy baby boy. Holding his newborn son, however, Obsidian’s face was more tender and fierce than Gregory had ever seen him before. Like much in Gregory’s life, Lance had come easily; he and his wife had barely begun trying to get pregnant when Lance arrived, strong and healthy and a little past due. That, of course, was the last thing that came easily about Lance. Six years later, just as Kumo was putting on weight and starting to catch up to his development plan, Gregory found himself completely overwhelmed with his own son.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He had tried to explain to him why knocking Lucy down was wrong. “They don’t fight back the way boys do,” he had explained. “They’re weaker than you. You shouldn’t hit people who can’t fight back.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To his amazement, his son had simply smiled at him. “That’s all right then,” he had replied, casually. “Lucy hits harder than I do.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The world had changed, reflected Gregory, looking his son in the eye. When he was a child, he’d never have talked back like that. As an adult, he’d never have considered leaving his wife. Aldrea needed him, and he needed her; when they had married, they had made a commitment he never intended to break. He took his vows seriously; it wasn’t as though they’d never had problems, never fought. They’d fought plenty – and often over Lance. Aldrea had insisted that there was nothing wrong with her son, that he was merely high-spirited, but Gregory knew that wasn’t true. He had failed his son, failed to instill the most important values in him; his son was defective, lacking in morals, and it was his responsibility to correct that. He had tried calmly explaining the situation and been ignored. He had put the child over his knee and spanked him, though it wounded his heart to raise his hand to another human being, and yet still Lance persisted in fighting, in bullying the weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, Aldrea had managed to convince him that it wasn’t a failure in parenting so much as a failure to understand. She had insisted that he had to understand the boy before he could properly correct his behavior. Gregory had to make allowances, she had insisted – not every boy was as well-behaved as he was as a child. Desperate, he had turned to the one man he knew who might have a chance at understanding the problem: his twin brother. Looking back, he regretted this decision; he had run from his responsibility, forced his brother to take care of his responsibility yet again. His son was no more understandable now than when he was a child – except to his brother, who insisted that the boy “wasn’t that bad” and “had a good heart” despite a lifetime of troublemaking and fighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Boy… Gregory mentally corrected himself, shying away from that word. His son was a man now, grown and wedded and with a son of his own. And yet, the eyes that looked into Gregory’s now were the same eyes that had defied him at six: determined, fully convinced of their own correctness, ready to challenge him, to fight him however long it took. Heart heavy, Gregory lifted his tea mug to his lips, drawing out the awkward silence as he groped for something to say to his son.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Come to think of it, why was his brother sitting next to the boy, a hand on his knee? Obsidian should be by Gregory’s side, he thought bitterly. He had never had a soft spot for Gregory the way he did for his son; remembering their boyhood fights, Gregory could almost feel once more the bruises he had received for “being stupid” and “sucking up”. When push came to shove, his twin was the fiercest friend he could have, but he did not hesitate to try to protect Gregory from himself, misguided though the effort might be. Gregory couldn’t bother counting the number of times he’d been shoved, smacked, or yelled at; a few incidents stood out in his mind, blurring into a continuum denoting his childhood. The time Obsidian had shoved him for telling when Mark had stolen an eraser: “Mark’s twice your size and he knows it was you, you gonna fight him yourself? Stop making things harder!”. The time Gregory had been seen comforting Justin’s girlfriend: “Everyone knows that’s JJ’s girl, you leave her be!”. The time he’d considered joining the army: “You’ll break mom’s heart, and you can’t fight worth shit.” The time he’d almost backed out of proposing to Aldrea. Every time, Obsidian had been trying to protect him from consequences the best way he knew how: by preventing him from making the mistake. Once or twice, he’d even been right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At first it seemed he was doing the same for Lance, but as the years went by, Gregory noticed more and more frequently that his twin was nudging his opinion of his son away from what it was, convincing him to punish the boy less, to give him more freedom. Eventually, Gregory hardly recognized either of them; they were a pair, always together, as though they were father and son rather than uncle and nephew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, the boy hadn’t gentled a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Originally posted to &lt;a href=&quot;http://yamikuronue.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/divorce-pt2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://yamikuronue.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/divorce-pt2/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2018-07-03T16:12:35.110" Title="Does this snippet meander too much?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2018-07-03T20:01:34.730" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4307" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-27T21:39:15.180" Score="0" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a brief on a conference I recently attended. What resources and styles should I consider to make this document effective and professional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2543" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T08:52:27.850" Title="What sytles and templates are available to write a brief?" Tags="|style|resources|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2011-11-02T13:54:03.270" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4296" CreationDate="2011-10-28T02:57:48.827" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea is great, and you obviously have a very clear image of your character and his environment, but you're trying to give it all to the reader in one lump. There is so much  description and detail that it slows the pace and makes the piece ponderous. This is a situation of near panic; the narrative should reflect that. Panic doesn't dwell; it's scattered and sketchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll limit this to a couple of examples, but you'll see plenty as you revisit the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't need to know that he's pacing in his front hallway, nor how he is dressed, nor the bit about the pants. Everything these things say about the character are better brought out piecemeal, where they make sense in the narrative, or skipped entirely. Let the reader fill in the gaps, because that's how a reader becomes involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Everyone kept telling Lance how a good woman she was&quot; speaks on several levels just as it is -- his resentment, the well-meaning and/or pious advice, the weight of peer pressure. The rest of that sentence &lt;em&gt;diminishes&lt;/em&gt; the power of that beginning by distracting from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Redundancy is your enemy here. It bores the reader. Lance goes over the argument in his mind, waiting for his father. Do we need to know &quot;to arrive&quot; (since that's self-evident) or &quot;for a serious chat&quot; (we already have the sense of that)? No. Restating the obvious is something you should scrupulously avoid. Unnecessary detail should be stripped out. Let the action set the scene in the reader's mind. Reveal the details of your characters and settings only as the narrative demands their revelation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get the sense that he hadn't planned to blurt out &quot;I'm gay&quot; (a lovely touch). It would fit with the state of mind and the shock of finding the uncle at the door instead of the father, and it opens up a whole new universe of story, if so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T02:57:48.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4306" CreationDate="2011-10-28T12:16:01.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This reads more as character history than it does a piece of fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no sense of &amp;quot;place&amp;quot; until deep into the piece, and the tense comes across all muddled - I'm unsure as to where we are, and where some of the flashbacks start and end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For me it's unrealistic for this much internal introspection to take place in the space of time we're talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's still too much telling, in my view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As others have noted, it does get a bit confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To try and illustrate the difference between showing and telling, consider just these two lines of dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You look tired.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Only around you, son.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these two lines (just seven words), almost everything is inferred that you tried to tell with this sentence: &amp;quot;Looking at his son, Lance, made him feel his age like he rarely did when alone with his wife. Mentally, he still considered himself his son’s age; sharp of wits, brimming with youthful energy.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only that, but there's far more conflict demonstrated in those two lines than what you wrote in those two long sentences. You can change the dialogue to use &amp;quot;boy&amp;quot;, instead of &amp;quot;son&amp;quot;, and that changes the tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, you haven't had to tell me anything at all for me as a reader to have understanding of what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've mentioned this before on other questions, but it's worth repeating: something is perfect not because there's nothing left to add, but because there's nothing left to take away. I would say heed this advice. The richness you're trying to invest in your characters is great, but show us this richness through their dialogue and actions, not by telling us black-and-white facts on the page. Put yourself in the character's shoes, and think and talk and act like them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T12:16:01.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4306" CreationDate="2011-10-28T15:11:12.667" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all: The guy called Lance you show here and the one in your previous post have nothing in common. You describe two totally different persons. Just to let you know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, so you call that a &quot;snippet&quot;. It took me two attempts to read through. You do not write a story, you write a family album. One full of cliches. Reading this detailed characterization is boring. It's a good thing to have as writer to look up the facts of your universe, but it is nothing to put in the actual work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should define your protagonists (and antagonists) by their actions. What do they do, what do they say. But that action mustn't be there just for introduction purposes. It has to drive the story, it must have meaning to the story. I see no story in the whole &quot;snippet&quot; you've posted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details are a good thing, but only if they are relevant to the story. E.g. is the son of the uncle relevant to story? Is he the lover of Lance? If he does not show up anymore, why introducing him in the first place? (I do not know if he does, but I doubt that you come back to all these intensive details. If you do, you get a story only a few people can follow.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your protagonists are too stereotyped. Nobody is that &quot;soft&quot; as Gregory is, no one that &quot;hard&quot; as Obsidian. If Obsidian were the antagonist in a fantasy story (like Sauron in LotR), I would say &quot;go ahead&quot;, but that's really the only case where I would do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to get rid of these extremes. Gregory should have slapped Lance at least once. At the moment that is totally unimaginable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why did Gregory fail raising his son? What does he think are the problems? Maybe more self-criticism and less Obsidian is the way to go. You get partly to it at the end of your snippet, but you waste much too much time telling us what Obsidian did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing: What is your story? What do you want to show your readers? It's not recognizable for me. Some writers call that the premise of the story. One short sentence that shows the quintessence of your writing. It's leading the direction, showing the aim you want to reach. Like &quot;coming-out leads to tragedy&quot;. After Lance's coming-out his parents wrangle because of it, leading to divorce, suicide, whatever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's your premise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T15:11:12.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4312" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-28T16:32:30.363" Score="1" ViewCount="324" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 15 yr old female in question has spent the last few months writing her own book (Fiction) and has passed it to her uncle for review who has a very small publishing press but its in an entirely different sector (Religious Works). She is due to start looking for part time work in the next 6 months after her exams and would rather get work doing something she enjoys rather than prioritise the idea of extra pocket money at this stage in her life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where would be a good place for her to start? Is there any chance she could get some sort of internship somewhere? I suggested the idea of writing letters to publishers to her, but that may be a bit of a long shot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there some preferable action paths she could take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2792" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T17:53:24.497" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T17:53:24.497" Title="Where would be a good place to start for a 15 yr old who wants to be a writer when she's older?" Tags="|career|preparation|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4312" CreationDate="2011-10-28T18:38:49.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If she has a book that she feels has potential, then she should try sending it out to any agents that might be accepting manuscripts. At the very least she may be able to get some constructive feedback on what she has written and perhaps even some guidance on where to go from here. I'm not sure that I would encourage her to provide her age, because there is a good chance that might cause agents (and/or publishers) to flag her as a greater risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the age of 15/16, it will be pretty difficult for her to obtain any kind of internship. I would recommend that she contact her school guidance counselor for advice on any programs that might be available for to pursue. There may be some summer workshops or writing classes that she could consider. While these would not provide any pay, they would provide her with experience that she can continue to apply as she pursues her goal of becoming a writer. Beyond that, encourage her to take any elective classes at school that might be available to her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a daughter who is 17 and has recently completed her first manuscript. I encouraged her to take an Advanced Placement English class at her high school because it focuses primarily on writing skills. It has proven to be very similar to a creative writing course that she might get in college. She is planning to go to college next year and focus primarily on writing and literature with the plan to obtain a teaching degree as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as possible employment, you might encourage her to look at local colleges to see if there are any summer internships being offered by any of the professors in the English department. Something like that might give her exposure to a mentor or others who might help foster and improve her writing skills while also giving her some practical work experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T18:38:49.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4312" CreationDate="2011-10-28T19:16:08.320" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write. Write a lot. And then write some more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though your daughter may be a very good writer, it's pretty unlikely that she's going to write anything publishable at her age. So the best thing for her to do would be to just write whatever she wants, and work on getting experience and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on &lt;em&gt;finishing&lt;/em&gt; things and getting breadth of experience. Try writing a novel. Try writing short stories. Try writing an epic poem (I did this when I was in high school). Join the high school newspaper staff. The more things she tries, the better she'll understand what she wants to work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, she should start thinking about if she wants to pursue a creative writing degree in college. A creative writing degree certainly isn't &lt;em&gt;necessary&lt;/em&gt; to becoming a writer, but it's one path that a lot of writers use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T19:16:08.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4324" CreationDate="2011-10-28T22:14:41.280" Score="7" ViewCount="1953" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working on my plot for almost a year now and every time I open my Excel sheet (yes,I know its odd to plot a novel in an Excel sheet but I find it's kind of a clean and clutter free workspace), I found myself losing interest in it.  The worst part is that it's a suspense novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About 7 months ago this disinterest rose to such a level that I was forced to quit it. To be very frank, I was bored. Super-bored! So I closed it and Googled. The search results told me a similar thing: close it and stop thinking about it and open it when you've forgotten about the details so that you can put a fresh eye on it the next time you see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's not working. Not in my case at least! I've spent much time and effort in developing it. Please suggest an alternative way (if any) to not to lose my interest in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-10-28T22:57:26.637" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T05:55:47.700" Title="How do I re-interest myself in a plot I am working on?" Tags="|fiction|plot|structure|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4315" CreationDate="2011-10-28T22:53:57.487" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've lost interest there is a good chance that an agent/audience will too. Put it away and try to write something else. We all have works in &quot;non-progress.&quot; Better to find out now; it will decrease the number of rejection letters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resurrection of the dead is in the realm of a religious issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T22:53:57.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4312" CreationDate="2011-10-28T23:00:10.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finish school. Go to a university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If her &quot;book&quot; is any good she could send query letters to agents and be prepared for a glimpse of reality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't think of any successful published authors (today) who are fifteen. Heck, a signing tour would require an adult along.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T23:00:10.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4315" CreationDate="2011-10-29T00:39:14.743" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your plot is no longer interesting to you, let it go. It's the most extreme version of Kill Your Darlings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You haven't wasted the time you've spent. Consider it an exercise in plotting and development. Think of how much faster and  more organized you'll be with the next one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mourn the story, kiss it goodbye, bury it. Move on. You hereby have permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T00:39:14.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4315" CreationDate="2011-10-29T01:51:06.150" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I say set it aside and forget about it. I wouldn't recommend throwing it out, but definitely set it aside. Move on to something else and let yourself get focused on something new. Somewhere down the road you may decide that you've found the missing piece and decide to go back to it. Even if you don't, you might find some elements that you can reuse later in a new project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes we can over-analyze our work and get to the point that we start experiencing paralysis by analysis. If you spend too much time plotting and never start writing, then you'll find yourself in this exact scenario. You might try to just sit down and start writing without plotting anything out. This could be a way of clearing your mind and getting you refocused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else you might consider is that when you sit down to write, do it with a pen instead of a computer. This will force you to use the creative side of your brain instead of the analytical side. I think you need to adjust your mindset and get back into the creative mode. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW - I use Excel to keep track of my characters and my timeline, so I don't think that's odd at all! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T01:51:06.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4315" CreationDate="2011-10-29T18:41:54.760" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you're not bored with your plot; you're bored with plotting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider writing instead of plotting. Maybe start at the beginning and write a scene. Or pick any scene and write it. I find that writing a scene always surprises me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't work, set it aside, and pick it up later if your interest returns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A writer friend of mine who has written dozens of well-regarded non-fiction books (and a dozen or more novels) offers this advice: Keep several writing projects going at once. If you become bored with one, switch to another. Now, this works only if you actually finish things from time to time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for plotting with a spreadsheet: Dan Wells (a relatively new writer who participates in the Writing Excuses podcast) does that, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T18:41:54.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4312" CreationDate="2011-10-29T21:28:31.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read. Write. Read some more, in as many genres as possible. An English degree will be of use, but is by no means essential. A creative writing program will only be useful if the program is prestigious (ie she will make connections) and covers aspects of publishing also. She should also make sure the programs covers the genres she wants to write in (most focus on lit fiction, which is useful to read for anyone, but useless to learn to write if she wants to write genre fic). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no publishing or writing internships available to fifteen/sixteen year-olds in terms of paid work. If you want to work in publishing, you usually start out working for free (and will usually be eighteen). She could request work experience. She could also ask places like Entangled Publishing (whom I work with) if they're looking for another online intern in the Young Adult genre; one of their interns is currently fifteen. This involves reading submissions and offering an opinion; it may or may not help her to improve her writing and will depend on her interest in the genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are people who write publishable novels at her age. Hannah Moskowitz was published at seventeen (I think) and writes popular young adult novels, for example. Kody Kepplinger was 19, I think (possibly 18?) She should aim to submit if she feels she's ready--but the odds, at her age, are very low, and it may not be in her interests if the work is very raw. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her uncle's opinion is irrelevant if he has no experience of the genre she's writing in, by the way, aside from the fact that he may be able to point out punctuation mistakes. If she has very strong grammar skills, he might offer her work experience in copy editing, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an industry where it pays to know people. She should make every effort to make connections (online is good for this, but do supervise). Blogging and Twitter are both useful. She should review the books she reads in detail, if she can. All this kind of stuff will come in handy when she turns eighteen and can look for lower jobs in publishing or wants to intern with an agency (although they tend to take university students). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth her keeping in mind that most writers maintain a &quot;day job.&quot; Writing does not pay all their bills. Training in another profession will nmost likely be very useful to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of all, if her current work is a bit rubbish (mine was at fifteen :P) she should not worry. She'll be called a &quot;young&quot; author if she's published before thirty. The very best of luck to her :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastEditorUserId="2745" LastEditDate="2011-10-29T21:34:34.257" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T21:34:34.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4307" CreationDate="2011-10-30T08:52:27.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google for &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=template%20for%20conference%20report&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;template for conference report&lt;/a&gt;&quot; - it will give you numerous examples/templates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="134" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T08:52:27.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2011-10-30T08:59:28.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, to distantiate themselves from what they are paid for to write for good money from what they want to be proud of.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="988" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T08:59:28.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4315" CreationDate="2011-10-30T15:14:18.660" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's possible that all may be lost; on the other hand, maybe not. Distinguish between &lt;strong&gt;losing interest in the project&lt;/strong&gt; and merely &lt;strong&gt;losing interest in its current state.&lt;/strong&gt; The latter is somewhat more salvageable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you remember what, in your initial writing, you found exciting about the book?&lt;/strong&gt; That's the key, because if there's anything to go back and save, it's got to have that spark of enthusiasm. Usually, once you work with any enthusiasm on a piece, you'll have several such sparks - some that kicked the story off to begin with, and others that popped up along the way, things you were pleased with or that surprised you as you wrote them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why do those elements no longer excite you?&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes your enthusiasm wanes as a once-exciting idea grows familiar, even if only to you. You might try to recall how it originally seemed new and interesting, but if this doesn't give you the boost you need, you may be burned out on the idea. On the other hand, if you can put your finger on particular problems - &quot;I can't pull off these intense dialogues well,&quot; &quot;I chose a stupid location and now I don't like it,&quot; etc. etc., then those are specific problems that can be overcome. You might change those elements for something more to your liking, and that would get you past the hump and back into writing something you're interested with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What could you change to make the story exciting again?&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes you can make a significant twist that breathes life back into your story. Orson Scott Card describes several cases where a plot or a setting lay dormant for years until he ran against a character or idea that woke them up again - like &quot;Speaker for the Dead,&quot; which suddenly &lt;em&gt;worked&lt;/em&gt; for him once he inserted Ender as its protagonist. You could try to do this actively. Does your story sound more enticing if you shift it into space? Into an underwater prison? If you tell it from the bad guys' point of view? You've got a strong but uninteresting backbone. Often, if you put down your author-spectacles and put on your reader/reviewer-glasses, you can say, &quot;Well, &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; story would be pretty boring, but what'd make it &lt;em&gt;cool&lt;/em&gt; is if he'd done...&quot; and you're off again. I do this all the time for books I read and TV shows I watch - and when I need to, I can do it for stuff I write, too. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, it's also quite possible you're burned out on that particular story, and mining it for your lost effort might be unproductive. You're the only one who can really tell whether you've still got any interest in your original work. I think a good guideline is this: do you have anything &lt;strong&gt;specific&lt;/strong&gt; from the original piece you want to save? Or do you just feel bad about the general expenditure of effort and time that won't bear fruit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's the first, then you know what you're looking for, and that's something you can probably save. If it's the later, than it's painful, but you probably shouldn't bother. Think of it this way - you've got a thousand other plots that are equally available to you, from books and movies and TV shows you've already seen. You might as well cannabalize one of those as your own. Why force yourself to write to a plot you're not interested in? Chalk the effort up as good experience, and start on your next project. If you ever regret that choice - if you ever &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; see something in your initial work that you want to use - then hey, you can always dust the file off and go right back to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T15:14:18.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4325" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-30T15:57:40.057" Score="11" ViewCount="3155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been writing about not just one, but two females; sisters. I've toyed with different methods/persons in this, but it seems I've come to an obvious roadblock. I wouldn't call it &quot;writer's block&quot; because I haven't stopped writing. But I've been writing with the irking notion that something is very, very wrong. Its ok for me to explore my feminine side, but obviously I can't know how a woman thinks. I can't validly write in first person within the head of a female, at least not correctly. So, how do I proceed? I might need to go back and make drastic changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2626" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-03-09T07:14:50.657" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T01:25:17.410" Title="The opposite sex in first person?" Tags="|characters|grammatical-person|gender|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4325" CreationDate="2011-10-30T16:29:24.947" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get a woman! Yeah, for proofreading, what did you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This irking notion is not so much different from all the other irking notions which assail your mind during writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write about a male politician, do you know how he feels and acts? Have you ever been a politician? How does it feel when the oppositions wants your head because of a wrong decision? Do you want to murder that journalist for asking this painful question again and again? Do politicians want to murder journalist at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What goes through the mind of a dragon, when this dingy two-legged mammal stands in front of him, waving a tooth-pick which with he wants to slaughter the fire-breather?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You make things up when you write. That's your job. And if you can write that passage about the dragon, then getting into a woman's head shouldn't be that different ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case you have the advantage, that you can ask other persons (test readers), male and female, if your characters work. That's more complicated with dragons. So embrace your easy challenge, keep writing, ask your test-readers, and slaughter dragons, that's so much fun. (Yeah, slaughtering politicians is even more fun. That's what the journalist is good for.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T16:29:24.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4325" CreationDate="2011-10-30T16:59:38.327" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is really a problem with the story being in first person.  Regardless of the POV you use, you need to be able to really understand your characters, and you need to present that understanding in a way that feels genuine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you need to decide whether there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; something wrong, or if you just &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; there's something wrong.  So, as John said, I'd get someone to read it for you.  Preferably several someones, because, guess what?  Women aren't monolithic.  Every woman thinks differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So find out if there's a problem.  If there isn't - if your betas tell you that they believed in the characters - excellent!  Get back to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a problem, try to get details on what it is, but also try to think of your characters as whole people.  Yeah, okay, they're women, but what &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; are they?  What has made them who they are?  Their sex will have had more or less influence on their character depending on what society they grew up in, what their family was like, etc., but I don't think there's ever been a time or place where being female was &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; they would have been.  Look at all of it, try to understand how it all fits together and influences everything else, and then try again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2011-10-30T17:43:04.747" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T17:43:04.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4325" CreationDate="2011-10-30T17:25:19.840" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's good that you're thinking about it, because men and women generally do have different voices, different concerns, and different ways of approaching the world and its problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is whether you're paying attention to the characters you've created. Is one sister the peacemaker and the other one aggressive and ambitious? Then the ambitious one is not going to speak in the stereotypically soft, non-confrontational, consensus-building language which most women use. Unless, of course, you've set her up so that she's fighting that teaching, and that she wants to be blunt and forcible but is finding herself handicapped by her socialization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry quite so much about the gender of your characters as their personality and capabilities. A nurturing man may tend towards chopping wood to make sure there's fuel for the fire, and a nurturing woman may bake bread. Conversely, a male psychologist who loves his family but who's not physically active may bake bread, and a farmer's wife who loves her family but doesn't know how to express her feelings may be the one out chopping wood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get beta readers, make sure they're of both genders, and ask them to pay attention to that aspect of the characters as they're reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA two books which may be useful to you to help you understand the difference between male and female thinking and communication: Deborah Tannen's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060959622&quot;&gt;You Just Don't Understand&lt;/a&gt; and John Gray's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060574216&quot;&gt;Men Are from Mars, Women are from Venus&lt;/a&gt;. Gray's book is relationship advice, but it's structured to explain one gender to the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-10-30T18:49:03.883" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T18:49:03.883" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4329" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4330" CreationDate="2011-10-30T19:35:32.373" Score="1" ViewCount="798" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has around 200 poems, a lot of vulgarisms, and many of them seem senseless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorDisplayName="anon" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T12:00:44.390" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T12:00:44.390" Title="I have compiled a poetry book with poems of 4chan users. It has a lot of vulgarisms, is it possible to publish something like that?" Tags="|publishing|book|poetry|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4329" CreationDate="2011-10-30T20:24:48.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no real limit on what can be published, and I don't think vulgarity is a barrier on poetry (in some markets, sure, but far from all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is who exactly you're aiming this proposed book at. Is it a humor/gift item (&quot;The Poetry of 4chan!&quot;)? Or is this serious, &quot;artistic&quot; poetry? Or perhaps, as you mention, it's a sort of character study - delving into the psyches of these writers and trying to say something about them as a group (in which case you might want some additional material, perhaps viewing these 4chan sociopaths from several different angles and not just the possibly-oblique poetry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to pitch this book, you'll have to have a good, clear proposal, because otherwise this could easily wind up with a &quot;why the hell would I want to publish random ramblings from people who post obscene pictures on the internet?&quot; reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course, publishing's an iffy prospect, doubly so for oddball projects. Even if it's possible, it's not gonna be easy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T20:24:48.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4329" CreationDate="2011-10-30T20:29:50.327" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you'll find a publisher if you keep racial slurs for amusement in. Indeed, if you self-pub with that, you may well find yourself removed from vendors. Anything else goes, though. Go search on Amazon for PETS WITH TOURETTE'S...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, I doubt very much this comes under &quot;radical&quot; ;) ). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T20:29:50.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4332" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-31T10:43:13.457" Score="4" ViewCount="409" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine is going to write a book. Therefore he is looking for an easy WYSIWYG solution. First I recommended latex, but this would be a bit to hard to learn. A big part of the book is finished and saved in a odt-format but for the publishing he has to offer more &quot;powerful&quot; formats (latex, xslt, ..). We tried the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Latex - LyX: Ok, lyx is great, but it was a bit too complicated and we had to fight against bugs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Markdown (with latex export) : The book will contain a lot of tables (big ones) and so it wouldn't be the best experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Libre Office: There are latex export tools, but they're very bad.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best solution (by now) is Sigil (ePub-format) - but tables are not supported yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am looking for a format and a good wysiwyg editor. Only a few functions are needed (heading, bold, kursiv, underline, tables and picture integration).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2799" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T20:19:35.010" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T20:19:35.010" Title="Format + Editor for book writing" Tags="|formatting|software|tools|ebook|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4325" CreationDate="2011-10-31T12:20:52.997" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best advice I received when I started writing male characters was to stop thinking of them as males and start thinking about them as people. It's not so much what's in the pants as how they've grown up: a male character whose father pushed him to be a tough guy and give up unmasculine persuits is going to be totally different than one whose parents supported his love of art or music. Ultimately, everything about a character is going to be shaped by either their innate personality or their life experiences - and that's going to provide far more variation between people than gender alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastActivityDate="2011-10-31T12:20:52.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4329" CreationDate="2011-10-31T17:58:15.223" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, what are you waiting for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://kdp.amazon.com/&quot;&gt;http://kdp.amazon.com/&lt;/a&gt; and publish it right now. Log in, paste it into the form, fill out the book details and click submit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amazon deletes you? Try Barnes and Noble. Go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/&quot;&gt;http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/&lt;/a&gt;. Follow the three simple steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barnes and Noble deletes you? Try Feedbooks. Go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.feedbooks.com/help/self-pub-howto/&quot;&gt;http://www.feedbooks.com/help/self-pub-howto/&lt;/a&gt;. Follow the four publishing steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feedbooks deletes you? At that point buddy, you're really fighting the tide. Consider doing a personal blog. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blogger.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.blogger.com/&lt;/a&gt; You might even get some Adsense revenue that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastActivityDate="2011-10-31T17:58:15.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4329" CreationDate="2011-10-31T18:56:55.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone mentioned earlier- anything can be published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the real question is will a publisher pay you anything to publish it-The answer is will enough people pay money for the work to allow the publisher a chance to get a ROI? Need I mention that the market for poetry is not large?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the work is really well-written and has some redeeming value I probably wouldn't be tempted to buy it even if it was self-published - based on your description. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think it is something that others will BUY then send query letters to agents and see if anyone is interested enough to represent you. If you don't come up with a really GOOD query letter I'd be willing to bet the only group who might make any money will be the postal system (when you send query letters and copies) and they are losing money. (Yeah, I know email is free but you'll have to try every agent and some still don't use the net.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-10-31T18:56:55.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4332" CreationDate="2011-10-31T19:02:27.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If &quot;he&quot; is going to self-publish then the real question to ask is what format his target audience will want to use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, perhaps the format he thinks he requires is not really required. Some readers don't read the same way some writers think they do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-10-31T19:02:27.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4325" CreationDate="2011-10-31T19:11:17.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a notion that something is wrong then your &quot;block&quot; is that the method you have chosen is frustrating you. Stop! You have found a way that you are not comfortable writing even if as you say you are still writing. You will do nothing more than get more frustrated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone suggested a definitive voice or approach to your issue you still might not be comfortable with that answer. Suppose I suggested third person for both characters and one printed in blue italics? Everyone said, &quot;Yeah. That's the only way to do it!&quot; YOU still have to be comfortable writing that way.  It is subjective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are famous writers who've written first person as a person of another sex- Molly Bloom in Joyce's Ulysses comes to mind. He wrote it that way because he was comfortable writing it that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-10-31T19:11:17.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4312" CreationDate="2011-10-31T19:33:48.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;getting expert advise is a great idea! I personally think she should go ahead and look for publishers.  if she is truly talented and she truly wants to do this for a living, she might as well start now.  and besides, what's the worst that can happen?  (answer: they can say no)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2801" LastActivityDate="2011-10-31T19:33:48.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4315" CreationDate="2011-11-01T05:55:47.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tell us about your characters. Have you spent equal time developing them? You could have the most labyrinthine, mind-bending plot of the year. It won't matter. Without characters we're curious about, and can relate to, we'll be napping by page thirty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try switching out the cast. What will new personalities do, given the same challenges? Or if you are interested in the current cast, start writing from their perspective, and dream into their choices more... no predetermined outcome... throw out the plot and see what they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider that your plot, while tight, may actually BE the most boring part of your work. That's not all bad. The skeleton is the most boring part of the body. But you need one. Put a sexy skin on those bones. Put some devil-may-care rogue in there. A loving but seriously deranged heroine. A homeless drunkard/fallen god. Juxtapose a non sequitur. Perhaps the acidification of the oceans is causing a worldwide famine, and everyone is on edge from hunger or guilt for not being hungry (yet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add playfulness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T05:55:47.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4342" CreationDate="2011-11-01T10:27:13.103" Score="4" ViewCount="686" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is as per the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read about log lines on &lt;a href=&quot;http://queryshark.blogspot.com/2011/10/212.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Query shark&lt;/a&gt;. Now I know what &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log_line&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says about them, but I'm still not sure what they are, and why are they bad for writers / queries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T13:50:15.550" Title="What is a log line, and why are they bad?" Tags="|queries|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4340" CreationDate="2011-11-01T10:49:09.790" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Log lines are just a way of quickly, pithily summarizing your book's plot and appeal into one sentence.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're not necessarily bad.  as the Query Shark admits, lots of agents recommend using them.  They're a style, and as such, some will appreciate them more than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the thing to definitely avoid is using a BAD log line.  Make sure you actually say something important in it, and don't get so caught up in being pithy that you make the content nonsensical.  In the Query Shark's example, everyone knows that the characters of the book don't &quot;resign themselves to inertia&quot; so those are really wasted words, even though they have a nice ring to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T10:49:09.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4340" CreationDate="2011-11-01T11:01:33.787" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;What Query Shark Says&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a look at what precisely QS has written there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a log line. Avoid them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about it: it &lt;code&gt;[refers to: they must decide whether to resign their lives to inertia or fight for uncertain freedom]&lt;/code&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;a false choice&lt;/strong&gt;. If they resign their lives to inertia, there's no story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And worse, this kind of log line &lt;strong&gt;doesn't entice me to read on.&lt;/strong&gt; Again, the goal of a query letter is to entice the reader to want more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Log lines are imported from Hollywood, and they have NO place in query letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She's &lt;a href=&quot;http://queryshark.blogspot.com/2010/12/191.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;also written&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the trouble with log lines: they &lt;strong&gt;undercut any kind of buildup to a punch line&lt;/strong&gt; - they destroy tension and suspense. Consider how much more a reveal it is if that log line appears AFTER these next paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://queryshark.blogspot.com/2010/05/161.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;also&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly I think log lines don't serve a writer well. You have an entire page to work with here, don't try to condense it to a single sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sentence doesn't actually say anything. It uses metaphors that don't apply to anything in the book (cards), introduces a character not in the query (a killer) and tries to set up tension...there's no tension in flabby sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Query Shark Means&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure my answer corresponds with QS's opinion precisely, but here's what I'd take away from what she's saying. Writers tend, in log lines, to try to amp up the drama tremendously, while not being able to provide any meaningful detail. Very often, the result is artificial (hence she's able to easily, intuitively, pick them apart and expose how hollow they are), and also not compelling (because of the lack of detail - which is what the agent/editor is actually interested in - and the familiarity of the format; it probably comes across at best as exciting hyperbole with little focus).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The log line may be effective for marketing purposes, when it's aimed at a less-discerning audience who aren't committed yet to devoting any attention to this particular piece. In a query, though, you've already got the agent's full attention; what they want to hear is &lt;strong&gt;detail about the book&lt;/strong&gt;. A log line usually doesn't supply that, and some agents may find them actively irksome. They also have a tendency to be poorly constructed or thought out, which adds to the nuisance. Hence (I presume), Query Shark does not like log lines in her queries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T12:31:19.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4340" CreationDate="2011-11-01T13:50:15.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As stated a log line is used more in the film industry. It is a quick &quot;statement&quot; with a beginning, middle, and end that summarizes the story. Typically, a sentence or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the publishing field you send a query letter with a pitch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pitch (like it or not) should include your introduction, a summary of your work, your credentials, and your closing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summary is 100 to 200 words that presents your setting, your protagonist and the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will suggest that the intro,credentials, and closing are close to the same length together as the summary (200 words.) You are selling yourself with these. The summary sells your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have 400 words instead of a couple of sentences in a log line.  But those 400 words have to all be golden and convince an agent/editor they want to read more. Those words are the only chance you get to make a sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T13:50:15.550" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4344" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4345" CreationDate="2011-11-01T15:04:34.140" Score="8" ViewCount="9108" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming the story itself is in past tense, normally when I go further into the past I'd use past perfect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He had first met her at the grocery store, six months prior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, which is more correct when writing an extended flashback (several pages):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He fondly remembered the day they met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;He had met her at the grocery store, where they had shared a long glance at the checkout line. She had bought sixteen oranges and one single banana, something that had caught his eye at once. He had only been purchasing a pack of gum. He had been about to leave when he had noticed her self-check ding...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;versus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He fondly remembered the day they met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;He met her at the grocery store, where they shared a long glance at the checkout line. She was buying sixteen oranges and one single banana, something that caught his eye at once. He was only purchasing a pack of gum. He was about to leave when he noticed her self-check ding...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My instinct is to leave the first sentence as &amp;quot;had met her&amp;quot;, then switch to simple past tense. Is that strange?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-09-17T08:47:31.717" Title="Should a flashback be in past tense or past perfect?" Tags="|fiction|tenses|flashback|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4344" CreationDate="2011-11-01T15:45:26.733" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not strange at all. That's exactly how I would do it. A flashback of two paragraphs can take past perfect. A flashback of several pages can be in the simple past as long as you establish the time shift clearly at the beginning, and use the past perfect in one or two sentences at the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also clearly indicate when the flashback ends: &quot;Now that it was summer, the watermelons took on an entirely new meaning.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T15:45:26.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4344" CreationDate="2011-11-01T18:05:09.663" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd go with past, actually. If you use past perfect, there's no need to italicise, is there? It's effectively not a flashback, but just narration. Flashbacks are meant to take on an element of immediacy, of being dragged into a moment re-lived. (In fact I've actually switched to present tense for flashbacks with no reader confusion. Indicate that you're about to &quot;remember&quot; something, use italics...you'll be fine. Flashback is over when italics end). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T18:05:09.663" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4347" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-02T00:07:17.347" Score="8" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been actively participating in the &quot;blogging world&quot; and have developed a substantial portfolio of 25-75 word &quot;rants&quot; on a variety of topics related to my specialty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know how these can be correlated into a book that would supplement and support my professional relationships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the specific challenges of converting blog content to a more traditional publication format like a book?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2460" LastEditorUserId="3496" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T02:14:48.853" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T02:14:48.853" Title="What are the challenges of converting blog content to a publishable work?" Tags="|publishing|marketing|blog|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4347" CreationDate="2011-11-02T00:48:30.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are suggesting &quot;salable&quot; as &quot;publishable&quot; there might be an issue with copyright unless you protected those rights in writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure why or if anyone would buy something you've already given away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I'm not sure who would be interested in short &quot;rants&quot; that are not timely. A &quot;rant&quot; as short as you suggest is just not something many folks would want to peruse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are in a blog that has thousands of readers why not ask on the blog if anyone would pay for a book? If no one bites you have your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T00:48:30.837" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4350" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-02T02:12:53.423" Score="5" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;If my character had seen all that he had seen, is it possible that a person of sufficient intellect could draw the conclusions that he has, or am I just handing him answers and giving him &quot;magic powers?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John has seen the other character's home, decorated with various (Lovecraftian) images and statues, and has been talking in his study for a few minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John sighed, and thought for a moment, but the conclusions were fairly obvious. &quot;You're an occultist, and a remarkably mature one for your age. You've progressed from tacky trappings to real artifacts, that I imagine are greatly desired in your circles. I'd guess that you've had a mentor of some esteem. Also, the reason for my being called is all tied up in it. You've had something stolen. Something is missing from that shelf over there, and your eyes keep flickering to it. The dust is still disturbed, and the other objects around the empty space aren't nearly as orderly as on the other shelves. But you're not only angry at it being taken, whatever it is, but you're also nervous about it being out from under your nose. Your feet are tapping and you haven't slept in some time. You've had something stolen that reveals your status as an occultist, and fear blackmail.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2805" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T21:50:30.270" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:50:30.270" Title="Logical conclusions of deduction" Tags="|mystery|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4350" CreationDate="2011-11-02T02:28:56.303" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe not a real person, but with a little storytelling sleight of hand, Arthur Conan Doyle made Sherlock Holmes do that stuff all the time. You'll probably have to explain the chain of logic for the reader at some point, perhaps by having John explain it to a bewildered onlooker (a la Watson).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T02:28:56.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4347" CreationDate="2011-11-02T02:39:09.043" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the primary challenges you may be faced with in trying to compile your boh entries into a book format lies in organizing your content. Will you list the content in the order in which it was written, group it by topic, arrange it according to a theme, or just randomize it? If you can figure out that answer, then you'll have a good start on deciding whether you even have enough content to justify a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another challenge will be in converting the blogs posts into relevant content. For example, if you have a dozen posts that generally relate to the same topic, do you really want to include all twelve, or would it be better to merge them together into a single statement or phrase or chapter? It might be better to take the most salient points from each of the separate posts to provide a more complete or entertaining topic with more supporting material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, if you are just rehashing the same original posts verbatim, I'm not sure any of your followers will see a book as anything worth pursuing. However, if you merge the posts in an organized manner and perhaps rewrite portions to make the content fresher, then you will most likely have an easier time convincing people that the book is worth their time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T02:39:09.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4332" CreationDate="2011-11-02T02:52:15.253" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that your friend is over 70 and apparently not IT oriented, I would recommend sticking to something he already knows. If he already uses and is familar with MS Word, then stick with that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he is planning to self-publish, there are tools that can convert a Word document to the appropriate e-book format. Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing does this through an online interface that doesn't require any extra software or any special steps. It may not always format the finished product perfectly, but it's usually pretty good. There are also people who will convert the finished product to different e-book formats, and usually pretty cheap. For example, I know a few who will convert a Word document into four different formats for about $50. That's a lot easier than buying and learning new software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he is going to self-publish in print format, then the printer will most likely be able to work with him to make sure everything turns out okay. They may even have certain formatting changes that they will request or require in order to ensure everything turns out okay, but they should be able to provide assistance with that. Here again, if he needs to change the formatting to accomodate the printer, there are people who will do the work for hire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T02:52:15.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2011-11-02T11:08:14.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A googledoc timeline gadget (it graphs a spreadsheet onto a timeline):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user-friendly tutorial on how to get one started:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecoremechanic.com/2009/04/how-to-build-interactive-timeline-using.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thecoremechanic.com/2009/04/how-to-build-interactive-timeline-using.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-11-02T12:19:07.443" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T12:19:07.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1284" CreationDate="2011-11-02T11:57:13.603" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just forward your original e-mail and write on top of it &quot;Polite Reminder.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2807" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-11-02T13:52:49.213" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T13:52:49.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4350" CreationDate="2011-11-02T12:39:10.907" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that the conclusions are not necessarily the problem, rather the delivery. You don't have to spell some things out so matter of factly, you can infer them through conversation. Also, you should be more specific with your delivery, rather than being vague. For an example consider the first part of what you've written: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John sighed, and thought for a moment, but the conclusions were fairly&#xA;  obvious. &quot;You're an occultist, and a remarkably mature one for your&#xA;  age. You've progressed from tacky trappings to real artifacts, that I&#xA;  imagine are greatly desired in your circles. I'd guess that you've had&#xA;  a mentor of some esteem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, why mention &quot;the conclusions were fairly obvious&quot;? This should come out from the way the character talks and behaves. Unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get the impression you want to show that he finds this &quot;explaining&quot; to be tedious, because he considers things to be obvious. So why don't you show it? He's a man of intellect, and when people like that think things are obvious, then they can be condescending. If he finds it obvious, he probably assumes other people do, too, so why should he bother telling them what they should already know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the things he reveals are not that earth shattering, and are rather vague. What makes this person he's talking to mature? What real artefacts? Why would he &quot;guess&quot;, when he clearly knows?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this dialogue instead (okay, it's definitely not perfect, but I needed something to illustrate the point).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm curious if you know why you're here?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't play games, Miss Pollock.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Humour me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And then what? Shall I juggle? Roll over? Fetch?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Come now, Mr. Peel. I'm just interested in what you think.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Judging by that volume of Reading the Mind - which, if I'm not&#xA;  mistaken, is only given to members of the Red Sash - you should be&#xA;  fully capable of knowing what I think.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She tilted her head in acknowledgement. &quot;I consider that to be bad&#xA;  form. And bad for business. Unless requested.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Young, gifted, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; mature. A rare combination, no doubt thanks to&#xA;  your rather wealthy benefactor.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Good guess. You know, you could get yourself a crystal ball and set up at a flea market,&#xA;  you'd make a killing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I never guess, Miss Pollock. I observe, and what I can see is that he&#xA;  has infinitely better taste than you in artwork.&quot; He pointed at the&#xA;  oil painting hanging off the wall, the black and white crow seemingly&#xA;  trapped within the canvas. &quot;I'm not sure I would hang a Raphael next&#xA;  to your cheap Dali fakes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the difference? You're demonstrating his in-depth knowledge, his intellect, his disdain i.e. his character. Also importantly, you're helping introduce conflict, and you're creating a specific scene rather than just referring to vague things like &quot;shelves&quot;, &quot;objects&quot;, &quot;tacky trappings&quot;, &quot;real artefacts&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The logical conclusions reached are based on his intellect and his character, so you should show us that character so we know how and why he reached those conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2011-11-02T12:49:26.273" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T12:49:26.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4347" CreationDate="2011-11-02T14:31:13.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Books compiling previously-published articles are not new.  The usual challenges there are selecting and organizing your material and editing it for a different audience.  Compiling material that is still readily available (blog posts) adds one more challenge: how do you induce people to pay for what they can get for free?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have bought books that originated from blogs (Rands in Review and Real Live Preacher).  Here are the added values I saw:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Additional unpublished material: add something to what's already out there, whether it's new essays, introductions, or something else.  RLP had a popular series and added new essays in that series.  Rands, writing about working and managing in the software-development world, updated essays for the latest trends.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Presentation: a blog is optimized for short bursts of consumption; a book is optimized for sitting and reading for a while -- &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you group and (if applicable) expand your content so it doesn't still feel bite-sized, and if you get all the physical aspects right (comfortable page layout, fonts, etc).  Few people are going to spend several hours reading your blog while sitting at a computer, but they may spend several hours at a sitting reading your book if you make it comfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just concatenate your blog entries into a book, you probably won't get many sales.  But if you plan your content around that format and audience this can work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Not addressed here: the additional considerations of e-book publication.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T14:31:13.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4361" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4364" CreationDate="2011-11-02T23:03:19.083" Score="4" ViewCount="1177" Body="&lt;p&gt;The paragraph below is a conclusion for an essay. I have three problems with the paragraph that I would like to review with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This experience showed me that ignoring an interpersonal conflict only&#xA;  exacerbates the problem at hand. In my case, being in denial about my&#xA;  bullying conflict only made it worse, extending it through the years.&#xA;  It was only when I decided to confront the problem and call the people&#xA;  involved was I able to move towards a solution. However, calling the&#xA;  people was not an easy thing for me; it required me to confront my&#xA;  fear of being hurt, and more importantly, it forced me to understand&#xA;  myself, which gave me the courage that I was searching for. This&#xA;  experience, above all, was a lesson on how to find the courage to&#xA;  confront my conflicts in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The sentence &lt;em&gt;&quot;It was only when I decided to confront the problem and call the people involved was I able to move towards a solution.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; supposedly uses an inversion. It sounds kind of weird to me (english is not my first language), but a friend mentioned to me that it sounds right. Anyone knows if this is right, and why?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) I feel the paragraph is too paused. To many periods, when you read it does it feel the same way to you? if yes, what would you change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) The last sentence, &lt;em&gt;&quot;This experience, above all, was a lesson on how to find the courage to confront my conflicts in life.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. It does not bring the punch that I would like to have at the end of a paragraph, any idea on how I could re-organize it to bring the punch (I already tried to repeat the same idea but in a briefer way, but kind of looses the meaning of the phrase)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After following the feedback (special thanks to Lisa), I am including and updated version of the paragraph. Hope is helpful for anyone wondering on a newer version.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This experience showed me that ignoring an interpersonal conflict only&#xA;  exacerbates the problem at hand. In my case, being in denial of my&#xA;  bullying conflict extended my painful memories for years, and only&#xA;  after confronting my memories was I able to move on. However,&#xA;  confronting my memories was not an easy thing for me; it required me&#xA;  to face my fear of being hurt and, more importantly, it forced me to&#xA;  understand myself. This in turn gave me the courage I needed. My&#xA;  bullying experience, above all, was a lesson on how to build courage,&#xA;  the courage to confront conflict head on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2811" OwnerDisplayName="Peretz" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T21:16:05.130" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T21:16:05.130" Title="Paragraph flow, verb inversion and last sentence tone" Tags="|non-fiction|essay|tone|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4361" CreationDate="2011-11-02T23:16:47.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I have no answer for point 3, regarding points 1 and 2 I have an opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would change this sentence to &quot;It was only when I decided to confront the problem and call the people involved &lt;em&gt;that I was&lt;/em&gt; able to move towards a solution.&quot; This more clearly demonstrates the cause-and-effect scenario that you give.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't think the paragraph has too many pauses in it. Don't forget, run-on sentences make it harder for a reader to understand your points. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must point out that I am not a native speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Roald van Doorn" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T23:16:47.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4361" CreationDate="2011-11-02T23:19:16.300" Score="7" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This sentence is not correct. I think what you are going for is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was only when I decided ... &lt;em&gt;that I was&lt;/em&gt; able to move towards a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't agree there are too many periods. The paragraph stutters a little because there are so many clauses, and a lot more words than necessary. Try things like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My denial about my bullying conflict only made it worse, leaving it unresolved for years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, when it comes to writing, less is more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, this experience taught me courage to confront life's conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At school my son is learning about power words. The whole paragraph is a little vanilla, and might use a few of those power words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This experience taught me that ignoring interpersonal conflict only makes&#xA;  it worse. Denying my bullying experience was like a cancer, and only by&#xA;  confronting my tormentors was I able to excise it. However, fear of&#xA;  being hurt made calling them difficult. Yet, by facing my fear and&#xA;  looking inside myself I did find the courage I needed. Above all, I&#xA;  found that courage is found when one gazes unblinkingly into the eye&#xA;  of the tiger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, perhaps I got a little carried away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Fraser Orr" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T23:37:09.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4361" CreationDate="2011-11-03T01:16:41.897" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On point #1&lt;/strong&gt;, your inversion is only valid if you do as suggested in above answers OR if you removed the &quot;it was&quot;. e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Only when&lt;/em&gt; I decided to confront the problem and call the people involved &lt;em&gt;was I&lt;/em&gt; able to move towards a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you really need to minimise the gap between 'when' and 'was I'. One way to do this would be to remove superfluous verbs and 'I' and make the rest active. e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Only&lt;/em&gt; after confronting the problem and calling those involved &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; I able to move towards a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On point #2&lt;/strong&gt; the pauses are just fine. The amount of punctuation is not the greatest problem here. In my humble opinion it is just &quot;waffly&quot;. I'd just remove as many words as I could without removing the meaning. (But then I mainly ever only do technical writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On point #3&lt;/strong&gt; Here's how I would revise the last two sentences for punch. Brackets for where you should replace the words with the accurate noun/adverb to the experience you had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest replacing 'myself' with what you actually better understood otherwise the reader is left with a feeling that you've said nothing at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last suggestion in brackets optional. It's less formal but does add punch. Generally the more old English words (short and blunt words) the stronger the prose will be. Conversely the more long Latin-derived words (our Prime Minister got famous for saying 'programmatic specificity') the more difficult to read and potentially weak the prose will be. Think about not saying &quot;my experience&quot; but &quot;dealing with Tina's behaviour&quot; or whatever it was. This reinforces to the reader that there's a real concrete story here, something engaging, not just some theoretical situation full of legal words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, calling the people was not an easy thing for me; it required me to confront my fear of being hurt and, more importantly, forced me to understand &lt;em&gt;[my own needs]&lt;/em&gt;. This in turn gave me the courage I needed. Above all, &lt;em&gt;[the event]&lt;/em&gt; was a lesson on how to build the courage to confront conflicts &lt;em&gt;[head on]&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2812" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T01:16:41.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4365" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4372" CreationDate="2011-11-03T07:27:19.593" Score="8" ViewCount="1652" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a Science Fiction novel and describing a space ship. Sea Ships are usually feminine, while space ships don't seem to be either feminine or neutral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you stick to one? Or would you switch depending on whether the ship is addressed by name or just as a ship? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Herbert could see The Invincible, and she was truly a beauty. [...] As Herbert walked through the ship, he couldn't help but notice that the people on this ship were loyal to it and its captain. (&quot;her and her captain&quot;?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt; To clarify the role of the ship, it's comparable to the Battlestar Galactica. It's an inanimate vessel (so unlike the minds of Culture ships) but it's a unique ship, one with a long history and even more stories, and its crew truly loves it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastEditorUserId="68" LastEditDate="2011-11-03T09:25:54.767" LastActivityDate="2017-12-06T21:26:55.617" Title="Spaceships - It or She?" Tags="|style|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4365" CreationDate="2011-11-03T08:08:53.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd definitely stick to one or the other.  As to which one--your call, I'd say.  Do you want the ships to be unique and admired (she) or uniform and taken for granted (it)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T08:08:53.013" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4365" CreationDate="2011-11-03T09:01:25.287" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way a character thinks of a ship tells a lot about &lt;strong&gt;the relationship between the character and the ship.&lt;/strong&gt; For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone who thinks of the ship as an inanimate tool will naturally tend to refer to it as an &quot;it&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thinking of a ship as a &quot;she&quot; implies a more sentimental approach, pretending that the ship is an individual, maybe even actually considering it to be a full person. This is common because it's been common for sailors to ascribe personality, desires, and a sort of free will to the ship.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But your own setting could have its own customs and idiosyncrasies! Maybe in your world, ships &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; individuals with personalities, but they're bizarre and otherworldly, so people think of them as individuals but &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; female (or male), and use &quot;it&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, that's where variation in reference comes from - different ways of thinking of ships. &lt;strong&gt;Either form of reference you choose should be fine and unobtrusive, as long as you use it consistently&lt;/strong&gt; (throughout the book, or per character). If they relation between people and ships isn't interesting or important to you, just choose one and go with that. If it is, then figure out what best suits your world and your characters. Either way, recall that the choice of how to refer to the ship is &lt;em&gt;individual&lt;/em&gt; - different characters can refer to the ship differently; but a single character will generally stick to the same reference method at all times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the last option you suggested, I would advise you to avoid alternating the reference between usages of the name and plain old &quot;ship&quot;. This is not common or proper - and you'll notice it precisely undermines my central point here, which is that the way people feel about the ship as an &quot;individual&quot; affects the way they refer to it. Since their feelings for the ship - their awareness of it - stays consistent, the way that they refer to it will stay consistent as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-11-03T12:20:52.543" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T12:20:52.543" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4368" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4370" CreationDate="2011-11-03T09:37:46.467" Score="17" ViewCount="1666" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to make a particular language that adapts to the story. And the language has to have x and y and e characteristics for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a protocol to follow on the process of making a language for the sake of a story? (I don't talk about making a complete language with grammar and alphabet[okay maybe alphabet]) But on a simple way to make it believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if the question is clear, if not please comment so I can improve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2734" LastActivityDate="2018-03-09T04:15:15.557" Title="How can I effectively invent a language?" Tags="|creative-writing|language|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4368" CreationDate="2011-11-03T09:55:55.570" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to establish a language with a foreign touch in your story, the &quot;cheapest&quot; way to do it, is using an already existing one as reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did something similar. I invented a language for using magic. I took Latin as base and transformed the words, so that they were not directly recognizable as Latin, but still give the reader the touch of an existing, developed language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example you want to use the word &quot;river&quot; in your new language. In Latin it's &quot;fluvius&quot;. Change that to &quot;flovus&quot; or &quot;phlotus&quot; and you have your new word. Just play a little bit with an existing language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the alphabet you can have a look at the old glyphs shown in history books. Replace every letter of the English alphabet with one of your own glyphs you have derived from the historical ones and you have your own language plus alphabet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T09:55:55.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4368" CreationDate="2011-11-03T12:03:58.790" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much of this language are you going to use? Single words? Phrases? Sentences? Paragraphs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's just a few words or phrases, make up a few, be consistent in their usage, and call it a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're carrying on entire dialogues in this tongue, I would first recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1742/whats-the-best-way-to-show-a-foreign-language-in-a-manuscript/1743&quot;&gt;&quot;Don't overdo it.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; For the purposes of your question (and I Am Not A Linguist, so take this cum grano salis): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write your dialogue in English (or whatever the language of the book    is) so you know what words you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vocabulary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create some stems. These are the core bits which you build the word&#xA;from. Taking Romance languages as an example, &lt;em&gt;amo(r)-&lt;/em&gt; for love,&#xA;&lt;em&gt;mang-&lt;/em&gt; for eat, &lt;em&gt;blanc-&lt;/em&gt; for white, &lt;em&gt;petr-&lt;/em&gt; for stone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create some prefixes and suffixes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Combine those to create words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does the sound of the language reflect the speakers? (Papa&#xA;Tolkien was the master of this. The Elves' speech was liquid and&#xA;trilling, with Ls and Ss, because they were beautiful and serene, but&#xA;the Dwarves spoke in harsh guttural sounds because they were a harsh&#xA;people.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there diminutives? (&quot;Little&quot; something) A word or phrase you tack&#xA;on to a name to indicate formality, informality, family, familiarity,&#xA;ownership, affection?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be thorough, you will have to think about some grammar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the verb come right after the subject (Romance    languages) or&#xA;at the end (Russian)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the verb conjugate (so word    order is important) or decline&#xA;(words can be in any order)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the verb ending change with time (present tense, past, future),&#xA;with number, with gender (Hebrew)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about word forms (the noun vs. the adjective form of the same&#xA;word: book vs. bookish)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Articles (a, an, the)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contractions (dropped or elided letters). Don't throw in apostrophes&#xA;to be decorative; they should mean something. In English the&#xA;apostrophe means letters were dropped. (the possessive &lt;em&gt;'s&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;is attributed to the archaic phrasing &quot;John his book &amp;rarr; John's&#xA;book&quot;) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do characters from different classes or different geographical&#xA;locations have different variants on the same essential word?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An example in practice:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Mercedes Lackey's Valedmar universe, there's the root language of Kaleda'in, which has two major branches, Tayledras and Shin'a'in. The word for &quot;love&quot; or &quot;beloved&quot; is &lt;em&gt;ke'chara&lt;/em&gt; in Kaleda'in, &lt;em&gt;ke'a'char&lt;/em&gt; in Shin'a'in, and &lt;em&gt;ashke&lt;/em&gt; in Tayledras. The word for &quot;gay&quot; translates as &quot;one whose lover is like the self,&quot; and the phrase in Tayledras is &lt;em&gt;shay'a'chern&lt;/em&gt;. A gay person refers to his/her spouse as &lt;em&gt;shay'kreth'ashke.&lt;/em&gt; In Shin'a'in, the word for gay is &lt;em&gt;she'chorne.&lt;/em&gt; You can see the &lt;em&gt;cha(r)-&lt;/em&gt; stem moving around in that sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA more examples from the same writer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tayledras, in its own language, means &quot;Hawkbrothers.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;In Shin'a'in, the same word is &quot;Tale'edras,&quot; inverted to be &quot;Brothers of Hawks.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Another Shin'a'in clan is called &quot;Tale'sedrin,&quot; which is &quot;Children of the Hawk.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shin'a'in terms for their horses are &quot;dester'edre&quot; (wind-born siblings) and &quot;jel'sutho'edrin&quot; (ever-younger clanschildren). &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I seem to recall &quot;jel'enedre&quot; means &quot;younger sibling.&quot;&lt;br &gt;&#xA;A Shin'a'in term for two people who have sworn blood-sisterhood is &quot;she'enedre.&quot;  (and there's the &lt;em&gt;she-&lt;/em&gt; stem for &quot;same&quot; from &lt;em&gt;shay'kreth'ashke&lt;/em&gt; of Tayledras)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shin'a'in itself means &quot;people of the Plains.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The plains in question are called &quot;Dorisha Shin'a,&quot; the &quot;Plains of Sacrifice.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T02:01:42.780" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4365" CreationDate="2011-11-03T18:13:32.297" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would remove the captain entirely from that sentence.  You are talking the ship and the confusion in the sentence comes from injecting the captain into the thought cold.  It has the potential to provoke the reader to think about how the captain, whom we have not emotionally associated to the ship yet, is reflected in what Herbert was observing.  It can break the reader out of the reality you are trying to create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Herbert could see The Invincible, and &lt;strong&gt;she&lt;/strong&gt; was truly a beauty. [...] As&#xA;  Herbert walked through the ship, he couldn't help but notice that the&#xA;  people on this ship were loyal to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have already been referring to the ship in the feminine so changing midstream can confuse the reader.  Since the ship is a she what is the &quot;it&quot; the author is referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2638" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T18:13:32.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4365" CreationDate="2011-11-03T18:18:15.677" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself what the traditions of your space navy are. Does its culture trace roots back to a wet navy? What was the pronoun tradition of that navy (the Russian navy uses &quot;he&quot;, for instance)? Were there sociopolitical reasons that the tradition would be challenged or altered along the way? Does the captain get to choose the ship's gender? Do the crew argue about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very human to anthropomorphize one's favorite machines, so use of some gendered pronoun does seem likely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2815" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T18:18:15.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4325" CreationDate="2011-11-04T09:44:46.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that, as in relationships, if you focus too much on trying to figure out how their actions are defined by their gender, you won't be spending enough time on just getting to know the person as a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So does it help to get a woman to read it? Maybe. Or maybe it's better to get a married man to read it! Hard to say. No matter who you get, they need to be aware of the fact that not everyone thinks like them so they need to be careful with their feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2819" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T09:44:46.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4361" CreationDate="2011-11-04T15:32:26.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of the other answers made me look at your paragraph again.  I can't tell for sure which end of the bullying &quot;you&quot; were on (if it is actually about you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I deduce that you were bullied, but, especially in a conclusion, the reader shouldn't have to deduce anything.  It should be laid out as a summation of what has already been presented, or reinforce your main conclusions in some other way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;bullying conflict&quot; and &quot;bullying experience&quot; sound like you're still distancing yourself from the experience by abstraction (which may be valid if the issues remain unresolved).  But these terms are the place to put the &quot;punch&quot;, no pun intended, of real experience/emotion to give your conclusion more impact and give the readers something they can identify with.  &quot;The intimidation I suffered&quot;, &quot;The terror and dehumanization&quot;, &quot;powerlessness&quot; - or if you were on the other side, the &quot;hardening&quot;, &quot;destructive self-image&quot;, &quot;devaluing of life&quot;, &quot;consuming anger&quot;, &quot;shutting down&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may have gone a little too far if this is supposed to be a more formal, &quot;objective&quot; essay, but having been subjected to a lot of bullying and teasing myself, it hits home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T15:32:26.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4376" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4381" CreationDate="2011-11-04T21:23:46.667" Score="2" ViewCount="10715" Body="&lt;p&gt;My email client includes a signature beneath the text of my writing. Currently it is of the form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;------------&#xA;John Doe&#xA;Acme Widget Company&#xA;123 Elm Street&#xA;Metropolis, USA&#xA;phone:222-555-1212&#xA;email:jdoe@gmail.com&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write an email, how should I sign this? For a formal letter, it feels too informal and a little bit redundant to sign with just my first name, and very redundant (because of the signature field) to sign with my first and last name:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Dear Prof. Foo&#xA;&#xA;   Please help me solve 1 + 1.&#xA;&#xA;Sincerely,&#xA;&#xA;John Doe&#xA;&#xA;------------&#xA;John Doe&#xA;Acme Widget Company&#xA;123 Elm Street&#xA;Metropolis, USA&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen emails where the name is left off, and the signature is all that remains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sincerely,&#xA;&#xA;John Doe&#xA;Acme Widget Company&#xA;123 Elm Street&#xA;Metropolis, USA&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any formal conventions for signing such a letter? What other approaches exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="228" LastActivityDate="2020-01-21T00:48:36.743" Title="How do I sign a (formal) email?" Tags="|style|formatting|email|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4376" CreationDate="2011-11-04T22:23:28.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not that uncommon to repeat the name in business (which is also formal) emails. Especially if the signature also name your title:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&#xA;  Sincerely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Doe  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Senior Principal Software Engineer John Doe&#xA;  Acme Widget Company&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  123 Elm Street&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Metropolis, USA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't miss our fairy tale session, eeh, marketing summit on March, 29th&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even without a job title, you can repeat it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you hate redundancy, then left it off, as you described. You can separate the name from the address, so it looks a little bit more &quot;friendly&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sincerely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Doe  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acme Widget Company&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  123 Elm Street&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Metropolis, USA  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also ask yourself, if you really need a signature. Some laws require them for companies (at least here in Germany), but according to your sample content, I assume you do not need the company name in there. I don't think you need a full signature just for asking your professor for help. Your name should suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T22:23:28.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4376" CreationDate="2011-11-05T00:47:03.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have the option of turning the signature block off on an individual email? that would solve the redundancy problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also style your sig block so that it's obviously autogenerated (different color, smaller size), and then sign with your first name. I have seen people just sign with &quot;sincerely&quot; because their name is in the sig block, but I personally find that a little lazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Informal emails I either don't sign or I sign with my initials. (which then occasionally leads to response emails &lt;i&gt;addressed&lt;/i&gt; to my initials [&quot;Dear LGI,&quot;], which I find amusing.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-11-05T00:47:03.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4379" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4380" CreationDate="2011-11-05T02:31:35.503" Score="8" ViewCount="946" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of submitting a short story to a small (and probably not well-known) serial anthology publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an author who's never been published in any way, shape, or form, should I be wary of the rights I'm asked to give up, or should I just concentrate on getting work published as a first step, regardless of what's asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: first Canadian rights, non-exclusive anthology rights, first online rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2824" LastActivityDate="2011-11-12T19:25:10.650" Title="What rights are OK to give up for publishing?" Tags="|publishing|short-story|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4379" CreationDate="2011-11-05T03:00:04.460" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;How prolific are you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty prolific, so I honestly don't worry too much about what rights I'm selling - I try to work with good publishers, and then assume that they'll do a good job selling the work associated with the rights I've granted them.  But that's because it's not that big of a deal if I give rights to someone who doesn't deserve them - I'll just write something else and sell it elsewhere.  If you're less prolific, you need to worry more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even prolific authors need to worry about some things, like giving publishers rights of first refusal on future works.  Anything related to future work, really, negates the 'prolific' exemption, because being prolific in that context just means that you're binding yourself to the publisher for even more work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, honestly, I'd say that the examples you give are pretty inevitable if you want the work published.  I'm assuming it's a Canadian publisher, so that makes sense, non-exclusive anthology rights are pretty much the minimally binding terms given that you're looking at an anthology, and first online rights just means that your work is going to be published online (at least, this is my understanding - I Am Not A Lawyer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-11-05T03:00:04.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4376" CreationDate="2011-11-05T04:13:45.283" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Professors and the like have been reading emails for long enough that I bet they know these two conventions that you seem to indicate you're unsure of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emails, being not letters, contain who they are from in their&#xA;headers. Email readers display this to the recipient in the way in&#xA;which the recipient is likely most accustomed to by now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emails may, or may not, have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_block&quot;&gt;signature block&lt;/a&gt; at the end.&#xA;This block is separated from the content by a line of text&#xA;consisting of only &quot;-- &quot; (dash dash space). A good email reader&#xA;will format, color, or highlight this block differently. A&#xA;heavy email user will ignore it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So right off the bat, you're doing it wrong with how you delimit your signature. Secondly this block should be ignored by the person reading it, unless they're looking for some information they haven't seen in the email or the headers (your address, where, yes, it's okay to repeat your name). Often this is ignored because people once generated them per email with quotes of the day, famous sayings, bible bits etc. thus they're totally about expressing personal tastes. When you assume  they're ignored, there's no duplicate information in them to worry about; they're entirely redundant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing formally with an opening and closing as though it were a formal letter, yes, you will say &quot;Dear Your Name&quot; [redundant because the name is in the to header] and &quot;Sincerely My Name&quot; [redundant because your name is in the from header], and in countries like Ireland, Switzerland, Germany etc. where certain signed information is mandatory, there will be a standardized sig block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation for your case is to change your signature block a little (if that's permissible) to fix the apparently duplicated lines containing just your name. I'm thinking like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Dear Prof. Bar,&#xA;&#xA;   Please explain how Lagrange multipliers help to find minima of functions.&#xA;&#xA;Sincerely,&#xA;&#xA;-John Doe&#xA;&#xA;--&#xA;Address: John Doe at Acme Widget Company&#xA;         123 Elm Street, Metropolis, ST 00000, USA&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least you're not using one of those totally unenforceable disclaimers that foist some supposed compliant behaviors on the recipient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastEditorUserId="2827" LastEditDate="2011-11-05T04:19:47.023" LastActivityDate="2011-11-05T04:19:47.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4382" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-05T14:52:26.837" Score="1" ViewCount="2290" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/473/is-touch-typing-skill-important-for-being-a-good-writer&quot;&gt;Is touch typing skill important for being a good writer?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious about the great novelists, like Kerouac, thompson, hemmingway etc. The ones that had access to typewriters did they touchtype, and is it likely to make more or less mistakes via touch typing? Thanks for any answers I may get, thankyou all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2829" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-11-05T19:05:10.680" Title="Is it worth learning to touch type" Tags="|typing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-11-05T19:29:46.927" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4382" CreationDate="2011-11-05T16:33:09.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's worth it.  Of course, it depends on how often and how much you type, but for the most part, you'll be happy with the skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only will you be able to type faster, but you'll be able to keep your eyes on the screen.  This also means that you'll be able to transcribe a lot faster.  Imagine having a large text written out by hand, and constantly having to look back between the paper, keyboard, and screen.  But if you can touch type, your eyes stay on the paper and you trust your fingers to do their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for mistakes and typos, in my experience, there are less to be had with touch typing.  And in the event that you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; make a mistake, you'll usually feel it right away, and backspacing the right number of characters will quickly become a speedy reflex that you don't even notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a writer, and you're on the computer a lot, I definitely recommend learning to touch type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2824" LastActivityDate="2011-11-05T16:33:09.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4382" CreationDate="2011-11-05T19:05:10.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, it really depends on your perspective. I have considered learning touch typing many times, but ultimately I decided I didn't want to commit the time necessary to learn and practice it. I've started a couple of times, but each time I gave up in frustration because I didn't have the patience. If you do have the patience and are willing to commit the time and effort, then it would certainly be worth it in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I have gotten to where I type 60-70 wpm, with virtually no mistakes, and I do it all with just two fingers. I don't have to look at the screen because I am confident in my spelling, and even more confident in my spell-checking software! I do a lot of typing at work and at home during my writing, and I find that the more time I spend typing, the less mistakes I make and the faster I go. This is true for just about anything; the more you practice the better you get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-11-05T19:05:10.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4368" CreationDate="2011-11-05T22:46:38.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has been said, it is easiest to adapt an existing language. There are many synthetic languages that you can use, depending on your need and audience. If you were writing a historical romance, for instance, use of the Klingon language from Star Trek would most likely be unknown to your readers, so it would seem to be something new. On the other hand, it would also lack many of the 'romantic' ideals you'd probably need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like colloquial speech, be careful to avoid tripping up your readers. If you write in such a deep Southern slang that the reader has to stop reading your story, read aloud the words, listen to what is being said, JUST to understand what the character is saying, then you've probably lost a reader. I might do that a few times, mostly with character names, but after a few times stopping to figure out a foreign word, I'll put the book down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2831" LastActivityDate="2011-11-05T22:46:38.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3039" CreationDate="2011-11-05T23:04:15.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the POV character doesn't know the language, then the reader won't be able to understand it either. A fix could be separate chapters in different POVs allowing the reader to 'learn' the language. An advantage in this case is that the readers will know more than the characters in the book. It's always good to let the readers have and edge on things; they'll keep hoping the characters will discover what they already know...helps to keep the reader's interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you can have a secondary character who DOES know the foreign language, then he can either translate or just interpret what is being said. The reader won't know if the translations are accurate or not, so it takes away some of the intrigue, but if the POV character trusts the interpretor, then it tends to work well enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2831" LastActivityDate="2011-11-05T23:04:15.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3106" CreationDate="2011-11-05T23:11:53.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the problems with world building is that &lt;em&gt;none&lt;/em&gt; of the characters &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; the story care about it. It's the only world they know, so they don't look at the zebras with antlers pulling sleds any more than we comment on every car that drives by. If we &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; comment on a car, it's because the car is different &lt;em&gt;in our world view&lt;/em&gt;. An alien coming here might shrug at our interest in a cool, hot rod, but from his POV it's just another noisy, polluting mode of transportation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to emphasise in your story is what the &lt;em&gt;characters&lt;/em&gt; see as unusual. It makes it rather difficult to let the readers know what the characters just accept and not notice. What would you think of a story that starts off with the main character getting out of bed, putting his slippers, brushing his teeth, combing his hair, rinsing his mouth...etc. It's all true, but who cares? Only touch on the items that really make a difference in the story...&lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; the characters, not the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2831" LastEditorUserId="2831" LastEditDate="2011-11-07T00:43:30.603" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T00:43:30.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4124" CreationDate="2011-11-06T02:12:35.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;AceProject might be the thing you are looking for. You can group your writing tasks according to group types like for example for articles whose topics are about health, then you can group them accordingly. To keep track of your tasks, you can set priorities and statuses of each task so you will know which task is which.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try Zoho Projects. It's the same thing with Ace Project when handling tasks. It also allows you to set goals and milestones and keep track of deliverables and manage deadlines. You can assign tasks and priortize them using color codes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can check a comparison table of the various project management tools here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timedoctor.com/blog/2011/02/02/43-project-management-software-alternatives&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.timedoctor.com/blog/2011/02/02/43-project-management-software-alternatives&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;It's great if you can compare them so you can choose the software that you are looking for. By the way, MS Project would be an overkill for the type of management software that you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2833" LastActivityDate="2011-11-06T02:12:35.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3701" CreationDate="2011-11-07T02:15:02.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a suggestion inspired by computer science, where businesses, people and all kinds of other stuff can be simply generalised as &lt;em&gt;entities&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All characters and other entities appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons or other real-life entities is purely coincidental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All characters and other entities appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, &lt;em&gt;dead or alive,&lt;/em&gt; or other real-life entities, &lt;em&gt;past or present,&lt;/em&gt; is purely coincidental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this could be adapted and fine tuned. The principle suggestion is to gain coverage by the use of the word &lt;em&gt;entities&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other point I'd make is that existing disclaimers aren't always going to be adequate or appropriate to the modern world (i.e. the rise of brands, trademarks and business names as identities in their own right), so you shouldn't be afraid to improve on it by starting from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2812" LastEditorUserId="2812" LastEditDate="2011-11-07T02:20:36.837" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T02:20:36.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4392" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4393" CreationDate="2011-11-07T04:46:42.943" Score="6" ViewCount="1916" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm taking up the task of publishing some content to Kindle. I've been reading up on their &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2RYO17TIRUIVI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;documentation&lt;/a&gt; and been trying to get something to show up in the Kindle Previewer App, using a combination of Microsoft Word for Mac, Pages, and KindleGen, but without any luck so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when using Pages to export simple text (Body format, Times New Roman, 12 point size) to ePub, then using KindleGen to export ePub to .mobi, Kindle Previewer says &quot;An unknown error occurred.&quot; I've also tried having Kindle Previewer open the ePub, but I get the same error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to find some good resources for publishing to KDP and thought that this community would have some experienced people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2837" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T18:25:23.223" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T18:25:23.223" Title="Help Formatting for Kindle Direct Publishing on Mac?" Tags="|formatting|self-publishing|resources|kindle|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4392" CreationDate="2011-11-07T05:13:16.430" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best bet in uploading to KDP would be to leave your file in Word format and upload that. KDP usually does a pretty good job at converting Word documents, as long as you didn't get too carried away using different styles. Your problems are probably coming about as a result of you converting to ePub, especially since the Kindle doesn't read that format. Even though you are converting that to a .mobi file, it is possible that something got left behind in the conversion process and that is messing up KindleGen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't use Mac, but this process should work just as well on a Mac as it does on a PC. I convert my Word document to an html file (web simple), and then I do some formatting in the html file. I found a great site from &lt;a href=&quot;http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guido Henkel&lt;/a&gt; that takes you step-by-step through this process, and it gives you much more control over your final format. His instructions assume you know nothing about html, but if you do, then you can skip some of the primer. He uses a Mac, so pretty much all of his instructions would apply to you. You will need to download the free &lt;a href=&quot;http://calibre-ebook.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Calibre software&lt;/a&gt;, but otherwise, you should be good to go by following this guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend also that you download the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=sa_menu_karl3?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;docId=1000493771#&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kindle reader software&lt;/a&gt; for your computer. Once you have created your .mobi file, you can open it in the Kindle reader software on your desktop and it will give you a pretty reasonable view of what your readers could expect to see in the actual Kindle. I use this to do my final proofing before publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T05:13:16.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4394" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4400" CreationDate="2011-11-07T19:52:32.760" Score="15" ViewCount="1589" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a recent question that caused quite a stir around here, not so much for the question itself, but more the purpose of the question. That aside, there was a valid question being asked, and it was one that a number of writers may need help with from time to time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I am writing a young adult novel, and I want the dialogue between my characters to be more &quot;realistic&quot; and in tune with the current times. How can I know if that dialogue would be in touch with younger readers? Are there any sources that can be recommended to help compare dialogues, whether it be a web site or another book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T03:34:24.560" Title="How can I accurately represent young adult dialogue?" Tags="|character-development|dialogue|young-adult|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4394" CreationDate="2011-11-07T19:59:05.467" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things that first came to mind on this is to address it the same as any research you would do for any other novel. If you write a book about a French character, you may have to look up certain phrases in French. If you want to feature a younger character, do some research to get a sense of how they speak, as well as their mannerisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to do this might be to go to Amazon and look through their Kindle bestsellers in the Young Adult category. Pick a book that appears to be doing well and buy it. You can then compare the dialogue and mannerisms of that book's characters to compare to your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible source for research would be to find someone to interview. If you have teens at home (as I do), or if you have nieces or nephews, you can start there. Another option would be to volunteer at a church Sunday school class for teens. This would give you an opportunity to hear them carry on conversations and observe them in a social setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main point is to do your research. I'm sure others can chime in with additional sources for conducting such research, but this should offer a couple of options to get you started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T19:59:05.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4396" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4399" CreationDate="2011-11-07T22:15:10.470" Score="5" ViewCount="2339" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was looking at the last book I wrote. In it, I failed to meet the word count I had set for myself by a big margin, like 40,000 words instead of 60-70,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing a post mortem, I found that most of my work has a lot of dialogue, and very little description. But when I look at published books, they use a mixture of dialogue and description / narrative summary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I add some description to my book, without turning it into &quot;telling&quot;, or boring the reader with unnecessary detail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T17:57:49.783" Title="I have too much dialogue, how do I add more description?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4396" CreationDate="2011-11-07T23:18:17.607" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't. Don't stuff stuff into your book!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because you have a vague idea, what &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be wrong, does not mean that it is the culprit. Or that there is a culprit at all. Maybe your amount of dialogue is just fine. How many test readers have you asked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding stuff just because something feels slim is almost always a bad idea. Try to handle your  (imaginary?) lack by practicing. Start a short story without using dialogues at all. Skip even the most obvious. If you think, you really have to add a dialogue skip that, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have managed this struggle, reread your work. You will find some nice narration and most probably a terrible, terrible lack of dialogues. Because you've listened to some weird guy on the Internet telling you, you should leave them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mark the sections where dialogues are missing very badly. Count the length of these sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now add in the dialogues (yeah, you are allowed to add stuff now ;). After you have finished, reread. Change it till you are happy with the result. Now count the length of the dialogues. Compare it with the dialogue-free part. You have a rough estimate, what the ratio for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; writing could be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sleep one or two nights on it and then pick up your 40,000 words book again. Reread and look if really something is missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still unsure? Repeat. (Oh, yes, you could also ask your test readers ...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T23:18:17.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4394" CreationDate="2011-11-07T23:29:16.657" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be careful about being too specific with slang for teenagers.  There are huge regional variations, and what may sound natural to teen readers in one region (or even part of town!) could sound unnatural and jarring to readers from not that far away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have to make sure you aren't 'dating' your story, as slang changes fairly quickly over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't to say that you should have your teen characters speaking like college professors, but just that discretion is valuable.  Use 'teen speak' for seasoning, but not for the whole meal!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T23:29:16.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4396" CreationDate="2011-11-08T00:52:41.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, don't let yourself become a prisoner to your word count. If your story is complete and it only has 40,000 words, then so be it. It sounds like you need to ask yourself whether or not your story really is complete. If it takes place in one location and is almost entirely between two characters, then you may not have a lot to describe. However, if you are changing scenes and settings, then you need to make sure your readers are able to recognize that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the ways you can do that is to identify things that are happening around them. Say for example they are walking down the street having a conversation. You can comment on how they pass under a street light or have to cross to the other side of the street because of a barking dog on the sidewalk ahead of them. The main point is to give enough information to allow your readers to picture your characters in whatever they are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go back and add some of these things, you need to review it really carefully and make sure they add something of value to the story. If they are just there as filler, your readers are going to recognize that and get annoyed. If your additions paint a better picture, then your readers will be rewarded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T00:52:41.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4394" CreationDate="2011-11-08T01:44:53.833" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm 18- so although I feel qualified to give an answer; thats a very broad question, and it can be a daunting task for any writer. Even though sometimes I reflect on a conversation I've had with my friends, and stand back and realise how it would be total nonsense to one of my parents- there are countless niches of slang for teens, all over the English speaking world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where do your teenagers live? What kind of things are they into? Who do they associate with? Who would they never associate with? What irritates them? What do they find cool? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The less ambitious and concerned you are with trying to make them sound like &quot;teens&quot; the better I'd say, it could come off as laughable. If you have/know any kids- just think about how they would respond to the situations in your writing, what would they say? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch some MTV (that may sound ridiculous but it all depends on what kind of teens you hope to depict, would they watch 'My Super Sweet 16' or some teenaged pregnancy trash? I find my generations use of language to be massively influenced by whatever's on TV). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that where/when they come from is hugely significant. One of my favourite depictions of teens and their dialogue is Bret Easton Ellis' Less than Zero (but even thats quite a niche- 80's Californian late-teens/young adults, shades of valspeak etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1495" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T01:44:53.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2011-11-08T12:40:37.873" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a great great great resource for naming characters. It is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.behindthename.com/random/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;random name generator&lt;/a&gt; you can choose the influences and the origin of the name and each name has a meaning when it is generated. A real meaning. All names come from most of the cultures that inhabit our dear planet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the same page you can search for names according to meaning and/or sex. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another technique for inventing names is just cutting a word you see in half, example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just saw the word &lt;strong&gt;community&lt;/strong&gt; so I cut it to the piece I like the most like Munity or ity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I take another word I see, for instance &lt;strong&gt;answer&lt;/strong&gt;, and cut it, ans or wer or we.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I produce the name, result: &lt;strong&gt;Itywé&lt;/strong&gt; you can always put an accent to make it fancy. But as everything don't abuse it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2734" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T12:40:37.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4402" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4405" CreationDate="2011-11-08T12:52:37.063" Score="4" ViewCount="295" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cormac McCarthy's style is worthy of a topic all its own. I've read all his books. Hasn't written a bad one, though some owe more or less of a debt to Faulkner. Anyway, to the point: he doesn't use any &quot;quotes&quot;, apostrophes, &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;italics&lt;/em&gt; in his prose. His decision to do so certainly has the effect of making the words on the page seem more streamlined and useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can writers do without it? And, is copying from his style guide too derivative? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2841" LastEditorUserId="7" LastEditDate="2011-11-08T14:10:30.227" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T23:40:04.170" Title="Unpunctuation: bug or feature?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4402" CreationDate="2011-11-08T13:01:40.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think when you use the word 'copying' in your question, you've already got your answer.  It's his style, and I agree, it works for him.  But that doesn't mean it would work for you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T13:01:40.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4402" CreationDate="2011-11-08T14:21:16.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can writers do without it? Yes, since Cormac McCarthy has demonstrated that. The real question is: &quot;Should writers do without it?&quot;. The answer to that will be one of opinion, depending on the person answering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is copying from his style guide too derivative? No. Writing is a skill and a craft that is learned, and writers will use advice that they find useful. Use what works for you, discard what doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T14:21:16.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4402" CreationDate="2011-11-08T14:54:30.843" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main thing you need to keep in mind is your readers. I know a couple of people personally who chose not to read one or more of McCarthy's books for this very reason (their loss). Most readers are going to expect to see quotation marks at the very least, and they may feel disoriented or become easily confused by the dialog without them. McCarthy got around this in &quot;The Road&quot; by minimizing the dialog. He is also very good at pulling readers in with a very good story. This works for him because he has such talent as a storyteller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that if you are going to try this, you should make sure that your story is very, very good. Try running it by a couple of beta readers to get their feedback. Make sure that they are able to follow the story and keep track of the dialog between characters. If they are, then you'll be much more likely to get away with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, though, this is a matter of personal preference. You can choose to do this, but be aware that you are likely to be compared to McCarthy as a result. If you are compared to him because your story flows just as well or is just as engrossing, then that is a good thing. If you are compared just because readers see you as a derivative copycat, that isn't a good thing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T14:54:30.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4396" CreationDate="2011-11-08T15:13:54.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about your non-dialogue as painting a picture of everything that is going in the scene.  You want your reader to have a clear picture of where your characters are, how they are positioned in their environment, what objects are in the environment, etc...  This only applies to what is important to the story.  You don't want to be overly descriptive--that's boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try going through your draft and taking notes.  For every scene, make a list of what you know about the scene based only on what you have written on the page.  That will help you determine if something is missing that needs to be added.  Whenever an action occurs that causes a change in the scene, make sure there is description of that action and the results of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep it interesting, the description needs to be active.  Give &quot;life&quot; to inanimate objects in the environment by describing them with action verbs.  If your character is holding a knife, instead of writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He held the glistening knife in his hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The knife glistened in his hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eh, maybe not the best example, but hopefully it gives you an idea.  In the first, &quot;glisten&quot; is an adjective; in the second, it is a verb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T15:13:54.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4402" CreationDate="2011-11-08T16:16:52.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Streamlined and useful&quot;? Which means punctuation is useless clutter? Ask the legendary guy whose life was saved by Czarina Maria Fyodorovna's misplaced comma. (&quot;Pardon impossible, to be sent to Siberia&quot; vs &quot;Pardon, impossible to be sent to Siberia.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having never read any of McCarthy's work, I can say that such lack of punctuation and formatting would make me claw my eyes out. Or throw the book across the room. Or go through an entire box of red pens fixing the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to make your medium part of your message (your content), write poetry or graphic novels. Books which experiment in form are.... interesting, but not terribly re-readable. Gael Baudino wrote a whole trilogy where she kept switching not merely narrator and POV, but the entire narrative style: parts were standard narration, then parts were being told by a marketing guy as he was getting mugged, then parts were a stone-cutting manual which was increasingly crossed out and being used as a religious text.... seriously, it just got weirder and weirder. That's not storytelling; it's word-jazz. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the title of your question, I'd call it not just a bug, but a stack-ran-into-heap reboot-the-machine complete-kernel-panic bluescreen-of-death error. Wipe the drive and start over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T16:16:52.697" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4408" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-08T15:37:30.980" Score="3" ViewCount="865" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find the writing style of the show Merlin to be very good, and much better than current/modern English usage. Details about the show can be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1199099/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IMDB's Merlin page&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_%28TV_series%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's entry about the Merlin TV series&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone tell me what this type/style of English is called, and from what time period it is from? Does anyone have any references, links etc. which will give details on this style of writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 1:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one sample dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Uther:&lt;/em&gt; Let this serve as a lesson to all. This man, Thomas James Collins, is adjudged guilty of conspiring to use enchantments and&#xA;  magic and- pursuiant to the laws of Camelot- I, Uther Pendragon, have&#xA;  decreed that such practices are banned on penalty of death. I pride&#xA;  myself as a fair and just king, but for the crime of sorcery there is&#xA;  but one sentence I can pass. (Uther raises his hand and Thomas is&#xA;  executed) When I came to this land, this kingdom was mired in chaos&#xA;  but, with the people's help, magic was driven from the realm. So I&#xA;  declare a festival to celebrate twenty years since the Great Dragon&#xA;  was captured and Camelot freed from the evil of sorcery. Let the&#xA;  celebrations begin!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More example dialogue can be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Merlin_%28TV_Series%29#The_Dragon.27s_Call_.5B1.1.5D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikiquote's Merlin page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2844" OwnerDisplayName="Abhijeet Pathak" LastEditorUserId="84" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T22:29:39.503" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T22:29:39.503" Title="How to write English in Merlin (TV Series) style?" Tags="|style|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4408" CreationDate="2011-11-08T18:28:25.333" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with trying to emulate a particular writing style like this is that it isn't really based on any true historical language. The period is intended to represent the early Middle Ages, but realistically they didn't speak any language we would readily identify today as English. What you have here is a contrived language style that is intended to make the listener believe they are in a different time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look back at this particular example, one of the things you will notice is the lack of apostrophes. When writing fantasy novels, I almost never use them in my dialog. So rather than say &quot;I can't condone sorcery&quot; it would be written as &quot;I can not condone sorcery&quot;. The idea is to try to make it seem more formal and more distinct than what we commonly hear on a day to day basis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other things that are being done to help make the listener (reader) feel as if they are in a different time period, and it is up to you as the writer to get this across. Just the mention of sorcery or dragons is a step in the right direction!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-11-08T22:31:35.917" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T22:31:35.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4402" CreationDate="2011-11-08T19:20:32.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on your goal for your writing.  If you ever want to sell your work commercially, you better stick to conventional formatting.  You won't be able to get away with breaking the rules unless you are as famous a writer as McCarthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could self-publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1145" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T19:20:32.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4402" CreationDate="2011-11-08T19:51:30.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I'll tolerate it with McCarthy because it gives a certain feel to his book that's appropriate, I'm not as forgiving with other authors. The novel Rules of Civility by Amor Towles uses an em dash in front of each line of dialog. Distracted me throughout and bugged me. Not a bad book, but I won't go out of my way to recommend it just because it annoyed me. There seemed no purpose in deviating from more standard styles, it felt pretentious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd think long and hard about what it does, or doesn't do, for your novel. Will it distract the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T19:51:30.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4408" CreationDate="2011-11-08T20:47:09.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a speech. Uther, whatever his other faults, does give good speech, but so do many modern English speakers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want all your characters to speak in speechese &amp;mdash; long-winded, complex, winding sentences; occasionally inverted grammar; archaic phrasing; drums and trumpets under every applause line &amp;mdash; it will read very prettily, but it won't sound realistic. It's up to you if that's the effect you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read through a few Tolkien books. If they sound like ear candy, go for it. If it takes you three or four tries to get through a sentence... leave the speechese for the speeches, and have your dialogue sound more like people talking than people orating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T20:47:09.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4413" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4414" CreationDate="2011-11-09T11:14:24.770" Score="4" ViewCount="15982" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to write a short folk lullaby as part of my story, but am having trouble getting the feel of it in my lyrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the general conventions of writing a lullaby? Any general principles specific to lullabies as opposed to other types of lyrics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2020-02-07T22:58:24.117" Title="Writing a Lullaby" Tags="|style|lyrics|conventions|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4413" CreationDate="2011-11-09T12:16:57.437" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably not that complicated (in theory) when you write it in a story. The problematic part is the music, rhythm, which lulls the baby. These must not be stirring, but the words are not understood by the youngest babies. Humming is enough for them. That's easy to describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Older kids understand the lyric though. But finding something gentle should be easy when orienting at existing lullabies. They tell the kids that they are protected during the night (e.g. by angels), taking away the fear of the dark. Add the hope, that there will be a next morning when they awake and you have the &quot;main plot&quot; of a lullaby (ok, the lyric should rhyme ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the basics are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No fear of the dark, you are protected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Therefore sleep well and have sweet dreams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tomorrow you will awake, enjoying a new beautiful morning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short, rhyming sentences. Parents must be able to recall them. Four lines should be sufficient, they can be repeated endlessly (which you do not show anyway in your book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For examples orientate on existing lullabies:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lullabies.adoption.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://lullabies.adoption.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/sleep/lullaby/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/sleep/lullaby/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-11-09T12:16:57.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4413" CreationDate="2011-11-09T12:18:38.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have three children, and just before each child's birth I wrote a lullaby that was just for that child. Each one has a different tune and a different lyrical pattern, but the one thing they have in common is that they can be sung softly in a low voice. The whole point of a lullaby is to lull the child to sleep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, the words to a lullaby aren't usually the key emphasis. Since they are usually sung to an infant, the words don't have much significance for the intended audience. However, I sense that you want your lyrics to contribute to the story in some way, so that is obviously going to be more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not actually writing a tune to go along with the lullaby, then just focus on the words and think about writing a poem instead of a song. Concentrate on the meter and the rhyme and you may find it a lot easier. If you would like to think of it more as a song, then start out just humming something that is soft and slow and has a repeating pattern. Before long I suspect you'll find something that works as a tune. Try recording that tune and then you can play it back in pieces while trying to fit the words to the tune.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-11-09T12:18:38.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4413" CreationDate="2011-11-09T12:54:04.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;After it's written, and you're polishing, think about vowel sounds. There should be very few words or lines which end on hard consonants (K, T) because you want the sounds and the lines to flow in a stream. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say your lines aloud in a singsong (never mind a melody) to make sure they can be sung, and you haven't picked a word which stops on a voiceless syllable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example to make that coherent: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aaaaare you sleeeeepingggggg,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Broooother Johnnnnn?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Morning bells are rinnnngingggg,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Dingggg dangggg donggg.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the emphases are on vowels and the voiced N and NG sounds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Rockabye baby,&quot; the second line does end in &quot;rock,&quot; with a hard K sound, but when it's sung, you always emphasize the O of &quot;roooooooock.&quot; (not to mention I think it's a horrible thing to sing to a child anyway, but YMMV.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-11-09T12:54:04.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4446" CreationDate="2011-11-09T19:51:42.773" Score="1" ViewCount="372" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your experience, are sections on risk and risk management typically part of technical standards documentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in a document that describes how the Network Time Protocol is implemented and deployed throughout a network, does it make sense to talk about organizational risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do people usually create a single &quot;risk&quot; document, with sections for each technology? (As opposed to splitting the Risk and Risk Management sections throughout a myriad of documents.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The documentation must be in Microsoft Word, so a wiki solution is not possible (at this time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your opinions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2847" LastActivityDate="2011-11-15T23:13:49.427" Title="Risk Assessment in Technical Standards Documentation" Tags="|technical-writing|organization|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4417" CreationDate="2011-11-09T20:09:59.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't found it common for technical standards documentation to say much about risk and risk management. The folks who negotiate standards generally care about risk, and spend a lot of time discussing risk in their deliberations. Perhaps in the end they presume that their standards themselves mitigate the relevant risks (assuming, of course, that they are implemented correctly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-11-09T20:09:59.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4420" CreationDate="2011-11-10T13:48:51.777" Score="1" ViewCount="281" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a study on Network File System in the course Operating Systems. I also implemented NFS server and NFS client on Ubuntu. I also wrote a project report on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to write above in a resume. I didn't do any new research. But I wrote a report on it.&#xA;I just can't figure out a way to write in a resume. I don't want others to get the wrong idea, as I didn't do any research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I am a fresher. It was a course project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2848" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T18:28:10.223" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T18:28:10.223" Title="How do I rewrite the following for a resume?" Tags="|resume|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4419" CreationDate="2011-11-10T16:50:23.313" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're focusing on the wrong angle. Think about it this way: why would a potential employer care that you wrote a report? What skill set does it show you have? What does it prove you could do again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So think about the report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why did you write the report? For whom? Boss, peers, IT, management,&#xA;accounting? What are they going to do with the report when it's done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was it just stating the facts of what NFS can do, or were you&#xA;analyzing pros and cons of installation, or comparing it to some&#xA;other system?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What were the sources of the report? Did you pull information from&#xA;many different sources and create a new reference document for your&#xA;department, or did you just copy what you learned in the course?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you figure that out, it will be much easier to write it as a r&amp;eacute;sum&amp;eacute; bullet. (&quot;Analyzed NFS system so that IT Department could justify purchase requisition for next year's budget,&quot; for example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T16:50:23.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4419" CreationDate="2011-11-10T23:25:47.170" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a former employer I agree that most employers don't care about reports that you might have written. You need to stress knowledge and experience in a resume.  If you have no experience (that the company can use) the best you might be able to do is show knowledge in a way that someone might ask you a question in an interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And unless the company you are sending the resume to is using Umbuntu then they won't really care. As I recall &quot;implementing NFS&quot; in that environment isn't that hard so I'm not sure whether an employer would even be impressed if you do find a way to include it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many companies are now using software to scan through the resumes and applications they get. You need to write your resume to (hopefully) reflect the keywords that reflect the job skills the company wants. What (if anything) in your report can save the company money? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is a writing forum then think of your resume as your 30 second commercial. Companies want to reduce costs and make/keep their customers (other employees) happy. If you can't think of a way to do either with your report than I would suggest you leave it out and hope that maybe you can work it into an answer to a question during the interview. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, can you fix an NFS problem in the mentioned environment? Think. If you put it on a hundred systems and it goes bad on the V.P.'s desktop machine you better be able to diagnose and resolve the issue or your future boss will be filling your job...again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T23:25:47.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4417" CreationDate="2011-11-10T23:34:30.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risk management is often in a section just devoted to the topic. In large organization RM is the task of designated personnel. The tech folks don't care about RM they just want to implement and maintain. RM folks want to know what issues might mandate procedures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T23:34:30.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4402" CreationDate="2011-11-10T23:40:04.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;McCarthy did it because his writing is strong enough to allow him to get away with it. James Joyce did it too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My fellow students in fourth grade also wrote with little or no punctuation. As far as I know not one of my classmates ever had a novel published. (Yeah, maybe they never wrote one...) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many writers who can't sell a novel with impeccable punctuation, grammar, and word choice. Why tempt the gods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After your first published novel see if you can get your publisher to try one without punctuation.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T23:40:04.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4394" CreationDate="2011-11-10T23:45:27.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go to the geographic area of your novel. Listen to young adults. Tape young adults. Make sure they are unaware of your research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare their conversations with those you write/wrote. I'll be so bold as to suggest that if you got the language exact you might not attract enough readers. It is a tightrope. And the language can quickly date a work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, if your characters, plot, premise, and message aren't interesting a publisher won't care whether you got the &quot;speak&quot; right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-23T11:58:29.023" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T11:58:29.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4379" CreationDate="2011-11-10T23:52:17.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you received a contract? You said a short story. Have you been sent anything by the publisher? What rights are you giving up by just sending the story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically they have to acknowledge that they are going to publish it. Are they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have the horse a mile or so in front of the cart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a contract then you might need an attorney familiar with the publishing business.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T23:52:17.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4429" CreationDate="2011-11-11T15:33:23.887" Score="5" ViewCount="3827" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story in past tense, in first person. The character is discussing the vagaries of his memory of events in the further past. &quot;I remembered&quot; seems to have the wrong connotation here - he can still remember presumably in the present, rather than having specifically accessed the memory at this point in the story. Similarly, &quot;I can recall&quot; and similar phrases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The thing about Aelfheim is that the more time you spend there, the&#xA;  more it plays tricks on your mind. [...]  When I left Aelfheim, I didn't just leave the place and people behind; I left a part of myself. I don't think I'll ever&#xA;  recover all the memories I made there, not without becoming once more&#xA;  the being I was there. However, I remember Eve.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To say &quot;I remembered Eve&quot; would imply that he recalled Eve at a specific point in time - I want to say that he has the memory of Eve in his mind even when other memories are gone. Every other sentence other than those relating to memory is in past tense of some kind - does the shift read alright? And should I be doing it continuously throughout the section of flashbacks dealing with his spotty memory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Digression: I don't really like the feel of &quot;I didn't think I would ever recover the memories&quot; because that, to me, implies that he has recovered the memories by the time the story is being told - &quot;I didn't think I would X&quot; implies &quot;but I did&quot; in my head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastActivityDate="2011-11-11T19:50:15.890" Title="Use of present-tense for memory-related shenanigans in a past-tense story" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|tenses|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4428" CreationDate="2011-11-11T15:51:50.047" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you have it written correctly. &quot;I remember Eve&quot; means that at the moment he's speaking, he does in fact remember her. To say &quot;I remembered Eve&quot; means that at some point (in the past) he didn't remember Eve, and then at some point (still in the past, but more recently), he &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; remember her again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same with &quot;I don't think I'll ever recover&quot; because he is again talking about what's happening in the present moment. (Actually he's making a prediction: he thinks it will never happen in the future.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-11-11T15:51:50.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4433" CreationDate="2011-11-11T19:43:34.637" Score="0" ViewCount="361" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sending out a message to all users that have filed a bug report for my last game; the one I shut the server down on.  The broadcast message I am sending is going to be an email, but I'm not entirely sure how to word it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know normally there'd be something like...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is my displeasure to inform you that the  game servers have been shut down indefinitely, and updates for this series have been terminated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &quot;it is my displeasure&quot; is obviously the wrong thing to say here.  What would I use in place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2849" LastActivityDate="2011-11-11T19:50:49.523" Title="How would I say this in the reverse?" Tags="|technical-writing|business-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4431" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4434" CreationDate="2011-11-11T19:46:18.600" Score="3" ViewCount="252" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a faculty member at a small liberal arts college and a colleague and I are working on a textbook that is still basically in outline stage.  The idea is not completely novel but there are not a lot of other books of this type on the market (although we obviously think there is a need and a market).  Recently a representative from an academic publishing house contacted faculty at our school to solicit book ideas and we have a meeting with him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much should we reveal about our book?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we worry that he might steal our idea and get another (perhaps better known) author to write the book?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2852" LastActivityDate="2011-11-12T13:37:46.787" Title="How much should I reveal about my book idea to a publishing house representative? " Tags="|publishing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4428" CreationDate="2011-11-11T19:50:15.890" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, I think it's right. It's a memory, but the character is talking about parts of it he still remembers, and how the place still is, to this day - how things stand at this point in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you started talking about Eve, you might then go into past tense, as he would then be talking about what she was like back when he knew her. So, he says that he still remembers her (present), then talks about what she was like (past). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-11-11T19:50:15.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4430" CreationDate="2011-11-11T19:50:49.523" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure what you meant about saying this &quot;in reverse&quot;, but possible variations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It is with regret that I have to inform you ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It is with great sadness that I have to inform you ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm sorry to have to let you know ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-11-11T19:50:49.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4431" CreationDate="2011-11-12T13:31:35.000" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about them stealing your idea. Ideas are cheap. Publishers care less whether your &lt;em&gt;idea&lt;/em&gt; is original than whether you can execute well on your idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing-world.com/rights/theft.shtml&quot;&gt;Here is an excellent article about the topic.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/frank/proposals_1000.html&quot;&gt;And another from O'Reilly books.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd say that you should reveal as much about the book as you need to in order to impress the publisher. You have absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by being coy about your book idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2011-11-12T13:37:46.787" LastActivityDate="2011-11-12T13:37:46.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4379" CreationDate="2011-11-12T19:25:10.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's perfectly OK to give up pretty much any rights to the story, as long as you feel you are being justly compensated for them. If I were to make such a sale, as a no-name writer I wouldn't expect to get a large amount of money, but that's OK. Stephen King, on the other hand can reasonably expect a larger sum for his efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't afford a lawyer (it's a short story, so I'm betting you don't have a lot of cash left over for lawyering after you buy Ramen), then read it carefully and make sure it enumerates, with precision, the rights you are giving up, and how and when you are to be paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to try to get some kind of 'reversion' clause on any rights where that makes sense. For instance, with first publication rights, it doesn't make sense to have  reversion clause - but if they retain the sole right to reprint the story, you'd like for that right to revert to after some period of inactivity (several years at least).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can get it you'll also want some kind of reversion clause for the case where they don't actually ever publish at all. Again, this would be a several year timeout, but if something goes wrong after you've been paid, you eventually want the story to see the light of day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="679" LastActivityDate="2011-11-12T19:25:10.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2300" CreationDate="2011-11-13T05:26:52.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write around 1k an hour. But have wrote 3, or 4k on word-wars for NaNoWriMo. It depends on how fast you can type, if you are hyper etc and also if you can concentrate. I'm a pro writer but I find myself at low word counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2860" LastActivityDate="2011-11-13T05:26:52.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2300" CreationDate="2011-11-13T19:50:38.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you to start with noting down whatever you think caring less about quality while it satisfies you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think number of words per hour really matters. Coz a paragraph of excellent text might be more appreciated than whole 700 page book. Devote more time on thought, once its clear rest will flow by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2862" LastEditorUserId="2862" LastEditDate="2011-11-15T12:38:53.927" LastActivityDate="2011-11-15T12:38:53.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-14T13:34:41.483" Score="1" ViewCount="1547" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading a turkish translation of Robert A. Day , How to Write &amp;amp; Publish a Scientific Paper.&#xA;Foreword is written by A. M. Celâl Şengör. &#xA;In this foreword&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The writer who always uses third person ....&#xA;  should  know the origin of this style of expression and should be conscious of that &#xA;  it can sometimes obscure originality of an article.&#xA;  Use of &quot;third person&quot;  has become general and a strict editorial policy  in some journals. &#xA;  Knowing these facts is only way to resist to Editors who insist on using &quot;third person&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to learn &quot;origin of third person, passive voice in scientific/technical writing&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turkish Translation : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.tubitak.gov.tr/kitap/maknasyaz/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://journals.tubitak.gov.tr/kitap/maknasyaz/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amazon Robert A Day Book : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1573561657&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Publish-Scientific-Paper/dp/1573561657&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar Questions but not same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-is-the-difference-between-writing-in-the-first-and-the-third-person&quot;&gt;What is the difference between writing in the first and the third person?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2325/when-should-i-use-passive-voice&quot;&gt;When *should* I use passive voice?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/523/when-should-i-avoid-the-passive-voice-when-might-i-use-it&quot;&gt;When should I avoid the passive voice?  When might I use it?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2865" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-11-17T23:43:55.117" Title="Origin of Passive Voice or Third Person in scientific Writing" Tags="|academic-writing|third-person|scientific-publishing|voice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4440" CreationDate="2011-11-14T17:08:15.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written many scientific papers using first person singular and have not had any problems from editors. Many physics journals encourage it as a matter of fact. I will admit that most papers unfortunately do use this convention. Also, as mentioned, when some papers do use first person, they use plural even if there is only one author. I also use &quot;we&quot; but only in the context when when I am involving the reader, &quot;we can then see that ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I encourage you to use the first person when it is appropriate. Anything you can do to get your point across in an interesting style helps you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2866" LastActivityDate="2011-11-14T17:08:15.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4440" CreationDate="2011-11-15T09:29:08.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not know the etymological or cultural roots of using the passive voice/ third person. However, the reason we were given [the reason they gave us], and that sounded to us as perfectly understandable, was that active voice unnecessarily [and undesirably] shifts the focus onto an extraneous element, at least in some instances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider these: &quot;An assignment was given.&quot; vs. &quot;The professor gave us an assignment.&quot; If the discussion is about the assignment, the first form serves the purpose well, while the second one adds an irrelevant element of who gave the assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the trend and tendency now is to actually &lt;em&gt;avoid&lt;/em&gt; passive voice as much as one can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2011-11-15T09:29:08.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4312" CreationDate="2011-11-15T13:13:21.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go right online. That's the place to be. Start writing directly onto the websites if needed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a blog. Write and publish/update everyday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own child published her first poem online much earlier than 15. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the money, well, it's going to be only a trickle at this stage. With a bit of luck, it can improve over time. Most important, give wi..de publicity to her online publications, to improve visibility over the Internet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2011-11-15T13:13:21.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4444" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4700" CreationDate="2011-11-15T17:00:48.470" Score="4" ViewCount="2980" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a book that says on the copyright page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wipf and Stock Publishers &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  . . . &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Publication date: 2/23/1999 &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Previously published by Hunt &amp;amp; Eaton, 1890&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears to be a facsimile copy, rather than a mere reprint (as I understand those terms; in other words, it looks like they scanned the original and republished it). How should I reference it? I'm supposed to conform to Turabian, but I think Chicago is OK (maybe). I could do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Hunt &amp;amp; Eaton, 1890; facsimile, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1999&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Hunt &amp;amp; Eaton, 1890; reprint, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1999.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2870" LastActivityDate="2011-12-28T16:59:28.877" Title="how to reference facsimile (Turabian style guidelines)" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2011-11-15T21:17:26.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it helpful to research the names. If your fantasized world is similar to an existing country, find out what language they speak and try those names.  If your fantasized language sounds like an existing language, do the same thing.  I have found that names always fit the characters better if their origin is similar to that of the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2872" LastActivityDate="2011-11-15T21:17:26.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4417" CreationDate="2011-11-15T23:13:49.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should give mention risks in your technical document but leave risk management to &quot;Single Risk Document&quot; if it exists. What I mean is :&#xA;RISK: If we fail to use NTP workstations and servers may be out of sync. Therefore some reports will use their computer's time instead of using common time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RISK Management: &#xA;This is not a big problem. We publish our reports enterprise only and we can bear this cost. Maintaining NTP enterprise wide will more costly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may agree or disagree with Risk Management but it is prerogative of management to decide this issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I object to this line. &quot;The documentation must be in Microsoft Word, so a wiki solution is not possible (at this time).&quot; &#xA;MS Word has ability to link documents. Since I assume you can use network shared documents, you can link to this document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2865" LastActivityDate="2011-11-15T23:13:49.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4447" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-16T09:27:05.027" Score="5" ViewCount="314" Body="&lt;p&gt;The movie &quot;Sucker Punch&quot; and the &quot;Once Upon a time&quot; series make it hard to distinguish what state of reality is the &quot;real&quot; one (not that it matters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Fixing the Shadow&quot; we encountered a character who was either a cop who has infiltrated a biker gang or a biker member who used to be a cop. It was indistinguishable. But that was only a single reality where the character only had to choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characters actions have the same interpretation in different realities (Sucker Punch), but in &quot;Once upon a time&quot; a fictional reality completes the real reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for blabbering on, but I hope I have managed to convey what I am trying to ask for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1721" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-11-16T09:47:01.020" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T17:58:52.907" Title="What is the name of the genre of stories with multiple realities?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|genre|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4447" CreationDate="2011-11-16T12:33:13.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;An excellent question. Since it's a plot or perspective technique which can be used in any kind of fictional story, I wouldn't call it a &quot;genre.&quot; Science fiction, Western, soap opera, comedy, and procedural are genres (with sub-genres like &quot;medical procedural&quot; and &quot;lawyer procedural&quot;). Having more than one &quot;true&quot; narrative could happen in any of those types of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think &quot;multiple realities&quot; describes it very well, particularly if the viewer is meant not to know if one is more &quot;real&quot; than the other(s). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't quite &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_effect&quot;&gt;Rashomon,&lt;/a&gt; but it's related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-11-16T12:33:13.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4449" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-16T16:15:03.547" Score="5" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should a science fiction that wants to stand the test of time go into detailed daily life of the city it is set on, with all it's modern references that might become outdated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example would be a group of university students that later find themselves trapped in another planet through whatever plot events. Should the life of the students in their local reality, in their particular real-world existing university and city, with the socializing and the partying involved, be narrated for atmosphere and background, or would that get in the way of the story being timeless? This supposes the author lives in that reality and is able to give an accurate insider's rich picture of it. How much of it is relevant to a broader topic of science fiction? I'm looking for this compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2875" LastEditorUserId="2875" LastEditDate="2011-11-17T16:56:08.403" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T13:38:25.153" Title="Portraying life in a current milieu for science fiction that wants to be timeless" Tags="|science-fiction|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4449" CreationDate="2011-11-16T16:43:57.973" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you set any part of your story in a place and time which your readers will recognize, that part will eventually be dated. That's simply fact. Look at &lt;i&gt;The Invisible Man&lt;/i&gt; or &lt;i&gt;The Time Machine&lt;/i&gt; or &lt;i&gt;The First Men in the Moon&lt;/i&gt;. Those are all classics of scifi, but the parts set in the &quot;present&quot; feel, clearly, of that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is whether the &lt;em&gt;non&lt;/em&gt;-Earth part will seem dated fifty years from now. Your readers can accept that &quot;University students from 1957 Milwaukee find themselves on 2057 Mars&quot; or &quot;University students from 2011 Philadelphia find themselves on 2057 Mars&quot; equally, because the point is what the students do when they're on Mars. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;dated&quot; part of your setting will primarily be to establish your characters. An English major from 1957 Milwaukee will not be the same person as an English major from 2011 Philadelphia, so those two people wouldn't have the same reaction to 2057 Mars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think you need to dwell on the &quot;current&quot; setting for chapters on end unless it's a major part of the plot, but I do think you need to present it, just to give the reader a sense of who your characters are, where/when they come from, what lives they have, what their attitudes are, and so on. It will save you a lot of infodump later if we've already seen them in their natural habitat, so to speak. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it bothers you that much, then you have to remove your characters from any contemporary milieu whatsoever. They would have to start in &quot;2057 Loki City&quot; and end up on &quot;2257 Mars,&quot; and then you can make up both ends however it suits you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-11-16T16:43:57.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4451" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4453" CreationDate="2011-11-16T18:14:10.433" Score="-1" ViewCount="527" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most prompted essays for the SAT or an advanced placement writing class can be written using a similar basic structure.  An example of an introduction for a persuasive prompted essay might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;main idea of question&lt;/em&gt; suggests that &lt;em&gt;what question means to you&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In other words &lt;em&gt;rephrase part of the question&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;state your opinion from a generalized point of view&lt;/em&gt;(without using &quot;I&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Throughout society and in life, there is evidence to support my viewpoint is pervasive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming these steps are followed properly (with one sentence or so per bullet), would the introduction be well developed?  Is there a similar structure for the rest of the essay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I got the idea from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.english-test.net/forum/ftopic68493.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; site.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2876" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-11-17T13:32:13.263" LastActivityDate="2011-11-17T13:32:13.263" Title="What is a basic structure for writing an essay on the SAT or for an AP exam?" Tags="|essay|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4447" CreationDate="2011-11-16T19:13:51.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do agree that this technique can successfully be used in any genre, but often when the conflict of a story is centered around the characters trying to distinguish what is real it will have the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_thriller&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;psychological thriller&lt;/a&gt; sub-genre associated with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand when characters casually acknowledge the existence of multiple realities or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_thriller&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;parallel universes&lt;/a&gt; and aren't troubled by them those stories generally fit broadly into either science fiction or fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastEditorUserId="42" LastEditDate="2011-11-16T19:32:02.640" LastActivityDate="2011-11-16T19:32:02.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4451" CreationDate="2011-11-16T19:42:22.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to ensure that you will do well on an essay, regardless of the type, is to be well read on the subject. the more you know about the topic or the stronger you feel about it, the easier it will be to write it. The trick is figuring out how to pull that off in a situation such as the SAT where you have no idea what the topic is going to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In those instances, it looks like you already have a solid concept of the structure that needs to be applied to the essay. Below is a sample outline, which you have already basically provided. As long as you provide each of these key components, you should do well on the essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Introduction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly identify the topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify your position on the topic (if applicable)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Body&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide basic information about the topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give clear examples to support your position&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conside providing contrasting ideas about the topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Restate the topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Restate key points supporting your position&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-11-16T19:42:22.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2011-11-17T07:53:26.557" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Women writers used to do it because only men authors were taken seriously. Sometimes people don't want the fame from their writing they just want to do it for the art. The pen name allows them peace from the hype of their book. Sometimes people are afraid of critics and feel better if its not actually their name being bashed it makes it feel less personal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2878" LastActivityDate="2011-11-17T07:53:26.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2011-11-17T18:28:01.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To differentiate between genres, averting confusion, especially in marketing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hardly a pseudonym, but there's Iain Banks - fiction writer and Iain M Banks - science fiction writer. Collectively, these days, he's known as Iain [M] Banks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-11-18T18:04:08.880" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T18:04:08.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4457" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4466" CreationDate="2011-11-17T20:56:04.030" Score="5" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently wrote a non fiction book. A marketer from the publishing company, advised me to setup a small website with a few pages dedicated to this book. This website will have a description of the book and will link to online bookstores. I was wondering what the best way is to do this for somebody who doesn't make websites for a living.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, do I really need to have such a website?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not are there any better alternatives?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I need to register a domain for this website?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I need a premium hosting plan?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking of just winging it with a free hosting plan for instance on Wordpress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T08:03:14.960" Title="Dedicated micro website" Tags="|websites|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4457" CreationDate="2011-11-18T00:37:27.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's a good idea, if for no other reason than people are accustomed to searching online, and you want to make it easy for people to find your work so they can buy it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A WordPress site would be totally fine. If you don't want your own domain (EngineeringStrategies.com, assuming &lt;em&gt;Engineering Strategies&lt;/em&gt; is the title of your book), you can have a meaningful blog title (engineeringstrategies.wordpress.com), and make sure you have good keywords for the search engines to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Premium hosting is for websites which have not just a lot of traffic, but a lot of interaction, and a lot of fancy gadgets (video, Flash, forms, games, shopping carts). You don't need the bells and whistles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T00:37:27.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4459" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4463" CreationDate="2011-11-18T03:43:57.493" Score="1" ViewCount="6359" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to quote a film (Monty Python and the Holy Grail) in an MLA format essay, and I am not quite sure how to go about it. I have figured out how to cite it (both in the essay and in a Works Cited page), but I am not sure how to quote the dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the script looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Person X: Blahblahblah&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Person Y: Floopdeloop&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would I go about quoting that in the body of the essay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2879" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T11:38:38.840" Title="Quoting Films in an essay using MLA" Tags="|essay|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4457" CreationDate="2011-11-18T04:05:54.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the publisher thinks it's a good idea they ought to tell their marketer to set one up and ask you to approve the content. Isn't that what the job of a marketer is- to market your book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If YOU want a web site then make it a web site focused on you the author and your expertise. A link can be for the book. Tell the marketer that is a great idea since a web site devoted to you- will be able to market your books published by other companies too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, when many folks shop at on-line shops for non-fiction books they see the used books- guess who won't get a royalty check for a used book?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T04:05:54.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2011-11-18T04:19:41.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You asked how &quot;I&quot; name a character. I create my character and give him/her a name that fits the social and geographic location of the character. It's like picking names for children. You just do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard that some people use a phone book. Some these days use a name generator. I have one friend (unpublished) who visit cemeteries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are really having problems you might be over-thinking the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can create a story I'm amazed you can't create names for your characters....  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T04:19:41.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4462" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-18T07:16:01.697" Score="1" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel whose plot that I just learned is going to be made into a movie---how can I protect myself if similar plot points are used so that I don't get sued and vice versa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2880" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-11-18T13:51:52.450" LastActivityDate="2011-11-21T12:21:52.610" Title="Avoiding legal issues with plot similarities between my book and a movie in production" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4459" CreationDate="2011-11-18T11:38:38.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You probably want to break the quote up with words of your own, if you're using two distinct lines of dialogue.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;eg. This absurdist humour is evident when Character X goes to great lengths to explain &quot;Blahblahblah,&quot; and Person Y responds with a dry &quot;Floopdeloop&quot; (MLA citation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are important physical actions that are not conveyed in the dialogue, you can add that in your own words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;eg. This absurdist humour is evident when Character X goes to great lengths to explain &quot;Blahblahblah,&quot; and Person Y responds with a dry &quot;Floopdeloop&quot; while slapping Character X in the face with a medium-sized fish (MLA citation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's pretty much how you'd quote anything else, I'd say.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T11:38:38.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4462" CreationDate="2011-11-18T13:06:58.827" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Similar plot points&quot; is a little vague. Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl Back are &quot;plot  points&quot; which have been used since Gilgamesh was a teenager. (&lt;em&gt;ETA&lt;/em&gt; and Boy Meets Boy as well, as Gilgamesh himself proved. And Girl Meets Girl.) The question is whether your specific setting, characters, time, and action are similar to the movie which hits the screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even then, it's in the execution and the audience. The &lt;em&gt;Twilight&lt;/em&gt; series is set in contemporary times, has a central female character in a love triangle, and features vampires and werewolves in the Northwest U.S. So does Patricia Briggs's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0441019277&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mercy Thompson&lt;/a&gt; series... and they could not be more different. Bella is a passive, chaste 17YO human who marries a sparkly vampire. Mercy is a tough, independent thirtysomething shapeshifting coyote who is the object of attention for two werewolves and is &quot;friends&quot; with a very deadly vampire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on writing your story. Make it the best it can be. When this movie comes out, go see it with a friend, and then ask the friend to read your story with an eye to potential overlap. There may be nothing to change. A lot can happen between script and screen, and between your fingers and your finished novel. I wouldn't sweat it now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-11-21T12:21:52.610" LastActivityDate="2011-11-21T12:21:52.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4449" CreationDate="2011-11-18T13:38:25.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Details will always date, but you should add whatever details you feel bring a sense of truthfulness. Take The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: Arthur Dent starts off in southern England. There is a muddy driveway, a dressing gown, a pub, salted peanuts, a leather satchel, 3 pints of beer at lunchtime and then ten minutes later he's on a Vorgon sparecraft and everything's mental. It works perfectly and it is dated but it doesn't matter because it's great writing and that's what makes it a classic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2881" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T13:38:25.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4457" CreationDate="2011-11-18T14:50:21.177" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you at all go for a website, &lt;strong&gt;please&lt;/strong&gt; don't go with a free host blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gives off the impression of being unprofessional, and is associated with unpublished wannabe writers, which is just not your case. Anyone can have a free blog, but you sir, have a published book. If the marketing and success of it matters to you, there should be plenty of options for you with minimal cost and a domain wholly yours--that makes all the difference in how your web presence is perceived. As I said, either do it that way, or just don't have any web presence at all, it's better than a free blog. There is such a thing as bad marketing when your product is quality work--your marketing has to be up to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fatcow, for instance, usually offers some plans for just U$4/mo. or something, but I'd actually do some google searches for &quot;wordpress hosting&quot; and drill down the result pages, there are many companies willing to set it all up for you and charge you a modest price for the hosting. They will usually handle the domain registration as well. I'm not talking about &quot;premium hosting&quot;, though I'm unsure what you use it for--you mean a dedicated server? You don't need that. If, on the other hand, by premium hosting you merely mean paid hosting, then yes, you do need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone else said, make it an author blog and not just the book's blog (but definitely give the book a home inside it), and then it might be much easier to justify the cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: this is an answer from someone with more experience in marketing than in writing books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2875" LastEditorUserId="2875" LastEditDate="2011-11-18T15:32:12.543" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T15:32:12.543" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2011-11-19T00:03:10.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of the Brontë sisters' motivation to use pseudonyms Wikipedia has to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1846, the sisters' poems were published in one volume as Poems by&#xA;  Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The Brontë sisters had adopted&#xA;  pseudonyms for publication: Charlotte was &lt;strong&gt;Currer Bell&lt;/strong&gt;, Emily was &lt;strong&gt;Ellis&#xA;  Bell&lt;/strong&gt; and Anne was &lt;strong&gt;Acton Bell&lt;/strong&gt;. Charlotte wrote in the &quot;Biographical&#xA;  Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell&quot; that their &quot;ambiguous choice&quot; was&#xA;  &quot;dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian&#xA;  names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves&#xA;  women, because... we had a vague impression that authoresses are&#xA;  liable to be looked on with prejudice[.]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2875" LastActivityDate="2011-11-19T00:03:10.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4471" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-19T05:52:12.273" Score="2" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to understand the rationale of when, why and how His/My/Your are used in titles of addressing people.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the standard commonly accepted uses are:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;His Honour&quot;(&quot;His Grace&quot;, or &quot;Her&quot; instead of &quot;His&quot;) in written while &quot;Your Honour&quot; (&quot;Your Grace&quot;) verbally;&#xA;while&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;His Lordship&quot; in written while &quot;My Lord&quot; orally;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interest is twofold:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to grasp mnemonics, i.e. how to remember as to avoid wrong use (especially oral one when I cannot consult before using);  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to use such addressing in possible non-standard (metaphorical, satirical, mockering) transformations preserving continuity of a chosen style   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why  (and when) are such differences between:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;His&quot;/&quot;Her&quot; and &quot;Your&quot; (horizontally, using, for example, with &quot;Grace&quot; )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;His Grace&quot;(or &quot;Her&quot;) and &quot;My&quot; Lord&quot; (vertically, in verbal usage)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I have transformed above phrases in context of:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Disgrace&quot; or &quot;Shame&quot; (instead of &quot;Grace&quot;)   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or &quot;Dishonour&quot; (instead of &quot;Honour&quot;)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;?    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="988" LastActivityDate="2011-11-19T05:52:12.273" Title="How to use His/My/Your permutations in adressing persons" Tags="|style|fiction|technical-writing|creative-writing|fantasy|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2011-11-20T21:16:40.290" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4473" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4483" CreationDate="2011-11-19T18:16:22.930" Score="7" ViewCount="1274" Body="&lt;p&gt;My 10 year old niece enjoys writing fiction and writes very well for her age.&#xA;I would love to encourage her love of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone recommend a good fiction writing book that is accessible to a 10-year old?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2889" LastEditorUserId="2889" LastEditDate="2011-11-19T18:23:15.693" LastActivityDate="2018-12-28T16:39:08.203" Title="Fiction writing book recommendation for a 10-year old" Tags="|fiction|book-rec|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4474" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4511" CreationDate="2011-11-19T21:42:11.967" Score="2" ViewCount="3106" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to use a song lyric as a portion of my title for an essay. Obviously, I have to cite that those words are not my own, but how would I go about doing that? Do I use parenthetical documentation in my title (I am using MLA format) or do I just make a mention of it somehow on my Works Cited page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2879" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-11-21T16:45:16.227" LastActivityDate="2017-08-30T12:38:58.587" Title="Quoting a song in an essay title" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4473" CreationDate="2011-11-19T23:08:04.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/193290736X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Writer's Journey&lt;/a&gt;. It's very accessible and clearly written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-11-19T23:08:04.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4473" CreationDate="2011-11-19T23:16:23.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd also recommend trying &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bookdepository.com/Breakout-Novelist-Donald-Maass/9781582979908&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Breakout Novelist&lt;/a&gt;. It uses many examples from current novels, is easy to read, and has exercises to try at the end of each section. It covers both the core concepts of writing a fiction novel and then expands on them in more detail afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's actually a combination of three writing books also written by the same guy, all of which I enjoyed a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-11-19T23:16:23.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4477" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-20T10:56:41.297" Score="3" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently wrote a book about an open source software library. The book is published and available in bookshops, so now marketing has the highest priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the idea to submit articles about the aforementioned open source project on popular websites targeting IT professionals. In return I would like to have a shameless plug of my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know any websites that fit the profile? Preferably these websites should have a fast, easy and painless article submission process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2011-11-21T16:43:57.880" Title="Article submission websites" Tags="|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4478" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-20T13:10:49.080" Score="2" ViewCount="10527" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a personal statement for graduate admissions, and I've a query regarding the use of capitalization in the midst of sentences. For example, is it correct/expected to capitalize the names of each (specialized) course I've undertaken (viz. should it be &quot;One of my favorite subjects was Computational Geometry&quot; or &quot;One of my favorite subjects was computational geometry&quot;)?  What about subsequent uses of the term - should I continue capitalizing it? Also, what about more generalized terms (such as &quot;Electrical Engineering&quot;) - should they be capitalized as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I'm a bit confused, and afraid of committing a grammatical &lt;em&gt;faux-pas&lt;/em&gt; in front of the admissions committee. Any suggestions (with proper reference, if any) would be greatly appreciated! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2600" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-11-20T13:26:19.933" LastActivityDate="2011-11-20T14:34:01.973" Title="When is it correct to capitalize terms/phrases in a personal statement?" Tags="|style|word-choice|essay|conventions|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4478" CreationDate="2011-11-20T14:34:01.973" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Capitals in English are used for proper nouns. Your two examples have slightly different shades of meaning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of my favorite subjects was Computational Geometry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read that as &quot;One of my favorite subjects was Math 247, the specific course entitled 'Computational Geometry,' taught by Professor Angleton.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of my favorite subjects was computational geometry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read that as &quot;One of my favorite subjects was the general part of mathematics called computational geometry, where we used lots of math to figure out angles.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &quot;Computational Geometry&quot; is a course given at your university, and no other course has that name, then capitalize it. If it's a branch of math (as you describe &quot;electrical engineering&quot; to be a branch of engineering), then don't capitalize it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-11-20T14:34:01.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4481" CreationDate="2011-11-20T15:59:13.213" Score="0" ViewCount="7036" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general rule is that a &lt;strong&gt;synopsis&lt;/strong&gt; should be written in &lt;strong&gt;present tense&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;third person&lt;/strong&gt;, regardless of the tense/perspective of the manuscript. I sometimes hear that this doesn't apply to a &lt;strong&gt;synopsis for a memoir&lt;/strong&gt;, which should be written in &lt;strong&gt;past tense&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;first person&lt;/strong&gt;, just like the memoir itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of the following is appropriate, then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A.&lt;/strong&gt; The following spring, I enrolled at Frogparts Academy and met Joe Prince.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;B.&lt;/strong&gt; The following spring, Jen enrolls at Frogparts Academy and meets Joe Prince.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thinking is that it depends on context. I should use &lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt; if I'm writing a synopsis as part of a pitch to a publisher, while someone writing a plot summary of my book for Wikipedia would choose &lt;strong&gt;B&lt;/strong&gt;. Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2024-03-18T15:19:53.577" Title="Synopsis for a memoir: Which tense/perspective to use?" Tags="|memoir|synopsis|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4480" CreationDate="2011-11-20T16:15:47.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds right to me. The pitch is a letter which you write to the publisher, and since the book is about you, the pitch should be from your perspective. Today, those events happened in the past, but they happened to you. So first person, past tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When summarizing a memoir for something like Wikipedia, the summary is not from you (even if it is, the narrative voice isn't). There's a name for &quot;using present tense to describe past events, as if the reader had moved into the past and events were occurring at that moment,&quot; but I don't remember what it's called. Bill Safire discussed it once in the context of a subjunctive describing a baseball pitch (the game was long ago, but the discussion moved to the &quot;present&quot; of the ball game, and the subjunctive clause was from the perspective of the writer wondering what might happen to the ball, even though we already knew what happened). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-11-20T16:15:47.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4480" CreationDate="2011-11-20T16:23:34.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For fiction it is present tense, because that's the way we summarize stories naturally. You say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The story is about a kind of dwarf who has to destroy a powerful ring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The story was about a kind of dwarf who had to destroy a powerful ring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you have written a memoir, not fiction. There it is natural to tell it in past tense, no matter if it is the whole memoir or only a synopsis. So go for past tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further references read the discussion on &lt;a href=&quot;http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93799&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;absolutewrite&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-11-20T16:23:34.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4473" CreationDate="2011-11-20T23:57:27.013" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, it's great of you to take such an interest in your niece's passion for writing! I'm sure it's much appreciated :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the main point, I'm not finding much in the way of books on writing for children. And I think that's for good cause: nobody's trying to get children to write fiction particularly &lt;em&gt;well&lt;/em&gt;. Kids at that age aren't really in the running for writing good fiction, and I don't think anybody's trying to push them in - just encourage them to keep enjoying it. For that, you don't want a how-to book, any more than you'd want to get a ten-year a personal trainer just because he enjoys playing basketball. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of &lt;strong&gt;other&lt;/strong&gt; ways to encourage a kid's enthusiasm for writing, which might be more effective. Obviously, this will depend muchly on the kid herself, and your relationship, so YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take an interest in her writing; be appreciative.&lt;/strong&gt; Kids love an audience. But writing is solitary, and doesn't get the audience a hockey game does. Knowing people are interested in her writing; are impressed by her writing; enjoy reading her writing - these are all powerful motivators. Heck, this'd work on most adult writers I know.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publication and community.&lt;/strong&gt; There are several kids' websites and magazines that regularly publish kids' writing. If your niece likes the idea of sharing her work with others, this is a great route to pursue - it adds the elements of feedback, of interaction with others, and of an audience. It also establishes your niece as part of a &lt;em&gt;community&lt;/em&gt; of kid writers - again, since writing is solitary, she probably doesn't know about other kids writing. Seeing that this is a &quot;thing&quot; is encouraging and involving. I don't have any specific recommendations, but you can look around for appropriate magazines and websites.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reading, reading, reading.&lt;/strong&gt; Books and reading excite writers. Nuff said.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on authors.&lt;/strong&gt; Until she's reading about writing, she can read about writers. As a kid, I read a biography of Louisa May Alcott I still recall fondly (there seem to be many...); writer biographies or fiction featuring authors should be easy to find. Similarly, you can find articles and interviews featuring authors she likes; those will certainly be interesting to her and encourage her interest in writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find one book that looks right up your alley: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0824967712&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Kids Write!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, by Rebecca Olien. It looks really aimed at kids (and not at kids' teachers); it's also got good Amazon reviews. Probably worth checking out! Following links on Amazon leads to other likely candidates - &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060519606&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Writing Magic&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/159643628X&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Spilling Ink: A Young Writer's Handbook&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; both caught my eye. I can't personally attest for the quality of any of these, but browse for yourself and see what might suit your niece's fancy :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-11-20T23:57:27.013" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4462" CreationDate="2011-11-21T03:10:39.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your intent is to have the novel published (not self-published) and your story is too close to the movie - I'd guess you won't find a publisher. Problem solved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your novel must &quot;stand on its own merits&quot; and if it does then there is a chance that even with a similar plot it might sell but if your novel is not as good/exciting/professional as the movie it will be compared/contrasted with the movie by every agent and editor and there is nothing you can do about that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last time I check- plots are not something that can be copyrighted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-11-21T03:10:39.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4477" CreationDate="2011-11-21T16:43:57.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out duotrope.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has everything about submissions to magazines and online. It also&#xA;has a submission manager too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2658" LastActivityDate="2011-11-21T16:43:57.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4486" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4487" CreationDate="2011-11-21T21:04:23.510" Score="2" ViewCount="4091" Body="&lt;p&gt;My girlfriend was advised to use &lt;code&gt;Ibid&lt;/code&gt; in her assignment's citations to &lt;code&gt;help reduce the word count&lt;/code&gt; (I pointed out that references are usually not part of the count, but regardless); but she couldn't grasp the concept or why &lt;code&gt;Ibid&lt;/code&gt; would be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;I explained that it would typically be used when writing footnotes&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; and that &#xA;the material you were referencing&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; is the same, and used in more than one place&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;[1] Anon, Lorem Ipsum (SE Publishing, 1999), p23&#xA;[2] Ibid.&#xA;[3] Ibid., p30&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My argument was that you would save redundancy, by not having to write out the author name/title again, as well as provide a logical way of keeping footnotes numbered (1,2,3..) rather than (1,1,1,2) if the same work was cited more than once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is my understanding correct? Could anyone clarify and explain it in a better way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2891" LastEditorUserId="44466" LastEditDate="2023-05-19T05:43:43.773" LastActivityDate="2023-05-19T05:43:43.773" Title="Correct usage/explanation of ibid in referencing" Tags="|citations|footnotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4486" CreationDate="2011-11-21T21:30:58.650" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are right. &quot;ibid&quot; is short for &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ibidem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ibidem&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, meaning &quot;in the same place&quot;. It is used to not repeat the same title again and again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also have a look at this question:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3352/vancouver-system-citing-multiple-sentences-from-the-same-book&quot;&gt;Vancouver system, citing multiple sentences from the same book&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-11-21T21:30:58.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4486" CreationDate="2011-11-21T22:28:39.170" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be careful, though.  &quot;ibid&quot; is considered, at least in some circles, to be old-fashioned, even archaic.  What citation style is your girlfriend using?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: Unless someone &lt;em&gt;in authority&lt;/em&gt; advised her to use it, I don't think she should.  You're using it as correctly as possible, but it's still not likely to be a popular choice in this day and age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2011-11-22T01:15:39.247" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T01:15:39.247" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2011-11-22T18:13:15.767" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ywriter has a time line feature; I'm not sure how it works. Writeitnow also has an event timeline; if I recall correctly, you can create a summary of all events in your story showing the time that they occured. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2896" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T18:13:15.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="997" CreationDate="2011-11-23T22:21:51.643" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most powerfull example of that for me in Quran Narrator change suddenly POV from third person omniscient to first person plural... &quot;we&quot; are focused on an external individual&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2901" LastActivityDate="2011-11-23T22:21:51.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4408" CreationDate="2011-11-24T00:00:20.693" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;The Once and Future King&lt;/em&gt;, T.H. White referred to that style as &quot;the High Language&quot;, something that his knightly characters would put on like a uniform when speaking to their peers or about their Quest. And, linguistically speaking, it is a High Language (or &lt;em&gt;H&lt;/em&gt; dialect, since the term &quot;High Language&quot; carries a value implication relative to the &lt;em&gt;L&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;M&lt;/em&gt; dialects used colloquially or semi-formally). The &lt;em&gt;H&lt;/em&gt; dialect of a language is the version of the language one uses when writing formally or giving a formal speech (although the &lt;em&gt;H&lt;/em&gt; version of English is eroding lately, being reserved primarily for academic and diplomatic purposes these days). &lt;em&gt;H&lt;/em&gt; is, in a lot of ways, a relic of the past, the way people may have spoken two or three generations ago. It has ever been thus -- the King James Bible of 1611, for instance, was deliberately written in a style that would have been current around 1500-1550 so that it would have a ring of antiquity and authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example you cited is similar to early modern English as it was written (not necessarily as it was spoken), but with modern forms of the words. Particularly, the verbs are not conjugated in the 16th- and early 17th-century style (there's nary an &lt;em&gt;est&lt;/em&gt; or an &lt;em&gt;eth&lt;/em&gt; to be seen), and the pronouns are today's pronouns (thou, thee, thy, thine and ye are not used). The result is an exaggeration of the &lt;em&gt;H&lt;/em&gt; dialect of current English. &lt;em&gt;H&lt;/em&gt; generally avoids contractions, and the sentence structure is often more complex, with more inversions (Yoda-like constructions) and greater topic prominence (the subject of the sentence is visited twice, once as a noun and again as a pronoun, as in &quot;I, Uther Pendragon, ...&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1304" LastActivityDate="2011-11-24T00:00:20.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="997" CreationDate="2011-11-24T08:02:24.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen some excellent non-fiction written in the first person plural. However, right now I can only recall a few. Travel writers Hugh &amp;amp; Colleen Gantzer have been doing this for a long time and with great success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one thing I suspect with regard to the first person plural. Do people start thinking in the first person singular somewhat later in life? It's very common for school children to talk in 'we' terms and past their teens, they are mostly about 'I'.  Just a curiosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, firstly, it is about a suitable genre where the fpp can fit well. And secondly, the age of the readership. Any empirical data relevant to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastEditorUserId="2868" LastEditDate="2015-07-18T10:00:19.363" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T10:00:19.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4496" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-25T05:05:18.067" Score="3" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having read about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling#Name&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;how J. K. Rowling names were chosen/created&lt;/a&gt;:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Fearing that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers demanded that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name...&quot;     &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I became perplexed.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books#List_of_best-selling_single-volume_books&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The most sold of children's single volume books&lt;/a&gt; is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Petit_Prince&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Le Petit Prince &quot;(The Little Prince)&quot;&lt;/a&gt; signed as &quot;Antoine de Saint-Exupéry&quot;, i.e. by a male name(s) without a middle one. While this writer really had the name &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry&lt;/a&gt;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what should I know in order to decide when and how to conceal/abbreviate my gender and middle names signing my writing?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="988" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T18:18:55.387" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T18:18:55.387" Title="What should I know to better decide which of my names to conceal/abbreviate/elaborate/modify/invent for signing my writing?" Tags="|business-writing|pseudonym|self-preservation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4497" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4509" CreationDate="2011-11-25T05:09:31.920" Score="1" ViewCount="871" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am applying to school and, after 3-4 weeks of thinking and writing essay iterations, I ended up with the essay below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are your professional objectives? (300 words)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have one professional objective: Push forward the personal robotics&#xA;  market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the last few decades, robotics research has made considerable&#xA;  strides towards solving hard robotics problems such as navigating&#xA;  unknown environments, recognizing and manipulating objects, and using&#xA;  natural language to interact. These advances have resulted in some&#xA;  interesting robotic applications, ranging from autonomous vacuum&#xA;  cleaners and self-parking cars to personal software assistants. Yet, I&#xA;  believe these applications are just &lt;strong&gt;the tip of the iceberg&lt;/strong&gt; in a whole&#xA;  new wave of personal robotics applications to hit the marketplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My belief is that this new wave of applications promises to transform&#xA;  society in extreme new ways. Among this new wave, self-driving cars&#xA;  promise to permit a much faster, cheaper and safer transportation&#xA;  infrastructure, robotic nursing assistants promise to bring quality of&#xA;  life to a raising number of elder people, and user-friendly flexible&#xA;  robots promise to liberate us from the chores in the house. &lt;strong&gt;In a&#xA;  nutshell&lt;/strong&gt;, personal robotics promise to automize slavish and&#xA;  repetitive tasks and usher in a new age in our society, an age with&#xA;  less dependency on manual tasks and more on creative and stimulating&#xA;  ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This vision is what really excites me about personal robotics. It is&#xA;  the opportunity to combine my fascination for robotics with real&#xA;  impact in people’s lives, it is the opportunity to push forward such a&#xA;  transformative change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would greatly appreciate if you could help me put the final approval seal by helping me with the points below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Flow - I tried to divided my essay in four sections. First line, clearly frame the essay. Second paragraph, give some background and set some direction. Third, the vision I see. And forth, why is this important to me. If you feel that in some point the essay is not flowing naturally or is jumping too much, please let me know why you feel that way, and what would you change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Clarity - It is kind of a vision of the future, so some things are left in the air. Are you actually picturing things or are just void sentences? This is important because the board that is going to evaluate the essay is not a science or engineering board, it is just a general admission board. So, I really need to make sure that they are following up with my ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Passion - This one is simple. Do you actually feel that I love the topic I am talking about? Did you feel excited in any point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;-----------------------------------------------------------------&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LATEST ITERATION&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;-----------------------------------------------------------------&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realized that due to the nature of the question and the length of the essay it will be hard to have one single answer that comprises all the changes. Also, I thought it would be helpful for the forum to see how was the final state of the essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am including my latest iteration. I am planning to update it as more feedback is given, and check the answer that contributes the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have one professional objective: To bring personal robotics to every&#xA;  household.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Robotics research has made considerable strides toward solving hard&#xA;  robotics problems such as navigating unknown environments, recognizing&#xA;  and manipulating objects, and using natural language to interact.&#xA;  These advances have resulted in some interesting innovations, ranging&#xA;  from autonomous vacuum cleaners and self-parking cars to personal&#xA;  software assistants. Yet, these innovations are just the leading edge&#xA;  in a whole new wave of personal robotics applications to hit the&#xA;  marketplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This new wave of applications will reinvent society in extreme new&#xA;  ways. In my vision, self-driving cars will enable a faster, cheaper&#xA;  and safer transportation infrastructure; robotic nursing assistants&#xA;  will bring better health care to a rising number of elder people; and&#xA;  user-friendly flexible robots will liberate us from household chores.&#xA;  In principle, personal robotics will automate slavish and repetitive&#xA;  tasks and usher in a new age in our society, an age with less&#xA;  dependency on menial tasks and more on creative and stimulating ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, this vision of a world free of menial tasks has always&#xA;  created a personal conflict. Born and raised in Mexico, I have&#xA;  realized the importance that menial jobs play in low-income families.&#xA;  Yet, menial jobs such as taxi drivers, nurses and housemaids will be&#xA;  the first to be substituted by automated systems, which will leave a&#xA;  sizable void in the economy and in people’s welfare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This personal conflict has drawn me to reconsider if personal robotics&#xA;  is the right professional objective. In the process, I have learned&#xA;  that unemployment is not an isolated consequence to personal robotics, but&#xA;  a common one to every technological revolution. Through history,&#xA;  people who lose their jobs due to a technological revolution have a&#xA;  hard time recovering from the change, being the following generation&#xA;  the one that adapts to the new economic dynamics and benefits from the&#xA;  technological advances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although personal robotic will improve people’s quality of life, my&#xA;  professional objective is deeply intertwined with my concern for&#xA;  low-income families, and pursuing the former without considering the&#xA;  later would be deceiving to myself. Consequently, no matter the role I&#xA;  play in the robotics industry, my professional objective will be&#xA;  strengthened if I complement it with a personal objective, the&#xA;  objective of retraining people to adjust and join into a new economic&#xA;  reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2811" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T18:14:30.337" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T18:14:30.337" Title="Does this essay demonstrate flow, clarity, and passion?" Tags="|essay|clarity|flow|atmosphere|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4496" CreationDate="2011-11-25T06:09:20.220" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that gender and middle names are a very big deal these days. Some of the biggest bestsellers have been written by females (with distinctly female names), and I doubt that there's much of a bias. Same goes for middle names - most book covers don't even mention them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose if you are writing a ridiculously sappy, romantic novel about angsty teenagers who sparkle, you may want to conceal your gender if you were male, but that would be more to save your own pride rather than get published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, I would say the key is good writing, not gender or name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T06:09:20.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4499" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-23T19:30:40.083" Score="17" ViewCount="2299" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylometry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/q/32529/14963&quot;&gt;at least one answer on this site&lt;/a&gt; suggest, the name &lt;em&gt;stylometry&lt;/em&gt; encompasses certain techniques to determine authorship of text.  Although stylometry itself appears to require a certain amount of expertise, I conjecture that an average reader of a piece of text could make an unscientific guess as to the text's author if the reader were familiar with other texts known to have the same author.  I refer here not only to &quot;famous&quot; texts (&quot;that sounds like Shakespeare&quot;) but also to much more mundane texts such as e-mail correspondence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there techniques known to enable an author to incorporate ideas of his or her choice in an English-language text while disguising the authorship of the text?  If so, what techniques exist?  Do these techniques work with the casual reader, the more technical processes of stylometry, or both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After posting this question, I found an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~greenie/hotpets_final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;interesting academic paper&lt;/a&gt; on this exact subject.  The paper does not indicate that any particular method of attack was used, as the participants in the study were not linguists.  I am more interested in what the authors call &lt;em&gt;obfuscation attacks&lt;/em&gt; than &lt;em&gt;imitation attacks&lt;/em&gt;, but answers pertaining to either are fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2904" OwnerDisplayName="Andrew" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T19:30:08.083" Title="Techniques to disguise authorship of text" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4499" CreationDate="2011-11-24T01:19:57.300" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the easiest way to obfuscate your writing style is to imitate someone else's writing style. Some people have a chameleon-like knack for imitating or even parodying the styles of different authors; they may or may not consciously employ any particular techniques to do so, but simply have a feel for the rhythm of the prose and an awareness of the characteristic word choices that the object of their emulation employs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the skill of the emulating author, the obfuscated/imitative text they produce may or may not stand up to the stylometric analyses mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~greenie/hotpets_final.pdf&quot;&gt;Brennan &amp;amp; Greenstadt's paper&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, all of the analysis tools used by B&amp;amp;G are freely available. Someone sufficiently determined to obfuscate their own writing could subject their prose to the same analyses performed by B&amp;amp;G, and practice changing those tendencies. They would perform the analyses on their successive efforts until they could produce text that was sufficiently obfuscated from the point of view of the analysis tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The best-known technique for disguising authorship from the casual reader is to be able to convincingly write in someone else's style. (Note that B&amp;amp;G had their test subjects attempt obfuscation &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; imitation to prevent their obfuscation efforts from simply being imitations!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you think authorship may, for some reason, be subjected to a more rigorous analysis, having an awareness of the stylometric techniques that might be employed may give you a head start in obfuscating authorship.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2910" OwnerDisplayName="Gnawme" LastActivityDate="2011-11-24T01:19:57.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4497" CreationDate="2011-11-25T09:09:26.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First impression:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sentences are too long winded. Comma, comma, comma. The worst one begins with &quot;Among this new wave&quot;. You can really use more than three sentences per paragraph. Break the sentences apart. That enhances clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't use the iceberg metaphor. First it's overused, second it is normally used to show negative things (&quot;The government is corrupt. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. They arrest innocent people ...&quot; - you know what I mean.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use the expression &quot;in a nutshell&quot;, you demonstrate clearly that the stuff you told before is not clear and concise. I'm not sure if you really want to do that here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stumbled on the two sentences beginning with &quot;I believe&quot; and &quot;My belief&quot;. I was thinking &quot;Haven't I read that a second before?&quot;. Maybe you can exchange one of these &quot;beliefs&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your passion to the topic is obvious. Or that you are exaggerating shamelessly. But I'm not sure you can do anything about that in such a short essay. It depends on the reader. If it is a grouch, he won't believe you. But that's a risk you have to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-11-25T18:29:06.083" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T18:29:06.083" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4502" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4503" CreationDate="2011-11-25T09:48:31.820" Score="6" ViewCount="1686" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently one rather famous author wrote a new book in English. Since I'm a fan of his writing and know that he's quite well recognized I thought that it would be great to translate it and publish in Russian (my native language). This has already been done for his other books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a rather good publishing house in the region where I live so I emailed the house and informed them about the book. Their reply surprised me - they said they knew about the book but the author would refuse to license the translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me (I don't have commercial publishing experience) this is strange - it seems a win-win for an author. He already finished all the hard work, he could just license the translation, the local publishing house would do all the rest and he'd get royalty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would an author refuse to license translation of his book to a foreign language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2908" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T15:10:18.003" Title="Why would an author not agree to license his book to a foreign language?" Tags="|translation|copyright|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4502" CreationDate="2011-11-25T12:22:20.010" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There ARE authors who don't want their work translated because they can't approve the work, or because they feel that the word choices of the translator wouldn't match the artistry of the original prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are also authors who have already sold the rights for translated works to their original publishers, and therefore cannot license someone else to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without more information on this case, it's hard to speculate further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T12:22:20.010" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4502" CreationDate="2011-11-25T13:08:28.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a little bit of conspiracy: Negotiation between the author and a publisher (translator) are in progress so the author does not want to jeopardise the desired agreement. Negotiating with more (possible) publishers (translators) can render the author untrustworthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No conspiracy, just the author is cautious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T13:08:28.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2425" CreationDate="2011-11-26T09:39:24.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have used NBOS's Astrosynthesis, and it bridges the gaps the OP spoke of when he mentioned Pro Fantasy's Fractal Terrains. The two actually work in conjunction; with Astrosynthesis allowing for the creation of entire universes — if you were willing to spend that much effort — and Fractal Terrains allowing for the creation of realistic worlds based on planet data generated in Astrosynthesis. Astrosynthesis also fits his bonus criteria of keeping it all organized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2914" LastActivityDate="2011-11-26T09:39:24.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4497" CreationDate="2011-11-27T05:38:02.267" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Evidently you have clear ideas about what you want the essay to accomplish, and a reasonably good understanding of what you are writing about.  Your revised essay probably reaches most of the goals you set.  However, it seems rather wordy to me.  If you trim away empty phrases, you will improve the essay's readability and at the same time make room for more examples or deeper thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have one professional objective: Push forward the personal   robotics market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your objective should be prefaced by &quot;To&quot;, I think.  Also, &quot;push forward&quot; is awkward.  Consider alternatives like: &quot;To advance the frontiers of the personal robotics market&quot;, &quot;To help mold the future of the personal robotics market&quot;, &quot;To bring the promises of personal robotics to useful fruition&quot;.  (Of course some of these also are&#xA;awkward, hackneyed, or perhaps not what you want to say.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the last few decades, robotics research has made considerable&#xA;    strides towards solving hard robotics problems such as navigating&#xA;    unknown environments, recognizing and manipulating objects, and&#xA;    using natural language to interact. These advances have resulted in&#xA;    some interesting robotic applications, ranging from autonomous&#xA;    vacuum cleaners and self-parking cars to personal software&#xA;    assistants. Yet, I believe these applications are the leading edge&#xA;    in a whole new wave of personal robotics applications to hit the&#xA;    marketplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strike out &quot;Over the last few decades&quot; as it's wordy and does nothing&#xA;for your essay.  Change &quot;towards&quot; to &quot;toward&quot; and &quot;manipulating&quot; to&#xA;&quot;handling&quot;.  (Reduced syllable count seems less verbose.)  Also, you&#xA;could change &quot;using natural language to interact&quot; to &quot;natural language&#xA;interaction&quot; if you change &quot;navigating&quot; &lt;em&gt;etc.&lt;/em&gt; to &quot;navigation&quot; &lt;em&gt;etc.&lt;/em&gt;.&#xA;Strike out &quot;some interesting robotic applications, ranging from&quot; and&#xA;the coordinating &quot;to&quot;.  Strike out &quot;Yet, I believe&quot; and/or rewrite&#xA;that last sentence; &lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;These inventions are just a hint of the&#xA;wave of personal robotics applications that will arrive in the decade&#xA;ahead.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My belief is that this new wave of applications promises to&#xA;    transform society in extreme new ways. Among this new wave,&#xA;    self-driving cars promise to permit a much faster, cheaper and safer&#xA;    transportation infrastructure, robotic nursing assistants promise to&#xA;    bring quality of life to a raising number of elder people, and&#xA;    user-friendly flexible robots promise to liberate us from the chores&#xA;    in the house. In principle, personal robotics promise to automize&#xA;    slavish and repetitive tasks and usher in a new age in our society,&#xA;    an age with less dependency on manual tasks and more on creative and&#xA;    stimulating ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drop &quot;My belief is that&quot;, and perhaps change &quot;promises to&quot; to &quot;will&quot;.&#xA;How can something be &quot;among&quot; a wave?  &quot;Promise to permit&quot; is clumsy or&#xA;ungrammatical.  &quot;Automize&quot; isn't a word.  Change &quot;raising&quot; to&#xA;&quot;rising&quot;, &quot;manual&quot; to &quot;menial&quot;, and &quot;the chores in the house&quot; to&#xA;&quot;household chores&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume you have all those &quot;promise&quot; phrases in there on purpose, and&#xA;that each of them means &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/promising&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;showing&#xA;promise&lt;/a&gt;, and likely to&#xA;develop in a desirable fashion&quot; rather than &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/promise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;oath, affirmation, or&#xA;vow&lt;/a&gt;.  The latter meaning would&#xA;demonstrate &quot;passion&quot;, the former much less so.  Anyway, I'd change&#xA;each &quot;promise to&quot; to &quot;will&quot;, change &quot;Among this new wave&quot; to &quot;In my&#xA;vision&quot;, and use semicolons in place of several commas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update 1:&lt;/em&gt; Except for its last clause, your concluding paragraph &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This vision is what really excites me about personal robotics. It is the opportunity to combine my fascination for robotics with real impact in people’s lives, it is the opportunity to advance such a transformative change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;can be made stronger by replacing several phrases by more-precise or more-pithy terms.  Let me first mention what I see as problems:  &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; are weak and overworked adjectives; &lt;em&gt;excites&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;fascination&lt;/em&gt; are too-informal in tone; &lt;em&gt;impact in&lt;/em&gt; probably is wrong; and the construction &quot;It is the opportunity&quot; (where &quot;It&quot; is &quot;This vision&quot;) falls down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having pointed out some problems, I now should offer some useful suggestions for improvement.  But as an an opinionated non-expert dabbler in writing, I find it much easier to point out problems than to fix them, and will merely say that perhaps you should write something to the effect that this vision has drawn you deeper into personal robotics work, and that in turn has shown you how personal robotics can have a real and positive effect on people’s lives, and you want to be involved in and help shape the field, and want an opportunity to advance such a transformative change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastEditorUserId="2619" LastEditDate="2011-11-29T07:54:58.567" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T07:54:58.567" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="210" CreationDate="2011-11-28T13:32:35.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A book I really like (and full of useful tips) is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1580650155&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How Not to Write a Screenplay: 101 Common Mistakes Most Screenwriters Make&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Denny Martin Flinn. He goes over examples of bad screenplay writing compared to bits from screenplays of some big films like Braveheart and Bladerunner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2927" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2011-11-29T00:20:54.197" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T00:20:54.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4474" CreationDate="2011-11-28T13:37:17.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would just put it in your works cited page. If the lyric is popular enough (&quot;Hit me, baby, one more time&quot;, for example), your reader will probably know where the lyric is from without even having to read the back of your essay. Otherwise, a simple mention will cover you from any angry Oasis lawyers :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2927" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T13:37:17.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3344" CreationDate="2011-11-28T16:49:45.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;###&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;--30--&lt;/code&gt; are/were used as industry-specific conventions to standardize and add quality controls to copy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;fin and various ornamental dingbats are used on the finished product, for the viewers help in recognizing the end of an article, book, section, chapter, film, etc. Again, certain conventions are established for each industry, and of course these evolve with time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2928" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2011-11-28T22:40:50.400" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T22:40:50.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4513" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-29T09:55:06.800" Score="3" ViewCount="651" Body="&lt;p&gt;Guide lines Q no. 4:&#xA;This is supposed to be the opening part, but certainly not the whole of the first chapter or page for that matter... I'm not exactly sure anyone would take 30 seconds to read that, and I'm told that's what it takes for a reader to decide on a writer they've never seen or heard of before. So, does it work? And if not, what guidelines do you propose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;‘The world is only just recovering but we continue to punish each other. Independent scientists from around the globe have been unwilling to&#xA;  comment while big names in private research could only give hints that help nothing in the current stream of rumors.&#xA;  Others completely refused to cooperate in&#xA;  what seems to be international governments trying to buy more time. In&#xA;  that regard, NASA has announced that a press conference is to be held&#xA;  hour fifteen-hundred today afternoon at the United Nations Head Quarters in New&#xA;  York, being the only official word we could get up until now, and at&#xA;  the same time reinforcing rumors that authorities so far played&#xA;  catch-up to hide.’&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It’s mumbling of which they have no clue,” Tana said, turning from the television to the control HUD projected on the nearest wall; no voice-command in hospitals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adam had been heeding the broadcast, hardly for the news. “Leave it,” Adam told his mother. He gritted his teeth when his body refused to let him adjust his pose; he let go. “Why is she on television?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Actually, many of your friends were asked for… certain jobs today.&#xA;  For Ellie,” she paused, looking at the television, “it looks like the TV’s river of reporters depleted!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She had tried to lighten up the atmosphere, when she failed, she tried again, “Oh-- Well... an' she came to see you before they called.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One thing specifically caught his thought. “Friends? Jobs?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Isn't she into jour...”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I know she's into journalism, but why is she reporting?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The explosion was big, hopefully it went unnoticed... The school was badly damaged, and they're trying to hide it; those not injured were given jobs as... &lt;em&gt;prodigy&lt;/em&gt; cases... The last thing they want is minors getting into the mix...”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oh, that... He paused and tilted his head; when he did talk, it didn't help that he appeared not to fully understand, and that rarely happened, “Badly, damaged?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Yes. We... You landed... It's Los Angeles.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“America? Wh- What the–?” he mumbled and tried to sit only for pain to&#xA;  shoot through his spine again. The next remark was a command, gentle in tone, but not a wish.&#xA;  “Don’t tell me they know. Please don’t.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You want what I think? You should rest. You had nothing to do with it.” She asserted, with a firm look as she adjusted his head on the pillow. “I think people have more pressing matters than a light pop on the moon and a couple of here-says that it was something educational. Politics got our back&#xA;  this time... People have other things to talk about and, apparently, move&#xA;  about,” his mother stopped and pointed at the television projection on&#xA;  the wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reporter was listening to something through her ear-piece. She seemed increasingly worried; although it was subtle, Adam noticed it. She kept shaking her index finger. She wasn’t &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; worried; she told more than what she voiced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;‘This’s just in: The PHFO has issued a worldwide alert that Atlantic and Pacific coastal areas should be evacuated within two kilo-meters off&#xA;  shore. Again; Atlantic and Pacific coastal areas should be evacuated&#xA;  within two kilo-meters off shore. No government has yet commented on this&#xA;  warning and it remains for public decision. And prayers. This is&#xA;  Elizabeth Wilson, WWN. Reporting live from The White House, Washington&#xA;  D.C..’&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“My god…”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;31 days ago...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Draft 1; Rev. 3 (4 suggestions taken by, the rest underway) Nov. 30, 2011 | 20:40 GMT+00&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Does editing the body bump up the question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T21:17:42.460" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T10:33:07.107" Title="Does this beginning hook the reader?" Tags="|fiction|science-fiction|openings|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2017-01-05T07:42:52.210" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-11-29T16:48:23.713" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3503" CreationDate="2011-11-29T10:52:53.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I understand what you're trying to do - you're trying to get the audience to go 'uh-oh, Jake is going to be surprised once he gets to the end of the story', when we're following Jake throughout the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of points from someone who is similarly struggling with writing (I.E. take any advice I give with a big lump of salt):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Don't feel like you have to be shackled to what Syd Fields says about screenwriting. The whole point of making a format is to provide a skeleton for your story. Your story may have more fat and muscle in a different area of the story than what others might do (this can work either brilliantly, or else will cause a BIG problem with your story). Work on what you feel is the right beat for the story. And remember that even once you're done, you only made a first draft - how it'll look later will probably be very different than what you have now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Any twists that you make should be in line with the story and where the protagonist is going to go in the story. I can't quite think of any examples that would parellel what you want to do (my first thought was the 'twist' of Harvey Dent becoming Two-Face in The Dark Knight, but then I realized that the main protagonist in that story is The Joker, who helps shape Harvey into becoming Two-Face), so it should be something that is not going to make the audience lost. If you're bringing in some new character to furnish the twist, for example, that is a good indication that your audience is not going to be able to follow you to where you want to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2927" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T10:52:53.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4513" CreationDate="2011-11-29T12:35:54.693" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two things immediately jump out at me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Granted that this is a very short excerpt, there isn't enough info or setting for me to understand where the characters are, in time or in place (not literally &amp;mdash; I get that they're in LA, but Adam acts surprised that they're in LA, so why would the character not know what city he's in?). There's something about the moon, but it's casual, so maybe this is fifty years in the future? or maybe not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Move the material in italics to dialogue. It can come from two characters who each only know part of the puzzle, comparing notes. Two reporters would work nicely. Or the reporter and a friend who's &quot;connected,&quot; and each of them getting more concerned as they start assembling the pieces and realize what the gaps are, and what they imply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you have a start, but there's not enough tension or suspense here yet. Drag it out a bit more so the evacuation notice is more of a punch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA 1) yes, the updated body gives a better sense of place and a little more of character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA 2) Your opening para in italics is narration. It's an information dump (infodump). You as the author are just dumping a load of backstory on the reader. You are &lt;i&gt;telling&lt;/i&gt; us. One of the most important tools in a writer's toolbox is &lt;i&gt;Show, Don't Tell.&lt;/i&gt; Show us two reporters coming into a newsroom and talking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Did you talk to your buddy at the White House?&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&quot;Nobody's talking. He hung up on me. He sounded terrified.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&quot;I can't get NASA to call me back either. But my sister-in-law works for the NYPD, and she sent me a text message. Three words: RUN TO MOM'S.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&quot;Where's Mom's?&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&quot;Indiana. Her mom, my mother-in-law. Who we both can't stand, so if she's telling me to go &lt;i&gt;there&lt;/i&gt;, something's serious.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on. Don't tell us that the White House isn't talking. Show us that someone tried to call the White House and the staffer, who does know what's going on but isn't allowed to share, won't talk to the reporter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-11-29T16:36:14.867" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T16:36:14.867" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4516" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-29T13:18:35.413" Score="3" ViewCount="620" Body="&lt;p&gt;Especially when you consider pro-blogging, or blogging with a definite aim and niche, what is the ideal word count to stick around for your average article, and how often is it a good compromise to blog, as to keep your audience coming for more but not overwhelm them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there days in a week better to publish posts, and is it really important to stick always to the same weekdays?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2875" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T17:57:14.030" Title="Ideal blog post size and frequency" Tags="|wordcount|blog|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4516" CreationDate="2011-11-29T14:49:23.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ideal frequency is every day. The ideal word count is as many words you need to make your point clear, but no word more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, you do not have to post every day, no, you do not have to stick to a special weekday. But keep in mind, if you want to be a pro, you should build up a backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the best day for publishing is, can only your audience say, but it really doesn't matter. The good thing with the internet is, that you can post when you have time to do it, and they can read it when they have time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a more detailed answer, reread justkt's comment to your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T14:49:23.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4516" CreationDate="2011-11-29T15:09:11.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there are any &quot;rules&quot; at all, they are domain dependent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/41/what-is-a-normal-length-for-a-chapter&quot;&gt;printed chapter lengths&lt;/a&gt;, counting words in blog is simple, isn't it? Just look at some blogs comparable to yours, and emulate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2938" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T15:09:11.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4516" CreationDate="2011-11-29T16:26:40.643" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I concur that you should post at least once a day, to keep your audience returning. How long each post should be is dependent on your audience and your content (and your willingness/time to write, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at the vast differences in posting frequency and length at &lt;a href=&quot;http://freethoughtblogs.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Freethought Blogs.&lt;/a&gt; Camels With Hammers frequently veers into tl;dr territory, PZ and Ed Brayton usually post many many short entries with additional links, and Greta Christina goes from two-photo posts to lengthy analyses to recipes. Each blog has its own audience (there's obviously a lot of overlap, but they're not identical), and each audience has its own preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you build an audience, ask them for feedback. Until then, write however much or little makes you feel comfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T16:26:40.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4447" CreationDate="2011-11-29T17:58:52.907" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what you might be looking for here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipstream_%28genre%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;slipstream&lt;/a&gt; fiction.  The term is quite modern, but is generally about moving away from a single universal perspective and rather writing from a more personal or foreign one.  Examples of this genre exist long before the term was coined, and might include books such as Walser's The Tanners, or O'Brien's The Third Policeman.  These stories may include multiple or varying realities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the course description of an MFA Slipstream Fiction course: the genre embodies concepts of &quot;a freewheeling approach to genre boundaries and conventions; and a sense that 'consensual' reality should not delimit a writer's vision.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2720" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T17:58:52.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4513" CreationDate="2011-11-29T21:18:10.463" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;So here's a question I'd like you to consider. You're trying to grip the reader. What, in this passage, do you expect/hope will manage to do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid I didn't find this opening to be very compelling. Sorry to welcome you with negative feedback, but I hope you'll find it helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This opening is mostly a whole lot of ominous foreboding - we're being punished, we're facing something, the government is hiding rumors; something's going on with Adam's friends and somebody might know something. My problem here is, you're trying to get us interested and tense, but you don't give us any &lt;em&gt;detail&lt;/em&gt; to elicit our interest and tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't know your characters. We don't know your world. We don't know how we're being punished, or who Adam's friends are, or what &amp;quot;jobs&amp;quot; they're getting, or who it is that Adam is afraid knows something. What we &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have is a whole bunch of lines saying &amp;quot;something important is going to happen.&amp;quot; That's a natural way to go, but for that to work, we need to have at least &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; idea of what's going to happen, or why it's important, or who it's important to. Otherwise, it's just hyperbole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Johnny had been receiving threats all week. He was terrified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't a bad opening, but see what happens when you just add in a detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every day of the past week, Johnny had found a new death threat delivered to his email inbox. It was creepy - the emails showed with a font that looked like cut-out letters from a newspaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Johnny had been receiving threats all week - threats hinting all too clearly that someone was out to make sure his father wasn't going to survive his surgery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Johnny had been receiving threats all week. He was terrified - who in their right minds would be devoting this kind of attention to a second-rate mechanic in the wrong part of town? He'd never been no trouble to anybody - what the hell did want from him? Anybody finds out somebody's gunning for Johnny, and Johnny's gonna find himself with no customers, not a one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these gives us a hook - something to interest us; something we want to see resolved. What kind of creep sends emails like that? Is Johnny's father going to be OK? How'd a guy like Johnny get into a jam like this? These are &lt;strong&gt;explicit questions&lt;/strong&gt;, they're great to get the reader hooked because &lt;strong&gt;once you've established a question, the reader wants to find out the answer.&lt;/strong&gt; The difficulty is that the questions in response to your opening are all of the &amp;quot;what is going on here?&amp;quot; variety, and those aren't interesting - they don't cause the reader to be eager to find out what happens; they mostly keep him confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Notice how each one of these details seems to lead to a very different story. The first one might focus on the weirdness of Johnny's stalker; the second one might be a story about protecting his father; the third about a simple person caught in an insane situation. Doing that is &lt;em&gt;great,&lt;/em&gt; because it helps us understand right away what kind of story this is, what the conflict is, what's at stake - and that's what keeps us interested. Your story doesn't really do that yet - I don't get any sense of what the central conflict and stakes might possibly be.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you can't necessarily get a whole lot of detail in right from the start; I'm not saying I'd stop reading after a page of this. But if it goes on in this vein - spending more focus on saying things are very bad than explaining &lt;em&gt;what's&lt;/em&gt; bad about them, &lt;em&gt;who's&lt;/em&gt; suffering from them, &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; people are responding to them, and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; I should care - I'd give it a pass after a few pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll also add you've got a fair share of awkward phrasing - if this is your current level of presentable prose, I suggest you should find someone who can help edit your work. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Ellie, it looks like the TV’s river of reporters depleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid I can't make heads or tales of this. It looks like this to Ellie, or to everybody? Is the river of reporters depleted, or does it only look like it has? What in this sentence is &amp;quot;the job&amp;quot;? And this should be &amp;quot;the TV's river of reporters &lt;em&gt;had been&lt;/em&gt; depleted,&amp;quot; or something similar, or else the river depleted something else. I won't run through the whole thing, but you've got a lot of poor phrasings like this, and that doesn't encourage me to read on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I'm sorry to give you negative feedback - I hope you find this helpful, and remember that everything I've said here is easily fix-able :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-11-30T14:51:39.433" CommentCount="7" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-11-29T21:18:10.463" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4516" CreationDate="2011-11-29T23:12:00.470" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frequency - as often as you need it. Quantity of words - whatever number you need to make your point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these are separate variables that are going to change depending on the topic, the objective you hope to reach with your post, and the audience. There are so many factors that come into play when it comes to starting up and maintaining a successful blog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More important questions you need to be asking yourself are things like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is my intended audience?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is my blog site about?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why would people come to my site in the first place?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I draw more people to my site?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many other important considerations as well, and they far outweight the frequency and volume of your posts. Content is king, so make that your focus, but you also need to have a game plan for how you intend to grow your audience. If you go in believing that all you have to do is build it and they will come, then you are setting yourself up for disappointment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T23:12:00.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4516" CreationDate="2011-11-30T11:28:00.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Length: Max. 300 words for me. No limit on images and the works.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Frequency: As a rule, post a blog &lt;em&gt;every time&lt;/em&gt; you feel strongly about something, and do it while it's hot. Readers love topicality and passionate writing.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If there are thumb rules, I would not want to know of any that distract me from saying what I want to when I want to (and all that I want to). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2011-11-30T11:28:00.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4513" CreationDate="2011-11-30T14:49:48.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what others have noted (as always, just my opinion, use it or ignore it):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It didn't grab me, either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting the television is good for an info dump, but I don't feel it works as an opening. I find it too factual and boring. I can see you've tried to introduce an air of mystery by withholding information (recovering from what, how have they been punished, why won't scientists talk, governments buying time for what purpose etc.), but I'm not sure that really works here. What would work is if there's conflict, emotion and character, but these are all lacking. Besides which, they're not overly concerned listening to the news report that you started with, so why should the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Tana said and went for the HUD on the nearest wall; no voice command in hospitals.&quot; Why the explanation of no voice command in hospitals? It's completely out of place. And why did she go to the HUD? To turn it off? And why the one on the nearest wall? Are there more than one? Also, be sure that HUD is a commonly known abbreviation for your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use a name, stick to it. You switch from &quot;Tana said&quot; to &quot;his mother&quot; without there being a conclusive link in the reader's mind that they're one in the same. This is a tactic some writers use to introduce more information about people, but it rarely works. You're better off letting your characters reveal this information, and stick to using Tana. For example, Adam could say, &quot;Just leave it, mother.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do the same with &quot;Elie&quot; and &quot;the same reporter&quot; - are they all one and the same? I suspect they are, but it's certainly not clear. Stick to using Elie. We already know she's a reporter, because she's reporting on TV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting is an issue: we only know its a hospital because you told us it was a hospital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, there is a complete lack of Point of View character, which makes the piece almost completely unemotional and flat. Perhaps that's what you were going for, but I suspect you wanted Adam to be the PoV character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-11-30T14:49:48.877" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-11-30T14:49:48.877" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4525" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4665" CreationDate="2011-11-30T19:28:30.607" Score="2" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually write explanatory nonfiction, but now I am interested in something more narrative--think Erik Larson or Rebecca Skloot, for example. I write clearly, and understand basic ideas about narrative elements like story arcs, scene setting, dialogue, etc. but there's a difference between understanding a concept and being able to apply it effectively to my writing. Where do you suggest I look to find the kinds of exercises or suggestions that help me move from conceptual understanding to skillful writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2942" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T20:49:47.503" Title="Where can I find exercises to help me develop fictional writing techniques useful in narrative nonfiction?" Tags="|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4527" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-01T00:57:57.177" Score="11" ViewCount="30490" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently learned of the concept of academic ghostwriting (see, e.g. this &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;) - by which I mean the situation where a student goes to another person, or perhaps a service, and pays them to complete an assignment for them. In the linked article, the writer (a claimed ghostwriter) says that he has written thousands of pages of essays for students, or more accurately, for the students' money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm entirely unfamiliar with this concept and type of work, and I'm surprised to learn that it seems to be common, at least to some extent. In the comments to the article, the claimed ghostwriter says that the act of ghostwriting is legal (although he makes no claims regarding ethics). So my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is academic ghostwriting illegal?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect this type of work to constitute fraud, or perhaps qualify as some sort of assumed copyright or something. What is the actual legal status of academic ghostwriting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2945" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2015-03-16T15:15:15.103" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T15:15:15.103" Title="Is Academic Ghostwriting legal?" Tags="|legal|copyright|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4527" CreationDate="2011-12-01T02:46:29.993" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's going to be difficult to give an absolute answer to any legal question since laws and their interpretation vary widely by jurisdiction.  Also, IANAL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, in general terms - are you looking for a way to see it as illegal to &lt;em&gt;sell&lt;/em&gt; the papers?  I can see &lt;em&gt;buying&lt;/em&gt; (and using) the essays being seen as fraud, as well as being against academic honesty policies, but I'm not sure I can see the selling as criminal.  The person who wrote the essay (or the mill that employs that person) holds the copyright, and they license the student to use the essay. It's my understanding that most essay mills say that they are writing to contract, but have no actual idea what the purchasers are doing with their product. Selling a piece of writing isn't illegal, and they can't be responsible for what the buyers do with the product post-sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, opinion time: Going after the essay mills for supplying essays makes as much sense to me as going after the drug supplying countries in Central America instead of addressing the demand in the United States.  It's easier to blame someone else: the evil essay mills or the nasty foreigners.  But the real problem is our precious darlings in the classrooms, and our addicted drug users on the streets.  If you deal with the demand, the supply will dry up. If you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; deal with the demand, all you're going to do is drive the suppliers further underground, and drive up the prices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T02:46:29.993" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4527" CreationDate="2011-12-01T03:30:14.900" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In response to your specific question, I would say that ghostwriting is NOT illegal. However, I would say that it IS unethical, unfair, cheating, and a violation of academic policies. We had a discussion on this topic on the meta site a short while back after someone had asked about how to lower his writing standards to make it seem more like he was a younger writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned there, I have two teenagers in high school, and each of them was required to sign an agreement that specifically addressed this and a number of other topics, such as plagiarism. This document was intended to be a social contract with the students to state that they understood these academic policies, while also stating clearly that the school has a zero tolerance policy against such activities. Furthermore, I was required to sign the document as well to indicate that I also had read and understood the policies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not too many years ago I went back to school to obtain my MBA, and I was required to read and sign a similar document that clearly stated that these types of activities would not be tolerated or accepted. While these examples are not legal documents stating that these activities were illegal, they are clearly stated policies. As such, they made it perfectly clear that such behavior was considered cheating and would not be tolerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone can justify something in their own minds if they really want to do it, but the bottom line is that there are policies and procedures that provide acceptable guidelines for performance and behavior. Anyone who uses a ghostwriter to create their writing assignments is in clear violation of these policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T03:30:14.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3503" CreationDate="2011-12-01T10:56:06.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An addition - there is actually one scene I thought of this morning that might be an example of what you're trying to do. In the film &quot;Get Shorty&quot;, Chili Palmer (John Tavolta) is trying to get out of the mob business by becoming a movie producer, working with B-movie director Harry Zimm (Gene Hackman). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the middle of the film, he's at LAX where there's a locker that has drug money (and some drugs) that's being watched by the Feds. Realizing that this is a setup, he makes it look like he opens the locker, but opens the one adjacent to it (complete with tote bag and a book, so that it looks like he's picking up the money and drugs). As he's being hustled off by the Feds, Ray Barboni (Dennis Farina) - the guy who Chili worked for, and who is after Chili for some money a client didn't pay - is seen walking off with a limo driver (I.E. twist number one - Chili is in trouble if Ray is now in town, but he doesn't know this yet). As Ray walks off, Roberto Escobar, a Columbian drug lord - the guy whose money and drugs are in the locker - is also seen walking along, wanting to get his money that Catlett (Delroy Lindo) - who invested $200,000 in Harry to be part of his films - left in the locker (I.E. twist number two - Catlett is now in trouble, and this will wind up affecting Harry and Ray). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole scene from start to finish is over in less than 5 minutes, but we get A) Chili's smarts at being able to outsmart Catlett and the Feds; B) the knowledge that Ray is now in town, and will soon be after Chili (even though he doesn't know it yet); and C) the knowledge that Catlett is in big trouble, and this will soon translate to trouble for Chili as well. It's a well-made scene, and worth watching, especially to show how you can add a new element to your story without the main character knowing what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2927" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T10:56:06.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4531" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-01T12:03:47.720" Score="2" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've tried to write without thinking, but that doesn't really worked that well. I need time to formulate my thoughts before I commit them to paper or screen. Since I'm not a native English speaker, my vocabulary is limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you come up with the right words while writing? Do you use provisional words and replace them later with words found in a dictionary or do you stop and look up that particular word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2916" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T15:30:27.130" Title="How do I formulate while writing?" Tags="|writers-block|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4531" CreationDate="2011-12-01T15:20:08.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While you're writing, I suggest you write using words you know, in the simplest language possible, and then deal with the issue of choosing the right word during your editing phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a very basic example, you could write: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She spoke with a low voice, &quot;I love you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, you could look up in a dictionary and realise the word you wanted is &quot;whispered&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe you prefer the description of &quot;spoke with a low voice&quot;, but regardless, leave it for editing. The reason for this is because if you stop and hunt for a word every time, you'll likely break your flow. Better to write and fix it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, I suggest you read as much as possible, and write down any and all words you come across that you like (and read their definitions) so you can start to internalise these words more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T15:20:08.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4531" CreationDate="2011-12-01T15:30:27.130" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Craig that you should write using the most common words that you are familiar with and feel comfortable using. Remember that you are working on the first draft, and it doesn't have to be perfect. I'll often just type in some running commentary to remind me that I need to come back and fill in more detail. For example, if I am having a difficult time describing the setting for a particular scene, I will simply write something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Come back and provide more detail on the setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually place a couple of extra empty lines before and affter this commentary so that it stands out more when I get ready to edit the first draft. In fact, I will go back through the first draft and look for things like that before I start editing, so I'm technically still working on the first draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main point is to find a way to keep yourself from getting too bogged down with details. Write your story through and then go back and improve as you edit. It might also help to have a general outline or timeline to help you keep your thoughts in order and to help keep you focused on where you are going and what you want to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T15:30:27.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4499" CreationDate="2011-12-01T19:30:08.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently heard someone else ask about something similar, but for a different purpose. This person is from England and had written a novel that had become quite popular in the UK. However, there were so many terms that are common in England that did not really transfer well for an American audience. As a result, the author hired an American editor to go through the entire book and make recommendations for changes that would Americanize the contents. Thanks to the notes and suggestions from the American editor, this author was able to release the same novel under a different title in the US and found similar success here. I actually read major portions of both books, and the differences were astounding, not only from a dialectic perspective, but also from a stylistic perspective. Having a &lt;em&gt;&quot;foreign&quot;&lt;/em&gt; editor helped this author change the style of the writing considerably!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another method is something I would describe as situational immersion. The author was writing in a different genre using characters complete foreign to the author's experiences. The author lived with the subjects for a year to learn their speech patterns, customs, and cultural influences. Then once the author started writing, the perspective of the main character took on a more personal slant than the author had used before. This was a direct result of writing from experience rather than writing from imagination. Because the author had a wider range of material from which to choose, it ended up changing the style in which the author was accustomed to writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The degree to which this can be accomplished really depends on the amount of effort that the author wants to apply. If you have a strong enough reason and justification for it, then you need to be willing to put forth the effort to make it work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T19:30:08.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4527" CreationDate="2011-12-03T06:53:40.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic ghostwriting is legal, but not ethical or in keeping with the standards or practices of most schools. That is easy to answer. What is harder is, is it ethical, legal or in keeping with the practices of schools to have an editor &quot;proof&quot; a paper, or &quot;tweak&quot; or make/suggest changes to the paper to make it better? At what point does &quot;editing&quot; become &quot;ghostwriting,&quot; and is reading a dissertation to ensure sources are properly cited, noted, referenced or that passages are used appropriately unethical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2953" LastActivityDate="2011-12-03T06:53:40.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4536" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-03T11:57:47.813" Score="4" ViewCount="596" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a speaker of English as a foreign language. I appreciate that English is a living language and that different regions in the world use English differently. I wanted to know how I can keep up with written English, style choices, popular sayings, words often used, etc. A dictionary seems to get outdated pretty soon. I'm also not sure if there really is an authoritative source, or if the development of the language is more grassroots and less structured. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &lt;em&gt;Is there some website you can recommend or some other way to keep up to date with current English?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is too broad, let it be limited to American English, because that seems to be what is mostly used on the Internet. Also, I'm mostly interested in creative writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2916" LastEditorUserId="2868" LastEditDate="2011-12-04T14:54:55.830" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T22:28:09.300" Title="How do I keep up with current written English language?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4536" CreationDate="2011-12-03T16:48:15.140" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to keep up with written English, read newspapers and magazines (preferably weekly, but also monthly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newspapers, meant to be daily, cover news, politics, opinions, business, human interest, tech, medicine, sports, and entertainment (among many other subjects). New terms can enter from any angle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magazines can either be weekly or monthly. Weekly magazines will be a little fresher with their use of slang; monthly magazines are usually more niche-oriented and will be heavier with jargon from a particular industry or hobby. If some phrase has reached a monthly magazine, it's more likely to be entrenched in the lexicon, since publication lead time is two to three months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most periodicals have websites where some or all of their content is reproduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Entertainment periodicals will have more creative writing than news outlets, but you can find creative writing in the opinion sections as well. Monthly magazines can have a fiction component.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just off the top of my head, I can suggest (note that this does not imply endorsement of content):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The New York Times&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Los Angeles Times&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Washington Post&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Chicago Tribune&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Entertainment Weekly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Newsweek&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The New Yorker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Atlantic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-03T16:48:15.140" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4536" CreationDate="2011-12-03T21:26:31.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read.&#xA;Read more.&#xA;Listen.&#xA;Listen more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Luckily, there is no one place to suggest as an answer. If there was- the language would be dying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-12-03T21:26:31.603" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4527" CreationDate="2011-12-03T21:32:49.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The act of writing is not illegal. &#xA;The use of this writing and foisting it on others as original when it is not is dishonest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of a man/woman who sells a gun. if they KNOWINGLY sell it to someone not qualified to own it or who states they want to harm someone else then there is an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know your work will be used to deceive someone else then if nothing more you are guilty of being a willing participant in that deception. So, is your intent to be deceptive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2478" LastActivityDate="2011-12-03T21:32:49.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4536" CreationDate="2011-12-04T14:17:19.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't look like you are on &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;english.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt; yet! In fact, you could very well have asked this question there for better response.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find forums such as these one of the best ways for 'Continuing Education', i.e., keeping up to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2011-12-04T14:17:19.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4543" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4544" CreationDate="2011-12-04T23:03:47.740" Score="0" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an Psych professor who likes to give essays instead of exams. His final exam is an essay that is supposed to encompass all we learned this semester. He gave us a checklist of what it should cover. The only problem is, I don't know where to start. The checkpoints could all easily be separate essays, and I don't know how to combine them in a thesis statement without just resorting to &quot;In this course, we learned...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you create a thesis statement and focus an essay that has an enormously large scope?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2959" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-12-05T13:40:06.283" LastActivityDate="2011-12-05T13:40:06.283" Title="How to focus a &quot;Final Exam Essay&quot;" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4543" CreationDate="2011-12-05T01:26:47.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing the course material or the checklist, my impulse is to say that you should look for a theme, or something which most or all of the points have in common. What do they all relate to? What ties them all together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing that, group the bullets. Maybe three of them are about Freud, four of them about various methods of treating mental diseases, two are items which have been reclassified within the DSM, and three are about what age certain diseases are expected to present. There are your essay sections, so write those first, and then see if those groups can be wrangled into a lengthy thesis statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-05T01:26:47.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4536" CreationDate="2011-12-05T04:29:04.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I enjoy reading Michael Quinion's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldwidewords.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;World Wide Words&lt;/a&gt; e-mail newsletter. Quinion works on the Oxford English Dictionary and has written a number of popular books on English besides. The newsletter ranges widely through the various dialects of English and often covers archaic, newly minted, and regional words. Often he tracks down the origin of an idiom, which he always documents authoritatively when possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't really imagine being interested in English (or writing in the language) without subscribing to World Wide Words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2011-12-05T04:29:04.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4547" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4555" CreationDate="2011-12-05T16:43:45.823" Score="3" ViewCount="328" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a lot of history on the web under my screen name, including my writing blog and various pieces of other work scattered about. I'd love to associate it firmly with the self-published ebook series I'm working on so that people will think to plug that into google as well as my real name -- there's a better chance of finding me that way. I considered using it as a pen name, but &quot;Yami Kuronue&quot; (or &quot;Yamiko Kuronue&quot;, which I've used sometimes when I wanted a more name-like screenname) a) is the wrong ethnicity and b) sounds a bit pretentious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how can I integrate my real name and my screen name? And is that even a good idea to begin with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T13:59:01.523" Title="How to associate my screenname with my books?" Tags="|self-publishing|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4547" CreationDate="2011-12-05T17:33:55.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different options you can consider, but only you can decide which one you are most comfortable with. The first would be to include your screen name in the description of the book(s). For example, you could include a statement that some of the content was originally published on your blog or other sites using the screen name of Yamikuronue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option would be to list the author's name as your own name, writing as Yamikuronue. For example, if your real name was Tom Jones, you would list the author as &quot;Tom Jones, writing as Yamikuronue&quot;. Along the same vein, you could just use your screen name as a pen name, leaving it spelled exactly the same. (After all, people will be searching by that name, and not some variation of it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to make your e-books available to the public, they have an author's interface that will allow you to list the author's name however you want it to appear on the book(s). If you choose to write some content under your own name and and other content under your screen/pen name, you can manage all from the same portal. (I'm sure other services provide the same capabilities, but KDP is the one with which I am more familiar.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there truly is a high probability that future readers will use your screen name when looking for information from/about you, then it would definitley behoove you to include it in same way when you get around to publishing your e-books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-12-05T17:33:55.563" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4549" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4557" CreationDate="2011-12-05T18:31:25.587" Score="22" ViewCount="9418" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know a good emacs configuration for creative writing? I'd be looking for the ability to write, edit, and export to libre office or word (so the less technical people get edit/view). I'm looking for something that would be appropriate for novels, not just short stories or blogging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2961" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-12-05T19:47:06.090" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T21:14:25.197" Title="emacs for creative writing" Tags="|editing|software|tools|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4550" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-06T04:14:59.913" Score="5" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short version:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;What is an equally informative, but more interesting alternative to typical academic-article-style scientific writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Longer version:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love writing, I do a lot of it – fiction and non-fiction. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amichaioneducation.com/2011/05/too-long-didnt-read-it-college-writing.html&quot;&gt;I strongly dislike&lt;/a&gt; academic writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my last year of college before I graduate with an undergraduate degree in physics. To graduate I have to pass a physics course called “Intermediate Lab.” I have no problem doing the physics experiments in lab, but the subsequent “lab report” that we're required to write, essentially an academic article, is torturous for me. I do not intend to go into academia and I'm not particularly interested in the experiments themselves (they're all fairly basic experiments, e.g.: non-linear pendulum, voltage divider, etc.). Having spoken to my professor, he invited me to “break away” from the  academic article style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as I am able to convey:&#xA;a) the setup of experiment performed,&#xA;b) the data collected from the experiment,&#xA;c) the physical theory behind the experiment,&#xA;d) an analysis of experimental error, and&#xA;e) ideas for future study,&#xA;I can write my lab report (almost) any way I want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you recommend any good writing, articles, methods, forms or styles that would help me write a lab-report in a style that would be compelling to read and would be enjoyable for me to write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not looking for an &lt;em&gt;easier&lt;/em&gt; alternative to the standard lab-report, I'm looking for a more engaging alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27" LastEditorUserId="27" LastEditDate="2011-12-06T04:27:39.640" LastActivityDate="2011-12-08T01:28:17.723" Title="Interesting and easier-to-read alternatives to the scientific academic article" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|science|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4550" CreationDate="2011-12-06T04:58:04.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joseph M. Williams's &lt;em&gt;Style&lt;/em&gt;. It's a book (in about 63 different editions), but there's a short version. It's about how to write so as to match the way readers read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T04:58:04.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4550" CreationDate="2011-12-06T06:43:54.433" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_nonfiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;creative nonfiction&lt;/a&gt;. This approach relies on facts like a journalist, but uses the literary techniques of a novelist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lee Gutkind has promoted this genre extensively through &lt;em&gt;Creative Nonfiction&lt;/em&gt; magazine and several books. You may be able to find some of them in your library. There's a book by Philip Gerard, also titled &lt;em&gt;Creative Nonfiction&lt;/em&gt;, that discusses several examples of this style of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlguuzwdq_Y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a video&lt;/a&gt; where Gutkind discusses how to convey factual information within a story framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T06:43:54.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4550" CreationDate="2011-12-06T11:57:47.157" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you have a very understanding prof - I'd take advantage of that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you could write a children's book about it - how could you simplify the experiment to a level that a child (teenager?) could perform at home, using household objects?  You could have a side-panel that explains how it was done in the lab, if that's needed for academic purposes.  Then explain the results in a way that a young person would understand, and give examples of the principle that they may have seen in their daily lives.  Then publish  the writing at Christmas time, and give me half of the proceeds!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't like that one?  Maybe an allegory - did you ever watch the WKRP episode where Venus explains the atom to his girlfriend's (thirty-year old) son using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhbqIJZ8wCM&quot;&gt;a story about gangs&lt;/a&gt;? I don't know enough about physics to know if it would work, but it'd be cool if it did!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you're more business-oriented.  You could write a presentation in which you explain the ideas to a panel of business-folk who need to understand the principle in order to make the right decision about the area of technology to invest in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you an artist?  A graphic approach would be cool. A lyricist?  Write a song!  Like sci.fi.? Write a story set in the future, where the rules of physics you're 'discovering' are being bent, somehow, by some mysterious force, and the characters are fighting to understand what's happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the possibilities are extensive, but to some extent, they're going to depend on your own interests and talents, so I'm not sure how much more help other people can be.  You don't want to be a physicist, so... what DO you want to do?  Take advantage of this opportunity to start doing whatever it is a little early!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T11:57:47.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4550" CreationDate="2011-12-06T12:36:09.303" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our college days, my best friend used to write his reports as diplomatic communiqu&amp;eacute;s from Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan. Fortunately, the teacher was also a Trekkie, and appreciated the humor. YMMV on that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T12:36:09.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4547" CreationDate="2011-12-06T13:59:01.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are finding your pen name inconvenient for the reasons you mention (ethnicity, etc.) then perhaps the best option would be not to point people to your name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that your items are on your writing blog and &quot;scattered about&quot; — so, save your readers the trouble of hunting.  If you don't already have one, put together a page or sidebar on your blog linking to where your other writing is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can just give the link to your blog as the one-stop shop to find more of your writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2818" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T13:59:01.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4549" CreationDate="2011-12-06T19:42:47.393" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal setup uses Vim, but a large part of the stack would be applicable to any sufficiently advanced text editor. (Note: &quot;sufficiently advanced text editors&quot; are basically just emacs and Vim.) I don't know of any existing package that does all of this, but writing this for myself was actually pretty easy since it's just a matter of stitching together the existing tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Composing&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I compose all of my stories using Markdown markup (the same markup that StackExchange uses on all of its sites). This allows me to do basic formatting (italics, underlining, outlining) with simple text decorations. For ordinary writing purposes, more complicated formatting is almost never necessary and is almost always a distraction. There already exist packages for both Vim and Emacs to facilitate syntax highlighting and other shortcuts for composing text in Markdown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write with Vim's spell-checker turned on. My &lt;code&gt;.vimrc&lt;/code&gt; (&lt;code&gt;.emacsrc&lt;/code&gt; for you) automatically looks for a file called &lt;code&gt;.custom.add&lt;/code&gt; in the same folder as the file, and includes it as a custom dictionary. This allows me to add character names, place names, invented words, etc. to the custom dictionary for every story. When I'm done, the &lt;code&gt;.custom.add&lt;/code&gt; file then serves as a convenient list of characters and other non-English words that appear in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have mapped a keystroke to invoke &lt;code&gt;dict&lt;/code&gt;, allowing me to look words up in a dictionary with a single button, either to search for synonyms or check on my spelling. I've mapped other keystrokes to exporting to any of the formats discussed below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Exporting&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/&quot;&gt;pandoc&lt;/a&gt; for converting from Markdown into any of the myriad formats that pandoc supports. In my case, I'm interested in LaTeX (which I later convert into PDF), HTML, and RTF. Getting good LaTeX and RTF output requires that you write a custom output template, but this is actually pretty trivial, and the pandoc documentation covers this in plenty of detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://mcdemarco.net/sffms/&quot;&gt;sffms LaTeX package&lt;/a&gt; for typesetting the LaTeX/PDF output. Sffms makes it dead-simple to create manuscripts that fit standard manuscript format with no effort at all. I prefer to send PDFs to people unless they've specified otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RTF can be read natively by every existing word-processing program, so I rarely find the need to convert it to something else. If I do, I open up the RTF file in Word and then save it in Word format, which is usually the only other thing that people ask for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T19:42:47.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4558" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4559" CreationDate="2011-12-06T23:26:28.890" Score="4" ViewCount="30368" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a sentence that reads as follows,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This study shows that performance of method X and method Y are almost identical in ranking task and method X &lt;strong&gt;actually&lt;/strong&gt; outperforms method Y in user recommendation task by about 30%.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comment I received from the reviewer is the word &quot;actually&quot; is casual, so I have the following alternative in mind&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;remove the word actually&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and method X &lt;strong&gt;in fact&lt;/strong&gt; outperforms...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;in fact&lt;/strong&gt;, method X outperforms...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;indeed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't like option 1 because I do want to emphasize the fact it does &quot;actually&quot; outperform, 2 and 3 is ok for me but I am bit concern if the sentence becomes verbose. No. 4 I think is casual too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which solution would you use and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2970" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T21:57:56.813" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:57:56.813" Title="Replacing actually with a more formal alternative" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-09-30T15:12:47.127" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4558" CreationDate="2011-12-07T00:43:36.617" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this situation, I would read each term differently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;actually&lt;/strong&gt; indicates disconfirmation of a prediction&#xA;(either the author's or the imagined reader's),&#xA;or perhaps the author's surprise at the &lt;em&gt;general nature&lt;/em&gt; of the result&#xA;(as if the author hadn't even considered the possibility).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;indeed&lt;/strong&gt; indicates confirmation of a prediction&#xA;(or at least a possibility)&#xA;already explicitly expressed by the author.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;in fact&lt;/strong&gt; could indicate either surprise or confirmation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lack of any of these terms makes a bare statement, without reference to predictions or expectations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T00:43:36.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4558" CreationDate="2011-12-07T00:50:00.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think 'actually' is particularly casual, and I agree with Dale Emery that the other words have different meanings.  I'd stick with 'actually', myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T00:50:00.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4558" CreationDate="2011-12-07T06:01:35.500" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The intention of the reviewer seems to be to avoid words that may reflect personal opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you break it into two sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;This study shows that performance of method X and method Y are almost identical in ranking task.&amp;quot;&amp;lt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Furthermore, method X outperforms method Y in user recommendation task by about 30%.&amp;quot;&amp;lt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, you are not including your interpretation/ opinion in an implied way, as is the case with saying &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt;. Note that the implication &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; is not part of the findings of the study as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T06:01:35.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4558" CreationDate="2011-12-07T07:16:48.090" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since this appears to be a sentence from a scientific paper, I would think the reviewer's problem is not actually with the choice of word, but with lapsing from cold academic style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In scientific papers the author is expected to stay detached from the results. This is an utter fiction, of course, as the whole point of publishing a paper is to boast in your success; but this is expected to be masked with an appearance of sober objectivity. The world &quot;actually&quot; here betrays emotions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I second Kris's suggestion: it allows you to emphasize the result you are interested in, in a subtle way that would be acceptable in a scientific context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2938" LastEditorUserId="2938" LastEditDate="2011-12-07T13:35:41.253" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T13:35:41.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4563" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4610" CreationDate="2011-12-07T12:32:39.397" Score="3" ViewCount="2222" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am poet and a blogger, and was writing a poem today for my blog. It went something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;So, are you missing me?&#xA;Missing me so much that you crave,&#xA;crave to meet me right now...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody know what this form of poetry is called, where a part of the present line is repeated in the next line each time? I've never read any poem of this type previously, so I am unaware of what this poem is called.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2971" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T19:58:56.900" Title="What is this form of poetry called?" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4564" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-07T12:38:20.853" Score="1" ViewCount="80" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4567/is-it-ok-to-begin-an-essay-report-with-a-quote&quot;&gt;Is it ok to begin an essay/report with a quote?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing an essay on project management within IT and in my introduction I will give a brief description of project management, to begin my essay I was looking at using one of these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) Project management is &quot;A unique set of co-ordinated activities, with definite starting and finishing points, undertaken by an individual or organisation to meet specific objectives within a defined schedule of cost and performance parameters&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) &quot;Almost by definition, innovation relies on project management&quot; (Wheatley 2004)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would either (#1 vs #2) of these quotes be an appropriate way to start an essay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2972" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T13:34:09.617" Title="Is it ok to begin an essay/report with a quote?" Tags="|essay|quotes|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2011-12-08T13:22:27.693" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4567" CreationDate="2011-12-07T13:34:09.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I kind of like the idea of starting with #2, but italicized and as its own paragraph &amp;mdash; almost like an epigram leading off your essay. In fact, if you can get two or three of these  &lt;em&gt;short&lt;/em&gt; pithy quotes and set up each on its own line, before you begin your intro, that would be a rather intriguing start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T13:34:09.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4563" CreationDate="2011-12-07T13:40:35.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's sort of an anti-&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enjambment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;enjambment&lt;/a&gt;. I have no idea if it has a formal name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T13:40:35.503" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4569" CreationDate="2011-12-07T11:31:37.900" Score="3" ViewCount="70048" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing an essay on &lt;strong&gt;project management&lt;/strong&gt; within IT and in my introduction I will give a brief description of project management, to being my essay I was looking at using one of these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Project management is 'A unique set of co-ordinated activities, with definite starting and finishing points, undertaken by an individual&#xA;  or organisation to meet specific objectives within a defined schedule of cost and performance parameters'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Almost by definition, innovation relies on project management (Wheatley 2004)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would either (#1 vs #2) of these quotes be an appropriate way to start an essay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2972" OwnerDisplayName="Darren Burgess" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T03:54:10.467" Title="Is it ok to begin an essay/report with a quote?" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4567" CreationDate="2011-12-07T11:38:45.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, I suppose, especially, the second quote. By the way, you did not attribute the first quote to anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" OwnerDisplayName="Kris" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T11:41:33.480" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4567" CreationDate="2011-12-07T12:11:59.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are pros and cons to starting off with something attributed to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can lead the audience to expect something derivative so you really have to work to demonstrate why your ideas are either supported by the quote or can refute it - depending on your aims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also use quotes to carefully point out the &lt;strong&gt;main idea&lt;/strong&gt; of essay/report for the reader or to make a good &lt;em&gt;statement&lt;/em&gt; right from the beginning to make your essay &lt;strong&gt;interesting&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;relevant&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not provide you with some examples but feel free to google it.&#xA;and also check out some essay writing tips like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grammarbook.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://essaydragon.com/blog/essay-writing-tips&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2978" OwnerDisplayName="Rory Alsop" LastEditorUserId="26396" LastEditDate="2017-08-28T03:54:10.467" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T03:54:10.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4563" CreationDate="2011-12-07T16:13:07.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know that there is any formal name or style associated with this. One of the unique things about poetry is that it can ultimately be whatever the author wants it to be, and it can take on whatever shape the author wants as well. There was a point in time where people tried to categorize poetry according to meter or rhyming patterns, but that doesn't seem to be the case so much any more. For the most part, I would suggest just writing your poetry and leaving the classification to your readers! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T16:13:07.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4567" CreationDate="2011-12-07T16:38:23.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The opening words of an essay should immediately enmesh the reader in your wiles.  Purpose-written paragraphs have broader latitude to do so than have found quotations.  To start with a quote is not wrong, but you may do better, as onomatomaniak suggested, to &quot;think of an engaging first sentence that makes the reader think you have something interesting to say.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from limiting range of expression, starting with a quote requires attribution (crediting the source of the quote) which may cause the reader to look aside, to a footnote or a bibliography, during that important first moment with your essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure great essays can be started with quotations, because there are so many great quotes to be found, and I hope someone will present examples.  But you often have more freedom of expression and can get to the point more quickly without one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T16:38:23.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4563" CreationDate="2011-12-07T17:01:17.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that this is a hybrid form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/495734/refrain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;refrain&lt;/a&gt;, which is a &quot;phrase, line, or group of lines repeated at intervals throughout a poem, generally at the end of the stanza&quot;. The usage you demonstrate isn't your typical refrain, since your example repeats a phrase from the previous sentence, and does not repeat it again. A repetend, which is a type of refrain, may be a better match, but again, it's not exactly the same thing, since a repetend is an irregular repetition of the same word or phrase throughout the poem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T17:01:17.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-07T09:56:13.517" Score="1" ViewCount="4504" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering the sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'd like to do ... in such a way that ... is achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this sound wordy? If so, is there a way to streamline it?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="artistoex" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T18:02:27.720" Title="Are there alternatives to 'in such a way'?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2011-12-08T13:27:01.900" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4573" CreationDate="2011-12-07T10:02:22.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you can use &quot;such that&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to do addition on the calculator in such a way that the addition function is achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to do addition on the calculator such that the addition function is achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2927" OwnerDisplayName="Barry Hammer" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T10:02:22.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4573" CreationDate="2011-12-07T10:04:59.750" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;So&quot; should do? &quot;I'd like to do ..., so (that) ... is achieved.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" OwnerDisplayName="Kris" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T10:04:59.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4573" CreationDate="2011-12-07T15:03:41.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can directly substitute it with &quot;in a manner that&quot;. Not much shorter, granted, but if you want to avoid repetition it may be of use to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'd like to write this sentence &lt;strong&gt;in a manner that&lt;/strong&gt; highlights my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Mark S. Everitt" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T15:03:41.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4577" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-07T19:55:05.477" Score="1" ViewCount="8869" Body="&lt;p&gt;When discussing books in a formal essay, is it more appropriate to use &quot;the reader&quot; or &quot;the readers&quot;?  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like a true anthropologist, Bill Bryson takes [&lt;strong&gt;readers&lt;/strong&gt; / &lt;strong&gt;the reader&lt;/strong&gt;] on a highly informational journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Janice Dutton" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2011-12-08T17:23:19.767" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T16:15:16.567" Title="Using &quot;the reader&quot; or &quot;the readers&quot;" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4577" CreationDate="2011-12-07T20:16:34.713" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case, you're using &lt;strong&gt;Generic&lt;/strong&gt; noun phrases. Either one works -- in fact, you could say &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;a&lt;/strong&gt; reader&lt;/em&gt; just as easily here -- but there are some subtle differences among them that you might want to consider. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Definite&lt;/strong&gt; Generic&lt;/em&gt; refers to the &lt;strong&gt;Prototype&lt;/strong&gt; of a species, roughly the image we associate with &lt;em&gt;reader&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;em&gt;The reader&lt;/em&gt;, as a prototype, has all the properties of anyone we would call a reader, except that they doesn't exist in an individual physical sense, like all real readers do. This is a very abstract concept, and its use signals that the speaker is theorizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The reader enjoys it&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;means the speaker believes that &lt;em&gt;enjoying it&lt;/em&gt;, in the relevant context, is a characteristic property of readers, that we should expect this to be true of any reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Plural&lt;/strong&gt; Generic&lt;/em&gt; refers to the &lt;strong&gt;Norm&lt;/strong&gt; of a species over its individuals, as perceived, of course, by the speaker, who is unlikely to have conducted reader surveys, so the &quot;statistics&quot; here are very vague and impressional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Readers enjoy it&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;means the speaker believes that, on the average, any reader is likely to &lt;em&gt;enjoy it&lt;/em&gt;. This doesn't mean all readers will, though that's close. This is potentially a less abstract concept, since its use implies a generalization based on experience of several individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are very similar, and it may not make much difference for your purposes. More discussion &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/000001.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22907" OwnerDisplayName="John M Lawler" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T20:16:34.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2786" CreationDate="2011-12-07T21:35:34.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There really isn't a way to &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; your characters likeable.  It all depends on your character's natural finesse.  however, if you really want your character to be likeable, make him or her &lt;em&gt;REAL&lt;/em&gt;. if people can identify with the character because of their realistic attributes, then they tend to like the character better.  At least, that is what I have found when writing. REAL = LIKEABLE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2975" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T21:35:34.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4580" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4584" CreationDate="2011-12-07T23:43:52.767" Score="3" ViewCount="685" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to find out if a certain phrase is considered a cliché?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an online resource, a specialized dictionary-like lookup?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found these so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.westegg.com/cliche/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cliché Finder&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moviecliches.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Movie Clichés&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="1415" LastEditDate="2011-12-07T23:52:25.447" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T20:33:33.040" Title="How to discover clichés" Tags="|style|dictionary|cliches|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4550" CreationDate="2011-12-08T01:28:17.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should simply try writing the lab report using active voice, simple words, and clear prose. Make Strunk &amp;amp; White proud. Even if you work within the typical headings and content requirements of a lab report, this would still represent a departure from the norm. As an added benefit, other scientists might see the advantages of clear prose, too. I think they would be less likely to notice if your paper was a radical departure from their accustomed format (notwithstanding the occasional Trekkie, I suppose :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, if you'd like to think about how scientific papers are organized, and different ways the traditional paper might be organized, Sir Peter Medawar (Nobel Prize winning immunologist) wrote a wonderful essay called &quot;The Scientific Paper is a Fraud.&quot; I make all my students read it. You can find it easily via Google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2942" LastActivityDate="2011-12-08T01:28:17.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4577" CreationDate="2011-12-08T02:53:29.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds most fluid as &quot;readers&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2976" LastActivityDate="2011-12-08T02:53:29.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4558" CreationDate="2011-12-08T03:39:08.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go full-bore on the emphasis and make the distinction clear. For example,&#xA;&quot;This study shows that performance of method X and method Y are almost identical in ranking task.  However, they differ greatly in that method X outperforms method Y in user recommendation task by about 30%.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2976" LastActivityDate="2011-12-08T03:39:08.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4580" CreationDate="2011-12-08T04:49:48.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClicheStorm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TvTropes&lt;/a&gt; is a good place to find them, if you don't mind some &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropesOfLegend&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;investment&lt;/a&gt; of time. Alternatively, a site specific search may give you additional insight: TvTropes loves to abuse cliches and puns, and if a quick google for 'site:tvtropes.org phrase here' showed a whole bunch of results, the chances are fairly good that this is a cliche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has a very limited list: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Clich%C3%A9s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Clich%C3%A9s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as an online cliche dictionary/thesarus, I don't know of any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the best way would be to use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/ngrams/info&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Ngrams viewer&lt;/a&gt;, which lets you track the usage of given phrases or words through Google's vast collection of scanned books. What it does is give you a percentage of the total usage of that phrase versus usage of all phrases of that word length in any year Google has data. The date ranges go back to the 1400's or so. You could compare a phrase to multiple other phrases and determine if it appears significantly more than other phrases with the same meaning and probably guess that it is a phrase, but this wouldn't always hold true. For instance, 'it was raining that night' far outpaces 'it was a dark and stormy night' in total usage, but 'it was a dark and stormy night' is widely recognized as a cliche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is and isn't a cliche is pretty subjective, so I don't think there is any kind of definite answer. Certain genres may have unique cliches, eg. Science fiction would have differing cliches (aliens invade the Earth) versus romance (Romeo and Juliet plot).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you could provide an example case? If you wanted to avoid cliched phrases in your writing to appear more professional, a good editor should be able to assist you in this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2977" LastEditorUserId="2977" LastEditDate="2011-12-09T03:07:20.557" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T03:07:20.557" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4577" CreationDate="2011-12-08T10:23:03.123" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with John M Lawler. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular case, I think it definitely is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like a true anthropologist, Bill Bryson takes &lt;em&gt;the reader&lt;/em&gt; on a highly informational journey...&amp;lt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The reader&lt;/em&gt; is a 'role' corresponding to 'the writer' (Bill Bryson). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastEditorUserId="2868" LastEditDate="2011-12-09T03:08:38.877" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T03:08:38.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4549" CreationDate="2011-12-09T04:52:53.370" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to work within emacs, I would consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/&quot;&gt;org-mode&lt;/a&gt;; it's what I'm currently using for writing projects (amongst other things).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First and foremost, it's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/manual/Outlines.html#Outlines&quot;&gt;outliner&lt;/a&gt;, with facilities for structuring your document(s) hierarchically. If you want to plan a story out into acts, acts into sequences, sequences into scenes, maybe scenes into beats...structuring it hierarchically in an outliner is perfect. If you don't want to impose much structure, you don't have to -- use as little or as much as you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It supports basic &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/manual/Emphasis-and-monospace.html#Emphasis-and-monospace&quot;&gt;markup&lt;/a&gt;. It supports &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/manual/Hyperlinks.html#Hyperlinks&quot;&gt;hyperlinks&lt;/a&gt; within your document, between your &lt;code&gt;org&lt;/code&gt; documents (kind of like your own little private wiki), and to other types of documents or web pages or what-have-you. And, it supports &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/manual/Exporting.html#Exporting&quot;&gt;exporting&lt;/a&gt; to a variety of formats (including HTML, LaTeX/PDF, and cleaned up ascii-text).  It's a very deep, powerful program written within emacs, and creative writing is one of many things you can do with it. A version of it comes with modern emacs distributions, but I recommend downloading and using the most current version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many modes that come with a modern emacs distribution that may help as well. I would be sure to enable &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/FlySpell&quot;&gt;flyspell-mode&lt;/a&gt; for spell checking as you compose, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/VisualLineMode&quot;&gt;visual-line-mode&lt;/a&gt; for word wrapping to the editor window if you don't want to insert hard newlines, possibly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/LineNumbers&quot;&gt;linum-mode&lt;/a&gt; for displaying a running count of line numbers in the left-hand margin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally like visualizing my whitespace glyphs (tabs and newlines in particular) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/WhiteSpace&quot;&gt;whitespace-mode&lt;/a&gt; can be configured to display these things subtly instead of gaudily. I would recommend against visualizing the &quot;space&quot; character...with a monospaced font, it should be pretty obvious that all the places that are not actual ascii characters, tabs or newlines are in fact space characters. The desire to do this may come from the fact that I'm a programmer using emacs first, and a semi-aspiring writer using emacs second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use google and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emacswiki.org/&quot;&gt;emacswiki&lt;/a&gt; for learning about all things emacs, and the tutorials on the org-mode website for org mode.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/user/rpdillon&quot;&gt;hack emacs&lt;/a&gt; series by rpdillon has a number of episodes on org-mode which I found to be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2980" LastEditorUserId="8003" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T21:14:25.197" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T21:14:25.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4587" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4591" CreationDate="2011-12-09T06:32:46.777" Score="-2" ViewCount="301" Body="&lt;p&gt;It comes to me when a graduate school application form asks me&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;why do you think XX university is an intellectual fit for you&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I write about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2981" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T11:45:32.277" Title="Write about why XX is an intellectual fit for you" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-12-09T14:17:00.810" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4588" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4589" CreationDate="2011-12-09T06:39:48.283" Score="-1" ViewCount="1146" Body="&lt;p&gt;A graduate school application form asks me to write about my academic plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I can think of is only the course arrangement in graduate study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So am I missing something ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2981" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T09:48:46.970" Title="Write about academic plans" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-05-02T18:21:13.840" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4588" CreationDate="2011-12-09T09:48:46.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are asking you about what are you planning to work on graduate study,especially your thesis.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;What I can think of is only the course arrangement in graduate study.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know your course arrangement, you should know your interests in that school. If you have a specific thesis in your mind you can write about it. Otherwise list your interests and say you would like to work on them. Control that your interests matches with their offerings. What they are doing is actually helping you to understand if you and that school is a match. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets say you are interested in image processing and pattern recognition. List which courses you would like to take for this purpose. List labs, projects and professors you may work with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do your homework about school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2865" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T09:48:46.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4587" CreationDate="2011-12-09T11:45:32.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is similar to your other question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must do the homework about the university. Investigate what they are known for. Are they a leader in a particular field? Do the professors publish books which are known outside academic circles? Are the professors themselves notable? Who are some well-known alumni, and what are their contributions to their fields or industries? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you have to figure out what your strengths are. Are you good in languages? Philosophy? Music? Math? Science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Match up the two. Write about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T11:45:32.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4502" CreationDate="2011-12-09T15:10:18.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of thoughts in line with previous answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideas are hard enough to translate from one language to another even without trying to preserve wording, tone, rhythm, etc.  To a certain extent, each language (and those speaking it) encompasses a unique world view. For example, the English word, &quot;computer&quot; gives the idea of something that calculates a result, but the French word, (ordinateur) has connotations of putting things in order - a very different meaning.  Idioms, cultural references, and humor (often critical to the feel of a work) are very hard to translate and are often without effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to have fun some time, go to the book of Genesis in the bible and find one of the more esoteric passages like the one about dividing the waters below from the waters above and look it up in several different bibles.  Some of the translations/interpretations are almost unrecognizable as having come from the same source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translating The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy into another language (although it has undoubtedly been done) would be a complete nightmare.  Translating it into a film certainly was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wording is determined by the world view and depth of understanding of the translator and sometimes by ulterior motives as well.  These can never be identical to those of the original author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think editors can be challenging, translators, by the very nature of their task, are an order or two of magnitude beyond that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T15:10:18.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4558" CreationDate="2011-12-09T18:39:03.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This study shows that performance of method X and method Y are almost identical in ranking task while method X significantly outperforms method Y in user recommendation task by about 30%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Significantly&quot; adds a bit of weight to the result and should work as long as you're not directly involved with statistics where it's more precise meaning could cause the reader to ask, &quot;significant at what probability level?&quot;  &quot;While&quot; instead of &quot;and&quot; serves to subtly differentiate the two results instead of lumping them together with &quot;and&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T18:39:03.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4563" CreationDate="2011-12-09T21:08:46.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This looks like an example of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Haiku&lt;/a&gt; poetry.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though in the West, the 5-7-5 pattern of syllables is more strictly observed, even masters of the form do not always adhere to this exact restriction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could also be considered a Haiku with a nod to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.terramedia.co.uk/fisherscircle/poetry_handbook_verseforms.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Common English Hymn Metres&lt;/a&gt; which follow an 8-6-8-6 syllable rhythm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the repetition; though it is uncommon in Haiku, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tempslibres.org/tl/en/textes/essai05.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;there are some&lt;/a&gt; that welcome the technique into the tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice the syllables:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;6 - So, are you missing me?&#xA;8 - Missing me so much that you crave,&#xA;6 - crave to meet me right now...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of 5-7-5 Haiku:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;5 - Whitecaps on the bay:&#xA;7 - A broken signboard banging&#xA;5 - In the April wind.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;~ Richard Wright (collected in Haiku: This Other World, Arcade Publishing, 1998)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please recall the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is this form of poetry called?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Haiku&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2951" LastEditorUserId="2951" LastEditDate="2015-07-17T05:31:11.153" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T05:31:11.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2786" CreationDate="2011-12-09T23:33:49.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Likeable characters have a flaw of some kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, give them a super human ability.  Not necessarily being faster than a speeding bullet, but make them amazing programmers (Zuckberberg - Social Network) or amazing Poker Players (Mike McDermot in Rounders).  Give them an ability that the average person probably doesn't have or perhaps does have but isn't amazing at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flaw is extremely important as it makes them relatable since no one views themself as flawless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T23:33:49.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3503" CreationDate="2011-12-09T23:36:22.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your midpoint should be the false victory of the false defeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The true victory/defeat occurs at the end of the screenplay, so the false one should occur in the middle, around page 50-55.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in a love story it's when they finally get together, which then sets up the end of the second act where they typically break up, or find something very wrong with each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a story I worked on, the mid point involved the hero achieving his revenge - only to realize that he killed the wrong person (end of act two).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T23:36:22.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3296" CreationDate="2011-12-09T23:41:29.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Screenplays are heavily structured.  Structure is almost everything within a screenplay.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tarantino and some others are the exception to the rule so I'd avoid writing like them until you get your foot in the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most stories, translated into a &quot;script&quot; need to be structured in the three act structure where you follow a set of story beats and keep your script within 120 pages.  If you're a nobody, keep your script within 100 pages.  Less is more when you're a nobody, as far as page count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T23:41:29.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1685" CreationDate="2011-12-09T23:47:29.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do not need an agent.  I just optioned a screenplay with no agent.  I paid a lawyer to look over the agreement (it was 10 pages) to make sure I wasn't given away too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What helps, is to have a producer, or a wanna be producer who believes in you or who believes in your writing.  Writers are typically introverted, and we find it quite difficult to sell our ideas or sell ourselves, at least I do.  It helps if you have someone who is willing to take your work and show it around.  That might be an agent - but most agents aren't going to waste their time with an unknown - there are exceptions but typically not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agents take 10% - I'm not sure that's actual law, but it's close.  Now, if you come across someone who is willing to help you sell your work and they want more - it's up to you.  I agreed to give someone 33% because they convinced me they had a buyer all lined up and the extra 23% seemed worth it - it didn't work out, and I own that material again - no harm no foul.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could look into getting a manager but again - similar to an agent, they will take 10% and might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically the best advice would be to write as many scripts as possible, vary the genre to show you are flexible, because for the most part your career will consist of writing assignments and not necessarily selling your own spec material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you come across someone looking to buy your script, you can always reach out to an agent and ask them to look over the agreement and give them 10% - for the most part they will probably ask to see what else you got.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T23:47:29.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4600" CreationDate="2011-12-10T02:14:00.550" Score="0" ViewCount="454" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot decide which style is better in writing Statement of Purpose for graduate school application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asked a few questions in writing the SOP, such as purpose in applying for graduate study, interested areas and academic experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One style is answering each question and place the answer under the question title. Just like an &quot;exam&quot;. I think this style is more clear and organized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other style is writing an essay and answering the questions in the essay without addressing them explicitly. I think this style maybe less clear, because the reader need to correspond the sections or parts to the questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which way do you think is better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2981" LastActivityDate="2011-12-10T18:08:54.613" Title="Statement of Purpose writing style" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2011-12-10T18:08:54.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I bet you there's someone at your grad school of choice that could give you advice on this.  That'd be much better than speculation here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if for some reason you're unable to get advice from the school - I'd ask yourself how good of a writer you are, and what sort of program you're applying to.  The Q&amp;amp;A format would likely be more straightforward, but it would also be choppy and graceless.  The essay format, in the right hands, could be a great opportunity to showcase your wit and style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - if you're a great writer applying for a Creative Writing program, I'd go with the essay.  If you're not a strong writer and you're applying for grad school in math, maybe the Q&amp;amp;A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-12-10T18:08:54.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4549" CreationDate="2011-12-10T23:14:33.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what Matt Anderson said, Org-mode does export to MSWord and LibreOffice.  Here's a video I made demonstrating this:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/31564708&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://vimeo.com/31564708&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't done it, but I understand there is also an 'import' function that converts from MSWord/LibreOffice ODT to native Org-mode files.  The little comment/annotation-blocks in right margin are also supported for export, and, I expect, import.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video is actually of VimOrganizer, an Org-mode clone I'm writing for Vim.  For export (and some other functions) it calls out to an Emacs server to perform the operation.  VimOrganizer has gotten to the point that its an excellent solution for people who would like to use Org-mode but who -- for whatever reason -- have an aversion to Emacs.  I don't like editing in Emacs myself, but Org-mode is a beautiful piece of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2984" LastEditorUserId="2984" LastEditDate="2011-12-10T23:19:47.283" LastActivityDate="2011-12-10T23:19:47.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4580" CreationDate="2011-12-11T18:59:25.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out my program &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clichecleaner.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ClichéCleaner&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It highlights passages in your text that are either clichés, other overly-used common expressions, or phrases of your own that you have repeatedly used within the same document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ClichéCleaner includes a list of nearly 7000 unique clichés and common expressions that are compared against your text. However the actual number of phrases compared against totals over 16,000 counting all the variations. For example, when searching for the cliché &quot;lose one's shirt,&quot; the various verb forms lose, lost, and losing are all checked, as well as his, her, my and your being substituted for &quot;one's&quot;. That's 15 different versions of just this one cliché!.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It currently just works with just text files (or any text pasted into its editor window); however I am working on a version that will allow native checking and editing of MS Word files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote this program myself, I hope it is okay to post a link to it here since it appears to be on-topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="300" LastActivityDate="2011-12-11T18:59:25.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4563" CreationDate="2011-12-11T21:34:08.343" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of any term for it, but I would suggest that it's a bad idea. Unless the consistent repetition occurring at the end and beginning of every line is arguing, somehow, for some kind of legitimately &lt;em&gt;emotional&lt;/em&gt; refrain -- and spastic urgency is the only thing that suggests itself offhand -- then the device is going to scream &lt;em&gt;gimmick&lt;/em&gt; and whatever emotional effect you were seeking is going to be trumped by an annoying, textual stutter, one that immediately becomes predictable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With forms that mandate repetition of various kinds, such as the sestina or villanelle, the form itself also incorporates variety and allows for the poet to play with how that repetition is read. It's probably better to avoid something like this, especially with such short lines, and let the words simply express the core argument and figuration, viz., trust your language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2987" LastActivityDate="2011-12-11T21:34:08.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4607" CreationDate="2011-12-12T14:54:08.857" Score="12" ViewCount="40146" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Some books are published by more than one publisher. For example, if you go to Amazon or Flipkart and search for 'The Interpretation of Dreams' by Sigmund Freud, you will see many of them from different publishers. I used to think that once you give your book to a publisher, that publisher owns the exclusive copyright to that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If some book is in the public domain, can you make a small change to it and issue the modified version under your own copyright? I know one guy who did that to an old book. For example, there's a book named 'As a Man Thinketh' by James Allen, and there are many versions of it from different publishers, all of whom have made only a small change or two to the text and have issued it under their own copyright. I have read more than 3 different versions of this book from different publishers, and spotted that there are only minor differences (less than 10 words have been changed in the entire work). What's going on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2341" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T11:07:55.627" Title="Can a book be published by more than one publisher?" Tags="|publishing|book|copyright|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4605" CreationDate="2011-12-12T15:47:34.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It depends significantly on what terms the work was published under. It is fairly common for different publishers to be listed for the same book in different markets; a common split is one publisher for US versions of the work, and another publisher for the UK version. Updated versions of the book may also be published differently than the original edition.&#xA;Many times publishers also make deals among themselves (or the publishers are owned by the same parent entity) and so a book published under exclusive rights may still be published by different publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes. This is a very important part of public domain, specifically derivative works.&#xA;You can make minor or major changes to something in the public domain and re-release it under your own copyright. The copyright only applies to the specific changes or additions you have made to the work, not the entire work. Eg. Hamlet is in the public domain, and cannot be copyrighted. An annotated version of Hamlet with an index can be copyrighted, but the only the index and annotations would would be considered under copyright, not all of Hamlet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2977" LastEditorUserId="2977" LastEditDate="2011-12-12T15:57:44.767" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T15:57:44.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4605" CreationDate="2011-12-12T15:50:32.450" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In answer to the first question, you need to keep in mind that each book has different terms that are negotiated between the writer and the publisher. In some cases, the publisher will purchase first print rights or first US print rights. This means that they have the right to publish the works before anyone else. Generally, once this has happened, there is a set term during which the publisher has exclusive rights to the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After those terms have been satisfied, the author may choose to revoke or reclaim rights to the book. In that case, the author is free to submit the book to another publisher. Also, if the original publisher was granted first US print rights, then the author is free to submit to foreign publishers (the UK counts as foreign) and obtain a publishing contract there as well. It is not uncommon for a book to be published in different countries by different publishers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the book has passed over into the public domain, then any publisher can choose to publish the book and make it available to readers. This is by far the most common means by which multiple publishers end up publishing the same book. If a publisher believes they have a unique opportunity to publish and promote an older book that is in the public domain, then it may be worth their time and effort to publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to respond to your second question. Technically, the answer is yes. However, while it may be legal, technically, I would see this as unethical. If the book is published with the same title and credits the same author, then there is really no foul because the author is still getting credit. The publisher reaps the benefits of the author's reputation and get rewarded for investing the time and money to promote that author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the publisher chooses to keep the same title, basically all the same content, and then publishes the book under a different name, then that is where the ethical questions come into play. Just adding or modifying a few words or even a few chapters does not truly constitute a new book, and as such does not entitle the new &quot;author&quot; to lay claim to the full body of work. If the new author chooses to acknowledge the previous author and provides a disclaimer that this is a derivative work based on the previous efforts of the original author, then that would be considered acceptable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The examples you gave were most likely a case of the publishers choosing to take advantage of the original author's reputation. They may have changed a few words either to improve the interpretation or enhance the work (in their opinion). Ultimately, as long as they provide proper attribution to the original author, this is still acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2011-12-12T18:29:02.950" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T18:29:02.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4577" CreationDate="2011-12-12T16:15:16.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, in a formal essay, it is preferable to eliminate phrases such as &quot;the readers&quot;. &quot;The readers&quot; is fairly vague, and too inclusive. It is a weasel word; as it lends a greater sense of agreement then actually is present (all of &quot;the readers&quot; haven't necessarily felt like they have gone &quot;on a highly informational journey&quot;; you only know that you, the writer felt like you have). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The reader&quot; is also bad usage in a formal essay. In academic writing, the first person (I) is avoided because the logical merits of an essay stand on their own, without the author. &quot;The reader&quot; essentially means &quot;I&quot;, but with the added implication that any sensible reader would agree with you; this is not necessarily the case.Talking about yourself in the first person is to be avoided in an essay, but talking about yourself in the third person also ought to be avoided. Instead, write only in terms of the story, characters, or the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I would simply say something like &quot;the author wrote a highly informational journey&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2977" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T16:15:16.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4549" CreationDate="2011-12-12T21:18:55.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I use LaTeX, I divide the project into several files (settings, functions, chapters, etc.)&#xA;One frame, one window, if you like/need enable &lt;code&gt;flyspell&lt;/code&gt; and use the &lt;code&gt;text-scale-adjust&lt;/code&gt; to fit the text to your screen width.&#xA;I think there is no need for more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2990" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T21:18:55.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4563" CreationDate="2011-12-13T03:12:49.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wouldn't this be considered a type of anadiplosis?--though anadiplosis is typically the repetition of a single word.  It doesn't seem to be an actual poetic form, but more of a stylistic device.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a Wikipedia article on it &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anadiplosis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2991" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T03:12:49.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-13T15:21:52.640" Score="7" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm re-releasing a novella of mine as a self-published ebook shortly, and I'm wondering what to do with the traditional &quot;front matter&quot; of the book: copyright information, dedications, acknowledgements, etc. In an e-book format, would it be acceptable to have those things in the &lt;em&gt;back&lt;/em&gt; of the book rather than the front?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is that most ebook sales systems allow for a certain percentage of the book to be read up-front by browsers, and if you put all of these miscellanies in the &lt;em&gt;front&lt;/em&gt; of the book, then you're giving up several pages out of the sample for something that most readers will simply skip over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some other legal or practical reason why I couldn't move these things to the end of the ebook?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T13:09:16.297" Title="Front-matter or back-matter?" Tags="|self-publishing|ebook|copyright|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4611" CreationDate="2011-12-13T17:07:41.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest leaving it at the front. While it is true that &quot;sampling&quot; would result in potential readers getting less true content, it really won't have that much impact (unless you have a very wordy dedication). Even with that, you don't want to be giving away too much of the actual content anyway. Your readers are going to skip over that stuff anyway, and you will still be able to provide them with enough content to enable them to decide whether or not they want to pay for the full version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T17:07:41.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4611" CreationDate="2011-12-13T20:14:28.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me it would depend on what would get cut. If the preview is &quot;the first chapter,&quot; no matter how long, then leave the front matter at the front. If it's &quot;the first ten pages,&quot; no matter where the story stops, then you might want to move the colophon and author's comments to the end, so the preview piece reads more smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T20:14:28.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4664" CreationDate="2011-12-14T21:32:45.680" Score="2" ViewCount="7445" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to cite a source from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm fairly new to APA in general and I'm struggling to come up with the proper format for this. Even using citation generators, I'm not sure where to find all the authors or even the type of citation to use (http://citationmachine.net/index2.php?start=&amp;amp;reqstyleid=0&amp;amp;stylebox=2 -- is it &quot;government&quot;, &quot;compiled&quot;, &quot;academic&quot;, &quot;reference&quot;, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2997" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-12-15T16:34:46.460" LastActivityDate="2011-12-20T13:48:34.403" Title="APA (sixth edition) citation for the Fourth Assessment Report" Tags="|technical-writing|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4616" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4620" CreationDate="2011-12-15T00:45:02.090" Score="1" ViewCount="731" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing an essay in which I used a simple chronological flow. Setting first the background, then the circumstances I was involved in and the decision I took, and finally my conclusion after the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I reviewed it several times, but since the story is in my mind. I might be skipping details or interesting information. Plus there might be a way to express it in a more succinct manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would greatly appreciate if you could critique the flow -- if there are parts that are missing which would help to a smoother progress of the story -- and pointing out better ways to express any phrase or idea -- maybe by erasing unneeded words, sentences or paragraphs, or well, expressing it in a better form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your observations are greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;strong&gt;NOTE: For comparison purposes, I have included the modified paragraphs below its respective paragraph. *&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reflect on a time when you turned down an opportunity. What was the&#xA;  thought process behind your decision? Would you make the same decision&#xA;  today? (600 words)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few months before finishing graduate school, I was starting to&#xA;  visualize my graduate life when suddenly a friend told me the latest&#xA;  news: Lehman Brothers had collapsed underscoring the real concern that&#xA;  the economy in the US was in a precarious state. I had a limited&#xA;  perspective on the situation, but I knew that my student visa was&#xA;  close to expiring and my student loans were running out. I needed to&#xA;  find a job quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A few months before finishing graduate school, &lt;strong&gt;I was starting to&#xA;  visualize my graduate life when a friend told me that Lehman Brothers&#xA;  had collapsed. This was terrible news, since it underscored the real&#xA;  concern that the economy was in a precarious state, and increased my&#xA;  fear that my student visa would expire or student loans run out before&#xA;  I could get a formal job.&lt;/strong&gt; I needed to find one quickly.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After a couple of months, I found an interesting job opportunity. It&#xA;  was a due diligence job for high-tech patents. It sounded like a good&#xA;  opportunity that was going to extend my visa as well as pay for my&#xA;  living expenses and student loans. For these years of economic&#xA;  instability, it was going to provide me with a stable job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, once the initial excitement faded away, I got my main&#xA;  priority back in place. My priority was to pursue a career in the&#xA;  robotics industry. Thus, the logical initial step was to get a hands&#xA;  on robotics job which would help me understand the technicalities&#xA;  behind building and delivering a robot. &lt;strong&gt;This step, in my eyes, was&#xA;  highly important, since it would lay down a path to grow in the field.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nevertheless, once the initial excitement faded away, &lt;strong&gt;it was time to&#xA;  refocus on my main priority: to pursue a career in the robotics&#xA;  industry.&lt;/strong&gt; Thus, the logical initial step was to get a hands on&#xA;  robotics job which would help me understand the technicalities behind&#xA;  building and delivering a robot. &lt;strong&gt;This step, in my eyes, was highly&#xA;  important, since it would lay down a path to grow in the field&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Somehow working in High-Tech patents did not seem so appealing&#xA;  anymore. It would completely deviate me from the robotics industry and&#xA;  the experience I needed to start off. In short, I was sacrificing my&#xA;  long term priorities for short term comfort; so, I decided to pass up&#xA;  the opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Somehow working in high-tech patents did not seem so appealing&#xA;  anymore. It would completely derail me from the robotics industry and&#xA;  the experience I needed to gain in that field. In short, &lt;strong&gt;I was&#xA;  sacrificing my long term priorities for short term comfort, so I&#xA;  decided to forgo the opportunity.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My decision did not come free of consequences. I had to cut expenses&#xA;  by moving out of my place and staying with friends; I had to work as a&#xA;  volunteer in order to maintain my visa status, and I had to learn how&#xA;  to manage the uncertainty that comes without a formal job. But, after&#xA;  a few months, I was rewarded with a job in the automation industry. A&#xA;  job in which I was going to develop software for CNC machines. It was&#xA;  an exciting role in the right industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My decision did not come free of consequences. I had to cut expenses&#xA;  by moving out of my place and staying with &lt;strong&gt;friends, I&lt;/strong&gt; had to work as a&#xA;  volunteer in order to maintain my visa status, and I had to learn how&#xA;  to manage the uncertainty that comes without a formal job. But, after&#xA;  a few months, I was rewarded with a job in the automation &lt;strong&gt;industry, in&#xA;  which&lt;/strong&gt; I was going to develop software for CNC machines. It was an&#xA;  exciting role in the right industry.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From this experience, I realized that when one’s priorities are clear,&#xA;  the right decisions are easy to figure out. The difficult part is&#xA;  convincing oneself to take the risks and sacrifices that a decision&#xA;  will entail. Turning down the job opportunity was the right decision&#xA;  in my mind and heart, but somehow convincing myself to pursue an&#xA;  uncertain and risky path instead of a stable and comfortable one was&#xA;  incredibly challenging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am happy that I pursued the right decision and everything worked&#xA;  out; yet, I am conscious that decisions based on one’s passion and&#xA;  values need not always turn out so well. That sometimes, circumstances&#xA;  and timing can undermine one’s personal goals in life. Despite this, I&#xA;  still believe that in the long run, staying true to one’s priorities&#xA;  will lead to a more fulfilling life and if I were in a similar&#xA;  situation today, I would still do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am happy that I pursued the right decision and everything worked&#xA;  out, &lt;strong&gt;but I am conscious that decisions based on one’s passion and&#xA;  values do not always turn out so well.&lt;/strong&gt; That sometimes, circumstances&#xA;  and timing can undermine one’s personal goals in life. Despite this, I&#xA;  still believe that in the long run, staying true to one’s priorities&#xA;  will lead to a more fulfilling life and if I were in a similar&#xA;  situation today, I would still do the same.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2811" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T21:41:31.200" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:41:31.200" Title="How to further improve the flow and crispness in the essay?" Tags="|structure|essay|clarity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4617" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-15T02:44:07.953" Score="3" ViewCount="518" Body="&lt;p&gt;A long time ago, I dropped by a session of a creative writing course where the teacher brought a lot of reference books. One of them was a lovely picture/sketch-based identification dictionary. There were vivid drawings of a Regency ballroom, and each of the items in the room had a tag that showed their name. There were also lots of other things -- wardrobe and coats with all their parts named, obscure house parts, etc. No idea what it's called. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been trying to find a good subject-based visual dictionary like that. I often don't know how to describe a particular furniture or clothing item exactly, and it would be lovely to just be able to look up a picture, then read the tag that points to the name of the item in the picture! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2999" LastActivityDate="2011-12-18T23:47:00.480" Title="Picture-based Identification Dictionary" Tags="|resources|research|dictionary|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4618" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-15T03:09:05.760" Score="4" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often, I develop mythos that are based on extensions (sometimes fantasy-based) of personal trauma. There are times when it becomes too personal and I literally feel like hitting the shift-delete on everything. Most of the time, I don't do it - I just walk away. I move on with my dayjob, &quot;real life,&quot; and forget about finishing this silly writ. And usually my cheap HDD crashes and I try to move on permanently. But, I always end up coming back to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I try writing something that is not personal, I'm told that my writing is too generic. When I try writing something more personal, if I tell it &quot;in a rush,&quot; I get the same flat feedback -- the only way that I seem to be able to get the right way to express it is to basically put myself in tears and re-live it as I slowly put it in words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do I learn to write in a way that is neither too generic or too personal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2999" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-12-15T16:33:58.553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T12:41:02.470" Title="Dealing with personal trauma in writing" Tags="|perspective|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4618" CreationDate="2011-12-15T11:57:26.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your issue is that you want to improve your writing when you are not writing about a personal crisis, you need to work on strengthening your imagination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be finding it easier to transcribe a trauma because the feelings are in your head, very alive and immediate. That's exhausting, however, and not necessarily appealing to your readers. Good drama makes for good storytelling, but not all personal dramas are good stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you essentially want to do is &lt;em&gt;practice being someone else.&lt;/em&gt; You need to learn to get into someone else's head so you can observe what that person is thinking and feeling. When you have a sense of what someone who is &quot;not you&quot; is going through, you can start to create a character who will not be flat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hesitate to recommend writing fanfiction, but if you're passionate about a TV show and you're already part of an online community, that might be a place to start. TV characters are already drawn and demonstrated for you, and there are other fans to &quot;check your work,&quot; as it were, so you could use that as a training exercise. Can you write a drabble (100 words), a vignette, a short story from the POV of one of the characters? Then ask someone else who watches the show if the character's voice and actions sound right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or depending on your personal proclivities, maybe take an acting class instead, and learn how to build a character a different way. That skill could then be extrapolated into your writing. (And acting is somewhere more productive to dump your &quot;moodiness.&quot; ;) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-15T11:57:26.713" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4616" CreationDate="2011-12-15T12:21:42.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The flow isn't bad. You have some wording issues and one large clarity problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;A few months before finishing graduate school, I was starting to visualize my graduate life when &lt;strike&gt;suddenly&lt;/strike&gt; a friend told me &lt;strike&gt;the latest news:&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;that&lt;/b&gt; Lehman Brothers had collapsed&lt;b&gt;. This was terrible, but it only underscored&lt;/b&gt; the real concern that the economy in the US was in a precarious state. &lt;strike&gt;I had a limited perspective on the situation, but I knew that my&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;My&lt;/b&gt; student visa was close to expiring and my student loans were running out. I needed to find a job quickly.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use &quot;suddenly&quot; very sparingly, and try to keep it attached to physical actions, like a car crash or a gasp. You could talk about how the door to your room suddenly slammed open and your friend burst in with news, but not &quot;she suddenly told me something.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, you are describing an ongoing process (&quot;I was starting to visualize&quot;) which is interrupted by a concrete event (Lehman's collapse). Either you are in the present moment or you are generalizing, but you can't do both in the same sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Nevertheless, once the initial excitement faded away, &lt;strike&gt;I got my main priority back in place.&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;it was time to refocus on my main priority:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;strike&gt; My priority was&lt;/strike&gt; to pursue a career in the robotics industry. Thus, the logical initial step was to get a hands on robotics job which would help me understand the technicalities behind building and delivering a robot. This step, in my eyes, was &lt;strike&gt;a&lt;/strike&gt; highly important&lt;b&gt;,&lt;/b&gt; &lt;strike&gt;step&lt;/strike&gt; since it would lay down a path to grow in the field.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Somehow working in High-Tech patents did not seem so appealing anymore. It would completely &lt;strike&gt;deviate&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;derail&lt;/b&gt; me from the robotics industry and the experience I needed to &lt;strike&gt;start off&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;gain in that field&lt;/b&gt;. In short, I was sacrificing my long term priorities for short term comfort&lt;strike&gt;; so, I decided to pass up the opportunity.&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;b&gt;, so I chose to leave the job.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't pass up an opportunity after you've accepted it. If you didn't take the job, then you need to reword as something like &lt;b&gt;&quot;While the job had a lot to offer, after I thought about it, I realized I had to focus on my main priority.&quot;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;My decision did not come free of consequences. I had to cut expenses by moving out of my place and staying with friends&lt;strike&gt;;&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;b&gt;,&lt;/b&gt; I had to work as a volunteer in order to maintain my visa status, and I had to learn how to manage the uncertainty that comes without a formal job. But, after a few months, I was rewarded with a job in the automation industry&lt;strike&gt;. A job&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;b&gt;,&lt;/b&gt; in which I was going to develop software for CNC machines. It was an exciting role in the right industry.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;I am happy that I pursued the right decision and everything worked out&lt;strike&gt;; yet, &lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;but&lt;/b&gt; I am conscious that decisions based on one’s passion and values &lt;strike&gt;need not&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;b&gt;don't&lt;/b&gt; always turn out so well. That sometimes, circumstances and timing can undermine one’s personal goals in life. Despite this, I still believe that in the long run, staying true to one’s priorities will lead to a more fulfilling life and if I were in a similar situation today, I would still do the same.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;need not&quot; means more like &quot;isn't obligated to&quot; (You need not return this), not &quot;expected to&quot; (things don't always work out). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-15T12:21:42.780" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4622" CreationDate="2011-12-15T17:57:21.727" Score="30" ViewCount="53277" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would need a list of all words that are not capitalized in English titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also like to make sure if it's true, that all first and last words of a title are capitalized no matter what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd really appreciate your help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="320" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T01:07:45.023" LastActivityDate="2020-01-28T16:10:28.260" Title="Which words should not be capitalized in Title Case?" Tags="|style|titles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4621" CreationDate="2011-12-15T19:10:12.090" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are referring to &quot;title case,&quot; where some words are capitalized and some aren't, &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.about.com/od/grammarfaq/f/capitalstitle.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there is no one standard rule&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apstylebook.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AP stylebook&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Capitalize the principal words, including prepositions and conjunctions of four or more letters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Capitalize an article &amp;ndash; the, a, an &amp;ndash; or words of fewer than four letters if it is the first or last word in a title.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use lowercase for articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, for, nor), and prepositions, regardless of length, &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; they are the first or last word of the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Headings_and_publication_titles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of different ways title case can be applied&lt;/a&gt;. I tend to follow the second version in that list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ra9A2.png&quot; alt=&quot;title case variations&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that some people prefer using &quot;sentence case&quot; in titles, where you only capitalize words as you would in a normal sentence. This is also known as &quot;Down style.&quot; Apparently this is more typical in the UK than the USA, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://typophile.com/node/66002&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;opinions vary&lt;/a&gt; (as you might expect) on which is the correct form, or if there is even one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-04-03T13:13:15.863" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T13:13:15.863" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4617" CreationDate="2011-12-15T20:23:11.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br&gt;&#xA;I found a current &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0877790515&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Merriam Webster Visual Dictionary&quot;&gt;hard-copy version&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of the Merriam Webster Visual Dictionary.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iXW03.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;2010 Merriam-Webster&amp;#39;s VISUAL Dictionary in English for all ages (cover image)&quot;&gt; &#xA;In fact, it &lt;strong&gt;IS&lt;/strong&gt; suited for all ages and audiences. This includes children, adults and even medical students and physicians, I was surprised to find, based on this &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/free-visual-dictionary-of-medical-terms.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Free Visual Dictionary of Medical Terms&quot;&gt;post (Cases Medical and Health Blog)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The new Merriam-Webster's Visual Dictionary incorporates thousands of color&#xA;  illustrations organized by subject area... &lt;strong&gt;useful to patients and students&lt;/strong&gt;. The full-color pictorial&#xA;  images are grouped into chapters outlining major themes such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Earth &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Plants &amp;amp; gardening &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Animal kingdom &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Human beings &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Food &amp;amp; kitchen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Clothing &amp;amp; accessories &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Arts &amp;amp; architecture &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Communications &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Transportation &amp;amp; machinery &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Science &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sports &amp;amp; games&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really like the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://visual.merriam-webster.com/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Visual Merriam Webster Dictionary&quot;&gt;Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. The online version is the only one I am familiar with, although I believe it is available in print. It is free to access online, as far as I can tell.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a Visual Thesaurus, but that is more about diagramming word relationships using network-style visualization. The &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://visual.merriam-webster.com/about-visual_overview.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Overview&quot;&gt;Visual Dictionary Online&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;definitely&lt;/strong&gt; focused on pictures and images, just as you described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2358" LastEditorUserId="2358" LastEditDate="2011-12-18T23:47:00.480" LastActivityDate="2011-12-18T23:47:00.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4624" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4626" CreationDate="2011-12-15T22:08:41.513" Score="12" ViewCount="1364" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a romance novel and have hit a brick wall. The problem is every way I think the future lovebirds could meet and become friends is totally cliché. After thinking about it, I've realized that the problem lays with the two soon-to-be lovebirds. Neither one is the &quot;player&quot; type. The boy is shy and doesn't flirt, though the girl mistakes his kindness for flirting at first. And the girl is the kind that doesn't date or even feel butterflies because of past pain. If that makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, my question is, what should I do when my characters and plot disagree with each other without changing my characters personalities? (my plot is 95% written, only this small part remains)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it really that bad to have one cliché in a book if the rest is largely original?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any help and advice!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2998" LastActivityDate="2019-08-25T01:55:18.660" Title="What to do when characters disagree with the plot?" Tags="|characters|plot|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2011-12-15T22:20:12.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies from writer to writer. Some writers, like myself at times, write long chapters. Mine are around 6600 words which translate to about 20 pages in my current format. While other writers prefer small chapters, 2000-4000 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same goes for published work, it all depends on the writer. Some books has no chapters at all, while others use chapters to break up events in a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd say don't worry about what other writers are doing, instead find what works for you and run with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2998" LastActivityDate="2011-12-15T22:20:12.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4624" CreationDate="2011-12-15T23:00:31.430" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Romance itself is a cliche, really (and this is coming from a Romance author), so I wouldn't worry too much about fighting for originality.  Find a way to write the cliche in an interesting way, and get going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, Romance is &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; all about characters and characterization, and you can't afford to violate that in the service of plot. If it isn't believable to have your characters do a certain thing, then they should absolutely not do it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm not quite sure what you're looking for, here.  If the characters are shy and/or damaged, then I expect most of your plot revolves around getting them out of their shells, letting them learn to trust each other, etc.  Having them meet in a way that doesn't fit with that will violate your entire story, not just a small part.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, meeting in a cliche way? - okay, just write it well and give it what freshness you can.  Meeting in an out-of-character way? - hell, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-12-15T23:00:31.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4627" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4684" CreationDate="2011-12-15T23:22:35.777" Score="2" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard for the fields which are required to be included for a reference in scientific journal/conference papers?  For instance &lt;code&gt;BibTeX&lt;/code&gt; has a lot of fields for an &lt;code&gt;@article&lt;/code&gt; entry, but which of them are required?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3003" LastActivityDate="2011-12-24T18:18:30.230" Title="Scientific Citation" Tags="|citations|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4624" CreationDate="2011-12-16T05:02:47.577" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Kate. The key selling point here is about your characters and who they are - audiences will overlook bucketloads of cliches if they care about the characters and are genuinely rooting for them to get together. This, of course, involves staying true to who they are and not giving the reader a jarring experience by making them wonder why the hell Character X is doing something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say the true payoff is in the journey they take after they meet, so don't worry too much about the meeting being cliched and make the growing relationship and the eventual getting together memorable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T05:02:47.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4617" CreationDate="2011-12-16T05:20:11.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;They used to be called '&lt;em&gt;Illustrated Dictionaries&lt;/em&gt;' as I remember from a long time ago.  Today, though, it's only the children's dictionaries that one more often sees richly illustrated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why, even Google has the two distinct: 'Search Images' &amp;amp; 'Search Web', which I find pretty disconcerting most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T05:20:11.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4624" CreationDate="2011-12-16T06:03:19.680" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me see if I've got this right: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've got two characters who are telling you what to do (or what not to do). And you think that's a problem? Writing believable characters who want to write the story for you is a goal that many would-be writers never achieve. Congratulations! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to write the story anyway. &lt;em&gt;Listen to your characters.&lt;/em&gt; Do what they tell you to do. Your plot is 95% written? Well, maybe not so much if you do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book may not be a romance when you're done. Perhaps it will be about a missed opportunity. But wasting strong characters would be a terrible thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This doesn't preclude you from writing another book that &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a romance.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T06:03:19.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4632" CreationDate="2011-10-10T02:11:08.207" Score="1" ViewCount="38983" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've gone through several different resources that appeared in the Google search bar when I asked this question, but the sources give different answers to this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When referencing a play name in an MLA-formatted essay, should I underline it, put it in quotes, or italicize it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a final draft of an essay due in a few days, but I can't figure out which one I should use.  Most sources point to underlining or italicizing; not quotes.  However, that's still two different answers I'm receiving.  If any of you know for sure what is expected in an MLA paper, your response is greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;:  The most reliable and sensible answer I found so far mentioned that back in the age of typewriters, it was underlined, but nowadays it is italicized.  If any of you can confirm this notion, please feel free to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2762" OwnerDisplayName="Mike Gates" LastEditorUserId="2762" LastEditDate="2012-12-05T01:18:34.100" LastActivityDate="2017-09-04T15:06:22.330" Title="Referencing a Play in an MLA paper" Tags="|essay|mla|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4631" CreationDate="2011-10-10T04:27:07.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Italicized:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shakespeare, William. &lt;em&gt;Hamlet&lt;/em&gt;. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Washington Square-Pocket, 1992.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just searched for examples.  I found this site: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mystfx.ca/resources/writingcentre/MLA_Citing%20Sources.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mystfx.ca/resources/writingcentre/MLA_Citing%20Sources.pdf&lt;/a&gt;, and I used that info.  I think that most scripts of plays are republished in books or collections (which are books).  You can always add more info after the date, in parentheses, if you think it's useful.  I would probably add &quot;play&quot; at the end, so I could jump to it using a find feature in a text editor.  The safer bet would be to add the info at the end, but my preference would be to add it after the title.  I doubt I would receive any complaints, either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, most of the names of works in the works cited section are italicized, articles and sections being the big exception.  I also remember finding some works-cited example pages at .edu websites doing a keyword search for +hamlet site: .edu or something similar.  I found a site that told &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hancockcollege.edu/Default.asp?Page=1045&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;how to cite a &quot;live play&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a quote from that site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hamlet&lt;/em&gt;.  By William Shakespeare. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Perf. Kenneth Branagh, Derek Jacoby, and Julia Christie. The Globe Theatre, London. 27 Dec. 1991. Performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3082" OwnerDisplayName="Wolfpack'08" LastEditorUserId="3082" LastEditDate="2012-01-05T05:46:15.173" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T05:46:15.173" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4070" CreationDate="2011-12-16T10:42:49.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Grok&lt;/em&gt; existed in 1700 AD?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ngrams:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=grok&amp;amp;year_start=1680&amp;amp;year_end=1790&amp;amp;corpus=0&amp;amp;smoothing=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1700-1780&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=grok&amp;amp;year_start=1950&amp;amp;year_end=2010&amp;amp;corpus=0&amp;amp;smoothing=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1950-2008&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T10:42:49.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4627" CreationDate="2011-12-16T11:16:12.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A tool like Jabref can help you about this.&#xA;According to Jabref Article type's required fields are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Author&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Volume&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JWp5x.png&quot; alt=&quot;Jabref Editing Type Article &quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2865" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T11:16:12.397" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4627" CreationDate="2011-12-16T11:52:36.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style specifies Author(s), Year of Publication, Article Title (sentence case, not title case), Journal (italicized), Issue Number followed by a colon followed by the page number(s), thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anholt, B. R. and E. E. Werner. 1995. Interaction between food availability and predation mortality mediated by adaptive behavior. &lt;em&gt;Ecology&lt;/em&gt; 76:2230-34&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journal titles are normally abbreviated, so &lt;em&gt;Journal&lt;/em&gt; becomes &lt;em&gt;J.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Record&lt;/em&gt; becomes &lt;em&gt;Rec.&lt;/em&gt; and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T11:52:36.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4636" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4638" CreationDate="2011-12-16T12:26:27.983" Score="2" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a coherency problem in the following text (its typesetting). The last paragraph must not be considered as a part of subsect02. For instance it is a kind of conclusion of two approaches covered under two previous subsections. How can I make the reader distinguish it from paragraph(s) related to the last subsection?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;\section{section}&#xA;Some text here about what we are going to discuss.&#xA;\subsection{subsect01}&#xA;Text about this subsection.&#xA;\subsection{subsect02}&#xA;Text about this subsection.&#xA;&#xA;Some text here, which is not related to subsection02, but to the whole section.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3003" LastActivityDate="2011-12-20T05:08:03.997" Title="Return to section context after a subsection" Tags="|formatting|typing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4618" CreationDate="2011-12-16T12:41:02.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your question, I would suggest that your best next step is to do a lot of reading. Find books and stories that are in the genre you are interested in, and read, read, read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you feel that a particular story is effective, has an emotional impact, has characters that come to life in your mind, read it again. In your second round, though, don't read as an audience; read as a writer. Identify what the author did that made that character, that plot line, that scene really come alive. What did the author include? What did she leave out? How did she build that interest or understanding or suspense? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Revisit one of your own stories and see where you could have used the same approach to make the writing more effective, then go ahead and rewrite it, consciously using what you have identified in your model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are reaching for is technique, and the two most important things that develop it are studying what has been well done, which means reading, followed by practice. Writers circles, texts and forums like this one can add insights and point you in various directions, but ultimately your style and your success come from those things in the writer's craft that you have observed, internalized and can apply. From there you will develop your own new techniques, perhaps, but that will never happen until you know that there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; such a thing as &quot;the craft of writing&quot; and have gained some mastery of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technique in any art demands a certain amount of detachment. For all but a tiny, exceptionally skilled few, it is impossible to craft something &lt;em&gt;well&lt;/em&gt; while wallowing in an emotional fugue. That includes both trauma and inspiration. By all means be inspired, by all means be sincere, but it is your craftsmanship, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; your internal state of mind, that will carry your story to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal trauma (and personal success) in your own life may help you to find something to say, but to &lt;em&gt;communicate&lt;/em&gt; it effectively requires technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T12:41:02.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4636" CreationDate="2011-12-16T12:44:09.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple approach is to give all of your subsection text a left indent, and possibly a right indent, to set it off slightly from the main section text. Any text starting at the normal left margin would then be identifiable as belonging to the main section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T12:44:09.157" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4617" CreationDate="2011-12-16T12:52:23.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you remember was possibly one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://us.dk.com/nf/Browse/BrowseStdPage/0,,231454,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DK visual dictionaries&lt;/a&gt;, which are brilliantly done and quite memorable. (I have the DK Illustrated Oxford Dictionary on my bookshelf as I write this.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The is also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B000H2DULM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Facts on File Visual Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;, sitting right beside the Oxford.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T12:52:23.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4624" CreationDate="2011-12-16T12:56:23.063" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;If all else fails, chase your hero up a tree and throw rocks at him.&quot; (I don't know the source of the quote, but it's catchy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introduce a disaster. Car crash, random passerby collapses, dog gets loose and digs up the yard, kid gets lost and knocks on the door for help. One or both of your characters get drawn into the drama, willingly or not. They meet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T12:56:23.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4611" CreationDate="2011-12-16T13:09:16.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standards for ePub aren't as set as for printed works, but you should keep the copyright information at the front (and don't forget that your e-version requires its own ISBN -- the one in the printed edition can't be reused). The dedication should be at the front, but even in printed books the acknowledgements, author bio and other miscellany can be in the back matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no half-title page in an e-book, because you don't need it (it's there to attach to the cover or end papers), and your TOC sits in a sidebar rather than in the body of the book, so after the title page and copyright you would have the preface, if any, and introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amazon and the other ePub sellers I know of let you pick what you want for sample pages, so I don't think that's too much to worry about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T13:09:16.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4643" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-16T14:59:28.217" Score="1" ViewCount="734" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've decided that the best way for me to get my ideas on paper is to dictate them, because I find that typing/writing 'gets in the way' and prevents me from properly expressing my ideas as they arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been looking at digital dictaphones, and there are many of them, but I wonder if anyone has any recommendations for getting the recordings transcribed. In an ideal world I'd love it if I could just record something and it would be converted to text immediately, but I realise there would probably need to be a bit more work than that. I really don't want to have to type the recordings though, if I can avoid it - I don't mind tidying them up manually, as long as the 'meat' of the text is there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've come across NaturallySpeaking from Dragon but I don't know if it is any good or whether it has specific requirements in terms of recordings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone else use dictation as a means of getting their thoughts down?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3009" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-12-16T15:31:13.017" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T06:37:40.977" Title="Best dictaphone/transcription workflow?" Tags="|software|tools|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4644" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-16T02:06:04.957" Score="0" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I was trying to cite this question and properly format my works cited section using MLA.  Where would I look to find information on how to format it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="David B" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-12-16T15:29:46.623" LastActivityDate="2011-12-27T23:16:19.893" Title="Where can I find information about how to cite a web address using MLA?" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4645" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-16T21:18:09.117" Score="1" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a question related to a website providing mathematics solutions for students. Here are details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Students will enter the page number and problem number on the website, and the site will show the text of the Mathematics problem  described in that text book;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;then the web page will show the solution to that math problem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is my web site violating the copyrights of the text book publishers for showing the text without their permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not just a one page/one time issue. The site may show hundreds of pages from the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3011" LastEditorUserId="3000" LastEditDate="2011-12-18T12:33:35.430" LastActivityDate="2011-12-23T16:21:59.957" Title="copy right issue with using exact Text from a text book" Tags="|copyright|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4643" CreationDate="2011-12-16T21:20:02.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've tried using Naturally Speaking, but abandoned it.  Not because of technical issues, though - it was really quite good!  I had to go back and read things over and catch little errors, but I'd say it was... I don't know, maybe 98% accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem was that I couldn't read over what I'd just said, and I'd lose track of my thoughts and get all turned around.  I'd thought it would be really efficient, but it ended up being a quick way to produce total crap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, that was just me, so I would certainly recommend giving it a try.  And I think Naturally Speaking is pretty much the industry standard, although my phone has a dictation function that's almost as good, and that was totally free!  (check your phone!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T21:20:02.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4644" CreationDate="2011-12-16T21:21:58.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The OWL at Purdue is my go-to source for MLA information.  Check their page for &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/08/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;electronic sources&lt;/a&gt;, or their &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;home page&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T21:21:58.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4648" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4650" CreationDate="2011-12-16T20:04:17.113" Score="5" ViewCount="368" Body="&lt;p&gt;While my skills of expression are okay, being able to observe errors within my own writing is truly lacking. The only methods I've found to be of real use are long-time periods in between reviews, if I find one error I restart the review from the beginning per error found, and using text to voice played at the same rate as my rate of reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any &quot;modern&quot; methods or state of the art tools for proofing copy? Given how much I write, and enjoy writing, I'm willing to invest in any application if the return on the quality of error detection is high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, while outsourcing copy checks might be an option for some, it's not a good fit for my needs as large amounts of material I author are for use only by the parties who commissioned the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2083" OwnerDisplayName="blunders" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T17:27:22.933" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T17:27:22.933" Title="State of the art proof reading tools/methods" Tags="|tools|proofreading|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4645" CreationDate="2011-12-16T23:00:01.457" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is violating copyright.  You're essentially copying their book. And I'm guessing that you're doing it for financial gain, which makes it even worse.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check the inside of their book for the copyright blurb.  I bet there's something about 'no reproducing, in whole or in part, without permission'.  Your website would be reproducing without permission, and that would ABSOLUTELY be a copyright violation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may not be the case if the book is old enough to be in the public domain, or if it has somehow been explicitly placed in the public domain (a creative commons license, for example).  But I doubt these things have happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone put a lot of work into writing that text book - why should you profit from that person's work for free?  Write your own questions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, in case I'm being too innocent here, and you're not simply trying to find an efficient way to help students learn math... stop trying to help students to cheat!  They're given assignments for a reason, and copying the answer off a website won't teach them a damn thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T23:00:01.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4648" CreationDate="2011-12-16T23:33:27.487" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;So you need a non-human external proofreader?  Good luck with that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some websites that may &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt;, but I think it's going to come down to human eyes, in the end.  But before that, you could try good old MS Word's spelling and grammar check.  It's often wrong, but it's right often enough that you should at least consider its suggestions.  I've also heard good things about Stylewriter, but the few times I've used it myself, I didn't find it significantly better than MS Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that doesn't mean that technology can't &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; you proofread for yourself.  Play with the font (size and style and colour), change the columns, even change the screen if you can (read on your e-reader, for example) as a way to freshen your perspective without waiting quite as long between readings.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to use some text-to-speech software to have the work read to you.  You'll pick up on things through your ears that your eyes allow you to gloss over.  (Obviously this won't catch homonyms or some other errors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-technical tricks, try printing out your work, reading it backward, and learning and starting to search out the most common errors that you make so you can work to catch them more efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T23:33:27.487" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="976" CreationDate="2011-12-17T13:13:30.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion has a very interesting use of chapters, some only one paragraph in length. It is laid out with lots of white space. It's a great book, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3013" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-12-17T13:47:10.413" LastActivityDate="2011-12-17T13:47:10.413" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-12-17T13:13:30.500" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4652" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4653" CreationDate="2011-12-17T14:03:10.417" Score="5" ViewCount="4531" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of translating a script and am constantly struggling with the side-by-side&#xA;vertical scrolling of the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of an editor which is capable of &quot;locking&quot; two columns side by side? Something novel translators would use, or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Please, no recommendations of Word with columns turned on, or Excel...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3014" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T09:52:06.687" LastActivityDate="2019-10-22T21:05:09.613" Title="Any good side-by-side editor for script translation?" Tags="|software|tools|translation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4652" CreationDate="2011-12-17T15:43:46.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using Windows, you can select two separate documents and display them side by side. This does not synchronize the scrolling between windows, but you probably wouldn't want that anyway. If the content in one window surpasses the length of the content in the other, then you would need to scroll in each separately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am using Windows 7, and I can open two documents of the same type, do a Shift-right click on their icon at the bottom of the screen, and then choose the option to &quot;Show windows side by side&quot;. I don't remember the exact steps for earlier versions of Windows, but I know they are very similar. This will allow you to use the editor of your choice and keep each screen positioned where you need it so that you can easily move back and forth as needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-12-17T15:43:46.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4648" CreationDate="2011-12-17T15:57:03.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw that you mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitesmoke.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Whitesmoke&lt;/a&gt; in the comments, and one of the advantages of it over MS Word is that Whitesmoke can also check grammar and excessive use of words or phrases. There are a number of other software tools out there that do similar things, but ultimately you need to decide if it really makes things any easier for you. I found a review of &lt;a href=&quot;http://writing-enhancement-software-review.toptenreviews.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ten writing enhancement tools&lt;/a&gt; that provides a side-by-side comparison of the different features available in each. This would be a good place to look for help in areas in which you may have a particular weakness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside of using software, a suggestion I have seen that has worked for other people is to do your editing in a larger font. Seeing the text in larger format sometimes makes things stand out a little better. I've also seen suggestions to just read your work out loud yourself, as opposed to using a text to speech converter. This allows you to hear your content in your own voice, and then compare that to the voice inside your head that first came up with the ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Utlimately, if you have a solid grasp of the language and understand different writing styles, you'll probably do better on your own. If you are writing in English as a second language and need help making sure that the grammar is correct, then one of these software products might be more useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-12-17T15:57:03.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4138" CreationDate="2011-12-18T13:32:42.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about this: Mathias has a shady background.&#xA;Maybe he was a petty criminal, or even a lieutenant favored by the Emperor of Darkness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, he repented, and now he's on the Path of the Just.&#xA;But still, old habits die hard, and old loyalties die harder still.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the following conflicts this would cause:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Internal conflict (such as doubting himself, whether he's really doing the right thing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feeling he betrayed friends or family&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of trust from fellow rebels&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Downright difficulty with his new-found way of life&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every so often, he might start slipping back into his old, evil habits&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mathias might also have an urge to simply ditch all the responsibility and live a life of freedom and carelessness. Tempt him to do so! Imagine how he must grind his teeth while struggling to aid the rebellion while none of the rebels trust him, his family views him as a traitor, and he's not even sure he's doing what's right!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2011-12-18T13:32:42.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3561" CreationDate="2011-12-18T13:49:09.203" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pay less attention to what the monsters &lt;em&gt;look like&lt;/em&gt;, but rather what they &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is your monster simply a beast with fangs, muscles and acute hearing, or does it have special abilities? Are these abilities magical, or pseudo-scientific?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the monster's weakness? Like a good character, a good monster has weaknesses. Is it afraid of anything? Is there a specific way to kill it? Can it only attack someone who wields a weapon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider making your monster represent something. Perhaps your monster can be the personification of fear, hate, hunger, sadness etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2011-12-18T13:49:09.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4645" CreationDate="2011-12-18T15:07:10.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, it is beyond doubt that the idea is fraught with copyright issues.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even so, why would you want to reproduce the question in toto? Referencing it by echoing back the question number, etc., should be a sufficient, elegant and preferable alternative.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the input includes the necessary reference details, you know the user knows the question, I suppose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2011-12-18T15:07:10.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4660" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4661" CreationDate="2011-12-19T13:27:44.233" Score="19" ViewCount="6994" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just can't make my dialogue sound like it's being said by a woman. As a friend of mine pointed out, &quot;This woman talks just like you, Jack.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried imitating the speech patterns of various females I know, but it just doesn't work. Most women I know talk about things that interest women (e.g. shoes, shopping, baseball, etc.), and not about wars, monsters and magic, which is what my book is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My best attempts merely made them sound British (but still like men, and with a funny choice of words).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas or guidelines would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: I &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; women do talk about the same things as men; that's exactly my point. I'm wondering if there's any short-cut to making a character sound more like a woman, without reverting to fake stereotypes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-03-09T07:16:00.733" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T05:49:55.003" Title="How to write realistic female dialogue" Tags="|style|word-choice|dialogue|gender|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4660" CreationDate="2011-12-19T13:52:51.417" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, thinking of some conversations as solely the domain of women and some as solely the domain of men is not going to get you anywhere.  For example I know of many female computer programmers, women in a male-dominated career field, who can talk circles around most guys when it comes to discussing computer hardware.  I know men who enjoy sharing favorite recipes and guys who look at the Ralph Lauren lookbook for women in order to find nice fashions for their wives and can talk circles around some fashion-averse women when it comes to cuts of shirts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women who are in the middle of a war will talk about war.  Women who can practice magic or are affected by it will most definitely talk about magic - if you've been reading fantasy and &lt;em&gt;haven't&lt;/em&gt; come across women talking about magic you've been reading a very, very narrow selection.  If there's a monster prowling around town you can bet your bottom dollar women will talk about it as much as men.  Some women may even talk about the best way to kill it just as some men will try to avoid the subject out of sheer fear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your characters talk just like you, the problem isn't the gender.  I bet the men all talk just like you as well.  The issue is fully realizing your characters as &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; than you.  For that read the answers on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1240/getting-inside-someone-elses-head&quot;&gt;Getting inside someone else's head&lt;/a&gt;.  Sure, women can provide a perspective that men don't, but their perspective is informed by their background, experiences, friendships, and interests.  These may be influenced by their sex, but their sex is not the sum total of these things!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more on specifically thinking in terms of a different gender than yours, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2790/pitfalls-of-writing-a-main-character-of-different-gender-to-the-author-specific&quot;&gt;pitfalls of writing  a main character of different gender to the author&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4325/the-opposite-sex-in-first-person&quot;&gt;the opposite sex in first person&lt;/a&gt;.    But my best piece of advice is to focus less on the fact that your characters are female and focus on fleshing out the personhood of all your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T13:52:51.417" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4660" CreationDate="2011-12-19T14:19:05.700" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a can of worms I'm going to try to avoid opening here...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suffice to say that I think a lot of what informs the &quot;difference&quot; between men and women comes down to societal metrics. If the society you are describing is more equal some differences will disappear as societal roles are redefined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I have been told by women I have known is that women are more aware of their moods than men tend to be. Emotion is often seen as a more valuable tool and more subtly applied by women I have known than men. Part of this is the fact that the male hormonal balance was most accurately described by my step-mother: Women have a period every month, men have one it starts when they're about thirteen and lasts, in some cases, until they die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attempts to rely upon the manipulation of emotion to secure a power base may result in the general physical differences between men and women. There are no absolutes. Sometimes men are sensitive and emotionally wise, sometimes women like to throw their weight about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So referring to justkt's answer above I would concentrate on thinking of people as people. Sure there are tendencies that they are going to be more or less likely to display but that's all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When re-examining character dialogue it's best to question things about the character as an entity relative to the others there present. Factors such as social status, raw physical power, intelligence and natural charisma are all going to have a bearing on the kinds of things that a character is likely to say in a given circumstance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth bearing in mind the tension in the difference between what a character might say in privacy with peers or those less powerful and how they might be forced to act in broader society. The greater the tension between these two the more toll it is likely to take on the character themselves. In a society where women are oppressed, belittled and ignored they are likely to be mostly silent and to choose their words carefully in a public forum but in private their bottled up tensions may overflow in line with how their character wishes to express their &quot;true identity&quot;. If you reverse this into a society where women oppress men the same sorts of behaviours are likely to exhibit the opposite way around, it's the situation that produces the reactions not the gender of the participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If women are having issue with your female characters it is possible that your male characters are also a little bland, if they aren't then you just need to apply whatever method you apply to differentiating your male characters to also differentiating the female ones with all the above borne in mind. If you have no method for telling the audience how the characters are different it is possible that they aren't signalled as different enough across the board, in which case if you solve the general problem it will, of necessity, mitigate the specific one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T14:19:05.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-19T19:11:17.553" Score="1" ViewCount="905" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, first, I'm not a native. So, what you do by instinct and a bit of research, I do by extensive research, including accents and dialog style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m dead.&#xA;‘But you have a chance,’ I was told, ‘Then why not take a&#xA;leap of fate?’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fate? Hhh… One wonders how I am dead. But… I’m stuck in&#xA;a future to which I did not belong for reasons I could not understand.&#xA;I neither knew my captors nor did I share their motivesI despised them. All of them. I shall rip their hearts, one vein for everything they forced me to see.&#xA;The one time in my life I could do without reason. My mind wouldn’t work without&#xA;reason. She… Huh… She allowed me to do so. Or rather denied me the choice. You’ll get to know her, eventually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a world so strange to me. Where nothing is possible until it’s&#xA;flipped over. But, as everything is another face of something, nothing&#xA;is truly possible.&#xA;You see? I can’t understand! Me! This means no one&#xA;can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My name's Adam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though not good news, this is your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;—&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For the past five decades, people and governments of the world lay down differences and conflicts, pursuing the dream of the Utopia to&#xA;which we’ve always aspired. We still have a long path to take. But a&#xA;sudden and unexpected ripple might be in its way to disturb the flow.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Are they rumors? Some say it is coming down from the sky. Others say&#xA;it is coming from beneath the ground. Some even say it is the end of&#xA;the world.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;We weren’t able to reach any scientists to comment on the seismic&#xA;activities in the South-Pole or the interference in communications for&#xA;the past three days. Internationally, governments preferred to keep&#xA;citizens in a deep state of information black-out. No one answered&#xA;these questions. And we’ve asked international organizations,&#xA;universities, private research companies… But no one really knows what&#xA;to ask; not yet.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NASA just announced that a press conference is to be held at the&#xA;United Nations’ headquarters in New York at hour thirteen-hundred&#xA;(13:00), Eastern-Time; eighteen-hundred (18:00) GMT. Until then, the only official word we’ve&#xA;received does no better than reinforce the rumors, conspiracy, or&#xA;whatever is happening; which the political system so far played catch&#xA;up to hide.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;One thing is certain, a change is occurring. A change that will add to&#xA;a world’s history that remained relatively peaceful for half a&#xA;century.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I will be joining you in New York at ‘1 PM’ to cover the press&#xA;conference NASA has announced. This is Elizabeth Blitz, WWN; reporting&#xA;live from The White House; Washington D.C.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Don’t trouble yourself with that,” Tana finally said. She’d been&#xA;closely watching the broadcast; but not for the news that was said.&#xA;“You need rest. Just forget it.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adam smiled. “Why’s she on TV?” He’s been heeding the picture on the&#xA;wall, not for any news however. The bed he lay on was comfortable, but&#xA;his body still didn’t like it. He tried to adjust his pose but pain&#xA;shot through his spine; he gritted his teeth and let go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Mmm…” Tana was hesitant to reply. She remained silent as she headed&#xA;for the projected control-display on the nearest wall. It’s not worth&#xA;it at all. Not by any shot. She didn’t care what reason he’d put into&#xA;this, but she wasn’t going to be the one stressing him, opening&#xA;Pandora’s box, on her son.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Hh… Don’t think about it. It’s really nothing. She’d applied long ago&#xA;and today they needed her,” she finally said. Then, pushed by her&#xA;nature, she continued honestly, “With some of your friends too. They&#xA;were given jobs… That’s all.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tana left the control-display and watched Adam closely; he stared&#xA;blankly at the television projection on the wall. In the rare&#xA;occasions he was silent, thinking, debating, it was never good.&#xA;“Friends? An’ jobs?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She took a deep breath. “OK… You landed in New York.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“America! What the—?” He tried to sit up again; he could almost hear&#xA;his back and elbows complain. His mother quickly took hold and forced&#xA;him into a more comfortable pose. He continued, commanding yet gentle&#xA;in tone, but not yet wishing, “Don’t tell me they know. Please don’t.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“OK, you know what? Just forget about it all. People have more&#xA;important things to do. Rumors are the thing of the day… Every day,&#xA;actually. And just a couple of here-says about a grand conspiracy in&#xA;outer space won’t have their attention. Politicians have other things&#xA;to hide, things that really matter to people now. I imagine if we told&#xA;them of a school on the other side of the moon, they’d sue us for&#xA;wasting their time.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You know it’s not just a school, mother.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Adam. If you didn’t do it, all of you would’ve… died,” she sat next&#xA;to him and stroked his hair. Her hands trembled from the mere thought.&#xA;“And you… You’re not supposed to worry about anything further. They&#xA;got you into this and they’ll have to get you out. The jobs your&#xA;friends received were actually a sort of gift; they got the jobs&#xA;officially as &lt;em&gt;prodigies&lt;/em&gt;. The last thing the UN wants is minors getting&#xA;into the mix.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Comforting!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A moment of silence followed. The walls of the room were a pure white&#xA;that, contrary to popular belief, didn’t help you relax at all; its&#xA;brightness almost followed your eyes through the lids. There, far into the distance, sang a bird, just faintly. Adam knew there was more to&#xA;it. &lt;em&gt;He&lt;/em&gt; knew more. When he knew and others didn’t, it was okay to him,&#xA;the other way around wasn’t an option. His mother didn’t tell him how&#xA;many were injured and if there were any dead. For his secrets, if he&#xA;didn’t tell, someone else will. He moved his arm on top of his chest;&#xA;he felt a strange tingle in it, as if felt by someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same reporter returned to the picture, this time the background&#xA;was a more soothing view of the country, possibly the gardens of The&#xA;White House or a green land on the road. She seemed very nervous, not&#xA;transparently, but enough for Adam to notice. He watched, becoming&#xA;increasingly worried. She’s been tapping her palm with her index&#xA;finger; there’s more to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This just in: The PHFO has issued a worldwide alert, advising everyone to evacuate Atlantic and Pacific coastal areas within three&#xA;miles from the shore. I repeat, three miles offshore, the Pacific and&#xA;the Atlantic coastal areas. We haven’t yet received any comment on&#xA;this but you are advised to stay clear from the coast. Go to a&#xA;safe-house further into land if you can. Local police forces will be&#xA;available to help you. Although we are still waiting for official word&#xA;from the White House, NASA, or really anything, it remains for now up&#xA;to public decision, and prayers.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeatedly tapping her palm with her index finger, in rhythm, with&#xA;something Adam knew. As he kept looking at the Elizabeth's picture projected on the wall, loud, erratic, footsteps came nearer and nearer.&#xA;Her finger... A tick, a tock. One, and zero. 1011101-000-1010111-000-11101&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RUN&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“My god…”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;31 days before…&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the opening tell you enough to make you want more without telling too much? Does it have enough suspense, with every line? Is it too long-winded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T10:06:34.560" Title="Do these starting paragraphs make you want to keep reading?" Tags="|fiction|science-fiction|openings|suspense|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-01-07T17:37:03.030" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4615" CreationDate="2011-12-19T20:42:59.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Authored report, from a nongovernmental organization. APA 6th edition Section 7.02 - #33.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Author (year). &lt;em&gt;Article Title&lt;/em&gt; (Research Report No. if there is a number). Retrieved from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) website: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, I did not know which report you are referring to.  You won't want to use the citation to the general website, you want the exact page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3024" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-12-20T13:48:34.403" LastActivityDate="2011-12-20T13:48:34.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4525" CreationDate="2011-12-19T20:49:47.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read a great book, Between the Lines: Master the &lt;em&gt;subtle&lt;/em&gt; elements of fiction writing by Jessica Page Morrell. I wrote to her and we have corresponded. She also wrote Thanks, But This Isn't For Us: A (Sort Of) Compassionate Guide to Why Your Writing Is Being Rejected. Both books are a good fit for the writing transition you describe. The second has more exercises, both offer great information on the specifics you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3024" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T20:49:47.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2011-12-19T22:28:48.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;my guideline for chapters tends to be that every ten pages or so, I start a new chapter.  this means that sometimes the chapter will leave the characters hanging, and sometimes it won't.  I've found it to work pretty well for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3025" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T22:28:48.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4636" CreationDate="2011-12-20T05:08:03.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could label the section &lt;code&gt;Conclusions&lt;/code&gt; add a divider that separates it from other sections.  See this question on &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/38578/4301&quot;&gt;long underscore to divide sections of text&lt;/a&gt; on different options.  This should sufficiently differentiate from the other &lt;code&gt;\subsections&lt;/code&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/m6K9j.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3015" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:29.717" LastActivityDate="2011-12-20T05:08:03.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4643" CreationDate="2011-12-20T06:25:57.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I guess the best to deal with this is to record your own thoughts in an audio recorder, and then later pen them down yourself while the playback. This way, there are two main advantages required in writing that can be accomplished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One, you can get spell out your thoughts with out any setback for the need of writing. Two, When in the playback and you write, you may rectify minute errors, be it grammatical or thoughtful insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3008" LastActivityDate="2011-12-20T06:25:57.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4674" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-22T19:44:12.877" Score="8" ViewCount="4704" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instinctively I find underlining for emphasis distracting and much prefer bold or italic.  From my research it seems underlining is a carryover from typewriters that were incapable of italicizing or bolding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in a situation creating written content with others who love underlining as a point of emphasis and see nothing wrong with it.  They sometimes include italic and bold in the same paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I try and break the teams underlining-for-emphasis habits or change my perspective on it's appropriateness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2548" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2011-12-22T21:56:50.717" LastActivityDate="2011-12-24T11:16:26.160" Title="Is emphasizing a point by underlining still appropriate?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4674" CreationDate="2011-12-22T21:06:19.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an answer to your original question, yes it is still appropriate, especially in certain business settings. As to how you should respond to it or handle it, that depends on your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, ask yourself why your colleagues prefer underlining. Is it because they are older and have done it this way for a considerable amount of time? Is it a preferred standard in your current environment (work, school, etc.)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, ask yourself how important it is to persuade them to change. If there isn't any underlying reason to do it this way, then you might be able to suggest an alternative. Check to see if there are any documented guidelines that might support either method. If so, then use them to help you decide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find bold font to sometimes be harsh, especially in a business setting. At my workplace, bold is usually interpreted as a sign of anger or frustration and is used very sparingly. Italics tend to be the preferred choice here. (I rarely see underlining used as a point of emphasis.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-12-22T21:06:19.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4677" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-22T21:49:02.430" Score="5" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a paper in which I have reviewed a list of reports and have summarized data from each.  I have cited each of those original reports.  However, I originally located some of those reports because someone else wrote a similar paper years ago in which they listed sources (without summarizing), and I looked up the citations they had used. That is to say, they wrote a paragraph that said something along the lines of &quot;This subject has been examined in the past by W, X, Y, Z&quot;   I am unclear on how to cite this secondary source.  Do I write my summary, then cite both the original source and the secondary source, i.e.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, curabitur voluptatum nullam sed placerat vestibulum (Original1 1960; Secondary 1990).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, curabitur voluptatum nullam sed placerat vestibulum (Original2 1971; Secondary 1990).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems misleading, because I didn't actually draw the data from the secondary source, just used their list of citations.  On the other hand, I really need to make reference to the fact that this secondary author created the list of sources that I used.  Would it be better to make a statement that the second author listed the references, and just cite that paper once?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3036" LastActivityDate="2011-12-23T16:17:27.030" Title="citation for source from which a list of references was drawn?" Tags="|resources|citations|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4677" CreationDate="2011-12-22T22:10:54.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not cite your secondary source except to note that it was used to obtain the list of reports that you used to actually write the paper. If you are not using any other content, then you wouldn't have anything else to specifically cite. Some would argue that since these primary sources were available independently, then you would only need to cite them. I would suggest that it would be more appropriate to at least acknowledge the secondary source as a matter of courtesy. Also, you never know when someone else may come along and note the similarities and suggest that you simply pilfered the original author's sources and/or information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, do you have any other sources aside from the list of reports you obtained from the original author's paper? If a sizable portion of your sources originate from the other paper, then you run the risk of being accused of plagiarism. If you are using different material from these sources and cover a different topic, then it won't be a big deal. However, if your paper covers basically the same topic or area of discussion and uses more than a few of the exact same references, then you may have a problem on your hands! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2011-12-22T22:10:54.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4674" CreationDate="2011-12-22T22:27:30.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think underlining for emphasizing is a little bit old-fashioned. But if you write for an audience which is used to it, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to publish your writing online, I would advice against underlining. On the internet underlined text is associated with a link. If you do not really have a good reason to break this convention (and emphasizing isn't one, if you ask me), then do not do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mixing different styles (bold, italic, underlining) is confusing at best for the reader. Is the italic section less important than the bold? Does underlining strengthen more than bold? Is the not emphasized text necessary at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last sentence isn't a joke. I've seen whole paragraphs underlined in some writings, wondering why they have written the non-underlined at all. If they had skipped these, they could have skipped the underlining also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-12-22T22:27:30.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4674" CreationDate="2011-12-23T02:06:30.113" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, no, no, hell no, frak no, can I get a no from the peanut gallery? oh, and NO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are not typing on typewriters any more. We are using computers. Word processors, HTML, CSS. Underlining means a hyperlink. Period. If you want to emphasize something, use bold, italics, indents, all caps, or any combination thereof. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; exception is certain legalese, if the lawyers insist on underlining for some archaic reason which gives formatting weight in court. Still annoying, but there's no arguing with Legal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not dealing with lawyers, then change the underlines to italics as a matter of course. If the writers object, tell them, &quot;But in typesetting, when something is underlined in the manuscript, that's what it &lt;em&gt;means&lt;/em&gt;. It's telling the typesetter 'italicize this.'&quot; Brook no arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Sorry. I am a writer, editor, and typesetter, and seeing underlined non-hyperlinked copy makes my blood pressure rise.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-12-24T11:16:26.160" LastActivityDate="2011-12-24T11:16:26.160" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-12-23T08:59:32.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke weren't programmers (AFAIK), but they were certainly geeks and wrote huge bunches of award-winning science and fiction, so that's not the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue for a lot of left-brainers (myself included) is getting in touch with our emotions so that what we write isn't too dry.  Emotion and empathy are what gives stories and characters &quot;life&quot; and makes them worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best ideas won't work in fiction without humanizing them - having the characters discover and experience them - not just lecturing the reader about some new concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently listening to Rendezvous with Rama (Clarke) and that, IMO, Hugo Award not withstanding, teeters on the edge of expounding scientific theory at the expense of good story telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Object-oriented programming transformed dry processes into things that look a lot like characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're any good at writing software (and I assume you are), then you already have the creativity and problem solving skills needed for writing.  You just need to develop a new set of heuristics!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2011-12-23T08:59:32.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4677" CreationDate="2011-12-23T16:17:27.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can incorporate the secondary source in your narrative. Since your problem section is, most likely, early on in your paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paul Ricoeur (1991), in From Text to Action, posits on Hiedegger's interpretation of language, based on Wittgenstein's initial foray into the phenomenology of language. Heidegger analyzes (cite from Ricoeur) Wittgenstein's interest in understanding language beyond deconstruction, &quot;quote&quot;. Ricoeur interprets Wittgenstein's interest in x, as well as Heidegger's understanding of y, as a pivotal moment in the transition of language toward the ontological.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, tell the story of what you read. In your problem section, your purpose is to inform the reader, to offer a path of interpretation toward understanding. You shouldn't, as Steven said, pull secondary as primary; however, you are expected to bring the reader up to speed and can do so by exploring where you and the theorists got to the point where you present your problem section. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I need to provide another example, I'm baking all day and will check back in :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3024" LastActivityDate="2011-12-23T16:17:27.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4645" CreationDate="2011-12-23T16:21:59.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, and unnecessarily. There are a lot of open source mathematics materials/books on the market. What, specifically, is your subject and grade year? I'll link up a few examples of free materials. Remember, it's not only a copyright issue, the person that wrote that math textbook is a teacher somewhere, making the same amount of money you're making as a teacher. I'm a teacher too, there are alternatives. It's good that you asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3024" LastActivityDate="2011-12-23T16:21:59.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4627" CreationDate="2011-12-24T06:21:08.763" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there is no &lt;em&gt;universally accepted&lt;/em&gt; standard for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean there aren't standards you should follow, though. Usually, the set of required fields is dictated by the journal or conference you are publishing in. Many journals have BibTeX styles that will include the required fields for you (as long as they are present in your library, of course). It should go without saying that if your journal offers a BibTeX style (possibly as part of a LaTeX class), you should use it. Otherwise, check on the journal's website to see if they have a description of the kind of references they are looking for. Any self-respecting journal should have this information accessible somewhere in its submission instructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do find yourself having the freedom to choose which fields to include, I would suggest following one common-sense guideline: &lt;strong&gt;Include enough information to uniquely identify the reference.&lt;/strong&gt; You'd be surprised how often I find citations which do not uniquely identify a paper, and it's really annoying. At a minimum, I would suggest the following for citing a published paper (not necessarily in this order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authors' names&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal title (abbreviated if standard practice), issue, and volume&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Year of publication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Page number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doi.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DOI&lt;/a&gt; if there is one&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;eprint identifier&lt;/a&gt; if there is one (for fields in which papers are pre-published on arXiv)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In other fields, any sort of widely recognized identifier, if there is one&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If citing a book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authors' names&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Book title&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Edition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Year of publication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ISBN&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, keep the references short enough to be quickly digestible. In particular, the full title of a scientific paper can often be omitted. The aim is that one should be able to pick out the key identifying information at a glance. Using font styles to distinguish different fields helps; most BibTeX styles will do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3037" LastActivityDate="2011-12-24T06:21:08.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4685" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-24T06:26:17.387" Score="0" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend recently challenged me on communicating an idea clearly, and we ended up discussing clear thinking.  I explained that in the idea communication process, concepts sometimes get tangled amidst becoming sentences; other concepts interrupt or intertwine with them.  It's like trying to read a sentence from a page overlayed with layers of moving sentences.  That was new to him.  He sees only the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clear writing requires clear thinking.  What supports it?  What hinders it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3038" LastActivityDate="2011-12-25T08:33:26.990" Title="Clarity: What supports it? What hinders it?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-02-09T15:50:07.453" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4685" CreationDate="2011-12-24T08:16:07.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a principle that serves me well: Begin by connecting with the reader, with what they already know. Then take them somewhere new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Begin each sentence with something the reader already believes, or knows, or cares about. Put new information at the end. Then you can start the next sentence so that it connects with this new information (which they now know), and take them one more step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flow of your content won't always be so linear. So you can start a sentence with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An idea that the reader knows from experience, or other sources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some connection to the idea with which you ended the previous sentence. Maybe you'll add to it, or restate it, or highlight an implication, or zoom in on a single detail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reconnecting with ideas you introduced before the previous sentence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same idea works for paragraphs, sections, chapters, and entire essays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Connect, and take a small step. Connect again, and take another step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I learned this principle from Joseph M. Williams's enormously helpful book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0205747469&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Style&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. The subtitle is &quot;Lessons in Clarity and Grace.&quot; I recommend it highly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-12-24T08:16:07.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4368" CreationDate="2011-12-24T14:01:16.690" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The resource that most conlangers point to is the venerable &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zompist.com/kit.html&quot;&gt;Language Construction Kit&lt;/a&gt;. It's quite extensive. It mostly concerns the linguistic aspects of making your language, but it does address some of the issues about making your conlang believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3039" LastActivityDate="2011-12-24T14:01:16.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3161" CreationDate="2011-12-24T14:15:37.757" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal preference: omit the &quot;he said&quot; / &quot;she said&quot; entirely. You will need it when there is the slightest possibility that who is speaking is unclear, but otherwise there is no need for it. If you wind up with a stretch of dialogue so long that it's easy to lose track of who is speaking, that's a sign that your dialogue needs to be cut down or broken up by action anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you have to do it carefully. One book that does it wrong is &quot;And Another Thing&quot; by Eoin Colfer, or at least my edition of it. I was confused about who was speaking on more than one occasion, because he (or his editor) didn't apply the following rules:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a character is the subject of some description (say, performing an action), and the character then speaks, then his line of dialogue goes in the same paragraph as the description. In such a case, no &quot;he said&quot; is needed because, if it were somebody else, there would be a paragraph break.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If, however, you just finished describing what Joe does and then Jane speaks, Jane's line goes in a new paragraph and should include &quot;she said&quot; or &quot;said Jane&quot; for clarity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3039" LastActivityDate="2011-12-24T14:15:37.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4627" CreationDate="2011-12-24T18:18:30.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;AFAIK for each bibtex entry there are required fields (if they are missing you get a warning when compiling with bibtex/latex), and they are specified, for instance, here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BibTeX&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BibTeX&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kmh-lanl.hansonhub.com/spie/bibtex-overview.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://kmh-lanl.hansonhub.com/spie/bibtex-overview.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2114" LastActivityDate="2011-12-24T18:18:30.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4368" CreationDate="2011-12-25T01:41:20.480" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I created my own language for a game, and I've come to learn a lot from it. I am no expert on linguistics, and my tips are a bit random/rambling, but maybe they might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some of what I would suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to create something with only a few basic rules, so it is easy for you to remember. Readers will not like noticing that your fictional language seems inconsistent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to reuse syllables within your language in a way that indicates conjugation and a kind of &quot;history&quot; to the language.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unless you are writing by hand, make use of the Latin alphabet :), especially if that is your native alphabet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only use what you need in dialogue and when writing phrases/sentences in your fictional language. Overdoing it can lead to confusion for both you and your audience.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every language has a history - so if you are going to use a fictional one, ensure that the &quot;speakers&quot; of your language have a good story (even if you don't use it in your main story) to draw from. A good way to do this is to write down a side story somewhere, so you can draw on it when working on your fictitious language.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some languages are &quot;harsher&quot; or &quot;more coarse&quot; than others. For example, I've found Portuguese to be less &quot;soft&quot; than Spanish (I could be wrong :D!). It helps, when creating your own language, to keep this in mind with relation to the civilization, secret society, or who ever - uses your language. For example, a race of friendly aliens who never knew warfare are unlikely to use &quot;harsh&quot; tones and &quot;hard&quot; consonants like p and d often, but more likely to use something &quot;soft&quot; like &quot;ah&quot; and &quot;oh&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over all - be creative, but don't overwork yourself. Use words or parts of words from other languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tend to be very useful to me). Many languages have multiple ways of saying the same thing, or different related words for the same subject. For example, Greek has many words for &quot;love&quot;. You can try to use this concept when creating your own language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know my answer was a bit... &quot;all over the place&quot;, and probably not a professional/scholarly answer - but I hope it helps :)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2162" LastActivityDate="2011-12-25T01:41:20.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4663" CreationDate="2011-12-25T07:52:36.667" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a little too hard to tell what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this adds to the suspense, it might make a reader wonder if reading is worth the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long can you read a book you don't understand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2011-12-25T07:52:36.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4685" CreationDate="2011-12-25T08:33:26.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is more of a tip than an actual answer, but it can still help you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short is clear, long gets you lost.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that important and critical sentences are as small as possible, and have a paragraph just for themselves. The eyes tend to roll over long, bulky paragraphs and sentences, whereas a five-word paragraph immediately catches the eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2011-12-25T08:33:26.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4663" CreationDate="2011-12-25T10:58:13.057" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid this piece feels far too jumbled for me to be intrigued by it. I feel like a lot of unrelated information is being thrown at me, and most of it isn't even real information - it's vague hints at details that haven't been revealed yet, and at this point I still have no idea why these details might be interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be counter-intuitive, but you need to give away more if you want to be suspenseful. Without enough grounding, your hinting and foreshadowing feel like amorphic hyperbole, and don't encourage me to continue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Glut of Foreshadowing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider: you've asked whether there's enough suspense &quot;with every line.&quot; That's a &lt;em&gt;great&lt;/em&gt; question. Now look at your piece: one line talk about being dead. The next about a &quot;leap of fate.&quot; Then about &quot;captors.&quot; By the time we're at the third line, we're lost all the power the first line had, because we're talking about something else already. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I think I can safely say that the &lt;em&gt;method&lt;/em&gt; you're using to generate suspense is by using vague foreshadowing. You mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Somebody &quot;dead,&quot; but speaking to us.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Despised captors. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &quot;she&quot; who allowed the narrator's mind to &quot;work without reason,&quot; whom we will &quot;get to know, eventually&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An &quot;unexpected ripple&quot; which could apparantly be anything&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;A change that will add to a world’s history&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Friends&quot; given &quot;jobs,&quot; and this is somehow alarming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A school on the other side of the moon, for prodigies, which is &quot;not just a school&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is more to it (to what?) than Adam's mother is saying (even though we don't understand yet what she's said)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A worldwide alert to evacuate the coast&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A warning to RUN&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this, you'll note, occurs before the &quot;story&quot; has really &quot;started.&quot; (In fact, the next line implies a complete change of scenery to somewhere &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt;.) I think the effect you're aiming for is to excite the reader about various elements the story will be addressing later. But when you throw in so many hints with so little concrete detail, with no characters or setting for us to latch onto yet, that's not what happens. The reader can't keep track of all these hints; there's so many of them, and none of them connects to anything yet. Even when you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; start clearing things up, this passage won't have helped, because the reader won't have understood enough to remember the details of this scene 50 pages later. And it certainly doesn't create suspense &lt;em&gt;now.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Suspense Comes From Open Questions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've always considered suspense to be built around specific, tantalizing questions. Try choosing &lt;strong&gt;one or two questions&lt;/strong&gt; to intrigue your reader with, and rewrite so that the focus is on making &lt;em&gt;only those subjects&lt;/em&gt; suspenseful. Everything else should either be clear, or clearly irrelevant at the moment, or cut out entirely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples for suspenseful questions could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why are Adam's friends suddenly receiving jobs?&lt;/strong&gt; In this case, your focus is on Adam's surprise at this, and what the implications may be. The suspense of &quot;why arethey being given jobs? what does this mean?&quot; allows you to go into detail regarding who Adam's friends are, what the &quot;jobs&quot; are, and why they're significant. The suspense is tied into the &quot;why now?&quot; element, and the significance this development holds for Adama and the world.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the big event about to be announced?&lt;/strong&gt; This is mysterious within the story-world; Adam might be wondering about this too. He might also have inside information, giving him a better direction than most people have. You can use the suspense of &quot;what is NASA hiding?&quot; to reveal Adam's character and background, and the current state of the world, and concrete potential threats to it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the school behind the moon?&lt;/strong&gt; As opposed to other name-dropping references your piece makes, this is one that gives concrete detail and raises interesting questions. You could take that further, make the scene &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; amping up the suspense regarding the school. Tell more about who goes there, why it's significant, what Adam's connection to the school is. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any event, &quot;What did the author mean in the line [XXX]&quot; is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a good question to build suspense around. It's a question of understanding, with no immediate implications (as far as the reader knows); it doesn't set the reader looking forward to anything because they have no idea what to expect from that element. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, try picking just one or two &quot;suspenseful&quot; questions, and building the scene &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; around those. Keep everything else clear and comprehensible. That'll keep the reader grounded enough to understand what's going on now - so they can wonder what'll happen next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2011-12-25T10:58:13.057" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="270" CreationDate="2011-12-25T19:54:31.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started using Visual Dictionaries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are good ones I'm familiar with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DK Illustrated Oxford Dictionary&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Facts on File&lt;/strong&gt;, thanks to Writers SE, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/4639/2358&quot;&gt;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/4639/2358&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary&lt;/strong&gt;, online and books, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/4623/2358&quot;&gt;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/4623/2358&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2358" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2011-12-25T20:05:18.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="270" CreationDate="2011-12-26T07:48:00.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0194325385&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oxford Collocations Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; very useful. It tells you which verbs tend to be used with a specific noun, which adverbs tend to be used with a verb, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-native speakers this a real treasure which is unfortunately little known. Collocations are the kind of intuitions about a language which are very difficult to fully acquire, and they are hard to fathom from a normal dictionary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe - though it's not really for me to say - that it also has a value for native speakers, both as useful form of a thesaurus - and, for creative writes, as a sort of dictionary of cliches to be used with care. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2938" LastActivityDate="2011-12-26T07:48:00.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1447" CreationDate="2011-12-26T10:48:55.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;there are so many aspects you have to look on before hire a copywriter because on them , your whole project or business is depended.So before hiring a please check:&#xA;1.His/her past writing posts.&#xA;2Results of previous campaign.&#xA;3.compare his/her fee with some other copywriters in the market.&#xA;4.Mode of his working.&#xA;These are some important keys, on which you must take care of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.billfryercopywriter.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;copywriter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3044" LastActivityDate="2011-12-26T10:48:55.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4652" CreationDate="2011-12-26T15:27:03.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using the free &lt;a href=&quot;http://notepad-plus-plus.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Notepad++&lt;/a&gt; text editor lately for writing software code, and find it very useful being able to have two documents visible, side-by-side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also allows you to lock the vertical scroll-bars. I expect it's limited to plaintext documents, so if that's what you have, give it go. Many other text editors will be able to do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2537" LastActivityDate="2011-12-26T15:27:03.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3161" CreationDate="2011-12-27T21:32:19.827" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best advice I ever got on this: use an action just before they say something.  It's really easy.  make them do something and then put what they said next to it.  people understand who's talking, but they don't get tired of &quot;he said&quot;, &quot;she said&quot;, &quot;they replied&quot;.  Have fun writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3048" LastActivityDate="2011-12-27T21:32:19.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4644" CreationDate="2011-12-27T23:16:19.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I paraphrased this from Robert Harris' &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.virtualsalt.com/MLA-InText.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Robert Harris In-text URL and database citation style&quot;&gt;MLA In-Text Citation Style&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, November 2010. It is based on the Seventh Edition of MLA for Research Writers, 2009, which remains the most current version. Harris distinguishes between a web page and a database. Here is the standard for a web page, or web address, as the question requested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last name, First name. “Article Title.” &lt;em&gt;Web site name&lt;/em&gt;. Sponsoring&#xA;  organization name, Date of article. Web. Date you accessed article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Include as much of the information that you can find for the website. If you don't have the date, use &lt;code&gt;n.d.&lt;/code&gt; for &lt;code&gt;no date&lt;/code&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last name, first name. “Article title.” &lt;em&gt;Web site&lt;/em&gt;. Sponsoring&#xA;  Organization, &lt;code&gt;n.d.&lt;/code&gt; Web. Date you accessed article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have the author's name, nor the date of the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Article title.” &lt;em&gt;Web site&lt;/em&gt;. Sponsoring Organization, &lt;code&gt;n.d.&lt;/code&gt; Web. Date you accessed article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the web site name is the same as the organization name, or no organization name is specified:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last name, first name. &quot;Article title.&quot; &lt;em&gt;Site name&lt;/em&gt;, Date of article.&#xA;  Web. Date you accessed the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the URL might be difficult to locate, include it in  brackets at the end of the citation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last name, First name. “Article Title.” &lt;em&gt;Web Site&lt;/em&gt;. Sponsoring&#xA;  Organization, Date of article. Web. Date you accessed article.&#xA;  &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;http://xxxxxx.xxx/....&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use &lt;strong&gt;exactly&lt;/strong&gt; the same period and comma placements above for your citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2358" LastActivityDate="2011-12-27T23:16:19.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4444" CreationDate="2011-12-28T16:59:28.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Facsimiles of a Printed Source (note that the use of hanging indents applies except for the first one where Title and Facsimile are both left-aligned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Title. Hunt &amp;amp; Eaton. Newly Re-printed. Original City: Printed by Orig Printer …[for] Original Author…, 1890.&#xA;Facsimile, Introduction by Name (Facsimile/Reprint Title). Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1999.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Title. Facsimile edition by Hunt &amp;amp; Eaton. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1999. An explanation, sentence, such as the document appears to be a facsimile circa 1890. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turabian gives an example related to a musical score; however the order of the citation can remain. A manuscript score reproduced in a facsimile that is part of a multi-volume set. Combine 17.1.3, 17.1.4, 17.1.8 and 17.6.4:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Dowland, John]. &quot;Flow My Teares Fall from Yo'r Springs.&quot; Manuscript score. Oxford, Christ Church Ms. 439, [pp.] 6-7. Facsimile reprint in English Song 1600-1675: Facsimiles of Twenty-six Manuscripts and an Edition of the Texts. Edited with introductions by Elise Bickford Jorgens. Vol. 6, Manuscripts at Oxford, Part I. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;APA gives an example of a reprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Freud, S. (1961). The ego and the id. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 19, pp. 3 - 66). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1923)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3024" LastActivityDate="2011-12-28T16:59:28.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2011-12-28T17:44:45.087" Score="28" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Write What You Know&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of those rules that I think is most often misinterpreted. Many aspiring writers and advisors take it to mean 'write only about your personal life experiences and not using your imagination at all'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realistically though a writer &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; to move beyond the strictly autobiographical and create fiction with their imagination. So how to combine the two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better understanding is to realise that what you know is emotions, relationships, motivations, describing people and places, tragedy, comedy, and all the many other things that make up the basics of a novel: characters, plot, humour, and drama. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, write about what you know: &lt;strong&gt;life&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3010" LastActivityDate="2011-12-28T17:44:45.087" CommentCount="10" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-12-28T17:44:45.087" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="665" CreationDate="2011-12-29T09:10:29.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's my stab at brevity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ran alone on the winter beach racing the storm home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3010" LastActivityDate="2011-12-29T09:10:29.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4704" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4709" CreationDate="2011-12-29T12:01:54.120" Score="5" ViewCount="5127" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my novel, I have a part where there is a war scene, and I need to explain it precisely from the king's point of view. How can I explain the war graphics vividly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3052" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T18:02:39.533" Title="How to explain a war scene?" Tags="|style|fiction|technique|scene|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4705" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-29T12:35:45.973" Score="12" ViewCount="1356" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for some inspiration on where to start writing a novel. I have a general idea for a plot and characters, but I don't feel it's enough for sitting down and starting to write. It needs a lot of development. And I am not sure how to approach it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously not all writers start in the same place or prepare in the same way. I would like to know how different people approach that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of writers who wrote or talked about this process? Maybe there's a book with interviews of writers about their creative process, that will cover that too? Or maybe some of you will be interested in sharing their own experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2938" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-12-30T13:46:34.733" LastActivityDate="2022-10-04T07:15:22.883" Title="How to develop a story for a novel?" Tags="|fiction|novel|resources|creative-writing|preparation|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4706" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-29T13:03:31.367" Score="1" ViewCount="6118" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can find my initial trials &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/revisions/4513/1&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and, based on feedback, version two &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/revisions/4663/12&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was trying to create a sort of 'flashforward' opening (please don't cite Sawyer) for a novel. That is: of the 45 chapters being edited for the novel, the paragraphs linked to are the zero chapter. They'll be available again in chapter 44 followed by the recap and the cliffhanger for the next book in the serial. I later found it was called &lt;em&gt;in medias res&lt;/em&gt; but that didn't help me find &lt;em&gt;quality&lt;/em&gt; examples. Especially ones that'd work with a Hard SF novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to that, what examples would you cite for this kind of effect? Having a scene from the ending be the Prelude sequence and everything told from the point it started until it lead to the Prelude. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt; I want quality examples of this, preferably by reputable writers. I want the advice for writing long novels; neither novelettes nor TV shows. Yes it's an old and possibly tired technique but I asking for the right way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you couldn't grasp this, think of Nolan's Inception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if possible, cite older (out of copyright) titles so that I can get them from Project Gutenberg. I may already have some modern titles you may give as examples, but I seriously doubt it. If you can include the excerpt of the text you meant, that'd solve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T01:00:51.830" Title="Quality examples of 'in medias res' starting sequences in SF literature" Tags="|fiction|technique|resources|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4704" CreationDate="2011-12-29T13:22:09.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you explain anything vividly? Observe with all your senses, and add emotions and thoughts. Do the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will express hope that you have not personally been in a war scene, so you would have to find some other way of observing, or use your imagination. You could watch combat footage or news reports of war, you could interview veterans, you could read war memoirs, or you could read other fictional books with war scenes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then don't just describe the parry-thrust-advance of swordwork, but how it feels to swing the sword &amp;mdash; how it hits his opponent, the shock that comes back up the king's arm (or doesn't), the smell of perforated bowels, the smears of blood and brains, the terrible screaming of dying men. Maybe find some Society for Creative Anachronisms chapter and talk to the folks there about how sword-fighting works. (Substitute whatever weaponry or tech is appropriate for your setting, of course.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-29T13:22:09.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4705" CreationDate="2011-12-29T13:25:11.597" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some good answers &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/134/how-much-planning-should-go-on-before-beginning-writing&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm finding the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snowflake&lt;/a&gt; method useful as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T21:03:11.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4704" CreationDate="2011-12-29T13:39:50.380" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For starters, avoid getting into details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is true generally, and even more so during battle. People are moving quickly! It is no time for details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read a battle-scene where the author described specific attacks, and the impression I had was that the fighting was happening in slow motion. With classical music in the background. Really slow music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best battle-scene I remember reading included almost no descriptions of the actual battle, but of colors, emotions and cries. Needless to say, this scene left a powerful impression, and I actually felt like I was there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, since you're writing this from the king's perspective - and the king is normally in the back lines - you'll have to get into overall detail of what's happening on the field. After all, the king needs to know what's going on!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2459/what-makes-a-good-action-scene&quot;&gt;Good action scenes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-12-29T13:39:50.380" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4704" CreationDate="2011-12-29T15:59:09.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gritty details go a long way, so I would recommend not dwelling on them too much. I feel like it would be more realistic for someone in a battle to be focused on fighting and staying alive, rather than witnessing all the atrocities happening around him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an old adage along the lines of &quot;after the first shot is fired, all battle plans go out the window.&quot; If your king is in charge of this battle, at least in some capacity, it would be good to focus on how easily everything breaks down into chaos, both in a specific battle, and in troop positioning/tactics. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poor troop morale&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;breaking formation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;running&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;abandoning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;becoming obstinate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plans:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;backfire &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fail&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;partially succeed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;succeed with undesired results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are not accurately communicated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unknown, enemy plans/sabotage attempts:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;succeed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;partially succeed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fail but with undesired results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Equipment:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;malfunctions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is inappropriately apportioned (like wool uniforms being used in Africa)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supply lines:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are severed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get waylaid&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sneaky tactics:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;night fighting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;pretending&quot; to run, only to achieve advantageous ground&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;guerrilla warfare&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication breakdown&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pre-radio, commanders had to shout orders or have instruments announce them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;missives / carrier pigeons not arriving&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some books that hit these realistic difficulties of war as well as the gritty violence are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hawk_Down_%28book%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Black Hawk Down&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_badge_of_courage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Red Badge of Courage&lt;/a&gt;. Even if they aren't your specific time period, the concepts can be easily adopted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-12-29T15:59:09.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4705" CreationDate="2011-12-29T16:07:41.313" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I've written this before (or upvoted someone who has written it), but so what:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need a basic idea. Oh, you have one, good.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need a main conflict. Otherwise you do not have a story. That means your hero wants something and someone is putting obstacles in his way. Like Remeo wants Juliet, but their families are against their relationship. Hero wants peace, but villain wants to conquer the world.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need more conflicts. Smaller ones along the way. Inner conflicts of the characters. Leaves conflict with the tree and water conflicts the river. Conflicts everywhere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Characters. Characters drive the story (well, normally). Write down the biography of your characters. How do they look, when left they school, how many children, inabilities, do they smoke, torture puppies, eat children, hate women, were violated by their daddy, whatever. Ask your characters questions to get to know them. &quot;Would you drive 100mph in a city if you knew you weren't caught?&quot; &quot;Would you play football naked in a sold out stadium?&quot; Stuff like that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have your basic idea and the main conflict, start to develop your characters. When you know who will drive the story, you get more ideas for the other conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-12-29T16:07:41.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4706" CreationDate="2011-12-30T02:22:39.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Flash-forwarding is also called 'Prolepsis'.  There are examples in classical literature, mainly in the form of prophesy.  For example, Oedipus is told that he will kill his father and sleep with his mother.  I know that I have seen it elsewhere in SF, but haven't found a specific example for you yet. It seems like the technique, not used as an interlude, might be more commonly found in short stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1773" LastEditorUserId="1773" LastEditDate="2011-12-30T15:59:48.200" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T15:59:48.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4713" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4716" CreationDate="2011-12-30T07:45:24.547" Score="5" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write like Neal Stephenson- I read Snow Crash and absolutely fell in love with the style.  I'm trying to write a cyberpunk style book myself, and I have a good plot (I think), but I want to make it humorous.  Stephenson's style works extraordinarily well, so I figured that I might as well piggyback on his signal, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3056" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-12-30T13:35:10.267" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T14:49:53.117" Title="Is it okay to attempt to write in the style of another person, and how is that done well?" Tags="|style|fiction|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4714" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4718" CreationDate="2011-12-30T08:14:21.987" Score="12" ViewCount="3725" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty good in the writing department as far as prose, it's just that I'll sit down and have no idea what to write.  Perhaps it's a creative problem, I just don't know.  I cannot figure out any plot whatsoever.  Specifically, for me, I like to read science fiction, so my goal is to come up creative science fiction plots.  That seems impossible to me because, no matter how hard I try, I always end up conforming to some dumb cliche.  How do you guys do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Why am I asking?  Well, I read a book called Snow Crash recently by Neal Stephenson, and I decided I was going to write a novel/story/whatever that was a humorous cyberpunk themed kinda thing.  But everything I think of just seems so cliche!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3056" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-12-30T13:34:55.853" LastActivityDate="2018-08-06T11:37:53.867" Title="I suck at plots. Is there a way to sort of train oneself to think of creative plots, specifically in scifi?" Tags="|fiction|plot|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4705" CreationDate="2011-12-30T13:45:46.527" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;For book resources, there are many out there.  Here's a small sampling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0393320030&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;On Becoming a Novelist&lt;/a&gt; by John Gardener (and he wrote several other books on writing like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0679734031&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Art of Fiction&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0156091801&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aspects of the Novel&lt;/a&gt; by E. M. Forester&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0385480016&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bird By Bird&lt;/a&gt; by Anne Lamott&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1439156816&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;On Writing&lt;/a&gt; by Stephen King&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of questions on this site that may help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/148/what-are-good-reads-about-writing&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; has a larger list of book resources, although not all will directly apply to your question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/392/resources-for-character-development&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; covers resources for character development in particular&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T13:45:46.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4713" CreationDate="2011-12-30T14:49:53.117" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can appreciate the feeling, since I started out that way myself, but it's not an adult way to write. The short answer is &quot;No, find your own voice.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The longer answer, and explanation: You're suffering from Red Shorts Syndrome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does that mean? Well, let's say you watch a race, and the guy who won the race wore red shorts. If you want to win a race, do you go out and buy red shorts and assume that wearing them will make you win? No, you look at what the winner did to train himself so that he could win. Did he run half-marathons every day? Eat minimal carbs? Drink seaweed tea? What techniques did he use to make his skill set better? That's the idea you want to copy. Not even the actions: the mindset. This guy knew that carbs made him sluggish, so he ate as little carbs as possible. Maybe your albatross is dairy, so you cut out dairy instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In writing terms: what do you love about this book? You say you love the genre (cyberpunk). Do you like his prose style? Do you like how he plots? Are there other cyberpunk books you also love? Other Stephenson books? What do they have in common? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a list of the goals you want to accomplish: a book written in X style, which is funny, which has Y kind of character, set in Z setting, and so on. Then throw away &lt;i&gt;Snow Crash&lt;/i&gt; and focus on your own story. Don't mimic someone else. Write the best funny cyberpunk &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt; can write. Stephenson, one imagines, was not copying some other writer when creating &lt;i&gt;Snow Crash.&lt;/i&gt; He was doing something unique to himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copy the work ethic, not the end result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T14:49:53.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4717" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-30T15:17:29.273" Score="1" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live in India and here light reads and &quot;chick lit&quot; have made a great impression. The youth are picking up such books like petrol on fire. Even non-readers are giving reading these genres a try. Titles like these have helped the publishing industry here to grow more than 100% in the last few years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea someone who wishes to become a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7/what-is-literary-fiction&quot;&gt;literary fiction&lt;/a&gt; writer to write such a book; does it fix his/her genre? Is it going to demean his standing as a literary writer from the readers' point of view? Does he or she come to be characterized as a Light read or &quot;chick lit&quot; writer who cannot write in another genre, especially literary fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3052" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T01:10:21.007" Title="Is writing a light read or &quot;chick lit&quot; a good option for an aspiring literary fiction author?" Tags="|fiction|genre|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4714" CreationDate="2011-12-30T15:25:01.227" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid of using cliche plots. Plots are all cliche. Think of architecture: for the most part, buildings all follow the same general rules. That's because these rules are necessary for the building to be structurally sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plot is much the same. A standard frame with which you hang all the unique flourishes and twists that will set your work apart from the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some books on plot that have helped me tremendously:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1932907009&quot;&gt;Save the Cat&lt;/a&gt; (technically on screenwriting, but still highly recommended)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/193290736X&quot;&gt;The Writer's Journey&lt;/a&gt; (specifically focused on the hero's journey)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1582979987&quot;&gt;Story Engineering&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/158297294X&quot;&gt;Plot and Structure&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T15:25:01.227" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4717" CreationDate="2011-12-30T15:59:57.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You think too much. If you want to be a writer, you should write instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, seriously, this thinking (and the resulting &quot;decisions&quot;) will take you nowhere. If you read lots of chick lit and you like it, then write chick lit. If you read lots of literary fiction and you like it, write it. If you disgust chick lit, then avoid that genre. The readers will find out. Because they are not stupid. Which takes me to my next point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think your readers are stupid? Why should they &quot;demean&quot; you, because you write in different genres? If they really did, you would not want them as readers. Skip that thought, it's totally useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you like both genres, write in both genres. But if you think, there is an easy genre (like chick lit), where you can make easy money, and there is this other reputable genre (like literary  fiction) where you can show the world how great you are, then you are a snob and an idiot. So I really hope, you do not think that. Because there is no easy genre, there is no easy money. Everyone thinking that should stop writing immediately or never start at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T15:59:57.630" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4717" CreationDate="2011-12-30T23:51:34.303" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're worried about reader perception, use a pseudonym.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't think that one genre is easier than another, which seems to be the assumption behind your question. I think each writer needs to look at his or her own strengths and interests, and work within those.  Someone whose preferences and style run to literary fiction will have serious trouble writing a successful Romance, just as someone whose strengths are a good match for Romance will have trouble writing literary fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are these strengths and weaknesses?  Well, I'm not sure--maybe it should be another question on this board!  In my experience, Romance requires a strong understanding of characterization and the ability to write simple, clean prose.  Romances may have the reputation of being the home of 'purple prose', but I think most modern readers shy away from over-written stories, and prefer more simple, straightforward language.  Subgenres within Romance will have their own requirements, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to write Chick Lit, write Chick Lit. If you want to write in more than one genre, write in more than one genre, using pseudonyms as necessary.  But don't force yourself to write something you're not comfortable with in the interest of increasing sales; readers of all genres want well-written work by someone who's an expert in the genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T23:51:34.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4717" CreationDate="2011-12-31T01:10:21.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you write something &quot;lightweight,&quot; and then something &quot;heavy&quot; or &quot;serious&quot; afterwards, the readers of your &quot;light&quot; book might give the &quot;serious&quot; one a try sooner than someone who never heard of you, because they like your previous work. So you're establishing a built-in audience. Can't see a downside there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the critics, it's their job to &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; the books to review them. If the reviewer can't be arsed to get past your name on the cover because your previous book was &lt;em&gt;Burning But Age-Appropriately Chaste Desire in the Desert,&lt;/em&gt; the reviewer should be fired for refusal to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write what you want to write. If it's good, word will get out. Don't worry about being pigeonholed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T01:10:21.007" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4723" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4724" CreationDate="2011-12-31T06:20:28.277" Score="2" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A pineapple is walking down a street, but here’s the kicker: he’s completely naked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was a non sequitur hook I thought of.  I figured that it would raise a bunch of really interesting questions, encouraging people to read on.  However, I can't think of how to connect it to my novel.  Any suggestions on how to connect this (in my mind) great hook to a story?  I realize this may be closed because it's too specific, but I'm drawing a blank.  What I'm really asking is: when you guys think of a funny/interesting non sequitur, how do you connect it to story?  Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3056" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T13:59:04.073" Title="How do you connect a non sequitur hook to a novel?" Tags="|fiction|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4723" CreationDate="2011-12-31T07:15:53.177" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The narrator is clearly present in the sentence. The most important thing here is not the pineapple, but the narrator's desire not only to tell us about the pineapple, but to &lt;em&gt;begin the story&lt;/em&gt; by telling us about the pineapple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's a tie-in between that opening line and the rest of your novel, it's in your answers to questions like these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does the narrator's desire to utter the sentence tell us about the narrator?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does the narrator's desire to &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; with that sentence tell us about the narrator?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What makes those aspects of the narrator so important to you as the author that you want to start your novel with that line?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your answers to those questions don't give you a meaningful connection, then this line doesn't belong in your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T07:15:53.177" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4725" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4729" CreationDate="2011-12-31T13:05:02.113" Score="9" ViewCount="3396" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write fiction as well as poetry. And many a times I use poetry as a tool to bring out that acute feeling of pain or love (as required) in my explanations. What if I use poetry  to introduce or end a scene? Is it alright to do so, or does it also has some damaging effect? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3052" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-13T03:05:08.427" LastActivityDate="2019-04-13T03:05:08.427" Title="Using poetry in novels a good option?" Tags="|fiction|style|technique|poetry|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4723" CreationDate="2011-12-31T13:29:54.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start a notebook.  Jot down ideas like that, let them ruminate and meet up with your other ideas and have idea babies, and then when you're stuck for inspiration, read through the notebook.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, yeah, if you have a story that goes with your line, you could use the line as an opening. But that means that you're more or less stuck with that ironic, detached voice for the rest of the piece, and I think that would be really hard to pull off. I'd love to read it if it were done well, but it would take a strong stylist to pull it off, and I get the feeling that you're pretty new to the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also try to have one of the characters use the line as dialogue.  A joke told at the start of the story that becomes more and more meaningful as the events of the tale unfold.  If you felt the need, you could have it bookended with a repetition of the joke at the end - perhaps through the bloody teeth of a character dying because he, too, was a naked pineapple. Or whatever. Again, pretty challenging, but brilliant if it worked. I'm  thinking Tarrantino-esque.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with it, and have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T13:29:54.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4723" CreationDate="2011-12-31T13:59:04.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't really insert a hook afterwards. It will feel inserted. The hook needs to be there organically. You've presented a bizarre but intriguing image. In order to use it, you have to build a reason for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a literal pineapple, like you can buy at the store, which has&#xA;through some magical or technological means become animated? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a person dressed as a pineapple, with bare legs visible?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a person dressed as a pineapple mascot (think Mr. Peanut), and&#xA;the character is supposed to have clothes of some kind which have&#xA;been lost?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it an advertising exec pitching a quirky commercial to a client&#xA;who sells pineapples?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a dream?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a videogame?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no logical or natural reason for the naked pineapple to stroll into the book, send him strolling out again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Kate advises, keep a notebook. Write down your fabulous hooks. You can reread them later at your leisure and make yourself happy with your own writing all over again. But &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; clutter up your novel with them if they don't belong there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T13:59:04.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4725" CreationDate="2011-12-31T14:05:00.820" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of your characters could &quot;write&quot; the poem and recite it to another. You could present the poem as something in a book which a character reads, or establish that  your character is a poet who is always composing in her head and tends to think in verse, so the poetry is actually coming from her thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to stop dead in the middle of prose narration, insert a poem, and continue merrily along is disruptive to the flow of reading. Unless you're writing something truly surreal, where  you're playing with the medium as part of how you're telling the story, I don't recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T14:05:00.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4725" CreationDate="2011-12-31T16:59:54.910" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read several books where chapters are introduced by a poem. I do not see a problem with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose a more disruptive approach, like putting the poem between scenes (or within one scene), you generate a &quot;damaging&quot; effect. Many readers will be puzzled, you tear them out of your story and normally a writer tries to avoid exactly that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But breaking a rule is not automatically a bad thing. If you want to do it, try it. I would probably not read it, but I could imagine that there is an audience which like this experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst thing that could happen is that I'm wrong and no-one likes it. Then you have failed and failing is good, because you can learn from it. Experience is such a valuable thing, so go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T16:59:54.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4714" CreationDate="2011-12-31T23:48:32.227" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you say you suck at plots, you may be looking at the wrong level. Everyone sucks at plotting in the beginning. I suspect that a plot never comes fully formed to anyone. You have to tease it out. You have to play with the tools of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently reading &lt;em&gt;Story Engineering&lt;/em&gt; and loving it (long as you skim over the first 50 pages of sales pitch.) He talks about the six core competencies of writing fiction. I've heard good things about all four books oldrobotsneverrust suggested. Just because a good writer makes it look easy, doesn't mean that writing fiction is easy. Takes work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But shy of reading a whole book, you might try what Stephen King does (and me) and talks about in &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On Writing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. He starts with a few characters and the concept question, a what-if question. What if a regular kid found proof of alien visitations? And what if his most trusted punker friend wants to steal it from him and destroy it for no apparent reason? OR: What if a punker geek met a pretty preppy girl who just happened to have more info about conspiracies than he did? How would his attraction move the story forward? What if two punkers competed on a trivial task, and what the winner created turned out to have galactic significance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is referred to as a &lt;strong&gt;pantser&lt;/strong&gt;, writing by the seat of your pants, and is considered by most to be very hard, unless you are Stephen King. But for me, learning to create good concepts was a powerful exercise. Never mind what they do when they meet. Just put them in a room and see what they do. Tease out the inciting incident that launches the journey of the story. Create interesting characters and let them tell you where they want to go. Just put them in interesting situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether a plot is a cliche, I agree with @oldrobotsneverrust. Don't worry about it. If you characters are rich in depth, inner demons and complexity, it won't matter if the plot has been done a dozen times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So just start creating lots of concepts and ask people if they would want to read such a book. Or start to look for the concept in books you've read, so you get good at understanding what a concept looks like. You might even start with writing short stories, rather than the daunting task of writing a book first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another exercise I created was &lt;strong&gt;fictionalized reality&lt;/strong&gt;. Start to notice when some trivial event happened in your life, one that happens to feel more rich with detail that most events. Write it up with all the texture of a novel, learning to add setup, backstory and voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;He sat at the computer answering yet another question on the writers board, still irritated at that last BSOD crash. His desk was littered with scraps of do-lists and scattered index cards from his recent novel project. He had no time for such attempts to help, when his own novel had fallen so far behind. Maybe he'd never finish it. Maybe it was true what they say. Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But he couldn't just quit. He'd just made a brilliant point, one that needed follow up. One last thing and that would nail it. He needed to do this. He needed to be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;He turned to look out his apartment window, looking onto the deserted church parking lot. The service seemed to have ended early. No, wait. It was the 4 p.m. service and the time was now approaching 6 p.m. Ali would be waiting for him, complete unwilling to press play on the DVR before he got there for their ritual viewing of Warehouse Thirteen.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See. Just learn to capture the voice, and remember to add more texture like colors, sensations of the wood, smells, anything to make it more rich than it is. Just remember, that the reader will cut out half or more of the details you add. So add at least twice what you need. Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3060" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-08-06T05:55:12.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4733" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4735" CreationDate="2012-01-01T13:48:00.663" Score="14" ViewCount="20875" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different characters speak differently. If someone reads me a letter written by an immediate relative, I can tell right away who wrote it. I believe --and correct me if I'm wrong-- that giving each major character a subtly unique way of speaking can help make the character seem more real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What practices are used to make different characters speak differently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't bear the thought of reverting to crutches such as speech impediments, favored swear-words, or noticeable accents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet, I've read far too many books where I felt that the characters all spoke alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I make the differences be subtle, so that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Characters don't sound the same; and yet-&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The difference sounds natural, and not as if I'm forcing the characters to talk in a way they shouldn't?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; My question is referring to speech patterns only, not to character behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T13:12:05.567" Title="How to create varying, yet realistic, speech patterns" Tags="|style|technique|characters|dialogue|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4733" CreationDate="2012-01-01T15:57:12.000" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can work to 'hear' the dialogue in your head as the characters are speaking.  It'll slow you down a little, until you get used to it, but then it becomes routine.  But I think it's best if you think of them as movie or TV characters (good ones) rather than real people, because real conversations are totally brutal (transcribe a few and see). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can refine your technique by reading your dialogue aloud after you've written it.  You might actually want to set up a reading with some friends, like it was a play, to see if everything stays consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think you're right to be cautious with it all.  A little dialect goes a LONG way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2012-01-01T15:57:12.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4733" CreationDate="2012-01-01T16:18:20.707" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consider the different characters':&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level of intelligence &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stupid characters contribute stupid thoughts to conversation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;smart characters might only contribute when they know they have something important to say&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interest in the conversation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Social personality: whether introverted or extraverted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subject matter of interest (since they would continually bring it up):&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A priest constantly going back to the bible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A war veteran who relates everything to &quot;the war&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A player constantly talking about women&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level of engagement with the conversation's subject matter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use of gestures with speaking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relationship to the other characters speaking:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their reactions, both physical and in dialogue to the other speakers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any subtext brought about by the relationship(s)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Give each character about 4-5 &quot;characteristic&quot; phrases they use often. Eg:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Seems like&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Bloody&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Just so&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Theoretically&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vary the sentence length between characters&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastActivityDate="2012-01-01T16:18:20.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4736" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-01T17:07:21.760" Score="6" ViewCount="635" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm desperately looking for a book publishing solution that can handle revision control and layouts. My issues/requirements are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Typists are extremely non-technical and I would like to keep training to a minimum (that being said, I value revision control higher than training and will go great lengths to get RC implemented).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Volumes spend almost as much time being edited before they go to layout as they afterwards. Hence, I need a way that &lt;em&gt;non-technical&lt;/em&gt; people can work with a formated document without breaking the style (as per style: full, advanced text layouts - chapters, headers, footnotes, indents, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revision control is CRITICAL. We currently have a spaghetti mess of versions (all in word so there hard to diff) and we need to rein in on the madness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While I work with svn/git from the command line all day long, most of the typists struggle with Word. While we will train as necessary, a proper cli (for me!) and as much automation as posible would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks! p.s. I asked a software question here based on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/276/should-this-site-help-with-specific-writing-software-questions&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;. If I'm in the wrong place, please point out where this question belongs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3062" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:03.470" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T21:10:16.990" Title="What software can handle both revision control and layout?" Tags="|software|formatting|revision|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4738" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4739" CreationDate="2012-01-02T02:04:39.517" Score="1" ViewCount="234" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read this quote recently, attributed to Norman Mailer, that has had my brain itching:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Alimony is the curse of the writing class.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What did he mean by it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="252" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-01-02T15:22:12.050" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T16:25:54.087" Title="What did Norman Mailer mean?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4738" CreationDate="2012-01-02T02:47:38.557" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Roughly speaking, it means if you have to pay alimony, you have to earn money. Writing is not a way to earn money (for most of us). He's suggesting that it's insufficient income for an alimony payment, so a writer would have to take on some other work to earn enough money to make the payment, thus cutting into writing time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you do have to suffer to write, so maybe it's a blessing in disguise. ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-01-02T02:47:38.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4733" CreationDate="2012-01-02T05:53:44.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Giving a character their own voice is difficult for me, but I've found that looking at the traits of the character is the first thing you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself 3 questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 how smart is your character?--basically, the smarter the character is, the more words they'll know. Such as using the word &lt;em&gt;flamboyant&lt;/em&gt; to the word &lt;em&gt;showy&lt;/em&gt;.  Short, simple words to long, complex (sometimes even snotty) words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 How much does your character talk?--the quiet guy vs. the guy who can't keep his mouth shut for more than a minute. Also the length of the dialogue, quiet or shy guy will talk less, ect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 How does your character's personality effects their use of words?--think sarcastic, optimistic, ect. The optimist will always try to end on a happy note or use words that suggest things in a bright manner. Likewise, the sarcastic one will use words that are said in the opposite manner that they should mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps. These are just the three steps that have helped me in developing my character's dialogue patterns, and since working with these steps my dialogue have improved greatly (though it still needs work). Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2998" LastActivityDate="2012-01-02T05:53:44.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4741" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4742" CreationDate="2012-01-02T09:44:57.803" Score="5" ViewCount="3579" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just what the title says. I decided to improve my writing skills only for blogging purposes (for starters and no, it's not a part of new year's resolution). I am also not really good at writing (i.e. write a few paragraphs about simple topic/subject). I know that practice makes perfect, but I'm actually at the point where I would like to know what makes the beginning easier. Does reading books help writing in any way? I believe that my main obstacle for writing is inability to clearly express my thoughts. Will reading others' writings help overcome it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1898" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-01-02T15:20:58.353" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T05:52:57.863" Title="Does reading books help writing skills?" Tags="|technical-writing|exercises|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4741" CreationDate="2012-01-02T10:33:10.570" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slightly longer answer: Yes, a lot! All reading is good, but not all reading is equal.  All reading will help you absorb the effective use of written language, will increase your facility with words, will enhance your vocabulary, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're really serious, you should spend at least some of your time in conscious, directed reading in the genre of your choice. Fiction writers don't just &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; the masters, they study the masters. They break down the plot structure of great books in order to understand how things flow; they look at characterization and dialogue, and see how great authors use these tools to create compelling reading; they analyze the strengths and weaknesses of different books, and try to understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the great books are great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you want to become better at blogging, so you should not just read but &lt;em&gt;study&lt;/em&gt; blogs. Find blogs you enjoy, and figure out why. Find blogs you don't enjoy and spend just as much time analyzing the problems there, so you'll know what to avoid. You want to work on clarity, so I would recommend looking at the structure of the blogs you find effective. You're not reading for content so much as you're reading for style and technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, while you're at it, read everything else you lay eyes on. Writers read. Absolutely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2012-01-02T10:33:10.570" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4736" CreationDate="2012-01-02T15:10:07.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion might be quite a no-brainer, but this is something we have used at my old workplace, when we had run out of time and woke up to the nightmare of version hell. (Like having files named SOMETHING_FINAL_FINAL_v2.doc...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we did was rename the files upon editing by including the date and time of the last edit. Since your people are non-technical and you seem to be quite computer-savvy, I'd suggest you write a short command line script that does just this: opens the last version, lets you edit it and when you close it, makes a copy of the last edit with date and time appended to the file name. If this is in place, the only thing left to do is to &lt;em&gt;enforce&lt;/em&gt; using the script and make sure people don't open the file using another method. This should work with virtually any text editor. To make things even simpler, here is the actual code I used for version control (in a different setting), so nobody forgot to register the students who attended class &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; to make sure we had a backup copy after each modification (if in doubt about how to use it, etc., leave a comment and I'll try to answer the questions):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;@ECHO OFF&#xA;&#xA;SET fname=File_2_edit %date%@%time%.docx&#xA;SET fname=%fname::=_%&#xA;SET todel=%fname:*,=%&#xA;CALL SET fname=%%fname:%todel%=%%&#xA;SET fname=%fname:,=.docx%&#xA;&#xA;&quot;File_2_edit.docx&quot;&#xA;&#xA;COPY &quot;File_2_edit.docx&quot; &quot;%fname%&quot;&#xA;&#xA;@ECHO ON&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you could also do (I didn't test this one that thoroughly), you can use e.g. Google Docs, where several people can edit the same document at the same time. But I wouldn't suggest this one for documents where copyright issues could arise or non-disclosure agreements have been signed...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is really up to you, depending on what you feel more comfortable with. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2948" LastActivityDate="2012-01-02T15:10:07.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4744" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4745" CreationDate="2012-01-01T15:24:39.433" Score="4" ViewCount="608" Body="&lt;p&gt;I notice that a lot of computer and programming books are now licensed under various permutations of the creative commons license. Half of the books published by No Starch Press and Apress (at least the ones I looked at) seem to be available directly or indirectly under creative commons licensing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the business model for creative commons books? Does it hurt sales? Does it help sales by creating more buzz around a book? Has the wide availability of pirated copies (and pirated PDFs) of traditionally copyrighted books affected the book publishing world, and does this help or hinder the creative commons licensing process? How does the advent of ebooks factor in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3118" OwnerDisplayName="haziz" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-08-03T21:23:08.667" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T21:23:08.667" Title="What is the business model for Creative Commons books?" Tags="|publishing|marketing|ebook|creative-commons|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4744" CreationDate="2012-01-01T16:55:21.943" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact is, you don't write books for money in science or IT: from the pure financial point of view, it's worthless: you'll spend months or years of work while gaining not too much from sales as the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, writing books is a good way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to become popular,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to show your deep knowledge in a specific field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, Creative Commons only helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the publisher, as Pierre 303 mentioned in his comment, people will still buy paper version of books, even if they are able to get a digital copy (illegally or not), just because it's easier to read, just because... it's real. I want to own books that are worth it. As for books which are not very good, I wouldn't buy them even if they were available for free online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3067" OwnerDisplayName="MainMa" LastActivityDate="2012-01-01T17:13:59.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4738" CreationDate="2012-01-02T17:15:06.803" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, and without any reference to support it, I've always believed the quote meant that those dedicated to a writing career often cannot also effectively support a long-term, committed relationship. Which leads to divorce. And alimony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence the curse. And Kris' reference from TJ Smith citing Mailer's six wives seems to confirm he suffered from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2012-01-02T17:15:06.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4725" CreationDate="2012-01-02T19:43:15.683" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an example, The Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson opens every chapter with either a poem, or a snippet from an academic work from his fantasy world (mainly poetry, though). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience with this work is that, while I find the story amazing, I'm largely indifferent to the poems, and find myself often skipping them. They're often a distraction at best, or self-indulgence at worst. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not because I'm against poetry, it's just that they seem to have little or no bearing on the actual story itself. If you take the poems away, the story doesn't suffer. You don't miss out on some vital info. True, they do add a certain degree of richness and authenticity to the fantasy world, but for the most part, I couldn't see the point, and I honestly felt the books would be better without them, since they often break the flow of the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point to be made is this: don't just insert the poems because you like poetry. Ask yourself what purpose your poems serve. Can the story live without them? Are they integral to the story? Do they fit in with your narrator, or your characters (i.e. who is telling the poem, and why)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel you still want poetry in your work, then I definitely suggest starting each chapter with the poem. This means people like me could skip it (if we don't feel like reading poetry), and it doesn't break the flow of the story too much by appearing in the middle of a chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2012-01-02T19:43:15.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4706" CreationDate="2012-01-03T07:28:17.860" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From TV Tropes (&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InMediasRes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;In Media Res&quot;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HowWeGotHere&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;How We Got Here&quot;&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Fight Club&lt;/em&gt; starts with Tyler Durden holding a gun in the Narrator's mouth, then goes back to the beginning and catches back up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Kill Bill Volume One&lt;/em&gt; opens with The Bride killing victim number two before jumping back to explain how she got to that point, the film ends with the killing of victim number one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each book of Stephenie Meyer's &lt;em&gt;Twilight&lt;/em&gt; saga opens with a preface that is actually describing a scene that happens near the climax of the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Red Mars&lt;/em&gt; trilogy opens the night of the assassination of John Boone, the first man on Mars, then jumps back about twenty-seven years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Christopher Nolan's films seem to specialize in this. &lt;em&gt;Batman Begins&lt;/em&gt; start the story proper with Bruce Wayne in a Tibetan prison before flashbacking to explain how he got there. &lt;em&gt;The Prestige&lt;/em&gt; begins with a shot of a pile of top hats scattered in some woods followed by Michael Caine performing a magic trick to a little girl, both of which only pop up in the last third of the film. &lt;em&gt;Inception&lt;/em&gt; begins with Cobb washing up on a beach before being dragged to meet an elderly man. The film spends most of its running time recounting how Cobb ended up there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as I've mentioned in the comments, this is a problematic technique. It's meant to offset the slow build-up to conflict, but in practice, it often merely delays that slow build-up. The reader reaches the slow bit a couple of pages later, but unless the flash-forward is extremely powerful and its significance to the story is (and remains) immediately obvious, the flashforward scene seems unrelated and is soon forgotten. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To all that, add the difficulty of presenting a compelling scene before introducing the setting and characters (TV Tropes calls this &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LostInMediasRes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Lost In Media Res&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, and for good cause). This is a difficulty I certainly think the critique pieces you posted suffered from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example I'd consider successful is the opening of Dan Simmon's &lt;em&gt;Endymion&lt;/em&gt; - the first four pages, available in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553572946&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this preview&lt;/a&gt;. For the most part, it's less of a scene and more of a monologue - but this allows the author to toss in some teaser-ish details, particularly the idea of &quot;making love to a messiah,&quot; and the twin death sentences. No less importantly, this lets him explicitly introduce the tone and feel of the story. It's so explicit it's almost clumsy, but he keeps it short, and peppers it with powerful, immediate details to look forward to. The Schroedinger's cat box is at once both very easy to grasp even when knowing nothing of the world, and also extremely significant (it's the narrator's death penalty; it's also bizarre and ingenious, making us wonder why on earth - and in the setting - this contraption has come to be used). It should be noted the narrator returns to this flash-forward repeatedly throughout the books, so we never forget about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T07:28:17.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4736" CreationDate="2012-01-03T14:51:21.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if there's one solution. You may have to approach this from a few angles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, you do need to train your &quot;typesetters,&quot; but in procedure as well as the program. (Someone who can't handle headers and indents is not a typesetter, but a typist.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, while I loathe recommending anything by Microsquish, Word does do what you're asking for. So you will have to invest in getting your typesetters trained to use Word's functions: templates, styles, headers/footers, sections, section breaks, indents, and so on. It's not hard to find software trainers in major cities, and most will schedule lessons on-site if you have enough students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, it sounds like you have problems with file management. If your main concern is revision control (that you don't have seventeen Finals which have to be merged), then you should only have one master copy of the document. It should live on a server, and it should never be worked on from a local hard drive. All typesetters will have to access it over the network or from one workstation, period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since formatting is already chewing up a large part of your time, budget it as part of the process and try to make it a manageable chunk rather than an open-ended time-suck. It will have to be part of the procedure that Tracking is ALWAYS on, and only authorized editors can approve the changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, while it may not be in your budget, a separate option might be to have ONLY text editing done in Word, and the layout done in an actual DTP program like InDesign or Quark. That would address a lot of the indent/header/footer etc. issues, because your Word typists wouldn't be doing that formatting work at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA&lt;/strong&gt; I had one more thought re process: what about assigning projects per person, rather than allowing everyone in the group to work on them? So only John works on the Smith novel, only Mary only on the Jones novel, and so on. Would that cut down on some of the spaghetti?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-01-03T19:09:19.650" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T19:09:19.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4751" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4760" CreationDate="2012-01-03T16:45:32.883" Score="3" ViewCount="676" Body="&lt;p&gt;I normally stick with &lt;code&gt;&quot;he said&quot;&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;&quot;she said&quot;&lt;/code&gt; to keep things simple and transparent to the reader but wondering about questions. Is &lt;code&gt;&quot;she asked&quot;&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;&quot;he asked&quot;&lt;/code&gt; appropriate when a character asks a question? Can &lt;code&gt;&quot;he said&quot;&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;&quot;she said&quot;&lt;/code&gt; be okay attributives for questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T15:13:38.960" Title="Attributives in dialogue" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4736" CreationDate="2012-01-03T16:58:41.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/InDesign/5.0/help.html?content=WSF01741BA-E88B-4921-8821-09D338807EF1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adobe InDesign has Version Cue&lt;/a&gt;. And in newer versions there's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adobe.com/products/adobedrive.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adobe Drive&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastEditorUserId="554" LastEditDate="2012-01-03T17:04:49.833" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T17:04:49.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4751" CreationDate="2012-01-03T16:58:42.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds fine to me. But then, I don't object to a judicious use of synonyms for &quot;said,&quot; either. (grumbled, snarled, sighed, snickered, hinted, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T16:58:42.840" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4704" CreationDate="2012-01-03T18:02:39.533" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just an amateur writer, but a seasoned soldier.  If I were to write a combat or battle scene, I think I would probably try to describe the calamity of battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Confusion sets in very quickly when you lose the initiative in a fight.  At that point, there is a good deal of sensory overload.  Training kicks in and fighting become an instinctive struggle for pure survival.  Extremely seasoned warriors can delay this outcome for longer than a 'greener' force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you have a well-trained military, with several campaign ribbons on its battle-standard, you might consider a very lucid and methodical description of the general mechanics of the fight.  Leave details to the imagination, except where they serve the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your force is inexperienced, I would use the opportunity to capture as many non-combat related details as possible during the fight, to heighten the reader's feeling of confusion in the fog of war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3071" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T18:02:39.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4751" CreationDate="2012-01-03T18:08:24.927" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;They're fine; they certainly aren't an error. If a particular use sounds awkward, don't hesitate to drop attribution entirely (it's often still quite clear who's talking, because most conversations are dialogue, so it's whoever wasn't talking the previous paragraph), or to move the attribution up to earlier in the line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But why would any of all that,&quot; he said, &quot;explain how late you were to the party?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This removes the incongruous sense of using &quot;said&quot; for a question, because it puts distance between the attributive and the question mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-01-04T05:27:33.743" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T05:27:33.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4751" CreationDate="2012-01-03T20:53:29.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;He said&quot; and &quot;she said&quot; are definitely fine when used with questions as well as statements and exclamations.  When used with expressive dialog that speaks for itself the attributive may even be unnecessary, especially if there is other action text which makes it clear who is speaking.  When the attributive is necessary or useful with expressive dialog, it tends to disappear, which I as a reader view as a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the occasional use of &quot;he asked&quot; and &quot;she asked&quot; is still fairly transparent, but it would be easiest to tell in a snippet for critique.  More expressive language such as &quot;she mumbled&quot; or &quot;he grunted&quot; should be used with an intent to call attention to itself, because those attributives will make themselves obvious and catch the reader's focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T20:53:29.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4741" CreationDate="2012-01-03T21:14:36.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely.  As you read, you learn subconsciously how to mold plots, create speech patterns, and make realistic characters.  The more you read and absorb, the more creative and the better at writing you should become.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3073" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T21:14:36.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4736" CreationDate="2012-01-03T21:39:33.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would Google Docs work for you? Maybe a Google Apps account for your organization? This will work better if you can separate writing from layout. That is, people write using Google Docs, applying corporate standards for text styles and for organizing stuff into parts, chapters, and sections. Then a separate process does layout and typesetting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than online tools, I don't know of any software that is both writer-friendly and version-control-friendly. Writer-friendly word processors typically save in a binary format, which is not easily diffable. Markup-based text formats (docbook, TeX, markdown) that play nicely with version control tend to be challenging for non-geeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I wonder... Word processors' recent binary formats tend to be zipped XML. Could you add svn/git hooks that unzip the files before committing, and re-zip them on checkouts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might improve diffability a tiny bit. But merging (if you need it) will be a nightmare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the projects will be in use by only one person at a time, consider Scrivener. Scrivener saves in plain old RTF files. I use that for most of my writing projects, and version them all with git. This works beautifully for my personal projects. It's no good for collaborating, because there are a few xml files that combine both project information (e.g. how the individual RTF files are organized) with user information (e.g. which file is open, and where the carat is in each file). Also, if two writers each add a file, they both get the same file name, and checkins collide in ways that are too difficult to untangle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm collaborating with geeks, I use a text format called Markdown, and use folders to aggregate chunks into larger chunks. I doubt that Markdown can handle complex formatting... but again, perhaps layout and typesetting could be performed separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T21:39:33.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4706" CreationDate="2012-01-04T01:00:51.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out Vonnegut -- Slaughterhouse Five for a more traditional version, or Galapagos for a more quirky version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="862" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T01:00:51.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4751" CreationDate="2012-01-04T06:04:47.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Asked' is generally &lt;a href=&quot;http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue%205/tags.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;not considered a &lt;em&gt;said-bookism&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by most editors and readers AFAIK. In fact, I always use it when a character is asking a question. Because something like &quot;'But how can that be?' he said.&quot; sounds wrong to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An aside related to comments on @LaurenIpsum 's answer: I only use the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;said - always&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;asked - always for questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;yelled, called - only when the scene won't work if the character delivers his line at normal volume&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;interjected - when one character cuts off another mid sentence, but even then, rarely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: I also use &quot;replied&quot; occasionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2838" LastEditorUserId="2838" LastEditDate="2012-01-05T15:13:38.960" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T15:13:38.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2520" CreationDate="2012-01-04T15:54:30.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to not get repetitive, make variable rules; that is, a sort of an algorithm that allows for variety in your writing as well as clarity/consistency...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't switch names when referring to the same characters within the narration from the POV of one character. Lt. Timz can't call his wife &quot;Moya Zvizda&quot; and &quot;Ellen&quot; in both the dialog and the narration when he's the POV of the scene. &lt;em&gt;- Limited-third-person/first-person narration&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the scene has only &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; characters and they're of opposite genders, the pronouns &quot;he&quot; and &quot;she&quot; most often suffice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With several characters of the same gender, mention by name the character that is the subject of each sentence except when the previous sentence either already had them being the subject or didn't have a subject of the same gender. &lt;em&gt;- Wouldn't work in some languages with limited 3rd-p pronouns; eg. Finnish.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When referring to characters using pronouns, see if the setting/surrounding-action/... helps you as a reader identify them without rereading preceding sentences.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;eg. A character reading by the fire talks to another sitting by the window. If either &quot;looks up from his book&quot;/&quot;leans against the window&quot; before talking, using one pronoun shouldn't be confusing but don't overuse it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the character is a major one that readers are supposed to pay attention to, refer to him/her either by his/her most popular nick-name used in dialog, or by his/her first or last name. Whatever you him/her to be remembered/though of as.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;eg. &quot;Peter Ivanovich Bobchinsky&quot; and &quot;Peter Ivanovich Dobchinsky&quot; can be referred to as &quot;Bob&quot; and &quot;Dob&quot; respectively...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T15:31:17.940" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T15:31:17.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4765" CreationDate="2012-01-04T20:01:21.677" Score="5" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;My protagonist works in a pharma company and I really don't have a clue about how they work, what kind of a life they live and all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is required for the plot to make him work in a company which produces drugs. At first, I thought of biotechnology and then ultimately landed in pharmaceuticals because well, they're the same (how stupid of me!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that one should write what he is an expert in. But this piece of work revolves around two things of equal importance. One of them is the company's conspiracies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am an undergraduate and I really do not know how my protagonist's professional life will be.&#xA;Will my imagination suffice to construct the company, their history and his work-life or will I need to dive in the ocean of R&amp;amp;D?&#xA;If so, can anyone please guide me as to where can I get an elaborated view of a pharma official's life-style (except searching for a real person who does work in one and ask him directly)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="25563" LastEditDate="2018-04-06T09:38:31.290" LastActivityDate="2018-04-29T05:12:57.557" Title="Should I research what my protagonist’s job would involve, or just create it all from my imagination?" Tags="|plot|character-development|research|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4763" CreationDate="2012-01-04T20:33:56.180" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you not want to ask a real person directly? Most people are pleased if they can tell about their job, especially when an author says he wants to write about it in a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &quot;writing what you know&quot; is becoming more and more dangerous, because it is widely misinterpreted. It's just an advice, that you shouldn't be too disappointed if you try to write literary fiction and all you have ever read are romance stories (and vice versa). So skip that &quot;expert&quot; nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are a writer. Your job is to make things up. You can even do that without any research. Some readers don't even care if what you write is like it works in real life. After all they bought a fiction novel. Just look at movies. I'm a programmer and I can tell you that every movie I have seen where a hacker is involved tells you totally rubbish. But most people don't care (probably because they do not know better).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let us they you care (or you care about the readers who care). Then asking people working for a pharma company is the easiest way to get the interesting details. An internet search should give you a good start also. Yes, it's work, but don't expect someone is doing your job and gives you an already elaborated view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to please the readers who care, then research is part of your job. And very likely it will be a remarkable quality improvement for your whole story, even for readers who do not care about the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T20:33:56.180" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4736" CreationDate="2012-01-04T21:10:16.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't tried it myself, but apparently TortoiseSVN can handle diffing Word Docs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tortoisesvn.net/about.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tortoisesvn.net/about.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Found out about that in the answers to this stackoverflow post: &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29810/is-version-control-ie-subversion-applicable-in-document-tracking#29837&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29810/is-version-control-ie-subversion-applicable-in-document-tracking#29837&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like Open Office has a plugin that may do what you want: Team Drive&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/project/TeamDrive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/project/TeamDrive&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:40:35.973" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T21:10:16.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4768" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-05T12:30:37.563" Score="1" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper on Internet censorship in China and was considering starting it with a thought provoking epigram to draw the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title of the paper in question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;China's Internet Censorship: Protecting or Controlling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The epigram I was leaning towards was: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Information is not to be feared and ideas are not enemies to be&#xA;  crushed&quot; (Dorgan 2010)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this suit the purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2972" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T18:27:45.683" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T18:27:45.683" Title="Advice on choice of epigram" Tags="|non-fiction|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4768" CreationDate="2012-01-05T12:50:50.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it effectively summarizes/reflects/prefaces the theme and import of your own paper, then yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T12:50:50.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4631" CreationDate="2012-01-05T13:09:08.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Wolfpack. For future reference, the general rule is that if the work comes in multiple parts, (chapters, acts, scenes... whatever) then the title is italicized. If it comes in only one part (short story, article, etc.) then it gets quotation marks.  Of course, there are articles that have multiple parts, and plays that have only one scene, so it's not an absolute rule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe better to say that if the form of literature, in its most typical form, has more than one part, then italics.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Might also be better to say long gets italics, short gets quotations, but apparently somebody wanted to make the rule a little more complicated than that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T13:09:08.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4773" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-06T06:59:34.777" Score="2" ViewCount="281" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/563/how-to-overcome-the-fact-that-i-cant-write&quot;&gt;How to overcome the fact that I can&amp;#39;t write?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally I have good ideas to write, but when I come to writing those on paper it seems I don't have much vocabulary or good sentence making structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know writing is a skill, but if some want to learn it, is it possible or is it an in-born quality? It takes lot of time to read a novel, so I don't like to read. But I want to write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anybody suggest me the procedural way to be a good writer and the things I should take care of in day to day life to be a good writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe my question is bogus, but I want to make sure from others that its bogus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3091" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T11:45:07.393" Title="How to express in a better way?" Tags="|creative-writing|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-01-06T14:55:42.600" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4774" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-06T10:09:58.403" Score="1" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new in the working world and I happen to be given a lot of tasks related with creating report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later on I heard people give me comments that my sentence structure and my word choices are not professional enough (in a corporate world).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I start to think that I need to improve this. Can anyone suggest/advice me tips on how to be professional in writing? If you have some websites to recommend, it will be nice too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several mistakes that I am usually critized:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Word choices are too simple and not specific&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lengthy and shorty sentences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usage of first person in the sentence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't utilize several strong ms word features that actually ease report making, can someone suggest me on this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3092" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-01-06T13:52:39.510" LastActivityDate="2012-01-06T13:52:39.510" Title="Regarding Professional Report" Tags="|technical-writing|business-writing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2012-01-06T14:56:18.217" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4773" CreationDate="2012-01-06T12:39:28.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot be a writer if you don't write so the only way to learn how to write is write something. You can start by keeping a journal or a blog or both. You might be wondering what's the difference between the two and why I am suggesting both. Living in a technology-driven world, these two terms might be synonymous. But just to be clear, blog is an online journal/diary and the journal I'm referring to is the old fashioned way - pen and paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to keep a blog, it would be better to join a community like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deviantart.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.deviantart.com/&lt;/a&gt;. People there are very nice and they provide excellent feedback on your posts (poetry, short story, articles etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read from an article from a writers' magazine some tips to improve your writing skills. The author suggested to keep a journal (pen and paper type) and write anything you want to write. For example, you're walking and you saw a house. You could practice writing by jotting down descriptive words about the house then afterwards pretend to describe it to someone by writing it down. Pretend that you are writing to a friend and you are describing to him/her about the beautiful house that you saw earlier. Or you could try to write a make-believe advertisement, pretending that you are a ad copy writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several ways to practice your writing. Reading is also a good way to learn how to write. You can learn new vocabulary words and writing styles by just reading. You can improve your craft by reading blogs of well-known writers or by subscribing to writer-related materials. &lt;strong&gt;But still nothing beats practice. Write, write and write!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for a lengthy post. Hope my suggestions help you to become a better writer you wanted to be. Cheers! :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2708" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-01-06T13:59:32.757" LastActivityDate="2012-01-06T13:59:32.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1773" CreationDate="2012-01-07T05:52:12.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, don't worry about what other people will like when writing a poem. It does not matter, write about what makes you happy. I write poems to let out my feelings and thoughts, things that I think and want other people to hear. I write things that to me are a lot easier written down than said aloud. I don't worry about whether someone will like it or not and I think you shouldn't either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try, but you won't be able to get everyone to like a poem. Everyone has different likes and interests. Don't worry so much about what other people want to hear and what they like and whether they like it or not, what really matters is if you yourself like the poem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that poem speaks to you and makes you feel like you just acomplished something, then I suggest you be glad. Keep writing, because it's your thoughts and feelings, your words that you took and wrote down into a beautiful way. Poems are a great way to say what you need to say. To say things that your heart tells you to, but your mind won't let you speak them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So forget what other people think of your poems. Yes, it's great hearing people say they like or love your poems, it gives you the courage to continue writing. But what really matters is what you think of your poems. Remember that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3095" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2013-12-28T16:46:53.830" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T16:46:53.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2300" CreationDate="2012-01-07T18:44:03.953" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write about 350 words an hour and judging from what i've read about famous writers (like Hemingway or Jack london) who typically only write 1,000 words a day while working around 4 hours a day or more, their words rate must be quite slow. fiction is an inefficent business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3099" LastActivityDate="2012-01-07T18:44:03.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4778" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4780" CreationDate="2012-01-09T01:42:08.493" Score="3" ViewCount="3584" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for an expression or a word that will describe my attitude towards a country I've never visited. In this sentence, I want to show to the reader that I've created an idolized and romanticized image of this country in my head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MW gives this as a definition to &lt;em&gt;stardust&lt;/em&gt;: &quot;feeling or impression of romance, magic, or ethereality&quot; and I quite like the meaning, it feels to be quite close to what I am trying to express. However, since it's a noun, I have a hard time using it in a sentence to convey my thought. Can someone give me a few good examples or advise another word to use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3103" OwnerDisplayName="Nikita" LastActivityDate="2022-05-04T15:52:31.970" Title="How do you use &quot;stardust&quot; in a sentence? Is there a better word to describe what I am trying to convey?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4778" CreationDate="2012-01-09T01:49:20.160" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would &quot;starry-eyed&quot; or &quot;stars in your eyes&quot; work for this? It's more often used in the context of personal romance rather than with regard to a country or foreign place. Here is a link to a song that uses the phrase in the personal-romance context: &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/PUMjb74c2LI&quot;&gt;Tom Russell - Walking on the Moon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Tom Hughes" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T01:49:20.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4778" CreationDate="2012-01-09T05:31:15.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/?c=coca&amp;amp;q=106652337&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;COCA&lt;/a&gt; gives few examples of this usage, but they seem to be along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bulgaria clouded my mind with stardust.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Until then Bulgaria was all roses and stardust.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I had a stardust feeling about Bulgaria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was high on stardust.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="rdhs" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-05-04T15:49:17.463" LastActivityDate="2022-05-04T15:49:17.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4778" CreationDate="2012-01-09T15:30:01.963" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will probably have more success describing familiar aspects of this place in a romanticized way — rather than using one word to capture it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, your character might dream of Paris as an ideal place where the streets are so clean you take off your shoes before walking on them.  Homeless people hand out small coins and little bakery treats to visitors.  The crowds in the town square move as one to the sound of the March Triumphant.  And the Eiffel Tower looms so large and welcoming over the city that it appears to be leaning forward to say, 'Good Morning!' to every waking Parisian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That key is to tap into the common images that everyone recognizes: streets, homeless people, crowds, and the Eiffel Tower.  Then describe them in a very surrealistic way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, you are running out of space in your piece, then you might consider finding some synonyms for &lt;em&gt;starry-eyed&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;wonderment&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3064" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-05-04T15:52:08.290" LastActivityDate="2022-05-04T15:52:08.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4782" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-10T04:21:39.043" Score="3" ViewCount="484" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a novel(la) of 33,000+ (130 or so manuscript pages) words that I would like to build up to 60,000 or so words - but I'm having trouble restarting the project...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is this: what should I be doing to begin again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3106" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T10:34:50.227" Title="How to restart a novel(la)?" Tags="|novel|creative-writing|getting-started|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4782" CreationDate="2012-01-10T05:46:44.567" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is, why do you want to add the extra words? If it's a complete story, then IMHO the only reason you should be adding to it is because you feel that it's still lacking in certain elements, not because you want to reach a certain word count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it's a character who you feel needs more fleshing out because they play an important role later. Pick one, then see what elements of their personality you'd like to explore further. For example, if you have a main love interest who feels flat and generic, think about other interests or activities he/she can be involved in that will affect his/her relationship with the protagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linked to that, maybe there's a particular story thread that feels rushed and could be strung out to increase the tension. Consider who else can be thrown into the mix to complicate things, or maybe additional scenes that provide exposition to the key scenes and get the reader more emotionally involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're halfway through and the story is unfinished, consider what other conflicts you can throw at the characters. Don't go throwing everything but the kitchen sink at them, but consider what conflicts will make your ending that much sweeter when the reader finally gets there. I think this has been said many times, but if you're stalled for ideas, add more problems and see what the fallout is from that. Or throw in a new, out-there character and see how the others react. You may not use the additional conflicts or characters, but they're good for getting ideas going again and reconnecting with your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T05:46:44.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4782" CreationDate="2012-01-10T10:34:50.227" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have a problem with expanding a novella or short story into a novel. It can definitely work. For example, Orson Scott Card's &quot;Ender's Game&quot; was originally a short story published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine, and he expanded that into an incredible novel, plus followed it up with additional books. There are no doubt other examples to choose from. However, just because you can, doesn't mean you should, and I imagine that not all leaps from short story/novella to novel are as successful as Ender's Game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you start with a simple question that may be difficult to answer: What is there that you are left wondering about at the end of the story? Perhaps you're left wondering about events before what's depicted. It could be that the story starts in the wrong place, and should have started earlier in order to cover several events that define your characters and heighten the conflict more, or explain/expand the plot arcs better. Perhaps you've reached the end, and you're left wondering more and more about a particular character: how they got there, who are they, what's their history. You may discover you're telling the wrong story, and you should be focusing on a different character because you're asking more questions about them than anyone else. Perhaps you're wondering more and more about the setting, or the relationships between the various characters ... it could be anything, but the main point is that you think there's something fundamentally missing that needs to be told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of the Ender's Game short story, it essentially covers what's the core basis for the ending of the first book (although obviously it's different since in writing the novel, OSC changed a lot). How much more meaningful is that ending once we've lived and breathed Ender's life until that point! The relationship with his brother and sister, the friends and foes he meets, the terrible inner struggle he faces. Clearly, even though the short story stood on its own, the character of Ender deserved to be explored, and with it, all the events, relationships, trials and tribulations that lead him up until that final point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not every novella or short story should be expanded, and can stand on their own. My advice is to read the story afresh, or give it to a few others to reread, and see what questions are in the back of your mind. It could be questions about the setting, the characters, the plot. Try identify what's missing, or left you wondering, and focus on that. If you're not wondering what's missing, or asking questions about characters and their past, then it would suggest that there's nothing more that needs to be added, in which case, consider editing and whittling your work instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T10:34:50.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4786" CreationDate="2012-01-10T10:54:04.733" Score="11" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a member of some SE sites, like SO and CSTheory.  In those sites I'm an active member, I'm reading Q&amp;amp;A and also answering some questions or asking questions, but I think my writing is poor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to write letters without thinking about grammar (like a child), but I think I'm a bad writer, because too many times my questions and answers are being edited. In fact, most of my problems are in my questions.  I don't know how to ask good questions, which means I can't express my problem well (but my answers are not too bad).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to improve my writing, specifically when I want to ask long questions relating to my field (Computer Science).  What's a good practice for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3107" LastEditorUserId="3147" LastEditDate="2012-01-26T21:16:26.940" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T21:16:26.940" Title="How to improve my skill at writing a question?" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4785" CreationDate="2012-01-10T11:53:36.180" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I commend you for wanting to improve your writing. :) You can look at how other people have edited your questions and compare the changes. For example, in your question above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;I'm a member of some SE sites, like SO &lt;b&gt;and&lt;/b&gt; CSTheory. &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need &quot;and&quot; between two items in a list. You need to end a sentence with a period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;In those sites I'm &lt;b&gt;an&lt;/b&gt; active member.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indefinite article before the noun. You then have a string of clauses which should be separated into sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt; I'm reading Q&amp;A &lt;b&gt;and&lt;/b&gt; also answering some Q or asking Q, but I think my writing is very poor. &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Join the two clauses with &quot;and.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;I like to write letter&lt;b&gt;s&lt;/b&gt; without thinking about grammar (like &lt;b&gt;a&lt;/b&gt; child), but I think I'm &lt;b&gt;a&lt;/b&gt; very bad writer, because too many times my questions and answers &lt;b&gt;are being&lt;/b&gt; edited.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've written many posts (letters), so make that plural. You are referring to &quot;child&quot; and &quot;writer&quot; as generics, so use the indefinite article. Change the tense so it's not happening in the future, but describing a generic event which happens repeatedly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get the idea. (I also changed the title of your question because you are asking about how to improve the writing of &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; question, not just technical ones.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, read a lot and study how sentences are constructed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-01-10T12:06:36.073" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T12:06:36.073" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4785" CreationDate="2012-01-10T16:37:41.823" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I gave you an upvote for your question: I wish more on SO would ask it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good SO questions and answers are hard work. I try to improve my questions by finding and studying good questions. I think that good questions have been edited and worked over to share some attributes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They are succinct: not too wordy or overlong.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They are free of lazy jargon and ill-used shortcut words.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They get to the point without unneeeded discursion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They are careful to stay on the point and on topic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They follow the rules of spelling and grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Strunk's advice is best, imo: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This requires &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastEditorUserId="1645" LastEditDate="2012-01-26T20:37:24.277" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T20:37:24.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4789" CreationDate="2012-01-10T17:38:57.897" Score="1" ViewCount="36138" Body="&lt;p&gt;Situation -A subject matter expert is helping me with something that, well, matters. (to me)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to send a quick one liner thank you and let her know that I fully appreciate the time that she would be spending on this AND that I respect and am glad about the fact that she has the domain knowledge that I don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the correct version of -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I appreciate the time you will spend on this and the fact that you have the necessary expertise&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Please help retag this question appropriately. I browsed through the available tags but am not sure if I chose the most appropriate ones.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3105" LastActivityDate="2020-05-23T11:05:35.713" Title="How do I appreciate a subject matter expert's expertise?" Tags="|creative-writing|email|getting-started|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4788" CreationDate="2012-01-10T17:48:43.377" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Thank you so much for generously sharing your time and expertise.&quot; With additional superlatives and the word &quot;appreciate&quot; as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T17:48:43.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4788" CreationDate="2012-01-10T17:59:27.290" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;This project could not be completed without your specific expertise and generous support.  Please know you have my deepest thanks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to add some details that characterize your interactions so that the message is a little more personal.  The phrase 'specific expertise' is a little vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did she provide you with archived recordings of mission data?  Werer there particular anecdotes that stuck in your mind?  Was her field of research perfectly suited to your needs?  Did she come prepared with files for you to examine at your lesiure?  Did she suggest additional resources that increased your knowledge of the subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just a few examples that I would mention (if they occurred) so that the recipient knew I was not just sending a stock greeting, but a genuine thank you- specifically thought out and intended for her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it doesn't hurt to mention that you will include a 'sepcial thanks' in your final product in her name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3064" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T17:59:27.290" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4791" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-11T00:07:07.533" Score="4" ViewCount="327" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm 20 and have been writing a lot of fiction since I was 11, and there is a story that I keep rewriting  as I get older and learn more about writing and storytelling. Strangely I haven't done that much reading myself so the Dos and Don'ts are still a bit unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem I have right now is that the story centers around several characters that together have to search answers about their origin. But these characters are introduced &lt;em&gt;over time&lt;/em&gt; - in the beginning there is only one character (the most important character) but further characters are introduced, each with their own separate storylines from &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; perspective. Is this a taboo in writing? Should I focus on one or a few characters from the beginning to prevent it from becoming confusing and annoying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3109" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-01-11T09:12:49.310" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T21:53:05.110" Title="Adding more characters as the story moves forwards" Tags="|technique|structure|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4791" CreationDate="2012-01-11T00:44:14.513" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds fine to me. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;George R.R. Martin&lt;/a&gt;'s been doing it for about five thousand pages so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: Martin makes the vast array of characters work by starting slow, with one family, and building outwards as the family splits apart and the members travel. Ned Stark goes from Winterfell to King's Landing, where we meet another family at the palace, which introduces us to the politics of the country. That's a springboard to other families, other castles, and more politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also helps the reader by keeping to one POV per chapter, and naming the character at the top of the chapter, so you know who and where the plot is focusing on. (As some characters shift their internal identities, the names change as well, which is a nice touch.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a huge character list with thumbnail descriptions at the end of each book, for those who have difficulty remembering who was doing what to whom six years ago when the last book was published, and several maps as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-01-11T14:41:40.007" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T14:41:40.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-11T04:02:55.673" Score="15" ViewCount="17549" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working on my book (on and off...) for about 6 months. I have a good bit planned out with the plot, story line, and characters. I even have a small idea on how to start the story but somehow it never seems to be right....&#xA;So is there a certain place I should start my story? Way before the life changing events? Presently where the main character is and then just do backflashes? &#xA;Please help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3111" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-01-11T13:35:56.023" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T20:19:56.970" Title="How to start a book off?" Tags="|fiction|novel|plot|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4793" CreationDate="2012-01-11T06:24:38.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't a certain way to start a novel - it all depends on the story you want to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opening will set the tone of your story and should ideally give an idea of the main themes in the book. For example, if a big part of your story is the main character dealing with their past, then maybe you would want to start in the past, or start with a flashback to the past. Or if a big part is the relationship between two characters, then you could start in the present with a key scene between them that foreshadows the tribulations that are to come; or perhaps with a flashback to how they met, if the meeting has information that will intrigue the reader and throw some mystery onto the relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really comes down to what feels right - the fact that you're able to discern that things don't fit is a good start! Keep trying different tacks until you find one that you know is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T06:24:38.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4793" CreationDate="2012-01-11T08:00:52.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important thing to remember when writing the opening of the story is that you have to keep the reader interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it bores the reader, there is a high chance that he or she will put the book down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean starting straight off with the life-changing events; in fact, those events will feel fake if there is no build-up. (Not to mention that the reader might not understand what's going on - another reason readers put down books!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, though, is that it depends on many factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, you can post possible openings here and ask for critique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T08:00:52.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4793" CreationDate="2012-01-11T08:07:45.927" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some pointers from what I have learned from experience and from what more experienced writers have told me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're a beginner, it is better to stick with linear time. Attempt flashbacks, parallel story arcs and such once you get a good handle of story telling. In your case, consider starting just before the very first life changing / significant event.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide whether you're writing in first person, third person omnipotent or third person limited. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages (see related questions on this website). Each narrative style will allow you to cover past events in different ways. Read some of your favorite authors and see how they do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's good that you have a story planned out. If you have the backdrop / history of your story already in mind, it will be easy to introduce them into the story later on (in the sci-fi genre, these are sometimes called 'info-dumps').&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If what you are suffering from is the problem of mounting that hurdle between the story idea and the first sentence (where you just stare at the blank first page): one way to overcome this (and this depends on the genre) is to vividly visualize the scenes in your head without even thinking that its for a book. Try thinking of it as a movie you're watching. Then try describing the first scene. More often than not, this will get you rolling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The difficult part is to string together scenes into events and then the events into a coherent story. It's difficult because each subsequent scene/event has to be consistent with all those that went before it, which naturally includes the back stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't expect to get it right the first time. The essence of writing, some say, is &lt;em&gt;rewriting&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2838" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T08:07:45.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4791" CreationDate="2012-01-11T09:40:39.177" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a few rules for you which I made up just for your case. Follow them rigorously:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rule #1: &lt;strong&gt;There are no taboos in writing!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rule #2: &lt;strong&gt;There are no taboos in writing!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rule #3: &lt;strong&gt;There are definitely no taboos in writing!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I hope we have made that point clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are rules in writing, what you should do and what you shouldn't. But for each rule there is an exception where you should do exactly the opposite of what the rule tells you. The prerequisite for using or breaking rules is understanding the rules. You are in the right place ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, back to your question: You want to avoid confusing your readers when introducing all these characters. First: You cannot please them all. There are readers who get confused with too many characters, no matter where you introduce them. A pity, but that's how it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let me tell you a story about Margret. She had a sister, Susann, and they both visit her mother Ann. They met Marie on their way to their Mom's house, the daughter of their neighbor Kate. Kate and Laura, the aunt of Ann, know each other since childhood. Sadly Laura is sitting in her rocking chair all day and Kate doesn't have much time visiting. But she always loved that marmalade Marie was cooking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now ... where was I ... oh, yes, who is my main character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I'm overexaggerating, but I wanted to show you, that introducing characters in a short time period (all in the beginning) can be also very confusing. Take your time introducing the protagonists to your audience. But that does not mean that you should bore them. Writing is so lovely complicated, isn't it? :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-01-11T12:05:33.197" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T12:05:33.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4793" CreationDate="2012-01-11T12:09:58.570" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the beginning is blocking you, start writing something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have an outline, right? You know roughly what's going to happen when. So pick some point which is easier, and start there. My suggestion is to start near the beginning (If your intro is I. in your outline, start with II., for example), but start with whatever part makes you excited to be writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get into the groove, and you're feeling the voices of your characters and watching the story unfold under your fingertips, you can let that momentum carry you back to the opening of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you might develop an opening and then toss it three months from now when you're halfway through the book and you realize there's a better way to present your story. That's okay too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find excuses to start writing, not excuses to keep you from writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T12:09:58.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4516" CreationDate="2012-01-11T17:57:14.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The correct answer is as few words as possible to make your point. The longer the blog, the more readers that you will lose. If you have too much to say, then break it up into multiple blogs...like a series of blogs providing more depth. As a general rule, &amp;lt; 200 words is a good standard. This response was a bit over 60 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3113" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T17:57:14.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4785" CreationDate="2012-01-11T18:24:22.713" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One key to academic writing is &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; think about grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you are a completely fluent speaker who has spent much time thinking about grammar in the past so that it is effortless to get it correct, you will make grammatical errors unless you think about it.  This will distract and confuse your readers.  Other aspects of presenting a question--for example, presenting information in a clear and logical order so that a reader understands the relevant context--are also very important, but doing this well in the face of many grammatical errors is exceedingly difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2085" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T18:24:22.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4741" CreationDate="2012-01-12T11:26:06.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely! A blog entry is a short essay: studying (thanks, @Kate Sherwood!) essays, reading them closely, is always a good bet. The best essay writer I know is EB White: I reread White's work often. &lt;em&gt;One Man's Meat&lt;/em&gt; is a rich collection of good writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you're looking for a list of rules or suggestions. None surpasses Strunk and White, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/020530902X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Paris Review&quot; has since birth published interviews with writers about the ways they work. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt; These insights&lt;/a&gt; can help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone will tell you to read &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; writing is as valuable. Sometimes, when I come across bad writing and I'm feeling virtuous, I ask why and how it's bad. Then I work to improve it. That exercise helps me greatly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please don't forget that writing is painstaking hard work: this answer took ninety minutes to write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you must understand and embrace that good writing of any kind comes mainly from the heart.      &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastEditorUserId="1645" LastEditDate="2012-01-12T12:00:26.627" LastActivityDate="2012-01-12T12:00:26.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4819" CreationDate="2012-01-12T19:56:22.793" Score="5" ViewCount="451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to write a summary of my book's plot for a query letter to literary agents, but my plot is extremely hard to summarize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is that the plot is fast-paced, erratic, and constantly shifting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do I still believe in my novel? Because it's &lt;em&gt;humorous&lt;/em&gt;, darn it. The plot is really not the highlight of my novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm stuck between two extremes: If I keep just the essentials, the plot sounds hollow. If I write about the many details, the summary is nothing but rants and ravings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried following the answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/40/how-do-i-write-a-synopsis&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question, but my plot doesn't really have a core.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...So how do I approach the summarizing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it's hard to answer this question without even knowing what my story's &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt;, but I could really do with any tip or insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T07:14:07.667" Title="How to summarize prolonged plot" Tags="|publishing|plot|agent|queries|synopsis|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4803" CreationDate="2012-01-12T21:25:18.203" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;So what &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; the highlight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a character study of lunatics? A farce? A satire of a particular genre? A giddy romp across space and time? A surreal exploration of the absurdities inherent in our classist political system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A synopsis for a cover letter is really your &lt;i&gt;elevator pitch&lt;/i&gt; &amp;mdash; boil your book down into the fewest words which describe it, not necessarily the fewest words which tell the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-01-12T21:25:18.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4803" CreationDate="2012-01-13T04:30:59.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I see it from here, your question itself looks like a potential solution. Yes, I mean, if you could reword it and include bits from your work itself, in a creative way, that should really impress any literary agent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it this way: giving away much in a summary/ abstract has never been a good idea anyway. Even as it serves to arouse curiosity, it should do so more by suggesting than by revealing. Get the drift?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote Lauren Ipsum, &quot;words which describe it, not which tell the plot&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2012-01-13T04:30:59.370" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4778" CreationDate="2012-01-13T04:51:06.217" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about something like &quot;The country enchanted me with stardust&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3120" LastActivityDate="2012-01-13T04:51:06.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2012-01-13T07:20:54.383" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the other answers are good and practical, but in a way they might be missing the most critical (pardon the pun) part.  Writing is a very personal thing that exposes aspects of who you are (and of who you think you are - which may be quite different.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach to this might be to do some journaling.  Ask yourself questions like the following ones and write whatever comes to mind.  The first few &quot;answers&quot; to each will probably be logical and rational, but the &quot;real&quot;, deeper answers may come after you acknowledge the first ones, let them go, and see what else is there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my work (any kind of work) isn't good enough, what do I think will happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When my work wasn't good enough in the past (especially during childhood), how did people important to me respond to it?  Did they judge me and not just my work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did I feel like I wasn't &quot;good enough&quot; as a person to deserve love and care if my work wasn't good enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did people tell me that bad things would happen to me if I wasn't good enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would people think of me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would that make me feel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost no piece of writing (or almost anything else we do) is beyond improvement, so how &quot;good&quot; is &quot;good enough&quot;?  Is it ever good enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost no piece of writing will be liked by everyone.  How important is it to me that I feel my work is good?  How important is it that other people approve of my work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, if writing is part of earning your living, you do need some approval from others, but when you're in the writing process, the approval you need the most is from yourself and from all the other voices from the past that are still in your head repeating the judgments and limitations of the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, just writing all of this down and seeing it on paper (or on the computer screen) will be enough to release old feelings of limitation or judgment.  Sometimes, further work will be needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a &quot;spiritual&quot; bent to your personality, then meditating, praying, or giving the results of your work to a higher power and trusting that the best outcome will occur can really free up your energy and creativity while relaxing you at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a big topic and has been the subject of many books, so please understand that what is presented here is just an invitation to look further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2012-01-13T07:20:54.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4785" CreationDate="2012-01-13T08:06:34.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just typed, &quot;how to ask a good question&quot; into Google and got some surprisingly good results.&#xA;(I asked Google a good question.  LOL.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.gvc.edu/ssnyder/121/Goodquestions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://faculty.gvc.edu/ssnyder/121/Goodquestions.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#rtfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#rtfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;along with many others more specific to topics other than computing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2012-01-13T08:06:34.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4793" CreationDate="2012-01-14T17:17:35.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When in doubt, make it count for something. Many authors begin the story at a place which is or will be a pivotal part of the plot. Only you will know where or what this is, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not to say that you should elaborate or explain why this particular passage is central, of course. Suspense and lack of information will drive your story forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few famous examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Accidental_Tourist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Accidental Tourist&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, by Anne Tyler begins with the main event: The time when the protagonists wife asks him for a divorce. This is the event that triggers everything that transpires in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; by Tolkien begins with him describing the hobbit race. They will turn out to be the main focus of the books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The hitchhiker's guide the the galaxy&lt;/em&gt;, by Douglas Adams begins with a description of Earth, and its subsequent destruction. The reasons for which are not immediately obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Da Vinci Code&lt;/em&gt; by Dan Brown begins with the assassination of an old man, which puts us firmly in the middle of the conspiracy and a murder mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps more or less all books can be crammed into such a category, but the point is, this central point was invented (or discovered) by the author. Follow the threads in your story, see where they originate, and begin there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2209" LastActivityDate="2012-01-14T17:17:35.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4811" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4814" CreationDate="2012-01-16T13:11:14.743" Score="22" ViewCount="20305" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one character is using sign language and lip reading while the other is speaking normally, how do you represent the lines of the former? Quotations with &amp;quot;he signed&amp;quot; attribution or italics? E.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;When did you first feel the pain?&amp;quot; asked the doctor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Two days ago,&lt;/em&gt; signed the patient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2838" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2022-10-02T21:35:00.127" Title="How does one include sign language in a dialogue?" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|formatting|language|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4811" CreationDate="2012-01-16T13:26:14.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, italics is exactly how I'd do it. Dean Koontz did that in &lt;i&gt;Watchers,&lt;/i&gt; as I recall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T13:26:14.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4536" CreationDate="2012-01-16T14:58:39.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can find &lt;a href=&quot;http://urbandictionary.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;urbandictionary.com&lt;/a&gt; useful. Probably that's the only adequate source of evolving English language available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3069" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T14:58:39.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4811" CreationDate="2012-01-16T15:06:24.510" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Italics make sense when sign is not the language most of the dialogue is in (I think this is a common tactic for &quot;secondary&quot; languages).  But if sign is the main language in your piece, I would just put it in quotes like any other dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the only question I would have for you is what is the main language of the dialogue?  If it's sign language, I wouldn't give it second class treatment in italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T15:06:24.510" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4815" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4830" CreationDate="2012-01-16T21:17:49.760" Score="11" ViewCount="1609" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was starting to leave a comment on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4811/how-does-one-include-sign-language-in-a-dialogue&quot;&gt;this excellent question&lt;/a&gt; when I realized I had come up with a second question which was equally intriguing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a story where 95% of the communication is signed, and you decide that you're simply going to use quotes to indicate signed speech, with attributives (&quot;Where are you going?&quot; he signed. &quot;To Venice!&quot; she responded, exaggerating the gestures in her excitement.), what happens when the signers come across someone who speaks aloud?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is spoken speech formatted as a secondary or cameo-use language to signed speech?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T03:54:31.463" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T03:54:31.463" Title="How does one present spoken dialogue as a secondary language to signed speech?" Tags="|dialogue|formatting|language|multilingual|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4791" CreationDate="2012-01-16T21:53:05.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IN order to be yourself, you must write what you feel led to write.  If you want to add POVs (Point Of Views) as you go, then by golly do that!  I personally think it's a great idea and would love to see more people do it.  I have a similar story to yours, since I, too am about your age and have been writing since I was ten.  I say go all out on the story and make it the best book you can possibly write!  Have fun writing and I'll look forward to seeing your book in print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3127" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T21:53:05.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4815" CreationDate="2012-01-16T23:28:42.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's less about which language is the main or secondary (or tertiary or...fourthary?) and more about &lt;strong&gt;differentiating between them&lt;/strong&gt; (as I stated in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4811/how-does-one-include-sign-language-in-a-dialogue/4814#4814&quot;&gt;my answer to the other question&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But broader than that, I think it would &lt;strong&gt;depend on the scene&lt;/strong&gt;.  Do the characters understand each other? Are they communicating entirely in the secondary language?  If it's yes and yes, I would say do the whole thing in quotes.  If it's a yes and no, I would denote the secondary language in italics.  If it's two no's, you're writing a sitcom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More thoughts:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something I didn't address before was consistency.  If you decorate your second language in italics in one place, then do an entire scene in that language using quotes, I think you will confuse your reader.  So the real assessment is what makes the most sense for your scene (and I stick by my conditional statement above), but then also what will not be jarring or strange for the reader based on what else they have seen throughout the rest of your piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T15:51:58.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2012-01-17T01:28:00.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a Scrivener 2.0 user myself, and I recommend Aeon Timeline to any writer in need of making a solid timeline for your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest challenges with the novel I am working on now was the timeline and the order of events. I've been pounding the issue for months, but it wasn't before Aeon that I could get it right. And best of all: Its free :)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3128" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T01:28:00.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4803" CreationDate="2012-01-17T07:14:07.667" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your query is meant to introduce the book and make clear why it's compelling. That doesn't require you to explain its plot in detail, particularly if the plot isn't the compelling aspect of it. On the other hand, you can't just write &quot;My novel is called [TITLE HERE], it's very funny, you should totally check it out.&quot; So you need &lt;strong&gt;a core aspect of your novel&lt;/strong&gt; - a plot thread; a character; setting; a catalysing event - which you'll be able to build your query around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;em&gt;The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy&lt;/em&gt; is certainly a humorous novel with a fast-paced, erratic plot which isn't really the main point of the book. What unifying element can we, nonetheless, find and focus on in a query? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, even though the &lt;em&gt;plot&lt;/em&gt; zigzags like crazy, the central &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt; is that of Arthur Dent, milquetoast extraordinaire, being tossed and batted about the universe in a sequence of zany situations. So you could write about Dent, and what sets this off, and what he goes through:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All Arthur Dent wants is to be left alone, for his hangover to pass, and for those construction workers outside to please not tear his house down. The good news is, they're not going to. The bad news is, that's only because the entirety of planet Earth is blasted to smithereens. So Arthur Dent, sole survivor of planetary annhiliation, last human in existence, is feeling rather put-upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There - that's the premise. It explains the &lt;em&gt;set-up&lt;/em&gt; for the novel; it introduces our main character; it explains what he &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt; - to be left alone and for things to be normal - and it's pretty clear that he's not about to get it. Now that we've got a clear premise and character, we can build on that to give a sense of what the rest of the book is like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Arthur Dent discovers that, in absence of Earth, there's a whole universe out there. Much of it is loud, unpleasant, and trying to hijack him off on ridiculous escapades. Ford Prefect, whom on Earth he had believed to be a largely reasonable human being, turns out to be an alien marooned on Earth for decades, originally assigned there to write the planet up for the notorious intergalactic travel guide, &lt;em&gt;The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy&lt;/em&gt; (his essay in entirety: &quot;Mostly harmless&quot;). Ford inducts Arthur into the ranks of the galaxy's interstellar hitchhikers - leading him from one mess into another, and always ever-so-slightly ahead of the jaws of disaster. Well, almost always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There. That's a halfway-decent draft. You've said what you needed to - it's a funny book; it's about a boring guy who suddenly finds himself going through weird adventures in space; the tone is off-kilter and zany; the premise is a human becoming a &quot;galactic hitchhiker&quot; after Earth is destroyed. Premise; character; tone - you've got them all across, and you don't need to start explaining anything about probability drives, or start leading up to &quot;The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything&quot; in just a paragraph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two important notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I've resisted the (compelling...) urge to put in a list about the zany things Arthur's going to encounter. No &quot;Arthur meets a rapidly descending sperm whale, the Creators of Earth, and a sorely depressed robot, and ultimately discovers The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.&quot; Why have I done that? Because that list is meaningless; if you haven't read it, it's just a list of random things. They may be interesting, they may be unusual, they may be well-written. But reading a list of them doesn't tell me any of that. So avoid the &quot;teaser list&quot; if at all possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Notice I've deliberately tried to write this mock-query with a tone and humor similar to that used within the book. (I'm not Douglas Adams and I'm writing rather quickly, so don't dock me for humor, OK? :P) This isn't always appropriate (and writing &quot;in-character,&quot; as though a character from the book is speaking, is generally frowned upon) , but for a book that &lt;em&gt;relies&lt;/em&gt; on tone and humor, this can be extremely helpful. It gets across why the book is worthwhile - so that's good.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, &lt;strong&gt;if you cannot find any core element of your story to focus on, you may have a problem.&lt;/strong&gt; It's one thing for plot not to be the focus; it's quite another for there to be no plot, or incoherent plot, or a whole lot of &quot;short&quot; plots one after the other with no connection. Typical elements that bring the story together are often an initial set-up (like Earth blowing up...), a character (what does he want? how does he try to get it? what stands in his way?), a goal (if the final goal is clear from the start). If you can't find &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt;, your story itself may feel random, slapdash, incoherent. Your best recourse is to ask for feedback from people whose opinion you trust and respect. Ask them what &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; see as the core element; if you feel it's not strong enough, rewrite to put focus on it. Sometimes problems in a query letter do indicate problems in the work being queried about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T07:14:07.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4820" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4823" CreationDate="2012-01-17T11:13:40.240" Score="3" ViewCount="436" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a technical report with keywords which are mainly English. I am using a Glossary at the end, which describes translated keywords. Is it a replacement for footnotes or I should just keep footnotes too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3003" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-06-18T03:59:02.440" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T03:59:02.440" Title="Using Glossary Instead of Footnotes (for translation/transliteration)" Tags="|style|technical-writing|formatting|translation|footnotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4821" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4846" CreationDate="2012-01-17T11:18:56.927" Score="2" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a report in Farsi and using &lt;code&gt;ieeetr&lt;/code&gt; bibliography style for my references. This style uses numeral references like [1] [2] etc but regarding context (Farsi) I am using Arabic number scripts like [۱], [۲] etc, but in the bibliography section, I am using a Latin script, again due to context (English references).  Am I obliged to use Latin scripts for numbers in the text where I am citing an English article instead of [۱], [۲] etc?&#xA;What about Farsi articles? What about Chinese?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3003" LastEditorUserId="3003" LastEditDate="2012-01-17T14:51:04.940" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T15:09:38.953" Title="Numeral Citation Scripts" Tags="|style|technical-writing|formatting|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4815" CreationDate="2012-01-17T11:37:06.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case, I think the best approach would be to quote the spoken dialogue as regular dialogue and use the attributives to differentiate between signed and spoken content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's fine to drop the attributives if it is clear who is the source and s/he has been established as a &quot;signer&quot; or &quot;speaker.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Italics should be reserved for foreign words (i.e. not in the language of the narrative).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T11:37:06.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4820" CreationDate="2012-01-17T11:41:56.780" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Provided you mean that footnotes are &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; for translations (that is, you're not using footnotes for additional information or for source citations), I'd put the glossary of translations at the &lt;em&gt;beginning&lt;/em&gt;, and skip the footnotes. The glossary up front will alert the readers that foreign words are coming up in the text, and putting everything in one spot makes it easy to reference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually find frequent footnotes to be distracting from the flow of reading, and I would imagine a technical report needs even more concentration to keep flow than a novel, so footnoting the translations repeatedly would be difficult for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a compromise, perhaps the first time you introduce an English keyword, you could put the translation in parentheses right after it (as well as in the glossary). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T11:41:56.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4815" CreationDate="2012-01-17T12:22:22.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you need a differentiation in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the actors can communicate (one is deaf-mute, but can read lips, the other one can read signs) then I see no need for a special formatting style (or even other quotation marks which would be also an option). So go with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/4822/99&quot;&gt;Cliff's suggestion&lt;/a&gt; here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they do not understand each other then you probably want to show that in a different way. When using the perspective of one person in this scene, you do not need to mark speech of the other person. Because whatever he says/signs is not understandable by the other one. So you do not show it as speech, because your POV-character does not understand it and you show his puzzlement instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T13:26:47.677" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4825" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-17T12:48:08.937" Score="7" ViewCount="602" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a technical documentation about a product. Now problem is there are many interrelated and interdependent concepts. I am just confused how to put them in order. I mean if I talk about first concept, it needs a little understanding of second topic and if I talk about second topic, it needs the understanding of first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="337" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-25T19:20:37.730" LastActivityDate="2018-02-25T19:20:37.730" Title="How to write about things which depend on each other" Tags="|technique|technical-writing|organization|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4825" CreationDate="2012-01-17T13:16:08.303" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is very common in certain types of projects. You can try beginning with presenting a tree structure (not necessarily a diagram) for a quick overall picture of the elements and their interdependence at a glance -- an aerial view, kind of.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember to follow the same relationship logic in setting out the individual elements in the main discussion. Think of it as presenting a table of contents first and then the chapters in that same order -- only here the TOC is non-linear.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do let us know how you look at this option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T13:16:08.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4827" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-17T14:38:33.847" Score="5" ViewCount="233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been struggling for a while with my CV and I need help on deciding which sections should I include in it? I lack the formatting skill, I remember studying in school how to prepare my CV - there were specific rules, but since then the times have changed tremendously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer having the following sections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact information - very basic - just name, address and telephone;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Profile Summary - a brief description of what's happened so far in&#xA;my professional development;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skill Set - a tabular representation of the basic skills I acquired&#xA;so far;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Education; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work experience;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Additional;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is relevant to say that I live in Europe and I'm not native English speaker, so I might lack very basic notion about the art of writing a CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please - feel welcomed to express your opinion on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether this section set is sufficient? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether I intent to use the sections correctly?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do I break any standards, if I prepare my CV the way I'm planning? should &quot;Skill Set&quot; section be exhaustive (we - the IT people - use enormous amount of buzz words), or should mark the general areas of competency?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What, besides languages, should go in Additional?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help is highly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3112" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-01-18T02:49:59.793" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T14:51:20.983" Title="What content parts should a technical (IT) CV have?" Tags="|business-writing|resume|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4825" CreationDate="2012-01-17T14:41:04.343" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two general approaches, depending on the amount of detail you need from the &quot;other&quot; concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't need a lot, write about subject A, and when the first interaction with B hits add a parenthetical sentence, call-out note, or footnote (depending on your style guide) describing the other concept and pointing to its main documentation.  For exmaple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To configure a subscription, do (blah blah blah) and specify the callback URL.  (A callback is a service you write that this service will call with updated data.  See Section X.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the topics or their inter-connections are more complicated, the other approach is to write a brief overview that introduces all the concepts.  Think of this as breadth-first documentation.  The overview should point to the more-detailed documentation on each topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T14:41:04.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4815" CreationDate="2012-01-17T19:07:00.863" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;FWIW, I faced exactly this problem in a novel I wrote a few years ago that included a large amount of both spoken and signed dialogue. Having such a large amount of italicized text was distracting for the reasons discussed in other answers, so my approach was a punctuation convention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Spoken dialogue goes in normal quotes like this,&amp;quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;«But signed dialogue goes in guillemets,» she signed in response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first few chapters I always pointed out the change in mode by adding a &amp;quot;said&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;signed&amp;quot; dialogue tag, but after that I regarded the convention as sufficiently well-established and only used the punctuation. My beta readers found this easy to follow and never once complained. Since the distinction between what was spoken and what was signed was sometimes important to the plot, this allowed me to signal these shifts without having to beat the reader over the head with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I originally added this answer to your other question, but I think that it is actually more appropriate here.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T19:07:00.863" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4827" CreationDate="2012-01-17T19:07:06.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your first language isn't English and you write your CV in English, find a native speaker who can correct your errors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;English CVs start listing the previous jobs/education with the newest topic (your last job) and go down to the oldest (where you went to school). In Germany, for example, it's the other way around. But you do not have to follow that convention. I have read a lot of debates about the pros and cons and nothing really convincing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read the guidelines of the company where you want to apply. Follow them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you  write a cover letter, explain, why you have chosen this company and why you are the best fit (within one page/two paragraphs).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid buzz word clusters. If you are a programmer and list every programming language you might have heard of or you used the last time ten years ago, then you will look like all these other liars out there and you do not want that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be honest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T19:07:06.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4249" CreationDate="2012-01-17T23:05:12.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In epub on  ibook font name, font size and page orientation are key factors in layout.   There is no reason why the publisher can't suggest to the reader the name size and orientation from the comparatively few options that will produce the layout the author intended.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try loading into ibook the free epub version of Moore's Twas the Night before Christmas with its numerous illustrations by Jessie Wilcox Smith(originally published in 1912) and play about with the few options available and you will soon find the variables required for optimum viewing even though the publishers neglected to give any clues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3135" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T23:05:12.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4833" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-18T00:20:06.293" Score="4" ViewCount="1902" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a cover letter - an excrutiating process. There are two sentences I am quite unsure about. The first one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hold a math Ph.D. from xxx that was carried out at a research group headed by yyy, a receipient of the Fields Medal, the “Nobel Prize of Mathematics&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 1) Is this sentence too long? Is it better to split it in two sentences? For example, would&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hold a math Ph.D. from xxx. Its work was carried out at a research group headed by yyy, a receipient of the Fields Medal, the “Nobel Prize of Mathematics&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;be better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 2) Does it sound presumptious? It is the second sentence in my cover letter, right after &quot;I am writing to apply too...&quot;. I am applying to a post in the US outside academia. University xxx is not well known in the States, and the Fields medal is not well known to non-mathematicians (it is, however, widely regarded as the nobel of math, e.g. see wikipedia). So, I feel as if I have to explain that xxx is a solid place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is presumptious, would you have a better way to express this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second sentence I am having trouble with is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe that the advertised post is an outstanding opportunity to contribute to, and further develop my career in, governmental policy planing and analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was my sorry attempt to put together the two sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) I believe that the advertised post offers an outstanding opportunity to contribute to governmental policy planing and analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) I believe that the advertised post is an outstanding opportunity to further develop my career in governmental policy planing and analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the post I am applying to is just for a few years, I feel it is OK to say it is a stepping stone, not the end point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would you have any suggestion on how to improve this? Or it is a bad idea to put something like this is a cover letter? It is the end of my first paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3138" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-05T08:56:45.893" LastActivityDate="2018-05-05T08:56:45.893" Title="Questions on two sentences on a cover letter" Tags="|business-writing|resume|cover-letter|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4825" CreationDate="2012-01-18T08:30:30.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a common situation. Most of the systems have different parts that interact with one another, and with the external word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best presentations / documentations I have seen all start by first describing the environment in which the system evolves, with a high-level overview of the system itself. Then they quickly present one or two common uses and how they are dealt with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should probably follow the same pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction (gives some context)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overview (of the different parts)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then go on describing each part individually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3139" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T08:30:30.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4833" CreationDate="2012-01-18T09:54:27.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some people do not like it if you begin your letter with &quot;I&quot;. They think you are ego-centric and they do not want to work with these kind of people. I contrarily think starting a cover letter with &quot;I&quot; is pretty straight forward, but again, that's maybe just me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The sentence is presumptuous (BTW: use a spell checker and a native speaker if you aren't one). Skip the &quot;Nobel Prize&quot; stuff. Either the people know the Fields Metal or they google it (unlikely) or they just don't care. You would only help the googling guys and I don't think it's worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you mean &quot;planing&quot; or &quot;planning&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;believe&quot; is a word I would try to avoid. It always provokes the &quot;why don't you &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt;&quot; reaction. Use &quot;Your advertised position is an ...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You do not want to develop your career, you want to develop yourself and your abilities. I also wouldn't use both verbs &quot;contribute&quot; and &quot;develop&quot;; pick one. You can still add another sentence like &quot;contribute to your team/success&quot; or nonsense like that if you really want.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-01-18T13:39:59.410" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T13:39:59.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4778" CreationDate="2012-01-18T16:20:19.110" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One option might be,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm fascinated with Bulgaria. This country makes me hallucinate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3140" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-05-04T15:52:31.970" LastActivityDate="2022-05-04T15:52:31.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4738" CreationDate="2012-01-18T16:25:54.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That if you take a writing class you'll want to become a writer, and your wife will leave you.  Worse still, as a writer you won't make enough money to afford the alimony.  [That last part is subtle, if money were not scarce than paying it wouldn't be so much a problem]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3141" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T16:25:54.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4833" CreationDate="2012-01-18T23:19:33.153" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question 1 is too long, but where you should break it is not where you broke it. The information about the professor is a sidenote and is a parenthetical remark if ever I saw one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can't &quot;carry out&quot; a degree, and &quot;I hold a degree that was earned&quot; is verbose; &quot;I earned my degree&quot; would be more concise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my suggestion is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I earned my math Ph.D. from xxx in a research group headed by yyy. (yyy is a recipient of the Fields Medal, the “Nobel Prize of Mathematics.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note correct spelling of &quot;recipient&quot; which was misspelled in your original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On to your second problem sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe that the advertised post is an outstanding opportunity to contribute to, and further develop my career in, governmental policy planing and analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My issue with this sentence is that it focuses on what you would get out of the position, not what you would give to the position. It also seems tentative due to the &quot;I believe&quot; at the beginning. So I would simply say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The advertised post is an excellent fit for my background, skills, and career goals, and I am certain I can make a valuable contribution to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it is difficult to give advice at the sentence level without the advantage of the context in which the sentences appear. My rewrites may well not fit in with the tone of the rest of your letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastEditorUserId="251" LastEditDate="2012-01-18T23:31:18.250" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T23:31:18.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4839" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-19T08:50:37.500" Score="3" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a proof reading service for my scientific paper. I am not a native English speaker. I have spent significant time on improving the writing, thus I want to try a proof reading service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to go for Editage (http://www.editage.com/) but, before I do that, I would like to learn what other providers/company you use and could recommend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="256" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-01-19T13:22:47.793" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T10:50:44.070" Title="Proof reading service" Tags="|collaboration|process|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-11-06T18:38:44.607" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4840" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4842" CreationDate="2012-01-19T23:41:08.820" Score="5" ViewCount="529" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9/is-there-a-special-software-for-writers&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; on software for fiction writers. I'm wondering if there is software out there for non-fiction/instructional/research writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems like yWriter and Scrivener focus on organizing scenes, characters, etc. It'd be nice to have the same organizational flexibility that those programs provide, but tailored for the needs of instructional writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3146" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-11T07:34:32.813" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T07:34:32.813" Title="Software for instructional book" Tags="|software|tools|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4839" CreationDate="2012-01-20T00:08:11.053" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grammarly.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grammarly&lt;/a&gt; works great for usage, grammar, spelling, etc. (and it's free).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3146" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T00:08:11.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4840" CreationDate="2012-01-20T02:04:09.240" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In yWriter, the concepts of character and scene are baked right in. It's designed for fiction, and it's a fine tool when your style fits the structure it knows about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to prefer tools that allow me to evolve my own structures, without trying to help by constraining me to its known templates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener helps you organize your text (and ideas) into a hierarchy of chunks of text. It has no preference for what size chunks, or what you call the chunks. If you write a novel, you might have chapters that have scenes. If you write a technical document, you might have parts that have chapters that have sections that have subsections. Scrivener don't care one hoot. You decide the meaning of the hierarchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Super Notecard (from Mindola) is another program that allows arbitrary chunks. It also knows a few things about research, such as citations, in a way that gives just a little bit of help, without imagining that it knows more than you do about how you want to organize things. I remember liking it once upon a time, but I find that Scrivener somehow fits me better. It's been a while since I compared, so I don't remember the distinguishing details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T02:04:09.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4793" CreationDate="2012-01-20T05:08:54.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been a bunch of good suggestions already.  I think what I'm offering up is coming from a slightly different angle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first question to you is how do you want to write your story, or how do you want to write stories in general?  Some writers are fervent outliners and they refuse to write any scenes until a solid skeleton is built.  Some writers are intentionally discovery writers, they write with some purpose, story, character, setting, etc in mind, but they do not have a specific plan for what will happen.  They let the story come to them as they write and edit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated, there is not one answer.  The most important is to not allow yourself too much time to think about it.  There isn't a perfect formula, but for me, I try to evenly balance my time between mental processing and content creation.  Or another way to put it, just start typing, or scribbling, or sketching...  It is frustrating as a writer to produce bad content, but it is a contradiction as a writer to produce no content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying something like a NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) group... or a meet-up to get you into the discipline of producing content.  Once you're writing consistently you can even potentially work on multiple projects at once to keep your mind fresh, as perhaps even find other genres you really enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's tons of advice to be given, but the most important is to put words on paper.  The rest will follow...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3147" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T05:08:54.560" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4821" CreationDate="2012-01-20T15:09:38.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of citing is, that the reader can refer to the sources you used for your text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine your user is a Chinese. He does not know English and hardly care about the numbers. Now he looks up your citation source, sees it is in English and can ask someone for a translation of that source if he really needs one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point here is &quot;looks up your citation source&quot;. Is &lt;em&gt;the reader&lt;/em&gt; able (or is it easier for him) to look up the citation source if the number is in Chinese? Obviously, so use what your reader understands. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T15:09:38.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4793" CreationDate="2012-01-20T21:51:48.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the teach-a-writer-to-fish vein, may I suggest that a fruitful approach to a question like this is to look at some books you particularly like and see how those writers did it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T21:51:48.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4849" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4850" CreationDate="2012-01-21T04:17:01.477" Score="3" ViewCount="286" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ralphlavelle.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;, and with one of the sentences I want to say that I'm not judging anyone differently to how I judge myself. So I thought I'd go with the &quot;&lt;em&gt;hold someone to account&lt;/em&gt;&quot; metaphor. That way of expressing what I want to say is proving tricky, however. Does anyone know how to write this? This is what I have so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm not holding anyone I know to a different account than the one to which I am also responsible.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should &quot;responsible&quot; be &quot;liable&quot;? Should it be &quot;by which&quot; rather than &quot;to which&quot;? I like this sentence, and I want to get it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-01-21T14:30:32.763" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T08:31:11.533" Title="A tricky sentence to construct" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4849" CreationDate="2012-01-21T05:01:55.290" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider: &lt;em&gt;... the one to which I hold myself.&lt;/em&gt; It makes you more active in your own self-accounting. And it strengthens the rhythm of the end of the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T05:01:55.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4849" CreationDate="2012-01-21T14:42:38.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the only reason the sentence as-is doesn't feel quite right is grammatical.  The thought makes enough sense to understand what you're trying to say without changing anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue for me is that you wouldn't &quot;hold someone to account,&quot; you would hold someone accountable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between liable and responsible, I prefer the word responsible as it connotes a stronger sense of personal acceptance of the accountability we're referring to.  To be liable means you may be held responsible, but it does not mean that you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; responsible -it sounds more like legal jargon.  For example, if I co-signed a loan with my son and he failed to pay that loan, I might be liable even though I am only indirectly responsible.  I could see someone saying, &quot;I may be liable, but it wasn't my fault!&quot;  I have more trouble with the statement, &quot;I may have been responsible, but it wasn't my fault!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with that said, maybe a couple possibilities...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not suggesting a double-standard, I hold myself responsible to the same rules I hold others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I accept the responsibility for my own ethics, and I hold others to the same standards accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not judge anyone by a harsher set of standards than I judge myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if you'll like any of those, but I hope the thoughts are helpful.  Thanks for the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3147" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T14:42:38.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4853" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4857" CreationDate="2012-01-21T15:34:40.000" Score="1" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of writing a science fiction novel that will involve a large quantity and variety of synthetic life forms.  I have been highly influenced by the works of Asimov, and while I may not explicitly state the laws I utilize for the governance of artificial life, I want to have a solid footing for how my robots -or whatever they might be called- are able to make ethical decisions.  From a plot perspective, I also want some realistic ways ways that these rules could be hacked or otherwise subverted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I could ask this question on a pure coding site, but I don't want to be inundated with lines of raw code.  At the same time I don't want to read through tomes of philosophy that have no foundation in modern computer programming.  I'm looking for something in between...  So I thought that there must be some other sci-fi minded folks around writers.SE with experience into this type of research.  Pseudo-code would be fine, but I really don't want to sit down with AI scripts and try to project them far out into the future.  For those who might think that I'm trying to avoid doing research, I would merely say, I love doing research, but I could use some help on where to focus that research at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to restate the question:  Are there any writers here who can recommend good middle-ground resources that deal with the concepts of the philosophy and programming of artificial intelligence and/or systematic ethics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if this is a strange question, and thank you to everyone who takes the time to consider it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3147" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T07:56:16.363" Title="Can anyone direct me to writers' resources on AI or robotic ethics?" Tags="|resources|science-fiction|research|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2012-01-23T17:47:45.210" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="796" CreationDate="2012-01-21T19:13:51.470" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many writers - all too many, in fact - have the exact opposite problem; their worlds are undeveloped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find such a writer, and team up! There are many successful novels written by more than one author (take &lt;em&gt;Dragonlance&lt;/em&gt;, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T19:13:51.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4855" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4978" CreationDate="2012-01-22T04:30:27.250" Score="5" ViewCount="485" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a site where I can publish my poems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not keen on rewards; I just need a place to publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found poetry.com that seems to be what I'm looking for but they require a Facebook account to log in and I don't have one (and don't plan to create one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3155" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-07T21:41:17.697" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T14:29:36.963" Title="Where to publish poems?" Tags="|publishing|poetry|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4855" CreationDate="2012-01-23T01:30:46.803" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you get a Facebook account, you can publish them there, with a built-in audience. I suppose, however, you couldn't be anonymous, and you'd have to collect friends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3157" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-08T14:29:36.963" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T14:29:36.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4853" CreationDate="2012-01-23T07:56:16.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is one simple problem with describing ethics as algorithms; there are too many different opinions on what's right and wrong! (Or if 'right' and 'wrong' even exist.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asimov, for example, had his robots follow a very simple ethic code (no wordplay intended!). As a result, Asimov's robots can't make difficult decisions. A robot would not be able to cope with a situation where it must kill a terrorist to save someone else's life, for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will your synthetic life forms all follow the same ethical guidelines, or will different 'species' (or &lt;em&gt;models&lt;/em&gt;?) have different ideas of what is right and wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've settled on a set of ethical rules, I don't think you need to get too technical with the actual coding. Even nowadays, programming requires less technical details, and enables one to simply write what he wants done. (As someone expressed it, &quot;Nowadays, you deal with the &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; and let the code deal with the &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, a simple algorithm should do, as long as it doesn't leave any holes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T07:56:16.363" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4855" CreationDate="2012-01-23T08:24:18.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're not looking for any rewards as such, I'd suggest signing up for a tumblr or wordpress blog and publish your poems there, and give people the link to your poetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3159" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T08:24:18.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4855" CreationDate="2012-01-23T15:02:58.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://duotrope.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;duotrope.com&lt;/a&gt; for lists of poetry magazines and websites, paying and nonpaying. Though if you don't care about payment, setting up a free blog of your own would work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T15:02:58.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4861" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4867" CreationDate="2012-01-23T19:51:15.170" Score="16" ViewCount="4303" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, writing something confusing is not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a writer should &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt;. (Generally.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm trying to do is imitate the way one's thoughts get all muddled while falling asleep. The settings: Character being hunted by people who are trying to kill her. Now she's hiding, and - after so much time on the run - is falling asleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her drowsy brain tossed at her fake, annoying sounds of questions and&#xA;  requests in voices of people she knew. She wanted to fall asleep and&#xA;  sleep but she couldn’t sleep because she couldn’t fall asleep even&#xA;  though she was very tired. She wanted to giver herself away to her pursuers,&#xA;  to sleep, to death. She was tired, like a brink crawling and skipping&#xA;  off and on the height of a wall together with something else that&#xA;  wasn’t exactly the opposite of the sort of idea that tended to laugh&#xA;  particularly because when it was time to throw the street under the&#xA;  most medium lightning snake nobody would have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: Is this a valid way to demonstrate what the character is going through, or is it simply too weird and confusing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T06:25:55.553" LastActivityDate="2016-07-14T16:25:23.417" Title="Confusing writing in order to show how character is falling asleep - is it OK?" Tags="|description|atmosphere|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4892" CreationDate="2012-01-23T21:37:27.653" Score="3" ViewCount="907" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I cite a (reprinted) multivolume work in one volume, Turabian style? The way I see it, I have two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fairbairn, Patrick. &lt;em&gt;Typology of Scripture&lt;/em&gt;. [4th ed.?] 2 vols. New York: Funk &amp;amp; Wagnalls, 1900; reprint, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1989.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fairbairn, Patrick. &lt;em&gt;Typology of Scripture&lt;/em&gt;. [4th ed.?] 2 vols. in 1. New York: Funk &amp;amp; Wagnalls, 1900; reprint, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1989.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is correct? Is there another, better option? Or does it simply not matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The book retains the original page numbering [i.e. vol. 2 starts on p. 1], so I have to treat it as 2 volumes whichever form I pick.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2870" LastEditorUserId="2870" LastEditDate="2012-01-26T18:03:06.520" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T21:56:48.343" Title="How to cite two volumes in one (Turabian)" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4861" CreationDate="2012-01-24T00:48:49.010" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like this idea, actually. I'd straighten it up just a little:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;She was tired, like a bug crawling and skipping off and on the height of a wall together with something else that wasn’t exactly the opposite of the sort of idea, sort of laughing but not really meaning it particularly because when it was time to throw the street under the most medium lightning nobody would have to because she wasn't serious, not really.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's just enough of a thread of an idea which can be followed semi-logically, without becoming entirely gibberish. It's a cool technique. Go for it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T00:48:49.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4839" CreationDate="2012-01-24T02:24:52.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started a new business/technical writing/editing company, and I think we can help. We offer an editing and proofreading service. Take a look: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thediamondpen.com/editing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thediamondpen.com/editing.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3164" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-01-24T14:22:03.020" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T14:22:03.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3450" CreationDate="2012-01-24T02:30:58.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like &quot;We want you to buy. Preferably now, but if not now, there’s a wonderful savings plan we will tailor to your needs.&quot; It's perfect. You're honest, and willing to work with customers. I also agree with Standback about the oddness of the last line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3164" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T02:30:58.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4861" CreationDate="2012-01-24T03:59:37.323" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Lauren.  I like the concept a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a very difficult balance to try to use a unique literary device like purposefully garbled inner-dialog while remaining invisible as the author.  If you're too obvious it feels out of place, but if you're too subtle then it just looks like sloppy writing.  It's a bold move for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of a couple alternatives you might use instead of, or in conjunction with your idea...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Poetic offsets are a useful tool&lt;/strong&gt; if not used in excess.  They signal a reader to read this text in a different way without necessarily having to say anything at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Her drowsy brain tossed at her fake, annoying sounds of questions and requests in voices of people she knew.            She wanted to fall asleep and sleep but she couldn’t sleep because she couldn’t fall asleep even though she was very tired. She wanted to giver herself away to her pursuers, &#xA;          to sleep, &#xA;          to death. &#xA;          She was tired...&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;note: not suggesting that structure specifically, just an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alliteration is another&lt;/strong&gt; poetic tool that could get the point you want across.  Wordsworth was the master of alliteration in my opinion.  Anytime I wonder if it's possible to make words sound like something completely unfathomable I read his poetry and am usually inspired.  I don't have a specific suggestion here, but I do think that classical poetry could offer something more to your idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final thought.  To answer your question as briefly as possible, I would say yes it is Ok.  The one thought I can't shake though is, if you had not specifically asked if it was Ok, would I have noticed what you were doing on my own?  I think you might get a better response to your raw idea if you ask us blind next time.  It might have been the same, I might have thought it was really clever, but unfortunately I'll never know because I already knew what you were doing before I read your work.  Very interesting idea Jacob, good luck with it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3147" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-07-14T16:25:23.417" LastActivityDate="2016-07-14T16:25:23.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4849" CreationDate="2012-01-24T08:31:11.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I agree with Steve, you don't generally &quot;hold someone to account&quot; you &quot;hold someone accountable.&quot; If you were asking for more alternatives I'd rather use &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I measure general public accountability with the same ethical yardstick that I measure mine&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The contours of my judgement are not flexible for anyone, not even for me&quot; although the latter sounds relatively scripted and dramatically tainted, it could be of use depending on the scenario or situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3166" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T08:31:11.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4861" CreationDate="2012-01-24T11:34:51.233" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the effect is absolutely worth working toward, but I'm not sure you're working in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The excerpt you gave, for me, felt stimulating rather than lulling.  The first sentence was frustrating ('tossed at her' made me think the brain was tossing (like tossing and turning) in response to the voices) so my brain was on edge, and then the repetition of 'sleep' and 'asleep' seemed to intensify rather than sooth.  I'm not sure about the long sentences, either.  I think they tend to build toward a climax, rather than ease into relaxation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, absolutely OK to try, but this attempt didn't work for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T11:34:51.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4870" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-24T14:28:36.690" Score="21" ViewCount="3898" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a 1st person piece and reading it I realize it's very difficult to tell if the narrator is male or female. There are one or two clues, and they come pretty late in the piece. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you as readers busy yourself with trying to figure out gender? Or do you think you would automatically assume one gender? and then would it be frustrating to find out you were wrong? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you as a writer try to clarify this early on? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit: There are good answers. Obviously part of every answer is that it depends on what I want to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, it isn't important information for the understanding of the piece, as far as I am concerned. I don't &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; mind if it was understood one way or another; I just want it out of the reader's way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2938" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-03-09T07:20:52.800" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T06:57:12.423" Title="Is it frustrating not to know the narrator's gender?" Tags="|style|fiction|gender|ambiguity|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4870" CreationDate="2012-01-24T14:39:40.353" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a reader, I tend to assume a gender (often but not always the same as the author's). The only reason this would bother me is that it's jarring when I discover I'm wrong, as I have to reimagine the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer I do try to clarify it early, and that's the advice I've heard from others as well. It's tricky in first person, especially if the piece begins with the narrator alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mentioning their gender-typical clothing is a pretty simple way to do it. Another possible trick is to have the narrator think of him/herself like &quot;not my mother's daughter,&quot; &quot;one of the boys,&quot; &quot;the smartest girl in class&quot;--anything that drops a clue early. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T14:39:40.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4870" CreationDate="2012-01-24T14:40:55.093" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My response would have to be that the narrator's gender is irrelevant unless you choose to make it relevant.  I would say, in addition to that, that if you do choose to make the gender of the narrator relevant, that you should decide early in your writing whether you want to make it clear or hide it from your reader.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be a very powerful effect to cause the reader to realize they had been making a false assumption throughout your entire story.  The one warning I would give you is to not let it overshadow other ideas or plot twists that you want the reader to discover.  Depending on how jarring you make such a realization for the reader, it could have a positive or negative effect on the rest of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3147" LastEditorUserId="1264" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T00:52:39.310" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T00:52:39.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4870" CreationDate="2012-01-24T14:42:04.157" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally the purpose of fiction is to let the reader immerse into your story - to get him caught deeply into the world you have created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reader is wondering about the narrator's gender all the time, there will be no immersion. If he assumes a gender and it is wrong then he will be ejected out of your story when he discovers his error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to avoid that, clarify the gender early on. Otherwise leave it. Maybe you want to play with the reader and fool him a little bit, that's your choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-02-07T15:52:55.757" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T15:52:55.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3450" CreationDate="2012-01-24T14:50:07.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The name of the toy store would keep me reading for a bit longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had trouble with the &quot;ever&quot; in the first line. The last toy I ever bought as a child, for myself? The last toy I ever bought as an adult, because I didn't know any children to buy toys for? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This line:  &lt;i&gt;If you’re in a “gift sized fix” and in need of the latest razzler dazzler—-you call us. &lt;/i&gt; seems unnecessary, and I agree with Standback that it doesn't quite fit the tone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T14:50:07.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4870" CreationDate="2012-01-24T18:05:41.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a reader discovering your implicit assumptions about a character were wrong can be disconcerting.  However,if done deliberately to make a point it can be effective.  Heinlein did it in several of his novels with the main characters race.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T18:05:41.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4870" CreationDate="2012-01-24T18:06:10.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd ask whether you are trying to &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; anything with the reader's knowledge of the narrator's gender.  From your added comment it seems like you are not; in that case, I'd ask whether it's important for the story whether the narrator even &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; a particular gender.  Again, it seems like it's not.  I'd say, then, that you can improve your story by tying in this loose thread: give the character a motivation, or experience, or personality related to their gender.  The reader will make an assumption about all of these things and, if you don't accept the task of addressing the consequences, they will be left with a sense of incompleteness.  Write tight, is what I'm saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3169" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T18:06:10.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4725" CreationDate="2012-01-24T18:12:21.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Poetry in a novel is dangerous because it backfires easily if it's bad, and (not to say anything at all about you) it's often bad.  Or at least not good.  Or just plain puzzling, like it's been put there just because it's Significant and the reader doesn't know why it matters that it's poetry.  If the poem isn't good enough to stand on its own, the reader will be right to reject it.  Jo Walton had a nice snark in the first post of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/04/rothfuss-reread-the-name-of-the-wind-part-1-the-cut-flower-sound&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;her Rothfuss reread&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apart from being that rare thing in fantasy, actually good poetry...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to be careful not to end up as one of her many targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3169" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T18:12:21.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4863" CreationDate="2012-01-24T18:26:18.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go for the first option. The &quot;in 1.&quot; in the second option is more confusing, at least to me. I don't really understand what you mean by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3164" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T18:26:18.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4879" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-24T21:24:40.223" Score="11" ViewCount="403" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have about a hundred pages of a novel I wrote in high school, I like the concept behind the writing but I'm finding it extremely difficult to go back and read/edit it again. I last edited the document in 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work received lots of praise at the time but, as I look back and read it myself, it's embarrassing. At the same time I'm attached and want to finish it. I'm concerned with how much work editing it all would be and that makes me afraid I will never finish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of three ways of handling this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Throw the old copy in the trash and completely rewrite it. I hesitate to do this because the amount of work was already intimidating; if I do this I think I might abandon the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read and edit page by page, fixing all the little things I don't like. This feels logical but I don't know if it's the best approach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the whole thing over once like a new reader before I start considering edits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T00:53:09.573" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T22:56:19.273" Title="How can I edit my own, very old work?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4870" CreationDate="2012-01-24T21:25:48.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of the beauty provided by the written story is that the reader's imagination can paint a vivid image however that reader's mind may wander. I can only imagine that the narrator's gender is only important if it becomes part of the story. Otherwise, I personally may have my own narrator's voice that I like to imagine. Being informed of the gender may remove that simple pleasure from the reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I like the comments about how it can be woven into the story line, and even end up being contrary to what the reader originally supposed. And it could be quite fun for the reader to be taken in in that way. (For example, a story about a boy growing up, as told by his best friend. The majority of the story could be all about boys' things, but the narrator could end up being the girl next door. That kind of story could be appealing. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3175" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T21:25:48.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4879" CreationDate="2012-01-24T22:30:22.263" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely the third one. Reading the whole thing will help you decide between 1 and 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision between rewriting the whole thing from scratch and editing the latest draft depends both on how good the piece is, and how much your writing has improved since you last touched it. If you've improved a lot, it might be easier to rewrite it than to edit it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T22:30:22.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4870" CreationDate="2012-01-24T23:43:20.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you characterize your narrator, then add gender.  If you keep your narrator the omniscient without characterization, no need to mention anything about gender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the 'Harry Potter' novels.  Is there any mention of the narrator's gender?  Or even that there is a narrator at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now look at John Irving's &quot;A Prayer for Owen Meany&quot; (I just happen to adore this book, and thus I am using it as my example).  The very first word of the novel is &quot;I&quot;.  Since the narrator is characterized, the author must then tell us a little about who the person is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be the intent of the author to string the reader along a bit- making the identity of the narrator part of the story.  But unless he/she has a good reason for doing it (intrinsic to the story), the narrator generally remains the anonymous omniscient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3064" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T23:43:20.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4879" CreationDate="2012-01-25T01:03:55.483" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three aspects to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The plot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The characters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to know if the project is worth pursuing at all, read the entire thing from scratch. Furthermore, read it and try to pretend you aren't the author. Now: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you like it? Do you like the premise? When you're done, do you&#xA;want to know what happens next?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you like the characters? Do you care for the people you've been&#xA;reading about? Do you understand them? Do they feel real?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you like how it's written? For the most part, does the prose work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you enjoyed the story as a story, and not as &lt;i&gt;your&lt;/i&gt; story, then it's worth fixing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you hate the construction (the writing), break it back down into an outline, save the few sparkling sentences, throw it out, and start over. Yes, it will be a lot of work. If writing were easy, people would take up poetry for a summer job instead of flipping burgers at McDonald's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't like the plot, write up detailed studies of your characters and find something else for them to do. Throw out this book and write a different one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't like the characters, figure out what the original purpose of the story was and tell it some other way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T11:39:21.337" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T11:39:21.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4879" CreationDate="2012-01-25T01:15:08.137" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most authors writing a novella/novel length piece don't typically just do repetitive straight reads.  When working on large pieces I like to color-code my text for easier editing.  When I'm working from a simple formula I'll give the protagonist a color, the antagonist a color and the relationship character a color.  You can color large portions of description/dialog/action.  For me color-coding is my favorite editing tool.  It makes editing large works much more reasonable and it makes it much easier to edit works you've set aside for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no right number of revisions, but most well known authors I've listened to on the topic would say 5-10 revisions is standard for a novel.  Breaking my editing passes into sub-categories makes me vastly more effective and helps keep my attention on what I wrote, and not on what &lt;em&gt;I remember having written.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3147" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T01:15:08.137" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4879" CreationDate="2012-01-25T09:40:35.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had the exact same problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I ended up doing was a mixture of options 1 and 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the most part, I'd rewrite the story paragraph by paragraph, writing the new one beside the old paragraph, then deleting the old one. Basically, what needed editing was edited, and what needed rewriting was rewritten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of this method?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-It felt like I was merely &lt;strong&gt;editing&lt;/strong&gt; (because it was done in small chunks, and I was simply making changes within the existing manuscript instead of facing a blank page) when in fact I was &lt;strong&gt;rewriting&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I didn't have to actually rewrite any part where simple editing would suffice, thus sparing unnecessary work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T09:40:35.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4879" CreationDate="2012-01-25T12:58:38.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's good that you're embarrassed by it, that scrutiny will help you. I'm in a similar situation with a novel I wrote but I haven't let it gather enough dust to view it with fresh eyes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you open it up and read through the whole thing with a red marker pen, tear it apart like a college proffessor- with the cynicism of a publisher. Reflect on your self-criticism for a while and then undergo a massive rewrite; using your old draft as a guide (keeping whatever you like and what you feel works and trashing the rest)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck my man&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1495" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T12:58:38.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4827" CreationDate="2012-01-25T14:51:20.983" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are probably about as many ways to write a CV as there are people who have ever read or written at least one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to include at least also an e-mail address in the contact details section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you would put into the Additional section (unless you add a specific section for it) is any (professional) references. I simply wrote a fairly generic &quot;references are available upon request&quot; under a separate heading in my CV; don't think I ever had anyone ask for them, though. Just be prepared for that someone &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my CV I list specific work-related skills under each job, then towards the end have a short paragraph listing programming languages and technologies with which I have only non-professional experience, thus making it clear which is which as well as when I most recently worked professionally with each. (So, I have worked professionally with technology X for Y years, but only non-professionally with Z, but could probably get up to speed reasonably quickly if needed. I don't claim any real experience with M68k assembly, for instance, but I wouldn't get a deer-in-the-headlights look looking at such a source code listing either.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side by side with the generic skills list I also put in notable non-professional experiences. Be careful here, and don't overdo it, but some things that show that you aren't a complete workaholic might be beneficial. This probably depends a lot on the culture where you are applying for jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, it's probably better to put in a little too much than a little too little, since you will almost certainly tailor the CV to each position (or at the very least company) anyway. It's easier to cut things out than to add more to make it match the position you are applying to, and cutting out is much faster than writing new if you find something interesting, giving you more time to focus on the personal letter where you can &quot;sell&quot; yourself to the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And like @JohnSmithers said, be honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T14:51:20.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4888" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-25T18:57:37.650" Score="8" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anyone, who has any experience with writing ebooks, recommend a way for me to proceed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a book in Microsoft Word heavy on mathematics: formulas (inline), equations (numbered) and diagrams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to create an ebook from it (both epub and kindle versions), I was thinking one of two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convert Word document to ebook somehow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write an ebook from scratch, striping all ms-word formatting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For #2 I am deciding between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LaTeX&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Markdown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reStructuredText&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I use both Windows and Linux - so don't worry about OS, I can use anything (except MacOS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1782" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2013-12-10T16:12:17.307" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T16:12:17.307" Title="Converting ms-word to ebook vs. writing from scratch?" Tags="|formatting|ebook|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4888" CreationDate="2012-01-26T07:52:40.083" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;After doing a bit of digging, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aspose.com/community/files/69/free-utilities/aspose.words-express/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aspose Words Express&lt;/a&gt; is the best resource that I came across for converting your files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used &lt;a href=&quot;http://calibre-ebook.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Calibre&lt;/a&gt; before, but I've had very mixed results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calibre is great for converting my own books for reading on various devices, but it can sometimes leave a lot of work in terms of editing artifacts for a press-ready piece of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did use the Aspose converter a few times.  All I can say is that it works pretty well and that I was satisfied with it.  You are likely to have to do some very thorough checking, regardless which method you choose, but Calibre and Aspose Words Express are both worth a try before you take the time to do a full rewrite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One technical note: the Aspose website does require a login to download, but the express version file converter seems to be completely free and available offline in the PC format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3147" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-01-27T22:22:52.257" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T22:22:52.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4863" CreationDate="2012-01-26T15:16:26.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would try to cite the edition.  If the current edition of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.covenantseminary.edu/academics/library/guides/turabian/#h_multi_vol&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;multi-volume work&lt;/a&gt; you are using is no longer in multiple volumes then you can technically cite it as a single volume work.  If it is the first edition you might specify 1st Condensed Ed.  If each volume is still using the original page numbering then I would treat it as a multi-volume citation and simply use volume:page references in the notes, and standard citation in the bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Derived from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bridges.mobius.umsystem.edu/record=b1679156~S1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (7th. ed.)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically helpful sections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.covenantseminary.edu/academics/library/guides/turabian/#h_edition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Revised Edition of a Book&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.covenantseminary.edu/academics/library/guides/turabian/#h_multi_vol&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Multi-volume Work&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.covenantseminary.edu/academics/library/guides/turabian/#h_complex_book&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Book with Multiple Additional Elements&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, this version of the guide is available for &lt;a href=&quot;http://search.covenantseminary.edu:2048/public/pdf/guides--turabian.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;download&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3147" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-01-27T21:56:48.343" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T21:56:48.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4893" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4894" CreationDate="2012-01-27T14:26:22.943" Score="2" ViewCount="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written these two sentences: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite her temper, I loved her still.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or perhaps not despite; perhaps because of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second sentence feels grammatically incorrect; how can I revise this to be less awkward-sounding yet still punchy? (The thought continues in the rest of the paragraph, explaining his feelings in more depth; this is the end of one paragraph and the beginning of another.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I came back to the paragraph to give context, decided I didn't like the way it flowed into the next sentence, and ended up changing it entirely: &quot;Or perhaps not despite; that would imply I saw it as a flaw.&quot; C'est la first editing pass. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2018-05-12T22:12:12.210" LastActivityDate="2018-05-12T22:12:12.210" Title="How can I revise these sentences to be more correct while still keeping the effect?" Tags="|editing|grammar|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-06-07T06:29:19.933" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4893" CreationDate="2012-01-27T15:42:39.177" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second sentence feels grammatically incorrect because it's not a sentence; it's two fragments joined by a semicolon.  That doesn't make it wrong, but that's probably why you're reacting that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to keep the fragment style, I would tweak it thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or perhaps not despite -- perhaps &lt;em&gt;because of&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I made two changes there.  First, I emphasized &quot;because of&quot;, since that's the key insight that (I assume) you'll build out in the sentences to follow.  The other is that I replaced the semicolon with a dash; a semicolon puts up more of a &quot;barrier&quot; between the clauses (like that one I just used), while a dash is more flexible.  In this case the dash suggests a thought sequence, which seems to fit with what you're trying to do.  (If you want to suggest a more gradual, contemplative process, instead of a dash you could use an ellipsis -- the first thought &quot;trails off&quot; to be replaced by the second.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T15:42:39.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4893" CreationDate="2012-01-27T19:51:01.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The topic seems informal to me, and lends itself nicely to a more personal, less formal tone. I'm okay with it being not strictly grammatical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that, consider a version that is even less grammatical and more informal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or perhaps not despite. Perhaps because of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T19:51:01.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4896" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4899" CreationDate="2012-01-27T20:53:42.537" Score="9" ViewCount="977" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a fairly undisputed fact that the genre of western fiction has had a declining audience for decades.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.westernwriters.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Western Writers Association&lt;/a&gt; still exists, but if I had never worked in a Border bookstore I wouldn't even know that the genre was still stocked (on an area spanning maybe 2 shelves?) in bookstores.  A magazine which tried to focus on the genre and bring it back into more prominence in the 2000s folded after &lt;a href=&quot;http://tainted-archive.blogspot.com/2008/08/great-western-fiction-has-folded.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;just two issues&lt;/a&gt;.  The western's appeal - based in television and the cultural ethos of the time - seems to have faded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the same thing ever happen to science fiction?  For example in the United States the space shuttle program has ended.  Does this mean the end of space-focused novels?  Will the genre change to focus on new developments in science or even fade from the popular consciousness?  Or is there something different about science fiction's appeal from the appeal of the western, something that makes it more like romance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T07:18:49.440" Title="Will science fiction as a genre ever go the way of the western?" Tags="|fiction|genre|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4896" CreationDate="2012-01-27T21:21:53.863" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Westerns are essentially historical fiction, set in a very specific time and place.  And there's a mythos associated with that time and place that may be out of step with modern life.  Most successful modern westerns of which I'm aware have subverted the western tradition, making it grittier and more realistic.  I'm thinking of movies, but also Cormac McCarthy's trilogy, etc.  So maybe the traditional western tropes of simple, strong heroes and black and white hats/values no longer resonates with people.  I wouldn't necessarily give up on the genre entirely, because there &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; been some successful recent iterations, but obviously it's in decline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the same happen with Science Fiction?  I doubt it, just because it's so much more wide-open.  Westerns are linked to one place, one time. Science Fiction is anywhere, and almost any time.  Science Fiction doesn't have to be about space, it's anything set in the future of the world. So even if society loses its belief in progress and science, it'll still be interested in figuring out what the world might be like in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-01-27T21:59:17.597" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T21:59:17.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4839" CreationDate="2012-01-28T03:48:32.303" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a proofreader at Hollywood and proofread all kind of scripts. I have 18 years of experience.. you can contact me if you would like to proofread your material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards,&#xA;Lena Banks&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.TheBitchWithTheRedPen.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.TheBitchWithTheRedPen.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3193" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T03:48:32.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4896" CreationDate="2012-01-28T04:26:13.857" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Science fiction has the advantage of being more loosely and broadly defined than the Western. Westerns are limited by definition to a narrow group of settings. But SF? As &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?ei=D3YjT_ndPKbs0gHfy-GCCQ&amp;amp;id=pM9cAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;dq=Nabokov,%20Vladimir%20Vladimirovich%20%281973%29.%20Strong%20opinions.%20tempest&amp;amp;q=tempest#search_anchor&quot;&gt;Nabokov said&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;If we start sticking group labels, we'll have to put &lt;em&gt;The Tempest&lt;/em&gt; in the SF category&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, maybe &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera&quot;&gt;space opera&lt;/a&gt;&quot; will go away after we've been in space for a while, sure, or some of the other sub-genres. That in my mind is similar to Westerns going away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We humans have always loved stories that deal with the nature of our world, the forces that control it, the problem of the future, etc. In ancient times the stories were about the Gods - the &lt;em&gt;Iliad&lt;/em&gt;, the &lt;em&gt;Odyssey&lt;/em&gt;. In later times we have, for example, the &lt;em&gt;Divine Comedy&lt;/em&gt; - a work that falls squarely into the definition of modern fantasy!  But now that our world is explicated by science and we've become a scientific people, we use science fiction as the fabric with which we weave our myths. I daresay we're always going to need myths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2992" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T04:26:13.857" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4138" CreationDate="2012-01-28T14:06:47.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to attenuate the blandness in your superhuman character is by dropping the superficiality of invulnerability. Your protagonist might be an epitome of impeccability but what you have to keep in mind is that his challenges are equally overwhelming. The negative character that he is supposed to overcome or deal with should be having equal and opposite powers of similar amplitude and should be overall equally resourceful. That way no one is an underdog and what we have is a battle of equals, which is interesting in a way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now once your plot has these elements in place what you need is a personal life attached to these characters, which is going to spin enough controversy to keep the reader interested. Now there are various ways of depicting an impaired personal life. The most usual way to go about it is to create a character from the opposite sex who has a history with the protagonist, and maybe seduces the protagonist or gets him/her in a trance by so much as looking at her/him, but unfortunately plays for the opposite team. This sounds exaggerated but you have to decide on the meticulous details depending on what kind of picture you're interested in painting/at what pace you want your novel to move/in which era of history does the chaos breed, you know basically the 'theme'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way of doing it is by showing him having an emotionally malnourished childhood and the fact that he went into drugs and is unable to quit so needs rehabs and without a regular visit to a rehab or without refueling himself periodically with a certain chemical he is no more than a freak dancing to the music of oppression. Use him like a lock with a rusty key that needs to be lubricated for the lock-key system to work properly and give the lubricant to his opponent and watch the story take shape...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3166" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-01-30T15:11:39.127" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T15:11:39.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2012-01-28T14:27:39.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Self criticism is a really good tool which knocks consciousness into your work. An editorial which is reviewed before publishing time and time again and is chiseled into finesse by the insecurity of obsession with quality, always radiates a certain level of textural finish which is completely absent if the skeptical operation is not performed on it. But, what you need to keep in mind is that criticism is like the icing on the cake. You need to bake the base first. If you think of criticizing an article without having first drafted it, it isn't criticism at all, it's apprehensiveness and its a really wasteful inhibition. Do not confuse apprehensiveness with criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3166" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T14:27:39.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4902" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-28T14:55:43.657" Score="5" ViewCount="442" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a programmer by profession and am looking for good text processors to help me with my blog writing. Word (MS/OpenOffice) has felt too clunky, because of the interruptions (corrections,formatting etc....) it throws up while writing. I tried out VIM which is my workplace editor, and though it has been great in letting me think clear and write, I just haven't been able to use it for efficient formatting. I'm now looking for something that can combine both. Is there one you would recommend? I would prefer to do the formatting/rewriting from the keyboard without having to go to the mouse but am flexible about that part. I also want something that doesn't make me wait a few seconds while it's saving the text. (i.e: light and responsive) Any suggestions ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I use Linux for all my work and don't have a Windows.&#xA;UPDATE 2: After trying out some of these, I'm going with VIM itself and using latex for formatting. Only problem is that's fine for latex2pdf but otherwise Wordpress supports only latex math package. I'll need to find a different blog host or try latex2html. I'll update once I'm done with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2636" LastEditorUserId="10460" LastEditDate="2016-09-29T14:56:24.517" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T14:56:24.517" Title="Best text procesor-- keyboard focussed UI" Tags="|editing|tools|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4902" CreationDate="2012-01-28T22:15:39.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.textpad.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TextPad&lt;/a&gt; for well over a decade. It is light, responsive, and very flexible as far as using the built-in keyboard shortcuts or designing your own. I'm not sure what kind of formatting you have in mind, but TextPad can probably handle it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3194" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T22:15:39.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="67" CreationDate="2012-01-30T11:33:57.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll have to agree with the simple, &quot;No,&quot; regarding the existence of a one-stop experts forum for consulting work, but depending on how well rounded your skills are across some specific disciplines there are a few very satisfying ways you might be able to volunteer your services.  I'm only going to mention two here for the sake of brevity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Become an alpha or beta reader for someone you respect.&lt;/strong&gt;  It can be both enjoyable and rewarding to be a reader for a good writer.  The other way I have in mind might be outside the scope of what you have in mind, but if you want to become a writer yourself there are few better ways than to &lt;strong&gt;become a writer's personal assistant&lt;/strong&gt;.  It's probably not given as much attention as it should be, but many writers at the very top of the food chain use one or more research assistants.  Obviously, this is a much harder situation to get yourself into, but much like young photographers who find a mentor and simply follow them around incessantly until they let you work for them, this or an equally persistent approach may be what it takes to get you that edge into the writing industry.  It probably sound obnoxious, and it is, but sometimes a writer's got to do what a writer's got to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3147" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T11:33:57.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4905" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5020" CreationDate="2012-01-30T13:39:13.223" Score="2" ViewCount="3505" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my thesis and now wonder whether I should typeset index and glossary as an appendix or after them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no department-level accepted writing style, so my adviser's opinion might be different from that of my thesis committee. Hence, I am not only supposed to be accountable for my scientific participation; but also the typesetting and formatting of the thesis. This is why I am looking for a justifiable answer. For better or worse, the common practice for scientific writing style in Farsi (which I am supposed to present my thesis in) is to adopt and adapt style guides of English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3003" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-06-25T15:12:22.320" LastActivityDate="2019-06-25T15:12:22.320" Title="Where should index and glossary appear in a report?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|indexing|appendix|glossaries|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4906" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4907" CreationDate="2012-01-30T14:17:55.113" Score="12" ViewCount="960" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have published a few collection Kindle eBooks, and am planning on publishing at least 3 more in the not-too-distant future. While my experience with the Kindle marketplace has been mostly positive, I have been wondering about the other options out there (such as Nook, Lulu, Google Books).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone published using multiple platforms and seen a decent amount of increase in their sales to warrant the (admittedly small) amount of effort it would take to publish to those other marketplaces?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would an independent writer be better off locking in to only the Kindle marketplace, given the tools available to the writer through Amazon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="57" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T15:24:20.550" Title="Is publishing to Amazon Kindle-alternative eBook markets worth the time and effort?" Tags="|self-publishing|ebook|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4906" CreationDate="2012-01-30T14:47:38.690" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that there is definitely an advantage to publishing to other venues/formats. From a simplicity standpoint, I use Smashwords to distribute my e-books to other markets, such as B&amp;amp;N, Kobo, and Apple. They don't pay as frequently (once per quarter), but they do make it a lot easier to get into more markets. I also like having the ability to generate coupons so that I can offer certain titles for free to selected individuals. This comes in handy if you want to offer a copy to a reviewer, especially since they can go there and choose whatever format they prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether or not the sales warrant it, that answer depends on your book(s). Some titles may do well while others struggle to find an audience. It all depends on what you do to promote on that platform. I have several titles that I have published under a pen name, and I find that they do very well with B&amp;amp;N (Nook). To give you a point of comparison, I sold over 60 copies of one title last week on Kindle, and 36 copies of the same title at B&amp;amp;N. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T14:47:38.690" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4906" CreationDate="2012-01-30T15:24:20.550" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=6245&quot;&gt;See what author Dean Wesley Smith has to say about this&lt;/a&gt;. (&quot;Sorry, I just don’t understand the business thinking of limiting your sales. As a business person, it makes no sense at all to me.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T15:24:20.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2012-01-30T16:56:18.943" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Google Docs revision history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://www.google.com/help/hc/images/docs_190843a_revision_history_en.gif&quot; alt=&quot;revision history&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True version control systems like SVN and GIT are too complex, requiring knowledge of the command line, and are really designed for collaborative teams, working on dozens of different files, all at the same time. They're overkill for writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use Microsoft Word for writing, and every time I save &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.google.com/dlpage/cloudconnect&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Cloud Connect&lt;/a&gt; uploads my revision to Google Docs. I get backup and revision history for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't use Microsoft Word try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.syncdocs.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SyncDocs&lt;/a&gt;. SyncDocs works like Dropbox, creating a folder that is synced automatically to Google Docs. It also saves revision history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:45.217" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T17:11:56.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1396" CreationDate="2012-01-30T20:21:10.453" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your question has two parts, I'll address each separately. As far as how you can go about it, I would recommend that you self-publish as an e-book! You can use the web site below to get a free pdf version on how to get started. Someone made the following comment on a previous answer which has since been deleted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A self-published erotic novel will most likely fail unless the author has the experience needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would beg to differ on this opinion. I didn't have any previous experience, but I decided to self-publish a series of erotica e-books under a pen name, and I have done quite well with them. So far this month I have recorded over 7000 sales on Kindle alone. (Yes, that's one month!) There are a LOT of people who are buying erotica, and there is no time like the present to jump on the bandwagon. (One of the points I have seen concerning this is that the big advantages for readers is that nobody can see the cover of the e-book they are reading, so nobody can judge their selection of reading material.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the question of how far is too far, that would appear to be certain forms of incest and anything that mentions or includes under aged participants. Amazon in particular has been very strict about these two particular topics and has gone so far as to remove books by some authors for featuring either topic. Some forms of incest seem to be getting through (uncles are currently popular), but underaged participants is absolutely taboo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try the options suggested in the other answers, but you'll spend a lot of time trying to promote yourself and trying to get someone to publish your book. I strongly recommend doing it yourself. I have done absolutely NO promotion on any of my erotica over the last three months, but it has taken off at an amazing clip. The real difference changer for me was to offer a single short story for free. People who downloaded that have gone on to buy my other titles, and I suspect many of them have bought more than one title. Over the past month I have had four different titles that have made it into the top 20 for erotica at Amazon, and the free short story made it into the top 150 of ALL free books on Amazon!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/lets-get-digital/&quot;&gt;http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/lets-get-digital/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: The author of this book is in a writer's group that I am part of, but I do not know him personally. I have traded messages with him from time to time, but I have no vested interest in promoting his book. Besides, it's free!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T20:21:10.453" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4902" CreationDate="2012-01-30T21:27:01.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in TeX but do not want to type things like &lt;code&gt;\begin{}&lt;/code&gt; and whatever, you could take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lyx.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LyX&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a What You Mean Is What You Get editor (not What You See Is What You Get), based on LaTeX and it doesn't keep you busy with appearance and formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3202" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T21:27:01.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2970" CreationDate="2012-01-31T04:02:51.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am just beginning to understand the nuances of re-writing and what I have found is if you have been reading your writing recently, you don't re-read it as much as you are recalling what you read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is to say, even though you move your eyes through the document once again, you are not just recalling what you wrote (and a biased version of what you wrote) rather than really re-reading and trying to see how you can improve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that for me it's not a question of a time gap as much as what I do in the gap between. I.e: If I go away and read something else (especially something demanding abstract thought) and come back am less fresh compared to say I go away do my day job (programming) and come back... the passive nature of reading other stuff seems to keep me dwelling somehow... it seems... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extending that hypothesis, I would say, going for a run/gym/physical activity should improve the freshness even more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2636" LastEditorUserId="2636" LastEditDate="2018-03-08T04:57:42.913" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T04:57:42.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4893" CreationDate="2012-01-31T07:33:14.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would you really want it in one pseudo-sentence? When it's not quite a sentence as such, why not have two for the right effect?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite her temper, I loved her still. Or perhaps not despite. Perhaps because of.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leave some grammar out for the reader's imagination. Even a mark of interrogation showing a sense of 'I really wonder if it is ...' should be nice, I suppose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perhaps because of?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, would that be superfluous with &lt;em&gt;perhaps&lt;/em&gt;? Perhaps.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T07:33:14.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2012-01-31T09:59:31.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;I believe that having S*** and F*** in your conference slides or titles doesn't make you cool or professional, or a better coder. It makes you look crass.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scott Hanselman&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ProfanityDoesntWork.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Profanity doesn't work&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who don't know, Scott is a major player and top-tier blogger in the .Net progrramming world, and this is his tuppence (two cents). I don't know if I agree with all of it, but as always, he's written it down and reasoned it out, and therefore it's worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T09:59:31.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4839" CreationDate="2012-01-31T10:50:44.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll want a copyeditor who specializes in academic writing, if possible one that specializes in journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please also note that, when the writer's first language isn't English, some journals &lt;em&gt;require&lt;/em&gt; ESL editing before acceptance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T10:50:44.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4917" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4918" CreationDate="2012-01-31T11:25:45.680" Score="6" ViewCount="1105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a self-published author, I write non-fiction. I would like my book to have a reasonably good cover and stand out among others, but I'm not ready to spend more than $500 on it. What are my options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3200" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T21:34:51.933" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T07:23:16.567" Title="How do I create a book cover for my self-published book for under $500?" Tags="|self-publishing|ebook|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4917" CreationDate="2012-01-31T11:45:21.257" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there a few different paths you may go here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way would be to try to find an illustrator who'd sell you the work of his own to be used as book cover. You can do this on sites like IllustrationMundo, DirectoryOfIllustration (beware, lots of agents instead of actual designers on this website) and HireAnIllustrator. It may be pretty difficult to find relevant works there, because those sites allow to search by illustrators, but not keywords that might be relevant to your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way is to try to craft one yourself with numerous software available. Just type in &quot;make book cover&quot; in Google and you'll be enlightened with tons of cheap-looking software packages promising you super skills in designing a book cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are stock images websites where you can purchase an image to be used as a book cover. The most notable and closest to the book industry is &lt;a href=&quot;http://getbookcover.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Get Book Cover&lt;/a&gt;, which sells fine-quality illustration and photography works as book covers, allows keywords search and claims to have an in-browser editor to put title and author credits on the cover, as well as convert it to various formats for digital and print use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3205" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T11:45:21.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4917" CreationDate="2012-01-31T12:30:17.363" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;$500 is more than enough to get a pro to do your cover for you.  It wouldn't be enough for an individual photo shoot, I don't think, but there's lots of people make stock-photograph covers for a couple hundred bucks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find a self-pubbed book with a cover you like, and see if you can find the cover credits.  Or, hell, find an industry-pubbed book with a cover you like; a lot of their cover artists are probably working freelance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T12:30:17.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4917" CreationDate="2012-01-31T13:01:42.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try holding a design contest on &lt;a href=&quot;http://99designs.com/book-cover-design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;99Designs&lt;/a&gt;. I just ran a logo design contest for $500 and received 50 different designs I could choose from and was very satisfied with the results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="642" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T13:01:42.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4917" CreationDate="2012-01-31T13:32:07.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find a good artist and offer them a reasonable contract, but whatever you do, don't promote spec work!  As a writer you should know better. Contests produce some good results, but that kind of thing devalues all of our work as artists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3147" LastEditorUserId="3147" LastEditDate="2012-01-31T13:48:40.663" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T13:48:40.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3439" CreationDate="2012-01-31T14:07:22.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some Latin phrases or abbreviations that any academic will find acceptable are: &lt;p&gt;&#xA;i.e., e.g., &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;a posteriori&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;in silico&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;in vivo&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;in vitro&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but note that foreign language phrases should be in italics, whereas common foreign abbreviations such as &quot;i.e.&quot; and &quot;e.g.&quot; should not be in italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The caveat (which although Latin is also a commonly used word in English and so does not require italics), is that the phrase should be used correctly (its meaning is appropriate in context) and non-redundantly (for science writing, try to be concise; fewer words are better).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3206" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T14:07:22.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4902" CreationDate="2012-01-31T15:50:53.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every time I've gone looking for a simple solution such as the one you're looking for, I've come across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Emacs&lt;/a&gt; with all kinds of nifty attachments/macros that people have developed over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://therandymon.com/woodnotes/emacs-for-writers/emacs-for-writers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a fairly thorough rundown&lt;/a&gt; of some options you have for building a system that works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4549/emacs-for-creative-writing&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; for more info/discussion of using Emacs for writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="57" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T15:50:53.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2012-01-31T16:10:37.003" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try Scrivener for this. You're able to make &quot;snapshots&quot; of a piece of work before you make any drastic changes. As well, Scrivener makes backups for you and auto saves while you are writing. Not having to use multiple programs for version control is nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3208" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T16:10:37.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-31T16:48:08.707" Score="3" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to document my learning experience, and I'd like to use the 'quizzes' or 'chapter review' style questions in my textbooks as the basis for blog posts. So basically, I finish a chapter and do the review questions on my blog...Here's the book, these were the questions, here are my answers. Is this a no-no? If it is acceptable use, is there an appropriate way to reference the materials for this type of use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After digging around I found a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4645/copy-right-issue-with-using-exact-text-from-a-text-book&quot;&gt;similar question&lt;/a&gt;, but it mentions taking pages directly from the text...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3209" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T12:21:16.143" Title="How does copyright apply to the Q&amp;A sections of educational or textbooks?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2012-01-31T19:40:55.917" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I switched to Dvorak about 4 years ago due to some pain in my wrists. It took me less than a month to regain my old speed, maybe three weeks. This was the same for everyone I knew who switched cold turkey; people who went back and forth with QWERTY during the transition period took two or three months to become proficient (or gave up). After less than six months, my wrist pain was virtually gone, and has remained gone (disclaimer: I used to play guitar and video games more frequently as well, so I'm not certain this was the only factor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had read on a pro-Dvorak site at the time that most people get a 30% speed gain. I was in the lower 70s with QWERTY and am now in the upper 70s, so for me it was more like 10%. Still, over the course of the last 4 years, I've probably made up for the slowness of the month when I switched. Think of it this way: you already know how to type, so switching is essentially rebuilding your muscle memory. Since your fingers will be travelling a shorter distance under Dvorak, once your muscle memory gets to the same point you're at with QWERTY, you'll be faster by definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to switch, my advice would be the following to try to reduce the learning curve:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't switch back and forth until you've got Dvorak down. All major OSes have fairly straightforward ways of switching to Dvorak; learn them and use them, even if you're borrowing a machine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Print out a diagram of the key layout and put it up next to your monitor. This is better than relabeling your keyboard, in my opinion, because then you will get out of the habit of looking down to see where you are (which should also improve your speed, even if you decide to go back to QWERTY).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to time the switch around a time when you're going to be using a computer frequently, but not for anything time sensitive. I work in IT, and I timed my switch around a stretch when I knew my primary task was going to be working with numerical data. Be prepared to send a lot of one-word e-mails! If you've got to do a large amount of time-sensitive typing, you'll be inclined to switch back and forth, and that will be problematic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are a number of online keyboarding exercises designed for Dvorak - use them! I actually observed noticable speed gains daily using these. I don't have any of the links any more, but I don't recall them being difficult to find.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be wary of keyboard shortcuts. As others have mentioned, many application specific keyboard shortcuts are in part based on the physical location of the key on QWERTY, so depending on what else you do, it could be problematic. (I've gotten used to the cut/copy/paste type functions and many shortcuts in Vi, but there are some applications where I just switch back to QWERTY if I'm not going to be typing words.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've become enough of a Dvorak evangelist that it's become a sort of joke among my friends and family. I honestly think it's the best computer-related decision I ever made, and I've gotten a great ROI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3211" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T19:40:55.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4888" CreationDate="2012-01-31T19:47:05.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amazon, Barnes &amp;amp; Noble and Smashwords (which distributes to B&amp;amp;N, Apple, Sony, etc.) all have their own conversion programs that start with a Word document. I'm not sure how well they would handle the mathematical bits, but it might be worth a shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3211" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T19:47:05.083" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4917" CreationDate="2012-02-01T22:20:30.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;$500 is enough to find a good illustrator / designer. Look for someone who is starting out and wants to build a resume (not someone who's already established). With some work, you can definitely find a good young illustrator at that price range, and you'll help them in the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3219" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T22:20:30.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4935" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4936" CreationDate="2012-02-02T14:31:55.720" Score="4" ViewCount="1016" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a student and I write many labs, reports, letters, and fun little things.  I use Latex for school because I don't have to worry about formatting, i.e, its like &quot;programming&quot; my paper and can scale to any type of print media (ex. books, newsletters, mailings, thesis papers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to take my writing to the next level and continue to improve my writing, would investing in Latex path be worth the time, or should I just stick with Word or some other platform? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3221" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T18:58:31.667" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T16:44:30.187" Title="LaTex vs. Word vs. etc" Tags="|latex|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-02-10T16:44:30.133" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4935" CreationDate="2012-02-02T15:33:06.743" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any text-based &quot;markup&quot; format -- LaTeX, HTML, various XML schemas like DocBook, etc -- will serve you better than binary formats like Word, Pages, FrameMaker, etc.  (I am aware that some of these tools export XML or SGML.)  The reasons include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Decoupling from editors.  You can use your favorite tool to edit any of these, which gives you more flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Conversion to other formats is probably easier and at least no worse.  If you want to take your Word document and convert it to HTML for your blog, probably you're going to end up cutting and pasting and re-adding the format directives.  Converting from LaTeX to HTML, on the other hand, can probably be largely scripted (hedge because I'm very rusty with LaTeX).  If your document is 5 pages long maybe you don't care much; if it's 500 pages, or you're going to be doing this a lot, you do.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's a better foundation for producing output for multiple platforms.  Depending on what you're doing you might only need to change a style sheet to go from book-style output to newsletter-style output, for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2012-02-10T15:35:06.913" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T15:35:06.913" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4937" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4938" CreationDate="2012-02-03T12:42:28.873" Score="7" ViewCount="2848" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I'm not sure this question fits here but this site seems the most appropriate within stackexchange network...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to buy a some book from NHBS (a field guide). The problem is that the same field guide is often printed in 2 versions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;smaller one for usage in the field, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bigger one for comfortable reading at home.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: &lt;strong&gt;will both versions of the book have different ISBN, or it might happen that they have the same ISBN?&lt;/strong&gt; Note that the dimension is often the only difference between the two versions, the publisher, year etc. will be the same. &lt;strong&gt;Does ISBN uniquely identify a book dimension?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Background: I must order the book from NHBS (my company rules), but NHBS doesn't publish dimensions of the book. So I look up the book dimensions on Amazon and then look at the ISBN, if it's the same. But then I must know that ISBN will surely differ for both formats!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2586" LastActivityDate="2024-01-30T00:32:05.387" Title="ISBN - does it uniquely identify book dimension?" Tags="|isbn|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4937" CreationDate="2012-02-03T13:00:57.197" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It absolutely SHOULD be different for both formats.  That said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it were published by a big publisher, I'd be totally confident that it would be.  But I don't know anything about the NHBS, so it's not impossible that they've gotten a little sloppy and not bothered.  And Amazon is a bit worrisome because they have their own book numbering system, and tend to include the ISBN as a detail, rather than their primary identifier.  So they might be a bit sloppy as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked at  the books, and given the price involved, I think I'd give the company a call and make sure you're getting the right thing.  Personal contact can be fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T13:00:57.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4937" CreationDate="2012-02-03T16:19:28.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working with a writer who's self-publishing, and she had to get a different ISBN for the hardcover, softcover, and eBook versions of her novel. I remember reading somewhere that if you issue a new version of the book (change the content in any significant way), you need a new ISBN as well. So yes, it should be different, but I agree with Kate's suggestion to call the company and find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T16:19:28.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4937" CreationDate="2012-02-03T17:06:14.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am pretty sure that the ISBN number would be different if the dimensions of the book were not the same. I know that ISBN numbers are not the same when the paper stock is changed to be &quot;acid free&quot;, so even with the same dimension a book could have different ISBN numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishers use ISBN numbers to keep track of their inventory and costs/profits, etc...  So they certainly would want to know which dimension of the book was ordered more often, and of course the buyers would want think that if they ordered a book with the same ISBN number as someone else they would get the same identical book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I would think it is up to the publisher to decide. For instance, if there was a minor adjustment to the paper size and they were no longer going to be offering the older size, the publisher may just decide to keep the same ISBN number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Different &lt;em&gt;versions&lt;/em&gt; of the book may have different ISBN, or may have the same ISBN&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ISBN does not uniquely identify a book dimension.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3015" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T17:06:14.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4896" CreationDate="2012-02-03T22:47:19.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will only go away if interest in/fascination with the future goes away.  Even if really bad things happen and science gets demonized (more than it already has been, LOL), it will still be around.  I saw a TV show the other day (title was something like the prophets of science fiction) which asserted that the first sci fi work was Mary Shelly's Frankenstein!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although Sci Fi usually explores new science and technology and its possible impact on humanity, the best works really focus on who we are, where we come from, and &quot;the meaning of life, the universe, and everything&quot; ;)   .  Mankind will always ask those questions.  It's at the core of our beings.  Religion won't go away either for the same reasons (and more).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People will always ask, &quot;What if ... ?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T22:47:19.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4893" CreationDate="2012-02-03T23:03:56.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Despite her temper, I loved her still.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps ...because of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be a bit too terse for your character, but it adds impact by being more direct.  Without the direct reference to the sentence above, it becomes like an idea that occurs/emerges from the first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T23:03:56.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4902" CreationDate="2012-02-03T23:32:21.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard good things about LyX, but haven't actually used it.  I don't know LaTeX either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever editor you settle on, I would recommend checking out AutoKey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://code.google.com/p/autokey/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://code.google.com/p/autokey/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will allow you to add many useful features to your text processor (or any other program).  Its phrases feature can be used to insert words/phrases, code skeletons, HTML, and boilerplates.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its functions can do almost anything - limited only by your knowledge of python (you mentioned you were a programmer).  It communicates with your application through the keyboard interface, so your application can't tell it's not you typing.  You don't have to configure anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has a macro recorder function, so you can build simple functions without any coding or knowing python.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T23:32:21.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4580" CreationDate="2012-02-04T15:42:14.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prowritingaid.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ProWritingAid&lt;/a&gt; has a free cliche finder as well as other interesting features&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3229" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T20:33:33.040" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T20:33:33.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2012-02-04T15:44:57.597" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend the text-to-speech feature on the Amazon Kindle (or an equivalent device), with the read speed set to &quot;slow&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you read your own work, your mind tends to jump ahead of your eyes (because it already knows what the text is going to say, if only subconsciously). Because of this, you tend to read even the incorrect sentences and words correctly. Missed or duplicated if's, the's, ands and of's for example, are often overlooked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newer text-to-speech software are advanced enough to read in a narrative tone that is only slightly mechanical. When I used this approach for the story I'm writing these days, I found dozens of errors of all kinds in every chapter. And I had edited and cleaned up those chapters multiple times before that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2838" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T15:44:57.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2012-02-04T15:53:48.377" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://ezinearticles.com/?Five-Simple-Steps-to-Improve-Any-Piece-of-Writing&amp;amp;id=6852754&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; that gives you five good steps to editing your work. To summarise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Target overused word&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;vary your sentence structure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eliminate cliches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;vary repeated words and phrases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;brainstorm using existing ideas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it gives some constructive steps that might help you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3229" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T20:28:07.773" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T20:28:07.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2012-02-04T16:05:18.983" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting article about using markov chains to generate realistic sounding character names &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dgames.org/markov-chain-name-generator/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dgames.org/markov-chain-name-generator/&lt;/a&gt; in this case it generates Hindu and ancient Greek names but the same principle can be applied for whatever. &#xA;Also there are any number of baby name sites that I use. You can look through names of certain origins. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3229" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T16:05:18.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4950" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4951" CreationDate="2012-02-04T23:14:59.820" Score="2" ViewCount="449" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to fiction writing, I love creating characters and watching them run with the story under my pen. I spend a lot of time at the office coming up with exciting ideas of what and who to write about, and on the way home, I can't wait to get to my desk or notebook. However, when I walk through the door, I inevitably turn on the TV, play a video game, or find some other task to take up my writing time. We all know people like that, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not that these things are more exciting to me than writing. I've boiled it down to that they are easier to do. Before I can write, I have a lot of fleshing-out that must happen to my ideas before I can get to the &quot;letting the character run with the story&quot; step. Characterization, motivation, setting development, plotting, research, filling in any holes I've discovered through the prewriting process...all before I've put pencil to paper. It's much simpler to turn on a distraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think my problem is too much prep work. By the time I finish it all, I usually burn out on the story and lose interest in writing it. Is there a way to determine the bare basics of what I need to have figured out and to deal with the rest in the process of writing and revisions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I've received a number of great answers so far, each of which contains things I plan to apply, but I feel my question needs some editing to better explain my writing approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I've mentioned in a comment below, I have had tremendous success with forum roleplays. In this context, much of the &quot;prep work,&quot; particularly setting and the overarching conflict, is already taken care of by the forum creator. I have only to create a character with their own desires, motivations, and obstacles before I can jump in. I realized after my comment that I enjoy plotting in my roleplays as well, but I usually do this as I'm writing, in collaboration with other players I'm working closely with. Usually I get in contact with them to suggest future events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to create a couple forum RPs of my own, but have burnt out before getting either of them running.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously developing setting and overarching conflict will have to be skills I develop to be a successful author. In the meantime, I think the closer I can bring my writing process to my roleplaying process, the better off I'll be. Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3225" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T18:06:27.630" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T18:06:27.630" Title="How can I cut my prep work to get to writing more quickly?" Tags="|planning|process|psychology-of-writing|preparation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4950" CreationDate="2012-02-04T23:58:09.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem is that writing is work.  The stuff you call 'prep work' is essentially daydreaming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the usual suggestions will apply here, I think. Set a daily or weekly goal for yourself - an hour a day of writing, or five thousand words a week, or whatever seems challenging but achievable.  If you have nothing to say, you can sit there and write about how you have nothing to say, but you absolutely have to get the words out.  Join a writers' group where you're expected to share your work. Find a writing buddy who can nag you when you don't produce and praise you when you do.  Don't let yourself make excuses. If you're serious about being a writer, you have to &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of what the bare basics are before you start writing - that's going to be something you have to figure out on your own.  There are people who sit down with &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; and write full novels. There are others who outline exhaustively. I think it depends a bit on genre: you can probably 'pants' a Romance, but you probably need an outline for a mystery or an intricate spy thriller. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you should start with some short works so you won't feel the need for so much prep and will be able to achieve a first draft in a short period of time.  Then find someone to share the work with; getting feedback is &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; motivation, at least for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: Based on your ETA I'm going to &lt;em&gt;amplify&lt;/em&gt; my suggestion that you write something short and then get it out there for feedback. You sound like a very collaborative person, so I think you may be struggling with the solitude of traditional novel writing. If you absolutely want to write novels right away, maybe you could find a community where you could post chapter-by-chapter to get feedback and encouragement. I'm not too collaborative at all, and I still benefit from having a small online community with whom I share my work as I go.  A novel takes a LONG time to finish, and it's really hard to put all that work in without getting any reward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you could try co-writing something, but I think you'll have better luck getting a quality co-author if you have at least a few short stories to show that you're worth working with.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2012-02-07T02:52:12.727" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T02:52:12.727" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4950" CreationDate="2012-02-05T04:28:44.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common problem. I myself conquered this only last year. There is no one reason and no two writers suffer from the same set of reasons in the same proportion. But here are some things to try out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Freewriting exercises - Whenever you feel like it, open up your note book or your word processor and just start writing. Start with any old nonsensical sentence or scene that comes to your mind and build it up. I once started an exercise with &quot;Mr. Frost popped another banana into his mouth...&quot; It became a short story of intergalactic intrigue and comedy (I never finished it though, but that's okay). Keep doing this until sentence formation comes to you naturally. This may take months!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prep work is definitely a plus. But avoid analysis paralysis. Go for more depth and less scope, initially. For example, paint your scenes and events in your head in detail. What are the characters wearing? What color are the walls? What are their facial expressions? What are the trees like? What are the sounds you hear? Build it up from there. Character motivations, back stories can be built in after you gather some writing momentum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you master the above two abilities, going from a scene in your head to a paragraph is easy. It just takes practice. It's kind of like learning the guitar -- first you think it's anatomically impossible to hold those chords but you keep trying because you see people with much smaller hands do it. Similarly, know that it can be done and just keep practicing and trying different things till you get it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check your writing tool. It may be putting you off. If you use a word processor, try switching to pen and paper for a while. Or, try a less cluttered word processor. After many years, I found that applications like Microsoft Word do not work for me. I hate worrying about saving and backup. A cloud based editor solved the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4793/how-to-start-a-book-off/4796#4796&quot;&gt;This answer&lt;/a&gt; has some additional points that may be relevant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep going until you develop the habit. If you can, find a trusted friend with a good understanding and taste for your particular genre. Share chapters with him/her as you progress. You might find that this helps you not to abandon projects mid-way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2838" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T04:28:44.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4953" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4958" CreationDate="2012-02-05T04:53:30.243" Score="2" ViewCount="756" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is a standalone passage from a collection meant to deal with topics of psychology, philosophy and self-help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: Is the quirky style helpful in driving home the point, or does it take away from the seriousness of the topic? Or does it come across as satire? Or, more simply put, would you read a self-help style book peppered with passages written in a similar style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Oracle of All Wisdom put down the phone. He felt deeply disturbed. No doubt the caller derived much relief from the advice he had dispensed, as they always did. He wondered what they would think if they knew how inept he was at following his own advice. He in turn derived relief from the reassurances and advice he received from the Oracle of Oracles of All Wisdom, who in turn, turned to the Oracle of Oracles of Oracles of All Wisdom, and so on and so forth. In the end, nobody was good at following his own advice. However, when his own advice was given to him by another, when the same assurances he screamed to himself over and over were plainly spoken to him by another soul, everything changed. There was no Ultimate Oracle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2838" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T17:55:20.453" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T17:55:20.453" Title="Does this passage convey an appropriate mix of seriousness and levity?" Tags="|style|tone|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4954" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4956" CreationDate="2012-02-05T05:17:47.157" Score="13" ViewCount="3300" Body="&lt;p&gt;By speculative, I mean mostly science fiction, fantasy or intrigue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example Neal Stephenson's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem&quot;&gt;Anathem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, which is a 900-page book, goes well past the 200-page mark before the central conflict begins to take form. Works such as these have universes that need to be explained to the reader before the story proper can begin, but does this sort of thing cause the reader to lose interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, in my case, if the villain is still hidden 100 pages into a 300-page book, will it bore the reader? Note that there may be many small incidents and disasters, and other characters may be searching for answers, but the overarching conflict is toward the middle of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2838" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T05:05:38.467" LastActivityDate="2020-04-30T02:37:42.677" Title="How far into a speculative novel should one go before introducing the central conflict?" Tags="|plot|structure|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4954" CreationDate="2012-02-05T08:05:20.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, if &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are feeling that a reader might get bored, then the readers might actually get bored. Consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start the novel with the central conflict. Give a teaser, then go back to the set-up and lead it up to there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have mentioned that there may be subplots before the main conflict. That's a good thing. If you can make the characters and the issues they are facing interesting enough, it should not bore the readers. Only that, the central conflict should originate somewhat organically from your set-up. The reader should not feel that you just constructed empty worlds and characters in order to introduce your central conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Link all your issues/characters/subplots to the central conflict. It might give a nice thematic roundness to your novel. E.g., while introducing any character you can maybe give the reader an inkling of where it will stand in relation to the central conflict when it manifests.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Point 2 and 3 might be the same).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T08:05:20.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4954" CreationDate="2012-02-05T10:27:16.983" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;To a large extent, &lt;strong&gt;a plot-centric book should make its central conflict clear as early as possible.&lt;/strong&gt; If the reader needs to get past hundreds of pages of exposition to find out what the book is &quot;about,&quot; that's definitely a structural flaw in the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might not be an insurmountable flaw (if the lead-up is sufficiently well-done); it might also be a flaw that's extremely difficult to correct (e.g. because your speculative element demands a lot of exposition). Nonetheless, it is a flaw, and worth correcting if you can. The extreme form of this is books that &quot;get really good at chapter 12&quot; - in other words, even the author doesn't consider the first 11 chapters interesting or gripping on their own, so nobody's going to get up to the &quot;good part.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the book is plot-centric, then the central conflict defines the book. Until you make it clear, the reader doesn't really know why he's reading - he's moving forward primarily on trust, that things &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be interesting later. What's worse is, the reader is &lt;em&gt;looking&lt;/em&gt; for the plot - he's trying to figure out what's important, where things are heading. Until you tell him, he can get frustrated, or he might start hanging on to various tangents and thinking &lt;em&gt;they're&lt;/em&gt; central to the plot. The longer the central plot is absent, the less clear the structure becomes - because you're spending more and more focus on things that won't have the narrative arc, the climax, the payoff, that the plot will. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take &lt;em&gt;The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo&lt;/em&gt; as a negative example. That book starts out with (IIRC) over a hundred pages on journalist Blomkvist's battle with Wennerström, the corrupt industrialist. Only then is Blomkvist called into the Vanger family murder mystery that serves as the center of the book. And once &lt;em&gt;that's&lt;/em&gt; solved, we go &lt;em&gt;back&lt;/em&gt; to Wennerström, to tie up that plot line. That's awful structure - these two subplots have no connection to each other. It feels like somebody spliced book A into the middle of book B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This structure makes it tough to tell which we should consider the &quot;main&quot; conflict. Is this a book about a journalist fighting against corruption? Not really, because half the book is spent on an unrelated murder mystery. Well, then, is this the story of an investigation into the past of a twisted, influential family? Kind of, but if that's the case, how come the payoff and climax of the book are all about the completely-unrelated Wennerström? If the book starts and ends with the Wennerström conflict, then &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; seems to be the defining arc, doesn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's talk about &lt;strong&gt;how to bring the conflict forward.&lt;/strong&gt; The trick is to find the &lt;em&gt;core&lt;/em&gt; of the conflict, and set that on the table as soon as humanly possible. Everything else - the details, the implications, the consequences - can be layered on above that. Because once the core is clear, the reader will understand why these details are important and how they tie in - vice versa, that isn't the case. Once the core is clear, the reader knows what to focus on, he knows &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; he's reading, and he can follow along with you more easily, knowing how to tie in new information to the core of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficulty is that often, the conflict needs a lot of explanation. So the trick here is to begin from an &lt;em&gt;immediate&lt;/em&gt; conflict, something clear and compelling enough to require little upfront exposition, which nonetheless introduces and represents the central conflict. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indiana Jones takes a while to reach the Lost Ark, but we see him risking his neck for archealogical treasures right off the bat - and facing off against the same villian he'll be facing later. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ender starts out certain he's not going to Battle School, but &lt;em&gt;Ender's Game&lt;/em&gt; starts right off with Ender being attacked for being &quot;better&quot; and different, and launches right into both Battle School's untrustworthy interest in him, and into the compelling dynamics between Ender and his siblings. (Notice how little it's necessary to explain about Battle School, about the Buggers, about the whole speculative mileau - all the attention is on the immediate conflicts Ender has to deal with. Of course, these conflicts are carefully chosen to start exposing the setting.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dr. House is absurd, outrageous and cruel right from the beginning of each episode, deliberately creating petty conflicts out of thin air. Part of what this does is start off episodes with immediate conflict, whichs show off the dynamics in the hospital long before the episode has reached any pivotal climax (where such conflict would be natural and necessary). So the tiny conflicts get us ready for the big ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a good way to handle this is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out what your central conflict is. It might be a person, it might be a situation, it might be a theme. Know which and what.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find &lt;em&gt;a splinter conflict&lt;/em&gt;, an offshoot of that main conflict, that can affect your cast right at the beginning. This offshoot should:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be something you can introduce right from the start of the book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be extremely easy to understand, at least partially, and to find compelling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be the same &quot;sort&quot; of conflict the central conflict is, or tied tightly to it. When the reader reaches your &quot;main conflict,&quot; they should be able to instinctively realize that the &quot;main conflict&quot; and the &quot;initial conflict&quot; are the same thing (or that one is part of the other).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good &quot;splinter conflicts&quot; include repercussions of the main conflict, or early &quot;small versions&quot; of the main conflict.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take &lt;em&gt;The Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt; as an example. The central conflict there is the oppression of the Districts by the Capitol. But civil war and cultural revolution are way too much to leap off from right at the start. So the author found a compelling, highly representative conflict - a reality-like survival contest, which is meant (on every level) to exemplify and highlight the Districts' humiliation and powerlessness. The Hunger Games serve as a micro-cosmos, which explains the setting in its entirety, in an exaggerated and intense manner. And even &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; can be broken down further - in the first book, we know far less about the Games then Katniss does; we only understand the whole procedure as she goes through the whole thing. Because the &quot;big&quot; conflict of the Games is introduced with several immediate conflicts: the difficulty of survival in District 12; the horrific lottery for the Games; the danger to Katniss's family once she leaves. Continue along the book, and each new scene is a new conflict along the same theme. Impress the callous judges. Overcome the despairing drunkenness of the mentor. Survive the initial bloody skirmish. Escape the cruel &quot;professional&quot; contestants. And so on, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll go back to where I started: your book should never be without clear conflict or direction, if at all possible. If you find that it is - consider whether that part could be skipped, condensed, or interwoven more tightly with the plot so that it creates interest and anticipation. You'll never get it all (and you don't want to) - but you'll tighten up your work, and give your reader clear direction and incentive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2019-06-05T04:04:16.770" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T04:04:16.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2012-02-05T14:34:45.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Haruki Murakami's novel &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1Q84&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1Q84&lt;/a&gt;, the main character is a writer. It's possible to get a pretty good idea of Murakami's writing methods just by reading the story. There are some extremely simple tips and tricks in there, and I learned a lot about writing just from reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="450" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T14:34:45.410" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-02-05T14:34:45.410" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4953" CreationDate="2012-02-05T20:39:19.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is gentle humor. The fact that the tone is lighter-hearted does NOT detract at all. What DOES detract is the lengthiness. If the passage above were half the length that it is now, it would get the point across quite effectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recursive business, about the Oracle of Oracles becomes belabored when so drawn out. Otherwise, it is a good way of demonstrating the point i.e. by asking another who also asks another, and only feels there is validity if advice comes from an external source, despite knowing the truth of it, rationally, on one's own already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternating serious passages with slightly quirky ones like this seems quite acceptable, probably even good. Just remember to keep these sections brief. I read a quantitative finance book recently. It was targeted toward leisure readers, with an interest in the field. Unfortunately, there were SO many digressions that tried to illustrate concepts, particularly from the author's own life! Most weren't interesting at any greater length than a few sentences (but were drawn out into  several pages). It was boring! That's why I suggest brief but frequent use of these sort of passages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2358" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T20:39:19.790" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4950" CreationDate="2012-02-06T23:00:55.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll address the question in the post, rather than in the title: &quot;Is there a way to determine the bare basics of what I need to have figured out and to deal with the rest in the process of writing and revisions?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this varies for everyone, the only way to know for sure is to try different things and see what works. You already know that too much prep works makes you lose interest. What happens if you skip thinking about motivation, setting, plot, and just go from idea to churning out words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastActivityDate="2012-02-06T23:00:55.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4968" CreationDate="2012-02-07T00:29:11.833" Score="14" ViewCount="2208" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an amateur writer who has just finished my first manuscript, I want a &lt;em&gt;qualified, non-biased, and thorough&lt;/em&gt; opinion on whether what I've written is any good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently heard about a service offered by Kirkus where I can pay about $400 or $500 to receive a &quot;professional review&quot; of my manuscript. Kirkus dangles the possibility that the review might be read by someone important, leading to publishing offers -- but for now, I'm more interested in getting the pro-caliber feedback than the long-shot at exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So is it worth it for me -- a hopeful upstart with my first manuscript in hand -- to pay for a Kirkus review?&lt;/strong&gt; Again, what I'm interested in is the &lt;em&gt;feedback&lt;/em&gt;, not the potential exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3238" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-14T09:27:59.237" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T09:27:59.237" Title="Would a paid-for review from Kirkus give me real insight into quality of my manuscript?" Tags="|reviews|feedback|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4963" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-07T04:15:05.840" Score="13" ViewCount="719" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am contemplating writing a technical book (and probably self-publishing it) on a proprietary programming interface for a well-known software package produced by a very large company. The company name and many of its packages are of course trademarked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it legal for to use their package names in my book? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it legal to write about their software (in a good light, of course)? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, how do I go about addressing the trademarks - in a foreword that states something along the lines of &quot;foo is a trademark of bar&quot;? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some connections at the company, who I am possibly thinking about getting in touch with, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3241" LastEditorUserId="1317" LastEditDate="2012-02-07T15:46:54.950" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T15:46:54.950" Title="Is it legal to write about trademarked material and use the terms?" Tags="|technical-writing|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4963" CreationDate="2012-02-07T04:30:34.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This probably isn't a direct answer, but I suggest obtaining an existing technical book of similar content and examining how its author addressed these issues. Assuming this existing book was published recently by a reputable firm in your country, it would likely be a good example to work from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3238" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T04:30:34.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4926" CreationDate="2012-02-07T07:02:09.860" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Odds are those questions are copyright-protected -- but unless your blog is in a position to get a lot of attention (like on a website of major newspaper), you probably don't have to worry about upsetting the copyright holders. If you did upset them, it's likely that they would first ask you, in the form of &quot;cease and desist&quot; letter, to remove whatever you copied. That would probably be the end of it, unless you made money from the blog, in which case they might want some compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3238" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T07:02:09.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4926" CreationDate="2012-02-07T12:21:16.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL, but I think it's a bit of a grey area.  There's a 'fair use'/'fair dealing' exception to copyright in many jurisdictions, and two of the exceptions included in this principal are often teaching and scholarship.  Now, I don't know whether figuring out the answers to text book questions would count as either teaching or scholarship, but it might.  There's often also a 'commentary' exception, but again, I'm not exactly sure if that applies to your example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you'd want to ask yourself who you think would be the audience for your blog.  Is this for you and a few friends to discuss your solutions and explore the issues raised? To me, that sounds like the text book question was merely a jumping-off point, and the real meat of your blog would be the discussion.  I think that would give you a strong argument that your excerpts qualify as fair use.  On the other hand, if the true purpose of your blog is to help students copy their homework answers instead of doing the work themselves, I think the questions and the original text are much more central to your blog's value, and therefore are less likely to qualify as fair use.  And if the publisher feels that you are lessening the value of their product by publishing these answers, they're both more likely to go after you AND more likely to be awarded damages, if a court agrees with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't really tell whether &quot;I'd like to document my learning&quot; is a genuine statement or whether it's just what you think you'll say if anyone gets you in trouble for helping others to cheat.  It occurs to me that unless you're studying philosophy or something else with a lot of discussion involved, no one else is likely to be interested in sharing your learning documentation.  So you could document your learning just as well by keeping the work private.  That makes me think you're actually trying to help others cheat. Why?  Is there a profit motivation? I'd tread carefully on this ground, both morally and legally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T12:21:16.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4963" CreationDate="2012-02-07T12:54:57.380" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using a trademark term in a title is known as Nominative Use. There is no problem with this as long as you don't suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the company. Also you can't use their font/images. For more info see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3242" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T12:54:57.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4961" CreationDate="2012-02-07T13:23:13.977" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's really good that you're looking for professional critique - that's a really helpful thing to have! However, a Kirkus book review might well be the wrong address. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Kirkus Reviews&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Kirkus review exists to help people find books they want to read, or to choose whether or not to buy a particular book. What you're looking for is a &lt;em&gt;critique&lt;/em&gt; - feedback highlighting both the faults and merits of your particular book. The two goals may be somewhat related, but for $400 and upwards, you can do a whole lot better than &quot;somewhat related.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've just browsed some of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/indie/books/published/&quot;&gt;Kirkus indie reviews&lt;/a&gt;. Look at those and see if that's the type of criticism that you think you'll find helpful. Notice that in general, the reviews are half a simple description of the book - not very important to you, but extremely important to people who want to know &quot;what the book's about&quot; - and half opinion as to what in the book works and why, mostly in general terms addressing the novel as a whole rather than going in-depth to characters, scenes, etc. That's not unhelpful. But it's not a whole lot, either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, a serious concern is how reliable the Kirkus indie reviews are. The ones which I've browsed often portray their books as a mixed bag, with some things done well and others serving as flaws - so this isn't a &quot;buy a glowing review&quot; scam. But even mixed reviews can be suspect. The tone, phrasing and generality of many of the partially-positive review makes me suspicious that &quot;the good stuff&quot; is simply &quot;the least bad stuff,&quot; portrayed positively so that the reviews don't all come off as excessively negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suspicion is acute because Kirkus is pitching to self-publishers here, not to readers. When your target audience is readers and book buyers, you succeed most if they come to trust your reviews. When your target audience is self-publishers, you succeed if they think they're getting good publicity for their books. Note how the Indie reviews are held seperate from the regular ones - they're aimed at two different segments. So, if you consider pursuing such a review for feedback purposes, then you really want to check out how reliable the reviews are. Maybe read a couple reviewed books yourself, and see if the reviews match; at very least look for unbiased reviews elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Non-Kirkus Reviews&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are all reasons Kirkus sounds to me like a poor option for feedback (for publicizing your book, that's a whole different story, which I won't get into here). Here's are two suggestion I think might be more appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you started out asking for &lt;em&gt;qualified&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;non-biased&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;thorough&lt;/em&gt; feedback. How about two out of three? There are many venues for &lt;strong&gt;getting your work critiqued by fellow writing enthusiasts.&lt;/strong&gt; I'm personally a big fan of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critters.org&quot;&gt;the Critters workshop&lt;/a&gt;, which has a well-established track for getting novel critiques. If you've never been in a workshop or a critique circle before, you might be surprised how helpful they can be. Readers may not be &quot;qualified&quot; editors, but they read and love their genre - they're the type of reader you're writing &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt;, so at very least, they can be a great guide to whether you're getting across what you'd like to, and what impressions random readers have from your work. And these aren't random readers - these are readers who write, and some of them know a little about it. Of course, if you get somebody whose criticism resonates with you, then you'll find that incredibly helpful, even if it's not professional-level. A lot of feedback from a hobbyist beats a few lines of feedback from a pro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, you can probably &lt;strong&gt;find friends and acquaintances who can be a big help&lt;/strong&gt; (if you haven't done so already). What's most important is that (A) they be somebody whose opinion you respect, and (B) they thoroughly understand that you prefer honest criticism, even if harsh. When soliciting feedback, what's most important isn't suggestions for improvement - most amateur suggestions will not be immediately helpful or beneficial. What's important is &lt;strong&gt;understanding what the reader's response to the book was.&lt;/strong&gt; That's what they can report on unerringly; how you can improve your work to get better responses is an issue for later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, these might not be qualified critiques, but they're extremely helpful in gauging where your writing stands. Jumping to a professional review without getting more modest, accessible feedback is a waste - because really, why not get both? And why not get the expensive feedback &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you've made as many improvements as you can with the free stuff?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, consider &lt;strong&gt;hiring an editor.&lt;/strong&gt; Editors and reviewers hire out same as everybody else; find somebody who can do the job you need, rather then the job Kirkus is offering. Offhand, two blogs I follow do review work for pay, &lt;a href=&quot;http://nancyfulda.livejournal.com/324939.html&quot;&gt;Nancy Fulda&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://metteharrison.livejournal.com/332451.html&quot;&gt;Mette Ivie Harrison&lt;/a&gt;. I'm not recommending these two specifically (one of them isn't even an option - Nancy Fulda only accepts new clients by reference), but they can give you an idea of what services to look for and what kind of prices to expect. If you go this route, &lt;strong&gt;WATCH OUT FOR SCAMS.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any way you wind up choosing, best of luck, with this piece and with future ones!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T13:23:13.977" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4961" CreationDate="2012-02-07T14:54:06.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My standard response to a question like this is to go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt; and create an account. You will be able to find people who are looking for your particular genre who will read your manuscript and provide honest, constructive criticism. Most importantly, it's free! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to try to develop a group of beta readers who are willing to take the time to read your book and give you some feedback from a reader's perspective. I have been fortunate enough to find a few trusted souls who will read my books and give me their opinions without glossing over anything or trying to make me think it's better than it is. You need to make sure they will be truly honest in their feedback. It's better to have them reject you and offer suggestions on where/how to improve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T14:54:06.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4963" CreationDate="2012-02-07T15:01:04.200" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you address the ownership of the trademark and make it clear that you are not affiliated with the trademark owner, there shouldn't be a problem. Also, make sure you capitalize their trademarked names or brands. For example: Crisco oil or Fanta soda or Microsoft Office. Below is an example of a disclaimer you could/should include to ensure that you are not trying to infringe on their trademark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product names, logos, brands, and other trademarks featured or referred to within this manuscript are the property of their respective trademark holders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These trademark holders are not affiliated with the author or any of the author's representatives. They do not sponsor or endorse the contents, materials, or processes discussed within this book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T15:01:04.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4917" CreationDate="2012-02-07T15:23:59.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to look at some of the artists listed here in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,50419.msg868939.html#msg868939&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;KindleBoards Yellow Pages&lt;/a&gt;. You should be able to find a very talented artist who can help you develop an e-book cover for under $500 easily. Some of the folks listed here are mediocre, but there are many who are amazing! I personally have used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.streetlightgraphics.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Glendon Haddix&lt;/a&gt; for two of my book covers and have been most pleased with his work. He does excellent work and is very responsive. (He is also well within your price range.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these artists provide premade covers at very low prices, and most of them will provide examples of their work. Take the time to look at a few and see if you find someone who has done something that catches your eye. I'm sure you won't be disappointed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T15:23:59.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2012-02-07T19:36:47.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the Polti book, or perhaps in spite of it, many writers argue that any story can be boiled down to: Stranger Comes to Town or Young Person Strikes Out on Adventure. In literature classes, you learn that there are seven basic plots:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Man vs. Man&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Man vs. Nature&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Man vs. Himself&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Man vs. God&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Man vs. Society&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Man caught in the Middle&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Man &amp;amp; Woman  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still others point out that all plots boil down to either conflict leading to transformation (in which you have a &quot;moved&quot; central character) or conflict leading to the opportunity for transformation, but the opportunity is wasted, in which case you have an &quot;unmoved&quot; central character.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3239" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-01-20T05:30:40.797" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T05:30:40.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2012-02-08T15:42:58.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smashwords.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.smashwords.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This website has a web app for converting word documents. But it's a very stringent one; Converts only those documents that adher to the guide lines provided in it's free E-book --&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it looks like a big book, many of the pages were filled with big pictures. So, it won't take more than 2-3 days to complete it. Also, it gives a clear perspective of how not to write an E-book with word, which you can use for your future books. Also, once your book passes the test, your book could be made available through their store which serves E-book apps such as Apple's ibookstore, Aldico etc.,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, many authors, who have published the kindle version of their books at Amazon, refer to it as a definitive guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. Happy writing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3248" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T15:42:58.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4976" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-08T20:18:37.767" Score="11" ViewCount="333" Body="&lt;p&gt;I and one or more co-authors, sometimes geographically distributed, are working on a set of related documents.  Sometimes I will make a change in my part that affects someone else's part; this could be anything from changing a name to adding a new concept (that later parts should then use or reference) to changing the scenario for a running example.  For large changes one hopes we'd all be talking about it first, but sometimes smaller changes come up that it's not worth calling a meeting about.  How do you track those dependencies so you don't lose track of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things we have tried include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Send email.  Easy but can get lost.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a central place to leave notes (shared document, wiki page, etc).  This works pretty well if you can sort it by who/what is affected, so each person has just one place to look, but it can be kind of unwieldy if dependencies are vague or numerous.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a bug-tracking system: works if everybody is using the same tools and the folks overseeing the bug database don't mind, but that's not always the case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are better ways to manage inter-connected work with co-authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clarification: I'm talking about cases where I make a change and others will then have to make updates to their work, not about cases where I make all the relevant changes myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T22:12:32.123" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T22:12:32.123" Title="How do you track dependencies for your co-authors?" Tags="|technical-writing|tools|process|collaboration|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4976" CreationDate="2012-02-08T20:48:11.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can work together at the same document with tools like Google docs, but that maybe gets a little bit messy over time if you want to track all the changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make the changes visible (I'm not sure if that's what you mean with &quot;dependencies&quot;, but I guess so) my best bet is a source control system like programmers are using it. But to make use of its benefits, you should store your work in a comparable format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does that mean: Tools like Subversion or Git store your document in a (central) database. Everyone needs access to this database (the access is provided by the source control tools). If someone changes something, then the change is stored (tagged with his name) to the database/source control system. It also can be commented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the document format is human readable (like txt or xml), then a diff-program (which shows the differences between two files) can show the changes between the different versions of the file. I know that Subversion can also do this with the Word doc-format (which is a binary format, i.e. not human readable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the changes are directly visible. Additional information (why you made the change, for example) go into the comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T20:48:11.720" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4855" CreationDate="2012-02-09T00:10:26.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Write Out Loud&lt;/a&gt; is UK based, but it has a nice (though little) poetry community. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livejournal.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LiveJournal&lt;/a&gt; is still limping along, and is still the writing community of choice for a large number of people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="376" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T00:10:26.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2012-02-09T01:16:27.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apple's Pages can import MSWord docs and export ePub.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4168?viewlocale=en_US&amp;amp;locale=en_US&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4168?viewlocale=en_US&amp;amp;locale=en_US&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only helpful if you are using a Mac of course :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="939" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T01:16:27.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4980" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4981" CreationDate="2012-02-09T00:52:24.120" Score="1" ViewCount="404" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am studying English as my second language. I was thinking about following situation. &#xA;In a writing class, I wanted to say &quot;the author's argument&quot; but the author name showed up the first time. so I learned that I need to explain about author's background before insert paraphrase or quotation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could I write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Charles Bazerman's, the author of “A Relationship Between Reading and Writing: A Conversational Model” argument was that ...blablabla...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or should I write &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The argument of Charles Bazerman, the author of “A Relationship Between Reading and Writing: A Conversational Model” was that ...blablabla...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one is better way to insert paraphrase or quot? If you have any other ideas, please share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3255" OwnerDisplayName="Ryutaro Matsuda" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T02:19:26.973" Title="ESL Writing How to quote article sentence?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4980" CreationDate="2012-02-09T01:44:53.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that you are not using in-text citations, you should try to introduce the author's background as naturally as possible. In other words, try not to disrupt the &quot;flow&quot; of your sentence. For instance, with the first example you gave,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Charles Bazerman's, the author of &quot;A Relationship Between Reading and&#xA;  Writing: A Conversational Model, argument was that….&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you cut off the explanation of his argument in order to provide background information, which is not good; you want to introduce his background before providing his argument and, preferably, without separating the author's name or source title from the quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, try something more like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;A Relationship Between Reading and Writing: The Conversational Model&lt;/em&gt; ,&#xA;  Charles Bazerman argues that &quot;blah blah blah….&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See how the author's name is closer to the actual quote, and there's no information in-between?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not quoting from his book (i.e. you want to mention what the author's best known works are, without quoting those works), you should consider splitting the background information into two sentences, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Charles Bazerman, author of &lt;em&gt;A Relationship Between Reading and&#xA;  Writing: The Conversational Model&lt;/em&gt;, prefers another approach. In &quot;Insert&#xA;  Generic Article Title Here,&quot; Bazerman argues that….&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However you insert the background information, try not to insert background information between the title/name of your source and the quote you wish to provide. If that's not possible, try your best not to disrupt the &quot;flow&quot; of the sentence, at the very least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3252" OwnerDisplayName="Katherine" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T01:44:53.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4982" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4984" CreationDate="2012-02-09T05:55:44.607" Score="5" ViewCount="1240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Description is a weakness in my fiction. My understanding is that the first priority in fiction is to tell the story. Setting does this by providing props and indicating character mindsets, either externally (clothes; home decor decisions; behavior), or internally (how their mood colors the scene; what memories the scene triggers). However, this understanding doesn't make it into my writing. I paint scenes in broad strokes, and if I get two characters talking, I often forget to keep up with what they're doing while they're talking, which I think I would manage better if I were more description-minded. I think this ties back to how I read novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm reading, I'm much less thorough in descriptive sections than I am in dialogue and action sections. &lt;em&gt;Okay, let's get the atmosphere over with&lt;/em&gt; (if I identify that the section is for atmosphere at all)&lt;em&gt;; I already know the main character is scared, now I want to know what the bad guy is going to do.&lt;/em&gt; Or, &lt;em&gt;I don't care what kind of fabric the princess's dress is made of, where it came from, or even what color it is! Is she going to even let him propose to her, let alone accept it?&lt;/em&gt; I grab the details necessary to understand the scene and forget the rest. I'll fill in the blanks anyway, so it doesn't matter if there are a few more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been to a couple writing websites with articles on description. What I usually find is instructions to insert more words (albeit, more &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; words) into a paragraph. What it looks like is directions on how to be more descriptive for description's sake. This makes sense since the article's purpose is to teach description for the sake of teaching description, but it does little for me as someone who wants to advance my story. Even if I need to slow the pace, I want to do it in a way that moves things forward rather than feels artificially stilting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm taking a different tack. &lt;strong&gt;Instead of asking how to be more descriptive, I'm asking if any of you description-minded folks can identify viewpoints or practices, both in and outside of your writing, that contribute to your descriptive ability. Specifically, I'm hoping that if I can raise my appreciation of description, I will be better prepared to pick up the words and skills I need to use it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3225" LastEditorUserId="3225" LastEditDate="2012-02-09T06:13:20.650" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T11:53:29.987" Title="How can I make description more natural to me?" Tags="|description|exercises|setting|habits|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7785" CreationDate="2012-02-09T06:29:06.193" Score="11" ViewCount="633" Body="&lt;p&gt;If two authors collaborate, and each of them already has an agent - then who handles the collaborative work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the authors decide to be jointly represented under one of their two agents? If that's the case, doesn't that &quot;cut out&quot; the other agent - barring them from a major project of an author they represent? Or is their some type of agreement which will let both agents in on the project? Alternatively, should the two consider finding a third agent to handle their collaborative work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, what if one of the authors has an agent, and the other doesn't? Should the unagented author accept their co-writer's agent, or not necessarily? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, different cases should be handled differently, and choosing an agent is a joint decision the two authors make like any other - with consideration and cooperation. However, I would like to understand both common practice and important considerations for the choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2019-03-09T18:40:24.817" Title="How do collaborating authors choose an agent?" Tags="|agent|collaboration|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4982" CreationDate="2012-02-09T09:27:05.373" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an entire spectrum between telling a disembodied story and painting every little piece of unnecessary detail. Both writers &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; readers have their preferences with regards to this. This is why different authors' styles appeal to different types of readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more you describe, the more you restrict the reader's imagination; the less you describe, the less vivid the story is and higher the possibility of your reader imagining important details wrong. So always find a balance that you are comfortable with. But if I &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt; to take a side, I would say err on the side of less detail -- few things put off readers (like me) like too much detail. Worst of all, do not describe for the sake of description -- each description has to contribute something to the story, the character or the event. If not, just drop it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, what contributes to descriptive ability? Here are my personal experiences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Imagine the scene -- the surroundings, the people, what they are saying and doing, what is happening. I usually do this while I'm &lt;em&gt;away&lt;/em&gt; from my writing desk. Later I write it down from memory, as if describing an event I actually saw. This helps me to keep the act of writing from interfering with the act of story telling. This may or may not work for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skip unimportant scenes entirely and imply, allude or refer to them in future passages. Avoid description fatigue, for yourself &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; your reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read your favorite books again, but this time concentrating on their story telling and writing skills, rather than the story itself. Pick up good habits from them (but don't directly copycat).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a short piece and let a friend read it. Now compare your mental image and your friend's mental image. If your friend's description turns out to be completely different from what you expected to convey, better descriptions may be called for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2838" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T09:27:05.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4982" CreationDate="2012-02-09T09:33:49.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First priority in fiction is to show, not to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not really sure if I understand correctly what you mean with &quot;description&quot;, but if it is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her blue eyes followed him. She flattened her red dress with her hands. She ran her fingers through her blonde hair ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then there are two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's an infodump. You want to tell your reader how your protagonist looks like and you have invented this situation, because everyone say &quot;telling&quot; is not good, you should &quot;show&quot; instead, so add some actions. The alternative would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She had blue eyes, blonde hair and wore a red dress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just skip both of them. It's unnecessary for your story, so skip it. If it is really important, that she has blonde hair or that her dress is read, you have plenty of opportunities to describe that. Don't invent scenes for that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is important for the story, that she meets/seduces/whatever this man. Then write a seduction/whatever scene. But do it better, than I did above. Keep in mind: conflicts drive a story. In 90% of the cases it is totally irrelevant what hair color your protagonist has.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T09:33:49.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4982" CreationDate="2012-02-09T09:35:15.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key is in what you wrote: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I grab the details necessary to understand the scene and forget the rest. I'll fill in the blanks anyway, so it doesn't matter if there are a few more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on descriptions in whose absence the scene wouldn't work. The color of the princess's dress (to use your example) doesn't make any difference; but whether the guy is proposing in an underground parking lot, or over some romantic scenery, makes all the difference in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be able to fill in the gaps yourself when you read, but other readers need to be told what to fill in. Otherwise, the story will remain full of holes, and will therefore be unrealistic and unbelievable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom line&lt;/strong&gt;: Start off by writing without descriptions. Once you're done, put on your artist's hat and fill the story with all the relevant details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Extra tip: You can practice descriptions by paying attention to details in your everyday life - whether it's an event or a sight - and practice describing them to yourself.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T09:35:15.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4988" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4995" CreationDate="2012-02-09T11:19:44.263" Score="16" ViewCount="368" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've not done collaborative writing before, but I've read several works, and sometimes the text strikes me as having a split personality: some parts were clearly written by one author, while others were written by another. (Note: I would give examples, but I can't remember any off-hand because I'm a bit sleep-deprived at the moment!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the story itself is cohesive, but lacks a unified voice, so much so that it's distracting. Obviously, authors have very distinctive styles, and this can shine through very easily, so my question is really how do you ensure a unity of voice, or at the very least, incorporate the distinct voices of the authors in such a way that it isn't glaringly obvious that two different people were writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would this come down to the editing process, or should you look at structuring the story in such a way that it can accommodate these different voices e.g. different narrators, POV's etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-02-09T13:13:24.690" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T17:29:02.730" Title="How do you avoid the problem of a collaborative work having separate voices?" Tags="|editing|collaboration|planning|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4982" CreationDate="2012-02-09T11:53:29.987" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I try to describe something or someone the first time we meet them, so the reader has something to hold onto, and I do it from the POV of whatever character is in focus at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's say we open with a squabble between a married couple over getting the kids to all their activities over the weekend. Mary says she's going to bed; Jane says she still has work to do and will be up in a hour or so. They kiss goodnight and Mary goes upstairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She's still cooling down from the squabble (which I introduced as part of the groundwork that Mary feels constrained by being the keeper of the house and Jane feels put-upon by being the major breadwinner, and each wants the other to pick up more work), so she's feeling a little critical. As she walks up the stairs to the bedroom, she's looking at the stairs, the banister, the hallway, the paintings on the walls, the wallpaper, the carpet, the kids' doors, the guest bathroom. She could be noticing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the tread on the stairs is worn and needs to be replaced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the banister is still the beautiful wood it was when she and Jane&#xA;installed it when they bought the house, and the pride she felt at&#xA;doing something so complicated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the ceiling needs dusting again to get the cobweb in that one corner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the cat threw up on the throw rug, but he always throws up on the&#xA;throw rug, to the point where their son Victor calls it &quot;the throw-up&#xA;rug&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the watercolor Jane's dad gave them as a wedding gift is a little&#xA;askew, so she straightens it, and that leads her to wonder if the&#xA;grandparents could start pitching in for taxi service&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the smell of the plug-in air freshener in the guest bathroom, which&#xA;Jane keeps obsessively neat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on. Then she gets to the bedroom. She turns on the light and glances from one side of the room to the other. Set the scene briefly by describing the furniture (two cherry dressers, which stood out against the soft pink walls; the king-sized bed which Jane insisted on because she's a restless sleeper; matching antique lights on the nightstands which Mary found for a song at a garage sale, etc.), and then you could mention either that there's still laundry piled on the bed to put away, or that Mary is glad she put the laundry away earlier because she just wants to go to bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you've described a house, a history, and several relationships all in ninety seconds of walking up the stairs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow the character's gaze. Think about what the character is seeing and what it could mean to him or her at that moment. Use the description as a springboard to give us additional information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T11:53:29.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4988" CreationDate="2012-02-09T13:12:58.700" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to unify the voices: Get a tough editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explain to him/her that you have two authors and you want to standardize their voices. You might pick a passage or a chapter which particularly reflects both writers, and say &quot;make it all sound like that.&quot; Then be prepared to have a whole chunk of everything rewritten. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: Examples of things which might be rewritten to create a balance of styles: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One author tends to use long, complex sentences with many clauses,&#xA;interrupters, and parentheticals, and the other author uses short&#xA;choppy sentences. The longer ones may be cut and made into several,&#xA;and the shorter ones may be joined, until there's a happy medium.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One author use lots of description. The other is very minimalist. The&#xA;descriptive sections can be trimmed down to remove some flourishes,&#xA;and the spare sections padded out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One author rarely uses dialogue tags, even &quot;said.&quot; The other uses&#xA;attributives, action tags, and dialogue tags in every line. Some attributives are rewritten or removed, and then some added where they are missing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One author uses elaborate metaphors, and the other doesn't use them&#xA;anywhere. Remove some and add to the other sections.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want distinctive voices: I like the idea of structuring to accommodate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fiction, each author could take only certain characters/POVs. So Raymond's sections have short choppy sentences, with little description, while Anne's have a more flowing and atmospheric style. But Raymond only writes from the POV of a soldier, a general, and the vice president, while Anne writes from the POV of a concierge, a mad dictator, and the ambassador. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-fiction: Give the section an author's byline and quit worrying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-02-12T03:15:21.133" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T03:15:21.133" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4992" CreationDate="2012-02-09T14:02:57.617" Score="4" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently sat down and wrote a poem after a long hiatus.  It was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_poetry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;narrative poem&lt;/a&gt; with a formal rhyme scheme.  I'm pretty dissatisfied with my initial draft, as it was far too &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/665/something-different-help-me-find-the-unnecessary-words&quot;&gt;wordy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides editing with a critical eye, what can I do to practice getting the compression of expression that makes poetry, well, poetry?  Since the poem is a narrative I'm focused slightly less on multi-layered imagery and slightly more on constructing a story with spare but meaningful details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T14:42:50.170" Title="Are there good writing exercises for compressing expression?" Tags="|style|poetry|exercises|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4991" CreationDate="2012-02-09T14:42:50.170" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a poet by any stretch of the imagination, but for what it's worth ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps what you need to do is impose more limits on your poetry to force clearer thinking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I find the limiting syllabic structures of haiku to be paradoxically freeing by forcing me to choose words very carefully to express what I have to say. As a starting point, I would therefore suggest you place some arbitrary limits on the amounts of syllables you can use for each line in your poem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another suggestion I have for your editing process is to use a methodical, almost repetitive process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, shift to paper-based writing for your poetry (if you haven't already). I find computers tend to be ill-suited for poetry, unless you're tracking changes. Write each successive draft on separate sheets of paper. For each draft, write out what you wrote before, but identify those lines that strike you as too wordy or incorrect, and focus on altering them specifically. Cross those lines out, write what you think of, cross out words etc. and fix them. It'll look like a mess, but you'll clean it up afterwards when you write it out again on a new sheet of paper. Also, don't worry if you alter the rhyme with your changes, because on your subsequent drafts you can focus on making a different rhyme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are good reasons for this approach, the most important being that you keep a solid history of what you've written, so if you go in a direction that doesn't pan out, you can go back to a previous edit. The second reason is because the act of writing it out time after time helps you understand the rhythm and nature of what you're writing, and it becomes much easier to spot where things fall over, e.g. too verbose, lack of rhythm and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T14:42:50.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4994" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-09T15:48:12.077" Score="9" ViewCount="1471" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a couple of small ebooks available on Amazon via Kindle direct publishing - I've just found a mistake in one of them so I fixed it and have reuploaded the file. I'm assuming that everyone who downloads the book in future will get the 'fixed' version, but what about the people who have already downloaded the book, will they have to delete the book and redownload? Or will kindle quietly fix it for them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3199" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T20:46:42.260" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T20:46:42.260" Title="Kindle self-publishing, automatically update" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|ebook|kindle|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4988" CreationDate="2012-02-09T16:00:24.173" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;For fiction that can accommodate different POVs, dividing those up per author not only addresses this problem but can be a feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For cases where you want a unified voice, if you can't get a tough editor like Lauren Ipsum suggested, try having the authors edit each other's sections.  In technical-writing teams I've found that this drives the material toward the center; I have no experience doing this with fiction but would expect it to work.  But first sit everybody down to have the &quot;don't take this personally; it's about the work&quot; conversation to reduce the chance of bruised egos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T16:00:24.173" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4994" CreationDate="2012-02-09T16:05:27.133" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A36BYK5S7AJ2NQ#3-16&quot;&gt;Publishing FAQ&lt;/a&gt; I found on Amazon, customers have to specifically request the new version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;If you’ve already purchased your book and subsequently revise the content and re-publish the updated version, you don’t need to re-purchase the book to get a copy. At this time, it’s not possible for publishers to receive the updated file without contacting KDP Support for help. We’re working to automate this feature and appreciate your understanding with our existing solution to manually send the updated content to your device.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;We request your explicit permission, and will do the same for any customers who contact us to receive the updated content, prior to sending the revised file because the new version will not have previously saved Highlights, Last Page Read, Bookmarks, and the location of notes may not match. If this is acceptable, please email kdp-support@amazon.com confirming your permission and which title/s you’d like to have re-sent. Thank you.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Note: Customers who purchased the old content can also contact our Customer Service department to have the new file delivered. &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T16:05:27.133" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4998" CreationDate="2012-02-09T17:17:04.770" Score="10" ViewCount="383" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a book in a niche market, and it's my first one. It seems to me that the following things need to happen to publish my book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finish the book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design cover (a friend is helping)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Edit manuscript (help of multiple people)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convert manuscript into proper format for print and ebook (I can do this myself)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get the book printed (Amazon)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get the book available electronically (Amazon)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marketing for the book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can do some marketing on my own. I have a healthy readership on my blog that can be valuable for marketing purposes. I can handle most of the components I listed. Am I missing any major components to publishing? In the end, what do publishers do for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3257" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-03-22T17:04:07.753" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T14:04:35.590" Title="What can publishers do for me in a niche market?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4997" CreationDate="2012-02-09T17:30:52.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishers are most useful with mass-market books. If, for example, you had written a new horror or sci-fi novel it would be very difficult to achieve the same level of marketing you would get from them. They also, if they're good, get your book in front of the people best suited to spread the word about it. They have marketing connections in the industry that you can't hope to match without years of work. They can not only get your book onto store shelves, they can encourage stores to make it more visible if they &lt;em&gt;reallly&lt;/em&gt; want to sell it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In niche markets they are less valuable. In niche markets (like adventure motorcycling, which I'm assuming yours is about) there is a very limited audience to reach, they are primarily reachable through the internet, and getting your book into thousands of brick-and-mortar stores would result in a lot of unsold copies sitting around, because &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; people don't care about your niche (or any other niche, by definition). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, there are better ways to get your book printed than Amazon that will still get your book ON Amazon (both printed and kindle versions) however, addressing that issue is far beyond the scope of this question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3258" LastEditorUserId="3258" LastEditDate="2017-03-23T14:04:35.590" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T14:04:35.590" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4999" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5005" CreationDate="2012-02-09T17:48:11.700" Score="7" ViewCount="1766" Body="&lt;p&gt;When an individual writes a novel, he owns all rights over the manuscript until he starts selling those rights to others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the situation when the novel is a collaborative work? How are such rights as &quot;first publication rights&quot; and &quot;movie rights&quot; defined when the rights are held jointly by two individual authors? Obviously a duo can determine an individual agreement, but my question is what the &quot;default&quot; definition of the rights are absent a formal agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I would like to know whether on the death of one author, the rights are considered to revert to the collaborator, or to the author's estate. I could see strong intuitive cases in both directions, and would like to know what the ruling is in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-02-09T18:13:25.207" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T15:05:37.823" Title="How do co-authors' rights to a manuscript work?" Tags="|copyright|legal|collaboration|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4976" CreationDate="2012-02-09T17:52:57.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Software developers deal with projects with millions of lines of code and collaborative writing projects deal with content on the order of thousands or hundreds of thousands of lines of text. I think the versioning approach used for software development is incredibly applicable to the writing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a software developer I use versioning source control software (SVN, GIT, etc) to track changes between a large set of code across multiple developers. I've started writing a book (solo) and I've tackled the problem of managing thousands of lines of narrative using the same technique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing my manuscript in a glorified text editor (Notepad++) and this solution many only be applicable to this kind of approach (Word docs will be messy, in other words).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use Unfuddle.com which has an &quot;Issue tracking&quot; thing that may be useful for communicated between collaborators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the most important component is to have contributors consistently provide a reference number to an &quot;Issue&quot; when they are saving their changes. This way when you look at the issue you are dealing with, you can see all the related changes throughout your document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be a learning curve for contributors to adopt some technical skills, but depending on the size of the project I think it would pay off in the ease of managing the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3257" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T17:52:57.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-09T18:10:19.737" Score="8" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;A publishing contract is generally a contract between a publisher and an author; a collaboration seems to add an additional party to the agreement. I would like to know what kind of complications this introduces to the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything I should be wary of when negotiating such a contract? Does collaboration add new elements to a contract I may be unfamiliar with from &quot;regular&quot; contracts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-30T10:27:59.783" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T10:27:59.783" Title="How does collaboration affect a publishing contract?" Tags="|publishing|legal|collaboration|contracts|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4994" CreationDate="2012-02-09T19:47:25.393" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, if you contact KDP Support, they will send out an e-mail to all customers who have already purchased your book to let them know that there is a new version available. They will send an e-mail to the people who have already purchased the book which directs them to respond to the e-mail with the word &quot;Yes&quot; in the first line of the response message. This automatically results in a new version being sent to the customer's device. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have received these messages on at least half a dozen titles I have purchased. In addition to that, I had to make a major revision to one of my books and was able to get them to send out the automated message for my title as well. It may take them some time to respond (mine took two weeks and a gentle reminder). On the downside, they don't actually replace the existing file. Instead, they send a copy of the new file in addition to the original. This can get confusing for the customer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T19:47:25.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4935" CreationDate="2012-02-10T06:10:31.430" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on what you do with your writing, you may end up having to produce a Word document.  For example, many academic journals take &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; Word format (even, in one case I am aware of, when they simply turn around and use a commercial Word-to-LaTeX converter as the first step in their page-layout process!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are likely to be in a situation in the near future where Word documents will be required, you should stay familiar with it, and you may find expertise with LaTeX specifically to be less applicable than you hoped in those situations where it would be nicest to have it.  Otherwise, LaTeX or another markup format will give you more flexibility (and cost less and look better).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2085" LastEditorUserId="2085" LastEditDate="2012-02-10T16:44:30.187" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T16:44:30.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4999" CreationDate="2012-02-10T10:26:13.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is a complicated area of law, but I'll give you the 30,000 foot view to get you started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By default (at least, under U.S. law), each co-author owns an equal interest in the work's copyright. This is irrespective of how much (or how little) each co-author contributed to the work. So, absent of any agreement, if there are two authors, the split is 50/50, thirds for three  authors, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For someone who collaborates on a work to be considered an &quot;author,&quot; his contribution must be independently copyrightable. That means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone who designs &lt;strong&gt;illustrations&lt;/strong&gt; with the intent that they should be used in a specific book is a &lt;strong&gt;co-author&lt;/strong&gt; (graphics designs are copyrightable)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone who composes the &lt;strong&gt;music&lt;/strong&gt; for a song, or writes its &lt;strong&gt;lyrics&lt;/strong&gt;, is a &lt;strong&gt;co-author&lt;/strong&gt; (music and lyrics are copyrightable) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone who comes up with the general &lt;strong&gt;idea&lt;/strong&gt; for a screenplay is &lt;strong&gt;not a co-author&lt;/strong&gt; (ideas are not copyrightable)  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone who researches population statistics for a geography textbook is &lt;strong&gt;not a co-author&lt;/strong&gt; (facts are not copyrightable)  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone who invents the algorithm for a new search engine (but does not write the actual computer code) is &lt;strong&gt;not a co-author&lt;/strong&gt; (algorithms are non-copyrightable processes)  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each co-author can exploit the work in any way they seem fit (license the work, create derivative works, etc.), but they have to split all the profits with the other co-authors in equal parts. A co-author does not need to seek permission from the other co-author(s) to use the work, and likewise, a co-author cannot prevent the other co-author(s) from using the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An exception is the grant of an exclusive license, which requires the consent of all co-authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Co-authors' shares of a copyright are property interests that pass to their respective heirs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ober.com/publications/291-avoiding-joint-pain-treatment-joint-works-authorship-conditions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ober.com/publications/291-avoiding-joint-pain-treatment-joint-works-authorship-conditions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kowi.de/Portaldata/2/Resources/FP6_alt/ipr_joint_ownership.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.kowi.de/Portaldata/2/Resources/FP6_alt/ipr_joint_ownership.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="1415" LastEditDate="2012-02-10T10:46:08.247" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T10:46:08.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1804" CreationDate="2012-02-10T15:14:40.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can highly recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.circusponies.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Circus Ponies Notebook&lt;/a&gt;. It uses the notebook metaphor and it has a page type that gives you an outliner. You can easily integrate media files as well. I use it for fictional and non-fictional writing, then put my outliner next to Scrivener to write it down (CPN has the advantage of optional checkboxes for each cell, so you always know what you have already used). You can also use keywords to make sure you remember your sources, and of course, non-relevant parts can be folded in. While I love Scrivener, I need an outline that is more detailed, one information per cell. The files in Scrivener contain more than one idea when I write which makes it difficult to shift information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This posting on my blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.organizingcreativity.com/2009/09/circus-ponies-notebook-the-best-tool-for-structuring-creative-writing-projects-esp-research-projects/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.organizingcreativity.com/2009/09/circus-ponies-notebook-the-best-tool-for-structuring-creative-writing-projects-esp-research-projects/&lt;/a&gt; gives a nice overview of its functions, there's also an example linked at the end of the posting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Scrivener is very useful for structural outlines, Circus Ponies Notebook excels at Content Outlines. There a posting in my blog comparing the outlining feature in both programs: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.organizingcreativity.com/2012/02/outliner-in-scrivener-vs-outliner-in-cpn-structure-scrivener-vs-content-cpn-outlines/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Outliner in Scrivener vs Outliner in Circus Ponies Notebook — Structure (Scrivener) vs Content (CPN) Outlines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly I couldn't have written my diploma, nor my PhD thesis, without it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3259" LastEditorUserId="3259" LastEditDate="2012-02-24T10:00:21.967" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T10:00:21.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2012-02-10T17:37:22.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides the general advice on writing (like JSBᾶngs said, &quot;You are not your story&quot; and &quot;Allow your writing to suck&quot;), I think in your case this point is also relevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You are not what your former and now very successful peers thought of you/r work:&lt;/strong&gt; Just because they are very successful now, does not mean that their feedback was &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt;. It surely was not &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; feedback, because it did not improve your current and future work. Feedback should be specific for the current work and not judge the worth of the person as a writer. They might be successful writers (now), but they did not know how to give good feedback (then), and it should be of no relevance to you. Write for yourself (and your audience), and not for the ghosts of your past, no matter how bright they shine in their current success on a path you haven't taken (yet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3259" LastEditorUserId="3259" LastEditDate="2012-02-10T17:47:30.153" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T17:47:30.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5011" CreationDate="2012-02-10T17:45:48.627" Score="16" ViewCount="881" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a little strange to ask, but are there ways to get feedback from friends about the quality of fictional writing (whether they liked it, not more objective aspects like spelling/grammar/etc.) unbiased by the friendship that is likely to bias the judgment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3259" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-08T13:11:32.723" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T13:11:32.723" Title="How to get feedback about the quality of one's fictional writing from friends unbiased by the friendship?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|criticism|feedback|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5010" CreationDate="2012-02-10T19:26:20.567" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Choose your friends wisely! I started with a group of ten friends when I first started writing who had volunteered as beta readers. Five responded very quickly that they really loved my first book, even though I felt it still needed a lot of work. Three more came back a week or more later with glowing remarks. The last two took at least a couple more weeks, but both of them came back to me with questions, suggestions, and criticisms. Guess which ones are still beta readers five books later? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you tell your &quot;friends&quot; that you are looking for true, honest feedback. Tell them that they are not going to hurt your feelings (although in my case that turned out to be wrong, but I ultimately agreed with the criticism). Let them know that you truly NEED constructive criticism or feedback or suggestions and you need it to be brutally honest. Lastly, make sure you choose people that already read your genre (that was a mistake for me with two people who later admitted they really didn't read much of the first book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because they are your friends, their first inclination is going to be to encourage you and reinforce you, even if it means lying to you to not hurt your feelings. If a friend is willing to tell you the truth, even when they know it will disappoint you, then that is a friend you can trust!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T19:26:20.567" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5010" CreationDate="2012-02-10T22:41:56.793" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to listen to how people reacted to my writing. Frankly, I don't care what their suggestions are. They are reading your book, and I think they should act as a reader does, not as a writer. Feedback such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I didn't understand this part&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I didn't like this part&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't understand the meaning of this part&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is feedback I like because it gives me an honest impression from the reader. They didn't understand, like or find meaning about something, and this will be different for each reader. My readers find positive things about parts and areas that I never found to be a big deal, so I focused on it a little bit more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely I think the following kind of feedback is limited in how it can help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should rewrite this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe the guy can be a ghost! (or whatever_)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What if &lt;em&gt;blank&lt;/em&gt; happens?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most helpful advice I have gotten is from people who have simply told me what they think of the story, not what they think &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What do you think?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What do you think it should be?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are two very different questions. The second question can go bad very quickly. If the person gives you genuine answers about the first question you can say, &quot;Well that's their impression, and everyone has a different one&quot;. No hurt feelings, and even better, a look into what your audience is thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3257" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-02-11T22:35:28.040" LastActivityDate="2012-02-11T22:35:28.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5010" CreationDate="2012-02-10T23:11:11.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the above comment that first off, you need to make it clear that advice and criticism are what you want, rather than affirmation. You also need to make sure that that's actually true; many writers find it harder to discuss their work critically than they expect to. And nothing kills a writing workshop/beta faster than having the author get touchy or mount a defence in response to each criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a practical level, I would suggest you ask for your friends' thoughts on specific aspects of your work that you already have doubts about or want comments on--say, 'did this scene work for you?' or 'do you care about this character as a person?' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can present them with specific questions about what they think makes a story good/worth reading, and then ask them how well your piece lives up to that. Basically, the more you give your friends a concrete set of criterion with which to assess your story (or make them come up with one on their own) the easier they'll find it to give you solid feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3032" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T23:11:11.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5010" CreationDate="2012-02-11T05:09:02.780" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Share your work as a revision-enabled word processor document (e.g. Word) or a cloud service (e.g. Google Docs):&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People are more likely to add comments while reading rather than facing you with verbal criticism.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their opinions are more considered because they can take time to write them. They also have the time to phrase it without hurting your feelings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If shared among multiple beta readers (this is only possible with a cloud service), they get to see each others comments and compare notes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This will also filter out those who are not serious about critique -- they wouldn't want to spend the time or effort to write down their comments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Note: make sure you trust your friends enough that they won't indiscriminately re-share it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tell them to assume that they're reading an actual book that they paid money for. Tell them you already have positive comments and that you're looking for the flip side:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When they read it as a book they bought, they'll be a lot more critical.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Choose beta readers who read regularly. Better if you've heard them talk about other authors' works in the past&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This will tell you exactly what level of analysis they're capable of.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final note. I did all these recently and it worked out very well. (It didn't hurt that I had several well-read friends with absurdly high standards!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2838" LastActivityDate="2012-02-11T05:09:02.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4905" CreationDate="2012-02-11T09:29:53.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is difficult to answer because there might be differences in departments/disciplines/committees/etc like Lauren Ipsum mentioned in the comments. In which domain is the thesis (or report?)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look in a book like &quot;The Craft of Scientific Writing&quot; by Michael Alley (1996), you see that he has Glossary and Index &lt;em&gt;after the Appendices, but not as part of the Appendices&lt;/em&gt;, which makes sense for a readers point of view. If I want to find out where something is mentioned, I start from the back of the book and have the index, next in importance are looking up terms I do not know (anymore), i.e., the glossary. While this was a book on writing and not a thesis, perhaps this is a compromise for you and your adviser (don't go head to head over this issue) -- put them after the appendices (&quot;Appendix x&quot;, &quot;Appendix y&quot;, &quot;Glossary&quot;, &quot;Index&quot;), but do not name them so. After all, they are an important part of the work and not optional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3259" LastActivityDate="2012-02-11T09:29:53.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5017" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5018" CreationDate="2012-02-11T16:34:50.700" Score="20" ViewCount="1396" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somewhere, don't ask me where, I picked up the idea that publishers don't like works that the public has already been able to access. When a family member suggested I post short pieces of fiction to a blog to help myself get motivated, I hesitated because I assumed it would be impossible to publish later; I'd have to write up an entirely new piece if I wanted to publish something in the same genre as the piece I had blogged. (I went ahead with the blog anyway. I wasn't writing anything up to then, so my publishing potential was about equal.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought it might be good to verify my assumption here, and while I was researching in preparation to ask the question, I discovered this blog: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howtoblogabook.com&quot;&gt;How to Blog a Book&lt;/a&gt;. It's being published! It mentions several books (one of which I've heard of) that were blogs beforehand and the author says that the techniques she used will work for publishing both non-fiction and fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now my question is, are there publishers who absolutely &lt;strong&gt;won't&lt;/strong&gt; publish a blog? Do I diminish my chances of publication at all by blogging my work first?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3225" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T12:04:58.610" Title="Will blogging my fiction limit its ability to be traditionally published later?" Tags="|publishing|blog|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5017" CreationDate="2012-02-11T18:37:01.173" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rules are changing, which makes it a bit hard to be sure what the hell the rules currently are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Posting on your blog counts as publication. The traditional rule was definitely that, for fiction at least, most publishers want first publication rights, and you'd be blowing those rights by posting on your blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that still the rule?  I think it is, for most publishers.  But there are likely to be exceptions.  If your blog draws a huge audience, then it could actually be an asset in trying to sell the book, since you've demonstrated the material's appeal.  And even if you don't get a huge audience, you may find a smaller publisher that doesn't care as much about first rights.  It's possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'd be really careful about counting on either approach.  I totally sympathize with the motivation issue, and do myself post my WIPs to a blog... but it's a locked blog with a circulation of about ten people.  Essentially, it's an on-line crit group, and I've never heard of a publisher having a problem with writers working with crit groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have people in mind who'd read your on-line stories?  If you do, you could make a locked blog (I use LiveJournal, but I'm sure there are other options) and only give access to those people. It might be a way to give you motivation without closing any doors for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2012-02-11T18:37:01.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5017" CreationDate="2012-02-11T21:00:27.827" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even though &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5018/99&quot;&gt;Kate&lt;/a&gt; mention valid points, I have a different point of view: The rules have not changed and probably will never.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditional publishers want to make money. If they think your writing will make money, they publish it, no matter if you have already published on your blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, they will tell you, that blog publishing is a problem, and if they have to choose between two similar projects, one already published, one not, then it's likely they pick the unpublished one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand you are building an audience with your blog upfront, which means: possible customers. A similar unpublished project with this advantage is hard to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, why shouldn't you publish them yourself, on your blog, as ebook, as POD? If you are successful, traditional publishers will probably approach you instead the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, but not least:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'd have to write up an entirely new piece&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what? Are you a writer or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-02-11T21:00:27.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4905" CreationDate="2012-02-11T21:03:08.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is for you to do what the universoty or your department requires. There is no universal answer to this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For academic writing in English, one would likely be using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APA_style&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;APA Style Guide&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_MLA_Style_Manual&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MLA Style Guide&lt;/a&gt;. (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/72/what-are-the-most-common-style-manuals&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; for more on style guides in general.) Different departments may have different standards, so check with your advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be a university style guide for you to follow, to handle issues specific to your educational institution. There may even be more than one, so make sure you're using the right guide. (Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://gsnb.rutgers.edu/style_guide.php3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an example of a thesis style guide&lt;/a&gt;, but this will almost certainly not apply to your school.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line: Check what style guides your university requires and use those. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-02-11T21:10:54.320" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5017" CreationDate="2012-02-11T23:34:23.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, I think blogging your fiction will hurt your attempts to be traditionally published later. I think publishers have been following the same trends the record industry have followed with respect to technology. They fear that it will steal from their profits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;But here's something to consider:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps traditional publishing isn't something that's as valuable as it once was? Perhaps embracing untraditional ways to publish will be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been hosting a blog for four years now and my audience has grown beyond what I originally managed. I haven't worked tremendously hard at grow it. It just kinda happened. But it's been a healthy outlet for me, and has turned me into a beter writer. The world is online and your reach could be greater than what any publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3257" LastActivityDate="2012-02-11T23:34:23.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5036" CreationDate="2012-02-12T10:32:52.777" Score="11" ViewCount="1329" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of defining the characters for a novel. It is a crime fiction, with a really strong focus on the characters. I hope to construct really rich, complex and clearly defined characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that I should, in principle, create characters the reader can identify with. I've got some conflicts for the good guys, with redemption, self-forgiveness and the usual goodness. But how about my bad guy, who is a ruthless, violent, ambitious and macho killer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the pros and cons of creating bad guys the reader can identify and empathize with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2487" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T13:19:05.317" Title="Should my readers be able to identify with the bad guy?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5022" CreationDate="2012-02-12T10:44:27.990" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pro:&lt;/strong&gt; The bad guy will be convincing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character that readers can't connect to in any way will look fake, and the readers will have a hard time believing them. Just like a perfect good-guy (see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue&quot;&gt;Mary Sue&lt;/a&gt;) isn't believable, so is the absolute villain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real life, villains truly believe that they are good people. I doubt Hitler would wake up in the morning and say to himself, &quot;What evil things can I do today?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Warning:&lt;/strong&gt; Don't overdo it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the readers need to understand the villain, and see his point of view, but don't sympathize. This is a bad guy, after all! The keyword is &lt;em&gt;empathy&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T10:44:27.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5048" CreationDate="2012-02-12T12:45:13.227" Score="11" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keeping track of details invented for a work of fiction is never simple, often requiring writing bibles and continuity editors. But when two people are working on the same book simultaneously, then you're not only dealing with the details you've made up, you also need to work around a slew of fictional details that your co-author sprouted up on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can detail-organization techniques be adapted for collaboration, where they need to be shared constantly? How can an author keep abreast of a bunch of invented details their co-author thinks up? And when two co-authors have made up minor details which clash with each other, how can one resolve the conflict without knowing where and how the other used the detail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T06:37:27.287" Title="How can I keep up with my co-author's detail creation?" Tags="|collaboration|organization|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2012-02-12T14:11:57.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can check Pressmo.com - works fine, you can use PDF files, it has a flip page effect and the conversion is fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3266" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T14:11:57.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5026" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-12T19:09:34.347" Score="5" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a novel together with my co-author, K. K's come up with this great character - a sassy were-cat name Garlic. Unfortunately, I'm having a really tough time writing for Garlic - K has a feel for the character that I just don't have yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to leave K doing all the work on Garlic - he's going to be a major presence in the book, and I want to be able to write him at least reasonably well. So I want to practice writing dialogue, behavior, viewpoint description, etc., for this character, until I can do a better job writing him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for good writing exercises that would be appropriate for, well, appropriating K's awesome character. Obviously K can help me out with them. I'd like something more directed than &quot;write random scenes with Garlic; have K tell me what I could have done better.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited to Clarify:&lt;/strong&gt; While I'm familiar with many ways to develop a character independantly, I am most interested in &lt;strong&gt;exercises&lt;/strong&gt; which are &lt;strong&gt;unique to the situation of writing collaboratively.&lt;/strong&gt; In other words, I want to know what &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; options I have available to practice &quot;getting used&quot; to somebody else's character, which I wouldn't be able to do with something that was entirely my own creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclosure:&lt;/strong&gt; This is a hypothetical question for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/419/wtcs-collaboration&quot;&gt;&quot;Collaboration&quot; topic challenge&lt;/a&gt;. In reality I have no co-author, nor am I working on a book involving a were-cat. If you would like to apply for either position, please contact me in the chat room. Use the keywords: &quot;RE: collaboration/lycanthropy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:03.470" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T09:12:22.430" Title="What exercises will help me write my co-author's character?" Tags="|characters|collaboration|exercises|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5026" CreationDate="2012-02-12T20:15:02.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;write random scenes with Garlic; have K tell me what I could have done better.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say it's the other way around. K should write a character sheet. K should write scenes which describe how the werecat acts and behaves. Then you as a reader become acquainted with the character, maybe even identify with him. And you make suggestions, how to improve the character, what you dislike, what you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this approach you get a feeling for the werecat. After that you use your normal approach for creating a character and apply it for Garlic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g., you ask the werecat questions about his history, about his feelings, would he eat raw mice or prefer raw virgins, stuff like that. Let the character formulate his answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just treat him like every character you invented yourself, have a lot of discussions and contradictions with K and go on writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T20:15:02.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5024" CreationDate="2012-02-13T03:09:57.227" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first step I would suggest is to develop a timeline and then place your characters on that timeline. It would be better if each of you is writing from the perspective of a different character, because then you wouldn't have to worry so much about what the other person is writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would also help to periodically exchange content so that you can see what the other person is doing. If they have a significant event happening that your character should know about, then you'll be able to react to that. (For example, if your character sees a pink glow around the moon, and both of you are writing about characters in the same city/region, then your co-author should probably comment on how their character sees it as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be easier if you have a detailed outline that identifies any critical bits of information. Define your setting for each scene/chapter, and document any major events happening in that scene. If there are fireworks going off, then each character might describe them from different perspectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main point is to document as much as you can up front. Then if either of you goes in a different direction and decides to add something big, then just communicate that to your co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T03:09:57.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2012-02-13T04:24:54.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aristotle's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetics_%28Aristotle%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Poetics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several translations are available for free online and can be purchased in bookstores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sample:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is&#xA;  always preferable to the improbable possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T04:24:54.357" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-02-13T04:24:54.357" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2012-02-13T06:35:28.123" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joesph Campbell's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Hero with a Thousand Faces&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that writers tend to love mythology, which jives perfectly with how helpful it is for writers to &lt;strong&gt;know&lt;/strong&gt; mythology. This book recounts and unites myths from many cultures throughout the ages under the thesis that important stories-- from parables to fiction to the way we announce breaking news or share personal experiences-- are reappearances of a single, enduring story whose structure lies in the &quot;Hero's Journey.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With inspiration from this book, a new writer can not only gain a better sense of her characters' (and possibly her own) grand story, but will also find inspiration to continue writing, even if only to further contribute to the grand story that unites her with story-tellers from all times and grounds her work in what touching stories are really all about: a universal human connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two companions to this book are &lt;em&gt;The Power of Myth&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Myth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in book form&lt;/a&gt;, an interview of the author by journalist Bill Moyers, and the actual &lt;em&gt;The Power of Myth&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0296362/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;documentary-interview&lt;/a&gt; on DVD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make his points, Campbell draws from psychology, religion, mythology, cultural ritual, and philosophy; and he lays out character archetypes and stages in a hero's journey. If you want the same information but prefer it in a bite-sized portion, there is Christopher Vogler's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Writer%27s_Journey%3a_Mythic_Structure_for_Writers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, which scoops an extra dollop of Carl Jung on top of Campbell's work and flattens it out into an undemanding template for writers, chiefly screenwriters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T06:35:28.123" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-02-13T06:35:28.123" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5022" CreationDate="2012-02-13T15:46:54.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your readers don't necessarily have to be able to identify with your bad guy, but they should at least be able to accept him as a believable character. You don't necessarily need to explain why he is bad or what caused him to become bad, but he should elicit some kind of response from your readers. It is up to you as to whether that response is the kind of shock that accompanied Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs) or the empathy that accompanied Boo Radley (To Kill a Mockingbird) (who ultimately turned out to be a good guy). My point is that you can make your readers despise or empathize with your bad guy, but one way or another they should FEEL something!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T15:46:54.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5017" CreationDate="2012-02-13T15:58:14.027" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that blogging will turn off some publishers, but it might also attract others. If you develop a strong, consistent following, then publishers are going to pay attention. They will see that you have already established a following and therefore have a built in audience. They might work with you to modify the blog content into a consistent book format (or more likely just suggest you do it). The bottom line is that by developing a strong audience, you have proven that people are interested in what you have to say, and that will make publishers interested in you as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another consideration is to use your blog as a sounding board for what you ultimately write. If you have subscribers or followers who give you feedback on what they like or don't like, then it will help you develop your stories/characters better. Your readers can help guide you towards something that might be more readily accepted by the masses. However, don't try changing with every single comment. Instead, look for trends and let those trends guide you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also keep in mind the possibility of self-publishing. I know a few people who have taken their blog content and repurposed it as books, and they have found considerable succes with both venues. The blog drives people to the book, and the book drives people back to the blog. They have the best of both worlds and have seen their audiences growing continuously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something to keep in mind, though, is that in order for your blog to become successful, you need to keep contributing to it. If you only post a random article every few months or so, then nobody is going to keep coming back looking for your new work. Make sure that you have the time and desire to make that kind of commitment, and you may just find yourself rewarded with a strong readership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T15:58:14.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5026" CreationDate="2012-02-13T18:36:12.580" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in agreement with John Smithers here: the issue seems to be that you don't know enough about the character, so K needs to supply as much detail as possible for you to start with. Perhaps write a questionnaire for K to answer as if you were interviewing Garlic. This is an old technique, but it could help you get answers to fundamental things you want/need to know to understand the character better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think there's a more fundamental issue here. Clearly, the character belongs to K, so the issue for me is that you haven't brought your own ideas to the table. It's all very well that the character originated with K, but since this is a collaboration, and you are both planning on writing this character, then the character should belong to both of you. Once you get the character histories, then start to expand on them yourself. Add your flavour to the mix, and continue communicating and sharing ideas about Garlic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A last point: don't stress too much if you don't get it &quot;bang on&quot; with the first draft. Things can always be refined with editing later, and so K can edit your scenes (and vice versa) if necessary for subsequent drafts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; since you've commented below asking for specific exercises that I can suggest for collaborations, I had a think about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've already suggested the interview technique, which can work well for collaborations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second exercise I can suggest would be to get together with K online and do a chat room session (or meet each other and do something akin to a role-playing session) where you each take on a persona: you would take on Garlic, and K would take on a key figure from Garlic's life. Switch characters regularly so you see how each other handles Garlic. Not only that, you get to explore the other characters as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that you could be working on an existing body of work, in which case you would need to research extensively, so there would be no avoiding the &quot;boring&quot; traditional techniques. However, perhaps what you could try is, after doing your research on the character in question, take an existing dialogue exchange, or some key moment from the character's life from the TV series that you haven't read/seen (but you know the basic facts of what happens - get K to share this with you), and then write it as you would have done it. Once you're done, compare it to the original, and see where key differences lie. This can help highlight where you are spot on, or where you've missed the mark completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2012-02-14T08:32:34.543" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T08:32:34.543" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5017" CreationDate="2012-02-14T03:32:01.750" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For fiction, I have little proof to show of blogs being published as print and/or ebooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some &lt;strong&gt;perspective in genres other than fiction&lt;/strong&gt; like technical- there are authors like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Joel Spolsky, who has been publishing online since 2000 and has built a reputation. And now has about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/BuytheBooks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;four print books&lt;/a&gt;. In his own words,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I’ve been working on this website, here, since 2000, and there’s so much material I’ve published four actual books out of it—yes, made out of paper and ink!—which you can buy, hold in your hand, read in the bus, or throw at your boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Darren Rowse, author of a blog on tips and suggestions on better blogging has published a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B003HOXLL6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;print book&lt;/a&gt; and ebook.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I started it in September 2004 mainly because I wanted to keep a record of what I was learning about blogging for money. Since then I’ve added well over 3500 articles, tips, tutorials and case studies to my archives here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the &lt;strong&gt;advantages in publishing online before contacting publishers&lt;/strong&gt; would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing the waters before investing in publication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building a reputation, a brand name. In today's world, I think you need to be available at major social networks like Twitter etc. It's all about that one catchphrase, like &lt;em&gt;codinghorror&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;stackoverflow&lt;/em&gt; etc and making it popular.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may judge, by the success of your blog, if you are ready to go print.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Like Steven said above, blog and book bring readers to each other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;disadvantages of publishing online before contacting publishers&lt;/strong&gt; would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are not adding new content to the print, then the appeal to buy for casual reader may be less, thus less business.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may have to add some exclusive content to the print edition. For some writers, who genuinely want to share knowledge and information (programmers for example), this may pose a moral dilemma.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For fiction, you could:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give a &quot;teaser&quot; in blog, which is sufficient for casual reader, but would excite the more interested ones to go buy and read the print edition. Good for you (it is being read), good for publisher (sales) and good for reader (satisfaction, feeling good).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run a story for some time on blog, and invite alternate endings etc. Then add some more content and fulfill some of these in print edition only. Make sure the publisher understands that some of the readers will have a buy-in in the book thanks to the blog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may, depending upon your priority, decide to monetize the blog also. So, that relieves some of the pressure to strike it soon with a publisher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I think in the coming times, both blogs and print books will co-exist- so let's make the most of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user613" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T03:32:01.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5017" CreationDate="2012-02-14T11:49:20.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It didn't hurt either David Moody or Amanda Hocking, both started by blogging and/or self-publishing their work and both now have deals with major publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are however both genre authors (horror and urban fantasy respectively) and I think genre work is a little more forgiving of this than mainstream thrillers or crime dramas as the ability to world-build and set tone and give backstory is far greater when you're making it all up as you go along and these days of 'transmedia' projects it's almost expected that you will have stuff online and in print to help sell your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, blogging and/or self publishing is a great way to build audience, and if you can show audience you can parley that into a publishing deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3271" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T11:49:20.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5022" CreationDate="2012-02-14T13:19:05.317" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;How sympathetic to make your villain depends heavily on &lt;strong&gt;what your villain's role in the story is.&lt;/strong&gt; Once you're able to figure out what role he has, what effect you'd like him to have on your audience, I think you'll be able to see quite easily whether that role demands reader identification (and how much).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The villain always causes trouble for the protagonist. But &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; trouble he causes - what type; for what motive; most of all, why it's powerful, effective, and painful - this is what defines the villain's role. Is the villain threatening because he represents all-consuming evil? Or because he demonstrates just how easily the protagonist could slip over to the dark side? Is he fearsome because he's willing to kill thousands of people with his doomsday device - or because he's able to traumatize a single individual due to their warped, dysfunctional relationship? Is the villain a friend who betrays the hero, a foe who wants vengeance against the hero, a massive power who is callously apathetic to the hero and his friends? Each of these tilts us to strive for a different measure of reader identification and sympathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a few guidelines on what the different extremes can be good at. This is hardly an exhaustive list, but I think the examples here will help you figure out where your own villain stands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Low Reader Identification&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good vs. Evil:&lt;/strong&gt; Lots of stories are simply a conflict between A and B; A is good and B is bad. Fantasy and action stories can work really well with this framework - it justifies the plot and moves it forward, and doesn't really need any justification beyond that. The villain's personality is simply not the focus. Examples: Sauron; Darth Vader; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Faceless Evil:&lt;/strong&gt; If the enemy is a vast corporation, a dispassionate machine, or even an uncaring society, then the fact that we can't identify with it is the entire point. Here you actually go to great effort to stress how callous and nonsympathetic the enemy is. Examples: &lt;em&gt;ST:TNG&lt;/em&gt;'s Borg; the ministries of &lt;em&gt;Brazil&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;1984&lt;/em&gt;; Batman's cruel, corrupt Gotham City.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alien Mindset:&lt;/strong&gt; Similarly, sometimes the idea is that something is so alien to us that it is entirely incomprehensible. Here, too, you need to &lt;em&gt;stress&lt;/em&gt; the incomprehensibility - make clear that this is not an issue that can be bridged with sufficient effort and understanding. Examples: the Cthulhu mythos, the fae (e.g. as portrayed in &lt;em&gt;Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell&lt;/em&gt; or in Pratchett's &lt;em&gt;Lords and Ladies&lt;/em&gt;), Batman's Joker.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A major problem to avoid here is an &lt;strong&gt;implausible villain&lt;/strong&gt; - a bad guy so mindlessly, pointlessly evil it feels exaggerated and false. Another thing to watch out for is &lt;strong&gt;character depth dissonance&lt;/strong&gt; - in other words, if all your good guys are complex, believable characters but your bad guys are simple caricatures, they might feel mismatched. The bad guys feel false simply by comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;High Reader Identification&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Complex Conflict:&lt;/strong&gt; The opposite of &lt;em&gt;Good vs. Evil&lt;/em&gt;, many stories place great importance as portraying the villain as a realistic, understandable character - perhaps an antihero or even full-out heroic in his own right. Such stories try to avoid simplistic or arbitrary divisions into &quot;good guys&quot; and &quot;bad guys,&quot; and generally work to stress that such divisions are inherently flawed. Examples: Martin's &lt;em&gt;Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt;; &lt;em&gt;Dexter&lt;/em&gt;; Batman's Catwoman.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tragic Conflict:&lt;/strong&gt; The above point - that your enemies are sympathetic and generally trying to be OK people - can quickly turn to the tragic, particularly if you start killing each other. Evoking sympathy for the villain - even partial sympathy - makes the conflict tragic rather than triumphant. Examples: The Buggers of &lt;em&gt;Ender's Game,&lt;/em&gt; Gollum in &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Misguided Evil:&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes a villain represents a particular ideal, worldview or character trait, perhaps taken to an extreme. The story might demonstrate the destructiveness of that element, showing the villain to be misguided. In this case, some identification with the villain is necessary for the reader to understand the villain's case, or to demonstrate how tempting or compelling this viewpoint can be. Examples: Magneto in &lt;em&gt;X-Men&lt;/em&gt;, the pigs in &lt;em&gt;Animal Farm&lt;/em&gt;, Dukat in &lt;em&gt;ST:DS9&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A major problem to avoid here is to make your villain overly sympathetic - if readers feel that a villain is partially justified, perhaps merely misguided, then they might not condone the protagonist's conflict against him. They might be in favor of opposing him, but &quot;extreme measures&quot; - such as killing the bad guy, or otherwise harming him greatly - may feel cruel. This can make epic climaxes very difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For your particular story,&lt;/strong&gt; I don't know precisely what to recommend without knowing more about it. You want rich, complex character dynamics, so maybe the villain should be in on that. On the other hand, &quot;Ruthless Macho Killer&quot; sounds more of the stone-cold evil type, and that's extremely appropriate for crime fiction. See where on this spectrum you think your villain belongs; if you're not sure, I hope I've given you ideas for what kind of direction you'd like to take his role. Once you know that, I hope I've given you enough to answer your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T13:19:05.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5024" CreationDate="2012-02-14T15:20:42.127" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another suggestion would be to use some sort of distributed source control system to keep track of the changes that you each make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Dropbox&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dropbox.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt; has built in source control, so you can roll back to previous changes, and it is fairly simple to use. Their Terms of Service kind of trouble me, but I may have donned my tinfoil hat in recent years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Benefits&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to use&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to get started&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track changes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Syncs to multiple machines, making backups easier&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Drawbacks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your work is stored on someone else's servers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;May not be able to see fine-grained changes easily&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Git&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're decently technical, something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;git&lt;/a&gt; might be a better option, as you can easily see differences between check-ins, and keep track of who is changing what. As a programmer, I use git every day, and that sort of mindset has become second nature to me. This is beneficial when you're working with 10 other programmers/designers, and you need to keep track of who is doing what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would also give you the benefit of keeping all of the content on your own systems, making sure that it's not inadvertently copyrighted by some other entity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside might be that Git was designed to work with non-binary files (such as flat text files), rather than proprietary Word files (or other proprietary file formats), so the change tracking might not be best used with Word files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Benefits&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track changes at a fine-grained level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your content is always in your possession&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allows you to keep multiple branches of the same work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep multiple versions in local source control before committing to the main repository&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't have to keep multiple, differently-named files to track versions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tons of resources to get you started, and keep things going&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many GUI application options to choose from, regardless of the operating systems used by the contributors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Drawbacks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Works best with non-binary file formats&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requires more technical knowledge to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alistapart.com/articles/get-started-with-git/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;learn and get setup&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See what other writers here on the site think about using source/version control with their writing in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/289/do-you-use-any-version-controlling-software-methods-as-writers&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="57" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T15:20:42.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4905" CreationDate="2012-02-14T16:32:22.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I wrote my thesis, the Graduate School had a guide with &lt;em&gt;very strict&lt;/em&gt; rules for the layout and formatting of anything that was to be submitted to them. If you had something wrong (as in your margins off by 1/10&quot;), they would not accept it. Who do you turn the final copy of the thesis over to? Check with that group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3241" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T16:32:22.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5039" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5042" CreationDate="2012-02-14T19:52:10.510" Score="18" ViewCount="2025" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any reason that an editor should know how to use Scrivener? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally see manuscripts after they're out of draft but before proofreading. (I'm an editor.) However, I see a lot of talk about Scrivener on this site, and I'd like to know more about what it can do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot;&gt;the developer's website&lt;/a&gt;. I suspect, given the love I see for the program, that this is an oversimplification, but it looks to me like a cross between an outliner, a note organizer, and a word processor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what happens when you have to send the writing off to the editor? Do you compile the project into Word format? What happens when you get changes back? If you want to keep going in Scrivener at that point, can you do so? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spend a lot of time on the notes I write authors, sometimes explaining &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; I made a change. (If they don't like my changes, then at least they know what the problem is.) Is there some way to Scrivener-proof my notations, or is that a non-issue? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T18:46:05.450" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T06:08:01.767" Title="Is Scrivener involved in the editorial process, or is it strictly a writer's development tool?" Tags="|editing|software|tools|scrivener|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5039" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:17:23.987" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before Lauren shows up, let me provide an answer from a non-evangelist ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... it looks to me like a cross between an outliner, a note organizer, and a word processor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, more or less. Scrivener is an all purpose &lt;em&gt;writer&lt;/em&gt; tool. It tries to replace all other tools an author would need to write a book, or better: to finish the first draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All other drafts can be done with Scrivener also, but it is not a &quot;communication tool&quot;. You can compile to the Word format and use Word for your notes, but then the writer has two tools (Word and Scrivener) where he has to sync his work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working with the Scrivener format is not an option here, because Scrivener does not use just one file what would be easily exchangeable. A Scrivener project has a bunch of files for the chapters, scenes, notes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So communicating efficiently with an editor is out of the scope of Scrivener. It was just not designed for that work. Maybe you should ask a question if someone knows a good tool for that. Ok, Lauren will suggest Scrivener :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T20:17:23.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2012-02-14T23:58:35.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; will keep you from having to reinvent the wheel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Art of the Novel&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; by Henry James is perfection yet a bone-dry read. Thankfully, this nineteenth century gem is condensed into a 20 page afterword to be found in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The House of Fiction, an Anthology of the Short Story&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (Charles Scribner's Sons, NYC, 1950/1960) by Caroline Gordon and Allen Tate. Tagging Henry James' insight to these stories really works. This anthology is the definition of a good read. It will keep you on the road. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a great book on becoming an artist, a writer, a painter, or a musician: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;No Longer Human&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (New Directions 1958) by Osamu Dazai is the whole story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3273" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T00:17:30.450" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T00:17:30.450" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-02-14T23:58:35.227" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5039" CreationDate="2012-02-15T00:36:16.580" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrivener does have a Comment or Sticky-Note function. You can also use a Highlight to mark big swathes of text, change the color of inserted copy, and Strike-Through to cross things out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As John Smithers wisely points out, Scrivener isn't just for writing the draft. It also allows you to gather notes, keep audio and video with your story, create outlines, and cross-link your ideas (rather like a mind-map, as I understand it). So if you give your Scrivener file to an editor, you aren't just handing over the file with the story, you're handing over the entire file cabinet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, however, I would &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; turn over my sole original file to an editor, and as an editor, I would never expect to receive such a file from a writer. It's partly because that's the original, and partly because the editor just doesn't need all the slush material. The editor's job is to polish the final product, not to fact-check the universe. So while an editor &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; work in Scrivener using commenting and markup tools which are similar to Word's, there isn't a compelling reason to do so. (Other than hating Microsoft, which I totally get.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I have handed off my work for editing, I have exported as Word (you could also print to PDF) and the editor has used Word's markup tools for comments and corrections. I then manually move those changes to my Scrivener document, because as the writer, I get the final say about what changes do and don't get made. It is a little tedious, I agree, and if the writer really felt strongly about it, you could make editing in Scrivener work. It's not a workflow I'd recommend, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T00:41:27.980" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T00:41:27.980" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5043" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5267" CreationDate="2012-02-15T14:10:26.053" Score="3" ViewCount="6562" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who has written a series of great nursery rhymes.  I would like to put these rhymes into a book as a gift for my friend, but I don't want to give up my friend's first publication rights.  Is there a service I could use &amp;mdash; perhaps like one of those photo publishing books or something along those lines &amp;mdash; where I could get the rhymes in a bound book form but without it being considered publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="734" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T18:48:19.620" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T07:09:41.753" Title="How can I put something in book format without &quot;publishing&quot; it?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5043" CreationDate="2012-02-15T17:24:09.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the purpose of doing this for your friend to see their words &quot;in print&quot;, or for them to see that someone considers them good? (i.e., you.) Or perhaps it's something else entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever option you choose, you'll have to get the rhymes in shape for printing/publication, if they aren't already. There's no need to hire an editor, not with a print run of one, but I &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; do some careful proofreading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, print runs of nursery rhymes will include illustrations as a matter of course. If you want to simulate a print run, you'll want to do these as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a few options: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get the rhymes into bound book form, using a short-run print service.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advantages: Less work on your part. Will look professional. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disadvantages: Need to check services' terms of use. Expensive. Need to prepare manuscript, get illustrations and layout done. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do a craft-style &quot;printing&quot; of the book.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be where you get a scrapbook from a crafts store, and use it to hold the pages. Call it a &quot;mockup&quot; of the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advantages: Realistically, there are no copyright or terms-of-use issues. Cheaper than a print-on-demand book. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disadvantages: Will look home-made, although that can be charming. Slightly more work on your part than bringing the whole thing to a printer - will take the most time of these options. Need to prepare manuscript, get illustrations and layout done (but less tightly than with the first option.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do a framed print of one of the rhymes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the simplest way to handle this. Pick one of the rhymes, have it illustrated or decorated, and print it out nicely and put it in a frame. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advantages: Less work overall. Will look home-made but, here, I think this is an advantage. Realistically, there are no copyright or terms-of-use issues. The cheapest option of all.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disadvantages: Less extensive than doing the whole book. You need to pick just one rhyme. (Or is that an advantage?) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T17:24:09.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5045" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5047" CreationDate="2012-02-15T17:47:17.057" Score="13" ViewCount="2391" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a collection of short stories that I'm currently selling in the Amazon Kindle marketplace, and one of the biggest hurdles to actually getting my works read is lack of exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My &lt;em&gt;passive&lt;/em&gt; plan (once my KDP Select period is over) is to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4906/is-publishing-to-amazon-kindle-alternative-ebook-markets-worth-the-time-and-effo&quot;&gt;publish to multiple marketplaces&lt;/a&gt;, in order to have my works available to the largest audience possible. This may be a good strategy in the long run, but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem of pushing the most eyeballs &lt;em&gt;toward&lt;/em&gt; my works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In what ways can I market a collection of short stories that would be most effective, without being obnoxious in regards to volume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="57" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T10:36:35.847" Title="What marketing techniques are effective for short story eBook collections?" Tags="|short-story|ebook|marketing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5045" CreationDate="2012-02-15T18:30:52.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The challenge with publishing these days, especially with the great supply of e-books, is getting people to look at your stuff among all the competition.  There's so much to choose from; if I've never heard of you, what will get me to buy?  Short stories seem to this consumer to have a big advantage: you can give one away for free and people can get a sense of your writing.  I've bought several collections because I was able to read one story, either via the Kindle preview or via a posted copy on the author's web site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the writing does need to sell the work too, but I think the biggest problem is getting the eyeballs in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a consumer's perspective; I haven't tried to sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T18:30:52.520" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5045" CreationDate="2012-02-15T19:23:13.150" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think we already have a question about generally marketing a book, so I keep the first part short (hopefully the second also):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a blog (oh, you have one, good!) and post about your stories, pricing, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell it your family, friends, colleagues &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make meaningful posts to other forums, blogs, or other sites (like what you are doing here). Do not mention your books/short stories, just provide a link in your signature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more complete list is provided by &lt;a href=&quot;http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/lets-get-digital/&quot;&gt;David Gaughran&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choose your &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=2275&quot;&gt;pricing&lt;/a&gt; well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can offer on story for free on your blog to attract readers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Offer collections and single stories: e.g. take 99 cents for a single story and $2.99 for a collection of five, 4.99 for ten&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bundle your collections around a topic. Keep in mind, that you are not bound to seasons like a brick-and-mortar bookstore. You can publish a Christmas collection today. Readers find it, when it's time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=2168&quot;&gt;the new way of publishing&lt;/a&gt; and on how a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=3736&quot;&gt;publisher's brain should work&lt;/a&gt;, can be found on Mr. Smith's homepage (I have the feeling I link pretty often to his page, maybe I should stop that. Maybe not.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T19:23:13.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5024" CreationDate="2012-02-16T06:37:27.287" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My own habit is to use either Dropbox or Google docs to store what I refer to as &quot;lore files.&quot; Each file contains all current details for a particular category: cities, characters, items, species. When making a minor change, the files are changed directly. If it is a major change or addition, it is added to a discussion file, to be added later. Before referencing something in your writing, simply check the lore file for that item. While this requires a bit of work keeping everything up to date, I find that the work translates directly into making the end result as congruous as possible. Additionally, it can help to record in the lore files the locations of references to the entry in your writing. This way when a change is made to the lore, it is easy to find chapters and pages that may be affected by the changes. Again, a lot of &quot;not writing work,&quot; but in personal experience, it helps immensely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a slight aside, these lore files can also be helpful if you feel the need to include an index or release a sort of encyclopedia to your book. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3277" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T06:37:27.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5045" CreationDate="2012-02-16T10:10:33.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who's your audience?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer that, and you'll know where to focus your efforts. Wherever that audience gathers; whatever the norms are among them; whoever within that group makes book recommendations people pay attention to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blogging and telling friends is nice. It also doesn't get you very far, because thousands of other eBook self-pubbers are doing precisely the same thing. The common reader is inundated with plugs for self-published work; as long as they're promotional plugs, most readers will ignore them simply because he comes across so many. Two exceptions to this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some works may have some special feature that'll grab some eyes even in a plug (&quot;Ooooh, I &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; vampire time travel stories!&quot; or &quot;Hey, a how-to book on building origami tables - I never thought about it, but that could be cool!&quot; or even &quot;Cool, this book only costs a buck!&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your book is good enough and you get it out to a large number of people, you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be able to get a word-of-mouth thing going, and then you're golden - you've got people recommending your work to friends; that's just about the best publicity there is. &lt;em&gt;But,&lt;/em&gt; this is hardly something to rely upon; it depends heavily on the quality and accessibility of the book (which is practically orthogonal to marketing strategy...); and it's pretty much outside your own control.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, knowing your audience and targeting them is extremely helpful - it helps you aim for the first, &quot;special feature,&quot; reaction, and it focuses on groups most likely to have that reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great difficulty is that many ebooks (and short story anthologies even more acutely than novels) don't really &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; a clear audience beyond &quot;readers&quot; or maybe &quot;readers within [Genre X].&quot; And that's tough, because so many readers are spread out all over the place and it's hard to find a clear focus, and because such a broadly-defined group already &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; plenty of reading material to their tastes, and is &lt;em&gt;already&lt;/em&gt; fending off similar broad plugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what I'd suggest is to see if you can brand yourself. Figure out, in detail, what existing communities would most enjoy your work. Build around that. If you need to change, add, subtract - I'd strongly suggest doing that. &lt;strong&gt;Build up your brand, know who you're aiming for, figure out how to reach them.&lt;/strong&gt; Each of those steps will be very individual to your particular work and style - but those are the steps worth figuring out, and taking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T10:10:33.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5052" CreationDate="2012-02-16T10:39:16.603" Score="3" ViewCount="373" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea that I wanted to convey is that a certain constant exposure to an object would build up a mental library of experiences with the object inside our minds. So, my intention is to write this idea in a way that allows the reader to visualise a building-up effect. I have a sentence that reads like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The constant exposures build up a mental set of experiences &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the&#xA;  object &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sentence, however, sounds awkward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it reads &quot;&lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the object &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; us&quot;. This part sounds having to pronounce so many &quot;&lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt;&quot;s that I think would confuse the reader. Other than &quot;&lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, are there other choices of preposition can I use in conjunction with the word &quot;experiences&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, does the part &quot;build up a mental set&quot; sound unnatural?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2511" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T21:54:32.697" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:54:32.697" Title="How can I describe the effect of building up a mental exposures?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-05-31T21:56:51.680" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5051" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-16T11:00:23.193" Score="0" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4855/where-to-publish-poems&quot;&gt;Where to publish poems&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to write poems and stories. They were published in local newspapers many times, but I did not get any benefit besides this limited publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know how I should go about looking for larger, more widely-read venues that will be appropriate for my work. I would like to hear about specific recommended publications, but mostly about the process I should go through in order to find such publications myself. I am most looking for a venue that will let me show my talent so that people know about my creativity; eventually I would like to make writing my profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3279" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:55:21.047" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:55:21.047" Title="How can I find good venues for publishing my work?" Tags="|fiction|poetry|career|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2012-02-16T21:13:28.887" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5050" CreationDate="2012-02-16T11:48:57.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you taking something simple and making it complicated?  It really sounds like you're just talking about learning, or about developing familiarity with an object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you want to keep the details, I'd first distinguish between &quot;constant&quot; and &quot;repeated&quot;.  I'm not sure which you mean, but if the exposure is truly constant, I'd take the &quot;s&quot; off &quot;exposures&quot;. If it's been constant, there's only been one.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I'd eliminate either &quot;mental&quot; or &quot;within us&quot;.  They're redundant - where would a mental image be, if not within somebody?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also not sure about &quot;mental experiences&quot;, or about having experiences &quot;within us&quot;.  The experience you're talking about is external, right?  The interaction of the person with the object?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, without know the greater context I'd say: &quot;The more exposure we have to the object, the more we learn about it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want to keep all the &quot;experiences&quot; and &quot;building&quot; stuff in there, maybe: Constant exposure to the object builds up a mental library of experiences.&quot; But that sounds vague and wordy to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the idea is complicated, the writing may need to be complicated in order  to explain it.  But in this case, the idea seems pretty simple, so I think the writing should match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T11:48:57.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5045" CreationDate="2012-02-16T17:09:54.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a series of short stories that I have published under a pen name, and I had a lot of difficulty getting any exposure or sales. Each short story was a stand alone story, and I priced them at $0.99 each. I then combined them together (five stories) into a collection that I listed at $2.99. The first couple of months I would sell a few short stories and maybe five or six collections. Then, back before Christmas, I started giving away one of the stories for free at Smashwords, which I used to distribute to the Apple store, B&amp;amp;N, and Sony. Within a week, the story was free at all of those sites as well. I then used the link on my Amazon page to inform them of the lower price, and they matched it within a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In January, I gave away over 10,000 copies of the free book at Amazon and sold over 150 copies of the collection. I also gave away about 6000 copies at B&amp;amp;N and sold another 85 copies of the collection there. In the first two weeks of February I have already matched those numbers at Amazon. (B&amp;amp;N reports monthly through Smashwords, so I don't have any numbers for them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now with all the people that bought or received new e-readers for Christmas, there are a lot of folks going through the freebie lists looking for new titles. If you can get some of them to pick up your freebie then you may be able to &quot;ride the wave&quot;. I have done something similar with a series of books and have had even better success with that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as building up your brand or promoting yourself with a blog, I haven't done either. What I have done is write, write, and then write some more. If you have plenty of titles then you have a better chance of getting people to pick up other works. Free will get you noticed, but then it is up to you to make sure they want to go out and buy whatever else you have to offer. If the writing is good (especially on the freebie), then the rest will take care of itself. Nothing promotes you better than having more titles from which to choose!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T17:09:54.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5054" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5057" CreationDate="2012-02-17T04:23:49.883" Score="6" ViewCount="911" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a long time now, I've been reading books on how to get the first draft of a novel written. I've finally begun putting the knowledge I've gathered to practice and look forward to the results. In the meantime, I'm interested in trying to write short stories as well, mainly because they require less prep, the first draft will be finished sooner, and I'll have something to practice revising (I'm hoping if I become more familiar with revision it will help me through some of the issues that have demotivated me when it comes to writing novels).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, do I need to know anything to write a short story that I probably wouldn't have picked up in studying to write novels? &lt;strong&gt;Does the size difference significantly change the way I should understand issues like characterization, plot, conflict, theme, or anything else?&lt;/strong&gt; I'd like to avoid buying a book on the subject if I don't have to, since I've fallen into the trap of study-as-procrastination before and what references I've seen seem to go back to the basics I've seen in novel-writing anyway, but I don't want to miss anything important either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3225" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T14:46:21.957" Title="Do I need to know anything to write a short story that I wouldn't know by studying how to write novels?" Tags="|novel|short-story|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5054" CreationDate="2012-02-17T04:38:38.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good short story has many of the same elements as a good novel. Character development, a strong plot, good descriptions, and realistic dialogue. However, a short story has one thing a novel usually does not: conciseness. A short story has to deliver the same force as a novel, but in a much smaller package. Think of a novel as a 280mm battleship shell. It is large, heavy, and certainly gets the job done when it impacts a target. A short story is more comparable to a 9mm pistol bullet. It is small and lightweight, but delivered well, it can accomplish exactly what is needed. The difference then lies in delivery. Those battleship shells can level a house, but they require massive quantities of energy. A 9mm, nowhere nearly as much. A 9mm requires much focus and precision in order to be effective. A battleship shell, just point it and fire. Now, in relation to novels vs. short stories, a short story requires great focus. That is one thing that is rarely taught by studying novelwriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to your question, I do not think it is a matter of buying a book, however. It is a matter of practice. Take a novel that you have written or even one that you've read before. Attempt to focus the plot and message of the book into a short story. Evaluate the end result: does it make you feel the message, or was it lost in translation? Rinse and repeat, as they say. Focus on capturing the emotion and message of a piece, over its details and grandeur. Before long, you will be an expert short story writer. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3277" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T04:38:38.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5054" CreationDate="2012-02-17T09:14:09.013" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say you need to know anything new, but I think you need to know a new side of the old stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing short stories is a distinct skill: there are people who are masters at it, and people who are much better with more space. A Gabe says, the basic elements of fiction are the same whether the work is long or short, but the way you use these elements is quite different.  Short stories rarely have subplots. They rarely stray from the standard Climax, Rising Action, Climax, Denouement structure. They rarely give much attention to secondary characters. They rarely switch POV. They rarely give a whole lot of back story.  The conventional wisdom is that writers have to make every word count even when writing longer fiction; this wisdom is even more important in a short story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's not a whole new skill set, but don't assume that everything you learn from writing short stories will carry over to writing novels, and don't assume everything you've learned about writing novels will be useful when you're writing short stories.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T09:14:09.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5054" CreationDate="2012-02-17T15:48:43.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often think of different forms of writing as a continuum along a line of compression.  In non-fiction you may have a book-length treatment being the least compressed, an article somewhat more so, etc.  In fiction a novel is the least compressed, then a novella, then a short story, then a &quot;short short&quot; such as the 50 word challenge pieces.  Those shortest pieces often verge on poetry, layering many meanings and significances into individual words and phrases to get the full message across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience the biggest and most important skill for a novelist who wants to write a successful short story is to be able to compress your story.  Your expression needs to be more compact.  You have less time to sketch your characters and make me, the reader, care about them.  You may have fewer characters to work with.  You have less space for conflict.  Your climax typically comes relatively later in the work and your denouement is shorter.  Your pacing is often faster, ratcheting up the conflict faster than in a novel but not so fast as to leave the reader feeling frantic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world of a short story may be smaller than the world of a novel, but it should be even more richly layered with meaning.  That's what makes short stories so wonderful to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For great examples, get a few years worth of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hmhbooks.com/hmh/bestamerican/shortstoriesbookdetails&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Best American Short Stories&lt;/a&gt;.  Not only will you learn from what was deemed by an esteemed author to be the best short stories of each year, you'll have a lot of fun reading some great fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T15:48:43.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5054" CreationDate="2012-02-18T09:00:37.003" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would not want the reader to think you wrote a short story from what you picked up in studying to write novels, do you?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two are different genres and for a reader, each has a different sense of appeal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do have to think afresh and approach your writing from a different perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2012-02-18T09:00:37.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5059" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-18T09:37:05.530" Score="7" ViewCount="507" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a follow-up to another question. I asked &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5022/should-my-readers-be-able-to-identify-with-the-bad-guy&quot;&gt;Should my readers be able to identify with the bad guy?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and got an &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5036/2487&quot;&gt;excellent answer&lt;/a&gt; which explains the continuum of &quot;identifiability&quot; for bad guys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his answer, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/1046/standback&quot;&gt;Standback&lt;/a&gt; also cited George R.R. Martin's &quot;A Song of Ice and Fire&quot; as an example of &lt;strong&gt;complex conflict&lt;/strong&gt;, which was spot on: I loved those bad guys, and even wanted to re-use the idea of following one character per chapter, which I saw for the first time in Martin's books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my bad guy, Pio, is in the mafia, and he's after a peer of his. He's already managed to put the blame on Salvatore for something bad he's done himself, and now that Salvatore is out of jail, it's time for Pio to kill him. Pio is ruthless, macho and brutal, but I still want to take the time to explore his psychology. There are certainly reasons for his traits which are just exacerbated instances of our own &quot;dark sides&quot; (or at least my own, anyway.) And he's probably going to have some good moments as well - maybe he'll fall in love? Or learn a valuable lesson and feel the burn of shame for a little while?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, though, he's still the bad guy. Is it a mistake to try to explore his psychology? What should I do or avoid in order not to spoil the main conflict of the book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2487" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T01:47:26.057" Title="I want to explore the psychology of a ruthless, macho killer. What mistakes should I avoid?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5059" CreationDate="2012-02-18T12:41:41.023" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely not a mistake to explore his psychology. GRRMartin is a great example; by the end of book 4 I really felt for the Lannisters, and they have done some evil things. You don't have to make Pio so sympathetic that we're necessarily rooting for him to kill Sal, but we should understand Pio's motivations. His motives should make sense to the reader given what we know of Pio. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: &lt;em&gt;Why&lt;/em&gt; is he ruthless, macho, and brutal? Was Pio's father Raimundo heavy-handed? Did he smack Pio's sisters and mother around and turn a blind eye to Pio's misdeeds? Did Pio run with a group of similar thugs as a teenager? Or was he a homeless orphan who had to steal and rob to feed those sisters after his mother died in childbirth and his father was killed in the war? Maybe he has a touch of the bi and he acts &quot;macho&quot; to overcompensate? (there's your potential to fall in love; he dimly realizes his feelings for Mario are not just for a paisano, but something stronger, and he feels like he has to strangle that impulse in himself because it's a sin, or because it makes him weak, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I wouldn't do is &quot;excuse&quot; your killer. If Pio is the bad guy, he shouldn't be killing Sal because, say, Sal killed Pio's mother. He shouldn't be killing Sal because Sal is his best friend from the cradle and is now dying of Alzheimer's, or cancer, and death is a release. Pio shouldn't have a mental disorder which absolves him of responsibility for his actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can understand that Pio feels like he has to kill Sal to keep Sal from spilling the beans, and that Pio might even regret having to kill him at a family wedding because it's rude or unprofessional. We should not think that Pio is &quot;right&quot; and Sal really does have to die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-02-18T12:41:41.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5050" CreationDate="2012-02-18T15:12:39.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Exposures&quot; reminds me of photography. If I were trying to express the concept of repeated exposures, I might try to draw a comparison between those two. Each experience with an object is like a snapshot. With each experience, a photo is taken of the object from a different angle, in different lighting, perhaps in different places or different versions of the same object, depending on where you want to take the concept. All of the photos get filed away in an album, ever-widening as we take more snapshots, to which we return when we need to reference our knowledge about the object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the alternate preposition, does &quot;of&quot; work for you? &quot;...Experiences of the object within us&quot;? That said, I think Kate has a good point about the redundancy of &lt;em&gt;mental&lt;/em&gt; experiences &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Come to think of it, if you're trying to develop the idea of &lt;em&gt;constant&lt;/em&gt; exposure to an item, you might want to change my photo analogy to a video recording analogy. Each video is made up of several frames that combine to deepen our understanding of its subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3225" LastActivityDate="2012-02-18T15:12:39.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5063" CreationDate="2012-02-18T18:01:08.210" Score="15" ViewCount="12982" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of publishing a book on kindle, but I don't currently have a business set up. Do you need a business to publish a book? I'm curious as to how to handle US taxes for the royalties. I wouldn't be publishing it from outside the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3286" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:55:13.247" LastActivityDate="2023-02-10T19:01:17.613" Title="How to handle taxes for a self-published book" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|kindle|getting-started|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5062" CreationDate="2012-02-18T18:21:20.883" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you don't need to set up a business to self-publish a book. In the U.S., royalty income and all related expenses to publishing the book (e.g. paying a graphic designer to create a cover, advertising, travel expenses for a book tour, etc.) are reported on Schedule C of your personal tax return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding Social Security and Medicare taxes, you don't use the forms 940/941 that an employer would file. Instead, these contributions are called &lt;em&gt;self-employment tax&lt;/em&gt; on your personal return, and cover both the employer and employee portion for Social Security and Medicare. The employer portion is a deduction on your personal tax return (available even to those that don't itemize deductions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Steven pointed out in his answer, don't forget that you may owe additional taxes that aren't covered by withholding of any W-2 income you may have, so you may need to make estimated quarterly payments to avoid having to pay an underpayment penalty when you file your tax return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="1415" LastEditDate="2012-02-19T16:33:17.593" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T16:33:17.593" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5064" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-18T23:42:19.810" Score="6" ViewCount="1774" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SPOILER ALERT:&lt;/strong&gt; Questions and answers may contain spoilers for all three books in the &lt;em&gt;Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt; trilogy by Suzanne Collins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Symbolic Conflict as the Climax of Social Conflict&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed an interesting structure inherent in Suzanne Collins &quot;Hunger Games&quot; trilogy. It seems an unusual structure, presenting an interesting challenge of plotting, setting and structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;core&lt;/strong&gt; of the narrative - the overarching plot - is concerned with the subjugation of Panem's Districts by the Capitol. This core conflict is given an extreme, exaggerated, and intense representation in the eponymous Hunger Games - which are explicitly designed within the story's setting to demonstrate Capitol's complete dominion, to humiliate the Districts, and to pit the Tributes against each other. So the Games are designed to &lt;strong&gt;symbolize&lt;/strong&gt; the social plight of the twelve Districts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The books focus very heavily on this symbol. They spend the climactic portions of the first two books focusing heavily on the symbolic scenario - playing out the larger conflicts of the setting on a more immediate, visceral level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Symbolic Conflict as Interruption of the Primary Conflict&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it seems to me that this structure also presents an interesting difficulty. The Games symbolize the larger conflict, but they don't affect it - not directly. In many ways, both &lt;em&gt;The Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Catching Fire&lt;/em&gt; start out one type of story (highlighting the abuse of the Districts at the hands of the Capitol) and then shift into a very different type of story (a brutal survival game against constructed dangers and harsh competition). &lt;strong&gt;The survival-game story clearly &lt;em&gt;stems&lt;/em&gt; from the class-war story, but does not seem poised to directly go back and affect the class-war story in return.&lt;/strong&gt; In fact, both these books portray, as a climactic moment, ways the Games' outcome &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; affect the rest of society - and this is seen as unexpected, unpredictable, destabilizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this is a problematic structure. The interruption of the &quot;main&quot; thread in favor of a &quot;secondary&quot; thread, which doesn't clearly advance the &quot;main&quot; thread, runs the risk of the &quot;secondary&quot; thread feeling like a side-trek, a distraction - a thread you're waiting to get over with and &quot;get back to the real story.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it, using the Hunger Games to reflect the entire social conflict is the central concept the trilogy is constructed around. So the issue I'm presenting is inherent to the trilogy concept. I think Collins found many ways to alleviate this difficulty. I would like to ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What techniques and structure/plotting choices did Collins make which directly helped make the &quot;survival-game&quot; thread feel like part of the primary narrative, and not an interruption of it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What ways can you suggest of dealing with this issue beyond what Collins did in the original books? I am interested even in methods which would require drastic changes to the originals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE:&lt;/strong&gt; This is my first attempt at a case-study question. I'd be happy to hear what people think of this type of question, and what guidelines might be appropriate. If you have any thoughts, please join the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/430/is-this-attempt-at-a-case-study-question-something-wed-like-to-see-more-of&quot;&gt;meta discussion!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:03.470" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T11:14:49.860" Title="Preventing the symbolic conflict of &quot;Hunger Games&quot; from overshadowing widespread social plight" Tags="|technique|structure|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-05-28T11:24:01.880" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5059" CreationDate="2012-02-19T01:47:26.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to remember that the reader is a &quot;willing participant&quot; in the process of storytelling. A certain amount of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;willing suspension of disbelief&lt;/a&gt; is something the author &#xA;can reasonably expect his reader to supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice what that means is you don't have to provide every last detail about the background, personality, motivation, etc., of every character. Concentrate on the interesting elements, and only provide details in other contexts where it's necessary because the reader might otherwise have trouble convincing himself it's all &quot;plausible&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, decide what the &lt;strong&gt;real&lt;/strong&gt; story is that you're trying to tell. As a rule that story shouldn't be a &quot;towering saga&quot; trying to create a whole new universe with every detail spelt out. Give the reader some credit and assume he &lt;strong&gt;wants&lt;/strong&gt; you to &quot;skip the details&quot; so long as you don't insult his intelligence (by expecting him to accept that the bad guy is actually a really nice chap who happens to be a psychopath every third Tuesday of the month for no particular reason, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: Don't try to cover too much ground. If the details aren't central to the story, omit them unless you think the reader won't be able to imagine either what you were thinking of, or a plausible alternative. Help the reader to become actively involved, by giving him scope to &quot;flesh out the tale&quot; (but keep him on a reasonably tight leash, obviously!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1662" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T01:47:26.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5062" CreationDate="2012-02-19T03:06:25.497" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amazon will send you a 1099 that will identify the amount of royalties that they paid you. If you are just now starting, I would strongly recommend setting aside at least 30% of everything you earn in royalties as soon as you receive it. You are now considered self-employed, and you will have to pay 15% of your royalties as self-reported income tax. You will also have the self-employment tax, or the Social Security/Medicaid portion an employer would normally pay, which is now your responsibility. That will be about 15% as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also keep in mind that if you start doing well with your sales, you will probably want to start paying that 30% to the IRS every quarter as estimated taxes. If you wait until the end of the year and then show a large sum of income on which you had not paid any taxes during the year, they will slap a penalty on you for failure to pay sufficient estimated taxes. Paying the estimated taxes throughout the year will help you to avoid that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2018-07-16T23:23:31.883" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T23:23:31.883" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5068" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-19T16:13:36.867" Score="6" ViewCount="1096" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past when I've written short stories, I've found that setting a word limit tends to make my writing more focused and concise (generally, the limits have been imposed by a course I was taking).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if there's an &quot;optimal&quot; word limit I could use to restrict myself when I start writing a short story. I could write less or write more, obviously, but I'm looking for something that gives me a good starting point to work towards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give you an idea, I define &quot;optimal&quot; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a good, respectable length for a short story that readers are comfortable with&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a length that could maximize acceptance for use in a variety of publications (although this is not a major concern of mine as I tend to prefer to write stories without thinking about where they could be published)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-03T03:18:46.290" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T03:20:22.263" Title="What are the advantages to setting a word limit for a short story?" Tags="|short-story|wordcount|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5068" CreationDate="2012-02-19T21:16:31.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider an alternative approach: Write the first draft however you like, to whatever length fits your story, even if it's wordy and not as focused as you like. Then edit to improve clarity, focus, and style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to do this (that my writing group has used to great effect):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write the first draft.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delete 1/10 of the paragraphs, in such a way as to do the least damage to the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delete 1/10 of the remaining sentences, in such a way as to do the least damage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delete 1/10 of the remaining words, in such a way as to do the least damage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Note the word count after deleting all of those things. This word count is your target.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rewrite so as to restore any essential ideas that were deleted, while staying within your target word count.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This exercise is quite painful. It is also quite instructive, and enormously beneficial to clarity, focus, and style. It forces you to be mindful. It confronts you with your habits (good and bad) and forces you to make difficult choices about your words and phrases, and about which ideas to keep and which to toss. As you make those difficult choices, you will learn about the effects of your choices and about which effects matter most to you. In the end, your mindful choices will produce a style that has power and grace, and that fits the story you want to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T21:16:31.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5068" CreationDate="2012-02-19T23:37:52.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it to be less a matter of a specific word count, and more a matter of readability. Edgar Allen Poe maintained that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/philcomp.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a good short story should be read at one sitting&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want your reader to be able to enjoy the full impact of your story without the need for devoting hours of time to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3277" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T23:37:52.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5071" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-20T00:15:40.653" Score="3" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, so on the Kindle website there's all about how to go from .doc --&gt; HTML --&gt; kindle. But I write primarily in HTML, which is what Kindle uses in the first place, so it seems silly to convert to HTML --&gt; .doc --&gt; HTML again, then hope that nothing got screwed up in the conversion (and obviously I like the control of putting the file together myself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there somewhere I can read exactly what the structure of a Kindle folder should be? (HTML file + illustrations folder)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've looked, and all I find is .doc --&gt; HTML --&gt; Kindle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What tags are allowed, what custom tags (if any) does Kindle need, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3219" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T04:33:13.603" Title="File specifications for HTML folder --&gt; Kindle?" Tags="|formatting|kindle|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-02-20T08:38:05.137" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5071" CreationDate="2012-02-20T04:33:13.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/article.asp?BaseFolder=prcgen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the definition of the mobipocket file format&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T04:33:13.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5073" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5077" CreationDate="2012-02-20T08:17:20.620" Score="5" ViewCount="23639" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is a better way to write in an email to tell my client that I will charge him a fee of say $100? Often, I feel very reluctant to write these ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I will quote the hosting and development fees at $100.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds totally crappy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I will give you a quote of $100 for the development and web hosting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't sound very polite. It sounds like the client owes me something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The total charges/fees for the development and hosting is $100.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[OR]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cost of the development and hosting is $100. / The hosting and development will cost $100.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[OR]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hosting and development are charged at $100.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds more direct but still, the tone isn't very friendly. Feels like the relationship between the client and me is still at a &quot;stranger&quot; stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some ways or examples to write in an email a quotation that I would like to charge my client, which sometimes is a sensitive thing, in a friendlier manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2511" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-02-20T22:31:58.277" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T09:48:27.157" Title="A friendlier way to write charges or fees to clients?" Tags="|style|business-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4361" CreationDate="2012-02-20T09:52:43.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To help with the tone, consider using shorter, more concise sentences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To gain punch, you can simplify your sentence structures,eliminate some abstract words (&quot;exacerbates&quot;, &quot;denial&quot;), and put your key words at the end of each sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To gain force at the end, you might consier reoranizing the last sentence to connect tightly the causes and effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring a conflict often makes it worse. When I ignored some bullies, they increased their bullying. Eventually they stopped, but only after I confronted them. Telling them to stop was not easy. I needed to overcome my fear of being hurt, and I had to work hard to understand my own nature.  Having done both, the gain in courage was worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3288" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T09:52:43.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5073" CreationDate="2012-02-20T12:43:33.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you know the person you are writing to and if he or she is friendly with you, you can add a simple smiley like this :) at the end of your statement to make it friendly.&#xA;But not to those clients, you have just started to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3289" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-10-22T09:48:27.157" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T09:48:27.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5073" CreationDate="2012-02-20T12:48:39.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The cost of the development and hosting is $100. / The hosting and development will cost $100&quot; are both fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also use &quot;I estimate the hosting and development will cost $100&quot; if it's genuinely an estimate which might change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T12:48:39.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5073" CreationDate="2012-02-20T19:46:14.820" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two elements of a quote for which clarity is &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; more important than friendliness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The description of your services.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The statement of your fees.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you like, make everything else in your message friendly. But write the description of your services clearly. Then write a short line like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My fee for these services is $100.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of that &quot;I will quote&quot; or &quot;I will give you a quote&quot; blather. That's filler. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider whether friendliness is what you really want. You and this client are strangers, and this client wants you not as a friend, but as someone who can provide a service they need. The client may read a friendly message as wishy-washy, or presumptuous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to establish the tone of a relationship through text. If you want to make your relationship more person, have a phone call or two, and be personable. That will establish a relationship, and the relationship will set the context in which the client reads your email messages. If the relationship is friendly, the client will read the message in a friendly tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But whatever you choose to do, when it comes to the terms of your agreement, favor directness and clarity over friendliness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T19:46:14.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5078" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-20T20:44:24.820" Score="7" ViewCount="598" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write epic fantasy; I've written two trilogies in a joint setting, and am writing further books in the same setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to start writing short stories for my setting as well - stories that I can send to short fiction venues, that can introduce new readers to my series and provoke their interest in my books. It's very important that, on the one hand, the stories be of a piece with the rest of the series, but on the other, they need to be clear, accessible, and engrossing to new readers who aren't familiar with the series yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm used to plotting on a pretty epic scale. Most of the &quot;draws&quot; in my work are built around a long range scope - gradual buildups, different threads intertwining with each other, Fate of Nations at Stake, the whole shebang. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where, within my epic-scale setting, should I be looking for story ideas appropriate for the &quot;mere&quot; scale of short stories?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclosure:&lt;/strong&gt; This is a hypothetical question for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/426/wtcs-short-story-writing&quot;&gt;&quot;Short Story&quot; topic challenge&lt;/a&gt;. In reality I have not written any fantasy epics. No, not even one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:03.470" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T22:07:01.970" Title="How can I find short-story spinoffs for my fantasy epic?" Tags="|fantasy|short-story|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5078" CreationDate="2012-02-20T22:07:01.970" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on the comment by John Smithers, one of the advantages of an epic fantasy is the grand scale upon which your story is built. Usually an epic fantasy either contains a lot of characters or covers a considerable time span. Ideas for short stories can come from either of those two sources (or a host of others). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In writing my epic fantasy, I found that I had to eliminate certain supporting characters because they just didn't contribute enough to the overall story. However, their own stories, while much smaller on the grand scale, were nonetheless interesting. As a result, I am contemplating writing short stories that involve those peripheral characters. Each short story would include or involve one of the major characters, therefore giving readers an introduction to a small portion of the bigger story. In a couple of instances, the intention would be to provide more background on a couple of major characters by depicting certain events in their lives that were significant in helping them to become the characaters they are in the original story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to this, my epic fantasy starts several hundred years after a major event. This major event is referred to by the main characters and explained in some minor detail, but that event alone would provide enough material for a short story that could serve as a prelude. In addition to that, there are at least two or three other important events that are alluded to in the original epic fantasy, and each of those events could be represented well in a short story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, look for people or events that you think your readers would be interested in learning more about. Also, as you are editing the next epic fantasy, if you find yourself removing large portions of content, remember to set it aside. There might be something there that would present itself as a short story, and you can use it at a future time. Even if you don't have a large amount of content surrounding the item(s) you are removing, it might still serve as a foundation upon which you could build a short story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T22:07:01.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5081" CreationDate="2012-02-21T03:15:03.893" Score="12" ViewCount="806" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to burn out developing my stories before they even reach the page, so I'm taking some advice to plan a novel. I didn't quite follow the advice to the letter; I used an idea that had been rolling around in my head for a while. Character A had a backstory, Character B was in conflict with him, and there would be an antagonist to both of them. Anytime I try to introduce the antagonist, however, I find myself losing interest because I have no idea who he is. I'd be happy to throw him away and see where the story goes without him, but I'm concerned that it would lose much of its motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to know all of my main characters better. I recently wrote a scene that shed a lot of light on Character B's reasons for wanting to leave the situation in which Character A has placed him. That and Character A's backstory might be enough to provide the motivation I'd miss if I chucked the antagonist. I would like to write some scenes revolving around  these details, but they wouldn't be part of the finished novel and I'm afraid of slipping into procrastination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there room for writing scenes that could prepare me for writing the main story, but won't be in the final version of the novel? Is this procrastination, or is it useful for a story I haven't spent a lot of time developing? How can I tell the difference? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3225" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T05:26:45.447" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T13:08:43.533" Title="How do I decide if writing expository scenes that won't be in my finished novel is useful, or procrastination?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|planning|psychology-of-writing|time-management|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5080" CreationDate="2012-02-21T09:51:53.213" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fearing procrastination &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; procrastination ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First: No-one said you are not allowed to develop a character when pantsing a novel. But if you take three days to add detail on detail for just one character, then you are doing it wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sit down and write your story. If you encounter the problem, that you need more information about one character to go on, take a sheet of paper and a pen and scribble down the character details. Don't think! Just write down what's in your head. The moment your pen leaves the sheet and you start to ponder what to add more, throw the pen away, reread your character sheet and go on writing your story with the new information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does something do not fit what you wrote yesterday when using the new character? Shrug your shoulders and keep writing. No-one cares, at least not at this stage of your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second:&#xA;Scenes that do not belong to the story? How do you know, that they do not belong to the story? How do you know, that what you plan to write is what you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to write? Maybe these scenes are the real story you are after. Don't keep them separately. Add them to your story, keep writing. You can kick them out afterward if they don't fit. Being unsure and developing from what comes from your mind instantly is part of the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third: Never forget your main goal: &lt;strong&gt;Finish the &amp;amp;*$# novel!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-02-21T14:53:51.167" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T14:53:51.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5080" CreationDate="2012-02-21T14:06:30.553" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are writing, it is NOT procrastination. Believe me, there have been plenty of times where I would sit and think about a character or scene and come up with all these grandiose ideas, but never actually get anything down (or done). Then later I'd find myself wishing I had written something (anything) that would help the story along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first draft should be all about geting everything down. If you provide too much detail (or not enough), you can always fix it when you go through and edit. After the first pass through, you'll have a second draft which may still need to have more information deleted (or added). You may find yourself starting all over from scratch, but at least you'll have plenty of notes and reference material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there was another discussion about &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/5078/2343&quot;&gt;short story spinoffs&lt;/a&gt; from a novel. If you end up with some fully (or mostly) developed scenes or characaters, even if you don't use them in the finished novel, you may be able to use them as part of a supporting short story or part of a sequel or spinoff. The main thing is to just sit down and write!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T14:06:30.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1804" CreationDate="2012-02-22T11:55:28.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I spend a lot of time in Tinderbox ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/&lt;/a&gt; ) It is a great tool for harvesting information, putting down ideas or any kind of notes. Then, as need arises, to structure this information, discover new relationships and patterns, and finally export it to text or html. It is great for taking notes at lectures and rework them later and for making sense of any problem whith lots of information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can jut notes down in map view, where notes look like sticky notes on a windowpane. There is an outline view where notes are viewed as lists. There are also several other views. You can make Tinderbox do many things for you – agents are notes that collect aliases of notes based on your chosen criteria. All in all, you can do a lot in Tinderbox. I find it is ideal for when you want to take notes, research, and when you want to think what you have researched into something good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3292" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T11:55:28.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5089" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5091" CreationDate="2012-02-23T04:59:42.880" Score="17" ViewCount="5658" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been mulling over the plot and characters for an elaborate fantasy work for a number of years now. The longer I mull things over, the more possessed I am that this story is worth telling. The problem arises when I actually sit down to write it: as a lifelong fan of fantasy, when I write my story on paper, it seems generic. Contrived, almost. The plot and characters I am totally in love with, but when I write it, I think, &quot;Oh, this is worse than Paolini.&quot; It just feels... fake. What can I do to avoid generic writing? I would appreciate concrete methods that work, not just opinions or abstract advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3277" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2012-06-12T15:22:41.563" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T15:22:41.563" Title="How does one avoid bland, generic fantasy while they write?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|fantasy|plot|originality|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5089" CreationDate="2012-02-23T05:27:39.787" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If everything you write is sounding like overused tropes and clichés, it may be that you're simply showing your influences. And when you see your writing, all you're seeing are those influences. Hence, it feels less substantial to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What, exactly is &quot;bland, generic fantasy&quot; to you? I suggest you define what it is you're trying to avoid. Make a list if you're so inclined, or just get it straight in your mind what you want to sound different from. You could then go ahead and write, specifically avoiding these areas. While this could push you into writing about new and interesting things, it could also be difficult restriction to deal with. What if there's very little left after this process? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;All&lt;/em&gt; writers have influences. With some, it's more obvious than with others. However, the only cure to this is, unfortunately, to keep writing. Don't stop just because something seems familiar or fake, just note it for future revision. With a little talent and time, your influences will blend into a style that is yours. It won't happen quickly, or without some hard work, but have some faith that it will happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask for specific methods: Since becoming aware of your influences and stylistic leanings will only help matters, getting some critiques of your work with that in mind may help. However, volume is your friend: Get those pages written. Don't stop if they suck, just keep going. You won't learn from the experience if you don't. Some specific working regimens, if you don't have them, may also be of help here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-02-25T16:27:18.590" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T16:27:18.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5089" CreationDate="2012-02-23T05:53:47.447" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;What has worked for me in the past is to simply concentrate on telling the story. I'm assuming you are on your first draft and have yet to complete even that. In that case, you need to spend less time analyzing and more time telling your story. If you spend too much time reviewing as you write, you'll end up with a case of paralysis by analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes what causes a writer to start reviewing their work prematurely is a lack of focus or direction. If you don't already have an outline or at least a timeline of events, then maybe you should concentrate on that. The main idea is to just let the words flow, no matter how contrived they may seem. You will have plenty of time to go back and edit for style later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another consideration is to stop comparing your own words to what you have read in other fantasy novels. More importantly, I would recommend refraining from reading any fantasy at all while you are writing. I have found that reading a fantasy novel by another author proves to be very distracting when trying to write my own. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with copying another writers style, so don't assume that your readers will be critical of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, make sure you have at least a couple of good beta readers who will give you honest feedback. Let them help you to decide if your content is too contrived or too generic. It is very easy for us as writers to be overly critical of our own work. We end up spending so much time trying to refine the story that we never end up completing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T05:53:47.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="125" CreationDate="2012-02-23T07:17:34.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://ohlife.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OhLife&lt;/a&gt; previously for my daily piece of my writing. I followed it religiously for about 2 months. But my life journals were either too short or large and I had no way of tracking how much I write. That coupled with an absence of sense of accomplishment my writing graph went down steeply. Luckily for me I came across &lt;a href=&quot;https://750words.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;750words.com&lt;/a&gt; which is everything I wished for. I have set it to send me reminder emails at 7.30 in the morning. My day begins after writing it. I found 3 pages or 750 words the right amount of words to get my creative juices running. Writing whatever comes in my mind helps to clear the clutter in my mind and gets me ready for the day ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3297" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T07:17:34.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5089" CreationDate="2012-02-23T11:23:57.300" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the first draft: you won't. First drafts are almost invariably clunkers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But your first draft is not meant to shine. Your first draft is meant to get the story onto paper and out of your head where it's been languishing for years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once it's on paper, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; you can edit, revise, polish, and get an editor/editors to scrub out the bland and generic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can't do that until it's written. So give yourself permission to be bland. Give yourself permission to be generic. I promise it's okay. You will be able to fix it later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T11:23:57.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5094" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5097" CreationDate="2012-02-23T12:49:11.427" Score="6" ViewCount="2257" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's rare to find a how-to-write book or blog that doesn't have this advice: &quot;Read. Voraciously. In all genres, especially your genre of choice, books both good and bad. You won't develop as a Writer unless you are a Reader.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to spend more time reading fiction. It seems like a less paralyzing way of gaining know-how than the how-to-books (which I think tap straight into my critical side). I'm never more inspired to write than when I read, and my memories of the times I wanted to write most come from when I volunteered in libraries and was surrounded by book covers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, though, I come home from work, play with my dog a few minutes, and head for the computer to write. I can usually come up with six or seven hundred words before I bog down (can't wait until I'm far enough into my novel to know where I'm going), then I give in and pull up Google to search for solutions to whatever problem I perceive is blocking me. Usually I spend hours getting caught in the web and never find whatever nugget I'm searching for. Every so often, I'll come across that bit of reading advice and say, &quot;Yeah, that'll happen. It's hard enough to find time to write.&quot; On the other hand, if I could manage my time better, I'd probably find the time to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, &lt;strong&gt;how do I find a good balance between reading and writing?&lt;/strong&gt; I'm often reluctant to pull away from the computer when I feel the writing is becoming a grind because I don't want to teach myself to abandon the project. (I know how to do that well enough already.) I suspect even if I did use my time more effectively, I'd keep churning away at my project until the day ran out. Not quite the main question, but I suspect tangent to it, is there a guideline for when to stop writing to make time for other ways to develop my skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3225" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T13:06:28.783" LastActivityDate="2020-05-14T17:18:26.940" Title="How do I balance reading time with writing time?" Tags="|discipline|habits|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5094" CreationDate="2012-02-23T14:00:07.780" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me get this straight. Your &quot;schedule&quot; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Coming home&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cuddling dog&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write 600 words&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give in&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Surfing for &lt;strong&gt;hours&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want more time for reading? Cut your internet connection! I mean it. You also get more time for writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you sit down for writing, unplug your internet connection. Make it a big hassle for yourself plugging it in again. Like hiding the router in a hole in your garden. Give it the dog to play with. Best: use two computers, one exclusively for writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you hit stage 4 then do not surf, pick a book and read. Don't tell it's not that easy, because it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; that easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T14:00:07.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5094" CreationDate="2012-02-23T14:16:46.593" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem is not making time for reading. You have two other problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're giving up too quickly on writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You surf too much.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, as John Smithers wisely says, disconnect your internet connection. The web will still be here when you come back, I promise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you say &quot;I'm never more inspired to write than when I read.&quot; So: pick a book which is inspiring you, and put it next to your computer. When you hit 601 words and start to get bogged down, turn off the &lt;em&gt;monitor&lt;/em&gt; (so you can't be distracted) and read, until you're inspired again. Put the book down, turn the monitor back on, and start writing again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to &quot;whatever is bogging you down&quot; is, 98% of the time, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; found on the web, unless it's a particular word or fact. In that case, put in a placeholder and go back to it later. The answer is usually in your head, and you're good at finding reasons not to work through it. You are, as you correctly note, paralyzed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a third suggestion, I might add that if writing feels like a grind or a chore, set a timer. Do the writing-reading-writing for a specific amount of time: start with 30 minutes, and work up. When the time is up, &lt;em&gt;turn off the computer&lt;/em&gt; (no fair surfing) and go do something else. Something physical. Play with the dog, make dinner, weed, clean the house, something not involving electronics. This will let your mind go but keep your hands busy, which is when I get many of my best ideas (sometimes full scenes). Keep a notebook in your pocket, jot down anything cool, and go back to your activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are using the web as an excuse for procrastinating and not working through your issues (what's &quot;bogging you down&quot;). Reading isn't going to solve your problems, so there's no particular point in making special time for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T14:16:46.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5094" CreationDate="2012-02-23T16:04:21.233" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that you have felt most like writing when you were in a library surrounded by books. So go to the library to write! I know a couple of folks who do just that, and they have been extremely productive. They also are inspired by being surrounded by books, and they find that it is much easier to get a lot done without any distractions - which is another benefit of the library. However, a lot of libraries now have wireless service, so turn off your wireless access to keep yourself from once again allowing the web to become a distraction and a time consumer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also mentioned that you can't wait until you get far enough to know where you are going. It sounds to me like you need to do a little more organizing or perhaps even outlining of your story. It doesn't have to be anything fancy like you had to do in high school English. Just jot down some notes on who your characters are, what scenes they will find themselves in, and what type(s) of interaction(s) they will have. Note cards work really well for this so that you can rearrange the order easily and overlay character cards onto scenes. A timeline might be even more beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry so much about how to write. Just get in there and write until you finish your story. You can worry about cleaning it up and making it more concise when you finish the first draft and start your editing process. You may very well find yourself going through two, three, or more drafts before you feel it is finally right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as making time to read, just schedule it. You know when you have to be at work, you know what time you have available, you know what household chores need to be done, and you know you want to write. Work up a schedule for all of those things and if reading is that important, then block out time to do it. You may find that you want to spend more time writing anyway!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-02-11T04:39:54.923" LastActivityDate="2016-02-11T04:39:54.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5098" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-23T20:18:06.987" Score="3" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Style signatures&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; are bits of words and phrases used consistently throughout the entirety of a work (but not necessarily among my unrelated works). I would like to try using style signatures in a work of mine - things that won't stand out at individual usages, but I think the effect across a long piece will be interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Patterns I'm using:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using a specific set of 'said-bookism's' &lt;em&gt;everywhere&lt;/em&gt; in the book. eg.:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;~ whispered.&quot; for all dialog in low voice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;~ cried (out).&quot; for all belted out, high-voice dialog. (Notice, &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; in dialog tags; &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; in the narration.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;~ asked ~.&quot; for &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; questions regardless of voice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;~ said.&quot; for even-voiced dialog or otherwise un-indicated states.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Always using double paragraph breaks to indicate change in scenes. The reader is therefore expected to 'read it with a new eye' and disregard the setting, characters and -much more importantly- the time of the immediately previous scene.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Indicating pauses in speech by ellipses and em-dashes instead of the now popular comma. That's the more radical point so far (the third in the series) so I need feedback on how well it would show up to the reader since -as far as I know- it's ungrammatical.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Does anyone have more suggestions?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would this work well for the reader? That I leave invisible patterns in my writing in the paper-voice (between the narrator and reader where the narrator is a character)? I plan to partly use this as an embedded signature (again, this's an example) but I want to know how it would &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; work with the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T13:08:59.520" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T13:08:59.520" Title="Style signatures and uncommon formatting patterns" Tags="|style|fiction|technique|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4621" CreationDate="2012-02-23T22:29:07.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is also often up to the authors/editors discretion, for example if your title was fairly long (such as an essay) it might look very strange if a couple of words are lowercase. Also, of course, it should be consistent throughout, a lot of people seem to forget that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2052" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T22:29:07.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5101" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5103" CreationDate="2012-02-24T04:54:13.333" Score="4" ViewCount="1705" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a while I moved away from pen and paper, my handwriting was bad, it was sloppy, digital was the future. I barely write anything now, I don't even have notebooks or nice pens. But writing by hand helped me get the ideas &lt;em&gt;out&lt;/em&gt;. I want to get back in that state of being able to &lt;em&gt;produce&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After years of all-digital all the time, how can I get back into the habit of writing on paper again? I don't care what I write, I just want it to feel comfortable and natural again. Do I need comfortable pens, nice notebooks? Should I write everything down before I transcribe it on the computer? Should I just &lt;em&gt;write things&lt;/em&gt; every day to make it a natural habit again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T21:24:06.710" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T02:49:58.653" Title="How can I learn to write by hand again?" Tags="|habits|handwriting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5101" CreationDate="2012-02-24T09:29:57.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sure what's keeping you from writing is your question of 'How'. It's exactly like insomnia caused by worrying about not being able to fall asleep. I know, I've seen that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, you don't need good pen and paper, not the least, good things to write about. Keep just about any usable article handy at all times; write on any surface around you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially important, keep them close to your keyboard and every time you reach out for the keyboard, pause, pick up the pen/ pencil and write that down on paper/whatever.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find this disruptive to your work and to concentration, but do it all the same. :) Then don't forget to post an image of it here; all the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T09:29:57.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5101" CreationDate="2012-02-24T09:51:20.090" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably by making it useful for you again. If you say that it helps you think, then make it easier for you to write by hand and let the results reward/condition you to write more often by hand. Thus, if you are asking for specific tips for writing with pen and paper, you might find the following aspects useful (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.organizingcreativity.com/&quot;&gt;mostly paraphrased from my blog/a book I'm working on at the moment&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In General&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't worry about brand (Moleskine, Clairefontaine, Fisher, etc.) --&#xA;it must work for you. Each brand has adherents, make up your own mind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use writing by hand to get ideas, to capture them. Then digitize them. Personally I use a textfile first and type them in as soon as possible, then use DEVONthink to organize my ideas. This removes the stress of having slopping handwriting. It's not about beauty, it's about capturing ideas. Ideas rot if they are not used, and I think it's easier if they are available digital.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pens&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pens with pressurized mines or other ways to ensure that you can write against gravity are helpful (e.g., Fisher Space Pens, uni PowerTanks). You can not only writing while lying on your back (e.g., in bed), but also against the wall.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lightpens (have a small light bulb inside) are helpful to be able to write in the dark (e.g., if you wake up in the middle of the night).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collapsible pens (e.g., Fisher Bullet Pen) are small enough to fit in a wallet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ballpoint pens are way faster than anything with a cap -- and can be used with only one hand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are digital pens (e.g., from Livescribe, Wacom) which can be used like normal pens but which also digitalize whatever you write.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Paper&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find paper with a texture you like. Writing is also a very ... touch-based activity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Rite in the Rain&quot; notepads are unaffected by water -- you can write in the rain or in the shower (essentially the same thing).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spiral bounds will stay open by themselves. If the spiral is in the way, turn it around.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use cheap quality that does not intimidate you. Personally I cannot use Moleskine or leather bound notebooks because I'm scared of ruining it with 'worthless' ramblings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use plain paper unless you really need lined or checkered paper. Plain paper is more flexible and does not influence you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As paper is hard to backup, use something where you can tear out pages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to do concept work, MagicCharts (Legamaster) are thin foils that stick to walls due to static electricity. You can easily transform a wall into a huge Whiteboard. Very useful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Workflow&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep something to write with you at all times and also store it where you spend some time (e.g., bathroom, next to bed, car).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can write while walking if you bend a notepad a little.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Photographing the text with a cellphone camera or your webcam (Apple: Use Photobooth and removing the mirroring option in the settings) can be used to digitize your sketches/notes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn to sketch -- it's a killer feature of paper. There's a book called &quot;Sketching at work&quot; (by Eppler &amp;amp; Pfister) which might be of interest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3259" LastEditorUserId="3259" LastEditDate="2012-02-24T11:05:34.897" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T11:05:34.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5101" CreationDate="2012-02-24T13:16:01.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you &lt;em&gt;discover your personal writing quirks&lt;/em&gt;. I will try to illustrate this with my own experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since high school, I had developed this habit to put aside a notebook (maybe an extra one left over from the school-work books) or a diary (maybe some complimentary office gift given to my parents) and use it to record my thoughts. It was a journal &lt;em&gt;of sorts.&lt;/em&gt; I liked to write, and I wrote down all sorts of things, random thoughts, quotes that especially struck me, reminders, tasks, plans, records of my video gaming achievements, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then somewhere around college, I fully embraced the prevailing digital paradigm, and most of my writing, be it academic, assignments, fiction, journal, all migrated to the keyboard and screen. But very soon I felt the need for something else, another writing medium which allowed me to do things that I could not do (at least with any degree of fluency) on the keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was because while writing in those notebooks/diaries, I had developed a host of quirks that allowed me to express myself more fully. These may include anything from abbreviations, variations in font size (sometimes in the middle of a sentence) to represent the importance of something etc., arrows, floating text, boxes, diagrams (which I thought represented my thoughts to the highest degree of accuracy that would be immediately apparent to me when I later read them), silly little inside jokes e.g. I had created some recurring abbreviations/symbols to remind myself of the significance of something, like if something was drastically important, I put a big 'IMP EXT' (important in the extreme) next to it with a 'TM' on top of it to signify that this was one of my 'trademark' recurring signs, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was these quirks which I could not recreate while typing that made me put aside a special notebook which I have had for quite a few years now. I don't write very regularly because most of my writing is nevertheless dominantly on the keyboard, but once in a week or two I do find myself returning to the notebook to just write and express some thoughts which I feel the keyboard won't do justice to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe you need to find some similar and deeply personal relationship with pencil and paper-writing in order to make yourself do it naturally once again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T13:16:01.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5101" CreationDate="2012-02-24T17:28:47.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For communicating with others, as you mentioned in your comment, you should continue to use digital. It isn't fair to everyone else that they should have to suffer through your handwriting (assuming it is as bad as mine) just because you decided to abandon digital. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went through a similar situation recently myself. I found myself struggling to complete my stories or to finish my books, and it was becoming increasingly frustrating. Then I read an article that stated that handwriting involved the same side of your brain that controlled the creative processes, while typing was controlled by the other side of the rbain. The article suggested that by writing out your ideas by hand, you were more likely to continue to develop your creative interests. (If I can find the article I'll come back and add a link.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sat down with a notebook and a pen and started writing out the remaining chapters of the book I was writing, and I was stunned to find that the words were suddenly flowing! I ended up finishing the book in short order and then started copying everything over to my computer. I found that this alsow worked really well in another manner. As I was typing the content, I was also able to edit it as I went along. I still went back and did another round of editing, but this helped me get the editing done faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I keep a notebook with me at all times, and I leave it on my nightstand in case I wake up with an idea. Just find notebook you like and a pen (or pencil) that isn comfortable, and make a point of keeping them with you. Use them specifically for writing your stories or ideas, and I think you'll be surprised to find the creative juices flowing again!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-02-24T17:42:04.003" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T17:42:04.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5108" CreationDate="2012-02-25T19:13:05.327" Score="7" ViewCount="5957" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an academic paper on ethics in robotics.  I have a previous paper that I wrote and would like to use material from it.  If I use the material from this paper, that I wrote, do I need to cite myself as a source in the new paper or am I free to use my own material again without citation?  These are my thoughts and ideas, not others (I realize that I would need to source others work again if I used it again).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3316" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-02-25T22:11:31.207" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T22:11:31.207" Title="Citing Myself As a Source" Tags="|technical-writing|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5107" CreationDate="2012-02-25T19:44:54.373" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cite a source because it gives additional information that a curious reader may want to follow up on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: If your prior paper gives additional information (data, methods, background, conclusions, further citations, etc.) that is not in your current paper, but which may be of interest to readers, cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, you're not citing yourself; you're citing your &lt;em&gt;paper&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T19:44:54.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5109" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5113" CreationDate="2012-02-25T23:24:35.480" Score="0" ViewCount="1422" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished re-re-reviewing an essay for an application to school. The essay seems to be flowing nicely, but as always I feel it is not succinct or crisp enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not want this to be a proof-reading question, what I am looking for is to start identifying common phrases or structures that I poorly structure, and to find better ways to structure them by using a more methodical approach -- something like trying to avoid passive voice or weak verbs such as &quot;is&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find a better way to describe a sentence in the paragraph, it would be great that you suggest the improvement for the sentence and point out the judgement you used for your selection -- any external references would also be of great help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you feel there are extenuating circumstances of which the Committee&#xA;  should be aware, please explain them here (e.g., choice of&#xA;  recommenders). (250 words)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this brief essay, I explain why I chose Prof. X as a recommender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before my last semester at Columbia University, I was disappointed&#xA;  with the entrepreneurial programs offered in the Engineering school. I&#xA;  felt that New York City, and particularly Wall Street, was strongly&#xA;  influencing the culture in the school, undermining the needed&#xA;  attention for entrepreneurial events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Out of this disappointment, I contacted two friends and together we&#xA;  founded the Society for Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation&#xA;  (SETI @ CU), whose purpose was to foster an entrepreneurial spirit in&#xA;  the Engineering school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We started by interviewing 30 engineering students and chatting with&#xA;  12 faculty professors, and soon enough formed a student executive&#xA;  board and a faculty advisory board, which played a fundamental role in&#xA;  all future activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the next six months, SETI created a constitution and a website,&#xA;  organized six entrepreneurial activities with an average attendance of&#xA;  70 students, and coordinated Pitchfest 2009, the first university-wide&#xA;  entrepreneurial event, which was a highlight of the semester with a&#xA;  total of 41 idea-pitchers and almost 200 listeners -- truly a&#xA;  phenomenal event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prof. X played a key role behind the success of the Pitchfest. He&#xA;  showed us the purpose and logistics behind the event, he got us in&#xA;  touch with the right people in the Columbia Business School and&#xA;  Columbia Technology Ventures, and finally he encouraged us to work&#xA;  through any rivalry between schools in search of a higher common&#xA;  purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of all the board advisers, I believe that Prof. X was the one with the&#xA;  most unbiased and sound guidance. So much so that after my program&#xA;  finished, I have got back to him for career advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I decided to ask Prof. X for a recommendation letter because of two&#xA;  reasons: First, he saw me execute and lead a vision I was really&#xA;  passionate about, allowing him to comment on my management and&#xA;  leadership style; and second, he showed me the importance of having a&#xA;  good mentor who provides an impartial perspective when the&#xA;  circumstance arrives. Given this, I trust that a recommendation letter&#xA;  from Prof. X will provide valuable and fair information to my&#xA;  application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2811" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T21:44:00.417" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:44:00.417" Title="How can I make this essay more succinct? " Tags="|essay|wordcount|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5110" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-25T02:58:53.260" Score="3" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3606/citing-speech-and-interviews-in-biographies&quot;&gt;Citing speech and interviews in biographies&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you quote an indirect source (source quoted in another source) when there are explanatory words within the indirect source and before it?  Specifically in MLA style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Christina" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T14:54:27.293" Title="Indirect source quotations" Tags="|citations|quotes|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-03-28T15:36:02.907" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5110" CreationDate="2012-02-25T05:28:50.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally, you state the original author of the quotation. Then, you explicitly cite the source from where you took that quotation. For exemple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] Cohn has demonstrated X, as stated in (Author that cite Cohn) [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Zonata" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T05:28:50.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5109" CreationDate="2012-02-26T09:50:01.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Eliminate the first sentence.  You don't need to begin with &quot;In this brief essay...&quot;  (Ugh; everyone already knows this is a brief essay.  Moreover, your concluding statement explains why you wrote the essay).  &quot;&lt;em&gt;Before my last semester at Columbia University, I was disappointed with the entrepreneurial programs offered in the Engineering school&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; now THAT'S an opening that captures interest!  &quot;&lt;em&gt;In this brief essay, I explain why I chose Prof. X as a recommender&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; is not.  &lt;strong&gt;General advice&lt;/strong&gt;: make sure your opening words don't elicit a yawn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &quot;&lt;em&gt;I felt that New York City, and particularly Wall Street, was strongly influencing the culture in the school&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;  The previous sentence has &quot;was&quot; as its verb.  This sentence makes two in a row.  How about, &quot;&lt;em&gt;I felt that New York City, and particularly Wall Street, held strong influence over culture in the school&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;  &lt;strong&gt;General advice&lt;/strong&gt;: avoid passive voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &quot;&lt;em&gt;We started by interviewing 30 engineering students and chatting with 12 faculty professors, and soon enough formed a student executive board&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;  &quot;&lt;em&gt;Soon enough formed&lt;/em&gt;&quot;?  Why not just &quot;&lt;em&gt;soon formed&lt;/em&gt;&quot;?  &lt;strong&gt;General advice&lt;/strong&gt;: eliminate superfluous words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &quot;&lt;em&gt;Of all the board advisers, I believe that Prof. X was the one with the most unbiased and sound guidance. So much so that after my program finished, I have got back to him for career advice.&lt;/em&gt;  You were on a roll, until you got to this paragraph.  Strike the &quot;I believe that...&quot; - be bold enough to make an assertion, even if it's based on personal opinion.  Take out the passive voice.  And eliminate the weak &quot;so much so...&quot; &quot;&lt;em&gt;Of all the board advisers, Prof. X provided the most sound and unbiased guidance.  I was very impressed, and have continued to seek career advice from Prof. X.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;strong&gt;General advice&lt;/strong&gt;: don't be apologetic about forceful assertions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) &quot;&lt;em&gt;I decided to ask Prof. X for a recommendation letter because of two reasons:&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  Change to &quot;&lt;em&gt;I asked Prof. X for a recommendation letter for two reasons:&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;strong&gt;General advice&lt;/strong&gt;: to write concisely, learn to recognize - and eliminate - unnecessary wordiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6) &quot;&lt;em&gt;a vision I was really passionate about&lt;/em&gt;&quot; - passive voice, ending with a preposition?  I think you can do better than that.  &lt;strong&gt;General advice&lt;/strong&gt;: when you spot something weak, don't be content until you've fixed the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.  Read &lt;em&gt;How to Say Nothing in 500 Words&lt;/em&gt; by Paul Roberts.  He'll give you the same advice, in a much more entertaining way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T09:50:01.083" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5115" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5118" CreationDate="2012-02-27T10:19:45.240" Score="2" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a personal website and I have an &quot;about me&quot; text. I though I'd post it here for professionals to tell me if it's OK (English is not my primary language).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My name is Primož Kralj, I am 22 years old and I am enrolled in 3rd&#xA;  year of Computer Science and Informatic Technology programme at FERI,&#xA;  University of Maribor. I started to explore computers since I got my&#xA;  first one at age 10. I wrote my first &quot;Hello world&quot; program at age 12&#xA;  in Delphi programming language (without using internet back then :))&#xA;  and made several (mostly personal) websites. &lt;strong&gt;My enthusiasm for&#xA;  emerging technologies haven't smallen since then not even for a bit.&lt;/strong&gt; I&#xA;  look-out for any opportunity to participate in summer schools, online&#xA;  classes or any other activities that could benefit my know-how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am especially curious about the sentence in bold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3320" OwnerDisplayName="Primož Kralj" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T22:04:57.740" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T22:04:57.740" Title="My &quot;Bio&quot;. Is the language OK?" Tags="|word-choice|biography|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-02-27T13:59:05.790" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5115" CreationDate="2012-02-27T10:43:38.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Enthusiasm&lt;/em&gt; is singular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Small&lt;/em&gt; is an adjective not a verb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &quot;My enthusiasm for emerging technologies has not reduced at all since then&quot; would be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Henry" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T10:43:38.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5115" CreationDate="2012-02-27T11:00:47.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Enthusiasm may &quot;&lt;strong&gt;fade&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; or &quot;&lt;strong&gt;wane&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. These are the usual collocations for &quot;enthusiasm&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wane: To decrease gradually in size, amount, intensity, or degree; decline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My enthusiasm ... &lt;strong&gt;has&lt;/strong&gt; never waned...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you may use &lt;strong&gt;decrease&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Mustafa" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T11:00:47.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5115" CreationDate="2012-02-27T11:11:48.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use &quot;lessened&quot; for &quot;smallen&quot; here, and add a comma after &quot;since then&quot;, to make it clearer. Also, switch &quot;haven't&quot; for &quot;hasn't&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My enthusiasm for emerging technologies hasn't lessened since then, not even for a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in the sentence after that, &quot;look-out&quot; is grammatically correct but feels a bit weird there, but I'm not sure I can put my finger on the reason. I would change it to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;am always on the look-out&lt;/strong&gt; for any opportunity to participate in summer schools, online classes or any other activities that could benefit my know-how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in your second sentence, you use &quot;I &lt;em&gt;started&lt;/em&gt; to explore [..] &lt;em&gt;since&lt;/em&gt; I got [..]&quot;. This is wrong. Either &quot;I &lt;em&gt;have been exploring&lt;/em&gt; [...] &lt;em&gt;since&lt;/em&gt;&quot; or &quot;I &lt;em&gt;started&lt;/em&gt; to explore [...] &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; I got&quot;. &lt;em&gt;to start&lt;/em&gt; is a one-off action that happened at a specific time, not something that has been happening since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3291" OwnerDisplayName="Avner Shahar-Kashtan" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T11:37:43.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5119" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-27T14:31:14.133" Score="4" ViewCount="1279" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3/how-do-i-find-an-agent&quot;&gt;This question on finding an agent&lt;/a&gt; has an answer linking to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=720&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; which really tears into literary agents.  I'm not sure if it is justified or not, but it got me thinking about a the alternate route of finding a publisher to whom I can submit my work unsolicited and without using an agent.  How would I find one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that while I know that self-publishing is always an option, I am interested in looking into traditional publishing at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T13:02:28.743" Title="How would I find a publisher who is accepting unsolicited manuscripts from authors?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5119" CreationDate="2012-02-27T18:25:05.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of what an author needs to remember when asking this question is that there are only two different kinds of publishers as it relates to this question:  Those who &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; accept unsolicited submissions and those who &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;occasionally&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; accept unsolicited submissions.  This is important because persistence, content and luck are all required in order to publish a book, but for most authors nothing is more important that persistence.  &lt;em&gt;There is no publisher that will turn away an unsolicited manuscript if it is good enough.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only caveat to that statement is that as authors we must remember that when we say good enough we are sometimes only thinking about content, where when they say good enough they mean good enough at earning a profit.  As writers we have to learn the difference and keep working at understanding the economics that drive the business --frustrating as this may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process is a simple but grueling one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research Publishers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every print publisher of any significant size will have a website and on their website you'll find a submission guide.  This will give you usually very specific directions on how to submit your work and whether they accept unsolicited materials.  &lt;strong&gt;Even if they say they don't accept unsolicited work, there is ALWAYS a way around that.&lt;/strong&gt;  That's enough for a whole other question though...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritize Your Targets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I stand by my statement that, &quot;There is no publisher that will turn away an unsolicited manuscript if it is good enough,&quot; there are imprints and brands for a reason.  Readers put a lot of stock in the reputation of a publisher and so publishers tend to stick to one content area and do it well.  Larger publishing companies usually segregate their different imprints and brands based on genre just like film production companies do.  If you want to submit to every publisher in the world, go for it and be bold!  But save yourself some time and money by choosing the best fits first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use Free Advice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research what agents actually do.  Try talk to some of them or listen to interviews with literary agents.  Essentially, if you're submitting unsolicited manuscripts you will be doing all of those tasks on your own.  Don't underestimate how much a good agent actually does.  It's one thing to choose to accept these responsibilities out of necessity, but an entirely different matter to blow off the industry's accepted conventions without having a clue.  Understand self-representation and the pros and cons --there's a lot more to it than just a bigger cut of the profits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Respect Your Peers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The arts are incredibly competitive and with the modern changes to the writing industry this is increasingly the case.  There is a fine balance between doubt and over-confidence and if you want to succeed as a writer you will need them both daily.  Always doubt that your work is done.  If you think you're finished, look again, there is always something you can do to improve.  Likewise, after you've given due diligence, believe in your product and represent it and sell it like it is made of gold and radiates a glowing aura beside a pile of scraps.  Balancing this tension is crucial to approaching traditional publishing with the appropriate attitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process of getting published can take years.  I feel disrespectful even trying to answer this question in brief, but there are a lot of us out there, and it is good to help one another.  If I could boil it down to one thought I would say:  Always be refining and always be submitting.  As long as you keep doing both of those things you're chances of publication will typically be increasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3147" LastEditorUserId="3147" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T18:33:52.113" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T18:33:52.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5121" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5122" CreationDate="2012-02-27T19:02:42.517" Score="7" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to run into a bunch of domain-specific questions when I'm writing, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What happens to a jet flying at low altitude, at super-sonic speeds, when its cockpit gets breached?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the maximum range of a radio signal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What accuracy is experienced by a person with average training shooting at birds?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For many of these questions, &quot;ask a friend&quot; is the best I can do. Are there places online that cater to writers looking for people knowledgeable in specific areas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far the best place I've found is NaNoWriMo's &lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk&quot;&gt;Reference Desk&lt;/a&gt; (especially active in November). How else can I look for esoteric details and find people who can answer my research questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2240" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T21:41:58.203" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T22:10:21.270" Title="Are there  online research resources that cater to writers? " Tags="|resources|research|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5121" CreationDate="2012-02-27T19:35:12.493" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A all-questions-welcome resource will, almost inevitably, be less helpful than finding pertinent resources for the specific topics you're asking about. And that'll be a case-by-case process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general workflow will be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out which field your question falls into (e.g., physics; architecture; survival skills)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google &quot;[Field Name]&quot; together with keywords such as &quot;community,&quot; &quot;forum,&quot; etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Browse through the results until you find something that seems appropriate - some site on the topic with a public forum; a newsgroup; a LiveJournal community; a chat room. Make sure to read through to be certain your question won't be wildly out of place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Post your question. Explain that you're looking for detail for a story you're writing; be sure your question is clear and detailed; be polite and appreciative. Mention that you'd be happy to hear of other appropriate resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This process is great for a single detail, but if you find that your work is dealing heavily with a particular topic, you really need to do your own research - you won't get by giving a fair portrayal of desert survival or Victorian England just by asking other people about the occasional detail. For greater involvement, you want to find good sources on the subject - generally books. You can search yourself for books that cover the topics you need; if you're not sure or want a second opinion, you can follow the above process to ask for specific recommendations. Be sure to explain exactly what topic you're researching, and what kind/style/level of books you think will be best for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond this, there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; many communities based on answering specific questions on a wide range of topics. These are certainly worth trying out, particularly as an initial avenue. These include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The wide range of &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;StackExchange websites&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://little-details.livejournal.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Detail-Oriented&lt;/a&gt;, a LiveJournal community for detail-seeking writers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allexperts.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AllExperts.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reddit&lt;/a&gt;, with its many domain-specific and Q&amp;amp;A sub-communities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...and many many others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="330" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T22:10:21.270" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T22:10:21.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2012-02-28T05:42:11.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;GNU Timeline is a basic timeline building application with some nice features. It is free, and it works on Windows and Linux (Probably Mac also). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thetimelineproj.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://thetimelineproj.sourceforge.net/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3329" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T05:42:11.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2060" CreationDate="2012-02-28T21:13:34.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're only concerned about the writing and battery life and not other tablety stuff, and you don't mind hacking it a bit, &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1457971&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some folks on XDA Developers recently got a Nook Touch to support a USB keyboard.&lt;/a&gt; I plan on investing in one of these myself soon, since the eInk screen should be easier on my eyes than a regular monitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3211" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T21:13:34.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2060" CreationDate="2012-02-28T22:01:24.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a big fan of the Asus line of devices.  Touch typing is getting much better and their accessories are right on par with Apple devices in my opinion -except cheaper.  The iPad still probably sets the bar as far as user experience goes, but &lt;strong&gt;the ASUS Transformer Prime&lt;/strong&gt; is a very strong competitor -that &lt;strong&gt;would be my current recommendation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a CNet review: &lt;a href=&quot;http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/asus-eee-pad-transformer/4505-3126_7-35089447.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/asus-eee-pad-transformer/4505-3126_7-35089447.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with all consumer electronics, the longer you wait, the better your device will be for your money.  That said, this might be a good time to wait a bit longer.  Quad-core devices with a ton of upgrade potential should be hitting the market soon.  Additionally, &lt;strong&gt;if you decide you really want to go Apple but price is an issue, wait for the iPad 3 and grab a used iPad 2 while people are in upgrade mode.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T22:01:24.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2060" CreationDate="2012-02-28T22:26:14.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I own a 64 GB Transformer Prime and I love it!  I'll never own a laptop again.  It's an excellent device for screen typing and it is the fastest Android device that I've used.  It is a bit expensive, but the investment to productivity and portability is well worth it for me.  The number of alternative keyboards available is also a big plus.  I prefer Swype personally, but there are many to choose from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3323" LastEditorUserId="3323" LastEditDate="2012-02-28T22:37:46.870" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T22:37:46.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1750" CreationDate="2012-02-29T08:17:15.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;storYboard&quot; software lets you add plot lines (which are called strands).  Then you see it organized by day and by strand.  This feature is available even in the free version. (sorry if this post repeats.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3335" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T08:17:15.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1750" CreationDate="2012-02-29T22:13:56.763" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;J. K. Rowling used an interesting tool. There is an image of this on the internet at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/73653&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/73653&lt;/a&gt;. (Google J K Rowling Plot Spreadsheet.) She made a huge paper chart, which you could implement in an excel file if you were so inclined. Each row of the table is a single month. (You could use a week or a day as needed.) She had a column for each character (e.g. Ron, Hermione, etc.). In each cell of the table, she recorded what the character was doing at that point in time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It occurred to me that a chart like this could contain far more detail than is actually presented in the book. You could fill in the chart first, and then choose which details to include in your narrative and which to leave out. For instance, Hermione appears out of the blue with some polyjuice potion at one point. Rowling chose not to include the process by which she decided to do this, found the recipe, overcame obstacles to making the potion, etc. On the other hand, Rowling had to giver her enough time to go through that process, so the potion appears late in the school year. You can work out plausible time lines this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T04:16:25.380" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T04:16:25.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5131" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-01T17:01:27.747" Score="1" ViewCount="446" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are the things that I want for this introductory paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grab the reader's attention&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a melancholic and dark atmosphere&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Inside was dark with just enough light to see shapes, and silence was&#xA;  playing in the background in an endless loop. The source was a green&#xA;  neon light attached to the rusty wall in front of the bar. There were&#xA;  only two persons sitting there; a young man with short hair and a girl&#xA;  with long black hair and smooth facial features. No one else was&#xA;  there; not even the bartender. They were glancing at each other from&#xA;  time to time. Both were holding glasses. He was having a whisky, and&#xA;  she a martini.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also would like to improve/or fix bad writing style in this opening dialog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I had a nice time,” he said while staring at his glass.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      “Me too,” she said while looking at him with a smile.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      “I really mean it,” he said while looking into her eyes. “I feel like...for the first time, someone listens to not only to my dreams, but also my nightmares when I talk about them.”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      He turned his eyes into the glass again as having said something inappropriate.&#xA;      She remained silent and her face turned red. She was trying to say something but it didn’t come out.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      Silence continued playing in the background.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      &quot;Can I talk to you about something that terrifies me?&quot; he said after a while.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      She looked straight into his eyes and nodded with her lips half open.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything I'm doing wrong or is there something I can do to improve them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I'm not a native English speaker and I haven't corrected the grammar.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T18:13:52.320" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T20:53:03.300" Title="How to improve/fix this short introductory paragraph and dialog?" Tags="|fiction|openings|atmosphere|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2060" CreationDate="2012-03-01T17:59:53.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I moved to a Macbook Air. I know it's not a tablet, but for lots of writing, I didn't like the iPad and if I'm carrying the keyboard as well, why not the Air? It's about the same size as my iPad 1, and there are some great writing apps for OSX. I also use DropBox and Evernote to sync notes/drafts back with a home computer to keep a second copy in case I have issues on the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T17:59:53.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5168" CreationDate="2012-03-01T20:31:01.330" Score="10" ViewCount="1366" Body="&lt;p&gt;I looked through the questions and didn't see this one so hopefully it's not a duplicate. I often have ideas of stories I want to write and I work on outlines or write down elements and I know what I need to do is actually sit down and write. It's the only way I'll actually improve. The problem is that I can't seem to concentrate enough to write. I don't have a lot of time either but I could make the time but even when I do I end up wasting it because I'm to busy worrying about other things. I've tried relaxation techniques and prescribed medication but both of these seem to take away my creativity. Is there any advice or techniques that can help me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3345" LastEditorUserId="421" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T21:16:27.527" LastActivityDate="2017-10-15T00:23:36.717" Title="How to concentrate when writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|writers-block|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5134" CreationDate="2012-03-01T20:59:39.030" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Morning Pages&lt;/a&gt; and/or an &lt;a href=&quot;http://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/artists-dates/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Artist Date&lt;/a&gt;. Relaxation techniques likely won't help because writing is not relaxing, it's being highly alert in an intellectual sense. Medication, in my understanding, should be used to treat an illness, so unless you actually have an illness, they won't help either. Since you are distracted by worrying about other things, try to get those things out of your system by writing Morning Pages about them – or simply allow yourself to write them down as they occur to you during writing, and then return to whatever you were going to write. Also, are you sure you know what you want to write about? An Artist Date can help you to legitimately put all other things on hold and get some clarity for what it is you really want to write. Basically, you want your writing to be so important that the things you worry about are no longer relevant and don't disturb you. This might mean you have to adress those other things first, at least the most urgent ones, so that the task next on your internal priority list is your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="421" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T20:59:39.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5136" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-01T21:39:33.913" Score="11" ViewCount="287" Body="&lt;p&gt;For our SDK, we generate individual documents (PDFs) and one big HTML doc set (CHM file) from the same Docbook source.  Each book has an index, and the HTML version has an integrated index that is the union of all the individual entries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have been focusing on the individual books in crafting our index nouns and verbs.  Sometimes combining them in the global index produces the right result -- if books A, B, and C all use verb1, verb2, noun1, etc in the same way, you generally want those to sort together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, however, the terms -- while meaningful in their original contexts -- do not play well in a global index.  In a book about database integration &quot;synchronization&quot; might be a good index term (how to keep your app up to date with the DB), but &quot;synchronization&quot; means something different in a book about networking, and if you're trying to look up the former you don't want to be bothered with the latter.  You could change those entries to &quot;synchornization, database&quot; and &quot;synchronization, venue&quot;, which helps the global index, but they look kind of stupid in individual books that are all about databases or venues.  Similarly, &quot;rendering&quot; means different things if you're talking about the low-level graphics layer (e.g. Swing) or a higher-level graphing system.  (While I'm semi-making up these examples, yes a single SDK does cover topics this broad.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some strategies for either (a) crafting index terms that work in both contexts or (b) varying how the local and global indexes are produced from a single source?  For an example of the latter, is there some way that Docbook could support adding a word (context) to only the global version of an index entry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're using version 4.4 of the Docbook DTD, and we use XSLTProc, XEP (PDF), and HHC (CHM) to produce the documents.  We drive the whole build using Ant targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-05-27T02:00:07.857" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T16:16:05.510" Title="How do you build good per-book *and* global indexes?" Tags="|technical-writing|indexing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5064" CreationDate="2012-03-01T22:52:48.573" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if this is along the lines of your question exactly, but: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first book was great (mostly about the games), &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The second book was good (more politics, but still plenty about the games)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The third book was disappointing (all about politics). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess if I were to improve the series, I'd simply have found some way to resolve things in book 2, honestly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I think Collins did try to find a scenario that could &quot;condense&quot; or &quot;focus&quot; the wider conflict in book 3 like the games did for book 1 - that's what the guerilla fighting, especially through the capitol, seems to be trying to do, but I don't think it really worked).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T22:52:48.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5131" CreationDate="2012-03-02T01:37:39.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a fan of these &quot;denoting something by describing that which does not exist&quot; techniques, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Yes,&quot; he said, unsmiling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The silence was very loud.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc. While it does say &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;, I feel it is left too much to the imagination. Certainly it can be used in specific cases, but as a general rule, only to create that specific feeling of uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not see the melancholy and darkness here. There's awkwardness in their dialogue, but that's all. I would go straight for the people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I had a nice time,&quot; he said, staring at his glass of whisky.&lt;br&gt; &quot;Me&#xA;  too,&quot; she replied.&lt;br&gt; He glanced up and saw that she was smiling.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;I really mean it.&quot; ... etc&lt;br&gt; They were alone in the bar. The ice in&#xA;  his glass clinked very loudly in the  silence. A faded sign above the&#xA;  counter said &quot;[something crass]&quot;, and he found himself staring at it.&#xA;  Outside on the street he saw a woman tossing the corpse of a cat into&#xA;  a shopping cart, and then continue down the street, pushing her cart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing something like &quot;There were only two people sitting there&quot; implies that the reader should have knowledge about how many people &lt;em&gt;ought&lt;/em&gt; to be sitting there, and I feel that it sort of jars my reading. Also, it is a bit clunky to first mention it is a bar, then mention the bar in a back reference: &quot;there&quot;. &quot;They were alone in the bar.&quot; does all this in one fell swoop, at the same time feeling like a very natural observation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mentioning short hair on a man is usually redundant, because that is more or less the default image that pops into your mind when you read &quot;a young man&quot;. Similarly, a girl would have smooth facial features. I would focus on describing that which is unusual about them, and try to do it innocuously:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Can I talk to you about something that terrifies me?&quot; he said. He&#xA;  found it hard to look directly at her. Her smooth skin, long black&#xA;  hair and startlingly blue eyes made something inside him hurt and&#xA;  burn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2209" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T01:37:39.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5300" CreationDate="2012-03-02T03:21:55.740" Score="22" ViewCount="2856" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good SDK (software development kit) includes plenty of well-documented examples.  It also includes good tutorials and developer guides, which introduce concepts in logical progressions, typically showing only the relevant excerpts from the sample code.  (Nobody wants to see a 200-line program inline in a book, but it's important to show that 20-line excerpt that demonstrates a principle right there in the section that talks about that principle.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This creates a maintenance challenge: over a progression of releases, interfaces or preferred coding patterns change.  An IDE (a code-development environment) provides tools for finding the example programs that need to be updated (e.g. find all places where this function is called), but they don't tend to help with references in documentation.  So what usually happens, in my experience, is that before a release somebody will page through the documentation looking for suspicious code snippets.  This is, obviously, not 100% reliable.  (Edit: the full examples are tested regularly, but that doesn't guarantee that the excerpts in the documentation remain in sync with the full example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently we rely on the technical writers, who we hope remember which examples were excepted in documentation where, to react when the example code or the relevant interfaces change.  The team is fluent with the bug-tracking and source-control systems, including subscribing to check-ins, but we are still relying on people's personal knowledge, which becomes a problem if people leave the team.  (As is often the case, testing of documentation tends to be a low priority for QA.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for practices &lt;em&gt;that have been used successfully&lt;/em&gt; to improve the ongoing accuracy of code examples in documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T18:16:13.950" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T18:16:13.950" Title="Best practices for maintaining documented code examples?" Tags="|technical-writing|software-documentation|examples|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1804" CreationDate="2012-03-02T08:02:28.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to write outlines using emacs and org-mode, because I do technical research that involves a lot of programming, and as a result, I live in emacs. &lt;a href=&quot;http://aquamacs.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aquamacs&lt;/a&gt; is an emacs port for OS X that's free and has a nice Mac interface you can use instead of many of the Unix-based keyboard shortcuts. Aquamacs comes with &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;org-mode&lt;/a&gt;, which is a nice text-based format for outlining and text-folding (so you can hide various parts of your outline). What I like about text-based formats is that it's easy to determine exactly what changes have been made between revisions (hell, if you want to track versions, use a version control system like Mercurial, Git, Subversion, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantages are that it's free, and highly customizable (up to a point). The outlines are exportable to a number of different formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The disadvantages are that the workflow tends to be designed for people who are programmers, and work in emacs. There's not much of a GUI to speak of, beyond the toolbar at the top of the screen (and each window). Emacs is written to be a highly flexible text editor, and org-mode is a plug-in; it's not designed to be something like Scrivener, which, as far as I can tell, bundles together all of the tools that they think writers need (and in a cool-looking way). If you want something to keep track of your sources or research, you'd need another program (like Mendeley, for instance, which does a pretty good job of acting as a database for PDFs and media). If you want version control, you need another tool for that. I don't know of anything that corresponds to the &quot;corkboard&quot; functionality. So if you want extra functionality, you need other programs to fill in the gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3349" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T08:02:28.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5139" CreationDate="2012-03-02T11:10:23.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would actually answer this with my graphic designer hat on: all code should be given a particular style in the layout program (font in particular, but type size, margins, justification), and then you just Search for each iteration of that style. It's still manual, but you won't miss any. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T11:10:23.377" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5142" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5143" CreationDate="2012-03-02T12:42:36.933" Score="2" ViewCount="513" Body="&lt;p&gt;The writing techniques used to develop a short story are probably different from those used in developing a novel. My question is, how should I approach writing a movie script? Given the main storyline of a movie usually could be written in maybe one or two lines, how should my approach be to develop the main idea I have on my mind and turn it into a movie script?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3340" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-02T16:41:53.310" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T16:51:40.973" Title="Is a movie script more like a short story or a novel?" Tags="|scriptwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5142" CreationDate="2012-03-02T14:19:36.520" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing a script for a movie bears little relation to writing either short story or a novel. There are so many reasons why, but to bullet point them: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are writing in a compressed time frame&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your characters can never think, they can only do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The beats of your story need to happen at pretty much specific pages in order to flow &lt;em&gt;as a movie&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The way people speak is different&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nothing can happen that is not on the screen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Certain things like flashback, exploring backstory etc. that can work in a novel are frowned upon in a screenplay &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and every one of these rules can be broken if you're Aaron Sorkin. It's just different, and it's no less demanding or difficult to do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a book written by author Alexandra Sokoloff that might help. I've not read it but the articles on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alexandrasokoloff.com/tricks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;her blog&lt;/a&gt; are well worth a read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3271" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-02T16:51:40.973" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T16:51:40.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2060" CreationDate="2012-03-02T22:21:12.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would vote up other votes instead of writing my own answer, but since I'm still new to this site, I can't do that yet. I vouch for the Asus line as well. I'm currently writing this post using my Asus Transformer Tablet. The Prime is the newer model and has some better specs. (I have the older model).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you look at getting the tablet with the keyboard dock (definitely recommended), it still comes out cheaper than the iPad and other tablets on the market. I find it's easy to carry around and has a very good battery life. With the keyboard dock, it is advertised to have 16 hrs of battery. About 8 hours without the keyboard dock. I've taken this tablet with me on trips and used it to write storires and brainstorm ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm just looking for apps that will help with that as well. It runs Android Ice Cream sandwich, which is the newest OS for Android. The flexibility of a touchscreen and keyboard brings a new experience altogether. Rather than relying on a mouse/touchpad, I can just tap the screen if I want to edit a specific paragraph. Or scrolling up to read what I wrote before, I can just use finger gestures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still personally would prefer a laptop for heavy duty writing, but for being out and about, I would recommend the Asus Transformer line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3352" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T22:21:12.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3505" CreationDate="2012-03-03T00:09:43.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might find that technical writing has a more limited set of rules than most other areas of writing. Writing has to be extremely minimalistic and simple. There is less room for any kind of verbal creativity than in journalism. Technical writing is not about personal expression, it is about clarity and simplicity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could start by reading a technical writing style guide like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0131428993&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry&lt;/a&gt;. Then write a little manual that follows the rules described in the style guide. The ability to memorize a style guide is probably the most important skill for a technical writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3353" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T00:09:43.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4413" CreationDate="2012-03-03T00:45:49.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the same problem! I knew a lullaby was (duh) lulling, and so I wrote down a list of all the words I could think of that had a sleepy connotation. Then I just kind of arranged them in a nonsensical but very rhythmic way. Maybe the process I used would work for you too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3354" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T00:45:49.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5101" CreationDate="2012-03-03T15:33:11.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe many people stop drawing as children when their preconceptions of what a drawing ought to look like (something like marvel comics?) doesn't agree with their ability to draw. &#xA;I think that many people stop writing by hand when, at some point in school, they become disenchanted with their handwriting, because they never learned to master a style that is worth imitating. So they just think their handwriting looks bad and they are ashamed of it. It takes away all motivation to write.&#xA;My advice is therefore that you choose a style that you want to learn, and then use some time to practice. Don't just use a random writing book for children, but find good examples by good calligraphers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most calligraphers use as their personal handwriting a style derived from Cancelersca Coursiva, whitely used in the renaissance. It is the style that italic in classic bookfornts is based on. This style got a renaissance in the beginning of the 20th century thanks to the efforts of Alfred Fairbanks who wrote an instruction on how to adopt it for modern use. Most school writing material teach a dumped down version of it, but do not advance to better examples. As an adult it is maybe better to find a good book on calligraphy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The font designer Hermann Zapf has a beautiful handwriting worth imitating, his font Zapfino is based on an elaborate version of it. Adobe's chief font designer Robert Slimbach has made a font, Poetica, that is very good for as model for learning to write in a controlled manner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have learned to write in a formal manner that pleases your eye, a good fluid handwriting will follow naturally. A little effort goes a long way. It is easier than you might think, far easier than to learn to draw well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I think tools matter. I avoid ballpoint pens; they are too slippery. A pencil and a fiber pen is better, and, most of all when you when you are learning, a broad point pen is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3292" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T02:49:58.653" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T02:49:58.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5148" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-03T21:24:29.283" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T21:24:29.283" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T21:24:29.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5149" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-03T21:24:29.283" Score="0" Body="Questions about writing by hand: Tools, technique, and materials. " OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T21:24:29.283" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T21:24:29.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5150" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-03T21:32:34.593" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T21:32:34.593" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T21:32:34.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5151" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-03T21:32:34.593" Score="0" Body="Writing habits, routines, and systems for writing. " OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T21:32:34.593" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T21:32:34.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5152" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-03T21:34:05.107" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T21:34:05.107" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T21:34:05.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5153" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-03T21:34:05.107" Score="0" Body="Writing that's intended to accompany music" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T21:34:05.107" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T21:34:05.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5154" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-05T10:04:20.527" Score="7" ViewCount="646" Body="&lt;p&gt;Throughout &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone&lt;/em&gt;, Harry is certain that Snape is serving Voldemort, and bulling Quirrell into helping him. At the climax, we learn that Snape is protecting Harry, while Quirrell's master is Voldemort himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, Harry's misconception is built up through a series of unfortunate encounters which, in retrospect, are blatantly contrived. These include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Harry just happens to hear precisely the right portion of a conversation between Snape and Quirrell.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Harry hears Quirrell being bullied, but conveniently nothing manages to disclose that Snape is nowhere around.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hermione thinks Snape is casting a hex on Harry during a Quidditch game; she just &lt;em&gt;happens&lt;/em&gt; to disturb Quirrell on her way to stop Snape, which conveniently stops the hex right when she was expecting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These developments all depend heavily on being in the precise right place at the precise right time and noticing precisely the right things; when such events are the basis of a climactic plot twist, it smacks of author fiat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What changes might be made to the story to let Harry's misconception feel better-justified and less contrived?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T21:54:16.880" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:54:16.880" Title="How could the surprise-villain thread have been less contrived in &quot;Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone&quot;?" Tags="|fantasy|plot|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5177" CreationDate="2012-03-05T10:05:56.030" Score="6" ViewCount="1048" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; series, Dumbledore seems to represent ultimate wisdom and authority. Harry (and the readers with him) hold him in awe; many times throughout the series Harry willingly accepts and follows Dumbledore's plans even when he doesn't understand them. Dumbledore is portrayed as &lt;strong&gt;trustworthy&lt;/strong&gt; - so much that Harry grudgingly accepts Snape as an ally, against his own suspicions and based on Dumbledore's say-so, so much that Harry is willing to die when Dumbledore tells him he must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a character I'd like to share some of these aspects. Not quite to the same extent, but she's a mentor character who constantly withholds information but is trusted implicitly by my protagonist. It's important for me that this loyalty be considered genuine - I want readers seeing her as a source of support, not a potential backstabber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this purpose, I would like to understand better &lt;strong&gt;what methods and techniques Rowling uses&lt;/strong&gt; to make Dumbledore so trustworthy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I am looking less for in-world explanations (&lt;code&gt;&quot;Harry finds Dumbledore comforting (cf. _Stone_ p.142) and overall considers him a father figure, which he's sorely missing&quot;&lt;/code&gt;) and more for authorial decisions and techniques (&lt;code&gt;&quot;Dumbledore's ridiculous humor in _Stone_ appeals to the reader, making Dumbledore feel friendly and lovable, and countering the condescending nature of the character&quot;&lt;/code&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific recommendations for generalizing these observations into my own writing are particularly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T05:06:18.067" Title="What methods does Rowling use to establish Dumbledore as being wise and trustworthy?" Tags="|technique|character-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5156" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-05T10:06:18.167" Score="8" ViewCount="1912" Body="&lt;p&gt;The latest two volumes of Martin's &lt;em&gt;Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; have been poorly received compared to the series' earlier books.  What's interesting here is that Martin's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire#Bridging_the_timeline_gap_.282000.E2.80.932011.29&quot;&gt;original plan did not include these books&lt;/a&gt;. Rather, these books were a solution to a problem Martin had:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fourth book, tentatively titled &lt;em&gt;A Dance with Dragons&lt;/em&gt;, was to focus on Daenerys Targaryen's return to Westeros and the conflicts that creates. Martin wanted to set this story five years after &lt;em&gt;A Storm of Swords&lt;/em&gt; so that the younger characters could grow older and the dragons grow larger. [...] A long prologue was to establish what had happened in the meantime, initially just as one chapter of Aeron Damphair on the Iron Islands at the Kingsmoot. Since the events in Dorne and the Iron Islands were to have an impact on the book, Martin eventually expanded the Kingsmoot events to be told from three new viewpoints since the existing POV characters were not present in Dorne and the Iron Islands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2001, Martin was still optimistic that the fourth installment might be released in the last quarter of 2002. However, the five-year gap did not work for all characters during writing. On one hand, Martin was unsatisfied with covering the events during the gap solely through flashbacks and internal retrospection. On the other hand, it was implausible to have nothing happening for five years. After working on the book for about a year, Martin realized he needed an additional interim book, which he called &lt;em&gt;A Feast for Crows&lt;/em&gt;. The book would pick up the story immediately after the third book, and Martin scrapped the idea of a five-year gap. The material of the 250-page prologue for the beginning of &lt;em&gt;A Feast for Crows&lt;/em&gt; was mixed in as new viewpoint characters from Dorne and the Iron Islands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But fan reaction suggests this solution was a poor one, resulting in stretched-out books whose object was to impart key information and to &quot;keep track&quot; of characters who weren't moving as far or doing as much as those of the earlier volumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking in good faith Martin's descriptions of the difficulties he had with the five-year gap, &lt;strong&gt;how else might Martin have solved these difficulties?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am less interested in how &lt;em&gt;Feast&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Dance&lt;/em&gt; might have been condensed or abbreviated (that would be an editing question). What I'd like is suggestions for &lt;strong&gt;plot/story structures&lt;/strong&gt; that might have been more appropriate to Martin's purposes. In other words, &lt;em&gt;given&lt;/em&gt; that Martin had these difficulties and considered an additional piece necessary - what would have been a better format and structure for such a piece?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T21:47:40.880" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T21:43:00.443" Title="Could a different structure for &quot;Feast of Crows&quot; have been a better solution to Martin's five-year-gap?" Tags="|fantasy|plot|structure|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5154" CreationDate="2012-03-05T18:05:53.160" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO, there are two explanations for this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, it could be, as you hypothesize, be a contrived storyline, created perfectly to accomplish Rowling's plot point. This is a very real possibility. As writers, we know the temptation to &quot;phone in&quot; plot points, just to get them all in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, it could be a simple case of a young boy seeing and hearing what he wanted to. Harry was abused for his whole life at the hands of the Dursleys. When he met Hagrid, he was the first person Harry had met that didn't think of him as a nuisance. As Harry went through Diagon Alley, and the Hogwarts Express, and of course, Hogwarts itself, everyone seemed to love and admire him, that is, until he arrived in potions class. Snape was extremely hard on Harry, even spiteful towards him. I think in Harry's view, Snape was like the Dursleys. If he was abusing Harry from day one, literally, certainly Snape was a villain like his family. &lt;strong&gt;Preconceived notions can go along way towards coloring your perception of events.&lt;/strong&gt; In fact, one of the main themes of the book is just that. Assuming that Quirrel was harmless, or Snape was evil, or Hermione was a stuck up snot, or even that what you see is what is real (the mirror of Erised) runs through the whole story. I think that when viewed in the light of the story, the characters, and the plot, these &quot;contrivances&quot; are simply natural plot points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to answer your question: &quot;What changes might be made to the story to let Harry's misconception feel better-justified and less contrived?&quot; If I were to rewrite the book based on critical analysis, I would develop Snape's character more. Snape needs to be mysterious and aloof, it's part of his nature. However, revealing &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of Snape's positive traits earlier on would add further doubt to his &quot;evil nature&quot; that Harry percieved. Possibly having him directly stand up for Harry or one of his friends against Filch, or having him publicly reprimand Malfoy for his obnoxious attitude. Giving Snape more depth earlier in the story would do wonders to make the plot seem deeper and less contrived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most difficulties with far fetched plots can be fixed by developing your characters more fully.&lt;/strong&gt; When you develop your characters, you begin to feel like they do. You understand their motivations more fully, and their reactions and decisions become natural. It's my experience that natural characters don't make contrived decisions. Let your real characters smooth out your less than realistic plots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3277" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T18:05:53.160" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5156" CreationDate="2012-03-05T18:21:53.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not an easy question you pose. For one thing, this problem stumped &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._R._Martin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;George R R Martin&lt;/a&gt;, who should be considered more experienced than most users on this website. For another thing, we do not know all the variables involved that depended on the 5-year gap. I would say that this question is far too complex to handle in this format, and would be better off handled one piece at the time, e.g. &quot;How to solve the dragon's growth&quot;, &quot;How to solve the Stark kids' growth&quot;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My take on the 5-year gap is that what GRRM was envisioning was something like the time that passed between episode 3 and 4 in the Star Wars trilogy, when we &quot;begin&quot; by watching Luke grow into his hero role. Well, something like that, anyway. His problem was that his original plans were thwarted by the story growing too much on the way there, to the point where he felt it was no longer feasible with flashbacks and other means of telling a story retrospectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a solution. You either have gaps, or you don't. You can allow time to pass by simply not mentioning it. The problems begin when you start thinking, like GRRM did, that you can allow time to pass by adding fluff and new storylines (Brienne, Ser Arys Oakheart, Arianne, Asha Greyjoy, Reek, etc). By fluff I mean things like trying to add complexity and richness by enumerating long lists. For example, trying to illustrate a forest like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There were all kinds of trees: tall ones, thick ones, short ones, wide&#xA;  ones, spruce and pine, deciduous trees and coniferous trees, trees&#xA;  with faces and trees without faces. Even mighty stumps that had once&#xA;  been trees. There were a lot of trees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heck, I can't even do it well, but you get the gist I hope. I am particularly un-fond of this writing style, which I consider to be just a lazy brute-force attempt at adding spam in order to simulate some kind of complexity. The human mind does not easily adapt a set of varied information into the concept of complexity. Rather, the mind simulates complexity by being given examples of it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From atop the tower, the forest seemed endless, disappearing in the morning fog, stretching out into the white nothingness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fluff can also be extending pointless scenes, such as Tyrion signing a bunch of papers, and delineating time by writing &quot;Tyrion signed another paper&quot; from time to time. Or by people shoving through crowds and mentioning people along the way -- for 20 pages straight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that fluff does not bring the story forward. While reading 200 pages of fluff, time may not have passed at all in another story line. This is also explicitly mentioned as being the case in the prologue to the recent books. So what did he really gain by doing this? In my opinion, nothing at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What he has done is add a sort of buffer in the reader's mind, a long stretch of pages that may be interpreted as a long time passing. But in doing so, he has sacrificed a lot of the reader's goodwill and diminished the effective style of writing that permeated his first three books. Go back and reread &lt;em&gt;A Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt;, if you haven't done so in a while, and you will be astonished by how quickly so much happens there, compared to later books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While important information was given along the ~3000 pages that make up &lt;em&gt;Dance&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Feast&lt;/em&gt;, much of it very interesting, actually, the critical failure is that most of the story lines we read are uninteresting. I think GRRM had the right idea from the start, and that a 5-year gap would have been preferable to 5-years worth of fluff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, while a 5-year gap might be hard to bridge, it could/should have been abridged in shorter pieces. He could have made note of things that were to happen in this time span, and strung them together, while making obvious references to time passing. Such as showing the Dragon's growing in size. I think it is important not to become a hostage of your own story line, but always remember to keep things interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, while Brienne's story might be interesting on its own merits (her being a possible descendant of Dunk's), writing hundreds of pages of her making a journey were know from the start to be pointless, during which nothing really happens, except at the end, is to annoy the reader, I feel. I feel that the story could have been left with only Jaime's perspective, and been all the better for it: We would follow Jaime's journey towards redemption with some interest, as he is a main character, which Brienne is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2209" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T18:21:53.997" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5160" CreationDate="2012-03-05T18:35:47.180" Score="6" ViewCount="1018" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was &lt;a href=&quot;http://magnificentnose.com/2012/03/05/first-words/&quot;&gt;blogging about opening lines&lt;/a&gt; the other day, and looking for examples. I came across the opening to American Gods, and realized that it's neither flashy nor something that will grab the reader in an obvious way, but it's quite effective and hooks the reader into the story very well. I'm just not sure how it's doing this. Far from being a traditionally attention-getting opening, this one is a slower, gentler seduction of the reader into the book's world: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough, and looked don't-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The best thing--in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing--about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He did not awake in prison with a feeling of dread; he was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It did not matter, Shadow decided, if you had done what you had been convicted of or not. In his experience everyone he met in prison was aggrieved about something: there was always something the authorities had got wrong, something they said you did when you didn't--or you didn't do quite like they said you did. What was important was that they had got you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He had noticed it in the first few days, when everything, from the slang to the bad food, was new. Despite the misery and the utter skin-crawling horror of incarceration, he was breathing relief. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, whether this is good writing or not is subjective, but I'd be interested in learning why this works on these terms. Why do we want to know more? What's keeping us reading? Is the informal language part of that? Is it Shadow's self-acceptance and confidence that's so attractive? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T19:03:01.623" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T20:26:23.460" Title="Slow openings: What is it about this Neil Gaiman opening that pulls the reader in?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5159" CreationDate="2012-03-05T19:10:41.907" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's three things.  First, the accessible writing style, with its informal language that matches how regular people think and talk, is helpful but not sufficient.  Second, the character's acceptance of the situation, which he appears to have accepted from the beginning, is unusual; we expect convicts to be hardened, angry people, and this is not that at all.  Third, and probably related to the previous, is that we don't expect a criminal (he never protests his innocence here) to be a sympathetic character, yet this one seems to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T19:10:41.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5186" CreationDate="2012-03-06T03:40:49.927" Score="2" ViewCount="230" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in writing a book on a particular class of natural products. It would discuss the products' isolation and biological functions - these are the two chapters that I can fit into the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my proposed book would only have 2 chapters, which may run to about 75-100 pages each. This  intuitively seems like a very low number of chapters for a book, even though that's simply the number of topics I want to cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are tech books with so few chapters publishable? Is this something seen frequently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3312" LastEditorUserId="3312" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T05:50:37.263" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T19:45:23.247" Title="Is it acceptable for a tech book to consist of only 2 chapters?" Tags="|book|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5162" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-06T05:06:18.340" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T05:06:18.340" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T05:06:18.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5163" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-06T05:06:18.340" Score="0" Body="Tools and strategies for building indexes" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T05:06:18.340" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T05:06:18.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5164" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-06T05:09:13.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For questions specific to software documentation, see &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/software-documentation&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;software-documentation&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;software-documentation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-20T18:48:25.650" LastActivityDate="2018-02-20T18:48:25.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5165" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-06T05:09:13.110" Score="0" Body="Documentation, tutorials, training, user guides, installation guides, design documents, and all other types of technical documentation in any domain (not just software).&#xD;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-20T18:48:25.650" LastActivityDate="2018-02-20T18:48:25.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5166" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-06T05:10:34.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag should be used for questions that deal with a consistent style in your writing, such as when asking about typical ways to introduce a certain aspect to your reader by &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/showing-telling&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;showing-telling&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;showing-telling&lt;/a&gt; or if you are concerned that your &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/readers&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;readers&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;readers&lt;/a&gt; might feel that a change in the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/pov&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;pov&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;pov&lt;/a&gt; might be perceived as inconcsistency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should mention what kind of writing you are interested in, such as whether you are interested in &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/fiction&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;fiction&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;fiction&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/business-writing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;business-writing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;business-writing&lt;/a&gt;. Furthermore you should define what you are currently doing and why it's not working the way you think it should work. The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/feedback&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;feedback&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;feedback&lt;/a&gt; you already received from your &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/beta-reader&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;beta-reader&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;beta-reader&lt;/a&gt;, if this is applicable to the type of writing you are interested in, could also be relevant to give answerers a better understanding of your situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When asking about a style you should aim at getting information about a &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/technique&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;technique&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;technique&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/process&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;process&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;process&lt;/a&gt; that might help you consistently apply this style in your writing. In your question you should make it obvious what you are searching for and what you are hoping to achieve with this, such as whether you want to improve the speed of writing or the feelings of your readers towards a set of &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/characters&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;characters&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;characters&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T08:26:09.913" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T08:26:09.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5167" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-06T05:10:34.247" Score="0" Body="This tag should be used for questions that deal with a consistent style in your writing, such as when asking about typical ways to introduce a certain aspect to your reader by showing-telling or if you are concerned that your readers might feel that a change in the point of view might be perceived as inconcsistency. " OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T08:26:09.913" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T08:26:09.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5134" CreationDate="2012-03-06T11:23:24.607" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't recommend medication, as it seems that the concentration issues are specific to writing and these are usually short term solutions with long-term negative effects/side-effects. But perhaps the following aspects, dealing with organization, structure, and anxiety, might help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organization&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend Silvia's &quot;How to Write a Lot&quot; (Silvia, P. J. (2007). &lt;em&gt;How to Write a Lot.&lt;/em&gt; Washington D.C.: APA.). It's written for academic writing, but I think that most of the tips are also helpful for any kind of writing. Chapter 2 deals with &quot;Specious Barriers to Writing a Lot&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can't find time to write. =&gt; Treat it like any other appointment you cannot skip, e.g., teaching, and make and defend the time. Regularity makes it count, not the pure number of hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Need some more analysis first. =&gt; Treat it as part of the writing process in the allotted time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Need better X (computer, printer, desk). =&gt; Not necessary, &quot;only making a schedule and sticking to it&quot; will help.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Waiting for Inspiration =&gt; Cites a study which has shown that inspiration is not necessary, neither for quantity nor quality. He cites Keyes with &quot;Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend to them than inspiration.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He manages to examine these &quot;barriers&quot; and pretty much obliterate them -- mostly by recommending said scheduling and sticking to it. I'd try this first, because having time slot allocated for writing can really help to actually write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Structure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It it is still an issue, for me, most of the problems with concentration while writing (i.e., if I have managed the steps above) are due to a lack of structure. Once that is clear, writing goes more or less smoothly. So, perhaps you might invest more time in the outlining process (prior to writing, including capturing ideas to have enough material to work with). For me, this step comes prior to writing, but is part of the writing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More about outlining here (links to my blog):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Content Outlines: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.organizingcreativity.com/2012/02/how-to-create-a-content-outline-in-circus-ponies-notebook/&quot;&gt;http://www.organizingcreativity.com/2012/02/how-to-create-a-content-outline-in-circus-ponies-notebook/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outliner Comparison Scrivener vs. CPN: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.organizingcreativity.com/2012/02/outliner-in-scrivener-vs-outliner-in-cpn-structure-scrivener-vs-content-cpn-outlines/&quot;&gt;http://www.organizingcreativity.com/2012/02/outliner-in-scrivener-vs-outliner-in-cpn-structure-scrivener-vs-content-cpn-outlines/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anxiety&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the anxiety that the writing might be bad -- self-doubt is devastating here, especially if you love writing. Personally, allowing myself to be a beginner (even as an adult) has helped me -- I don't expect perfection. The good thing with writing is that you can revise your drafts, and as Lamott said (in Lamott, A. (1994). &lt;em&gt;bird by bird&lt;/em&gt;. New York: Anchor Books. also a great book), allow yourself to write a &quot;shitty first draft&quot;. You improve it in the second version, and make it good in the third. Take in mind that you alone decide if and when to seek feedback, and make sure that you get good feedback, i.e., feedback that actually improves your current and future work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3259" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T11:23:24.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5169" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5200" CreationDate="2012-03-06T12:23:58.057" Score="8" ViewCount="2009" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am writing papers with rather &lt;strong&gt;short sentences&lt;/strong&gt;: About half of them contain around 20 words, about 10% to 20% even less. I am doing this for three reasons: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I find short sentences easier to read, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prefer to show relationships using other means, such as colons and conjunctions (e.g. thus, because of, but), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and thought the scientific community agreed upon short sentences being better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I did some research and came upon &lt;strong&gt;contrary statements&lt;/strong&gt;, for instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/pgt/COMP60990/lectures/scientific_writing.pdf&quot;&gt;This presentation from the University of Manchester&lt;/a&gt; advises that one use short sentences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docstyles.com/library/ascience.pdf&quot;&gt;This article about the science of scientific writing&lt;/a&gt; prefers long sentences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.widener.edu/svb/essay/writing.pdf&quot;&gt;ACS Style Guide&lt;/a&gt; promotes the happy medium. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: &lt;strong&gt;Should I use long or short sentences, or a mixture, in scientific writing? Why?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3363" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-25T19:17:24.010" LastActivityDate="2018-02-27T16:06:38.033" Title="Should I prefer long or short sentences in scientific writing?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|scientific-publishing|science|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5170" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-06T12:40:34.843" Score="5" ViewCount="642" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this meets the FAQ under the 'Non-fiction, technical' section. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work as a Graphic Designer, but I want to apply for a job as an Advertising Account Manager. While my title at my current job says &quot;Graphic Designer,&quot; in practice I do a lot more then that. Our company is frankly pretty bad, and as a result our Acct Mgrs just try to lie and swindle to get clients to sign a contract; then they pass the file off to me to do everything else. They don't follow-up with me, they don't proof the ads, they don't do anything but convince the person to sign the contract - I do everything beyond that. On multiple occasions clients thought I was the Account Manager, because they end up talking more to me then with the actual Acct Mgr. I've also been responsible for some up-selling and finding new leads. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do freelance on the side which means I am my own Acct Mgr for those clients. Part of being an Acct Mgr is being a good Brand Ambassador, and I've got experience in that area too - I served in the US Peace Corps, which is very much being a Brand Ambassador 24/7 in the &quot;glass fishbowl,&quot; as they like to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of me wants to just explain the above without being negative towards my current job. The other part of me wants to write in a way that shows I understand the point. Something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am a creative, friendly, detail-oriented problem solver. I thoroughly enjoy analyzing questions and designs to make sure that they serve their point and are completely free of errors. For the work I do, that is to communicate an idea and create interest in a product or company. In the case of this letter it is to create interest in myself. If offered a position I would bring this same dedication, salesmanship, creativity, and outstanding attention to detail in creating an interest in both AGENCY NAME, and in our clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm concerned in the above that it doesn't really explain my experience and my resume doesn't particularly show Acct Manager experience just Graphic Design experience. How could I better convey the above and also explain my current experience without it becoming too long?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AGENCY has an opening for an experienced and ambitious Account Director. This person will drive new business and manage creative marketing programs utilizing our full range of services—design, digital, strategy, and product development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Account Director will be responsible for developing a deep understanding of client needs and objectives, and managing resources to deliver relevant, integrated solutions. A successful candidate will be able to lead several multi-disciplinary projects simultaneously, while still identifying and developing the next great client opportunity. Expert communication, project management experience, and creative thinking required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Job Functions:     Account Management, Business Development &amp;amp; Sales, Design Management, Marketing, Project Management, Research, Strategy &amp;amp; Planning&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3364" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T21:48:21.583" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:48:21.583" Title="Explaining that experience is far greater than official job title implies" Tags="|resume|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5169" CreationDate="2012-03-06T12:53:10.893" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want to do whatever makes the text easiest to understand. For me, that means a mix of long and short sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific writing is already going to be dense and complex. There are times when you have to write long sentences because you have to string a lot of information together, and separating the ideas will make them less clear. When you can, break up those long sentences with shorter ones. It will make the material more digestible, and give the reader someplace to rest between thoughts, if that makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to talk down to your audience, but there's no reason to put them to sleep, either. Paragraph-long sentences become a soporific drone to the reader's inner narrator. Short ones keep folks up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T12:53:10.893" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5170" CreationDate="2012-03-06T14:06:47.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Been there, done that, designed the T-shirt. Some suggested bullet points, mix and match as needed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acted as secondary point-of-contact with clients&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assisted Account Managers in dealing with client contacts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acted as junior Account Manger. Handled significant direct client contact. Upsold existing clients, generated&#xA;new leads.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be blunt about what you did. Put the Brand Ambassador material into the cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA&lt;/strong&gt; I wanted to address your blockquote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;I am a creative, friendly, detail-oriented problem solver. I thoroughly enjoy analyzing questions and designs to make sure that they serve their point and are completely free of errors. For the work I do, that is to communicate an idea and create interest in a product or company. In the case of this letter it is to create interest in myself. If offered a position I would bring this same dedication, salesmanship, creativity, and outstanding attention to detail in creating an interest in both AGENCY NAME, and in our clients.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a number of problems with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it in the job description that you are supposed to be nitpicking&#xA;everything which crosses your desk to figure out if it's doing the job it's supposed to do? Isn't it the job of the Art Director to make sure that a design fulfills its purpose before the job is, you know, designed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is proofreading part of the job description?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Right now you are the designer. Is it your job right now to come up&#xA;with the concept of the ads? That is, are you also the marketer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;In the case of this letter...&quot; Yeesh, don't call attention to the&#xA;man behind the curtain like that. The entire &lt;em&gt;point&lt;/em&gt; of a cover&#xA;letter is to create interest in yourself. Why else would you be&#xA;writing one? If this clunky and obvious line is an example of how you're going to create interest in a product, you're not doing a good job. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;If offered a position...&quot; That's fishing. You can talk about all those qualities, but in the context of &quot;I bring these X qualities to bear on every job I do&quot; and leave the implication that those qualities could help the employer to whom you are applying.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can only use &quot;our clients&quot; if this is a move within your existing&#xA;office; I'm unclear from your intro.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T19:06:20.663" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T19:06:20.663" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5205" CreationDate="2012-03-06T15:15:40.667" Score="1" ViewCount="1797" Body="&lt;p&gt;The actual meaning that I want to convey is sort of like a good design covers up the nitty gritty technical aspects of a machine and provides a smooth experience when using it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to describe this in a metaphorical manner with the imagination of a design as a &quot;bridge&quot; into the machine's world. I imagine that the surroundings of the journey into the machine's world is full of tangling wires and electronic boards in the background. There are moving tentacles at the sides of the bridge, making the journey a difficult one. It's like a Matrix world. A good design is a good bridge that would cover up all these ugly scenes/backdrop with a canvass of a blue skies and white clouds and make the journey on the bridge a pleasant and seamless one into the machine's world. The main gist is to describe the experience of walking from our normal realm into the machine's, comparing the raw experience with a &quot;well designed&quot; experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am hoping that I could write this whole messy idea into a concise and expressive manner with as little sentences as possible. I wrote a a little bit of it but found it really really awful. It just doesn't even feel good when reading it, much less to lead the reader to visualise the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The path into the machine's world is a curvy road with the tangling&#xA;  wires and tentacles in the surroundings. A good design flushes away&#xA;  these ugly scenes with backdrops of cloudy skies, making the journey&#xA;  into the new world a pleasurable one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was hesitant to even put up my attempt in writing this imagination because I feel it just reads so badly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas of how I could paint this imagination out expressively in words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2511" LastEditorUserId="2511" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T19:59:09.487" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T17:49:10.907" Title="Describing a machine's world in a metaphorical manner" Tags="|style|creative-writing|fantasy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5170" CreationDate="2012-03-06T15:40:50.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Lauren Ipsum's answer.  Some additional points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paragraph you posted for the cover letter talks about what you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to do, but you've actually &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; this.  Call that out; lots of people have aspirations, but you've got solid experience.  Consider working in something like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My current position allows me to go beyond the traditional scope of a graphic-design position.  I work directly with customers to do (thing) and (thing), demonstrating my creativity, flexibility, and knowledge of (domain).  (Something about positive customer reactions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, on the resume itself, make sure you call this out.  I have been in positions where my official job title was &quot;technical writer&quot; but I was doing programming, technical leadership, and project management besides.  On my resume I address this in two ways:  first, I have a section up front called &quot;key qualifications&quot; that talks about what I'm good at (the &quot;functional resume&quot; approach).  Second, in the job-listing section, I add summary notes right after the job title, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Company, dates&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Senior Technical Writer (programming, interface design, team leadership, documentation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotal evidence suggests that this has worked for me, though I have not been on the market in the last few years so I'm not as up on current trends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T15:40:50.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5159" CreationDate="2012-03-06T16:30:53.833" Score="8" Body="&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; •&#xA;I agree, this is a great opening. The first three lines are the sharpest, they prick your interest immediately:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough, and looked&#xA;  don't-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time.&#xA;  So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and&#xA;  thought a lot about how much he loved his wife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's why they grip me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;1st Line&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;• You meet Shadow and he has a cool name. He sounds mysterious.&#xA;• It's a punchy sentence. It's simple and intriguing. You know where you are and yet you're not comfortable being there.&#xA;• He's in an interesting place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;2nd Line&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;• Shadow's a bad-ass. But his name is unknowable.&#xA;• But we get to look at him. (killing time)&#xA;• Shadow is likely to be our vehicle for the story. Q: What do we know about him? A: So far we know he's a big, tough vehicle; likely to be a good ride.&#xA;• There's a nice play on him being unable to kill time, but anything living he could probably kill without raising a sweat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;3rd Line&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;• Good - he's keeping in shape. He's limbering up for the journey he's about to take us on. This revs our engines as well.&#xA;• Coin tricks are unusual and fun. They remind us of trickery, of cleverness. They are intricate like a whodunnit. This story is 3 lines in and already we have power and intrigue.&#xA;• He has a wife: this shadow has depth. And a weakness. And a soul. He &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; vulnerable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neil Gaiman is a fantastic writer, he is interested in mystery most of all but he has an instinct for people. His characters always have depth and that's why you care about his stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me a story must have: • a believable setting with flesh • characters who live, who you care about • significant events •&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3365" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T16:30:53.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5156" CreationDate="2012-03-06T16:33:20.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This won't be an essay, as I'm short on time, but my personal answer is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Martin's world expanded exponentially with each additional book in the series, and along with all the new information came many new characters, a lot of them to carry exposition and information, yet initially served no real purpose of their own in the sense of the grand epic that was being told. None of the readers was emotionally invested in Aeron Greyjoy, for example, but through him we gained a better understanding of the background that shaped his nephew Theon's character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This became a problem when the expository characters became secondary characters in their own rights – now each of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; had to have his or her own arc, background, characteristics, etc. Martin felt, whether rightly or not, that he couldn't just leave these new characters in the lurch when he executed his originally-planned five-year time skip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what he failed to realize was that there were only so many fictional characters readers could care about. They tended to bond with the ones introduced in the first novel and see those  subsequently introduced as no more than tools of exposition, information, or adversity for the primary characters already established. No one cares about Aeron's problems, and I have personally long suspected Brienne to be nothing more than a second attempt on Martin's part to create a more sympathetic and interesting Ser Loras Tyrell, who's been hanging around for five novels now and has yet to serve any real purpose. In that he only partially succeeded, as Brienne serves a classic example of a second-tier character in which no one is really invested, despite Martin's efforts to the contrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This crucial misjudgment on Martin's part was what led him to scrap the time skip to begin with, and it was an error from which the series has yet to recover, and I seriously doubt it ever will. Martin should have realized his primary characters was where the focus of the story always lay. He should have either abandoned the tertiary ones or relegated their fates briefly after the fact, no matter how unfair to them and their fans it seemed, and stick to his original plan. The fact he didn't do so served to seriously water down the focus and intensity present in the initial first three books as well as eliminate the powerful dramatic effect the skip would have possessed – we would have seen our beloved characters beaten down only to rise again, observe the changes that whould have occured in them for ourselves without having to agonize over every tiny step of their way. Some of the changes the loss of the time skip necessiated - such as suddenly turning Cersei from a flawed, conniving, yet ultimately brilliant player into a drunken moron complete with a previously never-heard-of mystical prophecy tailor made to explain her obvious overreaching and mistakes - could have been avoided, and our respect for the character would have remained in tact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3366" LastEditorUserId="3366" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T16:51:18.813" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T16:51:18.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5155" CreationDate="2012-03-06T16:50:55.307" Score="6" Body="&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi Standback, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good question. JK Rowling is a far better writer than people give her credit for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Everyone's character is defined by their feelings towards D'dore.&lt;/strong&gt; He is a kind of compass for the others in the books. Hagrid shows him loyalty like a dog, showing his unambitious, straightforward nature. Harry respects him as a guru, showing his drive to learn and do the right thing. Voldemort fears him as an equal, showing his need to be superior.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dumbledore is down to earth even though he has otherwordly powers.&lt;/strong&gt; Examples: he likes sweets (lemon sherberts) and has an unpretentious mischief. We simultaneusly associate him with a grandfatherly and a grandmasterly figure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He understands and accepts peoples' weaknesses.&lt;/strong&gt; And he shows up at just the right moment to encourage them when they are feeling disempowered.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4 + 5. &lt;strong&gt;He bestows kick-ass gifts / He speaks in riddles / He 'outdoes' the rest of the story.&lt;/strong&gt; Dumbledore speaks in a harmless, lullaby way but his words always have real significance. And so do his actions, even when they're mysterious. The gifts he gives have almost mythic power. In short - Dumbledore's actions always has &lt;em&gt;meaning&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you find this someway to being helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3365" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T16:50:55.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5185" CreationDate="2012-03-06T17:55:20.937" Score="3" ViewCount="438" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project I have been working on for many years. It is quite personal and is intended for a small audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the story, the protagonist is trying to find/help another character, who for most of the story is not named. The other characters know who this mystery person is, know the relationship between her and the protagonist, and will often refer to her by generic references or titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am worried that not naming her, or referring to her by name would be frustrating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3367" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T06:13:02.820" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T20:19:14.360" Title="Not knowing a character's name. Would this be frustrating for the reader?" Tags="|naming|readers|ambiguity|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5178" CreationDate="2012-03-06T18:09:10.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your story is for an audience of one, your reader can finish the story, look up from the page, and &lt;em&gt;ask you&lt;/em&gt; &quot;what's the woman's name?&quot; Problem solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T18:09:10.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5159" CreationDate="2012-03-06T20:26:23.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What makes this opener work? It puts you square amidst the action--as the old classical folks would say, in medias res, and introduces you to an interesting character, and tells us why me might be interested in that character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3368" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T20:26:23.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5182" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-06T23:32:56.897" Score="2" ViewCount="1886" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing an essay and must use MLA formatting. I can format the MLA formatting for the speech on the works cited page but I do not know how to form my in-text citations. The whole speech is done my Martin Luther King, Jr. and everything refers to the same speech. Do I have to make a parenthetical notation for the speech each time I quote something? That seems wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3371" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T00:42:33.690" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T21:17:34.707" Title="MLA formatting for multiple in-text citations of the same soure" Tags="|essay|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5155" CreationDate="2012-03-07T05:06:18.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it comes down to relatability. Dumbledore is portrayed in such a way that almost anyone can relate to him in some way. He is so... gosh darn grandfatherly that no one really feels the need to question his motives. Rowling takes &lt;strong&gt;something fantastic and lofty&lt;/strong&gt; (a nearly all powerful wizard) &lt;strong&gt;and makes him so human and down to earth&lt;/strong&gt;, that he feels like that nice old man in church, or your great grandfather telling war stories in front of a fireplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What makes Dumbledore so unassailable is his absolutely upstanding and kindly characterization.&lt;/strong&gt; When reading Dumbledore, you don't feel the need to criticize him, because deep down inside he strikes that chord that tells you that he is really doing what he thinks is best. There are moments where you wonder whether he really is making the right choices, but at the same time, the fondness that he intimates with the reader makes them feel that he is doing his absolute best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What contributes to Dumbledore's characterization? &lt;strong&gt;Everything he says or does.&lt;/strong&gt; His choice of passwords to his office. His fondness for sweets and trinkets. His kind understanding of the students wants and needs. His mercy when they misstep. Even when he is first introduced to the reader, he is seen going out of his way to protect Harry. Rowling really does a masterful job in her series of characterization. She may have plot holes here and there, and some of her choices seem a bit odd, but it is her skills at creating real characters that make her a joy to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to apply this to your work: &lt;strong&gt;Make Real Characters.&lt;/strong&gt; What does that involve? Getting to know them. Really getting to know them. Sit down and have tea with them, or play chess with them. What are they like? What is their personality? &lt;strong&gt;What they say, why they do things, or even how they do things is less important than what they do.&lt;/strong&gt; Growing up, we are taught that &quot;actions speak louder than words.&quot; Well, it really is true. Even in fiction. Having a character that does what makes sense for them is the first and most important part of having a real character. When your characters are real, you won't have to worry about what the reader thinks, because it will be the natural reaction to the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3277" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T05:06:18.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5178" CreationDate="2012-03-07T05:56:20.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe not knowing a character's name would be confusing unless you make it so. If you continuously refer to the same person differently from each of the other character's perspectives, or if you refer to the mystery person by using different titles, then that could become confusing. You will also need to be careful using terms like &quot;she&quot; and &quot;her&quot;, because depending on the context, your reader might not know who you are talking about. As long as you word your story well and pay heed to how you use your pronouns, you should be okay. Just concentrate on making sure that it is easy to understand who is being discussed wherever you use pronouns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T05:56:20.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5178" CreationDate="2012-03-07T06:23:43.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your worry is a valid one; the reader could be frustrated by this. However, this is something that can be taken care of in later drafts. You may need to shore things up a little to clarify the mystery character and their relationship to the other characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we don't know much about your project - novel? short story? game premise? movie pitch? - it's hard to give you specific advice. I hope the following scattershot suggestions will help: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will different people be referring to the mystery character by more or less the same phrase or title? If everyone refers to &quot;the MacGuffin character&quot;, then the problem is minimized. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe different people only have their own pieces of the puzzle and don't interact. If that's the case, they'd have no reason to use the same catchphrase or title for the mystery character. If that's the case, your job is a little harder. I'd suggest looking for commonalities between these characters who will refer to the mystery character. They'll come up with their own tags for the mystery character, but its possible to make them parallel in verbal structure. Better yet, construct the nicknames so they tell the reader something about the character's relation to the mystery character. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the rest of the tale is clear, the characters well-drawn, and the language fairly straightforward, then there should be a mysterious &quot;vortex&quot; when we get near the mystery character. If it's the same feel each time, the reader will be able to make the connection. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T06:23:43.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5161" CreationDate="2012-03-07T06:32:05.387" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;With the disclaimer that I'm neither a tech writer or tech editor:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific and academic books are generally organized by &lt;em&gt;function&lt;/em&gt;. Unlike a narrative book where the chapters are broken down by feel or by narrative rhythm, a scientific or academic  book has a certain amount of material to cover, and it makes logical sense to divide the book according to those functional guidelines. In this case you have two functional areas: Isolation of natural products, and biological function of natural products. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I understand your hesitation. Having only two chapters &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; feel a little strange. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will those two chapters subdivide in any way? Is there any structure within these two chapters? If so, perhaps you can divide the book into two &lt;em&gt;parts&lt;/em&gt; instead, and subdivide the parts into chapters. Just take care not to have insanely short &quot;chapters&quot; or you risk making the book seem fragmented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also check MLA or APA (or whatever style guide you're using) for advice about chapterization. I know that the Chicago Manual of Style addresses these issues, perhaps these academically-oriented style manuals do as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T06:37:15.910" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T06:37:15.910" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-03-07T06:32:05.387" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5156" CreationDate="2012-03-07T08:13:59.370" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;GRRM's primary goal with &lt;em&gt;Feast&lt;/em&gt; was &lt;strong&gt;to fill in crucial details&lt;/strong&gt;, whereas most of the volumes had the goal of &lt;strong&gt;portraying epic plot and conflict&lt;/strong&gt;. I'd suggest that the structure used in the previous volumes - interlacing novellas told from different viewpoints, collectively portraying a larger plot - is a great match for the latter goal, and a poor match for the former.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interlaced narrative is great for a multi-faceted plot. Individual details, on the other hand, don't need to be forced into a single narrative. There's no inherent reason to try and swirl them all together - while some creative interactions can yield brilliant, unusual plots, it's also possible to simply convey the different points separately, one by one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I think &lt;em&gt;Feast&lt;/em&gt; would have been better conceived as &lt;strong&gt;an anthology of short stories.&lt;/strong&gt; Short stories are an excellent way to convey focused information. They can zoom in on a particular character, time, place, or society. They're less limited by the narrative needs of a full novel (or a complete volume of a saga). And they can let individual characters quickly sum up a lot of what they're going through, while concentrating on a single, specific exciting event. (Interlaced narrative doesn't let you do that, because you need to either spread the single event over the whole book, or else have &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of exciting events, not one.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Brienne's oft-maligned arc could have been confined to a short story - for example, beginning with her expecting to find Sansa and discovering the outlaws instead, and then speeding right up to her finale with Catelyn. As a short story, this would have worked very nicely. I think many of the other arcs could be similarly condensed; similarly, using unusual and one-time viewpoints (as in the Dornish and Kingsmoot arcs) would have been easier, more natural, and more flexible - in fact, other more unusual framing POVs could have been employed as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I'd suggest that considering individual short stories (rather than a full double-volume novel) would make it much easier to identify when a story sags or meanders. This could also be fixed more easily, by shortening the story without rearranging the structure of the entire book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I think an anthology of &quot;tales from the interim&quot; would have better conveyed the nature of the book, its inherent &lt;em&gt;lack&lt;/em&gt; of epic-scale developments, its focus on things &lt;em&gt;other than&lt;/em&gt; advancing the main characters and plot. It would have stood out as a volume that was fundamentally and intentionally &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; from the others, and I think it could have served that purpose well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T08:13:59.370" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5188" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5190" CreationDate="2012-03-06T21:19:20.990" Score="3" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an article about Microsoft for my tech' analysis website and I got into a stylistic roadblock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of the following sentences should I use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I said before, the company from Redmond is cornered in the mobile space, so they'll need to heavily subsidize their OS in order to convince hardware manufacturers to join their fold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I said before, the Redmond company is cornered in the mobile space, so they'll need to heavily subsidize their OS in order to convince hardware manufacturers to join their fold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="112" OwnerDisplayName="Axonn" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T00:06:43.130" Title="&quot;The company from Redmond&quot; vs &quot;The Redmond company.&quot;" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5188" CreationDate="2012-03-06T22:16:10.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;So... provided that the reader has already been informed that they are reading about Microsoft, I prefer the first one (&lt;em&gt;the company from Redmond&lt;/em&gt;).  It's nearly pejorative or at least tongue-in-cheek, and the phrasing reminds me of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second version (&lt;em&gt;the Redmond company&lt;/em&gt;) isn't confusing per se, but it won't scan with the impact of the first version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3381" OwnerDisplayName="cornbread ninja" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T22:16:10.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5188" CreationDate="2012-03-06T22:31:46.320" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;In English, attributive adjectives usually precede their nouns in simple phrases&quot;&#xA;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjective&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjective&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems a fairly simple phrase so I would suggest &quot;the Redmond company&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, given the familiarity of the company it is not some company from &#xA;Redmond, it is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; Redmond company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems unnecessary and a little too informal to say &quot;as I said before&quot;. If you&#xA;have the readers attention they will know what you have already said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Redmond company is finding itself cornered in the mobile space, ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Sean" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T22:31:46.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5199" CreationDate="2012-03-07T15:17:11.200" Score="5" ViewCount="1104" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing a book which will include lots of short passages, on a variety of subjects, many of which are related to a single area in a city. Each passage will also have a photograph, which I intend to take myself. Here are some examples of the subjects that might appear in the photographs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A particular model of car.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Billboards and advertisements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commercial products, such as toys or packaged food.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impressive architecture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interior and exterior of specific businesses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Living, well-known people, photographed at a public event, such as a concert.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Murals on the sides of buildings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strangers walking on the street.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The dishes and menu at a restaurant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to obtain permission to write about these subjects or use the photographs (taken by myself) in the book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T22:51:41.950" Title="When do I need to obtain permission to photograph and write about a business, work of art, or person?" Tags="|non-fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5188" CreationDate="2012-03-08T00:06:43.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's &quot;the Redmond-based company.&quot; There is no value in making the phrase longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="202" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T00:06:43.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5001" CreationDate="2012-03-08T00:13:40.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently co-wrote a book that will be published in May.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a lot simpler than you think. The payment section of the clause says what the split is. In most cases I suppose that's 50-50 though obviously it could be anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other business issues in the collaboration are another matter. If you and your coauthor are splitting the money 50-50 and one author finds he is doing 80% of the work... that can cause tension. I &lt;em&gt;suppose&lt;/em&gt; the authors can go back to the publisher and change the financial split, though I don't have experience doing that. (I doubt it would upset the publisher, since it doesn't change how much they lay out, just the payment math.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="202" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T00:13:40.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5001" CreationDate="2012-03-08T11:18:23.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5005/1415&quot;&gt;my answer to a similar question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, your agreement with your co-author (and other possible collaborators) is a separate contract that should be put in place &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you begin the creation of the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T11:18:23.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5196" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-08T17:44:34.637" Score="3" ViewCount="449" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4325/the-opposite-sex-in-first-person&quot;&gt;The opposite sex in first person?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4660/how-to-write-realistic-female-dialogue&quot;&gt;How to write realistic female dialogue&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an inherent difference in how man and women speak that would translate to writing dialogue? I find this hard to contemplate as while I am male, I don't feel that I have found many differences in how the women i have known tend to speak, at least when it comes to dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Body language and topics and such would and are different, but for dialogue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To try and give an example, consider a friend comforting another friend over a break-up. Men and Women may try to comfort in a different way, but when speaking about the issue would my hypothetical friend characters dialogue be influenced by their gender?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm reminded of a story of an actress replacing a male actor in a big hollywood movie (can't remember which) without any of the lines being rewritten for her, which was not even noticeable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any kind of established good practice when it comes to writing genders? What is the reasoning behind it, if it does exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3378" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T23:20:25.023" Title="Does there have to be a difference when writing different genders?" Tags="|dialogue|gender|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2012-03-09T07:14:14.743" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5196" CreationDate="2012-03-08T19:57:44.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, the link that Lauren provided in the comments provides a lot of good, practical information rgearding possible issues in writing from the perspective of a different gender. However, I get the impression that you are more concerned about the dialog, which is most likely going to be different as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to keep certain aspects of your characters in mind as you write different genders. For example, two guys talking to one another might be included to call each other &quot;Dude&quot;. A man and a woman having the same conversation are much less likely to use such terminology. Also, two guys shooting the breeze might be inclined to throw in some colorful language or share inside jokes. They may also have some light banter about a sports topic or about a certain female. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While none of these are expressly taboo for a woman, you will want to make sure that if your female characters engage in such dialog, then the personality and other characateristics you provide for her should fit with that characaterization. For example, a formally educated high class woman is not likely to curse like a dock worker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing to do is just write your dialog without consideration of the genders. This will be your initial draft and will allow you to just get the words down. Then when you go back and start to edit, you can look at the dialog (and other aspects of your writing) and see if it really fits. That is the point where you will want to be more considerate of the dialog and mannerisms of your characters based on their genders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T19:57:44.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5191" CreationDate="2012-03-08T22:51:41.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, IANAL. I took some law classes in college, but still. Bert P. Krages, Attorney at Law is however, and he has a post on his website regarding this. He even created a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;downloadable PDF&lt;/a&gt; regarding photography laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, unless there is a clearly posted sign saying it's illegal to photograph something, you can go right ahead. With photography, it matters more who took the photo than its contents. You can't just use a photo that Jim Smith took without permission, but you can photograph Jim Smith's house without his permission, without fear of repercussions. That doesn't mean you won't get harassed, however. Jim may just decide to come running out of his house with a gun screaming for you to get off of his property. That may or may not be legal for him to do, depending on the state, but that's the risk you take. The PDF I linked to has various tips regarding this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as writing, as long as what you are writing is true, you're okay. If it isn't true, you can be sued for libel. For instance, say that Jim's Restaurant is filthy. You visit Jim's Restaurant, and notice the uncleanliness, so you write about it on your blog. Now, if Jim see's this, and doesn't like it, can he sue you? In short, no. In order to sue you successfully, he has to prove that when you visited, the restaurant was clean, that you willfully intended to damage his business by lying, and that he lost business because of it. Due to the difficulty of proving even one of those statements, it is extremely difficult to prove libel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you are probably safe. If you are really worried, there are courses of action to take. Firstly, you can hire a good lawyer, who can evaluate your work and give a recommendation one way or the other. That lets an actual legal expert have a detailed look at your work, and he can tell you exactly what is wrong, if anything. Secondly, and probably simpler, you can just make a simple disclosure form, and get the owner of the property to agree explicitly to allowing you to do your work. That gives you near 100% indemnity in court. It's also the friendlier way in my book. Most places would probably welcome the publicity, for that matter. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3277" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T22:51:41.950" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5169" CreationDate="2012-03-09T09:06:46.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that the sentences need to be the appropriate length to what you are saying, which is liable to be, on average, shorter than novel writing. One of the reasons for using long sentences is to convey a mood, to put a lot of ideas together in one, to build and build the picture you are drawing. In scientific writing there is no need for this, so this sort of long-winded sentence should be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is also important to make your sentences make sense. If you need to put a lot of information together. Then put it in one sentence. Don't chop them just for style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastEditorUserId="3380" LastEditDate="2012-03-09T13:24:09.633" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T13:24:09.633" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5201" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5203" CreationDate="2012-03-09T13:11:20.430" Score="6" ViewCount="986" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to write a sentence that tells the reader that the works displayed that they are about to see will bring them &lt;em&gt;back and forth&lt;/em&gt; between the real and virtual realms, in a figurative manner. The &quot;borders&quot; that I mentioned in the statement reflects some of the earlier references in the paragraph. This is the sentence that I wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The displayed works will set forth its viewers through a journey from&#xA;  the physical, passing the borders, into the virtual realm and back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sentence is somewhat complicated since I attempt to throw in quite a few ideas together. The phrase &lt;em&gt;back and forth&lt;/em&gt;, in particular, is split into &quot;set forth...&quot; and then &quot;back&quot; at the last part of the sentence. I am not sure if my sentence construction is correct and if the sentence delivers my intended meaning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somehow, I find my phrasing slightly awkward. Is there anything wrong with my sentence construction/pattern that causes it to sound awkward or lose its intended meaning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2511" OwnerDisplayName="xEnOn" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T21:49:00.740" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:49:00.740" Title="Problems with constructing a complex sentence with many ideas in it" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5201" CreationDate="2012-03-09T15:10:48.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that this sentence structure has some problems. I really don't think it conveys the message you intended, or at least not very well. Here are a couple of suggestions on ways to improve it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The displayed works will carry viewers on a journey from the physical world into a virtual realm and back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first example is simple and to the point. However, if you feel the need to mention the dividing border, then you can consider something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The displayed works will carry viewers on a journey from the physical world into a virtual realm and back, transporting them back and forth across the dividing boundary that separates the two planes of existence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what you mean by &quot;displayed works.&quot; Is this a book, a collection of stories, or what? You may want to simplify/clarify that a little better as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-03-09T15:13:25.817" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T15:13:25.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5201" CreationDate="2012-03-09T15:12:47.237" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is actually with &quot;back and forth.&quot; That's because &lt;em&gt;back&lt;/em&gt; is the return, but in the idiom it's placed before &lt;em&gt;forth&lt;/em&gt;, which is the &quot;going out&quot; part. If you use &lt;em&gt;take over&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;bring back,&lt;/em&gt; you'll eliminate some of the confusion. Streamline it and cut some of the figurative fluff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want something more like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;The displayed works will take the viewers on a journey past the borders of the physical into the realm of the virtual, and then back again.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T15:12:47.237" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5201" CreationDate="2012-03-09T15:23:49.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some ideas. Note, that &quot;the displayed works&quot; may be technically correct, but nobody says or writes that. The awkwardness of your sentence starts there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These pieces will send the viewer on a journey through the real -- and&#xA;  into the virtual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This work will take the viewer on a journey through the physical,&#xA;  across the border into the virtual, and back again!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or, if you were looking for something more direct, like in a story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hang on to your hats, boys and girls! Step on up and have a look,&#xA;  you'll never believe what your eyes will see. Pay two bits, and come&#xA;  on, strap in for the journey! From the physical, through the virtual,&#xA;  the borders you'll cross and the things you'll witness your friends&#xA;  will never believe!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course that's last one has a side-show feel to it. It does demonstrate something useful, through -- the fact that you don't need to cram everything into one sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final point:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;One problem I see with your writing is that it's passive. You can see that in the way you've phrased your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, you wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is the sentence that I wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;instead of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wrote this sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &quot;borders&quot; that I mentioned in the statement reflects some of the earlier references in the paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &quot;borders&quot; reflect some of the earlier references in the paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write more directly to you audience. Don't be afraid to state what you're going to state. Your writing will be cleaner, tighter and clearer if you avoid the passive voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T15:23:49.527" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5173" CreationDate="2012-03-09T17:49:10.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know the overall context of what you're writing, but I'll take a stab at it nonetheless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the user, the path into the machine's world is a twisted road,&#xA;  filled with chip-shaped stumbling blocks and tangled wires grasping&#xA;  like tentacles to catch the unwary. Good design paves over these&#xA;  dangers. It gets the technology out of the user's way, by working in&#xA;  the way the user thinks. And because it does, the technology becomes&#xA;  invisible. &quot;It just works&quot;, to quote Apple. It makes technology fun,&#xA;  by making what the user wants to do easy, and just as important, not&#xA;  intimidating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It should be the goal of every designer to make the journey into their&#xA;  machine a pleasurable one; a path broad and clear, inviting to the most wary user, and wire-tentacled-monster free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, so I kind of added to it too. I also made certain assumptions about your target audience -- software designers?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T17:49:10.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5206" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5207" CreationDate="2012-03-09T17:09:03.847" Score="4" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the correct tense to use in an academic paper when speaking about correspondence?  Say one of my source materials is a letter written by someone named William, in which he says he went to the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would I say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;William writes that he went to the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;William wrote that he went to the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If William was an author and I was discussing a book he wrote, it would be the former.  Is that true for correspondence as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3388" OwnerDisplayName="dwhsix" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-09T18:35:56.667" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T18:54:24.270" Title="What tense to use in an academic paper when speaking about correspondence?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|academic-writing|tenses|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5206" CreationDate="2012-03-09T18:54:24.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not in academia, but I think if you would use the present tense for a book, then a letter &amp;mdash; which presumably has to be published for you to have access to it &amp;mdash; would fall under the same rule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise you have something like, &quot;John Adams writes in &lt;em&gt;Defence of the Constitution&lt;/em&gt; that England is a monarchical republic, but in his letter of 1 March 1776 to his wife, Abigail, he wrote that he thought England was 'an instance of the indifferent led by the inbred into iniquity.'&quot; The switch in tense might be jarring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T18:54:24.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5208" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5219" CreationDate="2012-03-10T07:34:46.717" Score="5" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Japanese company has offered me a gig helping translate an Android&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; business application + documentation into English. Their staff will do a rough translation, and I will polish it into something reasonably professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my first writing job. My “qualifications” are availability, cheapness, and a fair technical background.  (I also happen to think I can write good prose, but the client didn’t bother to check that.)  But still, I want this contract to be a success, and I hope it will lead to more work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What work habits and routines do I need to establish in preparation for this new job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;1. Android OS is the operating system that drives most non-Apple smartphones and tablets.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3390" LastEditorUserId="3390" LastEditDate="2012-03-12T04:01:24.193" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T12:30:45.050" Title="Habits and routines for my first tech writing job" Tags="|technical-writing|translation|process|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5209" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5355" CreationDate="2012-03-10T08:01:31.927" Score="6" ViewCount="1761" Body="&lt;p&gt;This relates to my earlier question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5208/my-first-professional-writing-job-any-advice&quot;&gt;Habits and routines for my first tech writing job&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be involved with writing documentation for an Android OS business application. Is there an Android style guide for this kind of documentation? I really need to know the standard terminology for User Interface interactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google doesn’t turn up anything. All I find are style guides for other OS’s (e.g. here’s the &lt;a href=&quot;https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/APStyleGuide/APSG_2009.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apple Publications Style Guide&lt;/a&gt;) and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Android User Interface Guidelines&lt;/a&gt; which, at first glance, doesn’t seem to have what I’m looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3390" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-03-05T20:30:03.913" LastActivityDate="2018-03-05T20:30:03.913" Title="Is there a style / terminology guide for Android OS application documentation?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|software-documentation|user-guides|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2060" CreationDate="2012-03-11T23:31:28.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just writing, no bells, whistles, games, internet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HP LX200 (it's a clamshell XT). Load it with WORD 5 for DOS or VDE editor, better yet with a few nifty editing Macros and you can beat the crap out of any Tablet (Mac or Android)... even though it's antiquated and superannuated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or go back to the PSION 5MX (but with a fixed up third party flat cable). Marvelous little clamshell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tablets are NOT for writers/editors. There's no DEL (or CANC). You can't create simple editing Macros.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went to a Tablet store taking my 1992 HP LX200 - DOS!! with absurdly slow XT engine (the stone age!) and CHALLENGED them to do better / faster, promising them to pay twice the price on any modern handheld gizmo that could do better in terms of ease, speed on a simple paragraph translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, no Angry Birds, no flying in formation with a friend in Singapore, no Internet... I'm talking just about writing / editing work. First draft stuff . WORK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They stopped snickering when I beat the pants off them... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They got upset and figured I was a crank. But on the same text, they were still poking their fingers on the screen and highlight with their index fingers, while I used the rich editing features of old WORD 5 for DOS to do the same things at blazing speed. I shouted: &quot;Done!&quot; and they were still pecking and poking... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, I have a tablet (HTC Flyer) and I love it to pieces, but when I'm in a hurry and I don't want to be chained to a real computer with a real and proper keyboard (still the fastest way to go), my ancient hardware / software is at least 8 times more productive than Ipad or Android.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This ticks me off, because I'd love to bury the old machine... but there's nothing modern in the handheld - walking-and-typing that comes close...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3396" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T23:31:28.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5039" CreationDate="2012-03-12T00:31:29.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I downloaded the trial version of Scrivener and began toying with it in the fall of 2011. I initially used it for outlining, I loved the corkboard feature. I then decided to give it a try for NaNoWriMo 2011. It was the first year I finished. Attribute it to the intuitive interface, great tools or just having all your writing, characters and research in one program. I love writing in scenes and being able to drag and drop these as I need to rearrange my story is priceless. There is a free trial so why not give it a shot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone decides to buy Scrivener I was given a limited use coupon here &lt;a href=&quot;http://smworth.blogspot.com/2012/02/scrivener-coupon-codes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://smworth.blogspot.com/2012/02/scrivener-coupon-codes.html&lt;/a&gt; You’ll get 20% off – until it expires. Enjoy!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3397" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T00:31:29.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5213" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5214" CreationDate="2012-03-12T04:42:52.373" Score="5" ViewCount="609" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This question relates to my earlier question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5208/habits-and-routines-for-my-first-tech-writing-job&quot;&gt;Habits and routines for my first tech writing job&lt;/a&gt; which I was told to split into two parts.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first technical writing / translation gig starts soon. A Japanese company has offered me a gig helping translate an Android business application + documentation into English. Their staff will do a rough translation, and I will polish it into something reasonably professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client has a clear idea of how long the job will take me, and wants me to spend a fixed number of hours working in their office. I have no way of knowing whether the client’s estimate is realistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to start making my own estimates as early as possible but, if my computer programming experience is anything to go by, I’m the worst person to do that. If you ask a novice programmer, “How long will it take you to do Job A?” he answers, “A day.”  If you break Job A down into sub-jobs and ask, “How long to do A1, A2, ... A10?” he answers, “A week.”  If you hold him to that, he burns out in a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I estimate how long the job will take? How do I avoid the trap of overpromising out of an abundance of enthusiasm and a desire to please the client?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3390" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T09:22:44.943" Title="How can a new writer make a realistic estimate of his work rate?" Tags="|technical-writing|organization|translation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5213" CreationDate="2012-03-12T07:46:33.653" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimates of how long work like this will take are always guesswork. One can make some excellent guesses when one is experienced, but even then, it's advisable for one to take several factors into account: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The difficulty of the material.&lt;/strong&gt; Have you seen any of the text you'll be translating? If you have, then you already have a rough guide as to how long this will take. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;I suggest &lt;em&gt;actually doing the cleanup work you'll be doing on a few pages of the material&lt;/em&gt; while timing yourself. You can then make an estimate of how much time the core project will take. This is an amazingly simple and useful technique that I do with every editing or rewrite job before &lt;em&gt;quoting&lt;/em&gt; a fee or setting any timelines, to avoid surprises for myself or for the client. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;While this is much simpler with straight text (where you will have a word or page count), I imagine similar techniques can be used with translating an app. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;(Perhaps another tech writer can chime in about this. How do you estimate the volume of application text? Is there a metric here that's useful?)  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication issues&lt;/strong&gt; can also add time to a project. In this case, I'm guessing the  documentation team will be in the office where you'll be doing the work? &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;If you come across problems while doing the rewrite that are prohibiting you from proceeding, timely responses to questions from your client will make your job easier. If your only contact is in Japan, you'll have to wait overnight for responses. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Familiarity with the material&lt;/strong&gt; is also something that can add time to a project. In this case, you have a technical background, but are you familiar with Android's quirks? If not, add a little time to your estimate. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, after getting a time estimate together, you find that the client's timeline is truly unrealistic, I recommend going to them with this information and discussing the issue. If the two of you truly are at odds here, then this could easily turn into a difficult working situation that it'd be best to avoid. On the other hand, if your estimate is fairly close to what they're looking for, then you have no problems.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T07:46:33.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5213" CreationDate="2012-03-12T09:13:25.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your computing experience is probably the best guide you have. You know from this that a) some part of the translation will be easier than expected; b) some parts will be very tricky. So, ignore the easier parts, estimate how many will be tricky. This you should be able to ascertain from the length and complexity of the material - if you can gauge this. Or can you make a reasonable estimate as to how much is liable to be complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume you will have to go back to the original translators for these pieces, and that they will take you a long time. In the meantime, you will be able to get on with the rest. So you total time is liable to be defined by these difficult pieces - as per software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would say, treat it as a software task, like translating user requirements into code applications, and you should get yourself a reasonable idea of whether the estimate is close or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastEditorUserId="3380" LastEditDate="2012-09-10T09:22:44.943" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T09:22:44.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3358" CreationDate="2012-03-12T13:36:08.793" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Names of things (book, chair, car, house) are not capitalized, as they are common nouns, not proper (unique) nouns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is THE Holo-Reader, (the only one that exists) then yes, capitalize it. &quot;We were going to retrieve the Holo-Reader, which had been locked behind the Gates of Time for centuries.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a Holo-Reader, as opposed to some other brand of holographic reading device (Holographix, 3DBook, etc.) then yes, capitalize it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, no, common nouns are not capitalized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3402" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T13:36:08.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3358" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:36:47.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on what you are trying to do. By capitalising it, you are emphasising the difference - rather like saying &quot;Now I am going to use and define a term - read carefully&quot;. By using the term as it would be normally used by your characters, you don't highlight this so much - it is just part of their world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can de-emphasise it even more by modifying the description, which itself feels like a side note to people who are not part of the story. Maybe something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You spot a holoreader, which may prove useful to record and playback full holographic images. The long silver tube will fit well into your trouser leg.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or whatever. The less you take your reader out of the story, the more they will be glued into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T14:36:47.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5208" CreationDate="2012-03-12T15:17:50.083" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm answering this as a technical writer but I don't have translation experience so can't address any aspects specific to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the habits that (I hope) you already have as a software developer apply equally to technical writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Design first: figure out how you will structure the document to cover everything with a good flow (more on that in a minute).  Stub it out -- does it work?  In your case it sounds like they'll be giving you a rough document so this might not apply as much, but review it for structure/organization first anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Put yourself in the user's shoes: what &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; will the user be attempting to complete?  What does he need to know in order to do that?  Don't just &quot;walk the menus&quot; (as is common in application documentation); think about his goals.  If you've ever written API documentation and have risen above the level of the individual class/method/function to produce package overviews, developer guides, etc, do the same thing here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work breadth-first, not depth-first: especially because this is a new area for you, there is risk that you'll get bogged down in the early sections and have to rush the end to meet the deadline/time-allocation.  Do one reasonable pass over the whole thing using no more than half the time allotted.  Then assess where the most work is needed and address that.  Save about 20% of the time for an editorial/polishing pass (and to address any comments you receive).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask your questions early: something they've given you won't make sense but you won't spot it early if you don't look.  Review everything they've given you first, before you start designing and writing, so you can queue up the questions and go on to other work while waiting for the answers.  (This is particularly important if you're looking at at least a one-day turn-around due to time zones.)  As with any other work you've done, you don't want to get blocked on everything because you're blocked on something; structure your work to support this kind of multi-tasking.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When will your work be reviewed?  Only at the end, or will there be a review of a draft before you're done?  If the task is more than a couple of full-time weeks then, especially for a first gig, I would ask for a draft review to make sure everyone agrees about the level of detail, prose quality, structure, etc that you're producing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2012-09-10T12:30:45.050" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T12:30:45.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5220" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-12T04:33:46.013" Score="3" ViewCount="869" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do I need to form an LLC to self-publish a political book out of Florida? Although, I have tried very hard not to break any laws, I am worried about frivolous or spiteful lawsuits. I am trying to do a cost benefit analysis regarding time and money.&#xA;The set up fee via a website that forms LLCs is $100 to $200.&#xA;Articles of Incorporation filing fee is $125. &#xA;Apparently there will be a yearly $138.75 annual report filing fee.&#xA;As a one person LLC, I would have to file yearly taxes on Schedule C of my personal income taxes.&#xA;Is that it? Would that be all the time and money involved?&#xA;I expect to make less than $500 per month with the business. I have very little free time to deal with paperwork. And filing every quarter would be a burden.&#xA;In Florida can they take your house? Other assets?&#xA;I am not wealthy and am not sure it is worth all the time and money to set up an LLC. But the legal protection would be nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6091" OwnerDisplayName="user16879" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-13T17:48:01.133" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T18:30:22.603" Title="Do I need an LLC to self-publish a political book in Florida?" Tags="|self-publishing|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5220" CreationDate="2012-03-12T05:52:11.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, I am not a lawyer-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should check with your lawyer but I believe that a LLC will not offer you any protection in a libel suit. If you knowingly print something that is untrue and causes injury to another party it is on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as your house goes, I believe Florida is one of the few states where your primary house (residence) is protected in bankruptcy. That may or may not help you in a libel suit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="JonnyBoats" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-13T17:47:13.570" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T17:47:13.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5220" CreationDate="2012-03-12T18:40:07.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IANAL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IANAL&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I can see from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publishlawyer.com/pubfaq.htm#2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this reference&lt;/a&gt;, an LLC does not protect you from lawsuits against you as the writer, such as with libel, defamation, or invasion of privacy torts.  That page does mention you can get media liability insurance, but it is not cheap (it states $3-4,000 and a $5k deductible).  &lt;em&gt;You should check this against other information to see if this is the case.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, even if we were to assume an LLC &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; protect you, if you do not conduct your LLC completely properly (separate bank accounts, documenting your &quot;meetings&quot;, filing all forms, &lt;em&gt;sufficient capitalization&lt;/em&gt;, etc...), courts can find you are operating as an &quot;alter ego&quot; and pierce the corporate veil, affording you no personal protection anyway.  Given that you state that you have little time for paperwork/filing, you might want to think twice about whether you are up for what it takes to run an LLC properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2388" OwnerDisplayName="Chelonian" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T18:30:22.603" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T18:30:22.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5178" CreationDate="2012-03-12T20:19:14.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;GO AHEAD AND KEEP IT A MYSTERY!!!! Not only will this hook your readers and they'll want to keep reading, but it will add a different kind of perspective to your novel.  However, you might want to consider revealing this person's name toward or at the end of the novel, just to keep the reader happy that you concluded everything. and that is JUST a suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3404" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T20:19:14.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5225" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5228" CreationDate="2012-03-12T21:18:16.923" Score="3" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently followed the advice of our very own Jeff Atwood and started a blog site in order to become a better writer and communicator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal is to improve my skill at technical writing and business writing; to be able to write crisply, clearly, and to the point. I want to develop a writing style whichs is, at once, both informative and enjoyable. Stylistically, I'm aiming for a (crazy) mixture of Bill Bryson and Christopher Hitchens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've chosen a blog because it seems a good first step - it gives me a platform to write. It's a place I can write frequently and get as much practice and I need. However, I'm concerned that I will not go too far just by blogging frequently without any external input. &lt;strong&gt;How can my I use my blog to improve my writing, beyond just writing a lot?&lt;/strong&gt; Is there something I can do as part of my blogging that will push my limits and make me a better communicator? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3405" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T18:04:32.780" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T18:04:32.780" Title="How do I use my blog as a platform for practice and improvement?" Tags="|technical-writing|blog|business-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5226" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5245" CreationDate="2012-03-12T21:18:26.643" Score="2" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the self publishing route one that is considered acceptable these days? Specifically, I am writing short stories, and there is no real chance of getting a publisher to look at short stories without some previous history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I don't expect to make enough money to justify a publisher, or even my time in trying to find one - I expect to make something, but not a great deal.  So self-publishing seems to make sense, to get some of my work out there, and see whether anyone likes it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this sort if work, is self-publishing a good route, a sensible route?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T19:22:28.350" Title="Is self-publishing a good option?" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2012-03-13T19:30:37.963" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5227" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-12T23:30:28.520" Score="6" ViewCount="1887" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written several essays and  am still working on some that I would like to eventually get published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issues I cover are on a wide range of topics ranging from Scientology to Piracy to Democracy. All of them are controversial topics. I've supported all my arguments with references to try and give them credibility. The average length is about 2000 words, with some being over 6000 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is key is that I think the views I advocate are unique or at least controversial. In all cases my arguments are well supported by evidence and reputable sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to publish a book in the line of &quot;Arguably Essays&quot; by Christopher Hitchens or Jon Stewarts early book &quot;Naked Pictures of Famous People&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do to formulate these essays together in a way more attractive for publishing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I try and link them, however loosely?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I try and shorten them, making them more brief and thus perhaps more accessible?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I leave opinion out of it to a certain extent?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or anything else that has slipped my list of issues to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3378" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-13T01:25:15.180" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T02:59:13.090" Title="How can I make a collection of essays / arguments more attractive to publishers? " Tags="|publishing|essay|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5225" CreationDate="2012-03-13T00:40:36.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like you're already following the One Big Law of becoming a good writer: Write! :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, with that out of the way, I have a few ideas to contribute. These are in no particular order though they are interrelated. And, of course, all standard disclaimers apply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Find a local writing group&lt;/strong&gt; to join that can critique your work. You say you miss feedback, so go get some. The key to this is getting the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; writing group. Many are self-congratulatory groups of folks having fun hanging out and pretending to be artistes. You'll never hear a bad word out of them. Others are outlets for petty tyrants to boost their own self-worth by cutting down everyone else. You'll never hear a good word out of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you want are a group of honest, constructive people that can tell you what they liked and what they didn't like -- and then can tell you why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;Read writing books&lt;/strong&gt;. Look around at some of these &quot;best writing book&quot; lists people put out or elicit on sites like this. Pretty soon, you start to see the same subset of books show up over and over. Orson Scott Card's &lt;em&gt;Characters and Viewpoint&lt;/em&gt;, for instance, if you're doing fiction. Have a look at some of those, and start in on one that interests you and addresses an area where you think you're weak. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;strong&gt;Slice your writing into elements, rate each element, then pick one to focus on&lt;/strong&gt;. By elements, I mean things like voice, characterization, pace, setting, clarity, and so on. Obviously my list is in the vein of fiction, but you get the idea. When you rate yourself on these elements, look for worst and the best. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, pick one or two, and study it, practice it, and polish it. For those you rate the worst, you're looking to improve them to the point where it doesn't damage your writing. If you're lucky, you'll start to &quot;get it&quot; and it could turn into a good thing in your writing. Or at least stop the bleeding.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the best, these are the elements where your talents lay. You want to practice them, polish them, and play with them -- these are the elements that will make your writing shine and give it star power. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final note on that before moving on: you don't have to be great at every element. Very possibly, you can't. JJR Tolkien was a master at creating mythical worlds, but his plots were fairly straightforward. HP Lovecraft's still around a hundred years later because he could narrate imagery that would sink its claws in your mind -- but he couldn't write dialog with a gun to his head. I read somewhere that out of a million-some published words he only wrote about 5000 of dialog. And those are... painful to read, in a bad way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;strong&gt;Look to the masters&lt;/strong&gt;. You mentioned Bill Bryson and Christopher Hitchens. Two parts to this idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Read their stuff with &quot;a writer's eye&quot;. See if you can identify what it is that makes you like them. Then, figure out what they do and how they do it that makes it so appealing. I'm not talking about in a broad sense, especially not at first. Take a single sentence, or bit of dialog, or paragraph that really grabs you, and figure out how they did it. Or at least figure out &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; they did. Explicitly defining it will help you put tools in your toolbox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) Sit down, pretend you are that author - like you're an actor playing them in a movie - and write as if you are them. Write what they would write, if they were sitting in that spot instead of you. I'm sure that plenty of people will be critical of this idea. After all, as a writer you want to find your own voice, not be a pale imitation of the other guy. But I do think it's useful sometimes. When you do this, you use those tools you've discovered in a way that flows, uninhibited by yourself and all the thousands of other possibilities of what you could put on paper. And in the process, you're actively learning to use those tools in a way that boosts your own writing. It's like training wheels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) &lt;strong&gt;Write some more&lt;/strong&gt;. Or, so this has already been covered, but I'll repeat it here. It's a good one to end on. In some article I read, they claimed you can't really be a good writer until you've written a million words. The more I write, the more I believe them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-13T01:20:59.990" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T01:20:59.990" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5225" CreationDate="2012-03-13T00:57:59.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your next step is to start editing yourself. First up: clean out those clich&amp;eacute;s, redundant words, and worn-out filler phrases you're relying on without even noticing. To wit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;...and started a blog site in order to become a better writer and communicator.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;..and started to blog to improve my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;I'd like to figure out how exactly I can improve the fastest, as I suspect that I will not go too far just by blogging frequently without any external input.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two clauses actually have nothing to do with one another. Start with &quot;I suspect.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;  &quot;literary tricks&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're tricks, then they're not skills, which is what you're really looking for. And by &quot;literary&quot; do you mean &quot;to do with writing,&quot; or &quot;mainstream and not genre, because genre books are for [insert insult]&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;will push my limits &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find a way to freshen this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;and make me a better communicator?&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to be a better communicator or a better writer? They aren't the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt; At the end of the day&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clich&amp;eacute;, and a particularly tired one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt; I want the reader to feel that what I wrote was accessible, fun to read, informative and inspiring, while still eloquent, but without being elitist.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything else? Should it freshen the breath and defragment the hard drive? Should it taste great and be less filling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm being snarky, but you get my point. You write a lot; that's great. Now start examining what you've written and see where it could be tightened, polished, trimmed, and reworded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T00:57:59.363" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5230" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-13T04:34:05.397" Score="3" ViewCount="501" Body="&lt;p&gt;As authors, our influences can come from many places. Religion is definitely one of many influences on people's work. I believe a work should be a reflection of its author, yet religion can be really polarizing. How can I bring aspects of my personal belief system (Christianity, if it matters) into my writing without marginalizing my audience, who may not feel like I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, some of the fiction I've read feels like thinly veiled propaganda (Pullman's His Dark Materials), while some has a lot of hidden meaning without being obstructive to the point (Card's Ender Saga). How can I express my viewpoint in my fantasy world without seeming propaganda-ish? To clarify, I'm not interested in writing an allegory; that would be marginalizing. While they have their uses, and can be wonderful on their own right (Lewis' Narnia), that's not what I'm doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a particular example of writing that illustrates your point, I'd like to know what it is, and have a small summary of it. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3277" LastEditorUserId="3277" LastEditDate="2012-03-13T21:45:15.753" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T21:45:15.753" Title="How do I express opinion informed by my beliefs without being hamfisted?" Tags="|style|resources|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="17" ClosedDate="2012-03-13T18:23:46.580" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5230" CreationDate="2012-03-13T09:39:07.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is that you introduce characters with views that oppose your own, &lt;strong&gt;and don't try disproving their views&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing this, you'll make your readers more accepting toward your own views for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By being willing to accept other views within your work, you remind the readers that each is entitled to his own opinion - and that includes you!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Readers who disagree with your viewpoint will still have &quot;representation&quot; within your work, and won't feel that by having your own view you are disqualifying their views.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T09:39:07.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5232" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-13T00:08:13.327" Score="5" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4815/how-does-one-present-spoken-dialogue-as-a-secondary-language-to-signed-speech&quot;&gt;How does one present spoken dialogue as a secondary language to signed speech?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to write a novel and I was thinking of including a deaf character. I want to know the best way to express what the deaf person is signing because I don't think using speechmarks would be appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="MattyBeales" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T10:12:37.440" Title="Deaf speechmarks?" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-03-13T16:40:08.690" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5232" CreationDate="2012-03-13T00:56:18.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would simply treat this as you would any other foreign language. The fact that the language is communicated by signing rather than speaking is immaterial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Brett Reynolds" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T00:56:18.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5230" CreationDate="2012-03-13T09:58:51.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Present your views as the views of a character, who is also &quot;human&quot; ( i.e. normal, fallible ). Present other views alongside, from other characters. Don't push your views as the narrator or other super-being within the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, show the doubts the questions, why your character has come to believe what they do. Not in depth, but at least demonstrate that they have thought through their views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need a character with strong, extremely polarising views, make sure they are seriously challenged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasoning is that if you present an argument for a religious view, and explore how it impacts a person, that is a better way of reflecting the holistic nature of their belief than simply explounding dogma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing SF or fantasy, then you may have to modify some of these ideas, but the principles apply just as much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T09:58:51.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5232" CreationDate="2012-03-13T10:36:33.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We just addressed this &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4815/how-does-one-present-spoken-dialogue-as-a-secondary-language-to-signed-speech&quot;&gt;recently,&lt;/a&gt; and the excellent answer suggested was &lt;i&gt;guillemets&lt;/i&gt;. « and »&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T10:12:37.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5232" CreationDate="2012-03-13T14:14:56.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;guillemets, as suggested by Lauren Ipsum, is a good option. Another one, that would appeal to me in reading it, would be to not use any speech marks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Do you like my use of language?&quot; he questioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you would sign more, she signed back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is that this sounds more silent to me - I read this, and get the silence and the occasional slap as the person signs back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this would not always work, but it would make me think each time I read it, how this was being communicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T14:14:56.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4815" CreationDate="2012-03-13T14:22:07.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Treating sign as spoken language makes sense and is generally the right way to go. But remember, you're &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; actually quoting what someone signs. You're &lt;strong&gt;quoting the English translation of what someone signs&lt;/strong&gt;. So you should treat ASL signers exactly like you would treat any other foreign language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ASL is a language in its own right, not derived from English, and has its own vocabulary, syntax, etc. It's not just finger signs but involves movements of the hands, arms, head, face, mouth, etc. E.g., &lt;code&gt;&quot;Where are you going?&quot; he signed&lt;/code&gt; would literally be &lt;code&gt;&quot;[YOU] [GO] [WHERE?]&quot; he signed&lt;/code&gt;,  substituting the proper signs for the bracketed transcriptions and using standard ASL syntax. This of course it not very helpful way to transcribe! It would be as if we transcribed French &lt;code&gt;&quot;Où vas-tu?&quot;&lt;/code&gt; as &lt;code&gt;&quot;ooh vah too&quot;&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;&quot;Where go you?&quot;&lt;/code&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that ASL is a language and you should treat it as such in writing. So if you would just quote a French person speaking in French, do the same with ASL. If you italicize foreign speech, then do that. In my opinion you need to aim for two goals: (1) accurate depiction of ASL as a foreign language and (2) reader comprehension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2992" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T14:22:07.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5227" CreationDate="2012-03-13T14:45:05.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The up-hill battle you face is that there's a lot of material out there and publishers can afford to be choosy.  Based on observation only (I haven't tried to get essay collections published nor am I a publisher, but I've watched others pursue this), publishers are looking for a unifying theme that can be used for marketing.  With Christopher Hitchens or Jon Stewart that unifying theme is the author -- people have heard of those authors and are naturally going to pay attention.  They've never heard of me or (I presume) you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A unifying theme can work even for an author who is previously unpublished, but it requires an established base or a compelling hook.  For example, Gordon Atkinson sold &lt;em&gt;Real Live Preacher&lt;/em&gt; (now out of print), a collection of essays from his blog (with some new material), and Michael Burstein sold &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0981639062&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I Remember the Future&lt;/a&gt;, a collection of stories that had been published in magazines and had all been nominated for awards.  Michael Lopp published &lt;em&gt;Managing Humans&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Being Geek&lt;/em&gt;, collections that originated on his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randsinrepose.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;, and Johanna Rothman published a book about hiring technical people based on entries in her &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jrothman.com/blog/htp/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;.  In cases like those, people are attracted to the theme and have also had the opportunity to sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you offer a collection of essays that may be individually compelling, but they aren't tied together somehow, they haven't been previously published (I presume) and vetted by the public, and (I presume) you are not already known personally.  That's going to be a hard sell.  Things you might do to increase your odds, all of which will take time, include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seek publication of individual essays in appropriate venues.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Blog, and drive enough traffic to that blog to build the beginnings of a base.  (How to do that is beyond the scope of this question.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Self-publish some of your material (e-books make this easier than it once was) so that you can point to those sales when approaching publishers later.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-02-17T02:59:13.090" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T02:59:13.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5241" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5246" CreationDate="2012-03-13T15:43:02.763" Score="2" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a son in kindergarten who is interested in reading. He also loves the stores that I tell him each night. These are usually just made up on the spot and are pretty silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I wanted to write my stories down for my son, how do I make sure I am using the right words that are within his reading level and maybe even stretch him a bit without the reading being too hard or to where he loses interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1418" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-13T16:37:54.153" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T06:13:58.403" Title="How to write a book for a given reading level?" Tags="|children|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5241" CreationDate="2012-03-13T15:55:16.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One approach would be to record your story-telling sessions, particularly in a way that captures his reactions.  You could then review those recordings to see what worked and what didn't (e.g. you had to repeat something in a different way).  Reading comprehension is different from aural comprehension, but at least you know he'll know the words in one context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T15:55:16.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5244" CreationDate="2012-03-13T16:19:53.413" Score="4" ViewCount="4764" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it really necessary to place the appendices in a book in the order in which they are referred to, or is it possible to have a &quot;logical&quot; order, i.e. place them in an order which would be chosen when the Appendix would stand alone? For example, Appendix G referres to another appendix, which logically would be placed as Appendix H, but because the reference appears so late, that appendix would end up as Appendix Q when placing the appendices in the order of references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3409" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-06-24T15:29:54.817" LastActivityDate="2019-06-24T15:29:54.817" Title="Is the order of appendices according to their references fixed?" Tags="|formatting|book|appendix|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5243" CreationDate="2012-03-13T16:40:29.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would have no problem putting appendices in &quot;logical&quot; order. An appendix is referred to out-of-context or out of order anyway, so what difference does it make if your footnote sends the reader to Appendix A, Q, or IV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T16:40:29.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5226" CreationDate="2012-03-13T19:22:28.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on how short you're talking, and whether you're talking about print or electronic, Amazon is explicitly pushing short/medium stories at present through their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;node=2486013011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Singles&lt;/a&gt; program, and a scan through the published works ranges from unknowns to Stephen King. I can't speak from personal experience, but it seems like it's a reasonable approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3211" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T19:22:28.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5241" CreationDate="2012-03-13T19:38:11.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Children have quite astonishing powers of linguistic acquisition - in other circumstances your son could be equally fluent in two or even three languages. Bear in mind this is &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; son, so &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are a major source of his exposure to language, particularly in these very early years. To a considerable extent, &lt;em&gt;you determine what level of language he becomes comfortable with&lt;/em&gt; - almost by definition, it's what you expose him to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't set yourself an unrealistic task - for example, by trying to learn and reproduce a subset of grammatical constructions and vocabulary deemed by someone else to be appropriate for an average child of your son's age.  You simply won't be able to maintain this consistently, and you'll end up constraining your own natural powers of expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It shouldn't be difficult to avoid words and constructions that you know perfectly well are excessively unusual or complex. But you should concentrate more on making sure the &lt;em&gt;subject matters&lt;/em&gt; you write about are those your son is keen to engage with. And try to encourage his powers of imagination to develop; you want him motivated to read for himself, and perhaps to find even more depths in a tale when he reads alone than when you read it aloud to him originally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another little trick to try is introducing family/local references into a story. Even to the extent of having your fictional characters mention &lt;em&gt;your own son&lt;/em&gt; as someone they've heard of. Artistic license is a useful tool for making sure you capture both the attention and the imagination of your reader!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1662" LastEditorUserId="1662" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T00:44:00.460" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T00:44:00.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5227" CreationDate="2012-03-14T03:08:20.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that &quot;attractive to publishers&quot; means &quot;readers will pay money for it&quot;. That and only that. What you will need to do is prove that there is a &lt;em&gt;market&lt;/em&gt; for this (when we can already read megawords about people's views on &quot;topics ranging from Scientology to Piracy to Democracy&quot; for free online). Not that it can't be done: look at Freakonomics. You have to make it new, unheard-of, fresh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T03:08:20.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5227" CreationDate="2012-03-14T05:25:33.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your difficulty is that &lt;strong&gt;you need an elevator pitch.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're unfamiliar with the term, an &quot;elevator pitch&quot; is a super-brief description of your book - basically, how you'd pitch it to somebody sharing an elevator with you. A line, two - no more. This level of succinctness is crucial, because from most potential buyers - both publishers and, eventually, readers - that's pretty much all you're going to get to catch their attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes marketing anthologies (of any kind - fiction, nonfiction, opinion, whatnot) extra-difficult - because you need to bundle a bunch of different, unrelated pieces into a single quick pitch. Consider your own reaction, if you were offered a book like you're describing. If somebody (say, other than a personal acquaintance whose opinion you trust) were to say, &quot;Hey, you should totally try this book! It's got a whole bunch of essays on a whole bunch of topics! Yes, just like on lots of places on the internet - but &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; guy's really good and his ideas are really interesting!&quot;. Would you be excited by that intro? Would you believe the last part? Would you pay money for that? Or would you figure you could get the same in a hundred magazines and blogs? That's the problem you need to overcome - once you've got a pitch, your work will stand or fall on its own merits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What's a good unifying pitch for my collection?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Common was to unify your pitch include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on a specific topic.&lt;/strong&gt; If you can focus on a single issue, the book becomes much easier to describe and to market. If you're after publication, you can deliberately target a topic. The topic also doesn't need to be entirely expected or straightforward - if you've got something clever or unusual, or something that stretches a definition in a way people will enjoy, that's great too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on your unique style and character.&lt;/strong&gt; Then that becomes the draw. &quot;A Zen Master takes on everything from Piracy to Scientology!&quot;, &quot;Delightfully tongue-in-cheek, &lt;em&gt;Things White People Like&lt;/em&gt; mocks every staple of everyday life!&quot; etc. etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on a consistent approach.&lt;/strong&gt; Popular science books like &lt;em&gt;Freakonomics&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper&lt;/em&gt; cover a huge range of different topics, but they're all an attempt to examine a variety of issues in &lt;em&gt;pretty much the same way.&lt;/em&gt; Similarly, if you've got a core insight you apply over and over, or a regular system by which you ferret out the basis for your controversial opinions, then that approach might be the core of your book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have an existing following.&lt;/strong&gt; Then the pitch is really easy - &quot;read the exciting insights of [semicelebrity X]!&quot;. Nice work if you can get it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What other options do I have?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds, from your question, as though you're having a tough time finding a unifying concept. That's perfectly reasonable (albeit, of course, less fortunate than the alternative). In that case, your pieces might really be better off as standalones. If you come to this conclusion, you have a few worthwhile avenues to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sell your pieces to professional publications. This is the single-piece equivalent of publishing a book. It gets your name out, it gets you paid, it brings you contacts, it establishes reputation in the field. You can even spread out into several directions and different publications at once, which is really rather nice. Don't forget to consider respectable, popular online venues - writing a guest post for a really popular blog gets you a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of readers, at least briefly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blog. It's tough to get a following, but good content will generally find an audience. A decent blog readership is often acheiveable - and could even be the basis for the &quot;have an existing following&quot; option for some later project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self-publish as an eBook:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a collection - This is straightforward, and gives you the self-publishing version of what you wanted for traditional publishing. &lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt;, you'll run into the same problems selling this that you would with writing a pitch to begin with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As individual ebooks - this might be a great solution if you really think you've got marketable content. Split up into a bunch of tiny ebooks; sell 'em cheap. This lets you pitch &lt;em&gt;every single one&lt;/em&gt; of your essays independently; each individual pitch will be much easier; each individual ebook will be cheap (and hence pretty attractive to newcomers). You might even distribute some free, as a sample that'll help draw more readers to your ideas and your writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both - lots of itty-bitty little ebooks, and one &quot;big&quot; one collecting them all. The small ones are great as above, but they &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; direct readers towards the big collection. This is no guarantee that the big collection will sell nicely, but this is literally no additional risk (and very little additional effort) beyond what you've got for the individual ebooks. So, yay!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T05:25:33.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5213" CreationDate="2012-03-14T22:13:25.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an exhaustive list of tasks and approximated times it will take for each one, and then I enter this info in a metrics with a minimum 10% contingency (prefer 20%) to determine man hours. However, one programmer suggested a simpler solution: actual time multiplied by 2. If it will take you one week, tell them two. You have to allow for risks and contigencies, changing priorities, and anything else that inevitably might happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3416" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T22:13:25.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5251" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-14T22:34:41.393" Score="-1" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;What writing style should be used if you are attempting to write a book for the general public between the ages 9 through 25?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="megzoftrouble" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T03:58:19.710" Title="Writing for all ages?" Tags="|word-choice|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-03-15T06:28:36.700" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5253" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-15T02:51:27.233" Score="10" ViewCount="840" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a dozen good guys, but four of them are the protagonists and the other six are more in the background, it's not that hard to skew the pagetime of each character towards those that are more important to the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if all twelve characters are equally important (like one of those superhero unions or something), then I've found things seem to get difficult. Obviously the characters that are actors more than observers get more pagetime simply due to being more involved in the plot, but I still feel like the less-involved are being shafted a bit, especially as the characters I tend to favour wind up being used more often. So far the most common character has ~11% of the paragraphs while the least common two have ~4% each (with ~14% of the paragraphs being attributed to no one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it reasonable at all to expect better distribution of spotlight? Aside from breaking the cast into subgroups and focusing on one group at a time (which is planned), is there a feasible way to divert subconscious bias? How many simultaneous protagonists is too much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3420" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T12:32:24.763" Title="Balancing loads of equally-important characters" Tags="|fiction|characters|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5251" CreationDate="2012-03-15T03:58:19.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a pretty wide spectrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;9-year-olds who actually care to read have a decent vocabulary-- you'd be surprised what they can handle if they want to. So you don't need to dumb your book down terribly. But at the same time don't be using words like &quot;deontological.&quot; There's just no point, unless it's a crucial word which an entire section of your book revolves around, in which case you should go out of your way to define it. Otherwise, it adds nothing because so few people will know what it means. But that goes without saying, I think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: when you have to choose between the elaborate/fanciful way and the clear way of saying something, always take the clear way. Clarity is king.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't have long blocks of text, like two-thirds of a page or more. Nothing turns people off more than a huge block of text. In novels for an older audience, it's okay. For most 9-year-olds, it's going to be a problem. Try to break things up. If this is a narrative book, dialogue is good. It does a great job of breaking up the sometimes monotonous flow of the author's narration by letting the characters get in a few words instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's generic advice, though. If you wanted to be told how to develop a personal writing style, of course nobody can answer that for you. Styles vary enormously from one author to the next, and from one type of book to the next, and from one genre to the next, and one language to the next. You have to look at other books similar to what you want to write, and see how they did it, then develop your own voice over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T03:58:19.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5253" CreationDate="2012-03-15T04:12:10.050" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I've experienced, you don't need to give everyone equal spotlight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take Star Wars for instance. Darth Vader has considerably less screen time and fewer lines than Han Solo or Luke Skywalker, but nevertheless he's an icon and one of the most memorable parts of the film. It isn't about duration: it's about quality. A well-crafted character can make their mark in a tenth of the time it takes for a lesser character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust your subconscious bias, but don't let it seize control. Your subconscious is biased because there's a reason to be biased: some characters may be legitimately more interesting than others. Make sure you're being honest with yourself: do all your plot threads truly have equal importance? Don't try to squeeze something out of it if it isn't there, just because you wanted it to be there. Your story may need re-envisioning. But like I said, don't let the subconscious seize control, or next thing you know you'll be ignoring other parts of the story. That's a bad thing :) Balance your intuition with your intellect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last tip, look at how other writers did it. Stephen King is renowned for managing huge casts of characters simultaneously. Then there's Lord of the Rings. Or, watch an ensemble-style tv show or movie. The same techniques carry over. &lt;em&gt;Lost&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Heroes&lt;/em&gt; are good examples, as are &lt;em&gt;Grey's Anatomy&lt;/em&gt; and a number of other medical shows which follow a large number of hospital workers. &lt;em&gt;12 Angry Men&lt;/em&gt; is a classic courthouse movie which follows a single conversation between 12 people: this may be one of the best examples I can offer. Just look at the time allotment they give to different characters, and think about how that time allotment is used, and why it was used that way, which means thinking about how that time slot contributes to the overall storyline. Nothing helps better than carefully soaking in the techniques of a more experienced author over time. Skill is never gained instantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2013-08-11T04:32:17.917" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T04:32:17.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5253" CreationDate="2012-03-15T13:53:32.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other think to bear in mind is how often or regularly the characters appear. It is quite possible to build a character with very little space, if every few pages, they make some significant impact on the plot. It is quite a good way of forming a stealth character, who only expresses themselves fully towards the end of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But quality of page-time is more important than quantity. Just like with real people, those who are always at the front, making the waves, are not necessarily the most significant or important. Those who just contribute a small but critical part can be the stars. Make the pagetime fit the characters, and they will shine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T13:53:32.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5265" CreationDate="2012-03-15T17:21:49.680" Score="4" ViewCount="1069" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a narrative and am having a problem structuring the order of events. Here is what I have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jamie had an 8 am flight so she was out of the house just after 6.&#xA;  Leaving me to wake up, feed and dress the girls, something we&#xA;  typically tag team each morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I rephrase the above to include all of the details but no create a run-on sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="40" OwnerDisplayName="ahsteele" LastActivityDate="2020-03-27T18:32:35.257" Title="Need help to rephrase this sentence to prevent a run-on" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5258" CreationDate="2012-03-15T17:34:25.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically we tag team each morning. However, Jamie had an 8 am flight, so she was out of the house just after 6. That left me to wake up, feed and dress the girls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="David J" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T17:34:25.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5258" CreationDate="2012-03-15T17:34:28.383" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because Jamie had an 8am flight, she had to leave the house at 6am&#xA;  which left me to feed and dress the girls, which we&#xA;  normally do together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, I guess you could break down like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because Jamie had an 8am flight, she had to leave the house at 6am, leaving me to dress and feed the girls. These are normally responsibilities shared between us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3427" OwnerDisplayName="swasheck" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T17:34:28.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5258" CreationDate="2012-03-15T21:58:13.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I could reword this for you ten million ways, but a better answer would be that you should do it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you need to break down a horrific run-on sentence, just separate out the different things you want to say and try reordering them in a handful of ways with different comma and period placements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the first five wordings don't work, make five more. You'll get it right a lot faster if you force yourself to not keep thinking of it the same way each time. Think of new words and phrases which can better express what you're trying to say. with practice, you'll catch yourself mid-run-on and efficiently reword it as you go. Just takes time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T21:58:13.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5258" CreationDate="2012-03-15T22:37:25.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Punctuated as a single sentence, it's not a run-on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jamie had an 8 am flight so she was out of the house just after 6, leaving me to wake up, feed, and dress the girls, something we typically tag team each morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That series in the middle is now ambiguous, though. Who is waking up, the narrator or the girls? And singular &quot;something&quot; might be the wrong number, as it refers to three activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's not a run-on sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T22:37:25.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5258" CreationDate="2012-03-15T23:38:42.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you want to rephrase it? Because you read somewhere, that sentences should be short? Because someone said, you would drive off readers? Then don't do it. Think about what you want to express.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist is in an uncomfortable situation. Jamie is not there to help. So he has a little bit more stress, is in a hurry. So would he take a break between the actions and catch his breath at each period?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wake up the girls. I feed them. Then I dress them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or would his actions be more breathless:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wake up the girls, feed them, dress them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you are going for the second situation. Therefore I wouldn't change your sentences. They express this well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T23:38:42.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5264" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5270" CreationDate="2012-03-16T02:39:17.407" Score="6" ViewCount="735" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write some reference books containing details about the fictional universe of some popular franchises, such as Tintin, or Star Trek. This would contain short plot summaries (1-paragraph in length) and various details about the setting and characters. The information would be similar to material found on On-line encyclopedias, such as Wooieepedia, but completely original writing. I would use only the original stories (e.g. books or episodes) from the franchise as the source for the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I write such a work or would I run into legal problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T16:15:05.363" Title="Can I write reference books about a fictional universe from an existing franchise?" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5258" CreationDate="2012-03-16T05:01:08.647" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, lemme take a couple stabs at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First idea:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jamie had a 8 am flight that morning. Usually, we'd tag-team the&#xA;  morning rituals with the girls -- waking them, feeding them, and&#xA;  dressing them together. But Jamie had to leave just after 6 to catch&#xA;  that flight, so it all fell to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the change from &quot;something&quot; to &quot;morning rituals&quot;. I think giving it a name instead of a placeholder gives it more punch, and makes breaking it up easier too. I did the same with &quot;something&quot; in the option below, changing it to &quot;chores&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this first version, though, the key piece is splitting the times -- the 8 am flight and 6 am departure from home. I like doing that here, since what's happening is a deviation from the norm. It can bear, and arguably needs, to have that beat* spent on it expanded from the one sentence to encompassing the whole paragraph. Now, if their normal morning was her rushing off to catch a flight, then I like that sentence exactly the way you've written it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*I may not be using the term &quot;beat&quot; correctly here, but I hope my meaning is clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second idea:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jamie had a 8 am flight, so she was out of the house just after 6.&#xA;  That left me to wake the girls up, feed them and dress them; chores we&#xA;  typically tag teamed each morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one's much closer to what you had, and also is shorter and tighter than my first. The key change here is from &quot;Leaving&quot; to &quot;That left me&quot;. &quot;Leaving&quot;, and any other -ing word, is a continuation word, one that feels open ended, stretched out, and in progress. And that's why the whole thing (your version) comes off as a run-on sentence. Even with that period there, starting that sentence with an -ing word ties it to the previous sentence. Conversely, &quot;That left me&quot; is definitive, directly stated - in short, stronger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worthwhile to note that -ing words frequently come off as weak. Even if unnoticed by themselves, they can still weaken a sentence. It's a good practice in your re-writes to flag each one, and attempt to replace it. I don't mean that they should never be used, but for every one that you do, have a solid reason why it's the best construction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I just used three -ing words in a row in my first version. I happen to like them there, since their subject (the girls) is not the main subject and the time is a continuum -- every morning for an indefinite period into the past and likely the future. That said, it works without them, and that alone may be reason enough to change it. So, I'll end with that first one again, but with stronger verbs: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jamie had a 8 am flight that morning. Usually, we'd tag-team the&#xA;  morning rituals with the girls -- we'd wake them, feed them, and&#xA;  dress them together every day. But Jamie had to leave just after 6 to catch&#xA;  that flight, so it all fell to me.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hm - I wasn't expecting it, but strengthening those verbs revealed that something was missing here -- that &quot;every day&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastEditorUserId="3080" LastEditDate="2012-03-16T05:56:04.990" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T05:56:04.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5264" CreationDate="2012-03-16T05:20:03.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, so I defer to the next person's answer, but this is my instinct: you're fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems preposterous to me that it would be illegal to write ABOUT someone else's book. So long as you don't claim your book is any sort of &quot;OFFICIAL&quot; reference, and don't steal their logos for your cover, it should be okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T05:20:03.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5043" CreationDate="2012-03-16T07:09:41.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have art to go with these nursery rhymes, then I'd say go the photobook route already mentioned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, check out using &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amazon's Create Space&lt;/a&gt;. It's their print on demand service, that people can use to self publish. However, there's nothing saying that you have to offer it for sale -- you can set it up in Create Space, and print out a grand total of one, and have it shipped to you. And it'll only cost you a few bucks for the printing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option may be a place that has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://ondemandbooks.com/ebm_locations.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Espresso Book Machine, if there's one near you&lt;/a&gt;. The espresso book machine prints out library quality books (paper back), in a matter of minutes, on demand. It's like a giant copier but better. I say &quot;may&quot; because whoever owns it near you may not offer it for people to print their own stuff. The one near me does, and also offers help laying it out and making a cover on a per-hour fee basis. (it does have to be laid out exactly) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, on Neil Fien's excellent idea in the comments of crafting the book by hand. You may not have the time or the tools to do that, but art or graphic design students at a nearby university do. I'm guessing you could commission one of them to do it for a couple hundred bucks, and get something pretty sweet if you make it clear you're commissioning an artwork, not asking them to slap some pages together. It gets even better if it's hand-lettered, not printed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To track that down, I'd suggest find some classes on binding, materials (paper), or on fonts, and ask the professors for recommendations. Heck, if you're loaded and willing to spend the money, I bet you could get one of the professors would do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more I think about it, the more I like the hand-crafted, hand-lettered idea. That would be a stunning gift! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T07:09:41.753" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5182" CreationDate="2012-03-16T20:44:56.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an issue like this, there are other details that become relevant before an appropriate way forward can be found.  First, does the speech you are citing span multiple pages in the source text?  If so, then it is appropriate to include a parenthetical citation after each quote.  Keep in mind, however, that after the initial citation, you no longer have to include the author's name - it is sufficient to cite solely the page number.  For example, your first citation would look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &quot;this is the first quote&quot; (King, Jr. 201). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the subsequent citations would look more like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &quot;this is one of the many subsequent quotes from the same source&quot; (204).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This format will hold true until a new source is cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise - if the speech is a single page (or if you are not citing from a text at all, but from, say, a film) - then it would be worthwhile to discuss the issue with your instructor in order to discover how he or she would prefer you to proceed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3429" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T20:44:56.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2312" CreationDate="2012-03-16T23:13:51.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the annoyance attaches to the &lt;em&gt;frequency of asking&lt;/em&gt;, rather than the &lt;em&gt;question itself&lt;/em&gt;, OP started wrongly in the original version by placing &lt;em&gt;annoying&lt;/em&gt; immediately before &lt;em&gt;question&lt;/em&gt;. Put it next to the annoying thing...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The annoying frequency with which this question is asked... &lt;em&gt;(if you've got more to say about it)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...or if you just want a simple statement, identify the annoying thing first so your gripe target is clear...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The frequency which which this question is asked is annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will also just point out that it's &lt;em&gt;&quot;frequency &lt;strong&gt;with which&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/em&gt; something happens, not &lt;em&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;in which&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1662" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T23:13:51.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5264" CreationDate="2012-03-17T06:54:46.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A book discussing copyrighted and trademarked works &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; unquestionably be done. It &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; been done, many times; search on Amazon for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;amp;field-keywords=%22unauthorized+guide+to%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;unauthorized guide to&lt;/a&gt; and you'll see books on everything from Buffy to Barbie dolls. The only question here is, how much trouble is it to get permission? Do you even need permission to do a book which is, essentially, criticism and analysis? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest consulting a lawyer, because even though &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5266/26&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; may very well be correct: Writing about something may well be legal. However, there's no way of getting around the fact that publishing a book like this would be using trademarked properties to make money. Even if it's not illegal, companies have to enforce their trademarks or they risk losing them. (Copyrights and trademarks are very different animals.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, publishers might want to get permission, even if no money is involved, to avoid receiving a cease-and-desist. Knowing the answers to these issues would help smooth the way with potential publishers, although their legal department would likely deal with this once the book is sold. If you're self-publishing, however, wouldn't have that advantage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, since its obvious that this has been done and can be done (see that Amazon link), you could also attempt to contact the authors of other, similar reference works: See what they did, and how they did it. If nothing else, it will give you more information on the process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T06:54:46.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2312" CreationDate="2012-03-17T09:13:07.340" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would just keep it simple, something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an annoying question only because of how often it is asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3430" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T09:13:07.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5272" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5274" CreationDate="2012-03-17T09:41:55.387" Score="3" ViewCount="4301" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a part of one assignment, I need to create of a character who is petty. His pettiness causes him (or her) conflicts with other characters around him (or her).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I am not quite familiar with this personal trait. I know petty people usually care too much about details, worry themselves with trivial things, but not much more. In my head I have an image of an old grumpy man, who doesn't have much sympathy for others and follows strictly his daily routine. I am not sure if I am on the right track.&#xA;How to make a convincing petty character?&#xA;What other characteristics are usually connected with pettiness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2340" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T00:31:55.390" Title="Petty Character" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5272" CreationDate="2012-03-17T10:03:44.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the image you have is only one aspect of pettiness. I would express that person as Grumpy Old Man, one of whose characteristics is pettiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to associate pettiness more with younger women, being unnecessarily bitchy, pedantic, and for the purpose of being difficult and unhelpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To build this pettiness, it might work to have them connive and spend time doing something that is intended purely to hurt someone else. The reason is because the person was slightly rude to them. You might want to look at Gregory House, who can be petty in the extreme - although he is also a GOM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T10:03:44.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5272" CreationDate="2012-03-17T10:41:03.127" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Petty&quot; is making emotional mountains out of molehills. It's a way of being self-centered and having no larger perspective, and no empathy for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not being difficult for the sake of being difficult, but rather being difficult because one can't move beyond one's own concerns to see things from someone else's point of view, and doing this over every issue, no matter how small. It has no lock on age or gender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your character should be thinking, &quot;No, &lt;em&gt;I'm&lt;/em&gt; more important. &lt;em&gt;My&lt;/em&gt; thing is more important. What &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; want to do is more important,&quot; in a whiny, childish kind of tone. The person should never say this aloud, but that's what's going on subconsciously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Laura and Janet both bring cupcakes to the school bake sake. They had&#xA;a squabble earlier in the day about a parking space, so Laura puts&#xA;Janet's cupcakes all the way in the back so people can't see them or&#xA;buy them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;David has a bunch of CDs. His sister Maria wants to copy two of the&#xA;songs, so she borrows the CDs without asking David while he's at&#xA;school. When he finds out that she took his CDs without permission,&#xA;he goes onto her computer and deletes the songs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bruce, Noreen, and Jack are working on a report for their department.&#xA;Bruce insists that because the boss handed him the paperwork for the&#xA;assignment, he's the head of the team, even though he's not the&#xA;department supervisor. At every meeting he somehow manages to work in&#xA;a reference to his being the team leader. When the report is turned&#xA;in, even though Noreen and Jack agreed that everyone should be listed&#xA;alphabetically, Bruce has changed it so that his name is first,&#xA;&quot;because I'm the team leader.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T10:41:03.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5275" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5315" CreationDate="2012-03-17T16:27:05.487" Score="2" ViewCount="436" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had an article published for 1st rights in a magazine. Can I use an excerpt or all of the article in my own ebook? I now own the copyright and am unsure about the rules of fair use pertaining to my own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3431" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T17:07:44.630" Title="Can I use my own previously published magazine article in my own book" Tags="|ebook|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5064" CreationDate="2012-03-17T18:16:54.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alright, everyone Stand Back. I've got this. I think a specific case-study is a great idea for a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read those books pretty fast last spring. Before I get started, I have to say: they're not the greatest books ever. Her writing is very hit and miss. Somehow, the plot was engaging enough for me to finish the series, but I was constantly thinking &quot;well this is boring,&quot; and &quot;I don't care about this character/scene at all,&quot; and sometimes even &quot;this is awfully disappointing after so much build-up.&quot; The problems became more flagrant as the series wore on. That being said, there are definitely structural flaws with the way she put the plot together. It seemed to me at times that she wasn't certain what she wanted to focus on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, as for ways Collins tried to thread her plots together: periodically while Katniss is in the arena, and constantly when she's out of it, the reader is doused with indicators that just about every man, woman, and cat in the country is clinging to their television for dear life, watching the Games. In the arena, when she's out of contact with the outside world, these indicators come in the form of her own suspicions, usually written in a form similar to &quot;I could just imagine the crowds aching for me to kiss Peeta.&quot; The gifts from sponsors, usually showing up as rewards for tv-friendly behavior, encourage and strengthen these thoughts in the minds of both Katniss and the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite aspects of the novels is her personal fashion designer, whose name I can't remember for the life of me (EDIT: Cinna!). It is frequently implied but never stated that he is some sort of not-very-subtle revolutionary agent working against the Capital, and the outfits he provides for her as she goes into the Games are repeatedly emphasized as designed to light sparks beneath the discontent of the Districts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a less tangible note, I suppose a major aspect of the early novels which aims to tie these two separate worlds together is the obscure nature of the Capital. Nearly &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; developed character in the books is anti-Capital, just another unhappy subject of their oppressive regime. What characters there are who actually support/are members of the Capital are kept in the background as soulless creatures without lives or motives beyond stomping on the Districts and running the Games. My point here is that for a long time Collins makes it feel as though the book's entire plane of existence is held in chains by this hated but untouchable ghostly Master. Early on, one gets the impression that there is no fighting back, and the Games are all there is to think about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't recall whether it was in the second or third book that the arena contestants astonishingly managed to break out of the arena by directing lightning into the wall, but this seemed to me to be a rather contrived way to shift the plot.  Suddenly the Capitol has a physical nature, an army: suddenly it can be struck against. This shift was too sudden for me. It felt like the plot-board had just snapped under its own weight, and a handful of characters had tumbled off onto a separate conflict on the floor. I would say that despite her best attempts, Collins did a mediocre job of tying the Games into the greater national plight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Against my better instincts I will take a stab at offering what I would have done to improve the plot's continuity and verisimilitude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start the district conflicts sooner. Perhaps have one of the less important districts revolt and be destroyed early on. this would be even better if Katniss got to know the tribute from that district.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Emphasize the physical threat of the Capital outside the Games. In the first Games, perhaps one of the other tributes could have found a way out and tried to escape. This could be the same person as the last idea, and he could ask Katniss to come with him (she says no), only to be caught and thrown back in and then killed by the gamemakers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Figure out a better way to get Katniss out than directing lightning into a wall. It just wasn't believable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alright, that's all I've got off the top of my head. let me know what you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2012-03-17T19:02:58.777" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T19:02:58.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5278" CreationDate="2012-03-17T20:55:32.563" Score="4" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to know if numbers should be written alphabetically in educational contexts, for instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;10 plasma samples out of 1016 cannot be ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ten plasma samples out of one thousand and sixteen cannot be ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10832" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-04-03T00:55:16.993" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T00:55:16.993" Title="What's the appropriate way to write numbers in educational contexts like papers?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|education|numerals|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5277" CreationDate="2012-03-18T03:08:42.737" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a technical journal, you would want to use numerals, not spell out the numbers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our journals follow &lt;em&gt;The Associated Press Stylebook&lt;/em&gt; style (for the most part), which means that we do spell out numbers less than 10, but use numerals for numbers 10 and greater. We also use numerals when the numeral is followed by a unit of measurement, even if the numeral is less than 10. And we would not use a numeral to begin a sentence. (So in your example, we would use this: &quot;Ten plasma samples out of 116 cannot be ignored.&quot; Or &quot;Ten plasma samples out of 1016 cannot be ignored.&quot; (If you actually meant to write out one-thousand and sixteen.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if your paper is accepted, most journals will have editors helping you with the style in your back-and-forth communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3432" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T03:08:42.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5277" CreationDate="2012-03-18T08:38:10.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no single standard, but some things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the numbers are of comparable units, use the form you would use for the greatest number in your sentence, according to your style guide. For example, if the greatest number is &quot;10&quot; and your style guide says to &quot;write numbers ten or lower as numerals, and numbers greater than ten as words&quot;, and the numbers in your sentence were 3 and 10, you would write &quot;Three plasma samples out of ten cannot be ignored&quot;. However, if the numbers in your sentence were 10 and 116, you would write &quot;10 plasma samples out of 116 cannot be ignored&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Except&lt;/em&gt;..., as @JLG pointed out, you generally should not use a numeral at the start of the sentence; however, unlike @JLG's suggestion, I would recommend recasting the sentence so that no numbers appear at the start. I suggest this because based on the point above, that would mean having to write out large numbers as words which isn't &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, please note that the expanded word form of 116 should be &quot;one hundred sixteen&quot;, and that there is an inconsistency in your original post: is the value 116 or 1016?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3433" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T08:38:10.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5213" CreationDate="2012-03-18T23:30:39.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project manager I worked for used this rule: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;whatever amount of time seems about right, double it and go with that&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3238" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T23:30:39.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5284" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5285" CreationDate="2012-03-20T17:14:21.740" Score="3" ViewCount="209" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a horrific habit I'm finding it very difficult to break. A disturbingly large portion of my sentences consist of the same structure-- two parts separated by &quot;and.&quot; I don't know how to break the habit. Please help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After awhile our words subsided, &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; I commented on a picture of his dog which hung on the wall over the television. This immediately invoked considerable excitement in him, &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; he asked me if I would like to see better. I uncertainly answered Yes, &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; he rose from the couch &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; headed for a doorway to the left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T18:33:21.887" Title="Avoiding &quot;and&quot; as a sentence structure" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5284" CreationDate="2012-03-20T17:41:04.887" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have six sentences' worth of text in three conjoined sentences.  Not all of the pairings are necessary and some might not be &quot;correct&quot;; for example, you could just as easily conjoin the question and the answer, which are currently part of two different sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to attack this problem is to break it into the six sentences and then ask yourself which ones really go together.  Join only those ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to break it up is to not always use &quot;and&quot; for your conjunction.  You can also use semicolons to tie sentence clauses together, and you can use words like &quot;then&quot; to connect independent sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you can mix up your structure more (see example below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting all these ideas together, here is one possible revision of your text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After a while our words subsided.  I commented on a picture of his dog which hung on the wall over the television, and he grew excited and asked if I would like to see better.  Uncertainly I answered yes.&#xA;  Then he rose from the couch and headed for a doorway to the left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T17:41:04.887" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5284" CreationDate="2012-03-20T17:55:08.093" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Monica's great suggestions for structure once you've located the problem, you need to develop a way to find all the problem sentences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either at the beginning or end of every writing session, search through your new text and look for &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt;. Look at every pair of clauses you've joined and highlight them. Then go back and start rebuilding them, not using the same fix twice in a row if you can help it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you do this at the beginning when you're fresh (and you want to get back into the story, and can look at your work with a little distance) or at the end when you've run out of steam (so you feel like you've put it to bed for the night) is entirely dependent on your personal workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T17:55:08.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5284" CreationDate="2012-03-20T18:33:21.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes changing the words around can make the actions trigger each other because using and can make sentences sound like a list. By having a mix of long and short sentences you can vary the pace of your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think I've quite kept your original meaning but here is an idea of what I mean...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After awhile our words subsided. Commenting on the picture of his dog immediately invoked considerable excitement in him, and he asked me if I would like to see better. I uncertainly answered Yes, looking towards the photograph hanging on the wall over the television. He rose from the couch, heading for a doorway to the left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3439" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T18:33:21.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="287" CreationDate="2012-03-20T18:59:50.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There a series of children's books about Mog the cat and the last book is called &quot;Goodbye Mog&quot;. It has Mog happily and peacefully going off to sleep. Despite being a bit too old for the books by the time it was published, I was still sad! Mog then helps the family's new kitten so the family have a new cat to love so the ending is happy and sad at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3439" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T18:59:50.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1631" CreationDate="2012-03-20T19:13:22.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important thing to me is that there is a distinct ending, not that the author just stopped writing. There has to be some kind of resolution/event that concludes the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the characters are in exactly the same place as where they started that's far more dissapointing than if it ends badly for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most story endings tend to be a mix of good and bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3439" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T19:13:22.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3102" CreationDate="2012-03-20T19:20:52.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest asking someone else to read it and see if there any parts you have not made clear. A one sentence might be clear to you as you've had a scene planned for ages but other people might not picture it the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at big patches of description and see if any thoughts/dialogue could break it up and add a more personal touch. Vice versa breaking up dialogue presevents conversations ounding like scripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3439" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T19:20:52.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3102" CreationDate="2012-03-21T14:39:33.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things that can work for this sort of story is more background on the characters, especially the geek, in terms of their normal day-to-day life. Setting the perosn in a normal, boring life provides even more contrast with the excitement to come. In general, the more you know about the characters, the better, even - maybe especially - if they have very boring lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would echo others thoughts about why you feel a need to extend the length, especially by this amount? If you have a good and well written story as it is, then doubling it in length is liable to make it a long and drawn out story, and not as good.Think about the number of novels you have read that would have been improved by reducing the size. And how many do you know that would have been improved by increasing the size?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T14:39:33.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5292" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5296" CreationDate="2012-03-22T03:45:50.370" Score="8" ViewCount="4306" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel, and it's written in close third person perspective, very much sitting on the shoulder of one main character and privy to their thoughts. There is another very important character who goes only by his nickname for most of the novel, but who will mostly likely tell the main character his real name about a third of the way through the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first instinct is to have the narrative switch from &quot; Nickname said, 'why don't we do this?' &quot; to &quot; Realname said, 'why don't we do this?' &quot; after the main character learns his name, but I worry that this will be hard for the reader to get used to after several hundred pages of Nickname and possibly even confusing. Nevertheless, once the main character knows the real name and has started to use it, it seems terribly awkward to keep referring to him by the nickname. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any (relatively) canonical way of handling this / are there some good examples of either method?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://beckylevine.com/2011/06/10/point-of-view-close-third-person/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a set of 3 links to short articles on the close third perspective, just for reference on the difference between that and straight up 3rd person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3032" LastEditorUserId="3032" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T14:41:12.237" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T13:41:25.923" Title="How best to handle revealing a main character's name midway through a long story in close-third person?" Tags="|fiction|third-person|perspective|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5292" CreationDate="2012-03-22T06:22:43.613" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue here is that you want to avoid an identity disconnect between the reader and this character. If the reader is connecting to this character only through their name, then this is not only a problem of identification but also one of a lack of style and characterization. You have a couple of ways to avoid this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Characterization:&lt;/strong&gt; If this character is a strong character, and if their thoughts, speech, and actions all ring true to the character, then the reader will be able to identify the character past the name change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Confusion by proxy:&lt;/strong&gt; Another tool you can use is that, if the name change is done &quot;publicly&quot; (i.e., the other characters are experiencing it as well), then other characters may be slightly confused as well. You can play this up a little bit, and cast those characters' confusion as stand-ins for the reader's confusion. Of course, this may be tricky since people in the real world can see each other and hear each others' voices. But look for opportunities to portray illustrative confusion. (This is analogous to having a &quot;newbie proxy&quot; character who doesn't know what's going on, and exists to be someone to whom other characters can explain the situation.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Transparency:&lt;/strong&gt; Explain &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; this is happening, and make sure it's clear why the character is changing their name. If the name change is believable, and if the reader buys into it, they'll make the effort to follow along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third-person narrator issues:&lt;/strong&gt; Of course, you have one more problem to overcome: In third-person, the narrator is usually a general, vague entity telling the story. &lt;em&gt;He stood up, she walked across the room, they both thought about the color yellow for different reasons.&lt;/em&gt; If that narrator changes their story (i.e., mentions this character by the old name, then the new name), then this narrator will have been lying to the reader. Make sure there's a good reason for this! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, make sure the reasons for the name change are solid and believable; as in any story, make sure your characters are well-drawn; and do your best to anticipate and head off issues the reader will have.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T13:57:37.407" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T13:57:37.407" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5292" CreationDate="2012-03-22T06:49:59.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No concrete examples are coming to mind at the moment, but just thinking about it leads me to believe it's best to stick with the character's nickname. But this assertion is circumstantial: you say the main character has started to use this fellow's real name; I ask you why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone is going by Nicky the whole time and then dramatically reveals their true name to be Nikolaevich, why does this make it necessary for the other characters to change what they call him? Is your character specifically indicating that he wishes to be referred to by his full name? If not, continue to use the nickname, both in narration and dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ah! I thought of a simple example. In &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt;, Voldemort's true name is in time revealed to be Tom Riddle. Dumbledore &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; calls him by this name (Tom), but he is still called Voldemort by the narrator and by other characters talking about him. Few other characters ever address him by name. It's rarely necessary to do so--how often do your dialogues need to start out with a name? &quot;Sarah, I wish it were louder.&quot; &quot;Mick, I'm afraid so.&quot; I actually think it should only occur in a small percentage of your dialogues. And other characters referring to this fellow when he's not around would still use the name they know best--his nickname.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule, I find it's bad to change what a third person narrator calls a character, anywhere, ever. It's discombobulating and strange, because that narrator is assumed to have certain transcendental and genuine knowledge of a concrete and absolute nature. I can't think of a single instance of it ever happening, in anything I've read, unless someone had been using a flat-out fake identity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T09:41:46.333" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T09:41:46.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5292" CreationDate="2012-03-22T10:06:13.483" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep it plausible. The way your characters act in your universe must be authentic. Otherwise you jerk your readers out of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is authentic depends on your setting. Two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Little John is just a fellow, helping the main character, because he is a good fighter, then it could go like that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey, Little ...&quot; Darn. He still forgot to use his real name. He was too used to the old one. &quot;Hey, Leon, please lend me a hand here.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People mess things up, so just changing in addressing him from Little John to Leon from one page to the other does not feel realistic. It takes time. So when the main character has learned to use the new name, the reader will have also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second example, let us assume, that revealing the name also introduce a new relationship between the characters. If he changes from good fellow Little John to &lt;em&gt;King&lt;/em&gt; Leon, we have a whole new situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the main character has to kneel down, has to call him &quot;My King&quot; or &quot;Your Grace&quot;, then it is unlikely that he mess this up (&quot;Oh sorry, I've forgot you are my king. My bad.&quot;). Also the readers will follow the new name/title easily in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T10:06:13.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5292" CreationDate="2012-03-22T10:55:45.680" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;David Eddings does this in the &lt;i&gt;Belgariad&lt;/i&gt; pentology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main character Garion is introduced to a man whom his Aunt Pol calls &quot;Old Wolf,&quot; and Garion decides to call him &quot;Mister Wolf.&quot; Mister Wolf later announces to other characters, &quot;This is what Garion is calling me, and I happen to like it, so that's what you'll be calling me for now.&quot; All the attributives and narrative references to the man are &quot;Mister Wolf.&quot; Garion later learns that the man is named Belgarath, and all attributives immediately switch over from there out. (This was so subtle I didn't notice it until my second or third read of the series.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, Garion's aunt is &quot;Aunt Pol&quot; whenever he is the story's focus, but when the narrative turns to her when he's elsewhere, the attributives use her full name, &quot;Polgara.&quot; This goes on until the end of the series, when Garion formally refers to her as &quot;Lady Polgara&quot; for the first time. After that, in the &lt;i&gt;Malloreon&lt;/i&gt; (the sequel pentology), she is always &quot;Polgara&quot; no matter who is the narrative focus, because Garion has changed the way he thinks of her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, although at one point in the first series Garion does something to earn himself the honorific of &quot;Bel-&quot; and many characters refer to him as &quot;Belgarion,&quot; the character himself always thinks of himself as &quot;Garion.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also several characters who are spies, who tend to go by their nicknames: Kheldar is Silk, Liselle is Velvet. Khendon is Javelin. It's made clear early on what the characters' real names are, and they are used, but attributives are usually the nickname.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your story, I would say it depends on how your main character &lt;i&gt;thinks&lt;/i&gt; of this other person. If he thinks of the guy as &quot;Bob&quot; and later learns his real name is &quot;Frank,&quot; it's fine to keep referring to him as Bob. But if he goes by &quot;Nails,&quot; and Nails reveals his name is actually &quot;Nicky&quot; in a moment of bonding and friendship, then your character is going to  think of him as Nicky. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T12:03:22.240" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T12:03:22.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5299" CreationDate="2012-03-22T12:11:04.530" Score="6" ViewCount="364" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to the growing popularity of POD, many small companies are coming to the market, and makes this business very competitive. However, I hardly see comments on the quality of printing (paper, binding, color, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These companies print even one copy upon order. Although modern printers are different from classical printing apparatus, printing low quantity is always costy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid these companies might compete with professional printing companies and traditional publisher by lowering the print quality (paper, color, etc). Am I wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the quality of POD books comparable with that of books published by major publishers? Is this a major concern I should take into account when choosing a POD service - and how can I check?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; As I investigated further by comparing several companies, I believe the difference is in B&amp;amp;W printing. The price for color printing is almost the same. It seems printing companies use color printers even for printing B&amp;amp;W documents. This is the reseason that B&amp;amp;W print with printing companies is only 10-20% cheaper than color print; but B&amp;amp;W book by POD companies is 300% cheaper than color book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2640" LastEditorUserId="2640" LastEditDate="2012-03-23T00:46:52.813" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T00:46:52.813" Title="What printing methods and quality can I expect of POD companies?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|printing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5139" CreationDate="2012-03-22T15:15:38.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several projects that come to mind that seem to do this well.  All of them use  very similar techniques.  One is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://qt.nokia.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Qt framework&lt;/a&gt;, another is a tool called &lt;a href=&quot;http://doxygen.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Doxygen&lt;/a&gt;, and a third is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gtk.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GTK+  Project&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all three cases, the documentation for the project is primarily pulled out of the actual source code for the project.  The both are maintained together, often in the same files.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documentation is stored as marked up comments in the code.  Generally speaking, the mark ups can specify everything from the creation of documentation pages, section on a page, cross references, the inclusion of code samples (including full and partial pieces of files), and even images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Qt and GTK+ both use custom tools to accomplish this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doxygen is actually a tool for creating documentation from code, and as such uses itself to document itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3448" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T15:15:38.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5297" CreationDate="2012-03-22T15:51:11.080" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't speak to any small companies that might be popping up out there, but I can bring my experience with CreateSpace, which is the Amazon POD service. I recently used &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com&quot;&gt;CreateSpace&lt;/a&gt; to provide a print version of one of my books, and when I received the proof copy to review I was truly quite impressed. I compared it side-by-side with a trade paperback that I had recently purchased froma major publisher at B&amp;amp;N, and the quality was every bit as good. The paper stock was actually, in my opinion, better with CreateSpace, but that is probably because I chose a different paper stock to be used. The binding was done in the same manner as the book from the major publisher, and the cover quality was stunning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that ultimately the cost of production for paperbacks and the processes for creating them have changed so much that it is now much easier and more cost efficient than it ever was in the past. Whereas major publishers have historically used large offset printing presses to mass produce their books, that is no longer a major requirement anymore. With current laser printers and new binding equipment, companies that are willing to make the investment in the proper tools are able to produce similar or better quality at similar prices without having to mass produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW - With CreateSpace (and other POD programs) you can choose the size of the finished book,, the type of paper you want to use, the font size and style, and the cover. A writer looking to self-publish can make changes to any or all of these areas to reduce the cost, so ultimately you get what you choose. If you go with the cheapest option in every category, then the final product wil be inferior to something produced by a major publisher. However, if you are mindful of your readers and make appropriate selections, you can very easily get the same or better quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T15:51:11.080" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5139" CreationDate="2012-03-22T16:39:44.117" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.python.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Python&lt;/a&gt; has a useful module called &lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.python.org/library/doctest.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;doctest&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. It is commonly used to validate tutorial documentation and examples embedded as comments in the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The doctest module searches for pieces of text that look like&#xA;  interactive Python sessions, and then executes those sessions to&#xA;  verify that they work exactly as shown. There are several common ways&#xA;  to use doctest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To write tutorial documentation for a package, liberally illustrated&#xA;  with input-output examples. Depending on whether the examples or the&#xA;  expository text are emphasized, this has the flavor of “literate&#xA;  testing” or “executable documentation”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the code you're interested in is merely &lt;em&gt;excerpts&lt;/em&gt; from the full source, you would extract the excerpts from the tested code based on some metadata. Tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://doxygen.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Doxygen&lt;/a&gt; are intended for this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A language-agnostic approach would be to include the full source for each excerpt in the library source code or wherever the primary documentation resides. Then when you want to build your tutorial/developer guide, you run automated tests on the code using your xUnit-equivlent with &lt;code&gt;doctest&lt;/code&gt;-like connector code if necessary, and then extract the excerpts with &lt;a href=&quot;http://doxygen.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Doxygen&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of what specific solution you implement, best practice for maintenance is to follow the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_repeat_yourself&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DRY principle&lt;/a&gt;. Do what you can to keep all of the source code in one place. In your case, it sounds like this will require generating your excerpts from the original sample code each time you generate the documentation. There's some discussion on the topic of code sample testing and maintenance in &lt;a href=&quot;http://pragprog.com/the-pragmatic-programmer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Pragmatic Programmer&lt;/a&gt; on pages 26-29 (DRY principle) and further on pages 100-&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=5wBQEp6ruIAC&amp;amp;lpg=PA101&amp;amp;ots=n4irfyaOt_&amp;amp;dq=%22we%20didn%27t%20want%20to%20copy%20and%20paste%20lines%20of%20code%20from%20the%20tested%20programs%22&amp;amp;pg=PA101#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22we%20didn%27t%20want%20to%20copy%20and%20paste%20lines%20of%20code%20from%20the%20tested%20programs%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;101&lt;/a&gt;. The authors describe vaguely how they accomplished what you need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] using the DRY principle we didn't want to copy and paste lines&#xA;  of code from the tested programs in the book. That would have meant&#xA;  that the code was duplicated, virtually guaranteeing that we'd forget&#xA;  to update an example when the corresponding program was changed. For&#xA;  some examples, we also didn't want to bore you with the framework&#xA;  needed to make our example compile and run. We turned to Perl. A&#xA;  relatively simple script is invoked when we format the book -- it&#xA;  extracts a named segment from a source file, does syntax highlighting,&#xA;  and converts the result into the typesetting language we use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3450" LastEditorUserId="3450" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T22:12:46.003" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T22:12:46.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5308" CreationDate="2012-03-22T20:14:43.130" Score="1" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to publish short fiction, you send it out to magazines. If you want to publish a novel, you send it to literary agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what if you want to sell a screenplay? Who do you talk to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T12:26:31.193" Title="How do you get into screenwriting?" Tags="|publishing|screenwriting|jobs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5089" CreationDate="2012-03-22T22:30:47.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One kind of off the wall solution I've used in the past to make fantasy/sci-fi feel less generic is choosing another style of writing (genre fiction or otherwise) and trying very consciously to emulate it while I write. If you're writing fantasy, maybe read nothing but noir fiction while you're writing and try to absorb the syntax/diction of that genre into your own work (assuming, of course, that that tone is still appropriate to the story you're trying to tell). For example, I'm giving a kind of 19th century 'literature' novel feel to a sci-fi piece I'm working on. Analyze the unique qualities of writing in other genres, and experiment with applying them to your work. There are plenty of books and essays out there that discuss the building blocks of genre fiction if you're interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you're at it, think about qualities of the writing that separate really good fantasy from cookie-cutter fantasy for you, maybe make a list of the things that set it apart to help you isolate what you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; want to emulate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laster makes a good point too, about remembering to get down and dirty no matter how fantastic your world is--people will still have aching feet, streets will still be dirty, people will still annoy each other even if there are archmages running around. Try to include the mundane day-to-day things and follow through with the non-obvious consequences of your fantasy-novums. The unexpected inconveniences that come with being a mage or a snake man go a long way towards drawing the reader into their lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid to be weird, make strange similes and word choices, and even be cliche as long as it's still absorbing for you. As other people have pointed out, this is a first draft. Try and be daring now and critical later. Write what you want to read without thinking about other people's work except as inspiration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it was helpful, good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3032" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T22:30:47.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5277" CreationDate="2012-03-23T01:09:29.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a late thought: It depends on the impact you would like the number to have, if you use digits the visual reception of the quantity is immediate. The spelled-out words has lesser influence and to some extend obfuscates the number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would think if the number is important it should be shown as digits, and if the application of the number is of greater concern it should be spelled-out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="134" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T01:09:29.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5139" CreationDate="2012-03-23T03:40:08.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best practice would be that all of the code has to be compiled and potentially verified against some code rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way we do this at my work is that all of the examples are tagged in documentation, and then during our nightly builds they all get extracted and compiled.  So if someone modifies the interfaces, the nightly build will catch this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help us with that we have some custom scripts.  Effectively different kinds of examples are marked differently, as they will need different wrapping code to be something that compiles.  So we have code that is just a little snippet, complete functions, complete classes, and then some full projects.  Each gets compiled, so they are at least up to date with the interfaces/functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently do not do anything for specific coding conventions, but if you have the first part working, you can then run some automated style checking.  Since we do not do this automatically, we do go thru them every so often by hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3452" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T03:40:08.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5089" CreationDate="2012-03-23T09:22:18.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Further to Steven Drennons answer, make sure you get people to read it who know and understand the same sorts of influences that you have. This means that a) they are more likely to be your target audience and so will give you a critique based on those you are writing for and b) if you are writing badly, or generically, they will probably pick this up and tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To an extent, fantasy works best when it draws on the many other fantasy influences - it fits into the world better. At the same time, you have to draw something new from this as well, but wearly on, you should be setting the scene, defining what part of the fantasy genre you are using, so it will be moderately generic - that is a good thing at that stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T09:22:18.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5306" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5334" CreationDate="2012-03-23T11:07:59.640" Score="5" ViewCount="387" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this construction quite a bit, although only in the last five years or so. It's a transcription of a way of speaking, where the speaker is emphasizing something by using a verbal full stop after several words in a row, no matter where it is in the sentence. To wit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Please don't use the &quot;Prologue, then flashback&quot; technique because it&#xA;has been done. to. death. lately and I am sick of it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;We are going to do this because we were hired to do it, and then we.&#xA;Are. Finished. Forever. I don't ever want to speak to you again.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That episode of &lt;i&gt;The Simpsons&lt;/i&gt;? Best. Episode. Ever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this structure have a name? And while we're at it, is there any convention to how the words are capitalized? I used all three ways I've seen it (no caps because it's in the middle of a sentence, caps after every period, three &quot;single-word sentences&quot;) in the examples above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My guess is that it originated from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Book_Guy#Character&quot;&gt;Comic Book Guy's&lt;/a&gt; catchphrase, but that's neither here nor there.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T19:49:44.787" Title="Is there a name for this kind of sentence structure?" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5307" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5335" CreationDate="2012-03-23T11:51:27.123" Score="4" ViewCount="744" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a book intended for print (POD) and eBook (PDF/ePub displayed on different devices, including iPads). I use InDesign (CS4) to create the book. The book uses colors for the tables (rows in alternating colors). Looking at the book on different computers (or rather: differently calibrated screens) shows that on some screens a very light color is shown as white (which looks ugly) and others are distorted (e.g., too much cyan).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without going into color management, are there resources (e.g., recommendations for minimum color values)/formatting helps/color schemes freely available to ensure a more or less consistent look?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3259" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T16:53:51.280" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T16:53:51.280" Title="Color scheme for print and ebook" Tags="|formatting|resources|ebook|printing|print-on-demand|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5301" CreationDate="2012-03-23T12:26:31.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no right or easy answer to this question. If you asked 1000 screenwriters how they got their break you'd get 1000 different answers but the single continuous thread that will run through every answer is &quot;Write an amazing screenplay.&quot; Seriously, the world is always looking for writers and good screenplays will always get noticed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a practical level - and assuming you don't know anybody famous and/or well connected - there are a number of things you can try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Write some amazing screenplays (at least 3 or 4, no-one wants a one-hit-wonder they want a 'writer')&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;2) Enter and win some competitions&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;3) Make a short film or two or a very lo-budget feature and get them online and in festivals (credits are key!)&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;5) Approach some agencies/managers with a good query letter&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;6) Go to meetings/classes/talks/panels/industry events&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;7) Track down producers that make the kind of film you've written and approach them&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;8) Write for other mediums first - radio plays or theatre are a good grounding, there's strong chance your work will get made and it gives you 'credits'.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;9) Kidnap a movie star and hold them to ransom unless they buy your screenplay*&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;10) Make your own damned movies!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*This is actually a bad idea, don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these have worked for someone/not worked for anyone at various times. The key is get out of the house and get out there and eventually you'll make a break for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3271" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T12:26:31.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5309" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-23T12:47:33.290" Score="4" ViewCount="3910" Body="&lt;p&gt;What software tools, if any, which can count the number of syllables on each line, to aid in the writing of English-language poetry?  What features and pros and cons exist for each?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="3375" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T01:37:38.440" LastActivityDate="2023-09-07T19:15:59.117" Title="Are there any syllable-counting applications for poety writing?" Tags="|software|poetry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5311" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5316" CreationDate="2012-03-23T13:22:41.570" Score="7" ViewCount="8404" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title says it all. I'm talking about a feature-length film here, although I'm sure the techniques are universal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-03-23T14:42:36.453" LastActivityDate="2021-03-08T14:40:35.880" Title="How do you estimate the length of your screenplay in screentime?" Tags="|screenwriting|pacing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5307" CreationDate="2012-03-23T14:07:13.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know a couple of people who have encountered this problem as well, and the way they addressed it was to convert all their charts to images. They generally had better luck in seeing the colors rendered properly when they did this. However, that introduced another issue in that the screen sizes for different e-readers, from Smartphones to Tablets to Computers, could cause distortions in the images. However, since most e-readers will allow you to increase the size of an image to beyond the normal width of the screen, this turned out to be a more acceptable solution for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T14:07:13.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2604" CreationDate="2012-03-23T15:28:02.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see that, in the context of a night in an art museam, pictures of items or interest would be useful and informative. If they help and enhance the story, then use them. If not, then don't - use your artistic skills in other books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest danger is using illustrations because you can, rather than because they help. If they are a positive part of the novel, then use them - it makes it slightly unusual, but in apositive way, and not a childish way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T15:28:02.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5311" CreationDate="2012-03-23T17:05:40.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard for a script is to estimate that one page equals one minute.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3381" LastEditorUserId="3381" LastEditDate="2012-03-24T20:18:25.093" LastActivityDate="2012-03-24T20:18:25.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5275" CreationDate="2012-03-23T17:07:44.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter that it's your own work or others; if you are the &lt;strong&gt;copyright owner&lt;/strong&gt;, you can re-print the entire article in your book.There is no legal obstacle to do so. If the audience of your book are different from those of the magazine, it can be convenient too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2640" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T17:07:44.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5311" CreationDate="2012-03-23T18:05:04.097" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;1 page = 1 minute&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the reason that all screenplays are written in 12pt courier font and the margins and spacing are strictly adhered to, you can tell how long a film will (probably) be at a glance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3271" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T18:05:04.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5326" CreationDate="2012-03-23T19:56:33.420" Score="6" ViewCount="7905" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe I understand this and I'm looking for confirmation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has become a tugging match with the Weird Man shouting, &quot;I'll&#xA;take you to a taxi... I'll take you.&quot;  Ahead, a group is gathered&#xA;on the sidewalk near two ambulances.  People clamor to get a look&#xA;at a BLOODY BODY which lies on the street.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DETECTIVE TAYLOR, 52, stands on the other side of the room, looks&#xA;through a notepad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do they do this because at that moment, the screen focuses on that item, character, or aspect? And/or is it also always done when a character is first introduced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2016-03-13T09:22:35.127" Title="Why are some words in screenplays set in all caps?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5327" CreationDate="2012-03-24T02:22:34.033" Score="7" ViewCount="3693" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/&quot;&gt;DOI website&lt;/a&gt; will redirect to the article webpage on the journal official website. Is there is a public automated system to translate DOI to citation information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be beneficial for preparing references (for examples in LaTex), as each journal has its own web layout and different style for writing citation information of the given article. Thus, it needs extra task to explore each journal website to capture citation information for each article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2640" LastEditorUserId="2640" LastEditDate="2012-03-27T16:56:27.917" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T09:37:36.957" Title="How to convert DOI to citation information" Tags="|resources|citations|research|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5317" CreationDate="2012-03-25T09:12:02.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When ALL CAPS is used mid-sentence like that it's usually because it's the first appearance of that thing on screen. If you think about it, the focus of almost any scene will be the characters in it, so a BLOODY BODY is unlikely to get much screen time compared to say, DETECTIVE KATE BECKETT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases it may suggest the focus for the scene - such as &quot;unnoticed by her captors, Beckett slips a KITCHEN KNIFE in her boot&quot; - but ultimately the director will point the camera where he wants to point the camera and if it's a choice between a bloody body and Kata Stanic he's going to point it at the star every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3271" LastActivityDate="2012-03-25T09:12:02.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5306" CreationDate="2012-03-25T10:09:17.553" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than temporal spacing, I think this is more of a technique of emphasis. This is used where you would like to draw the listener's focus to a word or phrase in the (long) sentence.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes this is purely a dramatizing gimmick, though:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A...n...d, the awa..rd goes t..o.. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not just words, even syllables could be spaced out for the effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2012-03-25T10:09:17.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5306" CreationDate="2012-03-25T17:19:51.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A cursory search yielded a few instances of other people asking the same question on other sites, but no actual technical terminology or guidelines. I agree with LaurenIpsum's comment: I think this is a writing technique which, like all others, is a stylistic choice of the writer. Look at Faulkner's writing-- he left out punctuation, apostrophes, you name it. In this specific case, it seems the writer wants to convey emphasis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is, wield written language and all its acoutrements however you like to get your point across. If the reader manages to understand why you formatted something the way you did and through it gains a greater insight into the meaning of the text, then you just might've made a good choice. Otherwise-- perhaps you're still in the realm of misunderstood genius.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in the end: No, not every formatting method has been given a name quite yet. I believe this is one such method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-03-25T17:19:51.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5322" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-25T18:03:05.407" Score="6" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've looked at some of the largest outsourcing sites.  These have huge amounts of software developers, and huge amounts of casual writers.  I'm having enormous difficulty finding authors that would be suitable to create technical white papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My requirements are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very Technical (experience in at least one programing language, and with at least one database)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone who is comfortable writing marketing style or other more creative work (I'm not looking for a 'dry' technical document)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I find a writer like this? Are there freelance sites dedicated to technical writers that I just haven't been able to find?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3460" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-25T22:11:19.997" LastActivityDate="2018-10-17T04:00:53.657" Title="Where to find authors for highly technical articles?" Tags="|technical-writing|marketing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5322" CreationDate="2012-03-26T14:18:47.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One resource is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techwr-l.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Techwr-l&lt;/a&gt;, a large, long-running mailing list and web forum.  You can't just post job ads to the mailing list, but they accept ads/sponsorships.  I've never advertised there so I don't know how well it works, but you could &lt;a href=&quot;http://techwhirl.com/advertise/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ask them&lt;/a&gt; about success rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also look into the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stc.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Society for Technical Communicators&lt;/a&gt; (STC), a large professional organization.  My experience is that writers who can program are rare but not non-existent there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T15:54:38.310" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T15:54:38.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5322" CreationDate="2012-03-27T02:51:09.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are regional sites like this one:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.minneapolistechnicalwriter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.minneapolistechnicalwriter.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Check out their &quot;Other Directories&quot; tab.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I would look for programmers who know their field but who can also write well. (Maybe ask to see their English class grades?) As @Monica stated, writers who can program are rare. You might ask a faculty member at a university (either a technical writing instructor or a programming instructor) whether they know of anyone looking for freelance work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find someone comfortable with your subject matter, then you can steer them in the direction you want your marketing copy to go. My experience (in medical publishing) is that technical writers usually are not that comfortable developing marketing copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3432" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T02:51:09.900" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1626" CreationDate="2012-03-27T08:53:03.827" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is based on both the content of your question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/posts/1626/revisions&quot;&gt;the way it was written&lt;/a&gt;, and your comment on your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your primary problem is not editing.&lt;/strong&gt; Editing is your third biggest problem, Writing is the second, and your biggest problem by far is Organizing (and Developing) Your Thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organizing your thoughts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I can tell from your writing style that you're a stream-of-consciousness kind of guy. I can tell from the content that you're a big-picture, big-ideas kind of guy. Fortunately, I know someone just like that, and have advised them on this issue. I'll focus on two points here -- a small point and a large, core point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organizing -- the small point&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You need to use something to manage all these ideas. If you don't, it just becomes a giant cluster of files that, frankly, are useless. If you have MS Office, checking out it's app &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OneNote&lt;/a&gt;. Nutshell: it's an electronic notebook. It doesn't seem like a big deal at first, but once you use it you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. Even through I stopped using MS Office, I bought the standalone OneNote 2010 because I can't live without it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fire that up, and start pulling in that 100K words of ideas into it, bit by bit, organizing it as you go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have OneNote, check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EverNote&lt;/a&gt;, It's a free, online, and works similarly, just not quite as well as OneNote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, google &quot;Mind Mapping&quot;. These are concepts of how to lay out ideas and interrelate them, on the fly, so when you're done generating ideas you don't have useless gobs of text; you have something with some structure that can be built onto. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's software for Mind Mapping, but learn the techniques first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organizing &amp;amp; Developing -- the huge, core point&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;One thing a fellow like you needs to do, when you have an idea, is &lt;em&gt;develop&lt;/em&gt; it. That 100K of notes is not a finished product, and no amount of editing is going to make it so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see, what you have in your head are these big ideas, complete ideas, but I guarantee you, what you have on paper is NOT complete. No one would be able to pick up those notes and fully understand your idea -- it has nothing to do with writing or editing, it simply won't all be there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you have to complete your ideas on paper. The goal is that someone could pick it up, and understand all of it, without you standing there interjecting or explaining verbally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, when you do this you're going to discover something interesting -- that your ideas are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; complete. You see, when you're thinking about something, your mind makes assumptions and leaps that you don't realize you're making. It's like the underpants gnomes in South Park: Step 1) Steal Underpants. Step 2) ???. Step 3) Profit!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also happens when you're verbalizing your ideas. Conversation is remarkably incomplete. That's why, for instance, they can't take transcripts of pundits talking on tv and publish them as essays. Conversation looks silly and choppy written down, because it IS silly and choppy. We don't say half the things we think we say -- or hear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is a concreteness to attempting to communicate an idea entirely on paper.&lt;/strong&gt; It'll help you see the bits that are not there, that you need. It forces you to lay out the idea linearly and logically -- step 1, step 2, step 3, with no unexplained leaps in between. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you probably think this is exactly what you've done with all those notes. That they're all crystal clear, except for some of this editing nonsense. &lt;strong&gt;But if someone else can't read it and understand the idea, you're wrong.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you need to develop the idea on paper. Here's how you do that:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick one (1) idea out of that pile you have. It doesn't matter which one; go ahead and pick the one that interests you the most. Dollars to donuts, it'll be the latest one. :-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transform that stream of consciousness idea into a &lt;em&gt;single&lt;/em&gt; paragraph, summarizing the whole thing. Yes, it can be done. And yes, you must do it. If you cannot, then you do not sufficiently understand that idea. Study it until you do. It's hard, but don't feel bad -- if this were a novel, you'd have to take it down to a single sentence. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some options here. Depending on what the subject matter is, you can:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;a) Expand the summary to a page or two. This is still a fairly high level view, but now you can flesh it out with more detail.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;b) Break out the steps of the idea into an outline.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You may want to do both.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add in steps or pieces that are missing. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flesh out the individual components. This can be more explanation, references or proofs for factual claims, and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organize it a bit. Rearrange the various components so you end up leading your reader logically through you concept.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go back and write a separate &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; for the idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat steps 4-6, honing, revising, clarifying, and adding as you go. Do this at least twice, with some rest time in between away from the project.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce your manuscript. Here we have the first step that involves any editing. This is where you cut out the fluff, tighten up your writing, and cut out any points that aren't absolutely necessary and are bloating the thing up. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give it to someone who knows nothing about your idea, let them read it, and see if they understand it. Don't talk to them until they're done reading, and no verbal explanations like &quot;oh, but what I really meant was...&quot;!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Based on that feedback, go as far back up these steps as necessary to improve the work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all of that seems like a lot of work, that's because it is. Having the grand idea is the fun part. Making it useful, even &quot;world changing&quot; as you say, well, that takes a lot of effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Final Note&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Where writing and editing, as skills, are concerned, do not underestimate the usefulness of taking classes and/or workshops to develop these skills. They'll make you write, give you feedback, then make you write (communicate) more clearly. Forget about trying to write your grandiose ideas in these classes. Write about meaningless things, so you can focus on improving those skills.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T22:06:42.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5317" CreationDate="2012-03-27T14:58:04.337" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the money quote from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scriptfrenzy.org/howtoformatascreenplay&quot;&gt;script formatting rules&lt;/a&gt; that cornbread ninja linked in the comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some writers also use ALL CAPS when a sound effect appears in Action. Others capitalize important props. This would look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;MORTIMER groans and pops a handful of aspirin. The tea kettle WHISTLES. Mortimer pulls out a SUB-PARTICLE SUPER BLASTER and blows the kettle to smithereens.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my understanding, this use of all-caps writing is meant to signify the &lt;em&gt;introduction&lt;/em&gt; of a &lt;em&gt;significant physical element&lt;/em&gt; into the scene. You can think of it as a way to mark the cues! Now, a lot of times a cue will be expressed by the camera focusing on the new element, whatever it is - so I understand why you might think that's what the caps means. But remember, a screenplay should generally avoid dictating directorial specifics like camera shots! Instead, it's just telling the reader, &quot;something new enters the scene, right HERE.&quot; That might be expressed with focus, but it might not - for example, when the BLOODY BODY is first referenced, maybe the actual film will only show partial glimpses of it for a little while before actually focusing on it. Maybe they'll never focus on it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, as far as I can tell using caps for emphasis in a screenplay is more of a good practice than a precise science with strict rules. If you understand what kinds of things need to be emphasized, and you feel like you're managing to emphasize those things with the caps, then your precise decision on a handful of cases you're not sure about shouldn't make a big difference one way or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T14:58:04.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5318" CreationDate="2012-03-27T17:03:56.403" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not certain if it is what you are looking for, but you can get the xml or unixref formatted citations from DOI on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crossref.org/guestquery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CrossRef website&lt;/a&gt;.  Also Connotea is freeware that will produce similar citation formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you specifically interested in LaTeX (i.e. BibTeX) formatting, you may be interested in &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/6848/automatically-dereference-doi-to-bib&quot;&gt;these answers&lt;/a&gt; on the TeX site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And on the CrossRef site, they have a blog that explains how you can use the same process (as BibTeX formatting) for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crossref.org/CrossTech/2011/11/turning_dois_into_formatted_ci.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;different formats&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:29.717" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T17:11:14.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5309" CreationDate="2012-03-27T17:49:57.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not something strange. Almost every programming language can analyze text to capture such data. It will be a one-file script. Here is some online applications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordcalc.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wordcalc.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordscount.info/hw/syllable.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wordscount.info/hw/syllable.jsp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.syllablecount.com/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.syllablecount.com/default.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the process is simple and straightforward, the features are not very different; just analyzing the text. There should be lots of (simple) desktop softwares too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2640" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T17:49:57.647" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5139" CreationDate="2012-03-27T23:28:39.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One suggestion is to solve the problem outside of the IDE, and inside your versioning tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you check in your documentation along with your source code to the same repository, then you can use command-line tools like 'git grep' to refactor code + docs at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3464" LastEditorUserId="3464" LastEditDate="2012-03-27T23:33:40.927" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T23:33:40.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5330" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5331" CreationDate="2012-03-27T23:33:35.620" Score="-1" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently have to write an application for college that I wish to go to over the summer. I have no idea where to turn and what to write. The prompt is to explain my interest in technology. Two questions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) Should I open with story or start with something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) What web pages of (preferably) books can help me? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2946" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T00:36:14.107" Title="College Application Essay Opening and Help" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-03-28T00:09:00.520" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5330" CreationDate="2012-03-28T00:06:30.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing you &quot;should&quot; do, besides of course addressing the prompt. A million people could give that prompt a million different excellent answers with none of them having anything in common with one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the key to writing personal essays is simple: speak from the heart. Be honest. If technology does sincerely interest you, think about how and why and maybe find an example or two to sew into your response. If you get stuck on a basic idea such as &quot;I like understanding how stuff works&quot; and can't think of anything else to say, then don't worry, you're encountering a common problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to start asking more specific questions. For instance: when did I first start developing an interest in technology? what was I doing at the time that led to the interest? what was my first venture in technology? For me, the kindergarten I went to had a special activity called &quot;take-apart&quot;: all of us little 7-year olds were handed screwdrivers and pliers and led to a pile of discarded computers and electronics parts, and allowed to roam free. I loved meticulously dismantling each component to see what I might find inside it. It was like performing surgery on Matryoshka dolls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've got something to say, @$%)@# spit it out. Just write. Afterwards, run through it and rephrase things as you see fit. Ask someone you know is decent with words to look through it and edit it also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you consider yourself to be a bad writer, i.e. you write down a sentence and then shout &lt;em&gt;UGH THIS IS GARBAGE&lt;/em&gt; and crumple it up/ctrl+a+delete, then here's the best tip I can give you: I often find that people who are poor writers are nonetheless perfectly well-qualified speakers. So just talk. Explain it out loud as you would if you were telling them in person. Write what you're saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And don't mix up their/there. Looks bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2012-03-28T00:36:14.107" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T00:36:14.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5322" CreationDate="2012-03-28T19:45:06.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the number of software development books available, it's fair to say theres a lot of writers out there who can program, and with a healthy dose of google you should be able to find the websites for quite a few of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a head start you then, as a writer with a published programming book, I'd be happy to hear about your idea if you want to drop me a comment on my website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3467" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T19:45:06.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5306" CreationDate="2012-03-28T19:49:44.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would call it aperiodic periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3467" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T19:49:44.787" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5307" CreationDate="2012-03-29T20:23:50.437" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;epub (as well as kindle) are subsets of HTML. So, in essence, there's no difference between reading an e-book on a tablet and reading a webpage on a computer -- and you get some of the same problems. Color shifts between different computers has been plaguing web developers since the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have inDesign, so I can't tell you where to go exactly, but here are some things to try: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the color palette to be &quot;web safe&quot;. I know you can set your GIFs in indesign to be websafe, but I don't know about the rest. If it takes you all the way back to the old school 256 color scheme, it may not work for you, though. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce the bit-depth of your color palette. Initially, ipad was supposed to have a 24-bit color depth, but everyone's complaining online that it doesn't seem to. So, start stepping that down. In fact, if I were you, I'd step it down as far as possible while still getting the same effect. Every device renders just a little bit differently, so you want to go for the lowest common denominator. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I believe bit-depth is where it's at, but if that doesn't help, start turning off features and reducing other settings that add complexity to the color rendering. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change your colors. There are some colors that just won't display the same, no matter what you do. Others render consistently across devices. So, play around with other color sets if reducing complexity doesn't help. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all revolves around quality - you want less, not more. If you have inDesign, then I'm sure you also have a really high end monitor to use it on. Tablets are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; high end displays (with the possible exception of iPad 3) -- you have to target the low end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing to throw into the mix:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Remember that e-ink devices are black &amp;amp; white, so you'll want to make sure it works in grey-scale too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I just noticed from one of your comments that you're using CYMK. That's for printing, not displays. Set it to RGB instead. This alone may fix your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T20:23:50.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5336" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5337" CreationDate="2012-03-30T05:18:26.247" Score="4" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was writing a short story piece where one person drops something in the water. I got puzzled by the following two choices. Google books seem to be using both of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jena and Mike went outside for fishing. Suddenly, Mike dropped his wallet. As they both watched the wallet &lt;strong&gt;float&lt;/strong&gt; down to the bottom of the water, a big fish came in and gobbled up the wallet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should it be: As they both watched the wallet &lt;strong&gt;floating&lt;/strong&gt; down to the bottom of the water, a big fish came in and gobbled up the wallet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conventional wisdom says that the continuous form focuses more on the continuation of the action, while the other doesn't. What difference does it make if we change the first to the second one? Which one seems to flow naturally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T13:36:51.683" Title="Floating vs Float" Tags="|style|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5336" CreationDate="2012-03-30T06:16:37.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Main Answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Since the gobbling happens during the floating down action, and not after the wallet's hit bottom, you want a construction that's continuous. Therefore, floating is better. However, you already have another continuation 'flag', for lack of a better term, in that 'as'. That 'as' puts you in the middle of the action (in this case the watching, I believe), and frees you to use 'float'.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, either sentence works, and you can choose whichever feels better to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional points&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;That said, I think you have more problems than just float/floating. Like the fact they've only stepped outside, they're not over water when he drops the wallet. Unless they're already in some boat, you should replace &quot;went outside&quot; with &quot;went to the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;____&lt;/strong&gt; (river/lake/pier/boat/etc.)&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it's &quot;to fish, not &quot;for fishing&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need &quot;both&quot; in &quot;as they both watched&quot;. &quot;They&quot; already refers to the two of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;the water&quot; should be in sentence #2, telling the reader what Mike dropped his wallet into, and removed from sentence #3 since it's understood the bottom refers to the water bottom. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;fish came in&quot;: 'to be' and 'to go' verbs are weak, and easily over used. They're not interesting since they are very generic action verbs. I'd suggest replacing &quot;came&quot; with something like &quot;zipped&quot;, &quot;dashed&quot;, &quot;darted&quot;, or even just plain old &quot;swam&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, you don't need to repeat &quot;the wallet&quot; twice in the last sentence. It's repetitive, so replace the second one with &quot;it&quot; -- &quot;gobbled it up&quot;.  This holds true even if you split that last sentence into two, which is something I would do (but that's my style). If you did that, you could even replace both &quot;the wallet&quot;s with &quot;it&quot;; you can't if it's one sentence because then you'd have a repetitive &quot;it&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T06:16:37.610" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5336" CreationDate="2012-03-30T06:22:37.307" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think either one is quite right. To see why, try reversing the events:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a big fish came in and gobbled up the wallet, they both watched the wallet float down to the bottom of the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If each event is really happening &quot;as&quot; the other happens, you would be able to reverse the events and the sentence would still make sense. But this reversal doesn't work very well, so &quot;as&quot; is probably not right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As&quot; almost works. There is a kind of simultaneity here: The fish comes in as the wallet floats down. But &quot;to the bottom&quot; suggests that the wallet hits bottom. If that's true, then the fish doesn't gobble it up as they watch it float down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your puzzle about &lt;em&gt;float&lt;/em&gt; versus &lt;em&gt;floating&lt;/em&gt; is probably telling you that something else is wrong with the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T06:22:37.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5336" CreationDate="2012-03-30T08:49:19.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sink/Sinking would be better as a work, because if it floated, it wouldn't be going towards the bottom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wallet didn't actually sink to the bottom - it was swallowed before it got there. So they did not in fact watch it &quot;sink to the bottom&quot;. They did watch it as it was in the process of doing this, so they watched it &quot;as it was sinking towards the bottom&quot;. This has the sense of what was expected to happen, but in the process of this occurring, it was interrupted, and never finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T08:49:19.383" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5307" CreationDate="2012-03-30T18:12:48.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to sum up what I have learned in the meantime: It is not possible &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.organizingcreativity.com/book-as-pdf/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;for the kind of book I wrote&lt;/a&gt; to do a print and an ePub-eBook version with the same document. Reason being is that the print version (and an PDF Version viewed on an iPad or similar device) uses tables and a range of colors that look stunning on a medium to large display (and hopefully also in print, will take a while), but the hardware of ePub devices is too limited to achieve it there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like the old days with Netscape, Explorer, and Oracle -- only worse. Tables look awful unless you format them manually (InDesign does not export them with formatting), and using a colored table-style does not make sense on a small device (screen too small for the tables to look good with this kind of margin effect and some device offer &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; color, i.e., the information value vanishes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the best solution is to create an own ePub version -- removing any color, replacing the tables (and the need for a color scheme) with bullet point lists, and keeping to basic formatting. But doing both with one file is -- I think -- not possible for the formatting I have used, it would only cripple the print version/PDF ebook version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem is the formatting of the InDesign file itself -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sachaheck.net/blog/indesign/indesign-ebook-leitfaden&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;there is a great guide to use InDesign for ePub creation here&lt;/a&gt; (unfortunately in German), e.g., the text has to be on continuous flow (it was not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think the answer is -- there is no need for such a color scheme if ePub is included, because you can never be sure that the reader is using a device that can display &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; color. If going for print/PDF ebook and ePub, with complex formatting you might have to create two versions of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Moderator: Not sure, should I have written this as an addendum to my question? Or not at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3259" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T18:12:48.923" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5341" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5342" CreationDate="2012-03-29T16:28:31.617" Score="7" ViewCount="1995" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a moderate level of skills in &lt;em&gt;technical writing&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;TW&lt;/strong&gt;) having gone through graduation in engineering.  I was wondering what would be the best way to sharpen my knowledge. I am also interested in asking this especially for my juniors who have an opportunity for a fresh start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we learn &lt;strong&gt;TW&lt;/strong&gt; by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;getting a good text book and reading it? There are so many of them; which one should I  choose?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;taking a class and doing the homework?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reading technical articles and imbibing their style?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;writing and referring to textbooks occasionally?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, I find students and colleagues that do not have good technical writing skills i.e. they lack conciseness, clarity and completeness. I  also do not adhere to this sometimes. So how do you improve your technical writing skills when you have already learned the &quot;wrong&quot; way. I want to let my students focus on that and at the same time help my colleagues. You may suggest me a book or some specific guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3468" OwnerDisplayName="Stat-R" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-06-23T21:15:59.940" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T18:06:56.480" Title="What is the best way to learn technical writing?" Tags="|technical-writing|education|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5341" CreationDate="2012-03-31T05:13:29.060" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'm &lt;em&gt;heavily&lt;/em&gt; in favor of #3 as a way of learning anything and everything to do with writing. I too spent several years studying engineering and have done my fair share of technical writing. If you're not a horrific writer to begin with, I feel you should have no trouble picking up the style and voice of technical writing by reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I should note there is a little more to it than that-- you can imbibe the &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt; just by reading it a lot; it'll get in your head. But the &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt; you can't get subconsciously, not as easily anyway. You need to actively think about what you're reading. Why were the report's components placed in the order that they were? What did the author treat in depth and what did they gloss over? How did they start, and how did they conclude?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know the voice of technical writing, understanding questions such as these will tell you what to say with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-03-31T05:13:29.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5343" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5347" CreationDate="2012-03-31T11:24:24.213" Score="1" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I planning to write about the convergence of our real world and the computer reality world. My plan to develop on this idea is to describe this convergence as a &quot;merger&quot; between our real world and the computer's virtual reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in my story, this &quot;merger&quot; is driven (and made possible) by technological advancement. And, in my story, this advancement is an &lt;strong&gt;ongoing process&lt;/strong&gt;, which affects the convergence &lt;strong&gt;continually&lt;/strong&gt;. In fact, the convergence will only work if the technology advances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's where the problem with my plan for writing this idea starts: I am worried that I'm unclear and misleading about whether the convergence is an ongoing process, or a one-time &quot;merger.&quot; I'm particularly worried that describing it one way in one place will be very confusing if later I describe it another way. I wonder if I would confuse the reader about the definition of convergence in my context. I am afraid that the reader might question: &quot;So is the convergence I am telling a merger of 2 entities or a process?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as you read about my problem, would you, too, make similar question about my idea of convergence? How would you tackle such a problem when you face one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2511" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T06:33:46.957" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T06:33:46.957" Title="Is calling this process a &quot;convergence&quot; accurate and clear?" Tags="|science-fiction|description|clarity|setting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5343" CreationDate="2012-03-31T18:59:34.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand this correctly, over the course of your story the two separate worlds of reality and virtual reality are going to gradually become one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If I've understood,&lt;/em&gt; this does not seem so complex to me. Be clear in your description-- it's a gradual convergence of worlds. Certainly that is an apt description, but one sentence won't do it. This will take paragraphs. Describe it thoroughly. I may come back and add an example later if I'm on the right track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-03-31T18:59:34.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5343" CreationDate="2012-04-01T07:40:34.347" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the process you're trying to describe is complex or can be looked at in two different ways, you can explain it pretty much in those words. Because &lt;em&gt;inside your story,&lt;/em&gt; the same tension and double-definition exists - so that can be how people think of it and describe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider these two possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the nature of the convergence is widely known and understood,&lt;/strong&gt; than the double-definition &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the definition. If everybody thinks of it both as a merger and an on-going process, then that's how you introduce it to begin with. You give it a particle-and-wave type of explanation, introducing it right off the bat as something counter-intuitive yet well-understood. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even though the convergence seems to have happened already, the fact is that we're all still converging. In one sense, it's an event that happened in the past - in another sense, convergence is still taking place, all around us, all the time. As our technology advances, our ability to keep the convergence up and bring us together keeps advancing right along with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;strong&gt;if the nature of the convergence is unclear, and only gradually uncovered to the reader,&lt;/strong&gt; it's absolutely fine to start out using one explanation -- a &lt;em&gt;partial&lt;/em&gt; explanation -- and only later come back, explain what we were missing, and reveal to the reader that the first explanation was a partial one. The risk you describe -- that you might confuse your readers -- is a real one, but you can avoid it: all you need to do is make clear that the new explanation is &lt;em&gt;supposed&lt;/em&gt; to be surprising and disorienting. Then they know that their confusion is justified, that they're reacting correctly to the information in the story - instead of suspecting that the confusion is because the author isn't being clear, or because they haven't been following along closely enough, which are considerations from &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; the story world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One very clear way to do this is to make sure your viewpoint characters do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; know about the later explanation. It's as much news to them as it is to the reader; that makes it very easy to understand that the reader is being called upon to revise his understanding of the setting - right along with the viewpoint character. This method might look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't understand,&quot; said Eddington. &quot;What do you mean, we're still converging? We've already converged. We're &lt;em&gt;here,&lt;/em&gt; converged. Isn't that the whole point?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Well,&lt;/em&gt; said the AI &lt;em&gt;it might seem like that, yes. However, the truth of the matter is, what you think of as 'convergence' was merely the very beginning of the process. [explain explain explain]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is, you might want to divide the reader's understanding of the convergence into &quot;simple explanation first/complicated explanation later&quot; simply because the longer explanation might be difficult to work in well early on in the story, and isn't necessary until later. If that's what you're going for, you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; let the reader tag along with a viewpoint character that knows more than he does. But you're going for pretty much the same effect - the &lt;em&gt;viewpoint character&lt;/em&gt; offers the reader one explanation at the beginning, and &lt;em&gt;intentionally&lt;/em&gt; provides a more complicated explanation later on. The main difference is that here the viewpoint character is (knowingly) surprising the reader, whereas in my previous example we had some other character (knowingly) surprise the viewpoint character (and the reader through him). This is a rather crude example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now, the convergence is a bit more tricky than just colliding our two realities together and calling it a day; I don't want to give you the wrong impression. A lot of it has already happened, but the truth is, it's still happening all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, what's very very important is that the reader not &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; that extra explanation until he gets it. In other words, you can get away with simplification as long as the simplification makes sense and isn't deliberately putting the reader at a disadvantage. (You can have some hints and &quot;edges of ideas&quot; to hint that there's more to convergence than you've said, but nothing big or crucial.) It's basically the narrator going: OK, I've taught you how to send email; now I'm going to teach you how the internet works. It's all right to expand gradually outwards, just make sure the reader is never left at sea and bewildered just because he hasn't gotten the full explanation yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this is clear and helpful :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T07:40:34.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5348" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-02T00:49:17.730" Score="10" ViewCount="12081" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is some good advice for writing about things done, in an autobiographical sense, that may have been or still are illegal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, smoking or buying marijuana is illegal in many countries, yet people write about doing this without a problem. Likewise other minor illegal acts such as sex in public, harder drugs, etc also seem to be written about (Look at Hunter Thompson for example) without any consequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a matter of degree? O.J. Simpsons was found innocent by a court of law, yet his book If I Did It was taken by some to be a confession of sorts. However this did not prompt any new investigations that I am aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to write some stories about my travels and adventures without facing consequences for what I saw as minor, mostly harmless and/or necessary and infractions at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I keep in mind and how free/honest can I be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3378" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-04-02T03:25:10.290" LastActivityDate="2019-03-19T02:04:20.867" Title="How can one write about illegal deeds without getting into trouble? " Tags="|legal|biography|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5348" CreationDate="2012-04-02T08:00:20.000" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be free and honest in what you did, unless you committed an extremely serious offence - murder, serious fraud, rape - because your writing does not, as a rule, constitute a formal confession. The police would have to find other evidence that you committed the crime to make it worth their while investigating - with acts like drug taking or public lewdity, that is unlikely to be still present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about crimes of violence or large scale activity, then the police are liable to consider it worth their while to investigate, in which case your writing may be a starting point, but unless you make a formal confession, the writings you publish are merely a small piece of evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as you are talking about travelling, you may want to consider whether you ever wish to return to those countries that you committed &quot;minor infractions&quot; in. Irrespective of your guilt or otherwise, they might not be prepared to let you pass the border again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T08:00:20.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5352" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5360" CreationDate="2012-04-02T14:45:07.887" Score="14" ViewCount="3365" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently work for an engineering company as an electrical engineer. A good chunk of my time is spent writing testing reports or instruction documents. Currently my company doesn't have any sort of guidelines specifying how to format documents, and everyone seems to do it a different way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I considered buying the Chicago Style Manual because it is suggested by the IEEE (a prominent electronics organization). This is a massive book at nearly 1,000 pages. Does anybody here have any input whether reading through a manual like this is a worthy expenditure of time for someone in a field like mine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3478" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-07T01:07:18.260" LastActivityDate="2023-09-05T17:36:07.163" Title="Is it overkill to follow style-guides for technical writing?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|resources|chicago-manual-of-style|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5352" CreationDate="2012-04-02T15:22:31.210" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Purchase it? Yes. I don't think you need to read it cover-to-cover unless you're a serious language geek who reads dictionaries for fun. &lt;i&gt;::cough::cough::&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Pulling out my 14th edition for reference...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would try to read as much of &quot;The Parts of a Book&quot; and &quot;Manuscript Preparation&quot; as you can before your eyes glaze over. Unless you're reading someone else's work, you can skim the proofreading section. &quot;Design and Typography&quot; would be good to read as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything else you can look up as you come across it: Do I use the serial comma? Does this sentence take &quot;which&quot; or &quot;that&quot;? How do I cite a website in a bibliography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T15:22:31.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5352" CreationDate="2012-04-02T16:11:35.563" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;For documentation that will be published outside your organization, it is usually important to follow a style guide (pretty much any one) so that all the documentation reads with one &quot;voice&quot; even though it was written by a bunch of different people.  As noted by Lauren Ipsum, you don't read the style guide cover-to-cover but, rather, consult it on individual points.  (You'll need to become familiar with what points it covers, though.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I said it is &quot;usually&quot; important; you should ask the question first before proceeding to adopt a guide.  There is an existing practice of &quot;every man for himself&quot;; are things that way because it really doesn't matter to the people in charge, or only because the question has never come up?  If it's not important to them, then you'll need to make a case that it matters in proportion to the cost of adopting a new practice.  The purchase price of the book is noise; the cost will be in changing everyone's work habits.  If customers (or other important people) see this documentation then that may well be an easy pitch; if it's only used by the members of your team, it might not matter (much as it pains me, as a writer, to say that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T16:11:35.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5209" CreationDate="2012-04-02T19:03:06.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may not be exactly what you're looking for, but don't discount the &lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Android UI Guidelines&lt;/a&gt; site immediately. While it isn't exactly overflowing with information, and it is specifically aimed at the text used &lt;strong&gt;within&lt;/strong&gt; applications, the site does have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.android.com/design/style/writing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing Style page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6 rules, 5 examples. But perhaps the application style could do well translated to documentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T19:03:06.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5356" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5358" CreationDate="2012-04-03T02:35:44.263" Score="7" ViewCount="2102" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once, a while back, I tried to use notecards when noveling to organize and develop my novel. The idea (a fairly common one, I believe) was that each scene is noted on a notecard, and you can then visually order them and add/remove scenes; it creates a high-level overview that helps with pacing and flow, and finding superfluous scenes to cut or holes that need an added scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I liked the idea, but I couldn't make it work in practice. About halfway through the novel I had a stack of less-than-useful cards, that didn't seem to add any value to the noveling process. So, I abandoned it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lately I started using Scrivener - which has a notecard feature - so I want to give it another shot. I think my problem may have been what I put on the cards. Some had lots of detail, others quite sketchy, and generally what I put on each would seem important at the time but later had me wondering what I meant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, What should be put on scene notecards to make them useful? Especially, what are the set of things that should be on &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; notecards to make them useful as a whole as well as individually? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-04-03T09:55:14.620" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T00:29:55.150" Title="What should be put on scene notecards? (for novel writing)" Tags="|novel|organization|outline|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5356" CreationDate="2012-04-03T03:11:54.100" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on what you want on those cards. Since I tend to worry about the details of a scenario when I'm writing it specifically, I tend to be pretty rough when I plan like this, but I recommend four basic elements be on all of your notecards: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What characters are there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why they're there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What happens to them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How this affects the characters and the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these guidelines, you shouldn't have any problems knowing where a scene is going when you actually sit down to write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3480" LastEditorUserId="3480" LastEditDate="2012-12-25T00:29:55.150" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T00:29:55.150" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5356" CreationDate="2012-04-03T05:14:36.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For each scene, I like to note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The POV character&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goal: What the POV character wants in this scene.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obstacle: Who or what gets in the way of the POV character's goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Result: Whether or not the POV character achieves the goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the character has a significant dilemma (more than a paragraph) in response to something that happens in the scene, I'll note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reaction: The character's reaction (emotional, thoughtful, or both) to what happened.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dilemma: The options that the character weighs, and the problems that lead the character to discard most of them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decision: Which option the character chooses and commits to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are the basics. I often note a few details or complications about some of those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I might note &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; goals in the scene (demonstrate something about the character, set up or foreshadow some later event, reveal new information, hide some detail in plain sight, and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T05:14:36.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5352" CreationDate="2012-04-03T08:37:52.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the documentation is only ever going to be written by one person, and read by the same group of people, that documentation does not require a style (assuming it is internal documentation, not going to customers). As long as both sides understand it, it can work, although it may take newcomers to the reading a while to understand. If writing it in biblical Greek works for this situation, there are no problems with doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, almost all documentation, even internal, will be written by more than one person, and read by different people over time. It may be instructions for testing, but QA auditors may also need to see it. Instruction documents may be initially intended for a set groups, but they might then be stored for new people. Therefore, some form of standards are a good idea, although they may not need to be as rigorous as for external users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose is not to ensure that everything is always consistent and professional, it is to ensure that new people can understand and interpret documentation the correct way. So minor typos are not so important, but clarity and consistency are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T20:00:40.083" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T20:00:40.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5352" CreationDate="2012-04-03T12:33:18.410" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it is not overkill to follow a stylebook. As others have said, you consult it as questions arise and learn as you go; you normally don't read it cover to cover. We all put sticky notes on the oft-consulted sections. Since you went to the trouble of asking your question, you are obviously bothered by the lack of consistency within your company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, since you write a lot for your job, chances are you ARE already following a style. I would suggest you begin compiling a document including all of the things you are constantly looking up and create your own style guide. Who knows, maybe your company will one day adopt your guide! (One suggestion: as you compile your own guide make a note of which authoritative source you base each &quot;rule&quot; on so that you can refer back to it if necessary.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My company follows &lt;em&gt;The Associated Press Stylebook&lt;/em&gt;, except when they don't. We have a Word document with the exceptions, which is updated as decisions are made. (It is always noted in the file the date when a rule is changed.) Also, AP changes their style on occasion, and my company has to decide if they agree. As an example, last year AP changed &lt;em&gt;e-mail&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;email.&lt;/em&gt; My company did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3432" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T12:33:18.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5361" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5421" CreationDate="2012-04-03T12:44:14.790" Score="3" ViewCount="1838" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the PC Study Bible, which is a collection of resources (Bible versions, commentaries, &amp;amp;c.) bundled together and accessed via a special software program. How do I cite one of the resources Turabian-style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it were a print book, I'd write (in a footnote):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adam Clarke, &lt;em&gt;Commentary taken from the Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments . . .&lt;/em&gt; , new ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, n.d.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I simply put something like one of these at the end:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Nashville: Abingdon, n.d.) CD-ROM (Biblesoft, 2006).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (Nashville: Abingdon, n.d.; [CD-ROM] Biblesoft, 2006).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is there more to it than that? Do I need to specifically cite that I'm using version 4.1a of the software, or is the date good enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, since the resource doesn't have page numbers, how do I reference a quote's location in the text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I notice that if I copy text from the commentary, the program inserts below the copied text, &quot;(from Adam Clarke's Commentary, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 1996 by Biblesoft)&quot;. This might be an important piece of bibliographic data, but I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2870" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T12:48:41.943" Title="how to cite CD-ROM resources (Turabian)" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5371" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5373" CreationDate="2012-04-04T13:25:19.753" Score="2" ViewCount="179" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not getting too technical, I am writing a configuration file for a piece of software I have developed. This software allows others to write &quot;services&quot; and attach them to my software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written a simple service that serves as an example and I have included it in the release bundle. It is the user's choice however, whether to build this service or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part where they select whether to build that service or not, has a help text attached to it. There, I have this sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This option enables build of a simple sample service ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, the &quot;simple sample service&quot; sounds strange to me. Am I being too picky with my words? If not, what alternative do you suggest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes: I certainly want to mention that it is a sample service and it's not meant to be used. I would be happy if I could include &quot;simple&quot; also, to encourage them to take a look at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3487" OwnerDisplayName="Shahbaz" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T06:35:08.373" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T06:35:08.373" Title="Would it be weird if I write &quot;a simple sample something&quot;?" Tags="|technical-writing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5372" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5916" CreationDate="2012-04-04T13:56:24.110" Score="3" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;When using text from articles published in journals and magazine, we need to obtain copyright permission from the copyright owner (publisher or author). I wonder if we need copyright permission when using text from a US Patent addressing that patent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason that I'm asking is that patent text are freely available on the internet, contrary to journals. In addition to the official website of the US Patent, there are many websites which freely distribute patents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have these websites obtained copyright permission fro the US Patent and Trademark Office?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2640" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T16:20:48.277" Title="Is Patent text copyrighted?" Tags="|citations|copyright|websites|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5371" CreationDate="2012-04-04T13:58:23.857" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with the phrase &quot;simple sample service&quot;. However, if you want to avoid alliteration you could use other words that convey the &quot;not for production use&quot; nature of the service:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prototype&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;demo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T13:58:23.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5371" CreationDate="2012-04-04T15:26:57.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might try substituting the word &quot;&lt;em&gt;basic&lt;/em&gt;&quot; for &quot;&lt;em&gt;simple&lt;/em&gt;&quot; - that would eliminate the most awkward part of the alliteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T15:26:57.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5371" CreationDate="2012-04-04T15:39:09.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The minimal change needed to avoid disconcerting alliteration is to just call it a &lt;em&gt;&quot;simple &lt;strong&gt;example&lt;/strong&gt; service&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1662" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T15:39:09.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5376" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5380" CreationDate="2012-04-04T17:28:24.000" Score="6" ViewCount="439" Body="&lt;p&gt;We often hear that literature review (&lt;em&gt;LR&lt;/em&gt;) is not mere summarizing the writings of other, rather it is scrutinizing finding the material relevant to one's own research and the gaps to be filled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone give me specific guidelines on &lt;em&gt;LR&lt;/em&gt; in terms of examples and resources? Googling will give many listings but I would like to know it from your own experience either as a learner or as a teacher. You may kindly provide one specific tip/resource or example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3468" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T00:59:31.543" LastActivityDate="2022-04-18T00:42:44.987" Title="How to do literature review" Tags="|academic-writing|research|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5377" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5379" CreationDate="2012-04-04T17:31:06.090" Score="0" ViewCount="1043" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a recent discussion regarding software manuals, we came across the issue of different styles of writing / speaking in English. I am having a hard time finding a list of the different styles, such as vernacular, slang, old-fashioned, the type of talk one would use with a professor, and such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the name of the preferred writing style for software manuals, and where might one find a list of the different styles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2445" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-04-04T18:45:46.250" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T03:46:09.993" Title="What are the names of the different levels of English?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|resources|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5377" CreationDate="2012-04-05T03:46:09.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the name of the preferred writing style for software manuals,&#xA;  and where might one find a list of the different styles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software manual authorship falls under &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;technical writing&lt;/a&gt;.  Business correspondence is an example of &lt;em&gt;formal writing&lt;/em&gt;, and a letter to your grandma is an example of &lt;em&gt;casual writing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3381" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T03:46:09.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2012-04-05T08:28:39.347" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding, from what I have been told in my thesis work, is that the literature review should demonstrate that you have read everything that is critical to your work, understood it, and can explain why it is relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More practically, this means that you need to identify the core areas of your subject that relate to your thesis topic. They within these areas, identify the most critical texts, and read them. Then write sections that explore the &lt;em&gt;topic&lt;/em&gt;, drawing heavily from the &lt;em&gt;books&lt;/em&gt; with quotes. Make sure that you are arguing for What this area involves into Why this is relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, for HCI, I talk a little about introducing new technology, because this is a critical part of HCI design, and I refer to Zuboff and Bannon, referened below. These are the two key authors in the specific area focus that I need to address, and I quote them liberally talking around the focus of the topic that I require.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your writing is just a litereature review, then it probably needs more detail, more personal exploration of the topic in more depth. But the principles are the same - read the most important literature on the specific topic, and demonstrate that you understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zuboff, S (1988) In the age of the smart machine – the future of work and power, Oxford: Heinemann Professional Publishing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bannon, L (1991) From Human Factors to Human Actors. In Greenbaum, J and Kyng, M (Eds.)(1991) Design at work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates pp. 25-44&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bannon, L (2011) Reimagining HCI: Towards a more Human-Centred Perspective. Interactions. New York: ACM, pp50-57&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T08:28:39.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5381" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5383" CreationDate="2012-04-05T16:22:53.560" Score="3" ViewCount="17463" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a bio for a development conference I am presenting at. My writing style causes my &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_test#Flesch_Reading_Ease&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flesch Reading Ease&lt;/a&gt; score to trend high. While I like what I have below I'd like to simplify it a bit without losing impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some options for simplification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Andrew earned both a Bachelors and Masters of Business Administration&#xA;  with a concentration in management information systems from the&#xA;  University of New Mexico. Most recently he completed a Masters of&#xA;  Science in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.&#xA;  Andrew has experience writing and deploying applications in Java, Ruby&#xA;  on Rails, Python, and JavaScript but primarily develops software in&#xA;  C#. He has developed and deployed many enterprise applications for&#xA;  Sandia National Laboratories. In the past year he has assisted Google&#xA;  and NASA with their mobile application development efforts for&#xA;  disaster responders. In addition to coding he is an advocate for agile&#xA;  software development practices and a .NET evangelist at Sandia. He has&#xA;  organized several development communities and both developers and&#xA;  management seek out his perspective on software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="40" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T18:12:16.380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T18:12:16.380" Title="How to write a powerful but uncomplicated conference biography?" Tags="|editing|clarity|biography|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5381" CreationDate="2012-04-05T16:34:29.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than &quot;deployed&quot;: helped to launch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've no idea what an &quot;enterprise application&quot; is, so perhaps that could be rephrased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with &quot;he is an advocate for agile software development practices&quot; is that &quot;agile software development&quot; is an actual jargon phrase. If you don't want it to mess up your readability score, you have to rephrase it entirely as something like &quot;clean and efficient coding,&quot; which may not have the same meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than &quot;a .NET evangelist,&quot; try &quot;and the use of .NET.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than &quot;and both developers and management seek out his perspective on software development,&quot; maybe &quot;making his opinions welcome to those at all skill levels.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T16:34:29.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5381" CreationDate="2012-04-05T16:52:53.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would abbreviate your degrees; chances are your audience will understand them. And then I would break down a few of your sentences into shorter sentences. Here's an edited version (impressive resume by the way!):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Andrew earned his BS and MBA from the University of New Mexico and his MS in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He primarily develops software in C#, but also has experience with Java, Ruby on Rails, Python, and JavaScript. He has developed and deployed many enterprise applications for Sandia National Laboratories. In 2011, he worked with Google and NASA to develop a mobile application for disaster responders. He is an advocate for agile software development practices and a .NET evangelist at Sandia. He has organized several{software?} development communities. Both developers and managers seek out his perspective on software development.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3432" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T16:52:53.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5384" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-06T15:53:48.417" Score="3" ViewCount="370" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does a self-contained environment for authoring research papers exist? Clearly, the concept might be a little unclear, so here's an attempt to better define what I mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All sources used would be within the system; for example, a static-clone of Wikipedia.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The workflow for researching, tracking source notation, fact validation, text-editing, and final review, would all be within the system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use would be for basic education, not professional writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;General use of such a system would be based around reducing the overhead to learning to write research papers. For example, the first &quot;research paper&quot; would simply be finding a topic, rephrasing the supporting topic sentences, and writing a conclusion sentence. The expert/last would be manually tracking the citation of sources, doing original research external to the system, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; Thought I might share additional &quot;logic&quot; on why I believe such a system would be of value. For starters, creative thinking/sourcing/independent research to me easy to separate from the action of rephrasing and summarizing information gathered in sources and presenting that information in a meaningful, yet interesting way. Beyond that, facts changed, but the skill required to present them roughly stays the same. By having a static source, it would allow all research, phrasing, etc. to be traced real-time, possibly even in a semi-automated way. Beyond that, Wikipedia is big enough, to write enough research papers to learn to write research papers, but allow people to select topics on their own. By keep the version of Wikipedia static, no links between the source and research would ever go broken, and as a result, ever paper on written on the system would be able to be used to teach other people and good and bad choices in writing a research paper, since the papers would also be wikis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2083" LastEditorUserId="2083" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T21:57:43.937" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T07:31:14.387" Title="Self-contained software environment for authoring research papers" Tags="|software|research|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5381" CreationDate="2012-04-06T17:17:19.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's how I'd write it, keeping in mind two things: 1.) I'm not a software developer and 2.) your audience probably is so you can use a lot more abbreviations. I can't tell you that I'm a fan of the alphabet soup but your readability score will significantly improve if your degrees, etc. are abbreviated. I've also tweaked some other bits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Andrew earned both a BS and an MBA with a concentration in MIS from&#xA;  UNM and he recently acquired an MS in Software Engineering from CMU.&#xA;  Andrew prefers coding in C# but he also works in Java, JavaScript, RoR&#xA;  and Python. He develops applications for Sandia National Laboratories&#xA;  and in 2011 he helped Google and NASA develop mobile apps for&#xA;  disaster responders. In addition to coding he advocates for agile software&#xA;  development practices and is a .NET evangelist at Sandia. He manages a number of programming discussion boards and his views on software development are highly&#xA;  sought after by developers and management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: Your readability is 5. Mine is 30. I don't think you can get to plain English (65) when discussing software development. On a side note I'd add a small bit about you as a person at the end: &lt;em&gt;While waiting for his code to compile Andrew reads shonen manga and takes his goldfish, Roscoe, for long walks in Roosevelt Park.&lt;/em&gt; Or whatever you do in your down time. (If you have down time, that is.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="3496" LastEditDate="2012-04-06T18:55:30.117" LastActivityDate="2012-04-06T18:55:30.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5386" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5387" CreationDate="2012-04-07T02:15:49.733" Score="6" ViewCount="883" Body="&lt;p&gt;I go to a CEGEP, which is basically pre-university in Montreal. In my Introduction to English class, I had a teacher who allowed us to go around the typical essay writing conventions. Conventions like outlining three points in your thesis and summing up those points in different words in your conclusion were thrown out. Instead, our essays consisted of logical points of progression; if I could prove point A, then I can prove point B, and then C, and therefore I've proven my thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of progressive method allowed me to write some of the best essays I've written so far, and my favourites too. But when I took my second English class in my second semester, I was forced to go back to these conventions, which weren't horrible, but I didn't see too much use in them, as I never felt as though I required them to prove my point in a literary essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to ask, are there strict rules about essay writing format in a university, other than the need for a thesis and 5 paragraphs? Or is the format irrelevant, so long as the essay does its job, which is proving the thesis? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zolani&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3419" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-03-02T06:44:56.897" LastActivityDate="2020-09-15T18:12:30.290" Title="How Important are essay writing conventions in the university level and above?" Tags="|style|essay|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5386" CreationDate="2012-04-07T03:16:15.543" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking as someone who's gotten As on essays through the entirety of an American education, I would say that the answer is-- yes and no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That conventional scheme works &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; well, which is why it's so common. But a good writer can pull off almost any kind of format for an essay: the sky is the limit. In fact, the definition of what an essay even &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; is a very loose thing. Essays come in a million shapes and sizes; sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between a short story and a reflective essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can pull it off, it's perfectly permitted. If it's just not working no matter how you tweak it, maybe try accepting that the format you've chosen is not right for that particular essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sum: there are not strict rules. Do a good job, make sure the reader understands exactly what you're saying and never feels lost, never loses sight of the essay's overall purpose, and you're set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2012-04-10T04:05:56.713" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T04:05:56.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5388" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5389" CreationDate="2012-04-08T10:11:11.237" Score="0" ViewCount="1220" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to allude an experience that feels almost like Descartes' idea of &quot;I think, therefore I am&quot;. Because the phrase is a proposition, I find it very difficult to fit in the statement in because I have no idea to use the phrase in a verb manner, adjective manner, etc to make the sentence sound fluent. This is the statement that I am trying to fit the phrase into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The experience that we had undergone confused our consciousness in the&#xA;  real and virtual worlds and made us think with Descartes' &quot;I think,&#xA;  therefore I am&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds very very awkward at the end. My intention is to let the reader consider the experience to be something surreal, like Descartes' idea, which a person in a state of a dream-like situation tests or verifies his existence because of the feels-so-real-yet-could-be-false-or-real type of experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some of the ways that I can implement this &quot;I think, therefore I am&quot; into the statement while still sounding fluent and making sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2511" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-04-08T16:22:20.737" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T11:55:37.180" Title="How to use &quot;I think, therefore I am&quot; in a more fluent manner?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5388" CreationDate="2012-04-08T11:58:13.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you have a tense disagreement: &quot;we had undergone&quot; is past, so you need &quot;confused&quot; and &quot;made.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few variants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...made us re-experience Descartes's proclamation: &quot;I think, therefore I&#xA;am.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...made us re-experience Descartes's proclamation: &lt;em&gt;Cogito, ergo sum.&lt;/em&gt; We&#xA;thought, therefore we were.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...made us cling to Descartes to assure ourselves that we were indeed&#xA;real: &quot;I think, therefore I am.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T11:58:13.540" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5390" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5393" CreationDate="2012-04-08T16:22:42.607" Score="0" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I cite both the author and article title of a website or book in the text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example reference:&#xA;Smith, A. (2012). &lt;em&gt;How to cite an article title&lt;/em&gt;. Available: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask&quot;&gt;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask&lt;/a&gt;. Last accessed 8th April 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of just (Smith, 2012)? The answer may be obvious and I know what it might be but for the benefit of clarity, and keeping this question answerable, I have omitted my suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3499" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T08:48:15.270" Title="Cite the article title (from a book or website) in the text" Tags="|titles|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5388" CreationDate="2012-04-08T18:05:01.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds awkward, because you repeat &quot;think&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... made us &lt;strong&gt;think&lt;/strong&gt; with Descartes' &quot;I &lt;strong&gt;think&lt;/strong&gt;, therefore I am&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, your sentence is missing a logical step, which is another source for your &quot;awkwardness&quot;. Descartes' confusion did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; make him think &quot;cogito, ergo sum&quot;. &quot;Cogito, ergo sum&quot; is the conclusion he arrived at after trying to dissolve this confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you should somehow show the way from confusion to conclusion. Something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The experience that we had undergone confused our consciousness in the real and virtual worlds and culminated in epiphany like Descartes' &quot;I think, therefore I am&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T18:05:01.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5392" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-09T08:18:37.987" Score="3" ViewCount="148947" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to collect feedback from my colleagues and the deadline is on 10-April-2012, 2.00pm. So in my mail I write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please email your feedback to me before 2.00pm, 10-April-2012(Tuesday).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it seems too commanding instead of being polite?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-04-09T19:13:41.320" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T13:13:08.017" Title="How to write polite deadline email?" Tags="|business-writing|email|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-02-23T14:04:27.053" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5390" CreationDate="2012-04-09T08:48:15.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using Harvard you shouldn't do this. If you need to clarify an ambiguity between authors with the same last name or two articles by an author in the same year you should use (Smith A., 2012)/(Smith B., 2012) or (Smith, 2012a)/(Smith, 2012b).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the case for Harvard AGPS I'm not sure for the other varieties but I assume it's not significantly different if at all. You could mention the article name within your text but the citations should only contain minimal detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3502" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T08:48:15.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5392" CreationDate="2012-04-09T10:08:17.650" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just a reminder: I need your feedback by this Tuesday, 10 April, before 2pm. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-04-09T11:01:46.293" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T11:01:46.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5395" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5397" CreationDate="2012-04-09T12:01:37.673" Score="1" ViewCount="660" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I'm not an native English speaker&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the first part of a short novel I'm writing. For the description I wanted the reader to have an idea of the place first and then let him know that there is people in there (and that they are alone).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The darkness made the bar look bigger than it was. A flickering neon sign was &#xA;  barely illuminating the place. Sitting in the bar, a young man and&#xA;  a girl were having their drinks. There was no other human presence&#xA;  around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I think you need a refill,&quot; he said, pointing her glass with his.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She looked at it, then around. &quot;I don't see the bartender.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No problem,&quot; he said. &quot;I can mix something for you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He grabbed her glass, stood up, and walked towards the liquor shelf. Before &#xA;  she could say anything, he was already behind the bar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Ask for any drink you want,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She shook her head while smiling at him. &quot;The one you know best.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Got it.&quot;&#xA;  He went through the variety of bottles as if examining animal specimens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He finally decided for a black bottle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Can I talk about a thought that is making me feel lonely?&quot; he asked&#xA;  while  searching for a glass. &quot;Hope you don't find it weird.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if this will grab the reader's attention.&#xA;I would also like to know how can I improve it. Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T18:10:47.660" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T12:04:32.153" Title="Will this opening and dialogue grab the reader's attention? And how can I improve it?" Tags="|fiction|openings|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5392" CreationDate="2012-04-09T15:07:02.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there is a tight deadline, as you seem to have, I always follow the sentence containing the deadline information with another sentence that says something like, &quot;If you foresee a problem with replying by tomorrow, please let me know that as soon as possible.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives them a chance to tell you that the deadline is not feasible for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3432" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T15:07:02.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5395" CreationDate="2012-04-09T16:07:52.247" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are definitely improving from your previous work. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minor fixes: My corrections are in italics; do not add the italics to your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;No other human presence&quot; makes me wonder: is there a &lt;em&gt;non&lt;/em&gt;-human&#xA;presence? An animal? Something supernatural?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pointing &lt;em&gt;at&lt;/em&gt; her glass&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;then &lt;em&gt;glanced&lt;/em&gt; around (the parallel grammar is technically correct,&#xA;but a native speaker would not make that particular elision there)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Any drink you want,&quot; he said. (&lt;em&gt;ask for&lt;/em&gt; is unnecessary)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;decided &lt;em&gt;on&lt;/em&gt; a black bottle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Can talk about &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; which...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grabbing attention: I am intrigued by the idea that they are alone in the bar, mostly because you highlight &quot;no other human.&quot; That's hinting at some kind of supernatural or post-apocalypse setting. Or separately, that they've broken into the bar and shouldn't be there. I'm just interested enough to want to see what your setup is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, generally speaking, men don't talk about what makes them feel lonely, so you really need to be going somewhere with that for me to accept it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-04-09T16:54:22.163" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T16:54:22.163" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5395" CreationDate="2012-04-09T17:22:55.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does very much depend on where you are going - how important the location is. But if you want to let people &quot;have an idea of the place first and then let him know that there is people in there&quot;, you could spend more time on the place...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In the darkness, the room seemed larger than it was, the walls disappearing into the distance. The single flickering neon light seemed suspended in nothingness. Occasional reflections show that it is a bar, with reflections off the bottles arrayed there, and the scattered debris of a tidy but not scrupulous bartender, of whom there was no sign. Only on careful examination did it become clear that there were two people, a boy and a girl, sitting at the bar.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to describe the building and focus from the building down to the couple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T17:22:55.067" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5392" CreationDate="2012-04-09T19:50:49.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your wording is perfectly polite. It's neither demanding nor wimpy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think it would help, add a few words about why you need the feedback by 2pm. Something like, &quot;so I can revise the document before the 3pm staff meeting.&quot;  That gives people some context in which to understand the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T19:50:49.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5400" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-09T20:25:01.927" Score="41" ViewCount="7682" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a problem where I often proof my own writing and I don't catch all the errors while I am reading through it. I often miss entire words out of sentences or find myself repeating words. I can read a document several times and I catch new errors every time. Eventually, I'll feel like I've caught everything, but I find out after I've posted or printed it that I left out some word.  The whole process takes hours instead of a few minutes. This process is so frustrating that sometimes I just give up. Does anyone have this experience writing and if so, what techniques have you developed that help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For some reason, I make fewer errors and my writing is a lot speedier if I write it out long hand first. For some reason, the word processor makes it hard to keep your train of thought going because you find yourself derailed by the formatting. I also found using NotePad to be a useful tool. Since it doesn't have formatting, it is less distracting.  I also set the width of the Window to be very short. For some reason, my thoughts are less likely to get derailed and I make fewer errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt; I haven't picked an answer because all of these responses are great!  I also want to keep the suggestions coming so that others will benefit.  Thanks a lot.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3504" OwnerDisplayName="Joel Rodgers" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-07-12T09:00:13.923" LastActivityDate="2017-11-21T22:09:30.283" Title="How can I catch more errors when I proofread?" Tags="|editing|technique|proofreading|" AnswerCount="21" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2012-04-09T20:43:20.473" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try reading the final draft out loud either to yourself or to another person. (That's what I have always had my own children do when they're working on school essays.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading out loud slows you down so that you are less likely to read over a duplicated word and it will be more obvious when a word is left out. It is also a good method for detecting awkward sentence construction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3432" OwnerDisplayName="JLG" LastEditorUserId="3432" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T14:29:12.810" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T14:29:12.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2012-04-09T20:45:58.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Proofreading is the process of looking for errors.  Revision is the process of improving the writing.  The two aren't necessarily synonymous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, removal of errors usually results in an improved piece.  But many other improvements require restructuring, better word choices, removal of stale idioms, switching passive voice to active voice, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sentence made me laugh out loud: &lt;em&gt;The whole process takes hours instead of a few minutes&lt;/em&gt;. Forceful, effective writing takes more than &quot;a few minutes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" OwnerDisplayName="J.R." LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-08-06T22:09:45.230" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T22:09:45.230" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2012-04-09T22:04:41.377" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to your specific problem is that there is no simple solution. There is no trick. Reading out loud does definitely help, but ultimately if your mind is subconsciously fixing the errors as you go so that you read right over them without taking any notice, it's going to happen when you're reading out loud just the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to train yourself to &lt;em&gt;see what's there instead of what you want to see.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really is that simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The funny thing is that this is applicable to much more than just proof-reading. It applies to characters, to plots, to descriptions, to entire novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to see it as if you've never seen it before. It's difficult as hell, but you've got to learn it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just keep practicing. Go slow. Slow, slow, slow. Go slow enough and you'll only have to go once or twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T22:04:41.377" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2012-04-09T23:39:36.360" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read from the bottom up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It derails the comprehension so it's much easier to see individual words, and you catch many more typos and dropped words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T23:39:36.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5405" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5407" CreationDate="2012-04-10T04:33:59.550" Score="2" ViewCount="768" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand there's a certain element of stylistic freedom in using quotes, double quotes, or neither.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what are the specific cases when single quotes are generally recommended?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2012-04-10T07:09:02.593" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T10:41:12.657" Title="When to use single quotes in narrative writing?" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5406" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5409" CreationDate="2012-04-10T08:41:19.530" Score="0" ViewCount="390" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5131/how-to-improve-fix-this-short-introductory-paragraph-and-dialog&quot;&gt;previous question&lt;/a&gt;, I asked about how to improve the opening of my short novel. The following is the ending:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Can I talk about something that makes me feel strange?&quot; he asked&#xA;  while searching for a glass. She nodded and stared at him with her&#xA;  lips slightly open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A thousand years from now, this moment will no longer exist,&quot;  he&#xA;  said, placing the glass on the bar. &quot;Not even as a memory.&quot; She leaned&#xA;  her head slightly to one side. &quot;Isn't that long enough?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It is for us,&quot; he replied. &quot;But for the universe, it's only a&#xA;  fraction of fraction of a second.&quot; He poured some of the vodka into&#xA;  the glass, closed it, and returned it back to where he found it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And you know what's the strangest thing?&quot; he said while repeating the&#xA;  same procedure with the next bottle. &quot;If I close my eyes, I can see&#xA;  the empty space that is left after that happens. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How does it look like?&quot; she asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Just like the world as it is now, he said. &quot;But without this. Without&#xA;  us.&quot; He put the second bottle back, and washed him hands, like a&#xA;  surgeon after an operation. He made sure that everything was in its&#xA;  right place, and then placed the glass in front of her. She thanked&#xA;  him, and picked the glass up with care. &quot;How it is called?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Explosions in the sky,&quot; he answered. She took a sip, and complimented&#xA;  him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Why don't you look at it like this,&quot; she said, with her eyes fixed on&#xA;  her glass. &quot;Like our minds and bodies, this moment will become&#xA;  stardust, and float through space.&quot; He looked at her, then sipped his&#xA;  drink. For some reason, he found it particularly strong this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And exist forever?&quot; he asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah,&quot;  she said. &quot;Just in a new form.&quot; They kept quiet, lost in&#xA;  their thoughts for a while, sipping their drinks. The neon sign was&#xA;  still flickering from time to time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I wonder why we are the only people here,&quot; he asked after after a&#xA;  moment. She looked around. All the seats were empty, and there was&#xA;  total silence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Maybe this moment already turned into stardust a long time ago,&quot; she&#xA;  said. &quot;And right now, it is being played somehow. Like a movie.&quot; She&#xA;  made a pause, and started drawing imaginary circles on the glass with&#xA;  her index finger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But because it's based on my memory,&quot; she continued. &quot;There is only&#xA;  you and me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He looked at her with a smile on his face. &quot;It could be based on mine&#xA;  too.&quot; She smiled back, and placed her hand on his. He closed his eyes,&#xA;  and imagined the moment turning into stardust. Every image. Every&#xA;  sound disintegrating, and floating forever in the vast universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is my first attempt of writing a story so I would like to know how to improve this last scene (which consist basically in dialogue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I get confused about whether start an 'action tag' in a new line or right after the double quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also want to know if there are any writing mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I'm not a native English speaker&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:46:44.313" Title="How to improve the ending of my short novel (mostly dialogue)?" Tags="|dialogue|ending|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2012-04-11T17:49:21.183" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5405" CreationDate="2012-04-10T10:41:12.657" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;...actually, so far as I know, one does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have stylistic freedom in using single or double quotes as one pleases. (Not in prose, anyway &amp;mdash; all bets are off in poetry.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In American English, dialogue or other quoted material goes in double quotes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;There is no fate but what we make,&quot; she said.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoted material &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; a quote goes in single quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;He answered, &quot;Patrick Henry is known for 'Give me liberty or give me death,' particularly since he received the latter shortly thereafter.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in British English, the reverse typographical standard is used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Bertie called, 'Jeeves! I say, Jeeves, where have you gotten off to?'&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;The valet shimmered into view. 'I was diverting the attentions of Mrs. Gregson, sir. She wished you to attend the Little Whinging &quot;Auction of Wastrels,&quot; and I felt our time would be more profitably spent on the Continent.'&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you continue to nest quotes, you switch back and forth from double to single, starting with whichever you used first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;I said, &quot;He told me, 'The Good Ship &quot;Lollipop&quot; has already been taken,' so I changed the name.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T10:41:12.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="281" CreationDate="2012-04-10T12:14:57.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see someone recommends Rhymezone. I've been using it since my copy of Wood's fell apart and it's no substitute: it has multipe repetitions, vast numbers of words that sound as though they were invented by a desperate rhyming dictionary editor, and their idea of what rhymes with what is plain weird. In what variety of English does &quot;what&quot; rhyme with &quot;butt&quot;? It's ugly to look at too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3505" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T12:14:57.003" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-04-10T12:14:57.003" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5406" CreationDate="2012-04-10T15:18:58.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) As far as concept, there's nothing to improve. I like this quite a bit. The mystery and the philosophy dovetail nicely. There isn't a lot of action, and whatever &quot;happens&quot; is occurring in dialogue. This works really well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Action tags can be almost anywhere you like; it's mostly a choice of style. As long as it's clear to whom the action belongs, there's no particular rule. I suggested one spot to fix below, but otherwise all your action tags are clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Minor fixes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;her lips slightly &lt;em&gt;parted&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mouths are open, lips are parted, because there are two and they are parted from one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would put a line break before &quot;She leaned her head...&quot; so that it's clear that the next line of dialogue is hers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;closed the &lt;em&gt;bottle&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't close a glass, and he wouldn't be returning the glass to the shelf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;What&lt;/em&gt; does it look like?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;How&lt;/em&gt; does it look?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;washed &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; hands&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;was in &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; right place&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;was in &lt;em&gt;its&lt;/em&gt; place&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What's this drink&lt;/em&gt; called?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's important, so that we know she means the drink and not the philosophical concept he's discussing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;started drawing circles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're not imaginary because she's drawing them on the glass, even if she's not writing them with ink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;she continued, &quot;there is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comma instead of period, lowercase T&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T15:18:58.540" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5361" CreationDate="2012-04-10T22:22:16.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming that you're talking about doing citations in the style of Kate Turabian's book *A Manual for Writers. (If that's not the case, than this answer may be incorrect.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Table of Contents for the seventh edition of the book is online &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/turabian/turabian_toc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and while I don't have access to it, any good library will have it. I'd first check out Part II, Chapter 17, section 17.5, &amp;quot;Additional Types of Published Sources&amp;quot;. If that doesn't work, you can try  section 17.7, &amp;quot;Informally Published Electronic Sources&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing all that, and if the book has no guidance for citing a CD-ROM. The current edition was &amp;quot;updated to reflect The Chicago Manual of Style, fifteenth edition&amp;quot; (according to the books' &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/turabian/manual/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;), so I think it would make sense to consult the Chicago Manual of Style as a fallback for this. CMOS 16th edition gives these examples of CD-ROM citations in entry 14.168:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style,&lt;/em&gt; 15th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), CD-ROM, 1.4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hicks, Rodney J. &lt;em&gt;Nuclear Medicine: From the Center of Our Universe.&lt;/em&gt; Victoria, Austral.: ICE T Multimedia, 1996. CD-ROM&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The differences between the two are unclear. Perhaps one is a multimedia CD-ROm and the other is not? I'm guessing the 1.4 is a version number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least the first example shows what to do where there's no primary author. (Like the case of the Bible, I'm guessing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/ch14/ch14_sec168.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's the full CMOS entry&lt;/a&gt;. (Note: link is accessible to CMOS subscribers-only, but CMOS is available in most libraries with decent reference sections.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T22:27:34.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5412" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5413" CreationDate="2012-04-11T03:28:59.403" Score="4" ViewCount="11595" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a technical book, and I want to split my book up into about 3 to 6 very broad sections, each of which would have several chapters in it.  Is there a standard name for these broad pieces that are &lt;em&gt;bigger&lt;/em&gt; than a chapter?  Unit? Part? Section?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3508" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T17:41:27.000" Title="What would sections of a book that are larger than a chapter be called?" Tags="|technical-writing|organization|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5412" CreationDate="2012-04-11T03:38:46.417" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually it's called a &lt;em&gt;part.&lt;/em&gt; A section is typically a cohesive chunk within a chapter. Nobody would know what &quot;unit&quot; means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But grab a handful of big-ish technical books to see what they call the chunks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T03:38:46.417" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5414" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5419" CreationDate="2012-04-11T07:55:26.510" Score="14" ViewCount="641" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me preface this by saying I am quite young as writers go, only 20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oftentimes as I am writing, I find myself simulating the style of whatever I most recently read-- sometimes the clipped and mysterious prose of Murakami, sometimes the very direct and simple writing of Harry Potter or any number of action/mystery books, sometimes (quite badly) the old-fashioned and elaborately detailed wording of Joyce or Henry James.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is I find it equally easy to do all of these. I'm not saying I do it very well; simply that they all &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; natural to me as I'm channeling them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I do it all of the time. I really have no idea what my actual, personal voice sounds like in narrative writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long does it take to develop such a thing, and how can you help yourself to move in that direction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T22:35:53.167" Title="How do you find your unique style?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5412" CreationDate="2012-04-11T08:07:10.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally for books, part works, but for a technical book, if each bit can be treated as a single lesson in the topic, then Unit works well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are merely different parts of a whole, and are different sizes, I would stick to part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T08:07:10.927" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5406" CreationDate="2012-04-11T10:55:56.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The dialogue is OK, but I was distracted by the constant mentions of &lt;em&gt;glass&lt;/em&gt;. For me, it disrupts the flow of conversation.You use it in almost every paragraph. Try to make bartending and drinking more interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;The neon sign was still flickering from time to time.&quot;&lt;/code&gt; Flickering neon is a beaten-to-death cliche. Maybe add some man playing sad song on the piano, while you're at it :)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1957" LastEditorUserId="1957" LastEditDate="2012-04-12T08:37:01.063" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T08:37:01.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2604" CreationDate="2012-04-11T11:09:06.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Case in point: K. Vonnegut - Breakfast of champions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1957" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T11:09:06.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5414" CreationDate="2012-04-11T11:13:12.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is a personal voice really necessary? Not always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't worry about your style, as long as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It sounds natural (and you don't sound like you're actively trying to imitate someone else)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your style matches the theme of your novel; (for example, semi-archaic English doesn't really fit an action thriller)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your work is clear and understood;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You use correct grammar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about it, all styles are made of 95% of the same genetic material, so there's nothing wrong with not having a totally unique style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T11:13:12.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5414" CreationDate="2012-04-11T11:16:59.587" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being affected by what media you are currently consuming is not an uncommon problem and, I would say, not necessarily even a bad thing.  The key next step is to try to &lt;strong&gt;internalize&lt;/strong&gt; the styles, to really pick them apart.  Figure out what is happening on the page and why that is so effective. Start to ask the important questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why did the author choose this style over any other? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which elements of this style work best?  Or worst?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which elements of this style appeal most to you?  Or least?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then write&lt;/strong&gt;.  Just write and write and write.  Move around in styles and genres and mediums.  Go wild.  Don't worry about editing or censoring yourself.  Exploration is just for you.  Later, you will be able to go back and edit these pieces down to perfection. The more you write, the more you are going to find the facets that you like.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then go back and reread what you wrote.  Ask yourself the same questions you asked when reading Joyce.  Parts will make you laugh or cringe or shake your head, but the best bits will be immediately apparent. A word, a phrase, a structure that just feel right to you.  The kind of thing that you will want to use again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's your style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should have stated this explicitly, but this process will take many years and hard work.  Part of the problem is at any given point, you will think you have found your style and you will go back to your older pieces, read them over, shake your head and mumble, &quot;Oh man, what was I thinking?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Style&quot; is an incredibly finicky thing.  It's slippery.  &lt;strong&gt;It evolves&lt;/strong&gt;. As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5423/181&quot;&gt;Patches states in his answer&lt;/a&gt;, your experience will inform your style.  Hemingway, who has one of the most recognizable styles in literature, was not stagnant.  His prose stays terse and repetitive, but it grows and refines.  Between &quot;The Sun Also Rises&quot; (1926) and &quot;Old Man and the Sea&quot; (1951), he is a different person and therefore he writes differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, he thought A LOT about writing.  For him, it was all there was (other than drinking and ladies and being sad...).  &lt;strong&gt;Everything he did was largely to inform his writing&lt;/strong&gt;. If you want to really find your style, you have to work for it.  But that's the fun part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T08:10:22.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5384" CreationDate="2012-04-11T12:24:16.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would an application like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.braindraw.com/2010/05/mead-builder-research-paper-edition.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mead Builder - Research Paper Edition&lt;/a&gt; be a start?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;helps students write better research papers by prompting them to create a schedule based on a step-by-step process. It also assists students with organizing their notes and sources and writing their paper in keeping with standard MLA format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly it has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mead.com/meadstore/mwv/product/Builder-Research-Paper-Edition-from-Mead%26reg%3B/38764?catId&amp;amp;prodId8764&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;discontinued&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also appears that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.endnote.com/eninfo.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EndNote&lt;/a&gt;, although certainly not self-contained, nor structured for actual instruction, at least simplifies the reference portion by allowing one to search globally on-line from within the software and then automatically create and maintain the references as required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3506" LastEditorUserId="3506" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T12:34:13.157" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T12:34:13.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5361" CreationDate="2012-04-11T12:48:41.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked my professer (duh, shoulda done that first), and he said to cite it as I would a print work, noting that it is in &quot;electronic format.&quot; This appears to follow the guidelines for e-books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2870" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T12:48:41.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5384" CreationDate="2012-04-11T14:22:22.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the main problems with creating a self-contained software environment for research papers and other types of authorship is that we're dealing with all the information in the world that could be useful at any given time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though one could download the entire mirror of Wikipedia, attempting to parse that large of a database of information in a way that could be useful to you as an individual is nearly impossible. For example: say you are writing about the advent of indoor plumbing in Great Britain. Using Wikipedia, you might start out with an article that is absolutely &lt;em&gt;relevant by name&lt;/em&gt;, but end up on an article that would seem to be completely unrelated, but is &lt;em&gt;relevant by reference&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would assume that the best way to work toward a platform such as this would be to look at your own goals in any given situation, and find something that suits your needs as close as possible, and use self control to weed out all of the &quot;extra fluff&quot; that's out there and keep things organized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evernote.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt; could be a good start. While not explicitly solving the problem, Evernote (or an Evernote-like software application) could be extremely useful by providing a way for you to easily capture the research that you are doing, and allowing you to link between documents in a simple fashion, essentially creating your own cyclopedic system for whatever it is you are researching. Using a system such as this would not only provide you with a means to link to outside resources, but also copy those resources to a local/contained storage medium, thereby eliminating some of the pitfalls (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link rot&lt;/a&gt;) of strictly using online sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't help you with standard formatting, automated references or bibliographic information, but it could be a good start toward creating a system that works for you, while still allowing you the flexibility to change formats in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that a system to perfectly fit the criteria you have put forth doesn't exist today, not for lack of trying in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="57" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T14:22:22.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5414" CreationDate="2012-04-11T17:38:38.577" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason you don't have your own voice yet is because you haven't developed it yet. That's not a knock - there are very, very few writers that have a unique voice at age 20. It's just not something you can develop in a short amount of time. Damon Knight, in &lt;em&gt;Creating Short Fiction&lt;/em&gt;, wrote that most people won't really be good until they're at least 30.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a tidbit you'll chafe mightily against now, at 20; you'll love it at 35. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joel's answer already covers quite well how to work toward your own voice in your writing. I'll add one thing: &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt;. Not writing experience, I mean life experience. The purpose of writers is to give voice to the things people feel but can't express. To make sense of it all, even if that sense is pure fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you accelerate this a bit? Go to odd and unusual places, do odd and unusual things, and most of all, seek out odd and unusual people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then drink it all in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T17:38:38.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5414" CreationDate="2012-04-12T04:19:40.567" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;A great way to discover your style is to force yourself to exhibit it. And a great way to force yourself to exhibit your style is to &lt;strong&gt;write with one habit tied behind your back.&lt;/strong&gt; Or tied up and locked in the basement. But definitely tied up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is: Pick one habit, temporarily forbid it, and rewrite a short piece without being able to lean on that habit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some habits, and some ways to temporarily tie them up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To be.&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite a piece without any form of the verb &lt;em&gt;to be&lt;/em&gt;. If you can't use &lt;em&gt;to be&lt;/em&gt;, you force yourself to think about your other verbs, and some other parts of speech, and the way you construct sentences. Then rewrite again using what you've learned, and using &lt;em&gt;to be&lt;/em&gt; if you want to.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adjectives and adverbs.&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite a piece with no adjectives. Or with no adverbs. For extra credit, rewrite with none of either. This forces you to think about the kinds of color that modifiers add, and forces you to find other ways to paint with those colors. Choosing better nouns and verbs, perhaps. Or playing with sentence structures. Or fragments. Then rewrite again using what you've learned, and using modifiers if you want to.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sentence structure.&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite a piece using sentences no longer than 10 words (or seven words if 10 is too easy). Rewrite the same piece using sentences no shorter than 20 words (or 30 or 35 if 20 is too easy). Then rewrite again using what you've learned about sentence lengths and structures.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Excessive extra extraneous words and wordiness.&lt;/strong&gt; Yah, you gotta have 'em. But how many? And which ones? Take a piece that's about 700 words long. Delete one tenth of the paragraphs (round up). Then delete one tenth of the remaining sentences. Then delete one tenth of the remaining words. Notice what you've lost. Count the words and remember the count. If it's more than 500 words, keep cutting, and count again. Your final count is now your word limit. Rewrite your piece to add back in everything you've lost, but without exceeding your word limit. This forces you to find more compact ways to say what you're trying to say, and to create the effects you're trying to create.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By tying a habit behind your back, you force yourself to rethink how you overrely on that habit. You have to find other ways to create the same effects. And by playing with other ways, you learn all kinds of stuff about how words and sentences and sonority and rhythms and punctuation work. And you learn how to choose those things deliberately, instead of out of habit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And by choosing deliberately, you discover your style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T04:19:40.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2122" CreationDate="2012-04-12T05:03:56.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd disagree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2122/what-is-a-good-methodology-for-researching-a-historical-novel/2127#2127&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;—if you don't do any research beforehand, not only are you not going to know much about clothing, architecture, etc., you probably won't have a very good idea of what the mindset of the time would be. The person who has their patrician character from Ancient Rome sympathizing with slaves isn't going to get published—obviously. Make sure you have a good idea of everything that would be surrounding your character—architecture and clothing, how they would have done simple things like go to the bathroom or eat dinner—first, and if you forget something while you're writing and need to quickly research it, do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, look at the bibliographies of other historical novelists. You'd be surprised at the sources they reference. A book about what kind of perfume Marie Antoinette would have used might not seem so useful when you're writing about her, but it's the sort of book you may need to reference someday. After all, you need to be there in all five senses when you're reading a book, so do that for your readers with research, hopefully before you've tried to summon the time period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3514" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T05:39:55.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5437" CreationDate="2012-04-12T14:42:29.440" Score="5" ViewCount="4150" Body="&lt;p&gt;A serial comma is used to separate a list of items:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For breakfast, we had ham, eggs, and toast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A serial semi-colon is used when items in the list have commas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For breakfast, we had ham, eggs, and toast; orange juice, coffee, and milk; pancakes, waffles, and French toast; and a Pepto-Bismol chaser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both AP and Chicago style manuals are clear about the serial semi-colon use when the items in question have interrupter clauses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He is survived by a son, John Smith, of Chicago; three daughters, Jane Smith, of Wichita, Kan., Mary Smith, of Denver, and Susan, of Boston; and a sister, Martha, of Omaha, Neb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I've come across a different construction recently, and I can't quite decide whether it takes a serial semi-colon or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sentence runs something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James T. Smith, vice president of widgets at WidgetCo, Mary Holmes, chief foo officer at FoobRUs, Sheldon DeVane, head of global placeholding at RiMelioraDies Inc., and Lisa Catera, chief lending officer at Plugitin Motors, will be speaking at tomorrow's conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using serial semi-colons somehow trips my eye:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James T. Smith, vice president of widgets at WidgetCo.; Mary Holmes, chief foo officer at FoobRUs; Sheldon DeVane, head of global placeholding at RiMelioraDies Inc.; and Lisa Catera, chief lending officer at Plugitin Motors; will be speaking at tomorrow's conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one which really bothers me is before &quot;will be speaking.&quot; If the sequence were reversed, the semi-colons wouldn't bother me at all:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Speakers at tomorrow's conference include James T. Smith, vice president of widgets at WidgetCo.; Mary Holmes, chief foo officer at FoobRUs; Sheldon DeVane, head of global placeholding at RiMelioraDies Inc.; and Lisa Catera, chief lending officer at Plugitin Motors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that we are using the Oxford or serial comma before the &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; (that part is not negotiable), for this particular construction &amp;mdash; name, title at company &amp;mdash; is it all commas, or the serial semi-colon? I'm leaning towards all commas, but I welcome arguments on either side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-04-12T17:55:49.543" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T10:31:30.753" Title="A tricky serial semi-colon" Tags="|marketing|email|punctuation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5429" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5452" CreationDate="2012-04-12T15:40:47.933" Score="19" ViewCount="772" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most publishers insist that first-time writers approach via a literary agent. However, all the literary agents I have contacted claim to be too busy to take on new clients, as they receive hundreds or thousands of submissions every year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used the Writers &amp;amp; Artists Yearbook to get a list of likely agents, then checked all their websites and eliminated ones that didn't seem suitable. For the rest, I noted their precise submission requirements (lots of variation, but I did exactly what they wanted). I submitted to the agents left on the list, exactly as they specified, and so far of the responses I have (20+) nobody has said they didn't like it, in fact several have said that it sounds fascinating. However, they all claim to be too busy to take on new clients and wish me luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The impression I'm getting is that getting an agent is an impossible requirement if agents aren't accepting &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; new clients due to their existing workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I genuinely believe in my project, and everyone who has heard about it says it'll be great (not just friends and family, but random people too), where can I go from here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3517" LastEditorUserId="5576" LastEditDate="2013-07-24T20:21:25.960" LastActivityDate="2019-02-02T10:42:26.287" Title="Are agents too busy for new clients? What should I do next?" Tags="|publishing|agent|queries|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5428" CreationDate="2012-04-12T17:55:23.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I'm answering this from a point-of-view of readability. If your corporate communications are subject to any internal style sheets or style guide such as AP or Chicago - since you have a policy on the serial comma, I'm inclined to think they are - please also consult those. If this does get migrated to English, you'll doubtless get all kinds of more technical answers there.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you obviously know, the serial comma exists to enhance readability. You've already outlined its use above, so I won't repeat that. The serial &lt;em&gt;semicolon&lt;/em&gt; - even though I'm familiar with the semicolon's use in the way you describe, that's a new term for me! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phrases with commas separated by semicolons like this, while technically correct, can be ponderous and difficult to parse. Many readers will &lt;em&gt;skim&lt;/em&gt; this text, not read it. This is email/brochure copy, not a novel, so I would, rather, suggest formatting this text as a bulleted list for maximum utility. The reader will see it and be able to decode the format at a glance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Speakers at tomorrow's conference include:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;James T. Smith, vice president of widgets at WidgetCo.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Mary Holmes, chief foo officer at FoobRUs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sheldon DeVane, head of global placeholding at RiMelioraDies Inc., and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Lisa Catera, chief lending officer at Plugitin Motors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, sometimes a bulleted list isn't an option (for layout or other reasons). In that case, my next suggestion would be to rewrite the sentence like this:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Speakers at tomorrow's conference include WidgetCo's vice president James T. Smith, FoobRUs's chief foo officer Mary Holmes, RiMelioraDies Inc's head of global placeholding Sheldon DeVane, and Plugitin Motors's chief lending officer Lisa Catera. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that the semicolon does interrupt the flow of the text. If you can, I'd replace the longer titles with &quot;executive&quot; or something similar. Shorter is better. (Perhaps you could include profiles of the speakers elsewhere in the document with more complete titles?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if none of this is possible, I suggest you use your last attempt at this, the one starting with &quot;Speakers at tomorrow's conference include&quot;. Putting this information at the end of the paragraph requires that readers read through a lot of names and titles to get to the point of the paragraph. Putting it at the beginning of the paragraph at least tells them what the paragraph is before they proceed, and the can decide to read or skim based on what information they need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-04-12T17:58:58.477" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T17:58:58.477" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2012-04-12T18:13:55.917" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just recalled a friend telling me years ago that he witnessed professional proof readers and editors, who work for publishers, use a pencil to plot a dot over each and every word as they read through a manuscript.  It forces them to read every word.  Of course, it is only a matter of time before your brain goes on autopilot again, especially on very long documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought of another idea from folks here about reading aloud and even a software suggestion. A speech synthesis program can help by reading the text back to you.  It won't get the tone and pace right, but it helps as you read along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3504" LastEditorUserId="3504" LastEditDate="2012-04-12T18:40:54.430" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T18:40:54.430" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5433" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-12T18:55:32.913" Score="12" ViewCount="29556" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not talking about &quot;boring&quot; academic papers that are 99% science and 0% interesting. But in comments on a draft of my senior thesis, my teacher made the comment that my writing style was quite &quot;journalistic&quot; and ought to be more academic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that a journalistic writing style is a bit more sensational, perhaps, but what are the differences between journalistic writing and academic writing? Since writing is often concerned with different scopes (paper, section, paragraph, sentence, etc.), what differences manifest themselves in different scopes? Obviously an academic paper is largely different from a journalistic one, but as the scope narrows, what are the specific differences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Note, I'm not asking how to improve my paper or what a thesis looks like - I'm asking a general question of the stylistic difference between types of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3428" LastEditorUserId="3428" LastEditDate="2012-04-12T23:56:26.203" LastActivityDate="2020-09-04T18:14:03.913" Title="What's the difference between academic and journalistic writing?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|journalism|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5428" CreationDate="2012-04-12T21:21:08.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Punctuation marks where invented to &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; readability. So for God's sake, get rid of these semi-colons; my eyes are bleeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really need the differentiation which shall be achieved with the semi-colons (comma and a non-comma-punctuation-mark), I would suggest parentheses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Speakers at tomorrow's conference include James T. Smith (vice president of widgets at WidgetCo.), Mary Holmes (chief foo officer at FoobRUs), Sheldon DeVane (head of global placeholding at RiMelioraDies Inc.) and Lisa Catera (chief lending officer at Plugitin Motors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-04-12T23:13:47.250" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T23:13:47.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5433" CreationDate="2012-04-12T23:39:38.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe this is not the answer you're looking for but, have you tried to ask your supervisor what are the concrete complaints he has about your style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your field of research is related to journalism, it is possible that your supervisor actually doesn't know how to structure a journalistic text well or at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, he knows scientific writing well and had some concrete aspects in mind when making that, hard to understand, metaphor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask your supervisor to be more details on what he thinks you should improve. If you do that, you will surelly get much better feedback than you will ever obtain here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2208" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T23:39:38.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5433" CreationDate="2012-04-13T01:15:58.327" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have any special knowledge of journalism, but I have a fair amount of experience with academic writing as well as giving advice to my grad students. Here's my take, all at the paper level:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're right about the possibility of sensationalism. I tell some of my students to imagine someone reading their work twenty years from now. Too much enthusiasm about a well-known result--or possibly an overturned result--will seem odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newspaper and magazine articles are written for a much broader audience than academic papers, and they assume a lot less about the reader's background knowledge.  It's possible to explain too much or to overwrite in academic writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some long-form magazine articles, we read a story that gradually unfolds.  That's less appropriate in academic writing, when you want to tell readers the conclusion up front, and then explain how you got there.  Even if some research solved a mystery, it's conventional to present it with the resolution at the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3516" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-04-14T08:41:50.803" LastActivityDate="2012-04-14T08:41:50.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5428" CreationDate="2012-04-13T02:17:40.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use this one (without the semicolons):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;James T. Smith, vice president of widgets at WidgetCo, Mary Holmes, chief foo officer at FoobRUs, Sheldon DeVane, head of global placeholding at RiMelioraDies Inc., and Lisa Catera, chief lending officer at Plugitin Motors, will be speaking at tomorrow's conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is grammatical and understandable, even if not your ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3432" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T02:17:40.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5438" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5439" CreationDate="2012-04-13T12:38:52.717" Score="7" ViewCount="8077" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the first short story where I'm using actual names for the characters. Here is a sample:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sorry for the question,&quot; Jun said. &quot;But why don' you have friends?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ling&lt;/strong&gt; glanced at him, then opened her Asahi cocktail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;People are scared of me,&quot; &lt;strong&gt;she&lt;/strong&gt; replied. &quot;Others are angry.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Because you like to beat them up?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;She&lt;/strong&gt; shook her head without looking at him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Because I don't have a soul,&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jun&lt;/strong&gt; had been fired from his job as a photographer in a wedding firm&#xA;  and had been unemployed for three months. A friend, a wealthy&#xA;  Christian, of his offered him a job; to accompany her eighteen years&#xA;  old daughter in afternoons and evenings. &lt;strong&gt;He&lt;/strong&gt; thought it was an unusual&#xA;  job for a twenty six-years old guy, but he didn't have any good reason&#xA;  to refuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jun&lt;/strong&gt; stared at her as if she were a ghost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So I guess you lost it somewhere.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ling&lt;/strong&gt; shook her head and replied, &quot;I was born without one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He&lt;/strong&gt; stopped talking for a while and looked around. The sky was getting dark and the street lights of&#xA;  the park started to turn on. He noticed that there were no more people&#xA;  jogging around, or kids in the playground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure when to use the name of the characters and when to use he or she.&#xA;(I'm also confused about whether omitting or not the dialogue tags).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-05-09T17:32:11.343" LastActivityDate="2022-05-09T17:32:11.343" Title="When to use the character's name and when to use she/he?" Tags="|fiction|characters|word-choice|pronouns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5438" CreationDate="2012-04-13T15:42:26.537" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no rule; it's all by ear. Write it however it seems to work at the time, put it aside for a week and reread it, and then have a friend review it to see if it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is that the reader should know exactly who is speaking and/or acting, and when. Do whatever you need to do to make it clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T15:42:26.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4368" CreationDate="2012-04-13T21:13:01.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tremendous online resource/tutorial on inventing languages:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zompist.com/kit.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.zompist.com/kit.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also ConLang:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/Create_a_Language&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/Create_a_Language&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the best advice would be to buy a copy of Holly Lisle's 'Create A Language Clinic':&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.hollylisle.com/index.php?crn=1&amp;amp;rn=367&amp;amp;action=show_detail&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://shop.hollylisle.com/index.php?crn=1&amp;amp;rn=367&amp;amp;action=show_detail&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a copy and it's really good - like most of her stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3271" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T21:13:01.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5433" CreationDate="2012-04-13T21:24:44.040" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, having been a Social Science major and a Journalism minor who has written several academic papers and worked for a variety of newspapers and magazines here is the difference for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academic writing you generally introduce a topic by presenting a thesis or a hypothesis, then you lay out the premise of the discussion, then you discuss the topic and then review the discussion. In other words: You tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, you tell them, and then you tell 'em what you told them. The 'meat' of the discussion will generally be in the middle or towards the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In journalistic writing you write in what's called the inverted pyramid style. The 'meat' of the article will almost always be in the first paragraph, called the lede [or lead. Sometimes called a whatta (as in &quot;what it's all about&quot;) or a nut graph, as in (&quot;in a nutshell&quot;)]. The lede should be a paragraph that's so dense it could choke a horse. If you read nothing but the lede you will still know the who, what, when and where of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the lede you follow up with the how and -maybe- the why and other information of secondary and tertiary importance. If you've ever heard the phrase &quot;buried the lede&quot;, that's what happens when you lead with interesting but less important information and the stuff of primary importance is 'buried' deep inside the article. This tactic is useful for academic writing but it's antithetical to journalistic writing. One other big difference is that instead of putting a nice summary conclusion at the end that neatly wraps everything up, like an academic paper, your journalistic article will simply stop at the end when you've run out of useful information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this top-heavy style difference is twofold: One, readers of newspapers and magazines (this also applies to web) will generally stop reading after a few paragraphs. If you &quot;bury the lede&quot;, the reader will stop reading before they get the most important information. Two, Copy editors realize they have limited space, especially in print. So when it comes time to chop your article to fit they aren't going to read the whole damn thing and edit it to make sense - they're just going to lop off as much stuff as they need to off the end assuming you've placed the most important stuff at the top. If the important bit is at the end, there's a good chance it'll just get cut or never even be read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other differences, of course. Journalistic writing should be simpler and more accessible to the general public than academic writing. It doesn't have to be Dr. Seuss but it should be easily read by an educated 10th or 11th grade high school student. You should also keep in mind that your job is merely the inform the audience and present a balanced viewpoint; it is not your job to advocate for one side or the other. That's what the opinion page is for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T21:24:44.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5442" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-13T21:52:23.947" Score="1" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I change &quot;our&quot; to &quot;their&quot; in this quote? If so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated in their 2011 Annual Report, Siemens’ identity and corporate culture is defined by their vision to be a pioneer, which is based on their values of being responsible, excellent and innovative (Siemens, 2011). “Together with these values, our strategy and One Siemens framework, it also defines our business goals and specifies a clear direction for our development” (Siemens, 2011, p. 21).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3519" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T22:08:33.533" Title="APA Formatting - Changing Adjectives in a quote" Tags="|formatting|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5442" CreationDate="2012-04-13T22:08:33.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Knowing nothing about APA formatting, I would say that the material in quotes should stay quoted &amp;mdash; use &quot;our,&quot; since it's a direct quote which you immediately cite. I don't see a reason to change the actual quote, and your summary in the previous sentence uses &quot;their&quot; correctly in context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are contexts where you'd change &lt;em&gt;our&lt;/em&gt; to [their] with the straight brackets, or use [sic] to indicate a mistake in the original quote, but this is fine as it stands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T22:08:33.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5343" CreationDate="2012-04-14T12:52:58.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my non-fiction writing, I've found analogies and metaphors to be helpful. I wonder if this would work for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a historical example, it's sometimes happened that people who speak different languages have had to learn to communicate with each other (imagine an island on a busy trade route back in the days of empire building). One outcome can be a pidgin language, a simplified language that combines some features of its source languages. With time and over generations, a pidgin can evolve into a creole, an independent language with its own vocabulary, grammar, and so forth. Languages evolve continuously, influenced by other languages and new things that need to be said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine that this would work only if there were an omniscient narrator, if one character were explaining the situation to another, or if a character were actually learning a new language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3516" LastActivityDate="2012-04-14T12:52:58.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5429" CreationDate="2012-04-15T01:01:01.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never been published. I've never contacted an agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'll tell you this: I can't even count on sixteen hands the number of times I've read something JUST like this--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Twilight was initially rejected by 14 agents, however, eight publishers competed for the rights to publish Twilight in the 2003 auction.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; [From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_%28novel%29#Publication&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia]&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And obviously we all know how that story turned out. Don't ever give up. I understand you're saying they're too busy to even &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; at your work, but the same principle applies. Just keep going. Sooner or later you'll break through the wall. Guaranteed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T01:01:01.567" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5447" CreationDate="2012-04-15T05:31:41.827" Score="2" ViewCount="5959" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having problems describing certain parts of a place that I usually visit. Here are some pictures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kqZw5.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Park at nighttime&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HuW1i.png&quot; alt=&quot;Park in daylight&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, I have no idea how I should refer to the wooden platform on the left (so I just called it wooden platform). I'm also not very sure how to call the section between the wooden platform and the handrail (I just called it sidewalk).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, here is the description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The darkness and fog made it hard for Jun to see the end of the&#xA;  sidewalk. There were no people around, and the streets were unusually quiet. After walking a few meters, he spotted a large wooden&#xA;  platform and decided to sit there. He pulled a Busch beer from is bag,&#xA;  opened it, and looked up. In front of him, there was a sewage&#xA;  canal that was surrounded by a handrail and streetlights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A minute or two passed when Jun heard the sound of a second can&#xA;  opening. He looked to his side and realized that someone was sitting just a&#xA;  few meters away from him. It was a girl. She was looking up. Something&#xA;  at the other side of the sewage canal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jun glanced his watch. It was 2 A.M. What is a girl doing here at this&#xA;  time, he wondered. He tried following her line of vision to the other&#xA;  side of the canal. It took him some time to make out the shape. It&#xA;  looked like a tree. A standing dead tree. It had a grayish color and&#xA;  had long branches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After finishing his can, he pulled another one from his bag and&#xA;  continued staring at the decayed tree. He glanced to the girl from&#xA;  time to time, but she never never took off her eyes away from the&#xA;  tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jun woke up in his bed with a terrible headache, wondering how he had&#xA;  reached home. His bag was lying on the floor with nine empty beer cans&#xA;  inside. An hour or two passed when the phone called. He let it ring&#xA;  for moment and then picked up the receiver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond simply finding words for these particular items, I would like to know how to figure out good descriptions on my own in similar cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T18:09:42.233" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T18:09:42.233" Title="Tips for describing features of unusual place that I often visit" Tags="|description|setting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5446" CreationDate="2012-04-15T07:53:44.117" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing research is part of being a writer. So, don't know what that pavilion is called? &lt;em&gt;Find out.&lt;/em&gt; Look online, look around the thing to see if there's a plaque that may give you a hint, heck, you could even ask some people in the area, like cafe workers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you don't necessarily need to know what it is:    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...spotted a large wooden platform with an asian-looking arbor over it. It&#xA;  looked vaguely Shinto, not that Jun's experience with oriental shrines&#xA;  extended much past martial arts movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's only if you need to focus that much attention on it. I think the problem you're running into has less to do with the wooden platform and more to do with over-describing and under-showing the scene. That is, you've basically got a bullet point list of what Jun sees and does. This takes a scene with some very interesting concepts (the staring girl, the dead tree, the blackout), and dulls and flattens it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare your first two paragraphs to this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The darkness and fog muffled the street. Jun could barely see to the&#xA;  end of the sidewalk, so he felt, more than saw, his way along. He kept&#xA;  the parked scooters rising and falling in the mist like chained&#xA;  derelicts to his left and the dead iron ladder of the sewage canal's&#xA;  railing stretching to infinity on the right. He'd steer between the&#xA;  two, and eventually he'd be home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eventually. He wasn't quite ready to get there just yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A wooden pavilion shaped itself out of the gloom and Jun&#xA;  sat down. A couple of cans of beer in his backpack called to him so&#xA;  he open one, drank, and pondered the dark wavelets in the canal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hiss-click of another can of beer startled Jun out of his&#xA;  reverie. There was a girl sitting on the far end of the pavilion, her&#xA;  legs dangling over the sides. Had she been there the whole time? He&#xA;  watched her drink the beer down in one long swallow, her eyes closed, her throat&#xA;  bobbing in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She didn't seem to notice him. Instead she stared across the canal, the beer&#xA;  can, now empty, forgotten in her lap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't necessarily the best way to write this, but it shows you that you don't have to tell the reader the boring bits of how a character moves through space (X meters, spotting, looking this way and that) -- their mind will fill in those blanks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blanks they can't fill in are how the scene &lt;em&gt;feels&lt;/em&gt; -- and how it'll make them (the readers) feel. This is texture, and you have to provide that. And that can't be done by listing facts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider, for instance, when Jun first sees the dead tree. You write:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It took him some time to make up the shape. It looked like a tree. A&#xA;  standing dead tree. It had a grayish color and had long branches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It had a grayish color and had long branches.&quot; Really? No! This tree is a pivotal element on the scene that, if my impression is right, gives the scene's spooky nature a reason for being. I mean, the whole thing was set up for the girl to stare at that dead tree, right? So why not something like:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It stood there like a forgotten evil, its bark the shriveled gray of a drowned man's&#xA;  flesh, its skeletal branches grasping through streamers of&#xA;  murky night air, lusting after the memory of its trembling victims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both here and and in the first paragraph with the scooters and canal railing, I'm using similes and adjectives to give these elements some punch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll grant you, I am over-doing it a bit. The tree thing especially is over the top. But that's just for purposes of example to make my point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When describing a setting you don't want to describe everything, which inevitably leads to summarization. Instead, you want to use a few elements shown in loving, delicious detail to set the whole scene for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So remember, it's about &lt;em&gt;texture&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2012-04-17T18:24:33.197" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T18:24:33.197" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5448" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5450" CreationDate="2012-04-16T05:04:44.410" Score="4" ViewCount="849" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a short story. All the action happens mainly at the beginning of the story. You can see part of the beginning in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5446/tips-for-describing-features-of-unusual-place-that-i-often-visit&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question, and the full story &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexandrochen.com/existential-fiction/the-girl-without-a-soul/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the dialogue and ending (just edited it once):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Excuse me,&quot; he said, after gathering some courage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She widen her eyes as if she had just woken up from a trance, turned&#xA;  her head and stared at him with confused eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Do you mind if I sit closer?&quot; he asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She shook her head slowly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He moved closer, still keeping a distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm Jun,&quot; he said, and paused. &quot;Can I know your name?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She kept silent for a moment, looking down at her hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Lin,&quot; she said with a low voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They spent the next minutes looking at the decayed tree without saying&#xA;  anything else. Jun wasn't sure if it was his imagination or the fog,&#xA;  but the tree seemed to have become taller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sorry for asking this,&quot; he said, after a moment. &quot;But is it true that&#xA;  you don't have a soul?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She took a sip of her canned Asahi cocktail and then nodded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jun stared at her blankly as if she were a ghost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How did that happen? he asked, &quot;Did you lost it somewhere?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lin shook her head. &quot;I was born without one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He felt more confused than before. &quot;I thought people couldn't live&#xA;  without a soul.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;For me, having a brain and body is enough,&quot; she replied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jun stared to his can, thinking what she had just said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It seems like you spend most of your time alone.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lin narrowed her eyes and looked up the dark sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Not many people want to get close to me once they discover that I&#xA;  don't have a soul,&quot; she said. &quot;Some get scared, others get hostile.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Why is that?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I wish I knew,&quot; she replied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jun finished his beer and pulled another one from his bag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You know,&quot; he said, holding the can. &quot;Maybe you remind them about&#xA;  something they fear. Something they fear deep inside.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She glanced at him without figuring out what he meant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well,&quot; Jun said. &quot;The good thing is that you have plenty of time to&#xA;  do whatever you want.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't do much,&quot; she said. &quot;I spend most of my time sitting here,&#xA;  watching the dead tree.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Is there something special about it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;One day he spoke to me,&quot; Lin said and sipped her cocktail. &quot;He told&#xA;  me something that has been revolving in my mind for a while.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jun remained silent, waiting for her to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He said that people want to be eternal as an individual because they&#xA;  forgot how to be eternal as a whole with nature.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What does that mean?&quot; Jun asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Honestly, I'm not very sure.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He sipped his beer and looked up. The sky had a majestic purple hue.&#xA;  He couldn't believe they had talked the whole night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He also told me what will happen to me after I die,&quot; Lin said after a&#xA;  moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jun stared at her with his lips slightly parted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He said that after I die, my body will decompose and return to the&#xA;  earth, nourish all sort of living things, and part me will continue&#xA;  living on them.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It doesn't sound that bad,&quot; he said with a smile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She smiled at back at him. It was his first time seeing her smile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Thank you. It's been a long time since someone listened to me the way&#xA;  you did,&quot; she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before this dialogue, the main character talks to a classmate on the phone (So there is a little dialogue in the middle of the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not very sure if doing this makes the story look unbalanced or poorly written. If it does, what can I do to improve it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I would also like to know how to improve the flow and identify inconsistencies in the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T03:05:49.453" Title="Is it a bad idea to have all the action in the beginning and all the dialogue in the end?" Tags="|fiction|structure|flow|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5448" CreationDate="2012-04-16T08:29:38.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see how it can work. The action is set on a larger scale - action normally involves more or wider scope than just two people. If the story plot noturally focusses down onto these two people, involved in a discussion, then it might be a valid and workable route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thin the challenge is to ensure that the story is not disjointed (unless you are Ian Banks, in which case it is expected), so that your focus moves slowly enough from Big Action Start to Two People Finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T08:29:38.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5448" CreationDate="2012-04-16T14:11:33.950" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like most things in writing there's no right or wrong answer - only good or bad writing - and that can be subjective. Without the context of the action piece it's difficult to know if this works or not, it might be perfect, it might be completely wrong, it's hard to make a real judgement call. Having said that, my problem with this passage as it's written is that it's a bit &quot;he said/she said&quot; which comes off as 'flat' on the page, the conversation doesn't have much of a dynamic, it's all spoken in one tone. It also leaves very little room for subtext.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an old saying that goes &quot;if your scene is about what your scene is about, then it's not working&quot; which means that your dialogue shouldn't mean what is being said, there should be deeper meaning, underneath what's spoken. This passage doesn't really have that and thus, it falls a bit flat. That doesn't mean it's bad writing, in fact the subject matter is actually interesting and I would like to see how it concludes, but you should see if you can explore it in a less obvious way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only my two-penn'th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3271" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T14:11:33.950" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5448" CreationDate="2012-04-16T16:50:22.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading the entire piece (from the link you posted), I'd say the story feels like it's all cut of the same material, so you don't have anything to worry about in terms of most of the dialog being at the end. There are some rough edges here and there - how did more beers get into his bag? &quot;Jun left his room at 1:20 that night.&quot;? - but a light editing pass would take care of minor inconsistencies like this. I'm also guessing it was &quot;proofread&quot; with spell-check. (If you're not picking up on these sorts of mistakes in your own writing, you can try getting some beta readers or find a writers' group; a full proofreading and editing would be outside the scope of this site. A pro editing job would likely be overkill for a short piece like this, unless you decide to collect many tales into a book later on.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm not seeing problems stemming from bottom-loading most of the dialog, I'm seeing other issues. In particular: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If Lin doesn't have a soul, how will her consciousness live on after her death? Unless the consciousness is separate from the soul. Why is a lack of a soul something that gives people the heebie-jeebies? And why not Jun? You don't need to answer all of these questions in a work this short - sometimes an unresolved question can of itself be a great plot point. But at least acknowledging the question is a good step. (You partially do this when Lin admits she doesn't know why people are avoiding her. But be careful to avoid that these are just covering up flaws.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is lacking a soul important to the story? The lack of a soul is kind of a Macguffin, in that any property that Lin has that's weird or out of the ordinary could be substituted. In my opinion, Lin's lack of a soul should either be integral to the tale or dropped entirely. The telephone conversation might be a good place to address some of this. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This kinda feels like a piece of a larger work, since it doesn't really resolve. That's not necessarily a problem. You can choose to resolve this by, rather than continuing the plot until you reach a &quot;natural&quot; ending, setting up the end point you have earlier in the story. For example: The connection between Lin and Jun is obviously the end of the tale, so maybe you could emphasize Jun's loneliness a little bit more, since it's alleviated at the end. A word or two could serve to do this: The telephone conversation might mention that Jun's been reclusive lately. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Or: Jun was afraid to approach Lin at first. Maybe we could find out that he passed up similar opportunities in the past? Similar in that he didn't talk to someone out of fear, not necessarily that they were lacking souls.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, I really like this story. I'd take care to avoid tightening it &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; much; the loose, vague feel here is wonderfully atmospheric, so take care to not resolve &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;. But a little tightening and polishing would really bring this home. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-04-16T17:02:45.973" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T17:02:45.973" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5429" CreationDate="2012-04-17T10:39:29.030" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered self publishing? If you are looking for inspiration, read Joe Konrath's blog, available &lt;a href=&quot;http://jakonrath.blogspot.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Read through his back posts, and you may find some interesting stuff. One of them talks about his book, the list, that was rejected by all the publishers, and is now a &lt;a href=&quot;http://jakonrath.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/list-story-of-rejection.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bestseller&lt;/a&gt;. One of the comments to that post is worth reading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My favorite line from all the rejections was this from the &quot;New American Library&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...as its novelty seems to hamper its commercial potential.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes, as a reader, I know the LAST thing I want to see is something&#xA;  that deviates even a LITTLE from everything I've seen before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Gaughran has written a book on self publishing, that is free at the moment, available from his website &lt;a href=&quot;http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/lets-get-digital/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, agents. Dean W smith has written a series of posts called the sacred cows of publishing, and one of the myths he bursts is that you need an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=860&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;agent&lt;/a&gt; to sell a book. Scroll down to part three, and read all the articles in that section. It certainly opened my eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be sure to spend some time reading, and then digesting all the info above. Then take a week or two off, to decide if you still want to continue down the traditional path, or go down the self pub path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, writers now have a lot of options, and don't have to wait years to see their book in print. As JA Konrath says, that time could be better spent writing more books, and marketing the ones we have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T10:39:29.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5388" CreationDate="2012-04-17T15:53:24.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about paraphrasing the quote &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; showing the reader it is paraphrased. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The experience that we had undergone confused our consciousness in the real and virtual worlds. It made us strive for re-assurance which could be summed up best in Descartes's &quot;Cogitamus ergo sumus.&quot; Or simply, &quot;For our thoughts exist, we must be.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Or:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;For our thoughts exist, we must as well.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;|&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Existence is in the mind of the beholder.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;|&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Existence is there for the thinker/tinkerer/etc...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2012-04-17T17:14:45.387" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T17:14:45.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5454" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5456" CreationDate="2012-04-17T18:12:52.090" Score="1" ViewCount="1496" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a documentation for an eGovernment project, so the document I'm writing is a scientific document. It contains some big ideas, each having some subideas, with each subidea having a number of paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is that at the title of each subidea (wich contains only paragraphs, no free text), should I put colons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paragraphs contain explanations sometimes, so should I put colons for the paragraphs' titles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;h1&gt;Motivating People&lt;/h1&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Reputation System&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;h3&gt;Needs for&#xA;  reputation system&lt;/h3&gt; It's needed due to several reasons (so&#xA;  mentioning the reasons). &lt;h3&gt;Mechanism&lt;/h3&gt; The system works as&#xA;  follows: (so mentioning how it works). &lt;h2&gt;Trust System&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  .......&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3528" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-04-18T00:57:59.383" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T00:57:59.383" Title="Should I put colons with second-level titles?" Tags="|titles|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5454" CreationDate="2012-04-17T18:57:49.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that you do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; need colons with your subheadings (the headings above your sub-ideas). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3432" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T18:57:49.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5454" CreationDate="2012-04-17T18:58:41.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, if you're writing for the government they might have a format they expect, so if so and it says something on this point, it wins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, I would not use colons in any of your titles or paragraphs.  The colon's job is to introduce what follows (e.g. in a list), but a title/subtitle/subsubtitle/etc structure already provides that implicitly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one case where I would use a colon in a title is in a document title that has a subtitle, e.g. &quot;A History of the McGuffin: A Literature Survey&quot;.  But I would prefer to represent all of that as the title, not title + subtitle, so I would only do that if a style guide forced me to separate the elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T18:58:41.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5457" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5459" CreationDate="2012-04-18T16:19:46.233" Score="22" ViewCount="3924" Body="&lt;p&gt;Among a million other ambitions under the general heading of &quot;Writing,&quot; I have this fantasy where I write a major series, several books long with a giant cast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I started thinking. In giant series like the recently famous Song of Ice and Fire, Lord of the Rings, Golden Compass, every other giant series ever, there are more than a hundred characters. Maybe even hundred&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;s&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, sometimes. And of course every writer wants to make the next Jack Sparrow, Willy Wonka, Dumbledore, Holmes...awesome characters who everyone remembers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when you have that many characters, I feel you simply &lt;em&gt;can't make them all interesting.&lt;/em&gt; If you did, you'd be emphasizing things that may not matter. The audience always wants to see more of an interesting character, and you'd be bringing something to the foreground that had no place there. Many characters, both minor and occasionally major, have to be more flat and generic. 95% of the elves in LotR barely speak at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I suppose my question comes to something like this--&gt; How would you decide when to give someone personality, and when not to? Has anyone here ever consciously kept a deliberate balance in this category?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3827" LastEditDate="2012-07-07T07:32:32.687" LastActivityDate="2012-07-07T07:32:32.687" Title="How/When to create deliberately boring characters?" Tags="|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5457" CreationDate="2012-04-18T17:05:55.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose for me, the answer is not choosing to give someone personality or not, it is about how important the character is to the story. I have written people who are mainly identified by a name, and maybe a few lines, because that is the limit of my characters interaction with them - looking from their view, they know very little about the other characters, so the reader also knows very little about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, you can define all that is needed about a character in a short line, and that gives you all of the relevant facts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Snodgrass behaved, as always, with sniveling acquiescence&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all you need is a character who does what he is told, you have it all there. You need to know nothing else about him if that is the limit of his function within the story. He could play a major role, appearing a lot, but if he is just taking messages, doing jobs, you can refer to him as Snodgrass, and you have everything about him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T17:05:55.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5457" CreationDate="2012-04-18T17:20:54.917" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Characters are people, just like you and me. We all have our own little biographies and memories that shape our character, define our personality and predict and explain our behavior. Some of those biographies will inherently be more interesting than others and some will be engaging to only a few and not others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bank teller, the guy behind you in line at the supermarket or the young lady standing next to you in the elevator could be made of cardboard, as for as you could ever care, and in a story they could be. But they all have their own secret narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that you should set out to intentionally make your characters interesting or memorable. As a writer the vapors of your imagination coalesce into entirely new people that you then place into a situation of your choosing and like the silver spheres of a pinball bonus round they will careen and veer in an unpredictable behavior around the stage you've set for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add order to the chaos by providing every character of note (let's say all speaking roles) with at very least a mini-biography (main characters should have enough of a backstory to fill an hour on the Biography channel). Providing a back story will give you a way to predict the way someone will behave in a certain situation. Even if (especially, really) the reader will never know the backstory your plot cohesion will benefit immensely from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guarantee that JK Rowling, JRR Tolkien, George RR Martin and anyone else who created an epic fantasy universe has notebooks and index cards full of important information about each and every character they ever created. You'll never see them but as a reader (and a writer) you'll appreciate that they're there. For instance, Dumbledore was gay. Rowling never said this outright in her books and left few hints about this aspect of his personality but I guarantee that somewhere in her house there is a notebook with the words &quot;Dumbledore is gay&quot; scrawled in pencil in the upper corner of the margin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, not all of your character's backstories will be inherently interesting, just as not everyone you meet has an interesting story. But they will be have one. And a character doesn't have to be lively to be memorable. Think HAL in 2001. That's a character who is completely devoid of personality. Yet he is memorable and interesting. Marvin the paranoid android would be remarkably boring to be around. Yet he is memorable and interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build your characters to a greater or lesser degree based on the level of interaction your readers and the main characters will have with them. Don't try to make them interesting. Just make them, and let the reader decide if they're interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the question has morphed slightly since I posted my response allow me to provide a post script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I stand by the crux of my response (simply create new people and ensure that anyone worth mentioning has depth) there is a caveat or two. Readers will be drawn to some characters and not others, and that's okay. But if a character isn't interesting to you, he won't be interesting to your readers and characters that bore the reader give them an excuse to stop reading. But if there's a character who is intentionally boring then I believe he should be so mind-numbingly boring that he's simply unforgettable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="3496" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T17:12:10.303" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T17:12:10.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5457" CreationDate="2012-04-18T19:33:49.680" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;The real question is: boring to the writer, boring to the reader, or boring to the other characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the character bores you as the &lt;em&gt;writer&lt;/em&gt;, either change the character or excise him/her. That person has no place in your story. I just had to do this myself two weeks ago, and it made a massive, awesome improvement in the entire book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the character is boring to the &lt;em&gt;reader&lt;/em&gt; (you're getting notes from your betas reading, &quot;Man, Snodgrass &lt;em&gt;again&lt;/em&gt;? This guy is made of cardboard! Why are you giving him so much screen time?&quot; when he's supposed to be a major villain), you have a problem. Even your NPCs and your cameos shouldn't make the reader feel the need to flip to the next page. Not every walk-on needs a full biography, but if your character talks to the same barista every morning, give her a nose-ring with a bell on it or something. Or the main character should notice her green eyes, which make her think of the green scarf her girlfriend gave her ten years ago, and she thinks of the scarf every morning for a split second whenever she sees the kid's green eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the character is boring to the &lt;em&gt;other characters&lt;/em&gt;, that's actually fine. That's drama. Your main character should roll her eyes when Snodgrass trudges into the room. And you don't have to redeem Snodgrass from being boring, either;  he can just be the comic relief by being boring. But that makes him interesting in his own way &amp;mdash; what boring thing is he going to say next, and can your main character refrain from popping him one in the jaw?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To focus on your question, yes, even the 95% of the elves who don't speak have &quot;personalities,&quot; even if they don't get names. They are beautiful, graceful, solemn; trackers, singers, archers; Galadriel's women who weave cloaks, etc. Don't over-focus on the barista with the bell in her nose if she's not the point of the scene, but if there's any interaction beyond &quot;she got coffee on her way to work,&quot; then bell the barista.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T01:20:25.893" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T01:20:25.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5461" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5462" CreationDate="2012-04-19T03:30:09.493" Score="3" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write about the very interesting topic of 'what really happened' on 9/11. How close can I possibly get to real characters and facts without getting sued?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Facts I might include in my work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transponder switching of planes over areas with little radar coverage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Long delays in interceptor flights.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Possible&lt;/em&gt; presence of thermite in the Twin Tower rubble dust.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this would implicitly put blame on somebody. Would that mean I would be sued the hell out of my pants? Is there a way to keep clear of getting sued if you want to write about that fateful day? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plot of my work does not follow what happened that day. But I need to mention those characters to make it interesting. What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3533" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-04-24T17:39:53.563" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T17:39:53.563" Title="Will 9/11 fiction get a writer into trouble with the US Government? " Tags="|fiction|characters|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5461" CreationDate="2012-04-19T08:28:02.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suggestion - stick to publically acessible facts, and express them as factual only in terms of the characters in your story. Then you are writing fiction using possibilities, and you cannot be sued for that, AFAIK. If so, I am in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would only be in trouble legally if you were to present information as factual, and specifically make this blame people or organisations, in a book clearly intended as factual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of Dan Brown. He presented wacky ideas as fact, but in a fictional context. You cannot sue him for defamation or whatever, because his story is purely fictional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T08:28:02.340" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5388" CreationDate="2012-04-19T11:55:37.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on your readership, you could abbreviate the entire last part, and make it something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The experience that we had undergone confused our consciousness in the real and virtual worlds and recalled a Cartesian &lt;em&gt;cogito...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which would work if readers understood that a Cartesian cogito was a reference to Descartes phrase. For the wrong readership, of course, it just sounds completely pretentious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T11:55:37.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5467" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5469" CreationDate="2012-04-18T07:25:06.143" Score="3" ViewCount="360" Body="&lt;p&gt;I titled a short story &lt;em&gt;&quot;The Girl without a Soul&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. But recently I've been thinking on naming it &lt;em&gt;&quot;The Girl who didn't have a Soul.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they mean exactly the same thing? Is there an advantage to using one over the other? As a short story title, what impressions will readers get when they see the different titles? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" OwnerDisplayName="alexchenco" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-03T10:34:22.880" LastActivityDate="2019-04-03T21:09:14.470" Title="Title Choice: &quot;The Girl [Without/Who Didn't Have] A Soul&quot;" Tags="|word-choice|titles|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5467" CreationDate="2012-04-18T07:33:15.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To your second question first, because it's easier, &quot;&lt;em&gt;The Girl Without a Soul&lt;/em&gt;&quot; would definitely sound better as a title of a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two phrases do not mean the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Girl who didn't have a Soul&quot; sounds like a story about a Girl who &lt;em&gt;once&lt;/em&gt; did not have a soul, but may have one now. This phrase emphasises the fact that the Girl had no soul &lt;em&gt;in the past&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Girl Without a Soul&quot; sounds like a story concerning a girl without a soul, and implies that this is the case throughout the whole story. It does not give the impression that the Girl will, at the end of the story, have a soul.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the difference between these two statements are so slight, to dwell in them would be pedantic.  Based on how your story goes, you could choose either statement. However, &quot;The Girl without a Soul&quot; does sound better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Bidella" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T10:08:08.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5467" CreationDate="2012-04-18T08:10:45.833" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, they mean exactly the same.  There are plenty of stories that have &quot;who didn't have&quot; in the title; and it really doesn't connote an event in the past.  By contrast, Amazon has no fiction books with &quot;who doesn't have&quot; in the title.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very common to use the past tense in the title of a story, without any implication that something happened in the past, or that something is not happening in the present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the second question, &quot;The Girl without a Soul&quot; flows better in my opinion.  &quot;The Girl with no Soul&quot; is better still.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24609" OwnerDisplayName="David Wallace" LastEditorUserId="24609" LastEditDate="2019-04-03T21:09:14.470" LastActivityDate="2019-04-03T21:09:14.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5470" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-23T07:51:03.410" Score="1" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my story &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nicholaslawson.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;THE GOSPEL OF THE RETURN OF A CHRIST THAT WANTS ANSWERS&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; I wanted to evoke a sense of the middle ages in a modern book. So I utilized a technique where whenever I referred to a character, I directly added an adjective or a descriptor to their name. My other goal is to deepen the characters. Does this technique work in your eyes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example passage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So if you dont mind my asking, what happens to be your name?&quot; asked the Nicholas the Entertainer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I am called Hakiym.&quot; said the mysterious man who provided a luxurious cigar leaf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Its really is good to know someone else who happens to smoke the reefer around here. Sometimes I feel mostly alone with this habit that I have here in the City of C's.&quot; said Nicholas the Friendly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yes, well, this is a fairly dry city in terms of all that but I try do what I can to keep the cortex lubricated. You are a poet, no?&quot; said the resourced Hakiym the Introduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well I happend to get on the microphone tonight.&quot; said the Nicholas the Celebrity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You should come out to a very special show known as the Lyrical Insurrection, its a little something that I like to entertain people with. You would fit right in with your style of speech and I even bet you do have some poems, don't you?&quot; said the Entertaining Hakiym.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nicholas the Smoker had started the ceremony of sprinkling the herb into the leaf so that he could engage in rolling up the reefer cigar for the purposes of experiencing conscious freedom. There is a pattern of thought and language that rolls off the tongue when lucid on the reef. It is experienced like a beautiful tapestry of thought that occurs in dream like fashion when you are lifted on the reef.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I would truly love to come out, but I really don't know if I am an Insurrection artist, and I was wondering if you could do the honors and roll this piece up so that we could have a collaborative effort on this kush.&quot; said Nicholas the Team Player.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That is not a problem at all.&quot; said the Problem Solving Hakiym as he picks up the instrument of enjoyment and lifts it to his mouth where he rolls it magically with his lips and creates a perfect rolled piece of highnishnes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Would you let me see your flame?&quot; asks the Enterprising Hakiym.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nicholas the Giver hands over his lighter and Hakiym the Annointed sparks it with all of the elegance and suave of a trained master of ceremonies. He takes three slow cool drags and passes it back to Nicholas the Honest One.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3544" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T06:32:08.207" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T18:01:43.520" Title="Do I correctly utilize my naming adjective concept in this book?" Tags="|technique|naming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3042" CreationDate="2012-04-23T08:43:55.163" Score="-6" Body="&lt;p&gt;PS stands for &quot;Please see&quot; in the e-mails, to highlight something important. There is no need of Post script in the e-mails. Post script is outdated technique which was used in earlier days when there were no e-mails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3545" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T08:43:55.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5470" CreationDate="2012-04-23T10:22:55.530" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it doesn't work, and no, I don't think you're using the technique correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you use descriptions attached to someone's name, it is to differentiate them from someone else with that name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To use a stereotypical example, take an Italian neighborhood with five friends all named Joseph. One will go by Joey D (for his last name). The second is Joe the Hammer, because he's a carpenter. The third is called Joey Goombatz because he picked up the nickname in second grade and nobody has ever called him anything else. Number four is called Joe Kings after some ridiculous incident at the old Kings Plaza mall, and when the fifth Joseph moved into the neighborhood the guys heard his father calling him Jo-Jo, and it stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read your piece above, I see six guys named Nicholas talking with five or six guys named Hakim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you intend this to be a dialogue between two people, then your adjective phrases are so excessive as to become silly &amp;mdash; I'm expecting the next ones to be &quot;Nicholas of the Gilded Liver&quot; and &quot;Hakim Who Wears Crushed Peony Booger Perfume.&quot; Now, if that's what you're aiming for (ridiculous, giggle-inducing overkill), then you're right on target. If you want to be taken seriously, however, pick &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; description per person and stick with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you can point to ten medieval sources where &quot;they all wrote this way!&quot; I guarantee that 99% of your audience is not going to know that, and will think you're writing a parody of some kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-01-10T18:01:43.520" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T18:01:43.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5474" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5480" CreationDate="2012-04-23T12:17:08.153" Score="8" ViewCount="446" Body="&lt;p&gt;After releasing my first blogging article I received some less-than-stellar reviews citing that I &amp;quot;managed to write a blog post that hypes up your proposed solution to &amp;quot;hacking&amp;quot; TV...then don't even have a solution&amp;quot; and that &amp;quot;this must be one of the most content-free blog posts I've read recently&amp;quot;. Obviously, for a first time writer, this isn't what I was hoping for and I'm looking to correct these problems so that future posting will be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where is my writing lacking in meat? I liked my introduction but I'm inclined to agree that my writing slacks off as the article goes on. Another user mentioned that he/she &amp;quot;can't seem to find more meat than what's already stated in the title&amp;quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The general consensus seems to be that my argument for removing commercials from television is weak and uninteresting. What would make my defense better?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should sayings such as &amp;quot;OK. I know what you're thinking.&amp;quot; be avoided? Perhaps they are a bit lame or cliche?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Here's an updated version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The date is July 1. The year? 1941. As fathers and sons sit down in front of their televisions and prepare to watch a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies, they unknowingly witness history in the making. For 10 seconds, the New York station WNBT displays a clock covering a map of the United States, along with the words “America runs on Bulova time.” They don’t know it now, but the watch making company Bulova has started a dastardly trend that will continue for at least the next 70 years. Commercials are television cancer. The life of the TV viewing lazy-bones would be better off without commercials, yet Mr. Couch Potato continues to accept the reality of commercials without question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading about why we should build a future without cars, I began thinking about other norms that need to be disrupted. Television seemed like such an obvious choice. Who actually likes commercials? Not only are they incredibly obnoxious (That Was Easy™), they are also huge timesinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, I know what you’re thinking. Watching television is probably the most efficient way to waste your time. There are certainly arguments to support this; watching TV requires no mental processes or physical exertion and most television shows don’t teach the viewer anything. But consider this: for every 30 minutes of television you watch, you’re watching approximately 8 minutes of commercials. For hour-long shows the time spent watching commercials increased to 18 minutes. That means that ¼ to ⅓ of time spent watching TV is all commercials. Now consider all of the things you could do with the time you spend watching commercials for products that you care nothing about. For every movie watched, you could have read another chapter of your book, mowed your lawn, or spent an extra half hour with your family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disrupting the Television Industry&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I’m going to throw something out there that might seem kind of crazy, but just stick with me. Let’s disrupt the television industry by getting rid of all commercials. There, it’s out in the open now. I’ll wait while you take a moment to tell all of your friends not to read Maniacal Science because it’s blasphemous propaganda written by a maniacal (yes, I just did that) nut case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about it though, it’s really not such a farfetched idea at all. Commercials are justified by television networks that need to make money. What better way to make money companies pay for the right to have their product shoved down viewers’ throats? This must have proved to be an effective model, otherwise it wouldn’t have lasted as long as it has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Netflix, Grooveshark, and Youtube. Oh my!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible solution is a move to more on-demand type programming. Services like Netflix have already jumped on top of this, but $8/mn isn’t enough to satisfy TV networks. They need way more money than that to operate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those of you who use Grooveshark, YouTube and Hulu, you’ve probably noticed that advertisements will pop up every so often and you’ll have to watch 10 seconds of the advertisement before you’re given the option to close it. This isn’t nearly as frustrating as being forced to watch the entire advertisement and I’ve actually caught myself watching the entire length of some of the more interesting ones. This is another thing to consider: maybe it’s not that commercials are annoying by nature, but that most commercials are boring and the annoyance stems from being made to watch non-interesting material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shifting Paradigms&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason that companies like YouTube can function for free, without bombarding users with ads could have something to do with the fact that the ads are more effective. Not only are they placed using complex algorithms, it is also reasonable to believe that the user will pay more attention to the ad. The advertisements are short and they aren’t being shoved down the user’s throat. The difference here is that YouTube ads are served based on the number of videos you watch, not the length of the videos. That means you view 10 minute videos and only have to sit through a single 30 second advertisement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a shift to more on-demand programming, supplemented with advertisements a la Grooveshark and Youtube is a solution to this problem. Viewers will save large amounts of time and marketing teams will be happy that viewers are paying more attention to their ads, ultimately resulting in larger revenues for TV networks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Inventing For The Future&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I’ve noticed an influx of people calling for disruptions of huge industries. Where most people consider Facebook to be important (and it is, in some aspects), there are others who believe that it’s time to get past Facebook and invent for the future. What these people all agree on is that there are certain tried-and-true methods that have run their course and are no longer as effective as they once were. These methods need to be hacked. I believe that television commercials fall into this category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, television is a waste of time. Personally, I try not to watch too much. Luckily I enjoy being outside, so that’s really not a problem for me, but I digress. Like it or not, tens of millions of people around the world spend well over 3 hours a day in front of their TVs. The preferred solution would be to get rid of TV all together, but I think the couch potatoes out there might get upset at the thought. Instead, we need to work towards alternative solutions that save time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that TV is broken and we need to fix it. Commercials make up 18 minutes out of every hour of television and we are all too busy to allow this to continue. My hope is that the right person will see this article and step up to the plate. The idea has been presented, but we all know that ideas are worthless. If anyone has any thoughts on other ways to disrupt television, I’d be glad to hear them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3546" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T17:36:57.327" Title="&quot;Lacking meat&quot;, &quot;Content-free&quot;, and poor defense-development. Please critique my work" Tags="|blog|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-04-20T08:22:39.987" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5474" CreationDate="2012-04-23T14:24:25.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The paragraph starting &quot;Recently&quot; is where you go vegetarian. You set up your pitch in the first three paras, state your premise in the fourth, play a little devil's advocate in the fifth... and then trail off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've removed the status quo, but you haven't replaced it with anything. Yes, commercials exist; yes, they generally bore the viewer; yes, they exist so companies can sell products. You've defined the problem and the reason for the problem. Now you have to present alternatives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problems are &quot;Creating TV ain't free&quot; and &quot;advertisements in the middle of TV shows are boring and disruptive,&quot; then you must provide other solutions. What about cable TV? what about streaming TV? what about product placement? what's an entirely different model we haven't seen yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Separately, I don't mind the &quot;Okay, I know what you're thinking,&quot; because the article is clearly chatty and informal in tone, and it works with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T14:24:25.693" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5474" CreationDate="2012-04-23T14:39:52.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think your article is lacking in &quot;meat&quot;. It is a blog after all, not a scholarly article. Same for informal language like &quot;Ok, I know what you are thinking&quot;. I like blogs that are informal and chatty, as I really don't like being lectured to, unless you are an obvious expert in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do agree that your blog is unfocussed - what point are you trying to make? Are ads bad? What would you replace them with? You use the word &quot;hack&quot;, but outside computer geeks, the word has a negative connotation. Try to avoid it, if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you need to make more clear what you stand for, what your solutions are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the normal rules of blogging apply. The current text is one dense blob of words. Break it into headings, to make it easier to read. If the text is dense, as it is now, most people just skim over it and make snap judgements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for suggestions on what to read, just following other blogs is enough. I don't think you need to read any books for blogging, as it is one of  those things one learns by doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, do you really care what others think? You need to have a thicker skin if you want to make it in the game. This seems to be your first blog, and you already have 5 comments. Many blogs go years without any comment, as the majority of people are happy to just read, and never comment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would seem to me you are already doing a good job. Just make your arguments more focussed, and keep blogging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T14:39:52.973" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5477" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12649" CreationDate="2012-04-24T00:31:23.483" Score="16" ViewCount="30399" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was re-reading &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone&lt;/em&gt; recently to get a feel for the way J.K. Rowling passes an entire year in a fairly short book that feels content packed, and I noticed something &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; common which I hadn't previously put any thought to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to the passage of time, the book's voice changes drastically here and there. For many pages it follows the second-to-second real-time actions of the character, e.g. a passage describing a conversation or a duel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at other times the narrator zooms out and passes hours in a sentence, like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hermione didn't turn up for the next class and wasn't seen all afternoon.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this seems simple, or obvious, but I think it's a tiny piece of brilliance, and something that all good writers can do and frequently &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; do but which does not necessarily come easily to new writers and which maybe many people don't think about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see this happen with days, weeks, months, even years. And it isn't trivial to just drop it in there. In fact I've found it's very easy to interrupt the flow of your writing by shifting the rate of time passage in anything less than the smoothest manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is: how can you cleanly shift time scales and avoid making a somewhat jarring break in temporal continuity? How can you go from following a character second-to-second to briefly relating what the character did over the afternoon, the summer, the rest of his forties? Tips/Exercises for practice are always good, if anyone knows any clever ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2017-03-03T00:00:39.373" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T00:00:39.373" Title="How do I cleanly show the passage of time, with multiple, varying time scales?" Tags="|technique|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5477" CreationDate="2012-04-24T08:11:43.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are talking about isn't &quot;voice&quot;, but a scene change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If something is important to your to your scene, you need to describe it in detail. This is especially true in scenes with danger or suspense. So if your heroes are entering a dungeon, where you know there is a monster hiding, you may describe the dungeon in great detail, making the characters jump at the smallest noise. This will make the reader tense with anticipation on what will happen next. Of course, the more suspense you build, the greater must be the threat and resolution. You cannot then end the scene saying &quot;There was nothing there but a grumpy fairy in the dungeon.&quot; The reader will feel cheated and throw the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At other times, you need to show a great time has passed, without boring the reader with all the trivial details. So you can just say &quot;3 days passed, and Hero X was too busy to see his friends about the grumpy fairy they met in the dungeon&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As another example, if a child moves to a new school, you can describe his first day in detail, as he will be lost, confused and scared. He will be taking a lot in, and the reader can share his fears/hopes. But  if you then start describing every day hence, it will become a boring journal, and the reader will rightly throw away your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can skip past the boring parts with the words &quot;And five years passed in the blink of an eye, before Sam heard about the scary dungeon where people vanished. He made a plan to check it out with his friends. 'Golly gee, I hope I find something more dangerous than a grumpy fairy down there' he said to himself&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summarise: Scenes that matter, describe in detail, but only if it is relevant to the &#xA;plot, or to increase suspense. If you then want to move to the next important scene, you can do so in 1-2 sentences, and expect the reader to understand that some time (hours or days) have passed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T08:11:43.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5477" CreationDate="2012-04-24T08:15:34.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, while I like HP, I am not sure they are the best style guide for a writer. They are not all especially well written. The stories and concepts behind them are superb, which is what captured the readers imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, the writer is describing the critical events, and giving the timescales around them. The time for Harry to put on the owl costume, and walk to the centre of the plaza are irrelevant, and so ignored - you get a sense of immediacy. The more detail you put into your descriptions of events, the more closely you will appear to be following them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Harry walked slowly to the bathroom, and started to put on his owl costume. He lowered the main part over his head, and let the straps rest on his shoulders, feeling the weight, balancing the costume. Carefully and slowly he tried moving like an owl would - slowly, but purposefully....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get a sense of every moment being described, and the sense is even slower than your example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, if you brush over events or times - this can be an afternoon, or weeks or months, then they will pass quickly. But make sure things are happening - don't leave your characters in limbo. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hermione studied hard, attending all of her classes that term, and spending most of her spare time doing homework&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have most of a term taken, not doing nothing, but doing nothing that is specifically relevant. So making sure that you know what your characters should be doing when not progressing the plot is important, and varying it, or tweaking it to reflect their emotions. This is their background, their core persona, and there can be something useful in this for later....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Suddenly, Hermione remembered something she had studied last term - something about the Burberry tree.&quot; - her constant study provides the justification for her knowing some obscure piece of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit - so, to take a previous example, you may do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Harry walked slowly to the bathroom, and started to put on his owl costume. He lowered the main part over his head, and let the straps rest on his shoulders, feeling the weight, balancing the costume. Carefully and slowly he tried moving like an owl would - slowly, but purposefully. Harry took an hour, maybe more to don the costume and become happy with it, before starting his afternoons rampage around the square.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, a little stilted, and I would write the first part differently if I was doing this, but the concept is there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastEditorUserId="3380" LastEditDate="2012-04-24T08:56:20.690" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T08:56:20.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5474" CreationDate="2012-04-24T08:19:11.283" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the main problem is that your article, and the stylistic choices you make to write it, are all setup and no payoff. The first half, which actually is setup and is where you frame the problem, isn't too bad. A neat historical anecdote, a build up that walks the reader though, and deeper, into the problem, topped off with a suspense-building capper - &quot;expect something crazy!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, pretty decent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But delivering the payoff to all that setup? Not so much. Look, I didn't even realize I was in the solution section of the article until I hit the end -- then I had to go back and hunt for it. I'm still not really clear on what, exactly, it is that you propose we do. Frankly, I was expecting you to plug some software that strips commercials.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Weakness in presenting your solutions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Where you go wrong is from the very first sentence of your solution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One possible solution is a move to more on-demand type programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm sure you think your solution starts two paragraphs higher. It does not. Saying &quot;Lets disrupt...&quot; is not a solution, it's a vague, unspecified desire. The solution is &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you want to disrupt the industry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that brings us to your &quot;One possible solution...&quot; sentence. The problem here is that it's worded in a way that reader (I.e, me), reads it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Now there are other people, not nearly as crazy&#xA;  as me, and much easier to stick with, that say we should move to on-demand&#xA;  programming. But my solution...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I kept waiting through the rest of the article for that &quot;but&quot; to drop, but it never came. The reason it comes across this way is because it's so weakly written. If you have a solution, then say it. Put it out there with some confidence. Don't hem and haw around it, with phrases like &quot;One possible&quot; and &quot;to more&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The weakness continues, in a different way, in the next paragraph: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For those of you who use Grooveshark, YouTube and Hulu, you’ve&#xA;  probably noticed that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wait. Isn't that your solution? Aren't we all here, waiting breathlessly to hear whatever this marvelous idea is you've had? And yet, with &quot;For those of you who use...&quot; you state that you assume a significant portion, perhaps all, of your audience not only knows about your solution, but are already using it on a regular basis! So why should said audience waste it's time reading you? If you'd just stated it confidently, at least then your grooveshark-using audience could nod sagely along, pleased they're among the few already in the know.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The weaknesses in that paragraph continues with unnecessary words and meandering (though grammatically correct) sentences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, all that makes the solution seem like it's still part of the setup. That is, that after defining the problem, you're now setting up other people's poor solutions, so you can knock them down with the awesomeness of your own. Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare your &quot;Netflix, Grooveshark, and Youtube. Oh my!&quot; section to this one, with my edits: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The solution is to move to on-demand programming. Some services like Netflix&#xA;  have already jumped on this with subscriptions. But $8/mn isn’t enough to satisfy TV&#xA;  networks. They need more money than that to operate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other services like Grooveshark, YouTube and Hulu pop up&#xA;  advertisements every so often. You have to watch 10 seconds of the&#xA;  advertisement, but then you’re given the option to close it. This&#xA;  isn’t nearly as frustrating as being forced to watch the entire&#xA;  advertisement. On the contrary, I’ve caught myself watching the entire length&#xA;  of some of the more interesting ones!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is another thing to consider when thinking about this problem.&#xA;  Maybe it’s not that commercials are annoying by nature, but&#xA;  that most commercials are boring. Maybe the annoyance we all feel&#xA;  stems from being made to watch uninteresting material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't added much: mostly I just cut words and phrases, and split sentences and paragraphs. I, for one, think it reads much better. Or much clearer, at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Balance of power&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;My second point is very related to my first: in fact, it makes your weak writing stand out in sharper relief.  Here, in essence, is what you're saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those stikin' networks, they've been stealing our time! They want us&#xA;  to sit there like ZOMBIES!! This is AN OUTRAGE!!! HOW DARE THEY!!!&#xA;  We'll show them! I've got an idea that'll TAKE THEM OUT! IT'S&#xA;  CRAAAAAZY, BUT AWESOME!!!! WHO'S WITH ME?!? Here's what we do: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We, um, well, you know, we use some of the other products out&#xA;  there. Right, um. Sorta the stuff, uh, that you're already using,&#xA;  you know, if you want. So, yea. Um. There's commercials too, but&#xA;  they're better, see, 'cause they are. Maybe. So, um, yea. Go, uh, go team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not a critique of your ideas, but rather, of the &lt;strong&gt;balance in tone, forcefulness and confidence&lt;/strong&gt; between your setup and your payoff. And I exaggerate, of course, to make my point. But if your setup is: &quot;I'm gonna hit you in the face with a bucket of fish!&quot;, then as a reader, I bloody well better be picking fish guts out of my teeth by the time we're done. It's what you promised. And a truly terrible thing to do, as a writer, is to not deliver on what you promise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastEditorUserId="3080" LastEditDate="2012-06-08T19:36:00.940" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T19:36:00.940" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5477" CreationDate="2012-04-24T10:46:05.527" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your concern is the how-to of changing perspective, you can do it a few ways, but the idea should always be that you finish one beat, and the next beat starts the different time-voice: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;1) End the current chapter and start a new one.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That allows you to have a different POV, a different time-scale, a different location, anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;2) End the current scene and start a new one.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a definitive end to Harry romping about in Rockefeller Plaza and a definitive beginning to the next scene. Two hard returns is a typical method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;3)&lt;/em&gt; This is the tricky one I suspect you're concerned with: &lt;i&gt;End the current &lt;strong&gt;beat&lt;/strong&gt; but continue to focus on the same character(s).&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To use your own example, let's say we've just gone through another torturous Potions class, in typical detail &amp;mdash; that is, we've sat through more or less every moment with the Power Trio. Now class is over, and they're in the hallway:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What's next, Divination?&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  Ron groaned. &quot;How are we supposed to make it up to the old bat's tower on time from down here in the dungeon?&quot; &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  Hermione gasped. &quot;Oh! I just remembered! I have to go get something. I'll see you in class.&quot; She hurried off, leaving Harry and Ron to stare at her retreating back.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  But she didn't show up to class at all, and they didn't see her for the rest of the afternoon. In fact, Hermione didn't materialize until well into the evening, climbing through the portrait hole into the common room with an armload of books. &quot;I found all these at the library,&quot; she said breathlessly, dumping the books on the floor between Harry and Ron where they sat curled up in their favourite squashy armchairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that snippet, the &quot;time voice&quot; moves from immediate to one remove back to immediate again, on the beats. It isn't necessary to explain what happened all afternoon, at dinner, and after dinner, because, as Schroedinger's Cat notes, nothing important happens during that time period. But we've stayed with Harry's and Ron's point of view &amp;mdash; &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; didn't see Hermione during that time, so we're skimming the afternoon along with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You scale the time-voice in and out depending on how important the action is to the plot of the story. At the end of book 6 (I'm going to assume I'm not spoiling anybody here...), Rowling describes the few weeks Harry and Ginny have together as kind of a golden haze. She doesn't go through each afternoon, but blends all the days together as one large beat. What's important to the plot and the characters is that Harry and Ginny have time together to be happy and build their relationship, not single specific incidents, so that's the level of detail Rowling provides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-04-24T12:19:08.360" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T12:19:08.360" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5482" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5483" CreationDate="2012-04-24T13:06:15.400" Score="34" ViewCount="53137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see it quite a lot. It looks a bit like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It can be seen in Figure 3 that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My gut feeling is that there is no reason to scream in the middle of a perfectly calm sentence. I would like to write it like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It can be seen in figure 3 that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it seem to be very common. Which one is the recommended way of writing, and more importantly what are the reason(s) for using a capital letter there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3549" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-07T19:15:00.483" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T19:20:07.320" Title="Referencing figure in text - capitalize the word &quot;Figure&quot; or not? Why? " Tags="|style|capitalization|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5482" CreationDate="2012-04-24T14:27:51.837" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Figure 3 is recommended, and it's pretty much in line with every style book I've consulted (Chicago Manual of Style, AP Stylebook, O'Reilly, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a logical point of view, I completely agree with you. However, the standard convention of Figure 3 makes perfect sense, because Figure 3 is . . . well, Figure 3. It's an element of the article, book, etc. that deserves its own capitalization. Think of it as another chapter (to which you would refer with uppercase spelling) or heading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120418194216/http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/stylesheet.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;O'Reilly Default Stylesheet&lt;/a&gt; (Archive.org link) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3550" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-07T19:20:07.320" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T19:20:07.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5484" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-24T17:53:22.703" Score="5" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to learn the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;APA&lt;/a&gt; style guide, so that, in addition to the fiction and general non-fiction I work on currently, I can start accepting academic editing jobs. However, I know very little about the details of APA and I don't know what the best strategy is for learning it. I also understand it's very different from AP and Chicago, the style guides I use most and know the best. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/learn/tutorials/basics-tutorial.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tutorials&lt;/a&gt; John linked to in the comments look like a good resource and, best of all, they're free. However, from experience, I learn best by hands-on, applied project-based learning. However, this style guide is a foreign country to me, and I don't know if my usual style of learning will work well with APA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I learn APA quickly?&lt;/strong&gt; Should I look for training right away, or, since I learn best when I have a project, should I dive right in and then fill in the gaps later on? At which point can I consider myself competent enough at the style manual that it would be ethical for me to start accepting editing jobs using APA? How will it be different from other, non-academic style manuals? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-04-27T08:25:52.807" LastActivityDate="2018-02-14T16:24:45.393" Title="How can a practical learner get up to speed on APA quickly?" Tags="|style|editing|academic-writing|apa|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5485" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5487" CreationDate="2012-04-24T19:34:28.370" Score="6" ViewCount="682" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have during the last couple of years developed a fantasy world. It's a hobby project I work on when I have the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every now and again I get some idea of a scene or an event and I place it on the time line or write down a few pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the world is quite rich with events I find it difficult to come up with a interesting story to write. In the end all I am left with is a string of events focusing only on the characters with no real plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was hoping I could get some advice on how to build a proper story or that someone would point me to some place that could. How can I go from simply writing scenes to writing a story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3552" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-04-25T17:05:59.647" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T17:05:59.647" Title="Creating a compelling story from a prebuilt world" Tags="|plot|world-building|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5486" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-24T19:40:47.113" Score="5" ViewCount="2514" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note: This is a vague question, so I welcome help in improving it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a large amount of writing on my computer, some thousands of RTF files that sometimes start as taking notes in class lectures, sometimes start as unsent letters to friends, sometimes start as pointed reflections on a topic I just realized I have something important to say about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But each one of these files might have other random bits of information, statements, ideas, expositions that are not related at all to the main topic of the file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I get started on &lt;em&gt;doing something&lt;/em&gt; with all these files?  Could be things like &quot;writing exercises&quot; or &quot;file copying and pasting tasks&quot; or even some automation (scripts to process files into some other form), or maybe some open-source application (perhaps console-based or web-based) that is built to aid in this kind of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3551" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-04-24T20:02:53.837" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T14:18:07.547" Title="How do I organize a massive collection of personal files and writing? " Tags="|organization|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5485" CreationDate="2012-04-24T20:14:31.830" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;the world is quite rich with events&quot;--&gt;Are these events related to one another? If you have an enormous series of unrelated events, you need to work on stringing them together. Find ways to make them relate, or change them entirely until they do. Possibly George Lucas started off with something like--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;A spaceship the size of a moon vs. a fleet of little ships!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Dark overlord fighting hero with light swords!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Young boy finds robot with secret message that draws him into something bigger than himself!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then he thought to himself...man, these have nothing to do with each other at all. What do I do? And then he realized-- wait! What if the young boy who finds the message eventually &lt;em&gt;becomes&lt;/em&gt; the hero who fights the dark lord with a light sword? Hey, now I have to have a scene where he finds a light sword! Idea! And a scene or three where he learns to use it.  This could be good. Then...hmm...what about the space ships....well...I suppose I'll figure that part out later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;^But you see where I'm going with this? Finds ways to tie them together. If you hit the problem of &quot;this event was about &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; character and &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; event was about &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; character and they have nothing to do with each other!&quot;, then &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; them have something to do with each other. Make the characters run into one another and conveniently become entangled by the overlap of their separate purposes. Just the way Han Solo is a convenient &quot;ride&quot; for Obi-Wan and Luke before he becomes a main character. Up until then, he was just a guy in a bar avoiding a bounty. And later, that comes back as an extended sequence in Jabba's palace. And the people he once gave a ride to, come back to save him!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take all these threads and make a tapestry!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T20:14:31.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5486" CreationDate="2012-04-24T22:49:56.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me roll up the sleeves and plug &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OneNote&lt;/a&gt; again. I swear, I don't get a commission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You're looking for some app that'll help you organize bits of info spread across, and mixed up in, thousands of files -- OneNote does that. Of course, it can't know what any given line of text in any given file means to you; it doesn't help you parse those files. What it does give you is a &lt;em&gt;destination&lt;/em&gt; for all of those bits of info as you go through and sort everything out (meaning copy/pasting out of the files and into the appropriate spot in a OneNote notebook). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it as an electronic notebook. You can make any given number of notebooks (displayed down the left side; unless you explicitly close one it stays open and is there every time you launch the program), each with any given number of sections (tabbed across the top), each which contain any given number of pages (vertical tabbed down the right side). You can put whatever you want in each page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you might have one notebook called &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Letters&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, where you put all those old unsent letters. Each friend's name could be a section, and each unsent letter to them, or even just ideas of what you want to write them, could go in the section pages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For class notes, you could have a &lt;strong&gt;notebook per class&lt;/strong&gt;. Each section could be a topic covered, or you could do it chronologically and make each section a week. Whatever works best for you. For those classes where you have only a few notes, you could make an &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Other Classes&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; notebook, and make each section one of those classes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have notebooks for your &lt;strong&gt;Random Ideas&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Statements&lt;/strong&gt; (do you mean quotes by that?), and so on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all there is to it. The end result is, once you've gone through those notes once, you can discard those thousands of files and have one spot to go to where all of these things are easy to find, easy to see (not buried where you forget it), and easy to add to in an organized way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OneNote is a really simple idea, but a tremendously useful one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;List of some more features, that may/may not be useful for this question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Where it really shines is in all the details. for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put your cursor anywhere and start typing. That's where your text appears.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you copy/paste anything into it, it'll put a little subscript under what you pasted with a link back to the source. If you copied from a web page, it'll link to that page. If you copy pasted from a file on you computer, it'll link with the path to that file&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you drag and drop a document into it, it gives you three options: a) take that document's text and paste it there, b) make an icon there linked to that document, or c) make an icon but imbed the document into the OneNote behind the scenes so it's always available in that OneNote&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Screen clipping - push a button, OneNote disappears, and you can click-drag to capture whatever is showing on whatever part of your screen. Let up, and OneNote reappears, with that screen clipping inserted wherever your cursor was. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;voice &amp;amp; video recording. Push a button, click record, and start talking. When you click stop it drops that recording in mp3 wherever your cursor was. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search, including searching for text within images -- like on a picture of a sign&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;various flags, including to-do checkoff flags. I've heard that that can play nice with your outlook tasks too&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaboration - You can share a OneNote notebook on a network share. Others can access and use it too, and OneNote keeps it all synchronized between everyone using it. It does a pretty good job of it too. While in this case the main notebook lives on that network share, it'll also keep a local copy, so you can work on it offline. It'll sync as soon as it can. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skydrive - same as above, but instead of on a network share, it's in MS's cloud service Skydrive. You get that for free with a live (hotmail) account. Then it's available and sharable anywhere in the world, plus you can open it in a browser in a web version of OneNote (incidentally, you don't have to own OneNote to do that)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And on and on. It just gets out of your way and works the way your mind thinks it will. &lt;strong&gt;It's perfect to manage all those notes you've got.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastEditorUserId="3080" LastEditDate="2012-04-28T07:42:50.160" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T07:42:50.160" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5485" CreationDate="2012-04-24T23:59:31.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write in a similar vein, and sometimes face the same problem. However, there are some simple ways to create story out of setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely your setting has some history, and the history of your world must contain some important moments of change: the invasion of Lai Harai by the Beetle-Men, the collapse of the Trondarian Empire, the rise of Lothor the Robber-King, and the voyage of Kymlyt, the first man to sail through the Dragon's Teeth. Find an event which is interesting and consequential for your &lt;em&gt;world&lt;/em&gt;, and use that as a starting point to your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will probably not be enough, though, as building a story around &quot;world history&quot; type of events will often result in a stale, cliche story, since these sorts of things have been told lots before. But you said that you have &lt;em&gt;characters&lt;/em&gt;, you can come up with interesting stories by considering the way that your characters' lives intersect with the world history. You could write a story about the heroic general who defends Lai Harai from the Beetle-Men... or you could write about an ordinary man who is just trying to save his family from the encroaching monsters. Both stories could be very good, but the first one has been done much more and may be more difficult to make fresh and interesting. You can do the same thing with almost any other situation that presents itself in your world and its history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may require you to go back in time, so to speak, with the setting for your story. In my fantasy world, the time which I think of as the &quot;present&quot; is not a time of significant change, and so it presents relatively fewer opportunities for stories. However, I have thousands of years of history mapped out, and when I sit down to write stories I find that I usually mine those &quot;historical&quot; events for settings and character situations, rather than trying to write in the &quot;present&quot;. This may work for you as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T23:59:31.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5485" CreationDate="2012-04-25T01:09:49.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creating a world with a rich, full tapestry of history and character can be a wonderful place to set a story, or a series of stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the first thing to do is to make sure that you in fact have a rich, full world. Make sure there is a system of government and economics in place. Define the factions that compete for power and control and define their motivations and justifications and alliances. Make sure there is a complete and full history and examine the events and influences that link those historic events. If there is a supernatural force that governs this world (magic, space travel, etc.) make sure you understand how and why it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know that you have a complete world with all the little rules in place then you can start exploring those tales. Take one story that you find interesting and start asking questions. If you've already established the history you will already know the &quot;when&quot; and where&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to start with the &quot;who&quot;. Define your protagonist. Why him? Why is he special? Why not someone else? Does he need training? Who trains him? Does he do this thing alone? Who helps them? Who stands in the way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the &quot;what&quot;. What is going on. Why here? Why now? What events led to this event before the story started. Is this a journey? Is this a series of adventures? Is there a monster to be slain, a princess to rescue, an evil to banish forever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a few characters. Give them memories. Give them history. Give them relationships. Make them complex. Pretty soon you'll find out that your characters will start to weave their own tapestries and you're just telling their stories for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T01:09:49.503" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5491" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5494" CreationDate="2012-04-25T09:56:41.810" Score="4" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am designing a writing contest for 13 and 14-year old EFL students. The students have very limited experience with creative writing and I will not have any time to give them practice on brainstorming, so I need to define the contest's theme very carefully. I hope each entrant can write an simple fictional story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some ideas for methods of framing the theme, but have limited experience with this, so I am not sure how well they work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give a key word or phrase, e.g., “Treasure Hunt.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a starting sentence to begin every story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a picture, which should form the basis for the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any of these, or other methods, work particularly well? If the theme is not narrowly defined, will this increase problems with writers block?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T12:23:52.153" Title="What are some good methods for framing the theme of a writing contest?" Tags="|children|contests|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5492" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5496" CreationDate="2012-04-25T10:14:49.480" Score="5" ViewCount="3171" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where can I search for words using descriptive sentences? For example, now I'm looking for a word meaning &quot;to purify (by hand) a quantity of grain and take away anything that isn't good grain.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could I get words like that? I know it in my first-language, but I don't have a classic version of it to use in automatic translators. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe a search engine that uses content words from my description and offers words that could mean the same with their dictionary definitions. Nothing I'd tried in (translate.)google.com gave me the desired result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example dictionary that I use is &lt;em&gt;(Oxford's Word-Power Dictionary).&lt;/em&gt; It's not for the purpose of the question but for clarification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oxford's has a 3,000 word list of 'bare-bone-essentials.' It contains the most-used words in English and all of the grammatical operators. Ideally, these are the words necessary for a learner to use an English-English dictionary such as Oxford's. The descriptions of words in Oxford's rely on this list for definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An electronic (web-based) dictionary for word-meaning-search should have a larger list (maybe 10,000) and use a thesaurus to &lt;em&gt;down-level&lt;/em&gt; difficult words a user may use in the search then, using all content words in the search phrase, present a list of words whose definitions seem appropriate. Another regular dictionary may be used from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Search query:&lt;/em&gt; &quot;to use hands to purify a quantity of grain taking away anything that isn't good grain.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Content Words:&lt;/em&gt; &quot;use-hands; purify; quantity-of-grain; taking-away; anything; isn't; good-grain&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Filtered:&lt;/em&gt; &quot;use-hands; clean; quantity-of-seeds; take-away;anything; not-good-grain&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Words:&lt;/em&gt; &quot;1; 2; 3; 4&quot;  that use the content words to varying degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's a five minutes' work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. Sorry about the delay; connection problems...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2012-04-25T19:44:44.080" LastActivityDate="2019-08-30T12:51:14.207" Title="How can I search for words by meaning/definition?" Tags="|resources|software|word-choice|dictionary|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5492" CreationDate="2012-04-25T10:16:27.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a phrase in English, not a word: &quot;Separating the wheat from the chaff.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T10:16:27.663" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5491" CreationDate="2012-04-25T12:23:52.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are on the right track. Your topic sounds promising, giving a starting sentence and a picture should help inexperienced (teenage) writers to start writing at least something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to avoid writers block, you should give them a little choice (not too much, because that blocking again).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you give them three different topics, or three different pictures, then they may be blocked, because they cannot decide. So leave it with one topic/one picture, but tell them they do not need to use that, they can make up something for themselves if they want. (If they are free to choose another topic than you have no good base to compare the stories. I do not know if that is important for you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the starting sentence says nothing to them, let them be free to use a different one. If the picture is plain ugly to them, they could find it problematic to come up with a good story. Tell them explicitly, that they can choose something different, because they will take it as an instruction and not an assistance if you do not make it certain that they have a choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people (especially teenagers) do not want to be exposed, so if reading the story to the other members is part of your contest, it should be voluntarily. Some could decide it's easier to not write something at all instead of being ridiculed for rubbish afterward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T12:23:52.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5485" CreationDate="2012-04-25T12:36:58.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you have discovered, creating a world is one of the least important things in writing a book. As Holly Lisle has written (though I can't find the source now), this is a mistake new authors often make. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't worry, all hope is not yet lost. :) Here's what to do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a main character, and give him a big challenge. Give him/her something they must have, and then put the most powerful force in the world against them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You must also create a few more other important characters, with their own struggles, as I have found it is hard to write a novel length book with just one main character.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a list of 20-30 scenes, in each of which of the main characters tries to get what they want, while facing some hurdle. All the while, the story must still be moving forward.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start writing. Only bring in the details of your world as and when needed. The readers don't care about the world, they only care about the story. But don't worry, your work hasn't been wasted, as you can use the world in other books. Terry Pratchett has been using his world for more than, what 30-40?, books now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key thing is to start writing, it doesn't matter what. If you have a book, no matter how rough, you can revise it, fix it, have others review it. If all you have is some notes, you can do nothing but fret. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T12:36:58.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5492" CreationDate="2012-04-25T15:47:30.357" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OneLook Reverse Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; work for this? You still need to winnow down your search phrase, but it might work. (Information from &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/a/12973/161&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, good ol' Google will sometimes do this as well; just type in &quot;word that means&quot; and the rest of a short phrase. For example, here's the search phrase &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/#hl=en&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;sclient=psy-ab&amp;amp;q=word+that+means+separating+wheat+from+chaff&amp;amp;oq=word+that+means+separating+wheat+from+chaff&amp;amp;aq=f&amp;amp;aqi=&amp;amp;aql=&amp;amp;gs_nf=1&amp;amp;gs_l=hp.3...7933.9629.3.10019.16.16.0.0.0.4.128.1321.13j3.16.0.LCEFYqFN6SM&amp;amp;pbx=1&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&amp;amp;fp=8c09eaea2875d914&amp;amp;biw=1276&amp;amp;bih=683&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Word that means separating wheat from chaff&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. The first search result is &quot;winnow&quot;, which may or may not be the word you're looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T15:47:30.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5064" CreationDate="2012-04-25T16:07:08.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The disconnection you point to is vital to the initial volume of the trilogy. The Hunger Games are a satirical device, the oppressive Panem actually come from the desire to frame a story around a satirical look at reality television Collins says as much in the interview printed in the tail of volume one in the edition I have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does leave a problem when we go from satirical statement to epic adventure. As the story continues the wheels start to come off the premise in various ways. The core of the story is rotten because it really doesn't make any sense. The key clue to this is that Snow's only tactic is to manipulate the Games, he has no other military plan to contain unrest in the districts. The actual concept of the games is riddled with problems if you think about them too hard. The plan was originally that at the outset the holes would be covered by the presumed virtue of the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Collins has some really nice characterization going off, and knows how to craft symbols and dramatic moments. It's a testament to her skills that many of these symbols, moments and characters remain engaging and resonant even when it is obvious that the main story is rather silly. As the epic winds to its conclusion the Hunger Games become more of a problem to the new, weaker story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always find it interesting when an author sub-consciously rejects the set up of their story by choosing to kill almost everyone at the very end of the story. I could be wrong but I always think that such an action expresses a dissatisfaction the author has with the shortcomings of their own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dramatically the oppression of the Districts exists to serve the Hunger Games, that is why the Capitol has a very limited play book when proper unrest comes out of their key initiative for oppression and control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All it really would have taken to strengthen the story would be to evolve and consider the Capitol as if it really existed, instead of as a large piece of set decoration surrounding the Games. If the Capitol had been fleshed out to be far more insidious and evil it would have given more liberation for the Games to be the fostering ground of a revolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Games were like a special event in among a calendar of &quot;Circuses&quot; (as in Bread and Circuses) the whole televised game industry could be seen as the bedrock of Panem's aspirational society. Gladiatorial combat for adults a la Death Race and Gamer could be seen as the way out of the life of a drudge. The kick back is that people in the Districts could be against the Hunger Games but for the Games in general, allowing the question of how far is too far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this makes the satire far deeper and more complex in turn and is far harder to stage manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't be fooled. All things in the books exist to fuel some form of organised combat in books one and two the pantomimic President Snow is the manipulator and the combat is in the form of the arena ritual, in the final volume President Coin is the manipulator and the combat is a real warzone. Only the capitol's &quot;pods&quot; exist to inject that grim gallows jollity that leads Katniss to explicitly dub the climactic military mission as just another stage in the Hunger Games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of it particularly holds up to close examination purely because the Games have far more weight than the oppressive ruling class strand. If they were held in an equilbrium of attention and story weight it would have dramatically altered the character of the story and made the whole thing more robust and less prey to the weaknesses described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T16:07:08.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5499" CreationDate="2012-04-26T09:08:58.607" Score="11" ViewCount="22796" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sexuality is a large part of who we are as persons and it influences many decisions we make.&#xA;Sadly, I don't know how to make a romance subplot believable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any good guidelines to creating characters' love-story arcs? Any good articles about it? What are some common pitfalls to look out for? Are there any good analyses of good and bad romance stories in recent pop culture? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I make a romance believable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3552" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-04-26T17:26:24.767" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T02:52:34.743" Title="How do I write a believable romance subplot?" Tags="|character-development|romance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5498" CreationDate="2012-04-26T11:18:34.763" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the romance is indeed a *sub*plot, keep it that way. Don't let it take over and become a central plot thread, which is easy to do. It should complement the story, not distract from it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think romantic dialogue is the easiest place to accidentally cliche yourself up a wall by getting too serious. &quot;Never let go!&quot; Don't do it. As I said, for a subplot, romance is the easiest thing to let become more serious than it should be. I'll use my favorite example -- Star Wars. Han Solo and Princess Leia have that romantic thing going on for three movies, and how does it manifest itself? As deep and significant proclamations of desire and affection? Hell no, it manifests as constant bickering. They can't keep off each other's backs, and it makes for awesome and oftentimes hilarious dialogue. All the while becoming used to one another and learning to rely on each other. That's not to say everyone argues all the time, but real romance is never like Romeo and Juliet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think the real key, the most important thing, is &lt;em&gt;knowing your characters&lt;/em&gt;. Don't try to have Billy fall for Leona until you know what it is about Leona that attracts him, and how he would go about trying to pursue her, if indeed he has the courage to do so in the first place. If you don't know Billy, how can you know what he would do in a romantic situation? You can't create a living, breathing relationship before you have two living, breathing people to experience it. Carefully and thoroughly build your characters before placing them in a situation. This goes for all of narrative writing, not just romance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is largely a rephrasing of the last bullet, but it may add a little more depth to it. Remember-- people have reasons and motivations for everything they think and do, and also for the way they perceive things. If Jo-Lee becomes upset with Daniel and won't answer his texts, it's not a random thing, and it's not because of something stupid and contrived. She has a serious reason, or at least a reason that seems very serious to her. The reader needs to see things through the character's eyes. We need to sympathize. Make us understand why your characters are romantically involved, and why their romance is going the way it is, for better or for worse.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it'll seem like you did it badly, but really it wasn't the content-- it was the writing itself. Sometimes you'll have the right idea but just write it badly so that it doesn't come across well.  Be careful to differentiate. It might be a good idea to take something that seems shallow and just rewrite it. Same events, different phrasing. Make sure you know where the problem really lies. The best way to identify this is if everything seems to make perfect sense to you. Thanks to this cause, there was this effect, and so on. Perfect sense, but it still reads stupidly. What am I doing wrong? Rewrite it. Maybe tweak it a little, polish, but keep the essence. Go to great lengths to make the sequence of interactions between the two (three? four?) characters as realistic as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another very important point is to remember is that perception is a thing that grows and changes with experience, particularly with respect to the way you view another person. Let me be more clear. Speaking from personal experience, the two girls I've been closest to in my life, I had classes with for 1-2 years each without even noticing them. One of them was assigned as my lab partner &lt;em&gt;twice&lt;/em&gt; and I still found her boring and pretty much disregarded her. A year later she came to my room one night on a whim and we stayed up til 4am talking, and out of nowhere we soon each became one of the other's closest friends. Separately, another girl who I met and liked right off the bat, after spending time with for two months, we realized we had almost nothing in common and mostly stopped talking to one another. This goes for friendships, coworkers, acquaintances-- every sort of relationship, and especially romantic ones. The way two people see one another changes over time. This is one of the most important elements of realism with regard to writing relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2012-04-29T02:52:34.743" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T02:52:34.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5498" CreationDate="2012-04-26T12:05:42.507" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a great article by Mette Ivie Harrison: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&amp;amp;vol=mette_ivie_harrison&amp;amp;article=029&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How To Write Romance (in Fantasy)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, published in OSC's Intergalactic Medicine Show. I think it's particularly appropriate to your question because it focuses on romances as subplots, romance combined with other elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harrison starts out by rejecting &quot;category romance&quot; and obiquitous mishandlings of fictional romance. She has many valuable suggestions, but at the core, she suggests that a compelling romance should have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Characters who, while they may have deep flaws, are also deeply good (because romance relies on the characters being sympathetic to the reader).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Characters who have a unique need for each other - but not dependence. Each one elevates the other in some (possibly unexpected) way; that drives home the romance. But if one character can't live or function without the other, the relationship becomes a pathetic one which doesn't gain a reader's respect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of plot, she suggests these elements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An external obstacle - the major thing keeping the two characters apart. She writes: &lt;code&gt;As a writer, you should set up the world at the beginning that would make it difficult for the two characters to fall in love and get married. Then the rest of the novel is playing this out, and you as a writer have to figure out the way out of the pit along with the characters and the reader.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having the main characters make mistakes; this is the stuff of drama and tragedy, which gives weight to your characters and story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sacrifice, similarly, is the classic way to portray monumental choices and character development. It's a great capstone to a story, cementing life choices in a focused dramatic decision. Harrison writes: &lt;code&gt;I think this sacrifice needs to be on both sides for me to love the romance. If the sacrifice is unequal, I always end up wondering if in a couple of months, one of the couple will decide it wasn't worth it, after all.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entire article is well worth reading. (She uses many examples from &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice&lt;/em&gt;, which is even more well worth reading.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T12:05:42.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5502" CreationDate="2011-09-19T15:49:18.257" Score="12" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why is it standard for a book's notes to be placed at the very end of the book—book endnotes—while only a small minority of books place each chapter's notes at the end of each respective chapter—chapter endnotes?  Least common of all is the placement of notes at the bottom of each relevant page—footnotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me the closer to the actual reference a note is, the more convenient to the reader.  Yet from my experience authors (publishers?) almost always place them at the end of the entire book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a reason for this practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3585" OwnerDisplayName="Adam Rackis" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-04-26T22:21:10.927" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T18:02:08.273" Title="Notes Placement" Tags="|style|publishing|notes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5501" CreationDate="2011-09-20T05:14:06.547" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contains informed speculation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The choice between footnotes and endnotes (chapter/book) is primarily a stylistic issue and different people have different preferences. You find many discussions on the internet debating the merits of either such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.goodwithwords.com/2006/06/footnotes-versus-endnotes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2007/footnotes-vs-endnotes-the-debate/#comments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. In my opinion there is &lt;strong&gt;no universal standard&lt;/strong&gt; and different style guides have different recommendations or leave the choice up to the author. &lt;a href=&quot;http://history.nasa.gov/footnoteguide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NASA prefers footnotes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally prefer footnotes compared to chapter endnotes or book endnotes for ease of reference — I don't have to leave the current page to follow the reference. If footnotes aren't allowed I prefer chapter endnotes. I don't understand the point of book endnotes — why does the author want me to turn all the way to the back of the book to read some parenthetical comment (especially when the book endnotes are separated by chapter)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will mostly see footnotes in scholarly papers, especially in the humanities and law. In my experience I have not seen any footnotes or endnotes in scientific papers; they mostly contain references/bibliography (comprising of the earlier sources referred to in the main text) at the end of the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of law books (casebooks, treatises) these do contain footnotes. As for chapter endnotes vs book endnotes it could be a stylistic choice of the author or the house style of the publisher, or if an academic book the style of choice in that field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the discrepancy in books which use chapter endnotes vis-a-vis books which use book endnotes that could be because the Chicago Manual of Style recommends book endnotes over chapter endnotes. The Chicago Manual of Style is also the most widely used in non-journalistic professional writing (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Style_guide&amp;amp;oldid=450252318&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;according to the Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the subject of endnote placement the Chicago Manual of Style states (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/ch14/ch14_sec041.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chapter 14, § 41&lt;/a&gt;, hidden behind a 30-day free trial):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Endnotes to each chapter of a book are often best grouped in the end matter, following the text and any appendixes and preceding the bibliography if there is one ... In a book that has a different author for each chapter, or whose chapters may be published separately, endnotes normally appear at the end of each chapter.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And why are the endnotes to each chapter often best grouped in the end? Because that is how books have been traditionally organized. From the Chicago Manual of Style (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/ch01/ch01_sec004.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chapter 1, § 4&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Books are traditionally organized into three major divisions: the front matter (also called preliminary matter, or prelims), the text, and the back matter (or end matter). ...  The text proper comprises the narrative—including arguments, data, illustrations, and so forth—often divided into chapters and other meaningful sections. The back matter presents sources or source notes, appendixes, and other types of documentation supporting the text but outside its central focus or narrative.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And why have books been traditionally organized this way? I have no idea (yet). Maybe because the text and endnotes are usually in different type (size, font) it was easier to segregate them in the olden days when metal plates were used and was therefore cheaper? That would definitely be the case with footnotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And why the footnote hate? Once again the Chicago Manual of Style (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/ch14/ch14_sec039.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chapter 14, § 39&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;The limiting factor in printed works is page makeup—it can be difficult or impossible to fit a close succession of long footnotes onto the pages they pertain to, especially in an illustrated work (a basic requirement for all footnotes is that they at least begin on the page on which they are referenced). There is also the matter of appearance; a page consisting almost exclusively of footnotes is daunting.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The 30-day free trial to the Chicago Manual of Style needs only a working e-mail address)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of book with book endnote: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0309085497&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prime Obsession&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of book with chapter endnote: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0521879280&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Against Intellectual Monopoly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="tolkienfan" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T18:02:08.273" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T18:02:08.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5503" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5505" CreationDate="2011-10-17T20:17:10.580" Score="11" ViewCount="2990" Body="&lt;p&gt;I buy quite a lot of literature, mostly of academic nature. One thing I have noticed is that books by American authors always tend to be more explicit and contain more examples, regarding whatever subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have heard a rumor that American authors get paid by the word/page; hence the massive size of the books. Is this true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2749" OwnerDisplayName="Anders" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-04-28T21:39:43.687" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T17:49:01.730" Title="Is being paid by the word/page making American books longer?" Tags="|publishing|money|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5503" CreationDate="2011-10-18T14:08:20.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I honeslty don't know if this has any one answer, because I'm sure different publishing houses and different authors with different contracts get paid differently.  From what I recall back in the day authors were probably paid by the page (or whatever quantity) because there was a push for quantity, not quality.  Now-a-days I believe authors get paid depending on how well the book sells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3559" OwnerDisplayName="DForck42" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T14:08:20.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5503" CreationDate="2011-10-18T16:28:55.350" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writers being paid 'by the word' is kind of a misnomer.  Many writers are paid more for longer pieces - reflecting the author's investment - but writers are never paid to pad or extend their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The confusion seems to be mostly relevant to journalism, where word count is important because space in a magazine or newspaper is literally limited.  When an author is told she will make $250 on a 1,000 word article, one might say that she's being paid 25&amp;cent; per word, but she won't make an extra $25 for turning in a 1,100 word article.  In fact, her piece could even be rejected if she misses the word count.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://adam-williams.suite101.com/what-freelance-writing-pays-a56799&quot;&gt;How Freelance Journalism Pays&lt;/a&gt; for more details.  (Incidentally, this confusion is responsible for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dickens.ucsc.edu/faq/bytheword.html&quot;&gt;myth&lt;/a&gt; that Dickens was paid by the word.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to books (including tech books), authors are paid with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royalties#Book_publishing_royalties&quot;&gt;royalty system&lt;/a&gt;.  It works like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An author pitches a book to a publisher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The publisher and author agree on an &lt;em&gt;advance&lt;/em&gt; payment to the author that will ensure the book will be completed.  The amount of the advance is related to the time and investment required on the author's part, and the expected return once the book hits shelves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The book is published (hopefully).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For every book sold, call a (small) portion of the sale price a 'royalty'.  Initially, these royalties go to the publisher to refund the advance paid to the author in step 2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once the advance has been paid back, the author herself receives any remaining royalties for the life of her contract with the publisher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be obvious that this system yields better books than any kind of pay-for-quantity system.  I would be hard-pressed to believe that authors have &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; been paid for the quantity of their writing, except in the sense described above.  To hear more about the royalty system in use today, here are some articles by recent tech book authors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macresearch.org/realities-writing-technical-books&quot;&gt;The Realities of Writing Technical Books&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/articles/technical-writing.shtml#was-it-worth-it&quot;&gt;Writing a Technical Book&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fasterj.com/articles/bookwriting.shtml&quot;&gt;Writing A Technical Book: Is It Worthwhile?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(All of this stuff applies equally well to non-tech books, too.  If you're interested in the nitty-gritty, &lt;a href=&quot;http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/03/ebooks-and-self-publishing-dialog.html&quot;&gt;a conversation about self-publishing&lt;/a&gt; between Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler - who recently turned down a $500,000 advance - makes for pretty fun reading.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1697" OwnerDisplayName="ladenedge" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T16:28:55.350" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5507" CreationDate="2012-03-11T13:09:31.540" Score="3" ViewCount="3893" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a term in literary criticism for a character who espouses the points of view of the author? Especially, but not necessarily, if that character has no other role in the work. (This is different from a &quot;Mary Sue&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3557" OwnerDisplayName="DVK" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-04-26T22:23:52.153" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T22:23:52.153" Title="Literary criticism term for character espousing author's ideas?" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5506" CreationDate="2012-03-12T08:54:30.540" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=noTRMjASamEC&amp;amp;pg=PA98&amp;amp;lpg=PA98&amp;amp;dq=literary%20terms%20mouthpiece&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=L4ZEqKXVyO&amp;amp;sig=rG5P9InCyvDRbSisOOmZzOCW8_A&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=TL5dT9DzK5OA8gPj7JiFDw&amp;amp;ved=0CEYQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mouthpiece&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is a person who speaks on behalf of another person, often used in a derogatory fashion.  John Galt, for instance, who monologues on the subject at extreme length could be considered a mouthpiece for Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also the possibly less apt &lt;em&gt;raisonneur&lt;/em&gt;, which Lewis Turco defines as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a &quot;chorus character,&quot; one who performs the function of a Greek chorus in that he or she comments on the action of play, sometimes speaking as a &lt;em&gt;surrogate&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;em&gt;stand-in&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;mouthpiece&lt;/em&gt;) for the author and acting like the omniscient or ironicalnarrator of a Victorian novel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which also gives &lt;em&gt;surrogate&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;stand-in&lt;/em&gt; as alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2152" OwnerDisplayName="Ben Williams" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T09:21:04.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5512" CreationDate="2011-08-09T21:29:04.013" Score="35" ViewCount="21424" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I've noticed while browsing bookstores is that hardcover books tend to cost more than softcover ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oftentimes a hardcover book that's five times the price of a paperback doesn't have five times the mass of one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it the manufacturing technique that creates this price difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do hardcover books retail for multiple times the amount of softcover books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2349" OwnerDisplayName="Kalamane" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2012-04-28T09:40:39.567" LastActivityDate="2022-06-08T13:03:11.613" Title="Why do hardcover books retail for more than three times the cost of softcover books?" Tags="|publishing|book|marketing|money|printing|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5508" CreationDate="2011-08-09T21:30:48.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would imagine because they're bigger, heavier, of higher quality, etc.&#xA;edit: i stated this because production costs would be higher, the shipping/transportation costs are higher, the storage and shelving cost is higher.  also hard backs seem, to me, to last longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3559" OwnerDisplayName="DForck42" LastActivityDate="2011-08-09T23:58:43.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5508" CreationDate="2011-08-09T21:35:20.740" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because the hardcover books come out sooner than the paperback books.  It's like the difference between a movie being released in the theaters and coming out on DVD.  In both cases, you pay to get it early.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though hardcover books &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; of higher quality, I doubt the manufacturing costs play a significant role in the price difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36204" OwnerDisplayName="Kirk Woll" LastActivityDate="2011-08-09T21:35:20.740" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5508" CreationDate="2011-08-10T00:20:07.500" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the other answers, there's also a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;price discrimination&lt;/a&gt; component.  A product is optimally priced at the intersection of its supply and demand curves, but of course, there are always people who are willing to pay more than the market price.  People who are willing to pay more are often offered nicer products that give them the excuse to spend the extra money.  The book market is no exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Lev Reyzin" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-06-08T13:03:11.613" LastActivityDate="2022-06-08T13:03:11.613" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5508" CreationDate="2011-08-10T01:27:34.553" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120113092008/http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-costs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Breakdown of book costs&lt;/a&gt; shows an example of the costs involved in making a hardcover book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on a list price of $27.95&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$3.55 - Pre-preduction - This amount covers editors, graphic&#xA;designers, and the like&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;$2.83 - Printing - Ink, glue, paper, etc&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;$2.00 - Marketing - Book tour, NYT Book Review ad, printing and shipping&#xA;galleys to journalists&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;$2.80 - Wholesaler - The take of the middlemen&#xA;who handle distribution for publishers&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;$4.19 - Author Royalties - A&#xA;bestseller like Grisham will net about 15% in royalties, lesser known&#xA;authors get less.  Also the author will be paying a slice of this pie&#xA;piece to his agent, publicist, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leaves $12.58, Money magazine calls this the profit margin for the retailer, however when was the last time you saw a bestselling novel sold at its cover price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110510122545/http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2002/12/03/prices/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Salon.com&lt;/a&gt; also has an interesting post on what makes books cost as much as they do. According to that article, the physical cost of the book comes from the quality of paper, the printing, and the binding. That accounts for about 20% of the book's final price. The rest covers the publisher's other costs (editing staff, promotions, etc.), distribution costs, and booksellers' profit. The author also gets a cut — typically around 10% or 15% of the price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other considerations in book pricing, but they seem to have more to do with how the bookselling industry works than with the book format, so I'm omitting them here. The Salon article goes into more details, though, and there is also some interesting information &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20050221200753/http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/004141.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;from the desk of Jane Galt&lt;/a&gt; about hardcover pricing if you look past the political bent of some of the comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wasn't able to find a detailed breakdown of the costs involved in making a paperback, so I looked at &lt;a href=&quot;https://lulu.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;lulu.com&lt;/a&gt; — a self-publishing service — to get a ballpark figure. I ran their manufacturing price calculator on roughly the same parameters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a paperback, I used 100 pages of standard paper, black &amp;amp; white printing, US Trade size (6&amp;quot; x 9&amp;quot;), bound with the &amp;quot;perfect bound&amp;quot; binding. The manufacturing cost on that came out to US $6.50 per book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a hardcover, I used the same parameters except for binding. With casewrap binding, the cost was US $15 per book and including a dust jacket bumped that up to US $16.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems to me that if we assume that marketing and distribution costs are roughly the same for all types of books, the production costs would account for a good part of the price discrepancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3136" OwnerDisplayName="Anna Lear" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-06-08T13:02:44.567" LastActivityDate="2022-06-08T13:02:44.567" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5508" CreationDate="2011-08-10T05:49:43.657" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since many books are written based on an advance to the author from the publisher, I imagine there's also a component of them trying to regain that advance earlier in the sales cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="87" OwnerDisplayName="TML" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T05:49:43.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5508" CreationDate="2011-08-25T13:36:52.500" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My take on this is &quot;because they can&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hardcover books are pain to carry and it annoys me that hardcover books are always published first and that softcover books are published 6 months to a year later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example Unseen Academicals by Sir Terry Pratchett&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hardcover cost £10.99 released 1 Oct 2009&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mass Market Paperback cost £5 released 10 Jun 2010&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think publishers do this to maximise the return on a book and increase the shelf life of a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="TheMoo" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T22:06:31.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5516" CreationDate="2011-08-12T17:30:02.490" Score="10" ViewCount="179" Body="&lt;p&gt;eBooks and eReaders are still relatively new, but they've had a major impact on literature.  What impact has eBooks and eReaders had on the production of literature (specifically books)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3559" OwnerDisplayName="DForck42" LastEditorUserId="3857" LastEditDate="2015-01-21T16:19:43.640" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T20:49:43.410" Title="What effect on literature has the introduction of eBooks and eReaders had?" Tags="|ebook|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5515" CreationDate="2011-08-12T18:49:05.433" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are quite a few ways to approach and answer this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ebooks and e-readers are still relatively new, but have shown already that there's a future for them. Even stronger, they're already passing sales of &lt;a href=&quot;http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/amazon-sells-more-ebooks-than-paperbacks-and-more-kindles-than-harry-potters-50002424/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;regular books&lt;/a&gt;. There are several reasons for this, some of them are: easier to pack several books with you for a trip, ebooks are quite often cheaper or sometimes even free *, they can be read on several devices (phone, pc, e-reader, iPad, ...), ...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Production costs are much lower for an ebook. Most work to get to the ebook is already done as part of the preparation of printing on real paper. So nowadays there's no reason to go for a printed version and ignore the ebook version.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some claim that ebooks are greener, because no trees have to be cut. But what about the production and energy costs of e-readers, or your pc? If you want to know more about which is greener, go read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Authors can release a book much easier. It also gives people the chance to release a paper, a collection of (quality) blog posts, some poems, ... to the wide public. Ebooks don't have to be 300+ pages to be of high quality and useful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's still to early to say what impact they'll have on book stores and libraries, but overall they had a quite positive impact on literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;I won't go to deep in the discussion on pricing of ebooks. You can claim that some providers like Amazon are asking way to much for an ebook (sometimes even more than the printed version), but this would bring us to far off topic.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3583" OwnerDisplayName="Bart" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T18:49:05.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5515" CreationDate="2011-08-12T18:53:29.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I read a lot more of what I would term &quot;Literature&quot; than I ever used to, simply because large chunks of it are in the public domain. Given the amount I read, &quot;free&quot; is a powerful motivator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I absolutely refuse to pay for ebooks. I work in the publishing industry, and the claims that the costs of the physical product being equal or nearly equal to the cost of the digital product are a sick joke (The e-edition is basically what they send to the printer, so that work has to be done for &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; products. The printing and distribution have a massive cost associated, and it keeps going higher due to increasing costs in paper, ink, and gasoline.) Until they fix the pricing, I'm abstaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" OwnerDisplayName="Satanicpuppy" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T18:53:29.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5515" CreationDate="2011-08-16T19:18:51.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For one, it probably requires the author/editor/publisher to do layout and writing in a way that will suit different formats, besides just print. Images don't always work well on a reader (such as the Kobo) due to size or colour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing with electronic formats in mind enables preview versions of the material, since electronic output is easier to create and distribute than print. Unfortunately, pricing does not always reflect this - sometimes ebooks cost more than their print counterparts!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the whole, I think ebooks and ereaders make literature more accessible, due to the portability and the ease of finding new things to read. It also makes publishing more accessible since it's possible to output just electronic books without a print version, reducing costs and processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Grant Palin" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T19:18:51.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5519" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-16T09:35:58.103" Score="14" ViewCount="1502" Body="&lt;p&gt;The background to my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always assumed that authors choose their titles, because I consider them an important part of the book, but then I read interviews with some authors who had a fight with their publishers on this subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a book's title generally the publisher's decision or the author's?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2630" OwnerDisplayName="Phira" LastEditorUserId="5689" LastEditDate="2015-07-11T05:21:00.123" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T05:21:00.123" Title="How much influence do authors have on the titles of their books?" Tags="|titles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5519" CreationDate="2011-08-16T12:03:41.243" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;After the author writes the book, he submits it to the publisher, who then suggests edits all over the book, which the publisher believes will improve the book. Thus, it's really the author's choice, but the publisher can be insistent. Such suggested edits can be done to the title, or just parts of the entire work itself. It's still the author's decision, but the publisher can decide not to publish the work, if the publisher believes that the work won't sell and be profitable. Thus, it's a kind of compromise that the author and the publisher have to work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2453" OwnerDisplayName="Cryst" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T12:03:41.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5519" CreationDate="2011-08-16T14:32:42.267" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think they actually have less say over the matter than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richard Dawkins has written quite a bit about the lack of choice authors have over their titles.  Dawkin's publisher actually refused to let him title his most recent book &quot;The Only Game in Town&quot;; he had to settle for his second choice: &quot;The Greatest Show on Earth&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's also bemoaned the practice of publishers &lt;em&gt;renaming&lt;/em&gt; books when they're republished overseas (either England to America or vice versa).  Gould's Full House is one example of this (I don't recall what the UK title was).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3585" OwnerDisplayName="Adam Rackis" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T18:49:56.677" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5519" CreationDate="2011-08-16T19:15:21.427" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The more clout you have as a writer-- the more popular your books are-- the more control you have with future books. They renamed my first book and wouldn't take no for an answer. On the other hand, I was able to veto all but three of the content changes (which were good changes, in my opinion). A title can kill a book, but it shouldn't be the reason you wrote the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2470" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T19:15:21.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5524" CreationDate="2011-08-28T22:04:28.193" Score="9" ViewCount="3036" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this term (and its variations such as &quot;conceptual poetry&quot;) used a lot to describe works such as Christian Bök's &lt;em&gt;Eunoia&lt;/em&gt;. I have a sense of what it means, but I've never seen a solid definition. Sources such as Wikipedia seem to be silent on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user608" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T11:43:03.070" Title="What exactly is &quot;Conceptual Writing?&quot;" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5523" CreationDate="2011-08-28T22:11:42.987" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's writing where the concept of the piece is more important than the form of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20110206071531/http://bombsite.powweb.com/?p=4653&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This interview&lt;/a&gt; with Kenneth Goldsmith might be enlightening. Or you can read some of &lt;a href=&quot;http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/conceptual_paragraphs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;his own writing&lt;/a&gt; on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This quote, I think, sums the movement up quite well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The best thing about conceptual poetry is that it doesn't need to be read. You don't have to read it. As a matter of fact, you can write books, and you don't even have to read them. My books, for example, are unreadable. All you need to know is the concept behind them. Here's every word I spoke for a week. Here's a year's worth of weather reports...and without ever having to read these things, you understand them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22407&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2152" OwnerDisplayName="Ben Williams" LastEditorUserId="2152" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T11:43:03.070" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T11:43:03.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5525" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-29T10:56:12.450" Score="5" ViewCount="196" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishers occasionally publish a special limited edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do they ensure that the number of pre-orders do not exceed the quantity that will be limited?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems a nightmare logistically, as anyone can pre-order a book through any book store with the correct ISBN/information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask, because two books I've pre-ordered are kind of like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Orbit is publishing a limited edition (2000 copies) of a book. How do they ensure that everyone who has pre-ordered will receive it, especially with the limited run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another publisher is letting the author sign all of the first print run, so they can say that all pre-orderes will be signed. What about if more people pre-order than the first print run can cover? (unlikely, but possible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Samuel Walker" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T21:51:14.020" Title="How do limited edition book pre-orders work?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5525" CreationDate="2011-10-29T20:55:40.527" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, each distributor is assigned a certain number of copies they are allowed to sell as preorders. After they sell their allotment, that's it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2879" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T20:55:40.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5527" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-30T17:54:40.363" Score="9" ViewCount="1794" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia, I learned that figure of speech is change of general usage of words. When it's a change of the ordinary or expected pattern of words, it is called &quot;scheme&quot;, while when it's a change of the general meaning of words, it is called &quot;tropes&quot;. I wonder how to understand &quot;change of the ordinary or expected pattern of words&quot; in &quot;scheme&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I was also wondering what relations and differences are between &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric&quot;&gt;rhetoric&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_of_speech&quot;&gt;figure of speech&lt;/a&gt;? I think rhetoric holds the same meaning as figure of speech. However, the Wikipedia articles seem to give me an impression that figure of speech is just a kind of rhetoric. If this is true, what are some kinds of rhetoric that is not figure of speech?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="438" OwnerDisplayName="Tim" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2019-08-02T08:18:41.880" LastActivityDate="2019-08-02T08:18:41.880" Title="Rhetoric vs Figure of Speech" Tags="|figures-of-speech|rhetoric|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5527" CreationDate="2011-11-02T05:38:46.643" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tropes&lt;/strong&gt; are plays on meanings of words, while &lt;strong&gt;schemes&lt;/strong&gt; have to do with structure of sentences. An &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/Schemes%20and%20Tropes.htm&quot; title=&quot;Tropes example&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is the sentence &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I work like a slave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a trope, because it is playing on the word 'slave' through simile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a scheme is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't know if I'm working my job or my job, me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It uses the scheme types antimetabole, ellipsis, personification. Again, tropes act on meaning. Schemes act on structure of sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figures&lt;/strong&gt; are a subset of Rhetoric, albeit a major subset, which is probably why you have equated the two. Nonetheless, they are different. Rhetoric is an over-arching framework for persuasive speech or writing that not only includes figures, but also includes topics like the appeals (ethos, pathos, logos), identifying the type of situation, the canons, and various other areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to use the website &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rhetoric.byu.edu/&quot; title=&quot;Silva Rhetoricae website&quot;&gt;Silva Rhetoricae&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; as well, rather than Wikipedia. It is much better than Wikipedia, and is generally seen as the &quot;go to&quot; site on the net for Rhetoric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Daniel" LastActivityDate="2012-01-02T12:13:20.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5531" CreationDate="2011-11-21T21:31:39.947" Score="4" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other day my wife, who went to quite a good school, told me that her literature teacher had taught her class abbreviations of terms which they were then asked to write in the margins of their books. HHI was one example, and stands for heavy-handed irony. I only just now realized that this was not something I learned to do in school. In fact, I had never heard the term before. But HHI, for example, seems like a pretty ubiquitously novelistic device. (The banana breakfast scene of Gravity's Rainbow comes to mind.) Where can I find a long (exhaustive, even) list of such terms, for my own reference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="450" OwnerDisplayName="ixtmixilix" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T21:51:41.120" Title="Source for literary terms?" Tags="|terminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5529" CreationDate="2011-11-22T18:58:51.167" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wiki offers a long list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_literary_terms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;literary terms&lt;/a&gt;.  The University of Toronto offers a glossary of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display_rpo/poetterm.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;poetic terms&lt;/a&gt;.  Cengage Learning offer this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/glossary/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quite broad list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2152" OwnerDisplayName="Ben Williams" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T18:58:51.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5529" CreationDate="2011-11-26T19:53:19.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best references for this sort of thing (and a required text at my MA English program) is M.H. Abrams's &lt;em&gt;A Glossary of Literary Terms&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Jon" LastActivityDate="2011-11-26T19:53:19.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5501" CreationDate="2012-04-27T09:13:56.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it really depends on the type of book and the nature of the note. You will find, for instance, that many textbooks have the notes directly in the margins, rather than at the end of the book, the end of the chapter, or even the end of the page. But, in these cases, the nature of the note is often integral to the understanding of the text--for instance, it might be a definition of a key term, or a cross-reference to an earlier concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3433" LastActivityDate="2012-04-27T09:13:56.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5533" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5659" CreationDate="2012-04-28T06:46:44.797" Score="1" ViewCount="3670" Body="&lt;p&gt;Up until now, I'd only written dialogues between two persons. I'm not very sure if this dialogue is flowing smoothly. Is there anything I can do to improve its flow? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I'm wondering whether the conversation feels authentic and whether it's clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be difficult to simulate the interactions of more than two people. Is it clear who's addressing who, and who's reacting to what? Is the reader able to follow all the characters throughout the entire piece? Do all the characters stay aware of both their companions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I ask, does this feel like a realistic multi-person conversation? If not, where did I go wrong? I realize it's a short excerpt, but do your best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I'm not a native English speaker&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The moon looked bigger than usual, like a planet that had just&#xA;  appeared in the sky. All that could be heard was the sound of the wind&#xA;  blowing. Giant waves were crashing against the rocks&#xA;  in the beach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I think the rooms are interesting,&quot; Tom said, adding more coal to the fire. &quot;The walls&#xA;  have some sort of surrealist paintings on them.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anny nodded and took a bite of her steak. &quot;The only bad thing is that&#xA;  they don't have TV nor radio.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's what I like the most about the rooms,&quot; Adele said, with a&#xA;  little smile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They remained silent for a moment, lost in their thoughts. Adele gazed&#xA;  up and spotted a plane. It looked like a slow motion shooting star.&#xA;  Her eyes followed it as it disappeared in the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You know,&quot; Tom said, holding his glass of beer. &quot;Lately, I've been&#xA;  wondering if anything really belong to us in this world.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adele looked at him with her lips slightly parted. &quot;If anything really&#xA;  belong to us in this world?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah,&quot; he said. &quot;For example, let's say I have a girlfriend. She's&#xA;  always there when I need her, and I'm always there for her. But does she really belong to&#xA;  me? Or is it that she just had been temporally loaned to me?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The wind became slightly stronger and the waves bigger. Adele turned&#xA;  her eyes back to the sky. Anna had finished her steak, and now was&#xA;  staring vacantly at the beach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And I wonder if it is the same with everything else,&quot; Tom said,&#xA;  putting the last steak on the grill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You know, if you were to give a motivational speech, half of your&#xA;  audience would commit suicide,&quot; Anny said, with a mocking tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sorry, sorry. They're just random thoughts,&quot; he said, moving the coal&#xA;  with a stick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I think there are some things that do belong to us,&quot;  Adele said,&#xA;  watching the little sparks float up and disappear in the air.&#xA;  &quot;Wouldn't life be sad if nothing did?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I guess you are right,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T16:02:53.877" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T16:02:53.877" Title="Critique: three person dialogue" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2019-08-26T19:05:06.103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5486" CreationDate="2012-04-28T10:17:10.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, that depends &lt;strong&gt;if&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; you want to do with it. Having a lot of &quot;great&quot; ideas is easy, until you try to realize them (there is often a discrepancy between what one imagines it to be and what it turns out). And unless you specify what you want to do with it, there is hardly any movement possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you want to find out &lt;strong&gt;what you have available&lt;/strong&gt;, I would start by &lt;em&gt;collecting&lt;/em&gt; your ideas (and not merely having them somewhere without any structure). There are a lot of ways to do this, from files and folders, to mind/concept maps, outliners (e.g., NeO, OmniOutliner), digital notebooks (Circus Ponies Notebook, OneNote), notes management systems (e.g., DEVONthink), visual notes management systems (Tinderbox, Curio), Wikis (DokuWiki, MediaWiki), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case &lt;strong&gt;I would recommend using tags to first get an idea in which areas you have ideas&lt;/strong&gt;, and as you mention that files can have multiple ideas, tags are the way to go (you can tag the quality of ideas, the area like &quot;gift&quot;, &quot;character&quot;, &quot;plot&quot;, &quot;object&quot;, etc.). Personally, I love DEVONthink for this, because it augments the File/Folder system, gives you tags and immediately identifies duplicates based on the file content (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.organizingcreativity.com/2011/07/a-very-quick-introduction-to-devonthink/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see this blog entry on my blog&lt;/a&gt;). It's a Mac program, but there should be similar solutions for Windows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After tagging and getting an impression which projects are feasible (creativity is more than one idea and a good collection helps you to generate and collect the necessary ideas) you can decide for a project to realize -- and make something out of your ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.organizingcreativity.com/book-as-pdf/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I'd point to a book I've written recently -- it's available as PDF 'for free' (Donationware, once I finish with the ePub version)&lt;/a&gt;. It essentially covers the whole process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3259" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T10:17:10.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3245" CreationDate="2012-04-28T14:58:01.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll say it for what it's worth...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way 10,000 hours of work translate into &lt;em&gt;'writing-work'&lt;/em&gt; is by getting at least 10,000 strangers that only know your work (ie. not you personally) to like one of your original works... With the rest not trailing far behind!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively: You can try to get 10,000 unique reading hours (with different readers reading different parts of the work to the very last word). That might be easier...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know, that's strange and harsh (and kind of funny) but I felt the urge to tell it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2012-04-28T15:32:33.663" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T15:32:33.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5536" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5538" CreationDate="2012-04-28T19:00:04.250" Score="5" ViewCount="348" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, some background that may help explain the question.  I have recently realized that most of my life has been spent pursuing technical-creative hybrid projects.  As a professional software developer, I have a huge advantage in my creative mind, but until I learned the technical side well I was sub-par.  I have also pursued cooking as a discipline, and worked as a Chef's Apprentice.  This is another technical-creative hybrid, and again, I had a huge advantage with my creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, with the realization that I've been doing myself (and, although this may be a self-aggrandizing delusion, any potential audience that may exist for my voice) a dis-service, comes a duty to fix the situation.  When I was a teen-ager I wanted to write fiction and poetry professionally, so I've chosen that as the first discipline to express my creativity in a more pure creative outlet.  I would like to transition to being a professional writer, and I'd like some advice on how I can manage this.  Any input would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-04-29T07:51:30.640" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T17:39:40.657" Title="How does one break into the field of professional writing?" Tags="|career|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5536" CreationDate="2012-04-29T02:57:51.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone else is going to give a better answer to this, but here's my two cents anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is oh so simple: write. That's how. Write, and then keep writing. If your writing is terrible, write anyway. Write for years. Write for decades if you have to, and then keep writing. Do I repeat myself? Very well then, I repeat myself. And so should you, while constantly seeking self-improvement. Reread what you've written and identify what's lacking, and think seriously about how to fix it. Read other people's work and ponder what made it great or mediocre. Work to raise yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if ever, for even a second along the way, you think, &quot;Damn, this is pretty decent,&quot; then hell, show someone else. Show an editor, an agent, a magazine, a publisher, a director, a producer, a friend, an enemy. Sooner or later, someone's going to have to acknowledge, &quot;Hey...this actually is pretty good.&quot; And then maybe, if you do it enough times, maybe someone will pay you for whatever it is you've done, or for what they think you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's when you smile to yourself and seize the opportunity, and make the most of it*, because you've just taken the first step upon the exceedingly steep staircase of professional writing. Rinse and repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*You now have a professional contact. Use it to make others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T02:57:51.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5536" CreationDate="2012-04-29T09:20:39.827" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Define Your Goals.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Breaking into professional writing&quot; is a very loose definition. It could mean somebody who's only ever published a single book or a single short story; it could be somebody who publishes regularly but is widely held in low esteem; it could be somebody who self-publishes eBooks through Amazon; it could be a respected journalist or a guy who starts a poetry ezine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it's hard to say, right at this moment, which of these will eventually be right for you. You don't need to pick your eventual &lt;em&gt;achievements&lt;/em&gt; right now. You &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; need to understand what it is that you're after, and what it is you want to spend your time working on. Obviously, some goals are more likely than others. Doesn't mean you can't shoot high, but don't be devastated if you can't reach 'em, either. Some goals include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writing for yourself.&lt;/strong&gt; That's something anybody can do; if you truly gain satisfaction from this, then you're doing well - no matter how poorly you might fare with your career (over which you have relatively little control), you are still finding satisfaction in the writing itself. People who &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; have this goal are, shall we say, even less likely than others to cope well with the frustrations of the publishing industry and the state of the market.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Getting Your Work Out.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a common desire for writers - to have their work available to the public. (You touch on this yourself, in your cautious hope that you have a potential appreciative audience.) Nowadays, it is extremely easy to have your work technically &lt;em&gt;available&lt;/em&gt;, with a slew of respectable options for internet publication, ebooks, and print-on-demand services. However, the vast majority of such works languish in obscurity; moving to higher steps of mild popularity, word of mouth, placement in brick-and-mortar bookstores, etc., are much more difficult. They generally depend on some combination of skill at the craft, and promotion/career abilities (e.g. getting a publisher to move this forward for you).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recognition.&lt;/strong&gt; You want your ability and work recognized in some way. This isn't necessarily &quot;being famous&quot; or &quot;people liking your work,&quot; just to be noticed and for your work to be appreciated (possibly by a very small group or an insider crowd of some sort) on its own merits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fame and Fortune.&lt;/strong&gt; Most creative types would love to become the rock stars of their own personal field. But this is really a pie-in-the-sky dream - the number of authors who achieve even modest popularity is miniscule; the ones who actually become household names, who earn serious money off their work, etc. is even more discouraging. This is also one of the elements that is pretty much entirely out of your own control - unless you know how to transform yourself into a wildly successful phenomenon, in which case you're already pretty darn savvy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Write&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really the core of it all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of people are more interested in the process, in the industry, in the social scene - but they aren't actually writing. The only way to get in is &lt;strong&gt;to produce great writing&lt;/strong&gt;. So by definition, you've got to be &lt;strong&gt;(A) productive&lt;/strong&gt;, so you've got actual work to hawk, and &lt;strong&gt;(B) great&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3245/how-does-the-10-000-hour-rule-apply-to-writing&quot;&gt;the only way to get great is to practice, practice, practice&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Develop Your Craft&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is a craft and a profession; you want to push your boundaries and grow as a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read books and essays on whatever aspects of writing interest you, on whatever you feel you need most, on things you feel like you could do better on. There's a lot of great, inspiring, and helpful resources out there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be a voracious reader - don't isolate yourself from the field you want to contribute to. Know what's going on; maintain your sources of excitement, inspiration, and respect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get feedback on your writing - that's the best way to understand where you're doing great and where you need work. Be able to take criticism well, and seek out those who can give you honest, constructive criticism. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give feedback to others - that's a great way to improve your own writing, and become more aware of possible flaws and of technique abilities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this being said - these should all be secondary to &lt;strong&gt;actually writing.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Learn the Industry&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Navigating the publishing industry is a huge curveball for many writers - it's an entirely different skillset than what they're using for the core of their profession (which is &lt;strong&gt;actually writing&lt;/strong&gt;, for those of you who haven't been following along). So somebody might write a great book, but not know how to find an agent, or mess something up with publishing rights, or fall prey to a scam, or try to e-publish and make a hopeless mess of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At low-intensity, follow what's going on in the industry. You can follow along with industry blogs by agents, editors, self-publishers, what-have-you - you'll seek these out depending on your personal field of interest. I won't list blogs here, except for &lt;a href=&quot;http://accrispin.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writers Beware&lt;/a&gt;, which focuses on alerts and scams (hugely important for newcomers!). It also touches on major current issues in the publishing industry - you can branch out from there into other blogs and resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Be Good; Be Lucky; Above All - Be Persistent&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no guarantee of anything. If you're good, and persistent, then you can almost certainly break in somewhere and in some way. Probably no way to predict right now when and how that might be. If you're not good, and you are persistent, you can practice and get good. Either way, you'll have a LOT of hard work and frustration on the way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why the goals are so important - a lot of them you can reach regularly, as you go. If you're waiting all the time for that first acceptance letter, you're probably going to be waiting a &lt;em&gt;long&lt;/em&gt; time, and you might not make it that far. If you've got drive and satisfaction to keep you going - well, again, no guarantee, but your odds become a whole lot better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T09:20:39.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5482" CreationDate="2012-04-29T22:20:18.943" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no right or wrong on this; it depends on which style manual you're following. (And if you're not restricted to one style manual, you can do what you like, as long as you're consistent.) For example, Chicago (3.9) recommends lowercase, while APA (4.17) recommends uppercase. I don't think one capital letter = a scream. People probably capitalize it because they're used to capitalizing names and it is similar to a name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3567" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T22:20:18.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5414" CreationDate="2012-04-29T22:35:53.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;CS Lewis said: &quot;No man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.&quot; That seems like a good rule of thumb for style as well as substance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the fact that you have the urge to &quot;channel&quot; other people's styles, and are able to do it regularly, means you're well on the way to becoming a writer. (That's hearsay; I never could mimic styles myself.) From everything I've heard and read, it's cool, you're building skills, and you'll eventually find your own voice. Don't watch the clock or the calendar, or you'll go crazy -- let it happen at its own pace. Meanwhile keep it simple and clear, don't decorate. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3567" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T22:35:53.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5547" CreationDate="2012-04-30T02:22:07.113" Score="3" ViewCount="14745" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to self-publish a book through CreateSpace and they want me to give them an imprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I know, I know, &quot;you're not likely to make any money by self-publishing&quot; and all that, but for the sake of this question, let's assume that I'll be able to bring in a few hundred sales per month because of green space magic.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I purchased my own ISBN for the book through Bowker, and it looks like I'm supposed to send Bowker a request for an imprint name for the book, which they would approve and then I'd submit to CreateSpace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, how much effort do I need to put in to selecting an imprint? Is this a big deal, or should I not worry too much about it? Who will see it and when? (Does it show up on the inside of the book? On Amazon?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3508" LastActivityDate="2020-11-25T22:52:54.957" Title="How critical is selecting an imprint for a self-published book?" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="796" CreationDate="2012-04-30T08:07:49.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with Tolkien is that he wrote a fantasy land without it being explicitly a basis for a novel - the novel came out of it, almost accidentally. That is not a good way to go if you do not have another job that allows you to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other side is that, if you are working on a series of novels, then the stuff you work on now may end up very useful in another novel. it is not wasted, it might inspire something else, or it might never be used, but provide depth to your work anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may spend 50K words and many hours on a scene that ends up with an oblique reference in one sentence. But it will be a right and relevant reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may spend the same time and realise that you can work this into an entire novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So enjoy making the world real. You seem to be writing enough anyway, so lose yourself in it, because the more you believe it, the more your readers will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T08:07:49.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5543" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5544" CreationDate="2012-04-30T08:31:43.950" Score="7" ViewCount="4134" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm gearing up to write an actual full-length novel and I've decided that the best way to test the mettle of my writing (and make a couple of bucks in the process) is to enter a few writing contests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I simply don't have the time to write a brand new short story for every. single. contest. Plus, I'm a bit lazy. And I would really not like to waste six months to a year ignoring my wife and children just to write a book that will never break into the top 100,000 self-published Kindle books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think that entering a couple dozen contests in the next few months is a good way to see if my friends, family members and former instructors have been too kind in their praises. I figure if I can't win a contest or 12 then I probably shouldn't waste my time on a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presuming my logic is sound on having my writing judged via contests, many, if not most, writing contests that give out cash prizes explicitly state that they do not want submissions that have been previously published -- a thoroughly understandable condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here is my question: If I only have the time and/or desire to write one or two short stories of quality, &lt;strong&gt;is it ethical or proper to submit the exact same &lt;em&gt;unpublished&lt;/em&gt; short story to multiple contests?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to explore other tangents if they relate to your answer: If I was fortunate to win two different contests with the same story and I got found out is it likely I would have to forfeit one or both prizes? Are contests not a constructive way to gauge the grade of your skill? If not, what is an excellent way to have your work peer reviewed (preferably for free by a professional)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You certainly don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to answer these questions; I have no problem saving them for another day for the Writers SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-11-24T18:15:04.807" LastActivityDate="2022-12-08T02:49:14.043" Title="The ethics of multiple contest submissions" Tags="|short-story|contests|ethics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5543" CreationDate="2012-04-30T09:40:02.023" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is called a &quot;simultaneous submission,&quot; and a well-organized contest should have a clear-cut rule on whether or not they're allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a particular contest doesn't call simultaneous submissions out specifically, the safest is to try and contact them and make sure what their rules are. At very least, be absolutely certain you can contact them and withdraw your story if it gets published elsewhere first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always with contests, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/contests/&quot;&gt;watch out for scams or mishandling of your copyright&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T09:40:02.023" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5545" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-30T15:59:17.210" Score="0" ViewCount="1317" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an academic project report, what phrasing should I use to introduce and explain related work? I have to explain several previous projects; I would like to be clear but also avoid repetition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came up with the following two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Previous research in this area has focused on the following: ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this section we discuss related work...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T22:14:48.650" Title="Adding related work to an academic project report" Tags="|word-choice|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5482" CreationDate="2012-04-30T18:17:17.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the figures are labeled &quot;Figure 3&quot;, you would refer to them so in the text. Similarly for &quot;Fig. 3&quot;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the label is only &quot;3&quot;, refer to it as &quot;figure 3&quot;, using lowercase.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T18:17:17.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5541" CreationDate="2012-04-30T19:44:43.110" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;An imprint is basically the name of the publisher. CreateSpace gives you a few different options when it comes to assigning an ISBN to your book. You can obtain one for free from them, in which case CreateSpace is identifed as the publisher. If you obtain your own ISBN, then you can identify who the publisher of record is that will be associated with that ISBN. This can be yourself, it can be a publishing company you create yourself, or it can be a ficticious name that isn't even a business at all. However, if you later decide to change that for whatever reason, you will need to obtain a new ISBN. You can think of it as the unique bar code for that particular product. If you change anything on the cover, including the name of the publisher, then you have to change the ISBN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find more information on the CreateSpace community forums, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/en/community/message/163893&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is one post&lt;/a&gt; in particular that applies to your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T19:44:43.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5543" CreationDate="2012-04-30T19:52:06.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can try it in a different way...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All I've read about big-company publishing says that you shouldn't send your manuscript to different publishing-houses at the same time but rather send it to the biggest (in your opinion) and see what they say about it. You'll have to wait a lot but you won't have to deal with a big publisher accepting then rejecting your story because they felt insult that you'd sent it somewhere else while they were reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the same logic, I'd say you should send your story to multiple contests on a (contest by contest) basis and see how it goes. Contests should be much faster in replies (scores) so the process's more tolerable than what's with publishing houses. At the same time, multiple contests would most likely have different times for submitting and scoring so it would take even less time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And lastly, I would second Standback's recommendation that you view the contests rules and/or contact them for clarification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T01:26:10.740" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T01:26:10.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5549" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-01T03:53:34.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about writing screenplays, tools for writing them, formatting, and all other story/character issues peculiar to writing for the silver screen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-03T18:44:58.450" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T18:44:58.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5550" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-01T03:53:34.970" Score="0" Body="Screenplay storytelling, writing, formatting, and how to put it all together. " OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T03:53:34.970" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T03:53:34.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5551" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-01T03:58:38.053" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T03:58:38.053" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T03:58:38.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5552" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-01T03:58:38.053" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about short stories. Do not use this tag for questions about novellas, flash fiction, or other types of short fiction." OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-11T05:15:27.393" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T05:15:27.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5553" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-01T04:00:25.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The tag &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/word-choice&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;word-choice&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;word-choice&lt;/a&gt; is for questions that deal with the words and vocabulary that should be used when writing different kinds of texts. This can include finding the right voice for your narration or for your technical document, for example. In these cases it could be combined with the tag &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/voice&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;voice&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;voice&lt;/a&gt;. It can also be appropriate for questions about phrasing information so that it is easily understood, or for questions about convincing dialogue in a historical setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tag is not intended for questions about etymology or grammar. These may generally be more on-topic on the various language sites of Stack Exchange, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;English Language &amp;amp; Usage site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="36826" LastEditDate="2019-07-07T17:21:22.087" LastActivityDate="2019-07-07T17:21:22.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5554" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-01T04:00:25.867" Score="0" Body="This tag should be used for questions about choosing the right words for the context of your writing. Questions about etymology and grammar are off-topic." OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="36826" LastEditDate="2019-06-27T21:25:39.517" LastActivityDate="2019-06-27T21:25:39.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5555" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-01T04:01:33.213" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T04:01:33.213" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T04:01:33.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5556" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-01T04:01:33.213" Score="0" Body="Writing or editing copy for the web. Questions about creating or maintaining websites are off topic here. " OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T04:01:33.213" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T04:01:33.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5557" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5558" CreationDate="2012-05-01T09:27:10.987" Score="10" ViewCount="575" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of self publishing. Now what all the blogs tell me I have to do is hire a professional editor, who will see any plot / character holes, other story problems etc. (For the moment, I'm not talking about &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2008/07/editing-vs-copyediting.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;copy editors&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is the good editors can charge hundreds of dollars, something I can ill afford.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been looking at online critique groups like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critters.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critters&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scribophile&lt;/a&gt;, and from what I can tell, the reviewers do a good job of finding problems in your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do I still need to pay someone hundreds of dollars, when I can outsource (crowdsource?)  the process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3575" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T17:04:18.540" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T17:04:18.540" Title="Are online critique groups a good substitute for editors?" Tags="|editing|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5557" CreationDate="2012-05-01T13:13:33.667" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can certainly get pretty far by using an online critique group. There are two problems you'll find with such a service:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's hard to get people who can commit to reading a whole book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The quality of reviews and feedback that you get can vary a lot, and many reviewers won't tell you anything very useful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you hire a professional editor, problem #1 is taken care of with the promise of cold, hard cash. Problem #2 still exists, however, as the quality even of &quot;professional&quot; editors varies quite a bit, and you have to exercise diligence and good judgement to decide whether or not a given editor is actually worth your money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to self-publish, you can probably get &lt;em&gt;good enough&lt;/em&gt; by relying on online critique groups and some trusted writer friends. However, if you really want to take your writing to the top level you'll probably benefit from finding a qualified, professional editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T13:13:33.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5559" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5561" CreationDate="2012-05-01T13:44:02.680" Score="4" ViewCount="1630" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am designing a fiction writing contest for 13 and 14-year old EFL students. The students have very limited experience writing English and writing fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am developing the scoring sheet, on which the judges can evaluate the students. This must be very transparent and very fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, the scoring sheet only covers grammar and spelling, which has been the only focus of their lessons, so it might not be fair judge much more than that, but, as it might be possible that several students could submit a story with perfect grammar and spelling, then several students would have perfect scores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that I need some system for judging the quality of the storytelling as well, in a purely objective way. Is this possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What components of a story can be judged?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can these aspects be judged objectively?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T15:51:15.097" Title="How to objectively judge the storytelling in a writing contest?" Tags="|children|contests|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5225" CreationDate="2012-05-01T14:11:42.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to practice technical writing, start contributing to an open source software project. You could write how-tos or sections of the user manual. As a novice, you'll want to find a project that already has an active writing team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3576" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T14:11:42.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5559" CreationDate="2012-05-01T14:28:22.747" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two separate paths you can take:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) You might have to back up and set down some rules for the &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; before developing rules for the &lt;em&gt;judging.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if one of your judging rules is &quot;The story must have a beginning, middle, and end,&quot; but someone submits an amazing &lt;em&gt;in medias res&lt;/em&gt; piece, is that going to be penalized for not meeting an arbitrary criterion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a teacher, figure out what you want the contest to accomplish (telling a coherent story, having a character learn something, revealing something to the audience), and you can use that to develop the metrics which will tell you if your students have accomplished it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Admit that structure and content are two different things, and judge them separately.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall one time in middle school where we were assigned a report, and two teachers graded it: one for structure (grammar and spelling) and the other for content. We received two separate grades for the same assignment. You could do that here, so that you could have many students getting perfect Structure grades (which are objective) and varying Content grades (which you make clear beforehand are subjective). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The judges who are grading the content can then just decide, &quot;Is this a good story? Does it hold my attention? Does it hold together? Does the ending work?&quot; &amp;mdash; basically all the criteria you would normally use to judge a piece of fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T14:28:22.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5559" CreationDate="2012-05-01T15:51:15.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think for a writing competition, you need a theme or focus, and maybe - for that age - some guidelines. Are you after an imaginative story, or a factual-type report of a fictional situation, or is there a setting it should take place in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You then have something against which you can judge them subjectively, as to how well they have interpreted the brief, which gives you some freedom to say story A is, in the opinion of the judges, better at interpreting the brief than story B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to consider whether they should be weighted, so that a story with only 95% correct spelling and grammar, but a brilliant story could win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to introduce a subjective aspect, it is a good idea if the final subjective judging is done by the same people across all of the entries. Hopefully, this will be a manageable task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit - I have just re-read and you want an objective test of storytelling, but, in reality, you cannot have such a thing. This approach should provide a consistent subjective result, which I think is the nearest you can get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T15:51:15.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5563" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-01T18:24:09.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag can be used for questions about fiction or nonfiction, as long as the audience is young children. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Children's books can be picture books, early readers, or chapter books. The books may feature children the age of the audience or they might be about older children, adults, or animals. Content is &quot;family friendly&quot; and suitable for the specific age targeted.  Children's stories span all genres.  Exact age ranges may vary publisher to publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For readers ages 8-12 use &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/middle-grade&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;middle-grade&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;middle-grade&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For readers ages 12-18 use &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/young-adult&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;young-adult&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;young-adult&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For questions about characters who are children (especially in adult books), use &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/child-characters&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;child-characters&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;child-characters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For questions about children or teens who are writers, use &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/young-author&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;young-author&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;young-author&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T18:15:25.017" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T18:15:25.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5564" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-01T18:24:09.523" Score="0" Body="This tag should be used for questions about writing intended for readers 0-7 years old.  For readers between 12 and 18 years old use [young-adult]. For readers ages 8-12 use [middle-grade]. For questions about characters, use [child-characters]. For questions about children or teens who are writers, use [young-author]." OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T18:15:25.017" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T18:15:25.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5565" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5566" CreationDate="2012-05-01T20:24:07.927" Score="8" ViewCount="19396" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen various combinations of interjections (or &quot;grunt words&quot;, as they are sometimes called) used in fictional dialogue, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;uh huh (which I take for a yes)&#xA;uh uh (for no)&#xA;nuh uh (also saw that once for no, but I'm not even sure nuh is even a word)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;whereas a standalone &quot;huh?&quot; usually means the person doesn't understand something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these commonly associated with the meanings I have assumed (either in American English, or elsewhere)? Are there others I have missed?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they really appropriate to use in dialogue? What effect does having them (or not) have? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="300" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T20:45:31.377" LastActivityDate="2018-01-05T17:03:39.710" Title="How should I use phrases such as &quot;uh huh&quot;?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5565" CreationDate="2012-05-01T20:41:18.307" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;People generally speak with &quot;um&quot; and &quot;huh&quot; peppered throughout their speech. Their meaning can be defined in a general sense, but that meaning may not always be consistent, and some of their meaning will be encoded in body language. (Nods, facial expressions, gesticulations, and so on.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/huh&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this definition of &quot;huh&quot;&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;—used to express surprise, disbelief, or confusion, or as an inquiry inviting affirmative reply&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, it can also indicate agreement (if accompanied by a nod). So that's five possible meanings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, &quot;uh huh&quot; means agreement - in a vague sort of way - but it can mean sarcastic agreement or emphatic agreement, and the writer would have to indicate this very well. For example, what does this mean? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Uh huh&quot;, she said, shaking her head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, context within the text will help. But many writers omit these in dialog, employing them only occasionally for effect. Including them all the time or too often looks odd or makes people look stupid.  Making people look stupid will also reflect badly on the writer, since it can come across as a cheap shot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't say to never use them - that'd be silly, users are used to them to a point - but I'd reserve these words for when you want to indicate, um, confusion or indecision in a character who's already been established to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indicating body language helps. It makes the reader work harder, but it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be used to good effect. Just don't overuse the technique, like any special effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T20:41:18.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5565" CreationDate="2012-05-01T21:40:52.557" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice: Try not to use them. Instead, try a more creative solution first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paul shambled into the kitchen at around noon on Sunday. The coffee&#xA;  was, thankfully, still warm. &quot;Apartment Fire Kills Seven in Columbus&quot;&#xA;  said the paper that his wife read as she took heavy drags on the first of many&#xA;  afternoon cigarettes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That asshole boss of yours making you stay late again, Paul?&quot;&#xA;  questioned Mary as she flicked ashes into her empty cup. Paul grunted&#xA;  affirmatively as he sipped his coffee, black.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare that to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That asshole boss of yours making you stay late again, Paul?&quot;&#xA;  questioned Mary as she flicked ashes into her empty cup. &quot;Mmm-hmm,&quot;&#xA;  said Paul as he sipped his coffee, black.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the first sample is more easily read. In the second one, the onomatopoeia of the &quot;Mmm-hmm&quot; gets in the way when reading. Granted, it's not a huge difference; it's just that the first one is a much smoother read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But sometimes you will really want to or need to use a transcribed grunt. If you want to use them effectively, then there should probably be some ground rules on how to write them in a proper way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately there's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W00-1004.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; from Nigel Ward at the University of Tokyo entitled &quot;Issues in the Transcription of English Conversational Grunts&quot;. (Yes. Really.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among many other helpful suggestions and observations it provides the following &quot;Phonetically Accurate Schemes&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hesitation Sounds: Use &quot;uh&quot; or &quot;ah&quot; for hesitations consisting of a&#xA;  vowel sound, and &quot;um&quot; or &quot;hm&quot; for hesitations with a nasal sound,&#xA;  depending upon which transcription the actual sound is closest to. Use&#xA;  &quot;huh&quot; for aspirated version of the hesitation as in &quot;huh? [other&#xA;  speaker responds] um ok, I see your point.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes/no sounds: Use &quot;uh-huh&quot; or &quot;um-hum&quot; (yes) and &quot;huh-uh&quot; or&#xA;  &quot;hum-um&quot; (no) for anything remotely resembling these sounds of assent or denial&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another scheme (Lander, 1996) lists several &quot;miscellaneous words&quot;,&#xA;  including: &quot;nuh uh&quot; (no), &quot;mm hmm&quot; (yes), &quot;hmm mmm&quot; (no), &quot;mm&#xA;  mm&quot; (no), &quot;uh huh&quot; (yes), &quot;huh uh&quot; (no), &quot;uh uh&quot; (no)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this does codify the matter, I think that it minimizes but does not eliminate the possible ambiguity from using &quot;conversational grunts&quot; in writing. I believe that the best thing to do is to creatively avoid using words like &lt;em&gt;uh-huh&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;huh-uh&lt;/em&gt; as much as possible, using them sparingly and &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; as a last resort. Mmm-kay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="24959" LastEditDate="2018-01-05T17:03:39.710" LastActivityDate="2018-01-05T17:03:39.710" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5568" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5570" CreationDate="2012-05-01T23:24:54.533" Score="5" ViewCount="2054" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm writing a plotline, it often works out that I know two characters will be meeting each other in a particular scene, and that they will converse. And I oftentimes know the central idea of what needs to be communicated, and I see to it that it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But dialogue is more than that, and oftentimes I find myself wondering: &quot;What else should they be saying?&quot;, or, more accurately, &quot;What else &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; they be saying?&quot; I find myself trying to flesh out a conversation without any particular goal in mind. I'm thinking, if these two people met, would they speak briefly and then part ways? If so, how soon would they part ways, and with what sort of farewells? Which one would be the one to say &quot;All right, I've got to be somewhere.&quot;? Or would they hit it off and end up having a long conversation out of interest? What would they talk about? Or would one keep talking and the other wishes he would shut up? And if so, what would he be talking about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, I think what I'm doing is aimlessly hoping that something will grow out of their interaction, that I'll suddenly realize I've stumbled upon a new idea for the story overall. It's happened before, but it's hit and miss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I plan out conversations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T02:38:09.330" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T02:38:09.330" Title="How to plan dialog and keep it on track?" Tags="|dialogue|planning|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5565" CreationDate="2012-05-01T23:51:35.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dialogue is the only place that it's appropriate to use informal language like this, in fact, if your character is someone who is generally informal and they are likely to speak like this it would seem incongruous in many cases if a character were to enunciate &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot; clearly. Further, as to &quot;nuh&quot; being a word or not, who cares? In America, &quot;nuh uh&quot; is uttered frequently by children and adults who speak like children. Dialogue should reflect the way your character would actually speak, regardless if a prescriptivist would say that those words aren't real.  Twain was the first american to write speech the way people actually spoke, it was considered groundbreaking at the time, and even now a great many authors don't do it.  Your characters will seem more alive and real if they are seen to speak in the manner of real people, and the personal connection between your reader and your characters will be that much stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conveying the intention of the words to the reader is easy, as the person being spoken to will hopefully understand the intention, and so their reaction will clue the reader in to what was meant by the grunts.  Personally I do my best never to pander to my readers and hit them over the head with explanations of every detail, and instead I rely on clues that allow me to &quot;show them, not tell them.&quot;  If a person in your book speaks like this often, you can start by spelling out &quot;uh-huh&quot; a few times, and then showing the reaction of the person being spoken to, then you can lead the reader in stages of less and less description, &quot;Joseph grunted in the affirmative,&quot; &quot;Joseph nodded yes and grunted his response,&quot; &quot;Joseph grunted his usual affirmitive reply&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastEditorUserId="3523" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T01:45:31.970" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T01:45:31.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5568" CreationDate="2012-05-01T23:51:50.753" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A little riffing, a little planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to sketch out a scene in notes and bullets beforehand, so I know more or less where it's going and what I want to accomplish. I'm &quot;watching&quot; the characters interact in my head as I'm jotting down notes, and sometimes entire exchanges come out of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I've roughed out the scene, then I can go back and tweak to make sure it does what I need it to do, and that the characters are true to how I've envisioned them. Sometimes I have to back up and say, &quot;But Malcolm wouldn't pry like that. This whole section has to go&quot; (massive deletion of text) &quot;so how &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; he get Charles to open up?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How the people actually get to where I'm aiming them is all ad libbing, but you should have a good idea of each character's voice so that it doesn't take you by surprise or wander off into the living room. You should know them, as people, and be able to predict how they're going to react.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know your characters well enough, you have to go back and spend some time with them &amp;mdash; maybe doing those silly personal quizzes which get emailed around, answering it in the voice of each character. (I actually find those incredibly helpful.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your questions about when they would start and stop talking is up to you, or up to them, in a sense. Those questions aren't going to be answered necessarily by just clattering away at the keyboard like an infinite monkey and hoping that &lt;em&gt;A Midsummer Night's Dream&lt;/em&gt; comes out. &lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; have to figure out how your character is going to react to your other character, and write the scene accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T23:51:50.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5568" CreationDate="2012-05-02T01:01:44.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a somewhat unconventional style so I don't know how much use this will be to you. Most of my dialogue is intended to convey meaning in some form or another, or to illustrate something about one of my characters, so I consider carefully what my protagonist will say and what the responses will be beforehand.  I have to do this to make certain that all of the information I want to convey is conveyed and no more than that. Most of my fiction is odd in that it's told from the perspective of a potentially unreliable narrator, who may not want to share information with the reader directly for his or her own reasons, and instead may wish to convey the information with clues in dialogue, and that's the reason for the careful consideration.  I hope that helps you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T01:01:44.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5568" CreationDate="2012-05-02T01:38:57.300" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've discovered from experience that whenever I try to shoehorn my dialogues into how I think they should go or how I want the scene to work out, they always end up very stilted and unnatural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The method that I've found works for me is only having an end-state in mind. That is, Person A should now have this knowledge, Person B this knowledge, etc. And then maybe something like &quot;Person A should feel like they're trapped&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I simply let the conversation flow between the two characters, no matter how it comes out (but always keeping the end-state at the back of my mind). Sometimes I'll achieve the exact outcome I wanted, other times it means I need to rethink either this scene (is this really the best way to convey this information?) or rework previous/future scenes (can this happen/be conveyed in another scene instead?) - but I find that doing this makes for much more natural dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, YMMV on this - it's very much a character-driven approach and relies on you being very familiar with how they think and act. It does also mean that I need to go back later and revise the dialogue, because natural speech =! effective writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T01:38:57.300" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5557" CreationDate="2012-05-02T10:26:33.500" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Critique groups are great for getting &lt;strong&gt;typical reader reactions,&lt;/strong&gt; and for &lt;strong&gt;spotting major flaws.&lt;/strong&gt; That's certainly immensely helpful for improving your book! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a critique group is much shakier when it comes to &lt;strong&gt;figuring out how to fix things.&lt;/strong&gt; When a reader tells you &lt;em&gt;&quot;I read [Scene X], and had [Reaction Y]&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, that's an extremely reliable report; he's giving you a factual account of his own experience. But when he tells you &lt;em&gt;&quot;...but I would have reacted differently if you had made [Edit Z]&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, that's speculation. You &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; get good writing advice, suggestions, and speculations in workshop feedback, but you will &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; get bad advice, amateurish suggestions, and unfounded speculations. You'll have to navigate all that, and if the expertise of the particular group of critiquers is not so great - then you won't get much good out of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bringing me to my next point - &lt;strong&gt;an editor is committed to your work.&lt;/strong&gt; When I'm critiquing or reviewing a story, I don't &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to fix it. If I think it's a lousy story, then &lt;em&gt;&quot;Your story is lousy because of X,Y,Z; I think it's fundamentally flawed, go write something else and don't make those same mistakes next time&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is perfectly valid feedback for me to give. An editor, on the other hand, can't reject your work once they're committed to it (which is why good editors need at least some measure of care in what ms's they commit to editing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's really the fundamental difference: &lt;strong&gt;An editor is on board to make your work awesome; a critique group is on board to tell you what they think of it.&lt;/strong&gt; So if a critique group makes a good case for your work being awesome, then maybe you don't need an editor. If the critique group makes a good case for your work being un-awesome, than you probably do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Now, you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; try using critique groups as a polling mechanism: write, ask for feedback, then revise and ask for feedback over and over until your work has become awesome. But repeated &quot;revision + amateur feedback&quot; cycles don't necessarily converge into awesomeness - and finding new helpful reviewers over and over can be very difficult.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond all this, an editor can obviously be expected to be more thorough, to give better suggestions, to be available for numerous revisions, et al. But those, as you suspect, are more issues of &quot;how &lt;em&gt;well&lt;/em&gt; is my work edited?&quot; rather than &quot;&lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; my work edited?&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, you should definitely start with a critique group - because they're an excellent and easy first step, even if you do wind up getting an editor later. See what kind of feedback you get; see how helpful it is and to what extent you feel that your next revision might be &quot;publication-ready&quot;. Then you can take it from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T10:26:33.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5575" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5577" CreationDate="2012-05-02T13:00:58.467" Score="4" ViewCount="478" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current WiP is a science-fiction piece which is less about characters coping with a particular problem, and more about the process they go through in reaction to the SF-nal catalyst. My story is not without conflict, but the main driving force is &quot;where will this develop to next?&quot; rather than &quot;how will this situation be resolved?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been giving me trouble, because &quot;where will this develop?&quot; is a less immediate, engaging question than &quot;how will this be resolved?&quot; My first draft feels loose and meandering; while early scenes and later scenes have clear causal links, the focus is so different (because characters are at different stages of the process, so their problems and occupations are different) that the scenes don't feel strongly related to each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen many cases of stories which focus solely on describing a process. For example, in Joe Haldeman's &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20041013121609/http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/jh01.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Four Short Novels&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, he gives four flash-fiction pieces with the structure of &quot;Society X had Technology Y, let's see what happens to them.&quot; In Peter Beagle's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boomtron.com/2008/12/short-fiction-round-table-the-last-and-only-or-mr-moskowitz-becomes-french-review-peter-s-beagle/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mr. Moskowitz Becomes French&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, one strange occurence keeps sending out ripple after ripple of new changes and reactions, with no overt conflict or goal trying to be achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What techniques and considerations should I use to write a story focusing on such a process?&lt;/strong&gt; How do I make it clear that the focus is on the process; that there are going to be constant &quot;ripples&quot; and wrinkles; that we've got intriguing reactions to look forward to even though we don't know yet what they're going to be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T16:59:41.773" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T03:59:33.307" Title="My story portrays a process, not a conflict - how do I make the process my focus?" Tags="|structure|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5575" CreationDate="2012-05-02T16:26:10.367" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each character or set of characters has their own arc. &quot;How will this develop?&quot; is that arc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simplest way to tie all the arcs together is to &lt;strong&gt;set them all in the same period of time.&lt;/strong&gt; Try starting with the same event at the beginning of each character's section &amp;mdash; for added emphasis, use exactly the same wording for a paragraph or two &amp;mdash; and then track each character or set of characters for roughly the same amount of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a wormhole rips open in the middle of Main Street in Wichita, KS, and seven aliens fall through and land in the lobby of Mary's Bait &amp;amp; Tackle &amp;amp; Library. Your sections cover the next 48 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 1 follows Mary as she tries to clean up and figure out what to do with the visitors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 2 covers Pete and Mark, who watch the wormhole on the news. They live in Albany, NY. They've  been having marital difficulties, but this event reorders their priorities and suddenly their problems seem rather small and silly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 3 is the POV of FBI Special Agent Chen, who is an amateur astronomer and a conspiracy buff, which is only exacerbated by his job. He tries to work his way onto the task force dealing with the aliens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 4 is told by Giovanna, a seven-year-old living in Rome who just saw &lt;i&gt;E.T.&lt;/i&gt; and learns about the visitors from her teacher in school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can present them sequentially and repeat the time period for each arc (like Tolkien did in &lt;i&gt;The Two Towers&lt;/i&gt;), interweave them (like Peter Jackson did in &lt;i&gt;The Two Towers&lt;/i&gt;), or group them according to geography (like George R.R. Martin did in &lt;i&gt;A Feast for Crows/A Dance With Dragons&lt;/i&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good example of this is Dean Koontz's &lt;i&gt;Strangers&lt;/i&gt;. The Event happened some time before the story opens, different people had their memories wiped or altered in different ways, and they are overcoming the wipe or alteration each in their own fashion and to different degrees. Everyone is geographically scattered &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; not everyone experienced the same thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need some constant for the reader to measure the process against. Time, as Dana Scully once told us, is the universal invariant. Start there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T16:26:10.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5575" CreationDate="2012-05-02T21:20:47.890" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This exact problem is what makes &quot;pure&quot; science fiction so hard to write properly -- but also so satisfying to read when done well. I don't have a perfect answer, just some thoughts about some story models you can apply: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Notes on conflict&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Note that stories are about conflict, but conflict is not necessarily person vs. person. There's also person vs environment (climbing that mountain; surviving that drought), person vs. machine (building that impossible car; surviving against grinding political oppression), and person vs. self (beating addiction; resisting that irresistible temptation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Models:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Process for conflict&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Much scientific research and technology invention is done to solve some sort of problem. In this model, that problem is your conflict. The characters have a problem, invent a tech to solve it, then set about solving it with that tech with lots of surprises along the way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Process causes conflict&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Here the tech is innocently developed, but directly causes a host of problems. Those problems are the conflict, and the characters spend the story trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and/or develop past the problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Process causes change in milieu&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Here the tech doesn't necessarily cause problems itself, but it changes the rules of life/social order so dramatically that it throws society into turmoil. Think of the switch from agrarian to industrial society for example. The conflict is whatever you think those changes will spark and you can show snapshots in time with different characters the way you're describing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Process as a character&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This model is probably the one you want. In fact, this one can be used along with any of the other models. Here you treat that tech/process as a character itself. Not necessarily as a living, breathing, sleeping around kind of character (though that's possible), but rather that the process follows a development arc the way a person character would -- it undergoes some kind of transformation over the course of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two ways to effect this transformation: If the process is mutable, you can have the process change, that is develop, over time in response to the various character's attempts to deal with it. If it's immutable, you'll need to hide the entirety of the process at the beginning and reveal it to the reader in stages over time, via what the various characters discover or experience.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One key thing to make this work is that just like an interesting character, an interesting process needs its own unique &quot;voice&quot;, or flavor, that remains consistently distinct throughout the story. What you want is the reader to be &quot;watching&quot; the process, riveted by what'll happen or be revealed next, rather than watching the characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T21:20:47.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5467" CreationDate="2012-05-03T03:57:54.330" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may seem like a trivial distinction, but as a title choice it's important as the title conveys an overall sense of the tone of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, the use of the contraction didn't is less formal than without so it might be best  to consider the verbiage you've used throughout the story and match the word choice to the formality of the voice in the story.  Next, &quot;without&quot; is more concise as it's a single word, and can't is a contraction of two words plus requires the use of &quot;have&quot;.  If your language is meandering in the story and not overall concise, to show your reader that you would maybe consider can't.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that the technical differences are spelled out, without conveys an absence of a soul, when I hear &quot;without a soul&quot; I think of a void, of absence and of longing, and seems more wistful of the two, whereas &quot;didn't have&quot; seems less of a statement of absence and void and more a statement of loss.  None of that is specifically spelled out by the definitions, this is more of a connotative distinction and more of a conveyance of the unspoken feelings the words conjure.  If the story is more about loss, maybe &quot;didn't have&quot; is better, whereas if the story is about absence, a void and of longing, it seems that &quot;without&quot; would be a better choice.  Didn't have also seems like it has more of a 'concrete' or definite feeling, as opposed to the wistful ethereal feeling conveyed by without. Again, pick the choice that is more in line with the words you've used in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, and maybe the most important consideration, &quot;didn't have&quot; is past tense while &quot;without&quot; is present. If the girl gets a soul later in the story, it may be more apropos to use &quot;didn't have&quot;, or another synonymous  past tense phrase, if she doesn't get a soul, it might be a better idea to use &quot;without&quot;.  That said, if your style is to withhold clues from the reader about the ultimate end of the story rather than try to let them guess at your intention, reverse that advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastEditorUserId="3523" LastEditDate="2012-05-03T06:30:00.350" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T06:30:00.350" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5579" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-03T09:39:36.517" Score="2" ViewCount="752" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an extract of a short story I'm writing. Sometimes I get confused about when to start a new paragraph and when to start a new &amp;quot;scene.&amp;quot; So I would like to know if I'm doing it properly here (and how to do it properly in the future).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was almost midnight and Adele was lying on bed, staring at the&#xA;ceiling in the darkness. She was tired, but for some reason, she&#xA;couldn't sleep. After some minutes, she got out of bed, walked towards&#xA;the window, and opened it. A strong breeze entered, filling the room&#xA;with the smell of the sea. She stood there, still, watching the rocks&#xA;being hit by the waves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A minute or two passed when she spotted something down in the beach.&#xA;At first she couldn't make out the shape, but after looking at it&#xA;keenly, she realized that it was a kid. He was standing on one of the&#xA;rocks, gazing at the moon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(New scene starts)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adele woke up at ten thirty in the morning. She brushed her teeth,&#xA;took a shower, and went downstairs. There was no one in the dinning&#xA;room, so she decided to make herself a sandwich and a coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After finishing her breakfast, she went outside to take some fresh&#xA;air. She went to the beach, which now looked as empty as a desert. She&#xA;sat on the sand, and gazed at the sea. There were still enormous waves&#xA;that looked like skyscrapers. How it would be to be swallowed by one&#xA;them, Adele wondered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She spent the rest of the day alone, waiting for someone to come back. But no&#xA;one did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(New scene starts)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was 11:30 a.m. Adele was in her room, staring out the window. She&#xA;was waiting for the kid to appear again. Maybe he is somehow connected&#xA;with what had happened, she thought. She stayed in the same position&#xA;for a while, eyes focused in the rocks. The kid appeared thirty&#xA;minutes later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She walked downstairs, passed through the dinning room, and got out of&#xA;the inn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When she reached the beach, she saw the kid standing in the&#xA;same place as before. She walked towards the little boy, until she&#xA;found herself standing right next to him. After examining him for a&#xA;few seconds, she realized that he was wearing a mask. A&#xA;Japanese mask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-05-30T21:02:27.780" Title="When to start a new paragraph and when to start a new &quot;scene&quot;" Tags="|style|fiction|short-story|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5467" CreationDate="2012-05-03T12:45:01.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Girl Without a Soul&quot; scans better, because it comprises three pairs of unstressed-stressed syllables. &quot;Who Didn't Have&quot; does seem more childlike, so might be appropriate if you imagine the title being spoken by the child's peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2421" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T12:45:01.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5579" CreationDate="2012-05-03T12:57:16.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first transition is very jarring, I am expecting to see more of her reaction and also be told a reason that she ignored the kid and went to sleep.  There might be a reason you don't want to share the latter, in which case I might say something like &quot;She pondered this for a moment to herself, then shrugged and rolled over and went back to sleep&quot;, or something to that effect. The shrug here is used a gesture to show her dismissing whatever reason she may have had for investigating.  If you don't have a distinct reason to say why it is that she didnt go and try to help a child in the middle of the night on the beach, which most women would do as they tend towards the maternal, I might try &quot;She looked at the kid and wondered what he might be doing there at this time.  She wanted to go and make sure he was alright and wasn't lost, but (Insert reason here) instead and went to sleep.&quot;  Reasons might be fear of going on the beach alone, fear that she was still dreaming, I have no idea really why but I hope you do.  There definately needs to be an indication that she ignored the kid and went back to sleep before the transition because it's so unexpected to me that she'd do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second transition is perfect:  You explain what she did with her day and it's a normal assumption that a person would go to sleep after their day was over, so there's no disconnect or jarring of the frame of reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T12:57:16.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5579" CreationDate="2012-05-03T15:39:57.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find they both jar a little. You would do better, IMO, to introduce each with &quot;On Wednesday, Adele woke at ....&quot; &quot;On Thursday morning, Adele was awake at ...&quot; The day setting makes for a cleaner scene change, because Adele may otherwise be sleeping at anytime. In particular, the first shift appears more like a dream being awoken from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am always reminded of Iain M Banks, who sometimes does some unexpected scene changes, and expects the reader to catch up eventually. But then, his writing is very surreal, and might not be the style you are after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule, scene changes that you need the reader to understand should be introduced by something external to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T15:39:57.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5583" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-03T16:11:43.043" Score="4" ViewCount="1794" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing poetry, is there a known method of some kind that exists that makes it easy to turn a concept I'd like to illustrate into a metaphor?  If so, please elaborate as much as possible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking if there is a way to come up with metaphors quickly and easily, so that if I want to illustrate a concept or a thought or a feeling I can quickly come up with a solid metaphor, rather than ask and puzzle about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastEditorUserId="3523" LastEditDate="2012-05-04T05:02:58.877" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T11:04:21.987" Title="Creating metaphors in poetry" Tags="|poetry|metaphor|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5584" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5596" CreationDate="2012-05-03T16:13:49.937" Score="8" ViewCount="5961" Body="&lt;p&gt;What makes an individual metaphor a good illustration of a complex idea as opposed to a &quot;bad&quot; metaphor that doesn't do the job of painting a picture with alternate words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-04T10:21:43.790" LastActivityDate="2021-11-19T05:32:42.673" Title="What qualities should a good metaphor have?" Tags="|poetry|metaphor|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5585" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5589" CreationDate="2012-05-03T16:14:51.947" Score="8" ViewCount="301" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mostly, I've heard that having previous publication credits to your name is beneficial, but I wonder if listing many publications in journals that aren't particularly well-known or impressive might make a worse impression than just including a small number of publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd appreciate answers from journal editors or from people who have been published in multiple tiers of literary journal and therefore can speak from personal experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3032" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-05T14:32:06.023" LastActivityDate="2018-05-05T14:32:06.023" Title="In writing a cover letter accompanying a submission to a literary journal, is listing publications in less well-regarded journals detrimental?" Tags="|publishing|submitting-work|cover-letter|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2012-05-03T16:17:41.570" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone that's submitted papers to scientific journals I can say that the feedback I received was no, in the case of a scientific paper, it isn't detrimental.  It also doesn't help at all, as science papers are judged on their merits alone, ostensibly, but I've always gotten the impression that the editors are more likely to take an entry from someone with published work seriously.  I'm not certain if this is helpful to you or not, but, I'm posting it in case it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T16:17:41.570" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5584" CreationDate="2012-05-03T16:58:41.437" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good metaphor will parallel or easily invoke the idea you're trying to convey, without extraneous or irrelevant details. It resonates with the audience and may add to the core idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A poor metaphor has baggage of its own, doesn't track with the original concept, is too clunky, too esoteric, needs too much explanation, or becomes absurd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T16:58:41.437" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5584" CreationDate="2012-05-03T18:12:33.967" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bad metaphor is like your 81-year-old Portuguese grandfather. Really, only close family members and people from that region can even understand him at all, and even then he's talking nonsense half the time, and he talks for far too long about things most people are unfamiliar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good metaphor is a lot like a mime - it neatly conveys the essence of the idea in mind and requires no additional explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; good metaphor is much like Marcel Marceau - original, memorable, and even alliterative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T01:11:47.293" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T01:11:47.293" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2012-05-03T18:16:43.153" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;How less well regarded are they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your previous publication experience consists of &quot;Dear Penthouse: I never thought this could happen to me...&quot; then I would leave the bulk of your experience in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if you have extensive publication experience I would prioritize the more prominent publications first, keeping it to about 5. The time you got published in &quot;Regional Writers Quarterly&quot; should probably take precedence over that time you wrote an article for &quot;The Weekly Freebie&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that being said, I have always, ALWAYS, found that the cover letter is far, FAR less important than the what comes after. An impressive cover letter might get you a more eager reader (or just plain read) but if what comes after doesn't impress, your cover letter is essentially meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="3496" LastEditDate="2012-05-03T19:50:57.560" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T19:50:57.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5691" CreationDate="2012-05-03T18:20:19.370" Score="5" ViewCount="13261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to revise a screenplay in Final Draft, and I'm finding that the revision features in the program are poor. Are there any ways to introduce revision features in to Final Draft, similar to Track Changes in Microsoft Word? If not, what kind of workflow could give me the same benefits of keeping changes visible to the writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background about what I'm looking for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past, I've done revisions to screenplays in Microsoft Word, where the changes are clearly indicated. Final Draft will show added text in a different color, but as far as I can tell, deleted text is not tracked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/puo56.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, Word shows text that's been crossed out, an advantage to editing someone else's work. (You don't have to do side-by-side comparisons when you have this information handy.) Word also lets you add notations in the text, like &lt;code&gt;this might work better if you wrote it like this&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any solution to this? Moving the text to Microsoft Word and back is not a realistic option, due to the complexity of screenplay formatting. If it's not supported in the application itself, perhaps there's a plug-in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's not possible, what are the import options for moving files back and forth between Final Draft and Word? Or are there third-party document tracking systems that aren't too much in the way of overkill? Perhaps Scrivener can be a go-between to track revisions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or am I stuck with simply comparing versions manually?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This question is a more writerly variation on &lt;a href=&quot;https://superuser.com/q/416908/39871&quot;&gt;this Super User question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-11-21T02:27:13.130" Title="How to handle screenplay revisions in Final Draft?" Tags="|tools|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5583" CreationDate="2012-05-03T21:39:59.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Absolutely not. You should puzzle over everything you write until you know that the words convey exactly what you want. There is no abstract &quot;metaphor machine,&quot; so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I need a metaphor, sometimes it's there, waiting for me. And sometimes I have to sit for five minutes and think, iterating over different aspects of the world we live in until I find the one that best mirrors the subject and fits the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And sometimes I put in a blank and think about it for days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T21:39:59.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5592" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5594" CreationDate="2012-05-04T05:46:51.940" Score="4" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm gearing up to start writing after a bit of a hiatus. But rather than just jump in and start on a novel (which will take several months, at best, to create and even then it might not be very good) I thought I'd start by trying my hand at a few short stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way that I'd like to see if they're any good is by submitting them to various contests, which can pay some good scratch and get you published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't really know if contests are an effective way to judge the quality of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting aside the fact that short stories and flash fiction are different beasts from novels and novella, &lt;strong&gt;are contests an effective way to gauge the quality of your writing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T22:19:33.673" Title="Are contests an effective way to gauge the quality of your writing?" Tags="|short-story|contests|flash-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5583" CreationDate="2012-05-04T06:00:01.923" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To quickly generate metaphors I grab my thesaurus and I find words that mean the same thing as the concept I'm trying to metaphorize.  I tend to pick out words that do not sound at all similar despite having the same meaning.  After I have a collection of words as a baseline, I write a sentence each to describe each of them.  I pick the most illustrative sentences and I expand them to paragraphs.  Once that's done there is always a metaphor waiting for me in my mind.  This is an exercise that I learned at a writing conference, and it almost always works for me.  The presenter suggested that it's because the act of writing concrete structures describing words that mean what you're trying to illustrate gets your subconscious to think about the metaphor while you're concentrating your conscious mind on the act of writing descriptions.  YMMV, but, as I said it works for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked the question hoping to get more exercises like this one, not to answer my own question, because the times that it doesn't work I often end up stuck. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T15:56:55.247" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T15:56:55.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5592" CreationDate="2012-05-04T06:38:12.423" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It very much depends on the quality of the contest, and that depends in turn on the quality of the judges and whether they provide any sort of feedback to the authors. &quot;Did I win or not?&quot; is pretty crude measure of quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was at the Writers of the Future awards ceremony recently here in Los Angeles, and I was struck by the fact that &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; winner mentioned how much the feedback they got from the contest judges and organizers had helped them improve the quality of their writing, to the point where here they were, two or four or size stories later, prize-winning authors. In this case, it doesn't hurt a bit that the judges are themselves established best-selling authors (not critics or academics), stellar names in the F&amp;amp;SF field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A local writers group (many of the WOTF winners thanked their writers groups) is a much faster way to get feedback on the effectiveness of your writing than a contest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T06:38:12.423" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5592" CreationDate="2012-05-04T06:39:12.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not usually, in my experience, and the reason why is that they are usually judged by objective standards with an objective set of criteria and you're really only going to win the kind of contest with those kinds of guidelines if you tailor your writing to what the judges are going to be looking for. With this in mind, when you submit to that kind of a contest, are you really submitting your own work?  If not, then clearly whatever the judges say isn't a reflection of your words, it's a reflection of your words tailored to a specific format.  It's like the difference between writing an editorial or opinion piece, which you have a free hand with and can say mostly anything because it's your opinion, and a thesis paper where you're constrained to APA format and have to stick to the topic that your professor wants to see you write.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another other issue is that my appreciation of writing, and think many other's also, is based on subjectivity and my own appreciation, without much consideration for objective guidelines or prescriptive rules, whereas a judge should be looking for all of the elements specified in the rules for the contest and may appreciate your story, but won't give that as feedback necessarily if they feel you skirted the edge of one of the rules too closely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, all of the contests I've seen in the past few years look to me like scams where they are trying to get as much free writing as possible to publish without paying for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you can find a contest or a set of submission guidelines that are a fit for your writing without changing your style at all, or with minimal changes, then I'd say yes, it can be a good way to get an idea of the quality of your writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it were me, however, rather than look for a contest I'd be looking for publications like magazines, anthologies, blogs, and other small distribution channels that are looking for submissions, and trying to get what's called a beta reader to give me feedback.  The publications I've seen tend to pay 4-8 cents a word and tend to want 2k-6k words, so you'll be getting paid to be an author, and in general I've seen publications submission guidelines be much looser than contest entry rules so you'll have a more of a free hand to express your words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YMMV, I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T06:39:12.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5584" CreationDate="2012-05-04T09:49:07.270" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, first off, it should be a metaphor, not a simile. :) Ahem... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great metaphor recasts the familiar or mundane as something strikingly different yet truly parallel. It gives a startlingly vivid picture or brings a surprising insight. A bad metaphor fails to achieve the parallel, or the fresh insight, or both. The element of surprise is an important part of a great metaphor. If we saw it coming from a paragraph away, it is far less effective; a metaphor can be bad merely because it is a cliche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some personal favorites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees/The moon was a ghostly galleon, tossed upon cloudy seas&quot; (Noyes)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes&quot; (T.S. Eliot)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage&quot; (Shakespeare)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Out of the mocking bird's throat, the musical shuttle/Out of the Ninth-month midnight&quot; (Whitman)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T09:49:07.270" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5597" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5604" CreationDate="2012-05-04T10:04:06.060" Score="10" ViewCount="2098" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm contemplating writing about a character with good motivations whose actions would be considered evil.&#xA;In short the story would be about a necromancer killing an entire nation so that he can bring order and peace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that while I can convey the logic of this, I have no clue how to write this without making him a pure force of evil or writing a fall-to-evil story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't think of any story where you get to follow the &quot;good&quot; guy and see his challenges; you always get the Mr Bond sit down at the end explaining why the bad guy is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you go about writing a story about a man who has already fallen to &quot;evil&quot; but still portray him as a good guy without sugar coating his plans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3552" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-05-04T12:41:30.407" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T20:35:58.673" Title="Sympathetic portrayal of an evil protagonist with good motivations" Tags="|characters|antagonist|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5600" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5601" CreationDate="2012-05-04T12:02:15.087" Score="2" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing up a CV (my secret identity is a mild-mannered software engineer); there's a volunteer project I did (related to my undergrad studies) that I want to describe, and I'm not sure where to put it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a standalone program which completes a certain task. Is that &quot;work experience&quot; because it's basically similar to working? Possibly &quot;Education&quot; because the work was in the context of my degree? Or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, seeing as this was a side-project which I worked on for a long period but at low intensity - how should I be describing the timeframe of this project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T12:40:50.440" Title="Where in a CV should I mention a relevant but unpaid (volunteer) project?" Tags="|resume|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5600" CreationDate="2012-05-04T12:40:50.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you did it for educational credit, put it with Education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did it in a field which happens to be the one in which you got your degree, but your university didn't care one way or the other, put it under Work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Timeframe is always just dates: September 2008&amp;ndash;May 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T12:40:50.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5597" CreationDate="2012-05-04T12:46:18.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Does the story have to be from the POV of the necromancer? Or at the least, does the end have to be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can show all the necromancer's challenges from the POV of the people of the nation, and its leaders, as they try to defend themselves, and in the epilogue or the denouement, someone (could be a survivor, could be a third party) points out that the necromancer was right after all. Or the leaders of the nation realize that they themselves have been a threat to peace, but they didn't intend to be, and they back down, or allow themselves to be sacrificed. I just read this setup in a C.E. Murphy novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Read or see &lt;i&gt;Watchmen.&lt;/i&gt; Decide if that structure is worth adapting. (I won't spoil it for those who haven't read/seen it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T12:46:18.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5597" CreationDate="2012-05-04T13:22:58.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way that bad people with good motivations are often shown is by explaining their wrestling with their evil actions. So if you can show that this person has to struggle with the prospect of destroying a nation, and is reluctant to do it despite the good it will bring, you might be part way there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If his motivations are good, then he will look for other options, he will struggle with the implications. But, because he is also evil, he will then be able to achieve the results without any qualms. And he will have no remorse. Regret that there was no other way, but not remorse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of stories with a &quot;flawed hero&quot;, which might help you. In a sense what you seem to be trying is a &quot;flawed villain&quot;, which is quite similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T13:22:58.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5597" CreationDate="2012-05-04T14:14:08.053" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Allow me to respectfully disagree with the other answers currently given. It's quite possible to do this, and I think it's a really interesting challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing to remember is that &lt;strong&gt;bad guys don't think they're bad&lt;/strong&gt;. In the usual plot structure, where the POV follows the good protagonists, it's hard to present this fact, but your story is in the POV of the evil necromancer. So you have the opportunity to show us the inside of the evil mind, which can be really compelling. In order to make the reader believe this, try to hit the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the necromancer's goal? Ideally, he should have a goal which the modern, non-evil reader can relate to, even if we recoil at his methods. Is he trying to prevent something even more disastrous? Is he trying to be reunited with a lost lover or family member? For comparison, in the last several books of the &lt;em&gt;Wheel of Time&lt;/em&gt; Rand came very close to being an outright evil villain, but the reader sticks with him because we know that he's literally responsible for saving creation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did the necromancer get to this place? Can the reader identify with and sympathize with the path that brought him to this place? Avoid cliche here, as it's really easy to fall back on &quot;he was abused as a child&quot; or something similar that's been done innumerable times.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the necromancer's personality? What if, in person, he's a really nice guy? Maybe he has a great sense of humor or an interesting hobby. Think of Spike in the early seasons of &lt;em&gt;Buffy the Vampire Slayer&lt;/em&gt;, who was in theory as nasty as vampires can get, but engendered the viewer's sympathy by being fun-loving and irreverent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The examples I mentioned above (Rand and Spike) all involve characters who are eventually redeemed, but you don't have to structure your story that way. You can let your necromancer just slide continually deeper into evil, and let the reader experience the conflict of seeing a character that they &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt; become more and more irredeemable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: probably the best example I can think of from recent media is actually Tony Soprano from &lt;em&gt;The Sopranos&lt;/em&gt;, who is very clearly a bad man who gets worse over the course of the series, but who is nonetheless the protagonist. You might consider examining the way that Tony's character is presented and built for examples of how to do this effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T14:14:08.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2904" CreationDate="2012-05-04T17:48:28.860" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this has an accepted answer, but it's from Billy Bob.  The APA Guide has the following to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When writing an entire paragraph about a single study, introduce that&#xA;  paragraph by stating that you will refer to the same study throughout&#xA;  the paragraph, then cite the reference. This avoids awkwardness and&#xA;  redundancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as to indenting, this is what it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the quotation has more than 40 words, use a block quotation. Begin&#xA;  the quotation on a new line and indent a half-inch from the left&#xA;  margin. Double-space the entire quotation, and at the end of the&#xA;  quotation, provide citation information after the final punctuation&#xA;  mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T17:48:28.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5579" CreationDate="2012-05-04T21:09:19.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the effect you are going for. If you want to be confusing and disorienting, then it's okay. But if you don't it's easy enough to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The next day, Adele woke at 10:30 in the morning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The day after, 11:30 am. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to ground the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure there is a &quot;proper way&quot; to do anything with words. There are ways that work for what you want to do and ways that don't. For me your whole passage comes down to this sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She walked downstairs, passed through the dinning room, and got out of the inn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her feeling about leaving the inn is going to answer a lot of questions I have about this passage. Instead of &quot;got out&quot; you have choices like, &quot;left, abandoned, escaped.&quot; watch how something slightly different happens with each of these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;She walked downstairs, passed through the dinning room, and escaped the the inn for a while.&#xA;&#xA;She walked downstairs, passed through the dinning room, and abandoned the inn.&#xA;&#xA;She walked downstairs, passed through the dinning room, and left the inn.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is not to try and make the &quot;right&quot; choice, but to become more sensitive to the range of choices available to you. Good Luck. Keep Writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3592" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T21:09:19.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5597" CreationDate="2012-05-04T22:14:04.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is your question is too vague. Kill a nation might be evil. Kill a nation to save a planet? Well, that we can get on board with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if we don't like the guy's actions, we can still have sympathy for him. Sons of Anarchy, The Sopranos, The Godfather -- all prove this. Violence in defense of family, for instance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You avoid making him a &quot;pure force of evil&quot; by making him a real character. Ask yourself what would drive you to do such a terrible thing and you will come up with a fresh answer that we will be excited to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sympathize and understand your challenge intimately. I struggled with it when I wrote this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00589W1DM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/How-Succeed-Evil-ebook/dp/B00589W1DM/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3592" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T22:14:04.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5592" CreationDate="2012-05-04T22:19:33.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contests might be a way to judge salability or popular appeal. The only thing that the outcome of a contest will tell you FOR SURE is what the judges like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write something that you absolutely love. That you can't live without. The thing that you can't leave the earth without committing to paper. Then write the next thing and make it better. It's the only way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3592" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T22:19:33.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5609" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5622" CreationDate="2012-05-04T22:37:50.873" Score="9" ViewCount="794" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't find any authoritative citation for this.  As an example, I know that the average entrepreneur has to be involved in 12 new businesses before he has a successful enterprise.  That is the national average for new business owners.  If anyone knows the average number of times that a new author submits a story before his first publication, either nationally in the US or regionally, I would be appreciative.  Please provide where you learned this information too, if you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;I am NOT asking how many it's likely I will have to submit, I am looking for an average for authors in general.  I know that the government keeps statistics like this, that is where I got the citing above for my entrepreneur statistic, but I can't find this data.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously I am asking so I have a target to hit in mind.  I have always figured when looking at these statistics that this might be the one time in my life that I'm super unlucky and I may need to do 3x the average to succeed:  As an entrepreneur I expect to have to start 36 businesses before any of them make me rich.  I am in the teens.  I would like a national average as I begin so I know what kind of expectation is reasonable for an average person.  I can also look at that number and hope that this could be my Cinderella story, I used to for businesses, and hope to get lucky in about half that number (It obviously didn't happen).  I always hope for the best and plan for the worst.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, since people asked about my case specifically in the comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the synopsis writing and initial few chapters, I will be submitting short stories to show prior publication. I will be submitting finished, edited manuscripts.  I will be submitting them as incomplete, with as many chapers finished as I have finished at the time of submission. Eventually the submssions will be a complete first book with chapters from a second.  I have the material and I hope the will for 6-9 books.  I plan on releasing in triliogies, 2 or 3 total, depending on what the synopsis I am working on ultimately calls for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-24T09:31:46.427" LastActivityDate="2018-04-24T09:31:46.427" Title="Does anyone know the average number of times a new author has to submit before acceptance?" Tags="|marketing|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2480" CreationDate="2012-05-05T00:02:10.620" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer the first version, in fact I think it's quite good; it kind of sounds like Douglas Adams. When you describe the naming issue like that, with the public vote and all, you are in fact describing the &lt;strong&gt;people living on the planet&lt;/strong&gt; (even though we have come so far we still spend time on these silly things) rather than &lt;strong&gt;the planet iself&lt;/strong&gt;, and this is more interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second version is just &quot;techno babble&quot; to me, and I lost interest quite fast. Also, in most scifi/fantasy I find made up names annoying -- You shouldn't have to memorize a bunch of stuff to be able to follow the story. &quot;Earth&quot; is pretty simple to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, when you write &lt;code&gt;Earth of course, referred to (...)&lt;/code&gt; you surprise the reader (exciting), which is always good, while when you write &lt;code&gt;home world of Solum&lt;/code&gt; the reader &lt;em&gt;knows&lt;/em&gt; that there will be an explanation (boring).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My three cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3593" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T00:02:10.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5597" CreationDate="2012-05-05T07:16:47.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Problem #1: &lt;strong&gt;There is no such thing as &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;evil&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are subjective values that we ascribe to people and actions. As such they are not effective descriptors for a person, real or imagined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, your necromancer doesn't seem to be a garden-variety bad guy; it seems to me that anyone who would eliminate an entire nation would have to be a super-villain. A super-villain means that his motivations are beyond the self; his motivations are revenge for (what he believes) is a much larger crime. The current justification he uses for his  proposed genocide may have nothing to do with the original awful thing -- but that awful thing is writhing and seething below his surface all the time, turning his heart hard and dark and black. And when you combine that darkness with the immense power of a necromancer - that is a formidable foe indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the necromancer fought in a war that ravaged his nation, so he comes to power during a devastating crisis and blames the nation that won the war for causing the new crisis. But you don't find that out until the climax. Or maybe the reader knows and the protagonist only finds out (or finds the final piece of the back story) at the climax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's your fully functional three dimensional character: A really bad thing happened that he blames the other nation for, ergo it must die for whatever other reason he can justify to himself and others. You don't need a whole fall-to-evil story. You can and should reveal bits of it either in a prologue, or a lengthy monologue or sprinkled around your story like Easter eggs on a spring Sunday morning. Whatever works for your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T07:16:47.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5692" CreationDate="2012-05-05T08:47:44.280" Score="9" ViewCount="1904" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing in the first person, what is a good way to convey that the viewpoint character is lying, without saying so explicitly?  My idea is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I am writing this as a record of what's been done in this age. I'm told it's very important, however I do not need this text as I am cursed with an eidetic memory, and I never forget anything.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, a few paragraphs later: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The memory of that woman is dim, and I cannot for the life of me recall her name, or her face.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly he's lying, and a liar, so now the reader should be tipped off that they can't trust him for the rest of the story.  (In this case he doesn't want to admit who the woman really is to the reader, for his own personal reasons, he's not lying about having an eidetic memory)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T06:21:57.617" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T21:17:03.613" Title="How can I convey that my viewpoint character is lying?" Tags="|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5613" CreationDate="2012-05-05T10:17:33.777" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are on the right lines, in that including contradictions is a good way of indicating that the person is not telling the truth. Of course, you need to avoid the danger that readers think you are just being sloppy. I think the speaker needs to be caught in a lie - realise that they have said something contradictory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is more difficult is identifying what they are lying about - that is, when they are lying, and when they are telling the truth. You may need another character to verify important facts (like the eidetic memory, if this is important).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult, because the reader tends to trust the narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T10:17:33.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2012-05-06T11:51:01.170" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First write whatever is in your mind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organize it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read it as a reader and see whats lacking and what would the reader&#xA;be thinking while reading the article.&#xA;Following these rules would help you make your point clearer to the readers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, one good rule I know about life and writing is,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Always make improvements. When you come across something better,&#xA;  improve it. Make corrections in the previous articles and keep doing&#xA;  it. It would help you learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2234" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T11:51:01.170" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-05-06T11:51:01.170" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5617" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5618" CreationDate="2012-05-06T18:34:57.237" Score="5" ViewCount="586" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering opening up my current work in progress to critique. In the past I haven't had very much luck with the local writer's group, but I'm willing to try again. Maybe not with them, but definitely with some writer's support forum, somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer's group I used to associate with would normally take an excerpt from another member's novel, short story or what have you and then promptly proceed to beat the living hell out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that model might be flawed and what should be critiqued is not the individual excerpts but the overall cohesiveness of the plot. Almost anyone can make a bunch of pretty words, but that doesn't fix a broken story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again, the best story in the world wouldn't be worth reading if it's full of bad writing and grammatical errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;is it more important in a writer's group (or other similar writer's support forum) to focus on critiquing plots for problems and improvements or to continue to focus on critiquing excerpts in order to improve the quality of writing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T22:02:46.293" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T22:02:46.293" Title="Is it more advantageous to have an excerpt or a plot summary critiqued?" Tags="|plot|criticism|writing-groups|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5617" CreationDate="2012-05-06T20:43:40.107" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Critiquing specific text is important, but you can always improve the writing. If the book has structural problems, weak characters, or sections that don't mesh with each other, then these larger issues need to be addressed &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you worry about the language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you don't have a clear idea where (or if) your manuscript is weak. That being the case, can you specifically ask your group to critique the structure only? Rightly or not, writers' groups have a rep for being overconcerned with language. However, groups that concern themselves with plot and structure do exist. I suggest you make certain the structure is sound either through such a group, or have a beta reader you trust (and who will be brutal) evaluate the manuscript/outline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're really stuck, you can always hire an editor to go through the manuscript/outline and give you feedback. Look for someone who specializes in developmental editing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T20:43:40.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5617" CreationDate="2012-05-07T00:06:16.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Neil. It doesn't matter how pretty it sounds if the plot is weak. Present your plot first, in outline, bullets, summary, however it makes sense, and have them beat the crap out of that first. Once you have a solid plot, then you can worry about getting down on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T00:06:16.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5609" CreationDate="2012-05-07T17:07:52.340" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid I've never seen any statistics on this. As the comments have noted, this is a very difficult estimate to make - there are many different definitions of &quot;getting published&quot; (does self-publishing count? e-Publishing? Vanity? Short stories? Posthumously?), and it's practically impossible to track the many, many writers who never got past the rejection stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is more readily available is finding individual accounts of specific writers' paths to publication. These are more anecdotal than statistical, and tend towards the extreme edges:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jacob M. Appel's short stories netted him &lt;a href=&quot;http://pimpmynovel.blogspot.com/2010/02/11000-rejections-on-wall-11000_22.html&quot;&gt;11,000 rejections&lt;/a&gt; before he got published.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mette Ivie Harrison wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&amp;amp;vol=mette_ivie_harrison&amp;amp;article=017&quot;&gt;20 novels that never got published&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;J.K. Rowling famously got &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling#Harry_Potter&quot;&gt;12 rejections for &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; before selling it to Bloomsbury. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Elsewhen in England, Terry Pratchett published a short story commercially &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett#Background&quot;&gt;at age 15&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, again, these are mere anecdotes, they do imply (at the very least) an extremely wide variation in this particular datum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhat more available is the other direction: what percentage of incoming manuscripts does an agent or a publisher accept? You'll find varying accounts; two that I found most easily are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An NYC literary agency winds up representing about &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3201014&amp;amp;userid=0&amp;amp;perpage=40&amp;amp;pagenumber=21#post386834309&quot;&gt;1 manuscript in 4000&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In 2006, literary agent Miss Snark would read &lt;a href=&quot;http://misssnark.blogspot.com/2006/04/writing-well-is-not-comparison-its.html&quot;&gt;one full for every 100 manuscripts&lt;/a&gt;; doing the math from her description, I think that comes out (by generous estimation) to representing approximately 1 author per 1200 queries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hypothetically, you might guesstimate how many venues there are for novels, say that each one accepts, say, 1 in 2000, and get some approximation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what you might really want to take to heart is the rest of Miss Snark's post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no reliable way to measure the acceptance ratio at a publisher because there is no reliable measure of what's pitched. Do you count manuscripts received? Do you count each version? Do you count pitches that fell so flat the editor said &quot;ix-nay on the rap-cay&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sufficient unto the day is this: we ARE looking for good work. Write really really well and you won't need to worry about who else is there cause you'll rise to the top of the heap. The fact that there is a lot of other stuff out there is no indication of the quality of that work. Most of it is dreck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take from that what you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T17:07:52.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5609" CreationDate="2012-05-07T17:57:44.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand somewhat on the great information that @Standback provided, you have to keep in mind that the numbers you found pertaining to business success is in itself an incomplete number. The government statistics are based on those businesses that are actually documented as a result of completing some type of government form, such as a business permit or tax ID number. There are no doubt countless businesses that are started without completing these forms that ultimately fail without anyone &quot;officially&quot; documenting that they existed in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a similar vein, no publisher is going to keep a running total of the number of manuscripts they receive and ultimately reject. The main reason for this is because the number would be so daunting it would discourage most writers from ever making the attempt. Agents face similar problems, but at least some of them are more likely to share their acceptance numbers. According to the assumptions Standback made in his response, 1 in 2000 manuscripts is likely to be taken on by an agent. That number represents 2000 separate stories, and not authors. There may be five manuscripts from one author in that mix, but either way, the numbers are still pretty staggering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a quote from a literary agent that I think helps to provide a little perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reality is that the market for new fiction is horrendous. Of course, editors are looking for new writers, but the hurdles editors have to leap to acquire unpublished authors are nearly impossible to scale -- editors need both a highly marketable as well as a brilliantly executed novel in order to acquire it. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing-world.com/publish/agentFAQ.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Simon Lipskar&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An interesting aside from this quote is that it is a quote from about ten years ago, and the odds of getting accepted have dropped even more since then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I think it is noble that you want to give yourself a specific goal, I don't think that there is any clear and simple way to find an average on which to base your goal. You would be better served just settling on a number that you believe is reasonable before deciding to move on. You also need to decide if your goal is based on submissions to agents or submissions that you make directly to the publishers. Going through an agent could possibly get you broader exposure to more publishers, which would mean starting with a smaller number for your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that you need to take into consideration is how much time you want to devote to getting published. Are you willing to have a manuscript shopped around for a year, or two, or three? Will you stop writing if you don't get any bites on the first manuscript? These are additional factors that should equal or greater importance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If ultimately your goal is to just write your stories and get them into the hands of the public, then you might find it more beneficial to pursue self-publishing as an e-book. That market is expanding enormously and the potential is far greater (in my opinion). You could continue to try selling your short stories or articles to help provide a foundation of experience, and then as you acquire those points of recognition, draw attention to them as part of the promotion for your e-books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read an article somewhere once where someone was asking for advice on how to pursue a career as a writer, and I'll try to present the same scenario that was suggested there. Let's say you have the idea/outline for six different books, all of which could become parts of a series. If you don't sell the first one, would you still plan/want to write the others? If the answer is yes, then you should concentrate on being a writer and spend less time worrying about selling the books before they are written. If the answer is no, then you are more interested in the business venture, and that would be more of your focus than the actual writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T10:17:20.397" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T10:17:20.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4138" CreationDate="2012-05-08T08:12:00.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get him drunk and start to ask him questions. Maybe - as others suggested - about his surname. Maybe about his childhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to write all of it, but imagine it, and see what comes out. Somewhere in his drunken - i.e. open and uninhibited state - is the real person, and the real flaws. Once you have had that (possibly quite long) conversation, you will know the character better, and you can write some of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is something embarassing about his name in context, then someone taunting him about it might be a good setting to explore this. If he has a physical characteristic, then maybe it gets worse after some activity, and you can explore it then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But once you have revealed these flaws, problems, irritations, then he needs to draw strength from them, and not be defeated. So maybe it is his heredity that he feels he needs to live up to. Maybe it is his disability that will not stop him. Then you have a super hero that other s can relate to, because they are drawing their real strength from their own failings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a readers point of view, they then know about a serious vulnerability, and how the character can react, so their super-humanity then becomes something he might possibly deserve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T08:12:00.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5626" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5628" CreationDate="2012-05-08T10:57:14.563" Score="7" ViewCount="5123" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing&quot;&gt;Rules of writing&lt;/a&gt; indicates that knowing the end before the beginning is critical to writing. Which I find odd, because in my writing (early days, probably doing it wrong), one of the best things is that I don't actually know what the end is on my first run through. I think this gives my writing some of its dynamism, because the author is as unsure of where this will end up as the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, just for clarification, I have something of an idea of what is going to happen, some sense of what is being worked towards, but - critically - until I get there, I cannot say what the interactions will be, and so how the story will end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, on a secondary rewrite, I do know where it is going, and I make sure that I put pointers and indicators in at that stage, but I see this more as adding items that the characters didn't notice the first time, but can see with hindsight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is, how important is this rule? Is my way of writing breaking it, or actually fulfilling it (by the rework)? As a new author, I want to understand whether I am getting things right or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T10:34:31.027" Title="How important is it to know the end before the writing the beginning?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5626" CreationDate="2012-05-08T11:26:29.267" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like all rules, this can be broken if the end result is what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people are &quot;discovery writers&quot; (aka &quot;pants writers&quot;). They just sit down to write, and watch the story unfold as if they were watching TV. Some people have to have everything structured and sketched out before they begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no wrong way to do it. If you get to the end, decide you like it, and then rework the rest to fit the end, congratulations: you did it right. If you get to the end, decide you hate it, and change it, congratulations: you did it right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the finished, edited story works so that all the pieces throughout point to  the end, or don't, &lt;em&gt;as you intend&lt;/em&gt;, it doesn't matter how you arrived at the end, or any piece in between, on any draft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T11:26:29.267" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5626" CreationDate="2012-05-08T11:31:22.207" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You give rules too much credit ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these rules should be treated as being one of the Commandments. In your mind you have to add a &quot;... but think for yourself&quot; to each rule, because maybe for your current situation it is best to break/ignore the rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see that also at the comments to this particular rule. To cite Standback here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A good modification to this would be: once you know the ending, fix up the beginning to match. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good thing of knowing the ending is having an aim. People tend to have it easier writing when they see their goal in front of them. Also it is useful to keep the consistency in your story. But you can fix consistency afterward. It's just more work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That does not mean you can save work if you follow this rule. Because if a known ending is blocking your creativity and you are not able to write something, then the rule is not helping, it's sabotaging your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do whatever works for you. The most important aspect of writing is (you would never have guessed that) &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt;. If you can write your story the way you are doing it now, then keep going. Don't ponder, write!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T11:31:22.207" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4652" CreationDate="2012-05-08T14:59:28.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sublime Text offers multi columns layouts and is a very lightweight text editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't have vertical scroll locking, but it does provide a mini-map of the entire document so you can see exactly which part of the document is currently on screen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sublimetext.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sublimetext.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3594" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T14:59:28.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5626" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:29:34.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would just like to add an &quot;it depends...&quot; clause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For short and shorter stories, I believe that freewriting is the way to go. Follow the story where it goes and chronicle events as they unfold. Sometimes you can get a little lost but, heck, that's what rewrites are for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But novels are much larger and less agile beasts; it might be better to treat them like a loosely scripted improv. For weeks ahead of time, you can do all of the freewriting you want in your head or in little brainstorm bubbles or whatever works. But get at least a solid framework of rough sketches in place. Yes, you should know what happens in the end and you need to be prepared for it. So do your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then all you need to do is to take those rough sketches to sit down and plan out the framework. Then break each bite size chunk into chapters and give each chapter a set mission to accomplish: &quot;In Chapter 3 Mark discovers his friend's dead body hanging from the rafters. It must have been suicide. Something isn't right but Mark just can't put his finger on it. The cops are called and the elderly neighbor lady refuses to leave, claiming it was 'them terrists'.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 'rules', 'commandments' what have you are there for a reason -- they work. You can play them fast and loose. Just don't throw out the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="3496" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T17:46:31.953" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:46:31.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3344" CreationDate="2012-05-08T20:32:54.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is part of the standard way of finishing a press release. Some of these formal documents still use these conventions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It comes, I think, from the time when press releases came on a teleprinter, and it was important to mark the end, so that it was clear to the recipient that the entire release had been received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:32:54.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="476" CreationDate="2012-05-08T22:23:04.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's also a somewhat basic name generator called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.behindthename.com/random/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Behind The Name&lt;/a&gt; that will let you select several different national heritages to choose from, as well as Biblical and other mythical origins. There's also a similar app for your iDevice called &lt;a href=&quot;http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/name-shake/id458164362?mt=8&amp;amp;ign-mpt=uo=4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Name Shake&lt;/a&gt;, if you're into that sort of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T22:23:04.837" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-05-08T22:23:04.837" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5617" CreationDate="2012-05-09T12:10:04.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very much about where you think you can gain most from. You may have a brilliant plot, but find that you write it with the fluency of a plank of wood, or you may have the writing style of Iain Banks*, but such a loose and implausible plot that it makes no difference**.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what you have said, a critique of the plot might, at this point, be more productive for you, and if you can include some more finished written work, to give an idea of how it might look, they can be done together. But get the plot sorted first, write some of the story on a good quality plot, and then see whether you need the same sort of critique of that, or whether something different would work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Well, I like his style, at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;** OK, he gets away without a plot sometimes. But then, he is pretty unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T12:10:04.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5626" CreationDate="2012-05-09T13:15:11.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree strongly.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.english-for-students.com/Exploratory-Writing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Exploratory&lt;/a&gt; writing is defintely considered a good practice sometimes, and it's certainly not in keeping with &quot;the rules of writing.&quot;  Further, I think that any set of prescriptive rules for writing are ultimately only useful for the people who say them.  I have my own set of rules for writing, and they don't look much like that. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T13:15:11.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2139" CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:05:51.187" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point is all novels require info dumps, but you as the author has to find a way of putting across the information as entertainly as possible.  To do it entirely as narration is a major fail.  Consider the Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham.  He had to put about three major info dumps in that novel.  In one he used a flashback to get across the origin of the Triffids, but by starting the novel with his protagonist waking up to a blind chaotic London was a master stroke.  Because the reader was engaged in a dystopian nightmare already and the info dump allowed a breather knowing action was further ahead.  in another info dump he used the device of a meeting.  This way the info comes out in a conversation (dialogue), so it is more easily digested.  Also he could put non-info dump snippets of dialogue to keep things interesting.  I feel he achieved this by introducing the assertion that women would have to take multiple husbands (or was it the other way around?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your protagonist could have at least some dialogue with a pet if no humans are available/possible.  Also you could have her introspection occurring amid other action (while she is being tortured as a result of the person she 'fell' for).  If any info dump requires more than 20 solid pages then you are not writing a novel, are you?  So let's say you have to do 8 pages of info (which is massive).  I would say write a chapter of 16 pages and make 8 pages interesting and non-info dump.  Also remember the info dump should be interesting to the reader if it relates to the story, what has gone, but more importantly, what as a result of the info dump will follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am tackling an info dump problem right now near the end of a first book in a series of 6 books (which 3 books have been written and the rest planned out as a draft).  that is why I arrived at this blog!  I have about 16 pages of conversation to put this info across, which I realise is too much.  I have my protagonist talking to an Angel (Silicon-based life form with a carbon-based brain).  This angel is putting across the beliefs and politics of his race (some of which believe in Angels of Light; ie, angels as in created by God).  My angel is an atheist but he has to deal with the Religious Angels all in an effort to join my protagonist in an impending fight against a creature threatening the Multiverse.  You can imagine the the info dump required as this is the protagonist's first meeting with an angel.  I did do what other bloggers in this problem set suggested.  I have already put related info at 4 points earlier in the novel, which on their own seemed reasonable to mention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I still need to break up my conversation of these 16 pages.  What I've done is split the 16 into two chapters of 8.  This means I aim to do say 14-16 pages per chapter with only 8 pages having the info dump.  I aim to do this by introducing action amid the info dump.  I will approximately use the 8-point arc:  Stasis; Trigger; Surprise; Critical Choice; Reversal; Resolution as a sub-plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this info might trigger something useful (even if it was a bit of an info dump in itself!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tom&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3603" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T18:05:51.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5626" CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:29:05.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it was Abe Lincoln who said the last part of any book written is the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, so you do not know how your story will end and this helps you write.  Fair enough, but your story will have an end, won't it?  Now that you know the end, know your whole story, I would think this could well affect your beginning.  I recently wrote a novel and put it away for a few years.  When I read it again, I realised the beginning has to be my best writing.  It has to pull the reader in.  I found I rewrote entirely 20 chapters of the novel and it became a trilogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no hard and fast rules except the book has to be readable and the reader must want to read the book through to the end.  But most writers I know, including myself, agree on one thing: have at least a brief plot and an idea of how the story might end AND write the novel.  THEN think about how to best rewrite it to maximise entertainment (publication).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course some authors simply write one chapter at a time and see where it leads.  This can work if you are a good writer and each chapter encourages the reader to desperately want to read the next.  But it is worth remembering that a book is a contract between author and reader.  The reader will be expecting a satisfying end.  I recently read &lt;em&gt;A Thousands Suns&lt;/em&gt; by Alex Scarrow.  Although I found I wanted to read each chapter I was disappointed that the climax was poor (at least for me).  I won't be reading his other books as a result.  Yes the beginning is the most important part of a book because it is the bait to catch the fish.  But the ending is the bait for whether a reader will ever read another book by that author.  If the said fish was not netted and released properly it will not bother to bite a similar bait again (poor metaphor, I know, but...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3603" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-05-09T21:02:48.410" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T21:02:48.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5617" CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:41:11.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a great fan of Writer Groups.  I don't think a story should be submitted for critique until it is completed.  Otherwise just a single critism will cause the writer to lose heart to a degree.  Of all the successful published writers I don't know any who show their developing works for critique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have identified a problem and want a solution then that is a different matter. State the problem, and seek the solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3603" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-05-09T20:59:46.307" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T20:59:46.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5617" CreationDate="2012-05-11T00:56:58.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's two sides of the same coin; it's two different kinds of reviews.  A plot with too many holes and weak points will make a crummy book, but shoddy writing will spoil even the keenest of plots.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is &quot;more important&quot; to review?  That would depend on the author.  Proficient writers may need help with plot; strong storytellers might need help with writing.  Odds are, however, that most writers would derive benefits from both kinds of review, particularly if the reviewers are skilled and constructive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to decide which is &quot;more important&quot; makes for an interesting academic exercise, but, ideally, both plot and writing would be thoroughly examined over the course of time.  It depends on where you are in the writing, and what needs to be reviewed at that stage.  The review process is very different for each.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T00:56:58.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5640" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-11T02:44:46.853" Score="1" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing (and re-writing) something for a good number of years. In the development of the story, it kind of felt like I was finding myself. In this, I feel that the fantasy world I've created is having an effect on me philosophically. While this might be a good and a bad thing, it also dangerously blurs the line in my head and in my heart between reality and fantasy. I know this isn't a philosophy room, but I think this has happened to other authors too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something that can be reversed, or am I better off leaving things as they are for the purpose of more writing in the same genre?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2626" LastEditorUserId="2074" LastEditDate="2012-05-11T12:19:44.130" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T12:19:44.130" Title="Fantasy writing and Personal Philosophy" Tags="|fantasy|philosophy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2012-05-11T14:11:28.860" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5641" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5644" CreationDate="2012-05-11T04:11:37.663" Score="7" ViewCount="682" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you can write a lot without saying anything, sometimes you can say a lot but get little through the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In technical writing the later is very typical (at least for me), one can tend to over-explain &#xA; and get the adverse effects out of fear of under-explaining and making people feel dumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good rule to take something you've written down and make it shorter and sweeter without stripping technicality?. What criteria can one follow to condense/compress information and make it clearer at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I'm currently writing a whitepaper, which mixes formal research with software engineering topics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3610" LastEditorUserId="3610" LastEditDate="2012-05-11T22:30:46.643" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T16:36:08.103" Title="How can you write less to say more?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5640" CreationDate="2012-05-11T06:42:39.613" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're starting to believe that honesty isn't always the best policy, or something similar in nature, keep going. Writing is just channeling thought onto paper. Really, essentially, you've thought about an aspect of your world at length and come to regard it differently. The fact that you happened to be writing at the time has no bearing on the truth of this scenario. Asking whether it's a bad thing is practically the same as asking whether your personal world perspective is trending in a bad direction.&#xA;Who can answer that but you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, you're beginning to think kitchen gnomes are cleaning your dishes at night...you might want to take a break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2012-05-11T07:43:48.603" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T07:43:48.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5640" CreationDate="2012-05-11T08:06:02.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an argument, I think, that we write what is inside of us - that is, we express into English some of our real, core beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect of expressing our beliefs, writing them out, can - in both good and bad ways - make them more real, more concrete, and so can affect our thinking even more. However, it is always good to get them out into the open, have them expressed, because otherwise we are, to an extent, repressing them. Writing is a fairly safe way of doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So embrace an understand them, but make sure that you also challenge your own belief system, against reality. And dismiss the belief system when reality demonstrates it to be wrong. It will strengthen you as a person and a writer, the latter because your belief system as expressed in your writing will have a closer connection to reality. Yes, even if it is fantasy, it will engage better with the reality your readers know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T08:06:02.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5641" CreationDate="2012-05-11T08:26:59.013" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, the answer to this is structuring of the writing. I work in Software development, and you are right that a lot of technical documentation is appallingly overdone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The straightforward answer is to take stuff that is written more than once, and write it once in a definitions or explanations section. It is rather like refactoring code - take the verbosity out and put it centrally, so that you can see the flow of the code, and only refer to the details at the points you need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, someone who knows the system fairly well, should be able to look at a short page of technical instructions to find out how to do something they have not done before. At the same time, a new user should be able to achieve the same thing, but probably looking up a lot more of the details (What is a Doodlesquat? Where is the Diddle control? How do you Activate The Centuran Protocol?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing good and clear technical documentation is a really difficult thing to do, as demonstrated by the general quality around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T08:26:59.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5641" CreationDate="2012-05-11T09:19:08.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The techniques are no different than for any type of writing, really.  You write &lt;strong&gt;everything&lt;/strong&gt; there is to know about the topic down in the first draft, then you go back and &lt;strong&gt;cut out what isn't needed&lt;/strong&gt;.  Once you have everything in front of you, it will be much easier to see what should be there and what shouldn't.  Do they really need to know that there are twelve different kinds of widgets? That each has a different process for manufacturing? Do they need to know that &lt;strong&gt;here&lt;/strong&gt;?  Cut about &lt;strong&gt;half the words on the page&lt;/strong&gt; (and I'm not kidding, 50% the words in your first draft are probably not carrying their own weight) and rearrange your text around so that the most urgent, important stuff is in the front and the nice-to-knows are closer to the back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now give it to someone who knows nothing about widgets and see if by the end they know something.  While someone with no prior knowledge may not know how to build a widget by the end, if they understand what it is and that there are a dozen different kinds and that a sand widget is the most interesting of the bunch, you are on the right path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things to keep in mind is that your reader is probably pretty smart, maybe even smarter than you, just less knowledgeable about this subject.  Don't worry about those that aren't.  You are more likely to alienate both readers if you try to over-explain things to them. Readers don't want to be coddled, they want to be shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T09:19:08.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5641" CreationDate="2012-05-11T15:19:42.260" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience is in software documentation (particularly programming interfaces), so I'll answer from that perspective.  I think these principles are pretty general, but I've never written manuals for, say, airplane repair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, you want your documentation to say all and only what is needed for the reader in his current context.  For example, if you're documenting a programming interface and the signature of the call already contains a return value, typed arguments, and exceptions thrown, don't repeat that -- it's already in front of the reader.  &lt;em&gt;Do&lt;/em&gt;, however, &lt;em&gt;explain&lt;/em&gt; any of those that need clarification.  What does it mean if it returns null?  Are there semantic limitations on the parameters that aren't encoded in the type system (e.g. that integer must be positive)?  Are there preconditions (this call is only valid if such-and-such state exists)?  These are all cases where you will need to say more, not less, but the point is to not say the stuff that's unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean you'll never repeat information.  If there are three different contexts in which such-and-such piece of information about your system is important, you need to say it in all three.  Whether you do this with duplicate text or via links/see-alsos depends on the specifics of your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people approach the problem of concise writing by writing everything down first and then pruning.  I prefer to work up from the bare bones.  I start with (say) the signature of the call, then ask myself what else the reader needs to know in order to use it, and I write that.  (Ideally &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; will use it rather than just speculating.)  The first round of review by the SMEs (subject-matter experts) is focused on whether I left anything out or have any errors; reviewing for the text itself comes later.  I've found, by the way, that SMEs are more responsive when I don't drop large rambling tomes on them. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer boils down to &quot;don't get verbose in the first place&quot;, but what you asked was how to trim down an already-written piece.  For that, I go in decreasing chunk sizes (section, paragraph, sentence, word), asking &quot;is this X really necessary?&quot;.  If not, mark.  I do this on paper, not in a text editor, so I can complete the entire review pass before changing anything.  I do it in this order because there's no point in tuning a sentence if its entire paragraph or section is going to go away.  Do the biggest parts first and then narrow your focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been talking so far about reference documentation.  Other types of documentation, such as tutorials, call for a more verbose style that reinforces previously-taught information.  Don't generalize my advice about concise writing to situations where this is not the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T15:19:42.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5647" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5648" CreationDate="2012-05-11T19:18:17.490" Score="4" ViewCount="7626" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short paper on macroeconomics; the professor gave us two tries, I submitted the first try, and now got my feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The feedback is: &quot;The first paragraph could also deserve a reference&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And these are the two paragraphs this refers to (note the reference [3] in the end):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;Both rational ignorance and expressive voting are more likely to occur&#xA;  when instrumental voting does not seem to bring any benefit to the&#xA;  citizen; i.e. an election where the  candidates have similar prognoses&#xA;  should attract instrumental, rational voters, whereas a landslide&#xA;  election with an almost predictable outcome attracts less total&#xA;  voters, but more ignorant or expressive ones, because they feel that&#xA;  their vote will not have any instrumental, decisive value, hence can&#xA;  be used to express an opinion.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;Assume a voter realizes that he will not tip the balance, and will not&#xA;  benefit from the enactment of the candidate's promises. He can also not&#xA;  be paid for his vote. But he is willing to vote, in order to express&#xA;  his support for democracy, or maybe his dissatisfaction by voting for&#xA;  protest party. If he enjoys the voting process itself, then he is not&#xA;  benefiting in an instrumental sense, but in an emotional one. If this&#xA;  joy exceeds the cost of voting, he is still rational in some broader&#xA;  sense. [3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the second paragraph, after the word &quot;opinion&quot;, starts in the very next line, without any empty line or any additional distance in between. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, the reference at the end was intended to spread over both paragraphs, since they are both &quot;covered&quot; by this source; however I understand that this may not be obvious. But what shall I do? I cannot quote it, since it's not a quote; so shall I put the citation twice, one for each paragraph? Won't the same citation within 5 sentences seem unbeautiful, or is this a necessary evil?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3614" OwnerDisplayName="Marie. P." LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-11T19:54:55.410" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T20:04:34.183" Title="Citing in a paper: one citation for two paragraphs?" Tags="|style|citations|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5647" CreationDate="2012-05-11T19:54:44.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, just repeat the citation. If you consider beauty aspects, you can also use &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4486/correct-usage-explanation-of-ibid-in-referencing&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;ibid.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for the second citation, but that's depending on your citation style (&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3352/vancouver-system-citing-multiple-sentences-from-the-same-book&quot;&gt;Vancouver&lt;/a&gt; or other stuff).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T19:54:44.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5647" CreationDate="2012-05-11T20:04:34.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your professor wants it, put it in, regardless of aesthetic considerations. If your professor wants to you type from the bottom up, in sparkling teal ink, in Comic Sans... that's how you format it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T20:04:34.183" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5650" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-11T21:28:56.277" Score="1" ViewCount="2111" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a number of novels by Clive Cussler, the characters are sometimes offered help by a person whose surname is Cussler, same as the author. I believe this also happens in &lt;em&gt;Sahara&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Dragon&lt;/em&gt;, and Stephen King has done it in his Dark Tower books as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the name for this self-referential technique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3615" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-05-11T23:43:08.277" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T09:24:10.390" Title="What is the name for the literary technique where the author writes him/herself into a book?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5650" CreationDate="2012-05-11T22:02:30.610" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The technique that I believe you are referring to is &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Self+insertion&quot;&gt;self-insertion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a literary device in which an author character who is the real author of a work of fiction appears as a character within that fiction, either overtly or in disguise&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the character is actively seeking help from the author as the work is being written, another possible word or phrase you might want to use is &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Fourth+wall#Breaking_the_fourth_wall&quot;&gt;breaking the fourth wall&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/meta+reference&quot;&gt;meta-reference&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Meta-reference, a meta-fiction technique, is a situation in a work of&#xA;  fiction whereby fictional characters display an awareness that they&#xA;  are in such a work, such as a film, television show or book. ... It is also sometimes known as &quot;Breaking the Fourth Wall&quot;, in reference to the theatrical tradition of playing as if there were no audience, as if a wall existed between them and the actors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T22:02:30.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5412" CreationDate="2012-05-12T03:23:51.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see a big difference between &quot;part&quot; and &quot;section&quot;. However, I would suggest something more descriptive than &quot;Part One&quot; or &quot;Section 1&quot;. What do the chapters have in common? Why are the grouped together? It helps the reader if you could call them something like &quot;Part One: Networking&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3617" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T05:42:09.893" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T05:42:09.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5322" CreationDate="2012-05-12T03:31:47.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm late to this discussion, but we call ourselves &quot;programming-writers&quot;. And yes, we are rare and expensive. For example, on my current contract I add Doxygen comments into Java source file, read C++ files (the native implementation of many of the Java files), post the files on a Linux server where I modify Php and JavaScript, write SQL statements to interact with a MySql database, modify Windows BAT and Cygwin Bash shell scripts, while using emacs with custom modifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most developers dread writing documentation and most writers do not have the technical breadth. I suggest you try Craigslist and use the heaviest technical requirements. Be prepared to be inundated with responses from the barely qualified (as in they wrote a VB program once). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;doug&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3617" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T03:31:47.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5654" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5660" CreationDate="2012-05-12T01:29:51.797" Score="3" ViewCount="3019" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it easier to write many things with parentheses, but I don't know if this is considered good practice. I would expect some might say that parentheses are indicative of excessive digression and that the sentences would be clearer if restructured. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there general consensus on the extent to rely on parentheses (e.g. &quot;sparingly&quot;, or the same as with starting sentences with conjunction)? &lt;strong&gt;Do parentheses generally make writing more or less clear?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3619" OwnerDisplayName="T. Webster" LastEditorUserId="3496" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T10:52:01.160" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T10:11:40.260" Title="Do parentheses inhibit clarity?" Tags="|punctuation|clarity|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5654" CreationDate="2012-05-12T03:17:51.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Parentheses are intended for parenthetical expressions and recognizing correctly what is and what is not a parenthetical expression in a given context governs their proper use.      &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" OwnerDisplayName="Kris" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T03:17:51.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5654" CreationDate="2012-05-12T03:49:06.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like what Theodore Bernstein says in &quot;The Careful Writer&quot; (original copyright 1965):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is some evidence that the use of parentheses has become more common in modern writing, particularly in critical and expository writing. Parentheses seem almost to have become a mark of &quot;sophisticated,&quot; knowing style. They do have their uses in simplifying sentences that otherwise would be encumbered with ponderous subordinate and coordinate clauses and in permitting the use of pointed asides that might otherwise seem overemphatic. But, like every other stylistic device, they can be overdone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you should be able to lift out what is inside a set of parentheses and still have a grammatical, understandable sentence left behind. I personally think they are overused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3432" OwnerDisplayName="JLG" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T03:49:06.617" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5654" CreationDate="2012-05-12T05:34:38.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sparingly is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most commonly, a pair of parentheses is useful to set off a strong or weak interruption, rather like a pair of dashes or a pair of bracketing commas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule we prefer parentheses, rather than dashes or bracketing commas, when the interruption is best regarded as a kind of &quot;aside&quot; from the writer to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Susan Argiri" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T13:18:01.807" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T13:18:01.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5654" CreationDate="2012-05-12T13:19:42.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with any technique, use it when it makes the text easier to understand, and don't overdo it (unless you're overdoing it deliberately as a stylistic choice, which should then be obvious). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T13:19:42.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5533" CreationDate="2012-05-12T13:40:54.180" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the flow of the conversation works fine.  I found no confusion regarding who spoke, who listened, or why the characters participated the way they did.  That being said, it wasn't really a three-way conversation.  Tom spoke to two characters, both of whom listened.  They took turns commenting without competing for ‘air time’, they didn’t hold different positions from each other, and never attempted to take the conversation in different directions.  Both Adele or Anny wanted the same thing from the conversation (to listen to Tom).  You could remove either of the characters and the conversation would require little change.  This is not wrong for your story, of course.  I can't know that.  I'm just addressing the larger issue of conversation between more than two characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you’re feeling that this dialogue isn’t popping, the reasons might be more basic.  There isn’t any conflict here.  Since drama is conflict, the exchange feels a bit flat (undramatic).  Conflict doesn’t have to be big, it can be subtle.  Really it just means divergent goals.  Character 1 wants A, character 2 wants B.  If they both can’t get what they want, you have a conflict.  Since screenwriting is my thing, I tend to look for conflict in dialogue.  Tom wants to convey his thoughts about possession.  Adele and Anny want to listen.  Everyone’s desires are served, thus no conflict.  What if Adele was interested in listening, but Anny wasn’t.  Maybe she just wants to relax and so resists the serious tone the conversation is taking.  Now you have a compound conversation driven by conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally there is subtext.  Maybe I have too small a piece of your story to tell, but I detect no subtext.  This is what screenwriters call ‘on the nose’ writing, which means that what your characters are talking about is all they’re talking about - there’s nothing below the surface with a different or deeper meaning.  Only for reasons of making the point, imagine this.  Anny loves Tom, she doesn’t want to hear him waxing about nothing belonging to anyone, because she interprets it as his unwillingness to commit to anybody romantically.  Thus the comments she feeds into the conversation suggest this other take and further drive the conflict.  I know I’m speculating a lot, but it’s tough to interpret small pieces of narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1904" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T13:40:54.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5654" CreationDate="2012-05-12T15:59:13.057" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do parentheses inhibit clarity? They do and they don't, it's all down to individual use. When used well and skillfully, parentheses fulfill a function that no other punctuation or construction can quite imitate. Their function is similar to em dashes (a woefully overused punctuation mark) and can also be used to mask off digressions (which can detract from the text). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overuse and use to mask bad habits have given parentheses a bad rep. Long parenthetical statements that don't flow well are a misuse. If the sentence or paragraph doesn't flow when reading it (because of the parenthetical statements) then you're not using them right. Maybe  parentheses are the wrong tool in a case like this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, just because parentheses are misused often doesn't mean there aren't good ways to employ them. I wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://magnificentnose.com/2011/05/04/parenthetically/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a longer blog post about this very subject&lt;/a&gt;, but here's the money quote in the article that illustrates the central point: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[General Washington] had not done well farming despite all sorts of theories about river mud being the best of manures (it is not), and the invention of a plough (shades of Jefferson!) which proved to be so heavy that two horses could not budge it even in moist earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Gore Vidal, &lt;em&gt;Burr&lt;/em&gt;, 1973)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See how well that flows? Dashes would introduce awkward pauses into the writing, rephrasing it entirely would remove the narrator's great sense of self-importance. This novel's narrator is opinionated and talky, but the author cleverly turns his asides into parenthetical ejaculations of color that don't interfere with the flow of the language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parentheses can be a useful tool in situations where writing the sentence without them would make the sentence longer, a maze of twisty corridors, or perhaps just drain it of life. Those who learn to use parentheses well have access to a wonderful tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-13T10:11:40.260" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T10:11:40.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5654" CreationDate="2012-05-12T16:16:40.187" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I express my thoughts online (and I have to make parenthetical statements) I &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; parentheses. For me they're like talking to someone and saying something under my breath. I love getting that extra bonus idea into my already lengthy sentence creations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when I'm writing something that I intend to make money or get a grade out of I (almost) never use parentheses. If I were to make a lecture to a crowded auditorium I am not likely to express a side note under my breath. I'm going to want to make sure that everything important is clearly stated and that everything unimportant is nonexistent. The same goes for writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When you write for grades or money eliminate parentheses. Period.&lt;/strong&gt; (&quot;But what if...&quot; &lt;strong&gt;NO.&lt;/strong&gt; Eliminate parentheses. Period.) If the parenthetical thought you have is important it needs to be integrated into the text. If the parenthetical thought you have is unimportant it needs to be excised like an ugly wart on an otherwise beautiful face.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parentheses are a tool of the lazy writer. A writer that can't be bothered to make a decision as to whether or not that bonus idea is important to the reader. Don't force your reader to be subject to your written mumblings. Don't use parentheses professionally. (All right?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-05-13T00:29:53.937" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T00:29:53.937" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5626" CreationDate="2012-05-12T17:04:58.573" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the risk of redundancy, I'm answering to strengthen Lauren Ipsum's point because I think he/she's correct, but I sense some resistance.  Like you I'm a struggling writer, but I've been a member of two writing groups; so I've watched many different writers (with different approaches) struggle.  I have also seen that there are indeed two writer types (planners and explorers) who both suffer different advantages and disadvantages.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a planner myself, I can see that explorers escape some of the stiffness that planners tend to suffer from.  Explorer writing however, is a commitment to aggressive and fearless rewriting.  By rewriting, I mean largely writing over.  The first drafts of explorer writers must be considered prototypes - an alternate form of planning, not a short cut to writing.  Thus these first drafts are throwaways.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When explorer writers get into trouble, it is because they attempt to salvage their first draft, most of which they wrote before they knew what they were going for.  In screenwriting, they say that, &quot;there are no 3rd act problems, only 1st act problems.&quot;  This is because the first act sets up the entire story.  If you don't know what your third act will be, it's darn near impossible to get the first act right, so you better be willing to completely rewrite your first and probably much of your second act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1904" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T17:04:58.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5613" CreationDate="2012-05-14T11:49:18.090" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are talking about is essentially an unreliable narrator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unreliable narrators can be mentally ill (Humbert Humbert in 'Lolita), have a character flaw (boastful, ignorant - Chaucers 'Wife of Bath for example), or immature, such as Huckleberry Finn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each case, the unreliability can be signalled much as in real life - lack of credibility. Your character can contradict himself, or contradict what the reader knows in the text, or lie to other characters (Intratextual signs) or contradict real life or social norms (Extratextual signs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nabokov's Humbert Humbert does most of these, and is an outstanding example of an unreliable, lying, narrator. Well worth reading if you are looking for ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3624" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T11:49:18.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5613" CreationDate="2012-05-14T13:18:14.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just occurred to me what troubled me about this. If someone really does have an eidetic memory they will remember telling you they had one and therefore would only tell a lie like this to either test your powers of recall or if they wanted to be caught out for some reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All narrators are necessarily unreliable. There's nothing wrong with a narrator saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I remember the woman but will not tell you about her in any depth as&#xA;  you really would gain nothing from the description. I shall continue&#xA;  to do you this kindness throughout my account. If you could see what I&#xA;  see then you would also err on the side of vagueness when trying not&#xA;  to bore others with exhaustive unnecessary details.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This accomplishes the goal of telling people the account will be heavily edited to the convenience of the narrator. Also, and this is important with most unreliable witnesses, make the reader feel patronised and talked down to. This will make them want to believe the narrator is lying and wrong about things and keep it foremost in their minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T13:18:14.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5613" CreationDate="2012-05-14T13:22:53.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;By asking this question I think that you are underestimating your reader.  You are clearly making your character a liar and anyone paying attention would note it.  The only possible issue you may have, in trying to maintain that throughout the story, is if you gave the reader a reason to believe that the narrator was justified in lying in this case and that he may not lie should the situation not warrant it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3625" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T13:22:53.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5667" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-14T15:15:28.933" Score="0" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a tutorial-type article on high-performance cluster computing. It is aimed at researchers and grad students who want to use clusters to answer scientific questions, especially in the life sciences. I may want to re-use text from this article for future, expanded versions - long-term goal is a series of articles or even a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have put a lot of work and time into the article already, and I simply do not want to publish it on some random blog. I am looking for a suitable website to publish the article. I do not expect financial renumeration, but I want a website where I have a lot of audience and of course the right audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A website which seemed very suited at first is IBM developerWorks: the article would get a lot of exposition, many readers, and I like how the website is designed and that there is a limited form of peer-review. But, I find the publishing policy and rules of IBM developerWorks ridiculous and just downright offensive. Anything you publish there is considered &quot;work for hire&quot; which means you give all rights over to IBM, and you can not re-use your own stuff in any other form elsewhere etc. So developerWorks is out of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are scientific journals of course, but this is also not the right forum for my article, because my article deals with very practical aspects of scientific cluster programming and computing, but so much with the science itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of a site very similar to IBM dveloperWorks in scope and audience, but with a more reasonable policy? Or, do you have any recommendation for a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; (i.e., not just some random blog) site where I could publish my article? Any suggestions welcome. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3626" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-14T16:22:01.117" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T16:35:34.790" Title="website to publish article on high-performance cluster computing?" Tags="|publishing|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5668" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5678" CreationDate="2012-05-15T07:53:58.240" Score="15" ViewCount="24787" Body="&lt;p&gt;The last time I printed a book I just needed something done cheaply and quickly. The print store used very bright, glossy office paper (the same that they use for office documents) and used construction paper for the cover. I thought this would be sufficient, but when reading I found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The edges of the paper are too sharp, potentially causing paper cuts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The pages feel too stiff. It's difficult to grasp and turn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The book is thicker and heavier than most novels of the same length.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my next book I want to select something which does not have these problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of binding is preferred for a novel meant to be carried around in one hand and read on the bus?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of paper should I select? Should it be bright? Brown? What weight?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-05-16T18:01:51.913" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T01:24:11.693" Title="What binding and paper should be used on a self-printed novel?" Tags="|novel|self-publishing|book|printing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5669" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-15T10:50:05.590" Score="2" ViewCount="717" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to learn how to maintain the flow of a novel's plot - there are so many characters and events to organize. What I find most difficult is the way a writer needs to shift from one phase of the story to the other, and then pick them up again and continue - and all the while, the writer needs to develop and maintain the interest of the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I &quot;keep the story moving&quot; when I'm constantly shifting between different threads of the plot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3628" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-15T20:48:17.303" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T12:28:22.173" Title="How do I maintain flow and interest when handling numerous plot threads?" Tags="|novel|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5669" CreationDate="2012-05-15T11:57:21.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at Lord of the Rings as an example. Tolkein has a lot of characters, all doing different thinks in different places, and meeting up in odd combinations. So what he does is focus on a particular story for a while, progresses one group or individual, and leaves the others to get on with it. Sometimes, this is for half a book, sometimes, for a paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is to leave the characters in a position that they can wait in for a while. In prison, or climbing hills or similar works quite well. Or even just &quot;off somewhere&quot; and recounting the back-story when they meet up again ( as with Gandalf ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is kept moving, because the current focus is always driving on, however you also have a concern for the other story passages, because they were left incomplete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, making sure that it all hangs together, geographically and chronologically, is a real challenge, that even Tolkein didn't quite get right all of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T11:57:21.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2012-05-15T13:17:47.683" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;You just need to shut off the inner critic, and start writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two main approaches: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/4027/2024&quot;&gt;pantsing&lt;/a&gt;, and plotting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I answered in the question linked above, pantsing works for very few people. Plotting is a better approach, for me at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write down a rough, one page summary of what you want the book to be, create a few characters, create 30-40 scenes which move the story forward, and start writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you write, you don't have to stick to the plan. If you dont like a character, just ignore them and continue writing, &lt;em&gt;but don't go back to edit your novel.&lt;/em&gt; If you don't like the plot, again change it on the fly, and pretend that's what you wrote. You can always fix any plot holes in editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dilemma you are stuck in happens to everyone, and the only way out is to type out 50-60,000 words, without criticising yourself or trying to edit. There is no easy way, you just have to slog through the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A way to make this easy is to write what you love. This may or may not be what you like reading, or the type of writer you want to be. For a long time I wanted to be a serious writer, the type that wins awards &amp;amp; stuff. But every time I tried to write such books, my muse revolted, and like you I ended up writing nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accepting that I have my own style, and it may never win me the Pulitzer award was one of the biggest challenges for me, harder than how to create a plot/character, things all the blog writers want to talk about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will end with a quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/54-writing-hacks-part-1-starting/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scott Berkun&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This means that when people can’t start they’re imagining the precision of the end, all polished and brilliant, a vision that makes the ugly clumsy junkyard that all beginnings are, impossible to accept. Good voice, tone, rhythm, ideas and grammar are essential to good writing, but they’re never introduced all at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Have you ever been blocked while playing Frisbee? Eating doughnuts? Dancing naked in your living room? Those are joyful things and there’s nothing at stake: if you fail, who cares? Nobody. If there are no rules, and no judgment, psychological blocks are impossible. And remember writers like making names and overthinking things: there is no term for architect-block, painter-block, juggler-block or composer-block. Every creative pursuit faces similar pressures, but they don’t obsess about it the way writers seem to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T13:17:47.683" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5673" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5676" CreationDate="2012-05-15T13:23:25.833" Score="1" ViewCount="687" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find myself using however much too often.  What's the best way around this?  Should I find a list of substitutes?  I'm thinking a better approach would be to fix my overall sentence structure and flow.  I don't have much in terms of official writing training.  I've been blogging a good bit and I feel I have good points to make, but I think my style and flow is just horrendous (as witnessed by this rambling question).  Any tips for a blogger to improve their writing ability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2512" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T15:59:48.720" Title="substitute for however" Tags="|blog|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-05-15T16:30:26.380" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2012-05-15T14:27:33.017" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try a more structured approach than just sitting down and writing something.  When I run into this issue, I start branching out my ideas using a snowflake model.  You don't have to follow any strict guidelines, just jot down some simple ideas and keep branching off.  Sooner than later ideas will pour in faster than you can type.  When they stop, go back to your model.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3625" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T14:27:33.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5673" CreationDate="2012-05-15T15:59:48.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid your question, &quot;Any tips for a blogger to improve their writing ability?&quot; will have to remain unanswered, because it is too vague. However, I can address some of your other concerns, or at least point you in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I find a list of substitutes [for however]?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar questions to this have been asked and answered &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/20192/alternatives-to-leading-a-sentence-with-the-conjunctive-adverb-however&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/48862/difference-between-however-and-although&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; on our sister site &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;English Language and Usage&lt;/a&gt;, which is probably the best forum for individual word choices. There is also a discussion, of sorts, of the proper usage of &lt;em&gt;however&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/79/is-it-acceptable-to-start-a-sentence-with-however&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Nevertheless, you should continue to ask Writers any writer-ly sort of questions you have, per the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What's the best way around [using however]?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a question we might be able to help with. But the answer will most likely be a variant of &quot;use &lt;em&gt;however&lt;/em&gt; sparingly&quot; without any real sense of what that means. Just keep in mind that when you are using &lt;em&gt;however&lt;/em&gt; you're making a statement that runs counter to the previous thought. Asking that question, &quot;How do I best join two disparate thoughts?&quot; could be a constructive style question to ask here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't have much in terms of official writing training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hey, I don't either. Formal training (i.e. college) helps. But as I'm sure you know, practice makes perfect. Having said that, feel free to ask for a critique by asking &lt;em&gt;specific question&lt;/em&gt; about a &lt;em&gt;specific excerpt&lt;/em&gt; as per &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/488/clarification-of-critique-guidelines&quot;&gt;this discussion&lt;/a&gt; on our meta side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, welcome to Writers. But for your next question, you might want to consider asking &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; question about a specific topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T15:59:48.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5668" CreationDate="2012-05-16T09:13:32.970" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Pick a lightweight, off-white, acid-free opaque paper (preferably book paper if it’s available). Then pick a binding to suit your budget: 3-ring and a nice binder if you’re cheap, plastic comb if you’re slightly less cheap, perfect binding if you’ve got a couple of bucks or professional bookbinding if money is no object.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From just printing it off and sticking it into a 3-inch binder to having it leather bound and printed on Bible paper there are many ways to print a single run book for just about any budget. But only you (with a little help) can decide what the “right” way is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you’ve got to pick a place to go for this. Do NOT print it yourself. Do NOT go to a national chain. DO go to the locally owned print shop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why the locals and not you or the national chain? Two reasons: knowledge and experience. You don't have it and neither does that kid with the mohawk and nose ring. The local guy and his crew have it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They’ll have access to all different kinds of papers and bindings and will have the ability and patience to tell you the advantages of each and every different thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can tell you that from having worked in a locally owned print shop for years, every few months someone will come in and ask to print and bind their memoirs, poetry collection, cookbook or unpublished novel. The local guys know how to handle these sorts of things. The big national guys don’t and/or won’t.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know where you’re going, you’ve got to pick a paper. The worst type is the (now standard) thick and bright white presentation paper (24#, 90-100 bright). In small quantities (10-15 pages) it’s fine (great, even). But in large quantities it makes the final product too thick and heavy and the bright white can cause eye strain and headaches over extended reading periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best type of paper is called (believe it or not) book paper. It’s thick yet light, off-white and opaque (33-40#, 70-80 bright). Go grab a paperback off the shelf – that’s book paper. The off-white color makes it easier to read and the opacity makes it so you can print on both sides and not see the print on the other side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The drawback is that in small quantities it’s special order and expensive. Your local print shop will be able to tell you more about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other option that’s readily available and budget-friendly is the thinnest, dullest and cheapest copy paper the print shop has in stock (18-20#, 60-80 bright).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frequently called 20#-bond, it’s normally thin (which makes it light), slightly dull and off-white (which makes it better for reading). The drawback is that it jams mercilessly in most printers, so you’ll have to print in small sessions. It’s also not archive quality so it likely won’t last more than a couple of years before it starts to fade. If you want your book to last, you’ll need to make sure to pick a paper that’s acid-free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you pick the right paper, you have to pick the right binding. If you have to go with a budget, pick three-hole punch. It’s cheap and there’s a variety of quality, good-looking binders on the market that you can put your book in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, there’s plastic and wire comb binding. It looks cheap and you can’t (generally) lay your book flat but it lasts for a very long time and does not easily come apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there’s “perfect” binding which glues the pages together along the spine and gives you a final product that is remarkably similar to a paperback. But there are drawbacks.&#xA;If it’s not a quality job or the glue is bad then pages can fall out over time. And because of how the margin shifts inwards towards the center of the book, you need to either use a pagination program (like InDesign or others) that can subtly increase the inside margin towards the middle or you need large margins that won’t noticeably be affected by the shift. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if you’re going to go to the bother of shifting your margins around for a proper binding job, you could see if you’ve got some cash lying around and take your printed book and give it to a professional bookbinder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also another advantage of using the local print shop – they are likely to know who the local hobbyist bookbinders are. They aren’t likely to have their own website or be in the yellow pages (what’re those?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So pick the right place (the local print shop), the right paper (lightweight, off-white, opaque and acid-free) and the right binding (3-hole, comb, perfect or professional) and getting one book printed is easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="3496" LastEditDate="2012-05-16T09:40:58.583" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T09:40:58.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5669" CreationDate="2012-05-16T13:43:01.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways, and this is how I would do it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing is, finish your first draft. There is nothing you can do until then. Any planning or thinking is a waste of time before then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, create scenes from your work. It doesn't matter if you are a plotter or &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/11/pantsing-a-story&quot;&gt;pantser&lt;/a&gt;. Take what you have written (and not what you wanted to write), and write down all the scenes that exist. For example, &quot;Scene 20: Hero chases evil wizard to recover stolen magical sword.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can write these scenes in a normal text editor. Then look at each scene and ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does this scene have a good conflict, that matters? I.e., not a conflict like James can't find the remote control to the TV&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does this scene move the story forward? If you have a cool action scene which does nothing for the story, change it or get rid of it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any scene in which the main character is passive, get rid of it. So no scenes where the hero is moaning about his sad life, drinking coffee, or talking about the weather.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is, each scene &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; move the story forward. If the hero has a cool battle with a dragon, but at the end of it he is in the same position as when he started, what's the use? The change each scene brings may be for the better or worse, but it must move the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I recommend (that not everyone likes), is having a theme for the story, like good triumphs evil. Then you can look at each scene, and see if it clashes with the theme. For example, if your hero beats up innocent people and steals their money, you are breaking your theme. Unless your theme is 'We must do anything to survive.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have done this, you can decide which scenes to keep, which to throw away or rewrite. At this stage, you can create another scene list, creating the book you wanted to write, and start reworking your draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few iterations of the process (depending on your experience) will get you a book that moves fast, and stays interesting throughout. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T12:28:22.173" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5680" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5685" CreationDate="2012-05-15T22:08:15.183" Score="8" ViewCount="18555" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several times I've seen lists formatted like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My parenthetical pet peeves: &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1) Referring to a single parenthesis as &quot;a parenthesee&quot; or something similarly beastly.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  2) Smiley faces preceding closing parentheses. (How do you handle them? :))&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  3) Unmatched parentheses.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, it would make more sense to enclose the numbers in parentheses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My parenthetical pet peeves: &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (1) Referring to a single parenthesis as &quot;a parenthesee&quot; or something similarly beastly.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (2) Smiley faces preceding closing parentheses. (How do you handle them? :))&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (3) Unmatched parentheses.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or to use periods:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My parenthetical pet peeves:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1. Referring to a single parenthesis as &quot;a parenthesee&quot; or something similarly beastly.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  2. Smiley faces preceding closing parentheses. (How do you handle them? :))&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  3. Unmatched parentheses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/859/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I'm not the only one&lt;/a&gt; who is unsettled by unmatched parentheses. Is there authoritative sanction or condemnation of this method of formatting list numerals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4405" OwnerDisplayName="user3632" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-16T14:35:07.157" LastActivityDate="2024-01-16T14:42:59.363" Title="Is it OK to use a single parenthesis after each number in a list?" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5680" CreationDate="2012-05-15T23:34:27.393" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/16/&quot;&gt;APA format&lt;/a&gt; is to use bullets, but the use of a single parenthesis is also a standard elsewhere.  Use of two parentheses is used far less frequently.  The purpose of parentheses in this situation is purely to offset the list item, not to group words into a parenthetical clause as it is used in the English language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3631" OwnerDisplayName="treehead" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T23:34:27.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5680" CreationDate="2012-05-16T02:17:47.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is certainly very common to use a single parenthesis for an enumerated lists.  For example, the &lt;em&gt;Applied Geography Conferences&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://applied.geog.kent.edu/AGC%20Submission%20Guidelines.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Author Instructions&lt;/a&gt; say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where lists are used, each item should be numbered (with the number and a single parenthesis: 1) e.g.), with numbered items separated by double spacing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2183" OwnerDisplayName="Peter K." LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T02:17:47.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5484" CreationDate="2012-05-16T15:27:00.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first thought was &lt;em&gt;&quot;Why not start with the Web site you mentioned and take the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/learn/tutorials/basics-tutorial.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Basics Tutorial&lt;/a&gt;?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  You mention that you learn best with &quot;applied project-based learning,&quot; but you cannot work on projects without first having a least a &lt;em&gt;little&lt;/em&gt; knowledge of the topic -- it's a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_or_the_egg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;chicken and egg&lt;/a&gt;&quot; thing.  I would look at the tutorial, because they provide examples of manuscript formatting, citing references, etc., which are basic to doing any work with APA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the tutorial, you should read the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1433805618&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (currently, Sixth Edition).  If you want to take a course, there's the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/learn/courses/4210700.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mastering the Sixth Edition&lt;/a&gt;&quot; course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially with academic style-guides, there are a lot of rules and idiosyncratic syntaxes to memorize.  Sometimes there are no shortcuts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3631" LastEditorUserId="3631" LastEditDate="2012-05-16T15:32:30.620" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T15:32:30.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5667" CreationDate="2012-05-16T15:44:38.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your article centers on a particular cluster implementation, then finding the right audience depends a lot on the &lt;em&gt;kind&lt;/em&gt; of clustering you are using, since a lot of websites are going to center around a particular platform or vendor.  For generic high-performance computing (HPC), you could start with a site like &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hpcwire.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HPC Wire&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;  If your article is a &quot;How To&quot; article on building a cluster with open source software, I would suggest something like &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howtoforge.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HowtoForge&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;  Since you are orienting toward &quot;researchers and grad students who want to use clusters to answer scientific questions,&quot; though, it may be best to &lt;strong&gt;target a specific academic community and submit your article for publication in their literature.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3631" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T15:44:38.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5680" CreationDate="2012-05-16T16:08:49.060" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asking for a ruling on a point of style like this is generally pretty futile in English. There is no central authority. However, style manuals or internal style sheets can provide guidance, even though different ones will have varied answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which answer you use depends on what document you're writing, and whether there's a style sheet that covers it. (Many corporations have internal style sheets.) If the document you're working on is to be published, one of the following general style guides (i.e., not an in-house, corporation- or publication-specific guide) may help: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The closest to a solid ruling on this that I found is in the &lt;em&gt;Franklin Covey Style Guide for Business and Technical Communication&lt;/em&gt;. Vertical lists use bare numbers followed by periods, with sub-entries using letters in the same format. Inline lists use numbers/letters inside a pair of parentheses: (1), (a), and so on. (1997, pp.158-160)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;APA style uses numbered lists without parentheses (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://apastyle.org/learn/quick-guide-on-formatting.aspx#Lists&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quick Answers - Formatting lists&lt;/a&gt; and pairs of brackets in an inline list (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/02/lists-part-4-numbered-lists.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lists, part 4&lt;/a&gt;): &lt;br&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In running text, a series of items is designated by letters in parentheses: (a) first item, (b) second item, and (c) third item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style uses mix of bare numbers and letters, as well as items enclosed by a pair of parentheses as well as a single parenthesis, leaving the exact execution up to the writer/editor. &lt;em&gt;(16th edition, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/ch06/ch06_sec126.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CMOS 6.126 Vertical lists with subdivided items (outlines)&lt;/a&gt; - that's a subscriber-only link, I'm afraid.)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The web-centric &lt;em&gt;Yahoo! Style Manual&lt;/em&gt;, on the other hand, barely discusses numbered lists at all, assuming that lists on the web will generally be bulleted. However, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://styleguide.yahoo.com/writing/construct-clear-compelling-copy/lists&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;entry on lists&lt;/a&gt; does have an example of an inline list (embedded in the text of a paragraph) with opening and closing parentheses. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I also consulted &lt;em&gt;The Economist Style Guide&lt;/em&gt;, which uses no special formatting for lists (and doesn't even put a period after the numbers in a vertical list). &lt;em&gt;The Copyeditor's Handbook&lt;/em&gt; is also silent on the issue. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing for internal or informal documents (emails or such), just pick a method that appeals to you and stick with it. Personally, I prefer using single brackets in vertical lists and double brackets in inline text, since you're reading up to them; but that's just a personal preference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one last thing: Smiley faces at the end of a parenthetical sentence will be awkward no matter how you handle them. I suggest rewriting to avoid this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-16T19:38:22.667" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T19:38:22.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5680" CreationDate="2012-05-16T17:30:38.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is ok for your personal style (or specified company style) than yes, it is. Otherwise leave it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I have learned it in school (and I'm from Germany so it does not refer directly to English), periods were used for numbers, parentheses for letters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Point one is divided into the subpoints a), b) and c)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;a) This is a subitem&lt;br&gt;&#xA;b) This is the next&lt;br&gt;&#xA;c) (You will never figure out this one)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second topic&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could imagine that it started in English the same way and got mixed up during time (like it is in German). I see rarely a., b. and c. but it also happens. Again, a matter of personal style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T17:30:38.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2012-05-17T13:26:56.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One approach, which seemed to work for me, is just to write something. It doesn't matter what - write a review or assessment of a TV programme, And then rewrite it to make it better. If you want, send it to a newspaper, which might give you a good focus, but the purpose is not to have something marketable, just to go through the process of writing something significant - i.e. longer than an answer on SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can get something written, taking the time to get it right, it might give you the inspiration to continue to write more and more, as well as the practicalities, and working on getting them right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My writing was a PhD thesis, but it showed me that i could write and re-write over a period of time, and produce something worthwhile (sort of - I have still to get it completed!). Once you are over the challenge of being able to write something significant, you will find it easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T13:26:56.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5689" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5690" CreationDate="2012-05-17T15:54:54.810" Score="5" ViewCount="8703" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the first time I'm writing something that jumps from one period of time to another in a short story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The field was vast and empty, like a green abandoned planet. Icaro and&#xA;  Maru were lying on the middle of it, sharing a joint, and gazing at&#xA;  the ocean of stars above them. Occasionally, a breeze would come&#xA;  through creating gentle waves in the grass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maru took a long drag on the joint and passed it to him. &quot;You know,&#xA;  sometimes I wonder why we have to die. Why can't we last forever, like&#xA;  a crystal?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Icaro glanced at her, then turned back his eyes to the sky. An&#xA;  airplane was passing over them, high in the sky. It almost seemed to&#xA;  merge with the stars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I have a theory,&quot; he said, in a neutral voice. &quot;Our lives are&#xA;  temporary because we just serve as disposable machines for something&#xA;  that is within us.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She sat up and narrowed her eyes at him. &quot;Something like a soul or a&#xA;  little alien?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;More like a crystal,&quot; he corrected her. She kept silent for a moment,&#xA;  waiting for him to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;They built us to transport themselves, compete with each other, find&#xA;  other crystals, and build new machines so they can continue living on&#xA;  them,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What's the point of doing that?&quot; she asked after giving it a thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There's neither a point nor a purpose. They just do it because that's&#xA;  what they are supposed to do. In fact, they are not even conscious of&#xA;  it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maru looked up at the stars for a while, trying to digest what Icaro&#xA;  had just said. The airplane was nowhere to be seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So according to your theory, our lives don't actually have a meaning.&#xA;  We are just cargo ships delivering supplies and goods to other cargo&#xA;  ships,&quot; she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He glanced at her, took another drag on the joint, and blew the smoke&#xA;  up into the air. &quot;I know, it's not a very comforting theory.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They remained quiet for a few minutes, lost in their thoughts, feeling&#xA;  as if the conversation had transported them into a foreign land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well,&quot; Maru finally said. &quot;Even if your theory tells us that life&#xA;  doesn't have a meaning, it's still a cheerful thought.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Icaro turned his head and stared at her. &quot;How is that?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If we happen to have these crystals, even if our bodies turn into&#xA;  dust one day, part of us will never die.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He looked at her with a smile on his lips, and looked back to the&#xA;  stars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Starts here)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hundreds of years had passed, but the field looked the same as before.&#xA;  It was early in the morning and the sun had just risen. The sky was&#xA;  clear except for a few clouds on the horizon. A young boy and a girl&#xA;  were walking through the field. There was a  soft wind coming from&#xA;  somewhere, blowing their hair slightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I think this is a nice spot,&quot; he said and sat in the grass. She&#xA;  followed his action, settling herself beside him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They remained silent for a moment, listening to the sound of the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So your grandmother is not in good health?&quot; the little girl asked,&#xA;  turning her head towards him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He nodded without looking at her. She felt as if she had just said&#xA;  something inappropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You know, sometimes I wonder why life is so short,&quot; he said after a&#xA;  moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She gazed up into the sky and looked at an airplane that was flying&#xA;  near by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I got a theory,&quot; she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am doing this effectively? If not, how to improve it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-05-17T17:33:39.710" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T00:40:10.337" Title="How to effectively jump from one period of time to another in a short story?" Tags="|fiction|short-story|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2021-01-01T11:48:37.200" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5689" CreationDate="2012-05-17T18:02:18.863" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Same way you would with any scene break: double return, a row of * * * * * * *, whatever you usually do to indicate a scene change. Your &quot;Hundreds of years later&quot; makes the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T18:02:18.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5590" CreationDate="2012-05-17T20:47:30.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First option:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not understand why you have to move the file &lt;em&gt;back&lt;/em&gt; to Final Draft. You can export it to Word, track the changes, find the corresponding parts in the Final Draft document and change them there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also export to a plain text format and use a diff tool. Yes, it's cumbersome to find the text passages in the original Final Draft document and change there, but it should be feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second option:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of deleting, strike the text through (with the corresponding formatting option) and mark it as &lt;a href=&quot;http://support.finaldraft.com/article.aspx?cid=1001&amp;amp;aid=888&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;revised&lt;/em&gt; afterward&lt;/a&gt;. Maybe with this trick you can work around the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T20:47:30.120" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5613" CreationDate="2012-05-17T21:17:03.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Frame It Appropriately&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the issue: There's a pretty firm assumption that, the moment you're following a tight first-person (or third person) narration, you're following around in their head. You're not just hearing them tell you the story (which gives them an opportunity to lie about it), you're actually privy to their truest, innermost thoughts. As long as you allow that assumption to ride undisturbed, the readers will assume a reliable narrator - by which I mean, a narrator who isn't deliberately withholding information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you dispel that assumption? By providing a counterexample - the moment you demonstrate that the narrator is keeping something to himself, or otherwise trying to fool the reader, then the reader is warned. This is what you're going for with your own example - you telegraph to the reader that he's being lied to, by providing him with a clear contradiction in the narrator's information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But doing that can be a problem if you're still relying on the tight-viewpoint, in-the-narrator's-head style of writing. Because if we &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; being lied to, then we aren't in the narrator's head, and if that's the case - where are we?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So deliberately unreliable narration[1] pretty much requires some layer of separation between the narrator and the reader. Perhaps the narrator is telling a story, or writing the story down. You've got to follow through on this elsewhere, too - if the narrator's a storyteller, have him address the reader frequently; this stresses the disconnect between them. If he's writing his own story down, remind us of this frequently - let him mention his writing supplies, or how much time has passed since then, or that he hopes this manuscript is found. This is a necessary foundation; without it, you're basically letting the POV character lie to the reader without establishing any sort of ground rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stay in Character&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other primary element is that however the narrator lets slip that he's unreliable, it's got to be in character. So a goofy compulsive liar may brazenly contradict himself, and the staunchly refuse to admit there's any contradiction. A cagey character who has some particular topic he wants to avoid might constantly find himself edging towards it, and always find some excuse to veer off - &quot;but I'll tell you about that later.&quot; Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character who is &lt;em&gt;reasonably clever&lt;/em&gt; and also &lt;em&gt;lying deliberately&lt;/em&gt; is very difficult to convey convincingly. Basically, you need to have a narrator who is &lt;em&gt;so careless&lt;/em&gt; that he's capable of committing a gaffe blatant enough to overcome even the reader's inherent trust in the narrator! Somebody remotely competent needs a really, really good reason to get caught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of examples include exposing the narrator's unreliability as a late twist to the story. Instead of posting spoilers here, I'll direct you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnreliableNarrator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TV Tropes' exhaustive list&lt;/a&gt;. But I don't think that's what you're attempting here - you're trying to let us know &lt;em&gt;early on&lt;/em&gt; that the narrator's unreliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, you can take a page from the same book. When it comes as a twist, what's common is for the narrator to reveal themselves because their secrets have already been revealed, or because they're no longer useful. If you can come up with a similar situation - where the narrator has a &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to recant some earlier tidbit - then I think you've achieved your purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Be Shady and Mysterious&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other common handling of this is to present the narrator's character as being shady, mysterious, or unreliable. By his stories, his actions, his tone - you can do a lot to get across that the character is not a trustworthy one. It could be straight-out refusal, e.g. &quot;...aaaaand never mind where I went later that night,&quot; but it could also simply be descriptions of the narrator lying, fooling others, etc. That's buildup for the fact that the narrator isn't any more straight with  us than he's been with anybody else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Distinguished from &quot;unaware&quot; unreliable narration - e.g. the viewpoint character who doesn't understand fully what's going on (but the reader does) -  and from the &quot;innocent&quot; unreliable narration - a narrator who's forgotten details or is mixing things up, &lt;em&gt;a la&lt;/em&gt; the narration in &lt;em&gt;How I Met Your Mother&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T21:17:03.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5693" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5694" CreationDate="2012-05-17T21:21:32.270" Score="2" ViewCount="2166" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an essay for the play &lt;em&gt;Waiting for Godot,&lt;/em&gt; and there is a passage I want to use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ESTRAGON: (&lt;em&gt;very insidious&lt;/em&gt;). But what about Saturday? And is it Saturday? Is it not rather Sunday? (Pause.) Or Monday? (Pause.) Or Friday?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To express the dislocation of time in the play, I want to quote the passage starting from 'Saturday;' but I don't know whether I'm allowed to replace the question marks with commas, as that would make the passage fit with my sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to try to avoid quoting only the days with commas, because it feels detached and somewhat useless to reference each day with a separate quote, like &quot;Monday&quot; and &quot;Tuesday&quot; and &quot;Wednesday,&quot; at least to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I allowed to change question mark punctuation when referencing MLA, or must I find another way around it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3419" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T16:59:48.250" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T16:59:48.250" Title="Can you change a punctuation mark when referencing a passage from a text?" Tags="|citations|essay|punctuation|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5693" CreationDate="2012-05-17T22:11:55.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Citing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gcms.k12.il.us/gcmshs/hslibrary/new_page_1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GCMS High School Media Center&lt;/a&gt; (highlighted by me)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Changes &lt;strong&gt;must not&lt;/strong&gt; be made in the spelling, capitalization, or &lt;strong&gt;punctuation&lt;/strong&gt; of the quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it looks like you have to find another way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T22:11:55.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5697" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5703" CreationDate="2012-05-18T01:42:37.523" Score="10" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have prepared a book which utilizes some information which was licensed under a &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons license&lt;/a&gt; of which a large number of people contributed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that the use of this material requires me to release the book under Creative Commons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some sample text &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/choose/non-web-popup?license_code=by-sa&amp;amp;jurisdiction=&amp;amp;version=3.0&amp;amp;lang=en&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but I do not know if it is complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is a common location for such information?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should additional details about the prior work and attribution of prior contributors be added somewhere?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T19:46:13.977" Title="What is the proper way to add Creative Commons licensing information to a book?" Tags="|legal|creative-commons|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5697" CreationDate="2012-05-18T12:26:06.103" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Citing from your link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you &lt;strong&gt;may distribute&lt;/strong&gt; the resulting work &lt;strong&gt;only under the same or similar&lt;/strong&gt; license to this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you have to release it under Creative Commons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best places are the beginning and the end of the book. I would split it. I.e. mentioning at the beginning the license and putting a note that the details are at the end of the book (appendix). There you can list the former contributors. Which takes us to your next question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the attribution of prior contributors must be added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are using a Stack Exchange site right at the moment. Every content here is also under Creative Commons. There is a nice blog post about &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/&quot;&gt;attribution&lt;/a&gt; from one of the SE founders. Have a look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T12:26:06.103" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1021" CreationDate="2012-05-18T18:15:20.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://fmwriters.com/fm/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forward Motion&lt;/a&gt; is a community with lots of forums for discussions about business and craft (and other things), writing challenges/exercises/marathons, posting goals or submissions and rejections to cheer on other writers, chat rooms, critiques, articles... You can participate in any or all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's free and is open to any genre of fiction, though my impression is that most people there are genre writers (SF, fantasy, romance, mystery). It was founded in 1998 and is still going strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-08-23T12:01:05.343" LastActivityDate="2023-08-23T12:01:05.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1813" CreationDate="2012-05-18T18:21:54.350" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Q10 a lot and find that it really helps me focus. But I'm not certain that it is all down to the fact that it is full screen. It also has keystroke sounds and a carriage return like an old style typewriter which I'm sure help keep me writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a love it or hate it thing though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always a have a browser open and use Alt+Tab to flick between the two windows when I need to check external sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3594" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T18:21:54.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5697" CreationDate="2012-05-18T19:46:13.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; You must use and attribute the Creative Commons source in the exact same manner you would any other copyrighted source. That means you can’t claim the content creator’s work as your own or redistribute it in its whole for money. But citing it with attribution or any other form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fair Use&lt;/a&gt;  is a-ok. If you’re not sure if your use would be deemed Fair Use in a court of law, either seek permission from the source or ask a lawyer who knows.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#How_do_I_properly_attribute_a_Creative_Commons_licensed_work.3F&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Creative Commons&lt;/a&gt; does is provide rules for distribution and reproduction without asking for permission from the copyright holder first. In the case you cite (CC BY-SA) you can share (SA) the work in question, &lt;em&gt;in its whole&lt;/em&gt;, with attribution (BY) so long as that platform is also a Creative Commons Forum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you aren’t distributing that work in its whole; you’re citing it. (Probably. If you are distributing that original work verbatim and adding onto it you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; actually do that. You just have to attribute the source and you can’t do it for money.) That means you’re using it under &lt;a href=&quot;http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fair Use&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And while a court of law is the final arbiter of what is considered Fair Use, there are some guidelines you can go by. If the source is fictional then comment, criticism and parody are all (generally) considered Fair Use. If the source is non-fictional then the rules are much looser, since &lt;a href=&quot;http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-b.html#2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the dissemination of facts benefits the public&lt;/a&gt;. Using your source in way that benefits the public interest is almost always considered Fair Use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why all the hubbub about the proper use of Creative Commons? Well, on sites like Stack Exchange, and Flickr there is concern about one thing - selling your creative work after it appears on a Creative Commons site. That is where things can get a little muddled. But the general consensus is that the content creator retains ownership (copyright). That means if I post an excerpt of my book on Writers.SE I can go ahead an sell that book to a publisher for money but that publisher might hesitate to commit since they can't be guaranteed exclusivity of at least a portion of that content. That's because someone, like you, can redistribute my excerpt freely without my consent as long as you attribute the source (me &amp;amp; SE) and not take money for it. But I'm getting off topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Please don’t take anything you read here as a substitute for legal advice. If you have questions on something that you feel could potentially cause you legal troubles, contact a lawyer that specializes in copyright issues (or whatever your local designation for ‘legal representative’ is).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T19:46:13.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5705" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5712" CreationDate="2012-05-20T01:04:48.417" Score="21" ViewCount="3668" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I have this great character( not the main protagonist), who is funny and intelligent. Each scene I write for him is a delight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the problem is, he is doing nothing for the plot. I have tried to fit him in a few places, but he always stands out, looking uncomfortable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried reasoning with him, trying to help him out, but like a bad coin, he always turns up and accomplishes nothing. He's always like &quot;Look at me, I'm so funny, so cute, why do I need to add to the story?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I love this character, but I am stuck on what to do with him. Should I :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. Kill him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. Change him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. Anything else??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, the character isn't boring, just not that useful to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="2024" LastEditDate="2012-05-20T01:38:46.330" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T16:08:50.397" Title="My cool character is doing nothing for the plot. How do I deal with him?" Tags="|characters|plot|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5706" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5713" CreationDate="2012-05-20T01:15:54.703" Score="13" ViewCount="3036" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of going down the self publishing path. Now looking at most agents and publishers websites, it seems the expected word count for most novels is around 70-90K. &#xA;Now these word counts may have made sense in the traditional world, where books had to be printed, bound and shipped all over the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am self publishing in digital format. Do I still need to follow these arbitrary word count limits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask, as I have a 60k novel, which is longer than a novella (50k words), but shorter than what agents expect.&#xA; Originally, I was going to add another 10-15k words, mainly by adding more plot, and developing sub plots. But now, I'm wondering, is it worth the effort?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do readers care for these word count limits? Is it worth me padding in the extra words, to meet the limit of traditional publishers, when I'm going to self publish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-20T10:23:22.230" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T03:04:39.090" Title="Self publishing: Do I still need to follow the arbitrary word count limits?" Tags="|self-publishing|ebook|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5715" CreationDate="2012-05-20T01:35:54.243" Score="0" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read books, blogs, or even answers like &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/2403/2024&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, the advice is usually always the same: To revise properly, you must print out your manuscript, and revise on paper. The thinking goes that one cannot revise properly on the screen, and if you attempt to do so, you will miss things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Is this always true? Is it possible to revise directly on the screen, without wasting a lot of paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T09:32:46.520" Title="Do I have to revise my book on paper?" Tags="|revision|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5705" CreationDate="2012-05-20T02:18:40.133" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's plenty of things you can do to make a character important to the plot. Without knowing what genre we're talking about, I have a few possibilities to offer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give this charming character some role, purpose, or thread in the story, either directly related or distantly.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E.g. Knowledge/Wisdom:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He has or is withholding important information, clues, or insights that could be helpful to the protagonist's moving the plot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He could serve as a mentor figure that dispenses necessary wisdom in a comical way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E.g. Antagonstic:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make him on the antagonist's side, or the big bad himself &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;His appearances would serve as plot points for explaining the antagonist's efforts that directly conflict with the protagonist's wants/needs  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The fact that he is charming and funny just makes the obstacles he presents that much more bitter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revealing him a secret/sleeper/undercover agent for the antagonist makes his formerly charming nature ring horribly false and manufactured&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E.g. Scapegoat&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having the antagonist hurt, kill, or ruin a lovable character makes the antagonist's actions even worse &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having something terrible happen to him due to inaction stresses the urgency and risk of the protagonist's journey&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1600" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-05-20T02:33:07.540" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T02:33:07.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5707" CreationDate="2012-05-20T02:27:51.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should do both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will, without question, catch things on paper you don't see on the screen. It just looks different. I don't know why, but many years of experience have shown me this is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you can also do a pass while reading it onscreen. I would use this method as a way of getting back into the book at the beginning of a session: you reread what you did the session before, or a section or two before, so you can clean up any obvious errors made in haste or connect dots you might have overlooked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buy inexpensive paper, duplex, and recycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T02:27:51.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5705" CreationDate="2012-05-20T02:28:16.813" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh, so your protagonist needs to get to the store badly but his car is in the shop? This guy has a car and some free time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, so your protagonist is after this girl? This guy is her brother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, so your protagonist is trying to bring down the dark king? This guy is good with a sword.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, so your protagonist is trying to learn the violin? This guy used to play viola.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, so your protagonist is a regular at the bar, where he talks out what's going on in his life to get a new perspective? This guy is, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, so your protagonist is a struggling writer? This guy has a ton of inspirational stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, so your protagonist is doing anything whatsoever that isn't explicitly being alone in the desert? This guy is somehow related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T02:28:16.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5706" CreationDate="2012-05-20T02:29:09.247" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that you shouldn't add more words than the story needs to be told properly, regardless of how it's being published. Why pad it with garbage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-20T04:15:18.000" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T04:15:18.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5705" CreationDate="2012-05-20T02:31:54.593" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give him his own story so he's not stealing scenes in someone else's. If he's that awesome, he should be starring in his own book rather than sucking all the oxygen out of this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T02:31:54.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5706" CreationDate="2012-05-20T03:00:29.550" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;All that readers care about is that you present them with a well-crafted compelling story. Length is of minimal importance. Some of the best written and most memorable stories have well below 60- or even 50,000 words. &lt;em&gt;Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Of Mice and Men&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Slaughterhouse Five&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Fight Club&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;The Great Gatsby&lt;/em&gt; all have less than 60k words (&lt;em&gt;Hitchhiker's&lt;/em&gt; only has about 46k). If your story is complete at 60k words, type two more, &lt;em&gt;The End&lt;/em&gt;, and call it a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="3496" LastEditDate="2012-05-20T03:43:42.790" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T03:43:42.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5706" CreationDate="2012-05-20T07:19:23.857" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're quite correct in your assumption that digital publishing removes a lot of the necessity of typical length categories. Here's some things to bear in mind when coming to a decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There's no restriction except &quot;what works well for the story.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Traditional publishing is bound by all sorts of restrictions and best-practices - printing costs, shelf space, product appearance, etc. etc. You're free of those. All you have left is making sure that your story is as good as possible - including that its length is appropriate, that it works well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;length categories have also evolved for certain reasons.&lt;/strong&gt; Writing practices, story structures, and reader expectations have all developed in concert with those length categories. What this means is that an odd length may (&lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt;) indicate that your novel is an &quot;odd duck&quot; of some sort. That's a sign that you should devote special attention to this topic - basically, making sure that if it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an odd duck, then that's for good reason, and the unusual element works well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So consider the possibility that your book is too short (as you fear) or too long (a long novella, not a short novel). Feedback will help - be sure to ask specfically about structure and pacing. As long as those are OK, though, you're doing fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Once you've determined your length, be sure to market appropriately.&lt;/strong&gt; Readers want a sense of what they're buying, and I don't know if you offer pagecount on ebooks. So &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; try and give a reasonable impression of how long the book is when you're marketing and publicizing it - readers might be jarred by a story much longer or much shorter than they're expecting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-20T10:25:33.863" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T10:25:33.863" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5707" CreationDate="2012-05-20T09:32:46.520" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/665/something-different-help-me-find-the-unnecessary-words/707#707&quot;&gt;I said so myself&lt;/a&gt;, let me answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, you do not have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the answer you linked to or at mine above, you see that they suggest techniques which aren't easy to follow on screen. Both answers suggest to mark your printed text using pens one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Printing out, grabbing pens, start marking is one thing: easy. If you want to do that on screen, you need special tools (maybe built in to your word  processor, maybe not). It's more tedious in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are special tools for doing this. Most of the markings I describe in my answer are available in the word processor &quot;Papyrus Autor&quot;. The creator of that marking technique (Eschbach) worked together with the Papyrus team, so you do not have to print it out anymore (if you buy &quot;Papyrus Autor&quot; and you write in German).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you do not want to use these techniques or you have a way doing it on-screen, you do not need to print them. Only if you want to get a new perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's another reason, why printing out is suggested. You have a different look on your story. But to get a new perspective, you also can reformat it and read it on-screen. Instead of Courier 12pt, use Times 8pt, 50 lines instead of 30 a page or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New perspectives improve revising, because your text is placed on a spot where you do not expect it. Just moving the paragraph from the beginning of a page to the end, can show you what's wrong with it, because your mind has to rethink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T09:32:46.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5706" CreationDate="2012-05-20T09:45:10.560" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not add unnecessary filler to your book. I agree with @Lauren, @Jed and @Standback here, but let me add one thing, because you want to self-publish: the price of your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Length may be arbitrary, but prices are arbitrary, too. Most people expect a certain price for a certain page/word count. Or at least to pay less for a 40k novel than for a 60k one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So think carefully how much money you want for which word count. To get some ideas I suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=2275&quot;&gt;Smith's suggestions about pricing&lt;/a&gt; as a starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-05-20T10:29:20.350" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T10:29:20.350" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5705" CreationDate="2012-05-20T09:59:42.960" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some different diagnoses that might be appropriate here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Xander&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've clearly established how the character came to be involved, but now that he is, he doesn't seem to actually be very helpful. He's kinda there all the time, and occasionally he just &lt;em&gt;happens&lt;/em&gt; to have precisely the right skill for saving the day - but most of the time, he's just kind of hanging around; he doesn't really have anything important going on with him and he isn't really able to actively participate in the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples (Debatable):&lt;/strong&gt; Xander (&lt;em&gt;Buffy the Vampire Slayer&lt;/em&gt;), Harry Kim (&lt;em&gt;Voyager&lt;/em&gt;), Mary Jane (various &lt;em&gt;Spider-Man&lt;/em&gt; incarnations), Lt. Ford (first season of &lt;em&gt;Stargate: Atlantis&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solutions:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm not crazy about the &quot;easy fixes&quot; to this one, which include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Force the character into the spotlight by creating scenarios which are tailored specifically to the character's unique strengths. These tend to be pretty implausible (&quot;Who would have guessed we'd need a left-handed sanitation inspector in order to defeat the Demon of Frozen Eternity, ha ha!&quot;), and they don't serve their purpose - they demonstrate that the character isn't &lt;em&gt;totally&lt;/em&gt; useless, but in every plotline that &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; deliberately created around him, he's still pretty useless.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character becomes upset over his own ineffectiveness. This gives him a stake in everything going on - because he now not only wants to succeed; he wants to prove himself to others. This can work, but it can also be kinda whiny and insecure. It's generally not very interesting on its own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character is cast as the comic relief, or simply a commentator. If you accept that the plot &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; meant to revolve around him, then a cool, funny character is fine for just adding fun commentary and reactions along the way. He's an observer, not a player. As long as you write him appropriately and don't create the impression that he's a central character with choices to make, you can keep his voice in the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more drastic approach is to have some incredible change befall that character - something that &lt;em&gt;forces&lt;/em&gt; him to evolve into something more tightly tied into the story. The reason I bring &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiden_Ford&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;ST:A&lt;/em&gt;'s Ford&lt;/a&gt; as an example is because after season 1 (which he spent being generally present, sweet, and utterly uninteresting), he gets overdosed with an alien enzyme; he turns into a super-soldier - who's also addicted to the enzyme as though it's a drug. Note this passage in the Wikipedia description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ford was a regular in season one. Since the series producers and the actor himself felt that Ford had not worked as intended and was highly underused, the writers came up with an idea to make the character more important in a recurring role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Stargate example isn't clear, imagine if Mary Jane or Lois Lane stopped complaining about being on the sidelines of their superhero's lives, because they suddenly got superpowers themselves - stepping into the main stories. (&lt;em&gt;Note to actual comic book readers:&lt;/em&gt; I'm assuming this has probably actually happened once or twice. (At least I hope so, because the solution &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; heard about was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man%3a_One_More_Day&quot;&gt;&quot;One More Day&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, if this is roughly the situation you're facing, then this character needs to be stepped up or stepped down. If his character concept doesn't have an intrinsic connection to the plot, then either force one on him, or take him offstage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Side-Trekker&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe your character has got &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; to do - it just isn't really related to the plot. In this case, possibly that character has their own story to tell - and by trying to shoehorn him into a different one, one that isn't about him, you're kind of squishing him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The warning sign here is if you have scenes to write for him, but they're not scenes that advance the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; plot - they're developments and repercussions centered around that character, not around the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this makes sense to you, maybe you need to put this character aside for a moment, and reconsider his role in your story. Maybe you want to write &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; story first - give him a chance to flex - and come back to this piece later. At any rate, don't let a character overwhelm your story unless it's &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; story (or you decide you want to &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; it his story). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example I can give here is the Fool in Robin Hobb's &lt;em&gt;Farseer Trilogy&lt;/em&gt;. Hobb has described how the character of the Fool turned out to have a life of his own, to demand more and more involvement - and that's fine. But she kept the Fool secondary to her main plotline; she made sure the Fool's relation to her protagonist was what she focused on. The Fool has stories of his own - and a later sequel, the &lt;em&gt;Tawny Man Trilogy&lt;/em&gt;, made him much more of a protagonist than he was in &lt;em&gt;Farseer&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to keep the character, you can do the same - let your character grow, but direct his growth into the things that are important to the story. How does he react to what's going on? What in the plot is important to him? What are his stakes in the conflict? How does this inform his interactions with the other characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you conclude that he really &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; interested in the primary plot - then it's time to let him go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Wallflower&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, a character seems like he &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; fit in perfectly - but in practice, he never quite does. He relates to the plot, but he's not interested in affecting it, or he's going in different directions than everybody else. He's playing, but he's not playing &lt;em&gt;with the rest of the team&lt;/em&gt;. His interaction with the other characters is nonexistent or uninteresting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, all you're missing is a good hook to tie him in. Once he's in, you'll know what to do with him - you just need justification to keep him involved and engaged. Here are some questions you can ask in order to find - or create - a hook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What's the character's stake in the plot?&lt;/strong&gt; The moment he has &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; he cares about, he's got reason to be involved - and to act. He might work at cross-purposes with your protagonist (say, a rival), or he might be interested in some side-effect of the plot (say, he collects monster-bones for magic spells, so he follows around the hero, who's a monster slayer). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal relationships promote interaction.&lt;/strong&gt; Does the character have a relationship with any of the characters that compels him to action? Could he be a lover, a suitor, a sibling, a mentor, a student? Any of these give him motive to be interested and involved in pretty much &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; the main characters do. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What guarantees his commitment?&lt;/strong&gt; Characters are easier to control if they're committed to the plot - if they can't go, &quot;ehh, forget this, I'm going back home to watch TV.&quot; You've got a carrot in terms of a stake in the plot; what's the stick that keeps him from ever backing out? Could he be running away from something? Obligated to somebody? Dying? Determined to win a preposterous bet? &lt;a href=&quot;http://1001films.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/vlcsnap-3434311.png&quot;&gt;Handcuffed to the protagonist?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've given you a lot of options and analysis here, but the tools are pretty similar each time - so I hope this is helpful even if your case isn't quite any of these. You're always asking yourself: &lt;em&gt;Why&lt;/em&gt; isn't this character currently working? &lt;em&gt;What&lt;/em&gt; would make him more involved? &lt;em&gt;How&lt;/em&gt; can I connect him more deeply and fundamentally into the main action? And if you can't connect him well, then you sideline him or take him out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-05-20T18:30:46.703" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T18:30:46.703" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5718" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5719" CreationDate="2012-05-20T17:26:36.130" Score="1" ViewCount="877" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking to write a book on Physics/Mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this book will need to include mathematical equations and diagrams.&#xA;Are there any writing softwares that have devices such as TeX and LaTeX, which are typesetting systems? (see here for more on TeX: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how would a writer approach the incorporation of diagrams into the writing of a book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3644" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-20T12:27:19.440" LastActivityDate="2018-04-20T12:27:19.440" Title="Incorporating diagrams and equations into text when writing" Tags="|formatting|software|resources|graphics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5718" CreationDate="2012-05-20T18:51:02.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a writer and a (former) typesetter/graphic artist/production manager I have to state that writing a book =/= designing a book. You can't write your book in Word or TeX and have it be sufficient for the printed element. (That part is opinion but based on experience. Dedicated hardcore users of TeX might disagree with me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you're writing a book, just write the book.&lt;/strong&gt; There are plenty of posts on Writers on how to do that. But I would &lt;em&gt;highly&lt;/em&gt; recommend using a program designed for book building like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;. That will allow you to organize chapters and sections and allow you to import formulas from TeX so long as they've been exported as images (for reference &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt;, NOT composition.). All you need to do then is label the formula and make a reference to them in your work (&quot;In Diagram 2.11, the Pythagorean theorem...&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you sell your book to a publisher they will compose the book using their preferred methods. But you will want to make sure you have all of the formulas saved in Tex (or other formula able software).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if this is a project you intend to write, design and publish all by yourself then you should really invest (and I do mean &lt;em&gt;invest&lt;/em&gt;) in a proper pagination program like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign.edu.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Adobe InDesign&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quark.com/Products/QuarkXPress/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quark Xpress&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding scientific and mathematical formulas, InDesign can import formulas directly from [shudder] Microsoft Word's equation editior. InDesign can also use formulas exported from Tex as images and there is also a plugin called &lt;a href=&quot;http://movemen.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MathTools&lt;/a&gt; that can create formulas right in InDesign. Similarly, Quark can import TeX formulas as images and there is a plugin (Xtension) called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathmagic.com/product/xtension_info.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Math+Magic&lt;/a&gt; that will more easily import formulas from TeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The caveat is that even if you have the right tools, you still need the right training to make them work. That is why I strongly suggest that you keep your work very organized so that if and when you decide to outsource the design and pagination of your book, you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to check out the &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Tex&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Graphic Design&lt;/a&gt; forums on Stack Exchange to see how other users tackle this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:19.783" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T18:51:02.577" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5721" CreationDate="2012-05-20T20:35:00.277" Score="5" ViewCount="5055" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to publish screenshots of web sites in a book and provide a critique of each screenshot. Many of the screenshots would be cropped to just show a section of a page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adobe has published these guidelines &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adobe.com/misc/permissions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.adobe.com/misc/permissions.html&lt;/a&gt; (see the screenshots section) . They seem reasonable enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those that have experience of this, do Adobe's guidelines seem permissive? The screenshots would not be of Adobe web sites and my worry is that other companies may not follow Adobe's line and take legal action if they were entitled to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3594" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-05-20T23:21:46.197" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T14:46:32.907" Title="What are the legal implications and best practices for publishing screenshots of web sites in a book?" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5720" CreationDate="2012-05-21T02:36:56.937" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A nearly identical question appears at &lt;a href=&quot;http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter6/6-c.html&quot;&gt;Stanford University's Copyright and Fair Use Center&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Rich: I have a question. I’ll be using a lot of screenshots from&#xA;  different websites in my book. Do I need to get permission for that or&#xA;  is it a fair use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 'Rich' in question is &lt;a href=&quot;http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/stim.html&quot;&gt;Richard Stim&lt;/a&gt;, the corporate council for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nolo.com/endorsement.&quot;&gt;Nolo&lt;/a&gt;, which claims to be &quot;one of the web’s largest libraries of consumer-friendly legal information&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Rich:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conventional wisdom (and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.eff.org/&quot;&gt;Electronic Frontier Foundation&lt;/a&gt;) says that&#xA;  an unauthorized screenshot is an infringement. That said, the use of&#xA;  screenshots rarely triggers a complaint because either: (1) the&#xA;  copyright owners don’t want to complain about something that promotes&#xA;  their company -- for example, an online tutorial about using Microsoft&#xA;  Word, or a book about starting an eBay business, or (2) the copyright&#xA;  owners believe the use is likely to be excused as a fair use. Although&#xA;  issues don’t often arise, occasionally copyright owners do complain --&#xA;  for example, Apple complained about prerelease screenshots of the&#xA;  iPhone. Some sites place limits on your use of screenshots in their&#xA;  user agreements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that if the copyright owners do complain, the results can&#xA;  be unfortunate -- it may disrupt publication of a book or other&#xA;  product. Perhaps a more important issue to consider is whether what&#xA;  you are doing is likely to anger or annoy the copyright owner. If it&#xA;  is, proceed with caution and review your use of the company’s&#xA;  trademarks so that your use doesn’t imply an association or&#xA;  endorsement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, that reads: use at your own peril. You will &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt;  be ok, as commentary and criticism are &lt;em&gt;generally&lt;/em&gt; considered Fair Use. But if the copyright holder is displeased, &quot;the results can be unfortunate&quot;. Of course, you could always seek permission from the copyright holder and avoid any unnecessary legal entanglements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, this is no substitute for real legal advice from a real legal expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T02:36:56.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5705" CreationDate="2012-05-21T08:35:30.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following on from @Standbacks epic work, all of which is good, I would suggest one of two roles for this character:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The comedy interlude. When the main plot gets a bit serious, or you want to put some delay before the resolution, then introduce this chap as a bit of light relief, while keeping the tension there, because the readers know that this is irrelevant to the main plot. Many of Carl Hiaasens books have some sickly comic character in them to provide a foil to the real action. (Note - his books are not for the faint-hearted! Seriously black humour).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You take the cool character out of this story, and write his own story. You can even, should you like to, keep the character in this story very occasionally, without any serious role, but just to lighten up, knowing that his full story will be told elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, as others have said very well, if the character does not enhance THIS book, then get rid of them. It does not mean they are a poor character, just that they need some other place to shine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T08:35:30.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5720" CreationDate="2012-05-21T14:46:32.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copyright of web pages and web sites is a legal nightmare, not least because most companies are quite happy for screen shots and images to be taken, if they are used to support and promote their site. Of course, when they are not, the issues are extremely complex. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those sites that allow me to define what and how I want information, who does the copyright over the finished look belong to? Have the site owners not just provided me with a development tool to produce my own site? If I take a screenshot of a site in a specific state, because it is dynamic and changing, then is that instantaneous image something the providers should have rights over?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the whole, if you are being fair and reasonable about the screenshots you use - that is, not misrepresenting the sites or the organisations - then you are probably on acceptable legal grounds for &quot;fair use&quot;. The real difficulty come when, as I suspect, you are wanting to critique sites, and make negative comments. You are probably still on &quot;fair Use&quot; grounds, as long as your criticisms are reasonable and valid, however as @JedOliver pointed out, if the site owners decide to make a big fuss, then, irrespective of the final results, your book publication could be delayed, which might be serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can, contact the copyright holders, where you can find their details. It may be that such a critique will prompt them to change things, and you can then comment on the changes too. But at least they will know what you intend to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T14:46:32.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5730" CreationDate="2012-05-21T14:53:47.707" Score="0" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within a technical document I want to refer to a system or process by a shorter name. I have no idea what this process is called so searching the internet is not getting me anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Core Distribution Engine (engine) is the main module of the&#xA;  Distribution Hub system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that sentence I can simply refer to the Core Distribution Engine as engine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is this process called?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3648" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-22T04:41:49.537" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T05:21:41.187" Title="Giving something an alias" Tags="|style|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5725" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5727" CreationDate="2012-05-21T18:07:42.983" Score="-1" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Backstory:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a project due in the next few days and noticed about halfway through the editing, rewriting and revision process that my initial approach to the subject matter and my argument is flawed. Not unsound, mind you. Just not the strongest material that I'm capable of producing or the strongest argument that I'm capable of making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It took me several weeks to compose and research this project and doing it the 'right' way would normally take weeks of research and rewriting. But the finished product could be [finger smooch] perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Problem:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have several weeks to essentially start over on this project. I've only got a few days until the drop-deadline and this is not the only thing I need to work on in that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Question:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I throw everything at this that I can in order to get the best possible result, knowing that I still might fail to finish on time and essentially have nothing instead of something? Or do I simply fix any glaring errors and tidy up what I've written knowing that I can meet deadline with ease, but have that nagging feeling that I'm capable of much better work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T20:45:04.480" Title="Fixing fundamental flaws of structure and composition under deadline" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5725" CreationDate="2012-05-21T19:08:55.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nearly every piece of writing (especially those written under deadline!) can be made better in some way or another, often significantly so, given enough time. We are all &quot;capable of much better work&quot; when we have more time than we have! But we don't have more time than we have; if we did, we'd have had that amount of time instead! Therefore, assuming we haven't been slacking, whatever we have written when the deadline comes is, &lt;em&gt;by definition,&lt;/em&gt; the best work we can do. If we could have done better, we would have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you could have noticed the flaws in your initial approach sooner, you would changed the approach you were taking in time to make the work much stronger. But you could not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming your client/editor/professor/whoever has seen drafts of the piece and is satisfied with the direction you originally proposed, my suggestion would be to inform them that you have finished the piece, but that while you were finishing it you thought of another approach that might be superior to the one you originally proposed. Then the ball's in their court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastEditorUserId="251" LastEditDate="2013-06-24T20:45:04.480" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T20:45:04.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5725" CreationDate="2012-05-21T19:39:15.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lovely. I use this to introduce my personal &amp;quot;bore people to death with omnipresent citations&amp;quot; day:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never give up, never surrender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never let perfect be the enemy of the good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To create something great, you need a good idea and just too little time to finish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ha, I love that :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what do these citations tell you? Well, nothing in particular, only that your assumption is totally flawed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh, if I had enough time, than this would be perfect ...&amp;quot; No. If you have &lt;em&gt;enough&lt;/em&gt; time, you'll &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; finish your work. That's the definition of &lt;em&gt;perfection&lt;/em&gt;. You are human, you err, you need unlimited time to be perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have not enough time to do your work (surprise), you are afraid to mess it up (surprise), for some reason it looks like you cannot delay the deadline (surprise), so do what every professional would do: dig a hole, hop in, and whine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or do the best you can do within the time you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T22:06:20.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5729" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5735" CreationDate="2012-05-22T01:42:58.907" Score="22" ViewCount="981" Body="&lt;p&gt;During Roman and medieval times the use of slaves was very common in most civilizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crimes often carried punishments that would fall under &quot;cruel and unusual&quot; today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to write a story depicting things like this and not have the reader be appalled by the main characters being OK with it? And without having a story that is considered extremely dark?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3552" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2018-05-27T07:11:14.360" LastActivityDate="2018-05-27T07:11:14.360" Title="How to use today's moral compass in fantasy?" Tags="|fantasy|historical|morality|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5724" CreationDate="2012-05-22T05:21:41.187" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without context, this question can only be answered in the most general ways, but even though I'm not a tech writer or tech editor, I've researched the issue a bit. I hope this will be helpful. Any tech writers or editors here, please feel free to comment or correct any errors -- or both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're referring to two concepts: Abbreviations (&quot;Engine&quot; for &quot;Core Distribution Engine&quot;) and initialisms (&quot;C.D.E.&quot; or &quot;CDE&quot; for &quot;Core Distribution Engine&quot;). Either one allows for a kind of shorthand to a long term in continual use. Either can introduce problems or obfuscate, particularly when there are many such abbreviations or initialisms/acronyms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The intialism is sometimes erroneously referred to as an acronym, but an acronym is usually just an initialism that spells out a speakable word, or can be tortured to become one. e.g., Nick Fury runs the Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-enforcement Division - SHIELD. Also see &lt;a href=&quot;http://styleguide.yahoo.com/editing/treat-abbreviations-capitalization-and-titles-consistently/acronyms-and-other-abbreviations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Yahoo! Style Guide&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, and - my personal favorite entry on acronyms - &lt;a href=&quot;http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/a.html#acronyms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Jack Lynch Guide to Grammar and Style&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question asks about referring to an often-used concept in a paper in a shortened, convenient way. If the acronym/shortened term/initialism is used consistently and clearly, and defined on first use, you could abbreviate &quot;Core Distribution Engine&quot; as &quot;CDE&quot;. But first, ask yourself if you really need to do this. Unless using the full term often would make the writing seem unbearably stilted, or you have an internal style sheet or convention indicating otherwise, ask if you have the option to use the full term more often. Perhaps some of our tech writers can weigh in on this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What the major style guides say&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you using any particular style manual? APA, Chicago, MLA? Do you have any departmental conventions or style sheets to follow? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/use-abbreviations.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA has to say about abbreviations&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To maximize clarity, APA prefers that authors use abbreviations sparingly. Although abbreviations are sometimes useful for long, technical terms in scientific writing, communication is usually garbled rather than clarified if, for example, an abbreviation is unfamiliar to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some abbreviations may not be in the dictionary but appear frequently in the journal for which you are writing. Although probably well understood by many readers, these abbreviations should still be explained when first used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and from &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/21/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the OWL website for APA style&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When abbreviating a term, use the full term the first time you use it, followed immediately by the abbreviation in parentheses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;According to the American Psychological Association (APA), abbreviations are best used only when they allow for clear communication with the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AP's &quot;Abbreviations and Acronyms&quot; entry, while not as applicable to technical writing as is APA, is worth noting: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... in general, avoid alphabet soup. Do not use abbreviations or acronyms that the reader would not quickly recognize. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt; (10th edition, 10.3 &quot;Abbreviations&quot;) takes roughly twice as much text to say essentially the same thing, but they do stress that abbreviations are more appropriate in a scientific and technical context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term &quot;Engine&quot; on its own could easily be mistaken for the word engine, but it'll depend on the sentence. I suppose &quot;The user should use the Engine to perform the task&quot; could be confusing in certain contexts (which engine? The CDE, or any old engine). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you choose to do, be consistent (i.e., CDE or C.D.E. - pick one and stick with it) but clarity is more important than consistency. Haven't referred to the CDE in a while? Perhaps it should be defined again. Do you have a style guide or departmental style sheet? Apply that, but don't let it override your judgment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, this question is difficult to answer without more text from this paper. Is it possible for you to give us more context? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T05:21:41.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5729" CreationDate="2012-05-22T06:30:12.973" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, consider your intent. Middle Ages &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; mostly dark and grim, indeed. Even most members of nobility were untaught, uncultured and brutal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, many people are attracted to Nazis, particularly to the SS and Gestapo. Being &quot;bad guy&quot; seems to be great to them. So regard it as certainty, this &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; appeal to someone and you can do nothing about that. &lt;strike&gt;(&lt;em&gt;Furthermore, I think most &quot;fantasy&quot; stories are inherently anti-humanistic.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastEditorUserId="624" LastEditDate="2012-05-25T04:25:26.523" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T04:25:26.523" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5729" CreationDate="2012-05-22T08:29:44.327" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The important thing is that your characters do not come over as cruel and sadistic, but they treat it as just part of what happens. So your soldiers who have to impale offenders need to do it with the same sort of mundane routine as others might write weekly progress reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your characters can have slaves as part of a normal life, but ignore them most of the time, except when they have to deal with them, then you readers should accept this as part of their lives. It becomes an issue only when you focus on the slave-owning aspects of their lives. They didn't treat it as particularly noteworthy, so nor should you as you write about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The middle ages would have treated people maimed from both accident and punishment as part of life - as we treat the homeless today. They would have accepted that most families would have lost someone to punishment, disease or accident - nobility downwards. The challenge - and it is a  big challenge - is to write your characters as if the casual cruelty of life and state were perfectly reasonable and normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can do that, you should show just how appalling it was, but without losing sympathy for the main characters. There is a sense that the novel as a whole will shock, which is probably a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T08:29:44.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5729" CreationDate="2012-05-22T08:35:34.843" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a rule, when people read fiction from another time period, they expect the culture / thinking style from that period. I can't remember how many books I've read based in medieval  Europe, where the hero talks about the rights of man, individuality, democracy etc. I usually throw such books away, as it shows the author hasn't done their research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second thing is, you assume that all people in ancient times were cruel, and supported their respective social evils. So for example, all Romans loved to see people being eaten by lions. This is not true. Just like in modern times we have racism, religious wars, sectarian violence, but in actuality very few people actively support extremist groups. 300-500 years from now, today will look like the dark ages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific question, people have their own moral compass, which they follow, no matter what the society believes. So you could have your hero supporting slavery, but showing a random act of kindness to a slave. Or he could hear the story of how a slave was captured, and change his views on slavery. Or he could accept slavery, but not have personal slaves, as it doesn't agree with his own moral compass. The characters don't need to be black or white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, don't force modern, western &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment&quot;&gt;enlightenment&lt;/a&gt; views on your characters. But that doesn't mean they have to be barbaric &quot;Ooga Ooga, me steal woman&quot; type characters. Your characters can be nice people, trying to survive in a unjust society, and doing their small bit to help others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T08:35:34.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5729" CreationDate="2012-05-22T14:05:22.863" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you first need to distinguish between whether you are writing &lt;em&gt;fantasy&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;historical fiction&lt;/em&gt;. If you want to write a fantasy novel, then you don't have to depict anything that happened in our own history. After all, you are creating a new world and you get to depict it in whatever fashion you deem necessary for telling your story. If you choose to use elements from our own medieval times in your fantasy world, then simply depict them as standard elements of the story. In describing your world and its inhabitants, you have the opportunity to determine how the reader perceives your characters, and ultimately it is truly up to you to do this. The important thing, however, is that with a fantasy story, the reader does not come in with any preconceived notions on how your world was formed or how its society behaves. You have to paint that picture for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you are writing a story that is historical fiction, then you are going to be telling your story in a setting in which your audience &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; have preconceived notions. It is likely that your readers will have at least some level of understanding in regards to the morals and behaviors of that time period. Even so, it is still up to you to make sure that your readers understand that while certain standards of behavior might be considered barbaric today, in the time period in which your story takes place, those standards are considerably different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T14:05:22.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5597" CreationDate="2012-05-22T20:35:58.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of Brandon Sanderson's works explores this idea.  I will mark the rest of the answer with a spoiler tag because the relevance to this question is not immediately apparent, and just knowing that it was would be a spoiler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title so you can decide if you want to read further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;em&gt;Mistborn&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; The heroes oppose a ruler who is ruthless and cruel.  They attribute his actions to evil and set out to defeat him and end his reign.  When they succeed they discover that his motivations had merit, and by defeating him they have set into motion events which they must now struggle against to prevent a terrible disaster.  Over the next two books of the series you gain some sympathy for the ruler as you discover the method behind his madness.  You see the heroes cause death and destruction on a scale far beyond the events that led them to act in the first place.  You are still sympathetic to them because you have seen how they struggled to make the right choices but made terrible mistakes and caused great suffering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2615" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T20:35:58.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5740" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5746" CreationDate="2012-05-23T07:22:47.233" Score="13" ViewCount="2082" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main character of a story dies before the story itself ends. Nothing new here, you can keep a story interesting following their death. But I have an additional requirement: The dead main character has to exert &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt; to the story world even following their death (diminished capacity acceptable), and I'm wondering about ways to achieve this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is for interactive fiction, where the reader gets to make choices on behalf of the main character. I'm exploring death as a possible consequence of those choices, but don't want that to stop further choices down the line completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An afterlife of some sort is one possibility; undeath, e.g., becoming a ghost, appearing in other characters' dreams, having their consciousness stored in a computer... What other ways are there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3658" LastEditorUserId="3658" LastEditDate="2012-05-23T12:35:35.727" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T02:21:09.620" Title="Ways for main character to influence world following their death" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5740" CreationDate="2012-05-23T08:05:25.027" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on your entire scenario, you have, I think, three options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;ghost&quot; route, whereby the departed exerts influence by appearing in an ethereal form to the various characters. Of course, this has to be consistent with the worldview already expressed, AND you need to explain why there are not hundreds of spirits hanging around, continuing to influence events.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;lasting influence&quot; route, where the impacts of the person while they were alive continue to have influence and impact after their deaths, so other characters do what the dead person would have wanted. This can be explicit, with instructions having been given to certain people. Obviously, there is no ability to react to events, but there is also no need to explain the continuing influence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you re sci-fi focused, you could have the remnants of the persons conscience uploaded into a computer, to meld with the other dead consciences, but then still exert some influence of continuing events. This is a form of ghost, but with real and definitive influence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think the second would make a wonderful story ( if you don't do it, I might have to! ). The third would require an already existing universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T08:05:25.027" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5740" CreationDate="2012-05-23T10:03:13.307" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Option 1: I'm Back!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an IF game, probably the &lt;em&gt;easiest&lt;/em&gt; way to allow character death is to allow some kind of backup, or a chance to be restored to life. Examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cloning Technology&lt;/strong&gt; - Your character has been cloned (or can be), and when the original dies, a clone takes his place. This method is used in the classic SF/humor RPG &lt;em&gt;Paranoia&lt;/em&gt;, specifically to let characters be killed off constantly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time Travel&lt;/strong&gt; - In a time-travel story, sometimes the time-travel technology lets you &quot;come in from the future&quot; and make another attempt if &quot;things go wrong.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Beat Death&lt;/strong&gt; - Some RPGs solve the death problem by making it simply an extra challenge: dying just takes you to a different level, which you must beat, and then you can return and continue with the game. So you could have a &quot;Hell&quot; level or a &quot;Deal with the Devil&quot; challenge or some such, allowing you to return to life once you beat the extra level. (I remember the &lt;em&gt;Neverwinter Nights&lt;/em&gt; module &lt;em&gt;Witch's Wake&lt;/em&gt; did this.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's also the brilliant use of story-as-a-flashback in &lt;a href=&quot;http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/tangle/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zarf's &lt;em&gt;Spider and Web&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;HIGHLY&lt;/em&gt; recommended!). Obviously you don't want to copy such a unique structure wholesale, but the unusual approach may give you ideas for similarly oddball structures that might work for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Option 2: I'm Still Here!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be more what you had in mind - ways to exert influence despite having, shall we say, shed the mortal coil. Do bear in mind, though, that creating a whole new mode of play can be quite a chore for an interactive-fiction game! If you like any of these ideas, you might consider basing the &lt;em&gt;entire&lt;/em&gt; game around the concept, rather than adding the extra mode in as an odd extension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ghostly Haunting&lt;/strong&gt; - Your own suggestion, and quite effective for your purposes. A ghost has limited interaction with the world - how limited is up to you. A ghost can certainly continue to wander around; maybe it's more limited in what it can touch and manipulate; maybe it can't speak easily to others. Maybe it also has new powers - like walking through walls, or possessing NPCs. &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A particular variation could set the player as the incorporeal sidekick of an &quot;independent&quot; NPC. Kind of the reverse of &lt;a href=&quot;http://iplayif.com/?story=http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Violet.zblorb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;what Jeremy Freese did with &lt;em&gt;Violet&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reincarnation&lt;/strong&gt; - A more mystical/fantastical approach to having a backup character would be reincarnating as someone or something else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Guidance From Beyond&lt;/strong&gt; - Set up some way to give advice to some sidekick character - dreams and visions; flashback memories; a will; a prophecy. You can set this up so the &quot;advice&quot; is retroactively assumed to have already been provided.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. If I have any other ideas, I'll add them on later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T10:03:13.307" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5740" CreationDate="2012-05-23T10:03:26.943" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Set up your world as a version of &lt;i&gt;The Matrix.&lt;/i&gt; When the player-character dies, s/he is removed from &quot;the game,&quot; and can now only influence other players second-hand: mysterious text messages, altering the headline on a newspaper just as the &quot;living&quot; character looks at it, turning on a TV remotely, etc. So your player-character becomes a kind of &lt;i&gt;deus ex machina&lt;/i&gt;, not able to interact directly with the other characters, but able to leave hints and breadcrumbs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T10:03:26.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5729" CreationDate="2012-05-23T14:30:26.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about it this way: Why weren't Romans (for example) appalled by their own use of slaves? Because to them it seemed normal. I haven't ever been a Roman slave, but I believe that slaves too didn't see anything wrong with slavery. (Though they probably would have &lt;em&gt;preferred&lt;/em&gt; not be slaves, just as almost everyone nowadays would prefer to be rich. Want? Yes. Be upset about it? No.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, slaves are given food and shelter in exchange for their work, which is something that wasn't taken for granted in older times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice, therefore, is that you show how the &quot;victims&quot; of such a code of morals accept it as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T14:30:26.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5729" CreationDate="2012-05-23T18:00:47.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Darkness is in the eye of the beholder. And if there weren't a significant attraction to materials of a certain dark and twisted nature, then you would have never heard of Stephen King, Clive Barker, Peter Straub or even Edgar Allen Poe. Darkness is part of the human condition. After all, it was Thomas Hobbes who argued that the life of man in nature is &quot;solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short&quot;. We like darkness; it's part of who we are as a species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people who read a story that's set in medieval times or in a medieval-themed dark fantasy world expect that the life of man is much closer to a Hobbesian state than the modern world. Slavery, injustice, brutality, violence, class, caste — these are just some of the things you expect in a world from long ago and far away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you have concerns that the day-to-day operations of the world you create will simply be seen as unnecessarily brutal or overtly dark, then there are a few ways to introduce that sort of world to your reader and help them accept what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal favorite is to introduce a character from outside the bubble or that otherwise has an extraordinarily high moral code (but not thoroughly modern or it won't seem genuine). This character comes from a world where the value system is closer to that of your reader and each controversial element is introduced and addressed in its own time in a very &quot;this is how it's done; this is how it's always been done&quot; sort of way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe your character changes the way things work; maybe the way things work change your character. But either way that allows your reader to come to terms with the poor, nasty, brutish world you've created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T18:00:47.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5740" CreationDate="2012-05-24T02:21:09.620" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I see it, there are two possible ways for a character to influence others after death, but each has a number of variations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the character could &lt;strong&gt;directly influence others&lt;/strong&gt; after death. This would involve some sort of continued existence either magical or supernatural in origin. Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ghost (or any other non-material existence after death, such as a poltergeist, or other spirit)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uploaded brain (into a computer or robot)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cloning (depending on how magical the cloning process is -- in a more realistic universe, a clone would be an identical twin born later, not a repeat of the original person)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time travel (which stretches the limits of &quot;after&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resurrection (same person coming back)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reincarnation (returning as a different person)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way for a character to exert influence after death is not to actually be there but to leave some sort of &lt;strong&gt;intentional legacy&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A will&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Letters to loved (or hated) people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bequest with ongoing results, such as founding a charitable organization or school&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unintentional legacies&lt;/strong&gt; are also possible&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inspirational speech&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taught a significant skill or piece of knowledge to another character&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;WWDGD: What Would &lt;em&gt;Dead Guy&lt;/em&gt; Do? (In other words, a life philosophy built around that of the dead guy, who acts as a moral guide for the living character.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Published knowledge that helps others (Dr. Dead Guy's research suggests that we can find the solution to our problems in this star system.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unpublished documents that come to light after the death (see Emily Dickinson). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one that straddles the border between intentional and unintentional: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Children&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Parts of the body, either from donated organs or in the form of frozen sperm/eggs/other material&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Genetic legacies, particularly in terms of diseases that might get passed along&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3342" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T02:21:09.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5747" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5748" CreationDate="2012-05-24T11:43:48.373" Score="2" ViewCount="16648" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I'm not an Native English Speaker.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexandrochen.com/existential-fiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fifth attempt&lt;/a&gt; of writing a short story (the previous ones are set in the same &quot;universe&quot; as this one). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if the reader would feel intrigued by this opening. I also wonder if he would feel that it has a &quot;dark&quot; atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the first time I describe so many things in a story. So I would also like to know if the descriptions are 'flowing' smoothly. If not, how to improve them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Julian found himself walking along an empty street, only accompanied&#xA;  by the darkness and the fog. They were like omnipresent observers,&#xA;  carefully watching each of his steps. He didn't know where he was&#xA;  heading. In fact, he didn't even know if he wanted to reach a&#xA;  particular destination. After walking for a while, he spotted a light&#xA;  at the distance. It was a long and white, and looked as if it were&#xA;  suspended in the fog. As he was getting closer, the light started to&#xA;  form a shape. It was a big neon sign that said Little Paradise. Soon&#xA;  he realized that he was standing in front of a glass door. Another&#xA;  neon sign, one with the silhouette of a nude woman, was hanging on it.&#xA;  He stood there for a while, staring at the door. Then, as if he had&#xA;  just made up his mind on something, entered the place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Inside was dark and empty. The only source of light were a couple of&#xA;  neon signs hanging on the walls. Julian glanced around the place.&#xA;  There was a bar in the front, a few seats in the center, and some&#xA;  others on the sides. Back at the bottom, there was small stage with a&#xA;  stripping pole in the middle of it. Everything looked old and rusty,&#xA;  like old antiques deteriorated by time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Julian walked towards the bar and sat on one of the stools. He took a&#xA;  package of Marlboro Red from his pocket and lit a cigarette up.&#xA;  Without knowing what else to do, he focused his eyes on the stage,&#xA;  smoking his cigarette and waiting for someone to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After staring at it for a while, he realized that there was someone&#xA;  lying on it. He hesitated a little bit, but then crushed his cigarette&#xA;  in an ashtray, and slowly made his way to the stage. Once he reached a&#xA;  reasonable distance, he narrowed his eyes and he examined the person.&#xA;  It was a girl. She was lying still, with her back to the absent audience. She was wearing a black bikini, and the upper part of&#xA;  her body was being covered by a black jacket. He stood there, staring&#xA;  at her as if he were in a trance for a minute or two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hello?&quot; Julian called out after a moment. His voice didn't sound has&#xA;  his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A silence passed. The only thing that he could hear was the sound of&#xA;  his own breathing. He never imagined that a drinking spot could be&#xA;  that silent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sorry, there are no more shows,&quot; the girl suddenly said, without&#xA;  moving from her lying position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2018-06-14T10:06:53.413" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T10:06:53.413" Title="Is the opening of this story intriguing, &quot;dark&quot; and smooth?" Tags="|description|openings|atmosphere|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2018-06-14T20:09:30.113" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5747" CreationDate="2012-05-24T12:42:12.450" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In all honesty, it doesn't work for me. To address your particular questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it dark? Not especially. I get a sense of someone not being sure where they are, but not being in a sinister place. More like having woken up after a drunken night, and trying to remember the last bar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it flow? Not IMO. I am reminded of the old text-based Adventure games &quot;You are in a room. There is an octopus lying on the floor.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solutions? More words, more description. Taking it slower, adding more potential danger would help both of these. A quick attempt to rework the first sentence, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Julian was in a deserted street. How he had got there, or where 'there' was, eluded him. As he walked, the fog enveloped him, wrapped him, held him. When he escaped from the fog, the darkness took him instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note - these are just my opinions! Others may disagree, but as a rule, slower progress tends to make for more suspense. And I think, with some work, this could work out well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-05-24T13:13:41.473" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T13:13:41.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5747" CreationDate="2012-05-24T13:13:14.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not particularly dark. There's so much unknown that we don't even know if we're supposed to worry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A strip club which is so old it feels like it's populated with antiques isn't particularly dark or scary; it means nobody's there, so there are no threats. It also doesn't imply that everyone disappeared or dropped dead abruptly (which would at least be a mystery). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want it to be smoother and more interesting, &quot;slow down&quot; is definitely good advice. You're hurrying us along to the club. &quot;After walking for a while:&quot; well, what does he see? Where is he? Big city, small city, state, country, continent? Are there other people? Other sounds? Cars? Age, make, model, condition? What are the buildings like? What kind (houses, apartments, stores, warehouses, crack dens, empty lots, gardens, museums)? What does the air smell like? Is he near the ocean, a lake, the mountains, an industrial park? Is it summer or winter? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to intrigue the reader, give us something to be intrigued about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And, as always, I must compliment you on working so damn hard in what is not your native language.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T13:13:14.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1230" CreationDate="2012-05-24T16:58:40.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;After a considerable bit of research, I came across this on the Polish language Wikipedia page on proofreading (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korekta_tekstu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Korekta tekstu&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Google-provided broken English translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korekta_tekstu#Poradniki_stylistyczne&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Style guides&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These guides are usually created by employees internally or supplied by the customer and should distinguish them from professional sources for formatting and style of the language of documents, such as &quot;The Chicago Manual of Style&quot; (CMS), &quot;The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law &quot;(AP Stylebook),&quot; The Elements of Style &quot;and&quot; The Gregg Reference Manual: A Manual of Style, Grammar, Usage, and Formatting. &quot; &lt;strong&gt;(Polish publications include handbooks normative culture of the Polish language, eg by H. Jadackiej, A. Markowski, correct Polish PWN dictionaries, and other, one must add that they relate primarily linguistic layers, whereas those English-language sources also include a recommendation for formatting etc. - editor. crowd.)&lt;/strong&gt; In the case of a conflict, proofreaders mark the errors as the internal reference guide instead of the material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in the original Polish:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korekta_tekstu#Poradniki_stylistyczne&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Poradniki stylistyczne&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Takie poradniki są zwykle tworzone wewnętrznie przez pracowników lub dostarczane przez klienta i należy odróżniać je od profesjonalnych źródeł dotyczących formatowania i stylu językowego dokumentów, jak np. &quot;The Chicago Manual of Style&quot; (CMS), &quot;The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law&quot;, (AP Stylebook), &quot;The Elements of Style&quot; czy&quot;The Gregg Reference Manual: A Manual of Style, Grammar, Usage, and Formatting&quot;. &lt;strong&gt;(polskie wydawnictwa normatywne to m.in. podręczniki kultury języka polskiego, m.in. autorstwa H. Jadackiej, A. Markowskiego, słowniki poprawnej polszczyzny PWN i inne, trzeba jednak dodać, że dotyczą one przede wszystkim warstwy językowej, natomiast wymienione źródła anglojęzyczne zawierają także zalecenie dotyczące formatowanie etc. – przyp. tłum.)&lt;/strong&gt; W razie kolizji norm, korektorzy zaznaczają błędy zgodnie z wewnętrznym poradnikiem zamiast z materiałem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the closest thing to an accepted and universal &quot;manual of style&quot; in the Polish language (according to Wikipedia) is the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ksiegarnia.pwn.pl/produkt/7112/kultura-jezyka-polskiego-t-3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Książka Kultura języka polskiego&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;em&gt;The book of Polish Language and Culture&lt;/em&gt;) by Hanna Jadacka (&lt;em&gt;T.1.: Inflection, word formation, syntax&lt;/em&gt;), Andrzej Markowski (&lt;em&gt;T.2.: Theory, Lexical Issues&lt;/em&gt;), and Thomas Karpowicz (&lt;em&gt;T.3.: Pronunciation, spelling, punctuation&lt;/em&gt;). And if there are issues of preferred writing style, each publication uses its own internal reference guides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other Style Guides for the Polish Language&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to &lt;em&gt;The book of Polish Language and Culture&lt;/em&gt; (which appears to be a general reference of grammar, syntax and punctuation), there are other international style guides which are provide rules for the proper translation of laws, regulations and business practices into several languages, including Polish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is the European Union's Interinstitutional Style Guide (&lt;a href=&quot;http://publications.europa.eu/code/en/en-000100.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EN&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://publications.europa.eu/code/pl/pl-000100.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PL&lt;/a&gt;), which provides detailed information on the proper use of several linguistic concepts in all 23 languages of the EU. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iso.org/iso/home.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;International Standards Organization&lt;/a&gt; (ISO) which provides several international standards for businesses and government. There are many, many different documents on the proper use of style in several international languages (including Polish) that are dependent on the situation (such as ISO 31 for quantities and units or ISO 5966 for the presentation of scientific and technical reports).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tangentially related, the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) also provides a  certification called EN-15038 which is an international standard for translation service providers that ensures proper translation into various languages. The &lt;em&gt;PKN EN 15038&lt;/em&gt; is the version specifically for the Polish Language. You have to pay CEN to find out exactly what is entailed with being EN-15038 certified in Polish, but you can get some idea &lt;a href=&quot;http://qualitystandard.bs.en-15038.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="3496" LastEditDate="2012-05-24T21:29:33.833" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T21:29:33.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4825" CreationDate="2012-05-24T17:28:11.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I'm in this situation I leverage the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Glossaries&lt;/strong&gt;: Doing a glossary saves me from bloating a document with detailed explanations on &quot;basic stuff&quot;. I instead give a 1 sentence explanation useful enough for the rest of the context. This one liner comes to me after writing the glossary entry and rewriting it several times after.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Metaphors&lt;/strong&gt;: If one thing is to hard to explain to a target audience, sometimes a supplementary explanation will just do. This works well when the metaphor is replacing other concepts than the central one I'm trying to focus on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cross-referencing&lt;/strong&gt;: Sometimes you just have to explain the whole shenanigan, but rather do it one at a time and provide a link/reference to another section (i.e. &quot;see page X&quot;, &quot;read section Y&quot;). Similar to when having to use glossaries, but a glossary entry alone wont be enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use LaTeX and doing Glossaries and cross-referencing is easy as cake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3610" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T17:28:11.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5752" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5754" CreationDate="2012-05-24T17:29:09.680" Score="6" ViewCount="252" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can one use social proof as an argument without sounding like &quot;just because everybody is doing it so should you&quot;?. &lt;strong&gt;My problem is trying to demonstrate with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;social proof&lt;/a&gt; that trendy tools/techniques are not necessarily &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cargo cult&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a whitepaper regarding best-practices and new tools in the industry of software engineering. There are certain controversial topics like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_revision_control&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DVCS&lt;/a&gt; (Distributed Version Control) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TDD&lt;/a&gt; (Test-Driven Development) that do work, but require changing mindsets and extra effort at the beginning to reap the rewards. Something along the lines of this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;More and more developers are being converted into DVCSs because of its success in&#xA;overcoming classical frustrations in CVCSs, such as avoiding merging hell and commit&#xA;races. Adoption involves evolving the centralized mindset as DVCSs change the &#xA;paradigm of version control, after developers accept the new paradigm and embrace &#xA;it —which generally involves trying to go back to the centralized mindset— they will&#xA;start reaping the benefits and become increasingly aware of how scalable this &#xA;paradigm is in terms of collaboration.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the previous paragraph sounds credible, I don't think people resistant to change will see another thing from &quot;oh, it's cargo-cult&quot;. I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;social proof&lt;/a&gt; is relevant to this case (as adoption is important to the enterprise due to support professional support markets &amp;amp; well-tested environments), but cannot help to think that this could get on the bad side of rhetoric (too much pathos?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since those kinds of things are being increasingly adopted and preached, how could one turn this situation as a good convincing argument?. I was reading Joel's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/11/16.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;entry on demonstrating software and social proof&lt;/a&gt; but it seems like a double-edged sword.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional context&lt;/strong&gt;: VCS or Version Control Systems are (in a nutshell) programs that let you store incremental differences (or changes/deltas) to text files so that then you can rebuild them at a particular point later; these systems are mostly use for writing software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are currently two models: a) the centralized one (&lt;strong&gt;CVCS&lt;/strong&gt;) where each user to be hooked up to a server to use these systems, making them slower and bottlenecking collaboration, as everyone needs to stand in line to store the changes to this sole &quot;code bucket&quot;, and b) the distributed model (&lt;strong&gt;DVCS&lt;/strong&gt;) where each programmer has their own &quot;bucket&quot;, so there is no need for a server, everyone puts their work on their own &quot;bucket&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing in DVCSs and collaboration happens after, until they have finished and refined work to share and be proud about instead of stepping on each other's toes with incomplete work (and still being able to rely on version control to aid their own work). In a DVCS each peer can check each other's buckets and they can add their bucket's contents to others' too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: Sorry for the wall of text&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3610" LastEditorUserId="3610" LastEditDate="2012-05-24T21:01:38.093" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T22:21:29.567" Title="How to leverage social proof?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5752" CreationDate="2012-05-24T21:43:01.087" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I'm understanding you correctly, I think what you want are &lt;em&gt;case studies&lt;/em&gt; to demonstrate your points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you put forth one of your arguments &amp;mdash; &quot;switching to the individual bucket version reduces problems A, B, and C&quot; &amp;mdash; and then you put in a section with an actual real-life example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Case Study: Acme Widget Coders Amalgamated&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AWCA had been using centralized bucketing for many years, but it was causing production bottlenecks whenever the buckets were all dumped into the same coding trough at the end of a widgeting session. Switching over to individual buckets was a huge boost to efficiency. Programmers had more flexibility, errors were caught much earlier in the process, and there were fewer holes in the buckets, dear Liza, dear Liza.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do this for each facet of your argument (or each problem which your trendy technique purports to solve), then your reader will see that you're not just lusting after the latest sparkly vampire of coding solutions, but rather presenting something which is useful and has been field-tested to produce significant results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T21:43:01.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5755" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-25T04:54:05.127" Score="11" ViewCount="1124" Body="&lt;p&gt;We know that reading sentences with capital letters is hard.&#xA;I noticed that some documents are still written with capital letters.&#xA;Why are license agreements, disclaiming letters and others written with capital letters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3667" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T20:23:53.197" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T20:23:53.197" Title="Why are license agreements, disclaiming letters and others written with capital letters?" Tags="|technical-writing|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5756" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5760" CreationDate="2012-05-25T09:43:06.747" Score="2" ViewCount="761" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: English isn't my native language.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A while back, I posted &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4663/do-these-starting-paragraphs-make-you-want-to-keep-reading&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4513/does-this-beginning-hook-the-reader&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. I got... well, reviews. While not outright helpful (ie. &lt;em&gt;indirect,&lt;/em&gt; which is the whole point of critiques, I guess) they helped me shape the following extremely revised beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cuba: 1972 A.D.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conscious enough to know it but too much to joy it. At least to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I knew this was the only possible end for my quest, my curiosity-cursed pursuit for knowledge and survival. Yet it was the trait that defined me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even now -to you: then-, with all my knowledge of the future, some I remember and some I calculated. Even now, I'm sending myself, you, the rebirth note. Again. Hating every bit of myself that allowed it and dreading the day I could no longer do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For on that day, I'll lose the ability to control how my life starts. And I don't know how much I could trust myselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course, it's just easier to have a good, new and old story told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“And that’s what we’re offering, ma’am. This opportunity will benefit everyone if taken.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;The man and his partner in suits had barely blinked during the information relay, which Amira saw empty and useless. Amira, The young woman sitting across and the house owner, had long given up trying to read their faces and instead stared into the cofee in her hands, head bent. The steam leaving the mug threatening her eyes teary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;She spoke, “Your current offer is whether my son and I agree to hear your next offer. That’s not helpful.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;The bigger man’s eyes shone behind the contacts, a gleam harsher than the artificial reflection of contacts. “Not quite. We must take your word that you and your son will be bound to not disclose any information given here, now. Apart from that, you already know it’s about your son’s future.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;A young boy paused on the stairs behind the table the grown-ups were talking around. I had another nightmare, he wanted to say. But instead just waited there, remembering all the details of the dream and calming down; he continued his way down the stairs. It always helped him to think of things, to find their intricacies and secrets. Knowledge was life or death to him and so his mind, which made it a breeze to acquire, became his second loved one after his mother. He glimpsed the men talking to her as he went down and smiled, already composed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;On seeing her son awake, Amira motioned for the man. “Ask him yourself.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He asked. I said yes. After all, the offer only said a scholarship, nothing suspicious in that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I still remember this day for it was my version of it. And I know of a few others I’d taken care to recount in the note before. Thousands… Millions of other versions undoubtedly lost forever. Unless I could travel between timelines which isn’t a calculable possibility right now. And I wouldn’t want to if I could. It’s millions of Earths and populations frozen in time the moment I leave. Every time I do it. All because I wanted to live again, differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the time you read this, you’ll know I’m telling the truth… With whatever constant intricacies in it you might benefit from. But know that the note was always there to give you, me, us, a different life, every time, never knowing it existed until too late. But now that I told you… Now that, to my knowledge, you are the first me to read it before writing it. I beseech, I implore you to hole and behold. Don’t send it again. It gives us new lives by taking what we already had. I want to die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes for previous drafts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Too many elements with no clear focus. &lt;em&gt;Solution:&lt;/em&gt; Here, I only focused on the main 'flame' of the story. See #a&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Strange language construction. &lt;em&gt;Solution:&lt;/em&gt; I can't say what exactly but I believe my language is much clearer (and intriguing, I hope) here than in the previous trials.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pronoun misuse and name changes for characters. &lt;em&gt;Solved.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Info dumps. &lt;em&gt;Solution:&lt;/em&gt; The pace is a bit slower now with less descriptions and is always to the point. Thus it should be balanced out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. The target market is young adults and the main genre is hard science fiction. This is crucial to the plot but I'm afraid I might frighten away potential readers if I went hard from the get go so it's just SF at the beginning; not providing SF explanations on the 'flames' of the story such as the rebirth note, timeline freezing's, ... etc. Being of the target age-group myself, I feel I might be swayed toward the bad practices of the current works offered for this market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would this beginning sell the story to people? As a story not a commercial product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was the first one and a half pages. The next two pages of chapter one could be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://mussri-litworks.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:45:59.417" Title="How well would this beginning sell the book to readers? Not necessarily for money" Tags="|fiction|editing|science-fiction|openings|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-01-05T07:50:47.007" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5755" CreationDate="2012-05-25T11:20:10.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's something to do with legal. The lawyers think that screaming gets the point across better. You'd have to ask the legal department which approved the document in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T11:20:10.967" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5752" CreationDate="2012-05-25T12:45:16.433" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key is to establish a strong foundation first. Someone who is resistant to change will need to see why change is necessary, how it can be accomplished easily and cheaply, and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; feel the pressure of &amp;quot;all the cool kids are doing it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't establish the reason why change &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; happen, then social proof will look like flash-in-the-pan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest first demonstrating the advantages of the new over the old, and then the benefits of adopting the new practice which comes at the modest expense of a tiny little paradigm shift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've established a sensible and strong argument for the adoption of the new practice, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; you can leverage social proof as additional support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CVCS has been the standard since it became necessary to do something other than copy material to a dated folder in the &amp;quot;Backup&amp;quot; file.  However, methods of software production have changed since CVCS was introduced 20 years ago, resulting in performance bottlenecks and cranky people wasting time on the nets while waiting for their code to be ready.  DVCSs solves the classical frustrations of CVCSs, such as avoiding merging hell and commit races. The adoption of DVCS creates a versioning environment that is more natural for workers, resulting in geometrically increased productivity and infinitely scalable cooperativity.  Training workers to use the new format takes less than a week, and once adopted, it quickly becomes intuitive. They can version in their sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many sensible, knowledgeable, and successful people have already recognized the genius of this plan.  They shag frequently with beautiful, famous, and wealthy people. We recommend you adopt this practice as well, since everyone will be doing it in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you want to do is establish why this is a good practice, how it can be adopted especially by people who are familiar with the old practice, and then give a little peer pressure.  That way, the reader will feel more like they will be on the cutting edge rather than just jumping on the bandwagon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T22:21:29.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4825" CreationDate="2012-05-25T13:51:41.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only way of not having forward references is to build up everything from the bottom. So you start with a glossary, defining the terms you are going to use. In some cases, these can cross reference to each other, as they will all be in the same area. Then you do your definitions - the basic processes that are involved, again with some cross reference if needed. You can also do &quot;see also&quot; type references to later in the manual, so referring in the definition of a wizzlet process, you can say &quot;for details on how to initiate and configure a wizzlet process, see section 26 below ). This means that peple who want to refer to this for a specific need can follow these through, but it can also be read ignoring this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, by this point, you will be able to write the main bulk of the text, referring back but not forward ( although further see also references might be useful - these are to provide links that are not necessary to follow to understand ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case, you would define the principles behind topic 1 and topic 2, with possible cross references if necessary, although if you can avoid them, even better. The detailed interaction of these two is dealt with in the main text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you need a define Cyclone Bigit, which is created from a Convex Waddle, and the convex waddle only has a meaning as the progenitor of a Cycle Bigit, then you define the meanings first - what is a Bigit? What is a Waddle? Then you define the Cyclone Bigit, irrespective of how it is generated, or what it is for. You also define - irrespective of context - the Convex Waddle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have these both defined, in a way that is insufficient to use them, but sufficient to appreciate their potential reference, you can explain how you take and define a Waddle and make your Bigit out of it. Hopefully, someone reading it all through will have their understanding taken slowly through the whole process, and grasp what is needed by the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T13:51:41.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5756" CreationDate="2012-05-25T15:48:55.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;ideas&lt;/em&gt; in this excerpt grab me.  We have a first-person narrator who's dead; how does that work?  This seems to have involved some sort of deal to help the narrator's son, and there seem to be alternate timelines or worlds involved.  This makes me curious and it does not feel too information-intensive.  I get the sense that you'll explain these details in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; is difficult enough that I would not keep reading.  English is a hard language to learn and I applaud anybody who can get as far as you can with it as a second language (says the mono-lingual American).  But this would need substantial revision before I would be able to get past the writing to get to the story.  Your best bet is probably to hire an editor rather than trying to do it yourself; editing your own work is always a little dicey and, as noted in the question, you have some language challenges.  Don't make yourself crazy trying to figure it all out; get an editor or perhaps a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T15:48:55.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5761" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-25T16:13:41.457" Score="5" ViewCount="662" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing I hear most often about my writing is, &amp;quot;It's too dry.&amp;quot;  I'm sure this happens to other people too.  I'm working on eliciting emotion through writing, and I'd like a critique on some of my first bits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wake up screaming - again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’ve woken up screaming at least once a night since it happened.  Most nights I’ll wake up three or four times, bathed in sweat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can still see her face fading from recognition, each time I awake she’s silently begging me to save her.  I see her face twist with the sudden terror as she slips, time slowing as she starts to fall.  I feel the look of betrayal, deeper than the deepest ocean, when her fingers barely brush against mine as I lunge to save her.  Then...every emotion I’ve ever seen, and so many more I could never begin to describe, all meld together with abject terror as she falls.  Those same feelings are ravaging me from the inside, taking my world and ripping it to shreds in the blink of an eye.  Pieces of paper, torn apart by a storm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn’t tear my eyes away; I had to watch it all.  A twisted sense of responsibility to her memory, or something.  She fell for so long - when her body hit the ground, it was smaller than the ant crawling next to my hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stayed there, on the edge of nothingness, for three whole days.  I ate nothing.  I drank nothing.  I did. not. move.  I played all of our mutual experiences over and over again in my head, promising her all the while that I’d never forget her.  I knew the first time I’d told her this that I was lying: at some point my memory would fail, or we would grow apart and the memories would be rewritten.  I could see in her face that she knew I was lying too.  But...we both also knew that there wasn’t any other way to live.  That even though we know that nothing can last, we had to act like it could, like it would.  Act like we were the immortal &lt;em&gt;fomori&lt;/em&gt; of legend, casting linguistic spells on those around us, running circles around people with less-developed minds.  Capricious spirits of the wind who nevertheless held such capacity for love and understanding that it overwhelmed us on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cried in her arms, cried over all the things we could never do nor fix, all the people - who by simple virtue of existence deserve unrelenting love - whom we couldn’t save.  People whom we’d never meet, whom we could never help.  We grieved together for the people who are too blind to know that they can’t see, who will live forever in self-created misery - people we will never be able to help. We grieved for the people they hurt out of ignorance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could argue that childhood abuse coupled with a unique perspective has created martyr complexes.  But we didn’t do this for ourselves.  We didn’t do this because we wanted others to know who we were.  We didn’t do this for praise or fame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you realize that we are all just living collections of basic particles, that invisible air is made from the same type of particles, that all things are made up of the same stuff -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you realize that knowledge, culture, beliefs, and more are all just things we are given -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you realize that the only objective Truth is that we each have our own subjective experience -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you realize that the only true knowledge is experience taken in its original context -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you realize that the world is uncertain -   that language is imprecise -     that experience is ineffable -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- you begin to realize what it means to really live - and you would never go back, even if you could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I miss you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’ll never forget you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not intended to have characters, a plot, or much structure.  This is specifically about creating emotion in the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did it work?  Or not? (why not?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3670" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T19:41:58.900" Title="Does this writing create emotion in the reader? " Tags="|fiction|technique|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5761" CreationDate="2012-05-25T17:23:56.557" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is getting there, but not quite yet, IMO. The rule I have seen so often applies here - show don't tell - and you are still telling too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can remove description and replace it with emotional response, while still telling the same information, then you will have it. That is a real challenge, but you are part way there already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Edit] An example, from the first part of your writing. Not perfect, but the direction I feel you should be going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A scream echoed around the room, starting from the pits of hell, or maybe from me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once again. like every other time this night. Or last night. Or whenever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bed was wet. The smell of sweat filled the air. Her voice begging me to save her still ringing in my head, her face fading in my mind, the look of terror frozen on it, melting into hopelessness, freezing into horror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastEditorUserId="3380" LastEditDate="2012-05-25T19:44:51.873" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T19:44:51.873" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5767" CreationDate="2012-05-25T18:24:57.027" Score="2" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering that I'm writing a novel or a short story story (fiction) and I penned down the first draft. And then I began editing it, but how to make sure it doesn't require any more editing. I mean, many times few parts of my story appear fine to me in the very first draft itself. But my friends who read it ask me to improve it. And similarly, when I don't feel good about some part and I wish to improve it, they say, it's good enough. How can I do that myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3052" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T12:33:34.490" Title="How to make out that my work doesn't require any more editing?" Tags="|editing|first-draft|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5752" CreationDate="2012-05-26T02:27:50.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I've found another way to leverage social proof as such: the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hype cycle&lt;/a&gt;. Pasting from Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Technology Trigger&quot; — The first phase of a hype cycle is the &quot;technology trigger&quot; or breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press and interest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Peak of Inflated Expectations&quot; — In the next phase, a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Trough of Disillusionment&quot; — Technologies enter the &quot;trough of disillusionment&quot; because they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the press usually abandons the topic and the technology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Slope of Enlightenment&quot; — Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some businesses continue through the &quot;slope of enlightenment&quot; and experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Plateau of Productivity&quot; — A technology reaches the &quot;plateau of productivity&quot; as the benefits of it become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technology becomes increasingly stable and evolves in second and third generations. The final height of the plateau varies according to whether the technology is broadly applicable or benefits only a niche market.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 5th stage called the plateau of productivity can demonstrate (to a certain degree; it can be deemed unscientific) that a technology has become mature and stable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/P6tz3.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be partly demonstrated with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/insights/search&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Insights for search&lt;/a&gt; and the correct search terms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;dvcs +distributed +git +mercurial -nike -&quot;mercurial vapor&quot; -FIFA&#xA;scm +distributed +git + mercurial -nike -&quot;mercurial vapor&quot; -FIFA&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/clbDx.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Should give them more tries, as these are biased)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the paper I think I can give historical proof of each phase and as such give an historical overview of version control systems. For the plateau of productivity I can use the case studies Lauren Ipsum suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3610" LastEditorUserId="3610" LastEditDate="2012-05-26T02:33:52.657" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T02:33:52.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5766" CreationDate="2012-05-26T06:35:35.283" Score="1" ViewCount="1289" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the continuation of a story I mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5747/is-the-opening-of-this-story-intriguing-dark-and-smooth&quot;&gt;a previous story&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if the reader would feel intrigued by the dialogue and situation (a girl who seems to be a stripper is lying alone in the stage of a strip club). It used to be intriguing for me, but after editing it like 9 times I became used to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I would like to know how to improve the flow of the dialogue (if required). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After staring at it for a while, he realized that there was someone&#xA;  lying on it. He  crushed his cigarette in an ashtray, and slowly made&#xA;  his way to the stage. Once he reached a reasonable distance, he&#xA;  narrowed his eyes and he examined the person. It was a girl. She was&#xA;  lying there still, with her back to the absent audience. She was&#xA;  wearing a black bikini, and the upper part of her body was being&#xA;  covered by a black jacket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hello?&quot; Julian called out to make sure that&#xA;  she was conscious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A silence passed. The only thing that he could hear was the sound of&#xA;  his own breathing. He never imagined that a drinking spot could be&#xA;  that silent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sorry, there are no more shows,&quot;  the girl said, without moving from&#xA;  her current position. Her voice was weak and low, as if she had no&#xA;  more strength in her body. But it seemed to Julian that she was lying there by her own will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He stared at her for a couple of seconds. &quot;I don't mind. I—I just want&#xA;  to have a drink. Do you know where is the bartender?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He's not here,&quot; she replied. &quot;Go to the back bar and get yourself&#xA;  anything you want. No one will mind.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Julian stared vacantly for a while. Then, with a bit of hesitation,&#xA;  headed towards the back bar. After reaching there, he started going&#xA;  through the variety of drinks. They were dusty, like they hadn't been&#xA;  touched for a while. He picked up a Jack Daniel's, searched for some&#xA;  ice cubes, and put them in a plastic container. After that, he walked&#xA;  to a seat near the stage to sit in, poured some of whiskey in a glass&#xA;  he had found in the table, added some ice cubes to it, and sat there&#xA;  staring at her. She had barely moved from her spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you OK?&quot; Julian suddenly asked her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She remained silent. The roof started making a loud continuous noise.&#xA;  It had began to rain outside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I guess so,&quot; she replied, a bit unsure, moving her feet slightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Julian took a gulp of his drink, feeling warm sensation as the alcohol&#xA;  moved down his throat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Were you looking for something tonight?&quot; the girl asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He gave a thought to the question. &quot;I didn't have anything particular&#xA;  in my mind.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Is that right?&quot; she asked with a neutral voice. &quot;But, isn't everyone&#xA;  coming here looking for something?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Something like what?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She kept silent for a few seconds. &quot;I don't know. Something like a&#xA;  fantasy perhaps. Something they can see but can't touch.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They didn't say anything for a moment. The rain became slightly&#xA;  stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But you know,&quot; she said. &quot;Fantasies are more fragile than we imagine.&#xA;  They are as fragile as bare skin, and can turn into ashes any moment&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As fragile as bare skin,&quot; Julian muttered to himself. The words had&#xA;  shaken something inside his mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She let out a little laugh. &quot;Isn't our existence sad and pathetic? We&#xA;  spend most of our lives feeding our desires with perfect images of&#xA;  someone's body. Building ecstatic thoughts around a collection of&#xA;  bones and skin, only held together by delicate stitches.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He stared at his glass, thinking about the significance of her&#xA;  statement. &quot;Do you talk about this to every customer who comes?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Not really,&quot; she replied. &quot;I just talk about it with myself, since&#xA;  no one is coming any longer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No one is coming any longer?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The place is no longer what it used to be,&quot; she said, moving her head&#xA;  a little. &quot;Not after that incident.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Julian narrowed his eyes. &quot;That incident?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The neon sign near the stage started to flicker, making the place dark&#xA;  from time to time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;May I have a drink too?&quot; she suddenly asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T20:49:49.817" Title="Is this dialogue and situation intriguing (short story)?" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5765" CreationDate="2012-05-26T12:09:06.693" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have the guy walk into what appears to be a deserted bar on a deserted street in a deserted city. Then he realizes there's a live woman lying on the stage, not sleeping but lying there sprawled and possibly injured, and she starts talking to him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And all he does is &quot;stare vacantly for a while,&quot; walk &quot;hesitantly&quot; to the back of the bar, and pour himself a drink?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's going through my head is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What happened to all the other people?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is this woman?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;why is she lying on the stage of this deserted club? Is she real? a&#xA;robot? a hallucination? attached to the stage?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can they be having this conversation comfortably if her back is&#xA;to him?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why isn't HE worried about her sprawled there? What is wrong with&#xA;him?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is his bizarre detachment part of what made everyone else leave? That&#xA;they were so bored they all just eventually died in place? Then where&#xA;are the bodies?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So part of your problem is that you've set up this situation where there is clearly Something Wrong, but your characters behave as though Nothing Is Wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that can in fact be a plot point, but you have to give the reader a clue about that. The &lt;em&gt;reader&lt;/em&gt;  has to realize that they are not behaving &quot;normally&quot; for us but are behaving &quot;normally&quot; for &lt;em&gt;them.&lt;/em&gt; I can't advise you on how to do that until you say whether you're doing this on purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not, then your character needs to act like a human being and rush over to the possibly injured woman and find &lt;em&gt;why she's lying half-naked on the stage in an empty room.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T12:09:06.693" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5763" CreationDate="2012-05-26T12:33:34.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're asking how you can know by yourself what you should edit, the answer is &lt;strong&gt;you can't&lt;/strong&gt;. You will find &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; things in your personal editing passes, but everyone, even the biggest of big-name authors, needs an editor who can help them get past their personal blind spots and see the weaknesses and deficiencies in their work. That's what editors are &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt;. For your purposes, your friends are beta readers are playing a vital role in letting you know which parts of your story need work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice I ever heard for when to stop editing was this: Stop once you're making it different, not making it better. There will come a point when, even if you think that a passage could be better, your continued edits aren't actually &lt;em&gt;making&lt;/em&gt; it better. You can continue rearranging words, but you're not actually improving the story any. Once you get to this point, even if you're still not 100% satisfied with the story, it's time to quit with the editing and start with the submitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of us are ever 100% satisfied with our writing. It's sufficient to get to the point where you say &quot;this is the best that I can do,&quot; and leave it at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T12:33:34.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5064" CreationDate="2012-05-27T22:37:48.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting take on the series, and I can certainly see your point, however I do not completely accept your opinion, and therefore cannot offer you an answer to your question, only provide my own views and hope you can glean some insights from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I've only recently finished the trilogy, which I suspect I will return to for repeated readings in the future, but so far, from one read, this is the way I see the structure presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I agree with you that there are two distinct conflicts (the social one and the Hunger Games), and that the latter stems from the former, where I disagree is the notion that they are separate except for when Collins consciously tries to integrate them. I see the trilogy more in roughly this paradigm:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The Hunger Games - thesis&#xA;2) Catching Fire - antithesis&#xA;3) Mockingjay - synthesis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll elaborate. Book One more-or-less presents the &quot;classic&quot; situation you describe. While the subjugation of the Districts is certainly present throughout the book, it's actually the secondary conflict - the Hunger Games - that takes the stage, with the everything else in the background. While the Games don't actually begin until about halfway through the book, the build-up towards them is almost immediate and they occupy the entire novel, either in preparation or execution. This is what has enabled it to be adapted so successfully to screenplay form, a feat that will be much harder as the series progresses.&#xA;It's no accident that the main antagonist - President Snow - is reduced to an &quot;extra&quot; in the book, and that the head Gamemaker - Seneca Crane - is nowhere to be seen and in fact is only introduced in Catching Fire as a posthumous character. In fact, the movie had to bolster these roles as preparation for the sequels! If the film was stand-alone, I doubt they'd even appear. The first book focuses almost exclusively on the personal - Katniss' struggle to survive and her relationships, particularly with Peeta and Haymitch. Any social commentary is incidental and provided as background information, and the &quot;game-changing&quot; ending is in fact precisely as you describe it: unexpected, unpredictable and destabilizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Book Two, while seemingly retaining the same basic pattern, actually does quite a lot to subvert it. So much, in fact, that in many ways it's the complete opposite of the first book. Unlike it, it focuses almost exclusively on the political rather than the personal. Consider: first of all the Games do not feature into it in any meaningful form until Katniss' discovery that she will be forced back into the arena, again about halfway through the book (a reveal heavily implied to be itself a political move). The relationships have been firmly established and while we still spend some time on them, they don't actually develop in ay meaningful way, except for the artificial, playing-to-the-camera aspect, which become more and more absurd and obvious political machinations. President Snow and the new Gamemaster are introduced and are prominent characters, and the repercussions of Katniss' actions in the first book are spreading into a full-scale rebellion along with the reveal of the mockingjay as its symbol, culminating in the destruction of District 12 at the end of the book. Most importantly, the Game itself this time is an arena of political maneuvering, not simple twisted mass entertainment. The tributes this time are all victors, experienced not just in killing but also in the way the world really works. They know each other beforehand and, indeed, many are involved in a secret pact to subvert the games by making sure Katniss and Peeta, the symbols of the rebellion, are saved, even at the cost of their life. This pact was engineered by non other than Haymitch, the so-called clownish, drunken mentor figure, who is revealed to be in reality a cool, calculating political animal (a fact hinted throughout the first two books but only confirmed at the end of the second) who is in fact one of the leaders of the rebellion. Even Katniss' personal agenda is reversed - whereas in the first book every single move she makes apart from volunteering is designed to increase the odds of her survival, here her aim is to save Peeta, a sign that she is moving beyond small-time, self-centered thinking into a realization that she is part of something bigger than herself, which may require her to sacrifice her life. While the ending is still unexpected, it also sped a process already underway, and is therefore no longer unpredictable and destabilizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Book Three can easily be seen as the culmination of the action in the series. There are no longer any Hunger Games, and now it's an all-out war, with Katniss playing a figurehead as the Mockingjay. That's a valid viewpoint; I just don't happen to agree with it. As Katniss realizes early in the book, the Game never ended, it just transformed. The third novel abandons the structure of the previous two and instead fuses together the political and the deeply personal on every conceivable level. All the elements from the previous two books are still there, but they are now so mixed together it becomes impossible to tell them apart any longer. At one point Snow himself is referred to being a contestant in the Game - the Game of who lives and who dies, which reaches its terrible climax with the death of Katniss' sister, the one for whom she kick-started the whole thing to begin with, as the result of a coldly calculated war-crime, which on a smaller scale could be seem on the arena. This action in itself, because it is so personal, has profound political implications in the rest of the war and Panem, as Katniss realizes there is no real difference between Snow and Coin and goes from being the symbol of the revolution to subverting it by actually killing its leader in retaliation for Prim's death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my understanding of the series as a whole. I apologize if it failed to directly answer your question, but I hope it might provoke some sort of insight or discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3676" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T22:37:48.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5770" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5772" CreationDate="2012-05-28T05:34:34.907" Score="11" ViewCount="335" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm formulating a habit where I create too many writing projects. I'll work on a project, and things will go fine, until I have this &lt;em&gt;incredible&lt;/em&gt; idea and I start writing on it. This continues overtime until I have an overload of different writing projects, all which are good, interesting projects that I care about, but that I have serious trouble completing in an organized, efficient way, due to the sheer number of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give some perspective, there are 4 projects I'm working on/planning, in decreasing completion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A short story (very deep in)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A very small screenplay (Just started, but progress is well)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A much larger screenplay (Only in planning stages; figuring out characters and other things) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A second short story (Barely started)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like and care about &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of these projects, and I want to finish every one of them, but I can't do that unless I figure out the best way to go about it. It just isn't reasonable to be tackling them all at once, fumbling between them in the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I organize/prioritize these projects efficiently, so that I can actually get them completed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3419" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-28T07:08:24.643" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T20:51:09.267" Title="How can I deal with an overload of writing projects?" Tags="|organization|process|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5770" CreationDate="2012-05-28T06:24:52.083" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The priority of a writer is to get stuff written and in a shape where it can be read by others. (Assumedly, submitted, sold, to agents/editors, etc.) Your goal is to get stuff written. (Whether quality or timeliness is your primary goal is something you'll have to work out for yourself.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advice below is fairly production-driven and deadline-oriented. However, as an artist or craftsperson, do whatever you have to do to get your writing completed. If it means setting rigid deadlines and sticking to them, then do that. If it means getting yourself inspired by writing naked in a dark room with glow-in-the-dark ink on animal skins, then go hit the craft store and turn out the lights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Deadlines&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any of these projects have a deadline? I'm guessing from the tone of your question that this isn't the case. However, for the sake of completeness: Deadlines, whether self-imposed or editorially mandated, should be your number-one priority. Respect deadlines and do your best to meet them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have deadlines, set them. A project that has no required completion date is one that's begging to be put aside. Deadlines can seem oppressive, but they can also be inspiring (in a pressure-cooker kind of way). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Which projects are ready to be written?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything has the same or a similar deadline? Self-imposed deadlines not doing it for you? Let's look at project stages next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of your projects are in a place where you can sit and pound out text for them, and some are more amorphous. This is great, since it means you have a clear choice of what kind of work you want to do at any given time. There's an old aphorism about what to do in the case of writer's block: When you can't get the words down, put down what you're working on and write something &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it's time for you to sit down and physically write out the words, I'd pick the projects that are close to being finished - you're more likely to get something done quickly. Feeling wrung-out for the day? Spend some time developing the less-complete projects - brainstorming, working on notes or outlines, or doing research. (Incidentally, browsing Reddit or Stumbleupon: These are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; research.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;However:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of all of this, if you're feeling inspired to work on a barely-started project that's not due for another year, listen to your inner writer elves and work on it! With one caveat: When you're doing this to avoid a different writing project, be aware that you may have come down with Planners' Elbow, aka World-Builder's Disease: Using planning to distract from actually getting a project finished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I's also like to reiterate: A plethora of projects in various stages of completion is not a problem, it's a benefit. When one project is giving you writer's block, you have another one to switch to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T06:24:52.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5770" CreationDate="2012-05-28T08:16:44.807" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is about personal organisation - actually nothing to do with writing per se, but it does, I understand, affect writing significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you identify the urgency of your various projects, or - if you have no deadlines - the closeness to completion. Then work on the most urgent or nearest complete. Work on it until you have completed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, if you have thoughts and ideas for you other projects, which does happen, then write them down, maybe even take half an hour to write a piece of it, and then put it aside, and work on your primary piece. that is about discipline, and it is hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, I work in IT, and I have some of the same issues in personal time management here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other approach that might work for you is to define a &quot;working day&quot; - say 8 hours. Commit that you will put 8 hours work into your primary project each day. ( if your working day is only 2 hours, then 2 hours it is, but whatever ). The rest of the time you can spend on other projects, or reading writers.se or whatever. But putting in the hours on your primary project means that you will get through it - and then the next one, and the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end it is about discipline and a work ethic, both of which are very hard to achieve. But if people can see that you are a disciplined writer, and so get work out on time, then you will receive more work to do, which is a good thing. No really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-05-28T11:12:10.163" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T11:12:10.163" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5773" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5777" CreationDate="2012-05-28T08:27:47.060" Score="5" ViewCount="4456" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started reading books I have completed chethan bhagath's(Indian author) books and other books  like Godfather,notebook. I want to know what are new/good books i can read. Is there any website to know about good books? Similar to IMDB website. Instead of movies i want to know about books.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Edit: The website which list the books according to user rating&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3678" LastEditorUserId="3678" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T11:12:48.253" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T14:05:03.457" Title="Website to know about books something similar to IMDB for movies?" Tags="|book|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-04-25T20:18:46.360" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5775" CreationDate="2012-05-28T06:42:45.580" Score="1" ViewCount="1049" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two pages that I would like to cite/reference in a paper. Both pages are located on the Microsoft website (and both represent specifications of document formats). The problem is that there are no authors mentioned in those documents, thus the author is... Microsoft. Both papers are published in 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the ref list I have something similar to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Microsoft, 2010] Microsoft, [paper name], [link] ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [Microsoft, 2010] Microsoft, [other paper name], [other link] ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is pretty obvious — I cannot reference those sources since the reference in text will be ambiguous. What does one do in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3679" OwnerDisplayName="Jefim" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2012-05-28T10:44:32.990" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T10:44:32.990" Title="Citing the same source several times" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5774" CreationDate="2012-05-28T10:35:05.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the answer is to cite ( and reference ) them as &quot;Microsoft, 2010a&quot; and &quot;Microsoft, 2010b&quot;, putting them in date order if you have a more precise date of production, or any order if you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also a problem for other authors who are especially prolific, and produce multiple related publications in a year. Most of the time, academic authors will explore a particular topic in multiple ways, and so you can reference just one and get the information, but here, of course, you have a corporation, which can do a whole lot more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The a,b,c,d approach is the one I have seen, and should be accepted under most schemas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T10:35:05.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5064" CreationDate="2012-05-28T11:14:49.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, this is my take on the stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All three books contain a hunger game. The first one is the standard hunger games. The second one is the results of Snow being determined to kill off Katniss, and the third is the &quot;real&quot; games, spread into the Capital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At another level, the Capital represents the entertainment industry - Hollywood, if you like, but more than that, and wider. They are untouched by the suffering that they inflict, just to have their entertainment. It reminds me of things like Jerry Springer, where peoples suffering is used for ratings. It is also drawing from the reality shows (x-factor etc), where people are &quot;used&quot; for the purpose of entertainment, without any real consideration - often - for what it does to the people concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the message that was throughout the books was about what happens when your entertainment becomes real. When you are entertained by oppressing people, what happens when the oppressors fight back, and confront you in the street. The games started as a rather symbolic indication of oppression, but in the second book became a more explicit weapon of Snow to destroy opponents. In book 3, the game became real for everyone ( not that, for Katniss and the other tributes, it wasn't in the earlier versions ). We like killing and death for entertainment, as long as it is carefully controlled and contained. We don't want the reality of it brought to our faces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions: What plot thread .... In the first book, the games were just an interruption to the normal oppressive life that District 12 lived. But it served to highlight the difference between the poor districts and the rich capital. By the third book, the games had erupted out of the arena (the rescue at the end of book 2 can be seen as symbolically taking the games out of the safe arena, and Katniss breaking the force field was critical to that). And it showed that the oppression that the games represented was far more significant than appeared in book 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would I change it? Actually, I think Collins did a good job. The writing is not brilliant, but it kept me reading, and I enjoyed it. Yes it could be improved, but then, so could pretty much any book. I might want to change it by looking at the other districts more, to see how the social oppression was experienced in other places, to see the various forms it took. In District 12, it is mainly either quite gentle or totally destructive. But there are other forms of social oppression, that could have been shown around the other districts. I can see that for some of them, being selected as a tribute might have been a positive, as dying would be better than living. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some ways, Collins makes the situation too simple. District 12 are poor, but happy, and their oppression is that they are kept poor. In district 13, they are oppressed by their own people ( which is significant for the finale ), but accept it as fighting for the right cause. But seeing the real breadth of oppression would show how significant it is - and would probably make it unsuitable for the teenage audience it is aimed at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TLDR version - more experience of the breadth of the oppression, and the forms it can take. The insidious forms, and the explicit forms. To see all of that in the context of the games might have made the connection better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this is answering your questions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T11:14:49.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5773" CreationDate="2012-05-28T14:44:02.473" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are 2 answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 .  Amazon reviews: Amazon has a very good system, where it shows you books similar to the one you bought. There are also lists created by users, which give the books similar to the current one they enjoyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to be registered with Amazon to look at the book recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 .  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Goodreads&lt;/a&gt; - Though I personally haven't used it- does a similar thing. Unlike amazon, the lists here are driven entirely by users. You can join groups, become friends with other users and share book recommendations etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both these websites, you can also click on a book reviewers ID, and see which others book they reviewed. Chances are, you may also like those books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other websites similar to Goodreads, but it is the most popular one, so I suggest you start there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T14:44:02.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5747" CreationDate="2012-05-29T14:50:40.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To make it dark, you would have to focus more on the atmosphere. Something about Julian's surroundings or something about your style of describing his situation has to suggest that darkness. Stay in the scene for a bit longer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When Julian is outside&lt;/strong&gt;: Are there shadows forming around him, expanding and flowing into mysterious shapes? What about the fog? What is it doing? Forming wispy vapors that ascend into the night sky, like long forgotten memories? (That is not a very good metaphor, read better authors to get the hang of this, but I hope you get the idea). The progression &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; seem a bit rushed, we see a neon light, a sign, then a glass door, then another neon light forming the silhouette of a nude woman...this happens a bit too quickly. To improve the flow here, you need to lead us  through these objects much slowly, trying to pique our intrigue and adding more description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When Julian in inside&lt;/strong&gt;: I like the part that starts with '&lt;em&gt;After staring at it for a while...&lt;/em&gt;' much better. You have given a sense of 'something being wrong' more successfully here. '...&lt;em&gt;with her back to the absent audience&lt;/em&gt;' is a good touch. This is the kind of descriptive style you need to put into the earlier section, something that will invoke associations of mystery, intrigue and darkness in the reader's mind. This later section (in my opinion) flows better than the previous one as well, which shows to me that you can get there with a little bit of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general advice, although I am sure that you are already reading, read &lt;em&gt;even more and more&lt;/em&gt; of your favorite authors/genres. That is crucial in terms of improving your style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T14:50:40.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5786" CreationDate="2012-05-29T21:10:50.443" Score="3" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a book on how to program in C#.NET.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of the sections follows this format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Section Aims&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Content&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Section Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quiz&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exercises&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The section review is there to summarise all of the things that have been taught, including the key programming syntax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It dawned on me that it may be silly to write all that out in the section review, and then immediately ask the reader to answer questions on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I move the section review to the end of the section, or leave it where it is? My only concern about moving it is that if the reader gets confused or stuck on the quiz/exercises, they may give up!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3685" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T18:08:42.890" Title="In a &quot;learn to do X&quot; book, should a section review come before the quiz / exercises or after?" Tags="|technical-writing|exercises|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5779" CreationDate="2012-05-29T21:59:20.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How big is a Section? What's in it? I ask because if you can break it into sub-sections, you might have a review at the end of each sub-section, and then the quiz at the end of the whole section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, I would order it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review of section&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exercises  with answers at the end of the section (to give the&#xA;student a chance to practice)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quiz (with answers at the back of the book)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T21:59:20.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5770" CreationDate="2012-05-30T09:01:57.390" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found it very helpful to &lt;strong&gt;use an idea collection&lt;/strong&gt;, which allows you to prioritize your projects without having the feeling that you miss some of them. It takes one great burden of your shoulders that often prevents that any project is realized: &lt;strong&gt;The need to do everything at once — because nothing can go lost when you collect it!&lt;/strong&gt; It becomes not a question of &lt;em&gt;whether&lt;/em&gt; you do it or not, but &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt;. And &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; mostly means when you have &lt;em&gt;enough ideas to realize it&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;the necessary time/resources&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.organizingcreativity.com/book-as-pdf/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many ways to collect ideas, I'd refer to my blog/freely (donationware) available book here&lt;/a&gt;. When it comes to working on the ideas, I have &lt;strong&gt;one core project&lt;/strong&gt; that I focus on and that is frequently on my mind, then I have &lt;strong&gt;central projects (5-7)&lt;/strong&gt; which are also often in the back of my mind and for which I am generating ideas at a higher rate (as you need more than just one idea for a creative project). But it is only collecting the ideas, jotting them down like &quot;do x or y&quot;, a line of dialogue, and the like, not actually fleshing it out or realizing it. And then there are &lt;strong&gt;periphery projects (a lot)&lt;/strong&gt; which are any other ideas I have -- they are also collected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows you to &lt;strong&gt;focus on the core project (thereby realize it)&lt;/strong&gt;, while 5-7 other projects have a lot of material build up in the background, meaning &lt;strong&gt;you can quickly start another project when the core project is finished&lt;/strong&gt; (important for me, because I usually fall into a hole when a project is finished, unless I have something else to do where there is already a lot of material to work with).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So working on one core project while building up central projects works very well for me, I can highly recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3259" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T09:01:57.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5779" CreationDate="2012-05-30T09:58:03.893" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh no, not another C# book ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joking aside and to your question: Think about what was &quot;dawning&quot; on you and think about your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to write a book for idiots, save your time, idiots don't read books. So do you think your readers are idiots?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are reading this, so I guess your answer was &quot;No!&quot;. Then don't treat them like they were. No matter how you arrange your sections, the reader will have figured out after the first one how you place the sub-sections. I.e. they know where to find the review if they want to use it for the quiz or exercises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So make it easy for them to find the info they need. Keep in mind that they also need the info &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; reading your book during coding on a real project. Maybe (instead of googling) they want to pick up your book and look it up. From this scenario would you place it where you do it now? (Just a question to consider for you, I do not have an answer on this one.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't hide information if you want to teach people. They do not have to memorize the info anyway. They &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; can look things up, they are missing. They are not operating in an emergency room where every delay can decide about life and death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T09:58:03.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5783" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5785" CreationDate="2012-05-30T13:43:47.250" Score="2" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the breakdown description I received from a publisher, they mention that &lt;strong&gt;they also pay industry leading royalties of ##%&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does that mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3689" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-30T15:00:48.233" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T15:00:48.233" Title="What are &quot;industry leading royalties&quot;?" Tags="|publishing|technical-writing|legal|money|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5783" CreationDate="2012-05-30T14:24:17.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Industry-leading&quot; (please note the hyphen in the compound adjective) means &quot;they lead the industry in this.&quot; So they claim they are offering royalties which are among the best in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T14:24:17.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5783" CreationDate="2012-05-30T14:27:18.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is a marketing ploy that they are using to claim that they provide royalties that might be considered to be higher than the average royalties paid by other publishers. Considering that these royalties are usually pretty meager at best anyway, that probably isn't much of a claim! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as determining what the industry average really is, it would depend on the type of book. I believe most royalties tend to be anywhere from 7% to 17% and will vary by genre as well as whether it is for a trade paperback or hardbook, or fiction versus non-fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you read the fine print, though, especially if any form of advance is being offered. If you are receiving an advance, then you will NOT receive any royalties until the publishers recover the money they paid you for the advance. Furthermore, be cautious concerning multiple books published with the same company. If they try to put all your books into a single basket, then you may find it even more difficult to retrieve any royalties. This is because they will expect to recover the advances on ALL books that are lumped together before paying royalties on ANY book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, they give you a contract for three books, with a $5000 advance on each book. Book #1 earns back $2000, Book #2 earns back $3000, and Book #3 earns back $5000. If all three are lumped into the same basket, then the publisher will not pay royalties on any of the books until they get back $15,000, and in this example you have only earned $10,000. If each book is handled separately, then you would start earning royalties now on Book #3 because it has earned back the advance for that particular book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T14:27:18.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5779" CreationDate="2012-05-30T15:07:59.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The review will have different purposes - and should be written differently - for each of these places. If it is just after you have read the chapter, then it should be summing up all of the major issues in the chapter, a way of setting in your mind the critical parts, as a starter to the quiz, which should then help them to use this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is after the chapter, then it should be a briefer summary - the reader has done the exercises, and probably knows the core of the chapter. This should be key concepts or ideas that they need to have before moving on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which do you want to do? Put the material appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T15:07:59.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5787" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5788" CreationDate="2012-05-30T19:15:21.473" Score="12" ViewCount="771" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am amazed thinking how people used to write before the computer ever came about. Before that, everyone was forced to write on paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd very much like to write on paper but my ideas come in a random order and I'd like to be able to re-organize sentences into paragraphs, dissect paragraphs and move things about after I've got all my ideas written out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing on paper, how can I cope with the randomness of the order in which ideas appear in my mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2341" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T20:54:46.367" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T20:54:46.367" Title="When writing on paper, how do you move things about?" Tags="|editing|paper|handwriting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5787" CreationDate="2012-05-30T20:11:20.923" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of people find it easier to write and keep their ideas flowing when they are writing by hand. Unfortunately, as you suggest, that makes it difficult to rearrange the order in which your ideas get written down. If you decide to introduce a character earlier in the story or if you decide you need to provide more information to an earlier portion of the story it becomes a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I tend to do is just keep writing, without consideration of where everything need to fall into place. I will usually write comments in the margins to help me remember what I want to do with a new portion of text, and that often helps. In addition to this, I make sure I number my written pages so that I have a point of reference, and I will also number different sections of a story. For example, if I am writing a particular scene, I will draw a line in the margin to identify where that scene starts, and then I draw another line at the end of the scene. Then I can go back later and number the scenes. If I find myself adding content that needs to be placed elsewhere, I can refer to the page/section number to make it easier to organize when I start typing everything up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I always write with an outline so that I can at least have a basic structure to start with. My outlines are usually numbered as well, so I may choose to refer to the outline numbering instead. Either way, as long as you can find a process that makes you comfortable and helps you to keep track of things, that's all that matters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I do start typing everything up, I will usually go through and read the handwritten copy first. At this time I will usually verify that my sections are numbered in the order in which I want them to appear by using red ink to number each section. That way if I have a section at the end of my handwritten copy that I wanted to appear earlier in the story, I can place it there as I'm typing to simplify the editing process later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T20:11:20.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5787" CreationDate="2012-05-30T21:00:40.770" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a simple tip: use a legal pad (they are a little longer than standard notebook paper), and, on the first draft, confine your writing to the middle third of the paper (or thereabouts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This scheme gives you plenty of room to rewrite the paragraph on the same page, if you want to overhaul it.  It also lets you add a paragraph before (or after) the one you originally wrote.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for reordering, you can label each paragraph its own number, and jot notes such as, &quot;Move para. 13 here&quot; and &quot;Move this to after para. 21.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's still nowhere as easy as a word processor, but, if you're set on writing in longhand, this arrangement can give you plenty of room for ad-hoc revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T21:00:40.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5787" CreationDate="2012-05-30T22:22:58.807" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard of people using 3x5 cards with good results (in case you are not familiar with them, &quot;3x5&quot; cards are made of card stock that measures 3 inches by 5 inches; it can be blank or have lines); it is pretty easy to put a single thought/sentence/paragraph on one card and reorder them in a stack or lay them out on a table and move them around in two dimensions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another quite different tool is &quot;mind mapping&quot; which is a technique for capturing ideas in a graphic fashion; it could help with the above-recommended outlining process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! It is good to have the option of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3691" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T22:22:58.807" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5575" CreationDate="2012-05-31T03:44:16.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would have to agree with Lauren Ipsum's answer. Why? Because it is more character based. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We experience a story through its characters. Or put another way, we connect emotionally to a story through it's characters. The only way to have a visceral experience is through the human characters that we can relate to, root for, put ourselves in their shoes, etc. No matter how much you try to make an atomic bomb, for example, a character, it is still an inanimate object. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you show us the result of detonating the atomic bomb, say over the course of three generations of a family who lived near ground zero, then you have a story. But the event, the object, the process, the technology, are all set pieces and nothing more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show me a character, or group of characters dealing with the process and how it changes over time, and I'll be emotionally invested. Show me the process with cardboard characters, or worse, vignettes of characters, then I'll soon get bored and be done with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this: M. Night Shyamalan's story &lt;em&gt;The Happening&lt;/em&gt; failed because the main antagonist was good 'ol mother nature. The premise of &lt;em&gt;nature&lt;/em&gt; rebeling against people because of our abuse may be well intended, but who can relate to or feel any emotional connection to overcoming nature. The story's protagonist is a human in this case but the second most important character is the antagonist. The same would hold true if the roles were reversed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science Fiction works best when it's grounded in a human character or setting we can relate to. This is especially crucial when you create a fantasical futuristic world with strange bizzare characters. We need something to ground the story in order to connect to it. In the Hunger Games, we have such a futuristic world but are grounded in the District 12 characters and the setting of a rural mining town. we can all relate to this. So many science fiction stories fail because they fail to ground the story with a character or setting we can relate to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3693" LastEditorUserId="3693" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T03:59:33.307" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T03:59:33.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4896" CreationDate="2012-05-31T04:38:36.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add, in the realm of screenwriting, &lt;em&gt;science fiction&lt;/em&gt; as a genre is expanding more and more. With the current state of special effects technology and the lower costs involved in making a beleivable story, the future is wide open for stories that previously were too expensive to make or even imagine on the big screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We will always look to the future and speculate on what it holds. We now can bring these stories to light in ways nver imagined before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, Mary Shelly is considered the first science fiction author. In her time technology was created to use electricity to galvanize metal and this sparked her imagination to speculate on what else it could do. It also touched on themes such as man acting like God and overstepping his bounds. Again, a prevalent concern in the early days of the technological revolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 1950's we saw science fiction movies that dealt with what could happen during an atomic appocalypse. We were in the height of the cold war and this was on everyone's mind. The original &lt;em&gt;The Day the Earth Stood Still&lt;/em&gt; dealt with an alien intervention to stop an inevitable nuclear holocaust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the recent remake of &lt;em&gt;The Day the Earth Stood Still&lt;/em&gt; we see a theme that deals with the environment and the reason for the alien visit is too stop us from destroying our environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twenty years from now we may see another re-boot of the movie with another theme. Perhaps controlling our population, or preventing us from strip mining every planet and asteriod in the neighborhood...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3693" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T07:18:49.440" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T07:18:49.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5787" CreationDate="2012-05-31T11:12:12.543" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is always the original &quot;cut and paste&quot;. Write your ideas out, and, if you need to move stuff around, literally cut it up, and tack it down again. Once you have got the ordering you think you want, write it all out (you can scribble on the originals too, for minor amendments). Hopefully, you will then have something much closer. You can repeat the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T11:12:12.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5794" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-31T11:41:32.523" Score="1" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could you choose the most natural paragraph,  please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will come to your place as soon as I am done with the selling of the/our house. Don’t get bored without me. It’s a/the beginning of /a/the/ our new life.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have to finish all big deals with the selling of the/our house.&#xA;  Dont be bored without me alone. It’s a beginning of /a/the/ our new life.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have to finish all my stuff connected with the house sale, don't get bored without me! It’s a beginning of /a/the/ our new life.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Monica" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T12:21:32.630" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T12:21:32.630" Title="The most natural paragraph" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-05-31T12:18:49.327" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5761" CreationDate="2012-05-31T14:13:31.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As answer to your question: it did for me. You can slightly get a feeling of the story behind, and I think that makes it strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do have 2 small notes: &#xA;&quot;. I did. not. move.&quot;:  This reads a bit annoying&#xA;&quot;But...we both also&quot;:  I think &quot;...&quot; isn't stronger than just a regular comma and should only be used in comics ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like M.Na'el's piece as well but that depends on the style you want to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3696" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T14:13:31.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5761" CreationDate="2012-05-31T18:00:31.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try putting the entire thing in present tense, unfolding in real time. That tends to elicit emotion better than a chronolog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You start with present tense: &quot;I wake up screaming,&quot; but then dropped the ball -- why? To keep us on the edge of our seats, we need to think something is about to happen, not that it has already happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also slip into passive voice at the end: &quot;has created,&quot; &quot;is made from,&quot; etc. Make the reader an actor, not an observer! Battling passive voice is challenging, but rewarding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3699" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T18:00:31.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5797" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-31T21:53:43.603" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T21:53:43.603" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:53:43.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5798" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-31T21:53:43.603" Score="0" Body="Atmosphere is the general &quot;feel&quot; of a piece, its tone and emotion - which may fit or clash with the actual events being described." OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T21:53:43.603" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T21:53:43.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5706" CreationDate="2012-05-31T22:28:26.103" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going on the assumption that you are talking about an e-book, I would say that the number of words doesn't matter as much, especially if you make sure that your potential readers know what they are getting in advance. My experience has been that more and more readers are starting to feel slighted if they spend $5.99 on a story they assumed to be a novel, only to find out it was a short-story. I have even seen some instances where books (not my own) are receiving very negative reviews because the reader was disappointed to find out that they got a lot less content-wise than they expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a printed product, they can see how many pages there are and make a fair comparison. With an e-book, however, they have a more difficult time determining the length of the work. Sometimes they can gauge based on the file size, but more often than not the bulk of that file size is determined by the cover image, and not so much on the content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the time to include some additional information in your description to let your potential readers know what they are getting. If you are trying to sell them a novella, then let them know that, and make sure to price your work accordingly. If you try to sell a shorter work for a higher price than the last full length book they bought, then you better have a really great story to keep the reader from feeling slighted!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T22:28:26.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5761" CreationDate="2012-06-01T01:45:36.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers are great.  When you wax analytical/philosophical, you are naturally distancing yourself (and your readers) from emotion.  Emotion can't look forward or back in time, it is all about now.  Even if you're focused on an event in the future or past, the feelings about it are happening now.  That's one of the biggest differences between thought and feeling.  Thought can roam anywhere, anywhen, but feeling is here now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing for a feeling needs to be immediate - not reflective.  The reflective/descriptive/analytical stuff is what builds the context for the reader so that they &quot;understand&quot; the situation and have a reason to care about the protagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why so many horror stories start out honky dory, boring, and hopeful - so that when the action/emotions start, it's not only a stark contrast to what came before, but the reader has had a chance to get to know and identify with the characters (and with what they have to lose).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(disclaimer - I write almost no fiction (although I have read a lot), so my &quot;suggestions&quot; are not meant as actual text you could use, but more as the sort of thing that might work.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Little things: meld is a soft, comforting word.  It works against the predominant feeling - maybe - all smash together - or freeze into a mass of - those aren't very good, but they add momentum instead of dampening it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Splitting the waking up into paragraphs also gives the reader breathing room to relax.  Emotions flow and usually build or subside (&quot;waves of emotion&quot;).  They are rarely static, so your text has to reflect that. It can't stop and look at them from several angles while they're &quot;holding still&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wake up covered in a cold sweat.  Two or three times every night since she plummeted from my grasp, I'm wrenched from sleep screaming as I hopelessly try to save her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Digression:  Many years ago, I went to see The Deer Hunter at the movies. I knew it was going to be a rough picture from the trailers, etc.  I remember the amazing Polish wedding at the start of it.  All I could think of was, Holy !@#$%, if he's making this so incredibly detailed and real, how am I ever going to handle what's coming next?  I was terrified before any of the terrifying stuff happened!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T01:45:36.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5098" CreationDate="2012-06-01T04:31:31.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like you accidentally breached a little line in this question and struck out into a different category mid-question. It was in this paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Indicating pauses in speech by ellipses and em-dashes instead of the now popular comma. That's the more radical point so far (the third in the series) so I need feedback on how well it would show up to the reader since -as far as I know- it's ungrammatical.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean is that particular formatting involving punctuation choices is a very separate matter from the rest of this question, and the answer is that &lt;em&gt;this must always remain consistent.&lt;/em&gt; To vary your punctuation or formatting by more than the &lt;em&gt;slightest&lt;/em&gt; amount under identical or close to identical circumstances is a very, very bad idea. It jumps out to the reader and looks unprofessional, removing them from the world of your story and reminding them that they're looking at print on a page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always keep your formatting as close to perfectly consistent as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to the other part of the question: maybe someone else will give a very different opinion, but personally (and I say this in all kindness) I think the idea is absurd. Perhaps I'm taking you too literally and not using my imagination, but going off the given example, it seems like you're severely limiting your word choice without adding anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use the same four dialogue words over and over and over, the reader &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; notice. And they will not smile to themselves and think &quot;Oh, author, I do so love your personal flourishes!&quot; They'll think, my God, this is getting so repetitive. Couldn't he think of anything else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your writing is going to have a deliberate signature, it should &lt;em&gt;add&lt;/em&gt; to the work, not diminish it. Look at Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness passages. They're mind-bending, absolutely incredible. It's like getting caught in a storm of thoughts; all flying past you in a million shades and colors. It never gets repetitive. On the contrary, the imagery is dazzling. And you can tell Faulkner's writing at a glance, almost, just like you can tell a Biblical passage at a glance. Such a unique style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I think there might be more to your idea than what you've detailed. I can imagine better ways of wielding such a system-- you should think on it a bit, and possibly add to your question if you feel that your chosen example and explanation didn't fully capture your vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2012-06-01T10:11:08.040" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T10:11:08.040" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3786" CreationDate="2012-06-01T12:24:04.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;One day, nothing significant happened. Everyone got on as normal&quot;. What does your character do on that day? If they cannot get through a normal day, doing normal things - which may vary depending on the setting - then they may be a Mary Sue (a term I had never heard before, but I recognise the trope).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are worried that you are creating a Mary Sue, try writing a normal day for them, and see if it works. You will probably not have to go far into the day to know. @StevenDrennons answer and @Standbacks comment are an excellent checklist, but for a quick way to know, this might work. In fact, just trying to start grasping what a normal day would be might work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T12:24:04.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5779" CreationDate="2012-06-01T18:08:42.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having read a number of programing books, I think having the review section before any quizzes or exercises is very helpful. It gives me a chance to go back over what was covered in the section, and make sure I have a good grasp on the ideas of it. It's also helpful if the review section calls out any important points that the reader should be taking from the section. It helps focus things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T18:08:42.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5804" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-01T18:28:58.940" Score="1" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an eighth grader who is about halfway through reading all of the &quot;Hogs of Entropy&quot; issues.  Reading through them, I realized that formality is not the focus of the pieces, which intrigues me to write similar pieces.  However, I cannot seem to find a group similar to HOE to write for...  Does anybody know a group similar to HOE??  If not, any ideas on where to go next?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3704" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T18:28:58.940" Title="Finding an Textfile Ezine to Write For" Tags="|writing-groups|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-06-01T20:26:36.627" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3057" CreationDate="2012-06-01T18:36:19.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the structure will work, and I personally would find it interesting to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how you structure the first half I wouldn't have to much trouble with one chapter focusing on a given character at a time. If you already have a single point of view for each chapter, having one chapter staying with a single character wouldn't be a problem. On the other hand if you often change POVs with scenes having a chapter with one character might be a bit jarring, but if the story is compelling it wouldn't be a major issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, of the two styles you offered I like the first one best. Have one or two focus chapters and then seeing how those changes affect the whole group would work well. It would allow you to keep engaged with the whole ensemble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real trick will be keeping the flow of the story going, making one focus chapter lead into another in a way to keep the reader engaged. Like in your example A above, the events in John's and Lily's chapters could lead into something that the whole group has to deal with. The results of those events then pushing another character into their focus chapter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure that the climax of the story is part of the ensemble story, possibly touching back on all the focus chapters to show that they wouldn't have been able to survive with out these events. That way all of the focus work then leads feeds back into the end of the story and make the whole tale stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T18:36:19.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5806" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5807" CreationDate="2012-06-02T15:25:11.090" Score="3" ViewCount="620" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the following first-person POV introduction good, or would it be helped by switching the story to third-person limited? The book is very action-centric, involving a good deal of fights and large-scale battles, and I would like to know if I can achieve the excitement I want from a first-person perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Logan cranked the winch, closing the gate behind us before the rest of the bastards could get at us. We were stuck in the alley now, just me, Logan, and Crank; opposite the Iron Gate was the city wall, built for protection against raiders. Turned out it was better for boxing in Mercs. A nearby crate offered a place to rest while we awaited the inevitable, so I sat and turned to look at my companions.                                   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Logan was in his early twenties, handsome, with long black hair and a slender body that could have belonged to a girl. Crank was nearly the exact opposite; he was approaching thirty, with a scarred face and a stout, if short, build. I had only known them for about eight hours, but I knew that Crank was the leader of the two; he was not as smart as Logan, but his cruelty and Logan’s inferiority complex, made him dominant.               &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Predictably, Crank was the first to speak: “Well, what do we do now?! The regiment’s been routed and the city’s as good as taken, while we’re stuck here, waiting to get captured! That damned colonel should’ve planned the defenses better!” he huffed and growled; I had seen many men like him, always angry with their lot in the world, always blaming it on someone else. Nevertheless, he was right. We were stuck here, and unless ELITE pulled some mercy out of their ass, an unlikely event, given their reputation, we were dead.                                                           &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I didn’t let that bother me; after all, this was hardly the worst situation I had been in in my ten years of battlefield experience. My apathetic attitude was quickly remarked upon by Logan, in his halting, shy way of speech “L-Lead? You don’t seem bothered by this. Do ya…do ya have a plan?” He looked suddenly hopeful, and Crank perked up to hear what I said. They were desperate, willing to follow a fifteen year-old boy’s commands. That gave me an idea.                                                  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“As a matter of fact, I do have an idea that could get us out of Shattri. Only thing is, it’s dangerous;” I said, running the operation through my head as I spoke, “first, you two will distract the soldiers outside…”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                                      ___&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I slipped out of the west gate with no problem, mostly due to the fact that the fighting still continued, though it looked to be an easy victory for ELITE here. Crank and Logan had done their job perfectly, leaving no one to witness my escape; the next part of the plan was for me to kill the soldiers while they were after them, but I had taken the opportunity to get out while they were being chased. What idiots. One would have to be insane to have thought my plan would work, even crazier to think that I would actually do my part in it. But, desperation breeds stupidity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3706" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T00:33:22.643" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T00:33:22.643" Title="Should I switch to third person or continue in first person?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5806" CreationDate="2012-06-02T18:25:51.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The initial &quot;feel&quot; I get from this piece works very well with the first-person narration you've chosen. Your suspense and action revolve around &lt;em&gt;immediate&lt;/em&gt; danger; first-person contributes wonderfully to that immediacy- you're writing &quot;Whoa, I'm in trouble,&quot; not &quot;So there was this guy who was in trouble.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're also doing a really nice job of weaving your POV character's voice in - even though he &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; nothing in the first section, we already get a lot of feel for him, which you've conveyed very naturally through his narrative voice. He's a &quot;Merc&quot;; he's only joined up with his two companions; he's constantly judging others from a viewpoint of apparant experience; he's got ten years of battlefield experience; and lots more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be significantly more difficult to do in third-person. Even if you used tight third-person narration, the kind that's practically identical to first-person except for changing the pronouns, it would be disconcerting to the reader - since he wouldn't &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; yet what degree of seperation there is between narrator and character. For example, if I modify your second paragraph to third-person:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Logan was in his early twenties, handsome, with long black hair and a slender body that could have belonged to a girl. Crank was nearly the exact opposite; he was approaching thirty, with a scarred face and a stout, if short, build. Lead had only known them for about eight hours, but he could tell that Crank was the leader of the two; he was not as smart as Logan, but his cruelty and Logan’s inferiority complex, made him dominant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since &quot;Lead&quot; is no longer the clear narrator, no longer the storytelling &quot;I,&quot; he no longer stands out. It's not clear if these appraisals of Logan and Crank are Lead's own view of things, or an objective, disassociated judgement. Also, Lead becomes much less distinct - we've got a group of three here; as long as all three are active, it'll take some work to distinguish Lead as being the main character we should actually be caring most about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you've got larger concerns than just the initial scene, so you might have other factors in your story which would weigh in favor of a different narration POV. However, you've clearly set Lead up as a relatively competent and experienced character, with a clear, distinct voice, who is in immediate danger - and who's able to take action in response. Lead seems like a fine POV character, and first-person seems extremely natural and appropriate for him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do have one major POV issue here, though, and that's Lead coming up with a plan - and hiding it from the reader. The moment a POV character - particularly a first-person POV - hides information her knows from the reader, the reader feels the point-of-view is not actually providing his point-of-view. We're not seeing it through his eyes; he's manipulating narration, telling us some things but not others. Now, cutting off a scene with &quot;I have a plan&quot; is common and you can usually get away with bending POV in this way, simply because the reader is willing to wait to see the plan in action (rather than merely discussed), as long as this action comes right away (in your example, it clearly does). However, as this is your introduction, this is &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; early in your story to be attempting a maneuver like this. The maneuver relies on trust, and familiarity with the character; you've hardly built anything up and already you're putting the weight of a POV break on your narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider: Why not just start during the first steps in the plan? Then you don't have to skip over the bit where he tells them what the plan is. You'll be imparting precisely the same information you are now, but you'll be beginning &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the part which (in this version) needs to be hidden from view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other Options&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tight third person - the kind that's intimately aware of the character's thoughts and motivations - is in many ways very similar to first person. You could pull that off here if you just spend a couple paragraphs establishing the character in his own right, before mixing in other characters too deeply. On the other hand, there's no compelling reason to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, depending on your story, you might want to switch to an omniscient narrator - one who can follow any or all of the characters. Basically, if you're going to want to follow all three characters roughly equally, then you don't necessarily need Lead as a unique POV - you can dip into each character as needed. But that would definitely lose the voice and characterization you've got here, and the impression I've got is that Lead &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the important, active character. So unless I'm mistaken on that point, I wouldn't advise this option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T18:25:51.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5808" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-02T18:36:11.007" Score="5" ViewCount="502" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m thinking about developing a blog where the main character is fictional and has fictional relationships with well known celebrities and sports figures.  Are there any legal ramifications for writing about celebs in this manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3707" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2019-05-26T12:08:48.413" LastActivityDate="2019-05-26T12:08:48.413" Title="Legal ramifications for writing about fictional relationships with celebs" Tags="|legal|relationships|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5809" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5810" CreationDate="2012-06-02T19:25:33.740" Score="3" ViewCount="322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working on the first draft of a screenplay, and it's not very good right now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's little things; some parts go too quickly or slowly, other dialogue exchanges need improvement, and the word choice could be better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't surprising, since first drafts tend not to be great, but I'm worried that I may be lingering too long on parts my first draft, when it isn't even finished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking that it may be a better idea to just get my first draft completed, then worry about the details during a second run through it. At least then I have a better picture of the overall plot. Would that be a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3419" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T00:30:45.877" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T20:32:37.387" Title="Is it a bad idea to linger too long on a first draft?" Tags="|editing|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5809" CreationDate="2012-06-02T20:23:42.423" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's an excellent idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your considerations are quite correct - a first draft can be absolutely terrible; most of its value is in fleshing out general details, structure and plot. It gives you a skeleton framework which you can the edit the heck out of. Therefore, there's no reason to worry if some parts are not all they could be. You &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; what improvement they need (if they remain as-is); you &lt;em&gt;don't know&lt;/em&gt; what'll be needed for the parts you haven't written yet. So first, finish the draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or look at it this way: there's no point in tightening up a dialogue and polishing it to perfection if next week you decide that your one-legged ballet dancer should actually be a tap-dancing robot. If you spend your time making the current scenes marvelous, that's effort that'll be wasted if you need to change just about &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; - and you most assuredly will. So, yes, having a complete first draft will give you a &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; firmer foundation to build (and edit) around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course, every author has their own creative process; not everybody uses a first draft in this particular fashion. But my understanding is that this view of a first draft is exceedingly common and highly recommended - plus, it sounds like you're leaning in the same direction anyway :P )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T20:23:42.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5808" CreationDate="2012-06-02T21:02:20.397" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I AM NOT A LAWYER.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as it is clearly evident that the piece is fictional, my understanding is that you can basically employ celebrities however you like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Major issues you generally want to avoid are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;libel and defamation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;copyright violation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use of likeness without permission&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a fictional account (clearly presented as such, and not using copyrighted works or actual pictures of the celebrity) has none of these problems. See, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Social Network&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, a dramatized account of the founding of Facebook, which played &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/09/30/the-facebook-and-zuckerberg-in-the-social-network-arent-real.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fast and loose with the facts&lt;/a&gt; and was produced &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/andrew-clark-on-america/2010/sep/23/facebook-mark-zuckerberg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;without consent or cooperation from its subject, Mark Zuckerberg&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major thing to watch out for, then, is looking as though your blog is nonfictional. In blog format that'll be a bit hard, because you probably don't want a disclaimer in every post. Make sure you can get something very clear into your design, maybe even a regular line in your RSS feed, to avoid anything approaching misleading appearances - because &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt; could probably get you into trouble. But the act itself, publishing fiction involving real-life public figures - that should be perfectly OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T21:02:20.397" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5812" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:27:38.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main person or force opposing the protagonist of the story. Not the &quot;villain,&quot; since the protagonist does not have to be &quot;good&quot; or a &quot;hero.&quot; The antagonist is whatever is preventing the protagonist(s) from getting what he/she/they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:27:38.223" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:27:38.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5813" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:27:38.223" Score="0" Body="The main person or force opposing the protagonist of the story." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:27:38.223" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:27:38.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5814" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:29:21.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The American Psychological Association is a professional organization for psychologists. APA style is thus a style for scholarly publications, created by the APA for its journals and widely adopted in the social sciences. Its standards are published in the Publication Manual for the American Psychological Association. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-02-24T15:48:09.450" LastActivityDate="2018-02-24T15:48:09.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5815" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:29:21.420" Score="0" Body="The style manual for the American Psychological Association." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:29:21.420" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:29:21.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5816" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:30:13.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The style manual for the Associated Press. A widely-used style manual in the United States, covering wording, phrasing, punctuation, abbreviations, acronyms, sports terms, title usage, and numbers, among many others. Updated annually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:30:13.523" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:30:13.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5817" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:30:13.523" Score="0" Body="The style manual for the Associated Press." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:30:13.523" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:30:13.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5818" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:32:42.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing for school, either as a student at any level or as part of a research project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:32:42.273" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:32:42.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5819" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:32:42.273" Score="0" Body="Any kind of writing for school." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:32:42.273" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:32:42.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5820" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:36:07.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both &quot;direct access&quot; (i.e. unassisted) and &quot;indirect access&quot; meaning compatibility with a person's assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). Accessibility is often used to focus on people with disabilities or special needs and their right of access to entities, often through use of assistive technology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions having the tag &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/accessibility&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;accessibility&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;accessibility&lt;/a&gt; regards rules, guidelines, design and implementation of accessibility in the context of Writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia - Accessibility&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="30375" LastEditDate="2019-03-23T23:03:48.567" LastActivityDate="2019-03-23T23:03:48.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5821" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:36:07.653" Score="0" Body="Providing affordances for readers with disabilities." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2019-03-24T02:08:21.800" LastActivityDate="2019-03-24T02:08:21.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5822" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:37:13.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone who represents a writer to publishers. Questions about how to find one, whether to employ one, what an agent does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:37:13.873" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:37:13.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5823" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:37:13.873" Score="0" Body="Someone who represents a writer to publishers." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:37:13.873" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:37:13.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5824" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:39:12.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about presenting ideas to the reader in a way which might be so frustrating or confusing as to scare the reader off. How to gauge whether something is &quot;mysterious&quot; or &quot;vague.&quot; Whether something in the story must be defined, or if it can be left to the reader to determine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:39:12.000" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:39:12.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5825" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:39:12.000" Score="0" Body="It's neither here nor there." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:39:12.000" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:39:12.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5826" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:40:33.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to capture and keep the reader's attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:40:33.573" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:40:33.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5827" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:40:33.573" Score="0" Body="Listen up! Hey, over here!" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:40:33.573" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:40:33.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5828" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:41:21.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about those who will be reading one's work. How to appeal to them, attract them, keep them reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:41:21.093" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:41:21.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5829" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:41:21.093" Score="0" Body="Those for whom one writes." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:41:21.093" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:41:21.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5830" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:44:22.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about how an author presents him/herself to the world. Questions about due credit for one's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:44:22.227" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:44:22.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5831" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:44:22.227" Score="0" Body="Writers' rights and rites." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:44:22.227" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:44:22.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5832" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:46:28.573" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T17:58:00.200" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T17:58:00.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5833" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:46:28.573" Score="0" Body="Tag depreciated, please do not use. " OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T17:58:00.200" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T17:58:00.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5834" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:48:35.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;beta reader&quot; is someone who agrees to read over your work and suggest corrections. This person is generally not a professional editor and usually does not get paid for the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:48:35.157" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:48:35.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5835" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:48:35.157" Score="0" Body="A kind of unpaid editor." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:48:35.157" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:48:35.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5836" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:50:13.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about blogs and blogging. Post length, how to transition from blogs to print, topics, formatting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:50:13.000" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:50:13.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5837" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:50:13.000" Score="0" Body="Questions about blogs and blogging.&#xD;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:50:13.000" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:50:13.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5838" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:58:11.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about biographies of others and about autobiographies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:58:11.570" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:58:11.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5839" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T01:58:11.570" Score="0" Body="Questions about biographies of others and about autobiographies." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T01:58:11.570" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T01:58:11.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5840" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:03:46.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about the length of books. What is an appropriate length. How to make something longer or shorter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T02:03:46.620" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:03:46.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5841" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:03:46.620" Score="0" Body="Questions about the length of books." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T02:03:46.620" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:03:46.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5842" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:05:12.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;General questions about characters in one's story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T02:05:12.500" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:05:12.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5843" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:05:12.500" Score="0" Body="Questions that involve people in a work of fiction, including character development, motivations, design, points of view, and representation." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="33846" LastEditDate="2020-04-24T19:54:13.640" LastActivityDate="2020-04-24T19:54:13.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5844" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:07:29.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about creating and using names. How to come up with appropriate names. How to come up with unusual names. Whether to reveal names. When to use first/last/nicknames. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T02:07:29.547" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:07:29.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5845" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:07:29.547" Score="0" Body="Questions about creating and using names. Note that questions asking people to come up with names for you are off-topic." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2022-12-15T08:31:21.840" LastActivityDate="2022-12-15T08:31:21.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5846" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:10:33.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about finding clich&amp;eacute;s in one's work. How to remove them. What constitutes a clich&amp;eacute;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T02:10:33.957" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:10:33.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5847" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:10:33.957" Score="0" Body="At the end of the day, we all use them." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T02:10:33.957" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:10:33.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5848" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:12:07.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about making one's writing easy to read. How to keep things from being too complex. How to make complicated subjects simple. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T02:12:07.980" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:12:07.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5849" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:12:07.980" Score="0" Body="Making things clear and easy to understand." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T02:12:07.980" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:12:07.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5850" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:13:41.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag should be used for questions about invented languages, such as legal questions about using Tolkien's Elvish languages or inventing your own constructed language to use in your own literary works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag could also be used on questions about the basics of how to create a constructed language, when to create an entire language, or when to create just a few phrases/words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to check out our sister site &lt;a href=&quot;https://conlang.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;ConLang.SE&lt;/a&gt; for more details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-27T17:14:08.720" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T17:14:08.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5851" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:13:41.257" Score="0" Body="This tag should be used for questions about invented languages, such as legal questions about using Tolkien's Elvish languages or inventing your own constructed language to use in your own literary works. You might want to check out our sister site ConLang.SE for more details. " OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-27T17:14:08.720" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T17:14:08.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5852" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:15:48.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions involving matters of copyright, encapsulating parody and level of similarity questions, reprinting and publishing of copyrighted works, public domain, attribution, fanfiction, legality, and fair use questions. Any question involving copyright law in the U.S. or abroad should be given this tag. Other topics that could involve copyright include whether or not something qualifies as fair use, whether or not permissions should be or have been granted to use a work, and whether something is properly sourced or given due legal credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Copyright references and materials:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;United States&lt;/strong&gt; (U.S.) Copyright Law: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.copyright.gov/title17/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.copyright.gov/title17/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;European Union&lt;/strong&gt; (EU) Copyright Legislation: &lt;a href=&quot;https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/eu-copyright-legislation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/eu-copyright-legislation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="33846" LastEditDate="2020-08-15T01:23:48.933" LastActivityDate="2020-08-15T01:23:48.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5853" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:15:48.163" Score="0" Body="Questions involving matters of copyright, encapsulating parody and level of similarity questions, reprinting and publishing of copyrighted works, public domain, attribution, fanfiction, legality, and fair use questions. Any question involving copyright law in the U.S. or abroad should be given this tag." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="33846" LastEditDate="2020-08-15T01:24:13.127" LastActivityDate="2020-08-15T01:24:13.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5854" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:17:24.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about working with other writers on a single piece of writing. How to deal with others' characters. Keeping a consistent tone. Copyright issues. Contracts and agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T02:17:24.310" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:17:24.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5855" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:17:24.310" Score="0" Body="We can work it out. " OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T02:17:24.310" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:17:24.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5856" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:19:38.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about writing for business. Emails, brochures, catalogs. Correspondence with clients, coworkers, subordinates, bosses. Technical papers. Instructional manuals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T02:19:38.987" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:19:38.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5857" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:19:38.987" Score="0" Body="Writing for business." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T02:19:38.987" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:19:38.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5858" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:21:32.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about how to get things done by a specific date or in a limited time frame. Techniques for adhering to deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T02:21:32.277" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:21:32.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5859" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:21:32.277" Score="0" Body="Getting things done on time." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T02:21:32.277" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:21:32.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5860" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:22:54.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about writing within comics. How to write for a comic. Structural questions. Includes all forms of sequential art: Comic books, graphic novels, manga, comic strips, webcomics, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-11-18T14:28:50.450" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T14:28:50.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5861" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:22:54.833" Score="0" Body="Writing for comic books, graphic novels, manga, etc. " OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-11-18T14:28:50.450" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T14:28:50.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5864" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:51:47.677" Score="12" ViewCount="56335" Body="&lt;p&gt;In scientific papers, the term &quot;Figure&quot; -- referring to an illustration in the text -- is often abbreviated as &quot;Fig.&quot; But is &quot;Figures&quot; abbreviated as &quot;Figs&quot;, &quot;Fig.s&quot; or &quot;Figs.&quot;? I am proofreading a paper just now and the journal editors have used the abbreviation &quot;Fig.&quot; for &quot;Figure&quot; and &quot;Figs&quot; (no period) for &quot;Figures&quot; as in &quot;Figs 2 and 3&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone explain the convention of abbreviation as it applies in this case? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3686" OwnerDisplayName="JAM" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T06:38:36.170" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T02:05:45.827" Title="Abbreviation for &quot;figures&quot; in scientific papers" Tags="|style|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5863" CreationDate="2012-06-03T03:59:54.017" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Figs%202%20and%22&amp;amp;tbs=bks:1&amp;amp;lr=lang_en&quot;&gt;quick search&lt;/a&gt; on Google shows that the practice of abbreviating &lt;em&gt;Figures&lt;/em&gt; really took off in the last 40 years and that it most often appears as &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Figs.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (with the period)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Jim" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T04:29:24.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5866" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-03T11:17:56.073" Score="8" ViewCount="2398" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a service which allows you to check if a paper/article was plagiarized?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this moment, I use Google to check if some papers are plagiarized or not, but I think that are other smarter methods&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3708" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-21T01:02:12.823" LastActivityDate="2020-07-14T07:59:46.073" Title="How do I determine if a paper has been plagiarized?" Tags="|academic-writing|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5866" CreationDate="2012-06-03T17:05:32.457" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; software options available (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism_detection#Plagiarism_detection_systems_for_text-documents&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's page on plagiarism detection&lt;/a&gt;), some free, and some paid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge, one of the most commonly used commercial options available is &lt;a href=&quot;http://turnitin.com/&quot;&gt;Turnitin&lt;/a&gt;; there is also Turnitin's student version, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.writecheck.com/static/home.html&quot;&gt;WriteCheck&lt;/a&gt;. Another commercial option is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plagscan.com/&quot;&gt;PlagScan&lt;/a&gt;. These options can be somewhat expensive though; PlagScan, for example, charges by the word: $13 gets you 50,000 words of plagiarism checking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several free services, but they should be used with caution and their limitations should be understood. Some, for example, simply do what you've been doing: they take the sentences and search in Google. This &quot;direct plagiarism&quot; is much easier for the software to look for. Others, like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scanmyessay.com&quot;&gt;Viper plagiarism-scanner&lt;/a&gt;, do a &lt;em&gt;pretty good&lt;/em&gt; job in my experience (from a long time ago), but still only match direct matches, and won't catch things where a word or two have been changed here or there. I've since stopped using them because they have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scanmyessay.com/viper-use-essay.php&quot;&gt;somewhat sketchy data retention and policy&lt;/a&gt;: whatever you upload, they add your work to their &quot;study site&quot; (or essay mill or whatever you want to call it). (To Viper's credit, they are transparent about how they use your data!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;IMPORTANT NOTE&lt;/strong&gt;: The bottom line with free is that unfortunately you need to be very careful with them--be sure you closely read their privacy policies and their data retention policies. Commercial services may also retain your data, but generally offer an option to purge your account; nevertheless, it never hurts to read the terms of use and other relevant documents, particularly in cases of sensitive information.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are checking against a known local database of documents (which it doesn't sound like you're doing, but I thought I'd mention it), you can check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://plagiarism.bloomfieldmedia.com/z-wordpress/software/wcopyfind/&quot;&gt;WCopyfind&lt;/a&gt;. It might not be the most intuitive, but it is promising and free. You might use this software, for example, if you have a database of papers students have submitted in the same course offered in different years, to check whether a student in the current batch of students is plagiarizing from an earlier student or from someone else in their class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3433" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T17:05:32.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2122" CreationDate="2012-06-04T04:26:41.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in the process of researching and writing a novel based upon actual events which occurred in 1897-1899. Here is the process that I have been following, which might be of some use for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(1) Identify and locate any original source material which is directly on point with the story you are writing&lt;/strong&gt;. Obviously, the existence and amount of this type of material will depend upon the historical period you are writing about and the events you are covering. In my case, I was able to track down the original court documents from over a century ago. There were also a number of newspaper articles written at the time which were archived at my state historical center's library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(2) Identify and locate contemporaneous secondary source material.&lt;/strong&gt; These would be materials that were written at or close to the time of your novel. In my case, I was able to locate a history of my state and a history of the county in which the events occurred. Both books were written in the early 1900's and covered the time period in question. This gave me a better understanding as to what was going on at the time, from the perspective of those who were living through the time period. Another example of contemporaneous source material was a copy of the store catalogs in use at the time. I was able to locate a reprint of the Montgomery Ward and Sears catalogs from that time period, which has automatically given me a picture, description and better understanding of what existed at that time. Magazines, newspapers and other print media from the time period is also helpful not only in getting a better understanding as to what was going on, but also to word choices, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(3) Read some novels written in that time period.&lt;/strong&gt; This has been mentioned in other responses. I've found it mostly of use with regard to dialog and description rather than plot or character development. I am writing for a 21st century reader, not a 19th, so I am more concerned with learning how they describe doing things or getting to places so that I can better incorporate those ideas into my own writing (e.g. how long it took to get from one place to another by train) as opposed to writing in the style of the time period. Also, I figured that my own characters would have been aware of the books when they were written and perhaps read them themselves!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(4) Read current day historical novels and watch movies/tv shows set in that time period.&lt;/strong&gt; I have read three or four modern novels set in the time period I am focused upon and have gotten some ideas from them. It has been useful to see what other authors found to be important or necessary. I have a journal that I've kept when reading them to keep some notes on the time period. I've found it useful to make a simple alphabetic list (one letter per page) with things I have run across that I otherwise wouldn't have even considered. As an example, from one I learned that in my relevant time period the floors were often dirty since most men chewed tobacco and spit, either in the spittoons which were everywhere or simply on the ground. Just a detail that caught my eye, but thanks to wiki I was able to learn a bit more--and even found a photo of a spittoon in a 1910 courtroom, which is important in my novel since it is a legal thriller. Movies set in a time period can also be very helpful as it gives you the chance to look at the background scenery, items in a room, etc. They've already done the research, you just have to blockout the story line. Try turning off the sound or better still, changing the audio to a different language sans subtitles. That forces you to simply watch and listen to what sounds are present in the background. Works well on old movies that don't have a musical score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much depends, however, on the type of novel you read, however, as I've found there are two types of historical novels. The first is a novel that just happens to be set in that time period, that is the time period itself is really the focus of the novel. You could put the story in about any time period and it would be the same. The second type has the historical time period at the very heart of the story, it is what the story is really about. A novel about a well-known historical figure, for example, will call for a much greater focus on the historical issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(5) Cultivate friendships with those that are experts in parts of the historical time period in question.&lt;/strong&gt; The fact is, there is only so much you can realistically learn secondhand. If you think about it, however, there are people that already love a particular time period or at least an aspect of it. By figuring out who they are and making their acquaintance, you've got an expert to consult and help make sure you are on the right path. For instance, if your novel is about knights, hit the local Renaissance Fair. There you will find a lot of people that are more than happy to help you, plus you can actually see how rope was made, chainmail, bread, hold a sword, etc. In my case, our local living history farm features authentic meals from the time period my novel is set in, in a historically accurate house. They've dedicated their life to recreating that time period and simply love to answer questions. If you read the dedications of many books (not just historical fiction but most genres), you'll find &quot;hank you's&quot; out to people that have helped the author with specialized information or read a draft with an educated eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also spent some time in historical museums just looking at things, clothing, etc., from my time period and tried to picture what they looked like when they were brand new. Our job as writers of historical fiction is to make the past come alive. Picturing what a dress or book or gun looked, felt, smelled like when it was first worn, opened or held is a good exercise. BTW, I'm not saying I am very good at it, but am doing my best!! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the above is just the process that I am following. I am sure there are things that I have overlooked and would love to hear them (so I can incorporate them into my own research!). Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T04:26:41.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5871" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5872" CreationDate="2012-06-04T15:21:00.217" Score="8" ViewCount="5465" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my novel there will be a chapter-length flashback as one character relates a story from his past. The rest of the novel is written in limited third-person, seeing into one person's mind at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make sense to switch to first-person for the flashback, as if the entire chapter is a quotation from the storyteller, or should it be told in the same manner as the rest of the book but focused on this character as if it is happening in the present?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The previous chapter ends with the character starting to tell the story, so it should be obvious either way that this chapter is his flashback. But I don't know which format would fit best while still keeping the first-hand account feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="330" LastEditorUserId="33121" LastEditDate="2018-09-18T20:02:29.963" LastActivityDate="2018-09-18T20:02:29.963" Title="Should a long flashback be written in first or third person?" Tags="|novel|tenses|perspective|flow|flashback|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5871" CreationDate="2012-06-04T15:41:56.173" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I wouldn't change from third to first person in the middle of the story, it's always a little bit jarring for the reader. That being said, maybe being jarring is what you want in this case. It would make the flashbacks stand out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being in first person for the flashback would also make it feel more personal, something you might want for that element in the story. If we're seeing a lot more of what is going on in their head first person might work better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice... write the first part of flashback both ways, no more the a page or two. Then you can look back and see which one flows the best with the narrative. It's not a lot of extra work to go through to find out which way you prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2014-12-15T14:22:09.780" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T14:22:09.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5871" CreationDate="2012-06-04T19:21:02.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does it matter if you use first or third person for that chapter? Yes? Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are confusing the reader. That's not a bad thing by itself, but you should have a reason to do it. Just &quot;maybe it's better&quot; is not a reason. Does the switch fit to your story? Yes? How?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the story, it's your story, so only you can decide. Follow &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5872/99&quot;&gt;Fox' advice&lt;/a&gt; if you can't figure it out. Here are two examples why it could be a good idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had several flashbacks, using first person for all of them would give the reader a distinction when a flashbacks begins and ends. It would be a special style of your novel and worth considering. But well, it's your only one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a story teller scene (person tells his tale to an audience, maybe just a few friends), then the first person could work if you want the distance of the story teller POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then it's also possible to interrupt the first-person-chapter with scenes in the present time where e.g. the audience asks questions and the story teller gets into more detail about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not only interrupt the flashback, it also interrupt the reader. But you are doing this anyway if you switch to first person. It is unlikely to keep the reader full immersed during the first-person-chapter one way or another. The switched narrator's perspective will keep him &quot;outside&quot; the story at a distance (&quot;That's not the real story, just this old guy telling tales.&quot;) Again, not a problem by itself, the question is, do you want to keep the reader at bay? Yes? Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T19:21:02.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4997" CreationDate="2012-06-04T19:49:34.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishers can do all of the things you identified in your list for you, but the degree of commitment that they apply to each will vary based on a number of factors. If they believe that you have a truly commercial product that has the potential to reach a very large fan base, they will devote more time and resources towards making your book successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here is in getting them to agree to publish your book in the first place. Since you indicate that your book is targeting a smaller niche market, your best chances of getting picked up by a publisher would be for you to find one that specializes in your type of product. Failing that, you're facing a very difficult road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you already have a plan/idea in place for pursuing self-publication, which is most likely a more viable option for you. There are a number of advanatages that have been discussed in other posts, but it will also require a lot more effort on your part. In spite of that, you probably have a better feel for your intended audience than a major publisher would have, so you would probably have better success pursuing this on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T19:49:34.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5156" CreationDate="2012-06-04T21:43:00.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's interesting to see @Standback propose dealing with the problem by creating an anthology of short stories. Clearly there's a dissonance of execution between the first installments and the last two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But perhaps the real resolution of fitting format and structure with story would require &lt;strong&gt;stepping outside the print notions of (one-volume) books and the rejected two-volume novel&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a fully electronic age, the 2000 pages of &lt;em&gt;Feast&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Dance&lt;/em&gt; wouldn't have had to be shoehorned into two arcs (as two books) but could have been released as multiple segments of one continuum. In print, ending one character's chapter requires the pre-release agents (author, publisher) to decide which character's story will be brought up next. Imagine what it would be like if instead the post-release agents (individual readers, book groups) were presented with multiple choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A future Martin-like author might tell such a saga with such different focal points as epic novel and short-story as suggested but also with more, running the gamut from internet meme to forum thread to graphic novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, I don't know what the epic story of the future will look like, but it very likely will be &lt;strong&gt;more like an enormous interconnected website than a boxed set of paperbacks&lt;/strong&gt;, to be read in no prescribed order and not seriatim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3715" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T21:43:00.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5808" CreationDate="2012-06-05T01:50:48.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am also not a lawyer but have experience in this matter. You may generally use a character in a work of fiction as long as they are in the public limelight. A celebrity, political figure, and so on. It has been upheld in court that since the person is a public figure they are open game for a fictional work. And as previously stated you may not use a picture or graphic representation of the person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, if what you or someone on your blog writes or comments about, you may get into trouble. Your level of tolerance and what offends someone else may be two separate items altogether. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to only write about persons already dead. I know this is not what you want to do, but here in the United States it's a lot safer. You can legally write ANYTHING you want about a dead person. It can be a story set when the person was alive and you can tell a totally fictionalized account of an event - or use them as a character in a fabricated story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The caveat here is that you MAY NOT write about a person who is still alive. So if the dead person's wife or children or friends are still alive you have to leave them out of the story. Or get permission from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just some food for thought. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3693" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T01:50:48.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5808" CreationDate="2012-06-05T13:56:28.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One question that becomes very important is whether you are being positive or negative about the celebrities. If you are going to suggest that, for example, David Cameron had a gay affair with your lead character, then don't - you will get in trouble. If you are wanting to suggest that your lead character was at an official event that He spoke at, and talked to him about nothing significant, then you should be OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Picking up @VictorGs comment, you could use meaningless meetings with current people to provide reminiscences about past ( and dead ) characters that they have met, which can be more racy/ controversial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that there is a link on the blog that makes it clear that this is a fictional account - not necessarily prominent, but noticeable. Also, consider whether you would allow comments - probably not, unless it is critical to your project. YOu could get in trouble for comments that assume the blog is real, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: IANAL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T13:56:28.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5755" CreationDate="2012-06-06T01:57:19.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two reasons why legal documents have sections in all caps. The first is that some state laws are very specific on having a certain font size (usually no smaller than...) and some method of calling attention to a particular legal passage that has some special significance. Usually it has to do with waiving of some legal right, such as a right to a jury trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second reason is that it helps to focus the reader on certain terms, such as the material terms of a contract or license. That way it is harder for someone to say they didn't see that part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is for these same reasons that you might have to initial certain sections of a legal document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T01:57:19.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5882" CreationDate="2012-06-06T06:19:08.593" Score="5" ViewCount="383" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on three separate works for three different audiences.  All are non-fiction.  One is for children ages eight to twelve, another is for teens ages fourteen to twenty, and the third is for adults.  Is it recommended that different names be used, or should they be published under one name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3723" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T16:56:52.383" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T16:56:52.383" Title="Should I use different pen names for different audiences (non-fiction)?" Tags="|publishing|non-fiction|young-adult|pseudonym|middle-grade|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5881" CreationDate="2012-06-06T06:57:27.070" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are all non-fiction, but what are the topics they are covering? If they are all something like, history books or biographies, there is no harm in using the same name for all three. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-fiction doesn't seem to have the same issues with crossing genera or age ranges that fiction does. So unless there is a pressing reason to try and keep them disconnected, I would just write them all under the same name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T06:57:27.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="878" CreationDate="2012-06-06T13:32:51.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that grammatical nuances of a particular discipline can sometimes confuse readers more than the technical terms (which should already have been well explained)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over on the English exchange, there was a question only today about &quot;Significant fraction of reactor core inventory&quot;&#xA;This is a case of seemingly innocuous technical speak befuddling the casual reader. In said case it would be better to have written something like &quot;A large portion of the  materials contained within the reactor core&quot;&#xA;This way a reader can still be on shaky ground as to what a reactor core may be made up of but does not have to struggle with the grammar to understand the entire meaning of the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add two cents about an index, they are great for referring to, to quickly remember what acronyms and the like are for, instead of having to trawl back through earlier text to find one particular item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great example of a work along these lines is Simon Singh's Fermat's Last Theorem, that enables the reader to see the maths as more of a journey from one point to another, in correct but casual language, rather than a dry text book on the involved procedures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3728" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T13:32:51.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5809" CreationDate="2012-06-06T16:33:43.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I view writing as art, you don't have the masterpiece on the first brush stroke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do the following&#xA;&lt;em&gt;1st draft - pretty much a brain dump, I write without regardless to grammar, subplots, and details so in the end it looks like this&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jack ran around the big vampire to snatch the grey keystone&#xA;&#xA;The vampire falls dead from Jack's sister  as she calmly remarks on Jack's lack of planning&#xA;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;2nd draft is plot, location details and character details&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the full moon rose behind Jack, he stared at the cyprt intentely. &quot;This must be the place&quot; he muttered shoving the map back into his pocket. &quot;Damm I wished I remenbered to get the garlic. Oh well DartLing knows I am onto him and will move the keystone&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jack dodge to avoid the crashing blow of the heavy stone as DartLing was on him faster than he could blink &quot;Give me the stone human and I promise your death will be quick&quot;. DartLing was about to speak but the words would forever remain un-spoken as a razor sharp yew stake pieced his black heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Thanks Sis, althought I had him&quot; Julie snorted as she rolled DartLing over with her foot aiming her huge crossbow at the smoking corspe just to make sure. &quot;Yea you had him like the time you tried to see the Macaw Cystral and forgot your wire cutters&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;3rd draft - Grammar, spelling and flow&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;4rd draft - I give it to someone else to read and comment on it (not the whole thing just a few choice chapters)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3692" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-06-06T20:32:37.387" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T20:32:37.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5809" CreationDate="2012-06-06T17:45:30.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on how you write. I can see that spending a lot of time on a first draft so that it is a correct first draft is important. It may be, if you are not really happy with it currently, it may be that there are some core issues that you need to resolve in this draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The danger is that you continue to build on a first draft, spend a lot of time on it, and only by the 3rd or 4th do you realise that there is a crucial flaw ( or someone else reading it points this out ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't work on it being perfect, but do make sure that the core work is there and right. Working a long time to get that right is very worth while. then everything else is straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T17:45:30.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5890" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-06T18:41:52.167" Score="0" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5609/does-anyone-know-the-average-number-of-times-a-new-author-has-to-submit-before-a&quot;&gt;Does anyone know the average number of times a new author has to submit before acceptance?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been looking through this site to understand the difficulty in getting published, and what I see is lots of subjective answers, nothing very objective. Can anyone comment on that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the deal: Let's say that tomorrow morning 10,000 people wake up with the greatest idea for the novel of the century. What happens next? My understanding is that around 9,000 of them may try to write it but will give up at this stage because they know the odds are against them, and they can put their writing time to better use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we're down to 1,000 people who have fully written and editted (well, according to them) manuscripts that are ready to get shipped off to a publisher/agent. A percentage of these &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; get read by someone at the publisher who like them enough to pass them on to someone in authority. A (small) percentage of these will warrent an offer to the author. Probably most of those will result in some type of contract, and then a number of those will be purchasable at a bookstore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, so here're the real question: At each stage in the process, how many authors do we lose? Of those 10k originals, how many will be selling their book at the bookstore?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3730" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T20:23:21.967" Title="How difficult is it to get published? - The Objective Version" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-06-07T13:14:49.403" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5890" CreationDate="2012-06-06T19:42:51.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely no way to give a truly objective answer to this question, which is exactly why you keep seeing subjective responses. We have determined &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5622/2343&quot;&gt;through other posts&lt;/a&gt; that about 1 author in 1000 will be offered a contract for representation from an agent. That still doesn't guarantee even then that the book will get published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are just too many factors that can influence the final answer, such as the genre of the book, the hot trends at the time the book is submitted, and the timing in general. If you submit a suspense novel at the same time that three top selling authors in that genre are pushing new works, then publishers may consider the market to be &quot;saturated&quot;, which is a polite way of saying you don't have a chance in hell at competing with those three established authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that agents and publishers &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5623/2343&quot;&gt;do not keep track&lt;/a&gt; of the number of manuscripts they review OR reject makes it virtually impossible to determine a truly objective number. Even the numbers you offer were derived after making certain assumptions, so you are already working with a subjective hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T19:42:51.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5892" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-07T06:37:39.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not to be confused with &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/marketing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'marketing'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;marketing&lt;/a&gt;, which is for marketing your own writing work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T06:37:39.780" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T06:37:39.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5893" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-07T06:37:39.780" Score="0" Body="Writing copy for advertising, marketing, promotional material, etc." OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T06:37:39.780" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T06:37:39.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5894" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5899" CreationDate="2012-06-07T10:36:33.083" Score="19" ViewCount="8967" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexandrochen.com/existential-fiction/&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; short stories (in fact, they are flash fiction). When I'm writing short stories, the ideas and the structure come to my mind by themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something different happens when I try to write long stories; It starts with something simple, but then I add more and more stuff until it gets too complicated. Another thing that happens is that I lose interested in the story after some weeks. I just feel that it is not a story that I want to write. Other times, I just tell myself: I have nothing else to say in this story, it should end here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this happen to a lot of beginners? How to overcome this problem? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Sometimes I think that I should just accept my fate as writer that only writes short stories. Or just write novels that are composed of interconnected short stories, like David Mitchell's Ghostwritten.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T17:08:20.130" LastActivityDate="2018-07-28T01:50:05.740" Title="How to overcome the fact that I can't write long stories?" Tags="|fiction|novel|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5895" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-07T13:14:52.437" Score="7" ViewCount="5246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the writing tool &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; because of the organisation tools like the corkboard and the no-frills full screen mode. I'm starting out my thesis using the Windows trial and intending to buy if I can make this one other thing work for me: I can't work out a sensible approach to working with figures in it. I want to be able to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;specify which pictures from my resources go where&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;specify a caption that goes with a picture &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have the compile process figure out based on a figure's position in text what the numbering should be (simple 1 to n will suffice)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...ideally with the ability to do this all in markup so that I don't have to switch to the mouse while typing. I'm also very much hoping to avoid compiling and then adding figures manually in Word after every time I compile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard mention of Scrivener supporting Multimarkdown which can then be compiled into Latex and from there into other formats. This seems a bit convoluted, but tolerable. However, I can't see any multimarkdown options in the compile dialog in my Windows version. Is this a feature only supported by the Mac versions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies if this is standard Scrivener editing functionality that I've missed somehow, but I've read the text surrounding every instance of the words, &quot;figure&quot;, &quot;image&quot; and &quot;caption&quot; in the manual, and I see nothing about how to achieve this. I honestly find the Scrivener documentation and L&amp;amp;L website baffling, give me man pages over this stuff any day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The comment from John Smithers unfortunately does not answer my question - I am looking for some more information that would help me understand why compiling my draft does zero with that tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OUTCOME:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I basically gave up on doing anything except writing in the Windows version. The image / caption markup features I wanted existed in theory, but they were broken under Windows, which L&amp;amp;L freely admitted, and they had no timeline to fix them. I ended up exporting to RTF, using Zotero's RTF scan feature for references, and leaving text (literally &quot;picture #1 goes here&quot;) in the position where I wanted pictures, which I manually replaced with images when I finally turned the RTF export into a Word document. So thanks for pretty much nothing Scrivener, I should've used Latex and saved the 40$.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3733" LastEditorUserId="3733" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T20:32:01.957" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T21:13:46.790" Title="How to work with in-text markup for figures and captions in Scrivener?" Tags="|software|tools|academic-writing|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5894" CreationDate="2012-06-07T13:22:09.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep going forever no matter what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T13:22:09.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5894" CreationDate="2012-06-07T14:43:58.113" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of your story as separate scenes. Your idea about writing a novel of interconnected short stories is basically the same thing. Each chapter is a different scene, or a different short story, if you will. Take the time to figure out where you want to go with your story and then start documenting that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of writers will get an idea of what they want to write and then just sit down and start writing. The problem with that is you don't always have a clear understanding of where you want to go or how you want to get there. Take the time to outline each scene so that you have a roadmap. You don't have to put a lot of detail into the outline, just make sure you have one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try starting out with a couple of major characaters and an idea of what you want to do with them. Then take the time to plan for them to do something in each chapter (short story), and then keep adding chapters to help guide them through a process that takes them where you want them to go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it's just hard to maintain your focus, and that is where an outline can prove to be most benficial. It allows you to break up the work into smaller pieces while also providing you with a structure that helps you see the big picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T14:43:58.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5894" CreationDate="2012-06-07T14:48:00.847" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I've said elsewhere, don't pad your stories with, er, effluvia. If your idea is a short story, leave it short. Not every writer has to write long pieces. I'm reasonably sure Shakespeare didn't write novels. If short stories are your strength, your passion, and your interest, stick with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you want to write something longer as an exercise, there are plenty of methods you can look up to help you do that. But don't do it because you think &quot;only novelists are real writers&quot; or that you're &quot;supposed&quot; to write books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T14:48:00.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5894" CreationDate="2012-06-07T16:03:23.060" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been there myself, stuck trying to work out how to make things flow in a larger context, but just feeling like I can't pull it off. It's frustrating all around, but I can at least tell you what I did to get over it. It be of some help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep trying to write the longer stories. It might be frustrating now, but if you don't work at it it won't ever come together for you. If you feel like the story has hit a dead end or you can't keep going on it don't be afraid to set it aside for a bit and try something else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take it a step at a time. If length is the problem, don't just jump into a novel, take it in steps. You said you mostly write flash fiction, well move onto short stories, the longer short stories, novellas, and then onto full novels. As you work out each stage your confidence will grow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A long story doesn't mean having more stuff going on. True, you have more room to have more events, but the main benefit of the longer length is that you have more room to tell the story itself. While you can just add more events and struggles for your characters, you can also use the space to expand on the characters them selves. Show more of there interactions and motivations. You have the room to flesh out the story and make the players more interesting. Something that's much harder to do in a short story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stories usually end up as long as they need to be. If your struggling to write a longer story maybe it's because that story doesn't need to be that long. It might be time to play around with outlining or brain storming to see if you can find longer and fuller tales. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, all or none of this advice can work for you... well except for the first one. Keep trying to write long stories, it will help above everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T16:03:23.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5894" CreationDate="2012-06-08T13:56:15.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it happens to a lot of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is hard work, like anything else. You say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I just feel that it is not a story that I want to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real writing is re-writing. You need to bang out a first draft, then read through it. Then you need to make notes on how the book differed from your expectations. Ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was the book I wanted to write?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What I actually got?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What changes do I need to make to get the book I wanted?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then you either completely rewrite the book, or modify the 1st draft. For beginners, complete rewriting maybe a better option. Even though it may seem like work, it will save time in the long run, as you are not trying to duct tape something broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are correct in your idea about a novel being a lot of interconnected stories. All you need to do is, ensure there is a strong theme / conflict unifying the stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Steve Drennon and Fox Cutter have said, you need to keep practising. Writing a long novel is like running a marathon- you can't just go out and do it. You may need somepractice and groundwork before you are ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T13:56:15.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5901" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5909" CreationDate="2012-06-09T13:39:38.063" Score="3" ViewCount="8820" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story about a schoolgirl who is visiting an aquarium (this setting is connected with her past and with the conflict of the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sophia found herself walking through a glass tunnel. She felt as if&#xA;  she were at the bottom of the sea without any difficulties to&#xA;  breath. A blacktip shark and a school of yellowtail surgeonfish passed&#xA;  over her head. They didn't seem to be noticing each other; they were&#xA;  just swimming peacefully side by side. Sophia followed them with her&#xA;  eyes as they disappeared in the blue murky water. She continued&#xA;  walking along the long path, carrying her schoolbag on her back, and&#xA;  gazing at the other marine animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sophia always felt a special fascination for the ocean and everything&#xA;  that lives in it. She could spend whole afternoons watching clown&#xA;  fish, sharks, sting rays, turtles and corals. Being surrounded by them&#xA;  made her feel as if she had been transported to another world. A world&#xA;  that was closer to her than the world outside. At first, she didn't&#xA;  know where that interest had come from. But as time passed by, she&#xA;  discovered that these feelings were reminiscences of her childhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sophia's father used to own a watermelon farm in Kenting's&#xA;  countryside. It wasn't huge, but it was big enough to keep his father&#xA;  busy the whole year. The farm was near the sea. He would take her to&#xA;  the beach every weekend. Sophia spent most of her childhood there,&#xA;  searching for crabs under rocks, fishing with her father, swimming&#xA;  with some of her friends, and enjoying all things that the Pacific&#xA;  Ocean provides. But all this ended when she reached 16. Her family's&#xA;  financial situation had declined considerably over the years, so her&#xA;  father decided to sell the farm to continue paying her school fees. A&#xA;  month later, Sophia and her family moved to Tainan, where her father&#xA;  had found a job in an company that exported agricultural products to&#xA;  China. Sophia's life in the city had begun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sophia reached a winding staircase, stared at it for a moment, and&#xA;  began to ascend. The staircase was surrounding a cylindrical tank. As&#xA;  she was walking up the steps, she realized that the tank contained&#xA;  thousands of jellyfishes. A light on the top of the tank changed from&#xA;  time to time making the jellyfish change their colors along with it.&#xA;  They looked like fluorescent mushrooms dancing in a blue canvas.&#xA;  Sophia loved to watch them. For her, their movements were so beautiful,&#xA;  yet so simple. But the thing she liked best about them was how they&#xA;  looked as if they were one with the sea. How they seemed to merge with&#xA;  the blue crystalline water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, each paragraph starts with &lt;em&gt;Sophia...&lt;/em&gt; I've done my&#xA;best to think of other opening lines but I can't think of any. What&#xA;do you suggest? (I also repeat the name &lt;em&gt;Sophia&lt;/em&gt; in the paragraphs. Not sure if this is &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; though)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the transition to the flashback of Sophia's childhood smooth?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Well, the purpose of these paragraphs are not to create suspense nor intrigue,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;but as a reader, do you want to keep reading? If not, how to improve them?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(the 'intriguing' part comes later when she discovers a baby girl floating in the middle of a water tank).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since the story is set in an aquarium, there are some terms that I'm not familiar with (e.g. water tank, glass tunnel, glass window, etc.). Am I using them properly?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T18:01:55.133" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T12:27:22.007" Title="Opening paragraphs of a short story set in an aquarium" Tags="|fiction|word-choice|openings|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5907" CreationDate="2012-06-10T21:26:45.893" Score="4" ViewCount="536" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working for some time on a story about a detective who finds himself alienated, delusional and hopeless while trapped inside a dystopic, postmodern dream. This segment voices some of the sentiments that define the narrator's personality and ego-fixations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Outside my window you can make out the figures of people who have&#xA;  simply given up. Their daily glance in the bathroom mirror is met with&#xA;  an unarticulated notion of defeat, a resignation to the fact that any&#xA;  hope for their brilliant future as the protagonist of a lucid,&#xA;  satisfying destiny was misplaced. They had woefully overestimated&#xA;  themselves. They languished, doing nothing in particular for years,&#xA;  with the quiet promise of self-improvement, the re-imagination of&#xA;  themselves as a success, occurring sometime in the future. They would&#xA;  start their journey towards their patient destiny tomorrow, or the day&#xA;  after. As I move among them, standing beside these shadows on the&#xA;  subway, in the grocery store, I know that I, at some point, suffered&#xA;  the same fate that they did. After Kathy, I could never find a rhythm,&#xA;  a groove to approach life from- something that I could keep private&#xA;  and something that could give me direction, inspiration, meaning. So I&#xA;  withdrew from it. Somebody said that apathy isn’t the same as&#xA;  withdrawing in disgust, but I did it more out of confusion and&#xA;  insecurity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Life then came to find me, and by the time it did I had starting&#xA;  losing my hair, grown older and tired, impotent and faded; all the&#xA;  while having loved no one else and nothing else in particular. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is what people are most afraid of.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My goal is&lt;/strong&gt; for this passage to be taken &quot;straight&quot; - I want the reader to get a taste of the despair and the alienation my protagonist feels. I want them to buy into his worldview, at least a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My problem is&lt;/strong&gt; that I'm worried the piece comes across as simplistic, overwrought and cliched; I'm afraid readers won't take this seriously - they won't sit and think about these musings, and they won't respect my character since he does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I improve my piece so as to convey the atmosphere and emotions in a powerful, engrossing fashion?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1495" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-06-11T13:21:37.233" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T10:21:41.807" Title="Are these fictional musings convincing or overwrought?" Tags="|fiction|technique|atmosphere|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5902" CreationDate="2012-06-11T10:50:14.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, I don't like the first sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Outside my window you can make out the figures of people who have simply given up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; works to reveal the narrator's &quot;ego fixations&quot; – but why is that followed with a &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;? &quot;Make out&quot; reads awkwardly simplistic. And why &quot;figures of people&quot; and not just &quot;people&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, the rest of the paragraph seems too cluttered, too psuedo-intellectual.  Your best sentences are your simpler ones.  I'd suggest something more along these lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Outside my window I observe people who have given up. They glance in their bathroom mirrors daily, only to realize they've spent a lifetime woefully overestimating themselves.  Their faces are marked with defeat, resignation, lost hope.  They languished, doing nothing in particular for years, with the quiet promise of self-improvement, but their imagined success never came. Always tomorrow, always next week – but their journey never started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying mine is perfect, I'm just saying I'd move it in that direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T10:50:14.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5901" CreationDate="2012-06-11T13:34:31.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you can see, each paragraph starts with Sophia... I've done my best to think of other opening lines but I can't think of any. What do you suggest? (I also repeat the name Sophia in the paragraphs. Not sure if this is bad though)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Para 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Being surrounded by sea water and everything that lived in it made her feel &#xA;as if she had been transported to another world. She could spend all &#xA;afternoon watching clown fish, sharks, sting rays, and turtles. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Para 3: since Sophia is the only actor, you can use &quot;she&quot; without ambiguity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;She spent her childhood years were spent on a watermelon farm in Kenting's countryside.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Para 4:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Having reached a winding staircase Sophia stared at it for a moment and began to ascend.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the transition to the flashback of Sophia's childhood smooth?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It did not come across as smooth to me.  Instead it came across as a break in the action that was all telling and little showing.  It may feel smoother if you phrase it as something Sophia is thinking as she is walking through the tunnel.  Have a sea creature swimming by remind her of one she saw as a child, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Well, the purpose of these paragraphs are not to create suspense nor intrigue, but as a reader, do you want to keep reading? If not, how to improve them?  The truly 'intriguing' part comes later when she discovers a baby girl floating in the middle of a water tank.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it needs to be tightened up in order to be intriguing.  Right now it kind of meanders on and on about her love for the sea, but you can convey that in probably a single paragraph.  What you need to elaborate on is the background of how Sophia got to the city she is currently living in.  Right now it's an info dump.  Draw it out with more interesting details.  If possible help me as the reader see how &lt;strong&gt;Sophia&lt;/strong&gt; will react to the floating baby by giving me a glimpse into her character that is more than just the fact that she loves the ocean.  Make me care about her as a person.  You have an interesting story - that of a family's fortunes declining and lots of changes for a young girl coming of age.  Make it matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To create a suspenseful tone I'd bring in some of the very real danger that water can pose, since I assume the baby girl who will be floating is not going to be alive (although if she is that would be even more interesting to me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since the story is set in an aquarium, there are some terms that I'm not familiar with (e.g. water tank, glass tunnel, glass window, etc.). Am I using them properly?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just one note: usually in an aquarium the water is not too terribly murky so the fish wouldn't disappear that easily.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unrelated to your bullet points there are some grammar issues here that you should look into cleaning up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T13:34:31.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5902" CreationDate="2012-06-11T13:47:01.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Flatten the scope - you are attributing personality to the people he sees, but the words imply they have none. Also focus on the self-obsession of the narrator ( as per @J.R. ). Just my suggestion for re-working it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Outside my window I make out figures who have simply given up. &#xA;  They glance in the bathroom mirror and are met with&#xA;  defeat. Unarticulated, maybe, but real enough, a resignation to the truth that &#xA;  hope for a brilliant future in a lucid,&#xA;  satisfying destiny was misplaced. They had woefully overestimated&#xA;  themselves. They languished, doing nothing in particular for years,&#xA;  with the tacit promise of &quot;self-improvement&quot;. They imagined&#xA;  themselves as successes sometime in the future. They &#xA;  start their journey tomorrow. Or the day&#xA;  after. Or whenever. I move among them, standing beside shadows on the&#xA;  subway, in the store, I knew that I, at some point, suffered&#xA;  their fate. After Kathy, I could never find a rhythm,&#xA;  a groove to approach life from- something that I could keep private&#xA;  and something that could give me direction, inspiration, meaning. So I&#xA;  withdrew. Somebody once said that apathy isn’t the same as&#xA;  withdrawing, but I did it out of confusion and&#xA;  insecurity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Life then came to find me, by which time I had starting losing my hair, aged&#xA;  and wearied, impotent and faded; all the&#xA;  while having loved no one else and nothing else in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This, I understood, is what people are most afraid of.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not suggesting this as a finished piece, just an attempt to make the picture you are painting much flatter, more 2D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T13:47:01.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5902" CreationDate="2012-06-12T00:54:31.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will lead off by saying that I like the passage as written, but I feel it conveys a very different character from the one you describe that you want.  The character you have written, as I see it, first comes across as arrogant and pompous as he describes the uninspired, defeated losers he is watching, and then hints that he might have experienced something that could reveal his nicer qualities once he began to really face his own mortality.  The end of the passage makes me feel hopeful, not despairing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you truly want to convey a character that is alienated and hopeless, then you need to completely rewrite this paragraph. An alienated person does not observe other people's behavior and identify with it; that leads to a sense of connection and fraternity. Even if it is anonymous camaraderie, we can all lift a pint with strangers in a bar.  An alienated person takes all that common feeling and turns it inward and believes that it isolates him from the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I am confused about the hopeless desperation.  &amp;quot;Life then came to find me&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;sounds&lt;/em&gt; hopeful to me, at least upon a first reading.  It reminds me of Dar William's lyric &amp;quot;I think life chose me after all.&amp;quot; I don't think this is what you are trying to say at all. I think you want something like &amp;quot;Life caught up with me,&amp;quot; which would be a more clichéd way of saying &amp;quot;Then I got old.&amp;quot;  But because I stumbled over the message of the sentence, I missed the thrust of the emotion behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my suggested revision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I turned on the faucet and let the water run until it steamed, hoping to erase the face in the bathroom mirror.  An unshaven shell of a man met my eyes with an unarticulated sigh of defeat, resigned to an aged future that was far from the heroic dreams of burgeoning virility. I shook my head scornfully before I laid the razor to jaw.  This pathetic reflection had woefully overestimated his ability to succeed.  He had languished, frittering away the years, with the silent excuse that tomorrow his journey toward destiny would begin, or perhaps the day after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rubbing the towel vigorously against my face, my thoughts made their usual turn to Kathy. After a love like that, a triumph and a catastrophe, I could never find my rhythm or a groove to approach life from—something that I could keep private and something that could give me direction, inspiration, meaning. There was nothing to my life anymore but a balding head, aching knees, and a faded old man filled with memories of what might have been, what &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have been.  I have never loved anyone or anything else and now I know I never will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside my window, I watch the figures of people hurry by without a glance in my direction.  As I move among them, standing beside these shadows on the subway or in the grocery store, I know that I am living my worst fear.  Not one of them will ever know me, and my death, when it comes, will go ungrieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T00:54:31.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5902" CreationDate="2012-06-12T10:21:41.807" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;What strikes me most about your excerpt is that you're speaking in vague generalities, which on their own feel somewhat bombastic. &quot;People have given up,&quot; there is &quot;an unarticulated notion of defeat,&quot; and &quot;they [i.e. everybody] has overestimated themselves.&quot; That's a sweeping, bombastic statement, and without shoring it up with some actual detail to &lt;em&gt;support&lt;/em&gt; this observation, it indeed comes across as being detached and unconvincing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, your detective doesn't give us any real detail about his own experiences. His history, too, is handwaved and described in generalities - he could never &quot;find a rhythm,&quot; he &quot;withdrew from life,&quot; and later &quot;life came to find him.&quot; All of these are fine as an element of description, but they can't carry the weight of compelling portrayal - because they don't actually tell us anything specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider, for example, the lyrics to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Piano-Man-lyrics-Billy-Joel/C76FF1FBFBE36421482568700017360F&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Billy Joel's &lt;em&gt;Piano Man&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Take a look at this bit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now Paul is a real estate novelist &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Who never had time for a wife &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And he's talkin' with Davy, who's still in the Navy &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And probably will be for life &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the waitress is practicing politics &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  As the businessman slowly gets stoned &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  But it's better than drinkin' alone&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you'll find some startling similarity between Joel's sentiment and your own. He's got the same themes of pointless, doomed aspiration. But look how he paints it - he draws characters, each just a handful of words long. He uses the characters to exemplify his theme - instead of just telling us flat-out what his theme is. That's incredibly effective, because simply by recognizing a character of his, by identifying one of the &quot;types&quot; he's describing, you're &lt;em&gt;already&lt;/em&gt; buying into the worldview. He's got you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch how he does it. He chooses the simplest details - but just that give examples of what he's talking about. The guy who doesn't realize his dreams are hopeless; the guy who's stuck somewhere forever; the guy who's supposed to be well-to-do - but is portrayed in a sad, sorry state nonetheless. He gives us a simple, instantly-graspable example of each. Examples, not generalizations - this is simply the classic &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/762/1046&quot;&gt;&quot;Show, Don't Tell&quot;&lt;/a&gt; guideline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once he's built up a solid picture of clear, visual details, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; Joel can afford to set up a generalization or two. &quot;They're sharing a drink they called loneliness, but it's better than drinking alone&quot; - that's vague and general (albeit poetically so). Even without the poetry, this'd still work - &quot;They're all so lonely, they'll take even the most pathetic company imaginable over staying by themselves.&quot; If I tossed this line out without context, it'd be just as cliche and angsty as you're worried your piece is. But supported by the examples, it becomes clear, concrete, convincing - because we just demonstrated this generalization to be believable with our individual examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another great example is Kurt Vonnegut, whose &lt;em&gt;Breakfast of Champions&lt;/em&gt; I read recently. Vonnegut can write with overpowering, all-suffusing morbidity which is nothing less than delicious. How does he do it? Vonnegut &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; make generalizations, talking about all humankind or about grands swaths of history. But he ties them in to specific, precise details - characters, observations, trivia. A snippet from the preface of &lt;em&gt;Breakfast&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I tend to think of human beings as huge, rubbery test tubes, too, with chemical reactions seething inside. When I was a boy, I saw a lot of people with goiters. [...] Those unhappy Earthlings had such swollen thyroid glands that they seemed to have zucchini squash growing from their throats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All they had to do in order to have ordinary lives, it turned out, was to consume less than one-millionth of an ounce of iodine every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My own mother wrecked her brains with chemicals, which were supposed to make her sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When I get depressed, I take a little pill, and I cheer up again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So it is a big temptation to me, when I create a character for a novel, to say that he is what he is because of faulty wiring, or because of microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or failed to eat on that particular day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vonnegut's sentiment is different from your own - what Vonnegut is portraying here is a sort of disgust. Human beings are crude and helpless, he says; they have no free will - yet even though they can be manipulated so easily, their nature is to be sick, to be mad, to be depressed. That's not your sentiment, but it's strong and clear, so it makes a good example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, Vonnegut says &lt;em&gt;explicitly&lt;/em&gt; that he's talking about &lt;em&gt;everybody&lt;/em&gt; - &quot;those unhappy Earthlings,&quot; he calls us. But he, too, uses detail to achieve power. He doesn't say &quot;humans are disgusting&quot; - he gives us specific examples of disgusting things that happen to humans. He doesn't say &quot;humans are pathetic&quot; - he gives us specific examples of pathetic behavior common to humans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, too, notice how he opens with a generalization - &quot;I tend to think of human beings as huge, rubbery test tubes&quot; - and closes with a generalization - the temptation to say that characters (i.e., people) do what they do because of &quot;faulty wiring&quot; and chemicals. All the rest, though, is detail, detail, detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is striking a chord with you, that means you've got work to do. You've got the sentiment - but you haven't fleshed it out yet, at least not here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What needs to be done? Exactly what we've just seen. Think of a few &lt;strong&gt;specific, concrete examples&lt;/strong&gt; of the sentiment you want to express. Then, figure out how you can use them in the text - describe those as things your protagonist sees or knows about; this will replace &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; of the pontificating, though you can keep a few lines here and there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the examples should mesh well with your setting and character - so you might go at it from the other direction, picking major elements that your protagonist interacts with, and then figuring out how those elements (or some part of them) might be a good example for your sentiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck to ye!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T10:21:41.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5894" CreationDate="2012-06-12T12:00:25.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think its the same for everyone, I myself is a newbie in writing and does not have much knowledge about it. When I start to write I get short of words but once I have written few lines and got comfortable in it I continue writing endlessly even things that are not necessary. I think we can overcome this if we first create a rough draft of it and then re-write it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3628" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T12:00:25.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5901" CreationDate="2012-06-12T12:27:22.007" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick answer - I would make the third paragraph start with &quot;Her father&quot;, just to clarify that it is reminiscing - as it stands, it doesn't flow particularly well, there. For the final paragraph, you might want to start with &quot;Back in the present, Sophia ...&quot;, to indicate the end of the reminiscing. However, it is not &quot;wrong&quot; to do as you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That third paragraph could be written without a name at all, and might work being more &quot;disconnected&quot; - in the sense of showing random memories that don't necessarily connect directly, but show a whole. And if it is memories of her childhood, then the farm would have been huge to her. Even though later, she might have realised how small it was. If you can tell this part from the perspective of a young Sophia, and give it a different feel because of that, I think it will work better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suspense - I think you need to focus more on the sense of being surrounded by tons of water, kept away by layers of plastic. Can she tap gently on a tank, look at the side and see how thick - how thin - the plastic is, imagine all of that water on top of her as she walks in the tunnel. Clearly she is imaginative, so let that go a little more. That would keep me reading as it hints at a sense of danger that most people who have been through these types of places have felt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your usage of the words is absolutely fine. You could incorporate some of the phrases you mention more, if you want to emphasise the sense of being surrounded by water ( see my previous point )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T12:27:22.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5894" CreationDate="2012-06-12T15:47:51.453" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try taking a Screenwriting class, one that teaches structure -- or at least plan out what will happen in your story before you sit down to write it.  The other good part about taking a class is that it will give you the feeling that you've got to finish the story, like it or not, in order to finish the class.  So even if you get bored with the story you'll still have reason to see it through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found that by understanding and defining the structure of a project, both at a macro and micro level, a couple things happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing speed is increased drastically&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are no longer writing a &quot;long story&quot;, you are simply writing from the current position up until the next plot piece or structure point. The immediate goal is no longer as amorphous as &quot;to write a  novel&quot;, it is only to get to the next point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to have a similar feeling, that completing a long-form project was unattainable, and the #1 thing that Screenwriting 1-3 did for me was show me that it is within reach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a shameless self-promotion, I've written an iPhone app that helps you do this. It's called StorySkeleton and it exports to native Scrivener and Final Draft, as well as rtf and txt. You can find it here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.storyskeleton.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.storyskeleton.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3750" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T15:47:51.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5912" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-13T10:03:11.210" Score="-1" ViewCount="455" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is sort of the continuation of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5901/opening-paragraphs-of-a-short-story-set-in-an-aquarium&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; previous question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full text is &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexandrochen.com/existential-fiction/reminiscences-of-the-shore/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (just in case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sophia grabbed her bag, and headed towards an entrance in the corner&#xA;  of the room. She walked in, and found herself inside a dark corridor,&#xA;  with a huge water tank at the back. A blue light was coming from it,&#xA;  partially illuminating the walking path. She couldn't tell if it was&#xA;  due to the reflection of the water or an aquarium light. As Sophia&#xA;  walked towards the tank, she noticed that there was something floating&#xA;  in the middle it. At first she thought it was a baby Beluga whale that&#xA;  had gotten lost from its mother. But after examining it carefully, she&#xA;  realized that it was baby girl. She was naked and curled in fetal&#xA;  position. Sophia wanted to scream for help but her vocal cords, as&#xA;  well as the rest of her body, were paralyzed. She felt as if time had&#xA;  momentarily frozen, like a river in a harsh cold winter. The baby&#xA;  opened her eyes after a moment, and stared fixedly at Sophia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They were dark and deep, like small black holes. Sophia felt as if&#xA;  they were looking directly into her soul. The very core of her&#xA;  existence. She was terrified, but for some reason, she found something&#xA;  familiar in those eyes. It was then that the thought struck her: the&#xA;  baby was herself. She was staring at an image of herself, or to put it&#xA;  better, an image that once was herself. Before Sophia had the changed&#xA;  to have any further thought, the shark whale she had seen before&#xA;  appeared from on side of the water tank. It passed in front of her,&#xA;  swimming with the speed of a torpedo, swallowed the baby, and&#xA;  disappeared at the other side of the tank. Sophia watched the whole&#xA;  episode breathlessly, with her lips slightly parted. A deep emptiness&#xA;  and anguish surrounded her. She felt as if something inside her had&#xA;  been pulled out. Something that she would never be able to get back&#xA;  again. She realized at that moment something that she had known all&#xA;  along; the sea no longer belonged to her. What she once called home,&#xA;  was now a distant world. A world that was far away from her reach. She&#xA;  was no longer part of the sea, and the sea was no longer part of her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if the actions flow smoothly together (along with the character's emotions). If not, how to improve them?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I feel that I'm just 'gluing&quot; the actions by starting the next sentence with &lt;strong&gt;&quot;after that,&quot; &quot;at that moment,&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;&quot;then.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; How can I replace them with something else?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T18:21:37.337" Title="How to improve the ending of this short story (final scene + flashback)" Tags="|fiction|ending|flashback|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5045" CreationDate="2012-06-13T10:36:35.847" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think first you need to spread the news out there that you have written some short stories it can be done by sharing a work in good social networking sites and once everyone is informaed then you should go forward with deciding on its price and sale thereafter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3628" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T10:36:35.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5912" CreationDate="2012-06-13T11:02:38.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sentences starting with &quot;then&quot; etc can usually be amended by leaving them out, and indicating the time using more expressive statements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They were dark and deep, like small black holes. Sophia felt as if they were looking directly into her soul. The very core of her existence. She was terrified, but for some reason, she found something familiar in those eyes. The thought struck her: the baby was herself. She was staring at an image of herself, or to put it better, an image that once was herself. Before Sophia had the chance to have any further thought, the shark whale she had seen before appeared from on side of the water tank. It passed in front of her, swimming with the speed of a torpedo, swallowed the baby, and disappeared at the other side of the tank. Sophia watched the whole episode breathlessly, with her lips slightly parted. A deep emptiness and anguish surrounded her. She felt as if something inside her had been pulled out. Something that she would never be able to get back. She realized at that moment something that she had known all along; the sea no longer belonged to her. What she once called home, was now a distant world. A world that was far away from her reach. She was no longer part of the sea, and the sea was no longer part of her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have amended your text as minimally as possible, but I think it still has the same sense, without any of those words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T11:02:38.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5915" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-13T15:55:27.493" Score="5" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that many authors discuss &quot;building&quot; their novels using scenes as the fundamental building block. Be it by software or notecard, the scenes are identified, arranged and written, then chapter divisions made. From what I have read, it appears to be the accepted method of novel writing these days. &lt;strong&gt;Does anyone know when (and where) it first started to be used?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I ask is that 25+ years ago I received my undergraduate degree in Creative Writing and although I had a number of courses in fiction writing, I can't recall ever even hearing about scenes in writing. Nor were they mentioned in my literature courses. Is it something relatively new or were my undergraduate studies subpar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T17:03:18.443" Title="How long has the &quot;scene&quot; method been used for writing a novel?" Tags="|plot|scene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5372" CreationDate="2012-06-13T16:20:48.277" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally no, you do not need permission from the patent holder to use text from their patent application. &quot;Subject to limited exceptions reflected in 37 CFR 1.71(d) &amp;amp; (e) and 1.84(s) , the text and drawings of a patent are typically not subject to copyright restrictions.&quot; The exception referenced within deals with patent apps which themselves contain copyrighted material.&#xA;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspto.gov/news/media/ccpubguide.jsp&quot;&gt;http://www.uspto.gov/news/media/ccpubguide.jsp&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T16:20:48.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5915" CreationDate="2012-06-13T17:03:18.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How did your education propose that you prepare a project before sitting down to write it? I mean rather than using notecards, how did you define the plot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scenes obviously dominate screenwriting. So it's likely a crossover from that. Calling the events that happen in one time &amp;amp; place a &quot;scene&quot; is just a handy metaphor, and I'd be surprised if it had an identifiable point for when the metaphor crossed over from screenwriting to other forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a filmmaking background, and in college I took three screenwriting courses and one creative writing course, and the screenwriting courses were 100% structure, beats, and scenes, while the creative writing course contained absolutely no formalized structure advice, just focused on reading great stories, then writing and workshopping short stories. The screenwriting teacher was younger and the creative writing teacher was older, so that may support the idea that the scene metaphor is a newer phenomenon in creative writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3750" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T17:03:18.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2012-06-13T17:53:06.013" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funny, no one has mentioned the MS Manual of Style for Technical Publications ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Avoid the generic masculine pronoun. Use the instead of his, or rewrite material in the second person (you) or in the plural. If necessary, use a plural pronoun such&#xA;as they or their with an indefinite singular antecedent, such as everyone, or with&#xA;multiple antecedents of different or unknown genders, such John and Chris. Use&#xA;his or her for the singular possessive case if you can do so infrequently and if nothing&#xA;else works. - MSTP v3, page 107&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3754" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T17:53:06.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="476" CreationDate="2012-06-13T21:19:27.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just use the wiki list's most popular names database: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_popular_given_names&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_popular_given_names&lt;/a&gt; which gives you a breakdown of names by Region and country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For US names, particularly if you are needing a historically accurate name for a specific time frame, I use the Social Security name database: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/decades/century.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/decades/century.html&lt;/a&gt; to make sure a name is not too unusual for the time of the story. For example, &quot;Lisa&quot; is a great name to use for a story about someone born between 1960-1975 or so, but would be somewhat unusual for a person born in 1950 or 2010 to have the name. Similarly, while &quot;Jayden&quot; has been popular these past couple of years, it wouldn't be a common name in a story set in the 1980's or for an adult to have in a story set in our current time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T21:19:27.077" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-06-13T21:19:27.077" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2012-06-13T21:33:47.740" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently stumbled upon &lt;strong&gt;How NOT to Write a Novel&lt;/strong&gt; a few months back and have read it twice already. Well worth the time and money, IMHO, and I own most of the other titles on this list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0061357952&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Novel-Misstep-Misstep/dp/0061357952&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T21:33:47.740" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-06-13T21:33:47.740" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3901" CreationDate="2012-06-13T22:10:07.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple answer, you can't use someone else's copyrighted material in your own fiction without either paying them for the license or having them grant you a license for no charge. This is as true for song lyrics as it is for a poem, essay or someone else's work of fiction. It makes no difference if you attribute the work or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an article from the UK's Guardian which explains the mess an author found himself in for quoting a single line from a couple of songs: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/01/blake-morrison-lyrics-copyright&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/01/blake-morrison-lyrics-copyright&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The doctrine of &amp;quot;fair use&amp;quot; does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; apply to creative works, such as fiction. It does apply in instances of non-fiction, particularly in academic scholarship or commentary. Here is a brief summary on fair use from the US copyright office: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20210605143659/https://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you absolutely must have the song lyrics in your own work, you'll need to get clearance from the owner. The easiest way to do that is to follow the footsteps of those who record cover songs. Go to Limelight (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.songclearance.com/pricing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.songclearance.com/pricing&lt;/a&gt;) or Harry Fox's Songfile (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harryfox.com/public/songfile.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.harryfox.com/public/songfile.jsp&lt;/a&gt;) and use their tools to identify the lyricist. There is a good chance that you'll find the performer you attribute the song to didn't actually write it. But take solace in the fact that if the song is popular enough for you to want to pay to use some of its lyrics, one of those two entities will help take your money!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2022-05-12T05:31:10.497" LastActivityDate="2022-05-12T05:31:10.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4961" CreationDate="2012-06-15T03:12:49.173" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not trust Kirkus Indie to provide a real review. I have had a very bad experience with them. I'll say it loud and clear: stay away! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assumed that a company of their repute would, surely, give a full read of the manuscript. I paid $575 for a review (express service). The resulting review was ridiculous - it made such gross mistakes describing the plot, I can guarantee the reviewer never read the entire work. They &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; skim it enough to check correct spellings of character names right and pick out a few choice details, but I cannot believe they made any more effort than that. The so-called &quot;problems&quot; with the narrative simply did not exist. There was a major aberration of the story arc as a whole and therefore, the reviewer just summed it all up the way he/she wanted to see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My efforts to complain and to demand a refund were firmly rebuffed, though I am certain I could prove my case if they'd simply give me a chance to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, Kirkus Indie is a scam and should be avoided. They're certainly not a good address for seeking a helpful assessment of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;O.K. with the edit--but I did present my &quot;case&quot; in a clear, logical manner--asking that the editor there ask the reviewer only a few brief, but pertinent questions (proving my assurance that she did not read major, crucial sections) and I asked that it be done in a live call. Not in an email. (as it would give time for the writer to go back to the manuscript to answer those questions). I suggested this as the Kirkus Indie CEO assured me that every reviewer assigned a book must read the entire work. This is something they are adamant about, she assured me. However, when it got down to the wire, both she and the editor ignored my request and responded with tepid, defensive statements from their reviewer--who was interrogated via email about anything but my questions. The attitude was: &quot;Too bad.&quot; it's &quot;her opinion&quot;. The problem is, she was factually and demonstratively incorrect. They clearly did not care to get to the truth of the matter. They only wanted to protect their position as the bottom line for them was to keep my money. That's another thing: they say &quot;Well, if you don't like the review we'll make sure it never sees the light of day.&quot; They actually say this. And proudly. Like they're doing you a big favor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3759" LastEditorUserId="3759" LastEditDate="2012-06-16T06:54:06.507" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T06:54:06.507" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3901" CreationDate="2012-06-15T13:15:09.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fair Use is not relevant for this, as it is fiction - it is intended to allow academic or other non-fiction to reference existing work for the purpose of comment and critique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way around this in a fictional work would be to have the character sing along with some of the words, some of them wrongly heard, so that it is clear what the song is, but you are not using the lyrics fully. As long as you are careful, this should be OK, although, of course, IANAL. Crediting them as well would be a positive. An example may be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Johnny turned on the radio. As he organised his room, his favorite song of the moment came on, so he bounced around the room singing &quot;...nothing lasts forever ...&quot; as he tidied his underwear drawer; &quot;... in the cold September rain ...&quot; as he put his boots away; &quot;I need some ties, on my own...&quot; as he sorted the wardrobe; &quot;... you're not the only one&quot; as he organised his sock drawer. He broke off for the air guitar riff, of course, because that's the law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(OK, maybe not, but this sort of idea).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T13:15:09.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-15T18:46:07.590" Score="7" ViewCount="457" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had my book reviewed by people who are interested in the topic of the book. Now I am interested in reviews by professional book reviewers. What is the appropriate way - directly approaching potential reviewers or submitting the book details somewhere online?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2021-01-29T09:17:53.677" LastActivityDate="2021-01-29T09:17:53.677" Title="How can I get my non-fiction book reviewed by professional reviewers?" Tags="|non-fiction|reviews|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1875" CreationDate="2012-06-16T01:23:16.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I subscribe to the &quot;John Steinbeck school-of-thought&quot; on character description, as set forth in his prologue to &lt;em&gt;Sweet Tuesday&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I like a lot of talk in a book, and I don’t like to have nobody tell&#xA;  me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what&#xA;  he looks like from the way he talks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently, when I describe my characters I try to only include descriptions that are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;necessary for some plot point (e.g. referencing glasses on a&#xA;character if his inability to see clearly without them is&#xA;important);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the cause of some character flaw or issue that is pertinent (e.g. a facial birthmark that creates shyness);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the result of some necessary backstory the reader has or will be told about (e.g. a limp caused from a childhood fall); or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is something unique enough that anyone meeting the character for the first time would obviously notice (e.g. Holden's red &quot;people shooting hat&quot; in &lt;em&gt;Catcher in the Rye&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T01:23:16.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2555" CreationDate="2012-06-16T02:01:04.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is how you can avoid legal repercussions when writing a &lt;em&gt;non-fiction&lt;/em&gt; story based on events in your life:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;libel&lt;/a&gt; anyone;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_laws_of_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;invade their privacy&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't put them in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_light&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;false light&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't cause them emotional distress, either &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_infliction_of_emotional_distress&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;intentionally&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligent_infliction_of_emotional_distress&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;negligently&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To know whether or not your manuscript blatantly does one (or more) of the above, you'll need to have a lawyer read it over and give you a legal opinion on whether or not you crossed the line. Of course, nothing can prevent your aggrieved ex-co-worker from still filing a lawsuit against you but at least you've done all you can to minimize the likelihood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your ex-co-worker was a well-known &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_figure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;public figure&lt;/a&gt; then you are safer (at least in the U.S.) as the target of your writing would have to be able to demonstrate that you had &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_malice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;actual malice&lt;/a&gt; towards them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worth reading author &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.terenceblacker.com/writers-shed/writers-shed-notes34.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Terrance Blacker's thoughts on being read for libel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T02:01:04.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5929" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5932" CreationDate="2012-06-16T05:40:28.713" Score="2" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently started a MLB baseball website. On the site, we focus on covering the Kansas City Royals and all of the Royals' minor league affiliate teams. For each minor league affiliate, I receive all team press releases and all other media releases, including: pre-game notes, post-game notes, series notes, roster transactions and everything else offered to the media by the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am new to this aspect of sports writing, so I am unfamiliar with the etiquette. Are these releases meant to be published as is? Are they meant to be an aid in writing my own articles on the topic? How are the press releases supposed to be cited, since many times there is not an actual publicly available copy on the teams' websites?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any additional advice on how to use press releases would be greatly appreciated as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3548" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T14:45:29.047" Title="What is the proper usage and etiquette for using press releases from an external source on a website?" Tags="|blog|websites|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5930" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5964" CreationDate="2012-06-16T10:57:01.883" Score="1" ViewCount="1563" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is the opening of a short story I'm writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Erin stared at Ruth, eyes narrowed. &quot;There was&#xA;  an earthquake last night?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ruth nodded. &quot;Around 9p.m. The news says it&#xA;  was a 4.3 on the Ritcher scale.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Erin searched through her memory, but came up with nothing. What I was&#xA;  doing at that time? she wondered. One thing for sure: she wasn't&#xA;  asleep. She didn't go to bed that early. If for any reason she had&#xA;  fallen asleep, the intense shaking would have woken her up&#xA;  immediately. After all, she wasn't a heavy sleeper. It occurred to her&#xA;  that maybe she had indeed felt earthquake, it just that she didn't&#xA;  remember it. But she decided to discard that hypothesis. She didn't&#xA;  consider herself particularly smart. But when it came to remembering&#xA;  things, specially events of that magnitude, her brain never failed&#xA;  her. Only one possibility was left; she didn't fell the earthquake.&#xA;  But how can that be? She asked herself. The idea couldn't fit into her&#xA;  mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't remember feeling any shaking,&quot; Erin finally said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's strange,&quot; Ruth said, and grabbed a cigarette from her purse, and lit it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They remained silent for a moment, lost in their thoughts. Erin stared&#xA;  at the neon sign beside her. Ruth was smoking her cigarette,&#xA;  and glancing at the other tables from time to time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it grab the reader's attention (starting from the first line)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this opening make you want to keep reading?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2012-06-20T01:50:10.347" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T08:13:19.693" Title="Does my story beginning hook the reader? (dialogue + narration)?" Tags="|fiction|openings|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5930" CreationDate="2012-06-16T12:14:15.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No on both count at least for me. I don't know what Ritcher scale is. Typo? Do people say Shit twice like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2794" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T12:14:15.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5929" CreationDate="2012-06-16T14:45:29.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How you use this material is ultimately up to you and will depend on how you structure your site. If you are basically just providing a stopping point for fans to come and obtain this information, then use it as is and attribute the information to the team. Below is an example on how you might do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Press Release - 6/16/2012 - Baltimore Orioles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to write your own stories based on this information, then you should still provide attribution so that readers know the source of your information. These press releases and other information are just sources, and as such should be acknowledged. One way to do this would be to provide a closing tagline such as this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This article written with the assistance of information provided by the Baltimore Orioles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were actually at the game or heard ot in the radio or something, then you might mention that in your article, but that would the only case in which attribution would not be directly necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also have a copyright notice on your site that states that all information pertaining to each team is the property of MLB and may not be reproduced without their express written permission. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mlb.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MLB.com&lt;/a&gt; will have more specific guidelines.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This of course brings up another point. Have you yourself obtained that &quot;express written permission&quot;? I used to be a co-owner of a fantasy baseball site, and over ten years ago MLB became the sole owner and executor of ALL things related to professional baseball in the United States and abroad. At the time our site was active, we received promotional materials straight from the actual teams, and we then gave those materials as prizes. We received a notice from MLB that we could no longer use the logos, team names, team statistics, or any promotional materials for any specific team without first agreeing to a licensing contract. We also received a notice from the MLBPA (player's association) that we could no longer use a player's name or likeness, his individual stats (which were now fully owned by MLB), or even his uniform number in reference to a specific team without signing a licensing contract with them AND MLB! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MLB has become extremely protective of their brand and all materials associated with it, and if there is even a chance that you might profit in any way from your activities, they will definitely want their share first. I would suggest you check very closely on the sources of your information to see what the terms of use are before making any effort to share this information with the general public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T14:45:29.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5930" CreationDate="2012-06-16T18:34:22.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No and no for me as well.  Here is my feedback:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Too much emphasis on the surroundings, rather than on characters. I don't care that it was a &lt;em&gt;spicy&lt;/em&gt; chicken leg, &lt;em&gt;Marlboro Light&lt;/em&gt; cigarettes, on a neon sign advertising &lt;em&gt;Heineken&lt;/em&gt;. Maybe you think such inferences help us &quot;see&quot; the surroundings, but they made me feel like I was trudging through a swamp of detail. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why was she musing about a 6.0 earthquake, when the news said it was 4.3?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People who shrug their shoulders while declaring, &lt;em&gt;&quot;I think I missed it somehow&quot;&lt;/em&gt; don't generally &lt;em&gt;discard their hypotheses&lt;/em&gt; – maybe they &lt;em&gt;dismiss their ideas&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;forget their thoughts&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;shrug off their notions&lt;/em&gt;, but not &lt;em&gt;discard their hypotheses&lt;/em&gt;. (I didn't think those words were a good fit).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You wrote: &quot;One thing was sure to her...&quot;  Why not, more simply, &quot;One thing was sure...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;She didn't fell [sic] earthquake.&quot;  This passage isn't ready for prime time. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T18:34:22.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5934" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5939" CreationDate="2012-06-16T21:23:20.350" Score="-1" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a software developer, as I get older, I find myself with the issue of not having as much time to learn as I once did. My learning schedule has gone from 'whenever I have time' to 2 hours or so a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been looking to document my learning so I can make more efficient use of my time, however, I have ran in to problems when trying to lay out my notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep finding myself returning to a format similar to what could be considered a tutorial but I worry this may not be the best way to take notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate any insight people have who document their learning or work on a regular basis. Cheers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For clarity my question is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have made the assumption that writers are more adept at keeping notes than others. I am asking what particular styles of note keeping do you find works and why. My current style is to write my notes in a format that is similar to how you would write a tutorial on a subject. These style of notes tend to be &quot;addressed&quot; to a &quot;reader&quot; and also tend to be more long winded than I would like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My notes end up reading as if I wrote them to teach somebody else on a given topic and this does seem natural, yet very inefficient. I was hoping writers, who tend to have to plan stories, plots and characters could give me an insight into how they translate all this information for thought to paper in a structured format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3760" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2020-03-14T12:33:15.100" LastActivityDate="2020-03-14T12:33:15.100" Title="Is a 'tutorial format' acceptable for personal notes?" Tags="|structure|notes|tutorial|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2012-06-17T22:36:25.063" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5926" CreationDate="2012-06-16T22:03:46.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to follow a lot of blogs by other professionals in the field. Comment on their blogs, reply to their tweets, engage with them. This way you will build credibility, and the other professionals will get to know you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once your name has some &quot;brand&quot; awareness, then you can ask others to review your book. It would help you if you review books by others too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this whole process may take a few years, as it takes years to build credibility. Unless you are well known in your field, you may not get many reviews from professionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T22:03:46.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5930" CreationDate="2012-06-17T00:02:55.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It was quite difficult to read actually. I am not sure you are not a native English speaker, there are many grammatical mistakes that I expect to see from non-native speakers. Examples (3 from several): &quot;...and glancing at the people in the other tables from time to time&quot; &#xA;instead of &quot;...at the other tables...&quot; and &quot;I decided to open my eyes, and for my surprise, the shaking had stopped.&quot; instead of &quot;...and to my surprise...&quot; and a style rather than grammar one &quot;Heineken neon sign&quot; is better as &quot;neon Heineken sign&quot; as it places the emphasis better (on Heineken).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also colons in place of semicolons.&#xA;All in all it is overly wordy, and has some strange logic holes - do we notice shaking has stopped when we open our eyes - or because we can no longer feel the vibrations. &quot;...my apartment room...&quot; no need for &quot;room&quot; here as it is obvious if you are in an apartment you are in a room, &quot;...my apartment's sitting room...&quot; perhaps. &quot;took a package of Marlboro Light from her purse, and lit a cigarette up&quot; no need for &quot;up&quot; either really &quot;took a package of Marlboro Light from her purse, and lit a cigarette&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has the 'first hit' look and feel to it. You need to reread it several times - go take a break and then read it fresh. Then errors will scream at you and better way to say things will come to mind. I often rewrite whole sections several times on rereads - sometimes even wiping out whole scenes or characters - it has to fit and it has to flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep at it :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3761" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T00:02:55.927" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-17T01:33:18.543" Score="-1" ViewCount="1179" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wondering if anyone had recommendations for software that converts handwriting (fairly legible penmanship) to computerized text? Any hiccups or bottlenecks in the process/workflow? Sensitivity to ink and paper combinations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A potential project involves the handwritten text on one page and its typewritten conversion on the other. One application is assessing translation quality and integrity from archival texts that are handwritten. Another is for artist's books, ones intended to preserve the aesthetic quality of the author's &lt;em&gt;calligraphic&lt;/em&gt; style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3762" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-06-18T03:59:51.287" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T03:59:51.287" Title="Software that converts handwriting to computer text" Tags="|software|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2012-06-17T02:21:31.013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5937" CreationDate="2012-06-17T01:37:57.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had pretty good luck using the text conversation in Mircosoft OneNote, both scanned in text and hand written stuff, and my handing writing is pretty bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T01:37:57.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5934" CreationDate="2012-06-17T12:10:07.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The best way&quot; is whatever works for you. They're your notes. You have to refer to them and learn from them. Take notes in whatever fashion helps you to learn and retain the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T12:10:07.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5940" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-17T19:05:23.830" Score="4" ViewCount="1481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using the Scene/Sequel model to go from an informal outline of my novel to a list of scenes. In summary, during a Scene the POV Character has a Goal, encounters some Conflict, and it ends in Disaster; during a Sequel, the POVC has a Reaction to this disaster, faces a Dilemma, and finally makes a Decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble figuring out how this structure applies to a specific part of what I'm writing. As the Disaster of the previous scene, the POVC is declared a traitor by his superior, who will execute him immediately. The Reaction of the POVC is to resign to die; however, after some thought, his superior decides to let him live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens with this second scene? It has the Reaction of the POVC, but the Dilemma and Decision of another, non-POV character. Should I ignore this breakage of the rules and go forward happily, because this is a tool that should help me instead of limiting me? Should I figure a way to merge this segment as part of the previous and next scenes, to follow a proven structure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe I got the scale wrong, and all of these things I'm thinking of as &quot;scenes&quot; are actually small parts of a bigger scene with bigger goals, conflicts, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, should &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; be a scene? Can I skip parts of the scene, e.g. have a Reaction, skip the Dilemma and the Decision, and have a new Goal - or another way to put it, can the Dilemma and the Decision take just a few words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2019-03-22T16:14:52.927" LastActivityDate="2019-06-21T22:04:39.717" Title="Issues with Scene/Sequel model" Tags="|fiction|technique|structure|scene|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5941" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5942" CreationDate="2012-06-17T21:24:19.223" Score="3" ViewCount="5068" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been writing bits and pieces for quite a while now. I just can't ever follow through. I have written tons of poems (close to 50) but the only reason they have been possible is because I can finish them in one sitting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking of trying to do a short story instead of a full length novel I've been working on. How can I stick with one story instead of constantly skipping around? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3767" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:55:07.977" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:55:07.977" Title="How do I stick to one story?" Tags="|creative-writing|short-story|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5941" CreationDate="2012-06-18T01:06:57.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This could be a problem with discipline on your part. Nobody can help you follow through on commitments except yourself, but perhaps the problem is that you don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; a commitment of any sort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe that's not it; maybe you get &lt;a href=&quot;http://magnificentnose.com/2012/01/02/i-dont-have-time-to-believe-in-writers-block/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;writer's block&lt;/a&gt;? Maybe you follow the rule of thumb, &quot;when you get stuck on a story, write something else.&quot; And maybe that happens a lot to you? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, ask yourself with each project: &quot;What do I want to achieve?&quot; Do you want to write a short story? A novel? a decalogy of books? All of these are achievable goals. Pick a project (&quot;A story of length [foo] about [topic]&quot;) and set a &lt;em&gt;deadline&lt;/em&gt; for yourself. Whether you want to break that deadline down into dates for outlines, character sketches, first draft - that's up to you. But tell yourself you'll be coming back to that, because you've set a hard date for completion of the first draft and the final edit and submission to a magazine/agent/publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short story is a great stepping-stone to a novel. But a novel is not the be-all and end-all of writing. (Except for established novelists, of course.) Some of my favorite books &lt;a href=&quot;http://magnificentnose.com/2012/03/12/shorter/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;are barely novels&lt;/a&gt; by the modern definition. But if you want it to be a step on the way to a longer book, plan for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are tricks for how to stick to a deadline: Set a daily word count, set aside daily writing time, get yourself a place to write (home office, the bus, coffeeshop) - but these are frills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What seems to work for more people is to write every day. Don't stop. Ever. If you don't enjoy the process of writing, if you're not doing it all the time, you won't improve and you won't keep it up. (Okay, fine, take the weekends off &lt;em&gt;if you must&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get off the internet, stop reading books about writing, stop planning (particularly if you have &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/796/26&quot;&gt;world-builder's syndrome&lt;/a&gt;). Sit down and write. When you finish the thing you're writing? Write something else. Stuck on the piece you're working on? Write something else for a while. But, since your problem is that you're skipping around, leave yourself an easy place to pick up. Stop in the middle of a sentence, perhaps, or leave yourself a few notes about what you want to do and why you're stuck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T03:52:49.407" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5941" CreationDate="2012-06-18T01:08:42.747" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write an outline. At the very least write a sketch. So you are writing your story before you write your story. Have an idea of where it starts, what happens, and how it ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives you something to hang your ideas on. Then when you feel like walking away, or you get bored, you can go over your outline and see what's supposed to happen, and pick some other part to work on. Or focus on getting from wherever you are to some arbitrary next point in the outline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T01:08:42.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5948" CreationDate="2012-06-18T02:51:59.467" Score="4" ViewCount="990" Body="&lt;p&gt;After the great amount of encouragement that you all gave me &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3573/how-do-i-balance-work-with-my-love-of-writing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, you'd be happy to know that I finally started writing my novel and I'm writing whenever I get time. Special thanks goes to Lauren for that quote of hers. I loved it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay. So I'm following the three act structure for my thriller. And as I read somewhere, according to this structure, the first act should end when the novel reaches around 25% of its length; Here, as most of us know, the protagonist is supposed to start his journey, the story goal is supposed to become clearly visible &amp;amp; concrete along with the story question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the problem that I am facing is this: Although my first act does everything what it is supposed to do, it ends at around 38%. Which, I feel, is devastating. &#xA;Although I asked a couple of my friends who are avid readers, to proofread my work up til here and they said that the humour (I have used humour in the whole act just to cover up my placing of 'links-in-a-thriller') is very finely written and it kept them going without letting them feel any lags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I tried clubbing a few scenes together; keeping what is required. But as soon as I did that, the 'links' that i had placed became visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now i do not know what to do! I mean, If i condense the scenes, the links show up. If i don't then the Act becomes wider. And the conversations, though lengthy, are equally important because it gives the backstory to the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T13:15:36.303" Title="My first act is lengthy. And I cannot shorten it. Any Suggestions?" Tags="|editing|plot|structure|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5940" CreationDate="2012-06-18T03:36:14.607" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am no expert, but I do not think it is a hard and fast rule.&#xA;As far as I have noted, the Scene/Sequel structure is used with the sole intention of driving the novel forward. This subsequent following of a Proactive scene (Scene) by a Reactive Scene (Sequel) is most of the time used to raise stakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a thriller, the Reactive scenes are shorter because a thriller is generally fast paced. So you do have the authority to customize the paradigm. But certainly, do not do so to such an extent that it creates confusion and/or seem incompatible with the previous scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your scene that you have described, let's plot it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Proactive&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflict:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disaster: Declared traitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reactive&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reaction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dilemma:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decision: resign and die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now here, if you insert a Proactive scene, According to me, there will be incompatibility. Instead, what i think you should do is, Followed by the decision of the reactive scene, give him the good news that he will not be executed and then insert a conflict followed by a dilemma and a decision and then continue with the paradigm.&#xA;So it becomes this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Proactive&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflict:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disaster: Declared traitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reactive&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reaction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dilemma:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decision: resign and die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;surprise&lt;/em&gt; : Will not be executed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Conflict&lt;/em&gt; : But...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dilemma&lt;/em&gt;  : So the choice is difficult between... &amp;lt;- you may omit this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Decision&lt;/em&gt; : hence he will. &amp;lt;-this sets the goal for the following Proactive/Reactive sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Proactive&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reactive&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hope that helps! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T03:36:14.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5944" CreationDate="2012-06-18T06:15:13.310" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Expand the other two acts until that the first takes 25% ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a more serious note, why do you feel this is &quot;devastating&quot;? The way I read your friends' feedback, it's working just fine. You'd have a problem if the act &lt;em&gt;felt&lt;/em&gt; too long, or got boring, but it doesn't seem to be the case here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to take a look at the &quot;lengthy conversations that give backstory&quot;, though. Is all of that backstory necessary &lt;em&gt;at that point&lt;/em&gt;? You could move parts of it to later in the book. Or you could shorten the conversations and give the backstory in a less explicit way (give hints, rather than lengthy exposition). Would the characters say everything they're saying if the reader wasn't listening?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T06:15:13.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5941" CreationDate="2012-06-18T08:28:59.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many respects, you have hit on the core problem of many writers, which is sticking with a task that has become boring ( new work is always far more interesting ). This is a discipline, that you need to develop to become a good writer, because the rework, rewrite, critique process is so important to producing really good material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, I am writing up my PhD thesis ATM, It is tedious, boring work. I have done most of the interesting stuff already, but I need to achieve this document before I can get any credit for that. And re-writing it again and again is hard going, but necessity. Because the end result is not my experimental work, but my written thesis. In the same way with other work, the result is not your brilliant initial idea, it is the slow and careful crafting of that into a work that means other people can get your brilliant idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T08:28:59.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5944" CreationDate="2012-06-18T10:00:25.137" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quit bean-counting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finish the novel and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; go back and worry about whether the first act works. Methods for structuring a story are guides, not laws. The novel &lt;em&gt;Jonathan Strange &amp;amp; Mr. Norrell&lt;/em&gt; is 850 pages. I remember vividly that the first six hundred were a complete slog, and then suddenly something &lt;em&gt;happened&lt;/em&gt; and the last 200-odd pages went like a shot. That worked for that book. Who knows what will work for yours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put the entire story together, set it aside, and then go back and look at it with fresh eyes. If your first act is the right length, stop worrying. There will be other things to fix. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T10:00:25.137" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5428" CreationDate="2012-06-18T10:31:30.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What &quot;feels right&quot; to me would be leaving your paragraph just as it is, except replacing the &lt;em&gt;last&lt;/em&gt; semicolon with a comma:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James T. Smith, vice president of widgets at WidgetCo.; Mary Holmes, chief foo officer at FoobRUs; Sheldon DeVane, head of global placeholding at RiMelioraDies Inc.; and Lisa Catera, chief lending officer at Plugitin Motors, will be speaking at tomorrow's conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I haven't formally studied English, and it's not even my native language, so this is just a gut feeling - how I'd write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T10:31:30.753" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5950" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5953" CreationDate="2012-06-18T11:43:00.490" Score="5" ViewCount="473" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay here's the thing. After a tough verbal fight with my friend, I concluded that I will post this question here and get some concrete answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to what I feel, italicized words are used &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For internal monologues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;And what about her cousin? Mary?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I shook my head. &quot;No... No contact with her too.&quot; &lt;em&gt;Except sometimes getting slapped by her for free.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For stressing on certain words&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As far as I know, I &lt;em&gt;am&lt;/em&gt; right.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;No. You &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; right.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But is this valid?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw her look towards me as I entered the office, &quot;It was him.&quot;&#xA;I turned around to see who she was pointing at. But there was no one. She was not looking looking &lt;em&gt;towards&lt;/em&gt; me.She was looking &lt;em&gt;at&lt;/em&gt; me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument that my friend gives is that I should not use the italicized words in sentences because it looks rude to read. But I say why can't I if I want the tone at that very word to be emphasized? He says I should use single inverted commas instead. But I use them for my dialogues within dialogues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help. I am really confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T14:25:51.700" Title="Some doubts on the use of Italicized words" Tags="|description|scene|tone|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5950" CreationDate="2012-06-18T11:53:11.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no harm in using italic but if you want to specifically emphasize on any word making it bold would have a better impact. I feel using italics makes it a little informal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3628" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-06-18T14:09:48.493" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T14:09:48.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5950" CreationDate="2012-06-18T11:58:46.180" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most writing, the use for internal monologues is valid, but bold, as per @CarolHardin, is more common for emphasis.In most typefaces, I think bold is clearer. Italic just indicates that this is a different voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T11:58:46.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5950" CreationDate="2012-06-18T12:55:27.957" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read a lot of novels in my life and I cannot remember one, that uses &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt; for emphasizing. But maybe that's just my memory problem. I prefer &lt;em&gt;italic&lt;/em&gt;, but honestly, that is a matter of taste and totally up to the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer italic words, because they stand out without shouting at the reader. One bold word on a page is attracting the eye. It's almost like the North Pole to a compass needle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Italic instead stands out &lt;em&gt;while you read it&lt;/em&gt; and not during all the time your eye look at the page. (Aren't you attracted to the &quot;bold&quot; above from the very beginning and still are?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, using quotation marks (single, double, whatever) could be problematic. They are used for citing, for dialogues, for emphasizing and to mark irony or obscene meanings of some words (like &quot;cock&quot;). Now, which one are you using and how do you tell it your readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, don't have doubts, you are the writer, it's your story and if your friend has a problem with your markup, tell him/her to write his/her own story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T12:55:27.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5944" CreationDate="2012-06-18T13:20:34.127" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the first act should end when the novel reaches around 25% of its length&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aaaaaaaah!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the wordlimit for a debut author is 50K [comment to Lauren's answer]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aaaaaaaah!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Listen, XORGate, you have a problem, but it is not your writing. You think arbitrary limits are God's commandments. They are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many writers succeeded, because they &lt;em&gt;broke&lt;/em&gt; rules intentionally. Don't be a slave of rules other people made up. People you do not know, are probably long dead, and of whom you do not know &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they made these rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, after 25% shouldn't end the first act, there should be the first &lt;em&gt;turning point&lt;/em&gt;. It really doesn't matter how long your act is. But even this turning point can be somewhere else if it works for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; novel. They just say it should be there, because that works for the majority of novels. So it looks like a good idea, but that does not guarantee that it is one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, word limits are one of the most arbitrary limits ever invented by human beings. If you want to publish traditionally and they like your book, if they are hooked by the beginning, if they see that the story flows, they will publish it, no matter if it has 50K or 80K words. Can you really imagine a publisher saying: &quot;Well, excellent book and it would sell well, but sadly it's too long&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, in the world of today self publishing is an option. So you can write and publish whatever you want. And now don't tell me, that you know a reader who asks for the word count before picking up a book. The thickness of a book does not tell you anything about the word count. If readers want smaller books in your country (what I doubt), then you can fake that with the correct layout and most won't even notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T13:20:34.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5950" CreationDate="2012-06-18T14:25:51.700" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;...it looks &lt;em&gt;rude&lt;/em&gt;? I have never heard of italics being called &amp;quot;rude.&amp;quot; Your friend is full of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both your examples are perfect exactly as they are. The first one is a brief interior monologue, set off by formatting. The second uses italics for emphasis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Single quotes (or single inverted commas) are, as you correctly stated, used for nested quoted material (dialogues within dialogues). Quotes can be used to refer to something mockingly, or to indicate that something has an inferior, parody, or so-called status:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We went down the &amp;quot;easy&amp;quot; road, which was just as steep and strewn with boulders as the &amp;quot;hard&amp;quot; road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Norrington sneered, &amp;quot;When does 'Captain' Sparrow arrive?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will note the second example does not have the same meaning as this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Norrington sneered, &amp;quot;When does &lt;em&gt;Captain&lt;/em&gt; Sparrow arrive?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first one, Norrington's implication is that Sparrow has taken the title of Captain without earning it. In the second, Sparrow is legitimately captain, but Norrington doesn't want to acknowledge it and probably called him &amp;quot;Mister&amp;quot; in the previous exchange and was corrected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not make the common mistake of thinking that quotes just mean emphasis. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Big Sale on &amp;quot;Sneakers&amp;quot; Today!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is completely and entirely WRONG. The only possible way that statement is correct if if &amp;quot;Sneakers&amp;quot; refers to something which is actually not a shoe but has the brand name of Sneakers (for example, if it were a bookstore selling a series of books with titles like &lt;em&gt;Sneaker of the House, Sneaker in the Back, Sneaker with Sally in the Alley,&lt;/em&gt; and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T14:25:51.700" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5944" CreationDate="2012-06-18T18:35:01.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to writing the only hard numbers are in your contract. Don't worry about things like what your word count should be or how long the act is taking. Just sit down and write the novel, once you've written &quot;THE END&quot; you can worry about the rest of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me it sounds like your books is longer then you expected it to be. Not a bad problem all things considered. I bet that once you get the whole book written you'll find that your first act is 25% of the over all length. Still, as I said before, don't worry about it now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, you'll find that there won't be a very clear point when you move from act to act. They are just labels for large parts of the story, not fences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T18:35:01.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5944" CreationDate="2012-06-18T21:19:49.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rules in place are to help writers overcome hesitation to write, or indecision on how to structure the story. Others will give you rules to follow, and as a result you try to club it into submission and force it to be something that it is not.  The story is the important part: write it to keep it in its natural form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said &quot;I just cannot move on to the next chapter until I personally feel that I have written good.&quot; This is a problem that writers have dealt with forever, but it is not a reason to stop writing! &quot;If you want to write&quot; by Brenda Ueland addresses this point exactly, and has been immensely inspirational to me. It was written in 1938, so it was before all the hundreds of books on how to write. Hopefully, you might find it helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0034KYUV8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/If-You-Want-Write-ebook/dp/B0034KYUV8/ref=tmm_kin_title_0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you are worried about following publisher's guidelines so that it is easier to publish, you should self-publish on Amazon's KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). Link for more information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3768" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T21:19:49.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5930" CreationDate="2012-06-19T01:56:07.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ignore grammar errors for now, that is not the point. You want to make sure you have a story worth proof-reading first. Writing will help you improve your English, but focusing on grammar will detract from your story. The only value of grammar is to make the reading smoother for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first line is good, I'm interested. For better pacing of the story, try breaking up the next big paragraph. This is just a suggestion, but maybe have Erin's thoughts about her memory be interspersed with Ruth's description of the earthquake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just an example, and I made sure not to change much of it. I find that reworking a story is easier when I see someone else's interpretation of it. Feel free to use it or ignore it. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Erin stared at Ruth, eyes narrowed. &quot;There was an earthquake last&#xA;  night?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ruth nodded. &quot;Around 9p.m. Didn't you feel it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Erin searched through her memory, but came up with nothing. What I was&#xA;  doing at that time? she wondered. One thing for sure: she wasn't&#xA;  asleep. She didn't go to bed that early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't remember feeling any shaking,&quot; Erin said with her eyes&#xA;  narrowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If for any reason she had fallen asleep, the intense shaking would&#xA;  have woken her up immediately. After all, she wasn't a heavy sleeper.&#xA;  It occurred to her that maybe she had indeed felt earthquake, it just&#xA;  that she didn't remember it. But she decided to discard that&#xA;  hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't see how you missed it&quot;, Ruth said. &quot;The news says it was a&#xA;  4.3 on the Richter scale.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She didn't consider herself particularly smart. But when it came to&#xA;  remembering things, specially events of that magnitude, her brain&#xA;  never failed her. Only one possibility was left; she didn't fell the&#xA;  earthquake. But how can that be? She asked herself. The idea couldn't&#xA;  fit into her mind. She shook her head no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's strange,&quot; Ruth said, and grabbed a cigarette from her purse,&#xA;  and lit it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3768" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-06-20T12:15:29.833" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T12:15:29.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5930" CreationDate="2012-06-19T13:30:40.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start straight away with the dialogue. &quot;There was an earthquake last night?&quot; grabs me right off my seat - I'm thinking &quot;holy shit, an earthquake?&quot; The way you have it know, your story starts with an extremely passive act. Staring is quite boring. Not much happens when someone &quot;stares.&quot; I stare at people all the time. Earthquakes, however? That is unique, interesting, pulls me the devil off my seat into the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some grammar mistakes, as other people pointed out, but I think you could make the most impact simply by truncating that first sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3471" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T13:30:40.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5963" CreationDate="2012-06-19T15:06:52.120" Score="3" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a question about the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3397/correct-order-for-thesis-front-matter&quot;&gt;correct order for thesis front matter&lt;/a&gt;. If I have those sections and some order, what of them is usually placed into the table of contents? While the main chapters surely have their entries in the table of contents, what do I do with abstract, list of supervisors, declaration of non-plagiarism, epigraph, preface, acknowledgements, dedication, preamble, ... ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My institution does not have regulations regarding this, my advisor does not answer questions, and different publications handle things differently. I would like to know how it is done in English publications, of which I do not have a significant number. (I'm neither a native speaker nor located in a country with English as official language, but we are required to write in English.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3771" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T14:03:56.323" Title="What sections of the frontmatter are listed in the table of contents?" Tags="|academic-writing|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5926" CreationDate="2012-06-20T13:33:53.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no direct experience in getting professional reviews, but I've been reading about the topic lately. Here's my understanding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some major newspapers and magazines do book reviews; most have public submission guidelines. Typically, as described on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/content/help/site/books/books.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; for the New York Times, the submission is expected to be from a publisher a few months before the book is published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You or a publisher's publicist can also contact book reviewers directly. Jacqueline Deval, in &lt;em&gt;Publicize Your Book&lt;/em&gt;, describes such a submission as including either a letter to the reviewer or a press release, and a copy of the book itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third option is to contact someone you think would be interested in your book and ask that person to write a review and submit it to a publication in the same area as the book. (I've been asked to do this, for example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My impression is that it's hard to get prominent reviews of a book without doing a lot of legwork, unless you're already well known. But it seems to be doable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3516" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T13:33:53.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5961" CreationDate="2012-06-20T14:03:56.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, the contents for an academic thesis would normally include the main work and appendices only, everything else being additional to the core work that others may wish to refer to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the list in the previous question, the contents lists everything after itself. The items before are important, but mainly for the university - abstracts, declarations, acknowledgements etc are for the purpose of verifying and referencing the main work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if your supervisor doesn't answer questions then kick them. That is what they are there for, to help you prepare your thesis in the way that your examiners require.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T14:03:56.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5930" CreationDate="2012-06-20T14:22:51.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem I have - and it is a promising idea, btw, so keep at it - is that the speaking does not feel natural. People don't actually talk like that, except in very staged situations (or Scandanavian crime stories, where it works, oddly)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What earthquake?&quot; Erin said, staring at Ruth with narrowed eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;9 last night. A 4.3 they said on the news. Not something you can miss&quot; Ruth replied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What was I doing, thought Erin. Not sleeping - far too early for that. And a 4.3 on the Richter scale is not something I would miss even if I was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most relaxed or casual style draws me into people who have a past together that I want to know about, and the sense of being in the middle of a conversation gives it a sense of immediate speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, this is just some direction that I would prefer to see in it. Feel free ot ignore if it doesn't work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: Think about your first line - that is vitally important. I think that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What Earthquake?&quot; said Erin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is a more gripping start than&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Erin stared at Ruth, eyes narrowed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are right into the heart of the action from the start - earthquakes are cool as is the possibility that someone might have missed one. Your start sounds like the introduction to a bitch-fight, not an earthquake story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastEditorUserId="3380" LastEditDate="2012-06-22T08:13:19.693" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T08:13:19.693" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5965" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-20T19:25:20.757" Score="2" ViewCount="52" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1648/internet-communities-where-i-can-read-rate-review-short-fiction-and-post-my-own&quot;&gt;Internet communities where I can read/rate/review short fiction, and post my own?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where can I get feedback on my writing? I have just begun learning about writing novels and I need somewhere which is 100% free and has a high quality of critiques. I'm not sure if this website is the right place for this (I have asked a lot of programming questions on StackOverflow for example, but I've never asked for &lt;em&gt;code review&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3775" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T20:41:34.700" Title="Where to get critiques?" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-06-20T22:56:59.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2012-06-21T13:22:35.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal favorite is a site where I've been active for several years: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Online Writing Workshop&lt;/a&gt;. This site is geared towards science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers, so it won't be useful for you if you don't write in those genres. However, the OWW has been the training ground for an impressive list of bestsellers and up-and-coming writers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nkjemisin.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;N.K. Jemison&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sff.net/people/jpalmatier/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joshua Palmatier&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ccfinlay.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Charles Coleman Finlay&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elizabethbear.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elizabeth Bear&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and others (I can't seem to find a good list right now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a great place. You'll like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T13:22:35.520" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-06-21T13:22:35.520" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5968" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5969" CreationDate="2012-06-21T14:25:31.720" Score="5" ViewCount="736" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the middle of reading &lt;em&gt;Good Omens&lt;/em&gt; by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and it occurred to me that I'd finally found a good place to ask a question I'd been wondering about for years. How do authors collaborate on works of fiction? Do they alternate chapters, or...? Is there any common, standard practice for this, or is it just whatever they want to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T18:39:10.887" Title="How does joint authorship work?" Tags="|collaboration|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5968" CreationDate="2012-06-21T15:21:40.043" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seem to be two general approaches to this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One person writes the work, and the other starts revising it heavily. There might be significant problems that the second author needs to address. There might be significant expansion of the work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both authors agree on a general outline or plan, and they map out the work, indicating who will write the first draft of what sections. These sections could be anything from significant fractions of the book to individual scenes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, the collaborators will smooth out stylistic differences in a round of revisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T15:21:40.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6042" CreationDate="2012-06-21T16:36:11.697" Score="2" ViewCount="21818" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a paper which uses an APA6-style bibliography. I'm referring to a graph from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&amp;amp;ctype=l&amp;amp;met_y=it_net_user_p2#!ctype=l&amp;amp;strail=false&amp;amp;bcs=d&amp;amp;nselm=h&amp;amp;met_y=it_net_user_p2&amp;amp;scale_y=lin&amp;amp;ind_y=false&amp;amp;rdim=region&amp;amp;idim=country%3aCHN%3aUSA&amp;amp;ifdim=region&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;dl=en_US&amp;amp;ind=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Public Data&lt;/a&gt;.  What should my in-text citation say, and how should I cite it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if I should use &lt;code&gt;(Google, 2010)&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;(Google Public Data, 2010)&lt;/code&gt;.  Then, I actually need to cite two different graphs.  How will I differentiate between the two using my in-text citations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3779" OwnerDisplayName="notfed" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-06-21T17:23:40.033" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T00:25:24.733" Title="How do I cite Google Public Data in my bibliography (APA format)?" Tags="|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5968" CreationDate="2012-06-21T18:33:02.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several years ago I wrote a short story with a friend.  We talked briefly about the premise, then started writing.  One of us would write a few hundred words and hand it over to the other.  The other person would edit (focusing mostly on the language), then add a few hundred words and hand it over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This process worked beautifully for us, for that short story.  We submitted the story for our writer's group's annual &quot;blind submission&quot; meeting.  Everybody thought our story was the best written of the dozen or so submissions.  And nobody could identify who wrote it (we'd eliminated each other's &quot;tells&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt that this style of collaboration would work well for a longer story.  For that, I'd probably alternate either scenes or chapters.  Another possibility is to alternate POV characters.  I'd also probably want a clearer shared understanding of the whole story arc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also working on several non-fiction books with a colleague.  For those, we know the general scope of the books, but not the final organization.  Currently we're in the &quot;fleshing out the topic&quot; phase.  Each of us works similarly:  Notice a topic that fits, that we have some passion about, and that we haven't written yet.  Then write about that topic (usually as a separate file) and drop it in our shared repository.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every now and then we get together and talk.  One of us starts to ramble on a topic, and the other will take notes.  That will spark the other to pick up some thread and run with it.  Then together we shape the notes into something nearly coherent and add them to the repository to be fleshed out later (by whoever has the energy at the time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This colleague and I have also written several articles together.  We connect on Skype, open a shared Google doc, and start talking and typing.  Sometimes one of us has an idea and writes a fumbling, inarticulate sentence or paragraph.  Then the other magically figures out how to phrase it well.  Often we'll each have something we want to say at the same time, and we'll simultaneously write in separate parts of the same document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I much prefer a collaboration style in which we either write simultaneously or we trade off very, very frequently.  The writing becomes a kind of improvisation (bounded somewhat by our ideas of what we're trying to create).  As I said, I don't expect this style works for others, or for other kinds of works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2012-06-21T18:39:10.887" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T18:39:10.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5972" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5975" CreationDate="2012-06-22T03:28:41.507" Score="14" ViewCount="2130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see lazy plot devices as anything that is too coincidental. Person One just so happened to be in the 'area' when Person Two was attacked (then they end up running into each other a bunch of times afterwards--really?). Those nicks-of-time rescues. Some random thing distracting a villain right before they are victorious and giving the hero enough time to gain the upper hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also like to think happenstance/luck/fortune has a place in sustaining tension, such as bad weather preventing the villain from reaching the heroes or certain people's paths so happening to cross at the right time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you draw the line between a plot device that is too contrived and a plot device that propels the story forward without breaking the suspension of disbelief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2998" LastEditorUserId="2998" LastEditDate="2012-06-22T05:38:46.157" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T18:30:05.530" Title="How do you determine if a plot device is too coincidental?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5972" CreationDate="2012-06-22T10:15:57.293" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the solution is to ask - and answer - &quot;why&quot;? Why did this person happen to be in the right place? How did they obtain that information that led them right to the villain? Has there been a rainstorm brewing for a few days - is it even the season for storms ( in the UK, the answer here is always yes ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Events should never be random. However they can be the result of good fortune, as a pay back to hard work. The reason these particular people have become involved is also important - why was it Fred, not Joe who received the phone call? What marks them out as the appropriate person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My short story linked in my profile tries to address this, as my only example. But the point is that I had to ask these questions, and the answers were sometimes a challenge. I had to make sure that the reader could get these answers, and know why a certain person was involved in something, why things happened in their favour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at why people make decisions they do - what drives them to one side rather than another - is fascinating, IMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T10:15:57.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5972" CreationDate="2012-06-22T10:16:42.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you feel like your plot elements show too much of the author's &lt;i&gt;deus ex machina,&lt;/i&gt; then go back and figure out a way to make them more organic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes this may mean backing up several scenes, or possibly halfway back into the book, to put your pieces in motion. If Sherlock needs to run into Molly late at night at the morgue, you have to establish early on in the storyline that Molly keeps long hours and has no life so it's not unusual for her to be at the morgue at 2am, on Christmas Eve, etc. This is less contrived than &quot;Molly &lt;em&gt;happened to&lt;/em&gt; forget her purse at the morgue and went back to get it because she needed her phone and just &lt;em&gt;happened&lt;/em&gt; to run into Sherlock.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T10:16:42.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5972" CreationDate="2012-06-22T11:30:27.740" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have to distinguish two different layers of coincidences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coincidence in the beginning of the story vs. coincidence at the end of the story (Deus ex machina problem)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conflict decreasing coincidence vs. conflict increasing coincidence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader forgives (and sometimes want) coincidences that happen at the beginning of the story and conflict increasing coincidences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the fortune helps the protagonist or is used at the middle or end to get further in the story, then it is perceived as cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the car accident between protagonist and antagonist at the beginning is ok. If they meet again when applying for the same job, the setting is already introduced (&quot;Oh, &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; guy!&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cavalry at the end rescuing the protagonist, because he is inapt doing it himself is a no-no. (&quot;Why have I read all these pages if he can't rescue himself? What a loser!&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the protagonist has a street fight against the evil doers and he is running out of ammo, then that's increasing the conflict. If he runs out of ammo in front of a gun shop, it is decreasing the conflict (i.e. unfair help for the protagonist). If the gun shop is locked it is increasing again (reader will like it again).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So coincidences at the beginning of the story and coincidences which are punishing the protagonist (increasing conflict) are good/acceptable, helping coincidences and stuff that happens later out of nowhere to keep the story running are no-gos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveat: None of the above is true if you write a parody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-06-22T11:47:13.470" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T11:47:13.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5976" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-22T13:40:05.763" Score="4" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a world (well universe since the main focus of the shared world has the ability for space travel) that I am working on some books on however I believe its really large enough that I can open it up to other writers aka shared world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is does anyone have any experience with creating or writing in shared worlds? If so what are some of the advantages and pitfalls of going this route?  (if needed I will separate the questions)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3692" LastEditorUserId="3692" LastEditDate="2012-06-22T15:55:19.307" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T19:27:52.650" Title="Creating Shared Worlds" Tags="|world-building|shared|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5977" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-22T15:57:53.203" Score="1" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a world/universe that I wish to open up to other writers. However I am unsure how I should structure the licensing fees and rights of ownership over the world itself and what happens (basically things like in Forgotten Realms you can't just kill off Elminster)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3692" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T10:38:53.537" Title="Shared World licensing fees" Tags="|world-building|shared|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2012-06-22T23:03:18.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://figment.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Figment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figment is a website aimed at teenagers where stories can be posted and commented on. Comments and reviews can be given about stories, and people can favorite stories. Short stories, long stories, and poetry can all be posted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One common thing is to trade reviews or comments. People will  post on a forum that they want reviews and that they will swap and review on other stories. Reviews and comments come up differently. Comments are short and usually just contain a person saying that they like the story, but reviews are more in depth and are submitted under a different category on the story page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3781" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T23:03:18.183" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-06-22T23:03:18.183" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5977" CreationDate="2012-06-23T01:09:53.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Licensing fees&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Do you own the rights to, say, Starwars or Forgotten Realms or Hunger Games or Twilight or anything that big? 'Cause if you don't, no one's going to pay you to use the universe. Think about it -- why should I, the poor starving writer, give you what little money I have, or have coming in, for something I can do myself for free? There's only one reason -- &lt;strong&gt;BFB&lt;/strong&gt;. That's right, Big F-ing Brand. A brand that can take my piddly sales and jack them up to a couple hundred K worth of books sold, and put my name on the map. And all 'cause it has that little brand stamp on the cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you're thinking about it the wrong way. This isn't something you can make money off directly. What you can do is make a killer open source** world and an even better site that by game-izing it (like stackexchange did), draws in tons of writers to develop &amp;amp; use this open source universe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;**Note: do some kind of creative commons license that allows individuals to commercially use the universe, but corps have to pay&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rights of ownership&lt;/strong&gt; -- wrong question again. the right question is:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to manage Canon?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For that some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everything published by a reputable publisher is cannon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everything self-published that has greater than X # of sales is cannon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something approved by the titans of your awesome-site-of-shared-world-building is cannon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something with X # of non-titan cannonize votes on said site is cannon &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastEditorUserId="3080" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T23:24:02.533" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T23:24:02.533" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5980" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-23T04:03:16.613" Score="4" ViewCount="4098" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen at least a few cases of Latin being used in both fantasy and scifi, and I wonder how it is perceived and how much is tolerated. Being primarily a gamer, the first examples that come to mind are &lt;em&gt;Kingdoms of Amalur&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Warhammer 40,000&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a bad idea to use Latin (or similar languages)? What would it be acceptable to use Latin for? names, phrases/expressions, objects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3552" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-09-15T13:55:42.127" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T13:55:42.127" Title="Using Latin words in fantasy" Tags="|language|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5982" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-23T19:54:37.520" Score="4" ViewCount="854" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've sent &lt;a href=&quot;http://endofgospel.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my manuscript&lt;/a&gt; to tens of literary agents. Strangely enough, I received no positive response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: Can I &lt;b&gt;hire&lt;/b&gt; a literary agent? If yes, how much it costs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other ways (except of vanity presses) to publish and widely distribute &lt;a href=&quot;http://endofgospel.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my religious book&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may probably get a grant for publishing this book (instead of my own expenses). But I don't even know how much to ask, because I don't know how much I need to pay for publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T09:20:38.260" Title="Can a literary agent be hired?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|agent|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5982" CreationDate="2012-06-23T20:15:39.567" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can hire a literary agent if you have an offer from a publisher and need someone to negotiate the contract. But for that it's cheaper to hire a literary lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First question: Why do you want to hire an agent? You  have already published your book. It's available for free on your website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to make money with your book? Then why have you published it for free? Why should an agent (or a publisher) be interested wasting their time with a book which is available for free? Religious books do not have a big market anyway. So giving it away for free diminishes the possibilities to make money with it tremendously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, because you have already self-published, I advise you to go further on this route. You can publish it on Amazon and other sites, you can publish it as POD. For details search this site and have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=3736&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dean W. Smith's publishing series&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-09-27T09:20:38.260" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T09:20:38.260" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5982" CreationDate="2012-06-23T20:20:00.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Probably not a professional one.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All agents are hired - they take a percentage of whatever contracts they get you (or which they negotiate for you). You're asking if you can pay extra for an agent to represent an author or an MS which they'd otherwise turn down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the thing: &lt;strong&gt;an agent represents what s/he thinks s/he can sell.&lt;/strong&gt; If they don't want to take on a book, that means they don't think they can sell it (or, maybe they could sell it, but not for enough money to make the percentage worth the agent's effort). Why would you want to hire somebody who straight-out doubts they'll be able to sell your book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking a percentage works in the author's favor - it means the author doesn't pay if the agent doesn't make the sale. For this reason, &lt;strong&gt;agents taking anything &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; than a percentage are usually extremely suspicious&lt;/strong&gt; - and there are a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of fake, malicious, or simply unprofessional agents who will take your money but do nothing to advance you towards publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point is that an agent's reputation is much of his/her livelihood. A good agent can't take on a manuscript s/he considers to be poor quality, because it will make future pitches for other clients much more suspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other options you might pursue&lt;/strong&gt; could include e-publishing, which is quite accessible and produces a final product that can be quite widespread, or simply approaching publishers directly yourself, which is still quite doable. Be sure to target publishers with lines of books that are appropriate for the manuscript you'd like to sell!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T20:20:00.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5985" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5986" CreationDate="2012-06-23T20:29:34.620" Score="3" ViewCount="2183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am deeply fascinated by Japanese culture and the medieval era; so naturally, when I began the development of my fantasy world it became solidly rooted in this ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also with the animals that inhabit this world, they are very earth like. They might not go by their names (in fact I've taken to calling them by either their Latin names or the large category they fit into). In fact, Latin seems to be the undeclared language of the planet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a bad idea to do this? Is it weak world building? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What guidelines should be followed when crafting the worlds of fantasy novels? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, is the combination of several different cultures a mistake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2998" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T05:29:37.540" Title="Is it a bad idea to ground a fantasy world in earthy culture(s)?" Tags="|fantasy|world-building|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5985" CreationDate="2012-06-23T22:13:56.390" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It isn't a &quot;bad idea&quot; per say, as long as there are in-world reasons for what you have contained in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very common to have fantasy stories based in other cultures. Eon, for example, is based in large part in Chinese mythology. Codex Alera by Jim Butcher is based in Roman culture, even though it is not based explicitly in Rome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;World building isn't always making an entire planet. World building can be as localized as creating the culture of a country, state, town, or even family, so whether world building is strong or weak isn't based entirely on what you get your inspiration from. If you make your world believable, the world building is strong regardless of whether it's based on an earth culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For crafting a fantasy novel world, here is a couple of useful links: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/fantasy-worldbuilding-questions/&quot;&gt;Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mortaine.com/personal/MagicalWorldBuilder.pdf&quot;&gt;Magical World Builder&lt;/a&gt;. The questions go through everything, from what the world is based off of to the diet of the people in the world. The other one is a pdf of a 30-day exercise to create a world. It starts with the basics and goes on through building up and then refining a fantasy word. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to combining different cultures, it can be a mistake. While it may seem like it makes sense to take different things from Earth today because they all exist now, at the same time, consider that that is only true because our history progressed as it did. Latin is used for animals now because it was a major western language and the western cultures were, and still in many cases are, the predominant cultures in the world. A lot of international things are based in western ideas or western languages because they spread internationally more than the east or Africa did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, many cultural ideas or societal norms exist now because of religious values or historical religious values. If you're combining Japan and Rome, for instance, you would end up with major issues in terms of religious ideas and practices. They worship or worshiped their gods differently. Even things that don't seem to be related to religion on first sight are related. Views on homosexuality, for example, are based strongly on religious values. The Japanese historically had no issue with homosexuality, while the Abrahamic religions do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Language is another issue to consider. Japanese is a very different language from Latin, and if you have both of them, you should have a good reason for it. Someone with a Japanese name wouldn't be using Latin, probably unless they were an academic or a biologist, and that would only be fairly recent. The languages are structured very differently and would likely not exist in the same civilization for no apparent reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was using Latin and Japanese as the two examples because those were the two you mentioned. That is true for any set of cultures. One major thing is that the farther apart the cultures are, the more difficult it will be to combine them to make something cohesive and sensible. If you do want to combine cultures, you will need to decide why they're together (for example, why people in a Japan-esque world are speaking Latin, which is from a completely different language family) and if it's necessary for your story. The other thing you can do is try to take bits and pieces from different places, but you still need to be careful doing that so it's coherent and cohesive and doesn't look like you made a random jumble of cultures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3781" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T22:13:56.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5985" CreationDate="2012-06-23T22:20:05.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It isn't a bad idea. Keep in mind that most fantasy settings today are based on Medieval European era. I see no problem at all using the Japanese one. Honestly it is already done by author. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/075927066X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Seventh Sword Trilogy&lt;/a&gt; is shouting &quot;samurai&quot; at me all over the place. And no, it does not play in Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combining different cultures isn't a mistake either. It's up to you where you get your ideas from. You build the world, you build the story. It should be consistent and believable. That's hard to do. But it is hard to do, no matter with which conditions you start. Don't narrow your creativity with arbitrary limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T22:20:05.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="443" CreationDate="2012-06-23T22:25:39.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using modern terms generally isn't an issue in fantasy, because people don't want to have to spend their time translating in their head from whatever ancient English or colloquial dialect you made up for your story. However, there are a few things to be avoided. Religious terms, for example, should be avoided unless you're setting your story on Earth. A person in a fantasy world isn't going to say &quot;Jesus Christ&quot; as an exclamation unless they're Christian or live in a world where Christianity is predominant. They wouldn't use proper nouns from our history that we might take for granted unless they lived on earth. A suspect wouldn't be Mirandized unless they lived in America. This can still work, though, and be understandable. In Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series, they say &quot;Crows&quot; instead of &quot;God&quot; as an exclamation. Terms that have a clear historical basis should probably be avoided, but otherwise, there shouldn't be much of an issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3781" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T22:25:39.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5989" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5990" CreationDate="2012-06-24T00:38:26.833" Score="8" ViewCount="8430" Body="&lt;p&gt;Through the process of writing my novel, I've found that I really don't know where it fits in the written realm. I believe I should have a clear understanding to identify what genre my book belongs in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy is about things that cannot occur and has no logical explanation; about alien planets and magic and monsters. Science fiction has logical explanations to all things occurring in the work and often takes place in a futuristic time setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, pulled straight from a dictionary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science fiction: Fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and alien life on other planets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy: A genre of imaginative fiction involving magic and adventure, esp. in a setting other than the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for novels that are completely rooted in logic and playing out on different planets with inhabitants who &lt;em&gt;greatly&lt;/em&gt; resemble humans and have no powers, what then? Is it filed in a completely different category than these two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really need a healthy dose of clarification on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2998" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-02-24T15:20:12.853" Title="How to distinguish if a novel is science fiction or fantasy?" Tags="|fantasy|science-fiction|genre|clarity|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5989" CreationDate="2012-06-24T02:12:33.477" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, the difference is not whether the story &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; a logical explanation, but whether it &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; have an explanation &lt;em&gt;in this universe&lt;/em&gt;.  Another way to say it: Fantasy may violate what we know to be true of the universe.  Science fiction may not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A monster, an alien planet, or &quot;magic&quot; could be either fantastical or science fictional, depending on whether it violates the known laws of the universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, even that line is fuzzy, because &quot;known&quot; is fuzzy and to some extent changeable.  And different readers know different things.  A quirk of physics that most readers would accept might violate the knowledge of a scientist who specializes in that aspect of physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And sometimes an explanation will make the difference.  A given monster, planet, or magic might, with sufficient explanation, shift from fantasy to science fiction.  What seems like magic may be &quot;merely&quot; technology sufficiently advanced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T02:12:33.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5989" CreationDate="2012-06-24T04:56:06.697" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, the &lt;em&gt;science&lt;/em&gt; in science fiction is what differentiates the two. That is usually represented by devices of some sort. Nor does it necessarily need to be a silicon-based device, a carbon-based biological based device would equally foot the bill. But there is always some device that is what makes the special power of the world (be it a method of transportation, communication, etc.) There are also different levels of science fiction. A soft science fiction story probably wouldn't explain how an &lt;em&gt;ansible&lt;/em&gt; works, as long as it does. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction&quot;&gt;hard science fiction&lt;/a&gt;, the technology behind such a device would not only need to be described in glorious detail but it pretty much needs to actually work based upon the scientific principles that we know and understand today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy novels, on the other hand, are almost always rooted some non-device based means of getting things done. It could be magic or runes or wishes, but it does not strictly depend upon a manufactured device being used to make things happen. As with science fiction, there are levels of fantasy, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_fantasy&quot;&gt;hard fantasy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that the vast majority of fantasy and sci fi is not strictly delineated. In fantasy fiction there are always &quot;things&quot; that &lt;em&gt;contain&lt;/em&gt; the world's special power, but it doesn't actually create it. These would include such things as Frodo's ring or Harry's &lt;a href=&quot;http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Nimbus_Racing_Broom_Company&quot;&gt;Nimbus 2000&lt;/a&gt;. Likewise, in science fiction there are often special powers of the mind (psi) that function as that genre's magic. Think of the Bene Gesserit abilities of Dune, for instance, or &quot;the Force&quot; in Star Wars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, of course, as Arthur C. Clarke has famously pointed out, &lt;em&gt;[a]ny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic&lt;/em&gt; which implies that if you get far enough out in time, it all merges into the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T04:56:06.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="525" CreationDate="2012-06-24T07:28:29.090" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;An immensely helpful resource on this topic is &lt;em&gt;Writer Beware&lt;/em&gt;, a volunteer organization associated with the SFWA and MWA. Their essay on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/agents/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;warning signs of questionable agents&lt;/a&gt; answers your question in great depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For completeness, I'll summarize the main points here - but do read the entire article...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A reputable agent charges NOTHING but a percentage&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An agent earns his or her money by selling your work. For this reason, their fee is defined as a &lt;em&gt;percentage&lt;/em&gt; of whatever contracts they find and/or negotiate for you. &lt;strong&gt;Nothing else.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other fees - an upfront fee, an editing fee, extra services they urge you to pay for, &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; - are a huge danger sign. That's because they're prone to heavy abuse - and that's just what shady agents do: they sign up lots of author-wannabes, do little or nothing to sell their work, and get money &lt;em&gt;from the author&lt;/em&gt; instead of getting money &lt;em&gt;for the author&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A reputable agent has a track record&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reputable agent with &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; experience in the field should have a list of clients he or she has successfully represented. That's a great sign that an agent is legit - just check that he's been legit in the past. Also check the quality of that agent's work - if the agent only lists books printed in small, negligible presses, that probably means they're not a very successful agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This information should be available from the agent's website (if it's not, huge warning sign). Be sure to verify whatever information you find, because shady agents can simply &lt;a href=&quot;http://accrispin.blogspot.co.il/2006/01/victoria-strauss-faking-track-record.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;make up a false history&lt;/a&gt;, as impressive as they like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an agent is brand-new, fresh in the field, then they won't have a track record. But in that case, they &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have a relevant professional background – Writer Beware says &quot;either working in publishing, or training at a reputable agency.&quot; Verify the background, and make sure the agent really is as new as he claims to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sniff 'em out&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/537/1046&quot;&gt;John Smithers writes&lt;/a&gt;, never be content that an agent &quot;looks OK&quot; - root out whatever you can find about an agent before you commit to anything. Search &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Preditors and Editors&lt;/a&gt;, use Absolute Write's &lt;a href=&quot;http://absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;background check forum&lt;/a&gt;, Google for &lt;code&gt;[agent's name] scam OR rip off OR swindler OR blackgaurd&lt;/code&gt;, use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.victoriastrauss.com/advice/track-record/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;every resource you can possibly find&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just the most fundamental tips. The more you familiarize yourself with industry practices and professional standards, the better you will be able to recognize shadiness and warning signs - as well as being able to spot the real McCoy when you find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.217" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T07:28:29.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5980" CreationDate="2012-06-24T19:36:58.273" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I was reading a fantasy or sci fi story in which Latin was the predominant language, I would expect some explanation as to why. Perhaps the Roman Empire had not imploded and instead had gone on to develop space travel and colonized the planets. Or maybe your fantasy is about a kingdom where magic exists and it is in the path of Roman conquest. In either case, as a reader I would expect the author to provide me with a sufficient explanation to allow me to suspend my disbelief. It wouldn't have to be much, but it would have to make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A further complication you would have is that Latin, while arguably a dead language, is still enough alive that some readers would have studied it in school or at least be familiar enough with it that you would have to ensure you used the right vocabulary, verb tenses, etc. Not doing so would definitely affect your credibility as an author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your own created language automatically makes you the linguistic expert and you wouldn't have to contend with the above issues. It is certainly more work, though. Another option is to use an artificial language, such as Esperanto. Harry Harrison took this route in a number of his novels, such as those in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Stainless Steel Rat&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathworld&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Deathworld&lt;/a&gt; trilogy. You might consider reading a few of them to see how he handles using the language. Harrison talked about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iol.ie/~carrollm/hh/ssresper.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;why he used Esperanto&lt;/a&gt; back at the 45th World Science Fiction Convention.  Philip José Farmer also used Esperanto in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverworld&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Riverworld&lt;/a&gt; series.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastEditorUserId="3710" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T16:38:44.793" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T16:38:44.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5980" CreationDate="2012-06-25T08:13:34.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there is an issue if you expect people to understand Latin to read it - relatively few do these days, but some will. This means that not only do you have to provide explanations/translations, but these have to be accurate!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read some stories where Latin phrases/mottos etc are used, with an expectation that the read will know them - sometimes this is fine if they are well known, but it does provide a barrier to reading. Umberto Eco, IIRC, tends to do this, but then he draws from such a wide range of back-tales, all of which you really need to know, this is just part of my problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Latin for the names of things or people is not a barrier really - you can recognise the names whatever the actual language is, whether Latin, Vulcan or an Elven language. Using it as the &lt;em&gt;lingua franca&lt;/em&gt; of a book raises a whole lot of other issues, not least about language development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T08:13:34.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5989" CreationDate="2012-06-25T09:52:34.677" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever this question comes up I always say that the clue is in the name. It's SCIENCE fiction. That means that the story must absolutely rely on science in order to be told and if it doesn't, it's probably fantasy. Now that doesn't mean that the science in the story has to be real, neither does it have to make sense (except within the logical parameters of its own world) and it doesn't have to be set in the future so I'm not necessarily talking about robots or spacecraft or &quot;phasers on stun&quot;, but the science does have to be one of the major driving forces of the story. Without the science, the story could not be told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great example of this is Back To The Future. In the film Doc Brown has to deliver 1.21 gigawatts of electricity, directly into the Flux Capacitor, at the exact moment that the car hits 88mph to travel through time. Later on when Marty McFly is trapped in 1955 the only way to get back is to rig up the DeLorean with a conducting rod so that, as long as Marty hits his mark at exactly the right moment, while doing exactly 88mph, the lightning will send 1.21 gigawatts of electricity directly into the Flux Capacitor, sending Marty back to the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is classic science fiction. The story absolutely relies on the science to work, without the science, the story could not be told. The fact that the science is utter nonsense is neither here nor there but what does matter is that the science is utterly consistent within the confines of the film and in both time periods. The physics(!) dictates 1.21 gigawatts of power into the Flux Capacitor at 88mph and the same is true in both 1985 and in 1955, the challenge is in harnessing that kind of power in 1955 to get Marty home and that is what makes Back to the Future such a terrific film.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember though, ultimately very few people care about the science. What they want to know is &quot;Will Marty's parents get together? Will he get back to 1985 before he ceases to exist?&quot; because like all great science fiction, the science drives the story but it's the people we care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3788" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T09:52:34.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5989" CreationDate="2012-06-25T12:22:01.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To come from the other side, I think fantasy will usually have characters with some form of &quot;mystical&quot; power - however it is described or explained - which is core to the story. The power is not something created - which would imply that everyone could have it - but something which is indigenous to the character or characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In SF there is often no sense of the mystical. Where there is, it is not something that empowers people beyond an inner strength that they may get from their mysticism. In the end, the story is driven by scientific progress or regress, and by application of science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, classification is always difficult, and not always helpful. Blurring boundaries often makes for a fun story, and one that challenges the reader. Some of the best stories fail to fit into a clear category - Audrey Niffeneggers &quot;The Time Travellers Wife&quot; is probably romantic fiction, but there is a definite SF element in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T12:22:01.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5989" CreationDate="2012-06-25T15:11:48.957" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Philip K. Dick said it best: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fantasy involves that which general opinion regards as impossible; science fiction involves that which general opinion regards as possible under the right circumstances. This is in essence a judgement-call, since what is possible and what is not possible is not objectively known but is, rather, a subjective belief on the part of the author and of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a letter, May 1981; as quoted on p.28 of &quot;The Twisted Worlds of Philip K. Dick&quot; by Umberto Rossi&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3471" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-06-26T01:25:30.210" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T01:25:30.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6002" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6012" CreationDate="2012-06-25T17:40:05.590" Score="11" ViewCount="30666" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you are writing a story that is set in a fantasy world (maybe our world with just one made-up element, or a completely different world), what is a good way to come up with names for species that aren't just names of Earth species with minor variations? It's easy to call a bird of prey a Tlkachtian hawk, for example, if you have a region in your world named Tlkachtia, but it's not particularly imaginative, and lots of people are likely to focus on the &quot;hawk&quot; part when it might in fact be very different from a hawk. And what if there is nothing in Earth's fauna or flora that is similar in the respect that you want to emphasize?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a number of questions and plenty of good answers and resources centered around naming characters and places, but essentially nothing about naming species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T06:20:06.443" Title="Coming up with names for species in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|naming|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5976" CreationDate="2012-06-25T18:25:44.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked with a friend on what basically amounted to story-telling in a shared world, but which out of necessity also involved quite a lot of world exploration and some building, because the characters we worked with only interacted to a limited degree. What we did amounted mostly to &quot;killing time&quot;, but resulted in a fairly hefty collaborative short story (21K words, 200+ hours document editing time, both according to OpenOffice) which still had some room for further plot development within the originally envisioned framework when we decided to call it quits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest issue, I thought, was &lt;strong&gt;our slightly disparate views of what the world in which the story was set was like.&lt;/strong&gt; It was never actually a problem, but did involve a lot of discussions outside of the story line development to hash out both details as well as parts of the larger picture. Since we both wanted to keep the story consistent in-universe, there was also a lot of detail editing going on, not just to recently written parts but sometimes to parts that had gone untouched for several rounds of going back and forth. (We basically each wrote as much as we felt comfortable with, then either left the other person's characters in a spot to work themselves out of, or until we ran out of creative juices. Naturally, this sometimes involved making the other person's characters do or say things, where we took a best guess and the &quot;owner&quot; of that character would rework it. Sometimes that affected the next part of the action, requiring multiple rounds of editing. Each one of us also worked on story pieces set in the same world that were not collaborative, sparking further discussions about what the world was like.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this experience, I'd say that the answer depends a lot on what kind of shared world you have in mind to create, but they both depend on an &lt;strong&gt;accurate description of the world&lt;/strong&gt; being available to other authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your idea is &lt;strong&gt;collaborative&lt;/strong&gt; writing, be prepared for the fact that others are going to want to do things in your world that you might not have thought of, or allowed for your characters to do. Know how you plan to handle this when it comes up: is it your world all the way, or are others allowed to introduce other elements? The third option would be collaborative world-building, which I don't think is what you have in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your idea is to simply &lt;strong&gt;drop a world in other authors' laps&lt;/strong&gt; then you have to come up with a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; detailed description of the world. The description has to basically answer every question people might have about the world, in enough detail that they can actually work it out for themselves, unless you're willing to actually field questions and give thoughtful, consistent answers to them. This basically means to first create a world and describe it, and then place your own story in it using only the description of your world, so that you can be certain that you are not leaving out anything that is essential to telling a/the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you are including space travel makes it easier to allow other authors to introduce other elements, since those can easily be made specific to a planet or a solar system. (Interstellar travel would pretty obviously necessitate allowing for some form of faster-than-light travel.) The basic laws of physics would have to remain the same, however, if you want your universe to make any sense at all. For example, if you come up with a reason why space travel is limited to, say, a hundred times the speed of light, then you can't suddenly have a species gallivanting off making a weekend shopping trip to the next galaxy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T19:27:52.650" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T19:27:52.650" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="281" CreationDate="2012-06-25T18:29:09.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rhymebrain.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://rhymebrain.com&lt;/a&gt; works well for most words, and also provides near-rhymes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T18:29:09.063" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-06-25T18:29:09.063" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5989" CreationDate="2012-06-25T23:31:30.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read the following breakdown of speculative fiction in some writing article or book, and I can't remember were or who wrote it, so unfortunately I can't attribute it. But, it's been really useful for my thinking, so here goes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Science Fiction is fiction of the mind, Fantasy is fiction of the heart, and Horror is fiction of the senses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T23:31:30.030" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="443" CreationDate="2012-06-26T11:51:12.637" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should avoid using modern words in fantasy because they can break the immersion which readers are experiencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, many words are not as modern as you might think. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Rockets for military and recreational uses date back to at least 13th century China,&quot;&lt;/a&gt; so they can exist in medieval-themed fantasy world. Tug of war &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tug_of_war&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;was practiced in ancient Egypt and China.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1957" LastEditorUserId="1957" LastEditDate="2012-06-26T14:26:35.090" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T14:26:35.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6007" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6009" CreationDate="2012-06-26T12:48:00.783" Score="1" ViewCount="369" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story about a girl who has apparently 'missed' an earthquake. This is the beginning of the second scene (&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5930/does-my-story-beginning-hook-the-reader-dialogue-narration&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is the first):  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Erin was sitting on her bed, working on a new song. Becoming an artist&#xA;  wasn't something she had in mind; writing songs was just a way of&#xA;  putting her thoughts in order. But tonight, she couldn't concentrate.&#xA;  Every chord she played sounded wrong, and every rhyme she wrote was&#xA;  flat and meaningless. She put down her guitar and stared vacantly at&#xA;  the ceiling. How long I have been living under this roof? she&#xA;  wondered. It had been almost four years since she had moved back from&#xA;  Taipei. Then, as if something had just popped up into her head, she&#xA;  grabbed the remote control from the table, turned on the TV, and&#xA;  switched to the news. 4 killed, 8 injured in chain highway crash.&#xA;  Drunk man hit a 63-year-old woman on the sidewalk. She died on the&#xA;  spot. Erin switched to another news station. 8 police officers&#xA;  investigated for corruption, 4 praised for performance. Unemployment&#xA;  rate rises to 4% in May. Rain possible over the weekend. She scratched&#xA;  her ear, turned off the TV, and stared again at the ceiling. No news&#xA;  about any earthquake, she said to herself. She stood up and walked to&#xA;  her bookshelf. Then, as if she were looking for a secret passage, she&#xA;  examined the books carefully. They were stacked perfectly side by&#xA;  side, like piano keys. It seemed like they hadn't moved a single inch&#xA;  since the last time she'd checked them. She wondered if Ruth had told&#xA;  the thing about the earthquake as a joke. Or maybe she lied to me, she&#xA;  thought. But no matter how she looked at it, there wasn't any reason for Ruth to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Erin left out a sign. &quot;Why I'm thinking so much about this? &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She walked back to her bed, grabbed her phone, and dialed Benjamin's&#xA;  number. He answered after a few seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Did you see my missed calls?&quot; Erin asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the first time I write a scene where a character is checking the news.&#xA;I would like to know if I'm including too many details or useless information. Is there something I should add?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T10:43:10.740" Title="Level of detail in description of character checking the news" Tags="|fiction|scene|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5982" CreationDate="2012-06-26T14:33:26.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In response to your question, the answer generally is &quot;no&quot;. You can attempt to hire an agent to represent you, but the agent has the right to refuse if they don't feel you have anything they can actually sell. Your first priority, therefore, would be to make sure you have something to sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can appreciate the fact that you have gone to the trouble to self-publish your book through CreateSpace and Lulu but haven't seen any sales. My question would be to ask what you are doing to promote your book and let people know it is out there? If you are promoting your book, even if it means driving them to the free version on your web site, then in time you should start seeing some sales (assuming the book is of interest and is written well). The main thing is to be patient, because unless you are doing a ton of promotion, it is highly unlikely anyone will even know about your book or be able to find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option you might consider is to use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/KDPSelect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Select&lt;/a&gt; program. If you publish your book as an e-book through Kindle (Amazon), they will offer you the option to join the Kindle Select program. This means you can have your book made available through the power of Amazon advertising, and they will let you choose five days on which to make your book free. I know several people who have done this to generate interest, and then once the book was no longer free, they had enough momentum and word of mouth to start seeing some actual sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside of this program is that they ask you to remove all other avenues for purchasing your book while you are in their program. That means you can't sell your POD versions and you won't be able to offer it for free on your Web site. Personally, I sell more books through B&amp;amp;N, so this option doesn't work for me. However, a new writer with their first book might be able to use it to their advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T14:33:26.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6007" CreationDate="2012-06-26T16:52:57.133" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case I would say you have it pretty well balanced. The whole point of her checking the news is to see if anyone else noticed the Earthquake, so seeing what's on the news works well. There's just enough there to give us a feel for it and so we can all fill it in with the same old day-to-day news we're all familiar with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I think you've managed a good balance for Show vs. Tell. You're showing just enough to let us know what it is without having to resorting to telling us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T16:52:57.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5977" CreationDate="2012-06-27T10:38:53.537" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Patches noted, play first, pay second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I launched a shared story world commercial entertainment property, and I curate examples of others. It is possible to make money from a shared world, but the hurdle is getting folks to want to play in the world first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need to build a compelling world, lay out the rules clearly about how rights and revenue will be shared, and seed the world with quality content first. Money coming in your door is second (and may take many months before it actually does occur).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at the worlds listed at &lt;a href=&quot;http://sharedstoryworlds.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sharedstoryworlds.com&lt;/a&gt; and examine how they  structured their legal agreements, revenue sharing, and copyright terms for some ideas about how your world could work. Look at how they have structured their world and the content inside it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://intothefarwest.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Into the Far West&lt;/a&gt;. I know the creator behind that world, and he's pushing for something close to what you're describing (i.e., an entertainment IP people pay to play in). He hasn't fully rolled out that portion of it, but I want to point out how much he's already done to build and blow out the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps, and good luck with your project!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3791" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T10:38:53.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6002" CreationDate="2012-06-27T14:26:17.780" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any species you invent will have characteristics. Find yourself a creature with similar characteristics, get a good dictionary, and follow the etymology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using you 'hawk' example, the etymology says that the OE was &lt;em&gt;habuc&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;heafoc&lt;/em&gt;; midle Dutch was &lt;em&gt;hawic&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;havic&lt;/em&gt;, High German was &lt;em&gt;habuh&lt;/em&gt; and Middle German &lt;em&gt;habech&lt;/em&gt;: the Norse was &lt;em&gt;hauk-r&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take any of those, and form your species name from it. Your hawk could, as an example, be a &lt;em&gt;hauch'r&lt;/em&gt;, a &lt;em&gt;heafic&lt;/em&gt;, or something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no special reason for using etymology. I happen to like it, that is all, so you could adapt it for personal taste (foreign words, random Scrabble tiles, etc) as long as it serves to get ideas flowing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3624" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T14:26:17.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6002" CreationDate="2012-06-27T20:15:55.323" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than focusing on generating names - a process that's usually somewhat arbitrary - perhaps examine the purpose of these names in your story. There's a school of thought that goes like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;World building is an exercise whose purpose is to help the writer tell a good story. Correspondingly, the design of a species in SF or fantasy should contribute to the story, and its name should also do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The names of characters can contribute to the flavor of a narrative. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilbo_Baggins&quot;&gt;Bilbo Baggins&lt;/a&gt; is a good example. It's a silly, bumbling name, and it serves a good purpose: We underestimate the character, and his eventual bumbling triumphs are the more valuable because of it. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant&quot;&gt;Thomas Covenant&lt;/a&gt; is another good one - the character is serious, dour, important. (You may not want to be this blatant, of course.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The name you choose for an entire race, therefore, can serve a story purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want the story to feel very down-to-earth, then using earth-based names would serve your purposes, unless you want to put an extra layer between your tale and anything earthbound. If you want things to seem truly alien, then you'll want names that feel odd, maybe even a little bit wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of etymological dictionaries, name-generating tools, and thesauri. All of these can be good tools in naming your fictional races. But, in the end, just use &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; and get the story written. You can always make changes later on, when you're clearer on what story purposes your names should serve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T20:15:55.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5094" CreationDate="2012-06-28T04:31:30.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike writing, reading time is something that you can sneak into the rest of your day. All you really need is a book and a bit of free time. If you can sneak in four fifteen minute reading sessions a day, you've got an hour of reading done and seven hours of reading a week. If you are a reasonably fast reader, that is easily a novel a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can bring a book/ebook reader with you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in the bathroom&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;over your lunch hour or during a work break&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in your car before or after work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;before you go to bed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;while waiting for someone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and you'll get some reading done each day, probably a couple of chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T04:31:30.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1043" CreationDate="2012-06-28T13:11:45.400" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used a company called Piece of Cake PR. They wrote a press release for me and distributed it to quite a few thousand journalists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then had lots of media outlets coming ot me asking for either a book in the mail or an eBook via email. Got me some great reviews that I put on my site, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think the service cost me around $180. Well spent IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3796" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T13:11:45.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6007" CreationDate="2012-06-30T10:43:10.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, there is too much irrelevance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever heard the &quot;If you show a gun in scene one, you had better use it by scene three&quot; advice? That springs to mind when I read the whole Erin-on-her-bed bit. If you are going to tell us that she is musical and moved from Taipei, that hade better become relevant very soon. If not, it is doing nothing to move the narrative forward and should be deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some specific sentences are too much 'tell'. &quot;Then, as if something had just popped up into her head, she grabbed the remote control from the table, turned on the TV, and switched to the news&quot; could be made a lot shorter.  Grabbing the remote shows us that she acted on impulse and doesn't need to be stated. She can just turn on the news, and this implies that the TV is on - again there is no need to say it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;No news about any earthquake, she said to herself&quot; there is no need to say that she said it to herself. The reader can work that out for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly with &quot;They were stacked perfectly side by side, like piano keys. It seemed like they hadn't moved a single inch since the last time she'd checked them.&quot; Just tell us they are neatly stacked - readers have minds and can figure out that if they are stacked neatly they haven't moved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3624" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T10:43:10.740" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5989" CreationDate="2012-06-30T16:54:47.910" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Real difference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science fiction pretends to be possible. It says &lt;em&gt;We haven't managed to pull this off yet, but we still might someday!&lt;/em&gt; Or else, it says &lt;em&gt;We never pulled this off, but if history had gone a little differently, we could have!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy flat out says &lt;em&gt;This shit is impossible, but it's happening anywayyyy!!!!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondary difference which is a thematic generalization, not always true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy uses unrealistic aspects to allow characters to explore &lt;em&gt;themselves&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;their own potential&lt;/em&gt; in more inventive ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science fiction uses unrealistic aspects to explore &lt;em&gt;society&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;humanity&lt;/em&gt; in more inventive ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T16:54:47.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6019" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-30T17:27:45.420" Score="0" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;What publishing houses would you suggest that pay special attention to young teenage authors? And what can you say about them if you'd had any direct interaction?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. Also, if there's a guide for this kind of situation to teach approaching publishers and deciding on their viability. And on the specifics of the legal parts of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be a focused publisher or a traditional mega-publisher that has an initiative (a campaign, a sub-division, a satellite company, a focused media channel as in a magazine, a worldwide competition, etc...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I can't go with self publishing for numerous reasons not the worst of which is the time it would require from me in school times or my financial state.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;On one hand, I do believe that my writings are, to me, astounding; while relative strangers backed this up with generally favorable reviews. So, once my works are there, they'll do every thing starting from captivating hearts up to enchanting imaginations passing everything in between.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, following this idealized scenario, &lt;strong&gt;suggest publishers that would deal favorably with young writers&lt;/strong&gt; and give them (somewhat) an edge. &lt;strong&gt;Include any other information you think is important for young authors trying to get published.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be a company reputable enough with good markets in its target language. I only need English but include whatever you know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T22:10:27.697" Title="Publishers favoring, or temporary initiatives tailored for, young authors" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6020" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6023" CreationDate="2012-06-30T19:18:17.087" Score="6" ViewCount="681" Body="&lt;p&gt;A problem I run into frequently is that I am struck by an idea, more accurately termed &quot;a premise,&quot; for a story, but then I can't decide what to do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think of a million ways to present the idea and I can't really decide on how to proceed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say I have an idea for a sci-fi short story about a society that replaces the dead with artificially intelligent holograms, imprinted with the mind of the deceased, so as to create the feeling that nobody has truly departed. This is a society that cannot let go, that does everything possible to avoid accepting death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now I think: this could be seen through the eyes of a child. Or an adult. Or of several people. Or by the crew of a ship visiting this society from somewhere else. This could be a personal, touching story, or a sterilized and distant story (sort of the way Asimov writes). This could be told in a thousand different ways, with a thousand different scenes and endings and voices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me condense this into a not-so-simple question: once I have my premise, how do I decide on how to tell my story? On what the best way to tell it is? What characters would best fit this tale? Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I narrow down my story's content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-07-01T15:07:50.863" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T15:07:50.863" Title="How can I develop my ideas?" Tags="|planning|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6019" CreationDate="2012-06-30T19:34:17.090" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every publisher does—if the manuscript is good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me, that you haven't understood some fundamental concepts in the publishing industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It could be a focused publisher or a traditional mega-publisher that has an initiative (a campaign, a sub-division, a satellite company, a focused media channel as in a magazine, a worldwide competition, etc...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, the main focus of a publisher is &lt;em&gt;making money&lt;/em&gt;. Every initiative is supporting this goal. If they figure out that it does not make money, they cancel the initiative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nothing else whatsoever is really that important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;As found in Version 1 sans edits&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe for you. But for the publisher &lt;em&gt;money&lt;/em&gt; is important. A publisher has no use for a &quot;I just want to be published&quot; writer. If your manuscript is promising enough to make money, they will take it. Otherwise not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The contract lets me keep copyright after it's over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;As found in Version 1 sans edits&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's over when it is not longer available in &quot;print&quot;. In the age of epublishing this means &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt;. Like everything else, that's negotiable, but you should have someone (like a lawyer) who is good at it. Even then, the odds for an unpublished newcomer are not the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking about epublishing: Why don't you do it? If you believe in what you write, why do you want to wait for the permission of a publisher? Welcome to the 3rd Millennium; publish it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit: Answering to the edited question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can't go with self publishing for numerous reasons not the worst of which is the time it would require from me in school times or my financial state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This still shows a fundamental misconception. I advise you to read the posts here about publishing, self-publishing and query letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had mentioned your &lt;em&gt;legal&lt;/em&gt; state, I may have understood that. Maybe you need the help of your parents to self-publish, because you have not attained full age yet. I don't know something about that. But &lt;em&gt;financial&lt;/em&gt; state isn't an issue nowadays, because you do not need (and shouldn't) pay someone upfront to publish your book. That would be vanity publishing. Also look for that keyword.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you epublish e.g. on Amazon, they take a percentage of every sold book. But you can upload it for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time is always an issue, but if you think you can save time by querying a traditional publisher, I have to disappoint you. Maybe you are lucky and the first one will take your book, but it's unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have to write a lot of query letters. Some editors look first on your manuscript, so the query is not as important, but some look first at the query letter, so that should be better good. And they do not want to read a letter you have written once and send to dozens of publisher. You need time to learn how to write a query letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you need patience, because it takes weeks or even months till you get an answer, &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you get an answer. I don't know what you want to do in your free time during these months, but I have two brilliant suggestions (and they are brilliant, trust me):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write your next book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn how to self-publish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And again, because it looks like you still do not understand it: There are &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; publishers who deal favorably with young writers. There are &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; publishers who deal favorably with writers who make them money no matter how old these writers are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2012-07-02T14:00:13.973" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T14:00:13.973" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6020" CreationDate="2012-06-30T19:47:58.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer is that all of these are valid viewpoints to take, and each of them might make a story. But you have to ask one more question - why is your premise important? Who is it important to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to identify not just a premise, but a story. The premise is just the oddity of the society that you have to describe, but for the people within it, it usually is just life as it happens. So you need a story, someones story, that drives against this, or with it, or around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to tell this through a child, but why is the child challenging or questioning it? the same quesiton for an adult - why do they draw attention to this aspect of their society, rather than, say, their ability to fly through space?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you want to take the position of a visiting group, what is it about this technology that challenges them? Maybe they have moral problems with it, which could provide a good story. You could even tell the story from the point of a deceased person, but you still have ask the question why is THIS story being told? What is the force of this particular story that makes it different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think once you have the conflict point or story point - not complete, but just as a point to work from - you will know why that story is the one to tell, and then you will know how to tell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T19:47:58.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6020" CreationDate="2012-06-30T22:55:20.293" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with SC about conflict. The other thing that will help you decide how to tell it (voice, characters, etc.) is theme, theme and &lt;em&gt;theme&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at your world. Decide what you want the main theme of your story to be, because that will help you decide which people or groups to use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, do you want to explore the ways in which humans cope with death? Maybe you could use a mother who's about to die - she thinks differently from the rest of society and wants to be gone from the world for good (for whatever reason, maybe something in her past for example). Her goal is to be left alone when she dies. Her daughter, however, doesn't want to lose her mother and wants to imprint a hologram with her mind. Bam. Instant conflict from goals that are equally valid but cannot co-exist. You would then want to tell it from a personal voice, as a distant voice wouldn't convey the characters' struggles very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe you want to explore the mechanics and structure of such a society. What would happen to such a society? How would the imprinted holograms be treated? Do any of them deteriorate over time, and what happens then? This would certainly be a more clinical telling, from some outside force. Note that if you do go down the Asimov hard science path, you will need a very novel, interesting premise to grip the reader. Take the movie Primer as an example. I wouldn't say the emotional or plot elements were anywhere near fantastic, but damn if it didn't garner a huge following because of its new take on time travel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, the viewpoints and conflict all come from your theme and what you want to leave your audience thinking about when they reach the end. It's very well and good to have a concept but if you don't know what you want to say, then why bother saying anything at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T22:55:20.293" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6019" CreationDate="2012-07-01T00:46:11.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that there are a couple of big misunderstandings in your post, which I'll address individually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, to the best of my knowledge there is no publishing company which prefers or even has a distinct policy for teen-written work. However, &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; publishing company would be happy to publish such a work &lt;strong&gt;if the book is good enough&lt;/strong&gt;. And that's a big &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt;. The reason that so few teenage novels are published is because almost all of them are rubbish, and it has nothing with an explicit or implicit bias against young authors. If anything, a teenage author presents an interesting marketing opportunity, so given a high-quality manuscript, I expect that most publishers would be pleasantly surprised that it was from a teenage author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to approach publishing houses, though, some things to keep in mind. First, read up on industry standards for query letters and other submission guidelines. Don't mention your age in your queries --- adult writers don't do that, and you want to be treated like an adult. Many publishing houses don't accept unagented manuscripts, so you may be better off querying agents rather than publishers at the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the way that copyright and contracts work. Rather than explain it here, I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlycommunications.wustl.edu/copyright/authors.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this guide&lt;/a&gt;, which covers the main points, including the question of who &quot;owns&quot; the copyright to your book and how long contact terms last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T00:46:11.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6020" CreationDate="2012-07-01T01:57:15.143" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have sort of a different take: don't narrow it down. Write them all, as short stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your premise is the premise of an entire society. All those potential stories are valid. So create them all. Use each little vignette as a different window into how this society functions, how the people relate to one another, how the technology developed, how some people embrace it and some reject it, how it's seen from the outside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edgar Lee Masters wrote a book of poems called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_River_Anthology&quot;&gt;Spoon River Anthology.&lt;/a&gt; The 200-plus poems are each from the POV of a different character, and all together they create a portrait of the town of Spoon River. I suppose yours might be the &lt;i&gt;There Is No Spoon Anthology,&lt;/i&gt; but you get my point. If your goal is to explore all the different facets of this society, then show all the facets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T01:57:15.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6026" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-01T03:22:38.303" Score="6" ViewCount="465" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a teen dystopian adventure/thriller/romance novel. I've been thinking about the plot for awhile. I've got an idea I want to develop: a dystopian world where the government has gotten rid of crime by drugging food and drink with a drug that suppresses negative emotions, like hate and fear. The plot would revolve around a 17-year-old female protagonist whose boyfriend knows about the drug, rebels against the government, and has been imprisoned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm having trouble deciding whether the drug is something the government keeps secret, or something everybody knows about. This seems to make for two very different stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No one is aware of this drug and in general they think that their world is perfect and safe. The female protaganist's boyfriend (she's 17) finds out somehow about the drug and tells her. However, he is captured for being a rebel and she must rescue him while also trying to escape the drug's influence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Same scenario, except everyone knows about the drug and accepts it because they believe that it makes their world better and safer. The boyfriend is still arrested/kidnapped for wanting to get rid of the drug.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I decide who knows about the drug?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3804" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-07-02T10:04:58.793" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T02:14:11.700" Title="Should my story's main obstacle be secret or common knowledge to the society?" Tags="|plot|science-fiction|young-adult|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6026" CreationDate="2012-07-01T10:50:34.227" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you already considered flipping a coin? I'm not kidding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, the answer &quot;your story, your choice&quot; will not help, even though it is the best answer for your question. So I'm telling you the real question behind your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;How could I overcome the resistance to write?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, you won't like the answer to this one either: Just write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to learn something about resistance, there is this excellent book you should read: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1936891026&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The War of Art&lt;/a&gt;. Every writer should read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, how do you decide what to write? Imagine both scenarios. Which one scares you more? Are more anxious to write one scenario than the other? The pick the more scary one. And stick to it. Your resistance is showing you your way. The bigger it is, the more you want to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know, you say &quot;It's equally scaring!&quot; Or &quot;They're not scaring me at all.&quot; Just flip a coin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T10:50:34.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5989" CreationDate="2012-07-01T18:52:08.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An even simpler answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the world of the novel purports that proper application of the scientific method in OUR WORLD could explain what's going on, it's sci-fi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T18:52:08.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6026" CreationDate="2012-07-01T21:05:43.343" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both scenarios have lots of potential for great storytelling. When choosing between them, consider what kind of story you'd most like to tell, and which of the two is going in a direction you find more interesting/compelling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me throw some light on the primary differences between the two avenues you're suggesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conspiracy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the drug is a secret, then your tale is one of &lt;strong&gt;conspiracy&lt;/strong&gt;. The story will necessarily revolve around the pursuit of truth - finding out the truth about the drug, fighting the government which tries to cover it up, trying to bring awareness to the population at large. In your specific case, you have a very nice twist, in that the population - including the protagonist - is &lt;em&gt;drugged&lt;/em&gt; to reject the conspiracy theory, and not to fight against it. That's an additional obstacle to overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an implicit assumption here that people would oppose the conspiracy if they only knew about it (otherwise, it wouldn't need to be secret). A conspiracy story provides a clear division between good guys and bad guys - the bad guys are the ones secretly manipulating everybody; the good guys are the ones trying to fight back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another consideration to take into account is that conspiracy provides natural outlets for &lt;strong&gt;exposition.&lt;/strong&gt; Explaining a central SF-nal concept is always a challenge; a conspiracy tale lets readers understand the concept right along with the protagonists, as they uncover it. You've still got your work cut out for you - you've got an insidious drug to develop, a massive conspiracy, and a whole society thrown out of whack! - but since your story's primary focus is &lt;em&gt;finding out more about what's going on&lt;/em&gt;, you've got a lot of good opportunities to explain important information without breaking pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Revolution&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your other option is that your SF-nal element has already been accepted as the status quo. In this case, your story becomes one of &lt;strong&gt;revolution&lt;/strong&gt;. It's a story that revolves more around argument, persuasion, and a deeper understanding of &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the society believes what it does, and why this society is fundamentally mistaken. It's likely to be a story focused on the &lt;em&gt;society&lt;/em&gt;, not only on plot and action. This is because what you're describing is a huge &lt;em&gt;change&lt;/em&gt; to society - everybody knows that society has changed drastically; just describing everyday actions will need to make considerations of how different this new society is. It's a change that's too big to ignore, so it'll probably get a fair share of the spotlight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With conspiracy, I mentioned a natural good/evil conflict. Here you're going to have to work harder for that, because either you've got a nation of morons supporting something blatantly stupid (which is seldom fun or interesting...) or else the opposing opinion is &lt;strong&gt;semi-legitimate&lt;/strong&gt;, and gets at least some measure of sympathetic portrayal. In other words, the conflict here can be more subtle, with more shades of gray. (In your particular example, you add a nice twist because the question of agency arises - to what extent can you argue with people drugged to be content? This can come into play in both versions, but the social-oriented one might take the question farther and deeper, addressing it in more complex ways, and not as a mere obstacle.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when it comes to exposition, well, you're trying to portray an unusual but oblivious society - that might be pretty tough, but can be very rewarding! Here you've got less excuse to focus on exposition than you do with the conspiracy version - you don't have the easy inroads. But a story focused on social elements will have advantages of its own - you might decide to focus on more character interactions, on relations within the society, since that's more appropriate to the social focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in conclusion, I think you'll find a conspiracy is a more straightforward, conflict-based story; a revolution is subtler and more complex. Of course, these are all generalities - e.g. you could have a conspiracy story that dealt heavily with the society created by the conspiracy, or you could take the story in a completely different direction than what I've outlined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But these, I think, are (some of) the immediate considerations that arise naturally from this particular choice. Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T21:05:43.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6026" CreationDate="2012-07-01T21:07:30.983" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmm. In situation A you get to work with the theme of a government lying to its people &quot;for their own good&quot;-- security vs. freedom is what that is, and you get to use the secrecy of the drug as a plot device-- who will the girl tell; who will believe her? Who else will find out, and who else already knows?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In situation B you get to work with the theme of people being afraid of themselves-- man vs self, essentially, our own fear of human nature, and possibly the theme of people coming to accept themselves and finding other ways to fight their dark side rather than using science to neuter their mind. And you get to use people's opinions as a plot device: Who's in favor of keeping the drug? Who's in favor of getting rid of it? What will each side do to win?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2012-07-02T00:24:38.200" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T00:24:38.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6019" CreationDate="2012-07-02T22:10:27.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're still in high school, you could enter the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.artandwriting.org/Awards/Categories#NOVEL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scholastic Novel Contest&lt;/a&gt;. They'll take up to 50 pages of your manuscript and an outline. If you're chosen, you'll be given mentoring to finish the book, and it will be published by Scholastic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3810" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T22:10:27.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5972" CreationDate="2012-07-02T22:15:03.433" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I think a new event or occurrence might be too unbelievable, I might have my protagonist express and work through the same doubts. Instead of skimming over the incredible coincidence, I would emphasize the luck involved. As long as they are used sparingly, having a perfect plot twist is believable because sometimes life actually happens like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3810" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T22:15:03.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6026" CreationDate="2012-07-03T02:14:11.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it needs to be kept secret, scenario 1. Otherwise, curious citizens might have already tried resistance, stopped eating and drinking to see the effects of being off the drug. In either scenario, the drugged population would be apathetic about getting rid of the drug. Their emotions would be suppressed, so they wouldn't rebel, and (in scenario 2) people would complain about the cost of switching food and drink for undrugged materials; they wouldn't see the point. At least with the first situation your protagonist has a secret that she thinks will be a big reveal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3810" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T02:14:11.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6035" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-03T09:47:47.483" Score="0" ViewCount="524" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any tools or online communities that deal with word association? I'm looking for a resource where I could poll for common associations for a particular word.  If you do know of such a tool or community, please describe its positives and negatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3811" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T07:37:00.937" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T07:37:00.937" Title="Tools or communities for word association?" Tags="|word-choice|tools|resources|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6035" CreationDate="2012-07-03T13:43:12.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two resources that sound appropriate are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wordassociations.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wordassociations.net/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordassociation.org/search/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wordassociation.org/search/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though I can't rule it out, I kind of doubt you'll find existed dedicated communities - I expect very few people are interested in regularly checking into a site for the sole purpose of answering word association requests. On writing forums, you might find some people happy to do you a favor by answering, but your requests will probably not be the scintillating discussions forums prefer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; do is just collect the words you're interested in, and ask a handful of friends to give you some associations for each. Simple, friendly, and 100% human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-07-03T15:13:37.557" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T15:13:37.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6038" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6044" CreationDate="2012-07-04T07:41:19.120" Score="19" ViewCount="3381" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a great question but I use a lot of cliffhangers. And I have a habit of making  cliffhangers in the end of every chapter that I write just to hook the reader. The question is, is it a good idea?&#xA;Won't it look monotonous after a while into the novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-07-04T16:38:04.783" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T00:01:05.950" Title="Should cliffhangers be used in every chapter?" Tags="|structure|ending|suspense|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6038" CreationDate="2012-07-04T08:01:32.513" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Proper tense cliffhangers should be kept for a few occasions, otherwise your readers will guess what is happening, because they know it needs to have a problem by the end of the chapter. Like Eastenders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However leaving the ends of chapters in limbo - unresolved, with the characters walking off to certain death, while you take up another thread of the story will have a similar effect, of keeping the readers going and wanting to know what is going to happen to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, resolving everything raised in a chapter during that chapter is boring, as there is no sense of long-term development of the characters and situations. Sometimes, you just need to move the characters on in a chapter, and prepare for something later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T08:01:32.513" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6038" CreationDate="2012-07-04T14:55:45.850" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ending each chapter on a cliff hanger is a plot device used in some genres, like thrillers. Dan Brown uses it extensively in his books, as do some other writers. If well done, they can make the book more exciting, and gives it that 'can't put down' feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if done badly, it irritates the reader, as it seems the only purpose of each chapter is to put the hero in even more trouble. Also, if your characters are boring, the reader might just say, &lt;em&gt;go ahead and die already&lt;/em&gt;. Certainly I've thrown away books where the hero was getting caught by gun toting henchmen every five minutes, just so each chapter could end in a cliffhanger. And this was in the first 3-4 chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd say no, they should not be used in every chapter. My advice (as a reader, as I have no experience as a writer writing cliffhangers) is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't have too many in the first part of the book. You need some time to develop plot / character etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cliffhangers do better near the middle / end of the book. By this time the reader identifies with the characters, and understands what's at stake in the plot. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the cliffhanger is a part of the plot, and not just added to make the reader keep reading. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not sure, put your book away for some time and then read it as a reader. Do you feel the cliffhangers make the book enticing, or like a soap serial, their only purpose is to get you to the next week / chapter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T14:55:45.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5970" CreationDate="2012-07-05T11:48:28.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally the rule of thumb with web pages is to treat the title of the page or the domain as the title of the inline citation, so if the page title is 'Google Public Data', go with that. In practice I think that 'Google' is a little too general, because of the number of products Google provide. You would also need to provide the url in your full citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the following on the APA site that suggests you can just number the graphs in your inline citation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the material does not include page numbers, you can include any of the following in the text to cite the quotation (from pp. 170–171 of the Publication Manual):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A paragraph number, if provided; alternatively, you could count paragraphs down from the beginning of the document.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  An overarching heading plus a paragraph number within that section.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A short title in quotation marks, in cases in which the heading is too unwieldy to cite in full.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because there is no date and no author, your text citation would include the title (or short title) &quot;n.d.&quot; for no date, and paragraph number (e.g., &quot;Heuristic,&quot; n.d., para. 1). The entry in the reference list might look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Heuristic. (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary (11th ed.). Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/heuristic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/heuristic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(adapted from the sixth edition of the APA Publication Manual, © 2010)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3422" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-07-05T14:03:53.267" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T14:03:53.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6043" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-05T14:11:51.887" Score="2" ViewCount="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do have little research experience on &quot;Web Security&quot; and I made some inventions in that. I have patented my inventions and now when I was trying to apply for Masters by Research in Information Technology in some X University they are asking for Research Publications. I never came across them in my past and I don't know its importance. May anyone tell me &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its role to the admissions committee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How important they are as compared to patents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How and where can I release my Research Publications? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What format should I maintain while creating one?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3820" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T07:45:57.223" Title="How to publish my Research Publication" Tags="|self-publishing|publishing|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6038" CreationDate="2012-07-05T19:38:03.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say no. Not for a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of how you are defining cliffhanger, I don't think you need an &lt;em&gt;aaiiigh!!&lt;/em&gt; moment at the end of every single chapter. A chapter should &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/when-should-a-chapter-end/1811&quot;&gt;end for a reason,&lt;/a&gt; but that reason doesn't have to be a shock, reversal, discovery, or threat to life/limb/happiness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use the same trick or tool repeatedly, in the same place or the same way all the time, it gets old. Your reader becomes jaded. You wouldn't use the same sentence structure over and over, right? You mix it up. So why use the same narrative tool? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soap operas and lengthy serials need cliffhangers because &lt;em&gt;the story never ends.&lt;/em&gt; You need a reason for the audience to keep returning. A book is pretty much by definition a finite narrative. (Even reeeeeeally long ones like &lt;em&gt;A Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings.&lt;/em&gt;) At some point the story will come to a conclusion, and you hope your reader will complete the journey with you, so you can afford to end an internal arc because the larger arc of the entire story is still going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a neverending story, then you have to use cliffhangers to drag the audience along, because there's no quest to finish. There's no The End coming &amp;mdash; you have to give the audience something to come back for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T19:38:03.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6043" CreationDate="2012-07-06T07:45:57.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the confusion may be coming from the degree title. It may be that the Master by Research is a masters degree based on existing ( or ongoing ) published research, which is possible, but implies existing published research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research Publications mean peer-reviewed and published research work, in a set of standard journals (in IT, the ACM is the worlds primary research publisher, with a whole lot of sub journals that you an get published in)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how you have submitted your application (and I would guess that English is not your first language, so there may have been some confusion), they might be assuming that you want to use existing work for your thesis, in which case, it needs to have been peer-review published. If it hasn't, then you are not expecting to use this, so you should make this clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Patents are academically worthless, because there is no evidence as such that they work - they are ideas and concepts, nothing more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you play down your previous work to them, use it as an indication of interest, and nothing more. The academic community has a way of doing things, and an approach that you will need to change to fit in to. It is a whole lot more rigorous than the patents application, for good reason, because the purpose is the advancement of knowledge across the discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T07:45:57.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6038" CreationDate="2012-07-08T00:01:05.950" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Monotonous cliffhangers&lt;/em&gt; seems like an oxymoron. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, I'd have no problem with consistent chapter-ending cliffhangers, provided that it didn't get overdone.  After all, pretty much any literary device can be overused.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, overdoing it would depend more on quality than quantity.  The more you use a literary device, the better you'd be at using it, lest it become worn and trite.  If these cliffhangers are forced, corny, cheesy, or contrived, then even every &lt;em&gt;third&lt;/em&gt; chapter would be too much.  But if they provide a natural, intriguing, riveting free-flowing transition into the next chapter, without being repetitive, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, would a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter constitute overuse?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T00:01:05.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2012-07-09T05:17:51.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently having the same problem in the writing of my novel's first draft. Like many writers, I have an inner critic that is always hovering over my shoulder, whispering--sometimes shouting--about all the cleaning up the trash heap will need. and I find myself sinking in my chair; banging my head into my desk; deleting, deleting, deleting; stressing; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the thing, I keep &lt;em&gt;telling&lt;/em&gt; myself to quit stressing over how utterly hideous the writing is, to ignore the cynical voice, and just focus on getting the ideas down on paper. Then shift through those many pages and erase the bad ideas. Work it out later. Make it beautiful later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem--and perhaps yours, too--was I never listened to myself. That all changed when I read an article (if I could remember where, I'd cite it) a few days back on how to deal with this. It was a simple enough 'solution': Write a big, bold note to yourself and place it where you can see it when ever you're writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mine literally says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quit being a detail obsessed idiot and just WRITE. The first draft is&#xA;  meant to be blunt and awful and ugly; its purpose is to simply get&#xA;  your ideas down on paper. BLUNTNESS IS YOUR FRIEND! And realizing so&#xA;  is your best weapon against sulking about how  horrible your work is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ha, ha. Funny (a bit insulting) and yet effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my utter surprise, I wrote a whole chapter in one day. Accomplishing that feat gave me a confidence boost I desperately needed. (despite the fact that I know what I put down on paper is the worse I've ever done--all the easier to replace later, yes?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another great tip I received was Don't read &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; back until you are finished with the first draft in whole. If you can't fight the urge to read back, turn off the computer's back light or temporarily turn the font color the same as the background, therefore making it impossible to sneak peeks without a lot of effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only then can you release that inner critic and tear it to shreds. That little monster will be your best friend through the process of rewriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps you as much as it did me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2998" LastEditorUserId="2998" LastEditDate="2012-07-09T05:59:50.863" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T05:59:50.863" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2012-07-10T13:01:37.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm also working on a weekly publication, and struggle with a lot of the same feelings. I think that rather than trying to address the problem head-on, what has worked for me is to have a fairly strict but reasonable writing schedule that I stick to every day. Following the &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Seinfeld productivity method&lt;/a&gt;, I got myself a giant year calendar and mark the calendar for every day I sit down to do two hours of sustained writing work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that working in small chunks but doing my work every day limits the amount of time my brain spends in self-judgement mode, and that it also puts a cool down period in place so that if I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; start tellign myself a piece of work isn't good enough, some time passes before I look at it again, and that helps a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll admit, this doesn't eliminate my perfectionism, it just spreads it out a little more evenly and prevents it from totally freezing me up. Also, shifting the balance from &quot;did I write well today?&quot; to &quot;did I sit down and do my work today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3841" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T13:01:37.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2012-07-11T06:50:01.530" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Apache Subversion (merely for Android &amp;amp; web development, not exactly content writing) - either self-hosted or on client's Beanstalk or private GitHub accounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just wanted to recommend my favorite clients; both of them are commercial, but affordable and definitely worth the money: Syntevo &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.syntevo.com/smartsvn/download.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SmartSVN&lt;/a&gt; &amp;amp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/download.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SmartGit&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SmartGit supports SVN partially - but only a basic set of commands.&#xA;The downside might be that one can only compare plain-text files 1:1;&#xA;on any other files one can just see them something has changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With one file per chapter and some script which merges the plain-text chapters into one single file - with chapter-headings and page-numbers, maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't recommend TortoiseSVN - but that's probably just a personal thing - any VCS-client which got a full implementation of the command-set should do the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3847" LastEditorUserId="3847" LastEditDate="2018-05-19T03:37:12.913" LastActivityDate="2018-05-19T03:37:12.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2012-07-11T18:07:40.893" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a Mac. I use the built-in Text-to-Speech feature to read back aloud the words I have written. It is by far superior to reading yourself because the brain sometimes skips things right in front of your eyes! And the more tired your eyes, the ears usually hear better! You can achieve similar results if you use a PC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3851" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T18:07:40.893" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6061" CreationDate="2012-07-11T21:14:07.367" Score="16" ViewCount="3462" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend has asked me to read through a chapter of his story and give my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets say he has two main characters &lt;strong&gt;Mr John de Havilland&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Mrs Sally de Havilland&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that the author sometimes uses the full name, &lt;strong&gt;Mr John de Havilland&lt;/strong&gt;; Other times he uses the short form, &lt;strong&gt;John&lt;/strong&gt; and other times uses a descriptive word instead of the name, i.e &lt;strong&gt;the plumber&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst reading the story, I often found it difficult to work out 'who said what' (especially when I was having to distinguish between Mr de Havilland / Mrs de Havilland).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to suggest that he pick one name for each of the characters and stick to it. To keep using various pronouns/roles to refer to the character, but decide on the &lt;strong&gt;one word&lt;/strong&gt; to use for their &lt;strong&gt;name&lt;/strong&gt;. So, if the name is to be used in the narrative, nearly always to choose &quot;John&quot; instead of varying between &quot;John&quot;, &quot;Mr de Havilland&quot; and &quot;Mr John de Havilland&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested to hear if that is a sensible criticism.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;How much consistency/ variation should there be in specifiying character names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it typical to add variation to the words used for a character's name to keep it spicy or is consistency often considered the prioritised goal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2754" LastEditorUserId="2754" LastEditDate="2012-07-11T22:17:07.250" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T22:16:04.197" Title="Is it typical to add variation to the words used for a character's name to keep it spicy?" Tags="|creative-writing|word-choice|characters|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6059" CreationDate="2012-07-11T21:39:30.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not about &quot;spicy,&quot; it's about not being boring. Using &quot;John&quot; in every single dialogue tag can grate on the inner ear. That said, don't overdo it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say you should use character names (or he/she) 90% of the time, and the other 10% can be &quot;the detective,&quot; &quot;the doctor,&quot; &quot;the captain,&quot; &quot;the younger woman,&quot; &quot;her older sister,&quot; etc. You want to do it just often enough to prevent monotony. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're having trouble figuring out who &quot;Mrs de Havilland&quot; is in a conversation between a husband and wife, then the writer is doing a poor job of attribution, period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT TO ADD: As JSBangs notes below, using a character's full name and courtesy title (Mr John de Havilland) in a dialog tag sounds very strange to the modern ear. Unless there's some compelling stylistic reason, pick one version of the person's name (Mr de Havilland, Dr. McCoy, John) and stick with that in pretty much all iterations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-07-12T09:53:24.673" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T09:53:24.673" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6059" CreationDate="2012-07-12T08:35:30.100" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Orson Scott Card answers your question precisely and eloquently in his excellent &lt;em&gt;Character and Viewpoint&lt;/em&gt;, under the heading &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.il/books?id=-jehiAI0WJAC&amp;amp;pg=PA56&amp;amp;dq=%22orson+scott+card%22+%22One+Name+Per+Character%22&amp;amp;hl=iw&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=Tor-T-L_Lu-P4gTE4YWBBw&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;One Name Per Character&lt;/a&gt;. Go, read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For posterity, I'll summarize:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Names should be treated as &quot;invisible words&quot; - they're so common, the reader hardly notices them. You can repeat them as often as you like, without worrying about &quot;sounding repetitive&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alternating between different tags can be confusing and distracting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every POV (point of view) should stick to a single tag per character - that's how that person thinks of them. This tag might demonstrate the relationship between the characters - Mr. John de Havilland might be &quot;Johnny&quot; to his wife, &quot;Mr. de Havilland&quot; to his subordinates, &quot;the prig in the yellow shirt&quot; to a street kid, and &quot;Knives&quot; to a newly-released ex-con whose gang he belonged to when he was 11. But the ex-con will never think of him as &quot;Mr. de Havilland,&quot; nor as &quot;the plumber.&quot; Don't break from the POV's chosen tag unless the story itself calls for it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't use the tags themselves to tell us directly about the character - rotating between &quot;De Havilland,&quot; &quot;the plumber,&quot; &quot;the 50-year old,&quot; &quot;the ugly revolutionary,&quot; &quot;the Soviet spy&quot; just to tell us he is all those things. It's clunky, it's confusing, and it's telling us rather than showing us.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-07-12T09:53:47.743" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T09:53:47.743" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6068" CreationDate="2012-07-12T11:32:44.053" Score="10" ViewCount="43128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have multiple scenes in a chapter, sometimes from different POVs, or different locations/times. Now I would like to make it clear to the reader that they have left a scene and are entering a new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, Scrivener (which I just started using, so I'm not an expert), places a '#' between scenes, but I have never seen this in a real book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.---------------&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;x--------------x&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to separate scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not so interested in what the style manuals say, I just want to make it easy for the readers to understand they are in a new scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the easiest way to accomplish this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: To clarify, I'm planning to self publish, so I will be doing the manuscript formatting myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="2024" LastEditDate="2012-07-12T21:19:57.913" LastActivityDate="2020-09-27T22:48:45.700" Title="How to separate scenes in a chapter?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6062" CreationDate="2012-07-12T13:51:05.880" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could take the five-star approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;      *     *     *     *     *&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could just use a significant amount of whitespace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3381" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T13:51:05.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6062" CreationDate="2012-07-12T14:29:06.177" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess it depends how you compile your text in Scrivener if you get the '#' or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scenes within a chapter are normally separated by blank lines. Like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a scene.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And here is its end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a new one.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Keep writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you send your manuscript to a publisher and it is edited/copyedited, transformed for printing, then these new lines can be easily missed. That means, where you put in a scene break is none in the printed book, because someone accidentally deleted the blank line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid this, the #-signs are inserted. Then it is obvious for the publisher guys where a scene ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you self-publish your book, you can use whatever you want to separate lines. As long as you like it. It's your book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T14:29:06.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6062" CreationDate="2012-07-12T14:30:55.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Never seen a professional book that didn't separate scenes by a triple newline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T14:30:55.470" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6062" CreationDate="2012-07-12T16:02:50.980" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once your document is compiled, you can go through and change the # to three returns, which is what's usually used. (The only time I see multiple asterisks is if a scene end happens to fall at the bottom of a page, and the &lt;strong&gt;*&lt;/strong&gt; is to let the reader know that the next page starts a new scene.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't sweat it too much; if you're fortunate enough to get a book contract, your publisher will be laying out the book according to their standards, and if you're self-publishing, you can do whatever you like (as long as it's consistent). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T16:02:50.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6062" CreationDate="2012-07-12T16:13:03.853" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the easiest way to signify that you've left a scene and are entering a new one is one of two things. first, you could just hit the return button a few times.  most readers realize what this means because they've grown accustomed to it.  another way is to insert some sort of symbol (e.g. ~ or something) a line or two under the scene you're leaving and before the scene you're entering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3853" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T16:13:03.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6062" CreationDate="2012-07-12T17:03:21.950" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrivener exists, in part, to put manuscripts into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuscript_format&quot;&gt;standard manuscript format&lt;/a&gt;. The # mark it uses as the default section break is, frankly, a little puzzling to me. (Apparently this is standard for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/manuscript-format/&quot;&gt;SFWA format&lt;/a&gt;, see the comments.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manuscripts in any variant of standard manuscript format will separate sections by either an empty line or three asterisks. However, when these fall at the end or the beginning of a page, they're easy to miss, so writers will often use lines of asterisks or similar symbols. Scrivener's default pound sign is fine for this purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leave the symbols and lines to the graphic designers. You're a writer, and you should worry about the words, not the design. Using lines of dashes in the manuscript, particularly when they're of random length, comes across to me as, frankly, slightly amateurish. But whatever you use to separate sections should be consistent throughout the manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re-reading this question, I'm guessing that, since you're concerned with readers, this may be a situation such as an e-book or web publication, where manuscript format is irrelevant. If that's the case, it doesn't matter what you use, but I do suggest picking a simple marker such as three asterisks or bullets and centering them in the space in-between sections. With web publications and ebooks, you have no way of knowing how the text will hyphenate, so simply using white space in-between sections may not be the clearest way of breaking up sections. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-07-13T01:16:07.930" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T01:16:07.930" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6002" CreationDate="2012-07-13T14:17:37.573" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can jumble the characters of the existing species names. For example, in Pokemon, you have Ekans and Arbok, which are the reverse of Snake and Kobra, respectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, you can use equivalent names from some other languages. Like, the Japanese equivalent of Hawk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3832" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T14:17:37.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-15T06:18:06.847" Score="9" ViewCount="4353" Body="&lt;p&gt;My fiancée is a first-time children's book author. What should she expect from her first meeting with the publisher and editors? Any advice?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They've already seen some samples of her unpublished work and are interested in interviewing her before signing any contract. The meeting is to be a panel-style interview (Skype call) with a few editors and a head publisher/director-type. How can she prepare for this? What expectations might they have of new authors? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3860" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T18:05:48.800" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T18:05:48.800" Title="First-time meeting with publisher &amp; editors (What to expect)" Tags="|publishing|editing|children|first-time-author|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2425" CreationDate="2012-07-15T17:58:39.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://UniverseSandbox.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UniverseSandbox&lt;/a&gt; has a relatively new powerful Astrophysics and celestial mechanics simulator if you are writing a Sci-Fi universe and would like something that will give you a chance to make sure your orbits, day/month/year lengths, number of moons, etc are reasonable and workable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also has a gross calculation of planetary surface temperatures based on your sun's data and planet's orbit, with configuration for planetary Albedo and Infrared Emissivity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it runs Fractal Mapper or something similar to generate random planetary textures, or you can import your own surface texture map so you can see your world how it might look from space.  }}:P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3862" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-07-15T20:34:43.837" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T20:34:43.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6002" CreationDate="2012-07-17T10:02:30.177" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One important aspect of naming creatures is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onomatopoeia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;onomatopoeia&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideophone&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ideophone&lt;/a&gt; -&lt;br&gt;&#xA;the name should give an impression of what the creature &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;em&gt;buruk&lt;/em&gt; can sound like a large, powerful, lumbering beast&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Fleep&lt;/em&gt; may give the impression of a small, flying rodent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T10:02:30.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6070" CreationDate="2012-07-17T10:20:16.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The precise process from manuscript to distribution may be different from publisher to publisher - in fact, explaining what to expect is probably a major purpose of such a meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many ways, this meeting will be similar to a job interview - and the advice will be the same. Don't stress out too much - you're already on their good side (or they wouldn't be arranging all this), and they know you're new to the industry; you'll be nervous and you'll have concerns and you'll want stuff explained, and that's absolutely fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They'll probably want to &lt;strong&gt;explain the process&lt;/strong&gt;; this is a great time to ask any questions that you have about what to expect. Come ready with questions if you can. It's good if you can read up on children's publishing a bit (if you haven't already), so things won't be completely new to you, and so you'll notice if anything seems unusual or off-kilter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They'll probably want to &lt;strong&gt;get a personal impression of you&lt;/strong&gt;; this needs some social skill, but nothing extravagent. They'll want to see that they can have a pleasant conversation with you, that you seem on top of your work and of their expectations of you, that you don't have any major issues which would make working with you a problem. I'll be honest - more than anything, they'll be looking for warning signs, like &quot;this author refuses to accept any criticism,&quot; &quot;this author swears like a sailor,&quot; or &quot;this author appears mentally disturbed.&quot; This kind of thing is a deal-breaker. Of course, anything you can impress them with - professionalism, wit, dazzling beauty, what-have-you - is a very nice bonus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They might already &lt;strong&gt;talk about the contract.&lt;/strong&gt; Don't commit to anything you're not absolutely certain of - contracts are serious stuff. Handling the contract itself is a whole seperate issue, which you should come into prepared. I won't expand on this here, but be sure you expand on it elsewhere...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For extra reading, here's one of many available essays describing &lt;a href=&quot;http://editorialass.blogspot.co.il/2007/09/what-makes-dream-author_24.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;what makes a dream author&lt;/a&gt;. A lot of these will only be self-evident when actually working together, but this might give you a certain ideal to aim for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T10:20:16.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6074" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6076" CreationDate="2012-07-17T13:06:14.430" Score="7" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my book I'm planning to self-pub, I aim to hire a copyeditor / proofreader at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is this: Should I do any proofreading myself, other than using a spell checker? Currently, my eyes hurt from trying to find small mistakes (things using 'their' for 'there' etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if there is any harm in just throwing the whole thing over to someone else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an advantage in me doing a typo edit pass myself? I mean, will it help reduce cost (as I've done a lot of work myself), or make the quality better (as 2 people have gone over the text)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T17:22:13.270" Title="If I'm going to hire a copyeditor, do I need to do any proofing myself?" Tags="|editing|proofreading|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6074" CreationDate="2012-07-17T14:38:22.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, this is a perfect job for a proofreader, so there's not much point in you trying to &quot;double up&quot; with a professional. There might be some minor cost difference if they charge by hour, but I would guess it to be negligible - the effort is less in fixing errors once found, and more in carefully going over the entire text, to find the errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some provisos and qualifications, though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're not 100% certain of the proofreader, definitely look again once he's finished and make sure he's done a reasonable job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What shape is your ms. in, proofreading-wise? You'll only want to pay once, for one editing - on the absolutely final text. No point in paying for copyediting of something that might change entirely! &lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, before you get to that point, you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; want outside feedback - writing groups, critique circles, feedback from friends, hiring an editor - and for &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;, you should have something that's not too riddled with errors. Critiquing a piece full of obvious errors is very tough; they're distracting and they give an amateur feel - even if they're sure to be corrected later in the process. &lt;strong&gt;So,&lt;/strong&gt; if you've got a lot of minor errors, it's worth cleaning up on your own before any round of feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some writers just like their writing to be pretty clean, and put effort into keeping down blatant errors even when it's not strictly necessary. Obviously, this is a matter of personal preference. It certainly doesn't hurt - and many will say that basic concern for &quot;correctness&quot; correlates with good command of the language.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-07-17T17:22:13.270" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T17:22:13.270" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6074" CreationDate="2012-07-17T16:26:55.397" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nobody is perfect, not even proofreaders. But first, let's get some terminology straight: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Copyediting&lt;/strong&gt; is a catch-all term for editors who revise, make changes and suggestions, and so on. Of course, as editors go along, we mark up any typos they find on the proofreading level. But it's not the focus of this pass. We'll catch as many errors as we can, but at this point, we're looking to make the work read better while preserving the writer's voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Proofreading&lt;/strong&gt; is done after copyediting, with the intent of catching all errors that absolutely cannot make it into print. It should be a separate pass from editing, Since a writer has to accept or reject the editor's changes, this process can actually &lt;em&gt;introduce&lt;/em&gt; typos. This is, of course, despite the fact that editors &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; make mistakes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the world of self-publishing and small presses, these two steps are often combined. This results in more typos. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dirty little secret of the editing world is that, in any work that's long enough, despite our very best efforts, there &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be typos that weren't caught. There will be places where someone made a last-minute change in the post-galley stage, or a proofreader simply didn't catch something. This is why writers with a large following often enlist the aid of readers to catch typos, often many of them at the same time. This is also the case with writers who are working with large publishing houses. I've even seen writers who will specifically ask readers who bought the hardcover to email in any typos they found. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if it's important to you that your work be as close to error-free as possible, I suggest always checking a proofreader's work. It's not insulting or a slight on their professionalism. Enlist the help of some friends who will go on a typo hunt. If you have the budget, hire a second proofreader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if all you do is catch one or two typos, multiple layers of editing and proofreading is a big help and makes your book look more professional. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T16:26:55.397" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4392" CreationDate="2012-07-18T13:46:49.007" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Word's &quot;Save as Webpage (HTML)&quot; option worked for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regular Word format (.doc and .docx) could have you working into the night: I wrote a picture/caption book and uploaded it, following all the recommendations 4 times; it was still splitting page one into pages, page three was blank, page four perfect, page five had a picture and no caption, page six had a caption and no picture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, so, i saved as webpage html, and it was perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, you must save as html, which creates two more files: an image file and document file. Then you need to compress them both into one file - in mac, this is an &quot;archiver&quot; file. Then upload that, and it should be just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Zip or compress the .htm and the _files... Not the word document file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3869" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-07-18T15:41:09.893" LastActivityDate="2012-07-18T15:41:09.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6078" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6083" CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:23:09.887" Score="20" ViewCount="12916" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is good/preferred way of presenting directory trees in programming books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main criteria are following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should be readable and intuitive &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It shouldn't take too much page  space&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It shouldn't require too much effort from author to create and&#xA;update&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of situations when presenting directory tree to the reader is required include describing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sample programming projects (e.g. &quot;Hello World&quot; project using some technology), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;project layout conventions (like Java EE convention, Maven convention etc.), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;important directories and files of some installed application (e.g. layout of Tomcat directories), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For now, following forms come to my mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listing of Unix/linux &lt;code&gt;ls -R&lt;/code&gt; invocation on file tree of interest, e.g.&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;$ ls  -R /etc/sysconfig/networking&#xA;/etc/sysconfig/networking:&#xA;devices  profiles&#xA;/etc/sysconfig/networking/devices:&#xA;/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles:&#xA;default&#xA;/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default:&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manually constructing directory tree &quot;images&quot; from ASCII characters like &quot;|&quot; or &quot;-&quot;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;|-myproj&#xA;  |-WEB-INF&#xA;    |-classes&#xA;    |-libs&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating a screenshot of project tree view of some IDE (e.g. Eclipse)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describing file structure textually, e.g:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Root project directory should contain WEB-INF subdirectory which in&#xA;  turn should contain classes and libs subdirectories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Using some advanced modelling tool like Microsoft Visio to generate diagram showing directory structure?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  Below are my impressions for the options I already written out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 1&lt;/strong&gt;: is very terse and is readable and familiar for advanced programmers, but I dare to say not all programmers (especially younger ones) are really familiar with Unix or &#xA;command-line programming in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 2&lt;/strong&gt;: is should be readable for most of readers but doesn't really look professional&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 3&lt;/strong&gt;: it will probably look professional but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not everyone must be familiar with given IDE (alhought it shouldn't really matter)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IDE GUI quickly becomes outdated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It isn't really easy to update&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 4&lt;/strong&gt;: it is OK for the simplest cases. But for more complex it can easily become confusing and verbose. They say that &quot;A picture is worth a thousand words&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 5&lt;/strong&gt;: such diagrams are likely to take a lot of space and in practice may be less readable than option 1 or 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my questions to you are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you know any more solutions that the ones I stated above? Maybe I'm missing some good one(s)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you know if any solution is widely adopted in professional programming books? Which one do you meet most often?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What solution do &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; personally find best?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have experience with writing programming books? How did you solved this problem?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. I'm not 100% sure if I'm writing on right forum but it seems the best suitable for this question from all of forums I found in stack exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3871" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T18:17:47.090" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T23:02:18.140" Title="Writing a programming book: how to present directory structures" Tags="|technical-writing|formatting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4231" CreationDate="2012-07-19T20:36:57.643" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's how it shook out with regard to my own project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My illustrator wanted to retain the copyright, and grant me a limited-use license in conjunction with my creative work. When pressed, she gave me a second, higher price for relinquishing the copyright. I took the first option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the language we settled on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Artist grants the Client exclusive reproduction rights, excepting&#xA;  that the Artist retains the right to use the Artwork for&#xA;  self-promotion, in the Artist's portfolio, for the production and sale&#xA;  of prints, cards, calendars and similar products, and for inclusion in&#xA;  collections of the Artist's work, provided that the Artist does not&#xA;  use the Artwork in connection with a literary or cinematic work of any&#xA;  kind. The Client's right to reproduce the Artwork is unlimited&#xA;  provided that such use is in connection with or to promote the&#xA;  Client's product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2736" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T20:36:57.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2053" CreationDate="2012-07-20T07:39:50.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to turn down a pretty good contract role as a technical author (TA) writing API for a company based in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gibraltar&lt;/a&gt; - sun, sand and senoritas! Why? Because I was able to get through the interview based solely on my personality rather than my aptitude for the subject. I'm a good enough TA to know my limitations and I have previous experience writing API so why am I saying no to a contract that I really need? The answer is that I don't believe that I could do it justice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not have a 'reasonably' deep understanding of programming (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JSON&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_%28programming_language%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Java&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RESTful&lt;/a&gt;) and I would have to lean heavily on the developers to explain each nut and bolt of the code - thereby exposing what a wally I was and eventually discouraging developers or technical experts from providing the techy stuff that as an author, I should be clarifying for the audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I truly believe that a good author writes from experience, from a sound knowledge base of the subject, from a position of strength. Understanding your subject makes your prose flow, and flow with clarity and succinctness. So yes, a technical author &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; need a technical background in the subject matter that he is writing about; if only so that he can obtain the cooperation of the subject matter experts he will be getting the information from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes without saying that if the author does not understand the information he is writing about then he will be clueless on how to sift through the data and clearly explain the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3874" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T20:11:42.427" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T20:11:42.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6002" CreationDate="2012-07-20T08:17:33.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been thinking about creating an imaginary world, too. In fact, I have been creating them in my mind. I have to find time to put them down in writing or at least dictate into the recording app of my phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evolution of species&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story is more intriguing if it has background of how various species evolved from a couple of common roots. It's more believable when you invent the history together with how they became known by what they are known. Then your story could prequel respectively into why they are what they are called. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evolution of Language&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not difficult to invent a language - if you have been exposed to a number of languages. You could have all these historical evolution of languages that is hidden beneath your world/universe that the audience does not know about. Every conversation - you drop a little hint. And you name their race and species based on the linguistic evolution you have concocted - which you could plan to reveal in bits and pieces as the story progresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think we need to come up with whole vocabs for the languages. Just bits and pieces. Not trying to invent languages, but fragments of linguistic and cultural history in order to name your characters and their villages/cities and races.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analytic languages (English, Indonesian) are easier to concoct than synthetic ones (Greek, Latin, Sanskrit) or idiomatic/ideographic languages. Synthetic languages require you to synthesize whole complex paradigms of grammar - which would be to complicated for a readers more interested in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You start with inventing the primitive sounds - let's say rr, vv, hh, gg, mm. Threatening sounds, soothing ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a very simple example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Associating rr=exposition of power, gg=food, vv=ecstasy, mm=fear. And then the vowels would indicate intensity u e a i.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ruve gami would be someone with some power exhibiting it in mild ecstasy over those who have strong need of food and extreme fear of losing their source of food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should try to be consistent. For a particular tribe/race - is it &quot;house my&quot; or &quot;my house&quot; to denote possessive. But not overly consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the race/species gets splintered evolutionarily. Or a less developed tribe encounters the first tribe and adopts their grunts - but they could not pronounce r because of their biological limitations and all the r sounds become y sounds. And they had mixed up the vowel intensity. Instead of four intensities, they only have three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the new tribe says yaba hhene rather ruve gami. And they have a different culture - more aggressive. So ruve gami=village mayor becomes yaba hhene=fearless king.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could name species after the places they are associated with, using the various grunting languages you have developed  - for example, the house on stinky river = giba ngonle. n being negation of food = stinky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then their names get evolved thro diversity until the present day of your story. And when you form the conversations (in English of course), their manner of speech (which you translate in English) and the body language you describe of each tribe or species hint very strongly of their past linguistic and cultural and adversarial evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like the shampoo advertisement telling you to give body to your hair - give body to your story - when the epic of story is woven with the names of the races and cities, geography and languages, with its linguistic and historical evolution. And why they are fighting or are in uneasy alliances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the simplified analytic language you concoct, your readers will be able to learn them quickly. And when a race or city is called Ngandi-Kopsela -  your audience would get a hint that species had been named pejoratively by another race. And they would more likely want to find out why that race has a pejorative name and who amongst the subtribes gave them that name and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because your universe is so rich of untold history (all hidden in your foundations scrap book) thro its names and simplified languages - it could make readers crawl the episodes to find out, to decipher or to wait for the next installment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3873" LastEditorUserId="3873" LastEditDate="2012-07-20T08:38:52.740" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T08:38:52.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6078" CreationDate="2012-07-20T09:01:07.167" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focus on your main goal: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It should be readable and intuitive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other two goals make your life easier, but not necessarily the lives of your readers. Your readers come first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So screenshots of a directory structure would be easy to comprehend. But if you have stress and have to finish the book because of some deadline, what will suffer most? Yes, revising the screenshots. Are they still correct? Do they correspond with the text? Is it easy to miss important things in a hurry? Yes. If they were easy to change, they would serve your readers better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see, I fooled you in the beginning, but that had it purpose: focusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Looking professional&quot; is an odd term, much overused, seldom defined. Care about the look later, or in between, but not at the beginning, you can change things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you do not like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;|-myproj&#xA;  |-WEB-INF&#xA;     |-classes&#xA;     |-libs&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then make it simpler. What about&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;-myproj&#xA;   -WEB-INF&#xA;      -classes&#xA;      -libs&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Directory structures are hierarchical structures. Show the hierarchy and you are fine. Don't overstress showing some lines pointing from parent to child, just indent. That should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T09:01:07.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6078" CreationDate="2012-07-20T15:44:07.140" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do something similar to your ASCII implementation, but instead of an ASCII block I use compact bulleted lists (with sub-lists).  File/directory names are still styled as they would be in running text.  In addition to conveying the structure, this also gives me a handy place to add explanations where needed, which is particularly important when (from the user's point of view) the information is new.  For example, my approach would let you explain what WEB-INF is for.  (In that bullet: &quot;&lt;code&gt;WEB-INF&lt;/code&gt;: explanation.&quot;  Typography distinguishes name from explanation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screenshots are usually a bad idea in my experience; they have to be edited/updated separately so they might rot (as @Piotr said), and if the document isn't WYSIWIG but, say, HTML, the author of the document might not see the screenshot &quot;inline&quot; while editing.  Not seeing the screen shots in your (say) text editor can lead to text-screenshot mismatches.  Further, screenshots aren't as visually accessible as text; they don't work with screen readers (unless you also type everything is alt text) and readers can't style the page for font sizes, colors, or contrast.  This doesn't mean never use screenshots or other graphics; they're an important part of many documents.  It &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; mean to not use them when they're not necessary.  In this case, you have a text alternative that provides the same information, so you should prefer that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-12-03T04:18:01.047" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T04:18:01.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6084" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-21T00:56:24.470" Score="0" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was taught to write in school, my teacher told me to start with an introductory paragraph and end that paragraph with my thesis. I understand what I was writing in school was very elementary writing. But I noticed that in more sophisticated pieces of writing, I am unable to find the a thesis at the end of the first paragraph in articles from the New York Times or New York. My question is how would I go about finding the main idea or thesis of more sophisticated pieces of writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3877" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T13:59:49.217" Title="Main idea or Thesis" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2012-07-21T21:50:58.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sense in your question, as well as the other answers, a common theme that I shall take an opposite stance on.  I’ll convey it as an example using myself because I recognize (perhaps incorrectly) similar struggles to my own.  When I first got into writing (about six years ago), the writing just poured out of me.  Screenwriting is my thing and back then I could write 4 scenes a day.  At that pace, I could finish a draft in 2-3 weeks.  When I finished a draft, I felt like a god.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time, I wrote more scripts.  I read books on screenwriting, took classes, joined writers groups, and kept on writing, but a funny thing started to happen.  As my skill and understanding improved, my writing began to slow down.  I would become stuck, blocked, stymied.  I’d set something down and not write again for months.  I couldn’t complete a sentence without minor flaws overwhelming me.  Worst of all, the pleasure of writing, the fun, just wasn’t there.  The fear that my writing was crap, began to haunt me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throwing caution to the wind, I started a new story who’s premise I specifically designed to be the opposite of every other thing I ever wrote.  I completed the first draft effortlessly and the story felt great.  I showed it to people and they loved it.  Then came the second draft and everything ground to a halt again.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It took forever to finish a small piece and I struggled the whole time.  Finally, I shared it with a writer friend, not because I thought it was good, but out of desperation.  As he struggled to explain why he didn’t like it, a realization hit me like a ton of bricks.  The whole 2nd draft sucked - fundamentally the wrong approach for the story.  It wasn't a little off, it was WAY off.  The solution: throw it out, start over; no editing, no tweaking, no salvaging.  My gut (my inner critic) was screaming at me, but I wasn’t listening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I could magically help the world of writing, I’d replace the term with ‘rewriting’ and similarly exchange ‘1st draft’ for ‘prototype.’  I’ve belonged to two writer’s groups now, worked with many other amateur writers and I’d say four out of five struggle to commit to rewriting, instead producing successive drafts increasingly over-edited and under-written.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I’m in a middle stage in my writing development.  My early work sucked, but I didn’t care because I was clueless.  I didn't even have an inner critic.  Years later, my gut can’t tell me what’s good while I’m writing, but it can tell me when something sucks.  So I can write well only if I commit to rewriting as apposed to the numerous ‘salvage operations’ I was running on bad writing.  My answer to your question, “How do I deal with self criticism?”  the inner self critic?  More and more, I try to listen.  When it all feels wrong, I take it as a sign that it is wrong and I start over.  I rewrite instead of editing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1904" LastEditorUserId="1904" LastEditDate="2012-07-21T21:56:27.380" LastActivityDate="2012-07-21T21:56:27.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6078" CreationDate="2012-07-22T12:42:21.613" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go with option 2. However, you do not need to manually build the structure. I instead recommend using a tool such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://mama.indstate.edu/users/ice/tree/&quot;&gt;Tree&lt;/a&gt; which should handle the pretty-printing for you as below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;$ tree -d /var&#xA;var&#xA;|-- backups&#xA;|-- cache&#xA;|   |-- app-install&#xA;|   |-- apt&#xA;|   |   `-- archives&#xA;|   |       `-- partial&#xA;|   |-- apt-xapian-index&#xA;|   |   |-- index.1&#xA;|   |   `-- index.2&#xA;|   |-- cups&#xA;|   |   `-- rss&#xA;|   |-- debconf&#xA;|   |-- dictionaries-common&#xA;|   |-- flashplugin-installer&#xA;|   |-- fontconfig&#xA;|   |-- hald&#xA;|   |-- jockey&#xA;|   |-- ldconfig [error opening dir]&#xA;|   |-- man&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The script should be available as a package in your distro. I can confirm that it is in Ubuntu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also suggest that you contact your editor to get his/her opinion. The publisher very likely has its own style guidelines for such matters (with layout in mind). If you do go ahead with a text representation, I recommend that you add a sticky somewhere reminding you to check the indentation in the final - whitespace often gets messed up when the book is laid out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. ... and your editor will prefer a textual representation as well - saves ink ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3880" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T12:42:21.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5770" CreationDate="2012-07-22T20:51:09.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one project is pulling at you the most, take down the important notes on the others, and work on the most pressing one first.  Failing that, are all projects equally 'cooked'? If something isn't ready to be written yet, it's out of the running for now.  If all projects are both clamoring for attention and ready to be written, I would suggest working on the shorter projects first, so something can be finished and make room for another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3882" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T20:51:09.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2012-07-23T08:37:38.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things that a regular or consistent publishing schedule means is that not every piece of work you produce for it will be as good as each other, or even the last one. Sometimes, you will send, and have published, a duffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, you will get some feedback on them, to indicate the areas that others feel do not quite hit the mark. It will help you to focus your inner critic on these areas especially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing to bear in mind is that you are not trying to write a classic masterpiece. Use the writing you can do to hone and mold your skill. Don't ask &quot;is this perfect/brilliant&quot; or whatever you do, turn it round and ask &quot;does this have a good idea in it?&quot;. If so it is worth pursuing ( and if not, then chuck it and try something else ). For an early draft, that is sufficient - on later drafts, you need to then ask &quot;is this being clearly expressed?&quot; - and work towards that. Maybe, at a final stage, ask &quot;does this work as a whole?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask different questions at different stages, you might find yourself able to silence the wrong questions at the wrong times, knowing that they will be addressed later. And once you have a core &quot;good idea&quot; down, you will know that it is worth cleaning up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you have a good idea, even if written appallingly, some people will get it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T08:37:38.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6092" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-23T11:30:31.267" Score="0" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a letter there is often meta information about the correspondence before the actual content of the letter. For example, in bold below:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Address,&lt;br&gt;Town,&lt;br&gt;City,&lt;br&gt;Postcode&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;23rd July 2012&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RE: Letter received 1st July 2012 &lt;br&gt;Reference: [some ref]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Mr Smith,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... Content here ...&lt;br&gt;...&lt;br&gt;..&lt;br&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is this section called?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3886" LastEditorUserId="3886" LastEditDate="2012-07-23T11:47:32.493" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T11:47:32.493" Title="What are the 'header' lines/meta information in a formal letter called?" Tags="|word-choice|letter|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6092" CreationDate="2012-07-23T11:46:10.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.about.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;About.com&lt;/a&gt; refers to this as the &lt;strong&gt;Reference Line&lt;/strong&gt;:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/letters/l/bl_mblock_p.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/letters/l/bl_mblock_p.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3886" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T11:46:10.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6092" CreationDate="2012-07-23T11:46:45.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd call it &quot;Reference&quot; or &quot;Subject.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T11:46:45.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6096" CreationDate="2012-07-23T11:47:17.877" Score="6" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a couple of &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexandrochen.com/existential-fiction/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;short stories&lt;/a&gt;. I'm really satisfied with some of them, and I would like to turn them into full-length novels. They were meant to be short stories from the beginning, but I feel I can still add more stuff to them (e.g. some part needed more details, and I didn't develop the characters enough).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a bad idea to turn a short story into a full-length novel?&#xA;(Is there any author who has been doing this?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2012-07-23T11:58:20.513" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T19:48:41.053" Title="Is it a bad idea to turn a short story into a full-length novel?" Tags="|novel|short-story|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6095" CreationDate="2012-07-23T12:18:19.537" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asimov did it with &lt;em&gt;Nightfall&lt;/em&gt; as well as Standback's examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I've said elsewhere, it's only a &quot;bad idea&quot; if you're padding your story with effluvia. If you think you have more to say, more things can happen to the characters, the characters can be more developed, the setting could be richer, then by all means go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T12:18:19.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2012-07-23T13:00:58.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Earlier comments characterize 60 characters as being &lt;em&gt;comfortable&lt;/em&gt;. I've believed it was to specifically increase reading ease and speed by enabling one to slurp in an entire line. For me, that is comfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to shrink the width of HTML windows that have reflowing text, so that I can gobble single lines. I find the width of an eBook line on a mobile device to be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3887" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T13:00:58.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6084" CreationDate="2012-07-23T13:59:49.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to understand different writing styles and types. So, for instance, in poetry, you would not expect a thesis at all, and may well need to read the entire poem to grasp the meaning or purpose. Similarly, in fiction, if they told you everything that was going to happen at the start, it would not make for a good read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What your teacher was talking about was - broadly speaking - academic articles. This does not necessarily mean scholarly research publications, but articles whose purpose is to educate and inform. Some journalism falls into this, but a lot does not - as per @Aerovistae, journalistic articles are another writing style. Longer, serious, magazine-like articles may count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely in &quot;proper&quot; academic work, you need to state your thesis early on, and work towards this throughout the article/document/book. My PhD thesis needs a simple tagline, that I define at the start, and relate to throughout - my core thesis that I am setting out to prove. That is the way academic material is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your teacher was right in respect of the work you were expected to do for the next 10 years through school. But it is not appropriate to apply this to all forms of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T13:59:49.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6101" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-23T18:19:49.203" Score="-1" ViewCount="1116" Body="&lt;p&gt;For writing a editorial note covering some misjudgement facts (basically criticism of new policies based on failed results), I am writing in a sarcastic tone to get the message clear and effective as far as getting reactions (positively in action and ideal manner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would that be good idea considering that the majority of the readers is aged between 18-27?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or any other manner you can suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a students' college magazine raising academic issues, a kind of indirect communication bridge between students and the faculty to get their attention in their implemented rules, covering tuition-fees, assignments, publications of papers and views on new rules and their expected results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3891" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T09:05:14.087" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T09:05:14.087" Title="Is it good idea to create a Sarcastic tone for provocative thoughts" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-07-23T20:40:58.783" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6102" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6104" CreationDate="2012-07-23T18:59:22.390" Score="4" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written (and self-edited) a book, and need to figure out how to expose it to the &quot;right&quot; agents.  I'm a little overwhelmed (and I'm sure I'm not the first), but I do think it is a unique story that at least deserves a &quot;go&quot; and a few others (that are not friends and family, but friends of friends) have agreed. How can I find an agent? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3892" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T17:53:02.407" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T17:53:02.407" Title="How to find an agent for a children's picture book? " Tags="|publishing|agent|children|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6101" CreationDate="2012-07-23T20:36:58.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the intent of your article is to &lt;em&gt;persuade&lt;/em&gt;, then sarcasm is rarely an effective tactic. Overt sarcasm will cause those who already agree with you will snigger along with you, while those who don't agree will be irritated. Subtle sarcasm runs the danger of being misinterpreted as sincerity. In either case, sarcasm is rarely an effective choice for an editorial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll notice that printed media very rarely use sarcasm in their editorial pieces. It is somewhat more common on blogs and other online media, where the standards of formality are lower, but the best bloggers still use it sparingly. My recommendation is to stay away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T20:36:58.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6102" CreationDate="2012-07-23T20:40:31.013" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://querytracker.net/literary_agents.php&quot;&gt;QueryTracker.net&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search for agents representing children's literature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to those agents' websites. Confirm that you're submitting a book in the right categories for that agent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put together a query for the agents that you've selected, then send it out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T20:40:31.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6105" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6388" CreationDate="2012-07-24T02:31:10.763" Score="0" ViewCount="225" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking for some help on how to reference chapters in a book inside of a booking I'm helping with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I be capitalizing &lt;code&gt;Chapters 3 and 4&lt;/code&gt; and would referring to chapters simply by capitalized title be the correct way to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For those who are new to programming, I strongly suggest reading&#xA;  through Chapters 3 and 4 thoroughly before continuing with the rest of&#xA;  this resource as they contain all of the core concepts needed in order&#xA;  to understand some of the higher level concepts presented in Data&#xA;  Structures and Algorithms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3895" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T08:59:15.517" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T13:59:32.267" Title="Am I correctly referencing chapters which belong to the same book?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6105" CreationDate="2012-07-24T09:58:03.087" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's how I'd do it. I'd capitalize it even if I were referring to someone else's book: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For those who are new to programming, I strongly suggest reading through Chapters 3 and 4. For those who are more advanced but need to brush up on databases, I suggest Robert Foo's &lt;em&gt;How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Relational Databases,&lt;/em&gt; Chapters 4 and 7. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T09:58:03.087" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6108" CreationDate="2012-07-24T12:18:40.367" Score="7" ViewCount="1149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always wondered if going off-topic in a dialogue is a bad or a normal thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say I'm writing a novel where the main theme is love and loss.&#xA;Is it bad if the characters start talking about their favorite breakfast, or a cousin they dislike? Or maybe about another theme like alienation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time I find myself in this situation I get stuck. I don't know if I should removed the part, make it fit somehow with the theme or just leave it there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T14:21:37.990" Title="Is going 'off-topic' a sign of bad dialogue?" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6107" CreationDate="2012-07-24T12:46:40.800" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In real life, conversations ramble, so it's unsurprising if your dialogues ramble as well. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In realistic literary novels, it would be unsurprising, or even expected, for your dialogues to include long tangents and unrelated content. This is part of that genre's attempt to present situations naturalistically. In other genres readers expect a tighter degree of focus, and so will be less tolerant of long conversations that don't appear to relate to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, just because a dialogue doesn't &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; relate to the theme or plot doesn't mean that it actually accomplishes nothing. Dialogues can be used to set mood, to demonstrate character, or to illustrate the setting. So consider: does your characters' conversation actually contribute &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; to the story, or is it adding something a little more subtle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T12:46:40.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6107" CreationDate="2012-07-24T13:28:55.927" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Studying real life conversations is fascinating, because they do ramble and wander, especially if the people know each other well. It is part of the richness that makes up real discussion, where tangents provide insight into the original discussion because they are tangents, and it indicates something about the mind working of the speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there is a place for a novel where the theme is &quot;love and loss&quot;, in which the characters do not talk about either of these topics directly, but the theme is developed by their skirting around them. It would not be easy to write, but would work by drawing the themes in relief - the particular topics that they do not talk about. And you would learn a lot because of the way that the conversation had to avoid them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, talk about other stuff, talk about life, because people do. And use this to show their thinking about the bigger issues. Where your core themes are big ones, then all issues will touch on them. A favorite breakfast was the last one I had with George. Or the one we took on our first holiday, in the open air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T13:28:55.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6107" CreationDate="2012-07-24T14:21:37.990" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it distracts from your plot and from your theme, then yes - sooner or later, that dialogue should be rewritten or cut entirely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real conversations get sidetracked; they go off on tangents. If you do a lot of your writing by figuring out &quot;what would they say next,&quot; you're likely to follow that natural tendency. The problem is, if it's really nothing but a random offshoot of conversation, then it probably won't interest the reader. It may confuse him, or he may find it boring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not every digression from the initial subject is a distraction. Some digressions have thematic significance; some digressions serve important roles like exposition, developing relationships, etc.; some digressions switch from one aspect of the plot to another one. But if you don't know &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; that bit of dialogue is there, if you don't feel that it &lt;strong&gt;adds to your story&lt;/strong&gt;, than you do the same as with any bit of writing that isn't contributing: you change it, or you cut it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will probably be able to tell the difference simply by assessing your own intentions while writing. If you feel that you're grasping for something, anything, for the characters to say, or that you're writing the dialogue based on loose association rather than sticking to some central point, then the dialogue is probably unnecessary. On the other hand, if you're trying to accomplish something (anything!) specific by changing topics, then you're probably fine - you can judge whether the topic change accomplishes your goal or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T14:21:37.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6078" CreationDate="2012-07-24T19:43:11.657" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try&#xA;&lt;code&gt;tree -d&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;at the CLI.  Does pretty much what you want - automatically and should be easy to copy and paste into a document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;shelelia@halo:~$ tree -d installs&#xA;installs&#xA;├── bash_library&#xA;├── dropbox&#xA;│   ├── DEBIAN&#xA;│   ├── DropboxServiceMenu-0.16.1&#xA;│   │   └── dropbox-scripts&#xA;│   └── kde&#xA;├── HP&#xA;...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks better on a terminal than in this post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastEditorUserId="2821" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T23:02:18.140" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T23:02:18.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6352" CreationDate="2012-07-24T21:30:05.013" Score="3" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been asked to modernize some technical documentation - user manuals in particular.  I have some guidelines, but a lot of free rein to take it in whatever direction I think is worthwhile.  Where can I look to learn what exactly is a good example of &quot;modern&quot; technical documentation?  I'm interested in resources such as websites that describe best practices as well as resources for learning state-of-the-art tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in tools and specifically information on layout and organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-07-25T13:14:15.883" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T20:55:21.277" Title="What resources will teach me about the state of the art in technical writing?" Tags="|technical-writing|resources|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6114" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6116" CreationDate="2012-07-24T22:10:43.457" Score="7" ViewCount="53256" Body="&lt;p&gt;For writing diary content every day, which English tense is appropriate to use? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things have all happened already. I usually write late at night (end of the day) or the next day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I use simple past, present perfect simple, or another tense? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3898" OwnerDisplayName="gilzero" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-08-05T00:55:38.923" LastActivityDate="2020-04-22T01:51:21.163" Title="Which tense to use when writing a diary?" Tags="|tenses|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6114" CreationDate="2012-07-24T22:31:56.857" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the simple past, if you're describing events of the day. An excerpt by Lewis Carroll:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;July 4, 1862&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I made an expedition up the river to Godstowe with the three Liddells, we had tea on the bank there, and did not reach Christ Church till half-past eight. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.victorianstation.com/authorcarroll.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="ash" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T22:31:56.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6114" CreationDate="2012-07-24T22:43:04.533" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Past tense is my instinct. Yet it depends on what you are writing and the writing's purpose. If it's an adventure story or something with more of a fast pace then clearly present tense might be best. &quot;What was that? Rustling in the bushes nearby. Footsteps just beyond--sound like a person, a large person. I must move on. Now.&quot; That is more effective than: &quot;Yesterday I discovered signs of a person having walked behind my trail during the night. I am being followed and better switch up my route.&quot; &lt;em&gt;The Blair Witch Project&lt;/em&gt; versus an Aldo Leopold work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3947" OwnerDisplayName="Emily Alinder Flynn" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T22:43:04.533" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6118" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6119" CreationDate="2012-07-25T09:10:31.557" Score="7" ViewCount="2011" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of translating a book (scientific publication) for private use. If I ever decide to publish it: what is the procedure? Who is the right person to ask for publishing rights and translation approval?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two of three authors are deceased, and I still need to find out what is the situation with the third one. I'm translating from a Russian translation of the book (due to the unavailability of the original).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all three authors show up to be deceased - should I contact the original publisher(s) (since it was a joint publication by two companies) or the publisher of the version I'm translating (since one (the Poles) are holding the general, and the other (the Russians) are holding the Russian translation rights)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the Russian publisher went out of business (Mir Moscow).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3900" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-08T10:53:05.010" LastActivityDate="2018-05-08T10:53:05.010" Title="How can I publish a translation of a book?" Tags="|copyright|translation|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6118" CreationDate="2012-07-25T09:20:14.693" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll need to contact the original author and/or their publisher. Either one will direct you to the correct person to deal with - there's no blanket rule over who has which rights, so you'll need to check who's got translation rights in your specific case, and whether that person is willing to let you translate the material &quot;officially.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your case is even harder, since it sounds like you're running out of related people you can contact. The piece may well be an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_works&quot;&gt;orphan work&lt;/a&gt;, and as far as I can see, there is no legal way to use such a work.  So the bottom line is: you'll need to search out whatever connection you possibly can. Approach every angle that presents itself. Once you make contact with &lt;em&gt;somebody&lt;/em&gt;, you'll (hopefully) have an easier time finding the person you're ultimately looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do make contact, be sure to be clear on what type of publication you're aiming for - publishing freely on the web is very different than print publishing for profit; you might be able to get permission for one but not the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-07-25T09:49:52.723" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T09:49:52.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6114" CreationDate="2012-07-25T09:51:34.173" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find these answers interesting because to me, a &lt;em&gt;diary&lt;/em&gt; is a place you confess your innermost thoughts, while a &lt;em&gt;journal&lt;/em&gt; is something you write in every day to talk about what you did. (note the &lt;em&gt;jour-&lt;/em&gt; root, meaning &quot;day&quot;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That having been said, if I'm reporting on what I did today, or yesterday, I'd use past tense, because it's something I &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt;. But if I'm using the writing as a way to work out my thoughts or emotions, I'd use present tense, because it's something I &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt;, which is still ongoing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T09:51:34.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6118" CreationDate="2012-07-25T14:49:46.633" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the book you are translating was not written in the United States, it would be subject to the terms of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works&quot;&gt;Berne Convention&lt;/a&gt;, which essentially is an International treaty concerning copyrights. In the simplest of terms, the countries that have signed this treaty basically agree that a copyright is intact until 70 years after the death of the original author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working from a translation from the original, then a copyright would be enforced until 70 years after the death of the translator, and not the original author. In the case of works published by more than one author, the 70 years is measured from the death of the last surviving author. Therefore, if one of your authors is still alive, then his work will still be protected under copyright until 70 years after he dies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, copyrights are considered transferrable property, so any surviving family members of the original author would most likely now hold that copyright. In this case, if you are able to translate from the original source, you could possibly get permission from whoever holds the original copyright. If the &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; author has been dead for more than 70 years and you are translating from the &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; work, then you are working with a book that is now in the public domain, so you wouldn't need any permission from anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T14:49:46.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4999" CreationDate="2012-07-25T15:05:37.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned previously, if two or more contributors are considered as co-authors, they share in all revenue generated from the work. The exception would be if they had signed some form of agreement beforehand that permits one of the authors to act on behalf of the other(s), but this would be a rare situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to the rights reverting to one author after the death of the other(s), it was also mentioned that the deceased author(s) copyright is passed on to the respective heirs, which is an important reason for identifying how you want those rights handled in your will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing that I would add is that the duration of the copyright is dependent on the last surviving author. Normally, the copyright would expire (in most countries) 70 years after the death of the author. In the case of multiple authors, the copyright is viable for 70 years after the death of the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;last&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; surviving author. That means that the heirs of the other author(s) could continue to benefit from the copyright even longer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T15:05:37.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6123" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-27T05:28:09.987" Score="9" ViewCount="252" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a thesis. Just the introduction is 25 pages/8000 words. The whole document will probably be 70 pages or so. With a document this large, and on such a complex topic, it can be quite hard to keep track of what's going on where.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for ways to summarise the document structure, that might make it easier to figure out what needs changing. Things like lists of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/documents/TopicSentences.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;topic sentences and signposts&lt;/a&gt; (possibly marked as such in the code); word, paragraph, and image counts per chapter/section/subsection; &lt;a href=&quot;http://vis.pnnl.gov/pdf/vis98paper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;visualisations of flow&lt;/a&gt;; plots of keyword densities and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Readability_tests&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;readability&lt;/a&gt;; and so forth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What types of tools are there (aside from the ones I mentioned), and what software implementations are available (including for the tools I mentioned)? Answers that deal with non-computer based visualisations (e.g. sketches) are also welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Note: I &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/64716/tools-for-exploring-and-analysing-document-structure&quot;&gt;asked this on Tex.SE&lt;/a&gt;, but I think that the question is too specific for that site.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3848" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:29.717" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T05:42:42.537" Title="Tools for exploring and analysing document structure?" Tags="|non-fiction|tools|structure|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6123" CreationDate="2012-07-27T15:12:20.420" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm willing to bet &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; can handle a lot of what you're looking for. I will cheerfully admit I haven't even read the documentation (I'm a Mac user... we don'need no steenken manuals) so it's got powerful tools I don't even know much about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can separate your work into individual documents (section, subsection) which can then be put into folders and dragged around on a virtual corkboard, and compiled into a single document for reading over. You can add keywords, highlight chunks of text in multiple colors, create internal hyperlinks, and do word counts and word frequency counts. I have no idea what &quot;visualization of flow&quot; means, so I can't advise you there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can download it and try it for free for a month, and export everything to Word or text so it's not held proprietarily hostage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T15:12:20.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6126" CreationDate="2012-07-27T15:52:46.860" Score="3" ViewCount="991" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a (commercial) book about cinema and reviews of movies. My question is about the pictures to illustrate the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example I suppose that I can't use the promotional poster of a movie without paying for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then what about a simple screen of the movie? Do I need the authorization? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least can I use (for free) a portrait of the director of the movie? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This is an author edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3909" LastEditorUserId="10460" LastEditDate="2016-09-22T10:01:18.860" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T10:01:18.860" Title="Copyright of screens/movie posters" Tags="|publishing|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6125" CreationDate="2012-07-27T16:33:13.080" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just written a book and that same issue, needing lots of images from films to illustrate it. I'm going to assume that its some kind of 'educational' work in that its purpose is to teach people something, and in that case, according to my publisher it's okay to go ahead and use posters, promotional materials and screengrabs if the films are reasonably old (say 2 or 3 years) because they can claim fair use under a provision for education that all publishers lean on when they sell these types of books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was dubious at first but they've been in a business a long time and the reality is that if this wasn't the case then no educational books would ever be published with images because the returns could never justify the probable costs of paying for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3788" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T16:33:13.080" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6127" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6131" CreationDate="2012-07-27T22:09:07.257" Score="7" ViewCount="1900" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always think of commas as indicating pauses in speech, and vice versa. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I was surprised the other day when I saw somebody's typed-out Pledge of Allegiance, which looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason that it stood out to me was because of the way that I've always heard &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; recite it... with far more pauses, which to me, would be indicative of more commas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America.  And to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This version feels more familiar to me, more in line with the way we recite. But seeing it written down, it seems ridiculously comma-heavy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... is my understanding of commas correct? Is it correct to use them to demonstrate pauses in speech?  Are they required to influence/enforce cadence? If so, can I have too &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; commas, or is it correct to use as many as I have pauses, even if that's a lot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3910" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-07-29T03:31:12.647" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T17:11:26.300" Title="Should I be using commas to suggest/enforce cadence?" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6129" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6132" CreationDate="2012-07-27T22:56:47.610" Score="0" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;p&gt;what are the steps to such thing, i want to write an episode to beavis and butthead and send it to MTV ,i don't live in the USA,i don't know if that a problem , please provide me with all the details that can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3911" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T23:55:47.987" LastActivityDate="2012-07-28T18:39:13.773" Title="IF i want to write an episode to a TV sitcom, how can i send it to the TV network?" Tags="|publishing|process|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6127" CreationDate="2012-07-27T23:17:51.210" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In dialogues (or monologues, or any transcriptions), commas are used for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1-&lt;/strong&gt; Logical separators as in formal grammar and;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2-&lt;/strong&gt; to indicate oral pauses whether grammatically correct or not. Dashes (&lt;strong&gt;–&lt;/strong&gt;) and ellipses (&lt;strong&gt;…&lt;/strong&gt;) can also be used this way, usually at at a line's end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd say that if you are reciting the pledge itself as content then the formal -comma light- version should be used. That's true for all text everywhere because commas translate to pauses in speech, not vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The version where pauses are captured with commas could be used in dialogues and situations where you want the text to convey how the phrase/sentence/...etc was meant to be said. This could be called 'conversation mode' as the reader translates commas to pauses then translates the whole text back with proper 'grammatical commas.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;*&lt;/em&gt; One more thing, punctuation is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; included &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'as is'&lt;/a&gt; when quoting text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2012-07-28T02:37:39.973" LastActivityDate="2012-07-28T02:37:39.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6129" CreationDate="2012-07-27T23:49:17.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I don't work in the TV industry, as I understand it, most shows have their own stable of writers and generally don't accept unsolicited manuscripts. (Some of the Star Trek shows did, but I gathered that was unusual.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, if you do want to write for a show which does accept outside manuscripts (and I don't know of any), you would need to get an agent to submit it for you. Even a show which does take manuscripts from out-of-house writers is not going to take one without representation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA References. The upshot is &quot;it's extremely probable that you need an agent, but there's an outside chance you can get by without one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scriptmag.com/features/primetime-how-do-i-submit-my-scripts-to-tv-shows&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How do I submit my scripts to TV Shows?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tvwritersvault.com/tvspecscripts/tvspecscripts.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writer's Guild of America&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Companies with episodic television shows and once-per-week serials must hire freelance writers each season for each series, depending on their network order,&lt;/em&gt; but it explicitly says you must have spec scripts for an &lt;em&gt;agent&lt;/em&gt; to submit. A lot of good instruction at this link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ask.metafilter.com/39564/Whats-the-process-for-submitting-a-tv-script&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What's the Process for Submitting a TV Script?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://animatedtv.about.com/cs/groening/ht/htwritescript.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;About.com:&lt;/a&gt; &quot;You must secure an agent to be considered a professional writer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scriptangel.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/i%E2%80%99ve-written-a-script-what-next-part-two/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Two references&lt;/a&gt; for companies which will apparently take unsolicited scripts without an agent, in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.screenwritingforhollywood.com/film-forum/do-i-need-an-agent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Do I need an agent?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-07-28T18:39:13.773" LastActivityDate="2012-07-28T18:39:13.773" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6135" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6167" CreationDate="2012-07-29T22:28:40.707" Score="3" ViewCount="1560" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for an authoritative convention for attributing a book to both an author and editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is necessary in this instance to have the editor's name on the cover as well as the author's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the well-documented citation styles seem appropriate for this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would the following be stylistically correct, or is a better option available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;TITLE&#xA;&#xA;Auth. Name&#xA;&#xA;Ed. Name&#xA;Editor&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" OwnerDisplayName="Alexander Wenzowski" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T00:34:42.373" Title="Book cover conventions" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6154" CreationDate="2012-07-30T12:57:47.710" Score="11" ViewCount="3516" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine that Writer A's book includes copyrighted material created by Creator B, and Creator B sues for copyright infringement. Will Writer A be held liable, or will the book publisher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the publisher is officially responsible for this. If yes, is it possible for the publisher to contractually transfer all responsibility to the writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It possible for a publisher completely avoid copyright complaints, or will a publisher always be held accountable for copyright violations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2640" LastEditorUserId="3814" LastEditDate="2012-08-03T05:53:21.153" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T00:55:08.507" Title="Who is responsible for copyrighted materials (publisher or writer)?" Tags="|publishing|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6162" CreationDate="2012-07-31T09:57:43.760" Score="16" ViewCount="673" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the years, games that affected me emotionally convinced me that storywriting is a very rewarding work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought about learning from novelists. But it seemed that some of the skills, i.e. expressing ideas through writing, won't translate well to expressing ideas through a game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought about learning from screenplay writers. It seems fairly relevant to storywriting for games. Though I'm concerned that movies can be different to games in some ways. e.g. A player can pause the game to read a letter from another character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So my final question will be:&lt;/strong&gt; Where can one learn how to create stories in a visual form? i.e. creating sensible characters and settings to connect them and create an emotional story which gets depicted through a game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3922" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2012-12-23T00:05:02.243" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T00:05:02.243" Title="Learning storywriting for videogames - where to start?" Tags="|plot|videogame|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6136" CreationDate="2012-07-31T14:35:09.797" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Legally, the author owns the copyright, so the ultimate responsibility falls on the author. If the copyrighted material is a real money maker for the publisher, then they would have a vested interest in protecting that copyright and would in all likeliness provide legal assistance or even act on the author's behalf. It would be in their own best interests to protect their investment, so they would definitely be motivated to do so. Some publishers have employees who are responsible for monitoring such things to ensure that their published works are not used without compensation, but ultimately it depends on just how successful the book is in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T14:35:09.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6139" CreationDate="2012-07-31T15:48:25.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google can be your friend. Here are some links I found by typing in the search term &quot;video game writing&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing-world.com/freelance/games.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writing-world.com/freelance/games.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/12/breaking-into-video-game-writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/12/breaking-into-video-game-writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/158065066X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Video-Writing-Design/dp/158065066X&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gamecareerguide.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4858&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gamecareerguide.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4858&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3692" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T15:48:25.747" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6143" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-01T16:47:38.510" Score="5" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing (and self publishing) a non-fiction travelogue about a cross country roadtrip. I have already obtained permission from the person I traveled with, and there are no other main characters involved. What I am wondering is, what do I need to get permission for with regard to places we visited?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is my understanding that as long as I am being truthful about a hotel, business, or attraction I visited, I am OK (while I mentioned some things that could be improved at certain locations, I didn't say anything paticularly negative). When giving any historical background of a location, I will be citing the sources where I obtained that information. I have also been planning on listing the websites for each location in the back of the book. Am I correct in understanding that this should all be fine, or would any of this require legal permissions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am slightly unsure about any photos that I may use. I personally took all photos myself and the ones I would like include are just of the location without any people in the picture. I'm wondering what, if any, permissions I would need to get from the business or attraction in the photo? Furthermore, is there a difference with regard to legality between publishing a photo of a national landmark like Mount Rushmore, versus a privately owned location like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or a local museum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, (and I think I already know the answer to this but am not completely sure), is it legal to mention the name of a television show or movie without permission when I'm doing little more than just mentioning that we watched it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to research these questions and have found conflicting answers so that made me a bit nervous and unsure just what I could do. Because I am self publishing I would also like to avoid the cost of having a lawyer go through it if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3929" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T18:43:32.043" Title="What permissions do I need for nonfiction travelogue?" Tags="|non-fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6143" CreationDate="2012-08-01T18:43:32.043" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, there are no copyright issues that you need to worry about as long as you're truthfully reporting your own experiences. In particular, there is nothing that prevents you from mentioning companies, products, locations, or people by name, so long as you are not &lt;em&gt;lying&lt;/em&gt; or attempting to present yourself as having some official affiliation with those companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All rights to a photograph lie with the photographer, not the subjects photographed. So you don't need to worry about photographs, either, with one minor exception: if you photograph a work of visual art, reproducing that photograph may constitute copying the original (copyright-protected) work of art, and so may be prohibited by law. Buildings (such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) and landmarks (such as Mt. Rushmore) are not subject to this restriction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are also free to print photographs of people that you took yourself, without requiring the permission of the people in the photograph (though it may be considered polite to ask). The only exception to this is if the photograph or accompanying content may be considered defamatory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T18:43:32.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6149" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6268" CreationDate="2012-08-02T08:23:50.877" Score="5" ViewCount="973" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never kept a diary, and some time back I thought it would be fun to work on some sort of autobiography to note down any memorable events etc. I am not famous, and even if completed the 'audience' for this is basically going to be a few relatives &amp;amp; friends, besides having it serve as a substitute diary to chronicle past events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides being an unknown, I am also not a writer, and do not know how to plan books or anything longer than a short technical article. How should I prepare and attempt to write an autobiography if I'm aiming for an interesting and factually correct read?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chronological order&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; or some alternative arrangement (interactions with particular people? Aspects such as school life, entertainment etc.?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I start &amp;amp; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;pace myself&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to try and sustain interest in this project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its unlikely to ever see print of a single copy; so should I take advantage of any &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;digital features&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (better hyperlinking, multiple data views) by aiming for only digital version?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3933" LastEditorUserId="3933" LastEditDate="2012-08-04T11:13:34.903" LastActivityDate="2020-04-26T00:38:36.193" Title="How do I approach writing an autobiography?" Tags="|biography|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6217" CreationDate="2012-08-02T08:28:27.877" Score="-5" ViewCount="303" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm already quite good at writing and putting together words and sentences. However, I would like to improve myself to the level that I can write a nice entertaining novel or several short stories to comprise a volume. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I need an online resource (preferably e-book or PDF or Word document or PPT presentation) that teaches me the rules of writing...in BRITISH ENGLISH!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you heard me right, any resource from UK would be nice as I like to study in British English (all my favourite authors are British, Alistair Maclean, Ian Fleming, JRR Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So any help for a resource location would be much appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3932" LastEditorDisplayName="user34214" LastEditDate="2019-03-11T22:49:44.363" LastActivityDate="2019-03-11T22:49:44.363" Title="Need a resource for creative writing" Tags="|fiction|resources|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6152" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-03T04:03:14.810" Score="3" ViewCount="328" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I wrote a short story that contains a flashback in the middle that was used to explain a major plot point in the story. Does a significant scene set as a flashback break up the flow of a short story (usually considered to be somewhere between 1,000 and 15,000 words, depending on who is asked), and if so, why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3781" LastActivityDate="2012-08-03T09:57:41.753" Title="Do flashbacks break up short stories too much?" Tags="|short-story|flashback|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6136" CreationDate="2012-08-03T05:27:21.403" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the scenario of Creator B's work being included in Writer A's work without approval, Creator B will go after both the writer and the publisher. Writer A is obviously liable for using Creator B's work, and the publisher is liable for assisting in the infringing by distributing the book. The publisher also is going to have far deeper pockets than Writer A. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately for publishers, it is difficult to root out plagiarism. The very &lt;a href=&quot;http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/jonah-lehrer-resigns-from-new-yorker-after-making-up-dylan-quotes-for-his-book/&quot;&gt;recent case of Jonah Lehrer&lt;/a&gt; shows that once they find out about it, they usually act swiftly not to defend the plagiarist, but to distance themselves from him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Publishing+Law&quot;&gt;laws surrounding publishing are complex&lt;/a&gt;, but the most important thing to remember is that copyright is a negative right, meaning that the creator of the work has the ability to stop others from distributing his or her work. It also means that &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; connected with the infringement is likely to get sued. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3814" LastActivityDate="2012-08-03T05:27:21.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6152" CreationDate="2012-08-03T09:57:41.753" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all about context. I don't think there's a blanket answer. &lt;em&gt;An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge&lt;/em&gt; is, in a sense, a flashback in the middle of the story, but it works exquisitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-08-03T09:57:41.753" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6157" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6161" CreationDate="2012-08-04T00:15:17.680" Score="1" ViewCount="743" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I watch 'Smallville', I wonder how the writers take us back and forth the timeline without getting into a conflicting situation.  Another example would be 'Back to the Future' trilogy.  Also, when they do a sequel, they don't really insert elements which are supposed to be in the prequel.  Say, a flashback from the father about his father!!&#xA;If I try extending my story, it either goes boring (with flashbacks) or it ends up in a conflicting situation (with the original story).&#xA;Are there any rules that we should follow while writing the original story so that we get a good amount of freedom for writing Prequels and Sequels?&#xA;Thanks for helping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3945" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T13:23:06.317" Title="Are there any specific rules to write Prequels and Sequels so that we don't end up with conflicting situations?" Tags="|rules|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6157" CreationDate="2012-08-04T00:38:19.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sketch out your entire timeline before you write your story. Have an idea of what happened before and after. Your book takes place &lt;em&gt;in medias res,&lt;/em&gt; in the middle of things. If you decide what your entire history is, then you won't develop conflicts in your flashbacks and you won't step on the future, because you'll already have a linear series of events to refer to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T00:38:19.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6160" CreationDate="2012-08-04T04:55:17.757" Score="3" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most authors I read write in small chunks of time (1hr~40min). I wonder if this is a writing technique. I always find myself writing for 3 to 4 hours straight (taking 5 minutes breaks). The thing is that when I start writing I want to put all my ideas into the paper (I mean screen) as fast as I can.&#xA;I wonder if this is bad for writing. Is it a bad idea to write too many hours straight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2012-08-04T20:48:22.170" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T13:53:43.653" Title="Is it better to divide writing time for a 'many short times' approach instead of 'one long session'?" Tags="|creative-writing|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6159" CreationDate="2012-08-04T11:45:40.317" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different writers have different writing disciplines. Mark Twain said that his discipline was to write a certain number of pages per day, but he wrote in longhand and as he got older he began to write in a larger and larger hand, so that his actual output was less. He was, he confessed, a profoundly lazy man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read that Stephen King used the &quot;pages per day&quot; method as well, and this is not uncommon. The important thing in a longer work is the preparation — start by reading twenty or so pages back from the point you stopped the previous day. This lets you edit what you wrote as well as brings you back into the feel of the piece, so that when you get to that blank page you already have a full head of steam. Another nice thing about the &quot;PPD&quot; method is that it forces you to write &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;. If you write crap one day — and we all do — you can simply edit or delete it. But you will have at least gone through the exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However long your daily session, another important consideration is not to write yourself out in a single day. Writing a longer work (which I assume is what you are talking about) is like running a marathon: you have to pace yourself. If you sprint too soon you will wear yourself out. Leave something for the next day, even if it is a juicy bit that fairly begs to be written. &lt;em&gt;Especially&lt;/em&gt; if it is a juicy bit that begs to be written. That will give you something to look forward to. If you have ideas you are afraid you will forget, write them as notes and use them in the next day's writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastEditorUserId="633" LastEditDate="2012-08-05T13:53:43.653" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T13:53:43.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6157" CreationDate="2012-08-04T12:04:21.067" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no rules; there is only what works, and you have to be the judge of that. But there are aids. Whenever you write multiple works using the same characters, you should keep a &lt;em&gt;concordance&lt;/em&gt;. This is a set of notes about characters and plot points, which you can refer to later when you forget what color hair a character has or who said or did what to whom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should always keep such notes and refresh them after each chapter or section. Modern software such as Scrivener automates the process, making it pretty easy. Tag your notes for cross-referencing. That way you never have to come adrift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the &quot;boring&quot; problem, that is something a concordance won't help. There is nothing wrong with writing flashbacks (or flash-forwards) so long as they advance the current story. But remember it is the &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; story you should be concerned with. Keep the flashbacks lean and pointed if you can. To suggest something in a few words is better than beating it to death in several chapters or scenes. I don't know if you watch &lt;em&gt;Breaking Bad&lt;/em&gt;, but the opening of the current season has a flash-forward of the main character, Walter White, one year hence. He's in a Denny's, sardonically &quot;celebrating&quot; his 52nd birthday while he meets up with a man who is selling him an M-60 machine gun. It's a couple minutes of film, but it raises all kinds of questions in the viewer's mind. White is a scientist, not a thug — why does he need a machine gun? Why is he celebrating his birthday in an ironic echo of the way he celebrated his birthday a year earlier (the flash-forward has him mimicking the way he arranged bacon strips to form the numerals of his age in Season One, which will not escape the avid viewer's notice — and thereby suggesting a flashback within the flash-forward). We are at once wondering about his future while contemplating how far he has come from his past. If you can do &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; sort of thing with your outside-of-timeline writing, you will be deepening and enhancing your present narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastEditorUserId="633" LastEditDate="2012-08-04T13:23:06.317" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T13:23:06.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6139" CreationDate="2012-08-04T15:23:52.887" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Really long answer, I apologize. Hope it's useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought about learning from novelists. But it seemed that some of&#xA;the skills, i.e. expressing ideas through writing, won't translate&#xA;well to expressing ideas through a game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought about learning from screenplay writers. It seems fairly&#xA;relevant to storywriting for games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, no, wrong idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story is a story, no matter whether it's told through braille, Spanish, or Morse code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it has &lt;em&gt;characters&lt;/em&gt;, and they do &lt;em&gt;things&lt;/em&gt;, it's a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing you're thinking about this in a manner perhaps similar to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Well this book has &lt;strong&gt;paragraphs!&lt;/strong&gt; And drawn-out descriptions, and pages and pages of back-story and details and extraneous information... but a video game is just &lt;strong&gt;dialogue&lt;/strong&gt;, and action! Maybe I can learn from movies, but books, in this case, are surely not my friend.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am here to correct your errant perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you play a video game, the only writing you see first-hand is the dialogue, to be sure. But don't ever think for a moment that there aren't &lt;strong&gt;paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs&lt;/strong&gt; of description behind the scenes, guiding the artists, level designers, and cinematographers in creating the game and cut-scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take any story-based game. Take &lt;em&gt;Bioshock,&lt;/em&gt; take &lt;em&gt;Halo: Combat Evolved&lt;/em&gt;, take any of the &lt;em&gt;Elder Scrolls&lt;/em&gt;. All have detailed, fleshed-out worlds with extensive back stories. Every scene in that game has a script behind it. Every character has a dossier. Every ship, setting, and object has a detailed profile, and probably a history. The paragraphs you see in a book are hardly any different from the paragraphs in these miscellaneous pieces of world-creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ever play &lt;em&gt;Halo&lt;/em&gt;? Do you remember first crashing on the ringworld, and looking up to see a horizon that rises endlessly into the sky and bends back upon itself, arcing overhead and cutting through the stars like a cartographer's dream?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone who remembers that moment, they all agree: jaws dropped. I've never seen anything like it, and I doubt I will ever be so amazed by a game again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assure you that moment had a script, with paragraphs detailing &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; what surrounded the player on all sides: the sounds, the sights, the way the stars gleamed behind the green and blue sky-band, the way the ocean beside you stretched on into clouds. And it was punctuated with a line detailing what Cortana, the player's AI assistant, would be saying in your ear. Something like, &lt;em&gt;Dropships incoming! Better find cover, chief!&lt;/em&gt;, if I remember correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first point: don't ever underestimate just how much written description there is behind something seemingly simple. If it's well-done, there's probably enough paper behind it to fill a small box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can learn to write, to describe, to imagine, from &lt;em&gt;any written material&lt;/em&gt;, books more than anything else, including games and movies, because they keep your focus on the writing and really allow you to delve into the words without distraction. If you can't happily immerse yourself in words, and learn from them, don't bother trying to write. Waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second thing is that you seem to be concentrating on the style and format of the writing, which is why you assume movies will be more useful than books: they're a visual medium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as I said, a story is a story. Many stories exist as a book, movie, and video game. Look at &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;. You can learn much about crafting characters and plots from books. It's not like a video game plot is so drastically different. It requires the same elements: interesting characters, suspense, constant intrigue, etc etc. Learn how to create these things in one medium and you'll still be able to do it in any other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But yes, finally, I understand that you wish to learn how to do these things in the style of a video-game. Let me emphasize one last time that you must be able to do these things &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt;, in the first place, before you should worry about being able to do it in a certain style. But if that's not the issue for you, then yes, movie scripts will translate well. I would advise you to pick some of your favorite movies and feverishly search the web for the &lt;em&gt;official&lt;/em&gt; (not fan-transcribed) screenplay/scripts and read them beginning to end, paying close attention to what the author chose to emphasize. Movie scripts can be terse or wordy, but more often terse. They can convey an entire city in a spoonful of words, a world in a sentence. Or they can dote on a little ring for a paragraph. It's all about knowing which elements to emphasize at that point in the story. But this goes for books as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also find extensive materials behind video games by searching the web. Find the game scripts, the world descriptions, the character profiles and weapon design specs and alien civilization histories and so on ad infinitum. They exist, and they bear more in common with books than you might suspect. They're all important pieces of designing an imagined world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, there are of course important pieces specific to creating a video game. As mentioned in a comment above, there's a whole field for video-game psychology. But my opinion is that hooking someone with a story and characters is the same in any medium, and as the writer, that's your only job. Leave exhilarating gameplay to the programmers and designers. But remember to make a story that encourages it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Well, I could have the level script start off with the player having just landed on the beach, about to begin his infiltration of the castle-mansion. That'd be cool.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;But...beaches are old hat...what if instead I have him dropped paratrooper-style on the castle roof by the agency, and he has to target his landing so that he lands perfectly on top of the only guard up there, silently taking him out of the picture? And then rappel down the wall? And as he's rappeling down, he witnesses a story-relevant scene through an open window! That'd be even better...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T19:26:46.447" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3245" CreationDate="2012-08-04T17:06:29.277" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it does. Sure, in music and sports, public speaking and race car driving, practice makes perfect. But in many things, such as cooking and painting and writing, passion and talent shine through more than practice. Art is more beauty than math. Writers struggle to craft their work but some of the more well-written and renowned works took no time at all to create. While some were labors of love. It can be a coin toss when it comes to art and creation as to what it takes to create it. So for writing, I don't believe that the 10,000 hours idea can be applied because everyone writes differently and you just have to find what works for you and gets you to produce your best writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3947" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T17:06:29.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6164" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6169" CreationDate="2012-08-04T20:26:26.660" Score="6" ViewCount="21496" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some scripts I read specify the exact camera angle of every shot-- where the camera starts, what we see, how it will move during the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And some scripts are a little less specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this only because the former is the &lt;em&gt;shooting script&lt;/em&gt;, a modification of an earlier script so as to include such specifics? Or is it just a difference in style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While writing a script, or what will at the very least be the first version of a script, should you specify camera shots? Or should that be left for other people to add in and decide upon later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2017-08-02T08:02:57.083" Title="Should you specify camera action in a film script?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6149" CreationDate="2012-08-04T22:47:33.303" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it were me I would just start writing without any sort of outline or rules.  I would write whatever I felt at the moment and as little or as much as I was moved to write.  Once you have a lot written it will be obvious to you how it should be organized in the book.  As with any large project that is overwhelming at first I get nowhere until I just start doing it.  There are no rules to autobiographies or writing for that matter and in my experience the best works are those that were written with a no-holds barred attitude and are written by following the heart and not the head.  Write the book as if you are the only one who will ever read it and it will be everything you hoped for and more.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3949" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T22:47:33.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6114" CreationDate="2012-08-04T22:52:36.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you planning on sharing this with anyone else or is it just for you?  If it is just for you then write what comes naturally to you and what feels comfortable at the moment.  It is after all your innermost feelings and your tense may change from entry to entry depending on your mood.  Personally there is no way I would be able to write a diary entry if I had to force myself to stick to any type of rules.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3949" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T22:52:36.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6135" CreationDate="2012-08-05T00:34:42.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I said in my comment above, it is probably more appropriate to acknowledge the editor in the preface or acknowledgments section of the book. Usually when an editor is credited on the cover, it's because there are multiple authors of various chapters. This is sometimes called an &lt;a href=&quot;http://linguistics.byu.edu/faculty/henrichsenl/apa/APA07.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;edited book.&lt;/a&gt; With that kind of book, the editors are the ones who get the billing on the cover. For example, one of the most cited textbooks in the veterinary medical profession (the field in which I work) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1416065938&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Textbook of Veterinary Internal Medicine&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;/a&gt; edited by Drs. Stephen Ettinger and Edward Feldman. They are the ones listed on the cover, because there are dozens of contributing authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your situation, there is one author and one editor. I think it would be unusual to list the editor on the cover. The author could be asked to write a paragraph to acknowledge the significant contributions of the editor. As an example, Theodore M. Bernstein, in his book &lt;em&gt;The Careful Writer,&lt;/em&gt; included this particularly elegant acknowledgment in his preface:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Almost a collaborator, Bertram Lippman of the English Department of Bayside High School, New York City, shares credit for whatever is right in this book. Whatever is wrong is probably the result of my not having taken some suggestion of his or not having heeded some caution of his.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I thought it worth mentioning that if you are applying for an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/us/application.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ISBN for the book&lt;/a&gt;, you will be able to include both the author and editor names in the application. That will ensure that both people's names show up in searches for the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3432" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T00:34:42.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2012-08-05T05:51:30.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Westerners, esp. movie goers,  are conditioned to expect certain elements in a story eg protagonist antagonist etc. A goal must be set and the goals impeded somehow by an antagonistic force, whether darth vader or the weather in &quot; a perfect storm&quot;. If there is no antatgonist, the story can still &quot;exist&quot; or &quot;be written&quot;, but it may not be appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I accept a Short Story(eg 7 minute play) and poetry for example dont necessarily have time for a hero's journey and may not need an &quot;antagonist&quot; and they can still be &quot;good&quot; because they reflect on the depth of an issue rather than &quot;plot&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you want to engage an audience for 2 hours and be liked (story/movie/novel), you'll need a goal and impedance, and audience to root for the hero. The tried and tru structures work. change them after ytou ahve mastered them. As a corollary any person can record music in their garagae, but whether 900/1000 will want to listen to it is another thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3950" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T05:51:30.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6164" CreationDate="2012-08-05T14:47:18.513" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Screenwriters don't specify shots or camera angles -- that's the job of the director and cinematographer. Since you know nothing about the actual production when you're writing the script, such information would be entirely hypothetical and largely useless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the screenwriter, you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; specify the setting and time in the scene's slug line, using INT. or EXT. for interior or exterior, a brief description of the setting, and DAY or NIGHT for the time of day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; INT. JOE'S GARAGE - NIGHT&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it might be necessary to include some additional information, i.e. if it's important that the scene be taking place at dawn, include that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; EXT. ARIZONA DESERT - DAY (DAWN)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, if it's a flashback you might need to include some information to indicate the change in set (if it's not obvious from the dialogue or action). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;EXT. NEW YORK CITY STREET (1933) - DAY &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond those broad strokes, almost everything is a production decision, not a script decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2744" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T14:47:18.513" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2053" CreationDate="2012-08-06T21:20:46.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, you don't need to have taken classes or earned a degree in your area.  What you really need is an &lt;strong&gt;insatiable curiosity&lt;/strong&gt;.  One of the best examples I know of this is &lt;em&gt;Martin Gardner&lt;/em&gt;, who for over 20 years wrote a column for Scientific American called &lt;em&gt;Mathematical Games&lt;/em&gt;.  He is given much credit for the popularization of recreational mathematics in the 20th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to wikipedia: &quot;Ironically, Gardner had problems learning calculus and never took a mathematics course after high school.&quot;  As I recall, Gardner credited his &lt;em&gt;lack of training in mathematics&lt;/em&gt; for some of the success of his column.  Each month for his column, &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; had to learn about the topic, before he could teach it to his audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3953" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T21:20:46.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6172" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6178" CreationDate="2012-08-07T01:31:13.847" Score="5" ViewCount="1335" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read a quote a long time ago, but did not know the origin. I want to use it in a paper I am writing, so I tried researching to find out who is the source of the quote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote is &quot;We are the universe trying to understand itself.&quot; and I believe it was Carl Sagan who said/wrote it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be appropriate to credit him in my paper, even though I cannot find the exact source and am not 100% sure he said it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3367" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T21:17:57.887" Title="Is it appropriate to credit someone with a quote if I am not absolutely sure they are the source?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6272" CreationDate="2012-08-07T03:08:14.383" Score="12" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any reference for comparing publishers (or at least major ones)? Writers choose a publisher based on fame or by chance, but is there any system for rank of publishers? Or providing statistical data such as the number of published volumes, magazines, factors of business success, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2640" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T19:21:21.270" Title="Where to find comparative information about publishers?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6172" CreationDate="2012-08-07T08:57:34.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you Google the quote with Carl Sagan? Any other information you might have to narrow it down? At least you can confirm whether it is him, and be sure that the quote is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked, and there seems to be some evidence that it was Sagan, but you would need to confirm for yourself, especially that he was not quoting someone else. TBH, it sounds rather like a Sagan original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect the Babylon 5 quote took it from Sagan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can identify that he appears to have said it, then you can reasonably credit him with it, as long as this is not a formal academic paper than needs a definitive reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-08-07T08:57:34.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2012-08-07T13:53:57.033" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something I have done with considerable success is to read the finished product in a much larger font. When you are reading along in your normal font, it is easier for your mind to anticipate and gloss over words, even when they are obviously incorrect. By increasing the font size, an error tends to stand out more clearly, making it more difficult to gloss over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these are excellent ideas, and if you are planning to do multiple passes through your work, it would be good to use at least two different techniques. Anything that gets through the first pass might be more easily detected in the second pass by using a different technique. Either way, I strongly agree with the recommendation to set it aside at least a couple of weeks. That way you don't do as much anticipating as you are reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW - I read somewhere that people tend to use the creative side of their brain when they are writing using longhnad, but they use the other side of their brain when they are typing. As a result, typing out your story as you are trying to develop it can prove to be difficult for some people because their creative side is not being engaged as much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-08-07T13:53:57.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6172" CreationDate="2012-08-07T14:06:20.070" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, it would not be appropriate.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite possible that nobody would check you up on this, but quote attributions are expected to be, you know, correct. Mis-attributing a quote might be an honest error, but it's more likely to be a case of insufficient research, or even intentionally lending weight to your work by leaning on an existing respected personality (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.likecaptions.com/2011/11/abraham-lincoln-on-the-internet/&quot;&gt;like so&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example you've given, this is very evident: if I Google the quote, I get a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of hits for an identical quote from a character on 90's SF TV show &lt;em&gt;Babylon 5&lt;/em&gt;. You really don't want anybody even considering that maybe you stole a &lt;em&gt;Babylon 5&lt;/em&gt; quote and said it was from Carl Sagan. My Googling also reveals references to Carl Sagan (unsubstantiated) and Charles R. Pellegrino (&lt;em&gt;Ghosts of Vesuvius&lt;/em&gt;) - look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quotationspage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10245&quot;&gt;this discussion of the same quote&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your paper is not going to be held to rigorous expectations of research and formality, you might write that the quote is &quot;often attributed to&quot; Carl Sagan. Alternatively, choose one of the similar quotes whose source you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; certain of. (Quoting from &lt;em&gt;Babylon 5&lt;/em&gt; is perfectly fine, as long as it's properly attributed!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: &lt;strong&gt;don't attribute unless you're certain.&lt;/strong&gt; If you're not certain, then either say so, or find a different quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-08-07T14:06:20.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6172" CreationDate="2012-08-07T15:50:55.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This quote is often attributed to Carl Sagan, but I can find little evidence to support that attribution.  Regardless, I think this quote is important because...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="526" LastActivityDate="2012-08-07T15:50:55.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6182" CreationDate="2012-08-07T20:12:17.417" Score="3" ViewCount="3902" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally, a book price should be proportional to its publication cost. Since some books and topics have potential for higher sales, publishers increase the price. What I do not understand is why a book with public audience costs a few dollars, but a technical book (with the same printing costs) can be a few hundred dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I speculate that one reason is that a technical book has a lesser number of potential sales. Of course a publisher would expects a decent revenue from each book project, but but I cannot understand why the increase in price is so extreme. I wonder if this high price is part of the reason for lower sales in the first place, creating a vicious cycle.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any standard scheme for determining the price of a book? Or do publishers increase the price to as much as the book will sell?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2640" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-08-07T20:37:59.163" LastActivityDate="2021-04-21T09:53:11.387" Title="What determines a book's price?" Tags="|publishing|book|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6181" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-08T07:37:06.423" Score="4" ViewCount="2806" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for advice on writing a synopsis for my novel. I've found quite a few examples online, but none for multiple POVs and time periods. My novel is written from the point of view of three main characters, with POV switches at the chapter level, and two time periods that are many years apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the novel each chapter starts with the location and date, the timeline is important to the story, so is made clear in this way. While I think this works in the novel, it seems a bit clunky for a synopsis, where I'm aiming to reduce the plot to a snappily worded two pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas on how to achieve this or links to some examples? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3964" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T22:10:35.180" Title="Synopsis - multiple POVs and time periods" Tags="|synopsis|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2012-08-08T09:01:31.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the simple answer is that the publisher has to recover their costs on the expected sales of the book, and tend to price accordingly. There is also the drive that they want to charge as much as they can for it, while not damaging their sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So academic or technical books are liable to have similar or higher costs than novels, for example, because they need checking for accuracy by people who know the subject. They are often also larger and thicker, requiring more time to check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The potential sales of these are hugely less than popular novels. Some of them will sell hundreds, maybe thousands, rather than tens of thousands that novels can sell. So their income is liable to be less - if the book takes off in academic circles, they will get a nice profit from it, but if it fails to take off, they will make a loss. Hopefully, it balances out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a different market for regulatory books, that is, books that certain organisations need to have, which will have known basic sales, but they will be businesses, so they will charge more. There are extra costs for making sure it is strictly correct and valid, according to the regulations, and companies will pay £200+ a year for the latest copy. Publishers will price according to what they think the market will take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T09:01:31.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6181" CreationDate="2012-08-08T22:10:35.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Randy Ingermanson (&quot;the Snowflake guy&quot;) writes about this in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com/ezine/2012/AFW_Ezine_2012-06-05.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;June 2012 E-zine&lt;/a&gt;, taking The Hunger Games as example, mostly for writing character synopses. Introduce the main character and her main story arc. Add the second character and his story arc, etcetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case perhaps you can describe the main character and her time period. Same for the other characters. If someone is time travelling, this will be trickier. But remember that just like you do not need to write a list of all places a character visits, you also do not need to record all time travels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The synopsis does not need to follow the same route in place or time as the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know specific examples for multiple POV and time periods, but perhaps search for summaries of Doctor Who.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1674" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T22:10:35.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2012-08-09T15:38:10.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two different primary factors involved here. The first is recovery of costs, while the second is supply and demand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publisher is going to have a certain amount of fixed costs tied to any book, regardless of subject. These include editing, fact checking, cover design, paper, and printing. With a popular novel, they can recover these costs more easily through volume sales. Say for example their total expense is $100,000, and the book sells for $10. They would need to sell 10,000 copies of the book just to break even. For a technical book, they have to factor in the likeliness that they even have an audience of 10,000, let alone that many who will actually buy the book. Based on previous sales of similar books, they will most likely identify a target number of sales they might realistically be able to reach, and then price the book accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the supply and demand factor, they can look at the marketplace and detrmine whether or not there is any other book offering the same information. If there is not, and the demand for the book seems respectable, then they can charge a higher price simply because nobody else can offer what they have. Even if they can sell the book at a lower price to recover their expenses, they may be inclined to start with a higher price. This would especially be true if they believe that there is considerable demand from a limited audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T15:38:10.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6185" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-10T00:43:17.950" Score="1" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of a phonetic dictionary (such as this one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writeexpress.com/phonetic.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writeexpress.com/phonetic.html&lt;/a&gt;) that works for Mac or is available online?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3973" LastActivityDate="2012-08-11T22:09:33.440" Title="Phonetic Dictionary" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6186" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6187" CreationDate="2012-08-10T09:23:13.413" Score="7" ViewCount="753" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel that will have 9 chapters. Most of the chapters have the same structure: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The main character goes down a hole she found in her room.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She finds herself in a strange part of the city and has a conversation with a strange character.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She returns from the hole and discovers that something has changed in the world she came from.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each chapter deals with a theme. The conversations she has with the strange characters and the changes in the world around her have something to do with each theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if using the same structure in each chapter and defining the themes in each of them is somehow a &quot;bad&quot; way of writing a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, I would like to know how to make it so that the structure is not that obvious for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(One thing that I did was to start some chapters with the character having already jumped in the hole.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a summary of the second and third chapters (to give you a better idea):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2nd Chapter:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Erin's father is in prison for raping her sister. She had promised her mom that she would visit him. She takes the train and reaches the prison, but she backs up at the last minute and returns home without seeing him. That night she realizes that the hole in the floor of her room has gotten bigger. She enters (there are some boxes and a corridor with a door) and finds herself in a empty alley (she's still in the same city). She enters a bar and has a conversation with a strange man. He talks with her about good and evil and questions whether they exist at all. She then returns from the hole and goes to sleep. In the morning she resolves to visit her father. But when she goes to call him in advance, he is no longer in prison but at the hospital. Erin calls her mother and discovers that her father has always been in the hospital, and was never in prison. Erin finds this very puzzling because she knows that her father has always been in prison. She goes to the hospital to visit him and finally reunites with her father. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3rd Chapter:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Erin's cat has disappeared and she looks around the area in search of the missing feline. Right after she gives up, her landlord calls to tell Erin that she found the cat. When Erin meets the landlord she finds that her cat is dead. Erin goes to her room and notices that there are pawprints leading down into the hole. She enters the hole and follows them until she reaches a subway. There is no one in the subway except a girl who is standing on the edge of the platform. Erin tries to find out what she is planning to do. The girl talks with Erin about life and death, believing them to be one and the same. At the end, the train comes and the girls board it. Erin gets out from the hole and goes back to her room to find a baby cat that resembles her recently deceased pet. She finally decides to take care of the new cat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2012-08-10T23:35:11.313" LastActivityDate="2018-03-23T15:52:25.247" Title="Writing a novel which has the same structure and a particular theme in each chapter" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6186" CreationDate="2012-08-10T10:05:59.373" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually I find the repeated structure interesting. Clearly &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; is going on, some kind of external magical force which is creating changes in the &quot;real world.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only advice would be not to be too obvious about how her conversations down the rabbit hole affect the world she returns to, unless you intend for there to be a literal one-to-one correspondence. That is, if the magical world is &lt;em&gt;symbolic&lt;/em&gt;, she shouldn't have a talk with someone in the Rabbit Hole bar about how forgiveness is healing and then return to reality and her sister's broken arm is no longer broken. If the magical world is &lt;em&gt;literal&lt;/em&gt;, then she could find a Barbie doll and pop its arm back into its socket, which would result in her sister's arm no longer being broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you intend to explain how the conversations in the rabbit hole world affect reality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T10:05:59.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6186" CreationDate="2012-08-10T23:53:51.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This poem is one of the best ever written, for my tastes, and is worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-13ways.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-13ways.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The poem has thirteen stanzas, each contributing its own elegant detail to the overall portrait of the blackbird.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any stanza in the poem could stand on its own. Each one is beautiful. But together they make something truly perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point in bringing this up is that anyone reading the poem can see that each stanza has the same idea in mind, even if the detail and form vary. Each one helps to construct the blackbird. There's no hiding that, nor should it be hidden. It's the point of the poem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the sound of your story, there is no &quot;making it not obvious to the reader.&quot; Your story is defined by its structure. If you're embarrassed by the structure and wish to hide it, perhaps its because you don't actually think it's a good idea, and are unhappy writing it. So stop! Change it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But otherwise, stop trying to hide it. It's there, and that's that. Now focus on making the hole-centered adventures as engaging as possible, and the thematically significant changes in the protagonist's world as intriguing and thought-provoking as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;There is no such thing as a &lt;strong&gt;bad&lt;/strong&gt; novel structure.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is only an author who made it work, or didn't. Can you make it work? Just because you can't, doesn't mean it can't be done. You're focusing on the wrong thing. Of course it's not &lt;em&gt;bad.&lt;/em&gt; The real question is whether it's what you want, and what you're confident in writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like many people may angrily contradict the statement I'm about to make, but really I never could understand this concept of asking other people &quot;Do you like my idea? Is this good?&quot; When I've written something, I &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt;, innately, without asking anyone, whether it's good or not. Being a good writer, I am by nature an even better &lt;em&gt;reader&lt;/em&gt;, and therefore it's plain as day to me whether I pulled it off right, whether my story is (for its target audience) almost indisputably of good quality. And I am a very harsh self-critic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I alone in this sentiment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean to say, Alex, is that you should be able to answer this on your own. Read what you've written. How does it sound to you? Do you like it? Does it sound professional? Does it flow flawlessly? Are you distracted from the story by its structure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I certainly respect the idea of asking other people for their opinion on your work. That goes without saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just saying that I don't start asking for other people's thoughts until I'm very pleased with the work myself, and it doesn't sound like you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2012-08-10T23:59:42.297" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T23:59:42.297" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6196" CreationDate="2012-08-11T14:16:01.303" Score="8" ViewCount="3002" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I see a movie critic praise Ridley Scott's &lt;em&gt;Prometheus&lt;/em&gt;, they seem to be drooling over all the mythological references, although most don't necessarily complement gaps in the story or enrich itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see the same pattern repeated over and over in Hollywood. Take &lt;em&gt;The Matrix&lt;/em&gt; for one, where mythological and religious references are regarded significant and are valuable additions to the storytelling. I am at the brink of coming to the conclusion that any screenplay can be improved a lot by adding sufficient amount of mythology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand how mythological references make a story better. Because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mythology is the oldest form of storytelling, so it's been around the longest, hence it's the most common and the most primitive. It even predates philosophical texts so the most intricate theme you can bump into is &quot;self-sacrifice&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's been referenced so many times. Every new pantheon, new mythology and new religion, inherited complete volumes of previous mythology. It didn't stop there either, non-religious storytelling was also influenced by mythology for a very long time. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So referencing mythology today feels like referencing a dictionary, or lyrics to Old McDonald's Farm. I cannot simply grasp how people feel awe when faced with a mythological reference in a movie called &quot;Prometheus&quot; in the first place. Since everybody seems to be ok with those I probably don't know something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2705" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T15:17:43.720" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T15:17:43.720" Title="What's the significance of ancient mythology in literature?" Tags="|cliches|metaphor|philosophy|mythology|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6190" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-11T18:41:56.873" Score="5" ViewCount="905" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel, and part of the plot has one character killing another in a specific real-life location. I mean the setting is &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; specific - for example, a particular hotel, or one particular ferry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm worried that portraying violence in a specific location might be frowned upon by the real-life owners. I don't want to be sued because they don't like how I've used their property, or because they think I'm slandering them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I be sued for this kind of writing? And if so, what can I do now, in the writing stage, to avoid that possibility?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3975" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T09:11:19.920" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T15:27:45.873" Title="Is it safe to write about a fictional murder in a real-life location?" Tags="|fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6189" CreationDate="2012-08-11T19:08:41.690" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because mythology is the oldest form of storytelling, it resonates with our deepest selves, allowing us to explore the inner archetypal  landscape of being human and our connection to divinity. It is our common language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3977" LastActivityDate="2012-08-11T19:08:41.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6185" CreationDate="2012-08-11T22:09:33.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dictionary.reference.com&lt;/a&gt; and look up the word and then select &quot;Show IPA&quot; it shows you the pronunciation using the International Phonetic System which I love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3978" LastActivityDate="2012-08-11T22:09:33.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6189" CreationDate="2012-08-11T22:28:39.277" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed you said &quot;movie critics&quot; enjoy mythological references in a film, but do audiences?  So you've asked, kind of a two-part question.  For clarity, there are films that are based on mythology, like &quot;Star Wars&quot; and there are films that reference mythology like &quot;Prometheus.&quot;  It can be a fine line, but I believe the difference lies with whether the filmmakers want to draw attention to the myth or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that referencing a myth resembles the use of symbolism in storytelling.  Both are fairly easy to do, but the audience (who know nothing of writing, filmmaking, or storytelling) tend to like them because both make them feel smart.  Like they discovered some hidden detail no one else was clever enough to see.  This despite the fact that, for example, the movie is titled &quot;Prometheus.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for movie critics, most seem to believe (based upon the many movie reviews I've read) that they are somehow 'fellow filmmakers.'  In fact, they know little more than the audience.  Thus critics cleave to any subtlety or detail of a film that makes them feel smarter than the audience and thus involved in the filmmaking process.  Critics love symbolism, literary references, and mythological references, but as Adam Sandler might ask, &quot;do you need the critics to like your film?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1904" LastActivityDate="2012-08-11T22:28:39.277" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6194" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6195" CreationDate="2012-08-12T06:28:05.607" Score="4" ViewCount="744" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I find my self wondering if the events in my novels are 'realistic enough.' I aware that they don't need to happen in real life, but I want the reader to think: oh yeah, this could happen in real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, right now I'm writing a novel where the main character is playing in a rock band. One day, he receives a call form a girl who attended to one of his concerts. She wants to talk with him about one of the songs his band played that day. She believes that the song is referring to the death of her diseased boyfriend (the age, time and location are exactly the same). But as far as the main character knows, the song is completely fictitious (an ex member of the band wrote it). The only difference is that her boyfriend fell accidentally from his balcony while drunk and in the song, the boy commits suicide (she has been suspecting this). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, I have two ways of making sure something is realistic enough: 1) I write about things that had happened to me 2) I make sure that I had heard or read about the thing somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, in the example, the story is totally made up, and I haven't read or heard any story with the same plot (maybe someone has written something similar).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2012-08-12T07:54:31.053" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T17:57:20.697" Title="How to know if the events in my novel are 'realistic enough'?" Tags="|novel|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6194" CreationDate="2012-08-12T09:19:32.290" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;For writing fiction, realism is really much less important than believability. Things happen in the real world that are much more improbable than many readers would be willing to accept. &lt;em&gt;Truth is stranger than fiction.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, there are four primary elements of believability:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does the story contradict anything that we know about the universe? This could be scientific, historical, geographical, etc. If you put a lit match in a puddle of gasoline, it will burn. It takes a certain amount of time to drive from point A to point B.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do the characters behave consistently? This is tougher, because real people don't necessarily appear to behave consistently - but this is often because we don't see what's motivating them. As a writer, it's up to you to understand what's motivating your characters to behave in a particular fashion. If they're doing something that would generally be considered out of character, you may have to give the reader a look at the motivation behind the action.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dialog. If the characters were real people, is that what they would really say in that situation?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Description - written correctly, it can make people, places and objects feel real to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, believability is the author selling his vision of the story to the reader. It isn't four disjointed elements thrown haphazardly into a pot but the careful blending of those elements into a recipe that tastes good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3979" LastActivityDate="2012-08-12T09:19:32.290" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6189" CreationDate="2012-08-12T13:41:47.387" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Myths and religions are &quot;stories we already know.&quot; Adding references to known mythology in a contemporary story both grounds it to reality and connects it to our larger culture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about modern myths. If you have an ensemble action piece in a movie or a TV episode, for example, there's often a moment just before the climactic battle where five or six heroes walk towards the camera grimly, in slow motion. That's been picked up from a hundred Westerns, which in turn was probably taken from &lt;em&gt;Seven Samurai&lt;/em&gt;. Does that make the SloMo Charge of the Light Brigade any less moving? As a watcher, doesn't your heart swell to see the heroes march towards their potential doom? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the same thing with referencing ancient mythology. These are tropes. They're well-honed narrative devices. The stories have been told before and told well, and by calling back to them or repeating them, we are trying to borrow some of the emotional impact the original had and echo it in our own work. And if the fictional characters in your story reference myths from an actual culture, it makes them more realistic (in the sense that the story is happening in &quot;the real world&quot; or &quot;our timeline&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, when do you something as blunt as call your movie &lt;em&gt;Prometheus,&lt;/em&gt; you are by definition inviting your audience to make the comparison between your story and the myth. If the movie had been called &lt;em&gt;Ripley Believes It or Not&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Float Like a Butterfly&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;...On Little Cat Feet&lt;/em&gt;, you'd be invited to compare it to something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA Writer L.B. Gale just posted a discussion of this on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lbgale.com/2012/08/11/summer-blockbuster-mythologizing/&quot;&gt;her blog&lt;/a&gt; this morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-08-13T09:50:16.780" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T09:50:16.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6197" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6269" CreationDate="2012-08-14T11:14:57.383" Score="4" ViewCount="1239" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a tutorial on how to use a specific web application and I don't know which verbs to use. Shall I use &quot;click&quot; for buttons? But what if the user doesn't use a mouse? Contrary to &quot;normal&quot; applications, web applications can be visited by many different clients, e.g. PCs, Smartphones with Touchscreens, Voice Recognition Software... But the verb &quot;select&quot; fits better for radio buttons and check boxes in my opinion and would not be best for buttons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also how should I emphasize different elements such as button names, radio button or text field labels, strings to type in from the user, select entries...is there a guideline anywhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2020-03-14T12:34:29.123" LastActivityDate="2020-03-14T12:34:29.123" Title="What is the word for the action of selecting an item by a mouse?" Tags="|technical-writing|software|tutorial|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6197" CreationDate="2012-08-14T11:36:24.097" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can use &quot;click&quot; with relative impunity. Even someone on a tablet or smartphone knows that &quot;click&quot; equates to &quot;tap&quot; with a touch interface. If you really feel strongly about it, you can say &quot;Click or tap&quot; or &quot;Click/tap,&quot; but ask around to make sure it doesn't sound clunky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that &quot;select&quot; is the right word for &quot;choose one or more of these options,&quot; not for &quot;interact with this button.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-08-14T11:36:24.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6197" CreationDate="2012-08-14T18:29:48.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is a button, then &lt;code&gt;press&lt;/code&gt; is still appropriate, as is &lt;code&gt;click&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;tap&lt;/code&gt;. It can be handy to have multiple synonyms for something, and &lt;code&gt;press&lt;/code&gt; works as well, or perhaps even better, for a touch interface than it does for a mouse interface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3979" LastActivityDate="2012-08-14T18:29:48.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6201" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6322" CreationDate="2012-08-14T20:20:03.347" Score="16" ViewCount="1786" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just watched one part of Brandon Sanderson's lecture on writing, the section entitled &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glPLTNuhfxA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gardeners &amp;amp; Architects&lt;/a&gt; and I realised I'm a Gardener, almost exclusively. This often ends up with me writing very weak plot with no direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130211033755/http://www.writeaboutdragons.com/home/brandon_w2012/lecture-1-sub/gardeners-vs-architects/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;summary&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two main types of writers: “discovery writers” and “outliners”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discovery writers are kind of like gardeners, growing their story from some seed of an idea and not quite knowing where it will take them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outliners can be thought of as architects, mapping their story out from start to finish before they ever write a single word of prose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gardeners should watch out for “and then I guess it ends” type of endings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Architects should watch out for “world builder’s disease”.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm used to writing in a way that I discover the work as I go. How can I practice writing like an architect, so that when I write properly I can use both aspects to my advantage? In particular, how can I learn how to outline before I start to write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3986" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-12-20T04:52:10.373" LastActivityDate="2021-12-20T04:52:10.373" Title="How can I learn how to outline, so I can write like an architect?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6189" CreationDate="2012-08-16T06:56:19.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers are good, but there's a whole dimension that hasn't been addressed (except by @FBRogers who got his darn post in before I had a chance to write this ;)  ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Myths were (and, to a large extent, still are) mankind's way of coming to terms with the nature of reality - especially the parts that deal with emotions, our inner nature, and things that aren't always amenable to the rational mind.  Without going all C.G. Jung on you, archetypes and myths resonate deeply and powerfully with us on many levels.  They are usually what gives a story juice.  It's what the readers or watchers identify with - often unconsciously.  It's almost impossible to write anything good without them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the myths and archetypes will (almost) always be there.  The only issue is whether making the connections explicit makes a difference.  In some cases this is a genre thing with comics (graphic novels, to be politically correct) about demigods and superheros.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other cases, maybe the target audience can be assumed to be lacking in a classical education (getting more rare by the day, from what I hear about the current state of education) and may need a push in the intended direction so as to have a clue as to what the story is really about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barring these (and undoubtedly, more legitimate uses I haven't thought of), such references may just be blatant grabs for association with memes that sell.  That's where to draw the line.  Don't use them to disingenuously trick your reader or to insult their intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, don't be afraid to use them appropriately.  Joseph Campbell (the demigod of mythology and archetypes) did a lot of consulting for George Lucas when he was developing Star Wars and (without knowing any of the specifics) I'm sure that made a very positive contribution to the work (at least to the first three movies, Episodes 4, 5, and 6 ;(  ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for critics, they can point out how well (or poorly) a myth/archetype was employed.  I know I don't always analyse everything I see/read and sometimes having things like this pointed out to me is very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I remember seeing Zabriskey Point (an unremarkable movie) in an art theater (back when that didn't mean x rated).  At the end as we were getting up to go, someone in the theater called out, &quot;Boy meets girl in dessert.&quot; and got everybody in the theater laughing. That pretty much summarized the whole movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastEditorUserId="2821" LastEditDate="2012-08-16T07:02:38.197" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T07:02:38.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6201" CreationDate="2012-08-16T07:27:35.527" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read and write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Read&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Innumerable guides and advice exist for outlining and plotting a story. Pick a few and read some! This will help you absorb fundamental concepts, common techniques, and typical pitfalls, so you're not wandering around completely blind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dip into some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.il/search?q=how+outline+novel+OR+story&quot;&gt;simple Google results&lt;/a&gt;. Spend a couple of bucks on &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B005NAUKAC&quot;&gt;an ebook&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0083FXTB6&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt;. Stack Exchange isn't a great place for resource recommendations, but Ansen Dibell's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0898799465&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Plot&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is a superb book which lights up different aspects of plot construction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading is the easy part, though - you don't need to read &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;, just enough that you feel you're not getting too much from new resources you read. What you read shouldn't freeze you up when you sit down to write - most advice is subjective and doesn't work for everybody; and it's absolutely fine to make mistakes and go against the advice you've read!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Write&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to really gain experience is by practicing. Outlining is a particular skill you want to develop, so you want to exercise it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you'll gain quite a lot by practicing outlining stories and novels - &lt;em&gt;even&lt;/em&gt; if you don't go on to write the actual thing. That's a good exercise you can do many, many times, until you feel more comfortable with it. Of course, whenever you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; able to write the story that goes with the outline, your experience will be much fuller - you'll be able to see how your outline maps to the actual writing experience, and that'll give you a sense of what parts of outlining work well for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some specific outlining exercises you might enjoy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a &lt;strong&gt;query&lt;/strong&gt; for a prospective novel/story. Take a look at resources like Query Shark in order to get a sense of what works well in queries and what doesn't. Often, you can write a really interesting query without actually having a book written... and a query gets you a long way towards an outline, since it describes the major touchpoints and goals of the story!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;James Van Pelt suggests the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/81034.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seven-Sentence Story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, which helps you write a basic story outline according to a simple template. This is a great exercise for your goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T07:27:35.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6190" CreationDate="2012-08-16T11:42:13.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Option A:&lt;/em&gt; &quot;Welcome Monsieur Debarge to your cabin on the Caspian Rapide, the luxury train service that will take you on a journey from London through to Istanbul,&quot; the guard said as the famous Belgian detective came aboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Option B:&lt;/em&gt; &quot;Murder!&quot; Lady Glintington cried, aghast. &quot;On the Orient Express? I believed that this was one of the safest train services in the world!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Normally so,&quot; Debarge said the inflections of his French-Canadian accent bringing a particular gusto to his authoritarian tone. &quot;The perpetrator of this wicked crime must have been exceptionally determined and resigned to capture. For only a fool with little care for their own freedom and safety would dare to execute such a heinous crime in such an environment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Option C:&lt;/em&gt; Just don't worry about it. It's only if you go into territory that suggests that heinous acts of murder most foul are the norm in the selected location and the owners of the location actively encourage carnage and anarchy that you'd probably be getting a raised eyebrow or two. As long as it is made plain that the situation is out of the ordinary the location is usually deemed fair game for adding dramatic spice, particularly if the venue is open to the general public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Matthew Reilly set his gladiatorial SF thriller Contest in the Library of Congress, Dan Brown set Angels and Demons in the Vatican City. If in the latter Brown had depicted the Vatican as an organisation of loose morals and casual atrocity he might have attracted the wrong type of attention to his tedious pot boiler. Because the Vatican largely performed its expected function with various rogue elements trying to cause chaos it passes as dramatic licence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T11:42:13.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6207" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6208" CreationDate="2012-08-16T12:40:37.540" Score="5" ViewCount="657" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm not saying you don't know what you are talking about,&quot; he said,&#xA;  then looked at her and shrugged his shoulders. &quot;But I don't know what&#xA;  you are talking about.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm not saying you don't know what you are talking about.&quot; He looked&#xA;  at her and shrugged his shoulders. &quot;But I don't know what you are&#xA;  talking about.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm not mistaken, both examples are describing the same thing.&#xA;But I always find my self wondering whether I should use dialogue tags or action tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He looked to the side and blushed. &quot;I probably love you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He looked to the side, blushed and said, &quot;I probably love you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I probably love you.&quot; He looked to the side and blushed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I probably love you,&quot; he said, after looking to the side and blushing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I probably love you,&quot; he said, looking to the side and blushing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I stick with some of them, or all of them are useful in different situations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2012-08-16T14:11:23.120" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T20:07:58.700" Title="Deciding whether to use a dialogue tag or an action tag in a dialogue" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6207" CreationDate="2012-08-16T14:57:32.467" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is clear who is speaking, you do not need a dialog tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He looked to the side and blushed. &amp;quot;I probably love you.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;He&amp;quot; is looking to the side and blushing, so &amp;quot;he&amp;quot; is the one who speaks. Skip the dialog tag. Add them if you do not have an action tag and it could be unclear to the reader who is speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this has nothing to do with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He looked to the side and blushed. &amp;quot;I probably love you.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I probably love you.&amp;quot; He looked to the side and blushed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you are telling two different things. First he cannot stand looking at the other person and then says &amp;quot;I love you.&amp;quot; In the second sentence he says he loves the person and then look away. You are telling two different stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example look at this situation without dialog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He slapped her. She cried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She cried. He slapped her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two different situation, two different stories. You are switching cause and effect when switching the sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T14:57:32.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6207" CreationDate="2012-08-16T16:14:01.057" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;All your constructions are useful in different situations. Keep John Smithers's comment about cause and effect in mind, and vary your tags so that you aren't repeating the same sentence structure constantly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your examples, I like your action tags better than your dialogue tags only because they're a little tighter. There are times when you need use to &quot;he said&quot; or variants thereof, so don't jettison all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T16:14:01.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6207" CreationDate="2012-08-16T20:07:58.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When different phrasings all have more or less the same meaning, I choose the phrasing that creates the tone or mood I want.  For that, I listen to the rhythm, tempo, and sounds.  Reading the passage out loud, in context, is a big help here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of your phrasings give cues about the order of events.  The temporal arrangement of emotions, actions, and dialogue can create subtext that nicely expresses the character's mood.  I got different impressions of the character from each of your &quot;I probably love you&quot; examples.  In the first one, he proclaims his love despite his embarrassment.  In the second, he seems more breathless and blurting.  In the third, he seems embarrassed not by what he is feeling, but by having proclaimed his love, or perhaps by the lack of an immediate response.  The fifth gives a rich, more complex mood that I'm not sure how to summarize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would probably avoid &quot;he said, after...&quot;  The sequence in the text mismatches the sequence in which the events happened.  This forces the reader to resequence the events, which is jarring.  It can be useful if you're trying to show that the character is disoriented, or is overwhelmed and becoming aware of events out of sequence.  But those are very specialized situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T20:07:58.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6211" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-16T20:32:20.177" Score="2" ViewCount="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;For instance. I've never really paid attention to white vans, but when the DC sniper was at large and they stated that he's probably shooting from a white van, white vans seemed to appear out of no where and be around every corner!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3994" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T18:31:27.180" Title="What is the word for this effect - things are not normally noticed until those things come in to the news and people fear/are looking for them" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-08-17T18:31:35.150" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6219" CreationDate="2012-08-17T01:23:47.150" Score="6" ViewCount="356" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a short story in which the protagonist (Vasily) has a notebook.  During my rewrite, I wanted to really emphasize the importance of the notebook and push the reader's focus onto it.  I decided to rewrite several scenes into notebook entries instead (an excellent suggestion from NeilFein). The rest of the narrative is in third-person. His notebook is written in first-person (obviously).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a personal journal for years, so I thought it would be straightforward to write an authentic-sounding journal entry.  Instead, when I re-read those passages, I can hear my voice rather than Vasily's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want there to be a distinct difference between the notebook passages and the rest of the narrative, but although I have a feel for Vasily's character, I don't seem to know how he would write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a technique that would help to develop this character's personal writing style?  I can't seem to make it sound different from my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-08-17T18:28:22.253" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T12:09:39.230" Title="Is there a technique to help me write this character's notebook entries?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6214" CreationDate="2012-08-17T05:07:19.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh my, this is a problem. I've had it as well. Very tricky indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I get outside myself? How do I think and talk like someone else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How can I stop being me??&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know, it occurs to me that actors have this problem as well. Some of them take their jobs really seriously and get deep into character and pretend to really be that person. They change their bodies, their lifestyles, their personalities. They want terribly to convince you that they are no longer the person you know they really are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of an author doing this. I wonder why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps  because we have the advantage of not needing to be that person on the spot. We can think it out, take our time, revise, edit, sculpt, until we've created the perfect portrayal. We have all the time in the world. They have to do it all in one take, or start over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my first suggestion is to take massive advantage of your ability to fine-tune every frame, so to speak. Look at every sentence, every word, every phrase and expression. Look at the overall structure/direction of  what the character has said in their writing. Is it consistent with their personality? Would Abraham Lincoln really use the word &quot;bubblicious&quot;? Of course he would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second suggestion is to simply &lt;em&gt;get into your character.&lt;/em&gt; Think about them. Sketch them out. Figure out their past. Imagine their future. Mentally place them in a variety of situations, talking with a variety of people, and discover what they say, and how they say it. I think you might find an image taking shape very quickly. Once you really know them, you'll know what they would say without thinking twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proof's in the pudding. Take your close friends, people you know better than anyone. If one of them did something out of character, wouldn't you notice instantly? You'd think, &lt;em&gt;That's strange, James is never this direct,&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;How unusual, Sarah using a word like &quot;effluvium&quot;?&lt;/em&gt; When you really know someone, breaches of standard behavior stand out like neon lights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And don't think that characters are any different from close friends. After all, who knows your characters better than you, their creator?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T05:07:19.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6201" CreationDate="2012-08-17T06:06:46.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wish to recommend you two authors to concentrate on for the next 12 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Edgar Allen Poe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ernest Hemmingway.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hemmingway can be considered the beginning of modern journalistic style. Descriptive to the point. Phrases and sentences of high value functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas, Poe builds his sentences into rhythms and occasional crescendos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, use Standback's recommendation to summarise your stories into precis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3873" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T06:06:46.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6150" CreationDate="2012-08-17T09:27:56.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rules of writing, you say? From a British source, and more than that a good and respected writer?&#xA;I give to you, George Orwell's essay, Politics and the English Language:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find therein six rules for writing which I consider to be fairly useful; honestly you don't want to take anything too prescriptive as a guide, because to write anything good you will need to find your own voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3996" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T09:27:56.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6214" CreationDate="2012-08-17T12:16:24.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is hard to answer, because there can be multiple causes for your problem. So the first step would be to identify these causes. To do that you need to know what your character is focusing on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be a problem of gender. Men write different notebook entries than women. Let's say Vasily has met a sexual attractive woman. Now he asks his notebook if her smile was more offering than just politeness. How do men describe that smile, how do women? Ask your friends (one woman, one man) to write down such a description, then compare it with your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be a problem of different background. Vasily spent ten years in jail. You only one. &lt;sup&gt;(ok, ok, I'm kidding, I have no idea how long Kitfox was in jail)&lt;/sup&gt; So you do not know how these additional years transform the psyche of your protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make up different scenarios. Would he describe his feelings for the woman above differently if he was raped by his inmates? If he raped his inmates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's about emotions. What would someone feel, who was raped, who felt helpless for ten years? What does someone feel who was dominating the others for ten years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key for the different tone are different emotions. Write about something that makes you creep, which you fears. Losing your job? Locked into a room with rats? The first time your kid was coughing hard and you had no idea what it was and what to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write about something that made you happy. Meeting a good friend. Playing with your kid the whole day. Compare these writings and very likely they will sound like different persons. Building on that you also can write like Vasily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself on what details/emotions would Vasily focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T12:16:24.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6214" CreationDate="2012-08-17T12:44:00.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other thing you can look at is Vasily's world and background. Depending on the people around him (their class, their culture, their beliefs), he will use different words, different phrases, different cadences. Examine who he would have been influenced by, and start by working specific words and phrases in. What does he use to express surprise, or disbelief, or joy, or dismay? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, you can look at sentence structure, if you feel it still sounds too much like you. What kind of rhythm is there to his speech? Is he inclined to use long, expressive sentences? Or does he keep things short and simple? Some people get straight to the point, others beat around the bush first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T12:44:00.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2012-08-17T15:27:28.053" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a book at the moment which is a Sci-fi fantasy type. I've written around 20,000 words in a month. (I started July once I got my summer holidays.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some days I write 7 pages, other days I write half a page. Normally, I like to write a little everyday so I won't fall behind or completely forget my story line and characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a notebook so you don't have to re-read everything. Plot down little details important to the story and it will save you time I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enjoy the writing process of course. Sticking to a pattern or plan will definitely help you achieve having a whole novel written! You can write it maybe all during the holidays. At work or school time, it will probably be hard work fitting it into your schedule. Having a plan is the main key to success! You'll be finished in no time. I'm thinking around 3-5 months and it can be achievable!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3997" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-08-17T21:32:30.390" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T21:32:30.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2012-08-17T22:50:29.383" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how helpful this will be, but it's at least one data point (though not about a novel). I've written a popular science book that will be published later this year. Once I got a response to my query letter, I started writing. These were the milestones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposal submission included three chapters, 18,000 words, written in 3 months. (This was writing from scratch, with a lot of editing.) 17 months later, the draft manuscript was ready, at 75,000 words. (I'll guess that this was about 50/50 writing versus editing.) The final manuscript was 85,000 words, submitted 6 months after that. (90% editing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it took 26 months in all, working in my spare time on evenings, weekends, and during the summer. I'm thinking that a year would be enough to write a reasonable 100K-word book, working on it full time, as others have suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3516" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T22:50:29.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2012-08-18T02:37:09.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think fanfiction is a great start if you enjoy writing. There's nothing you can gain from writing completely original stories that you can't gain from writing fanfic. As for no confidence in creating your own world, with fic, you can build on that confidence. You could try putting some of the characters in a world not mentioned in canon, an AU, which would improve world building. Also, you could create original characters in the story. Once confidant doing that, you could tell the fanfic from the OC's point of view about the main characters. These are things that won't hurt a writer to learn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4000" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T02:37:09.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6214" CreationDate="2012-08-18T12:09:39.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you ever done any acting? This I find to be a good way to establish a voice. Pick up plays and try out the various parts. Think of the point of view of each of the actors and try to say their lines as they are motivated from a unique, idiosyncratic perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you hear your voice uttering these words out loud, you may experience a transformation. You may &lt;em&gt;become&lt;/em&gt; the character. In this case, your voice will not sound like your voice. It is good practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also works for other aspects of your writing, such as the production of dialogue and interior monologue. You have to become each and every one of your characters the same way an actor inhabits a role. Have a careful ear: Listen to the way people talk and see how they express themselves. If all your characters speak the way you would speak and say the things you would say, then you won't be creating a convincing world. You have to let the world in before you can let it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an exercise, you might try writing the same journal entry as written by several different characters. Make sure to convey their moods, their prejudices, their past hurts and desires, their innate assumptions about life. Don't explain any of this. Just project it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more you write different characters differently, the easier it becomes. The point is, you have to write a lot. So don't try to be perfect right off the bat. If something isn't working, set it aside and write more, then come back to it. It may be that when you have finished your story or novel or screenplay you will go back and see things (like a character's journal entry) that don't ring true. If you do, simply change them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write I hear the voices of my characters in my head. They are all different personalities and nearly write themselves. It's as if they each have something to say that &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; wish to say, and they behave as they wish to behave. A lot of the time what they say and do comes as a surprise to me. Writing is a process of discovery. What you discover is what you have assimilated over the course of your life, and that includes everyone you have ever known. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if any of this will be helpful to you, but it can't hurt to try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T12:09:39.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2012-08-20T03:45:24.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I absolutely think it's possible for a novel to be written without an antagonist.  So long as it's entertaining, enlightening, and the characters grow and change, then there doesn't need to be a &quot;bad guy&quot;... but I agree about conflict.  Your characters must face and deal with/overcome obstacles for the plot to be interesting to /most/ readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take children's literature and/or picture books as an example.  Sure there are a lot of differences between novels for adults and stories for children, but that may be a place to start your research.  A lot of books for small children don't have an antagonist.  The situation becomes the &quot;antagonist&quot; or the obstacle to be overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4004" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T03:45:24.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6225" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6226" CreationDate="2012-08-20T00:17:26.523" Score="1" ViewCount="1471" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an essay I am using Mother Lois' quote on page 104 of the Washington Square Press paperback edition of Warrior's Don't Cry.  In particular, the line goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Look,&quot; Mother said, &quot;there's a price to paid for freedom; we pay it now or we're in 'ball and chain' forever.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How the heck am I supposed to quote this in MLA format?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4006" OwnerDisplayName="Just another dunce" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T00:26:23.550" Title="Quotes inside of Quotes inside of Quotes" Tags="|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6225" CreationDate="2012-08-20T00:26:23.550" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In North America it should look like this: &quot;'Look,' Mother said, 'there's a price to paid for freedom; we pay it now or we're in &quot;ball and chain&quot; forever.'&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4009" OwnerDisplayName="DAWR" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T00:26:23.550" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6227" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-20T07:20:02.603" Score="1" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a character writes something inside of a diary, how do I quote it?  Do I quote just like anything else?  Specifically I am talking about page 145 of the Washington Square Press paperback edition of Warriors Don't Cry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4006" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T09:48:03.573" Title="Quoting characters' writing" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6228" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-20T10:42:23.723" Score="2" ViewCount="399" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I find it quite helpful for readers (e.g., of my dissertation) to get an overview of what they are going to read, I want to do this in each chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where should I locate these overviews? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I phrase these overviews? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where: This kind of overview is usually given at the end of the first section, right? I think at the very beginning of each chapter would be even better a location. But maybe going with the standard is better for those who search for it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How: I really hate the phrase &quot;The remainder of this section is structured as follows&quot;. Do you know of any other popular phrase? Since I am often indicating what a paragraph is about (Example, Definition, ...), I thought of doing the same for the overview paragraph, with the indication &quot;Roadmap&quot;. Is this the correct choice of word for the structural overview, or is it colloquial? Do readers search (pdf-)documents for the phrase given above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3363" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-08-20T20:29:58.020" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T20:29:58.020" Title="Where and how to give an overview of each chapter in scientific writing?" Tags="|word-choice|structure|academic-writing|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6150" CreationDate="2012-08-20T16:07:33.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although not British English, this website is great:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thewritepractice.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://thewritepractice.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can check &lt;em&gt;14 prompts&lt;/em&gt; under Resources. They often publish blog posts with a certain theme and ask the readers to write about a theme for 15 minutes and then post it in the comments. They even have a monthly contest for a short story and the winner gets to be printed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2340" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T16:07:33.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6230" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6233" CreationDate="2012-08-20T17:15:10.637" Score="1" ViewCount="2293" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a name for the mechanic where the storyteller doesn't divulge the outcome of the end of a story because the outcome is not important to the point of the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4008" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T23:50:22.453" Title="What is it called when the outcome of the plot is not told?" Tags="|ending|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6194" CreationDate="2012-08-20T17:57:20.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are really concerned about realism, then you need to ask a lot of questions to get enough background to get the details right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example you gave, for instance, find someone in a rock band and ask them questions.  Have they ever been contacted by a fan? How did the fan get their phone number/email address? Have they had fans interpret their songs in a personal fashion? What was the fan's reaction when/if the rocker told the fan they were wrong about their interpretation?  Even if a band member hasn't had this happen to them personally, they likely will have a better idea than you will of how a realistic scenario would occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, find out details about the cause and treatment of the boyfriend's disease, how often suicidal ideation comes with this disease, and how suicidal people view and react to the world.  Maybe talk to a suicide-prevention counselor about what a suicidal mindset is like, for instance.  You might also look at average fall heights, how increased blood alcohol can contribute to the fatality of accidents, maybe even what the standard height of a balcony railing is (since these are usually made to be difficult to fall over).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you should do some research about grieving lovers. How does a girlfriend grieve differently than a wife or friend? How is that grief different if the death is a suicide as opposed to an accident?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You obviously don't need to include all of this information in your story, but knowing these things will be the next best thing to writing about things that have happened to you or your friends, or things you read about.  You will find it comes out in the little details, and it will make your story more realistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T17:57:20.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6228" CreationDate="2012-08-20T20:16:50.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, as a chemist, I often have to look up constants, mechanisms and stuff. The primary help for finding what I need is neighter the table of contents nor summaries, but the index which leads me right to the exact point of information. From my point of view, maintaining a proper index is incredibly important as otherwise I couldn't use it as a reference book and would choose another one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About overviews... what do you think about placing them both before (as you said &quot;roadmap&quot;, which I find very fitting) and after (say, &quot;conclusion&quot;, &quot;summary&quot; or &quot;overview&quot;) the chapter? This way the reader could have a brief overview (that word again) about the topics of the chapter and have the most important information gathered together after the chapter in case he/she is really interested, but not interested enough to read the whole chapter. It would save time as one wouldn't have to read the whole summary to realize it's not what you're looking for. And on the other side, if you read the chapter you have a nice summary at the end of it. But I think that depends on the length of the text, you shouldn't end up with only overviews of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally cannot believe that anyone would search for specifically that phrase. Usually, most people I know just scroll through the pdf until the next chapter starts and then scroll back some pages to see if they find what they are looking for. Or they simply search for a keyword (=&gt; index).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, this is not the very most scientific way to gather information... but let's face it, we're all human (I guess). Therefore, whichever topic you write about - please write a nice searchable readable document and all the best for it. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4010" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T20:16:50.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6230" CreationDate="2012-08-20T23:50:22.453" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in theater, one name for that device is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vcu.edu/arts/playwriting/openending.html&quot;&gt;open ending&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T23:50:22.453" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6201" CreationDate="2012-08-21T21:23:51.363" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php&quot;&gt;Snowflake Method&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He forces you to start with a single sentence that sums up your entire novel. That's step 1 of 10. Then he has you expand it, over several of the steps, adding more detailed structure as you go. Step 2 is to expand the sentence to a paragraph, for instance. Your acts start showing themselves here. And so on. Interlaced with that is steps that develop the characters, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hardest part is squeezing your story down to that first sentence, but it's actually a really good exercise. Generally, if you can't do it, then your story is too vague in your mind. By the time you can, your story has much more depth to it. It's counter-intuitive, but it works.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T21:23:51.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2053" CreationDate="2012-08-21T23:51:36.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to understand (hopefully in a bit more depth than what you write) what the reader needs to know and what they already understand so you know what analogies, examples, level of detail, and other things to use to bridge the gap between that and the new material.  So, you don't have to be an expert, but you do have to know where you're going if you want to lead someone else there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working with experts, you also have to know what the reader doesn't have to know so you can filter out unnecessary details and tangential topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always learn some of this as you go, but starting out with a general feel for the material and background really helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T23:51:36.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6236" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-22T02:21:55.287" Score="2" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written and self published the book 'babymoves' in 2002. It is now in its third edition. I sell it through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babymoves.co.nz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my website&lt;/a&gt;. I have been approached by a Japanese woman, wanting to translate the book into Japanese. I need to know what my rights are if I allow her to do the translation and publish it. Do I get royalties? how are these determined? etc. What other information do I need to know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4016" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-08-23T16:26:13.897" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T16:26:13.897" Title="Translation of my book &quot;Babymoves&quot; into Japanese" Tags="|copyright|money|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6237" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-22T04:10:49.350" Score="8" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing academic text, you're often in the position of having to write introductory or explanatory material for your audience. Usually you write this kind of material after you've explored the subject fairly deeply, and have a pretty solid understanding of what you're talking about. This makes it easy to write in one sense: you don't need to constantly refer to other sources. But it also makes it really hard in another, because all that experience makes it difficult to know when you're talking over the heads of your audience. And if you lose them in the introduction, then you've likely lost them altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to get around this is to have one of your audience members proof read your writing. Of course, that isn't always possible, nor always reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are there any methods of getting outside your own head, and viewing your own writing as if you didn't previously understand the topic? How can I read my writing so that I can detect the potholes I've left for other readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3848" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T12:03:29.013" Title="How do I escape my own experience?" Tags="|editing|academic-writing|proofreading|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6237" CreationDate="2012-08-22T06:29:36.423" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an english student, so if you are teaching, you already far outmatch me in ability, however, these are my thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, although is sounds a little bit insane, it is possible to create someone in your mind to critically analyse your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try this. Imagine a sarcastic, witty imp, sitting on your favourite shoulder. He knows nothing but the basics of your topic, and is not really wanting to learn. He will need a simple explanation of the subject, before he can begin to understand it, so try not to confuse him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now get him to slowly read your work. Listen to his critical yammering, and try and see the world from his point of view. If you are lucky, he will point out at least some of your problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You may receive quite an earbashing, so be warned.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another method is to just simply have a nice long sleep, then reread. A clear head makes mistakes so much easier to see, and you will be able to see whether some stray string theory has crept into your lecture on basic newtonian physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These methods may not work for you, however, so take this answer as you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4017" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T06:29:36.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6236" CreationDate="2012-08-22T09:00:47.037" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are all details that need to be determined in some sort of contract or agreement with her. You can grant and withhold whatever you choose. Be familiar with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing-world.com/rights/copyright.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;what different rights you have over your work&lt;/a&gt;, so you know what's on the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, the terms of payment are part of your agreement. Whatever you agree to is what you get. In order to get good terms, you should get an agent or a lawyer who can negotiate your contract. You want somebody who's got the experience and knowledge to know what contract language is problematic, and who has some sense of whether the offer is &quot;fair&quot; in relation to other offers for purchasing translation rights in roughly the same scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you're probably in a poor position to monitor how your work is used in a foreign language... so you might want to figure out how you can keep an eye on the translation and its use. I don't know what &quot;typical&quot; solutions to this are, but it's worth looking into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this is operating under the assumption that it's a publisher of some sort who wants to translate your book. If it's a private individual who wants to translate it for personal use... well, the same issues arise, but obviously an individual is less capable of paying you for the rights you're granting. Be sure you know what you're getting into, so you can make an informed decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T09:00:47.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6227" CreationDate="2012-08-22T09:48:03.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The diary entry is part of a the book, is it not? If the section quoted is out of a book in a book, the same author wrote it in the same text as the rest of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just cite it like you would a normal quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find this helpful&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;www.bibme.org&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the off chance that I misread the question the first time, try to phrase your sentences in such a way to avoid quoting quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not---------&gt;    &quot;Joey looked in his diary. He read &quot;This too doth pass.&quot;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try this----&gt;    We see, in the scene where Joey is reading his diary, the strange quote &quot;This too doth pass.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this addresses the question, if not, I have no idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4017" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T09:48:03.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6237" CreationDate="2012-08-22T12:03:29.013" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best answer I ever heard was from an English professor: &quot;Write as if you're explaining the text to a slightly stupider classmate.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T12:03:29.013" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6242" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6243" CreationDate="2012-08-23T03:08:55.740" Score="6" ViewCount="614" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read that after finishing the first draft, you should distance yourself from the project at least a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just finished the first draft of my novel (10 chapters). I've been trying to not to think about the project. But editing ideas pop up in my mind now and then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really want to start editing the project (I finished the first draft three days ago).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a bad idea to break the 'cooling down' rule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T20:59:53.703" Title="Breaking the 'cooling down' rule after finishing the first draft" Tags="|novel|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6242" CreationDate="2012-08-23T09:05:30.733" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, maybe you haven't finished the first draft yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of editing ideas are popping up? The &quot;cooling phase&quot; is used to get a fresh look on your manuscript, so you are able to find wholes in the story, more spelling mistakes you would have missed otherwise, passages that do not read fluently and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if your ideas are about changing the story, adding a scene or two, asking &quot;should she really kiss him in chapter five&quot;, then it could be that you put &quot;The End&quot; on a not yet finished story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Besides that, keep in mind, that this cooling phase works for a lot of writers, but that does not mean it is the right tool for you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, you need to get your head free of this stuff. As a writer to get your head free you have to write it down. You do not need to change anything on your first draft, just take a piece of paper or a text file and note down what you want to do. The thing is, that you also have a lot of garbage in your head, and you have to note that down too, to get it out. Otherwise there is no room for the good stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I advise you to just note down your ideas and wait a little bit longer. In two days if you look on your notes and say &quot;I have to implement that to the story&quot; then do it. If it is &quot;Why have I ever thought this is important?&quot; then don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I forgot to mention, that starting a new project is also a good idea. Then you have something different to think about and can the other draft rest. Not to mention, if you really want to be a writer, you should write. Which means, start a new project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Oh, and congrats for finishing your novel.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-08-23T20:59:53.703" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T20:59:53.703" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6245" CreationDate="2012-08-23T09:08:08.827" Score="4" ViewCount="2473" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am submitting a children's book to a potential agent whose submission process asks me to send this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a covering letter in the body of the email, and a synopsis of the proposed book with the first two or three chapters and a CV&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now. I haven't had a writing career. I've had an IT career ... surely they don't want to hear much about that? So what should I put in the CV, that won't be in the cover letter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2802" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-05T14:31:01.563" LastActivityDate="2018-05-05T14:31:01.563" Title="How do I write a relevant CV for submitting a manuscript to a literary agent?" Tags="|agent|submitting-work|children|cover-letter|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6244" CreationDate="2012-08-23T11:01:41.360" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If they want the information in the synopsis, then put it there. I also see no problem mentioning it in the cover letter additionally, but you don't need it there when it is in the synopsis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not have a writing career (yet), then your age (or date of birth) and current profession should be sufficient. Tell them, why you are in expert for children's books. If you have worked with children in the past, mention that in the CV part. Mention if you have children yourself, if you are engaged with the local kindergarten, or whatever in your life has driven you to write children's books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T11:01:41.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6242" CreationDate="2012-08-23T15:58:55.380" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Distancing yourself from a manuscript for a period of time is, in my experience, a good idea when you've run out of inspiration or have finished a draft. Reading through a draft version after a few weeks indeed has the advantages listed by John Smithers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when you're inspired, by all means write! Don't look at the 'cooling down period' as a rule, but rather as a tool that you can sometimes use to great effect, but that at others times has no use. You can't screw a nail into a plank, as my granddad used to say...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T15:58:55.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6247" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-24T00:27:53.643" Score="1" ViewCount="1089" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a novice writer of fourteen, I've tried a few attempts at science fiction (military science fiction, to be specific), and of course my writing's got HUGE mistakes and shortcomings. But the most obvious one is the fact that I end up with massive paragraphs that are most likely have too much unnecessary detail or have to be plowed through to read. What's a few ways to cut down on the lengths of paragraphs while keeping precise detail or making it an enjoyable read? See:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Martin Sinclair&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The thick forest near Lake Baikal, Russia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;January 25th, 2068&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;03:26:49&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Pilum rocket found its explosive mark on the ice-encrusted slab of stone Sinclair was using as cover, with the resulting fulmination violently throwing the Assault Legionary four meters backward with an invisible fist of heated, compressed air. Sinclair landed on his back with a loud clang, on impact his head whipped backwards so sharply a great spike of protest drove up his neck that nearly blacked him out from the pain and sent him into an incapacitating daze – the trees all around him spun like he was being held before a monstrous cobalt turbine of whirring scarlet blades from the radiant flashes of gunfire and missile trails both the struggling troops and the tentacled ghouls exchanged bullets and warheads, neither willing to give ground in their ferocious firefight. Sinclair’s head throbbed with pulsing intensity, his hearing only a faint, distant ring, and his vision streaked with shimmering, shifting splashes of color even when he shut his eyes tight. Giving all his effort not to utter so as much as a moan from his agony, he gave himself three seconds of reprieve…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sure enough, in three seconds the mental assault subsided, if only to a tolerable level. Exerting strenuous effort, Sinclair rolled onto his chest, the ground below him uttering grinding cracks of protest, and his upper body burned likewise, then stood to one knee as he braced one forearm to rise up to full height, for a split-second watching as the Lutetian soldiers continued to valiantly hold off another flurry of the infernal hellspawn, then swiveled on an armored boot, retrieved his railgun rifle laying askew several centimeters away from where he crashed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The next ten seconds, Sinclair sent three slugs bolting clean through more of the demonic menagerie, of spider-women bobbing and weaving through the net of bullets, of regurgitators unleashing more of the vile, bubbling acid as lead and iron sank into them without effect, and of ghouls blanketing the camp with their own relentless counterfire, only diminishing when the creatures needed to reload their captured guns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Switching on his re-activated communicator, which Sinclair had forgotten to reactivate and had been somewhat damaged-but-still-functional by his proximity to the rogue missile’s detonation, he almost coughed out a small gob of blood from biting his tongue before swallowing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Solace! God damn it, &lt;em&gt;Solace, where are you?!&lt;/em&gt;” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Still the Lutetian forces fought them back, backwards into the unnatural forest they came from, even though Sinclair knew from too many operations this light and unprepared that the defenders were running dangerously low on ammunition – some of the soldiers that were not killed or grievously wounded were now using their handguns, but they might as well have been hurling pebbles for all the damage it did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Well, we all knew we’d die someday, wouldn’t we?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Mantises would not be able to sustain their osmium barrages for long, nor could their ammunition-chewing machine guns, likewise for the Scorpions – their seemingly endless torrent of grenades (and autocannon shells, in the case of Thomas’ Scorpion) would have to halt sooner or later, and then their defences would collapse and the camp overrun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hell, personally I’m surprised I made it this far...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And now they were doomed. To be slaughtered, or consumed, or &lt;em&gt;converted&lt;/em&gt; to one of these abominations, Sinclair didn't know. All that rushed through his mind, no longer caring about where his railgun slugs hit, was that he failed. He had led both his team, and dozens more soldiers to their deaths in a futile mission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;We'll all be paying for this in hell, I know it...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Solace-One! Assist!” a hoarse, panicked cry with hints of barely-concealed relief reached Sinclair’s communicator headset speaker, echoing in his ear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A simultaneous rustling noise, thunderous crashing, and the rumbling of engines alerted the battling forces – and with a headturn, double-take, and the elating feeling of a great burden lifting off his chest, Sinclair once more turned to the cratered, scorched front with a returned, rising, resurgent feeling of hope and gratitude as behind him, the lumbering, titanic adamantine monstrosity that is the C-88FV Scarab arrived (with some Courser members firing from a makeshift balcony while tossing ammunition crates atop the Scarab’s turret, Sinclair saw with another surge of relief) and immediately accomplished in two minutes what the entrenched Lutetian troops could not accomplish in the past two hours – the oncoming creatures were decimated by the tens and twenties from the deafening, earsplitting blasts that came with every slug the Scarab’s twin coilguns fired. An independently piloted laser cannon atop the Scarab fired sudden, radiant beams of red fury that incinerated any mutant unfortunate enough to enter its gunner’s crosshairs. &lt;em&gt;Just in bloody time!&lt;/em&gt; Sinclair mentally snorted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Within minutes, the camp, now having been relieved of intense pressure, reorganized its defensive pattern. Riflemen who had any ammo in their assault rifles left, both on the breastworks and some emerging from within the Scorpions, arranged into two rows, in the process flicking a pin on their rifles so that they fired only in three-round bursts – the phalanx formation used so commonly and effectively by Lutetian ground troops, as Sinclair had witnessed and participated in so many times in his many tours. Bombardiers, those given the task of wreaking havoc on enemy vehicles, stood behind the two rows of riflemen and aligned themselves like the riflemen, their Spiculum missile launchers held high and launching their deadly warheads. A trio of grenadiers capped the formation on both ends, spraying shards of shrapnel wherever their canisters detonated. Two snipers and their accompanying spotters positioned themselves within the Scorpions and picked off what they could, with the occasional crack as their precision aims sent tungsten rounds with pinpoint accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for bearing with me, and for your time to type a potential feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4022" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-08-24T01:53:40.450" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T10:05:22.690" Title="Cutting down on paragraph size" Tags="|science-fiction|pacing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6190" CreationDate="2012-08-24T04:11:04.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To avoid possible problems, you could perhaps be less specific, or make up a fictional hotel or ferry to set the murder in. Depending on the way you write it, could be considered damaging to the reputation of the hotel. If they take offense, I believe they could take you to court - I don't know exactly how much trouble you can get in for libel for this sort of stuff, but to be on the safe side I would suggest not using a very specific location. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3712" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T04:11:04.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6247" CreationDate="2012-08-24T04:32:03.657" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Paragraph length isn't the problem here, although the paragraphs could stand to be broken up a bit. The biggest problem here is a problem of focus and organization. A paragraph should have a fairly concise point; it's not simply a container for sentences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problems here are those of organization (on the large and small levels) and editing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is telling a story by giving the reader clues. It's not about telling the reader everything there is to know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To use your the first paragraph as an example: I'm not clear on whether I should focus on Sinclair or the battlefield. Which is more important in this paragraph? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to set the scene and then zoom in on Sinclair, rewrite this so you describe the battlefield and only &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; focus on Sinclair. On the other hand, if you want the reader to pay more attention to the character than the battle, then reverse the order: Describe the action and the character, being very sparse. Only then do you start filling in the details of the battlefield. The more important the information you're conveying, the easier it should be to absorb. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rhythm and chunk length&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I said that a paragraph isn't simple a container for sentences, and that's true. But it is &lt;em&gt;made&lt;/em&gt; of sentences. Scenes are made of paragraphs, chapters are made of scenes. There should be a clear structure and rhythm of language, on the level of the entire book as well as the level of the individual word. Using many long, packed sentences will preclude any sort of rhythm, because there's no place for the reader to rest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider breaking up your sentences into many shorter chunks. It may feel strange and staccato-like at first, but they will read more easily and your readers will thank you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can't have &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; sentences be very short; there should be the occasional longer sentence to break up the rhythm, generally when you have a complex thought or situation to convey. Establish your rhythm, but don't forget - sometimes you need to break stride to startle the reader. They'll pay attention to those outlier sentences or paragraphs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can count on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Editing and breaking things up&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few exceptional talents aside, our first drafts are always a mess; and that's okay. We go back to them and make them make sense later on. You can learn how to self-edit your writing more thoroughly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no quick way to do this. Read the piece you've written, look for places that seem confusing. Your readers will look at your story with different eyes. They may need more detail than you provide in some places, and less detail in other locations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And pay attention to pacing by looking for overlong chunks. A good way to break up paragraphs: Look for natural stopping places, places where the reader needs to take a breath. Try reading your prose out loud if need be; where would you stop and take a breath, or have a sip of water? (Reading is thirsty work, after all.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And sentences can be broken up in many ways. Overuse of dashes, colons, and semicolons - these are often indicative that your sentences are too long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Planning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this will be easier if you plan your writing first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're not out on a limb, writing to a plan, it's easier to write in an organized, readable way. There's no single, &quot;correct&quot; way to do this. You could make a detailed outline, or sketch the main points on the back of a cafe receipt; as long as you have a general idea of what the scene will cover, it'll be easier to write it. (If you already are doing this, perhaps re-examining your workflow is in order.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you can plan on the paragraph level, too. Decide which thoughts need to be connected to each other and in what order the reader should see them. Break up your chunks so they make more linear sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion (and inspiration)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here is one of planning and editing. After you establish good habits, much of this will come more easily and you may find your first drafts are coming out in a more organized way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all of this seems difficult to comprehend, try reading books with simple language. You may be inspired by Isaac Asimov, Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert A. Heinlein. Don't restrict yourself to science-fiction; writing is writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, long, ornate language &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be done well. You may not yet be at the point where you can pull off longer sentences, sentences where you lead the reader down the garden path, bringing them to a conclusion they didn't expect. But for examples of longer sentences done well, it's harder to to better then Gene Wolfe or Ray Bradbury. Michael Crichton's &lt;em&gt;The Great Train Robbery&lt;/em&gt; is a good example of longer sentences in a pseudo-Victorian style that manage to be easy to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually you'll find your own style, of course. Best of luck, and keep writing! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T04:32:03.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5253" CreationDate="2012-08-24T04:40:20.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal experience is that stories are more interesting when told from the viewpoint of just one or two characters. I have read books where it starts out as if all characters are equally important, but then subtly changes as you go through so that on character in particular is the main one. I don't know if this was intended or if it naturally happened as the book was written. I would say go with the flow and what comes naturally when you are writing, the bias there toward certain characters serves a purpose. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3712" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T04:40:20.257" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6247" CreationDate="2012-08-24T04:48:54.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All around, it's actually not too bad. Some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The natural tendency when you're writing action scenes is to over-describe -- so start cutting bits. Look for things that are redundant, and especially look for things that are over-specific with limbs (hands, legs, etc.), and with measurements. The readers don't need to know where all the limbs go unless it's relevant to the story.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For instance, compare what you had here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exerting strenuous effort, Sinclair rolled onto his chest, the ground&#xA;  below him uttering grinding cracks of protest, and his upper body&#xA;  burned likewise, then stood to one knee as he braced one forearm to&#xA;  rise up to full height, for a split-second watching as the Lutetian&#xA;  soldiers continued to valiantly hold off another flurry of the&#xA;  infernal hellspawn, then swiveled on an armored boot, retrieved his&#xA;  railgun rifle laying askew several centimeters away from where he&#xA;  crashed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the same sentence as I've edited it: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sinclair rolled onto his chest. The ground below him crackled under&#xA;  his grinding weight and his arms burned as he pushed himself up. But&#xA;  he stood up anyway, rising to his full height for a split second --&#xA;  just long enough to see that the Lutetian solders where valiently&#xA;  holding off yet another flurry of the infernal hellspawn -- before he&#xA;  snatched up his railgun from where it lay when he crashed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better? I think so. I cut out the bits about forearms and knees, and armored boots a-swivelling and several centimeters away a-laying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also turned out to illustrate several other points:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cut the sentances down. I turned that one sentence into three, and it could have easily been five instead. That's a bigger problem for you than the overall lengths of your paragraphs. Action is, well, active, so short, tight sentences work well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sentences should generally start with the subject. This is especially true at the start of a paragraph. We don't need to know about &quot;exerting strenuous effort&quot; until we know &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; it is that will be exerting that effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, beware &quot;-ing&quot; words. Sometimes they are necessary, but they should only be allowed in your fiction under grudging duress. &quot;-ing&quot; words tend to weaken writing -- and they also lengthen it. You're doing better than most with not having &quot;-ing&quot; words, but there are still plenty to cut. You'll find your writing becomes much stronger, and tighter, when you re-write the &quot;-ing&quot; words away.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T04:48:54.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6254" CreationDate="2012-08-24T18:04:44.740" Score="5" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The whole thing sounded a bit strange. How had she gotten my number? I&#xA;  wondered. I didn't know anyone called Maria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The whole thing sounded a bit strange. How had she gotten my number&#xA;  anyway? I didn't know anyone called Maria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wondered if the person who called was Maria. Or maybe my mother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wondered if the person who called was Maria. Or maybe it's my mother,&#xA;  I thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure which one is the 'right' way of narrating the example above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really necessary to add things like &quot;I thought, I wondered, etc,&quot; in first-person narrative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is OK to omit them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2012-08-24T18:10:08.443" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T11:40:24.627" Title="Is it really necessary to add things like &quot;I thought, I wondered, etc,&quot; in first-person narrative?" Tags="|novel|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6252" CreationDate="2012-08-24T20:53:07.313" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's absolutely okay to leave these out. You'll be making the text more concise and the reader will have less work to do. The only time you want to use tags like &quot;I wondered&quot;, &quot;I thought&quot;, &quot;I worried&quot;, and so on, is when they actually add information, or clarify the situation. For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My friend often wondered about turnips. I wondered why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take care to vary your writing; one way of doing this is to stick the occasional &quot;I thought&quot; in the text. However, as a general rule, words that serve no purpose should be omitted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-08-25T06:01:44.453" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T06:01:44.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6252" CreationDate="2012-08-25T09:25:49.323" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not necessary to tag these thoughts in first, second, or third person narration. In third person narration, the unattributed thought or narrative embodiment of the speaker's voice is called free indirect discourse, and James Wood writes about it extensively in early sections of &lt;em&gt;How Fiction Works.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The examples you've given could be rewritten as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The whole thing sounded a bit strange. How had she gotten my number&#xA;  anyway? Had Maria called? My mother--?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, the speaker's dialogue and confusion are allowed to live in the narration itself--as if the reader is speaking with the person as opposed to the author. The reader innately understands this style (it is very common in modern literature), and since the reader doesn't need your cues to signal them along, the cues sound pedantic, if not amateur. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3973" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T09:25:49.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6247" CreationDate="2012-08-25T10:05:22.690" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this explains what's been said as opposed to reiterating it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-ing phrases slow the pace. Subsidiary clauses slow the pace. You're writing action. Don't slow the pace. Modern middle school English teachers ask students for sentence variation. -ing phrases are a common result. These phrases may sound scholarly, but they do not work in fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you introduce on an -ing phrase, you introduce simultaneity. All actions that follow must occur at the same time. Rearrange your sentence and the law is obvious: He coughed blood while switching his reactivated communicator. If you introduce the sentence on the -ing phrase, you keep the reader reading for the payoff; when will I know what is happening simultaneously? I have ADD. I can't pay attention until I know. The reader cannot even begin to understand the sentence until the subject shows up. Who is acting the action? Without the actor, our minds are blank. Introductory -ing phrases encourage the reader to read over those initial words. If you rearranged them, the reader would keep at it linearly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to envision the process: Write as if you were your character in that moment. Don't write as if you are your character retelling his war story. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Giving all his effort not to utter so as much as a moan from his agony, he gave himself three seconds of reprieve…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sure enough, in three seconds the mental assault subsided, if only to a tolerable level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were Sinclair in the moment, you'd say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He needed to moan. He shouldn't. He gave himself three seconds reprieve. The mental assault subsided, if only to a tolerable level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that no fun? Does that take away the poetry of authorship? The voice of distance? No. You inject the voice subtly. Your voice merges with Sinclair's. The word reprieve? I doubt Sinclair has thought to himself: I will give myself three seconds reprieve. He might say rest. He might say, &quot;I'll give myself a fucking break.&quot; You say reprieve. The reader understands the merge between voices, and you are allowed to make Sinclair's profanities into poetry. Understand, however, that in this complex relationship, Sinclair's voice is more immediate and more enticing than yours. In the action plot, stick with his voice as much as possible. That beautiful word choice? You can get away with it. But only so long as it is not the entire foggy lens through which the reader has to muck in order to get to the good stuff--the plot. Make that lens as clear as possible. I hope this description helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3973" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T10:05:22.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6257" CreationDate="2012-08-25T14:19:38.223" Score="6" ViewCount="367" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I have been having moderate success with my short stories, being selected to have my work read at several local literary events and winning a competition for a major literary journal.  I have yet to be paid for anything (let's not go crazy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have now been approached by an agent who would like to meet with me.  They received my name from the producer of one of the literary events.  I did a bit of research on them and found that this agent recently broke away from a large, established agency and is trying to build a client list of there own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my real question is:  If I am currently only working on short stories, what can an agent do for me?  I do have a novel in the works, but it is probably not going to be done in any sort of timeframe an agent would want to wait for (6 months to a year).  Am I wasting their time and mine by meeting with them?  Or would having an agent be helpful for getting my work published in the more established literary journals?  And even if that is so, would taking 10-15% of the 30 bucks I would earn for a short story be worth their time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T17:18:31.607" Title="What can an agent do for me if I only write short stories?" Tags="|short-story|agent|magazines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6256" CreationDate="2012-08-25T17:18:31.607" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agents generally do nothing for short stories. I have never heard of an agent representing a short story to a literary journal of any kind, since the 15% that they get from a sale would be too trivial of a sum to be worth their money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two things that an agent could potentially do for you at this stage in your career:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help you publish a short story collection. These are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; hard to do on your own, but if you publish one they pay roughly as well as novels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help you with your eventual novel. Even if the novel isn't completed yet, it is probably worth your while to get on the agent's radar so that you have something to refer to when you get back in touch with them after the novel's finished.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that it's worth your time to meet with the agent, if only for networking and career-building. However, keep in mind that there isn't a whole lot that the agent is likely to do for you right now---the meeting will mostly be to prepare for a possible future contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T17:18:31.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6259" CreationDate="2012-08-25T20:26:04.280" Score="4" ViewCount="531" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm Brazilian and I'm writing a book in portuguese. However the story takes place first in Europe, i.e. Italy, Portugal, and London. Of course this requires of me some research about the culture of these places. After that it is going to take place in Brazil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that I have a little doubt about how to describe the language two characters would be speaking in, mainly if they speak multiple languages. SHould I always mention in which language the characters would be speaking everytime they change places? Should it be implied depending on the country the characters they are?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also somethings that make sense only in certain languages, like rhymes and contextual jokes. Should I write that it both the main language of my text and the specific language the character is speaking? Would not that become burdensome to the reader mainly considering that most of the readers won't be polyglots?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example (in which English is the main language, but the character is saying something relevant in Portuguese):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And then the man said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-Não se preocupe porque sempre chove quando menos se espera. (Don't worry because it always rains when it is least expected.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mark did not know what the man was saying. He only know it was Portuguese. He knew&#xA;  that &quot;Não se preocupe&quot; meant &quot;Don't worry&quot;, but what about the rest?&#xA;  He hadn't the chance to ask, for the strange man couldn't be seen in&#xA;  front of him anymore...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have some examples of stories following this pattern?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3985" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-08-25T22:23:53.770" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T22:23:53.770" Title="Which language to use when writing a multinational story" Tags="|language|multilingual|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6258" CreationDate="2012-08-25T20:39:42.863" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, it's my opinion that a story should pick a language and stick to it. Even though many people speak multiple languages, having a book in more than one language means you're limiting yourself to a subset of possible readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself: What purpose does it serve to the story and characters to quote them speaking in more than one language? If a reader speaks (for example) English and Portuguese, there's no reason for them to see a translation immediately following. If they speak only one or the other, then they'll see text that makes little sense to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, of course the characters &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; be speaking in more than one language, and that should be conveyed. But there's no need to double up on the dialog; quoting the occasional word or phrase should be sufficient to get this across to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also add color by mentioning, from time to time, misunderstandings from accents and translation problems. You can even describe double meanings that result. (For example: &quot;He said the word &quot;misunderstanding&quot;, but in [language], that word also meant ‘sabatoge’”.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T20:39:42.863" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6258" CreationDate="2012-08-25T21:54:35.457" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ditto Neil's reply. A lot to be learned from a master of migrancy literature, Salman Rushdie. While &lt;em&gt;The Satanic Verses&lt;/em&gt; is written in English, the narration itself, not just the dialogue, utilizes Hindi, Arabic, and Urdu. Jokes within the text rely on the reader's understanding of multiple languages, but the plot doesn't; Saladin Chamcha is called &quot;Spoono&quot; in reference to the Hindi word chamcha, meaning spoon; Zeeny Vakil uses Saladin's own name to insult him--when he is obsequious, he is a chamcha, a yes-man. But at no point does Rushdie require his reader to understand these little colorations, and he does not embark on the thankless task of translating dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When he hits one of those words that doesn't quite translate, he reproduces it in the original language (&quot;Proper London, bhai!&quot; or &quot;Baba, if you want to get born again&quot;). In some cases, this is because his characters are migrants, who have adopted this type of mutt-language. This is how they are actually speaking to one another. In other cases, in which his characters are clearly not speaking English, but the text is produced in English, there is a curious transaction between author and character--the author primarily has a stranglehold on the character's word choice (he is, after all, translating the character's voice), but when no translation will suffice, the character is allowed to &quot;speak for herself&quot;--the word she actually used, baba, comes through. Since it's just a word, the English reader can use context clues to devise the meaning, as with any unknown English word that might appear in a text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This style could help in some ways to reproduce rhymes and contextual jokes. In some cases, such as reproducing a poem, I would probably opt for the original completely. Characters that don't understand the language can act as a proxy for the reader in the text--let them ask what it means; it's a simple trick that doesn't sound as expositional as other methods. But it is just that, a trick. You can't let the whole text rely on translation and explanation to the reader as if she is a child. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend reading &lt;em&gt;The Satanic Verses&lt;/em&gt; side-by-side with this guide from &lt;a href=&quot;http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/satanic_verses/svnotes.pdf&quot;&gt;Washington State University.&lt;/a&gt; The guide signals every instance of this linguistic cohabitation in the text--very quickly you'll be able to see precisely how Rushdie is doing what he's doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3973" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T21:54:35.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6261" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-08-25T22:24:34.940" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-08-25T22:24:34.940" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T22:24:34.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6262" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-08-25T22:24:34.940" Score="0" Body="Questions about pieces of writing that have more than one language in them, prominently. " OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-08-25T22:24:34.940" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T22:24:34.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3300" CreationDate="2012-08-25T22:49:42.620" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the style guide you subscribe to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AP Style does not use italics. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Chicago Manual recommends use of italics for isolated words that are likely to be unfamiliar to the reader. If a word will become familiar over the course of the writing, it needs only be italicized the first time. Entire sentences are not italicized. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MLA Style recommends the same as Chicago. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;APA recommends same as Chicago.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the most common style guides; many publications have house style guides. You may create your own for your own work if you like. The most important thing is to be consistent within a work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3973" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T22:49:42.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3300" CreationDate="2012-08-26T11:38:39.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;FWIW, senhor isn't spanish (I think it's portuguese, in fact). As a native spanish speaker, seeing &quot;senhor&quot; when people are supposedly speaking spanish would make me cringe. I won't comment on the use of italics, but please, please, use &quot;señor&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the accents, as you probably know, there are a few words that have different meanings with and without accent. For those that don't (e.g. either the accented or unaccented version exists, but not both), the meaning will be clear, but it won't feel completely right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, &quot;sí&quot; means &quot;yes&quot;, and &quot;si&quot; means &quot;if&quot;. Not sure about the official position of the RAE regarding accents on single-syllable words, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2012-08-26T11:38:39.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6244" CreationDate="2012-08-26T13:19:41.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I expect that in addition to knowing you're an expert on children, an agent would like to find out whether you can write a successful book. I'm also in a non-writing field, so I have to stretch a bit when writing a query letter. I want to convey that I already have some experience writing for my target audience, that I can easily plan and execute a writing project, that I can meet deadlines, that I've gotten good feedback from impartial readers on what I've done, maybe that I have an existing &quot;platform&quot; to publicize my work, and so forth. Basically, that I can do what I'm promising to do. I think all this is secondary to the book itself, but it can't hurt to build the agent's confidence in you as a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3516" LastActivityDate="2012-08-26T13:19:41.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6266" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-26T20:39:03.810" Score="6" ViewCount="941" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a famous Russian writer named &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yury_Ignatyevich_Mukhin&quot;&gt;Yuriy Mukhin&lt;/a&gt;. He writes books about Stalin and about alternative economic system. All his books are in Russian and have never been translated into other languages. He doesn't know English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you describe plan in steps how can he publish his books in not-russian publishing house without leaving Russia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can he get his books translated into English? How does he go about hiring a translator? What publishing houses could handle the translation for him? What would translation typically cost? What kind of royalties or payments does an author receive for a translated work? How does he find and contact a publishing house? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4029" LastEditorUserId="4029" LastEditDate="2012-08-27T11:19:26.717" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T11:07:34.530" Title="How can a Russian writer get his work translated into English?" Tags="|publishing|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6149" CreationDate="2012-08-27T06:02:23.790" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice is to find some element (with an emotional content) that changed across your life and make a list. The goal is to have an outline of major events. Then fill the gaps between those &quot;milestones&quot;.&#xA;For me, a list of girlfriends worked pretty well (without it turning out to be a book about my sex life). Anything could be suitable for this purpose (like a list of your jobs, without it turning out to be a book about your career :D).&#xA;About your three points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, I'll suggest &lt;strong&gt;chronological order&lt;/strong&gt; (it's easier if you follow my previous advice)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just start typing it without too much thinking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It only depends by your purpose.. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4018" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2020-04-26T00:38:36.193" LastActivityDate="2020-04-26T00:38:36.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6149" CreationDate="2012-08-27T15:33:42.663" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you are near (what you think is) the end of your life, you don't have enough data yet to know what will ultimately be the best organization.  So don't try to create an outline; just start writing pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chronological seems logical but might not be very engaging.  Is reading a day-by-day (or week-by-week) diary where not a lot happens at once interesting?  Not usually.  But the slices of life that you get through journaling can add up to interesting collections, re-arranged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you will get the best results by doing this digitally.  Specifically, use a blog so you can cross-link and tag entries.  This does not mean you have to &lt;em&gt;publish&lt;/em&gt; your blog to the world; blogging sites like Dreamwidth, Livejournal, and others allow you to set access control for individual entries or entire journals.  I started an online journal more than ten years ago and it's still surprising what entries I return to -- ones I didn't know at the time would be significant -- and which ones that I thought important turned out not to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tagging allows you to index on the fly.  Over time you can organize existing entries into groups, via linking, based on whatever criteria make sense -- time, broad themes, ties to specific people, or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T15:33:42.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6197" CreationDate="2012-08-27T17:38:13.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Click&quot; is pretty standard in my experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the typography, my personal preference is to use bold for anything you want the user to click on or select (button names, etc.) and italics for names of screens or windows. It calls the most attention to the items you want the reader to actually do something with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft does have a style guide, The Microsoft Manual of Style, which provides a lot more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is to be consistent throughout the document, and make sure it's consistent with other similar documents produced by your company or organization. I'd recommend either using a style guide or creating your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4031" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T17:38:13.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6266" CreationDate="2012-08-28T10:32:10.857" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If he's been already published in Russia, his publisher should be able to handle it - offer his book on a book fair (Frankfurt Book Fair comes to mind), make a deal with foreign publisher, find a good translator (preferably English translator, not Russian)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the author does not want to use publisher (maybe he has way too much free time on his hands :)), the best way would find some foreign publishing house who might be interested in his books (perhaps he specializes on similar books or Russian authors) and send him an email with the offer - whether he would like to publish his books, possibly include some excerpts, manuscript, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before doing that, he might want to buy some book about creative writing, where the process of communication with publishing house is usually described in detail. Western authors are very good at &quot;selling&quot; themselves, eastern authors - not so much (applies even here in CZ). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't worry about translation and royalties, especially at this stage - these are publisher's concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1957" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T10:32:10.857" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6173" CreationDate="2012-08-28T19:21:21.270" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well I don't really think there is a clear answer in this case. You might be able to pull the information together by looking through Locus or other field related magazines. Even so with a bit of looking around I can find some older rankings of publishers. Such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.hemartin.net/2011/07/2011-ranking-of-global-publishing.html&quot;&gt;2011 Ranking of the Global [Book] Publishing Industry&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.heypublisher.com/2011/05/2011-publisher-survey-results/&quot;&gt;2011 Publisher Survey Results&lt;/a&gt;. That might provide some of the information you are looknig for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, most writers will choose a publisher based on what they publish. You wouldn't send a piece of military sci-fi to Harlequin, they would never be interested in it. On the other hand Tor on Baen books might be a much better fit. You want to find a publisher that is already in that field. This is true for both books and for short fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that a most of the book publishers want submissions to come in through agents, on the other hand a good agent will know who the best publisher for a story is. As for finding an agent, it will work much the same, find one that works in the field your trying to write for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T19:21:21.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-29T11:55:35.170" Score="3" ViewCount="412" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of the sites Elance, guru and Odesk for finding freelance writing work.  I am interested in finding others.  How can I search for them?  Is there a list or resource anywhere?  When I find sites how can I determine if they are worth my time? What criteria should I be looking for when evaluating these sites? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4035" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T19:54:56.820" LastActivityDate="2018-12-05T18:26:32.213" Title="How to determine if a freelance writing website is reputable and provides assignments that are worthwhile?" Tags="|websites|freelance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6149" CreationDate="2012-08-29T17:11:30.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, chronological is always a useful way of telling this sort of story, but it might not be the most engaging. As strange as it sounds, even a biography has to have a story. Sometimes the best way to do this is start it at a singular event, then go back to see how you came to that point. The idea is to show how your life molded you into the person that you are. This also starts to dance into a memoir, but that isn't a huge issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, since his is a biography the order you write the events isn't going to change the events themselves, so I would just simply start writing things as they come to you. Make sure to date when they happened so you can organize them later, also talking about one event may help jog you memory of another even, so writing it non-linear might help keep events fresh in your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how to pace yourself and keep interest in the project, well that's a challenge every writer faces. Going old traditional might be the best choice: writing some every day, having a fix time to write with little distractions and daily goals. Even so that is a larger question to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, using digital features to try and keep things organized. Believe it or not, blogging software might be the best choice in this case. Using software like that you can tag and link pretty much every post you make, allowing you to navigate things easier. You can also host in in the 'cloud' so you can access in anywhere (and you can keep them private, so no one can read them without your permission). In the end though, don't let worry about how to use it stop you from starting the project. Really the very first step is going to be to start writing it, before that everything else is really just academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T17:11:30.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2012-08-30T07:44:37.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a piece of software that converts OpenOffice (or LibreOffice) files to Kindle and ePub.&#xA;To answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It automatically recognize chapters and creates a table of content for both Kindle and ePub&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can easily add front and back matter, it will be recognized and added to the table of content. To do that, you just add a heading to the page (same as for chapter titles) and make it invisible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Styling from the odt file is converted: indent, justification, font style and size, drop caps, images and wrapping, etc. All the editing can (and should) be done in LibreOffice. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also a few other advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The final mobi file is accepted by Amazon (because we use kindlgen as a final step in the conversion.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It runs on Windows and OS X and is quite fast.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It allows you to embed fonts, or, if the font cannot be legally embedded (general case), to convert headings and drop caps into pictures that can be legally embedded in the ebook.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are templates with front/back matter to explain how to format the document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The software is completely free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you'll find it useful.&#xA;You can get it here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://soft.alkinea.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://soft.alkinea.net&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4038" LastEditorUserId="4038" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T03:29:33.893" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T03:29:33.893" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4332" CreationDate="2012-08-30T07:47:56.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;LibreOffice is a perfectly viable option.&#xA;Use Alkinea to convert to kindle and nook formats:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://soft.alkinea.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://soft.alkinea.net&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4038" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T07:47:56.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6278" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6281" CreationDate="2012-08-30T13:50:29.953" Score="1" ViewCount="699" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD candidate and I am having difficulty in communicating effectively in writing. Specifically, this post is a piece of text submitted for critique and, in addition, explains what I am trying to achieve. I thought that if I described my situation in a few lines, then the readers would get a glimpse of my ability to communicate and could contribute insightful comments on how to improve my writing work in terms of comprehension and style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supervisor urged me to post to this site when he realized that the time he spent on comprehending my writing work, both academic and casual, was out of normal proportions. This situation was driving down our productivity rate and so he established a formal approach to deal with the problem. For your reference, besides posting pieces of writing and submitting critique, the method includes reading renowned books like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicago_Manual_of_Style&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the aforementioned make sense to you, that is a good start. I hope this post is not out of context and that I did not abuse the privilege.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4039" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T14:06:33.537" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T09:21:06.193" Title="Is the following piece of text comprehensible and written in good style?" Tags="|style|resources|structure|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6273" CreationDate="2012-08-30T16:06:40.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to evaluate a freelance site is the same as evaluating any other business: Talk with the people who've worked with them before and see what they think about them, search around for other references to them to see what negative comments they have, and check their local Better Business Bureau for comments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid to ask writers who do freelance work for their opinions on both who they work with and who they won't work with. They might also be able to put you into contact with people who watch for and monitor scams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always the core rules still apply. If it looks to good to be true it probably is, and money flows towards the author. Keep both of these in mind when looking over any freelance site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-09-01T10:20:32.920" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T10:20:32.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6278" CreationDate="2012-08-30T21:34:39.083" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, let's start...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Specifically, this post &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You just lost us. &quot;This post&quot; often means &quot;an external piece to which I am linking&quot; or &quot;some text which is going to follow shortly,&quot; rather than &quot;this question you're reading.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is a piece of text submitted for critique and, in addition, explains what I am trying to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Redundant, but okay in context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This situation was driving down our productivity rate and so he established a formal approach to deal with the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is? and relates to us and this post how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here also I feel like something's missing. It reads like you're building up to asking something specific, or presenting a chunk of text, and then you overshoot it completely and move on to the footnotes (the reference material). So you've described a problem but you haven't actually showed us what it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your writing seems to be reasonably clear in general. You might have to post something else for us to look at, or give us an example of something your advisor balked at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T21:34:39.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6278" CreationDate="2012-08-31T00:19:51.330" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Note: The current edit of this post fixes some of these issues.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarity of objectives&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's unclear, exactly, what you want people to critique; the way the post is written implies that there will be text other than the question and the question's title, and that &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; text is what you want people to critique. The body of your question is laying the groundwork for why you're seeking a critique and the sorts of problems you're looking at - all this is good information - but there's an implication that the question is just background. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm harping on this point because it illustrates point of writing that far too many people ignore: &lt;strong&gt;Know your audience&lt;/strong&gt;. On this site, people generally post a critique question with a specific question (in this case, is your text comprehensible), and format the post so there's either specific text they want a critique on, or a link to that text. A few minutes' research could have saved us this confusion. (But perhaps this is a lesson you needed to learn?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;White space&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/revisions/6278/1&quot;&gt;original post&lt;/a&gt; was all one paragraph; the edit that John performed helped split the text up into three paragraphs, which helps readability. (Edit: Using a double return will give one paragraphs with white space in between them.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spending a little more time on organization (outlining what you meant to write, and in what order you will present the issues) will only help you do this upfront. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Organization is particularly important in academic writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if it does ramble a little, your writing &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; clear. However, there's a certain style in academic writing that you may want to learn to emulate; stylistic departures are not well tolerated in academic writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest reading documents similar to the ones you'll be generating - journal articles, dissertations - to learn about this. Your advisor may be able to suggest a few for you to read. (Remember, the best kind of writing for you to produce is what your advisor &lt;em&gt;thinks&lt;/em&gt; is good.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strunk and White is a good guide to simple, clear style. It's a short book, and well worth reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style is a large tome that very few people read cover to cover. Perhaps your advisor means for you to use it as a reference; it's a good one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T13:10:30.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1742" CreationDate="2012-08-31T03:51:13.437" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible to use multiple languages even if you actually don't by flagging them in dialogue tags. This is good when who speaks what language(s) is important in the narrative. You can put the inter-language confusion in the dialogue and the speakers' actions. You can also use this to play with mis-translation, either deliberate or incidental. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know what you're doing, you can also use idioms differently to subtly indicate a different langauge. For example, in one of my fantasy worlds, I characterise one of my languages by limiting contractions and by repeating verbs in a way that is not usually done in casual English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technique as also a good out if the languages are fictional, or if you, the author, don't actually speak one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="495" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T03:51:13.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6293" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-02T20:05:15.703" Score="9" ViewCount="5547" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is very specific to academic writing: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used the contraction &quot;don't&quot; instead of &quot;do not&quot; in some of the papers. Some of the reviewers mentioned that &quot;don't&quot; is not a formal style of writing. I wonder the reasons - I see pretty much every writer use it. What makes &quot;don't&quot; so informal over &quot;do not&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="730" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-28T01:31:59.327" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T10:15:27.280" Title="Are contractions antithetical to academic writing? " Tags="|style|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6293" CreationDate="2012-09-03T07:35:31.287" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contractions are, by their very nature, informal, as they tend to be more frequently used for speech than writing. However, you don't necessarily always have to avoid them: although the APA Style Guide recommends avoiding them for academic writing, other style guides, e.g. Chicago Manual of Style, recommend using them, for when &quot;used thoughtfully, contractions in prose sound natural and relaxed and make reading more enjoyable&quot;. The best advice would be to use them when &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; using them would sound strange or unnatural. As always, however, stick to what is recommended to you in your setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T07:35:31.287" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6278" CreationDate="2012-09-03T12:56:39.367" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll offer some blunt advice that I've given my own grad students over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Be direct.&lt;/em&gt; Make it easy for readers to see the main points you're trying to convey. (I think the main parts of your question are that you're a Ph.D. student whose advisor thinks your writing needs improvement, and you're asking for comments about style and understandability.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Prefer shorter, simpler sentences.&lt;/em&gt; (The sentences beginning with &amp;quot;I thought that...&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;My supervisor...&amp;quot; could be shortened a lot.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Avoid jargon, vague words and phrases, and superfluous words.&lt;/em&gt; (&amp;quot;my writing work&amp;quot; should be &amp;quot;my writing&amp;quot;; &amp;quot;the readers would get a glimpse of my ability to communicate&amp;quot; is superfluous.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Avoid intrusive parenthetical phrases.&lt;/em&gt; (&amp;quot;and, in addition, explains&amp;quot; breaks the flow of the sentence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Avoid superfluous modifiers.&lt;/em&gt; (You suggest that readers could offer &amp;quot;insightful comments&amp;quot;, but that's a bit of unneeded flattery.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how I'd rewrite your question, retaining a semi-academic style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a PhD candidate and I would like to improve my writing. My&#xA;supervisor believes that if my writing were easier to understand, we&#xA;could work together more productively. I have two questions: Is my&#xA;writing understandable? Could the style be improved? A sample is given&#xA;below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that my question is appropriate for this forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3516" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T12:56:39.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6296" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6297" CreationDate="2012-09-03T17:59:46.067" Score="1" ViewCount="8644" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you welcome a business audience to your presentation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've thought of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Hello, my name is [prename] [surname] and I am going to talk about [...]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but it sounds rather like a school presentation and not like a business presentation. Or isn't there a difference in the English language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make a difference if there are only men or if it is a mixed audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(I don't have any experience with business presentations and English is a foreign language for me. If you have any more hints for business presentations or links to websites that adress this topic: Please let me know in the comment. But please note that this is not the question.)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I've &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/q/80531/9880&quot;&gt;already asked this question here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4055" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T06:20:13.123" Title="How do I start a business-presentation?" Tags="|business-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6296" CreationDate="2012-09-03T23:43:05.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's not a bad opening. I might change it to &quot;Today we're going to talk about...&quot; to make it more inclusive, but there's nothing wrong with being straightforward. Another version might be &quot;Today I'd like to talk to you about...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T23:43:05.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6296" CreationDate="2012-09-04T10:09:42.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hello everyone&lt;/em&gt; should be alright. Make it natural, people won't care about the subtle way you greet them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4058" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T10:09:42.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6278" CreationDate="2012-09-05T03:38:58.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a small contribution to the excellent advice already offered....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When possible, read your work aloud.  If you stumble over a phrase or sentence, so will your readers.  Reading aloud reinforces where the pauses should be, for clarity and emphasis, because you'll need to take a breath occasionally, unlike when you read silently.  Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4062" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T03:38:58.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6278" CreationDate="2012-09-05T09:21:06.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it weren't for the fact that your links were Wikipedia links I would have thought your post was spam. I see what you are trying to accomplish; However writing a piece of work that asks a question about a questions seems a bit off. Maybe try something more declarative for a critique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4064" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T09:21:06.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6296" CreationDate="2012-09-05T09:37:59.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What kind of information are you presenting? If you are presenting a weekly update to a board a normal introduction like the above will do just fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are presenting something of import, or trying to persuade your audience on a certain subject I would say go with something more powerful. Start with a powerful argument, then introduce yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly, be confident and knowledgeable in your topic. An introduction can easily be brushed aside if you know what you are talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4064" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T09:37:59.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6296" CreationDate="2012-09-06T06:04:45.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make the audience comfortable&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I believe everyone here is comfortable. We have water and beverages on the tables at the sides. Please feel free to saunter in the middle of my presentation to go there to get a cookie too, if the need and desire so arises. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Introduce yourself&lt;/strong&gt; without self-aggrandisement. Attribute yourself as highly competent by saying that the people you work with are highly competent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am Ally McBeal. I work with a team of experts in our company Caged Fish Wattle. Our company's expertise is highly focused on personal reputation and assets maintenance. With that expertise, we have amassed a wealth of skills, knowledge and experience in keeping &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; reputation, investments as well as real and virtual assets secure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Introduce the modus operandi&lt;/strong&gt;, without complicating details. Use illustrative words (not bombastic words) that would draw a picture for the clients with as brief a description as possible. Make the audience comfortable, seeing each one as potential client or existing client with potential for escalated relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a legal team, a team of finance and economic expertise, a cloud of computing hardware and the most hack-hardened network security and software experts. We even have a weather-forecast person who advises and issues reports to clients against any of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; ventures having any potential of being hampered by geological and weather events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She happens to be with us here ... and here is Susan, the most pleasant colleague I've had the privilege to work with (Susan takes a slight bow and sits down). And, we are pleasantly surprised, that our chief technical officer is also here. George, the most intensely focused person I know. (George turns around smiles and waves slightly.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our cloud resources has far and wide reaching capabilities to monitor and avert intrusions on your assets and ventures with speed and precision and a wide margin of pre-emption due to ever changing dynamic patterns that our technical capacity has been able to design and construct into our cloud, with constant and persistent adaptive reinforcement due to our legal and economic expertise. As well as weather forecasting expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your presentation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the use of 2nd person pronoun &quot;your&quot;, &quot;you&quot; (rather than &quot;their&quot; or &quot;they&quot;) as often as possible, when addressing potential and existing clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3873" LastEditorUserId="3873" LastEditDate="2012-09-06T06:20:13.123" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T06:20:13.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6307" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6309" CreationDate="2012-09-06T09:12:10.080" Score="3" ViewCount="827" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm 21 years old female from South India. I would like to publish a book which concentrates on any one latest computer technology. Now, I have completed my BE- Computer Science and Engineering. I'm going to work in an IT company for two years and after 4 years I would like to publish the book. What are the qualifications I need to publish a technical-oriented book? What is the procedure for that? Is it way too expensive? I don't have anyone for guidance. Kindly guide me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-09-06T10:29:28.133" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T11:50:19.357" Title="Path to publishing a technical book" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6307" CreationDate="2012-09-06T11:50:19.357" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three things you need to publish such a book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mastery of the subject matter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to write well, in an engaging, informative style and samples to prove that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A publisher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual practice is to get an idea for a book that has not been covered to death, write a proposal, and submit it to various publishers along with samples of your writing on similar subjects. Blog writing on that or other topics will help, but be aware that the coverage should be thorough and detailed, not just a &quot;random thoughts&quot; kind of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a recognized expert in your field, so much the better. You may receive inquiries from publishers without solicitation. Absent that, you should be prepared for plenty of rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T11:50:19.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6311" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6312" CreationDate="2012-09-08T11:36:10.243" Score="4" ViewCount="168" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of answering the question &lt;strong&gt;please indicate any leadership roles you have held&lt;/strong&gt; for a particular job application but still feel as if my replies lack a certain crispness and flow. So far I have shown a friend who has provided some minute changes but I'm not entirely convinced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas on how I can improve the effectiveness of my three examples? I have 100 word limit for each. Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Having to maximise the usefulness of the few resources provided, I led&#xA;  a small team to runner-up position in university’s annual&#xA;  business competition. This required me to plan, manage and delegate&#xA;  tasks effectively in order to increase the group’s overall&#xA;  productivity. Upon establishing myself as an expert on the target&#xA;  market, I was immediately able to gain the trust and support of my&#xA;  peers which facilitated the decision making process.  When pitching&#xA;  our idea to a team of private investors, I had to respond to queries&#xA;  related to the credibility of our service and managed to secure a $500&#xA;  prize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After being promoted to admin controller at XYZ Taxi, I was&#xA;  responsible for ensuring that the performance targets required of the&#xA;  firm were met. This required me to monitor the daily number of&#xA;  incoming calls received by each employee and report back to&#xA;  management. In addition to this, I was in charge of reviewing and&#xA;  resolving difficult conflicts such as fare disputes. Over time, I&#xA;  recognised recurring issues and begun to analyse their causes in order&#xA;  to reach a solution. For example, to solve the issue of inaccurate&#xA;  quotes being given to clients, I designed clearer price charts to be&#xA;  displayed all over the office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Organising a youth conference provided me with valuable experience in&#xA;  planning a complex event. As technical director, I assisted with&#xA;  booking the venue, ordering refreshments and helping our keynote&#xA;  speaker with his travel arrangements. Such careful preparation ensured&#xA;  the presence of a reliable welcoming team, memorable interior design&#xA;  within the venue and on posters outside the venue. My role was&#xA;  significant in ensuring the event was well-attended by spearheading a&#xA;  marketing campaign on various social networks to cultivate interest.&#xA;  This gave me a platform to demonstrate my resourcefulness; I adhered&#xA;  to a strict budget by designing the flyers myself using online&#xA;  tutorials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4076" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T03:00:01.117" Title="How can I improve the effectiveness of my examples to grab the recruiters attention?" Tags="|editing|jobs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6311" CreationDate="2012-09-09T03:00:01.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how much help I'm going to be, since in the end a lot of&#xA;these things come down to subjective likes and dislikes, but here's a&#xA;few thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The pattern of &quot;problem, action, result&quot; is often recommended for&#xA;resume-type writing. The goal is to prove your skills and experience&#xA;with a concrete example of how you had a problem, what you did to try&#xA;and fix it, and what the outcome was (usually something positive I&#xA;suppose, but it could even be what you learnt and how you would go about&#xA;handling the same situation differently).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you search for &quot;problem, action, result&quot;, there are lots of resources&#xA;about it on the net. Your first example shows some of this, with the&#xA;&quot;$500 prize&quot; being the result. In the second example, you describe the&#xA;action (&quot;designed clearer charts&quot;), but the result is only implied&#xA;(something positive I assume? x% reduction in inaccurate quotes, or&#xA;some increase in customer satisfaction, maybe).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Specifics. This is getting into the subjective realm, but when I'm&#xA;reading resumes, it really stands out when someone responds with specific&#xA;things that they've done, as opposed to generic descriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your first example, what was your business idea? Which university?&#xA;You say a small team -- could you say &quot;a five-person team&quot; (or however&#xA;many there were). How did you establish yourself as an &quot;expert on the&#xA;target market&quot;? You delegated tasks that improved efficiency -- maybe you&#xA;could use a specific example of why and who you delegated to, and why it&#xA;worked? In example 3, which youth conference? How many people attended?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realise the word limits make it difficult to have too much detail,&#xA;so go for the one or two things that best demonstrate your abilities.&#xA;You may want to consider reducing some of the sentence lead-ins to&#xA;give you more words (for example: &quot;Having to maximise the usefulness&#xA;of the few resources provided&quot;...is it really necessary, or is the&#xA;lack of resources going to come out in the following detail?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be careful with being vague in describing the activities you performed,&#xA;as they might not be interpreted how you intend. For example,&#xA;&quot;I assisted with booking the venue&quot; -- if I was feeling particularly&#xA;uncharitable, I could interpret &quot;assisted&quot; as &quot;you were in the room while&#xA;the person with real authority did the booking&quot;. Maybe you surveyed&#xA;and evaluated potential venues? It might be stronger to state this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T03:00:01.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6313" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-09T05:10:35.357" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-09T05:10:35.357" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T05:10:35.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6314" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-09T05:10:35.357" Score="0" Body="Questions about getting work as a writer, or about using effective writing when applying for work. " OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-09T05:10:35.357" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T05:10:35.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6315" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-09T05:12:11.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Creative writing&quot; is a vague term, but generally means &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/fiction&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;fiction&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;fiction&lt;/a&gt;, or writing that's not &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/non-fiction&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;non-fiction&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;non-fiction&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/technical-writing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;technical-writing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;technical-writing&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/business-writing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;business-writing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;business-writing&lt;/a&gt;. This tag should be used when asking questions that apply to multiple categories of creative writing, such as when asking questions that could apply to fiction or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/poetry&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;poetry&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;poetry&lt;/a&gt; alike. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should specify what your problem is, such as whether you are looking for &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tools&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;tools&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/software&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;software&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;software&lt;/a&gt; that can assist you in your writing &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/process&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;process&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;process&lt;/a&gt;, or if you are looking for a &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/technique&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;technique&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;technique&lt;/a&gt; that will help you with a certain way of &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/showing-telling&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;showing-telling&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;showing-telling&lt;/a&gt; aspects of your world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T08:20:04.753" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T08:20:04.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6316" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-09T05:12:11.407" Score="0" Body="&quot;Creative writing&quot; is a vague term, but generally means fiction, or writing that's not non-fiction, technical, or business writing. This tag should be used when asking questions that apply to multiple categories of creative writing, such as when asking questions that could apply to fiction or poetry alike. " OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T08:20:04.753" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T08:20:04.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6318" CreationDate="2012-09-09T05:49:48.240" Score="2" ViewCount="2000" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading a &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;guidance&lt;/a&gt; of the APA style and I am now confused with the in-text citation part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to what I have read, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When using APA format, follow the author-date method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the year of publication for the source should appear in the text, for example, (Jones, 1998), and a complete reference should appear in the reference list at the end of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess in-text citation should look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jones (1998) found &quot;students often had difficulty using APA style&quot; (p. 199); what implications does this have for teachers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, in-text citation in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MLA&lt;/a&gt; style seems similar -- it also uses parenthetical citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My confusion is that most papers I read does not seem to stick to this rules. Their in-text citation is often [1], [2], [3] ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the above example would look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Students often had difficulty using APA style [3]; what implications does this have for teachers?&#xA;  And then all information would be given in the reference list at the end of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard that APA and MLA are the two major formal writing styles, but why formal publication papers does not stick to their in-text citation rules? Is the &quot;[1], [2], [3]&quot; method from another style? How can I find guidance to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4081" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T07:02:26.870" Title="In-Text Citations: Author-Date v.s. [Number]?" Tags="|citations|mla|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6317" CreationDate="2012-09-09T07:02:26.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note that these are discussions about &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt;, not something like &lt;em&gt;grammar&lt;/em&gt;; as such, there is no &quot;correct&quot; or &quot;incorrect&quot; way among the different choices. The best thing is to pick one &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt; and stick to it. And, APA and MLA are just two out of dozens of commonly used &lt;em&gt;styles&lt;/em&gt; of citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When considering which style to follow, you should also consider the needs of the reader. APA and MLA are definitely common in many academic circles, and the citation method makes it really easy to cross-reference with other related work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've always been more comfortable with APA, mostly because it's what I had to use at school, but MLA advocates more precision. Whereas the APA style only mandates including a page number for direct quotations, if my memory serves correct, MLA requires page numbers even for paraphrased materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number format to me always seems more relevant when the references themselves are less important. Compare the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're writing a research proposal, where you're including a literature review. Obviously, you want to show why your research is important, so you put your research in context of other studies that have been done before. In such a case, I would find the number format very inconvenient. You're referring to other studies, so the author-date format tells the reader immediately what study or researcher you're referring to. They don't need to flip to the end of your report and look up a number to figure out whose work you're referring to. The information you're referring to is &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; to a study, and not something that might be, say, factual.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're writing a history paper and covering some famous historical event that many people have written about, and the perspectives don't necessarily differ widely. Still, you want to validate your information by providing sources. In this case, the author-date format might be a distraction. It might be more convenient for the reader to look up the source if they are interested in further detail about that little tidbit of information that you've cited.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, as I've mentioned, these are not &lt;em&gt;rules&lt;/em&gt; but matters of &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Style&lt;/em&gt; is often selected with &lt;em&gt;intent&lt;/em&gt;. So, my advice here would be to clarify your intent, and, based on that, decide which style to follow. (Unless, of course, you're forced to follow a style by your institution!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen, for instance, some books published with &lt;em&gt;no indication&lt;/em&gt; in the text of cited materials, but at the end of the book, chapter by chapter, they will list the facts mentioned (in the order that they were mentioned) and the source or sources for each fact. This is the ultimate in distraction-free reading, but won't be very convenient for, say, a faculty or an editor to evaluate your work. Take a look at the following two images:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the source text, from page 20 of the book &quot;The Big Necessity&quot;. Notice that there are no citations in the text at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eeou1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But, this is not common knowledge. Where are the sources? The publishers decided to mention the page number, followed by the fact, and then the source. Here's the &lt;em&gt;notes&lt;/em&gt; section for pages 18 to 22. You can see the facts about cell-phones and bras mentioned in italics, and the relevant sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vmcvn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to take a look at the &lt;em&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt; which suggests several different ways of citation. You can view their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;quick guide&quot; online&lt;/a&gt;; on that page you'll see tabs for the &lt;strong&gt;notes and bibliography&lt;/strong&gt; (number) format, and the &lt;strong&gt;author-date&lt;/strong&gt; format. If you're serious about &lt;em&gt;publishing&lt;/em&gt;, you should definitely have a copy of that book on your desk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3433" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T07:02:26.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6201" CreationDate="2012-09-10T12:23:58.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written stories using both &quot;gardener&quot; and &quot;architect&quot; models and find that it's much easier getting a longer piece to work, if I set down an outline at the beginning. I usually end up with 1-2 sentences per chapter (sometimes letting 1-2 sentences actually inform 2-3 chapters, once it gets to writing). I don't know that I intentionally trained to do it, but I suspect it's more a question of giving it a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also do not let the outline stay firm, sometime you discover that your initial plan was wrong an end up revising the outline (in one case, the last three chapters I actually wrote happen to be the first three chapters of the book, because it needed not so much a bridge as a launch-pad). That happens and is nothing to be afraid of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T12:23:58.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6201" CreationDate="2012-09-10T22:13:02.513" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering the question: &quot;How can I learn how to outline before I start to write?&quot;, I will give you the gist of the 'Architect' paradigm and how to go about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an Architect, you start with the big picture and work out a&#xA;storyline and three-act structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A storyline is important as it will plant the seed of your novel's plot. It may range from a line to a couple more. Note: it doesn't have to be perfect. It is for your own track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as this is done, you create a synopsis which is derived by expanding the storyline; branching it out into a paragraph and hence into a complete three act structure which is quiet famous (or the five act structure if you want):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost always, you must have a synopsis to sell your novel. A synopsis is a&#xA;document roughly two pages long that describes your plot, and it’s an essential&#xA;part of your book’s sales process. To get an agent, or to sell your book to&#xA;a publisher, you need to write a query or a proposal. Either an agent or a publisher will want to see a&#xA;synopsis. Therefore, knowing how to write a good synopsis is mandatory for&#xA;every novelist.&#xA;Here are the basics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write in third person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write in present tense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summarize your entire story in about two single-spaced pages. That gives you about 1,000 words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you need to plan the three act structure of the Novel by expanding the synopsis into three major branches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expand the first sentence (the story setup) into a paragraph or two&lt;/strong&gt;, describing the story backdrop.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expand the second sentence (leading up to the first disaster) into about half a page&lt;/strong&gt;.Use two or three paragraphs to tell how you’ll get to your crucial first disaster and the decision that defines your story question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expand the third sentence (leading up to the second disaster) into another half page&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;Again, use no more than three or four paragraphs to summarize the high points of the story. Don’t worry about glossing over details or ignoring some story threads. Cut to the bone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expand the fourth sentence (leading up to the third disaster) into yet another half page&lt;/strong&gt;. Once again, use no more than three or four paragraphs. Be brutal in leaving out details. The publisher does not care about those cool subplots&#xA;you cooked up; the publisher cares whether the main story works.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expand the fifth sentence (the ending) into three paragraphs&lt;/strong&gt; that tell how the ending works out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the three act structure ready, the real engineering of the novel begins- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenelist&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A scene list helps you keep track of your scenes. To develop a scene list, you write a short summary of each scene. Managing all those summaries is challenging,so you can use a Spreadsheet to give each cell it's respective scene. I was an outliner. I used Ms-Excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, each scene can be either of the two types:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Proactive&lt;/strong&gt;: This type of scene includes a goal, a conflict, and a setback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reactive&lt;/strong&gt;: This type of scene includes a reaction, a dilemma, and a decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A little extra description:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;Proactives&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goal: At the beginning of the scene, the POV character has some goal&#xA;that he hopes to achieve by the end of the scene.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conflict: During the middle of the scene, the POV character tries&#xA;repeatedly to achieve his goal, but he runs into obstacle after obstacle&#xA;as the scene unfolds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setback: At the end of the scene, the POV character hits a nasty&#xA;setback.&#xA;Normally, he fails to reach his goal and is now worse off than he was&#xA;before. Occasionally, he achieves what he wanted, but something bad&#xA;happens to nullify this minor victory.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;Reactives&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reaction: At the beginning of the reactive scene, the POV character is&#xA;reeling from the setback in the previous scene.&#xA;She spends some time reacting emotionally and finally gets control of&#xA;her feelings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dilemma: During the middle of the reactive scene, the POV character&#xA;has to figure out what to do next.&#xA;If her setback was significant enough, then she has no good options. She&#xA;has a dilemma, and she must think hard to choose from the least-bad&#xA;option.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decision: Eventually, the POV character makes a decision.&#xA;That provides her with a goal for her next scene, which is normally a&#xA;proactive scene.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A proactive scene starts a character out with a goal, hits him with loads of&#xA;conflict, and then rocks him back with a setback. A reactive scene picks up&#xA;immediately afterward, taking that character through an emotional reaction,&#xA;then working him through an intellectual dilemma, and finally taking him to a&#xA;decision — to pursue a new goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This completes the basics of the outliner's job. Once done, you will need to concentrate on the dialogues, and action and the description. Although Outlining is a hectic job, It has it's advantage. But now, I am a snowflaker. And i'm happy with this paradigm shift. All the best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T22:13:02.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6324" CreationDate="2012-09-10T22:16:07.203" Score="4" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my essay (specifically a recount essay of a moment in the past), my objective is to end with the discussion of Death as a being (because my recounted moment will be related to death). I'd like to indrectly reference &lt;em&gt;The Book Thief&lt;/em&gt; by Mark Zusak by saying something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Death. He who &lt;em&gt;steals&lt;/em&gt; our colors and uses them as his vacation - he who takes &lt;em&gt;pleasure&lt;/em&gt; in beauty while destroying it nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to take this as my own idea though, so I'm wondering how exactly I'd cite this? Do I need to at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4085" LastEditorUserId="4085" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T00:41:04.520" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T00:41:04.520" Title="Knowing When To Cite?" Tags="|style|citations|essay|education|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6323" CreationDate="2012-09-10T23:14:10.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should cite it if it's not your idea. The simplest way would be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As Mark Zusak describes it in his novel &lt;em&gt;The Book Thief,&lt;/em&gt; Death is he who steals our colors.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're clearly mentioning the author and the work. If you use Zusak's exact words, quote him; if you're summarizing, make sure you change the quote enough that it's not plagiarism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T23:14:10.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6323" CreationDate="2012-09-11T01:09:36.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;General in-text citations &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/6324/26&quot;&gt;like Lauren suggests&lt;/a&gt; will almost certainly be sufficient, particularly for a short, informal paper. However, if your paper is longer or a more formal paper (for example, a report as opposed to a shorter research essay), a little more rigorous citing may be in order. But never fear, it's easy to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some high schools even have their own citation guides! For example, Soquel High School in California has put up &lt;a href=&quot;http://soquelhs.net/library/net%20links/citation_guide.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this citation guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Printed Works&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Books, one author&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Author. Title. Place of publication: Publisher, Publication   year. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Welch, James. Winter In Blood. New York: Harper &amp;amp; Row, 1974. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fcps.edu/MtVernonHS/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mount Vernon High School&lt;/a&gt; in Virginia has posted a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fcps.edu/MtVernonHS/media_center/citation_guides/mvhs_apa_style_guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF table&lt;/a&gt; that seems to be a summary or modification of relevant APA citation styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A web search on your high school, or perhaps comparable high schools in your area, may yield useful information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find nothing useful like this, your school library may well have a copy of an appropriate general style guide. These have information on citation styles, and really are quite simple to use. There's a question here on Writers - &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/72/26&quot;&gt;What are the most common style manuals?&lt;/a&gt; - that will give you an idea of what style guides are good for what kinds of papers, but any style guide will probably do the job. (APA or MLA, or maybe Chicago, would probably be fine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T01:15:38.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2012-09-11T09:14:01.690" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;https://sigil-ebook.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sigil&lt;/a&gt;. It's a multi-platform EPUB ebook editor with the following features:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Online Sigil User's Guide, FAQ, and Wiki documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Free and open source software under GPLv3 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multi-platform: runs on Windows, Linux and Mac&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Full UTF-8 support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Full EPUB 2 spec support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple Views: Book View, Code View and Split View&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;WYSIWYG editing in Book View, supporting all XHTML documents under the OPS specification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complete control over directly editing EPUB syntax in Code View&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Table of Contents generator with multi-level heading support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Metadata editor with full support for all possible metadata entries (more than 200) with   full descriptions for each&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User interface translated into 15 languages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spell checking with default and user configurable dictionaries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Full Regular Expression (PCRE) support for Find &amp;amp; Replace&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SVG support and basic XPGT support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supports import of EPUB and HTML files, images, style sheets, and fonts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documents can be validated for EPUB compliance with the integrated FlightCrew EPUB validator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Embedded HTML Tidy: all imported files have their formatting corrected, and your editing can be optionally cleaned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Native C++ application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Downloads at &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/user-none/Sigil&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sigil's github page&lt;/a&gt;. If you like to be notified of new releases, there's the &lt;a href=&quot;https://sigil-ebook.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sigil website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2054" LastEditorUserId="18615" LastEditDate="2018-02-27T20:39:58.280" LastActivityDate="2018-02-27T20:39:58.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6252" CreationDate="2012-09-12T11:40:24.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often encountered the writing advice, &quot;Show, don't tell.&quot; In line with Brett Cassette's answer, I would even consider revising the first sentence. For example (probably lame, because I don't know what came before in the scene):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I sat frowning at the phone after erasing the message.&#xA;How had someone named Maria gotten my number? Mom?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than telling how the narrator felt about the call, provide an image that allows the reader to experience those feelings more directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="982" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T11:40:24.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2053" CreationDate="2012-09-12T11:52:10.123" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A slightly different angle is that technical (or any other kind of) writing can be as much about culture as explicit content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be most effective in writing for a particular technical community, you need to understand the subject matter you are covering, but also need to communicate in a style that resonates with that community. For example, if you were writing about the contemporary music scene in a particular city, you would lose credibility with the readers if you misused local slang or made out-dated references, even if your facts about the local bands were entirely correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same way, technical communities tend to have subtle but distinct ways of using and perceiving language that can mark you as an outsider, a sympathetic visitor, or &quot;one of us&quot;. Read some well-regarded writing for the field in which you plan to work, and look for examples of the community's style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="982" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T20:12:05.123" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T20:12:05.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6330" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6334" CreationDate="2012-09-12T21:42:31.790" Score="5" ViewCount="360" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a few thousand words into my newest draft and starting to question if I picked the right beginning. As usual, when I get back into the habit of writing regularly, I have also gotten back into the habit of reading about how to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two very core ideas I've come across that I really like the sound of, but that seem to conflict with each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, the three act structure says we should start with exposition. We should introduce the players, introduce the setting, and set the stage for the conflicts that are to follow. Looking at the books I'm reading now and have read in the past, especially fantasy books (my genre of choice as a writer), I can clearly see an exposition period in all of them. The characters are introduced in their element, and are allowed to live a few days or at least a few hours of their normal lives before things pick up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you're supposed to start things with a bang. The first sentence of your book is supposed to hook the reader for the rest of the page, the first page hook the reader for the rest of the chapter, and the first chapter hook the reader for the rest of the book. Things have to get off the ground, &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;, if you want to have any chance of keeping a reader around long enough to finish this paragraph, never mind your 100,000 word novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two seem incompatible for me. I went for the latter approach in this revision, but I feel like there are just too many questions unanswered. On the other hand, if I went for the former approach, I would be thinking &quot;who would even get this far?&quot; by the time I hit the first &quot;disaster&quot; of the three act structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a happy middle ground?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastEditorUserId="7" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T21:59:01.003" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T15:51:24.760" Title="How can I reconcile the exposition of the three act scheme vs. starting out with a bang?" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6330" CreationDate="2012-09-12T23:38:58.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe this is one of those questions where, if you knew the perfect answer to it, you would never get another form rejection again. Unfortunately there is no perfect answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are right, the two concepts are in conflict with each other and in many ways the opening of your book is going to be a balance between them. Too much exposition and the opening is bland, to little and you don't care much about the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now keep in mind, novels are allowed to start a bit slowly, you can spend a chapter or so setting things up before getting to the a major event of the story. As long as you can keep it interesting people will read it, and the best way to do that is to make it about the characters and how they interact with the world. It also lets you show what is 'normal' before things start going to pot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really feel you want to show the action right away, maybe start with a prolog show what is going on before it involves the main characters. Then you can start that out with the bag, get the ball rolling for a page or tow, then jump into your main characters with chapter one. The upshot of this is it adds some tension as to when they will be involved in everything that is going wrong while letting you establish everything.&#xA;Starting with a big bag is more important for a short story, where you don't have the time to set things in motion, but have to hit the ground running. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T23:38:58.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6330" CreationDate="2012-09-13T00:03:18.767" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you might want to do is get the whole thing written as a three-act piece with exposition in the beginning. Set it aside for a month, and then come back and see if the opening is too slow. If it is, now you can figure out a way (as Fox Cutter suggested) to add in a prologue or some other &lt;em&gt;in media res&lt;/em&gt; opening which creates the bang you're looking for. But you'll have something to start with. You can't edit a blank page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, having a slow opening (exposition) is more of the classical Hero's Journey. Not every story follows that pattern. The idea of the exposition opener is to set establish the Normal World which the Hero has to depart to go on the Journey. If the Hero is already on a Journey, or if Journey is not what your Hero does (for example, if your Hero is a detective, or a doctor, or a mercenary in the middle of a war zone), then you only need to explain as much as is necessary to understand the setting of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T00:03:18.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6330" CreationDate="2012-09-13T00:55:49.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A useful tip I read about (The Fire In Fiction, Donald Maass) is to use what he calls microtension to hook the reader. This is where tension is created by conflicted feelings within the characters. That is, what are they doing or saying that makes them feel upset, or uncomfortable? What are the feelings warring inside them, and why are they incompatible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like using this for my starts, as I tend to write more character-driven pieces. It still has the tension to hook the reader, but it works quite well with exposition as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T00:55:49.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6330" CreationDate="2012-09-13T11:45:44.423" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no incompatibility as long as your characters are exciting enough to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider Rali, a thief in a fantasy kingdom. Rali will be part of a party of unwilling warriors sent to recover a magical artifact from beyond the Kralon Veil. He will be coerced into this by the enigmatic Count Maskyl for reasons that are not entirely clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We could introduce Rali to the reader as he is pickpocketing in the market where he is arrested and then made available for coercion by Maskyl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But maybe...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We could be allowed to understand that for Rali to be coerced is a way of life. When we meet him he has been forced to steal a rare jewel from a corrupt merchant to settle a gambling debt. We've upped the risk and, when he gets the jewel and escapes into the market place, we understand, automatically, why Maskyl targets him. Except he needs to be caught, which kind of undermines his master-thief credentials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But maybe...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the market place he is only discovered because his long time adversary, City Marshal Kund, knows that Rali has sympathy with street urchins; Rali himself grew up in that life. Kund publicly and falsely accuses a local urchin of petty theft and determines to cut off the boy's right hand. Rali is forced to break cover to save the boy, showing his underlying decency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SUMMARY: If your characters have lives packed with interest, excitement and adventure you shouldn't have a problem introducing them and making the introduction pop with excitement. Think the little one act chase at the opening of most Bond movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2012-09-13T13:28:10.723" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T13:28:10.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6330" CreationDate="2012-09-13T15:51:24.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With a mind on current buying trends, I would recommend starting with a bang. More and more people are buying their books online rather than going to a book store and browsing the shelves. As this trend has developed, an increasing number of people are also now &quot;sampling&quot; the book before buying. Most books sold online allow potential customers to download the first 20% or so as a sample before buying, and that is what is most likely to influence their purchase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you take into consideration the front matter (table of contents and such), which will take up a portion of that sample, you will have even fewer pages with which to persuade the reader to buy your book. As a result, your exposition needs to be entertaining enough to engage the reader and encourage them to read more, or exciting enough to engage your reader from the start and make them want to read more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, look at the Thomas Covenant series by Stephen R. Donaldson. The first book is an epic fantasy that follows the exposition approach. This epic fantasy is the first in a planned trilogy, and it lays the groundwork for a very large story. Most people found the first one-third (exposition) to be rather slow, but absolutely loved the last two-thirds. This would indicate that they preferred the action over the background or setup. Anyone who samples this book is only going to see that first one-third (or less) and will probably not be engaged enough to buy the book, let alone the next eight books in the series! (Fortunately for him, word of mouth got his first trilogy going, and people couldn't sample back then like they can now!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new writer who is trying to get noticed and sell that first book might find it difficult to get a writing career started with this approach. Providing action right from the start is more likely to engage those readers who are willing to sample your book and then take a chance on a new and unproven writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T15:51:24.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6336" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-13T16:18:19.770" Score="6" ViewCount="2636" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a non-fiction book based on recorded interviews with several people.  I have recorded verbal consent to be interviewed for the book from each person. One of the interviewees has since published his own book about the story he discussed with me.  I have supplied written transcripts of the interviews to each person for review/clarification.  I have not heard back from the one individual for almost a month and when I finally did make contact he was very abrupt, said he's been &quot;very, very busy, and he was going to review it 'this week'.&quot; That was over a week ago and I have heard nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I have recorded verbal permission and acknowledgement in his interview, can I legally move forward with his story as is or do I need to also have written permission?  The other interviewees have signed a release and acknowledgment form, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His story is a compelling one and would be a terrific inclusion for the book.  I am confused about his reaction because when I told him I had completed the transcript he was eager to review it. He was very cooperative up to this point and at one time he asked if I would be interested in collaborating on his book. If he has changed his mind for whatever reason he has not indicated that to me verbally or in writing and his reaction is open to interpretation, which I prefer to avoid. A direct answer would be appreciated and I can move forward from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for any guidance you can provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4095" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-13T17:44:01.000" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T19:15:46.760" Title="What permissions do I need to write a non-fiction book based on personal interviews?" Tags="|non-fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6336" CreationDate="2012-09-13T20:31:18.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask a lawyer, really, do it. Here are none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;right&quot; answer depends on so many details. For example a verbal contract is binding in Germany. You have not mention where you are from, where your interviewee lives and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the permission is one thing. The other is compensation. Have you paid him something? Are you going to do it? Just because you have permission to use it, does not mean you get it for nothing. If you haven't negotiated the topic, then it could be that some general rule exists how much is paid. And you interviewee knows that and you don't. So ask a lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He indicated a collaboration, so I guess the monetary part wasn't done for him. You have to dissolve the uncertainty which means you have to contact him. Personally or by a lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if he is busy (maybe someone died in his family) and you are afraid he changes his mind if you press him, then wait a little bit longer. Write a polite mail in two months asking if he has time to review it. If you do not have that time for what reason whatsoever, be prepared for disappointment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-14T19:15:46.760" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T19:15:46.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6338" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6340" CreationDate="2012-09-14T04:00:04.773" Score="1" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm at the outline stage of my novel writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is pretty straightforward to think of an action-adventure novel's victory as attained by physical attributes and/or courage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for alternative ways of making my hero win - such as by faith, hope and/or love. These themes are usually found in slice-of-life or romance novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I make these the critical factor in the climax of a physical conflict? Are there examples of novels or movies that have done this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4097" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T06:59:03.720" Title="Faith, Hope and Love as the keys to victory in an action-adventure novel?" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6342" CreationDate="2012-09-14T04:06:10.743" Score="11" ViewCount="1468" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does using unexplained spiritual elements (soul, &quot;spiritual&quot;/non-physical beings, afterlife, God, etc.) in a story with a futuristic setting make it science fantasy rather than science fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4097" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2019-06-06T20:36:04.987" LastActivityDate="2019-10-02T17:48:08.367" Title="Spiritual elements in a science-fiction novel" Tags="|fantasy|science-fiction|paranormal|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6338" CreationDate="2012-09-14T06:59:03.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I find that action/adventure only describes the pace or the general event types in a novel. It shouldn't define your theme, which may very well be that you need to have faith in friends/family you love and trust to get you through, no matter the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, have your climax with thrilling action scenes, where your hero does everything they can and kicks ass. &#xA;But then throw in something that's out of their control. This could be at any time - before, during or after the action scenes. Set up the situation so that they need to rely on someone (or many sotmeones). The message actually comes across even more powerfully when a hero who seems able to do everything realises the need for others in order to win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can have victory by strength or courage if you want, but that is a different theme, a different message you want to get across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example of this is the Hunger Games trilogy. They would definitely fall into the action/adventure category. The whole concept is about fighting to the death in a grand arena. But there's so many more themes that Suzanne Collins added in, such as the importance of trusting others and working together against a common enemy - Katniss, her heroine, certainly wouldn't have succeeded without her allies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tl;dr - genre and theme are different. Action/adventure is a genre, succeeding by faith and love is a theme. They're not mutually exclusive, but work together to make an awesome story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T06:59:03.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6339" CreationDate="2012-09-14T08:14:43.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few ways to answer this. Which answer you use depends on what you want to achieve - something lacking in the original question. Does the work already exist and you're just trying to categorize it? Or are you in the planning stages? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this answer, I'm assuming that there are deities or other spiritual elements explicitly in your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are deities: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deities of any sort are fantasy, and we should all grow up and acknowledge this.&lt;/strong&gt; This is the prototypical hardline-atheist answer. Your book will be looked at as such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deities may seem unlikely, but what if &quot;god&quot; is really just a powerful energy being?&lt;/strong&gt; Arthur C. Clarke did this, as did Star Trek. It's a way to have gods in your fiction, still have it be science fiction (maybe), and avoid disrespecting religion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Pagan&quot; gods are, of course, fantasy. The god I worship is real, so that makes this sci-fi.&lt;/strong&gt; That would make your book religious fiction. I'm not aware if religious science-fiction exists or not, so you'd either be joining an existing genre or creating a new one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are no deities, but there are spirits or ghosts, that would probably make your book a fantasy, or possibly what's now called a &quot;paranormal&quot; book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T08:14:43.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6339" CreationDate="2012-09-14T08:59:58.623" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is Star Wars fantasy or science fiction? I say fantasy, but they sell it as SF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are stories which meander along the borders. But to categorize your story you should not only ask what it is about. For example it's also important how the story ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are tagging genres to make it easier for the readers to pick what they want. If you sell a romance and it has no happy ending you can really disappoint a whole bunch of readers. A tragedy they wouldn't have picked up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High Fantasy is often about the eternal fight of Good and Evil. If Evil wins, readers could be disappointed. They don't expect (and probably do not want to read) such an ending when picking up this genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are in doubt about your genre, ask your test readers. Often their distant point of view can clarify this issue more easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or look at the books you read yourself and ask to which of them your book is most comparable to. Then use the genre of that book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-09-25T11:13:48.387" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T11:13:48.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6336" CreationDate="2012-09-14T12:55:38.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Again, not a lawyer, but do you really need permission if you are writing a book about someone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if I write a book about Obama, and interview his friends, do I need their and Obama's permission? As long as you don't claim to be the &quot;Official version&quot;, I'm not sure why you would need permission. Journalists routinely interview people, and even publish books based on these. And they don't ask everyone for written or verbal permission, do they? The only thing to avoid is misrepresenting them, or making false claims. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were required to take permission every time you interviewed someone and wrote about them, we would never have investigative journalism, as no one would give permission to be criticised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I missing something? If so, please modify the question to add details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T12:55:38.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6344" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6346" CreationDate="2012-09-15T14:29:34.167" Score="3" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if it is a good idea to include a sense of dementia in my writing. For example, it's a personal narrative where the character is traumatized for a paragraph. I feel like a good way to exude this concept is to write that one paragraph with short, choppy sentences that have a fearful connotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a good approach to take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4103" LastActivityDate="2012-09-15T21:32:41.863" Title="Adding dementia to writing" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2053" CreationDate="2012-09-15T17:53:26.517" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a technical background myself, but I've worked with some first-rate tech writers who wandered into the field from the humanities or social sciences. In my opinion, the best technical writing teams have a mixture of techies (to provide technical insight) and non-techies (to ask useful &quot;stupid&quot; questions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, good technical writing is based on a solid curiosity about the subject matter. Your goal should be to make the technology accessible to your readers. Tech writers who are incurious about or intimidated by technology (and there are a lot of them!) write about things they barely understand in a superficial, misleading manner that drives readers crazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4105" LastActivityDate="2012-09-15T17:53:26.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6344" CreationDate="2012-09-15T21:32:41.863" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems you are mixing two &quot;states of mind&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dementia means the mind has forgotten a lot, but is still trying to figure out how the sensory input it gets fits together. This does not result in choppy thoughts/sentences, but rather confused and rambling thoughts/sentences, that are searching for logic. Example: &quot;He had finished his coffee, and the mug seemed to stare at him, asking him to put it somewhere it belonged, but not back into the cupboard, it had to go somewhere else, a place where used mugs go, used mugs out of which coffee had already been drunk.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) means that the mind can suddenly be brought back into a the high state of stress it was in when the trauma occurred. This might be depicted using short choppy sentences if (and only if) the trauma was one in which the mind worked in short, choppy sentences. Note that this might for instance not be the case if the trauma was that a person was locked in a basement for two years, although such an event might cause PTSD. Example: &quot;He crossed the streets without fear for the first time since the accident, and almost felt pride when a car hooted. Pain surged through his limbs. The windshield smashed into his face. Scrambling for the sidewalk, he screamed nine one one, nine one one, finally being able to scream the numbers that before he could only whisper with his last breaths before blacking out.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you read up on both dementia and PTSD on (for example) wikipedia and decide which of the two you want to go for, and take it from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2012-09-15T21:32:41.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6349" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-16T14:13:22.230" Score="5" ViewCount="11200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always see the em dash (—) in fiction writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some example from Haruki Murakami's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Dark_%28novel%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;After Dark&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Komugi comes in and takes something from one of the cartons piled&#xA;  against the wall—a fresh bathrobe to replace the one from room 404.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mari says, &quot;She told me he took everything—her handbag, her money, her&#xA;  cellphone.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt; couldn't help it,&quot; says Komugi. &quot;When it starts, it&#xA;  starts—bang!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When to use the em dash (—) in fiction writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T10:20:20.950" Title="When to use the em dash (—) in fiction writing?" Tags="|fiction|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6349" CreationDate="2012-09-16T17:52:43.273" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Punctuation marks, like words and paragraph breaks, are tools. Overuse of any tool will make your writing inelegant, but using the proper tool at the right time will help you generate pages that are well crafted and precisely assembled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fiction, as in other kinds of writing, you'll still want to use the em dash to indicate interruptions, performing a function related to &amp;mdash; but subtly different from &amp;mdash; parentheses. (The em dash is particularly useful in dialogue.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a distressing tendency for some writers to overuse the em dash, and I often notice this kind of overuse in amateurish fiction where there are also other problems. Overuse of the em dash (or parentheses, or the semicolon &amp;mdash; or &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; punctuation marks) can make your prose a little predictable. The em dash also can make prose seem disjointed and stuttery, almost as if you put little thought into your writing &amp;mdash; putting phrases that should come earlier at the end of a sentence, for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Em dashes are easily edited out, and the clumsy sentences rewritten. Every writers' habits are different, of course, but getting yourself into a habit of using dashes sparingly may well train you to learn to think in terms of variety. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd reserve the em dash for situations where you want to startle the reader &amp;mdash; startle them just a little bit. Used occasionally, this kind of construction can be a useful tool that will add variety to your prose. You can also do this with, say, parenthetical phrases, or by varying average sentence or paragraph length. But doing any of these things will make your writing stale and predictable, so treat them as unique hand tools you break out when the power drill/screwdriver won't work elegantly, and you need just the right tool for the job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T10:20:20.950" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T10:20:20.950" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3925" CreationDate="2012-09-17T20:16:16.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So pleased to read those valuable answers, as an theatre and movie actor I can testify that beats in a dialogue, are an indication about where the character is at a particular key moment of the scene. It helps determine what motivates him to jump to the next thought or action.&#xA;It means that a beat marks a change of intention, desire or objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the the character's objective  happens to stay the same, then what's determined is the action he decides to take, consequently to the information he just received (line, action or reaction) in order to reach his main target as character. However I would have been happy to see OneMonkey's annotated example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4112" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T09:14:15.810" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T09:14:15.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6112" CreationDate="2012-09-17T20:55:21.277" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few tech writing blogs and forums that I like. Joining STC is useful, though it costs $195 a year ($160 if you graduated within the last three years). Membership includes access to both their publications. Intercom has a lot of best practices articles and information about new tools, while Technical Communications is their academic journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd Rather Be Writing - a blog about the latest trends in tech writing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://idratherbewriting.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://idratherbewriting.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Content Wrangler - a blog and community about managing content as a business asset &lt;a href=&quot;http://thecontentwrangler.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://thecontentwrangler.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E-mail lists or forums might be another good way to get information. TechWr-L (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techwr-l.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.techwr-l.com/&lt;/a&gt;) is a good group with lots of knowledgeable people. You might find some good information going back through their archives with keywords like &quot;IETM&quot; or the names of specific tools you want to learn more about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4034" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T20:55:21.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5352" CreationDate="2012-09-17T21:10:44.867" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think following a style guide is overkill. It's really helpful to have an authoritative answer to things like whether to use &lt;em&gt;e-mail&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;email&lt;/em&gt; and not have to look them up a dozen times or argue over them with other people. However, CMOS is probably too detailed for your needs, and I certainly wouldn't read it cover to cover. Even as someone whose whole job is writing, I wouldn't sit and read a style guide from front to back. For an electrical engineer, I don't think that's a good use of your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently on my bookshelf, I have &lt;em&gt;The AP Stylebook&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;The Microsoft Manual of Style.&lt;/em&gt; I like both, although AP doesn't use serial commas and I personally like serial commas. Microsoft is really helpful for software instructions because it defines how to format button, window, screen, and menu names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might actually be more useful to write up your own style guide and create a template for the documents you write most. The style guide can be a simple list of style decisions; it doesn't need to include everything under the sun. When I write user manuals, I list all the parts of the interface and how to style those terms. (For example, if the application has a small 3D map for navigation, I note whether it's called the Mini Map, the Mini-Map, the 3D Map, the Navigation Map, or whatever.) I also include any terms that come up that have more than one standard spelling or hyphenation. Every time I have a question about a term when I'm writing or editing, once I resolve it, I add it to the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use that style guide just for yourself or, depending on how much pull you have and how much your organization cares about writing consistency, share it with the rest of your team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IEEE Standards are a good resource for developing templates, because their standard for a given document usually includes a sample outline and a description of the content for each section. It's generally not too hard to set up a Word document with the specific formatting you want, the sections all laid out, and comments indicating what should actually go in those sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4034" LastEditorUserId="4034" LastEditDate="2016-06-22T15:06:07.170" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T15:06:07.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5545" CreationDate="2012-09-17T21:15:38.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Previous research in this area has focused on...&quot; sounds perfectly fine as an intro to a &quot;related research&quot; section. You may want to make it clear whether it's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; previous work or other research in the area that you're building on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4034" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T21:15:38.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6355" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-19T00:07:15.220" Score="18" ViewCount="3551" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of my writing experience has been with first person, nonfiction stories. Now I want to try some fiction. I'm working in third person, but I'm a little bit confused about how to pull something off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, say I'm telling the story from character A's POV and he's talking to character B, suddenly character A says something where I think it might be interesting if the reader were to know exactly what it is that character B is thinking and or feeling at that very moment in time that Character A said whatever he said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I not just write a new sentence saying whatever it is I want the reader to know? Can I not just change the POV from sentence to sentence by simply indicating to the reader that Character A felt this. And then Character B felt this. And so on and so forth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this not the purpose of the omniscient narrator? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been told I've got it wrong. I've heard the term &quot;head popping.&quot; I guess my question is what is head popping. Is it a bad thing to do? If so, why is it bad? And by that I mean: How does it hurt the story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone think of a good example of a popular book that uses this type of effect? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="359" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T05:14:02.747" LastActivityDate="2020-10-21T16:09:57.717" Title="What is &quot;head popping&quot; and why is it bad?" Tags="|style|fiction|viewpoint|third-person|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6355" CreationDate="2012-09-19T01:11:35.397" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would find it annoying, or annoyingly convenient, to be switching POVs repeatedly, particularly just for one sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think even when you have an omniscient narrator, you need to stick with one person per scene, or per beat. When you read a story, you are kind of sitting on the shoulder of whoever is the focus of a scene, and if the POV jumps from A to B repeatedly, as the reader you don't know who you're supposed to be traveling with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want the reader to know what Character B is thinking &lt;em&gt;at that moment&lt;/em&gt;, either Character B has to display it (expression, body language), say it out loud, or communicate it somehow (write it down, sign it, text it). Otherwise you have to wait for the next scene or the next beat for the focus to switch to Character B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the omniscient narrator may be to give us access to the thoughts of all the characters... but not necessarily all at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T01:11:35.397" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6360" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T05:17:35.503" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T05:17:35.503" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T05:17:35.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6361" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T05:17:35.503" Score="0" Body="Questions about viewpoints like &quot;he said&quot;, &quot;she said&quot;. " OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T05:17:35.503" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T05:17:35.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6362" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T05:18:18.670" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T05:18:18.670" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T05:18:18.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6363" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T05:18:18.670" Score="0" Body="Questions about grammatical persons (first person, third person, etc.) and how to use them. " OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T05:18:18.670" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T05:18:18.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6364" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T05:18:54.503" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T05:18:54.503" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T05:18:54.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6365" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T05:18:54.503" Score="0" Body="Questions about writing in resumes or CVs. " OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T05:18:54.503" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T05:18:54.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6366" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6367" CreationDate="2012-09-19T10:06:00.910" Score="6" ViewCount="9749" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in one of the newsletter teams of my company. Last week, I had mailed the Vice-President of our company to write an article for our newsletter, to which he replied in affirmative and mailed me back that he would send that article by the end of this week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided to write a reminder mail to him today asking him whether he can send that article by the end of this week and if not then he should let me know. But I'm kinda stuck in making this email sound gentle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I've written so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hello XXX,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Morning!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recognizing your very busy schedule, I’m sending you this mail as a reminder to your article for the newsletter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, that's it. I'm stuck at this point so as to use what words inorder not to make this mail sound rude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you guys help me on this front. He is the Vice-President of my company and I really don't want to sound rude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4119" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T14:19:49.457" Title="Avoiding unintended rudeness or accusatory tones in reminder emails" Tags="|business-writing|email|letter|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6366" CreationDate="2012-09-19T10:27:00.823" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good morning XXX,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to touch base with you about the status of your article for the newsletter. Please advise whether you will be able to send it to me by the end of the week. If it doesn't work with your schedule, that's fine; I just need to know one way or the other for planning purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards,&#xA;[your name]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T10:27:00.823" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6355" CreationDate="2012-09-19T11:28:12.313" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a good question. It is something I have seen done - for instance, I have recently been re-reading some of David Weber's Honor Harrington series. He uses this occasionally to show the reaction of a character to events.&#xA;Sometimes it's quite satisfying - but if not used very carefully, it can make the reader confused. A lot of what your omniscient narrator tells the reader will not necessarily have come from the PoV of any character, so if you chop backwards and forwards between two characters' heads the reader can end up uncertain of which thoughts and feeling came from which character.&#xA;And that can be pure death to your story, because it will dilute the impact of it substantially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3996" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T11:28:12.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2012-09-20T18:32:45.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Annie Dillard's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.ca/Writing-Life-Annie-Dillard/dp/0060919884&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Writing Life&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Umberto Eco's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_walks_in_the_fictional_woods&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Six Walks in the Fictional Woods&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;bell hooks's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.ca/remembered-rapture-writer-at-work/dp/0805059105&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;remembered rapture&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Behn &amp;amp; Twichell's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-practice-of-poetry-robin-behn?variant=32118191292450&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Practice of Poetry&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3686" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-02-11T14:19:12.290" LastActivityDate="2022-02-11T14:19:12.290" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-09-20T18:32:45.727" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6370" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-20T21:11:23.143" Score="9" ViewCount="1517" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of rhyming dictionaries; is there such a thing as a metrical dictionary? Sometimes in fixed-form poetry, I need a word to fit a specific position in a line, and it would be really handy to have a database that organized words by syllable count and stress pattern, as well as rhyme. It would be useful for songwriting too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example use case: Suppose I am looking for a word that is an anapest (three syllables, two short followed by one long, like &quot;billionaire&quot;). It would be great to be able to query a scansion dictionary to be given a list of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A combined rhyme/scansion dictionary would be a killer app. So that if, let's say, I wanted (1) an anapest that (2) rhymes with &quot;hair,&quot; I could query that, and be given a list of results (e.g. &quot;billionaire&quot; &quot;debonair&quot; &quot;laissez-faire&quot; etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does such a thing exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4124" LastEditorUserId="4718" LastEditDate="2015-06-23T21:00:29.633" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T21:00:29.633" Title="Are there any metrical (scansion) dictionaries?" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6370" CreationDate="2012-09-20T23:39:27.633" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I don't know of any straight dictionaries that organize words by number of syllables, many &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/311/26&quot;&gt;rhyming dictionaries&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; organize rhymes by how many syllables they contain, or by how many syllables rhyme. (&quot;Example&quot; is a three-syllable word that's a two-syllable rhyme with &quot;ample&quot; and a one-syllable rhyme with &quot;steeple&quot;.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T05:07:35.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6372" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6373" CreationDate="2012-09-21T02:56:12.377" Score="0" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found some examples of good and poor example of executive summaries &lt;a href=&quot;http://unilearning.uow.edu.au/report/4bi1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Everything seems fine but in one of them, they included this sentence -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;All calculations can be found in the appendices&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my teammates complains that everyone knows where to find the calculations, so why should someone put this sentence in their executive summary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: does everyone really know where to find the calculations even if it is not mentioned anywhere? Is it okay to put this sentence in the executive summary of a technical report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4125" LastEditorUserId="4125" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T05:47:38.993" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T23:32:58.770" Title="Should this sentence be included in the Executive Summary?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6372" CreationDate="2012-09-21T08:49:18.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with your teammate: Leave it out. Keep the executive summary as short and succinct as possible. It is understood that the rest of the report contains the details. You could make it clear where to find the calculations by using descriptive titles in the table of contents: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Appendix C: Supporting Calculations ...... Page 65&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T08:49:18.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6375" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-22T08:05:57.617" Score="8" ViewCount="813" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some background. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently published a book and was asked to share the first 30 pages so the publisher could edit and send it to the distributor. I complied and asked to see it. When I saw the amount of change the editor had imposed on the work, I was appalled. I had been told she wanted to make some grammatical changes, but she'd added lines of text using a first person pronoun (and the book was a memoir, so all she added was attributable to me, my thoughts) and other stuff I don’t want to go into. For changes like that, I expected some back and forth, or to at least be involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started searching for the answer to this question for myself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have an agent. I went to a place that offers professional legal advice to artists. The lawyer told me that I didn't have a legal problem, but I had a problem that most often dealt with by an agent. I asked for clues about how to move forward and the lawyer said writers have very little power once the contract is signed. I wonder if that's accurate or if I misunderstood what he was telling me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously there is a way to exhert control over the publishing process and this is, I assume, the job of the agent. But how does a DIY like me manage? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="359" LastEditorUserId="359" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T01:36:21.133" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T06:15:33.683" Title="How much power does the author have over an original work?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6376" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7116" CreationDate="2012-09-22T18:38:18.767" Score="3" ViewCount="356" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a native English speaker, and I would like to start a blog in English. I cannot say that I have a lot of experience blogging, but I had a blog in my native language for more than an year, and kept it up for around 200 posts. I feel I really want to give this a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blog will be minimalist and on the technical side. I want posts to be fairly short, the equivalent of a page, but hopefully very thoughtful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to learn from the lessons of others, how can I find out what these bloggers have done badly and what they've done well. Is there any information available on successful blogs written by non-native English writers, perhaps a study or a survey? What other sources of information can I seek out to obtain useful information?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3970" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T13:50:03.707" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T18:27:50.867" Title="Common errors for a non-native English writer starting a blog in English?" Tags="|blog|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6377" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6378" CreationDate="2012-09-23T10:06:10.290" Score="17" ViewCount="1387" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a tech genre author, and have already published one book on Android development. However, this book was focused more on the developer of the apps, than the user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm working on my second book, which is on app UI. In this book, there is a lot of focus on the usability of the apps, making it as easy as possible for the end user to accomplish the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among developers, you can frequently find statements in casual chats saying stuff like &lt;code&gt;users are stupid&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;if your software is idiot proof, a better idiot will be its user&lt;/code&gt; etc, all basically saying that users do not think the way we do, and what might be blindingly obvious to us, is not so obvious to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking if it's acceptable to say things like the following in a proper printed book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Users are stupid/dumb/something. You need to position your UI elements&#xA;  in such a way that it is impossible to miss, and make its function so&#xA;  clear that even the dumbest user cannot fail to understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4133" LastEditorUserId="4133" LastEditDate="2012-09-25T16:21:38.457" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T20:54:50.277" Title="Is it okay to call the reader's target audience stupid?" Tags="|technical-writing|terminology|" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2012-09-23T10:47:28.447" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, users are not stupid, it's usually the designers that are. A good UI requires a solid understanding of HCI (Human Computer Interaction) concepts, which range from understanding the target audience, to cognitive load theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be able to get away with &quot;idiot proof&quot;, since it's a cliché. Personally I'd avoid painting the users with a broad brush, simply because you're already shaping your readers idea of their audience, instead of informing them to go out and investigate for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4134" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T10:47:28.447" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2012-09-23T12:07:35.537" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is one of the things that irritates me, the fact that users are so often considered &quot;dumb&quot;. They are not. In many cases, they are more intelligent that the designers, it just may be that their skills are different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is better to say that the users are not familiar with the technical issues involved. Or that the best UX solution is to make the front end as clear and straightforward as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not about how clever the users are. It is about whether they want to get involved in complex and fancy nerdy stuff, or just get on with their work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T12:07:35.537" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2012-09-23T12:19:17.553" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sympathize with the sentiment, but no, you can't use &quot;black humor&quot; and &quot;shop talk&quot; in a book like that. Such comments have to be kept in-house and preferably not written down. We all complain about horrible clients and idiots at the DMV and so on, but you shouldn't actually codify that into written advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Users as a group are too diverse to call them all stupid. Any one of your users is expert in something which you as a designer/programmer won't understand, and the user could call you &quot;stupid&quot; for not grasping something which seems &quot;obvious&quot; in his/her field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your goal is to make the end result easy for any user, no matter the technical background, to understand. That does require a lot of work on your part (and the part of your readers). If you object to the idea that part of your job is to make things easier for someone else, you should change jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T12:19:17.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2012-09-23T17:54:50.597" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that yes, it is acceptable. Obviously it's an oversimplification, and the average user of any particular Android app will be approximately as intelligent as the average human being. However, if you don't feel that you need to go into the rationale behind &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/0321344758&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Don't Make Me Think&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; simple design philosophies, then you may find &quot;users are stupid&quot; to be an effective shorthand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I highly doubt you will cause much offence to your readers with such shorthands, though some may find them unconvincing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4139" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T17:54:50.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2012-09-23T21:56:05.250" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's not okay. Why not simply give your advice as something to make an app great because its visual appeal and intuitiveness make it easy to use? As someone with some recent experience in an HCI/UI design group, as well as lifelong experience as a user of technology, I think it is the developer's job to make a great UI so the user can spend less time navigating and more time doing. People should be used to seamless design as the expected norm, not just something done to humor them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also like to point out that things &quot;blindingly obvious&quot; to a developer are only so because they made the thing; it might not be so obvious to another developer unfamiliar with the code. Think of UI design as retail; the customer is always right. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3810" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T21:56:05.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2012-09-24T06:27:29.743" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a problem here: Saying something like, &quot;users are stupid,&quot; makes &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; look ignorant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As other have said, the fault isn't always with the user; sometimes, a product is poorly designed. And, even though some users will search frantically for the &quot;ANY&quot; key, many other users are proficient, not dumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize you mean the statement tongue-in-cheek, but you risk coming across as shallow if you state it in such simplistic terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You need to position your UI elements in such a way that it is impossible to miss, and make its function so clear that &lt;em&gt;even the most novice users&lt;/em&gt; won't fail to understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastEditorUserId="3298" LastEditDate="2012-12-28T20:54:50.277" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T20:54:50.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2012-09-24T20:31:35.070" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think calling users as a general group stupid is appropriate in a development book. It would be appropriate in places where developers or customer-service reps vent to each other and try to top each other's &quot;who's had to help the biggest idiot?&quot; stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also not really relevant to the point you're making. Users might have any number of reasons for not noticing a feature that the developer thinks is obvious: they're in a hurry to finish a task, they have visual problems the developer didn't account for, they're not familiar with standard symbols or conventions, etc. Making things clear will help all those groups of people, whether they're smart or dumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem with &quot;Users are dumb&quot; is that it can breed an attitude of resentment and condescension, rather than the idea that your job is to help the user accomplish a task or do something fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4034" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T20:31:35.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2012-09-24T21:13:49.687" Score="7" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Nothing to do with intelligence&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would instead write something like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You should try to make it obvious how to use your app, recognizing&#xA;  that it is there to serve the user. Imagine a brain&#xA;  surgeon trying to use Skype to consult with a colleague. This user has &#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;limited time and attention&lt;/strong&gt;. She does not want to&#xA;  spend 30 seconds figuring out how to place a call. She has plenty of&#xA;  non-obvious questions to consider, and doesn't want &quot;how do I use&#xA;  this?&quot; to be one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Making your app intuitive will make it a&#xA;  pleasure to use, and will keep your users coming back to spend their&#xA;  valuable time using your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are limits to how easy you can make something. A surgeon's&#xA;  computerized tools will inherently require expertise, and the&#xA;  surgeon will be willing to invest time learning them. But even these&#xA;  tools shouldn't present unnecessary difficulty, and should let the&#xA;  surgeon focus mainly on the surgery and not on the tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The goal of good UI is to &lt;strong&gt;get out of the way&lt;/strong&gt; and help the user do a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4145" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T21:13:49.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2012-09-24T23:57:12.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well it is clearly an insult. So, if your book is supposed to have users as a target group, then it might not be wise to insult them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, to conclude from someone's trouble finding an icon somewhere (or similar struggles) that this person would be stupid... well, this does not make you look so bright either (if I may say so.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could, however, make an allusion, something more implicit that lets the reader conjecture your point of view, without directly insulting the average book reader. People that are then more 'on your side' will get what you mean and might smile to themselves and the usual - as you might say 'stupid' - reader does not even realize what you mean, and thus, does not feel insulted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4151" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T23:57:12.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6293" CreationDate="2012-09-25T13:19:14.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your reviewers are correct that &quot;don't&quot; is informal. Whether it's appropriate to academic writing or not is a harder question to answer. Google Scholar turns up 2 million hits for &quot;doesn't&quot; and 2,800,000 for &quot;can't,&quot; so clearly it's used in some academic contexts. (The results for &quot;don't&quot; weren't helpful, since Google flagged not just &quot;don't&quot; but the name &quot;Don T.&quot;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it's appropriate for your specific journal or conference depends on their overall style. I would pay attention to the other papers presented there to see how formal they are, as well as trying to find out what specific style guide the journal uses (maybe by asking their editor or checking the journal's website--frequently guidelines for writers are listed somewhere on a journal's page).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that might help identify whether it's a common convention is how many reviewers pointed it out. If one reviewer noted it, and three others didn't, it may well be one person's preference. But if multiple reviewers found it problematic, that suggests that it will seem out of place to the journal's audience as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4034" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T13:19:14.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6105" CreationDate="2012-09-25T13:59:32.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Chicago style, &quot;chapter&quot; is lowercased, even if it is used as a title. (An example from the Chicago Manual of Style Q&amp;amp;A page: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/Capitalization/Capitalization10.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/Capitalization/Capitalization10.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uwf.edu/edd/internal/documents/apa_faq.htm#chapteref&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA style&lt;/a&gt; also suggests lowercasing &quot;chapter.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mhhe.com/mayfieldpub/tsw/capitals.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mayfield Handbook of Technical &amp;amp;  Scientific Writing&lt;/a&gt;, on the other hand, recommends capitalizing &quot;references to specific figures, tables, chapters, sections, equations.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, it varies between different style guides. If the book you're working on isn't following a particular style guide, then it's up to your or the author's preference, as long as you're consistent. (I'd recommend making a note of decisions like this on a style sheet for the book--which could be as simple as a list in a Word document. That can help keep things consistent.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4034" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T13:59:32.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6370" CreationDate="2012-09-25T16:00:54.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's something that might help: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howmanysyllables.com/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.howmanysyllables.com/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You enter a word and it tells you how many syllables it has (Not terribly useful), but the really useful part is that it lists related words and phrases, by syllable. For example, enter fire, and you get everything from blaze (1 syllable) to conflagration (4 syllables).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside is that it's not separated by part of speech or different meanings, so the list for fire includes noun and verb meanings, and the verb meanings include launching or shooting something as well as firing someone from a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4034" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T16:00:54.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2012-09-25T19:04:03.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Users are not dumb; they are busy, and their attention is on things other than using your software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T19:04:03.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6393" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6398" CreationDate="2012-09-25T22:20:31.587" Score="5" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had a few friends review my unpublished manuscript, and they were in my target market and quite knowledgeable in English. What are some good ways to get some more reviews, of a decent level in know-how of what makes a fiction book tick? I don't have much $. Eg. Specific ideas about clubs, any good website for authors to exchange, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've looked around the web and found some companies that cost about $250 for reviewing your structure, spelling, grammar, etc. but they seem to have limited credentials. I'm avoiding publishers too. The current q/a I've found on this website is limited to completed books getting publicity reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4157" LastEditorUserId="4157" LastEditDate="2012-09-26T09:06:20.380" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T14:28:52.540" Title="Getting a Manuscript Reviewed" Tags="|reviews|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6339" CreationDate="2012-09-26T03:15:47.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, it all comes down to a very precise answer to a very simple question: Are you dealing with magic or advanced abilities that transcend the current human understanding of the universe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people will say that there's no difference between those two things. For such people, it's all fantasy, end of story. However, those people make up a fairly small percentage of the science fiction community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been a long history, in science fiction, of elements that are beyond our current understanding of the laws of the universe. Some are relatively minor (the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087175/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dreamscape&lt;/a&gt;) while some have been quite dramatic (the Q in Star Trek, or the Vorlons in Babylon 5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there have been stories with magical and religious elements that still had the look and feel of science fiction (Star Wars, and the &lt;em&gt;Warlock of Gramarye&lt;/em&gt; books by Christopher Stashef). Some people consider them fantasy, some don't. Does it really matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, I think the most important thing is to focus on writing a good story. Let people argue about labeling it once it's been printed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3979" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T03:15:47.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2012-09-26T10:38:27.717" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is never good practice to insult readers, consumers. If you write for pay, they write your paychecks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4164" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T10:38:27.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2012-09-26T11:06:10.203" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's completely your decision, and the decision you make will help contribute to your writing style (which is why some writers are successful and some are not). So, therefore, you're asking for an opinion on writing styles and what decision &lt;em&gt;we&lt;/em&gt; would make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mine is that you don't resort to this approach of establishing a light-hearted way of making the point that software should be developed with simplicity in mind. It's almost insulting and certainly shows a lack of imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also take into consideration the fact that, one day, you may choose to go down the avenue of writing for users of apps - I'd imagine it's not a good business move to unnecessarily call potential customers idiots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the reaction in this thread - that should be enough of an indication that calling users 'dumb' and 'idiots' can annoy people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By you asking this initial question - it's almost as if you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to take this approach - in which case, I don't like your writing style at all and would think of it as less articulate than most successful technical evangelists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4161" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T11:06:10.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6393" CreationDate="2012-09-26T14:28:52.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me include the caveat that you get what you pay for. A review from a friend or a writing group member isn't going to be of same quality as a professional edit by a long shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://writers.meetup.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writers Meetups&lt;/a&gt; can help you find a writing group in your area, as could Googling &quot;writers club [your area],&quot; as well as checking to see if there's a group at your local library or college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Writers Cafe website also has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writerscafe.org/forum/Test-Out-Your-Work/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a review forum&lt;/a&gt; where you can request reviews. Unfortunately, it looks like there are a lot more people interested in getting their work reviewed than people doing reviews. So, if you do post something there, I would recommend doing reviews for other people so that they'll review your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4034" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T14:28:52.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6399" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-26T17:57:20.250" Score="0" ViewCount="316" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that you need an agent to communicate publishing with big guys like Random House etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I also know that money can buy almost everything and surely can buy publishing of a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe a vanity publisher will be an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is: If I have enough money and give it to the vanity publisher, how much will they ask for publishing a fictional hardcover book that contains 500 pages including corrections, proofreading, cover design etc. and distribute it on the US market?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are price ranges for this goal? Can it be done with a $50,000 budget or do I need $100,000 or $500,000 or even more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to sell this book in all the big supermarkets, bookstores, Amazon and also as an ebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I am sure you are curious about my motivation. Well, let's say I have a personal reason for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I don't want to publish it via CreateSpace or Lulu, because I want different/better paper quality, books size, promotion/exposure and reach all major bookstores except other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any names or contact to good and reliable vanity publishers that are capable of what I have described above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4160" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-27T17:17:58.670" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T07:04:37.320" Title="Which well-established vanity publishers offer publishing for money and how much money is enough?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2012-09-26T22:48:37.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeglider.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;timeglider.com&quot;&gt;timeglider.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only drawback is that it's online, not on your desktop. So if your WiFi doesn't reach all the way to your favorite writing spot down the garden path you're screwed :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4166" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T22:48:37.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8940" CreationDate="2012-09-27T08:22:57.960" Score="5" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there good books that give guides to reviewing manuscripts for inclusion in scholarly journals? I'm working in the areas of computers, education, training, and psychology. There are some scattered resources out there, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nits62oGDHU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://advan.physiology.org/content/27/2/47.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, but I'd rather have a more unified resource (or resources).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4168" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T18:24:09.973" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T18:24:09.973" Title="Guidelines for reviewing journal manuscripts" Tags="|academic-writing|resources|publisher|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6399" CreationDate="2012-09-27T09:51:33.537" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;well-established vanity publishers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's an oxymoron and your problem. Vanity publishers are not well established. Bookstores avoid vanity publishers like the pope satanic masses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A vanity press tells you they distribute your book for money, but honestly, why should they care about your book &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you have paid them? The only one who cares about distributing your book is you (and a normal publishers who pays you for the right to publish your book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I see it, the solution to your problem is the thing you do not want: CreateSpace. If you become your own publisher and use this (or a similar) service to make your book available, you can sell it to the bookstores. You can get into the lists from which bookstores order their book. So you are creating your own &quot;vanity&quot; publishing house, but you run it like a real publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is a lot of work and I guess you can find people and pay them to do the work. Nonetheless you have to coordinate and supervise it. Again, only you care about your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To learn about how to be your own publisher I recommend reading how &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=3736&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;others have already done it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-09-27T17:22:58.913" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T17:22:58.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6139" CreationDate="2012-09-27T11:12:43.333" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are actually two books, specifically dedicated to writing for games, that I know of. The first is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1592730078/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;camp=1634&amp;amp;creative=19450&amp;amp;creativeASIN=1592730078&amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;tag=swinefever&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Creating Emotion in Games: The Art and Craft of Emotioneering&lt;/a&gt; by David Freeman. I've been to a couple of screenwriting classes with him and they are very intense and full of information. I've read this and I can tell you that it's worth buying but you will benefit from knowing a thing or two about writing first. The other one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/024081343X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;camp=1634&amp;amp;creative=19450&amp;amp;creativeASIN=024081343X&amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;tag=swinefever&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Write Your Way into Animation and Games&lt;/a&gt; by Christy Marx. Now I haven't read this one but I've read its predecessor, Writing for Animation, Comics, and Games and that's a great book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a bunch others, if you follow the links to Amazon and then scroll down to the 'people who viewed these also viewed these' widget you'll see them there, but I know that both of these books are written by people who are actually making a living in the games industry, and I'd be inclined to believe what they say because of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4169" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T11:12:43.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2012-09-27T16:10:30.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please write in whatever style is necessary to get the information across in a memorable way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please write in a way that makes the reader actually smarter, even if it makes you sound a little silly rather &quot;intelligent&quot; or &quot;professional&quot;.&#xA;( &lt;a href=&quot;http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/09/conversational_.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.communitywiki.org/en/PlainTalkDrama&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;b&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my favorite authors occasionally call users &quot;stupid&quot; ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/04/my_favorite_gra.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;c&lt;/a&gt; ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My users generally are pre-occupied with something else, or are stressed by time pressures, or have not yet learned or have forgotten what I think are some of the niftiest parts of my application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite all right to remind me that every user has occasional mental glitches, and it's my responsibility to make sure such momentary awkwardness doesn't lead to something horrible, like erasing a hard drive or leaking a credit-card number to the bad guys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also quite all right to remind me that all humans can keep only a finite number of things in their heads at any one time, so I need to design a system that works even when my users are unable to give it their full attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you tell me I can blame the mistakes my users make entirely on those users, and it's OK to do nothing to help them, you are doing them and me a disservice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1748" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T16:10:30.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6399" CreationDate="2012-09-27T16:13:54.843" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of problems in answering your question. The first has to do with finding a reputable vanity publisher who can and will successfully distribute your book to the big books stores you appear to desire. Unfortunately, pretty much all vanity publishers have a bad reputation, and that fact alone has resulted in pretty much all big name book stores refusing to stock any books they publish. It doesn't really matter how good your book might be, the bad reputation of the vanity publishers will prevent the book stores from taking a chance and trying to stock your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second problem is the actual process of getting your book into the book stores. Just like the big name publishers, the big name book stores have a reputation to uphold. They have to be very selective about which books they stock, because they not only have to protect their reputation, they also have to actually sell books, which is more important. They rely on the big name publishers to select the books most likely to sell, and they are much less likely to take a chance on a new and unproven writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite frankly, I agree with John Smithers that your best option may be to self-publish your book. If you are willing to spend that much money, then you should be able to accomplish your goals by going with self-publishing. If your book picks up a following and you can prove that people are interested in it, then every book store will want to carry it, even if it is self-published. Not only that, but you may find that some of the big name publishers are willing to take a chance on it as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, you need to write a great book. Then it is up to you to decide whether to go through an agent to get it published traditionally or just handle all of that yourself. Ultimately, you have to prove yourself to someone, whether it is an agent, an editor, or the fan base you build through self-publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T16:13:54.843" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6411" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6415" CreationDate="2012-09-28T13:57:10.943" Score="3" ViewCount="35747" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to email the author to get the complete paper. He's published a version with proof sketches, but I need the whole proofs. My draft:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subject : Paper Request&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. .....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read your paper entitled ............. and would very much like to acquire the complete manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you have not written it yet, I would appreciate it if you could send me the complete proofs of the theorems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking forward for your reply,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to add anything?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4175" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T21:10:57.890" Title="Email to request copy of paper" Tags="|email|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2014-11-13T21:39:14.593" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6411" CreationDate="2012-09-29T01:54:19.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is sufficient. It's polite, but why would this person share anything with you just because you asked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you need to explain who you are, how you found his work, and what you want to do with his work if he's willing to share it with you. Also, if you end up doing something which earns you money from your work which built on his work, are you willing to share that money with him? Perpetually?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just feel like you're asking a lot and not giving him any reason to say yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-09-29T01:54:19.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2012-09-30T01:02:29.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among developers, you can frequently find statements in casual chats&#xA;  saying stuff like users are stupid, if your software is idiot proof, a&#xA;  better idiot will be its user etc, all basically saying that users do&#xA;  not think the way we do, and what might be blindingly obvious to us,&#xA;  is not so obvious to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Users are stupid&quot; is a pernicious attitude that many software developers have, and the world would be a better place if it could be eliminated. (For what it's worth, I've worked as a software engineer; I have a Ph.D. in computer science; and I now do research in the area of human-computer interaction. I've seen this attitude before.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to business with an analogy: I've had to deal with medical doctors lately, on the patient side, and it's relatively easy to tell whether a doctor has a similar attitude: &quot;Patients are stupid.&quot; How do you think our interaction worked? Not as well as it might have. Ditto car mechanics, lawyers, accountants, and anyone with specialized expertise. Some software developers seem to mistake inexperience or ignorance or lack of interest for stupidity. &quot;I can program and you can't--you must be stupid.&quot; That sound ridiculous, just as it should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's a bad idea to encourage your readers to think of the users of their software as being stupid. It's not true, and in the end it will make it harder for them to take the user's perspective when building their systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3516" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T01:02:29.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6411" CreationDate="2012-09-30T01:13:49.210" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lauren Ipsum gives a good answer. I'll guess at the purpose of your query and suggest a message along these lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Dr. X,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I recently read your paper, Y, and I was very interested in the proofs&#xA;  you sketched. My research is in a related area: (here you describe&#xA;  your research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would it be possible for you to send me the complete proofs of the&#xA;  theorems? I would use these proofs to... (here you describe what you'd&#xA;  do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, Dr. X might be planning to do exactly what you'd like to do, so it would be useful to let him or her know what that is. You might suggest that the two of you could collaborate, but that depends to some extent on your current track record (i.e., it would be more attractive for Dr. X if your past work indicates that it would be a fruitful collaboration).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3516" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T01:13:49.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2012-10-01T07:46:53.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3124082?lookfor=title%3a%28Death%20Sentence%29&amp;amp;offset=1&amp;amp;max=532&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Death Sentence: The Decay Of Public Language&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, by &lt;strong&gt;Don Watson&lt;/strong&gt; is an incredibly astute and witty look at the abuses of language in modern business-speak. It's not explicitly about how to write well, but it does point out what &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to do, and will help develop critical thinking about writing in general. It's also very entertaining :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3848" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T07:46:53.357" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-10-01T07:46:53.357" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6418" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6420" CreationDate="2012-10-01T17:11:20.263" Score="8" ViewCount="2615" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am getting really tired of getting emails and PowerPoint presentations in which half of the words are bold and underlined. There is also excessive use of exclamation points, all caps, and overly strong wording. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to send them a link to someplace authoritative that states that their writing style is tacky. Is there anything like that out there?  I would even settle for a blog post somewhere so long as it argues the point well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4190" LastActivityDate="2020-11-04T02:13:52.847" Title="Is there some guideline that I can point to about the overuse of bold and underline?" Tags="|style|email|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6418" CreationDate="2012-10-01T19:08:25.937" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most-authoritative page I've seen on this topic is part of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://wmich.edu/writing/about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;style guide&lt;/a&gt; at Western Michigan University.  It first points out that most of the recommendations in the guide “are consistent with AP style, which is the standard for the styleguides of most universities and for writing for the Web”, and later lists the following as errors to be avoided, because they create print and electronic publications that are unattractive and difficult to read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;•     Using ALL CAPITAL LETTERS&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;•    Capitalizing Common Nouns&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;•    Underlining words to create emphasis&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;•    Placing words within quotation marks “to create emphasis”&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;•    Using bold face or italic type &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;to create emphasis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;•   Concluding sentences with more than one exclamation point!!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A relevant &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.divinecaroline.com/32/68556-red-pen-five-things-really/2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog entry&lt;/a&gt; (part 2 of a “Five Things That Really Annoy Me” article by “divine caroline” gives &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EMPHASIS!!!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; pride of place.  It says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a reason this is number one [on list of annoyances] There is nothing more agonizing than reading something that is overemphasized [...] This is how it looks to the copy editor…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then presents examples of egregious all-caps, bold, and underlining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastEditorUserId="47512" LastEditDate="2020-11-04T02:13:52.847" LastActivityDate="2020-11-04T02:13:52.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6418" CreationDate="2012-10-02T03:17:12.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a website dedicated to business email etiquette called BusinessEmailEtiquette.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has a newsletter-type format that is both informative and fun to read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessemailetiquette.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.businessemailetiquette.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your email etiquette offenders might not mind being chided with a friendly note from you to go along with the link. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4062" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T03:17:12.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6421" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-01T22:04:18.047" Score="0" ViewCount="2937" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been writing high school English paper on a novel in MLA format.  Is there any rule about using past participle or past imperfect?  Throughout the essay there have been many places that can be changed from past to present, but there are some areas where there seems to be no way to changed to present.  This has gone unchanged in revisions by other, meanwhile other verbs have been changed by other people to present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;after forty years pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was corrected by a writing teacher (not my own) to &quot;passed&quot;.  I am wondering if this is correct, and if there are any exceptions to the rule that past tense cannot be used in MLA formatted essays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="None" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T10:21:54.060" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T10:21:54.060" Title="Problems with past tenses in formal paper on a novel with MLA Format" Tags="|style|mla|tenses|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6399" CreationDate="2012-10-03T07:04:37.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where are you based? US, UK, Australia?&#xA;This   will help with providing you with some answers. &#xA;Also this article may steer you away from some vanity publishers. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mbspress.com/new-articlepage-7/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mbspress.com/new-articlepage-7/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4193" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T07:04:37.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6425" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-03T16:57:00.457" Score="5" ViewCount="4442" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just purchased Scrivener yesterday and am trying to get it figured out.  After importing my manuscript, I cut and pasted it, separating it into the 23 chapters that are linked under &quot;Manuscript&quot; in the binder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some reason, when I go to Project: Project Statistics it shows only 158 words.  My entire manuscript is roughly 97,000.  I think it's only calculating statistics on the title page? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if I did something wrong when splitting it into chapters?  Or if I should've copied to paste it into the separate breaks instead of cut?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone please help me understand how to fix this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4195" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T18:18:33.253" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T18:18:33.253" Title="Scrivener project statistics is showing an incorrect word count" Tags="|novel|software|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6425" CreationDate="2012-10-03T18:43:02.180" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You probably need to check the Include in Compile checkbox in the Notes Inspector (View → Inspect → Notes; ⌃⌥⌘H)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 21.3 in the manual is about goals and statistics tracking by the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T18:43:02.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7185" CreationDate="2012-10-05T00:54:35.053" Score="7" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2005, Alexander Genaud created a &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/alexgenaud/Poetic-License&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Poetic License&lt;/a&gt; based on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://mit-license.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MIT license&lt;/a&gt;. It consisted of 2 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerick_%28poetry%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Limericks&lt;/a&gt; which attempted to distill the already meager license jargon into a fun, simple, and tiny text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(c) 2005 Alexander E Genaud&#xA;&#xA;This work ‘as-is’ we provide.&#xA;No warranty express or implied.&#xA;We’ve done our best,&#xA;to debug and test.&#xA;Liability for damages denied.&#xA;&#xA;Permission is granted hereby,&#xA;to copy, share, and modify.&#xA;Use as is fit,&#xA;free or for profit.&#xA;These rights, on this notice, rely.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later on I found this cute alteration, and decided that the wording did not afford as much protection as it possibly could have. I submitted an &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/alexgenaud/Poetic-License/pull/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;update request&lt;/a&gt; but was denied because I broke the rules of Limerick prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast forward a year and I decided &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/Xeoncross/Poetic-License/blob/master/Liability.md&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;to try again&lt;/a&gt;. I would like to know if this time I have successfully created a proper Limerick. Suggestions and improvements are also welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(c) 2011 Company Name&#xA;&#xA;Permission is granted hereby,&#xA;to copy, share, and modify.&#xA; To use as is fit,&#xA; free or for profit.&#xA;These rights, on this notice, rely.&#xA;&#xA;This work ‘as-is’ we provide.&#xA;No warranty express or implied.&#xA; Denied is our liability,&#xA; for damage, tort, or responsibility.&#xA;Therefore all claims are defied.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I also need someone to add the correct tags to this post since I can't.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4201" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T04:45:13.923" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T04:45:13.923" Title="Converting the MIT License into a limerick" Tags="|legal|poetry|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6428" CreationDate="2012-10-05T01:26:52.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first half is a correct limerick.&#xA;The second, not so much.&#xA;Remember the style/syllable construction of limericks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4202" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T01:26:52.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6431" CreationDate="2012-10-05T11:13:50.200" Score="10" ViewCount="5695" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished the first draft of a novel I'm writing. Right now, it has 17000 words. I've heard that novels these days range from 60,000 to 150,000 words, so I'm a little bit worried (I'm hoping to have 200~300 pages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this normal? (I didn't stop and edit any single line. And I didn't describe actions, dialogues, and settings with much detail, because my priority was to get the story done).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I go back and add the details before starting the second draft?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="4062" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T00:42:36.830" LastActivityDate="2020-05-31T18:13:39.603" Title="Is the first draft of a novel usually shorter than the finished work?" Tags="|editing|novel|creative-writing|getting-started|first-draft|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6430" CreationDate="2012-10-05T13:50:49.097" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;At first, I thought this is a bit of a tricky question.  Normally, I would say that about half the words that are in your first draft probably shouldn't make it to the second.  Then they are usually replaced by others (and then the same thing happens again for your third draft (and fourth (and ninth))).  But if you are lacking all detail, then I think you would be hard-pressed to say you have a first draft.  Perhaps you just have a very thorough outline or a treatment (to borrow a screenwriting term).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's great that you haven't stopped to edit.  That is the easiest way to derail progress.  If you feel good about the direction you are heading and are enjoying what you are doing, then don't change a thing.  No one should ever read your first draft anyway, so you could use hieroglyphics if it kept you moving forward.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, the last thing you want to do is get bogged down by draft numbers and word counts.  Just continue until you are &quot;done&quot; with this stage.  Then you can go back, see where you need more, identify the words that aren't pulling their own weight and kill them, and fill the plot holes you inevitably left in your wake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastEditorUserId="181" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T21:06:10.757" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T21:06:10.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6430" CreationDate="2012-10-05T14:27:57.063" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question is: It depends on how the writer works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a question that's impossible to answer in a general sense, since different writers will approach a story in different ways. Some will rough things out and add detail later on, some will dump everything down on the page and trim it down later on. Without seeing a manuscript, it's difficult to comment on it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that the story you're telling simply isn't a novel at all. It could also be that you've only written part of the story. But whichever of these is the case, when fleshing out this story, I highly recommend against adding things to simply pad your word count. Let the story find its own length. If it's too short to be a novel, so be it; you can find another, novel-length story later on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But maybe what you have is closer to a very detailed outline with notes. In that case, go ahead and fill things in and let the book find its length that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T14:27:57.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6434" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6463" CreationDate="2012-10-05T15:16:48.610" Score="2" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Ph.D. student in engineering, so most of my writing fits into a fairly strict idiom: the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMRAD&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IMRaD&lt;/a&gt; (Introduction, Methodology, Results, and Discussion). In general, I like to use an outline to help structure the paper and each section of the paper. So I will create something like the following list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Introduction&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;blah&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;blah&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Methodology&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;blah&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;blah&#xA;  ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I do not always label the sections so strictly by the IMRaD format, this works as a good example for my problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get the content of the outline for each section if my paper, I usually do what I call a brain dump; i.e. I write every possible topic and content item that I can imagine falling under this section. I then try to reorganize the pieces and make something coherent. In theory, I suppose this process should produce a nice outline. In practice, however, as I start writing from my outline I end up realizing that I forgot to explain some crucial details, and then I need to go back and revise my outline to take these into account. Normally, I would accept this as part of the revision process, but I would like to help work out some more of these kinks by adding a step to my outline process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to try some sort graphical or visual outline, either in parallel or in series with my textual outline, to help show which ideas or topics need to be explained first. This ordering will help ensure that I am not using a term without defining it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question is:&lt;/strong&gt; How can I coordinate the visual outline and the textual outline in a time efficient manner? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can work on a computer or by hand. I don't really have a preference, except that I will always use a computer to generate the bulk of my prose. Most of my final writing will be done using a text editor (such as EMacs) to write my document using LaTeX (a system for typesetting that is particularly math friendly), so systems that are compatible or complementary to these would be ideal, but it is not required. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4118" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T21:21:41.850" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T21:21:41.850" Title="How to combine a visual and textual outline" Tags="|technical-writing|organization|scientific-publishing|outline|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6436" CreationDate="2012-10-05T15:31:52.900" Score="3" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;p&gt;The bulk of my writing consists of technical papers, reports, notes, and memos. Because of the mathematical nature of my work I spend a lot of time writing definitions, and it is very important that I define terminology in the right order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally write from an outline, but often my first draft of an outline has a lot of flaws of a particular type. The type of flaw is where the outline talks about some topic or terminology before it has been defined. In my first revision of the outline, I would like to try an indicate the dependencies of a particular item. How can I clearly denote some of these dependencies in my outline without making the outline cluttered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Describe problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Define parameters and decision variables.&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Cost function&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Time function&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Probability distributions&#xA;  ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, suppose that the time and cost functions both depend on the probability distribution, what is an effective way to indicate that, in a way integral to the outline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4118" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T20:13:51.757" Title="How to represent dependencies in outlines" Tags="|technical-writing|outline|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6435" CreationDate="2012-10-05T17:16:04.167" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;After you write your first draft, you will see from actual use what terms are dependent on other terms. That will allow you to reorder your definitions and put the ones you need first in front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're allowed to vary from your outline, and you're allowed to revise your outline. If you wrote a paper as you outlined it above and then realized that Cost and Time are dependent on Probability... then move Probability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The outline is a guide to help you write, not the end document. Your final piece doesn't have to be mirrored in your outline. You can rewrite the outline to match the end report if you feel strongly about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your question is &quot;how do I physically represent this relationship?&quot; you could make Cost and Time sub-bullets of Probability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T17:16:04.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6430" CreationDate="2012-10-05T17:29:16.753" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And I didn't describe actions, dialogues, and settings with much detail. Should I go back and add the details before starting the second draft?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen your writing. The answer is yes. :) (And I mean that in the nicest way. You work very hard. You do need to flesh out your dialogue with descriptions.) Go back and review these two questions of yours and my answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2531/has-this-dialogue-enough-suspense-to-engage-the-reader/2533#2533&quot;&gt;Has this dialogue enough suspense to engage the reader?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1984/first-conversation-scenes-ive-written-looking-for-errors-conventions-and-imp&quot;&gt;First conversation scenes I&amp;#39;ve written (looking for errors, conventions, and improvements according to writing standards)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T17:29:16.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6428" CreationDate="2012-10-06T17:13:07.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first limerick is fine.  For the 2nd limerick, try these changes to the last three lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Denied is our liability,&quot; has 2 too many syllables.  Try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There's no liability,&quot; or &quot;Denied: liability,&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot; for damage, tort, or responsibility.&quot; has 4 too many syllables so try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;for tort, damage, responsibility&quot; (you'll have to mash that last word a bit to make it fit but reversing tort and damage picks up a syllable)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last line has 1 too many syllables.  If you can live with this, contract &quot;warranty&quot; (3 syllables) to &quot;war'n'ty&quot; (2 syllables):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;No war'n'ty express or implied.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what I came up with is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This work ‘as-is’ we provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore all claims are defied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Denied: liability,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for tort, damage, responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No war'n'ty express or implied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phew!  :-) Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4062" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T17:13:07.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6430" CreationDate="2012-10-06T22:09:59.653" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the exact same problem with my first work, so let me tell you how I dealt with the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was trying to aim for 60k, but my book ended at 20k. There were several reasons the book came up short. The main was that I had tried to write the book without any thinking- sort of like the pantsing or discovery approach (see this &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4027/what-is-a-discovery-writer&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt;). Like you, I did not stop at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that this approach did not work for me. While I hate plotting in detail, I found that I have to do some plotting. I usually write 20-30 bullet points scenes, which I then try to flesh out. Since I had done no plotting at all, my steam ran out, and the book finished at only 20k.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other reason was, the book was mainly dialogue and action, with sparse description. Now I try to flesh out my work. The best way I found is to imagine you are in the scene you are writing, and then write the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third reason was- I had too few characters. If you only have 2-3 main characters, they can only have so many problems, and your book can only be so long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now , to answer your question, yes for some people, 1st drafts are much shorter than the final works. This advice flies against the accepted dogma/canon, that says you have to write a long 1st draft and then cut it down. For a few us (the silent suffering minority :) ) this advice is not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I aim for 60K, my 1st draft comes out at just 40-50k. I add another 10-20K in my other drafts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in your case, the gap is huge. I can tell you what I did with my 1st project. 1st, I added more characters, with their own problems. I also add more scenes, taking another project I was working on and merging it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do a rough calculation. If you write scenes that are 1200 words long, and you need a 60K book, that means you need about 50 scenes. You can be very flexible about how you use the scenes. If I plan 50 scenes, I usually throw more than half away, and add new scenes as I'm writing. However, I find that while the plot comes out by writing, I do need some scenes or bullet points to guide me towards the end, or else my muse gets bored and types &quot;The End.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice to you is: Put the book away, for at least a month, then come back to it. Read through it, and figure out where you can add more plot. Can a minor sub-plot be expanded? Can the minor characters be given more important roles? What else can make the hero's life difficult(eg, he gets kidnapped by aliens while trying to save his girlfriend from the Mafia)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write down 40-50 scenes, and then start expanding your book. While the task may seem daunting, my experience is it gets easier as you get along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T22:09:59.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6443" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6444" CreationDate="2012-10-08T07:33:10.877" Score="6" ViewCount="350" Body="&lt;p&gt;I plan to self publish a book (non fiction). Currently I have 150.000 characters, but when it's done I will end up with around 250.000. I am not a native english speaker but write the book in english, so I want to pay somebody to edit my book. Although my target audience are software developers, it is an &quot;pretty easy&quot; read for everybody. It is basically non-technical, more explaining &quot;how to&quot; work instead of &quot;how to solve technical problems&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have learned you can have an editor in two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Editors for proof reading, grammar correction etc only&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Editors who does 1) plus giving tipps on improving the readability, caring on logical errors etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have already learned how I might find a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2529/how-do-i-find-an-affordable-editor&quot;&gt;native speaking editor&lt;/a&gt;. I would like to calculate the expenses for my book but do not know how much an Editor takes for such a job and how long it would take to complete it. Some raw estimations from your experience would be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because comments to this question explained me that nobody calculates in Characters (except me :-)), I counted words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current document has around 30.000 words, but I expect around 50.000 when it is ready. When I copy the text into Word for Mac, it shows me 49 pages. I tend to think they will become around 90 when I am done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4209" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T09:42:48.247" Title="How much $ to calculate for an Editor" Tags="|editing|getting-started|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6443" CreationDate="2012-10-08T12:59:34.247" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to get some quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that sounds like I'm dodging the question, but I'm not. My method, for example, is to work on a manuscript for one hour and use that as gauge to estimate the rest of the work. For some writers, that's 15 pages an hour; for others it's 30. So my quote for the &quot;15 pages an hour&quot; person is twice as much as the other one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some editors have flat rates: $50 an hour, 50 cents a page. Some will charge you by the project: $800 no matter how long it takes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You won't know unless you start asking for estimates from actual editors who might work with you. I couldn't give you an estimate for your non-fiction ESL work without looking at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T12:59:34.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6445" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6462" CreationDate="2012-10-08T13:08:27.013" Score="6" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;I scripted a TV ad with an agency and they required me to work through the night on the shoot as opposed to during the day as I usually would. Should I charge a premium rate for the inconvenience of the work being at night time? Is it standard practice to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4199" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T21:23:00.070" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T20:26:10.720" Title="As a freelance writer, should I charge more for inconvenient time worked?" Tags="|copywriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6447" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-08T20:11:47.100" Score="2" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I freelance remotely for overseas advertising agencies as a writer? Is there a site that caters for such a thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea excites me and as a writer, I'm able to liaise with clients and agencies via email. Do you know of a way to branch out like this? I'm currently involved with the South African advertising industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4199" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-10-09T00:29:07.457" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T19:58:21.893" Title="How can I freelance remotely for overseas advertising agencies as a writer? " Tags="|freelance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6448" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6461" CreationDate="2012-10-09T03:01:43.107" Score="3" ViewCount="2977" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm asking this question in the interest of getting a high score on IELTS writing, specifically Task 2, the 40-minute 250-word one. My primary confusion is whether to write subjectively or objectively when writing an essay (in the test).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In TOEFL, a typical essay topic &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Do you like to eat out or eat at home?&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; encourages you to write subjectively. However, IELTS writing topics usually have a more objective tone, like this one (in the book Cambridge IELTS 7):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;As most people spend a major part of their adult life at work, job satisfaction is an important element of individual wellbeing. What factors contribute to job satisfaction?&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's argumentative. I recall college professors saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;subjective phrases like 'I think', 'to me', 'as far as I'm concerned'&#xA;should NOT be appearing in an argumentative essay&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the sample essay in the book contains the sentence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I think it is not unrealistic to promote ....&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other sample essays contain phrases like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I personally think that some people do have talents...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I agree that any child can be taught...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I think to tackle the problem of pollution ...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All sample essays in the Cambridge books seemed to be using subjective tones consistently. The book did mention that these models are prepared by examiners as examples of &lt;strong&gt;very good answers&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's the other book series &amp;quot;IELTS Practice Tests+&amp;quot; by Longman / Pearson. This series didn't provide that many sample essays. But the ones it did provide are written purely objectively. In the sample essay on the &amp;quot;How to encourage employees&amp;quot; topic, no &amp;quot;I&amp;quot; or other subjective phrases are used. The book did mention this is Band 9, which is the highest score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been trained to write objectively. I'm wondering generally speaking, for argumentative topics, is it really unprofessional to use subjective tones? And does tone actually matter in English tests for foreigners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4213" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T15:50:23.113" Title="Writing subjectively or objectively? (IELTS writing)" Tags="|academic-writing|essay|tone|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6448" CreationDate="2012-10-09T12:17:27.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will need to do both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that you are doing IELTS Academic, writing task 1 will be analytical, a task based on some graphic or pictorial information. You will be asked to write a descriptive report, of around 150 words, using the information provided in the question. As you are using facts from the question, this answer will be mostly objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing task 2 is usually a statement that you are expected to agree with or disagree with. You will be asked to produce a written argument of around 250 words on the given topic, clearly organised, with examples to support your points. As this is basically argumentative, the answer will be mostly subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3624" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T12:17:27.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6454" CreationDate="2012-10-09T07:03:28.277" Score="19" ViewCount="6911" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in the US, &quot;will&quot; has replaced &quot;shall&quot; in most every context, with the notable exception of the &quot;legal shall&quot;. Shall is used instead of will in legal documents to indicate a sense of obligation or requirement; e.g. &quot;the defendant shall vacate the premises by October 16&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In software, requirements documents and specification documents serve close to the same purpose as the aforementioned legal documents; does this mean shall should be used in a similar fashion as a result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1290" OwnerDisplayName="Billy ONeal" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T18:16:40.993" LastActivityDate="2019-03-16T21:38:21.243" Title="Should one use the legal &quot;shall&quot; in requirements documents and specification documents?" Tags="|technical-writing|specifications|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6450" CreationDate="2012-10-09T07:16:11.467" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shall is still used in software documentation. It was a subject of discussion in my software engineering course and it's also present in field documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example can be found in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=2&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CCoQFjAB&amp;amp;url=http://www.jsf.mil/downloads/documents/JSF_AV_C%2b%2b_Coding_Standards_Rev_C.doc&amp;amp;ei=HdFzUNytHYWC8AT25IDoDA&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEj7b1ekelyoc2_TlJ_T2SJe74dJw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joint Strike Fighter's C++ coding standard&lt;/a&gt;. In section 4.2 under Rules on page 11. It specifically defines the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4.2.1 &lt;strong&gt;Should, Will, and Shall Rules&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three types of rules: &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;shall&lt;/strong&gt; rules.  Each rule contains either a &lt;strong&gt;“should”&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;“will”&lt;/strong&gt; or a &lt;strong&gt;“shall”&lt;/strong&gt; in bold letters indicating its type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should&lt;/strong&gt; rules are advisory rules.  They strongly suggest the recommended way of doing things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will&lt;/strong&gt; rules are intended to be mandatory requirements. It is expected that they will be followed, but they do not require verification. They are limited to non-safety-critical requirements that cannot be easily verified (e.g., naming conventions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shall&lt;/strong&gt; rules are mandatory requirements.  They must be followed and they require verification (either automatic or manual).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at the very least, within the last decade for government contract work, shall does have a great deal of force. I suspect it's still much the same in the private sector, though perhaps not nearly as strict in the case of projects not involving multi-billion dollar avionics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4217" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T07:26:14.877" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6450" CreationDate="2012-10-09T08:01:58.287" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt&quot;&gt;RFC 2119&lt;/a&gt; defines the meanings of various words used in specifications (such as other RFCs). It defines SHALL as a synonym of MUST. I think it's preferable to use MUST, as it conveys the meaning more clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4225" OwnerDisplayName="Michael Borgwardt" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T08:01:58.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6450" CreationDate="2012-10-09T10:03:48.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You certainly &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; use &quot;shall&quot; in this fashion, and it would not be a &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; thing, but don't expect your programmers to know the difference. I never saw this usage during fifteen years of writing code from formal specs, so probably a lot of other coders haven't either. If you have a use for the distinction, go ahead, but be careful to explain what you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="mjfgates" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T10:03:48.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6450" CreationDate="2012-10-09T10:25:31.460" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 1: use RFC 2119&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;RFC 2119&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MUST   This word, or the terms &amp;quot;REQUIRED&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;SHALL&amp;quot;, mean that the definition is an absolute requirement of the specification.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also the most current use of the word &amp;quot;shall&amp;quot; from what I've seen in the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 2: use present tense&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the requirements are mostly mandatory, you may also want to formulate the requirements in present tense, without &amp;quot;must&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;shall&amp;quot; or other keywords. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The undo history is preserved when the application is closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The requirement clearly states, by its present tense, that the requirement is mandatory. The history should be preserved, and if it's not, the software fails to pass this requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such way of writing the requirements allows them to be slightly more readable, without losing their mandatory property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 3: use your own conventions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you may define your own terminology in the documents you write. That's why most documentation starts by defining the terms, including &amp;quot;must&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;can&amp;quot;, etc. For example, HTTP specification contains such section: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec1.html#sec1.2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1.2 Requirements&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key words &amp;quot;MUST&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;MUST NOT&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;REQUIRED&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;SHALL&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;SHALL NOT&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;SHOULD&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;SHOULD NOT&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;RECOMMENDED&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;MAY&amp;quot;, and &amp;quot;OPTIONAL&amp;quot; in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [34].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An implementation is not compliant if it fails to satisfy one or more of the MUST or REQUIRED level requirements for the protocols it implements. An implementation that satisfies all the MUST or REQUIRED level and all the SHOULD level requirements for its protocols is said to be &amp;quot;unconditionally compliant&amp;quot;; one that satisfies all the MUST level requirements but not all the SHOULD level requirements for its protocols is said to be &amp;quot;conditionally compliant.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a convention which differs a lot from the generally accepted practice is still a bad idea, and must be done only if you have serious reasons to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3067" OwnerDisplayName="MainMa" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T20:01:57.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6450" CreationDate="2012-10-09T10:58:00.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With requirements, shall / shall not. Nothing else. &quot;Shall&quot; is a very specific; it's a keyword I can search for. Must, must not, will, will not: That's for the explanatory text. (And no shalls in the explanatory text. That defeats making &quot;shall&quot; a search term.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How not to do it: I helped write a proposal long ago where the RFP had shall requirements, should requirements, shall options, and should options. What a mess! A viable proposal had to meet all of the shall requirements and the shall options, and had to address all of the should requirements (&quot;we can't do this&quot; was one way to address those things). Should options were optional. The base offered price had to cover all of the requirements (shall and should); options had to be priced separately and individually. We didn't win; nobody did. Someone high up eventually put a stop to that convoluted RFP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With tests, shall and should don't belong. The test criteria says how to interpret the results of the test: Did the test pass or did it fail? The criteria might be plain English, a boolean, math, but not shall. There's no reason to say shall. That the test must eventually pass is implied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="David Hammen" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T11:03:19.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6456" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-09T15:54:25.880" Score="10" ViewCount="1191" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm preparing some material because I have the intention of writing a book. I'd do this in every type of work, but considering that I'm writing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_fiction&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crime Fiction&lt;/a&gt;, this is even more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've decided already some things: main characters, victim, murderer, even the motive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I've come to a great wall that is now blocking my work: &lt;strong&gt;the setting&lt;/strong&gt;. I've checked around in many sites and there's who suggests to go with an invented town or get material on real cities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't except you to suggest me what to do, but I'd like you to give me some tools to help me decide. There's the city layout, then the actual laws in force in that country (I don't want to set it in my country), etc. So, what should I be considering? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4219" LastEditorUserId="4219" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T18:51:01.243" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T23:44:05.700" Title="Deciding the setting: real or invented?" Tags="|fiction|planning|setting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6450" CreationDate="2012-10-09T18:03:28.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background: I speak from the viewpoint of roughly thirty years experience, almost all of it in the defense industry (except for two years in telecom, at Nortel Networks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definition:  A requirement is something that you are required to verify.  You may verify by analysis, by demonstration, by test, by mathematical proof, or some other approved way, but you absolutely must verify that your product meets that requirement.  If your product doesn't meet that requirement, or if you have not &lt;strong&gt;PROVEN&lt;/strong&gt; that your product meets the requirement, you aren't done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the defense industry, at least, a statement in a requirements specification is considered to be a requirement if and only if it uses the word &quot;shall&quot;.  There are no exceptions whatsoever to this rule.  If it said &quot;shall&quot;, it was a requirement, if it didn't, it wasn't.  Period.  End of sentence, end of paragraph, end of chapter, end of book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes it VERY easy to decide whether a particular statement in a requirements specification is or is not something that must be tested, or otherwise verified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RFC2119 formalized terms of art long used for writing RFCs.  At the time the original RFCs were written, long before RFC2119 was penned, the original RFC writers, who were very familiar with defense industry specification conventions, were trying very hard to avoid appearing as though they were writing requirements specifications for the net as a whole.  The very name, &quot;Request For Comments&quot;, was chosen for that specific reason, to avoid dictating to the other researchers.  (Herding cats is a lot easier than herding researchers.)  Hence they carefully avoided using the word &quot;shall&quot;, and used &quot;must&quot; instead.  The idea was the same: if you wanted to write e.g. a Telnet client, and claim it conformed to the Telnet RFCs, you were required to comply with the &quot;must&quot; statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During my short stint in telecom, I did have to read RFCs, and I did have to read and write non-RFC requirements specifications.  The RFCs all used &quot;must&quot; to denote requirements.  The requirements specifications all used &quot;shall&quot; for that purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were in your shoes, and writing non-RFC requirements specifications, I'd use &quot;shall&quot;, and only &quot;shall&quot;, to denote requirements and only requirements, for the reasons described above.  Similarly, if you're writing RFCs, use the RFC 2119 language, and incorporate RFC 2119 in your RFC as the other guy described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4220" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T18:03:28.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6456" CreationDate="2012-10-09T20:06:09.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever works best for your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can make it work in a real setting and you know or can research the setting well enough to make it work, do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story requires something which doesn't exist, is or is not against a particular law, needs a river to be here rather than there, etc. then invent a place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T20:06:09.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6456" CreationDate="2012-10-09T21:48:31.220" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Setting' is not the same as 'place' &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; 'world.' All of which are close enough in definition but since you said crime fiction I think what you meant is the setting, even though you go on to say 'the place' but let's cut to the chase and see what's going on here: &lt;em&gt;Edit: I swear I'd read 'place' somewhere in the Q!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Place:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This's a subset of 'setting.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 'place' of your story should only be unique within its world (also called history or timeline) so that it's just one of several places that exist in that world. So it could be the 'State of Janedonia', in the US but still be considered &lt;em&gt;not real.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? Because the 'invented' place automatically places a screen between the reader and what they already know about where this place should be (here, the US); the reader knows what to &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; because you gave the cue that the place is &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; a real place but &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; it, but they still wouldn't feel cheated if some things are a bit off from real life in the place in which you set you story; (the big place being the US, the small 'focal' place being the State of Janedonia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Setting:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This's the one you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A step up from the 'place' of the story is its 'setting.' The setting is, figuratively, four-dimensional while the place is only 3-d. So you have time travel with important/famous/well-known/highlight points in history and culture that could be easily adapted. You would need to do the research to accurately describe, say, the Cold War era but the reader will, again, know what to expect. Although the template here is both bigger than the place's and more distant in feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 'setting' shouldn't be radically different from the norms of your world, though. You could set the story in a space center where the protagonists never contact Earth, but it's still 'within our world.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings us to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;World:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This's a superset of 'setting.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you can make radical changes, make magic replace electricity as the driving force of the tools of the inhabitants of your world, or make it analytic much as physics is here. But with differences; for example, the protagonists can invent new spells and put new rules that change how their world works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then make us a parallel universe where we're nearing the same level of sophistication with technology, except that technology is separate from us here while in the other universe all the people's machines and other contraptions are driven by the mere fact that their bodies/souls/essences exist and have infinite energy in the form of magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even social norms can be changed here. You only have to show it. Then subtly point it out so no one misses it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on what you're going for, whether it be suspense or build-up suspense (where you hit the readers hard and hook them/or start slow and expose), you will want to show the reader how your outer most 'content-bubble' is different from their world. If you're writing fantasy, you'll start by painting the world, if it's science fiction then the setting (sometimes the world) would be the starting point, and if it's comedy or romance then most of the time it's the place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crime fiction I find to be much more intriguing if the setting is exotic in itself. But again you might be going for the fear-factor in these stories (as opposed to the detective journey taking the spotlight) where a different setting could be either a blessing or a curse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T13:20:34.877" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6456" CreationDate="2012-10-09T22:58:25.370" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do both. You can start from an existing city (maybe give it a new name) and change the areas which do not fit (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_%28series%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;GTA&lt;/a&gt; comes into mind).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have already an idea for the setting like &quot;Oh, that should play in New Orleans&quot; because of the (cliched) reputation of that city, then go with that. Your New Orleans does not need to be square inch by square inch like the real one. You want to set atmosphere in your book, not a geographical map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally if you can't decide, make plans for both options, what you have to do to accomplish the goal. Then pick the more frightening. The bigger the road block in your mind, the more your subconscious wants to get over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T22:58:25.370" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6448" CreationDate="2012-10-10T08:54:54.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my understanding of tests like the IELTS, it doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the essay is to see if you can string together a few sentences in a paragraph, while following basic grammar and spelling. The goal is to see if you can express yourself in the written format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the subjective form is hence better, as it allows you to better put forward your own viewpoints. The objective form can get a bit dry and mechanical, the sort of thing a computer  could write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is why the book  says the subjective answers are excellent. You have to give your own views, you cannot hide behind formal language. Using the subjective tone forces you to put your own views forward, with passion and feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But ultimately, it doesn't matter. From my own knowledge of the IELTS, the examiners are looking for a clear and coherent essay. If you can write objectively without sounding like a machine or a photocopy of some essay you read online, go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T08:54:54.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6445" CreationDate="2012-10-10T20:06:14.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For anyone ever wondering, I got some solid feedback from two freelancer friends that work in advertising and for advertising freelancers, no matter the discipline or hourly fee dependent on weighting; here's what they advise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you work on a Friday outside of regular work hours - normal hourly rate.&#xA;Saturdays - X 1.5 normal hourly rate.&#xA;Sunday - X 2 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's justified based on the value of the personal time it's cutting into. Friday is still considered part of the week and so, normal rates apply. Saturdays and Sundays are your downtime so the rate is greater. Sunday is the highest rate because it's considered by some to be sacred and for others, the day you have to prepare for the upcoming week. These rates conditions are somewhat similar to other industry practices e.g. Legal. The rates are justified by the the reputation of freelancers supplying an extremely fast turn-around in emergencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4199" LastEditorUserId="4199" LastEditDate="2012-10-11T12:32:16.920" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T12:32:16.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6434" CreationDate="2012-10-10T20:21:59.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use mind mapping software (Freemind, Freeplane) to organize all of my writing projects.  Blocks of text can be imported and then moved around as needed.  You get a visual representation of your outline, as well as quick access to any part of your content.  Areas that are completed, need content, or are under review are easy to mark with visual icons.  When complete, the entire work can be dumped to a Word document or copied out to Framemaker or whatever software you are using to receive final formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4229" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T20:21:59.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5352" CreationDate="2012-10-10T21:26:10.537" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are confusing a style guide with a manual of style.  The Chicago Manual of Style will help, but is more of a reference book of best practices, rather than a set of policies and procedures to guide document development processes for your particular business use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems a &lt;strong&gt;style guide&lt;/strong&gt; is what you are hoping to create and implement company-wide, something that standardizes things like sections in a report or user guide, typefaces used, logo and trademark usage, software to be used to create documentation, and template design standards.  Do a web search for &quot;technical style guide&quot; and you will find examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating the style guide will not be your biggest task, however.  Getting management to implement it as a requirement will be the greatest challenge, and if you don't have that, you will waste your work and annoy yourself and your coworkers.  The key to getting management buy-in is to get them to understand that consistent documentation is part of consistent branding and messaging - your documentation is a part of the marketing effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have management behind your effort, bring in your colleagues and work as a team to create a style guide tailored to your company culture and work flows.  Include key members of engineering, customer service, and marketing teams in this effort as well, so that you get engineering on the same page with scheduling documentation lead times, learn about what in the documentation is confusing or frustrating customers from the people who have to deal with them regularly, and ensure that the terms you are using in the documentation are the same ones the marketing department uses, also that you are targeting the right audience by understanding the actual customer base and their real world use of the products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some style guides also cover document distribution processes and retention policies.  These can be also be dealt with in separate procedures, as best fit your business use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4229" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T21:26:10.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2012-10-11T07:54:29.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I have a new favourite book about writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1582979987&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Story Engineering&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book made me go from pantser to outliner. It focuses on story creation, not writing techniques. Do note that it's very much about making sellable, commercially popular stories. So much that it might turn a few people off. I write mostly to entertain, and not so much for the art of it, so I loved it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T07:54:29.830" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-10-11T07:54:29.830" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6466" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-11T21:36:56.063" Score="4" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there are any websites that offer analyses of stories, written or otherwise, with the intention to teach people something about writing and storytelling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize I can just google for analyses on specific works of litterature, but I thought maybe someone had made a more collected effort. Pehaps even divided into different aspects of writing/storytelling, such as prose, characters or story structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Might be tempting for lazy kids who don't want to do their homework, though...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T08:33:55.703" Title="Websites that offer book/movie/story analyses useful for writers?" Tags="|planning|websites|text-analysis|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6468" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6470" CreationDate="2012-10-11T22:55:01.050" Score="8" ViewCount="1747" Body="&lt;p&gt;i am  currently writing a book but would like to know if i can pre register an ISBN and Book title. I am little concerned someone might call their book the same as mine before i finish it. So i really want to secure the title/isbn. Are there any great website for doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You help would really be appreciated for sure as i'm a novice when it comes to the publishing side. Thanks - Andy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4232" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T01:17:18.870" Title="ISBN - is it possible to have one and a title before publishing?" Tags="|publishing|book|titles|isbn|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6469" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-11T23:13:57.350" Score="4" ViewCount="20451" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend is a literary agent who mostly works with YA novels, but she told me recently that I should aim for about 75,000 words for my book, which I'm currently speccing out as a romance novel or maybe chick-lit, depending on how the genre-bending shakes out. (Her numbers are 250 words per page, and about 250 pages.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, going by the books I've enjoyed most, single-title romances tend to be 350 words per page and 350-375 pages. This comes out to over 100,000 words per book!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know category romances (Harlequins, Mills &amp;amp; Boon books) are much shorter -- usually about 150 pages and about 50,000 words long -- but are single-title books really that short? To put it another way: &lt;strong&gt;what's the accepted wordcount range for a single-title romance novel?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2580" LastEditorUserId="2580" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T04:00:36.677" LastActivityDate="2017-07-02T17:22:24.357" Title="How long is a single-title romance novel supposed to be?" Tags="|wordcount|romance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6468" CreationDate="2012-10-12T01:45:38.987" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Book titles are often duplicated quite by accident, and there is pretty much no way of preventing other people from publishing a book with the same title. It happens all the time, and as long as the title isn't something trademarked (like something in the Star Wars universe), it's generally not a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend you concentrate on writing the book, then when you have it ready for publication, search and see if the title is available. Don't get too hung up on the title - titles can change up to the last minute, and I understand it's not at all unusual for an editor or publisher to suggest a different title than the one you have in mind anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could register an ISBN, but that costs money, and again there's no good reason to do so before you absolutely need it. Especially since if you publish through a regular publisher, they'll take care of all of that anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="679" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T01:45:38.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6468" CreationDate="2012-10-12T08:48:17.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My book, Writing The Science Fiction Film, is due out in April 2013 but it already has an ISBN number. I didn't deal with it my publisher MWP organised it, but it shows that it is possible to do. They've also told me that it will appear for pre-order on Amazon etc. very soon (this is 6 months in advance of publication date!) and it obviously will need one before that can happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4169" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T08:48:17.963" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6469" CreationDate="2012-10-12T08:56:29.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your novel should be as long as it needs to be. Not shorter, not longer. Too vague? Well, that's writing ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly I think we already answered this question, but I can't find it. To summarize out of my head:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A novel starts around 50,000 words. That's a widely accepted figure no matter what genre you write in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write, don't care about word limits. If you think all the time &quot;Oh, I have to add something here, do that to reach [enter arbitrary word limit here]&quot; then you only will achieve one thing: messing up your story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check the market. If you really want to know what's the general word length of a romance novel, look at what's published. Do not stop at the books you enjoyed. Assuming that word count has anything to do with it, is a sure road to a writing disaster.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a literary agent tells you to &lt;em&gt;aim&lt;/em&gt; for 75,000 words, it is very likely that she told you a mean value (surprise: 75,000 is in the middle between 50,000 and 100,000).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the ultimate answer to your question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The accepted word count range for a single-title romance novel is whatever your readers buy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T08:56:29.470" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3296" CreationDate="2012-10-12T09:03:57.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I'm reading your question right, stories become scripts well in advance of ever getting close to becoming a production. It doesn't matter if you're adapting a novel or writing a 'spec' (an uncommissioned script based on an original idea) stories rarely go into production until the script is finished because the finished script is what attracts the studio, the producer, the director, the stars and everyone else involved. Films where the script remains unfinished even while production is taking place usually turn out bad and fail miserably by every possible measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course once those people get involved they generally start to re-write and change things to suit themselves, the star will have his favourite writer take a pass, the studio will hire someone to take a pass, so will the director unless - horror of horrors - he thinks he can write, in which case he'll do it himself but, and here's the rub, it's their story now, you sold it to them, they can do whatever the hell they want with it. The big issue for you now is to make sure you get credit and that your name remains on it, even if the finished film bears no resemblance to your original story, because credit means residuals and residuals means money. If you don't get credit then you have to go to arbitration to fight for it but that's a whole other issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4169" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T09:03:57.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6474" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-12T19:13:34.447" Score="1" ViewCount="328" Body="&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1.Today I got in a car accident, but I now value life more.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2. Today, I stubbed my toe, but looked down and found my wife's wedding ring we thought was lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This concept is called the &lt;code&gt;blank&lt;/code&gt; effect.  Or, I was struck by the &lt;code&gt;blank&lt;/code&gt; of this event that made me see the reality of life in a different way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking &lt;code&gt;unforeseen benefit&lt;/code&gt;, or &lt;code&gt;unexpected surprise&lt;/code&gt; but they are just both too boring, and I would like one word that captures it.  I would like something that more accurately captures the perspective-shift aspect of the event.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2480" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T03:56:26.033" Title="Word Choice: When something negative happens that changes your perspective for the better" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2012-10-24T03:41:00.300" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6475" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6476" CreationDate="2012-10-12T19:39:53.317" Score="1" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;I gues I could say I am decently good at writing, for someone who doesn't write much besides English 101/102 classes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a couple questions, which may proceed some background information to why I am asking the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;i&gt;Background:&lt;/i&gt; I want to write a fictional story that I thought origanally should be a short since I haven't written a lot of stories; I however, have a &lt;strong&gt;lot&lt;/strong&gt; of storyline and details. The story runs through multiple parts of the main character's life and the beginning part is a lot of background information while the middle and end is where the main story and adventure takes place to the climax of the writing. The begining is supposed to build information and characters that you would not have expected to do be in the story later on.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;i&gt;Question:&lt;/i&gt; Should I write a short story first and then make it into multiple stories like a &lt;strong&gt;series of books&lt;/strong&gt; or a series of &lt;strong&gt;short stories&lt;/strong&gt;? If I take the write a short story route, should I condense the short story into all the stages of the story - young begining, exciting middle and end, or just write a detailed short story about the early years, and expand it to a story with added details into the later life with the main story and plot?... When I say main, I mean like what the story is all about.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;i&gt;Background:&lt;/i&gt; I have a lot of details for the plot, characters storyline. I started out with my own main ideas for the main story (which is sort of in the middle where it get's intense)  and later on; however, I wanted this preceding story about the characters upbringing. Not to be reduntant, but hoperfully assuring you that I am not copying verbandom someone else's story, I repeat that I got my own ideas for the begining part's setting and character's, but I am using &lt;strong&gt;documentary&lt;/strong&gt; videos of the real grim stories of people's ubringing.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;i&gt;Question:&lt;/i&gt; Should I gather details about the circumstances of the people in these documentaries and the grim cruel cold world they live in and can't escape, and use some of their stories into mine?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;i&gt;Background: Same as in Question 2. &#xA;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;i&gt;Question:&lt;/i&gt; Regardless of whether should gather details from the documentary, in the case when documentary's (videos articles first person ) are a good sources, should I &lt;strong&gt;FIRST&lt;/strong&gt; know some &lt;strong&gt;&quot;writer's secrets&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; of what details to look for when seekign detial from sources for my stories?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some books on Writing and was wondering if read such material would be highly  recommended &lt;strong&gt;even before grabbing ideas or makeing your own?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is should I read such material as cited below, to help me use documentaries and other sources for stories in the most usefull manner ( read description if it helps )?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/qp7-migration-books/plot-vs-character&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Plot Versus Character A Balanced Approach to Writing Great Fiction by Jeff Gerke &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1599632128&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elements of Fiction Writing - Characters &amp;amp; Viewpoint:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:55:02.670" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:55:02.670" Title="Starting Out - Plot + Charaters by Documentaries" Tags="|short-story|resources|ideas|book-length|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2012-10-13T21:23:13.320" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6475" CreationDate="2012-10-12T22:26:19.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;should be a short since I haven't written a lot of stories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forget about that. Making stuff up about word count has no use, except someone pays you for a 1000 word article or a 60.000 words novel. Then you have to meet their criteria. Otherwise just write and count the words after you've finished your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no clue what your second question is about. Do you ask if you can use documentaries as an inspiration source? Yes, you can. Do you ask if you can steal material? No, you can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no writer secrets. Have you ever asked a sprinter if there is a secret to running? Probably they just run more often than you. Sit down every day and write. That's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it good to read about writing? Oh, boy, I could be honest, but you won't like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caution: If you do not want to be discouraged and keep writing instead, leave this post now!&lt;/strong&gt; (I mean it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books about writing contain (more or less) wonderful advice about writing. The problem is, if you haven't written anything of length yet (like your first novel), it's pretty much useless to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will be overwhelmed by all this information and you will not know when to use what and that can be pretty paralyzing. You just lack the experience to use all that stuff correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice is, keep these books on the shelf, write your first novel and when you have gained that experience, read the books about writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Won't that make my first novel worse?&quot; you may ask. Well, it's your first novel. With a 98% likelihood it will be bad anyway, no matter how much you read about writing before. If you are a carpenter's apprentice your first work will not me a master piece, no matter how many books about woodwork you have read. It will be crap. Get over it and start writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and use a spell checker, really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T22:26:19.743" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6474" CreationDate="2012-10-12T23:31:14.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would call it the Lemonade Effect. As in, &quot;when life gives you lemons, make...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T23:31:14.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3143" CreationDate="2012-10-13T21:26:08.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may be confused because of accent: to native English speakers, &lt;em&gt;sick&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;seek&lt;/em&gt; are very distinctive, and could not be confused, but to speakers of many other languages, these two vowels are difficult to distinguish. (See also, &lt;em&gt;ship&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;sheep&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;shit&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;sheet&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;bitch&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;beech&lt;/em&gt;.) If your book is targeting native English speakers, this will not be a problem. (However, as others have said, the word &lt;em&gt;seek&lt;/em&gt; there is a little odd anyway.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="537" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T21:26:08.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6474" CreationDate="2012-10-14T03:56:26.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd go with something's &lt;strong&gt;&quot;silver lining&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I don't think this is quite what you're looking for, you could say it was a &quot;near-death experience&quot; or &quot;out-of-body experience&quot; because most people associate coming back from &quot;near-death with a refreshed view or awakening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3810" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T03:56:26.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6481" CreationDate="2012-10-14T03:58:00.113" Score="8" ViewCount="204953" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use the GIS/Programing ones extensively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a cover letter, what are ways that you can avoid repeating &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have done ....&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I have experience with ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I am experienced in...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4238" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-05T08:58:12.140" LastActivityDate="2019-01-09T21:38:48.333" Title="&quot;I have/am&quot; - what are other short ways to not repeat this in a cover letter?" Tags="|letter|resume|phrasing|cover-letter|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6480" CreationDate="2012-10-14T04:13:13.000" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are actually quite a few options, many of which come naturally when you're not forced to consciously write formally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can change the verb into an –ing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Having done freelance for 8 years, I...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Choosing to work from home has...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or in some cases turn the verb into the subject or your sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Experience with Java has helped...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives it an assertive feel, as does any other form of eliminating personal pronouns. Though one should include some personal pronouns for fear one begins to sound impersonal. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also add introductory phrases or prepositional phrases to the beginnings of your sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In my extensive set of skills, I...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;With my passion for social media, ...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're currently writing the cover letter, it might be best to get all your thoughts and strengths down first before editing for repetition and word choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3810" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T04:13:13.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6480" CreationDate="2012-10-14T04:42:00.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of saying, &quot;I have experience with X,&quot; consider describing what you did with X.  &quot;I created a global meteor defense system using Java and Arduino.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T04:42:00.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6486" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6493" CreationDate="2012-10-15T11:51:41.980" Score="7" ViewCount="2418" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm 1/4 through my first novel, with a pretty solid 12 page outline of the whole thing. After years of reading books about story structure, I think I have a good grasp on how to make a plot work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My characters, however, are turning out to be quite flat, uninteresting and generic. They do have motivations and I'm putting a lot of effort into making sure they act accordingly, in a logical way according to their goals and the story seen from their perspective, etc. But they don't feel &quot;alive&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read about the archetypes in The Writer's Journey, but that's about it. How can I make my characters come to life? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-10-15T19:18:16.447" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T19:14:01.303" Title="Problems with character development?" Tags="|characters|character-development|book|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-15T18:19:38.600" Score="2" ViewCount="3130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing the works cited part of my paper and am trying to avoid plagiarism.  I have used information which is not common knowledge in my paper so I must use citations because i have put it into my own words.  Do I have to use multiple inline citations for separate sentences or ideas even when they are from the same source? Or should I just use the citation after all the info I have referenced from that source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Don Rigatone" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T00:17:13.583" Title="When citing information from a source do I need multiple citations for multiple ideas or sentences" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6488" CreationDate="2012-10-15T22:55:30.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This applies within the Harvard Referencing system. You may need to check which referencing system you should be working to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the points taken from source have been separated by other points that are not from source, then yes, you need to recite a reference for each point. If this is the case you may want to consider revising your work so that all the points taken from source are together. This avoids this dilemma completely and means you only have to state the source once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the thing to remember is to make sure everything said by another person is accredited to them, but no more than what they said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;&quot;In your paper, every time you summarise, paraphrase or quote from a source you need to provide an in-text citation.... &#xA;In any one paragraph, if you cite an author or authors more than once in the narrative (i.e. the author’s name does not appear in parentheses), include the family name/s and year the first time. In subsequent citations in the narrative in the same paragraph you need to cite only the family name/s, and omit the year, provided studies cannot be confused, i.e, &#xA;According to Hopkins (2004, p. 16) little attention has been given to the way a manager might identify and … Furthermore, Hopkins argues that in some business environments …&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;When the name of the author/s and year are in parentheses in any one paragraph, the year is included in subsequent citations, i.e, &#xA;Little attention has been given to the way a manager might identify and … (Hopkins  2004, p. 16). Furthermore, Hopkins (2004, p. 16) argues that in some business environments …&lt;/em&gt;&quot;*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref:&#xA;Deakin University of Australia, 2002, Referencing using the author-date (Harvard) style [online] &lt;a href=&quot;http://deakin.edu.au/current-students/study-support/study-skills/handouts/authordate-harvard.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://deakin.edu.au/current-students/study-support/study-skills/handouts/authordate-harvard.php&lt;/a&gt; (accessed 16th October 2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4246" LastEditorUserId="4246" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T00:17:13.583" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T00:17:13.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6486" CreationDate="2012-10-16T10:25:01.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to consider your characters outside the plot as well. They'll have likes and dislikes that have nothing to do with the story, funny mannerisms they're unaware of, things that set their teeth on edge, irrational fears. The strangest things will get them into certain moods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a real person, Charlie (name changed to protect the not-so-innocent), as an example. Charlie hates M&amp;amp;Ms - they make him sick, after he ate too many before a long car ride and produced a bag full of multicoloured puke. He's terrified of worms because when you chop them in half, they still wriggle about - but spiders, cockroaches, and other bugs don't really bother him. He gets bloated after big meals and can't stop burping. He can't stand it when people sit on his bed with pants they've worn outside of the house. He hates afternoons because they put him in a lethargic, melancholy mood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were he in a story, it's likely none of this would be directly related to the main plot or his motivations. But it's the little things that people say or do or feel that bring them to life. And when you get them down, you'll see them appearing in your story quite naturally. For example, Charlie may be having some friends over. He may turn down the M&amp;amp;Ms they've brought, and keep them out of the bedroom so no one sits on his bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may also be useful to do some online personality tests, as they'll get you thinking about how a character would react in various situations, and how they'd respond to some tricky questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T10:25:01.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6486" CreationDate="2012-10-16T13:04:05.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem may stem from the fact that you are writing a book too much &quot;by the book.&quot; Characters aren't like bits of code. Unless they walk around in your subconscious, speaking and breathing and acting like real people, they won't seem like real people on the page. If your characters don't surprise you, they won't surprise anyone else. Novels are about people, not structures, and as a novelist your job is to find a structure that fits the people in your story, not the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T13:04:05.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6486" CreationDate="2012-10-16T14:39:08.917" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finish the book, then go back and look at the characters again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I start writing my characters are fairly generic, flat, and frankly cardboard. Character is my weakness, I love plots and ideas.&#xA;The crucial thing is that in the second draft, I then go back and add in bits of the colour, life and uniqueness which the characters have only accumulated by the last chapter.&#xA;Sometimes this will require changes to the plot (I'll realise that Rachel shouldn't have done that in Chapter 2, it doesn't fit with a part of her character I only realised in Chapter 7), but overall I find this a much more organic and natural process than trying to specify everything about a character before I know them, and as such the results tend to be much more convincing and compelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may vary, but I think if you're a quarter of the way through without your characters having sparked yet, you're probably more similar to me in this respect than most!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3996" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T14:39:08.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6496" CreationDate="2012-10-16T16:17:27.690" Score="6" ViewCount="591" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD Student in the social sciences. When I do focused free-writing on a topic, my thoughts just fly out and I can easily generate 600-800 words an hour of relatively high quality text. However, whenever I think of starting to revise, I freeze up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I love free-writing, it is often very liberating to just let my thoughts out, and I'm often astonished and pleased with the thoughts that I generate. I'm not very picky about grammar/punctuation/word choice, and I'm not particularly afraid of being judged. However, when I start to revise, and the changes are bigger than correcting grammar or clarifying sentences, things get difficult. When I think of restructuring a text (deleting/adding major constructs, changing the flow of the argument) I feel stuck. It feels as if the task is too great to take on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I perhaps making a mistake in thinking that I can &quot;revise&quot;, when actually what I should be doing is to delete my text (or at least certain paragraphs) outline it again and rewrite it completely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any advice/recommended literature/techniques for revising (or perhaps reconstructing) academic texts effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4250" LastEditorUserId="4062" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T03:34:02.690" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T19:56:11.020" Title="How to get over writer's block related to revising?" Tags="|academic-writing|process|revision|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6494" CreationDate="2012-10-16T20:17:18.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your problem is procrastination, given that revising is no fun (imho).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set a timer for 20 or 30 minutes. Promise yourself to work fully concentrated for those minutes. No e-mail, surfing or whatever you distraction poison is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the minutes are over, take a break. Get a coffe, play a round of Starcraft, do something fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a while, start over again. I usually do 20 minutes work 20 minutes fun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;But you're wasting half your time!&quot; No, i get something done for half of the time, instead of procrastinating it all away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the best part is that your subconsciousness keeps on working while you are on a break, so if you got stuck at the end of the work session, you'll be surprised at how often your brain has found a solution in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And don't focus on the end of the large task. Focus on the next step (easier said than done, I know).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good tip is to read Ken Rands &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0966818407&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The 10% solution&lt;/a&gt;. It is a mechanic editing technique that gets a lot of nasty language problems out of the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T20:17:18.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6494" CreationDate="2012-10-16T20:43:52.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've got the seeds of your answer in your edit. When you write, you're just dumping. Whatever comes to mind, without structure or discipline, and who among us doesn't love the sound of your own voice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when you're done, now you have to shape your thoughts into a coherent argument. And for some people, that's not particularly fun. (In fiction, this is called &quot;discovery writing&quot; or &quot;pantsing,&quot; as in &quot;writing by the seat of your pants.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reverse-engineering an outline from your logorrhea sounds like the simplest plan. Take each sentence or thought of your dump and figure out what topic it belongs to: psychology, talk therapy, pathology, chemical treatment (or whatever your topics are). Make one document for each topic idea. Copy each sentence or thought into the relevant document. (Scrivener is &lt;em&gt;fantastic&lt;/em&gt; for this.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you have four or five separate documents with a paragraph each. Move the individual sentences around until you have something coherent, and add transitions as needed. Thread the paragraphs back together and you have a more structured essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is essentially the reverse of the technique I described in my answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1699/writing-first-programming-book/1700&quot;&gt;this question.&lt;/a&gt; See if that's useful to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T20:43:52.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6494" CreationDate="2012-10-17T00:49:22.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the great comments I have received I decided to take a stab at answering my own question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A large part of the problem I have is that I have been procrastinating as @erikric suggested. However, I think that just solving it using brute force time management techniques duck the real issue here - that I feel uncertain as to what to do when I'm done free-writing. Thus, I outlined a process that could potentially describe how to cycle between the different stages of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aronlindberg.me/writing_process.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Graphical representation of writing process&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(can someone insert this picture in the post?)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Generative Writing.&lt;/strong&gt; This is focused free-writing, or generative writing. Essentially a stream-of-consciousness focused on the particular topic or question that I am working on for the moment. Often this is based on weaknesses in my arguments that has been pointed out by those who reviewed the last draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read &amp;amp; Develop.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a first review of my free-writing. It is not an editing stage but rather a way of a) getting an overview of what I have written, and b) an attempt to squeeze some further thoughts and arguments out of my mind before I move on to editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Outlining.&lt;/strong&gt; Here I start to outline the paper chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph. This means that I need to describe the major points of each section (i.e. chapter or paragraph) so that I get a clear view of what each section accomplishes and how it fits into the paper as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rewrite/Reconstruct.&lt;/strong&gt; After I have created the outline I can start to &lt;em&gt;rewrite&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;reconstruct&lt;/em&gt; each section. I use the term &lt;em&gt;rewriting&lt;/em&gt; for a section whose basic integrity or structure can be retained with changes only made to the way the section accomplishes its goals. The term &lt;em&gt;reconstruction&lt;/em&gt; is used for paragraphs that, according to the new outline, needs to be rewritten from scratch, because the basic logic of the paragraph as it stood before the outlining process does not make sense any longer. While particular thoughts or sentences will be retained, it is easier to write it from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gather feedback.&lt;/strong&gt; I will send it to my advisor and/or research group for feedback. The whole process continues until the paper has been published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon reflection, I realize that I have often not done the outlining stage (meaning, I have skipped it completely). Also, I have often attempted to &lt;em&gt;rewrite&lt;/em&gt; when I should have been &lt;em&gt;reconstructing&lt;/em&gt;. It makes sense that if someone just tries to make minor changes within a structure that no longer works, not much good will be achieved. All that will happen is that I will have this feeling in my stomach that something is wrong, but not knowing how to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4250" LastEditorUserId="4250" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T12:13:31.263" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T12:13:31.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6494" CreationDate="2012-10-17T19:56:11.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this is helpful. It's something that I discovered during the process of writing my first book. Like you, I love the process of initial creation, and I did that for a while, just setting aside editing for content-generation. When it came time to prepare the book proposal (non-fiction), I had to go back and do some editing to get the sample writing solid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I discovered was that editing is a completely separate process from writing, and if I held them in comparison, I was screwing myself. So I started to just treat editing as a fun thing to do, and instead of focusing on creating, I focused on finding rhythm and polish. I imagined reading it out loud to a group, and feeling how it flowed. Did it trip up my tongue? Was there a sentence or a paragraph that just didn't flow? Was there a section where I felt like I was losing the audience? How could I make it flow so that it would be fun for me to stand up and read it out loud?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as I used imagination to generate content in the first place, I used imagination differently during editing, and found that I was having just as much fun that way. Starting a session feeling what I would feel reading the early draft to a group, and then noticing how much better I felt imagining reading my polished work out loud, was all the motivation I needed. Now I actually look forward to editing just as much as I look forward to writing, sometimes even more, depending on the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all art, it's all craft, and it all comes from imagination....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4067" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T19:56:11.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6486" CreationDate="2012-10-17T19:58:59.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems the trouble you are having is differentiating characters easily. I've found when I have trouble telling between two characters without using their name, then they are not sufficiently different to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look into &lt;em&gt;traits list&lt;/em&gt; on Google, and read some articles on &lt;em&gt;character diamonds&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also try backing up your scenes, and then removing &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; character names from the scene. You will force yourself to consider any and all other elements that can differentiate between characters.&#xA;I've even gone so far as to remove names from excerpts of successful novels which have already been published so I can observe the techniques the authors use for characterization. It is worth examining other author's works and can improve your own writing significantly (Hemingway is an excellent example to study).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4255" LastEditorUserId="4255" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T20:10:41.463" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T20:10:41.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="365" CreationDate="2012-10-17T20:35:33.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Character Development is starting at one mental state and growing or receding to a new one. All you really have to do is look at a character's personality, consider how a person of that nature would react given a certain situation (it helps to put yourself in the character's shoes), and then consider how the situation causes the character to react. The experience and outcome changes the character's outlook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you prefer a more technical process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Motive - What the character wants&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Method - the actions taken to achieve the Motive, and the reaction to obstacles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moral - success/failure, &amp;amp; how this changed the character's motives and/or methods.&#xA;You can use this on the scene, chapter, act, or at the level of the entire narrative (or use it on multiple levels).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more complex and abstract processes, but I've found this is the most concise way to study character development, but to each his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amichai your advice rings true. and Michael you provides some excellent examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4255" LastEditorUserId="4255" LastEditDate="2012-10-18T00:26:30.213" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T00:26:30.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="365" CreationDate="2012-10-17T21:40:53.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is important to describe a character in different levels. I love the way it is described in the (imo) excellent book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1582979987&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Story Engineering&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Larry Brooks suggest you need to describe three dimensions of a character:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;dimension is the physical outward image that the person likes to show&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;dimension is the characters background an psychological reason for their behavior&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;dimension is how the character act; what kind of person they are deep down and what decisions they make&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example (from the book). A 40 year old man drives a corvette with old leather seats. This is the 1. dimension, and it gives you an impression of a person, based on your preconceptions about middle aged men driving old corvettes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2. dimension could be his psychological backgound reason for driving in such a car. It could be a gift from his late father, whom he was very attached too, or he could be an immature man with his head stuck in high school, believing he is still cool for driving such a car. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine he is out driving, when a dog suddenly runs out in front of him. He could choose to drive the car off the road, wrecking it, to save the dogs life. Or maybe he cares more about the car than a dogs life, and deciedes to run over it. This is the 3. dimension. This revelas how the person is deep down, and dictates how he acts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think most problems with characterisation is that writer don't spend enough with the 2. dimension. Either characters are given too much description on the surface level, or they are show to behave in certain ways, or have certain values, without explaining the background reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T21:40:53.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6510" CreationDate="2012-10-17T21:53:02.810" Score="3" ViewCount="339" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I do my daily writing, questions often pop into my head, and I jot them down to ponder later on. I was going through all the papers on my desk today and couldn't help but wonder: are chapters in novels and sequences in movies structurally equivalent? In other words are chapters used in stories for the same purpose sequences are used in movies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4255" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T12:10:03.897" Title="Is a chapter the equivalent of a sequence?" Tags="|plot|structure|planning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6506" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-17T22:58:53.753" Score="5" ViewCount="12647" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within a user manual, I need to convey the maximum time period allowed as &quot;365 days 23 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds&quot; - are commas expected between each component? Is the word &quot;and&quot; expected before the last component regardless of the time period name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4256" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T03:05:47.563" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T03:05:47.563" Title="How to write time duration correctly" Tags="|style|technical-writing|resources|punctuation|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5356" CreationDate="2012-10-17T23:22:14.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use an extensive array of index cards. The core thing I learned about index cards is &lt;em&gt;make sure you know what information you want to put on them before use&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;and ask yourself before pulling out a fresh index card &lt;em&gt;will a new card help to better organize my work, or will it obfuscate my process and clutter up my desk?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't take clutter lightly. To much of a good thing can be bad. The important thing is to use a tool, in this case index cards, only when your sure you need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally plot out five or six key scenes, and then as I write, I get ideas for scenes, and create a few index cards to fill some of unknown region between key scenes, revising these cards as I write and improving my grasp of the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4255" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T23:22:14.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5940" CreationDate="2012-10-17T23:34:11.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scene/Sequel is less of a rule, and much more like &lt;em&gt;guidelines&lt;/em&gt;.&#xA;If the guidelines don't fit your writing needs feel free to use some other technique that does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4255" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T23:34:11.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6506" CreationDate="2012-10-18T10:44:04.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use commas between each component, and use &quot;and&quot; &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; if the last component is seconds. I learned way back in intermediate school that &quot;and&quot; is only used before fractions (so 10,247 is said &quot;ten thousand, two hundred forty-seven&quot; but 10 7/8 is said &quot;ten and seven-eighths&quot;). I would call seconds the smallest &quot;lay person&quot; time interval &amp;mdash; if you're getting into fractions of a second, you've moved beyond regular timekeeping and are now talking science, so it would be formatted differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So using your example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The maximum time period allowed is 365 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds, so any longer than that is a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT if your time were shorter, it would be written:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The maximum time period allowed is 365 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, so any longer than that is a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T10:44:04.600" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6505" CreationDate="2012-10-18T12:10:03.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A chapter is the equivalence in so far that it divides a big chunk (the book) into smaller sections. But for a novel you have much more freedom as in a movie script which follows traditional structures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever wondered why most movies are made for certain length? They are usually around 75 min, 90 min or 120 min. These numbers are multiplier of 15.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the old days cinemas got the movies on reels which contained 15 minutes of film each. If you go for a 120 minutes movie with 15 minutes per reel you need: 120:15 = 8 reels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So movies were divided into 8 sequences (one sequence per reel). These sequences were adapted to the three act structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Act I: Sequences 1 and 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Act II: Sequences 3 and 4 - Midpoint - sequences 5 and 6&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Act III: Sequences 7 and 8&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more details see &lt;a href=&quot;http://cjpowersonline.com/2012/01/27/movies-told-in-8-sequences/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CJ's Corner&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T12:10:03.897" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6511" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6513" CreationDate="2012-10-18T16:08:39.810" Score="1" ViewCount="308" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a critical essay, arguing individualism, narcissism and collectivism within an online society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I feel that the title I've come of up with for this essay just isn't critical? Should the title be more engaging and argue a quote, or a specific piece of theory, or is this title critical enough? Please see below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;A critical examination of individualism, narcissism and collectivism within Facebook&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4261" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-10-18T17:26:43.363" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T10:29:57.813" Title="Is this essay title critical?" Tags="|essay|titles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2012-10-19T19:53:12.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm finding all of this very helpful! I just wrote a prologue that ended up right at 500 words, and I wanted to know the same. Another interesting way to find a good chapter length I think, would be to sit down and read a book from the first chapter, for about 5-10 minutes, or however long you wish your chapters to be, and see how many words you have read in that amount of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I go by chapter gauge when I read, and when I was young I would discipline my reading habits, by posing a limit to the quantity of chapters I could read before allowing bed, or other distractions to overtake me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say for instance you are writing a YA novel, and want the chapters to be gripping, but not too lengthy.&#xA;You could either borrow a young adult to test it out, and tell you when their mind starts to float, or put yourself in the mindset of a young adult with school, work, friends, etc on their mind, and see how long you can pay attention to one situation with other things surrounding you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to read for about 30 minutes, and then continue working, and it's slightly perturbing to spend a half hour in attempt to discover something that could have easily been resolved in 10 minutes, and be stuck in the same spot you started in. Like a &quot;to be continued&quot; in TV shows, one is suspenseful, two in a row is annoying, three is aggravating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just my personal thoughts, as a busy individual with not as much time to devote to reading as I'd like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4265" LastEditorUserId="4265" LastEditDate="2012-10-19T20:47:48.417" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T20:47:48.417" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6511" CreationDate="2012-10-19T21:49:40.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your title is fine as a subtitle or a deck, but it needs something catchier to start with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I Me Ours: A critical examination of individualism, narcissism and collectivism within Facebook&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E Pluribus Farmville: A critical examination of individualism, narcissism and collectivism within Facebook&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on. Puns, lyrics, movie titles, proverbs — go nuts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T10:29:57.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-20T16:50:02.740" Score="5" ViewCount="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;What existing platforms use crowdsourcing to develop creative writing and editing?&#xA;What are the barriers in developing an active community? Why would this not work? Has it been tried? Was it successful? If not, why did it fail? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea I have and would like to develop is described below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open.Write.Collaborate.Edit.Refine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Like GITHub but for creative writing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User would have their own library of stories they created or are following. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Users could:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Follow a developed story by copying it into your library as a version, providing input by leaving comments by line or modifying the document and providing what sections of the story are impacted. Similar to track changes on Word. If you think your changes could help the story you can Push the edits to select users who have copied the same story into their library. Then those with the story copied out can choose whether they would like to incorporate the edits into their own version. When the edits are incorporated it track who made the edits and pulls in any additional comments. When the edit are not incorporated it creates a branch of the original story in your library that other people can copy out and provide input.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a story from scratch and get input.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Help develop specific elements of a story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;plot summary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;location descriptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assumptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;character summaries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inner monologues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;script notes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;notes on pitch and tone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story boards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Structure graphics &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;A community for writing and getting input on your writing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does something like this already exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine it more for groups at the start, allowing friends to develop a story together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this site have plans to develop similar tools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4267" LastEditorUserId="4267" LastEditDate="2012-10-20T17:09:52.217" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T16:29:40.497" Title="What existing platforms use crowdsourcing to develop creative writing and editing?" Tags="|creative-writing|planning|screenwriting|creative-commons|community|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6486" CreationDate="2012-10-20T19:49:00.653" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the problem you are having is you are thinking about it as &quot;character development&quot; not storytelling. Many writers start off working on their work with a formulaic engine of what is going to happen. They know where, when, who and why. They believe this will make their story compelling since they dot every &quot;i&quot; and cross every &quot;t&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your characters move through your story as if they already know what is going to happen and are simply reacting to it, this removes the sense of tension you are looking for and thus they cannot &quot;develop&quot; or change. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are characters who are not changed as they move through the story. But in those stories, the environment changes completely around them. This usually means in the end of the story there is no place in the new world order for them. Think Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Character development is what happens after something unexpected happens. If your characters are not experiencing the new, the different the unexpected and are not changing because of it, they are not developing and will remain flat as their responses to events is unchanging.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It isn't enough to differentiate them by style of clothing or behaviors you write in with their descriptions. You have to find a way to make the reader feel them, want to know them, fear them, fear for them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This can only happen when you are willing to present them as fully as possible, revealing them the same way you would find if you peeled an onion. Yes, there is more onion beneath the first, but your goal is to describe the deeper layers of your characters. Just like with real people, what's on the surface is only the tiniest bit of their character. Their true desires, fears, ambitions, may stay completely hidden due to forces outside of their control, i.e. their religion, their family expectations, their social obligations, the nature of their desires, which may be considered potentially perverse or taboo in their society but not in others. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the tension you seek when you are looking for character development, the push-pull of the character toward his/her goal while dealing with opposing forces, inner motivations and the overall plot of the story which is what moves the character into opposition with his environment in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3739" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T19:49:00.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6514" CreationDate="2012-10-20T19:55:52.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.storytimed.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;StoryTimed&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.protagonize.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Protagonize&lt;/a&gt; both of which my sister recommends, which are the closest sites I could find to what your looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4255" LastEditorUserId="4255" LastEditDate="2012-10-20T21:58:15.483" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T21:58:15.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="702" CreationDate="2012-10-20T21:56:14.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generators, I've found, tend to produce bland characters. There are few, if any, substitutes for spending time with your characters. Obviously you can't meet your characters in-person. What you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do is use writing prompts to put characters in everyday situations and see how they handle themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A useful tool is stereotyping your character. Think about all your favorite characters, or the characters you want to imitate. Now draw up a &lt;em&gt;character diamond&lt;/em&gt; of this stereotype.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character diamond is a collection of four traits that best describe a character. Usually one of the traits is negative, called &lt;strong&gt;The Flaw&lt;/strong&gt;, and the other is positive, called &lt;strong&gt;The Highlight&lt;/strong&gt;. People change in bad or stressful situations, and their true nature, which is normally hidden, tends to come out. The trait that emerges during a conflict is called &lt;strong&gt;The Shadow&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;How a character acts in everyday life is called &lt;strong&gt;The Facade&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Facade is the top of the diamond, The Flaw is on the left, The Highlight is on the right, and the Shadow is on the bottom. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, a character diamond only lists the most &lt;em&gt;dominant&lt;/em&gt; of traits, and is just a tool getting a better grasp on who your character really is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, think, &lt;em&gt;how is my character different? How can I distinguish them from the stereotype?&lt;/em&gt; Often, being unique is not a requirement to hold readers attention; an interesting character can be made by a couple degrees of difference. Change either a character's &lt;em&gt;Flaw or Highlight&lt;/em&gt;, and either &lt;em&gt;The Shadow or The Facade&lt;/em&gt; to some other trait to create an interesting new persona.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help you along, you should take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tvtropes.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TV Tropes&lt;/a&gt; which, despite the name, has many articles, and discussions on characters from novels, as well as stereotypes, and gives more specific examples than I could possibly ever list. Also Google &quot;character diamonds&quot; for articles that go into greater depth. Getting a list of character traits is also useful for gaining some ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blindly asking questions without knowing who, even in the simplest sense, your character is on the personality level, is a recipe for boring. Answering some basic questions about the character is good, so long as you ask &lt;em&gt;the right questions&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too many forms provide a laundry list of physical questions, hair, eyes, height, build, clothing, gender, age, occupation, etc. The problem with this is beginning writers assume that these questions are important; are these questions important, really? The answer to that is &lt;em&gt;only if the answers help tie the character to the narrative, or inspire further development.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the difference between John Doe, thinning hair, who works as a chemistry teacher in some boring &lt;em&gt;this is my life&lt;/em&gt; sort of story, and Walter White, worried about his thinning hair and thinning health, dying of cancer, and using his occupational knowledge in chemistry to cook meth so his family won't suffer financially when he is gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spend some time with your characters, their (supposed) to be people too! You want your readers to perceive them as real, right? After all, characters are how your readers connect to the narrative. When a character feels like a person, it engages the reader's suspension of disbelief, so to me characters are the most important part of writing. Don't do your characters, the people of your mind, injustice by &lt;em&gt;asking the wrong questions&lt;/em&gt;, and writing them into a narrative before really knowing who they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4255" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T21:56:14.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6521" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-21T13:04:25.993" Score="3" ViewCount="4607" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen several references to some &quot;short monograph on &lt;em&gt;subject X&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. But how short is that? Is there a standard length to use as a reference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that this depends on page size and font, so I guess answers should reference what kind of layout is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1242" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2012-10-21T16:30:00.480" LastActivityDate="2017-11-26T02:36:59.913" Title="How short is &quot;short monograph&quot;?" Tags="|non-fiction|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6522" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-21T16:45:46.740" Score="2" ViewCount="441" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a webcomic, and have come upon a snag, I need two characters to like each other very much, but one is the slave of the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the comic, there are characters who find and use powerful beings for personal gain, and then there are those powerful beings. The complex relationship in this question's title is between these two people, an &quot;agent&quot; and her &quot;fighter&quot; (a human male from Earth).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The male is her first fighter, and the male never had the most interesting life, but at the end of the day one is the slave of the other. How do I make the attraction between the agent and the fighter seem real, when one is forced to fight to the death for the other? Even though the male does get lots of money for the fighting, and is not always in her control (just when a fight is happening).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need more information, just let me know and I will respond to your post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4269" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2019-05-28T10:14:04.713" LastActivityDate="2019-05-28T10:14:04.713" Title="Writing a very complex relationship" Tags="|creative-writing|comics|relationships|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6522" CreationDate="2012-10-21T21:15:43.623" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simplest answer is that there has to be something which bridges the divide between master and slave and allows them to see and respect one another as equals. Does she show mercy to the slave whom her slave has defeated? Does he disable rather than kill his opponents, or dispatch them quickly and without pain? Did she acquire him and thereby save him from execution? Does he love fighting and was slotted for something quiet and boring, and she rescued him from a worse fate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've established how they get past the initial barrier, the falling in love bit is like any other pairing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can suggest some homework. These are similar relationships, and you can see how they develop to figure out how to draw parallels with your own characters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0451457951&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Transformation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Carol Berg: The two men don't fall in love, but they form a powerful friendship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0886778778&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Morgaine Saga&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by CJ Cherryh: The warrior isn't exactly the sorceress's slave, but he is bound to her service. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to stretch it a bit, the title character of the BBC's &quot;Merlin&quot; is Arthur's servant but they decidedly do not have a servant-master relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T21:15:43.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6466" CreationDate="2012-10-22T03:03:06.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tvtropes.org&lt;/a&gt;. It's an exhaustive list of tropes and idioms and written in kind of a smart-alecky tone, but among the snark there's genuinely useful analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3792" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T03:03:06.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6527" CreationDate="2012-10-22T03:14:25.300" Score="4" ViewCount="481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering taking my first run at NaNoWriMo. 50,000 connected words of beginning-to-end narrative is a little more than I'm used to, so I was considering writing a series of novella-length pieces and tying them together with a common theme (say oranges, or plate tectonics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the NaNoWriMo &quot;rules&quot; are loose, but I would like to understand if my 30-day investment is going to pay off in something that will be seen as valid by anyone who's done this before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a NaNoWriMo person, what could a writer who creates an anthology-form novel do that would make the work more or less novel-y? Would 10 5000 word short stories be considered a valid result? 2.5 20,000 word novellas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking for anecdotes to help me answer a question: what is a valid &quot;novel&quot; form for NaNoWriMo?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3792" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-03T09:13:49.610" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T09:13:49.610" Title="Is an anthology a valid NaNoWriMo entry?" Tags="|short-story|conventions|rules|nanowrimo|anthologies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6526" CreationDate="2012-10-22T04:16:11.363" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rules say that &lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org/en/about/hownanoworks&quot;&gt;if you think of it as a novel, it counts as a novel&lt;/a&gt;.  If you don't think of the whole 50,000 words as a novel, it doesn't strictly fit the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've known lots of people who write 50,000 words of short stories and call it good.  It may not strictly satisfy the rules, but so what?  You wrote 50,000 words of short stories and had a lot of fun.  If some sourpuss doesn't think that's valid, well, you have 50,000 new words and thrill of the experience, and they have a sour puss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way people make their short stories more novely is to connect them in some way.  Maybe they share a time, place, character, theme, or object.  Or maybe each one picks up on a plot point from another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T04:16:11.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4870" CreationDate="2012-10-22T06:57:12.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently wrote a short story which was written in the first-person style. As part of this I chose specifically not to disclose the setting and the gender of the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone who read the story said it was brilliant, so in my opinion you don't need to disclose the narrators gender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4273" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T06:57:12.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6530" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-22T07:03:44.240" Score="2" ViewCount="434" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because this story is quite ambiguous in relation to the setting and also the main character's gender, I have been wondering whether this is frustrating for the reader or whether it provides a good effect for the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s been twenty-eight years since it began. Their government is hell-bent on destruction, willed on by – them. Those men who walk around in their suits, full of self-importance. On their fourteen thousand pound a year, have decided we must conform to their standards. We must speak their language. Adhere to their customs. They invaded my people’s land just over one-hundred years ago. Tried to destroy my race and overtook the country. Today my people will send a message to ‘them’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I live in a community where they are few and far between. They aren’t as brutal as the ones in the bigger cities, probably due to the fact that we outnumber them at a rate of almost one-hundred to one. Although it has been over one hundred years since they stole my people’s land, they have only just taken the last step towards overtaking my peoples country. A bloody twenty-eight year battle has been fought. That is why today, my people are protesting the introduction of their  language at my school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was five hundred metres away when I rounded the corner and caught my first glimpse of the crowd that had amassed for the rally. At first it looked like there was about ten thousand people, later I realised this was far from correct. Not one of them was around. All I could see was black. It was inspirational seeing all of my people here, slowly rolling towards me, rumbling just like a summer storm. As I got to within two hundred metres of them I heard it. A sound so terrifying, I break down every time I hear it, the POP! of a semi-automatic weapon. The crowd rushed in every direction, avoiding the bullets being hurled at them. Police suddenly swarmed, almost as if they had been teleported in. They must’ve brought them in from the city. ‘POP! POP! POP!’ Within five seconds police, were everywhere. I was now within one-hundred metres. The only safe-haven on the right side of the street, an old white, crumbling mud-brick shanty, roof tiles scattered across the road, was now almost pitch, covered with trembling. I ran quickly to the left side of the road where I found a tree and climbed it. Branches gouged my face cutting it open in several places. I couldn’t feel anything due to the fear of being shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I sat watching from my vantage point in the tree. Three students were thrown, lifeless, into a pile. Two of them were standing next to the small mound. ‘POP! POP! POP!’. Due to the shock at the situation unfolding, my vision slowly blurred. After about fifteen minutes the shock had dissipated and the scene started to become clear again. Guns trained on them, the dead students’ mothers and siblings screamed in what sounded like a mix of anger and grief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After seven hours, the fighting died down. I decided to make a break. It was the longest minute of my life. With the searchlights trained on me I weaved my way down the road, bullets whizzing past my torso. I was ten metres away from the refuge of a building. My leg gave way.  I’d been shot. When I hit the ground I heard footsteps, heavy ones. The next thing I knew I was sitting up against a house, covered by the all-consuming darkness. The voice of a young man pierced the cold night air. It sounded, different, foreign almost. It was then I realised that this man was one of them. &#xA;  ‘Bloody bastards!’ he exclaimed.&#xA;  ‘Why are you helping me?’ I asked, bamboozled. Was this a dream?&#xA;  ‘I’m one of you.’&#xA;  ‘You can’t be, you’re not like us, you neither speak nor look like us.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The man stood, silent. Then, displaying knowledge well beyond his years explained, ‘I may not look or speak like you, but I believe in your cause’. He continued ‘that makes me one of you.’ &#xA;  ‘POP! POP! POP!’ That dreadful sound continued to wreak havoc in the hearts and minds of my people. The ‘POP!’ had been followed by the ‘THWUMP!’ of flesh hitting the ground. I took a peek, the pile had grown. It was now about five-feet high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the young man holding something that resembled a soft-drink can and a gun. I soon realised it wasn’t soft drink, it was a silencer. Placing the silencer on the gun he instructed me to stay where I was. &#xA;  The young man’s heroics lasted but thirty seconds. He, who had risked his life to save me, in an act of defiance against his people, was gunned down. With rage rising like the sun, I did it, I ran out into the open, snatched the gun off the ground and peppered them with six bullets. I hit three. ‘SHIT!’ No bullets left. With only one of them left standing, I ran for it. Using cars as shields, I sprinted down the road. As I got to the last car, ten metres away from the sole survivor, I heard it. It was the most beautiful sound in the world. About one hundred of my people, of all ages, all screaming. They ducked out from behind the crumbling, mud-brick shanty. The last police officer, with only three bullets left and one-hundred people surging towards him, fired his gun in desperation. All three shots drifted away into the night. He was gone in under three minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That was the day our country united.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4273" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-10-25T10:38:51.207" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T07:42:41.693" Title="Is the ambiguity in my story the salt which makes it tasty or just plain frustrating?" Tags="|fiction|short-story|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4714" CreationDate="2012-10-22T07:08:59.427" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that using dreams often leads to creative plots, if you reset the dream in another location and change some of the events to fit your genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, collaborate with your friends and family on your ideas, many of the stories I've written have come from discussions I have had with friends from my creative writing group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps :D  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4273" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T07:08:59.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4714" CreationDate="2012-10-22T10:14:06.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best beginners book for plotting I've read is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/My-Story-Can-Beat-Up-Your-Story-Jeffrey-Alan-Schechter/9781932907933/?a_aid=robgrant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;My Story Can Beat Up Your Story&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Jeffery Alan Schecter. He shows a method - exactly beat-by-beat - for building a plot that'll work for pretty much every type of story, and he uses &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; to demonstrate his example. It's more than just plot though, he talks about characters, relationships, arcs and a lot of other stuff and how it all &lt;em&gt;feeds&lt;/em&gt; your plot. It's really very good if you're struggling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to know specifically how to find ideas for stories and building a sci-fi plot then I suggest you wait till April 2013 and buy my book! It's called &lt;em&gt;Writing The Science Fiction Film&lt;/em&gt; and it's published by Michael Wiese Publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4169" LastEditorUserId="28277" LastEditDate="2018-08-04T15:00:36.673" LastActivityDate="2018-08-04T15:00:36.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6533" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-23T00:29:05.967" Score="7" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finding beta readers were suggested to get unbiased feedback for a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can one work on oneself to be able to give a more unbiased feedback to a close relative, friend, wife/husband, etc.? Can one set one's mindset to decrease the effect or overcome the bias? Can one deliberately forget to some degree that this was written by someone I know closely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem is that you cannot choose from writings from different writers as a beta reader when there is only one candidate. This somehow gives a biased start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other problem is that one can't get one's finger on the energies of the text, ie. can't easily tell if I'm reading this because it's good stuff or because I promised it to friend/wife/husband/etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any walkarounds/solutions to these problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4275" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-14T09:26:13.153" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T09:26:13.153" Title="Can I improve my beta reading skills to aid a close person's writings?" Tags="|beta-readers|feedback|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6533" CreationDate="2012-10-23T01:44:36.673" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're essentially asking if it's possible for a human being to be unbiased. The answer is no, it's not. Even in the case of professional manuscript evaluators working for total strangers, there is no such thing as truly unbiased feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are ways of improving the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Beta reader&quot; is an tern that just screams the words &quot;fan fiction&quot;. And &quot;fan fiction&quot; is a term that has, for decades, translated to &quot;terrible quality&quot;. &lt;em&gt;However,&lt;/em&gt; the deluge of terrible self-published fiction has given the lie to that association. It's not fan fiction that's bad, or self-published fiction. It's &lt;em&gt;writing where no genuinely useful feedback been given to the writer&lt;/em&gt;, or, worse, the only feedback is from friends and family or internet pals who are afraid to offend the writer. (Crowdsourcing is pretty good for catching typos, but it's not very good at consistency or getting useful, professional feedback.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The right question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can one work on oneself to be able to give a more unbiased feedback to a close relative, friend, wife/husband, etc.? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not the right question to be asking. What you really need to decide is whether or not you want to be a beta reader who is one who &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; give this sort of feedback. You don't need to steel yourself to recognize bad writing so much as be someone who will be willing to tell the writer when they have a serious, deep issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dealing with writers:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a perceptive reader, able to puzzle out what it is that a writer is trying to do, then you're perfectly capable of giving helpful feedback. If you're capable of writing &quot;this would be more effective if you...&quot; rather than &quot;this sucks&quot; in the comments, you're able to give &lt;em&gt;palatable&lt;/em&gt; feedback that will help a writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are times when the only good advice is going to be that the writing just isn't working. And a good test reader needs to be able to say that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the very best test readers (or editors) are able to not only say when something simply isn't working. They're also able to give suggestions for how to improve the work. There are times when the writing is bad enough that it's difficult to find those suggestions, but there are always ways to make something &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also times when a writer is touchy, and honest feedback &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; upset or offend them. To be a truly useful test reader, you need to risk doing these things. Then give them suggestions for fixing the problems. Whether they follow your suggestions is entirely up to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And always, always tell a writer when things work well. If you don't do this, they (very correctly) won't ask you for more feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expectations:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Give me feedback&quot; is a terrible thing to say. What sort of feedback? What does the writer want you to focus on? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find out what they expect from you, and give it to them. Both of you will be happier, and more problems will be fixed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of couse, identify other areas of improvement as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Close relationships and evaluating writing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conventional wisdom is that this is always a bad idea. But there are exceptions to everything. Some married couples can tear each others' work to shreds and all is fine. And friendships have probably been sundered over typos. You need to make this call on your own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If giving feedback to a spouse is going to cause marital difficulties, the choice is clear. There should be no feedback. And &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt;, pandering feedback is worse than none at all. The same applies to friends and co-workers. If they can't take honest criticism, don't give them any. Or just point out typos. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask for feedback on my own writing from people I don't know very well for these reasons. However, I do have a few close friends I can count on for murderously on-target feedback. They know me well and know where I tend to obsess over trivialities, and are good at puzzling out what I meant to say. And I trust their judgment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of relationship takes time, and is quite rare. But these are also people who know that criticism may hurt me in the short term, but I'll be happier later on having fixed problems. But I'm fairly confident in what I can do, and brutal criticism won't strike at the core of my being. Is the person you want to give feedback to such a person? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So cultivate the sort of relationship, where the writer counts on you for honest feedback. Once you get to this place, you really can tell them &quot;this story is garbage, and here's why.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no easy answers to a situation like this. If you decide the relationship can handle serious criticism, and to go ahead with this: Decide what you want the writer-test reader relationship to be, with the writer if at all possible. Clarify expectations. Cultivate that relationship. Repeat. Better writing should result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T01:51:30.080" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T01:51:30.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6521" CreationDate="2012-10-23T05:58:21.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Monograph lengths are generally not about number of pages, but about word counts. In the humanities you will find monographs ranging from 5000-100,000 (and even longer) in length. There is no standard length for monographs unless you are writing for a specific publisher/publication which specifies length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T05:58:21.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6522" CreationDate="2012-10-23T16:10:07.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to know your characters first to be able to know how they'll react to the whole situation. Is the &quot;Agent&quot; a kind master, or is she a cruel bitch? If she's a bitch, is it just a façade she puts on to make herself look tough? Does she like fighters in general, or she thinks they're brainless twits? What about the &quot;Fighter&quot;? Is he resenting her for being forced to fight, or has he accepted his fate? Is he rude and defiant towards her? Or perhaps he's a flirt and makes inappropriate passes at her just to make her uncomfortable? Is he a jerk or a nice guy? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have their personalities down, the relationship will sort itself out on it's own, they will react to each other and the situation according to their natures. For example, if she's a bitch towards him, he might start hating her in the beginning, but later when he finds out it's just a mask she wears and she's actually very vulnerable underneath, he might start to turn around, he might get intrigued to find out what's under the mask. He might even be sorry for being rude to her in return. Or if she really is a cruel bitch, maybe he falls in love with her (falling in love isn't really a rational thing, people fall in love with bad people in spite themselves) but fights it, because, well, she's a bitch. If she thinks of him as a brainless twit, she might come around when she realizes there's more to him. Maybe because of his flirtatious passes at the beginning, she doesn't believe he's sincere when he starts having feelings towards her? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to make it is to have them hate each other because of some misconceptions about one another, and then slowly have them come around when they get to know each other and realize they each misjudged the other. Or have one hate and the other like, then find a reason to turn it the other way around. Switching them from hot to cold and cold to hot could prolong the tension and keep them from getting together too soon :) Usually when the tension between two characters is driving the story, as soon as they get together, it stops being interesting for the readers ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastEditorUserId="4264" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T17:05:53.937" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T17:05:53.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6102" CreationDate="2012-10-23T19:39:29.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are TONS of resources on the Internet about how to find an agent and appropriate ways to query. You can also try other forums like the Ask An Agent forum on &lt;a href=&quot;http://absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=58&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Absolutely Write&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4280" LastEditorUserId="1821" LastEditDate="2012-11-01T20:57:30.633" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T20:57:30.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6443" CreationDate="2012-10-24T09:42:48.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're particularly price sensitive don't forget that using an online editor upfront can save you money. These automated editing programs are generally free/cheap compared to a human editor and can pick up a lot of the stuff that an editor would. They leave the editor to concentrate their time on stylist issues rather than grammar, word usage, and structure.&#xA;Take a look at (in no particular order):&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://autocrit.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://autocrit.com&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;http://prowritingaid.com&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://masteredit.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://masteredit.net&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4285" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T09:42:48.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6544" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-24T17:22:31.297" Score="3" ViewCount="3264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm unsure of whether or not I should cite a &lt;em&gt;foreign language source&lt;/em&gt; (Swedish), with the original (Swedish) title, or use a translated English language title. The paper is for university-level coursework. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example (using: &lt;a href=&quot;http://debatt.svt.se/2012/08/17/svenska-journalister-ljuger-om-assange/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://debatt.svt.se/2012/08/17/svenska-journalister-ljuger-om-assange/&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Original (Swedish) title: svenska journalister ljuger om Assange&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;English: Swedish journalists lying about Assange&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The validity of the translation is vulnerable to question, however I plan on using only &lt;em&gt;verified&lt;/em&gt; English translations from both media, and governmental (Swedish judiciary) sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4288" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T09:52:55.697" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T09:52:55.697" Title="Citing foreign language sources (Swedish) in MLA7 bibliography?" Tags="|academic-writing|citations|translation|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6545" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6557" CreationDate="2012-10-26T06:48:36.557" Score="4" ViewCount="7892" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the name for a text subdivision that is shorter than a chapter, but longer than a paragraph? They are always untitled (unlike chapters, which are at the very least called &quot;Chapter 1&quot;, &quot;2&quot; etc), and denoted with either three asterisks, a longer blank space between paragraphs, or some other fancy marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(specifically, I'm not asking about name for the break itself, but for the section of text delimited by such breaks.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2012-11-06T14:43:57.803" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T17:37:35.577" Title="What is the &quot;three-asterisk-break&quot; section called?" Tags="|novel|formatting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6530" CreationDate="2012-10-26T07:34:47.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is of course my own, subjective opinion, but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gender ambiguity changes about nothing. It has no bearing on the story, and so no impact - a redundant undefined variable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nationality of the character - if you skipped the 'black' it would be a salt, turning a specific racial struggle into a general, universal one, with a bearing all of us could identify with. &quot;What if it were us?&quot; But this way, the key element - who vs whom - is defined (frustratingly far into the story) and the salt is lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ambiguity of location - This is frustrating to no end. As you paint a picture of the location in your head, and must backtrack and change elements because no, it's not colonial period, there are semi-auto guns, change it to a modern times backwater settlement. No, it's not a poor backwater settlement, they have a bunch of cars; change it into a moderately advanced city. And the violent discrimination of the blacks is not a trend of current day, so it's not modern day, but some somewhat recent past, change models and style of cars. No, not a rampartly militarized country like most of Africa, the gathered are all unarmed. And the thrown in bits of historical facts break it up even further without adding much. The location requires an exposure. Let us see the place, instead of piecing it from our imagination then invalidating the image piece by piece. That's frustrating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarizing: if you keep an important piece of exposure from the readers, keep it hidden until the end (either forever or just until last lines before the end if it's to be a surprise shattering the image we had built). If you want it to be known, make it known as soon as it bears any importance to the story, before we are forced to build a mental image from insufficient data. Do not dribble pieces of information in a story explicitly written. It's a valid technique in a criminal, where the explicit story (investigation) is all about piecing together the implicit story (the crime) from ambiguous details painstakingly gathered. It's not valid if the story itself is not implicit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2012-10-26T07:42:41.693" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T07:42:41.693" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6522" CreationDate="2012-10-26T08:10:59.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say you did hit a snag indeed. With the medium. I could nicely answer this for a novel, but webcomics are inherently restricting, with need to limit verbal communication, bite-sized &quot;strips&quot;, and so on. Still, I'll try best to my ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, to make things more spicy (otherwise the outcome would be mellow and boring), build a conflict between the two. They struggle for opposite goals, despite their feelings towards each other they may hate factions the other belongs to, or despise their methods etc. Generally, give a clear, strong reason why the two should hate each other, going beyond slavery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then give them their own individual conflicts, where the other is the a bargain card and obstacle. Make them face difficult - or seemingly not so difficult choices. Chance for freedom, requests to betray each other, generous or terrifying incentives. Then expose their internal struggle, regretting the decision whatever it is, struggling with its consequences. Let them perform random acts of kindness and generosity towards each other, that seemingly go against their nature. Build their internal conflicts, where the general goal struggles against personal feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in the end allow them admit their true feelings. Give them a crowning moment of awesome. Let them surprise all sides by cooperating tightly, overcoming all differences and generally kicking ass as a well-matched team whereas being in their &quot;default relationship&quot; would be extremely hindering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T08:10:59.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6549" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-26T09:12:09.870" Score="5" ViewCount="1261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a lot of story fragments that contain the major plot, but that are also very short because everything moves so fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I find a lot in Novels is a bit of &quot;filler&quot;, like someone just describing a car in more detail than required, or the landscape or even some mundane thoughts. Some books overdo it, but most manage to make it add to the atmosphere and setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just don't seem to be able to &quot;hit&quot; that sweet spot where I can add things like that because I perceive it as superflous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any tips to improve the writing of the atmosphere/setting bits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T22:15:41.487" Title="Adding Detail/&quot;Filling&quot; the story" Tags="|setting|atmosphere|book-length|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6550" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6553" CreationDate="2012-10-26T09:28:59.463" Score="6" ViewCount="265" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a fiction novel. The way the world (magic, technology, government, species etc) works is extremely complicated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the idea is to reveal the mechanics bit by bit . The problem is how much should I reveal? If I reveal too much the tension would be gone and there wouldn't be the unknown factor. On the other hand if I reveal too little no one would understand what is happening. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am scared of not revealing enough, because I know how it works and it would seem to me that a given portion of information is enough although it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sorry for any mistakes in the question, English is not my mother tongue, if any clarifications are needed, pleas say so. [:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4293" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T01:43:43.063" Title="How much should I reveal of how the world functions in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|world-building|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6549" CreationDate="2012-10-26T09:34:41.427" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get someone else to read the story and point out the sections that would require more fleshing out. As the author your perception of the text is tainted with the imagination of the scene. Things that appear obvious to you may be entirely unclear for the reader. The talent to forget what you know and read the story you wrote as if you'd have read it the first time is rare and elusive. Most of us simply need a help from someone who genuinely didn't read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T09:34:41.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6550" CreationDate="2012-10-26T09:58:06.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of those things you can't always determine on your own. Give your finished story to several people to read and ask them to tell you if they felt like they understood how the world worked or if they needed more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(and your English is fine. :) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T09:58:06.657" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6550" CreationDate="2012-10-26T10:00:48.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you reveal too little, new revelations will be deus ex machina, cheap tricks to overcome story obstacles, elephants in the room the reader wasn't allowed to see. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pacing of the story should be the only factor that limits the pacing of exposition of the mechanics of the world. Such exposition might be boring so keep it as sparse as to keep storytelling interesting, but otherwise do it as early as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep events, secrets, motives and feelings in the dark and dispense them sparingly. Make the mechanics of the world, all that is common knowledge of the world's denizen, an open book, and at the very least foreshadow early any major features too big to be given proper exposure before due time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T10:00:48.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6545" CreationDate="2012-10-26T11:50:26.497" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A question was &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/40379/is-there-a-proper-name-for-the-3-asterisks-that-are-used-to-suggest-temporal-dis&quot;&gt;asked&lt;/a&gt; on English.SE about what the marks themselves are called.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only answer there states that most marks that separate logical chunks of text, signaling a change in focus/time/characters (or whatever the main point of the writing is) are called 'section/scene separators'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I logically assume that bits of text they separate would be 'sections' or, more appropriately in fiction writing, 'scenes.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for my real-world experience, I've seen such marks (including a double paragraph break in more recent fiction publications) used to signal change in scenes (and therefore, time) with the connotation of 'this isn't as big a change as between chapters.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T11:50:26.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6549" CreationDate="2012-10-26T12:40:30.320" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have faced the same problem.  Going to professional editors/critique groups didn't help, as they all want you to rewrite the story as they would. Which is why you get scenes that spend a whole paragraph describing what the character wears. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what worked for me. Imagine you are standing in the scene in your novel. Describe the scene as your main character (for that scene would), moving through the scene with the character. Add description only when it is something the character would notice. So if someone is wearing a Tshirt with Jeans, no  need to describe it, as do you pay any attention to anyone wearing a Tshirt on the road?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the person has pink hair and is standing with a machine gun, then you would describe her, as your character would notice her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you describe will depend on the scene. A character running from zombies would not notice another person wearing a red T shirt with Nike shoes (as I recently read in a book). On the other hand, if your character is at a party flirting, they may easily notice these details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is, don't write stuff that you don't like reading. So when reading fiction, I skip whole paragraphs that describe the characters clothes/house/car, so I don't write those scenes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will take sometime to get the balance right, but keep at it until the scene looks perfect to you. Your muse is a better judge of good writing, so trust your inner voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Based on John's comment below: describe anything your character may find unusual, or may cause him to have a reaction. In addition to Johns comment below, something like plain white buildings may cause the character to think, &quot;I'm bored of seeing the same colour buildings everyday&quot;, which will tell you something about the setting of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="2024" LastEditDate="2012-10-26T14:45:13.580" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T14:45:13.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6550" CreationDate="2012-10-26T12:57:28.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will always be a matter of preference, but I'd err on the side on little exposition. As a reader, I get bored by an info dump and usually stop reading. The only exception is humour, like the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hannu Rajaniemi is an author who explains very little, yet his books are very successful. Some of the things/terms he uses throughout his books are only explained somewhere near the end of the book. This gets him a few angry readers, but most people like it. For me, it is fun re-reading the book to understand all that I had missed the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So only reveal as much is required. Let the rest come out through the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T12:57:28.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6549" CreationDate="2012-10-26T22:15:41.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focus on the effect you are trying to create in the reader.  Maybe the most important of those is the emotional impact you are trying to create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then: Choose the details that help to create that emotional impact.  What details would help us to understand the character better?  To understand what the character wants, and why it's so important to them?  To understand the character's strengths and limitations?  To understand the character's state of mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important element of this is that it is not just the detail per se that is important, but the POV character's &lt;em&gt;noticing&lt;/em&gt; the detail.  If two people walked into a room, they'd each notice different details.   Which details each character notices, and which each overlooks, tells us great deal about the character's personality, attention, and state of mind.  And this in turn helps us to understand the emotional impact of their actions, thoughts, and situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; POV character notice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favorite example is from Thomas Mann's &lt;em&gt;Doctor Faustus&lt;/em&gt;.  About two thirds of the way through the book, the narrator character Serenus Zeitblom walks into a room to discover Clarissa dead on the couch.  Then, for several paragraphs of fine detail, he describes the couch.  That he focuses on the couch is very creepy, and exemplifies just how cold Serenus is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T22:15:41.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6550" CreationDate="2012-10-27T01:43:43.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that if you're relying on the readers &lt;em&gt;ignorance&lt;/em&gt; of the mechanisms of the world to keep up suspense, then you may have a little problem. If your story is meant to be suspenseful and intriguing, hopefully there's more going on than simple obfuscation brought about by the complexity of the world. A good mystery can be read and enjoyed even if you already know who did it; likewise, a richly built setting can be enjoyed even if the reader already knows all of the secrets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I generally think that less is more. Describe what you must, and let the reader put the rest of it together by inference. However, really the best thing for you in this instance is &lt;em&gt;beta readers&lt;/em&gt;, as they'll be able to tell you whether they are confused, and will reveal to you which parts you've over-explained and which are trivial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T01:43:43.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6592" CreationDate="2012-10-27T13:08:14.423" Score="12" ViewCount="1858" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been juggling some ideas for NaNoWriMo and one of them is a Doctor Who story. Now I've not read a great deal of fan fiction but I've never read any that I'd say that compares to the original, and often I feel most fan fiction is a written exercise in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misery_%28novel%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Misery&lt;/a&gt;, with the fan fic author directing the characters, plot and theme over to their (often &lt;em&gt;wildly different&lt;/em&gt;) point of view. Reading these back feels unnatural and clunky, as though the very act of trying to continue someone else's story ruin's your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I avoid the pitfalls of writing fan-fiction? Or should I avoid it entirely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Edit:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the purpose of this question 'dangerous' means that it will naturally lead to the things I mentioned above: characters becoming Mary Sue's, and plot veering wildly from the original theme, as the author forces the plot to work their way. In short is it possible to continue someone else's story gracefully?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3986" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T14:37:12.010" Title="How to continue someone else's story gracefully, with fan-fiction?" Tags="|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6562" CreationDate="2012-10-27T13:49:11.077" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some writers will tell you that writing fan fiction is lazy, uncreative, a fruitless endeavor, and a waste of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I don't think that's true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fan fiction is great practice for writing, learning how to plot, and learning how to characterize, etc. There are plenty of fan fic writers who are highly praised as &quot;being better than the original&quot;, but I do draw the line there -- it's disrespectful, in my opinion. Nothing is better than the original, even if one disagrees with some of the original content of a story or series. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some authors encourage fan fic (Mercedes Lackey); some do not (Orson Scott Card, Anne Rice, etc); some are bemused by it (J.K. Rowling).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fan fic is allowed for NaNoWriMo, so I consider that to be encouragement to write it. As well, it brings legitimacy to the genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that you might get a lot of &quot;Don't do it&quot; answers to this question, but I think if you have a story to tell, tell it! Yes, even if it's in someone else's universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's my $0.02 on fan fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4297" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T13:49:11.077" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6562" CreationDate="2012-10-27T14:28:17.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, the acceptability of fan fiction depends on the original story. As another post stated, some origianl authros are fine with it, while others are not. In the case of Dr. Who, apparently the producers are okay with it because I found at least a dozen different fan sites and such that contained hundreds of fan fiction articles, including one that had over 30,000!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real issue isn't whether or not you can write it. The real issue is whether or not you can publish it. If you post it on a fan site where it is clearly labelled as fan fiction or it is presumed as such because of the content with which it is made available, then that is generally acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you try to publish it as a stand-alone book using the same characters from the television show, then that becomes a problem. At that point, you are violating the copyright for the show in an effort to derive income, and I can guarantee the producers will NOT be okay with that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you are not attempting to make money off of it or trying to use any of the characters in a derivative work for publication, then you should be okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T14:28:17.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6514" CreationDate="2012-10-27T15:31:32.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a writer, I can't think of anything more damaging - especially for young writers - than to be inundated with editorial contributions from others.  The editorial process is a one-to-one correspondence in which the relationship between the writer and the editor is paramount in terms of calibrating the importance of the feedback.  The idea that the feedback of a group of people would contribute to the the quality of a story reminds me of the old saw that if you gave a roomful of monkeys with typewriters they would eventually come up with Hamlet or War and Peace.  Well, no, they wouldn't because they wouldn't have the artistic sensibilities required to recognize Hamlet or War and Peace. A roomful of idiots cannot improve the quality of you work, but neither would a roomful of geniuses because their respective advice would cancel out each others advice.  Robert Heinlein, in his rules for writers, said that a writer should never revise anything, unless an editor specifically asked for the revision with a promise that the story would be purchased upon revision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4298" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T15:31:32.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6568" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6571" CreationDate="2012-10-28T06:14:18.927" Score="6" ViewCount="1629" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question really comes down to a personal issue I've had present in my fiction. I'm still very new as far as being a writer is concerned. So a few (if not all) of my main characters seem to be based in part (or completely) on myself and my personal experiences. (With some obvious changes, such as a different background or a different personality, but I'll give them the same job or make them have similar thoughts to my own, or put them in a very similar situation to my own that turns fantastical in some way.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that I have been criticized that being autobiographical in some (or any) way is almost as bad as writing a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3786/is-there-a-quick-way-to-know-i-have-created-a-mary-sue&quot;&gt;Mary Sue&lt;/a&gt; and I'm not sure if I agree with that assessment. So my question boils down to this: Is it bad form (generally accepted as &quot;lazy writing&quot;) to consciously imbue your characters with bits and pieces of your own personality, experiences or thoughts? And if so, should I just be working harder with my &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1832/finding-the-voice-of-a-character&quot;&gt;Character Development&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4296" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T22:34:52.860" Title="Is it ok to be autobiographical with a main character?" Tags="|fiction|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6568" CreationDate="2012-10-28T10:18:50.713" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I can interpret &quot;I'm still very new&quot; as &quot;writing my first novel&quot;, then skip this, go back to your story and keep writing. Ignore everyone telling you anything about how to write. Because all this good advice out there (like on this page) will be clearer after you've struggled through your first novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no, it is no problem if a main character is based on your personal experience. Honestly, on what else do you want to base it? He/she will have feelings and problems and you have to describe these feelings and problems, so you start with the feelings and problems you know and adapt and develop them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adapting and developing means, if your hero had to shoot someone and you've never done something like that, then you can describe him nonetheless. You felt sad and guilty sometime in your life, I'm sure. Just adapt and push these feelings a little bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, it is a problem if your main characters do not differentiate. If you believe in god and think god's laws should be followed strictly and every character in your book thinks so too, then it's just boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fiction writer writes most of the time about things he has no clue about (rape, dragons, murder, drugs, alien invasions). Maybe you take drugs, but you never met an alien. Writers make up shit, so start doing that. Then your characters will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you think you should just be working harder at being a writer, then the answer is: &lt;em&gt;Yes!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T10:19:01.693" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T10:19:01.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6568" CreationDate="2012-10-28T13:02:19.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is both, to some degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should always be working harder on your character development. Particularly if you're a beginning writer, you can always work harder on everything, but developed writers have to work at it too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making all your characters yourself with minor differences is a problem for a few reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can't tell them apart. When Jon sounds exactly like Malcolm who&#xA;sounds exactly like Kathryn, there isn't much flavor to the&#xA;interactions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's not much conflict. If everyone agrees that throwing an empty&#xA;cup out the car window is littering, you don't have any conflict, and&#xA;conflict is what drives story (or plot).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's hard to have a hero and a villain if they act like the same&#xA;person and they have the same reactions. Hell, it's hard to have several heroes if they all have the same reactions to events.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, it's fine if &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of your characters have &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of your traits, and as John Smithers pointed out, you can't ever really escape your own head. If you want to create someone who has a very different life and opinions than you do, you will have to research the situation, maybe do interviews, maybe travel, to learn what that life or opinions are like so you can describe them from the inside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T13:02:19.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6421" CreationDate="2012-10-28T18:34:16.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading your question I did a little &lt;a href=&quot;http://www7.esc.edu/hshapiro/writing_program/students/handouts/main/research_mla.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;search&lt;/a&gt; and discovered this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use present tense to introduce cited or quoted material and to make&#xA;  personal comments on such materials. Use past tense only when directly&#xA;  quoting a passage that is in past tense or when reporting historical&#xA;  events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answers the question of why &quot;pass&quot; was corrected to &quot;passed&quot; since you were speaking about an event that has historically passed. And therefore past tense is what you wanted for that sentence. Same reasoning behind choosing the first sentence in your example comment. That sentence is reporting on something that has already happened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that, if you are citing a piece of fiction you should always be aware of &lt;a href=&quot;http://revelle.ucsd.edu/humanities/writing-info/literary-present.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;literary present&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4296" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T18:34:16.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6574" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-28T20:37:57.260" Score="13" ViewCount="8908" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to use an experience I had which is pretty unbelievable but true. The majority of the story will be completely true. It's not over yet so I want to use an ending which is NOT true yet works well with the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had someone close to the situation read what I have so far, several pages. That person thinks the story is unusual and significant but agrees that it needs to be anonymous until it's resolved. Which may not be in my lifetime.&#xA;I can't be too specific but it involves a group that doesn't take kindly to people who write about them. And I know that my loved ones would hate being associated with them. Thanks for any advice. It wants to be written so it will be, but I'd also like to try to get it published somewhere due to the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would use a pen name as the story could cause people I love problems simply because it's true, not because  it's libelous. I know that legally I'd have to form a corporation with the pen name to process payments (if there ever are any, a long shot!) to maintain secrecy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would this kind of approach be called and how would I submit it?&lt;/strong&gt; The story is rolling out of me, but I can't chance sending it somewhere if I can't keep my name out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4302" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T22:46:40.500" LastActivityDate="2020-10-18T14:30:42.453" Title="How can I write anonymously (based on true experiences)?" Tags="|non-fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6486" CreationDate="2012-10-29T14:03:14.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I create characters, after creating their appearance and personality, I usually try to think like them. There are almost always some key attributes of a personality, so try being that person for a while. Just thinking like them is enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, there was once one truly evil character. For a time I forced evil thoughts  to the point when I was becoming evil. I had an evil character, knew how diabolical minds think (to a certain extent) and could appropriately write about him. [:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4293" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T14:03:14.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6574" CreationDate="2012-10-29T18:46:06.910" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using in a pen name will work just fine in this situation. True, the publisher will know who you really are and you will be paid using your real name, but if they have any level of ethics they aren't going to go around saying who it really is. There have been a few popular Roman à clef style novels with anonymous authors, &lt;em&gt;Primary Colors&lt;/em&gt; comes to mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, are you sure that being anonymous will help? If you write this out and it's really close to reality, the people involved will be able to not only spot themselves (even after changing their names) but yourself. If you are trying to hide yourself because of legal issues you way have to fictionalize it further then just the ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T18:46:06.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6562" CreationDate="2012-10-29T21:38:32.243" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read recently (I think in a review of CBS's &lt;i&gt;Elementary&lt;/i&gt;) that technically every adaption of Sherlock Holmes after Conan Doyle is &quot;fanfiction&quot; in a sense, and it's easy to see that some are really excellent stories. &lt;em&gt;(::cough::BBC Sherlock::cough::)&lt;/em&gt; Those movies and TV series may be &quot;continuing someone else's story,&quot; but you can't argue that they aren't graceful or told with skill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original fiction can have Mary Sue characters and characters with informed characteristics (which means that the writer says &quot;Jon was brave and intelligent, well-respected by his peers,&quot; but Jon actually does dumb things, doesn't confront bullies, and gets ignored by his co-workers), and fiction based on someone else's premise or universe can be brilliant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's obviously easier to fall into the &quot;crap trap&quot; with fanfic; it just means that you have to be more on the lookout for it and work a little harder to avoid it. If someone else has defined Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, you have to decide if you're going to follow their established characteristics, backgrounds, and storylines, or if not, how far afield you're going to go. Is it reasonable to extrapolate a romance between them? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on how you write them, what the setup of their romance is, how you present their thoughts and feelings, how they and the other characters react to the romance. (For example: a passionate, impulsive roll in the bunk after Spock survives the &lt;i&gt;koon-ut-kal-if-fee&lt;/i&gt; in &quot;Amok Time&quot;? I'd believe that. Spock bringing Kirk flowers and snogging in the hallways? Not so much.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose it can be more obvious in fanfic when your story is not a &quot;graceful&quot; adaptation of the original, because the original is usually widely-known and easy to compare. That doesn't mean all fanfic is badly written or out of character in regards to the source material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The things which make an adaptation or fanfic graceful are a lot of the things which make original fiction graceful: strong consistent characters, believable plots, and good writing. The main difference is that in fanfic, a lot of your story elements have been defined by someone else, but in original fiction, you get to decide all the parts on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T21:38:32.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6574" CreationDate="2012-10-30T10:32:37.997" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other option - additional option, as you should definately write under a pseudonym - is to write something that is clearly fictional, but tells the true story. Then you are not being libelous, as you are not making any claims to truth, but you are getting the story out there. You could write another piece for publication once resolved, indicating the true situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But making it a fictional account can work. You can then elaborate or amend the details so that it becomes slightly less clear that it relates to the true situation. Doing this is very hard work, but worth while - you can make the story work as a story (real life so often doesn't), and so make it readable. Ideally, this gets the truth out there, without actually putting yourself at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of this is that you can say that you are storifying events that you know about, not trying to tell a real story, which is sort of true. Incidentally, people like Robert graves did this brilliantly with his Claudius books, and they make great reading, but are historically based. Your situation is different, but the same idea might work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T10:32:37.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6584" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6586" CreationDate="2012-10-31T13:44:05.053" Score="19" ViewCount="2045" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many, many English-language novels I've come across characters who speak other languages, most often French for whatever reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, such as with &lt;em&gt;Ulysses&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Lolita&lt;/em&gt;, this is a simple matter, because the author was multilingual. He simply wrote the characters himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that can't always be the case, because even someone who speaks French, English, Spanish, Russian, and Hindi might want a character who constantly references his Japanese heritage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There must be time when authors want to include characters who speak languages that the author does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this dealt with? Do they perhaps write the content of what is to be said, and then find another professional to help them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T20:32:37.077" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T20:32:37.077" Title="How do authors incorporate languages they don't speak?" Tags="|language|multilingual|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6584" CreationDate="2012-10-31T15:49:17.670" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mix and match between all the following methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research.&lt;/strong&gt; If you're going to be using a language extensively, then you'll want to have at least an elementary grasp of the words you'll be using. So learn a smattering of the language; understand the words you've written at least at a surface level; also read as much as you can about idioms, social norms, etc., to get the &quot;voice&quot; correct.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use an expert.&lt;/strong&gt; Get translations from somebody qualified. These should be checked and proofread just like the rest of your book (because you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; eventually be read by somebody who understands the language). If you can, get the translations looked over by several competent readers. Be sure to ask them if nuances such as phrasing and connotation are what they should be.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fake it.&lt;/strong&gt; Not recommended, but you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; fool most of the people most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid it.&lt;/strong&gt; Even if your character speaks, say, Klingon, that doesn't mean that all that Klingon needs to be transcribed. Use a couple of words (ones you know or learn or seek out...), but otherwise, write in the same language and always, and clarify that the speech is translated. &lt;code&gt;&quot;Today is a good day to die!&quot;&lt;/code&gt; is a lot more effective in prose than writing &lt;code&gt;&quot;HeghluʹmeH QaQ jajvam!&quot;&lt;/code&gt;. And if your protagonist &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; understand the language, then why should the reader get &quot;extra&quot; knowledge? Consider: &lt;code&gt;&quot;The Klingon shouted out something unintelligible; all his fellow warriors looked at him with sudden shock, and began edging away slowly.&quot;&lt;/code&gt; We get precisely as much as the character knows, and we don't &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to give away extra information to readers who &lt;em&gt;happen&lt;/em&gt; to know the right language.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2012-10-31T15:49:17.670" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2425" CreationDate="2012-10-31T16:36:54.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, as someone who has used world builders extensively, a warning: When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;World builders are all limited to certain things. None are as realistic as they say on the box, and you'll find yourself with a few odd looking flaws which actually damage immersion. I &lt;em&gt;strongly&lt;/em&gt; suggest you design your world first and find the mechanics that explain why it works that way instead of rolling a generator and building the story around your results. You'll likely create less scientific flaws than if you ran it through a generator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to answer the question, some games do put a lot of focus on world creation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_V&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Civilization 5&lt;/a&gt; has a nice system if you want to simulate terrains loosely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best so far is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dwarf Fortress&lt;/a&gt;. It was designed first-most as a fantasy world simulator, with the game built on top of that. It simulates incredible detail, from boiling points and chemicals to geology. It takes about a week to get past the poor interface. Though it doesn't simulate things like multiple moons and suns yet. There's also good modding capacity if you want to generate something very specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To wander a little off topic, &lt;a href=&quot;http://aurora2.pentarch.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aurora&lt;/a&gt; is an incredibly detailed universe creator, which seems to be designed as a sci fi roleplaying game of some sort. It's not a direct world builder, but anyone who appreciates extreme detail and sci-fi worlds might find it useful. On the other hand, it might take around half a month just to learn how it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this also brings up a second warning on world generators: They can be fun/distracting to play with in themselves and the more realistic a simulation is, the more work it takes to learn to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4312" LastActivityDate="2012-10-31T16:36:54.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6574" CreationDate="2012-11-01T18:01:40.960" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very interesting question that touches on the nature of fiction and non-fiction and the many ways in which they intersect. Two approaches come to mind, both encapsulated in books I've read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran&quot;&gt;Reading Lolita in Tehran&lt;/a&gt; by Azar Nafisi (2003). The author describes the true and somewhat dangerous circumstance of secretly meeting with female English students to discuss works of western literature at her home in Tehran after she had resigned from her teaching job at the university. Nafisi wrote the book after leaving Iran, but many of her students were still in the country. Their participation in her book club could have gotten them into trouble, so Nafisi protected their identities by changing and switching aspects of their lives in a way intended to be so utterly opaque that they could never be identified in Iran. Hopefully she was successful. This is an approach you could try.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_Broke_Horses&quot;&gt;Half Broke Horses&lt;/a&gt; by Jeannette Walls (2009). The author writes a &quot;true life novel&quot; based on stories of the life of her grandmother. It calls itself a novel but clearly there is a great deal of creative latitude as the story is told in the first person by the main character. It strings together family anecdotes from the grandmother's life (that would be the &quot;true life&quot; part) and fills in the gaps (there's the &quot;novel&quot; part). Although there is no attempt to disguise the truth in this novel (unlike with Nafisi's and your own work), there are probably still things you could learn from this approach in how to take true events and turn them into fiction -- in your case, a disguised and opaque fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3686" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T18:01:40.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6562" CreationDate="2012-11-01T21:32:30.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that Doctor Who is not written by one man. The list of screenwriters is actually very, very long: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_writers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;List of &lt;em&gt;Doctor Who&lt;/em&gt; writers&lt;/a&gt;. You might argue that, to a certain degree, most of them actually wrote fan fiction, since they were not the original creators of the series, but fan fiction that became canon once the episodes were filmed and aired ;) Actually, both &quot;new series&quot; Doctor Who writers Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat wrote fan fiction about the time lord earlier in their careers, before they became the main writers for the series! And I bet they're not the only ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the trick to writing good fan fiction is to get to know the characters and the world they belong to extremely well, and then staying true to them. Most bad fan fiction, aside from those that are bad simply because of poor writing, grammar and such, is bad because the characters are out of character. They do things that original characters would never do. In worst cases, it's a completely different character that only wears the original character's name. For the truly worst example of it, check out the Internet's worst fan fic: &lt;a href=&quot;http://myimmortalrehost2.webs.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;My Immortal rehost&lt;/a&gt;. So if, for example, you'd have the Doctor sleep around with every female he comes across, be sure you'd get flamed by Doctor Who fans, because chasing skirts is simply not something that the Doctor does. It's just not in his nature. A good fan fic, IMHO, is the one that stays true to the characters (plus, of course, that the story itself is well written). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do, however, really really want to have our favourite time lord turn into a skirt chaser, you'd have to give it a believable reason that is possible in the universe he is in. For example, he could become infected by a weird alien virus that makes him horny. Or he got hit on the head and forgot who he is - not very imaginative examples, I know, but it's not as important for the reason to be imaginative as it is important for it to be possible according to the rules of his world. Just as long as there is a reason. Having a character do something out of character out of the blue is a bad thing even for original fiction, and it's especially bad for fan fiction. There's nothing more irritating in fiction from an inconsistent character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastEditorUserId="1251" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T14:37:12.010" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T14:37:12.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3561" CreationDate="2012-11-02T10:27:07.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not much experienced in writing but coming up with ideas for a creature is not a problem for me, so I will try to help [:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing I think about is its function. For example, I had to create a creature that was linked to the hive mind and its duty was making food, or specifically farming. The farmer had following specifics: a plow on belly and two strong front legs so it could drag itself with ease. One leg in the back (three legs are exotic) for stabilizing. Its back was like a bowl where it could store harvest or take seeds from. Two small to medium sized hands for managing the harvest. One eye and no head as the hive mind controls it and it only needs to look forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically you think of what would be the reason for creatures existence, how it would survive, its function, and then think how evolution would handle it. You can take an existing (or non-existing) creature and then modify it to suite your needs. I also find useful crippling the creature in certain aspects, it makes them exotic, but don't overuse it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also add to them random vulnerabilities that wouldn't get guessed so easily and can add to the mystery factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope I helped [:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4293" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T10:27:07.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6486" CreationDate="2012-11-02T10:52:06.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think one of the problems with character development in novels is the author's liberty to spend periods of time explaining a character's motivation to a reader without the character actually having to say or do anything. A chapter that has the ostensible position in time and space of someone sitting in a chair, reflecting on a dramatic problem, is something that crops up from time to time. That reflective period can info dump a whole heap of incidents in summary and leave the character in a position where the next things they say and do are obvious to everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with that is that doing this is dry and it restricts the things that you need to have the character do in order to establish character through action. It also means that you miss opportunities to flesh out character through interaction and action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with having a character make a seemingly bizarre action that they later have to explain, possibly to another character. Also it is possible that characters don't always agree with each other's motivations. These nuances of character are what flesh out the interactions and make each character grow and deepen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I lucked into character development boot camp, I did a film-making course where I wrote a lot of scripts. They weren't great scripts but they taught me the nuts and bolts of what do when you can't just gear-shift into &quot;exposition mode&quot; and have a slow beat of characters reflecting on their own pasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a story can get by with out that kind of thing it will be richer for it. It is a path that should only be taken when absolutely necessary. Always explain exactly as little to the reader as you need to in the moment to keep them reading the next few paragraphs. Info dumping is the gentle story killer, smothering under the guise of explaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T10:52:06.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3561" CreationDate="2012-11-02T11:37:10.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think fairy tales and folklore provide a huge resource for monsters. Around the world you can find an infinite amount of scary stories to crib from. You can take them and use them as they are, just bring them to the modern world, or you can re-vamp the to be a modern incarnation of the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to bear in mind though is that no monster thinks it's a monster, they all think they are the hero of their own story and it's the erstwhile hero who is the bad guy. This is good advice iof you ever think of flipping the point of view of a story and telling it from the 'monsters' perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4320" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T11:37:10.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6596" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-02T13:24:00.723" Score="-2" ViewCount="821" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does stilted english means that the writer is dumb in using the langauge? Or can it be said to be their style? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some said that it can easily be pointed out if someone is not a native English speaker. One way to know it is, if the writing is silted. So does silted writing really means that the writer is not a native speaker, and that being this he/ she is not good in using the language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there anyone to expect, that in social tasks he seeks to complete, he requires &#xA;spirituality? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4305" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T15:04:27.850" Title="Does stilted english means that the writer is dumb in using the langauge?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-11-03T02:00:28.530" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6596" CreationDate="2012-11-02T14:52:04.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to its definition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stilted&lt;/strong&gt;: Stiffly or artificially formal;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does stilted english means that the writer is dumb in using the langauge? Or can it be said to be their style? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why dumb? It means that the writer does not have enough experience with the language, so his writings look too formal or too &quot;&lt;em&gt;robotic&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, because the way they are written is a mathematical way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;STILTED ENGLISH&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;P1: Would you happen to have any milk in your refrigerator?  I ruined my last cup when I added the wrong spice and now my carton is empty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;P2: No, I'm afraid I have no milk.  But whilst your here, would you&#xA;  mind, what is the name of your plumbing specialist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;FLUID ENGLISH&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;P1: Do you have any milk?  I had to dump my last cup when I&#xA;  added the wrong thing from my recipe to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;P2: No, sorry, but hey, what's the number to your plumber?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://the-ink-slinger.blogspot.com.es/2010/07/stilted-language.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://the-ink-slinger.blogspot.com.es/2010/07/stilted-language.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from this, you have some mistakes in your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it MEAN (no final -s)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Silted is not the same as s-&lt;strong&gt;t&lt;/strong&gt;-ilted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4321" LastEditorUserId="4321" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T15:04:27.850" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T15:04:27.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6584" CreationDate="2012-11-03T12:38:10.370" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmm... Let's see how I can't be of help, shall we? Try this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read famous works that are translations from source materials in the language you want to add to your manuscript. See if there's a phrase that caught your eye and see what it looks like in the original work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look up common expressions and idioms in 'the foreign language' from websites that teach them (mostly dedicated for light travelers but should work). Use literal translations with those but be careful they don't have too obscure cultural concepts. &lt;strong&gt;Eg.&lt;/strong&gt; It's not always obvious to a westerner that 'gifts/wrapped presents' take the place of flowers (as a consolation to families of/respect for) the deceased in some Eastern countries. &lt;em&gt;(See&lt;/em&gt; 3.2&lt;em&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what I can say on this;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on adding the result to the MS, one should&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decide on the source language and the target script:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The script of the source language may differ significantly from that of the manuscript language. For example: Adding phrases in Devanagari script to text predominantly in Latin script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If that's the case, decide on which you want: To transcribe the foreign phrases; To include them in the original script; or To transliterate them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Transcribing the foreign phrase seems to be the best option. As including visually different scripts -different in direction of writing, in the general form of glyphs, or in type (2)- can be jarring and is discouraged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only use sounds found in the target script, don't add any (or too many, if you must have a few) sounds that the reader can't pronounce, even if the character is fluent in the source language. Similarly, don't use diacritics too much; aim for a maximum of 'Tolkien-level'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;See if the scripts (source and manuscript) differ significantly in type -one is an alphabet, the other an ideographic- and never, &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt;, include the phrases in the source script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In certain languages -especially Chinese/Japanese, from what I've seen- you may use phrases in a closely related or a very common script. Latin being the best example of an &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; universal script that I've seen often used in non-mainstream Japanese works (manga, mostly).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decide on what s/he wants to include of the foreign language,&lt;/strong&gt; is it simply the fact that it is used by a character? Or do you want to reference the culture that comes with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To reference the culture of the language's home country, I'd imagine the best way to be through the narrative, not dialog. Through the characters' moves, hobbies and way of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But to reference the culture &lt;em&gt;behind&lt;/em&gt; the language (we could consider Shakespeare/Rock'n'Roll/... to be 'culture behind English') then you can translate the idioms. Notice that you essentially bring the idioms along with the character and give them to a machine translator (not really, the point is to have a literal translation).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't overuse or misuse this. The reader will look up (or you will include through narration or dialog) what the translated idiom meant, but s/he'd hate to have to read then translate every sentence to his/her cultural concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eg.1&lt;/strong&gt; Arabic: &lt;em&gt;&quot;As if birds are on their heads.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; ** English: &lt;em&gt;&quot;They're walking on egg shells.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;strong&gt;Eg.1&lt;/strong&gt;: In the previous example, both idioms could (but not always would) mean that a group of people are very silent, or very careful for some reason. Because of the desert-origin of the Arabic language, people would look out for birds, especially predators, and thus would fall silent when travelling so as to not scare the figurative birds. The English idiom I believe is fairly clear.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eg.2&lt;/strong&gt; English: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Like hell you're gonna have this one!&quot;&lt;/em&gt; ** Arabic: &lt;em&gt;&quot;The moon's closer to you than this!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eg.3&lt;/strong&gt; English: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Thank you, Mr. Obvious!&quot;&lt;/em&gt; ** Arabic: &lt;i&gt;&quot;Like who struggles to describe water and ends up with... &lt;/i&gt;'Water'&lt;i&gt;!&quot;&lt;/i&gt; OR &lt;em&gt;&quot;Like you found the lost gem!&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (But in a sarcastic tone, I'm not sure I can capture that with an English word; an example of an idiom that will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; work properly.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eg.4&lt;/strong&gt; English: &lt;em&gt;&quot;This's just the top of the iceberg.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; ** Arabic: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Greater is what's hidden.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also notice how such expressions would differ from dialect to dialect. The Arabic idioms I used are usually seen in literary works, rarely in the 20+ regional dialects. The English idioms I used are quite common in films.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For quick translations of phrases in languages different from the manuscript language (but in a suitable script) then one can&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;include the translation in italics immediately following the line of dialog that needs it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;enclose the foreign phrases in quotation marks different in appearance to what the manuscript language uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eg.&lt;/strong&gt; Use &lt;strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; (double quotation marks) for English (here, MS l'g) and &lt;strong&gt;‹&lt;/strong&gt; , &lt;strong&gt;›&lt;/strong&gt; (angle quotation marks) for French, Arabic, or transcribed Chinese (here, possible foreign l'gs).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;make sure the formatting is consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2012-11-07T21:10:53.863" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T21:10:53.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6609" CreationDate="2012-11-04T09:50:06.970" Score="13" ViewCount="30373" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having 17 syllables is in the definition of Haiku, but does it have to have exactly 17 syllables? Is this usually followed strictly, or is it more of a guideline rather than a rule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking about Haikus written in English, not Japanese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3970" LastEditorUserId="29719" LastEditDate="2020-08-05T09:28:49.400" LastActivityDate="2022-02-27T20:25:51.333" Title="Does a Haiku need to have exactly 17 syllables?" Tags="|poetry|haiku|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6599" CreationDate="2012-11-05T02:21:55.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order for it to be a Haiku, it must have 17 syllables.  Because a Haiku is strictly 3 un-rhymed lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, people usually are very strict about this.  If it is over or under 17 syllables, I'm sorry, but they probably wouldn't classify it as a Haiku.  Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4210" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T02:21:55.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6584" CreationDate="2012-11-05T02:30:43.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research, research, research.  I can't state it enough.  Research is the key and the backbone to writing a successful knowledge.  If it's a language you can handle phrases of on your own after simply looking up the grammatical rules, go for it!  If not, I suggest you find an expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a simple language (aka a well-known language) such as french, Spanish, or another language with an English-looking alphabet, you may use it sparingly.  I don't think you should overwhelm your reader with entire paragraphs in a foreign language.  Simply saying, &quot;John slipped into French...&quot; and throwing in a few key words in the language should be sufficient.&#xA;Tough languages, where the reader would not recognize the alphabet at all, should be avoided if possible.  If you absolutely must have a Japanese-speaking character, tell them that he's speaking Japanese and then through in a few words that have been translated into &lt;i&gt;English characters&lt;/i&gt;.  Try not to confuse your reader, or they won't want to continue in the book&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I've been helpful and have a great time writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4210" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T02:30:43.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6603" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-05T10:58:15.947" Score="-1" ViewCount="678" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I need to write a short story for my university writing portfolio and I was wondering if I could put a poem in it or would that be inappropriate for a short story? And are there any short stories out there that have poems in them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4324" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T23:23:42.257" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T05:22:04.393" Title="Poem in a short story?" Tags="|short-story|poetry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-11-06T21:24:29.760" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6608" CreationDate="2012-11-05T22:55:41.750" Score="1" ViewCount="841" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a paper, supposedly using APA citation style, and I've encountered the following conflict. &#xA;On the one hand, the title of the work I cite is cited in all small letters, and only the first word (and a word directly following a colon) are capitalized, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Liard, J. (1990). &lt;em&gt;Deductive reasoning.&lt;/em&gt; Annual Review of Psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anderson, J. N. (2000). Secular responses to the problem of induction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what if the title of one work contains not only a noun, but a name, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Salmon, W. (1974). An encounter with david hume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(David Hume was a British philosopher.)&#xA;Do I, or do I not, capitalize the words &quot;David Hume&quot;? and if so, does anyone maybe even know how to force this in JabRef/LaTeX?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3614" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T23:08:31.563" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T04:57:10.240" Title="APA citation style - capitalization of titles" Tags="|tools|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6486" CreationDate="2012-11-06T02:30:56.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Making realistic characters starts with knowing them.  Pick your top few characters, and write a character bio.  To write a bio, you must answer some questions about your characters.  Here is a non-exhaustive list of a few questions to answer about your characters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where were they born?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of family did they grow up in?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are their likes and dislikes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do they look like?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are their core beliefs? (i.e. moral, religious, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do they sound like (voice, dialect, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do they interact with others?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What type of people do they have as friends?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What type of flaws do they have (everyone has them, and if your characters don't, they won't be believable.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is their back-story?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What culture did they grow up in?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each question like this informs your characters, and provides a texture and richness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, your main character should change through the course of the work.  The typical method is giving your character a fatal flaw that he or she must overcome to achieve the goal of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T02:30:56.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6605" CreationDate="2012-11-06T04:57:10.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should capitalize the name as you should other proper nouns. See this article and the links within: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/02/how-to-capitalize-author-names-in-apa-style.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/02/how-to-capitalize-author-names-in-apa-style.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can preserve the capitals for the proper nouns by using braces:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;title={An encounter with {D}avid {H}ume}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe with JabRef you can go to preferences and put 'title' in the section where you 'Store the following fields with braces around caps' (maybe not the exact name of the field, but it should be obvious).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T04:57:10.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6599" CreationDate="2012-11-06T05:08:58.703" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Haiku don't have to have 17 syllables. That &quot;rule&quot; is based on something that makes sense in Japanese, not so much in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;syllables&quot; (onji) in Japanese are in a 5 - 7- 5 pattern, but Japanese is primarily polysyllabic...so creating Haiku in English based on the same pattern is likely to result in a poem that is often too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Haiku is less a syllabic form than a kind of poetry. Traditional Haiku have three lines, the first and third lines are separated by a kind of interjection. Consider Buson's haiku:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a single poppy&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  blowing in a field of wheat -&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  your face in the crowd&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two lines are connected by the middle line. I remember reading somewhere that Haiku are almost formed like jokes: there's a setup (first line) and a punch-line (third line).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Haiku go beyond the form. The syllabic structure that many learn in elementary school is often the result of teaching about syllables rather than what Haiku really are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T05:08:58.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6545" CreationDate="2012-11-06T05:13:45.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In typesetting, this is sometimes called a 'dinkus' -- see here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenewsmanual.net/Resources/glossary.html#D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thenewsmanual.net/Resources/glossary.html#D&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T05:13:45.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6603" CreationDate="2012-11-06T05:22:04.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no &quot;rules&quot; for fiction, and appropriateness depends on whether it achieves the effect in the story you want it to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many examples of novels which include poems/songs/lyrics (think Tolkien, Milne, Lewis Carroll), but I can't think of any short fiction that does so (though I am sure there must be examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T05:22:04.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-06T13:05:44.807" Score="2" ViewCount="2735" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing an academic paper for a school assignment, specifically a short &lt;strong&gt;Position Paper&lt;/strong&gt; with 500 word limit. I have chosen to use &lt;strong&gt;APA&lt;/strong&gt; for my citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is compulsory or a MUST to stick to EITHER using in-text citations OR parenthetical citations for the whole paper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IF no to 1, would it be best to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;stick to using one particular citation style, which for my case, using in-text citations for the entire paper, or &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;should I consider mixing both in-text citations and parenthetical citations throughout the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am relatively new to writing an academic paper and only need to &lt;strong&gt;cite around 5 or 6 points/sentences&lt;/strong&gt;, my concerns are that 2. might make the whole paper very dull and monotonous but 3. might make the paper look messy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Karen" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T14:26:07.663" Title="Stick to in-text citation or use a mixture of both parenthetical and in-text?" Tags="|style|citations|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6612" CreationDate="2012-11-06T13:12:52.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should decide sentence by sentence. Because the &lt;em&gt;APA Style Manual&lt;/em&gt; requires so much garbage to be inserted in those reference citations, you cannot escape distracting your readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a parenthetical cite will be better than an in-text cite, and sometimes vice versa. There is no standard rule. Whatever works best for your particular text is best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Bill Franke" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T13:12:52.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6612" CreationDate="2012-11-06T13:39:45.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no rule stating that you have to stick to one in-text citation style or the other for the whole paper.  If you're including a direct quote, you need to include the author, year of publication, and the page number for the reference, but they don't all have to be in parentheses.  You can mention the author in a signal phrase.  I think mixing the two different styles can make the language seem more natural and readable, but use your best judgement for each reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it's worth noting that if you're paraphrasing an idea (not directly quoting), you only have to include the author and year in your in-text citation.  You're encouraged to include the page number, but it's not required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Purdue OWL: APA Formatting and Style Guide - In-Text Citations: The Basics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" OwnerDisplayName="Bill the Lizard" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T13:39:45.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6616" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-06T15:13:05.543" Score="2" ViewCount="404" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing an academic paper, specifically a Position Paper, using APA.&#xA;According to the Purdue OWL webpage, to cite an organisation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;First citation: (Mothers Against Drunk Driving [MADD], 2000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second citation: (MADD, 2000)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I allowed to use the abbreviation of the agency/organisation in other sentences in the paper but not as a citation? Or do I have to use the entire name again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First citation: ... (Mothers Against Drunk Driving [MADD], 2000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second citation where Brown talks about the organisation MADD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;MADD also notes that .... (as cited in Brown, 2010).&quot; or&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Mothers Against Drunk Driving also notes that .... (as cited in Brown, 2010).&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4328" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-11-06T20:03:47.353" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T03:44:20.480" Title="Using abbreviations after in-text citations" Tags="|citations|academic-writing|apa|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6616" CreationDate="2012-11-06T16:24:42.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Knowing nothing about this particular style, my impulse would be to define it on first reference in each kind of copy, and use the abbreviation after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the first time you use it in running copy, spell it out and put the abbreviation after it in parens, and then use the abbreviation thereafter. But &lt;em&gt;additionally&lt;/em&gt;, the first time you use it in a citation, spell it out &lt;em&gt;again&lt;/em&gt;, and then use the abbreviation in subsequent citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First citation: ... (Mothers Against Drunk Driving [MADD], 2000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second citation: (MADD, 2000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Running copy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First reference: Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) also notes that .... (as cited in Brown, 2010).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second reference: Later, a spokesperson from MADD commented... (as cited in Brown, 2010).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T16:24:42.607" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6618" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6622" CreationDate="2012-11-06T21:00:46.097" Score="5" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current goal is to write a novel (I'm already close to the 35K word mark). However, most of the books I've read about story structure are actually about screenwriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While stories are stories no matter the medium, I'm wondering whether everything in these books applies to novels. In particular, some books about structure are very precise about where in a screenplay should some important event happen; can this be directly translated to a novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, are the basic concepts about structure freely interchangeable between novels and screenplays, or are there major differences to be aware of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T23:24:45.437" Title="How applicable are screenwriting ideas to novels?" Tags="|novel|structure|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6545" CreationDate="2012-11-06T21:56:16.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, you would call this a &lt;strong&gt;section&lt;/strong&gt;. For fiction, a &lt;strong&gt;scene&lt;/strong&gt; (or maybe a &lt;strong&gt;sequence&lt;/strong&gt; if the portion of text covers multiple scenes),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T21:56:16.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6620" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-07T02:52:51.997" Score="0" ViewCount="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a 60 page essay. However most of my references are articles. How can I include this in the bibliography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4325" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-11-07T19:16:21.013" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T05:04:30.823" Title="Can you cite an article to your bibliography? If yes, what is the format?" Tags="|citations|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6623" CreationDate="2012-11-07T03:03:31.683" Score="15" ViewCount="551" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to copyright a work in the name of a fictional writer? For example, like Nicolas Bourbaki or some pen name of some author? Can I use my own fictional name to copyright the work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4330" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-06-25T10:13:57.920" LastActivityDate="2022-05-10T12:46:27.013" Title="Can a copyright be made in the name of a fictional writer?" Tags="|copyright|authorship|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6618" CreationDate="2012-11-07T11:13:00.243" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of structure the two mediums are actually very related and follow very similar patterns. You have a set-up, an inciting incident, a call to action, first act resolution etc. etc. The difference with a novel is that there are more ways to explore the intangibles that cannot be used in a screenplay - what a character is thinking, what memories they are having, what they can smell etc. - and these things are what gives a novel greater depth than a screenplay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in knowing more then you should read Alexandra Sokoloff's 'Screenwriting Tricks for Authors' which costs about $3 as an ebook or try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alexandrasokoloff.com/tricks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;her website&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She does both and she knows her stuff. Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4331" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T19:35:32.847" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T19:35:32.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6621" CreationDate="2012-11-07T23:03:05.893" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, at least you can in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write under a pseudonym and do not want to have your identity revealed in the Copyright Office’s records, give your pseudonym and identify it as such on your application. You can leave blank the space for the name of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20210428165628/https://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl101.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;U.S. Copyright Office - Pseudonyms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2022-05-07T15:04:53.043" LastActivityDate="2022-05-07T15:04:53.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6620" CreationDate="2012-11-08T04:07:08.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The particular style that determines the proper formatting will depend on where this article is being submitted or published. If it's for school work, then ask your instructor or check with your program guide. If it's for publication, check what your intended publication requires. Once you know that, we can provide specific help and resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T04:07:08.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6621" CreationDate="2012-11-08T04:13:51.443" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also: there are two ways you can indicate your pseudonym with the Copyright Office. You can either use just your pseudonym or you can use your real name and indicate you are &quot;writing as pen name.&quot; Using the pseudonym as the copyright claimant can pose potential legal problems should such issues arise, so the Copyright Office rightly suggest that if you go that route, you should check with legal counsel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, too, that because of tax requirements for payment, if you receive payment from a publisher, they will have to have your real name and social security number, unless you can work out some &quot;middle-man&quot; arrangement with an agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, using a pseudonym doesn't offer any legal protection if you were, for instance, sued for slander or plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T04:13:51.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6626" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6627" CreationDate="2012-11-08T09:42:49.980" Score="6" ViewCount="3025" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the beginning of a short story I'm writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jun was standing motionless at entrance of the 7-eleven. He was staring down,&#xA;  searching for something in his memory as students picked their&#xA;  midnight snacks, office workers talked on the seats, and youngsters&#xA;  with dyed hair drank their beers. He scratched his ear and lifted his&#xA;  head. &lt;em&gt;What did Ling ask me to buy?&lt;/em&gt; His wife had asked him to get&#xA;  something for her at the the 7-eleven. That had been the reason he had&#xA;  come out, and entered the convenient store in the first place. But now&#xA;  that he was here, he didn't know what he was supposed to buy. He made&#xA;  a mental list of all the possibilities: chocolate milk, cookies,&#xA;  shampoo, washing foam, bathing foam, condoms...He stopped there and&#xA;  realized that it wasn't any of them. &lt;em&gt;How can that be possible? She&#xA;  just told me a minutes ago.&lt;/em&gt; He wonder if he was in early stages of&#xA;  Alzheimer or dementia. But he thought that was impossible, after all,&#xA;  he was just in his mid-thirties. Those diseases belonged to people&#xA;  with white hair and walking sticks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jun decided to sit in one of the stools. He glanced at his watch.&#xA;  12:30 a.m. He thought about calling his wife and ask her what she&#xA;  needed. He took his cellphone from his pocket and stared at it for a&#xA;  couple of seconds, but then put it back. &lt;em&gt;I better not call her. I just&#xA;  told you few minutes ago and you forgot? she would say&lt;/em&gt;. He left out a&#xA;  sigh and glanced around, realizing that he was feeling a little bit&#xA;  hungry. Jun headed to the food section, and bough himself a hot dog and a iced coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if this will grab the reader's attention (Would he or she think that the situation is too &quot;normal&quot; or &quot;not intriguing enough)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for everyone's suggestions. How about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jun stood motionless at the entrance of the 7-Eleven, ignoring the&#xA;  strange looks from customers who were entering the place. He stared down at his&#xA;  shoes as if he were in some sort of trance. Then, he lifted his head and glanced&#xA;  around. &lt;em&gt;What did Ling ask me to buy?&lt;/em&gt; His wife had asked him to get&#xA;  something for her. That had been the reason he had gone out, and&#xA;  entered a convenient store in the first place. But now that he was&#xA;  here, he didn't know what he was supposed to buy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T14:49:42.267" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T22:29:17.507" Title="Does this opening paragraph grab your attention? (very normal setting)" Tags="|creative-writing|short-story|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2021-07-24T14:20:00.983" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6626" CreationDate="2012-11-08T10:03:14.847" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was late at night, and Jun stood at the convenience store entrance, trying to remember what he was supposed to buy – his absent-mindedness prompting his first midlife crisis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've added a lot more details, but we've both essentially said the same thing.  I don't find those &lt;em&gt;details&lt;/em&gt; to be particularly gripping; in fact, they seem to have the opposite effect, especially in a story opening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than being intrigued by the character, I'm left waiting for something to happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, the words aren't entirely without purpose: they drop hints about the neighborhood, the clientele, and Jun and Ling’s married life. Still, you asked about their ability to &lt;em&gt;grab the reader’s attention&lt;/em&gt;.   If such detailed descriptions are really going to grab my attention, they need to describe something far more intriguing than, &lt;em&gt;&quot;What was it... shampoo or milk?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing: no one drinks their beer inside a 7-11, especially not &quot;youngsters&quot;. Munch on a chili dog? Maybe. Lug a six-pack back to their car? Happens all the time. But drink their beer &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; the convenience store?  Now you've got a credibility problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastEditorUserId="3298" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T11:18:17.227" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T11:18:17.227" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6626" CreationDate="2012-11-08T11:19:46.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main reason this doesn't grab my attention is that there is no sense of immediacy. We start with him standing there, staring, scratching his ear, lifting his head. So what? It doesn't give me a good reason to keep reading all the way to the hook where he's going &quot;How is that possible? She only told me minutes ago.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with the hook. Let us know right off the bat that something's off. You could state it explicitly (eg. It had only been two minutes since his wife had told him what to buy, and already Jun couldn't remember for the life of him what it was that she wanted) or make it more subtle (eg. Jun wandered up and down the aisles of the 7-Eleven, ignoring the strange looks from the other customers as he focused his full attention on each section in the store). With better writing, obviously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other aspect that makes it lack immediacy is the verb forms (yes, there is a formal term for it that I don't know). When you say &quot;was standing&quot; or &quot;was staring&quot; it doesn't give you a sense of things happening now. It makes you feel more removed from the action, like you're watching on instead of being part of it. Instead of &quot;was standing&quot;, say &quot;stood&quot;. Instead of &quot;was staring&quot;, say &quot;stared&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically: Hook us, and make us feel like we're there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T11:19:46.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6626" CreationDate="2012-11-08T11:36:35.380" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me you kind of steam right into the detail without giving a little set-up first. I'd simply change things around a little like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jun made a mental list of all the possibilities: chocolate milk, cookies, shampoo, washing foam, bathing foam, condoms... but as he stood there, motionless, in the 7-eleven he realized that it wasn't any of them. All around him students grabbed midnight snacks, office workers talked, and kids with dyed hair drank beer. He scratched his ear, lifted his head, searched his memory. His wife had asked him to get something, that was why he had come out in the first place, but now that he was here he had no idea what it was.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;How can that be possible? She just told me a minutes ago.&quot; He wondered if he was in early stages of Alzheimer or dementia. But he thought that was impossible, after all, he was just in his mid-thirties. Those diseases belonged to people with white hair and walking sticks. Jun decided to sit in one of the stools. He glanced at his watch. 12:30 a.m. He thought about calling her and took his cellphone from his pocket. He stared at the screen for a couple of seconds, but then put it back. &quot;I better not call her.&quot; 'I just told you few minutes ago and you forgot?' she would say. He let out a sigh and glanced around. Realizing he was hungry, he headed to the food section and bought a hot dog and an iced coffee.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like that, anyway. Hope that helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4331" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T19:34:03.377" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T19:34:03.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6626" CreationDate="2012-11-08T22:29:17.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are going to expose what's going on inside the protagonist's head to the reader, don't waste your time on cliched drivel.  &lt;strong&gt;Instead, have a packet of something hit the floor, which makes a sound and grabs &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; attention.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's some relatively skanky white trash chick, but hot in a way.  She dropped a bag of Combos on the floor and bends over to pick it up.  He compares some of her features to his wife's.  He contemplates whether he would like his wife to have a tattoo on her back like that girl's, weighing his sexual desires against the embarrassment factor, since he's more on the conservative side of the fence.  &amp;quot;Perhaps a temporary one,&amp;quot; he thinks to himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, then he walks over to the counter with a gallon jug of water and a half gallon of 1% milk.  Normally he'd go to the grocery store for that sort of thing, like a normal person.  In fact, he only visits a 7-Eleven maybe once in five years, and even then it's probably to ask for directions, which never works out too well by the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's behind three other customers, the first two are an interracial couple buying several candy items and a 2-liter of Mountain Dew.  Their bill comes to $14.62 and he thinks to himself, &amp;quot;Oh my gosh that's expensive for so little.  I'm glad I'm not wasting my money on that junk.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's half past ten on a Friday and a man wearing a green army surplus jacket, faded jeans, and a ski mask walks in the front door waving a hand gun.  Crap, what would Stallone do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, have something &lt;em&gt;happen&lt;/em&gt;, not just some boring thoughts going through the protagonist's head.  Nobody thinks about Alzheimer's when they forgot what they needed at the store.  They just think to themselves how dumb they are for not making a list after having the same thing happen to them 1000 times before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4338" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T22:29:17.507" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4855" CreationDate="2012-11-09T02:06:55.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I already know you chose a best answer, I thought I'd still share a site for future visitors to this question. There is a good site where you can post up your original works (whether it be a very long story, very short story, or poetry). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fictionpress.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FictionPress&lt;/a&gt; is a really great site. There is also a review system in place so you can get critique from peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T02:06:55.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6616" CreationDate="2012-11-09T03:44:20.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/abbreviations/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA Style Blog&lt;/a&gt; recommends that you spell out the organization's name in your first use in the text of the article, then abbreviate in subsequent uses, including in-text citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you include the citation many times in your paper, you might want to abbreviate the group author name. If so, this introduction should be included with the first use in text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;According to the American Psychological Association (APA, n.d., Definition of &quot;Psychology,&quot; para. 1), “psychology is a diverse discipline, grounded in science, but with nearly boundless applications in everyday life.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you still need to spell out the name of the organization in each long reference at the end of your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T03:44:20.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6633" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6634" CreationDate="2012-11-09T13:59:18.777" Score="4" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;When in the same chapter, I finish a section and want to connect it with the next section I am not sure what is better. Let's see an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Section: &amp;quot;Bus&amp;quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bus was very popular and cheap... Everybody loved it! &lt;strong&gt;However, new production techniques, robotics, whatever and an economic revolution allowed every one to own a car.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Section: &amp;quot;Car&amp;quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A car offers convenient transportation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, I don't like to finish the first section without a rational ending by just saying &amp;quot;and then buses were replaced by cars&amp;quot; and finish the section. However, I am afraid I am losing relevant information regarding the &amp;quot;Car&amp;quot; which should go in that section, and I don't want to repeat that information in the next section. If you are reading everything it should be okay, but if you just open the book, go to the section &amp;quot;Car&amp;quot; because you care only about it and read that part, you have missed important information regarding the birth of cars!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I am doubting whether a sentence should be a conclusion of a section, or an introduction of the next. So, what would you think is the best approach to technical writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4339" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-11-12T17:08:45.787" Title="Should the transition sentence be placed in the end of the current section, or at the beginning of next section?" Tags="|technique|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6633" CreationDate="2012-11-09T14:11:15.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The information about buses being replaced by cars logically makes sense in both sections of the paper.  There's nothing wrong with having a sentence or two overlap between the sections.  If it gets to be more than that, you might want to consider adding even more details and have a separate section that discusses the transition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T14:11:15.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6635" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6636" CreationDate="2012-11-09T19:11:28.237" Score="4" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to write the biography of an important, underrated scientist who performed a really important experiment. He persevered for many years, became ill (and recovered) along the way, and practically invented molecular biology. He and his work deserve to be much better known, as do the times through which he lived (born when Pasteur introduced the idea germs cause disease, lived long enough to see the double helix). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that he had pretty much no life outside his scientific papers. He was intensely private, kept no diary, and has no legacy of personal letters. It's hard to make a personal connection when so few details are known about a person's life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I struggle with whether he's too boring to be publishable, or whether I lack the writing skill to portray him skillfully. So I'm looking for advice. For the record, I do have &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; personal info, but I'm essentially asking for tips on how to turn technical archane papers into a gripping story. ... And suggestions for biographies I might turn to as models?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2942" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T07:30:41.800" Title="How can people doing technical, archane work be portrayed interestingly?" Tags="|non-fiction|biography|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6635" CreationDate="2012-11-09T19:58:07.407" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing biographies like these for a mass audience will require that the reader understand the subject's work. This can be handled by long expository passages, or, as is more frequently done, concepts can be broken up into small, easily digestible pieces. These can alternate with the story of the subject's life, information provided to the reader only as is needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many writers seem to have a knack for getting science writing &quot;right&quot;, and I suggest that your best strategy is to read those books. Look at what these writers do well, and learn from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are just a few examples of the books I've read. While most of these are not biographical in nature, the same issues apply: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0062091247&quot;&gt;The Best American Science Writing&lt;/a&gt; series is probably the best place for you to start. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simon Winchester is a wonderful popularizer of history and science. His books cover geography and geology as well as politics and history. I particularly recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060838590&quot;&gt;Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded&lt;/a&gt; for an amazing blend of sociology, geology, environmental issues, and politics. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Isaac Asimov was famous for making many, many topics accesible. He wrote books on physics and chemistry that may be of interest, despite being somewhat outdated now. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0380004836&quot;&gt;The Neutrino: Ghost Particle of the Atom&lt;/a&gt; is a particular favorite of mine. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brian Greene's book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0375708111&quot;&gt;The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory&lt;/a&gt; is a wonderful if slightly slow read. The book is somewhat technical but understandable if the reader sticks to it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carl Sagan's seminal book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0345331354&quot;&gt;Cosmos&lt;/a&gt; is the essence of readable science popularization. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stephen Hawking's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553380168&quot;&gt;A Brief History of Time&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/055380202X&quot;&gt;The Universe in a Nutshell&lt;/a&gt; are great introductions to then-current theoretical physics.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0393316041&quot;&gt;Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character)&lt;/a&gt; focuses more on Richard Feynman the man than the work, but is a great read and is well worth your time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T19:58:07.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6635" CreationDate="2012-11-10T01:58:54.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to make scientific work accessible to the non-scientist, you need to connect it to something within the experience of your audience. The personal life of the researcher is a very popular vehicle for this but not the only one available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look to the events of the world in which he worked to provide the thread that might otherwise come from his private, non-professional activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lifespan from Pasteur to the Double Helix can also be represented as &quot;Dickens to Huxley&quot; or &quot;Franz Liszt to Benny Goodman&quot;. Can you see evidence in the mental models that underpin his work reflecting the zeitgeist? How might advances in medicine have shaped the way in which he went about his work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every scientist is shaped by the communities in which he worked. A lucky few can see how they reshaped the world around them. In the absence of a richly detailed personal life story, the story of those interactions can open your work to the non-specialist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T01:58:54.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6635" CreationDate="2012-11-10T07:30:41.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a substantial amount of material on the actual &lt;strong&gt;timelines&lt;/strong&gt; of how he did his work/made his breakthroughs, you can use that. Quiet a lot of books about people working in technical fields that are obscure to a large section of the readership use this sort of playing around with the timelines. You can break it up into chunks, give teasers as to what sort of (theory, experiment, etc.) they were working on in say 1973, then break away to some of the important life events/chanllenges faced by them around the same period in time. Then, after putting that period of their work into their life's context, you can return to the next big step they managed to take in their work, or say the next major breakthrough they were able to make in 1975.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to give a sort of narrative, or some inkling of tension (e.g the tension often present in the cycles of work--&gt;personalobstacles--&gt;overcoming--&gt;backtowork) to the readers, for them to grip onto so that they find it easy to involve themselves into the signficiance and context of that person's technical achievements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you may not have any 'obstacles' or 'personal tragedies' for this particular person's life, but you can still give his/her work context by placing it in that period's overall scientific landscape, or his country's political turmoil/transformation (just riffing here), his quest to find the right people to work with, how progress made by his peers affected his work, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;timelines&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; could be the approach you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T07:30:41.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6639" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-10T14:38:29.437" Score="0" ViewCount="1019" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this opening too short or too quick? Can it be shortened further, removing any unnecessary description like &quot;not giving him a lift to the office&quot;? (I feel this last can be avoided but I am not sure.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Listen Mr. Amit, I am warning you for the last time. Next time I will just fire you. Why didn’t you close the window panes yesterday after the work? It’s just because of my luck that the robber didn’t take anything except few unimportant things. But I would still like to warn you to be careful.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This was the kind of scolding I used to get from my boss Mr. George Henry almost every day. I was his company’s financier, so I had to work till late in night on his computer. I just wanted to quit his job, but money was compelling me to work for him. I lived in one of those houses built in front of his one big bungalow of a castle. Still, he wouldn’t pick me up in his ambassador in the morning. I really despised him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was working on my desk as usually when I heard the phone bell ringing in Mr. George’s cabin. Then it cut off. He probably must have picked up. After a few minutes I saw him rushing out of his cabin. He was in a real hurry. The clerk tried to aid him. But he pushed him aside and ran to his ambassador and drove away like a mad man. No one knew what has happened. His personal secretary, who was in the cabin, at that time said that the phone was from his home. Then after a few hours, the shocking news came to us. Somebody killed his son, and following it he declared a week holiday. This was the only good thing happened to me in the last five years working for him. But I was of course very sorry for his son. Why would any one kill a 10 year old boy!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4344" LastEditorUserId="3880" LastEditDate="2012-11-16T03:19:56.397" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T03:19:56.397" Title="Is the opening of this detective short story gripping enough to read on? Can it be shortened?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6640" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-10T15:41:37.577" Score="0" ViewCount="564" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a short love story. There is a moment when the man and woman he loved meets after 3 decades at his home and they strike up a conversation. They had some unsaid feelings buried deep within and it just overwhelms the man. He puts forward his feelings and pain more gradually but more aggressively. I want to make this situation very intense and as real as possible. What points should I keep in mind in order to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to provide a detailed description of the interiors of the house and points like 'she sat on the antique looking sofa' and all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scene:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He smiled at her with a bit of watery eyes. But hers was as beautiful and sparkling as always and with a melted heart he said &quot;hey&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;hi&quot; she replied with her soft voice, climbing the stairs back to him. For the first time in 32 years he was looking again what he considered the most beautiful face. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;how are you?&quot; She said in a heavy tone, but with a subtle smile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I am fine&quot; wondering she has come back after all these yrs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How are you?&quot; he asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I am fine but don't you feel its bit cold out here!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh yes, I am sorry please come in&quot; Thus she entered his home.&#xA;  His was a detached house with a ground and first floor. It seemed as if either he is shifting in or shifting out, suggested by the few articles kept in the drawing room. Just a small wooden center table with a sofa and two dissimilar chairs around it. And old chandelier, a flower vase in one of the corners with some dust laden artificial flower set. There were good number of windows. She remembered he used to talk of houses well ventilated and naturally lit rooms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You live alone here?&quot; She said turning to him from the room's ceiling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yes&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Where is your wife and kids?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;For your information I never got married, if that's what you have come to know.&quot; He never liked the way she would say things as if they don't mean anything to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I didn't mean to irritate you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah, i know.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I thought you would be happy to see me&quot; she said looking down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Happy to see you? Let me be honest to you, seeing you in person after 3 decades has withered me. Its as if I will crumble any moment now. Though I always imagined this day and believed I can face this situation but I am not able to. I don't know what to be. To be happy or to be sad! The pain, the agony, the moments with you I have always cherished are gushing out of me. You tell me what should I be!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She sank her chin into her chest. He could few drops of tears falling off her face.&#xA;  He realized he was being too rough. &quot;Hey, I am sorry dear. Didn't mean to hurt you. I have always been unable to hide my feelings from you. You know that, but I never mean to hurt you. Moreover you are the stronger one of us. Isn't it&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She wiped her face with her handkerchief. &quot;You want coffee or tea&quot; he asked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Neither. I just want a glass of water.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He brought her water. She sipped it slowly and thanked him keeping the glass on the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4344" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-11-10T20:34:44.750" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T20:39:37.330" Title="Is there a description of location required in intense moments of the story like in a love story" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5765" CreationDate="2012-11-10T20:49:49.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is really amazing and eerie start for a story!!  I was very intrigued throughout.  I like the dialogue for the most part, but to make the woman appear even more mysterious, I would recommend she not seem so eager to share these thoughts with Julian, and make him inquire a bit more.  One other thing which tripped me up was when you said that she was wearing a black bikini with a jacket covering her top half, because if the jacket was covering her the man would not be able to see her bikini.  Perhaps it would be best to say something like, &quot;Her legs were bare and she was wearing what looked like black bikini bottoms.  Her top half was covered by a dark jacket.&quot;&#xA;Anyways once again, I personally love the mystery at the start of the story, and that is what gets readers hooked.  I was curious to find out why she was lying there and I never doubted that this would be answered later into the story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4345" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T20:49:49.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6642" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6643" CreationDate="2012-11-11T15:06:13.090" Score="14" ViewCount="20314" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've realized that I always start sentences with &lt;strong&gt;(name of character), he, she, it, they, her, his, the, after (a moment/that), and then&lt;/strong&gt;. &#xA;I wonder if there's any useful exercise or tip to reduce this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sample of my writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adele&lt;/strong&gt; wondered where was everyone. &lt;strong&gt;It&lt;/strong&gt; occurred to her that&#xA;  maybe they were in a safe place now. Maybe everyone knew about this,&#xA;  and I was the only one who didn’t, she thought. &lt;strong&gt;She&lt;/strong&gt; stared at her&#xA;  hands, and thought about the things that had actually belonged to her&#xA;  in this world. &lt;strong&gt;She&lt;/strong&gt; realized that nothing really had. All the material&#xA;  things she’d ever owned had turned into dust. Boys had possessed her,&#xA;  but they’d never been hers. &lt;strong&gt;Her&lt;/strong&gt; friends had just been people who had&#xA;  accompanied her throughout her life. &lt;strong&gt;Adele&lt;/strong&gt; sat down, and looked back&#xA;  to the moon. &lt;strong&gt;She&lt;/strong&gt;’d been left alone in the world, waiting for the moon&#xA;  to fall from the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="4062" LastEditDate="2012-11-13T19:58:06.163" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T04:13:00.233" Title="How to avoid repetitive sentence structure?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|structure|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6642" CreationDate="2012-11-11T20:15:47.820" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even though you notice the problem in the first words (in the subjects of the sentences), I think the problem is elsewhere:  Each of the first five sentences has a verb that reminds that we're in Adele's head.  But we already know we're in Adele's head, so these reminders are unnecessary, and they weaken the sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this edit, which removes all five reminders:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adele wondered where was everyone. Maybe they were in a safe place now. Maybe everyone knew about this, and she was the only one who didn’t. She stared at her hands.  What had actually belonged to her in this world? Nothing really had. All the material things she’d ever owned had turned into dust. Boys had possessed her, but they’d never been hers. Her friends had just been people who had accompanied her throughout her life. Adele sat down, and looked back to the moon. She’d been left alone in the world, waiting for the moon to fall from the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is an improvement, though it is perhaps too relentlessly staccato now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to explore the dangers and delights of sentence structures, try this exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick a scene you've already written, about 500 words long.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rewrite the entire scene using sentences no longer than 10 words.  If this is too easy, try sentences no longer than 7 words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rewrite the original scene using sentences no shorter than 25 words (or 35 if 25 is too easy).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read each version aloud.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make notes about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the effects of sentence length&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what different sentence structures you used&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the effects of different sentence structures&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the rhythms created by different lengths and structures&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;which effects you liked and which you disliked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;anything else you notice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rewrite the original scene, using everything you've learned about the effects sentence length.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-11-11T20:15:47.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6640" CreationDate="2012-11-12T04:16:40.937" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key thing to keep in mind with writing fiction generally is: Does it add to the story? There's nothing wrong with describing a place, but how does that set the scene for what's about to happen? How does it set the mood? If you describe a place for the sake of describing things, that really drags down the pace and kills any tension you have at that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when you're describing the house, think about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What kinds of things the woman would notice, given her agitated state of mind in coming to visit the man.&lt;/strong&gt; Would she notice that the place hadn't changed, that the furnishings hadn't changed (cue descriptions here)? Would she notice the vase she gave him for his birthday, back when they were still going out, or the candlestick she threw at him when she left him? If she's thinking about well-ventilated houses, how does that relate to their relationship in the past (given that this is meant to be the focus of your scene)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Elements that you can use to represent their current situation/mental state.&lt;/strong&gt; If the man feels withered/crumbling, you could set the mood by describing dying flowers in a vase, peeling paint, broken furniture, etc. You could show the gap that's grown between them by contrasting how things looked in the past with how they are now (presumably older, dustier, tarnished, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, you wouldn't use everything, as it would be description overload. Granted, if you were going for a 'literary' piece, that's another matter. :P&#xA;But generally, you'll need to pick and choose what you think would work best for the emotions and mood you want to get across, as well as the pace you want to set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T04:16:40.937" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6639" CreationDate="2012-11-12T10:04:35.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your hunch is correct. You need to prune this by being more efficient in your wording. I see several candidates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Listen Mr. Amit, I am warning you for the last time.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Listen Mr. Amit, I’m warning you for the last time&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why didn’t you close the window panes yesterday after the work?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Why didn’t you close the windows after work last night?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s just because of my luck that the robber didn’t take anything except few unimportant things.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;I was lucky the robber didn't take anything more valuable.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This was the kind of scolding I used to get from my boss Mr. George Henry almost every day.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;This is how my boss would scold me daily.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was his company’s financier, so I had to work till late in night on his computer.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;I was his financier, so I'd work late on his computer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I just wanted to quit his job, but money was compelling me to work for him.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;I wanted to quit, but the money was too good.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, you get the idea.  I think the writing needs to get out of its own way, and then it will flow better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such improvements often need to be made after the first or even second draft. Over time, you'll learn to recognize when your writing is polished, as opposed to being in need of yet another scrub.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T10:04:35.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6649" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-12T15:28:21.717" Score="0" ViewCount="33" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1648/internet-communities-where-i-can-read-rate-review-short-fiction-and-post-my-own&quot;&gt;Internet communities where I can read/rate/review short fiction, and post my own?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a user of Cowbird already, and I love it, but I want to branch out, and go to other story-telling sites, so I can get more feedback.  I just want another community to go to, and I don't really need much else ^^&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3704" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T15:28:21.717" Title="Story-Telling on the Internet" Tags="|fiction|community|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-11-12T19:32:38.847" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6639" CreationDate="2012-11-13T15:26:56.430" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've cleaned up the text so you can compare my edited version with your original. It can be a little wordy, and you should pay close attention to tense - you switch from past to past perfect, for example. I hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Listen Mr. Amit, this is your last warning. Next time I will just fire you. Why didn’t you close the windows yesterday after work? It’s pure luck that the robber didn’t take anything important. You have to be more careful.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was the kind of scolding I used to get from my boss, Mr. George Henry, almost daily. I was his company’s financier, so I had to work late at night. I wanted to quit, but I needed the money. I lived in one of the houses built in front of his large bungalow of a castle. Still, he wouldn’t pick me up in his ambassador [Is this a type of car? Capitalize if so] in the morning. I despised him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was working on my desk as usual when I heard the phone ringing in Mr. George’s cabin. &#xA;After a few minutes I saw him rushing out of his cabin. The clerk tried to aid him, but he pushed him aside, ran to his ambassador and drove away like a mad man. No one knew what had happened. His personal secretary, who was in the cabin at that time, said that the phone call was from his home. After a few hours, the shocking news came to us: someone had killed his son, and the office would be closed for a week. This was the only good thing that had happened to me in the five years I’d worked for him … but I was, of course, very sorry for his son. Why would anyone kill a 10 year old boy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4355" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T15:26:56.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6642" CreationDate="2012-11-13T19:00:42.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love Dale's revision.  What I also find useful and can help move the scene along is to start the sentence with the verb - it lends a feel of action:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... Sitting down, looking back at the moon, she now knew that she’d been left alone in the world, waiting for the moon to fall from the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4062" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T19:00:42.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6652" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-14T02:17:58.937" Score="1" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly my problem here is that I've been on writing hiatus for like...a year and half. Apart from writing small stories here and there, I haven't really taken on a story to a larger scale in a long time. There's several factors which caused it, but I'm spare you the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either  way, I recently got in the inspired creative mood that I'm been trying to regain control of again for awhile now, and I have this one story idea (sort of, not sure if I like it yet or not). The problem is, all my ideas for it are so muddle and jumbled into chaos in my head, that I can't even think  straight to &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; thinking of where to begin. And I know someone's probably just going to suggest that I &quot;sit down and think about it and write anything about it that comes to mind&quot;. Listen, that doesn't work for me. I can't even force my mind or body to do that. It's like grating nails on chalkboards for me right now. Maybe once I'm not so &lt;em&gt;rusty&lt;/em&gt; at getting my thoughts in my head so organized I could do that, but not in my current state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for the record, how I &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; to get my thoughts in order was simple: I didn't. I've never needed to do this before, so I lack the skills and knowledge of methods to help myself. In the past, whenever I had an idea, I just instantly &lt;em&gt;knew&lt;/em&gt; it in my head. Even if I didn't know where it was heading, I did have it in order enough to run with it. My God, it feels like I have cotton in my head right now. Please help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4360" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T02:17:58.937" Title="How to fix writer's thought muddledness?" Tags="|technique|organization|plot|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-11-14T04:41:27.597" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6653" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-14T05:57:55.530" Score="0" ViewCount="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a proof reading request, I would just like to know whether the statements are readable or at least correct in structure before I would submit it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Prescriptions hold no metaphysical substance to identify a man being a sinner. It does not exist as the truth of nature, but only the failure to do what is prescribed. What is normative does not give any account for inherency, truth, or permanency to nature. &#xA;Such language indicating pure value as goodness and evil cannot be tested. Goodness and evil can exist only objectively and not prescriptively.  So for goodness and evil to exist it requires not to be reminded to be done, because he is already observing such.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4361" LastEditorUserId="4305" LastEditDate="2012-11-14T11:21:05.913" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T11:21:05.913" Title="Is the statement readable" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-11-14T12:56:26.497" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6653" CreationDate="2012-11-14T08:08:06.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't make sense of this.  Each sentence but the last seems grammatical, but I don't understand what any sentence means. I don't know what the word &quot;it&quot; refers to in either the second sentence or the last. I don't know what person &quot;he&quot; refers to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps some additional context would help me understand this, but I can't make sense of it on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T08:08:06.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6653" CreationDate="2012-11-14T11:20:47.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I concur with Dale; this is so disjointed as to be incoherent. The paragraph needs some context and your sentences need to be simpler and more straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T11:20:47.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1533" CreationDate="2012-11-14T13:42:27.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not exactly a word list, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vocabulary.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vocabulary.com&lt;/a&gt; can handle word lists (which its users create and share) and its dictionary is quite good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its approach to word lists isn't the conventional flash-cards type but I liked it, have had success using it for several month now, and can recommend it if for nothing but the fact that they always present the words in context before telling you the definition(asking you about it, which they often do before resorting to the definition).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T13:42:27.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4855" CreationDate="2012-11-14T19:00:53.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try Jottify&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jottify.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jottify.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's pretty easy to sign up there and if you take the time to comment on other people's work you usually get quite a few comments on yours too :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4363" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T19:00:53.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6486" CreationDate="2012-11-14T19:14:01.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find a really usful way of getting characters to feel more alive and realistic is to write a character centric synopsis for each significant character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to let characters that aren't currently involved in the story you're telling just kind of langish in limbo until the plot requires them again - this can lead to them re-entering the narrative a bit 'out of sorts' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By writing the whole plot from a given character's point of view you get a much better if idea of what they are up to when they are 'off screen' and this helps make them far more interesting when they're 'on-screen' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to write in nice fancy prose, as that can take too long, but in enough detail to fill in the gaps in thier experience. Often you'll find characters that are absent for large parts of the plot, and so you make up something for them to be doing in the mean time - then when they meet up with the plot later, you know what they've been up to - you know how they're feeling about things and this can colour thier reactions etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also this is usful for ensuring that they know what they need to know - you can have meetings between characters 'off screen' and decide what was said and done - it never makes it into the final novel per se, but working through those interactions in detail really fleshes out the characters and makes them more real when you come to write about them in the actual plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4363" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T19:14:01.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6639" CreationDate="2012-11-15T05:32:45.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First,&#xA;The characterization needs to be strong sk. Of course its just 3 paras. But if you are not including monologues, it won't make the readers listen to his inner voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, &#xA;Amit seems to be just a normal guy. Why not give him a few  traits in the beginning only? &#xA;As far as I have seen/read the beginnings are crucial. If your beginnings won't make me slip to the next page, I won't buy it. Make your beginning strong. The opening paragraph should be such that it forces the reader to read on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, I gave it a shot..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Again?&quot; my boss stared at the ruffled papers on his desk with his hands on his waist. &quot;How many times will I have to tell you, Amit?&#xA;  Always close the windows! You're my company's financier. I hired you&#xA;  because you had sense.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I tried not looking into his eyes. They had a fierce gaze. &quot;I was&#xA;  working late last night. I must have forgotten to do so.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Thank God they didn't steal these&quot;, he said as he dug out a few&#xA;  {stuff} from his drawer. &quot;Next time, this excuse won't save you from&#xA;  getting fired. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So much for an attractive salary.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I stood there and saw him pick up his {stuff}. I knew that I was morally&#xA;  supposed to help him. But he didn't ask for it.  His hands were going&#xA;  through all the papers and {stuff} that he had had on his desk. Only a&#xA;  few things were missing. But most of them had been dropped on the floor.&#xA;  Among them was a photo frame of his son. He picked it up, brushed off the dust and carefully&#xA;  placed it back on the desk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, I tried to show things in the dialogues themselves. The line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I knew that I was morally supposed to help him. But he didn't ask for it.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is my attempt to show a personality trait of Amit's character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the reason why I included this line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Among them was a photo frame of his son. He picked it up, brushed off the dust and carefully placed it back on the desk.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is because I wanted to show that the boss has a son and he loves him. It's just like an introduction of the son as he is going to be killed in the next paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I did not include the other details... I just wanted to show that this is how you can entwine details with dialogues rather than giving a straightaway info dump. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a pro, but I'm trying really hard. Hope this helps :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="1768" LastEditDate="2012-11-15T08:21:16.107" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T08:21:16.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="73" CreationDate="2012-11-15T20:27:13.947" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to writing as well.  I can relate to lack of motivation.  I've had the motivational issue pop up in other areas as well but I think they relate.  Here's what I mean. I have always, always wanted to have a horse and enjoy training and working with it.  Now, in my forties, I have two horses.  Yet oddly, I feel a block.  You would think that the idea of working with them would fill me with joy.  The feeling registers as a lack of interest, a dull lack of motivation or enthusiasm.  Slowly unpack it and i find an old identity rooted in some very negative experiences and messages. The joy IS still in there somewhere but so are some other things.  As always when attempting something that takes a certain amount of belief in one's abilty to achieve success in some way, negative voices, old feelings and beliefs intervene and fight to &quot;hold the floor&quot; in my life.I don't think, though, that these negative things introduce themselves and say &quot; Hi, I'm not really rooted in truth or reality but I'm here to use old past things to mess you up&quot;.  Its not obvious what the general feeling of malaise is.   Its a no brainer when we ask ourselves &quot; Why don't I want to do the dishes, change the transmission in zero below weather or go to the doctor for a hemmorhoid operation?  But when its something you love or really want to do, it seems insane that you'd hold back from doing it.  I would suggest, without getting too deep into navel gazing, that you check and see if there are any beliefs or past voices that attack your attempt to go in a chosen direction in case something like that is part of the resistance you feel.  Sometimes feeling undeserving or unworthy of success is enough to put a stop to that alive, free flow of creativity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4366" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T20:27:13.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6633" CreationDate="2012-11-16T05:26:34.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nope. Sections do not refer directly to the next section, unless there is a specific reason, such as a cross-reference. What you need is an overview topic/section ABOVE these where you describe the contents of the sub-sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3617" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T05:26:34.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6664" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6665" CreationDate="2012-11-16T14:00:41.707" Score="14" ViewCount="2196" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am participating in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nanowrimo.org&quot;&gt;National Novel Writing Month&lt;/a&gt; this year. I have never in my life written so much of a single story.  Although I am supposed to tell my inner editor to shut up this month, she is constantly nagging at me about my structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seem to vary wildly between description/narrative and dialogues. In fact, my entire novel thus far is composed of many scenes of long dialogues which involve a little description of what the characters are doing while they reveal the plot, interspersed with a handful of scenes that are primarily descriptive or perhaps narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me like I have too much dialogue. Way too much. But I don't know how to find a balance here and help the characters grow and the plot unfold without having people talking all the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to I shift my dialogue into narrative or descriptive text and still maintain the character development, relationship development, and plot movement that I get from writing dialogue? How do I determine whether there is enough dialogue, or too much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T18:32:30.950" Title="Striking the balance between dialogue and narrative" Tags="|style|dialogue|narrative|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6664" CreationDate="2012-11-16T14:37:59.090" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, for the purposes of NaNoWriMo I strongly suggest that you shoot your inner editor in the head. Write the most awful dreck that you can imagine, and then go back and fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as for answering your actual question, you should alternate between description and dialogue in the same scene. That is, instead of doing the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Several long paragraphs of description.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Several pages of dialogue.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Several long paragraphs of description.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try something like this instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[A few lines of dialogue.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[A snippet of description, preferably one which relates to the dialogue on some level.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[A few more lines of dialogue.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be easier said than done, so here are a few more ideas for how to know how and when to insert your descriptive snippets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use description to control the pacing of the dialogue. Wherever you need a &amp;quot;beat&amp;quot; (a moment of silence or brief lull in the conversation), insert some description.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use description to create atmosphere or theme. If your story is dark and foreboding, break the dialog for a moment to have the character notice a crow picking at some roadkill. Use other descriptive techniques as appropriate to the tone of your story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use description when you need to turn the dialog in a particular direction. Have one of the characters be distracted momentarily by something in the environment, but have this distraction serve as the excuse for a change in topic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T14:37:59.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6664" CreationDate="2012-11-16T15:46:36.903" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to I shift my dialogue into narrative or descriptive text and still maintain the character development, relationship development, and plot movement that I get from writing dialogue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't. If you can do character/relationship development done through dialogue, that's excellent. Note frequently shifting to non-verbal communication will have a better impact, but that's still a dialogue, only without words. But if you can shift descriptions from narrative into dialogue without loss of detail, by all means, do! It's easier to read and more interesting - but harder to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel speech doesn't convey something well, only then shift into descriptions and observations. It's easier to say &quot;He wore his usual, worn, sleeveless jeans jacket with a thousand patches&quot; than to think up an excuse to make the protagonist talk with someone about their jacket, but if you can think up a viable excuse and the dialogue will be interesting, choose dialogue!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use narrative for action. When all is said, there remain things to be done. Yes, plot movement. When words fail to solve problems, let the actions in, and skimp on dialogue not to distract the reader from things that happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the action is not catchy enough to stand on its own,  you may overlay dialogue on top of it. Characters perform while talking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from time to time, when the action stops, and when most is said, use a section that is neither action nor dialogue. Break the pacing with a reflective, descriptive, emotional, introspective, calm and slow piece with no action whatsoever, that is practically a shock compared to the remaining whirlwind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I determine whether there is enough dialogue, or too much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about that. It's as if a painter was worrying they use too much brush#4. That's unimportant. Worry about pacing, about build-up, about mood, immersion, coherence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are stories that are best written without one single line of narrative. The dialogue builds the place, the mood, the conflict and the resolution, and the lack of narrative gives an eerie immersive feel of listening in to actual conversation. And there are stories where words are best avoided. Painted by rich descriptions, poignant in imaging scenes where words would be cheap and shallow. It's up to you to decide which image you want to create and the use of dialogue and narrative is just tools to achieve this image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T15:46:36.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6640" CreationDate="2012-11-16T16:07:20.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lexi gave a good run-down of what is needed, let me add a few tricks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reuse the location. It was formerly introduced in detail when that was needed for another scene. That way a one-line mention will suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make the location a radiant extension of the scene. It isn't curtains and a window, it's a golden glow framing her shape and veils flowing by her face.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a generic setting that needs just three words of introduction and make the lovers so infatuated they cease to see it. But do non introduce non-generic elements of the setting later, unless being jarring is your purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make the location an arena of non-verbal game, make the elements appear in a physical play. Chasing playfully, hiding, a romantic walk. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make the description impressive, not descriptive: how it feels, not how it looks. Make it an extension of personality of the one who lives there, not merely a location.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T16:07:20.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="73" CreationDate="2012-11-16T19:12:47.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answers I find most useful for productive writing times are also the answers to other writing maladies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Routine, routine, routine. Set up a schedule to write at the same time everyday. Try to follow the same routine not just with scheduling, but with whatever little rituals work for you (I sit down with a cup of coffee in the same place, start my pomodoro time, fire up my editor, and go. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Draft, don't edit. Just charge ahead. Some people use a typewriter mode so they basically can't go backward. I don't find I need that...it's just a mindset. You can edit later. I try to just let it flow, diversions and what seems immediately like a bad sentence or idea. Approach the drafting like brainstorming!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't work in silence. I need white noise of some kind, not silence. I write in a coffee shop (no beret), which works well. For a long time I used a program like Ambiance on my iPhone to use nature sounds like rain on a tent, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If on-computer distractions are an issue, use some kind of full screen editor and maybe software that locks down your internet, etc. so you aren't tempted by Farmville or email or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I mentioned my pomodoro timer...which helps with my operative principle that I need disciplined breaks to let my subconscious work. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T19:12:47.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6670" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6673" CreationDate="2012-11-16T23:06:05.083" Score="43" ViewCount="4907" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does one write a &quot;genius&quot; character? I don't mean a scientific genius, or someone who is a prodigious talent in math or chess or something like that. I mean the following scenario (or an equivalent):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Character G (for &quot;genius&quot;) is a criminal mastermind who has just devised a brilliant scheme to make lots of money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;G is pursued by Inspector A (for &quot;average&quot;), an everyman detective who knows G is up to something and is itching to catch him in the act, even though he doesn't know what the plan is. In fact, A can't even imagine it because it takes special insight and/or knowledge to have thought of it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like brilliance of G's scheme (and of G himself) is necessarily limited by the ingenuity of the author. And if the author can't come up with a sufficiently ingenious plot for G to hatch, it's hard for the reader to believe that an ordinary person couldn't have thought of it (&quot;Really? That's his plan? And Inspector A never saw it? How stupid is he?&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4129" LastEditorUserId="1199" LastEditDate="2013-01-02T13:08:23.393" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T16:20:27.027" Title="How does one write a character smarter than oneself?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6642" CreationDate="2012-11-17T00:09:35.487" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check out the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0764147838&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Art of Styling Sentences&lt;/a&gt;. It's a bit formulaic way of forming dynamic sentences where they show you twenty sentence patterns and where and how to use them. To quote from the book description:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The authors review the fundamentals of good sentence structure and then go on to describe twenty basic sentence patterns that encompass virtually every effective way of writing sentences in English. They also draw on passages by current prominent writers, using these examples to show how varying rhythm and sentence patterns can result in elegant writing styles that keep their readers interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, there's another technique, I can't find it online right now, but it more or less goes like this: you make all your sentences simple sentences, like:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adele wondered where was everyone. It occurred to her. Maybe they were in a safe place now. Maybe everyone knew about this. I was the only one who didn’t, she thought. She stared at her hands. She thought about the things that had actually belonged to her in this world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then see how you can combine them in different ways. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adele wondered where was everyone, and then it occurred to her. Maybe they were in a safe place now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adele wondered where was everyone. It occurred to her - maybe they were in a safe place now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adele wondered where was everyone, but it occurred to her that perhaps they were in a safe place now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She stared at her hands, while thinking about the things that had actually belonged to her in this world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Staring at her hands, she thought about the things that had actually belonged to her in this world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She thought about the things that had actually belonged to her in this world as she stared at her hands. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She stared at her hands as she thought about the things that had actually belonged to her in this world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. Then you just vary the way you combine them - you use first example for one sentence, third for the next, second for the one after that... It's not the most brilliant example, but I hope you get the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One more thing: to get the whole text to feel dynamic, vary your sentence length. All short sentences in a paragraph imply fast action. Fight. Flight. Action. More action. Speed. All long sentences imply slow action, long, boring, slow action or can also serve to give the feeling of light-headedness or tiredness of the point of view character, on the count that the reader himself feels tired after reading such a long sentence. But by varying the short and long sentences, you get a general feel of dynamic - fast, slow, fast, slow, fast, fast, slow... &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastEditorUserId="4264" LastEditDate="2012-11-17T01:14:04.580" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T01:14:04.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6670" CreationDate="2012-11-17T00:45:47.783" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way would be to sort of &quot;cheat&quot;, if that would be acceptable to you. What I mean is that you can try to find some good ideas in real life. Real life is full of strange and wondrous things. Google things like &quot;top criminals of all time&quot; or something in those lines to find a criminal that might suit your character or has made an interesting enough scheme to fit what you're looking for, then take the idea and change it enough that it couldn't be easily recognizable. You wouldn't be the first writer to search for inspiration in real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Good writers borrow, Great writers steal.”  ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T00:45:47.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6670" CreationDate="2012-11-17T00:59:32.140" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have several advantages over your characters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get all the time you need to conduct research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have time to think about each thing they will do or say.  You get to think through the implications of the situation they're in, and the effects of their actions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can constrain and adjust your story world so that your character can excel in it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can construct the story to guide the reader away from areas that you know less about, and toward areas where you know more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Depending on the extent of your research and thought, most of your readers won't know as much as you do about the subject of your character's expertise.  Mostly you don't have to be smarter than experts, you only have to know more than your readers.  (Caveat: Some of your readers may be experts, and they may be annoyed at the flaws you and your characters exhibit.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your readers want you to succeed in entertaining them.  They will (sometimes, to some extent) give you the benefit of the doubt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Writing Excuses podcasters offer this advice for speculative fiction:  Take one unimportant detail and get it exactly right.  This can lull readers into accepting that you know what you're talking about, which gives cover to make up all kinds of implausible stuff.  This may also work for criminal enterprises.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T00:59:32.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6670" CreationDate="2012-11-17T03:35:51.070" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The character has to tailor a solution to fit a given problem, but you are not so limited.  You can come up with a problem to fit a clever solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take some obscure thing you happen to know, that an everyman wouldn't be expected to know: say, that the Chinese for &quot;I'm going to hit you with this giant phone&quot; sounds very similar to a phrase meaning &quot;Thank you coming to visit me.&quot; Now, imagine a situation where this could be used to pull off something seemingly impossible: say, verbally threatening Person A while Person B can hear, but without letting Person B know that anything worrisome is going on.  Write G into this situation.  It's not easy, but it's a lot easier than the reverse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For bonus points, note that you now have G hatching a plan involving making a giant weapon that looks like a phone.  If you come up with an additional problem facing G that can &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; be solved ingeniously using a phone-club, then G looks especially brilliant--he's elegantly solved two problems with the same ingenious device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4374" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T03:35:51.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6670" CreationDate="2012-11-17T13:46:50.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find people smarter than you to help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, Susan Elia MacNeal, the author of the Maggie Hope mysteries, didn't know anything about code-breaking when she started writing books about an American mathematician who ends up in WWII London and becomes a British spy. But she did have lots of friends at MIT, so she started asking them about cryptography. She used their help to make Maggie brilliant at seeing and cracking codes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T13:46:50.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6670" CreationDate="2012-11-17T15:18:38.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a few suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technology&lt;/strong&gt;.  Advanced technology can look like magic, and is not necessarily obvious to your &quot;average inspector&quot;.  E.g. the criminal could use tiny robotic spiders, which can crawl around the victim's house, eavesdrop on people (so that the criminal knows things nobody else could possibly know), send back data about where everybody is, or film the code that opens a safe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Social engineering&lt;/strong&gt;.  Maybe inspector A is not stupid, but a sufficient number of victims is.  Think of internet scams:  even if only 1 percent of people are gullible enough, a criminal can still make lots of victims by sending around huge volumes of e-mails.  This gives the criminal an edge over the inspector, who may not even &lt;em&gt;believe&lt;/em&gt; that people will fall for the scheme.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wealth&lt;/strong&gt;.  A rich criminal can buy people in high places, and can get things done which are not in the power of a &quot;simple&quot; inspector.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4377" LastEditorUserId="4377" LastEditDate="2013-05-18T16:20:27.027" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T16:20:27.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6670" CreationDate="2012-11-18T00:19:49.657" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Primarily, cheat by writing the story backwards. Start from the end revelation of the implicit story (the crime) and progress towards beginning, iteratively removing any simplicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with the outcome, the rather simple final set of events that is to be discovered. Then take it apart: tools, witnesses, methods, motives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at each of them. Whenever you see something overly simple, replace it with something ambiguous, deceiving, non-obvious, or outright fake. Unlike the real wise guy, you don't have to limit yourself to things they can do. You can modify circumstances, personalities, environments to fit your convoluted needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, when you have the whole set of utterly corrupted clues, start writing the explicit story, what the readers will see. Distribute the clues throughout it, and then have the investigator come to the right conclusions, correctly recognize lies and deceits, and present the outcome as result of detailed analysis, a set of random pieces matching in the end, ingenious mind combining them, while in fact it was constructed from a kit of parts with a builder's manual you have created before starting on the explicit story, and only made the process seem unguided while you, the writer, were the guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(just to add: this is how math exercises are written. How do you get that complex equation to resolve to &quot;2&quot;? Start with &quot;2&quot;, then keep multiplying by expressions that resolve to identity, add expressions that resolve to zero, square both sides, shift expressions between sides, divide by some red herring, and when your equation looks mangled enough, write it down as the subject of the exercise.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2012-11-19T08:10:38.177" LastActivityDate="2012-11-19T08:10:38.177" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="742" CreationDate="2012-11-18T19:12:25.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In answer to Charles Stewart:&#xA;I would suggest that any verb with a subject must be active or passive. Those are the only constructions we have. We can  make passive versions of all your examples, so they must by definition be active voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground.&quot; There is no modal here; we have the existential &quot;there&quot; construction with &quot;be&quot; (not a modal) , where &quot;There&quot; is a dummy subject delaying the 'real' subject &quot;dead leaves&quot;. This sentence is active voice - Compare with the passive - &quot;There are said to be a great number of leaves lying on the ground&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If six was nine&quot; - we definitely have a subject, and it uses a normal active construction, so this is also active voice. Compare the passive - &quot;If six was added to nine ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Infinitives can also be subjects in active constructions - &quot;To have loved and lost is better than not to have loved at all.&quot; Compare the passive - &quot;To have been loved ...&quot;. Your Startrek sentence fragment has no verb, so is obviously neither active nor passive voice. But we can even give that a passive infinitive - &quot;To be boldly led where no man has gone before!&quot; - infinitives have two passive forms - &quot;to be done&quot; and &quot;to have been done&quot; - so the standard forms are active. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that standard imperatives are also active as you can also have passive imperatives - &quot;Please be assured&quot;, and the subject is understood.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You say that active is better than passive &quot;because you don't need an auxiliary verb&quot;. This is only true in present and past simple positive forms. In EFL/ESL we use a twelve tense system. If we take it that each tense has three forms: positive, negative and interrogative, that means that only in two out of thirty-six forms is this true.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Active &quot;is almost always simpler and briefer&quot;. But in some 80% of passive sentences we don't use an agent, so this doesn't necessarily follow at all. &quot;They sacked him.&quot; &quot;He was sacked.&quot; And You can be just as formal and wordy in the active as in the passive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A few other occasions when it is appropriate to use the passive - &#xA;a. When the agent is unknown, important or obvious - &quot;He's been arrested.&quot;&#xA;b. To avoid a long subject - &quot;We were very impressed by his obvious enthusiasm for the subject.&quot; (end-weighting)&#xA;c. To start a sentence with familiar 'given' information, and introduce new information later in the sentence - &quot;They just arrived five minutes ago. Their train was delayed because of accident.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Jonny - The easy answer to your question is that a verb is active if it is in a normal tense form and is not in a passive construction, which involves different forms of the verb 'to be' + the past participle of the main verb. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He writes books / was writing a book / will have written a book - active&#xA;This book was written  a long time ago/ is being written right now/ had been written  in Latin first - passive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4380" LastEditorUserId="4264" LastEditDate="2012-11-20T08:17:34.463" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T08:17:34.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6640" CreationDate="2012-11-20T20:39:37.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you very definitely should use descriptions, whether of the location, what they're wearing or any other thing that will bring us there; make the scene vivid for the reader. That is, you should give the telling detail: that one, or those few items that tell us who these people are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might recommend that you read Nick Cave's short novel &quot;The Death of Bunny Munro&quot; as he is one writer who is very good at this sort of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I would try to lose words like beautiful because they're verdicts rather than descriptions, and so, for me, should be the prerogative of the reader. I would lose them, even if they are verdicts made by a character. Try replacing it with an emotional or physiological response. And, let's face it: at fifty-something people aren't necessarily beautiful anymore; all that was once firm and supple is beginning to sag, bloat, flop and wrinkle. And the face that could launch a thousand ships might only just inspire a dinghy. If she is still beautiful, and some are, describe her briefly so that we can tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But love is about other things, isn't it? I think you need to work on their emotional conflict, or his conflict, and it has to be conflict, you got that right. No one carries a torch for 32 years without some unresolved issues. And even then it's kind of pathetic and sad, and you should work out whether he should be aware of that. People have had full lives shorter than that. Work, career, family, sex, passion, follies, tragedies... You don't necessarily need to tell us, but you should work out for yourself what they did with their lives if they are to come off the page. And try to write like you were acting, like you were these people: what would their idiom be? Would she say; &quot;it's a bit cold out here&quot;? Or would she use nippy or freezing? what would her response be if he says he never married? &quot;Well, what did you do then?&quot; Something like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4385" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T20:39:37.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6682" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14162" CreationDate="2012-11-20T20:52:41.953" Score="6" ViewCount="6232" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you know any &quot;shortcuts&quot; to translating passages of my story into believably sounding archaic English? I mean, without taking a full school course?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A crash course? An automatic service? A phrase book? A group of enthusiasts who will do it for free? I don't insist on a zero-effort solution, but learning modern English was hard enough and I'm well aware the old style was much more complex, and I don't require a total historical accuracy, just the general mood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T21:57:03.480" LastActivityDate="2019-02-18T15:25:24.193" Title="Believable (but easy) archaic English" Tags="|resources|translation|language|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4660" CreationDate="2012-11-20T20:55:24.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while ago there was an article in New Scientist on a study in England on which words are the most commonly used by different classes of people. For women the three most used words were &quot;she&quot;, &quot;her&quot; and &quot;said&quot;; for men &quot;that&quot;, &quot;what&quot; and &quot;fuck&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this might come off as parody if overused; but women tend to talk and think more about people and relations, men more about things, achievements and technology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4385" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T20:55:24.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6682" CreationDate="2012-11-20T21:09:09.363" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you say &lt;em&gt;Old English&lt;/em&gt;, be aware that another term for that is Anglo-Saxon, which is English from before the Norman Conquest. Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ic eom weorð werum, wide funden&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  brungen of bearwum ond of burghleoþum&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  of denum ond of durum. Dæges mec wægun&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  feþre on lifte feredon mid liste&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  under hrofes hleo. Hæleð mec siþþan&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  baþedan in bydene. Nu ic eom bindere&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ond swingere sona weorpe&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  esne to eorþan hwilum ealdne ceorl.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Sona þæt onfindeð se þe mec fehð ongean&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ond wið maegenþisan minre genæsteð&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  þæt he hrycge sceal hrusan secan&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  gif he unrædes ær ne geswiceð&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  strengo bistolen strong on spræce&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  mægene binumen; nah his modes geweald&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  fota ne folma. Frige hwæt ic hatte&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ðe on eor an swa esnas binde&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  dole æfter dyntum be dæges leohte.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read Chaucer to find out what Middle English sounded like. Even Shakespeare, which no doubt sounds old to your ear, is of the period known as Modern English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I presume what you really mean is &lt;em&gt;archaic&lt;/em&gt; English. For that there is no real shortcut, and I'd advise you to leave it alone. It's like playing the violin: If you aren't an absolute master, it just sounds awful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T21:09:09.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="742" CreationDate="2012-11-20T21:32:26.840" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;An active sentence means that the subject is the one performing the action, that he is the one being &lt;em&gt;active&lt;/em&gt; in the sentence. A passive sentence is a sentence where the action is being performed onto the subject, who is &lt;em&gt;passively&lt;/em&gt; enduring the action being done upon it. If you have a sentence for which you can not tell if it is passive or active, just ask yourself if the subject's the one doing the action or is the action being done to the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is a site for writers, I assume you are more interested in the practical use of the passive and active voices than it's grammatical explanation. A lot of people will tell you that using passive voice is bad. Here, I must stand in defence of the passive voice. Using passive voice is not by definition bad. Passive has its uses and its purpose. It is like saying antibiotics are bad. Sure, if you use antibiotics for every little soar throat, you're not doing yourself any favours, but in certain conditions, they are the only thing that can help you. The same goes for passive voice. The trick is to know when to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the example where a passive voice is considered &quot;weak&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The battle was lost. The city was ransacked, the men slaughtered and women raped or sold to slavery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, my apologies to the women in the example. If you look at the sentences, you will notice that they're not exactly bursting with action. Yes, horrible things are happening, but it doesn't feel energetic. That's because all the action is being done to a passive subject. If we change it to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They won the battle. They ransacked the city, slaughtered the men and raped the women or sold them to slavery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This example is much more energetic. It's because the subject is actively participating in the action. It is causing it to happen. This is where the scene profits from the use of active voice, and this is the reason they say passive is &quot;bad&quot;. If you need a dynamic, &lt;em&gt;active&lt;/em&gt; scene, use active voice when ever you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this does not mean passive really is bad. Passive has its uses. The obvious ones being when we don't know or care who is doing the action, or it's implied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has already been done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Cathedral was built in sixteen century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is usually implied who builds cathedrals - builders commissioned by the Church. Or we simply don't care, we are interested in the cathedral and when it was built, not in those who built it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The less obvious, more subtle uses of passive are when you don't want the action to be dynamic. Perhaps you want to create a feeling of inaction, of subject's helplessness or unwillingness to take the action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As he was being beaten,&lt;/em&gt; the only thing he could do was to curse his assailants in his mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Too drunk to stand, &lt;em&gt;he was carried off to his room.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, &lt;em&gt;They carried him off to his room&lt;/em&gt; is more dynamic, more active, but it's not what we want here. We want to show the subject's inability to perform the action, to emphasize his passiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sentence &quot;The city was ransacked, the men slaughtered and women raped or sold to slavery.&quot; implies a certain helplessness of the city and it's people to defend themselves from the fate that has befallen them. Maybe that's more important to us in that moment than the action. It can also depend on whose side we are, the winning side or the loosing side. So, the passive has it's uses. A skilled writer knows when to turn a &quot;weakness&quot; into an advantage.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastEditorUserId="4264" LastEditDate="2013-07-01T11:34:00.047" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T11:34:00.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6682" CreationDate="2012-11-20T21:46:38.017" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read a lot of old books, prereferentially related to the topic of your own story. Get a sense of the idiom, like a sailor referring to himself as an old salt. Get it under your skin. If you constantly need to consult a phrase book, a grammar or a style manual, I'm afeared ye can nae pull it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if you don't feel you can write the original text in the language of your choice, you are probably not ready to write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translation is in any case not a 1:1 rendition. Words and concepts might not even exist in the target language, and complete restructuring of sentences may be required. You would also need to consider that although you want an old feel, you would also want your modern reader to understand it effortlessly; so you probably shouldn't go the whole hog - depending on how old you want it: Victorian English is rather readable, medieval, not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to simply develop believable characters. Let them talk and interact like they would, and language doesn't strictly need to be old, because it wasn't old to them. The movie &quot;A Royal Affair&quot; is set in historical Denmark, but the characters speak modern Danish. It's odd at first, but once you're pulled into the story it just doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4385" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T21:46:38.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4660" CreationDate="2012-11-20T21:51:16.327" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agreeing with those who said that your problem is probably with distinguishing characters in general, I just wanted to point out a few general differences between men and women. For example, women have the tendency to over think things and over analyse. They worry much more, which makes them more careful, and that can come out in conversation in a way that a woman would think more before speaking. Also, women have better recognition of facial expressions and feelings, and that makes them more aware of people's feelings. I know not all men and women fit into these stereotypes, but it's something to keep in mind when writing female characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T21:51:16.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="997" CreationDate="2012-11-20T22:59:53.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'd never break out of it, since that would probably jolt the reader the most. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Individual thought would have to be avoided, or self-interest, or anything that would separate an individual out of that group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem is the same as with first-person singular: just as you can't have scenes in which the first-person singular character is not present, you can't have scenes where the whole group, or at least most of it is not present. Which could be rather tricky and limiting to the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's harder writing in first-person plural, just as it's hard writing in second-person, but that doesn't mean it should be avoided at all cost. I've read some pretty good stories in second-person (stories that won Nebulas and similar prizes). It's much easier to mess it up though, you really need to know what you are doing. I'd recommend not attempting it before you can do first-person singular well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T22:59:53.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6682" CreationDate="2012-11-21T01:51:15.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Through Tannalein's link to TVTropes I found just the right resource I think I need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://elizabethan.org/compendium/home.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Life in Elizabethan England&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will allow some basic expressions, help avoid common blunders and show pretty much where not to go at all, for risk of making utter mess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another resource clarifying it a little:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://veestormcourage.tumblr.com/post/41702097565/speaking-ye-olde-butchered-english&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Speaking Ye Olde Butchered English&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-01-28T21:02:16.110" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T21:02:16.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6682" CreationDate="2012-11-21T05:41:56.643" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Initial reaction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elaboration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every question I've ever answered on this site, the answer has come to me offhand without much thought. Maybe some answers were pretty good and some were merely passable, but either way I knew what my answer was immediately without any further consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a little different. It's a very, very difficult question. It's a question I've wrestled with before but never brought up here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial reaction is &lt;em&gt;Don't&lt;/em&gt; because, as I said in my comment above, nobody wants to read that kind of language. It's the same reason a lot of readers are very turned off from &lt;em&gt;A Clockwork Orange&lt;/em&gt;. It's very inaccessible. If people can't understand what they're reading, they don't bother. Would you pick up a book written in Swahili? It's no different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, the only difference is that this dialogue is only a portion of your book; the portion where this one character speaks. So it's a little better than in some other circumstances. But it's still a problem. Even if it comes intermittently in small pieces, readers still get irritated by incomprehensible passages of text. It &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; bothers me when I can't understand something, I'll tell you that. Kind of like daddy's little princess flying economy for the first time. WHERE'S ALL MY LEG ROOM???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it's hard to come up with a good answer to your question. Even if you hire an expert on medieval language to maximize authenticity, we still hit upon that same problem I just outlined above: the reader won't understand it and certainly won't appreciate your misguided efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, this leaves you with a few options. You have to be clever. Incorporate translating technology, or have the character speak through a hired interpreter (and only occasionally do you actually write what the character himself said, in the cases where it's similar enough to modern language that the reader will understand and perhaps find some humor in the distorted familiarity in the words), or have the character speak very, very little out of shyness or shame. Or have them practice/be tutored extensively &quot;offscreen,&quot; so that each time we see them they can say a little more, and it's realistic and acceptable that they've made this progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the best I've got. What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2012-11-23T06:48:35.443" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T06:48:35.443" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4660" CreationDate="2012-11-21T10:36:33.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that - and this is a generalisation - women tend towards more passive and open speech than men do and their speech is generally more inclusive and collaborative. A man will &quot;get everyone in a room and hammer things out&quot; while a woman will &quot;invite people to meet up and look for an agreement&quot;. Men use words that are about power and strength and forcing their will upon others while women use words that show empathy and understanding. The classic example is sex (and again, I'm generalising) where women will &quot;bring him to a climax&quot; like it's something she's doing for him while a man will &quot;make her come&quot;, like he's forcing her to do it. Of course, you have to make each voice unique, but if you edit your female speech patterns to be less aggressive and forceful and more open and collaborative then it should help a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean they have to actually &lt;em&gt;be&lt;/em&gt; passive and open and collaborative, they can still cheat and lie and be sneaky and evil and everything else, but a woman will likely be less upfront about it than a man. Not for nothing is poison known as a woman's murder weapon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4169" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T10:36:33.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6693" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6694" CreationDate="2012-11-21T22:13:30.760" Score="0" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked Three questions in another question. To break it up,  I am going to ask one which I still would like more feedback on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: I was told to break it up by the moderator who closed it. Although I got one answer, I feel the question was not clear with 3 total, and it didn't get a chance to be fully examined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6475/starting-out-plot-charaters-by-documentaries&quot;&gt;The Original Question:&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to write a fiction story that is a sort of post-apocalyptic story. I haven't written nearly any fiction, although did a couple argument/persuasive essays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some background info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The story has lots of depth - especially in the beginning, which builds up story and characters, and thus is more slow in that it isn't action like wars, but is interesting still in the topic. It builds for the middle and end - where the action is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if I should write a single story if it is my first, and is going to be fairly long, or should I make it a novel or full out story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also invite @John Smithers who left a well done answer to answer please. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T12:15:49.877" Title="Should it be a Short Story or Full Story" Tags="|fiction|novel|short-story|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6693" CreationDate="2012-11-22T01:56:05.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know you've probably heard this a million times and it sounds like a generic answer, but it's really the best advice there is:&#xA;Make it as long as it needs to be. &#xA;Worry later about whether it's classified as a short story, novella, novel, or lengthy 10,000 page brick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can get the main plot written, it will also be easier to see afterwards what scenes, characters or subplots need to be fleshed out if you feel it's too short. There really isn't any scientific way to decide this, other than gut feel after reading many novels (happy to be proven wrong, though!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, maybe there's a bit-character that intrigues you, and you decide that they need to play a bigger role. It could add a whole new subplot to the story, which increases it in length from a novella to a novel, for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That shouldn't be your concern, though. Simply make sure your story is told exactly how you want to tell it, and conveys what you had in mind. Length is, and should always be, a secondary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T01:56:05.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6695" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6723" CreationDate="2012-11-22T02:45:27.260" Score="2" ViewCount="3469" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing an academic essay, if I was to reference Microsoft or Facebook, should I write Microsoft™, Microsoft® or just Microsoft? What is the difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4389" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-01-04T03:35:43.753" LastActivityDate="2019-01-04T03:35:43.753" Title="Text referencing protected, trademarked™ and copyrighted© names, what is the correct procedure?" Tags="|academic-writing|essay|trademark|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6695" CreationDate="2012-11-22T05:18:54.597" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the style guide you are using. APA format (and I believe Chicago) specify not using TM or R in the text. I suspect that most style guides say the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TM = trademark, which a company (or anyone else) can use without a registration with the government. It provides &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; common law protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;R = registered trademark, which means they've been granted the trademark with the US Patent and Trademark office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T05:18:54.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="742" CreationDate="2012-11-22T05:49:14.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scientists and academics often use--rightly--the passive voice to shift focus from the actor to what is being acted upon. For example, &quot;dry ice was dropped into the at and the ensuing results recorded.&quot; The actor is unimportant, so passive voice is acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T05:49:14.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6693" CreationDate="2012-11-22T06:14:02.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you haven't written much fiction, I'm going to make a contrary suggestion: start with the goal of writing a good short story. This is a good way to force you to really nail down the plot...and the worst that can happen is coming out with the seed(s) of a good longer piece and, in the process, you'll develop a better feel for where things really &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to be expanded to tell a better story. You will also be  less likely to write a longer piece where the knowledge that you have a lot of room can lead to weaker writing, too much exposition and all the other ills that you can find in many (published and unpublished) novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to do as @Lexi suggested: write something that is as long as it needs to be. But it might be more productive to find your way there via something designed to be short than long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, probably the best advice is: just charge ahead and write it. Revision is the bulk of the writing iceberg supporting the little finished product that sticks out of the murky creative waters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T06:14:02.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6544" CreationDate="2012-11-22T07:24:10.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;MLA doesn't specify how to format articles with foreign titles, but for books it specifies that you should include a translation of the title after the foreign title, and it should be italicized and in brackets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say it's safe to adopt the same convention for articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, the first title should be the foreign language title as it is specified in the source document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T07:24:10.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6700" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-22T07:24:14.800" Score="5" ViewCount="824" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an advertising copywriter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write headlines, depending on the job, I employ rhyme schemes, puns, idioms, metaphors and quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been asked to write headlines for a law firm with a style like those of The Economist. If you put &lt;em&gt;The Economist&lt;/em&gt; into Google Images, you'll get some fine examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I as a writer am quite intimidated by the wit of these headlines and haven't been taught the method of producing headlines like these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure all you writers out there might have a technique for writing these sort of headlines that you might be able to help me add to my arsenal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I would never be so rude to ask you to do my work for me, I am only interested in a method you might know to make this less of an intimidating process for me as I seem to have the writer's block bug from it being as intimidating as it currently is for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4199" LastEditorUserId="4199" LastEditDate="2012-11-22T08:48:05.247" LastActivityDate="2015-03-08T19:32:15.683" Title="Headline method - How do I write The Economist-style headlines?" Tags="|writers-block|copywriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6700" CreationDate="2012-11-22T13:00:44.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Essentially, you're asking, &quot;How can I become a 'punnier' person?&quot; (Or, perhaps more specifically, &quot;What techniques might help me conjure witty puns, rhymes, and play-on-words wordplay more easily?&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a topic I've mused on for some time. I haven't done any formal research on the subject, but I've observed that some people can pen their parody, poetry, and puns almost effortlessly – their Groucho Marxist quips pop into their minds just about automatically, as if they are hardwired to think of &quot;oxyneuronic&quot; thoughts – while others might flail to formulate a similarly witty idea, with their results coming across as flat and forced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone become self-trained to become more adroit with such wit? My first suggestion would be to immerse yourself in the world of borrowed- and double-meaning. If you want to become fluent in French, move to France; if you want to become a more creative tagline punster, surround yourself with the cream of the word-croppers. I'd recommend that you start by working on first-rate crossword puzzles. Puzzle makers do a great job of using secondary meanings of words to create clues that seem almost misleading at first. Pay particular attention to clues with a question-mark at the end, as these are used to indicate a stretched pun.  As &lt;a href=&quot;http://puzzles.telegraph.co.uk/site/article_full_details?article_id=12&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one website&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A question mark at the end of a clue usually signals that the clue/answer combination involves some sort of pun, e.g. &quot;Grateful?&quot; = ASHES&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will that work? In other words, will such exercises help train your brain to be more creative? I don't know for sure, but at least it's something practical you can try. That beats handwringing, at least in my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also pay attention to pop culture. I think the most effective puns in advertising are references to widely-recognized idioms and expressions. For example, &quot;Take me to an Economist reader&quot; is a pun off of the more well-known &quot;Take me to your leader,&quot; which comes from cheesy sci-fi movies. But if you're not in tune with what's trending, you'll be unaware of a trove potential catchphrases to play off of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T13:00:44.140" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6702" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6703" CreationDate="2012-11-22T13:39:03.327" Score="6" ViewCount="5087" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hired a proofreader (typos, commonly confused words, minor grammar issues etc) to look at my work, which I plan to self publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She found most typos, but from a 66,000 word novel, missed about 10. Things like using 'its' instead of 'it's', 'you' for 'your' etc. I found these on my own last read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I realise nobody is perfect, but if I'm hiring a professional proofreader, how many errors are acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3575" LastActivityDate="2020-04-10T15:11:51.200" Title="How many errors should I expect from a proofreader?" Tags="|editing|self-publishing|proofreading|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6702" CreationDate="2012-11-22T18:24:04.583" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ten out of 66,000 words would be acceptable to me, particularly if the proofreader has only gone through it once. You always catch more on the second round because on the first you're reading for both structure and sense, and the second time is primarily for structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T18:24:04.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6693" CreationDate="2012-11-22T20:33:03.890" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideas are not tied to page numbers, so don't let the complexity of a character or plotline fool you into thinking you are dealing with a novel idea and not a short story idea or a play idea, for that matter. James Joyce originally planned for &lt;em&gt;Ulysses&lt;/em&gt; to be a short story in &quot;The Dubliners.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't written much and you want to try your hand at writing, my suggestion is to choose the form that interests you most. See where it takes you. The opposite approach, trying to fit an idea to a format, can be extremely frustrating.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastEditorUserId="4390" LastEditDate="2012-11-23T09:12:38.403" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T09:12:38.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6719" CreationDate="2012-11-23T06:31:42.897" Score="9" ViewCount="10654" Body="&lt;p&gt;I come across words like &lt;em&gt;rectitude&lt;/em&gt;, like &lt;em&gt;laudatory&lt;/em&gt;, like &lt;em&gt;indigent&lt;/em&gt;, and being an experienced reader with a strong grasp on my native language, I know what they mean. They're words that I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they're not words I think of when I'm writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know a thesaurus is a great friend, but honestly, I can't picture Nabokov sitting there looking up synonyms, nor do I believe that it's a habit any aspiring writer should make heavy use of. It needs to be there implicitly, in your head, ready for use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I stir up the cauldron of lexical memory and bring the many sunken ingredients to the surface?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A comment below makes the argument that using uncommon words is essentially akin to bad writing; that it's unnecessary and the writer is generally better off using simpler language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh. my. God. Have you ever read &lt;em&gt;1984&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clarity is king. That is the number one rule of writing, absolutely. Writing is about communication, and communication is about clarity. Clarity is king. It is a common mistake by amateur writers to use words that inhibit clarity, to use words of great rarity with great frequency to such an extent that their sentences have more syllables than meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;THAT DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD STOP AT THE LIMIT OF A HIGH SCHOOL VOCABULARY.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is looking up words a bad thing? Is expanding your range of expression an outdated notion? Should I call the sky &lt;em&gt;pink&lt;/em&gt; instead of &lt;em&gt;fuchsia&lt;/em&gt; for fear that my readers won't understand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While words like &lt;em&gt;tergiversate&lt;/em&gt; might certainly have superior substitutes, why should I stop using any word I don't hear on a daily basis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll say this: I go to an engineering school, and people here &lt;em&gt;do not read at all.&lt;/em&gt; I mean, period. They literally don't like reading books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when  I hear a comment like the one below, I think of the moments here like when I called someone &lt;em&gt;shrewd&lt;/em&gt;, and they asked what that meant. And it makes me so sad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's the future that we encourage by being afraid to encourage the use of a dictionary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, from the comment below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Aren't there enough common words to make the writing dynamic without irritating the reader?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My intended audience never has been and never will be those who are irritated by new words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2012-11-24T07:06:52.337" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T03:31:22.047" Title="Effective ways to enrich your active vocabulary?" Tags="|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="17" ClosedDate="2019-08-15T20:03:34.637" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5318" CreationDate="2012-11-23T09:37:36.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are still looking for a copy-paste-click-copy-paste solution, try this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://doi-to-bibtex.herokuapp.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://doi-to-bibtex.herokuapp.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4394" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T09:37:36.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6707" CreationDate="2012-11-23T10:01:03.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read out loud whenever you get the chance. Hearing a word spoken adds another point of reference to the word--along with seeing it, interpreting it, and, potentially, writing it--and, like hearing a song, makes it stick more firmly in your memory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Language learners are taught to &quot;sing&quot; useful expressions so that they stick in the memory. Initially, this does nothing for cognition, but when combined with research, it can help ingrain the word. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T10:01:03.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6707" CreationDate="2012-11-23T11:47:05.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't imagine myself using them in my writing either. And for the simple reason that I never saw them in day-to-day speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may use them as spoken by an overly pretentious gimp in my story, one trying too hard to appear literate. But if there is a simpler synonym which conveys the same meaning without loss of nuances, avoid the obscure alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to enrich your vocabulary is to pick adjective-noun and verb-adverb pairs, and replace all you can with single nouns and verbs that mean just that. There's a controversy about &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/88130/is-it-poor-style-to-use-adverbs-ending-in-ly-in-formal-writing&quot;&gt;avoiding adverbs ending with -ly&lt;/a&gt;. While my stance is more neutral, that's an excellent chance to enrich your vocabulary. Run a global search for &quot;ly&quot; in your text and every time you spot one, think if you can replace its associated verb with one that will let you remove the adverb. Run quickly - dash. Smile cynically - smirk. Try the same with epithets (noun-pronoun pairs) though the search tool won't be so helpful here. Then you may go after your phrasal verbs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T11:47:05.563" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6707" CreationDate="2012-11-24T00:03:39.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only way to really expand your vocabulary is to, when you find that you need a word which does not immediately &quot;come&quot; to you, look for an appropriate word in reference works. Go grab a thesaurus, an encyclopedia, a dictionary, or some other reference work (or refer to ones online), and look it up. Then, get a feel for the meaning of the synonym (or antonym...) that you have found, work it into your text, and perhaps mull it over for a bit. Flag it somehow (different color, a column note, whatever) and go back to it later. Read it again. &lt;em&gt;Use&lt;/em&gt; the word in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one is born with a complete understanding of a language. I think it's safe to say that everyone uses various reference works now and then. Most people learn a language by being exposed to it. Why does it make you sad when, when you use an uncommon word, the person you used it towards &lt;em&gt;asks&lt;/em&gt; what it means? Would it make you feel better if they &lt;em&gt;assumed&lt;/em&gt; some, quite likely incorrect, meaning of the word in question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Referring to a reference work while writing does not mean you cannot use words that your audience is unlikely to know by heart. If, as you say, your audience is open to putting your book aside and referring to a dictionary or thesaurus just to understand the message you are trying to convey (which, if nothing else, is going to be quite inefficient), then what problem does your doing the same to find those words pose? If you do so repeatedly, those less common words should start coming to you more readily as you are writing. &lt;em&gt;But I am betting that there are ways you can work the details into your writing in a reasonably efficient manner which will not require the reader to have a reference work right next to your book in order to understand your message.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in the IT field, specifically programming. There is probably a million ways to write code in just about any programming language that makes it difficult for a fellow human to understand, while still being perfectly comprehensible to the computer. There are even &lt;em&gt;contests&lt;/em&gt; for that! Programming languages and software development frameworks these days are such huge behemoths that nobody can be expected to know all of it. &lt;em&gt;Lots&lt;/em&gt; of C-style-language (C, C++, Java, C#, ...) programmers don't understand the ternary operator (&lt;code&gt;?:&lt;/code&gt;). I've had coworkers balk at the C# null-coalescing operator (&lt;code&gt;??&lt;/code&gt;). It took me a while to get a good grasp of generics. Start talking about the precise difference between prefix and postfix increment/decrement inside statement execution and far too many are going to look at you like you are delusional. None of this means you shouldn't use them when appropriate; they are all extremely useful language constructs. But if you write a five-levels-deep ternary operator expression involving null coalescing, implied operator precedence, implicit conversions between types, uncommon operators and Heaven knows what else, &lt;em&gt;when something simpler would do just as well&lt;/em&gt;, then you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; going to annoy people who try to read and understand the intent of that code because they are going to have to refer to reference works all the time, or use a major portion of their mental or physical whiteboard, just to figure out how the blasted thing works. &lt;em&gt;The same goes for natural language writing.&lt;/em&gt; Programming languages are just a very formal set of languages, with precisely defined semantics, grammar and syntax. In natural languages, ambiguity is commonplace. In a programming language, any ambiguity tends to be either a compiler/interpreter (lexer, mostly) bug, or specification oversight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T00:03:39.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6712" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6713" CreationDate="2012-11-24T00:14:16.807" Score="11" ViewCount="29610" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know, from someone who has marketed a collection of short stories (or is otherwise knowledgeable in these affairs), about how many short stories a publisher is looking for to constitute a collection. Let's assume all the short stories are between two and ten pages long.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastActivityDate="2022-06-08T21:32:45.903" Title="How many short stories make a collection" Tags="|publishing|short-story|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6712" CreationDate="2012-11-24T02:27:03.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short story collections are notoriously had to place over the transom. Typically a writer will have published most or all of the stories in other venues and then work with an agent to market the collection...at which point the length will vary widely depending on the publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, there's really no rule of thumb due to the differences between publishers. Do you have publishers in mind? Have you published any of the stories in publications that are likely to be of interest to a publisher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T02:27:03.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6707" CreationDate="2012-11-24T02:34:53.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Setting aside debate over the merits of particular words (which no one should be contesting without knowing the context of your writing), making explicit word lists helps work words into my vocabulary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By a word list I mean actually writing down or otherwise capturing the words in some way. My method is to write down the word, check out the etymology and, most of the time, jot down the context in which I read it. I do this in a paper notebook, but it doesn't really matter what technology is employed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not particularly on the hunt for synonyms or the like, just words that interest me for whatever reason. Sometimes they are esoteric. Sometimes they are not. The most recent ones that come to mind: descry, cicatrize, schizogenic and penumbra. Because I spent a little bit of effort checking into the words, they come to me significantly more readily than just listing them alone (though I often capture them on the fly and do a bit of quick Googling and OED-ing later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T02:34:53.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6707" CreationDate="2012-11-24T10:36:58.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heartily endorse and strongly reject your key assertion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can't picture Nabokov sitting there looking up synonyms, nor do I believe that it's a habit any aspiring writer should make heavy use of.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My ambivalence relates to the key distinction of WHEN the thesaurus comes into play. It is not a tool to interrupt composition, but does have a central place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have completed a passage of your own (or when you read a piece of Nabakov) then you can use the thesaurus to answer the question &lt;em&gt;How else might I (or he) have written that?&lt;/em&gt; Actively seek out alternative terms and expressions, not to be used immediately but to roll around in your sub-conscious until a need arises and a word less-used does spring up, ready for use.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T10:36:58.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4660" CreationDate="2012-11-24T22:53:30.887" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Observe&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with observation. You may want to investigate &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;conversation analysis&lt;/a&gt;; what I'm going to describe is a watered-down version of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to a place where people talk publicly, freely, and audibly. A train station is an excellent place; you have an excuse to sit and observe. Try to find a pair of people; the techniques are harder with more than a dyad, so start with two. You can also do this at a gathering of your friends, but you'll be more inclined to join in, and it'll be harder to stay objective. (Side note: don't be creepy about this. It can easily look like stalking rather than research. If 'caught', be polite and explain what you're doing, and all that stuff.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note precisely what people say to each other: every word, not the topics. Look at the non-content parts of the dialog: parts of speech, pronoun use. Look at when and how they talk--who 'chooses' who gets to talk next? How? is it verbal, non-verbal, based on convention? How long are sentences? How long do people speak before being interrupted? Do people answer each other's questions, or just ask another question? Do they talk over each other, at each other, finish each other's sentences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do this a few times, and you'll be surprised at what you learn. Then, move on to content. What do they talk about? How do shifts in topic get decided upon, ratified, and carried out? What is the relation of the topics to the speakers? (e.g.: are they discussing something of mutual interest, or is one speaking and the other mostly listening/supporting, or are they swapping me-stories...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write some dialog, a fair amount. Don't label the gender of the speakers. Have your critic read it and try to decipher genders. Be surprised at the results. Try again. Fail better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do it totally stereotypically. Write the extreme of what you heard. Burn these versions. ;) Then figure out why you thought &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; would be the stereotype. What did you write? Does it match your observations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Study&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An excellent book on linguistic differences between stereotypically-female and -male conversants is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Just_Don%27t_Understand&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;You Just Don't Understand&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, by Dr. Tannen, who has made a living out of documenting conversation style differences. This will make you understand some of the subtext of the conversations. Read that one, read &quot;You're wearing THAT?!&quot; to learn more about conversation between a very particular pair of women: mother and daughter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good thing about this particular problem is that the answer is all around you. So go out and study, and try, and do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1192" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T22:53:30.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6718" CreationDate="2012-11-24T06:32:26.863" Score="6" ViewCount="947" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/why-is-it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night-not-a-good-opening&quot;&gt;Why is “It was a dark and stormy night..” not a good opening?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase in question is derided everywhere.  Wikipedia calls it &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;infamous&lt;/a&gt; and purple prose, the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest references it (google 'worst opening sentence'), but I've always been puzzled as to just what exactly is wrong with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Purple prose&lt;/a&gt; on Wikipedia is prose that is so &quot;extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself&quot;.  I don't think the sentence really qualifies on any of those three grounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was used in Snoopy a fair bit, and I originally thought it was either from the cartoon, or because of the cartoon, but it seems to have been the source of  derision since it first written, so I remain confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4398" OwnerDisplayName="mcalex" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T10:42:21.397" Title="What exactly is wrong with 'It was a dark and stormy night'?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2012-11-27T08:54:56.777" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-11-24T07:45:40.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is only part of the sentence, and there’s nothing really wrong with it in itself. The problem lies in the way it continues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at&#xA;  occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind&#xA;  which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies),&#xA;  rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame&#xA;  of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many readers have felt that it is hopelessly over-written. Compare it with the first few sentences of meteorological description in the second paragraph of Charles Dickens’s ‘Bleak House’:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and&#xA;  meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of&#xA;  shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog&#xA;  on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into&#xA;  the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering&#xA;  in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges&#xA;  and small boats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Barrie England" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T07:45:40.597" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6707" CreationDate="2012-11-26T00:13:06.820" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;One method I like to use to remember new words, or at least words I'd like to use more often, is to write them into sentences. So I'll take a word I want to dredge out from the depths of my mind (or a dictionary) and write 10 sentences that use the word in various contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easier to recall when you use it for yourself, in contexts you've constructed as opposed to copying someone else's (such as dictionary examples).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write it out with pen and paper, too, as studies have shown that we tend to retain information better when we write as opposed to type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T00:13:06.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6707" CreationDate="2012-11-26T09:55:09.653" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a big difference between using a fancier word when a simpler one will do (which can be unnecessarily pretentious, something that commenters have exhorted you to avoid), and using a more precise word that more accurately captures the nuances of what you are trying to say. Based on your edit and your replies, I suspect the words you wish you were using fall into that second category – not necessary &lt;em&gt;rare&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;convoluted&lt;/em&gt;, but &lt;em&gt;rich&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;exact&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advice I would give would be to not worry about so much about finding the perfect word in your first draft (go ahead and use a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; word, to keep the narrative flowing), but learn to recognize where later substitutions would be apropos (and then replace those &quot;good&quot; words with a more &lt;em&gt;glorious&lt;/em&gt; word later).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this happens more often than you'd like (which is what I suspect prompted the question), then you might try this technique: During your first draft, when you find yourself struggling to find the right word, simply use a suitable one, and then mark that with an asterisk*. That way, you can easily reidentify and locate those words when you're ready to polish your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do this exercise often enough, and it wouldn't surprise me if you became more &quot;fluent&quot; in using those richer words in your first draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastEditorUserId="3298" LastEditDate="2012-12-25T11:37:56.410" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T11:37:56.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-11-26T12:01:58.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's cliche and camp. You said it yourself; it shows up in Peanuts. If you were to say &quot;It was a dark and...&quot; most English speakers would finish your sentence. That is why it holds little currency among readers, while I do agree that it's not so overwrought as to be considered purple prose. I can't, however, find any criticisms of the  opening line originating at the time of Paul Clifford's publication that would suggest that it was scoffed at by then contemporary readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastEditorUserId="4390" LastEditDate="2012-12-02T10:42:21.397" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T10:42:21.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6693" CreationDate="2012-11-27T09:38:11.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's to be your early work - you're inexperienced - and you get to choose, I strongly suggest a short story. The pain of failure will be lesser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an unexperienced writer failures are inevitable. Nobody is born with skill of writing great fiction. Everyone starts with writing crap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think the idea is awesome, the best I can suggest is shelve it for now and write it in some five years, when you've learned the rules of the trade and are capable of making it shine. Don't waste it on what has more than 50% chance of turning up utter crap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write a lot, publish online, accept criticism, improve. Experiment a lot and fail a lot. And never worry what becomes of your first story. It may be something to remember fondly or something to be ashamed of, but I don't think it will be a great success...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2012-11-27T12:15:49.877" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T12:15:49.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6695" CreationDate="2012-11-27T13:47:52.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/6696/2533&quot;&gt;Chris' answer&lt;/a&gt;, but I'd like to add two things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;(c)&lt;/strong&gt; (from the title of the question) or more accurately ©, is &lt;em&gt;copyright&lt;/em&gt;, which is not used with company or service names. So you would never write &lt;em&gt;Facebook©&lt;/em&gt;, although if appropriate you &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; write &lt;em&gt;© Facebook&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, ® - as I am sure you are aware, but adding it for completeness, trademarks can be registered with other bodies too, particularly outside of the US. For example, in Sweden, you would register with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prv.se/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Patent and Trademark Office (PRV)&lt;/a&gt;. For EU-wide protection, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epo.org/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the European Patent Office&lt;/a&gt; should be a good place to start. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T13:47:52.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6725" CreationDate="2012-11-27T20:46:14.883" Score="6" ViewCount="18575" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone use em dashes (or two hyphens) to denote speakers in dialogue passages? Joyce does this as does William Gaddis. Many others. I practice it, but my only &amp;quot;conceptual understanding&amp;quot; is that the dash-dialogue format allows you to group a character's entire range of actions, thoughts, and words into one chunk, headed by a dash. I really like this idea; it's very dramatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example which will lead to a more specific question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rick and Nelly walked through the cathedral.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;-- It always makes me feel cold when I come here, he said shivering. I think it's something in the prayers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I seldom if ever have seen with dash-dialogue is the placement of the speaker tag at the end. So never this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- It always makes me feel cold when I come here, Rick said shivering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I have made up a sort-of rule in my head that any speech tags or character blocking written into normal dialogue should only be inserted into the middle of dash-dialogue and not at the beginning or the end. My question is: does anyone know if there are specific rules to follow in writing this kind of dialogue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T21:03:06.040" Title="Using dashes in writing dialogue" Tags="|style|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6724" CreationDate="2012-11-27T21:22:02.100" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that's the default in Spanish; I grew up reading stuff written that way, and I find the quotes... strange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do use it a lot to add description to the dialogue. The way I use it slightly different to yours, though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rick and Nelly walked through the cathedral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- It always makes me feel cold when I come here, - he said shivering. - I think it's something in the prayers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's called a &amp;quot;quotation dash&amp;quot;, apparently. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark,_non-English_usage#Quotation_dash&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark,_non-English_usage#Quotation_dash&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T21:22:02.100" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2012-11-28T04:04:21.343" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/humor/writegood.cfm&quot;&gt;How to Write Good&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first set of rules was written by Frank L. Visco and originally&#xA;  published in the June 1986 issue of Writers' digest. The second set of&#xA;  rules is derived from William Safire's Rules for Writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Avoid alliteration. Always.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Employ the vernacular.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Eschew ampersands &amp;amp; abbreviations, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Contractions aren't necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;One should never generalize.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: &quot;I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Comparisons are as bad as cliches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Don't be redundant; don't more use words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Profanity sucks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Be more or less specific.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Understatement is always best.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;One-word sentences? Eliminate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The passive voice is to be avoided.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Who needs rhetorical questions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;While a transcendent vocabulary is laudable, one must nevertheless keep incessant surveillance against such loquacious, effusive, voluble&#xA;  verbosity that the calculated objective of communication becomes&#xA;  ensconced in obscurity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In a sentence, the nouns has to match the verbs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Don't use no double negatives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In writing, few things are, so to speak, more infuriating, than, say, commas, at least when there are too many of them, or when they&#xA;  should be, say, semicolons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Proofread your work, so you don't leave some out or forget to finish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Run-on sentences are really bad because the reader saturates and what you really should be doing is using commas and semicolons and&#xA;  even periods to break the sentence up into more digestible chunks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To have been using excessively complex verb constructions, is to have been bopping the literary baloney.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A friend I spoken with recently told me he been forgetting his helper verbs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4406" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T04:04:21.343" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-11-28T04:04:21.343" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6724" CreationDate="2012-11-28T10:50:15.450" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is also standard in Polish. It's useful by freeing up the quotation mark for paraphrases, figurative expressions and inner quotes, while the long dash takes care of all dialogue needs and makes it really stand out from normal paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note we use the long dashes throughout the whole length, not just long at the beginning and short in the middle, and they replace the commas too. And they are often seriously long. Sometimes as long as an equivalent of a double or triple of your puny em-dash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rick and Nelly walked through the cathedral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;    ––  It always makes me feel cold when I come here –– he said shivering. –– I think it's something in the prayers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T10:50:15.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2012-11-28T16:11:58.363" Score="16" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Write in the Active Voice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm surprised that no one has mentioned active vs. passive voice (for a good discussion, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/742/what-does-active-voice-mean&quot;&gt;this Q&amp;amp;A&lt;/a&gt;. Like many &quot;rules,&quot; there are various reasons to decide otherwise, but in general the active voice is stronger than the passive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T16:11:58.363" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-11-28T16:11:58.363" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2012-11-28T16:16:47.107" Score="20" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Said&quot; is All You Need to Say&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favorite writing teacher, way back in the day, told me--rightly--that it is very rarely necessary to use more than the word &quot;said&quot; when writing dialogue, particularly using adverbs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost every time I find myself wanting to use constructions like, &quot;He said excitedly,&quot; or the like, I realize I'm better off just saying &quot;said.&quot; Part of the reason this happens so much is that, as writers, we are acutely aware of each word. But readers don't notice the repetition of the verb and the adverb rarely conveys enough to be meaningful anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T16:16:47.107" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-11-28T16:16:47.107" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6702" CreationDate="2012-11-28T17:25:11.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't even allow one mistake. I am a proofreader and I do not rest until every error is corrected... No matter how many words. He obviously didnt do what you asked for. Find another proofreader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4410" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T17:25:11.447" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6732" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6734" CreationDate="2012-11-28T23:39:49.443" Score="0" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering whether it is okay to write like this or not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I never went for the grooves. But I did take a seat near the bar table and checked out the pretty ladies. Drinking was not my cup of tea. Alcohol. Alcohol was not my cup of tea. Wait, let me reframe it. . . I did not drink. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I write sentences like these - 'okay wait, let me reframe it. . .  I did not drink.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Share some light?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T15:51:43.507" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T15:51:43.507" Title="Is it good style in fiction to write sentences as a flow of (disjointed) thoughts?" Tags="|style|fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2012-11-29T04:20:57.110" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6732" CreationDate="2012-11-29T00:49:02.947" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Is it okay...&quot; and &quot;Can I...&quot; are subjective. It's about context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the sentences grammatically correct? Strictly speaking, no. But you are clearly writing in a first-person, casual, stream-of-consciousness dictation style, so they are perfectly fine for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking as an editor, as long as this is your character's/narrator's voice, and you're consistent, I would be entirely fine with this type of writing, and wouldn't mark it up to be &quot;fixed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T00:49:02.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1256" CreationDate="2012-11-29T04:29:12.553" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cannot go wrong with Robert Ludlum such as the &lt;em&gt;Bourne Trilogy&lt;/em&gt; which someone already mentioned or &lt;strong&gt;Prometheus Deception&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4406" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T04:29:12.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6702" CreationDate="2012-11-29T09:20:03.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're working with a human so you'll usually be disappointed if you expect perfection. But as the author you are right to have high standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are proofreading techniques, such as breaking up chapters and long paragraphs so errors stand out. Perhaps your proofreader is early in their career, perhaps not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instinctively I'd suggest a few rounds of proofreading. Two or three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3365" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T09:20:03.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6707" CreationDate="2012-11-29T09:34:56.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have FOUR thoughts on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nabokov did a lot of research, sketching etc. It wouldn't surprise me if he used a thesaurus. Writing is not effortless.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A wide vocabulary is useful - so good for you. You should keep things simple and clear though. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For me the ONLY way to remember things (new words included) is USE them. Either write them or speak them. Then they'll nestle more neatly in your memory.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Precision is important. When describing emotions, places, everything, being precise is a skill. That's why I personally would encourage a writer to work on their vocabulary. Not to be showy, but to be precise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3365" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T09:34:56.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-30T16:20:20.447" Score="0" ViewCount="4959" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to write a scientific paper for a university course. As far as I know, and as far as I have ever seen, tables and figures are always inserted at the top of a page, instead of at the exact position in the middle of the text, allowing for a few lines above, below or between the tables. As far as I have heard, that is the scientific standard; it keeps the text together and more readable; the problem that figures are not at the exact same location as before, but maybe on a different page, is made up by the fact that every figure/table has a number, and therefore finding the figure described in the text should not be too hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm in a group with a few other students (I'm responsible for typesetting and compiling our report), who insist they've never heard that, and want me to insert their tables and figures in the middle of the text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I wrong and overreacting, or is there any regulation or standard that wants figures to be at the top of the page (I really have never seen a scientific paper with a text above a figure)? How is that called, such that I can justify and back up my opinion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3614" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T17:45:36.530" Title="figures and tables always on top of the page?" Tags="|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6740" CreationDate="2012-11-30T21:04:39.040" Score="1" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to say couple of this within one sentence. so my sub sentences would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We removed the vertical features from the classification process.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The removal of vertical features enhances the discontinuations between planar objects&#xA;  and the earth.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;(the meaning is: in reality there are many planar object features, for e.g. building&#xA;  tops etc. by removing vertical objects like walls, the connection between roof tops &#xA;  and terrain can be avoided.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The main reason for erroneous classification of mentioned places is the merging of &#xA;  less oblique planes with nearby vegetation patches.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;(meaning: some places wrongly classified so that i am referring to that places)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The nearby vegetation patches do not have considerable discontinuity with surrounding&#xA;  earth surface.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;(Meaning: some vegetation which do locate close to the mentioned objects make &#xA;  connection with terrain because vegetation normally has many branches from close to the &#xA;  terrain to top of the mentioned planar object surfaces, so that, indirectly such &#xA;  objects connect to the terrain.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I put all together and construct the below sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Although&lt;/em&gt; we removed the vertical features from the classification&#xA;  process &lt;em&gt;as it enhances the discontinuations between planes and earth&lt;/em&gt;,&#xA;  the main reason for misleading the classification of mentioned places&#xA;  is the merging of less oblique planes with nearby vegetation of which&#xA;  doesn't have considerable discontinuity with surrounding earth&#xA;  surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I put all in the way &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;although, part 1, part 2&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; pattern. in here, in both parts I am telling a fact and the reason for that fact. So, my question is how to shorten all stuff into one sentence as I am running out my space. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4420" LastEditorUserId="4420" LastEditDate="2012-11-30T22:10:53.637" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T17:09:19.327" Title="combining sentences" Tags="|technical-writing|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6739" CreationDate="2012-11-30T23:23:49.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Communicating complicated information can be done better using short sentences, not long ones.  It also is easier to check short sentences for clarity and accuracy than to check long ones.  Rather than trying to squeeze an explanation that should be a page or two long into a single sentence, aim at writing accurate short sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the above, I suggested using several short sentences rather than a single long sentence because the short sentences will communicate better.  A second reason for using several sentences rather than one is that the presented information contains several different ideas.  Treating separate ideas separately makes more sense than muddling them up together.  The ideas include (1) vertical features like walls act as misleading connections between terrain and non-terrain (roofs, etc), therefore vertical features are not considered within the classification process; (2) vegetation obscures some oblique surfaces and leads to false connections between terrain and non-terrain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might try something along the lines of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We removed one important source of misleading connections between terrain and non-terrain by suppressing vertical features within the classification process.  But  vegetation with many branches not vertical often obscures or connects to oblique surfaces.  The false connections due to vegetation now are the main cause of object misclassification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt; A comment speaks of “ruining the point of splitting the sentences” by starting the next one with &lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt;.  That may be so, because &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/but#Conjunction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;but&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;is serving here much like a coordinating conjunction.  To avoid the problem, consider the following arrangement, which besides avoiding &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt;, slightly improves the parallelism in form of the two halves of the paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We removed one important source of misleading connections between terrain and non-terrain by suppressing vertical features within the classification process.  False connections due to vegetation remain as the main cause of object misclassification.  With many branches not vertical, vegetation often obscures or connects to oblique surfaces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comment also claims &lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt; at sentence-front “looks informal and out of place in a piece of technical writing”.  That notion is echoed in wiktionary's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/but#Usage_notes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Usage Notes&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beginning a sentence with a coordinating conjunction such as &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; is considered incorrect by classical grammarians arguing that a coordinating conjunction at the start of a sentence has nothing to connect, but use of the word in this way is very common. It is, however, best to avoid beginning a sentence with but in formal writing. Combining sentences or using &lt;strong&gt;however, nevertheless, still&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;though&lt;/strong&gt; is appropriate for the formal style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, some who subscribe to the idea that &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; cannot serve to start a formal sentence would have you believe that using a longer word like &lt;em&gt;however, nevertheless, still&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;though&lt;/em&gt; will make it all nice.  I'm sure it's so, but also see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+9%3A24&amp;amp;version=KJV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mark 9:24&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastEditorUserId="2619" LastEditDate="2012-12-10T17:09:19.327" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T17:09:19.327" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6741" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6743" CreationDate="2012-12-01T22:56:01.307" Score="2" ViewCount="459" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a proposal for my PhD. In the proposal I have included a chapter titled “Actuator Design”. Within that same chapter, can I include a section with the same name as that chapter, meaning the very same “Actuator Design” as I’ve already used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4425" OwnerDisplayName="Shashank Sawant" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T17:56:41.967" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T17:56:41.967" Title="Can a section have the same name as the chapter?" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6741" CreationDate="2012-12-01T23:40:40.177" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a poor style - why make it a section while the chapter should contain it, what are other contents of the chapter if one section covers its whole title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can give it a subtitle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actuator design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actuator design - overview&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actuator design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actuator design - detailed description&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your chapter is to contain only one section, which covers the entire subject of the chapter, don't make any section and start writing the content directly under the chapter level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T23:40:40.177" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6741" CreationDate="2012-12-01T23:46:16.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can include whatever sections you like; the real question is whether your advisor or committee will approve what you write.  If the structure is made more logical, organized, and clear by having a section called “Actuator Design” within a chapter called “Actuator Design”, then go ahead and use such a section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are cases where structure would not be improved by such a section: for example, if the section were at the immediate beginning of the chapter and were introductory and general.  In a case like that, dispense with the  “Actuator Design” section name, and present its information at the chapter level.  Then add section headings as necessary following that introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also might want to rename the chapter or the section. If “Actuator Design” is only a section of a chapter, then the chapter must actually cover more topics than  “Actuator Design”, or the section  must cover less.  For example, if your “Actuator Design” chapter has two sections, called  “Actuator Design – Overview” and  “Actuator Design – Details”, perhaps just rename the sections to “Overview” and  “Details”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T23:46:16.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6724" CreationDate="2012-12-01T23:57:14.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An em dash inidicates a special kind of pause — perhaps a pause for thought, or a digression — that isn't really represented in any other way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4426" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T23:57:14.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2012-12-02T02:48:54.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The catty answers from unpublished writers amuse me.  I double-space after periods, not because I'm old enough to use a type writer but because that's how I was taught.  Double-spacing and monospace fonts absolutely make initial editing much easier.  For my final edit, I prefer to make a faux galley to check how well the flow works when it is typeset as it will be as a book.  When I turn it in, I only take out the spaces if I'm really pushing 400 pages and it buys me a page or two.  (In my genre, publishers get really unhappy when you go over the magic 100k mark.)  I've published 6 books with a major NY publisher and never had an editor comment on spacing after a period.  The book gets typeset anyway. It's a non-issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4427" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T02:48:54.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6738" CreationDate="2012-12-02T11:32:24.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that you are over-generalising. Figures and tables OFTEN appear at the top of a new page because of the requirement not to split them over page breaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That does NOT mean that they must be placed there if there is enough space on the previous page to enable them to be placed where they fall naturally in the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a paper with many small figures, it would be very off-putting for the reader if every reference to a figure on the recto (odd-numbered page) after the first line required you to turn over because of an entirely arbitrary decision on placement at the top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In ages past when journal editors decided layout, figures were placed by authors at the end of the manuscript on separate pages. As powerful page layout software becomes generally available, many journals have removed that restriction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T11:32:24.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6738" CreationDate="2012-12-02T13:34:22.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt that there is an actual rule as you describe. In scientific circles, many people typeset their work using the LaTeX typesetting engine because of its good support for mathematical equations and so on, and because it sort of adheres to a principle of separating design from content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The LaTeX typesetting engine uses the concept of image and table &lt;em&gt;floats&lt;/em&gt; which automatically try to determine the best position for your figures and tables and &quot;floats&quot; them to that position. The default (which &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; publishers insist on) is to have the float setting be &lt;code&gt;tbp&lt;/code&gt; which basically specifies the order preference for placement of floats as being either: &lt;code&gt;t&lt;/code&gt; = &lt;em&gt;at the top of page&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;code&gt;b&lt;/code&gt; = &lt;em&gt;at the bottom of page&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;code&gt;p&lt;/code&gt; = &lt;em&gt;on a special page just for floated elements&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside to this default is that sometimes figures and tables appear &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; they are mentioned in the text on a page (if LaTeX decides the best position to place the float is at the top of the page). My personal preference is to avoid this behavior. Of course, these settings can be overridden (for example, adding an &lt;code&gt;h&lt;/code&gt;, making the float statement being &lt;code&gt;htbp&lt;/code&gt;, changes the default placement to first try placing the float &quot;&lt;em&gt;here&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, before trying the other three options to determine what is best) but since part of the idea behind LaTeX in the first place is &quot;you work on the content, the program will figure out how to make it look good&quot;, I suspect that there are a good number of people who just leave the default settings as they are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your preamble that &quot;I have to write a scientific paper for a university course. As far as I know, and as far as I have ever seen, tables and figures are always inserted at the top of a page&quot;, the widespread use of LaTeX to typeset journals, books, and working papers might be an explanation for your belief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you spend some time looking into this question further, I am fairly convinced that you will find more people recommending closer integration of text and figures or tables. You argued that placing figures and tables at the top of pages &quot;keeps the text together and more readable&quot;. However, most argue the exact opposite, saying that if the reader has to turn the page to look at a table or figure (or even look down to the bottom of the page to read a footnote!), their concentration is broken and increases the reader's load.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps one of the most prominent advocates of that alternate style (placing figures and tables as close as possible to where they are mentioned) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Edward Tufte&lt;/a&gt;. Below is an example of a page where he describes this feature, using Galileo's work as an example. (Note also how his &quot;footnotes&quot; appear directly in the page's margin.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XlL04.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, to wrap this up, I would say you might want to do some more investigation before you decide on your own standard; or, if you have to submit to a particular journal or publisher, contact them and ask what their standards are (most will be able to provide you with author guidelines for manuscript preparation of some sort, perhaps even a template). This will save your group time arguing over matter of &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt; (things for which there really aren't rules) and let you focus on your content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3433" LastEditorUserId="3433" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T05:42:32.190" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T05:42:32.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4244" CreationDate="2012-12-03T13:51:24.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's documentaries or similar you want then why not check out some of the many, many website out there dedicated to screenwriting or writing and watch some of the interviews or panel discussions they post. A lot of them are at an hour long, some even longer, and they will inform, encourage, inspire and educate in equal measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with &lt;a href=&quot;http://cinephilearchive.tumblr.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://cinephilearchive.tumblr.com&lt;/a&gt; and the try &lt;a href=&quot;http://filmmakeriq.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://filmmakeriq.com&lt;/a&gt; or just search YouTube for either 'writing' or 'screenwriting' and see what comes up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4331" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T13:51:24.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6750" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-04T09:38:58.340" Score="14" ViewCount="16241" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I'm in charge of getting a three hundred page book published. I'll do all reasonable things to get it proofread, but still there is a chance that some errors will persist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the book goes to the bookstores and readers start reporting errors. I'd like to know whether the rate of errors is &quot;acceptable&quot; or if I haven't really done my job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any standard, or any informal rule, for how many errors are &quot;acceptable&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2908" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-08T16:49:25.110" LastActivityDate="2023-11-06T07:43:44.493" Title="How many errors per page volume is typically &quot;okay&quot; in a book?" Tags="|publishing|book|proofreading|" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6750" CreationDate="2012-12-04T20:06:56.367" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some errors will always remain, no matter how many proofreaders go through the manuscript.  I've yet to see an error-free book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some readers will always be critical.  If it's not the proofreading, it's the editing.  If it's not that, it's the fact-checking, and so on.  Just steel yourself for the critics, and hope they find happier ways to amuse themselves, soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure there's any &quot;error rate&quot; to share with you.  A single-letter error -- leaving an &quot;s&quot; off a plural, for example -- isn't the same as using an entirely incorrect word (accept, except), and some errors are more glaring than others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book that's been hastily proofread by just one proofreader may display 1 typo per 1,000 words.  In my opinion, that's too many, but it's not unusual among published books I've been sent to read and review.  I'm more comfortable with 3 typos (single-letter errors or two letters, transposed) per 10,000 words.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4432" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T20:06:56.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2060" CreationDate="2012-12-04T23:06:42.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found that the iPad was not really a good tool for writing, or getting ideas out...at first. While I know this thread is fairly old, due to sheer use, i found myself using the iPad with an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wirelessground.com/ipad-2-bluetooth-keyboard-case.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iPad keyboard case&lt;/a&gt; more and more for writing. I think that the more you use something, the better off you are with it. Furthermore, I feel that with Secunia for the iPad and this case, I have been able to pump out some of my best ideas....fast..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4434" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T15:16:04.403" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T15:16:04.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6754" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-05T15:48:18.903" Score="7" ViewCount="1108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a professor in a science department and I am working with a student that has significant anxiety about writing, such that they have opted to receive a lower final grade rather than turn in required writing assignments.  In discussing the situation with the student they indicated that the pressure of putting their thoughts perfectly on the page was too much for them.  They enjoyed the research for the papers but froze when confronted with the blank page.  In part they seemed to indicate that this was due to fear of judgement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end this student has essentially stopped doing any writing except that which cannot be avoided and most of this is now late so under increased pressure. I should note that the writing that I have seen from the student is actually well above average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial thoughts are that I need to encourage the student to use writing as a tool for understanding under much lower pressure situations so that they can learn to write for themselves as much as for dissemination.  But I am not sure how to go about this or if this is even the correct approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to be working closely with this student next semester outside of the classroom on independent research so I will have a lot of freedom to develop custom writing assignments. &lt;strong&gt;What approach should I use to help this student overcome their fear of writing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2852" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T06:36:33.333" Title="How can I help a writing-phobic but competent student develop their writing?" Tags="|academic-writing|education|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6754" CreationDate="2012-12-05T16:21:46.707" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a friend who was a substitute elementary teacher who had a similar problem. Granted, he was working with a fourth-grader, but essentially, he sat down with her and line by line they created the paragraph together. He suggested something, she suggested something, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, she kept insisting, &quot;I don't do A-plus work.&quot; He pointed at the paper and said, &quot;You just &lt;i&gt;did&lt;/i&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your student is terrified of being judged &amp;mdash; making the perfect the enemy of the good &amp;mdash; then maybe sitting down and holding the student's hand and actually showing the student, line by line, &quot;I will not critique this. This can be critiqued. This is fine. This is fine too.&quot; will work. Actually force your way past the judgment point so the student sees it's not quite the Harshmageddon expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1699/writing-first-programming-book/1700#1700&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; answer might also be useful; if the student gets used to assembling notes and phrases, then fine-tuning might be easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA something practical which is also rep bait for John Smithers: Another idea might be to get the student to focus on a topic s/he absolutely loves and can talk about for hours: Justin Bieber, Star Trek, dragons. Then ask to student to do an infodump on everything s/he knows about the topic, including Anne McCaffrey, Arthurian legends, George R.R. Martin, and Dreamworks movies. Getting excited about the topic might help the student get past the fear of having every word weighed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T02:33:11.143" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6756" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-06T16:04:18.830" Score="4" ViewCount="767" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems pretty normal to see screenshots of MS Word, steps for &quot;this is how you generate a template&quot;.  I don't think Microsoft would object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm not sure about reprinting images from in-game scenes for specific games, like Diablo II.  Do you need to obtain permission to include a screenshot of a game in your book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="389" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-03-01T05:40:24.937" LastActivityDate="2019-03-01T05:40:24.937" Title="Can you reprint screen shots of a game application or program without permission?" Tags="|copyright|graphics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6757" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-06T16:40:24.733" Score="10" ViewCount="23551" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper for a Canadian Literature class, and want to quote portions of one of the graphic novels we studied. Do I quote the written portions as I would any other written work? I am using MLA, so would it be like (Author,Page), like a conventional book? Or are there other conventions for graphic novels that I am not aware of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2879" LastActivityDate="2017-07-24T01:53:21.733" Title="How do I quote a graphic novel?" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6757" CreationDate="2012-12-06T23:36:29.467" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The MLA has a section on graphic novels. Basically, you cite the source in the same way as a regular non-periodical publication. If it's a single author, yes, you would use (Author, Page) format. See the &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Purdue OWL online writing lab&lt;/a&gt; for details on MLA format. See also this &lt;a href=&quot;http://elmo.academyart.edu/reference-help/mla_citation_guide.html#graphic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;site&lt;/a&gt; for specific information on how to form graphic novel citations in your Works Cited Page. As far as I know, you can't peruse the entire MLA manual online for free.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-12-08T01:12:47.890" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T01:12:47.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6754" CreationDate="2012-12-07T01:39:14.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the student is fearful of judgement, which I interpret as meaning &quot;getting a poor grade,&quot; and has also told you that putting down thoughts perfectly is an obstacle, it seems that the student's conception of how writing works is malformed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your student will benefit from learning that no writing is perfect on the first round. I would suggest that you require several drafts of a particular assignment (which aren't graded) and you together work through the revision process. This should mitigate the fear of judgement since there is no worry about the grade, and the student will (hopefully) have confidence that the final version is worthy of a good grade. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, these exercises should help the student develop good &lt;em&gt;editing&lt;/em&gt; skills while coming to the understanding that &quot;perfect&quot; is something that you work at after you write, not while you are trying to compose a first draft.  That should help your student breakthrough the anxiety of starting to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2012-12-07T01:39:14.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6756" CreationDate="2012-12-07T04:52:50.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a legal consideration concerning using part of one copyright work in another. The rules around it involve the quantity of material copied and the purpose for which it used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However in your case there may be an over-riding consideration. If &lt;em&gt;Blizzard Entertainment&lt;/em&gt; took exception to your use of material from &lt;em&gt;Diablo II&lt;/em&gt;, would it harm the market for your book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there could be a negative impact from not seeking approval, then ask, whether or not you are strictly required to by law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2012-12-07T04:52:50.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6756" CreationDate="2012-12-08T01:38:22.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are four factors to determining Fair Use of copyrighted material that must be weighed in the balance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Purpose and character of use...better if not for profit; better if transforming in some way&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The nature of the work...factual is better, creative works less so&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The amount and substance of the work...less is better; uses that don't get at &quot;the heart of the work&quot; are better. There are no rules about percentages, etc, despite myths to the contrary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The effect of the use on market value...if it doesn't take away from real or potential profit, better&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the nature of the book you are writing, you are probably quite safe using screenshots. You are likely writing something that will stimulate sales and that isn't going to reveal workings of the game that are protected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your publisher should have experience with this and probably has a policy for when they ask permission. Unfortunately, many people and organizations don't understand Fair Use and err too far on the side of caution, ceding rights they don't actually have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I teach about Fair Use regularly; you can find more information here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://iteachu.uaf.edu/develop-courses/constructing-a-course/copyright/&quot;&gt;http://iteachu.uaf.edu/develop-courses/constructing-a-course/copyright/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T01:38:22.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6754" CreationDate="2012-12-08T01:50:25.517" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few things I've done, with &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; success, with students:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Supervised writing sprints: have the student write in the classroom or during office-hours for a short, intense amount of time. Whatever they write is what they provide for review. After the first few sessions, some of the fear is gone and some of the benefits of the draft/feedback/revision cycle become apparent to the student.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have the student write drafts (or parts of drafts) by hand. I tried using an editor that had a mode that only allowed typing forward, but writing by hand was just more workable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the best techniques--and there are scads of sites out there that repeat all the common advice--demand willingness on the part of the student (and tie more directly to intrinsic motivations). If they aren't willing or able to &quot;adjust their head&quot; then it's nearly impossible to adjust it for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T01:50:25.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1055" CreationDate="2012-12-08T18:33:15.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Luck, as in most other aspects of life plays a major role in getting published whether people want to admit it or not. Just look at the crappy novels that are famous and popular and you will get the point. On the other hand I have read some novels by unknowns that are very good and in some cases great and they will never become popular or known. even though the author has fought tooth and nail trying to make his work known. It's a crap shoot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4447" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T18:33:15.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6466" CreationDate="2012-12-10T08:33:55.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a link for movies. John Truby's analysis of many Hollywood movies. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.truby.com/reviewarc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.truby.com/reviewarc.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4451" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T08:33:55.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6768" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-10T23:14:04.610" Score="-2" ViewCount="926" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really need someone to critique this poem for me. It's for a Poem Portfolio in my Creative Writing Class. I just need some help on where to include things like imagery, sensory details, similes, metaphors, etc. I would super appreciate if anyone could help me! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rock Collection&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not like I ever wanted,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;all of these rocks.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I just don't love him like I used to,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;and now I'm stuck with them.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I wish I could get rid of them,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;stupid rocks.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Keep me up at night,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;wear me down by day.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;These rocks are killing me.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Why can't I just leave them behind?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Just set them on the ground,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Leave them and never come back.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I just can't though,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;no matter how hard I try.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Why can't I just love him?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Love him the way I used to.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4458" LastEditorUserId="4332" LastEditDate="2012-12-11T02:55:16.847" LastActivityDate="2012-12-29T07:22:26.227" Title="Critique My Poem Please!" Tags="|poetry|revision|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-12-29T11:45:00.223" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6769" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-11T01:14:14.937" Score="9" ViewCount="123282" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title says it all. How can I gauge how long my novel would be, if for example I've written 400 single-spaced pages of size 12 Times New Romans in Microsoft Word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-12-11T20:40:02.977" LastActivityDate="2017-12-08T10:17:06.887" Title="Converting Word pages to book pages, for novels?" Tags="|book-length|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6769" CreationDate="2012-12-11T01:35:51.370" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cheated once: I pulled a book off my shelf and recreated it (in InDesign, but you might be able to do it in Word). Page size, margins (I used a ruler), font, type size, everything. Once I recreated what was on the page, I had a gauge for size. Then I dumped my current work into that, and I had a rough idea of how long my &quot;novel&quot; was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T01:35:51.370" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6769" CreationDate="2012-12-11T01:39:23.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using Word to create your manuscript, then you can use Word Count to find its length and work from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect typical text (whatever that is) set in 12 point Times New Roman to contain approximately 600 words (4000 characters) per page. So a 400 page manuscript would be about 240,000 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That will be a big book! &lt;em&gt;The Historian&lt;/em&gt; by Elizabeth Kostova is around that size and it weighs in at 900 pages in paperback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you considered whether your magnum opus would &quot;work&quot; in two volumes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T01:39:23.803" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6772" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-11T02:21:11.070" Score="2" ViewCount="726" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend has asked me to review a personal statement she's written for acceptance into a UK university. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have experience in assisting others with their writing, but as an American I want to ensure that my critique is worthy of both sides of the pond, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some of the major differences between this type of writing for a UK or American audience? Are there any cultural aspects I should be clued into as I help my friend craft this statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="221" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T13:58:23.167" Title="Differences in personal statements between American and UK universities?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6769" CreationDate="2012-12-11T16:00:46.210" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard way of calculating word count, aside from simply using the &quot;word count&quot; feature of your word processor, is to format your document in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html&quot;&gt;standard submission format&lt;/a&gt; and then multiply the number of pages by 250. This is the technique that was used back in the days before computers could instantaneously count the number of words in a document. It also has the incidental advantage of accounting for the actual length of your paragraphs on the page, so that long passages of dialogue (which consist of lots of short paragraphs) or lists are correctly adjusted for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T16:00:46.210" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6702" CreationDate="2012-12-11T17:38:49.607" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a difficult question to answer because an awful lot depends on your own personal expectations of what you expect a proofreader to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, a good proofreader should find &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; mistakes in a proofed draft, no mistakes should be acceptable; otherwise, what are you paying them for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, in my experience (and in my opinion) proofreaders are asked to do too much. If you want someone to check your grammar, correct word use, sense and consistency etc., hire a copy-editor, that's not the job of a proofreader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I accept that the dividing line between what a copy editor does and a proofreader does is blurred but it's important to understand the distinction between the two to get the best results from both disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask a proofreader to take on part of the role of a copy editor as well as proofreader they will make mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T17:38:49.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2012-12-11T17:52:22.943" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether you do this or not, but one of the best ways of proofreading I've found is to print out the document and read it through in the paper format, rather than trying to proofread writing on screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mark up your corrections on the paper in a particular coloured ink and correct them on-screen. Now take a break and do something else before going back to the paper proof again and correct the next set of errors in a different colour and so on until all corrections have been found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep repeating this process until the draft is correct. Don't try and catch all errors in one read through, sometimes it can take several readings to catch them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastEditorUserId="4459" LastEditDate="2012-12-12T13:35:36.227" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T13:35:36.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6769" CreationDate="2012-12-11T19:38:36.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's almost impossible to be able to calculate this without knowing the final format the printed work will be in. There are a huge number of variables that will all have an impact on the length of the text -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The font chosen, the type size, the linefeed (font leading), the paragraph spacing, the hyphenation settings, whether the text is justified or unjustified, the kerning, the letter and word spacing, the text column width, the text column depth, the likely number of footnotes and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without really knowing these parameters any estimation will only be a very rough one which could be out by as much as 40-50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T19:38:36.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6772" CreationDate="2012-12-12T13:58:23.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's pretty difficult to be able to give you a specific answer to this without really knowing the likely contents to the &lt;em&gt;personal statement&lt;/em&gt; you refer to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However as general advice I would suggest the following -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid extensive use of American buzz words, slang, expressions, sayings and particularly in vogue 'management speak'. These are not likely to be looked upon particularly favourably by an English University, nor will the specific meaning of the unfamiliar expressions be immediately apparent. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is quite a movement and dislike of this kind of language and the increasing amount of &lt;em&gt;Americanisation&lt;/em&gt; pervading the English language in this country (England). There's been quite a lot of press about this recently with regards to the fairly large number of 'new' words and 'sayings' entering the language. A lot of people just don't like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write in clear, concise, grammatically correct, correctly spelt (even if it must be American spelling) English and avoid unnecessary 'fluff' and 'flannel'. In other words don't write several paragraphs when one sentence will do. Sometimes less is more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T13:58:23.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6756" CreationDate="2012-12-12T14:08:51.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The copyright information included with the game itself should tell you the answer to this. They will set out the parameters of what you can and can't do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My hunch would be that a specific screenshot of a game in action, created by yourself, would be considered 'an original creative work' and would therefore not be restricted by the game publishers copyright rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you would really need to consult a lawyer specialising in copyright to know what you can and cannot do legally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T14:08:51.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6750" CreationDate="2012-12-12T14:30:29.037" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No errors are acceptable, period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to write out three paragraphs of text on here, I would check each paragraph for errors until I was satisfied they were all correct before I clicked the 'Post Your Answer' button. If I found errors, I would not be satisfied with what I'd written until it was correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would a 400 page book be any different? As far as I'm concerned it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, living in the real world and being the pragmatists we are sometimes compromises need (and have) to be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much money are you prepared to spend on proof reading those 400 pages over and over and over and over again to ensure there isn't one single error left? Because you can do that if that's what you're prepared to do. However, for most people, business people, writers, publishers etc that simply isn't financially viable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to draw a line somewhere and accept that given your budget for publishing that 400 page book you cannot spend all your money on proofreading and for the project to be financially viable you will have to accept that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; errors will slip through the net.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what it really comes down to is a cost v error acceptability rate. What that rate will be will almost always come down to how much money you're prepared to spend on it and the quality of the people you spend it on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're 'worried you haven't done your job', as far as I'm concerned just getting the 400 page book published means you've 'done your job'! If it contains any errors, log them and correct them on the next reprint!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T14:30:29.037" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6724" CreationDate="2012-12-12T15:53:46.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no such thing as 'two hyphens' for an em dash. There's 3 types of dash in use, hyphen, en dash and em dash:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;: - hyphen&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;: – en dash&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;: — em dash &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term traditionally comes from the width of the capital letter M in cold metal type and is a consistent width to size of the font being used. eg in a 12 point font, the em dash width would be 12 points. An en dash is the width of a capital letter N, or approximately half that of the em dash. A hyphen is generally the width of a a numerical figure in most fonts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two hyphens &lt;strong&gt;do not&lt;/strong&gt; equal the width of an em dash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T15:53:46.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6741" CreationDate="2012-12-12T17:10:32.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'd like to add, you'd need to think and question why you would have a &lt;em&gt;Chapter Head&lt;/em&gt; and a &lt;em&gt;Section Head&lt;/em&gt; as the same name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normal practice would be to use chapter heads as a generic title as to what that particular chapter contains. Section heads would normally go into even more specific detail about the contents of the chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter Title - Actuator Design&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section Heading - Design Parameters, Design Specifications, Design limiting factors, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T17:10:32.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6738" CreationDate="2012-12-12T17:45:36.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'd make life so much easier for yourself if you simply put all your tables and figures in an annex at the back of the paper. Then simply reference the table or figure within the text with - see figure 1, Annex 1 see table 3, Annex 5 etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was the standard way of preparing these kinds of documents before modern computer page layout technology suddenly made everyone a graphic designer, copy writer, editor, proofreader typesetter and illustrator all in one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forget trying to be a fancy dancy graphic designer and concentrate on the &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt; of your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T17:45:36.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6783" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-12T19:32:58.940" Score="-3" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love to play chess. After studying the game, you really get familiar with each square. You kind of create a story for e4, for example. If I wanted to turn a game into a story, how would I make each square more concrete? What details could I give to turn it into an imaginary location? Once we have the details for each piece and square, maybe players could use a board as a wiki to reify many different positions into memorable stories. I feel that if we personified each piece in a position with real emotions, the memories would be more clear and permanent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So essentially, how would you go about creating an environment out of the squares on a chessboard? I'd like to turn the game into a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your creativity. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4462" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T15:33:35.173" Title="Turning Checkered Squares into Settings" Tags="|setting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-02-05T10:28:49.350" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5161" CreationDate="2012-12-12T20:10:37.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there are any hard and fast rules on how many chapters a book should or shouldn't have. If you feel the book you want to write naturally and logically falls into two chapters, go with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, and this seems to be a recurring theme on this particular Stack Exchange, you may want to approach this from a completely different direction. Have you thought about how your likely 'target market audience' may want to see the book structured for maximum and ease of information retrieval? Would they see a two chapter book as being a logical and natural way to read about your subject matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you have to look at things from an alternative perspective in order to work out the correct route forwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T20:10:37.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6445" CreationDate="2012-12-12T20:26:10.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to this depends almost entirely on what your terms of contract are with the person or company commissioning you to do the work. If your terms of contract are for work performed in normal working hours, ie 9 - 6pm Monday to Friday then any over work demanded outside those hours would attract a premium hourly rate. Particularly if the over work is not due to an error on your own making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rates you mention in your own answer are about industry standard. Time after normal working hours and Saturdays is time and a half, Sundays and Bank Holidays double time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T20:26:10.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3166" CreationDate="2012-12-12T21:28:22.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not &lt;em&gt;impossible&lt;/em&gt; it's just getting more and more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Competition mostly - there's too many others out there all wanting to do the same thing. Competition raises standards, creative writing quality improves and you're already competing in an over-saturated market. There's already a huge number of very high quality books in the market why would a publisher want to invest substantial sums of money into a unknown author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any new author a publisher would be interested in would need to put in an awful lot of time and effort in writing their first manuscript at a very high level. Not only that will need to have done extensive and authorative research into their chosen subject. Not many people have the time, effort, motivation or ability to be able to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For someone prepared to put that kind of work in and be prepared for an awful lot of rejection afterwards but is willing to doggedly persevere there's no reason why they wouldn't ultimately be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can now see what you're up against. The time input v return is going to be very much in the negative in the early days. But hope springs eternal – it's not impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T21:28:22.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6787" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6790" CreationDate="2012-12-12T22:37:57.503" Score="-4" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using a documentary as inspiration for a fiction story I am writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some elements of fiction are stated &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unm.edu/~hookster/Elements%20of%20Fiction.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/hhecht/the%20elements%20of%20fiction.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;, although there's all kinds of stuff like archetypes etc.. Some of the elements of documentaries are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dvworkshops.com/newsletters/fiveelements.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My few questiosn are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.I know their is no definate answer, but is thier an approach to finding the elements of a documentary that may be similiar to those elements that make up ficton and use them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.)Will the elements that make up fiction not be exactly the same as that in a documentary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.) Also, are the elements of documentaries ( given in the third link) not very useful as inspiration for a fiction story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4.) You can use the what elements of fiction are stated black and white, use those that are infered by what's given black and white, use a little of both or use some of both and make up the rest that is not clearly stated or inferable... My fourth question is, is what order you use have benefits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastEditorUserId="4231" LastEditDate="2012-12-13T23:58:44.027" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T23:58:44.027" Title="Using Documentary For Inspiration" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2012-12-16T03:22:02.613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1693" CreationDate="2012-12-13T00:25:49.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading a history book recently that demonstrated this very problem - it was littered with abbreviations that were only explained in the first instance they were used. I constantly had to keep going backwards and forwards through the book to remind myself what they were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author really should (in my opinion) have put a complete glossary of abbreviations in the back of the book for ease of reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a book uses a lot of unfamiliar abbreviations a glossary is the way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T00:25:49.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4983" CreationDate="2012-12-13T12:22:25.060" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a very good and interesting question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you appear to be approaching it from the viewpoint that literary agents are literally going to fall over themselves to represent the two authors in question. Unless they're both relatively well known and have a successful track record in the book publishing industry, in my experience this simply isn't going to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if they are, I believe the &lt;em&gt;best practice&lt;/em&gt; here is to approach the selection of a literary agent in the same way that you would approach one if you had never been published. That is, you draw up a shortlist of agents who either specialise in the particular book subject matter or are likely to be interested in selling and representing that kind of work. From there you can submit a manuscript to the shortlist of agents for consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct process for a single author selecting an agent is the same process for a collaborative effort. It's the book itself and the subject matter that's the key here rather than the authors themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T12:22:25.060" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6787" CreationDate="2012-12-13T12:33:38.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not believe that you need to &quot;incorporate the five elements I listed for documentaries&quot; into your fiction. If you try, then you will produce a documentary (or at least, fiction about producing a documentary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your first decision is to switch the genre, then you cannot retain the features characteristic of the form that you are trying to move away from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to do is to look beyond the five elements of documentary to see the situation that is being reported and then extract the elements of fiction from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, you can use the documentary form as a guide. Look at the subjects of the &quot;interviews&quot; and decide which of them will be your characters. Decide which juxtapositions of characters are set up by the use of &quot;cutaways&quot; and use one or more of them to identify your underlying conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T12:33:38.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6783" CreationDate="2012-12-13T12:40:00.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The strong appeal of the squares on the board as settings for a story lies (at least in part) in their spatial relationship with one another (within the game of chess). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although e4 and f4 appear to be contiguous, the knight cannot move directly from one to the other. Your story might be based upon the notion that not all locations are equally accessible to all characters and hence different actors will have very different options and vulnerabilities when they are in (apparently) the same location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T12:40:00.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6783" CreationDate="2012-12-13T15:33:35.173" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question was famously addressed by Lewis Carroll in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_the_Looking-Glass#Chess&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Through the Looking Glass&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0phoU.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glen Downey's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Truth_about_Pawn_Promotion.html?id=pdehSgAACAAJ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Truth About Pawn Promotion: The Development of the Chess Motif in Victorian Fiction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; explores the metaphor extensively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2992" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T15:33:35.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6795" CreationDate="2012-12-13T16:32:24.510" Score="8" ViewCount="1246" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have any tried and true techniques to make villains of your stories truly hated by the audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, frequently it's &quot;eh, sure, that's bad, he's got to be stopped&quot; but the audience would rather observe the villain more, learn, maybe try to get them to change their ways. Or worst of all, pity the villain in the end for failing to execute their just revenge, or not getting along with their plan for what would -really- be a better future, even if through baptism of fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what to do if you want the readers to wish the villain dead in worst way possible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course getting the villain to kill one of most liked characters may work wonders here. Except it will definitely alienate the audience, it's cheap and disliked. It's something that will make the readers hate the villain and hate the author for writing the story that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what to do to have the readers feel a warm fuzzy when the villain gets hurt? A good healthy dose of schadenfreude? A good dose of ire when the villain gets away with their shenanigans? Make them love to hate that character, feel the story was written just right, no cheap gimmicks, and the villain is still really worth all their hate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all without loss of the basics: keeping the character fully believable and with completely logical (or at least sufficiently emotional) motives driving them, at least moderately competent and sufficiently interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T16:07:01.930" Title="Non-cheap ways to make villains evil?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|tropes|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6793" CreationDate="2012-12-13T18:38:56.663" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love villains, so this is difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I love about them is their brazen disregard for convention—moral, ethical, political, etc. They represent a freedom that the hero doesn't have. The hero is constrained by some rule or code while the villain runs free. This freedom allows the villain to evolve in ways that inspire our imagination. We wonder, &lt;em&gt;how vile can he become&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this logic, I would hate a villain that didn't acknowledge his egregious position, his freedom. What I mean is, I would hate a villain that believed that he was more moral (I'm only using moral as an example) than the hero. If this hyper-moral villain became so constrained by his morality that his actions became formulaic, I would hate him. He would have lost the potential to surprise me, to horrify me; he would shackle my imagination. I would wait for his death as a relief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example that comes to mind is Blake in the John Cheever story &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copperbeechstudios.com/fdu-lit-nyc/texts/cheever_the_five_forty_eight.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Five-Forty-Eight&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. He has done something awful to someone and he is oblivious to it. He is confronted by the victim of his awful act, and he is remorseless, ignorant even, of his misdeeds. Because he does not embrace his awful deeds, he cannot step outside of conventional morality, run free, and scare me. He is simply fighting a moral battle that the reader believes he &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; lose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I think about it, O'brien in 1984 is a villain that I hate even more. He is claustrophobic, oppressive, and fearsome. He isn't imaginative at all. He is formulaic, and I can't help but hate the mental confinement. Hate becomes my only form of rebellion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the irony surrounding good villains is that I want them to meet their demise, but I don't want this to happen just after their villainy has been established. I want them to thrive and then fall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastEditorUserId="4390" LastEditDate="2012-12-13T21:20:29.340" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T21:20:29.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6793" CreationDate="2012-12-13T19:13:21.010" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A villain you want to take down is, at his/her core, someone who does not care about the suffering of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An evil wizard who wants to murder every witch or wizard who isn't a&#xA;&quot;pureblood,&quot; regardless of how skilled or what the person has done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A plutocrat who became rich by destroying businesses, and then dismisses people who don't pay income taxes as &quot;refusing&#xA;to take responsibility for their lives.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A religious fanatic who thinks that everyone not of his faith&#xA;deserves to die, and that he is fulfilling God's will by killing &quot;the&#xA;infidels.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A parent who thinks that his/her child is so tainted and corrupt by&#xA;being gay that the child should be shunned, disowned, and thrown out&#xA;of the house, never to return.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A bishop who moves a child-molesting priest to a new parish rather&#xA;than reporting the crime to the police, and then refuses the victim Communion when he speaks up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get the idea: someone without empathy. Someone who either does not see that other people (heroes, villains, NPCs) are also people with feelings, or simply does not care because the villain him/herself is convinced of his/her own absolute and utter superiority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T19:13:21.010" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6793" CreationDate="2012-12-13T23:52:41.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The villains I absolutely hate are selfish and self-serving, but they are also cowards. This may not be blatantly obvious when they have power to wield, because they hide behind it. If they stripped of it, however, they're reduced to a sniveling heap on the floor, begging the hero for clemency or mercy and betraying everyone and everything they can so they won't be hurt or killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For I think there's still a certain, reluctant admiration for villains who go down screaming their beliefs to the end. We may be totally against what they believe, and furious at their reluctance to see reason, but we still get that sense of loyalty - of their dedication to their cause, however abhorrent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's as opposed to someone who is truly out for themselves only, who commits atrocities out of self-interest. And when they are finally confronted, having exhausted their power to hurt/torture/kill the hero(es) and those around them, they immediately promise the hero(es) anything they want - including the fate of all who were loyal to the villain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T23:52:41.020" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6797" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6798" CreationDate="2012-12-14T01:43:59.923" Score="13" ViewCount="29887" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tried to find copyright information about music lyrics, but it is too confusing, because it is related to the usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of websites providing lyrics, but it seems they are somehow illegal (though no complaint against them). Most of them put copyright notice that the copyright holder is the owner, and some indicate that the lyrics have been contributed by users (probably claiming that they have not been copied from the commercial CD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the case of copyright for published materials like books is more serious. Consider a book about music, is it needed to obtain copyright permission for including a song lyric?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is popular to translate the lyrics of a song to another language, and the final book contains the original lyrics and its translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is copyright permission needed, or it is treated as referenced materials (no need for copyright permission as we are referring to/citing the original work). Moreover, the main part of a song is its music rather than lyrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2640" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T21:29:28.857" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T21:29:28.857" Title="Are music lyrics copyrighted?" Tags="|copyright|legal|translation|lyrics|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6797" CreationDate="2012-12-14T11:20:58.817" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I am not a lawyer, if you purchase a physical CD (bit of a rarity these days, I know) and look at the booklet which has the liner notes, you should see copyright notices for each song. If lyrics have been provided, the notice will be at the end of each set of lyrics. (KISS used to copyright theirs under an entity called &quot;Opporknockity Tunes,&quot; which always made me laugh.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, you would need permission to quote a song lyric in a book. Look at the frontspiece for Stephen King's novel &lt;i&gt;The Stand,&lt;/i&gt; and you'll see the copyright and permissions notes for all the songs he references. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as &quot;the main part of a song is its music rather than lyrics,&quot; I don't think that's true &amp;mdash; you can copyright an a cappella song, which uses no musical instruments beyond the human voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know about translations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, if you are referencing or using someone else's work in yours, and yours is for profit in any capacity, then you should make an effort to get permission first.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Websites just listing lyrics are more of a gray area, since the only &quot;profit&quot; is from the ads, but if the person on the page is using an ad blocker, then even that source of revenue is eliminated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-12-15T14:49:41.503" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T14:49:41.503" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6799" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6801" CreationDate="2012-12-14T16:28:35.110" Score="6" ViewCount="29138" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realized I start sentences with &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; all the time. So I'm starting to use verbs instead. Here is an example of something I wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Erin left out a sigh. &amp;quot;Why am I thinking so much about this?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She decided to forget about the thing, and go lie on bed instead. Talking to herself had really made her tired; a little bit more&#xA;and she would go crazy. She reached to her desk and grabbed her phone.&#xA;Hearing Benjamin's voice would probably snap her back to reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember having read about this long ago (but I don't remember if the author considered it good or bad writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2021-02-15T10:28:30.320" Title="Is it a bad writing practice to start sentences with a verb?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6799" CreationDate="2012-12-14T18:38:55.563" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sentences should start with anything that makes grammatical and syntactical sense. Writers create, so create your own rules. As long as they make sense, your reader will understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your example is actually a gerund, which does act as a noun, but consider these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;To be or not to be?&quot;  (Starts with a preposition.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Brilliantly, he began his sentence with a verb.&quot; (Starts with an&#xA;adverb.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Skilled and astute, he quickly posted his question on Stack&#xA;Exchange.&quot; (Starts with an adjective.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;And even some sentences can start with conjunctions.&quot; (Starts with&#xA;... a conjunction.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that all of these are correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4469" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T18:38:55.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6797" CreationDate="2012-12-14T18:52:24.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes you require permission from the copyright holder of the lyrics in question to reproduce them in a book. It is not treated as referenced materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you intend to profit from the book or wherever you intend to reproduce the lyrics is entirely irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The copyright holder holds the rights to those lyrics and he/she/they can stop you from reproducing them without his/her/their permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the lyrics are demonstrably in the &lt;em&gt;public domain&lt;/em&gt; you can reproduce them without permission, but not copyrighted ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T18:52:24.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6799" CreationDate="2012-12-14T20:32:01.020" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;None of your sentences start with verbs, though two of them start with &lt;em&gt;gerunds&lt;/em&gt;, which is not quite the same thing. In any case, I think that you are fretting about nothing. If your sentences sound fine to you as an English speaker and they avoid the monotony that you were noticing before, then by all means write them however you want. I can't think of many things less useful for a writer than worrying about imaginary rules like &quot;don't start with a verb&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T20:32:01.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6797" CreationDate="2012-12-14T22:30:28.720" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. The lyrics are covered by copyright and you need permission to reproduce them. I think at least some of the &quot;lyrics search engines&quot; on the web pay their dues to the copyright holders (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrics&quot;&gt;Wikipedia says&lt;/a&gt;: Lyrics licenses could be obtained in North America through one of the two aggregators; Gracenote Inc. and LyricFind.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translations are also covered by copyright. If you are the one translating, yours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth remembering that copyright exists even if you don't register it with the Copyright Office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4470" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T22:30:28.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6799" CreationDate="2012-12-14T23:00:29.103" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are struggling with variety in your sentence structure, I think you should make it a &lt;em&gt;writing exercise&lt;/em&gt; to begin sentences with verbs. Then do an exercise where you begin sentences with adjectives. Then do an exercise where you begin sentences with words that rhyme with &lt;em&gt;blue&lt;/em&gt;. Any and all techniques that force you out of your comfort zone and get you to practice new forms of writing are good. Ultimately, you should seek variety in your writing, but this is not something you just do. As you have found, once you get used to a certain organizational structure, you start thinking that way. Other sentence constructions have to become comfortable to you before you can start implementing them effectively. So, while the simple advice is to just unfetter yourself, the hard truth is that it's going to seem like you're writing gibberish until new writing constructions feel natural.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T23:00:29.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6806" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-15T04:01:57.380" Score="1" ViewCount="352" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a verb that means &quot;making something looks very simple by ignoring its complexity or details&quot;. Here is the text that I'm composing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Reducing&quot; complicated social problems to bad influence of media on “disturbed kids” is basically ignoring the main roots of the problem and putting the fault on the media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consider verbs like Degrade, Reduce, Decrease but none of them are enough accurate. Do you have any suggestion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3309" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T11:35:34.233" Title="Looking for a verb that means &quot;making something looks very simple by ignoring its complexity or details&quot;" Tags="|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-09-27T12:01:24.063" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6797" CreationDate="2012-12-15T04:12:20.570" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, they are copyrighted. BUT, if you aren't quoting them in their entirety you don't necessarily need to obtain copyright permissions if your use is a fair one according to the rules of Fair Use. This includes uses for profit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See my answer on this question for a breakdown of how to determine if your use is fair: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6756/can-you-reprint-screen-shots-of-a-game-application-or-program-without-permission/6762#6762&quot;&gt;Can you reprint screen shots of a game application or program without permission?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An original translation is a difficult area. If you translated it, you would be fine using that translation. But using the entire original lyric alongside it would be less likely to be considered fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as my note in the above link indicates: you should see how your publisher handles it. Many will attempt to get permissions even when they don't really need to (such as in the Stephen King example cited in an answer here, assuming it was a part of the song's lyric rather than the whole thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only &quot;problem&quot; with simply always asking permission is that a copyright holder can say no even if your right is fair. You are not then required to abide by their decision, if you think your use is fair, but it makes things needlessly more difficult. There's a poet whose son says no to EVERY proposed use even, in his words, a single word from any of his father's poems. This is an extreme example, but it's not uncommon at all to ask and be refused or asked to provide compensation that you don't actually have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T04:12:20.570" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6806" CreationDate="2012-12-15T07:51:47.377" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are talking about &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/oversimplify?s=t&quot;&gt;oversimplification&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/misrepresentation&quot;&gt;misrepresentation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. I think &lt;em&gt;oversimplification&lt;/em&gt; is probably the best choice to replace &lt;em&gt;reduce&lt;/em&gt;, but you would have to alter the construction of the sentence slightly to make it work. For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oversimplifying social problems by attributing them to bad media influence on &lt;em&gt;disturbed kids&lt;/em&gt; is basically ignoring the main root of the problem and putting the fault on the media.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, to use the active voice,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Attributing social problems to bad media influence on &lt;em&gt;disturbed kids&lt;/em&gt; oversimplifies the problem, ignores the root cause, and puts the fault on the media.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T07:51:47.377" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2012-12-16T07:53:07.903" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point is moot.  You will get to however many pages you want in the right amount of time for your story.  Here's how:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write your story from the beginning to the end.  Whatever you have of the story, write that down.  It will start with ideas or scenes or characters, but just keep adding to it until there's the story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Think about what you've written, and leave it alone for a day.  Don't write down any ideas for changes, fixes, whatever.  If the idea is good, it will come to you when needed.  Take this time to put what you have into some sort of organization, like a timeline. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After a full day, get in that story's bidness like just got off parole.  Have at the thing.  Don't worry about dumping scenes or characters.  If they are really important, they'll come back.  Even if you'd kept them you would have re-written them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go to step 2.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll get the beginning, climax, ending, and conflict, and tensioners at different times, but you'll only have multiple conflicts (subplots) or multiple tensioners.  When you feel like the story is all there, check the word count.  You'll be over or under, but not by much.  And editing that first draft will give or take 20% anyway.  So ignore the number and JUST KEEP WRITING THE STORY.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4477" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T07:53:07.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6819" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-17T07:54:32.993" Score="4" ViewCount="252" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just completed my first draft of a novel. Now the story is completed it's time to capture the style so the reader can engage in the story. I want to make sure the story style is easy enough for the reader to read. I have added my first couple of pages below for some critique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the first couple of pages grab your attention? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the writing style easy enough to read?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would you do to improve the writing style? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She has the Sight &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chapter 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Marston Children’s home is where fate brought the three of us in 2011. Stuck rite in the&#xA;  heart of Glasgow, the rundown building is an orphanage to many children that have been&#xA;  abandoned, abused and left by their families to shrivel away into nothing. Most people&#xA;  who come here are doomed before their feet even get through the door. Kid’s either take &#xA;  their own lives, turn to drugs, prostitution or serve a life behind bars. Destiny to most &#xA;  here is to get knocked up, junked up or locked up. Self destruction, demolition, &#xA;  devastation becomes worse here when too many kids are put together with similar family &#xA;  traits. A bad start in childhood leads onto being negative, depressive and suicidal in &#xA;  real life situations. Problems normally start to arise in teenage years and just &#xA;  deteriorate from there. Life isn’t to chase your dreams here it is to break the law and &#xA;  chase the dragon. This is how the neglected of the lower class escape everyday &#xA;  situations. This is the life they are dragged into by their abusers and society. The only &#xA;  life they know. This was the life and doom that was expected for me Danika Nebulae and &#xA;  most of my friends. An existence I never wanted but an existence I only knew of, a way of &#xA;  life that only I could change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was becoming an age where I had to go and fend for myself; in fact I had been &#xA;  fending for myself for as long as I can remember. My mother spent most of my young adult &#xA;  life in Garvlock Mental institution. The only information I had about my father was his &#xA;  name Felix Nebulae and that I had the same Aqua blue eyes. The rest of the family didn’t &#xA;  care much for me. They saw me more of a hindrance due to me being in and out of trouble &#xA;  with school and the law. I was 17 time was approaching for me to no longer be under the &#xA;  supervision of the childcare system. At the age of 18 I was expected to go and find my &#xA;  own way in life. This was the time for me to decide if I was going down the black path &#xA;  of doom that so many followed or was I going to head into the light, glowing, blistering &#xA;  white path that nobody that I ever heard of had even stepped in the direction off. &#xA;  The only beliefs I use to have were karma, what goes around comes around.  I was &#xA;   christened a catholic, and that was the only ties I had to any church. If you treat me &#xA;  with respect I will treat you with respect. I wasn’t brought up to believe in god I was &#xA;  brought up to survive. As a young adult I don't follow authority and I don't let anyone &#xA;  take advantage of me. That’s the way I use to think until the visions started. Now I feel &#xA;  like there is something else out there. Something that wants me to open my eyes, life was &#xA;  about to change, I could feel it. Although my upbringing wasn’t the best I felt &#xA;  protected, protected by something that I didn’t know. I didn’t believe in God or the &#xA;  Devil, I believed in good and evil and there was a choice in this life to do well or do &#xA;  bad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was a limbo state of mind of how we got here and why we were here. What I did know was &#xA;  the visions were sometimes events that would happen days later. The first time I realised &#xA;  this was more than a dream was when I seen my mum lying in bed with pills lying around &#xA;  her, I knew something was going to happen to her. One week later she over dosed and then &#xA;  got submitted to the nut house. What haunts me is I don’t know if I can change destiny or &#xA;  is fate just meant to happen. I don’t know why or how the visions have started or what &#xA;  they’re trying to tell me. What I do know is: they are a small part of a puzzle that I’ve &#xA;  yet to figure out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4478" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T09:38:54.023" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T10:57:46.657" Title="Looking for some tips on how to improve writing" Tags="|style|fiction|editing|plot|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-12-18T16:42:48.700" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6819" CreationDate="2012-12-17T10:01:54.087" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid this is all too telly. It's more like a news paper article than a story, you're just dumping all the information in one big info dump. This is lazy writing. Instead of stating that &quot;Kid’s either take their own lives, turn to drugs, prostitution or serve a life behind bars&quot; you need to show it through action, dialogue, plot... Show us a day in their lives, paint it to us, &lt;strong&gt;show&lt;/strong&gt; us their misery and let us come to that conclusion ourselves through the action you show. Don't just tell us it is so and expect us to take your word for it. Readers in general don't like to be served things, they want to get to some conclusions on their own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The first time I realized this was more than a dream was when I seen my mum lying in bed with pills lying around her, I knew something was going to happen to her.&quot; Don't tell us it happened, &lt;strong&gt;show&lt;/strong&gt; us it happened. Show us how it happened, where it happened, how the character felt when it happened. Intrigue us, pull us into the story, don't just dump facts at us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer each individual question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sorry, but it doesn't grab me. It's an info dump, I have no feel for the character nor the story. &quot;If you treat me with respect I will treat you with respect&quot; does not give me the feel for the character. For all I know, he could be lying.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The writing style is easy enough to read, and on that I have no remarks. I prefer clarity over all, and the text is very clear, so that's a yes from me :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show, don't tell :) Make it a story, not a news paper article or a manifest. You do have a promising story here, you just need to present it better. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastEditorUserId="4264" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T10:57:46.657" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T10:57:46.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6821" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-17T12:15:30.750" Score="3" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I secured a job with big MNC. Now, I want to concentrate on it and appoint 2-3 editors to look after mildly popular tech blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you guys suggest where should I search or post to hire part-time/full-time editors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4482" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T07:35:31.840" Title="Where to find editors to hire for tech blog?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6806" CreationDate="2012-12-17T19:10:14.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one except an optometrist would get this, but &quot;hyperopic&quot; would be a great adjective to use for this meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know you want a verb, so what about &quot;overdistilling&quot; or &quot;hyperdistilling&quot;? I lean toward the latter -- it has a hyperbolic feel to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4469" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T19:10:14.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1364" CreationDate="2012-12-18T01:22:11.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you go through the twelve slush books which Christopher Tolkien assembled from his father's writings (collectively called The History of Middle-Earth), you can see practically line-for-line how JRRTolkien created, edited, and shaped the LOTR trilogy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple drafts, stories which hopscotch from version A to C and back to B ending up in version D which was typeset as E but then finished by his secretary as C-Prime plus F... At any rate, I can hardly think of a larger example of vivisected prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T01:22:11.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6824" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-18T03:57:06.650" Score="8" ViewCount="11520" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is known that the copyright permission is not needed for old books (usually 70 years after the author's death), because the copyright has been expired. However, I am not sure how easy a public domain book can be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider re-publishing a book by Shakespeare. Since it is in public domain, this means that any publisher can re-publish it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if not, who is responsible for any hidden copyright?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to check that we can publish a title legally? and how to be sure that there is no copyright restriction for publishing it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For recent books, we need to ask the original publisher or the author; but for the case of Shakespeare's works, many publishers have re-published it. It is the case for most of old books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2640" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T19:37:13.123" Title="How to publish public domain books?" Tags="|publishing|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6824" CreationDate="2012-12-18T05:07:27.130" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The public domain is the public domain...there is no &quot;hidden copyright&quot; if the text &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; actually in the public domain. So, yes, anyone can republish Shakespeare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, though, that with something like Shakespeare you have to be careful to use a text that is actually in the public domain; in particular, you can't use notes and commentary that are not old enough (and usually the aren't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, translations are considered original work, so you cant use a translation unless &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt; is no longer covered by copyright (which is why you see so many publications of Dryden's translation of Dante, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as determining whether something is still under copyright, it is somewhat complicated (the &quot;death + 70&quot; rule is just one of many and is only applicable in some cases). A copyright flowchart such as this one: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jonathanlaphillipslaw.com/blawg/copyright-expiration-flowchart/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jonathanlaphillipslaw.com/blawg/copyright-expiration-flowchart/&lt;/a&gt; can be of help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T05:07:27.130" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6824" CreationDate="2012-12-18T15:00:02.450" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the first things you can do is to check with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/records/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Copyright Service&lt;/a&gt; and use their searchable database. In a lot of cases, the copyright may have been passed on to someone else as part of an inheritance, or it may have been sold to someone else. Using this database to search is a good first step. Keep in mind that the original author may not be the person who renewed the copyright. It may have been renewed by an heir, an estate, or a publisher, depending on whether or not the rights were transferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else you may need to be cautious about is whether or not something was later included in a collection of works which might have its own copyright. This is especially true with things like short stories, poems, cookbooks, and other smaller works. While the author or heirs may not have renewed the copyright on the individual work, they might have a copyright on that smaller work as part of a larger collection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, if you published a short story as a chapbook in 1970, it would be subject to copyright for 28 years, until 1998. However, if you took that same story and included it in a short story collection with some of your other stories in 1976, then the copyright for all stories within that collection would last until 2004. Even worse, if the short story collection was published in 1978 (which is when copyright laws changed), then each story would be protected until 70 years after the death of the author(s). (I actually experienced a situation like this with a story in which I was considering writing a derivation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to keep in mind how you are going to go about publishing. If you are planning to use something like Kindle Direct Publishing to self-publish as an e-book, then you need to be aware of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2OHLJURFVK57Q&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;limitations imposed by Amazon&lt;/a&gt;. Other e-book publishers have specific guidelines for public domain books as well, and some are even stricter. The most basic guidlines for Kindle are that the new work has to be differentiated in one of the following ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• (Translated) - A unique translation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• (Annotated) - Contains annotations (unique, hand-crafted additional&#xA;content including study guides, literary critiques, detailed&#xA;biographies, or detailed historical context)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• (Illustrated) - Includes 10 or more unique illustrations relevant to&#xA;the book&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books that meet this criteria must include (Translated),&#xA;(Annotated), or (Illustrated) in the title field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else to keep in mind is that certain characters are protected either by Trademark or other legal means. As an example, even though the original Sherlock Holmes stories are now considered to be in the public domain, the rights to the use of the character are still protected by the author's estate and cannot be used without their permission. This is true for countless other major literary characters as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T19:37:13.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6793" CreationDate="2012-12-18T16:07:01.930" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the flip side, let me comment that one thing I really dislike in many works of fiction is when we are told that someone is a villian, but he never actually does anything evil. To take a well-known book as an example: Consider &quot;The Picture of Dorian Gray&quot;. The whole point of the book is that Dorian Gray is a horribly evil person who nevertheless does not suffer for his crimes. And yet ... what does he actually do that is evil? He's rude to his girlfriend. That's about it. The fact that his rudeness leads her to commit suicide left me thinking more that she was mentally unstable than that he was to blame for her death. I've seen lots of movies where at some point I find myself saying, Wait, what did this guy do that justifies the hero destroying him like this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T16:07:01.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2012-12-18T16:49:40.920" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another important aspect is to make sure that your chapters are of relatively the same length. Just a tip, but it sucks when you have a chapter like 30 pages long, then another like 60 pages long. &quot;If your chapters are inconsistent, your readers gunna have a bad time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T16:49:40.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6799" CreationDate="2012-12-18T19:23:43.720" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Begin a sentence with a verb sometimes. See, I just did. Twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have noted, you're apparently confusing gerunds with verbs in your example. But that said, gerunds are perfectly good words and can be used to vary your sentence structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know where you were told that a sentence can never begin with a verb. Imperative sentences (i.e. commands) routinely start with verbs: &quot;Go to the store.&quot; &quot;Bring me the book.&quot; Etc. It's relatively rare otherwise in English, as the conventional structure is subject-verb-object, but it's not unheard of. &quot;Thinking quickly, Bob leaped for the door.&quot; &quot;'Leaving so soon?' Sally asked.&quot; Sometimes it's effective to use a non-standard word order for emphasis or to save an unexpected word for last. &quot;Left in the middle of the night, he did.&quot; &quot;Kill me they might, but they will never defeat me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that you are in a rut and all your sentences follow the same pattern, then, as Tylerharms says, I would definitely make an effort to consciously break the pattern. (Now that you mention this, I have to look at my own writing and see if I've fallen into this!) Of course one should avoid the opposite extreme, of trying so hard to vary your sentence constructions that you over-use odd phrasings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T19:23:43.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1693" CreationDate="2012-12-18T19:40:47.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you use a lot of abbreviations that may not be familiar to the reader, then readers may find they have to continually refer back to see what they mean. But if you don't use abbreviations, the text can get tedious and very repetitive-sounding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like -- let me see if I can make up a couple of sentences to illustrate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Warp Drive Autonomous Decontamination Peripheral (WDADP) can prevent your ship's engines from failing. A WDADP keeps foreign particles out of the engine. Most WDADPs are made from titanium alloys. Be sure to check your WDADP monthly. A well-maintained WDADP ... etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try re-writing that paragraph, but spelling out WDADP. It becomes terribly wordy and awkward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, every now and then I come across a sentence that's practically one long stream of abbreviations. &quot;FTP your ASPX files to the IIS server before starting the CRON task on the LINUX box&quot; and the like can be very intimidating to someone who doesn't use these abbreviations every day. (Every now and then I read a sentence filled with such abbreviations and get a chuckle from the fact that I understood it completely despite its obscurity.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, when I have a long technical term that is used repeatedly in a document, I'll abbreviate it with an explanation on first use. If I expect an abberviation to be very familiar to my target audience, I'll use it without hesitation and often without explanation. But if something is likely to be unfamiliar and only turns up a couple of times, I spell it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T19:40:47.657" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5161" CreationDate="2012-12-18T19:45:23.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say any number of chapters more than one is &quot;legal&quot;, but two is an awfully small number. If I was in this situation, my inclination would be to break the book into &quot;Part 1&quot; and &quot;Part 2&quot; and then divide each of these parts into multiple chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T19:45:23.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6769" CreationDate="2012-12-18T19:52:00.763" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can set a page size in Word. Don't use 8.5 x 11, use whatever the real, final page size will be. Also set the correct margins. If you're self-publishing and producing your own master, you can produce the PDF or whatever format directly from this and you'll know exactly what will be on every page. But even in general, it will at least give you a rough idea of how much fits on each page and how many pages the final book will be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did my second book with the intended final page size and margins in Word and I found that helpful to give me a feel for how long chapters would look, as well as to help me keep toward my targetted total length. In my case I figured that 250-300 pages was a good length for that particular book and I had it divided into five sections so I wanted at least roughly 50 pages each. So as I was working I had a feel for whether I was beeing too wordy or not wordy enough, whether I needed more material or had to trim, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T19:52:00.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2012-12-18T20:41:50.723" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/2012/12/09/writing-excuses-7-50-outlining-the-mary-way/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing Excuses podcast&lt;/a&gt;, Mary Robinette Kowal suggests that chapters are about pacing.  This resonated with me (and with Howard Tayler, as you'll hear in the podcast).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I think about pacing, I think about answering the reader's questions and provoking new questions.  There are various levels of story question (beat, scene, chapter) depending on the significance of the question to the overall story goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a good place to end a chapter is with an event that creates a significant shift in the reader's questions.  This doesn't mean cliffhangers, necessarily, but &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; significant shift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some ways to shift the reader's questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Raise a new question.&lt;/em&gt;  Introduce a new puzzle or mystery.  Introduce a new character with conflicting goals.  Create a conflict with an ally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Answer a question in a way that raises a new question.&lt;/em&gt;  Reveal information.  Show that the problem is more complex that was apparent.  Eliminate, undermine, or thwart the MC's most promising option.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Increase the significance of a question that's already on the reader's mind.&lt;/em&gt;  Raise the stakes.  Shorten the deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T20:41:50.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6834" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6837" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:11:05.370" Score="17" ViewCount="29698" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a few short stories going, and I've foregone naming any of my characters. It started because I just didn't have any good names in my head and I was going to take care of it later, but now I'm considering leaving them all nameless. It's worked well for the first four stories, but I have between ten and twelve stories in mind for this collection, and I am wondering if I should just continue without naming anyone. Most of my stories have between two and four characters, and so far I've been able to get away with referring to them by one or two traits. For instance,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The man in the pink shirt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The woman in the Claims Department&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The second boyfriend&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that these names are kind of generic, but it works. So far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if anyone has any feedback about the relative merits of an entire collection of stories (or at least about 10) without named characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastActivityDate="2020-12-04T00:00:17.577" Title="Characters with no names" Tags="|fiction|naming|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6834" CreationDate="2012-12-18T23:56:11.937" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found that when I was reading a collection of Grimm's fairytales &amp;mdash; just translated, not the bowdlerized Disney versions &amp;mdash; a whole bunch of them have nameless characters. The King, The Queen, The Prince; the baker's daughter, the tailor's apprentice. Puss in Boots is the only character with a name in his story; the rest are the miller's son, the king, his daughter, and the ogre. (The Marquis is a title which Puss invents.) And all those have lasted for hundreds of years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the reader can keep the characters straight, I say go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA I forgot that Larry Niven's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kzin#Naming_convention&quot;&gt;Kzin&lt;/a&gt; race don't have names at birth; they have to earn them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T11:08:41.367" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T11:08:41.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2012-12-19T02:03:37.220" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this question asked so many times, and never thought it really matters, a chapter is as long as it needs to be to contain what's in it. Then I read &quot;Name of the Wind&quot; by Patrick Rothfuss. The book has ridiculously short chapters. Not all of them are short, though, some have about ten to twenty pages, but some are just half a page long. While I was surprised with the ultra short chapters, I was even more surprised by the way they impacted my reading. Since they weren't long, I always wanted to read just one more. It's 3 am, and I should go to bed, but the next chapter is so small that I might just stay up for one minute longer and read it. Then just one more after that one. And just one more after that one. Really got me to appreciate small chapters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T02:03:37.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6834" CreationDate="2012-12-19T05:08:51.343" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without having read your stories, it's hard to say. There are lots of things one could do in a story that if done well can be clever, innovative, and effective, but if done poorly can come across as a gimmick, lame, and tiresome. In general I'd avoid doing something unusual just for the sake of doing something unusual. But as I say, if you do it well, it can be way cool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you want to not give the characters names? If you have a specific purpose, like you want to give the idea that the people around them don't know or care who they are, or you want to emphaisze their role over their personal identity, etc, this could be effective. If you're avoiding names to avoid preconceptions that a name might give, like you want to avoid giving the character a national identity or be vague about whether this person is male or female, maybe. But if you're just doing it because you think it's a clever gimmick, I think that would be hard to pull off for ten stories without it just becoming annoying to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a character has a title or maybe some other handy &quot;identification tag&quot;, this would be little different from a name in practice. I mean like, if you call a character &quot;the mayor&quot;, &quot;the sergeant&quot;, &quot;the prisoner&quot;, etc., the reader might not even notice that you never give the character a name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could always use descriptive terms like those you mention, but I would think this could quickly sound like an affectation or a gimmick. If a character only appears briefly and is thus only referred to two or three times, this might again pass pretty much unnoticed. This is especially true if the character would be largely anonymous. Like, I know you said none of the characters in these stories have names, but if you had two or three main characters with names, and then you mention they go to a store and &quot;the clerk&quot; did this or that and then &quot;the manager&quot; said this, readers would probably take this as routine: we usually don't know or care about the names of store personnel, so calling a store clerk by name might be odder than just calling him &quot;the clerk&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A long description could get tedious. If you call a character &quot;the tall bearded man with the snakeskin boots&quot;, using that phrase over and over could be tiresome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be careful about having different descriptions of the same person. If here you call him &quot;the accountant&quot; and there you call him &quot;the tall man&quot;, the reader may have trouble grasping that this is the same person. I recall a book I read recently where there was a character who was routinely called by name, but every now and then -- like once a chapter -- the author would suddenly refer to him as &quot;the redhead&quot;. The first time he did this I was totally confused, as he had never before mentioned the color of the character's hair. I had to re-read a couple of paragraphs to figure out who he was talking about. Then when he did it again some time later, I knew who he was talking about, but it was distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself giving convoluted descriptions, like, &quot;And then the second man -- not the man who had arrived in the bus that is, the other man -- said ...&quot;, I think you definitely need to back up and rethink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T05:08:51.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6702" CreationDate="2012-12-19T05:24:52.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perfection is a very difficult standard to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the more practical standards are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At what point does the number of errors in the text become distracting to the reader? Ten typos or grammar errors in a 66,000 word novel doesn't sound to me like something that would be really annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is typical in the industry? What's the average number of errors per 1000 words or whatever in the average published book? Does anybody have any statistics on this?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that if a proofreader misses an error, it's likely that many readers will not notice it either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T05:24:52.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="845" CreationDate="2012-12-19T06:15:23.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see this question is over 2 years old so you've probably already made a decision and gone one way or the other, but for the benefit of others who come along:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three issues to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Getting your book physically printed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Getting your book listed in on-line sellers, like Amazon and Barnes &amp;amp; Noble's website.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Marketing your book.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Getting your book stocked in bookstores or department stores with a book section.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to #1 and #2, this is easy these days. There are several companies out there, like CreateSpace, Lulu, and Lightning Source, that will print your book with a trivial upfront investment. I forget the exact numbers and I'm sure they change but they're like $50 or so depending on which company and which plan you choose. They will then get you on Amazon and other on-line sellers with little effort and little or no expense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But these places don't do any useful marketing. Some will do marketing for extra fees, but in my humble opinion the marketing options they offer aren't very useful. It's up to you to do any marketing on your own. You can create a web site, take out ads in magazines, get a booth at conventions, go door-to-door, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting a self-published book into bookstores -- assuming you're not already a well-known author -- is extremely difficult. I've been on forums where self-published authors talk about the efforts they've gone to to get in bookstores, and there's lot of talk about how much work they did and how many contacts they made and how many encouraging conversations they had, but very few actually got their books on shelves. Most of those who did were people who got a specialty store to carry their book rather than a bookstore, like somebody who wrote a book on collecting antiques got it an antique shop. Frankly, unless you have reason to believe you have a special in, like your brother-in-law owns the bookstore, I wouldn't waste my time. Concentrate on other avenues. If you get to the point where readers recognize your name, then work on the bookstores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T06:15:23.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6834" CreationDate="2012-12-19T10:19:16.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It adds a little difficulty to reading and thus a little chance to screwing up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, especially in first-person stories it's a very common and quite nice literary tool to leave the protagonist both nameless and devoid of most physical traits that are not essential to the plot. This makes immersion easier: every reader can imagine themselves in place of the protagonist and fit in just fine. (and it's easier with 1st person perspective, &quot;I&quot; in narration is unambiguous.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, make sure to give your characters easy to remember (and distinct! Avoid names with identical two first letters on &lt;em&gt;somewhat&lt;/em&gt; similar characters!) whenever lack of names is confusing. If seven people in a room discuss, you'll have a hard time making the scene not suck without using at least a few names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too many names are bad. If a name appears once or twice per whole story it's poor style - it's much better to give the character some very memorable traits (not pink shirt, but rather a glass eye and chipped front tooth), if they are to reappear seven chapters apart, when the reader would long forget the name (and even more so the pink shirt). Do NOT depend on the reader remembering given name. If a character who is not very memorable returns, give a brief synopsis on when they were seen last, a reminder of where they are recurring from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Episodic characters may be quite featureless and very generic - if you take time to give a precise description, you focus the reader's attention, they will try to remember the character, and will be pissed at you for wasted effort if the character never reappears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the merits are either easier immersion in case of 1st person protagonist, or leaving the characters more impersonal, more distant and harder to relate with (e.g. in Grimm tales). Still, the  &quot;nameless character&quot; is correctly executed if the reader asked about the character's name after reading the whole story goes &quot;It's... oh wait, it wasn't mentioned even once, was it?&quot; Essentially, if the lack of name becomes too apparent, you're doing it wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T10:19:16.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1693" CreationDate="2012-12-19T10:32:27.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stanislaw Lem had a very nice method for that. Read his &quot;Observation on the Spot&quot; for it, although I'm not sure if translation captures the spirit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, the acronyms compose into meaningful, half-meaningful, humorous, horribly misspelled, rudely suggestive and otherwise very memorable words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So when we're dealing with SuperChronistic Mechanics (SuC-Me) we have to take a wholly different approach than before in the case of Temporally InterTransmissive Area Oligarchs (TIT/AreOli). Those in favour of SuC-Me in fact frequently disagree with the conclusions reached by applying TIT mechanisms to the same data set...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T10:32:27.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6843" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-19T12:02:32.527" Score="-1" ViewCount="280" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having a hard time formulating a sentence with the following meaning&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please note that not all eBooks support all the different platforms&#xA;  and devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the sentence conveys the idea (please mention if it's ambiguous); however, I feel it's unnatural and unprofessional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for suggestions to re-word and improve it. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2137" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T14:29:22.133" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T06:03:56.427" Title="Please help me re-word this sentence" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-12-26T07:55:28.983" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6843" CreationDate="2012-12-19T12:35:34.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please note that some eBooks may be unavailable in formats required by certain eBook readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First off, the relation is in opposite direction. Device supports media, not the opposite.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's about formats, not the content so, eBook formats.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A device supports a number of formats, requires any single of them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an &lt;em&gt;eBook reader&lt;/em&gt; covers both devices and programs; mostly all platforms support all formats, providing they can run a program that can read them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;not all...all&lt;/em&gt; is less than optimal style. I think &quot;some, certain&quot;, &quot;unavailable&quot; is a better word choice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm still not sure about &quot;certain&quot;, you may prefer something like &quot;selected&quot;, &quot;chosen&quot; or such.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T12:35:34.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6843" CreationDate="2012-12-19T13:46:57.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each type of eBook reader has different requirements. Not every title will be available for use on a particular reader.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T13:46:57.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6843" CreationDate="2012-12-19T15:07:48.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;how about -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not all eBooks will be compatible with all operating systems and eReaders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T15:07:48.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6670" CreationDate="2012-12-19T15:47:28.347" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree: it's a tricky problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some additional thoughts that I have beyond what others have said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can simply say that the character accomplished something without giving all the details of how he did it. Like, it's easy to write, &quot;He invented a time machine.&quot; How, exactly, does one go about building a time machine? I have no idea. Or he could say, &quot;I noticed that the shirt he was wearing had a type of stitching used only in Philadelphia in 1993 and 1994, and so ...&quot; Just what about it makes it possible to tell that? I have no idea.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The character can know something he needs to know right now, out of all the possible things that one might know. While in real life to know that one particular fact would require a vast knowledge, you can pick the one particular case. Okay, that may not be very clear. What I mean is, say, a character could see a scrap of paper with one word on it and say, &quot;Hmm, 'paradicsom', of course that's the Hungarian word for tomato ...&quot; I know that because I just picked a random word and a random language and looked it up. But for a character to recognize an obscure foreign off the top of his head would require that he be a master of many languages. (Unless we suppose that he was just lucky and stumbled on one of the few dozen foreign words he happens to know.) The same could be done with scientific or historical facts. (Actually probably better with scientific  facts, that might be harder even in these Internet days to look up if you don't already know the answer.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can have the character figure out the solution to a problem from sketchy information. In real life there might be many answers that would fit the available data, but the character manages to pick the right one. Think of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Like, in one of the stories Holmes tells Watson that he sees he has been out in wet weather and that he has a clumsy servant. Of course Watson is amazed and asks how he could know this since he is now wearing dry clothes and Holmes has never met his servant. Holmes tells him that he deduced this because Watson has some scratch marks on the heels of his shoes where someone had carelessly damaged them while scraping off mud. But how does Holmes know that a servant did it, rather than Watson himself, or his wife perhaps? How does he know that Watson was out in the rain and not that Watson was walking near a pond on a sunny day? Or that the thing scraped off was mud and not that Watson accidentally stepped in horse droppings? Or hundreds of other possible scenarios? But of course, in the stories Holmes astounding conclusions from meager evidence are always right.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As others have intimated, in a story you can fit the world to the character's plan rather than the other way around. In real life, a great plan can be ruined by inconvenient side difficulties. Like, &quot;Then we'll swim across the river and escape on the other side.&quot; &quot;But, you can't swim straight across the river, the current's too strong. You'd end up at least a hundred feet downstream, where the banks are far too steep to just climb out.&quot; &quot;Oh. I hadn't thought of that.&quot; In a story you can make sure that the only difficulties that arise are ones that you can think of solutions for.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One important thing is to make sure that all your contrived solutions don't look contrived to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T15:47:28.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6848" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6892" CreationDate="2012-12-19T16:16:16.197" Score="9" ViewCount="1019" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally, I specialize in strong, determined, uncompromising, extroverted protagonists, &quot;If the laws of physics are against us, too bad, they need to be changed.&quot; I'm pretty good in getting them right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this time I tried at someone opposite: a character who is introverted, shy, uncertain, afraid, lost and confused. Unable to fit in, afraid to experiment and try to accept the overwhelming world, a recluse, outcast, working a disrespectful, dead-end job, and not daring to speak up against abusers. Meanwhile, a very nice and smart person, though rarely given any opportunity to shine, and the few times when he tries to take initiative, it backfires badly, discouraging him even further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've managed to get the primary, larger scale elements sketched: the abuse, finding him in a scapegoat position, underlining his avoidance of spotlight positions, reluctance towards taking any initiative. Still, the closer image is lacking badly and I really don't know how to proceed. The image I have drawn so far could be misinterpreted as someone who is thick-skinned, naturally passive (lazy), dull in their unwillingness to act, emotionless, or just hard to understand and alien. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stranger is in fact very emotive, terribly afraid, suffering from solitude badly, often powerlessly angry, and suffering from terrible self-esteem. Thing is, he hides his emotions, keeps them in not to let others hurt him further and take for even weaker than he feels. For the world he is a dull, thick-skinned nobody, and so I fail to make him anybody else for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This mask is too efficient, and narrating from perspective of an external observer I'm having a very hard time getting the emotions across to the reader. I'm trying to show rare glimpses when the mask drops momentarily, but I'm afraid that's not enough, the readers may consider them more as my omissions and mistakes than as essential pieces of revelation. They are too little to get the readers to like him for who he really is, and feel compassionate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need something better, something stronger, that will get the reader deeper into the mindset of the unfortunate stranger, and it needs to be applicable early enough into the story that the revelation doesn't come as a late surprise to the bored and impassive reader but gets them into the character's inner sanctum, revealing their true self without breaking the plot - friendless, lonely recluse won't normally allow any stranger there, one would need a good build-up of trust towards that, and that build-up takes time, and so the revelation gets delayed... you get it. I consider some bullies just &quot;breaking in&quot;, but then how to make it not destroy the poor character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how would you paint this kind of character? What kind of motives would you use? Do you know any literary works with such protagonists? I know a few examples of movies - Woody Allen, Charlie Chaplin, Roberto Benigni managed to masterfully draw that type of characters in saddest of their comedies. Still, the expressiveness of the medium, their wonderful play with whole body, indescribable facial expressions, and hard to copy situations are something which is probably beyond my skill of transferring to paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(some more info: the setting is similar to modern, a medium-sized town with its corrupt &quot;ruling elite&quot; and neutral citizens mostly honest but staying out of trouble, the character is obviously a foreigner, an immigrant/refugee not of a kind common there, and while probably he would find some good help and even friends if he just started looking, he's too afraid to try.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2019-11-21T17:14:37.793" Title="Peeking through character's mask" Tags="|creative-writing|character-development|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6848" CreationDate="2012-12-19T18:27:54.653" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you need to do is show your introvert to the reader &lt;em&gt;when no other characters are looking,&lt;/em&gt; or when he's with people he's close to in some sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does your introvert cry when he goes home from his job? Write in his journal or a private blog? Kick himself for not speaking up about something? What about when he talks to his parents, his brother, his landlady? Does he tell him things he wouldn't tell his boss?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another similar technique is &lt;strong&gt;[WARNING: TVTROPES LINK]&lt;/strong&gt; called &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PetTheDog&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pet The Dog&lt;/a&gt;, which shows us an otherwise Jerk character doing something nice, so we realize the Jerk has a heart of gold under the crusty exterior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T18:27:54.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6850" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6856" CreationDate="2012-12-19T20:13:45.227" Score="9" ViewCount="342" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_classification&quot;&gt;scientific taxonomy of Living Things&lt;/a&gt;, you have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Life&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Domain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kingdom&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phylum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Class&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc. down to Species, and maybe thence to Breed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were talking about my neighbor's dog who is half Chihuahua and half German Shepherd (no she is, really), I would say her parents had a &quot;cross-breed romance.&quot; (they are both of the species Canis lupus familiaris)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were talking about a mule, I would say the mare and the male donkey had a &quot;cross-species romance.&quot; (they are both of the genus Equus)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on and so forth up the improbable chain. In a science-fiction setting, you can  cross a Vulcan and a Terran and have a viable hybrid child, even though they come from two different planets and shouldn't even share a Kingdom, let alone enough genetic similarities to breed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what's the &quot;cross-&quot; when you have a romance between biological life and non-biological life? For example, if &lt;i&gt;Star Trek: Voyager&lt;/i&gt;'s Seven of Nine and the Emergency Medical Hologram had actually had a relationship? Or when Data dated Jenna D'Sora (TNG's &quot;In Theory&quot;)? (The Holodoc is a software-based lifeform; Data is a hardware-based lifeform.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am establishing such a romance between two characters, and I've no idea what to call it. (Of course, figuring out what to call it may wind up in dialogue as part of establishing it, because they don't know what to call it either.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T01:36:13.510" LastActivityDate="2012-12-24T05:48:07.503" Title="A cross-[What] kind of romance?" Tags="|fiction|word-choice|fantasy|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6851" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-19T20:13:46.830" Score="4" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know an online library with free books (I mean not &quot;free of charge&quot; but free as a concept) that provides access to e-books published by Creative Commons, Public Domain, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4493" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-01-02T00:04:22.860" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T15:03:13.773" Title="Creative Commons and / or Public Domain library" Tags="|ebook|creative-commons|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6851" CreationDate="2012-12-19T20:34:36.260" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you mean something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Gutenberg&lt;/a&gt;? You should read the legalese for copyright issues, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T20:34:36.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="297" CreationDate="2012-12-19T22:45:05.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt anyone knows what you wanted to say better than yourself. Even the most skilled translator can miss some fine points you wanted to express. As someone who has seen quite a number of bad translations, I'd never let anyone translate it into a language I know well enough to translate myself. To help, maybe, to edit and give a hand with some subtler points of language, yes, but the whole translation, no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm reading a book right now in English and was surprised to find it in the bookstore translated into Croatian, so I flipped through it and I literally shuddered. It wasn't that it was badly translated, per se, but since it's written in first person, the voice was completely different. It wasn't the same character anymore. I know some things get lost in translation, but this felt like a completely different character was telling the same story. Not to mention that some names were Croationized while most didn't. You just don't do that, you either do it all or none at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are just as much of bad translators out there as there are good ones, it's a lottery which one you would ran into. The ones that have actually lived in a foreign country and are truly fluent in that foreign language are really rare. Translator also needs to have a flair for writing, because it's not all literal translation, sometimes you need to be creative to translate phrases and sentence structures that don't even exist in the other language, and still keep the original meaning in the original voice and style. It's not straightforward. So who better to do it than the original author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T22:45:05.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3317" CreationDate="2012-12-20T00:26:00.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read one simple rule for determining if the work is science fiction or not: if you can take out the science fiction element out, and still have the same story, it's not science fiction. For example, if it is science fiction just because it's happening on a spaceship, and could just as well be happening on a seventeen century pirate ship and still have the same premise, it's not really science fiction. However, if you take the sci-fi element from, I don't know, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, you just don't have a story anymore. That's true science fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the same could be said for true fantasy: if you can take out the fantastic elements and still have a feasible story, it should not be called fantasy, IMHO, although fantasy is somewhat more flexible in this regard than science fiction. You can have worlds similar to ours with no magic or supernatural elements in it, and still call it a fantasy, because sometimes that world &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the point of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the borders are being redefined every day, and things that pass as science fiction and fantasy today would never have passed fifty or thirty years ago. Eugene Mirabelli's &quot;The Woman in Schrodinger's Wave Equation&quot; was nominated for Nebula in 2008, even though it has no science fiction elements at all, not a drop. There are more and more examples every day. So in the end, it's all up to the author, market, readers, editors, publishers... But like I said, a lot more can pass for fantasy today than it could fifty years ago. A lot of readers today prefer &quot;soft&quot; fantasy rather than full blown Dungeons and Dragons type of story. Guy Gavriel Kay's books, for example, have very little magic or other fantastic elements in them, but rely on elaborately developed characters and story instead. Still, you couldn't take the fantasy part out of them and still have a plausible story. Even though most of his books are based on real world countries during real historical periods, it's still fantasy because you can not take the characters and the plot and fit them in those real world countries and turn it into historical fiction, because for historical fiction you'd need real historical characters and events. Events that take place in real historical setting but have never actually happened are still fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in the end, I'd say, if that fantastical element, how ever small it might be, is something that would break the whole story if taken out, I'd call it fantasy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastEditorUserId="4264" LastEditDate="2012-12-20T00:33:08.327" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T00:33:08.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6848" CreationDate="2012-12-20T11:53:19.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having bullies &quot;breaking in&quot;, as you put it, doesn't necessarily have to destroy the character. It's natural that under a lot of stress, his facade would start to crack. Put him in some high-pressure situations, but snatch him away at the last moment if you don't want him to be too damaged, especially if it's early on. It's your story, so you can give him an out. Coincidences do happen in real life, and it may even be a chance for your observer character to connect with this guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may also be a good way to convey to your readers the extent of the abuse he endures, which also helps them empathise with him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T11:53:19.510" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6850" CreationDate="2012-12-20T15:48:33.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tough question and it's been in my brain all day.  I've been trying to really think about what separates these two groups, which I hoped would lead me to what brought them together.  At first I was thinking about &lt;strong&gt;sentience&lt;/strong&gt;, but it doesn't sound like you have a person falling in love with a rock, but instead robots (or something akin).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So then I was trying to move along the &lt;strong&gt;biological&lt;/strong&gt; route:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organic vs Inorganic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Natural vs Synthetic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carbon vs Non-carbon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hard part is of course not finding the differences, though, but where these differences would intersect.  The groups these fall into (the [blank] in your cross-[blank]) are perhaps a bit generic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chemistry&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Matter&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Composition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Compound&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Carbonality&lt;/strong&gt; (this of course isn't a word, but it may be my favorite anyway)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully these at least might send you in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another I just thought of that is super-generic but might work with enough context is &lt;strong&gt;cross-composition&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastEditorUserId="181" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T09:49:55.933" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T09:49:55.933" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6850" CreationDate="2012-12-20T17:51:38.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;biosphere&lt;/a&gt; is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be called the zone of life on Earth, a closed (apart from solar and cosmic radiation), and self-regulating system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think, if we think in interplanetary terms instead of our little xenophobic terracentric little box, a biosphere can be defined as an entirety of lifeforms forming a closed system - usually inhabiting a planet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cross-biospheric romance then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option would be cross-lifeform but that doesn't really restrict as far apart as much as 'biosphere' but may encompass lifeforms that don't happen to live as parts of biospheres (a unique pan-universal deity?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2012-12-20T18:01:34.787" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T18:01:34.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6850" CreationDate="2012-12-20T18:51:40.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;cross-lifeform&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; romance or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;cross-sentient-being&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; romance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4062" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T18:51:40.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6850" CreationDate="2012-12-20T22:15:37.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not familiar with this &quot;domain&quot; level in taxonomy. That must be a new idea since I was in school. Of course Linnaeus originally defined the kingdom as the highest level, and he identified three kingdoms: plants, animals, and minerals. When I was in school I was taught that biologists debated whether things like fungi should not be broken out into a separate kingdom, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had interbreeding between an animal and plant -- however one imagines that might be possible! -- that would be &quot;cross-kingdom&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone managed to create a holographic life form or a mechanical life form, to my mind that would qualify as another kingdom. It seems to me that the difference between plant and animal would be analagous to the difference between either and holographic life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to say where aliens would fit in the existing taxonomy. Would they be similar enough to us that they could be considered new phyla, etc, in the existing kingdoms and classes? That seems unlikely to me. Whether you're supposing evolution or creation, either way I'd expect aliens from another planet to be more different from humans than, say, a bird or an octopus is different from humans. So maybe if we met aliens we'd create new kingdoms for them, or maybe we'd have to create another level, above kingdoms (or domains), one for &quot;terran&quot; and another for &quot;vulcan&quot; or whatever, and then have subdivisions within each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you're inventing the aliens or whatever these life forms are, I think it's up to you to decide where they fit in taxonomy. Consider both what you believe to be scientifically plausible and what works in the context of your story. Then just make something up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2012-12-20T22:22:24.277" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T22:22:24.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6834" CreationDate="2012-12-21T10:57:17.663" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;So just to be clear, you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; named them. If you refer to him by it often enough (which may just be one or twice, depending on the context), that &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; their name.  You just haven't giving them a proper name.  This an important distinction that points to the fact that it probably doesn't matter.  Like anything, it can be hard to pinpoint exactly which elements can turn your readers off, but if your naming scheme is that item, you probably have other problems as well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's mostly about how you handle it.  If the only recognizable characteristic of &quot;the man in the pink shirt&quot; is the color of this clothing, you have a bigger problem.  His name could be Bill Smith or Walla Walla Washington, he still won't grab the reader's attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some very memorable characters with no &quot;names&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Doctor&lt;/strong&gt; from &lt;em&gt;Doctor Who&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The cigarette smoking man&lt;/strong&gt; from &lt;em&gt;X-files&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Everyone&lt;/strong&gt; in &lt;em&gt;Twelve Angry Men&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Time Traveller&lt;/strong&gt; from &lt;em&gt;The Time Machine&lt;/em&gt; by H.G. Wells&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Man in the Yellow Hat&lt;/strong&gt; from &lt;em&gt;Curious George&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Second Mrs. de Winter&lt;/strong&gt; aka the narrator from &lt;em&gt;Rebecca&lt;/em&gt; by Daphne du Maurier&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the crown prince:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Man with No Name&lt;/strong&gt; from &lt;em&gt;A Fistful of Dollars&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T10:57:17.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="30" CreationDate="2012-12-21T18:03:17.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one can answer that question for you. You need to write every day and find the best wordcount for yourself. As a 4 time winner of NaNoWriMo, I can honestly say that 1667 words a day for me personally is way too much. It's doable, but if I had to go one more day, I'd go insane. 1667 a day burns me out, even without a day job. On the other hand, I've met a lot of people during NaNoWriMo that do 1667 a day with ease, while others even go for 100k or even 150k. It really depends on the person (and the story, how well planned out it is, how inspiring, how easy it flows...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I'd advise you rather choose a range than a fixed number, or perhaps a bare minimum. There will be days when writing will not come easily, and it's better to take it slow than to force it. Forcing might be necessary during NaNoWriMo where deadline is tight and quality is not an issue, but I really see no need for it in every day writing, it unnecessarily lowers the quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T18:03:17.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6864" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-21T18:55:59.113" Score="16" ViewCount="3211" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many word processors are capable to tracking and displaying changes made to a document. Those changes are typically displayed in special markup supported by the editor. E.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/97Dy9.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when using a &lt;strong&gt;plain text&lt;/strong&gt; editor (like Microsoft's Notepad), is there a useful markup technique that editors can use to suggest changes, without losing any of the original text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="61" LastEditorUserId="2868" LastEditDate="2012-12-24T17:10:48.240" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T12:23:12.313" Title="Text Editors. Suggesting &amp; Tracking Changes to Plain-Text Documents" Tags="|editing|revision|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6864" CreationDate="2012-12-21T21:39:32.087" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I kind of doubt that there is a &lt;em&gt;standard&lt;/em&gt; for it, at least. You might get away with using some marker that isn't used anywhere else, like &lt;code&gt;###&lt;/code&gt;, to indicate a changed passage, but I'm not sure if that really qualifies as markup. In any case, it would have to be an agreement between the people involved which marker(s) to use and what they mean. Something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Tracked changes look like ###this[WAS: these]###.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, depending on the technical inclination of the author(s) and editor(s), you might get away with something like setting up a GitHub account and uploading the text file there. Source control systems tend to be somewhat more geared toward programmers, but they solve your problem quite nicely: they allow multiple persons to work on a single text file (even simultaneously), tracking changes over time, displaying the differences between arbitrary versions, going back and forward between versions, and selectively rolling back any changes made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may take a little getting used to for someone who isn't technically inclined, but if you are serious about doing this with only plain text files, it's a reasonably easy way forward once you get over the initial learning curve. And for writing, there's likely no need to deal with the more complex issues such as branching/merging and such; a linear history will likely work well enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T21:39:32.087" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6864" CreationDate="2012-12-21T22:17:42.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a good question. Unfortunately, outside of the programming realm, there's no system for tracking changes at the character level that I'm aware of. (If there is one, I'd love to know about it!) I suspect there are many, many such systems that have been cobbled together by individuals, however. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This comes up often when blogging: Do we use Word files with their awesome change tracking features and then deal with all the garbage they produce before posting (possibly introducing errors)? Or do we work in plain text from the start, cobbling together some sort of change system like the one Michael suggests? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you absolutely need something like this, I recommend using marks that are catch the eye. [[[triple brackets]]] or ***lots of asterisks*** or ###other such signs###. (If you're working on source code or HTML, this could cause problems later. And, as you can see, sometimes &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;lots of asterisks&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; render as bold-italic text, indicating yet another problem.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than embedding changes in the text itself, is it possible you could simply use versioning and the name of the person? For example, SampleFile_EditorNF_v1.0.1.txt may have meaning if you and your colleagues have agreed on a system. You could then use the compare revisions of a robust editor (such as BBEdit) to compare versions and see the changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to use commenting to describe the changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="61" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T22:23:40.577" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T22:23:40.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6864" CreationDate="2012-12-21T22:31:42.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never used Notepad, but can it create PDFs? Or at least print to PDF?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Acrobat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Acrobat Pro&lt;/a&gt; has a dandy set of markup tools which I use all the time for proofreading emails:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highlights&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sticky notes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Callouts (with arrows, lines, squares, circles, clouds, text cross-outs, polygon)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think there's even a freehand pencil tool. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-01-20T19:35:19.973" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T19:35:19.973" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6868" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-22T04:27:48.830" Score="14" ViewCount="15611" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I invent names for fictional characters in a future-setting Sci-Fi story so they won't be connected to any existing culture?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I considered the following options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Invent some random names. This has a disadvantage in that such names are often difficult to pronounce and sound unpleasant and unlikely to be used by people. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use names from some obscure languages. This makes a connection to Earth's history and is difficult to explain, given that these cultures have already vanished now, not to say in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use names from some Classical languages such as Latin, Greek, Proto-Indo-European or similarly-sounding ones. This does not make sense if we are speaking about non-human cultures. Take for example &quot;Stroggos&quot; and &quot;Makron&quot;. How on Earth can an alien nave have the Greek ending &lt;em&gt;-on&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the advantages and disadvantages to these techniques? Are there other options and techniques that could help me? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2012-12-25T07:49:40.477" LastActivityDate="2020-10-12T21:01:13.023" Title="Inventing names for Sci-Fi characters" Tags="|technique|science-fiction|naming|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6868" CreationDate="2012-12-22T08:46:49.170" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One further option is to have the aliens adopt &quot;earth names&quot; as part of the plot because their (non-verbal) method of identifying individuals is incomprehensible to mere humans. Perhaps their species all vibrate at a characteristic base frequency and each individual has an unique overtone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then make the decisions made by the aliens about appropriate names form part of the explication of the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T08:46:49.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6864" CreationDate="2012-12-22T09:00:51.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to mark-up a text then the obvious solution is to use a mark-up language. The best known example today is HTML but the power of XML is that you can create your own tags (and share them with your collaborators through a DTD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;suggest&lt;/code&gt;&gt;track &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;/suggest&lt;/code&gt;&gt; follow changes such as removing redundant &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;replaced&lt;/code&gt;&gt; unnecessary extra&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;/replaced&lt;/code&gt;&gt; words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that Markdown interprets invented tags as mark-up even when it does not know what to do with them. To get the paragraph above to appear correctly, I have used the tick character as an escape on the eginning and end of tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T09:00:51.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6850" CreationDate="2012-12-22T09:03:44.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that the object of affection is material and therefore based upon an element of our Periodic Table (although not Carbon).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would the romance then be cross-elemental?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T09:03:44.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6868" CreationDate="2012-12-22T11:56:25.617" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wherever your characters are from they will have their own culture and their own language. It's pretty easy to come up with some random names for characters but if you have more than one character then the naming construction for each should be similar, with similar syllable count and length. If they have a culture that respects class hierarchy then they may have other standards that append to their names to denote house or clan affiliation or just family name. For example it's common among Dutch people to have a name that is [someone] van [somewhere] like Vincent van Gogh - the 'van part just means 'from' so it means Vincent 'from' Gogh (bear in mind I'm not Dutch but you get the idea!) and it can also be spelt van de, van der or van den and it pretty much means the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your character names have to have a common construction and it should be based on some sort of culture and language construction, even if the reader never actually gets to know about it. Also, once you have decided on a language construction it becomes much easier to write dialogue for those characters because it will be based on the language they know - even if it's not their language they are speaking - in the same way that I can often spot a non-native English speaker by sentence construction, even if the words and context make perfect sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more on language construction try this guy: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zompist.com/kitlong.html&quot;&gt;http://www.zompist.com/kitlong.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4169" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T11:56:25.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6868" CreationDate="2012-12-22T15:52:56.733" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want names that are entirely alien to us? Let me share a story - interestingly, an entirely real story about a species with most unique names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning these names is within grasp of humans, although communicating them by anyone else than given name's bearer is nearly impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The species is the horse, and the names are the scents of their breath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will sometimes see horses &quot;sharing breath&quot;. They put their noses close, and exhale and inhale deeply. This is a friendly &quot;How are you&quot; in their language, and simultaneously getting accustomed to each other and introducing yourself. If you, a human, decide to get on &quot;more personal&quot; level with horses than &quot;owner-pet&quot;, you'll fairly easily get them to greet you that way. Share breaths with a horse, feel the scent and marvel how unique they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, one bears dry, cold, tomb-like emptiness. Another is summer herbs of a sunny meadow. Yet another is the scent of a frosty, midwinter day, another - sweet fruit, or a dusty road, or deep shade of forest, or stale midsummer river, or dry warmth of hot sand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are true names of horses. And understandably, you can't really copy these, tell them to someone else as given horse told it to you - you'd have to hold their breaths. So, humans use various silly substitutes. But smart humans will give their horses names similar to their true ones. The one with tomb-like emptiness was called Pharaoh, and the one with herbs of sunny meadow - Fairy Tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T15:52:56.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6875" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-22T18:47:21.053" Score="2" ViewCount="277" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of different fantasy worlds depicted in fiction. In general, due to copyright, a license is required from the original creator of the fiction to publish a new story set in that universe (for example, you need to get LucasArts to agree to make a new Star Wars book). Are there any examples of fantasy worlds where this is not true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4505" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T19:55:15.517" Title="Which fantasy worlds can be freely used in new work without a license?" Tags="|world-building|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-12-22T19:57:23.210" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6875" CreationDate="2012-12-22T19:55:15.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-Kzin_Wars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Man-Kzin Wars&lt;/a&gt; represents one such world.  The series started as a short story by Larry Niven, but several more stories have sprung up mostly written by people who are not Larry Niven. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also read books by Mercedes Lackey that are collections of short stories written in her Valdamar world by other authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if you have a particular universe that you want to use for a story, you need to do some research and see if that author or publisher allows for other people to contribute to that universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T19:55:15.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2520" CreationDate="2012-12-22T20:43:21.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Call your character by name, if that name is known to the narrator. Calling him &quot;dark haired man&quot; in one sentence, &quot;the butcher&quot; in the other and &quot;the other man&quot; in the third will confuse the hell out of the reader. It will lead the reader to believe there are three characters here, not one. Even if you refer to him as something else just once, it can still be confusing (just the other day someone here mentioned that he read the character being referred to as &quot;the redhead&quot;, and he ended up going through the previous chapters trying to figure out if this was a new character or if the character in question really has red hair). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of inventing nicknames for characters to avoid repetition, try arranging your sentences in a way that you don't need he/she. If the sentences are all of the same structure it doesn't matter how you call the character, they will still feel repetitive and monotonous. &#xA;To demonstrate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jack opened the door. He tiptoed inside. He was afraid he might wake up Marry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not just that &quot;he&quot; keeps repeating, but the sentence structure is the same in every sentence. Boring. &#xA;Now imagine this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jack opened the door. The burly man tiptoed inside. The husband was afraid he might wake up his wife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you tell me with absolute certainty how many people are there in the example above? And it still feels just as monotonous as the original example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, why not something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jack opened the door and tiptoed inside, afraid he might wake up Mary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After opening the door, Jack tiptoed inside so not to wake up Mary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jack opened the door, then tiptoed inside. Mary was sleeping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can write these few simple sentences in so many interesting ways without using he/she, or at least reducing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it just can not be avoided, I think a safe &quot;formula&quot; would be to call the character by name the first time he's mentioned in the paragraph, then &quot;he/she&quot; for the rest of the paragraph, or several more if no other characters are mentioned. When the next character is mentioned, use his name first and then &quot;he&quot; until another is mentioned and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to keep the clarity is to make only one character perform the action per paragraph. For example, if Jack is opening the door, Mary is yelling and Steve is smoking a cigarette, they should all have their own paragraph for what they're doing, even if the paragraphs end up being no more than a short sentence. It avoids confusion. The same for dialogues, you should never have two people speaking in the same paragraph, that's confusing as hell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you're writing from a close third POV, it largely depends on the POV character how the other characters will be referred to. For example, in Lois McMaster Bujold's &quot;Mirror Dance&quot;, we have two POV characters, Miles and his clone brother Mark. When we see things from Miles' perspective, the character of Elena Bothari-Jesek is referred to as Elena, since Miles has grown up with her and was in love with her most of his life. When seeing things from Mark's perspective, she's referred to as Bothari-Jesek, as Mark barely knows her, and she also scares the hell out of him. In Miles' chapters his parents are referred to as &quot;mother&quot; and &quot;father&quot;, in Mark's they're referred to as &quot;Count&quot; and &quot;Countess&quot; because in this book Mark meets them for the first time. This also serves as a reminder to the reader that even though Mark is impersonating his clone brother on and off throughout the book, he's a completely different individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastEditorUserId="4264" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T21:06:24.867" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T21:06:24.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6878" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-23T01:55:54.160" Score="9" ViewCount="664" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6139/learning-storywriting-for-videogames-where-to-start&quot;&gt;A recent question&lt;/a&gt; asked for pointers for writing for games, and the gist of the answers was that it's not very unlike writing books. The underlined differences were only superficial. There's a plotline to follow and obstacles to conquer. You write the plot and develop essentials and let the programmers handle dynamics and interactivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might be fine if you work at Valve, writing games that are great fun to go through the first time, a little fun the other time when you discover hidden tastes, and then interesting the third time when you enable the developer commentary. Then there are challenges and multiplayer that make it great arcade fun, but the storytelling part is entirely exhausted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what if I want to write something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukihime&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tsukihime&lt;/a&gt;? &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will not spoil the details of the plotline of Tsukihime, but let me just say it is meant to be played exactly five times, and only on fifth walkthrough you will be able to fully appreciate the depth and hidden meanings of everything recurring throughout your prior walkthroughs. More interestingly, while the first two walkthroughs pretty much follow the same storyline, staying just to two sides of the barricade, starting with the third you open up a wildly straying tangent that completely abandons the first premises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this is still fairly linear. What about games like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_III:_Morrowind&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Morrowind&lt;/a&gt;, where outside of three entirely different ways of getting the main quest done, you get a wild tangle of intersecting, conflicting, synergizing, complementing or opposing quests for various factions? Three vampire clans at war, join any. Imperial Temple vs Tribunal Temple, distrusting and hostile, join any again. Become a werewolf or fight werewolves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book has a progression from beginning to end, a storyLINE. Events follow in logical progression of cause-effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you write something where you have a storySPAGHETTI to create? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, you have a number of smaller plotlines. Call them quests, questlines or story arcs if you like. How to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;manage their interconnections - hold a tight grip over how they influence (or break!) each other? &lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;handle their prerequisites to avoid both circular dependencies and stupid limitations. &lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do this all from most mundanely technical viewpoint - How to write down multiple (lengthy) entries that have no apparent order and a wild web of connections, especially keep these connections visible and easily editable, and easy to follow? Keeping tab of limitations and prerequisites for these to be possible? Not getting lost and holding it whole in my head, while the player just holds the current walkthrough?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Example chosen as striking the middle ground between linear and convoluted beyond hope, balancing great story with considerable nonlinearity; for the latter example try &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagetsu_Tohya&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kagetsu Tohya&lt;/a&gt;, nearly impossible to get through without a guide, and no, I don't think it's a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; I will never forgive &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_IV:_Oblivion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oblivion&lt;/a&gt; with its four(!) guild questlines, after Mages Guild questline making me the Archmage, to have the Thieves Guild questline have me steal a magic staff from myself to convince myself that I, the Archmage should recall my battlemages to better protect my guild from myself, the thief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; I've got a scroll of Raise Dead, I don't get what's so bad about the assassin getting caught &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; killing the victim!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T20:19:13.143" Title="Learning storywriting for videogames - Handling deep nonlinearities" Tags="|technique|creative-writing|videogame|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6879" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-23T03:01:46.493" Score="0" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please consider the below excerpt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'How long is your break?' I shouted. A group of labourers sat under the banyan tree near the main campus building. 'It's two-thirty, lunch ended an hour ago'&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The workers tightened their turbans. They picked up their brushes and moved to the classrooms, I remained under the banyan tree, exhausted by my daily ritual of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;__&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;__&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; up the men every two hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need some help to figure it out correct word to fill the blank among the below set of words. I am giving words along with their meanings those I have found in Oxford English Dictionary. How different word changes if I use one instead another?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;haul&lt;/strong&gt; = (of a person) pull or drag with effort or force.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Drag&lt;/strong&gt; = pull (someone or something) along forcefully, roughly, or with difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4507" LastEditorUserId="4507" LastEditDate="2012-12-23T07:42:01.677" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T07:11:46.063" Title="Correct word for &quot;Pulling some one into work, with continuous effort&quot;?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6879" CreationDate="2012-12-23T03:36:47.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) I rather like &quot;herding the cats.&quot; The idea is that cats are very independent and don't take well to being told what to do, and will scatter and go their own way if forced. You can herd cattle, sheep, or horses because they are group animals which naturally follow a leader and respond to goading from behind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I remained under the banyan tree, exhausted by my daily ritual of herding the cats every two hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) just use &quot;rounding.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I remained under the banyan tree, exhausted by my daily ritual of rounding up the men every two hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Extend the cattle/sheep/horse image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I remained under the banyan tree, exhausted by my daily ritual of rounding up the men and corralling them back to work every two hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T03:36:47.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6879" CreationDate="2012-12-23T05:07:39.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I remained under the banyan tree, exhausted by my daily ritual of &lt;strong&gt;dragooning&lt;/strong&gt; the men every two hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although a dragoon was originally a member of a heavy cavalry unit, the use of such forces to impose the will of a conqueror on unwilling people led to the use of &lt;em&gt;dragooning&lt;/em&gt; to mean &quot;demanding compliance by threat or coercion&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In recent times, the meaning has softened as it was used for exaggerated effect. &quot;I was dragooned into helping with the childrens' bath time.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that sense, it is suitable for your case where there is certainly a lack of cooperation but the resistance is passive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T05:07:39.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6879" CreationDate="2012-12-23T15:39:57.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neither of the two words you have selected are appropriate in the context you are using them in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you physically having to drag or pull the men back to work? If so, either of those words would work, but &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; if you are physically dragging them back to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll notice in your word meanings, both say &lt;em&gt;haul a person&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;pull someone&lt;/em&gt; they can only be used if you are physically pulling a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your sample text you suggest that you are &lt;em&gt;verbally&lt;/em&gt; encouraging them back to work, &lt;em&gt;('How long is your break?' I shouted.)&lt;/em&gt; if that is the case then &lt;em&gt;chivvy&lt;/em&gt; would be a better word to use -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From OED -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;chivvy, v.1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To harry, harass, trouble, worry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In use -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doris..and I chivvied the chicken around till we caught her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...exhausted by my daily ritual of &lt;em&gt;chivvying&lt;/em&gt; up the men every two hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word &lt;em&gt;up&lt;/em&gt; is not strictly necessary and would work with or without it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T15:45:30.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6884" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-22T16:46:56.940" Score="3" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to get help to apply different flavors to the action &quot;annoy someone&quot;. Please consider the below excerpt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her mother spoke again, Aarii looked irritated,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   &quot;Why should I get engaged because Bela did? Yes ... I will one day mom ... Okay fine .. Yes, the hotel car will drop me... Bye!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  She kept her phone on the bed, and looked &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;__&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;__&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I figured it out the below set of words implies the meaning of irritated. How ever I need some help to figure it out further what special flavor does these words add to the sentence. Please find below the set of words along with the their meanings that found in dictionary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exasperate&lt;/strong&gt; = irritate intensely; infuriate.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Exacerbate&lt;/strong&gt; = make (a problem, bad situation, or negative feeling) worse.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Vex&lt;/strong&gt; = make (someone) feel annoyed, frustrated, or worried, esp. with trivial matters.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Nettle&lt;/strong&gt; = irritate or annoy (someone).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Persecute&lt;/strong&gt; = harass or annoy (someone) persistently.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4507" OwnerDisplayName="Hanu" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T08:27:47.880" Title="Various flavors for the action &quot;irritate someone&quot;?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6884" CreationDate="2012-12-22T17:00:23.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot &lt;em&gt;exacerbate&lt;/em&gt; a person, only a situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Persecute&lt;/em&gt;  is simply wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The normal verb here is just &lt;em&gt;bother&lt;/em&gt;, which you do not seem to have listed. That is the one you should be using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Vex&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;nettle&lt;/em&gt; have more specific, or intensifying, or regionalizing, uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5040" OwnerDisplayName="tchrist" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T17:00:23.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6884" CreationDate="2012-12-22T20:48:10.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find your punctuation troubling, and your use of the word &amp;quot;looked&amp;quot; twice, unwise.  I suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When her mother spoke again, Aarii became irritated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Why should I get engaged just because Bela did? Yes, mom, I will one day.  Okay, fine.  Yes, the hotel car will drop me off.  Bye.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She threw her phone to the bed, feeling vexed.[or exasperated, or piqued, or annoyed]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either &lt;em&gt;vexed&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;annoyed&lt;/em&gt; seems appropriate.  &lt;em&gt;Exasperated&lt;/em&gt; denotes strong emotion, which Aarii may be feeling at the time, given her mother's insistence she get engaged. &lt;em&gt;Piqued&lt;/em&gt; is an interesting word, denoting vexation caused by a perceived slight or indignity or wounded pride. It's your call,  however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="rhetorician" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-12-24T00:15:50.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6850" CreationDate="2012-12-24T05:26:14.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nonhomogeneous romance...    ?    Anthropomorphic romance... ? Technosexual romance... ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anthropomorphic technosexuality . . . God, that rolls off the tongue nicely. So many syllables. What a beautiful phrase. &lt;em&gt;Cellar door&lt;/em&gt; be damned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2012-12-24T05:48:07.503" LastActivityDate="2012-12-24T05:48:07.503" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6888" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-24T06:17:07.297" Score="1" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dear Writers &amp;amp; Playwrights;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working on my first full-length play. In workshops, the feedback is consistently, &quot;Too much exposition.&quot; I agree with the criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm struggling with is . . . now what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on how to transform exposition to action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there's no simple answer to that question but any thoughts would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4512" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-12-24T12:52:22.410" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T00:15:10.373" Title="Too much exposition in my full-length play: how to fix it?" Tags="|exposition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6864" CreationDate="2012-12-24T07:17:46.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The earliest/simplest I had known and the one that survives to-date with enough support is the classic &lt;em&gt;was:&lt;/em&gt; -- (it's already been mentioned in the passing by @Michael Kjörling in his answer).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know much beyond the near-horizon (spatially and temporally) what people did or are doing, but I still use it in config files and the sort.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;PDL_NAME=devNAME  &#xA;UninstallLevel=1  &#xA;PST_DEL=OFF  &#xA;AUTHORITYCHECK=ON  &#xA;CheckJobMonitor=ON [was: OFF]  &#xA;DelRestoreFile=OFF  &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggested changes similarly are indicated by a &quot;query&quot;:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;PDL_NAME=devNAME  [? portNAME]&#xA;UninstallLevel=1  &#xA;PST_DEL=OFF  &#xA;AUTHORITYCHECK=ON  &#xA;CheckJobMonitor=ON   &#xA;DelRestoreFile=OFF  &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastEditorUserId="2868" LastEditDate="2012-12-24T07:23:30.087" LastActivityDate="2012-12-24T07:23:30.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6864" CreationDate="2012-12-24T12:07:15.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure. You could save the file as an html document and use the &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;!-- Hello --&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; tags to denote suggested changes. When I worked at a freebie weekly, we used the comment function in Windows Word to suggest changes. The changes were then added in using red text and strike through's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4514" LastActivityDate="2012-12-24T12:07:15.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6884" CreationDate="2012-12-24T12:34:49.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Irk would work in that instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From OED -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;irk, v.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To grow weary or tired; to feel vexed, ‘bothered’ or disgusted; to feel it burdensome, to be loath (to do something).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She threw her phone to the bed, feeling irked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I also like the suggestion above of &lt;em&gt;pique&lt;/em&gt;, but I'd reword the sentence thus -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She threw her phone onto the bed, in a fit of pique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also like glower -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glower, v&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To look angrily or crossly; to scowl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She glowered and threw her phone to the bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-12-24T12:34:49.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6848" CreationDate="2012-12-24T17:01:54.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the &lt;em&gt;pet the dog&lt;/em&gt; reference real well. I don't think it amounts to much more than one character observing and compiling observations of The Stranger because she is interested in understanding him. Plenty of thick-skinned characters come to mind, but it doesn't do to go into detail. What will become a significant plot element, what will keep us interested in The Stranger, is how you allow his inner struggles to surface through another character's eyes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inscrutability is not a reason to dislike or write off a character. In fact, it is a reason to look closely at him. We want to know why he is cryptic and closed off. If you are providing small clues to his reasoning throughout the story, you are doing the right thing; you're stringing your reader along, and he will follow. On the contrary, if the character, whose initial impression is introverted, emotes too strongly early in the story, that won't make sense, and he may be written off because of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastEditorUserId="4390" LastEditDate="2012-12-24T19:07:57.283" LastActivityDate="2012-12-24T19:07:57.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6848" CreationDate="2012-12-24T18:23:47.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I went about it, is giving the Stranger a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=single-serving%20friend&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Single-serving friend&lt;/a&gt;, to whom the Stranger dares to open up just enough to give us a glimpse, and who happens to be not nearly as single-serving as it seemed (leading to the protagonist and the Stranger to meet later.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting Fight Club:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Narrator:&lt;/strong&gt; Everywhere I travel, tiny life. Single-serving sugar, single-serving cream, single pat of butter. The microwave Cordon Bleu hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap. The people I meet on each flight? They're single-serving friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2012-12-24T18:23:47.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6888" CreationDate="2012-12-24T21:55:47.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ancient mantra of &amp;quot;show, don't tell&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bad news: Your work will grow. For one paragraph of &amp;quot;tell&amp;quot; there's usually a page or two of &amp;quot;show&amp;quot;.&#xA;Good news: Your work will be more interesting. For one boring paragraph of &amp;quot;tell&amp;quot; there's a page or two of interesting &amp;quot;show&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create side-threads unrelated to the main story, that use the elements of exposition as core nodes of their own stories. Make them interesting, small, stories on their own. How you do this depends on particular pieces of exposition. In essence, everything that is shown exists for a reason. Give a backstory for that reason, and make it an interesting one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take an example. You plan to introduce a sea deity who gets to interact with protagonists later, in meaningful ways. You don't want her appearance to be deus ex machina, so you provide a piece of exposition...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the old marine legends talks about Amber Mermaid, a lady of untold beauty with lower body of a seal, and her flesh transparent amber color. She's a fickle sea creature of power, who has no compassion, nothing bores her more than groveling and begging, but if you manage to capture her interest with a riddle, a puzzle, secret she can't solve, she will do your bidding and aid you in distress in exchange for explanation or answer. Just be cautious, make sure your secret is worth her service, or her wrath at disappointment will be worse than whatever oppression she found you in!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The event of the day was the Marble Battle, a game of marbles, where kids and adults alike would compete against each other, for the prize of Azure Marble, founded by the governor and imported from Rome. Not worth much financially, it was the token of prestige and a bragging right in all taverns of the island.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jim had traded his marble made out of meteorite for the legend of Amber Mermaid earlier that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we walked into backyard of the Admiralty building, a group of children squeezed past us, shouting &amp;quot;Amber mermaid! Amber mermaid!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There, in the middle of the paved backyard amidst the ivy-covered white walls stood a fountain with a statue of mermaid made of one big block of amber, spouting water out of a jug she held in her hands. Unlike classic mermaids with fish lower bodies, this one was a seal from waist down. Bubbles of air danced within the transparent, golden body lit brightly with sunlight, as water was pumped to the jug-shaped spout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The children stood in front of the fountain and the oldest boy stepped ahead of them. &amp;quot;Amber mermaid!&amp;quot; he shouted, &amp;quot;Did you hear this one?! What runs up and down the stairs without moving?! Help me win the Blue Marble and I will tell you!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a bit of silence, then a bigger bubble ran up through the hollow amber, and the water ejected from the jug, interrupted momentarily, splashed into the basin at the feet of the fountain, droplets dripping at the gathered children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I told you it's an old one,&amp;quot; a girl from the ring said, disappointed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big kid turned sadly and walked back towards the exit, his head down low. &amp;quot;A rug,&amp;quot; he muttered. &amp;quot;A stupid rug. Come on, we've got to find a better one... We have to!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of kids followed in a loose file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could see Jim's expression. A legend! Oh, the hound would never pass the opportunity. &amp;quot;Hey, kid!&amp;quot; he called out. &amp;quot;You play marbles?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Yes,&amp;quot; the disheartened gang leader turned to him. &amp;quot;There's a tournament tomorrow, but I don't think I'll win. And the main prize is the Azure Marble! Made from blue crystal! Imported from Rome by the Governor himself! And whoever wins, is the King of Marbles recognized all over the island for a whole year!&amp;quot; The kid's eyes shone at the thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Now, this here...&amp;quot; Jim produced his special, &amp;quot;rusty marble&amp;quot; from his pocket, &amp;quot;is something that might help you win... It was made from a rock that fell from the sky, and is as heavy as iron, but it still counts as a rock, and can blast other marbles to smithereens. It can be yours...&amp;quot; he retreated his hand as the kid reached for it, &amp;quot;for a little fee. Tell me everything you know about this Amber Mermaid!&amp;quot; he pointed to the fountain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I... Sir...&amp;quot; the kid hesitated at first, then suddenly understood the luck is knocking at his door and began spouting facts at speed of battery of cannons. So, what we fished out from the torrent was that she lives in the sea. She's mean and doesn't like helping but she has insatiable curiosity. She will help you for a riddle or secret she doesn't know. &amp;quot;...And if the riddle is stupid, she gets angry and drowns you or something...&amp;quot; the kid finished. &amp;quot;Is that enough for the marble?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Conditionally. If you recall anything more about her, tell me!&amp;quot; Jim grinned, passing the brownish orb to the kid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we turned to the entrance to the building, we heard the kids from the gate. &amp;quot;Told you she'd love it? With this marble we're bound to win!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note it's still not pure showing, it's still a lot of telling, but we gave the tale a proper backdrop, incorporated it as a piece of the main story, gave the emotional background and hooked it into local culture, and told it in a way that is more pleasant to read than a dry fact dump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T00:15:10.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6895" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6896" CreationDate="2012-12-25T01:54:42.167" Score="9" ViewCount="3615" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of writing a novel where my character narrates flashbacks through the hardest times of his life written in past tense, leading up to the present tense. I was considering switching to present tense only directly before and throughout the climax of the book so that the reader can understand the character's actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By writing the beggining of the book as a series of flashbacks I can skip through many years without boring the reader. Then, when he has described the events up to the present day, he will describe his current location and condition and proceed to initiate the climax. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So would this kind of switch be ok for a book written in first person point of view?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I'm not a pro writer at all this was just an idea that I had and would like to try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4518" LastEditorUserId="4518" LastEditDate="2012-12-25T02:12:23.640" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T05:34:52.673" Title="Switching from past to present tense?" Tags="|tenses|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6895" CreationDate="2012-12-25T04:21:23.250" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;That actually might be really interesting. Particularly if you label the flashbacks as &quot;1958&quot; or &quot;Forty years ago,&quot; and then the present is &quot;now&quot; or &quot;Present day.&quot; And if your flashbacks get closer together (one year ago, six months ago, four months ago, six weeks ago, three weeks ago, one week ago, three days ago, thirty-six hours ago...) and speed up, that adds its own tension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say go for it and see if you can make it work. At worst, if it fails, you'll only have to change the last part to past tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T04:21:23.250" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6895" CreationDate="2012-12-25T05:14:09.333" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that beginning with a series of flashbacks might be difficult for the reader to follow if there was no sense of what they are moving towards. This might not be exactly what you are doing, but in any case my advice would be to consider an &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res&quot;&gt;in medias res&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; structure. Instead of narrating consecutive flashbacks leading up to the present, begin with a moment just before the climax in present tense, and then revert to flashbacks. This introduces the narrator, introduces the conflict, and gives some context to the flashbacks. It also gives the reader added motivation to figure out what links the flashbacks. The key when using flashbacks of any kind, though, is in the effectiveness of the narrative transitions into and out of the present. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T05:14:09.333" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4660" CreationDate="2012-12-26T00:23:19.167" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, don't be afraid of stereotyping.  Stereotyping can be useful.  A piece of fiction is not a documentary.  So, think of how boys and girls play.  Boys play football.  They learn, when in a huddle, to speak directly and in short commands.  These end up getting softened a little bit in more polite company, but only a little bit.  Girls play house.  They are less about getting a project done and more about the process of getting the project done.  Completely sexist.  But, useful.  Remember that some of these stereotypes exist because they are true and they are true for good reason.  The typical woman won't drink from a bottle opened by a stranger in a bar, nor does the typical woman view a walk at night the same way th typical guy does.  Now, how and why are your characters different from the stereotype?  Role-play being the character.  Become the character.  Let the character inhabit your skin, fully.  Now, how does the character speak through you?  NOTE that this is distinctly different from figuring out how the character talks, it is more about tuning into the right frequency to hear the character talk.  If you are having problems with this, take an improv class or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4522" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T00:23:19.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6702" CreationDate="2012-12-26T04:27:30.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a bit late on this answer, but my experience with a proofreader at an academic publisher is that they can do much better. My proofreader made one mistake, changing a technical term into a more common homynym, but I only found two or three things she missed, and these weren't misspellings but rather inconsistencies in punctuation. (I should say that the manuscript--85,000 words--was very clean copy to start with.) I'd have been bothered if things like you're/your had been missed, though. That's what one is paying for: to appear literate. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3516" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T04:27:30.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6908" CreationDate="2012-12-26T04:42:50.360" Score="0" ViewCount="1953" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many times a client asks that the content delivered should be his/her Property and me ( the original writer) won't have any right on that written material once I deliver it and get paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is about the,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ability of a person (writer or programer) to reproduce the same content (written article or software) again and again and getting paid each time for hard work of each project and still not indulge in any Intellectual Property Confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How does the intellectual property works here? Cause in case of computer program you can repetitively use the same logic, same programming languages, same programming libraries. You can reuse nearly everything. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also in writing once I write a sentence say , 'My country is great' then I can never use the same sentence in same context in same way again in any other articles. Because that will violate the originality of that new article plus violate Intellectual property of the old article.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do I generate a real 'new and original' content each time?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When its explicitly not specified, who owns the right to the written material.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4521" LastEditorUserId="4521" LastEditDate="2018-10-03T11:20:26.107" LastActivityDate="2018-10-03T11:20:26.107" Title="Intellectual Property Rights &amp; Reuse of the Written Material" Tags="|legal|copyright|international|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6843" CreationDate="2012-12-26T06:03:56.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please note: some eBooks cannot be viewed on certain platforms or devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4523" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T06:03:56.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6879" CreationDate="2012-12-26T06:15:04.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The workers tightened their turbans. They picked up their brushes and moved to the classrooms, I remained under the banyan tree, exhausted by my daily ritual of &lt;b&gt;marshalling&lt;/b&gt; &lt;strike&gt;up &lt;/strike&gt;the men every two hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4523" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T06:15:04.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6900" CreationDate="2012-12-26T14:32:44.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you undertake a commission to produce an original piece of work (whether this be writing, design, painting, drawing or whatever) you (as the originator) decide on the contractual copyright with the commissioner or purchaser of the original work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I say &lt;em&gt;contractual&lt;/em&gt; I mean under what terms of contract that original piece of work is produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an originator of an original work you are by right the copyright holder of that work &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; you sell the copyright of that work to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wish to retain copyright of your work then you must make it clear to whoever is paying you to produce it that you retain copyright but give unrestricted rights to &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;reproduction&lt;/em&gt; of that work for the fee they are paying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must make it clear to whoever is buying your work, precisely what they are paying for - for the copyright or for the use of that work only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T14:32:44.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6878" CreationDate="2012-12-26T18:20:15.560" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you &lt;em&gt;certain&lt;/em&gt; you don't still have a standard storyline in mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many &quot;linear&quot; stories interleave multiple perspectives and have events that occur off-screen; whatever cause-and-effect drives the story marches on whether anyone is there to see it or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like what you want is a single linear &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; with a braid of possible &lt;em&gt;narratives&lt;/em&gt; through that story--essentially the same as a book, except that instead of selecting what scenes to show a reader, you let a player select which scenes to experience. For this to be meaningful, the story should involve (if only tangentially) many people in many locations, but dealing with such a story is not unique to games, and is beyond the scope of this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, the &quot;loosely coupled&quot; storylines you complain about sound like exactly what you'd get from letting a narrative thread jump between unrelated stories--each may be a worthwhile story on its own, but they're not advancing an overall plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A branching storyline leading to several very different endings makes things more difficult but not fundamentally different; each path to an ending must stand on its own as a linear story, after all. As a matter of opinion, I would also say that how a player ends up choosing an ending should be approached first as a question of &lt;em&gt;gameplay&lt;/em&gt;, not story. It really shouldn't require a stack of walkthroughs to reliably get each possible ending, to my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given all that, if you have the rough outline of a linear story, what remains is to chart the potentially nonlinear routes through it that will be available to the player:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you know what plot points are both &lt;em&gt;necessary&lt;/em&gt; to the storyline and &lt;em&gt;require&lt;/em&gt; the player's presence. These are immutable landmarks everything else must navigate between. Too many and the player will feel shackled by the plot and you might as well just present it as a fully linear story; too few and the plot will feel irrelevant and you'll give yourself a headache to boot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Identify any &lt;em&gt;significant&lt;/em&gt; plot points that &lt;em&gt;depend on&lt;/em&gt; the player's involvement; these are one way the player can steer the story, and making major choices here gives you a &quot;choose your own adventure&quot; style of branching story. Plot points like this are never truly optional--opting out, if allowed, is a choice as much as any other.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Identify any &lt;em&gt;necessary&lt;/em&gt; plot points that &lt;em&gt;allow&lt;/em&gt; the player's presence, either as an observer, as a non-critical participant (e.g. one soldier among many in a key battle), or in a role where an NPC can fill in if the player is not involved. These are probably the best way to create the effect you want, despite (or because of!) not actually branching the story. To elaborate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The player can change the outcome in ways that are irrelevant to the overall story, but feel significant. A non-critical character dying because of the player's actions (or inaction) is an easy example. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a checklist of details that are dependent on such choices, and let those be reflected in later scenes. Plot-critical scenes can acknowledge these changes so long as it doesn't change the plot-critical events. The main limitation on details like this is the amount of extra work required to write out variant scenes, but if done well you can create the impression of a storyline being far more flexible than it actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With a bit of extra effort, a group of such scenes can have their own recurring sub-plots. The difference between this and the &quot;loosely coupled&quot; storylines is that you're building side-plots on a foundation of scenes and characters that, by construction, are relevant to the main plot. Anything involving the social lives of plot-critical characters probably fits in here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Come up with &lt;em&gt;optional&lt;/em&gt; plot points that &lt;em&gt;require&lt;/em&gt; the player. This is the flip side of the previous point--events that let the player advance the main storyline, but in a way that isn't necessary for the final outcome. These can alter the same checklist of details as before, but can also tie into gameplay-based goals. Collecting enough plot coupons to weaken the final boss somehow would fit in here, particularly if it's possible to win without collecting any. Just be careful that anything like this is still clearly motivated somehow--players don't appreciate &quot;pick two out of three tedious fetch quests&quot; being presented as a &quot;non-linear story&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Identify scenes that are a step removed from the main plot, i.e., where the events can revolve around the player but the context involves the main plot. In a typical RPG you can get lots of side-quest mileage out of this--finding a lost dog for some random NPC is a stupid pointless sidequest; finding a lost dog for someone essential to the plot is a character-development goldmine.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Collect chunks of non-essential information about the main plot and build a bit of scaffolding around them to create something the player can &quot;do&quot;. An interesting feature of interactive storytelling is that you can have as much exposition dumping and worldbuilding minutia as you want if you present it in context and make it optional. Nobody likes trudging through that crap in a novel, but given the chance a surprising number of people will sit there and read an in-game equivalent of Wikipedia to learn more about the setting, backstory, &amp;amp;c. (If only this answer could be given such treatment...)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Various mixtures and combinations of each are also possible, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But really, the key point in all of this is that, much like how convincing fiction must make more sense than real life does, and written dialogue must be far more eloquent than real people speak, a non-linear narrative requires more linear story structure than a linear narrative does. You don't want an aimless tangle of story threads--that will just seem disjointed and incoherent. The underlying story gives everything else a direction that makes the non-linearity more convincing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The player starts at the beginning, and upon reaching an end, stops. Everything they do in the middle needs to be motivated somehow by getting closer to an ending. If you do it right, the player will reach the end of that linear storyline feeling like it's the natural outcome of many non-linear choices they made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4373" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T18:20:15.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6878" CreationDate="2012-12-26T20:19:13.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can describe the system used in aforementioned &lt;em&gt;Tsukihime&lt;/em&gt;. This isn't a solution how to do that at writing phase, or how to physically write to have the right grip of things but may serve as a general guideline how to keep things at manageable level while affording great flair and a lot of freedom with significant decisions drastically changing the outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; hold all the threads easily and manage their interconnections if the number of threads is small - up to three tightly coupled threads, that strongly influence each other. &lt;em&gt;Tsukihime&lt;/em&gt; holds much more than that, I'd estimate the number of threads at roughly 20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to keep the initial pool of threads early on loosely coupled. In each of them you keep tally of points towards given outcomes, or observe essential events. They follow through time whether the player is present or not. Then you arrive at key point or achieve critical score in one of the threads, and a key event occurs, changing the scene drastically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New threads are spawned. Most of old threads either are killed off or reduced to skeletal forms that don't have any importance. Very few most essential threads are picked out and continue in their full flair, reset to known state by the event and maintaining only very minor amount of prior player decisions. New tallies are counted, new events observed, and converge towards another critical point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way the actual decision tree is trimmed to manageable size, the number of threads running at given time is strongly reduced, the number of interconnections perfectly manageable, and the initial trunk with most threads is loosely-coupled and so easy to manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: in the initial stage you can interact with any of the five heroines of the story, and build romantic interest with any of them. Your choices which one to woo will increase the romantic interest towards that one. At certain points the rest of the girls fade into background and you lose most (all significant) options to interact with them... except for specific case when one becomes an antagonist, and a thread of intense war between the two begins, with you on one side or another. If you leave both off, the whole war between them goes only through mild cameos if even that much, while entirely different set of events occupies your focus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T20:19:13.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6907" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6916" CreationDate="2012-12-27T03:49:31.133" Score="1" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m looking to summarize an idea into as few words as possible — to make it as concise as possible. The idea is to ask others for help (putting ego aside), value others’ input, listen to others, learn from others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have so far is “Ask for help and learn from others”, but I’m not that satisfied with it. I’m trying to make a list of rules, such as “be virtuous” or “seek adventure” or “be kind”, and this particular phrase doesn’t really fit in well. Any other suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And please ask me to clarify if necessary. I’ve been running this through my head for a while, so it might not be clear as I think it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4527" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T07:20:56.310" Title="More concise words for &quot;Ask for help &amp; learn from others&quot;" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6900" CreationDate="2012-12-27T05:23:02.237" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usual disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Please do not construe this as legal advice. Etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my understanding from my research and past experience is this. Oh, another disclaimer: I'm an American so my experience is with U.S. copyright law, but I think most of this is pretty much the same in all countries because copyright is controlled by a couple of big international treaties. There may well be some differences in the details, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are paid by someone else to write something for them, it is considered a &quot;work for hire&quot; and they normally own the copyright. It would be a very very good idea to have a contract that specifies who owns the copyright to avoid any legal or ethical ambiguity. If you as the author are retaining the copyright, clearly state what rights you are giving them. Can they print it once or an unlimited number of times? Are they licensed to publish only in their own country or anywhere in the world? Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But I understand that you're saying that you sold them the copyright. Okay fine. So legally, you now have exactly the same rights to this work as someone who had nothing to do with writing it. That is, you have a limited &quot;fair use&quot; right to quote small sections of it, and that's it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But regarding your discussion about program logic: A copyright gives ownership of the exact words used. It does not give ownership of the research, facts, or ideas. So if, say, you sold an article in which you explained why 2+2=4, if you sold the rights, you could not sell those exact same words again somewhere else. But you could write other articles giving the exact same explanation of why 2+2=4, using the same logic and research. You just can't use the same words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been many court cases where someone took, for example, an article from a newspaper, rewrote it in their own words, and published it. The courts have routinely ruled that this did not violate copyright because they did not copy the exact words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The courts have routinely ruled that you do not have a copyright to a fact, only to the words used to describe a fact. So when you sold your calculator program, you are not selling the rights to the fact that 2+2=4. Even if you were the first person to discover that 2+2=4, you do not own a copyright on that fact. You cannot legally prevent other people from adding 2 and 2 just because you discovered it first. The copyright covers the exact text of the program, not the underlying mathematical facts or the techniques used. (You might be able to get a PATENT for the techniques, but that's a different subject.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one fairly recent case, a phone company copied all the phone numbers from another phone company's directory. The first company had deliberately included some fake names in their directory to catch someone doing this, and so they sued. The courts ruled that you can't copyright the phone book. They said that the individual names and phone numbers are &quot;facts&quot;, and so can't be copyrighted. (If they could, then it would be illegal to dial anyone's number.) One can own a copyright to a particular selection and arrangement of facts, but the court said that in this case, the idea of including all the phone numbers in a specific geographical area and arranging them in alphabetical order is so obvious that it does not rise to the level of &quot;creative work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RE Can you re-use the sentence, &quot;My country is great.&quot; Here we get to an issue where the courts routinely wrestle. The fair use doctrine says that you can take quotes of reasonable length from someone else's work. But what is a &quot;reasonable length&quot;? The extremes are obvious: If someone wrote a 300 page book, and you copied 299 pages of it word for word and changed one page, the original writer will easily win a copyright lawsuit against you. (Every now and then someone reads about copyright law and says, &quot;So if I change one word, then I'm not copying the original author exactly, and he can't sue me!&quot; No. Our courts can be pretty stupid, but they're not that stupid. If that was the rule, copyrights would be worthless: you could always just tack &quot;Copied by Bob&quot; at the end now it's &quot;different&quot;.) At the other end, if someone tried to sue you because he wrote a book that had the word &quot;tomato&quot; in it and you wrote a totally different book that also used the word &quot;tomato&quot; and he claims that you stole this word from his book, he will lose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can quote a few sentences or a paragraph or two pretty freely. So I think the short answer is, no, the person you sold rights to would not own the sentence &quot;My country is great.&quot; You could re-use that all you like. Frankly a sentence like that is generic enough that there are probably many people in the world who have written it without having copied it from someone else, but maybe that's just a bad example. Even if the sentence was quite distinctive so it was very unlikely someone else would come up with the exact same sentence, you're still allowed to copy a sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you copy several pages, you're likely on thin ice. This all gets into judgement calls. If, say, you are critiquing another author's book, and so you print a paragraph from his book, then your rebuttal, then another paragraph, then your rebuttal, etc, so that in total you copy many pages, you'd probably get away with it as long as the amount you copy isn't a significant percentage of the whole book. But if you just copy twenty pages straight out of someone else's book, you probably would lose a copyright suit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So all that said, my short answer is: Whatever research or brainstorming you did to write an article that you sold to someone else, you can freely re-use that. Just don't use the exact same words. Take the same information, and write a new article using the same information but different words. I'd be very careful to avoid using similar phrasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the long answer, but it was a long question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T05:23:02.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6895" CreationDate="2012-12-27T05:34:52.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One can debate the validity of the flashback technique, as Lauren Ipsum and Tylerharms do in the comments on another answer. Like many techniques, it can be done well and it can be done lamely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Oh, how I hate movies that start out with a character brooding over the scene of the disaster -- whether it's the end of his marriage or the end of the world or whatever -- and then he stares soulfully at the camera and says, &quot;Let me remember, how did it all begin ...&quot; Lame lame lame!!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the difference between a good use of flashbacks and a lame use of flashbacks? I wish I knew simple criteria I could give.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One point: Make it clear to the reader what's the present and what's a flashback. I've read many books where I got really confused because it wasn't clear what was what. I'd be halfway through a scene before I realized it was a flashback. I recall one book where I was halfway through the book before I realized that it was all a flashback from the first scene. Whether that's a simple, &quot;Twenty years ago ...&quot; or something more artistic, make it obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T05:34:52.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6868" CreationDate="2012-12-27T05:55:37.937" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I've written two non-fiction books. I'm presently struggling through my first novel, which does not include aliens. So I'm speaking here more as a reader than as a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Tannalein says, I'd avoid making names that are unpronouncable. One could make a logical argument that an alien race would have an alien system for making sounds, and so may well have names that humans can't pronounce. But even if it's arguably more realistic, it makes the story hard to read. The trick is to make them strange but pronouncable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other extreme, of course, you don't want your aliens to be named Fred and Sally. You could borrow from other languages, but if a reader has even a general familiarity with that language, it will be just as odd. Better to invent something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to invent at least the rough outline for a system. You don't have to invent a complete language, just sketch out a few general rules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like: Invent an alphabet, preferably including at least a couple of sounds that are not common English (assuming you're writing in English). Like include a sound &quot;xh&quot; or &quot;jb&quot;. Don't make it too bizarre or it violates my advice about pronouncability, but make it odd. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about the pattern of vowels and consonants. Like if one alien is named &quot;Tolon&quot;, another named &quot;Fiemar&quot; sounds plausible. But &quot;Tolon&quot; and &quot;Frangmatuplen&quot; don't look the same, because the vowel/consonant pattern is too different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about length. Having one alien named &quot;Tal&quot; and another from the same plantet/race/whatever named &quot;Brumaxnologoran Frambar Huvangtran&quot; would seem distinctly odd.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many human languages have a pattern to the names, like many names end in &quot;son&quot; or start with &quot;Mc&quot;. Maybe have your aliens have a few common endings for their names. You don't need to explain what it's supposed to mean, just do it. You might even work something relevant to the plot into the names, like the elite all have names that end &quot;-axlon&quot; while the mechanics all end &quot;-tanak&quot; and the warriors all end &quot;-brufarl&quot; or whatever. But I wouldn't go out of my way to work something like that into the plot. If it falls out naturally, cool. But don't force it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, whatever system you come up with, it isn't necessary to explain it to your readers unless it matters to the plot. Personally I always like science fiction stories where there's a lot of &quot;background&quot; that isn't fully explained. It gives the feel that this is a real world with a history, instead of a simplistic cartoon created just to sustain this one story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T05:55:37.937" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6911" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6914" CreationDate="2012-12-27T06:06:57.207" Score="19" ViewCount="3811" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on my first fiction story. And one mechanical thing I struggle with is how to identify the speakers in dialog without constantly saying &amp;quot;Bob said&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Mary said&amp;quot;, etc. Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, I hate to write,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I found an important clue,&amp;quot; Bob said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;What was that?&amp;quot;, Sally said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The killer left behind a glove,&amp;quot; Bob said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Perhaps we can identify him from fingerprints or DNA,&amp;quot; Sally said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc. Said, said, said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried varying up the verb. Saying &amp;quot;Jack replied&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Sally exclaimed&amp;quot;. That works to some extent, but I feel like it stands out to much. It's too obvious that I'm just doing it to avoid saying &amp;quot;said&amp;quot; all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read many books where they leave out the speaker's name, just give the alternating dialog. But even when there are just two speakers this can get confusing, I often find myself saying, wait, which person said this? And if there are three or more characters in the conversation, you can't just count the odds and evens to figure out who's speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just came across a suggestion somewhere to make each character's speech distinct enough that it is obvious who is speaking. I can think of examples where that would work, like if one character is supposed to be a foreigner and so speaks in broken English, we probably don't need to identify him too often. Maybe another character is the mad scientist and always uses technical-sounding language. But beyond that, how can you do this without it sounding fake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2021-12-27T00:15:13.133" Title="Alternatives to &quot;he said&quot; in dialogue" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6907" CreationDate="2012-12-27T06:07:27.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Seek guidance from others&quot;?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or &quot;Seek wisdom from others&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4475" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T06:07:27.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6879" CreationDate="2012-12-27T06:30:06.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;rounding up&#xA;assembling&#xA;collecting&#xA;dragooning&#xA;gathering&#xA;mustering&#xA;marshalling&#xA;corraling, herding, driving&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think &quot;dragoon&quot; is a wonderfully descriptive term, and has the sense of forcing someone to do service that many of the other terms lack (though supplied here by context in the passage). I don't know how many people would understand it today, but it'd probably be my first choice as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think &quot;marshal&quot; fits quite as well as some other choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the word &quot;up&quot; must remain, I favor &quot;collecting&quot;, &quot;gathering&quot;, &quot;mustering&quot;, and &quot;corralling&quot; the best.  I don't think either &quot;hauling up&quot; or &quot;dragging up&quot; fits well at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4528" LastEditorUserId="4528" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T07:11:46.063" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T07:11:46.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6911" CreationDate="2012-12-27T06:41:02.407" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's two main techniques I use. Mix and match as appropriate for your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The simplest one: for a conversation between two people, don't give attributions like &quot;he said&quot;, but just state it. If it's going to be a lengthy conversation, you can also throw names into their speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey Sally, check it out - I found an important clue!&quot; &lt;p&gt; &#xA;  &quot;What's that?&quot;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;  &quot;The killer left behind a glove.&quot;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;  &quot;You think we can identify him from fingerprints or DNA, Bob?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For something more elegant, you can replace the attributions with actions. It conveys more of what is happening in the scene, and perhaps within your characters' minds as well. This works quite well for conversations with many people. I've exaggerated a bit below - you probably wouldn't want to qualify every single piece of speech with an action. A few sprinkled here and there would be enough to make the speaker clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I found an important clue!&quot; Bob held up a scrap of cloth and turned to Sally with a grin.&lt;p&gt;&#xA;  From where Sally stood, the cloth could have been anything. She squinted, but couldn't make out what it was. &lt;p&gt;&quot;What's that?&quot;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;  He shook it around wildly, like a dog that had found a new shoe. &quot;The killer left behind a glove!&quot;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;  Sally's heart quickened, and she raced over to examine it closely for herself. &quot;Perhaps we can identify him from fingerprints or DNA!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you may simply want to use &quot;he said&quot;, &quot;she stated flatly&quot;, &quot;she whispered&quot;, &quot;he sighed&quot;, and the like, from time to time. They're not bad to use, just don't overuse them. Though granted, there are some who will argue that you should just use &quot;he said&quot; the whole time because most readers will skim it (I'm not in that group, fyi :P). See below for an example where you vary it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey Sal, I think I found an important clue!&quot;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;  Sally turned toward Bob, who held what seemed to be nothing more than a discarded scrap of cloth. &lt;p&gt;&#xA;  &quot;What's that?&quot;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;  &quot;The killer left behind a glove!&quot; His voice was low and excited, as though they were sharing in some kind of conspiracy. &lt;p&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Of course he did,&quot; she said dryly. &quot;Perhaps he was nice enough to leave us fingerprints and DNA on it as well.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastEditorUserId="2410" LastEditDate="2012-12-31T14:47:00.380" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T14:47:00.380" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6911" CreationDate="2012-12-27T06:44:01.583" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some paragraphs, have the speaker do things in addition to speaking.  Readers will understand that it's the same person acting as speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bob knocked on door.  &quot;I found an important clue.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sally held her breath. &quot;What was that?&quot;  She cranked the pencil sharpener more furiously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The killer left this behind.&quot; Bob held out an evidence bag and waggled it.  In the bag was a bloody glove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Carlos's glove.  The glove Sally had thrown in the wood chipper only three hours ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sally gripped the pencil so hard that it snapped.  &quot;Perhaps we can identify him from fingerprints or DNA.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are only two speakers, you don't have to identify them in every paragraph.  As long as the dialogue alternates between the speakers, readers can keep track for a few paragraphs.  And if each speaker has a distinct voice, you can go even longer without identification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T06:44:01.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6907" CreationDate="2012-12-27T06:56:42.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Kathryn's examples are good.  I can't think of a better, more succinct phrase than &quot;from others&quot; to convey that part of the meaning.  If an approach combining the help and informational aspects is possible, it seems you have some choices for the ideas of the request and what is requested:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[ Ask for | request | seek | solicit ] &#xA;[ advice | guidance | insight | knowledge | wisdom ]&#xA;from others.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to knowledge, the big difference from information, of course, is that knowledge is learned information, or information made useful.  I would personally shy away from such terms as &quot;teaching&quot; and &quot;instruction&quot; unless that is the specific sort of help that is intended to be sought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think an optimal choice depends on the reason for the structure of the proposed rule, &quot;Ask for help &amp;amp; learn from others.&quot; Is it really that the reader should ask for help from others, as well as learning from others, and that these are just bundled together as actions taken with regard to others in service to conciseness?  For example, if one is building a roof, should one ask others to help one hammer in the shingles even if one already knows how, but still do one's best to learn from them in that and any other contexts that might arise?  Or is the help and the learning supposed to occur together, i.e. one should ask for help in the form of knowledge or guidance when one doesn't know what to do?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the latter, I think that something like &quot;Seek knowledge from others&quot; or &quot;Seek guidance from others&quot;, depending on the specific context, might be most appropriate.  But if you're just bundling together two things one should do with others, your original attempt isn't actually too bad, but I might try different variations on for size, e.g. &quot;Ask others for help and guidance&quot;, &quot;Learn and seek help from others&quot;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The slight clunkiness of the wording at present is caused, I suspect, by the desire for brevity.  It would seem more correct to convert &quot;learn&quot; to a gerund, but it sounds silly to &quot;ask for learning from others&quot;.  It would also seem a little more clear structurally to go with something like &quot;Ask for help from, and learn from, others&quot; despite the repetition, but of course that's just ugly; nor do I much like &quot;Ask for help, and learn, from others&quot;, though it does resolve the issue of &quot;Ask for help and learn&quot; being scanned initially and perceived as asking for two things, one of which is a verb.  Once you've decided exactly what you're trying to convey and chosen your terms, I'm sure it will be easy to juggle things up a bit and find an arrangement that's both short and sweet-- perhaps even more so than this entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4528" LastEditorUserId="4528" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T07:20:56.310" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T07:20:56.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6911" CreationDate="2012-12-27T07:09:46.613" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the advice about simply eliminating the attribution in simple dialogue; it's often not necessary.  The tips about using action to convey the speaker are good as well.  I particularly like Lexi's second example, but all of them are excellent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should strenuously avoid overdoing any use of vernacular or colloquialisms.  I think it's a terrible idea to give verbal affectations to your characters just in order to distinguish who's speaking in dialogue sections.  It might seem all right in a humorous context, I suppose, to have your London cabbie always append &quot;guv'nor&quot; to the end of every sentence, but even that would be barf-worthy as humor.  Problems with colloquialisms include not getting it right for the locals, who always have a keen inner ear for this stuff, and badly dating your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really only have one more tip to add: don't be afraid of &quot;said&quot;.  An editor friend of mine says that nothing screams &quot;newbie&quot; like a long string of &quot;breathed&quot;, &quot;growled&quot;, etc.  Of course, if someone's shrieking, she should be allowed to shriek; my friend's point is that a labored attempt at artful variance will often come off as such.  (From the same perspective, I personally think that too many heart-quickenings and pencil-snappings could eventually wear a little thin, though I really do like the examples given.) With careful attention to the techniques demonstrated by Dale Emery and Lexi, the occasional &quot;said&quot; to succinctly get you out of structural hot water may be a grace note instead of a hindrance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4528" LastEditorUserId="4528" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T07:18:52.613" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T07:18:52.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6884" CreationDate="2012-12-27T08:03:32.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from word choice, I see major issues with the passage.  I think instead of searching for the perfect single word to show varying forms of irritation (which you would doubtless plan to switch out to avoid repetition, yes?) you should start considering such rules as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;· Show, don't tell!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;· Tell the story from the character's point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of telling the reader directly that Aarii's irritated, you should trust them to be a little more perspective; throw more expressive hints in dialogue, if helpful; and do your best to show through action and thoughts.  Thus I think you could do worse, in your example, than making these few changes (this presumes that we have previously set the stage for Aarii talking on the phone with her mother):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Maybe you should think about getting engaged. Maybe even before your poor mother dies of old age, hmm?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Why should I get engaged? Because Bela did? I will when I'm &lt;em&gt;ready&lt;/em&gt;, Mom.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I know, my little shrimp-cake. Now I want you to get some sleep, and make sure that the hotel drops you--&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Yes, of course the hotel car will drop me off. Goodbye!&amp;quot; Aarii slammed the receiver so hard that the phone bounced off the bed.  She stared out at the falling snow &lt;strong&gt;[or picked her nose, or whatever]&lt;/strong&gt; as the busy signal bleated up at her, then eventually fell silent.  No way would she get engaged to Shloim, the toad, just to keep up with her overachieving baby sister!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This bit of asinine foolery (I'm incapable of better at the mo due to being a little woozy, sorry) hopefully serves to illustrate a couple of points.  First, you can show irritation through such helpful measures as slamming phones, punched faces, bowling balls heaved through mirrors and the like.  You've already got Aarii throwing the phone on the bed; that plus annoyed phrasings in the dialogue can work quite well enough to get the irritation across.  You don't need to telegraph irritation, then follow up to explicitly, tritely beat the reader over the head with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, since you seem to be telling the story from Aarii's point of view, you should try to  shorten the narrative distance and get the reader right inside Aarii's head, instead of narrating things as if you were observing Aarii from within the room.  You do this by eliminating &amp;quot;telling&amp;quot; statements that have the effect of standing the reader near but still away from Aarii in the room; a common mistake is to use such phrases as &amp;quot;Aarii said, eyes blazing&amp;quot; (since Aarii can't see herself).  Instead, just present things directly and &lt;em&gt;as Aarii would experience them&lt;/em&gt;.  For example, since Aarii can hear her mother's voice, it places the reader as a third-party observer outside of Aarii when you suppress the mother's words; isn't it better to simply present what Aarii hears, along with the rest of it?  Let the reader &lt;em&gt;be&lt;/em&gt; Aarii, as much as possible.  This will also give you more chances to present useful contextual information that will help explain just what emotions Aarii's feeling, and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4528" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T08:27:47.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6868" CreationDate="2012-12-27T08:27:04.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming, from your use of the word &quot;people&quot; instead of explicitly referring to aliens (not that they can't be people too), plus your explicit mention that some/all current Earth cultures will have vanished by then, that we're talking about future humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the others have given some excellent advice, but I just wanted to add that in my opinion, you don't necessarily need to come up with &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; new types of names, that aren't tied to any current culture.  This is for a few reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;· While technology such as the Internet, even today, is greatly accelerating the rate of dispersion of memes and other information across previously largely disconnected cultural groups, it also serves to preserve certain things.  Thus, for example, people will be watching &quot;African Queen&quot; on their computers and media screens practically forever, unless civilization in the large undergoes some cataclysmic reboot.  Thus not only will people be exposed to American English as spoken in that movie (and all the others from a similar period and the same culture), but the names as well; some future people may name their children &quot;Charlie&quot; because of it, just as people imitatively name children today.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;· This technological fixation can be expected to extend even more to systems of symbolic representation, and computers which store and track personal information will of course for all time be far less susceptible to transcription errors than handwriting was in the old days.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus especially if the customs for last-name transmission remain the same for a significant portion of society, it's not entirely out of the question that someone would be named &quot;Bill Smith&quot;, and (when he chose to vocalize, if ever) pronounce his name roughly as you just heard it in your head, a billion years in the future.  Certainly other cultures and traditions would arise over so vast a time, and would probably outnumber the ancient forms by far, but they would also have been influenced by them to some degree.  I find it more likely that many languages and pidgins would contain little snippets of at least half-recognizable sounds from today, than that all cultural influence from today would have vanished.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will update this if I think of a good example, but one approach I've seen in some cases to naming is to take some recognizable forms from today, and apply various degrees of changes to them to indicate the passage of time.  Thus instead of &quot;Bill Smith&quot;, a writer might name a character &quot;B'yll Smit&quot;.  That sort of thing always seems labored and cheesy to me if not done with an extremely fine touch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any event, I think that your task, which depends on how far into the future your story is cast, is not really to make everything seem completely different from today's world, but rather to determine how much of today's culture remains, morphed though it may be, and what sorts of new changes and additions have occurred.  So you'll need some techniques for generating new-type names that are believable in light of your future culture(s), and you'll have to think long and hard with how that meshes with the remnants of today's cultures, in light of the history that will have happened in between.  The question is not just what will have happened to isolated splinter cultures, but what happened with the ones that weren't isolated but still evolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4528" LastEditorUserId="4528" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T08:32:29.233" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T08:32:29.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6911" CreationDate="2012-12-27T14:26:41.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You already have some very good answers here, but it's also worth looking up synonyms for tweaking the mood and feeling for &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt; -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sshhh ‘I've found a very important clue’ Bob whispered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob grumbled under his breath ‘I've found an important clue’ but it might be too late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob hollered ‘I've found an important clue’!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘I've found an important clue’ Bob opined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob uttered with steely intention ‘I've found an important clue’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T14:26:41.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6900" CreationDate="2012-12-27T18:37:17.690" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, the author is copyright holder of a work, but this principle is often deviated from. When the work is commissioned by another party, some countries automatically transfer copyright, some leave it with the author. Some countries do not even allow copyright to be transfered voluntarily. International treaties such as the Berne Convention and the WIPO Copyright Treaty offer very little clarification on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fine details of these arrangements are usually complex and often up for debate. It is therefore advisable to explicate who shall hold the copyright on a commissioned work. It is not uncommon for a writer to merely provide an irrevokable, non-exclusive license for publication. Of course, as copyright holder, you are free to reuse your own work, as long as you abide by any contractual obligations. The following will assume someone else now holds exclusive rights to the writings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;But you write a sentence, 'two plus two is four' then you cannot reuse this sentence in same context in same way again. That will be considered as copy paste and reusing old content. In writing you can not use exact same sentences again.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, I suspect, is the heart of your problem. You're in luck; it's false. Generally, the entire work is protected by copyright. Parts of a work, for example several pages from a book, are still protected, but some exceptions may apply, most notably fair use and the more restrictive quotation rights. Sufficiently small parts no longer qualify as original expressions and do not meet the criteria for protection under copyright law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single sentence, such as this, carefully crafted in a deliberate attempt to be eligable for my monopolisation, may more than meet the minimum. On the other hand, a more factual news article may contain entire unprotected paragraphs. The distinction is unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The events, facts, ideas and opinions you have described are not protected themselves; their expression is. When writing another piece on the same subject, I would advise making an effort to rephrase. That should be fairly simple. If at any point it proves too difficult to express a thought differently, the wording you used in the first place probably was not original enough and can freely be reused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4530" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T18:37:17.690" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6900" CreationDate="2012-12-28T08:09:02.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a programmer I must state that you have made an error in your assumption. You can't reuse the code you have 'sold' to your employer/client, if you have sold the material and intellectual rights to the code. Freelancers usually aren't selling that rights, only the final product, so the situation is different. In your case it would be selling the rights to publish your article only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can write something else &lt;strong&gt;inspired by&lt;/strong&gt; the original, but inspiration is writing from scratch and not copying, the result will be similar but not the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, something more dubious, modification of original article by word changing, changing of word order etc. I would not recommend it but this is already done in SEO world you know - black SEO techniques based on copying the whole content from sites such as Wikipedia, with strong synonimization and word order changes. I haven't heard of process for such misuse, it's not trivial to prove. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are selling the unique articles to your customers, and I think (though you haven't written it directly) for those customers the google uniqueness is the only think that matters. If you simply copy the article or some paragraphs, the google algorithm could mark the page of your customer as copy and remove it from search list, so they are protecting against it. They contain no original research, so you are free to paraphrase them, but &lt;strong&gt;not to copy&lt;/strong&gt; even a sentence literally!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they would be articles for some printed press, there could be also the copying of essence involved. If the article was based of your research, copying those research results and writing this article once again would be probably against the contract between you and your customer (but this would be AFAIK directly written in contract). Own research is for example, the results of the polls etc., not writing based on books from library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4509" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T08:09:02.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6927" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-28T20:21:53.290" Score="7" ViewCount="1623" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a similar post about keeping a character nameless in order to contribute to his closed off personality. My concern is is keeping all my characters nameless, only describing their actions (and in doing so, some of their physical traits). The idea would be to get the reader to assume they know some unsaid things about the characters (specifically the species) until the end. I don't think they should have human sounding names, but I don't want to give them names that hint at them being anything but human (at least not until near the end), so for the greater part of the story they would remain nameless&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking I can get by with referring to relationships (mother, father, son, daughter, friend) and possibly a title. Is there anything else I should keep in mind in handling characters this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4536" LastActivityDate="2012-12-30T22:24:46.843" Title="How can I keep my characters' identities a mystery successfully?" Tags="|characters|mystery|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2547" CreationDate="2012-12-28T20:31:18.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't read your story so I have no idea if it's boring or not. But the number of characters of itself has little to do with it. You cannot measure how interesting a story is just by counting the number of characters, multiplying by the number of different settings, and adding the square root of the elapsed time. That's not how it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't look for arbitrary ways to make the story more interesting: use characters and settings that fit the story you want to tell. If at some point in writing you conclude that you cannot develop your characters the way you want without introducing an interaction with a new character, then bring in a new character. But likewise I'd say that if a story has many characters and one or more don't contribute anything distinctive, drop them. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T20:31:18.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6927" CreationDate="2012-12-28T21:45:46.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd primarily avoid having the characters do anything that a human couldn't do, or wouldn't naturally do.  No tail-wagging, licking of a character's own butt, etc.-- but also no swinging from tree to tree, flinging poo, or things of that nature, if you want to avoid any question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A way to actively conceal the characters' species would be to find examples of things that only humans would be expected to do, find a rationale for the non-human doing it, and insert it into the story with enough context to make it believable after the big reveal.  For instance, a dog might get on the bus, after being noted in passing as standing next to a woman with a red coat, who's later revealed to be the owner or dog-walker.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your characters are communicating with each other, of course, you'll either have to let them communicate as humans would, or risk giving it away quite early.  Humans do a certain amount of howling at, sniffing of, and cowering in front of each other, but those are not typically our exclusive modes of expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4528" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T21:45:46.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6768" CreationDate="2012-12-29T07:22:26.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think part of the problem is that this poem seems devoid of meaningful content, although I certainly might be missing something.  It seems like a bunch of phrases into which you've thrown the word &quot;rocks&quot;, and then there is some guy you used to love in a different way.  I don't think that any sort of imagery, no matter how seductive, will cure the failure of this poem to draw any connection between the guy you used to love (differently), and the rocks.  What are the rocks doing in this poem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will tell you right off that I'm not much of a poet, though I've never tried at it much.  I know it's difficult.  Still, I tend to subscribe to the feelings of Stephen King, expressed in &quot;On Writing&quot;: you should be able to fully explain your rationale for whatever you've put into a poem.  Can you do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4528" LastActivityDate="2012-12-29T07:22:26.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6932" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6934" CreationDate="2012-12-29T08:41:35.103" Score="10" ViewCount="613" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a sample of something I wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Erin watched Ruth as she disappeared between the cars and the&#xA;  multitude of people crossing the street. She stood there for a moment,&#xA;  staring at the city scene in front of her. A strange feeling of&#xA;  loneliness and alienation invaded her. &lt;em&gt;Not long ago, there was&#xA;  someone here, and now that person isn't here anymore.&lt;/em&gt; It was a simple&#xA;  and obvious fact. And even though Erin had experienced it a thousand&#xA;  of times before, she felt as if it were the first. She shook her head.&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;I drank too much. The alcohol is doing funny stuff to my brain.&lt;/em&gt; She turned around, let out a sigh, then went down the escalator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if it is a bad practice to combine third-person narration with first-person narration without using &lt;em&gt;he/she thought, she/he wondered, etc&lt;/em&gt; (and just using italics instead)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course, I will do this in moderation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2012-12-29T13:23:40.773" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T01:16:07.917" Title="Is it a bad practice to occasionally add first-person narrative to third-person narrative?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6932" CreationDate="2012-12-29T11:11:48.073" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can be a bit jarring at first. That said, the italics are a good signpost that something has happened, that the read needs to assess this sentence differently.  As long as the first couple times you use it, it's evident what you are doing (this will probably be the hardest part), then I don't see any real reason you couldn't use it as a device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with most things in writing, it's about your usage of it and how well you personally pull it off rather than the device itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastActivityDate="2012-12-29T11:11:48.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6932" CreationDate="2012-12-29T13:13:23.140" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The italics indicate that the words are the person's thoughts, so it's almost the same as speech. It's entirely fine. I agree with Joel, however, in reminding you not to overdo it (or any given technique). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(On an entirely separate note, why is she &lt;em&gt;walking&lt;/em&gt; down an escalator? Escalators move. Is it broken or does she want to go faster than it's carrying her?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-12-29T13:13:23.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6927" CreationDate="2012-12-29T19:44:20.800" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be very careful with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new writer submitted such a story to my writer's group.  The main character, referred to as &quot;she,&quot; took a drink, picked up her trunk, and a few other things.  In the end we discover she is an elephant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer's intention was to amuse us by exposing our assumptions.  Unfortunately, not a single one of the half dozen reviewers was amused.  Every one of us felt swindled.  The writer did not expect this, and became very defensive.  She did not return to the writer's group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what happened is this:  We readers want to feel involved in the story, involved with the character.  As we read the words, we make mental images of what we're reading.  We put ourselves into a reader's trance, guided by the written words.  This trance is the reason we read.  In general, we don't like anything that pops us out of the trance (awkward grammar, out-of-sequence actions, and so on).  This story created a trance, then shattered it.  That's jarring to the reader, and the writer had better have a very good reason for doing it, a reason that is worth it to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time we train ourselves as writers to induce this reader's trance and not violate it.  If our story stars a pair of buddies from page one, and one buddy is a foot and a half taller than the other, we want to say this right away so that the reader can form the right mental image.  We don't want the reader to form a mental image and invest in that for 60 pages only to discover that it's wrong.  That forces the reader to stop reading, rewind, and replay events with this new mental image.  It shatters the reader's sacred trance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly we writers want to create a trance and sustain it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few exceptions.  When we write riddles (&quot;thirty white horses on a red hill...&quot;), we try to disguise the subject.  Our audience knows it's a riddle, and a metaphor.  When we write mysteries, we deliberately disguise the &lt;em&gt;significance&lt;/em&gt; of the clues.  But even in a mystery we wouldn't try to fool the reader into thinking that the detective was looking at a clothing trunk if she were really looking at an elephant's trunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So be very careful with this.  For most of your story, you're trying to induce a trance.  If the point of your story is to lull us into the wrong trance, and then to point out our folly, I think you're in trouble.  And if this is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the main point of the story, then the rest of the story will have to offer something &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; special to compensate for shattering the sacred trance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2012-12-29T19:49:42.517" LastActivityDate="2012-12-29T19:49:42.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6932" CreationDate="2012-12-29T20:36:14.477" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the others, but would encourage you to think about why you are adopting this technique, and to consider taking it even further.  Consider describing the whole scene from your main character's point of view, with the goal of obliterating the (quasi-)omniscient narrator:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ruth disappeared between the cars and the multitude of people crossing the street. &lt;i&gt;[Erin is able to see this; no further explanation is necessary, since she could only know it by seeing.]&lt;/i&gt; Erin stood for a moment, staring at the city scene in front of her. &lt;strike&gt;A strange feeling of loneliness and alienation invaded her.&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;i&gt;[This is a show-don't-tell &quot;violation&quot;; instead of telling, find some way with perception/thought/action to &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; that she's lonely and on the brink of despair. You know, the usual suspects--empty-feeling stomachs and all that; maybe she's alone among cultural strangers to boot. Just stay away from observations of her facial expression; she can't see her own eyes, though she can know that she's narrowing them, tearing up, etc.]&lt;/i&gt; &lt;strike&gt;Not long ago, there was someone here, and now that person isn't here anymore. It was a simple and obvious fact.&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;i&gt;[&quot;That person had gone, leaving the absence of that person behind&quot; etc. feels tautological and bloaty.]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;strike&gt;Even though Erin had experienced goodbyes a thousand &lt;strike&gt;of&lt;/strike&gt; times before, she felt as if this were the first.&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;i&gt;[This is a trite way of trying to intensify her apparent loneliness. Show, don't tell! If she had experienced a thousand goodbyes, either they occurred earlier in the story and could be better explained there, or will be relevant later, in which case it can be explored then. In any event don't try to squeeze more out of this walking-away with a few phrases than is humanly possible. Sometimes a goodbye must be just a goodbye; otherwise you risk melodrama.]&lt;/i&gt; She shook her head. &lt;em&gt;I drank too much. The alcohol is doing funny stuff to my brain.&lt;/em&gt; She turned with a sigh and stepped onto the escalator, just a lonesome Goth girl in a cruel, cruel world. &lt;i&gt;[Just kidding.]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few ideas that may help:&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Don't simply name emotions. Describe them and their impact through context, using perceptions, thoughts and actions-in-response of the main character.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Eliminate as many he-saws and she-thoughts as possible, and just describe the action directly, as the main character would naturally perceive it.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Don't overdo the Public Displays of Emotion. It can be melodramatic, and readers may feel insulted and bored.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Just use italics to indicate thoughts.&lt;/b&gt; (Good going!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another technique which is starting to grow on me is to strip the italics from around thoughts and describe the main character's mental state directly, which might seem counterintuitive.  I picked this up from a writing manual a while back, and it is useful in some situations more than others.  A quick snippet, from a hypothetical novel that will by the grace of God never be written:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Erin slammed the receiver into the cradle. How dare Chumpster pretend that he hadn't lied? She inserted the magazine into the AK-47. Time to pay, hamburger creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of approach keeps things direct.  It's interesting because you're peering into the character's head, without the need for setting off thoughts with any sort of quotations or formatting, or even indicating what is thought and what is description of her state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding showing loneliness, since &lt;i&gt;Frankie and Johnny&lt;/i&gt; has been on my mind so much lately, I will give an example from that movie. Frankie is of course intensely lonely until the end, and loneliness in general is a theme explored with wonderful humanity and subtlety throughout the movie.  At one point Frankie, eating her dinner at home alone, begins to choke and administers the Heimlich maneuver to herself.  The resigned way in which she does it, quickly and with a total lack of panic, shows that she has had to do it before.  &lt;i&gt;That's&lt;/i&gt; loneliness, shown in a way that a person can vitally understand without being beaten over the head.  Obviously the movie equivalent of telling emotions directly is a little different (softball facial expressions), but hopefully you get the point.  If I had a literary example ready at hand, I'd give it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4528" LastEditorUserId="4528" LastEditDate="2012-12-29T21:02:14.280" LastActivityDate="2012-12-29T21:02:14.280" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6938" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6942" CreationDate="2012-12-30T11:14:59.147" Score="4" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many universities offer degrees in creative writing with courses such as “Short Story Writing” or “Fiction Writing”. I would imagine that such courses are quite unlike other subjects, such as math or history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do typical upper-level creative writing courses look like in the US?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does the average assignment look like?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do professors typically assign grades?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="3375" LastEditDate="2012-12-30T13:18:53.813" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T15:39:28.390" Title="What does a typical creative writing course look like?" Tags="|degree|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6927" CreationDate="2012-12-30T22:24:46.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Truth be told, that is one of the hardest things ever.  Definitely give him a title as a reference point.  Sometimes a title works just as well as an actual name.  For example: &quot;The Dark-Haired man&quot; could refer to a specific character whose name we don't know.  Something like that.  Be very careful to be specific and make it as obvious as possible who is doing what at which times.  Without a name for a character, you will want it to be obvious when he/she is speaking or making an action, just so you don't confuse your readers.  I hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4542" LastActivityDate="2012-12-30T22:24:46.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6911" CreationDate="2012-12-30T22:27:52.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my best friends in writing is action.  Instead of tagging them with &quot;said, exclaimed, shouted, etc.&quot; Try having them do an action just before or after the quotes.  This lets you know who said it without it being boring.  Try it for a while and see if it works for you! Hope This helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4542" LastActivityDate="2012-12-30T22:27:52.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6941" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-30T22:34:22.373" Score="17" ViewCount="109937" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find myself often in writing using too many commas, but then going through and editing many of them back out again or restructuring to use full-stops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a rule of thumb I've forgotten from my school days (English language was never pushed very hard beyond first-school) that would help me decide when a comma is appropriate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4543" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2022-06-20T14:35:25.833" LastActivityDate="2022-06-22T09:23:58.597" Title="How many commas is too many?" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6938" CreationDate="2012-12-31T00:29:49.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My graduate level creative writing courses worked like this, more or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You sign up or volunteer to bring in work. You sign up in advance. In classes of 10-18 people, everyone shared work about three times a semester.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On your day to bring in work, you make copies for the entire class and distribute. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was always some variation here. Either you read your work in class and then have it critiqued immediately following the reading, or you hand out your work on the turn in day and then have it verbally critiqued the following class after everyone has read it over and marked it up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was commonly graded on word count, though some writing professors graded on a vague notion of &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt;. In-class participation contributed to my grade as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of assignments, I had a few professors who would give writing prompts based around certain thematic elements. This was rare. Normally, a class on Short Fiction meant that you were expected to write short pieces and not novel chapters or poetry. Likewise with a Screenwriting class. The professor would initiate discussion and the class would function as a &quot;workshop&quot;. There were never tests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you'll find that a writing workshop takes on the personality of the professor. Typically, students gravitate towards the professors who teach workshops that speak to their style. You're right. The classes are not like math or history classes. They're much more colloquial and student run. Occasionally professors will run a workshop rigorously, but usually they will just facilitate discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stress, though, that this was my experience at a small college at the graduate level.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T00:29:49.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6932" CreationDate="2012-12-31T01:16:07.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add the following point of view. Using italics to indicate a different narrator draws attention to the writer and to a technique, a writerly artifice. If you're already removing speech tags in an attempt to streamline your writing--a technique that your audience will have to adapt to--why not drop the italics too and insert the character's thoughts into the narrative. Your readers will have to learn adapt to it, but it's not unprecedented (Joyce employed it (most readably) in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1455082&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Portrait Of the Artist As A Young Man&lt;/a&gt;) and it removes the ostensible intrusion of the writer caused by the italics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T01:16:07.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6941" CreationDate="2012-12-31T06:31:52.850" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's any simple metric. Like, no one can say you should have twenty-seven commas per page or anything like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first question would be, Do you have commas in inappropriate places? If you have sentences like, &quot;Bob walked, to, the store, slowly&quot; then yes, there are too many commas. But a sentence that contains a list could legitimately have many commas. Like, &quot;He found a bottle, three coins, two keys, a small metal box, a pack of matches, some scraps of paper, and a patridge in a pear tree.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real problem is not the number of commas per se, but whether they are being used properly. If they are, then I wouldn't even think about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think you have too many commas, and they are all used appropriately, it may be that your problem is that your sentences are too complex. If you have too many clauses in each sentence that can indirectly result in too many commas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Tylerhams said in a comment, perhaps if you gave a couple of sample sentences folks here could give a more specific reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T06:31:52.850" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6941" CreationDate="2012-12-31T12:05:03.430" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to say that much of the time when people use a comma, they really just want to use a period but don't know it. Elmore Leonard says that an exclamation point should not be used more than once per hundred thousand characters; I feel a similar rule should exist for commas.  But, of course, Elmore Leonard doesn't make the rules and neither do I (fortunately).  And I've already used three commas in this paragraph. What gives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to make a big assumption here that you are using commas where they legitimately belong (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/commas.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/commas.asp&lt;/a&gt;).  I am going to make the even bigger assumption that you are in fact using commas to elongate your sentences, to make them complicated, to have them drag out well past their usefulness; and that you want them to stop, but you aren't sure how to do it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people feel that complex sentences somehow infuse their writing with more edge or depth.  That long, lustrous sentences make your writing seem smarter.  &lt;strong&gt;But commas are just a tool.&lt;/strong&gt; They can only do what they are told, whether for the better or worse of a sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you feel you have too many commas, you do&lt;/strong&gt;.  In places that are appropriate, make them separate sentences.  The worse that can happen is that you cut it back too far, you can see that you have cut it back too far, and you put some of the commas back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="181" LastEditorUserId="181" LastEditDate="2022-06-20T14:01:14.380" LastActivityDate="2022-06-20T14:01:14.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6941" CreationDate="2012-12-31T13:30:48.270" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How many commas is too many?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When they're incorrectly used. There are four principal uses for a comma –&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a &lt;em&gt;listing comma&lt;/em&gt; in replace of words such as and, or etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a &lt;em&gt;joining comma&lt;/em&gt; in joining two sentences together with and, or etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a &lt;em&gt;gapping comma&lt;/em&gt; to show that words have been removed instead of repeated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a &lt;em&gt;bracketing (or isolating) comma&lt;/em&gt; to mark off a weak interruption of the sentence so the sentence flows more smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth taking time to understand how these four main comma uses are used and in doing so it will help you remove all the unnecessary or incorrectly used ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastEditorUserId="4459" LastEditDate="2012-12-31T20:22:23.553" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T20:22:23.553" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6911" CreationDate="2012-12-31T15:25:21.480" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When two persons speak, take an approach of &amp;quot;One paragraph per person&amp;quot; and give the reader rare reminders, especially in form of emotes and actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I found an important clue,&amp;quot; Bob raised a piece of cloth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;What was that?&amp;quot;, Sally turned to him with interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The killer left behind a glove.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Perhaps we can identify him from fingerprints or DNA?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I don't think so,&amp;quot; Bob shook his head. &amp;quot;The glove means there are no fingerprints.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giving them obvious sides of conversation (asker-answerer, attacker-defender, hopeful-skeptic) removes any doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;So, maybe we try potassium...&amp;quot; the young lab assistant shrugged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Far too reactive.&amp;quot; professor shook his head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Calcium?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Non-conductive.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Lithium?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Still far too reactive.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I've got it! Platinum!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Ha. Ha. Ha. We work on a budget, kid.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(30 lines later you'll still have no doubt which one is the assistant and which one is the professor.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, this may make pretty long paragraphs whenever one side does more than a line of talking at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Perhaps we can identify him from fingerprints or DNA?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Yes, of cour...&amp;quot; Bob's voice trailed off. &amp;quot;Oh. Wait. I contaminated it, didn't I?&amp;quot; he turned to her with waning hope in his eyes. &amp;quot;It can still be used to...&amp;quot; he stuttered, &amp;quot;is it? Please, Sal, tell I didn't destroy the only clue,&amp;quot; he pleaded, meeting her blank stare. &amp;quot;Sal?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever you make an exception from the rule, make it obvious and re-identify the talkers, either in speech or in narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Were you present at the location at 16 hours sharp, or not?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Jill, I know it's difficult but I need a verbal answer.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;...and this concludes our story.&amp;quot; Tom closed the binder and leaned back in his armchair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The silence lasted a minute or so. Nobody stirred. Tom chuckled quietly. &amp;quot;So, any takers?&amp;quot; he swept his gaze around the gathered, &amp;quot;or do I see a flock of chickens?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it gets much more difficult whenever there are more than two speakers. You can allow yourself short passages of unattributed back-and-forth, and &amp;quot;one paragraph per speaker&amp;quot; stands, but you really need to start abusing &lt;em&gt;X said&lt;/em&gt; whenever there's no firmly established, undisturbed dialogue between two participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T15:25:21.480" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6938" CreationDate="2012-12-31T15:39:28.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What tylerharms describes is similar to my experiences at an undergrad level at a fairly  large college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were 10 to 12 people in the class. We received an assignment (Write a short play, or Write an essay about something personal) and had to turn it in by a specific deadline. The deadlines were rotated so that in each class we were discussing one person's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So on Tuesday, let's say, I would make copies of my play and distribute it to everyone in class. The next class period (Thursday) everyone was expected to have read the play and marked it up, and we discussed it. People gave me comments and I defended my choices or accepted the critique. At the end of the class, everyone gave me back their marked-up copies for my review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I genuinely don't recall how any of my professors graded. I think one poetry assignment was &quot;Take a previous work you submitted in this class and improve it using your classmates' suggestions,&quot; but beyond that, I guess it was subjective using the same criteria as everyone else: did you like it? did it work? was it technically sound?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Essay Writing class, which was three times a week, we would begin the week with a five-minute writing exercise. Someone would volunteer a word (&quot;defenestrate&quot;) and everyone had to write nonstop for five minutes on the clock about that word. Then one or two of us might share their writing and we'd critique it. We also read published essays for homework and discussed them in the same way we did one another's work. That class also had scheduled office hours, where you had to come in outside class time and discuss your work with the professor for half an hour or so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T15:39:28.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6950" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-01T06:59:44.303" Score="4" ViewCount="234" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since writing my last question, I've been able to write a handful more items and have tried to nail down some more specific items I can ask about improving my writing.  This issue became readily apparent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In writing programming code, I've found that it can be really easy for things to just wash together so you can't see what is there.  I've found many times that something I struggled with one day was easily solvable by going back the next day and looking simply because everything washed together and I didn't see something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm finding that in my writing, as well, especially if it has markup in it.  I can write something and then put it away and come back about 2-4 weeks later and see stupid things like poor phrasing that renders the expressed idea into nonsense, grammar issues, and so on.  Now obviously, I can't sit on everything I do that long without moving onto something else, but I find even that I don't see things in the next day or two because what I want to say is so ingrained in my mind that I substitute that for what is actually being said by the written word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you get around the aspect of your writing being so fresh in your mind that you can't see what is actually being communicated by it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4476" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T17:28:19.927" Title="Combatting Excessive Familiarity Of Writing" Tags="|discipline|criticism|technique|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6950" CreationDate="2013-01-01T11:08:16.370" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to look at it in a different way, different perspective, different mindset or different time frame. Go away and do something different, come back and look at it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything you write will generally need to go through a number of revision, editing and proof reading stages to correct and sharpen the writing. Whether you apply these as actual stages or whether you do them instinctively and innately is up to you and how you work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you first write something you should really only consider it as a rough draft or mind dump of thoughts and ideas. The above stages then mould and shape this into a final draft which should be free of grammatical, spelling errors, cliches etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're probably thinking, gee that's going to be a lot of work, but as you become more experienced you'll become faster and more accurate in how and what you write which ultimately means less revision stages and hopefully less corrections to go through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more you write, the more you edit and revise the faster and more accurate you will become.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T11:08:16.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6950" CreationDate="2013-01-01T11:39:44.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take breaks, spread it out in time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Change perspective. Take proofreading to a park. Take it to a pub. Change your environment. This isn't very efficient but it helps some.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have some other person to read it and point out shortcomings.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your productivity suffers due to breaks, work on a few things in parallel. Write two different novels a scene at a time, skipping between one and the other, and squeeze a short story or two in between.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Edit, edit, edit, edit. I usually spend two-three times as long editing as writing. And I often go back to editing first chapters while still writing later ones, way before the end of the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If an imagery of given, further section is vivid, write it out of sequence. Squeeze it out to free your mind for writing the parts at hand. Use it later, when its time comes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T11:39:44.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6950" CreationDate="2013-01-01T17:32:48.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't re-read your work immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just write. Keep yourself on track with your outline (you have an outline of some kind, right? Even if you're a pantser, you have some idea of where the story is going) and don't look over what you did for however long you need to lose familiarity with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need two weeks, then write for two weeks and don't look at anything you've written until 14 days have passed. In fact, you could even try starting each day with a fresh document and not allowing yourself to look at anything less than 14 days old (date each document). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't want to stop writing, but you can stop re-reading. Or as SF. notes, try working on two things at once. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T17:32:48.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6950" CreationDate="2013-01-01T18:50:59.300" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good way to assess yourself from a new point of view is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Read your work out loud. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your ear catches things your eye misses, both on the level of content and form. Some things your ears will notice better than your eyes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unwanted repetition of words and phrases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;word choice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how well you've achieved a desired tone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;rhythm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;emotional range&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how real/believable/human you sound&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers tend to think of communicating from page to brain, but it's worth reminding ourselves from time to time that story writing was born of an oral tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple links that discuss this topic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/katelee/2012/08/01/to-write-like-a-human-read-your-work-out-loud/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.forbes.com/sites/katelee/2012/08/01/to-write-like-a-human-read-your-work-out-loud/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.juliamccutchen.com/blog/?p=697&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.juliamccutchen.com/blog/?p=697&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T18:50:59.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6189" CreationDate="2013-01-01T19:48:18.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing you seem to be forgetting regarding myths, is they are extremely &lt;em&gt;prevalent&lt;/em&gt; stories. I prefer to avoid the word &quot;good&quot; because, honestly, some of them are rather crap as stories, but they are definitely &lt;em&gt;memorable&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proof? They survived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about Shakespeare. He certainly wasn't the only writer of 16th century. More likely there were thousands of writers contemporary to him. Still, how many of them can you mention off top of your head? How many are still played on scenes all around the world, or published with new reprints every year? Shakespeare was extremely &lt;em&gt;memorable&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;prevalent&lt;/em&gt;, and so motives of his sceneplays are included all over the popculture - for the simple reason, they are &lt;em&gt;memorable&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now Shakespeare's sceneplays are - what - 400 years old? Compare that with myths from ancient Greece. Norse gods are at least 2000 years old. Hercules/Heracles is roughly 3000 years old and still fresh. Egyptian gods survived good 5000 years. It pretty much means they appealed to the audience all that time. Now this is some good marketing sample of a successful franchise!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, by choosing mythology you choose &quot;tested and true&quot;, something that continuously kept being successful long before your medium was born. People kept retelling the myths for centuries and they always found willing audience. You'd need to screw up really bad to retell it and not be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll refrain from stating my opinions on influence of including mythology on actual quality of the final work. I can just state it's a safe marketing move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T19:48:18.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6958" CreationDate="2013-01-02T00:53:49.323" Score="8" ViewCount="638" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did some thorough searching for duplicates of this question, but I don't think they really cover the same spirit of the issue I'm having. (here are some examples of similar but different questions)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2389/third-person-pov&quot;&gt;Third person POV&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/99/third-person-objective-in-action-scene&quot;&gt;Third-person objective in action scene&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3027/write-a-1st-person-story-with-a-3rd-person-narrator&quot;&gt;Write a 1st person story with a 3rd person narrator&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's my underlying issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing in third person limited omniscient perspective. The piece is finished, and I've been soliciting feedback from friends. One strategy I employed was an attempt to vary the voice of the narration based on the character being followed. The primary character is very simplistic in his world view, and the sentences are delivered in &quot;bullet patter&quot; and syncopated phrases: &quot;He zipped the hooded shirt beneath his jacket. The hood flapped behind him as he walked.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next character is an academic (a psychiatrist, in fact) who tends to be more eloquent and in most cases much more observant, so the narration style becomes much more affected by her perspective: &quot;She turned a Rubik’s cube idly with her hand, watching a rotating desk toy that spun as it revolved, which created a variety of unique motions that alternated based on the speed of its descent.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this can potentially come off as gimmicky, but as the story progresses the narration ultimately settles in a place between these two styles. My attempt was to put the reader in a headspace that resembles that of the character being followed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just muddled? Is the concept of doing this in violation of the purpose of a third person narrator? Are there examples in the wild that pull this off well that I should examine? Are my friends just not getting it, and if so is that a sign I shouldn't use it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="586" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T02:16:55.107" Title="Is it a bad idea to vary the voice of the narrator in third person (limited omniscient)?" Tags="|fiction|perspective|narrative|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6957" CreationDate="2013-01-02T01:26:13.823" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, I love it. I think it's great. The narrator is sort of echoing the perspective of the the person being observed, and you're absolutely right that the two characters see things differently and speak differently. Having a different narrative &quot;voice&quot; for the two of them is a subtle way of showing the reader their worldviews before they even open their mouths. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't say why your friends aren't getting it, but I think it's a splendid idea and you should stick with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T01:26:13.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6959" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6960" CreationDate="2013-01-02T09:18:04.187" Score="1" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any good limits or rules of proportion between time (or pages) spending on characters of primary list and secondary list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, that if character of secondary list appears only at the beginning and in the end, how much time i should spend on him? Are there any rules about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4430" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T12:21:49.997" Title="Characters time spending: Are there any good limits for time spending on characters of secondary list?" Tags="|characters|pages|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6959" CreationDate="2013-01-02T09:36:38.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid the only answer here is &quot;as long as needed&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story must captivate you, the writer, enough that the characters fight for their time share, appear for their specific purposes, linger in the background creating the mood, surprise us with their reappearances, break the mold, capture our hearts, capture &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; heart. You spend on each just enough time to have them fleshed out sufficiently, fulfill their role and then some - to let them be more than a literary tool, be a live soul too. This is not something that can be measured in pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to apply a technical metrics like time or pages, engineer the timeshare given to each character, don't live the story with them but just construct a literary product matching given technical standards, you won't be writing a very captivating story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T09:36:38.083" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6959" CreationDate="2013-01-02T12:21:49.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a character &lt;em&gt;appears only at the beginning and in the end&lt;/em&gt; then you need to devote sufficient time and space to ensure that the readers remember him (or her) when he reappears but not so much that they wonder why he was not more prominent in the middle of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot think of this in terms of number of words because that takes no account of the impact of the events in which the character is involved. A person (apparently) killed in a devastating explosion may be &quot;gone&quot; by the end of page 3 but you readers will be aware of who she is when she reappears horribly scarred but recovered from her amnesia at the denouement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the character has a low-key role in the opening section you may need to put more time into describing him or building his back-story so that he is memorable when revealed as the long-lost heir.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T12:21:49.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6963" CreationDate="2013-01-02T15:47:36.463" Score="6" ViewCount="734" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I wrote the beginning of something about novel-sized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I drafted totally sweet, lovable protagonists in an interesting, original relationship, I placed them in a solid world, I painted the location which was to be the main theater of the story in a rich flourish and lovely detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I loved the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I proceeded with building the actual plot. The conflict that only loomed in foreshadowing details now enters the actual build-up phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it's boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had imagined this phase would be much shorter. Unfortunately, there's way too many details that will be needed later, and simply must be presented right now. I can't dump it all on the reader yet, this must escalate introducing all the parts that are to come together later. But I planned for too many of these parts and introducing them takes too long, is too slow and about all are quite essential. And even when they do come together eventually, now as I look at the climax, it's merely decent, not nearly good enough to justify the long, slow, boring build-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, unless I come with a miraculous solution with making the build-up part more captivating, about all of the core plot is to be scraped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, I'd hate to discard the wonderful protagonists and their relationship. They came up versatile and original enough that they could easily fit in a different scenario (or serve as protagonists of a lengthy, varied series). But my head is pretty much empty concerning replacement &quot;big plot&quot; to give them. I'm currently in recovery of a burnout that lasted good 10 years and only slowly forcing my imagination to get back up to speed. Coming up with a &quot;replacement plot&quot; will be difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to deal with that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drop the whole thing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shelve it and hope for ideas in nondescript future?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Crop the lackluster plot with its foreshadowings and try to get the protagonists into something small, simple and fun just to get a touch of what they are capable of?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to find a replacement plot somehow? How?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trudge on and hope for the best?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to refactor the current plot, trimming it to more manageable dimensions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drop some bad, big bomb early on, and leave the current build-up as a background activity?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take a break?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you experience something like that? Please share your experiences, tell me How did you deal with it? What may work, and how? What won't work and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2020-11-23T22:39:17.207" Title="Dealing with lackluster plot failure" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|planning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6962" CreationDate="2013-01-02T16:58:46.763" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could introduce a sub-plot. That is, you have your main climax. Call it X (big-X). You need some exposition to lead  up to X. Call it x (little-x). So the story should go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;xxxxX&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in reality the exposition takes too long, so it's more like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;xxxxxxxxX&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe you could add another mini-climax. Call it Y. You'll need some exposition for Y. Mix that in with the exposition for X:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;xyxyYxxxxxxX&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if you need a big exposition for Y, you're back where you started, so Y has to be deliberately crafted to require less exposition than if it stood on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you give the reader some immediate payback for their time-investment in the story, and lessen the amount of exposition before you hit a climax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T16:58:46.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6950" CreationDate="2013-01-02T17:28:19.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For something book-length, just don't do your re-read immediately. Don't Write chapter 1, re-read and update chapter 1, write chapter 2, re-read and update chapter 2, etc. Instead, write chapter 1, write chapter 2, re-read and update chapter 1, write chapter 3, re-read and update chapter 2, etc. When you're done with the whole book, then go back and re-read the whole thing and do more updates. By the time I finished my books I must have read every word at least four or five times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, get someone else to read it and tell you what they think. I've had a few times where I had a chain of logic that made perfect sense to me, than I showed it to someone else and she said, &quot;Wait, how did you get from step 3 to step 4?&quot; In a novel it might be more like, &quot;Wait, why would Sally suddenly decide to call her brother?&quot; As the writer you have all sorts of information about the characters or the subject in your head that may never make it to the paper. Sometimes this leaves gaps for the reader that you just can't see because you're too close to it. (Like, &quot;But Sally and her brother are very close. She always calls him when she's in trouble. Oh yeah, I guess I never mentioned that in the story, did I? And I cut out the two previous references to her brother because they were slowing down the plot, so now this just comes out of nowhere ...&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T17:28:19.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6965" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6971" CreationDate="2013-01-02T17:53:24.367" Score="19" ViewCount="4331" Body="&lt;p&gt;We surely all have little quirks to our speech. Like my daughter once criticized my writing for using the word &quot;surely&quot; too much. (See, I used it on this post.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you keep all your characters from sounding the same in dialog? That is, how do you keep them all from sounding just like the writer? It's easy to say, &quot;Pay attention and be careful&quot;, but ... pay attention to what? Okay, in my case I've got my eye out for the word &quot;surely&quot;. But what else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some obvious extremes. You can make the scientist use a lot of technical language. A 5-year-old should normally talk like a 5-year-old and not like a college professor. In the story I'm working on right now I have a character who lives in another country and who would likely not use English much, so I put some grammar errors into his speech. Etc. Maybe you could give a character some stock phrases that he always uses: &quot;Elementary, my dear Watson&quot;, &quot;To the Bat Cave, Robin&quot;, etc. But I'd think there are limits to how far you can go with such things without it sounding too gimicky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any tips?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2021-01-29T05:28:22.467" Title="avoiding making all your characters sound the same" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4660" CreationDate="2013-01-02T18:34:49.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is, of course, true that any statement that begins &quot;women think that ...&quot; or &quot;women care about ...&quot; will not be universally so. But, modern political correctness notwithstanding, it is also true that women as a group have tendencies that are different from men as a group. It is, of course, absurd to suppose that anyone who talks about favorite recipes MUST be a woman and anyone who talks about car repair MUST be a man. But in real life, women talk about recipes a whole lot more than men do and men talk about car repair a whole lot more than women do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think someone should make a TV show or movie with a scene where a motorcyclist rides in wearing heavy clothing and a helmet with a dark visor, and does some really daring, macho maneuver, out-drives everyone in the place, etc etc, and then skids the motorcycle to a stop in front of the awed audience, whips off the helmet and ... it turns out that it's not a beautiful blond with long wavy hair and impeccable make-up after all, but a rugged-looking guy! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think the idea of making female characters who are more stereotypically masculine than any man in the room is just worn out. It doesn't surprise any more because it's done all the time. That's not to say that I think there's anything wrong with having a female character who excels in a traditionally male area or vice versa. I just wouldn't do it to make a point, because that point has been done to death. I'd do it because it works in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A while ago I stumbled across a program on the Internet that claims to be able to guess the gender of the writer from a sample of his or her writing with 80% accuracy. (I just did a quick search for it. Maybe this is it: &lt;a href=&quot;http://hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php&lt;/a&gt; If not, it's the same idea.) The gist of their method was that they studied writing of men and women and found that certain words were more likely to be found in the writing of one than of the other. For example, they said, women use personal prounouns like &quot;I&quot; and &quot;you&quot; more often, men use numbers more often, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried a few examples (of writing I could easily cut-and-paste from web sites and where I knew the gender of the author) and in each case it got it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This could lead to a new insult: You write like a girl!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I've seen this question, I think I'm going to look into their word list more myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T18:34:49.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6965" CreationDate="2013-01-02T18:55:37.163" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Spend more time with your character outside the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have you ever seen those email questionnaires which go around&#xA;occasionally? What's your favorite toothpaste, Coke or Pepsi, Beatles&#xA;or Stones, ever been to Africa, what's under your bed, etc.? Get one&#xA;of those, blank it out, and answer it &lt;em&gt;from the perspective of your&#xA;character.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cast your character. That is, in the movie, is your college    professor played by&#xA;Morgan Freeman, Nathan Lane, Queen Latifah, Benedict Cumberbatch, or Judi&#xA;Dench? Imagine the person talking. Really hear the voice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a letter to the editor from your character about something&#xA;which the character is passionate about: global warming, gun control,&#xA;abortion, dangling participles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write an email/letter from your character to his or her best friend.&#xA;Mother. Spouse. Send the character on vacation and write a whole email exchange.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nice bit of advice I saw somewhere: what does the character do in a&#xA;quarrel?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've spent some time establishing the person beyond his or her place in the plot, it will be easier to write in that voice. You may well have to go back multiple times for multiple people, and you may have to tell your beta readers and editors &quot;Make sure my characters don't all sound the same.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-01-15T12:16:35.183" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T12:16:35.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2013-01-02T19:12:52.947" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read an article by a film critic once where he commented (not an exact quote, quoting from memory), &quot;When was the last time you heard someone say, 'That could have been a good movie, but they just didn't use the f-word enough.'&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His point, of course, was that the opposite is true. There are many people who do not like profanity and who will not read your book if it contains more profanity than they are willing to tolerate. In some cases their tolerance level will be zero. There are very few people who will throw a book away because it doesn't contain enough profanity. You will lose far more readers by including profanity than you will gain by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is rarely &quot;necessary&quot; to use profanity. I often hear writers say that people like their character would use a lot of profanity in real life, so to be realistic they must use profanity. Yes, if you say that two sadistic killer drug dealers get into a turf battle and then one shouts at the other, &quot;You silly person! Why are you so mean to me?&quot;, that is not going to sound believable. But would it really be unrealistic to say that he shouts, &quot;You worthless scum! You're gonna die for this!&quot; Okay, maybe in real life he'd say &quot;You f---in' scum! You're gonna f---in' die for this!&quot; But so what? It would be rare that the slightly milder version loses anything of value to the story, it is not inconsistant with the characters ... and it avoids offending many potential readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many times in fiction that we avoid being too explicit to avoid unnecessary offense. If you want to say that a character is sick, you may write, &quot;He threw up.&quot; You don't have to do into detail about what it looked like and how it smelled. Some readers may revel in the added realism of such detail, but most will simply find it distasteful. I realize that characters have to go the bathroom, but I'm not interested in reading the details of how the procedure went. Etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people use profanity as a cop-out way to add drama to a statement. If you're an illiterate high school dropout and you want to express strong emotion, maybe the only way you can do that is to use profanity. But if you're a writer, you're supposed to have a command of the language. You should be able to put words together that explore the depth of human feeling and thinking. I've read lots of writing advice that says, You can't make a bland statement dramatic just by adding three exclamation points. I think in the same way, you can't make a bland statement dramatic just by adding three curse words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T19:12:52.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6965" CreationDate="2013-01-02T20:36:11.900" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Lauren's list, here are a few things I do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give each character a distinct background.  Some possible elements to vary are geography, culture, ethnicity, education, age, friends, family.  Each of these can affect a character's vocabulary, grammar, and general attitude toward the people and world around them.  Even in the same family, age and birth order vary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give each character a definite personal history, with several significant events in their recent past.  Their history will affect their general attitude.  The recent past will put potentially useful joys, problems, and conflicts into their minds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the characters already know each other before the story begins, know the significant events of their relationship, especially their recent interactions.  Write a conversation between them from a week, a month, or a year before the story starts.  Have one character describe an interaction between two other characters (perhaps witnessed from far enough away that the interaction can't be heard).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interview your characters.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://dalewriting.dale.emery.name/2008/09/interviews/&quot;&gt;Here's how I do it&lt;/a&gt;, with links to some example interviews.  These interviews really helped me to understand each character's psychology and attitudes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to include any of this in the story, but the better you know your characters as individuals, with individual histories and individual relationships, the better you will be able to give them individual voices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T20:36:11.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6965" CreationDate="2013-01-02T21:04:58.200" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think speech idiosyncrasies are a part of distinguishing characters from each other, but they are, more than anything, stylistic, writerly flourishes. Conan Doyle didn't define Sherlock Holmes's voice by excessive use of stock phrases. Sure, Holmes utters some choice expressions like, &quot;You know my methods&quot;, but those are few and ornamental. What defines Holmes is the hyper-rational nature of his speech patter, which is a direct representation of his intellect: of his character. He speaks the way he does because he &lt;em&gt;needs&lt;/em&gt; to speak that way because he needs to think that way to solve crimes with efficiency. It's a matter of necessity owing to Conan Doyle's understanding of his character's wants and needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it boils down to that awareness of necessity. That is what creates unique characters and distinguishable dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To understand those root desires and motivations, ask yourself these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What does my character want/need? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What is my character willing to do to get it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Variations on those questions, such as can be fleshed out using the very useful exercises suggested in other answers, will help you develop the answers to those two primary questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know what your character truly wants, you will know how to phrase dialogue to communicate that want, effectively creating a new manner of speech distinct from your own. As an example: how does a 5-year-old respond to the question &quot;Where are the cookies?&quot; Well, that depends. Does the kid want to avoid punishment? Does she want to put the blame on her big brother who is mean to her? Does she, for some asinine reason, feel compelled to tell the truth about eating the cookies? You are less likely to sound like yourself in answering the cookie question if you understand what specifically your character wants to accomplish with her speech. This may sound simplistic, but the ardor comes in letting the question of necessity guide every dialogue passage.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Characters, unlike real people, speak for a reason. As readers we expect this. We expect to glean personality traits through dialogue. As a writer, understanding that readers are searching for this makes our job easier. We don't have to convince our reader to analyze our character in the same way that we might have to convince a love interest to take a fancy for us. We have only to understand a character and to express their desires in speech and the reader will do the rest.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB: Sherlock Holmes never once utters the phrase &quot;Elementary, my dear Watson&quot;. The closest he comes is in &lt;em&gt;The Crooked Man&lt;/em&gt; where he responds to one of Watson's congratulations with, simply, &quot;Elementary&quot;. FWIW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastEditorUserId="4390" LastEditDate="2013-01-02T21:50:19.237" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T21:50:19.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6965" CreationDate="2013-01-02T22:07:51.747" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;On top of what others gave as excellent advices on getting &quot;in the mind of a character&quot; let me add a few crutchy &quot;dialects&quot; you can give your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The speaker is using Learner's English. The language is correct, but simple. The sentences are short. Correct sentence structure is used, where native speakers use clauses. The speaker avoids complex constructs. Their list of words is limited. Sometimes the speaker uses words that marginally apply and look awkward.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Archaic. The person has learnt English from KJV Bible foremost, and is currently striving with proper, modern English. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rapid fire speaker speaks in rapid sentences, and abuses conjunctions, like when the message is completed, the person must digress and keep talking about something barely related but this is how one builds the character, isn't it? And the digressions contain random weirdness, and hidden plot clues, or non-sequiturs, which may be funny, or just weird and the style is annoying at times but memorable and energetic, and some love it...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Laid back. Speaking is a tiring activity. So... Sparsely. Only essentials. Frequent pauses... no? Well... Pauses are good. Sit back and enjoy. It will be fine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Concrete. Military style, sir. No redundancies, no ambiguities and only regular amount of courtesy, sir. Reporting facts, staying on topic and hiding emotions. Respectful, but firm.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uh... a recluse? Forgetful? Not used to all that... communication. All harder words are there... but building sentences takes... um, effort? Time? These... whatdyacallem... interjections happen often.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slangs. I'll skip examples.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A classy language. You should not use crude contractions. Choosing fabulous flourishes of the language will give aura of elegance, but it is a clear sign of an uncouth upstart to abuse some &lt;em&gt;verbiage&lt;/em&gt; where cultured but common words suffice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should develop more original and closer to &quot;generic&quot; styles for the main cast, but these are very nice to give some secondary characters some depth and character at low cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T22:07:51.747" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4660" CreationDate="2013-01-03T08:35:53.827" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my own language, there were a few words that I used differently that instantly marked my cultural background - &quot;silverware&quot; and &quot;butter&quot; are two I remember. Similarly, there were were words that had different meanings to the men and the women that I mixed with - &quot;sheila&quot; is the only one I remember.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're trying to avoid stylistic stereotypes, I just wanted to make the point that men and women, like different cultural groups, use different vocabularies. If you were aware of this difference, you wouldn't be asking the question, so the normal way to learn about this is to &lt;em&gt;listen to the words other people use&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4557" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T08:35:53.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-03T09:36:26.157" Score="6" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you research subjects for a novel that might be sensitive? Both cultural and jurisdictional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: I usually try to &quot;research&quot; the setting and characters for my texts from real life. When I wrote a story about a priest I visited a lot of old churches and graveyards just to get a &quot;feeling&quot; for the place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm planning to write a story where the main character is a 12-13 year old girl. Since it's a long time that I was in that age myself I wanted to get a feeling for what you look like at that age, some vocabulary and so on. Therefore I sat down with my friend Google and typed in a search string looking for  girls around 12 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just before hitting the enter button I was struck by what I was doing. Oh-no this looked so wrong in so many ways even though my intentions where honorable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4227" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T14:07:30.147" Title="Researching sensitive subjects" Tags="|creative-writing|research|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6973" CreationDate="2013-01-03T14:07:30.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to write from a child's perspective, I suggest spending time with actual children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have any or aren't related to any, then you'll have to find some. You might try volunteering at (in the U.S.) a YMCA, or getting a job as a camp counselor. Just remember that if you're getting involved in other people's lives, take the relationships seriously. You can be a peripheral actor in the lives of adults without too much trauma, but don't ever treat kids like research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barring that, well, try and find your old diaries, read as many books with 12-year-old protagonists as you can, and find a good editor. JK Rowling didn't have a 10-year-old when she wrote the first Harry Potter, but her characters sounded age-appropriate to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T14:07:30.147" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6975" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6979" CreationDate="2013-01-04T16:15:53.013" Score="10" ViewCount="4825" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story targeted towards children in which the protagonist is a young girl. I find that in writing her dialog and the narrative, I'm producing a lot of very long sentences, to the point that an entire paragraph may be seven or eight lines long, but consisting of a single sentence. It feels stylistic to me, sort of relating to the youth and impetuousness of the main character. It's not that the entire thing is written this way; these very long sentences tend to occur at times where the character is upset, or very busy, or rushed, or has a lot going on. I wasn't thinking about it specifically when I was writing them, they just came out naturally as I wrote, but I think they are meant to convey the mood a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or am I just rationalizing poor writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A few examples:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In context, the main character (&quot;Antimony&quot;) is upset and thinking about other times she was upset:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And once in the kitchen, when Antimony devised what she thought would&#xA;  be a very clever recipe for a cake which she wanted to make for her mother's&#xA;  birthday, where instead of using baking powder, she would use paprika so the&#xA;  cake would be all red and beautiful, and instead of eggs and milk, she would&#xA;  use eggs and orange juice because everyone knows that orange juice goes better&#xA;  with eggs than milk does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few lines later:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And when the timer dinged and Antimony opened&#xA;  the oven and carefully pulled out the oven rack and saw what had happened, she&#xA;  cried because she had been so excited about her clever recipe, and because she&#xA;  wanted so badly to surprise her mother with a nice birthday cake, and because&#xA;  it had taken so much work and she was very tired and now she had nothing to&#xA;  show for it, and because anyway she didn't even have a present to give to her&#xA;  mother now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An unrelated example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The work was good to focus on to keep her mind off her troubles---especially&#xA;  once she was done gathering the wood and no longer had to wander around so&#xA;  much---and in no time at all she had a small fire going, which turned into a&#xA;  bigger fire, and then an even bigger fire, and then a fire which was a bit too&#xA;  large and she had to poke at the logs with a long stick to move them about the&#xA;  right way so that it would settle down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T19:24:21.947" LastActivityDate="2019-03-02T03:26:38.413" Title="Very long sentences: personal style or just bad writing?" Tags="|style|character-development|sentence-structure|middle-grade|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6975" CreationDate="2013-01-04T18:16:01.897" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd have to see these excerpts in context of her thoughts in other situations, but I think if you're doing it deliberately to mimic her feelings and thoughts, it's fine. It feels like nervous-energy stream-of-consciousness, and if that's what you're aiming for, you have it down nicely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying for a slightly silly book, I'd even ramp it up a bit more and throw in some hyperbole:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The work was good to focus on to keep her mind off her troubles &amp;mdash; especially once she was done gathering the wood and no longer had to wander around so much &amp;mdash; and in no time at all she had a small fire going, which turned into a bigger fire, and then an even bigger fire, and then a ripping great fire, and then a fire which was really rather too large for her taste, thank you very much, and she had to rush about and find a really long stick so she could poke at the logs and spread them out so they'd settle down and behave themselves like proper firewood logs ought to, which is to say burn respectably and give off some heat and light and not try to set the woods ablaze.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-08-23T10:58:44.633" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T10:58:44.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6977" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6980" CreationDate="2013-01-04T02:22:21.563" Score="19" ViewCount="112976" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had a few people read pieces of narrative writing I've done, and they seem to take issue with the fact that I sometimes put a piece of speech inline with the rest of a non-dialogue paragraph, like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jill found a box of mints she liked and took it off the shelf. She walked up to the cashier. &amp;quot;How much is this?&amp;quot; she asked, holding it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Two fifty,&amp;quot; replied the cashier. Jill handed him the money, took the mints, and left the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it's part of, or sandwiched in the middle of, a longer paragraph, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Jill walked home, the mints jiggled happily in the box in her pocket, as if they were waiting to be eaten. Suddenly, the box snapped open and one mint fell out. &amp;quot;Dammit,&amp;quot; said Jill, bending down to pick it up. As she picked it up, eyeing it, she noticed that the mint didn't have any dirt on it at all, despite falling onto the dirty, wet sidewalk. &amp;quot;I guess you're spoiled anyway, so I can't bring you to Fran,&amp;quot; muttered Jill, so she popped it in her mouth. Suddenly, she felt changes occurring in her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there actually a style rule against this? Does it actually make it more confusing for the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4566" OwnerDisplayName="Joe Zeng" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2021-11-29T01:46:10.440" Title="Must every piece of speech get its own paragraph?" Tags="|style|dialogue|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6975" CreationDate="2013-01-04T19:50:36.863" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it largely depends on what kind of &quot;children's book&quot; we're talking about.  If this is a book for teenagers (or even &quot;tweenagers&quot;), then it is an excellent way to convey a feeling of restlessness or stress.  If we're talking about younger audiences, it might be dangerous simply because the sentences could be confusing to the reader, invoking in them an &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; feeling of distress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see nothing wrong with the style, but relatively &quot;new&quot; readers might find trouble deciphering it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4565" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T19:50:36.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6977" CreationDate="2013-01-04T20:28:34.417" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the middle of editing a book where I'm &lt;em&gt;adding&lt;/em&gt; this technique, so I endorse it whole-heartedly. :) My two rules are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't confuse the reader. Make sure that no matter what, it's clear&#xA;who is speaking. This applies to narration, dialogue tags, action tags, and lack thereof of all of them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A new speaker gets a new paragraph, regardless of where the dialogue&#xA;starts in the paragraph. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your examples follow both these rules, and I quite like them. There's no reason to start Jill's dialogue on its own line in the middle of a narrative paragraph when it's perfectly clear she's the only one speaking. And since she continues to speak without anyone else interrupting her, the second line of dialogue still doesn't need a new paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T20:28:34.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6941" CreationDate="2013-01-04T21:27:27.903" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're using commas where they shouldn't be, they should obviously be removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One less common example of the misuse of a comma that might happen is &lt;strong&gt;comma splicing&lt;/strong&gt; - using commas to join two independent clauses and create a run-on sentence. It happens like this, sometimes you miss it because it looks like an subordinate clause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, sometimes all the commas do belong where they are and yet it still feels like too much. Usually it's a case of this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think that situations such as this one, where there are lots of nested parenthetical, but still grammatically discernible, phrases, are the issue, as far as I know, where most people have the most trouble with the use of commas, because, because of all that nesting, they tend to take a lot more mental accounting to parse. Usually, in cases like that, in order to avoid comma overuse, the solution is to reword the sentence to make the phrase more direct and decipherable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, the issue where people have the most trouble with the use of commas is in situations such as the above where there are lots of nested parenthetical phrases that are still grammatically discernible but take a lot more mental accounting to parse because of all that nesting. Usually the solution in cases like that is to reword the sentence to reduce comma usage and make the phrase more direct and decipherable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if you have too many commas, usually it's not the commas themselves that are the problem. Look at your sentence structure and see if you're taking yourself for loops while reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4566" LastEditorUserId="4566" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T12:48:15.590" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T12:48:15.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6983" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-04T22:09:00.887" Score="2" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;When using the word &lt;strong&gt;&quot;however&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; in my story, I feel like using a semicolon before it disrupts the flow of words in the readers head too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is the usage of a comma or semicolon necessary in front of the word &lt;strong&gt;&quot;however&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the sentence I'm dealing with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrary to first opinions; however, the school was public and cost nothing to enter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to make these descriptions sound like a narrator was speaking in normal everyday dialogue, where we normally wouldn't pause before saying &lt;strong&gt;&quot;however&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, despite usage of a comma before &lt;strong&gt;&quot;however&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; in an essay etc, is it OK to skip it in a novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4518" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T18:00:33.017" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T18:00:33.017" Title="Possible interactions of punctuation marks with the word &quot;however&quot; in a novel" Tags="|style|editing|word-choice|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6983" CreationDate="2013-01-05T05:53:20.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The use of the semicolon is incorrect.  The sentence should read&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrary to first opinions, however, the school was public and cost nothing to enter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, you cannot omit the first comma in the sentence as constructed.  The sentence also doesn't sound like one that most people would use in everyday dialogue, due to structure and word choice.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might consider just getting rid of the first clause and starting with &quot;However&quot;.  Advice would be easier to render if the preceding text were given as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4528" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T05:53:20.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6985" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-05T07:28:39.163" Score="1" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;In light of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6811/how-do-you-genuinely-improve-the-quality-of-your-writing&quot;&gt;the questions I've been asking here&lt;/a&gt; and the questions I've had about my writing, I thought of a good candidate to try and be more specific about.  This is a small paper I had to write for one of my classes.  I had the electronic version of this (and not the printed one I turned in), and re-read it and found it interesting how my guesses were so spot-on.  So I was thinking of posting it to another web forum.  I don't have any plans of selling this work, so I thought it would be a good candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The topic and goal: The professor at the time was really interested in Bill Gates' book &quot;The Road Ahead&quot;.  It had been published roughly 4 years before this, and the goal Gates had with the book was the assignment.  We were to make three predictions about what we thought would happen in the near future (5-10 years) with the computer industry and support those things with adequate reasoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Critique Questions: As with many of my papers, this one came back with no critiques at all.  I figured out very easily that it didn't hurt my grade, so I guess it satisfied the professor.  But I went over it before I posted it and found six problems from a logical or grammar standpoint and fixed them.  So I can say given my awareness of things, it's as good as I know to do.  Reflecting stuff I &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; heard in the past:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Are there any egregious grammar or sentence structure errors that I'm not seeing?  One of those six errors was a sentence that was completely nonsensical that I somehow missed, so I figure this is good to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Clarity: Does what is on the written page make logical sense and clearly communicate an intent in a non-confusing fashion (for example, no actor/actions confusion)?  Do the sentences logically flow into one another as written?  Am I being too excessive in that regard (another paper I wrote had the single phrase &quot;more flowsy than you need&quot; on it, so I have to ask)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Are there any instances of extra or superfluous words or phrases which have no useful function?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Do I use words in an incorrect fashion? (i.e. &quot;which&quot; versus &quot;that&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the time that anyone might spend on this!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(originally finished 04-03-2000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a very interesting future to the use of information&#xA;  technology in business and how business views information technology. &#xA;  I believe that general demands in business as well as user demands&#xA;  will change and shape the computer industry in the years to come. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Right now in history, the computer industry is at its point in&#xA;  development similar to that of automobiles in the era of Henry Ford. &#xA;  Before their widespread acceptance, automobiles were feared as the&#xA;  “horseless carriages” that thundered down the paths that horses and&#xA;  stagecoaches took by the people who were hesitant to accept the new&#xA;  technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The time of widespread fear of computers by the general populace that&#xA;  paralleled the period of the “horseless carriage” occurred in the late&#xA;  1970’s into the 1980’s.   As the Ford Motor Company (as founded by&#xA;  Henry Ford) brought the automobile into the age of increasing&#xA;  acceptance, Bill Gates and Microsoft has brought the computer into the&#xA;  age of increasing acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There will need to be more changes to computing and information&#xA;  technology.  Furthering continued acceptance of information technology&#xA;  as a valuable tool in life would be a major focus of the developments&#xA;  in information technology.   To that end, there are three foreseeable&#xA;  factors which should happen to reach this goal.  Standards for&#xA;  usability of systems should increase in order to simplify the use and&#xA;  value of information technology. Furthermore, the development of&#xA;  high-bandwidth and wireless systems at an affordable price which&#xA;  provides for all the demands of the users will become necessary.  Then&#xA;  as the number of automobile dealerships and repair sites have&#xA;  increased with their acceptance, the number of trusted and reputable&#xA;  computer dealers that are available will increase, along with the&#xA;  knowledge of the average customer for information technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Delivering The Right Data To The Masses Without Headaches&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simplification of the use and implementation of information technology&#xA;  will increase as time passes.  Demands of more knowledgeable users for&#xA;  systems will lead to easier used and maintained systems in business. &#xA;  This will lead to higher standards being placed on design and delivery&#xA;  of not only the right data, but the right data at the right time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Delivering the applications and hardware to deliver the right data&#xA;  needed at the right time will more than likely involve several&#xA;  technological changes.  Wireless access is an infant in the life cycle&#xA;  of industries and innovations will continue to come from this industry&#xA;  to provide higher bandwidth with more reliable wireless access.  Voice&#xA;  recognition and command will eventually be perfected to the point that&#xA;  people can obtain data of differing types via simply talking into a&#xA;  microphone versus using a mouse or typing in a keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to market pressure from the home user, the commercial software&#xA;  industry is currently moving in this direction.   Software is coming&#xA;  out all the time that is supposed to aid or help the user in&#xA;  performing their task or obtaining the data they need.  These demands&#xA;  will carry over into the business world as largely uninformed users&#xA;  will learn to expect more from information technology in terms of&#xA;  delivery of the right data at the right time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Furthermore, there will be vast opportunities in the information&#xA;  technology industry to make money in delivering this ease of use and&#xA;  portability to users in terms of the software or in terms of training&#xA;  and support.  There will be major switches in how information&#xA;  technology is perceived by business and users alike.  They will learn&#xA;  to expect more quality, user friendliness, and reliability from their&#xA;  information systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Taking Computing Power For A Road Trip&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the increasing acceptance of information technology and especially the &#xA;  Internet, the desire for&#xA;  businesses and users to be able to have computing resources at their&#xA;  fingertips will increase.  The nature of these changes will involve&#xA;  smaller hardware, as well as wireless access to different data sources&#xA;  such as the corporate network, satellite, or the Internet.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Information hardware will truly become mobile to the point of possibly&#xA;  wearing it as a wristwatch and gaining different functions such as&#xA;  times, global-positioning system access, and paging.  In addition,&#xA;  what we currently know as PDAs or personal digital assistants will&#xA;  evolve to have better user interfaces and wireless access to a home or&#xA;  corporate network.  Computing power will become common in automobiles&#xA;  as well to perform functions such as routing telephone calls,&#xA;  providing directions, and even programming music that is of an&#xA;  acceptable taste to occupants of the vehicle.  Providing instructions&#xA;  to the hardware will be as simple as giving voice commands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With all this mobile computer power, fast and reliable wireless access&#xA;  will be required to provide the information.  Many wireless services&#xA;  are already in place for various functions such as paging and cellular&#xA;  telephone access.  These standards will need to be further improved&#xA;  and augmented with other standards and would-be standards such as&#xA;  wireless network access and broadband access to provide for the&#xA;  eventual demands that users will place on the systems, such as&#xA;  interactive voice and video.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sprint’s PCS or personal communication services are a candidate for&#xA;  such a system.  It is not widely enough implemented or reliable enough&#xA;  to provide a stable connection but it has the potential to provide a&#xA;  suitable enough bandwidth for voice, data, and video.  It also&#xA;  provides access for paging and cellular telephone access through one&#xA;  access number or point.  This model will prove a useful basis for&#xA;  future developments in mobile data access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;IT Vendors On Your Street Corner&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the increasing acceptance of&#xA;  information technology, there will be more demand for businesses and&#xA;  the IT industry to provide more and better systems.   This acceptance&#xA;  will result in an increased number of sales outlets for hardware and&#xA;  software IT systems, as well as an increased demand for hardware&#xA;  repair and installation, maintenance, and training on these systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Increased knowledge and awareness of the exact capabilities of these&#xA;  systems will enable better decision-making and foster interest in&#xA;  learning about them.  As the systems get simpler to use, acceptance of&#xA;  those systems will increase in the general populace.  Demand will&#xA;  increase eventually to the point of having a vendor of IT equipment or&#xA;  services literally on every street corner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With an increase in the number of hardware systems in circulation,&#xA;  there will come an increase in demand for repair and maintenance of&#xA;  those systems when they break down.  Demand for job positions in these&#xA;  areas will increase for people who have an understanding of the design&#xA;  and implementation of these systems to the point of being able to&#xA;  repair these systems, maybe to the point of computer repair becoming a&#xA;  common major in college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Increased acceptance brings an increased desire to learn about using&#xA;  information technology.  Therefore, this increased desire to learn&#xA;  will bring about an increased demand for training and instructional&#xA;  services, to the point that whole franchises could possibly be&#xA;  developed with very little start-up capital.  A simple business model&#xA;  to provide one-on-one instruction or a classroom environment on&#xA;  elementary usage and function of these systems should bring a lot of&#xA;  new entrepreneurs into the marketplace for information technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A simplification of information technology should continue&#xA;  into the future to the point that computing hardware should become as&#xA;  easy to use as turning on a television is now.  Furthermore, there&#xA;  will be an increased demand to be able to make these IT resources&#xA;  mobile, giving them the ability to access a home or corporate network,&#xA;  or many public services, such as temperature readings, directions, and&#xA;  positioning services.  In addition, people will learn to accept&#xA;  information technology as a staple of their lives.   Demand for&#xA;  simpler, easier to use systems will increase on businesses from&#xA;  employees of those businesses as well as the end-user consumer market.&#xA;  Information technology is headed for several interesting twists and&#xA;  turns in the next ten to twenty years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4476" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T16:44:15.800" Title="Requesting A Writing Critique, Hopefully More Focused" Tags="|essay|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6977" CreationDate="2013-01-05T12:12:55.327" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now, while others mentioned correctly, one paragraph per speaker, I do have a problem with your other example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Jill walked home, the mints jiggled happily in the box in her pocket, as if they were waiting to be eaten.&lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt; Suddenly, the box snapped opened and one mint fell out. &lt;sup&gt;(2)&lt;/sup&gt;&amp;quot;Dammit,&amp;quot; said Jill, bending down to pick it up. &lt;sup&gt;(3)&lt;/sup&gt;As she picked it up, eying it, she noticed that the mint didn't have any dirt on it at all, despite falling onto the dirty, wet sidewalk. &lt;sup&gt;(4)&lt;/sup&gt;&amp;quot;I guess you're spoiled anyway, so I can't bring you to Fran,&amp;quot; muttered Jill, so she popped it in her mouth.&lt;sup&gt;(5)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suddenly, she felt changes occurring in her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is about paragraph breaks between segments of a story. It's hard to put this rule in words. Essentially, every turn of action should get a new paragraph. What is a turn of action? Now this is a very fuzzy expression and it's mostly up to the author, although in certain cases it's indisputable - like &lt;sup&gt;(5)&lt;/sup&gt;, where I put the paragraph break where it absolutely belongs. We are no longer on our standard run-off-the-mill walk. Changes occur. New paragraph is a must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, where to introduce new paragraphs, other than change of speaker in a dialogue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A rapid, unexpected change of state. Note, a very brief introduction of prior state is still allowed, like I'm not separating the first sentence - one &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; put paragraph break at &lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt;, this is at writer's discretion, but the single, short sentence would be a poor paragraph on its own. Longer introductions of prior state definitely should be separate paragraphs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A minor change of state, if the paragraph has been going on long enough. &lt;sup&gt;(3)&lt;/sup&gt; would be permissible but that would make for some very short paragraphs, not really encouraged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Longer pauses in action. If a character stops to gaze at the sky for a minute, you're fully justified to resume the action once the minute is past starting a new paragraph.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changes of scene. The moment Jill arrives home, enters and greets Fran, this should be a new paragraph. (the action of unlocking the door and entering may be within the allowance of introductory sentence).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A new thought, a new subject. The rule &amp;quot;one paragraph per speaker&amp;quot; should be violated if a person speaks at length. They arrive at an intermediate conclusion, a point necessary to continue with the following train of thought, then they continue with a new paragraph. (I always had a problem: what to do with quote marks around these...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Internal dialogue. A character asks self a question. You are fully allowed to answer in a new paragraph, although this is not a necessity. &lt;sup&gt;(2)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(4)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introducing severe transitions of state can be paragraphs on their on. Note how the sentence after &lt;sup&gt;(5)&lt;/sup&gt; can be the first of a new paragraph, or (better!) be a very short paragraph on its own, before you start describing the transformation in another one. Such tiny, short paragraphs are like exclamation marks, a sign that something big is about to happen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, none of these are written in stone. But just as breaking the introductory sentence &lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt; would make it less interesting, not breaking off the turn of events &lt;sup&gt;(5)&lt;/sup&gt; blurs the importance of the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of paragraph breaks as giving the reader a second of pause to take the content in, absorb the meaning and place it in greater image of the story. It's a bite-sized portion of information. Sentences are for clarity while reading and sections/chapters are for continuity separation, but paragraphs are the most important units of information, absorbable by the reader as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T12:12:55.327" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6983" CreationDate="2013-01-05T18:10:18.137" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, there should not be a semicolon after that first clause. Semicolons are typically used when separating two clauses of equivalent weight in meaning. To borrow some of your sentence, this would be an appropriate use of a semicolon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The school was public; it cost nothing to enter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's assuming that the school's being public meant that it cost nothing to enter. Public schools in England though cost a lot to enter, so check that this is what you mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking of which and more to the point, you mention that you want your narrator to speak in 'normal everyday dialogue'. But you don't say where the narrator is from, so it's not clear what you mean by 'normal'. Some speakers would not even use the word 'however'; they might say 'but' instead for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But, contrary to first opinions, the school was public and cost&#xA;  nothing to enter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some would raise a grammatical objection to starting a sentence with 'but', bending or breaking the rules to convey a voice in fiction is common practice. If your narrator is speaking more formally, you could go with an initial-position 'however':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, contrary to first opinions, the school was public and cost&#xA;  nothing to enter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strunk and White in &lt;em&gt;Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;insist&lt;/a&gt; on a second-position 'however' but some believe this to be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001913.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fossilised prejudice&lt;/a&gt;. If the narrator is in fact writing his/her account as opposed to speaking it, or if they are reading it out, then you might go with Strunk and White's advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So correct the semi-colon as that's an important punctuation issue and doesn't make sense the way you have it currently. But do what you need to do with word placement to get it sounding as authentic as possible. I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4571" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T18:10:18.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6988" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-05T23:35:41.450" Score="9" ViewCount="9553" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize there's going to be a bit of variation here from one author to the next and depending on length of the novel, but the range shouldn't really be too large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, I really have &lt;em&gt;no idea&lt;/em&gt; where the middle of that range lies. 5,000 words? 10,000? 20,000? I know the average adult vocabulary (in English) ranges between 20,000 and 30,000 words, although I don't know if that number includes variations (like, likes, liked, liking), but I would expect this number to be significantly less than the full breadth of a person's vocabulary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had trouble finding any information. Is there anyone who is familiar with this subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="2358" LastEditDate="2013-01-23T20:53:47.880" LastActivityDate="2020-12-19T22:57:44.097" Title="How many different words are in the average novel?" Tags="|novel|language|vocabulary|text-analysis|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6988" CreationDate="2013-01-06T02:45:09.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You know that you have an important question when your topic already has a recognised acronym &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.all-acronyms.com/cat/7/NDW/number_of_different_words/930368&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NDW&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it is typically used in the medical field rather creative writing. It appears to have arisen from the rehabilitation of patients with brain injury such as stroke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linguistics.ualberta.ca/en/CHESL_Centre/Narrative%20Sampling/Analyzing%20Narrative%20Samples.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Albert Department of Linguistics&lt;/a&gt; has a fairly extensive discussion on using NDW as one measure (among many) in interpreting the complexity of texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the short answer to your good question: IT DEPENDS on a huge range of factors. Any &quot;average&quot; value is likely to be meaningful only for the sample from which it was calculated. You could calculate an NDW for Stephen King novels but that would have little value in making predictions about the work of Umberto Eco.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.artbible.info/concordance/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;concordance of the Bible&lt;/a&gt; gives an interesting way to examine some of the issues. (Although this is KJV. I would be interersted to see the differences in GNT.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T02:45:09.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6990" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6993" CreationDate="2013-01-06T03:16:56.107" Score="1" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm practicing some essay writing and I've come across a few prompts that are like this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any field—business, politics, education, government—those in power should be required to step down after five years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write a response in which you discuss your views on the policy and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider the possible consequences of implementing the policy and explain how these consequences shape your position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the problem is that if I choose to disagree with the statement , I don't know if that means I'm arguing against any type of term limits, or term limits of &lt;em&gt;specifically&lt;/em&gt; five years (meaning I would be okay with term limits of four or six years). If I agree, does that mean I only agree with term limits of exactly five years or is is 5 just an arbitrary cap? Bah!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, if I come across some very specific statement such as the one above, how am I to treat it if my only options are to agree or disagree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I wasn't sure if this was the right place to post, but please let me know if it's not and I'll gladly take it down.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4572" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T01:43:47.043" Title="Unsure of how to interpret this prompt" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6994" CreationDate="2013-01-06T05:45:08.707" Score="3" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 100 blogs and have written for 10 years in my language (Persian), but I'm not focused on increasing my ability to write better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What exercises should a writer focus on when blogging to be a better writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I use comments and feedback from readers of the blog to improve?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What practices should an amateur writer adhere to in order to gradually become a professional?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4573" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T15:11:23.993" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T17:44:59.820" Title="How much influence does blogging have on learning to write better?" Tags="|creative-writing|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6990" CreationDate="2013-01-06T07:45:24.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's actually a pretty badly formed policy question.  When it comes to crafting a debate or discussion question, you generally want to make the language such that it is a binary choice: Pro or Con.  For instance (subsequents are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalforensicleague.org/aspx/nav.aspx?navid=227&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sourced from here&lt;/a&gt;): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Resolved: Armed guards should be placed at all schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially&#xA;  increase its transportation infrastructure investment in the United&#xA;  States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Resolved: Rehabilitation ought to be valued above retribution in the&#xA;  United States criminal justice system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Resolved: On balance, the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v.&#xA;  Federal Election Commission harms the election process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Resolved: On balance, the rise of China is beneficial to the interests&#xA;  of the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were presented with what you posted and had to craft a debate response (that's really what the rest of your requirements suggests), then I'd treat the statement as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In any field—business, politics, education, government—those in power&#xA;  should be required to step down after a specific amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4476" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T07:45:24.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6990" CreationDate="2013-01-06T11:25:14.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a situation where the policy position might be implemented in more than one form, your first step should be to lay out the underpinning principles that you recognise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example you quote, I might oppose the proposal for 5-year term limits because I&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;oppose term limits of any kind&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;support term limits in principle, but believe five years is too short&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;support term limits in principle, but believe five years is too long&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have defined the field in this way, you can state the basis for your position and then arrange your arguments to match that position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, you can then argue (logically) for term limits in general but against the specific term proposed. (If you do that, without laying out your analysis first, your essay might be criticised as &quot;confused&quot; in that it appears both to support and to oppose the proposition.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T11:25:14.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6991" CreationDate="2013-01-06T14:13:41.037" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing a lot is good for writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more you write the better writer you become. No matter what you write. If you write blogs, that's just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, there are problems no amount of writing will help - just opposite, it will make them rooted harder. If you keep making a certain mistake, lots of writing won't help against it. Lots of reading may help. Writing exercises. Using proofreaders of your texts for more than just correctness - but for learning your own mistakes. Trying various styles and new approaches. Experimenting in creative writing and taking honest criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...not even getting started on the ugly business side of writing professionally. Learning to write what you believe is wrong but what the publisher believes is right, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, blogging will &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; you become a professional writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, blogging will not &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; you a professional writer. It's useful but it's not enough. You need other exercises besides that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T14:13:41.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6995" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-06T19:39:59.497" Score="6" ViewCount="621" Body="&lt;p&gt;I contribute to a small website, well, one that's got Photoshop of various things. - it's a small obscure site with only a few users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I've been learning InDesign and Quark Xpress for digital publishing, and made a few of my own publications - with real-life titles, even though the content is fictitious - my own versions of cars, and fictitious towns with dealers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The content is fictitious (e.g. no such places as Esfolk - a parody of Norfolk/Suffolk, or Marlholme etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's even fictitious car dealers, and the effort put into making the adverts look realistic is done for verisimilitude purposes - apart from phone numbers (for obvious reasons, i.e. privacy) which are made longer and have numbers added in between, e.g. 01234 123456 becomes 012345413210 123456.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The magazines' inside design differs from the original, using different fonts, colours etc. - enough to avoid claims that it's 'ripping-off' the original design. The facts themselves (car prices of new vehicles etc.) are just data, and can't be copyrighted, if I'm correct, since this data is in the public domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering is this considered fan fiction? - I think it's a derivative work (bear in mind I am from the UK, so British law applies).&#xA;As I understand it, Photoshop works of vehicles are derivative works under British law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently my works are not on the site as I'm trying to ensure this fanfiction is legally compliant - it's my first real 'go' as it were, at fanfiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relating to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3928/on-copyright-laws-and-plots&quot;&gt;question here&lt;/a&gt; would my content be considered 'sufficiently different' and as satire, as this is &lt;em&gt;affectionate&lt;/em&gt; parody, not a &amp;quot;let's poke fun at this work&amp;quot;-type parody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of creating these works is twofold; to show my design skills to fellow enthusiasts, and a tribute work to car magazines that car enthusiasts like - basically, a sort of fan site, if you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, what I'm asking, is how to do things right with fan-fiction, especially since this isn't the usual type of question about fan-fiction works based on TV shows etc. as I'm &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; new to this area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2561" LastEditorUserId="2561" LastEditDate="2022-03-12T09:50:27.120" LastActivityDate="2022-03-12T14:45:43.050" Title="Can a mock-magazine with fictitious content count legally as fan fiction?" Tags="|legal|copyright|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5985" CreationDate="2013-01-06T21:16:12.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the reader's perspective (at least such reader like me) it's very interesting to read the fantasy stories placed in historical realities. And it applies to both stories which are placed in more exact realities and the stories which are only inspired by the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's, for example, polish writer &lt;strong&gt;Czesław Białczyński&lt;/strong&gt; who has invented the Slavic mythology. He have written epic stories inspired by Greek mythology, but based on the known fact about mythological creatures from real Slavic mythology. This is something like re-writing history but note, there are some readers that expect exactly that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when you come to the &lt;strong&gt;mixing of various cultures&lt;/strong&gt;, this is exactly what is happening in the real world. Why shouldn't that apply to the invented world? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be only consequent and &lt;strong&gt;avoid Deus ex machina&lt;/strong&gt;. It's really annoying when the laws ruling in the fantastic world change (or seem to have exception) &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; to help main character in his/her mission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4509" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T21:16:12.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6977" CreationDate="2013-01-06T21:21:12.157" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that you had people complain suggest that there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; something wrong. Of course, it greatly depends who is doing the complaining, since some people will complain about all sorts of nonsense, but reading your example, I too have a complaint. My complaint is not that you have inline speech (I actually like inline speech, it makes the dialogue less dry, I see nothing wrong with that) it's that you have one character speaking while a different one is performing an action in the same paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Two fifty,&amp;quot; replied the cashier. Jill handed him the money, took the mints, and left the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cashier is speaking here, but it's Jill that's doing the action. This isn't a very complex action so as to confuse anyone, but writing this way increases the chance that there might come an action complex enough that would make it hard to differentiate who is actually speaking. It's much more cleaner, so to say, if it's separated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Two fifty,&amp;quot; replied the cashier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jill handed him the money, took the mints, and left the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some even go as far as to separate any action made by different characters into their own paragraphs. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jill handed him the money. He took it, deposited it into the register and returned ten cents worth of change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no dialogue here, but remember, dialogue is just another type of action. It will always be much clearer if each character gets his own paragraph. If this was Jim and not Jill handing him the money, could you be absolutely certain who is returning the change, Jim or the cashier? When you put a paragraph break there, that's a cue for the reader that a different character is performing the action now, so there's less chance for confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jim handed him the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He took it, deposited it into the register and returned ten cents worth of change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like others had said before, there are different styles used by different publishers, which change and evolve not only with time but place as well - different countries have different customs. And these are only customs, things readers are accustomed to from books they've already read. For example, in some countries you'll find dialogue separated by dashes instead of quotes, and while it won't confuse the readers from those countries because that's what they're used to, it will confuse readers from other countries. The one single rule we can all agree on is &lt;strong&gt;not to confuse the reader&lt;/strong&gt;. Your best bet for not breaking that rule is to stick with what the reader is used to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't ask yourself what are the rules of style, ask yourself how can you make things more clear to the reader. I think everyone can agree that separating different characters actions (be it dialogue or not) into their own paragraphs can only make it more clear, not more confusing. In other words, I see more benefits in separating it than leaving it in the same paragraph. Actually, I see no benefits at all in leaving it in the same paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastEditorUserId="52766" LastEditDate="2021-11-29T01:46:10.440" LastActivityDate="2021-11-29T01:46:10.440" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6975" CreationDate="2013-01-06T22:26:16.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, this is the only situation where run-on sentences should be used (and work better than short sentences). In ordinary situations they should be avoided like the plague, but if you really want to translate that the character is tired or nervous or upset, run-on sentences are the way to go. Especially tired or rushed, because the reader will also be slightly out of breath, so to say, after reading the whole sentence (and tired after reading several of them), which is actually something we want in this case. So I'd say you're good, don't change a thing ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T22:26:16.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6991" CreationDate="2013-01-07T00:21:11.563" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing a blog may be less useful than reading the work of others and analysing what they have done and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself &quot;Would I have written that in that way?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you do want to develop a distinctive style that is not simply a copy of everyone else, individuality is no justification for repeating the same errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T00:21:11.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6995" CreationDate="2013-01-07T00:29:39.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the difficulties you face is that of passing off. Ironically the better the job you do of (affectionately) parodying the visual style of the products you celebrate, the greater the risk that a reasonable person might be mislead into believing that your work is actually from the famous brand and hence infringes on their trademarks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T00:29:39.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6977" CreationDate="2013-01-07T03:06:55.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, the convention is that each new speaker gets a new paragraph. Breaks in the statements of one person do not require a new paragraph. We generally do not break the speech of a single individual across multiple paragraphs unless the speech is relatively long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the comments on this question have indicated that you should disregard conventions and do whatever you like. If taken literally, I must disagree with this. While I would be the last to advocate slavish adherance to conventions, conventions exist for a reason: They allow us to convey information to the reader more economically. To take a silly example, suppose you said that you don't like putting quote marks around quotes, so you're going to use plus signs instead. Now the reader has to figure out that in your writing, plus signs indicate a quote. You make the reader do extra work, to shift mental gears, and for what? If, in your particular book or article, this serves some definite purpose -- hard to imagine in this example, but maybe you could some up with something -- then maybe it's justified. But don't break the rules just because you feel like it. I only break the rules when, (a) I want something to stand out, or (b) when the rule is so illogical in general or inapplicable in the present case that the advantages of breaking the rule outweigh the extra burden on the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T03:06:55.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6990" CreationDate="2013-01-07T03:40:40.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Glenn says, it's a poorly formulated question precisely because it creates the ambiguity that you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know who wrote this question and what they are trying to accomplish. In context it sounds like the person who wrote the question was just careless. But such questions are a pretty standard technique in opinion polls or surveys by people trying to get a pre-determined result: Word a question in such a way that you push people to give the answer you want, but then put out a press release where you don't quote the exact question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like, a few years back I saw news stories about some survey that found that the &quot;traditional American family&quot; was pretty much dead, with only some tiny percentage of Americans fitting that definition. The news stories talked about all the alternative family arrangements that were becoming more popular: from second marriages with children from prior marriages to people living together without marriage, homosexual couples, etc. But they never defined exactly what they called a &quot;traditional family&quot;. I finally found one news story that gave the definition they used for the study: two married people of the opposite sex with two children from that union sharing a home. So if you had three children: not a traditional family. If you were a newlywed couple who hadn't had children yet or if your children were grown and moved out: not a traditional family. If you were married for 60 years and your spouse died: not a traditional family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point with that example isn't to take a position on social issues -- that was just one example, I've seen plenty from all over the map. My point is that when constructing a question where you are trying to solicit opinions, you have to be careful to distinguish whether you are asking about a general principle or a detail, and in general to make clear just what you are asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was given such a question in the context that you are describing, an essay question, I think one easy way out would be to acknowledge the stated number so that the examiner cannot say that you misread the question, and then dismiss it. Like if you were for term limits, say, &quot;We could debate the exact time, whether it should be the five years stated in the question or some slightly longer or shorter term, but ...&quot; If you are against term limits in principle, I think I'd make clear that it is not the specific number that you are objecting to, but the concept. i.e. you are not rejecting five years because you think it should be seven years or two years, but because you think there should be no limit at all. Alternatively, if you think that the length of the limit is a crucial question, than say that. Like make clear why less than three years is just too short but more than four years is too long or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you are forced to say &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot;, then the question is meaningless and almost unanswerable. Like the classic, &quot;Have you stopped beating your wife?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T03:40:40.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6995" CreationDate="2013-01-07T14:16:54.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as the work is sufficiently differentiated from the original sources, it should qualify as &lt;em&gt;original work&lt;/em&gt; in which case you would own the full copyright over it. Even still, original &lt;em&gt;trademarks&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;registered trade names&lt;/em&gt; if used, such as British Leyland (BL) Austin, Jaguar etc. would still be the copyright of the original owners. If used, you must attribute copyright to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T14:16:54.267" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6988" CreationDate="2013-01-07T14:26:36.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is almost impossible to answer with any degree of accuracy as it depends on so many variables. However, as a very rough and general guide the average novel length is about 80-100,000 words of which about 5-10,000 words would be unique and differentiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T14:26:36.313" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7006" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7008" CreationDate="2013-01-07T15:48:26.150" Score="2" ViewCount="1229" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a concept for a story I'd like to do where my purpose for writing the story is simply to explore a hypothetical society by means of anecdotes about the members of the society. But this sounds like a horrible story to me. Basically, there is no plot, no conflict, and no resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone seen something like this before? Specifically, has anyone seen it work? If not, how can I develop a plot for it? Should I just pick some classic plot (e.g., from mythology or something) and base the story around that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: &lt;strong&gt;what do you do when your premise for a story is not based on the plot or conflict?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T04:51:04.130" Title="How about a story as a series of anecdotes?" Tags="|plot|planning|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7006" CreationDate="2013-01-07T16:46:35.017" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, this is a quite common format of a story &lt;em&gt;as a blog.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explore the idea of Tumblr &quot;ask blogs&quot;. The blog owner impersonates a protagonist, who then answers questions of readers and tells his/her own stories as separate entries. This is usually accompanied by rich illustration but not always - there are quite a few text-only ask blogs (one of which is regularly updated by yours verily...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions are actually a nice addition. They set direction and pace, they allow for more live interaction between the protagonist and the audience, give extra insights and ideas... generally writing that way is much easier than plain writing of novels. The protagonist may even ask the audience for advice when in a bind. (some of those are almost solely based on that, a kind of role-playing game where the audience suggests actions of the protagonist.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just how you incorporate the protagonist's ability to interact with the blogosphere is up to you... voices in his head? A magical communication device?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I don't know if any of the text blogs ever reached paper publication, but I heard of some of the graphical ones to be released as normal comic book releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for your question: &quot;what do you do when your premise for a story is not based on the plot or conflict?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There always is a plot and a conflict. Or many minor ones. Small, bite-sized conflicts, stories that occupy a single entry maybe a page long. Story arcs that take a couple entries. Amusing retrospections and world building in between. &#xA;The fact the stories are anecdote-sized doesn't invalidate them in the least, and in our modern world always in a hurry, such instant gratification pills of text may be more attractive than full books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... just go ahead and get to it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T16:46:35.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7006" CreationDate="2013-01-07T19:28:57.520" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume every anecdote would have it's own plot, conflict and resolution? Otherwise there would really be no point in telling them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are four types of stories: world based, event based, character based and idea based. While it's true that all stories need to have some kind of a plot to be interesting, the plot is not the main focus of every type. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take Lord of the Rings, for example. It has an engaging plot, that's for sure, but the book isn't really about the war against Sauron or the destruction of the ring. If it were, the book would stop after the ring was destroyed, but instead we have the whole cleaning of the Shire afterwards, we have Bilbo's birthday at the beginning, we have Tom Bombadil... That's because it's not an event based story, it's world based. Even the characters are little more than stereotypes, with Legolas, Gimli, Merry, Pippin being simple representations for their races, with very little character debt or development. It's because the characters are not as important as the world. But the world is painted with amazing care and detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every Agatha Christie novel is an event based story. There was a murder, and the plot revolves around that. The setting and the characters are not as important as the conflict and the resolution - finding out who the killer is. She has a few wacky characters, but we're not reading it for them, we're reading to find out who did it. In this type of story the plot is the most important, because no one wants to read a who-done-it that is illogical or where you figure out on the first page that the butler did it. A good plot is what drives this type of story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character based stories need not much explaining. I'm sure we all ran into a novel that is not so much on the plot side, but we kept reading because the characters are engaging. Who watches House for the weird medical cases? We all watched it to see what insane things he'll pull off next. The readers will close their eyes on a weak plot if the characters are cool enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea story would be Orwell's Animal Farm or Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the plot is just a way to present the idea, to entice the reader rather than beat him over the head with that idea. The plot is in the service of the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your description, you have either an idea based story or a world based story, or a combination of the two. Which ever it is, the plot is not the central element of your story. There has to be some plot, no one will read it otherwise. You need to pick a plot, or a series of small plots, that will best represent your world or your idea. It doesn't have to be something complex. Plot of the Animal Farm is pretty simple - you have animals on a farm that have rebelled against their human owner and took over the farm. Then one of the pigs installs a dictatorship and everything goes downhill. It's not a terribly dynamic or original plot, it's actually just author's representation of the events in Soviet Union at the time. It doesn't have to be original, it just needs to represent the idea well. It could be something classical, why not? It could be a representation of a historical event. You just need to figure out what you want to show, and shape the plot accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T19:28:57.520" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6995" CreationDate="2013-01-07T20:10:52.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this footer on my file I created:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All characters and other entities appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, dead or alive, or other real-life entities, past or present, is purely coincidental.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the place-names, I assume, are not copyrightable, e.g. Ashton-super-Mare etc. and telephone codes with additional numbers in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the advertisers are fictitious as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2561" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T20:10:52.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6990" CreationDate="2013-01-08T01:43:47.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So the problem is that if I choose to disagree with the statement, I don't know if that means I'm arguing against any type of term limits, or term limits of specifically five years&lt;/em&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wait a minute; where did the prompt ask you to agree or disagree with the statement?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Write a response in which you discuss &lt;strong&gt;your views&lt;/strong&gt; on the policy and explain &lt;strong&gt;your reasoning&lt;/strong&gt; for the position you take. In developing and supporting &lt;strong&gt;your position&lt;/strong&gt;, you should consider the possible consequences of implementing the policy and explain how these consequences shape your position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't interpret anything in that language dictating that your position needs to be wholesale agreement or disagreement with the policy. In fact, the prompt seems open-ended enough that it practically invites a more complex position than a simple yes-or-no answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say it's an ideal setup for writing about how five years is an arbitrary limit, and  how term limits might be a fine idea, but the notion that every field – politics, industry, and education – should be saddled with a universal limit is silly.  Why should the principle of a school be held to the same limit as an elected mayor, or the CEO of a company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T01:43:47.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6985" CreationDate="2013-01-08T16:44:15.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few thoughts about the first two paragraphs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a very interesting future [weak opening] to the use [&quot;future&#xA;  to the use&quot; is awkward] of information technology in business and how&#xA;  business views information technology. I believe that [superfluous]&#xA;  general demands in business as well as user demands [vague] will&#xA;  change and shape the computer industry in the years to come [cliche].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Right now in history [wordy], the computer industry is at its point in&#xA;  development [awkward] similar to that of automobiles in the era of&#xA;  Henry Ford. Before their widespread acceptance, automobiles were&#xA;  feared as the “horseless carriages” that thundered down the paths that&#xA;  horses and stagecoaches took by the people [garden path] who were&#xA;  hesitant to accept the new technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't offer a rewrite, but here are a few things to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can often rework a sentence that begins with &quot;there is&quot; so that it's more active. In the opening of an essay you'd like to engage the reader immediately; &quot;There is a very interesting...&quot; doesn't do it well. This is in part a &quot;show, don't tell&quot; issue. More than that, the first paragraph actually doesn't say very much, and it slows things down with preliminaries. I think it would be okay to skip it and start with the second paragraph, which is much more concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two paragraphs are a bit wordy. For example, &quot;right now in history&quot; could be replaced by &quot;today&quot;, and &quot;in the years to come&quot; (aside from being a cliche) could be replaced by &quot;in the future&quot;. Some &quot;the&quot;s are are superfluous: &quot;the “horseless carriages”&quot;, &quot;the people&quot;. Some words are repeated too close together: &quot;that thundered down the paths that&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writing also has vague spots. I don't know what &quot;general demands in business&quot; are, for example, or &quot;user demands&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The garden path issue has to do with sentence structure. &quot;Automobiles were feared as the “horseless carriages”... by the people who were hesitant to accept the new technology.&quot; But the subordinate clause makes it confusing: &quot;that thundered down the paths that horses and stagecoaches took by the people...&quot; It reads as though people are (ungrammatically) taking the horses and stagecoaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second paragraph has an unexpected transition between its two sentences.  We go from &quot;industry&quot; and &quot;Henry Ford&quot;, suggesting a focus on manufacturing, but then we read about the experiences of the users of technology. That might be clarified or smoothed out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3516" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T16:44:15.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7006" CreationDate="2013-01-08T17:08:36.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I basically agree with Tannalein (and upvoted her answer). Let me just add a couple of comments too long to fit in a comment on her answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's lots of fiction where the writer has some idea he wants to explore, and so the plot is just a thin wrapper around the &quot;big idea&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I can think of several books where it's pretty obvious that the author wrote the book to present his idea of how to build a better society. Like, I once read a book called &quot;Walden II&quot;. The story was about a man visiting a community where people had built a near-utopia. There really wasn't much plot, he visits the place and tours around and sees how their society works and has some trivial personal conflict with the founder of the place and leaves and then decides to come back and everybody is happy. The plot was clearly just a thin excuse for the writer to describe his idea of how he thought people could build a utopian society. Instead of writing an essay on, &quot;here's how to create utopia&quot;, he writes a story where someone has already done it and then has the hero visit the place and meet people and so on. (P.S. I'm not endorsing the ideas in this book -- frankly I thought they were pretty lame -- but that's not the point. I'm discussing the literary technique.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of science fiction that falls in this category. The author wants to talk about his idea for building an interstellar spacecraft or what an alien civilization might be like or discuss the paradoxes of time travel, etc etc. He could write an essay, but that would be boring. So instead he wraps some thin plot around the idea and makes it a fiction story. Often the plot is as thin as, &quot;hero meets someone who tells him about X&quot; or &quot;hero and his friends discuss how to do X&quot;. Of course when it's done well the writer creates an engaging story that keeps the reader interested, while pumping in the big idea on the side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: If the idea is controversial, this has a side advantage as a propaganda technique. If you write an essay on why some social change would be a good idea, the reader will naturally be thinking about the pros and cons of your idea, and will be on guard for weak arguments and simplistic solutions. But if instead you write a fiction story, you can present the idea as having been tried and worked and never mention any problems that you don't have answers for. If someone objects, you just say, &quot;Hey, it's a fiction story, not a legislative proposal!&quot; If you're good at it, you draw the readers into the story and they don't think about the fact that it's all made up. They get the idea in their heads that your utopia would be a really great place to live and the people who built this society are all good and honest and likable people. Like, I once posted an article on a web site where I commented that the society in Star Trek appeared to be a totalitarian military dictatorship: There is little mention of any civilian government and none that I ever caught of elections, but all decisions are made by &quot;Star Fleet Command&quot;. There don't appear to be any institutions other than Star Fleet:  no one even casually mentions a college other than Star Fleet Academy, a company where he used to work, or a church that he attends. No one ever quotes a source of news or information other than messages from Star Fleet. When there's a natural disaster it's always Star Fleet that responds, not the Red Cross or the Salvation Army or their future equivalents. Etc. Anyway, I got more hostile email about that article than about anything I ever wrote about politics or religion or other really controversial subjects (with just one exception, an article about capital punishment). All these people wrote me to say, &quot;No, no, the Federation is a wonderful place, how dare you criticize this great nation that has done so much for the galaxy&quot; etc. Like it was not only a real place but their own homeland. I think I could have said that George Washington was a child molestor and a cannibal and gotten less hostile response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T17:08:36.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1583" CreationDate="2013-01-08T17:40:23.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Latex honestly is not that difficult to learn to use for basic purposes. Especially if you're not trying to do tables or graphics or anything, there's not that much you need to learn, just a few simple commands like &lt;code&gt;\textbf{bold}&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;\section{Section Title}&lt;/code&gt;. There are readily available packages for writing code samples which include syntax highlighting, and of course Latex is built for writing equations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that's specifically not what you were looking for (sorry), but in my opinion it really is your best bet. You already learned Vim, so you must be reasonably bright (full disclosure, I'm a fellow Vimmer); no reason you wouldn't be able to learn Latex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T17:40:23.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7015" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7034" CreationDate="2013-01-08T14:25:41.360" Score="0" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am getting ready to launch a tech/personal opinion blog slightly more geared towards technical details. What documentation style is best for a journalistic/technical doc style?&#xA;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4582" OwnerDisplayName="motleydev" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T23:31:20.350" Title="What language style should I use for a tech blog?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7016" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7021" CreationDate="2013-01-08T17:54:39.823" Score="11" ViewCount="4714" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using a plain text editor (Vim) to write a fiction piece (chapter book), and I'm wondering what markup languages others use for such a task? I'm looking for something exceedingly simple, it does not have to be powerful at all. Minimum requirements would be supporting basic styling like bold, italics, and underline; markup to indicate titled chapters, and scene splits within chapters; markup for footnotes/endnotes; and markup must be nestable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But most importantly, the markup should not get in the way of my writing. In other words, I don't want to spend 25% of my keystrokes writing markup, and it should be easily readable even with the markup exposed. For instance, I find REStructured Text to be ugly and difficult to read smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My end goal is to &quot;publish&quot; to ePub and possibly latex. I'm currently using a very simple markup of my own devising, and a parser for it that generates both of those formats. However, it's a somewhat ugly markup (it uses curly braces which don't read smoothly) and my parser is rather clumsy, unable to handle things like paragraph breaks inside quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I can either improve on my own markup and rewrite my parser, or I can use something that already exists if anybody has any suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should have guessed that this would be the end result: I've spent the past week or so redefining my own markup and rewriting a parser for it and a number of output converters for it. &lt;em&gt;Thanks for all the good answers&lt;/em&gt;; I think you've pointed out the best markup languages that are available, but I'm finding that there just aren't any available that are well suited for writing novels, at least not for what I have in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone is interested or potentially interested in using this, let me know; I will most likely be putting this on bitbucket in the next few weeks as a set of python scripts and scons tools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastEditorUserId="4562" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T14:31:03.930" LastActivityDate="2019-09-11T19:01:08.723" Title="Very simple markup language for writing fiction" Tags="|formatting|tools|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7016" CreationDate="2013-01-08T22:12:09.330" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/&quot;&gt;Markdown&lt;/a&gt; is good for fiction.  It's a small, simple language and easy to type.  It's very similar to the markup language used here on Stack Exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If want to do something tricky that markdown doesn't support, you can drop into HTML.  Those situations are rare in fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are vim plugins to highlight markdown syntax.  (I use MacVim which has markdown syntax highlighting built in.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T22:12:09.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7019" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-09T00:46:57.020" Score="0" ViewCount="3133" Body="&lt;p&gt;My writing is focused primarily on love stories, i.e. the romance genre, and I believe this reaches a relatively small audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there one genre that appeals to a far wider audience than its nearest competitor? Is there a single genre that appeals to all readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4581" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T19:19:17.017" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T19:19:17.017" Title="What genre appeals to the widest audience?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|creative-writing|genre|marketing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7019" CreationDate="2013-01-09T01:25:56.297" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is not the genre.  Lots of people read lots of love stories.  The problem is that (up until now) there's a mismatch between your stories and your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In trying to leap from reaching only a few to reaching &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt;, you're setting yourself an impossible task.  There is no genre that reaches everyone of all ages and genres.  Heck, there is no genre that reaches every teenager, or every 16-year-old, or every 16-year-old girl.  If you can't reach all the 16-year-old girls, there's no way to reach everyone of every age.  People differ in their interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps there is an audience for the stories you're writing, and you just haven't found the audience yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And perhaps there are stories for the audience you have in mind, and you just haven't found the stories yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So keep writing, keep improving your stories, and keep seeking your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T01:25:56.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7016" CreationDate="2013-01-09T05:37:32.953" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Markdown&lt;/a&gt; is almost certainly the way to go for simple formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To then go from Markdown to a proper ebook format, you can use some automated tools to do the conversion for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Web Book Boilerplate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you want to run locally with your edits, and view them in various formats, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/WebBooks/wbb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Web Book Boilerplate GitHub project&lt;/a&gt; offers an easy way to do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the Web Book Boilerplate you have the perfect place to start writing your book! It uses plain old markdown and generates a well structured HTML version of your written words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leanpub&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you are looking for an all-in-one service for formatting, generating ebooks and finally publishing and listing your ebooks, have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://leanpub.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Leanpub&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leanpub manuscripts are written in a very simple plain text format called Markdown. You can generate PDF, EPUB and MOBI versions of your books from your manuscripts in one click. Since Leanpub provides a storefront for you, you can also sell them in one click.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="57" LastEditorUserId="13593" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T08:01:47.583" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T08:01:47.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7016" CreationDate="2013-01-09T13:37:22.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you need to mark it up at all whilst you're writing it? To save time later? This is false economy. You should focus all your efforts on your writing, proof reading, editing etc. Then when you've finished doing all of that, export your data/writing into a program to mark it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mark up should happen right at the end, not whilst you're writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on one thing at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T13:37:22.900" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7019" CreationDate="2013-01-09T16:00:27.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no single genre that piques everyone's interest, just as not all stories within a genre pique the interest of readers in that genre.  People who tend to read mysteries will by nature simply miss the release of most or all romance stories, but if you switch to writing mysteries you will probably lose a good number of your romance readers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could try writing a novel that spanned all genres, which might be an interesting exercise, but even that book would not appeal to everyone.  Many habitual readers of a genre prefer things to fit within the mold somewhat, and for variation to occur somewhat within the confines of the limits of that genre.  That's not to say that there aren't genre-spanning works that have been successful, but in most stories one genre predominates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is partly due to how most fiction has traditionally come to the attention of the average reader.  Traditional publishing has been categorized into genres for quite some time, and when a publishing house considers whether to take on a new book for publication, they try to analyze whether it will appeal to fans of the genre.  They know that when people go to a bookstore, for instance, the romance readers head for the romance section, and so on.  This categorization occurs on book-selling sites and in book-of-the-month clubs as well.  The categorization extends to magazines and a good many online sources of fiction as well.  It's almost inescapable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mere fact of this categorization means that a good many readers wind up self-selecting by the time they're exposed to a book. Thus if you were to write even a successful romance novel, it would simply never come to the attention of most mystery or sci-fi readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nor if you wrote an intentionally genre-catchall novel or short story would I expect it to be treated as more than an oddity.  Would you want to read a romance-western-space-opera-historical-drama-comedy-horror-action-adventure?  (Hmm... that actually sounds kind of interesting in a silly way, especially if you consider stripping out one or two of the genres.)  Even if so, how many would?  Do you think it would qualify as Great Literature, and appeal to its readers?  Note also that some types of stories are simply incompatible, even within a single genre, for example space operas and &quot;hard&quot; science fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that there have been many authors who have spanned genres, but they tend to show variation within their entire body of work and not to be evenly spread between genres.  An example is Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote some science fiction but who is not primarily remembered as a sci-fi author.  Gabriel Garcia Marquez is another possible example that comes to mind, and in general many authors who adopt fantastic or magical-realist elements within their works might seem to straddle genres.  However, here I think there is an additional division between serious literature and what's often called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre_fiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;genre fiction&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, which is written to intentionally fit within a genre.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus attempting to write genre-spanning genre fiction is not the answer, especially as that phrase likely qualifies as an oxymoron.  The real thrust of your question seems to be that you're dissatisfied with your current readership.  There are two main areas where you can more usefully focus your efforts: increasing the quality of your writing, and marketing the results.  The former is far too broad a general topic for the focused question-and-answer format of this site. There are many books available on the craft of writing, even whole series dealing with different subtopics in turn (characters, plot, etc.).  I'd read these first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aspects of the Novel&lt;/em&gt;, by E.M. Forster&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt;, by Stephen King&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Telling Lies for Fun &amp;amp; Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers&lt;/em&gt;, by Lawrence Block&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Bird by Bird&lt;/em&gt;, by Anne Lamott&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding marketing, I'm afraid that you are going to run up against some hard facts of the modern writer's life.  While e-publishing has enabled many new writers to theoretically reach a wide audience, the reality is more depressing.  Amazon and similar sites are so choked with ebook-only releases by unknown writers that potential readers, the ones that don't instantly head for the Stephen King and Jodi Picoult releases, are extremely scattered.  Thus even if you were to write a marvel of a romance novel or anything else, you'd be foolish to expect it to coast to bestseller status just on the basis of online reader reviews.  Fan fiction sites and other forms of cheap or free online forms of electronic fiction self-publishing fall prey to the same mass obscurity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus if you want to reach a mass audience, you're probably looking at dealing with traditional publishers (&lt;em&gt;Writer's Market&lt;/em&gt; is a good resource for targeting those).  Unfortunately, the outlook has become considerably more bleak in the last several decades.  Market forces set in motion by the wide availability of computers and the internet have made it tougher to become a successful fiction writer, by driving the ongoing demise of paper as well as greatly increasing the level of competition.  NaNoWriMo and computer use in general have resulted in a massive increase in the number of novels written and submitted to publishers as well, making it harder than ever for high-quality novels to stand out and be accepted for publication.  At one time magazines were a relatively easy way to break into professional writing, but the market for print magazines has diminished.  Surviving magazines tend to pay less for short fiction, at the same time as they tend to have a much larger volume of submissions than in the past.  There are number of online literary reviews and similar edited sites today that accept submissions from new writers, many of which sites do not offer pay for new work but merely the opportunity to publish on their site, but readership of such sites is not widespread, and publishing a particular story in such a fashion could greatly restrict chances at getting a traditional publisher to consider it later.  Getting published on such sites seems mainly useful for padding one's resume or cover letter when submitting a work to a traditional publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, stay away from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_press&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;vanity presses&lt;/a&gt;.  Money should always flow toward, not away from, an author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4528" LastEditorUserId="4528" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T04:43:12.390" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T04:43:12.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7019" CreationDate="2013-01-09T17:04:27.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: No. There is no genre that everybody reads. Some have broader appeal than others, but I think romance novels are well near the broadest appeal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your books aren't selling, there are two obvious possible problems: 1. They're not good enough, in which case you need to work on becoming a better writer. I'm not saying you're a bad writer: I have no idea, I've never read anything you've written. But even if you're a very good writer, I'm sure you could always become better. 2. Marketing. Maybe lots of people would love your stuff but they've never seen it. The reality of the publishing business -- of any business, really -- is that producing a great product is only half the job. People have to know about it. You could write the greatest novel in the history of the world, but if you don't do something to tell people it exists ... well, very few people go door to door asking if anyone who lives there has written a new novel lately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T17:04:27.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7006" CreationDate="2013-01-10T04:51:04.130" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tannalein's answer is excellent: I have but one thing to add in rebuttal to her statement that you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; a plot, which is quite certainly not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://thecomposingrooms.com/research/reading/Babel.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this short and excellent work&lt;/a&gt; by Jorge Luis Borges and you will have a renewed insight into what constitutes a story. I need say no more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; If the link ever doesn't work for whatever reason, the story is &lt;em&gt;The Library of Babel.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T04:51:04.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6988" CreationDate="2013-01-10T05:11:11.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I can't answer the &quot;big&quot; question of an average, I can answer the smaller question of whether anyone's heard/seen anything on the subject before. If anyone has answered a question like this I would assume it would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco_Moretti&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Franco Moretti&lt;/a&gt; or someone doing similar computational research into the statistical profiles of large literary corpora. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wired did an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/11/pl_print/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; on Moretti's research a few years ago. He floats a concept of &quot;distant reading&quot; wherein we cover a lot of ground traditional criticism can't meaningfully cover through statistical methods. I haven't read him widely, so it's possible he's covered this somewhere. I've emailed him before and he was responsive to my questions, though I note from his faculty page that he's on leave this year which may have some effect (as might any pending publications he has on the topic). He also has related books, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1844671852&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Graphs, Maps, Trees&lt;/a&gt; &amp;amp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1781680841&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Distant Reading&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4587" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T20:32:08.623" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T20:32:08.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7031" CreationDate="2013-01-10T06:58:49.113" Score="4" ViewCount="841" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Hope I don't get an answer like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHVqxD8PNq8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel where &quot;not much happens,&quot; instead, it focuses on things that  &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; happen. In other words, the protagonist does not directly experience love, death, or heartbreak; these things are just about to happen to her (but the novel ends before they do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5930/does-my-story-beginning-hook-the-reader-dialogue-narration&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is the opening scene in case you are curious).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all the novels I've read so far, at least &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; person dies, or at least one person finds love or loses it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I was wondering if there succesful novels where &quot;not much happens.&quot; But most of all, how to keep the reader engaged if I decide to write one like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T14:14:17.677" Title="How to keep the reader engaged in a novel where &quot;not much happens&quot;?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7029" CreationDate="2013-01-10T13:29:23.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you paint the world just right, it may work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plague&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Plague&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Camus as a famous novel where &quot;not much happens&quot;, a representative of Existentialism. Check any Existentialist works for more examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, in that novel there is the plague, but it's hard to describe the struggle as &quot;dramatic&quot;. Its atmosphere is lethargically depressive. No &quot;action&quot;, just events. Characters with their daily struggles, powerless, doing the necessary work automatically and without much emotions. I wouldn't call the story &quot;interesting&quot;, something you'd be eager to keep reading, but it captures the reader in a kind of dreary of reading, which is hard to let go. It's definitely very immersive, and as the grim city is an enclosed enclave with no escape, and all one can do in there is wait the plague out, so the reader waits the book out, captured by the atmosphere and just trudging along with the events without a trace of enthusiasm or curiosity, fully aware nothing will happen to the end, but unable to let go. One might think the pestillence makes for a very exotic, exciting setting. It does not. The plague-struck city feels extremely &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt;. Still, it feels very real and you simply live the dull lives of the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And once you're past, this is a memorable experience. Not a pleasant one, but profound, one that changes your outlook on the world. In hindsight, despite the utter lack of &quot;action&quot; this book was far more memorable than all the action-packed Conan fantasies I read as a kid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is to show you how a book utterly deprived of &quot;marketing lure&quot; can be still good, memorable, and keep the reader reading. The premise of what you write certainly seems more interesting than the premise of &lt;em&gt;The Plague&lt;/em&gt;. I see no reason why it shouldn't succeed if you do it right. Of course doing it right &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be difficult. It will be very easy to do it wrong and simply bore the reader into dropping the book after first two chapters. You will need a very captivating atmosphere if you don't deliver on actual events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T13:29:23.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7029" CreationDate="2013-01-10T14:14:17.677" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Something happening&quot; doesn't have to be earth-shaking. If the character wakes up, something &quot;happened.&quot; It's been a long time since I read it, but in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Denisovich#Plot&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;/a&gt; about a prisoner in a gulag, nothing much &quot;happens.&quot; He doesn't escape or get sprung from prison. He doesn't die or fall in love. But it's still a powerful book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your character wants to do something and is thwarted by some obstacle, there's your plot. That's something &quot;happening.&quot; The obstacle can be internal or external. The character can try or not try. The character can succeed or fail. But if there's conflict, there's plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your story is building up to something &lt;em&gt;big&lt;/em&gt; happening by means of many little things happening along the way, there's nothing wrong with that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T14:14:17.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7015" CreationDate="2013-01-10T23:31:20.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always use a simple rule: your style should reflect your intentions. If I was writing a novel, and wanted to describe a room in exquisite detail, I would use a lot more adjectives than if I were writing some code documentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I'd say follow Strunk &amp;amp; White's &lt;em&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt; and keep your language as straightforward as possible. Since this is a technical blog especially, active voice and &quot;making every word tell&quot; will go a long way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3471" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T23:31:20.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7039" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7043" CreationDate="2013-01-12T12:22:01.477" Score="6" ViewCount="768" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question: is it hard to write about a foreign country/place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that Dostoevsky was Russian, his themes and settings were inspired or entirely based by Russia/the Russian culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I also know Howard Philips Lovecraft who wrote in unfamiliar settings (foreign and imagined) and thus 'created' them. Because they were 'created', he wasn't as pressured to verifying details, unlike someone adopting a foreign setting, he invented them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is the paradox: although Lovecraft was a great writer, his imagery and scene/feel/place/culture suggestion power wasn't enough, because he couldn't write about foreign countries (in features/troubles/traditions) in the real world. I suppose because of the amount of required research, or he didn't feel like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how should a beginner go about writing about unfamiliar places/settings in the real world? Min you the beginner doesn't yet know where to look because they haven't tried and got it wrong before. What's the first step to avoid that 'going wrong' from the get-go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4430" LastEditorUserId="30832" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:54:52.720" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:54:52.720" Title="Troubles with unfamiliar locations and settings based in the real world" Tags="|research|world-building|setting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3561" CreationDate="2013-01-12T16:42:47.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;RPG games are the great source of ideas for monsters, as good as spells. Some of them have quite a lot of magical creatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the games I've played have very many creatures with very strange names. This was &lt;strong&gt;Vallheru&lt;/strong&gt; clone. In fact I've played in 2 Vallheru clones, Orodlin and Khazbanar, but both are based on the same source code available for free here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/vallheru/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sourceforge.net/projects/vallheru/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have the account there now, but there was a small description site for each of the monsters. All in Polish, but google translate would give you the idea what's going on. The names of the monsters can be found in SQL file in source code, here are some of them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Orog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lassaukaur&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dragon Beattle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ekkimu&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alaghi&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kyton&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vintaru&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mymic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mefith&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Worg&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allip&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ettercap&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aranea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Girallon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yuan-ti&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chuul&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lammasu&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beschalor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Couatl&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Playing a lot of RPG games and noticing the ideas from them will also help you. Thanks to your question I've realized how much of this magic stuff I have forgotten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4509" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T16:42:47.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7039" CreationDate="2013-01-12T23:24:32.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is your purpose in writing about a foreign country or place? Do you intend the setting to be integral to your story? If so, and you have never been there, then you are probably facing a considerable challenge. You simply do not have the background to inject the elements of authentic detail that will be required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if your aim is simply to have an &quot;exotic&quot; backdrop to a tale that is driven by the characters and their interactions, then you may be able to blur the detail to a level that you can manage by drawing on guidebooks and the writing of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, you should not be so determined about &quot;going wrong&quot;. The only way to learn from your mistakes is to make some. Start writing and see what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T23:24:32.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7019" CreationDate="2013-01-12T23:46:51.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The one type of writing that everyone enjoys reading is about themselves or at least about characters that they recognise as someone they could be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your love stories have a limited audience not because they are &quot;love stories&quot; but because the range of characters in them is restricted. Are you writing about the same kinds of people all the time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at one of your works and select an important character (but not the principal figure). Now imagine that character was 20 years older (or younger), or born in a different country and migrated to the site of your tale, or more highly educated, or less physically attractive. How would the story change? It is almost certain that at least one of these changes will impact on  the development of your plot. And if it does not, keep looking -- what if the character had a disability, or an exceptional athletic talent, or almost anything in the range that makes each of us different and looking for different things in our reading preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T23:46:51.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7039" CreationDate="2013-01-13T01:03:06.717" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first step is to hold back your urge to write. First do your homework, thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn. Learn a whole lot about the place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with Google StreetView and Panoramio.&#xA;Proceed through Wikipedia to learn not just about the place but about landmarks, anything in the area.&#xA;Find movies, amateur videos, anything to take place around there.&#xA;Read blogs of people who live there. Maybe get in touch with them, ask them to tell you about their daily lives. Listen to their daily worries. Make sure to see the place in all seasons and weathers. Read a local newspaper (online) even if through Google Translate. Find historical maps of the area, learn how it changed alegiances through ages. Learn basics of the language. Get a feel of how it sounds. Watch any artwork created around there. Try something of the local cuisine. If a given activity, sport, hobby, leisure is typical to the area, go and try it locally, feel it on your own skin. Find little details of the country culture. Find little details that make given country what it is. It's not the towers of Kremlin that create the feel of Russia, it's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podstakannik&quot;&gt;podstakannik&lt;/a&gt; on your tea glass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can afford, go there. If you can't, live by proxy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eat your heart out, Lovecraft! World got much smaller since your times!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...I could find my way from Dityatki to Chernobyl blindfolded. And if I had to, I'd stop and sit to have a lunch on the brick fence of the communal farm in Cherevach without ever taking the blindfold off. And I wouldn't even step into the nettles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-01-13T01:22:56.273" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T01:22:56.273" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7044" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-13T05:24:06.183" Score="1" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;readers on-line prefer summarized news and condensed stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a separate audience for traditional books love long stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems we now reached the point where we write in different methods and styles for these two audiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this assumption correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we try to bring the traditional, &quot;lengthy and deep&quot; style to the web, or should we give in and adapt our style to the &quot;short and shallow&quot; web?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4573" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-01-14T16:42:53.380" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T16:42:53.380" Title="Are the web audience who love microblogging and the book audience who love long stories different?" Tags="|short-story|titles|medium|romance|audience|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7045" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-13T08:07:36.873" Score="3" ViewCount="695" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have what seems to be a rather complicated situation and need some advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have co-authored a book with an author living in a different country. We began by using a publisher in her country but had so many difficulties with them (re: mistakes, layout) right from the beginning that it ended up with me doing all the layout, graphic design of the cover, in fact everything that the publisher should do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it came to printing the book we found many mistakes made in the reviews on the back cover (words missing, others joined together) that it was decided that I would publish my books here and she would get hers printed in her country using the files that I had prepared and sent to the original printer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have since printed and published the book on my own (i.e. I did the printing and binding and assigned myself a name as publisher) and started selling them myself. Now she tells me that she is thinking of going back to the original publisher in her country who will assign an ISBN (I haven't done this yet with my books). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that this publisher uses a different paper type and very slightly different size, so will I be able to assign my own ISBN to the books I self publish or can I just use the one her publisher will use even if there are the above mentioned minimal differences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4597" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-01-13T09:17:51.723" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T11:52:40.707" Title="Can I use a different ISBN when publishing a co-authored book in two different countries?" Tags="|publishing|isbn|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7045" CreationDate="2013-01-14T00:46:36.557" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your question specifically addressed ISBNs, I will limit my response to only that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, every country has a different organizing body that is responsible for distributing and managing ISBNs. Even if you had used the same publisher abroad and in the US, you still would have been required to obtain separate ISBNs. In fact, if you decide to republish your own book here in the US using a different paper size, that also would require a different ISBN. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let's assume that you decide that you want to self-publish as an e-book. Each different format (mobi for Kindle, ePub for Nook, etc.) would require its own ISBN. One exception to that would be if you were using a service like Smashwords. They will create multiple formats for distributing to various retailers, but they will only need one ISBN because they are publishing them all at the same time. (Technically, you could do the same if you generate all the formats using the same source file.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you decided to republish your print version using a service like CreateSpace or LightningSource, that would also require a separate ISBN. Basically, any time your book is published in a different format or in a different manner, it is usually going to require a different ISBN. There are a number of other factors, but these basic guidelines should be enough to cover most general scenarios. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are probably a number of other problems you might have to deal with that will be much more problematic than the ISBN issue. Without knowing what terms you may have had with the original publisher, it's really hard to say, but you should probably seek legal advice just the same. (As mentioned in one of the initial comments.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T00:46:36.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7045" CreationDate="2013-01-14T11:52:40.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you cannot. It is illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ISBN&lt;/a&gt; codifies (among other things) the &lt;em&gt;publisher&lt;/em&gt;. If you steal that ISBN, then you state that &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; book was published by your co-author's publisher. But &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; published that book. &lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; are responsible for it, not the publisher of your co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are pretending that a different publisher published your book. Which is just not true. A correct imprint does not make it better, only more confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are scraping the bar code of a milk carton and glue it to your carton, because the milk comes originally from you and you are selling it also in cartons of your own. Does that make sense? I hope not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, I hope your co-author mentions to her publisher, that the book was published in the meantime by someone else. Otherwise she could get in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T11:52:40.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7044" CreationDate="2013-01-14T12:24:29.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The truth is (as usually) not nearly as simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are different styles of writing and different audiences you're aiming at, but not only the split doesn't go along the line of &quot;online/offline&quot;, the line is not nearly as clear-cut as you're trying to make it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the longest books even written never reach paper and have avid audience online. And paper newspapers are still common, many of them keeping quite condensed formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And speaking from my experience, while I tend to prefer bite-sized pieces of data that happen on blogs or online news sites, plus love to write small articles or read blogs, whenever I'm not writing something lengthy, I'm reading something lengthy. I belong to both audiences at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it doesn't matter if I'm reading &lt;em&gt;Master and Margarita&lt;/em&gt; in paperback, or &lt;em&gt;Fallout: Equestria&lt;/em&gt; in Google Docs, they are both novels of considerable size. Doesn't matter if I read the free newspaper, Metro, while going by public transport, or skip to Tumblr to see my favorite blogs with my smartphone, I read snippets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not to mention both formats exist for ages. Contrast Aesop's tales vs the Illiad.  In young people's busy lives &quot;snippets&quot; became more popular because they don't need to sacrifice so much time to absorb them, and elder people with slower lives and less prone to use modern tech may prefer to spend time with a traditional book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The divide you may be observing is not related to medium, it is related to preferences of the audience: early adopters with fast lives and little time prefer electronics and prefer short. Calm conservatists with lots of time and taste for quality prefer traditional media and long content. Medium changes, and proportions change - but both formats exist and both exist in all media there are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-01-14T12:37:39.963" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T12:37:39.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7051" CreationDate="2013-01-14T13:00:12.620" Score="13" ViewCount="892" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, I find myself writing a scene that does everything I think it should do: reveal details about the protagonist, drive the plot forward, show other elements related to the story, etc. There's only one problem: I find the scene &quot;boring&quot; (even if the plot itself isn't). In other words, I don't feel excited writing it nor reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it normal for a writer to encounter those types of scenes? Should I just remove them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T01:31:49.457" Title="Should I remove scenes that I myself find &quot;boring&quot;?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7049" CreationDate="2013-01-14T13:24:27.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's normal to find such scenes. And removing these scenes is perfectly normal too, although not always necessary nor the correct course of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before anything, think what essential elements were added by that scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think if other scenes could benefit from moving these elements there. If you find that the story can only benefit from reaping all the good pieces of the scene and using them to enrich the rest, kill it off without regrets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If most essential elements can be moved out but there are a few that won't fit elsewhere, think of making a small, skeletal scene to put them in. Take the juiciest page out of the current one and condense them in there, or write one that summarizes the events or such. A kind of lifeboat for whatever would be lost. Reduce the whole scene to atomic dimensions, so there's no time for it to get boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find you can't really trim the scene and remove it without considerable sacrifices, it's time to think how to repair it. I &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6962/dealing-with-lackluster-plot-failure&quot;&gt;asked a question&lt;/a&gt; about that and got a fairly fine answer how to do it. Create a story arc, a short story, something captivating and thrilling and simply overlay it on the boring part, make it a background for the new events. You still get to convey what was needed but the audience won't be bored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...last but not least, you may keep the plot and the scene pretty much as-is. Rescue it by giving it proper framing. Make the neighboring scenes so rapid, so active and crazy, that the moment of respite becomes welcome, not boring but relaxing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T13:24:27.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7049" CreationDate="2013-01-14T16:15:13.527" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm mostly a non-fiction writer, just trying to write my first novel now, so I don't claim to be speaking from the voice of deep experience. But that said ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, absolutely. I've gone through this a number of times on my current project. I write a scene, and then when I look back at it the next day, I realize it's boring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As SF says, consider moving the essential elements of the scene somewhere else. Like -- and I don't want to get into a long discussion of my own project, but let me just say that I wrote a scene whose point was to reveal that the hero's motive in helping the other characters was purely selfish. I considered it a crucial revelation in the development of his character. But when I was done writing it, I realized that there was this long involved narrative of him arriving at the place where he has this conversation, explaining how another chararacter came to meet him at that place, and then getting them from there to where they needed to be for the next scene. I realized I had several pages of meandering for about two sentences of relevant material. So I sat back and re-thought the whole scene. Then I created a new scene at the same location where the main action was going on so I could eliminate all the &quot;how'd they get there&quot; discussion, put the exchange with him into that scene, and then built it into a larger discussion that included the motivations of two lesser characters. I ended up getting more material into one scene while making it all flow more naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just had another case where a scene just seemed way too long for the amount of interesting stuff that actually happened. It's just characters talking about their backgrounds on and on. So I'm thinking of breaking that into two scenes. Wrap up the first more quickly, so it doesn't drag on and get boring. Then take the second part and put some action in front of it, so there's something actually happening, and then after the &quot;action sequence&quot;, the character can give some explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how old you are, but I find that when personal computers came along and I switched from typewriters to word processing software, it completely changed the way I write. When you write on the computer, if you're working on page 40 and you realize that something on page 20 isn't effective, you can go back and change it and it's no big deal. You don't have to re-type the intervening 20 pages. Or if you're on page 20 and you're stuck about how something should go, you can just leave yourself a note to get back to this and push on. Take advantage of this. Be ruthless with your text. If something isn't effective, fix it. If a scene adds nothing to the story, throw it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T16:15:13.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7052" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7058" CreationDate="2013-01-15T15:16:27.790" Score="6" ViewCount="1641" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in a long and painful recovery from many years of writer's block. Coming up with even quite simple story ideas costs me unreasonable amount of effort. Sometimes inspiration is generous and I'm able to sketch a catchy main plot from time to time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is not quite enough - I should give my story some secondary threads. And by then my imagination runs dry. I need a bunch of simple, classic plot hooks. Stuff like &quot;Revenge after years&quot;, &quot;Recovery from soul-crushing experience&quot;, &quot;damsel in distress appears to be the monster&quot;. Nothing overly complex, just bare bones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I'm not asking you &quot;what to write&quot; - I'm asking where to find a bunch of this kind of stuff. Is there a subcategory of TVTropes listing that? Is there a kind of generic &quot;Random Adventure generator&quot; geared more towards writers than RPG players? Some guide to plot hooks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T21:57:32.313" Title="Resource for generic plot hooks?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|tropes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7039" CreationDate="2013-01-15T16:26:10.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you set a story in a real place that you have never been, I think it would be easy to get something wrong that anyone who has been there would know -- like what side of the street they drive on or the fact that no one there wears a hat or whatever. To those who do know the place it could be really jarring. Like casually mentioning that a character spent the evening watching television -- but you said he was Amish, and Amish people don't watch television. Or that he was in such financial trouble that he couldn't pay the mortgage -- but you said he was in Saudi Arabia, where the banking system is different and they don't have mortgages. A real example that occurs to me: I once saw a movie about King Arthur in which Arthur and his knights on several occasions talk about making sacrifices to &quot;the gods&quot;. Except ... except the whole point of the old stories about Arthur and company was that they were Christians defending Britain against an invasion by pagans. I suppose a re-telling of the story in which they are pagans might be a clever twist, but it was tossed in so casually that I got the impression that the scriptwriters didn't realize what a bizarre twist this was. Now I'm thinking it would be fun to write a story set in Indonesia in which the people there are all Jewish, with no explanation of how that came about. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think an easy out is to set the story in an imaginary place. You can model it on a real place, but if you give it a different name, then you avoid having to research a bunch of detail. You can then freely take the things about the real place that made you want to set the story there, and just make up whatever else you need as you go along. Also, you can say negative things about the place without offending people who are from there. I suspect this is why lots of stories are set in &quot;a small country in Europe&quot; and the like. Oh, this wouldn't give you total free rein. If you set a story in &quot;a small country in Europe&quot; and then mention the characters going off into the jungle, readers might ask, &quot;The jungle? just where in Europe is this supposed to be?&quot; But you eliminate whole categories of possible problems. You can call the local law enforcement officer &quot;the constable&quot; without having to check on official titles, you can say the hero had to cross a raging river without consulting a map, you can say that the heroine was annoyed that the shoes cost 20 dropniks without having to worry about the actual currency or prevailing prices, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That may not work for you, of course. It may be essential to set the story in France because the whole plot hinges on the legacy of Charlemagne or some such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T16:26:10.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7052" CreationDate="2013-01-15T17:44:25.560" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Character drives plot.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go back to your character sheets, or cook up a few secondaries, and see what their backstories tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen J. Michael Straczynski credited with: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conflict is made up of three things: What does your character want? What will they do to get it? What will someone do to stop them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So look into the backstories of your characters and find out something they might want but haven't been able to get, and determine why. That will generate plot ideas which are more organic to your story than anything TVTropes will be able to churn up. (Not that TVTropes isn't outstanding at that kind of thing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) The Hero's Journey.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oldest narrative hook in the business. If you can't find even a minor plot bunny in there somewhere, your story needs more help than we can give you. There's even a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/193290736X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; if you need it. See also Joseph Campbell's &lt;em&gt;Hero With a Thousand Faces,&lt;/em&gt; but that's becoming procrastination more than research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Pulp fiction.&lt;/strong&gt; No, bear with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Rogers, mastermind of the late and much lamented &lt;em&gt;Leverage,&lt;/em&gt; is greatly fond of pulp, in the classic sense &amp;mdash; those dime-a-dozen novels which were churned out in the '50s and '60s, with formulaic but rat-a-tat-tat action and snappy banter. You can consume a whole book in one train ride (but you can't eat just one). He recommends the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot.&lt;/a&gt; I cannot recommend this personally, but I pass it on because it certainly sounds like you could mine it for resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T14:27:47.100" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T14:27:47.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7049" CreationDate="2013-01-15T23:57:16.563" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a relatively new to fiction, but I too have experienced the pain of writing and then reading over a dreadfully boring hunk of prose. Here are ways I handle the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I wait a day. Then I cut like a butcher. I make sure key elements are incorporated nearby. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes a judicious adjectival phrase can carry the weight of a 4-5 sentence description!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I save my trimmings in a Word file especially dedicated to that story; sometimes I'll just paste cuttings at the bottom of a page, but this can get messy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sense that with more experience, with more hours spent tapping away at my stories,  I'll be able to recognize the thought-patterns that drive me down these tedious paths. Once I learn to detect a blowsy patch ahead, I'll learn how to avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4533" LastEditorUserId="4533" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T01:31:49.457" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T01:31:49.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7056" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7059" CreationDate="2013-01-16T05:15:08.850" Score="5" ViewCount="1318" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do table of contents, appendices, and chapter titles count toward the total word count for a book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if a book is 50,000 words, what is not included in the count?  This is for a nonfiction book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4608" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-06-24T15:36:45.103" LastActivityDate="2019-06-24T15:36:45.103" Title="Are TOC and appendix part of total word count for books?" Tags="|non-fiction|book|wordcount|table-of-contents|appendix|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7016" CreationDate="2013-01-16T09:42:19.353" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you want &lt;a href=&quot;http://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MultiMarkdown&lt;/a&gt;. It has built-in support for &lt;code&gt;**bold**&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;_italics_&lt;/code&gt;, and footnotes (footnote syntax: &lt;code&gt;[^footnote]&lt;/code&gt;). It's similarly easy to specify headers with &lt;code&gt;#&lt;/code&gt;, and it can publish directly to LaTeX. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of all, it's extremely easy to incorporate without getting distracted. I write MultiMarkdown blog posts full of footnotes and links from my iPhone; I've even composed whole MMD tables on the Metro for my RPG projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MultiMarkdown is especially great if you're a Mac user; there's tons of great software to support it like Marked to preview your output; Scrivener to organize larger projects; and Sublime Text 2 + &lt;a href=&quot;http://brettterpstra.com/2012/05/17/markdown-editing-for-sublime-text-2-humble-beginnings/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Markdown Editing for Sublime Text 2&lt;/a&gt;. None of that is really necessary, though: A plaintext editor and the command line can do everything, if you roll that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't support underlines, unfortunately. I've yet to find a simple markup language that does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4578" LastEditorUserId="13446" LastEditDate="2015-04-29T11:14:19.840" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T11:14:19.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7052" CreationDate="2013-01-16T11:51:19.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;George Polti, a French writer, concocted a list that, arguably, contains every dramatic situation possible. His list has &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;36 situations&lt;/a&gt;. Although it's quite general, it may provide clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T21:57:32.313" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T21:57:32.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7056" CreationDate="2013-01-16T13:31:17.817" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;After about fifteen minutes research, I couldn't find an authoritative answer for this. I suspect there's a good reason for this, however: &lt;em&gt;At counts in the tens of thousands, the answer doesn't make much difference.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you have a 50,000 word book (by raw body text count). Let's say the work has 100 headings, averaging 6 words each. Even duplicating these in the table of contents, this would only increase the word count by 1,200. That's just 2.4%, a fairly negligible difference. Any publisher or reviewer who is that worried about word count will probably spell all this stuff out for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my &lt;strong&gt;simple gut answer&lt;/strong&gt; would be: Include everything but the table of contents. Chapter headings, appendices, and even citations all represent &quot;writing effort&quot; by the author. If you're paid by the word, then you should be paid for this effort. Similarly, all these add to the length of the book for layout/formatting purposes. Again, including them seems like the most accurate approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4578" LastEditorUserId="4578" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T14:53:54.123" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T14:53:54.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7060" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2013-01-16T18:23:52.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Types of writing: fiction, technical documentation, poetry, scholarly papers, song lyrics, blogs, scripts, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning, creating, and revising your work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Editing, publishing, and marketing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Style and formatting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-08-14T23:37:53.800" LastActivityDate="2017-08-14T23:37:53.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7061" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2013-01-16T18:24:31.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;The strictly interpreted correctness of English grammar or syntax rules&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Anything not directly related to writing, copywriting, publishing, or editing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Questions that are primarily opinion-based&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Requests for proofreading or critiques of your work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2021-03-07T16:21:26.687" LastActivityDate="2021-03-07T16:21:26.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7063" CreationDate="2013-01-17T07:27:16.157" Score="5" ViewCount="371" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write on a fairly low traffic blog. One thing I've been seeing some of around the internet are blog posts which use meme pictures(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/36g57s/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;example picture&lt;/a&gt;. It seems like an interesting approach to me. I'm a programmer and write about technical topics. Sometimes topics are pretty dry and it's difficult to make them interesting. So, I recently decided to try out this style. I'm not for sure how much I like it. In some cases, it just makes bad writing less... bad. And in others, it can take a very dry and boring topic and make it hold my attention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is everyone's thoughts? What are the bad points to using memes (or other funny/not-diagram) pictures in writing about a topic? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, for reference, &lt;a href=&quot;http://earlz.net/view/2013/01/17/0708/how-to-name-variables-according-to-context&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; is the blog post I wrote using this style(it's very technical)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4614" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T18:20:48.697" Title="Should I embrace or avoid memes(pictures) when blogging?" Tags="|blog|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7062" CreationDate="2013-01-17T10:49:52.047" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Downsides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's unprofessional. They are usually teenager level style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most of them are repeated ad nauseam. Reposting an old meme is boooring.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trying to fit them in for the sake of having them in is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeS-Xb5u4-U&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a really pathetic attempt at being hip&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upsides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can liven up a text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can be really memorable and funny if done right.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can really drive a point home.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do NOT use generic memes for generic purposes. Use of &lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rage-comics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rage faces&lt;/a&gt; to express opinions is practically bound to be a failure. Using a meme in role of lorem ipsum (or any other generic sample subjected to given process) is bound to feel pathetic. Using it where a common expression would suffice is awkward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, hand-modifying a meme to make it a perfect fit for a given situation, something that would be hard to put in words to give it enough impact, can really make the impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine you describe a particular compiler directive that really badly breaks the resulting binary directly in opposition to what it should protect against, then you  put &lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/scumbag-steve&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scumbag Steve&lt;/a&gt;'s hat on it. It's hard to describe in words how utterly assinine the compiler behavior becomes, but the picture is worth a 1000 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or there's a case where given system running in a virtual machine runs an emulator under which a virtual machine runs an interpreter that executes a simulation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/xzibit-yo-dawg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;XZibit&lt;/a&gt; made it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or there's a simple typo in a script that triggers a small routing bug and brings down an entire data center &lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/that-escalated-quickly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bringing a whole city offline.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't overthink it. Only use simplest variations. Think of the memes as punctuation marks similar to &lt;code&gt;!&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;?&lt;/code&gt; except expressing somewhat more complex emotions, and it can be fine. If you abuse them, though, you lose all benefits. That would be like abusing  punctuation, wouldn't it!!!?!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;oops I didn't notice the example page you linked to. I see you commit a serious crime: using memes without understanding them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first meme: &lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/first-world-problems&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;1st world problems&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. It's used in context of mocking a trivial problem. ALWAYS with sarcasm. In this case it would imply you're supporting long names and mocking ire caused by them. This is not what you claim in your text. You abused a meme badly, used something strictly cynical in a direct, non-cynical way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: &lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sudden-clarity-clarence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sudden Clarity Clarence&lt;/a&gt;. It's to express epiphany, either truly or mockingly. A minor advice does not quite qualify there. It should be either really surprising or really trivial, not something from the spectrum between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quickmeme.com/Success-Kid/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Success kid&lt;/a&gt;: It's a marginally known meme about a minor serendipity. Is the achieved improvement of code just effect of blind luck? What do you want to convey through showing the amount of joy it's supposed to cause? The message is unclear, and the fact you used a little known advice animal doesn't help at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, &lt;strong&gt;know the meaning of the meme before using it&lt;/strong&gt;, or you risk making an ass of yourself, say, by inserting your own serious opinion into a frame of mockery. Memes are a minefield, and you really need to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7187027/Polish-newspaper-claims-Pedobear-is-2010-Vancouver-Olympic-mascot.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;know what you're doing&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning number of pictures per blog post, what others address: Use as many as you want, but providing you use them right and &lt;em&gt;make them genuinely funny&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt you'd find enough context in a post of the size you have linked to ever fit three memes in a meaningful and original way. There's maybe enough material for one. If you're a genius, you might squeeze three out of it. Are you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-01-17T18:20:48.697" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T18:20:48.697" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7062" CreationDate="2013-01-17T11:13:08.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to S.F.'s excellent answer, &quot;Less is more.&quot; The post you linked to could have one of those meme photos, but not all three. Having said that, using one of the meme photos does liven it up a bit and make it less dry. So they are not a bad thing by definition, but they are easy to overdo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use them judiciously and when appropriate, not in every post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T11:13:08.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7062" CreationDate="2013-01-17T11:23:56.780" Score="5" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;switch(NumberOfMemes){&#xA;case 1:&#xA;result=&quot;This might liven a dull post.&quot;;&#xA;break;&#xA;case 2:&#xA;result=&quot;If the first one did not work, take it out.&quot;;&#xA;break;&#xA;default:&#xA;result=&quot;If you want a picture gallery, stop calling it a blog.&quot;;&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T11:23:56.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7062" CreationDate="2013-01-17T16:11:10.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO, this is a clever idea that has been beaten to death. Whoever first thought of it: genius. The 10 bazillion people who copied him: not so much. Like anything, I suppose if done well it can still be cute. But I definitely would not do it on the theory that an unoriginal idea can be made interesting by combining it with an unoriginal gimmick. I'm not saying your ideas are unoriginal. I don't know what your ideas are. I'm just saying that if they ARE unoriginal, you're not going to save them by use of a gimmick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like those slogan that go around. Like, someone quoted Einstein as saying &quot;The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.&quot; I don't know if Einstein really said that or not. Whoever first said it: good point. The first few people to quote it in a different context: clever. Now I hear it so often that anytime I hear someone say the first few words of it I want to scream before they're finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T16:11:10.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7067" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7072" CreationDate="2013-01-17T22:09:13.637" Score="1" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to start my story connecting the government flaws to the main characters life before he was even born. I thought since the settings a somewhat Communist United Soviet United government, A nuclear facility like Chernobyl would be a good scene. I want to describe the insides of the nuclear facility. But how can I find photogrpahy or video of inside of a place that could be your deathbed if you went in to record what is in there? I want to have a &quot;trap&quot; or multipl occur in the plant so I need to know what &quot;host of vicious implements, I can use to exact my pound of flesh&quot; I used HowStuffworks to see how Nuclear Reactions work, and yes I could use the hot water or steam as part of the suffering trap involved, but thats not unique - A lot of places have hot stuff. So how exactly should I learn about what is inside a nuclear facility?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-01-18T06:42:01.967" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T12:00:20.173" Title="Find Information For Describing A Nuclear Power Plant" Tags="|resources|research|setting|inspiration|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7056" CreationDate="2013-01-18T04:18:27.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just looked through my non-fiction book contract from an academic publisher, and it says &quot;approximately 70,000 words in length&quot; and then says in parentheses that this would make for a 280 page book. The only other relevant detail was that the publisher would handle the index (they did the table of contents as well), which means that AncientToaster's answer was pretty much on the mark for my experience. There would have been penalties if the book had ended up being much longer or shorter, I think, but this wasn't mentioned. (It ended up being just 250 pages long, when published.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3516" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T04:18:27.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7069" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-18T10:46:26.020" Score="5" ViewCount="748" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every so often I see a nice piece of fiction where its author adds something (to save the plot, or to make it interesting, whatever) that makes the story broken (usually it makes the world, setting or environment broken). Canonical examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unlimited time travel (e.g. in Harry Potter someone could have use the time-turner to kill Voldemort before he became dangerous),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;super-ultra-hyper-mega weapon (e.g. in Star Wars: A New Hope, Vader could just annihilate both the planet and the moon, he didn't need to wait for the moon to become visible),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unconstrained teleport (e.g. in Lord of the Rings, Frodo could have just flew to destroy the ring).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to make a list of features that could easily make the world broken, so that the author should think twice before adding such an element or avoid it if possible. To make it more helpful, some comments on how to make such feature workable (constraints that doesn't prevent its use, but does prevent abuse) would be appreciated, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;time-machine which needs to be charged before each use, and you can only go back as far as the charge-time was;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;super-weapon with&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;very high reload time (or even one-time weapon),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;big resource consumption,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;limited aiming capabilities,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teleport only between linked teleport stations and with some non-zero transmition time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes such features are very mundane, for example, weird money exchange rates that would make arbitrage possible (in a story where huge amount of money would solve the main challenge or make it considerably easier).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would greatly appreciate your ideas!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It feels like I was misunderstood. I don't want to create some infinite (what?!) list of forbidden tricks. As for the survey-making comment, I have no idea what you want to call it, but number of questions from top of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes&quot;&gt;Highest Voted Questions&lt;/a&gt; are of form &quot;what are good  to/about &quot; or &quot;best  to do/avoid &quot;. Maybe &quot;what are good features to make your story ridiculous&quot; or &quot;best ways to make your story broken&quot; would be a better description of question I wanted to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it is not a plot holes I am looking for. Things I am looking for induce plot holes, but not every plot hole is what I am interested in. The main difference is that features like unconstrained time travel make the story broken continuously and independently of what the protagonists will do (but for destruction of the time machine). At any point they can do almost anything including complete reorganization of the world (and thus removing any challenges). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plot hole is usually a single event that doesn't fit, e.g. some kind of &quot;out of character behavior&quot;. What I am looking for are things that create a &lt;em&gt;plot trench&lt;/em&gt;, where someone ignores a natural and easy solution for a long period of time (usually from feature introduction to the end of the challenge). Often it is not only the main challenge that would be rendered pointless, but also any other similar problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4619" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2021-12-21T19:21:33.710" Title="Gadgets that make the world/story broken" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7069" CreationDate="2013-01-18T11:10:20.187" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Superpowers which aren't fueled by anything and have no consequence for using them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example which springs to mind is &quot;Heroes.&quot; When indestructible cheerleader Claire regenerated, or speedster Daphne ran, they were &lt;em&gt;burning energy.&lt;/em&gt; That energy had to come from somewhere. They should have been eating constantly, and even more whippet-thin than the poor girls already were. Claire regenerated a toe in an early episode &amp;mdash; where did the mass come from to create the toe? She should have immediately needed to inhale two cheeseburgers or something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T11:10:20.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7071" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7087" CreationDate="2013-01-18T11:27:08.123" Score="2" ViewCount="3004" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that the figures and tables are numbered consecutively throughout the&#xA;while paper. What about the equation numbering? Suppose I have four equations in the paper, but I want to number only two of them. Is it appropriate to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advise is very welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4594" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T12:17:45.833" Title="How to number the equations in an academic paper?" Tags="|formatting|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7067" CreationDate="2013-01-18T12:00:20.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want the outside layout and a small glimpse of the inside of Chernobyl NPP, follow John Smithers' advice: grab a copy of &lt;em&gt;S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl&lt;/em&gt;, read a game guide on how to get the &quot;Good Ending&quot; and play it through. The authors took only minimal amounts of artistic liberties while re-creating the outside layout of the NPP, and while the inside is &lt;em&gt;technically&lt;/em&gt; nothing like the real thing, it correctly captures the looks and atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, it's just a small glimpse and heavily influenced by the game mechanics, plus tells very little about the inner workings. If you want some great footage of the insides of Chernobyl NPP, plus quite a bit of backstory and feel of the still active area, try to to somehow obtain a copy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.podniesinski.pl/portal/?p=2901&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Alone in the Zone&quot;&lt;/a&gt; by Arkadiusz Podniesinski. There are shots all thorough the NPP, outsides, insides, eviscerated 4th block, active control center, a long interview with the staff, and of course a bunch of other objects. Obtaining a copy of the movie might be hard though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, details on inner workings? Actual dangers of active, functioning NPP? I'm afraid this is a wrong place to ask that. I believe while it will be just as off-topic on &lt;a href=&quot;https://electronics.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Electrical Engineering&lt;/a&gt;, but at least I hope that's where you should  be able to obtain actual pointers to where to ask to get your answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:33:11.447" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T12:00:20.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7069" CreationDate="2013-01-18T12:14:59.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid &quot;infinite lists of items&quot; are not really welcome here. OTOH, links to resources containing such lists are okay, so... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fridge Logic&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotHole&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Plot Hole&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warning, TVTropes links. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T12:14:59.800" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7074" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7075" CreationDate="2013-01-18T13:33:12.793" Score="9" ViewCount="2297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a new job in London and while emailing with my soon-to-be boss, I noticed something that drove me off: the constant repetition of the pronoun &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;. This is very different from my native language (Italian) and most of the time, sounds and reads awful to me. So I started to check online for explanations, but all I could find was people saying that using it or omitting it is up to me. But I'm still not satisfied enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Italian, for example, one would say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ho scritto&lt;/strong&gt; del codice, &lt;strong&gt;sono andato&lt;/strong&gt; a pranzo e poi &lt;strong&gt;ho fatto&lt;/strong&gt; la doccia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where there is not a single occurrence the first-person singular pronoun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The English translation is straightforward (and omitting the pronoun is easy to undestand), being this just a sequence of operations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I wrote&lt;/strong&gt; some code, &lt;strong&gt;had&lt;/strong&gt; lunch, then &lt;strong&gt;took&lt;/strong&gt; a shower&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem starts when I'm trying to be formal or technical (I'm a computer programmer): I'm not sure if I'm using the pronoun too much or not. This whole question is a nice example: I could have written this in italian without using the pronoun once. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following bit is from an email I sent to London:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I should be able to tell you (I hope) on Friday or Monday (both bosses are still out of office) and I'm trying to push this as fast as I can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had to use the pronoun &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; four times in a single sentence. Is this happening because my knowledge of the language is limited, or just because I'm not yet completely used to it in my daily life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4625" OwnerDisplayName="Samuele Mattiuzzo" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2024-01-08T17:26:17.113" LastActivityDate="2024-01-08T17:26:17.113" Title="What is the proper way to use the pronoun &quot;I&quot; without too much repetition?" Tags="|word-choice|grammatical-person|pronouns|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7074" CreationDate="2013-01-18T13:40:17.137" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing unusual about using 'I' four times in a sentence as you have done, and you can't really avoid it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You didn't ask about it, but you need to say 'out of &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; office', and that piece of information might be better in a separate sentence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Barrie England" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T13:40:17.137" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7074" CreationDate="2013-01-18T14:47:11.930" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pronouns can be heavily used more readily than other words, because the smaller and more common a word is, the less it &quot;stands out&quot;. Readers of English are used to &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; repeating a lot in first-person writing, because it's appropriate to such expression - the weak inflection means the information other languages would express in the form of the verb requires a noun or pronoun in English. So it isn't a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare your original (with one fix):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I should be able to tell you (I hope) on Friday or Monday (both bosses are still out of the office) and I'm trying to push this as fast as I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sentinel should be able to tell you (the sentinel hopes) on Friday or Monday (both bosses are still out of the office) and the sentinel is trying to push this as fast as the sentinel can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that's still perfectly grammatical, but it &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; pretty strange. The reason is that the long and relatively rare word &lt;em&gt;sentinel&lt;/em&gt; is more striking so its repetition is jarring. Unless we wanted this jarring for effect, we would avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main way that we would avoid it, is to use pronouns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sentinel should be able to tell you (he hopes) on Friday or Monday (both bosses are still out of the office) and he is trying to push this as fast as he can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;He&lt;/em&gt;, like &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; bears much more repetition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Incidentally &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;asked&lt;/em&gt; bear vast repetition easily. Trying to avoid them by substituting other words on the other hand, leads to tiring &quot;said bookism&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was to pick any point of style for criticism in the sentence, it would be that parentheses are worth avoiding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hope to be able to tell you on Friday or Monday.  Both bosses are still out of the office, and I'm trying to push this as fast as I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep things a matter of a series of thoughts, rather than detours into parenthetical thoughts from which the reader has to return. That said, I probably only noticed at all, because my own writing tends to overuse parentheses a lot, so I'm used to looking for where they can be removed because my own first-drafts tend to need it more than other people's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4626" OwnerDisplayName="Jon Hanna" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T14:47:11.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7071" CreationDate="2013-01-18T15:41:44.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general rule that I often use is to number all equations that will be referred to in the text. It is then optional to number equations to which there is no reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4623" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T15:41:44.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7074" CreationDate="2013-01-18T16:21:49.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To some extent, previous answers are correct in saying that pronouns can, should, or must be used frequently.  The idea that they can't be avoided is wrong.  One can reword the present example as below.  [I excluded the phrase “(both bosses are still out of office)” as not relevant to the example.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I should be able to tell you (I hope) on Friday or Monday, and I'm trying to push this as fast as I can  →&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I may be able to tell you on Friday or Monday; I'm pushing this along as fast as can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rewording “I should X (I hope)” as  “I may X” seems reasonable; rewording “as fast as I can” as “as fast as can be” , less so.  Because the phrase “I'm pushing this along as fast as I can” may be slightly too informal or slangy for a business email, and because the information it supplies should be a given, you could just drop it, leaving &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I may be able to tell you on Friday or Monday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can include the “both bosses are still out of the office” information without parentheses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I may be able to tell you on Friday or Monday; some bosses are away at present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit 1:  To clarify “The idea that they can't be avoided is wrong”:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The burden of several other answers and comments was that pronouns cannot be avoided, but they are short and thus it doesn't matter.   The point of  “The idea that they can't be avoided is wrong” is not that all pronouns can be avoided – fairly obviously, some can't – but rather that many can be avoided, by tightening up the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the condensed form “I'll let you know Friday or Monday” has one pronoun, and is short, direct, positive, effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By contrast, “I should be able to tell you (I hope) on Friday or Monday, and I'm trying to push this as fast as I can”, with its three personal pronouns, is lengthy and full of quibbles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; expresses uncertainty, as do  &lt;em&gt;I hope&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Friday or Monday&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase “should be able to tell” also is equivocal: it does not say &lt;em&gt;will tell&lt;/em&gt; (which the writer should say), nor does it say &lt;em&gt;will tell if possible&lt;/em&gt; (which the writer probably meant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase “I'm trying to push this as fast as I can” equivocates via &lt;em&gt;trying to&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;as fast as I can&lt;/em&gt;.  One might consider “I'm pushing this as fast as possible” instead, but I think it better to just cut the phrase entirely, taking it as a given.  Or say “This is my top priority.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastEditorUserId="2619" LastEditDate="2017-03-17T16:43:03.823" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T16:43:03.823" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7069" CreationDate="2013-01-18T16:41:00.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trying to build a list of all the possible &quot;excess magics&quot; that one could put in a story is probably a hopeless task. For one thing, the list might well be infinite: You could list a thousand things and someone could come up with one more. For another, there are plenty of things that exist in the real world that could provide easy solutions to many plots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I don't know how many stories I've seen where I just want to yell at the screen, &quot;Why don't you just call the police?&quot; or &quot;Why don't you just tell her you love her?&quot; or whatever. What I find particularly grating about many of these is that a writer with a dime's worth of imagination could toss in some explanation of why the obvious solution doesn't work. Like, the hero calls the police, a policeman comes ... and then it turns out the policeman has been paid off by the criminals and so he just calls back to headquarters, &quot;No hostage situation here. Just some nutjob who wants attention.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yeah, many many time travel stories, I find myself saying, Why doesn't the hero just go back in time one hour and try a different solution? Why doesn't he go forward to the day before he left and tell himself what he's going to encounter so he can prepare?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to plugging the plot holes: I think the trick is to make the plug not sound arbitrary. Like in many time travel stories they &quot;explain&quot; why the hero can't go back and prevent World War 2 or save his friend's life or whatever by saying, &quot;We can't change history&quot;. But the whole point of the story is that they went back in time and changed things. Why can they change some things and not others? I might buy it if at the beginning of the story they set out some coherent rule of what can be changed and what can't, or if in the course of the story the characters discover this rule. But of course the real rule is, &quot;You can change things that make the story more interesting and you can't change things that make solving the hero's problems too easy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard a lecture by a mystery writer once where he said that he spends a lot of time putting doors in alleys. He explained that what he meant was, if in chapter 10 the hero is chased into an alley, and then just suddenly conveniently finds a door through which he can escape, it looks awfully contrived. But if in chapter 5 he has the hero go to that alley and notice the door and go through it and see where it goes, and THEN in chapter 10 the hero gets chased into the alley and escapes through that door, it doesn't look so contrived. I think that's a big part of the trick. If you bring something up that creates a problem or solves a problem just when you need it, it looks contrived and the reader feels cheated. But if you bring it up a couple of chapters earlier, and then it's there when you need it, the reader feels like he's been given fair warning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T16:41:00.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7074" CreationDate="2013-01-18T16:48:06.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know anything about Italian, but many languages have the pronoun &quot;built in&quot; to the verb. There are different forms of the verb for when it is first person than for when it is second person than for when it is third person. In such cases, the pronoun is only needed in special cases or for emphasis. But in English the pronoun is not built into the verb in most cases, so you must explicitly include it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Jon Hanna says, English pronouns are short and people don't tend to perceive them as overused even when repeated many times in a sentence. Not to say that you shouldn't eliminate repeated pronouns when possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T16:48:06.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7016" CreationDate="2013-01-18T22:15:01.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have tried to write in XML and latex but neither seems very stream lined for fiction. A lot of people have said markdown but I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikicreole.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;wiki creole&quot;&gt;wiki creole&lt;/a&gt; is better. It is really simple and efficient and it is trying to be a standard markup language for use by all wikis so maybe it will become widely adopted which would make it a good thing to write in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4628" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T22:15:01.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7083" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-18T22:24:04.783" Score="6" ViewCount="12467" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any standard (or at least common) hierarchical arrangement for major divisions of a fiction book? For instance, I occasionally see some large novels divided into &quot;parts&quot;, and sometimes I see them divided into &quot;books&quot;. Can you have one inside the other? Is there a standard order?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what about a volume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-03-17T16:34:44.543" LastActivityDate="2022-08-08T17:11:24.663" Title="Parts, books, volumes, etc" Tags="|structure|organization|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7074" CreationDate="2013-01-18T23:49:37.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think part of the problem you're having here is that many of the &lt;em&gt;Romance&lt;/em&gt; languages can include the first singular pronoun &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; as part of the verb. E.g in Spanish &lt;em&gt;Yo como pan&lt;/em&gt;, (I eat bread) can also be written as simply &lt;em&gt;como pan&lt;/em&gt;  (I eat bread) without the use of Yo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English doesn't work like that and you cannot include the pronoun &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; as part of a verb, you have to say it each time you want to use the first person singular pronoun &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;. I eat bread, I ran home, I drove to work, I had lunch etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example you could have removed one of them, (hopefully would mean the same as I hope) but that's up to you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I should be able to tell you &lt;em&gt;(hopefully)&lt;/em&gt; on Friday or Monday (both bosses are still out of &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; office) and I'm trying to push this as fast as I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't concern yourself with the number of times you're using the first person singular pronoun as English has no way of incorporating it into verbs as you're used to. Which is probably why it feels strange to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T23:49:37.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7083" CreationDate="2013-01-18T23:59:42.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure about books versus parts but a volume is a bound segment of a work. You can remember that by the way printed encyclopedias are usually broken up into volumes. But I do not think that actually relates to structures like parts and books because a volume could split a part or a book or even a chapter it all just depends on how its printed and bound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the most important thing is to just be consistent obviously within a work or really within an entire series if it is one. And do not do anything that is obviously wrong like putting a chapter above a book because this could be confusing to readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4628" LastEditorUserId="4628" LastEditDate="2013-01-19T15:52:04.500" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T15:52:04.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7071" CreationDate="2013-01-19T00:21:46.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What purpose is served by an equation to which you do not refer in the text? Is it an illustration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the equation does not need a number, does the reader need to see it? I would number them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T00:21:46.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7071" CreationDate="2013-01-19T01:15:42.850" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the standard is to only number equations that are referenced in the text. On the other hand there is no real harm in numbering all of the equations especially when you have so few of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4628" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T01:15:42.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7083" CreationDate="2013-01-19T13:38:32.170" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is an official set of names, and worse, there are pieces that have conflicting meanings. A &quot;Book&quot; is used as &lt;em&gt;the whole story&lt;/em&gt;, as &lt;em&gt;a volume&lt;/em&gt; or as &lt;em&gt;a part&lt;/em&gt;. A &quot;Part&quot; is either &lt;em&gt;A book in the series&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;A subsection within book&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me try to put it in order but take into account this is by no means ultimate or a law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Series/Franchise/World/Saga. There is this world/universe/multiverse where stories take place. It's self-contained and doesn't bind to any other books. It's not even limited to one author. Usually name is supplemented with the &quot;Series/Saga/World of...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Storyline/Series [see, series within series?]. Following adventures of one group of characters in a single world. It's often quite non-straightforward; see an &lt;a href=&quot;http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game_series&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;...; usually named &quot;&lt;em&gt;character's&lt;/em&gt; Storyline&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Part [of Series]/Book. A self-contained story either released alone or as a part of series. The primary unit, has its own title.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Volume - a physical subdivision of a Book, a piece contained within one binder (or one physical file.) It frequently coincides with the Part of the Book. Usually has a number, rarely a title.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Part [of a book]. It's a major subdivision often coinciding with volume, but not always. For example, Lord of the Rings is three volumes but six parts plus appendices. It's a major turn of events, resetting the mood and pace and often with its own climax. It may or may not have a title.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chapter - I think we had discussions of what comprises a chapter here. I think it's easiest to understand but hardest to put in words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scene/Section - a piece delimited by &lt;code&gt;* * *&lt;/code&gt; or the likes, usually with a continuity of time or location.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paragraph&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note there is no agreement to naming especially within the Chapter/Volume/Part area: I've seen any of them named &quot;Book&quot; (&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Tadeusz&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sir Thaddeus&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is physically one book, one volume but it's &lt;em&gt;A Nobleman's Tale from the Years of 1811 and 1812 in &lt;strong&gt;Twelve Books&lt;/strong&gt; of Verse&lt;/em&gt;, which are actually chapters. Six &lt;em&gt;parts&lt;/em&gt; of Lord of the Rings are called &quot;Books&quot;.) And it's very frequent to make Volumes and Parts coincide (and then often Parts are called Volumes) but the Part-Volume relation may be entirely uneven, a part split between volumes or vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-01-19T18:32:48.543" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T18:32:48.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7089" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7091" CreationDate="2013-01-19T19:32:10.010" Score="1" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story I am writing involves the 10 steps of turning a democracy into a police state. And to make it more real, I thught the people who are doing it should explain it to the main character relaistically. This would mean that I need to be aware of how it works, and historical examples. I am using Naomi Wolf's &quot;The End of America&quot; as a source of leaning about these steps. She references that the turn The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, when she about democracy closing down in tipping points, I found on the Wiki page for Turning Point an outline / summary of what it is. Should I read the 300 page book or just read a summary. The character isn't gonna go into so much detail about every information about the 10 steps. And with tipping points being one element of many, he is not going to talk super in depth about this once concept as Gladwell did? I know this could be in the Politics SE page, but it is more about whether this source is worth diving deep into - which seems to be fitterd here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T21:21:47.280" Title="Is it worth reading book to learn more about topic of my story" Tags="|resources|book|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7089" CreationDate="2013-01-19T20:41:53.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely. I've read &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of books as research for writing stories, and I'm not even a compulsive researcher the way that some writers are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there's an obvious limit on how much effort you can put into a short story. Perhaps reading a 300-page book is too much effort, or perhaps only a portion of the book would be relevant to you. In that case, I have one word for you: &lt;em&gt;skim&lt;/em&gt;. Look at chapter and heading titles. Read the sections that are most relevant or interesting to you. Glance lightly over the rest. It's possible to get the most important bits of a very large book in a short space of time this way, and that may be just what you need in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T20:41:53.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7089" CreationDate="2013-01-19T21:21:47.280" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, research is worthwhile - to a point.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is difficult to answer because you're asking people to make a value judgment about how worthwhile research is. My opinion is that if your story is based on a concept, it behooves you to know about that concept. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to base a story on a particular concept, then you need to decide how well you want to know that concept. If you decide that this will take more work than is warranted for a short story, then you have a few choices: abandon the story, write the story on sketchy information, or decide that the story could end up being the seed for a longer project. for that last option, you might be able to justify doing more work than usual for a short story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it's worth keeping the following in mind: Malcolm Gladwell has been criticized for choosing examples that back up his theories, and for presenting a somewhat oversimplified treatment of the topic. (Having read &lt;em&gt;The Tipping Point&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Blink&lt;/em&gt;, this rings true for me. Even the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Gladwell#Reception&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; on him touches on some of this.) However, he is undeniably a talented writer who presents thoughtful ideas to the reader. And his books are very well-researched and filled with fascinating details and settings. If I wanted an in-depth knowledge of what a &quot;tipping point&quot; is, I'd read well beyond Gladwell's book. On the other hand, it's an easy-to-read and fun book that you could probably read in an afternoon. Why not read it anyway and see if you want to know more? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T21:21:47.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7093" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7097" CreationDate="2013-01-20T05:28:18.123" Score="10" ViewCount="6738" Body="&lt;p&gt;My college offers many writing courses. I notice, one course is called &quot;Creative Writing&quot; and another is called &quot;Fiction Writing&quot;. What is the difference between creative writing and fiction writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastActivityDate="2016-10-31T08:08:43.377" Title="What is the difference between &quot;creative writing&quot; and &quot;fiction writing&quot;?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7094" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7095" CreationDate="2013-01-20T06:14:00.913" Score="3" ViewCount="1951" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read many blogs which teach you how to give a unique voice to each of your characters. I feel I understand how to do it, but I think I'm a little stuck in the voice I've been using since I started writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there are some writing exercises to help me in this area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The only thing that comes to mind is to write a dialogue using people I know. But I'm not sure how effective that will be.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="4805" LastEditDate="2013-08-25T14:18:02.577" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T14:18:02.577" Title="Writing exercises to practice the art of giving unique voice to characters?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7094" CreationDate="2013-01-20T06:34:53.050" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the easiest way to write engaging and organic dialogue is to &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; your character inside and out. This way, you will find &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; inner voice--their way of speaking, thinking. To know them is to let their unique voice ring true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An exercise might be to compile a back history on your intended character and put them in a small &quot;situation&quot;. Write a monologue for your character, a plan to get them out of the situation, either triumphantly or tragically. Etc., etc., for the rest of your characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every character you can think of to write is merely an extension of yourself. We are all multi-faceted. Just dig in there and find that character in yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4631" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T06:34:53.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7096" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7099" CreationDate="2013-01-20T09:28:09.520" Score="1" ViewCount="7996" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been reading a host of old favourites, classics and authors outside of my usual reading pool, in an effort to dissect the writing (from plot, characters and environment to voice, pacing and dialogue) and hopefully learn both &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; to do and what &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When rereading &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_E._Feist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Raymond E. Feist&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magician_%28novel%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Magician:Apprentice&lt;/a&gt;, I noted that while clearly there was need (in terms of larger plot focus/tension and character growth and development), the increasing size of the clock ticks is a bit jarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first (at least) half of the novel, we get time that is pretty linear -  generally day-to-day, skipping a few hours or a day or two if needed for plot pacing. Once we get around two-thirds in, the scale of the story is increasing (geopolitical impact) and we're now experiencing gaps of weeks and months. By the time we're approaching the end, say around four-fifths in, we now have skips of months, seasons, and then even &lt;strong&gt;years&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I (&lt;em&gt;believe&lt;/em&gt; I) understand using time effectively in story telling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Zoom in close, add detail, use time linearly, when you're building the environment, character, or plot tension for the reader. I've noticed this to be especially prevalent in specific genres (horror, thriller, suspense).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Zoom out, skim-skip along as needed, when you're maintaining pace, plot course, and reader engagement. (epic speculative fiction or historical?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in all my reading-for-reading and reading-on-writing I've yet to come across any rules or guidelines for authors on &lt;strong&gt;when&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; to use this, so have no idea whether this is a learned skill that each author applies dependent on their writing style, or if they follow specific maxims (and yes, I agree rules for writers can and should be broken when the occasion demands).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there a set of commonly-used/respected rules/guides for deciding on time gaps between scenes/chapters in a written work of fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Notes:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;1. A search of Writers.SE on this topic only showed &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5477/how-do-i-cleanly-show-the-passage-of-time-with-multiple-varying-time-scales&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; as even remotely similar.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;2. No googling was done as I prefer to come to the best source I know.&lt;/em&gt; :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T18:35:04.053" Title="Are there rules for, or guidelines on, time gaps between a plot's scenes/chapters?" Tags="|style|technique|plot|time-depiction|rules|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7093" CreationDate="2013-01-20T09:39:04.053" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of what &lt;em&gt;your college&lt;/em&gt; is offering and the differences, your best bet is to &lt;em&gt;ask them directly&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of the wider world of writing, based on my own experiences in my own locale:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;creative&lt;/strong&gt; writing should focus on the &lt;em&gt;art&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt; of writing,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;fiction&lt;/strong&gt; writing on the &lt;em&gt;technical&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;functional&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in creative writing you'd learn to &lt;em&gt;experiment, have fun, and grow&lt;/em&gt; as a writer, while in fiction writing you'd learn how to be &lt;em&gt;a professional author&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T09:39:04.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7093" CreationDate="2013-01-20T13:34:54.607" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Zayne's answer, Creative might cover poetry, essays, or non-fiction, while Fiction is specifically fictional narratives (short stories or novels). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T13:34:54.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7096" CreationDate="2013-01-20T14:03:57.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is a respected rule: Skip the boring stuff!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on your story, on your style and what you want to show. If you have a gunslinger and you want to establish how good he is, you may want to describe in detail his fight against five other people which only lasts a few seconds to a minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reader already knows how good he is, just anther gun fight could be boring (even if it's the O.K. Corral). Then you can write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He drew first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and end the scene. In the next he is sitting in the saloon or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time gaps are used to keep your story thrilling. Skip the boring stuff and stress the excitement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T14:03:57.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7100" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-20T16:06:31.150" Score="4" ViewCount="577" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love to invent stories and come up with ideas, but I don't have the patience to fill out all the details that is usually a part of a novel. (For those of you familiar with Myers-Briggs or Jungian psychology, I'm talking about the curse of the Intuitives). Said in another way, I want to design stories rather than write them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What genre or format is the most efficient way to tell a story when you want to focus on narratives and not on prose? I would for instance assume that a screenplay takes less writing than a novel. Not necessarily less time, but less actual writing (please correct me if I'm wrong).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to get it straight, I realize that any story creation takes time. I just want to spend that time thinking more than writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-19T11:38:02.253" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T11:38:02.253" Title="How to tell a story with the least amount of writing?" Tags="|novel|screenwriting|narrative|genre|myersbriggs|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7100" CreationDate="2013-01-20T17:02:35.117" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you shouldn't be writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe you should be collaborating. Sketch the thing out and hire a&#xA;partner, or a ghostwriter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Short stories. Fewer words, and less need to create a world. You only&#xA;need to create as much as is necessary to make the story hold up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tell stories out loud instead. Find a library which needs volunteers&#xA;(a bit redundant, I know) and offer to set up a story hour for kids.&#xA;But instead of reading, you're just extemporizing your stories. Alternately, join an improv group.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think we have at least one video game writer on this board &amp;mdash;&#xA;how much &quot;writing&quot; does a video game narrative require?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would actually not suggest poetry, as the effort required to find &lt;em&gt;le mot juste&lt;/em&gt; takes just as much blood, sweat, and tears as writing prose, even if there are fewer words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T17:02:35.117" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7102" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7103" CreationDate="2013-01-20T17:24:19.773" Score="6" ViewCount="1916" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep thinking about this because I've lately been reading &lt;em&gt;Blood Meridian&lt;/em&gt; by Cormac McCarthy, and it's just ridiculous. I have to look up 1-2 words per sentence sometimes, something I'm only used to doing for Joyce. Apparently McCarthy is well known for doing this sort of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book was written in the mid-1980s -- it's modern. But the terms used therein belong to another time, and are mostly unknown to modern English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do authors pick up such a broad vocabulary of words that they can effectively disguise themselves as a hundred years older than they are? These words can't be used in day-to-day speech; nobody would understand you. If you can't use them, how do you remember them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples from &lt;em&gt;Blood Meridian&lt;/em&gt;: rebozo, shellalegh, hackamore, osnaburg, bungstarter, weskit, jacal, farrier, escopeta, caesura. Not a single one of these words have I ever heard reference to &lt;em&gt;anywhere else&lt;/em&gt; in my entire tour of existence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T07:50:35.013" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T01:58:14.540" Title="How do authors gain strong familiarity with archaic and extremely rare words?" Tags="|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7102" CreationDate="2013-01-20T17:48:13.020" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read a lot of archaic and extremely rare books, take notes, and make a point of using your list as a thesaurus. Practice using your list by writing paragraphs or stories as exercises just to get used to where the words fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T17:48:13.020" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7096" CreationDate="2013-01-20T19:50:25.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Time lapses, time advancements are used to move the story forward per plot situation, tempo, and cohesiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is going to span several generations of characters...well, then, you are going to move the story forward (skipping the non-pertainent boring crap) by time advancements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is going to stay in the moment, perhaps spanning only a week or a day (think Grey's Anatomy), then go breakfast, lunch, and dinner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no rules. There is common sense and a wicked sense of time. Get into your plot. Know your plot. Know your character/characters/situations. Write down all the scenes you can clearly &quot;see&quot; in your mind, and put those down on some cards. Now take a deep breath and decide what scene you might have to add between these cards for the story plot to make sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might end up with several scenes between these. You might end up with &lt;em&gt;none&lt;/em&gt;---these will be your lapses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't need it, don't show it. And NEVER, ever, ever, tell it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good writer usually knows that when he's starting to &quot;tell&quot;, he needs to say, &quot;cut.&quot; He needs to have a time advancement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4631" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T19:50:25.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7100" CreationDate="2013-01-20T21:24:09.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried writing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kōans&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are between one sentence and one paragraph long. Pure prose. No special prerequisites to writing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to write some great Kōans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; &lt;sub&gt;The likely outcome is that you will fail utterly. But then, the attempt should humble you enough that you will learn to value the freedoms granted by typical &quot;novel style&quot; prose. &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T21:24:09.757" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7096" CreationDate="2013-01-20T21:50:41.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No rules. But some guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to stay consistent with the layout of the gaps. There are traditionally two allowed &quot;zones of sparsity&quot;: Prologue and epilogue. Other than that, progression should be mostly linear.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bigger gaps are allowed but mark them as such. Four months in a coma shouldn't be a three-asterisk break. It should be a start of another volume.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can switch &quot;fast forward&quot; on by changing the format to that of a journal, a diary, a logbook. I covered three months of space flight under hibernation with a computer log. I covered thirty years of political developments with press headers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can switch to even higher gear by shifting the perspective to an eternal observer. A gargoyle on the roof. A sapling growing from a seed into a magnificent tree. A mountain carved by erosion. That way years or even millennia pass and the reader isn't alienated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid to go in opposite direction. One of chapters of &quot;Sum of All Fears&quot; by Tom Clancy, not really short too, describes a complex chain of events over a span of three nanoseconds.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Instead of jumping with the storyline, use retrospection and prediction; instead of saying &quot;30 years later&quot; on beginning of next chapter, write &quot;'...and that happened roughly 30 years ago,' said &lt;em&gt;the protagonist&lt;/em&gt; closing the photo album. 'And now that leaves up with today's situation...'&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these is written in stone. But - as you said - violating them may be &lt;em&gt;frustrating&lt;/em&gt; for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-01-20T21:57:35.290" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T21:57:35.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7094" CreationDate="2013-01-20T22:04:58.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of a fairly easy exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write a dialogue for 3 or more characters without ever identifying the speakers beyond the early introduction. Make sure the reader is able to tell them apart by their voices alone. Give it to someone to read (I think even posting that here would be okay) to see if you succeeded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T22:04:58.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7102" CreationDate="2013-01-21T00:04:58.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may have been written in the mid 1980's but the setting is the in the mid 1800's - you really &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; expect some archaic, unusual and unfamiliar words in any book set in that timeframe. Particularly so if the dialogue is intended to accurately reflect that of colloquial speech of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your primary question can be answered in one word: research. Any book set in a historical context and intended to accurately reflect speech of that timeframe will use archaic and unfamiliar words to modern English. It's deliberate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4459" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T00:04:58.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7102" CreationDate="2013-01-21T05:21:28.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to expand your vocabulary is to read a lot of books with unfamiliar words in them, experiencing them in context. However, there are ways to make this easier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seeking out relatively modern authors who have a reputation for using their rich vocabularies well in-context will make these words' meanings at least somewhat plain. (Gene Wolfe is my favorite writer along these lines.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reading older books with unfamiliar words will give you a larger number of new words to learn, but more words to look up. Reading these books on an e-reader will help, where looking up a word isn't much more complicated than tapping it on the screen. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read annotated versions of older books. These will have explanations of concepts and words unfamiliar to a modern audience. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, you can move outside of reading books and go to reference sources directly: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Browsing dictionaries and thesauri can be a heady if addictive pastime. I don't recommend this to any but the most ardent reference junkies. (Ahem.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are books &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; compiling reference books that may be more digestible. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0399535055&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reading the OED&lt;/a&gt; is a reader's journal of reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Word-a-day calendars can be fun. Similarly, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/dictionarycom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dictionary.com&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/MerriamWebster&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Merriam-Webster&lt;/a&gt; Twitter feeds perform similar functions. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T05:21:28.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7096" CreationDate="2013-01-21T06:50:41.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's certainly no rule on a specific time gap between chapters, like, &quot;Every chapter must begin 32 hours and 12 minutes after the last chapter ended.&quot; It depends on the subject matter. If the whole story happens in one day, then the gap between chapters may be a few hours, or less. If the story spans the history of a family or a civilization, the gap between chapters may be years or decades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the gap is consistent and natural, it usually needs no explanation. Statements of what the characters are doing and the beginning and end of each chapter can help, like if chapter 1 ends with the hero turning out the lights and going to bed and chapter 2 begins with him having breakfast, I think the reader will generally assume it's the next day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the gap between chapters is inconsistent or otherwise unclear, just add a couple of sentences to clarify. That could be as blunt as, &quot;After the war ended, George went back to ...&quot; Or a few lines of dialogue could set the time frame. &quot;'Have you been here before?' Sally asked. 'Yes, but that was thirty years ago,' Brian replied.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your times go all over the place, then I'd just put times or dates on the chapters. I've read plenty of books where each chapter begins with a label, like &quot;February, 1832: Paris&quot; or the like. I know some people will say that's clumsy, but I think it's better than trying to work statements of dates into the dialoge at the start of every chapter. &quot;Well, Harold, it really is hot this summer. Yes, this summer, 1938, will certainly be remembered as one of the hottest summers we've had around here ...&quot; I've seen plenty of movies that try to establish a date by having some news program on a TV in the background, like as the characters are talking we see a reporter on the TV talking about the moon landing or Nixon's resignation or some such to tip us off as to when this is happening. Personally I find this annoying: they think they're being subtle but it's screamingly blatant. I'd rather if they just pop up a subtitle that says &quot;1973&quot; or whatever. A gimmick way to fit the date into background or dialog may work once, but if you do it all the time, it becomes too obvious it's a gimmick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T06:50:41.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7111" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7113" CreationDate="2013-01-21T09:06:05.040" Score="-2" ViewCount="159183" Body="&lt;p&gt;A character in a story meets another and the author is keeping time of day, as in &quot;the clock was indicating 12 noon&quot;. How do the characters greet each other? Kindly include salutations for each time of day; that is morning, noon, afternoon, evening, and night with the related time. I went through several links for that which are as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=287453&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=287453&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.englishforums.com/English/UsageMorningAfternoon/klxbd/post.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.englishforums.com/English/UsageMorningAfternoon/klxbd/post.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc. but these set offer no static pattern or logical pattern to resolve the query. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Earlier in paragraph, the writer has mentioned that the &quot;clock was indicating 12 in day&quot;. And then another character arrived. How will he greet the first character who is already in the scene?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2088" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T17:35:33.967" LastActivityDate="2017-10-11T22:17:38.723" Title="How do greetings vary with time of day?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7111" CreationDate="2013-01-21T12:16:50.917" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The character will be probably as confused as you, unless they spend a good while to think over the meaning of the greeting. But just in case they paused to think it over...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;greeting&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;em&gt;wishing the upcoming time to be good.&lt;/em&gt; If you say &quot;Good morning&quot; you don't state &quot;this morning is good&quot;. It's a shorthand for &quot;I wish you to have a good morning&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since at noon the morning is just ending, there is no point giving wishes for such a short time. You wish &lt;strong&gt;good afternoon&lt;/strong&gt; which has just started - your wish will last for longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T12:25:24.473" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T12:25:24.473" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7111" CreationDate="2013-01-21T12:33:31.020" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;English speakers are fairly loose in this regard. The different greetings overlap, and your reader is unlikely to worry too much about what you use (unless it's 8 a.m. and your characters are saying &quot;Good afternoon.&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A rough guide, however:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;~5:00 to ~12:30: Good morning.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;~12:30 to ~ 17:00: Good afternoon.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;~16:30 to ~5:00: Good evening. (A tricky one. As far as I know, us English speakers don't say &quot;Good night&quot; in greeting, no matter how late in the day it is.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But these answers &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; approximate. The greeting might also vary depending on how light it is outside (You might say &quot;Good morning&quot; at 4:30 a.m., if the sun is up); the speaker's own schedule (If you generally wake up at 10:00, you might stretch &quot;Good morning&quot; as late as 13:00); or day of the week (&quot;Evening&quot; on Friday lasts longer than on Tuesday).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really aren't sure, just have them say &quot;Hello&quot; or &quot;How are you?&quot;. A time-based greeting is not required in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4578" LastEditorUserId="4578" LastEditDate="2013-01-22T09:55:18.877" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T09:55:18.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7114" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7119" CreationDate="2013-01-21T14:53:02.383" Score="6" ViewCount="1119" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following unedited dialogue is from a novel I'm writing (which is based on a short story I wrote a while ago):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I hope it's not an inappropriate question,&quot; Icaro said, after&#xA;  hesitating for a moment. &quot;But is it true that you don't have a soul?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ling stared down at her shoes, and then gave a slight nod.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Icaro's eyes widened, as if he had just seen a ghost. &quot;How did that&#xA;  happen? Did you lose it somewhere?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ling shook her head. &quot;I was born without one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But then how can you, like, be alive without a soul?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Mmm, to be honest, I'm not quiet sure myself.&quot; Ling said, &quot;I just&#xA;  know that my body managed to keep itself functioning without one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But there're still some sort of physical problems, right? Is that the&#xA;  reason you came to the hospital?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ling shook her head once again. &quot;I'm perfectly healthy. The reason I'm&#xA;  here is that, well, I kind of work here.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You work in the hospital?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ling nodded. &quot;Well, I guess I can't really call it a job, since I&#xA;  don't do much. I just sit in a room while doctors run tests on me.&#xA;  Nothing crazy, of course. Just simple things like blood, motor, and&#xA;  psychological tests. In return, they give me a monthly salary, and&#xA;  provide me with accommodation inside the hospital. A little room that&#xA;  was meant to be used by emergency doctors.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even thought it was a bit hard to believe, it somehow made sense to&#xA;  Icaro. Many doctors would be very interested in a case like hers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The pay isn't much,&quot; Ling continued. &quot;But since I have a place to&#xA;  sleep, and since I can eat at the cafeteria for free, I don't really&#xA;  spend that much. And the tests are mostly done in the morning. So, I&#xA;  have the whole afternoon, evening, and night for myself.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sounds like a good deal,&quot; Icaro said after giving it a thought. &quot;But&#xA;  I don't know, aren't you tired of spending so much time at the&#xA;  hospital? You know, watching sick people all the time. The smell of&#xA;  hospital.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Mmm, I think I'm used to it,&quot; Ling said. &quot;I guess everything is&#xA;  tolerable once you get used to it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each characters has his/her own story and motivations, and I tried to keep them present while writing the dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if both characters sound the same. If so, how can I do to make them sound more &quot;different&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T15:00:19.293" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T01:33:00.163" Title="Do the characters in the following dialogue sound the same?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7100" CreationDate="2013-01-21T16:34:32.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Easiest way: only tell the highlights.  If it isn't pertinent to the progression of the story, don't put it in.  If it is, don't leave it out.  That's about as simple as it gets.  Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4637" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T16:34:32.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6376" CreationDate="2013-01-21T18:27:50.867" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Colloquialism.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most successful blogs (technical or otherwise) are written as we speak, not as formally as news or media content. The trouble is, English learned from a book is not the same as English as it is spoken by native speakers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about the difference between what is spoken in the US versus Canada, or Australia versus New Zealand, you'll realize that every locality (no matter how geographically similar) develops its own regional dialect. This is perfectly natural, but doesn't make it any less of an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is even more marked when formal English is used in an informal setting. Directly translated metaphors can be funny, but not conducive to a &lt;em&gt;thoughtful&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer%27s_voice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;voice&lt;/a&gt;. The only way to correct this (without being able to &lt;em&gt;live&lt;/em&gt; in the target area) is through experience - read, read, and read some more... specifically content catering to the same audience you wish to reach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know if there are any studies or surveys as you suggest, but to be honest, if a non-native English blogger &lt;strong&gt;were&lt;/strong&gt; successful, who would know they &lt;strong&gt;weren't&lt;/strong&gt; a native speaker?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T18:27:50.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6864" CreationDate="2013-01-21T20:37:33.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would use a simple version control system like mercurial: there's no need for a server, you just pack up the entire directory (which contains the repository with all the version history), and trade it back and forth in email, for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also use a simple text-comparison tool, like &lt;code&gt;diff&lt;/code&gt;: save your original file and have your editor make all of their changes and save that to a different file. Then you can just run diff to compare the two versions and see what changed. The nice thing about this is that your editor could run diff and save the comparison to a patch file, and then add comments directly to the patch file to explain each change that was made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T20:37:33.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7114" CreationDate="2013-01-22T01:42:13.373" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say they don't seem to sound different - but then there's the rift: questioner-answerer. It very much sets the tone of this conversation, so spotting more subtle differences is difficult. It's the same informal, loose speech language. Give us these two giving answers to the same questions coming from a third questioner and they may be more distinguishable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You definitely need to add some physical emote to the 'mmm'. There are too many uses to that: when eating something tasty, when withholding pain, when expressing opposition/disapproval, when trying to scream with mouth taped shut (not the case here obviously), when expressing annoyed protest at disturbance...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...didn't you mean here 'Umm...' - hesitation, an inarticulate pause when thinking what to sat next?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things you can do without making them sound utterly &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6965/avoiding-making-all-your-characters-sound-the-same/6971#6971&quot;&gt;cliche&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shift all of hesitation to one character. There are five points of hesitation in this dialogue: &quot;after hesitating for a moment.&quot;; &quot;how can you, like,&quot;; &quot;Mmm, to be honest,&quot;; &quot;well, I kind of work here.&quot;; &quot;Mmm, I think I'm used to it,&quot;. They are evenly distributed between the two. Make one hesitate much more while stripping all hesitation from speech of the other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alternatively make hesitation of one strictly non-verbal (interjections like &quot;he fell silent for a second,&quot; &quot;he took a deep breath&quot;), and the other's always verbal (&quot;well,&quot; &quot;like,&quot; &quot;so...&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give them a different temperament. Here both feel awkward and reluctant, the dialogue feels very reserved. Make one an inquisitive, invasive extrovert, while the other is a reluctant, shy introvert. Express it by sprinkling more emotes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give them a different educational, cultural background. One to use very simple, crude vocabulary, the other using some word the first will entirely misunderstand. You may make one of them use cuss words a lot too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, what you're doing here is not wrong. If the characters are relatively similar, so will be their speech. If they are the protagonists, it is advised that unless you have strong story-related reasons not to, you should give your protagonists and central characters quite generic language and only shift spectra to increasingly obscure dialects for background cast. Giving the protagonists a subtle personal touch is nice, but don't be surprised if the readers simply overlook it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T02:50:43.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7120" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7124" CreationDate="2013-01-22T07:08:27.417" Score="1" ViewCount="1311" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been using &lt;strong&gt;iBook author&lt;/strong&gt;, for a time and the simple Mac &lt;strong&gt;TextEdit&lt;/strong&gt; along with openOffice &lt;strong&gt;TextDocument&lt;/strong&gt;. And I recently downloaded &lt;strong&gt;Evernote&lt;/strong&gt; in expectation of more (but that's something else and not writer specific). I also have been looking in an appstore for the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want some suggestion on good text editor that I can use for writing in multiple languages (specially English, Hindi, Arabic, and Urdu). Other language support would be great. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2088" LastEditorUserId="5233" LastEditDate="2013-05-31T23:17:50.653" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T15:28:28.713" Title="Suggest any good text editor for Mac for writing in multiple languages" Tags="|software|tools|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7120" CreationDate="2013-01-22T11:45:19.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;. I can't find anything in the documentation about those languages specifically, but it doesn't rule them out either. Free to try for a month, so you've got nothing to lose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T11:45:19.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7122" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7123" CreationDate="2013-01-22T12:15:05.690" Score="1" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing headlines for a print ad where instead of a 4X4 waiting for a train at a crossing, the train is waiting for it with a boom in front of the train instead of the car. This is to show the toughness of the car and so I've written the following lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Tough Act to Follow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rule With an Iron Fist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impossibly Tough&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Red Lights - Not Included&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Switch Up the Pecking Order&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Tough’s Gotten Going…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Adventure Gets Right of Way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As Tough as You Think You Are&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convention-Defying Toughness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No Added Extras – Like Rules&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who Says You Can’t?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Never Say Never&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You’re as Tough as You Feel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Rules of the Wild Aren’t the Rules of the Road&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not as though I'm having writers block as you can see and yet there's a value missing in these headlines that my headlines usually have and I'm not sure what's holding me back. If you have any technique you can suggest, please help. I'm not asking you to do my work, these headlines have been submitted for review but I would like to know what step I'm missing in my creative writing to add more 'ooomph' into my headlines. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4199" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-01-22T14:12:55.223" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T21:53:36.630" Title="What are my headlines lacking?" Tags="|copywriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7122" CreationDate="2013-01-22T13:48:48.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;They may probably be &lt;em&gt;just right&lt;/em&gt; for the target audience - if the target audience is the kind of people who would definitely use the toughness of the car in road traffic, and believe being stronger makes one right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for me, they are alliterating a crude message. No hint of subtlety, no wit, no distance to self, no humor. And this lack of distance talks to me as lack of confidence; either that's a really simple mind who doesn't get anything more subtle, or one who really needs to have their ego extended, and treats this all too seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean? Something more tongue-in-cheek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Can't get a tank? We have the next best thing.&quot; &quot;They don't fear the law? they will fear your bumpers.&quot; &quot;Background explosions not included&quot;  &quot;The crumple zone is the other car&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you watch &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1764651/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Expendables 2&lt;/a&gt; for entering the right frame of mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T13:48:48.807" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7120" CreationDate="2013-01-22T15:09:53.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing on the Mac for a number of years now. Over that time, I've settled into using &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; for project organization, version control, and major publishing; and Sublime Text 2 + &lt;a href=&quot;http://brettterpstra.com/2012/05/17/markdown-editing-for-sublime-text-2-humble-beginnings/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Markdown Editing for Sublime Text 2&lt;/a&gt; for most of the actual writing. I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://markedapp.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Marked&lt;/a&gt; for the publishing right now (I mostly &lt;a href=&quot;http://publius225.wordpress.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; at Wordpress, and this workflow lets me quickly build reasonably complex blog posts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you're technically-inclined, I'd recommend just using Scrivener. See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/videos/ScrivIntroSmall.mov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;introductory video&lt;/a&gt; for a good overview. At its core, Scrivener lets you break up big projects into small chunks, organize them in whatever way suits you, and then get writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also got powerful version control (I recommend using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/videos/Snapshots2.mov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Snapshots&lt;/a&gt; feature liberally), an attractive full-screen writing mode, and excellent publishing support (output to .doc, .pdf, ebook formats, .txt, MultiMarkdown, and god knows what else). My favorite feature is that Scrivener allows you to bring your research materials directly into the project file, for easy access later. Very useful for term papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It uses the standard Mac text-handling engine. If OS X supports the languages you mention, I think Scrivener should too. If in doubt, try the free demo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The learning curve can be somewhat steep. It's worth it, however, if you're managing a large writing project with a complex structure or one with lots of background information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't intend to do too much writing, or only write simple projects, you might be better off sticking with Word, Pages, or even just TextEdit at the start. The tool is just that, a tool. If it's getting in the way of your writing, then go back to a simpler tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4578" LastEditorUserId="4578" LastEditDate="2013-01-23T08:06:38.620" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T08:06:38.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7126" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7187" CreationDate="2013-01-22T21:34:09.550" Score="8" ViewCount="1988" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a writing project with a friend, and we're looking for some kind of (preferably cloud-based) project management and version control software so each of us can see how far the other has gotten on tasks and can review each others' documents. Does anything like that exist? I would prefer free, but will pay for software that meets my needs exactly (I've got a free solution I don't like at the moment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: To be clearer, I'm looking for something where I can, say, assign a task to myself or my partner, set a due date, and keep tabs on the progress, with files being uploaded into the system upon completion of the task, to be kept in version control so if we make an edit we don't like we can roll back. We're doing a lot of world documentation, character references, and other non-chapter files we'll be working with frequently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-02-28T16:52:56.910" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T15:24:25.137" Title="Software for collaborative writing for a small team" Tags="|software|tools|collaboration|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4961" CreationDate="2013-01-22T23:04:13.537" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kirkus Indie sounds like a good way to get publicity for your book, but here's how it actually works: Kirkus take $425 (or more) from the publisher/author, spends one hour skimming the text to select some problems (and only problems), then writes a terrible review which you will of course choose not to publish. Kirkus is into this for about less than $50 in labor costs and they don't have the expense of publishing a review. They pocket the difference and make a lot of money off the gullible public. Kirkus has no incentive to give you a good review, and every incentive to give you a bad one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will get nothing of value out of Kirkus Indie. Avoid them like the venomous snakes they are!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4644" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T23:04:13.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7126" CreationDate="2013-01-23T12:33:39.247" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are programmers, then why not use the same tools you use in your day job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trello.com/&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; may meet your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T12:33:39.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7132" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-23T17:37:13.670" Score="3" ViewCount="4141" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to be clear, I'm &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; talking about scholarly work of the sort that might be published by a university press. I'm talking about work by people like Goodwin, McCullough, or Larson. These kinds of books usually don't have in text citations. References will come at the end of the book, usually marked by a book page and phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize once the writer has a contract the publisher will probably specify all this. However, I would like to format my work from the very beginning, &lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, sample chapters for proposal, so that I only need to make minimal formatting changes later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2942" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T14:55:19.457" Title="How are citations formatted in serious non-fiction (proposals)?" Tags="|non-fiction|citations|book|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7100" CreationDate="2013-01-23T18:11:29.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say you love to invent stories and come up with ideas, this is a good start for a writer, so I don't agree with the answers and comments you've received so far suggesting you shouldn't be one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you've already figured out, screenplays are an excellent format for narrative. Most screenplays now a days even leave out technical details like for instance camera movement, and focus solely on narrative and dialogue. I suggest you at least try out this format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short story format is of course another valid option. A lot of writers, professional and amateur, have issues with long stories, so they stick to formats that are more concise, there's nothing wrong with this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some love the actual process of writing, but for many the writing is a necessary evil, and think about it as just a tool or device to tell the stories you have inside, and there is nothing more important than the actual story, whether if it's in a book or a screenplay. If it's a hundred pages or a thousand do not matter, only that what is there is quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4648" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T18:11:29.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7132" CreationDate="2013-01-24T15:30:45.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many different formats depending on the type of work being cited, and the standard being used. Common standards are the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the American Psychological Association (APA). MLA style is widely used when writing about history and literature. APA is widely used when writing about science and technical subjects (not just psychology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a reference for MLA style: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citmla.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www2.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citmla.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a reference for APA style: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/apa_examples.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/apa_examples.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T15:30:45.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7138" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-25T03:05:53.860" Score="1" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to this thing.  I've developed an awesome talent for essaywriting and poetics, but I have never entered a contest, gotten paid for it, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this question is simply: What is a typical &quot;workflow&quot; for locating a contest or assignment to pursue, and how to follow it through to the end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3551" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T02:42:24.520" Title="Workflow for writing and poetry contests" Tags="|contests|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5583" CreationDate="2013-01-25T03:09:21.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't write if you're not practically exploding with passion.  Write to a person, a thing, an audience, a listener, a love, and just tell them (or it) what you need to say in the most concise, comprehensive, and truthful way you muster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3551" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T03:09:21.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5583" CreationDate="2013-01-25T08:07:52.650" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quick and dirty way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grab the nearest adjective describing given noun. Grab another noun described by that adjective. Find an adjective or another description that sets them apart. There, you have the metaphor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glass - transparent - air - solid - solid air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hand - limp - jelly - fingered - fingered jelly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bar - noisy - classroom - drinks and cigarettes - classroom of drinks and cigarettes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bus - long - sausage - streets - Sausage of the streets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you certainly notice these aren't top notch. This is a quick&amp;amp;dirty method as you requested. If you want quality metaphors, you must painstakingly craft them, or experience a flash of inspiration, no way around that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T08:07:52.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7141" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-25T09:37:59.380" Score="5" ViewCount="1740" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to quote from a journal written in Arabic. What should I do? Write it first in Arabic then followed by translation and indicating that it is my own translation (translated by author)? Can I avoid this by paraphrasing? I mean if I'm not quoting the original source directly would it be OK to not state that it is my translation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="reery" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-01-28T01:17:31.537" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T01:17:31.537" Title="How to quote from a foreign journal that has not been translated?" Tags="|style|translation|quotes|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7142" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18300" CreationDate="2013-01-25T10:43:50.093" Score="5" ViewCount="424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a technical guide for travelling and I'd like advice on what kind of structure I should use for each article. I have the articles written, but when I wrote them I didn't use a particular structure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some articles offer information, some list ways of doing something, some speak from experience and others review equipment in a given context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book's layout thus far is intro, pre-trip, and on-the-road, while topics covered are practical advice, communicating, dealing with problems, and equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-02-10T08:45:16.833" LastActivityDate="2018-07-19T21:08:59.477" Title="What structure should I use for each article in a technical travel guide?" Tags="|formatting|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7141" CreationDate="2013-01-25T11:47:08.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think if you indicated somewhere (preface, end notes, first footnote) that the translations are all yours, you could either write the Arabic and then your translation, or write it in English (or whatever language) and footnote it and have the referent be the original Arabic with the citation information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reader, I would assume any translation I'm reading would be done by the author, unless it's otherwise explicitly noted, but it never hurts to say it anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T11:47:08.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7256" CreationDate="2013-01-26T00:24:53.130" Score="3" ViewCount="2021" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for good software for overseeing and rearranging the structure of a book. I have used &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrivener_%28software%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; before, but found its exporting functionality frustrating and the software itself somewhat clunky. What are the alternatives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a load of articles I need to rearrange around a new structure, expand or edit, then ideally export directly to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ebook&lt;/a&gt; format - or if necessary to another piece of software where it's easy to construct an ebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be new revisions of the book, so being able to edit in the original software then export is an advantage over formatting in separate software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-02-10T10:49:26.887" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T03:17:47.243" Title="What software do you use for writing and then structuring a book?" Tags="|software|structure|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7114" CreationDate="2013-01-26T01:33:00.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the comments that the people sound similar insofar as they sound like two teenagers talking to each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the content of the dialogue, there isn't much to distinguish their characters because it comes through as primarily plot exposition.  That's because Icaro asks a series of (presumably) plot-oriented detail questions and Ling answers them clearly and specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you would be able to elicit the differences between the characters more and blur the expository nature of the passage if you added some more detail about what the characters were doing while they talked to each other. How did they react to each other's statements? How did Ling feel about Icaro's questioning?  Her first reaction is to look away from him, so she is ashamed or embarrassed, but does she stay that way?  Or does she lift her chin defiantly? Set her jaw in irritation?  Even by the end of the paragraph, I don't know how she feels about being at the hospital all her life and being tested, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I don't know how Icaro feels about it either. Does he pity her? Does he think she's hot, so he's not really listening anyway? Does he think she ought to be fed up with the hospital, or does he think she ought to feel safe there?  You don't have to state any of these things explicitly.  He could cringe at the thought, or pat her arm, or study his fingernails, for instance.  All of those things would tell us something about him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I understand some of the story from what the characters say, but I don't really understand the characters because I don't know how they feel about what they are saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T01:33:00.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7144" CreationDate="2013-01-26T02:15:49.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You found &lt;em&gt;Scrivener&lt;/em&gt; clunky.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;::swoons::&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;::recovers::&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to try Adobe InDesign, which will allow you to export directly to epub and PDF, at least. Very easy to lay out, edit, and expand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T02:15:49.807" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7102" CreationDate="2013-01-26T03:39:32.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just written a story of around 7000 words that I set in 1611, in a monastery, so wanted to use the old English terms of the day, like 'ye, thou, thee, etc.'&#xA;Gaining familiarity with these terms was only done by looking at lots of information about it, and repeating the phrases like 'Where art thou&quot; to make it more familiar to myself, and therefore correct, for this story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T03:39:32.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7016" CreationDate="2013-01-26T03:41:22.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned above, I ended up developing my own tools and markup language to suit my needs. As requested by @corvec, I'm posting a new answer with a link to the project: &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/bmearns/tome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://bitbucket.org/bmearns/tome&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an open source project released under GNU AGPLv3, so if anyone would like to contribute, please feel free to contact me on bitbucket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T03:41:22.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7138" CreationDate="2013-01-26T03:42:25.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Join a writer's centre in your city/homestate if you can. They have lots of advice and information on competitions that you can enter your work in. A few years ago I did a lot of legwork myself to learn about this process, and it worked really well. &#xA;Also attend workshops/classes where you often learn from professionals and meet other like-minded souls. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T03:42:25.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7154" CreationDate="2013-01-26T03:53:32.543" Score="3" ViewCount="987" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story but I'm not sure whether to write it in the past or the present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the opening paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sophia was awakened by the rattling sound of her washing machine. She&#xA;  groaned, rubbed her eyes, and glanced at her watch. It was just&#xA;  2:00A.M. Barely conscious, she sat on the corner of her bed. It took&#xA;  her a moment to realize that she wasn't washing her clothes. That'd&#xA;  been something she'd decided to do in the morning. Besides, she would&#xA;  never think of doing the laundry at this time of the night. Sophia&#xA;  started to feel a sudden panic. &lt;em&gt;Maybe someone entered the apartment,&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  she thought. But it was ridiculous; who would enter someone's&#xA;  apartment in the middle of the night to wash the person's clothes? She&#xA;  stood up from the bed and walked towards her door. Then, she stared at the&#xA;  knob for a moment, gave it a turn, and exited the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sophia is waken up by the rattling sound of her washing machine. She&#xA;  groans, rubs her eyes, and glances at her watch. 2:00A.M. Barely&#xA;  conscious, she sits on the corner of her bed. It takes her a moment to&#xA;  realize that she isn't washing her clothes. That was something she'd&#xA;  decided to do in the morning. Besides, she would never think of doing&#xA;  the laundry at this time of the night. Sophia starts to feel a sudden&#xA;  panic. &lt;em&gt;Maybe someone entered the apartment&lt;/em&gt;, she thinks. But it's&#xA;  ridiculous; who would enter someone's apartment in the middle of the&#xA;  night to wash the person's clothes? She stands up from the bed and&#xA;  walks towards her door. Then, she stares at the knob for a moment, gives it&#xA;  a turn, and exits the door.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been rewriting my stories in the present tense recently, but I can never decide which one to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What works better in this case? (And how do writers decide which one to use?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(By the way, does it grab your attention?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-01-28T13:56:37.703" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T16:15:06.023" Title="What work better for the following piece of writing? Past or present tense?" Tags="|fiction|short-story|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7150" CreationDate="2013-01-26T10:01:09.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say the past tense, the first entry would be the better one, because even a few minutes after the event, just after Sophia's woken up, is already in the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T10:01:09.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7096" CreationDate="2013-01-26T10:09:45.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to write at the start of the next chapter/paragraph things like 'a few hours later' or if it's a longer timeframe, I specify that. &#xA;I'm writing a novel set in a school and some chapters are just one day's worth of part of the classroom scene, and then the teacher on yard duty.&#xA;For those I simply have 'the bell rang' (meaning the end of the class, so that the reader knows that.&#xA;OTher times I specify recess/lunch breaks, to give a sense of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T10:09:45.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7153" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7155" CreationDate="2013-01-26T11:40:43.240" Score="1" ViewCount="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a book (google 'Weave of the Ride') and I have built a community of followers of the past few years. I would like to put on a book launch. Does anyone have any tips and advice? I live in London so there are plenty of cafes. What sort of timescale from announcing it to the event happening? How many people should I invite and how is best to invite people? How many books should I have available for purchase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T23:37:28.590" Title="How to put on a book launch?" Tags="|planning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7150" CreationDate="2013-01-26T20:30:28.590" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second one is &lt;em&gt;stronger&lt;/em&gt; but that will wear off as soon as the tension loosens its grip. Generally, past tense is easier to read, feels more natural for smooth storytelling. It's the default mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's a short story, you can keep it in present tense. If you want a novel with slower passages, better either pick past tense or work on smooth switching of tenses - the point of switch, to be smooth, needs some special attention. Writing whole novel in present tense? I'd give it a pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T20:30:28.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7153" CreationDate="2013-01-26T23:37:28.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have a website/blog? Put the launch up there, advertise it among your friends and they'll spread the word. &#xA;Ask local cafes/bookshops if they'll be happy to host a launch, and see if the libraries would be happy to take a copy.&#xA;A friend of mine has just published her first book so I'm well versed in what to do!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T23:37:28.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7162" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-27T19:14:45.653" Score="1" ViewCount="1771" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once knew a famous author, but for complex reasons I lost the privilege of his acquaintance. In trying to begin a writing career concerned with many of the same subjects as his work, it occurs to me that he might not be the only person of his ilk that I could ever hope to meet, and that what I'm after is simply some personal acquaintance, some counsel, some support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I write to a big-name essayist or poet whose subjects I have something serious to say about?  Any tips?  And first and foremost, how do I find out where to send my letter?  Is it best to just send it to the publisher asking them to forward it, or best to track down the individual's mailing address?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3551" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T19:40:42.760" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T11:27:56.963" Title="How to write to a famous author?" Tags="|letter|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7162" CreationDate="2013-01-28T04:52:34.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion? Don't write. They'll never be able to tell you're not some hack just from the letter, and they will not bother to check by replying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meet them in person at some book-signing or a conference or wherever they meet the public. Talk face to face. Answer their questions. Build a personal relationship. And primarily, value the person for who that specific person is, not for being a celebrity. You won't get far by picking one &quot;because she's famous&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T04:52:34.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7162" CreationDate="2013-01-28T06:42:29.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are many good and great writers in the world to learn from. You need not track down Faulkner. It is most likely a quest that will result in much wasted time and little gain.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many very great writers are easily accessible in their posts as college professors, where they have offices on campus you can find without any special effort, and get a chance to speak with them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not walk in and ask to be their mentee. It won't work. Like a raindrop addressing a storm, you will be dropped and forgotten among many others.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you can get into a good conversation with them, however, one where they're not looking at their watch and waiting for you to leave but are actually engaged and interested, you may be able to convince them to &lt;em&gt;take a look at something you've written and give feedback.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it works out, try to keep in touch. Continue asking for feedback as you write. Do not become an annoyance. People are very, very busy. The more well-known they are, the busier. College professors especially barely have time to grade their class essays, let alone take on extra work. Respect that fact.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T06:42:29.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7150" CreationDate="2013-01-28T16:15:06.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with SF. Let me add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is conventional in English to write or tell stories in the past tense. Anything else is unusual. Any time you do something unusual, if you do it well and use it appropriately, it grabs the readers attention. In this case, it gives a sense of immediacy. But if overused, it becomes distracting and/or comes across as a cheap gimmick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read lots of stories where the author tries to use some clever little gimmick like this to liven up a story. Sometimes it works, but usually it doesn't. In general, I think you should try to make a story interesting by having an interesting story, not by introducing a gimmick. What is the difference between skillful use of language and a cheap gimmick? If I could give a simple answer to that, I'd probably be a lot richer and more famous than I am.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen the rest of your story, so maybe it works in this case. But my advice would be: don't. Or at least, be slow to do this. Stick with the conventional past tense. Because once you write one paragraph in the present tense, you're pretty much forced to write the entire story in present tense or there will be jarring breaks when you shift tenses. You paint yourself into a corner where you have to beat the gimmick to death. Some gimmicks are easy to slide in and out. Like, you can write one paragraph where all the sentences are two words long to give some effect, and then shift to more normal sentences in the next paragraph. It's tougher to do this with past vs present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you could write the whole story in present tense and it wouldn't become annoying, but I doubt it. Maybe you could find a way to make a smooth transition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T16:15:06.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6172" CreationDate="2013-01-28T17:07:06.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with Standback and Jason Baker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't sure of the source of a quote, you should say so, not just give your best guess without qualification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Actually, I'd say that for any fact you mention. If it's debateable whether Thomas Jefferson was really influenced by Herbert Fromme when writing the Declaration of Independence (a claim I just made up), you should say &quot;Some theorize that ...&quot; or whatever, not just flatly say it's true.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's fairly conventional with debatable quotes to give the quote and then instead of saying &quot;-- Carl Sagan&quot; or whomever, to put &quot;attributed to Carl Sagan&quot;, or when really debateable, &quot;sometimes attributed to Carl Sagan&quot;. In less formal writing, people sometimes say, &quot;I think it was Carl Sagan who said that ...&quot; If you are just quoting some statement you consider clever or interesting and who said it is not particularly important, a couple of words like this to indicate that you are not sure of the source should be plenty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are actually relying on the expertise or authority of this person to make an important point, then if it's questionable I'd go to a little extra effort to make that clear. To take an extreme example, if you are claiming that the Foobar Party is a bunch of racists based on an outrageous statement made by their leader, but there is some debate whether he really said it, I think it would be very unfair to baldly say, &quot;As their leader said ...&quot; In such a case you should at the least make clear that he denies he ever said this or whatever the story is. If it's really important you should say what the evidence is either way. I've read articles where someone adds a quick qualifier like, &quot;As their leader is reported to have said ...&quot;, which strikes me as dishonest: they stick in the &quot;reported&quot; so they can protect themselves if challenged, while trying to give the reader the impression that this is an established fact. I doubt anything this extreme applies to your Sagan/Bab-5 quote, but if in context you're relying on the reputation or authority of Mr Sagan to make some important point, and not just that you think this was a cute comment, then proper attribution becomes important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: The fact that a statement was made by a character on a television show does not necessarily mean that the writers of that show invented it. They may be quoting someone else -- whether Sagan in this case or whomever. No one expects a TV show to give proper attribution of quotes. I'm not saying the writers of that show didn't invent this quote, I have no idea. Just considering the possibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T17:07:06.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7167" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-30T00:26:44.240" Score="7" ViewCount="3636" Body="&lt;p&gt;For various reasons (increased clarity, and an interested agent), I'm rewriting what was once two first-person POVs into a third person limited POV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other answers have previously established the differences between first and third person, but what I'm asking about specifically are things I should be looking out for when changing the POV for an entire, completed novel. I don't want to change the storyline or characters, I simply want to change the POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What traps should I be wary of, and what kind of elements should I be playing up or downplaying as a result of the shift?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: Please don't say 'Change all the 'I's to 'he's and 'she's - the two forms are very different stylistically and I can confirm (...possibly from experience...) that it does not work very well.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T07:01:05.797" Title="How do I change a novel from first person to limited third person?" Tags="|style|editing|viewpoint|grammatical-person|third-person|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7168" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7179" CreationDate="2013-01-30T01:06:38.530" Score="10" ViewCount="23641" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find writing in a diary-style is the easiest way to write fiction. The format is the same as a diary, with each entry beginning with the date, then describing the feelings or events of the character up to that date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any disadvantages to writing fiction in this format?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do any of these disadvantages explain why this format is not very common?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T19:39:26.043" LastActivityDate="2018-06-16T18:19:40.287" Title="What are some disadvantages of writing fiction in a diary format?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7102" CreationDate="2013-01-30T01:58:14.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that the best way to improve your vocabulary is to read widely.  But I also like subscribing to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://public.oed.com/aspects-of-english/english-in-use/why-the-oeds-word-of-the-day-is-special/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OED Word of the Day&lt;/a&gt; email service.  I save the off-beat words in a list, like kimet (foolish or stupid), psithurisma (whispering, whispering noise), psychopomp (guide to the underworld), nemophilist (person fond of woods or forests), melliferous (yielding or producing honey), preterhuman (outside the bounds of what is human), and timeous (prompt).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4674" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T01:58:14.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7168" CreationDate="2013-01-30T06:55:03.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see how or why that should be a problem, and because it's a diary type entry you could add more intimate thoughts that may not occur in a 'normal' fiction book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T06:55:03.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7167" CreationDate="2013-01-30T07:01:05.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally I'd say &quot;none&quot;, 3rd person is fairly easy, easier than 1st, so you should be fine but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're rewriting into a 3rd person &lt;em&gt;partially&lt;/em&gt; omniscent with access to &lt;strong&gt;two minds&lt;/strong&gt;. Ouch. Ouch again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what I tried to do just recently, thinking &quot;It will be fine&quot;. It backfired. It's neither a proper omniscent, nor a proper partially omniscent. &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; was confused writing, unable to find myself in any proper perspective; I don't even want to think of the reader. I ended up scrapping the &quot;double partially omniscent&quot; and went with classic &quot;single-user partially omniscent,&quot; switching whose head he's in each scene. That got somewhat less awkward but I'm still pondering switching to 1st person because while that works for &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt; I still don't know if the perspective switches will be clear enough for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can make the &quot;Dual head&quot; work. I couldn't, it's such an unorthodox perspective, I just can't place myself in perspective of observer of two minds at the same time, and I'm pretty sure neither can my readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first other option is go for behaviorist/&quot;flying invisible camera&quot;. Give up the &quot;omniscent&quot; part altogether, describe reactions and gestures but never feelings or thoughts. That's an impartial report, a clear solid perspective if done properly - but it requires a good deal of mastery to convey it all, not to come out dry and sketchy or confuse with misunderstood emotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second other option is to go all out full omniscent. A.K.A. the cheesy one. Easiest to write but hardly immersive, &quot;tell, don't show&quot;, with a big &quot;Novice writer&quot; neon sign blinking on top. Do I have to elaborate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And your third other option is to give a finger to your agent, give them their 3rd and cheat them by bracketing the whole thing into a retrospection. Pick a nice flat &quot;behaviorist&quot; 3rd person, seat the two protagonist in a nice cozy room with a willing audience, and have them weave the tale together, each in their own 1st person, with the meta/main/bracketing level serving an extra function of added flavor, as they argue about points that they still didn't agree on, or correct each other &quot;augmenting their reality&quot; or throw in other &quot;meta&quot; notices like explaining what the other didn't know at given time. In essence you're retaining your perspective-switching 1st person, except the switches are fully explicit, on another level of the story, which is 3rd person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T07:01:05.797" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7168" CreationDate="2013-01-30T07:59:36.203" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;diary entry&quot; format is not very immersive. It's hard to give believably the most immersive parts of classic prose - following given events step by step, line by line, each breath, frown and smirk. It's all a retrospection from earlier events of the day, compressed into a diary entry format, so it's never this detailed. This alone would probably be quite enough to discourage most authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next comes the matter of fitting it in. The (meta-)writer must be a type to write one, and simultaneously interesting enough to be worth reading enough. Combining these two in a whole novel formatted as a journal is rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The format is stifling and gives little in exchange for the cost. You need to have it planned out in time - where a novel skips two months, the journal needs a filler. Where the novel has the protagonist striped of all possessions and locked up, the journal needs them to retain the journal. Where the novel has them keep a deadly secret that can never be written, the journal can't have it written down, or it would show them as reckless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, the format is liked and is common as &quot;fast forward&quot; mode, as day summaries, as a retrospection on last days of a deceased. It is popular and a very powerful tool, but rarely used on scale of full novel - a chapter, a section, a retrospection, something to break the pacing - it's common to interweave short scenes of very intense action with journal entries of days preceding the events. It's not nearly as rare as you believe, it's just usually served as a side dish, not the main course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T10:20:57.910" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T10:20:57.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7253" CreationDate="2013-01-30T13:26:06.537" Score="1" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a segmented screen play, involving three major segments cutting in and out frequently. I was planning to write the entire plot in a linear, unsegmented style, then cut it up per the moods and similarities of the scene ends. I've heard of a card technique that uses random cards with scenes shuffled to make up the sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel strongly that the linear plot first followed by segmenting is the way to go, but as I'm inexperienced in writing screenplays, any advice from the writing fraternity would be of great help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4677" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T02:12:05.233" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T02:12:05.233" Title="Is it a good idea to first write the linear plot when writing a segmented screenplay?" Tags="|screenwriting|planning|script|scriptwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="299" CreationDate="2013-01-30T13:28:55.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is great support for script writers and film makers available from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;, including free advice and film showcasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also have a published guide to writing, including sample screenplays by both professional and amateur writers, with in-depth reviews on each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/filmmaking/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Filmmaking&lt;/a&gt; - guides, how-tos, case studies and behind-the-scenes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/submit/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Showcasing&lt;/a&gt; - submissions page &lt;em&gt;(note as of 9th February 2013 process is suspended indefinitely)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/features/howtowrite/index.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writer's Guide&lt;/a&gt; - screenplay, novel, memoirs, radio play&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4677" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-02-09T16:26:01.243" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T16:26:01.243" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-01-30T13:28:55.223" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="299" CreationDate="2013-01-30T16:58:56.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first book you should buy is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1935247026&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Screenwriter's Bible by David Trottier&lt;/a&gt;. This is the complete guide to formatting in hard copy. While you may rely on software to format, knowing your formatting is equally as important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0385339038&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Syd Fields' - The Foundation of Screenwriting&lt;/a&gt; is also a great place to start. This offers the basic steps in regard to screenwriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But truthfully, if you want to learn how to write in a screenplay format, with all the elements of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;three act structure&lt;/a&gt;, inciting incident and big event, the mid-point turn and the third act turn, character arc, subtext, foreshadowing, and everything else that comes with a great script, then you need to write and read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spent a year at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_Street_Productions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trigger Street&lt;/a&gt; reading and reviewing screenplays for others. While it was a year of frustration - you tell someone their script is weak and they tend to tell you to go fish - but the reward was coming away with a great deal of knowledge about what doesn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Films are visual media, not dialog-driven media, unless you are Tarantino. Knowing how to direct the camera with the written word without ever giving a camera direction is a skill that can be learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first important thing about screenwriting is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The field is very tough to break into. If you don't live in L.A. the chances of your work being found and produced are so infinitesimal that it can be discouraging. Get an L.A. post office box and a cell with an L.A. phone number and be prepared to go there at the drop of a hat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't do that until you learn to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you need to write about a dozen scripts before you get this down. With editing and polishing you may invest several years to learn the craft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are a great number of businesses that will take your money to &quot;teach&quot; you how to get in to the business. There are websites that profess they have producers come to them for new and exciting scripts. There are quite a lot of people who claim to be experts. Since the advent of the internet there is a whole cottage industry created to get you to fork over money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't. Spend your time writing, and reading other's scripts at places like Trigger Street or wherever (I am not shilling for Triggerstreet, btw).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Movie_Database&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IMDB&lt;/a&gt; is your friend. When someone tells you they have the path, then &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/search/text?realm=name&amp;amp;field=bio&amp;amp;q=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;look them up on IMDB&lt;/a&gt;. If they truly have produced films, you'll know. If they are full of beans, you very well could find that out too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely, you will not get any action there at Trigger Street or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Zoetrope&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zoetrope&lt;/a&gt;, but you will get a wealth of knowledge you cannot get by forking over 700 bucks for a three-day weekend with some guy who makes his living cashing your check and not actually working in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the best advice is to move to L.A., get a job at a studio or with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_company&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;prodco&lt;/a&gt; and meet people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That, more than books, tutorials, lectures, and workshops that are all trying to sell you something wrapped up in the disguise that they have the secret to getting famous in Hollywood, is the best way to get into the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind a fool and his money are soon parted. In this realm, that goes double.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4679" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-02-10T07:23:02.347" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T07:23:02.347" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-01-30T16:58:56.880" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7144" CreationDate="2013-01-30T17:14:35.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the first draft, I find &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Drive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Drive&lt;/a&gt; to be the best: I can access and edit my text from my Mac, iPad, and even iPhone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the draft is done, I export it to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open Office&lt;/a&gt;, where you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/Writer2ePub&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;writer2epub&lt;/a&gt; to export. Then &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigil_%28application%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sigil&lt;/a&gt; for some final touches. Have fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4680" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-02-10T10:55:56.900" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T10:55:56.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7144" CreationDate="2013-01-30T17:30:11.140" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My books I've simply used MS Word with style sheets. Write to PDF. Sure, sometimes you have to do some klunky fine-tuning. The only real issue I found with MS Word was keeping a consistent bottom margin, i.e. it's common for a page to come out a line or two shorter than others. I know some people consider it very important to have a perfectly consistent bottom margin. (Other than at the end of a chapter and a few such cases.) Personally I just accepted the problem in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my Kindle book, I dumped it to a text file and used Eclipse programmer's editor to clean it up. Next time I'll probably use Notepad++.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then, I'm a hammer and screwdriver kind of guy versus specialized power tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T17:30:11.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7168" CreationDate="2013-01-30T17:45:05.083" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One big disadvantage is that you can't give too much blow-by-blow of events or you break the format. Yes, someone might write in a diary, &quot;And then Bill said ... and then I said ... and then we went to the park ...&quot; But would anyway really write in a diary, &quot;Bill entered the room. He saw Sally on the left and me sitting at the desk. He strolled casually over to Sally. Sally nervously brushed her hair ...&quot; etc. There's lots of description that goes into the action of a story that would just seem very unlikely in a diary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Big advantage: Very conducive to detailed discussion of the hero's thoughts and feelings. In a conventional narrative, this would look odd. But in a diary, it's expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another advantage that occurs to me: You can lie. That is, if in a narrative style you said, &quot;Bob was having an affair with Sally&quot;, and then later you say that in fact this never happened, that that was all just a mistaken idea that one of the characters had, the reader rightly feels lied to: You told him it was so and then later you told him it was not. But if you write, &quot;Amy thought that Bob was having an affair with Sally&quot;, that pretty much gives away that it's a mistake. Oh, there are plenty of ways around this, but sometimes it gets awkward. But in a diary format, you can write &quot;Bob is having an affair with Sally&quot;, and it's understood that this is what the hero thinks, which may or may not be reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2018-06-16T18:19:40.287" LastActivityDate="2018-06-16T18:19:40.287" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7126" CreationDate="2013-01-31T00:55:35.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may try a google drive shared folder, which can contain both text, which you can co-edit, even simultaneously, and other genre files. And for tasks you can use a spreadsheet with the discussion system...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4680" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T00:55:35.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7120" CreationDate="2013-01-31T01:01:19.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give a try to IA Writer too. So simple, so beautiful. And with iCloud support you can use iDevices to continue your work where you left off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4680" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T01:01:19.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7183" CreationDate="2013-01-31T02:31:47.593" Score="12" ViewCount="850" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I signed up for a novel workshop, and within a month the first chapter will be due. Problem is I that want to use characters who are well-versed in mathematics, especially group theory or model theory, yet I have no expertise whatsoever in those fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know a smattering of those subjects, but how do I give the illusion of realism to the intellect of a mathematician with a PhD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although my focus is mathematics in this question, it can of course apply to any field such as botany or physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could take some courses or do studying on my own, but time is of the essence, as always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you. [Ideally I wanted to ask this in a math.SE]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4406" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T06:39:42.180" LastActivityDate="2017-07-03T17:18:40.297" Title="Writing about a subject on which you have no expertise?" Tags="|technique|resources|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7182" CreationDate="2013-01-31T03:15:04.407" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a first draft, you can use placeholders. XXX, TK (publication shorthand for &quot;to come&quot;), TECH, literally the word [placeholder] in square brackets &amp;mdash; anything to indicate that you'll fill in the mathguffin details later. Also, feel free to gloss or summarize. The point of the scene is not going to be the math anyway, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;The professor pointed to the blackboard.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&quot;You see? If you [TK math thing], you get this result. But if you do &lt;i&gt;this&lt;/i&gt; &amp;mdash; &quot; He changed some variables and added a new line to the equation. &quot; &amp;mdash; then you get [different result]!&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Ben gasped. &quot;Of course! It makes perfect sense! How could I never have seen this before?&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&quot;Because I'm a genius,&quot; said the professor smugly.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&quot;And because you had me helping you,&quot; came the tart voice of the professor's wife from behind them. Ben winced. &lt;i&gt;&quot;I&lt;/i&gt; was the one who pointed out XXX to you,&quot; she continued. &quot;You never would have gotten to TKTK if I hadn't pushed you halfway there.&quot;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the point of the scene &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the math, then you're going to have to do a lot of research very fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T03:15:04.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7184" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-31T03:36:32.810" Score="6" ViewCount="1380" Body="&lt;p&gt;My ex-husband's wife self-published a non fiction book and put my kids in the story as well.  She did not change their names.   Neither she nor my ex-husband told me about this or asked me (or the children) if this was ok.  I had no idea until the book was published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this legal?  They are minors.  Ages 13 and under.  I understand she is working on a second book now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4683" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T16:57:53.830" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T16:57:53.830" Title="My ex-husband's wife self-published a nonfiction book naming my kids in the story" Tags="|legal|non-fiction|child-characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6428" CreationDate="2013-01-31T03:46:35.400" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm tickled you've taking this poem further. All praise be to sharing! My intention, in classic recursion, is that the license is protected by its own terms but state that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/alexgenaud/Poetic-License&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Poetic License on GitHub&quot;&gt;Use of the license itself does not require its own notice&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand, you are uncomfortable with &quot;We've done our best&quot; presumably concerned that the creators may not have &quot;done their best&quot;. Let us then be honest!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;This work 'as-is' I provide.&#xA;No warranty express nor implied.&#xA;   Just a geeky lug,&#xA;   did test and debug.&#xA;Your computer's already fried.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The leading extra syllable in &quot;&lt;em&gt;To&lt;/em&gt; use as is fit, free or for profit.&quot; renders the intended declarative verse grammatically incorrect. I myself was tempted to conform to the &lt;em&gt;Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt; which advocates &quot;&lt;em&gt;For&lt;/em&gt; free and &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; profit&quot; but this similarly chokes on verbosity and the divinity that inspired this stanza protested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Permission is granted hereby,&#xA;to copy, share, and modify.&#xA;   Use as is fit,&#xA;   free or for profit.&#xA;On this notice, these rights rely.&#xA;&#xA;This work ‘as-is’ we provide.&#xA;No warranty express or implied.&#xA;   Responsibility&#xA;   and liability&#xA;for damages and tort, denied.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers!&#xA;Alex&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4682" LastEditorUserId="4682" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T04:26:29.297" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T04:26:29.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7182" CreationDate="2013-01-31T04:12:21.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, I studied German with a teacher who did not believe in sugar coating his comments. One piece of advice that has stayed with me was &quot;If you don't know the word for picnic, don't try to write about eating outside!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T04:12:21.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7126" CreationDate="2013-01-31T04:57:42.623" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use git for version control, and it's terrific for writing projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used GitHub to share work in progress while collaborating with a friend.  We wrote plain text files in markdown format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GitHub also has an Issues tracker that can easily be used to assign, accept, and track individual tasks.  My friend and I didn't need that to collaborate, but I've used it for some of my open source software projects, and it can easily adapt to a writing project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a small fee to use GitHub for private projects.  Perhaps there are other open source hosting sites that offer free private projects or lower fees, and support other version control systems.  BitBucket, for example, offers a free account with private projects and support for git and mercurial.  I don't know whether they have a built-in issues tracker.  You could always use a hosting site for versioning and sharing, and something like PivotalTracker for managing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T04:57:42.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7182" CreationDate="2013-01-31T05:08:50.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've done a bit of research on social studies, since a character of mine starts studying that at university. I had to make the lectures/assignments realistic, so am lucky to already be doing a different course, so just went to the social studies area to see what it involves.&#xA;A bit of time spent researching could make the scenes believable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T05:08:50.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7182" CreationDate="2013-01-31T05:27:22.793" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing a story in which math plays a pivotal role when you know little about mathematics would probably be a mistake. There is, unfortunately, no way to fake knowing something. You either have to do the research, or write the story anyway, hoping your guesses are right. Guessing wrong will make you look foolish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the question of how much research you need to do is one without a good answer. But a story about math will probably attract readers who are interested in math. And those readers may well know a lot of math themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do choose to write this story anyway, run it past some beta readers who are mathematicians or math teachers. They may be able to tell you where you've made mistakes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T05:27:22.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7182" CreationDate="2013-01-31T06:23:08.303" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would have been incredibly off-topic to ask this on Math.SE -- you're in the write place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's the most important thing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Your readers, on the whole, know little to nothing about technical subjects, and will not catch fabrications or errors. The portion of readers who &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; know will respect you for trying if you do it well enough, and respect you even more if you get anything right.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LaurenIpsum provides in her answer an excellent example of literary sleight-of-hand, but it's easy to miss the point of her answer. While you can sidestep technical terminology using her demonstrated method, you don't do it just because you don't know anything about your subject. You do it because it's &lt;em&gt;not the point of the scene.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about great scenes in a range of movies and books involving technical imagery and conversation. What made the scene great? It wasn't the complexity of the terminology. &lt;em&gt;It was the circumstances underlying the scene.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a character reveals that -- &lt;em&gt;oh my god&lt;/em&gt; -- &lt;em&gt;using SHA1 on the password wasn't enough -- they used a rainbow table&lt;/em&gt; -- &lt;em&gt;we should have used bcrypt, thus thwarting brute-force attacks!&lt;/em&gt; -- that's great. That's really great. Nobody knows what anyone just said. But if the compromised password means citadel security is likewise broken, we have a powerful tool to move the plot forward, and the tension just went up a notch. It went up a notch not because of bcrypt, rainbow tables, and SHA1, but because &lt;em&gt;the enemy is coming, and our defenses are down.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm saying is that technical terminology should embellish a scene and add a sense of authenticity, but it's not necessary, and you can make great scenes without it. The success of your scene should not be dependent upon the professor demonstrating Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT, all that being said, authenticity is a lot like salt -- if used sparingly in the right places, it adds flavor. Put in too much, and people turn up their noses. Unless you're a master chef, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So -- the ultimate question -- where do you get authenticity when you know nothing? You do what all fiction writers must do -- &lt;em&gt;hybridize learning and invention.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, go learn topological basics. Spend a few days on it. If it's a major character, maybe longer. As much as you can stand. Find good sources that you can learn from easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead search youtube for beginner's topology. Rearrange the words and search them elsewhere -- &quot;learn topology&quot; &quot;basics of topology&quot; &quot;fundamental topology&quot; &quot;how to learn topology&quot; &quot;where to start with topology&quot;. Find nice beginner-friendly sites that have colorful diagrams with arrows. Search for topology animations. As you learn some basic terms, search those terms and see if you can get more detailed information on them, and through that, learn &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; terms. You'll quickly start building out a mental map that you can take as far as you wish. If you're a good or experienced writer, you'll know when you've gone far enough. If not, you'll learn as you go, and next time you'll know understanding Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture was &lt;em&gt;way, way, too far.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually it only takes basic terms to lend authenticity. You don't need to throw around anything heavy, because even beginner's terms are foreign to those who know nothing. Yet, inversely, beginner's terms are &lt;em&gt;the most important, because they are the most commonly used terms in technical conversations.&lt;/em&gt; Just like learning a language-- sure, a fluent English speaker can use words like &quot;defenestrate&quot; and &quot;categorical&quot;, but in common conversation, the words you see most are &quot;the&quot; and &quot;a&quot; and &quot;hello&quot; and &quot;please/thank you&quot; and so on, and that's an authentic English conversation, and anybody who sees those words knows it very quickly. Don't make the mistake of thinking the character will sound smarter or more real if he uses more arcane words-- that only makes him more likely to be wrong, and harder to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know enough to fool a fool, fill in the gaps with your imagination, with healthy use of LaurenIpsum's hand-waving method. I mean, I don't really understand cryptography at all, but don't you think that little clip would have fooled someone who knew nothing whatsoever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always remember it's only embroidery. The core of the story will not depend on the technical terminology, and ultimately the readers will forget it as soon as they read it -- unless you come up with something catchy, e.g. &lt;em&gt;flux capacitor&lt;/em&gt;. And the catchiest terms are almost always the imagined ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last tip-- consult someone who &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-06-30T15:22:49.550" LastActivityDate="2017-06-30T15:22:49.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7193" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-31T12:59:33.993" Score="3" ViewCount="1466" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see many times, that authors use various name formats for chapters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;***&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Twenty Four&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 5&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;XIX&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Last Resort&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Ad notam&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; (or something Latin or any &lt;em&gt;foreign&lt;/em&gt;, (!not author!) language)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For which reason do I need to use any of these methods of naming? Is there any hidden technique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I want to write a '&lt;em&gt;thinking&lt;/em&gt;' book, I will name chapters with &lt;em&gt;Roman digits&lt;/em&gt; (not sure, but as an example).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If I want to write a '&lt;em&gt;funny&lt;/em&gt;' book, I will name the chapters with '&lt;em&gt;funny&lt;/em&gt;' names. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can I name my chapters in a different language than I write in?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Use Latin for chapters and English for the story, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4430" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T14:30:30.757" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T02:42:07.147" Title="Chapter names: The various ways of implementing them and why should I care" Tags="|formatting|naming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7193" CreationDate="2013-01-31T13:49:30.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's one of artistic liberties the writer is free to take. If you write a scientific paper, you name your chapters, sections, subsections 1, 1.1, 1.1.1 but other than that, you're completely free to choose. Choose whatever you see fit, whatever you feel like it fits your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;* * *&lt;/code&gt; is usually reserved for sections/scenes, a subdivision within a chapter. But then, your book may have no chapters at all, just scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapters with meaningful names come at risk of spoilers. Readers often peek into the table of contents (even if to find the chapter where they finished if they don't have a bookmark!) and a too revealing chapter name may be a spoiler, so some authors choose more generic names - or ones more obscure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, sometimes the author has a difficult time thinking up titles at all, so they skip the whole bother of naming chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But overall, it's artistic freedom and choosing what you feel matches best. Of course roman numerals have a certain weight and elegance to them, fitting a mystery or gothic horror. A fun book for kids may have elaborate names like &lt;em&gt;Chapter 16 or how Agnes learned that broccoli is not the worst of world's evils&lt;/em&gt;. A topical non-fiction will have descriptive titles, &lt;em&gt;Chapter 5: Fluid mechanics&lt;/em&gt;. But in the end, it's author's hunch and personal preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T13:49:30.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7203" CreationDate="2013-01-31T19:22:50.113" Score="4" ViewCount="726" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to explain a psychological and behavioural process to someone via email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I start off in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_narrative&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;first-person&lt;/a&gt; and speak to them in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-person_narrative&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;second-person&lt;/a&gt;, but what do I use when I want to explain a process abstract from either of us?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Examples&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;... the person is aware of...&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;... the person uses...&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4381" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-02-10T11:11:03.027" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T11:11:03.027" Title="In what narrative mode should you explain a process or task?" Tags="|technical-writing|email|narrative|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7196" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-31T21:28:36.230" Score="3" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a textbook and I'd like to include an old paper from Alan Turing as an appendix. Searches on Google turn up copies of the paper, but I cannot seem to find anything explicitly indicating if it's public domain or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4688" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T21:29:36.003" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T21:52:27.810" Title="Is anybody aware of a good way I can determine whether or not something is public domain, or royalty free?" Tags="|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7196" CreationDate="2013-01-31T21:52:27.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copyright restrictions are for the author/creator's lifetime, plus 70 years after their death. From Wikipedia: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;He died in 1954, so add 70 to that and you get his work under copyright until 2024. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T21:52:27.810" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7195" CreationDate="2013-02-01T00:48:32.730" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to be cool and scientific, explaining a process, do it in third person. &quot;The subject is, the subject feels&quot;. This is the professional mode, very impartial but neither the easies to write nor the easiest to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's a colleague though, feel free to use whatever you feel like, First person, second, third, first introducing the actors: &quot;Assume you are a woman in her 60s with two adult daughters... Facing the situation, you feel...&quot;. Use whichever is comfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is different when you describe a task, instruct. The default mode is second person, either commands (&quot;Open the box, take the key&quot;) or simple present (&quot;You open the box, then you take the key&quot;). An interesting option when you don't want to sound commanding, just inform, is use of first person plural: (&quot;We open the box, then we take the key&quot;) - again, use whichever fits your audience best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(note there is an option for instructable to be impersonal third person (&quot;one opens the box and takes the key&quot;) but in my personal opinion it's utterly horrible.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T00:48:32.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7193" CreationDate="2013-02-01T02:42:07.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What purpose do you intend the chapter descriptors to serve for your audience? What is the relationship between the beginning of this new chapter and the end of the last? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have simply ended the previous chapter because the editor said it was already too long, then it probably does not matter what you call it. But if there is a real difference between the two (such as a new topic, a distinct point of view, or a jump in time) then your chapter label should alert the reader to that (or perhaps obscure it, if you want the element of surprise). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These labels are one of the tools that you have at your disposal as author. Do not give them up too easily because they can add a real dimension to the work. You have not suggested place names or dates and times (for a story where location in space and/or time is important) or the names of significant characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T02:42:07.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7206" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-01T18:07:34.560" Score="5" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;To technical background authors (e.g. Isaac Rabinovitch) who would possibly work in teams with non-technically trained writers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I prepare myself to be able to do what you do? &#xA;How can I figure out my niche in the market?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What publishers or technical writing groups or software companies have as their Target Audience the non-technical reader (e.g., over age 50, who is seeking information on personal economics, or leisure, or health, or government regulations)?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or perhaps as with the personal advocate to people who need to access government agencies through forms (writing training manuals for non-lawyers who will assist citizens with completion of government forms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What qualifications are sought in such writers? Where are those qualifications developed (e.g. through online schools, volunteer work as preparation)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4691" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-02-02T00:09:09.857" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T10:31:46.140" Title="How can I prepare for a career in instruction writing and editing?" Tags="|technical-writing|editing|legal|career|audience|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7206" CreationDate="2013-02-01T21:46:50.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say it's much easier for a person with technical background to learn writing for non-technical audience than for a writer without such background to learn writing technical texts in non-inane manner. The two factors are needed: a deep understanding of the problem and ability to convey the essentials, and learning the latter is much easier than the former in good instruction-writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to describe point by point every single obvious element of whatever you're writing about. It's much harder to describe usage patterns, write competent tutorials that don't introduce negative training (teach how to do things wrong) or getting a troubleshooting section to be better than a long row of &quot;contact the service&quot; and simultaneously not get the user killed by trying to rewind the coils in electric motor at home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there is still a wide market for inane manual writers, that's why we have so many completely inane, content-free instructions that are a complete waste of time and provide no help. If that's satisfactory to you, you're sure to find employment with many importers from China or &quot;rebranding&quot; companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, if you want to do better than that, you're up to face an uphill battle: you need the technical background and if you don't have it, you must get it, no way around that. As you probably correctly imagine this short phrase boils down to years of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is a position where a non-technical person might fit perfectly in this domain: an Editor. The fundamental problem of technical writers is that they tend to forget their audience is not nearly as technical, and explain the problems in a manner that is 100% factually correct, definitely the right way to do it, and 100% useless to the reader who is unable to parse a single line of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where the editor should step in and keep asking the writer to explain, clarify, rephrase, simplify, until the non-technically-inclined writer has a perfect understanding of the problem. Then the user will face the same clear, understandable manual and will be able to learn the process just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now comes the problem of finding a company with management wise enough to understand the need for this and employ the editor while they already have &quot;this guy in R&amp;amp;D who writes manuals&quot;. Unfortunately &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; can't help you with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-02-02T06:28:49.267" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T06:28:49.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7208" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7210" CreationDate="2013-02-02T03:55:53.587" Score="0" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a paragraph of dialog which technically continues into the next paragraph, but I want to interject a &quot;she continued&quot; almost immediately into the second paragraph. So should I close the quote on the first paragraph, or leave it open?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g., &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Well,&quot; Antimony began, taking a deep, thoughtful breath, and&#xA;stepping a little closer. &quot;If you fill the 5 pound sack, and&#xA;then empty it into a 3 pound sack, you'll have 2 pounds&#xA;left over. Then you can empty the 3 pound sack back into&#xA;your barrel, and transfer the two pounds of lentils into the&#xA;three pound sack.&quot;&#xA;&#xA;&quot;Then,&quot; she continued, &quot;you can fill the 5 pound sack again...&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It continues from there, but the question is about the closing quote at the end of the first paragraph. I know that normally when dialog continues across paragraphs, it is left open at the end of each paragraph (except of course the last one), because the closing quote implies that the following quote will be another person. But in this case, it is immediately indicated that it is the same person speaking, and it seems strange to continue the quote for such a short piece across the paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-02-11T16:08:57.840" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T16:08:57.840" Title="Should I close this quoted paragraph?" Tags="|dialogue|quotes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7208" CreationDate="2013-02-02T04:38:47.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a good place to break, yes. &#xA;Considering it's such a long quote, you don't want to let the reader lose their focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4549" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T04:38:47.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7208" CreationDate="2013-02-02T13:12:09.783" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have broken and punctuated it correctly. But if you're worried about the &lt;em&gt;she continued,&lt;/em&gt; then change it up a little:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well,&quot; Antimony began, taking a deep, thoughtful breath, and&#xA;  stepping a little closer. &quot;If you fill the 5 pound sack, and&#xA;  then empty it into a 3 pound sack, you'll have 2 pounds&#xA;  left over. Then you can empty the 3 pound sack back into&#xA;  your barrel, and transfer the two pounds of lentils into the&#xA;  three pound sack.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He watched her thoughtfully, but didn't interrupt. She continued. &quot;You can fill the 5 pound sack again...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you move &lt;em&gt;she continued&lt;/em&gt; to the beginning of the sentence and add another few words of stage business, and that's enough of a separator that it doesn't look so odd. It also resolves the &quot;close-quote&quot; question, because if you're adding narration, even though she's the same speaker, you have to close and open quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T13:12:09.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4027" CreationDate="2013-02-02T14:36:08.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just discovered that &lt;strong&gt;I am a discovery writer&lt;/strong&gt;.  I sat down last March and in 8 weeks, I completed my first novel of 90,000 words.  I added 10,000 words after I read my manuscript the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was completed without a single note or idea as to where my story was going and I am working on the sequel which is more than half completed.  When I write, &lt;strong&gt;I really don't know what the characters will do until I start typing&lt;/strong&gt;, which I find really exciting.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4662" LastEditorUserId="39461" LastEditDate="2019-11-14T22:19:04.323" LastActivityDate="2019-11-14T22:19:04.323" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7213" CreationDate="2013-02-02T17:45:24.227" Score="7" ViewCount="1437" Body="&lt;p&gt;So my novel look like this (I took this diagram idea from this site, but I'm not sure exactly from whom):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vL6bx.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beginning and end focuses on the mystery that the heroine is trying to solve (main plot). The middle focuses on her relationship with the other characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I ended up with many random scenes that are disconnected with the main plot (they are indirectly related to it, though). Basically, the main plot is acting as a metaphor for what's happening to her and the people around her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I presented the opening of the novel in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5930/does-my-story-beginning-hook-the-reader-dialogue-narration&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question (in case you want to know)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a sign of bad writing? Are there many books with this type of plot structure? (By bad writing, I mean giving the reader a feeling of discontinuity and dullness). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T15:24:35.917" Title="It is a sign of bad writing to have many scenes that are disconnected with the main plot?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|plot|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7212" CreationDate="2013-02-02T20:02:04.227" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A rambling narrative can be executed very badly or very well. Maybe it's tool to give color and depth to a world, but it can simply be a sign of an unfocused book. In all cases, what's important is how the reader will react, and that can be tough to estimate. It matters not a bit if you've planned the book out well if the reader believes you've given them the equivalent of notes tossed into a paper bag: They'll close the book and move along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do your troublesome plot threads give the reader critical data, or details that will add to the world of the novel? If so, then these scenes are needed. (You've already established that this is the case.) Next, you'll need to make sure the reader has faith in your storytelling. Will the reader find these scenes interesting enough to continue through pages that are apparently unrelated to the story? Unrelated detail can also become &lt;em&gt;interesting&lt;/em&gt; unrelated detail when it's tantalizing. But presenting a reader with interesting baubles repeatedly will get them used to shiny things, and again they might give up on the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discontinuity, to me, means a feeling of things not adding up. And dull-as-dishwater characters will turn readers off. But readers have a memory, and they're quite capable of feeling many things at the same time. Before they get to this point, do readers also sympathize with the characters and the situations? Do they find a character lacking in interest, or do they want them to grow and improve as people? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting readers to care about your world will see them through the desert of dullness, but it'll be easier to propel them across the dunes if these &quot;desolate&quot; scenes are shorter and interspersed with more accessible material. Unless you have a very good reason to have all the difficult scenes as a unified central section of the book, consider resequencing these scenes. Perhaps some scenes containing critical color can be removed, any information from them that the reader needs embedded in earlier or later scenes. The rest of the middle-section scenes could be preserved and interspersed with action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an example of this done well, any of the Bas-Lag books by China Mieville will do, but &lt;em&gt;Perdido Street Station&lt;/em&gt; is a particularly good example of the impenetrable character, performing actions whose intent and meaning are utterly opaque. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T20:02:04.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7126" CreationDate="2013-02-02T20:13:27.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't mind minimal manual labor, use DropBox. It's free, very user friendly, and you can use spreadsheets or just make new folders for version control. We do the same thing for collaborative story telling with 4 users across 3 countries and haven't had any issues yet. If more than one user edits the same document at the same time, it will even make separate copies so there's no risk of overwrite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4696" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T20:13:27.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7212" CreationDate="2013-02-03T13:52:45.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Along with nodding vigorously at everything Neil said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have discontinuity in the beginning, but at some point it has to be apparent to the reader how these threads are connected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In GRRMartin's &lt;em&gt;Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; series, the main action takes place on the continent of Westeros. Dany Targaryen is the exiled daughter of a previous king of Westeros, and all her story takes place far to the south. But a few characters cross back and forth, and Dany's entire purpose is to come &lt;em&gt;back&lt;/em&gt; to Westeros to reclaim the throne. So the main plotline may or may not interact with Dany's so far, but the reader knows that at some point they will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Plotline A is an echo of or metaphor for Plotline B, I would say that by the time we're a third of the way in, the reader should be getting some clear hint that they are connected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be an audience for &quot;impenetrable characters doing things for opaque intents,&quot; but I really prefer to be able to figure out what the hell is going on and why. Mystery is great as long as the mystery is both solvable and revealed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example is the movie &lt;em&gt;Murder by Death.&lt;/em&gt; It's a parody of great detective characters, and &lt;strong&gt;[SPOILER]&lt;/strong&gt; if you've never seen it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in the end scene, the antagonist complains about books in which the murderer was only caught because the detective knew something the audience didn't, and there was no way for the reader to figure it out because the writer deliberately withheld detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-02-05T10:43:55.880" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T10:43:55.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7216" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7220" CreationDate="2013-02-04T04:36:59.553" Score="2" ViewCount="293" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a work professional and the writer by choice. I have been writing for a while now but basically poems, short stories etc. I have been writing due to internal urge. An idea, emotion and a feeling have been my guide and I have been converting them to poems and stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now after 8 years of my first writing, I am preparing myself to write a play with characters, dialogue and scenes. But the problem is creating a plot. Or let's say, setting up myself for how to start? I have tried to start many times but couldn't go any further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here I am seeking some suggestions for the preparations that are needed for an amateur writer and guidance on, &quot;How to start?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2088" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-08T15:02:39.523" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T15:02:39.523" Title="Setting up for writing" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|planning|getting-started|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7217" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7219" CreationDate="2013-02-04T14:08:46.993" Score="9" ViewCount="1180" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following dialogue is from a novel I'm writing (first draft):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You're quiet tonight,&quot; Erin said to Benjamin, who seemed to be lost&#xA;  in thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He looked up and took a sip of his drink. &quot;I'm a bit tired,&#xA;  that all.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Too much work?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah, it's killing me, you know. My boss should really hire more&#xA;  teachers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Why don't you find something else? You've been doing this for a&#xA;  while. I bet you can find something better.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's hard to find a job these days. What if I quit and can't find&#xA;  another? I don't want to end up sleeping in a park and drink cheap&#xA;  sake from a paper bag.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Erin laughed. &quot;That would never happen. No matter what, you can always&#xA;  move to my place.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't think that would be a good idea. You know what they say:&#xA;  living together before marriage kill relationships.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;By the way,&quot; Erin suddenly said while tracing circles on the rim of&#xA;  her glass, “is that new co-worker bothering you? You know, the one who&#xA;  talks to you all the time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Benjamin took a sip of his drink. &quot;What's wrong? You're&#xA;  jealous?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Nah,&quot; Erin said, looking to the side, &quot;just asking.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;She's just talkative, that's all. Besides, she's&#xA;  new. She just want to learn as much as she can.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I see,&quot; Erin said, half-smiling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You never ask these kind of questions,&quot; Benjamin said with a suspicious look.&#xA;  &quot;Is there something wrong?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's right,&quot; Benjamin said after a moment. &quot;Did you feel the&#xA;  earthquake last night?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Erin was about to sip her glass but then stopped. She looked up, and stared at&#xA;  Benjamin with her lips slightly parted. &lt;em&gt;Am I the only one who missed the &#xA;  earthquake?&lt;/em&gt; She wondered if she was indeed living&#xA;  in the same city as everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each part of the dialogue reveals something about the characters. But I feel the first part is very dull (I guess the second part is more exciting). And the third part is the &quot;climax&quot; of the dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do in cases like this? Should I remove the dull part completely or should I keep it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-02-04T14:14:12.023" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T00:28:37.620" Title="Should dull dialogue be removed completely?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|dialogue|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7217" CreationDate="2013-02-04T14:17:06.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's important to character or plot, liven it up a bit. Dress it with stage business. Add some thoughts or descriptions of the setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't find it particularly dull in context. Not every conversation has to have fireworks going off. Sometimes you just have a quiet moment between two people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T14:17:06.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7217" CreationDate="2013-02-04T15:00:50.813" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should watch - or maybe better read up on - Hitchcock's movies.&#xA;Build up a sense of normal, dull life, then shatter it. The more standard, dull the image, the harder the blow hits, the stronger the effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course don't overdo it, don't just bore the reader, but setting up the pristine stage for a disaster is an essential step. Add some good foreshadowing and make it ring now and then in the dialogue with the reader realizing but the characters oblivious to it, and you are sending cold chills down the reader's spine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A dull dialogue may be an immensely powerful literary tool if applied correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T21:54:33.127" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T21:54:33.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7216" CreationDate="2013-02-04T15:31:17.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An amateur writer does not need any preparations to start. You do not need a plot. You do not need to know &quot;how to start&quot;, &quot;how to plot&quot;, &quot;how to write&quot;. You need to overcome &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B007A4SDCG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;resistance&lt;/a&gt; (look inside this book, if you don't know what I mean). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you have to start writing. And keep to it. It really doesn't matter if it suits your high ideals or not. Keep writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to write a book, then you (normally) have already an idea what it should be about. Like: two people love each other, they can't get together, they commit suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I call that an idea, but if it helps to kill your resistance, then you can call it a plot. Just put two characters into it and write a scene. You do not know how to start the drama? Well, write the end scene. How do they commit suicide? Or take a scene in the middle. How the best friend of the protagonist tells her that the guy she loves is not good for her, because ... up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's, what you have already tried, then you should explain, what you did when you &quot;started many times&quot; and why you &quot;couldn't go any long&quot;. Maybe our help can be more specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T15:31:17.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7217" CreationDate="2013-02-04T20:17:10.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/7218/26&quot;&gt;Lauren's answer&lt;/a&gt;: You need highs and lows in any story. As long as you're not boring the reader, maybe these excerpts are just low points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But momentum counts for an awful lot, and it's difficult to judge how &quot;dull&quot; these actually are out of context. For example, when Benjamin looked at Erin despite being lost in thought, did that have significance? When Erin missed the earthquake, was that typical for her or was it an alarming exception for a character who's normally observant? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you set up these dull moments properly, they might not be as dull as you think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T20:17:10.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7217" CreationDate="2013-02-05T09:16:10.277" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, dull dialog should be removed completely (or transformed to interesting dialog).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I assume you misunderstand &quot;dull&quot; in this context. As always in fiction it's the conflict which drives the story. And your first part &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; conflict:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah, it's killing me, you know. My boss should really hire more teachers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflict: Problems with the boss&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Why don't you find something else? You've been doing this for a while. I bet you can find something better.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflict: Boy-friend sets her under pressure getting her ass up to search a new job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;... No matter what, you can always move to my place.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;I don't think that would be a good idea.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, if that isn't a classical conflict, I do not know, how you define one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't shoot all your ammo at the beginning. You want to increase suspense, so start low and add up piece by piece. It looks like you are doing exactly that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T09:16:10.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6375" CreationDate="2013-02-05T14:50:22.200" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;An author has all power about his work, because he is the creator. If you have signed a contract which allows the publisher to change your work without asking you, then it was your power which transferred this right to the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the commentators already said: Read the contract. That's the number one key. Asking a lawyer is the first smart move, but it's not enough. Let the lawyer explain you the contract till &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; (not only the lawyer) have understood every detail in there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not need an agent. You can do that yourself. The help of a lawyer should be sufficient. Because I'm not a lawyer and I do not know which laws come into play in your country, I cannot say if there are laws which nullify parts in your contract. But the contract is what you and the publisher have agreed upon. So read and understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you sign a contract, you should not only be sure, that you do not give up control which you want to keep to yourself; also you should have the willpower to fight for your right. Otherwise you do not need to sign anything, you can just toss your book to the publisher and say: &quot;Do what you want.&quot; If you are not willing to sue them, don't sign anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Luckily in these modern times, you can maintain full control over your work. Selfpublish your next book and you do not have to worry about the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-03-06T17:36:06.050" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T17:36:06.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7224" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-06T01:49:01.850" Score="2" ViewCount="12392" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I use a quote and then want to explicitly refer to a small part of that quote again, within the same paragraph, do I need to use quotation marks again? Can I use italics instead? I am writing in MLA format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &quot;One day at the end of the fall when I was out where the oak forest had been I saw a cloud coming over the mountain.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I explicitly refer to the phrase &quot;I saw a cloud coming over the mountain.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4009" OwnerDisplayName="DAWR" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-10T04:18:57.050" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T04:18:57.050" Title="How to quote something twice" Tags="|citations|punctuation|mla|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7224" CreationDate="2013-02-06T04:56:36.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are referring to a select section of a quote, mentioned previously or not, you would place an ellipse from where it was selected:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;One day at the end of the fall when I was out where the oak forest had been I saw a cloud coming over the mountain.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Else where in the text)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;...I saw a cloud coming over the mountain.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This ellipse would denote that 'I saw a cloud coming over the mountain.' wasn't a quote itself but rather a selection from another quote (regardless of if it was mentioned in the text). Like a commenter mentioned, you may want to mention that it's from an earlier selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4707" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T01:36:46.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7217" CreationDate="2013-02-06T09:02:57.560" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's pretty readable as is (aside from a few grammatical errors in the dialogues that may be intentional) - not boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That aside, as the other answers mention, even the fastest paced action story/movie has some slow spots to provide context and motivation as well as to just let the viewer/reader catch their breath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characters also need time to absorb what has happened to them so they can change and not just proceed exactly as before because they haven't had time to process anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-stop action becomes boring when there's no time to consider the consequences, to start wondering what's going to happen next. The reader has to understand (or think they understand) who the characters are and identify with them so they care about what happens to them.  To do this with any degree of depth almost always requires some &quot;slow&quot; spots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One book I liked started with 10 or 15 pages of description of a throne room to the point where you could almost see every jewel on the columns.  Absolutely nothing happened, but it was fascinating none the less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I remember seeing The Deer Hunter. The start of the movie has action, but it's a wedding that seems to have nothing to do with what the &quot;real&quot; story is about - could be misconstrued as boring/irrelevant.  But, I remember thinking, &quot;My God, if this part is so real and so well done, how am I ever going to deal with it when they get to the part about the Vietnam war!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastEditorUserId="2821" LastEditDate="2013-02-06T09:11:20.180" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T09:11:20.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7228" CreationDate="2013-02-06T09:50:20.573" Score="0" ViewCount="14407" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a technical thesis with quite a few figures, tables and equations. These items break up the &quot;flow&quot; of the document. To mitigate this some journals suggest placing such items at the top or bottom of the page or column in which they occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In attempting to do this in MS Word a problem arises where as paragraphs, by default, split across page breaks; placing an item at the top or bottom of the page would mean inserting it mid-paragraph (or even mid-sentence) and so essentially creating two smaller paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So would it be recommended to continue to pursue this formatting by setting MS Word to not allow paragraphs to break across page breaks, which results in figs etc more easily placed at the top or bottom, but leaving some pages with white space at the bottom of pages.&#xA;Or should I make figure placement more flexible and prevent the white space introduced on some pages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify: better figure/table/equation placement or pages completlyu full with no white space at the end of some pages...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3728" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T17:02:55.150" Title="Should paragraphs split over pages in thesis?" Tags="|style|formatting|pages|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7227" CreationDate="2013-02-06T11:04:49.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid of white space. It's easier for comprehension not to break a paragraph or sentence mid-thought. I would rather have a big chunk of white space at the bottom of a page and then see the table at the top of the next page, where it made sense in the flow of reading, than have to interrupt my reading to double back and look at a graphic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put the tables/figures etc. where they fit in context and don't worry about big gaps. (For what it's worth, I'm also a typesetter who's done a lot of financial documents with tables and figures, and this would be my answer on Graphic Design SE too.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T11:04:49.523" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7229" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7235" CreationDate="2013-02-06T11:30:55.380" Score="4" ViewCount="1661" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I see stuff like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; said, &quot;...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...&quot; &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; did this, and then said, &quot;...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it used to just vary sentence structure? Or to make dialogue more &lt;em&gt;readable&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;smoother&lt;/em&gt; in certain situations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T11:41:42.423" Title="Putting a dialogue a tag before a quote" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7230" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-06T12:29:29.613" Score="8" ViewCount="4924" Body="&lt;p&gt;Killing off a character is a serious issue. Secondary characters or even extras can pass away without too much negative response from the readers but main characters are a whole different matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It saddens readers but sometimes it's unavoidable... &lt;em&gt;But how do we know that&lt;/em&gt;? I've searched around and the advice can be summarized as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kill the character if it helps/affects the plot or is important for it;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character did something that would grant his death (e.g. he was a bad guy in the past)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these good motivations and are there other reasons a write should consider killing a character? I thought it'd be important to go more in depth and analyze this issue because certainly we don't want writers to kill characters &lt;em&gt;&quot;just because that's what happens in other novels/movies, so I have to do it&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4219" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-02-09T00:13:46.833" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T18:58:48.767" Title="Killing off a character: deciding if, when and how" Tags="|fiction|characters|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7230" CreationDate="2013-02-06T13:09:29.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that your first point pretty much summarises why you would kill a character (or do anything in your story, really). When I consider killing a character, there are two main questions I ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who will this affect? How will it change their outlook or motivations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will the death change future events in the plot? Will it mean certain things happen/don't happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best uses of a character's death that I've read happens in Brandon Sanderson's novel Mistborn. Spoilers below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; The main character, Kelsier, is killed by the main villain, the Lord Ruler. But it turns out he planned his death, and used it to galvanise the lower classes into full-on revolution. And yes, he really did die, and remained dead for the rest of the trilogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T13:09:29.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7229" CreationDate="2013-02-06T13:18:16.637" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes to both. Repetitive sentence structure grates on the ear. Also, sometimes it helps to clarify the speaker before the dialogue, and sometimes you actually want action or a pause to occur before the speech, but not separate from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T13:18:16.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7230" CreationDate="2013-02-06T13:57:19.593" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want your story to be dark - or at best grotesque. It can be an element of drama or an element of horror, that's your choice. You decide upon the mood, and death of a character is an important factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of most important and common reasons to do it is to prove: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Stuff's gotten serious&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. You tell the reader the characters are not protected by &lt;strong&gt;[Warning: TV Tropes link]&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor&quot;&gt;plot armor&lt;/a&gt;. They are mortal and the danger is real. So, if you feel your adventure becomes too light, killing a member of main cast is a sure-fire (if cheap) way to tune darkness up a notch or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, &quot;when it's important to the plot&quot; - that sounds simple and cheap, but believe me, it doesn't have to. Imagine the character was very important, a live key to victory that had to be protected and delivered to the goal point. It all seemed like a straightforward, run-off-the-mill escort/travel story where dangers pop up along the way and the protagonists overcome them one after another. Then suddenly their savior/chosen/hope dies, in a way that shows the enemy is really competent. Suddenly all the secondary crew is left with saving up scraps, fighting with their own hopelessness and facing a battle without hope, desperately seeking an alternate solution. Such a turning point will totally shatter the reader's slightly bored area of comfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or opposite, the death may be essential part of the progress. Strugatski's &quot;Roadside Picnic&quot; exploits it in a great way: a character tagging along as a bait/victim/sacrifice. Make it clear early enough or late enough, the impact will be strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do NOT make it meaningless. You may feel like a character has outlived their usefulness and having them tag along with the team will not add anything of value, so you deem the opportunity to kill them while it still counts for something. It will be cheap. Don't. Get rid of them by wounds, by a necessity, by death of faith. Don't just kill them because you don't need them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, always make the victim live past their death: as a memory, as an idea, their spirit, their heritage. Whether a boon or hindrance, make their death matter until the very end, changing outlook of the survivors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, death is the ultimate redemption. If you really want to give your villain some depth, have them redeem themselves by sacrificing themselves. If they had their doubts all along, this makes for some quite satisfactory ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoroughly. Sure bringing a character back from dead is a common trick, but not bringing one who didn't die for sure is a bad crime against the reader, giving them false hope. No, make the death very real, possibly quite graphic and leaving no doubts. It's your choice if it's fast and sudden or if it's a slow, prolonged spectacle, a struggle and a fall - but make it count and make it hit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing: Remember Chekov's Gun can shoot real ammo and kill people dead. Hang one early enough and keep it conveniently in the background, then let it drop and kill your victim when needed. It creates a very strong &quot;oh shit!&quot; moment, when the solution to an unsolvable bind comes not from a deus ex machina but from an impartial background element that was there all the time and just waited for the right set of circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-02-06T14:06:20.317" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T14:06:20.317" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7229" CreationDate="2013-02-06T14:06:21.290" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes to both as Lauren said, and once you train the reader that you're a nice author who doesn't ever violate &quot;One speaker per line&quot; and sticks to that while mixing emotes and actions in too, you may go with a third form which is then even more smooth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...&quot; X did this,  &quot;...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kim shook his fist and muttered, &quot;Not you too, bastard!&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;So...&quot; Josh raised his gun and said, &quot;are we going to do it the easy way?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;versus &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kim shook his fist. &quot;Not you too, bastard!&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;So...&quot; Josh raised his gun. &quot;Are we going to do it the easy way?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the actions that describe the speaker, and you kill two birds with one stone, give variety against &quot;he said, she said&quot; and get the scene to live for real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T14:06:21.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7230" CreationDate="2013-02-06T16:49:57.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot depends on the tone of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like you mention in your question that a criteria might be to only kill a main character if he &quot;deserves it&quot; because of evil deeds he's done, etc. That's good and valid IF you are trying to establish a tone where, basically, everything ends up with a happy ending, good triumphs and evil loses, and all justice is restored at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the point of your story is to say that there is no justice and sometimes the good guys lose, having a good guy die tragically and unfairly would advance that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hamlet would have been quite a different play if in the end Hamlet had avenged his father by killing Claudius, and maybe even succeeded to the throne himself. It would have been an even more different play if in the end Hamlet had discovered that Claudius was completely innocent, it was all a mistake, and Hamlet and Claudius became best of friends and lived happily ever after. All those endings could make a perfectly good story, but they'd be completely different kinds of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've often thought that a problem with a lot of fiction is that the reader knows that the main characters are all invincible, so there is no real suspense. Like, no one watching a James Bond movie supposes for an instant that Bond is going to be killed, no matter how many bullets fly or how many things blow up. No one is on the edge of his seat wondering IF Bond is going to survive, the only question is HOW. A story in which main characters fail, even die, heightens the tension because now the reader really doesn't know if the hero will triumph in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T16:49:57.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7230" CreationDate="2013-02-06T17:40:12.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm more than a little wary of the second option presented here, i.e. &quot;The character did something that would grant his death (e.g. he was a bad guy in the past)&quot;. This to me feels like the author imposing an external criteria of good/bad on the reader, in a slightly sneaky manner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, sometimes doing this means you're sticking faithfully to the conventions of a genre. We all expect the villain in a James Bond film to get snuffed at the end, possibly through some 'ironic' twist, in which they are undone by their own evil plot. The viewer understands the rules that are at play there, and the villains are so outlandish that it's not really too troubling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, using the same principle more broadly can put artificial limits on the story. Or make it predictable. Or make it actively annoying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider another genre staple, 'virgin girls never die in horror films', for example. It's almost impossible not to see it as on some level a moral judgement, but personally I find it annoying and insidious. Annoying, because for me horror films rely on surprise, and predictable patterns lessen this. Insidious, as I'm left wondering if the writer really believes in this criteria they're using - that on some level, having sex makes a character a more 'legitimate' target to be killed off in some nasty manner, depending on their gender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think use it carefully. If I as the reader can spot a pattern in the writing (e.g. how flawed a character is determines how likely they are to survive in a way that does not depend on the actual events in the story) it may break suspension of disbelief if I'm not expecting it. Worse, if I spot such a pattern but disagree significantly with the author's definition of 'bad', then I might begin to view the work as proselytising rather than entertaining. And then I might just put it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4710" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-02-10T11:04:24.933" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T11:04:24.933" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7238" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7286" CreationDate="2013-02-07T00:32:32.717" Score="4" ViewCount="377" Body="&lt;p&gt;Script readers-- the people who sift and sort the vast piles of scripts submitted to Hollywood -- do they start at the beginning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I ask is that I know 99% of scripts are awful and just get thrown out after a couple pages....but if that's true, do they even bother starting at the beginning, or do they just flip to the middle for a sample of the writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T03:57:29.960" LastActivityDate="2017-12-22T13:23:11.860" Title="Do script readers start at the beginning?" Tags="|script|scriptwriting|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7240" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7241" CreationDate="2013-02-07T02:38:15.660" Score="3" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a paper that will be published. The editor sent me an email to return corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The requirement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please follow one of the following two options for returning proof corrections:&#xA;  1) Open and print the PDF, review the article, and send a list of corrections in an email to the Proofreader.  Please note page number, column, and line with each correction. Describe all corrections as clearly and unambiguously as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mother language is not English, I don't know how to describe the corrections. For example, for a sentence, I delete the first three words and add two words in the middle. The sentence is located at line 15 of paragraph 3 etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you give me an example and show me how to describe the action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4713" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T03:57:50.477" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T05:44:09.500" Title="Describe all corrections as clearly and unambiguously as possible" Tags="|editing|proofreading|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7240" CreationDate="2013-02-07T05:44:09.500" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've done this for brochures and other literature, and it's a bit of extra work compared to marking up a PDF with circles and arrows. But some publications have had problems with people using different PDF readers and these marks appearing in the wrong locations, so there may be a reason for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Describe the action&amp;quot; means you should let the proofreaders know what text you need changed, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; to what you want to change it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Location:&lt;/strong&gt; First you need to describe where the text is. As indicated in the instructions: page number as well as line number/column number, and so on. If there can be any doubt whatsoever about the location you mean, it's always best to give more information than less. (You seem to be following this part just fine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to keep in mind that &amp;quot;paragraph X&amp;quot; can be ambiguous. If a page starts in the middle of a paragraph, does that paragraph count as the first one on that page? If they give you no instructions about this, you can include a note in your email indicating how you're doing this. Be consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page 12, paragraph 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page 12, column 2, line 21&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Line numbers are wonderful to use when you have them.) If the location of text you're describing is on more than one line, you can provide a range:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lines 18 - 19&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the location you're describing is on the very top (or bottom) line of a page, it should be safe to just say that: &amp;quot;Page 32, first line.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Numbering in English is done with one on the top (or on the left in the case of columns).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Describing  the change:&lt;/strong&gt; This is much easier to explain with examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Location] &amp;quot;And in the end, the love you fake&amp;quot; should read &amp;quot;the love you &lt;strong&gt;take&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Location] &amp;quot;Jerry &lt;strong&gt;was was&lt;/strong&gt; a racecar driver&amp;quot; - the word &amp;quot;was&amp;quot; is repeated, please delete the extra word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Location] Section title &amp;quot;Teh End&amp;quot; should read &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;The&lt;/strong&gt; End&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bolding text to be changed is helpful, but some email systems may not preserve this information, so don't depend on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting article text like I did above helps find changes in an electronic file simple. It's easy to do this if the PDF you have allows you to select a bit of and copy it, then paste the text into your email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T05:44:09.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7229" CreationDate="2013-02-07T09:12:39.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second example just inserts the tag in the middle of speech, which is fairly standard if redundant. The first example though...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're asking for the &lt;strong&gt;reason&lt;/strong&gt; for this ordering - it's a matter of personal style. In literary writing it feels awkward and is rarely used... mostly by unskilled authors, because they don't know any better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now first, why they (the unskilled authors) write it like that, and when would skilled authors use this is how natural speech follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I went to Lucy and she said 'Mary has the keys'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You told me &amp;quot;It's not important.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said &amp;quot;Yes&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said it's here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast it with what you'd find in books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went to Lucy and asked her. &amp;quot;Mary has the keys,&amp;quot; she answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It's not important,&amp;quot; you tell me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Yes&amp;quot;, he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was supposed to be here, according to what you said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, in normal conversation, you report someone's speech, you first identify the speaker, then follow up either with the quote or a paraphrase. So, if you want to create this impression - of the narrator talking directly to the reader, then you'll use this ordering. It contrasts standard literary narration with conversational tone, removes the impersonal distance of the narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T09:12:39.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7477" CreationDate="2013-02-07T14:06:14.127" Score="8" ViewCount="364" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fiction I write currently hit a major &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6962/dealing-with-lackluster-plot-failure&quot;&gt;snag&lt;/a&gt; and needs a big overhaul of a major part of the story. A whole, large thread is being injected, a second conflict running in parallel with the main one and nearly as big - maybe smaller scale-wise but possibly even more complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thing is I have a big part of the story according to the old, single-threaded paradigm is already written. Most of it will be reused in almost unchanged shape content-wise, but will require serious edits on the &quot;details&quot; level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and with my experience from programming, adding a second, distinct functionality to a pre-existing module with one existing functionality creates much, much more bugs than writing this from scratch separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid my old story will be full of plot holes, pieces that depend on past that's been changed, on time-space relationships that are no longer valid, on knowledge that due to certain events became available or got lost in the changed version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: when before there was just the dark clouds on the horizon, there comes a whole new layer of plot and subterfuge, opponents at hand, observing the protagonists from the shadows. They will not hesitate to strike at any open vulnerabilities. Suddenly all (common) scenes where the protagonist just didn't care about immediate danger (because there was none) need to either excuse the opponents from striking at the exposed character, or provide some defense, or just turn into battles. Any moments where I leave the protagonist &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; exposed, and nothing bad happens, as he is most of the time now, become plot holes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are there any trusted techniques to trace such dependencies, and hunt all plot holes depending on changes of the story? Trace locations, knowledge, items to make them end up where they are? Like, in the old &quot;Wolf, goat and cabbage&quot; riddle, introduce a chicken and a sack of grain, and still reuse most of the old solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T20:27:41.213" Title="Tracing dependencies and emergent plotholes during edits" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7243" CreationDate="2013-02-07T15:19:39.203" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd use a spreadsheet as a wireframe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have such notes already, you may have to examine your story a section at a time, and make notes about each part detailing what's going on with Plot A. Then use the spreadsheet to make notes about weaving in Plot B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of the spreadsheet is that everything is modular, visible almost all at once, and very easy to move around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be necessary to go over your book several times to fill in all the spreadsheet gaps, particularly once you actually start writing and you find threads which suddenly dangle, but using a verbal wireframe will make it much simpler to see where all the variables are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then find a really good editor and explain what you've done, so the editor knows to &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; for plot holes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T15:19:39.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7247" CreationDate="2013-02-07T17:28:08.887" Score="6" ViewCount="900" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back when rocks were soft and the world wide web hadn't yet been invented, I worked on a college newspaper that, I was told, followed the same patterns as professional papers.  (That is, the skills we learned doing this would transfer.)  Between the journalist's story submission and the print copy stood an editor, who reviewed the story -- not just proofreading but assessing whether the research level was right, anything important had been missed, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, in the age of instant reporting on the Internet, where a delay of half an hour is significant, what is the role of the editor?  Does that job function still exist for online news sites?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As you can surmise, I didn't end up going into journalism.  But because I went into a different type of writing, I sometimes find myself talking with young folks considering writing careers and I realized I'm out of touch on this particular industry.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T17:33:40.350" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T02:20:55.327" Title="What is the role of editors in news media today?" Tags="|editing|journalism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6995" CreationDate="2013-02-08T01:23:44.553" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under US law, a direct parody is considered &quot;fair use&quot;.  What isn't fair use is parodying something for some other purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it's my understanding that English is spoken in other countries besides the US, and the laws there may be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T01:23:44.553" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7245" CreationDate="2013-02-08T10:41:50.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I worked for a major web portal, I was &quot;in a different dept&quot; and all I got was a bit of word on mouth, coffee gossip and &quot;customer interview&quot; (editors discussing features they needed in the portal), so take this with a grain of salt, especially that it was a moderately average portal in a backwater country on an unfashionable continent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The job is 95% skimming news from news agencies, picking out news to be published, attaching own features of the portal (assign section, link related stories, add keywords, add a map link, possibly add stock photos, dedicated commercials) and pressing &quot;publish&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, you read hundreds of news snippets, pick out the juicy ones, then apply some minor processing to turn them from bland, raw, plain &quot;agency&quot; format into fancy &quot;our own&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's very little of actual editing: the agency news are usually edited by their own editors to be very &quot;clean&quot; and rarely need corrections. You just decorate them a little and push to their relative page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the remaining 5% was old-fashioned editing with user-submissions, picking out interesting comments, working with their own news crew with local news - if something happened in our half of the city, we'd have first-hand news before the rest of the world would get their agency news, and also if there was some festival or other event with major media presence, the news crew would attend and submit their scoop for editing. But seriously, that was more for marketing purposes - for show-off, that we do have any news crew, and do more than just aggregation, than to create actual news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-02-08T16:37:03.623" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T16:37:03.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7230" CreationDate="2013-02-08T15:34:47.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give a reason for one character (or several, or for non-character entities,  etc.) to attempt on another character's life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But give the dying character (the one whose life was attempted on, etc.) a &lt;em&gt;cause&lt;/em&gt; of death besides the motivation of the killer (if one exists) and mere chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, there had been numerous reasons to try to kill Hitler, with numerous attempts on his life. But the guy was paranoid and well prepared most of the time. The result: he was never 'killed'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JFK probably had a mole in his 'team' the day he was assassinated. But whatever actually happened, I wouldn't use a roof-less vehicle in an apartment complex when there's a 'slight' chance someone 'might' be targetting me. He trusted (or maybe not, who knows) his security detail and his people, and he had a reason to show up in public, and there was a cause of death (besides the bullet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if there's a reason for a character to die, consider killing him. If there isn't a cause of death, he can't die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T15:34:47.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7249" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7250" CreationDate="2013-02-08T20:29:14.913" Score="22" ViewCount="9485" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a writer—no programming, only prose in text files, mostly in Emacs org-mode, some in markdown-mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to implement a version control system for my writing projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work with two types of text files:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;drafts (textfile-v1.org, textfile-v2.org, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;research files (research-notes.org)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter, the research files, consist of hunks of text I have copy and pasted from the web. My workflow for the research files involves going through those files and deleting as I go. In other words, when I find a quote, I might copy it into a draft file, then delete the quote. This is my way of knowing what I have already processed or not. So that by the time my research file is blank, I know I'm done. When the research file is blank, I delete it so I know I'm done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For both these uses—writing multiple drafts, and destroying research files as I go—it strikes me that having a version control system would be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am NOT doing different branches as I go—just going forward as I make progress writing my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using Aquamacs Emacs on OSX. Which version control system would you recommend, and how would I go about integrating it with my Emacs workflow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4718" LastEditorUserId="2088" LastEditDate="2013-02-14T19:53:53.637" LastActivityDate="2020-09-13T14:47:03.077" Title="What's the best version control system for a book writer?" Tags="|tools|version-control|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7249" CreationDate="2013-02-08T20:38:09.170" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a large number of version control systems out there, but I think that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_%28software%29&quot;&gt;Git&lt;/a&gt; might be the best choice for you for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is that everything is in a single folder, you don't have to check things out to work on them or rebuild anything. You can just keep a full live copy on a pendrive and it just works. You also don't need to set up servers or magic paths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you don't have to check anything out, you just commit it when you're done. You can also keep an offsite repository with very little work so you have that extra layer of protection. Another upshot of git is you can just backup the whole thing by just copying the root folder. Everything is copied over and will work just fine at it's new location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't speak of how to integrate it into Emacs, but I suspect that part of the question can easy be answered at one of the other SE sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="124" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T20:38:09.170" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7245" CreationDate="2013-02-09T02:20:55.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends largely on the site. On some sites, editors just collect and aggregate news. On others they write columns or work with other columnists. On websites that have a print section, they may just coordinate with web producers. However, it is still very much a job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4720" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T02:20:55.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7173" CreationDate="2013-02-10T08:35:41.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to be clear (with your own self) &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; you have a segmented screenplay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stories that become one&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the most obvious, but also the most complex. At some point the various narratives will need foreshadowing and unforced plot alignment in order to not break your contract with your audience. Keeping track of each individual segment's storyline and character dispositions will be &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; difficult if you write each separately - by the time you write the final segment, it will be constrained by the other two. &lt;em&gt;Clearly, writing the three stories in tandem would work best here, as each will draw on the growth of each other and be more fluid and cohesive as a result.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stories that remain separate, but share a theme&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is less complex than merging stories over time, but will require your theme to be fully understood &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you begin. If you develop your theme over time, each successive segment will have more depth and may leave the audience somewhat unfulfilled since the end result will jump between stories and the strength of the theme will come and go. You could make this work for you, but it will be extremely difficult to get right. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stephen King's On Writing&lt;/a&gt;, he firmly points out theme as an element to be aware of, but only to focus on in final edits. I agree: theme driving story equals &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality_play&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;morality play&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Assuming your theme exists and is clear, and you will return to fully flesh it out in later edits, then writing each story separately makes sense.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stories that are separate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the easiest to write, but will be the most difficult to cut up. You run the risk of slicing in ways that will have unintentional consequences for the audience, and often you will not pick this up given your close involvement. The amount of rewrites may become more effort than the project is worth. And the question has to be asked: if the stories are separate, and there is no uniting element (plot, theme or shared characters), then &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; have them together at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story telling &lt;em&gt;can be&lt;/em&gt; just for the author, but I firmly believe that a story isn't worth much if it doesn't have an audience. And audiences (with the possible exception of genres like mystery, I guess) don't want to be confused. Your contract with them is to entertain, to make them think, to help them suspend disbelief and enter another world. If you disrupt their engagement, you may not get their attention back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T08:35:41.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7230" CreationDate="2013-02-10T18:58:48.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Killing characters can be a tricky idea. There are a few main ideas behind killing characters that you have to keep in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is that you shouldn't kill a character just for the sake of killing a character. This goes especially for killing main characters, but can count just as well for &quot;red shirts&quot; (nameless, unimportant side characters). Here are some times when you should or should not kill a characters (as a general rule of thumb, not a hardfast rule):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you just want them out of the story, killing them might not be the best idea. It might mean instead that they didn't fit in your story to begin with. Look at that character and see if they were doing any good in your story. If not, maybe you should figure out how to write the story so they aren't there to begin with. If they are doing good, maybe you should rethink killing them. You might not personally like them as a character, but if they're being useful for your story, and are driving the plot along, you probably need them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it will cause an emotional reaction in your character, you should think very seriously about whether you want to kill them off. If you are doing it solely so your character will be angry/sad/emotional, it might be a waste. You want to move the plot forward, and if it will move the plot forward, go with it. If it will hinder the main character and force them to work harder, go for it. If it will just make your MC weep and cry and be whiny, it might not be the best idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they have done something that will bring about their death, you should probably kill them. Nothing is more annoying than a character who is supposed to die but doesn't because the author loved them too much to kill them off. If they do survive, there should be a very good reason (someone sacrifices themself instead, they win a fight through actual ability and working really hard and training instead of just being the author's darling). But if you set them up to inevitably die, you should probably kill them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they are the villain, you don't have to kill them in the end. Think of the consequences of killing them or of not killing them. If he is the king, there might be a huge uprising if you kill him. But if he's a dictatorial king, there might be a huge uprising if you don't kill him and sentence him to lots of jail time (think Egypt post: Arabic Spring). Just remember that killing him/her isn't the only option.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For how the person should die, remember to make it fit within the story. If the person is going off to battle the big bad evil guy (or if the big bad evil guy is coming to battle the MC), don't have one of them die in a car crash. Maybe your MC can be stabbed by a poisoned dagger sent by the big bad evil guy and then someone else has to fight in his stead or the fight never happens, but only do that if the big bad evil guy would send an assassin with a poisoned dagger to kill him. This is really just an example of a time when it depends entirely on your story, but just make sure that it's internally consistent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3781" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T18:58:48.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7212" CreationDate="2013-02-10T19:26:18.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One main idea about scene construction is that each scene should do two things. It can move plot and change the emotional feeling of a character/characters, or provide backstory and move plot, or do any combination of one of those and another thing. But it should do at least two things. So the biggest thing to look at is what each of your scenes does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a scene with the boyfriend right before the climax. Does that scene progress the emotional plot and provide backstory? Then it's, by that definition, a good scene, and probably useful to the story. If it is just a scene where the MC and the boyfriend are talking about their favorite fruit, it probably isn't so useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't want every scene in the beginning and the end to be plot and backstory or plot and relationship, and you don't want every scene in the middle to be emotional and backstory (as examples), because that will lead to a feeling of having two different stories in one, but you can generally have the outside progress the plot and inside progress emotional, or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it isn't good or bad writing to not always follow exactly what the main plot is doing. One way to avoid a feeling of discontinuity is make it clear where each scene is related to the others in space and time. It could be as simple as saying &quot;later that day&quot; or &quot;at the same time&quot; or &quot;across town&quot;, where it gives a feeling that everything is tied together. If suddenly start a scene with the father being in another state six months later with no tie-in, it would probably be confusing. If he is buying a gift for his child at the store they went to years ago, that gives a feeling of continuity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3781" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T19:26:18.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7144" CreationDate="2013-02-11T03:17:47.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm actually at the point now where I want to take hundreds of scrappy scenes and bits and pieces and try to give my novel some structure. So the question you've asked is actually uppermost in my mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I like Scrivener. I use it for all my drafting. But it doesn't quite cut it for the big-picture structure stuff, I'm finding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I tried to use Scrivener's 'corkboard' view, which lets you see all your little pieces of novel as pseudo-index cards on a pseudo corkboard, I found it impossible to manage because there were simply too many. Maybe if I had several enormous monitors rather than a single 15&quot; laptop, it would work better. But it just didn't work for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm finding works &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; better is not software at all, but the very thing Scrivener is trying to emulate: a large corkboard and a big stack of small index cards. I'm talking physical objects here - call me a Luddite. Rearranging and grouping the scenes is easier and more satisfying because I can see everything at once. If I run out of room I can just buy another corkboard - they're only about twenty bucks at Target. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there will be some additional work to apply what I come up with, structurally, onto my digital manuscript. But I think it's worthwhile. Convenience is overrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T03:17:47.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7208" CreationDate="2013-02-11T03:38:58.537" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Avoiding the problem (as per Lauren Ipsum's answer) is probably the best way to deal with this. But let's assume you don't want to change anything about your paragraphs. The answer is unambiguous: no close quotation mark. For two reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First reason is simple correctness: you don't want &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_Modern_English_Usage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fowler&lt;/a&gt; to turn in his grave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more important reason is clarity. If I - as an unsuspecting reader - came across the passage as originally quoted, I would be forced to re-read it, because I'm being given contradicting cues. The closing quote mark on the previous paragraph tells me there's two different people speaking, and the 'she continued' tells me that it's just one. There are times when you want your reader to be pulled up short and have to think about what they're reading; but this isn't one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T03:38:58.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7258" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-11T13:56:50.267" Score="2" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to insert a full-page colour plate into a document I am writing. The plate has been prepared in a different program. As colour plates, which I have seen in books, do not carry page numbers, my intention was to simply insert the colour plate into the appropriate place in the document and refer to it with text such as, &lt;code&gt;&quot;... are shown in the colour plate (overleaf).&quot;&lt;/code&gt; Would this be considered an acceptable method?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2323" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T15:22:30.340" Title="Page numbers on colour plates" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7258" CreationDate="2013-02-11T15:22:30.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between &quot;not showing&quot; and &quot;not having&quot; a page number. The books and magazines I know, continue the page numbering even though the page number is not shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can refer to it by page number. If the color plate is between page 15 and 17, the reader knows that the plate has number 16. Besides that you can always refer to a picture/plate/diagram by mentioning &quot;overleaf&quot; &quot;next page&quot; &quot;below&quot;. But then make sure it really is &quot;overleaf&quot; &quot;next page&quot; or &quot;below&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T15:22:30.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7270" CreationDate="2013-02-12T18:06:53.037" Score="6" ViewCount="153811" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a group paper and I was wondering whether there's a correct way to list multiple authors at the top of the first page in MLA format. Normally the header would look something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Name&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Instructor's Name&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Course Name&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;12 February 2013&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if there's three of us, should it be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Group Member 1, Group Member 2, Group Member 3&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Instructor's Name&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Course Name&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;12 February 2013&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should they be separated by semicolons? Is there even any standard to follow at all? If our  group had a name I'd use that, but it doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3786" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-11-20T03:00:30.930" LastActivityDate="2021-11-20T03:00:30.930" Title="Multiple authors in MLA header" Tags="|technical-writing|mla|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7262" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7263" CreationDate="2013-02-12T18:56:23.030" Score="10" ViewCount="2871" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me first explain what is going in in the beginning of the story: My main character belongs to a tribal culture that requires their children pass a rite of passage to earn their name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm kind of stuck on how to refer to the character while he is on his trial. (The story would start up right in the thick of battle as he is taking the test, which is done by going out into the jungle and stalking and killing some form of food that would feed the tribe.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then a bit later I had planned to have my second character make her appearance, interrupting his trial so he technically never gets his name. However, she gives him one by making her nickname for him his name for the rest of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But up until that point I am not sure how to reference him if I am doing it from his perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4732" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-02-16T15:55:54.407" LastActivityDate="2019-07-28T07:16:46.113" Title="How to have a character be nameless for the first few paragraphs of a book?" Tags="|word-choice|viewpoint|naming|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7262" CreationDate="2013-02-12T20:27:44.217" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a few things going on here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If the story is first-person, your problem is solved. We rarely address ourselves by our given names in internal monologues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If your story is in third person, then you have a cultural issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The children may not get official Names (Starfall, Willow, Runs With Scissors) until they do something to earn it. But you still have to &lt;em&gt;address&lt;/em&gt; someone before that age, since they have to have some level of competence to hunt and kill food. A mother with three kids under the age of trial is not going to introduce them as Hey You, Thing 1, and Pain In My Butt (even if that's how she thinks of them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think you need a culturally embarrassing placeholder address which is clearly not a name, which the nickname will then supplant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It could be a cutesy use-name, which is why a warrior of either gender would reject it&#xA;(Starlight, Birdsong, Crushed Peony Booger).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It could be a mocking name (Screech, Sewage, Mr. Hankey the Christmas&#xA;Poo) because the tribe thinks the gods will steal children who have&#xA;fine names, so they give them ugly names until they are old enough to&#xA;defend themselves against the gods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It could be a literal placeholder (Third Daughter of Two Blades).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Cultural issues aside, if this is a short story and you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; mean five or six paragraphs, using &quot;the warrior&quot; or &quot;the boy on trial&quot; is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T20:27:44.217" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7261" CreationDate="2013-02-12T22:44:01.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From memory (and this is quite a long time ago - since finishing my first degree I've used Turabian style rather than MLA), you are correct to use full names (first name before surname), in alphabetical order, separated by commas on a single line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have a copy of the MLA Style Manual? I'd strongly recommend it if you are going to be using MLA style frequently. You can buy it &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0873522974&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on Amazon&lt;/a&gt; or at a decent bookshop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T22:44:01.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7265" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7266" CreationDate="2013-02-13T11:40:48.503" Score="7" ViewCount="3478" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I first saw that statement in an answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-is-the-difference-between-writing-in-the-first-and-the-third-person.&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Men cannot, in general, write female first-person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I gave it a thought, and realized there was some truth in it; I've read first-person narrative novels by female authors where the main character is a man, but never the other way around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a bit curious about the reason most men don't/can't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2020-05-19T04:00:58.343" Title="Is it true that men (in general) can't write female first-person?" Tags="|fiction|narrative|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7265" CreationDate="2013-02-13T12:43:51.493" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's totally nonsense. Stupid gender category thinking. Just ignore statements like this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is that many women do not think (because of this nonsense) that men can write fiction for women (probably because they think men do not understand women). Therefore male writers use a female pseudonym if they want to sell romances and stuff where the main audience are women. So if you've read books of female authors, are you sure it wasn't a male author under a female pseudonym?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you know &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thepassivevoice.com/02/2013/romance-novelist-jessica-blair-is-an-89-year-old-man/&quot;&gt;Jessica Blair&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw, the same is true for women writing for genres with a heavy male audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-02-16T15:45:31.240" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T15:45:31.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7265" CreationDate="2013-02-13T15:24:34.553" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There probably is a kernel of truth here, but it has nothing to do with gender as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing in first-person because you want the reader to connect and identity with the character, and you want the basis of that connection to be some quintessential aspect of a social identity that speaks to a shared experience of people in that group... yeah, it helps if you're part of that group yourself. But it isn't necessary, and it certainly isn't sufficient, and if you fail (which is likely) you'll end up with a cliche-ridden pile of rubbish at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you're writing in first-person because you want the reader to see the inner workings of a complex character with a distinctive personality, focus on that; the perspective character's individuality is far more important than their gender or any other single trait. Or if you're writing in first-person because you want a neutral observer who isn't otherwise a central character, make them unobtrusive enough that their gender doesn't even matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing things from the perspective of people different from yourself is a vital skill in any case. For all the hand-wringing people indulge in over it, gender isn't even the trickiest--in my experience, writing across socioeconomic class and generational culture shifts are gotten very wrong far more often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4373" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T15:24:34.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7265" CreationDate="2013-02-13T16:11:28.693" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.&quot; -- Oscar Wilde&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to the extent that it is true that men do not understand women, it follows that if a man attempts to write a story from a woman's point of view but is totally off-base due to gender-wide ignorance of women, that any other man reading it will be just as ignorant and so not see any problem. So only half the potential readers will find the story incongruous. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously, though, I've read stories written by women where the men all seemed &quot;off&quot; to me. Some where the men act like women, and some where the men are extreme stereotypes. (Like, I've seen a few movies on Lifetime Network. Men are either controlling, abusive jerks, or sweet, sensitive, caring wusses.) So I don't doubt that men sometimes write female characters that women find unbelievable. I've certainly read stories where the women act just like men. A large percentage of action-adventure stories fall in this category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's not like all men do Y and never do X while all women do X and never do Y, so that you could take one scene out of a story and say, &quot;What? That's something a man would do, not a woman.&quot; Still, anyone who has actually interacted with real men and women knows that the two think and act differently in many ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm reminded of some cartoon my kids watched once where a pre-teen boy asks his sister or whoever she was supposed to be what he should do to &quot;become a man&quot;. She fumbles a little, then says, &quot;Well first, no matter what, don't let anyone else touch the remove control.&quot; &quot;I don't know about that,&quot; he replies, &quot;I feel like ...&quot; And she slaps her hand against her face and cries, &quot;And don't talk about your feelings!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, the ultimate sexism is the idea that a woman is only praise-worthy to the extent that she acts just like a man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But surely it's the same problem an author faces any time he attempts to write a character who is not exactly like himself. I'm sure that rich people stumble when writing poor characters, Americans stumble when writing Chinese, Christians stumble when writing atheists, liberals stumble when writing conservatives, etc etc, and vice versa. &#xA;I can think of many examples where the writer either portrayed a character as being just like himself when he clearly wasn't, or when the character was such a stereotype or caricature that it was laughable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T16:11:28.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7262" CreationDate="2013-02-13T16:30:22.577" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on what happens in your opening scenes, you may be able to refer to him as &quot;the boy&quot; or &quot;the unnamed person&quot; or some such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But: How do you suppose that the people in this culture refer to those who don't yet have names? If you're in the person's presence, you could point and say &quot;him&quot;, but what if you're not? The fact that you are struggling with this for your narrative may indicate that you have created a society which, to this extent, is unbelievable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is a common trap for people writing fantasy and science fiction. It's easy to write,  &quot;The people in this society all walk on their hands.&quot; But really, it's so wildly impractical, how long would such a thing last? Surely sooner or later someone would say, &quot;Hey, it's so much easier to walk on your feet!&quot; and no matter how much the authorities fought it, the advantages would be too obvious. At the least you have to explain away the obvious problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps in this culture unnamed people really do have names, they just don't consider them &quot;real names&quot;. The name he's given as a child isn't considered a name, it's just something you call him by until he earns a real name. Depending on what you're trying to do in the story, it might work to say, &quot;He was called Flinghar, but that wasn't his name. He hadn't yet earned a name. He hoped to earn a name in the Trial at the next solstice ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe they're referred to by some description, like &quot;Hamgar's Second Son&quot; or &quot;Boy of the Third New Moon&quot; or some such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the society is highly ritualized, I'd think there'd be a formula to such things. You wouldn't just use a random nickname.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T16:30:22.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7261" CreationDate="2013-02-13T16:41:28.730" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just checked my copy of MLA Handbook and I find no guidance on this case. The only example it gives has a single name. (I'll readily yield to someone who can point out that I missed something.) Given that, I'd just say, &quot;Do something sensible.&quot; It's conventional in other instances, like footnotes, to separate names with commas, so that's what I'd do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if your instructor has given specific guidance, or if your school has a style sheet, I'd follow that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T16:41:28.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7272" CreationDate="2013-02-13T21:10:02.777" Score="5" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the 'who is this application for' section of an application user guide, I have the following alternatives,  I'm not happy with either one. How can I convey both elements more clearly and consisely? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to convey: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The business functions related to the specific metric ==&gt; who in the sense of who might have to deal with the issue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why they would care ==&gt; The specific issue the the application is meant to resolve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The intended audience is anyone tasked to ensure the accuracy of [analytic metric] generated by the their implementation of the [Specific Analytic Software] Platform, whether for [business function A], [business function B], [business function C], or [business function D].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proposed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The intended audience includes personnel tasked with ensuring the accuracy of [analytic metric] sourced from the [Specific Analytic Software] Platform.  This information could be included within any of the following: [business function A], [business function B], [business function C], or [business function D].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your proposed solutions, here is my current, much improved take:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This application is for anyone in [business function A], [business function B], [business function C], or [business function D] who compiles [analytic metric] using (ESP). It is designed to help you ensure the accuracy of the [analytic metric] by connecting to ESP to generate and collect, in just a few minutes, related analytic and underlying data that would otherwise take hours to compile.  The compiled information is then organised and presented in a way that makes troubleshooting and documenting specific [analytic metric] values easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4737" LastEditorUserId="4737" LastEditDate="2013-02-14T21:42:24.350" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T21:42:24.350" Title="How can I express this fragment more clearly and concisely?" Tags="|technical-writing|non-fiction|clarity|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7271" CreationDate="2013-02-13T22:53:43.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This application is for users of (ESP) who need to understand its results quickly and easily.  (Product) takes the metrics compiled by (ESP) and presents them in a way that makes troubleshooting and documentation easier.  (Product) produces reports for (business function A), (business function B), ... .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rationale:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, explain how it fits in with the context they already know.  Then tell them how your product fits into that world; they (presumably) know the pain of dealing with (ESP), but they've never heard of you.  Focus on what your product &lt;em&gt;does for them&lt;/em&gt;, rather than &lt;em&gt;who they are&lt;/em&gt;; if you say, for example, that a product is for users of type X, then users of type Y who also need to do that thing may not realize you can help them.  But everybody has some idea of the problem he's trying to solve.  (Well, usually.  We hope. :-) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your house style, you might want to list the business functions your product addresses in a bulleted list instead of in running text like above.  This helps people who are skimming.  Think about the last set of product specs you read (online, on a physical package, or whatever); it was probably a list, wasn't it?  It was designed to make you quickly realize &quot;I need this&quot;; so too is this section of your document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T22:53:43.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7273" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7275" CreationDate="2013-02-14T04:36:44.623" Score="2" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a player's handbook for a game I'm producing. The game is fully open source, and the manual itself will be online. However, I would like to offer a hardcopy version of the manual for those who might want it. What are my best options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more info:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd probably be going for the nicest quality for the lowest price (who isn't?). Hardcover would be nice. Glossy paper with nice colours would also be great. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2409" LastEditorUserId="2409" LastEditDate="2013-02-14T11:20:05.037" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T15:41:19.457" Title="Self/vanity publishing a game manual" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7271" CreationDate="2013-02-14T11:13:42.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[The application] is designed with [business function A], [business function B], [business function C], and [business function D] in mind, with the specific purpose of ensuring accuracy of [analytic metric] generated by your implementation of the [Specific Analytic Software].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understood, some unfortunate code monkey gets tasked with debugging a huge enterprise software product using your tool as aid in understanding what happens under the hood of that ESP. That would mean the actual intended audience is the overlords of that code monkey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting it in more PC terms, the intended audience is the businesses which perform functions [A,B,C,D] and the actual use/purpose is ensuring the accuracy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact this purpose is achieved by harnessing said monkey to your tool and letting them loose on the ESP, is out of focus of the the business-side, an insignificant detail left for the technical crew which won't be interested in that section of the document anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T11:13:42.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7273" CreationDate="2013-02-14T15:41:19.457" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been several years since I investigated alternatives, but I think your main choices are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create Space: low cost, minimal start-up fees (I think now the only up-front cost you have to pay is the cost of proofs, which depends on size, color, etc but would be on the order of $30). Now owned by Amazon so you can sell through Amazon very easily. They don't do hardcover, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lulu: More expensive than Create Space, but does hard cover. As of several years ago, I think it was basically a $100 set up fee, and they keep a bigger share of the selling price than Create Space but it's in the same ballpark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lightning Source: more up front costs but lower oveall costs. Owned by Ingram, which is the biggest book distributor in the country. Geared to working with big publishing houses with large volumes so they're complicated to work with, not really meant for somebody with one book, though people have done it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above are all print-on-demand, that is, you don't have to order and pay for hundreds or thousands of copies and then hope you can sell them. They print a small number of copies at a time, sometimes as little as one, as people order them. With all of these, you can order copies yourself and sell directly, or you can direct people to Amazon and other on-line sellers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many self-publishing companies out there that charge substantial up-front fees, often thousands of dollars. I'd investigate these carefully before going with any of them. In my humble opinion, they don't appear to offer any value for this money that you don't get with the minimal-setup folks. I'm sure if you ask them they will disagree strongly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can still go the old-style route of doing a small conventional print run of a few thousand copies and stocking them in your garage. The per-copy print costs are lower. But then you have to pay the cost up front, take the risk that you won't sell them, manage the inventory, and do the shipping yourself. Again, my humble opinion, while I can think of circumstances where this would be a good idea, not the best alternative for most authors today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies to any printers/publishers in the same ball park that I didn't mention. There are others out there, but not all that many.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T15:41:19.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7271" CreationDate="2013-02-14T16:34:00.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For everyone who wants to control the accuracy of [analytic metric] of their [Specific Analytic Software] Platform implementation. No matter if it is for [business function A], [business function B], [business function C], or [business function D].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your examples are exactly in that formal tone that makes me fall asleep. Some guides are forced to be written in that tone, because of bosses who have no single clue about user guides (or especially users). I hope you do not have to suffer one of these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't use adjectives (or derived adverbs) like &quot;quick&quot; and &quot;easy&quot;. Always I read stuff like this I think automatically &quot;Oh, what a splendid idea. I always try to make my programs slow and hard to comprehend&quot;. (Add sarcasm tags at will.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T16:34:00.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5227" CreationDate="2013-02-14T21:35:25.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will sound like a lame response, but your problem is that you are not famous. Keep in mind that publishers do not want to publish collections of essays, generally speaking, since they do not consider them marketable. Being famous is the way that people like Stewart and Hitchens have &quot;solved&quot; this problem of marketability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effectively, I am saying the same thing as the above commenters. You need to develop a following outside of the writing world and then use that profile to overcome the resistance that the marketing department will have for your book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not recommend self-publication in this instance. Unless you have a strong, clear, core idea that has a niche audience that can be identified and reached, it's a bad option. You are talking about promoting controversial views on general and varied subjects. Consequently, you will quite simply be unable to sell this book until you have raised your profile - whether to publishers or individuals/groups. So you should focus as the above recommend on raising your profile and publishing the individual essays. Then collect them as a book when you are famous enough to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't kill the book's prospects by prematurely self-publishing the volume. If it was marketable, you would be getting responses from publishers. If a publisher is not willing to market the volume, you will not want to take on this difficult job yourself. Self-publishing is currently still only a good option for non-fiction when a niche market exists that either (1) you could reach effectively yourself, and will receive no benefit from a publisher (in this scenario, you would have no problem finding a publisher if you wanted to) or (2) the same is true except that the market is too small for a publisher to care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4742" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T21:35:25.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5062" CreationDate="2013-02-14T22:49:49.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usual disclaimer: I am not a lawyer nor a tax accountant. But here's my understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you must set up a business. You must report this income to the Federal government on Schedule C, which by definition makes you a business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're thinking, &quot;Do I have to set up a CORPORATION?&quot;, then no. You can be a simple sole proprietorship. This usually does not involve a lot of paperwork. You must check your state and local law to see what you have to do. I used to have a small side business in Ohio. There I was basically required to file a state form registering my business name and address and pay a small fee, like $50 or something like that. Now I live in Michigan and I had to fill out a form with the city and give them some modest amount of money, I forget how much. I also had to register with the state through a website. Big long form to fill out, but I don't think I had to pay anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you will be selling books directly to customers, you must register to collect sales tax. If you do all your selling through Amazon or other distributors, it's their job to collect the sales tax. In America, only the final customer pays sales tax, not anyone else in the supply chain. (Unlike VATs in Europe.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I presume you are not going to open an office but will work from your home. Check on local regulations about home-based businesses. Many towns have regulations intended to prevent someone from opening a factory in the middle of a residential neighborhood that has trucks arriving day and night and that's churning out pollution, or to open a night-club that results in rowdy drunks wandering the streets. It's highly unlikely that a writing business is going to disrupt the neighborhood, but you might get caught on some technicality not intended for people like you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @StevenDrennon notes, be prepared to pay taxes. I think he's a little sloppy on his terminology: &quot;Self-Employment Tax&quot; means Social Security Tax paid by self-employed people. With a regular job, you pay half the tax and the company pays half the tax. (Which is all a silly fiction: as far as the employer is concerned, their half of the tax is part of what it costs them to hire you, and has to be turned over to the government just like your half of the tax. A more accurate statement would be that the amount of tax reported on your pay stub is only half of what you actually pay. But that's another story.) When you have self-employment income, you have to pay both halves, or about 15%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you must pay regular income tax on whatever you earn. How much this is depends on what tax bracket you're in. It could be anywhere from zero to 39-point-something percent as of 2013. Plus you may have state and local taxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But remember to keep track of your expenses, as these are deductible. If you create a web site to market your book, your web hosting fees are deductible. If you mail copies of the book to reviewers, the cost of these books to you and the postage to mail them is deductible. If you buy software to format the book or produce artwork for the cover, that's deductible. Etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If writing will be a significant percentage of your income, then you need to make quarterly estimated tax payments or you'll get slapped with penalties. If you have a regular job and writing is just a small sideline, then you don't really need to worry about this. Depending on how big a sideline, it may mean you owe a little bit come April 15. If your writing is small enough compared to your regular income, it may just be a dent in your refund. Yes, I know, we're all hoping to write a best seller and get rich, but I suspect that most of us here measure our writing income in a few hundred to maybe a few thousand dollars a year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T22:49:49.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7281" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-14T23:16:58.383" Score="0" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm developing a writing app and I'm interested to know what features would be most appreciated for such a thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am most interested in writing versus editing, tooling versus immersion, organizing, sharing, exporting, cloud backup, but these are &lt;strong&gt;my&lt;/strong&gt; points of interest. If I'm over/underestimating something, please tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One feature per answer would be great, as it would allow sorting by number of upvotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4744" LastEditorUserId="633" LastEditDate="2013-02-16T14:33:21.720" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T14:33:21.720" Title="What makes good writing software?" Tags="|software|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-02-16T15:00:15.407" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7281" CreationDate="2013-02-15T00:28:23.283" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As silly as this may sound: the ability to turn every single function OFF if desired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bells and whistles are great. Some people love them. I hate a lot of them, although not always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I want my word processor to catch my CApitalization typos and repeated words. Sometimes I don't. I don't want it looking over my shoulder so it can complain if I use passive voice. I don't want it to automatically superscript &quot;th&quot; in 20th. Sometimes I don't want it to turn every bulleted sentence into an indented list, but sometimes that's exactly what I want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I want the ability to turn all those tools on and off, easily. Whatever whizbang features you end up adding to your app, I want a toggle for them so I can choose to use them or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T00:28:23.283" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7283" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-15T01:04:33.457" Score="6" ViewCount="1761" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of employing the &lt;strong&gt;historical present tense&lt;/strong&gt; in a first-person narrative (to achieve a greater level of immediacy). The problem is that I am telling the story in a non-linear manner, i.e. there is a flashback, which I would like to write in present tense, as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;San Francisco is just coming to life. I can see all of downtown from my hotel room. Ten stories below, the traffic is backed up on Powell Street. ... etc. ... etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two weeks earlier, I am sitting in a bar in New Orleans. The bartender asks me etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds odd. Is there a graceful way of handling the transition into the flashback, while maintaining the present tense voice? Or should I stick with past tense, or choose a linear story structure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-10-26T23:03:48.500" Title="Proper use of the &quot;historical present tense&quot;" Tags="|tenses|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7283" CreationDate="2013-02-15T02:04:17.897" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;San Francisco is just coming to life. I can see all of downtown from my hotel room. Ten stories below, the traffic is backed up on Powell Street. ... etc. ... etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Two weeks earlier&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  I am sitting in a bar in New Orleans. The bartender asks me etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The italics on their own line become a timestamp rather than part of the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T02:04:17.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7238" CreationDate="2013-02-15T06:20:52.097" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is, yes, although there's no rule about it, studio readers do seem to start on page one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers looking for scripts for their employers to film look for a lot of things: That there's a basic concept at work in the script, that the three-act structure is being followed... there's &lt;a href=&quot;http://myscriptworld.wordpress.com/2007/01/25/studio-readers-checklist/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a list&lt;/a&gt; to be ticked off, and every studio will require their readers look for certain things. But these guys read a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of scripts and only have so much time in the day. It's generally assumed that they may not even finish reading a script, skimming it or even abandoning ones that are not promising. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://gideonsway.wordpress.com/2010/06/19/so-you-want-to-be-a-script-reader/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;readers not part of a studio&lt;/a&gt; may read for broad strokes or even just skim the dialog, studio readers seem to just &lt;a href=&quot;http://nofilmschool.com/2012/05/hollywood-script-readers-screenplay/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;start at the beginning&lt;/a&gt;. Saying that you can tell if a script is bad &lt;a href=&quot;http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/2012/05/gits-the-twitter-conversations-script-readers-part-2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;by the tenth page&lt;/a&gt; (and sometimes earlier) seems to be not unusual at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be some that dip into the middle first; I do this when evaluating manuscripts I may edit, knowing that writers open with a bang and the beginning may be atypical, but if they do, I suspect this isn't the norm. Movies are, by their nature, generally front-loaded, particularly modern ones. So it's never going to hurt to grab the reader up-front, and it's probably expected that you try. Just make sure you follow this through in the rest of your script. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-02-15T06:47:25.047" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T06:47:25.047" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7283" CreationDate="2013-02-15T07:59:09.377" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're making the time shift too casual, too non-committing. That's a major jump granting a new section or at the very least a new paragraph. You can't just go by with a single clause of a longer sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lauren is quite right when making it stand out with italics, but if you want to avoid formatting it that way or think it disrupts the flow, you can fit it within your format by making the shift a clear, easily visible paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;San Francisco is just coming to life. I can see all of downtown from my hotel room. Ten stories below, the traffic is backed up on Powell Street. ... etc. ... etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cue to a bar in New Orleans, two weeks ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sitting in the bar. The bartender asks me etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to achieve that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My mind wanders to the events from...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But let us leave ... and go backin time to...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That was two weeks ago. The events replay vividly in my memory.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So, how did we arrive at that? We must skip two weeks back, to...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now there's still a matter of &lt;em&gt;recovering smoothly&lt;/em&gt; from such a reminiscence and going back to the present day, but that's a subject for a different question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T07:59:09.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5227" CreationDate="2013-02-15T08:39:02.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Opinionated people with opinions they want heard are dime a dozen, and if you want essays on a range of topics, search no further, millions of blogs are there free for you to pick for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opinionated people with opinions worth listening to are an entirely different matter, they are rare and few in between. Finding them and recognizing them is a difficult work, not a work most book editors are willing to undertake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to do first is make sure your name is known as the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe instead of going for a book, you might want to start as a columnist for a magazine/newspaper? That way the editor may cherry-pick what they like most. They don't risk much, and you're earning some, but most importantly you have something to show the publisher: &quot;renowned columnist for a popular newspaper&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T08:39:02.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7238" CreationDate="2013-02-15T11:35:13.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no experience with screenwriting specifically, but I see no reason why this would be different from the considerations in the fiction market (where &quot;sending chapters&quot; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and-quandaries/which-sample-chapters-should-you-send-to-agents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; the first three chapters&lt;/a&gt;: the reader will start from the beginning, precisely like a viewer would. Why would he do otherwise? That's what makes sense; that's what gives him the best understanding and experience of the work as a whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But beginnings are naturally slow and less-exciting? True. Also: tough. Quite simply, &lt;strong&gt;there's no good excuse for having a dull beginning.&lt;/strong&gt; As a screenwriter, it's your job to bring the &lt;em&gt;entire&lt;/em&gt; script up to par - before submission. That means you need to overcome the &quot;how do I draw viewers into the movie&quot; problem, just like later on you'll need to overcome the typical problems of a screenplay's middle and end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't think of it as looking for a &quot;sample of the writing,&quot; because that's not really what it is. It's &quot;I'm going to experience this screenplay precisely as a viewer would, but if at any point I'm persuaded that it's not good enough, then I can stop.&quot; In a vast majority of cases, that point comes pretty early. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, readers know movies and their genres. You don't need to start out with an erupting volcano because the opening of your domestic dramady isn't exciting enough. Lots of movies open with endearing characters, or great settings, or fun dialogue, or whatever. If you know why &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; would be riveted to this movie from the start, why your expected audience would leap right into this movie as soon as it begins, then you're absolutely fine. But if &lt;em&gt;everybody&lt;/em&gt; would be bored by the first 15 minutes before &quot;things get interesting,&quot; then that's a real problem - and the reader's quite right to reject your script as unready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T11:35:13.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7291" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-15T17:21:21.180" Score="5" ViewCount="1023" Body="&lt;p&gt;My apologies if this is off topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;American and British writing have different punctuation styles. Is there any software that can change American style punctuation to British? I am referring to punctuation, not spelling. A simple example would be changing the American styled&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hello,&quot; he said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to what (I think is) the British styled&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Hello', he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not entirely certain about the particulars which is why I need this tool in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4750" OwnerDisplayName="terdon" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T20:20:56.377" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T20:20:56.377" Title="Software to change American punctuation to British" Tags="|software|tools|punctuation|translation|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7292" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7294" CreationDate="2013-02-15T21:57:05.437" Score="2" ViewCount="763" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if I am being too overly critical of what I write or if I am actually falling into that &quot;He/She&quot; echo. By that I mean, using &quot;he&quot; or &quot;she&quot; over and over during the action, or combat in this case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Loki half ran, half skid across the slick ice, trying to catch up. More of the giants were closing in around her, obviously angered by the sight of their fallen friend. He slid by one and worked his fingers into the strange mesh they all wore. He scaled the beast as if it were a tree, then he plunged his blades into what he hoped was its neck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It howled in pain and tried to swat him away, Loki was relentless, stabbing repeatedly. Thick red blood soaked through the mesh, and dripped down the beasts back. Its breathing began to slow, and its thrashing became sluggish. With a shallow groan the giant fell to its knees; Loki jumped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He landed on its closest neighbor’s heavy arm, and dug his blades in deep to keep from slipping off. The creature raised its other and attempted to swat him away like a common insect. Loki grabbed a hold of long vine attached to its back, and swung. He slashed his way cross the small of its back. A large hole opened in both its mesh and its flesh. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The giant hit the ground hard, sending a spray of ice in all directions. Loki glanced around trying to spot Takira in the fray. The wind had picked up during the fight, blowing steady streams of snow off the ice above. Snowflakes steadily adhered themselves the lenses of his hood. &lt;em&gt;Where is she?&lt;/em&gt; He though, as panic had taken hold. Desperately he wiped at his lenses, &lt;em&gt;There!&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He had spotted her not far ahead; a giant pulled her leg. She slid unresistingly over the ice. The wind piled snow along her limp arms and side as the giant drug her closer to a large cave in the ice wall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I hope this works…&lt;/em&gt; He thought as he cut a long strip of mesh away from the dead giant at his feet. He ran over the creature, and lept, desperately he tried to keep his balance in the wind and slick ice.  Sliding forward he grabbed the rifle Thor, “Thor, do what ever you did to kill those apes!” He wished there was another way; however, he was willing to sacrifice his pride in order to rescue Takira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that matter am I using names too often? It was fine as I was writing it and then I printed it off to do a general read thing and it's like every single &quot;he&quot; pops out at me now. So I figured it couldn't hurt to ask and see if it's just me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4732" LastEditorUserId="4752" LastEditDate="2013-02-16T03:46:38.887" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T19:07:05.423" Title="Am i using &quot;he/she&quot; too often during action scenes?" Tags="|style|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7281" CreationDate="2013-02-16T01:39:13.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a good long look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;. Note that the link has a &lt;em&gt;Scrivener for Dummies&lt;/em&gt; title as the first thing you see. That is either insulting or an admission of failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is software makes it easy to write and organize a book. But there are certain things about it that are maddening, because they look trivial and simple but are actually unintuitive to the point of utter opacity (see &lt;em&gt;Scrivener for Dummies&lt;/em&gt; reference above). It's fine to be able to organize a book into subsections, but exporting those in a way that makes visual sense in the compiled novel is a task I had to Google to figure out—and even then I had to experiment with checking and unchecking level-inclusions and the like, over and over. Then when I switched from the Mac to the PC and tried to use the new computer (which runs the Windows port of the originally Mac-only software an order of magnitude faster than my Mac), it lost all that section information. How? Why? Help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can see how easy they make the writing and how awkward they make everything else, and can put that difference into a UI that fixes the problems, you will have a killer product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T01:39:13.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7292" CreationDate="2013-02-16T02:09:41.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sheer number of pronouns did not bother me as I read. My only pronoun problem was with the first paragraph, where your pronouns (she, he, and they) are plenteous enough and far enough away from their nouns to become a bit confusing. I would advise replacing the first paragraph &quot;they&quot; with a noun of some kind, preferably a word that lets you avoid using &quot;giants&quot; again. Actually, I would do the same for &quot;one,&quot; as well.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T02:09:41.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7291" CreationDate="2013-02-16T09:44:57.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea that there are &lt;em&gt;two styles&lt;/em&gt; is erroneous, as has been mentioned above. The 'rules' surrounding punctuation are becoming more relaxed year by year and, especially with the growth and use of the Internet, 'US' and 'UK' styles are becoming ever less easy to distinguish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And since 'quotes are supposed to be exactly like the original', this would include importing a style possibly at variance with that used in the main body of the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That having been said, you might find this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/quotation_%28speech%29_marks_punctuation_in_or_out.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;treatment of punctuation surrounding quotations&lt;/a&gt; interesting - even quite useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though choosing to use double or single inverted commas in the first instance is more a matter of personal (maybe your editor's) choice, I tend to use double for direct speech, but single for other quotes, to signal novel/unusual words/usages, or perhaps the risky choice of a certain word ('scare quotes'). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4754" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-02-16T16:02:49.910" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T16:02:49.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7283" CreationDate="2013-02-16T14:25:40.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can accomplish what you want with a single punctuation change, comma to colon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two weeks earlier: I am sitting in a bar in New Orleans . . . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T14:25:40.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7249" CreationDate="2013-02-16T16:55:25.413" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a coder and blogger I am using Git for version control. Actually my whole blog is run on it and I can recommend it a lot. As you are on Mac and do handle text files mostly, I'd recommend using the great github mac UI ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://mac.github.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://mac.github.com&lt;/a&gt; ) it makes it really easy to use and you don't even need any github account - using this as a free backup and sharing tool is highly recommend as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4756" LastEditorUserId="19292" LastEditDate="2020-01-17T14:32:09.260" LastActivityDate="2020-01-17T14:32:09.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7299" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7301" CreationDate="2013-02-16T20:36:47.463" Score="22" ViewCount="3342" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a writer, not a programmer. I'm just now for the first time learning about version control and how it works, and I am wondering how version control could streamline my workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7249/whats-the-best-version-control-system-for-a-book-writer&quot;&gt;previous question&lt;/a&gt;, I asked what version control system to use, and settled on Git. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For years, I've used my own cobbled-together version of version control. My folders are littered with files like resume-2012-06-01.doc, resume-2012-06-15.doc, letter.txt, letter-old.txt, letter-v2.txt, story-notes.txt, story-notes-with-character-sketches.txt story_draft1.txt, story_draft2.txt, story_draft2-shorter.txt, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I'm using version control, I guess I don't need to manually create all these renamed versions of a file. What should I do instead? Now that I'm using version control, how should I name my drafts and rewrites? How should I keep track of drafts and revisions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What philosophy and practices should a writer use for commenting when doing a Git commit of rewrites and revisions to keep track of everything and find things easily later? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4718" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-14T11:47:03.503" LastActivityDate="2019-08-23T03:06:29.163" Title="How should a writer use version control to track drafts, rewrites, and revisions?" Tags="|editing|software|organization|revision|version-control|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7299" CreationDate="2013-02-17T02:22:31.140" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two concepts in git that can help: &lt;em&gt;branches&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;tags&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tags.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Think of a &lt;em&gt;tag&lt;/em&gt; as a name for a specific revision.  Any time you want to remember a version, create a tag for it.  For example, when you finish a draft, you can tag it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;git tag first_draft&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When to use tags.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Tags are good for marking any version that you might want to remember later.&#xA;I use them to mark the end of each draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Branches.&lt;/strong&gt; Think of a &lt;em&gt;branch&lt;/em&gt; as a series of changes.  The default branch is called &lt;code&gt;master&lt;/code&gt;.  That's a good branch to use for your initial research and first draft.  Unless you create a new branch, every change you make updates the &lt;code&gt;master&lt;/code&gt; branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When to use branches.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Whenever you want to start on a new series of edits, you have a choice.  You can either continue on the the current branch, or create a new branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some possible uses for branches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Drafts.&lt;/em&gt;  You might start each draft by creating a branch for it.  (I tend not to do this, but it may suit your needs.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Experiments.&lt;/em&gt;  Suppose you want to experiment with rewriting a few scenes to change from first person to third, or to change the POV character.  You can create a branch and do your experiments there.  Later, if you like the new POV, you can continue writing on your experimental branch.  If you don't like the POV changes after all, you can switch back to whatever branch you were on before.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Submissions.&lt;/em&gt;  Before I make a submission, I'll often create a new branch, add my cover letter, make any minor manuscript changes specific to that recipient (e.g. quirks of mss formats), and add a text file with notes about the submission.  When I receive a reply, I can check out the branch and update my notes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to use branches more for experiments and submissions than for drafts.  When I finish a draft, I'll tag it, then continue with the second draft on the &lt;code&gt;master&lt;/code&gt; branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Creating branches.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;To create a new branch, use the &lt;code&gt;git branch&lt;/code&gt; command like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;git branch charles_pov&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you create a new branch, the new branch starts with the same content as the branch you were on.  If you're on the &lt;code&gt;master&lt;/code&gt; branch and  you create a &lt;code&gt;charles_pov&lt;/code&gt; branch, the &lt;code&gt;charles_pov&lt;/code&gt; branch starts with the current content of the &lt;code&gt;master&lt;/code&gt; branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that creating a new branch doesn't switch to the new branch.  To switch to a branch, see below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Switching branches.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can change branches at any time by &quot;checking out&quot; a branch.  To switch to your new &lt;code&gt;charles_pov&lt;/code&gt; branch:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;git checkout charles_pov&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you commit changes, git updates whatever branch you are on, and leaves the other branches unchanged.  So if you switch to the &lt;code&gt;charles_pov&lt;/code&gt; branch, your changes will update the &lt;code&gt;charles_pov&lt;/code&gt; branch, and the &lt;code&gt;master&lt;/code&gt; branch will remain unchanged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Creating a branch and switching to it in one command.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You can create a new branch and switch to it in a single command, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;git checkout -b charles_pov&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Viewing tags and branches.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You can see a list of all tags and branches with these commands:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;git tag&#xA;git branch&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Checking out a tag (AND A WARNING).&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Remember that a tag is a name for a specific version.&#xA;If you've tagged each draft, you can check out an old draft like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;git checkout twelfth_draft&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yep, you check out a tag the same way you check out a branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BUT NOTE&lt;/strong&gt; that when you check out a tag, you are no longer on any branch.&#xA;Any changes you make end up in a floaty nebulous place that I don't know how to explain succinctly.&#xA;Git does warn you about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The current branch.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;To see what branch you are currently on, use this command:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;git branch&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Git displays all of the branches, and marks the current branch (the one that will be updated when you make changes) with an asterisk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2013-02-17T22:56:58.800" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T22:56:58.800" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7304" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-18T13:02:37.650" Score="6" ViewCount="3578" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I use Git, Subversion or any other version control system for managing my writing. So my texts are preserved together with change history and if I accidentally delete something I can use history to restore it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean I no longer need to backup my work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2908" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T18:35:08.457" Title="Does using version control system make backups unnecessary?" Tags="|tools|version-control|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-05-02T16:05:05.607" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7304" CreationDate="2013-02-18T13:02:37.650" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You still need backups. Version control and backups are orthogonal concepts and should be used together, one is not a replacement for another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, version control will persist the change history in the repository, but the repository itself is not protected just as any computer file is not protected. If the drive where the repository is stored dies the repository contents gets inaccessible. If the filetree comprising the repository is corrupted due to a software bug, malicious software, or user error the data stored there is corrupted or lost. If you use a third-party service for hosting your repository that service may undergo some problems that will lead to your repository data being lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To prevent data loss in such scenarios you need backup of your repository. Don't confuse the two concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2908" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T13:02:37.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7304" CreationDate="2013-02-18T14:19:14.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While another answer is correct in saying that version control and backing up are orthogonal concepts, your local repository can have a remote repository synched with it to effectively provide a backup of your local history in the cloud. If you don't already have a remote repository, you can set one up on &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://github.com&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://bitbucket.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bitbucket.org&lt;/a&gt;. In this regard it can also be a tool to help you back up in addition to providing version control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1773" LastEditorUserId="1773" LastEditDate="2013-02-18T14:24:39.407" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T14:24:39.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7168" CreationDate="2013-02-18T20:20:35.707" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another issue with diary-formatted fiction is that it may limit you to certain time periods and classes of society. While Victorian ladies often wrote copious diary entries and even passed the books around among their friends and family for entertainment (which would give such a diary a reason for detail and description), it's harder to imagine a modern working woman with so much spare time, and utterly unbelievable for characters from eras and locations that lacked time, literacy, or writing materials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also compels you to choose as your protagonist the sort of highly articulate, introspective person who would keep a diary. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative to strictly-diary novels is to create a book from a mix of documents (newspaper clippings, letters, court reports, etc.) as Dorothy Sayers did in &lt;em&gt;The Documents in the Case&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T20:20:35.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2373" CreationDate="2013-02-19T02:23:37.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to reading voraciously as has already been suggested (especially, but not only, in the genre/field you want to write) you might want to check out &lt;em&gt;Stein on Writing&lt;/em&gt; by Sol Stein. It's the best book I've seen that discusses the writing craft, and contains sections on both fiction and non-fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T02:23:37.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7138" CreationDate="2013-02-19T02:42:24.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joining other local writers, as Amanda Witt said, is great. There are also online databases and sites that will help you locate contests and markets, and even provide statistics on those contests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://duotrope.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://duotrope.com&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;includes info on poetry and essay markets, although it has recently made much of the info available only to subscribers (only $5 a month). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T02:42:24.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7304" CreationDate="2013-02-19T16:35:13.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A version control repository IS a backup. But you really should back up the respository. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, back ups should be to a different device than the main file: a hard drive on another computer, CD, thumb drive, whatever. A backup on the same disk drive is worth something, but the most likely reason to need a backup is because the hard drive failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For real safety, keep the backup in a separate location from the original. Like I used to work for a small company, and I took backups home with me, so if the building burned down, we still had our backups. For my home stuff, I sometimes take a backup to work and stuff it in a drawer in my desk. 'Can't imagine the company minds me using up a few square inches of desk space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'm bad in that I only make my backups once every few months. Backup schedule should depend on how frequently your data changes and how important it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T16:35:13.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7312" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7313" CreationDate="2013-02-19T17:18:48.980" Score="4" ViewCount="613" Body="&lt;p&gt;I plan to use a dream or flashback as a way to show the reader the story has more going on behind the scenes. As well to sprinkle in a little of my main characters back-story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't written it out yet so I can’t post a piece of it for people to see. However, my real question is if I should inform the reader that it is a dream or should I just open the chapter with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flashback will take place directly after the end of the third chapter, which was a large action scene. My main character ends up knocked out, but saved by her companion. My plan was to open chapter four with her dreaming. I wanted it to be kind of a surprise to the reader, explaining that the small scene was a dream at the end of the flashback. However if that will confuse or anger readers I don't want to do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way the flashback will happen, I just wonder if I should &quot;inform&quot; the reader that it's a dream to start with or just jump into it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4732" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-02-19T17:53:23.090" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T17:53:23.090" Title="Flashback or dream as a means of hinting at more going on than meets the eye" Tags="|fiction|plot|character-development|flashback|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7312" CreationDate="2013-02-19T17:52:59.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have two things going on: a flashback from the main narrative, and a dream. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the dream is taking place in the past, that may be a literal flashing-back, but it's not actually a flashback. A flashback is reliable (in the sense of &quot;reliable narrator&quot;), realistic, and a memory of someone. It's a detour from the forward narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A dream, on the other hand, can take place at any spot in the timeline, or several over the course of a dream. It can be reliable or unreliable, realistic or fantastic, true events or imaginary ones, memory or imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that dreams rarely have coherent narratives, unless it's a &quot;lucid dream,&quot; in which case the dreamer knows she's dreaming. Dreams are full of symbols and are often non-linear. The POV changes, the dreamer changes character (that is, she starts as watching the events and then becomes part of them, and then becomes someone else in the same dream), physics are ignored, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So first off, decide whether you are introducing your character's past as a dream or as a flashback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a dream, then it depends what you want to accomplish with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you deliberately want to mislead the reader for the shock value? Will the dream be so close to reality that the differences start subtle and slowly grow, until it's clear that something has gone horribly wrong, and then the dreamer wakes up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to mislead the reader, putting the text in italics will quickly signal that the text is outside the main narrative. You don't need to do anything else to introduce the idea that &quot;this is a dream.&quot; The italics will alert readers that something's going on, and they'll figure out pretty quickly that it's a dream rather than reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making the reader angry or confused is a product of the actual story &amp;mdash; that is, did the technique work, or did it just piss me off? &amp;mdash; so we can't comment on that until we see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T17:52:59.627" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7304" CreationDate="2013-02-19T19:43:57.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, you still need backups.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the form that backup can take can vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Version Control might include it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using &lt;code&gt;git&lt;/code&gt;, then every time you &quot;push&quot; to an off-site repository, you have created a backup of your project in its entirety - including a catalog of your changes. This may be sufficient for your needs. In this case, you have two copies of your text: locally, every version, and in the off-site repository (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitbucket.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BitBucket&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.github.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;), every version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using &lt;code&gt;Subversion&lt;/code&gt;, then only the central repository includes a catalog of your changes. If you are only interested in backing up the most recent version of your text, then every time you commit to Subversion, you are creating a backup. In this case, you have two copies of your text: locally, the current version, and in the Subversion repository, every version.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Automatic Online Backups&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a few choices in this area, but the only one that I can recommend is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dropbox.com/help/122/en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt;. With Dropbox, your files are stored locally, backed up to a central location, and synchronized with your other computers where you have Dropbox installed. This is good, because it means that if your computer is stolen or your hardware breaks, you can seamlessly pick up from your last place on an existing (or new) machine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The disadvantage of using Dropbox is that there is &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt; for for someone to gain access to your account, delete all of your files, and for all of the copies of your work to be deleted upon the next synchronization. If you're worried about that possibility, I advise using at least one other backup method for important documents that are tracked by Dropbox.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Manual Online Backups&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of options in this area. The advantage that they have over option 2 is that you are not regularly synchronizing from the server to your machine. However, they hold the disadvantage of being manual processes. These are similar to option 1, but if you use Subversion then you may wish to manually back up the central repository on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Local Backups&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This boils down to backing up onto local media - most likely optical media (CDs, DVDs) or a different hard drive (most likely an external hard drive or flash drive). These have the advantage of not requiring a network connection to backup or restore. There are two problems with this method:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The backup is local. In the event of a fire or other disaster, your work will be lost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The backup media can fail. This is particularly of concern with external hard drives and flash drives, as most likely all of your backups will be stored on one device. In the event that your external drive and your local hard drive both lose data at the same time, you're completely out of luck (unless you have a remote backup).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I recommend using the following solution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Store your files in a Dropbox synched folder.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Version control your files with git.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Push your local repository after each work session (or more often) to a BitBucket hosted repository.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monthly or more often, back up your files locally, preferably on an external hard drive or flash drive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4611" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T19:43:57.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7316" CreationDate="2013-02-20T00:55:03.620" Score="2" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering using quotations (a sentence to a paragraph) from various pieces of literature  at the beginning of each chapter of my novel. The quotations connect thematically to the events of the chapter. However, I'm concerned that this might make a publisher less likely to take my work-- either because it's atypical or because there might be copyright issues. Is a publisher likely to consider dealing with the need to get permission for quotes? If I only use works in the public domain, are there still potential issues? Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T15:04:38.233" Title="Does inclusion of significant quotations from literature make a novel harder to publish?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7315" CreationDate="2013-02-20T02:13:48.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check your contract (if you already have one). In some cases, responsibility for securing permissions rests with the author. If so, the publisher will not be concerned so long as you deliver the evidence that you have all the approvals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe that the extracts from other works are essential to your novel (and it was once a fairly common practice) but your publisher is wary of extra work, you could offer to take on the role of obtaining all the relevant releases to remove that potential &quot;barrier&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T02:13:48.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7317" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-20T04:20:44.870" Score="2" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I'm writing a paper that uses well known historical sources, how would I cite them? Specifically, I'm referring to the United States Constitution and a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the general convention for these kinds of citations? (the citation style isn't as important as the general concept, but I'm using APA.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2490" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-02-20T06:32:26.347" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T11:21:54.720" Title="How do I cite well known historical works?" Tags="|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7328" CreationDate="2013-02-20T09:56:14.570" Score="0" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've dabbled with the thought of writing a childrens book. It allows my mind to go all out weird, and I believe they are ususally short enough for me to see the project through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as usual, I like reading about stuff more than actually do the stuff. Does anyone have suggestions of books they like? The &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0764537288&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'For Dummies'&lt;/a&gt; seems highly regarded by many. Has anyone read it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T21:50:31.460" Title="Good book on writing for children?" Tags="|children|book-rec|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7317" CreationDate="2013-02-20T11:21:54.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why would citing &quot;a well-known historical source&quot; be any different from citing a not-particularly-well-known historical source? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the speech: you found the speech somewhere, right? Book, website, magazine? Cite that source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the U.S. Constitution, a quick Google of &quot;rules for citing US constitution in bibliography&quot; turns up &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/06/how-to-cite-the-us-constitution-in-apa-style.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link from the APA Style Blog.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All citations of the U.S. Constitution begin with U.S. Const., followed by the article, amendment, section, and/or clause numbers as relevant. The terms article, amendment, section, and clause are always abbreviated art., amend., §, and cl., respectively. Preamble is abbreviated pmbl. (as in my opening quotation). Article and amendment numbers are given in Roman numerals (I, II, III); section and clause numbers are given in Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3). The Bluebook states that for parts of the Constitution currently in force, do not include a date. If you are referring to a part of the Constitution that has been repealed or amended, include the year that the part in question was repealed or amended in parentheses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T11:21:54.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7320" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7322" CreationDate="2013-02-20T14:28:24.660" Score="2" ViewCount="1738" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're self-publishing a book in both paperback and e-book format. The content between the versions will be identical except for some formatting corrections (mainly white-space) made for the digital version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that we need to have separate ISBN's for each version, but we are a little confused whether or not both versions need to be registered with the Copyright Office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4775" LastEditorUserId="4775" LastEditDate="2013-02-20T14:45:33.747" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T14:55:54.247" Title="Do different formats of the same book need to be registered separately?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7320" CreationDate="2013-02-20T14:44:12.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copyright applies the moment given work is solidified on a medium - the registration is not necessary at all providing that you have any reliable proof that you are the author. (you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have the copyright but the court is not omniscent, you need &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; way to show that you do.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Registering with the Copyright Office only serves as such a proof, and a very solid one. Once it exists, there is no way for the other version with such minor differences to be someone else's work and not infringe on yours. It's a clear derivative, so a single registration is enough of a proof in any copyright cases - you have the claim to the original, so all derivative works either belong to you or infringe upon your rights, whichever is the case you win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T14:44:12.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7320" CreationDate="2013-02-20T14:55:54.247" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: No. You are supposed to register only the &quot;best edition&quot; with the copyright office. They have a long list of criteria for what constitutes the best edition, but it's things like a hard cover takes precedence over a paperback. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ07b.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ07b.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T14:55:54.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7315" CreationDate="2013-02-20T15:04:38.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're just using short quotes, like a sentence or two, I think this would clearly fall into &quot;fair use&quot; and not require any permission. If you're quoting more than a paragraph, and your purpose is just to connect your work to some bigger theme, you're probably quoting too much and should cut it down. I take it that you are not trying to create an anthology of classic literature, but to write your own book and connect it to classic literature. If that's the case, then you shouldn't have any problem. I suppose if your quotes are long, a publisher might worry that you are &quot;on the edge&quot; between fair use and a copyright infringement. At that point you could either cut down the length of the quote or get permission. Getting permission might cost money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T15:04:38.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7324" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-21T01:14:54.443" Score="0" ViewCount="861" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing an essay or short paper for school, should I state my intentions and outline the essay's structure in the introduction? Or should I let the essay speak for itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4777" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T22:26:25.670" Title="Should I state my intentions/outline my structure at the beginning of an academic essay?" Tags="|structure|academic-writing|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7325" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7329" CreationDate="2013-02-21T01:23:43.183" Score="6" ViewCount="244" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not being a native speaker I'm unable to tell if my poetry sounds fine or just awkward - I know I'm abusing grammar to fit rhymes and rhythm, but the question is: am I abusing it too much? Does that sound as poetic English to a native ear, or is it mangled beyond repair?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Animal skull took name of dread,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Obedient to the God of War.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In darkness endless, empty, dead,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Its stone face scars uncounted tore.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In thirty hours its path is led&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  like human's year, eternal chore.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the suggested corrections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The skull of beast took name of dread,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  fulfilling will of God of War.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In endless darkness, empty, dead,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Its stone face scars uncounted bore.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In thirty hours its path is led&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  like human's year, eternal chore.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-02-21T07:27:58.700" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T07:27:58.700" Title="Does this riddle abuse language to make it fit into verse?" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7325" CreationDate="2013-02-21T02:08:16.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Line three has a nice ring to it. The line that tripped me up is four, because the verbs temporarily confused me. &quot;Scars&quot; could be either a verb or noun, so my brain was kind of expecting one thing and got another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The line is also ambiguous (maybe your intention?). I'm not 100% sure whether you mean that  the stone face has scarred some other, unnamed thing, or that the stone face itself is &quot;torn?&quot; On first reading, I thought the latter, but now I see that the former makes more sense. Do you want the reader to puzzle over this, or should the gist of the line be clear on first reading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T02:08:16.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7327" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7331" CreationDate="2013-02-21T04:12:33.897" Score="1" ViewCount="3898" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a poem entirely without commas, periods, colons, dashes, emdashes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, near the end of the poem I name a city and I want to capitalise it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one hand, I think it would be jarring to read the name of a city without capitalisation. On the other, though, it might jar to see an appropriately capitalised proper name in a poem entirely without punctuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question, then, is: if one eschews punctuation altogether, then should one also eschew capitalisation, in order to be consistent? Or is capitalisation a separate beast from punctuation marks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As it happens, my poem is a response to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/poems-week-2011%E2%80%932012/%E2%80%9Csomeone%E2%80%9D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this poem&lt;/a&gt;, also written without any punctuation. In this poem, there is a street mentioned that is not capitalised. This does not jar (to my reading, at least), but the lack of capitalisation does actually let the street name fade from view somewhat, which I think is a part of the author's intent. In my case, I don't wish the city to fade from view (nor do I want it to shout).)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3686" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T05:09:48.173" Title="Punctuation and capitalisation in poetry" Tags="|poetry|punctuation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-03-17T06:39:55.853" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7318" CreationDate="2013-02-21T04:21:57.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't give you the advice you want, but I will give your advice you need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The books you need to read are models, not how-to guides. Count me among those who, unlike the many you mention, do not highly regard any book that markets itself 'for dummies'. More specifically, the industry of teaching people how to write &lt;em&gt;creative&lt;/em&gt; works is a parasitic and intrinsically dishonest one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which books you choose as models (not for content but for technique) is important, but you must rely on the quality of your own taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, I would be careful of assuming that short works make for easy writing. Writing a children's book is not easy: unlike most other forms of writing, you cannot write for a reader just like yourself. Remarkable sympathetic projection is required to know what will appeal to a young reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T04:21:57.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7325" CreationDate="2013-02-21T04:46:28.623" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Abuse grammar all you wish! Leave it dead in a ditch if you must to get the rhythm right. Right now the nice imagery is being let down with by the dragging artificiality of the metre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To see why, just separate all the syllables, and annotate them to show the stresses. There is a formal way to show this, but for the purposes of clarity, I'll just bold-face the stressed ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An&lt;/strong&gt;-im-al &lt;strong&gt;skull&lt;/strong&gt; took &lt;strong&gt;name&lt;/strong&gt; of &lt;strong&gt;dread&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;O-&lt;strong&gt;bed&lt;/strong&gt;-ient to the &lt;strong&gt;God&lt;/strong&gt; of &lt;strong&gt;War&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;dark&lt;/strong&gt;-ness &lt;strong&gt;end&lt;/strong&gt;-less, &lt;strong&gt;emp&lt;/strong&gt;-ty, &lt;strong&gt;dead&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its &lt;strong&gt;stone&lt;/strong&gt; face &lt;strong&gt;scars&lt;/strong&gt; un-&lt;strong&gt;count&lt;/strong&gt;-ed &lt;strong&gt;tore&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;thir&lt;/strong&gt;-ty &lt;strong&gt;hours&lt;/strong&gt; its &lt;strong&gt;path&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;led&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;like &lt;strong&gt;hu&lt;/strong&gt;-man's &lt;strong&gt;year&lt;/strong&gt;, e-&lt;strong&gt;ter&lt;/strong&gt;-nal &lt;strong&gt;chore&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all it's quadrameter - four stresses to the line. This is a very hard meter to pull off. It very easily sounds like doggerel, especially if the feet are mostly iambs (as they are here). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second line clangs horribly - it's as if you want 'to' to be a stressed syllable. But it isn't - not in natural English. That is the one that mostly badly needs rephrasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also look at the word order and see if you really need to have the words in which you're placing them. For instance, rather than 'in darkness endless, empty, dead' you could say 'in endless darkness - empty, dead - ' which feels more natural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do like it though! I only critique if it's worth it. I'm curious to know what the answer is - one of the planets, I imagine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastEditorUserId="352" LastEditDate="2013-02-21T05:54:58.830" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T05:54:58.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7327" CreationDate="2013-02-21T09:11:03.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In modern poetry, anything goes. The only rule I would adhere to is the effect of the end result: whatever suits your intended purpose best is the right choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if you want the city to be instantly recognizable as a proper name, then by all means do capitalize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4779" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T09:11:03.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7327" CreationDate="2013-02-21T11:24:26.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a poem, you are allowed to throw pretty much all the rules out the window. You can eschew just punctuation, just capitalization, both, split the difference per stanza or per line, whatever works to convey your meaning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's significant to you as the poet that the city name should be capitalized, then capitalize it. If you've removed the capitals everywhere because it means something (the setting of the poem is supposed to be a monotone), and a capital letter signifies something else (a bright loud spark), then consider what capitalizing the city name will signify (this city is a bright loud spark!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T11:24:26.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7324" CreationDate="2013-02-21T17:38:23.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think anyone can give you a simple answer to that question. There are many ways to structure an essay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people like to begin by saying &quot;here's where I'm going&quot;. This can be helpful if the essay is long and complex, or if the subject is not obvious from the beginning. Like, if you're writing an essay about your views on how to reduce unemployment, and you start out talking about the Franco-Prussian War because you're building up to some analogy with how problems during that war were solved, it might be a good idea to give the reader a clue up front about where you're going with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But other times it is better to just launch into your discussion. For example, to start out by saying, &quot;First I will discuss the problem and then I will give my proposed solution&quot; is likely to be superfluous. The reader will easily see that anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many writers like to begin an essay with a hopefully-interesting anecdote. For example, if the writer is discussing some large-scale national problem -- economics or politics or foreign relations or whatever -- sometimes he will start with a little story about how one particular person was affected by this problem, to make the whole subject less abstract and maybe get the reader's interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is to begin with a literary allusion or famous quote. Like find a quote from Shakespeare that ties into your point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc. There are many, many ways to get started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T17:38:23.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7334" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7338" CreationDate="2013-02-21T18:32:58.750" Score="1" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my Masters Thesis, I am trying to find an appropriate title. The field of the research is in Forestry and Geographic Information Science (GIS).&#xA;Currently my title is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Determining harvest costs for private forest landowners in the Pacific Northwest (USA)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if I should also include the method I used and change it to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A spatial model to determine harvest costs for private forest landowners in the Pacific Northwest (USA)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4783" LastEditorUserId="4783" LastEditDate="2013-02-21T21:20:47.200" LastActivityDate="2018-04-24T18:00:14.010" Title="Do I include the method of my research in the title?" Tags="|academic-writing|research|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7334" CreationDate="2013-02-21T21:54:26.600" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually you include what is important and innovative about your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a method more than half of your domain uses, and you use it too, there is no point writing about that in the title. If there are three competing methods, you may choose to include it in the title or not. If you use a method maybe 5% of your coleagues use, say, because it requires three times the effort for 20% accuracy gain, by all means, include it. If your research is testing a new method on known set of data, it's the method that is a must in the title, not what is being checked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, the title says what's special about your research. If the method is, it belongs. If it's generic, it does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T21:54:26.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7324" CreationDate="2013-02-21T22:26:25.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently wrote an essay on ebooks, and jumped straight in, in my first line, by describing the device we use to read them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T22:26:25.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7334" CreationDate="2013-02-21T22:28:16.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second title starting with 'spatial model' gives people an idea of what you've focussed on during the research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T22:28:16.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7334" CreationDate="2013-02-21T23:19:36.803" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A title tells the reader not only the general subject area, but also focus of your paper, the aspect of the subject that you will primarily emphasize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of the following titles (your two plus one I added for contrast) suggests the same general subject area:  Harvest costs for private forest landowners in the Pacific Northwest USA.  But each suggests a different emphasis in your paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Determining harvest costs for private forest landowners in the Pacific Northwest (USA)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;A spatial model to determine harvest costs for private forest landowners in the Pacific Northwest (USA)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Harvest costs for private forest landowners in the Pacific Northwest (USA)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first title emphasizes the process of determining costs.  The second emphasizes the model.  The third emphasizes the costs themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... What aspect of your subject or method or conclusions do you wish to emphasize in your title?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T23:19:36.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7342" CreationDate="2013-02-22T01:30:07.223" Score="13" ViewCount="926" Body="&lt;p&gt;My biggest problem as a writer is that I always get inspired and then start writing from the middle, in particular scenes or moments which I think will be crucial.  Climaxes.  These scenes turn out really great, but then afterwards, when I try to go back and fill in the part between the opening and those scenes, it always turns out embarassingly awkward, much worse than my writing usually is.  I can never really fix it, so what I end up with is a story that seems like some great writer hired a fourteen year old to fill in the gaps in his idea notebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should clarify that it isn't so much writing the beginning that is my problem- my opening scenes are usually good- but the few pages between the opening and the first 'moment.'  I've considered trying to figure out how to just not write those parts, but then it seems like the reader doesn't know the characters well enough for my good scenes to have the right impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do better writers than I do to deal with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4772" LastEditorUserId="4772" LastEditDate="2018-04-24T19:01:21.657" LastActivityDate="2018-04-24T19:01:21.657" Title="How to write from the middle?" Tags="|fiction|technique|structure|short-story|process|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7334" CreationDate="2013-02-22T02:31:16.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the point of your paper isn't so much the costs themselves but the way you determined them.  If you invented this model (or adapted it from an existing one with significant changes) and the point of the paper is to show how well it works, while also presenting your results, then the second title is better.  On the other hand, if your paper is more about how you applied or adapted an existing model to the specific challenges in that region, your first title is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4772" LastEditorUserId="4772" LastEditDate="2018-04-24T18:00:14.010" LastActivityDate="2018-04-24T18:00:14.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7339" CreationDate="2013-02-22T04:20:29.590" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the same problem as well. I've got key scenes scattered here and there (though mine tend to be near the end) that inspire me, and no idea how to get there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sad to say, the only solution I've found is to write, throw it all away, and rewrite. Rinse and repeat many, many times. Even if it starts off as embarrassingly awkward, it's a base to work from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the scenes you've written. Can you change the setting so the action happens in a more interesting place? Can you introduce a new character, or reveal more about an existing one? What other conflicts can you add, or perhaps subplots? Can you develop an existing subplot? Or can you combine some of the existing scenes to make a single, more action-packed one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You won't get this in the first go. Heck, you probably won't even get it in the second or third. But the key is to &lt;strong&gt;keep finessing, and keep rewriting&lt;/strong&gt;. It sucks to throw out work that you've spent a lot of time on, but sometimes (okay, a lot of the time) it's the only way to improve. By your eighth or ninth iteration, you'll already have a good sense of what works and what doesn't, and those annoying in-between bits will read much better than before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T04:20:29.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7339" CreationDate="2013-02-22T07:52:35.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beginning in the middle is absolutely fine - in fact, how else could it be? We should come aboard the process 'in the middle, as onto a moving train' (I read this somewhere - it is either Gilles Deleuze or someone like him); how else can we seize hold of the story in its authentic form? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I can't imagine any way of starting to write a piece &lt;strong&gt;except&lt;/strong&gt; to jump in at the middle! &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/7342/2533&quot;&gt;Lexi's answer&lt;/a&gt; - to write, and then to rewrite - is an excellent method. Where is the shame in improving on one's first random scrawls? We cannot expect, like Shakespeare, never to revise our work (and even his habit of never 'blotting' or amending his first drafts had its detractors - as his contemporary Ben Johnson put it, 'Would that he had blotted a thousand!'). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one phrase that worries me in the question: 'particular scenes or moments which I think will be crucial'. Crucial to what? Do you already have a plot mapped out - Character A will do this, then do that, then the other thing? If so, I strongly recommend you reconsider this method. When we write, we learn; we feel our way into the world of the story. The inner logic out of which the narrative arises cannot be written out in our heads ahead of time - even if it were, what would be the point of writing the story? One could just as well tell the skeletal plot in a few words and then forget about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story will necessarily be inauthentic (at least, this is my experience) if we already know what is going to happen. We are not learning. The analytical side of one's brain has taken over &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; too early; the other side of our brain is the one we need when are writing a first draft - the one that muddles through, the bricoleur, the synesthesiac. It is this side that learns what the story is. The analytical side can come in later when the story is there already and needs to be improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore: blindfold yourself, and leap! And begin in the middle - though for all you know, the middle may turn out to be the beginning, or the end, or no part of the story at all - a MacGuffin you will later discard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T11:19:04.260" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7339" CreationDate="2013-02-22T09:15:22.210" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an alternative: force yourself to write from the beginning. Use the giddiness to reach the scenes you have fleshed out in your mind as a motor to build awesome introductions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like eating a dinner: starting with the ice cream and leaving the greens for last. Ick. Eat your greens like mother told you and get the ice cream last, savor it, remember fondly what you ate already and it will leave you with a great after-taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of significant problems I face is that as the story unveils itself, in these slow moments, new ideas happen, new motives arise, and so the climax mutates, often turning out far superior to what I intended. An insignificant throw-away thread from the introduction resurfaces halfway through, returns in a strong cameo near the end, and then provides a heart-wrenching plot twist in the climax, unplanned and plugging a plot hole you realized only a chapter away from the climax. It really works better that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eat your greens first. They are healthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T09:15:22.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7339" CreationDate="2013-02-22T11:41:29.433" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on what kind of writer you are, you might benefit from creating an outline, and trying to hang your cool scenes on that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing scenes which aren't connected to anything can be fun, and one of the reasons is that you aren't burdened by making it fit into a larger narrative. You haven't &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; established that X happened or Y character did Z thing, so you are entirely free to riff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when you're creating a larger narrative, you do have to think about how all the threads tie together. Sometimes that means your fabulously cool scene doesn't fit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel like you're jumping from Intro A to Cool Scene D and missing character notes in between, then spend some time out of the book getting to know your characters. Maybe creating a detailed backstory or interviewing your characters will help you to know them better, so writing scenes B and C don't fall flat or become a chore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other questions here which aren't duplicates but might be useful to you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2909/do-books-have-to-be-written-in-sequence&quot;&gt;Do books have to be written in sequence?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1781/how-do-i-construct-a-plot-out-of-my-many-setting-character-details/1784&quot;&gt;How do I construct a plot out of my many setting/character details?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6965/avoiding-making-all-your-characters-sound-the-same/6967&quot;&gt;avoiding making all your characters sound the same&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T11:41:29.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7339" CreationDate="2013-02-22T17:23:12.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think most writers start out at least having in mind what the conclusion or climax of the story will be, and then have to figure out how to get there. It's hard to imagine how you'd write a story if you really started at the beginning and had no idea where this was going. I recall reading an article by the well-known science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once where he said that he usually starts out with a general idea, then comes up with an ending, then a beginning, and then last he writes the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But look at it this way: You write the climax first, so you know where you're going. Now you have to figure out how to get there. To at least some extent, this should be obvious. Like, if you know you want the story to end with the detective revealing that the killer was Miss Scarlet in the library with the candlestick, then it follows that you have to start out with the discovery that there has been a murder and a character named Miss Scarlet. You'll have to create clues that Miss Scarlet was the killer, and let the detective find them. You'll also have to create red herrings that lead to someone else. Etc. That is, if you know where you started from and where you're going, that pretty much determines at least the broad outlines of what has to happen in the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your problem is that the path just gets dull, well, if I had some simple formula for how to write an interesting story, I'd be a rich and famous writer myself. The closest to a formula I can think of is: If it's boring, add some complexity. If the path from A to B is just too obvious, then add some detours. If it's too obvious that the hero will get the girl in the end, then introduce some complications so that the reader starts to think that maybe he won't, or at least that there are some difficulties to be overcome along the way. Think about how to make your characters more interesting. Introduce some character flaws, and then provide a way for the character to overcome them. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T17:23:12.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7348" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-23T09:45:00.380" Score="6" ViewCount="8840" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have published some story books for kids and I have already bought the ISBN numbers for the same. But I am confused on how to get those ISBN numbers as barcodes on covers of books. What is the cheapest way to do this? Please advise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4700" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-02-24T19:09:12.007" LastActivityDate="2021-12-07T22:43:35.307" Title="How to Create Barcode from ISBN Number" Tags="|publishing|book|isbn|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7348" CreationDate="2013-02-23T11:14:08.677" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You require the barcode as an image that you can place on the cover just like (for example) the thumbnail picture of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of free software packages that will generate barcodes in different styles. Be careful that the one you choose &quot;understands&quot; the requirements of ISBN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/generator/&quot;&gt;Online Barcode Generator&lt;/a&gt; provided on a web page by Terry Burton seems to do the job, but if you don't like it, a Google search will find you more options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try checking the output it generates for the code on a book you already have. Then you can compare the result with the barcode on the book in your hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastEditorUserId="4332" LastEditDate="2013-02-24T00:42:28.650" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T00:42:28.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7351" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10034" CreationDate="2013-02-24T22:19:32.903" Score="4" ViewCount="351" Body="&lt;p&gt;A short story of mine has grown until it's become a bit of a monster - about 15K. I don't know if that makes it a novelette or a novella, but it's certainly too long for most of the journals I would normally consider for submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A superstitious dread of talking too much about my work before it's published prevents me from going into too much detail. But I can say that the story is told from an unusual perspective, that the setting is historical, and it's definitely non-realist (although it isn't genre fantasy or magical realism, either).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be a good market for experimental novellas? I tend to prefer print, but for this awkwardly-sized piece I'd (reluctantly) consider an ebook publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastEditorUserId="352" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T08:36:46.167" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T17:38:41.163" Title="What's a good market for experimental novellas?" Tags="|marketing|novella|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7355" CreationDate="2013-02-25T07:38:48.737" Score="8" ViewCount="643" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's true that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Editors do proof reading for you, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;word processors have spell checking and grammar checking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you do not always have an editor available, and software tools aren't perfect (&quot;move&quot; instead of &quot;movie&quot; is not a spelling mistake). Some burden falls upon you to proofread your writing, which brings me to my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been known to me for a while that simply &quot;trying really hard&quot; to detect problems doesn't work. I did hour long sessions of editing and proofreading my work, only to return to it the next day and still find small issues with it. Of course, errors happen and it's not unexpected that small mistakes will slip by in a large piece of work, but still, striving for perfection is not a bad thing. So my question is, what do you do about it? How do you bring you error count to the minimum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T19:02:07.790" LastActivityDate="2017-11-21T22:14:22.133" Title="How to minimize language mistakes while writing" Tags="|editing|proofreading|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7354" CreationDate="2013-02-25T15:25:07.090" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Proof-reading and editing (or copy editing) are actually different though overlapping activities, arguably requiring opposed skills. A good editor is creative and imaginative; a good proof-reader adheres consistently and strictly to style guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you have neither person at hand, here are four tips that might be of use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show your work to people you trust and who seem like appropriate people to show.&lt;/strong&gt; You don't need to rely on a professional editor in the first stage. I say people you trust because they should be people who are honest with you and will be critical because they are trying to help you. I say 'appropriate' because different people will have different perspectives. Some things will be fairly uncontroversial errors ('move' for 'movie' or &lt;em&gt;vice versa&lt;/em&gt;, for example). Others will concern the clarity of a piece, it's structure, which is to say that good editing goes beyond proof-reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you should want to get as many perspectives as possible. I've shown work to many friends and colleagues, some of whom don't speak English as a first language, because sometimes they will read more carefully than those who do. But realistically you don't want to spend too much time quibbling with lots of people over various minor aspects of your writing. So select four to five people if you can and make sure you're willing to return the favour sometime.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read out loud&lt;/strong&gt;. Or get one of your friends/colleagues to read out loud to you. Simple errors should become apparent and you will also get a feel for the clarity and rhythm of the piece which a good copy editor would also be concerned with.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spend time away from the piece.&lt;/strong&gt; Getting some distance from a piece can be a good way of seeing things and spotting errors that hadn't reached your attention before. Especially if you can't find four to five people to help you with the reading and checking. The idea is to get different eyes on the document, eyes which will spot things that your eyes will have missed. You mention going back to a piece the next day but giving it longer might be better still. It depends on your deadline of course. I've left a piece for a year before, whilst getting on with other things. Your eyes in a month's time will be different (through experience, through taking a break) to your eyes now. For one, they will be less pink with strain.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Accept that you will miss something, that your work could always be better.&lt;/strong&gt; I'm reluctant to advise against striving for perfection; as you say it's no bad thing, and I think there's even something admirable about it. Attention to detail can make a piece of work very special. Many won't go as far because after a while the returns seem to diminish. There's an element of self-sacrifice as one spends longer and longer on the little things, even to the point of a kind of madness. Go as far as you're able but when you finally declare the thing finished, be ready accept that anything after that was beyond your ability to notice at the time and move on. With practice, you will get better at striving for perfection.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On that final note, this quotation from the poet Paul Valéry might be worth putting up somewhere you can see it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How can he recognise that his work is finished?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That's a decision he has to take…In fact, the completion of a work is&#xA;  only ever an abandonment, a halt that can always be regarded as&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;fortuitous&lt;/em&gt; in an evolution that might have been continued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—from 'La Création artistique' in &lt;em&gt;Bulletin de la société francaise de Philosophie&lt;/em&gt; (1928), via &lt;em&gt;Reading Paul Valéry: Universe in Mind&lt;/em&gt;, Gifford, P. and Stimpson, B. (1998). Emphasis in the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4571" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T15:25:07.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7327" CreationDate="2013-02-26T05:09:48.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the other comments. The beauty in poetry is its subjectivity. If I were reading a poem without punctuation, yet the poet took the time to capitalize the city, I would take special note of that city. If your goal is not to force the city to stand out, then forego the capitalization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4793" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T05:09:48.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7364" CreationDate="2013-02-26T18:39:12.497" Score="7" ViewCount="841" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard the term &quot;Mary Sue&quot; thrown around a lot, and it seems to mean different things to different people, but is always something negative about the way the character is written, not necessarily about the character itself, usually involving the phrase &quot;overly idealized&quot;. Is there any common definition that most people follow that can be properly qualified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4566" LastEditorUserId="4566" LastEditDate="2013-03-12T01:10:32.350" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T06:27:32.477" Title="Is there any standardized definition of a &quot;Mary Sue&quot;?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7358" CreationDate="2013-02-26T19:05:43.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;Mary Sue&quot; is a character who represents a highly-idealized version of the author (usually).  This is the sort of character who, as needed, can perform brain surgery with one hand on a turbulent jet that she's piloting absent-mindedly while working on a cure for cancer -- that sort of thing.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; gives the origin as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The term &quot;Mary Sue&quot; comes from the name of a character created by Paula Smith in 1973 for her parody story &quot;A Trekkie's Tale&quot;[2]:15 published in her fanzine Menagerie #2.[3] The story starred Lieutenant Mary Sue (&quot;the youngest Lieutenant in the fleet — only fifteen and a half years old&quot;), and satirized unrealistic Star Trek fan fiction.[4]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this originated with teen females with romantic interests, the article goes on to say, and my friends who write fan fiction confirm, that it's since evolved into exaggerated &quot;super-everything&quot; wish-fulfillment along the lines of my first paragraph.  Sometimes super-everything characters who aren't proxies for the author are also called Mary Sues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Lauren Ipsum (see comments), the masculine form is &quot;Marty Stu&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-02-26T19:22:44.647" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T19:22:44.647" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7360" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7361" CreationDate="2013-02-26T19:53:23.973" Score="0" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7358/is-there-any-standardized-definition-of-a-mary-sue&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; I asked about whether there was a standardized definition of the term &quot;Mary Sue&quot;. However, a related question would be whether the repeated dilution of the use of the term has rid it of any merit as a label.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask this because in my ventures, I've heard the term used to cut down any character who shows any signs of sticking out too much, out of a desire to either darken the story down (or to &quot;ground&quot; it) or simply make fun of a new author. On one hand, there are people who say that the Mary Sue archetype can (very rarely) be used to good effect. On the other hand, some people insist that all Mary Sues are bad, as being bad is part of their definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When people do the latter, they risk either making the gross generalization that all idealized characters are inherently bad, or making the archetype lose all meaning. If a character is idealized to the point of unrealism, why not simply call her an unrealistic character? What good does the term &quot;Mary Sue&quot; actually serve in this case? And when people do the former, they violate the inherently negative connotation that Mary Sue has come to acquire. Who is right, if any?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4566" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T20:38:25.297" Title="Is there any merit to the term &quot;Mary Sue&quot;?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-02-26T20:51:35.413" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7360" CreationDate="2013-02-26T20:38:25.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I myself have asked a question regarding &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3786/is-there-a-quick-way-to-know-i-have-created-a-mary-sue&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, but over some time I have come to see Mary Sue as an bad term, a term that is used to bully authors into creating generic, standardized characters. I'll explain what I mean below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term Mary Sue has been very harmful to women characters. Anyone who tried to create a strong female character was immediately mocked as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_sue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mary Sue&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...  fear of creating a &quot;Mary Sue&quot; may be restricting and even&#xA;  silencing some writers. Smith interviewed a panel of female authors&#xA;  who say they do not include female characters in their stories at all.&#xA;  She quoted one as saying &quot;Every time I've tried to put a woman in any&#xA;  story I've ever written, everyone immediately says, this is a Mary&#xA;  Sue.&quot; Smith also pointed out that &quot;Participants in a panel discussion&#xA;  in January 1990 noted with growing dismay that any female character&#xA;  created within the community is damned with the term Mary Sue.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has led to the situation where people don't create strong characters at all. All characters follow the same cookie cutter, Disney/Hollywood formula- they will start off as comically bad- ignoring their children, mistreating their spouse/ employees etc, and by the end of the movie, suddenly becoming goody good perfect human beings, having learnt all the cliched lessons the script had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written before about how I have stopped reading crime fiction, as almost every detective has a marriage problem, is an alcoholic, and usually is a jerk. I used to wonder why this was, till I saw all these online forums, where new writers are asked to give their characters &quot;flaws&quot;, which the characters can overcome. And so a &quot;flaw&quot; is bolted on the character, which they can then &quot;overcome&quot;, and hence tick the box that says &quot;character development&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is the problem of the Mary Sue tag- writers are scared to write the type of characters they want, but have to think about what others will think. Even reviewers are caught up in this- I read an enjoyable fantasy/comedy book in which the hero defeats a bunch of demons. And most of the negative reviews basically said &quot;There were no character flaws.&quot; How dare you write a book where the hero wasn't abused as a kid, didn't have his parents murdered, isn't suffering from alcoholism, and doesn't hate his boss?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm ranting a bit, but the term Mary Sue has harmed writers a lot, and should not be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T20:38:25.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7362" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7365" CreationDate="2013-02-26T20:56:50.990" Score="4" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is based on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2110/using-the-real-world-in-writing&quot;&gt;that question&lt;/a&gt;, but from a tone point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have a story taking place in a near-future version of Boston, characters are meeting for coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no issue saying the story is in Boston. However, having the characters &amp;quot;meet in Starbucks&amp;quot; sounds... wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, using real locations and landmarks often seems weird, especially if it is in a place I know well (I live in Boston).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What are the advantages and disadvantages of using real world brands and places? When should it or should it not be used?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Again, I am not asking for copyright advice, as it was well covered by the above question.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4272" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T21:31:41.680" Title="Effect of real world brands and/or places on story tone" Tags="|fiction|tone|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7363" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7378" CreationDate="2013-02-26T20:56:57.643" Score="5" ViewCount="2323" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written mainly novels in Scrivener, and am now thinking of writing a small non-fiction work (which I will self publish).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing a novel, you just keep typing til you reach the end, but non-fiction books have sections. The traditional method is to have space when a new section starts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;end of section 1&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Section 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;blah blah blah&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that in ebook formats, extra spaces (paragraph breaks) are not encouraged, as they might not display correctly. Smashwords will reject you, and so will Amazon if you go for KDP select. This is because these extra spaces don't always show up correctly on e-readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if I don't use a spaces, the whole thing will look munched up, which doesn't matter in fiction, but may in non fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is, how do I get around this? I see two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Scrivener, each &quot;page&quot; starts with some space(with page I mean the page/folder you create in the manuscript). So for each section have a separate page. The problem with this is, some sections may only be a small paragraph, and I may end up with hundreds of pages.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just go ahead and use space (by pressing enter). Avoid Smashwords and KDP select. This may not be that big a deal, as Amazon allows extra space if you don't choose KDP select, and other retailers like Apple/Kobo etc don't mind either. Of course, then I will miss out on some platforms.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better way to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-03-04T19:38:46.293" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T17:04:06.997" Title="How should I format a non fiction book with Scrivener?" Tags="|non-fiction|formatting|scrivener|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7358" CreationDate="2013-02-26T21:28:05.790" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Mary Sue is a character who passively warps the fabric of the story to their own benefit by virtue of mere existence, and acts only within that context. That's really what most of the extant and often inconsistent definitions boil down to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key defining characteristic of this is a sort of reversed narrative causality: The character is unique; therefore they were born with an unusual eye color. The character succeeds; therefore they learned the necessary skills somewhere. The character is popular; therefore other characters like them, regardless of behavior or motivation. The character is dark and angsty; therefore they had a tragic past. There's often no rhyme or reason to the implied backstory except in the context of setting the character up to act in the current situation. Most descriptions of a Mary Sue are essentially lists of character traits commonly used to prop up a Mary Sue in this manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A consequence of the reversed causality is that justification of the character's traits or development of their personality is treated as inessential. Other characters will interact with the Mary Sue in whatever way they're Supposed To, their motivations for doing so contrived as needed or just having their personal agency overridden outright by force of narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-inserts are frequently written as Sues for obvious reasons, but any character favored by the author can get the same treatment, up to and including distorted interpretations of canon characters in fanfic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term originates from fanfiction, where the artificiality of the character and the effects of their presence are most clearly visible against an established backdrop. A setting with multiple authors can be similar--writers using a shared setting, role-playing groups, &amp;amp;c.--if one author tries to make their character(s) more important by fiat or contrived situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a single author with a new story in an independent setting with original characters the term is harder to use in a meaningful way, which is not to say that accusations aren't made. A main character who is too perfect, too competent, too successful, and all around too much isn't a Mary Sue if showcasing their larger-than-life exploits is the intended purpose of the story. A secondary character being oh-so-special and interesting and important isn't a Mary Sue if the entire cast is similarly over the top and the narrative doesn't consistently favor any one character. A female character doing something unexpectedly interesting is not automatically a Mary Sue, for crying out loud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, there is no &quot;archetype&quot; here, though some archetypes are more susceptible than others. A character being a Mary Sue is first and foremost a property of their role in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4373" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T21:28:05.790" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7362" CreationDate="2013-02-26T21:31:41.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specificity can be helpful. Just as you can characterize the protagonist by telling us that he shuffled into the courtroom in his flame-colored flip flops, you can show the characters' preferences and habits (and maybe their economic situation) through their choices of brands, locations, and their reactions to well-known landmarks. The character who grabs a burger from McDonald's may have a different lifestyle from the one who insists on shopping only at Whole Foods. In addition, people often enjoy learning about other places through fiction. A character who knows the ins and outs of Boston could be fun to follow around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, random name-dropping of real-life brands and locations can create a &quot;dated&quot; or commercial feel to a piece. I haven't seen &quot;literary&quot; works use them unless for a clear, specific purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T21:31:41.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7351" CreationDate="2013-02-27T00:54:12.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just go directly to ebook through amazon. You can freely market it through FB by all of the various free FB apps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self publish, it will result in a lot fewer rejection letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3336" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T00:54:12.233" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="489" CreationDate="2013-02-27T03:35:39.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to be the same way as you.  Paranoid about having an &quot;all-original&quot; idea.  But then I had to come to the realization that &quot;nothing is original&quot;.  It's all been done before, in one way or another.  It isn't really a question of how original your work is,  but rather of the way you present it.  No one can tell the story the exact same way you can.  Maybe your storytelling will be the one to touch readers that another storyteller couldn't because of their way of expressing this story.  So, don't worry about having an idea that's similar to another book.  Tell the story in the way only &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4637" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T03:35:39.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7374" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7375" CreationDate="2013-02-27T18:59:05.053" Score="2" ViewCount="351" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would this be considered prose, or poetry? The reason I ask is because someone had told me that I should submit it to a magazine but I don't know what kind, if any would look at it. I write it about five years ago after I had stayed up for a good 30 to 40 hours, I haven't been able to write like it since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The waters edge, Feathers on the Wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The water, crisp, the scent of the lake stirring in the wind. Waiting for that special some one, the sun high in the sky clouds rolling in. It was supposed to be like any other day. A day by the waters edge, love growing stronger. A simple kiss to put ones emotions aflutter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A silent greeting, a hug hello, skin on skin. The embrace of lovers. Sitting down by the waters edge, staring into the eyes of the one you couldn't live with out. Never saying a word but always knowing what the other would say. Speaking of words never needed. But deep down wishing for the silence to break. Wishing to tell her something important, finally mustering the courage to speak the secret. The secret haunting, tearing away at your soul. Always with you, never leaving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The clouds are growing closer, larger. Time running out, storm approaching. Opening your mouth to speak, no sound can be heard. Lighting strikes the lake, loud deafening thunder. Ear drums ringing, the sound never ending, on an on. Steam billows, the waters ripple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terrified she looks to you, your eyes never meet hers. Splashing in the water, through the thunder, hearing the faint cry. Child in the water, splashing and splashing, can’t stay afloat. Calling for help, choking on the water. You look side to side, no one sees, no one hears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pointing to the water, a sharp gasp, she sees. But can’t help, too far out. Ready to jump in, taking off shirt, shoes. No too far to swim. Nervously, its time. The only way, taking a great leap. Hoping she understands, hoping against hope. Your secrets about to be out, will she praise? Will she admire? Or will she fear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She sees you, a question written across her face. She knows you can’t swim fast enough. She knows you would never make it. Mid-leap, something begins, something happens. She sees, confused. Feathers. Great big black feathers, falling in your wake. Wings, she sees large wings. Her mind, confused, unbelieving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You glide, inches above the water. The smell soothing, gaining speed. Faster and faster, moving, breathing, alive. Heart racing, blood pumping. Fear of the world leaving, Courage, love and joy growing. Reaching out, grabbing the hand. Pulling the child, holding him close. So young, so frail. A smile growing, happiness bursting forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wind roaring, deafening. Ripping at your eyes, ears and skin. Eyes watering, tears flowing. Vision blurring, the shoreline vanishing. Concentration waning, fear growing. Closer and closer, faster and faster. Almost, almost safe, almost free. Mid hope, a gust. Shot from the heavens, angry and cold. The storm fights to claim its prize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking forward, disbelief strong in her heart. Fear, doubt, how, why. Eyes following you, unable to look away. But something is wrong. She sees in horror, falling, faster. Crashing into the waters. So much speed, tumbling, tossing. Rolling across the surface. Over and over, hearing for the first time. You call out in pain, bones breaking. She hears, she cries, she calls out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rolling over and over, unable to tell up from down. Grasping to the child, shielding him. Water, so much water. Tearing at the child, trying to steal him back. Unrelenting, you will not let him go. Finally, slamming into the other shore. Skin tears, bones shatter. Pain, white-hot pain. Tears fall, wings laying on the ground, broken. Blood spilling, the water becomes red. Looking down, the boy. Safe, alive. Unable to move, pinned down. Something, everything, hurts. But more, coughing, blood pouring. Feeling, a pipe. Small thin, piercing through. Understanding, its over. Life of a child, for the life of his savior. Eyes growing heavy, darkness over whelming. Fighting, wishing, to see her face, one last time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Running, heart pumping. Fast as she can. Legs burning, getting closer. Seeing, but unbelieving. How, when, why. How, when, why. Over an over, tears falling. Love blossomed, but love torn away. Reaching the other side, seeing, red water, a crowd. People stare, but scared to help. What is he, whispers, shaken voices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hearing a familiar voice. Forcing open your eyes, trying to look. Unable to see, a splash. Some one in the water. Smiling to see, she has found you. She has come, terror, horror, tears streaming. Her face, pale. Coughing, more blood. Her hand trembles, reaching out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She reaches out, trembling, scared. How, when, why, still ringing. Pulling back. Mind about to break. She loved this, person. This person loved her, why does she tremble so. Why does she fear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eyes closing again. Sounds fading, the end growing near, night is falling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inching closer, she sees the wings, so clear. Feathers, black as night. Still trembling, still scared. Reaching out, grabbing the child. Pulling him free. Holding him in her arms, he breaths, he lives. For the first time she looks, takes you in with her eyes. Believing finally, understanding. Over whelmed, loss, regret. Leaning in, a simple kiss to the forehead. She doesn't fear you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Are, you, an, angel?&amp;quot; The voice, so distant. So faint. Using everything, all your strength. All your power. Touching her face, a gentle hand. Unable to speak, mouthing the word. &amp;quot;No,&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Night has fallen. Peace has come. Life of the child, for the life of the savior. The price has been paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple day, at waters edge. Torn asunder by a selfless act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4732" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2021-01-09T10:27:42.543" LastActivityDate="2021-06-30T20:44:50.273" Title="What type of writing would this fall under?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7374" CreationDate="2013-02-27T21:26:46.643" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd call it stream-of-consciousness prose. And try magazines which accept short stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T21:26:46.643" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7265" CreationDate="2013-02-28T08:43:49.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is simply not the case that men can't, don't, or won't do it. Many novels have been written convincingly, thoughtfully, and effectively, by male authors in female first person. Famously, in detective fiction, Robert B. Parker's entire series of novels about the female detective Sunny Randall are written in the first person. Another extremely well-received and respected novel written in female first person by a male author is  &lt;em&gt;I Am Mary Dunne,&lt;/em&gt; by Brian Moore. Other examples abound, but even these few are enough to disprove your premise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastEditorUserId="4805" LastEditDate="2013-02-28T09:00:11.833" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T09:00:11.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7363" CreationDate="2013-02-28T10:16:03.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our Scrivener guru hasn't answered yet, so let me give you general advice (I do not know where to set these things in Scrivener).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With &quot;spaces&quot; I guess you mean new lines. A new line is generally not a good method to format your manuscript, no matter if it is an ebook or a paper book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally your word processor (in your case Scrivener) has options to tell how much &quot;space&quot; (I do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; mean new lines here) is attached to a section header (above and below that header). This info should then be converted to the appropriate settings of the ebook format you use (epub, mobi).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This extra space is normally automatically added to header formats. If you are not doing it already, then format your section headers as &quot;headers&quot; and not as &quot;normal text&quot; with bigger font and bold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is for some reason not possible, you can still use non-white space to format your ebook. Like adding the three asterisks (&quot;* * *&quot;) between sections or a horizontal line. That does not look nice below a section header, but maybe better than crunched text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T10:16:03.317" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="108" CreationDate="2013-02-28T12:26:27.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently collaborating on a screenplay with a writer in another country. We're doing the research, outline and treatment in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Drive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Drive&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy, and you don't have to pass documents back and forth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;log onto &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://drive.google.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a folder and share it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;amp;answer=49008&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Docs&lt;/a&gt; word processor document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a &lt;a href=&quot;http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;amp;answer=177123&amp;amp;from=185180&amp;amp;rd=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Drawings&lt;/a&gt; document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;add comments to share notes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;collaboratively edit in real time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4808" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2013-03-07T20:06:34.273" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T20:06:34.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7363" CreationDate="2013-02-28T14:57:41.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As much as I adore Scrivener for writing, I wouldn't expect it to output in pristine, publishable format. It's a writing tool, not a layout program or even a word processor. I would necessarily expect to run my final content through a second program to format it for publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have access to any kind of desktop layout program (like InDesign or Quark), you can use that to lay out the text to whatever specs the self-publisher requires. Text is fairly straightforward, so if you don't need pretty bells and whistles, you could even use Microsquish Word (if you're comfortable with wrangling it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T14:57:41.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7381" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-01T21:24:09.693" Score="3" ViewCount="646" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a trilogy set 80% in Italy and 20% in other European countries. Each novel incorporates real historical characters and fantasy elements (a magical object, real/imagined symbols, clairsentience/audience, etc.). Each novel takes place a few decades apart from the previous one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have a definition for historical fantasy? Or examples of novels or trilogies that would defined as historical fantasy? I'm particularly interested in any examples that DO NOT include romance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, a number of agents/editors have asked me why I don't want to include romance because it would have a better chance of being sold, but romance doesn't appeal to me, either writing about or reading it so it doesn't make sense to make it part of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have others experienced this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, one editor asked me to defined how much of my novel is historical and how much is fantasy. I pitched him at a conference because he favored historical novels, but I didn't think the fantasy part would be such a big deal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone else been asked this question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4812" LastActivityDate="2013-03-03T01:08:14.170" Title="What constitutes historical fantasy?" Tags="|fiction|novel|fantasy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7381" CreationDate="2013-03-01T23:06:03.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say Mercedes Lackey's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0743471474&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Shadow of the Lion&lt;/a&gt; and Susanna Clarke's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0765356155&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jonathan Strange &amp;amp; Mr. Norrell&lt;/a&gt; would both qualify as &quot;historical fantasy.&quot; The latter has relationships, but I wouldn't call them &quot;romance.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, Lackey's entire Elemental Masters series could be historical fantasy. Again, there are pairings, but whether you'd call them &quot;romances&quot; is up to the marketing department. I wouldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T23:06:03.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7383" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-27T21:06:25.060" Score="9" ViewCount="1918" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I feel I'm a pretty good programmer in my area of expertise. Whats the process for writing a book about my niche and getting it published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4816" OwnerDisplayName="Omar Jackman" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-03-02T06:54:34.787" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T06:54:34.787" Title="How to get a programming book published" Tags="|publishing|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7383" CreationDate="2013-02-27T22:21:44.617" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;That depends entirely on a number of factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What's your motivation?&lt;/strong&gt; (Thanks, Steven Burnap for this one.) Do you just want to get it out there to share your knowledge? Or are you looking to make money (hint - you probably won't make much money off your first book, no matter what route you go)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dead tree? Ebook? Both? Something else?&lt;/strong&gt; This is going to determine what channels you can use to get your book out there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Big house, small house or self publish?&lt;/strong&gt; This will greatly determine how soon you get out there, how much money you have to invest and stand to make, and a number of other things.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who's editing this beast?&lt;/strong&gt; Most books go through an extensive editing process. Do you want a professional editor? Do you want to hire said professional yourself?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've answered those questions, you have to consider your options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Dead Tree Publishing vs eBook Publishing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want print books, you need to find someone that will print your books. Theoretically, you could go straight to a printer, but most people will go through a publisher that handles that kind of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, eBooks tend to be quicker to get to market, have a lower up front cost, and have more self-publishing options available (for all three, the main reason is not having to print physical books). Additionally, including an eBook can also allow you to submit it to places like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safaribooksonline.com/&quot;&gt;Safari Books Online&lt;/a&gt;, which can help get it exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some publishers will do both, but not all publishers that do one will do the other (think Venn diagram). Also, print books will allow you to reach audiences that don't have eReaders or otherwise don't like digital books, while eBooks will allow you to reach a very large potential audience via sellers such as Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Motivation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your motivation is purely altruistic (ie - you just want to get it out there), then it might be worth considering a completely different distribution avenue. There are a number of &quot;books&quot; that use the web itself as their publishing platform (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dionaea-house.com/&quot;&gt;Dionaea House&lt;/a&gt; is a superb example of how the Internet can be leveraged in a unique way to create something that's arguably more than a book; for the non-fiction, &lt;a href=&quot;http://learncodethehardway.org/&quot;&gt;Learn Code the Hard Way&lt;/a&gt; is another good example of using the Internet as a book publishing platform). Some even use GitHub as a sort of publishing platform, which not only allows people to consume the book, but also to help edit, revise, and add to these books (in a controlled manner, with pull requests), creating truly &quot;living documents.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your motivation is money, you'll have to go back to considering dead tree vs ebook. eBooks sell for less per unit, but come with lower overhead and have potential to reach more people than dead tree (due to not having to have stores keep physical stock). This means it could potentially be more lucrative when self or small house publishing. However, getting into a big publishing house, such as O'Reilly or For Dummies, brings with it prestige and exposure, but at a monetary overhead cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Editors&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you self-publish, you have to take charge to get the editing done, while publishers will often have on-staff editors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;So You Want To Get A Publisher&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get a list of publishers&lt;/strong&gt; that publish books in your niche (or slightly broader scope), and find their submission process. This will vary by publisher, and will likely be found on their website. If you don't have your book written, yet, make sure you have a chapter written. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it should be better than a rough draft, and should be meaty enough to entice them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Submit your book to said publishers&lt;/strong&gt; (check their rules, some might not allow multiple submissions). Remember, just because you've submitted a book, it doesn't mean they'll publish it. In fact, as a new author, it's very likely they'll turn you down (or offer you crap for royalties). Don't be surprised if you have to submit to several publishers before you get a bite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set aside time to write.&lt;/strong&gt; If you don't already have your book written, they'll put you on a tight schedule. Writing will likely be a full-time job for you, so either take time off from your primary job, or expect to work long-as-hell hours. Also expect to get a lot of grief from your editor - they're going to be a hard-ass to you (but for a good editor, it'll be worth it). Make sure you've put on your thick skin when dealing with your editor. Also, make sure you send in your milestones on time, so you stay on track and your publisher doesn't drop you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publish&lt;/strong&gt; The exact process will vary depending on the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;So You Want To Self Publish&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find self publishers&lt;/strong&gt; There are a number out there, including Amazon, Barnes &amp;amp; Noble, and Lulu. Pick a few that will fulfill your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Check their terms&lt;/strong&gt; Determine what you want for royalties and what they're willing to give you. See if they allow multiple publishing or selling at other retailers via their publishing platform. Drop any publishers that don't meet your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write your book&lt;/strong&gt; To get your book out in a timely manner, you should devote a good amount of time to writing your book. It doesn't need to be the break-neck speed that a big publisher expects, but it should be a good chunk of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get an editor&lt;/strong&gt; Find a good person to edit your work. You can use someone you know, or a freelancer or service, but make sure that they'll be upfront, honest, and detail-oriented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get an artist&lt;/strong&gt; If applicable, you'll want someone to take photography (for your &quot;About the Author&quot; page), draw diagrams, or design cover graphics or other support images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publish your book&lt;/strong&gt; The details on getting the book published on your chosen platform(s) will vary depending on the platform and avenue, so make sure you follow their guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I'm not a published author, personally, but I have a number of friends who are, so I know the basics of getting published. If anyone knows of any corrections or details, feel free to point them out and I can edit accordingly.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4822" OwnerDisplayName="Shauna" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T22:21:44.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7386" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7387" CreationDate="2013-03-02T15:52:50.333" Score="6" ViewCount="897" Body="&lt;p&gt;The crime of conspiracy is a limitation on free speech in the united states. Merely talking about, in fine detail, a crime can get one charged with conspiracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is slightly more complicated than that, for a conviction, but the point is, this chills free speech and makes it very difficult and is a deterrent for a fiction writer to get the details necessary for accuracy to allow for the suspension of disbelief&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does one hash out their ideas for the elaborate crimes in their book or any other expressive medium, with peace of mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4815" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-03-02T21:51:29.977" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T19:38:08.013" Title="How can one plan elaborate crimes for fiction without getting into trouble?" Tags="|planning|ideas|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7386" CreationDate="2013-03-02T16:50:15.213" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try a writer's group, where it is &lt;em&gt;absolutely and explicitly clear&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;that you are discussing this in the service of a story, and where&#xA;other folks are discussing things just as potentially problematic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One writer I work with is writing a crime story and actually&#xA;paid a retired detective as a consultant to make sure she got her details&#xA;right. She interviewed him extensively and went over her story bit by bit to make sure it was feasible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You also might find true-crime books (or blogs?) to be useful, where&#xA;someone else has already put down the details you need, and you can&#xA;adapt as necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Rogers, one of the creators of the late and much-lamented &lt;em&gt;Leverage&lt;/em&gt;, sometimes jokes on his &lt;a href=&quot;http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; that the things he'd had to research online probably have him on every government watch list in existence, because &lt;em&gt;Leverage&lt;/em&gt; was about five master criminals acting as Robin Hoods &amp;mdash; committing elaborate cons and crimes to help innocent people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T16:50:15.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7386" CreationDate="2013-03-02T20:34:30.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to wonder if &quot;merely talking about&quot; crimes, no matter what the level of detail, can result in a charge of conspiracy. Almost everyone talks about crimes at some level, because they are a matter of general interest. Those involved in the investigation of crimes talk about them in massive detail at great length. And crime writers research, talk about, and write about crimes extensively. All of this happens without anyone being accused of conspiracy. So even though merely discussing a crime &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be considered conspiracy, I think you have to assume that the crime discussed would have to be committed before you would have any genuine cause for concern. Believe me, the thousands of people who write about crime research it, talk about it, and pick the brains of all kinds of experts in the field, all the time. They don't worry about this issue, and neither should you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T20:34:30.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7389" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7391" CreationDate="2013-03-02T22:30:58.397" Score="4" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I first started focusing on short stories, I submitted to a range of top professional magazines (Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, etc.). I wasn't surprised to be rejected, but now I wonder if after rejecting a few pieces from me, they will attach a negative note or connotation to my name that could hurt future submissions. Obviously I don't/won't submit work that I don't think is ready for the world, but hopefully my future work will become increasingly better. Is there a benefit to holding off top-tier submissions until some time in the future? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T17:44:59.620" Title="Does submitting multiple pieces to professional magazines (and being turned down) hurt chances of later stories that may be better-written?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7381" CreationDate="2013-03-03T01:08:14.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no standard definition. And not just for historical fantasy. Give me a definition, and I will show you a best selling book that doesn't follow it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book has both historical and fantasy elements, you can market it as historical fantasy. If you think this will hurt your chances, feel free to emphasise either the historical part or the fantasy part, when talking to editors who are interested in one, but not the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you read any blog by DWSmith, or his wife Kris Rusch? When editors or agents want to reject books for business or other reasons, they will often try to &quot;help&quot; the author by giving them suggestions, of the type you got. (&quot;Add romance to your book, and it may sell&quot;). So never pay much attention to rejection reasons, as they might not be the truth at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editors may want you to change your work a little, to make the story tighter, to remove unnecessary sub-plots etc. But in your case, it seems they want to change your book completely, to what suits them at this time(at least that is what it looks to me. I maybe wrong). My advice is, continue shopping your manuscript, you may find an editor who loves your book as it is, without adding the latest fad( vampire-zombie-romance) to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you can't sell it after a year or two, seriously consider self publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2013-03-03T01:08:14.170" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7389" CreationDate="2013-03-03T03:08:36.100" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, don't hold stories back unless you have a specific reason. Unless a publication specifically asks you to re-submit a specific piece at a later time (maybe they have a theme issue planned), holding stories back makes little sense. There's no secret to getting published aside from (1) Write beautiful things (2) send the beautiful things to publications that things like the things you wrote. (i.e., send to appropriate markets and follow their submission guidelines.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stories that you send in should be the best you're capable of at that time. Why would you hold work back unless you think it's not ready? By saving top-shelf material for later, you'll all but ensure that you're not giving your best stories a chance to be noticed. And it's expected that writers will improve over time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were rejected with a form letter, they may not even remember you. If you were rejected with a personalized note, it's because they want to encourage you. If you send in a better story later, and they remember you, they'd almost certainly love to see that you've improved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-03-03T03:08:36.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7393" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-03T13:07:56.863" Score="0" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand it is possible to ask for critiques here and ask that you guide me to adapt this question if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I feel the need every now and then to get a thought down on paper. However, I am shy to diffuse the resulting text as the unrefined form may distract the reader from grasping the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm trying to express in the following text is a kind of unconscious reflex observed in people where they cannot help display disdain. This is when confronted with the situation of another person - like a beggar on the street, for example - that does not fit in with their beliefs and views of the world. Also, that disdain in higher spheres can destroy a society, especially in a bad economic context and the scarcity that this brings, adding to that the intuition that a serious flaw lies in centralized control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I think needs improving here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps wording or style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Punctuation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Readability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S: I'm native to an English country but did part of my schooling years in a French-speaking country. Please take this into account if anything seems strange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.P.S: Would like to know what this kind of text could be categorized as. It's obviously not fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To let inequality spread is to let contempt become acceptable. For, if&#xA;  we vilify this unthinking attitude through moral teachings, it can&#xA;  emerge as a defense mechanism to distance ourselves from the needy and&#xA;  suffering when basically the main differences lie with chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The greatest danger of all is to see this extend to circles of power.&#xA;  For, if the powerful distance themselves from the average citizen,&#xA;  they ultimately end up ignoring the needs of the many. That is why&#xA;  centralized authority can only degrade over time into the abuse of&#xA;  privileges and in such a way as to imperil the very same ideals that&#xA;  gave it birth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2243" LastEditorUserId="2243" LastEditDate="2017-01-03T08:49:05.767" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T08:49:05.767" Title="Critique of this short text about inequality and contempt" Tags="|style|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-01-03T09:33:46.137" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7394" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7396" CreationDate="2013-03-03T17:16:41.390" Score="11" ViewCount="1963" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I want to write a Sci-Fi where humans have spread across the solar system and into the galaxy. There are multiple stories going across at several different times. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aliens attack Pluto&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 weeks later, aliens arrive at Mars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flashback scene to a few years ago, when Earthlings missed sign of invasion, leading to destruction of Earth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I'm using Earth dates, something like: July 28 (Earth date), aliens attack Pluto, August 20 move to Mars etc.  But people on Pluto wouldn't use the Earth calendar; they would use their own system.  When those people talk about dates, what should they say?  How can I convey to my &lt;em&gt;readers&lt;/em&gt; the dates of these various events (and the relationships among them) when the calendar systems used by the &lt;em&gt;characters&lt;/em&gt; would be different?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I don't want something confusing like the Stardate system. I don't want to be explaining to my reader how my calendar works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-03-04T09:46:02.683" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T16:34:26.853" Title="How can I convey dates (with ordering) for events happening under different dating systems, e.g. a Sci-Fi story spread over the galaxy?" Tags="|science-fiction|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7393" CreationDate="2013-03-03T18:35:02.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A typical essay uses a few of the many available patterns or modes of exposition.  These include narration, description, process, definition, division and classification, comparison and contrast, example and illustration, cause and effect, analogy, and argument (according to a list in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abebooks.com/book-search/isbn/0070118167/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Seventy-Five Readings&lt;/a&gt;, Emily G. Barrosse, ed.).  Your paragraphs are mostly argument, I think, with some cause and effect as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the arguments and cause and effect elements do not convince me.  I see several sentence-to-sentence jumps in thought where intermediate steps need to be added before a convincing conclusion can follow.  I suggest that you write a careful outline, and at each level of the outline explicitly state each argument and its assumptions.  After the outline is complete, rewrite the essay, abstracting from the outline and adding examples where appropriate.  A historical example or two could both strengthen the argument and increase its interest to readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples for which I think consistency should be improved.  Where you write “To let inequality spread is to let contempt become acceptable”, indicate that you are equating  &lt;em&gt;inequality&lt;/em&gt; with  &lt;em&gt;contempt&lt;/em&gt;,  or anyhow whatever it is you mean with that sentence.  Then spell out what  &lt;em&gt;unthinking attitude&lt;/em&gt; refers to.  Also resolve the erroneous or at least difficult-to-believe statement that something vilified via moral teachings can become a defense mechanism.  In the next paragraph, a sentence says that seeing is a great danger, when it should instead say that of the thing seen.   “The powerful” are equated with  “centralized authority”, a false equation.  The claim that one thing “can only degrade over time” into another is asserted without support, when there is no reason given to assume it will degrade, nor to believe that if it degrades it will end as claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shifting gears to consider only the words and not the thoughts, I'd drop some of the extraneous words from “can only degrade over time into the abuse of privileges and in such a way as to imperil the very same ideals that gave it birth” and reword it as “can only degrade over time into abuse of privileges and thus imperil those ideals that gave it birth”.  That is, drop an unnecessary and clumsy &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt;, drop the verbose filler “in such a way as to”, and drop “the very same”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastEditorUserId="2619" LastEditDate="2013-03-03T18:40:17.387" LastActivityDate="2013-03-03T18:40:17.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7394" CreationDate="2013-03-03T22:05:54.183" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of a few ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Cheat.&lt;/strong&gt; This was how Tolkien did it, so you'd be in good company. He just listed somewhere in the appendices that &quot;Year 5798 by Gondor's calendar = 144 Shire Reckoning&quot; and let the readers do the math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;Make the characters work out a solution.&lt;/strong&gt; If you have characters on Terra and characters on Pluto who meet, &lt;em&gt;they're&lt;/em&gt; going to have to work out some way of syncing their calendars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;strong&gt;Meta.&lt;/strong&gt; At the beginning of a chapter, just announce as part of the header what the date is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;July 20, 2056 Terran Time &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  12 Fizzbinth of Shar, Plutonian Time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you equate them at the beginning of the chapter, it will be clear that the two dates are the same, and then you can advance them separately (or together) as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;strong&gt;Reset the calendars.&lt;/strong&gt; Call it 1 A.I., Year one after invasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point, unless all your characters are using a calendar which your reader understands, you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; going to have to do some amount of explaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-07-08T16:34:26.853" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T16:34:26.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7397" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7398" CreationDate="2013-03-04T08:51:53.263" Score="1" ViewCount="2027" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different animals symbolise different objects or actions. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bird for letter or postman.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Horse for speed and power.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bull for aggressivitet and anger.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Im looking for an animal or plant/tree which can symbolise market, store, trade, or commerce?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS! if you have other objects that can symbolise commerce or trade, please post. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4821" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T01:48:37.260" Title="Which animal symbolises trade?" Tags="|creative-writing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-03-05T02:02:36.427" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7397" CreationDate="2013-03-04T13:51:09.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The classic symbol for trade is a standing set of scales, standing (as opposed to handheld/hanging, more frequently associated with justice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want an animal, the one most frequently associated with trade will be the camel. While there were other animals used to transport wares for trade, about all of them served primarily in different roles like farming, rapid travel, military. Meanwhile, camels were primarily traders' animals, all their other uses quite secondary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-03-04T15:49:23.930" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T15:49:23.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7394" CreationDate="2013-03-04T15:04:34.537" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are just using dates in narration, as opposed to in dialog, you could just use Gregorian dates. When an American or European writes a history book today, they routinely use the Gregorian calendar even if that's not the calendar used by the people they're talking about. This only matters if the date itself is significant to the subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the people on the other planets are colonists from Earth and not aliens native to that planet, it's quite possible that they WOULD use an Earth-based calendar. Especially if they're in regular contact with Earth people. Sure, the Gregorian calendar does not match the orbital period of Mars or Pluto, but the convenience of using the same calendar on all the planets in the solar system would likely outweigh any advantage of having the calendar match the orbital period. I think this is what most science fiction stories do: They just have the characters express time in &amp;quot;standard Earth years&amp;quot; and leave it at that. It's not implausible, because the same reasons that make it simpler for the reader would make it simpler for the people involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if you're talking about aliens, I wouldn't expect aliens to use the Gregorian calendar. That would be a rather jarring disconnect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So failing that, if for one reason or another you must have these people have their own calendar, I don't see how there is any way out of explaining it, at least to some extent. You can't just say that one event took place on the Third of Foo and another took place on the Lesser Mordac of Hegenev and expect the reader to somehow know which came first and how far apart they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you want the workings of the calendar to be a major element of the story, even a simple calendar would be a pain to the reader. Like if you say that the Martian calendar has 20 months and here are their names, and the months are 33 days each except for the 2nd, 4th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th, 16th, and 17th, and the 19th on leap years, and leap occur two out of every five years, etc. (I believe that adds up to the right number of days, if I made a mistake, not really the point), that's about as simple as you're going to get, and it's an awful lot for a reader to understand and remember just so he can grasp when things are happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the easiest way out is just to translate the dates. As I said, if it's in narration, you can simply say, &amp;quot;this happened on August 3&amp;quot;. What the date is on somebody else's calendar doesn't matter. If it's necessary for a character to say the date, you could translate. Like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We must do this by the High Mordac of Hegenev,&amp;quot; Franslac said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George did a quick translation in his head: That would be August 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if you're doing this all the time, that could get tedious for the reader. That's why, I think, most writers avoid the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Addendum 3 years later&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we give alien dialog in a book, we routinely give it in English, even though it would seem somewhat unlikely that aliens from another star system would speak English. We have the aliens give distances in light-years, even though they would surely not use this particular unit. Etc. The reader understands that you are translating. So translating dates also would not be implausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where it WOULD get implausible is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) Anything that assumes that dates &amp;quot;line up&amp;quot;. Like, if a crucial plot point hinges on an event happening at the stroke of midnight on July 8, I wouldn't expect that to be the same time at Star Fleet Headquarters on Earth as it is on the capital of the alien planet. That doesn't work with time zones here on Earth. Similarly, we wouldn't expect the length of a day or a year to be the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) I wouldn't expect aliens to attach cultural significance to the same days we do. If in a book an alien says, &amp;quot;The invasion will begin on November 12&amp;quot;, I'd accept that as a translation. But if an alien says, &amp;quot;We're delaying the invasion until after the new year&amp;quot;, that seems to say that they start their year on January 1 like we do. &amp;quot;The invasion will begin the day after Christmas&amp;quot; -- unless you've given some reason why the aliens celebrate Christmas or at least are aware of it, this would be very jarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T13:35:09.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7386" CreationDate="2013-03-04T15:28:28.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of someone being charged with a crime because he discussed a hypothetical crime for a work of fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it's easy enough to imagine two writers discussing plot details for a book who are accidentally overheard by someone who thinks they are plotting a real crime. Frankly though, if the police came by and you explained that you were working on a book, and there was no other evidence that you were planning an actual crime, I think the incident would be promptly dropped. Maybe, possibly, they would put a note in a file somewhere so that if such a crime was actually committed, they'd come back looking for you. The police have enough crimes that have actually occurred that they must investigate that they can't spend much time on so-and-so thinks his neighbor is plotting a crime. Conspiracy tends to be a charge made after the crime is committed, not before. About the only conspiracies that police investigate before a crime is committed are threats against the president and terrorist attacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not a crime to discuss crime hypothetically. People do it all the time. If a prosecutor tried to charge you with conspiracy, they would need more than just, you were heard in a public place saying, &quot;Suppose someone wanted to kill his wife ...&quot; They'd have to show that you actually bought the poison or hired a hit man or something of the sort. I suppose if your research includes buying bomb-making components to see what they look like and how they fit together, and you assemble a bomb in your garage, and you're overheard asking about Governor Jones travel schedule and security arrangements, and you rent an apartment overlooking the square where the governor plans to give a speech and the police find the place empty except for a chair and a sniper rifle, etc, the explanations might become more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T15:28:28.380" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7389" CreationDate="2013-03-04T17:44:59.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely not. Getting rejected is all part of the business. Just because they don't like one - or maybe several - of your stories doesn't mean they won't find one that they love in the future.  Keep submitting and keep dreaming. You'll get there in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4637" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T17:44:59.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7402" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-03T23:59:53.560" Score="3" ViewCount="1291" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m compiling a bibliography and want to know if I should standardize the capitalization within the titles of the articles. I understand that copying mistakes/typos, etc., is one thing, and usually the correct thing to do is to simply duplicate them. But in this case I have, for example, two article titles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“The Cat in the House”,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“The Dog In The Barn”.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After checking the original articles, I’ve discovered that they are both indeed capitalized in these two different ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there is no changed meaning by standardizing, is it acceptable to format in a way that achieves consistency for my biography, as exampled below?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“The Cat in the House”,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“The Dog in the Barn”.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Jack Simpson" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-03-05T18:57:42.740" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T18:57:42.740" Title="Standardizing capitalization within a bibliography or footnotes when your sources have used different standards" Tags="|style|citations|footnotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7402" CreationDate="2013-03-04T01:32:02.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key to your question lies in the phrase &lt;strong&gt;no changed meaning by standardizing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The designer of the original publication might have elected to set all article titles in a Gothic font to align with other design elements on the page. We do not feel compelled to retain that font choice when referencing the article; why should capitalisation be treated any differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have noted, the exception arises when the initial capital serves more than a decorative purpose (such as marking a proper noun). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" OwnerDisplayName="Fortiter" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T01:32:02.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7386" CreationDate="2013-03-04T19:38:08.013" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the Official Code of Georgia (Annotated):  A person commits the offense of conspiracy to commit a crime when he together with one or more persons conspires to commit any crime and any one or more of such persons does any overt act to effect the object of the conspiracy... (OCGA 16-4-8).  Further, in the 'annotated' portion of the code, &quot;Conspiracy to commit particular substantive offense cannot exist without at least the degree of criminal intent necessary for substantive offense itself.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lets you off the hook in two different directions.  First, in order to commit the crime of conspiracy, you or someone else would have to take actual steps towards committing the underlying crime (i.e. the overt act element).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, and more importantly, Conspiracy is a specific intent crime, meaning there is a state of mind element required.  This is referred to as the Mens Rea (literally, 'Guilty Mind').  You can't commit conspiracy accidentally, you have to intend to actually commit the crime and you have to intend to conspire to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is based off the Georgia state legal code, but it is representative of the criminal code elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T19:38:08.013" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7397" CreationDate="2013-03-05T01:48:37.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you might want to look at the genre and also the time period to make the symbolism more effective. Just be aware that many of the symbols mentioned in the answers may have historical or cultural significance that may or may not apply to the potential audience and story that you are writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4825" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T01:48:37.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7406" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-05T04:00:59.390" Score="4" ViewCount="1896" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I cite multiple chapters from the same book? Do I have to use separate reference numbers, if they are by different authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4826" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-04T21:30:42.193" LastActivityDate="2018-03-04T21:30:42.193" Title="How to cite multiple chapters from same book in Vancouver style?" Tags="|style|citations|vancouver-system|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7406" CreationDate="2013-03-05T12:37:22.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand your question correctly, you want to cite from one book which is written by several authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you know which paragraph was written by which author and you cite different authors it is still one book. The idea of listing the sources is, that a reader can order these books and look up the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you have six different reference numbers, because you cite six different authors of the same book, the reader will be very puzzled why he has ordered the same book six times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, probably he will figure out that theses references refer to the same book, but there is no need to puzzle him. It's one book, so use one reference number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you want to show that you cite different authors, you can do that in your text. Like &quot;Mr A. Smith has written blablabla&quot; or putting the name in parentheses after the citation or whatever. But you do not need to do that. Referencing the source in the usual way is enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T12:37:22.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7402" CreationDate="2013-03-05T17:49:11.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not change capitalization to conform to some standard. You are quoting someone else: you should quote him as accurately as possible. The original writer may or may not have had a good reason for capitalizing in that way. I don't think it's your perogative to decide that he didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally when quoting we change capitalization to make a sentence look right. When we do, we normally put the changed letter in square brackets as a clue to the reader that we have changed something. For example, suppose the original said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While living in London, his brother always carried an umbrella.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wish to quote that without the restrictive clause. You could write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;[H]is brother always carried an umbrella,&quot; Mr Jones reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when there is something in a quote that is clearly and obviously an error, we do not simply change it. Usually we leave the error, and if we feel necessary to make clear that the error is in the original and not introduced by us when copying it, we put &quot;[sic]&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take the extreme: I think we would all agree that it would be flat wrong to deliberately change the meaning of a sentence being quoted because we disagree with what the original writer said. Like if we are quoting someone who said, &quot;Stalin was a great leader&quot;, then no matter how much you or I do not like Stalin, we do not have the right to change the quote to &quot;Stalin was a terrible leader&quot;. You certainly could say that you disagree with the person you are quoting, buy you don't have the right to change his quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, obviously changing &quot;great&quot; to &quot;terrible&quot; completely changes the meaning of the quote. But I think the same principle applies to lesser changes. Once you say that a change is so small that it doesn't matter ... what's the limit? Who decides? Best to say &quot;never&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing capitalization is unlikely to change the meaning of a quote: clearly we're at the very low end here. Still, writers do sometimes intend capitalization to convey meaning. There might well be a difference in intent between, &quot;Mr Jones was a great leader&quot; and &quot;Mr Jones was a Great Leader&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the particular example you give, I don't see any significance. But maybe the writer did. Maybe it is just a detail of style. And maybe not. I wouldn't touch it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T17:49:11.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7411" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-05T19:38:10.600" Score="-1" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;Eight of my books are available on Google Books as 100% online, downloadable, but no Creative Commons licensing. Now I am starting to see them show up in bookstores, in versions I didn't have printed. Amazon has a listing beginning with a statement that is both boilerplate and false:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then it cites the actual publication date, 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the best way to deal with these? Is this legal, given that I gave permission to download but not any Creative Commons license? Is there a &lt;code&gt;piracy@amazon.com&lt;/code&gt; or other such email address one can request? And can I request that references to this paperback be redirected to my actual ebook or the hardcover I published on Lulu?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way to request that monies tendered to unauthorized printing be redirected to me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8761" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-03-05T20:44:08.950" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T20:44:08.950" Title="Is there a way to ask online booksellers to pull pirated editions of my books?" Tags="|publishing|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7411" CreationDate="2013-03-05T20:41:57.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under the &quot;Product Details&quot; heading, you have several links for updating book information and notifying Amazon of problems. That'd be a good way to try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More directly, there's the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/contact-us/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Contact Us&lt;/a&gt; button on the help page. They should be able to direct you to the right place to alert them to the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T20:41:57.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6375" CreationDate="2013-03-06T00:18:56.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The writer has absolute power. If a work is sold to a publisher, it is almost unheard of that an editor will NOT make changes. It's a matter of negotiation between the writer and the editor which changes are acceptable to both parties. You have the absolute right to withdraw your work if you can't come to an agreement (but do be careful you haven't relinquished this right in your contract). So you do have absolute power, but here's how that power functions in the real world:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to publish through any publisher who is not you, be prepared to work on changes with an editor. Establish a congenial, collaborative relationship with the editor, and pick your battles. You might allow some changes you don't especially like to placate the editor, so that when you want to dig in your heels and resist some other change, the editor will be more likely to acquiesce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind two things: 1. The editor may have excellent changes in mind, which often improve the work. One of my longer stories was published only because the editor of the anthology, a brilliant writer himself, liked the story enough to want it to be a success, and he offered a bunch of great suggestions that worked! 2. If you resist the changes too much, the editor/publisher may decide to terminate the contract and not publish the work. You may have to decide whether it's more important to fight some change you hate than to have the work published with the hated change in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastEditorUserId="4805" LastEditDate="2013-03-07T06:15:33.683" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T06:15:33.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7406" CreationDate="2013-03-06T03:56:36.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icmje.org/urm_main.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (commonly called the Vancouver system) is also widely referred to as an Author-Number system, it will necessary to have a number for each author of a multi-chapter compilation (and more than one number for an author who produced two or more chapters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logically the treatment of a book to which several authors have made distinctly identified contributions should be the same as that of articles collected in a journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T03:56:36.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6375" CreationDate="2013-03-06T16:47:36.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The lawyer told me that I didn't have a legal problem, but I had a problem that most often dealt with by an agent. I asked for clues about how to move forward and the lawyer said writers have very little power once the contract is signed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm surprised any lawyer would tell a client with a contract question that they didn't have a legal problem.  That's like a restaurant manager telling a customer who'd been served the wrong wine, &quot;Hey, it's not me, you don't have a food problem.&quot;  If you've a contract, you've a contract problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you might not have is a contract solution.  Most states will grant great deference to the contract, with the assumption being that you have negotiated the very outcome you received.  There might be some wiggle room depending on the wording, but that is going to be very specific to the individual agreement you reached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No contract can force you to commit a statutory wrong, however.  If the editor's changes to your memoir wind up falsely casting someone in a bad light, or suggesting that you are culpable for some wrongdoing yourself, the contract itself might end up being nullified.  Even if it isn't, you or someone else might have a tort suit if the changes were egregious enough.  It all depends on the specifics of your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is the final question of how much your artistic integrity is worth to you.  Any contract can be breached, but are you willing to accept the resulting penalties?  Will doing so sour your relationship with the publisher?  Will this publisher then tell the next publisher, making it difficult to get published elsewhere?  Are the changes really that bad, or is it more about them changing your words without your permission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T16:47:36.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7416" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7420" CreationDate="2013-03-06T17:21:01.247" Score="4" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over on another site we're &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/q/1501/472&quot;&gt;talking about&lt;/a&gt; taking some of our content (on a particular theme) and re-packaging it as a printable PDF.  (The primary use case is paper.)  This wouldn't be a straight dump of the original posts; sometimes you want to edit some for a different audience, links don't work, and so on.  We're currently &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/a/1508/472&quot;&gt;thinking about&lt;/a&gt; using meta posts to facilitate this editing (so we can crowd-source that part of the work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: what's the best way to get from those posts to the final product, preserving as much formatting as possible so we don't have to re-do it?  One could work with the Markdown (are there translators for that to other formats?), or with the generated HTML (the actual web page).  Or one could cut/paste into one's favorite document-creation tool, which sounds like an unfortunate choice because it's labor-intensive &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the formatting wouldn't follow.  An additional consideration is that some of our content is in Hebrew (so non-ASCII).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that I'm treading dangerously close to &quot;too localized&quot;, but it seems like the same techniques that are used for wikis and blogs might apply here too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T22:08:00.657" Title="How should we go from Stack Exchange Q/A to publishable PDF with the least hassle?" Tags="|publishing|formatting|tools|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7184" CreationDate="2013-03-06T19:25:48.097" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lawyer. Any questions about specific rights, etc. should be directed to someone knowledgeable about the rules in your jurisdiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, there are a number of things that could complicate this question.  For example, you say 'your children' and refer to your 'ex-husband'.  Is he the father?  If so, do the custody arrangements allow him to make decisions on their behalf?  If that's the case, you may be out of options before even getting started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would also depend on context.  For example, she included the children's first names, but did she include last names, as well?  Writing a story about the funny thing Sally or Doug said the other day doesn't create the same concerns as would, &quot;Sally Hanson, at 123 Front St., North Little Rock, Arkansas.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to decide if what was written is really actionable.  While it may make you uncomfortable having her mention the children, the law might not take an interest unless she's actually putting them in harm's way or subjecting them to ridicule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also consider the potential damage bringing any type of legal suit against this woman would do to your relationship with your ex-husband, your children, and their relationship with each other.  A lawyer will be able to explain your rights, but you first need to decide if you are prepared for the fall-out of exercising those rights.  If the new wife's self-published book isn't popular, and you bring a suit that gets noticed by the media, you might wind up advertising the very thing you're trying to quash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T19:25:48.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7184" CreationDate="2013-03-07T15:13:46.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer. That said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether anything this woman wrote violates the law or gives you grounds for a lawsuit is probably a subject better discussed with a lawyer than with a group of amateur writers on a forum. If you're an American, this would be a matter of state law, so even if I knew all there was to know about the subject in my home state, it might not apply if you live in a different state. Double if you're in another country. Etc. That said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your concern? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did she say things about the children that would embarass them? If she said things about them that are false, this could rise to the level of being &quot;libel&quot;, in which case you might have grounds for a lawsuit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did she say things about them that could put them in danger? I'm not sure what that would be, but if so, you might have some grounds for a legal objection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it simply that you object to the violation of privacy? I think -- and let me repeat that I am not a lawyer -- that as long as what she says is true, and does not violate specific provisions of state privacy law -- that there's nothing you can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my home state of Michigan, it is illegal for a library, bookstore, or video store to to publicly reveal what books, videos, etc someone has borrowed, rented, or bought. It is illegal for a bank or similar institution to reveal your financial information without your consent. There are limits on government release of information about you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's about it. If someone writes an autobiograpy, he is inevitably going to talk about people he knows and things they did. If he lies about you, that's libel. But if he tells the truth, he has every legal right to say it. Think about all the things reporters publish every day about politicians and celebrities. Do you think those folks gave their consent to everything said about them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a self-published book, odds are she will sell somewhere from dozens to a few hundred copies. It's unlikely that the children's future employers, spouses, etc will ever see it unless you go out of your way to publicize it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T15:13:46.627" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7394" CreationDate="2013-03-07T16:25:02.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the point of view of practicality it's pretty hard for human beings from earth to adjust to other solar cycles etc. We're not built to operate in days much outside of our current 24 hour clock. People working in locations where the days are unusually long or short (or practically non-existent e.g. the South Pole) experience bizarre physiological and psychological effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason most SF writers fudge the issue by referring to &quot;Standard Cycles&quot; or &quot;Solar Days&quot; or &quot;Median Orbits&quot;. The nomenclature is alien enough to be exotic whilst clear enough to imply that time passes at the same rate. Star Trek is the exception not the rule. I think the &quot;Stardate&quot; thing was just a device to make the voyage of the USS Enterprise appear to be timeless and epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T16:25:02.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7416" CreationDate="2013-03-07T20:03:08.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have learned through experimentation that a new-enough version of Microsoft Word (we tested with 2010) supports format-preserving cut-and-paste from Stack Exchange posts.  We drew up some &lt;a href=&quot;https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1512/472&quot;&gt;formatting guidelines&lt;/a&gt; to get the content into shape (e.g. de-linkifying, since this is for paper).  This still involves manually cutting and pasting from the browser into some other program (e.g. Word), but it turns out we don't need to extract the source HTML or markdown to work with after all, so for a small project we can live with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T16:39:04.937" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T20:03:08.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7394" CreationDate="2013-03-08T17:14:12.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focus on your storytelling and how you structure your narrative. This will bring clarity to the timeline more than the syntax of the calendar you end up choosing. Recall your favorite science fiction authors - the vivid world they created and character arcs were probably primarily what drew you in, more than the delight of the alien language or non-earthly systems presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Storytelling and structure are your &quot;cake&quot;. The solar-system terminology you ultimately settle on will be the &quot;icing&quot; on that cake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4845" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T17:14:12.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7423" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7425" CreationDate="2013-03-08T22:27:12.867" Score="1" ViewCount="6186" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to import a script from Celtx into Final Draft? Going to switch and it seems as though my script is &quot;locked&quot; into Celtx's format. I'm hoping this is possible and that there isn't a huge typing project in my future. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4845" LastActivityDate="2022-04-25T00:40:34.773" Title="Is there a way to import a script from Celtx into Final Draft?" Tags="|software|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4244" CreationDate="2013-03-08T22:34:18.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Born Into This- Charles Bukowski's documentary.  It is more inspirational than you can imagine- Just avoid adopting his drinking habits.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4847" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T22:34:18.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7423" CreationDate="2013-03-09T06:51:36.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Final Draft&lt;/em&gt; will open a &lt;strong&gt;text file exported&lt;/strong&gt; from &lt;em&gt;Celtx&lt;/em&gt; and give you the option of converting it to standard formatting for a screenplay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite detailed instructions are given in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://support.finaldraft.com/article.aspx?cid=1001&amp;amp;aid=546&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Final Draft support forum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T06:51:36.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7416" CreationDate="2013-03-09T22:08:00.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you only want to convert a handful of pages into PDF, then you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do that in Microsoft Word and you will &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; be ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to convert a large quantity of webpages into PDFs and wish to preserve their edibility and eliminate unnecessary information, I am going to strongly suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Export the webpage with the source information as HTML. Open the saved page in Adobe Dreamweaver (or similar) and make all the changes to the text and page layout in HTML and then save the new content again as HTML. When all final changes have been made, then create the PDF from the HTML in Adobe Acrobat (or similar).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why this and not Word? Two reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One, I find that Word tends to get mucked up when you've cut and paste from the web. Things tend to flow incorrectly and un-mucking it up tends to be quite frustrating. You experience may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two, if you wish to be forward thinking and want to eventually create an ePub or a Kindle book or what have you I have found in my experiences that you get better results when you create your e-book from HTML as opposed to MS Word or even PDFs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be forward thinking it's better to handle your product once through HTML editing than to handle it twice through Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T22:08:00.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7427" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7428" CreationDate="2013-03-10T01:05:52.920" Score="1" ViewCount="3590" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am creating a practical guide book with images. I am using Scrivener. I need to include images into the text, but I will then pass over my draft to a layout designer to layout out the project in Indesign. Should I bother putting full size images into Scrivener, or should I just put placeholders in and then hand over the full size images to the designer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastEditorUserId="4105" LastEditDate="2013-03-10T23:11:55.997" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T23:11:55.997" Title="How to include photos in my Scrivener book?" Tags="|process|scrivener|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7427" CreationDate="2013-03-10T02:27:38.993" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a user of both programs, I would definitely say just put in a placeholder and let your designer import the images. Having them in the Scrivener text isn't going to help. You export them as Word or whatever, and then as a designer I'm going to strip out everything but the raw text so I can style and format it properly in InDesign. I'd much rather you put [PLACEHOLDER] so I can find it easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to include instructions about size, text wrap, alignment, etc. by all means do so, but don't bother sticking the image into your Scrivener document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T02:27:38.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7429" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-10T09:24:36.023" Score="8" ViewCount="1980" Body="&lt;p&gt;Parentheses have many uses; I find myself reaching for them often.  Increasingly though, I realise I can convey the same meaning without parentheses with little or only minor loss in succinctness.  The benefits of not using parentheses, it seems to me, is that parentheses almost always throw off the reader in the reading flow of the sentence.  Parentheses provide little information about how, when reading, the reader should enter and exit the parenthesised statement in a fluid manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not always the case, for instance consider the sentence from wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Mrs. Pennyfarthing (What? Yes, that was her name!) was my landlady.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, the statement inside the parentheses evokes a switch in tone and style of narration that would be difficult to convey otherwise.  Still it suffers from the fluidity problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other times as in the following sentence it is possible to remove the parentheses and accurately convey the same meaning, but necessarily with a loss in tone, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic,&#xA;  lightning) when I was three.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are a huge number of cases when the parentheses appear easily omittable, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you&#xA;  please. (Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any benefit of using parentheses in these cases?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4854" OwnerDisplayName="user1823" LastEditorUserId="633" LastEditDate="2013-03-10T12:14:52.973" LastActivityDate="2020-01-17T14:43:22.693" Title="How to use parentheses" Tags="|punctuation|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7429" CreationDate="2013-03-10T12:23:03.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say the first example &quot;suffers from the fluidity problem.&quot; That is because it was meant to suffer from the fluidity problem. It is a kind of anacoluthon—usually set off by dashes—which is an intentional break in sentence construction, meant to disrupt the flow for a rhetorical effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second case, parentheses offer a quick way to add information into the flow of the sentence without awkward or excessive addition of syntax. To omit the parentheses there and still add examples, one would have to add extra words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident involving lightning at a picnic when I was three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's still parenthetical information and it might benefit from commas, but the original version involving two words in parentheses conveys all that information in a more compact style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the third example, the parentheses are used as an aside, a turning away from the main narrative thrust to amplify a point that may deviate from the main narrative thread. It is impossible to tell whether it does so without more context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T12:23:03.807" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7427" CreationDate="2013-03-10T18:05:16.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only advantage I can think of to including the images in the file you submit to the designer is so that the designer can then see exactly which picture you want placed where. It seems a lot easier to include the image than to say, &quot;put the image with the blue cat right here&quot; or &quot;use image MVC3675 right here.&quot; Either way the designer will have to either remove the note from the text or fix any bugs that arise from including the image. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I wouldn't worry about is formatting the image at all (including borders, shadows or other visual decorations). Don't try to make it look exciting. Just make sure your formatting is simple and consistent (think high school English paper). Also submit the high resolution files separately! The designer won't be using images directly from your word processing file (it seems like you know these things, but I've seen people do them before).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another idea is to consult a style guide like the Chicago Manual of Style. They have a whole section on how to submit a transcript for publication. You could also ask the designer his or her preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4853" LastEditorUserId="4853" LastEditDate="2013-03-10T18:11:24.183" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T18:11:24.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7432" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7433" CreationDate="2013-03-11T20:57:48.267" Score="3" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm preparing some briefing notes on various open licences and I'm looking for some clarification on legal aspects of standard practice in the UK. (If there is a better SE site for this question feel free to move it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us say  a novelist has a book published in the UK, and the book is later scanned and distributed for free on the internet by a malicious third party.  What UK laws have been broken? I mean, one can certainly see how it would be hurtful and damaging to the industry, but I'm interested to know which specific laws have been broken - is it exactly the same as for, say, music and film, or is it covered separately? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS I'm asking specifically for UK law here, but I'm sure that answers dealing with US law will be informative and interesting; I'd like to see them, they just won't help much with the problem I have...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3199" LastEditorUserId="2619" LastEditDate="2013-03-12T01:58:40.700" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T20:51:09.020" Title="UK laws broken by piracy of novels" Tags="|publishing|novel|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7432" CreationDate="2013-03-12T05:26:24.447" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the most relevant law is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/contents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/contents&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terms are defined in Part I, Chapter 2. Section 17 (2) defines infringement by copying for literary works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Copying in relation to a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work means reproducing the work in any material form.This includes storing the work in any medium by electronic means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would be the scanning part. As for distribution via the internet, Section 20 (2) (b) includes in 'infringement by communication to the public':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the making available to the public of the work by electronic transmission in such a way that members of the public may access it from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveat: IANAL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T05:26:24.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7434" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7437" CreationDate="2013-03-12T15:25:36.430" Score="5" ViewCount="580" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently have my book published on Amazon using createspace and Lulu (google weave of the ride). However, I am not happy with the quality of the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want a glossy cover, bleached white paper etc. I would like to have more control over this and get a more professional look that people are going to want to have as part of their collection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with my book, in fact it has some great reviews and feedback, but I feel the format is letting it down. What can I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-03-12T16:09:29.620" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T07:10:16.380" Title="Not happy with format of self-published book. How to proceed?" Tags="|publishing|formatting|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7436" CreationDate="2013-03-12T17:36:34.280" Score="4" ViewCount="2405" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing my first undergraduate research paper for computer science and I think my lack of experience is starting to get on my supervisor's nerves. I've written a program that collects video metadata and attempts to organise videos into a coherent sequence using the metadata. The program has also been tested by a panel of users. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The supervisor has given me the following sections to work with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Introduction&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Background&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;perhaps sub-sections on different areas of background&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The  approach&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  3.1. Overall approach&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  3.2. Detailed design&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Key implementation decisions&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Experiments&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Related work&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Conclusions&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to understand the difference between (3) and (4) in the context of what I'm doing. Specifically, how is a detailed design different from implementation decisions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4865" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-21T05:26:43.917" LastActivityDate="2023-01-02T10:55:19.050" Title="Structure for computer science research paper" Tags="|academic-writing|structure|research|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7435" CreationDate="2013-03-13T03:50:31.763" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Design would include things like &quot;order the data by date&quot; or &quot;track each author independently&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Implementation would be things like an actual database schema or a routine itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key difference would be that design is &quot;what I need to make happen&quot; and implementation is &quot;how did I make it happen&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4858" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T03:50:31.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7434" CreationDate="2013-03-13T05:15:45.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www1.lightningsource.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lightning Source&lt;/a&gt;. I've heard good things about them and I've seen a couple of the books - they look pretty good. Considering using it for a volume this year (that I'm &lt;strong&gt;editing&lt;/strong&gt;, I should add, not writing! I'm not on board with this self-publishing malarkey). Also, unlike CreateSpace, the printer's name isn't listed as the publisher in online bookstores (I don't know that for sure, but that's what I've been told by the company).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T05:15:45.323" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7358" CreationDate="2013-03-13T06:27:32.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to make an amendment to the above. It's entirely possible to have a unique, overly-described character who isn't a Mary Sue, and a character with little to no description who is. There's no real formula that can exactly pin this down. Those listed above have good points and went over the common tell-tale signs, but here's what I consider to be the real problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Undue attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mary-Sues get the attention of the author for not having done enough. They get the attention of the characters around them for reasons that just don't exist in the story, for good or ill. A character that everyone hates for no good reason is as much of a Mary Sue as one who's universally loved. Anti-Mary-Sues fall for the same sins as what they were trying to protest. Their ego, the author's love of their darling pearl, and private fantasies and wish fulfillment has out-shown the story they were going to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to suggest that everyone forget what they know about Mary-Sues, though. Don't think about them. Don't concern yourself. Keep your own ego in check, and try to develop all your characters without focusing on too much on a favorite. Listen when your writing buddies say 'how is she getting away with this?' and find a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; answer. The symptoms of Mary Sue-ism will fade, even if you keep the violet eyes and fiery hair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People too afraid of falling into this category can drab their characters down until they're no longer interesting. I've known quite a few writers too scared to let anything interesting happen in their books, crying 'realism!' as if a baseball bat of critical disbelief was going to beat them at any moment. I used to be one of them. And I wrote Mary Sues in my early teens, before my writing matured and I found more interesting things to pursue instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep your work balanced, work hard on your writing, and don't worry about what people have done before. Writing's too much work to spend all your energy scared of what other people might think of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4869" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T06:27:32.477" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="143" CreationDate="2013-03-13T07:16:14.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on the people, what they're good at, and who came up with what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been co-writing as a hobby for the last six years, and in the last year started co-writing seriously. My writing partner isn't great with prose, and his characters can be a little flat, but he's got the most amazing ability to grab interesting ideas out of the air, and he has an instinctive ability to throw in really effective plot hooks. I tend to focus heavily on twisting existing elements into complications and intrigue, and I love character development and plot structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We'll write the first draft together on google docs, while chatting about the work on Skype. He'll do about two thirds of the brain-storming and solution-fetching. Some characters are 'mine' (he can't write them), some are his, some are shared. I tend to write a few paragraphs where my characters are acting or talking, then he'll do the same, with some liberties for simultaneous action. Sometimes one of us writes a few pages alone. The POV sometimes gets wonky, and there are style changes, and the prose isn't great. The point of this stage is to get a nicely proportioned skeleton in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I go in for the rewrite, rewrite everything alone, give his characters more depth, fill in scenes I feel need to be in the story, and occasionally cry to my cowriter to get me out of plot-holes. Once I finish, I'll polish excessively until I'm dragged away, and he'll go through the manuscript and pick out prose problems. (Along with a slew of other people making edits.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a self-published venture, so once that's done with I'll use my multimedia degree to lay out the book in InDesign, then convert into HTML with regular expressions for the e-book version. I also paint the covers, though I may step down from that eventually. We split the proceeds unevenly in my favor, with a written contract saying that if our duties shift, we'll renegotiate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4869" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T07:16:14.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7429" CreationDate="2013-03-13T13:38:10.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Robusto has already discussed the way that the parentheses perform specific jobs. In some ways, aren't they analogous to techniques like the passive voice? Passive sentences can be used  to accomplish specific goals (&quot;The woman was praised by all the people&quot; keeps the emphasis on the woman instead of on the people praising her), but can be easily overused and misused, and are therefore avoided by many writers.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T13:38:10.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7441" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7442" CreationDate="2013-03-13T17:43:39.467" Score="5" ViewCount="1203" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the final stages of writing a book and currently I am preparing the index.  Are there any rules whether index entries should be listed in singular or plural?&#xA;Currently I have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Markov chains, 20, 30-40, 50&#xA;    with discrete state space, 33&#xA;    with continuous state space, 38&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I change this to &quot;Markov chain&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4870" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T18:40:37.293" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T18:40:37.293" Title="singular or plural for index entries" Tags="|style|technical-writing|indexing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7441" CreationDate="2013-03-13T18:33:37.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it depends on how the item is discussed in the body of the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a Markov chain is something referred to as a single entity, then index it as a single item. If you discuss several of them at once, or generalize (like saying &quot;black holes have thus-and-such properties&quot;), I'd use the plural. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T18:33:37.150" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7444" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-14T19:02:58.880" Score="10" ViewCount="75062" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I'm talking about a length of time in a cover letter, let's say 5.5 years, what would be the correct way to write this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;five-and-a-half years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5-1/2 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5.5 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3811" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-05T18:56:39.897" LastActivityDate="2018-05-05T18:56:39.897" Title="What is the correct way to write a fractional number in a formal letter?" Tags="|style|business-writing|time-depiction|cover-letter|numerals|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7444" CreationDate="2013-03-14T19:52:53.513" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;five and a half years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No hyphens. Hyphens are for adjective phrases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a five-and-a-half-year journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also don't use the hyphen with the fraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;⁄&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T19:52:53.513" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2286" CreationDate="2013-03-15T16:15:35.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Couple of tangential thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) It's hard to say what would stand out. If you wrote a story set in America where someone ordered drinks and food at the same time, as an American, I can't say that it would give me a moment's pause. Rare? Sure. Unheard of? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I'm reminded of a movie I once saw that was made in Britain and set in Britain, in which there is a character who is supposed to be an American who at one point says, &quot;I have to make a trunk call to my solicitor.&quot; I found that very jarring: an American would say, &quot;I have to make a long distance call to my lawyer.&quot; But I was amused to see that in fact it was deliberate: at the end the clever detective points this out and reveals that the person is an imposter. (The catch for me as a viewer was that I assumed it was the writer's mistake and not the character's.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some things that will leap out of the page, and others ... won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) As you learn about such cultural quirks, be careful not to overdo them. I recall reading a story once written by an American and set in Britain that struck me as one long string of cultural references. In one short story he brought in Britain's television tax, Middle-Eastern immigrants, Jaguar, royalty, many many words that are different between the dialects of English, and on and on. I got the impression that the writer was either trying to impress us with how much he knew about English culture or was just fascinated by the differences. But it really detracted from the story. It's one thing to get it right when it comes up, it's quite another to go out of your way to bring up every regionalism you can think of. To a certain extent, it adds color, but beyond that, it's just distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Bear in mind that this is not just an issue between countries, but between sub-cultures within a country. Like, I'm a Fundamentalist Christian, and I often get a laugh at how &quot;my folks&quot; are portrayed in fiction. Not just when someone's obviously trying to paint a group he doesn't like in a bad light, you expect that, but even mundane stuff. For example, I once saw a movie where a Christian character is going on a trip and as he's about to leave another Christian character says, &quot;The Lord be with you.&quot; And he replies, &quot;Yes, and may God bless you while I'm away.&quot; And they go back and forth through a half dozen &quot;God be with you&quot; kind of statements to each other. Any one of them would have sounded plausible to me, but no, we don't go back and forth with the bless-you's like that. We just don't. It's like the writer took every religious-sounding statement he had ever heard and strung them all together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I live just a few miles from Detroit. But if I tried to write a story set in a black neighborhood there, I wonder if someone who was actually from that neighborhood would find it absurdly unrealistic. Ditto if I tried to write about wealthy investment bankers. Hey, I remember when I was in high school I was one of the science-club geeks. At one point I dated a girl who was in orchestra and the arts crowd, and I was struck by how different our sub-cultures were. I went to parties with her friends and the topics of conversation were just so different, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I think this is one of the biggest challenges facing any writer who tries to write about people who are not from his own little group. Ooh, reminds me of a book review I read once. A politician named Spiro Agnew had written a novel. I never read the book, but I read a review where the reviewer said that many people were interested to see if characters in the book would be thinly-veiled representations of real people. And then she wrote, &quot;They are. They are all Agnew.&quot; She went on to say that ever character in the book thought and acted just like Mr Agnew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T16:15:35.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7449" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7450" CreationDate="2013-03-15T16:44:28.190" Score="1" ViewCount="2196" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the story I'm writing i have a 2k word chapter that will either be attached to my fourth chapter or be a prelude. (prologue? I'm not really sure what the difference is or if there is one.) My issue is that i don't know if it qualifies as a prelude/prologue. I'm going to post it and i apologize if its too long for what this site normally has. I couldn't find anything that specified a word count. (It hasn't been edited yet beyond myself but i am more interested in the over all story being prologue material.) Quick warning about content - It has action based violence and a couple cuss words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Takira laid flat against the inside of the dust filled air ducts of the ship that had been her home for the last sixteen years. Three, maybe four family members scoured the room below. &lt;em&gt;They’re not the brightest bunch.&lt;/em&gt; Not once had they considered looking up. Takira’s small stature made the ducts the perfect hiding place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I thought you said she was in here…” one said in a booming voice that vibrated the thin metal she was laying on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I swear I saw her come in here!” Shouted another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A slight giggle forced its way up Takira’s throat. Desperately she struggled to hold it back. However, as if it were an insect fighting for its freedom she could not keep it at bay. Within her mind she imagined each person below as they stopped and looked up. She could feel their burning gaze as the realization hit them. She was in the vents and now they knew it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She laid perfectly still, hoping that maybe with their argument that they hadn’t heard her. Takira’s answer came in the form of a loud thud as something hit the side of the duct, it groaned under the added weight. A split second passed and the duct gave way, its far end fell to the floor creating a long dusty slide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Takira kicked her boots out into the sides of the now slanted duct in an attempt to keep from falling right into their waiting hands. It was a fruitless effort as year’s worth of dust that caked the walls trembled and fell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Shit,” she mumbled under her breath as her momentum pulled her towards the ground. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Copious amounts of powderized debris rolled out of the shaft ahead of her, blanketing the room. Takira pulled her limbs close and hoped there wouldn’t be any grasping hands waiting for her the second she was in view. Seconds later, she whooshed out of the shaft and onto the floor, surrounded by four gagging family members. So caught up in their choking and coughing that not a single one noticed she was sprawled out right in front of their faces. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Takira didn’t wait. She jumped onto the air duct and climbed, out of their reach. Each step sounded like she was stomping her way down a hallway, echoing in and around the hollow duct. If they hadn’t noticed her before, surly they would now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She quickened her pace as hard plastic bullets zipped by her body and the sounds of gunfire deafened her ears. Ahead of her, she spotted her only escape, the doorway to the corridor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The duct flew to the side as someone below rammed into it, sending Takira tumbling off the edge. On instinct, she grabbed at the first thing she saw, a thin chain that dangled from the ceiling. Its links clanked together as her momentum sent her swinging back and forth. A sharp piercing pain raced down her arm and back as a bullet skimmed over her bare shoulder, splitting the skin and breaking her grip. It was a brutal reminder of just what was at stake: her life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her back slammed into the floor, the force compressed her lungs and forced out every tiny morsel of precious air. Takira didn’t have time to lay around gasping for breath however, as bullets ricocheted all around her. She scrambled back to her feed and darted for the safety of the hallway, quietly thanking whichever god was on her side for giving them all such horrible aim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Takira clamped her hand down over her shoulder wound as she rushed through the opening and into the corridor. She didn’t dare give herself the chance to slow down, the others were right behind her and the corridor was far too exposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rounding the closest corner her eyes scanned for a new vent. A jet of fire shot past her face. Her nostrils filled with the stench of singed hair. Takira jumped backwards, and lost her footing on the smooth deck plating. Falling backwards, she saw standing not more then ten feet up the hallway was her father. A toothy grin spread across his face and a makeshift flamethrower held in his hands, he readied for another shot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Hold still for Daddy,” he said, raising the tip of the gun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If it wasn’t for the fact that he was trying to kill her, Takira might have laughed at the sheer corniness of what he said. Instead, she rolled backwards, springing back onto her feet and ran. Tiny droplets of flaming liquid splashed off the ground onto her pant legs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She ignored the pain as they burned their way through, leaving hot bubbling embers stuck to her skin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the flamethrower constantly spraying fire all around, her there was no way she could get into a vent. Takira grumbled and charged forward trying to move side to side to keep him from getting an easy target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Up ahead she spotted her only hope, an open doorway with a pitch-black room beyond. Takira leapt through the door, landing on the hard grate-like flooring. Instantly she heard what sounded like something winding up. In the center of the room, a small object sparked and whirred as it began generating power. She could hear her father right behind her, there was no choice. She kept running hoping to beat whatever was about to happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The room lit up as her father sprayed molten fire rained down around her, the room was barren, save for the object in the center. It grew louder and faster with each passing second. Thick blue arcs of electricity began leaping from the device and sparking with loud pops as they connected with the deck. She heard her father break into thick laughter as the arcs continued to grow larger, dancing across the floor in all directions. “Money well spent!” he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As she ran by the device, her leg passed through one of the arcs. Her muscles tightened and cramped as she crashed to the floor. Takira’s fingers trembled with panic as she clawed at the grating using all her strength to pull herself forward. More arcs danced across the floor, burning her leg as they passed over her skin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With droplets of liquid fire, still falling around her she pulled herself forward refusing to give in. Finally, Takira gained enough ground to be free of the electrical device. Up ahead she spotted another door and just as she was getting the feeling back, she heard a loud ‘ding!’ She planted her still weak feet into the deck, and jumped for the opening. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The device exploded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The shockwave sent her flying through the door, and she slammed into the hallway wall on the opposite side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Takira’s body shuddered as she forced herself to her feet, there was no time to sleep no matter how exhausted she felt. Her body ached from numerous burns, and at least a couple cracked ribs but she was still alive; if only by a little bit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She limped forward, using the wall for support. Every step was agony, as if she were walking waist deep in hot coals. It was so much that she didn’t notice a wall directly in front of her, and walked face first into a thick glass window. She blinked, confused as all she could see was her own reflection. Her face was covered in muck and blood oozed from many fresh cuts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then she saw something spectacular, behind her reflection loomed a giant green and blue planet, like a gemstone hanging in the blackness of space. They had arrived and in turn, she had survived. The signal blared across the ship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Still alive?” her father asked as he calmly walked up the hallway behind her, his voice dripped with disappointment. “A pity…” he said as he grabbed the back of her shirt and began to drag her down the other side of the hall. “Now we have to waste an escape pod….”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her father had never liked Takira. She was far too petite for what he considered a true Barbarian. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He drug her down the length of the hallway to where an escape hatch hung open, the pod inside was hardly big enough to hold a single person. With a rough flip of his meaty wrist Takira was flung inside, “Do me a favor,” he said as the door began to shut, “Don’t come back.” With that, he turned his back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Wait!” An old woman walked toward her father, dressed in fine robes that covered her frame. On top of her head rested a pure white animal skull. “I believe you forgot this,” held in her hands was the reason Takira went through such a difficult trial. The heirloom, passed down through the family, the sentient rifle Thor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You were planning to kick her out without this, weren't you.” Her voice shook with anger as she walked to the closing door and slipped the weapon under. &#xA;  “That is no Barbarian!” her father bellowed, pointing back at Takira. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The elderly women punched him across the face. He staggered backwards and Takira’s mouth fell open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“She survived, that’s Barbarian enough,” the woman said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The door sealed shut. Takira had no idea who the woman was, but she liked her.&#xA;  The pod rattled as it popped free of the ship. Through the window she could see her home growing smaller as the pod drifted closer to the planet. Black scorch marks littered its hull and large metal patches were strewn about. Barbarians weren’t exactly known for their repairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Soon her view vanished behind flame and smoke as the pod began to enter the planets atmosphere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Takira bounced around inside the pod as if giants were tossing it back and forth. The turbulence would have been enough to make her sick, if she had anything in her stomach. She had no way to tell where she was going or had the knowledge to steer the pod. All she could do was strap herself in, clutch her new weapon in her arms and wait to hit the ground. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The pod slammed into the dirt and Takira caught a glimpse of trees as her momentum shot her forward against the seat straps. A loud explosion took her by surprise as the door blew off and cold forest air rushed inside, bringing with it an overwhelming smell of pine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the door off, the pod was no longer safe. Quickly she slung the rifle over her back, and she began to climb out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Changing of ownership protocol initiated,” chimed her weapons AI in a dry electronic voice. “Accessing DNA… creating new genetic profile, Takira Wolf… Done… Returning to stand by mode.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Standing on top of her pod, she looked across the horizon. The sun was high in the sky, blocked by a belt of thick rain clouds. Each of the many treetops swayed with the cool wind. It was mesmerizing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Takira forgetting the damage her body had suffered, slipped down off the pod and fell into the moist dirt. She smiled ignoring the pain and hands ran through, for the first time, real dirt. Movement caught her attention as a well-armored figure stepped from the tree line, covered head to toe in body armor. The armor blocked its race and gender from Takira’s prying eyes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Who the hell are you?” She drew Thor and jumped to her feet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A mechanical voice erupted from its helmet, “My employees call me ‘The Doge’ and I’m an explorer, scientist and some times a teacher. And who is it that has so gracefully crashed into my forest home?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The name’s Takira” —she took a step forward— “and what the fuck’s a teacher?”&#xA;  Doge laughed raising his hands, “Now now, there’s no need for hostility. Tell me, young Barbarian, do you know anything about Earth?” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Large drops of water ran down Takira’s face as cold rain began to fall. “How'd you know that I’m a Barbarian?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Who else would point a gun at the first person they saw?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Takira’s cheeks flushed and she lowered the rifle. “What’s Earth?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doge held his arms wide, “This young Takira is Earth, the lost human homeworld!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The events of the main story take place four years after this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4732" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-03-15T23:03:15.010" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T23:03:15.010" Title="Does this qualify as a prelude or prologue?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|pacing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7449" CreationDate="2013-03-15T17:12:43.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether you use this section as a prologue (I think prelude is more commonly used to refer to music) or a flashback is ultimately a stylistic and structural decision that depends on the overall flow of your book. I find myself rearranging/moving chunks of text around quite a bit while editing. That said, as a reader I prefer books to be told in chronological order unless there is a clear reason to do otherwise. It's just less confusing. I would suggest you consider the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are the style, settings, and characters of this &quot;chapter&quot; so different from the main book that this section could create misleading expectations in the reader (you don't want readers to get attached to Takira and be super annoyed that she's suddenly no longer the focus)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does this section create a suitable introduction to the characters/world/themes/problems of your book, or is it more of a narrow info-chunk that shouldn't be given the prominence of a prologue? If it's too narrow, you might want to edit it to include ties to the overall book (for example, including a introductory sentence or two that explains who these people are and how they are examples of the type of folk who people your world). Prologues sometimes contain info that that sets the thematic stage for the book, and introduce that kinds of ideas/personal challenges that the characters will struggle with, even if the main characters aren't in the prologue. Is there a way to do this with your piece?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way: Takira is certainly an interesting character. Her extreme casualness in the face of death is a bit startling! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T17:12:43.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7451" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-16T09:32:44.223" Score="2" ViewCount="366" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there writing competitions/awards for novel length works by authors under 18? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.themanbookerprize.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;prizes for professional novelists&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yeovilprize.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;amateur novelists&lt;/a&gt;, but I'm looking for something for under 18s or under 16s...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3199" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-10-16T09:48:29.063" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T10:05:19.057" Title="Are there any contests for teenage writers?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7453" CreationDate="2013-03-16T04:59:10.703" Score="2" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question arises from this sentence in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/TheEnemy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my story&lt;/a&gt;, which was originally written in Hebrew and later translated by me to English. In Hebrew I say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;קמתי בבוקר והלכתי למוצב. היה זה יום בהיר של תחילת האביב. כשהלכתי בדרך לעבר המוצב, יצא לי ליהנות מהירוק האביב של השדה, לפני שהקיץ נותן בו את אותותיו.&amp;rlm;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;while in English I say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I woke up in the morning, and went to the post. It was a bright day at the beginning of spring. When I walked down the road that leads to the post, I enjoyed the lively green of the field, before the summer manifests itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what I mean to say is that the field is green and lively during springtime but after Summer it will turn less lively and green (or as we say in Hebrew &quot;נתן בו את אותותיו&quot;, which roughly translated means &quot;unleashed its signs/marks/influences on it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the best way to say it in English? Furthermore, which tense should I use, given that the story is supposedly written in springtime, before summer takes place? The people on &lt;em&gt;##English&lt;/em&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://freenode.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Freenode&lt;/a&gt; had a hard time with it. (And as someone there joked, I'd better find a good way to phrase it in English, before I miss the Israeli spring again.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4887" OwnerDisplayName="Shlomi Fish" LastEditorUserId="4664" LastEditDate="2013-03-17T06:37:16.103" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T17:14:46.400" Title="Best way to emphasise the greenness of the fields in spring in comparison with summer" Tags="|translation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7452" CreationDate="2013-03-16T05:30:03.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;best&quot; way to say it in English. What you are trying to say is a subtle observation by a  fiction writer, namely YOU. (Even it this is actually non-fiction, it nevertheless utilizes creativity in its modes of expression).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's up to you to say it the way you want to say it. You have free reign to do it any way you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the tense, the most likely way to do it is probably conditional, thus: &quot;By the time summer arrived, the grass would have lost its luster.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may as well go ahead and craft an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The field vibrated with the pale green flush of life that ran through the newborn blades of grass. Only a few months later, when summer had exerted its control on the world, the grass would darken and deepen into the green of fading promise, but now, while promise remained the word of the day, the grass spoke to him of all the love he might ever find and never lose.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you think of this meager off-the-cuff attempt, I hope it illustrates my point.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" OwnerDisplayName="John M. Landsberg" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-03-16T18:21:26.173" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T18:21:26.173" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7452" CreationDate="2013-03-16T13:38:26.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest you look at how other writers have used color and other imagery to suggest the freshness of spring and youth fading inexorably into age. Here's Dylan Thomas, for one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And playing, lovely and watery&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And fire green as grass.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Time held me green and dying&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Though I sang in my chains like the sea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, read all of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15378&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fern Hill&lt;/a&gt;. It's all about the very progression of youth to age that you seem to want to describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T13:38:26.057" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7452" CreationDate="2013-03-16T16:27:12.023" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to find a fairly literal translation, couldn't you play around with English phrases that communicate the meaning? Essentially, since you want to suggest the &quot;marks&quot; of summer, think about what those marks are and mention them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I enjoyed the lively green of the field, not yet faded from the ravages of summer&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;...not yet dulled by the heat of summer&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;...not yet muted by the heat of summer,&quot; or something like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also find a more specific, evocative verb than &quot;enjoyed,&quot; which might help you determine the rest of the phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T16:27:12.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7452" CreationDate="2013-03-16T17:49:45.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I woke up in the morning, and went to the post. It was a bright day at the beginning of spring. When I walked down the road that leads to the post, I enjoyed the lively green of the field, before the summer manifests itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the mix of tenses a little jarring; for example “walked down” being past &lt;em&gt;vs&lt;/em&gt; “leads” present; or  “enjoyed” being past &lt;em&gt;vs&lt;/em&gt; “manifests” present.  Perhaps use “would manifest”.  Anyhow, fixing those problems with tense leads to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When I woke in the morning, a bright morning at the front of spring, I went to the post.  As  I walked the road on my way, I marvelled at the lively green of the field, a green it would hold til summer came down upon it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following form, which I remark upon below, has been suggested in a comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The early spring day awakened me with sunlight so urgent and pervasive I almost felt I was breathing it. Minutes later I was walking the road to the post, admiring a field of grass so freshly green it seemed lit from within. I enjoyed its vibrancy even more when I reflected how summer would all too soon impose itself, dialing the color down to a dull, dark, nearly lifeless shade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, &lt;em&gt;urgent and pervasive&lt;/em&gt; seems overblown, an unnecessary exaggeration.   &lt;em&gt;Minutes later&lt;/em&gt; adds an unnecessary and undesirable sense of hurry, but the rest of that sentence is ok. Verb &lt;em&gt;enjoyed&lt;/em&gt; is weak and nonspecific.  The idiom or metaphor &lt;em&gt;dialing...down&lt;/em&gt; has a technical overtone that clashes with the natural setting of the rest of the passage.  Phrase “dull, dark, nearly lifeless shade” again seems an unnecessary exaggeration, although I grant we don't know what tone the paragraph should end with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastEditorUserId="2619" LastEditDate="2013-03-16T20:02:52.727" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T20:02:52.727" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7457" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-16T21:55:49.030" Score="1" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;When using an abbreviation such as OFr (Old French) or ME (Middle English) in academic writing, what is the best way to stylise it? Masses of punctuation looks messy, but I am concerned my assignment will be more difficult to read without it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... e.g.: “domynacyon”, from the OFr &lt;em&gt;dominacion&lt;/em&gt;; first appearing in the late 14th C.&lt;br&gt; is “decreas [-eth]” as a verb, from the OFr &lt;em&gt;descroistre&lt;/em&gt;; ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... e.g.: “domynacyon”, from the O.Fr. &lt;em&gt;dominacion&lt;/em&gt;; first appearing in the late 14th C. &lt;br&gt;is “decreas [-eth]” as a verb, from the O.Fr. &lt;em&gt;descroistre&lt;/em&gt;; ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Wormfood" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T18:13:20.970" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T18:13:20.970" Title="Should I punctuate abbreviations for Old English, Middle English etc. in academic writing?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7457" CreationDate="2013-03-16T22:24:06.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Old English&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;OE&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;OEng&lt;/strong&gt;.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Middle English&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;ME&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;MidE&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;MidEng&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Early Modern English&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;EModE&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;EModEng&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Modern English&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;ModE&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;ModEng&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's significant variation because one doesn't always need to make every possible distinction. So use whatever combination of these you need. My general principle is to use the shortest simplest abbreviations possible -- otherwise, why abbreviate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some possibilities, of many:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;OE, ME, ModE&lt;/em&gt;  (if it's mostly about Middle English with a few Modern references)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;OE, MidE, ME&lt;/em&gt;  (if it's mostly about Modern English with a few MidEng references)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;OEngl, MidEngl, ModEngl&lt;/em&gt; (if you're being paid by the letter)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for stylization, this is a matter for the editor to decide.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Consult the stylesheet for the journal you're submitting to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastEditorUserId="4885" LastEditDate="2013-03-16T22:41:37.160" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T22:41:37.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7460" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7461" CreationDate="2013-03-18T03:52:06.787" Score="20" ViewCount="24974" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've noticed something in writing: it's difficult to convey pain, and even specific types of pain, to an audience who's comfortably sitting at home in an easy chair. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can hardly imagine pain until I'm injured myself, in fact. The sting of freezing never hits home until I find myself on a mountain slope. I've no problem with the situational tension, but conveying the suffering (sharp or aching, burning or freezing, immediate or escalating) seems to be harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques can I use to really make the audience empathetic? What's proven to be the most effective? Something prose-based? Reactionary? Who writes pain extremely well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4869" LastEditorUserId="47470" LastEditDate="2021-02-09T01:27:03.837" LastActivityDate="2021-02-09T01:27:03.837" Title="Effective techniques for describing pain" Tags="|technique|torture|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7460" CreationDate="2013-03-18T10:08:13.123" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take notes when you're suffering for later use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No really. Get into the habit of carrying something to jot down your thoughts on (phone, tablet, moleskine notebook, marbled notebook, whatever) and when you're feeling something intense, write it down. Describe it. In the moment, write down all the things you're feeling, no matter how repetitive or hallucinatory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will teach you (a) observational skills (b) the habit of putting nonverbal things into words. As you get better at noticing and then describing how it feels when the wind blows through your soul on a cold mountaintop, and your thighs are prickling as they turn numb and your sinuses ache dully at the bridge of your nose and your scarf is wet and slimy from the condensation of your breath and your lungs feel like they're stabbed every time you inhale, you won't have to struggle so much to come up with ways to make your reader feel the cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T11:27:54.253" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T11:27:54.253" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7462" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7464" CreationDate="2013-03-18T22:52:26.437" Score="8" ViewCount="670" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a short children's novel and I want to expand this into a series made of several short novels. I intend to write the whole series at once so that the internal universe is consistent and so that I can add an arc across the books. This arc though is not the focus of the story and I hope that readers will be able to pick up any of the books and start reading it without needing to read through them in order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is a good technique for placing basic information about the characters and setting so that readers who started in the middle of the series are not lost and readers who started at the beginning do not feel bored seeing the same information again?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any series that has used this technique well?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T18:16:01.430" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T18:16:01.430" Title="How to tell or retell basic character and setting information in a series?" Tags="|characters|structure|setting|series|children|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7462" CreationDate="2013-03-19T00:16:45.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to have a series of books which tell an ongoing story, but you want readers to be able to drop in midway, you will of necessity need to recap something in the beginning. How you do it depends on your skill and comfort level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Harry Potter books, it was basically just narration in the opening chapter. This does run the risk of being boring, but it's all in the execution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Belgariad and Mallorean series from David and Leigh Eddings, each book had a prologue of some kind. Sometimes it was a recap, sometimes it told a different part of the mythological backstory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anne McCaffrey used a recap prologue for her original dragon trilogy; I don't recall if she did it for the Dragonsinger set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first book in CJ Cherryh's &lt;em&gt;Foreigner&lt;/em&gt; series was admittedly so challenging that she just outright explained what happened in book 1 in a prologue to book 2. (The rest of the series was less impenetrable and didn't need much recapping.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recapping prologue can be skipped by people who know what's going on, but brings new ones up to speed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T00:16:45.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7462" CreationDate="2013-03-19T00:17:06.507" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a story  standpoint, you have, more or less, two choices: Recount what's come before the current book, or embed critical information in the narrative itself. The more realistic it is for characters to talk about past events, the less need there'll be for a summary of events at the beginning of the book. But if you want the book to seem like a grand retelling of important historical events, placing the reader in time might suit your story very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Summaries:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By including a summary of previous books before the story starts, the reader will be firmly oriented before starting the current book. However, this also makes it obvious that the book is part of a series, and makes it appear to be less self-contained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of structure is useful in a series meant to evoke a feel of a chronicle of real events, or to create a sense of being part of a larger picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: Tolkien's &lt;em&gt;The Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;, Donaldson's &lt;em&gt;Chronicles of Thomas Covenant&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Self-contained books:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Embedding critical information in the book itself can be difficult to do well without seeming clumsy. It will make the manuscript slightly longer. It can make the book more accesible, in that one doesn't have to pick up previous books to read it. Common ways of doing this include having the characters talk about recent events, but this can easily become clumsy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the risk of losing readers in the plot is real, this can be mitigated by keeping the plot of the current book reasonably independent or at least interesting whether or not one understands the background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: Dan Simmons' &lt;em&gt;Hyperion&lt;/em&gt; books, Doyle's &lt;em&gt;Sherlock Holmes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Other issues:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are cases in-between these two extremes. For example, Asimov's &lt;em&gt;Foundation&lt;/em&gt; books include summaries of the book in broad strokes, then rely on either contextual clues or characters recounting events in-story. This sort of thing is more believable in a context  like this - sections take place years or even generations apart. Family sagas, and historical fiction can do this, as can fiction in other arenas where recounting events is common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And let's not forget the strategy of using a narrator. While this has fallen out of fashion along with the cinematic voiceover, it's still a valid technique - even if it tends to be cheesy and obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one of these strategies you use will be determined by personal preference and hoe complicated and interdependent your books are. For example, if the books have independent stories and the plots are fairly simple, making them stand on their own will be less complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another question to ask yourself: How large is your cast of characters? The larger it is, the more time you'll spend on character introductions in each book. Including a list of characters can be a way around this. If it's fun to read, and the descriptions are brief, it can even add to the book. However, it will add to the &amp;quot;series&amp;quot; feel if you include one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T04:30:30.997" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7460" CreationDate="2013-03-19T01:18:37.817" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hurt yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, really, go out and hurt yourself. But don't kill yourself. There's a lot of fun things to do that will cause your body to hate you later, like working out for 2 hours. The advantage this gives you is you'll be able to feel the pain more immediately, and when you're out to write your book, it will be much more personal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here's an important thing -- don't hurt yourself for the sake of the book. It's much better to hurt yourself for the sake of hurting yourself, if the process of doing so is fun. If you play basketball, you wont feel your body hating you while you play, but later on it will hurt -- but you were having too much fun to notice. If your objective is external to you, like writing a book, you might not learn as much as when your objective is internal, like enjoying the activity while you're in the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, I point out the evidence of pain instead of the pain itself. If you have a broken arm, it's better to say &quot;the bone is sticking out from the elbow&quot; rather than &quot;the pain of the bone sticking out of the elbow is really bad.&quot; If it's freezing, it's better to say that your fingernails are getting blue and your breath is fogging in your face, rather than saying it's really freezing. What Lauren said about the sinuses is really good, too. Those evidences are what you should be looking for when you're describing something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the goal should be to describe the sensation in as few words as possible (at least, for me personally). No need to write your nails are blue, your breath is fogging, your sinuses are clogging, and it's freezing outside. That's overkill. You just need to write the bare minimum so you can spend more time on your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writing style also really helps this out. If your writing style sounds formal like Harry Potter, it will be much harder to describe pain than, say, something like this: &quot;It didn't matter if Jack was the defending MMA champion or a newbie recruit. When she shot that needle into his arm, he fucking felt it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although swearing may not be to your best advantage when writing a book. But I'm just putting it out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow up-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might notice the same difficulty when writing a fast-paced fight scene. If you're already good at writing fight scenes, you should be good at writing about physical pain. Just ask yourself the question, what can I say about this pain that will make the reader squeamish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4894" LastEditorUserId="4894" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T04:50:21.307" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T04:50:21.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7460" CreationDate="2013-03-19T06:02:21.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have surely felt pain at some time in the past. Think back to what it was like. What thoughts went through your head?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two concrete suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-1- Use metaphors or some form of poetic language. I write non-fiction so I don't claim to be good at this, but which of these do you think is more effective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) When he was stabbed, it hurt really bad. He had trouble breathing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) When he was stabbed, it felt like a fire raging through his chest. The air rushed out of his lungs and he struggled to get a breath, like he was a hundred feet under water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-2- Take your time. Build up to it. Make sure we care about the character first, so that his pain matters. Drag out the description of the pain. In real life when I've felt physical pain I've often thought that it dragged on forever. So don't just say, &quot;It hurt really bad. When he got over it he went to the store.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't entirely the same thing but I recall a novel I read once where a character is introduced and then it's revealed that her husband? boyfriend? whatever recently died and she is upset to the point of suicide. But as I read the story, this character was introduced and then like two pages later the reader is expected to feel deep sympathy for her loss. I'm sorry, but I just didn't. Intellectually I can certainly appreciate that such a loss could be very upsetting, but with no build up, I just didn't care about the character. You can't just say, &quot;Then I met a woman named Jane. She was dying of cancer and was in a lot of pain.&quot; The reader won't care. You need to tell us enough about Jane first that we start to think of her as someone we know and like before we're going to care about her pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T06:02:21.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7462" CreationDate="2013-03-19T06:22:44.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have two basic choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Begin each book with a narrative synopsis of previous books or whatever background is required. Like have an intro titled, &quot;The story so far&quot; or some such, and then summarize the previous books. Advantages of this is that it is straight-forward and clear to the reader, and someone who has read and remembers the previous books can skim it or skip it completely. Many writers don't like to do this, though, because they consider it awkward. Also, it highlights to the reader that they are starting in the middle of the series. Some readers may decide to go back and get the earlier books, but others may say, Oh, forget it, I've missed half the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Include such background early in the story as conversations between the characters or other exposition. When done well and subtly, the reader may not even realize what you're doing, it just all flows together. When done poorly, it can be really, really lame. I've read plenty of books where a character says, &quot;As you know, Bob, last year you and I went to the Amazon searching for treasure. That went very badly when our guide, Jorge, abandoned us ...&quot; Etc. The reader can only wonder why a character would give his friend a long explanation of things he already knows, telling him about things that he did, etc. But if you're good at it, you can work it in smoothly. Maybe, &quot;Wow, this is even more exciting than that trip to the Amazon last year! Do you remember when Jorge abandoned us? Maybe this time we'll get a better guide ...&quot; Also bear in mind that it's not necessary to tell the reader everything that happened in a previous book, but only as much as they need to make sense of the current story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see Neil Fein mentioned Asimov's Foundation series. I was thinking of that one myself. It was originally printed as a series of short stories in a magazine, so he couldn't assume that the reader had read all the past issues. In my opinion, Asimov did a great job of sneaking descriptions of the background into each story in fairly subtle ways. Characters make brief references to past events in ways that sound natural. In one case he has a high-school girl talk about the paper she's writing for history class as a way to bring in a bunch of background material. I didn't even notice what he was doing when I first read the books. (Though I must admit that when I told my brother that he should read these great books, he hated them, saying he got sick of all the recaps, so apparently he noticed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T06:22:44.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7460" CreationDate="2013-03-19T12:23:05.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could always volunteer with your local medical or fire rescue service.  They always need the support.  Not only would this give you exposure to real people in need, but to the others who support them.  Frankly, most of us don't have that much exposure to emergency situations.  Even if you don't join, talk to someone about doing a ride along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T12:23:05.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7429" CreationDate="2013-03-19T15:09:30.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, parentheses can be vital to your essay (except when they're not). I think they're more properly used when they contain either a subjunctive clause, or an adjective. Anything else is like intentionally breaking fluidity — and that's the job of a dash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are very few cases in which parentheses are actually necessary to your work. The easiest example to cite when they are relevant is in technical writing (see Appendix A). It can also be used, still in technical writing, to set up an acronym which you will use later. Saying Theory of Constraints (TOC) now will save you time and space when you have to say TOC later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use it to clarify something that doesn't really deserve its own sentence, but you can't use em dashes for because you already are using the dash somewhere else in the same paragraph. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As compared with current policy, adopting a new machine reduces expected costs to PhP 4,290.71 (0.14% lower than simply changing policies), saving management PhP 143,152.56 over 365 days — a 1.6% increase compared to changing policies but not buying the new machine.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parentheses also feel like dashes that take less time mentally to pronounce. So, it feels like things in parentheses are less important than if you put them in the dashes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Still resting from yesterday, I suddenly found out I had an exam today (I thought it was tomorrow), so I went ahead and crammed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Versus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Still resting from yesterday, I suddenly found out I had an exam today — I thought it was tomorrow — so I went ahead and crammed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is just my (incomplete) list, and again, you can use the parentheses with adjectives that feel more secondary to the sentence. The fact that you can omit the things in the parentheses automatically make us think that they're already secondary, and less important. That's why, when reading sentences aloud that have something enclosed in parentheses in them, we often skip the things said in the parentheses. It might be easy to take these things for granted (and we often do), but they are quite important — especially if you're a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Sorry if this reply's use of parentheses seems forced. There's just too many parentheses!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4894" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T18:06:51.620" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T18:06:51.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2013-03-19T17:08:50.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dvorak is unbelievably more efficient. You simply travel less distance to type most words. It seems like a no-brainer to me. That said, I'm at week 5 and am just now getting back up to speed. Learning to switch is painful!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4896" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T17:08:50.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7292" CreationDate="2013-03-19T19:07:05.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as it is clear to the reader to whom the pronoun is referring, repeated usage of he/she/they is okay. I like to occasionally return to specifically identifying who is doing what before resuming non-specific pronouns so that the reader continually understands who I'm referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4898" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T19:07:05.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7243" CreationDate="2013-03-19T19:11:19.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find mind mapping programs like Freemind or Freeplane to be especially helpful with sorting out continuity and plot devices. Nodes can be formatted with different fonts, borders, colors, etc. to visually separate different components of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4898" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T19:11:19.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7243" CreationDate="2013-03-20T20:27:41.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best thing is to get someone else to read through what you have.  I find it difficult to look past the changes, because I know what was &quot;supposed&quot; to happen before the change.  Someone who is unfamiliar with your story will be better situated to go through it without preconceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's something to be said for doing this yourself.  It's amazing how well just saying to yourself, &quot;I haven't read this before, I have no idea what's going to happen,&quot; works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am also a big fan of drawing out a timeline of events.  Where was Bob when X was going on?  Why didn't Alice show up at Y?  Could Charlie have realistically gotten from here to there in the amount of time he had to travel?  Putting every event on your timeline will help you keep your characters, your events, and your plot on the straight and narrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I wouldn't necessarily worry about filling in every single perceived plot hole you find.  As much as the IT folks like to scream, &quot;Security through obscurity is no security at all,&quot; sometimes people don't exploit a weakness because they don't see it.  So your main character is standing exposed and no one takes a swing at him.  So what?  Sometimes the bad guys just don't &lt;em&gt;notice&lt;/em&gt;.  If it helps, you can seal up your plot hole by pointing it out.  &quot;Daniel stood in the field of battle, blinded by sweat and exhausted by the effort of simply standing.  Had anyone chosen to attack at that moment, he couldn't have fended them off with more than a stern expression.  Luckily, though the battle still raged, no one approached and the moment passed...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T20:27:41.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7432" CreationDate="2013-03-20T20:51:09.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL:  Are you looking at English law because you are English yourself and are attempting to settle a domestic concern, or are you looking to English law because that's where the document was published even though you are, say, Canadian?  If it's the former, micapam's answer is exactly on point.  If it's latter, then you need to look internationally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there isn't any such thing as international copyright law, there are a couple of relevant treaties covering the matter:  the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (Berne Convention) and the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC).  The U.S. and England are both signatories, I'm not sure about ratification.  The UCC requires use of the encircled c we've all seen.  The Berne convention doesn't require any copyright notification at all (U.S. copyright requirements are specifically tailored to match the Berne requirements).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T20:51:09.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6724" CreationDate="2013-03-20T21:09:00.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out the English examples here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English_usage_of_quotation_marks#Quotation_dash&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English_usage_of_quotation_marks#Quotation_dash&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In, for example, &quot;Dubliners&quot; Joyce puts the speaker tag at the end a lot. He appears to just be doing away with conventions of a lot of punctuation that isn`t necessary. In something like &quot;Trainspotting,&quot; it appears to be more of a dialectical thing, where he doesn't use many speaker tags at all. Other writers use both to distinguish 2 types of speech. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that there aren't really any set rules, as most writers who uses dashes use them for the fact that it is different or does something that puntuation marks don't. But you might run into trouble with editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4905" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T21:03:06.040" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T21:03:06.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7480" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-21T06:20:35.577" Score="9" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been gathering ideas for a novel. The basic idea is in place; the story combines two different eras but the same place.&#xA;How do I get the little details about the place, the people, their life and language right?&#xA;I have never visited the place (it is real). It seems to me I could even end up reading on the place's history all my life if accuracy is what I'm aiming at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I go about it and avoid a bad bout of analysis paralysis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4807" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-03-21T18:28:35.067" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T20:58:54.630" Title="Getting details of a past century right" Tags="|novel|planning|flashback|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7480" CreationDate="2013-03-21T06:49:20.390" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following the usual advice to “Write what you know”, you would set the project aside and write about things you know now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the meanwhile, you could&lt;br&gt;&#xA;• obtain and study books, maps, or films about the area,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;• strike up a correspondence with people in the area,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;• advertise locally to meet people from the area,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;• make plans to visit the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you meet or correspond with people from the area, as well as answering your questions they may be able to review your writing for accuracy and tone.  Persons native to the area may be able to tell you what they remember about its history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If after more work the obstacles seem no smaller, try to transplant the story to a locale you are familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T06:49:20.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7480" CreationDate="2013-03-21T13:39:44.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different schools of thought on how masterful and complete a writer's knowledge/research should be, and I think they often correlate to how seriously you want your work to be taken. Are you trying to simply write a more &quot;commercial,&quot; non-lasting book that will provide a bit of fun and entertainment, or to write a book that is more lasting and ambitious? Is it more important to you to produce lots of work quickly, or to produce truly excellent work (not intended as a put-down to commercial writing, which fills its own niche)? It's a good idea to clarify your own priorities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are satisfied with quicker work, you can always research only the things that will relate directly to your plot, and throw in cool details to add atmosphere. You could try to get natives of the place to read your work for any inaccuracies. Maybe you can even use Google maps to plan characters' routes through the location. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want the story itself to be shaped by the period and location (in my opinion, this is super cool) immerse yourself as much as possible before writing the story. How much research you need to do (via books, calling people for interviews, etc.) depends on how foreign and unknown the place is to you. Yet research still doesn't need to be absolutely exhaustive (it can't be, can it? :-)). You can still specialize in a certain neighborhood/social class/religious or cultural group, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T13:39:44.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7480" CreationDate="2013-03-21T18:38:20.293" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to research a location and a time: Books, the internet, even satellite photos and Google Street View. (Not really relevant for this project, but I've fixed some pretty basic errors with those.) However, when the place in question is interesting, you need to make sure that your research is actually relevant to the novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When you're doing the research, ask yourself:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Is this material I'm reading answering a specific question or providing critical background? Or am I just reading this because it's interesting?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with reading for deep background, or letting yourself get lost in historical details. But when you have a project in mind, you have to be careful not to do that too much. If you find yourself reading about stuff that's a bit too far from the plot and background you need info on, then put the book down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you know where that line is? Well, this is something you'll need to learn to judge for yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if the book you're planning to write has a very vague plot, or you don't even know the plot? Well, if that's the case, you have a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg situation. Force yourself to outline some of the story. Even if it's vague, that plan will help you limit your research. Keep in mind that you can always make changes to the plan later on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you have two specific eras in mind, however, says to me that you have at least a partial handle on the book's specifics. Remember that it's easier to change something than invent it out of whole cloth. You can do an edit pass later to find details that you may have gotten wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But always ask yourself: &lt;em&gt;Is this research inspiring me to write something?&lt;/em&gt; If the answer is no, you're not researching, you're just reading for fun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T18:38:20.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7480" CreationDate="2013-03-22T01:47:36.727" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Historical re-enactors share your problem.  Here are some of the things we do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read history books, sure, but sometimes it's the museum catalogs that show everything from art to architecture to everyday kitchenware that really help.  History books will tend to give you a good view of &lt;em&gt;events&lt;/em&gt;, but they're not always so good for daily-life stuff.  Then ask yourself what it would be like to live in a building like that, to cook with those utensils, to tend your plot of land with those tools, to use that furniture, to work at night by the light of those lamps, to wear those clothes (and consider climate if central heating isn't available), and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Visit relevant museum exhibits (or the location itself) if you can.  Seeing pictures in catalogs is good, but seeing the items directly can be even better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to other people who are interested in the same time/place you are.  Depending on when/where you're talking about, there might be historical societies, university lectures, book clubs, or other paths to finding those people.  People love to talk about their interests, and if it's obscure, well, do you know how exciting it is to find somebody else who's interested in the same niche you are?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The internet can supply both information and misinformation, but you should at least try to do your Wikipedia and Google research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For specific questions, try History.SE!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And finally, if you're up for a little extra work, try living it.  I don't mean completely or fanatically, but try cooking from their cookbooks, making and wearing their clothes as you go about your daily routine (just in your house if it's weird :-) ), reading their contemporary literature, doing some of the outdoor labor that they did, etc.  It's one thing to read about it and another to do it.  You don't have to get it completely &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; to learn from the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T01:47:36.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7452" CreationDate="2013-03-22T17:14:46.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;without a sense of the point-of-view of the narrator here, and the context surrounding this event: this walk to the post-office, I don't think I can say much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is your use of past tense here a deliberate choice, or dictated by the context and point-of-view ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've given some hints: &quot;surreal,&quot; &quot;archaic;&quot; which one could &quot;project&quot; into a thousand contexts, but then, that wouldn't be your writing, your voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you wish the reader to experience at this point in the story, or novel ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of the &quot;flow&quot; of your English, the somewhat stilted linear sequence of the sentences (peppered with lots of the article &quot;the&quot;) could very well be required by the character you are portraying: that &quot;jagged flow&quot; could suggest a detachment, an existential anomie, or, a distance, &quot;in consciousness,&quot; between the narrator, and the world of his, or her, senses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's where we need to know your &lt;em&gt;intent&lt;/em&gt;, as creator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, having said all that, let me tell you what comes to my mind :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Morning: I awoke, remembered I had to go the post-office. I stepped into the brilliance of an early spring day where the waxing sun had just burned-off dawn's mists, reflecting, as I walked, on the vibrant green fields along the roadway's transient lushness. I thought: such a fragile effusion of life-force: unaware, as I was all too aware, of the dragon of summer's on-rushing searing force, and its withering scourge of heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe I may have actually said to myself, out loud: 'it may be a blessing not to remember the future.' &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, good luck !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;yours, Bill&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'd like the winds of all cultures to blow around my house, but I would not want to be knocked over by any of them.&quot; Mahatma Gandhi&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4914" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T17:14:46.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-22T21:11:54.247" Score="3" ViewCount="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you need location releases for national parks and model releases for Pets to use in picture books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4915" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T22:56:01.100" Title="Releases needed for picture books?" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7488" CreationDate="2013-03-22T22:56:01.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many U.S. National Parks have permit systems in place for commercial photographers, but typically they allow unrestricted or less restricted amateur photography (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nps.gov/yell/parkmgmt/filmpermit.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nps.gov/petr/planyourvisit/regs.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nps.gov/nama/planyourvisit/permits-faqs.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nps.gov/grsa/planyourvisit/upload/commercial_photography_guidelines.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nps.gov/seki/planyourvisit/permits.htm#CP_JUMP_534596&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/upload/Requirements-for-filming-07.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;).  Restrictions that sometimes apply include forbidding use of tripods or use of flash or use of anything.  For example, link &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nps.gov/nama/planyourvisit/permits-faqs.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TRIPOD USAGE WITHIN RESTRICTED AREAS IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED WITH OR WITHOUT A PERMIT.&#xA;  ...&#xA;  Lincoln Memorial: Filming/photography is prohibited above the white marble steps and the interior chamber of the Lincoln Memorial.&#xA;  ...&#xA;  Washington Monument: Filming/photography is prohibited within the circle of flags surrounding the base of the Washington Monument. ...&#xA;  Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Equipment set-up of any kind is prohibited at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, photography in National Parks that is intended to produce commercial photographs must be permitted in advance.  Here is an excerpt from link &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nps.gov/grsa/planyourvisit/upload/commercial_photography_guidelines.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt; for the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, that is typical of the language used for several different parks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A permit is required for any commercial filming. Commercial filming is defined as digital or film recording&#xA;  of a visual image or sound recording by a person, business, or other entity for a market audience, such as&#xA;  for a documentary, television or feature film, advertisement, or similar project. Under P.L. 106-206 all&#xA;  commercial filming requires a permit and is subject to a location fee and cost recovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can publish without restriction pictures you take yourself in the parks, if they do not include persons who are recognizable.  If persons are recognizable a model release is needed.  For pictures taken by other people, copyright remains with the photographer unless other arrangements have been made (&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/post/4658837&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A so-called “property release” is the kind of release used for pets (&lt;a href=&quot;http://asmp.org/tutorials/forms.html#.UUzfMlEVlko&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080324103544AAdY13M&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;9&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T22:56:01.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7460" CreationDate="2013-03-23T00:26:31.063" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm answering this myself as well, because after mulling it over for a week I've come up with some thoughts not yet mentioned, and I'd like to flush this topic out. Who knows-- it might be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let the reader handle the pain part. Write what physically happened (works&#xA;best in an omniscient POV), and the reader&#xA;can fill in their own blanks. Simply saying that someone's&#xA;fingernail was removed will shake people all on its own. The tender&#xA;skin beneath need not be agonized over in every case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Reactionary&lt;/em&gt;. Describe pain through the actions of the character. There are outward signs of pain, and the difference between a&#xA;normally lively character to someone who will not move will worry&#xA;a reader if your characterization is strong enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After-effects / non-reactionary results. For a more subtle pain, what steps are needed to cure it can be detailed instead. Jumping from doubling over to next-day post-surgery is jarring, and evokes very strong associations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4869" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T00:26:31.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7460" CreationDate="2013-03-23T15:49:24.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key to communicate enough pain lies in establishing such empathy among your readers that they become sensitive enough to feel pain by reading you. Ever heard about Harry Potter success story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether you've heard about the craze, but I've seen people literally crying with grief when JKR killed a fictional character  (Sirius Black) in her fourth Harry Potter novel. That is how great novelists establish rapport and empathy through their writings in all ages, be it the 16th or 21st century. So, to answer your question, its all about the little details of how you go about your literature - the introduction, plots, friendships and quarrels, struggles, gravity of situation - all these start creating a perception in your readers' minds, and this perception ultimately decides how sensitive or empathic they are towards your writings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4917" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T11:26:41.920" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T11:26:41.920" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7496" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-24T05:53:09.713" Score="2" ViewCount="4460" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote 200 pages in a good sized notebook in my tiny, illegible handwriting and I now have the task of typing it up.  I am slightly terrified that I'll do it and find that I have only half as many.  Sure, I know the number of pages is not the most important thing, but I would really like to know how many pages I can expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4919" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T12:38:15.410" Title="Hand wrote 200 page novel- how many typed pages is that?" Tags="|pages|first-draft|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7496" CreationDate="2013-03-24T06:39:03.060" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Count how many words are on a page or two. It's alright to guess, but try to get it about right. Multiply that by 200. Now you have your wordcount estimate, which is the standard way to talk about a book's length. Contemporary novels tend to go about 80-100k, fantasy gets to be a bit longer, while YA fiction tends to cap at 75k.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have 200 words on every hand-written page, you'll have a half-novel of 40,000 words. I have a novella of 40k that measures 137 pages on a 6&quot;x9&quot; paperback. (292 words per page.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most fiction paperback books average about 250-350 words per page. The Hobbit is about 95,000 words. My paperback copy of The Hobbit is 303 pages, so with a bit of math we find it clocks 313.5 words a page. You can also get a feel for how type, margins, and dimensions change the page count by googling some of the well known titles on your shelf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4869" LastActivityDate="2013-03-24T06:39:03.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7499" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-24T21:33:46.497" Score="4" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a writer, and I write mostly articles about tv shows. How can I sell them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I researched the freelance content marketplace, but I mostly just found the general sites like fiverr, freelancer, odesk etc. The only site I could find that specializes in content buying &amp;amp; selling articles is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thebestarticles.net/?se&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;thebestarticles.net&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other sites like this? Am I even looking for the right kind of place to sell my articles? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4921" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-03-25T01:56:09.710" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T07:00:13.357" Title="How can I sell articles about TV shows online?" Tags="|creative-writing|blog|freelance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7502" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-26T19:42:47.840" Score="5" ViewCount="548" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am describing a database for a scientific publication. The database has many tables, and each table has fields (spreadsheet columns) and records (rows).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spend a lot of time discussing tables and relationships among tables, as well as the meanings of individual fields and records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here is the most descriptive &quot;long-form&quot; version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &quot;trees&quot; table is related to &quot;apples&quot; table so that each &quot;tree&quot; (record in the &quot;trees&quot; table) can have zero or more records in the apples table, but each individual apple (a record in the apples table) comes from only one tree. An apple record includes a color field, and apples can be either &quot;red&quot;, &quot;green&quot;, or NULL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a more realistic representation of my current draft (which requires revision for clarity):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The trees table is related to apples table and each tree may have zero or more apples, but each apple comes from only one tree. An apple's color can be &quot;red&quot;, &quot;green&quot;, or NULL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could define a convention, such as &quot;table names in bold, fields in italics, and records in &lt;code&gt;code&lt;/code&gt;. This would reduce the above to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each &lt;code&gt;tree&lt;/code&gt; in the &lt;strong&gt;trees&lt;/strong&gt; table can be associated with zero or more &lt;code&gt;apple&lt;/code&gt; records in the &lt;strong&gt;apples&lt;/strong&gt; table, but each &lt;code&gt;apple&lt;/code&gt; comes from only one &lt;code&gt;tree&lt;/code&gt;. Each &lt;code&gt;apple&lt;/code&gt; has a &lt;em&gt;color&lt;/em&gt; field that can be either &quot;red&quot;, &quot;green&quot;, or NULL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know: what can I do to provide a clear and consistent interpretation of the database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the sentence-level suggestions, I would appreciate paragraph and section level advice - for example, how to describe a table in one or two paragraphs? How to mapping a relational database to a linear prose - currently they are organized into a logical story in order of decreasing importance of the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3940" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-28T01:38:49.280" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T01:38:49.280" Title="How can I consistently distinguish among tables, fields, and records in a database?" Tags="|technical-writing|formatting|scientific-publishing|software-documentation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7503" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7504" CreationDate="2013-03-26T20:43:28.177" Score="4" ViewCount="331" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Reaching an end to his path, Eric found a locked door, the lock was a combination of 4 numbers, and above the doorknob a script explaining the lock : 'finishing four circles, a lost day is found' &quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an imaginary script, I want to know if I should solve the riddle for the reader, or just say that the character discovered the solution and got past it and move on ?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thing, A game is under-development based on this story, And I don't care if it will affect gameplay or not, because if he read the book he already knows the end of the game :p&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4929" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T11:13:46.337" Title="Should I write about how the character solved some riddle or let the reader solve it himself" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7503" CreationDate="2013-03-26T22:04:42.923" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As always in a good story, I'd say it depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the riddle itself relevant to the story?&lt;/strong&gt; Or, &lt;strong&gt;is the method of solving it relevant&lt;/strong&gt; to the story? If so, I think it's fair to show the reader how the protagonist solves the riddle, even if it ends up boiling down only to something like &lt;em&gt;he thought about it for a moment before it dawned on him that these astronomically centered people probably meant circles around the sun, making it obvious that they were somehow referring to leap years&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the riddle or method of solution &lt;strong&gt;isn't relevant&lt;/strong&gt; to the story, then I'd leave it out altogether. The protagonist encounters some undecipherable (by him/her) symbols, which there is no need to explain further, next to a lock, and he starts thinking through what he knows of the people who left it or even just tries combinations at random. Exactly what works then would depend on the established backstory - obviously it can't be completely indecipherable if he is the established expert on the people or culture, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, the reader is probably reading the story for entertainment, not to be quizzed at puzzles. So whether you decide to outline the process of solving the riddle in excruciating detail, or just do a little bit of hand-waving, don't simply dismiss the obstacle you introduced for your character. There are few things more jarring (and breaking suspension of disbelief) than bits of story which are introduced and then left completely unexplained to the reader. If you aren't willing to explain it (the lock in this case), don't introduce it at all (leave the door unlocked).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T22:14:24.517" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T22:14:24.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7505" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-27T01:20:24.443" Score="4" ViewCount="4262" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a children's story in first person, present tense. Aside from the quotes from characters, all of the text is meant to represent the narrator's own thoughts, and either describes what they see, do, or think, or their observations on other characters. I found that some areas seem more natural when I use contractions. Would it be appropriate for me to use contractions throughout the narration? Are there any authors who have done this successfully?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T01:20:20.433" LastActivityDate="2020-07-26T21:49:58.223" Title="Is it acceptable practice to use contractions in a fictional first person narrative for children?" Tags="|style|children|narrative|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7505" CreationDate="2013-03-27T01:27:02.847" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contractions are fine in narration.  As with other aspects of the narrator's diction and voice, the use or avoidance of contractions helps characterize the narrator, and indicates something about the formality/informality of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T01:27:02.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7505" CreationDate="2013-03-27T02:18:55.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An additional consideration may be whether you want your children's story to be stocked in school libraries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colleague wrote a piece of Young Adult Fiction intended to encourage reluctant readers but found it was rejected by schools because of &quot;the awful grammar&quot;! It was not considered to be a redeeming feature that the main character's expression changed (improved?) as he incorporated what he had read into his own thoughts and speech as the story progressed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T02:18:55.987" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7503" CreationDate="2013-03-27T02:23:46.973" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do both by leaving the riddle unexplained at the time but later have another character demand to know how the protagonist passed the door. Then the method can be explained to reinforce the smugness of those who worked it out or to put the rest of us out of the misery of not knowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T02:23:46.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7503" CreationDate="2013-03-27T11:13:46.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to be fair. A puzzle with no solution offered to the reader seems like cheating to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current novel has some encrypted text. I show the full text to the reader. The protagonist tries and fails to decipher it. This gives the reader the opportunity to try for himself if he wants to, or just continue reading if he doesn't want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later the protagonist figures out how to decipher the text. This is briefly explained in the text, but the whole process isn't shown - just the finished result. Again, the reader could decode the message by himself if he wants to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T11:13:46.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7502" CreationDate="2013-03-27T19:38:29.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the publication in question have relevant style guidelines?  (I'm assuming not or you wouldn't be asking here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your proposed solution, you are using both formatting and (initial) explicit labeling to convey information: &quot;the &lt;strong&gt;trees&lt;/strong&gt; table&quot; rather than just &quot;&lt;strong&gt;trees&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, for instance.  This is good; it reinforces your formatting convention while facilitating scanning of the text.  (It would be easy to miss that common words like &quot;trees&quot; are actually proper names in your database.)  You may encounter sentences where this verbosity gets in your way and you're tempted to use just the formatting; that can work well for later stages of a description, like in your &quot;but...&quot; clause, but I recommend leading off any new discussion with the more-verbose form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, in technical writing (as distinct from other prose), it is helpful to be ruthlessly consistent in your use of technical terms, lest a reader see the absence of something as significant.  In your example, you say a tree &quot;can be associated with&quot; one or more apples; when talking about the reverse I recommend using the &quot;associated&quot; language rather than the more colloquial &quot;comes from&quot;, especially if there actually isn't any directionality to the associations.  (That is, since you're talking about databases rather than graphs or pointers, I assume you mean bi-directional joins.)  For an audience fluent in databases I wouldn't make this recommendation, but your audience is more general (judging from comments on the question) so give them the extra help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is tangential to your question but I couldn't help noticing: is &lt;em&gt;the color field&lt;/em&gt; red/green/null, or is &lt;em&gt;the value of&lt;/em&gt; the color field red/green/null?  That is, does the field describe the column (as you said up front), or does it describe the &quot;cell&quot; (the value of that attribute for a particular record)?  I bring this up because it's another example of the kind of precision that's really important, particularly for an audience that isn't already familiar with the domain and its terminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting all this together, I would revise your paragraph thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each &lt;code&gt;tree&lt;/code&gt; record in the &lt;strong&gt;trees&lt;/strong&gt; table is associated with zero or more &lt;code&gt;apple&lt;/code&gt; records in the &lt;strong&gt;apples&lt;/strong&gt; table, but each &lt;code&gt;apple&lt;/code&gt; is associated with only one &lt;code&gt;tree&lt;/code&gt;. Each &lt;code&gt;apple&lt;/code&gt; has a &lt;em&gt;color&lt;/em&gt; field with a value of &quot;red&quot;, &quot;green&quot;, or NULL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T19:38:29.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7502" CreationDate="2013-03-27T19:45:58.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first question, as always in my writing specialty, is who is your audience? It makes a great deal of difference to know the expected sophistication of the audience and their experience with databases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;trees&quot; table is related to &quot;apples&quot; table so that each &quot;tree&quot; (record in the &quot;trees&quot; table) can have zero or more records in the apples table, but each individual apple (a record in the apples table) comes from only one tree. An apple record includes a color field, and apples can be either &quot;red&quot;, &quot;green&quot;, or NULL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a person with database experience would know what a relational database is and you would only have to describe &quot;tree&quot; as the primary key for the database, located in the Tree table. The Apple table would have a foreign key of &quot;tree&quot; and the color field is often also called an attribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a person with NO database knowledge, you have a different problem and you have to ask yourself if you need to describe the database and tables and such or you merely need to describe the relationships and not overload them with talk of tables, rows, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My typical experience with databases, especially complicated ones, is that trying to describe them in paragraph form is painful and I tend to move toward a schema description via document tables and/or a entity-relationship diagram. These are better understood than trying to invent a convention of bold, italic, etc. The diagrams also make the relationships far easier to understand and allow the readers a way to trace relationships without having to (re)-decipher a written explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;here's a Wikipedia page on entity-relationship modeling that's a reasonable reference &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-relationship_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;entity-relationship model&lt;/a&gt; If you have truly huge databases or very very complex ones, these are typically broken down into subsets according to functionality or objects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen a quick format used of something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Table: Tree&#xA;- TreeName (primary key, string)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Table: Apple&#xA;- TreeName (foreign key, Tree:TreeName)&#xA;- Color (string)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not convinced this helps a lot but it might be a middle-of-the-road solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4858" LastEditorUserId="4858" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T20:02:55.220" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T20:02:55.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7505" CreationDate="2013-03-27T20:00:39.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are writing in first person, the language used needs to be roughly mainstream consistent with the age, location, etc. of the narrative character. If the two are hugely out-of-sync, it can cause a lot of discord while being read because the &quot;person&quot; that is speaking is saying things and using words that are out of character, thus unexpected and often jarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, when writing books for young children (pre-teen or early-teen), you have the additional challenge of the fact that the people buying the books (parents or schools most often) want the kids to pick up good language and grammar skills while reading, instead of reinforcing bad ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contractions are not typical for a very young child but you could get away with them if your narrative character is a teen. A six year old using a contraction &quot;isn't&quot; wouldn't ring true to me and I wouldn't expect my six year old to know how to properly use it. It's not as bad as a ten year old using the word &quot;transcendental&quot; but it would still jar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two potentially useful links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.education.com/worksheet/article/shrink-ray-contractions-1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Contraction worksheet - 5th grade&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.education.com/reference/article/language-skills-different-age-levels/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Language Skills Development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the contraction worksheet is a 5th grade worksheet. That translates to roughly 10-11 years of age in the US. (My references are US references, I don't happen to have links handy for UK or other countries).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4858" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T20:00:39.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7502" CreationDate="2013-03-27T21:32:30.690" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first advice: Don't make your readers' eyes bleed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagining several paragraphs with bold, italics, grayed text, whatever, just makes me creep. Trying to keep in mind what which formatting means, makes me cry. I wouldn't stand a page reading that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second advice: Don't use experts' diagrams for laymen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The diagrams Maura links to are incomprehensible for non-techies. You mentioned in the comments that your audience is not familiar with database terms, so I guess they are non-techies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what you can do with formatting, is highlighting the names of the tables, records and fields. E.g. write all names italic (the &lt;em&gt;apple&lt;/em&gt; table, the &lt;em&gt;color&lt;/em&gt; field) or, because you use English, write them uppercase (the Apple table, the Color field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the reader knows it is the name of a special term (table, record, field) without having to keep in mind which formatting means what (and without dying on eye cancer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you always call a table a table, a record a record and a field a field (what you did in your example) then the reader should be able to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do with diagrams is inventing a layman's version of the experts ones. You already mention spreadsheets, columns and rows and I bet your audience will know these. So a diagram like this one can support understanding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fsKUP.png&quot; alt=&quot;Trees and apples tables&quot;&gt;&#xA;Well, make it a little bit more shiny ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T21:32:30.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7480" CreationDate="2013-03-27T23:45:46.867" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read their newspapers. There are a surprising number of local newspapers that have been lovingly uploaded by now that can provide a real insight into life in former times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4935" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T23:45:46.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2013-03-28T01:05:34.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having grown up with piano lessons and computer games, I used to be able to type 110-130WPM on a QWERTY keyboard. Now, after 4 months of DVORAK, I'm at about 60WPM DVORAK and down to 90WPM QWERTY. Thus, so far it has definitely cost me tremendously in terms of speed. However, the novelty of it and knowing I'm the only one who can use my laptop more than makes up for the difference :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4936" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T01:05:34.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7516" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7522" CreationDate="2013-03-28T10:49:53.330" Score="11" ViewCount="2738" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many translated Persian/Farsi poems in English like &lt;em&gt;The Rubaiyat&lt;/em&gt;, by Omar Khayyam, the famous Iranian poet, philosopher, and mathematician, translated by Edward FitzGerald. Unfortunately these kinds of translations were shallow and couldn't properly convey the deep meaning or purpose of poet to audiences, which can damage a poem or diminish its value. There are many English speaking audiences who enjoy reading the translated versions of Khayyam's Rubaiyat, but us Iranians can find how much these translations are wrong and even off topic!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any special method/source or institute to guide poets who want translate their own poems into English, and how can you find your audiences' ideas about your translation are correct and professional?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4719" LastEditorUserId="4839" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T21:50:57.340" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T08:19:51.130" Title="How can I translate my poems in English that it doesn't sound odd/non poetic for English speaker audiences?" Tags="|poetry|translation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7516" CreationDate="2013-03-28T14:22:20.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several song-writers here in Egypt write lyrics in both English and Arabic, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Zain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Maher Zain&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cat Stevens&lt;/a&gt; also do this. Their ability to do so is because they are just about as skilled with English as they are with Arabic. If a poet wants to translate their own poems I would suggest they locate a poet who adequately understands both the source language and the target language. In a sense, it wouldn't be a translation per se; more of a re-witing in the target language, but in that way you get something that is both poetic and conveys the intended meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4829" LastEditorUserId="4829" LastEditDate="2013-04-09T14:45:14.717" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T14:45:14.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7505" CreationDate="2013-03-28T18:14:23.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-best-childrens-books.org/teaching-contractions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; seems to suggest that books that teach contractions target children between the ages of 4-8, so it would depend on what age children you're targeting, it could be that the average 4 year old might not understand contractions however I would very surprised if an average 8 year old didn't understand them. Otherwise, they're proper grammar so if you expect your target audience to understand them, by all means use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add that, as someone has already mentioned, a first person narration should be written in a similar way to the narrator's natural way of speaking.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4829" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T18:14:23.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7519" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7520" CreationDate="2013-03-28T20:16:50.273" Score="12" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say you have an English book in which there is a particular dialogue where one of a handful of participating characters is speaking French. In this dialogue the fact that he's speaking French is a central point of the scene, as none of the other characters can understand him, which is necessary for the scene to make any sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if this book were translated into French, thus homogenizing the scene's linguistics and vanishing the source of internal confusion, thereby creating authentic confusion on the reader's part?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T16:19:49.230" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T16:19:49.230" Title="How are multilingual scenes handled when the story's main language is translated into that of its minor one?" Tags="|language|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7519" CreationDate="2013-03-28T20:57:30.840" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are, essentially, two choices here. Which is used would depend on the book, the complexity of the story, and how culturally French these section are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The translated text could simply &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; be in French, with understanding that the characters are not actually speaking French for some of the lines of dialog. Descriptive text added around the &quot;incomprehensible&quot; parts explaining the situation. If there are just a few lines, this may be a good option; it'd get very clumsy if there are more than that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to handle this would be to switch the languages completely. If French is used in the original as simply a random &quot;foreign language&quot;, this can work. (A fun example: The 30th-century SF show &quot;Futurama&quot; does this. In the future, French is an incomprehensible dead language. In the French version of the show, the &quot;dead language&quot; is switched to German.) This would be a better option for a longer scene, but it could change the meaning of what's being said if it's tied into it being said &lt;em&gt;in French&lt;/em&gt; and not in &quot;random langage that's not what most of the characters speak*. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's probably no &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; way to handle this. What's done would depend on the translator's judgment, how much latitude the translator is allowed, and how language-dependent the section is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T20:57:30.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7516" CreationDate="2013-03-28T23:57:27.950" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;A special method? No. There surely are guides, but I doubt their value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Poetic translation is one of the most difficult tasks of the writer craft (and probably the most difficult of the more common ones) often topping writing original poetry in means of difficulty. A guide or resource may help, but you need very, very much talent and perform a painstakingly difficult work to get it right - sometimes getting it right will be impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first advice is to pick a common poem that has at least three different translations and see how they differ and tackle the problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think what sacrifices you are willing to make. Keeping the meter of the original, number of lines, and direct relation line-to-line will be possible only in the simplest, child-level poetry. In serious poetry you will have to reorder some lines at the very least. Quite often phrases will be a whole strophe away from their original location, but sometimes you'll change the rhyming scheme or the meter, and use considerably different forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, you don't translate. You write the poem from scratch, trying to retain the original message and spirit. Don't try to translate it word-for-word or sentence-for-sentence. Start with taking the deepest meanings, the mood, the message, the impact of the original - things that made the original a worthy piece of art and not just a piece of rhyming text. Think which metaphors of the original translate well into the foreign language and try to save them, work them into the new text - but if the metaphor is unclear, say, because the English word carries different emotional connotations, replace it with something that works better. If there are puns, or thoughts dependent on double meaning of words, that just don't translate, don't hesitate to replace them with comparisons, replace the one word with two where they convey both meanings. And never hesitate to add your own if it works well - sometimes the translation can improve upon the original, as the target language may have expressions that describe given things even better than author's native language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to keep the same style. If the original uses flourishing extensive comparisons, use these. If the original is very dry and skimping on stylistic forms, skimp on stylistic forms. If the original is a sonnet, you must make your translation into a sonnet. If the original is dactylic hexameter, you don't really need to keep the translation a dactylic hexameter - pick dactylic pentameter or iambic hexameter, something of similar &quot;stature&quot;; translation of ancient epic poetry into iambic tetrameter would be quite inappropriate. The content may be significantly different, but not only the message but also the style - the language, the form should be as similar to the original as you can make it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note there are various words that have different connotations in different languages. An item that is the symbol of royalty in one language may be a symbol of laziness in other. If you translate the noun directly, you will lose the original meaning. Don't. Sacrifice factual adherence to literal meaning, to retain the symbolic meaning. Use a different symbol that has the same meaning rather than the same symbol that translated has a different meaning. Say, the direct translation of given character's role is &quot;witch&quot;, but her role is more of a shamaness, a person of deep wisdom and good will. Call her &quot;Priestess&quot; and discard the loaded &quot;Witch&quot; and unenlightened &quot;Shamaness&quot; altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, in the end, give it rhythm and make it rhyme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, what you must retain, translate and keep in the translation, in order from the most important to the least important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deep meaning. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mood. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Form/Style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Objects, subjects and events.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rhythm, meter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Metaphors, double meanings, poetic expressions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sequence, ordering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rhymes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found working with both a thesaurus and an online rhyme dictionary helps immensely. Also, trying to stick to the same metaphors gets you stuck. Try to find a better metaphor, a different form that says a similar thing better, rather than trying to repeat the old one word for word and lose the meaning or break the meter in the process. Don't try to translate - write a new poem that tells the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T08:19:51.130" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T08:19:51.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7524" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7526" CreationDate="2013-03-30T04:49:43.483" Score="10" ViewCount="8896" Body="&lt;p&gt;English isn't my native tongue, but I've been writing novels in English for a while. Most of the time, I can be aware of what's grammatically correct and what's not. But making sure that a sentence sounds like one written by a native speaker is a harder task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been trying the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing everyday (I try using simple words and simple sentences)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reading every day (and check in the dictionary words that I don't know)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I copy paragraphs from my favorite novels (I read the paragraph once, I write it, and I correct the differences.) In the process, I check in the dictionary every word I don't know (or translate it to Spanish, my mother tongue). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing everyday&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check my sentences on Google Books (the more results the more confident I am. If there are zero results, then the sentence is probably wrong).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if these are the best ways of accomplishing what I want.&#xA;Any suggestions? (other than looking for a native speaker to correct my work)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T21:48:39.603" LastActivityDate="2023-04-12T00:37:49.040" Title="Tips for writing sentences like a native speaker" Tags="|creative-writing|translation|learning|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7524" CreationDate="2013-03-30T06:49:35.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EXPENSIVE WAY:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest living in a country like US and A or Canada for 2-3 months (or more) and going out a lot. With native speakers, of course ;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CHEAP WAY:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Listening to PBS radio and watching/listening a lot of native speakers on Youtube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how your brain works, but majority of people talk to themselves (talking to yourself = thinking) when they try to formulate their thoughts and sentences. Only a few geniuses see them, but that's maybe only 0.001% of the world's population. So, at first glance listening may seem not very important for you as a writer, but I would disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning a whole scene from your favorite movie and replicating them will help you too. And last but not least ;) is &lt;strong&gt;talking to other people via chat, forums, stackexchange&lt;/strong&gt; ;) and in online communities. Ideally with more mature and intelligent people and not with teenagers (unless your books are about teenagers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, talking with foreigners from US and A and Canada is helpful. I am sure there are a lot of expats in Spain, especially if you are from Andalusia or Madrid. The only problem could be that majority of them are not from US and A but from Britain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw, only a few non-native English writers are successful, because it takes a lot of time and work. I would suggest watching some Ray Kurzweil videos how the brain works, especially that videos about learning new things when you are older. It takes a lot more time, because your &quot;exclusive&quot; areas in your brain are already &quot;inhabited&quot; with old stuff. Young people have these areas &quot;free&quot; (it's much complicated, I am just simplifying things for now). Here is a link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/IKhF--gU5c8?t=6m50s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://youtu.be/IKhF--gU5c8?t=6m50s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch this video from 6:50 (it's already been set to 6:50 in my link)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will help you understand how human brain works with learning new languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4160" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-03-30T11:31:41.970" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T11:31:41.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7524" CreationDate="2013-03-30T12:23:37.730" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to write like a native &lt;em&gt;speaker&lt;/em&gt;, you should also be &lt;em&gt;listening.&lt;/em&gt; So listen to radio broadcasts, podcasts, and TV shows. (Movies can vary; because they are shorter, they can be narratively compressed, so dialogue is often more focused on moving the plot forward. TV shows have the luxury of time, so they can afford to have people just banter.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, try to find series: soap operas, long-running (four or more years) TV shows and podcasts, radio hosts who have been on for a long time. When you have character (or real-person) relationships which are ongoing, it becomes less important to tell a story and you can spend time just enjoying one another's company. So your speech is more relaxed, more &quot;native.&quot; The idea is that this is how people actually talk to one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, try improvised or ad-libbed shows. Search on YouTube for &quot;Whose Line Is It Anyway?&quot; (the U.S. cast). People who are ad-libbing aren't thinking about how they're constructing sentences, so that's about as pure of &quot;native&quot; speech as you can get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Record these and transcribe what you hear, if you can. That will give you something to compare your work to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T12:23:37.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7527" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-30T17:21:44.837" Score="3" ViewCount="1315" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm starting with an existing .doc MS. Kindle warns to not use hard para breaks, i.e., don't hit return, but I can't get rid of any of them. Driving me nuts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4941" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T08:54:59.843" Title="For Kindle, are hard paragraph breaks that serious?" Tags="|formatting|kindle|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7528" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-31T22:42:54.397" Score="5" ViewCount="744" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have finished a fantasy novel I have been writing for the past few years and I am now in the process of meeting with representatives from publishing companies toward the goal of publishing my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not yet have a satisfactory cover but I am working with an artist now on one and the drafts are coming out magnificent. However, I am not sure if I am wasting my time since I've heard that the publisher can dictate the cover that they prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, must one (or is it at least strongly advised) to submit a manuscript with a cover already designed or does it not matter? Also, does an author have any say over what their cover looks like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4948" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-06T13:12:42.107" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T13:12:42.107" Title="Must one have a book cover designed before submitting it to a publisher?" Tags="|publishing|fantasy|book|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7528" CreationDate="2013-03-31T23:53:11.917" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like you may have been meeting with scam artists, or are severely confused about what the actual terms of being publishing are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When your novel is published with a reputable, honest publisher, the publisher provides the cover. &lt;strong&gt;Period.&lt;/strong&gt; Not only are you not required to have a cover, even offering or mentioning a cover of your own design is seen as unprofessional, since it betrays a lack of knowledge of how the publishing industry works. There is no real publisher that would ask you to provide a cover, and publishers will not usually even look at a cover that you provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you self-publish through Amazon, Smashwords, or any other reputable self-publishing service, you provide your own cover. Of course, in this case, the self-publishing service is emphatically &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the actual publisher of your book---they just provide a marketplace and a clearinghouse for self-published works. Your are your own publisher in this case, which is why they call it &lt;strong&gt;self-&lt;/strong&gt; publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you are actually in talks with a real publisher, don't bother with a cover. They will provide one. However, reading between the lines of your post I wonder if you aren't talking to a scam publisher which pretends to be a real publisher, but expects the authors to foot most or all of the cost of producing the book. If the &quot;publisher&quot; that you're talking to expects you to furnish a cover, pay for editing, or do anything else of the sort, then run away quickly. Paying for those things is the entire reason that publishers exist (from the writer's perspective), so if you're being asked to pay for those expenses then you're better off simply self-publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T23:53:11.917" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7537" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7542" CreationDate="2013-04-01T20:17:41.133" Score="10" ViewCount="990" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a Science Fiction book. While this book doesn't push reality very far, there are some new technologies and tools that I have added. One tool is used more frequently than all the others, and it has a very complex system (although there are other systems just as complex used somewhat less frequently in the story). For the sake of this question, we'll call it MYTO. The protagonist and the other supporting characters use MYTO on a regular basis, and an adequate understanding of it is critical to understanding and enjoying the story due to the frequent use of it. Normally, it wouldn't be a problem for me to introduce it and describe its functions. However, due to the complexity of MYTO and the systems surrounding it, I've found myself in a bit of a predicament.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've written several drafts and concepts trying to describe MYTO and the systems it uses, and I've ruled out an all-at-once approach - it would take too long, and the reader would get lost and bored. Because MYTO is used in settings with high action, it is very difficult to describe it as I go along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a bit of a background, MYTO was a pre-existing technology based on other communication technologies used by the military and special forces in my story. My main character took it and modified it to create an improved version with several more functions and more polished functionality. I've tried to write this out, but it also gets very technical and boring, so I'm put back to square one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How should I go about introducing the technology and its functions?&lt;/strong&gt; Some of the functions can and have been explained throughout the story as needed, but they are lesser functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any additional information is needed, please let me know in the comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4839" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-06-29T09:34:45.250" LastActivityDate="2019-10-06T09:00:46.857" Title="How should I introduce new and complex technologies or tools?" Tags="|science-fiction|clarity|exposition|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7537" CreationDate="2013-04-01T20:33:00.947" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Introduce a cabbagehead character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Cabbagehead&quot; is a term from Phil Farrand, who wrote the &lt;em&gt;Nitpicker's Guides&lt;/em&gt; to various Star Trek series. He points out that particularly in NextGen, it became necessary for one person to abruptly (and temporarily) develop the IQ of a head of cabbage, so that the other characters could explain the situation and the audience could get the information they needed. This position rotated depending on the episode and the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you have someone who's a newbie to the MYTO system, and your protagonist has to train him or her in its use (or at least explain the gist of it), that will allow you to give the basics to your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend trying to get away with as little explanation as you can in the beginning, though, since (as you noticed) too much exposition drags things down. Teach the newbie the basics and then drop in more details elsewhere. A chapter or two later, someone moderately skilled could come in and say, &quot;Hey, Bob, I just tried out the Foo function you added to the MYTO. That was amazing, man!&quot; and Fred says, &quot;What's the Foo function?&quot; and Bob can explain what it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T20:33:00.947" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-01T21:22:06.830" Score="0" ViewCount="3428" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why in some essays or articles there are words in the author's native language? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In other words, the essay is in English and there are some Spanish words spread out in the whole essay.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it necessarily mean the targeted audience is Spanish-speaking people or there is something else behind it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4804" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T16:44:27.920" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T16:44:27.920" Title="Words in author's native language?" Tags="|style|language|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7540" CreationDate="2013-04-01T23:42:30.753" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many cases, the intent is to add a foreign flavor or a realistic touch to the narrative.  In other cases, the foreign word may be difficult to translate; or might not be specific enough in translation; or the author or translator may not have realized that a particular word was not an English word.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the books of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinua_Achebe&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chinua Achebe&lt;/a&gt; (where words from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_language&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Igbo&lt;/a&gt;, a Nigerian language, appear occasionally) &lt;em&gt;ogene&lt;/em&gt; is used for one kind of big drum, and &lt;em&gt;Ikolo&lt;/em&gt; for another, larger, drum.  This is an instance where translation would lose specificity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T23:42:30.753" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7537" CreationDate="2013-04-02T06:02:18.050" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lauren gave the single most universal method - let me expand on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note there doesn't have to be a literal character for the cabbagehead - a virtual one will do. Get some quotes from 'MYTO for dummies'. Get a cautionary work safety series series &quot;Accidents resulting from and involving mishandling MYTO&quot;. Outright break the fourth wall having the omniscent narrator turn directly to readers (possibly in a condescending manner, for added irony if that's the tone). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the system is complex, on top of brief summary of its function, if your publisher allows, you can throw a schematics in. A picture is worth 1000 words and things like these add flavor to sci-fi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last but not least, one of characters may be tasked with writing an instruction manual for cabbageheads, and we can follow their struggles with the daunting task - say, editor complaining &quot;The readers won't understand complex words like 'shall', this must be changed!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Including quotes and excerpts doesn't work well in movies, and not at all in TV shows, but it's a well-established technique in novels, so you can use it freely to circumvent the need to introduce another character or lower IQ of any of existing ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T06:02:18.050" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7543" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-02T11:52:21.660" Score="3" ViewCount="519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm quoting lines from a dubbed TV series and I'm not sure how to reference it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked everywhere and I only found how would you cite an original version.&#xA;Help please :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4960" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-04-02T14:45:02.340" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T16:25:13.700" Title="how to cite a dubbed TV series? APA 6th edition" Tags="|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7516" CreationDate="2013-04-02T14:14:22.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: I don't think it's possible to really translate a poem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some translators will create a &quot;prose translation&quot;. That is, they translate the poem much as they would non-poetic language, trying to retain the meaning, while sacrificing rhyme, rhythm, and so forth. The result usually sounds nothing like a poem but simply like ... well, usually not ordinary narrative, because it will often have a heavy reliance on turns of phrase, mood, and so on, and it will end up being a little disjointed, because things that contributed to rhyme and rhythm and so on in the original will still be there, but no longer serving any purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take just one element: Suppose the original poem rhymes. Of course if you translate the words, the chance that two words that rhyme in language A will translate into words that rhyme in language B is very small. So what do you do? You might be able to find a different word with a similar meaning that does rhyme. You might be able to re-arrange the word order some to put a word that rhymes at the end of the line. But at best that will be difficult, and it would often be impossible to do without losing the meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, you could basically re-write the poem in the target language. That is, try to write a poem in the target language that conveys the same general meaning and tone and as much of the same phrasing as you can. But it's barely legitimate to say that this is a translation, it's more like an imitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T14:14:22.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7502" CreationDate="2013-04-02T14:36:45.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not use different fonts or type styles for each of the various &quot;kinds of things&quot;. I've read technical books that use such techniques, and even when it's a simple thing like &quot;italics for table names and bold for screen labels&quot;, I find myself repeatedly asking, &quot;Wait, was it italics for table names or for screen labels? Which was which?&quot; Once you pass two kinds of things, it just gets confusing. It doesn't help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I routinely capitalize the names of database objects to highlight them and distinguish them from ordinary uses of the word. Like if I have a table of employees, I'll refer to it as &quot;Employee&quot;. You might use italics or bold or whatever. But I use the same convention for all database objects, not try to recreate different typographical conventions for tables, records, fields, relationships, indexes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, when you first introduce an object, you should clearly state what it is. Like, &quot;We will create a Trees table to hold ...&quot; Don't just say &quot;We will create trees ...&quot; because then the reader might get confused whether Trees is a table or, say, a set of records. But once you've introduced each object, I don't think it's necessary to constantly repeat what kind of thing it is. Like write, &quot;We will create a Trees table and an Apples table. Each record in Trees is related to one or more records in Apples ... There is a record in Trees for the &quot;big oak in my front yard&quot;. But there are no records in Apples for the big oak in my front yard, because it is not an apple tree ...&quot; Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of how you refer to people and things in ordinary narrative. You might introduce Bob and say that he is Sally's brother. You wouldn't find it necessary to always refer to him as &quot;Bob, the person who is the brother of Sally&quot;. You surely wouldn't write, &quot;Bob, who is the brother of Sally, walked into the store. Then Bob, the brother of Sally, met Fred. Fred called out, 'Hi, Bob' (addressing Sally's brother) ...&quot; etc. Rather, you would describe him once when you first introduced him, and then generally just use his name after that. If you mention him again after not having talked about him for a while, you might repeat the description to remind the reader who he is. If there's a case where it might be ambiguous, like there are two Bobs, you might add the description to make clear which you are referring to. If something about the description is important in a particular context, you might bring it up again to make clear. Like, Bob has known Sally since she was born because he is her brother. If you're saying something that relies on this fact to make sense, you might clarify, &quot;As he was Sally's brother, Bob knew about ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T14:36:45.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7546" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7563" CreationDate="2013-04-02T14:44:31.827" Score="3" ViewCount="75012" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that the toughest standard regarding plagiarism is the  &quot;five (consecutive) word&quot; rule, which holds that, if there are five consecutive words identical to someone else's writing, then you are guilty of plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not apply to, say, proper names like &quot;The Loyal Order of Freemasons&quot;, which is considered one word, not five, but what about proverbs or trite expressions such as &quot;My country right or wrong&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My further understanding is that there are also &quot;looser&quot; standards for determining plagiarism (for example, ten or twenty consecutive &quot;copied&quot; words). When do such standards apply, and when does the five word standard apply?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T15:10:15.680" LastActivityDate="2019-10-28T20:33:20.843" Title="What exactly is the &quot;five (consecutive) word&quot; plagiarism rule?" Tags="|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="488" CreationDate="2013-04-02T14:46:54.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that it (in most cases) it is not ideas that are subject to plagiarism, but rather the EXPRESSION of ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the case, then the old grade school saying, &quot;tell it in your own words&quot; is the best guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T14:46:54.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="488" CreationDate="2013-04-02T15:09:22.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should decide if you're worried about plagiarism or copyright infringement.  The first is an ethical concept, the second a legal one.  In copyright, you are protecting your rights to the expression of an idea; you can't copyright the idea itself.  So I can write a sci-fi story about a rebellious group of pseudo-druidic soldiers taking arms against an evil empire without George Lucas breathing down my neck.  I start naming characters Luke and Leia and I'm going to run into trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism is an ethical concept, so the boundaries are squishier.  Basically, if you think it's plagiarism and can make a decent argument, it's possibly true to a degree, even if that degree is vanishingly small.  &quot;My God, your zombie/robot novel has &lt;em&gt;characters&lt;/em&gt;! And they do &lt;em&gt;stuff&lt;/em&gt;?  That's obviously stolen from Agatha Christie!&quot;  Unless it's actually copyright infringement, there's also nothing anyone can do about it legally.  The only harm will be to your reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the Hunger Games / Battle Royale dust-up.  Both stories are differing expressions of a similar idea.  Even the accusation harmed Suzanne Collins' reputation, but there wasn't a legal redress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T15:09:22.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7537" CreationDate="2013-04-02T15:29:39.963" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lauren's and SF's answers give good advice for dealing with the necessary explanation.  My additional advice is: &lt;em&gt;make sure it's really necessary&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Driving a car is a pretty complex task (ask anyone who's taught a teenager :-) ), and there are cases where it might be important to describe in detail the revving of the engine, the easing-out of the clutch, the braking technique to prevent a skid on ice, the timed firing of the rear thrusters -- oh sorry, wrong technology :-) --  but &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; this doesn't matter and you can talk about the driving of the car in a less-specific manner.  Sometimes in the process of developing a new thing (technology, world, social structure, etc), one can come to over-emphasize it.  Remember that your technology is, fundamentally, a tool to help you tell a good story.  Focus on the story first and the rest will tend to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you don't need to do it all at once (and your readers may give up if you do).  Let it come out in bits and pieces in the context of what's going on in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T15:29:39.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7546" CreationDate="2013-04-02T15:30:58.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism is an ethical concept, not a legal one, so there is no universal accepted standard.  The 'five-consecutive word' is a rule of thumb, not a legal precept.  If you are writing for a particular forum, they may have anti-plagiarism guidelines.  This is universally true for universities and other educational institutions, you should check your student handbook if this applies to you.  These sorts of institutions actually have software comparing student work to other sources, giving details on the points of comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quotes, properly attributed, are always allowable within reason (you can't &quot;quote&quot; the entire New York Times on your blog without running into legal trouble).  Cliches are typically quotes that have lost their attribution through long use (although your 'My country, right or wrong' is part of a longer Stephen Decatur statement).  Cliches are generally open for use, but are also boring and lazy writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, use your best judgment.  If you're actually to the point of counting individual words in common, my guess is that your writing is too close to the original.  And no fair changing up one or two words or just changing the word order slightly.  It's unethical and, possibly more to the point, doesn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T15:30:58.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7551" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7684" CreationDate="2013-04-02T16:36:48.153" Score="4" ViewCount="4904" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently at 5 - 10 pages (250 words/page) a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to increase my speed to be able to write 15 - 20 a day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4160" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T23:30:10.967" Title="Ways to speed up my writing to 15 - 20 pages a day" Tags="|daily|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7551" CreationDate="2013-04-02T19:20:53.123" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are a skilled writer, the goals you mention in your question may be not unrealistic. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://lexirevellian.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-many-words-day-do-you-write.html&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081203143319AAU9Y5E&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.authormagazine.org/articles/thayer_james_2009_04_09.htm&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://writetodone.com/2012/03/24/how-much-should-you-write-every-day/&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the most usable advice I've seen appears in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-day.html&quot;&gt;writing blog&lt;/a&gt; of Rachel Aaron.  A brief excerpt from the blog follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I ended up creating a metric, a triangle with three core requirements: Knowledge, Time, and Enthusiasm. Any one of these can noticeably boost your daily output, but all three together can turn you into a word machine. I never start writing these days unless I can hit all three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meaning and effect of Knowledge, Time, and Enthusiasm are given fairly clearly in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-day.html&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;.  I understand that more detail appears in Aaron's book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B009NKXAWS&quot;&gt;2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; ($0.99 for the Kindle edition) but I haven't read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T19:20:53.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7551" CreationDate="2013-04-02T19:30:59.530" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;20 pages per day is 5000 words per day.  That's a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, here are some ways to increase your daily output:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write for more time every day.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write without editing or even critiquing.  You can always critique later, and edit later if necessary.  This might end up increasing the total time you spend critiquing and editing, which in turn might eat into your writing time.  But you might be surprised at how well you write even without your inner critic's constant &quot;help.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Word wars.&quot;  Short bursts of full-speed typing.  Type as fast as you can for ten minutes.  These are called &lt;em&gt;word wars&lt;/em&gt; because writers often use this as a gentle competition--who can write the most words in 10 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If typing speed is the bottleneck, try a Mavis Beacon typing tutor.  Maybe try a keyboard layout that supports faster typing (e.g. Dvorak or Colemak).  Note that while you are learning your speed will drop, perhaps significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T19:30:59.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7554" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-02T20:38:37.163" Score="6" ViewCount="701" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been spinning yarn around &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;sqi=2&amp;amp;ved=0CDYQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Summoning%3a_Impure_World_Reincarnation&amp;amp;ei=CkFbUZehB4iurAeU14CgCw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEW_2Xh3FRzqIM2f1G22smJswXPSg&amp;amp;sig2=_IoNTc79n3l1vfRYddgQdQ&amp;amp;bvm=bv.44697112,d.bmk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kuchiyose Edo Tensei&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, a reincarnation technique I came across in the popular anime/manga series Naruto. Further developing on that, the concept of bloodlines (or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;sqi=2&amp;amp;ved=0CDIQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Kekkei_Genkai&amp;amp;ei=MkFbUeGjGcLmrAf_h4DoAQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNF8zdQdcfhDrh-xZ4lhxD0-7gCZQQ&amp;amp;sig2=7nLhDz1Hch3WtzX2jH7vxA&amp;amp;bvm=bv.44697112,d.bmk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;kekkei genkai&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;) hopped in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I include these elements in my work of fiction: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Am I really infringing someone's (the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangaka&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mangaka&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;'s) copyrighted material? [considering most manga is loosely based on Japanese mythology/folklore in one form or the other]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How would fan fiction compare in such a situation?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried my best to search this website and the internet in general for a similar question or clues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4807" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T20:40:04.903" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T06:25:10.150" Title="Dealing with potential copyright issues: manga" Tags="|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7551" CreationDate="2013-04-02T21:34:46.790" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have the text in front of me so my numbers may not be completely accurate but I can at least give you a general sense of why the number of pages you write each day is a meaningless metric. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Anne Lamott's book on writing, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/841198-bird-by-bird-some-instructions-on-writing-and-life?auto_login_attempted=true&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bird by Bird&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; she notes that the most prolific writers manage to write only one book about every 5-7 years. Regardless of how many pages they write each day, they're lucky if it all adds up to 1 page within the final product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line - it doesn't matter how many pages you write each day. Every first draft is going to be bad. What matters is that you are able to sit down and write consistently and that you are able to go back and tear apart and ruthlessly edit and re-write what you've written, realizing that 15 pages in your first draft might end up being reduced to a single page, or removed completely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4963" LastEditorUserId="4963" LastEditDate="2013-04-09T19:45:34.273" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T19:45:34.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7540" CreationDate="2013-04-02T21:41:22.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;To have another language is to possess a second soul&quot; - Charlemagne&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All languages are bound up within their particular cultural contexts. Translation doesn't simply strip some words of their specificity, it can also change their meaning entirely, or how people from different cultures understand that meaning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By choosing not to translate the word, the author is implying that there is a connotation, context, or idea contained within that word, in that language, that is not present in the &quot;equivalent&quot; word in a different language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4963" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T21:41:22.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7554" CreationDate="2013-04-02T22:33:27.880" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DISCLAIMER:&lt;/strong&gt; I am not a legal professional. The advice provided in this answer is not exhaustive and should not be considered complete.&#xA;  This information is worth exactly what you paid for it - nothing. If&#xA;  you want to do your own research, you may use this answer as a&#xA;  starting place, along with other research tools (search engines,&#xA;  etc.). If you are still unsure after this answer, please consult a&#xA;  lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;In General&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is heavily dependent on whether those terms have been a part of Japanese culture for a long time or the terms were made up by the mangaka (Masashi Kishimoto in the case of Naruto). It would be unwise to go forward assuming that this is one of the many instances where manga is loosely based on Japanese mythology/folklore. Some time should be spent researching Japanese culture and mythology/folklore regarding reincarnation and bloodlines (especially the relation between the two).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the terms &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; original works, or, in other words, created by the mangaka, then the mangaka probably has rights to the terms (much like George Lucas and Lucas arts have a copyright on the word &quot;Droid&quot;). If, from your research, the words are old and have been used in works before his, then you should be safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concepts behind &lt;em&gt;Kuchiyose Edo Tensei&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;kekkei genkai&lt;/em&gt; would probably be fine for use under a different name, especially if modified to a certain extent. You would need to come up with your own terms, and you'd probably be safer making the terms significantly different from what the mangaka used. You will still want to do that research though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, make sure to do some thorough and careful research about the concepts and ideas behind &lt;em&gt;Kuchiyose Edo Tensei&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;kekkei genkai&lt;/em&gt; and their connections to Japanese culture, mythology, and folklore, before taking the next step. Copyright is a landmine you don't want to step on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fan Fiction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Works of Fan Fiction are an interesting gray area. Generally, fan fiction is in the same boat as any other work. It is a violation of copyright. However, works of fan fiction are rarely acted upon (otherwise, such sites as fanfiction.net would not exist). You still need to be careful when writing fan fiction, though. When writing a Fan Fiction work, you need to make sure to do a few things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NEVER use a work of fan fiction for profit. This can and will get you in big trouble. Charging for the work also affects the damages in court if you end up getting sued.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don’t use real people’s names unless you know them and/or have gotten their permission.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the author is not on any list of authors who would not like you to write fan fictions (one such list is hosted on fanfiction.net).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a pen name (for the unlikely event of someone actually pursuing copyright laws related to fanfics).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Guidelines and clarifications concerning what is and what is not a violation of copyright are in Brad Templeton's article, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html&quot;&gt;10 Big Myths about copyright explained&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. This applies to all works, fan fiction or otherwise. More information is available in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vampwriter.com/FAQ-WRITING.htm#You%20write%20too%20slow!%20I%20want%20MORE%20Jack%20Fleming%20stories!%20Can%20I%20do%20some%20myself%20for%20a%20fanzine%20or%20an%20e-site?&quot;&gt;FAQs on Fanfic, etc.&lt;/a&gt; on vampwriter.com. More information, in a very well-summarized form, is in &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090912180612AAEh8pq&quot;&gt;this post on Yahoo! Answers&lt;/a&gt;. All of these are worth a good read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4839" LastEditorUserId="4839" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T19:39:48.430" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T19:39:48.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1704" CreationDate="2013-04-02T22:51:41.873" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to dedicate your entire life to it. If you just have one idea and think you can make money, it simply won't happen. You have to put hours every day into the craft for years. I know someone who is from a top university who moved to L.A. right after school and now works 12 hours per day studying and writing. He's sold his screenplays, but he's still struggling. I met an Oscar winner in screenwriting and she can't get a screenwriting gig. I know of a producer who has an A-list actress attached before money has been raised. Actors didn't do that before, but it's the economy that has changed the playing field of making movies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been at it for 18 years and got minor jobs; nothing has been produced. The best way to write is to become a producer. To be a producer, you need huge connections to big money or big talent. These connections have to be solid. Or you can break in by being a big director who directs his own writing. Make a small movie, but it has to be GREAT. You can do low budget work, but just trying to raise money is a huge undertaking. If you produce and finance your own small movie with B-list actors, you're still a HUGE LONG SHOT to get distribution. If you don't get distribution, your budget turns into money spent on nothing. I know people who this happened to. There are people who dedicate a big part of their lives to filmmaking who are struggling. Some-to-many are famous, believe it or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4964" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T22:51:41.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6114" CreationDate="2013-04-03T12:02:56.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a unique mix of past and present with future occasionally thrown in - while normal novels are almost universally written &quot;from viewpoint after the end of the book&quot; which means they will be completely &quot;past&quot;, each journal entry describes very recent events - many of them ongoing or stretching into the future relative to the entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John left. We had a terrible argument and he said he's tired of dealing with my crap. Now I'm sitting on my bed and crying. I've been calling him for past hour, and now I'm trying again, and the phone still doesn't answer. I will keep trying until he replies or until I'm too tired to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T12:02:56.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7546" CreationDate="2013-04-03T14:17:13.680" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't heard this five-word rule. But I can easily think of many sequences of five words that no one would seriously consider plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that I will&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;was the first time that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Britain, France, Germany, and Italy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;all men, women, and children&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;March 1 of this year&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;turn left at the traffic light (that's six!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;five words in a row&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some university or whatever institution is classifying as &amp;quot;plagiarism&amp;quot; any use of five words in a row that have ever previously been used anywhere in the world, I think that every student there, not to mention every faculty member, is guilty of plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't rationally define plagiarism simply in terms of the number of words that are the same. Many short strings of words like those above are the most simple and direct way of expressing a common idea. If you never heard one of those phrasings before, you'd be likely to invent it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm reminded of a TV comedy I saw years ago where a writer of home repair books was accused of plagiarism. And so in court the other writer's lawyer read samples from the two books that were word-for-word identical. Statements like, &amp;quot;Attach the faucet using two screws.&amp;quot; At one point the defendant says, &amp;quot;How many ways are there to say, 'Attach the faucet using two screws.' 'Put in the two screws to attach the faucet.' 'Screw in the faucet with two screws.' 'See the two screws? Put 'em in.'&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand I can think of many short phrases that surely would be plagiarism. Like, &amp;quot;I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;The ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I think, therefore I am.&amp;quot; (That's only three words in the original Latin: &amp;quot;Cogito, ergo sum.&amp;quot;) If you used one of those strings of words in a way that implied it was original, I think you would be guilty of plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T14:17:13.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7540" CreationDate="2013-04-03T22:51:47.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever you translate, there is a kind of &quot;semantic loss&quot;, which may be easily circumvented when it comes to fictional texts but which may endanger the essence of nonfictional texts such as philosophical treaties or academical research, since the latter kind of texts may contain certain key phrases whose connotations would get lost in the process of translation. If concepts of a certain general interest are concerned, the words signifying them are included into the language system that had no way of referring to those concepts beforehand. Blitzkrieg, schadenfreude, realpolitik and gedankenexperiment are examples for such transfers into the English language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the concept signified by a certain word is more specific, there's no need to transfer it beyond the very text it is used in. &quot;Waldesruh&quot; (literally &quot;silence of the woods&quot; or &quot;silence within the woods&quot;) is a proper example. I don't think that this word has found its way into English, and yet it's impossible to &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; translate it, since &quot;silence of the woods&quot; doesn't convey the culturally related imagery (nor its allusions to romanticism or the implied pastoral atmosphere of peacefulness) of this very word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4971" LastEditorUserId="4971" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T22:57:22.917" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T22:57:22.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7565" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-04T06:59:23.540" Score="0" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this symbol will show up in everyone's browser, so I'll describe it also; It looks like an S with a o in the centre vertically. Here it is:  §&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen this symbol used as a bullet point more often than anything else. But I'm very interested to know more about it, what it means, where it comes from, and what it's called.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone explain this symbol?  §&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4974" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T13:36:26.113" Title="Strange ungooglable symbol. What does it mean? What is it called? §" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-04-04T14:00:06.997" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7565" CreationDate="2013-04-04T07:11:02.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, so i found the ASCII code for the symbol and googled that. Which led to the conclusion that it is called a &quot;Section Symbol&quot; and is often used in legal documents to denote different sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I'm concerned, that means its a glorified bullet point. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is redundant now, but if anyone else is looking to learn it; Here is a link to the relevant wikipedia page: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_sign&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_sign&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4974" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T07:11:02.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7570" CreationDate="2013-04-04T12:57:44.847" Score="2" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a &quot;take-off&quot; on a French song using a technique that I believe is called &quot;parallel construction.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://french.stackexchange.com/questions/6041/can-rustique-be-used-as-a-form-of-self-deprecation&quot;&gt;https://french.stackexchange.com/questions/6041/can-rustique-be-used-as-a-form-of-self-deprecation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In English, the original begins, &quot;Me, me I am a man. And you, you are music.&quot; My version closely parallels this: &quot;She, she is a woman. And me I am just a rustic&quot; (peasant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this technique used a lot in poetry? Is it considered a form of plagiarism? I'm writing &quot;original&quot; thoughts, but using someone else's template, especially in a language in which I am not fluent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:56:40.253" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T14:58:08.617" Title="How is parallel construction viewed in literature?" Tags="|poetry|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7567" CreationDate="2013-04-04T13:20:59.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In reverse order: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as plagiarism, it depends on what you're doing with your take-off. Is it mean to be performed in public? Are you trying to get a recording contract? Does the music of yours sound the same note-for-note as the original? Is the original copyrighted? Do the monetary rights belong to a composer? Then you're veering into copyright territory, and I'd consult a lawyer. If it's just for you, don't sweat it &amp;mdash; it's sort of &quot;fan fiction.&quot; (Or parody, but that's an entirely different kettle of fish.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether that structure is used a lot in poetry I have no idea, because &lt;em&gt;poetry&lt;/em&gt; is a vast ocean spanning languages, cultures, and millennia. It's like asking &quot;are there a lot of sonnets?&quot; Well... yes and no. Shakespeare wrote a lot of them; not many people are writing them today. Does it matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T13:20:59.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7565" CreationDate="2013-04-04T13:36:26.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's in the same category as the paragraph symbol, &amp;para;. Both are sometimes used when giving a references, like to say &quot;As described in &amp;para; 12, &amp;sect; 4&quot;, meaning &quot;paragraph 12, section 4&quot;. They are also used when proof-reading text. The proof-reader will write one of these symbols in at a point where there should be a paragraph or section break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T13:36:26.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7567" CreationDate="2013-04-04T14:58:08.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing this as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastiche&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pastiche&lt;/a&gt; - an original work which closely resembles some specific author's style - something that &quot;they could have written&quot;, you're clean: style is not copyrightable. Of course this must be entirely original work, which may use similar construction - similar metaphors, same meter, the same stylistic tools but entirely original content, you're fine - it's a well known technique used either humorously or just to show skill, as an exercise, or even to convey a specific message by emulating given author commonly associated with something you want to convey. You don't really have to credit anyone - guessing the name of the author you're emulating is often an exercise to your readers - but don't deny it's a pastiche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're creating a parody - your work is a humorous variation of the original - then, at least according to US law, it's fair use - and extremely common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're merely copying given construction though, using its ideas to write your own, you're moving very close to plagiarism. Of course you can create a clearly derivative work, a remix - but in this case you must obtain copyright holder's permission/license to release it, and obviously crediting the original will be required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T14:58:08.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7571" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7575" CreationDate="2013-04-04T21:50:56.530" Score="1" ViewCount="1283" Body="&lt;p&gt;I refer to the old fable that if you set enough monkeys at enough keyboards for a long enough period of time, they will (through random typing), reproduce the &quot;Complete Works of Shakespeare,&quot; or any other tome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it likely that someone will &quot;copy&quot; someone else's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/7546&quot;&gt;five consecutive words&lt;/a&gt;&quot; through a random process? Or is that a high enough bar that it takes some &quot;doing&quot; to copy it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T15:00:18.537" Title="How likely is the &quot;five consecutive word rule&quot; to detect &quot;random,&quot; as opposed to intentional plagiarism?" Tags="|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7571" CreationDate="2013-04-05T00:05:20.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we're genuinely talking just five consecutive words: yes, that could happen by chance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But plagiarism is not just about five words in the middle of a 120-page thesis. It's lifting ideas, plots, characters, paragraphs, pages. See the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Opal_Mehta_Got_Kissed,_Got_Wild,_and_Got_a_Life&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Opal Mehta&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt; mess for an example of what's really plagiarism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T00:05:20.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7573" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7583" CreationDate="2013-04-05T03:03:22.827" Score="8" ViewCount="3638" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm translating a short story from Korean into English. One problem I frequently face is the 'antecedent pronoun agreement' when the original text leaves the 'gender' of the subject unspecified (and this is very common in Korean). I have racked my brains over this many times but can't come up with an 'elegant' workaround. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following are a few examples where I face this problem.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She had the illusion that she would fall in love if &lt;strong&gt;someone&lt;/strong&gt; were&#xA;  to stick &lt;strong&gt;their&lt;/strong&gt; head out from among one of those countless cubicles&#xA;  and meet her eye, even if &lt;strong&gt;that person&lt;/strong&gt; happened to be an octopus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One person&lt;/strong&gt; has put up a certificate won in &lt;strong&gt;their&lt;/strong&gt; childhood that played a crucial role in deciding &lt;strong&gt;their&lt;/strong&gt; career path.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Someone else&lt;/strong&gt; has hung a tacky Emille Bell that looks like it has been bought on a field trip to Gyeongju. The most common decorations,&#xA;  however, are mass-manufactured posters. Depending what &lt;strong&gt;they&lt;/strong&gt; put&#xA;  up, &lt;strong&gt;the person&lt;/strong&gt; reveals not only &lt;strong&gt;their&lt;/strong&gt; taste but &lt;strong&gt;their&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  identity as well. It is quite easy to get a handle on &lt;strong&gt;the person&lt;/strong&gt;’s mind if &lt;strong&gt;they&lt;/strong&gt; have put up Dilbert, the cartoon strip character popular for dealing with the everyday life of the ‘cubicle man.’ &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the next passage I intentionally specified the gender as a 'he' because I thought it would be odd for the 'speaker' to refer to a person working in the same office (even if she doesn't know him or her) as 'he or she'. But I wonder if there is any possibility of avoiding the gender here as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Someone&lt;/strong&gt; has hung up a t-shirt &lt;strong&gt;he&lt;/strong&gt; seems to have worn to university sports meets. The red mud stains  that have survived&#xA;  washing suggest he has spent quite some time running around the sports&#xA;  ground. It is not clear if it is the name of &lt;strong&gt;his&lt;/strong&gt; alma mater&#xA;  emblazoned on the chest or the fervor of the days spent running in the&#xA;  sports ground &lt;strong&gt;he&lt;/strong&gt; wants to emphasize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would really appreciate any tips on working around this annoying problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: I have searched the web for a solution but found nothing of practical use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/48/is-there-a-correct-gender-neutral-singular-pronoun-his-versus-her-versus&quot;&gt;is-there-a-correct-gender-neutral-singular-pronoun-his-versus-her-versus&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/76448/pronouns-for-collective-nouns-british-and-american?rq=1&quot;&gt;pronouns-for-collective-nouns-british-and-american?rq=1&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/he-they-generic-personal-pronoun.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/he-they-generic-personal-pronoun.aspx&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/Pronoun-Agreement.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/Pronoun-Agreement.htm&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.about.com/od/fh/g/indefpronounter.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://grammar.about.com/od/fh/g/indefpronounter.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4956" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T11:11:58.733" Title="How to avoid specifying the gender in English when the original text does not specify it?" Tags="|style|word-choice|translation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7573" CreationDate="2013-04-05T06:12:07.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, if you think you can resolve this annoying problem, more power to you. This has been one of the most debated bugaboos for writers in English since time immemorial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Classically, the antiquated answer was to use male pronouns generically. This was never wholly satisfactory, and as the world has become more sensitive to diversity, it has become almost painfully inappropriate. &quot;One&quot; was introduced some time ago as the alternative. &quot;He or she&quot; also has some popularity, but it's awkward. All sorts of invented/constructed options have been tried, such as he/she, she/he, s/he, se, and others. None of them has survived in any significant way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another recent answer has been to use &quot;he&quot; and &quot;she&quot; at almost random times in any given text. When done thoughtfully, this can be somewhat effective. If you try it, you probably want to be sensitive to the context; if the text carries any distinct flavor of one or the other, go with that one. Be careful you aren't linking something in a biased way; the context should be unequivocally connected to one or the other, if you are going to use that as a deciding factor. If there is nothing that distinctively links to one or the other, then flip a coin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, there is no simple answer, no right answer, no universally accepted way of dealing with this problem. I find myself doing almost anything I can to reconstruct what I'm writing to avoid having to deal with it at all, whenever possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, the use of &quot;their&quot; and &quot;them&quot; in place of &quot;he or she&quot; and &quot;him or her&quot; has become quite common, and is gaining greater acceptance, so you might just want to accept this usage and be done with it. Even many authorities will no longer consider this to be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T06:12:07.767" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7571" CreationDate="2013-04-05T08:53:19.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm completely sure picks like &quot;as he walked up to&quot;, &quot;he screwed his eyebrows and&quot; or &quot;as far as I know&quot; will happen notoriously but they don't constitute plagiarism because they are very common expressions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't count conjunctions, pronouns, particles and prepositions in the &quot;five word&quot; count - you'll start getting correct matches, and they will be exceptionally rare. Include these &quot;generic words&quot; and you'll get a ton of false positives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(my experience is with writing variations of &quot;dissociated press&quot; program: find a sequence of words repeating within the same text and cut the text there, continuing from the found match, so that it reads smoothly as a sentence but makes for nonsensical text, a run-on story pieced together from random pieces of a different story in a grammatically correct manner. Finding a repeating sequence of three words within a 130k words document was nearly impossible.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-04-05T09:04:42.263" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T09:04:42.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7573" CreationDate="2013-04-05T12:02:42.383" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just don't settle for one way of writing something. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;One person&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;Someone&lt;/em&gt; has put up a certificate, won&#xA;  &lt;strike&gt;in their&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;during&lt;/em&gt; childhood, that played a crucial&#xA;  role in deciding &lt;strike&gt;their&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; career path. Someone else&#xA;  has hung a tacky Emille Bell that looks like it has been bought on a&#xA;  field trip to Gyeongju. The most common decorations, however, are&#xA;  mass-manufactured posters. Depending what &lt;strike&gt;they&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt; put up, &lt;strike&gt;the&#xA;  person reveals&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;they reveal&lt;/em&gt; not only their &lt;strike&gt;taste&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;tastes&lt;/em&gt; but their&#xA;  &lt;strike&gt;identities&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;identities&lt;/em&gt; as well. It is quite easy to get a handle on &lt;strike&gt;the&#xA;  person’s mind if they have&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;the mind of someone who has&lt;/em&gt; put&#xA;  up Dilbert, the cartoon strip character popular for dealing with the&#xA;  everyday life of the ‘cubicle man.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could argue that &lt;em&gt;taste&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;identity&lt;/em&gt; could remain singular here. You could also argue for using plural pronouns to agree with singular subjects, but that's beside the point. There are so many different ways to say a thing, and it is the writer's job to put the words into a felicitous arrangement. If one phrasing causes you problems, use another one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastEditorUserId="633" LastEditDate="2013-04-05T17:51:56.947" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T17:51:56.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7577" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7580" CreationDate="2013-04-05T12:04:32.850" Score="1" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're putting together a physical direct mailer advertising leaflet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm embarrassed to ask my colleague who asked me to include this request in addition to my headline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4199" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T16:16:53.637" Title="What is an envelope line?" Tags="|copywriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7578" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-05T15:17:27.820" Score="1" ViewCount="1743" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to make my descriptions to look less like a bunch of bullet points.&#xA;So I decided to use more senses and similes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something I wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sun hung in the cloudless sky, like a sentinel looking over the&#xA;  world, welcoming the starting day, warming every plant and creature&#xA;  on earth. I took a lungful of fresh, morning air, and suddenly&#xA;  everything started to look bright and new; the elderly doing their&#xA;  morning exercises, the youth sitting across each other in breakfast&#xA;  shops, the trees swinging softly in the wind. I felt as if I were&#xA;  watching these daily sights for the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I doing it effectively? Or I'm overdoing it? If so, how can I improve it?&#xA;(by the way, am I cluttering the paragraph with too many adjectives?)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-04-05T15:23:03.297" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T15:56:48.147" Title="Using senses and similes in descriptions" Tags="|creative-writing|description|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7573" CreationDate="2013-04-05T15:41:40.887" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As JohnLandsberg says, this is a problem that has been much discussed among English-speakers for many years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are referring to a specific person, that person is presumably either male and female and this should not be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise if in context the person must be male or must be female, there should be no problem. In your first example, I would think that when this woman talks about falling in love with the first person to pop a head up, she is likely thinking the first &lt;em&gt;man&lt;/em&gt; to pop his head up. Unless she is a lesbian, in which case it would be the first woman. The only way this example would be a problem is if the woman really means that she could fall in love with either a man or with another woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But assuming neither of those cases apply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) The old rule was, When the person referred to could be either male or female, use &quot;he&quot;. So you would say, for example, &quot;Ask the applicant if he will please fill out the form&quot;, etc., even if &quot;the applicant&quot; could be either a man or a woman. But some number of people find this insulting to women. In some cases it might create a real ambiguity whether the intended meaning is that the person must be male, or if it could be either male or female.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatives that have been suggested include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Make up a new word that can refer to either gender. Nice idea, but inventing a new word and getting large numbers of people to use it is hard. You can pull it off if, for example, you've just invented some new gadget and have to give it a name, because there was no word for it before and people have to call it &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;. But we already have personal pronouns, and what's more, you often find yourself using pronouns several times in a sentence, likely hundreds or thousands of times in an article or a book. That many occurrences of a made-up new word is very distracting. So this idea has largely gone nowhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Use &quot;he/she&quot;, &quot;him/her&quot;, etc. This works, but it is very awkward to read and gets tiring after a few uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use this when I want to make clear that the person referred to could be of either sex. Otherwise I, and, I think, most writers, generally avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) Recast the sentence to use plurals. In English &quot;they&quot;, &quot;their&quot;, and &quot;them&quot; have no gender and so avoid the &quot;sexism&quot; problem. Instead of saying, for example, &quot;Give a customer his receipt&quot;, say, &quot;Give the customers their receipts&quot;. The problem with this is that sometimes we are talking about only one person. Like, &quot;The winner of the contest is the contestant who earns the most points. He can earn points by ...&quot; We cannot just change this to, &quot;The winners of the contest are the contestants who earn the most points. They can earn points by ...&quot; The first sentence says that there is one winner. The second sentence says that there are many winners. I've seen some discussions of cases where this is not obviously wrong but introduces a subtle change in meaning. One writer gave an example of &quot;The citizen must work to defend his nation's principles ...&quot; being rewritten as &quot;Citizens must work to defend their nation's principles ...&quot; He argued that this was similar, but not the same: The first indicated an individual responsibility and individual action, while the second implied group responsibility and collective action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I often do this when it does not hurt the meaning to use plurals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(5) Use plural pronouns but singular nouns. So some people will write things like, &quot;When the customer requests a receipt, give them their receipt.&quot; That is, we say &quot;the customer&quot;, singular, and &quot;receipt&quot;, singular, but use &quot;them&quot; and &quot;their&quot; for the customer. Others object that this violates a very basic rule of English grammar that a pronoun must agree with its antecedent, i.e. you shouldn't refer to a single individual as &quot;they&quot;. Aside from the arguably pedantic issue of obeying a rule because it's a rule, in some cases this could be confusing or ambiguous. Like #4, it might lead the reader to believe that many people are doing something when only one person is doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(6) Mix use of masculine and feminine. This is becoming increasingly popular today. Someone writing an article in which he gives four examples of hypothetical people doing whatever will use masculine pronouns for two of the examples and feminine pronouns for the other two. I've seen some cases where a writer will mix pronouns referring to what would seem to be the same person. Like he'll say, &quot;When the customer enters the store, greet him at the door. Ask her what she is looking for.&quot; I find this very distracting. But to make the first customer a &quot;he&quot; and the second a &quot;she&quot; makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(7) Use the opposite pronoun from what one would expect. Like say &quot;The auto mechanic ... she ...&quot; and &quot;The nurse ... he ...&quot;. Personally I find this annoying and silly. In real life, the vast majority of auto mechanics are male. If you think that more women should enter this field, well, go ahead and work to make that happen, but just pretending that there are lots of female auto mechanics when there aren't ... I don't see the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(8) Avoid using pronouns: use a noun instead. Like instead of saying, &quot;When the customer enters the store, greet that person. Ask what the customer wants.&quot; The catch to this is that you either, (a) End up using the same noun over and over. &quot;Give the customer the customer's receipt, then tell the customer that the customer's warranty will apply to the product that the customer bought ...&quot;. This sounds very wordy and awkward. Or (b) you use different nouns to refer to the same person. &quot;Give the customer the person's receipt, then tell the purchaser that the buyer's warranty will apply to the product that the visitor bought ...&quot; This can leave the reader confused whether you're talking about the same person or different people. In my humble opinion, it is almost impossible to replace all pronouns with nouns without making the text hopelessly awkward, and unless you do it 100% of the time, you haven't solved the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I often use plurals in informal speech and writing when it doesn't create an ambiguity. In more formal context, I use the old default-masculine rule unless it would create confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the long answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T15:41:40.887" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7577" CreationDate="2013-04-05T16:16:53.637" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;envelope line&lt;/em&gt; is almost certainly referring to one of two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.) An actual envelope line.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're functioning as a designer of sorts, as I used to, then your colleague may be simply referring to the physical placement of elements on the envelope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps what your colleague needs you to do is to move a design element because it interferes with the many folds, windows and/or postal service no-go zones that exist in the world of custom mailers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think this is likely, but it is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2.) A tagline.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've ever received &lt;strike&gt;junkmail&lt;/strike&gt; a direct mailer sent en masse, then you've seen taglines (or &lt;em&gt;envelope lines&lt;/em&gt;, as the case may be). Examples might include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You May Have Already Won &lt;strong&gt;ONE MILLION DOLLARS!&lt;/strong&gt; (Check inside for details)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CONGRATULATIONS!&lt;/strong&gt; You have prequalified for a new loan from &lt;strong&gt;SMALLTOWN MOTORS&lt;/strong&gt;! (See inside for details)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BIGCO INSURANCE&lt;/strong&gt; Could be saving you &lt;strong&gt;HUNDREDS&lt;/strong&gt; on car insurance! (Details inside)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What your colleague is likely asking you for is a few small words that give the prospect a reason to open the envelope and not just dump it in the trash. And, IMHO, a good tagline is &lt;strong&gt;5-7 words&lt;/strong&gt;, makes a &lt;strong&gt;realistic promise&lt;/strong&gt; of a &lt;strong&gt;tangible benefit&lt;/strong&gt; and requests the reader to &lt;strong&gt;take action&lt;/strong&gt;. It's not easy to do all that in a few words but hey, that's why they pay you the big bucks, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T16:16:53.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-05T17:29:13.630" Score="1" ViewCount="274" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife is beginning a novel, and she's written four chapters in under six pages. I suggested that she consider using page breaks, or lowercase Roman numbered sections, instead of chapters because a few of her chapters deal with a single event (an accident) and the hours after it (waking up in a hospital). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well, I find lots of chapters to be excessive in some way. Typically, this comes into play with tables of contents. Moby Dick, for example, has 135 chapters in its table of contents, and that table of contents is daunting to me; I can't use it to recall specific sections with any facility. Ulysses, on the other hand, has 18 chapters (episodes), and I find that I can peruse the table of contents and have a strong conceptual idea of each episode. True, I can recall Moby Dick with the same clarity as Ulysses, but the sheer number of chapters in Moby Dick doesn't seem very functional in aiding the recollection of the material in those chapters—even though those chapters are shorter than the chapters in Ulysses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see the argument that this is a matter of preference, but I think that books with over, say, 50 chapters lose the significance of the chapter. I also see that chapters and sections, in many cases, derive organically from the material, but I still feel the need to caution against too many chapters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what is the best way to deal with many chapters so that they maintain some autonomy? Give them titles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chapter One &quot;The Sound of the Conch&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add brief sub-headings beneath the chapter number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chapter One &lt;em&gt;In which Maggie regains consciousness and faces the reality of the last 24 hours&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add key elements of the chapter, like Twain does in Huck Finn?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CHAPTER I.&#xA;  Civilizing Huck.—Miss Watson.—Tom Sawyer Waits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add a quote that relates to the chapter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chapter I &lt;em&gt;The First Turn of the Screw&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mephistopheles: &quot;Was gibt es denn?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wagner: &quot;Es wird ein mensch gemacht.&quot; --Goethe &lt;em&gt;Faust II&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that quotes are overdone, and, in longer books, could lose their impact. I'm drawn to short synopses under chapters, but it does sound slightly like a children's story book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions about insuring the identity of the chapter in books that have many chapters? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4390" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T16:49:09.557" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T16:49:09.557" Title="The value of labeling book sections" Tags="|style|novel|organization|chapters|table-of-contents|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7581" CreationDate="2013-04-05T19:03:51.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you've mistitled your question. The real question is not &lt;em&gt;How many chapters should I have?&lt;/em&gt;, but rather &lt;em&gt;How long should my chapters be?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Four chapters in six pages is probably not the right way to go. Generally, in modern books a chapter runs between 2,000-6,000 words (10-30 typewritten pages in manuscript format), which is roughly the same length as a short story. There are exceptions, of course, and there are some novels that eschew the chapter structure altogether, but this is a good guideline. So my suggestion is that the &quot;chapters&quot; described above should really just be &lt;em&gt;scenes&lt;/em&gt; in a single chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T19:03:51.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7573" CreationDate="2013-04-05T21:37:26.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the matter of gender-neutral pronouns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pronouns like &quot;they&quot; and &quot;them&quot; can generally be used in &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; not strictly plural contexts, with varying degrees of informality. I get the impression that English may not be your native language (writing that's technically excellent, uncertainty about things native speakers learn intuitively, occasional non-use of a common idiom where it would be expected), so I'll attempt to clarify the situation a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the caveat that these are rough guidelines, here are some contexts where plural pronouns are commonly used and will sound natural to most people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Referring to a possible group of one or more people. Even in formal writing, &quot;he or she or they&quot; is ridiculous and so is anyone who would insist on it over just &quot;they&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An unspecified singular member of a group. Your first quote is a perfect example of this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implicitly referring to an entire group but speaking in terms of an individual, e.g. &quot;Each person present did what they had to under the circumstances.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A single generic person in an abstract sense, comparable to the stuffy-sounding &quot;one&quot; or use of &quot;you&quot; to refer to nobody in particular.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some contexts that may sound a bit more awkward:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A single, specific person of unknown gender identified by their circumstances or a generic role, e.g. &quot;When the janitor came through last night, they 'tidied up' my papers and now I can't find anything!&quot;. In this case, avoiding pronouns as much as possible can help.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any of the contexts in the previous list, except that the gender is known for other reasons. This can sometimes sound okay at first but will distract the reader if they notice the unnecessary generality, e.g. &quot;each father should do what is best for their child&quot;. Obviously in this case you should just use the gender-specific forms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's only one common situation I can think of where using a plural pronoun is usually not appropriate and will sound awkward or wrong to most readers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When referring to a single, specific person identified as an &lt;em&gt;individual&lt;/em&gt; or by a role &lt;em&gt;unique&lt;/em&gt; in broad context whose gender is unknown to the speaker. My name is &quot;Casey&quot;, which is used almost equally for males and females; &quot;he or she&quot; would be most appropriate for someone here referring to me in third person. Similarly, if I'm talking about the current occupant of a unique role like &quot;Beloved-Dictator-for-Life of the Republic of Lower Elbonia&quot;, using &quot;he or she&quot; is appropriate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, using a plural pronoun in singular context is appropriate in proportion to how ambiguous or irrelevant the personal identity of the person being referred to is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it sounds like most of what you're facing falls under that last scenario. In a work of fiction, it would sound very unnatural for a character to avoid gender-specific pronouns when talking about a specific person they know. If the original version doesn't specify a gender, your best option for translation is to simply pick one. Flip a coin or something if you have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One person has put up a certificate won in their childhood that played a crucial role in deciding their career path. Someone else has hung a tacky Emille Bell that looks like it has been bought on a field trip to Gyeongju. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the narrator would know these people by name, gender-specific pronouns are probably obligatory here. Ditto for the third quote. Picking an arbitrary gender for each individual is probably better than awkwardly avoiding the matter. I suggest taking notes to make sure you're consistent with this, so that the person with the certificate doesn't change gender between scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the narrator doesn't know these people and isn't certain of their genders, this falls under the first item of my second list, in which case what you have is fine, but rewording to avoid pronouns where possible would help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most common decorations, however, are mass-manufactured posters. Depending what they put up, the person reveals not only their taste but their identity as well. It is quite easy to get a handle on the person’s mind if they have put up Dilbert, the cartoon strip character popular for dealing with the everyday life of the ‘cubicle man.’ &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, this is all talking of abstract people, unspecified individuals, or groups in terms of each member; in these cases, the plural form is preferable, and acceptable even if the narrator might (for example) know that all four people with Dilbert posters happen to be male.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4373" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T21:37:26.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7578" CreationDate="2013-04-05T21:43:40.840" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on context. Senses and similes are generally used to create a mood for your piece, so the amount of description will depend on the emotion of the scene and narrator. If you were out to convey a person with a very optimistic view on the world, your piece does it well (except the sentinel sun bit, that seems a bit foreboding/big brother-ish and is a strange contrast). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if your intent is to convey someone's ordinary, day-to-day, experiences, then yes, it's overdone. I don't go around thinking all these happy, sparkly, &quot;look at this wonderful world&quot; thoughts when I'm going about my normal day (granted, that might just be your narrator). You could still use descriptions, but you'd relate them to the daily grind, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr - you descriptions themselves aren't bad, but you need to look at the big picture and decide what direction you're taking the overall story in and tailor accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T21:43:40.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7585" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-06T00:33:00.233" Score="3" ViewCount="371" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Easterner. I have been translating a novel, that is originally written in my native language, into English.  During the process, I have also been learning about cultural things, meant to adjust my lines to the Western habit/culture because this novel is supposed to be published in Western countries by the author (he lives in Europe).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone could give me some suggestions please?  I would post my questions regarding the obstacles I have met whilst working on this novel, if some of you are interested in sort of discussion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about this line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a metal tubular-framed plastic covered cupboard&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it fine to picture a plastic cupboard with metal corners?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you think if you have to translate a book and shift your cultural view whilst doing that? You would think it is a rare case?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4983" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T21:23:06.850" LastActivityDate="2019-02-17T00:57:03.410" Title="To translate a novel with Westerner's point of view" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|technical-writing|translation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-06T06:25:31.643" Score="2" ViewCount="1305" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is a glossary needed in a translated-novel? &#xA;or I would only need to put the translation of the native words under the brackets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4983" LastActivityDate="2018-10-21T03:37:38.983" Title="Is a glossary needed in a novel?" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|translation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7587" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-06T12:26:45.127" Score="0" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm translating a story, and there is scene in it where an ex-colleague asks the man who had slapped the female protagonist the reason for his doing so. In reply, all he says is something like, “What can the person who has given the slap say?” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the original, this is a rather obscure statement but at the same time has a nice impact. Because there's no further explanation about the slap in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering how best to carry over this into English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the excerpt where I have to write this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The man who had slapped her had already passed away. Apparently, he&#xA;  had worked in an overseas branch for some five years and then returned&#xA;  to the headquarters and worked there for six more. And then, he had&#xA;  caught pancreatic cancer. By the time the man had come to know of his&#xA;  illness, it was already too late to fix it. The sender said he had&#xA;  asked the man a good while later why he had slapped her. At this, the&#xA;  man had smile and replied, &lt;em&gt;“What can the person who has given the slap&#xA;  say?”&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was a question at the end of the mail. “Did you know? That I&#xA;  liked you?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've thought of the following sentences: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What can I say?   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What's there to say?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What do you want me to say?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to make him sound too flippant. Any suggestions on what would work best here? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4956" LastEditorUserId="4956" LastEditDate="2013-04-06T12:33:36.853" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T19:18:16.777" Title="A more effective way of writing this dialogue:" Tags="|style|creative-writing|dialogue|ideas|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7586" CreationDate="2013-04-06T12:31:15.033" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have so many unfamiliar or questionable terms that you think the reader will need both original and translation, by all means add a glossary. More information never hurts. As long as it's in the back or front matter so the reader can choose to read it or not (that is, it doesn't interrupt the flow of the story), I say add it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T12:31:15.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7600" CreationDate="2013-04-06T12:54:06.350" Score="11" ViewCount="1825" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a CS major I've learned that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CollegeAdvice.html&quot;&gt;knowing how to write is critically important&lt;/a&gt;, but, I'm not really sure how to improve my writing skills. I'm currently trying to write a tech blog in English, but, whenever I sit down to write, it just reminds me of the fact that my English sucks...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is; how can I develop a better understanding of the language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;P.S. The book &quot;The Elements of Style&quot; wasn't particularly useful...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4984" LastEditorUserId="4985" LastEditDate="2013-04-07T14:38:23.587" LastActivityDate="2021-07-29T07:57:36.900" Title="Ways to improve your writing skills" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7590" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-06T13:33:10.670" Score="2" ViewCount="1285" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been translating a novel that is originally written in my native language into English. Considering that the book's plot is the author's experience of a life that has happened in the past, I've been using past tense. Should I use present tense instead? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4983" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-09T08:00:54.397" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T08:00:54.397" Title="Tenses I should use in a translated-novel" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|structure|translation|tenses|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7589" CreationDate="2013-04-06T13:40:36.330" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, from my experience, I've always heard that reading helps on improving writing, and that worked for me! I hence would suggest you read a lot. This will help you expand your vocabulary, get more at ease with sentence structures, spelling and grammar and if you read specific things coming from newspapers, magazines and other articles relevant to what you are studying, it can definitely help you both in your English and in your own knowledge and awareness in your field!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to hang around chatrooms where they are people who share your interests. Those are often more dynamic but less formal English, which also helps. I'm sure you can find ones which can be at the same time interesting (even if you don't participate in the conversation) and help you with your own English. Now, those people shouldn't be the type who 'txt spk', I wouldn't advise to hang around that chatroom if they speak like that. I'm myself chatrooms where people discuss about programming languages and they don't text speak, so I'm pretty sure you can find some decent ones too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4926" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T13:40:36.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7590" CreationDate="2013-04-06T16:38:06.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best you can do, I think, is to try and pick up on the tone of the work that the original writer was trying to convey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your profile indicates that you're an Indonesian/English translator, I did a little research into Indonesian verb tenses, and I think I understand your problem. While this may be an oversimplification, I've found while verb forms don't change depending on tense, the language can indicate tense &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Indonesian/Grammar/Tenses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;using other cues&lt;/a&gt;, although the &quot;tense&quot; can still be a bit vague. (Am I correct in thinking this?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the advantages and disadvantages of various tenses: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Past tense&lt;/strong&gt;, in English, was the most common way to write. When in doubt, it was hard to go wrong by using past tense. It created a sense of things that have happened, perhaps setting out a sense of creating a record of events - whether formal or informal. Past tense was flexible, simple, and easy to write.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Present tense&lt;/strong&gt; creates a sense of immediacy. Present tense is a little clumsy, but the sense that events are unfolding &lt;em&gt;right now as I write these words&lt;/em&gt; is worth effort of wrestling with language. (For example, do you need to shift tenses when somebody is telling a story? People tend to speak in past tense, how do you handle this with descriptive text in present tense?)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Future tense&lt;/strong&gt;: (While this won't be part of your question, I'll include it here for the sake of completeness and perspective.) Future tense will be the rarest of all &quot;viewpoint&quot; tenses when writing a book. The problems you'll get when writing in present tense? They'll be magnified even more when you tell the reader: &quot;This event &lt;strong&gt;will happen&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; Prose in future tense will create a sense of things that are planned to happen, even one of things that may or may not happen. This unreliability may also set out a bit of a disconnect between the narrator and the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, getting back to your book: You may find it most helpful to look at the advantages and disadvantages of various verb tenses and pick the one that most closely matches the tone and intent of the source material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that what tense you use is not a decision you'll make once for the entire book: Narratives have a main tense, but characters will tell stories, talk about plans, and there may be sections that are flashbacks to other events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading English books in these various tenses, observing the effect of various tenses and viewpoints, will also help you make these decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is more complicated that it first appears! I hope I've been able to help. Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T16:38:06.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7587" CreationDate="2013-04-06T19:11:02.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most paragraphs of your question read smoothly and naturally.  However, the fifth paragraph (that is, the first inset quote) reads rather clumsily and should be rewritten from scratch a number of times until it flows more naturally.  I don't know how much latitude you have in translating the story, but if you have some flexibility, consider writing that paragraph in present tense, as a flashback, or in simple past rather than past perfect.  You can get rid of some of the eight &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt;'s that are one source of stiffness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the quoted paragraph is supposed to be part of a letter, replace “the man” with the name of the man.  It isn't plausible for a letter-writer to repeatedly write “the man” four times instead of a name.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the sentence you asked about, “What can the person who has given the slap say?”, the three alternatives you list in the question go only halfway toward being good enough.  I don't know of a fully satisfactory answer, but you might consider “What can one who has slapped a woman say?”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minor point: Rather than “he had caught pancreatic cancer” say “he developed pancreatic cancer”.  Cancer is not thought of as a contagious disease that can be caught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The man who had slapped her had already passed away” also is a problem.  Here is a simpler form, to make the problem more clear: “The man who slapped her was already dead”.  Which is to say, “A dead man slapped her”.  The simplest way to fix a problem like that is to put the information about the man having died into a separate sentence, instead of trying to bundle it up with the information that he slapped someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastEditorUserId="2619" LastEditDate="2013-04-06T19:18:16.777" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T19:18:16.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7606" CreationDate="2013-04-07T01:10:33.363" Score="-1" ViewCount="1527" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm translating a short story into English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1). The protagonist is a woman in her mid-forties. There was a time when she used to copy out verses from poems and paste them on her wall. The people in her office used to call her 'a young girl of literary interests'. I'm trying to think of a short nickname that people would use in real life.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The context where I have to use this nickname is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She too had taken pains to decorate her cubicle when the cubicle&#xA;  system had been newly introduced into the office. One of her&#xA;  responsibilities in the female employee committee at the company she&#xA;  worked at some twenty years ago was to put up maxims or poetic verses&#xA;  in the office toilet and elevator. She would copy out lines like “The&#xA;  wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!”, or “How beautiful the&#xA;  sight of one who walks away, knowing when it’s time to leave.” and&#xA;  decorate them with pretty sketches. You could not tell what came&#xA;  before or after the portions quoted. In her new cubicle, she would&#xA;  remember those days and browse through anthologies every week. She&#xA;  would pick out poems and try to read them till the end. She would also&#xA;  copy the verses onto a piece of paper and decorate them by sketching&#xA;  in the margins or pasting leaves. People called her &lt;strong&gt;'literary girl'&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2). The closest friend of the above mentioned protagonist is a woman who is also in her mid-to-late forties. She is sort of fat/chubby. She uses a handle for herself in chat that means 'plump'. One nickname I have thought of because it is related to 'plump babies' is 'Chubby-Chops' but I'm afraid that this might sound too British. Are there any more commonly used nicks in place of 'chubby-chops'? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas, on what a plump woman in her mid-forties would use as chat handle. It has to be related to her 'plumpness' and should sound cute and NOT be offensive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Three-way collision on Yeouido interchange. Took me an hour slipping&#xA;  out. I’m pooped.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;‘Chubby-chops’&lt;/strong&gt; had come online. It was Choi from the next cubicle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4956" LastEditorUserId="4956" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T00:51:49.107" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T11:45:44.180" Title="Ideas for nicknames of characters in a story" Tags="|characters|character-development|naming|ideas|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-05-24T15:16:36.300" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7589" CreationDate="2013-04-07T01:59:33.903" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to reading (as suggested by others), practice writing in contexts that are already available to you.  (Starting a blog is good too, but if you can't build a reader base that can be discouraging.)  You're a CS major; that presumably means you are designing and implementing software.  There is more to software documentation than inline comments in the code; go beyond that, even if it's not part of the assigned work, and you will both practice writing and develop skills that will help you in a software career.  A lot of programmers can't write a coherent design document or technical specification; if you can, you're a step ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practicing writing is good, but how do you know how well you're doing?  If your professors aren't able/willing to review documentation as part of grading your code homework/projects, see if your university has advisors who can help with that.  Some schools have people whose job includes helping students improve their writing; usually (from what I understand) this means graduate students working on theses, but ask your curriculum advisor, any professor, or someone in the careers center if your school has such services.  If it does, any of those should be able to connect you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if your school has classes in technical writing (which will probably be offered by the English department), see if there's a low-level course that's open to non-majors.  Such a class is likely to focus less on &quot;literary&quot; writing and more on explanatory &quot;nuts and bolts&quot;, which might be an easier introduction than, say, a creative-writing class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T01:59:33.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7586" CreationDate="2013-04-07T07:08:19.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should also consider a third alternative. Is there a character in your story who will have the same difficulty as the reader with the &quot;foreign&quot; words? Having a piece of dialogue that makes the meaning clear is usually preferable to an (intrusive) in-text &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloss&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gloss&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example someone might say &lt;em&gt;When you call that a keris, is that any dagger or a special kind for ritual use?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T07:08:19.610" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7602" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7605" CreationDate="2013-04-07T16:47:53.313" Score="3" ViewCount="2254" Body="&lt;p&gt;This flashback is from a short story I'm writing (unedited first draft):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I met Limei last summer. Our class had organized a graduation trip to&#xA;Green Island, where we stayed for fourteen days and fourteen nights.&#xA;One of my friends had dragged her along. He barely knew Limei, but he&#xA;apparently wanted to make a move on her. The reason she had accepted&#xA;escaped me. Probably because she didn't have many friends at that time,&#xA;so an invitation like that was a big chance for her to make new&#xA;acquaintances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She'd been specially quiet on the trip. She would would just sit alone&#xA;in the beach, staring listlessly at the blue ocean. My friend had&#xA;already lost interest on her by then, saying that talking to her was&#xA;as fun as talking to a lettuce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sat next to her one day, without being quite sure about why. She wasn't&#xA;exactly my type, but I had to admit she had a attractive facial&#xA;features; big deep eyes, a well-shaped nose, and smooth red lips. I&#xA;wasn't the kind who usually approached strangers either. So what did I&#xA;want from her then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Seagulls,&amp;quot; Limei suddenly said, still gazing to the front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stared at her for a moment, confused, and then turned to the sea.&#xA;There was a flock of seagulls flying above us, moving randomly from&#xA;one spot to another, but never leaving the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You like seagulls?&amp;quot; I asked looking at her again. Her jet-black hair&#xA;was blowing with the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Not really,&amp;quot; she said, shaking her head. &amp;quot;I was just...wondering.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the seagulls descended into the water, in an attempt to catch a&#xA;fish. But came out with nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I was wondering—why do birds, like seagulls, have to migrate every&#xA;year?&amp;quot; she continued. &amp;quot;Why don't they stay in the same place like most&#xA;animals do?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Well,&amp;quot; I said. It was a difficult question. &amp;quot;I guess each animal has&#xA;developed their own survival strategies. Maybe it doesn't matter what&#xA;the strategy is, as long as it works, it will remain in the specie.&#xA;And the genes responsible for that behavior will pass to the next&#xA;generation.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Limei turned to look at me with a inquiring look. I wasn't sure&#xA;whether I had answered her question or I had just annoyed her with my&#xA;attempt of displaying knowledge in evolutionary biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We remained silent for a while watching the seagulls. I had no idea&#xA;why Limei was being more open to me than the others. Or could it be&#xA;that she had actually many things to talk about, just that no one had&#xA;sat beside her and actually listen to what she had to say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hey, I'm curious,&amp;quot; I finally said, &amp;quot;why did you accept Jung's&#xA;invitation for coming? I bet you don't particularly like him. And&#xA;besides, you don't know any of the other guys.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She looked at me again, and then fixed her eyes into the sand. I let&#xA;out sigh, cursing myself. I'd always had a special talent for asking&#xA;inappropriate questions. An awkward quietness surrounded us. I&#xA;pretended to be immersed in the fly of the seagulls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I...just wanted to to leave my house,&amp;quot; Limei suddenly said with a&#xA;sigh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Family problems?&amp;quot; I asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Limei shook her head. &amp;quot;It just that my dad's work requires him to&#xA;travel constantly abroad. So, I spend most of the time alone at home.&#xA;And it feels really strange to be just by myself in that big house.&#xA;The empty space inside is so much that sometimes I feel like I can&#xA;barely breath.&amp;quot; She raised her head. &amp;quot;I wish he spent more time at&#xA;home.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her mini declaration had shocked me a bit. I wanted to ask: what about&#xA;your mom?  But I decided to skip the question. Something told me that&#xA;she wasn't around anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But I guess that's the reality of things,&amp;quot; Limei continued, gazing up&#xA;at the seagulls in the sky. &amp;quot;Everything's always in constant movement.&#xA;Nothing in this world remains still.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if I'm mistaken, but I think authors usually just use &lt;em&gt;telling&lt;/em&gt; in flashbacks instead of dialogue (e.g. We talked about this and this, and she also told me about this other thing...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this usually the case? Or it isn't?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T20:12:30.090" Title="Is it unusual for a flashback to have a very long dialogue?" Tags="|creative-writing|dialogue|flashback|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7589" CreationDate="2013-04-07T22:25:42.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Wilbeibi To improve my writing skills, I join on line writing communities.  That way I also learn more about writing by reading others' work. The internet gives me so much advantages because I only need to sit in front of my computer then reach many ways to many spots.  Definitely every one has their own unique style for their writing, it is linked to their background of life.  When I am involved in the field of micro-organism, of course I have more vocabulary of micro-biology, so when I write my poem I could be inspired by that experience.  People work in army would gain another way to look at things, so it would influence either their way or their style of writing. Good luck for you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4983" LastEditorUserId="4983" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T12:51:23.723" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T12:51:23.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7602" CreationDate="2013-04-07T23:20:58.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see a problem with what you have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flashbacks (like any literary device) can be implemented in many different ways. Some authors prefer to simply tell the flashbacks as you mentioned, but I assure you that that does not necessarily establish an implicit norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read many texts and short stories that have dialogues in flashbacks. In your case specifically, I think you made effective use of a flashback to establish the background information. But again as Tom stated, I don't really know what's usual as I've seen a lot of different implementations. All that matters is that you achieve your desired effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4931" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T23:20:58.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7599" CreationDate="2013-04-08T00:30:36.427" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any women willing to adopt a nickname that calls attention to their being overweight.  For one thing, most such nicknames are pejorative or uncomplimentary.  For another, many women believe that being overweight is unlikely to improve their public image.  Hence an overtly-fat-sounding nickname may lend implausibility to the story, translation or not, unless you indicate that it takes place in a culture where it is positive to be fat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might consider &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roly_poly&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roly Poly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, which is less negative than some other names.  Also consider &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mama&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Big Mama&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, a nickname used positively by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Joseph_%28Soul_Food%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Josephine Joseph&lt;/a&gt; and by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mama_Thornton&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Willie Mae Thornton&lt;/a&gt;.  I'd say the image of &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Momma%27s_House&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Big Momma&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is less positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people use the terms  &lt;em&gt;Amazonian&lt;/em&gt; and  &lt;em&gt;Junoesque&lt;/em&gt; to describe large women, so &lt;em&gt;Amazon&lt;/em&gt; and  &lt;em&gt;Juno&lt;/em&gt; are possible nicknames. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Amazonian&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/amazonian&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Junoesque&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Junoesque&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T00:30:36.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7607" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-08T04:45:13.217" Score="-2" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Indonesian but mostly write in English.  Most of my poems are written in English.  What terms and rules should I notice? considering that my idea comes to mind in English not  my native language.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4983" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-12T07:04:01.297" LastActivityDate="2019-06-12T07:04:01.297" Title="Writing in second language" Tags="|structure|language|poetry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2013-04-08T18:05:19.623" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7607" CreationDate="2013-04-08T08:27:08.687" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a South-American-born Chinese and I write novels and &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexandrochen.com/existential-fiction/&quot;&gt;short stories&lt;/a&gt; in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not familiar with poetry rules, but I think that's the easy part. The difficult part is to write like a native speaker (or at least, good enough to be taken seriously by native speakers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are some methods I use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I read everyday (e.g. two novels a week)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I write and get corrected by native speakers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I check my sentences on Google to make sure native speakers are using them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I watch movies and listen to songs in English&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is more a matter of getting used to thinking and expressing yourself in English rather than learning some set of rules. Which should be easy as long as you have passion in what you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T08:27:08.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7581" CreationDate="2013-04-08T14:47:17.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's really completely a matter of personal preference. There is no set length or number of chapters at which it is considered to be too many. I have read books with over 100 chapters and the existence of the chapter remains relevant as a separator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, in most cases, none of the chapters have titles. I do agree however, that adding a title to each chapter can help break monotony. Nevertheless, the focus is usually on the content and therefore chapter titles do not always need titles, regardless of the number of chapters there are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4992" LastEditorUserId="4992" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T15:05:58.350" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T15:05:58.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7602" CreationDate="2013-04-08T16:10:17.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A flashback is usually a memory.  Whatever is in that memory should be in the flashback.  (Even if it is not the character's memory, I still treat it as a memory).  If that memory contains a lot of dialogue, don't you think you should include it so the reader gets the full effect of what you're trying to convey?  I hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4637" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T16:10:17.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7602" CreationDate="2013-04-08T20:12:30.090" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a flashback is a paragraph or two, you can (sometimes) get by with telling. But if a flashback is longer than that, it has to engage the reader in the same way that current-time events do. And that usually means you have to show. And that means that, once you transition into the flashback, it reads just like any other scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the term &lt;em&gt;flashback&lt;/em&gt; is not limited to short flashes. Scene- and chapter-length flashbacks are common. I've seen flashbacks that take up the middle third of a book--for example, Richard North Patterson's &lt;em&gt;Caroline Masters.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T20:12:30.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7612" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7614" CreationDate="2013-04-09T10:27:11.350" Score="14" ViewCount="15693" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally like to read stories told by the the main character, it's more &quot;alive&quot; to me. But the problem is that my character will die and some of the story will need to be told afterwards. Maybe 1 or 2 pages max.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to solve this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4160" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-28T21:54:16.343" LastActivityDate="2018-04-28T21:54:16.343" Title="1st person story, but the main character will die in the end and some of the story needs to be told after his death. How to solve this problem?" Tags="|technique|characters|grammatical-person|series|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7612" CreationDate="2013-04-09T10:58:56.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your character can tell the story while being in heaven (or hell) like in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lovely_Bones&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Lovely Bones&lt;/a&gt;? (This won't work of course if your character is an atheist).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-04-09T11:05:11.837" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T11:05:11.837" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7612" CreationDate="2013-04-09T11:36:57.960" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few ways to solve this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Switch narrators.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything is told by your main character until his/her death, at which point some other character finishes the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Your narrator continues narrating from after death in some supernatural fashion.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your narrator could become a ghost or spirit, wander disembodied, communicate through Ouija board/s&amp;eacute;ance, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was done very subtly in the novel &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0062060627&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Song of Achilles,&lt;/a&gt; written from the first-person perspective of Achilles's partner Patroclus. Patroclus is killed by Hector. (I assume I'm not spoiling anyone for the Trojan War...) But for the Greeks, a person's soul couldn't enter Hades (the underworld) until s/he was given proper funeral rites and his/her grave marked. So Patroclus is able to stay on as a disembodied soul for the last 15% of the book, telling us what happened after his death. (I won't spoil the ending of that novel. Go read it. Moving, beautiful, amazing. I cried.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Switch narrative styles.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's literally only a page and a half, change to a third-person narrative style, maybe even set it in italics, to make it clear it's an epilogue because your first-person narrator is dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or have a series of newspaper articles, blog posts, emails, letters, etc. reporting/discussing what happened after your narrator's death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4) See the answers to this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5740/ways-for-main-character-to-influence-world-following-their-death&quot;&gt;Ways for main character to influence world following their death&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd forgotten about this question earlier. It's not a duplicate by any means, since your story is not interactive, but you may find something useful in those answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T13:17:36.963" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7590" CreationDate="2013-04-09T14:02:46.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most stories in English are written in the past tense. If it happened five seconds ago, it's still past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally writers put a story in the present tense with the idea that this will give a sense of immediacy. If done well it can certainly work, but it's unusual, and any unusual writing style tends to be distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my short answer would be: Use past tense unless there is a specific reason to do otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T14:02:46.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7586" CreationDate="2013-04-09T14:26:01.783" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say first, can you just translate the words in the text and not give the original? Like in the example you give in the comments on Fortiter's post, why not just write, &quot;Toward the beach, there was the village hall that performed a ceremonial dance every evening&quot; ? (Or more likely, &quot;... where a ceremonial dance was performed every evening&quot;. I doubt that the hall danced, it was more likely people in the hall.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there something about a &quot;banjar&quot; that is not captured by the English phrase &quot;village hall&quot;, AND that is important to the story? If not, there's nothing gained by including the untranslated word. Note the &quot;AND&quot; in that sentence is important. It is a classic sign of a bad story teller that he includes all sorts of details not relevant to the point. I'm sure we've all heard someone trying to tell about some personal experience that could potentially be very interesting to the hearer, who says something like, &quot;... and when I heard that your brother had been in an accident, I quickly put on my shoes and headed out the door ... and, well, it wasn't really shoes, it was sandals, are sandals considered shoes? They're sort of like shoes, but I think of shoes more as things that have a top to them and ...&quot; And you find yourself wanting to scream, &quot;Get to the point! Was my brother hurt or not? How is he? Where is he now?&quot; So if you say, &quot;well, a banjar isn't just any village hall, it has such-and-such characteristics&quot;. This might be very important in the total context of the culture, but does it matter to the story? If not, then the reader doesn't care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A certain number of untranslated words can add flavor. This is especially true if the word conveys something of the feel of the culture. Again going to your example, I probably would write &quot;Kecak dance&quot;. The word &quot;dance&quot; tells us what it is so you don't necessarily need any futher information. The use of the untranslated word gives the impression that it has some special significance, that it is not just any dance, but something with ritual or cultural significance. If it matters, explain further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the easy, cheap answer: I've read translated stories that include footnotes for words that the author considered difficult to translate or valuable to include but whose meaning was not clear in context. Like writing &quot;banjar*&quot; and then at the bottom having a footnote that say &quot;A village hall used for ... with ...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm reminded of an interview I saw once with an American woman who had written a humor book that was being marketed in the UK, and she said that they had added a glossary to explain her Americanisms to a British audience. For example she made a reference to being &quot;stuck on a cloverleaf&quot;, so in the glossary they defined a cloverleaf as &quot;an interchange on a motorway in the shape of a four-leaf clover&quot;. She read a brief excerpt that was basically one joke that referred the reader to the glossary three times. And she wondered, by the time someone reads the joke, and then looks up all the words in the glossary and figures out what she's talking about, are they going to laugh, or will they just say, &quot;Oh. I wonder why she wanted to do that.&quot; My point is that you can lose a lot of the punch of a humorous, emotional, or dramatic statement if the reader has to look up all the words before he understands what you are saying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T14:26:01.783" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7618" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7619" CreationDate="2013-04-08T21:35:05.503" Score="6" ViewCount="1058" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be taking the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_Record_Examinations&quot;&gt;GRE test&lt;/a&gt;, which is an exam for students from non-English speaking countries who want to go to the US for graduate study. The test basically tests your English ability and your logic (math) and critical thinking (in writing), and I have a half year to prepare for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know is would be appropriate to read books like &quot;Ways to improve your English Writing&quot;, or to just read as much as you can. Someone thinks Russell's &quot;The History of Western Philosophy&quot; would be helpful for this exam - and indeed it is good - but I just think it's a bit hard and I might not have much time for it before the exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I study to improve my writing in these areas? Should I read books, or is there some other way I can improve? Is this a writing problem? How can I prioritize my learning? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5048" OwnerDisplayName="Dylan Zhu" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-04-09T17:01:57.953" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T18:20:11.640" Title="How can I improve my analytical writing for a standardized test?" Tags="|academic-writing|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7618" CreationDate="2013-04-09T18:20:11.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To prepare specifically for the GRE essay portions, you can get test prep books which explain the rubric by which they are graded, or go online to the ETS web site. I found this link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/awintro.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/awintro.pdf&lt;/a&gt; , which includes specific examples of essays with different scores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting a good grade on the GRE essays is a skill that can be a little different from writing a good essay in general, because essays are graded rather quickly with a specific rubric. Writing that is poetic and beautiful but does not fit the rubric will likely receive a lower score (personally, I had trouble translating my writing style-- which always received excellent grades in college classes-- into a high-scoring GRE style). In my experience, writing that is &quot;too&quot; concise (and thus shorter than average) can actually hurt your score. Working on mastering the &quot;formula&quot; that the graders are looking for, and then making it your own and demonstrating good reasoning skills, is helpful. Again, the info provided by the ETS (they produce the test) in the above link helps with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can practice reasoning and analyses in ways beyond mere essay writing. Read news articles and formulate pros and cons of the positions described. Discuss issues with intelligent people and think about what kinds of arguments are convincing, and what kind of knowledge would support those arguments. Practice thinking about both sides of an issue and trying to imagine how someone might argue against your own position, yet also practice explaining why one side of an argument is sounder than another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T18:20:11.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7612" CreationDate="2013-04-09T19:12:16.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two problems.  First, if the person died, how did the story come to be set down in writing?  This is a problem whether the story continues after the narrator's death or not.  Some readers will accept this; others will not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second problem is the use of &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; an epilogue. Readers often feel swindled if a new POV suddenly appears after the MC dies. This can be a problem even for single-POV third person narrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way way to reduce the second problem is to add not only an epilogue, but a &lt;em&gt;frame.&lt;/em&gt; Open the story from a different character's POV, then close the story from within the same frame narrator's POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A frame can also help with the first problem, as long as the frame narrator has some reason to know the first person story. Not just the story, but the &lt;em&gt;first person&lt;/em&gt; story. Even better is if there is some strong relationship between the two narrators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T19:12:16.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6447" CreationDate="2013-04-09T19:58:21.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easiest way to do this is to create a profile on a site such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elance.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elance&lt;/a&gt;. Once you've done so, you can immediately begin bidding on jobs from clients around the world. This is where I got my start as a freelance writer after college and my first job was for a start-up in Singapore. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the vast majority of the jobs posted on these sites offer very poor pay. It's a good place to get experience, but I wouldn't advise relying on it for any kind of serious income. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another useful site is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flexjobs.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flexjobs&lt;/a&gt;, which lists telecommuting jobs, though they charge you for the service. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is always the old-fashioned direct approach. Find a client you'd like to work for and reach out to them with a proposal and examples of past work. If your experience is anything like mine, you'll be rejected quite a bit, but you'll learn a lot about dealing with people on the way and when you do get work it will pay much better than about 99% of projects found on bidding sites. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4963" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T19:58:21.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7585" CreationDate="2013-04-09T21:01:23.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Context is the key here and that on several levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First: You want to adapt the Western style/culture to the translation of the novel. I doubt, that this is a good idea. Translations normally do not try to change the context of the novel. And the context of that book is the Eastern culture. So for me the way to go would be conserving as much as possible of this other culture, because that's probably one of the things that makes the story unique. Many readers like stories from other cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: Describing a cupboard is only interesting within the embedded context. Why is it important to describe the cupboard? Does some use it? Put things in there and you describe the splintered plastic cover? Description combined with actions is a good way to build pictures in the reader's head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's not done in the original novel, then maybe just &quot;a metal cupboard covered with plastic&quot; is enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, all depends on context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T21:01:23.647" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7623" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-10T08:40:00.613" Score="5" ViewCount="1891" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have google translated docs which are almost error free and require only minor (about 10%) corrections, and even these corrections are redundant which could be learned by an intelligent machine learning software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be nice is to have low granularity learning system that&#xA;can recognize and correct minor in text errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;google translated English(with errors)&lt;/strong&gt;:Make sure the road Changes features in&#xA;  Word/OpenOffice.org is disable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good English\ corrected text&lt;/strong&gt;:Make sure the Track Changes feature in Word/OpenOffice.org&#xA;  is disabled&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we see corrections in 3 words: road,features,disable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we see the corrections are trivial, redundant, custom terminology related and easily learnable in our settings. Moreover they are in a relatively unpopular target language. Here I only gave examples in English and not the target language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a software tool or plugin which would learn and correct these errors utilizing translation memory in the word processor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4647" LastEditorUserId="4647" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T19:26:16.647" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T05:27:01.663" Title="Automated correction of google translated documents" Tags="|translation|proofreading|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7624" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7629" CreationDate="2013-04-10T14:12:52.420" Score="22" ViewCount="27712" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that an author can use a &lt;i&gt;pen name/pseudonym&lt;/i&gt; instead of a true name when publishing the traditional way. This is done by signing contracts with the publisher/agent using the real name corresponding to the pen name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would this work if the author plans to publish him- or herself? If there are no contracts using the true name behind the author, is there a registration field with the ebook publishers/vanity publishers, or must you go to a lawyer to sign some statement/contract?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4969" LastEditorUserId="40124" LastEditDate="2022-05-13T06:54:03.040" LastActivityDate="2022-05-13T06:55:00.987" Title="Can a self publishing author use a pen name/pseudonym?" Tags="|self-publishing|ebook|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1970" CreationDate="2013-04-10T15:23:59.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since no one else has suggested it, I would suggest LaTeX for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You probably haven't heard of it.  (Hipster pose; TeX is over 35 years old and is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;guaranteed to be bug-free&lt;/a&gt;, where the current bounty for any bug is &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/klund/www/urk/texvword.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;$327.68&lt;/a&gt;, that is, 2^15 cents.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply put, LaTeX is a way to create content that allows the writer to forget about format.  This separation of content from presentation helps me focus on the actual creative process itself, rather than worry about how it will look.  There are infinitely many 'looks' LaTeX can take on, and a great many are already made.  For example, there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org/pkg/screenplay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'template' for writing professional-grade screenplays&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org/pkg/scripttex&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;and another!&lt;/a&gt;).  Here is a link (PDF) to &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/CTAN/tex/macros/latex/contrib/screenplay/test.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;what becomes of a work written with &lt;code&gt;screenplay&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, and a small inline sample of the finished product:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/866yh.png&quot; alt=&quot;example output&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LaTeX produces the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tug.org/texshowcase&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;most beautiful documents&lt;/a&gt; and is easy to work with and control. Should you &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; need help, there are mounds of experts in LaTeX.  (If you don't believe me, head on over to &lt;a href=&quot;http://tex.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;TeX.SX&lt;/a&gt;.  I can tell you from personal experience that these are the most personable people I've ever encountered on the SE Network, and they are always happy to help you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of all? LaTeX is &lt;em&gt;absolutely free&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like I've done a poor job of advertisement, but I would challenge you to look into it and explore for yourself.  TeX.SX is a great place to start (in my biased opinion) - look around for examples of what (La)TeX can do (and for why I keep 'switching' from TeX to LaTeX! XD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5005" LastEditorUserId="5005" LastEditDate="2017-09-18T20:32:23.583" LastActivityDate="2017-09-18T20:32:23.583" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7624" CreationDate="2013-04-10T15:34:22.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can put anything you want as the name on the front cover and the name listed as the &lt;em&gt;author&lt;/em&gt; of the work. However, as the &lt;em&gt;publisher&lt;/em&gt; of the work, it's recommended that you use your real name, as this will allow you to establish that you are in fact the owner of the rights to publish and use that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to establish yourself as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doing_business_as&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;doing business as&lt;/a&gt; your pseudonym. There are some pitfalls here, and you'll have to look up the laws in your jurisdiction to see exactly how you establish your pseudonym as the d.b&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T15:34:22.927" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7624" CreationDate="2013-04-10T17:46:01.313" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is your goal to actually hide your identity? Like you're advocating the violent overthrow of the government and you don't want the police to track you down? Or maybe more realistically, you're afraid your writing might interfere with business relationships, like you don't want co-workers to know that you're writing sex novels? Or is it that you think a pseudonym would help sell your book? Perhaps you think your real name doesn't sound cool enough, or your name sounds inconsistent with the type of book you're writing. Like, you want to publish a Chinese cook book and your real name is Patrick O'Malley?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you see as the problem? I can only think of two likely issues: 1. Establishing copyright. 2. Being able to receive and cash the royalty checks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RE copyright: In the U.S., when you register your copyright there is a place on the form to say you're using a pseudonym. You can also give your real name if you want to, but you are not required to. If you do give your real name, it will be possible for people to find it by looking up the records at the copyright office. The duration of the copyright is different if you don't give your real name, because they then can't base it on when you die. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150729225516/http://copyright.gov:80/fls/fl101.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; for more info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RE royalty checks: Again, speaking for the U.S.: If you use a pseudonym, you can endorse a check with a pseudonym and then endorse it with your real name. I think that would be hard for an outsider to track down. Lots of places today use direct deposit, in which case I don't know exactly what information is sent to the bank. Anybody here know? Does the payer tell the bank, &amp;quot;this deposit is for Fred Smith, account number 12345&amp;quot;? Or do they just say &amp;quot;for account number 12345&amp;quot;? If they do give a name, does the bank compare it to the name on the account? In any case, if this was an issue, you could simply open a business account and have the deposits made in the name of the business. That's what I did for my second book anyway. If there was a crime involved I'm sure the police could track down the true owner of the account, but such information is generally confidential. Someone curious about the real author couldn't call the bank and ask who is authorized to withdraw money from the account. Well, they could ask, but the bank won't tell them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2022-05-13T06:35:03.010" LastActivityDate="2022-05-13T06:35:03.010" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7624" CreationDate="2013-04-10T22:34:18.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I only can give you a German perspective, but I could imagine that you face the same issues in other countries (like the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use a pen name as &lt;em&gt;author&lt;/em&gt;, that is no problem at all. But as &lt;em&gt;publisher&lt;/em&gt; it as a different matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides copyright and royalty payments (which shouldn't be a problem), there is the right of the readers to be considered. Because if the reader thinks there is something in the book worth suing you, then that should be possible for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. if the reader thinks you have stolen his story, then he needs a real person he can sue, not a pseudonym. That's normally the publisher. So (in Germany) the real name of the responsible person at the publisher and a valid address (of a real building) must be provided in the book. If you are a self-publisher then that would be you and your home address (if you do not have an office for your self-publishing &quot;company&quot; somewhere else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T22:34:18.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7624" CreationDate="2013-04-11T09:47:26.450" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike the other answers, let me try to give you a practical, nuts and bolt answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you go to self-publish your book, either as an ebook (Amazon, Kobo, etc.) or print (Createspace, etc.) you are asked to give an author name. This field is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; automatically filled based on your registered name, so you can fill in any name you want in the author field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This name will show up when someone searches for your book on Amazon, for example. When it's time to get paid, the distributor (Amazon, Kobo) will look at your registered name and address (on your account) and send the money to that name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yeah, using the pen name when self publishing is extremely easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="40124" LastEditDate="2022-05-13T06:55:00.987" LastActivityDate="2022-05-13T06:55:00.987" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7630" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7631" CreationDate="2013-04-11T14:02:07.543" Score="2" ViewCount="533" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story. I decided to opening it in the following way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;We were in Y, doing Z when she mentioned X. I wasn't sure whether she had misheard X's name or had gotten the wrong place...(and so on).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the original text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were in the hotel room, sipping a cheap Italian wine when Limei&#xA;brought the subject. I wasn't sure whether she had misheard its name or had&#xA;gotten the wrong mountain. Of all the times I'd&#xA;come to Yangmingshan, I'd never heard about the existence of such a&#xA;mystical object. It sounded to me like something she had taken from an&#xA;ancient Chinese tale, or a bad marijuana trip. Surely, not something&#xA;that belonged to this world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The Flying Stone?&amp;quot; I asked, frowning at her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Limei gave a single, quick nod. Her own little way of confirming&#xA;something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought about it one more time, but reached the same&#xA;conclusion: &amp;quot;I'm pretty sure there isn't anything like that in the mountain. Are you sure you heard&#xA;right?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Yes,&amp;quot; Limei said, &amp;quot;I'm very sure.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stared at her in silence for a moment. An owl started hooting at the&#xA;distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It's right up in the mountain,&amp;quot; she continued, &amp;quot;we just have to go to&#xA;the hiking trail number six, and follow it all the way until the end. The&#xA;Flying Stone should be resting on top of a nearby cliff.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hey, wait a minute, how come you're so sure?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The monk we met this morning told me,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;Remember him? The&#xA;tiny old man in the Buddhist temple?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh, him,&amp;quot; I said, though I didn't remember him very well, &amp;quot;he was&#xA;kind of...weird. Sure he wasn't joking around?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Limei laughed. &amp;quot;Monks don't make jokes like this,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;Its just&#xA;not a...monk joke. Believe me, I can tell. And besides, why are you so&#xA;convinced this stone doesn't exist?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question caught me off-guard. She was right: why I was so sure&#xA;about my statement? I couldn't disprove the existence of this&#xA;mysterious stone. In fact, it is impossible for anyone to disprove the&#xA;existence of anything—for instance, the existence of God. However, I&#xA;couldn't disprove the existence of unicorns, demons, and fairies,&#xA;either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I let out a sigh. &amp;quot;Okay, okay, if you really wanna see it, we can go&#xA;tomorrow morning.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure whether this will hook up or annoy the reader. If it is the first, am I doing it effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T00:49:35.743" Title="Hooking the reader by omitting a piece of information" Tags="|creative-writing|short-story|openings|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7630" CreationDate="2013-04-11T14:18:29.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the concept of what you are doing, and I think the concept could work well. It looks like you are intending to build a brief bit of mystery about the Flying Stone, but you also create a brief mystery about their location. The double-confusion was too confusing for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest making their location clear BEFORE you bring up the stone. A hotel and a cheap Italian wine do not, to me, suggest China. Perhaps you could mention the Chinese mountains (or the specific name of the mountain) as creating a beautiful view out the window in the opening sentence/s. As a reader, I am much more willing to accept one mystery at a time. Not only is it less confusing, but it also builds my trust that the writer is creating mystery on purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T14:18:29.490" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7630" CreationDate="2013-04-11T14:46:55.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's a good technique. In my opinion, to resolve the mystery too quickly. If you're going to create a mystery, resolving it in one paragraph just seems too fast for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T14:46:55.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1231" CreationDate="2013-04-11T22:25:33.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;None of these answers really helped me until I just looked it up on Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the middle of a sentence, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;space&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space (3 dots).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex) Feel the breeze . . . and smell the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of a sentence, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;no-space&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space-dot (4 dots).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex) I can't feel my legs. . . . But I can feel my arms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all according to MLA. For APA and everything else, different rules apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5010" LastEditorUserId="5010" LastEditDate="2013-04-15T02:24:45.957" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T02:24:45.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7630" CreationDate="2013-04-11T22:52:33.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This does not work for me at all. It feels highly inconsistent to be invited deeply into the character's head for almost everything, but not for this one thing. It feels like a storyteller's trick. The storyteller is trying to manipulate me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time it feels condescending. When I see this trick, I've come imagine some storyteller telling a story to a bunch of kids. &quot;And can you guess what happened next, kids?&quot; And we (kids?) are all supposed to lean forward, wide-eyed with wonder, hanging on whatever the storyteller says next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, storyteller's tricks make me wonder why they are necessary. Isn't the story interesting enough without this manipulation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This trick bothers me more when the narration is third person. It means that the person pulling the trick is not the POV character, but the narrator. It tells me that the narrator is going to try to manipulate me with storyteller's tricks. If I have a strong interest in the story, the storyteller, or the POV character, I might keep reading. But when the storyteller &lt;em&gt;opens&lt;/em&gt; with tricks, before I have a reason to invest in anything, I have no confidence that this story will be worth my time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With first person, I can at least attribute the manipulative, condescending style to the POV character. This might be an interesting bit of characterization. But again, if this is the opening, then the first thing I learn about the character is a desire to manipulate me with children's storytime tricks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dalewriting.dale.emery.name/2003/09/underhanded/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I have ranted about this before&lt;/a&gt;, so clearly this is a hot button for me. Perhaps the key for me is not so much the desire to keep something secret, but the deliberate inconsistency in POV. I can see everything in the character's head except this one thing. There had better be a very good reason that I can't see that one thing in the character's head. The desire to manipulate me, to coax me to lean forward in wide-eyed wonder, is not a reason that endears me to the storyteller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the problem is not that this is a storytelling trick &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;. All storytelling is trickery and manipulation in some way or another. It's that this trick feels condescending. It does for POV what melodrama does for plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often forgive this kind of trickery, but only once, and only at a certain moment in the story. In a mystery, it looks like this: &lt;em&gt;And suddenly Lily knew who had killed Baron Stimpypants.&lt;/em&gt;  In other stories, it looks like this: &lt;em&gt;And then Winston knew what he had to do.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's still a trick, and it's still manipulative. (Why am I privy to Winston's every thought &lt;em&gt;except&lt;/em&gt; the most important one?) But I can forgive it... if I'm deeply invested in the character and the story. And then only one time. And then only if it's not horribly clumsy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These nearly-forgivable instances have a few other common characteristics. First, the thing that's being hidden from me is not only crucial to the story, it is the answer to the main story question. Lily's identification of the killer is the main story question. How Winston will save the day (or whatever) is the main story question. Second, if I were told this hidden thing, it would diminish my enjoyment of the rest of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T22:52:33.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7636" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-12T07:31:54.247" Score="0" ViewCount="619" Body="&lt;p&gt;The AP style says that a comma is not needed between two clauses that have the same subject. However, it would become ambiguous if I removed the comma fromt the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you walk straight down the hall, you will be met with two doors: the first goes upstairs &lt;strong&gt;,&lt;/strong&gt; and the second goes to the outside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the comma after &lt;em&gt;upstairs&lt;/em&gt; required in the AP Style? Is it a clear &quot;YES&quot; or is it subjective? As a side note, is the use of the &lt;strong&gt;colon&lt;/strong&gt; okay according to the AP Style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3394" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-10-10T17:42:07.140" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T17:42:07.140" Title="Comma between the following clauses in AP Style?" Tags="|style|punctuation|ap-style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7636" CreationDate="2013-04-12T17:15:49.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the 2011 edition of the AP Stylebook, which gives the following as correct examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He promised this: The company will make good all the losses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were three considerations: expense, time, and feasibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yours seems to fit the first example, so as an independent clause it would take a capital letter after the colon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would use both commas for absolute clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T17:15:49.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7639" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-12T19:18:40.923" Score="3" ViewCount="963" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;So&lt;/strike&gt; There I was in the scorching, afternoon, summer heat of Cairo. It was a huge change from the UK’s mild weather, and &lt;strike&gt;together with&lt;/strike&gt; the fact that I had been fasting - &lt;strike&gt;as in&lt;/strike&gt; no food or drink- for 15 hours by that point &lt;strike&gt;didn’t make it any easier to handle&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;only made things worse&lt;/em&gt;. I looked around; the sun was quickly disappearing behind the towering apartment blocks that surrounded me. The taxi had dumped me here after taking &lt;strike&gt;what was clearly a&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;a clearly&lt;/em&gt; circuitous route to squeeze &lt;strike&gt;me of every penny I had,&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;every penny out of me;&lt;/em&gt; I had cringed as I &lt;strike&gt;saw&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;watched&lt;/em&gt; the number &lt;strike&gt;creeping up&lt;/strike&gt; on the meter &lt;em&gt;creeping up&lt;/em&gt;, but there wasn’t much I could &lt;strike&gt;do&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;have done&lt;/em&gt;. I had two suitcases and no idea where to go. I felt a painful emptiness in my stomach. My throat was completely parched from a lack of water and the desert air, heavy with sand, only made things worse. Each breath I took filled my nostrils with the pungent smell of rotten food given off by the overturned skips at every street corner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I walked for what seemed like hours but was probably closer to 30 minutes. I would ask one person for directions and once I’d get to where they told me, I’d ask again and be told to turn around and walk back to where I came from. &lt;strike&gt;Each step filled my shoes with more sand, until I felt I had the entire desert in my shoes, and soaked my shirt with sweat which made it feel as if it was super glued to my back&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;With each step, my shoes filled with more sand until the whole desert seemed to be in there, and sweat drenched my shirt so that it stuck to my back, as if glued there.&lt;/em&gt; So far Egypt was hardly the paradise I remembered from my youth and the insistent buzzing of the flies in my ear made it difficult to remember what good I thought I had seen in this country. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suddenly the booming voice of the Athan, the Muslim call to prayer, resonated around me. It marked the time for the evening prayer and, more importantly, the time for me to break my fast. That thought only made me hungrier and I thought I heard an audible rumble coming from my stomach. I continued to drag my feet through the various streets in the area squinting at each building number, &lt;em&gt;desperately&lt;/em&gt; hoping to see mine, but to no avail. Eventually I decided to ask at a shop I had passed a few times, as I neared it a man pointed to the ground next to him “Here,” he offered “sit and break your fast us.”&#xA;  In one hand he held a bottle of water, in the other a mango. No feeling could come close to the ecstasy I felt when I sunk my teeth into the sweet, succulent mango. This man who looked like he could barely afford the clothes on his back was freely sharing his food with me, it was a beautiful gesture and at that moment it was a lot easier to remember why I had decided to come back here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Guidelines for the critique:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How descriptive is it? How well does it perform as a descriptive piece of writing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How compelling is it? Does it make you want to keep on reading?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How cliche is it? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How well does it portray a change in perspective? As in how well do you get a sense that the character's persepective about the country changes from the beginning of the essay until the end&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When suggesting changes please note that I am limited by a 2500 character (including spaces)&#xA;limit, so if something was added something else would need to be removed. Please explain how that addition warrants the removing of another part and improves the overall quality of the piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; Additions made to essay are italicized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4829" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T04:43:38.020" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T04:43:38.020" Title="Critique a short essay" Tags="|essay|description|cliches|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7639" CreationDate="2013-04-12T21:12:27.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is very descriptive.  Probably too many adjectives per noun.  For example, &quot;sweet, succulent, fleshy mango&quot;, I personally feel that succulent and fleshy overlap enough to remove fleshy.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Without paragraphs, it is a formidable block of text to read.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It doesn't seem that cliche to me.  It seems to be derived from your personal experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not sure what you mean by change in perspective.  I think you mean if I can relate to the first person &quot;I&quot; in the essay.  I would say yes.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm confused by the 2500 character limit.  You make it sound like it is an absolute requirement, that the essay must be precisely 2500 characters, not more or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a few run on sentences, for example, the last sentence.  You also start with too many commas in the first sentence, and then seem to avoid commas through the rest of the essay.  I think there are places where commas would have helped with the understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5018" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T21:12:27.263" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7639" CreationDate="2013-04-12T22:05:41.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The highlights are in bold around my examples and suggestions, but a full reading is a bit more desirable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's very descriptive, but at the same time, there are places where it's so wordy that the description is weakened, making it perform poorly as a descriptive piece of writing. &lt;strong&gt;When a description or sentence becomes too wordy, even with descriptive words, the description is weakened or made confusing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Readability is made much easier with the multiple paragraphs (good job - leave it that way). It does suffer from the wordiness of everything, though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From what I can tell, your essay isn't cliche. I need not say more here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is also little room for a change in perspective, which would explain a slight weakness there. &lt;strong&gt;Overall, you're very close! Don't give up!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of the problem comes from using too many words to describe something, or trying to describe too many things at the same time. Your essay will be much more powerful and descriptive if you find a shorter way to describe things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I can tell, your essay isn't too cliche. I need not say more regarding that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a look at some examples of where things could be strengthened. I will use examples from your essay so that it's easier to describe certain concepts that I'm going to point out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a huge change from the UK's mild weather and together with the fact that I had been fasting - as in no food or drink- for 15 hours by that point didn't make it any easier to handle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, so let me point out a few things here. You've got some useless phrases (&quot;by that point&quot;, &quot;as in&quot;), so we'll remove them. There are a couple grammar/punctuation errors here, too. Shorten the sentence, then add a comma before &quot;and the fact...&quot; (we're separating clauses). There is also the conflict between &quot;together with&quot; and &quot;made it worse&quot;. Before (simplified): &quot;It was a huge change, and together with fasting made things worse.&quot; See how that doesn't quite click? Remove &quot;together with&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a huge change from the UK's mild weather, and the fact that I had been fasting - no food or drink - for 15 hours made things worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Point 1: Remove unnecessary words and phrases. They will be the death of an essay (I still struggle with this, too).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Point 2: Make sure you don't use conflicting phrases to describe what's happening. Writing a simple version off to the side can help with this.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The taxi had dumped me here after taking what was clearly a circuitous route to squeeze me of every penny I had, I had cringed as I saw the number creeping up on the meter but there wasn't much I could do; I had two suitcases and no idea where to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, this is a run-on sentence. Changing the sentence structure will give it much more power, and it will give context to the taxi. It will also give you the ability to remove the &quot;I looked around&quot; part from the previous sentence (about the sun setting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had two suitcases and no idea where to go. The taxi had dumped me here after taking a clearly circuitous route to squeeze every penny out of me; I had cringed as I watched the number on the meter creeping up, but there wasn't much I could have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Point 3: If you can reword or rearrange a sentence or set of sentences and communicate the same message (with more power, though), do it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's take a look at the sentence about the character's traveling woes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each step filled my shoes with more sand, until I felt I had the entire desert in my shoes, and soaked my shirt with sweat which made it feel as if it was super glued to my back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sentence is wordy and is not parallel (see Point 4, below). The problem also coincides with a few other things. There are a couple missing words that actually change the meaning of terms (&lt;em&gt;felt&lt;/em&gt; has a different meaning from &lt;em&gt;felt as though&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;felt like&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With each step, my shoes filled with more sand until there seemed to be no room for my feet, and sweat drenched my shirt so that it stuck to my back as if glued there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Point 4: Be careful when describing multiple things in the sentence. Keep them parallel (&quot;obj1 affects me, and obj2 affects me&quot; rather than &quot;obj1 affects me, and I am affected by obj2&quot;).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Point 5: Make sure you don't leave out words (or add words) that change the definition of a term, as described above.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to leave the rest to you, with a few more notes of advice: &lt;strong&gt;If you have too many descriptive words, you may be more descriptive, but you lose the readability.&lt;/strong&gt; It's a tough balance, but you're almost there. I think you can free up some more space and create another sentence to make a more complete transition to the positive tone at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4839" LastEditorUserId="4839" LastEditDate="2013-04-12T22:43:32.247" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T22:43:32.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1176" CreationDate="2013-04-13T12:18:26.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This, I think, is a writing prompt tool unlike any other.  Whereas most prompts just start you off, this one can assist you with the continuation of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It provides multiple ways to get a prompt depending on your mood or goal.  Whether you want a complete scenario, a starting scene, a goal, or a character, you just click a button.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend reading some of the example stories to get an idea of how people are using it here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rpgsolo.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Actual Play Reports&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the home page that has some more information on it: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rpgsolo.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.rpgsolo.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get lost there is great documentation in the forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3262" LastEditorUserId="3262" LastEditDate="2013-04-13T22:09:37.527" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T22:09:37.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7648" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-14T07:41:50.197" Score="3" ViewCount="2952" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can the following be considered plagiarized? I am interested in finding out the limit of words one is allowed to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Java &lt;em&gt;is a programming platform that's used for developing computer applications.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.NET &lt;em&gt;is a programming platform that's used for developing computer applications.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-02-18T23:27:05.773" Title="What is the smallest amount of text that can be plagiarized?" Tags="|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7516" CreationDate="2013-04-14T16:14:51.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Persian My experience to translate poems and book from my native language into English lead me to some considerations, for instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have to learn more about the audience/reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have to observe more about the expressions in English.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If possible, learn the culture of the audience/reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as I realize, to translate is not only focus on the words, but how to apply it in the nature of the audience/reader, particularly if the audience/reader is foreigner.  For my case, am translating a novel with its Eastern plot for Westerner as the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4983" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T16:14:51.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7651" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9020" CreationDate="2013-04-14T23:02:41.537" Score="11" ViewCount="44003" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am self-publishing a free e-book which I will make available in several formats: EPUB, online HTML, PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What characteristics should the PDF e-book file have? What should the page size, font size, margins, and so on be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastEditorUserId="2025" LastEditDate="2013-04-14T23:43:08.333" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T03:14:20.967" Title="PDF e-book page size and fonts" Tags="|ebook|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7652" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-14T23:07:13.230" Score="3" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am self-publishing a free e-book which I make available in several formats: EPUB, online HTML, PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I create (using my own programming scripts) EPUB and online HTML from XHTML sources which I write by hand (in a text editor). Then I also convert EPUB -&gt; PDF using Calibre software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: Except for PDF, which of the other &lt;a href=&quot;http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#what-formats-does-app-support-conversion-to-from&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;file formats supported by Calibre&lt;/a&gt; should I publish too? (For maximum readership of my e-book, provided that some formats may be probably rare and not worth supporting.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-04-14T23:34:13.420" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T20:07:09.893" Title="Which e-book formats to use to get a larger readership?" Tags="|software|ebook|websites|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7651" CreationDate="2013-04-15T03:39:54.147" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest the same formats that most editors and publishers would require for evaluating your book, that would be a serif font (like Times New Roman or Courier New) and double spaced. On top of that you could ad some adornments for your public, like large first letters for the first paragraph of a chapter, etc. Above all, make it so that it is easy to read if printed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5028" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T03:39:54.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7652" CreationDate="2013-04-15T07:56:40.460" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/devices/article/54705-kindle-share-of-e-book-reading-at-55.html&quot;&gt;these&lt;/a&gt; figures, 55% of ebook buyers use the amazon kindle, regardless of their accuracy, the kindle is a very popular device. The (non-drm) format which works best with the kindle is the mobi. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150336&quot;&gt;Pdf on the kindle is sometimes unreliable.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All other popular ereaders I know of support epub, and people on a pc will be fine with html and/or PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4829" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T07:56:40.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7652" CreationDate="2013-04-15T12:46:53.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wrong question. You don't choose the ebook format, the retailer(distributor) does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is, don't waste time creating dozens of formats. The two main ones are: Mobi for Kindle and Epub for everyone else. When you go to upload a book, the retailer will tell you which format they accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only other advice is: Many retailers will say they accept MS word or PDF. &lt;em&gt;Never&lt;/em&gt; do this, as these formats sometimes lead to formatting errors when converting. Stick to the pure ebook formats (Epub and mobi) if they allow it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T12:46:53.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7658" CreationDate="2013-04-15T15:53:44.857" Score="2" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hear how it is easier for the user to select DRM (digital rights management) free options so that they can use more software packages to read the book, but does that affect in anyway the authors ownership of the text/book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if it is DRM free can the author offer the book on his/her website for free?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4969" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T19:49:22.213" Title="Does DRM affect copyright or the restrictions on distribution by the author?" Tags="|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7656" CreationDate="2013-04-15T19:21:21.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;DRM does not affect the author's copyright in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DRM is a mechanical means of &lt;em&gt;enforcing&lt;/em&gt; copyright. It enforces copyright by making it difficult for consumers to create usable copies of a digital product. Making a copy of a digital file is easy. Technically this violates copyright, but there's no way for copyright owners to restrict this. So DRM ensures that the unauthorized copy is not unusable. Consumers who have not purchased the digital product cannot display it (for ebooks and videos) or listen to it (for sound recordings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose a non-DRM format for your digital products, you do not have this mechanism for enforcing your copyright. It is technically easy for consumers to make and distribute usable copies of your work. Distributing such copies would likely violate your copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of DRM is to make it harder for consumers to use your digital product in unauthorized ways. This has the side effect of making it harder for people to use your stuff in &lt;em&gt;authorized&lt;/em&gt; ways.  Non-DRM ebooks are easier for your customers to use on their preferred devices in their preferred applications. And they are easier for people to copy and distribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, none of this affects the author's copyright in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T19:21:21.497" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7100" CreationDate="2013-04-16T07:57:23.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the contrary! I'd say Intuitives probably have &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; patience in writing to work with than their Sensate cousins. Your problem is likely that you're an Extrovert and don't like to spend a whole lot of time alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obscure psychological theories aside, let's cut to the chase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I just want to spend that time thinking more than writing.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay. You're not going to get out of writing completely, so let's find a way to make it more bearable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should start by outlining the story(ies) you have in mind and writing down all your ideas, to see what you have to work with. The thing is, writing is very nearly the same as thinking anyway if you're doing it off the top of your head. You need to get used to your keyboard--actually, make sure you're consistently working at the same keyboard. Writing will feel a lot less tedious when you're pounding it out at 70wpm, so practice and patience with typing will make it a lot easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A vague representation of the general consensus on the stages of writing or whatever blather the pundits are putting about these days:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The ideas: as you say, designing it. Coming up with the world, the characters, and the plot. Worldbuilding and outlining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Starting to write. You lay down your characters like cards in that ridiculously nerdy game you played all the time twenty years ago (not last week at all, no).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Revising. Nearly everyone hates this, but you have to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Editing. This is really easy, actually; if you disagree with me, go find someone who doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For you, I suggest skipping most of the first step. Keep your outlines really rough, worldbuild as you write, and just keep another Word file with all your notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't like marathon worldbuilding sessions, and I find I come up with my best ideas during the first few chapters instead of before starting to write, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; since I don't like going back and altering all of my notes, this is what I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are multiple reasons to write that way, one of them being that you think the actual writing part is pretty boring and just like laying down ideas. Once you don't have to think about your typing, the writing part just becomes worldbuilding with organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I know it's said a lot, but if you're still new to all this, don't expect to be immediately good at it. Some people say--and I think this is pretty accurate--that writing takes about ten years to learn to do well. I'm halfway through that, though the first of those years was spent writing about trigger-happy alien fairies who had an obsession with the color yellow, so I'm not entirely sure that counts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway! Basically, don't be discouraged, because the first crepe goes to the dog. And, in writing, the second, third, fourth, and fifth, and then the sixth you just kinda cover in powdered sugar and serve because the dog is bloated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sheesh! That was longer than I intended it to be. If this is a completely unhelpful, rambling waste of the past five minutes of your life, let the record show that I do not claim to be an &quot;expert,&quot; &quot;professional,&quot; or any other silliness. Actually, I'm a 15-year-old girl with an extremely vivid imagination and a vocabulary that gets me funny looks. There! Now you've been spared the feeling of being lectured at by someone who sincerely thinks s/he knows what s/he's talking about, and is actually way off base. Isn't that better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5035" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T07:57:23.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7217" CreationDate="2013-04-16T09:21:40.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does depend a little on the genre of your story. If this is supposed to be an actiony-crime-thriller, you probably should cut it. If it's normally slower-paced and this doesn't seem too out of place, it should be fine if it isn't too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing, though. Give them actions that have nothing to do with their drinks. Have them tap their fingers on the table, play with their hair, adjust their clothes, but the only actions that don't have to do with their face in this excerpt are about the glasses they're holding. Make sure you don't rely too much on one thing--it gets repetitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5035" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T09:21:40.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7630" CreationDate="2013-04-16T09:32:59.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like it. I would want to read the rest of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it makes sense for the narrator not to be thinking about what the Flying Stone is immediately, when she's known about it for a while and is focused on something else (news). So it works for me. If it went on about how amazing the thing is without telling you about it, that would be irritating, but it doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5035" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T09:32:59.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-16T09:45:58.420" Score="2" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I improve my technique in description?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which things I should avoid in description?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I know, that I put &quot;enough&quot; description and will go to narration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My description technique is bad (I think) in these cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) I can't find balance between &quot;small&quot; and &quot;too much&quot; description&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) I can't describe things &quot;as they are&quot;: I use &quot;fantasy&quot; words and tips for it. I try to give every object soul and see, what it will tell. Maybe this is too &quot;childish&quot;. If so I want to change it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) sometimes I see, that narration is sinking in ENORMOUS description&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4430" LastEditorUserId="4430" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T21:04:02.657" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T22:24:47.567" Title="Improving techniques independently: Description" Tags="|style|description|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7665" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7666" CreationDate="2013-04-16T12:13:22.567" Score="3" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a theory that good prose style comes in part from avoiding complicated, abstract, and pretentious words. Are there any good lists of words to avoid, preferably with suggested alternatives? I'm thinking of lists like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/wordsuggestions/simplewords.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5037" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T16:03:44.557" Title="Where can I find lists of commonly used words to avoid?" Tags="|editing|resources|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7665" CreationDate="2013-04-16T14:44:38.517" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you focus instead on critiquing your own writing with the question, &quot;Could I say this more simply? More precisely? Can I potentially cut out any words?&quot; You could also ask someone else, whose clear and simple style you admire, to look through your writing with these questions in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the &quot;big&quot; words are actually better, if they convey your meaning more exactly. It's only when they obscure your actual meaning or jar with your style that you want to eliminate them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, Strunk and White does list commonly misused/overused words (although their selection of &quot;commonly overused&quot; words is written in reference to their own time).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T14:44:38.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7665" CreationDate="2013-04-16T16:03:44.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The language is a tool to convey more than meaning. By choosing specific words you create atmosphere, impression, differ between formal and informal, elegant versus pretentious, frank versus rude. By removing a set of words you cripple your means of expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are words that function in specific expressions and fit specific situations where simpler alternatives would be worse. There are rules that directly contradict your premise, like &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing/812#812&quot;&gt;never use two words when one will suffice&lt;/a&gt; - use a more sophisticated word where you'd need to use two simpler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us look at your list and see how it butchers the language:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;INSTEAD OF - TRY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;accomplish -      carry out, do&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Son, you spent past fifteen years in the university. What did you do?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;accurate -    correct, exact, right&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This gun is correct.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This gun is exact.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This gun is right.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;allocate -    divide&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The &lt;code&gt;malloc()&lt;/code&gt; command divides a specified amount of memory&lt;/em&gt;. (that's entirely incorrect!!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;attain   - meet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I have met the rank of captain&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't seek lists of words to avoid. Just learn the proper use of all words and apply the right ones where they belong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T16:03:44.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7581" CreationDate="2013-04-16T16:17:55.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adapt multiple levels of division. What I see as the worst problem is abusing chapters as sections. Get your wife to adapt &lt;code&gt;* ~ * ~ *&lt;/code&gt; section breaks with the current frequency of chapters, use chapters much more sparsely, possibly name each, and if that isn't enough, divide the whole thing into 2-4 parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The division into parts is clear, memorable and obvious though not very helpful in finding specific places. But with parts, named chapters become entirely meaningful and really help locate points of the story. Meanwhile the sections serve as thread separators, scenes for benefit of the flow. They aren't for locating events but for keeping them distinct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not to say some very short chapters are wrong. Breaking the rule of chapter length and serving a fully featured chapter to present a single paragraph of text will certainly give that paragraph some weight. If the event is the turning point of the whole story, the readers will certainly remember &quot;that special chapter&quot; and it will do the story good. But 130 chapters in a moderately sized book? No. Just no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T16:17:55.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7664" CreationDate="2013-04-16T17:22:56.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Describing a scene, or setting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My descriptive ability is not anything to brag about however the technique I find works well is to describe a scene in a single point of time, rather than talking about things that are going to happen or have happened just imagine (or look at if you're describing something real) the scene as if it's frozen in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General Description&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing I do is I try to incorporate all five senses. When I first started writing, I would notice after I had written a piece that I had mostly just talked about the visual aspect, and had to go back through and edit it to incorporate everything else (the smell, the way it feels, the sounds), but it came more easily as time went on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I would is to let the reader infer rather than telling them directly (although admittedly this will vary according to writing style), here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jamie walked along tiredly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Versus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jamie dragged his leaden feet along the ground and struggled to keep his eyes open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that just look at (and touch, smell and taste) stuff, and try to describe them, as time goes on your descriptive ability will improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4829" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T17:22:56.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7664" CreationDate="2013-04-16T19:56:04.073" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been applying &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=5097&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dean Wesley Smith's challenge&lt;/a&gt; to use &quot;all five senses every two pages.&quot; Using all five senses helps remind me to include sensory details, and many of these are about setting. I'm finding that remarkably helpful. If there is some sense I haven't used lately, I may have lost touch with the setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I get the hang of this, I may drop the &quot;every two pages&quot; rule. But I'll likely to continue to use &quot;every two pages&quot; as a reminder to check whether I am giving enough sensory details to keep the reader grounded in the setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another idea that I learned from Dean: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=4477&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;All setting is opinion&lt;/a&gt;. What this tells me is &lt;em&gt;which details to focus on.&lt;/em&gt; Focus on the details about which the POV character has an opinion. This helps me to introduce setting while staying firmly in the POV character's head. It also helps me to use setting as a way to characterize the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also keeps me from droning on about setting. At any given moment, the character has an opinion about some elements of the setting and not others. So I mention the ones that are on the character's mind. Those are the ones that matter to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T19:56:04.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7672" CreationDate="2013-04-16T20:24:11.193" Score="8" ViewCount="12428" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a somewhat related question, but it doesn't answer my question quite right. Say you're writing an event that happened on a single day, and you need to put it in your resume or CV. So how would you write it? For example 11/21/2013:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;21 November 2013&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;21st November 2013&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;21st Nov. 2013&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;November 21 2013&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;November 21st 2013&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nov. 21st 2013&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I put a comma somewhere? Change the order?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;November 21 - 26 2013&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;November 21 -- 26 2013&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;November 21st - 26th 2013&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what if the event spans several days? And the span takes one day from one month to the next one? For example 11/29/2013 - 12/02/2013:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;November 29 - December 2 2013&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;November 29th - December 2nd 2013&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T20:32:53.727" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T02:48:51.907" Title="What are the advantages of different date formats in resumes and CVs?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|formatting|resume|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7671" CreationDate="2013-04-16T20:50:16.230" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best date formats are the ones that are (1) clear and (2) familiar to your audience. You want your readers to focus on the content of your resume/CV, and this will be difficult if they have to &amp;quot;translate&amp;quot; dates to a familiar format in their heads while reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the two extremes - long, unambiguous dates verses shorter, more informal dates - run the spectrum from convenient to write and compact (if potentially unclear)  to longer and harder to write (but clear).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, the most important thing: &lt;strong&gt;Pick a single date format for the document, and follow it everywhere.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Clarity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shorter date formats, such as 4/12/10, are familiar and comfortable, but they can be unclear. Did I just write 12 April or 4 December? 1910 or 2010? (That last is unlikely to be a problem in a document like this.) Choosing a date format and sticking with it for the entire document can help with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer, unambiguous formats are preferred from the standpoint of being clear, but they take up more room (an issue in a resume, especially when formatting them for a single page) and can look clumsy to some audiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd find out what formats are the most common in your field and use those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Familiarity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are generally pretty good at recognizing different formats, but why make more work for them? It's the work of a few minute to change the date formats to be appropriate and consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's unlikely that an &amp;quot;odd&amp;quot; date format will cause someone to put your CV in the &amp;quot;circular file&amp;quot;, if presented with two resumes that are roughly the same in terms of qualifications and experience, a hiring manager could easily simply choose the one that looks more familiar and comfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Formatting&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd avoid dates formatted like &amp;quot;November 2 2013&amp;quot; (i.e., no comma after the &amp;quot;2&amp;quot;) because a too-narrow space can make the date hard to read. (Even PDFs don't preserve spacing perfectly.) Using spoken-word-type formatting like &amp;quot;3rd&amp;quot; can be a bit too chatty and conversational in a formal business document (as well as being another opportunity for typos to occur).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of ranges: Most style guides suggest using an en or em dash (&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; two hyphens in a row) for these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T02:48:51.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7677" CreationDate="2013-04-17T10:48:49.183" Score="0" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing a project with one other person, we have finished the project&#xA;and we are working on a cover page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are not sure what to write out before our names, we have thought&#xA;of a couple of options, but none of them seems quite right:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submitted by&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;authors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;made by&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;by&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Our work was to modify an existing piece work made by others, so something&#xA;like ``authors'' doesn't feel right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone please help us, what is the correct term to write out&#xA;before our names ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added: The project is the final project in a BSC in computer sceince, I am handing it in to a lecturer in the faculty who is my supervisor for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5045" OwnerDisplayName="Belgi" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-04-17T19:41:33.070" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T19:41:33.070" Title="What is the correct word/term that needs to be before the names of the maker of the project?" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7675" CreationDate="2013-04-17T10:58:26.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you say that you've modified another work I&quot;d say the best one would be to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Project xx, (if appropriate), Modified by (names). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" OwnerDisplayName="amanda witt" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T10:58:26.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7675" CreationDate="2013-04-17T13:28:12.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Submitted by&quot; might be your best answer. It obfuscates who the originator was (the authors/creators of the original work) and what you and your collaborator did, but the truth is, you are submitting this project (for what? term paper? publication? to a boss?). You can claim that honestly without worrying about who did what on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T13:28:12.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5486" CreationDate="2013-04-17T14:18:07.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Daniel Wessel on his recommendations.  I would seriously consider DevonThink for your needs.  Many people have written about it's ability to find relationships between documents that help in organization.  It also has an auto-classify function if you really need something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many, many articles describing DevonThink workflows.  I would start &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/000230.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;here&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; with Steven Johnson's often referenced article.  And then also search around &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.devontechnologies.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;here&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  Note: this isn't a paid endorsement.  I actually don't like the DevonThink UI that much at all.  But unfortunately there really isn't a comparable alternative to its &quot;AI&quot; feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5046" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T14:18:07.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7680" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-17T20:56:51.763" Score="2" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I dragged myself sluggishly out of bed and instinctively reached for my phone, then I remembered: there was no cell coverage or wifi.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wasn’t used to waking up this early. I didn’t think anyone would be used to waking up before dawn, but apparently Sarah was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“We have to beat the summer heat” she had told me “And there’s a lot of work to do”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I helped as much as I could, she told me the proper way to feed the animals and clean them, but I couldn’t get a hang of milking the cows, so I just watched her deftly do it. She had on baggy trousers and a loose-fitting long sleeve shirt. A headscarf and niqab covered her hair and face.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was surrounded mostly by flat farmland but there were a few hills in the distance. Cows, goats, and a few horse wandered around lazily. It wasn’t until I got here that I realised how polluted the city air was, the air here was clearer and felt better to breathe in. Each breath also filled my nostrils with the smell of manure that had been spread over the fields.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the time it got too hot to be outside I was completely shattered, but Sarah was still going strong, and started to do some household chores, as I lazed around. She rarely spoke when I she wasn’t answering a question, and at time the silence was deafening. I had no idea how she managed it, no people, no computer, no internet, and the electricity was only on a few hours at night. Although the work seemed to keep her busy, I was sure I’d be going crazy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About an hour before nightfall we got onto the horses to ride out to one of the hills, she told me it was one of her favourite places to be. We rode bareback, I had only done that once before and it felt strange not to have a place to rest my feet, and was a lot more strenuous on my butt.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We tied the horses near the bottom of the hill and started the trek up. She climbed in a quick practiced manner, I was slower going, it was hard to get a grip because my feet kept sinking into the sand. When we finally got to the top I was doubled over, panting for air. I was sweating despite the cold air. She was breathing more heavily than usual but didn’t seem as spent as me.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I looked back at the steep climb I felt a deep sense of accomplishment. I felt a sense of serenity descending upon me, and I finally asked her the question I’d been putting off all day: “Don’t you feel lonely out here?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The silence was scary for me at first, at times I’d be alone and going crazy, but then I started to connect with myself and god”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the beginning hook and make you want to keep reading?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the ending satisfying for a reader? What would make it more so?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How well does it flow?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4829" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T04:43:15.673" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T04:43:15.673" Title="Essay critique: flow and how compelling it is" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-17T21:26:59.283" Score="8" ViewCount="281" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've created a free e-book in online HTML, EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've created a small site to advertise this book and an other site (currently supports forums) for the community of readers of my book. Also I have a blog related with this book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, which directories/catalogues/resources should I submit my book to? The purpose is to increase readership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-05-07T05:19:45.827" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T18:14:41.513" Title="How to advertise a free e-book?" Tags="|self-publishing|ebook|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7680" CreationDate="2013-04-17T22:05:08.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To answer your question:&lt;/strong&gt; This is a good start towards compelling. It's a nice read, and holds interest, which can be difficult to do when most of your readers don't have much experience related to your subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for it to be compelling, you need to put more of yourself and your own emotions into it: not just &quot;I would go crazy in her place,&quot; but &lt;em&gt;why.&lt;/em&gt; Don't assume the reader will pick out why from your descriptions like a matching game; you need to directly and obviously connect it. This goes both ways, too: don't just tell us how clean the air is, but connect it with yourself. Such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The air here felt cleaner--better to breathe in. I felt as though it was making me more aware than I'd ever been, as if all my senses had been sharpened. Unfortunately, this included my sense of smell, which wasn't pleasant, since there was manure spread all over the fields.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe that wasn't your reaction, but I can't know. That's the point: I don't know how you felt about the cleaner air. It needs to be written in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you need to work in a description of where you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from that, certain things interrupt and slow the flow of reading the essay. If you don't mind, I'll make some suggestions in a second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a general critique:&lt;/strong&gt; Again, a good start, but I'd say it's nowhere near done. The organization is good, but the mechanics, word choice, and sentence structure need work. Also, there's a bit of a slow description-dump here--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I helped as much as I could, she told me the proper way to feed the animals and clean them, but I couldn’t get a hang of milking the cows, so I just watched her deftly do it. She had on baggy trousers and a loose-fitting long sleeve shirt. A headscarf and niqab covered her hair and face.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--which you might want to clean up a bit, because it slows down your prose and is a bit boring to read. It might read more easily if it were edited, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I helped as much as I could. Sarah &lt;em&gt;[you want to mention her name at least once per paragraph, to remind us she's a person]&lt;/em&gt; taught me to properly feed and &lt;strong&gt;clean the animals&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;[You mean muck out stables and such? You might want a different word than &quot;clean.&quot;]&lt;/em&gt; but I couldn’t get &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; hang of milking the cows, so I simply stood and watched as Sarah did it, much more deftly and efficiently than I could have. &lt;strong&gt;She wore baggy trousers and a loose-fitting long sleeve shirt. A headscarf and niqab covered her hair and face.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;[Do you need this? If so, I think it might be in the wrong place. Maybe you should introduce her earlier.]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corrected, it looks like this.&#xA;&lt;em&gt;I helped as much as I could. Sarah taught me to properly feed and care for the animals, but I couldn’t get the hang of milking the cows. After giving up, I simply stood and watched as she did it in my place, much more deftly and efficiently than I could have.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This version accentuates the actions in the sentences, rather than the description, and cuts out the out-of-place clothing description. Here's a suggestion if you want to keep that elsewhere. It also works in your setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I wasn’t used to waking up this early. I didn’t think anyone would be used to waking up before dawn, but apparently Sarah did it all the time. When she met me, she seemed perfectly awake, ready to get down to business in her baggy trousers and loose-fitting shirt. Her headscarf and niqab were carefully tied, something I felt I wouldn't have had the hand-eye coordination to do for several hours.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“We have to beat the summer heat,” she'd told me. “There’s a lot of work to do.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;That was true. &lt;strong&gt;[insert setting here]&lt;/strong&gt; summers sometimes meant that, even in the shade, the air could be 110 degrees Fahrenheit.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might be a little choppy, but you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5035" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T22:05:08.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7664" CreationDate="2013-04-17T22:24:47.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I try to answer this myself, I'll probably end up writing a whole book in this little text box and only realize it three hours later. Instead, I'm going to direct you to Limyaael.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://limyaael.livejournal.com/145349.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://limyaael.livejournal.com/145349.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of her stuff is about fantasy, but this is applicable to basically any genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, though, your reader should have an idea where the characters are, but shouldn't know about every object in the room, or how the furniture is arranged. Just what's meaningful: the little boy's teddy bear, given to him by his sister, which he carries around everywhere, or the professor's chair by the fire, maybe, because those are prominent things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But not the side table by the stairs, the potted African violets in the windowsill, and the family pictures on the walls--&lt;em&gt;unless these become important.&lt;/em&gt; If there's a dagger hidden in the violets or someone's going to crash into the side table in a fight and you want to mention that it's got a candleholder he can use as a blunt instrument, that makes it important. If the family pictures on the walls include vampires, that could also be important. What's important enough to describe is a matter of your own style, but make sure it's readable. If you can't tell, read other people's novels and compare, and get some readers who are not your family or otherwise sparing of your feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is sometimes referred to as the Law of Conservation of Detail. Here's the TVTropes page on it. (TVTropes is very useful to writers.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLawOfConservationOfDetail&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLawOfConservationOfDetail&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5035" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T22:24:47.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7551" CreationDate="2013-04-17T23:30:10.967" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pick your problem from the list...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Typing speed:&lt;/strong&gt; If it helps, you can stare intensely at your keyboard while you type and edit later. If you can go at light speed while looking at the keys, do it. Then, later, you'll be able to look up from your typing. When I was twelve (three years ago), I could hit 70wpm if I was looking at my keyboard, and maybe 30wpm if I wasn't. So you know what I did when I was writing? I looked at my keyboard. Now, I don't need to, and I've kept most of that speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ideas:&lt;/strong&gt; Go looking for them. The Internet is a wonderful place. You can spend hours on TVTropes, Limyaael's Fantasy Rants, Springhole.net, whatever. They're great. And the time you spend will pay off: if you come up with good ideas and avoid bad ones because you read those sites, you might save days in the rewriting. I know this from experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you should train yourself to think about your story whenever you're waiting in line for something or in the shower or otherwise not occupied. You might not think you're getting any ideas this way, but it does set your brain to working on the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time:&lt;/strong&gt; Two words: close Facebook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...I said now! Do it! I don't care if some random Indian dude you've never met wants to be your friend!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Concentration:&lt;/strong&gt; There's a device that induces this. It's called &quot;earbuds.&quot; You can get them for about ten dollars at Walmart. I recommend the band &quot;Explosions in the Sky,&quot; which is all instrumental and very calming, despite what their name would lead you to believe. Sometimes I have a hard time writing to classical music, though--it grabs my focus too much. If that happens with one band/composer, find a different one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there's a device called a husband, who should be taking care of your screaming kids so you can write. If he is uncooperative, bribe him with cake. If you lack such a device, build one. Tell your kids he's Data from Star Trek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or just turn on Star Trek. Your kids will shut up eventually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enthusiasm:&lt;/strong&gt; You may be lacking ideas, or you may be beating a dead horse of a story. If so, ditch it and find something more interesting. Unless you're under contract, in which case, you have my sympathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a high school junior, and therefore have a lot of free time to write out long stuff like, say, this post. It's not unusual for me to work in 5000 words in a few hours, if I'm really into it or have a lot of time on my hands. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't write every day, and I don't always write that much when I do, but I do spend a lot of time on the Internet, reading things that were written about writing. I also read a lot of fiction. That means that when I do write, it's productive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm stalled on something, I will go back to the Internet for ideas--&lt;em&gt;but I eventually write past it.&lt;/em&gt; You can't spend all your time taking in research, and you can't spend all your time writing, either. All intake and no output means nothing gets done, and all output without intake means you get burned out and are left with no ideas, and also that you're probably writing cliches. Balance is really important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5035" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T23:30:10.967" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7639" CreationDate="2013-04-17T23:48:00.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost any writing has to be written with some attention paid to who the audience will be. If you were writing a nice little travel piece for the newspaper, you'd write this piece very differently, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were editing this piece, I'd move all that weather and food stuff out of the way at the beginning and start with the taxi dumping you in the middle of nowhere, having just fleeced you. Have it rumble away, just as your stomach rumbles. (By the way, all rumbles are audible, so you can save eight characters right there by removing that word.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to make clear why you have been fasting (travel? religion? illness?) even though you say later that the call to prayer means it is time to break your fast--unless your intended audience is entirely Muslim, in which case you might get away with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this piece you are caught in an absurd situation. You think you should blend right into a city you obviously once enjoyed. Dare I say that for a few hours you were a pompous old white Englishman? Can you write it like you were? And it took a poor man with only a few mangoes to make you Egyptian again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4935" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T23:48:00.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7354" CreationDate="2013-04-17T23:51:05.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like a colossal waste of paper, but good self-proofreading really requires a hard copy. I'm one of those people who doesn't have much of a problem with this, but I end up catching the strangest stuff when it's all printed out. Most writers agree on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5035" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T23:51:05.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7680" CreationDate="2013-04-18T00:06:33.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This essay as it stands is not compelling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do not know why the narrator has traveled to visit Sarah.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do not know where Sarah is.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do not know why Sarah is there. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do not learn Sarah's answer to the question: &quot;Don't you feel lonely out here?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We need to understand a bit more about the two characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4935" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T00:06:33.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7354" CreationDate="2013-04-18T07:48:41.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing time is not the good time to concentrate on writing &quot;correctly&quot;. You should concentrate on the subject, on getting the point across. If you worry too much about commas and spelling, you lose the bigger image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proofreading later is the answer, and finding good proofreaders is THE answer - some people are just naturally inclined towards it, they admit themselves they have not enough creativity to write but can spot minute grammar errors you'd never notice. If you find one of these people, make friends and hold to them like they were a treasure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T07:48:41.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7571" CreationDate="2013-04-18T15:00:18.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indeed, if someone was really &quot;prosecuting&quot; by a 5-consecutive-word rule, I think a would-be plagiarist could beat that by going through the text and substituting some pronouns and prepositions, rearranging word order here and there, etc, while still retaining the sense of the original. He'd have to be meticulous to make sure that he made at least one such change every five words, but in principle it would work. But I'd think by any reasonable definition it would still be plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take a trivial example: Winston Churchill famously said, &quot;I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.&quot; I could write, &quot;I have nothing to give but blood, toil, sweat, and tears.&quot; If I actually claimed that sentence to be original, I would surely be guilty of plagiarism. But it has no five consecutive words in common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T15:00:18.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7671" CreationDate="2013-04-18T15:15:05.457" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that a compact numerical date format like 01/02/2013 uses a different convention in the US than in Europe. In the US it's interpreted as month/day/year, while in Europe it's day/month/year. So if you're writing a document that might be read in both hemispheres, I'd avoid the compact form. If it's only one or the other, less of an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A form like &quot;November 2 2012&quot;, with no comma between the day and the year, is very uncommon, probably because it's a little hard to read. Depending on the font and the reader's eyesight, the space might be lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since about 1990 I always put a four-digit year to avoid any ambiguity. If space is really tight, a two-digit year is unlikely to be ambiguous if you're talking about recent events. For a resume, if you say you worked at Foobar Corporation from '08 to '11, I think we could safely assume that you mean 2008 to 2011 and not 1908 to 1911, unless you are a very, very old man. But if you were writing in some larger context and you said that Foobar Corporation was founded in '08, it might not be at all clear whether you mean 2008, 1908, or for that matter 1508.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, when I'm writing for an international audience, I generally use either &quot;Nov 2, 2013&quot; or &quot;2 Nov 2013&quot;, i.e. use an abbreviation of the month name, a four-digit year, and if putting the day after the month, separate it from the year with a comma. Both forms are unambiguous but still reasonably compact. When I'm writing strictly for the US, I usually put 11/02/2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heartily agree with Neil Fein that whatever you do, be consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T15:15:05.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7691" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7718" CreationDate="2013-04-18T16:39:06.047" Score="3" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to rewrite someone else's novel in a different way.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Just to show the other side of his characters.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;My story will be based on these characters, but they will have more &quot;realistic&quot; sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do in this situation?&#xA;(I will study his story and take base tips for my story.)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What kind of consequences I may have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4430" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-04-22T11:32:17.647" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T11:44:48.940" Title="Best practice for stories based on other writers' stories" Tags="|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7656" CreationDate="2013-04-18T19:49:22.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer. The following is not legal advice. I strongly suggest you talk to a lawyer to seek legal counsel on your inquiry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having or not having DRM does not affect the original author's copyright. The author retains all legal rights and responsibilities as previously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DRM does, however, give the author more legal teeth via the DMCA, which covers the  circumvention of copyright protection measures, like DRM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While someone who gets ahold of your DRM-free ebook can publish it for free elsewhere, they would be in violation of your rights, and you will have the right to issue a DMCA takedown against the site, and/or seek redress via a lawsuit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having DRM applied to your book doesn't exactly protect you from having someone strip the DRM off of the ebook and then going and publishing it anyways. They can actually publish the DRM'd copy as well and just leave the task of removing the DRM an exercise for the downloader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For you, the author, DRM doesn't factor into your rights. It provides a mild hinderance to the would-be thieves and to a greater extent, a good deal of annoyance to your would-be fans and readers. DRM presents significant hurdles to your fans and customers from being able to read a document easily between devices or being able to retain the text past the life of the company that is handling licensing, the device that it is associated with, and so forth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, publishing a text without DRM does not imply that you are making it public domain, just as publishing a xerox'able/scannable book does not mean it is in the public domain. DRM is a tool to hinder copying and is of variable effectiveness(some would say of little value except to the companies that license out DRM technologies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some publishing channels require DRM, others require there to be no DRM on your submitted titles. Some publishing houses will enforce DRM whether you want them to or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5053" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T19:49:22.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7652" CreationDate="2013-04-18T19:56:53.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are self-publishing, there is no reason not to offer both EPUB and MOBI formats to ensure that the final output looks the way you want it to on the respective readers(EPUB for iOS/Nook and MOBI for Kindle). Since you have the scripts to generate these formats from your XHTML source, you are set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to publish through one of the channels, like Amazon/etc. then you would just need to submit your EPUB or MOBI file to their specifications. Once again, since you already have the scripts to manage this, this is a one-time setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would avoid PDF, as it poses many potential problems with e-readers(embedded fonts, reflow issues, and page formatting come to mind). However, once again, there is no reason why you can't offer PDF(s) for sale as well, if you are self-publishing and self-hosting the files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5053" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T19:56:53.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7648" CreationDate="2013-04-18T20:04:16.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't a technical definition of plagiarism in that sense. The two phrases you've listed as examples may be used by many folks without citation and it would not be considered plagiarism. They are simple statements and certainly not concepts that anyone would believe are originated by any new writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better question might be: At what point should I provide citations to a source for phrases/quotes, which are in common usage? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the phrase is something you fear will be flagged as plagiarism, then either rewording it or providing context to avoid confusion or mis-attribution would be ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5053" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T20:04:16.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7652" CreationDate="2013-04-18T20:07:09.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that this is a choice that you really have to make -- there are services that will do these conversions for you. I saw a presentation at the Digital Minds Conference 2013 by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.autharium.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Autharium&lt;/a&gt; that seemed to be suitable. (I'm not associated with them, just in the general publishing software business area).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T20:07:09.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1897" CreationDate="2013-04-19T02:24:05.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on your story. Sometimes a conlang (constructed language) will look silly, but sometimes it's almost necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, I'm working on a story in which alternate dimensions are a very real thing, and Earth (which once was a great dimension to trade with for metal, something that's scarce in most other dimensions) has become an obscure topic since most of its mage traders died in a magical collapse. Since English, in these worlds, has achieved about the same status as, say, Latin and Greek have in ours: once prevalent, but now only spoken by a select few--in this case, scholars and mages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this setup, it would be ridiculous if there wasn't a language to write in its place occasionally. A few of my main cast speak it, so that's not so much a problem. But it would have been absurd if scholars and mages, the few among the many, were the only people they ran into or had to talk to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it gives something to the world. You can have a lot of fun with a conlang. Mine sounds kind of like German, and is very rhythmic: most of the words are three syllables, with the stress on the second. Can we say fun to read aloud?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a lot of work, though. You have to decide how far you want to go--if you just want enough for a few characters to speak occasionally, then just do that. Don't make a whole language if you don't need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide you want to, make sure you've read Limyaael's stuff. There are some rookie mistakes that you want to avoid, because anyone who's ever taken a language class can spot them immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/459655.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/459655.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/460892.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/460892.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/462195.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/462195.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/463028.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/463028.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5035" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T02:24:05.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7697" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-19T03:19:46.990" Score="3" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge step-by-step tutorials should have the form of a ladder, where you describe how to get to a place step by step– accomplishing a single task at the end. Is it possible to accomplish many tasks while using the step-by-step approach? For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to view a contact in Gmail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open Gmail&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click on Contacts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To view a single contact, click on the name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To view all the contacts, click the &quot;contacts&quot; link&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am confused about step 3 and 4. Is it okay to list the two this way? I could list these two under a single step, but I have more than two items and this was just an example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3394" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2020-03-14T12:33:53.367" LastActivityDate="2020-03-14T12:33:53.367" Title="Multiple tasks and a step by step tutorial" Tags="|style|technical-writing|tutorial|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7697" CreationDate="2013-04-19T03:57:23.227" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want your tasks to have multiple endpoints, then you need to have an EXPLICIT branching point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 Open Gmail&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2 Click on Contacts&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3 Do you want to view (a) a single contact or (b) all contacts.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;4a To view a single contact, click on the name&lt;br&gt;&#xA;4b To view all the contacts, click the &quot;contacts&quot; link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastEditorUserId="4332" LastEditDate="2013-04-20T09:52:54.343" LastActivityDate="2013-04-20T09:52:54.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7699" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7701" CreationDate="2013-04-19T03:59:42.770" Score="2" ViewCount="932" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having a bit of trouble, since I'm writing in a semi-new genre. I ordinarily write fantasy with a modern-day setting, but my latest experiment is steampunk set in not-exactly-Earth, so it has a Victorian feel. Needless to say, there's a bit of a style difference, mainly in how formal it should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to sound stuffy or end up writing a bunch of sesquipedalian loquaciousness, but I also don't want my characters running around saying stuff like, &amp;quot;That's a cool T-shirt!&amp;quot; all the time. So I'm caught in an attempt to strike a balance. I'd like to be more on the relaxed side, since I write YA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is kind of difficult to describe and answer, I've provided a few paragraphs of example text in about the style I'm trying to go with. I just want to know if it sounds all right, or if it's too far one way or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not from my novel, just off the top of my head. But let's say for the sake of argument that this is a 20-year-old, working-class guy, who is kind of a constant traveler/merchant type. Also, he's kinda scared out of his wits because he's pretty sure some guys are gonna try to kill him for what he's about to do next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He sat down at his table with one intention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I’m going to write up all of our complaints. Someone has to do something, and I’m in the best position.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, he thought, he’d work up the nerve to send them to the Baron. Technically, Samuel wasn’t one of the Baron’s subjects, but this wasn’t that reassuring. He’d be in danger anyway. Possibly more so, since he wasn’t very well protected and the Baron had no reason to be attached to him—not that he had any reservations about dispatching his own people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Crap,” he muttered to himself. “So this is how he keeps his hold. I hadn’t imagined that this would be so difficult…”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steeling himself, he tried to think of the meetings. But the only things which surfaced were no help: Clara’s stony face as she thought of her dead son, Jonathan’s trembling hands as he tried to write notes. They only served to shut his mind down, and put him into a lethargic, downtrodden sort of mood. The gentle clunking as his homemade watch tapped the seconds away seemed louder than ever. How effective could he be, writing in this state?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know what steampunk is, this fellow explains it quite well in a nice little music video. You will be entertained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5035" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-04-28T22:10:05.053" Title="Does this excerpt strike a balance between the formality of steampunk and accessible writing?" Tags="|fiction|style|steampunk|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="476" CreationDate="2013-04-19T04:07:36.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Springhole.net has a whole collection of generators depending on your genre. I usually don't use the ones for character names, but the ones for country names, item names, plant names--those are great. I find it really difficult to come up with spellwords that don't sound stupid, but that site can be a really helpful one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5035" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T04:07:36.440" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-04-19T04:07:36.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7699" CreationDate="2013-04-19T06:54:44.143" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you had not specified that the setting was meant to be steam-punk, then I would not have inferred that from your sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was going to comment on the fact that your use of contractions strikes me as incongruous for the supposed time period. Then I came upon &lt;em&gt;&quot;Crap,&quot; he muttered&lt;/em&gt; and all other concerns paled into insignificance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer to your question is NO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T06:54:44.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7702" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-19T09:12:06.483" Score="6" ViewCount="5526" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Linux, and I'd like to format a book for the iBookstore. When I go to &lt;a href=&quot;https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/wa/bookSignup&quot;&gt;signup to iTunes Connect&lt;/a&gt; to upload my books, it&#xA;says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Download iTunes Producer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Download our delivery application, iTunes Producer (&lt;strong&gt;requires OS X v10.6 or later&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Deliver&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using iTunes Producer, provide your book’s basic information and click Deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Emphasis mine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I submit my e-book to iBookstore without having a Mac? Is that even possible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-04-19T16:56:23.187" LastActivityDate="2018-09-05T22:11:50.350" Title="How do I create a book on iBookstore without having a Mac?" Tags="|publishing|tools|ebook|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7704" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-19T14:47:19.130" Score="8" ViewCount="1675" Body="&lt;p&gt;Steven Berlin Johnson talks in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/000230.html&quot;&gt;this much cited article&lt;/a&gt; about his research workflow using DevonThink.  In short, he advocates for creating 50-500 word focused text snippets from your research readings and placing them in DevonThink for future use.  Reason: short, focused snippets allows DevonThink's &quot;See Also&quot; AI feature to come up with many overlooked associations between your snippets.  These associations allow you to get a much more in-depth use of your previously read research that you may have forgotten about or never made a link to on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: &lt;strong&gt;is it worth the effort?&lt;/strong&gt;  Is the pain of accumulating enough 50-500 word snippets in DevonThink during research worth the gain you receive from it in the writing process?  Converting previously-read articles to 50-500 word snippets can be very time consuming.  And the effort required to create a DevonThink snippet database large enough to make the &quot;See Also&quot; function useful is a substantial investment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone used both Johnson’s DevonThink workflow and another database applicaton with standard search features?  Can you offer a comparison?  Are the associations and “new leads” that are uncovered using Johnson’s DevonThink 50-500 word snippet technique worth the effort?  Or will you get, for example, 80-90% of the same results just using whole articles dumped into Evernote, EagleFiler etc and relying on its built-in search functions when retrieving research ideas?  Are these two research techniques comparable or entirely different in their results?  If so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5046" LastEditorUserId="5046" LastEditDate="2013-04-19T15:06:20.150" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T21:51:59.690" Title="Steven Johnson's DevonThink writing workflow: is creating &amp; accumulating 50-500 word snippets worth the effort?" Tags="|software|organization|research|ideas|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="466" CreationDate="2013-04-19T20:40:00.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write while lying on my stomach my bed, with all the covers shoved to one side. I have Christmas lights hanging on the wall it's up against, which is really nice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like when one of those expensively-done iPad commercials comes on and the girl in the commercial, who is rich enough to afford an iPad, is also apparently rich enough to have a patio with a bunch of string lights and a hammock. And, for some reason, she goes out there to use her iPad in the evenings and manages not to freeze to death. Well... okay. Whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer to be sitting at my desk for art, but I like to be lying down when I'm writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5035" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T20:40:00.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5094" CreationDate="2013-04-19T20:46:03.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dedicate two days a week to read instead of writing. If you get ideas that you want to start working on immediately, let writing distract you, but let it be the only thing that distracts you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, make sure you have an outline of some sort. Part of your problem is that you're going slowly and getting discouraged, so you'll want to speed that up. Here's an article that might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-day.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-day.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5035" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T20:46:03.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7702" CreationDate="2013-04-19T23:39:10.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Don't bother with Apple iBookstore unless you really, really want to because their market share is very small, albeit not insignificant. Instead, focus on Amazon, B&amp;amp;N&#xA;  and &lt;em&gt;maybe&lt;/em&gt; Google eBookstores.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; buy a secondhand Mac but that might be a bit much to invest in &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; to submit your eBook to Apple.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Or, you could use an eBook distributor such as Lulu or Smashwords, who will upload and distribute your eBook 'for free', but at the cost&#xA;  of a percentage of your profits, if you have any. There are also other&#xA;  caveats.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to consider is &lt;strong&gt;whether or not you want to bother publishing your eBook with Apple in the first place&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources vary, but it is generally accepted that Apple has about 10-25% of the eBook market, which is a small but not insignificant share. (It should also be noted that the answer varies if you look at the number of books &lt;em&gt;downloaded&lt;/em&gt; instead of the number of books &lt;em&gt;sold&lt;/em&gt;. It appears that Apple may have as much as 22-24% of the eBooks market when we're talking about &lt;em&gt;downloads&lt;/em&gt; but only about 10% when we're talking &lt;em&gt;sales&lt;/em&gt;. Sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asymco.com/2013/02/28/measuring-the-ibook-market/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2013/02/28/when-numbers-lie-apple-ibooks-revenue-estimated-to-be-over-a-billion-dollars/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://techblog.safaribooksonline.com/2012/11/03/ibooks-vs-kindle-bring-on-the-books-in-browser-wars/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, Amazon and B&amp;amp;N are the giants of the eBook industry, with Google starting to slowly chug along. (Other eBook stores such as Kobo, Aldiko and Sony also exist but their percent of market share is essentially a rounding error.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But let's say that despite all that you insist on self-publishing your eBook in Apple's iBookstore and you don't have a Mac. Now what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I see you have two choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.) Buy a &quot;cheap&quot; second-hand Apple computer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a limited budget, Craigslist and eBay have several second-hand Macs available. But in my area at least they seem to be hovering around the $500 mark. That's a pretty sizable chunk of change just to upload your book to Apple.  But it is an option, even if it's a bad one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2.) Use an eBook distributor&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;There exist for self-publishers a variety of eBook distributors, two of the most popular are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lulu&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smashwords.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Smashwords&lt;/a&gt;. The basic gist is that they will, for a percentage of what you get after the eBookstore gets their cut, distribute your book to a variety of eBookstores (including Apple). (i.e. If you sell a book for $10, the eBookstore will get $3, the remainder will be $7, of which the distributor gets $0.70, leaving you with $6.30)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some debate to the cost/benefit of this process and to the ethical conduct of some eBook distributors, but I won't bother you with that. What I will say is that make sure you fully understand the services you are receiving and how they will be paid for &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you enter into any agreements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="3496" LastEditDate="2013-04-20T04:57:30.400" LastActivityDate="2013-04-20T04:57:30.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7702" CreationDate="2013-04-20T00:29:49.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can rent a Mac in the &quot;Cloud&quot; using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macincloud.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MacInCloud&lt;/a&gt;.  They have several pricing plans including pay-per-go (which unfortunately has a minimum charge and automatic recharge). The cost may be prohibitive if you don't expect many (or any) sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative is to upload your book using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smashwords.com/about/how_to_publish_ipad_ebooks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Smashwords&lt;/a&gt;, which is an Apple-approved aggregator.  They'll take a cut of the profits, but you need to give your book an honest assessment and consider if you'll have any profits to worry about.  Follow the link for a page specifically describing how to upload to iBookstore.  They require your book to be in Microsoft Word format for irony's sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third option is to install OS X on a VM, though I can't speak for the legality of such a maneuver and therefore will leave it at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4437" LastActivityDate="2013-04-20T00:29:49.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1970" CreationDate="2013-04-20T21:42:28.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any text editor can be made &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; functional using a Markdown-like syntax called Fountain (info at fountain.io), which is similar to the formatting standard used here on *Exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple markup language was designed by a team including Stu Maschwitz (who made Han Solo step on Jabba's tail in Star Wars for crying out loud) and John August, screenwriter of Go, Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, Titan A.E., Charlie and Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short, it was designed &lt;em&gt;by&lt;/em&gt; people in the industry &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; people in the industry. The comparison of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://fountain.io/_downloads/Big%20Fish.fountain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;raw text&lt;/a&gt; and the resulting &lt;a href=&quot;http://fountain.io/_downloads/Big%20Fish.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PDF output&lt;/a&gt; of the screenplay for Big Fish on the Fountain website shows how it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5059" LastActivityDate="2013-04-20T21:42:28.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7711" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-21T17:35:44.707" Score="1" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where can I learn about the voice procedures, military jargons, submarine communications and politics involved in navy? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5063" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T17:52:49.777" Title="How should I begin my research for my Military Fiction?" Tags="|novel|research|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1176" CreationDate="2013-04-21T20:46:23.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of finding a source of explicit and structured prompts, I opt to look for randomized inspiration.  Every day or two, I do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/explore&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.flickr.com/explore&lt;/a&gt; - I browse until I find 3-5 images that strike a chord of interest in me (for any reason).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://live.lmgtfy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://live.lmgtfy.com/&lt;/a&gt; - I watch these live search terms with a text editor open and simply choose 5-10 individual words that pop up (again, whatever grabs me that day), writing them down.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost without fail, when I smash the words up against the images, I get struck with a nugget of a &quot;wouldn't that be interesting...&quot; kind of idea, then I write anywhere from 200-500 words on the topic.  These short exercises are always brief and not well fleshed out, and they are often terrible.  I write until the core of the idea is laid out, then I stop and file them into a folder with all the rest.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the point isn't to get a winner every time, the point is that much later, when I'm ready to begin writing a new story, I don't need to go looking for prompts or ideas... I have a collection of dozens (or more) ideas that I've already had.  All I have to do is browse through them and I &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; find at least a few that inspire me to explore them further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5065" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T20:46:23.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4997" CreationDate="2013-04-22T09:02:43.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your book looks like just the sort of rippin' yarn I'd enjoy myself -- I was a corporate type in the US for many years, and unwound on a Triumph Tiger in the Rockies whenever possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I hate your cover design. Have you looked at cover designs for adventure motorcycling books in the shops? Don't forget that they are there to attract a particular type of person and they are therefore all a little bit of-a-type -- bloke on bike on high mountain pass, bike on side in swampy jungle trail, that sort of thing. The purpose of a cover is to get the book off the shelves into the potential buyer's hands, and you've got a pretty distinctive look yourself and would probably &quot;sell well&quot; on a cover. Books also have to be sold to retailers, and that is based muchly on synopsis, marketing, and cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short, I'm afraid your friend who helped you with the cover has not served you well. It looks like a cheap self-published book with dubious production qualities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, a publisher would have got you a much better cover than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T09:02:43.803" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7711" CreationDate="2013-04-22T11:27:59.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best place I can suggest to turn to with this kind of open questions - on military and weapons - is &lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.4chan.org/k/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4chan/k/&lt;/a&gt;. It's an imageboard gathering fans of all things connected with weapons of all kinds, and military is a significant portion of their interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if they will know much detail about submarine communications and politics in the navy, but if anyone knows where to find that stuff, it will be them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be warned, 4chan is a specific subculture, many of its boards are NSFW and while /k/ isn't one of these, the contents of others sometimes spill over into SFW boards and you may encounter NSFW content before moderators catch it. Also, its specific culture is connected with particular jargon, ways of communication, and &quot;traditions&quot; - I suggest you spend some time &quot;lurking&quot; (just browsing the board and learning local customs) before you start asking your questions. The time spent will be useful - if your writing involves weapons, military, survival and such topics, you'll be returning to /k/ for advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T11:27:59.223" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7691" CreationDate="2013-04-22T11:44:48.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best practice currently is to obtain current copyright holder's permission - a license to use the copyrighted motives; possibly, for a fee or percentage in expected royalties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not always viable or possible. In this case you may either change enough that it doesn't violate copyright (but becomes a different story entirely) or pick more guerrilla solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going about commercial release is no longer viable. Even if you turn profit, you may expect a cease&amp;amp;desist followed by a lawsuit, and while the copyright holder is not guaranteed to win, your outlook isn't very good. Plus you antagonize the side of author on which you write, not a good marketing move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much more viable option is simply entering the fanfiction realm. You release for free, anonymously, and even if it's taken down on one site, you can reupload it on another... while fanfiction is &quot;grey area&quot; with law on the side of the original author, the &quot;cruel reality&quot; is that the author and the law lack technical means from preventing even most unwanted fanfiction from cropping up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this way you won't make any money, but essentially the moment the author said &quot;no, I won't issue you any license&quot; you lost any chance for them anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T11:44:48.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7719" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7720" CreationDate="2013-04-22T12:27:54.617" Score="11" ViewCount="2408" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I collaborate with someone who insists on making every sentence (or two) in a business document into a bullet point, by prefacing it with a bullet. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is typically done across a multi-page document, which is divided into sections with section headings. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Points which I consider real bullets then get a second level in the bullet point hierarchy. Numbering for 'bullet points' is almost never used. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is done for clarity, but I think this looks terrible, takes up space and makes things less clear.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any style references which explicitly discuss this practice? I'm looking for an objective discussion for why this a bad idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thanks for your help!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5067" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T08:00:09.367" Title="Overuse of bullet points" Tags="|style|formatting|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7719" CreationDate="2013-04-22T12:58:12.617" Score="6" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your co-writer is a pain in the tuchus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am sorry you have to put up with this annoying quirk of writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That being said, I found two references so far:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/bullet-points&quot;&gt;Oxford Dictionaries:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bullet points are visually attractive and make it easy for a reader to locate important information. Nevertheless, try to use them sparingly: too many bullet-pointed sections in the same document will mean that their impact is lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.unco.edu/content.php?pid=63917&amp;amp;sid=471710&quot;&gt;APA Style:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I properly use bullet points in APA style?&#xA;  You don’t.  The Publication Manual demonstrates two ways of making lists in your writing.  All lists should be double-spaced. For a complete explanation, look in the Publication Manual under “Seriation” on pages 115-117.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As a side note, SE really &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; doesn't want me to stack bullets.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T12:58:12.617" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7711" CreationDate="2013-04-22T14:09:43.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would advise you to get hold of a number of non-fiction naval books and start reading! Ideally look for biographic works, rather than factual books, as these will contain more insights into jargon, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do NOT use the internet as your primary source of information, as inaccuracies can slip into stuff like wikipedia and 4chan very easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible see if you can find a veteran's forum and ask questions there, from my experience ex-forces personnel are usually quite happy to answer questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4881" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T14:09:43.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7722" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7726" CreationDate="2013-04-22T14:56:50.210" Score="7" ViewCount="10519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to create textbook-perfect &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iambic_pentameter&quot;&gt;iambic pentameter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may be wrong in my assumption of there being such a thing as a 'secondary stressed syllable', but in the word 'poetry', the rhythm of it seems to be this: STRESSED, unstressed, secondary stressed. Right? PO-uh-Tri.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And with the word 'politician', it's: secondary stressed, unstressed, STRESSED, unstressed. Po-luh-TISH-uhn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since iambic pentameter is a strict unstressed/STRESSED, how can you use words like poetry and politician (and stay within the rules)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll give the example that's stumping me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's two variations of a line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;In poetry, it's true, it can be changed,&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;It's true, in poetry, it can be changed,&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See how the second one doesn't sound acceptable (the 'try' in poetry just sounds wrongly placed)? But the first does? Is the first one definitely ok, or are both breaking rules?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact there's a difference between the two (if one right and one wrong) makes me also think: is there a conglomerate 'overall' stress pattern/arch that can apply within a line? It seems the second syllable (the first stressed syllable) can work as the PEAK stress of the phrase, after which the rest declines from that. Maybe it just depends on the sentence, and how you make it clear, using punctuation if effective, and by context of the words themselves themselves, for how it is to be read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if I'm right in all my judgements so far, how can I know how to use a word like 'poetry' in iambic pentameter, with its problematic little third syllable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5000" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-04-22T15:06:40.853" LastActivityDate="2016-02-10T12:07:08.193" Title="Iambic pentameter: how do you use words with 'secondary stressed' syllables?" Tags="|poetry|rhythm|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7722" CreationDate="2013-04-22T15:17:51.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not really good with poetry, and so I won't give you one solid firm answer you probably desire - maybe someone else will. Still, if you're writing humorously, you may enjoy a trick Edward Lear applied to the word &quot;rheumatism&quot; in the two last verses of this strophe of his &lt;em&gt;&quot;The Duck and the Kangaroo&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Said the Kangaroo to the Duck,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  'This requires some little reflection;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Perhaps on the whole it might bring me luck,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And there seems but one objection,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Which is, if you'll let me speak so bold,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Your feet are unpleasantly wet and cold,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And would probably give me the roo-&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Matiz!' said the Kangaroo.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a horrible violation of the flow of poetry but applied like this, gives a good humorous effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T15:17:51.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7711" CreationDate="2013-04-22T17:52:49.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several specific texts that could help you out.  First is the 'Blue Jackets Manual'.  This the text issued to Seamen during Basic, and covers pretty much everything you could ever want to know about functioning in the Navy (Think 'Boy Scout Handbook' for sailors).  Secondly, there is a smaller text issued to officers called 'Reefpoints' that is issued to Midshipmen at the Naval Academy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for politics, I can't recommend 'The Caine Mutiny' highly enough (the book, not the movie).  Speaking as a salvage ship veteran, that book could have been written by any of the junior officers onboard, despite being set in WWII.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T17:52:49.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7722" CreationDate="2013-04-22T18:54:43.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cheat. Drop some letters/syllables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;It's true, in po'try, it cannae be changed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Feels like &quot;can&quot; needs another unstressed after it, doesn't it?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T18:54:43.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7722" CreationDate="2013-04-23T10:50:43.553" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;At its strictest, iambic pentameter is just as rigid as you've described. &quot;Poetry&quot; is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dactyl_%28poetry%29&quot;&gt;dactyl&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;code&gt;X-/-/&lt;/code&gt;), not an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iamb_%28foot%29&quot;&gt;iamb&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;code&gt;/-X&lt;/code&gt;), hence it shouldn't fit anywhere in an iamb-only sequence. Likewise, by the &quot;strictest&quot; definition, each word has a single primary stress, making the use of many polysyllabic words impossible by definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, &quot;stress&quot; seems to be loosely enough defined that you can allow yourself to go with a verse that &quot;feels&quot; as though it gets the metre right. Shakespeare's most famous sonnet, the eternal paragon of iambic pentameter, begins:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shall I / com PARE/ thee TO / a SUM / mer’s DAY?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Thou ART / more LOVE / ly AND / more TEM / per ATE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and what's &quot;temperate&quot; if not a dactyl with secondary stress on the last syllable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my ears, both your &quot;poetry&quot; lines sound fine. I understand your concern, since the middle iamb &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; seem to naturally get a little extra stress. But I can easily read or recite it very naturally, without sounding &quot;off.&quot; Again, look at Shakespeare - if you deliberately stress all the &quot;stressed&quot; syllables, he sounds off, too (&quot;Shall I compare thee &lt;strong&gt;TO&lt;/strong&gt; a &lt;strong&gt;summ&lt;/strong&gt;-er day?&quot;). But if you read it &quot;straight,&quot; then the iambic meter is firmly felt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T10:50:43.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7727" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7728" CreationDate="2013-04-23T15:56:38.057" Score="2" ViewCount="343" Body="&lt;p&gt;Slightly obtuse title, let me elaborate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing my first screenplay, and I'm trying to keep it simple while making it simultaneously wonderful. It's just a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=romcom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rom-com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as I write and modify and embellish the story, I can't seem to decide whether it's &quot;enough.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions I'm asking myself: Does this portray an engaging series of events? Is this a story the viewer can get immersed in? Is this building to something, which is to say: Does this plot have enough conflict, tension, and suspense? Even in the soft doses involved in a rom-com?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm very unsure whether my story is too flat. How can I decide if I've reached the end? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T03:47:30.553" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T04:14:46.503" Title="How to tell if my story is finished, or needs more?" Tags="|plot|screenwriting|ending|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7727" CreationDate="2013-04-23T16:13:00.967" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you didn't create an outline &amp;mdash; that is, if you didn't know beforehand how it was going to end &amp;mdash; then you're suffering from impeded arborvision (you can't see the forest for the trees). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Put it in a drawer and don't read it for a month. Come back with fresher eyes. You'd be amazed what you catch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Hand it off to someone else and ask your reader if the story is finished. You need other perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T16:13:00.967" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7729" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T16:47:05.840" Score="3" ViewCount="1894" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am fascinated by the idea of how to convey, in the written form, &lt;em&gt;as much&lt;/em&gt; detail of expressive nuance as you originally intended in your head (i.e. what you &lt;em&gt;hear&lt;/em&gt; when first coming up with it). I pretty much always hear a voice in my head when I'm writing things down, and also later, when I'm read things (especially my own writing, as I know what I'd intended to say, complete with sound and pictures, in my head!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually imagine things with lots of detail: like intonation and tone and even accent. Of the possible ways to convey that, we have basic formatting (bold, italic, underline, different typefaces), we have context and metaphors, structure and figures of speech and references, etc. There's also the gift/curse of varying internal/external contexts - the reader's the writer's, the story's intended context and the possibly-wrongly conveyed one. These all serve to color an otherwise clean string of letters/words/sentences with nothing but their dictionary definitions. And because it's impossible to read almost any text without all these combining (especially context) these 'methods' are basic, tried, and expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in electronic form, especially online, text can be coloured with all sorts of new nuances. I use them myself; in forum discussion. Smilies and emoticons. And animated GIFs, even, which can say a lot more than words when used well - an extension of quoting from some movie or novel, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when I'm writing (no matter what type - I do many forms, including articles and formal but persuasive-style fundraising appeal letters to large funding bodies) - I wish to convey to reader, as much as possible, the nuances that I intend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any (published) writers who have been pushing the limits of visual representation of expressive nuance in the written form?&lt;/strong&gt; Using even things such as smilies, traditionally unacceptable amounts of italics/bold/underline and maybe heavy use of punctuation (to represent things like pauses in speech or to heighten important words by setting them up, or just otherwise representing the rhythm/character of how one would orate the words), using traditionally excessive amounts of commas, colons, dashes, and the like; and also putting words in capitals and maybe asterisks around words - so all in all, even perhaps starting to become almost pictographic/animated, so to speak? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an analogy (I'm a music expert): Pierre Boulez, a modern classical composer, pushed the boundaries he faced in music to 'neurotic' levels where the instructions on the page (dynamics, accents, articulation) almost became too much information for the performing musician to take in due to the physical, real-time nature of the medium. (But still possible, and it's what he intended.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, philosophically (please let me know if this is crossing the line and this part will be removed), rather than seeking some ultimate representation of expression in the written text form, should we instead &lt;em&gt;embrace&lt;/em&gt; the fact that the form has its limitations, and even celebrate the fact that it can be interpreted/experienced 'in different ways by the reader' and 'without excessive spoon feeding in nuanced textual &quot;seasoning&quot; ', as something positive which should not be fought against?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And at what point does this 'seasoning' surpass the definition of literature and start to become another art form / hybrid art form (closer to ones that &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; give explicit nuance, like picture book, comic, voice, film)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5000" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2013-04-24T02:33:58.253" LastActivityDate="2018-02-19T17:02:07.897" Title="How to elegantly convey the finer nuances of language in written form" Tags="|publishing|creative-writing|formatting|self-publishing|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7730" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7735" CreationDate="2013-04-23T17:22:18.760" Score="2" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this excerpt I'm not sure is fluid and visual enough:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peter came out of the café rubbing his tummy. The chipmunk had a smile on the&#xA;  face and seemed content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not too far behind him was Ariett, flapping her wings just enough to&#xA;  remain airborne and humming a tune until her gaze fell onto the nearby&#xA;  commotion, near the village's treehouse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peter stopped as well, when he realised that Ariett was no more&#xA;  following. &quot;Is something wrong?&quot; When Peter looked at Ariett, he followed the direction she was pointing to and saw the little crowd near the Rescuer tree house. Furrowing&#xA;  his brows, he approached the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From where he was, Peter could not really see what was going on, nor&#xA;  who was speaking, but his ears twitched when he could hear the voice&#xA;  of the speaker more clearly. He immediately squeezed his way through&#xA;  the crowd and gasped when he could finally match the voice with the&#xA;  owner of the voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you really sure he's trapped in the boneyard?&quot; the voice would&#xA;  say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What's going on?&quot; Ariett whispered to Peter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He whispered back to the sparrow, trying to listen what was being talked about at the same time.&#xA;  &quot;This... the squirrel who's talking is Chill, he's a former guild leader&#xA;  and something's definitely up.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the time Peter finished, Chill was already on the way out of the village, and several others were following him. The chipmunk promptly got on all fours and followed suit. &quot;Come! It's perhaps a new rescue mission!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I have this line, and the more I read it, the more I feel like it could be phrased better and be more visual than it is. Here's the sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When Peter looked at Ariett, he followed the direction she was pointing to and saw the little crowd near the tree house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sentence seems perfectly fine, but I don't know, I feel like it could be edited to be better (I'm no native speaker, so I'm not sure if that might be a factor). Maybe it's the fact that I omitted that Peter actually saw her pointing a certain direction? I could split it into two sentences, like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peter looked at Ariett and the latter was pointing to some direction. When he followed her finger, he saw the little crowd near the tree house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That one sounds even worse to me as in 'there's too much to say the same thing'. ._.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question I think is: How can I make this excerpt more visual (show vs tell) and flow better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe I'm not strong with implied things and sometimes even take too much implied, or out of fear that I implied too much, I write too much to convey the same thing. I always saw those things like some sort of movie in my head, but I think I struggle to reproduce it in writing and would like to know how I'm faring, and ways to improve. I'm grateful for answers providing something constructive, but I'll be focusing mostly on making this excerpt more visual (maybe synonymous to show vs tell).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I cannot add the critique tag since I currently require 9 more points...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT: How about this edited version?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peter came out of the café rubbing his tummy. The chipmunk had a smile&#xA;  on the face and was smacking his lips. It was a good day to start off;&#xA;  the sun was up and the warmth was welcoming. He would probably be able&#xA;  to train with the master some more today. Things had been quiet lately&#xA;  and he knew that some good practice would do him good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not too far behind him was Ariett, flapping her wings just enough to&#xA;  remain airborne and humming a tune until her gaze fell onto the nearby&#xA;  commotion, near the village's tree house. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peter was thinking about new things he could learn today from the&#xA;  master when he felt something was wrong and stopped. He couldn't hear&#xA;  Ariett anymore, which was unusual of her. &quot;Is something wrong?&quot; He&#xA;  turned around to find that Ariett was pointing to a little crowd near&#xA;  the Rescuer's headquarters. Furrowing his brows, the chipmunk&#xA;  approached the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From where he was, he could not really see what was going on, nor who&#xA;  was speaking, but his ears twitched when he could hear the voice of&#xA;  the speaker more clearly. His heartbeat picking up, he immediately&#xA;  squeezed his way through the crowd and gasped when he could finally&#xA;  match the voice with its owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Stop asking everyone! Just stop! We need to just get going!&#xA;  Gunpowder's in trouble, c'mon!&quot; the voice said. As if he had said&#xA;  something forbidden, a roar of confused chatter spread among the&#xA;  crowd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Uh... But Gunpowder's a Rogue... Do we really...&quot; someone in the&#xA;  crowd said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What's going on?&quot; Ariett whispered to Peter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He whispered back to the sparrow, trying to listen at the same time.&#xA;  &quot;This... the squirrel who's talking is Chill, he's a former guild&#xA;  leader and something's definitely up.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What does that have to do with anything!?&quot; Chill asked. &quot;You don't&#xA;  just pick and choose who needs help! Dude, that's not cool!&quot;. He&#xA;  brought out something like a steel feather out of a bag Peter noticed&#xA;  only now and seemed to set off. &quot;Time to haul tail, guys. Now! Chex, lead the way!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Squeak!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I wonder what's that thing he pulled out... Could that be a new&#xA;  artifact?&quot; Peter asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Who cares about it?&quot; Ariett said, rolling her eyes. &quot;I don't like the&#xA;  sound of where it is going, but let me tell you that— Hey!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peter was already on his way, following the other Pokemon out of the&#xA;  village. As far as he knew, Gunpowder wasn't the weak type and this&#xA;  mission, should it be one, could very well be difficult. All the same,&#xA;  his determination as Rescuer wouldn't be deterred the least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4926" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-07-11T02:29:13.760" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T02:29:13.760" Title="Critique: Make excerpt more visual/flow better" Tags="|editing|non-fiction|structure|short-story|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7730" CreationDate="2013-04-23T17:34:51.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peter looked where Ariett was pointing and saw the little crowd near the treehouse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we're in Peter's head in this scene, we can also do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ariett was pointing at the little crowd near the treehouse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we're in Peter's head, we know that these are his observations. So we know he's looking at Ariett and then at where she's pointing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T17:34:51.513" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7727" CreationDate="2013-04-23T20:52:09.790" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two classic good, satisfactory approaches to ending a story. Let me call them &quot;Less is More&quot; and &quot;Afterglow.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Less is more&quot; ends before the key point - possibly seconds or hours before it. The text built a rich story in the reader's head, there were many threads that converged towards one single point. Then the explicit story, the one told to the reader ends - but only technically so. All the rest was written - by establishing directions of the threads, their interconnections, expected results - and so, when the text ends, the story continues in the reader's head, imagination builds upon the created foundation and events unveil in a very satisfactory train of thought, taking us through various possible outcomes and getting the results quite right. In essence: the last chapter is missing. You're a smart reader, think it up yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Afterglow&quot; is the opposite. All pending minor threads get resolved - sometimes through one-sentence solutions like &quot;X got sentenced to 7 years of prison&quot;, sometimes through extended scenes. It's an epilogue that lets us enjoy all the fruit of the prior struggle, observe all the fallout and collateral damage and really appraise the extent of effects as the author helps us take a step back and observe the entirety of the scene. It's an additional chapter added after the last chapter. &quot;The story was awesome, now let's sit and reflect on it before we say good-bye.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course less satisfactory endings: &quot;cliffhanger&quot; where the plots do not lead to clever resolutions but leave us with nagging questions, &quot;And they lived happily forever&quot; - ending right after the climax with a generic promise that it's all, or weird, memorable and interesting but not really satisfactory &quot;non-endings&quot; where the story didn't have a climax, explicit nor implied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I skipped a bunch of others I can't recall off top of my head, but unless it's a part of a series (where a cliffhanger would be acceptable), you will want either of these two, and choosing between them is fairly easy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story has a surprising, unexpected, wild twist at the end, a bunch of side threads that served as tools at certain points but now are left hanging, unsolved answers - go for &quot;Afterglow&quot; and simply wrap up all remaining threads by simply switching &quot;Fast forward&quot; on - telling what happens in a year, in ten years or so. In sceneplay it can be done by narrator, by the characters making plans for the future or by retrospection by characters advanced in time - much older. (or by a dozen other methods...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if your story built enough momentum to carry you directly to the climax, which doesn't contain any surprising twists but only a quite satisfactory &quot;it went according to the plan&quot;, go for &quot;Less is more&quot; and cut it before the climax. Sum the rest up with single sentence at the very end. &quot;It went all according to the plan&quot; is an example of such a sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T20:52:09.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7729" CreationDate="2013-04-23T21:09:19.003" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a sign of a poor writer if they have to use color and weird visual hints and the likes to express nuances of the scene on regular basis. There are writers who can use that skillfully and for real impact (bows to sir Pratchett with his full-page &quot;YES&quot;) but even they use it sparingly - or all the impact will be lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thing is, if you go into too convoluted visual hints, they will start detracting from the story. They will kill immersion, and immersion is one of the most important factors in a good story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A talented writer will normally approach this task from opposite side: build mood. Physical details are not that important. As long as they fulfill the premise, their precise layout or detail may be arbitrary. It's the &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; of the moment one must convey, and this is done by painting minute, apparently insignificant details that affect the whole. A drop of sweat on someone's forehead. A ticking of grandfather clock suddenly piercing through unexpected silence. A drop of dew on a straw of grass, refracting sunlight into a spark of rainbow. Give a couple of details like that, and the scene becomes much more vivid, detailed and rich than most convoluted notation of nuances could make it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ps. Shell out a couple dollars, visit Deviantart and find a couple amateur artists accepting cheap commissions. Order pictures that follow exactly textual descriptions you provide, and then boggle at how &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; - how totally &lt;em&gt;not how you imagined it&lt;/em&gt; they are. It came to me as a shock to realize how different people can imagine the same, very detailed description entirely differently - and still true to the description!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-04-24T07:00:59.520" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T07:00:59.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7719" CreationDate="2013-04-24T08:00:09.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let your co-worker know that overuse of bullet points signifies a need to compartmentalise and control information in an attempt to render it harmless, and thus it is a sign of mental illness. Let your tone be sympathetic and understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously though, the reading of prose is becoming a lost art in the world of business, and complexities and nuances best presented in the format of a white paper or discussion document are now derided as a sign of fuzzy thinking and indecision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while stylistically this rapid-fire bullet point presentation is bad for understanding, and in theory it's therefore bad for business, in practice to oppose it is probably politically bad for your career. It may be best to go along with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's really only one way to keep your own sanity -- encourage your co-worker to exceed even the most fevered nightmares of bullet-pointilism, while privately implying to the future audience that the man has gone Quite Mad You Know. Hopefully you'll provoke a backlash that will keep him under control for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, see also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB&amp;amp;topic_id=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB&amp;amp;topic_id=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T08:00:09.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7730" CreationDate="2013-04-24T12:41:59.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are very concise, precise, sterile in your writing, and I see you are asking the correct question to make this text better. If your text was a dish, it would be well cooked but rather dry and in need of a good sauce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is missing here are more emotions. You are reporting events in a very soldier-like manner. The sentence you asked about is a good example of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peter turned to Ariett, who stood motionless in the middle of the street, focused on something in the distance and ignoring all the surroundings. His own gaze followed to the source of her attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a little crowd near the tree house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to lube it up by more, stronger displays of emotion, attaching meaning to the events. In your story things happen but I go by them with a shrug, &amp;quot;so they happened, so what now?&amp;quot; - give them a sense of foreboding, make them more interesting to the characters, draw the reader in. Immersion is important, and for that the world must feel more alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One trick I can suggest for increasing immersion: If there's a story within a story, and the inside story is at least partially immersive, the moment of ending the inner story and &amp;quot;resurfacing&amp;quot; to the upper layer leaves us very much immersed in it. This is a golden opportunity to deliver some quite enjoyable content. In your case you could try to report a major part of the speech under the tree literally, and then the &amp;quot;Come! It's perhaps a new rescue mission!&amp;quot; (or something like that, maybe rephrased to more catchy form) should ring very well, as a sweet, juicy one-liner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;oh, and you overuse names a bit. Use more pronouns. &amp;quot;He&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;She&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T23:02:50.970" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7730" CreationDate="2013-04-24T12:59:47.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Various grammatical issues, with suggestions below  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he realised that Ariett was no more following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;he realised that Ariett was no longer following&quot; or &quot;he realised that Ariett was not following&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you really sure he's trapped in the boneyard?&quot; the voice would say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&quot;Are you really sure he's trapped in the boneyard?&quot; the voice said.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;trying to listen what was being talked about at the same time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;trying to listen at the same time&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chill was already on the way out of the village&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Chill was already on his way out of the village&quot; or &quot;Chill was already leaving the village&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's perhaps a new rescue mission!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Perhaps it's a new rescue mission!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T12:59:47.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7737" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7739" CreationDate="2013-04-24T17:26:31.313" Score="6" ViewCount="440" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been browsing writers.se for a while and I've noticed a lot of folks state you have to READ to be able to write. I'm currently having trouble working time to read fiction into my daily routine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first I waited until the kids would go to bed. I noticed then I would read at the most 5-10 pages before I would pass out. In the morning I would remember nothing about the story, let alone the narrative style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I tried getting in some kindle reading during breaks at work. What I noticed was that 10 minutes here and there had a negative cumulative effect. Instead of retaining bits of writing style my mind was starting to ignore the more descriptive pieces of text, only holding on to the actual events that took place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I need some ground rules on how to get the most out of reading fiction (in order to empower my own writing ability).&lt;/strong&gt; Should I set aside an entire evening to just reading? Or, should I only do so on the weekends to preserve the &quot;strength&quot; of the words? Have any of you noticed better retention late at night if you bomb your system with caffeine? Thanks in advance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5078" LastEditorUserId="5078" LastEditDate="2013-04-24T18:36:32.273" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T04:19:22.880" Title="Best Practices To Learn By Reading?" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7737" CreationDate="2013-04-24T18:52:43.257" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suggestion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedule time for your reading, just as you would schedule time for writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read in an active manner, keeping a notepad, journal, or your chosen way of taking notes, so that you can jot down thoughts and realizations while reading.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;compose your notes after your reading session, while the information is still fresh on your mind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it sounds like studying, that's probably because it kind of is like studying. :) I'm currently trying to get a handle on the writing style and flow of a few authors. I'm finding that how I read, when I want to learn the style and flow is very different from reading for fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5053" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T18:52:43.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7740" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7774" CreationDate="2013-04-24T19:20:20.927" Score="2" ViewCount="2196" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've noticed some fiction authors (James Patterson, for instance) over time &quot;dumbed down&quot; their writing to include less obscure words and less poetic descriptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's my understanding that this approach to writing is actually making literature &quot;more accessible&quot;, as larger groups of people will be able to understand it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a reference that authors use for this?&lt;/strong&gt; For instance, do they make sure their works can be read at a high school level? (A rule of thumb somebody gave me was &quot;no words with over 4 syllables&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5078" LastEditorUserId="30375" LastEditDate="2019-03-23T20:06:18.577" LastActivityDate="2019-03-23T20:06:18.577" Title="Is there a reference for &quot;dumbing down&quot; material?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7741" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-24T20:03:23.907" Score="3" ViewCount="450" Body="&lt;p&gt;My 9 to 5 job is in an office, which has made me very adept at using flow charts and graphs to plan out my projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any writing methods which employ charts, graphs, or other visual mediums to show relation between aspects of a story?&lt;/strong&gt; (something that is not a mind map)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5078" LastActivityDate="2017-11-01T05:34:27.633" Title="Visual methods of plot development?" Tags="|planning|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7744" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-24T23:44:43.943" Score="1" ViewCount="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a native english speaker. I have been taught in school that if you use a comma, you should not use &lt;code&gt;and&lt;/code&gt; after it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went to university, my university teacher said the same and if he said that if i don't follow that rule, I'll fail my Toefl exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was reading the FAQ of this website and i saw this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Writers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for authors, editors, reviewers, professional writers, and aspiring writers.&lt;/code&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to my teachers, it's a mistake, the sentence should be like this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;... professional writers and aspiring writers.&lt;/code&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you guys know more than me since you are native speakers, so what why was i taught this rule in the first place and why does the Toefl mention it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4990" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T00:54:52.653" Title="A comma followed by &quot;and&quot; rule" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-04-25T03:43:52.377" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7741" CreationDate="2013-04-25T01:00:48.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do a Google Image search for {Inception infographic} you will see an array of visual representations of the movie &lt;em&gt;Inception&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now these were analytical tools, but I imagine that the developers must have used similar story-boarding techniques in planning the production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T01:00:48.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7741" CreationDate="2013-04-25T09:46:46.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OmniGraffle&lt;/a&gt;,  which is a flowchart generator for Mac. I've only seen it used once or twice so I can't speak to how well it works, but it might fit your bill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="14530" LastEditDate="2015-07-15T09:38:13.647" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T09:38:13.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7749" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7750" CreationDate="2013-04-25T12:38:57.333" Score="12" ViewCount="11706" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of my favorite Frank Herbert books go 70 pages between chapters. All the James Patterson books go 2-3 pages between each chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know non-fiction uses chapters to help navigate, which means chapters are dictated by the related content. &lt;strong&gt;What are the purposes of having extremely short chapters? Does it actually do anything for the overall reading experience?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5078" LastEditorUserId="10460" LastEditDate="2016-05-31T12:07:26.897" LastActivityDate="2020-02-06T14:58:31.287" Title="Why Use Excessively Short Chapters?" Tags="|structure|book-length|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7749" CreationDate="2013-04-25T13:37:29.680" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using lots of very short chapters creates an impression in the reader of very rapid pace and lots of action. For some genres (such as Patterson's thrillers), this accelerated pace is exactly the effect that you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having long chapters creates the opposite effect: it slows the pace down and gives the author time to expand more fully a given section or theme. This doesn't preclude fast-paced action, but it does allow for more breathing space and a sense of epic scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-02-06T14:37:27.013" LastActivityDate="2020-02-06T14:37:27.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7751" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-25T14:39:11.137" Score="4" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common problem I observe in student papers the use of source material in a sequential as opposed to an integrated fashion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the first paragraph will be based on source 1, the second paragraph based on source 2, third paragraph on source 3, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am having a hard time helping them develop their writing to the point that they integrate their sources into a more fully synthesized argument that is supported by their sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To date, I have highlighted the problem in drafts and given them examples of papers where the sources were used effectively but I find that they have a hard time transferring the skill from the examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other approaches would be effective to help the students develop more sophisticated use of source material?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I teach in biology so the students are most often writing review papers where they use existing biological literature to support a hypothesis.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2852" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T18:11:23.290" Title="How can I get my students to better integrate their sources into their writing?" Tags="|academic-writing|citations|education|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7751" CreationDate="2013-04-25T18:18:00.823" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Way back in 10th grade, when we were learning how to do research papers on the back of a coal shovel, our teacher had us take all our notes on 3x5 cards. We had to submit them as part of the grade &amp;mdash; she actually went around with a bag and we had to toss in our rubber-banded stack of cards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit to clarify:&lt;/em&gt; Each card had one note or thought on it: &quot;After a flower blooms and has wilted, pinch it off. This is known as 'deadheading,' and improves the health of the plant.&quot; If the next thought is about weeding, it goes on a different card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe that should be part of the technique: the students take notes on the 3x5 cards (what they should put on each card can be up to them or up to you), and then you sit with either one example or with each student to show how the information can literally be reshuffled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every card needs a source line (we put ours on the back) so that when the cards are rearranged, it's easy to source any given item. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-04-26T11:23:31.293" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T11:23:31.293" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7751" CreationDate="2013-04-26T10:16:31.763" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of an exercise which might help - although I'm not sure how efficient it would be - if the students would be able to solve it. Chose a set of sources for them and give them a task that forces cross-referencing, comparing and binding them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, give the students a task of examining and proving or disproving a claim in source A (which you know is false/wrong/erroneous) by using information from sources B and C, from which each alone is not sufficient for the proof, but combined they prove the claim in A is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example: get them to give you information which is not readily available in provided sources. It's to be deduced - combine data from A, method from B, exceptions from C. That way they will have to combine the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or: Read between the lines. Person (politician) A claims something that sounds quite generic. Person (group) B reacts in apparently paradoxical way. The situation is described in document C. Describe what in person A's claim upset person B so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, make them &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; the data they found, not only &lt;em&gt;quote&lt;/em&gt; it - if the result can be achieved only by combining the data, blind quoting will get them nowhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T10:16:31.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7751" CreationDate="2013-04-26T18:11:23.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a professor who did a synthesis lecture using fruit.  She brought in a brown paper grocery bag and started pulling out produce one at a time.  The purpose was to come up with a general rule to determine if something was a fruit or a vegetable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apple: Fruit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peas: Vegetable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lettuce: Vegetable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rule 1: Vegetables are green&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carrot: Vegetable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potato: Vegetable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rule 2: Vegetables are roots, or green if they grow in the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so forth.  By the time she got to avocados (which I've never been able to decide), we had a pretty good rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar exercise could work for you.  By forcing the students to explain why something is a fruit or vegetable in relation to other produce, they have to mix their sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T18:11:23.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7737" CreationDate="2013-04-26T18:20:39.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading/writing is an iterative process.  Reading copious amounts of materials will help you develop your writing as you will learn the things you like and the things you don't like.  But the reverse is also true.  If you want to learn how to read, start writing.  It's amazing how producing a few short stories will affect the way you read.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're reading through several pages and only remember what happened, that writer is doing his or her job properly.  After you've tried to recreate that in your own writing, your brain will start to change its priorities.  Suddenly, how other people are writing becomes as important as what they are writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T18:20:39.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7756" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7762" CreationDate="2013-04-26T19:22:09.977" Score="0" ViewCount="939" Body="&lt;p&gt;That question derived from my previous &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/7730/4926&quot;&gt;critique question&lt;/a&gt;. That's one of the problems I think is more obvious in my own writing right now and would like to know of ways to address it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I know so far (but still struggle a lot with) is to put emotions in the story; basically things that I've experienced, which readers can stick to and through which they can understand the characters and be closer to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this tie in with the 'hook' that compels readers to read more and more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you maybe also give some examples of how those tools can be used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4926" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T14:55:23.140" Title="What literary tools can be used to make stories more immersive?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7761" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7763" CreationDate="2013-04-27T16:34:45.657" Score="9" ViewCount="3512" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I stumbled upon an issue of the type; meaning I had two characters talking between themselves and another character talking in the background; actually delivering a speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the problem is, is that what the speaker's saying is important (for the most part at least) to one of the characters talking (could be both, but it was only one in my case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how to get this in writing, as opposed to how easily this is done in movies (background speaker's volume is lowered by about half maybe while the characters in the foreground can whisper loud enough for the people watching the movie).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I maybe use some fancy formatting to set it apart from the foreground dialogue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The individuals or groups responsible for the senseless bombing...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She approached him taking care not to make any noise or disturb anyone around her. She seated at Jimmy's right side and peered at him. &quot;What's going on?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;... will bear the full weight of justice.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He grimaced from the interruption. &quot;The President's delivering his statement&#xA;  about the bombing yesterday.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or with more interaction between the characters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Is any of you strong enough to hold the rubble while we get inside? I wouldn't want to...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tommy was about to step forward to help, but was interrupted by Sydney. The latter visibly was out of breath. &quot;Finally I found you! Bad news, other regions have been affected and the damages have been far reaching.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Yes, like this, but this isn't enough, I'll need more...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tommy bit his tongue. He couldn't leave everyone here, no matter how hard he wished to. &quot;What is the progress towards clearing the exit?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Hey you there! Could you leave your damsel and give me a hand?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is there a better/more effective way so that readers don't get confused? The speech styles of all the characters involved may not necessarily be different. Or is this something to be avoided in writing completely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The speaker in my case will soon interact with the other characters as well. It seems relevant, so I added another example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4926" LastEditorUserId="4926" LastEditDate="2013-04-27T18:13:10.570" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T11:22:38.743" Title="Background speech with foreground dialogue" Tags="|fiction|technique|resources|formatting|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7756" CreationDate="2013-04-27T18:20:36.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Primarily, to make stories more immersive, you don't just use literary tools but above all stick to adhere to rules of immersion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pick one perspective and stick to it - at least within the chapter. If you choose a 3rd person narrator &amp;quot;impartial observer&amp;quot; don't suddenly skip into minds of your characters. Shift between perspectives are allowed (but not encouraged) between scenes, but one scene - one perspective. The reader must place their virtual self in position of the narrator and if you suddenly put them elsewhere you're confusing them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't withhold from the reader what is clearly seen from the character's perspective. There are few more disruptive elements than revealing significant elements of background later, only to shatter the imagined scene in reader's head and make them rebuild it: if we know it's a quiet town with a water well, a donkey in the shadow of a house, and men wearing swords, the protagonist suddenly leaning against a car that just happened to be there, not mentioned before, is &lt;em&gt;evil&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep continuity. If something appears in sight of the protagonist, it arrives there, not just suddenly is there while it wasn't before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;show, don't tell. Make events and objects we observe provide the information, don't just serve it as reported speech, or information dump by the narrator.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;avoid going meta if you don't have to: don't mention &amp;quot;this book&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;next chapter&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;my readers&amp;quot; etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be vivid wherever it matters. Build calmer moods by extended descriptions of location (the protagonist has time to stop and take it all in), more rapid moods by emotes, facial expressions, gestures. Never skimp on foreshadowing visible &amp;quot;geography&amp;quot; of location - if there is a catwalk along the upper wall of current location, where there will be a fight later, mention it, don't let it appear deus ex machina only when it's needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gradate focus of protagonists - importance of surrounding by varying their emotions as they observe them. Just mention mood-building backgrounds but if there's what they long desire, frame noticing it with some emotions, with some flair of description. Readers easily forget things - the mood of the place stays while details are forgotten, so if an element is important, make sure to make it memorable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess there's a bunch of other rules which I forgot, but let me repeat one that is an utter crime against immersion: no &amp;quot;deus ex machina&amp;quot; even on little things. If it's visible to the narrator, and matters any, it's visible to the reader. If it appears, it appears, a process. If it changes in plain sight, we notice the changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can skip it only if it's perfectly expectable, generic and typical - when you enter a restaurant there is no need to foreshadow the waiters and the tables, we expect these. But if later in the scene a foe is thrown into a decorative fountain in the middle of the restaurant - not many restaurants have such fountains, and it would be a poor writing to introduce it only as the landing spot of the foe, not an element of decor upon arrival.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note every single of these rules can be violated - but violate them consciously, for dramatic effect. Suddenly replace a nice renaissance town with a movie scene, there's the car, and there are cameras, and the yelling director. Or something just surprisingly happens to be in the field of vision of the protagonist and it wasn't there before, and they make a double take: it just appeared suddenly without them noticing! (or, after good foreshadowing - they do not realize it appeared suddenly - and the reader has a moment of creepy when the protagonist's mind is affected to not notice the weirdness of the elephant in the room.) Go full meta with the narrator explicitly telling the story to the readers and notoriously commenting on it. Violate the rules - when you know what you're doing. Accidental violations just spoil the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Elaborating on gradating focus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't draw the whole scene vividly and clearly, there's simply no room and you'd bore the reader to death. You mention everything that's important directly or building the mood. Still, some objects &amp;quot;need more love&amp;quot;. Merely stopping and writing a more detailed description will not do them justice, especially that mood-building may call upon describing a completely insignificant background element in painstaking detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, what you do is describe the observer's - the protagonist's reaction to noticing them. That way you draw more than usual amount of attention to a generic item which is too generic to grant extra detail in description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine there's a bunch of trinkets on the table, but you want to drill into the reader's mind that &amp;quot;dark cherry lipstick is important&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The detective's look stopped on the table. There was a half-empty pack of Pall Malls, a Zippo lighter with an engraving of a stylized bird, a small plate with crumbs of chocolate cake and a little dainty silver spoon with a monogram on the handle, a tube of dark cherry lipstick, an ashtray with a cigarette butt sitting in its notch untouched for a time, with far too long piece of ash unbroken, hanging into the pit of the ashtray, and three little coins, some foreign currency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;So, who lives here, miss Jansky?&amp;quot; he asked the landlady, trying to hide his emotion. The color of the tube of lipstick just wouldn't give him peace. It wasn't unusual in any way, common color, common brand. Still... that color would strangely set his heart aflutter. It felt both painful and ecstatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Excuse me, I didn't quite catch that...&amp;quot; he broke out of the stupor belatedly noticing the host answered his question while he wasn't paying attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T14:55:23.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7761" CreationDate="2013-04-27T18:33:53.393" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your first example is perfect, making sure that you drop out words from the speaker to indicate the passage of time as your foreground characters are talking &quot;over&quot; the speaker. It makes perfect sense to me as a reader what's occurring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-04-27T18:33:53.393" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7764" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-28T02:30:49.950" Score="3" ViewCount="12280" Body="&lt;p&gt;In what case is it justifiable for your own story to differentiate its plot from another, similar plot? For instance, I'm writing a story with a serial killer who whose motive sounds akin to the Jigsaw murder from the Saw franchise. I justify he is merely testing for people to work for him and the government's tyranny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-05-02T14:38:42.447" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T02:19:32.233" Title="How to assure your plot isn't a carbon copy of another story?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7764" CreationDate="2013-04-28T11:52:22.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're aware that your work sounds a lot like someone else's, start changing yours until it's not so close. If you have to keep justifying &quot;But it's not &lt;em&gt;Saw&lt;/em&gt;!&quot; then you're too close. Change a method, change a time frame, change a motive, change the number of instances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-04-28T11:52:22.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7766" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7768" CreationDate="2013-04-28T15:20:54.463" Score="0" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it valid to have &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Table of Contents&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in Corporate Newsletter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5092" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T15:40:24.820" Title="Table of content in Newsletter" Tags="|table-of-contents|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7766" CreationDate="2013-04-29T03:56:50.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your publication contains enough identifiable discrete units of content, then it is valid (and desirable) to provide a Table of Contents to aid readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if your document template includes a place-holder for a ToC but you are struggling to find what to put in it, then it may be time to change the template. If the Table of Contents is not serving a useful purpose for the end user, then you do not need it (regardless of what the market leaders do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T03:56:50.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7764" CreationDate="2013-04-29T04:03:41.793" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can see the similarities, then you must expect your readers will do so too. Do you want them to say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;At first I thought it was another &lt;em&gt;Saw&lt;/em&gt; clone, but the twist ... wow&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What a rip-off!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T04:03:41.793" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7764" CreationDate="2013-04-29T07:52:29.420" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One method of buying yourself a benefit of doubt from the reader, before you have the opportunity to show that you're not just a rip-off, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lampshading the similarity.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;(Warning! &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TV Tropes link!&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Do you think I'm some cliché self-righteous psychopathic murderer from a long series of movies, merely bound on getting people killed in most sophisticated manner, giving them an illusion of chance? Do you really think this low of me?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, the twist you're giving in the question description really seems rather minor. Testing people to work for him? Original Saw antagonist got his first follower through his &quot;tests&quot; so that's a very minor twist - and Saw II saw a protagonist who was a crooked cop... not very far from &quot;government tyranny&quot; to be an essential twist. Plus that gets awfully close to what V does to Evey in &lt;em&gt;V for Vendetta&lt;/em&gt;, so - how far does your story fall from a crossover of the two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T07:52:29.420" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7764" CreationDate="2013-04-29T15:35:29.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not seen &quot;Saw&quot; so I can't comment on the details you refer to. But in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all a matter of degree. Unless you're exceptionally creative, it's likely that any story you write will fall into one of a pretty small number of common categories: romance, murder mystery, coming-of-age, time travel, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a sense in which you could say that every romance story is &quot;another Romeo &amp;amp; Juliet rip-off&quot;. There's a sense in which you could say that every murder mystery follows the same basic plot line: a murder is committed, the brilliant detective is called to investigate, there are some red herrings that lead him to suspect the wrong person, then he catches the real murderer, the end. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're worried that your story is just like somebody else's because they're both about a criminal trying to outwit a brilliant detective, and that's about the extent of the similarity, I wouldn't worry about it for a moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're worried that your story is just like somebody else's because the crime is almost identical, the criminals in both stories have very similar personalities, the crucial clue that leads to him being caught is pretty much the same thing, etc, then you have a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You COULD go throw the details and start making changes to make your story different. If there were just one or two details that were two obviously the same, I'd do that. But if there are many points of similarity, and you really must admit that you got the whole idea for your story from reading/watching the other, then I think you need to go back and come up with SOME very fundamental idea that makes yours different. Make it an idea that has implications throughout the story. Not just, &quot;Well I'll set mine in Los Angeles instead of New York and so all the street names will be different.&quot; But, &quot;While his villain works hard to conceal his crime from the police, I'll make my villain flaunt his crime before the police and dare them to catch him&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly,  I think if you start out saying, &quot;I really liked such-and-such story, I'd like to write one just like it&quot;, you're going about it wrong. You should be trying to be original, not a clone. It's one thing to say to find that as you develop your story, it's getting too much like some other story you know, and you need to make some changes so it doesn't sound like a clone. It's quite another to deliberately set out to make a clone and look for the minimum set of differences to throw people off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you're writing a script for a TV show or movie, disregard the above paragraph. I understand that in Hollywood, the goal is to pick some popular TV show or movie and copy it, on the reasoning that if the original was popular, your clone should be popular too. Hollywood has this idea -- maybe it works for them, it seems pretty dumb to me -- that what makes a story popular is not creativity, originality, and smart writing, but rather a collection of surface plot elements. Like I read that after the Harry Potter movies were successful, some Hollywood exec concluded that this meant that Americans wanted to see movies &quot;about British school children&quot; and so began a couple of such projects. I remember when &quot;Star Wars&quot; proved popular, we quickly saw a rash of unoriginal movies about wars in space. Etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T15:35:29.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7766" CreationDate="2013-04-29T15:40:24.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure. The key question is, How many entries would such a Table of Contents have, and how big is the newsletter? If the answer is, &quot;one, because each issue of the newsletter is pretty much just one article&quot;, then clearly there's little point. But if the answer is &quot;twenty&quot;, then it makes sense. Likewise if the newsletter is a single sheet of paper, then readers can probably see everything that's in it at a glance anyway. If it's ten pages, a TOC makes more sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to edit a newsletter for a small non-profit organization. Our typical issue was six pages -- three sheets of paper -- with maybe ten articles or so per issue. So I would put a box in the corner of the front page with a small TOC. I didn't want to use up a whole page for a small TOC like that, but it was worth having.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T15:40:24.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7740" CreationDate="2013-04-29T16:10:56.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One popular tool is the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Score. See, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_test&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_test&lt;/a&gt;. Basically this counts the average number of letters per word and the average number of words per sentence and runs these through a formula to come up with an &quot;appropriate grade level&quot; for the block of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I think such scores are interesting but I wouldn't take them too seriously. Yes, long sentences tend to be more complex and long words tend to be less familiar. But the key word here is &quot;tend&quot;. The whole point of the FK score is that a writer can deliberately try to reduce the grade level of his writing by replacing long words with short words and breaking up sentences. But it's not at all clear that that really helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this sentence, which I just grabbed off the Internet by searching for a fairly obscure scientific concept:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In cosmology, a Hubble volume, or Hubble sphere, is a spherical region of the Universe surrounding an observer beyond which objects recede from that observer at a rate greater than the speed of light due to the expansion of the Universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flesh-Kincaid Score: 22&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, so now let me reword the paragraph to reduce my score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In cosmology, there's a thing called a Hubble volume. It's also called a Hubble sphere. It's a sphere-shaped area around someone looking at space. In that area things recede from the person looking at a rate more than the speed of light. This is due to the expansion of the universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flesh-Kincaid Score: 11&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cut my score in half. Is the paragraph now really more understandable? Did I really do anything to explain the concepts more simply? I don't think so. I just manipulated the scoring system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is: I wouldn't rely too heavily on simplistic scoring systems or guidelines. Rather, you have to apply intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using shorter words is a good idea in general. But there are lots of short words that are unfamiliar to most people, and plenty of long words that are well-understood. If you know something about chemistry, try explaining &quot;mole&quot; to a third-grader. I think he'd understand a long word like &quot;wonderful&quot; much more easily. I'm sure most people know what the word &quot;object&quot; means and know what the word &quot;oriented&quot; means, but that doesn't mean they'll easily understand the computer concept of &quot;object-oriented&quot; programming. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many suggestions on how to make writing more accessible are rushing through my head, but you didn't ask for a list of ideas, you asked for a reference, so I'll quit here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this all reminds me, I heard some guy on the radio once saying that he got new word processing software that had a feature to calculate a reading level for your text, I'm guessing a Flesch-Kincaid or something similar. And, he said, &quot;I have two Masters degrees, but no matter what I do I can't get a score above 9!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2013-04-29T16:19:06.810" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T16:19:06.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7740" CreationDate="2013-04-29T18:16:46.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dumb down&lt;/em&gt; is a phrase that conveys contempt for your audience: you're using small words and simple phrases because you believe that your audience isn't as smart as you are. That may be true, but you should ask yourself this: &lt;strong&gt;If the ideas in your complex sentences and unfamiliar words can be conveyed as well by simpler text, how good a writer are you?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than &lt;em&gt;dumbing down&lt;/em&gt;, look for ways to &lt;em&gt;clear up&lt;/em&gt; your writing. The ideals of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/403/403%20mne/plainstyle.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;plain style&lt;/a&gt;  are as good a guide as any to writing clearly without assuming the worst about your readers. Remember that simplifying the language that you use doesn't mean that you have to simplify your topic. Without obscure language getting in the way, readers will be better able to understand what you write about complex subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5094" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T18:16:46.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7776" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7778" CreationDate="2013-04-23T14:32:40.567" Score="1" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many movies/books which have an ending that is the foundation for the beginning of the story, an example is Terry Pratchett's book &lt;em&gt;Pyramids.&lt;/em&gt; In a way these stories become trapped in a repeating circular process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can these types of stories be classified?&#xA;What term is used for this type of dependency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4969" OwnerDisplayName="Vass" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T19:12:16.437" Title="How to express concisely the circular concept of a beginning and future simultaneously?" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7776" CreationDate="2013-04-23T15:10:57.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cinematic or literary device of placing the ending at the beginning of a film or novel is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/flash-forward&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;flash-forward&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It places an ineluctable, fixed point in the viewer's (or reader's) mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(To Jubobs's point, this phrase describes the fixed point, but is less about the story classification.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5101" OwnerDisplayName="rajah9" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T15:10:57.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7776" CreationDate="2013-04-24T00:08:08.513" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I propose &lt;strong&gt;ouroborean story&lt;/strong&gt;, after the fabled snake &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ouroboros&lt;/a&gt;, who ends up eating its own tail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AxpUc.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5096" OwnerDisplayName="Jubobs" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T00:08:08.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7776" CreationDate="2013-04-24T01:11:10.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The TV Tropes jargon for this kind of story is &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StableTimeLoop&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;stable time loop.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; They list Pratchett's &lt;em&gt;Pyramids&lt;/em&gt; as an example of the trope. The concept of a stable time loop as ontological paradox is called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrap_paradox&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bootstrap paradox,&lt;/a&gt; after a Robert A. Heinlein story of this nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5172" OwnerDisplayName="Bradd Szonye" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T01:28:40.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7782" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-17T02:15:45.700" Score="0" ViewCount="3078" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to describe the sense of two people, one who is angry (call him Joe) at another (call him Bob), but upon hearing Bob's retort, Joe reconsiders his position and changes his mind about being angry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you describe such a scene in terms of Joe's body language during this change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One idea I was to describe how his tense limbs loosened, but I can't think of a concise, elegant way of describing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="arigi" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T07:08:04.033" Title="How to describe the dissipation of tension between two people?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7782" CreationDate="2013-04-29T00:28:00.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply &quot;he relaxed&quot; or &quot;his body relaxed&quot;. Relax is the word that precisely describe a physical tension loosening, in common language, but also in medical term, as well as describing a state of mind, or a situation defusing. From Webster: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;To relieve from nervous tension...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;To slacken or make less tense or rigid...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;To cast off social restraint, nervous tension, or anxiety...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I've just realized that you asked two different questions: 1) the dissipation of tension between two people 2) describe Joe body language when the tension is dissipating. I'm answering No 2 here.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Jo Bedard" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T00:38:00.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7782" CreationDate="2013-04-29T06:53:45.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try &quot;detente&quot;, especially if they were arguing politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Joshua" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T06:53:45.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4983" CreationDate="2013-04-30T16:17:56.147" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When your authors began working with their respective agents, they would have had to sign a contract explaining the bounds of the agency.  That contract will explain the ins and outs for common situations such as dual representation, entering markets outside the agent's bailiwick, and so forth.  I would be surprised if 'Collaborative Works' wasn't mentioned in one (or both) contracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the contracts are not exclusive and each author is permitted to use Agent B while still being represented by Agent A (and vice versa), then there is nothing to legally bind them.  From here, the standard rules for choosing any agent would apply.  Who has the best knowledge of the subject matter and the target market?  Who has historically been the most reliable?  Do the authors want to stick with one of their own agents or do they want to go to a third party?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the contract with A is binding but the contract with B is not, then the choice is clear, at least from a legal standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should discuss the matter with BOTH agents, even if you don't think you are bound.  It may be that you are restricted in your right to use outside agency by a provision you overlooked or misunderstood and it would be best to find that out now instead of later.  Even if you are not bound, using Agent B without at least giving Agent A a heads up will almost certainly damage your relationship (possibly with both agents after B finds out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are both bound, then you definitely need to speak to both agents.  It isn't in anyone's best interest for the work to NOT get published so there has to be a solution that is beneficial for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T16:17:56.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7786" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7788" CreationDate="2013-04-30T16:27:07.393" Score="6" ViewCount="4327" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel with the following structure (I'm not very sure what's the technical term):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Chapter One (based on the POV of Character C):&lt;/em&gt; C sees B for the first time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Chapter Two (based on the POV of Character A):&lt;/em&gt; A hears about B for the first time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Chapter Three (based on the POV of Character B)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Chapter Four (based on the POV of Character C)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Chapter Five (based on the POV of Character A)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Chapter Six (based on the POV of Character B)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(and so on)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A is the hero, B is the heroine and C is the girl who is in love with A (the plot isn't that cliched. I'm just trying to simplify here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm still debating whether this is a good idea or not. If this will come out as strange for the reader (but probably, this has been done many times before?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T04:09:14.623" Title="Is it strange if a novel starts the first chapter without one of main characters?" Tags="|novel|structure|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7786" CreationDate="2013-04-30T17:12:53.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Introducing the protagonist later in the book is generally done when there's a large cast involved. In a situation like this, who the reader should consider the &quot;main&quot; character is less important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are no rules about any of this, it's generally a good idea for the reader to be able to identify with the protagonist in some way. And making the opening pages easy to relate to is important. I'd be more concerned with juggling the multiple viewpoints than bringing in the main character late. Are you setting this up in third person with follow-along points of view, or multiple first-person viewpoints? The latter is trickier to pull off well, but possible with very distinctive narrator styles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a situation where the main character won't be identified up-front, you could have the first chapter be more obviously a scene-setting prologue to the action of the book. Alternately, maybe you can plant the seeds of the protagonist in the early pages, perhaps by mentioning the character. Since the first chapter POV character is in love with your protagonist, that shouldn't be hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-04-30T17:19:16.340" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T17:19:16.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7786" CreationDate="2013-04-30T17:20:44.473" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nope, works fine. Starting from the POV of a minor character to establish the setting is no problem at all; in fact, that can be an interesting prologue, particularly if you're dealing with a mystery. It's sort of a sideways entrance into the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, Susan Elia MacNeal has done this with all the books in her Maggie Hope mysteries. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553593617&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mr. Churchill's Secretary&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553593625&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Princess Elizabeth's Spy&lt;/a&gt; both open with secondary or cameo characters and a murder. Book three, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0345536738&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;His Majesty's Hope&lt;/a&gt;, opens with cameo characters having a conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all three novels, the protagonist Maggie doesn't appear in the prologue &amp;mdash; none of the main characters do. None of the books read strangely to me for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-05-15T19:05:13.963" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T19:05:13.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7786" CreationDate="2013-05-02T02:36:33.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You get certain liberties with the first chapter. Actually, I've seen this in a number of good published books. So, no, it's not odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5035" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T02:36:33.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7764" CreationDate="2013-05-02T02:44:16.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you need to wait a while before writing this. If all you can think of is something you've already seen, you're not spending enough time taking in ideas. In this case, I'd actually suggest you spend several hours on TVTropes, where you'll find better ideas than the ones you're getting, and decent analyses of those ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, quit thinking of your work in relation to other people's work. If it's too similar to other plotlines, that needs to be changed, but after you've changed it, you need to get &lt;em&gt;Saw&lt;/em&gt; out of your head. If you've changed things enough, you won't have to focus on proving you aren't a ripoff, and if you continue to focus on that, you'll end up using all of the ideas from &lt;em&gt;Saw&lt;/em&gt; anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you change things, read it through, and still can't help thinking of &lt;em&gt;Saw,&lt;/em&gt; maybe you should write something else for a while and come back to it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5035" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T02:44:16.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7796" CreationDate="2013-05-02T15:49:45.700" Score="13" ViewCount="3751" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm done with my first novel, and I'm about to start writing to agents/publishers. The only detail I don't have yet is a good title!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a couple of ideas but both suck. I had the illusion that after three drafts the name would be obvious, but... it turns out it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something I don't remember having seen discussed anywhere. Do you have any good tips or ideas on how to come up with a good name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meta question - is this really important? For self-publishing I assume it is, but if I find an agent, would them/the publisher come up with a marketing-ready title? Or are authors expected to create their own titles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T03:06:20.293" Title="How to come up with a good title?" Tags="|titles|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7793" CreationDate="2013-05-02T17:01:47.763" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have trouble coming up with titles, too! Yet titles matter. Busy agents and publishers aren't going to spend much time looking at material that appears uninteresting, and your title (in addition to your cover letter and perhaps your first few sentences/pages) is one of the few opportunities you have to catch their attention. Even if the title is changed before final publication, &lt;strong&gt;it should pique interest and suggest the tone and content of the book.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions that I find helpful when trying to choose a title:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I use the theme of the book as a title? (Romance novels seem to do this-- &quot;Love Comes Softly,&quot; &quot;The Long Wait,&quot; etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I use the name of a key object or place, perhaps in conjunction with a character name? (Fantasies come to mind-- &quot;The Two Towers,&quot; &quot;Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I use a description of a character? (&quot;The Old Woman Who Saw Ghosts,&quot; &quot;The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I use a verb phrase that describes the action? (&quot;To Catch a Thief.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I make lists of possibilities, try to stretch my possibilities by combining them in unusual ways (trying to match the tone of the book as I do it-- is the story comic or serious? Epic or episodic?), and then eliminate most of them. I have to &quot;sit on&quot; titles for a while to know if they are workable. The better titles keep me happy over time, and the bad ones don't. It's kind of like planning out a name for your kid!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T17:01:47.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7793" CreationDate="2013-05-02T17:28:45.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find a key word or phrase and then start searching through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bartleby.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bartleby's&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://sydney.edu.au/engineering/it/~matty/Shakespeare/test.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Shakespeare&lt;/a&gt; to see if any good quotes come up. Even if they don't, just looking at poetry might shake something loose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T17:28:45.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7793" CreationDate="2013-05-02T17:46:13.703" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The short answer is that there is no right answer.&lt;/strong&gt; The hardest word choice in any book is the handful of words that make up the title. And if I were allowed to give advice then the advice I would give is to trust in magical word angels who will eventually whisper in your ear and tell you what the title should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But let's say that the whispering word angels are on their coffee break and you want the long answer. There are some rules which, like all writing rules, have exceptions to when they can and should be broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing to keep in mind is that &lt;strong&gt;most readers will decide to buy or pass on your book based on the title alone&lt;/strong&gt;. Rightly or wrongly, that's what happens. That means that you need to put your marketing hat on when you write your title. You can put it on backwards like the cool kids do, but always remember that &lt;strong&gt;the entire reason your title exists is to sell your book&lt;/strong&gt;. Think to yourself: Out of all of the books in a real or virtual bookstore &lt;strong&gt;what is the &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; title I can choose that will at least make someone stop and take a closer look?&lt;/strong&gt; (Yes, yes, you're an &lt;em&gt;artist&lt;/em&gt; not a &lt;em&gt;businessperson&lt;/em&gt;. I know. Let's just say there's a reason the phrase &lt;em&gt;starving artist&lt;/em&gt; exists, shall we?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, the first rule is that &lt;strong&gt;titles should be interesting, original, memorable and appropriate&lt;/strong&gt; above everything else. If your book is funny, then the title should be funny. If your book is dark, then the title should be dark. If it's for kids, don't give it an adult title. If you're writing a romance novel, don't make it sound like it's science fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The inspiration for your interesting and memorable title can come from several places:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People, places and things:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Mystic River&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Forrest Gump&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Charlotte's Web&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expressions &amp;amp; Expressions with a twist:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Usual Suspects&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;You Only Live Twice&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Of Mice and Men&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The Grapes of Wrath&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Live and Let Die&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thought provoking ideas from your book:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Fight Club&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Dances With Wolves&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Catch-22&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;To Kill A Mockingbird&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;A Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The Green Mile&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Rain Man&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to keep in mind is that while titles are generally not copyrightable &lt;strong&gt;you can get in legal trouble if your title and subject matter are similar to another writer's&lt;/strong&gt; (IANAL and all that). Beside legal trouble, if there are other works that share your title it can be confusing for potential readers to find your book. &lt;strong&gt;Lots of books with the same title can also make you and your book seem lazy and unoriginal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part of your question is a little more difficult. If you're self publishing then there's nobody to blame for the quality of your title but yourself. But even if you go the route of traditional publishing you should still take time to find a title you love. Yes, if your publisher doesn't like your title they'll probably change it, and that's okay. &lt;strong&gt;But you should always, ALWAYS as a writer, care enough about your creation to fight to preserve the vision of your work.&lt;/strong&gt; //Unless selling out makes you more money. Then you should &lt;em&gt;totally&lt;/em&gt; cave on that whole &quot;vision&quot; thing.//&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sources to scan for some more ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/titles.shtml&quot;&gt;Choosing the Right Name for Your Story&lt;/a&gt; An older website with some timeless advice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/RogerParker/how-to-choose-the-right-book-title&quot;&gt;Choosing the Right Title For Your Book&lt;/a&gt; A very marketing-oriented slide show on book titles that focuses primarily on selling your book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T17:46:13.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7797" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-02T18:53:42.700" Score="7" ViewCount="6539" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a paper that covers concurrency in Java, however to properly explain many concepts I feel code samples are basically needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't know how to properly cite code I've borrowed, or how to properly format code that I've written myself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this accomplished?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="990" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-05-03T20:43:09.763" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T18:42:48.467" Title="What is the proper format/style for using and properly citing code in an APA paper?" Tags="|style|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7793" CreationDate="2013-05-02T20:04:23.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some ways, some better, some worse. If this story is connected to some common theme, story, legend, myth, take its name and modify it, come up with some pun based on how it twists the theme, or such. This is a better method but it may or may not always work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One universal method that always works and always produces decent results though is: &lt;strong&gt;Abstract, abstract, abstract.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to write a one or two paragraph summary of the whole novel without spoilers, a blurb you could put as &quot;plot summary&quot; in a page offering the sales of this book in an e-bookstore.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Summarize the newly-created paragraph in one sentence, one line - something you could put after the title in a condensed list of books. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Summarize that line in one to four words. There, you have your title - your whole book reduced to one to four words. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T20:04:23.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7793" CreationDate="2013-05-02T23:03:40.613" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Truthfully the best thing to do is give your book a code name. After you finish your first draft, re-read it and name it after what you got from the book. Whether it be something you feel, a quote from a character or person, or based on a short description of something from within the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5112" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T23:03:40.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7764" CreationDate="2013-05-03T13:30:51.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess sometimes it's about writing, not the idea... And sometimes you just get inspired by some other thing. The line between the two is really thin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Walking Dead has a lot of similarities with Romero's movies, yet it's completely different not because of the idea but because what happens with the characters and the motivations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's just like somebody said in a previous reply, if you need to justify, you are doing it wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't bother with the macro idea being similar because this happens all the time. Just focus on what makes the book really different and unique than your book will become an unique piece of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T13:30:51.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1970" CreationDate="2013-05-03T13:56:14.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somebody already suggests but I'm really satisfied with Latex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's distraction free, can be used in ANY text editor you want and has the BIG advantage of separating formatting from content. In my case, I just created &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/efernandespt/Manuscript&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my own class&lt;/a&gt; to have the final document formatted as I want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another huge advantage is that, since it's plain text, you may threat it as computer code and use repositories to track reviews and share your writing efforts with editors and other writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://github.com&lt;/a&gt; is great if you want to write something public, and bitbucket.org offers private hosting if you want to keep it private. It's all a matter to understand how it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big disadvantage is that you will have to spend some time to learn the basics but, in my opinion, it's worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T13:56:14.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7802" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-04T02:06:41.123" Score="0" ViewCount="2521" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of writing my first fiction novel based on a medieval fantasy setting and I know nothing about writing. Any pointers for this type of genre? I think I read somewhere that you need a hero, and a quest item, etc. etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I feel the novel will be somewhat of a tragedy. The hero being rejected by his family, betrayed by his brother, the girl he's in love with is killed by a female villain who is in love with the hero. The hero kills the female villain, all during the process of trying to save everyone from something(not yet determined).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only have experience at technical writing, such as documentation as such. I have read maybe over 70 medieval fantasy novels, and now I'm edger to write my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any pointers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5112" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T10:18:21.310" Title="Tips For A Good Medieval Fantasy Novel" Tags="|creative-writing|structure|plot|fantasy|outline|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-05-05T12:26:19.093" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7126" CreationDate="2013-05-04T02:11:17.170" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend giving &lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Docs&lt;/a&gt; a try. It's free, and allows each of you to see eachothers changes as they happen in realtime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite useful. Allows commenting and reviewing too, and there's inbuilt revision control so that you can go back and see who did what, and when.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using version control systems might be too complex. I suggest this simplified solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5119" LastActivityDate="2013-05-04T02:11:17.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-04T14:45:04.087" Score="2" ViewCount="10590" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to cite a Google condition using APA style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the following paragraph, but when I pass it through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scanmyessay.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Viper&lt;/a&gt; I get plagiarized. How shall I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5123" LastEditorUserId="5123" LastEditDate="2013-05-18T16:03:05.347" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T20:00:13.203" Title="How to cite a Terms of Service in APA style" Tags="|style|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7802" CreationDate="2013-05-04T14:50:44.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about &quot;what to write about&quot; are off-topic. But your question can be also interpreted as &quot;how to start a novel&quot; and so I'm going to answer that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First a misconception on your side:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I know nothing about writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sentence is only excusable as a citation. But your name is not John Snow. So forget about it, because writing this question proved that you know &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;: Adding characters to sentences and sentences to paragraphs. Welcome to the club, you are a writer ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you have read over 70 fantasy novels. That's a good start for writing a fantasy novel yourself. You know the basic concepts what is expected in a fantasy novel (or at least what you expect) and that's a good start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more, you have a hero, a villain and a kind of plot. Give your hero and your villain a name, jot down how they look like, what they are good in, what they are bad in, open your word processor and go!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, don't think too much. You have a gut feeling. Listen to it, it keeps you writing. Don't bother about rules, what should be done, what should be avoided. Just write how you think it's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be counter-intuitive, because we have here a whole site with all these nice tips how to write a better story. But the truth is: Before you do not have some experience in writing all these tips will not help you. They even can be dangerous and kill your creative voice. Nothing is worse than follow rules you do not understand. And you cannot understand them without some experience. Even if they sound totally logical when reading them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So follow the good old writer's principle: Just write! And if you stumble over more problems &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you started your novel, come back and maybe we can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-05-04T14:50:44.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7802" CreationDate="2013-05-05T10:18:21.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're an analytical type (and if you do technical writing, I guess you are), &lt;em&gt;Writing Fiction for Dummies&lt;/em&gt; could be a very good match for you. It was for me :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to &quot;try before you buy&quot;, read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T10:18:21.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7813" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7816" CreationDate="2013-05-05T17:44:06.010" Score="-1" ViewCount="172" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alex look around the room, it's almost empty except few small empty boxes and few clothes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alex look around the room. It's almost empty except few small empty boxes and few clothes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alex look around the room. The room is almost empty except few small empty boxes and few clothes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one of these good for creative writing like story writing? I want the sentences to flow like fluid. If I choose first one(1), is it acceptable? In third sentence I'm re-referring the object of the first sentence again as subject in the second sentence. I do the same things in second but not using the direct word &amp;quot;the room&amp;quot; but I use &amp;quot;it&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5126" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T11:02:03.333" Title="Writing style — comma, period and re-referring the object of the first sentence again as subject in second sentence" Tags="|style|creative-writing|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-05-28T05:11:23.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7814" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7815" CreationDate="2013-05-05T18:14:16.410" Score="1" ViewCount="1339" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have tendency to write chopped sentences with too many conjunctions, repeating the subject again and again. I don't want that but I'm not skilled in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example how do write the following in a better way for a screenplay? I feel the below sentence looks chopped and repeats the subject, and looks like it was written for a formal letter or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hundreds of people are standing and looking at the on-coming train. Their sweating faces encrusted with dust, and they are wearing old clothes and shoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5126" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-05-06T02:25:08.527" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T00:58:58.180" Title="Chopped sentences with too many conjunction, and repeating the subject again and again" Tags="|style|description|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7814" CreationDate="2013-05-05T18:32:43.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a screenplay, it is probably more important to be clear than to have excellent, flowing prose.  (I'm not a screenwriter.)  For the more-general case of descriptive prose, however, one approach is to convert &quot;they are&quot; verbal clauses to adjectival clauses.  Instead of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hundreds of people are standing and looking at the on-coming train. Their sweating faces [are?] encrusted with dust, and they are wearing old clothes and shoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hundreds of people, clad in old clothing and their sweating faces encrusted with dust, are standing and looking at the on-coming train.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I also converted &quot;old clothes and shoes&quot; to &quot;old clothing&quot; there.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How&lt;/em&gt; you do this depends on which aspects of the description are most important.  You don't want to pile on a bunch of adjectival clauses (covering both the clothing and their faces in one sentence seems borderline to me), but as you've noted, you also don't want to string along a bunch of &quot;oh yeah, and...&quot; descriptive sentences.  So focus on the ones that are most important for telling your story, and let the rest emerge naturally later -- or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To apply that advice, consider instead a longer passage like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hundreds of people, sweating faces encrusted with dust, stand and watch the on-coming train.  (Something happens.)  (Somebody watches) the sea of people, all clad in well-worn dusty clothes, swarm toward the doors. (Etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point here is to add the descriptive detail as it fits, rather than loading it all up at the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T18:32:43.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7813" CreationDate="2013-05-05T18:37:07.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your first example is a not a grammatical sentence. It is a comma splice. It uses a comma to join two independent clauses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your third example uses repetition. Repetition serves to &lt;em&gt;emphasize&lt;/em&gt; the thing that's repeated. It also introduces a kind of rhythm into the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repetition is grammatically acceptable. Whether it's a good idea depends on whether you like the resulting emphasis and rhythm. I don't think &quot;the room&quot; is important enough to warrant the emphasis, but that may depend on what comes before or after these sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another way to structure the two sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alex looks around. The room is almost empty...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the second sentence immediately follows the first, the reader will make the connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T18:37:07.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7817" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7819" CreationDate="2013-05-05T22:23:16.357" Score="1" ViewCount="4400" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any list of words use in screenplay?  Like below. What word I can use to describe the sound of metal gate and a sound of a tower built in metal?&#xA;THUD - body fall sound&#xA;BANG - some blast sound, etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5126" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T06:51:02.680" Title="Words for Sounds in Screenplay" Tags="|scriptwriting|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7818" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7822" CreationDate="2013-05-05T23:57:25.587" Score="7" ViewCount="1261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this is right for this part of Stackexchange, but since there is no psychology section, here we go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing the same short story several times with the intention of conveying one very intense emotion each time. I'm wondering if &quot;putting yourself&quot; in the emotion charges you to write better to that effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to imagine some link similar to the one in acting. I've heard that thinking of something sad to make oneself cry, or Heath Ledger's depression he experienced during his role as the Joker, one so intense he ended up needing medication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a connection between the emotion a writer is feeling with how a feeling is being conveyed in the writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5128" LastActivityDate="2023-11-26T09:34:02.340" Title="Does writing in a certain mood change how a writer writes?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|word-choice|tone|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7817" CreationDate="2013-05-06T06:33:08.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider &lt;em&gt;screech, clang, clank, groan&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/screech#Noun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;screech&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, “A high-pitched strident or piercing sound, such as that between a moving object and any surface.”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;• &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/clang#Noun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;clang&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, “A loud, ringing sound, like that made by free-hanging metal objects striking each other.”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;• &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/clank#Noun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;clank&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, “A loud, hard sound of metal hitting metal.  Usage note: Clank usually expresses a duller or less resounding sound than clang, and a deeper and stronger sound than clink.”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;• &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/groan#Noun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;groan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, for which wiktionary only shows senses like “A low, mournful sound uttered in pain or grief”, but the word sometimes is used to characterize rending, wrenching, ratcheting, or tearing noises as metal is stressed not just beyond its yield point but beyond its ultimate strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T06:33:08.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7817" CreationDate="2013-05-06T06:51:02.680" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not simply describe the FX you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Footsteps on gravel, rusty metal gate opening, reverberating gunshot, scream of pain&lt;/em&gt; is far more useful in a screenplay than &lt;em&gt;Crunch, Creak, Kapowee, Aaaagh&lt;/em&gt;. Unless of course you are writing a comic book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T06:51:02.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7126" CreationDate="2013-05-06T09:06:12.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, as somebody said already, simple text files with markup languages (AKA Latex) with Github or Bitbucket is the best option not only because it will allow you to share your work with the people you need (editors and co-authors) but also because it will help you to safely backup your files and control every change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw, both - Github and Bitbucket - are free for personal using.&#xA;The second one allows private repositories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T09:06:12.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7818" CreationDate="2013-05-06T09:58:32.320" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reminded of the anecdote about Dustin Hoffman torturing himself for &lt;em&gt;Marathon Man&lt;/em&gt; because he was a &quot;Method&quot; actor, so he'd look as tortured as his character. Lawrence Olivier looked at him and said, &quot;My dear boy, that's why they call it &lt;em&gt;acting.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever we write, unless we're writing an autobiography, we are &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; putting ourselves into someone else's mood, experience, mindset, etc. So while you can &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7460/effective-techniques-for-describing-pain/7461#7461&quot;&gt;take notes when you're in a particular mood&lt;/a&gt; to use for later, just because you're depressed doesn't mean you'll write brilliant prose from the POV of being depressed. You may just be too depressed to write anything.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, in fact, &quot;changing how a writer writes,&quot; but not, I think, in the way you meant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T09:58:32.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7818" CreationDate="2013-05-06T12:33:38.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess the correct question would be &quot;&lt;em&gt;Is having your text affected by your mood good or bad?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no doubt that what the author is feeling affects the way he writes, just as anybody in any kind of job will be affected in their performance by the way they are feeling. It's normal to a certain point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that what you feel might affect your work in different ways, and it's up to you to use what is good and leave out what is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always heard that &lt;em&gt;Interview with the Vampire&lt;/em&gt; was written after the death of the author's daughter and, in fact, I see a really good book with a good deal of emotion in it. If that is true, I can see aspects of that death of a child in its pages (if it's not, writing is subjective anyway). I would say that Anne's emotion was good for the text and she knew how to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I see people start to do a lot of crappy text because they are depressed. A common mistake is to write about what you are feeling and forget that other people will read it and need to achieve what you are feeling. A book is not a diary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, everything has a good and bad side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-03-15T16:31:42.487" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T16:31:42.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7824" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7892" CreationDate="2013-05-06T13:01:19.687" Score="6" ViewCount="6328" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use the following formats for dialogues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;dialogue &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;dialogue - describing action (if any)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;dialogue - describing action (if any) - more dialogue (if any)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a chapter in my book that is mainly a conversation. During that chapter, after - let's say - the 10 first paragraphs, it starts to look like a monologue since the second chars starts to tell a history to the first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that scope, the normal dialogue won't work. I'm not sure how to format what the second character is saying since it will be spread out over more than one paragraph. How do I deal with such long dialogues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems nonsensical to drop the paragraphs just because of the dialogue. It also doesn't seem right to use something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dialogue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;more dialogue of the same char in another paragraph without the dash&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;dialogue&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;more dialogue of the same char in another paragraph with the dash&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My solution was to insert unnecessary things from the first character just to help the formatting, but that's not what I really want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;dialogue&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;something unnecessary from the other character&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;more dialogue of the other character &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-05-06T16:07:33.707" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T19:38:53.440" Title="How to format dialogue with an embedded long monologue" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7824" CreationDate="2013-05-06T13:41:37.083" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can break up long stretches of dialogue with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stage business (describing the person moving around, handling things,&#xA;getting up and walking, sighing, laughing, eating, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reaction shots from the other person&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bits of narrative describing what someone is thinking, either the speaker watching the listener or the listener reacting to the speaker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's actually okay to have &quot;something unnecessary.&quot; That's the stage business. It also helps make the scene easier to visualize. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an exercise, watch a (scripted!) TV show or a movie. Watch for scenes with two people talking. Turn off the sound or turn it low and really &lt;em&gt;watch.&lt;/em&gt; It's not just two people sitting stiffly and yammering at one another like the Sunday morning talk shows. There's movement. There are reactions. People get up and pace. They slouch. They fiddle with the china. These are the things you can intersperse in long paragraphs of text so they aren't boring walls of blah blah blah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T13:41:37.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7797" CreationDate="2013-05-06T15:51:41.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can find what you want &lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/03/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;In-Text Citations: Author/Authors&lt;/a&gt; section, where they give additional rules for citing indirect sources, electronic sources, and sources without page numbers. I believe it would work for source code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T15:51:41.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7786" CreationDate="2013-05-06T17:34:28.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Introducing your story like this is no problem, however if C is normally unrelated to the story you may consider the first chapter not being a de facto chapter and call it an introduction/prologue instead. It is a common characteristic of an introduction to introduce the plot via a side character. Normally this is a very short chapter comprising of one short scene. If your chapter falls into this description you may want to consider making it an Introduction/prologue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5133" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-05-07T05:18:37.430" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T05:18:37.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7681" CreationDate="2013-05-06T17:45:49.717" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few organizations that focus on getting new authors introduced to more readers, the one I am mainly associated with is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bookhubinc.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bookhubinc.wordpress.com/&lt;/a&gt; . Basically contact them and say that you're a writer having writen a new free book and would like help getting it known. They normally respond quickly. You don't have to use them or feel restricted to only use them. You may contact other organisations that offer the same service. Book Hub also distributes a collection of books to reviewers who run blogs for them to review so the book becomes more widely known. Alternitvly you may decide to skip the middle man and go straight to the reviewers, however using Book Hub you will probably get more reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5133" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T17:45:49.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7451" CreationDate="2013-05-06T17:54:56.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well yes there are awards though not as highly recognized as the major awards which are open to everyone. Also these awards are fairly localised. Normally your country has its own junior writing awards. You'll have to search on your government's site find out more about that. The relatively major awards for young authors are generally only for published books and if you win one of them you stand a chance doing having success in the normal competitions. Generally though they don't differentiate writers by age groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5133" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T17:54:56.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7824" CreationDate="2013-05-06T19:08:32.923" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One addition to Lauren's list:  If the history is interesting enough on its own, make the telling of the history a scene. End one scene with the storyteller launching into the story. Then put a scene break. Then put the story as told by the storyteller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works better if you've already established a pattern of switching viewpoints from one scene to the next, but you can sometimes get away with it in (otherwise) single viewpoint stories if the transitions into and out of the story are clear enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alas, I can't think of an example that you might know, though I'm sure there are numerous ones. Here is a (somewhat clunky) example from one of my works in progress:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Page leaned forward, placed his forearms on his knees, and began to tell the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;#&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1961 I was sent to Vietnam as what they called a &quot;military advisor.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the switch from third to first person helps mark the transition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T19:08:32.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7831" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-07T03:59:45.367" Score="0" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to do &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;in text citation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of my &quot;DK Handbook&quot;, &#xA;In other words, I don't want put it's citation in 'work cited' section as it would be short and so obvious&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched internet and MLA handbook but foud nothing,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering can someone help me to cite it in MLA format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it is a DK-Handbook second edition &amp;amp; custom edition for my college and published by Longman (I don't know whether I should mention publisher in 'in text citation') and I want to cite page 85 which is in third chapter&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4804" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T08:26:52.517" Title="in text citation for handbook" Tags="|mla|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1043" CreationDate="2013-05-07T04:46:51.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not an official journalist or professional reviewer, but I give great feedback and honest reviews. I've recently found out that I can receive a free book in exchange for a review. While I am an average person (new mom, non-celebrity), my professional background and large social network make me a great candidate for something like this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a business owner/ marketing professional with previous published articles. I enjoy promoting products through event marketing as well. One of the many services my company provides is web design and SEO, so when I post something on my website (like say a review in my blog), people in that audience will see it. I'm all over Google.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone is interested in me reviewing your book, please send me additional information. (Certain genres don't interest me so that wouldn't be fair to you if you fell under that category.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5138" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-05-07T17:19:48.093" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T17:19:48.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7831" CreationDate="2013-05-07T08:26:52.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The usual approach is to write both the citation (marked up either with quotes or italics) and its reference with the natural flow, making them visually distinct but semantically following the flow of text seamlessly: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the DK-Handbook recommends, &lt;em&gt;you need to give readers&#xA;  information about the source.&lt;/em&gt; How exactly you present the source depends on how much focus you want to draw to it, as opposed to the quote itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you're writing about the source, and use quotes as some kind of teaser, to incite the reader to try the source, make sure to present the source clearly. Conversely, if the quote is self-contained, self-explanatory and you just give the source out of common courtesy, just give enough information that the reader will be able to trace the quotation, even if it takes some considerable effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T08:26:52.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7834" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-07T09:40:56.923" Score="0" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Summa Logicae&lt;/em&gt; (Latin, in English it's &lt;em&gt;the Sum of Logic&lt;/em&gt;) is a textbook on logic by &lt;a href=&quot;http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_S5dFdpF6xm0/SuC3NlxHmwI/AAAAAAAAAj4/zGiXgFk3NK0/s400/William-of-Ockham-Moscarlop-GNU-free.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;William of Ockham&lt;/a&gt;. There are articles about &lt;em&gt;the Summa Logicae&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_logicae&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;  and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Summa_Logicae_%28Ockham%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in Logicmuseum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was published in Paris in 1488. There are different typed variants of this textbook, for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/articles/Ockham.Summa_logicae.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (in English).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I can't find any scans or photos of the original handmade manuscript or the original (first) edition. Do you know any links or libraries or museims, where I can find it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5139" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T12:38:15.077" Title="The manuscript Summa Logicae (William of Ockham)" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-05-07T23:58:25.363" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-07T10:05:44.847" Score="1" ViewCount="722" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to provide reviews in exchange for a free copy of the book. I have a great blog website with excellent SEO and social media following. I'm happy to provide the review on my website with a link to yours along with a review on GoodReads.com and Amazon.com. All reviews are 100% honest. I would not offer to do a review for a book genre that I know I am not interested in. That being said, I do have a variety of interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I identify writers or publishers to send me books to review? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5138" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-05-07T17:25:08.667" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T00:09:38.577" Title="My Reviews for Free Books?" Tags="|reviews|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7813" CreationDate="2013-05-07T11:02:03.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I normally use repetitions when I want to emphasize something. Use repetitions in those examples, for me, would not be a good practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;I thought about it. I thought about it deeply, and realized it&#xA;was not the way.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example phrases, I would go for something like Dale suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Alex looks around. The room is almost empty...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T11:02:03.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-07T11:16:41.673" Score="2" ViewCount="624" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to create a company that acts like a publishing house? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine registering a company and contracting the novels I write under its name, and then putting them on Amazon and Smashwords. I would be an author providing the books to this company but also be owner of the company at the same time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would such an arrangement have any benefits? (eg. tax, legal protection; this for the UK.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A concrete benefit could be that a pen name could be used exclusively in self publishing. Since a contract should be signed somewhere with the real name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4969" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T03:35:57.270" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T03:35:57.270" Title="When self publishing, are there benefits to making a company to represent your books? Is that then a publishing house?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|legal|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7834" CreationDate="2013-05-07T12:38:15.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://discover.odai.yale.edu/ydc/Record/3471469/Description#tabs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yale Digital Content&lt;/a&gt; reports that it holds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;William of Ockham, Summa Logicae, etc. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manuscript on paper (thick, coarse, some deckle edges; watermarks indistinguishable) of William of Ockham, Summa logicae. With Walter Burley, De puritate artis logicae tractatus brevior, beginning of text only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creator:   William, of Ockham, ca. 1285-ca. 1349.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Publisher:   Italy,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Publication Date:    [between 1400 and 1450]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Type:    Archives or manuscripts&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Physical Description:    ff. i + 125 + i: paper ; 222 x 145 (195 x 110) mm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that it is desribed as &lt;em&gt;Written by a single scribe in small, cramped and highly abbreviated gothic cursive&lt;/em&gt;, so it is presumably not a &amp;quot;first edition&amp;quot;. But given that it apparently predates your date for first publication (1488?), it may be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T12:38:15.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7837" CreationDate="2013-05-07T12:43:04.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that a company &quot;that acts like a publishing house&quot; but has no other corporate activity &lt;strong&gt;is a (small) publishing house&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one obvious benefit will be if you are successful promoting and selling your own books, then you could take on other authors using the same systems and become a larger publishing house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this question is almost exclusively concerned with legal and financial implications, consult your solicitor and accountant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T12:43:04.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7623" CreationDate="2013-05-07T14:49:47.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion as a computer technician, this is impossible at least outside the strictly technical language... And, even so, I don't think it's something you can expect to be error free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google translator is far from accurate, at least from what I see when interacting with people that depends on it to speak in English. It can translate something in an understandable way, but never in a perfect way. Specially because there are some localized word usages that won't make sense for a mere translator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somethings, at least at this time, will still need to be done by humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I use Google Translator, since I'm not a native English speaker but never as a tool to translate, just to help me with some words. What I do is to get it's translator and review it, fixing what is not right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there should be better tools than Google translator, but they will for sure be expansive. Besides, they will never be error free since it's quite hard to make such complex IA algorithm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At last, but not at least, there are sentences that we - as humans - have a hard time to comprehend in our own languages. Now picture a software dealing with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T14:49:47.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7841" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-07T15:16:55.600" Score="0" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a true story on my experience with some individuals and major corporations.  The book has factual proof throughout story.  I am afraid that they may get angry and send cease and desist letter.  Is it possible that it would prevent the sale of the book , even before a judge review the facts? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5142" LastEditorUserId="4823" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T20:04:29.057" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T20:04:29.057" Title="Is it possible my book could be taken off-line for sale if there is a cease and desist letter?" Tags="|non-fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7841" CreationDate="2013-05-07T17:36:57.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a legal question more than a writing question. You probably should find a lawyer or law-related site to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What country are you planning to publish in? Laws vary by country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But just based on my general knowledge of United States law: A judge might possibly issue an injunction based on preliminary findings. You should then have an opportunity to go to court and make your case, but he could order sales of your book stopped until a hearing or trial could be held.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A retailer or publisher might decide to defy such a court order, but that would involve huge risks. Unless they viewed your book as very important, or decided that they wanted to make this a test case for freedom of speech, I suspect they'd obey the court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, American courts are very reluctant to engage in what they call &quot;prior restraint&quot;, that is, preventing publication. You don't give a lot of details, but I gather that you're saying that people may object to embarrassing things about them being published. I don't think an American judge would block publication of a book on those grounds. They're far more likely to say that you can go ahead and publish whatever you want, but that the people you write about can then sue you for libel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, unless your goal is just to hurt people you are mad at regardless of the cost to yourself, I'd be far more concerned about libel suits than censorship. Even if you have all the facts on your side, you'd have to defend yourself in court, and that can be very expensive and time-consuming. Whether it's worth it is up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not in the US, laws of your country may differ greatly. As I said at the start, you'd get more useful answers from a lawyer than a bunch of writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T17:36:57.380" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7837" CreationDate="2013-05-07T17:44:21.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing exactly that. I created my own publishing company, which to date has published exactly one book. (My first book was published before I created this company, and I'm working on my third now.) The main reason I did this was so I could create my own imprint, i.e. publisher name and logo. It is also helpful -- I'm not sure if it's absolutely necessary -- to register with Bowkers to get ISBNs, and with the Library of Congress to get LOC catalog numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to tax and legal implications, that depends on the laws of your country and the form of the business. My publishing company is a sole proprietorship, so it makes zero tax or legal difference. If you made it a corporation or a limited liability company, then it would limit your liability if your company runs into financial or legal difficulties. Tax law can get very complicated, but in general, making it a corporation would increase your taxes and increase the amount of paperwork you have to do with the government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T17:44:21.740" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7835" CreationDate="2013-05-08T15:41:19.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had this same problem a while ago and I ended up finding, sites that help the promotion of new writers by getting their books reviewed by lots of reviewers. If you don't mind getting electronic copies of the book you can ask to review books at &lt;a href=&quot;http://bookhubinc.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bookhubinc.wordpress.com/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5133" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T15:41:19.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7818" CreationDate="2013-05-08T18:29:59.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does impact how you write, and possibly your ability to write, but not always in a predictable or positive sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first it might seem that it's easier to write about a particular emotion when you're experiencing that emotion. Not necessarily. Let's assume that you can somehow work yourself into that emotional state without it seeming strained or artificial. (I'm glossing over that, but recognize the ability to do so is remarkably difficult unto itself.) Does that really give you any &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; when it comes to portraying that emotion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For first-person stories, perhaps, but even then it will require significant editing. People undergoing an intense emotion tend to get wrapped up in that emotion, but you don't want that kind of directionless anger, depression, or what have you in a story. There should be enough to get a sense of it, but getting lost in it means you run the risk of losing the narrative, and therefore the reader's attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In third-person I'd say it's almost useless. Unless you're going to let the character's thoughts take over the narrative in some subtle way, there's no point. You need to remain firmly in the mind of the narrator, even if your third-person story follows characters (or possibly just one character) closely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it is helpful when it comes to writing about intense emotion to have &lt;em&gt;experienced&lt;/em&gt; that emotion, but the key here lies in past tense. It's hard to describe something when you're currently experiencing it, but far easier when it's a memory. After all, intense emotion is more often than not an inhibitor of logical thinking, which isn't very helpful when you need to sit down and pump out a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5147" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T18:29:59.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-09T09:43:25.090" Score="1" ViewCount="2163" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there some software which can automatically do a basic index from my Text document (MS Word) for me?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written multiple speaker text's (each 2-3 MS Word pages in german language) for videos I created (25~ Videos).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I want to automatically generate a basic index of each text so people can search roughly in which of the Videos their search criteria lies. As I am under time pressure and really just need some basic index (I will have time later to go after the details).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: I also take workarounds if there is no chance of doing that, but please something that is at least faster than having to read all documents through again and evaluate every word :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5151" LastEditorUserId="5151" LastEditDate="2013-05-09T12:48:37.697" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T22:53:40.197" Title="Create automatic index from text document" Tags="|indexing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7847" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-09T11:50:51.343" Score="-1" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;This book will expand your knowledge of Italian food and allow you to surprise your friends and family with authentic home-cooked meals that taste delicious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book will expand your knowledge of Italian food and will allow you to surprise your friends and family with authentic home-cooked meals that taste delicious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My doubt is, can I use will two times in the same paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5153" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T14:35:04.247" Title="Which one is correct?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-05-09T15:27:15.083" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7847" CreationDate="2013-05-09T11:59:19.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First version has a minor grammar error:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and allow*&lt;strong&gt;s*&lt;/strong&gt; you ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from that, both are fine. I would probably use the second version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think both sentences are too similiar to use in the same paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5104" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T11:59:19.650" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7847" CreationDate="2013-05-09T13:20:56.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would choose the first option over the second. That said, @Stephen has a point. If you include the &quot;s&quot; as he suggests, you will put the verb in present tense, if you leave off the &quot;s&quot;, it will be a future tense verb which would likely be preferred. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to avoid using &quot;will&quot; twice, it makes the sentence flow better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/41123/using-will-twice-in-a-sentence&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a link to an english.se question relating your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer is assuming that the OP's intended question was &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Can I use will two times in the same &lt;em&gt;sentence&lt;/em&gt;?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; rather than &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Can I use will two times in the same &lt;em&gt;paragraph&lt;/em&gt;?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5128" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T13:20:56.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7847" CreationDate="2013-05-09T14:35:04.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My short answer: Either is fine. I'd probably use the version with two &amp;quot;will&amp;quot;s because the sentence is long enough that with only one the implied &amp;quot;re-use&amp;quot; of the first one could get lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that in general one should be cautious about using the same word twice in one sentence. But that guideline is less important when talking about short common words, like &amp;quot;is&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;he&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;the&amp;quot; ... and &amp;quot;will&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a very short sentence, it's common to drop the second &amp;quot;will&amp;quot; on a compound future-tense verb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fine: Sally will stand and will give her speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better: Sally will stand and give her speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is correct because the &amp;quot;will&amp;quot; is understood to apply to both &amp;quot;stand&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;give&amp;quot;. It is better because it avoids saying &amp;quot;will&amp;quot; twice in rapid succession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in your example, &amp;quot;expand&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;allow&amp;quot; are pretty far apart, and it is easier to see a reader losing track of that first &amp;quot;will&amp;quot;. In that case not dropping the second &amp;quot;will&amp;quot; may make the sentence more clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T14:35:04.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7846" CreationDate="2013-05-09T15:36:28.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess now I understood what your question was. Indeed there are a lot of software that can do what you want but I guess your premise is wrong since this is not related to create a table of content for the document but to index the document content allowing -- at least from what I understood - complexes searches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally this is done trough software not to index, by to manage content. For example a CMS. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that way, the search and the indexing procedures are not performed by MS Word but for some other system. Please note that the search service from windows and linux commands will allow to do the same kind of searches but they will work locally only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as an example, I work with eZ Publish (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ez.no/Products/eZ-Publish-CMS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ez.no/Products/eZ-Publish-CMS&lt;/a&gt;). It uses Solr (&lt;a href=&quot;http://lucene.apache.org/solr/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://lucene.apache.org/solr/&lt;/a&gt;) to index the contents and the very CMS performs the searches. Of course I'm talking about Client/Server software, quite complex but, since you want people to search, I think you will have any kind of server to share content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess wordpress (&lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wordpress.org/&lt;/a&gt;) can do it using plugins, but I'm not sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, if you want to share searches and information, I think your premise is wrong since it will not be on word document level but one step higher, in the software that will share and manage the content. Maybe you should talk to your editor about that or the webadmin or the developer that will share/sell/distribute your book&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really hope I wasn’t too technical. This is quite hard to explain. Anyway, if this answer goes towards your question and you have any more doubts, comment here and I'll try to explain in a clearer way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Append:&#xA;I just reminded something. Google can index PDF files and allow searches. You can add a custom search box for your site, for example, assuming that's the way you want to share content. Please check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seoconsult.com/seoblog/seo-techniques/can-google-fully-index-pdf-files.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.seoconsult.com/seoblog/seo-techniques/can-google-fully-index-pdf-files.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="5114" LastEditDate="2013-05-09T15:50:43.013" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T15:50:43.013" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7846" CreationDate="2013-05-10T12:39:26.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that you are talking about creating concordances, not subject indexes. Subject indexes cannot be done automatically but require human analysis for substance and quality. For quality results, a good search will search both the text and the human-created index, thereby giving you both concordance findings as well as analysis for relations, alternative phrasing, etc., which concordances do not provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, please visit the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asindexing.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Society for Indexing (ASI)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pilar Wyman&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Immediate-Past President, ASI&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Chief Indexer, Wyman Indexing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5158" LastEditorUserId="4926" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T17:49:47.937" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T17:49:47.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7857" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7866" CreationDate="2013-05-10T14:24:00.453" Score="16" ViewCount="3714" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a lot of books, movies, or TV shows, there will be a character that knows little to nothing about the subject at hand. Most cop shows and medical shows will have someone who doesn't know very simple things so that the story can be accessible by all. Another prime example of this would be Marty McFly in &lt;em&gt;Back to the Future&lt;/em&gt;. He knew nothing about time travel (just like the audience) so Doc Brown explaining to him about the inter workings of &quot;flux capacitors&quot; and how fast one must go in a DeLorean to travel in time were to keep the audience from saying &quot;heavy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all seriousness though, is there a term for that &quot;literary device?&quot; Is it a literary device?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To follow up, a few movies recently are deciding not to include that character in the interest of realism. They feel in order to keep things as true to life as possible, you would not have a doctor who didn't know simple medical terminology or a cop who didn't know the proper collection procedure. They focus on the story or relationships rather than the jargon. Is this a better way to write? Is it better to alienate some and connect with a few or write to the masses (with the character question in mind)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tldr:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a term for that character in many shows that knows nothing whose sole purpose for being there is so the audience can learn as he does?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should you use this type of character in writing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5159" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T17:33:08.173" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T03:53:15.757" Title="What is the term for an accessible character that knows nothing?" Tags="|character-development|terminology|audience|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4146" CreationDate="2013-05-10T15:18:07.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree, you can call characters by first or last names, but have to be consistent. However, I think this poses an additional challenge. When you mention two characters in one sentence, and one of them is a first-name one (say, Charly Miller) and the other you refer to by the last name (John Smith), it could sound funny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Charly and Smith looked at each other and laughed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be much more natural to say &quot;Miller and Smith&quot; or &quot;Charly and John&quot;, but this would break the consistency rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts? I know this is an old discussion, but I was so happy to find this threat that I thought I'd try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5161" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T15:18:07.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7857" CreationDate="2013-05-10T15:18:14.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard an actual term for a character created only for the purpose of educating the reader, so I'll focus on #2.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like it could turn into lazy way to introduce a large amount of exposition or backstory very quickly.  This kind of touches that basic rule of showing, not telling.  If you cover a complicated issue by having one character explain (tell) it to another character, then I'd feel like the &quot;no telling&quot; rule would be broken.  As a reader, if there are large chunks of exposition about x world or practice or history, my eyes glaze over.  Readers (and characters) should learn organically--over time.  Revealing piece by piece of a dystopian world's history or a character's tragic backstory provides a more satisfying discovery rather than a huge info-dump.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's vitally important for your readers to learn something, then I'd use this device sparingly.  To cite your example from &lt;em&gt;Back to the Future&lt;/em&gt;, is it very important for your reader to know &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; how flux capacitors work?  Or do they just need to know that time travel is scientifically possible?  To your last point, knowing your audience is also important.  If their enjoyment of your work is going to greatly suffer because they have no idea to what a character is referring, then find a way to work in an explanation.  But I would use this device sparingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5160" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T15:18:14.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7818" CreationDate="2013-05-10T15:30:53.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say yes. I found a short articles for you to puruse at your lesure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/a-positive-mood-allows-your-brain-to-think-more-creatively.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/a-positive-mood-allows-your-brain-to-think-more-creatively.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have noticed when writing poetry or music, I tend to do my most prolific work when I am upset. I write down everything I can and use that mood as fuel. When I am in a happier mood and reread what I wrote, it is usually garbage, but I am able to do some good editing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hate to answer with a completely subjective answer, but that is what I have found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5159" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T15:30:53.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7857" CreationDate="2013-05-10T15:31:28.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a computer technitian. Every week, here at the office, we joke about a NCIS episode where the hacker and another guy &lt;em&gt;fight&lt;/em&gt; against another hacker by using the keyboard at amazing speed and writing random commands. Evertybody from IT knows that is ridiculous. Hacking does not work in that way, neither it's possible to stop an invader just by starting a typing race to see who is faster. But, on the other hand, it's really boring to use a real life hacking situations because they take a long time and deal a lot with social skills, even more than technical ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My opinion is that common sense is a great thing. Too much is something to avoid. What I mean is, it won't be good if you make really dumb real mistakes, but also it won't be good also if you make it so real that becomes boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take Dr. House, for example. The show uses real life diseases, real life treatments, real life diagnostic procedures but, in overall, it won't work for a real life doctor. Even so, the show is good because in the extreme of luck, could work. Contrary to NCIS where the hacking procedure was completely absurd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I wrote a chapter where my character ends up being searched (I'm not sure this is the correct word) by airport personnel for drugs and smuggled money. I don't know how this is done, what the inner procedures of the airport police are, or even if they are police or just normal workers. I had to improvise. My way to do it was to get away from the details and describe everything in a way most people -- and even professionals -- could accept even knowing it was not perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess your question can be answered by: It depends on the focus of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to write about medical stuff, like Robin Cook does, you need to know about medical stuff because that's the main focus of your writing. If you start to invent, it will become nonsensical. If you want to write about a normal character that needs to deal with specific knowledge in one chapter, it will be no problem at all -- as long as you do it right -- to overlook the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I think you can't do at all, is to describe a specific procedure, like NCIS, in a completely wrong way. That goes for terms as well. If you don't know the name, use the description instead and skip the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T17:28:10.470" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T17:28:10.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7857" CreationDate="2013-05-10T15:40:35.690" Score="9" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;According to the tvtropes entry for &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWatson&quot;&gt;The Watson&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Watson is the character whose job it is to ask the same questions the audience must be asking and let other characters explain what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidekick&quot;&gt;sidekick&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; sometimes acts in this role.  According to wikipedia,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sidekicks can provide one or multiple functions, such as a counterpoint to the hero, an alternate point of view, or knowledge, skills, or anything else the hero does not have. ... And by asking questions of the hero, or giving the hero someone to talk to, the sidekick provides an opportunity for the author to provide exposition, thereby filling the same role as a Greek chorus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2. Occasionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T15:40:35.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7857" CreationDate="2013-05-10T15:41:20.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;TVTropes calls such a character &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWatson&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Watson&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Watson is the character whose job it is to ask the same questions the audience must be asking and let other characters explain what's going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if it is desirable to have such a character (I'll let the more qualified people here answer on that one), but given the large number of examples (including from well-known authors) as well as the fact that TVTropes doesn't mention any downsides, I guess it is at least OK to have it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T17:29:41.270" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T17:29:41.270" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1724" CreationDate="2013-05-10T15:48:57.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would have just commented, but I am too low for that at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to add that one reason for this format is the viewer can now focus on the relationships that are forming in the background. The humor of how House relates to his team, the drama of his drug abuse, the ups and downs of his romantic relationships -- all this develops because you are not looking for a change in the pattern, you are focusing on these elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, when the pattern does change, the twist feels more heavy because you were not expecting it. So, to use Ralph's answer (&lt;strong&gt;SPOILER ALERT)&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They open with a problem occurring -- an unknown disease that no one can figure out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;House has to be conned into taking the case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They sit around a room and throw ideas at each other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of the ideas are wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;House thinks he is right. He diagnoses the patient.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;House realizes he is crazy from drug abuse. His team saves the patient.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;House goes to mental hospital.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because you are used to House doing the solving, when he misses one, you are surprised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5159" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T15:48:57.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7543" CreationDate="2013-05-10T15:56:49.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure, but I think you would treat this as any other translated work. According to&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; MLA format would be this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cite as you would any other book. Add &quot;Trans.&quot;—the abbreviation for&#xA;  translated by—and follow with the name(s) of the translator(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in&#xA;  the Age of Reason. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Vintage-Random&#xA;  House, 1988. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combined that with the television show section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Begin with the title of the episode in quotation marks. Provide the&#xA;  name of the series or program in italics. Also include the network&#xA;  name, call letters of the station followed by the city, and the date&#xA;  of broadcast. End with the publication medium (e.g. Television,&#xA;  Radio). For television episodes on Videocassette or DVD refer to the&#xA;  “Recorded Television Episodes” section below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The Blessing Way.&quot; The X-Files. Fox. WXIA, Atlanta. 19 Jul. 1998.&#xA;  Television.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I would say the format would be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Episode Name.&quot; Show Title. &lt;strong&gt;Trans.&lt;/strong&gt; Station or Channel. Station, City. Date of broadcast. Television.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5159" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T15:56:49.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7857" CreationDate="2013-05-10T16:30:31.513" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is indeed such a term. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phil Farrand of &lt;i&gt;The Nitpicker's Guide to Star Trek&lt;/i&gt; called this &quot;being the &lt;strong&gt;cabbagehead&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; Certain information had to be revealed to the audience, but it was information which the characters would reasonably already know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the writers picked someone in the room to be the &quot;cabbagehead,&quot; meaning someone developed the I.Q. of a cabbage and everything had to be explained to him or her as though s/he had never gone through Starfleet training and years of spaceflight experience. (Counselor Troi got this role a lot on TNG.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cabbagehead doesn't have to be someone who abruptly turns stupid, however. (TV Tropes calls this &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall&quot;&gt;holding the Idiot Ball.&lt;/a&gt;) This role can be more realistically played by a person who is on the job for the first day, someone &quot;new in town,&quot; someone from another planet, a child, someone who didn't have sufficient clearance, someone out of the information loop, or a new in-law. These are not doctors who have forgotten med school, but people who could &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be expected to know certain information, so the other characters must explain it to them (and thereby the audience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T16:30:31.513" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7867" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7928" CreationDate="2013-05-10T23:34:59.077" Score="14" ViewCount="24815" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've done some writing in the past - mostly short descriptive pieces, although I once wrote 9000+ words of a story idea I had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I enjoy about it are the technical, intellectual, creative challenges involved in every level from the sentence to the plot arc. I am analytically minded: I enjoy identifying a problem, clarifying it, breaking it down, and &lt;em&gt;solving&lt;/em&gt; it. I don't really do unrestrained creativity, I need a concrete problem, which &quot;make up something interesting&quot; isn't. Anything I've written in the past, I've just happened to get an idea: then I had fun solving the &lt;em&gt;concrete problem&lt;/em&gt; of communicating that idea as well as possible. But coming up with the idea in the first place was just a happy accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've considered more conceptual forms of writing, like philosophical stories (dystopias etc). But is that the only way? Does anyone &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to read a story written by someone who doesn't like coming up with ideas? Have any popular writers (past or present) been similarly-minded to myself? Or am I overthinking my problem, and this is something everyone struggles with? If so, what are some techniques for coming up with ideas when you don't care &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; you write, you just enjoy writing fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5163" LastActivityDate="2022-10-09T18:57:09.873" Title="What do you do if you enjoy writing, but have no ideas?" Tags="|ideas|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2013-05-11T03:43:22.947" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do you do if you enjoy writing, but have no ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;technical writing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;any form of nonfiction&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;edit other people's stories&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't really do unrestrained creativity, I need a concrete problem,&#xA;  which &quot;make up something interesting&quot; isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to do it all at once, &quot;make up something interesting&quot; can certainly be a tall order. Try breaking it down: first come up with something -- anything -- &lt;em&gt;and then&lt;/em&gt; make it interesting. Start with any boring old cliché; now the problem isn't to come up with something interesting, it's to make the thing that you've got interesting. That's a much more concrete problem, and you might have an easier time being creative when you're not working with a completely blank slate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anything I've written in the past, I've just happened to get an idea&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that's pretty common in any field -- people get ideas in the shower, while they're sleeping, driving to the office, pretty much anytime other than when they're sitting at a computer ready to work. So try to be open to ideas whenever and wherever they might drift into your brain. Some people keep a notebook at the bedside or even a grease pencil in the shower. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, sometimes the first idea you have will turn out not to be such a good one, but it may lead to other, better ideas. There are lots of different exercises that people use to get their ideas flowing. You could try something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write down 10 ideas, no matter how bad they are. Keep each one to a single sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pick the best 3 ideas of the 10 and write a complete but extremely short story for each. Give yourself a limit, like 150 words or less.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Expand the best of the three into a few pages.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5094" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T03:43:22.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7869" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7870" CreationDate="2013-05-11T09:40:35.337" Score="5" ViewCount="4510" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would the following sentences have different effects on the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He washed his hands thoroughly, like a surgeon after an operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like a surgeon after an operation, he washed his hands thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After pouring the last ingredient, he washed his hands thoroughly, like a surgeon&#xA;after an operation. Then, he placed the drink in front of her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After pouring the last ingredient, like a surgeon after an operation, he washed his hands thoroughly. Then, he placed the drink in front of her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T08:04:51.323" Title="Placing similes at the beginning and at the end of a sentence" Tags="|structure|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7869" CreationDate="2013-05-11T11:04:12.537" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In either case, there's something missing — or maybe it's because the sentence is out of context. Just to say someone washed his hands like a surgeon is insufficient; you need more detail. &amp;quot;He scrubbed his hands for over two minutes&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;thoroughly&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;with meticulous care&amp;quot; like a surgeon etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They do have different effects. The first one puts your character first. The second one creates an image which the reader then has to insert your character into. But I'd need to see more to tell you which one works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA Okay, now that I've seen your context, the second example absolutely does not work &lt;em&gt;at all.&lt;/em&gt; You cannot connect &amp;quot;pouring an ingredient&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;washing hands like a surgeon.&amp;quot; Sentences attach to what comes before them as well as to what comes after them, and if your sentence starts with a simile or an image, I'm going to think it's a continuation of the thought or the sentence I just read unless you give me direction to do otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought it was going to be more like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time slowed to a near-crawl, like it always did when he was lining up a shot. He aimed through the two windows, finding the spot just above the cabbie's heart to allow for the bullet to fall with distance, and then fired. He was gone down the hall before the echoes stopped ringing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His new flatmate was safe. Now he only needed to clean up the evidence. Like a surgeon after an operation, he washed his hands thoroughly. The gun disappeared into the murky waters of the Thames. A quick brushing took care of any glass splinters on his coat, and then he was off to wait outside the police barrier for the DI to finish with Sherlock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See, that puts your simile into context which works no matter where in the sentence it lands. It's supposed to emphasize how clean his hands are, but it also links backwards to the previous sentence and its events (that the shooting was quick, clean, and preicse).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T12:12:53.837" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2013-05-11T13:19:51.057" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take some very generic, very simple, completely trivial and trite theme - something entirely unoriginal - and try to write it best to your ability... no, not even best, just adequately, correctly. Start writing it, and if your imagination is taking you places, let it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last week I started off with a Romeo &amp;amp; Juliet balcony scene knock-off. Yesterday it turned into Inception-like battle across multiple levels of dream between &quot;The Romeo&quot; and a succubus demon impersonating &quot;The Juliet&quot;, with &quot;the real Juliet&quot; trapped and held hostage by the demon in the dream world (and not being just a generic passive damsel in distress either...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, how to approach turning a simple scenario into a complex one: first, use some artistic liberties in execution. Stylization, mood, change of events. Sooner or later your modifications will create errors; characters acting out-of-character, time dependencies broken, enemies acting like idiots, suspension of disbelief shaken, things coming out easier than they normally happen in life, little inconsistencies. Don't correct them! Embrace them and modify the behind-the-scenes circumstances to fit the bill. Hidden agendas, foreknowledge, utter negation of events. Then let the story flow with the new motives, and their (dire) consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my Romeo sneaks through the gardens to his Juliet, then meets her. She's totally out of character, far too sexually aggressive, dominant, demanding. I'm just about to scratch that when I recall: The gardens are guarded by quite an elite of security. What are his chances of sneaking past them? About none. So, no, he didn't get there at all. He got shot with a tranquilizer a third of the way in, and he's dreaming currently. And the out-of-character, sexually aggressive Juliet is not Juliet at all. Moreover, he notices that!  Our protagonist did have an event involving some nondescript mighty enemies in the past. So let's adapt the reality, pick a sexually aggressive, powerful enemy. The lore suggests a succubus demon fits the bill, let's run with that and solidify the nondescript past enemies into demons, with the succubus as their leader. So, do we get through the story without the real Juliet? No way. She's in there, pulled into the dream by a quirk of the lore. For now it's a quirk, but it will earn significance later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given these premises, this set of conditions, this conflict, let's roll with the battle, sides taking turns in the battle, hitting the other where it hurts, seeking inner strengths where it matters, losing and finding faith - we got the action story in full flair. We just report the progress of events, it's bound to take us to an interesting conclusion no matter how it goes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way two gaping plot holes (incompetent security and OOC protagonist) in a clear-cut run-off-the-mill cliché get transformed into an interesting premise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-05-12T11:50:21.283" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T11:50:21.283" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7846" CreationDate="2013-05-11T22:23:27.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!  Consider something a bit better suited to working with things of that sort, I heartily recommend LaTeX.  It's efficient, powerful, and &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; powerful.  There is a StackExchange for it, tex.stackexchange.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5168" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T22:23:27.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2013-05-11T23:12:21.257" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you really don't care what you write, it's easy to come up with ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lately this is all I need to get started: &lt;strong&gt;Character + setting + problem.&lt;/strong&gt;  This is from an old &quot;seven-point plot outline&quot; that Algis Budrys taught to a zillion writers you've heard of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by writing about some character in some setting with some problem. That's all you need for an opening. Then write about how the character tries to solve the problem, what goes wrong along the way, and what happens when the character eventually puts everything on the line to make one final attempt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a story doesn't go anywhere, set it aside and try another character in another setting with another problem. But before you give up on a story, just try to write one more sentence. You don't need to know anything beyond that. Just one more sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you honestly don't care what you write about, then any character in any setting with any problem will do. Put a character in a setting with a problem, then write the next sentence. &lt;em&gt;Something&lt;/em&gt; will happen. It might even be a good story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T23:12:21.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7874" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7875" CreationDate="2013-05-12T01:45:06.683" Score="1" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;So straight to it, I don't write very long pieces.  Usually poetry or flash fiction and a smattering of short stories whenever it needs to be longer, though I have aspirations (mostly just dreams) of expanding these to more industry accessible (profitable) media.  What I find is that at this length the line between authoring the piece and reading it is hard to define (especially since you are doing both) and the metaphorical, literary screws are really tightened so you can see the stress fractures in a piece.  What I mean is you are very aware of how it is going to read and whether it sounds like you want it to on the page.  I'm not doing a good job of this, example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hallway sounds of bells with each door closing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds great, right?  Suggestive, short, and sweet.  But, after some thought I've realized it isn't the right tense in the piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hallway sounded of bells as each door closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which, also isn't bad, but sounds different with the extra syllable mucking up the rhythm and hard consonants stomping around it.  But it's too vague!  This story is solely about SEVENTEEN different hallways (I know, a stupid idea, but I didn't choose the best example so bare with me) and it's confusing to the reader!  So, we get&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quantum Hope Devourer sounded of bells as each door closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now you think, well that's just stupid, It doesn't make any sense!  I can't believe I wasted my time reading this, I thought you were making a point.  You just changed everything about the sentence, how can you possibly expect it to keep the same shape and sound when you change it so much?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is MY point, how can I possibly hope to keep the things I like about a piece as everything changes.  This is why I don't like revising work.  But everything needs to be revised.  Nothing is perfect from the start, I know this and am stuck in this dilema.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here, you might say to yourself, but he hasn't even mentioned voice OR spontaneity once in his question!  A good point and I thank you for paying such close attention, but you can see where this is going.  Voice is all about phrasing words so it sounds one way and spontaneity is all about imaginative word choice so it sounds another way and everything is always about how it reads.  So then the revision process forces these things to a backseat in the creative process because I can't focus on them when they mean so much to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand how to fix plot structure, story problems, literary vices and all that through revision, but not this stuff. How can I approach editing consistently so I don't feel like I'm removing all the good parts in my work?  Should it even be a concern?  Is it even doable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4655" LastActivityDate="2017-08-02T18:44:01.020" Title="Maintaining the consistency of voice and spontaneity throughout a piece" Tags="|style|editing|technique|habits|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7874" CreationDate="2013-05-12T02:07:13.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're suffering from impacted arborvision: you have so much pressure on you that you can no longer see the forest for the trees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get an editor. Ask someone else to look at your work. Let a fresh pair of eyes judge how and where you need to cut or expand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T02:07:13.840" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2013-05-12T03:39:18.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you read?  Study anything?  Noodle around with puzzles or technical problems (in any field)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, try reacting to that.  Write about something you've just learned and what further thoughts and questions it prompts.  Write about something you've just read -- not necessarily a review, but perhaps the world-building grabbed you and you want to explore the setting more, or you just loved that one character and would invite him for dinner and conversation if you could (so what would you talk about?), or perhaps there's some problem you're trying to solve and doing the written equivalent of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rubber-ducking&lt;/a&gt; it could lead you to a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it helpful to do this on a blog rather than just for myself.  The questions and comments I get help me to see where I've been unclear, and besides, the conversations can be interesting in their own right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T03:39:18.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7878" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-13T03:07:56.070" Score="0" ViewCount="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even during a formal interview for a news article, people speak informally. They say &quot;uhm&quot;, they cut off sentences half-way through, they interject phrases like &quot;you know?&quot;, and they make innocent grammatical mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As somebody who wants to fairly and accurately report the discussion that takes place in an interview, what guidelines should I use in making changes to what a person says?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the simplest solution is to write exactly what they say and [sic] any errors they make, that can have the effect of unfairly casting a person in a bad light, especially when done editorially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5171" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T03:07:56.070" Title="When quoting a person's informal speech, how much liberty do you have to make changes to what they say?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-05-13T04:29:26.413" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7879" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-13T02:30:58.813" Score="9" ViewCount="4635" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even during a formal interview for a news article, people speak informally. They say &quot;uhm&quot;, they cut off sentences half-way through, they interject phrases like &quot;you know?&quot;, and they make innocent grammatical mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As somebody who wants to fairly and accurately report the discussion that takes place in an interview, what guidelines should I use in making changes to what a person says?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the simplest solution is to write exactly what they say and [sic] any errors they make, that can have the effect of unfairly casting a person in a bad light, especially when done editorially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Jason Indigo" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-05-13T04:30:07.433" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T11:44:36.110" Title="When quoting a person's informal speech, how much liberty do you have to make changes to what they say?" Tags="|journalism|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7880" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-13T06:34:29.453" Score="2" ViewCount="739" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to quote a song from Youtube. I don't own the song and the artist who sings it hasn't put an official version on YT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I do this? It needs to be in MLA form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the song: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCl01AkVnMo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCl01AkVnMo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5173" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T17:56:17.467" Title="How do I quote a song from Youtube? MLA format" Tags="|mla|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6821" CreationDate="2013-05-13T06:38:21.423" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For specific roles, try posting on forums that tech savvy people are likely to frequent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5173" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T06:38:21.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7879" CreationDate="2013-05-13T07:55:20.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only rules I follow here are necessity and common sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Necessity because sometimes the story gets better with informal speach, and it becomes vital to make such mistakes, specially if you really deeply on dialogues.&#xA;For example, I don't see how a low level street drug dealer will have a well form speach. People expect him to speak with errors and slang.&#xA;There will be no good to point that he's using slang and speak wrongly, if that is obvious and people already expect that.&#xA;Besides, if you have a good gramar in the rest of the text, people will comprehend that the drug dealers speack is wrong intentionally, not because you don't know how to write. In my opinion, there's no need to point what is obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, on the other side, there's common sense.&#xA;You can't get too far with slang and errors just because in reality people do that or you will become boring and confusing as you just can't write &quot;T2UL. AC&quot; just because someboy may write that in a SMS for &quot;Talk to you later. At class, right now&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T07:55:20.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7879" CreationDate="2013-05-13T14:46:38.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer this question, I'd like you to think about why we quote someone: to strengthen an argument. When a news source quotes someone, they are doing it to strengthen their argument for what actually happened (the news). I like to think of quotes as confessions in a court of law. If you misquote someone, they get to go free. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A major guideline I use is, did you change the meaning by misquoting? Any minor changes to words does change the meaning and are not acceptable. Further, if your omission changes the meaning of the quote, you have misquoted the individual and lied in your writing. I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_quoting_out_of_context&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Film: Live Free or Die Hard. Blurb: Jack Mathews, New York Daily News:&#xA;  &quot;Hysterically...entertaining.&quot; Actual written line: &quot;The action in&#xA;  this fast-paced, hysterically overproduced and surprisingly&#xA;  entertaining film is as realistic as a Road Runner cartoon.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5159" LastEditorUserId="14925" LastEditDate="2015-08-15T11:44:36.110" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T11:44:36.110" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7885" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-13T14:55:01.250" Score="4" ViewCount="3797" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if anyone could lend some advice as to the pros and cons between using Mashery versus Apigee for documenting an API? I have do some evaluating and have about 2 weeks to come up with a proposal as to which to use. I've used Mashery but not Apigee enough to know what the differences are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any resources you could point me to or anecdotal advice you could give me would be most appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I posted this question the API Writers group as well but am cross-posting because this group has a wider audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5176" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-07-24T02:24:14.307" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T02:24:14.307" Title="Mashery vs. Apigee" Tags="|technical-writing|tools|api-documentation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7879" CreationDate="2013-05-13T15:52:15.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's conventional to drop the &quot;umm&quot;s and &quot;you know&quot;s and correct obvious grammar errors. Like if someone says in a speech &quot;Senator Jones say he will ...&quot; I think most reporters would correct that to &quot;Senator Jones SAYS he will ...&quot; with no hesitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, when people are speaking, they often repeat themselves and generally ramble. It's routinely considered fair to leave out repetitions and to compress unnecessarily verbose speech. Like, suppose a speaker said, &quot;Albert Einstein was, he was a great scientist, I'm sure we all agree, yes, a great scientist, and, anyway, what I wanted to say, the point I was trying to make, is that he discovered relativity, I mean his first theory, the general theory of relativity, when, like, you know, he was working as a clerk, as a patent clerk, I mean a clerk at the patent office.&quot; A reporter might well quote this as, &quot;Albert Einstein was a great scientist. He discovered the general theory of relativity while working as a patent clerk.&quot; Few would challenge that &quot;clean up&quot; of the quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, going much beyond that is not legitimate. Changing the meaning of what the person said is dishonest and misquoting -- whether you are changing it to make the person you are quoting look better or look worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, many reporters disagree with this completely. There was a court case a few years back -- Masson vs New Yorker -- where Mr Masson was interviewed for a magazine article and sued the reporter for libel on the grounds that many of the supposed quotes from him differed dramatically from what he actually said. The courts ultimately concluded that although the article did pretty much invent quotes and put them in Mr Masson's mouth to make him look bad, this was not libel because the invented quotes were &quot;rationally related&quot; to things Mr Masson actually said. My favorite: according to court transcripts of the tape of the interview, Mr Masson, a psychologist, was talking about Freud's old house and said, &quot;Freud's library alone is priceless in terms of what it contains: all his books with his annotations in them; the Schreber case annotated, that kind of thing. It's fascinating.&quot; The reporter quoted this as, &quot;[Freud's house] would have been a center of scholarship, but it would also have been a place of sex, women, fun.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there's a murky middle ground on slips of the tongue and simple factual errors. Like if a historian made a reference to Andrew Jackson when in context it is clear that he is talking about Andrew Johnson, and there is no indication that he has the two men confused, it was just a slip of the tongue, I think it's fair to fix the name without comment. But in other cases, fixing someone's mistakes might amount to an attempt to hide the fact that the speaker doesn't have his facts straight and doesn't know what he's talking about. And I'm sure there are cases where a writer &quot;fixes&quot; statements that were in fact originally correct and the writer has now made them wrong. So I'd be very cautious about such corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T15:52:15.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7857" CreationDate="2013-05-13T16:47:02.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard a name for it, but as to the second part of your question: I'd say that, like many literary devices, it can be done poorly, but if used well it can be a great asset to a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that there is some background information that you need to convey to the reader. Whether it's a detail about how the police department files DNA samples, why Uncle Harry and cousin Sally can't be invited to family gathering together, or how Trantor came to be the capital of the Galactic Empire, there are some facts that the reader may need to know to understand the story that happened before the story began or that are background that the main characters all know. How do you convey this information to the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW I think this is especially a problem for science fiction and fantasy stories where there may be a whole history and culture that the writer has completely invented and that the reader cannot possibly be expected to know. In a conventional contemporary novel, if I was writing that the hero decided to travel from Los Angeles to Paris, I wouldn't think it necessary to explain that these are two major cities in two different countries, that the people there speak different languages, etc. But if in a science fiction story I said that the hero travelled from Dorsai to Kultis, I might need to give a lot of background for events to make sense. To a lesser extent this is also an issue for historical fiction or stories set in cultures that are real but unfamiliar to the reader. Like a story for American readers that is set in Russia might need to explain aspect of Russian culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But anyway, how to convey such information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;1. Have the characters tell each other things that they all already know.&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often this comes across as really lame. Like, the first officer of the star ship says to the captain, &quot;We're approaching the planet Trantor. That's the capital of our empire.&quot; Like, duh, does he really need to tell him this? Can one become a captain of a powerful star ship and not know what the capital of his own nation is? I've heard this called, &quot;as you know dialog&quot;, because it often begins with a character saying, &quot;As you know ...&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, sometimes you can slip some fast facts by this way if you word it right. Someone might say things that everyone around him already knows as a general complaint, or to point out that this fact is relevant. Like, &quot;What time is it now? Do we have time to sneak out and return before the boss gets back at 3:00?&quot; A sentence like that could convey what time the boss will return and also the implication that the characters will get in trouble if they're not back by the time the boss returns, even though these facts are likely known to all the characters, without sounding obviously pointless. Or, &quot;Blast, we'll never get this done in time! It takes two weeks to get a DNA test back from the lab!&quot; All the characters might be expected to know how long the lab takes, but it's not unreasonable that someone would say that in the course of making the point that it's too long to be useful. You may be able to just add a few extra words that are technically unnecessary but not obviously ridiculous. Like, instead of having a character say, &quot;I saw Sally yesterday&quot;, have him say, &quot;I saw your daughter Sally yesterday&quot;. Now the reader knows that Sally is the other character's daughter. The statement isn't obviously ridiculous -- we might even say that in context he might well have said &quot;daughter&quot; to avoid confusion with some other Sally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;2. Narration. You can interrupt the flow of the story to give some background. Like, &quot;'I suppose we have to invite Uncle Harry,' Bob said. No one wanted to invite Uncle Harry. He always showed up drunk and embarrassed everyone.&quot; Etc. In my humble opinion, writers are too quick to avoid this method. Yes, it violates the classic &quot;show don't tell&quot; and it interrupts the action. But if done right, it can get a bunch of background material in quickly and efficiently without having to come up with contrived reasons for characters to explain things to each other.&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;3. The uninformed person. Include a character who doesn't know things that all the other characters would likely know, so that people have to stop and explain things to him, and thus, to the reader. As Lauren Ipsum says, this person doesn't have to be portrayed as stupid, just uninformed. Life if you need to explain family history, have a character bring his new girlfriend to a family gathering so he has to explain things to her. Instead of the doctor explaining medical procedure to another doctor who would likely already know it, have him explain it to the patient's brother. Etc.&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen this done lamely, like if it's clear that the ONLY reason this character is here is so things can be explained to him. I just saw a fragment of a science fiction movie the other day that has scene early on with a teacher giving a history lecture to her students. I didn't watch the whole movie as it was kind of lame, and that was an example of the lameness: As far as I could see, the class had nothing to do with the rest of the story, we never see them again, it was just an obvious device to get this background material in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when done right, it can be seamless. Make the uninformed character an important character in the story, someone who has a reason to be there other than to be ignorant. Make his ignorance natural and understandable -- he's not a doctor, he's not a member of the family, he's from another planet, whatever -- so that the reader isn't left thinking, &quot;How could this person even survive if he's so dumb?&quot; And in general, break the explanations up into small pieces. Don't have someone give him a two hour lecture on the history of the world. Have one person explain this relevant point to him and another person explain that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="5159" LastEditDate="2013-05-15T21:20:50.920" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T21:20:50.920" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7879" CreationDate="2013-05-13T16:52:33.433" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a former journalism major (who has used almost none of those skills professionally), let me tell you right now that you &lt;strong&gt;DO NOT&lt;/strong&gt; make changes to what a person says &lt;strong&gt;EVER&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't misrepresent what the interviewee says. Don't misquote them. Don't change the meaning of what your interviewee says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can &lt;strong&gt;leave the word whiskers out&lt;/strong&gt;. Leaving out all the &lt;em&gt;Ahh..Umm..Err...&lt;/em&gt; is just good journalism. Word whiskers rarely (if ever) add anything to the conversation. If you've ever read an interview in a magazine, listened to one on the radio or watched one on TV, it's been edited and most of the word whiskers have ended up on the cutting room floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But word whiskers tend not to be a problem if you're interviewing a famous person or someone who speaks professionally. Avoiding word whiskers is &lt;em&gt;Public Speaking 101&lt;/em&gt; kind of stuff. A lesser skilled interviewee will, obviously, not speak as eloquently. So what then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A quick word on [sic]&lt;/em&gt;: [Sic] is not for interviews unless for some silly reason you're doing the interview by email. (&lt;em&gt;Sic&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;sic erat scriptum&lt;/em&gt; literally means &lt;em&gt;thus was it written&lt;/em&gt; not &lt;em&gt;thus it was said&lt;/em&gt;. Even then [sic](in my own personal experience) is woefully overused.) Since you don't use [sic] in interviews, when people say things in their own personal style, which may or may not be grammatically correct, &lt;strong&gt;you quote them verbatim&lt;/strong&gt;. One exception to this is people who give long, rambling answers (or use an excessive amount of word whiskers). This is when when your frenemy, the ellipsis, comes into play. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This point is less important in the digital age when stories are no longer measured in terms of column inches but is nevertheless still critical in journalism.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proper ellipsis usage is key: Ellipses are okay if you do not change the meaning of what's being said. For example, here is a quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fieldandstream.com/articles/guns/2013/02/gun-control-joe-biden-interview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an interview&lt;/a&gt; on gun control given by US Vice President Joe Biden, a man known for long, rambling answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is an individual right, but it is also clear constitutionally that&#xA;  the government can limit the type of weapon you can own. For example,&#xA;  if the idea was to be able to repel a tyrannical government, then you&#xA;  should be able to own an F-15 if you have the money to buy it, with&#xA;  full ordnance. But you’re not allowed to do that, and the court says&#xA;  you can deny certain weapons available for individual ownership. You&#xA;  can’t have a nuclear bomb. So it is an individual right. You have a&#xA;  right for self-defense against any intruder or any illegal activity&#xA;  being perpetrated on you, and for your physical self-defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BAD Ellipsis use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is an individual right ... to own an F-15 if you have the money to buy it ... you’re not allowed to ... deny certain weapons available for individual ownership ... a nuclear bomb ... is an individual right. You have a right for self-defense against any ... illegal activity being perpetrated on you, and for your physical self-defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, Biden's words have been twisted to mean the opposite of what was said. This may be an extreme and obvious case but even small, seemingly innocent omissions can change meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BETTER Ellipsis use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is an individual right ... [to] self-defense against any intruder or any illegal activity being perpetrated on you, and for your physical self-defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case we have distilled VP Biden's words to their core meaning: You have a right to self-defense, period. Also notice the bracketed word (another frenemy). The way Biden's words were summarized would have been grammatically incorrect, so the [to] was added to fix that. Please note: the meaning was not changed, only to correct grammar which would have otherwise been incorrect due to my editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final thought: Be sure to record the interview (with the interviewee's permission, of course). Keeping everything &lt;em&gt;on the record&lt;/em&gt; will help you accurately transcribe the interview (and keep you honest while doing so), as well as provide self-defense if the accuracy or intent of the interview is in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T16:52:33.433" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2013-05-13T17:16:32.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you could write about the problem of coming up with ideas? Write a story about someone who has troubles coming up with ideas. Think about which solutions he might try, and how those solutions work or don't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has two effects: First, you already have one idea for a text, and it's something you definitely can relate with. Second, by doing so, you force yourself to seriously think about the problem from a different perspective (namely, from the perspective of a subject of a text, instead of the perspective of a problem &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; have), and you might just find a solution that works also for &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; and not just for your protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am analytically minded: I enjoy identifying a problem, clarifying it, breaking it down, and solving it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do exactly that with the problem of finding ideas. Take it as a problem just like any others you like to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T17:16:32.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7880" CreationDate="2013-05-13T17:26:13.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can cite it just as you would any other online video:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author. &quot;Title of Web Page.&quot; Title of the Site. Editor. Date and/or&#xA;  Version Number. Name of Sponsoring Institution. Date of Access &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;URL&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, you may choose to cite it as a film or video recording and put the emphasis on the performer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last, First Name, their participation. Title. Dir. First Last name.&#xA;            Distributor, year of distribution. Medium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, better yet, ask your instructor for guidance on how they would like that particular citation formatted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T17:26:13.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7824" CreationDate="2013-05-13T18:10:32.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I would think about is: Are those things the other person says really unnecessary? They actually might give the reader valuable background information about what the other person already knows, and what that person considers normal (even though the reader may not) or extraordinatry (although it seems obvious to the reader).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare the following examples. First the monologue text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;OK, I'll tell you the story. As you probably know, there once were two kingdoms fighting against each other, Knitor and Daria. But what you don't know is that both kingdoms had top secret magical forces. Most people think that magic powers were only discovered later under King Freed, but that's wrong. It's just that both kingdoms managed to successfully keep their knowledge secret. Indeed, it was so secret that even the king of Knitor didn't know that Daria knew about magic, nor the other way round. And so they were heading to a disaster  ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then one example with reactions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;OK, I'll tell you the story. As you probably know, there once were two kingdoms fighting against each other, Knitor and Daria.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But what you don't know is that both kingdoms had top secret magical forces.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Magical forces? I can't believe that!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Most people think that magic powers were only discovered later under King Freed, but that's wrong. It's just that both kingdoms managed to successfully keep their knowledge secret.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, kingdoms have always been masters of keeping things secret.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Indeed, it was so secret that even the king of Knitor didn't know that Daria knew about magic, nor the other way round. And so they were heading to a disaster ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now another example with completely different reactions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;OK, I'll tell you the story. As you probably know, there once were two kingdoms fighting against each other, Knitor and Daria.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, I've heard tales about it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But what you don't know is that both kingdoms had top secret magical forces.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Magical forces back then? I can't believe that!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Most people think that magic powers were only discovered later under King Freed, but that's wrong. It's just that both kingdoms managed to successfully keep their knowledge secret.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Such things never keep secret for long. Are you serious?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Indeed, it was so secret that even the king of Knitor didn't know that Daria knew about magic, nor the other way round. And so they were heading to a disaster ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I didn't change one bit of the original monologue, and the other person doesn't actually add information about its subject. Yet there's still extra information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first expanded dialogue you learn that the war is common knowledge, that magic is obviously so common that the other person cannot imagine that it was ever not known, and that a kingdom keeping a perfect secret is something completely normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second expanded dialogue you learn instead that the war is already passing into the reign of tales and legends, that it is a well known fact that magical powers were discovered later, and that a kingdom keeping such secrets well is something extraordinary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T18:10:32.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7893" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7895" CreationDate="2013-05-13T20:04:49.233" Score="2" ViewCount="13177" Body="&lt;p&gt;How many words in 350 pages typed and double spaced? I want to know because I am 66 of those into my first novel, and I set my goal at 350. I'd like my word count to be epic novel sized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2626" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T22:27:24.630" LastActivityDate="2021-10-22T20:29:56.717" Title="How many words in 350 pages typed and double spaced?" Tags="|wordcount|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7885" CreationDate="2013-05-13T21:35:02.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's difficult to do a head-to-head comparison because it's not very often that you'll find someone who has experience using both Mashery and Apigee. So, from the Mashery side, I can comment on what is available because I am deeply familiar with the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For documenting an API, Mashery has two product features that come standard to all clients: (1) long form documentation CMS (content management system) with role based access control and (2) interactive documentation (I/O Docs) with full authorization integration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CMS for long-form docs is simple. It provides an easy way to build hierarchical docs with a simple WYSIWYG HTML editor, or straight HTML. You also have full style control with CSS templates or even inline injectable CSS, as well as the ability to load remote JS or also perform inline injected JS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long form examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Tribune Media Services: http://developer.tmsapi.com/docs/read/data_v1/lineups/Lineups_by_zipcode&#xA;Expedia Affiliate Network: http://developer.ean.com/docs/read/hotel_list&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the interactive docs, Mashery offers I/O Docs. I/O Docs is configured with a JSON schema, and it's integrated into the developer portal -- so that when a developer is signed in, the authorization schemes and API keys automatically populate. I/O Docs is flexible, and for better or worse, is disjointed from any other API definition, allowing a tech writer to configure I/O Docs to behave not only as a reference doc and testing tool, but also as a &lt;em&gt;learning&lt;/em&gt; tool (i.e. step-by-step configuration with detailed descriptions about resources, methods and parameters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I/O Docs examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;FoodEssentials: http://developer.foodessentials.com/io-docs (step-by-step style)&#xA;Tribune Media Services: http://developer.tmsapi.com/io-docs&#xA;EPSN: http://developer.espn.com/io-docs&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Mashery, both the traffic and portal management are performed in one place. It's all very tightly bound together. Of course, that's one of the biggest differences -- the management. Again, for better or worse, Apigee uses Drupal as the CMS, and it operates as a separate unit that needs to be managed. The contrast would be that Mashery's developer portal stack is multi-tenant SaaS, and fully managed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One individual/company came to mind, Peter from SDK Bridge. I believe his company has written/implemented documentation for one or more Mashery clients, as well as for platforms that are not in the Mashery family. Quite possible he's on here already, but if not, maybe check to see if he'll provide a comparison: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sdkbridge.com/documentation.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sdkbridge.com/documentation.php&lt;/a&gt; -- he is not associated nor employed with Mashery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am a platforms evangelist with Mashery (an evangelist for our clients' APIs) -- so I know several technical writers and API architects quite well. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5178" LastEditorUserId="5178" LastEditDate="2013-05-13T22:01:14.330" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T22:01:14.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7893" CreationDate="2013-05-14T00:44:00.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't a simple math question as much it is a &amp;quot;How long should my book be?&amp;quot; question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a simple math question, the answer is easily found by using the word count function in your word processor. Take the total word count, divide it by the number of pages you've written and that's your word count per page. Then divide your goal by that number and that will give you an idea of how many pages you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not a big fan of math, then you can eliminate the guesswork by using standard manuscript format. In &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_manuscript_format&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;standard manuscript format&lt;/a&gt;, your word count becomes &amp;quot;about 250 words per page&amp;quot; which makes 350 pages about 87,500 words. If your goal is 100,000 words then you're going to be looking at 400 standard manuscript pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what you're looking for isn't a word count. You're looking for how much you need to write before your regular novel is considered an 'epic' novel. And there is no straightforward answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But one thing you can do is to look at previously published 'epic' series to get an idea of what readers expect when they want to read an 'epic'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most prominent epic fantasy series is &lt;em&gt;A Song of Fire and Ice&lt;/em&gt; (also known as &lt;em&gt;A Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt;). The five books in that series (to date) average between 300-450,000 words each. That epic length is 3-4 times what you're setting your goal at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a story on the scale of &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt; might be a tad much. But there is another prominent epic fantasy series that might be a little closer to what you're thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At 450,000 words, the &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; trilogy is almost certainly considered an epic fantasy tale (if not, &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; epic fantasy tale). Most people think of it as three books of about 150,000 words each but it's 6 books of about 75,000 words each. Despite the original plan of combining all 6 (plus one other, &lt;em&gt;The Silmarillion&lt;/em&gt;) into one giant book it was instead collected into the three volumes that we're more familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compared to &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;, your 100,000-word, 5-book goal is certainly within the realm of 'epic' tales, albeit a little on the short side for the genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorUserId="8665" LastEditDate="2021-10-22T20:29:56.717" LastActivityDate="2021-10-22T20:29:56.717" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7722" CreationDate="2013-05-14T10:05:30.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I should warn that I'm actually not really qualified to answer this question since I neither know too much about a poetry nor am I even a native English speaker. However I'm answering anyway because I've made an observation which might adequately explain why the first version sounds fine and the second doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at your first version,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In poetry, it's true, it can be changed,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I notice there to be a second rhythm on top of the &quot;stressed-unstressed&quot; pattern: The stressed syllables alternate between &quot;strongly stressed&quot; and &quot;lightly stressed&quot;. Let me make it explicit by making the strongly stressed syllables &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt; and the slightly stressed ones &lt;em&gt;italics&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In &lt;strong&gt;po&lt;/strong&gt;-e-&lt;em&gt;try&lt;/em&gt; it's &lt;strong&gt;true&lt;/strong&gt;, it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be &lt;strong&gt;changed&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you see, &quot;secondary stressed&quot; syllable of &quot;poetry&quot; ends up in a lightly stressed slot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for your second version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's true, in poetry, it can be changed,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding the very same pattern here results in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It's &lt;strong&gt;true&lt;/strong&gt;, in &lt;em&gt;po&lt;/em&gt;-e-&lt;strong&gt;try&lt;/strong&gt;, it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be &lt;strong&gt;changed&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you see, now the &quot;secondary stressed&quot; syllable goes into a strongly stressed slot. And I think that is what makes it sound wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the Shakespeare lines quoted by Standback, they also seem to follow an alternating pattern of strongly/lightly stressed syllables, except they start with the lightly stressed one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shall &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; com-&lt;strong&gt;pare&lt;/strong&gt; thee &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; a &lt;strong&gt;sum&lt;/strong&gt;-mer's &lt;em&gt;day&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Thou &lt;em&gt;art&lt;/em&gt; more &lt;strong&gt;love&lt;/strong&gt;-ly &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; more &lt;strong&gt;tem&lt;/strong&gt;-per-&lt;em&gt;ate&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note how, again, the &quot;secondary stressed&quot; syllable of &quot;temperate&quot; goes to a lightly stressed one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastEditorUserId="5162" LastEditDate="2013-05-14T15:09:49.417" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T15:09:49.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8001" CreationDate="2013-05-14T23:10:29.143" Score="2" ViewCount="2376" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best grammar-checking software for checking grammar errors in novels and screenplays?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5126" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2023-03-02T15:06:08.127" LastActivityDate="2023-03-02T15:06:08.127" Title="Best grammar-checking software" Tags="|software|tools|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7897" CreationDate="2013-05-15T02:44:06.680" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;None of them. There is no commercial grammar checker that I know of which even approaches the ability of a halfway-competent native speaker. If you're thinking that grammar-checking software will help you with your typos and grammar mistakes, think again. This is one thing that still requires human intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T02:44:06.680" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7897" CreationDate="2013-05-15T12:54:58.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.duden.de/shop/software-horbucher/l/produktart-rechtschreibpruefung&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Duden Korrektor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hey, don't give me that look. There is no better checker on the market for the German language. Trust me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T12:54:58.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7869" CreationDate="2013-05-16T16:47:00.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you must go with one of those, I would go with the first one.  It just seems to go more smoothly.  However, in order to PERFECT the sentence, you may want to try a different technique than similes.  Either way it's really good.  Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4637" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T16:47:00.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2013-05-16T16:51:49.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am often the same way with my chapters and scenes.  I really think the varying lengths of your chapters depends on what you as an author are comfortable with.  If you feel like it is how it should be divided, then by all means do it that way! Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4637" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T16:51:49.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7764" CreationDate="2013-05-16T16:57:07.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the aforementioned answers are really good, but you should keep in mind that no matter what you write it is going to be similar to SOMETHING out there.  Every idea, no matter how original you think it is (and I am speaking from experience) will have been done in some form before.  It is just important that you realize no one can tell the story quite like YOU can, and that is what makes it unique to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4637" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T16:57:07.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7737" CreationDate="2013-05-16T17:00:23.367" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When people say you have to read to write, they aren't saying memorize every technique the authors use and mentally put them into your own stories. No, no, no! They aren't saying that at all.  What they mean is that when you read, and the more you read, the more the correct grammar and plot structure just seep into your bones.  If you read enough, the correct structure of a story comes out of the very fiber of your being.  Therefore, you don't have to even think about if the structure and grammar is correct.  You are learning by reading, but not necessarily by analyzing what is in that book.  Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4637" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T17:00:23.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7737" CreationDate="2013-05-17T08:18:42.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't give you any advice on how to &quot;get more out of reading&quot;. I can only help you read more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get a lightweight reader device and always carry it with you, in some very accessible place, like a side trousers pocket. Make sure it's small and lightweight enough that taking it out is never too much hassle - I was using an old palmtop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reallocate time you spend doing unproductive stuff to reading. Instead of commuting by car, switch to public transport, grab an ebook reader and spend the time reading. Make reading your habit to kill any moment of time you spend unproductively. Slow day at work? Waiting for customers and already done your chores? Read. I read through like 30 books in a year while riding public transport, waiting in queues, waiting for a train or a bus, eating, waiting for laundry, cooking etc. Allocating 2 hours a day for reading is nearly impossible. Allocating fifteen 5-20min time chunks is entirely viable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(if the book got me captivated, I would read until morning too. I hated myself for that in the morning, but that still counts...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T08:18:42.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7912" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-17T13:15:44.667" Score="2" ViewCount="824" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might seem to be a strange question, but I can't seem to get my head around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am trying to cite from Anselm's &quot;On Truth&quot;, which is part of a compilation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have read it in Oxford World Classics' &lt;em&gt;Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;On Truth&quot; was translated from Latin into English by Ralph McInery, but other parts of the volume were translated by others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On top of that, this version of &lt;em&gt;Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works&lt;/em&gt; is a reissued edition. The original was published in 1998.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The original &quot;On Truth&quot; (&lt;em&gt;De veritate&lt;/em&gt; in Latin) was published around 1080.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I thought that could be a solution is the following (in a reference list):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Anselm. (2008). On Truth (R. McInery, Trans.). In B. Davies &amp;amp; G. Evans&#xA;    (Eds.), *Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works* (pp. 151-174). USA:&#xA;    Oxford University Press. (Reissue edition. Original edition 1998.&#xA;    Original work published around 1080).&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;*this means that the text contained within is in italics*&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether this is correct;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how I would cite this source in a text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But because there are so many factors to keep in mind, it is hard to know whether this is completely correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5197" LastEditorUserId="5197" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T13:57:09.733" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T18:08:36.293" Title="APA: how to cite a translation of an old work in a compilation that has been reissued" Tags="|translation|apa|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2013-05-18T16:47:07.317" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Collaborate with somebody who loves to come up with new ideas but hates the process of writing.  There must be piles of people with vivid imaginations but no patience for the hard labour of writing it all down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4377" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T16:47:07.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7916" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8397" CreationDate="2013-05-18T18:15:15.467" Score="3" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't written anything serious in a while, but I would like to get back into writing non-fiction.  In particular, I want to write about &quot;big ideas&quot; that interest me; however, I realize that writing that has nothing to do with people may not be as interesting as writing that involves people.  (Of course this isn't an absolute, but I'd argue that in general, non-fiction that is a little more &quot;personal&quot; and people-focused is at least a little more compelling.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember that some of my favorite non-fiction books were about ideas rather than people's lives, but they usually found a way to focus on people and their interaction with those ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is:  How does one go about involving people in a book that's secretly more or less about one or more ideas?  For example, if I wanted to write a book about grammar, what are some ways to get readers interested in the book on a more personal level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user153" LastEditorDisplayName="user153" LastEditDate="2013-05-19T16:10:36.610" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T22:58:32.537" Title="How does one involve people in writing non-fiction?" Tags="|non-fiction|ideas|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7917" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7922" CreationDate="2013-05-19T17:43:17.173" Score="20" ViewCount="6915" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there really a need for a book to be translated from UK to US English? I'm nearing completion on my own great work, and just want to know if it is truly worth doing a British and an American version, or just release the current version in its UK form, as I am British.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally feel that works of fiction become truly great when the writing becomes invisible. When you're so lost in a novel that you don't even notice the sentence structure and intricately constructed prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while I can't see an American throwing an otherwise enjoyable book away in disgust just because there's a 'u' in 'color', is it jarring? To an American, would the odd British word, (Grey, mum, offence, theatre) actually cause them to not be engrossed in a novel as much as they could be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to think not, I'd like to think a British book with British spelling would make it a little bit more interesting, especially considering it's set in a post-apocalyptic UK and narrated by a British person. But publishers spend thousands of pounds translating UK books to US English, so why do they do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4760" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-08T10:55:11.330" LastActivityDate="2020-11-09T14:21:25.520" Title="Do publishers really need to translate between UK and US English?" Tags="|publishing|translation|international|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7918" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7919" CreationDate="2013-05-19T18:57:05.840" Score="-1" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are designing brochures for attracting possible vendors to use our software platform to attract/retain their customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The kind of vendors here are the hardworking type, with not necessarily any high education. We need the brochures to only excite them to call us. We should be able to connect to their one big problem, getting customers, and the loyalty. How do they attract the right kind of customers, and how do they retain them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have mobile applications that can connect the drivers with customers directly. Our mobile application and platform will take their services out to customers, and help them build loyalty. I am trying to build a tag line that connects them. Should be short and should only excite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically I am trying to say &lt;code&gt;You have the drivers, metered taxi's, We have the software infrastructure and mobile applications to connect you to your customers.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just too many words, I need to get as little words to graphically fit this image. I need help to reduce this and still retain the meaning and attract the people who have drivers and metered taxis to read this brochure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5sYGE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;together&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4951" LastEditorUserId="4951" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T03:13:17.750" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T03:13:17.750" Title="Forming a tagline for customers, drivers and software" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-05-20T14:03:10.653" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7918" CreationDate="2013-05-19T20:05:39.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say, &quot;too many words.&quot;  Too many for what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do your customers have any insight that what they lack is software infrastructure and mobile applications specifically?  Or do they seek only some way to connect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't care specifically about infrastructure and apps, try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You have the drivers, metered taxi's, We have the technology to connect you to your customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more abstract &quot;technology&quot; seems punchier to me, though less specific.  It shifts the focus to connecting, and away from the specifics of how you will help them connect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-05-19T20:05:39.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7920" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7921" CreationDate="2013-05-20T06:05:29.770" Score="4" ViewCount="1085" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some students that I mentor have written a number of short stories that they want to publish now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am totally new in this area. I did preliminary research which indicates that there are now a number of e-book platforms which cater for iphone or android markets. I have a hard time trying to figure out if they are mutually inclusive or exclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 1:&lt;/strong&gt; What are the key factors to consider when choosing an ebook platform?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Can they publish one story at a time (on their own) or do we have to publish all stories (as in a collection of short stories)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 3:&lt;/strong&gt; Do authors make money from ebooks, especially when the price is often around $0.49?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T09:38:00.333" Title="What factors to consider when choosing an e-book platform?" Tags="|self-publishing|short-story|ebook|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7920" CreationDate="2013-05-20T14:01:29.277" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume your students are interested in self-publishing. Traditional publishing is a whole different ball game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Key Factors To Consider&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rights.&lt;/strong&gt; One of the main draws of self-publishing is that you keep all your rights over your work. However, plenty of sub-par services exist which'll be happy to take 'em off your hands. Before posting work &lt;strong&gt;anywhere&lt;/strong&gt;, and certainly before agreeing to terms with a publishing service, be sure you understand the terms and that they are acceptable to you. See these two &lt;a href=&quot;http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-author-exploitation-business/&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/publishers-behaving-badly-part-ive-lost-count/&quot;&gt;posts&lt;/a&gt; on the prevalence of scammy and rights-grabbing services on the internet. Relevant rights include:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Creative Rights.&lt;/strong&gt; No respectable self-publishing service claims any creative rights from you. A service demanding reprint rights, translation rights, movie option rights, &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt;... should be considered highly suspect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Formatting.&lt;/strong&gt; Some services may include formatting your ebook for you, possibly including cover design. If this is the case, be very careful - simple formatting of ebooks is not difficult, and you might prefer to do it yourself; &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; formatting of ebooks is not difficult, and that might be what the service will leave you stuck with; &lt;em&gt;really good&lt;/em&gt; formatting of ebooks &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; difficult, and you might want to get good help with that. In general, avoid locking yourself into services (editing, copyediting, cover design, etc.) until you're sure of the quality of service you're getting. If there's a service you're considering, try buying some books who enjoyed the service, and make sure they're satisfactory.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exclusivity.&lt;/strong&gt; Some services may demand exclusivity (e.g., Amazon's &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin?&quot;&gt;KDP Select&lt;/a&gt; offers potentially greater exposure, in return for exclusivity). Consider whether the terms are worthwhile for you. Exclusivity is going to require at least some tradeoff with exposure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exposure.&lt;/strong&gt; You want your ebooks visible. That means you want your platform visible. Better to choose something popular that lots of people see, than something that sounds good but is relatively unknown. &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, since you're keeping all your rights, nothing keeps you from publishing an ebook to multiple venues and platforms (unless you choose a platform requiring exclusivity). For example, if you publish on Amazon, you'll likely want to also publish on BN.com for the Nook - otherwise you're limiting your audience to Kindle-owners. You might &lt;em&gt;additionally&lt;/em&gt; use another service, like Smashwords or an independant site, to offer a convertible, DRM-free version. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pricing.&lt;/strong&gt; Some services have limits on how you can price your ebook (for example, I believe Amazon does not let new authors offer their books for free), or may not give you control over the pricing at all. This isn't necessarily a problem, just be sure you understand pricing policy before you commit to anything - low pricing is a big part of making a minor story attractive; higher pricing may net more money! You want to avoid getting yourself stuck in a situation where you don't like the price but can't change it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Income.&lt;/strong&gt; Each service takes some cut of the take - compare, contrast, and pick the ones offering good terms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your other questions: when you self-publish, you can self-publish whatever you like; publishing single stories is extremely common. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And do authors make money from ebooks? Well, most of them don't make very much. But an attractive, low-priced read can be promoted. If you're willing to put effort into it, then you'll draw some readers; if they like what they see and you keep putting in effort, you'll draw some more. When ebooks &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; take off, they can do quite nicely for an author - people are willing to take a chance on them because they're inexpensive; the author can sell as many copies as he has buyers and all he gets is his cut of the take; even a small trickle of interest can be substantial over time; and actual popularity can sometimes snowball. Don't give up the day job - but if you're serious about selling ebooks, put work into it, and you've got a chance to do decently at first, and maybe pretty well as you progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-05-21T09:38:00.333" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T09:38:00.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7917" CreationDate="2013-05-20T14:10:20.480" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think few would be put off by differences in spelling. But there are also words and phrases that many Americans would not recognize. Words that I know of that are different from American English include &quot;lift&quot;, &quot;underground&quot;, and &quot;torch&quot;. There are likely many others I'm not familiar with as I've never been to the UK. Many of these are well-known in America; others might not be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases it might cause confusion. Maybe this one is out of date, but I recall an American a number of years back who had just returned from the UK said that a friend he made there was going on a business trip and asked him, &quot;While I'm out of town, could you knock up my girlfriend for me?&quot; To an American this means to have sexual relations, which seemed a rather odd request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reader might just stumble a moment before figuring out what an odd word must mean from context, or he might push on with some loss of meaning. (Unless it really leaves the reader baffled as to what is happening, I think few would stop to look it up.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a book set in Britain and that setting is important -- as I think you're saying is true for your book -- some &quot;localisms&quot; might add flavor and color (or colour), as long as they don't get to the point of making the book confusing. In other cases they would just be distracting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was watching a UK-made science fiction movie recently and I found it jarring that the aliens all spoke with British accents. It occurred to me that Britons watching American sci-fi movies must find it odd that aliens all speak with American accents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T14:10:20.480" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7916" CreationDate="2013-05-20T15:07:10.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try thinking of your idea as the central character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 'typical' person-based story takes an individual who is flawed in some fashion.  He (or she) has certain drives and desires, some of which conflict with others.  Through the course of the story the character overcomes adversity until, at the end, he has grown and become more mature (or hasn't learned anything, or been eaten by zombies, or so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do the same thing with your idea.  Take the reader back to an earlier incarnation of the idea, show how it has changed and developed in response to adversity, and the current state of the idea.  Or project it forward by giving the current state, the challenges your idea faces, and where you think the idea is going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you might want to revisit your attitude that any story, even non-fiction, can possibly have nothing to do with people.  All ideas are discovered, explored, and enhanced by people.  Either it has been challenged by skeptics (which means it is interesting) or it has been simply accepted without debate (which means it is trivial and not worth writing about).  Even the driest scientific text on the most esoteric of topics is premised on you, the author, taking us, the readers, on a journey of discovery through the dialog of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T15:07:10.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7917" CreationDate="2013-05-20T15:18:37.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking as a self published author, I use British slangs all the time, but my editor(American) and beta readers have never complained. Neither have those who bought my book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you read an American book, do you feel confused when someone uses color (without a 'u')? It's the same on the other side, isn't it? Like Jay says, you may need to be careful of some words like lift, but even that isn't that big a deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;He took the lift to the 3rd floor&quot;&lt;/em&gt; - It is clear lift is being used as a synonym for elevator here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one instance, the editor couldn't understand a swearing slang/insult, and asked me to change it. However, from the surrounding text, it was clear the character was swearing, so I kept it in, reasoning it would widen the cultural horizons of my non-UK readers, as they would learn a new swear slang in another language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="2024" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T18:40:34.303" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T18:40:34.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7917" CreationDate="2013-05-21T11:55:34.887" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Differences in spelling are a relatively minor impediment to cross-cultural culture. The use of completely different terms for the same thing (footpath, sidewalk) can usually be understood from the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you may have real difficulties is the use of the same word (such as solicitor) with completely different meanings (lawyer, street prostitute) or brand names (such as XXXX) attached to completely different products (beer, condoms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a point at which exotic intrigue becomes a barrier to ease of reading, then your commissioning editor will suggest an &lt;em&gt;adaptation&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T11:55:34.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2013-05-22T05:52:55.623" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question reminds me of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danheller.com/blog/posts/why-being-photographers-assistant-is.html&quot;&gt;Dan Heller's advice&lt;/a&gt; about getting started in the photography business. He's talking about a different situation (photography apprenticeship), but he makes a point that applies equally well to the writing business:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[They] start by being photographers &lt;strong&gt;of things ... that they know really, really well.&lt;/strong&gt; Usually the kinds of things they did before they took up photography. This may include a previous career, hobby, interest, or degree they got in college (outside of photography). The better you know something else, the better your chance for leveraging that knowledge to build a photo career. Anything that separates you from everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: Your best art comes from stuff that you know, that you're passionate about. Writers know this idea well: &lt;strong&gt;Write what you know.&lt;/strong&gt; Heller also cautions about the dangers of working with subjects that you aren't passionate about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, here's the caveat: those who have no substantive background before photography are not likely to do well in this business. Yes, this applies to the wide-eyed and ambitious 18-year olds who email me saying, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;I don't care what I shoot, I just want to learn the business and have a career in photography.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Such people who intern for other photographers almost always end up either assisting their entire careers, or they lose interest in photography and go elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you don't have any writing ideas that you're passionate about, think about what you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; care about and look for ideas there. Is there some social problem you care deeply about? Frame it as speculative fiction. Love puzzles? Write a whodunit. Is there a fiction genre you especially like? Think about what's missing from it and fill the gap. Figure out what you know and care about and write about that, so that you don't burn out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5172" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T05:52:55.623" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2013-05-22T11:12:27.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you want to write non technical stuff, I think the best way is to start writing. I'm not kidding, even without ideas, doing nothing is a GREAT way to never get an idea. Inertia is true to human mind and if you don't start, you will stay exactly in the way you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is: how to start writing if you have no idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer: by the basics, or, the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of character do you want?&#xA;A police officer? A medieval warrior? An modern cultism? A Journalist?&#xA;Start with his profession and then develop who he is, what he does, what are his goals in life, resuming, his background.&#xA;By doing that, you will start to have starting points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can extend your character with related characters and locales, what will also give more starting points to develop ideas.&#xA;By experience, as you write the background and what is happening with the world, you will start to imagine what can happen with the character to start a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real deal is inertial.&#xA;The background is important but more important is that, once you start developing the roots of your setting, your mind will start focusing in it, and the ideas will start to appear. You can't expect -- even happening sometimes -- the muse to appear in a miraculous way and enlighten you with some outstanding plot. You need to go to work everyday because you need, not because you like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is much more method than creativity.&#xA;Of course it's much better to have both, but by having method you can get somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And reading a lot helps.&#xA;If you want to write about fantasy, read fantasy books, watch fantasy movies, play role-playing games. That will give you ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some may say that's cheating, carbon-copying, stealing, but it's not true.&#xA;Creativity is an amazing thing and can create something completely new from what exists.&#xA;Somebody already said that there's nothing new under the sun.&#xA;It's true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never plagiarize, you need to have that in mind, but inspire yourself by what others do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T11:12:27.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2013-05-22T11:29:35.210" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But coming up with the idea in the first place was just a happy accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are far from alone.  Every time I've sat down and said to myself &quot;Okay, think of an idea for a new story,&quot; I inevitably sit there for an hour then give up with a blank page.  People (or at least I) just don't work that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what I've done is find a way to make coming up with ideas routine.  I've found that by decoupling the &quot;think of an idea&quot; from &quot;and write a story about it&quot;, both parts become easier.  When there is no pressure for your idea to be anything but a brief what-if, you allow yourself to be much more creative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do this by setting myself a goal of roughly 3-4 ideas per week.  I will sit down, open up a blank document and a few specific websites.  I'll open up Google News and Reddit Random and maybe a few other things, and just write down single words that jump off the page at me, with no particular goal in mind.  When I get 5-10 words, I'll open up Flicker Explore and look for 3-5 pictures that grab me.  Without fail, every single time, when I smash the words against the pictures, I'll get a small what-if nugget of an idea that falls out.  I write 250-500 words on the subject, then file it away in a big directory with all the others, then promptly forget about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the day comes that I say to myself I'd like to write a new story, I don't have to stare out the window anymore hoping for inspiration.  Instead, I open up the directory that is chock full of dozens/hundreds of ideas I've &lt;em&gt;already had&lt;/em&gt; (this is the important part!) and pick one, or two, or a handful.  On their own maybe they aren't very good, but with time, a fresh perspective, and in aggregate, I always find something to inspire a new, full, story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!  Just remember that you aren't lacking for ideas, you're just looking for them at the wrong time &amp;amp; place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5065" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T11:29:35.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="251" CreationDate="2013-05-24T20:10:30.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelyricmagazine.com/about_all.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Lyric&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;the oldest magazine in North America in continuous publication devoted to traditional poetry&quot;, is one periodical that accepts formal verse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theformalist.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The New Formalist&lt;/a&gt; seems to be another publisher of formal poetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Formalism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New Formalism&lt;/a&gt; might be of interest.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T20:10:30.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7934" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7997" CreationDate="2013-05-24T20:35:00.140" Score="12" ViewCount="21592" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can usually tell the story I want to in less than 10,000 words. I'd really like to accomplish writing a novel and I have a complex idea I want to use and explore, but I am worried I won't need 75,000 words to tell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most popular novels are chock full of dialogue, and I find it easy to write. I'd feel guilty about padding out a story when I could easily paraphrase or summarise a conversation though. Is dialogue necessary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5233" LastActivityDate="2022-02-28T23:48:04.910" Title="Is dialogue in a novel necessary, or just padding?" Tags="|novel|dialogue|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4332" CreationDate="2013-05-24T21:18:37.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Abiword is really light and simple. It looks and feels like Word 2003 so has a minimal learning curve. It is a very small download (&amp;lt;10 Mb). It can save directly to PDF, which makes sharing documents trivial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5233" LastEditorUserId="5233" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T05:48:35.267" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T05:48:35.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7936" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7938" CreationDate="2013-05-24T21:19:02.743" Score="7" ViewCount="2684" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to use a text editor (Emacs) to write a novel because I don't want to consider page layout and other similar issues. I want to use the Markdown format so that I can convert it to the docx format using Pandoc  if and when I prepare a manuscript for submission to publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I format the Markdown text so as to minimise rework on the manuscript post-conversion to docx?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5233" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T18:23:11.287" Title="How best to format a novel written in Markdown" Tags="|novel|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2013-05-24T23:32:14.230" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short, cop-out answer is: It depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer explanation is:&#xA;It depends on the type of novel you're writing, and also on your skill level as an author. It's possible, and common enough, to have none if you're writing the kind of novel that's epistolary (written communication, eg. letters, reports, postcards) or a monologue from the main character(s). But I suspect that's not what you're talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know - and I'm happy to be corrected here - this is rarely done because it breaks so many rules of storytelling. Sure, dialogue can move into padding out territory, but that's what edits are for - to cut ruthlessly and rewrite until you've conveyed the information in the least amount of words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarising a speech from time to time is fine, when there's nothing noteworthy about it, and detailing the dialogue wouldn't give the reader an expanded view of the world, the characters, or the plot. I just wouldn't cut it out completely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you start reporting or summarising speeches, you're moving from &quot;show&quot; territory into &quot;tell&quot; territory. A single phrase can show the reader so much about a person and their current state of mind, that would take an author many more words to describe if they're merely reporting. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reported speech:&lt;/strong&gt; He asked her what she was doing.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Dialogue 1:&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;What'cha doin'?&quot; &lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Dialogue 2:&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;What the bloody &lt;i&gt;hell&lt;/i&gt; are you doing?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Dialogue 3:&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;W-w-w-what are y-y-you doing?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Dialogue 4:&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;If I may be so bold, may I ask what the young Miss is doing?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Dialogue 5:&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;By the bloody battleaxe of the wargod Sarnis, what on earth are you up to now?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's only a few examples without any kind of context, action or dialogue attribution that will add more texture to such a simple question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll admit, it is possible to cut out all dialogue in a novel and simply summarise everything. Is it usually the best way to get a reader invested in a story and connected emotionally? &lt;em&gt;No.&lt;/em&gt; Is it usually the most economical way to convey one character's thoughts and feelings about another? &lt;em&gt;No.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a master storyteller, you may well pull it off, because after many, many years of experience you'll know it's the best way for your story to be told. You'll also know the best way to break the rules, since you understand the rules. If you're still starting off, however, I'd be a lot more cautious about doing something so &quot;avant-garde&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T23:32:14.230" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7936" CreationDate="2013-05-25T01:42:05.277" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is my sort of question, since I have basically the same setup as you do (except I use Vim, not Emacs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My novel text looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;% Novel Title&#xA;&#xA;# Title 1&#xA;&#xA;Text goes here.&#xA;&#xA;# Title 2&#xA;&#xA;More text goes here.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works fine for me, since Pandoc wants to convert the top-level section markers &lt;code&gt;#&lt;/code&gt; into chapter breaks, exactly as intended. The only snag is that there isn't any easy way to indicate &lt;em&gt;scene&lt;/em&gt; breaks, so I wound up using a literal &lt;code&gt;\#&lt;/code&gt; to mark scene breaks (since the &lt;code&gt;#&lt;/code&gt; is the scene break marker in standard manuscript format). I pass the author information and other metadata as variables on the command line when I invoke Pandoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how fancy you want your output to look, it may be worthwhile to get your text through an intermediate format such as RTF. The RTF format is human-readable (in theory), and Pandoc lets you create the RTF doc from a template so that you can specify your fonts, headers, etc. Note, however, that getting a good RTF template set up could take you several hours of experimentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T01:42:05.277" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7936" CreationDate="2013-05-25T13:05:37.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It allows the use of any kind of text editor.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It’s distraction free.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Since it’s based on classes, you won’t have to worry at all about what is the best way to format, since anybody who gets your manuscript will have it formatted — without changing anything — in the way they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will have a hard time converting it to docx, but it’s really simple to convert it to PDF. Most LaTeX editors already have a compiler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, since LaTeX is written in plain text, you can use tools like Github or Bitbucket to keep track of all the changes you and your editor make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/efernandespt/Manuscript&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a small LaTeX class I use in my documents&lt;/a&gt;, just as an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="537" LastEditDate="2013-05-31T18:23:11.287" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T18:23:11.287" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7940" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7942" CreationDate="2013-05-26T04:54:38.327" Score="0" ViewCount="9744" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I found a short story that I had written many years ago when computers were not that common. It is 25 pages of handwriting. Obviously, I don't want to spend hours typing it. My typing speed is not good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering what is an efficient but easy way to convert it into text, given the technological advancements of the last few years e.g. apps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have a big budget so recommendation on a free, open source, but reliable software would be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am planning to publish the story so a good presentation is vital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="5208" LastEditDate="2013-05-26T23:10:57.833" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T05:34:16.963" Title="How to convert handwriting into text" Tags="|software|handwriting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4605" CreationDate="2013-05-26T18:44:16.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A book can also be published by more than one publisher at the same time, generally for different countries. Where there are substantial parts of the book that are non-text, colour prints, for example, the costs can be shared and printing costs saved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edition_(book)#Co-edition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edition_(book)#Co-edition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastActivityDate="2013-05-26T18:44:16.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7940" CreationDate="2013-05-27T00:07:13.980" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost every computing platform now supports some form of speech recognition software. If you can read your own handwriting, then that offers a cheap and relatively painless way of getting your draft into a text file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously you should test the software you choose on a few paragraphs before committing to reading in all 25 pages. Some applications have a way of being &quot;trained&quot; to match your voice and will improve as you go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option would be to record your reading as an mp3 file and then investigate the programs that are designed to convert .mp3 to .txt; then you can read once and convert several times. If different apps work better with particular portions of the document you can then edit together the various &quot;takes&quot; like a recording engineer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You request for &quot;good presentation&quot; of the product will demand that you handle the formatting separately. The conversion apps I use generate raw text not word processor files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T00:07:13.980" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5136" CreationDate="2013-05-27T00:37:07.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be worth employing the services of a professional indexer to create the index as a separate document, rather than generate the index from embedded codes. The types of difficulties that you have noted are familiar to indexers. An index written by an indexer is probably only applicable to a PDF though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5233" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T00:37:07.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7945" CreationDate="2013-05-27T07:08:38.620" Score="6" ViewCount="6826" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to start each chapter on the right side of the book, as there are few chapters with a different point of view. I know numbering has to continue on the white page which might appear in between, but shall I print a number on it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the books I consulted didn't start on a new page, so I could not get any information out of it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5240" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-05-29T15:15:33.950" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T14:35:46.403" Title="Do empty pages need a number?" Tags="|style|formatting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7944" CreationDate="2013-05-27T12:01:48.260" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question of whether a blank verso facing a chapter title carries its page number is a question of style determined by designers (if their publishing house does not already have a fixed policy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there will be nothing on the page to index, the number is not &quot;necessary&quot; for that purpose. Nevertheless, it will often be be printed simply because it is easier to follow a single procedure (number every page) than it is to introduce exceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are self-publishing, make up you own mind on what you like (and can manage). If you are not, stop worrying about things outside your control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T12:01:48.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7071" CreationDate="2013-05-27T14:48:48.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you write a paper, you normally want to show the derivation of your mathematical results. Every step should be numbered. Then it is up to you to mention them or not in the text. LaTeX (&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot; title=&quot;LaTeX&quot;&gt;TeX Stack Exhange&lt;/a&gt;) does the numbering automatically for you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5203" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:29.717" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T14:48:48.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5136" CreationDate="2013-05-27T14:54:48.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;LaTeX is a very typesetting powerful environment which provides ways of managing indexes. Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latex-project.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;LaTeX&quot;&gt;The LaTeX project&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot; title=&quot;TEX SE&quot;&gt;TeX Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5203" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:29.717" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T14:54:48.003" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2013-05-27T15:30:57.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dialogues are not easy to write. Bad dialogues are easy to write.&#xA;I use dialogues a lot and I think they - if well used - can make a text richer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer to you is: depends on the writer's style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, since I really like dialogues, it's essential.&#xA;Other writers may almost don't use dialogues at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can insert dialogues inside paragraphs and reduce the padding a lot, or you can create dialogues in context where the real dialogue does not appears at all. There are a lot of ways to do the same thing. Chase the ones you want and follow that path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T15:30:57.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7940" CreationDate="2013-05-27T15:33:43.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best solution would be OCR Software ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition&lt;/a&gt; ) since you can scan your pages and it will understand the handwrite and change them to plain text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expect a few errors. It's normal, but most of the text will be fine.&#xA;A simple review should be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T15:33:43.310" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-05-27T15:33:43.310" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7950" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7951" CreationDate="2013-05-27T17:26:56.977" Score="3" ViewCount="361" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Qualifier/Disclaimer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be a very atypical question for this site (of all those I've seen, &lt;a href=&quot;https://superuser.com/questions/73212/open-source-software-for-writing-fiction-novels&quot;&gt;this question on superuser&lt;/a&gt; seems most closely related to mine, but the question was closed as off-topic there), but after reading through &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#name&quot;&gt;the list of all SE communities&lt;/a&gt;, I'm pretty sure this is the next best one (after SU) for my question. There may be a better one (maybe TeX &amp;amp; LaTeX?), though, and if you have suggestions for a better place to field this question, I welcome seeing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At its essence, I think this question is more about &lt;em&gt;software&lt;/em&gt; (to facilitate writing under specific constraints) and less about &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; per se, which is why I posted it to SU first, but perhaps someone here has some thoughts. Please pardon the length; it's been criticized as a &quot;life story&quot; question, but I'm not sure how I can pare it down. The length is more due to the detailed description of the very specialized task (which I think would be so abstract as to be meaningless without the specific example of why I want such a tool) than anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an important job application, I need to write a single coherent narrative of all my many professional situations over 20+ years, but I am severely constrained in the method of doing so. I'm guessing this is typical of many job applications, so there may be others with a similar question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This narrative must &lt;strong&gt;read&lt;/strong&gt; cohesively (as if it were written in a single document), but it cannot not be &lt;strong&gt;written&lt;/strong&gt; in a free-form, free-flowing essay like a single document in a single text file. Instead, I am required to do my actual typing in form fields with strictly-enforced character limits. Some of the form fields limit the character counts to 60 characters, others stop at 500, 1,000, or 8,000. All of these various fields are then assembled, building-block manner, by the form software into a single &quot;cohesive&quot; professional history narrative that (based upon the character limits placed upon each form field) has an upper limit of 29,325 characters (about 7 pages in this form). I write cohesive in quotes here because although the software does indeed mash all the pieces together into a single unit, unless I take great care in writing all of the parts, the reader (a person I want to impress) is unlikely to think that the entire unit was written by the same person on the same day. That is, the whole narrative is quite likely to seem disjointed and/or rambling because of the piecewise constraints on how I must write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have about 50 fields to work with, and most of the fields are supposed to answer one specific question (what was your work like at &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; job), but some are more comprehensive and of course I'm trying to capture 20+ years worth of varying but related professional history so as to describe the skills and experiences of a single person in a coherent manner. I'd like to be able to use as much of the 29,325 character (7 page) space as possible because, after 20+ years, there's a whole lot to write about and as I approach this task (several rough drafts already), I'm constantly facing decisions on what to leave out for lack of space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What application and configuration is most well-suited to this task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have experience with GNU Emacs, and what I'm envisioning with this tool is creating ~50 Emacs buffers corresponding to the ~50 fields of the form. Each of these 50 buffers could be configured to give me constantly visible, updated in real time, measures of character counts (as I type) while a 51st buffer would not even be editable but would instead just incorporate the contents of each of the others. This would let me have constant continuous feedback about my character count and limit for each buffer but would also let me read the entirety as a single document (even as I type).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a sense, I'm already doing something like what I described above with Emacs, but the time lag between writing something (into the web app containing the job application) and seeing the entirety (by printing the entire application as a PDF) is minutes to hours, so this workflow process is very cumbersome and time-consuming and I can't help thinking there must be a better way. Maybe with some macro magic, I could do something like what I described with Emacs, but I thought I'd ask if there was a tool that already did something like what I'm thinking of here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main goal is to be able to constantly keep track of individual field character counts (with respect to their maximum limits) while simultaneously being able to read the entire narrative as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this is a subjective question, with no single objective answer, but I've tried to craft it in accordance with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;guidelines for good subjective Q&amp;amp;A&lt;/a&gt;, and I think it is definitively (if not objectively) answerable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Product Idea?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's nothing that anyone can think of that facilitates this kind of writing, it seems to me like there might be a product opportunity here. I'm not a professional developer so I don't imagine I could do it myself in a reasonable amount of time, but I bet there would be a fairly big market for a tool like this. Whether conscious of it or not, people are constantly doing this task anytime they are applying for a new job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5243" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T10:18:33.360" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T10:18:44.027" Title="Composing a single narrative by writing small chunks" Tags="|software|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7950" CreationDate="2013-05-27T17:37:00.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The operating system you are using is probably going to limit your options to some extent or other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using MacOS or Windows I would highly recommend Scrivener. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could create a blank project with a single &quot;card&quot; for each of your 50 fields - Scrivener provides a live word and character count for content as you type and has numerous options for automatic backup and structuring your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5244" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T17:37:00.467" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7950" CreationDate="2013-05-27T22:09:18.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general approach you are required to take is called &quot;topic-based writing&quot;. It's a controversial field and there are mountains of material online about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most well-known tool is an XML specification called DITA. DITA is supported by numerous applications. I recommend using oXygen Author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have already been given a tool to work with, the main issue is how to write a cohesive narrative that is assembled from different parts. For that I'd recommended reading a document called &quot;STOP&quot;, which was written by Hughes Aircraft in the sixties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;STOP provides a method on how to prepare a convincing argument that is assembled from much smaller pieces that could even have been prepared by different teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/johngtait/ditabook/blob/master/STOP_Original%20Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://github.com/johngtait/ditabook/blob/master/STOP_Original%20Report.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5233" LastEditorUserId="5233" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T05:49:51.787" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T05:49:51.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7940" CreationDate="2013-05-28T06:19:27.853" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You won't like this answer, but I'm going to give it anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to convert handwriting into text is to type it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't skip it just because it's a little tedious. Typing up work is a valuable opportunity for engaging with each word and sentence of the text. Scanning over the text on the screen isn't the same thing. I always use the typing-up of work to do an extra draft (usually I've done a couple of drafts longhand already). Especially since this is an old story - surely in those intervening years you've grown as a writer, or have a different perspective than you had when you wrote it? Isn't this a great chance to revise your work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another piece of (probably unwanted) advice. Assuming you don't have a disability that prevents you from touch-typing at speed, you should learn to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you do decide to use OCR, you shouldn't rely on its accuracy. Don't trust the damn thing as far as you can throw it. The more accurate it &lt;em&gt;looks&lt;/em&gt;, the more likely it is that some subtle error will slip through. Assume it will fill your story with errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T06:19:27.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7554" CreationDate="2013-05-28T06:25:10.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to copy @JMcAfreak's disclaimer because it applies to me too. I'm glad user contributions are licensed with a Creative Commons license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DISCLAIMER:&lt;/strong&gt; I am not a legal professional. The advice provided in this answer is not exhaustive and should not be considered complete.&#xA;  This information is worth exactly what you paid for it - nothing. If&#xA;  you want to do your own research, you may use this answer as a&#xA;  starting place, along with other research tools (search engines,&#xA;  etc.). If you are still unsure after this answer, please consult a&#xA;  lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may however have slightly more expertise in copyright than the average person because I recently completed a wonderful free MOOC (massively online open course) at edX.org called &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.edx.org/course/harvard-university/hls1x/copyright/596&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HLS1x&lt;/a&gt; or also just &lt;a href=&quot;http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/tfisher/CopyrightX_Homepage.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CopyrightX&lt;/a&gt;. I mention this only as context for my following answer, but CopyrightX is taught by William W. Fisher III, professor and director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and it mirrors the course that law students at HLS take (I took the same final exam that they took). I think it would be very difficult to find a more exhaustive treatment of the subject anywhere in the world without getting a JD, and this course is totally free to everyone in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with that context, I can say that almost everything @JMcAfreak wrote in his answer is something that I specifically recall having talked about in CopyrightX on edX. I agree with everything he wrote about Fan Fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also agree with most of what he wrote In General.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here I'll depart slightly, though. My first thought is that you should clarify which country's laws you wish to abide by in terms of copyright compliance because there are significant differences. These are discussed in the CopyrightX course if you'd like to study the matter further on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the US is the target country, I'll say that there really are no certainties in US copyright law. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/arts/design/appeals-court-ruling-favors-richard-prince-in-copyright-case.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Richard Prince appeal decision&lt;/a&gt; came as a huge surprise to everyone at Harvard Law School, and that decision could be interpreted to be very highly in your favor with regard to your plans. However, if you spend 12 weeks reading judicial opinions in high profile copyright cases, it is impossible to leave the experience thinking anything except that copyright law is interpreted entirely at the whim of the judge involved, and that little to nothing is predictable aside from the cost of pursuing or defending a copyright case in federal court which averages about $60,000 per day at an average duration of 18 days. Based on these two aspects, I absolutely agree with @JMcAfreak that &quot;Copyright is a landmine you don't want to step on.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that even the US Register of Copyrights (Maria Pallante) would agree because two months ago, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/regstat/2013/regstat03202013.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;she testified before Congress&lt;/a&gt; that, &quot;The law is showing the strain of its age and requires your attention. As many have noted, authors do not have effective protections, good faith businesses do not have clear roadmaps, courts do not have sufficient direction, and consumers and other private citizens are increasingly frustrated. The issues are numerous, complex, and interrelated, and they affect every part of the copyright ecosystem, including the public at large.&quot; She also said, &quot;...if one needs an army of lawyers to understand the basic precepts of the law, then it is time for a new law.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One minor point where I differ with @JMcAfreak is the notion of copyright on the word &quot;Droid.&quot; I'm 99.9% certain that nobody is allowed under US law to copyright a single word, even for a fictional character name (although this example I would not completely rule out under capricious US copyright law for fictional character &lt;em&gt;names&lt;/em&gt; are awarded a great deal of protection in the US), and &quot;droid&quot; is widely understood to be a concept, not a name. I think the word &quot;Android&quot; goes back further in time than Lucas' works (maybe Philip K. Dick coined it?), and &quot;Droid&quot; is clearly a derivative. Importantly, Google is using the term &quot;Android&quot; with impunity now, and to my knowledge they have never obtained a license to use the word from Dick or his heirs. But my real point is that trying to copyright a single word would be very difficult in most nations. If that were possible then it wouldn't be too far of a stretch from there to copyright the color red. Copyright can quickly become ludicrous if taken to logical extremes. If the word is tied to a concept and the concept is fictional and you use the same word and concept in your work then that could be a problem for you so again I agree with @JMcAfreak that you should choose some different words and perhaps also modify the concepts you associate with them from your sources of inspiration. Being inspired by another's work is technically allowed, but where that crosses the line into infringement is decided on a case-by-case basis and is anybody's guess in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also like to see you elaborate on &quot;bloodlines&quot; because I don't know how it's used in your sources, but in general, both bloodlines and a reincarnation technique could be argued to be thousands of years old at least conceptually and as such, should be public domain in any country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5242" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T06:25:10.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7956" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7958" CreationDate="2013-05-28T06:52:16.777" Score="0" ViewCount="2117" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm editing a short story I wrote I while ago. And the first thing I wanted to do was to add similes/metaphors to it (OK, maybe just similes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is about a girl who fails to feel an earthquake, and starts questioning whether she is living in the same reality as everyone else. At the same time, she starts experiencing changes in her life (e.g. she starts losing the people around her). So most of the similes have to do with alienation and isolation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some sample text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ruth laughed. &quot;Sometimes I really wonder whether you are living in&#xA;  the same city as the rest of us.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah,&quot; Erin said with a half smile. &quot;I wonder.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They felt silent for a moment. Lost in thoughts, Erin stared at the&#xA;  neon Heineken sign next to her. &lt;strong&gt;It's light made her face look&#xA;  greenish, like perhaps, that of a traveler from a faraway&#xA;  civilization.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The waitress came back with the bottle of Budweiser, opened it, and&#xA;  walked away. &lt;strong&gt;She did all this mechanically, as if she were on&#xA;  autopilot.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Erin watched Ruth as she disappeared between the cars and the crowd&#xA;  walking across the street. It was then that a strange feeling surrounded&#xA;  her. &lt;strong&gt;She felt as if the gravity of the Earth had suddenly changed, and&#xA;  even thought she wasn't sure whether she'd become heavier or lighter, her&#xA;  body couldn't get used to this new adjustment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are those similes/metaphors improving the text, or making it more difficult to read? (I don't mind, though, if there's a slight randomness in them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T09:34:41.557" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T13:16:41.787" Title="Are my metaphors/similes effective?" Tags="|creative-writing|short-story|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2018-06-27T11:19:43.807" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2013-05-28T08:39:18.687" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Lexi makes a good point here; dialogue is a vital tool to express a character's personality, opinions and so on in a &quot;show&quot; way rather than a &quot;tell&quot; way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialogue enables us to connect directly to the characters. Reported speech has its place, but it makes it feel like I'm sitting here and you're telling me what happened, when what I really want is to experience what happened myself. There are places for it through, for instance; if you have a person who has to explain an event to everyone they meet (&lt;em&gt;Yet again Darryl told his tale, watching the guard's face move from bored, to confused to plain disbelieving.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, and I can't stress this enough, dialogue creates more white space in your pages. A novel with nothing but paragraph after paragraph of narrative and heavy prose is hard on the reader; they like to fly through the pages as it's the only way to stay engaged in the story. If you reject dialogue you make your text harder to read, and you disassociate the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T08:39:18.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7956" CreationDate="2013-05-28T08:56:31.747" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, I know from experience it can be hard to get an answer to this kind of question. I tend to get upset when my work is critiqued and I know I'm not alone in that. Still I know I'd rather an honest answer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me they're a little heavy. In my opinion similes and metaphors should be punchy and to the point; they add detail, rather than being the detail. They should also only be used when needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I make the following suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;i&gt;It's light cast her face in green and shadow, making her seem alien.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;i&gt;The waitress came back with the bottle of Budweiser, opened it mechanically, and stalked away from the table as if on auto pilot.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Honestly with this one I'm not sure. I think you're getting at a sense of separation from reality, but when I have to figure out exactly what this statement means I step out of the story; she's not sure if she's heavy or light, so how do I relate?&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you're polishing an old story. My approach when I do that is to print it off, and type it back up, that way you’re not slotting lines in, instead you're upgrading it as you write. Anyway, I hope this helps :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T09:33:16.590" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T09:33:16.590" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7956" CreationDate="2013-05-28T09:37:42.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion such metaphorical similes work poorly in narration. It's a different matter if the similarities incite such similes in minds of the characters, but throwing these directly at the reader seems awkward to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure if Ruth thought or mentioned &quot;In this green light her face looks like that of a traveler from a faraway civilization&quot;, or if Erin would smirk internally &quot;Even this light makes me look like a little green man of Mars&quot;, that would follow the flow. The speech of the narrator is the thoughts of the reader. Trying to create this image directly in my (reader's) mind feels awkward to me - my natural inclination would be to compare her to a dryad, or some reptilian race, so the sourceless suggestion it's like an alien from outer space seems... alien to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one is better, the mechanical execution of routine job tasks is a well established trope, and I can easily summon that imagery. It's a common, generic metaphor and it works in this role just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third one doesn't work for me at all. I can't imagine gravity changing in a way I'd be unable to classify, a change in intensity, direction, shape, possibly shifting field, possibly shifting randomly. Think &quot;You feel a shift in the temperature of your skin but you're unable to tell if it's warmer or cooler&quot;. A simile would be okay here, but I simply fail to imagine this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T09:37:42.250" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2013-05-28T12:19:33.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lexi is surely right in saying &quot;it depends&quot;. But that said, a novel with no dialog would be quite strange. If you had a story about someone living alone on an island or some such, the story might be purely narration and his internal train of thought. One can always dream up other odd cases, like a story about aliens who do not speak but communicate by waving their tentacles in standardized patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're talking about a story about people who, in fact, interact by speaking, then how would you have no dialog? Would you repeatedly write thinks like, &quot;Bob told Ann that ...&quot;? If you had some point in doing this, like you're trying to say something about the nature of communication, maybe. But I think it would be largely a gimmick. It could work for a short story, but for a novel, I think you'd be beating the gimmick to death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialog is not &quot;padding&quot;, it's a key component of most stories. Well, I suppose almost everything that happens in a fiction story is &quot;padding&quot; in some sense. You could reduce, say, &quot;Casablanca&quot; to, &quot;During World War 2, a French resistance leader and his wife, trying to escape from the Nazis, are trapped in Casablanca. They meet a man who turns out to be a former boyfriend of the wife and who convinces her to leave her husband and stay with him. But then he concludes that this would be wrong, tells her to stay with her husband, and helps the two of them to escape. The end.&quot; That about sums up the story, but rather leaves out everything that made it a great story. Without the action, the suspense, the playing out of the romance, etc, we're left with a very dry and boring tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T12:19:33.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7944" CreationDate="2013-05-28T15:01:45.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The usual approach I saw is to keep the page completely blank - no number, nothing, but treat it as if there was one when it comes to the sequence, so you have, say, 50, 51, [blank], 53, [blank], 55, 56... One of reasons is that even and odd pages remain to respective sides of the book, and if you are on page 51, and you want to get to 55, you flip two pages in the book, and not some nondescript number depending on number of blank pages in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &quot;irregular pages&quot; - end paper, map fold-outs, color print inserts on different paper (these aren't common nowadays but you find them in XIX and earlier XX century books frequently) etc don't get page numbers at all and are skipped in the numbering altogether. All pages of the &quot;core print&quot; have numbers even if they don't show them. It's not infrequent for the book to start with page 7, after 1: dedication, 3: title page, 5: part header.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T15:01:45.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5341" CreationDate="2013-05-28T19:19:02.983" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My background: wanted to be a programmer, entered a math program in college (because that was how you got to CS), loved the CS but hated the math, switched to technical writing and took the CS from there, and ended up doing a mix of programming, tech writing, and software design for the next (&lt;em&gt;cough&lt;/em&gt;) years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Classes and books, even reading good examples, will only get you so far.  To really learn to do technical writing, you need to &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;get feedback&lt;/em&gt;.  I still remember a senior developer once lecturing me (fresh out of school) on the changed meaning of a misplaced &quot;only&quot;.  Nit-picking details matter, and the best way to grow is to get nit-pickers to review your work.  Since most people don't have time to do that out of the goodness of their hearts, you need to seek assignments that involve writing -- requirements specifications, interface design documents, detailed design docs, perhaps user stories, configuration instructions, and so on.  If you can arrange to do some of this as part of your job, writing needed internal documentation that your coworkers care about being right, take that opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing that will teach you to write what your peers like to read, but how do you know if it's good in the abstract?  That's why you &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; need to review examples from elsewhere.  Pay attention to, say, the API documentation you're working with as a developer.  What's good about it?  What questions doesn't it answer?  What does it say that makes you say &quot;duh, tell me something I don't already know?&quot;  Observe what's there, what's not there because it doesn't need to be, and what's not there and leaves a gap.  Look for patterns.  (For example, many newcomers to API documentation write function descriptions that repeat what's in the signature.  You already know the &lt;em&gt;type&lt;/em&gt; of the return value; what does it &lt;em&gt;mean&lt;/em&gt;?  When can it be null?  Are there error codes?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm using programming examples because that's my field, but the same process applies to any technical area.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes yes, the basic English stuff matters too -- grammar, punctuation, consistency, and so on.  Precision will matter more than in other writing domains.  You should follow a style guide for the sake of consistency.  And some aspects of technical writing require specific learning and practice, such as indexing.  But what I've outlined in this answer provides a good foundation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T19:19:02.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7963" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-28T19:56:09.433" Score="7" ViewCount="439" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &quot;think&quot;, &quot;I think&quot; and &quot;I don't think&quot; in my writing a lot. Can you suggest a few ways to reduce it and few alternative ways of saying the same thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the below sentences I have written. These are just few examples, I use them a lot. Average two or three &quot;think&quot; in one page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Why do you think about that? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I think you can do it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;But I think you got to take some rest. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Do you think you can break that? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I don't think so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7915" OwnerDisplayName="T2E" LastEditorUserId="3857" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T20:57:19.957" LastActivityDate="2022-05-11T14:35:38.657" Title="think, I think, I don't think" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7963" CreationDate="2013-05-28T20:53:52.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some of them you can just drop the &quot;I think.&quot; You can also use dialect, slang, or regionalisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my opinion, you can do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You really should take a break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You really should get some rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can you break that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Betcha can't break that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not in my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not on my block!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can't see it from my house!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T20:53:52.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7537" CreationDate="2013-05-28T21:49:55.733" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Show it breaking or failing to work as intended. You can describe the steps to get it working again as well as explaining why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5233" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T21:49:55.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7537" CreationDate="2013-05-28T22:24:43.257" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Show the guy who modified it leading a training session to teach others how to use it. Doesn't have to be a classroom setting; it could be on-the-job or in-the-field. This gives you plenty of opportunities to have the students ask the questions that the reader will want to know the answer to. A whole room full of cabbageheads, so to speak, although for good reason. Needn't be a huge number, but the people who are being trained should have reason to need the information. To keep it fun, include some banter and give the cabbageheads distinct personalities. At least one might be further involved in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastEditorUserId="251" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T18:33:34.660" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T18:33:34.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7963" CreationDate="2013-05-28T22:39:40.263" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lucile Vaughan Payne's classic guide to the essay, &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0451627121&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Lively Art of Writing&lt;/a&gt;, calls out &amp;quot;I think&amp;quot; specifically as weak writing. Now, it's been nearly 30 years years since I read this estimable guide, but to the best of my recollection, she says that writing &amp;quot;I think&amp;quot; is akin to saying timidly, &amp;quot;What I think isn't very important, but anyway what I think is...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;State your opinions forthrightly, without &amp;quot;weasel words.&amp;quot; This has three benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It demonstrates respect for the reader. The reader can be relied upon to recognize an opinion and to know that it is the author's without being reminded constantly, making it a waste of everyone's time to state this explicitly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It doesn't continually remind the reader that he or she is reading, drawing them out of the piece and giving them the opportunity to turn their valuable attention elsewhere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It provides your opinions with more rhetorical force, implying that, even though they are obviously opinions, you have thought them through sufficiently that they may as well be facts. Of course, for this to hold up in the reader's mind, this implication should be true!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="251" LastEditorUserId="251" LastEditDate="2022-05-11T14:35:38.657" LastActivityDate="2022-05-11T14:35:38.657" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7963" CreationDate="2013-05-29T03:44:56.637" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many cases, &quot;I think&quot;/&quot;you think&quot; can be removed.  In some cases, such can be replaced with &quot;believe&quot;, &quot;know&quot;, &quot;am convinced&quot;, or the like when seeking to communicate personal sentiment, involvement, or expertise (i.e., when &quot;I think&quot; would be meaningful but not quite fitting).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a desire to communicate uncertainty, one can use &quot;seems&quot;, &quot;appears&quot;, or similar words.  Likewise, &quot;indicates&quot; or &quot;hints&quot; can be used along with specific evidence to communicate a reasoned but not absolutely proven opinion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other cases, more extensive rephrasing can be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following examples may help (&lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; is a placeholder for evidence, [] contain an alternative word or phrase):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Why do you think about that?&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Why are you [obsessed with][fond of] concerned about that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Are you an enthusiast about that? (an indirect approach which may provide an answer with the desired information)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Does that have some special meaning to you?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;That must be important to you. (such a statement of observation can encourage the other to reveal personal matters to a person who cares enough to pay attention and affirms the validity of feelings)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;That is not important to me. (&lt;em&gt;sometimes&lt;/em&gt; statements of contradiction spur others to explain their beliefs or behavior)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What is so [interesting] important about that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Why does that get your attention?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I think you can do it.&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You can do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I [know] believe you can do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; indicates you can do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;, so you should be able to do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;; you can do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;But I think you got to take some rest.&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;But you need to take a break.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;But I suggest you get some rest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;But &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; and you need to get some rest.  (e.g., &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; could be &quot;you've been at this seven straight hours&quot; or &quot;the exam is tomorrow&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;But you look like you need some rest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;But &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; says you need to get some rest.  (e.g., &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; could be &quot;that yawn&quot; or &quot;that basket of wadded up paper&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Do you think you can break that?&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Can you break that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Isn't that too tough for you to break?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;That seems too tough for you to break.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Does that seem too tough for someone to break?  (an indirect approach which, because people tend to relate to their own abilities and experiences, is likely to elicit the desired information)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I don't think so.&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;That's impossible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;That seems unlikely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;No, &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; proves that cannot be the case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; seems to contradict that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; contradicts that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Are you sure?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;How is that possible?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I believe [that is not the case] you are mistaken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T03:44:56.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7120" CreationDate="2013-05-29T04:02:22.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try out Mellel: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mellel.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mellel.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently it's good at RTL languages which you mentioned you will be using (Arabic, Urdu) and it's cheaper than MS Word etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That having been said, I use Scrivener, as various others have mentioned; but I haven't had much experience with multi-lingual documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastEditorUserId="23110" LastEditDate="2017-01-20T15:28:28.713" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T15:28:28.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7120" CreationDate="2013-05-29T12:57:34.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Emacs is on the Mac. Just type &quot;emacs&quot; at the terminal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emacs supports Unicode and bidirectional text (Arabic), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/International.html#International&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/International.html#International&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also comes with a project planner called org-mode (which also includes its own complete publishing system), artist-mode for ASCII art, dired file manager and a shell so you never have to leave Emacs ever, a browser, the French Revolutionary metric calendar, and a built-in psychotherapist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5233" LastEditorUserId="5233" LastEditDate="2013-06-01T19:20:53.420" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T19:20:53.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="281" CreationDate="2013-05-29T13:06:43.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wikirhymer.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WikiRhymer&lt;/a&gt; --- operated by songwriter and it's user-editable. It has pure rhymes, end rhymes, near rhymes, rhyming phrases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5254" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T13:06:43.540" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-05-29T13:06:43.540" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7963" CreationDate="2013-05-29T13:49:03.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is where a thesaurus comes in handy. Here's an online one: &lt;a href=&quot;http://thesaurus.com/browse/think?s=t&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://thesaurus.com/browse/think?s=t&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The words they list as synonyms for &quot;think&quot; are: believe; anticipate,&#xA;assume, be convinced, comprehend, conceive, conclude, consider, credit, deem, determine, envisage, envision, esteem, estimate, expect, fancy, feature, feel, foresee, gather, guess, hold, image, imagine, judge, plan for, presume, project, realize, reckon, regard, see, sense, suppose, surmise, suspect, take, understand, vision, visualize&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you should not just blindly substitute synonyms. They don't have exactly the same meaning. But it's a good list to consider. There are also longer phrases that can substitute for &quot;think&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that a big difference between many of these words is just the level of certainty that they imply. &quot;I think that you can do it&quot; implies something more than 50/50 but far from certainty. &quot;I hope you can do it&quot; would usually be taken to mean less than 50/50. &quot;I know you can do it&quot; or &quot;I believe you can do it&quot; indicate a high certainty. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others note, you can often simply drop the &quot;I think&quot; and state something baldly. Rather than saying, for example, &quot;I think people today are too lazy&quot;, you could just state it as a fact: &quot;People today are too lazy.&quot; This makes your writing more forceful. In some cases that may be inappropriate, especially if you have doubts yourself. Like, &quot;I think there may be life on other planets&quot; is a reasonable statement. &quot;There is life on other planets&quot; is probably more than you really know. But again, there are many alternatives to &quot;I think&quot;. Depending on the context, you could say, &quot;suspect&quot;, &quot;theorize&quot;, &quot;believe&quot;, &quot;presume&quot;, &quot;suppose&quot;, &quot;hope&quot;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T13:49:03.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7944" CreationDate="2013-05-29T13:50:48.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just reading a book last night that begins each chapter on an odd-numbered page, and I remembered your question and checked. When it skips the even-numbered page, that page is completely blank: no page number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my humble opinion, a page with just a page number and no other text looks odd, and I'd avoid it. But on the scale of things, that would be very low on my list of things to worry about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Hobbes says, sometimes folks will put &quot;this page intentionally left blank&quot; or a similar message on pages that would otherwise be blank. But I can't think of any examples of this that I've seen other than in technical manuals. I've never seen this done in a novel or other non-fiction books. I presume the point is to re-assure the reader that the page is not blank because of a printing error. But in most books, if a printing error did result in a page being unintentionally left blank, that would be pretty obvious as you read the book. A sentence on the previous page would not be completed, there would be obvious missing information, etc. I think I could see it more in a legal document, where a lawyer might deliberately replace a printed page with a blank page so he could claim that the contract that his client signed never included the clause under dispute and he had no way of knowing that the other party intended for such a clause to be in there, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T14:35:46.403" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T14:35:46.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7975" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7977" CreationDate="2013-05-29T17:40:15.930" Score="4" ViewCount="2859" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a paragraph like below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A hypothetical solution is like this: first, we can use a table to record entries. These entries are imported from a library. . .....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, this paragraph is to talk about a solution. After the colon &lt;code&gt;:&lt;/code&gt;, I have several sentences, and I'm at a loss on how to choose punctuations. If I use a &lt;code&gt;:&lt;/code&gt; as in the example, then it seems like the solution is just this sentence: &lt;code&gt;first, we can use a table to record entries.&lt;/code&gt;, because there is a &lt;code&gt;.&lt;/code&gt; after &lt;code&gt;entries&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I organize such a paragraph?&#xA;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5264" OwnerDisplayName="misteryes" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-05-29T20:15:48.750" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T13:25:50.280" Title="How do I organize a paragraph that lists several steps after an introduction?" Tags="|organization|punctuation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7975" CreationDate="2013-05-29T17:49:08.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no question here. You are setting out to describe a solution or process in steps. A series of sentences ending with periods is a perfectly legitimate way to do that. There will be no confusion where the process ends because the reader will continue until the content suggests the solution is complete. Also, you have written 'First,' which will suggest to the reader there is more to the solution if he for some reason wanted to stop after the first sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5260" OwnerDisplayName="GetzelR" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-05-29T20:17:28.333" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T20:17:28.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7975" CreationDate="2013-05-29T19:56:18.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is fine as written, so long as later in the section you have &lt;em&gt;Second&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Third&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Last&lt;/em&gt; and so forth. I'd make each numbered item a separate paragraph, regardless of length, so it's easier to follow the steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hypothetical solution might be set up like this: first, we can use a table to record entries. These entries are imported from a library or a database. A spreadsheet program is easiest for data manipulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, we sort the entries according to the number of ninjas. This will be useful when creating sorties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, we add rows for Vampires (Sparkly), Vampires (Non-Sparkly), Sharks, Starfleet Officers, and Other. We'll fill in that data as appropriate. We can add columns for whatever weaponry everyone is carrying, so the sorties will have balanced offensive and defensive skill sets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, we establish commanders for our sorties, and give each division a cool name and a logo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, we summon our forces, hand out sortie assignments, and unleash them against the invading enemy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T19:56:18.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2013-05-29T20:26:00.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, I read a full-sized novel that had (theoretically) no dialogue. Not to say that the characters weren't speaking; they were. Yet in this 100,000-150,000 word novel, not one quote/unquote mark was made. Period. I wouldn't call this good writing, necessarily, but it worked in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Run&quot;, by Douglas E. Winters, if you're interested. I think it might be out of print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5263" LastEditorUserId="5263" LastEditDate="2013-05-29T20:38:22.787" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T20:38:22.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7940" CreationDate="2013-05-29T20:37:24.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or, as a suggestion, find someone who does enjoy typing (and happens to be fast and accurate) and pay them to do it. You wouldn't be the first, and I doubt there are writers who wouldn't mind a little extra cash on the side. It's a thought. Try a Craigslist posting for a Ghostwriter, give them a target deadline, and a quote for the price. You might be surprise if you throw in a few extra dollars for people who prioritize it and get it done in say... less than a week. I do it rather regularly along with my own projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5263" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T20:37:24.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7956" CreationDate="2013-05-30T13:16:41.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Concerning gravity, it does two things basically; it comes as an attractive force described by the Ricci tensor, but also as a tidal force described by the Weyl curvature tensor, that distorts objects due to the gradient of attraction: when standing upright your feet are feeling a greater pull from the Earth's gravity than your head, literally pulling you apart, or trying. In a black hole you'd be what physicists call spaghettified. I would certainly imagine that playing with that gradient could induce sensations one would find hard to classify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If gravity (or mass) went away altogether, you'd behave like beams of light - or rather, the matter that used to be your body would. If it was substantially greater, you'd undergo spontaneous gravitational collapse. Play with gravity and you can do some really eery sh*t. (Roger Penrose; &lt;em&gt;The Road to Reality&lt;/em&gt; and other works; Victor J. Stenger; &lt;em&gt;The Fallacy of Fine Tuning&lt;/em&gt;; just to name two)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the question is of course whether you want to go that way. You'd probably have to find some elegant way of introducing some of these concepts, so that in the crucial moment - if it is a crucial moment - we'd understand perfectly why she couldn't even tell what her sensations were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And on a personal note; as one afflicted with recurring depressions since childhood I can attest that there are sensations you absolutely can't even tell what are; and experiencing that you live in a different universe from the rest of humanity is a fairly accurate way of describing it. Of course that doesn't mean your work has to be about depression, though the experience of your protagonist likely would induce something along those lines. Hyperbole and a Half recently did a piece on this kind of alienation: &lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.dk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.dk/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, I might have veered off topic somewhat... I don't see anything wrong with the greenish face. It works for me, though I might have substituted galaxy for civilization. That it's Ruth seeing her like that seems to me implied by the context. You may want to follow up with something like &quot;Ruth had a sudden premonition that...&quot; just to make it obvious, and maybe also to expand the metaphor; let it run for a while. You've got a good thing there. Run with it. One does not have to state explicitly who says or thinks what all the time, and in imho that might actually ruin an otherwise elegant piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;She did all this mechanically...&quot;: I'd get rid of as if. She's a waitress, employed in a menial, routinely task; she probably is running on autopilot. And although your protagonist can't strictly know that, she may certainly think that, and not even think it was anything out of the ordinary. Now, if the waitress was not on autopilot; if serving this particular beer for that particular customer really meant something; that would be odd. Maybe she was hitting on her. Maybe she thought your protagonist was the reincarnation of an ancient Mayan goddess or something. Maybe not. Maybe she was just a waitress on autopilot. And I know you did not solicit this piece of advice, but I like to let my characters daydream, imagine contrafactual scenarios; it adds texture to their character plus it's a great way of expanding on a metaphor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the whole, the best metaphors are those that take on a life of their own as recurring motifs; the green face, eerie light, her intrinsic alienness, noticing other people running on autopilot. Those could all work. But odd gravity is a bit tricky, as it may require people to know things one cannot readily assume they will know. If it was my story, that would not be a metaphor; that would be the reality that requires some metaphor, that people, including the characters, may understand it eventually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5265" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T13:16:41.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7975" CreationDate="2013-05-30T13:25:50.280" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't checked what the classic style guides say on this, but my personal practice is that in such cases, I capitalize what comes after the colon. If each &quot;point&quot; is long enough to be its own paragraph, then I make the first one its own paragraph also. Like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A hypothetical solution might be set up like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First, we can use a table to record entries. These entries are imported from a library or a database. A spreadsheet program is easiest for data manipulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Second, we sort the entries according to the number of ninjas. This will be useful when creating sorties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the entries are short enough to all be in one paragraph, I still capitalize the first one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A hypothetical solution might be set up like this: First, we can use a table to record entries. Second, we sort the entries according to the number of ninjas. Third, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Capitalizing, and possibly making a separate paragraph for, the first entry creates a parallel construct with all the other entries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T13:25:50.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7648" CreationDate="2013-05-30T19:10:13.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, now, there's stealing which, although normally frowned upon, in our context comes recommended by T.S. Eliot. On his view it consists of taking an author's phrase verbatim, but using it in a different setting where it therefore does something different from the original. It can be done, but sparingly, and I don't wish to be the one to quantify it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(However, the French-Uruguyan writer Isidore Ducasse (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comte_de_Lautr%C3%A9amont&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comte_de_Lautr%C3%A9amont&lt;/a&gt;) contemplated rewriting an entire Victor Hugo novel; but again, doing it so as to express a different set of ideas. Unfortunately he died before he could pull it off.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there's plagiarism, which in my book consists of stealing an author's ideas and passing them off as your own original work. And for that, rephrazing doesn't even cut the mustard. The maximum legitimate amount you can do is none. Whether that applies to the legal issue as well, I am not qualified to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you are of course allowed to use ideas you find in other people's work, with, or without credit depending on the situation. In an academic work, absolutely required. In a work of fiction, not necessarily. You may rely on the public being already aware of the origin of this particular universe or set of ideas. But if you don't bring anything original to it, what, then, is the point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're not allowed to do, is claim ownership or authorship of things that were not yours in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the quote you provide, it seems to me a straightforward descriptive statement of what a product does, that no one could legitimately claim ownership of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5265" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T19:10:13.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7986" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7992" CreationDate="2013-05-31T07:34:20.383" Score="19" ViewCount="9936" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder, what could be a good way to provide time measures in a fantasy universe. I don't mean the calendar which is covered in the question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/427/out-of-this-world-giving-it-time&quot;&gt;Out of this world... Giving it time?&lt;/a&gt;, but measures like hours, quarters and minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it's obvious for me that I won't write &quot;5 kilometres from here&quot;, would it be satisfactory to write &quot;an hour of a way from here&quot; (pardon if it's not a proper grammar way to say that in English, I write stories in my native language)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it reasonable to provide exact time measures in worlds without clocks, basing it on sundials or magic? Sundials could be an answer for hours (perhaps with the passing hours announced by bells or anything), but they're not accurate for any shorter measures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it better to pick up some in-universe measure, like the length of popular local prayer? F.e. we use Ave Maria in Poland for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4784" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-01-10T16:52:32.357" Title="Time measures in fantasy worlds" Tags="|technique|fantasy|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7986" CreationDate="2013-05-31T08:02:56.563" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the units of time are established, then yes, that's a good way - providing you add the mode of transportation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Five minutes of leisurely walk away&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eight hours of forced march&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A fortnight on horseback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an overnight train ride&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three hours of flight on dragon back&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two days by a blimp&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Walk ahead for three prayers, then turn left.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thirty generations in an ark traveling at speed of light.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only if the mode of transportation is well established or obvious, you can skip it in giving distances. And they are nice in giving the reader a rough clue while leaving the writer a lot of wiggle room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know about other countries, but in Poland hiking route distances are given in hours and minutes (of normal walk), because two tracks of the same length may vastly differ in difficulty - and so, time estimate is much more meaningful than distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T08:02:56.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7986" CreationDate="2013-05-31T08:29:30.273" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand your concern; minutes at least are very much a reflection of an age of clockwork and in a world with no such machines detailed measures of time jar the reader. I don't know the exact setting of your world, by which I mean that if it's medieval that allows for wildly different tech to if it's Aztec, but here are a few general suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hour glasses &amp;mdash; It isn't unreasonable for a character to carry an hour glass, this would track minutes, but it would require the character to know the hour is up and to turn it over&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sun tracker &amp;mdash; a device that can be held up to the sky to measure the sun in points of its decent or rise towards its zenith&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sun dial &amp;mdash; a fixed device and so it would be hard for the character to actively track the time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water clock &amp;mdash; same as for sun dial&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bells &amp;mdash; Churches would ring bells every hour based on a sun dial&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time could be measured in shadows or points, but honestly in the time fantasy tends to be set in time would likely be measured in quarters of a day. So sun rise, zenith, sun set and midnight. I would simply say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The walk would take half a day.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  We won't get there before high sun.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  They rode through the night. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no need to be specific to the minute in this setting: everything took a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="537" LastEditDate="2013-05-31T19:12:02.943" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T19:12:02.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7986" CreationDate="2013-05-31T09:56:03.577" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mercedes Lackey's Valedmar series has established candles (of a specific although unexplained size) which burn steadily enough to be marked off and used for timekeeping. So &quot;three marks&quot; (that is, however long it takes the candle to melt down three of the marks carved or painted on the side) is three hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of measuring time in prayers (because people don't all speak at the same time and cadence &amp;mdash; a New Yorker speaks much faster than someone from Mississippi), but if your fantasy world doesn't have Catholicism, you could also use poems. That would allow you to write the poem as an epigram or to open a chapter, which might also give you an opportunity for symbolism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T09:56:03.577" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7986" CreationDate="2013-05-31T10:10:58.683" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once a physics professor told me that we, in daily life, measure distance with time. In fact he is right. If somebody aks - &quot;how far away is the mall?&quot;, we answer &quot;It's fifteen minutes away&quot;. That means that measures are always relative to normal everyday standards, not scientific ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In old days, moon or sun was a good way to measure time: &quot;It will happen in three moons&quot;.&#xA;Also horse and walk speed are good for distances: &quot;Castle Rock is two days from here&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to keep in mind that the knowledge of time was somewhat well developed even in ancient societies.&#xA;Celts, Mayans, Egyptians, they all were quite skilled in it and could predict even solar events.&#xA;Please check the Jewish calendar ( &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;Also, note that meal times are not something that every society has. Brazilians Indians eat when they were hungry, not in specific times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your problem is how normal people use time, since they lack the knowledge and means scholars did. Like I said, they would rather use common nature to do that. The best approach for me is to separate scholar from normal context. A sage would know and measure time in a more technical way, a normal person would express it in daily units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at CLockeWork answer, a priest would more complex ways to know at what times the bell should be ringed, and could talk among other priests according such more accurate standards. The salesman from the street, could just say &quot;by the third bell&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I do write, I try not to use normal measuring units for a fantasy world and apply what I wrote before. Castle rock is not fifty kilometers away, it's a day away. There's an book (or a movie, I don't remember quite right) where the lord of the realm conduces a lot of candle burning experiments to try to determine what is the best way to determine time measuring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I suggest is to look the Net for such kind of standards.&#xA;This page talks about horse travelling times&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/realistic-horse-travel-fantasy-fiction-novels-455939.html&quot;&gt;http://voices.yahoo.com/realistic-horse-travel-fantasy-fiction-novels-455939.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T10:10:58.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7986" CreationDate="2013-05-31T12:39:00.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just by way of example. This year I am writing &lt;a href=&quot;http://bridgetowntales.blogspot.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a blog of fairy tales&lt;/a&gt; and have evolved a system for the folk to tell the time without the widespread use of definite timepieces. The day in any major settlement is split into a number of bells (presumably the bell ringers have hourglasses or similar to keep track of when the bell should be rung).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bells run like this: 6am Morning Bell, 9am Market Bell (signifying that the market should now be fully open), 12pm Noon Bell, 3pm The Day Bell (signifying the market should soon wind down and close) 6pm Evening Bell, 12am Midnight Bell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an organic system but it does give my characters a useful way of measuring time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T12:39:00.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7986" CreationDate="2013-05-31T13:09:52.333" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much do you suppose that your fantasy world resembles our own world? And how much do you want to deal with made-up units of measure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't suppose that the people in a fantasy world would speak English, but fantasy novels written for an English-speaking audience normally have all dialog in English. Perhaps you could explain that by saying that the dialog is translated, but I think most readers and writers don't even think about the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, you could simply have the characters talk about time in hours, minutes, and seconds, and if anyone questions it, say, yes yes, the time units are translated from whatever units these people use, just like the language is. I suspect most readers wouldn't even notice it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do invent your own units of time, you then have to explain them to the reader. Like if a character says, &quot;The knights from King Throbnar will arrive in 20 framnians&quot; ... is that a few minutes? Hours? Months? You could include some narrative to explain the time unit, but that seems like it would be an awkward interruption in the flow of a story. You could include some dialog where one character explains the units of time to another, but that is likely to be awkward. You either get that lame &quot;as you know&quot; dialog -- when was the last time someone said to you, &quot;I'll be back in an hour -- you know, that's one twenty-fourth of a day, or about 3000 heartbeats&quot; -- or some obviously contrived scene where you suddenly introduce a teacher explaining time-keeping to a group of children or some such. If I felt it necessary to use made-up time units, I'd try to find a way to introduce them naturally, to give some context where it's clear at least roughly how long the time unit is, without unduly calling attention to it. Like, &quot;I'll be there in a framnian! she cried, as she raced down the stairs.&quot; I think the reader would get the idea that a &quot;framnian&quot; is a small unit of time, in the same ballpark as a second. Or, &quot;Well son, you're ten lamnings old now. You're a man.&quot; The reader would presumably guess that &quot;ten lamnings&quot; must be what we'd call somewhere in the mid to late teens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't suppose that ancient or medieval people did not understand precise time-keeping. &quot;Minutes&quot; and &quot;seconds&quot; were invented by the ancient Babylonians circa 2000 BC. Ancient people used sundials and water clocks to measure time fairly precisely. While I'm not familiar with the Mercedes Lackey story someone here mentions where her characters measure time by making marks on candles, she didn't invent that: it was a method used by ancient people. The main catch to time-keeping back then was not being able to keep track of time in general -- they could do that -- it was being able to keep track of time while moving. The various mechanical devices people had for measuring time didn't work if you moved them around. Tip your hour glass or your water clock over and it quits working. It wasn't until the late 1700's that portable time keeping devices were invented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T13:09:52.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7993" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7994" CreationDate="2013-05-31T13:44:40.177" Score="5" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the brainstorming phase of a new manuscript.&#xA;Normally I do that on my own, but this time I I want to ask a few friends to help me with ideas.&#xA;I'm sure you all know how the brainstorming process works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I have the skeleton of something I think is good, I'll start writing it.&#xA;Writing will be my solo work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the question.&#xA;My friends that helped me with the brainstorming should be credited in what way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess, crediting them as co-authors are too much since they only helped me with the ideas.&#xA;The actual writing work was all mine.&#xA;On the other hand, giving him no credit at all seems not right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I credit people involved solo in brainstorming, and what about rights?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="5114" LastEditDate="2013-05-31T15:01:53.923" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T15:01:53.923" Title="Co-authoring, brainstorming but not writing" Tags="|creative-writing|authorship|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7993" CreationDate="2013-05-31T14:49:52.840" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say there's a particular name or title to give such a person, they just get credit for what they do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I bounce my ideas off my wife and she helps me develop them, so I would say something like; thanks to my wife for listening to my ideas and helping make my story the one you’re about to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for rights, they’re just helping you out. I don’t believe that rights come into it. Test readers may get a credit but they don’t get royalties. I guess it depends on just how much they helped develop your story. IP rights are owned by the acknowledged creator (in the case of literature the writer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my own purposes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—If a friend and I designed a world and planned and created characters, then he came up with the plot and I wrote it I’d call that co-authored (after all, writing is more than the just the words) and share IP with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—If I discussed my ideas with a friend and he made a few good suggestions I’d thank him specifically for what help he gave me (and maybe give him a free copy of the book!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T14:49:52.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2013-05-31T14:52:36.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secretes JKR just over 3K as her average chapter length and 5K in the Order of the Phoenix so 3 to 5K sounds about right to me :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5277" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T14:52:36.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7986" CreationDate="2013-05-31T16:46:12.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some interesting units that really do exist that are seperated by society, or not widely used anymore. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measure (sun) - I don't remember if it was the Aztecs or Incans, but one of these groups measured the length of the day by the span of the sun.I think there's something like 34, and since they were near the equator, the passing of seasons wasn't as noticable. So one measure was somewhere around 24 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Original Roman Calander - The original calander that the romans used was based on a solar day, but a lunar year. Over time, this grew to be a problem as seasons didn't match up with the month (i.e. spring was shifting into summer because the year was 11 days short). Perhaps as something interesting, your 'time' could be inaccurate; pocketwatches often had to be readjusted for being off time because they weren't as accurate based off the releasing of a coiled spring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The English Mile - This changed with every king for a few centuries until the 1600's. It was because the distance of the foot changed with the length of the king's foot. The Roman mile (another fun one, as Hadrian's Wall is 80 Roman miles, but only 74 SI miles) is shorter than the SI mile by some 400 feet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wheels - An English distance measurement of how far a standard wagon wheel rolled in a full rotation. While I don't know the actual distance (that old pi-r-squared thingie) this was a common mode of measurement, as it didn't shift with every monarch. I think it was around 3 yards. I think its origins start with the Romans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blocks - We use this measurement still, and it isn't clearly defined at all. Supposedly it is 250 squared feet of city space, but it changes to whenever the next perpendicular street intersects your direction of travel, and has no value in the countryside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seasons - Before ancient man realized that the sun didn't go around the earth, some civilizations measured time in Seasons. They may thought that the world was flat and at the center of all this stuff called the universe, but it wasn't hard to count upon Winter and Summer unless you lived near the equator (in which you still have dry and rain season). The word 'year' was substituted with one of the seasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Astrological Projection - Since celestial navigation was extremely important to both land and sea travelers (maps hadn't really been invented until neat the 14th century) some things were based upon the movement of the stars, which Venus (the Autumn Star) was one of the Primes. This wasn't accurate at all (Venus has a 255 day year) but it did set a sort of measuring stick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lunar Calander - Yes. The calander was once ruled by the moon. 28 day months, 356 day years. Do the math. Put in thirteen months and you got a 364 day year. Just don't mind that you're lagging 5 days every 4 years. (Surprisingly, it was Julius Caeser that figured this out. Thus, the Julian Calender. We now use the Gregorian Calender)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5263" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T16:46:12.300" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2013-05-31T17:52:22.397" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the author’s voice in a novel can communicate both the characters' actions and directly relate their state of mind, there is no fundamental need for novels to contain dialogue.  But your question also hinted at story length and a fondness for economy in writing, which I think is a good thing.  The path to reaching larger stories is not padding them with unnecessary material.  I’ve belonged to a number of writer’s groups and have found that budding novel writers often view dialogue as extraneous because they don’t understand how it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In screenwriting (my hobby) story must be conveyed exclusively with character actions and dialogue.  Metaphors, literary style, overt exposition, and character thoughts are all off-limits.  This forces great economy on a story.  A typical two-hour film script only contains about 20,000 words.  The point here is, screenwriting forces a writer to use dialogue to convey story.  Good dialogue can do a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When members of my writer’s group, unaccustomed to dialogue, attempted to employ dialogue in their stories; it typically accomplished nothing.  The problem invariably arose from the same two issues: lack of subtext and conflict in their dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every effective piece of dialogue in a film will have something going on below the surface of the conversation (all is not what it appears).  Overtly, a conversation might involve a protagonist making small talk with a security guard, but in actuality, the protagonist is attempting to con her way into the building.  This is subtext.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since drama is conflict, the use of dialogue in storytelling requires that it contain and advance character conflict.  So even if an exchange of dialogue is small and focused, it must contain its own conflict.  Continuing the example above, the security guard suspects he’s being conned, so he subtly attempts to learn more about the protagonist who of course doesn’t wish to be discovered.  Now the dialogue contains both subtext and conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to learn more about dialogue learn from the best, pick up some books on screenwriting or playwriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1904" LastEditorUserId="1904" LastEditorDisplayName="user18358" LastEditDate="2021-05-18T14:31:23.883" LastActivityDate="2021-05-18T14:31:23.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7986" CreationDate="2013-05-31T20:07:35.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One additional thought: Maybe the way you give time should depend on whether it is done by the narrator or by one of the protagonists. The narrator is telling the story to a present-day reader, so unless the narrator is supposed to be a person of that fantasy world, it would be natural if he tells times the way he expects the audience to understand. So if the narrator tells us &quot;they only needed about five minutes&quot; that seems normal to me, even if the concept of a minute is not known in that world. On the other hand, if some protagonist said &quot;I'll be back in five minutes&quot; in a world where you'd not expect minutes to be known, it would sound strange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T20:07:35.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2013-06-01T00:00:39.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In answer to the question I've always struggled with the concept of chapters. They are an artificial contrivance; often an artifact of the author's writing process designed to help him or her, not the reader. So the other option is to consider not having them at all. Here is my reasoning...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapters give the reader and excuse to stop reading, as a writer I don't want to give my readers any excuse to stop.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern fiction is based on a sequence of immediate scenes. It is more visual than in the past, because readers are used to watching movies. Do movies delineate their progress with chapters? No, a movie is designed to be an immersive experience. I want my fiction to be more immersive and so I avoid chopping it up into arbitrary slices that the reader can see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware of course that this flies in the face of tradition. But that doesn't mean it is wrong. People noticed when intermissions were removed from movies, but now they would be shocked if an intermission broke them out of their induced dream state. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first novel was a sequence of scenes with no chapters; my editor didn't say anything and I've had only a couple of complaints from readers who said they wanted a place to stop (I don't want you to stop!).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I predict that fiction without chapters will become more of the norm in the future, especially with genres such as thrillers where pacing is vital. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5281" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T00:00:39.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8000" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8081" CreationDate="2013-06-01T05:47:13.707" Score="2" ViewCount="7479" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The street is filled with cars and people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to write simple, straightforward sentences, like the one above. Can you suggest ways I can write more interesting sentences? What books (with lots of examples) will help me write better sentences? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I make the above sentence more interesting or better or unique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5126" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-21T19:05:19.860" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T19:05:19.860" Title="Making simple sentences more interesting" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7897" CreationDate="2013-06-01T05:58:52.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I checked a few tools like Grammarly, spellcheckplus, writing dynamo and white smoke. I felt white smoke is the worst of all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grammarly, spellcheckplus and writing dynamo are all very similar in value, but I found Grammarly is better than both spellcheckplus and writing dynamo. Still Grammarly doesn't catch all the issues, it catches at least some of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I've found you should know at least some level of grammar to use any of these tools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway Grammarly is better than others. Check it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5126" LastEditorUserId="6845" LastEditDate="2017-02-08T18:27:51.690" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T18:27:51.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8000" CreationDate="2013-06-01T07:31:37.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not really sure of what you want but, what about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The street is like the beach were I used to go in my childhood, with waves of people and cars coming and going in a never-ending movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T07:31:37.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8000" CreationDate="2013-06-01T08:44:02.870" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;So... what can be interesting about the street with cars and people? My first guesses are: action, thoughts and emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Action: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The street is filled with cars and people, beeping and shouting at&#xA;  each other in the endless war for the right to pass through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The street is filled with cars and people. Too many of them, but I&#xA;  won't do anything about it anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emotions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The street is filled with cars and people. I enjoy my everyday habit&#xA;  of crossing it - there's always some pretty girl passing me in this&#xA;  place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you notice that I didn't touch your words at all, you're right. They are OK. &lt;strong&gt;Simple words are good, because they are good and simple. It's mainly the context what matters.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the situation of a street filled with cars and people is casual one. It's boring, because if we take out all the context, all such streets are pretty much the same. So the sentence doesn't need to be the most interesting one. Being as simple as it is, it serves it's role very good. This way you say the reader that it's just a &lt;strong&gt;typical street&lt;/strong&gt; with just &lt;strong&gt;some random cars&lt;/strong&gt; and just &lt;strong&gt;ordinary people&lt;/strong&gt; crossing it. There's nothing wrong with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also this sentence, being simple, can be a good starting point for a twist, which leads to something more interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4784" LastEditorUserId="4784" LastEditDate="2013-06-01T10:21:43.507" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T10:21:43.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8000" CreationDate="2013-06-01T11:41:12.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself why that simple sentence is in the story. What purpose is it mean to serve?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know its &amp;quot;motivation&amp;quot; then you can build on it to make the narrative richer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The street is filled with cars and people because ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The street is filled with cars and people despite ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The street is filled with cars and people until ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The street is filled with cars and people. Little do they know that ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T11:41:12.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8005" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-01T16:37:10.840" Score="5" ViewCount="2986" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had in mind to use threads from my own life as a foundation for work, keeping much of the incidents, traits and all, but building upon them in a potentially different direction. What are the pitfalls?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find a similar question on the site, so I decided to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4807" LastEditorUserId="4805" LastEditDate="2013-06-02T03:16:24.917" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T14:47:22.843" Title="Basing fiction on personal life" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8005" CreationDate="2013-06-01T20:52:44.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The pitfall is that somebody who knows you and is aware of things about you may get a deeper insight about you, which can be good or bad. If done right, on the other hand, it will only make the text richer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book I just wrote has a lot of real life experiences that happened to me, friends or acquaintances. In fact, it's a must for me to use interesting characters and events that I live or get to know from somebody else because I really believe it makes the text much more believable... or not, because some of the real life stories I use are hard to believe. All in all, I think the final result was just great, at least from my paternal writer point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the key point here is to draw a line. The book can't be about you, assuming it's fiction, and it's easy to lose track. I wouldn't like at all to hear somebody saying my book was autobiographical, because it is not. It just has some of my experiences. The Cohen Brothers are famous for doing exactly the same thing in their movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is, use all the good and bad experiences you think might fit and make them fit your characters, not you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="4805" LastEditDate="2013-06-02T03:16:49.670" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T03:16:49.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8005" CreationDate="2013-06-02T00:05:50.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering that many of those threads from your life probably also involved other people, another pitfall is that someone else might recognize himself in your book and not like what you write about &quot;him&quot;. If he's too recognizable, it might even get you in legal trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T00:05:50.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8005" CreationDate="2013-06-02T01:19:08.847" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writers base fiction too closely on their own experiences, they can sometimes lose the ability to truly play with the story. I think this is because they are not consciously making as many decisions as a writer of &quot;pure&quot; fiction. They can be tempted to simply record what happened in real life (and to skip inventing material to fill in the gaps of their own knowledge about other people's motivations or bits of the experience that they didn't notice), instead of pondering how to best tell a good story. I've known writers whose story details should have been changed  or expanded to better support their theme or create atmosphere, but who resisted the suggestion that they do so because &quot;this is how it really happened.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing from life CAN limit your mental ability or willingness to be flexible with your story, and to shape the details in order to support your overall theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, nothing is so convincing in fiction as material that the author truly knows. The ring of authenticity is valuable and definitely worth the pitfalls of writing from life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T01:19:08.847" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8005" CreationDate="2013-06-02T02:42:52.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most writers utilize elements of their own experience when they create their fiction. Some of the best fiction depends heavily on the writer's own life. John Irving is an excellent example of a highly successful and respected writer who creates much of his fiction out of modifications of his own life. John Grisham, a lawyer, writes about lawyers. Dashiell Hammett, a detective, wrote about detectives. Robin Cook, a doctor, writes about doctors. Examples abound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when creating stories that seem to have little to do with one's own life, or even one's own world, most writers almost inevitably incorporate something of their own experience. At a minimum, what we have learned as human beings informs our writing even when we're writing about robots battling dinosaurs in another galaxy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, it goes back to the basic dictum: *Write what you know.&quot; Truer words were never spoken. So don't hesitate to use as much of your own life as you want. Just remember to make good choices about which &quot;real&quot; elements advance the story, and be creative about modifying the reality to make the story work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T02:42:52.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8000" CreationDate="2013-06-02T06:54:20.827" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simplicity is a virtue. Don't assume that &amp;quot;simple&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;straightforward&amp;quot; are necessarily less interesting than &amp;quot;complex&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;indirect.&amp;quot; Any sentence you write should be judged &amp;quot;better&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;worse&amp;quot; on one basis only: how well it accomplishes your purpose in constructing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want a sentence to be flowery, caustic, dynamic, subtle, poetic, informative, grim, exciting, or any number of other things. The effect you want to accomplish with any given sentence is limited only by your imagination. There is no one standard for what constitutes a &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just for fun, let me see if I can illustrate the point by giving you hypothetical examples of how various versions of your sentence might have been written by different authors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;James Joyce&lt;/em&gt;: Call it that lying passage laid west east never making marked time but vehicular. Lands lined with sons of sons of apes and Eve never knowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Charles Dickens&lt;/em&gt;: It was a plain roadway, though one well known to, and loved by, even those whose carriages now clogged it to the point of complete obstruction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;William Shakespeare&lt;/em&gt;: Dare not gainsay that which any fool of ten teeth can tell, how these carts and creatures bipedal crowd the path before thee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Raymond Chandler&lt;/em&gt;: Cars and gawkers filled the street at both ends, all of them behind the police barricades, none of them near what was left of the dead drifter whose name I still didn't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are any of these &amp;quot;better&amp;quot; than your original? Maybe, maybe not. &amp;quot;The street is filled with cars and people&amp;quot; is a perfectly good sentence, and might be exactly what you need!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T06:54:20.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8011" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-02T07:37:38.373" Score="4" ViewCount="975" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have received an offer from a US-based publisher (new company, good concept, good marketing strategy, good royalties, no fees) to publish a novel in print, eBook, and audio format.  We (the author and I) are based in Northern Ireland and we're keen to have it published here. However, the publishers we have submitted to here haven't been as quick to come back to us.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: If the US publisher can satisfy us that they are geared to promote the book in NI and the UK as well as the US, should we accept the offer or wait until the other submission responses are received?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5285" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-06-07T11:58:18.390" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T18:20:15.933" Title="Offer to publish - should you accept or wait?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8012" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8156" CreationDate="2013-06-02T10:57:44.100" Score="2" ViewCount="467" Body="&lt;p&gt;I uploaded my short story on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) yesterday. All went well and I am excited, given this is my first attempt to publish anything!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did some research prior to making the above attempt. Obviously, I wanted to get it right from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing I was constantly alerted to by others was formatting. This included advice on using a professional, a third company etc. I am unsure whether it related to using a service provider such as Lulu (i.e. unsure if the latter related to formatting only or wider matters, including publishing on multiple platforms through lulu etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate the tips and advice I got.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was told to do HTML formating and all the coding was beyond me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unsure where I read it but I followed the following steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Typed my story in Word (It was just three pages; I wanted to start with something I could manage.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the indent feature (under paragraph tab) to set the paragraphing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Saved my file as Web Page Filtered. I was told to use this (rather than Web Page) because it took care of the hidden codes in the document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then logged into KDP and uploaded my document, previewed the format and then clicked OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the above was relatively easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Is there anything I am not doing in terms of formatting my document in HTML? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-01-12T21:24:16.937" LastActivityDate="2019-01-12T22:12:42.267" Title="HTML Formatting for ebook" Tags="|formatting|ebook|kindle|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8013" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-02T12:42:47.280" Score="5" ViewCount="36163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying my hand at translating a few Korean literary texts into English. Something I come across often while translating is the phrasing &quot;jet-black(/pitch-black) eyes(/night/darkness)&quot; which describes something very dark/black. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really like using &quot;jet/pitch-black&quot; but I'm unable to come up with better wording. Please advise me on how to better rephrase this in a way that isn't too long, doesn't go overboard and fits within the context. Please note, this is not a single word request but a request for advice on better writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few excerpts from my writing:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first thing that sprang to mind as I watched him walk out of the arrivals gate and look around the airport was the crazy fervor I was stricken with a decade ago and the boundless darkness that lurked in the two mountains. The dense forest stained &lt;strong&gt;jet-black&lt;/strong&gt; by pine resin, and the tilting house I peered at every night set the backdrop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I stopped speaking for a moment. My mind harked back to the village at every turn of the story flowing from my mouth. I also recalled one &lt;strong&gt;pitch-black night&lt;/strong&gt; when it dawned on me that as long as he existed, I wouldn't ever amount to anything more than third-rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He did not reply. His &lt;strong&gt;pitch-black eyes&lt;/strong&gt;, impossible to read, were scary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How could I not be fearful of the night that was shrouding the world in front of me in &lt;strong&gt;pitch-black darkness&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4956" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-06-03T04:25:10.257" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T02:13:06.357" Title="How to better describe &quot;jet-black (pitch-black) darkness&quot;?" Tags="|creative-writing|translation|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8013" CreationDate="2013-06-02T14:54:09.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most beautiful writing uses common words in uncommon ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to avoid falling into clichés. I can't even count the number of times I've seen an author describe darkness as &lt;em&gt;inky&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;velvety.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pitch-black&lt;/em&gt; is generally a bit too strong for this context, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T14:54:09.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8013" CreationDate="2013-06-02T14:55:21.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How could I not be fearful of the night that was shrouding the world&#xA;  in front of me in &lt;strong&gt;evil-black&lt;/strong&gt; darkness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evil, being much more emotional, deeper word than the pitch, make a good describer for the colour. And there are plenties of such words, that could be used in different situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option worth to remember about is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How could I not be fearful of the night that was shrouding the world&#xA;  in front of me in &lt;strong&gt;bible-black&lt;/strong&gt; darkness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works on two levels - emotional one and as a reference to the colour of the typical bible cover. Perhaps best used in the song &quot;Starless&quot; by King Crimson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I understand your problem. In the world of my current story there's no pitch, so I wouldn't be able to use such thing. But there are f.e. black holes. This way eyes can be &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;so black, as if the rays of light vanished in them, never to return to&#xA;  the outside world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's out of question to do something like that in translations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But... have you tried the &lt;strong&gt;simplest solution&lt;/strong&gt;? Black eyes are good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4784" LastEditorUserId="4784" LastEditDate="2013-06-03T01:22:34.820" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T01:22:34.820" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3152" CreationDate="2013-06-02T16:57:06.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read somewhere that if you are double spacing between paragraphs, no indent was needed. But if you were single spacing, an indent was needed to show a new paragraph was starting. That is the &quot;rule&quot; I follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5287" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T16:57:06.973" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8011" CreationDate="2013-06-02T18:23:20.347" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have an agent, ask them first. If you don't have an agent, this might be a good time to try to consult with one. The specifics of your book and the specific market can be crucial to the decision. This is the agent's area of expertise - negotiating contracts, and understanding what distribution of rights maximizes your potential. Having an offer in hand makes getting an agent's attention easier to handle; an agent can also come onboard merely to negotiate a single contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, receiving a serious offer is sufficient reason to follow up with your other options. If it's been awhile without hearing back, re-contact the North Ireland publishers, and explain that you have a standing offer. (If the US publisher was very quick, you can certainly tell them that you're waiting to receive offers from local publishers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that you might also negotiate with the US publisher to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; publish in NI and the UK, or to allow X time to find a better local offer, and if you don't find one, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; promote there... or any other situation you feel meets your interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, I would be wary of signing over international promotion to a fledgling publishing company. Promoting &quot;nearby&quot; is tough (and rare) enough; handling promotion across the Atlantic is more than you can really expect of them at this stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T18:23:20.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8013" CreationDate="2013-06-02T18:44:33.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of a looking for a single expression, consider the cases individually.  If you can &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; us that it's black (pitch- or otherwise), you won't need to tell us.  Consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pine resin &lt;strong&gt;cloaked&lt;/strong&gt; the dense forest in darkness...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recalled one &lt;strong&gt;moonless&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; night&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you really do just need an adjective, such as &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;pitch-black&lt;/em&gt; eyes&amp;quot;.  That's fine.  Your goal isn't to completely avoid the expression, but rather to not over-use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might take a broader approach with your last example.  It sounds like you are describing something supernatural, a creeping darkness that's overwhelming the world (or some such).  If that's the case, you can talk about it like that; this is well beyond moonless or pitch-black nights and is something more ominous. Bring that out.  You can talk about the darkness &lt;em&gt;overwhelming&lt;/em&gt; the world (leaving, implied, that it would have to be pretty dark to do that), or talk about the &lt;em&gt;vast darkness&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Or &lt;strong&gt;starless&lt;/strong&gt;, as pointed out by Paul A. Clayton in a comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T02:13:25.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7589" CreationDate="2013-06-02T18:49:01.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing critically is all about having a sound logical structure, backing up our statements and making explicit what was otherwise implicit.&#xA; This last characteristic is the most important as this is the one that makes what we say clear or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing critically is what we do when we do analytical writing but all forms of &#xA;writing can be said to be a subset of analytical writing as all kind of writing seem to put forward some argument or thesis about how the world is, or how people act, or advocate some sort of philosophy about how we should think about a topic or life in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of he best book I found about critical writing is called &quot;smart thinking: skills for critical understanding and writing&quot;, a little known gem available here -&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0195517334&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Thinking-Critical-Understanding-Writing/dp/0195517334&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(The used version is cheaper and I think there is an ebook version available somewhere too.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book was made from a very successful critical thinking and writing course taught in an university in Australia so it's not like it's some random rambling from an armchair amateur or something :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5289" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T18:49:01.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8013" CreationDate="2013-06-02T18:50:10.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dense pine forest was stained black as pitch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I don't know if you're aware, but &amp;quot;pitch&amp;quot; actually means &amp;quot;pine tar.&amp;quot; It's pine sap cooked down until it's thick enough to spread like peanut butter. So if you're talking about a dark &lt;em&gt;pine&lt;/em&gt; forest, &lt;em&gt;pitch-black&lt;/em&gt; makes the most literal sense.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go for the emotion in it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recalled one night that the starless void seemed to fill my soul, when I realized that as long as he existed, I wouldn't ever amount to anything more than third-rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if your translation allows it, but you could recast the sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He did not reply. His terrifying eyes were like open pits, deep and blank and impossible to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could I not be fearful of the night that was swallowing the world in front of me in its utter darkness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T18:50:10.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8011" CreationDate="2013-06-03T09:57:25.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be very careful of publishers only offering a eBook contract. Usually, all they will do is upload to Amazon, and take a big percentage of your earnings, and own your copyright for a very long time. I don't know about audiobooks, so I won't comment on that. But I'd spend some time researching the publisher, to make sure they are not a fly by night operator. Maybe search for [publisher] [fraud][scam] etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Selling books is hard, and most publishers fail at this task (I've heard figures like one or two authors like EL James making the bulk of profits). Just having a good strategy isn't enough, as things that sound good on paper fail miserably in the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to disagree slightly with Standback's answer. I would not recommend hiring an agent. Make sure you have read Dean W Smith's articles on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=860&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;agents&lt;/a&gt; (and the one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=1213&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;specific&lt;/a&gt; to agents and contracts). An English literature major is not qualified to give you advice on legal contracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The better idea is to higher a good IP lawyer. To start you off, the Passive Guy has written a good article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thepassivevoice.com/06/2011/how-to-read-a-book-contract-%E2%80%93-non-competition/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;contracts&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Looking specifically at the clause I discuss here, I don’t believe any&#xA;  responsible agent who understood the clause would permit her/his&#xA;  client to sign a contract with such a clause included, yet many agents&#xA;  have done that very thing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If agents are negotiating contracts and advising clients on the&#xA;  meaning of those contracts or particular provisions of those&#xA;  contracts, they’re doing work that attorneys do in non-literary&#xA;  settings. Trained paralegals performing services in another field that&#xA;  literary agents regularly perform with publishing contracts would be&#xA;  charged with the unauthorized practice of law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise: Hire a good IP attorney to look at the contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="2024" LastEditDate="2013-06-03T14:35:05.547" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T14:35:05.547" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8022" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-03T10:34:05.597" Score="5" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a short story/novella. This piece of fiction describes a child who has vivid dreams. His dreamworld starts to blend with the real world by him being able to manipulate his dreams and call other people into his dreamworld. In the story I have sent him to a fictional institute for sleep analysis, there he is observed overnight with equipment which tracks his brainwaves during sleep. Stumped by the data, the doctor in charge sends out an e-mail for help, first of all anonymising the data. After being sent through a second set of data that is similar to his patient the doctor starts to compare what he has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is about authenticity. Knowing this is a work of fiction and does not have to be correct, I was wondering if I should research how a real doctor might approach this. I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_oscillation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a Wikipedia article that relates to brianwaves&lt;/a&gt; and was thinking of using some information from there to enhance the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know nothing about this subject so might get the finer details incorrect and I don't fully believe that going into detail will add much to the story. Am I over-complicating this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5296" LastEditorUserId="5296" LastEditDate="2013-06-04T08:49:26.770" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T04:29:17.457" Title="Dream analysis research" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|research|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8022" CreationDate="2013-06-03T11:07:14.607" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please check this &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7857/what-is-the-term-for-an-accessible-character-that-knows-nothing/&quot;&gt;What is the term for an accessible character that knows nothing?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;It's not the same question but I think it might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I think it's an error to try to be too much specific in an expertize field you are not an expert yourself, since you won't ever be able to tell if what you think you know is the real deal or not, what extends the potential to disaster. Somethings are possible to understand in a quick research, some are not. I don't think dreams and sleep analysis are such a lazy theme to be comprehended shortly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean research is worthless, on the contrary. It's truly important.&#xA;You just need to comprehend that you are only a layman, and need to write under that perspective, running away from the temptation of giving too much details. The more specific you talk, the more chances you will have to make it wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stay on the surface. You can make another layman - like myself - understand. A doctor in the field would probably say it's incomplete, but you are not writing a technical manual. The key point here is: the doctor in the field will say it's incomplete, but not completely wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T11:07:14.607" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8022" CreationDate="2013-06-03T11:34:46.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that if your story is set in the real world with real-world technology and does not involve magic or sci-fi tech, you should do &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; research (Wikipedia does not qualify) to make sure you aren't presenting something completely impossible. You don't have to have a legitimate medical explanation for your dream world &amp;mdash; that can be &quot;magical&quot; or involve [TECH] waves or whatever &amp;mdash; but getting there should be feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By way of example, if I wanted to write about a male pregnancy, I wouldn't say that the conception happened orally, because the digestive system and the reproductive system don't cross paths, and the acid in the stomach would damage or destroy any fetal material. But I &lt;em&gt;could,&lt;/em&gt; without much more than lay medical knowledge, have a male character who was trans FtoM, or a hermaphrodite with a blind uterus, or a government agent with a secret pouch created behind his navel. Those situations are stretches, but not against the laws of medicine and biology as we know them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically you should research just enough to make sure that actual experts are not going to fling your book across the room yelling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T11:34:46.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8022" CreationDate="2013-06-03T11:44:52.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When in doubt quote Lester Dent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here's a nifty much used in faking local color. For a story laid in Egypt, say, author finds a book titled &quot;Conversational Egyptian Easily Learned,&quot; or something like that. He wants a character to ask in Egyptian, &quot;What's the matter?&quot; He looks in the book and finds, &quot;El khabar, eyh?&quot; To keep the reader from getting dizzy, it's perhaps wise to make it clear in some fashion, just what that means. Occasionally the text will tell this, or someone can repeat it in English. But it's a doubtful move to stop and tell the reader in so many words the English translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The writer learns they have palm trees in Egypt. He looks in the book, finds the Egyptian for palm trees, and uses that. This kids editors and readers into thinking he knows something about Egypt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e. Learn one piece of trivia and drop it, assuredly, into the dialogue or whatever in order to &quot;fake&quot; reality. Of course in the high adventure days of pulp writers had limited research opportunities, these days we have the interweb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think some of this kind of thing is now, therefore, &lt;em&gt;de rigeur&lt;/em&gt; but like Mr. Dent says too much and the reader will &quot;get dizzy&quot; and no one wants that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T11:44:52.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8022" CreationDate="2013-06-03T13:58:51.203" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're not knowledgeable in the field, then it is unlikely that anything you write will be convincing to someone who is. But as several have said, if you're writing a novel, then by definition it's a made up story and not real life. If you're writing a science fiction novel, then there is going to be made up science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a computer guy by profession. I routinely get a laugh out of depictions of computers in fiction. From small details to basic concepts, they often get it completely wrong. Like I saw a cop show once where the police are tracking down the computer used to commit the crime, and so they're all standing around watching a computer monitor, and then it finds the criminal's computer, and it flashes up an IP address of &quot;510.1.698.42&quot;. Well, that's impossible, because each of the pieces of an IP address is a number between 0 and 255 -- you can't have &quot;510&quot; or &quot;698&quot;. I found it quite funny, and apparently I wasn't the only one to think so, because the way I can tell you the exact number is because some other computer geek thought it was funny too and got a screen shot of that scene and circulated it around the Internet. But I'm guessing that if you're not a computer geek and I tell you this, your reaction is, &quot;So what?&quot; I'm sure most non-geeks didn't notice anything wrong, and even if it's explained to them why it's impossible, they shrug it off as trivial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or on a totally different note, have you ever seen the movie &quot;Twelve Angry Men&quot;? It's a classic movie about a jury deciding a murder case. Except if a jury really did what the jurors in that movie did and the judge found out about it, the judge would declare a mistrial. Like, a key point in the prosecution case that the knife used to commit the murder was very unusual, and witnesses saw the defendant with such a knife, and it was just about impossible for the defendant to just by chance have a knife so similar to the murder weapon. And so in the jury room one of the jurors produces an almost identical knife and dramatically stabs it into the table, explaining that he bought it at a pawn shop that day. His point being that he was easily able to find a similar knife on a day's notice. Well that's great, except ... jurors are not allowed to introduce their own evidence. They're supposed to only consider the evidence presented during the trial. The reasoning for this is that if evidence is presented in the jury room, the other side in the case has no opportunity to respond to it and perhaps present a rebuttal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point with these examples is: Someone who spends every day working in some field will likely find many errors in a work of fiction. If they're small details, he'll probably laugh it off and move on with the story. Even if they're big, he might just accept it for the sake of the story. I've enjoyed stories that prominently feature computers that are totally absurd from any serious technical point of view. But I generally enjoy stories more that sound at least moderately plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my point -- and I do have a point -- is: Don't agonize over details. It is unlikely that you will ever get them all exactly right. Try to get the general tone right. If it's a science fiction reader, any fair reader is going to accept some made-up science as the basic premise of the story. There are plenty of good scientific reasons to doubt that faster-than-light travel or time travel are possible, but plenty of very serious scientists enjoy such stories anyway. It's routinely accepted that if you just throw in some pseudo-scientific jargon that the readers will buy the premise. But keep the tone as close to reality as possible. Like -- to take a deliberately extreme example -- I'd guess most dream research is done at universities. At least, that would be a plausible setting. If you say that your dream researchers work in the back of a candy store, that would be so far out that it would be jarring. Less absurd, if you said that your dream researchers work at MIT, and in fact there has never been any dream research done at MIT (I have no idea if there has or not, I'm just making this up for an example), most readers would have no idea and think nothing of it, but an expert in the field might say, &quot;What? They don't do dream research! What are you talking about?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting a few details right can add color. If you do even a little research you should be able to pick up some tidbits that you can throw in, like a casual reference to some experiment considered famous and important in the field, the right names for some of the equipment used, etc. Again, tone is most important. If in a doctor story the diagnostician mentions testing the patient with &quot;an EKG and a BRM&quot;, even though I just made up the acronym &quot;BRM&quot;, I think it would go past most readers as sounding plausible, and most real doctors would probably brush it off as &quot;okay, he's making up some new machine because he needs it for his story&quot;. But if the diagnostician said the patient should be tested with &quot;an EKG and that big blue machine with the wire thingees&quot;, well that's just not how doctors talk. Maybe if you had presented the doctor as routinely using flippant language you could get away with this, but it would be tough to pull off: real doctors would say, Yes, very amusing, but really now, isn't such language likely to result in the tech using the WRONG &quot;big blue machine with wire thingees&quot;, and then what's he going to say? Sorry, I was just kidding around?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the long answer. I know I rambled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T13:58:51.203" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7434" CreationDate="2013-06-03T18:59:15.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also look to independent self-publishing outlets like Mill City Press and Troy Book Makers. They offer a variety of trim sizes, lamination, paper stock. Know that there are some industry limits regarding paper - a few different weights/ thicknesses (like 50#, 55#, and 60#) in either cream (natural) or plain white. Getting an artistic paper (with, for example, a deckle edge) likely requires you work directly with a printer yourself. A short print run could be quite expensive!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5297" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T18:59:15.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8030" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8031" CreationDate="2013-06-03T22:11:29.793" Score="7" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my search to publish my short stories, I came across a number of sites, each offering overlapping services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for someone to clarify the difference between Kindle Direct Publishing, Createspace, Lulu, smashwords etc. I am unsure how many are out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very confusing to say the least.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T22:30:22.590" Title="Ebook publishing" Tags="|self-publishing|ebook|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8030" CreationDate="2013-06-03T22:30:22.590" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are all distributors for your book. So for traditionally published authors, the publisher handles distribution- sending your book to stores, Amazon etc. For self publishing, you have to do this yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lulu and Createspace originally distributed only print books, though they also do ebooks now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon's ebook programme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, Smashwords, like Draft2Digital, is an aggregate distributor, ie, they submit to many different ebook sellers for you, like Apple, Kobo, B&amp;amp;N. You can submit directly to these websites as well, but some people don't want the hassle of tracking so many book sellers. Also, some companies like B&amp;amp;N don't allow non-Americans (till now), and so you have to go via a distributor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to self publish your book, you need to do a minimum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use someone like Createspace to create a print version of your book. Note that, for an extra fee (fixed), companies like Createspace and Lightening Source will put your book in the catalogs bookstores use to order books, though not everyone finds this feature useful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use KDP to upload your ebook to Amazon, as Amazon doesn't work with  websites like Smashwords.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Optionally, use someone like Smashwords or Draft2Digital to upload your book to other sellers like Apple, B&amp;amp;N etc (or do it directly, if possible).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many self publishers don't do option 3, as other sellers are not very friendly to self publishers, though this is changing slowly over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T22:30:22.590" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8013" CreationDate="2013-06-04T02:09:49.273" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following options may be helpful for avoiding overuse of specific noun-adjective pairs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Replace the noun with another noun which has a similar relationship to the adjective.  This is the simplest and most obvious method.  In place of &quot;jet-black&quot; you could, e.g., use &quot;coal-black&quot; (I actually had to look up the definition of &quot;jet&quot; and learned it was lignite [coal]!), &quot;soot-black&quot;, or &quot;obsidian-black&quot;.  This simple solution has at least two issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If one is overusing one noun-adjective pair, diversifying the noun-adjective pairs will probably still keep the problem of excessive use of noun-adjective pairs and might introduce a feeling of trying too hard, of artificial replacement, because the phrasings are &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; similar. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The original noun may have intentionally associated a connotation or play on words (e.g., &quot;jet-black eyes&quot; which later &quot;burn with rage&quot; or a &quot;pitch-black night&quot; where oppressive humidity seems to make the night air stick to the skin) which would be removed or the replacement noun may introduce unintended connotations (e.g., &quot;he looked into the princess' beautiful soot-black eyes&quot;&amp;mdash;even for a Cinderella figure that is likely inappropriate).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remove the noun. &lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt; there is enough description earlier or nearby (yes, the description can be placed &lt;em&gt;shortly&lt;/em&gt; after the adjective), the simple adjective would act something like a pronoun, simplifying the phrasing and recalling the antecedent to the reader's mind.  E.g., &quot;His pitch-black eyes stared at her, and she shivered at their cold darkness&quot; might be replaced with &quot;His dark eyes stared at her, and she shivered at their cold blackness&quot; (yes, this also swaps the &quot;dark&quot; and &quot;black&quot;; but I think you get the idea).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This method may be particularly appropriate when the portion being written is already very dense with description, even when the description is not directly connected with the simplified part of the text. (Extensive description can give a feeling of opulence or oppressiveness, or hint of the narrator's unusually intense observation ['excess' of description intensifying some 'excess' in the story], but &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; moderation is appropriate.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, the intensifying effect of the noun may have been sufficiently significant to the scene that trimming other description would be more desirable.  This method is also limited to cases where some trimming of description seems appropriate (and sometimes in that context &lt;em&gt;simplicity&lt;/em&gt; adds its own emphasis) or the description is somewhat redundant.  (Note that even something as simple as an earlier description of a family member with &quot;jet-black eyes&quot; could provide a sufficient antecedent to allow the use of a simple adjective.)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a simile.  While this allows the retention of the specific descriptive noun (with all of its connotations), it increases length, it can introduce awkward phrasing, and it can otherwise interfere with the pace or feeling of the writing.  E.g., &quot;his pitch-black eyes swept over the prisoners without pity. 'Kill them all.'&quot; seems to have better pacing than &quot;his eyes, black as pitch, swept over the prisoners without pity. 'Kill them all.'&quot; and &quot;his pitch-black eyes showed no pity&quot; avoids the potentially 'upbeat' alliteration of &quot;his eyes, black as pitch, showed no pity&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remove the &lt;em&gt;adjective&lt;/em&gt;.  While acceptable in English, replacing a noun-adjective pair with just the noun&amp;mdash;or an alternative noun&amp;mdash;must be done with significant care.  E.g., in some cases &quot;obsidian-black eyes&quot; could be replaced by &quot;obsidian eyes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Confusion between 'made of' and 'having the properties of' is a significant danger in some cases.  E.g., in a fantasy where stone might be enchanted, &quot;the mage's obsidian eyes stared blankly at his bumbling apprentice&quot; might be quite ambiguous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uncertainty about &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; property is implied can confuse the reader, breaking the flow of the text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes the feeling is the primary concern and matches well, e.g., &quot;obsidian-black eyes&quot; and &quot;obsidian eyes&quot; might both communicate an unnatural, inorganic, dark feeling which may have been the primary intent.  Sacrificing some literal specificity may be acceptable in such cases.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rarely&lt;/em&gt; all of the properties that are consistent with the context and typically associated with the noun apply.  E.g., replacing &quot;obsidian-black eyes&quot; with &quot;obsidian eyes&quot; could communicate not only the blackness but also perhaps a hardness and coldness which are only later explicitly or implicitly shown to apply.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Replace the adjective with a more generic adjective.  E.g., replacing &quot;jet-black hair&quot; with &quot;jet-colored hair&quot; might be acceptable in some cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This typically reduces the intensity of the description, though perhaps not as much as simply stripping the noun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is not always an appropriate more generic adjective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As with using a different noun, this will not reduce any overuse of noun-adjective pairs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a more intense or more specific adjective.  A more explicit adjective can reduce the need for additional intensification or specification.  E.g., replacing &quot;pitch-black night&quot; with &quot;starless night&quot; may fit the setting, the mood, and the meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Often some specificity or intensity would be sacrificed by such a change, so such is generally more appropriate when the lost sense is less significant to the scene or the sense is already shored up somewhat by the context.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The adjective in question may not have an appropriate alternative.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use an adverb with an adjective.  While a noun-adjective pair provides a concrete specification to intensify the adjective, using an adverb can sometimes be a reasonable substitution.  (I cannot think of any good examples&amp;mdash;e.g., rather than changing &quot;rock-solid trust&quot; to &quot;unbreakably firm trust&quot;, using &quot;unbreakable trust&quot; makes more sense!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a companion adjective.  In &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; cases, a second adjective can be used to add relatively little new &lt;em&gt;meaning&lt;/em&gt; while substantially reinforcing the intended connotation.  E.g., replacing &quot;her jet-black eyes&quot; with &quot;her soft, black eyes&quot; (the comforting darkness of a peaceful night and jet is a soft and organic stone), &quot;her lovely black eyes&quot; (jet as a semiprecious gem), or &quot;her deep, black eyes&quot; (deep is a weak intensifier in this case) might communicate &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; of the intention of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Substantially rephrase the scene to distribute the desired feeling and meaning over a larger portion of the text.  This may be the least desirable of the alternatives.  Not only will such tend to be more work simply from expanding the scope of the change, but keeping such scattered changes from damaging other parts of the text can be very difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though you are working on &lt;em&gt;translations&lt;/em&gt;, I am going to boldly present reworkings of the snippets you provided rather than simply answering your question about alternative wording.  Although you can freely use any of the changes, I suspect that they (and their rationales) will be more useful as general assistance than as specific suggestions, &lt;strong&gt;especially&lt;/strong&gt; within the context of translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I watched him walk out of the arrivals gate and look around the airport, the first thing that sprang to mind was the crazed passion that struck me a decade ago and the boundless darkness that lurked on the two mountains.  The dense forest, stained black by pine resin, set the backdrop along with the tilting house I peered at every night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It was unclear whether the last sentence was meant to say that only the house set the backdrop or if both the forest and the house set the backdrop; a comma with &quot;and&quot; usually separates &lt;em&gt;clauses&lt;/em&gt; not mere &lt;em&gt;phrases&lt;/em&gt; but without &quot;was&quot; added to &quot;stained&quot; the first part would not be a clause.  I am guessing that both are intended to be part of the backdrop.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rationale:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reversing the order of &quot;as ... airport&quot; and &quot;the first ... mind&quot; brings the intense action verb (sprang) close to its 'subject'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replacing &quot;crazy fervor&quot; with &quot;crazed passion&quot; seems a little more intense (one less syllable) and &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; better fit the intended meaning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;on the two mountains&quot;: in this context, &quot;in&quot; would seem to have the sense of &quot;among&quot;, which seems less appropriate for two objects; &quot;on&quot; also has a little bit of an overshadowing feel which seems to fit the context&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;making the forest the subject of &quot;set the backdrop&quot;: this change emphasizes the forest (quite possibly too much) over the house, but strengthens the sentence by moving the verb closer to the beginning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;removing &quot;jet-&quot;: enough description might be provided by &quot;stained&quot; and &quot;by pine resin&quot; (it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be appropriate to add something like &quot;aged&quot; to &quot;pine resin&quot; since fresh pine resin is nearer a golden color; &quot;aged&quot; might incidentally add to the sense of gloom) and the abruptness of &quot;stained black&quot; seems to have a harder feel than &quot;stained [intensifier]-black&quot; (flowery language&amp;mdash;even if only in the sense of richly descriptive&amp;mdash;tends to work against a sense of gloom)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replacing &quot;and&quot; with &quot;along with&quot; allowed the &quot;house&quot; clause to be moved to the end of the sentence, increasing the emphasis on the 'dark word' &quot;night&quot; (it is also possible that sidelining the house &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; slightly intensify the feeling associated with &quot;tilting&quot;&amp;mdash;off-center, to-the-side); even so, this also seems a problematic phrasing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For a moment I stopped speaking.  At every turn of the story flowing from my mouth my mind had hearkened back to the village, and I recalled that starless night when I realized that as long as he existed, I'd never amount to anything more than third-rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rationale:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reversal of &quot;for a moment&quot; and &quot;I ... speaking&quot;: this seems a doubtful change but it moves the stopping closer to the next sentence, connecting the break in speech with the thoughts that interrupted the speech, the end-of-sentence emphasis is on &quot;stopped speaking&quot; rather than the momentary nature of the pause, and stopping is linked with a full stop mark.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reversal of &quot;at every ... mouth&quot; and &quot;my mind ... village&quot;: rather doubtful suggestion (particularly since if a comma is added after &quot;mouth&quot; it will weaken the break at &quot;, and I recalled&quot;), but moving the remembering of the village closer to the recalling of the night has some value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;had hearkened back&quot;: since this is a deeper past event than the &quot;stopped speaking&quot; using &quot;had hearkened&quot; seems more appropriate (&quot;returned&quot; might replace &quot;hearkened back&quot; if a casual feel is desired, but &quot;hearkened&quot; seems to have an appropriate nostalgic, possibly 'backwoodsy', feel)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replacing &quot;. I also&quot; with &quot;, and I&quot; improves the flow (it was only a momentary pause in speech)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replacing &quot;one&quot; with &quot;that&quot;: &quot;that&quot; refers to a specific night&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replacing &quot;pitch-black&quot; with &quot;starless&quot; touches on the &lt;em&gt;actual content&lt;/em&gt; of the question, &quot;starless&quot; implies a very dark night (and incidentally gives some feel of hopelessness, stars being associated with wishes, dreams, aspirations)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replacing &quot;it dawned on me&quot; with &quot;I realized&quot;: this removes what I am guessing is an unintended play on words (&quot;night&quot;/&quot;dawn&quot;), slightly tightens the phrasing (three vs. four syllables and active voice vs. passive), and (perhaps wrongly?) replaces the slightly positive and sentimental(?) connotation of &quot;dawned&quot; with a slightly harsh, rational, and realistic connotation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replacing &quot;I wouldn't ever&quot; with &quot;I'd never&quot; tends to keep the informal tone (though less 'backwoodsy') and increases the intensity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He did not reply. His unsearchable black eyes frightened me [or &quot;were frightening&quot;].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rationale:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replacing &quot;impossible to read&quot; with &quot;unsearchable&quot; may intensify the feeling and imply that intently looking at the eyes was impossible not just discovering their secrets being impossible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;applying &quot;unsearchable&quot; to &quot;black eyes&quot; and not just to &quot;eyes&quot; (i.e., not &quot;unsearchable, black eyes&quot;) intensifies the blackness and associates the eyes' unsearchable nature with the blackness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replacing &quot;were scary&quot; with &quot;frightened me&quot; would be more direct&amp;mdash;&quot;scary&quot; also seems to have a slightly juvenile, less serious tone (&quot;terrified&quot; might be too intense)&amp;mdash;but &quot;were frightening&quot; might well be more appropriate (e.g., if it was not just the narrator who was frightened or more emphasis is desired for their &lt;em&gt;general&lt;/em&gt; terror, i.e., they would frighten anyone)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How could I not be afraid of the night, shrouding the world in front of me in its impenetrable darkness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rationale:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replacing &quot;fearful&quot; with &quot;afraid&quot;: very weak suggestion, it just seems 'better'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replacing &quot;that was&quot; with &quot;, &quot;: increases the pace of the sentence and more tightly binds &quot;shrouding&quot; with &quot;night&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;adding &quot;its&quot;: associates the darkness more tightly with the night and gives a more involved, almost personal feeling (e.g., compare &quot;he stabbed it with a knife&quot; and &quot;he stabbed it with his knife&quot;) which seems to deepen the terror&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;replacing &quot;pitch-black&quot; with &quot;impenetrable&quot;: another answer for the &lt;em&gt;actual question&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;impenetrable&quot; has the same effective meaning&amp;mdash;so dark one cannot see&amp;mdash;but enhances the feeling of helplessness and isolation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2013-06-04T03:20:09.797" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T03:20:09.797" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8036" CreationDate="2013-06-04T11:18:00.983" Score="2" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Kindle Direct Publishing, the minimum price you can set is $0.99. I published a short story and wanted to price it at $0.49. This is because it is a short story of about 500 words. Its short and sharp though. Can any one tell me how to indicate that it is a single and not a long story to potential readers? I have always believed that being honest and upfront is always the best policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="11428" LastEditDate="2016-11-12T17:08:17.327" LastActivityDate="2016-11-12T17:08:17.327" Title="How to indicate about a single short story when selling?" Tags="|self-publishing|short-story|kindle|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8035" CreationDate="2013-06-04T13:20:11.670" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the description say &quot;short story - 20 pages&quot; or some such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T13:20:11.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8038" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-04T17:10:50.047" Score="9" ViewCount="14301" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the world I'm writing, there's a decent amount of magic - mages, spells, healing, etc. There's also a few aspects - hoverboards, strength/speed enhancing experiments - that don't quite fit into the realm of magic, but I'm not ready to commit to basing them in science. For one thing, that would mean the world is advanced enough to have guns, which I don't want. For another thing, that would basically be blending sci-fi and fantasy, which seems unwieldy and difficult to pull off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions how I can keep those science-based aspects in the fantasy but avoid blending the two genres?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5303" LastActivityDate="2021-11-21T17:14:50.587" Title="Avoid blending Fantasy and Sci Fi" Tags="|fantasy|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8038" CreationDate="2013-06-04T17:19:31.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can always make them relics of the ancient civilisation (Morrowind), or some stuff left by travelers from another planet (Roadside Picnic). People in your world can be smart enough to use them and to understand more or less of their technology, what leads to experiments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sidenote: I think that blending sci-fi and fantasy shouldn't be considered as a bad thing. Many great books cover such schema without being unwieldy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4784" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T17:19:31.283" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8038" CreationDate="2013-06-04T19:18:51.983" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why does apparent technology have to actually be technology?  Can't it be either mundane or magical instead, even if in our world we would call it science or tech?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strength and speed can be enhanced through medicine (and its cousin, magical potions).  Hoverboards with mechanical motors/propellors/jet-packs/whatever aren't the only way to fly on a device; magic carpets are also available (if perhaps cliche).  Separate the &lt;em&gt;effect&lt;/em&gt; you're looking for from the &lt;em&gt;means&lt;/em&gt;, and then look for &lt;em&gt;means&lt;/em&gt; that fit within your fantasy world, whether they be mundane (fantasy worlds have medicine too) or magical (potions, flying carpets).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, you might be able to combine them if that's important to you.  Anne McCaffery's dragon-rider books looked like fantasy initially, until the spaceships showed up.  I think you will probably fare better if you don't try to combine elements like that, but if you decide to try, you won't be the first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T19:18:51.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8038" CreationDate="2013-06-04T20:05:18.770" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are giving into the &lt;em&gt;temptation of explaining&lt;/em&gt;. Sometimes you don't need to know how - or at least not for sure how - just to make it believable in your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take your real life laptop as an example. It has thousands of microchips compacted into a single CPU but, what is a microchip? What is a diode? What is an integrated circuit? People generally don't know... A few may, but the vast majority don't care as long it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many have heard that a laptop has a CPU and decided that the vague notions they have are enough to not care at all. If real life people are not interested in details, why over-detail a fictional world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same thing goes for books or movies. In Back to the future you have a &quot;&lt;em&gt;flux capacitor&lt;/em&gt;&quot; but you have no idea what it is, you just know it allows time traveling. It's magical but also scientific because nobody ever tried to explain what it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It wouldn't be hard to create Back to the Future IV and say that some mystical being taught some weird magical ways to Doc, allowing him to create a magical device that could be inserted into a DeLorean. After all, nobody actually explained what the flux capacitor is and how it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same goes in your book. The flying carpet or hovercraft works based on magic or science (why not both together?) At the start, will anyone actually care? Will it make any difference to specify? If people already know it is science, they will assume some weird scientific means make it work; if people know it is magic, they will assume it's magical without asking for more explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I said in my previous answers, if you are not an expert in a field, just stay on the surface. It works here also. Don't try to explain what can't be explained, because that will close doors that could stay opened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you leave the way a hovercraft works open, you can in the future (maybe your next book) decide that in fact it works based on science, even being in a magical world. That may lead to new histories like one where the guy finds out that science exists and wants to uncover more about it and become the most powerful engineer of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already defined that the hovercraft is scientific, you won't be able to change that in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception is the history itself. If it's vital for your plot to have the way the hovercraft works, than you should define it. But if it's not vital, just leave it unexplained until some idea comes up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="4962" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T15:03:54.847" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T15:03:54.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8042" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-04T20:16:29.480" Score="0" ViewCount="1797" Body="&lt;p&gt;in the following sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;We forge such concepts like agent's IP, agent's port, agent's sequence number &#xA;and so on for ease of explanation.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;We forge such concepts like agent's IP, agent's port, agent's sequence number&#xA;blabla for ease of explanation.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it seems to me the &lt;code&gt;and so on&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;blabla&lt;/code&gt; is not proper, isn't it?&#xA;if so, how to modify the sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5264" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-06-04T22:01:55.703" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T13:49:16.760" Title="how to use `and so on` or `blabla` in the middle of a sentence?" Tags="|word-choice|organization|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8043" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-04T21:16:45.563" Score="-1" ViewCount="630" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example I am given an article and asked to write a summary for money; where do I begin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I just read the article, and kind of pull material out of it, re-arrange some of it, change some words around and try to convey a similar meaning with different words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps I put together a little overview of what the viewer will read without actually mentioning particular aspects of the original writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really could use some help here, because I was considering taking up micro-jobs for writing, such as summary writing for some money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5307" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T12:15:15.817" Title="How to write a summary of an article or any text print?" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8042" CreationDate="2013-06-04T21:39:43.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the specific example, the use of &quot;such ... as&quot; (&quot;for example&quot;/&quot;e.g.&quot; would likewise indicate an incomplete list) removes the need for anything like &quot;etc.&quot;, &quot;et al.&quot;, &quot;and so on&quot;.  Here is reworking of your example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For ease of explanation, we forge such concepts as the agent's IP, port, and sequence number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T21:39:43.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2293" CreationDate="2013-06-05T02:44:05.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for something free and decent try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.meocr.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MeOCR Image to Text Converter&lt;/a&gt; It works better than the other free ones I've tried like FreeOCR and SimpleOCR and it gives you formatted output that can be edited easily. The other ones just give you the text but its not formatted it makes me waste a lot of time reformatting also its pretty simple to use. Anyway that's my 2 cents worth hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5308" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T02:44:05.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8046" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8047" CreationDate="2013-06-05T06:59:03.250" Score="5" ViewCount="3886" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also find myself writing stuff like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(dialogue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They remained silent &lt;strong&gt;for a moment&lt;/strong&gt;. A dog barked at the distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(dialogue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His stomach started to growl &lt;strong&gt;after a moment&lt;/strong&gt;, and only then he&#xA;  realized he was hungry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After a moment&lt;/strong&gt;, he decided to walk west.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it better if I omit the bold text? I think the text wouldn't change that much. Are they often necessary for pacing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-06-13T13:31:36.313" LastActivityDate="2020-09-21T19:19:48.180" Title="Is it better to omit phrases like: after a moment, after a while, for a moment, etc?" Tags="|creative-writing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8046" CreationDate="2013-06-05T07:48:13.497" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the passage of a moment is better expressed by filling it with some action. To illustrate, let's rewrite your last example: &quot;After a moment, he decided to walk west.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about this? &quot;He looked to the east. In that direction lay nothing but the ruins of his former life. Turning away, he decided to walk west.&quot; Or: &quot;Thinking about what she had said, he decided to walk west.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are merely hypothetical, first-draft samples of random possibilities, but they demonstrate that creative writing works best when words (and opportunities) are not wasted. Merely stating that &lt;em&gt;a moment of time passed&lt;/em&gt; wastes the opportunity to convey what actually happened in that moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there may be nothing valuable to convey about a particular moment; there may be no content worth communicating, in which case it's a good idea to try to eliminate the statement. In your sentence, &quot;His stomach started to growl after a moment, and only then he realized he was hungry,&quot; the phrase &quot;after a moment&quot; is entirely unnecessary. Cut it out, and you'll see that the sentence works even better. If it is essential to the story that the stomach growling &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be shown to have started at some point distinctly after some other point in time, then again I would suggest making something happen in that crucial moment, thus: &quot;The window of a restaurant caught his eye, and he stopped to look inside. As if on cue, a waiter appeared, carrying a tray of plates laden with food. His stomach started to growl....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastEditorUserId="4805" LastEditDate="2013-06-13T05:46:18.487" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T05:46:18.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8038" CreationDate="2013-06-05T09:37:04.243" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Blending sci-fi and fantasy is actually quite easy, and can produce some excellent results; consider Steampunk for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are definitely plenty of great examples out there of sci-fi/fantasy blending (across many media): Final Fantasy (particularity FF XII), Dishonoured, China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, The Scar and The Iron Council, Neil Gaiman's Stardust…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there's no reason why having advanced tech should allow guns, guns came to be because of particular discoveries, and it's easy enough for those to have not occurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth remembering what Arthur C. Clarke said; &quot;Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.&quot; I have several stories where the science is closely guarded, so people see the tech as magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T09:37:04.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="143" CreationDate="2013-06-05T12:44:43.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another option that doesn't seem to have been mentioned, which might work if you are writing &lt;em&gt;multiple-POV-character&lt;/em&gt; fiction, is to switch viewpoint characters between chapters and let each writer &quot;own&quot; one or more of the viewpoint characters. As long as you have a reasonably firm outline, this allows each author to work relatively freely, and in such a case the differences in style may actually add to the flavor of the overall story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works best if the characters don't partake in each others' activities too much, but with a shared reasonably solid understanding of the characters among all authors and some editing it may very well work well enough even if the characters intermingle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Viewpoint character switches can get confusing if done wrong, but of the books I've read, I believe the ones that switch viewpoint character at chapter boundaries have all worked well. Of course you may need a solid round of editing at the end to bring everything together and make sure the story is consistent, but that is probably a good idea anyway so all things considered is probably not a huge drawback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T12:44:43.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8046" CreationDate="2013-06-05T13:41:37.070" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with phrases like &quot;after a moment&quot;. Just be careful not to overuse them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Al entered the room. After a moment, Sally entered also. A moment later, Al said, &quot;Oh, Sally, it's you.&quot; Sally paused for a moment ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the same word or phrase (other than an article, pronoun, or short preposition) repeatedly in a short space tends to look awkward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As John Landsberg says, in some cases you could replace the &quot;after a moment&quot; with some action. In other cases you could simply omit it. I'd say that the only time you should include it is when you intend to convey that nothing happened in that moment, that everyone was just waiting or standing dumbly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bob picked up the book and opened to where he had left off. After a little while, he put it back down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;after a little while&quot; contributes nothing. Indeed it leaves the statement ambiguous. Is the intent that he was reading for a little while, that he just stood staring blankly at the pages, that he was thinking about something else, or what? Better to say what he did than just say that time passed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cathy burst into the room and announced to her family, &quot;I've decided to marry Bob!&quot; She was met with total silence. After a moment, her father said slowly, &quot;I suppose the wedding will have to wait until Bob gets out of prison ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, the idea that everyone stands around saying nothing for a little while contributes to the mood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T13:41:37.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8042" CreationDate="2013-06-05T13:49:16.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Bla bla&quot; is decidedly informal. I would not use those words unless the text in general is very informal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of ways to say &quot;and other similar things&quot;: &quot;etc.&quot;, &quot;and so on&quot;, &quot;things like&quot;, &quot;such things as&quot;, etc. (Like there.) Alternatively, you can preface the list with a phrase like &quot;for example&quot; or &quot;among the options are&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's certainly nothing with giving an incomplete list, as long as the reader understands that it is an incomplete list. In some cases the complete list would be far too long to include without boring the reader or bogging down the text. Consider, &quot;People with common names, like 'John' or 'Mary', sometimes find that ...&quot; Listing all the common names that one could possibly have would be a very long and tedious list, and the reader would surely skim over the last after the first few entries anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T13:49:16.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8052" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-05T18:59:13.270" Score="3" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a recent college graduate with a Bachelor's degree in English. I have been asked to join a new startup online magazine as an editor. I have the choice to be either a Copy-Editor or Editor in Chief. I was wondering if anyone could help me determine which position is more fulfilling or challenging? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5314" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-06-05T22:33:23.537" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T22:33:23.537" Title="What is the better job for an English major: copy-editor or editor in chief?" Tags="|editing|jobs|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8052" CreationDate="2013-06-05T19:30:15.180" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the copy editor, I believe you'd be responsible for the text itself, the person who does the actual work of editing. As the Editor in Chief, I think you'd be responsible for the bigger picture and for more management-type tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For which position would be more fulfilling or challenging, that depends on you. Do you like to focus on the nitty gritty details? Do you enjoy working in leadership positions? Can you delegate? Do you work well with others? What about deadlines? How well do you manage stress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My best advice would be to ask for more details about both positions and think about which one better suits your personality and lifestyle. And hey, there's nothing wrong with challenging yourself if you think you can rise to the occasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5303" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T19:30:15.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8052" CreationDate="2013-06-05T21:19:35.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is very specific: which one would be more fulfilling or challenging. At a start-up, there is no doubt in my mind that editor-in-chief would be more challenging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A copy editor can always make a weak excuse and slip out the door. The editor-in-chief is there until the last typo is fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being the editor-in-chief would be very exciting, not to mention exhausting, not to mention fulfilling, not to mention scary, not to mention unbelievable for your first job out of college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to make sure that this startup has solid funding, and that you won't be looking for a new job in a few months. It is very unusual to be offered an editor-in-chief position straight out of college, except if this is your best bud, or bff, in which case, double check the funding AGAIN anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4935" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T21:19:35.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8055" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8056" CreationDate="2013-06-06T03:36:55.657" Score="1" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often wondered what determines the optimal length (number of words) of an effective short story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking the above in the context of epublishing e.g. Amazon kindle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the era of epublishing, I think length is often associated with price. For example, I think it is reasonable to expect a story  needs to be bigger and better i.e. complex plot if it is to be sold at $0.99 compared to $0.49.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do I determine the length of a short story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="5208" LastEditDate="2013-06-06T03:46:53.740" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T02:46:15.460" Title="Do short stories have to be of a particular length?" Tags="|self-publishing|kindle|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8055" CreationDate="2013-06-06T08:08:51.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;About your question, I like what Wikipedia has to say ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_story&lt;/a&gt; ):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Short stories have no set length. In terms of word count there is no official demarcation between an anecdote, a short story, and a novel. Rather, the form's parameters are given by the rhetorical and practical context in which a given story is produced and considered, so that what constitutes a short story may differ between genres, countries, eras, and commentators.[3] Like the novel, the short story's predominant shape reflects the demands of the available markets for publication, and the evolution of the form seems closely tied to the evolution of the publishing industry and the submission guidelines of its constituent houses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the answer is that. Common sense rules what's the length of a short story. I have seen shorties with 30 pages, I also have seen with 10. Of course, most of times, such small short stories will most likely be published in a book with other short stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put yourself into readers place. Do you - as reader - think it's a short story or more like a chronicle? Would you pay $0.99 for it would only $0.49. I guess the answer likes with common sense and how the customer will see your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a small edit: please check &quot;Do I still need to follow the arbitrary word count limits&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5706/self-publishing-do-i-still-need-to-follow-the-arbitrary-word-count-limits/&quot;&gt;Self publishing: Do I still need to follow the arbitrary word count limits?&lt;/a&gt;). Steven Drennon made a nice answer that shows, in pratice, what I mean about users reactions to book sizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T13:57:21.817" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8055" CreationDate="2013-06-06T08:59:18.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many different defenitions of this, and many major awards like the Hugo have their own, but using averages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally a story longer than the 500-1000 word range of a flash fiction, and shorter than the 7,500 minimum length of a novelette, would count as a short story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_fiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_fiction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_story&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelette&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelette&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2013-06-06T12:14:18.700" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T12:14:18.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8043" CreationDate="2013-06-06T12:15:15.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once upon a time in education systems based on the English model, the writing of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pr%C3%A9cis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;precis&lt;/a&gt; was regarded as an essential skill for any literate person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Works such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=yBk9AAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Handbook of Précis-writing with Graduated Exercises By E. Derry Evans&lt;/a&gt; that can be previewed on Google Books were used in the teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am certain that a search for {precis writing exercises} will reveal many similar resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T12:15:15.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8060" CreationDate="2013-06-06T19:57:12.197" Score="1" ViewCount="2469" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for an adjective which essentially means &quot;of or relating to the circus.&quot; My context is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As they stood in the doorway, taking in the &lt;strong&gt;circus-like&lt;/strong&gt; activities around them...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &quot;circus-like&quot; is garbage, can anyone suggest a good adjective to use in its place? Alternatively, I could replace the entire described noun (&quot;circus-like activities&quot;) with something better. I suppose I could just called it a &quot;circus&quot; directly, which will probably be my fall back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely oppose to making up words, but it would need to be easily comprehensible to the reader. I was thinking something like &quot;circusian&quot; or &quot;circusean&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-30T18:59:29.190" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T18:59:29.190" Title="An adjective relating to the circus?" Tags="|description|language|phrasing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2018-05-01T15:23:00.540" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8059" CreationDate="2013-06-06T21:42:17.507" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Circensian&quot; is a word, which means &quot;of or relating to the Circus in ancient Rome&quot;, so you could potentially consider using that, but it likely doesn't really fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is Writers.SE, however, I would fall back to Stephen King's comment that  “The road to hell is paved with adjectives.” Why not simply describe the activities that are occuring around them? &quot;circus-activities&quot; is so incredibly broad that it's boring and meangingless. It's difficult to say really without knowing the full context of the sentence, but I suspect that describing the action would be a better option. There are jugglers, freaks, unicyclists, clowns, ring masters, men of strength, bearded ladies ... use the imagination, and make your text richer through showing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T21:42:17.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8061" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8084" CreationDate="2013-06-06T22:00:59.360" Score="1" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;For lists such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Topic 1&#xA;xxx&#xA;xxxxx xxx&#xA;xxx&#xA;xxx xxx&#xA;xxxx&#xA;&#xA;Topic 2&#xA;xxx&#xA;xxxxx xxx&#xA;xxx&#xA;xxx xxx&#xA;xxxx&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is there some different way to represent them since they won't format well in mobi and epub?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These list will break over onto another page.  Since list items are numbers and just a hand full of words, breaking over into another page won't look too good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need some other representation that gets the content out of a list so it will flow nicely in the very fluid formats of mobi and epub.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4608" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T14:59:31.227" Title="Formatting lists for ebook format?" Tags="|formatting|ebook|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8046" CreationDate="2013-06-07T03:01:34.230" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using &quot;after a moment&quot; isn't that bad, but don't use it a whole lot. There are different phrases you could use to describe passage of time, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;•minutes later&#xA;•after some time&#xA;•a while later&#xA;•after a long pause&#xA;•following a brief pause&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5321" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T03:01:34.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8013" CreationDate="2013-06-07T03:26:09.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;•midnight black &#xA;•shadow black&#xA;•black&#xA;•black like ink&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5321" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T03:26:09.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8022" CreationDate="2013-06-07T03:31:25.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you make it how you think it would be done. You can also do the research, if you like that method better. &#xA;Also, it doesn't seem like you're over-complicating this to me. In my opinion, it is only over-complicated if you think it is. Anything goes when it comes to if you think it is or isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5321" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T03:31:25.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8000" CreationDate="2013-06-07T03:40:53.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you think is more interesting. Somewhat more complex sentences than &quot;the street is filled with cars and people&quot; are fine, but overly complex sentences, in my opinion, tend to get a bit boring. Once again, it depends on what you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5321" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T03:40:53.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7793" CreationDate="2013-06-07T04:02:43.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of what you're writing about. You can either a) write then come up with a title that fits, or b) (the style that my twin sister and I use) come up with a title, write, and if you feel that the title is unsatisfactory, change it. If you can't come up with a better one, keep it. Also, most publishers don't like coming up with a title for you, so it's best if you do it yourself. Also, your title may not suck to everyone, but it depends on what you came up with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5321" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T04:02:43.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7764" CreationDate="2013-06-07T04:06:15.537" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look up your plot. If you find something that exactly matches it, change it without changing the general idea of the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5321" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T04:06:15.537" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7727" CreationDate="2013-06-07T04:14:46.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it seems to you that the story is reaching an ending point, it's okay to end it. If all the plots aren't tied up, continue, but try not to make new ones, otherwise it's never gonna end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5321" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T04:14:46.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7737" CreationDate="2013-06-07T04:19:22.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read when you feel like it. If you think that you don't have enough time, either don't read or change your schedule so you have time to. Pull out plots, styles, uses of writing elements, anything that would help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5321" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T04:19:22.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8077" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8080" CreationDate="2013-06-07T05:49:45.863" Score="5" ViewCount="10061" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering what the convention is for punctuating dialogue with oneself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, if a character speaks to himself, do the words need to be put in open and closed quotes? Note that the words in this case are merely the thoughts of the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How could I be so complacent, Alex said to himself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will not give in, Alex told himself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="10878" LastEditDate="2014-10-17T17:12:08.323" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T17:12:08.323" Title="Punctuating dialogue with oneself" Tags="|style|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8077" CreationDate="2013-06-07T07:57:08.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Before I start my reply, I want to point that, afaik, in Portuguese speaking countries, the most common way to delimit dialogues is to use only dashes. The quotation marks are reserved for thoughts and, sometimes, foreign words. I'm answering based on that criteria.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I handle that in my books as a normal dialogues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;ndash; &lt;em&gt;How could I be so complacent?&lt;/em&gt; - Alex said to himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the phrase below, maybe it makes more sense to consider it as a thought, but I don't know to context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;I will not give in.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &amp;ndash; Alex thought while climbing the mountain. &amp;ndash; &quot;&lt;em&gt;I must continue on.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally I rule that, if a character expects an answer from himself, he is dialogging with himself, otherwise, he's just toughing about something... But that's only me. You should choose what works better for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the answer on quotes, depends on how you think you should deal with the dialogue. If it's a dialogue, don't quote. If it's a thought, quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-06-08T19:06:05.767" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T19:06:05.767" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8077" CreationDate="2013-06-07T08:19:17.003" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most instances thought is presented as italicised text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they’re physically talking I’d present it as normal text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thought - &lt;em&gt;Damn it, what’s the matter with me?&lt;/em&gt; She thought as she closed the door.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Speech - ‘Damn it, what’s the matter with me?’ She cursed as she closed the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T08:19:17.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8000" CreationDate="2013-06-07T12:59:53.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just (politely) criticized (or rather cautioned) by another user on a related matter. Referencing Stephen King, I was informed &quot;The road to hell is paved with adjectives&quot;. Now, adjectives aren't your particular problem , but the idea is the same: you're telling, instead of showing. Your sample sentence sounds more like directions to a stage manager: it's giving them the information they need to construct the scene, but not in any way that is likely to engage them as a reader. I think a more interesting and engaging sentence would tend to relate the information you want to convey in terms of how it effects the characters. For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Out on the street, they struggled to make any progress against the throngs of pedestrians and motorists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this depends a lot on your story and on the particular circumstances of the scene but the general idea is simply that if &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; think the sentence sounds boring, you can often improve the situation by illustrating the &lt;em&gt;effects&lt;/em&gt; of something, rather than simply describing it's form (it's very existential, besides =).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More generally&lt;/strong&gt;, if you want to make your sentences &quot;more interesting&quot;, I would suggest developing a rich vocabulary and utilizing a thesaurus (but don't overdue it), learn the proper use of semicolons, and emdashes for parenthetical information (don't overdue either of these, either), and learn about different kinds of grammatical constructs. Subject-verb-object over and over and over will make your story very boring; I know your English teachers probably took points off for the passive voice, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it, and if you learn to use it correctly (and sparingly), it can make your writing less monotonous. See, for instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/passive-voice/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as books to read for examples, I would avoid any &quot;super market&quot; books (anything you're likely to find in the checkout lane at the super market), and most books with gold or silver text on the cover. These tend to be &quot;mass produced&quot; works where the author is: a) trying to get books out as quickly as possible in order to make money, and b) targeting as wide of an audience as possible, which generally means underestimating their interest in and ability to read &quot;more sophisticated&quot; prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, any author widely regarded as having literary significance will help you learn different ways of phrasing things, and more sophisticated constructs. I would also suggest a wide variety of authors with a variety of writing styles. As John Landsberg illustrates in his answer, James Joyce will certainly provide some examples of not-at-all-boring (if perhaps wildly challenging) writing, as will Jack Kerouac, to a lesser extent (particular any book he wrote while strung out, which I think was every book beyond &quot;The Town and the City&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final note, don't entirely discount simple writing, it all depends on your purpose. I would say, for example, that Kurt Vonnegut's typical writing style was quite simple, which contributes to his stories' typical tone of frank but non-judgmental observation. And yes, it does make them more accessible to a wider audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T12:59:53.977" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-06-07T12:59:53.977" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8082" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8098" CreationDate="2013-06-07T14:00:22.303" Score="23" ViewCount="10003" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, I'm starting to get a feel for this, but I'm hoping someone can explain it more clearly for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I learned in all my English classes that sensory imagery is important, which naturally involves a lot of adjectives and adverbs. I also learned that the writer should &quot;paint a picture&quot; for the reader, which to me means describing the setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is why do so many people (Mark Twain and Stephen King, for instance) express such loathing of adverbs and adjectives? Can you provide some good examples of when adjectives and adverbs are overused?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I've come up with for so far, but I'd like to get some input from more experienced writers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No amount of great adjectives or adverbs can fix bad writing or a dull story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; needs to be described in detail. Doing so:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can bog down the text and burden the reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;obfuscates what is actually important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unnecessarily restrains the readers own imagination and prevents them from making the scene personal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adjective-noun or adverb-verb can often be replaced by one better word that encapsulates it (e.g., &quot;ran quickly&quot; becomes &quot;dashed&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show, don't tell: the story is more engaging if you describe something indirectly by illustrating the effect it has, particularly on a character. For example: &quot;He entered the hot room&quot; becomes &quot;He entered the room and was struck by a wall of hot air&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastActivityDate="2018-12-31T05:11:07.487" Title="What's with all the hate on adjectives and adverbs?" Tags="|style|description|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8022" CreationDate="2013-06-07T14:42:38.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, shows like CSI, and authors like Dan Brown, clearly illustrate that you can be wildly successful &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; knowing anything about your subject (see note at the end for examples). But if your goal is to actually be a good author and produce a quality work, then I wouldn't follow either of their examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst thing that will happen is you'll get something blatantly wrong and thoroughly alienate any reader who happens to know enough about the subject to know that you're wrong. This is particularly problematic if the thing you get wrong is very basic information, because that means: a) more people will know you're wrong, and b) it will likely be that much more repulsive because of the relative ease with which you could have gotten it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you would take some time to get at least a cursory education in the field you're dealing with, and then also have an expert in the field as a consultant, or at least as a final reviewer to tell you whether or not you've produced something that will alienate them and others in their field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you don't have the resources for this, a very brief introduction to the field might still be possible, using online resources like wikipedia. This will at least give you some sense of what the field is about. But do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; use this brief introduction as a means to &quot;knowledge-drop&quot; buzzwords into your story that you don't actually understand. You may also be able to find a professor, or even a student, at a nearby university who can help you with a final review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say the most important thing is to not put in anything that could potentially be very wrong. If you're unsure, gloss over it, or leave it out altogether. If you don't know the difference between alpha waves and beta waves, then don't try to distinguish between them in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to go into more detail about the field, I think the only safe way to do it is to learn more about it. The more detail you want to use, the more you'll need to learn in order to make sure you're using it correctly. I think you'll benefit much more from a story which doesn't provide a lot of details on an obscure topic, then one which provides &lt;em&gt;incorrect&lt;/em&gt; details on an obscure topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal anecdotes about this, vis. CSI and Dan Brown&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first and last episode of CSI I ever watched stated that someone fell off a three story building and reached &quot;critical velocity&quot; of 9.8 meters per second per second. I was only in high school at the time, and I still knew enough physics to know that this didn't make any sense. It would take a much further fall to reach critical velocity, and velocity is measured in meters per second, not meters per second per second. The figure they were actually referencing is the acceleration due to gravity on the earth's surface. This bothered me so much I never watched the show again. What was particularly troublesome was that anybody in a high school physics class could have gotten this right, which illustrated both ignorance and laziness on the part of the writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You probably already know that Dan Brown has been widely discredited for including a plethora of false information in his books, despite claiming that he does a lot of research and that all of the facts in his books are true. The one that bothered me most was his novel &quot;Digital Fortress.&quot; I'm a computer engineer, and the book was so riddled with not only inaccuracies and errors, but things that just straight up didn't make sense, that I was thoroughly disgusted by the whole thing and haven't read any more of his books. Again, what was most bothersome were the things that anybody who had done even a little bit of computer programming (say for instance a middle schooler) would have caught as bogus. It just gives the reader a sense of &quot;what on earth made him think he could write this story when he clearly has absolutely know familiarity what so ever with the topic?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T14:42:38.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8061" CreationDate="2013-06-07T14:59:31.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a couple ways you can try to handle this. The bottom line, though, is that ebooks are reflowable content, unlike a print book or a PDF for instance, so you only have so much control over how the content actually appears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_print_pagebi.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;, which describes the &lt;code&gt;page-break-inside&lt;/code&gt; CSS property. If you set this to &lt;code&gt;avoid&lt;/code&gt; for your list, it instructs the reader that it should &lt;em&gt;try not&lt;/em&gt; to break this element across multiple pages, or in other words, it will try to keep it all on one page. The downside of course is that you may end up with a large vertical whitespace before the content if the reader decides it needs to move the entire thing onto the next page in order to fit it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can also potentially cause problems if your content really is too big for a page (which, remember, you don't know the size of for an ebook). Depending on the reader, it might break the content onto multiple pages if it has to (ideally it will do this), or it might truncate whatever content doesn't fit (which would suck).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also look at the &lt;code&gt;page-break-before&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;page-break-after&lt;/code&gt; which can help make things look better if they are moved entirely onto a different page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to try to reformat your list. For instance, I had a long list which I replaced with a table &lt;a href=&quot;http://sparrowpub.com/html-book/chapter0030.xhtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; in order to make it a &quot;double-wide&quot; list, so that it would only require about half as much vertical space, and more easily fit onto one page. In another instance (&lt;a href=&quot;http://sparrowpub.com/html-book/chapter0018.xhtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), I turned the list sideways (also with a table) so that it would fit better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T14:59:31.227" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8085" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8086" CreationDate="2013-06-07T15:43:25.783" Score="7" ViewCount="767" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if it is appropriate to include my email address on the title page of my short stories on Amazon Kindle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, is it wise to use one obtained from say Yahoo because it will not change even when I change my service provider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2013-06-07T18:14:18.707" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T18:14:18.707" Title="Should I include my email address in an ebook?" Tags="|self-publishing|kindle|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8085" CreationDate="2013-06-07T16:05:02.180" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm answering this as a technician, not as a writer: it's not wise to share your email anywhere in Internet, and I believe it's valid for ebooks also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say that because your email will become public and a lot of people - and scripts - you don't know will use it. That will make sure you will receive in your email SPAM, STRANGE MESSAGES, UNDESIRABLE CRITICISM, etc.. That's a reason for most websites not use emails anymore, preferring on line contact pages instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other - and safer - ways for people to contact you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you can create a free blog or a webpage, and people will be able to contact you from there without actually knowing your email; or a facebook page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes much more sense to add a webpage address to your ebook than your email, specially because a webpage can be expanded and changed later if you want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T16:05:02.180" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8082" CreationDate="2013-06-07T16:52:28.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing is tricky. As someone telling a story, you have to find the balance between describing something and moving the plot forward. If your description (be it an adjective, adverb, or even a couple of sentences of prose) adds to the information the reader needs to know, is a relevant detail, or gives a better image of what's going on, keep it in. If it detracts from the momentum of the story and delays the actually important parts, it shouldn't be in there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase you used &quot;show, don't tell&quot; is a good example of that need for balance. As the narrator, you're going to be writing two things: prose and speech. When you have a character talking, you're not generally going to have them come out and directly say something like &lt;code&gt;&quot;We lost the championships. I'm sad,&quot; said Henry&lt;/code&gt;. You'll more likely write &lt;code&gt;&quot;We lost the championships,&quot; said Henry sadly.&lt;/code&gt; Here, you'd rather show than tell. On the other hand, you don't need to show all the events that occurred in the team losing the championships. It might be enough to tell the reader that it happened. If it doesn't move along the plot, you'd rather tell than show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't put in enough description, you run the risk of having your reader not connect with the world or the characters. If you put in too much, you bog down the plot. When in doubt, you can always put in the description as you're writing and take it out later. It's harder though to leave it out in the beginning and realize you need it later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5303" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T16:52:28.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8035" CreationDate="2013-06-07T18:39:21.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this on the cover of some single short stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[title] A short story written by [name]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5321" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T18:39:21.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8090" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8091" CreationDate="2013-06-07T22:04:14.133" Score="15" ViewCount="3549" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a novel, and am approximately 45% of the way through (~37,500 words / 100 A5 pages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working full time, I am unable to finish my story within the next month, and I plan on completing it within the next three-to-five months.  During this time, however, I would like to make people aware of its existence and was toying with the idea of offering the first chapter for free (personally, I believe that the try-before-you-buy system is a wonderful marketing strategy, plus it will also ensure that people who are likely to enjoy your book will be the only ones buying it, thus potentially providing positive feedback).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I intend on publishing my novel myself in eBook format (.epub, .mobi, etc.) and was wondering which - if any - sites offer such a first-chapter-for-free service free of charge.  Ideally, I will be listing with Amazon, but I understand that an eBook can only be listed in full (i.e. I cannot list merely the first chapter on there free of charge as a pre-release sample).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions would be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastActivityDate="2018-12-18T16:12:30.050" Title="First Chapter for Free?" Tags="|self-publishing|ebook|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8090" CreationDate="2013-06-07T22:15:13.463" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would &lt;strong&gt;strongly&lt;/strong&gt; advice &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; offering a &quot;pre-release sample&quot;. Offering a first chapter or two for free to get your readers hooked before they have to pay is a nice touch in my opinion, but providing a portion of your novel before it is all &lt;em&gt;finished&lt;/em&gt; sounds risky. What if you realize by the 80% mark that something is horribly broken in the beginning and you need to go back to fix it? If you have offered the first chapter, you cannot really change anything in or about the first chapter, which often includes a number of character introductions and world basics. It seems to me to be a bad idea to limit your available options like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility, which has been pointed out in comments by both &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8090/first-chapter-for-free/8091?noredirect=1#comment14203_8091&quot;&gt;Monica Cellio&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8090/first-chapter-for-free/8091?noredirect=1#comment14213_8094&quot;&gt;Paul A. Clayton&lt;/a&gt;, is to write and publish a separate short story. It is more work than simply taking the first chapter of what you have written and dump that in peoples' laps, but it does give people a chance to see what your writing is actually like rather than risk being disappointed in only getting the very first portion, particularly if that is very little. If you do go that route, you should consider that short story an &quot;advertisement&quot; and make sure you do your very best with it, because people &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; going to judge your longer novel based on that short story if they read it. If the short story is bad, they will (right or wrong) conclude that you probably can't wing writing a novel any better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If/when you decide to publish a portion of your novel for free, there are a couple of options. One obvious one that I can see (and this said without knowing what Amazon's etc. ebook publishing agreements are like) is to publish the first chapter separately either on a page on the merchant's site or on a site of your own, and provide a link from the purchase page. You would probably need to work out the particulars with each merchant; have you contacted e.g. Amazon and asked if they have anything like what you are after? They are, after all, the ones most qualified to answer questions about their services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T09:19:02.557" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8092" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-08T02:41:47.397" Score="9" ViewCount="16985" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write tech articles for my blog and for a news outlet here in my country (mostly in French). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been doing this for years, but I've always thought that I was slow in readying my stories. I am not talking about the 'seek-and-collect' information phase, but the actual writing of the article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long should it take to &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; e.g. a 1000-word article? How can I increase my efficiency and productivity during the desk hours? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5292" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T17:46:21.740" LastActivityDate="2021-02-21T10:44:42.207" Title="How long does it take to write a 1000-word news article?" Tags="|journalism|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8092" CreationDate="2013-06-08T09:02:50.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to increase your efficiency and productivity is writing. I mean, you can read 1000 books on the matter and listen to 1000 advised but the only thing that will make you more productive is actually writing. Of course you will be able to sit and put some of that theory to work also, but is the practice that it matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, what I use to do is. Think in the manuscript during the day, while I'm not writing and, when I start to write, I cease to think in the manuscript and focus in transcribing what I already thought to the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another thing. For me, it works really great to have a specific time of the day to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-06-14T13:11:16.607" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T13:11:16.607" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8090" CreationDate="2013-06-08T10:08:41.790" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you publish the initial chapter, there's one thing you should make damn sure: That the readers are &lt;em&gt;guaranteed to know up front&lt;/em&gt; that they are reading only a part of the story. Nothing puts you down more than if you expect to get the full story, and then detect that it's only a part, and you have to pay for the rest. This is true even if the author didn't intentionally hide the fact, but just made it not obvious enough for you to notice it. At least that's how I react as a reader. If I know up front that it's a sample, then I'll start reading under that premise, and then might buy it if I like it. If I expect to get the full story, and notice the incompleteness only after getting to the (non-)end, I definitely do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; feel like buying it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest to write &lt;em&gt;at the very beginning of the actual ebook containing the free chapter&lt;/em&gt; that it is not the complete story. That way, you also cover deep links directly to the text (which may fail to mention that it's not the complete story). Note that this might include people coming from search engines (and you certainly don't want to alienate people discovering your work through search engines).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T10:08:41.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8092" CreationDate="2013-06-08T13:10:49.123" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your assumption about hours rather than days for the mechanical processes of writing (a feature article, for example) is probably correct. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have &quot;text entered&quot; 1000 words in a day more than once. The proviso is that the work has been built and rebuilt in my head over several days (possibly weeks) before I commit to the keyboard. On those occasions when the work flows, it is almost as though I am transcribing a tale being told to me. I am not &quot;writing&quot; for those few hours because all that work has been done before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are days when I sit down to turn out my 700-800 word masterpiece and never get past 200 because something that worked fine when running around in my head reveals dreadful flaws when viewed on the screen or page. Some authors of how-to books advise that when that happens you simply keep typing as planned and do the fixing later. I always think that I would like to do that, but when the issue arises I stop and tinker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in most aspects of writing, the short answer to your question is &quot;It depends on ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastEditorUserId="4332" LastEditDate="2013-06-16T03:11:35.297" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T03:11:35.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8096" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-08T14:11:31.460" Score="1" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;My book was published by Melrose Books, Ely, U.K., in 2008. It was not self-published/vanity published, though I did have to pay toward publication. It is only available online; but despite knowing the title and ISBN, even I have problems trying to find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I legally change the title, pen name, character and place names and send it to another publisher? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, since I own all copyrights, can I simply send the book unchanged to a different publisher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5231" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2013-06-10T22:17:22.533" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T05:06:49.113" Title="What republication rights do I have?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8082" CreationDate="2013-06-08T16:00:56.220" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Abuse of adjectives and adverbs is the hallmark sign of pulp writing, showing the author has a poor grasp of the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You usually use adjectives and adverbs when you try to make given noun or verb, respectively, more precise, more descriptive. This is fine when there is no better way to achieve this goal, but in a lot of cases, there is a better way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, think if your noun-adjective or verb-adverb pair can be replaced with a different noun or verb that achieves the same goal alone. Instead of finding precisely, pinpoint. Instead of moving quickly, dash. Instead of deep red, use crimson. Instead of hunting dog, pick hound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, think if the adjective or adverb adds anything, or if it's just redundant. Visit a wise sage to beg humbly for helpful advice in a quest to search for an ancient artifact to prevent catastrophic genocide? No, just no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then think if your adverb is any good. Don't make them up. Don't replace whole clauses and sentences with them. They are &lt;em&gt;cheap&lt;/em&gt;. Using them copiously makes your prose &lt;em&gt;cheap&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When to use them? When your alternative would be pretentious. There are strong nouns and verbs, that pinpoint given meaning, and there are pretentious ones, that replace common expressions adding very little to the meaning but sounding smart.&#xA;Really, &quot;She's incredibly beautiful&quot; is better than &quot;She's pulchritudinous&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="34326" LastEditDate="2018-12-31T05:11:07.487" LastActivityDate="2018-12-31T05:11:07.487" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8100" CreationDate="2013-06-08T16:47:40.403" Score="3" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three main ebook formats that I'm aware of, which look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PDF (you have full control over layout)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mobi (Amazon - fluid...not much control)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;epub (Nook, iBookstore...not much control)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe iBooks Author allows more control over formatting than epub and mobi but not as much as PDF?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smashwords seems to take a variety of formats that create specific files for each vendor you are distributing too.  It seems this would be the most risky approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amazon now has KF8 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;docId=1000729511&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;docId=1000729511&lt;/a&gt;).  Does anyone know what file that accepts?  It seems mobi is still ok (but mobi is not KF8)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently using Scrivener.  For those that are formatting CSS, how do you keep up with all of these formats?  Doesn't your ebook eventually break when a new device/format comes out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't it better to just use the semi WYSIWYG features of Scrivener (or whichever editor) and not tangle with the CSS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4608" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T19:22:14.707" Title="How do you keep up with all the ebook formats?" Tags="|formatting|self-publishing|ebook|scrivener|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8099" CreationDate="2013-06-08T16:59:49.087" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why are you using CSS anyway? I use Scrivener, and I use the inbuilt features to convert to ebook formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, there are only two ebook formats. Pdf is a terrible formats for eReaders, and I've never heard anyone using it as such. The two used by the biggest sellers (Amazon, B&amp;amp;N, Apple, Kobo etc):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mobi for Kindle. I don't know about Kf8, but Scrivener uses Amazon's tool(which is downloadable for free) to convert to Mobi , and I assume it can deal with the new formats.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;EPub for everyone else&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smashwords requires a Ms Word file, which is why I avoid them (as Word files are as bad as Pdf). Either go directly to the other sellers, or choose a distributor like Draft2Digital that directly accepts ePub.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2013-06-08T16:59:49.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8092" CreationDate="2013-06-09T02:48:25.017" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an ex-journalist my guideline is - just write it, two hours and done. Later try not to think too much about it, focus on the next story instead and come back. If you've got the time for it, review the text on the next day, correct the most obvious things and send it. Other way, if you spend too much time on it, you can pretty quickly get bored with writing at all, and you certainly don't want your job to be boring for you, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4784" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-06-14T06:46:26.497" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T06:46:26.497" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8102" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-09T08:13:58.427" Score="2" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following my question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8085/should-i-include-my-email-address-in-an-ebook&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, I am planning to establish a personal website. It will have basic personal details and synposis of my short stories. The overarching goal will be to use the website to promote my stories. i.e. the personal website will act as a marketing tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to publish my stories through Amazon. This is a self-publishing platform and to increase the visibility/sale of my stories, I want to list my personal website as the publisher of my book. &lt;strong&gt;Please note that I want to list my website as the publisher.&lt;/strong&gt; I know many writers simply list their websites with their stories but I want to list my personal website as the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Is it appropriate to list my personal website as the publisher of my stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T07:59:23.880" Title="Is it appropriate to list my website as the publisher of my stories?" Tags="|self-publishing|websites|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8099" CreationDate="2013-06-09T19:22:14.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;CSS is CSS: if an ebook format uses HTML/CSS, then that part &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be the same regardless of the ebook format itself. Of course, not every ebook format will necessarily use HTML or CSS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, a WYSIWYG editor which is actively maintained (in order to support any new formats that come out) will make your life very easy, &lt;em&gt;if it supports everything you need&lt;/em&gt;. You've implied that Scrivener isn't giving you the flexibility to format your lists the way you want, so using it isn't helpful in that regard. Using a markup language and a program to generate different output formats from it (like the one I mentioned in the other question) potentially has all the exact same problems. If it's not maintained, new formats will be inaccessible, and the markup language may not be flexible enough to do everything you want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So here's what I do&lt;/strong&gt;: Generate your output using your preferred method (markup language and converter program, or WYSIWYG editor), and then manually tweak your output for any &quot;picky&quot; things that you couldn't achieve with your editor or markup language. This is the point where I start manually editing HTML and CSS: my program generates the bulk of it from the markup, but I can then unpack the EPUB (for instance) and edit the files directly to get them exactly the way I want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For iterative development, I use &lt;code&gt;diff&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;patch&lt;/code&gt;. It's a little tricky, and I've ended up using &lt;code&gt;scons&lt;/code&gt; to create a whole build system for it, but the basic idea is: you generate your output, create a copy of it, edit the copy, then create a patch file by diffing the original and your modified. After you edit your story some more and want to generate the output again, and can apply your previous patch file again, instead of manually applying each change again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's by no means a simple solution, but there's generally a trade off between how much flexibility to want to be able to have, and how easy it will be to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T19:22:14.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8110" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8111" CreationDate="2013-06-10T07:49:31.013" Score="-4" ViewCount="2581" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following my question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8062/manipulating-standard-stock-photos-for-ebook-cover&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, I am wondering what are the pros and cons of using images/photos from websites that offer free stock photos. I am aware of &lt;a href=&quot;http://morguefile.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MorgueFiles&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal is to use the images/photos to create my ebook covers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to be able to manipulate the photos (e.g. recolour or use layers). The less restriction the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of paid sites such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thinkstockphotos.com.au/?countrycode=AUS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thinkstock&lt;/a&gt; but their licensing arrangements are beyond my budget. They offer 5 images for $120!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other reputable sites that offer free images/photos that can meet my needs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T10:56:15.450" Title="Free stock photos for ebook cover" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-06-12T03:40:38.883" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8110" CreationDate="2013-06-10T08:48:29.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deviantart.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.deviantart.com/&lt;/a&gt; is a great site were people can post images. It works also as a social network and there you will find amazing photos: some you can use for free, some you can use if you pay a fee. Try to check there. You will find also people who have stock accounts. The trick pay attention because some pictures are free to use, by CC license, some you also can use if you pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for your question, I have used free stock sites before since I am a web developer and what I could say it that I don't remember any reason why not to, as long as you pay attention if the image can be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T08:48:29.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8102" CreationDate="2013-06-10T17:05:20.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, you're the one &quot;publishing&quot; your book. Your website is where a reader could go to learn more about you, but unless you have your own site (not hosted by a service like Blogger or Wordpress), I would suspect that you probably don't want to list your website as your publisher. Of course, I will defer to anyone who has more experience in this area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5303" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T17:05:20.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3161" CreationDate="2013-06-10T18:51:56.900" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He folded his arms and sat up straight. &quot;And you suppose he had a different motive?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her eyes widened. &quot;Really?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also like to use this style in an ongoing conversation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You're telling me that I'm fired,&quot; Jeremy muttered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His brother, the current president of the company, shook his head. &quot;No I'm not.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Then why does it sound like it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm only suggesting that you improve the way you work around here.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm working just fine! I don't see you doing anything!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Then you're fired.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jeremy stood up and walked toward the doorway. &quot;I hated this job, anyway.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5321" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2013-06-10T20:51:56.380" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T20:51:56.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8114" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-10T19:22:17.967" Score="0" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I'm writing, I use this style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't see why I have to put up with this nonsense.&quot; I muttered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I see this type of writing in books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This room is full of idiots,&quot; he muttered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the style I use okay, or do I have to change it to the one I see in books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5321" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-02-27T20:09:48.537" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T20:09:48.537" Title="How to do dialogue?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8114" CreationDate="2013-06-10T19:28:38.097" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you end the quote with a period, that makes it a complete sentence. And that turns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I muttered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;into a second sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to indicate that he (or I) muttered the words between the quotation marks, then yes, you must end the quoted words with a comma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T19:28:38.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8114" CreationDate="2013-06-10T19:30:44.417" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dialogue has a bit of a different style. Here's some examples of correct dialogue grammar (with respect to punctuation at the end):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You're looking well this morning,&quot; said Tommy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm doing well,&quot; said Theresa, &quot;thank you kindly.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Katherine said, &quot;Let's have pasta for dinner.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;That sounds good,&quot; said Austin. &quot;Do you want to go to the place on Broad Street?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, the way you see dialogue written in books is correct and you should change the grammar of your dialogue to match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5303" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T19:30:44.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8117" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-10T20:44:39.237" Score="3" ViewCount="990" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a descriptive paragraph, at the beginning of a scene:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;INT. VICTIM’S BASEMENT - NIGHT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;------, a professional criminal, and serial killer, is hard at work in the basement of an unsuspecting victim. The clock can be seen to his left, it reads 3:00 AM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long should that description paragraph run? Can it be  8 to 10 lines in some cases? When should I switch to a new paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm totally new to this, and I'm just writing this for fun. This is my very first scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4518" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T09:34:41.153" Title="Screenwriting: Help with paragraph length." Tags="|screenwriting|scriptwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-11T01:46:59.030" Score="-1" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have a good plot suggestion for a children's fantasy? Maybe about a 13 year old girl in the 1500's. Anything will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4704" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T01:59:50.770" Title="Book Plot Sugestions" Tags="|plot|fantasy|ideas|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-06-11T02:21:26.710" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8118" CreationDate="2013-06-11T01:59:50.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I can suggest something, that would be a story about a young female who attends the medieval school of wizardry. She is forced to have very strict training and no friends in school, because teachers believe that one day, she will save the world and they don't want her to rely too much on others. Somehow, she fells in love with a boy, but later realizes that he is a vampire, and that her favorite teacher, who is secretly in love with her, is a werewolf too. Unfortunately, there are some bad wizards in the world, who take it over and start their totalitarian rules. Our hero has to take part (instead of her younger sister) in a deadly competition against other teens from the school, from which only one will survive. But in the grand finale, the army of animals comes to the rescue, with the great lion who becomes a new king of the magic kingdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love to read a story like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4784" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T01:59:50.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8117" CreationDate="2013-06-11T09:41:27.853" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let us clarify: Is it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a publishable sceneplay to be read by readers, the creative choice of that format for storytelling, the final product to be &amp;quot;consumed&amp;quot; by your audience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a tool for director to create actual play or a movie, a step, ingredient to obtain the final product which will be the actual play?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a significant difference between the two formats. The former must not bore the reader with descriptions, must not skimp on details, and still can contain flair and effects simply unobtainable in real play. The latter may ignore aesthetics and pacing of the descriptions in favor for factual adherence, skimp on non-essential details as to not stifle creativity of the scene designer, and must consider the scenes to be realistically playable within reasonable SFX budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, the answer is pretty much the same as for writing novels. Contain all that is needed to build the scene in imagination of the reader, make sure it's flavorful and not boring. Try to stick to moderate size, not too laconic and not too boringly long. You may leave some essential details for later too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second case, keep it short. Keep all non-essential details out of it, and all essential details in. Skimp on artistic forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular example, it seems you're aiming more towards the first form. The professional killer should have been introduced in depth in &amp;quot;Dramatis Personae&amp;quot; and only mentioned by title here. The placement of the clock should be non-essential. We are not informed about what the work is. These are details you should not hold back from the director, although you may keep them back from the reader. What you wrote works fine for screenplay-as-book, but not for screenplay-for-movie. If you want the latter, it should be more like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;INT. VICTIM’S BASEMENT - NIGHT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MURDERER is hard at work digging a grave in the patch of soil of the basement. The clock can be seen, reading 3:00 AM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character's been long established. The actor is informed what to do. Essential element of the scene (the clock) is established, but its location not enforced. Detail unrelated to the appearance of the scene (the victim is unsuspecting) is skipped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T07:35:35.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8121" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-11T13:48:58.413" Score="6" ViewCount="12448" Body="&lt;p&gt;In other words, is it correct to write something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh,&amp;quot; he laughed. &amp;quot;Sorry, I'm not sure what's with me today.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Every time I see something like this, I think: &amp;quot;How is this peson laughing an talking at the same time? But other times seems OK for me. Strange.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as an shorter version of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh,&amp;quot; he said with a laugh. &amp;quot;Sorry, I'm not sure what's with me today.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh,&amp;quot; he said laughing. &amp;quot;Sorry, I'm not sure what's with me today.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;OK,&amp;quot; she said with a sigh. &amp;quot;Just this time.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;OK,&amp;quot; she said, sighing. &amp;quot;Just this time.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;OK,&amp;quot; she sighed. &amp;quot;Just this time.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I've noticed by dialogues are cluttering with &amp;quot;withs&amp;quot; all of the sudden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T00:39:41.673" Title="Is it correct to use verbs like &quot;sighed&quot; and &quot;laughed&quot; as dialogue tags?" Tags="|creative-writing|dialogue|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8121" CreationDate="2013-06-11T14:14:31.417" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have a problem with them (they're called &lt;em&gt;bookisms,&lt;/em&gt; I believe) &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You don't overdo it.&lt;/strong&gt; It's tempting to make every dialogue tag something vivid or extra. Don't. D.W. Smith pointed out in a writing tutorial once that &quot;the word &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt; is invisible.&quot; It really is. Be judicious with bookisms. Think of them as salt: a little is good; too much ruins the dish.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You use them when they are necessary.&lt;/strong&gt; That is, you use &quot;sighed&quot; because it conveys extra meaning which would otherwise be lost, and which can't be conveyed another way. For example: &lt;code&gt;&quot;'I hate you,' she crooned.&quot;&lt;/code&gt; &lt;em&gt;Crooned&lt;/em&gt; means something very specific which is very difficult to describe using &lt;code&gt;she said with TKTKTK.&lt;/code&gt; (Credit Kate Sherwood)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other answers which will be useful to you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4751/attributives-in-dialogue/4753&quot;&gt;Attributives in dialogue&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3161/im-getting-tired-of-he-said-she-said-in-dialogue-how-do-i-get-around-it&quot;&gt;I&amp;#39;m getting tired of &amp;quot;he said&amp;quot; &amp;quot;she said&amp;quot; in dialogue; how do I get around it?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1861/dialog-just-whats-the-best-way-to-write-it/1870&quot;&gt;Dialog, just what&amp;#39;s the best way to write it?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T00:43:22.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8121" CreationDate="2013-06-11T14:16:53.400" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using words like laughed and sighed give more information about how the person is talking while using adverbs like laughing and sighing tell what the talker is doing while communicating. As a reader, I interpret sentences like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Ok,&amp;quot; she said, sighing. &amp;quot;Just this time.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Ok,&amp;quot; she said with a sigh. &amp;quot;Just this time.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Ok,&amp;quot; she sighed. &amp;quot;Just this time.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;differently. In the first one, the character seems to be saying &amp;quot;Ok,&amp;quot; sighing with a pause, and then saying &amp;quot;Just this time&amp;quot;. When she talks, it is separate from the sigh and her speaking voice is a normal tone. Similarly for the second example. For the third example though, the character isn't saying &amp;quot;Ok&amp;quot; in a normal speaking voice. She's being expressive with her tone and the sigh is part of what she's saying. It's like a groan or a yell - it's how the person says it vs. what they're doing while they say it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the laughing example, I always interpret it as the character is laughing and manages to get the words out in between or after the giggles. Definitely doable, definitely something that occurs in real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, it depends what you're trying to convey. Generally, you don't want to do it too much, but not doing it at all can potentially leave the dialogue flat and without inflection. Find the balance between describing how the character's talking, showing what they're doing while they're talking, and just letting them talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5303" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T14:27:22.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8124" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8127" CreationDate="2013-06-11T15:49:44.680" Score="2" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted the manuscript of my first, never yet published, novel to a big writing contest whose outcome will only be revealed in December, and may lead to a publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm unsure of what to do next: just wait, hire an agent, and/or submit the manuscript to other publishers as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If I submit the manuscript to other publishers before contest's end&lt;/strong&gt;, some of them might be interested in the book, what may be good for me, save time, and open doors, since I'll have to do it in the same way if I don't get anything in the end of the contest. The bad side is that, if I do win something, I'll have to say no if somebody else is interested.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If I hire an agent not knowing the outcome&lt;/strong&gt;, it also might be good if nothing comes out from the contest. On the other hand, if I get the book published because of the contest I'll have to share everything, including the prize.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you probably are much more experienced in publishing than I, in this context, what do you think it will be better: just wait, submit the book to other publishers, and/or hire an agent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T16:36:02.640" Title="Wait for the results of writing contest or try other means" Tags="|publishing|agent|publisher|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8125" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-06-11T15:55:30.707" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-06-11T15:55:30.707" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T15:55:30.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8126" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-06-11T15:55:30.707" Score="0" Body="Publisher is the person responsible for the act of publishing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag is meant to be used with the specifics of publisher tasks, questions, and best practices, while the publishing tag is related to the publishing process itself." OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-06-11T16:15:03.733" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T16:15:03.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8124" CreationDate="2013-06-11T16:36:02.640" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: you can't just &quot;hire&quot; a reputable agent. The only agents that allow you to buy representation outright are effectively running a scam to defraud new writers of their money, and you &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;should not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; go to any of them. Instead, you query agents and tell them about your novel, and if they're interested they will offer you representation. The process of querying agents takes about as long and has about as much chance of success as the process of submitting to publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you wait until the contest results are in before you start querying agents or publishers. Most novel contests that have publication as a prize include terms that preclude you from selling or marketing the novel anywhere else, which means that if you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; win you'll be in a very awkward position with any publishers or agents who have shown interest, with possible legal repercussions. Wait until the contest is over, then shop around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that basically all agents and publishers allow for &quot;simultaneous submissions&quot;, meaning that you can send your initial query and submission materials to as many agents/publishers as you'd like at the same time. If one of them is interested, they'll then ask for a period of exclusivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T16:36:02.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6633" CreationDate="2013-06-11T19:58:00.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It depends on the context.&lt;/strong&gt;  In the example in this question, cars are being presented as &lt;em&gt;connected to&lt;/em&gt; buses somehow, so it makes sense to have this kind of segue.  However, in a chapter with a bunch of stand-alone sections, it doesn't.  If the same chapter is talking about buses, cars, trains, planes, and the Enterprise's transporter, and you aren't laying out connections among all of these, a reader would not expect to see you talking about these outside of their own sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It depends on the format.&lt;/strong&gt;  In a dissertation your readers are likely to be reading text from beginning to end (maybe skipping parts).  If, instead, your work is likely to be broken up into chunks -- individual web pages, blocks of context-sensititve help in an application, or the like -- then you cannot rely on any reader context beyond the current section.  The &quot;cars&quot; section needs to either stand on its own or have an explicit cross-reference to the &quot;buses&quot; section, and vice-versa.  It is important to consider how your reader will use your document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I realize that the question asks about a dissertation, but it is also tagged technical-writing, which has broader considerations.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T19:58:00.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8130" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8148" CreationDate="2013-06-11T20:05:59.650" Score="6" ViewCount="2416" Body="&lt;p&gt;One problem I often run into when trying to make a general outline of the plot for a story is how specific I am in the descriptions of events. Generally, this happens when I have written a portion of the story already, meaning that I know what happens in and around that part of the story. When I decide to actually outline the plot for the entire story, I start out very general at first, but get more and more specific as I get closer to the part that I've written. This obviously leads to having numerous bullet points with very specific information on events that are very close together (short gap between points), while there are other bullet points that are very general and open for expansion (larger gap between points).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a level of detail that I should try to keep the outline at? How detailed/simple should each bullet point be? My goal is to write a plot outline such that I can look at it and have a general idea of how long it is just by the number of items in the outline. Another goal could be considered to be ensuring that one plot point is not significantly more important or detailed than another. Is there any general method for doing such a thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4839" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T01:43:34.960" Title="How specific should I be when outlining the plot?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|plot|planning|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6435" CreationDate="2013-06-11T20:13:51.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Lauren &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/6436/1993&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt;, the outline is a tool for your use, not a deliverable in its own right, so if you deviate from it, that's ok.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked how to track these dependencies in an outline.  A technique I have used is to &lt;em&gt;diagram&lt;/em&gt; my outline, using arrows to point from an entry to each one that it depends on.  (This helps identify circular dependencies, too.)  This diagram can be with a pen (I recommend a whiteboard for easy modification), or in a diagramming tool such as Visio, or -- this is low-tech but it works in some settings (see below) -- sticky notes on a wall with string between them (knot one end of the string to stand in as an arrowhead).  With any of these, you can update as you go along, so when you discover a new dependency you can add it in.  If you need to move &quot;nodes&quot; around, that's easy with a diagramming tool or the sticky notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually use the whiteboard approach and sometimes the online diagram.  The sticky-note approach is useful in meetings early in the development of a project, where lots of people need to have input and we don't really know where the dependencies are yet, but it's more cumbersome once the problem is better understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T20:13:51.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8132" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8139" CreationDate="2013-06-11T20:14:39.760" Score="1" ViewCount="802" Body="&lt;p&gt;When striving for gender balance in a play: What is more important, balance among the characters or among the actors? (Given that all characters are written as individuals, and not as stereotypes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Background (if needed):&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a question that came up when deciding characters for a student project. We are writing a play and after the writing is finished we cast who plays what character (The actors are not chosen among the writers, but from a larger pool of students.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In previous years, the characters have been 50% of each gender or off by one (if there were an uneven number of characters), but with little or no consideration given to gender when casting. (Meaning that, every year, there are some actors who play a character of the opposite gender, depending on what character is most suitable for that actor.) Since there are closer to 75% males at school, the gender balance of the actors have never been even.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This year a theme was proposed that gave little room to female characters to exist or have a substantial role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the writers argued that this was a bad thing when striving for gender balance, since females would be underrepresented or in the background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others in the group argued that it was the actors' gender that mattered, and that raising the question about the characters gender was a step back for gender equality since we would make gender an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Update (one year later)&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We decided to do the theme with few female characters and here are some observations, in case someone has a similar situation in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pros&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Several that have been part of the project over several years had longed for this theme. They (and others) got exited and had fun with the theme.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cons&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not everyone that only wanted to play a female character could because of the lack of these. We told them this and some of the actors changed their choice to 'indifferent'. In the end only one actor that really wanted to play female couldn't but he states that he is happy anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We got some negative feedback that can be summed up as degrees of &amp;quot;all student theatre projects [at this school] are sexist&amp;quot;. (We are the only project of this kind that allows both female and male participants, the others are only male or only female, not sure what they would do if a non-binary person applied.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sidenote: Some also was disappointed that we had only characters with binary gender and hetro sexuality (we have had a few characters previous years with non-binary gender or non-hetro sexuality). This was also a direct result of the theme. It was not raised in the question here though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Neutral&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This years new students (the ones that saw the play spoken of and decided whether or not to apply to this years play) was about the same number as previous years, and the gender ratio is about same as well. I hope this mean no one was deterred to apply because of last years female-light theme.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5344" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-11-04T15:24:07.813" Title="When developing a stage play, whose gender matters more? The characters' or the actors'?" Tags="|character-development|planning|gender|playwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8132" CreationDate="2013-06-11T21:14:14.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you already answered your question: &lt;strong&gt;among the actors&lt;/strong&gt;. If not, why would gender balance be important in the play at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No play or book should limited by the sex of the characters, being just a fictional work. Sometimes that may count due to some specific theme the author wants to create but, apart from that, it shouldn't matter at all. You are asking that question exactly because you want to be have a proportional quota for each sex of your fellow students - aka human beings, aka actors - not among the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your concern is the people, not the characters and, as you already said, you don't care if an actor plays the role of a female character and vice-versa. Just let the best actors - male or female - play the roles that fit better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="13407" LastEditDate="2018-11-04T15:24:07.813" LastActivityDate="2018-11-04T15:24:07.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8130" CreationDate="2013-06-11T21:24:54.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't like the outline too detailed because grows too much and becomes confusing, so I keep it simple and generic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally I create one entry for each different scene. I deeply rely on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dokuwiki&lt;/a&gt; and have my outline page linked directly linked to other pages where I can add a much deeper level of details. Outline clean and concise, linked pages well detailed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing that way, I can see a small outline and yet have access to all details I need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T21:24:54.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8130" CreationDate="2013-06-11T22:07:23.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's tempting to include all this information that you &lt;em&gt;already know&lt;/em&gt;, so what's the harm?  The harm, as you indicate in your question, is that the outline no longer serves as a good gauge of your progress through the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the purpose of the outline?  If your publisher requires it then follow your publisher's guidelines -- but, probably, the outline is for &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;.  You should therefore include the amount of detail that &lt;em&gt;meets your needs&lt;/em&gt;.  Since you want a consistent level of detail, this means either adding a lot more detail for the parts you haven't written yet or cutting detail out of the outline for the parts you have written.  (It's already in your book/story, so it's not lost.)  The latter sounds easier to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you are tempted to include the detail because you need to keep track of key events, character moments, and so on.  That's important too, but consider using a different tool for that -- a timeline, a map, a collection of notes sorted by topic/character/place/artifact, or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My field is technical writing, not fiction, so I don't need to keep track of characters and plot elements -- but I do need to keep track of code snippets that I've used as examples, interactions among different parts of the system, and the introduction of key concepts.  I use notes, lists on whiteboards, and sometimes a task-tracking system to keep track of all this.  The outline, on the other hand, remains a glorified table of contents, helping me to keep track of the book organization as a whole without getting bogged down in details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T22:07:23.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8038" CreationDate="2013-06-12T06:51:11.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't the only way to do what you want and the other answers are good, but I felt another perspective might be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magic and Science are really just two ways of comprehending our world that come primarily from different levels of consciousness. (Explaining that in detail would take many pages, but it's been carefully done.*)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the &quot;real&quot; world, you have scientists and engineers (and certainly gymnasts!) doing things that look quite impossible. On the other hand, you have yogis and other mystics who can do many things that defy scientific explanation. Both are coexisting here now, not just in imaginary worlds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with putting the two together is that to do it well requires being able to form and hold a world view that subsumes both. Most people haven't done that and it's hard to write about what you don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two of my favorite shows got it dead on. Star Trek TNG had tons of advanced magic/metaphysics in it - most thinly disguised as science - and Babylon 5 had technomages alongside clearly &quot;spiritual&quot; beings like the Vorlons, Shadows, and the First One.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm saying, in essence, is that it's not primarily a &quot;writing&quot; problem, but more of an issue of expanding the consciousness of the writer. The only way I know of to do that is using meditation or other techniques that allow you to directly experience things beyond our normal 3-dimensional reality. Most of what's really out there is a lot stranger and more wonderful than anything someone can just make up!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your work is based on that, then it will ring true with your readers (at least subconsciously) and will have a much greater effect on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The explanation I'm familiar with was by Bill Harris (if I can find a link, I'll add it here) several years ago in his Mind Chatter magazine (now blog).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure where to find it now and I don't want to just add a link to his site because there's too much there to sift through and it might look like an ad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T06:51:11.050" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8132" CreationDate="2013-06-12T08:25:39.920" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously, both female participation and female representation are important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Female participation is more &lt;strong&gt;immediately&lt;/strong&gt; important, because you're dealing with your actual students, and it's crucial that the girls be able to participate just as much as the boys. That being said, this isn't a one-or-the-other case - quite the opposite, since the &lt;em&gt;easiest&lt;/em&gt; way of letting the girls participate is to have roles for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Gender Balance IS An Issue&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You write: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Others in the group argued that it was the actors gender that matter and that raising the question about the characters gender was a step back for gender equality since we would make gender an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an ongoing argument, and this isn't the place to rule definitively one way or another - but this point needs some attention. &lt;strong&gt;Gender representation is very much an ongoing issue,&lt;/strong&gt; and many people care about it deeply. It is disingenuous to claim that since &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; people don't see a problem, then the people who &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; should be disregarded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In theater, it is still the case that there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/dec/10/women-in-theatre-glass-ceiling&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fewer and more limited roles for women than for men&lt;/a&gt;. In popular media in general, women are often portrayed with less richness and variety than men are. There is a common perception that the &quot;default&quot; character is male, and women are a specific exception - less common, and almost always placed in one of a few stereotypical roles. Many people see this as extremely problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bechdel Test&lt;/a&gt; captures this disparity by pointing out how rare it is to see a portrayal of two women having a discussion concerning &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; interests, not centered around men. The interest here is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; in whether one specific movie, story, or play &quot;passes&quot; or &quot;fails&quot; the test - a piece can be terrific and even feminist without &quot;passing&quot; the Bechdel Test, and a piece can &quot;pass&quot; and still be overwhelmingly mysoginistic. The value is in the aggregate - the realization that these seemingly trivial requirements are very rarely met. And to a large extent, this happens because many, many creators make the choice to go with their &quot;default&quot; preferences without examining them for gender balance, and because those &quot;default&quot; preferences happen to marginalize women (because that's kinda what we're used to). That is &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; the situation you're describing here - your group defaulted to a male-centric show, and some actively object to straying from that default. It's not &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt;, but when &lt;em&gt;everybody&lt;/em&gt; does that, the result is problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;...but is it &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; issue?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, the fact that some people favor proactive gender-balancing doesn't mean that your school and your play are necessarily obligated to that battle. If, in general, all the individual participants are cool with the show you're planning, then you're no more obligated to champion gender balance in your production than you are to take a firm stance on the Middle East. If your choice is between a terrific show that everybody's happy with, but happens to be male-centric, and a desperate search for something more &quot;politically correct&quot; - the first choice is perfectly legitimate. Again, there's nothing &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; with portraying male characters - the problem is the &lt;em&gt;lack&lt;/em&gt; of portrayal of female characters. You could even commit to doing a female-centric show &lt;em&gt;next&lt;/em&gt; year - that'd be a different type of balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Bottom Line&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my mind, the two primary points are these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is a student production. The &lt;em&gt;students&lt;/em&gt; should enjoy it.&lt;/strong&gt; Both the boys and the girls - which means, at very least, the girls shouldn't be barred from getting good roles just because they're female. It &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; implies that if you feel many actresses would be uncomfortable playing men, than that might be a good reason to avoid this kind of play. (In my experience in community theater, some are fine with it, some aren't. A lot of girls feel like they're being cast in a role that &quot;wasn't meant for them,&quot; which can feel a little second-rate. On the other hand, some really enjoy having a wider scope of casting opportunities and more varied roles to play. Often the same actress will appreciate both points.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of gender balance in the play's characters is a legitimate criticism.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a real issue and many people care deeply about it. It is wrong to dismiss the criticism as irrelevant or incorrect - it is legitimate, and worth taking into account. That being said, it's one point of criticism among many - there's no reason to give it veto power unless it's &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; important to the actual participants. &quot;This play doesn't have major female characters&quot; is no more nor less a problem than &quot;This play is too long,&quot; &quot;This play is out of our budget,&quot; &quot;This play plays mental illness for laughs,&quot; &quot;This play is too hard for our actors,&quot; etc. etc. It's a perfectly valid concern; presumably, every option you're looking at has valid concerns. Take it under consideration, weigh it fairly against other issues on hand, and do what you can to address the concern. No more, no less.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since at the moment you're still at the very beginning of planning and writing, and since the topic has obviously come up as significant for at least some participants, I think it would be appropriate to devote a little bit of effort to come up with alternate proposals that &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; have the gender-balance problem. Since this isn't an either/or decision, and it's perfectly possible to find a play that has female actresses &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; characters, I would look for that first. At very least, you'll have options to compare instead of one proposal to approve or reject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T08:25:39.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8130" CreationDate="2013-06-12T10:23:50.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem is that you're trying to use one tool for two opposing tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're using an outline as a guide for writing &lt;em&gt;(what happens next&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want to use your outline to gauge the size of your work &lt;em&gt;(what has already happened)&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't gauge the size of your work by reading the actual text, then my suggestion is to keep two outlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &lt;strong&gt;writing&lt;/strong&gt; outline is the one you use to create the book. This is a working document, and it can have as many or as few bullet points as you need. This is the one which has breathing room for pantsing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Friday night: John goes to the pub. Thinks about his life and decides&#xA;it doesn't suck.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &lt;strong&gt;reading&lt;/strong&gt; outline is the one you use to measure your progress. &lt;em&gt;After&lt;/em&gt; you finish writing for the day, or maybe at the beginning of a session as a refresher to get you back in the groove, you turn your text into bullet points outlining what you wrote. This document is descriptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Friday night: John goes to the pub. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gets his usual.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sits in usual chair, watches regular crowd shuffle in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Starts thinking about the rut he's in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Considers whether he needs a new job. Rejects idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Considers whether he needs a girlfriend. Rejects idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Startled by Greg joining him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greg starts telling John about his day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John concludes his life is not so bad.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once your descriptive outline is finished, you can see quickly whether your scenes are balanced to your satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T10:23:50.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8141" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-12T13:39:09.103" Score="3" ViewCount="33567" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a report on our project in school, and we were discussing what would be the best place for the page numbers. It seems obvious, at least to us, that the page numbers should be right-aligned because the report is printed single sided. But should we put the page numbers at the top, or at the bottom of the page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5346" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2013-06-12T16:14:22.067" LastActivityDate="2018-04-04T18:33:18.033" Title="What is the correct location for page numbers in a report?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8141" CreationDate="2013-06-12T15:32:10.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it depends on the format your school uses. If it's MLA at least, you want your page numbers at the top right hand corner. Your last name should be in front of the page number though for MLA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5303" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T15:32:10.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8141" CreationDate="2013-06-12T16:14:38.033" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the absence of a particular style guide&lt;/strong&gt;, I would put the page numbers on the top of the page, &lt;em&gt;toward the outer side&lt;/em&gt;. When printing single-sided, this means put them in the top right corner. When printing double-sided, this means put them in the top right corner on &lt;em&gt;odd&lt;/em&gt; numbered pages, and top left corner on &lt;em&gt;even&lt;/em&gt; numbered pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Putting the page number at the top puts it in a spot where people will quite naturally look.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Putting the page number on the outside makes it easy to quickly flip to a specific page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the report is short, the second point in particular might not make much of a difference (it is not clear from your question what level of education you are in). But even then, it isn't going to hurt your grade if the page number is easy to find and the teacher happens to drop the printed copy of your report on the floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As pointed out in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8143/2533&quot;&gt;@jschabs' answer&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;if your school has an officially sanctioned style guide&lt;/strong&gt;, you should refer to it for guidance on where on the page to put particular pieces of information, as well as what to include. In that case, your school might also provide ready-made templates, which would make the question moot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T16:25:54.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8130" CreationDate="2013-06-12T19:43:00.423" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My approach to outlining: For each scene, write the minimum that reminds me what I want to accomplish with the scene.  For me, the minimum is something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The POV character.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the POV character is trying to accomplish in this scene.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The conflict (who or what stands in the way).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The outcome of the conflict (yes, no, yes but..., no and furthermore...).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's usually enough to get me writing the scene.  If there are other things I want to make sure to include (a clue, a revelation, a relationship event, a description of something in the setting), I'll note those, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stop with the bare minimum.  That gives me the energy I need to get into the scene, and plenty of freedom and opportunity for discovery as I write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though I don't worry about length before I write, this can give a sense of the length of the story.  My scenes tend to fall between 800 and 2000 words (2000 words is a long scene for me).  I figure 1500 words on average.  So if I have 10 scenes, that's about 15,000 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can often get a feeling for whether a scene will be shorter or longer because of the nature of the conflict--how the POV character will try to accomplish the scene goal, and how the conflicting characters will interfere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your bullet points represent scenes, and you know how long your scenes typically run, that can give you a ballpark estimate of the total length of the story.  If your bullets represent something smaller (e.g. beats or interactions within a scene) or larger (e.g. chapters or sequences), you'll have to adjust, based on your experience of how big those chunks typically turn out for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may need less information, or more information, or different information.  My recommendation is to &lt;strong&gt;experiment, practice, vary your outlining&lt;/strong&gt; from story to story or scene to scene to discover what helps you and what hinders you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try adding a few more details in your outline, and notice how that affects what you write, and your eagerness to write, and your satisfaction with what you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try putting fewer details in your outline, and notice what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try outlining only a scene or two ahead of the scene you're currently writing.  Try outlining many scenes ahead of your current scene.  Try outlining only &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you write the scene, to capture those things that you'll want quick access to when you write later scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other ways can you think of to vary the way you outline?  Pick one or two variables and experiment with them.  Keep experimenting until you discover what works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And experiment now and again, because your needs will change over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2013-06-12T19:49:41.247" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T19:49:41.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8130" CreationDate="2013-06-12T22:57:06.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something I've heard, though yet to try, is to write outlines at at three levels of detail, then finally writing the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First write the outline completely free from all character view point, write it as general as possible, cover all of the main points from the beginning to the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next write a second more detailed outline, this time taking into consideration characters view points. In fact, write parts of the outline from their perspective as if they are writing it for the sections which involve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next write the third outline, take into consideration the previous two outlines, and add in any of the details which you missed previously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then sit down and write the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2559" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T22:57:06.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8151" CreationDate="2013-06-12T22:57:42.130" Score="6" ViewCount="318" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any such thing as copyrighting a title?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A title of a novel / short story is usually short, up to five words or so. The words are chosen after much thought to reflect the contents of work. They are often common (everyday) words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A typical example is a romance novel which may have a title such as &quot;The man who stole my heart&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand there may be copyright protection for unusual titles but my question relates to use of common, everyday words in the title, as I have come across many books with the same or similar titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-06-13T16:48:09.833" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T11:56:21.707" Title="Can a title be copyrighted?" Tags="|publishing|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8150" CreationDate="2013-06-13T00:39:54.597" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I Am Not A  Lawyer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the United States, according to the U.S. Copyright Office, copyright protection is not available for &quot;names, titles or short phrases&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ34.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt; (PDF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are a few things you should take note of if you're concerned about accidentally using the same title as another work. For one, brand names, slogans and phrases &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be trademarked (which offers similar protections to copyright), so they should probably be avoided. For another, having the same or similar title as another book can make your book not only hard to find, but unoriginal too. Another thing to keep in mind is having a book with a similar title and similar content can open you up to the possibility of a lawsuit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3496" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2013-06-13T13:08:33.897" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T13:08:33.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8012" CreationDate="2013-06-13T05:56:51.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When saving a file from Word as HTML, Word acts as a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editor. From personal experience, the HTML produced by the program is passable and effective, though inelegant and usually not the absolute best it could be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only impact this has, the vast majority of the time, is that the file-size is the tiniest bit bigger than it could be - it's not really a big deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have tested the file in your browser and on an e-reader and it looks ok, then you aren't &quot;missing&quot; anything integral to having a functional e-book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5353" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T05:56:51.430" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8153" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8155" CreationDate="2013-06-13T08:23:45.267" Score="7" ViewCount="381" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story, and nowhere in it I explicitly mention the country in which it is taking place. The only time I mention something about the country is when I refer to a historical event that happened there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The country has nothing to do with the story. It's just that I have the habit to set all of my stories in the country/city I live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will this annoy the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T11:15:08.960" Title="Is it better to make clear immediately in which country/continent the story is taking place?" Tags="|creative-writing|setting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8153" CreationDate="2013-06-13T08:36:44.437" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the location isn't relevant to the story then there's no need to mention it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a fantasy, mentioning the location may help add to the colour and depth of the world, but it's still not vital. I very rarely state where a story is set. In a short story you want to keep the reader's focus on the story, and if the location adds nothing then it will only get in the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An no, it won't annoy the reader :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally I'd add some links and references but this is very subjective. I know I don't worry about it when I write, and it doesn't bother me when I read. I think that location is only important when it defines the culture of its people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T08:36:44.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8153" CreationDate="2013-06-13T11:15:08.960" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Either don't mention it at all or mention it fairly early. The reader is capable of building a decent image of the location in their mind and it's fine both for real locations and (even easier) for imaginary/undefined ones. That doesn't really matter. What matters is not to force them to break it down. It's extremely frustrating for a reader to build an imaginary location of imaginary land in their mind and then have it utterly shattered by the author revealing a common piece of knowledge conflicting with that image later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure if the revelation is the essential secret, it might be interesting; there are stories that tell a sequence of events creating a very simple, straightforward and obvious point of view, and then flip everything upside down by one simple revelation at the end where suddenly you realize the protagonist was one of the monsters, or that the story is not about horrible events from times long past but contemporary and about real events that take place now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the revelation is not ground-breaking but significant, for example suddenly solidifying the world from &quot;abstract European country&quot; to &quot;Italy&quot; when the reader made up a decent image of the location, not quite conforming to the image of Italy, that's a very unpleasant experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6530/is-the-ambiguity-in-my-story-the-salt-which-makes-it-tasty-or-just-plain-frustra&quot;&gt;Is the ambiguity in my story the salt which makes it tasty or just plain frustrating?&lt;/a&gt; - see my answer to that question too; in essence that story is very frustrating by dripping new facts all along, making us reshape whatever image we've built over and over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T11:15:08.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8012" CreationDate="2013-06-13T16:48:50.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Word brings a lot of trash along, when converted to HTML. By trash, I mean unnecessary formating tags and styles that can mess your content if you decide to change it in the future. I won't give much more details but MS Word was design to create Doc files, not HTML. If you need something else than Doc files, Word is probably not for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTML is extremely easy for basic documents like a 3 pages text, but it has its learning curve. Besides, HTML will split content from formatting, and that means that you will probably need to learn a few more things to do small funky things like add extra space after a paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, it's not hard. Anybody can learn basic HTML without any problems but it has its learning curve. Of course, HTML was not exactly designed to book writing so I don't think you will enjoy to write using HTML without a visual editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I suggest is: use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Markdown&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/installing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pandoc&lt;/a&gt; if you really intent to write ebooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Markdown is extremely simple. I'm using it right now to write this answer and it was designed to create a text that could be read almost in the same way by a render software and by a human. Also, it's plain text what means that can be edited in any text editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Pandoc, you will be able to compile (aka export) your markdown file into almost anything you want: DOC, HTML, PDF, LATEX,... And the code Pandoc generate is way cleaner than MS Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you asked if there was anything you are not doing in terms of formatting my document in HTML, and the answer is: there's so many trash in a HTML document generated from MS Word that it would be hard to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to write eBooks, use proper eBooks tools. MS Word is a wonderful software, I just don't think it's the right tool to create web content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T16:48:50.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8092" CreationDate="2013-06-14T01:26:12.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write news stories about technology. This means that I have to be as quick as I can when reporting news. It's not very easy to keep up with such a pace and over the years I learned some 'tricks' on how to improve my efficiency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A big part of this process is eliminating the distraction. So, when I sit to write, I close all the unnecessary tabs, especially those of GMail, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. I use a simple and minimal online text-editor called &lt;a href=&quot;https://draftin.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Draft&lt;/a&gt; to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found out that, the quicker I finish a piece, the better it is. If It takes me more than 2 - 3 hours to write a 1000-word story, for example, I would know that it will be rubbish. Because I just start to rewrite every phrase three or four times, trying to make it 'perfect'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I started setting deadlines (I use this &lt;a href=&quot;https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/task-timer/aomfjmibjhhfdenfkpaodhnlhkolngif?utm_source=chrome-ntp-icon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Task Timer&lt;/a&gt; for Google Chrome. Not very fancy but it's all I need), which helped improve both my efficiency and the quality of my articles. Thinking fast about the 'what to say' instead of wasting a lot of time on 'how to say it' made my stories better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Style DOES matter, but I always remind myself that I am not a poet and that the people who are reading my stuff are looking for information not for art. In this case, a good writing style has one mission : keep the readers reading the article and and make simple to understand. As the Facebook motto says : it's better done than perfect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5292" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-06-14T06:01:02.443" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T06:01:02.443" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8160" CreationDate="2013-06-14T03:40:41.073" Score="10" ViewCount="681" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, I wrote a short story that used specific information from my cultural background e.g. a belief that if you dream something, it is a form of a vision (superstition, some may say!). This was an asset because my target audience then was mostly people from my cultural background.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to update the story now and publish it to a wider audience who obviously are not aware of the cultural significance of the information. The cultural information hold the plot of the story so it cannot be simply discarded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Are there techniques that I can use to make any story sound less culture-specific?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Perhaps the alternative question is&lt;/strong&gt;: How do you blend cultural information in a story so that it can also appeal to a wider audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T13:58:14.687" Title="Techniques to write for a wider audience" Tags="|style|publishing|creative-writing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8159" CreationDate="2013-06-14T07:04:49.953" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a similar problem with my book, since it was aimed mainly for Portuguese speakers but the two main Portuguese speaking countries - &lt;em&gt;Brazil and Portugal&lt;/em&gt; - have really different cultural scenes and even the language is somewhat different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, I had to use footnotes and explain outside of the narrative what somethings were. At other points, my characters spoke in the book about the cultural thing that needed to be explained. I don't see how you can escape from those two approaches if you want to make your &quot;&lt;em&gt;localized&lt;/em&gt;&quot; book accessible to people who are not familiar with you culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quentin Tarantino has a wonderful example of how to do it in &lt;em&gt;Pulp Fiction&lt;/em&gt; in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/uYSt8K8VP6k&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;famous Quarter Pounder with cheese scene&lt;/a&gt;. He uses some hilarious European details and toys with them under the optic of an American; in the end, the viewer understands the differences perfectly with amusement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the characters use those localized cultural details in the book is better; but sometimes that is not possible. In such cases you might try my approach: use footnotes to explain the less important ones and characters to explain the more important ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2013-06-14T13:58:14.687" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T13:58:14.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8159" CreationDate="2013-06-14T07:54:06.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to appeal to an universal audience, you should talk about universal problems. You can use footnotes and very detailed descriptions but if the readers don't relate to them (because they don't identify with your culture) then it's probable that they won't find any appeal in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your case, I think the concept of dreams as premonitions is an universal thought. You can find the concept spread across various cultures. So I don't see any problem in it. All cultures have their own traditions but if you analyze them keenly you will find similarities among them. Exploit the similarities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A personal example: I'm writing a novel about the soul. If I had chosen to focus it on the Christian view, it would had been more or less culture-specific. But I chose to just talk about the soul in an universal way (e.g. Does the soul really exist or it's just an human invention?). So, I hope, it will appeal (or annoy) the majority of cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also add the various perspectives to the story. Or the opposition to your statement (e.g. if dreams are more real than we think, why is that Atheists don't usually dream about God whereas Christians do most of the time? As Philip K. Dick said, &quot;reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, many people like to delve in other cultures, but that takes an special interest. And you can't predict that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-06-14T10:24:54.020" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T10:24:54.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8159" CreationDate="2013-06-14T08:45:58.327" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If these are insignificant details, footnotes or mentions by characters are okay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these are more central to the story but not likely to be widely known, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/7538/4291&quot;&gt;cabbagehead&lt;/a&gt; may ask for detailed information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's central to the story, the culture and all characters, something quite a bit too common for a cabbagehead to ask, or too broad to answer, write a prologue about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jlryan.deviantart.com/art/Fallout-Equestria-eReader-Official-298931230&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fallout:Equestria&lt;/a&gt; prologue &quot;Of PipBucks and Cutie Marks,&quot; containing the sacramental sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So yes, PipBucks really are a testament to unicorn pony arcane&#xA;  science. And yes, having a PipBuck is a big advantage. So with how&#xA;  wonderful and miraculous all that just sounded, it’s hard to impress&#xA;  upon ponies who never lived in a Stable just how ordinary, how&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;pedestrian&lt;/em&gt; a PipBuck was in the eyes of the ponies living in Stable&#xA;  Two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be absolutely stupid to seek a cabbagehead who needed this explained. That was far too common, too &lt;em&gt;pedestrian&lt;/em&gt; to explain differently than through a chapter where the protagonist turns directly to the readers with explanation, ending the prologue with &quot;Pleased to meet you. Here is my story...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T08:45:58.327" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8164" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8166" CreationDate="2013-06-14T12:24:00.443" Score="16" ViewCount="5022" Body="&lt;p&gt;The end user documentation I'm writing makes use of screenshots (and partial screenshots) to show the user what I'm referring to in procedural instructions or conceptual explanations of the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm never quite sure whether to put the screenshot before the paragraph that refers to the screenshot or afterward. What is most readable? Furthermore, I'm not using figure captions. So, the problem might be that I have large sections of text referring to the screenshot at all. Maybe the caption should explain the screenshot and the text shouldn't directly refer to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some practices in technical writing that would help me here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5359" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T04:00:22.547" LastActivityDate="2019-06-27T20:28:49.057" Title="In end user documentation, should screenshots come before or after the text that references them?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|formatting|user-guides|graphics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8164" CreationDate="2013-06-14T14:16:58.940" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Put the descriptive text first, then the screenshot immediately afterwards. We read down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the Print dialog box, click &lt;em&gt;Export to PDF.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  [SCREENSHOT of dialog box]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) You may or may not need a caption, but you should at least label each screenshot. Fig. 1, Screen B, Ralph, something. That allows you to refer to it elsewhere in the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T14:16:58.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8164" CreationDate="2013-06-14T18:45:10.650" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a reader follows a reasonable path&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; through your documentation, there should never be a point where he's looking at something incomprehensible.  This applies to text, code samples, diagrams...and screen shots.  Therefore, unless the structure of your document itself provides this (e.g. through section titles and a consistent format, like in a catalogue), you should always have some explanatory text before the screen shot to provide context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this principle applies to text too -- you don't want to have a page of text describing stuff that will only make sense after someone sees the screen shot, either.  So in my experience the norm is: text that sets the stage, then the screen shot, then details that refer to the screen shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is true with or without figure numbers and captions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; At minimum (for non-reference doc), starting at the beginning and reading through.  But also consider the case of someone who looks something up in the table of contents and jumps there, and, if applicable, the use of your documentation in online context-sensitive help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T18:45:10.650" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8168" CreationDate="2013-06-14T20:09:33.183" Score="4" ViewCount="775" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering what is the limit, if any, of justifying one's writing style as being creative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have often seen the use of a single word  or phrase as a 'sentence' for creating impact. Example: &quot;It was a large knife. Sharp and shiny.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other examples are starting a sentence with a conjunction (e.g. and) and using one sentence paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Is it justifiable to disregard grammar rules for a specific creative purpose such as creating impact in the minds of readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: The above is usually not a problem to a person who does not speak English as his/her first language. English is my fourth language and I can tell you that. However, it may appear incomplete or incorrect to someone whose first language is English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-06-23T21:09:58.540" LastActivityDate="2013-06-23T21:09:58.540" Title="Creative writing use and abuse" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8167" CreationDate="2013-06-14T21:41:26.753" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grammar &quot;violations&quot; are perfectly fine in fiction, as long as they create the effect you desire in the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incomplete sentences can (sometimes) pick up the pace, or make the reading choppy and staccato.  When you want those effects, use incomplete sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting a sentence with a conjunction can (sometimes) make sentences flow together in an almost hypnotic way.  They can suggest that the narrator is speaking/writing/thinking informally.  When you want those effects, start a sentence with a conjunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, it's the same with every rule, whether it's a rule of grammar or a so-called rule of writing.  What effects does following this rule create in the reader?  What effects do &#xA;&quot;violations&quot; create?  Which effects do I want to create?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T21:41:26.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8167" CreationDate="2013-06-14T23:52:16.163" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask advice in any domain of creativity; art, photography, writing, movies, and you'll hear the same answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn the rules of the trade, then break them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any rule can be violated. Grammar, logic, style, pacing, anything! But you don't just go about writing, forgetting the rules, missing or misunderstanding them. You don't just know the rules perfectly, you also understand consequences of violating them. Then you break them in such a way as to achieve your specific goal, impress a specific effect on the reader. You can achieve the effects stronger and faster than if you just used &quot;proper tools of the trade&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: poor grammar is a clear sign of inexperienced writer. The rule is &quot;Use good grammar&quot;. But the story has a protagonist who is definitely a poor writer. What better way to show that than to give the reader a sample text written in-story by the protagonist? Then, as you're writing that letter, you make grammar mistakes on purpose, strictly violating that rule - because the consequence is desired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T23:52:16.163" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8170" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8174" CreationDate="2013-06-15T10:57:15.530" Score="3" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under the shelter of the inn, a barbecue was taking place, &lt;strong&gt;red coal&#xA;  glowing in the dark and tiny sparks fluttering around from time to&#xA;  time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or should I change it to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under the shelter of the inn, a barbecue was taking place. &lt;strong&gt;The red coal&#xA;  glowed in the dark and tiny sparks fluttered around from time to&#xA;  time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I can do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She was walking by the shore, her hair fluttering in the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm not very sure about the first example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2013-06-21T03:16:41.673" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T03:16:41.673" Title="Is the following allowed under the ungrammatical exceptions in fiction?" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8170" CreationDate="2013-06-15T11:40:30.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, nobody will put you to jail for that. Your editor will probably correct it anyways, before the book gets published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is there any particular reason why you want to connect two sentences? For your readers it will be more difficult to read, as instead of two short sentences which they are able to catch in one look of the eye, they get a longer one, which hardly make a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that most of the people don't read books word after word, whispering each of them silently. That's only what we, writers, tend to do. This way such a trick won't give you anything, maybe except for problems. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4784" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T11:40:30.503" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8170" CreationDate="2013-06-15T14:57:07.557" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Context is important, and this question is hard to answer. But I'll try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sentence length is something that creates a rhythm in the text. For example, let's think of a situation where you have successively longer sentences, coming one after the other, and the reader has to parse them. Next, a short sentence appears. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is that whether you go with a longer, flowing sentence or two shorter ones is entirely dependent on the context. While I actually prefer combining these two sentences, I think your specific example of a unified sentence is a little clumsy. &lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt; perhaps it fits brilliantly with the text surrounding it; we don't know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you want easy-to-parse description, something the reader will breeze through, go with the two short sentences. If you want a more flowing, immersive, artistic paragraph, go with the single sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T14:57:07.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8170" CreationDate="2013-06-15T15:49:48.303" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer the first of the two examples; the second seems choppy.  It would read slightly better with “Red coals” in place of “The red coal”.  (That is, &lt;em&gt;coal&lt;/em&gt; should be plural in both examples, and there should be no article before it.)  I might or might not add &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;its&lt;/em&gt; to the first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under the shelter of the inn, a barbecue took place, with red coals glowing in the dark and tiny sparks fluttering about.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Under the shelter of the inn, a barbecue takes place;  red coals glow in the dark, sparks flutter from time to time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest avoiding the past continuous tense (like “was taking place”) in narrative, and using either simple past (“took place”) or present (“takes place”).  Past continuous seems stilted, verbose, misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T15:49:48.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8170" CreationDate="2013-06-15T19:35:34.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not ungrammatical to use two &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/phrases.htm#absolute&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;absolute phrases&lt;/a&gt; connected by a conjunction (like &quot;and&quot;). Long sentences &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be more difficult to read and tend to slow the pace of the narrative, but in this case a slower pace is appropriate, like a warm, lazy evening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8170/is-the-following-allowed-under-the-ungrammatical-exceptions-in-fiction#8173&quot;&gt;jwpat7's suggestion&lt;/a&gt; about the tense of the main verb and the use of the plural &quot;coals&quot;, I offer the following alternative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under the shelter of the inn, a barbecue welcomed the warm evening, red coals glowing in the dark and occasional tiny sparks fluttering into the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Although this alternative is unlikely to fit the particular context of your writing, you are free to use any part of it without attribution.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;welcomed the warm evening&quot; might be too flowery (and &quot;warm evening&quot; might be redundant with previous or later text), but &quot;welcomed&quot; enhances the feel of safety brought by &quot;shelter of the inn&quot; and adds a small (likely appropriate) feel of community and &quot;warm evening&quot; seems to increase the relaxed feeling.  Moving &quot;from time to time&quot; from the end of the sentence (and changing it to &quot;occasional&quot;) allows &quot;fluttering into the air&quot; to be at the end; having the somewhat whimsical &quot;fluttering&quot; and breath sound of &quot;air&quot; at the end of the sentence (with its pause) seems to add a calm, relaxed feeling (&quot;ah&quot;), which also seems to fit the setting of a safe, relaxed environment. &quot;into the air&quot; is a relatively small change in meaning/tone from &quot;around&quot;; &quot;around&quot; emphasizes some degree of persistence while &quot;into the air&quot; seems to express more of a temporary rising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T19:35:34.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8096" CreationDate="2013-06-16T05:06:49.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually insist on a few things in contracts.  First, that they get first publication rights only so the rights revert back to me immediately after they publish it (or some reasonable time after, like six months).  Unless there's a reason not to, I try to maintain all electronic rights.  You can negotiate on contracts if you're persistent enough.  The more publications you have, the more leverage you have.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I've never published a book, just articles and short stories, so your mileage may vary.  Read the contract carefully to determine what rights you signed away and which ones you retained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5365" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T05:06:49.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8170" CreationDate="2013-06-16T17:14:46.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely nothing wrong with the first sentence. In fact, I think it's stylistically preferable to the second, though that's just how I see it. The first seems to evoke an image, while the second seems just to state facts dispassionately - to me, anyway. I think it's because in the first sentence, the glowing red coals and the sparks are connected with the barbeque, rather than being introduced later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I don't think I have made much sense. I'm not saying, of course, that you run everything into one sentence, or that you should write sentences like yours all the time. What I immediately felt upon reading your sentences was what I've said above. I might feel differently, if every sentence you wrote was like that. It would feel like the same style was being overused. Simple sentences are effective, too, and I can think of situations in which you might prefer the second style to the first (though not perhaps given these sentences in particular): for instance, simple and short sentences can be used when you're dealing with a tense situation, and you want every moment that passes to feel significant to the reader. This isn't the only situation, and you may not always want to do this in this sort of situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, this isn't ungrammatical, and you should keep it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5367" LastEditorUserId="5367" LastEditDate="2013-06-16T17:20:16.767" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T17:20:16.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="178" CreationDate="2013-06-17T07:59:24.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;go ahead! start writing in English and then be your own judge. you definitely will get an answer yourself. you cant learn swimming until you've jumped into the water. don't be afraid of drowning. i am a native Urdu speaker and i write articles both in English and Urdu. and you'll be interested to know that iv won prizes for my writings in English but none in Urdu! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5370" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T07:59:24.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8038" CreationDate="2013-06-17T17:54:46.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This actually exists, this is called Arcanepunk &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcanepunk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcanepunk&lt;/a&gt;. It boasts such things as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_(book)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_(book)&lt;/a&gt;, which I must say is an amazing read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, this is the more general problem that writers have when choosing what world-building to explain. After all, the writer might often have the mechanism that something works by in their head, but if it does not play a specific role in the story, then the writer does not have to explain it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5373" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T17:54:46.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8179" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8211" CreationDate="2013-06-17T18:39:29.067" Score="2" ViewCount="9269" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I'd like to apologize in advance for my horrible English, but it's not my primary language and I still can't help but make some blunders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been assigned to write a newspaper article summary for my English class - something that I'm not really all that familiar with. And my question is - should a good summary focus on the &lt;em&gt;article&lt;/em&gt; itself, or on a &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; it tells?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, should I use or avoid the words &quot;the article says&quot;, or &quot;the author states&quot;, etc? Should I focus on the arrangement of the article (&quot;the first/second/etc. paragraph&quot;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5374" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T11:58:25.233" Title="Writing a newspaper article summary" Tags="|style|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6189" CreationDate="2013-06-17T21:24:18.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you are seeing it from the wrong point of view. More than mythology, &lt;strong&gt;movies like Matrix and Prometheus deal with our current social values and believes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neo, the technological messiah, is ready to die to save humanity but under a very actual agnostic - almost atheistic - point of view since he is more than human but not divine. He is machine made flesh. A lot of people can't see the Christianity here, and even more won't notice the detail of the agnostic point of view but it's all there. It's all very actual. We are an agnostic and new age society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same proportion it's agnostic, Matrix has a great deal of New Age &quot;spirituality,&quot; mixing everything in a way that, in the end, all is possible if somebody chooses to believe in it. That's too actual and everybody will recognize their daily lives concepts in that movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not counting all the other small details - from occultism to role-playing games - the Wachowskis use to link the &quot;mythology&quot; in the movie to our current days and lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prometheus was the titan that gave fire to the mortals, what also can be understood as the secret knowledge. The myth is related also to bible since, fire and the forbidden fruit symbolize knowledge that human kind should not have and divorced men from god.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is esoteric and occult doctrines. Concepts known by everyone, and felt in the everyday, but not immediately recognized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's not the use of mythology that makes the difference, but the ability to use mythology to tweak with the subconscious creating recognizable concepts and images&lt;/strong&gt; in the movies. The ability to make them believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just, as example, I'll use the Vikings TV Series and Clash of Titans. Both are mythological and historical but they can't achieve the same effect because they stay in the mythological real and can't connect to our modern day reality. On the other hand, in a somewhat different perspective and degree, A Knight's Tale reaches that mythology that connects to us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-06-18T13:25:57.247" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T13:25:57.247" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8182" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-18T03:53:11.180" Score="7" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a short story long ago called &lt;em&gt;The End of the World&lt;/em&gt;. I thought the title was too common so I renamed it to &lt;em&gt;The Kid with the Gigaku Mask and the End of the World&lt;/em&gt;. But then, I found that title to be too long, so I just left it as &lt;em&gt;The Kid with the Gigaku Mask.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm clear that no Western reader would know what a gigaku mask is, but I think at least, they will know that is something related to Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking this because at first, I thought it was a bad idea to use a culture-specific word in a title. But judging from the number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexandrochen.quora.com/Short-Story-The-Kid-with-the-Gigaku-Mask&quot;&gt;views&lt;/a&gt; I got in comparison with my other stories, I think I was wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, anyway, is this a bad or a good idea to have titles like this (in terms of marketing)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-15T17:55:53.933" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T17:55:53.933" Title="Is it a bad idea to use a culture-specific word in the title of a story?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|language|titles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8182" CreationDate="2013-06-18T07:06:10.333" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know what a Gigaku Mask is, but I had no idea what &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/081258435X&quot;&gt;The Stone Dance of the Chameleon&lt;/a&gt; was either, and that didn't prevent me to buy - and love - that book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget that the reader buys also by the cover and the resume, and that will probably give them more insight. If I had seen the picture of a Gigaku Mask, I would know it was some kind of theatrical Japanese mask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think exotic titles might awaken curiosity more than drive back readers, specially because Japanese culture is somewhat liked by the westerns. Being Portuguese, and with all the relationship both countries had in the past, I must say I'm particularly interested by a lot of Japanese things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't worry at all with that title. I liked it a lot but, on the other hand, if it gets published you editor will, for sure, say if he thinks the title is not good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T07:06:10.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8182" CreationDate="2013-06-18T07:12:01.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on what you're aiming at with your title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title may not be meaningful. Take &lt;em&gt;Nana&lt;/em&gt; by Émile Zola or &lt;em&gt;Old Father Goriot&lt;/em&gt; by Honoré de Balzac. It's merely the name of the protagonist or just a significant character. It tells nothing about the content, the story, and is too generic to indicate anything about what kind of story it is. Such a title requires a rather reputable author to sell well though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title may be just as short but augmented with a subtitle. The full title of &lt;em&gt;Sir Thaddeus&lt;/em&gt; by Adam Mickiewicz is &lt;em&gt;Sir Thaddeus, or the Last Lithuanian Foray: A Nobleman's Tale from the Years of 1811 and 1812 in Twelve Books of Verse&lt;/em&gt;. That is sure to tell more about the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or the title may be mysterious, hinting at the content - like in your example. &quot;Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone&quot; - you get a bit of clue it will be about magical themes, and it has a bit of &quot;book for youngsters&quot; ring to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's of course a whole range of other titles, more revealing, completely mysterious by being written in a strange language (even made-up language), or ones outright misguiding. Nevertheless, your fares well mid-way the range, and is actually a rather common (that doesn't mean bad!) approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you want to keep &quot;The End of the World&quot; you can use it as the subtitle, an optional extra. It won't make the title too long but it will add a little for those who hesitate a second before picking it (and you're right, it's too generic - but then nowadays apocalyptic/postapocalyptic stories sell like hot cakes, so it would surely attract audience.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T07:12:01.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8185" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-18T09:51:29.970" Score="11" ViewCount="10338" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is related to best practices of making screenshots for end-user documentation. Particularly, is there universal information for filling in forms in the software and after that making screenshots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean demo data, such as Name, Company Name, City, IP-address, Links, URL, Site, Username Password.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any conventions that help avoid using the existing names and real infomation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5379" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T18:53:06.427" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T18:53:06.427" Title="Demo data in screenshots! What are the best practice?" Tags="|technical-writing|examples|user-guides|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8185" CreationDate="2013-06-18T11:47:50.167" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming native speakers of American English:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For first names:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jack&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jane&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For last names:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doe &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smith&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Johnson&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full names:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;John Doe&lt;/em&gt; is native English shorthand for &quot;generic person.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Richard Roe&lt;/em&gt; is native English legal shorthand for &quot;second generic person in the same document as John Doe.&quot; [&quot;Jane Roe&quot; (an anonymous woman at the time) is the Roe in &lt;em&gt;Roe v. Wade.&lt;/em&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;John Q. Public&lt;/em&gt; is another recognizable &quot;generic person.&quot; Use any first name there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For company names, I like using &lt;em&gt;Widget&lt;/em&gt; for products in conjunction with &lt;em&gt;Co., Company, Corp., Inc.,&lt;/em&gt; etc. (So House of Widgets, Widgets Inc.) A &quot;widget&quot; is a generic term for &quot;made object or product.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-product names, &lt;em&gt;Acme&lt;/em&gt; is reasonably generic. (Acme Incorporated) You can also combine some of the other generic terms: &lt;em&gt;SmithCo, Jones &amp;amp; Sons, Acme Widgets.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For addresses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;123 Main Street &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anytown, ST 12345 (&lt;em&gt;ST&lt;/em&gt; is standing in for the two-letter state abbreviation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For websites, I'd just use &lt;em&gt;www.example.com&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For username and password, just put in &lt;em&gt;username&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;password.&lt;/em&gt; You actually want to be straightforward with those fields, not coy and anonymous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-02-05T11:01:13.927" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T11:01:13.927" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8185" CreationDate="2013-06-18T12:54:37.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mostly agree with Lauren Ipsum, just a couple of extra thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Lauren says, John Doe and Jane Doe are widely recognized as fake names. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Q Customer is often used for a fake customer name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For US telephone numbers, use &quot;555&quot; for the exchange, like &quot;123-555-1234&quot;. &quot;555&quot; is reserved by the phone companies just for use in examples and in books and movies. The other digits then don't matter: you can use a real area code or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lauren mentioned using &quot;example.com&quot; for websites. This is also reserved specifically for examples, so you can be sure there will never be a real site with this name, and it's pretty obvious that it's an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there are any widely-recognized fake addresses. I generally use addresses that sound obviously fake, like &quot;123 Some Street, Anytown PA 12345&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely do not use any real person's information. Years ago I worked for a company that made a software package for doctors' offices, and at one point our chief marketing guy was going to some convention and he dropped by and casually asked me for a copy of a real customer's database that he could bring to the convention to use when giving demos of the product. I went through the roof. You want to use real people's private medical records for a demo at a convention?! I'm sure there are laws against that. Even if it was information not protected by law, you could set yourself up to be sued, or at the very least alienate customers with your lack of respect for privacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;** Very late addendum **&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Social Security administration says that they will never assign numbers beginning 000, 666, or 900-999. So 000-00-0000 is good for examples and pretty obviously fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the above said, note that people can be amazingly stupid and take examples for real. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/misused.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/misused.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use a real person's phone number, address, or social security number, there will be some number of people who will decide to call that phone number or try to use that social security number, and cause the real person all sorts of problems. If you make up a number at random, it is possible that it will by coincidence match a real person. Don't. A few years back I read that some developer was testing a system that sent automated emails, and so for test data he entered an email address by just mashing the keyboard. I forget what he said he came up with, but some totally random-looking, meaningless collection of letters.. Then he stuck &quot;webmaster@&quot; on the front and &quot;.com&quot; on the end. As there was no real organization with that email address, these emails were all returned and he used the error messages to verify that the correct emails had been sent. I'm sure you can guess where this is going. The test data was never deleted from the system, and a couple of years later a real company came along whose acronym just happened to match his random collection of letters. And they immediately started getting thousands of junk emails a day, and they were very unhappy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2014-11-19T15:13:11.377" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T15:13:11.377" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8185" CreationDate="2013-06-18T17:01:12.777" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some writers use these situations as an opportunity to embed small &quot;Easter eggs,&quot; targeting your audience. For example, if your audience is in the UK and &quot;geeky,&quot; Doctor Who references could work. In Australia, Mad Max references could work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This solution is not for everyone, but my usual developer audiences appreciate them, so long as they're subtle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5371" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T17:01:12.777" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7291" CreationDate="2013-06-18T22:10:02.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe the answer is really quite simple. Any decent word processing program will pick up on all of the incorrect punctuation and spelling if you import an American document into a British system. So if you import an American doc with the sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; &quot;What a lovely color,&quot; she said.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;into a British system, it should squawk and flag things so you know to fix it up to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; 'What a lovely colour', she said.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;by whatever hideously tedious means you invent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4935" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T22:10:02.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8170" CreationDate="2013-06-19T03:17:47.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone got stuck on the length of the sentences, which is completely irrelevant here, in my opinion. It's neither an overly long nor a confusing sentence. The question was about grammar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see nothing wrong with the grammar here, but if you're worried with the &quot;and&quot;, have you though of splitting it this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under the shelter of the inn, a barbecue was taking place, &lt;strong&gt;red coal&#xA;  glowing in the dark and tiny sparks fluttering around from time to&#xA;  time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under the shelter of the inn, a barbecue was taking place, &lt;strong&gt;red coal&#xA;  glowing in the dark. Tiny sparks fluttered around from time to&#xA;  time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You still keep the flow of the sentence, you don't make it look choppy as jwpat7 noticed, you got rid of the &quot;and&quot; that was bothering you, and you have a combination of a long and a short sentence, which adds to the overall dynamic of the text (which of course depends on the rest of the text, but it's something to pay attention to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T03:17:47.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8197" CreationDate="2013-06-19T05:28:11.540" Score="8" ViewCount="7529" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often heard of the advice that &quot;use a style that works best in your situation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regard to paragraph styling for an ebook, there are a few options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A single space (between paragraphs) and with the first sentence/line indented&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Same as (1) but with no indent of the first sentence/line&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No space between paragraphs and with the first sentence/line indented.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if there is a preferred method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find Option 1 very reader-friendly as the paragraphs are separated by a space (i.e. not clustered together) and the first line is indented (which gives it a traditional feel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-06-19T16:06:35.810" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T01:05:09.150" Title="What paragraph style should I use for an e-book?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8192" CreationDate="2013-06-19T05:46:45.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you open a book, almost any book of fiction, you'll find the first line indented and no spaces between paragraphs. As far as I know, that's the &quot;official&quot; formatting for a book of fiction. Non fiction, like essays and such, should have no line indent and spacing between paragraphs. Or at least that's what I've been told is the proper formatting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself, however, love the combination of both - paragraph spacing and indenting, I find it more readable (and books are actually formatted like that in my country). It all depends what's it for. If it's a book that'll be paper published in English, I think you would have to go with indent and no space. If you're self-publishing on Smashwords, their style guide DEMANDS indent and no space for fiction, and space and no indent for non-fiction. If you're posting it online, then I think going with both line spacing and indent would be best, we all hate reading big walls of text online - but only if the indenting is handled by the web page itself - putting, for example, four spaces on every first line in my post here just to have it look indented would be ridiculous. I wouldn't gain anything with that, and also, plain HTML removes extra white spaces, so it wouldn't even work. If you were to make a PDF document, however, then a combination of line spaces and indents would be doable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: &#xA;Just to add, don't ever handle the formatting by adding spaces or tabs and empty lines. If you edit it in word processor and export it to PDF, for example, use Paragraph settings to set the spacing between paragraphs and line indenting. If you post it online, use CSS styles. This way you can easily change it when ever you want, without having to delete extra lines or tabs and spaces. Unless you're posting fiction on sites like Wattpad or DeaviantArt, where you can't choose your own styles, then you don't have a choice. If you don't put a paragraph spaces when posting on DeviantArt, it will look like one big wall of text and odds are people won't read it solely because of that. Walls of texts are scary ;) (Wattpad automatically puts paragraph spaces, so it doesn't leave you much choice. Most sites go for paragraph spaces without indents because it's the easiest way to display writing online, indenting is rarely done in CSS but paragraph spacing is easy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastEditorUserId="4264" LastEditDate="2013-06-20T01:05:09.150" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T01:05:09.150" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8185" CreationDate="2013-06-19T06:37:23.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take great care when you opt to use a single generic name (or even a limited set). What is the message you are sending to Trang, Luigi and Antwan when every reference to a given name uses John or Richard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you certain that your target audience is so ethnically homogeneous that they will all identify with Dick and Jane from Picket Fence Lane in Smalltown? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even &lt;em&gt;technical writing&lt;/em&gt; has the capacity to say to readers &quot;This product is not for you.&quot; and you are not being paid to drive potential customers away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T06:37:23.533" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8192" CreationDate="2013-06-19T07:18:53.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you adopt a particular style guide, e.g. Chicago Style, then the first rule is to adopt the preferred method for that style. Almost all style guides will indicate their preferred method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going for pure readability/usability, and style rules be damned, then I would recommend: opening paragraphs are flush left; subsequent paragraphs are indented; you use a good line height/spacing to introduce a decent gap between each line; and, finally, gaps between each paragraph that are at least double the spacing between your lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T07:18:53.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8192" CreationDate="2013-06-19T07:57:01.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally I don't care much about text formatting since I always use plain text (Latex or Markdown) and is the final style that will define what details like paragraph spacing should be handled, since content is split from formatting since the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I normally use a space between paragraphs in my manuscripts because it's better to read, but that doesn't means it's the rule. On the contrary, the rule seems to be no space at all. Just to confirm that, I went to three different sites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theeditorsblog.net/2011/01/05/format-your-novel-for-submission/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Format Your Novel for Submission&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Half-inch paragraph indentations (five spaces) (this tab is pre-set in MS Word) for the first line of each paragraph. Double space; no extra spaces between paragraphs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fictionfactor.com/articles/format.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manuscript Formatting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not hit 'enter' again at the end of a paragraph. All your spacing should be consistently double-spaced. New paragraphs should be indicated by indents. Use your 'tab' key for this. You can set the indent to where ever you choose, as long as the paragraph is clearly indented from the left margin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefictiondesk.com/blog/how-to-get-manuscript-formatting-right/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Six rules for manuscript formatting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mark a new paragraph by indenting the first line; don’t leave an empty line between paragraphs. Each new paragraph, or line of speech should be indented. Again, there’s an option to indent the first line of each paragraph automatically in the paragraph formatting options: don’t use the tab key to do it. Leaving a complete blank line between paragraphs is something you’ll see when reading online, including on this site but, has no place in text documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it's pretty clear to me that the paragraphs should have no black line between them. Besides, as &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/4264/tannalein&quot;&gt;Tannalein&lt;/a&gt; said, &quot;&lt;em&gt;If you open a book, almost any book of fiction, you'll find the first line indented and no spaces between paragraphs. As far as I know, that's the 'official' formatting for a book of fiction&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. I think she is right&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T07:57:01.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8192" CreationDate="2013-06-19T14:02:28.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have noted, if you're writing for a magazine or someone else's website or a publisher who adheres to a specific style guide, then they'll probably reformat anything you submit to their style anyway and it's a moot point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're self-publishing or it's otherwise up to you, I don't know that one can say much more than: use a style that you find attractive and readable and that is not likely to confuse your readers, whether it's about paragraph breaks or any other point of formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're using software that lets you create style sheets -- like HTML or MS Word and many others -- use the style sheet to control the paragraph breaks. If you've manually added blank lines between every paragraph or typed in spaces at the front of the first line of each paragraph or whatever, and then you change your mind, you have a ton of work to change them all. But if you did it with a style sheet, you can reformat an entire book with a few keystrokes. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I avoid using both indenting and blank space between paragraphs. Use one or the other. Using both is overkill.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An advantage of using indenting to show a new paragraph is that you can then use a blank line to show a slightly bigger break. Like in a novel, you can use a blank line to show a break between scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A bit of practicality: Using blank lines takes more space and thus makes the total length of the printed document longer. So if you need to pad your document, for example if you're writing a book and after you say everything you want to say it's only 100 pages and you think this just looks too thin and unimpressive, one thing you can do to pad it out is to put blank lines between paragraphs. Other things would be to add more chapter breaks, as this gives you an excuse to leave more blank space at the end of each chapter; always start new chapters on an odd-numbered page, which means you'll sometimes have a blank page between chapters; use a larger font; etc. Conversely if your book is too fat, like you think 400 pages just looks too intimidating for your target audience, then remove blank lines from between paragraphs, etc, to reduce the page count. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T14:02:28.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="178" CreationDate="2013-06-20T18:16:20.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether you take her seriously or not, Ayn Rand's language and style were impeccable. She knew practically no English at all when she moved to the United States in 1925, at the age of twenty. So there's no reason you can't develop an original and respectable style as a writer in a language that isn't your own, once you've developed a strong base in its grammar and syntax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I was at first going to mention Vladimir Nabokov, a writer whose style was so rich and wordplay so brilliant that it's a wonder he never won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but he was for all practical purposes trilingual.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5367" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T18:16:20.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8200" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-20T19:25:46.880" Score="13" ViewCount="11722" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write short stories, a lot of short-shorts. I would say the longest thing I've actually finished writing is &quot;Lord of Snakes&quot;, which was about 19 pages typed. (And not even very good.) So I've always wanted to be able to write something...at least 60,000 words. And maybe it is because I feel like I can't be a true writer without writing a novel. And maybe that's wrong, but I'm...extremely frustrated by my inability to write something of length. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure why. When I write shorts I DO plan, and construct and such...but in many ways the characters and plot seem to write themselves freely, using me only as a medium. And that's what WORKS. When I try to write something long I end up getting terrible writer's block and can't write for days or more--because if I do write then I all but mess up the story. And because I'm not writing on it I sort of lose interest and when I come back to it I just get confused. It's like I can't handle anything complicated. I try mapping out the story and characters like people suggest, but that seems to just...mess with my mind and make it worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So sometimes I start over. Like with &quot;Annabel's Demon&quot;--I've tried three different times to write it, and each time end up at a standstill. I tried writing in third, then first, then third again. Tweaked the story and characters. Completely started over. And found myself failing to write anything decent. I get lost. I stop and try to go back. I leave it for a while and write something else. Once, when I was a preteen, I managed to write a good 80 pages of a story, but never finished. And now when I go back to it I realise it just needs rewritten and...it isn't a good enough story for that much work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help. Help me at least understand what I'm doing wrong. I so badly want to write something of length. I feel bad for all the decent story ideas I've abandoned because they...stopped dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5401" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T04:58:00.127" LastActivityDate="2020-09-25T22:58:07.410" Title="Why can't I write something longer than a few pages?" Tags="|creative-writing|discipline|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2013-06-20T20:52:12.793" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having written several novels myself, and having helped others, I indeed know your frustrations! While I don't have definate answers (as each person has different ideas and feelings) I can give you suggestions that might work for you or might at least help you out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, you're not alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Serials - If you're having problems with longetivity, try writing a series of shorts that are linked with one another, like the old 10 minute shorts they did back in the 50's. This could work well to making a longer novel, and help break the intimidation factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Be Like Star Trek - Perhaps your limiting yourself; you said you've got it planned, but perhaps that's what is holding you back. Start making stuff up. Seriously. Wing it for a while and see what you get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Plug Away - Devote a certain length of time each day (or some other reasonable quota) to writing. Perhaps the breaks are you problem. I can pick up where I left off after extended breaks (in fact, I work on several stories at a time), but not everyone can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Zen Is Boring, Boredom Is Zen - I don't know if you have a writing spot, but I do; the back seat of my car. No distractions, full focus. Perhaps you need a different writing spot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are what I use. There are others, but try experimenting, and keep working on it. Please don't get discouraged. And good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5263" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T20:52:12.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8038" CreationDate="2013-06-20T21:26:23.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way is to have all your technology run on magic, instead of electricity and gas. Check out the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1343740/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Paradox&lt;/a&gt; for an example of a &quot;modern&quot; world run solely on magic (the movie is crap, but the idea is interesting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way is to simply write &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fantasy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Science Fantasy&lt;/a&gt;. It's nothing new to mix scientific elements into fantasy, Science Fantasy exists for over half a century now. The trick is not to explain how things work, they just do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the beauty of fantasy, you can create any imaginable world. Technology, magic, everything is equally possible. In Science Fiction, on the other hand, you can't do that, your world needs to be scientifically possible, even if highly improbable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T21:26:23.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2013-06-20T23:40:35.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aim for an ambitious plan, something that simply won't fit in several pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methods to get there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Multiple conflicts. Your protagonist faces simultaneously at least three different foes, who choose to stay in the shadows and act completely independently and for different reasons. Add a slice-of-life style struggle, a non-trivial romantic thread, and at least two red herrings (subplots that appear important only to be revealed to be trivial at the end). I guarantee something like this will be fairly long.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try a nesting exercise story. Nesting is when a character inside the story tells another story. And then characters of that story in turn tell their stories. Try to get at least 3-4 nesting levels deep with at least 2 sub-stories on each nesting level. Read &quot;Tale of the three storytelling machines of King Genius&quot; from &lt;em&gt;The Cyberiad&lt;/em&gt; by Stanislaw Lem for an example of that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A road story. Someone travels from one end of the country to another and things happen along the way; they leave impact and influence later events but generally the road is at least a month long and not a single day goes without some trouble. Example: Damnation Alley.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A diary style story. A year out of life of X, each day detailed. See &quot;The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾&quot; for an example of that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T23:40:35.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8204" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-21T05:18:03.867" Score="4" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a medium which does not have line breaks, and a few paragraphs of text. How can I separate the paragraphs from each other visually, clearly? I additionally cannot add information which &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; either the content or this paragraph separator, so the separator must be intuitively understood by the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the best I've got so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer congue laoreet sapien eu sollicitudin. Vestibulum et iaculis dui, nec elementum enim. Suspendisse ultrices ipsum vitae neque auctor, ac ullamcorper neque molestie.   &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;***&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;   In molestie scelerisque lectus. Maecenas gravida odio massa, ut sollicitudin enim suscipit ut. Duis vehicula auctor orci in sagittis. Proin vitae nulla vel eros gravida elementum ut vitae nisl. Vivamus gravida dignissim metus a ullamcorper. Pellentesque mattis odio felis, eget malesuada dolor ullamcorper ornare.   &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;***&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;   Aliquam quis nunc neque. Donec in hendrerit ipsum. Phasellus augue nisi, vulputate non posuere at, suscipit nec dolor. Praesent tristique ullamcorper sapien facilisis mattis. Duis pharetra interdum sagittis. Curabitur varius eget elit sit amet suscipit. Vestibulum leo velit, tempus eget tellus ut, ultricies vestibulum odio. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3658" LastEditorUserId="3658" LastEditDate="2013-06-21T12:50:42.347" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T00:56:19.417" Title="Separate paragraphs without line breaks" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8204" CreationDate="2013-06-21T06:51:32.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For works in a medium where you can't use line breaks to separate paragraphs, consider putting a &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilcrow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pilcrow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (or &lt;em&gt;paragraph mark&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;paragraph sign&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;¶&lt;/strong&gt;) between paragraphs.  Also consider using a bullet (eg, •) between paragraphs, or perhaps a construction like  -)(- between them.  If you use something other than a pilcrow or bullet or some dingbat between paragraphs, it would be reasonable to mention at the outset of the work how you are going to divide one paragraph from the next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T06:51:32.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8206" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8212" CreationDate="2013-06-21T08:38:37.397" Score="4" ViewCount="909" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tsuki woke up to the morning sun that entered through the window. &lt;strong&gt;She&#xA;  yawned and sat on the side of the bed, rubbing her eyes.&lt;/strong&gt; The clock on&#xA;  the wall said half past ten. &lt;strong&gt;She brushed her teeth, washed her face,&#xA;  and then went downstairs.&lt;/strong&gt; When she reached the dinning room, she&#xA;  realized that there was no one there. Not even the owner of the inn.&#xA;  She checked the kitchen. No one either. They were probably still&#xA;  asleep. &lt;strong&gt;Her stomach started growling so she decided to check the&#xA;  refrigerator.&lt;/strong&gt; Luckily, there was a can of tuna and tomatoes. &lt;strong&gt;She fixed&#xA;  herself a sandwich with some bread she found on a shelf. Then she&#xA;  poured herself some orange juice, and went to sit at the table.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;While eating she stared at the various paintings on the walls.&lt;/strong&gt; The&#xA;  owner of the inn had told them the other day that they were the work&#xA;  of a Chinese painter who had been their guest. He would wake up every&#xA;  morning exactly at nine, start a painting, and finish it before&#xA;  midnight. He did this continuously for six days. But then, on the&#xA;  seventh day, he suddenly disappeared. He didn't even check out—he just&#xA;  took his things and left. The man had paid in advance, so the owner&#xA;  didn't mind, though he was very puzzled by his behavior. The paintings&#xA;  were unlike anything Tsuki had seen before. She wasn't sure how to&#xA;  describe them. They gave her the feeling of being surreal and ordinary&#xA;  at the same time. Her favorite was one with an white ironing board put&#xA;  in the middle of an empty room. The most noticeable thing was,&#xA;  obviously, the missing iron. Where could it had gone? Tsuki was having&#xA;  a hard time debating whether it was a common setting or not. She&#xA;  couldn't decide. Though it was precisely that confusion that made the&#xA;  painting beautiful; the balance between what is possible and what is&#xA;  not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After finishing her breakfast, she went to take a walk at the beach.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  She made her way through the sand barefoot, feeling the cold water and&#xA;  foam run between her toes. This was one of her favorite sensations in&#xA;  the world. It reminded her of her distant childhood. &lt;strong&gt;Tired of walking,&#xA;  she sat in the sand, gazing at the sea.&lt;/strong&gt; There were still enormous&#xA;  waves, so high that they looked like skyscrapers. A big tree trunk was&#xA;  being tossed up and down among them. It was then that Tsuki glanced&#xA;  around and realized the beach was deserted. There was no one around.&#xA;  Where's everyone? &lt;strong&gt;Puzzled, she went back to the inn and headed&#xA;  upstairs.&lt;/strong&gt; She knocked Meilin's door, but there was no response. Then&#xA;  tried Kazuo's. Nothing. &lt;strong&gt;She then went for her phone and tried calling&#xA;  them. None of them picked up. Giving up, Tsuki went back to the living&#xA;  room and sat on the table again. She spent the rest of the day there,&#xA;  waiting for someone to come back.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But no one did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this doesn't happen in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexandrochen.quora.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;whole&lt;/a&gt; narration (the beginning is mainly dialogue and the ending exposes the climax).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if I'm adding too many unnecessary descriptions (e.g. the character moving from point A to B, and from B to C. Or doing task A and B, then B and C).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the case, how can I improve the text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some parts of the text with a little bit more feeling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tsuki woke up to the morning sun that entered through the window. She&#xA;  yawned and sat on the side of the bed, rubbing her eyes. The clock on&#xA;  the wall said half past ten. She brushed her teeth, washed her face,&#xA;  and then went downstairs. When she reached the dinning room, she&#xA;  realized that there was no one there. Not even the owner of the inn.&#xA;  She checked the kitchen. No one either. They were probably still&#xA;  asleep. &lt;strong&gt;Her stomach started growling—but no one was preparing&#xA;  breakfast. It was probably not right, but guided by her hunger, Tsuki&#xA;  went to check the refrigerator.&lt;/strong&gt; Luckily, there was a can of tuna and&#xA;  tomatoes. So together with some bread, she fixed herself a simple&#xA;  sandwich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After finishing her breakfast, Tsuki felt like taking a walk at the&#xA;  beach. She made her way through the sand barefoot, feeling the cold&#xA;  water and foam run between her toes. This was one of her favorite&#xA;  sensations in the world. It reminded her of a distant childhood. The&#xA;  period of time she spent whole afternoons in the beach, building sand&#xA;  castles with her father, and swimming under a vanilla sunset. When&#xA;  happiness seemed so simple and reachable. Where had those days gone?&#xA;  Now, they only existed as memories. But did they really belong to her?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-06-21T14:19:59.873" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T17:25:43.413" Title="Does the following piece have too much dry narration (mundane tasks, moving about)?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|description|narrative|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8204" CreationDate="2013-06-21T08:39:21.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jwpat7's ¶ suggestion is the right answer for &quot;marking the paragraph breaks clearly&quot; when it's intended for further processing, e.g. editing or parsing. If it's intended directly &quot;for human consumption&quot; - eg. text reader, &quot;ticker&quot; style LED scroller, a banner tape, and the likes, the approach for visual media is at least two tabulators worth of blank space:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer congue laoreet sapien eu sollicitudin. Vestibulum et iaculis dui, nec elementum enim. Suspendisse ultrices ipsum vitae neque auctor, ac ullamcorper neque molestie.                In molestie scelerisque lectus. Maecenas gravida odio massa, ut sollicitudin enim suscipit ut. Duis vehicula auctor orci in sagittis. Proin vitae nulla vel eros gravida elementum ut vitae nisl. Vivamus gravida dignissim metus a ullamcorper. Pellentesque mattis odio felis, eget malesuada dolor ullamcorper ornare.                Aliquam quis nunc neque. Donec in hendrerit ipsum. Phasellus augue nisi, vulputate non posuere at, suscipit nec dolor. Praesent tristique ullamcorper sapien facilisis mattis. Duis pharetra interdum sagittis. Curabitur varius eget elit sit amet suscipit. Vestibulum leo velit, tempus eget tellus ut, ultricies vestibulum odio. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on width of the space (scalable font etc) that converts to 8 to 16 spaces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your medium doesn't allow for consecutive spaces, use any other least obtrusive character, e.g. full stop &lt;code&gt;. . . . .&lt;/code&gt; or middot &lt;code&gt;· · · · · ·&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-06-21T08:45:14.707" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T08:45:14.707" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8206" CreationDate="2013-06-21T10:03:29.527" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's dry because there's not much emotion there. You're telling us a lot, but you're not showing us much. You have two instances of her being &quot;puzzled,&quot; but the rest is just a description of her movements. What is she &lt;em&gt;thinking&lt;/em&gt;? What is she &lt;em&gt;feeling&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example. You start with this great sensory image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She made her way through the sand barefoot, feeling the cold water and foam run between her toes. This was one of her favorite sensations in the world. It reminded her of her distant childhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...And then you immediately drop it. &lt;em&gt;Why&lt;/em&gt; does it remind her of her childhood? Where did she live? Did she spend all day at the beach? Was it her home or a rare treat? Why is her childhood &quot;distant&quot;? Is she old? Was she traumatized? Did she live in another country? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add some emotions. Add some memories, some thoughts, something to give us a taste of who she is and why we should care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also use this as a way to introduce the character so we know, for example, why she would spend half a day &lt;em&gt;sitting at a table waiting for people to return,&lt;/em&gt; instead of making more phone calls or going back outside to knock on doors or turning on the damn TV to figure out what happened to everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An aside, but I've seen this before in your work in the examples you've posted here: Your characters encounter a situation which should be disturbing or terrifying and accept it with a passivity which borders on pathological. It's like they're watching their own lives on television. If you can't see it in your own work, then please mention it to your beta readers to point out to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that the remainder of the story has more action in it, and that it is a &lt;em&gt;short&lt;/em&gt; story, but that doesn't fix this excerpt, where she just sits there, patiently waiting to be acted upon, rather than acting herself. And it's noticeable to me primarily because I've seen and commented on the same thing in your other work/posts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T10:03:29.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2013-06-21T11:49:40.863" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The short version:&lt;/em&gt; To write at length turn off your inner editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The long version:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why the problem writing long form?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing at length is a completely different kettle of fish from writing shorts. I am absolutely hopeless in short form. However to become adept at either type of writing takes commitment and effort. I always had the point of view that a long form piece would allow me to mask weak bits with a large tapestry of generally okay bits and few superb bits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, to write in long form you have to cut out all the poor and mediocre bits and aim to have as much of it be &quot;good day&quot; writing as it possibly can be. What this tells us is that you are smarter than I am because you didn't have to write about nine novels to get to the point where you realised that some of this stuff just wasn't cutting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regarding Plans&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you plan everything, and this is great news. One thing I have learned is to plan everything. I learned this from the smoking wreckage of a number of novels varying in length between 30k - 80k where I planned nothing. Writing a story is like drawing a circle freehand. Small scale some imprecision can creep in but it's fairly easy to correct and, with some practice, can be minimised. Then you move to freehanding a slightly larger circle and so on and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only problem is that, human anatomy being what it is, the freehand circle can only be what it is to a certain scale without assistance. Try to repeat the process for the largest feasible freehand circle that your hand is capable of drawing for something ten times bigger and you'll end up with a broken looped spiral. Panic sets in as you realise the impossibility of the task in the old way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the circle analogy breaks down. With some carefully prepared guides a single path may be described freehand to an adequate quality. This would be equivalent to making a plan and then sticking to it. In the world of maths that's fine, but in reality things are not so convenient. This is where the second important lesson must be learned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Plan everything on paper that's easily burned.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what your plan will change as you write. When you plan your characters will perform plot actions without complaint, the logic of their actions - broadly - will seem unassailable. However, when trying to flesh out event A you will necessarily corrupt a character's motivation to do the thing described in event C. These little niggles of logic, plot holes, will come back to haunt you, present you with the daunting prospect that you may never finish this work because every step forward increases the length of the journey by another ten steps, seemingly ad infinitum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first instance this is good news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Editing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write, rewrite, wrestle with the problems, sew up the plot holes, explore the tangents, think about the character arcs, produce 120k of turgid, meandering, rubbish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this, get the scissors out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The novelist starts like an artist with a blank canvas but, after the first draft has left a hideous mess of randomness in a heap all over their consciousness begins a shift into a mode more like a sculptor or explorer. The text can be combed over, the worst examples of logic defying weirdness ripped out, re-written, re-shaped to fit into the shape that the completed work should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Draft one is indulgent gluttony, draft two is spartan dietary discipline, fat must be trimmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some Practical Advice&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the easiest way to turn off the inner editor is to take a story that is very broad, like a folk-tale or a fairy story, and try to write it with actual characters who do what they do in the story for some inner human reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's no less problematic to think of an empathetically sound motivation for Cinderella's wicked stepmother be mean to Cinderella because Cinderella is a much cherished part of the cultural idiom instead of something you made up yesterday. After all every person is the hero of their own story so how can the Wicked Stepmother sleep at night with her stepdaughter sleeping in rags on a mat before the hearth? Also, why does Cinderella's father allow this treatment of his daughter? What is that all about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't take too long thinking about simple stories in this manner before you find yourself re-writing popular stories as 80k books because you suddenly realise that the standard version tells you the stepmother was wicked but does not explain why, or what that implied when set against the other events in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you understand that other people's stories are no more coherent than your own appear to you perhaps you might be inclined to give yourself a break in the act of creating stuff in the first place. Also you must understand that after that first act of creation you are nowhere near finished, so don't sit back and heave a sigh of relief, the hard work only starts once you have all the material gathered together in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T11:49:40.863" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8182" CreationDate="2013-06-21T13:42:49.450" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a title has two purposes: to get the attention of the potential reader, and to give him a clue what the story is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting a foreign word or a word that is likely to be unfamiliar to most potential readers can attract attention. A natural response is, &quot;What does that mean?&quot;, which may get them to look for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the potential reader doesn't know the word than it can't convey a lot of information to him, but if he can at least guess at the language or the field the word comes from, it still conveys something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at your example, &quot;The Kid With the Gigaku Mask&quot;. My immediate thoughts are: &quot;gigaku&quot; sounds Japanese or Korean or maybe some other culture from that part of the world. So I guess the story has something to do with Japanese (or whatever) culture. I don't know if &quot;mask&quot; in this context is referring to a mask that might be worn in some traditional theater, or something used in religious or mystical ceremonies, or perhaps something related to some sort of holiday celebration. I'm sure there are other possibilities. &quot;Kid&quot; in the title leads me to believe that it is a story for children. (Of course not all stories with children as main characters are intended to be read by children, but they usually are.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you keep the &quot;and the end of the world&quot;, then I suppose that the story is fantasy or science fiction. With the reference to the mask, I'd guess some sort of fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course others may not have exactly the same thoughts I do, but I think what I just outlined is what many would assume. If that's right, than cool. If not, you may want to rethink that title some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T13:42:49.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8179" CreationDate="2013-06-21T13:59:47.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a review or critique of the article, then you should definitely be talking about &quot;the article says&quot; or &quot;the author says&quot;. But as I understand you, you're saying that you're supposed to write a summary of the article, not a critique. In that case, you should NOT be talking about the article, but about the subject. You should generally not use phrases like &quot;the article says&quot; or &quot;in the first paragraph&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your summary should follow the general order of the original. Like, if you are summarizing a news story about, say, a crime, and the story starts by introducing the victim, then describing the crime itself, then discussing the police investigation, your summary should also begin by introducing the victim, then describing the crime itself, then discussing the police investigation. Don't re-arrange sections. A summary may drop sections, but you should try to keep all the main points and just drop details. Like in that crime story example, if the original had a long description of who the victim was and where he lived and what he looked like, you might chop that all down to &quot;Fred Jones, a sales clerk from Brunswick&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course how much you have to cut things down depends on the length of the original article and the target length of your summary. If you're supposed to write a ten-line summary of a twenty-page article, you'll have to drop a lot more than if the original was one page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people who write summaries try to re-use the original words of the article whenever they can. They'll pick out key sentences and keep those, and pull phrases out of larger sentences. This can help to preserve some of the style of the original, as well as reducing the possibility of inadvertently altering the meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only time I write things like &quot;the author says&quot; in a summary is if I believe the original writer to be mistaken in his facts or I strongly disagree with opinions that he is expressing or if his statements are controversial or debatable whether I agree with them or not. I don't give a rebuttal -- then it wouldn't be a &quot;summary&quot; any more but a &quot;commentary&quot; -- but I hedge on saying &quot;this is true&quot; and make it &quot;the author claims that this is true&quot;. Arguably even that is introducing commentary and no longer a summary. But then, I've seen abstracts on technical articles where the person writing the summary included such hedge words, like, &quot;An experiment was done in which blah blah blah, the author claims to have proven that blah blah&quot; instead of a simple &quot;which proved that&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T13:59:47.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8206" CreationDate="2013-06-21T17:25:43.413" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think the information is entirely unnecessary, but it's dry.  Lauren gave a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8208/1993&quot;&gt;good answer about adding more feeling&lt;/a&gt;; in this answer I'll focus on another style issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a lot of &quot;she did this, then she did that, then she did something else...&quot;.  That feels repetitive.  Sometimes you want to convey the action itself; other times you want to convey a &lt;em&gt;state change&lt;/em&gt;.  For example, you wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tsuki woke up to the morning sun that entered through the window. She yawned and sat on the side of the bed, rubbing her eyes. The clock on the wall said half past ten. She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and then went downstairs. When she reached the dinning room, she realized that there was no one there. Not even the owner of the inn. She checked the kitchen. No one either. They were probably still asleep. Her stomach started growling—but no one was preparing breakfast. It was probably not right, but guided by her hunger, Tsuki went to check the refrigerator. Luckily, there was a can of tuna and tomatoes. So together with some bread, she fixed herself a simple sandwich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sunlight streamed through the window, awakening Tsuki.  Letting out a yawn as she sat up, she glanced at the clock on the wall -- half past ten already.  After washing and dressing she went downstairs to an empty dining room.  Where was the owner?  The kitchen, too, was empty; was everybody still asleep?  It probably wasn't right, but her growling stomach sent her to the refrigerator, where she found a can of tuna and some tomatoes.  Taking some bread she found on the counter, she assembled these into a simple sandwich to slake her hunger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did several things in that rewrite:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;changed some &quot;she did&quot; phrases into &lt;em&gt;descriptions&lt;/em&gt;: &quot;awakening Tsuki&quot;, &quot;letting out a yawn&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;conveyed some information without adding more action verbs at all: &quot;half past ten already&quot; (that the clock said it is implied), &quot;an empty dining room&quot; (she doesn't need to realize anything)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;moved some of the less-important actions into subordinate clauses: &quot;after washing and dressing&quot; (which I also collapsed, judging that brushing her teeth isn't important except as part of this routine)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;used &quot;action&quot; verbs for actors other than Tsuki: &quot;her growling stomach sent her to the refrigerator&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;turned a straight description into &quot;dialogue&quot; to show rather than tell: &quot;Where was the owner?&quot; instead of &quot;she realized that there was no one there&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;used a mix of approaches; doing any one of the above to the exclusion of the others would be just as problematic as your original&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T17:25:43.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2013-06-21T19:12:06.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two different reasons why people become writers. Some people become writers because they like the idea of being a writer. They like to play with words, they love the language. These writers usually write beautiful, poetic prose, but the story is usually not their strong point (I'm generalizing here, don't bite my head off). To them, the words are more important than the story. Other people become writers because they have something to say. They probably didn't consciously want to become writers, but they had so many stories inside their heads that the only way to quiet them was to write them down. These writers usually don't have a flowery writing style, but probably a more simple and straightforward one, depending on how much they care to work on it, but their stories are inspired. They don't open a word processor and go &quot;ok, I want to write something, what should I write about&quot;, the story is already there in their heads, just waiting to be written. The point of all this is, do you have a novel length story to tell, or do you just want to write something, anything? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you heard of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nanowrimo.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Novel Writing Month&lt;/a&gt;? It's an event that happens in November where people from all over the world attempt to write a novel of at least 50000 words in 30 days. You might want to give it a try next November (or even next month, they're having a NaNoWriMo Camp). The point of it is not to produce a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; novel, but to produce a first draft. The point is to prove to yourself that it can be done, and also to teach you a way of writing where you kill your inner editor and just write, because you simply don't have the time to edit, or even to think too much about it, you just write. When you start, you already know it's not going to be good, not at that first draft anyway. It might actually turn out to be total crap, it doesn't even matter. You might think what's the point then, but it actually takes the edge off. It lowers your expectations and you end up writing just for the hell of it. Plus it's fun hanging out with other &quot;WriMoers&quot; on the official forum and other places while you write, and if you get stuck, there's always someone to help you out. And then if you make it, if you write those 50000 words in a month, and you find that they have potential, then the real work starts.  There's a saying that great books aren't written, they're rewritten, and it's true. You need to edit a novel three, four, even ten times to make it good enough for general consumption. There are quite a few best-sellers that were written during NaNoWriMo, like Water for Elephants and The Night Circus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to return to the first point of this post. I've done NaNoWriMo for the past four years. First two times I've used a story that came from a dream, that was with me for several years already but I've never bothered writing it before then. NaNoWriMo was a perfect excuse to write it, and it was hard, the story was only vaguely fleshed out in my head before I started writing it and I had to come up with a lot of it on the fly, but I did it. Next year I wrote the sequel, also without much preparations. Third year, though, I wanted to try something else. I came up with a really fun story, I invented awesome characters with character backgrounds and everything, I outlined in details almost half the novel before NaNoWriMo started, but when I started writing, it fell apart half way. Not because it was bad, it was maybe even better than the previous story, but it felt fake, phony. It wasn't a story that came to me, it wasn't inspired, it was something I tried to make up, to force. I suspect you have the same problem. Ideas for short stories come to you, they're inspired, they write them selves freely, as you said. But from your question, I have a feeling you're trying to force longer stories, and subconsciously you just don't see a point of telling such a story, that's why you get writer's block. You can plan it and plot it all you want, but if the story doesn't feel true to you, there's no motivation, no desire to write it, characters don't feel real... I'm not saying you can't write a good &quot;made up&quot; story (yeah, I know, all stores are basically made up, but some are more made up than others, if you know what I mean ;) ). The first type of writers, the ones that write for the sake of writing and not because they have something to say, they're usually good in &quot;making up&quot; stories. But with some stores, when you read them, you can just feel they were inspired, that writer was compelled to write them. They have that something special you can't quite explain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if I'm right and this is the source of your problem, you need to let the story come to you, and not try to force it out. Maybe you could, like &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/5263/jersey&quot;&gt;jersey&lt;/a&gt; suggested, make a collection of short stories with a same theme, or same characters, or same setting. Maybe you could take one of your short stories, something with characters you find really interesting, and try to build on it, to expand it. Some short stories just scream to be allowed to grow. But don't try to write it until the idea grabs you completely. Give it a month, half a year, whatever, to mature inside your head. If after that time you not only still want to write it, but it has also fleshed out in your mind, that's the story you can write, that's the story that will write itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe, in the end, you're just not made for longer stories. Just yesterday another writer complained to me that she can't write short stories because all her ideas for short stories have a tendency of growing into giant monster ideas. We're not all made for everything. Some of us are better at short format, some of us at long. You're no less of a writer for writing short stories. Some of the world's best writers wrote their best stuff in short story format. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T19:12:06.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2013-06-21T19:56:49.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wattpad.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wattpad&lt;/a&gt; is a place where you can post stories and gain readers rather than critics. It has a mobile app so you can read the stories on the go if you want. Although, IMHO, there are too many teens there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another place where you can get both critics and readers is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deviantart.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;deviantArt&lt;/a&gt;, their focus is more on visual art, but they have a strong lit community as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both sites, though, are very socially oriented, and if you want to get read, you'd need to do a lot of socializing first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T19:56:49.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8216" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-21T20:59:22.470" Score="6" ViewCount="3815" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do the techniques for writing for animated cartoons differ from the techniques for other script-writing?  Is there a guide for writing for cartoons?  I suddenly find myself writing for a flash Youtube cartoon series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5405" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-06-23T21:11:04.293" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T03:26:12.703" Title="How to write for cartoons?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8217" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-22T05:14:16.263" Score="1" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want a staff of 16 writers to work on a creative project. Are there websites where I can find good writers to do free work? Please post links. I'm not advertising here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5405" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T21:20:37.657" Title="where would be a good place to find writers for my staff?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2013-06-22T23:43:01.820" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8216" CreationDate="2013-06-22T17:26:02.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have your target audience in mind, but don't stereotype and don't dumb it down. I mean, if that's a cartoon for kids, make it a nice tale for kids, but get the characters a secondary, non-obvious set of characteristics; have them play it through some behaviors, things that kid will simply shrug away as some insignificant discrepancy but an adult will notice as a nice nod - example, a benevolent wise master is secretly a prankster, half of the trouble - the more harmless half - is not random accidents or omissions but caused by them secretly. Make the story layered - the simple, obvious layer for kids, and a second, hidden layer, an implied play behind the scenes for adults that watch it. That truly will make a difference between that being &quot;just another toon&quot; and something excellent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: Learn your animation crew skill level. There are things that will be difficult to animate and draw. Full views of streets of lively, busy city may be impressive but take ten times as much time to animate as a sequence of talking heads. A sideways walk cycle is a standard pulled out of library, three minutes of animator work, but a rich, dynamic fighting scene will need to be drawn from scratch, a week of work for the whole team for a minute of animation. Talk to them and if that's a series, balance their workload by picking enough &quot;rich animation&quot; and enough &quot;filler&quot; so that making an episode takes roughly the same effort and cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can afford some more flair for pilot, season finale, and 3-4 episodes, but prepare 2-3 episodes of &quot;filler&quot; with roughly half of the core crew missing each - voice actors want a little time off too, and this gives them a week or two of holidays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, if you write a scene, try imagining how it will look like, when done - and then imagine the workload needed to make it. Make it too hard and expect it will be cut by the storyboard artists at request of the director.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T17:26:02.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5503" CreationDate="2013-06-22T17:49:01.730" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishers believe that a minimum page count is required for a marketable book, but some subjects cannot cover the 200+ page minimums. These books gets padded with material that is easy to produce such as analyses of works of art and unnecessary detailed review of other works on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another problem. If you are an academic, chances are you are producing very little new knowledge. A new theory or any other important contribution to science is considered a great work for any academic but it is actually rare that such a work is produced. So, academics spend a lot of time on analysis, material that is easy to produce and requires no creativity. Some academics write many books on a subject that could be easily covered in a single book. It's a question of page quota but also production. That is why the quality of books by academics is dropping every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aristotle would cover a subject fully in 40,000 or 60,000 words of dense meaning and only write a single book on the subject. The modern academic produces far less important work and tends to produce multiple book on a subject of limited depth and importance. There are techniques to do that sort of thing, and everybody is using them. The same applies to white papers and everything else in the academic world. These days, the production cost is very low and practically everyone writes books, so quality has naturally deteriorated. The reader will rarely find a good book on the subject and that's how it will be in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5411" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T17:49:01.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8221" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-22T04:25:11.100" Score="2" ViewCount="901" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you avoid too much repetition both in writing and speech? I feel like I'm repeating the same word over and over again when I'm writing or talking to people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;price&lt;/strong&gt; of this &lt;strong&gt;tablet&lt;/strong&gt; is X and the &lt;strong&gt;price&lt;/strong&gt; of that &lt;strong&gt;tablet&lt;/strong&gt; is Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, I feel like I'm repeating &quot;price&quot; and &quot;tablet&quot; too much. I even feel like I'm repeating the same sentence construction. Is there a shorter/better way to say this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;X is &lt;strong&gt;being sold in that store&lt;/strong&gt; at $200 and Y is &lt;strong&gt;being sold in that store&lt;/strong&gt; at $300. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the two &quot;that store&quot; are referring to the same store, what kind of information can I delete without losing too much information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Styluses X are $3 &lt;strong&gt;per dozen&lt;/strong&gt; and styluses Y are $4 &lt;strong&gt;per dozen&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, I'm not sure if I can leave out the second &quot;per dozen&quot; and still convey the same meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Styluses X are $3 &lt;strong&gt;per dozen&lt;/strong&gt; and styluses Y are $4 &lt;strong&gt;(per dozen is implied?)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should I even do this to avoid repeating the same construction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Styluses X are $3 if &lt;strong&gt;ordered in dozens&lt;/strong&gt; and styluses Y are $4 if &lt;strong&gt;ordered by the dozen&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to change things around a bit but I'm not sure if this works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5511" OwnerDisplayName="jess" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-06-23T21:09:25.927" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T12:59:26.803" Title="How to avoid repetition" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8221" CreationDate="2013-06-22T06:26:25.200" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put the two subjects together to make one clause. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The prices of X tablet &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; Y tablet are $120.00 and $140.00&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;respectively&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Join the two subjects with &quot;both&quot; and use a different preposition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;X and Y &lt;strong&gt;are both&lt;/strong&gt; sold in that store &lt;strong&gt;for&lt;/strong&gt; $200.00 and $300.00&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes for clarity's sake you might need to repeat the same expression but adding &quot;while&quot; as a conjunction makes the sentence flow more smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stylus X are $3 per dozen &lt;strong&gt;while&lt;/strong&gt; stylus Y are $4 per dozen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could swap the clauses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If ordered by the dozen&lt;/strong&gt; stylus X &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; $3 and stylus Y is $4&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I changed the plural noun &lt;em&gt;styluses&lt;/em&gt; to the singular &lt;em&gt;stylus&lt;/em&gt; because I presume each stylus has a different price tag, but if company X sells several different styluses all at the same price than it's perfectly correct to keep the plural form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestion No 2 seems open to misinterpretations, so here are other alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If X and Y are priced identically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;X and Y &lt;strong&gt;are both&lt;/strong&gt; sold in that store &lt;strong&gt;for&lt;/strong&gt; $200.00&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;X and Y are sold in that store &lt;strong&gt;for&lt;/strong&gt; $200.00 and $300.00 &lt;strong&gt;respectively&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;X &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; $200.00 and Y &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; $300.00 sold in that store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5294" OwnerDisplayName="Mari-Lou A" LastEditorUserId="5294" LastEditDate="2013-06-23T12:17:47.213" LastActivityDate="2013-06-23T12:17:47.213" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8221" CreationDate="2013-06-23T00:17:19.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mari-Lou A gave many good ways to do it. Let me just add about using em-dash to replace repeating part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The price of this tablet is X, and that — Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;X is being sold in that store at $200 and Y — in that one, at $300.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Styluses X are $3 per dozen and styluses Y — $4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And no, in your case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Styluses X are $3 per dozen and styluses Y are $4 (per dozen is implied?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, the second &amp;quot;per dozen&amp;quot; is not implied - specifically because you alliterate &amp;quot;styluses Y are $4&amp;quot; which is not the same as the prior clause at all. If you use the em-dash omission, the dash means &amp;quot;the same as before&amp;quot; and then the dozen actually is implied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-06-23T13:20:59.383" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8224" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8225" CreationDate="2013-06-23T13:01:10.333" Score="1" ViewCount="480" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not very sure why, but the following sentence structure came out from my mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: this is a first draft.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The realization just came to her now. Or perhaps, she knew it all&#xA;  along; it just that she didn't want to accept it. She was alone in a&#xA;  small, compressed space, with the rest of the world very&#xA;  far away from her. And maybe she would never be able to come back to it.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Ruth, Benjamin, and the people she loved and cared about—she would probably&#xA;  never seen them again.&lt;/strong&gt; Things would change. They would change from one state &#xA;  to another, just like ice turns into water, and water into gas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that sentence structure allowed in fiction? Is OK right to use the em dash in this situation? (Does it read clumsily?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-19T17:13:28.530" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T17:13:28.530" Title="Is the following sentence structure allowed in fiction?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|punctuation|narrative|sentence-structure|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8224" CreationDate="2013-06-23T13:31:02.353" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No! Absolutely forbidden! The Rule Book XVII of the Writers Inquisition explicitly forbids under pains of corporal punishment!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just kidding. That's a pretty standard, rather nice form. I usually use ellipsis where you used em-dash, but both are acceptable (and some use a colon, it's acceptable there too.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few mild typos/mistakes ( &quot;it &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; just that she...&quot;, &quot;come back&quot;, you usually put spaces on both sides of em-dash, plus the last sentence sounds a little cheesy to me... ) but the particular construction is quite common and well accepted. Don't abuse it - too much will be tiring, but using it from time to time is fine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-06-23T13:31:02.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8224" CreationDate="2013-06-23T14:49:44.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's perfectly alright, though it sounds weird in my head because you've drawn attention to that sentence. As a result, I feel like it could be changed in a way that it reads better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And maybe she would never be able to come back to it. The people she loved and cared about. Ruth, Benjamin — she would probably never seen them again. Things would change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, why not&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And maybe she would never be able to come back to it. The people she loved and cared about — she would probably never seen them again. She thought about Ruth, Benjamin. Things would change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I agree with SF that the last line just sounds too cheesy. But, your form is not weird at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, removing the &quot;I thought&quot; portion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And maybe she would never be able to come back to it. The people she loved and cared about — she would probably never seen them again. Ruth, Benjamin. Things would change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4894" LastEditorUserId="4894" LastEditDate="2017-04-30T12:41:56.073" LastActivityDate="2017-04-30T12:41:56.073" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8224" CreationDate="2013-06-23T16:38:02.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not grammatically correct standard written English, but it needn't be. It's perfectly comprehensible and imitates real stream of consciousness just fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4089" LastActivityDate="2013-06-23T16:38:02.573" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8216" CreationDate="2013-06-24T03:26:12.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, a lot of big animation studios (Disney, Pixar, etc) work with &lt;strong&gt;storyboards&lt;/strong&gt; rather than scripts. Try that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T03:26:12.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8164" CreationDate="2013-06-24T07:29:43.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An introductory text should always come before the screenshot that you are about to display. This will help the user to get an idea of what is about to be displayed in the screenshot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can definitely provide the descriptive text for what exactly is happening in the screenshot for better understanding of the user.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5416" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T07:29:43.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8234" CreationDate="2013-06-24T09:28:07.720" Score="5" ViewCount="2342" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am unsure if I adequately understand the concept of first electronic rights. If I post a story on a writers' website for free but also publish it through Amazon, will it affect me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-06-24T14:30:08.667" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T21:32:28.660" Title="What is first electronic rights?" Tags="|publishing|copyright|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8221" CreationDate="2013-06-24T12:59:26.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the examples you gave, I don't think the repetition is bad at all. These are parallel constructions and repetition makes that clear. You can and should repeat words when your intent is to show that two things are similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast your examples with a sentence like, &quot;Bob decided he needed a new tablet. So he went to a store that sells tablets where the tablet salesman showed him a variety of tablets. He particularly liked tablet XR-17, but tablet Ultra Foo, a tablet made by Acme, was cheaper. ...&quot; Here the repetition of &quot;tablet&quot; is distracting and it would be a good idea to look for alternative phrasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others have mentioned substituting synonyms. I assume by &quot;tablet&quot; here you mean tablet computers and by &quot;stylus&quot; you mean styluses used with computer screens. If not, the same ideas apply though the details would be different. But in that case I don't know of any synonyms, though you could use more general terms. In context a general term could pretty unambiguously refer to a specific item. Like if you're talking about tablets and then instead of saying &quot;tablet XR-17&quot; you say &quot;model XR-17&quot;, the reader would generally assume this was a model of tablet and not a car or a toaster. In other cases you could drop the word completely as it's already been established by context. Like the above paragraph could be reworded to, &quot;Bob decided he needed a new tablet. So he went to a store that sells computers where the salesman showed him a variety of models. He particularly liked the XR-17, but the Ultra Foo by Acme was cheaper ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in your examples, substituting synonyms could create ambiguity. Like if instead of &quot;The price of this tablet is X and the price of that tablet is Y&quot; you wrote, say, &quot;The price of this tablet is $200 and the cost of that computer is $300&quot;, a reader might well wonder if your switch from &quot;price&quot; to &quot;cost&quot; was simply to avoid repetition or if you are trying to convey a different meaning. Similarly they might wonder if the second item is also a tablet or if it is some other kind of computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T12:59:26.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8231" CreationDate="2013-06-24T13:12:00.740" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Amazon agreement says: &quot;&lt;em&gt;You grant to each Amazon party, throughout the term of this Agreement, a &lt;strong&gt;nonexclusive&lt;/strong&gt;, irrevocable, right and license to distribute Digital Books, directly and through third-party distributors, in all digital formats by all digital distribution means available&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means you can also distribute your digital book through other media - free or paid - what includes a a free writing website. In legal terms of exclusivity, it won't affect you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand. a lot of people will have access to your content freely and may not be willing to pay for it. Of course there are a lot of people who choose such an approach, appealing to those who like the content to buy it or donate money as support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That will affect you, but not necessarily in a bad way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to say if offering the book for free will make you earn or lose money. It depends on a lot of things and, especially for a not well known writer, it may mean profits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="251" LastEditDate="2013-06-24T20:58:40.010" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T20:58:40.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8235" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8239" CreationDate="2013-06-24T13:20:11.377" Score="0" ViewCount="6019" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you've guessed from the title, I'm writing a prospective email to venues, about hiring their venue for a day. I've drafted an email, but it just doesn't sound right so I would like some feedback. I want to get straight to the point, but I don't want it to sound to forward... I'm intending to call them next week so I don't need loads of information, just the most important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Draft so far&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To Whom It May Concern,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My name is [NAME], and I am interested in hiring a venue in East London for an exhibition that will be held in 2014. If possible, could you procure me information on the following?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the maximum capacity of your venue? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much would it cost to hire your venue for a day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will we we be able to utilize the whole venue as we wish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will follow this email up by telephone next week. Should you want to get in contact with me beforehand, my number is [number].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yours faithfully,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Name]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5419" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-02T20:09:18.480" LastActivityDate="2018-05-02T20:09:18.480" Title="Tone and directness in email requesting details from prospective venues" Tags="|style|business-writing|email|tone|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-05-04T12:37:55.157" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8231" CreationDate="2013-06-24T13:26:57.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, &quot;First [X] Rights&quot; means &quot;the right to be the first person/entity to do [X],&quot; or &quot;...to publish this piece in format [X].&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;First Electronic Rights&quot; means first &lt;strong&gt;publication&lt;/strong&gt; in a digital format. In this context, emailing a copy to your best friend isn't publication, but posting it on a publicly-accessible site (e.g. your blog, or a writers' website) is; publishing as an ebook available on Amazon certainly is. In general, as soon as you post or sell your story in &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; public venue online, you no longer have any First Electronic Rights to sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, not having &lt;em&gt;First&lt;/em&gt; Electronic Rights doesn't mean you don't have &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; Electronic Rights - they're just not first anymore. They'll likely still have value, particularly if you can eliminate the &quot;first&quot; source of publication, which lets you provide exclusivity. There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.authorsguild.org/services/legal-services/electronic-rights/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lots and lots of things you can do with Electronic Rights&lt;/a&gt; - it's so broad, that it's a good idea to negotiate very clearly on specific projects rather than the catch-all &quot;electronic rights.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, also, that publishing digitally can also been seen as &quot;taking&quot; other rights, particularly First Serial rights - having published something online can make publishing it in print less attractive; it's no longer the &quot;first&quot; publication of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this being said, rights are negotiated over, and the precise degree to which you're likely to be able to sell any one right or a combination thereof (and for how much!) depends heavily on your particular piece and situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T13:26:57.767" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8237" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-06-24T16:11:20.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fantasy is a genre of &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/fiction&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;fiction&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;fiction&lt;/a&gt;, that mostly deals with magic, mystical powers, mythical or magic creatures (like Vampires or Dragons) and often plays in a mediveal-styled world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions with this tag, should center around this theme, including &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/formatting&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;formatting&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;formatting&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/publishing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;publishing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;publishing&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/technique&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;technique&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;technique&lt;/a&gt; questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you should state, in which phase of your story you are (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/planning&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;planning&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;planning&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/editing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;editing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;editing&lt;/a&gt; to improve the quality of the answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26660" LastEditorUserId="26660" LastEditDate="2018-06-07T13:28:39.813" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T13:28:39.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8238" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-06-24T16:11:20.407" Score="0" Body="Is the literary genre that deals with magic, magic creatures and imaginary worlds. This tag should be used for any questions relating to fantasy, including formatting, techniques and publishing." OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2018-06-09T11:48:46.000" LastActivityDate="2018-06-09T11:48:46.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8235" CreationDate="2013-06-24T18:37:00.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an RFI (Request for Information) I suggest not focussing on tone, but instead aiming at clarity, brevity, and completeness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For clarity and brevity, rather than “I am interested in hiring”, write “I will hire”.  For completeness, indicate a time frame and your capacity; for example, “In a few weeks I will hire” or “In a few weeks my organization will hire” or (a bit clumsily) “In a few weeks the organization I'm acting for will hire”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the exact date of the exhibition, venue owners will want to know (or may insist upon knowing) when you will make your decision and how large the group is.  You might add to your list of questions whether a deposit will be required, whether advance payment is required, and whether a bond or insurance is offered or required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase “could you procure me information” is non-standard.   For correctness you might write “could you provide me [with] information”, but for brevity write  “Please let me know:” before your list of questions.  Do not use a qualifier like “If possible” before your request.   “Please” is ok as a qualifier, but “if possible” is unnecessary and sounds too tentative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest recasting “Will we we be able to utilize the whole venue as we wish?” as two separate questions or items, one regarding whether you will have sole occupancy of the venue, and another regarding whether you can use all of its facilities.  Note, the rather open-ended phrase “as we wish” probably will cause qualms among some venue owners, because they will not know what your wishes might stretch to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of “Should you want to get in contact with me beforehand, my number is [number]”, a more-specific phrasing may be better: “If you have questions regarding this Request for Information, please call me at [number]”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T18:37:00.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2013-06-24T22:02:34.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm dealing with the same problem. Short stories would write themselves like you said. But anymore ambitious dies at around page 11. I tried planning, but that seems to dry up the creative juices even quicker leading to a bunch of notes I'm not able to manage or a scene by scene outline I don't have any motivation to expand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I found a solution to this: you need to keep up the momentum of writing a short story, but paint with broader strokes.&#xA;Start by taking notes (bullet points or whole sentences). Write anything down that comes to mind about your story idea. Things that could happen. Characters. Places. It hasn't to be perfect. Don't do any detailed description, dialogs other wordy stuff. If things aren't clear in your mind write down the question that's bothering you. The story will flow naturally from your idea. You will have a couple of pages with a rough, but complete sketch of your story. It isn't final or set in stone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then take the notes and bring in your planning method of choice. Chop the sentences up into scenes. Start detailing characters. Write a clean outline. Refer back to the notes when you get stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You basically wanna expand on this rough sketch turning it into a whole book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that your outline will (need to) change, while you do the actual writing. Run with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On writers block:&#xA;Writers block seems to happen when something is wrong with your story. Take a step back and try to figure out the issues with your story and how to fix them. Try to write notes to identify and fix the issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've taken these two ideas (notes and dealing with writers block) from Richard Laymons A Writers Tale. It isn't the best book about writing, but I tried the notes taking he mentions and ended up with a complete outline in a couple of hours. Writing with a outline is a breeze. Well until I hit road (writers) block ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5104" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T22:02:34.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8242" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-25T02:25:36.110" Score="2" ViewCount="2367" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a ~3000-word piece, with deliberately stylized writing. Is the style of this piece successful or gimmicky? Does it read smooth or choppy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He sat on top of the highway. City on a hill. He was looking down at the cars, but not at their metal chassis. He was concerned with their existence, and their heavy weight in our perception of time. The cars moved so fast, they didn’t intake information at the same rate as he, standing still. Their time moved much too fast to see details. He got thinking—  people down there only spent a split second of their life ever in that exact spot he was watching. Speeding past the overpass that out looked a sublime mountain range. Metal was hiding wood, concentration was hiding beauty. Not that they noticed, no, their eyes were on the road. He could slowly breath in and out, but the cars would keep on coming, pouring down the highway, each speeding like the one in front of it. When did they take a break?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His mind would jump through his thoughts, looking about randomly. They were serious thoughts, but still subject to the decay of fresh crisp air. They sort of sat in his head, sometimes turning into words, and in the slow process of permeating into pure emotion, fermenting in his mind. Then he switched to the mountain range again, the one the drivers would never see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how his story began. This is how his story ended. Staring at the mountains, but of course, he wasn’t actually seeing them, because he was not really looking. He was preoccupied. Stuck in his thoughts, his time was much slower than normal. Opposite the cars, that moved too fast to look around, he was moving too slow. He was in the past; a whole different dimension than the present trees his eyes were perpendicular to. He would look at the trees, but really they were an afterthought. To his head, they were a mere green projector screen to watch, letting him take his thoughts and see them outwardly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His head was busy rewinding previous memories. The screen went dark, and he visited the episode at his house earlier that day. He saw his mom’s deep blue eyes, and straight blond hair. He could smell the air, and remember would it felt like to stand on his front, un-mowed lawn, which was reaching up and itching his ankle. He could zoom in on his mom’s shirt and see the texture of how the ink lay on the cotton if he wanted to. He could see the gritty dark red of his roof if he wanted. This was all in his memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The details were mostly blurs though, such were the nature of details. Mostly, he was watching the content. He was watching the visualization of the words, and the face expressions that was created from them. “You will not sneak around as long as you live in my house” she blurted. This contorted her face, so it looked like she was thinking, as if it were a hard math problem, where she scrunched her eyebrows closer together, and created extra wrinkles above her face. Emotional, frustrated, she looked as if she knew she’d get it wrong, transfixed with enlarged vivid eyes, and complete with a frown. From the tip of her nose, she was holding a downward wrinkle that spilled the frown around her lip and under her cheek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She had been thinking so hard, he was sure that she barely saw him leave. Her thoughts had glossed over the usually attentive glare in her eyes. She was so emotional, her view had blurred, and she hadn’t noticed time slip past her. The sky darkened, and he had left the house, unable to deal with his mom’s outburst.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His mom’s outburst had been loud. The neighbors could hear it. Of course, realistically every family has tension, so out of courtesy, they looked away. They could clearly hear it, yet their face would hold purposeful neutrality. Out of courtesy, they did not hear it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is everyone letting themselves be so blind to the truth? He remembered what he had been looking at. “You will not sneak around as long as you live in my house”. He had dodged his moms eyes, and had looked at the grass. The vivid green had reminded him of the colors of his adventures. As his mom slipped into her own world, so did he. He mentally closed the door to her, and recalled the lit blunt, and watched the smoke dance upward. As he followed the smoke trail up, He went from the green of the grass, to the trees, and then finally the sky. It hazed and dazed and dazzled, synergizing into a dizzying ride. His head was spinning, but his eyes were enjoying the colors too much to stop. He looked at the blue sky, and saw it darken. The darkening snapped him back into the conversation with his mom. He had snapped back a few minutes too late though, her mom had already dazed out of her anger. She now held a subdued anxiety. He tried to stay for dinner, but that wound him tighter, he needed to leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is no one grasping the present? What are they avoiding? His mom knew what he was up too. She found a bag of it in his room when she had gone to clean. It had been messy too long, and she was trying to be motherly and help. She knew he would not tell her about it if she didn’t ask, and he would probably lie about it if she did ask. Suddenly she saw the reality of parenting. She was mad, and had scolded him heavily, but then she had glossed over and let him go. It didn’t matter what she soliloquized, he was going to crawl around her back, no matter which direction she turned. In the reality of it, she was mad that her kid was lying to her, ruining his future, ‘But we can’t stop them, can we?’ she thought. She had stopped talking to her son. She just stood still. And thought. Son gets older every single year. She was not necessarily thinking words, only melancholy waves of sadness regarding her sons maturity. Her mind would slip in and out of old memories. All until she woke back up into the mud field of the backyard. She was stuck, trying to view him as a kid, malleable, and open to advice. She was stuck, not ready for him to grow older. ‘that’s usual, right?’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You will not sneak around as long as you live in my house”. His mom did not even consider how he had felt. He doesn’t like sneaking around. He doesn’t like hiding, and ducking. Still, to the same degree, he’s a person, and he will make his own decisions. He will sneak around in her house, as it is his life that is inhabiting her house, not her possession.  ’Does she hate me?’, he wondered. He wished he could tell her the truth. She was his mom, she should comfort him… but it didn’t seem right. Why was she suddenly mad now? Oh, so she found out he was not at the friend’s house he said he’d be at. In an unsettling way, he was happy to be punished for that mistake, as he had made others, and was scared she had found out about the more pressing details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The neighbors saw it get darker, they had been watching the television near their front window. In fact, that had seen him as he walked out of his house, a little after dark. He walked with his arms a little too tightly crossed, which gave off a dark, negitive aura of energy that was wound up and tangled in him. His hood was clear over his face though, so they saw no expression. After hearing loud burst earlier in the day, they wondered if he was running away from home. They waved at him, to see if he would show some warmth, but he didn’t even notice them in the window. He kept walking straight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There on the grass, overlooking the highway, was his friend. As he stared at the highway, thinking of the cars, thinking of the trees, she also thought. She was dizzy trying to remember the night before. She had been coughing, she was spinning. Her time was moving slowly too. She hugged herself, out of fear she would suddenly disappear. She was looking at, but also not really seeing, those distant trees. She was watching the lit blunt too, and she re-watched it go into her mouth. She coughed. She was having a mal-reaction. This was not supposed to happen. The Asthma was getting in the way. Was it, was it really happening? Was she just nervous, and doing what she thought would happen, or was the weed really what was causing her asthma attack? At first it wasn’t that bad, but after being encouraged to continue, the actual attack started. She was put in her own world. She tried not to over think, but her efforts made her over think about over-thinking, and then anxieties started choking her before her breath did, and then they harmonized, hitting at the same fear, the same nerve in her brain: hopelessness. Isolation. For a full lifetime, she was alone. She didn’t see him look at her with an abyss of concerned. She didn’t notice how hard he was fighting his high to leave his world and enter hers. She didn’t notice him grasp her, and comfort her. She was coughing, maybe even too her death. Her head was spinning, and things were not happened as they were supposed to. She couldn’t breath. She couldn’t grasp. She couldn’t see. Her eyes were watching nothing. They were not registering. Her senses were stuck attending her lack of breath. They were—&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then they had gone home, separately.  Both, completely scared of what happened, both, thinking they would never try it again. “You will not sneak around as long as you live in my house”. As his mom said that, she knew how incorrect it really was. He had probably tried some of the weed she had found, probably seen how it felt, and probably liked it. He will probably keep doing it, right? Could she stop him? It’s his choices, right? She felt so clever, as if she had seen it all. She saw so clearly what she was sure happened, it filled right into the details. The details were wrong. She was so clever, so sure of herself, she didn’t bother to notice her son’s phased face, and delicate body language. He had jumped when she told him not to sneak around, she didn’t notice how vulnerable he looked at that moment. He solemnly said “ok, sorry”. Maybe she would not understand the depth of what that meant, but she could have picked up on the fact that it had meant something. She didn’t really see that though. She did not notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“ok, sorry” he said. It wasn’t necessarily directed at any one, but more to everyone. He had encouraged her to try the stuff, and he had freaked out his mom, by telling a bad lie. Maybe he had made her hate him. ‘Does she hate me?’, he wondered. He had let his reality slip out of his hand. He saw what should have happened, and yet somehow it didn’t. On the brink of a total asthma attack, her inhaler did not bring down the adrenaline as it did her coughing. He saw what should have been a calming evening. The two conflicting pictures stayed dissonant in his mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He loved her. Though he felt sorry about that too. Sorry that he had to risk a solid friendship. He wanted so bad to hold her, to calm her down. His touch was fire, he never knew when he was going to outstretch his boundaries, and when she was going to melt. When she was going to wonder why he was always touching her, and when she was going to feel uncomfortable about their relationship. She was in equilibrium with him, they were both friends. He didn’t want to break that, scared that it would shatter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She, of course, was blind. When they were together, she rarely intersected eyes. They were good friends, and they had interesting, flowing conversations. While she was thinking, he was sweating, searching her eyes for recognition of his existence, but she never looked back. She was always looking out into the distance. “I didn’t mean to” he wanted to say. She would probably not respond to that, how could she? She wasn’t even sure what had happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I didn’t mean to”. His mom though, would dismiss this. Of course he meant to, right? He needed a way to get off the radar for an exciting night, right? He needed space, chance to be a kid. He must have meant to lie. At this point, time would speed up for his mom. She would go inside, and continue making dinner. She would continue her day, trying to ignore the white elephant in the room, her kid is doing things. He is doing what he will, and she can’t stop it. He is growing up. That’s what she would see all through dinner. He wasn’t so hungry, so he put his plate in the sink and left the table soon after dinner started. He’s growing up so fast isn’t he? She thought this, and then kept eating undisturbed. After dinner she did the dishes, and did not see him again that night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the morning, his mom looked better. He was happy to see his weed where he left it, untouched, undisturbed. He was in the clear then, this would all just fade away, right? He tried to call that happiness… really, it was just a minor relaxation. He still had a lot to fear; many things broke that night. He felt as if the whole incident was his fault, how could he even talk to her again? His lies felt so piercing, to both himself and others. “no mom, I’ll just be out for a bit, I’ll stay safe” “don’t worry about it, Emily, you’ll be ok, nothing bad happens when you try it” “no, everything’s ok, I’m fine, thanks for asking”. He was not fine, though this is not to be over dramatized. He felt no sense of impending doom, nothing was gettingworse. It was just that, nothing felt good, nothing was right. Everything was in its wrong place, and he felt powerless to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mistakes were not even big enough to need fixing. He could not outright bring the subject up, just think about it. Just think about and know others are doing the same. Always thinking, until the thoughts turn stale, and go south. Its the worst fate: to have to guess what everyone else needs, to guess what they are seeing, to not know.  ’Does she hate me?’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His mom had collected her thoughts. She would keep letting him go on suspicious sleep overs. He would continue to do what he wanted, and he would find the consequences that it would give him. “You will not sneak around as long as you live in my house”, his mom thought of that. She had cooled down, and knew that it would not stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, he was sick. He was so sick, he had to excused himself from dinner right away. He could not eat calmly, when he kept seeing her cough. He kept remembering that gut wrenching feeling, not knowing how to help, watching her unable to breath. He needed fresh air. He got up, went to Emily’s house, and brought her up to the lookout on the highway, where they had smoked the day before. It had all gone wrong. “It had all gone wrong” he said to her, while watching the cars. But of course, everyone was in their own world, blind to everyone else. He looked at the cars, at the trees, but what was there to see? The cars moved so fast, he could barely see their color, and so many of the trees were identical. He could just make out the outline of each tree. It was more of a green screen, then a forest. He could not see really see the trees, even though he had all the time in the world to look at them. So maybe he was no better off than the driver, just as blind, just as occupied. They were driving, he was thinking, he was worrying, he was crying. Tears rolled down his face, blurring their shapes. Why was he crying, he didn’t really know. He felt like he was being so over dramatic, and yet, still, he cried. Sitting next to him, Emily didn’t really notice. She was thinking about how much it hurt to cough. She had not even heard his statement. He repeated it. “It had all gone wrong” to which she calmly replied. “yea, it did, didn’t it?”. They both separately looked at the trees, and sat in silence. “You will not sneak around as long as you live in my house”, he thought of those words, he thought of that day, the overgrown green grass, the dancing smoke, the texture of his roof, time and space. He thought of her, the neighbors, his mom, himself, the hundreds of cars passing by. It was all so claustrophobic, so many people, all with a place they want to be, and a place they think that others are going. All focused on the road, not taking a second to look around. He thought, and then took a breath of fresh air. In flowed a new breath, and then he let it all tumble out of his lungs, out of his windpipe, and finally out of his mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5421" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T06:57:15.603" Title="Is this stylized writing successful or gimmicky?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2018-05-03T12:32:33.527" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8245" CreationDate="2013-06-25T06:41:54.860" Score="7" ViewCount="4277" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen several &quot;unauthorized&quot; guides for popular media. For instance, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B005Q70M2S&quot;&gt;Finding Battlestar Galactica: An Unauthorized Guide&lt;/a&gt;. The impression I get is that by being &quot;unauthorized&quot;, it is made without the permission of the owners of the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that definition is correct, can anybody and their grandmother write an unauthorized guide without any legal ramifications? I'm especially wondering: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they don't have permission, how do authors get around copyright issues due to using someone else's intellectual property?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do such guides have to be self-published or will publishers be willing to print them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the owner of the material have any legal recourse against the author if they do not want the book published?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do the rules change depending on what it is a guide about (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0345525191&quot;&gt;a TV show&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0789719126&quot;&gt;a software product&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1780924364&quot;&gt;a person's life&lt;/a&gt;)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that pretty much every response will fall under the &quot;I am not a lawyer&quot; defense clause; I'm just wondering in general whether or not anybody could write such an unauthorized biography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5424" LastEditorUserId="5424" LastEditDate="2013-06-25T07:22:06.727" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T14:35:34.420" Title="Can Anybody Write an &quot;Unauthorized&quot; Guide?" Tags="|authorship|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8256" CreationDate="2013-06-25T07:07:30.953" Score="6" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of websites for getting feedback for my writing. But since posting something publicly on the internet can count as &quot;publication,&quot; I'm worried that posting my work there might prove an obstacle once the work is done and I'm seeking publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I know whether or not posting my writing on a particular site counts as publishing it? What online workshop setups are definitely OK, and which are problematic? I'm looking for signs and guidelines more than specific websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T12:57:45.327" Title="How to tell if a fiction workshopping site protects my rights?" Tags="|copyright|writing-groups|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8243" CreationDate="2013-06-25T07:39:52.267" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;These guides are perfectly legal original work, and any copyrighted material used in them falls under &quot;criticism, comment and news reporting&quot; fair use clause. Of course the author needs to make sure to assign credit with diligence, to emphasize these are citations and not plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that doesn't mean the owner of the franchise won't &lt;em&gt;try&lt;/em&gt; to stop the author of the guide. After all, it capitalizes on the official franchise without paying licensing fees. The onus of proof given citation falls fair use rules lies on the defense (the prosecution must only prove it belongs to them). There's the matter of trademarks and again the author must be diligent to show this is not a part of the official franchise (thus the obligatory &quot;unofficial&quot; in title!) and does not erode the trademark or damage its reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: legally that's treading on slippery ground. This can be done legally but there's a bunch of preconditions that need to be fulfilled, and you may expect a legal battle - the fact the law is on your side doesn't mean the opponent won't try to coerce you into giving up, and in this case you're &quot;guilty until proven innocent&quot;, they show &quot;general rule forbids&quot; and you must prove &quot;exceptions apply.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering your points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You don't need the author's permission. (although obtaining it surely would make it easier)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publishers will be reluctant to accept these unless you're already in the clear legally (either with author's permission or won the lawsuit.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The owner can hope to prove you failed to observe all necessary conditions, or just hope to coerce you into giving up through a lawsuit. If you were diligent, you are in the clear, but that doesn't mean the lawsuit won't be lengthy or costly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's a bunch of completely different rules if you publish someone's biography. A guide to a franchise is a guide to a franchise. A story of private life of a person is quite a different matter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-06-25T07:47:57.473" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T07:47:57.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8243" CreationDate="2013-06-25T07:44:38.943" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good example you can study is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harry_Potter_Lexicon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harry Potter Lexicon&lt;/a&gt; case. A fan site wanted to publish a guide to the Harry Potter universe. Rowling disagreed, claiming she owed all the rights to the Harry Potter world, and nothing could be published about it without her approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Judge Patterson said that reference materials were generally useful to&#xA;  the public but that in this case, Vander Ark went too far. He said&#xA;  that &quot;while the Lexicon, in its current state, is not a fair use of&#xA;  the Harry Potter works, reference works that share the Lexicon's&#xA;  purpose of aiding readers of literature generally should be encouraged&#xA;  rather than stifled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering your other questions, it would be better to go with  a publisher, as the copyright owner may sue anyway, and the publishers can afford better lawyers than you. I'm sure if the book had been self published, the author would have been bullied into backing off due to the high legal costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think the rules would change based on the medium, but not sure. I don't think so, because I have seen such unofficial guides to TV shows, books, video games, to mention a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastEditorUserId="2024" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T14:35:34.420" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T14:35:34.420" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6621" CreationDate="2013-06-25T10:37:03.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course that depends on the country and internal laws but, since there may be Brazilian and Portuguese writers here, &lt;strong&gt;I'll answer based on those countries&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just registered a book with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.igac.gov.pt/inicio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IGAC&lt;/a&gt;, the institute that handles such requests in Portugal and it required my real name — &lt;em&gt;which makes sense since it has to track who I really am&lt;/em&gt; — and my pen name — &lt;em&gt;Eduardo Fernandes&lt;/em&gt; — which I think is for public consult of the archives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to use only the pen name, it's not possible, which — &lt;em&gt;in my opinion&lt;/em&gt; — makes all the sense since no copyright institute can register a manuscript without proper documentation and, if they have your documentation, even if they would accept your pen name only, they would also have access to your real name. I don't see how it's possible to copyright a manuscript without knowing who — &lt;em&gt;in legal terms&lt;/em&gt; — you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can create your own legal fictional identity — &lt;em&gt;for example, a small one-man company&lt;/em&gt; — and let the company have the rights on your work, not you. That would make the YourPenName Company be displayed as the owner, not you. Of course, again, your company will need to have papers and you would be listed as responsible for it, which would make your real identity findable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-05-10T12:46:27.013" LastActivityDate="2022-05-10T12:46:27.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8244" CreationDate="2013-06-25T10:47:38.170" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to play an online mmorpg game named &lt;a href=&quot;http://popmundo.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Popmundo&lt;/a&gt; and to be a regular columnist for their game magazine: It's Pop. In the agreement of the game, they specified that the content you create was &lt;em&gt;locked&lt;/em&gt; to the game and could not be used outside, even they not being able to sell it or make profits out of the game itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That give an example of how you can know if posting something publicly on the internet can count as &quot;publication&quot;: agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any site of forum will have an agreement page - &lt;em&gt;or something like that&lt;/em&gt; - and there they will specify what can be done with content publish under it. Some smaller sites may not have it, what demonstrates some lack of seriousness. You should be aware of such sites if you intent to use your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing, the Internet is wild west and exist in a gray area. Take for example online shopping, made most of times trough trust: if you buy something from another country and there are problems, it will be extremely difficult to enforce your rights trough law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that, I want to say that if you do not have your work registered, somebody - &lt;em&gt;not site staff, but readers&lt;/em&gt; - else may get your manuscript and do it and you will be engaged in a lot of problem to prove you own it. I'm not saying it happens always, but it may happen. So, if you want to share your work, make sure it's marked as yours somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T10:47:38.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8204" CreationDate="2013-06-26T00:56:19.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I do sort of like the way the asterisks and spaces look. You could also do the same with bullets or pluses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer congue laoreet sapien eu sollicitudin. Vestibulum et iaculis dui, nec elementum enim. Suspendisse ultrices ipsum vitae neque auctor, ac ullamcorper neque molestie. &amp;nbsp;•&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; In molestie scelerisque lectus. Maecenas gravida odio massa, ut sollicitudin enim suscipit ut. Duis vehicula auctor orci in sagittis. Proin vitae nulla vel eros gravida elementum ut vitae nisl. Vivamus gravida dignissim metus a ullamcorper. Pellentesque mattis odio felis, eget malesuada dolor ullamcorper ornare. &amp;nbsp;+&amp;nbsp; Aliquam quis nunc neque. Donec in hendrerit ipsum. Phasellus augue nisi, vulputate non posuere at, suscipit nec dolor. Praesent tristique ullamcorper sapien facilisis mattis. Duis pharetra interdum sagittis. Curabitur varius eget elit sit amet suscipit. Vestibulum leo velit, tempus eget tellus ut, ultricies vestibulum odio. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3810" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T00:56:19.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8254" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8255" CreationDate="2013-06-26T06:17:42.110" Score="1" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually have a hard time deciding whether to use &lt;em&gt;his/her&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; to refer to an object in a character's home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Mark entered his apartment, he realized &lt;strong&gt;his&lt;/strong&gt; radio was turned on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Mark entered his apartment, he realized &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; radio was turned on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the reader note the difference in both sentences? Do they convey different things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T09:16:32.247" Title="Using &quot;his/her&quot; vs using &quot;the&quot; to refer to objects in the character's home" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8254" CreationDate="2013-06-26T09:16:32.247" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;His/her&quot; implies a more personal connection to the object, and therefore we get the sense it is of importance to the character. It's subtle, and many readers may not even notice it specifically, but it contributes to the mood and atmosphere you're trying to build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to give off the impression that the character is comfortable and relaxed in the place, for example, then you'd say &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; radio, &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; bed, &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; coffee maker that only worked once then gave up the ghost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you want the space to be more impersonal, then you'd talk about &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; radio, &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; coffee mug, &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; oddly lumpy sofa. It gives more of a sense of distance, and you can even make it so the reader can tell the character feels way out of place without ever having to say it outright. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T09:16:32.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8244" CreationDate="2013-06-26T12:57:45.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://critters.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critters&lt;/a&gt;, one of my favorite workshopping sites, &lt;a href=&quot;http://critters.org/c/faq.ht#Q29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;addresses this question&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is sending through the group considered publication?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a word: No. Editors recognize the utility of critique groups and that many authors belong to them. Being seen by a restricted set of other authors is not publication (&quot;publication&quot; means available to anyone, i.e., &quot;the public&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know for a fact of stories workshopped on Critters have gone on to be published by the biggest magazines in the field, so I'm inclined to believe 'em.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, a good rule of thumb is this: &lt;strong&gt;if you can find the actual text of the story using Google,&lt;/strong&gt; e.g, by searching for the title, for the author name, or for a line or two from the text, &lt;strong&gt;then consider it published. If you can't, you're in the clear.&lt;/strong&gt; So, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A forum which is locked behind any kind of password should be OK. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publicly sharing a link to a temporary document which you can take down after getting feedback should also be OK. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emailing text directly to a limited group of online acquaintances is fine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Posting your entire piece on a public forum - not OK.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Posting your entire piece to your personal blog - not OK.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional crucial point is to &lt;strong&gt;check the terms and conditions of the site you are posting on.&lt;/strong&gt; Some sites and forums claim ownership or the right to re-use any posted content (the Stack Exchange network, including Writers.SE, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/legal/terms-of-service#3SubscriberContent&quot;&gt;one such site&lt;/a&gt;). If anyone besides yourself, the author, can claim ownership or re-use rights over your text, that can be a significant problem, and can conceivably render your work unpublishable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T12:57:45.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1674" CreationDate="2013-06-26T17:31:57.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beside the content and the style you used to have an emotional writing, the reader should relate to what you wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are writing about emotional states that happens to the reader&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are writing about a difficult event that the reader has went through&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reader identifies himself with a certain personality of your story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why it's important to know deeply the psychology of your intended audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5436" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T17:31:57.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8267" CreationDate="2013-06-26T20:32:48.180" Score="3" ViewCount="437" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been finding it hard to find info on a certain character archetype.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character traits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;has very little investment into the central plot and thus plays both pro and antagonistic roles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;intervenes into the central plot in a way that shifts the overall plot progression&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;holds an internal logic, code or self-interest that motivates actions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;holds immense power over plot progression&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples: (not perfect)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Athena in the Odyssey, Greek gods in most Greek mythology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the Count of Monte Cristo (although the story follows his arch he plays this intervening role into other characters arches)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gandalf (has connections to Frodo and the Ring, so not perfect) though seems to be a separate intervening character that dips in and out of other character's arches at important plot points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grey Fox in Metal Gear Solid (probably the best example I got).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TLDR: Intervening third party character who is both pro and antagonistic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the broad name for this archetype? Are there better examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T11:30:10.243" Title="Intervening Characters in fiction" Tags="|technique|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8258" CreationDate="2013-06-26T21:14:00.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you looked into alignments in role playing games? I've never played RPGs myself, but I find their classification useful when I develop my characters, fitting them into a category helps me describe them better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your description, your character might fall into a &amp;quot;True Neutral&amp;quot;, or maybe &amp;quot;Chaotic Neutral&amp;quot;, you'd be a better judge of that. To quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_%28Dungeons_&amp;amp;_Dragons%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (this was taken from &amp;quot;Dungeons and Dragons&amp;quot; alignment system, so I've omitted some game related things):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Neutral&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neutral alignment, also referred to as True Neutral or Neutral Neutral, is called the &amp;quot;Undecided&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Nature's&amp;quot; alignment. This alignment represents Neutral on both axes, and tends not to feel strongly towards any alignment. A farmer whose primary overriding concern is to feed his family is of this alignment. Most animals, lacking the capacity for moral judgment, are of this alignment since they are guided by instinct rather than conscious decision. &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Many roguish characters who play all sides to suit themselves are also of this alignment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (such as a weapon merchant with no qualms selling his wares to both sides of a war for a profit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some Neutral characters, rather than feeling undecided, are committed to a balance between the alignments.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; They may see good, evil, law and chaos as simply prejudices and dangerous extremes. Mordenkainen is one such character who takes this concept to the extreme, dedicating himself to a detached philosophy of neutrality to ensure that no one alignment or power takes control of the Flanaess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lara Croft, Lucy Westenra from Dracula and Han Solo in his early Star Wars appearance are neutral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chaotic Neutral&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chaotic Neutral is called the &amp;quot;Anarchist&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Free Spirit&amp;quot; alignment. A character of this alignment is an individualist who &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;follows his or her own heart&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, and generally shirks rules and traditions. Although they promote the ideals of freedom, it is their own freedom that comes first. Good and Evil come second to their need to be free, and the only reliable thing about them is how totally unreliable they are. Chaotic Neutral characters are free-spirited and do not enjoy the unnecessary suffering of others, but if they join a team, it is because that team's goals happen to coincide with their own at the moment. They invariably resent taking orders and &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;can be very selfish in their pursuit of personal goals&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. A Chaotic Neutral character does not have to be an aimless wanderer; &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;they may have a specific goal in mind, but their methods of achieving that goal are often disorganized, unorthodox, or entirely unpredictable&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A subset of Chaotic Neutral is: &amp;quot;strongly Chaotic Neutral&amp;quot;; describing a character who behaves chaotically to the point of appearing insane. Characters of this type may regularly change their appearance and attitudes for the sake of change and intentionally disrupt organizations for the sole reason of disrupting a lawful institution. Characters of this type include the Xaositects from the Planescape setting, and Hennet from the third edition Player's Handbook. In Advanced Dungeons &amp;amp; Dragons, Chaotic Neutral was mistakenly assumed to refer to this subset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Captain Jack Sparrow, Al Swearengen from the TV series Deadwood, and Snake Plissken from Escape from New York are Chaotic Neutral characters according to Complete Scoundrel (3.5e).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've emphasized the spots that correspond to what you have described the character to be. Hope this at least gives you a place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T21:14:00.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8242" CreationDate="2013-06-26T21:38:17.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read small segments through the piece and found a wealth of great little details though I think it still reads a little to much like a flight of fancy piece. That is to say it is obvious the importance of the piece to yourself though not to the reader. It helpful if you ask your self two questions with your piece: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;what is the most important feeling I want to covey to the reader&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;how can I do that with the least words possible&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the style it will read fine if you economize on words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great exercise with this piece would be to try and rewrite it with half the word count whilst still maintaining its original meaning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I am not trying to be mean in my criticism its just this is a common trap people fall into. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.P.S. Cormac Macarthy uses this style to much success in his book &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;the Road&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T21:38:17.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8242" CreationDate="2013-06-26T23:17:00.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe I'm not the best person to comment on this since it's not my usual cup of tea, but I have to admit, I had trouble getting to the end. So many thoughts and feelings, but nothing seams to actually &lt;em&gt;happen&lt;/em&gt;. My thoughts just wonder off while I read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the image you start with, cars going too fast to see what's happening around them, but I don't think those first three paragraphs are gripping enough to engage reader's interest (your question's been up for more than 24 hours and the only other person who wrote an answer admits to just skimming it). When a reader starts reading a new piece of fiction, the first thing he's going to ask himself, after reading the first few sentences is &quot;so what?&quot;. You start with the intimate thoughts of the character without giving a reader time to connect with the character, we have no idea who's thoughts those are (and by that I don't mean the character's name), so how can we connect? A random person is thinking about something, so what? And also, &lt;em&gt;nothing happens&lt;/em&gt;. It's  a bit hard to read something where nothing really happens. I strongly believe this first three paragraphs should be cut down into one. The fourth paragraph is the first one that actually aroused my curiosity, but it faded out very quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, all this point of view switching made me feel like I was on a roller coaster. And you're not just switching points of view, you're switching types of points of view. After the son's point of view, you switch to the mother's rather abruptly, but I can live with that. It's when you later switch to the mother's POV again, you also tell things that mother doesn't know, which is a different type of point of view - it's almost as bad as switching from third to first POV. Later again, you have both son's and mother's POV in the same chapter, which is very confusing. You also have neighbour's POV for just one chapter, which looks totally out of place to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize what you were trying to accomplish with the repetition of the sentence “You will not sneak around as long as you live in my house”, but to me it feels like someone is rewinding a movie that I'm watching over and over again. The first time I was even confused, had to return to the previous paragraph because I thought she was in some kind of a trance and repeating herself or something. It's generally not a good thing to go back in time, much more to branch scenes like this, not without at least some warning, some clear structure that would make it clear what's going on. All in all, I like the idea, but the execution needs to be smoother. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what's the main theme here? Is it drugs, mother-son relationship, son being friend-zoned, fact that no-one cares what goes on around them? You have too many of them in here I don't know what's it about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the ending, though, and how you connected it with the beginning, that a nice touch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you don't find my answer too harsh. It's not a bad story, it just needs to be cleaned up a bit. Pick one theme and give it more emphasis, tone down the others. Try to be more concise, like &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/5438/https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/5438/user5438&quot;&gt;user5438&lt;/a&gt; advised, and try to cut down on the word count, say more with less words. Try, if you can, to add more action. Not events, but action, like what characters do while they talk, think, sit and so on. We're a fast moving society these days, we need action to stay focused. It's also very hard to imagine a scene in your head when there's nothing actually happening. Ever noticed how rarely two characters in a movie just stand while they talk? They're most often walking or doing something while they talk, rarely standing still. For most of the piece, you're telling us what they're thinking, is there a way you can show that through their actions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I hope you don't find this answer too harsh. It's not given in with bad intentions. It's also just my thoughts and views, you can take them or leave them as you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T16:17:28.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8242" CreationDate="2013-06-27T06:45:43.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to start by giving you a huge pat on the back. Good for you attempting such a challenging piece of writing! This reminds me of the work of James Joyce. You are certainly aiming high when you set your sights on trying to emulate the work of one of the most unique, complex, and difficult writers ever known. This could be compared to a number of contemporary writers, especially those working in the cyberpunk field, but any comparison would be to someone whose work is cerebral, pyrotechnical, elaborate, artistic, and demanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if you are going to try to write this way, you are setting the bar very, very high. It usually takes years and years of practice to be able to successfully accomplish this kind of writing. But I think if you want to be a successful writer, you must be dispassionately honest in assessing your skills. In other words, you MUST be able to recognize your true abilities. You can't fool yourself. If you can't honestly admit to yourself what you are able to do as a writer, you cannot advance. It would be like saying, &quot;Oh, sure, I know how to lay a concrete foundation for a house,&quot; when in fact you really don't know how to lay a concrete foundation for a house, and you go ahead and fake it, and you put down a really bad concrete foundation, and the house collapses, because you weren't honest with yourself about your true abilities. So you need to be honest with yourself about your ability to handle the English language. You want to write elaborate, complicated, artistic fiction, but you must realize that you still need to learn more about the basics of English. Don't be discouraged. You know a lot already, and you can learn the rest. But you should start with something much simpler. You really should learn to walk before you learn to run! You will be amazed what you can accomplish if you do it that way!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit in response to Standback's critique of my answer:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hm. Well, okay. Admittedly, what I wrote here was not a very &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; answer to the question posed, and the reason for that is because all of us, all writers, have shockingly fragile egos. We all need encouragement, especially novice writers. So I maintain that what I wrote &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an answer, and the questioner should be able to extract that answer from what I wrote. For the three years I spent editing my science fiction magazine, what I wrote here is exactly the sort of answer I wrote, and I do mean wrote (we never sent form letters) to all the novice writers who submitted to us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you must have a direct answer, here it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The style of your piece is not successful. It is horribly choppy. No editor would keep it on his or her desk for more than the ten seconds it would take to get it back into the return envelope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastEditorUserId="4805" LastEditDate="2013-06-27T19:26:34.003" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T19:26:34.003" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8263" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8268" CreationDate="2013-06-27T09:46:44.390" Score="4" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;An example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Naomi's words hung in the air as I gazed out of the hotel window. The&#xA;  mountain lay quietly in the dark, like a calm, sleeping giant. A&#xA;  cluster of city lights glittered beyond. In the forest nearby, pine&#xA;  trees bowed slightly in the wind, and the loud cries of cicadas&#xA;  reverberated among the trunks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The Giant Ancient Tree?&quot; I said, making sure I had heard right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Naomi nodded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I turned to look at her. &quot;I thought it was just a myth.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if this reads smoothly, and whether it feels clumsy to start with a reference to what someone just said, and then follow that with a setting description (of course, with the topic being reveled immediately after).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-06-28T03:18:20.453" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T07:46:04.800" Title="Opening a story with a reference to what someone just said followed by a setting description" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|openings|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8263" CreationDate="2013-06-27T10:59:36.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I didn't think it read clumsily at all. I think it sets up a nice conflict and mystery at the start. The way you get right into the dialogue is nice as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be fun to play with some kind of interplay between the viewpoint character's thoughts about Naomi's words and the description of the scenery, but that's the only suggestion I would have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5443" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T10:59:36.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8258" CreationDate="2013-06-27T11:02:12.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this doesn't match perfectly with Gandalf and his role in LOTR, it does match pretty well with his role in The Hobbit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5443" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T11:02:12.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2013-06-27T11:15:07.790" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to have this problem. Here are some tips that helped me in no particular order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Expect your first draft to be broken and be okay with that.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would get somewhere around chapter 6, think: &quot;oh, I should have had this other thing happen in chapter 3&quot;. I would then go back and rewrite chapter 3 and think: &quot;oh, but I need this in chapter 2 for this to make sense.&quot; and the cycle would continue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I just make a note somewhere and keep writing the story as if I had made the changes. It was hard to get my brain to agree to this, but once I did it helped a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Figure out the end and work backwards.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to come up with a fun idea and just start writing, wandering all over the place without a clear sense of direction. Now I come up with the ending first and work in both directions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Add more try-fail cycles.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my early stories had a problem, the characters would solve the problem and I'd think: &quot;ok, now what?&quot; Now I take the first solution to the problem that comes to my mind, have them try that and let it fail for some reason. Then they get more information and try again, and fail again. (Mary Robinette Kowal calls this the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2012/04/an-interview-with-mary-robinette-kowal/#comment-31719&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Yes, but/No, and&quot; method&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If none of these work for you, you might just be a short fiction writer. Rather than curse yourself for that, use it as a strength. Consider writing a series of short stories that all take place in the same world, or try writing several points of view about some event, with each point of view being its own little story within a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope these things help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5443" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T11:15:07.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8258" CreationDate="2013-06-27T11:30:10.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're describing is the essence of the Trickster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Trickster&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people think of a trickster as being a foolish or comedic character but the Trickster forms in the overlap between a foolish character, an authoritarian character and a mentor character. If you think of these three archetypes as forming the points of a triangle you can place your individual trickster into that area somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several of the characters you describe (I can't talk for the Count of Monte Cristo) fall hard toward the axis between authority and mentor. For this reason it's easy to miss the influence of the foolish character in the mix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Foolishness&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the cases you've picked foolishness is provided by one of three factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Graeco-Roman Gods had very human foibles and appetites, some stories play these aspects up to make the gods into humourous characters or characters one can more easily recognize or relate to. In the story of the golden apple Hera, Athena and Aprodite are portrayed as being chronically vain, the events of the story depend upon this vanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gandalf is bound by things he cannot do, specifically he is unable to trust himself to bear the ring. An equivalent derivative character is the character of the Dungeon Master in the 80s cartoon show Dungeons &amp;amp; Dragons. Dungoen Master appeared to know everything, had demi-godlike powers and regularly appeared and disappeared at will. However he could neither take on the antagonist, Venger, in a fight nor send the party of main characters back to their home in the real world. He was also known for concealing information by talking in riddles. All of these limits and deceptions conspire to tip DM into the trickster archetype.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of Grey Fox the only thing that makes him a trickster is that he is concealing his true agenda by acting in the role of helper until the situation changes sufficiently for him to reveal his true colours. This would edge him into a sub-type of the trickster, the false friend. What stops him from just being a &quot;mole&quot; or a &quot;traitor&quot; figure include his personal code of ethics and also his weakness for proving himself against Snake in the midst of the action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Balance&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important that all three of the archetypal elements are present in the trickster for them to be a trickster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Without elements of deception or riddling the figure becomes more monk-like, or just a straight mentor figure, like Obi Wan Kenobi.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An authority figure who is in some way foolish but has no mentoring role becomes a tyrannical, chaotic figure, like Caligula.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A fool who has knowledge to impart but no authority becomes a Savant character, such as Kazan in Cube.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T11:30:10.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8263" CreationDate="2013-06-27T11:34:10.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yep, works for me. Particularly if this is the literal opening of the story, not just the scene; I like to establish some sort of setting fairly early on. You don't linger too much. You're giving us just enough for us to grasp where she is, and then get back to the dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T11:34:10.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8263" CreationDate="2013-06-27T12:56:06.597" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your first paragraph works well. You create a tiny mystery right off the bat -- what was it that Naomi said that her words are still &quot;hanging in the air&quot;? -- that sucks the reader in. It's often said that if you can hook the reader in the first couple of sentences, you've got him. (I may plagiarize this idea myself someday. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great piece of advice I read once was from an editor who said that a writer submitted a story to him and explained, &quot;My story really starts rolling in chapter 2.&quot; The editor's response was, &quot;Then start the story with chapter 2.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll add that personally, I don't like the &quot;I thought it was just a myth.&quot; I think that's a line that has been beaten to death. It seems like every time a strange tale or object is introduced in an adventure story, someone says, &quot;I thought that was just a myth.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &quot;the Giant Ancient Tree&quot; is a rather dull name for something that sounds like it's going to turn into a key element in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T12:56:06.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8288" CreationDate="2013-06-27T14:36:17.980" Score="3" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether we like it or not, the &quot;About the Author&quot; description is a marketing tool. It contains selective personal and professional information which is deemed to have the potential to create a positive impression about the author on the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have just written a paragraph about myself in which I mention my academic qualification. I am hoping the readers of my short stories would make a connection between my qualification and writing. e.g. the qualification puts me in a better/stronger position to &quot;know what I am writing&quot; (even if it is a work of fiction). i.e. the qualification has made me a better observer of social processes etc. (The qualification is not in creative writing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate/wise to include one's qualification when describing oneself as a writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-22T03:36:25.670" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T03:36:25.670" Title="About the Author description" Tags="|creative-writing|publishing|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8271" CreationDate="2013-06-27T15:12:53.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the difference lies on your writing. I would be interested in knowing that Robin Cook is a doctor, since he writes fiction books that heavily relies on medicine. It would be weird if he was a computer technician. On the other hand, I don't care at all about what Margaret Weis studied in college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write fiction, what kind of fiction you write? If it's social based, it makes sense you say that you have academic qualification but it's not mandatory. If you write fantasy books with elves and dwarves, will it make any difference if you haven't graduated at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's to say I wouldn't go for that path expecting to impress readers and make them to buy your work, because I think most of them will care more about the book description than the author qualifications... But I think a good &quot;about the author&quot; might reach the ones who want know more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the answer is yes, it's appropriate to include such information, specially because most of publishers do in their books. I just think it could not be yes if aimed for &quot;&lt;em&gt;making a connection between my qualification and writing for the readers&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T15:12:53.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8271" CreationDate="2013-06-27T15:14:19.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your qualification is related to your story, then yes. For example, Mercedes Lackey keeps hawks and horses, both of which feature prominently in her stories. So I know that any details about them are reasonably based in fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your degree is in underwater basket-weaving and your story is about WWII England, then not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T15:14:19.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8263" CreationDate="2013-06-27T15:37:34.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The organization and flow are good.  As other answers mention, a slight sense of mystery or perhaps foreboding arises.  But because of several minor problems it doesn't read smoothly for me.  For example, the second sentence ends verbosely or clumsily; “who had just gone to sleep” could change to “just now asleep”.   “At the distance” [since edited out] instead of the more-usual “in the distance” was jarring.   I don't find “pine trees swung slightly” accurate as a description of pine trees in wind – perhaps my problem with it is that I think of swinging things as suspended from above.  Perhaps try “pine trees bowed and nodded” instead.  If the forest is an important part of the story, make its first mention more interesting and specific; “nearby” lends little interest.  Is it all around?  Adjectives like &lt;em&gt;great, deep, ancient, dark, brooding, impenetrable&lt;/em&gt; are perhaps overused as modifiers of &lt;em&gt;forest&lt;/em&gt;, but if any of them apply to your concept of the forest, then use one or two, or look at synonyms and find a word that's descriptive, striking, and less-used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Faded cries of cicadas reverberated” seems self-contradictory to me because I regard a “faded cry” as a memory of a cry, rather than an attenuated cry; and regard something that reverberates (or “rings with many echos”) as necessarily loud and audible.  Thus, while one might accurately say loud cries reverberated, or the buzz and rattle of cicadas reverberated, or faded cries of cicadas tinged the air, it seems to me that &lt;em&gt;faded&lt;/em&gt; is incompatible with &lt;em&gt;reverberated&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Gave me quick nod” seems clumsy.  Perhaps revise the last two paragraphs to one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Naomi nodded when I turned to her; and then I asked, “But isn't it just a myth?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, the organization is sound, and the minor flaws I mentioned should be easy to smooth out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T15:37:34.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8275" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8277" CreationDate="2013-06-27T19:18:44.373" Score="10" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine was gracious enough to let me write a story using a setting he has been using for his own novel. I finished my novella while he is still working. I am looking at indie publishing the novella, but I want to make sure it is known he owns the world/setting. He was surprised when I brought up the idea of doing a shared world. We both want the same things: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He retains ownership of the world/setting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He may write whatever stories he wants in them (as he owns them).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am allowed to write in them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand we will have to discuss continuity in case my stories go in a different direction than he plans. However, I am not using any of the characters from his novel in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been looking for similar agreements online so that everything is on the table before we go further. But I have had no luck. Does anyone know where I might find such an agreement or what all needs to be included if not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5085" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-18T12:07:57.797" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T12:07:57.797" Title="Where can I find information about a contract that allows two authors to use a &quot;shared world&quot;?" Tags="|legal|resources|authorship|contracts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8276" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-27T19:42:36.343" Score="-2" ViewCount="339" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Shade of the Magnolia Tree&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Against the carmine coloured sand his robes seemed to fade. With a jump a bolt of pure crimson followed him like a shadow. His robes broke the unending horizon of the red twilight, A sight unknowable for its inhabitants. The sky and sand for once broken at its median, unknowable still, the second break in the firmament but this time instead of by crimson by the pale white and opalescent blue of a shade.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    The shade had a youthful complexion riddled with thin blue lines of veins tracing through his almost iridescent skin, were as the man in crimson's face was riddled with whitened scars. The scars snaked across his complexion, as if but tiny snakes who colluded long ago to choke of life and felicitous existence.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &quot;I've been expecting you&quot; the shade said.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The snaking scars flatted into a stoic glare on the crimson man.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &quot;you needn’t be surprised. Nothing, or should I say nobody can surprise me anymore.&quot; &#xA;    The crimson man smiled.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &quot;one would expect no less from you&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &quot;would you join me at my home for a cup of tea.&quot; the shade said.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The crimson man stopped startled not by what was said so much as the youthful innocence it was said in.&#xA;    &quot;yes... yes of course&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Cathedral built of sandstone deceives its former glory, as majestic frescos fade under the moonless sky. The roof had crumbled, though new shelter was found by the shade under the ashen magnolia that sprouted centuries ago from the cracked marble floor. The shade's house was built under a cage of mossy trees roots, it was unclear whether he had built the shelter under the root or whether the tree built it self over the home. &#xA;    &quot;Would you like some tea&quot; &#xA;    &quot;Please.&quot; &#xA;Beginning his story, his mind marred with remorse. The shade canted in the old language, which was neither embellished nor vernacular. Each note broke upon the walls, the tree, and the moonless sky as to wake upon something long forgotten. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Once a scholar, but still a fool, I drank the night away &#xA;To such taverns a weary path, lucidly did I stray&#xA;If you were to come to me upon the waking time &#xA;Vivaciously upon a flask would I be resigned  &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man of crimson shifts taking the weight off the vial in his robe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Then a scholar, not a fool, I dreamt the night away&#xA;To but hamlets a weary path, lucidly did I stray&#xA;And upon the pulpit did I pray for pernicious kinds&#xA;Perchance to find some reverence in their hell-purchased minds &#xA;&#xA;With the kettle now boiling on the fire the shade got up to serve the tea. The silver kettle was inlaid with rubies that in the firelight seemed to burn down the side of the kettle. The shade unheedingly reached into the fire and grasped the kettle from the metal handle. &#xA;The man slipping the vial from the hidden pocket of his robe uncorking it under the table; as the shade left to draw more water from the well he taps the side of the vial on the edge of the shade's cup.  He then disperses a mixture of dried magnolia petals and other dark green leaves into each cup. &#xA;&#xA;Would you call it blood for blood what I did that day &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turning now with the kettle the shade slowly fills each teacup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Finding rapture in the gallows of the windswept bay &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sitting down he continues.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;For as the judge of the mission would I be assigned &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He stands with this. The man takes a sip of his tea.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Given credence to deliver justice for the divine &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kneeling now beside the man's chair, the shade's hand resting on his head. The man feels the knife coldly on his spine. The shade's lyricism becomes mordant and chastefull. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Would you call it blood for blood what I'll do this day &#xA;Finding rapture in the hallows of this earthen bay &#xA;as you’re not the first to come with a murderous mind &#xA;Consciously from occlusive grasps have I resigned&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Shade's pupils contract, his grasp on the man's palatial head, ensnares itself around his auburn hair. The silver knife as If rising on its own accord stops before the man's spine when the man begins. &#xA;    &quot;Subsistence or sedition? I chose neither.&quot;&#xA;      &quot;What is it you speak of?&quot;&#xA;      &quot;Should I stand for only subsistence or sedition? Should I submit to the world? Should I forget of the wrongs placed against me and except a life of submission? Or should I fight the forces that wronged me? Wallowing in the pain it would bring me. Either way I have not choices except this one. &#xA;&quot;What is that? To cheat death.&quot;&#xA;&quot;Only in the same way death cheated me&quot;&#xA;Silence. &#xA;&quot;Regardless the mater is resolved.&quot; &#xA;The shade placed the silver knife on the table, hand shaking upon it's hilt. &#xA;&quot;Was I not but a lamb to the slaughter before, what am I now, a prisoner&quot;&#xA;The man takes up the knife. Then collapses &#xA;Broken now upon a bed of dried magnolia blossom the man's body goes limp, his face alone struggling in confusion. &#xA;    &quot;Why can I not move &quot; &#xA;    &quot;The tea you drank. Through which you tried to poison me itself had hemlock in it. I do not trust strangers especially those not of this land. The hemlock shall take a few more minutes loosen your grip over this body&quot;&#xA;    &quot;But for what reason though had you stayed your blade&quot;&#xA;    &quot;As a final gift you will receive in this lifetime. one of a peaceful death. you see we are not dissimilar creatures, you and I, It's just sad that it had to end this way&quot;&#xA;    The man's hand trembles in it's skeletal fixture until it covers his eyes.&#xA;    &quot;so dare I ask what awaits me&quot;&#xA;    &quot;you will find it to be quite familiar&quot;&#xA;    With his mobility hampered, he could not express grief, quiet now for but the slow shuttering of breaths. His focus falls upon the short-lived beauty of the magnolia that withers at his feet, he fades. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a man his face maintained it's youthful beauty in slumber, only revealing it's age when awoken. As a Shade though his face free from the snaking scars maintains it's signs of youthfulness that should have been marred by time. It shows no sign now of the sardonic displeasure that the shade of the cathedral invoke in him, not but a lifetime ago.&#xA;    &quot;Where am I&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &quot;Well you said it yourself, a land beyond life and death, even beyond good and evil&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     &quot;Am I dea-&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     &quot;I think you may find that to be an unnecessary question&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     &quot; what do you mean&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The shade now picking up the silver knife carves a line in his palm, the flesh forming over the gash as the knife runs though his hand.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &quot; What you choice to do after your restraints unbind is entirely your choice though heed my warning the path from this land does not deliver one unto happiness&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &quot;but surely I cannot stay here&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &quot;I too imposed my own justice upon people in this life and the previous, some out of rage others by prejudice. I am not one to judge&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &quot; and so what of purpose, there is nothing for me in this land&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &quot; ay, but life unrestrained by purpose is life without conflict. Is that not what you have been seeking all along&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    &quot; yes, but...&quot;  the shades turn to the door in expectation and then there is a knock.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-06-30T06:58:22.187" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T06:58:22.187" Title="Style Critique (1200 words)" Tags="|style|creative-writing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2013-06-30T06:51:11.657" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8275" CreationDate="2013-06-27T20:10:25.390" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you are &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; publishing independently,&lt;/strong&gt; then it doesn't much matter. Write up a contract spelling out everything, you both sign two copies, and Bob's your uncle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of &quot;everything&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John Smith (hereafter &quot;Author&quot;) is the creator of the SchmoopyWorld setting, environs, and characters (hereafter &quot;Universe&quot;).&#xA;Copyright belongs to him, his assigns, and heirs unless explicitly&#xA;granted otherwise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frank Luke (hereafter &quot;Buddy&quot;) is granted permission by Author to&#xA;write stories in the Universe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buddy's stories may or may not contain elements of Author's stories.&#xA;Elements include but are not limited to characters, settings, events,&#xA;geography, animals, language, technology, culture, literature, music,&#xA;ninjas, sharks, and ninjas riding on sharks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buddy agrees to confer with Author before embarking on any writing&#xA;projects to make sure that Buddy's works do not violate the&#xA;continuity of Author's works.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Author may write whatever stories he chooses in the Universe, and is&#xA;not obliged to seek or receive Buddy's permission before doing so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just off the top of my head. Basically, you hash out every possible thing the two of you can think of in regards to your stories, write it down, and agree to it. Add a line about Severability (if part 1 is declared void, that doesn't mean the whole contract is) and that you can add to the contract if you need to.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, if your friend gets a contract with a regular publisher,&lt;/strong&gt; the rights which he's granting you would have to be worked into his contract with them, and that's a different kettle of fish. I don't know if a publisher would allow that with a new author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T20:10:25.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8276" CreationDate="2013-06-27T22:44:07.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing that you'd like the several questions (“does it read like a mary sue? is the word choice too verbose? do the poems work? would this style be overwhelming in a longer piece?”) that you asked in a comment, answered.  (If you don't want people guessing about your intentions, rewrite the question and clarify.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;does it read like a mary sue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know, because I didn't force myself to read the whole thing.   I didn't find the first paragraph coherent or compelling enough to make me want to read further. &#xA;The punctuation errors and grammatical errors in the first paragraph (and the dialog just after it) are off-putting and suggest reading the rest would be time misspent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is the word choice too verbose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In places, yes.  But the run-on sentences, the misused or made-up (eg  &lt;em&gt;chastefull&lt;/em&gt;) words, the poor punctuation (missing question marks and periods), the lack of transition or sequencing, all are problems perhaps more serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;do the poems work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes and no.  Some lines seem desirably poetic, understandable, and rhythmic.  But others are strained (awkword word order in second lines of first two stanzas) or clumsy (use of “did I”) or stumbling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;would this style be overwhelming in a longer piece?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably, since it already doesn't work well in a short piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T22:44:07.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8242" CreationDate="2013-06-28T12:12:06.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the opening, &lt;strong&gt;the style feels distinctly noir-ish to me&lt;/strong&gt;. Short, choppy sentences; curt tone; detached musings about humanity - I can just imagine a hard-boiled private detective narrating the first couple of paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that this is, to some extent, intentional - that you wanted to evoke the voice of someone detached and curt; that you want the reader to feel awash in the narrator's rapid stream of thought. That being said, I think the style choice has significant problems as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The noir tone is so strong, I was frankly astonished when the narrator turned out to be a teenager.&lt;/strong&gt; Whether or not you make the specific association with noir that I feel, this style feels entirely out of place as a teenager's viewpoint. It's a rare teenager that has anything approaching the vocabulary on display here, and nobody has this type of phrasing - opaque and impossibly bombastic (e.g. this line - &lt;code&gt;He was looking down at the cars, but not at their metal chassis. He was concerned with their existence, and their heavy weight in our perception of time.&lt;/code&gt; - what teenager speaks that way?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The style leans too heavily on melodramatic phrasing.&lt;/strong&gt; If I've already begun comparing this to noir, I'll continue - the typical tough, curt detective uses noir-type writing to seem nonchalant and collected. They crack dry jokes about crime, violence, drinking. That means they take the choppy sentences and use them as punchlines - if not for actual humor, the for sharp contrast or to make a painful point. A random sample from Raymond Chandler: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was as empty of life as a scarecrow's pockets. I went out to the kitchenette and drank two cups of black coffee. You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women. Women made me sick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lines are short and choppy, like yours, but what they do is build up to a punch - which is still delivered deadpan. That's a tough skill to learn! But in the meantime, you've gone for melodrama, which is really, &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; hard to take seriously. Some examples from your piece include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;This is how his story began. This is how his story ended.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;Why is everyone letting themselves be so blind to the truth?&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;Why is no one grasping the present? What are they avoiding?&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are all lines which, I think, are trying to add weight and import to the piece. Unfortunately, they're not very convincing, because you haven't done much (at this point in the story) to prop them up with characters or situations we understand clearly and find compelling. For example, when the narrator bemoans &quot;everyone being blind to the truth,&quot; we haven't yet seen anybody being blind to the truth, or what the truth may be, or why the narrator feels he sees something other people don't. So he's got this deep complaint, but the reader isn't with him on his complaining - it just seems melodramatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, the total effect takes the style from &quot;curt and introspective&quot; into &quot;disjointed, deliberately oblique, and self-important.&quot; That's a reasonable point to reach as a writer experimenting with style, but for the reader, it's not so fun...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that for me, &lt;strong&gt;most of this piece is downright confusing.&lt;/strong&gt; I think you're intentionally being disjointed, giving us a bit of detail from here, a bit from there, not showing us everything at once... but I don't feel you've grounded your work enough to take that kind of hopping about. For example, at &lt;code&gt;The screen went dark, and he visited the episode at his house earlier that day&lt;/code&gt;, you've shifted into a flashback before &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; has occurred in the timeframe you've chosen to start from. You can tease readers with a mosaic of snippets, but for that to work effectively, &lt;strong&gt;you must know what your hook is&lt;/strong&gt; - why you expect your reader to care enough to read past the first page. This piece deliberately hides what it's about until near the end - the style you've chosen makes it difficult to get interested and read that far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, as others have discussed, &lt;strong&gt;you make many POV swaps,&lt;/strong&gt; shifting from the narrator to his mother and to Emily. These kinds of shifts can be very disconcerting; I'm wondering if that was intentional on your part - it seems like it might be; switching POV as suddenly as you switch subjects from line to line. Assuming this is an element you'd like to keep, I think it would be nice have the different POV's use somewhat different styles of narration; at the moment they all speak and sound very much alike - even if their content is different. Also, the narrative is so dominated by the narrator that the shifts seem more like brief slips than intentional departures. Perhaps if the piece was more balanced between its various POVs, you could achieve a similar effect, but be less confusing and more a sense of skipping back and forth between known quantities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In conclusion,&lt;/strong&gt; my sense is that the style here is quite gimmicky. Definitely choppy, but I see that as being the intent. Style is very difficult to separate from content; the same style might work much better with more appropriate content or with different detail, but in the case presented, I felt the style was distracting and more decorative than I enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T12:12:06.717" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8280" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-28T12:36:51.637" Score="7" ViewCount="629" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a graphical representation of &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt;, and the curves the story takes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should a story be rhythm based like this from design phase (i.e. when making some pre-writing work)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MamlX.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5448" LastEditorUserId="3298" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T00:47:26.357" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T00:47:26.357" Title="story driven by event rhythm" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|inspiration|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8281" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-28T13:28:21.770" Score="-1" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I view all creative proccesses as design disciplines. Thus composers, architects, writers etc. all are designers from my point of view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could song rhythms be applied from design perspective to a story/plot/scenario to good use? And i'm not only talking about song rhythm, i'm talking about borrowing other-design specific practices and applying it to yours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5448" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T16:25:17.707" Title="Design stories with techniques from other creative processes" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-06-30T15:38:09.243" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8280" CreationDate="2013-06-28T13:36:05.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always studied the &lt;a href=&quot;http://changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/plots/hero_journey/hero_journey.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hero's journey&lt;/a&gt;, where the main character goes trough a development process that works for most (if not all) plots.  J. K. Rowling used that in all her Harry Potter's books, and I think they are awesome examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the character goes trough these steps (I'm sorry if I didn't use the correct English terms):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everyday life&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Call to Adventure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refusal of the Call&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;External aid (mentor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Crossing of the First Threshold&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Probations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transformation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Climax&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Return to an everyday life (but self improved)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This events may happen more than on time in a story (in each step, for example) creating that rhythm that you are talking about. Please check &lt;a href=&quot;http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Heroesjourney.svg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hero's journey&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Luke lives in his planet - everyday life&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Luke find the droids with a quest - call to adventure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He do not want to leave his family - refusal to the call&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obi Wan starts to train him (mentor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and so on...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, some modern stories may not follow those steps in quite a linear way, but you will find some of those steps in all plots. They create cadence and, most important, attach the story to something that we expect as readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that can be used to other kinds of arts, because it's quite specific to literature but, I won't say a painter can't create a series of works - &lt;em&gt;or buildings, if he is an architect&lt;/em&gt; - using those steps. But if you think well, he would be telling a story not with words but with paints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T13:36:05.673" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8280" CreationDate="2013-06-28T13:44:32.403" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't have fast action scenes without slow, wind-down scenes, because if everything is fast, how can you tell it's fast, when you have no slow scenes to compare them to? The same way you can't have light without the dark, good without evil. If everything is the same pace, the same rhythm, it's neither slow nor fast, it becomes the norm. It's monotonous and boring. It has no impact. I don't think you'll find many good stories of novelette length and greater that don't have rhythm to them. Short stories might be an exception, simply because some of them can be made of just one single scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not just with scenes, same sentence length is also monotonous, varying the sentence length and structure makes the writing more dynamic. I'm going to blatantly steal an example from &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/1046/standback&quot;&gt;standback's&lt;/a&gt; answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8242/style-critique-3k-words&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; because I'm too lazy to find my own and his is perfect :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was as empty of life as a scarecrow's pockets. I went out to the kitchenette and drank two cups of black coffee. You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women. Women made me sick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See how they go: medium, long, medium, short, short?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now look at it written like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was as empty of life as a scarecrow's pockets. I went out to the kitchenette. I drank two cups of black coffee. You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women, because women made me sick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much more monotonous, isn't it? This can be used on purpose when you want to show that monotony, for example if a character has a boring job or daily routine, but writing the whole piece like this would bore the reader to death. It's same with paragraph length, although it usually doesn't have as much impact as the sentence. In other words, you need rhythm in all aspects of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T14:38:22.100" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8280" CreationDate="2013-06-28T14:10:59.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;sequencing&quot; of story into slower and faster sections is an old, established technique; think of them as minor climaxes - threads reaching their &quot;special moments&quot;. It creates flow, it builds up to every important part, and builds tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As every rule though, this one can be broken. I don't remember the title, but I still remember the story where the protagonist is changed into some miserable frog-like monstrosity less than halfway through, unable to fight, vulnerable and repulsive. He then proceeds to travel towards the goal of his journey and for a chapter or two receives little mercies in between his suffering, and then even these cease. Over a third of the book is just his harsh, unforgiving journey gradually losing every resource he had accumulated, no good news, no victories, and only more misery and suffering - no respite, no relief, no slowing of pace. It was many years ago and I forgot the title and the author but I still remember that gloom, that extremely depressive atmosphere and every hope of respite taken away before it could even be fleshed out, that made the book completely unique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there; follow that rule if you want to make a good story. Break it mercilessly if you want a superior one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T14:10:59.303" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8281" CreationDate="2013-06-28T16:25:17.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer will depend on your point of view.  The creative process for any endeavor can withstand a great amount of tinkering and experimentation.  Taking the architecture example, as I read the question, you're asking &quot;Can I take the process of building a building and use that to build a story, instead?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steps to Designing a Building:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Figure out what the building is for.  Your approach is going to be different if you're building a skyscraper or a gas station.  This step includes picking the right location, figuring out what your intended audience is, and figuring out if you have the infrastructure to support your building.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Identify key features you want to include or want to avoid. &quot;Last place I worked the ceilings were too low, but we had this big open window I really liked...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Broad strokes design.  &quot;The building is going to be six stories with a roof patio.  We have good public transit access, so plan to provide minimal parking...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Design the Structure.  At this point you figure out the structural supports, going the ground to the top of your building.  Where are the stairs, the elevators?  How are people going to move through the building?  A bunch of tiny little offices or big open spaces?  Where are the electrical risers and the wet-walls?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Design the floors.  Now you finally get to lay out the rooms.  This is the part most people think of and one of the least interesting in practice.  If your structure is built correctly, the rooms should be obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Details.  Light fixtures, fire sprinklers, window molding...  Nothing takes a room from zero to finished quite like new lights and a coat of paint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throughout the process, you have to pay attention to changing situations.  Perhaps the client says he wanted bay windows, but now says he wants a modern look.  The city plans showed enough water for a six story building, but checking the pressure only reveals enough for five stories.  You'd planned to use a design detail on the first floor, but it worked so well you want to use it throughout as a unifying theme.  And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the same steps you can use when telling any story.  What is my setting?  Who am I telling this story to?  What effect am I trying to achieve?  Where are my structural walls, i.e. what elements support my idea, providing structure and unification?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, the approach and the cadence is very different.  It would be an interesting experiment to approach writing a story in exactly this method.  And then again, but using the steps to painting a painting (choose a subject, mix your paints, prepare the canvas...).  I have been told many broadway composers work in teams, with one writing music and the other lyrics.  That would make for an interesting approach to writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T16:25:17.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8287" CreationDate="2013-06-28T17:23:43.367" Score="-1" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wish to write an entry for a writing contest. The contest requires a piece of 2,000 words, and gives the following four themes or topics that I may choose to write on. But because English is not my mother tongue, I am having difficulty understanding the topic &quot;sentences&quot;. The topics are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Meaning of Me&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paved or Unpaved Ways&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because This is What Matters, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Bravest Place on Earth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am particularly mystified by the second one, &quot;Paved and Unpaved Ways.&quot; What do these topic titles mean? What you think they are asking for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5449" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-06-28T17:37:28.173" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T18:02:39.200" Title="Need Help Understanding the Meaning of Certain Topics in a Writing Contest" Tags="|creative-writing|short-story|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2013-06-30T06:54:46.233" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8286" CreationDate="2013-06-28T18:02:39.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second one could be a variation of &quot;The Road Less Travelled&quot; theme - meaning, do you follow in the paths of others on the road that has already been travelled on, or you choose your own way, the one not many people have chosen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're all pretty general, probably meant to be that way so you can make your own interpretation of what they're supposed to mean to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T18:02:39.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8271" CreationDate="2013-06-28T19:00:41.920" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Presumably the point here is marketing. So the question really is, Will the mention of this particular credential help to sell this book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some credentials would be a pretty obvious plus. If you've written a book about how to design automobiles, mentioning that you've spent 20 years as an automotive engineer for a major car company would surely be a helpful credential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mentioning that you have a degree in French poetry would sound pretty irrelevant. If you give a bunch of credentials that are all irrelevant, that would signal to me as a reader that you have no relevant qualifications, or you would have brought them up. In such a case, better to say nothing. Like, okay, this has nothing to do with a book, but I got a campaign flyer from someone running for office once that had a panel with his qualifications, and they all sounded trivial and irrelevant to me. Like -- seriously, this was one of the things he listed -- &quot;Had perfect attendance in high school&quot;. Listing such things led me to believe that he probably wasn't qualified for the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Credentials mentioned might signal the reader what kind of book this is. Like if you've written a book about automobile design and you list as your primary credential that you've spent 20 years as an environmental activist, I think readers would expect that your book is going to be about the environmental impact of design decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases a credential could be taken by likely readers as a negative. A book on vegetarian cooking that lists as the author's main credential that he is chairman of the National Beef Producers' Association would likely lead vegetarians to question if this is a book they are interested in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be able to tie a seemingly-irrelevant credential to the subject. Like, my first book was about database design, and my second book was about the Bible. So in the about-the-author stuff I wrote that I was a software engineer and that I brought this technical and analytic viewpoint to my Bible commentary. Whether that worked or not I can't really say. I'm sure that the principle works if done well. It can not only let you use the credentials that you've got, but if done right can give the reader the impression that you are bringing a fresh or special perspective to the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T19:00:41.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2013-06-29T08:54:13.263" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a writer, not a coder, and I started with this same exact question. I started using Git and it works perfectly, though it was definitely took some time to learn. It's cool because Git is popular and there's GitHub and lots of people are into it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I understand that Mercurial is just as good or better, and much easier to use with &quot;saner&quot; more intuitive commands. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm still using Git since that's what I started with, but I spent too much time learning it and it's not better than Mercurial. If I had it to do over again, I would use Mercurial with Atlassian's SourceTree to graphically view and check in changes to drafts as I made them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's cool to do some writing, then have SourceTree show you all the additions and edits you made. Then checking in the changes gives you a sense of accomplishment because you can see the progress you made that day. :-) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4718" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T08:54:13.263" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-06-29T08:54:13.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8290" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8291" CreationDate="2013-06-29T09:06:51.347" Score="3" ViewCount="2474" Body="&lt;p&gt;So far I've been setting my stories in the country I live: Taiwan. Not because I love my country. In fact, I'm not fond of patriotism. I just figured out it would be easier to describe surroundings that I'm familiar with. But I've been wondering lately whether I should set them in places that have to do with the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, setting an earthquake story in Japan (a country famous for its earthquakes), a surfer's tale in Hawaii, or the chronicles of a rice farmer in China.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually my stories have nothing to do with the country's history or culture (though I make mention on them and use them to create a certain atmosphere).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the case, does the country matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-06-29T10:24:49.970" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T13:21:26.793" Title="Does the country matter in a story if it is set in a real one?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8290" CreationDate="2013-06-29T11:57:23.587" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything in your story should serve your story. The setting, the geography, the era, the culture, the time of day, the weather, the characters, their gender, their names, their descriptions, their language(s), their histories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've chosen a familiar setting because your story works best there, fine. If you want to set your story about ninjas fighting sharks in the American Old West, however, you'd better have a good in-universe reason for doing so. It has to make sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the setting (Japan, Hawaii, Mars) works for the story, then no, it doesn't matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T11:57:23.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8290" CreationDate="2013-07-01T01:50:15.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, Alex, the country matters if you want it to matter. Your story is what matters, and if your story is about something &lt;em&gt;that pertains to the country&lt;/em&gt;, then the country matters to the story. Think about it: In Mark Twain's &lt;em&gt;Life on the Mississippi,&lt;/em&gt; does the country matter to the story? Well, guess what. Even if you haven't read it, I'm guessing you can figure out that since the Mississippi is in the United States, the country matters to the story. How about &lt;em&gt;Doctor Zhivago?&lt;/em&gt; Well, I'm sure you know it's set in Russia. And I'm sure you know the setting is CRUCIAL to the story. Hm. Yes. I would say the country matters to the story. How about the movie &lt;em&gt;The Matrix?&lt;/em&gt; Well, gee, no. Can you even think what country that was set in? Nope, I bet you can't. It didn't really make one tiny bit of difference what country it was set in, because, after all, it wasn't really even set in a country. Well, okay, it sort of kind of was, at least in part, but not really, and the part of it that was kind of in a country didn't really emphasize the country, did it? Nah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The country matters... &lt;em&gt;if you want it to matter.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, most writers set most of their stories in their own country just because that's the easiest thing to do. It's perfectly natural, perfectly acceptable, and generally just fine. It's usually not a problem, and usually doesn't demand any particular thought on the part of the writer, because for the most part, unless you have a special, particular, compelling, plot-driven reason for &lt;em&gt;taking the story OUT of your own country&lt;/em&gt;, why wouldn't you just leave it alone and let it live where you are giving it birth... in your own country?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastEditorUserId="4805" LastEditDate="2013-07-01T05:27:00.687" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T05:27:00.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8294" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-01T07:01:52.517" Score="7" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've learned that variation in sentence length is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about paragraph length?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always end up with paragraphs like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam&#xA;  nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat&#xA;  volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation&#xA;  ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.&#xA;  Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse&#xA;  molestie consequat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy&#xA;  nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.&#xA;  Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper&#xA;  suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem&#xA;  vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie&#xA;  consequat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod&#xA;  tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim&#xA;  ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit&#xA;  lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum&#xA;  iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I think my mind unconsciously tries to even out the paragraph length every time I write).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy&#xA;  nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.&#xA;  Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper&#xA;  suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem&#xA;  vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie&#xA;  consequat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Something of great significance happened&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod&#xA;  tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim&#xA;  ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit&#xA;  lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum&#xA;  iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes dialogue adds up for some variation (I guess):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod&#xA;  tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim&#xA;  ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit&#xA;  lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum&#xA;  iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod&#xA;  tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim&#xA;  ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit&#xA;  lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum&#xA;  iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Dolor in hendrerit in vulputate.&quot; Consectetuer adipiscing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hendrerit in vulputate.&quot; Adipiscing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sed diam nonummy nibh euismod&#xA;  tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim&#xA;  ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit&#xA;  lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum&#xA;  iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat&#xA;  But as you can see, there isn't much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is variation in paragraph length good? Or it doesn't matter so much? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-07-01T20:53:18.123" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T18:49:14.653" Title="Variation in paragraph length" Tags="|style|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2013-07-01T07:48:23.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few tidbits upon which to feast, and I hope they help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First! Many of the greatest novels ever written were some of the shortest. For inspiration and encouragement, read these: &lt;em&gt;The Great Gatsby&lt;/em&gt;, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, &lt;em&gt;Of Mice and Men&lt;/em&gt;, by John Steinbeck, &lt;em&gt;The Postman Always Rings Twice&lt;/em&gt;, by James M. Cain, and a lesser known but brilliant short novel by a departed friend of mine, Brian Moore, &lt;em&gt;Catholics&lt;/em&gt;. It's worth tracking down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second! The amazing, unique, and mind-blowing writer who has won more writing awards than any other writer in history has written hundreds of short stories, and many, many other works, and very few novels. If you haven't heard of him, you sure as heck should have! His name is Harlan Ellison. &lt;em&gt;You could look it up!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third! The absolute easiest path to writing a novel is... (drum roll, please)... &lt;em&gt;get a collaborator!&lt;/em&gt; If you can find someone who wants to write with you, &lt;em&gt;BINGO!&lt;/em&gt; You write for a while, and when you don't know what to write, you hand it over to your collaborator. When he or she gets stuck, you get the manuscript back, and you take over for a while. These days, you can do it online. It's easy. The next thing you know, a whole novel is staring you in the face. Wowser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth! What many successful writers do (really) is sit in front of the writing thing (used to be pen and paper, then a typewriter, now a computer, someday something else, right?). That's it. They sit there. Every day. Doesn't matter if they have anything to write. They force themselves to sit there. It's the law. Sit. Write something. Nonsense. Doodles. Words? Not a bad idea. Make something happen on the page. Keep at it. If something good comes out, hey, that's gravy. Keep going. Every day. Same time, same station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See you on the bestseller list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and by the way. Here's the hidden message. For every million people who are trying to get published, the one who does succeed has a secret weapon, and it's (&lt;em&gt;shhhh&lt;/em&gt;, don't tell)  not talent, charm, good looks, or a friend in a publishing house. It's PERSEVERANCE. All the way from sitting in front of the computer every day to rewriting a million times to sending your manuscript to every possible place it can be sold in the universe and never ever giving up. Now go out there and be a star!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T07:48:23.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8294" CreationDate="2013-07-01T09:59:14.200" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Variation in paragraph length can be very useful, the same way variation in sentence length can be useful. As long as the short paragraph works (that is, the short punchy statement has a reason for being there, that the punchiness creates a dramatic or humorous moment or in some way serves the narrative), it's great for breaking up the monotony of prose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's good. But don't use it for decoration. Use it because it's necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T09:59:14.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8290" CreationDate="2013-07-01T13:21:26.793" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you've noted in your question, the country matters if your story is about events or culture peculiar to that country. Someone mentioned Dr Zhivago, which is a story about the Russian Revolution. It would have made no sense to tell that same story but say it happened in Canada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many stories, the country isn't all that important. A murder mystery or a love story could be set in any country that has ever existed, as -- to the best of my knowledge, anyway -- people everywhere commit murders and people everywhere fall in love. Still, the country would affect the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an important sense, the setting always matters. A love story set in a country in which marriages are normally arranged by the young people's families would be rather different from one set in a country where young people choose their own spouses. I'm sure every country has unique cultural traits that would affect the flow of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think most writers set a story in their own country when there is no good reason to set it somewhere else for the simple reason that they know their own country and so they don't have to worry about making mistakes on the background. I wouldn't just pick a random country to set a story in without knowing a lot about that country. You'd be likely to make all sorts of mistakes that anyone who DOES know the country would quickly spot. People might let you off on the details. Like if you say that the hero went to a bookstore in the town of Foobar and a reader who knows the place knows that there are no bookstores in that town, he might skim over it on the reasoning that it was important to the plot that the hero visit a bookstore and so you just invented one. But if you are regularly talking about characters being stuck in traffic jams in a country where in reality few people have cars and the roads are always empty, or if you talk about the king of a country that has no king, or about the blizzards in a tropical country that hasn't had snow in recorded history, etc etc, it's just going to be jarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an advantage to setting a story in a different country? Like, if you live in Taiwan and your primary market is Taiwan, do Taiwanese readers tend to prefer books set in their own country, or books set in foreign countries? (I have no idea.) I suspect it depends on the story. With some stories, a foreign setting would be exotic and could add flavor. With others, it would be distracting. Like, when American authors write an adventure story, they almost always set it in a foreign country, because the further from home you are the more of an adventure it is. But when Americans write a crime story, they almost always set it in America, because a foreign setting could make clues more difficult for the reader to interpret and would require additional explanations all over the place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T13:21:26.793" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8294" CreationDate="2013-07-01T13:36:44.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, variation is good, whether it's word length, sentence length, paragraph length or even chapter length. But at the same time, you need to keep something else in mind: the paragraph needs to be as long as it needs to be. What I mean is, if you need to write a paragraph that's just one sentence long to make an impact (&quot;Something of great significance happened&quot; in your example) then do it. If you're doing it just to variate the paragraph length, you'll probably break the rhythm of the narration. If you have a long paragraph where a sum of things are happening, then make it long. If you join several paragraphs together just so you can have a long paragraph, you're misusing your paragraphs :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, something else to think about: if your paragraphs are all the same length as in the first example, what's happening in the story? Why aren't there any dialogues? Why isn't there anything of significance happening? What I mean is, same length paragraphs can make the story appear monotonous, but also, the same length paragraphs can be a product of a monotonous story. If you notice that the paragraphs are the same length, you might want to examine the story to see why they're all the same length, and is there a way to spice up the storytelling. Chances are, if you make the story dynamic, the paragraph lengths will follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T13:36:44.707" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8300" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-01T15:54:06.073" Score="0" ViewCount="302" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a book and I've come to some roadblocks in the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here is the basic storyline:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A tribe of people live in a grand city deep inside the caves and large caverns in a mountain. Outside is so cold and always snowing that someone could freeze to death if they ventured out. The walls of the caverns have a sort of magical crystal all over it that glows, therefor lightening the caves with white light, and also allowing plants to grow. But in result to some accident they all had to leave the city and move to other parts of the mountain's caves and caverns. The maps were lost and somehow the beautiful city with crystals on the walls is lost and thought never to be found again. Several generations later a young man in the city has a map that is the last of it's kind from his great great great grandfather. It tells where the long forgotten and now legendary city is. The young man goes on a journey alone to find the city. He finds the city but does not know that his good friend the princess has followed him. The man is lost because he can not find is way back, but the princess follows his tracks and eventually finds him and the city. The people go in search of the princess when they find she is missing and find her tracks and follow them and soon find her, and the man, and the city. Because there were so many people searching for her they knew the way back and then everyone in the city moves to the wonderful land, the long forgotten legendary crystal city from several generations ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the happy ending. But I have some problems and I am sure there are more so please tell  me of any if you see any. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My problems:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do I make it realistic that there would be a place such as this; where outside is too cold to live, and the caves somehow give warmth. Perhaps it is a volcano mountain?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do I make the crystals realistic, does such crystals exist anywhere on earth? Or shall I make it another world where the crystals are natural. Any other ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What would have caused the people to leave the city generations ago, yet without destroying the city by a cave in or anything because they must be able to come back to it later?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It does not seam all that realistic that the princess would be friends with this man who thinks he can find the city. But there needs to be a main character that is attractive to the reader. So if not the princess, who else would make sense? And perhaps the man does not lose himself therefor can go back himself to tell the people.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since these people live underground and can not go out for long, what would be their main food source?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would like the man to be rather young, but younger does not make sense, so how young can he be and what past would he have that would motivate him to find this city and have him to happen to have a map from his ancestor?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would greatly appreciate your input, answer as many questions as you can, and also, I would like as many answers as I can get so I can compare them. And please, be a critic and tell me what's wrong with my story. Thanks a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, this story is copyright 2013. Please don't use the plot anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4704" LastEditorUserId="4704" LastEditDate="2013-07-11T14:32:23.700" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T14:32:23.700" Title="Roadblocks in my story: The Gladys Tribe" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|fantasy|ideas|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-07-12T15:56:02.237" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8303" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8304" CreationDate="2013-07-01T19:26:29.267" Score="4" ViewCount="507" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a book – more as a hobby than anything else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an amateur &lt;em&gt;I often get lost&lt;/em&gt; regarding the extent I should include in the chapters. But the greatest problem for me is that I did not define a specific goal to be reached by the end of the story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that problem I guess defining an &lt;strong&gt;outline&lt;/strong&gt; would help me keeping on track. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any online &lt;strong&gt;outline tool&lt;/strong&gt; available in the market (that is free, preferably)? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this tool &lt;strong&gt;collaborative&lt;/strong&gt;? (Since I want to involve someone else in this writing process)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I could use &lt;em&gt;Google Docs(Drive)&lt;/em&gt; for that purpose, but I imagine that an outline tool would lead me to achieve &lt;em&gt;the best result in defining what I want with my writing&lt;/em&gt; and therefore improving my writing techniques.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3985" LastEditorUserId="3298" LastEditDate="2013-07-02T01:26:05.173" LastActivityDate="2022-02-18T05:56:43.857" Title="An (Collaborative) Online Outline" Tags="|technique|tools|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8303" CreationDate="2013-07-01T20:21:03.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writer's Cafè&lt;/a&gt;, or many others to create outlines. People use to love the first one, I liked the second. You can also use mind maps like &lt;a href=&quot;http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Freemind&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindmeister.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mind Meister&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiderscribe.net/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SpiderScribe&lt;/a&gt;. I won't advise them, since I really don't like mind maps because they are - &lt;em&gt;for me&lt;/em&gt; - too limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to share your manuscript with coworkers. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dropbox.com/home&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DropBox&lt;/a&gt; is an easy choice, but you can sync with Google Drive, for example. There are so many choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer to work with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dokuwiki&lt;/a&gt; to create all the plot lines and sheets I need, since its wiki ability to connect everything works a lot better - &lt;em&gt;at least for me&lt;/em&gt; - than more specialized software. Also, since I have my own domain, I have my wiki online and can share it with people I want since it already has an ACL system. The down point is that you need to have a minimum or technical skills - &lt;em&gt;or at least will, since it's not difficult&lt;/em&gt; - to install and configure it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For writing the manuscript itself, I use pure text formats - &lt;em&gt;Latex or Markdown&lt;/em&gt; - and keep track of what I do with &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BitBucket&lt;/a&gt;. It has its learning curve but, once you learn how to use it, it totally worths the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a small bit of advise, sometimes you may have the beginning but not the end of your story. Some people thinks the best way is to wait the end to come from the muse before to start but I don't think it's the right way. For me, as you start to work the ideas will eventually come up. If you wait... Well, I guess most of the writer's blocks happens on those people that decides to wait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own experience, if you start to work the plot lines and the ideas you already have, you will be able to beat inertia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T20:21:03.537" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8305" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-02T15:45:44.287" Score="-1" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm organising a project in the near future and am emailing people, which profiles I found on Linkedin, that I would like to work with. What I'm trying to get across is that it's going to be an exciting venture for them to be a part with and they should contact me if they are interested. This is what I have so far. I would just like feedback on what I should improve, change etc. Thank you all in advance for your help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EMAIL:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hello [name]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My name is [name] and I am contacting you on behalf of [company].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the past few weeks we have been seeking individuals who can contribute to our project. So it was with joy that we came across your Linkedin and subsequent online profiles. So to cut to the chase we would like to invite you to join the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel this is of interest to you please reply to this email or ring me to speak about the project in further detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yours sincerely&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[name]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[twitter]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5419" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-02T20:09:46.807" LastActivityDate="2018-05-02T20:09:46.807" Title="Tone and directness in inviting prospective team member" Tags="|style|business-writing|email|tone|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-05-03T15:58:18.390" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8306" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-02T18:28:57.647" Score="3" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in the process of writing a small localised book on arranging funerals yourself (D.I.Y funerals). During the process of collating information, I have made phone calls to local funerals related businesses to enquire on the costs for certain things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm planning on putting a small localised list of businesses (a directory if you will), and the quoted prices I was given for things such as their most economical casket, cold storage prices per day etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it OK to publish this information in a book? I would like to know if publishing a companies prices and there contacts details is allowed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be mentioning that the price was given to me on a specified date. This information is meant to be public knowledge anyway, as funeral related businesses are dealing with the public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any comments and further thought's on this would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5467" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T01:37:11.290" Title="Publishing price comparisons. Is it allowed?" Tags="|self-publishing|business-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8294" CreationDate="2013-07-02T18:49:14.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell..........&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Word length really shouldn't vary &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; more than the correct spelling of each word attempts to enforce, in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think variation in &lt;em&gt;sentence&lt;/em&gt; length has a great deal to commend it except that you must beware of allowing a sentence to become overlong to the point at which it could cause readers to lose interest and even lose track of where the sentence is going if there are so many elements in the sentence that no one could even keep track of where the sentence started and what it is trying to say and the sentence itself actually becomes a paragraph in and of itself even without the need of a single punctuation mark if you don't count the period that inevitably must be placed at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paragraph length should vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However much you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It maintains interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Credo in gente Anglorum confundit Latine scribere. So you might want to give it to us in English, maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I believe in humor to make a point. I think you probably guessed that. :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T18:49:14.653" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8308" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21458" CreationDate="2013-07-02T21:48:26.877" Score="3" ViewCount="650" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/THRFF.gif&quot; alt=&quot;http://www.12manage.com/images/picture_minto_pyramid_principle.gif&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the Minto Pyramid, should I order the paragraphs of my paper by going through the rows of the pyramid like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thesis &gt; Why &gt; How &gt; Where &gt; A &gt; B &gt; C &gt; D &gt; E&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should I start at the top of the pyramid and follow one branch down to the end leaf, then go up one step and repeat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thesis &gt; Why &gt; A &gt; B &gt; How &gt; C &gt; D &gt; Where &gt; E&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5469" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-20T21:45:29.750" LastActivityDate="2019-02-20T21:45:29.750" Title="Using the Minto Pyramid" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|organization|outline|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8305" CreationDate="2013-07-02T23:21:37.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would respond negatively to this. The message says nothing about what attracted you to the recipient, or what would attract the recipient to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have received such messages.  They indicate no knowledge of me beyond my name and my having a LinkedIn account.  I interpret such messages to mean that my profile has matched some sort of automated keyword matcher, and that the message itself was dispatched by machine, with no personal involvement of a human being.  And from that entirely mechanical process, the result is to extend an extraordinary invitation:  Not to interview, not to submit my resume, not to read about the company or the product or the job to see whether there is anything for me, but to &lt;em&gt;join the team.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would immediately mark this as spam and delete it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want me to respond, tell me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; qualities do I exhibit that attracted you to me, and what makes you think I have these qualities?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; features of the product, company, and team do you think I will value, and what makes you think I want those?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some background about the product, company, and team, and what makes you so excited about them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T23:21:37.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8310" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-03T02:19:09.133" Score="7" ViewCount="13438" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a memoir about my abusive childhood.  Do I need permission from everyone I write about? My abuser is deceased, but my brothers are part of the story and I don't know where one of them is to request permission, but I don't want to go ahead without knowing I don't need their permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5471" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T09:45:37.147" LastActivityDate="2020-10-24T02:40:15.670" Title="Permission requirements from people in my memoir" Tags="|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8310" CreationDate="2013-07-03T06:16:27.460" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE:&lt;/strong&gt; I am not a lawyer, and the following is just the result of some Google searching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're allowed to publish basically anything you want; the concern is not whether you will be able to publish it to begin with, but whether you can be sued (for libel or misrepresentation) later on. Even if you would win such a lawsuit, it would probably be expensive and a lot of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to reliably protect yourself from lawsuits. The first is to get explicit permission from the individuals involved; what you want here is a &lt;strong&gt;release form&lt;/strong&gt;, a legal document that basically says &quot;I won't sue you over this book in the future.&quot; The second option is to &lt;strong&gt;anonymize your the individuals involved&lt;/strong&gt; - if an individual's name isn't used (or, I assume, directly clear from context), then they have no basis for a lawsuit. That is, if you were to write under a pseudonym and change everybody's names, it would be difficult to connect your actual brother to the character in the book; therefore there would be no basis for a lawsuit. (I do not know what extent of &quot;anonymizing&quot; is necessary - whether name changes are enough, or major identifying details need to be changed as well.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few questions you might want to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will your memoir portray your brother in a favorable light, or a negative one? If favorable, then there should be no basis for a lawsuit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How likely is your brother to, at some point, actually find out about your book? If you literally cannot find him, perhaps (perhaps!) the odds of him finding your particular memoir and taking offense are slim.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To what extent can you defend your writing about him as accurate? If you ever actually come to a lawsuit, the question is not whether you have portrayed him negatively without permission, but whether you have committed libel - that is, whether you've published &lt;em&gt;lies&lt;/em&gt; about him that could hurt him or his reputation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How hard would it be to write your memoir with fake names, without identifying your brother?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, if you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; proceed, you should try to get release forms from anybody relevant who &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; give you one - that's the strongest protection there is. Having one chink in the wall doesn't mean you can leave the main gates wide open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I relied on detail I found at the following sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_5730056_write-true-story-being-sued.html&quot;&gt;How to Write a True Story Without Being Sued&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_7855101_write-prevent-yourself-getting-sued.html&quot;&gt;How to Write an Autobiography and Prevent Yourself From Getting Sued&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090715032150AAZwefM&quot;&gt;Whenever people write an autobiography, do they have to ask permission for people to include them in it?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T06:16:27.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8313" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8314" CreationDate="2013-07-03T09:46:53.770" Score="6" ViewCount="2206" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sample text without pronouns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't remember how it started but &lt;strong&gt;Monica&lt;/strong&gt; began talking about &lt;strong&gt;Monica's&#xA;  mother&lt;/strong&gt;—a topic &lt;strong&gt;Monica&lt;/strong&gt; had always avoided before. &lt;strong&gt;Monica&lt;/strong&gt; told me about how&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Monica's mother&lt;/strong&gt; used to take trips to Mount Everest every time &lt;strong&gt;Monica's mother&lt;/strong&gt; had a fight&#xA;  with &lt;strong&gt;Monica's father&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Monica's mother&lt;/strong&gt; would stay in a hotel for two&#xA;  days, and on the third one, &lt;strong&gt;Monica's mother&lt;/strong&gt; would come back home acting as if nothing had happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same text with pronouns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't remember how it started but &lt;strong&gt;Monica&lt;/strong&gt; began talking about &lt;strong&gt;her&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  mother—a topic &lt;strong&gt;she&lt;/strong&gt; had always avoided before. &lt;strong&gt;She&lt;/strong&gt; told me about how&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;her mother&lt;/strong&gt; used to take trips to Mount Everest every time &lt;strong&gt;she&lt;/strong&gt; had a fight&#xA;  with &lt;strong&gt;her father&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;She&lt;/strong&gt; would stay in a hotel for two&#xA;  days, and on the third one, &lt;strong&gt;she&lt;/strong&gt; would come back home acting as if nothing had happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it clear to whom the pronouns are referring to? If not, how to modify the text so it reads better? (I'm also open to other suggestions)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T14:55:29.450" Title="Using pronouns properly in order to avoid confusion and repetition" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8313" CreationDate="2013-07-03T10:40:58.170" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would replace &lt;code&gt;her father&lt;/code&gt; with &lt;code&gt;Monica's father&lt;/code&gt; as it becomes a little unclear who you're refering to in that section (did the mum fight with her own father or Monica's father?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I'd say you can scrap the last she and replace &lt;code&gt;and on the third one, she would come back&lt;/code&gt; with &lt;code&gt;returning home&lt;/code&gt; so the last sentance would read: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;She would stay in a hotel for two days, returning home acting as if nothing had happened.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will keep that sentance punchy and reduce the amount of times you use the word &quot;she&quot; in one paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that it reads very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T12:07:34.127" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T12:07:34.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8313" CreationDate="2013-07-03T13:38:48.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a classic, tricky problem. Sometimes it's not clear who a pronoun refers to. But if you spell it out every time, your text sounds very awkward. You can say &quot;she&quot; twenty times in a paragraph and it flows naturally, but say &quot;Monica&quot; twenty times and it sounds repetitious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll ditto ClockeWork on his comments about your second paragraph. There really is very little ambiguity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How we match pronouns to their antecedents can be a complex thing. A pronoun doesn't always refer to the most recent noun or anything like that. Often we figure it out by our understanding of the people referred to, or logical analysis of the action. It would, I suppose, be possible for someone to read that paragraph and think that Monica's mother went away on a trip every time that MONICA had a fight with her father. Or, someone might start to read the last sentence thinking that when Monica's mother went on a trip, Monica stayed in a hotel. But then when they got to the final clause about coming home, they would probably realize that you meant that it was her mother that stayed in the hotel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often we do this without even thinking about it. It is only when we realize that our assumptions don't make sense that we go back and say, &quot;Oh, 'she' here must be referring to the lady in the red dress, not Sally's aunt ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two tips: 1. Go back and re-read a sentence, preferably some time after you've written it, and see if the pronouns are obvious. This should be a part of your proof-reading. If you have someone else available to proof-read, that's better still. Someone else may notice an ambiguity that you didn't realize was there. 2. If someone is identified only by a long description, it can seem particularly awkward to have to repeat this to identify him. Like if you mention &quot;the clerk at the hardware store with red hair&quot; and &quot;the clerk at the hardware store with brown hair&quot;, you can be tempted to just say &quot;he&quot; rather than repeat that whole description when &quot;he&quot; is ambiguous. In such cases, it can help to give the character a name, or invent a nickname on the spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T13:38:48.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8313" CreationDate="2013-07-03T14:55:29.450" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the great answers you have already received, don't be shy to reword where necessary. For example, I might change:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She told me about how her mother used to take trips to Mount Everest every time she had a fight with her father. She would stay in a hotel for two days…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She told me about how her mother used to take trips to Mount Everest every time her parents fought. Her mother would stay in a hotel for two days…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5278" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T14:55:29.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8317" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-03T18:47:54.950" Score="5" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;What kind of responses will come back from an editor after a short story is accepted in an anthology?  Specifically, is it common for a writer to hear that an accepted story has potential but needs significant editing before it's finally accepted?  I've had a hard time finding any actual verbatim responses online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5476" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T22:29:09.503" Title="What are the common editing requirements for a short story in an anthology?" Tags="|publishing|editing|short-story|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8329" CreationDate="2013-07-03T23:54:54.580" Score="9" ViewCount="7927" Body="&lt;p&gt;I enjoy writing as a 'side' interest and I have written 10 short stories (which are approximately 1,750 words each). I am publishing them as standalone ebooks (or 'estories' if there is such a term) on Amazon. Each story has its own cover and can be purchased for $0.99. (This is the minimum price I can set on Amazon for the three month exclusive period and I am happy with it - this site helped me very much - see one of the answers &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5706/self-publishing-do-i-still-need-to-follow-the-arbitrary-word-count-limits/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; - Thank you!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see that a majority of ebooks on Amazon (and other platforms) are bigger than short stories. Some are novellas and others are novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't intend to write a novel, as I don't have a lot of spare time and, more importantly, I cannot bring myself to it. I just love writing short stories because they are manageable for me and the full plot can be revealed in one sitting/reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may put them in a collection but for the time-being, they are individual pieces. (This is a marketing consideration as I may sell five stories for $4.99 compared to a collection of five stories for (say) $2.99.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question: What is the current state of the short-story market, for individual stories and for collections, particularly for ebooks?  What are trends in sales, readership, and profit?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In particular, do people still read short stories for writers like me to continue writing in this genre?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T18:40:36.150" Title="Do people read short stories?" Tags="|short-story|ebook|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8306" CreationDate="2013-07-04T01:37:11.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Buying guides, including reviews and prices, are not uncommon, with the quintessential example (at least in the US) being &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Consumer Reports&lt;/a&gt;, a monthly product-review magazine (with web site).  Local laws may vary, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is a &quot;small localised list&quot;, perhaps there is a matter of etiquette involved.  If you live in a smaller town where people tend to know and interact with each other (in contrast to a large city where you might not even known your neighbors' names), then the owners of the businesses you're reviewing might be surprised if the first they hear of it is when your shopping guide comes out.  Purely as a matter of courtesy you might consider telling them in advance -- or even giving them the opportunity to review the information you have about them for correctness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A practical concern (already raised in comments) is the frequency at which this information changes.  You wouldn't publish a book listing produce prices at local grocers; they'd be out of date before the ink is dry.  On the other hand, it's pretty safe to publish an annual listing of college tuitions.  Where on this spectrum do the prices you'll be listing fall?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you publish prices it's a good idea to date them.  I would suggest also putting them on a web site and publishing a URL in your guide so that people can look there for updates.  I trust that you will be including contact information for the funeral homes and other vendors you're listing, so that your readers can also call or email them for current prices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T01:37:11.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8320" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-04T12:00:22.933" Score="3" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in the social, cultural, and political landscape around me, and I think I've &quot;got a book in me&quot; on the topic. A major source of material would be the writings of everyday people in places like Tweets and letters to the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Is making a &quot;value judgment&quot; about a public statement someone have any legal risks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Would I need permission to quote a publicly made available statement, such as a Tweet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5193" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T15:55:45.700" Title="What steps can be taken to avoid libel / copyright issues in social commentary?" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8320" CreationDate="2013-07-04T12:51:43.437" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think it right, &lt;em&gt;everything has legal risks&lt;/em&gt;, since anything can originate arguments that may seem as valid for somebody. That's the reason why court houses exist: &lt;em&gt;to judge if an argumentation is legally valid&lt;/em&gt;. I know this might be a quite extreme affirmation but, yet, it's a valid one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first place, you have the legal right to have and express opinion. If you read or watch something, you can make a value judgment on it. There's a difference, by the way, in giving your opinion - &lt;em&gt;what's a product of personal believes&lt;/em&gt; - and affirmation - &lt;em&gt;what's a product of a fact&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About permissions, that's why licenses and terms service are for. Check &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/tos&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tweeter Terms of Service&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This license is you authorizing us to make your Tweets available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use tweets as much as you like as far you respect the terms of service. If you want to use other sources of data, you will need to check the license of that source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you will always have the right to express your opinion on a book even if it forbids reproduction, as far as you don't use any of its content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T12:51:43.437" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8320" CreationDate="2013-07-04T13:29:08.657" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Q1: Make sure you made it clear you are stating opinions, not facts. &quot;He's a thief&quot; is a libel. &quot;In my opinion, he's a thief&quot; is free speech. Also, until sentenced, the culprit is merely &quot;allegedly culprit&quot;. IANAL so I'm not sure if more rules or exceptions to that don't apply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q2: Make sure to read up on Fair Use. It's not much of reading but it's important. Use of quotes in news reporting, criticism and commentary (and other categories not quite applicable here) is allowed. You are still required to assign credit where it's due, and note, they can still sue you for copyright violation - it's then your duty to prove before the judge that Fair Use exceptions apply. It's a protection against losing the lawsuit, not against the lawsuit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T13:29:08.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8324" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-04T23:48:33.283" Score="3" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently managing a project with writers, Content Reviewers, and Editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The documents are stored on Google Drive. At the moment the process is very convoluted and is quickly becoming a bottle neck. I will describe the process below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Author puts article up in specified folder &#xA;-I email review team, asking them to review, wait for email back confirming it has been done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I move to Language checks, wait for email back confirming it has been done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I send it off to be published&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This involves emails back and forth and is a drain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need a tool that can manage the process, i.e., I can add states for a task such as, in review, in edit, published. Also this tool needs to be able to be collaborative so everyone involved in the end-to-end process can login to one central place do their tasks. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should also integrate with Google Drive.  As I come from a software engineering background, I was going to try and write some myself. But there is no point re-inventing the wheel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone got any suggestions of tools out there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5484" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T21:07:34.757" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T21:07:34.757" Title="Project management software using Google Drive" Tags="|tools|collaboration|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8325" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8340" CreationDate="2013-07-05T01:51:45.603" Score="1" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;The more I reject the demon, however, the more its pertinacity grows with unyielding resolve. He follows my every thought with conviction — has an answer for my every action, and speaks words indisputable before I could ever mutter a single syllable in retaliation. Herein, I recognized the futility of my resistance, and find the only solution stirring within me, capitulation. For the demon had set my anger aflame inside my frame and my mind is ablaze as a consequence. The destruction is all but complete. The battle has been decided. What little anger managed to escape the inferno retreats to the deepest recesses of my brain. This is a contradiction to what I had projected for I entrusted more of a fight from such a raw and powerful emotion, and because of this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5485" LastEditorUserId="5485" LastEditDate="2013-07-07T02:19:35.597" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T02:19:35.597" Title="Does this sound like someone at the end of their conflict with emotions? Please help" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-07-06T23:33:22.560" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8300" CreationDate="2013-07-05T06:29:16.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lizzy, you have many elements of a beautiful story here, and with some work you should be able to make a lovely romantic adventure out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are asking for what elements of the story could stand some improvement, I would like to focus on one particular connected stream in the storyline that I think would benefit from some attention. So here's my connected series of questions that really all pertain to the same thing: If there is a map that clearly shows the way back to the original city, why did the great great grandfather not use it to lead everyone back in the first place? Why did no one in that family down through the generations not use it ever before? If it didn't come to light for some reason until this particular young man found it, why did he not show it to the whole community? Why did he not show it to the leaders of the community so they could lead everyone back to the original city? If he was a friend of the princess, why did he not show it to the princess? If he decided to go off on his own (which seems like a dangerous and foolhardy thing to do) why would he not take some kind of precautions for his own safety? If the princess was going to follow him, why would she not follow him closely enough so that she wouldn't have to &quot;follow his tracks?&quot; If the young man had a map that could get him to the original city, how could he get lost? He could just follow the map back again. Even if he did get lost, you say the princess could follow his tracks to find him; why couldn't he follow his own tracks back and rescue himself? If the princess wanted to go save her friend, why wouldn't she go with a rescue party? She's a princess, after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plausibility in a storyline rests on paying very careful attention to microscopic details like this, so I hope you can see why it's worth my pointing them out. Best wishes on your story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T06:29:16.767" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8324" CreationDate="2013-07-05T07:30:53.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the solutions I know are mainly related to web - namely CMS -  and I think it would be to overpowered to use then just to manage reviewing process. In any case, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ez.no/Products/eZ-Publish-CMS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;eZ Publish&lt;/a&gt; is an outstanding. &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/sharepoint-server-help/what-is-sharepoint-HA010378184.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sharepoint&lt;/a&gt; works also but - imho - it's not so good and quite expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some more obscure solutions - like using &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BitBucket&lt;/a&gt; and GIT - but I don't think it's worth to suggest them in the context of project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T07:30:53.437" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8263" CreationDate="2013-07-05T07:46:04.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alex, the basic concept of opening with a reference to what someone has just said, followed by a scene description, is absolutely fine. In fact, it's a great idea. In your example, I think you've handled it really well! I see that you have the concept down perfectly, and this is a first draft that you can polish into something terrific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course a kazillion ways of doing it, so forgive me for just going ahead and taking my own turn at the plate here. Let me just have a go for fun:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Behind me, Naomi repeated the name. She knew she would have to, even though she couldn't see the scorn on my face. Before me, the mountain was a sleeping giant in the dark. A cluster of city lights glittered at its feet. Cicadas chirped and chattered in the surrounding forest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The Dragon's Egg Tree,&amp;quot; was what she had said, for the second time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I turned away from the hotel window and strode past her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Drink?&amp;quot; I asked, grabbing a bottle on the side bar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She scowled. &amp;quot;That's all you have to say?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I dumped some tonic into her gin and shoved the glass into her hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;What else should I say if you bring me three thousand miles to talk about fairy tales? Cheers, Naomi!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I downed my Scotch in one gulp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T07:46:04.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8318" CreationDate="2013-07-05T13:02:02.670" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a [...] romance short I’m thinking of publishing, but it’s currently about 1,700 words. At that length, do you think it would work better as a free story on my blog? Or should I still try to sell it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have six different stories at that length up for $2.99. And I also have all six in stand-alone paperbacks for $4.99 through CreateSpace, and one is selling like crazy. Strange, but true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is cited from the comments of Dean W. Smith's blog post about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=9457&quot;&gt;&quot;Making a Living with Your Short Fiction&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smith is writing and selling a lot of short fiction. If you follow his blog and the comment section you will see that there are many other writers making good money with short fiction. So the answer is: Yes, there is market. Yes, people read short stories. And yes, you do not charge enough for your stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole post is about making money with short stories. I highly recommend it (even if you do not want to sell short stories). But to answer your question, you do not have to read that blog post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it is totally irrelevant if there is some market if you write these stories anyway. And you say you enjoy doing so. So there is no reason to stop what you enjoy. Put them out there where people can find them and if people by them, then you have &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; market. Maybe a niche market, maybe not, but why should you care if people buy &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sell the single stories, sell them as compilations. Both. More variety gives your readers more options to find you. There is nothing you can lose. Even if the majority do not like reading shorts. It doesn't matter. You only need a few fans to make money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write more stories, put them up and repeat. Use as many markets as possible. Amazon is not the only marketplace. Think about paper books. The world is connected. A connected world is open for every niche there is. Wouldn't it be worth it even if you only find one hundred people who buy your stuff, but do it regularly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing to lose if you try it. Only experience to gain. And money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T13:02:02.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8318" CreationDate="2013-07-05T15:03:53.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, I don't have any specific numbers, so it's going to be more of a subjective answer, I apologize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, when self-publishing, you have to keep in mind that you are your own marketer. You sell your own books. Sure, they sell &lt;em&gt;through&lt;/em&gt; Amazon, or Smashwords, or Barnes and Nobles, or whichever you choose, but you have to make them sell. I saw people building &quot;platforms&quot; through blogs, facebook, tweeter and other social networking tools &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; they even put a book on the market, so that when it comes out, the potential readership is already eagerly waiting to read it. If you just put your story among million of others and then sit and wait for people to stumble onto it, odds are you're not going to sell much. A good story has to swim through a pile of garbage to get to the top (yes, when you let people freely submit what ever they want without any quality control a large number of it will be garbage). Separating crap from the good stuff is done through &quot;word-of-mouth&quot; - reviews, recommendations, off-site reviews (book-reviewing sites like BookReporter or BookPage), and it takes a lot of work to get your story reviewed (book-reviewing sites usually don't come to you, you come to them - you need to ask them to do a review, usually in exchange for a free copy). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a lot of hard work. Maybe too much for ten short stories, but why not write fifty? Or more? Ten or twenty decent novels could make the same amount of money as a single best-seller - people have tested and confirmed that. The trick in earning money from self publishing is in quantity. Ten low-priced items sell more than one pricey item. So don't waste your time contemplating whether it would sell. Write a ton of short stories, then &lt;strong&gt;make them sell&lt;/strong&gt;. A good place to get some good general info and advice on self-publishing is Joe Konrath's &lt;a href=&quot;http://jakonrath.blogspot.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Newbie's Guide to Publishing&lt;/a&gt;, but there are also plenty of other blogs out there on the same subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a bit of Googling, I ran into &quot;Kindle Singles&quot;. Basically, they're something like &quot;staff picks&quot; on Android Market, they're works typically between 5,000 and 30,000 words that have been reviewed by the editors, so they're guaranteed to have a higher quality than an average self-pub piece. It gives a reader assurance that he's not buying random crap. Also, they're marketed by Amazon, which means less marketing work for you. Amazon has released the sales figures for Singles, and they look pretty good, take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://paidcontent.org/2012/03/12/419-exclusive-amazon-has-sold-over-two-million-kindle-singles/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amazon Has Sold Over Two Million Kindle Singles&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://paidcontent.org/2012/03/12/419-exclusive-how-kindle-singles-authors-are-faring/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How Much Do Kindle Singles Authors Make?&lt;/a&gt;. Looking at these numbers, I have to say, yes, there is a market for short stories. If you can make yours 5000+ words long, and if they're of good enough quality, trying to get them into &quot;Kindle Singles&quot; category might be worth-while. You can have a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;docId=1000700491&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Submission Policy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T15:03:53.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8320" CreationDate="2013-07-05T15:55:45.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, but my understanding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., you generally have the right to express your opinion on any subject you like. If you talk about specific people, you have to beware of libel and slander laws. Basically, you can express opinions about people, but if you make statements of fact, you must have some substantiation that those facts are accurate. For example, if you say, &quot;I hate Senator Jones&quot;, that's a statement of opinion and should be absolutely protected. If you say, &quot;Senator Jones accepted a bribe from XYZ Corporation&quot;, that's a claim of fact and he could sue you for libel if it's not true. If you falsely say that someone committed a crime, that's always libel. Other statements about them could be libel if they can show that it causes them harm. Like if you say, &quot;Mr Smith was born in Maryland&quot; when he was born in Connecticut, the statement is provably false, but unless Smith can show that this error causes him some harm, he's not going to win a law suit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are growing numbers of &quot;hate speech&quot; laws that you have to be wary of. Like, a representative of the US Justice Department recently told a newspaper that criticizing Islam on Facebook and other social media is a violation of Federal civil rights laws. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tullahomanews.com/?p=15360&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tullahomanews.com/?p=15360&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding quoting public statements: As SF says, you need to read up on &quot;fair use&quot;. Basically, you can use short quotes of statements that others have written or said for purposes of commentary, criticism, or education without getting their permission. The law is vague because the concept is vague. Like, there is no legal definition of &quot;short&quot;. When someone sues, a judge decides it on a case-by-case basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T15:55:45.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8332" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8333" CreationDate="2013-07-05T16:19:27.977" Score="2" ViewCount="86649" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to describe somebody falling asleep from exhaustion, in first person.  I'm currently using a longer, detailed description, but is that the best way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Never had a few moments deliberation seemed like an eternity as I feel my consciousness ebbing away, and my thoughts, as clear and concise as they were mere moments ago, were coming to an end. My eyes grow heavy from the strenuous effects of excessive agitation of the brain--that faculty which, in all its strength, I had not prepared for such a weakness. At once, I was struck with incoherence, an inconsistency to my thoughts, as I kneeled down and leaned a shoulder against the wall—for I had already decided to give myself away to my pursuer, to &lt;em&gt;exhaustion&lt;/em&gt;, to be dead to the world before the rest of me ever hit the cold concrete floor…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5485" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-08-09T03:52:12.633" LastActivityDate="2015-08-09T03:57:46.047" Title="Does this sound like a good description of someone falling asleep due exhaustion? Anything I can do to make it sound better?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-08-19T16:33:19.673" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8332" CreationDate="2013-07-05T16:54:06.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bit too wordy for my taste, but that's purely subjective. I'd have to see the rest of the piece to make a better judgement. The overall imagery could work. The long, run-on sentences work well in showing fatigue, but some of it might need a bit of a clean up. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My eyes grow heavy from the overwhelming effects of excessive agitation of the brain for which, in all its power, I had not prepared for its weakness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sentence is just not right. If you leave out the inserted sentence &quot;in all its power&quot;, you get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My eyes grow heavy from the overwhelming effects of excessive agitation of the brain for which I had not prepared for its weakness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which makes no sense, grammatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At once, I was struck with incoherence—an inconsistency to my thoughts, as I kneeled down and leaned a shoulder against the wall—for I had already decided to give myself away to my pursuer—to exhaustion—to be dead to the world before the rest of me ever hit the cold concrete floor…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are so many — here that I don't know to what they refer to, what sections are they surrounding. For example, it looks as if &quot;—an inconsistency to my thoughts, as I kneeled down and leaned a shoulder against the wall—&quot; is an inserted sentence, which makes no sense. I believe you were going for &quot;At once, I was struck with incoherence — an inconsistency to my thoughts — as I kneeled down and leaned a shoulder against the wall&quot; but even so, the em dashes make it so awkward. I think it would look somewhat clearer like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At once, I was struck with incoherence, an inconsistency to my thoughts, as I kneeled down and leaned a shoulder against the wall—for I had already decided to give myself away to my pursuer, to exhaustion, to be dead to the world before the rest of me ever hit the cold concrete floor…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's still a pretty awkward sentence though. As I said already, long, run-on sentences are perfect for this situation, but they still need to be clear and readable to the reader. I had to go back several times to get my head around it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T16:54:06.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8335" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-05T22:01:12.553" Score="9" ViewCount="1547" Body="&lt;p&gt;Feedback from my writer's group tells me that my recent stories leave promises unfulfilled and important questions unanswered.&#xA;So I've become interested in how stories make promises and raise questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I've identified a few factors that arouse readers' expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character desire.&lt;/strong&gt; If I put a desire into a character's mind (or words, or actions), readers expect the story to resolve the desire.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character speculation.&lt;/strong&gt; If a character speculates about some future event or condition, readers expect the story to resolve the speculation. This is especially true if the character feels some emotion about the speculation.  Fear. Worry. Anticipation. Hope.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character motivation.&lt;/strong&gt; Readers expect that characters have reasons for their actions. Sometimes readers can readily imagine the reasons, either from their own experience or from something earlier in the story. If readers can't readily understand the reasons, that opens a question, which they expect the story to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cause and effect.&lt;/strong&gt; Readers expect that effects have causes. If readers cannot readily imagine the causes of some important effect, that raises questions that they expect the story to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Textual weight.&lt;/strong&gt; If I spend time on something in the text, readers expect it to matter. The more space I give it, the more readers expect it to matter to the story.  This is especially true in short fiction, where the mere mention of a thing must justify its presence in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Genre.&lt;/strong&gt; Each genre brings its own set of expectations. In a mystery, the crime will be resolved in the end. In a romance, the lovers will get together in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What have I missed?&#xA;What other features&#xA;arouse expectations in readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are reading,&#xA;what raises questions in you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal is to give myself a better chance &#xA;to notice when I've made a promise or raised a question that I will need to resolve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2013-07-05T22:09:43.167" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T20:05:26.287" Title="What factors in fiction arouse readers' expectations?" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8335" CreationDate="2013-07-05T23:11:29.217" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;(The name for &quot;Textual Weight&quot; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chekhov's Gun.&lt;/a&gt; Briefly, every element in the story must have a purpose, or don't put it in there. There are LOTS of examples and variants on TVTropes, with the standard TVTropes caveat.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than your excellent list so far, I'd add &lt;strong&gt;plot complications&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;obstacles.&lt;/strong&gt; The obstacle doesn't necessarily have to be defeated, but it does have to be dealt with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example: if the heroine punches out a guard and stuffs him into a closet, there are a number of things which could happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The guard wakes up and goes after the heroine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The guard wakes up but the heroine has already gotten away.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The guard wakes up, but the heroine locked the closet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The closet is locked, but the guard makes enough noise for someone to&#xA;find him and let him out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The heroine tied and gagged the guard before locking him in the&#xA;closet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The other guards find the tied and gagged guard in the locked closet&#xA;and realize the heroine is in the building doing her heroic thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The heroine hit the guard so hard she actually killed him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Et cetera. Many potentials. But what you &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; do is just have the guy in the unlocked closet with no restraints &lt;em&gt;indefinitely&lt;/em&gt; and nothing else happens. The guard in the closet represents potential. You have to counter the potential or let the potential happen (which becomes the next obstacle for your protagonist).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different way of dealing with expectations is (TVTropes warning again) the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrickJoke&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brick Joke.&lt;/a&gt; This is when you set something up casually far in advance which pays off well after the audience may have forgotten about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example: In Star Trek's &quot;The Trouble With Tribbles,&quot; tribbles are established to squeal in distress when they encounter Klingons. At the end of the episode, Kirk is carrying around a tribble which abruptly squeals when presented to a man who appears to be human. This unmasks him as a surgically altered Klingon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you set something up in the beginning (a Chekhov's tribble, if you will) which then doesn't pay off (there's no traitor to unmask), your audience may wonder why the hell you bothered telling us that tribbles hate Klingons in the first place. If you're going to throw a Brick Joke into the air, remember that it has to land again somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T23:11:29.217" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8335" CreationDate="2013-07-05T23:35:48.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Orson Scott Card in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1599632128&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elements of Fiction Writing - Characters &amp;amp; Viewpoint&lt;/a&gt; talks about &quot;a contract with the reader&quot;. I'll try to describe it as best as I remember. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first contract you make with the opening of the story. If you open with a murder, readers expect a murder mystery, so you need to close it with the resolution of that murder. If you start with murder, then switch to the victim's wife and how it disrupted her life, and end with the widow setting her life in order without the murder being solved, the contact is broken and reader will be disappointed. However, if you open it with the victim's wife, and then continue with how the murder impacted her life, you can not close with the resolution of the murder without showing how the wife set her life in order. The opening conflict sets the type and the focus of the story, and you need to resolve that conflict before the story ends. Other things may happen in the meantime - for example, if you opened with the victim's wife, catching his killer will be an interesting bonus to the story, but the reader will still focus on the widow and her life. You need to tell the reader what to expect from the story from the very beginning. For example, I got very irritated once when I was reading a story that was set on a spaceship, when about a chapter into the story a vampire appeared. I was assuming, based on the beginning of the story, that I was reading a science fiction story, not a fantasy. I felt cheated, it annoyed me so much I stopped reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second contract is happening throughout the rest of the story. If you spend some time on something, the reader will expect that thing to matter to the story. Since you already mentioned that, I won't go into it here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remembered an interesting example in &quot;A Song For Arbonne&quot; by Guy Gavriel Kay. The book starts with a Prologue that happens some 10-15 years before the main plot (one nobleman sleeps with another nobleman's wife), and while it's not the main plot (the main plot is a war with another country), and not even directly connected to the main character, that initial conflict shapes the events of the whole story. Even the resolving of the &quot;main&quot; conflict depended heavily on that first conflict. It's not until the very end that the first conflict got resolved (just after the &quot;main&quot; conflict), and everything that happens after that just wraps up the ending.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4264" LastEditorUserId="4264" LastEditDate="2013-07-06T00:18:15.223" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T00:18:15.223" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8332" CreationDate="2013-07-06T03:14:35.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using shorter sentences (and varying their length) can make the piece more readable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Never had a brief span seem like an&#xA;  eternity. As I feel my consciousness ebbing away, as&#xA;  clear and concise as it was mere moments ago, it was coming to an&#xA;  end. My eyes grow heavy from the strenuous effects of excessive&#xA;  agitation. At once, I was struck with incoherence,&#xA;  an inconsistency to my thoughts, as I kneeled down and leaned a&#xA;  shoulder against the wall. I decided to give myself&#xA;  away to my pursuer, to exhaustion. And I would be dead to the world before the&#xA;  rest of me ever hit the cold concrete floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if the piece makes sense after my edit. But you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-07-06T17:38:07.067" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T17:38:07.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8325" CreationDate="2013-07-06T05:18:58.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shawn, you are attempting to create a colorful, demanding work of art by painting an entire canvas with slashing brushstrokes of language. It's exciting, and I commend you for your effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effective writing, however, must be built on a solid infrastructure. Every nuance of language must be respected. If you falter in your use of a single word, you can bring an entire sentence crashing down; the death of that sentence can destroy a paragraph. Multiple mistakes can be fatal to the entire work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take your first sentence. The word &lt;em&gt;aversion&lt;/em&gt; is not a &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; quantifiable entity. Although there are ways to use &quot;aversion&quot; as something that can be counted, and subsequently modified by the word &quot;each,&quot; it is rather unusual to use it this way. &lt;em&gt;Aversion&lt;/em&gt; is a feeling; it is a distaste, a disgust, a revulsion; it is how one &lt;em&gt;feels&lt;/em&gt; about something. You certainly might feel an aversion to the demon, but it is very difficult to imagine a circumstance in which you would have, create, or experience multiple aversions to the demon. So right off the bat, your sentence would make most readers extremely puzzled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, in the same sentence, you mention the demon's capacity. The capacity of anything is the quantity it can hold. So this word is almost never used without stating &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; is being held. For example, &quot;The water tower's capacity was a thousand gallons.&quot; Note that it usually refers to inanimate objects. When using it with living creatures, it generally refers to an ability, thus: &quot;My father's capacity for hard work would always exceed my own.&quot; To say &lt;em&gt;the demon's capacity for me&lt;/em&gt; simply makes no sense at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two significant examples are both in your first sentence. Your enthusiasm is admirable, and your energy is marvelous, but your basic writing tools need work. I strongly urge you to seek out writing courses and workshops. Do you have any friends who can advise and guide you? A mentor can be invaluable. Also, it's great to find a writing group where you can get together with friends and share and critique each other's writing, or form your own. That's what I did when I was starting out and had no idea how to write my way out of a paper bag. Most important of all, keep at it! You can do it if you just don't quit. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T05:18:58.573" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2811" CreationDate="2013-07-06T06:33:41.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't use adjectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adjectives accomplish nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adjectives are the weakest words we have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find book reviews you respect, ones that make you think, ones that make you care about the book. Find reviews that are written by genuine critics who stand at the top of the profession and who have been showered with meaningful awards, and see how many adjectives you can extract from their reviews. Not many, I'll warrant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reviews that sing, reviews that make you run breathlessly to find that book by whatever means possible, reviews that make you grateful to be present in the same world with that book, are reviews that tell you what the book does, what the author thinks and why the author thinks that, why the book matters, how the book will change your life or someone else's, anyway, and what will go wrong in the universe if everyone doesn't experience this piece of art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life is very, very short. Don't waste it on adjectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T06:33:41.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8345" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8347" CreationDate="2013-07-06T16:51:57.963" Score="3" ViewCount="90419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I opened my eyes, it was still dark. Half&#xA;asleep, I got out of bed, and entered the bathroom. As I emptied my bladder, I checked my face in the mirror. For an instant, I couldn't&#xA;recognize the person reflected in it. Only when I waved my hand and person&#xA;waved back that I realized it was me. When had been the last time I'd&#xA;looked at myself in the mirror? A slight headache came upon me. After&#xA;flushing the toilet and washing my hands, I searched the cabinet for&#xA;some painkillers only to realize there wasn't one. Right, I was in a&#xA;hotel in Jade Mountain—not at home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shaking the water off my hands, I walked across the room, but then&#xA;stopped abruptly in the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An unsettling feeling began welling&#xA;inside me. There's was something wrong in the room—but I couldn't&#xA;quite tell what it was. I felt as though I had entered a house with&#xA;the gas stove left on; the atmosphere was dense and strange, thought&#xA;apparently invisible to my eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suddenly, I realized what it was: Naomi was no&#xA;longer in the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I turned on the light and glanced around. Her purse, her clothes; all&#xA;her things were still here. Everything except her shoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My heart started pounding at a increasingly rapid pace. I checked my&#xA;watch. Almost midnight. Where could she have gone at this&#xA;time? I turned to look at the window. The trees were still&#xA;swaying in the wind and the leaves still rustling against the&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;ground. Quickly, I put on my jacket, my shoes, and then rushed downstairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am effectively describing the character's panic and confusion? Does it feel natural and smooth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-11-30T11:31:12.090" Title="Describing a character's panic and confusion" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8346" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-06T18:37:57.633" Score="5" ViewCount="209" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story in English but I want to have a character in there that speaks German in which I'm not fluent.  Are they any online translation services for artistic pieces?  All I see on Google are translation services for business things.  I want to be able to just get a few sentences translated.  Anybody know any reputable online translation services for writers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm open to paid services available online!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3579" LastEditorUserId="3579" LastEditDate="2013-07-14T23:23:44.437" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T20:58:20.450" Title="Affordable way to translate sentences?" Tags="|translation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8345" CreationDate="2013-07-06T22:58:48.233" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The important thing about writing is to show, not tell. You want to draw your reader into the moment by relying on the character's senses and then walk them through the moment as if they were your character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a re-write that attempts to do that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I opened my eyes. In the dark stillness, I couldn't see much, but the dim glow of the bedside clock and the vague shadow of the lamp next to it. Half alseep, I fumbled with the covers and stumbled to the bathroom. After emptying my bladder and flushing the toliet, I checked my reflection in the mirror. The haunted eyes and dark circles underneath them made the long, drawn-in face almost unrecognizable. I waved my hand and the person waved back.  &lt;em&gt;Good&lt;/em&gt;, I sighed, &lt;em&gt;I'm still me&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A dozen needles danced their way across my forehead. I searched the cabinet above the sink and didn't find much but a few small bars of soap. Right, I was in a hotel in Jade Mountain—not at home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Washing my hands, I switched off the bathroom light and waited. After my eyes adjusted to the murkiness, I glanced toward the bed. Even before my mind registered the flatness, I knew she wasn't there. Flipping on the overhead, I scanned the room. Wallet and keys peeked out from the jumbled pile that overflowed from a over-sized purse turned on its side. I glanced at the open closet near the door. Everything hung straight and level, except for a gap where her dark, leather coat should have been.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I checked my watch. Almost midnight. Where could Naomi have gone at this late hour?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quickly, I put on my jacket, my shoes, and rushed downstairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5473" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T22:58:48.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-07T13:32:19.657" Score="5" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering how complex the story can be so that small children can understand it (younger than eight). Are there any rules of thumb of how many characters can be introduced before the child looses track of it? Is it alright to have more than one plot? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, are there any significant changes (due age) in child's perception that have to be accounted for, so that it can enjoy the book? For example, is it possible that (due to some change at ~4.5 years) a book targeted for 4-5-olds would have to be a failure, while those targeted for 3-4 or 5-6 might be fine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, all things vary, but I'm asking about rough averages and estimates. Maybe someone knows appropriate literature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4619" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T01:14:55.333" Title="Books for children: complexity" Tags="|technique|resources|plot|children|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8351" CreationDate="2013-07-07T18:09:10.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to keep in mind that children learn to read at slightly different ages and that reading comprehension/ability can vary greatly even among kids the same age. There could be some who are ready to read Harry Potter by themselves starting in first grade (6-7 years old) while their classmates could just be starting to make the shift to easy chapter books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that the best way to go about this is to target a specific age group. A better way would probably be to go about figuring where in the progression of learning to read you want your book to fit in - just learning/picture books, books with more words but still a large amount of pictures, easy easy chapter books, chapter books such that a child would find at a Scholastic book fair... up to young adult books (young teens) and older YA books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to go about this is to just write the story you're trying to write and see how complex it is when it's finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5303" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T18:09:10.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8351" CreationDate="2013-07-08T00:28:15.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question relates to the developmental psychology of children more than their capacity to decode text. As such it has very little to do with chronological age because there is so much variation across individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though publishers (or booksellers) may want to use labels such as &lt;em&gt;5-7 year-olds&lt;/em&gt;, these are essentially meaningless. The issue is not simply variation across the population because the accessibility for an individual of books written in similar styles will also vary with content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reader fascinated by dinosaurs will keep track of four plot lines in three time periods involving 10 Latin names with apparent ease, but then be completely stumped by what (to an editor) seems a simpler book about flowers or fish. The difference lies in background knowledge and intrinsic motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The classic works most often cited are those of Jean Piaget (although he has tended to fall out of fashion). If you are interested in how children handle the progression in complexity of situations, I recommend the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.johnbiggs.com.au/academic/solo-taxonomy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SOLO taxonomy of John Biggs&lt;/a&gt; as a starting point. Although it was developed for categorising assessment and curriculum tasks, the underlying understanding of number of elements and their inter-relationships applies well to plot construction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible use is in suggesting mechanisms for reducing the demand of a text that you have written but find too complex for your target audience. SOLO gives you a basis for identifying the features that are creating the barriers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T00:28:15.777" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9061" CreationDate="2013-07-08T04:26:34.870" Score="5" ViewCount="295" Body="&lt;p&gt;I entered a contest where authors are required to write a story of 3000+ words. The winners will be those who make the most sales in Amazon Direct Publishing (ADP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already have the plot, but I'm  not sure whether to make it a short story or a novella (I only have two weeks to finish it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I was wondering, what's a minimum recommendable word count if I want to generate as much sales as possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Considering I'm an unknown author, and given that I'm using the minimum price: 0.99 cents).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-07-08T13:13:18.093" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T17:49:25.090" Title="What's a minimum recommendable word-count to generate sales in Amazon Direct Publishing (ADP)?" Tags="|publishing|marketing|wordcount|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8356" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8361" CreationDate="2013-07-08T22:24:03.913" Score="4" ViewCount="617" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer writing short stories. Over the years, I have learnt many essential skills that I employ in my work. I believe (and this is my personal assessment) that my stories are of good quality (i.e have an intriguing plot, good character development, good dialogue, smooth flow etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have recently hit the wall (writer's block) and I cannot think of any story ideas. As creative writing is a side interest for me, I am unable to devote too much time to it because of work and family pressures. I read somewhere that these and other factors should not be stumbling blocks because talent is a myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware (through blogs, forums etc.) that some people have written more than 100 short stories (in addition to other works!). That is a monumental achievement by any measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not set any such target for myself but would love to get more stories published. To date, I have published five stories through Amazon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question: What can some key things that I can do to become a more productive and accomplished writer?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I know there is a difference between &quot;productivity&quot; and &quot;accomplishment&quot; but both are important in my case.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess one of the things I can do is to learn how to quickly turn an idea into a plot. I am unsure how other writers do this in a short time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T12:11:04.100" Title="How to become a productive/accomplished writer?" Tags="|short-story|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8356" CreationDate="2013-07-08T23:20:23.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, &quot;productive&quot; and &quot;accomplished&quot; are two different goals, so don't lump them together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be productive, carve out time to write. Period. Sleep less, give up a hobby, write on your commute, write on your lunch break, whatever you need to do. To produce writing, you must write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If by &quot;accomplished&quot; you mean a &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; writer, then you have to find one or more good editors, and learn how to revise well. If you mean &quot;published,&quot; then you have to start submitting, and perhaps find an agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as &quot;I read somewhere that these and other factors should not be stumbling blocks,&quot; it's true that if you are sufficiently inspired, you will find a way around whatever is stopping you from writing (lack of time, lack of skill). But, as John M. Landsberg points out, if you don't have the fire in the belly for writing, then those are not &quot;stumbling blocks.&quot; Those are the reasons writing is a hobby for you and not a calling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-07-09T09:50:08.340" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T09:50:08.340" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8351" CreationDate="2013-07-09T01:14:55.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to academic knowledge about child development, there's nothing like experiencing real children and seeing how they respond to books. If you don't have young children in your life, I'd suggest &quot;borrowing&quot; some who are within your target age-range and willing to help. See if they understand your story (ask them to explain it-- they may have reached very different conclusions than you intended). See if they like it. Talk to them and find out what their interests are, and what other books they like. Possible ways to find these small workshoppers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contact a local teacher or librarian and see if they would be interested in hosting a &quot;meet an aspiring author&quot; session. You could offer to talk about how to write a story as well as sharing your own.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;See if any neighbor families would be willing to read your story and give feedback. Kids usually like helping and might feel rather important in this role. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mail a copy to any young relations and see if they will tell you how they like it (especially if your story is for slighter older/more independent readers).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T01:14:55.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8300" CreationDate="2013-07-09T01:27:50.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read your questions, it made me think about the genres of fantasy vs. science fiction and I wondered whether you know which category you are aiming for. Is it important that you come up with scientific-sounding explanations, or can you simply construct a fantasy world that will support your crystals/etc.? If the crystals and living conditions are the result of some kind of magic, you could use the rules of that magic to explain many of the other plot issues. For example, some kind of powerful/divine/fairy beings could have created the crystals &amp;amp; etc., but attached rules for their use. Perhaps improper use (or neglect of gratitude toward the divine beings) resulted in the city becoming unlivable. Perhaps return is only possible once the divine ones have gotten over being angry, or the people have realized that they must repent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other potential reasons for leaving the city that come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A plague (natural or magical) could have struck. The inhabitants flee the germs, and lose the way back. By the time they actually return the contamination is gone. The same could apply to an attack or infestation of nasty magical bats/insects/gnomes, etc. (plus, they could fight a pitched battle against the nasty magical bats/insects/gnomes at the end to get their city back).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The main group of dwellers could have exiled a small group before themselves getting wiped out by plague, civil war, etc. The exiled folk could repopulate the city once they find their way back. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a lot of questions about your story. When I am in the early stages of writing, I find it helpful to make lists of possibilities and potential solutions to such problems (I write down everything that occurs to me, no matter how silly, because the lack of pressure helps me produce more). Once I cross off all of the silly and unworkable ideas, I usually have enough to start with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T01:27:50.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8356" CreationDate="2013-07-09T04:28:42.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Javeer, I strongly commend you for having published so much already, and for having such a strong desire to write more. But having worked with literally hundreds of new writers, I have often seen the problem you are experiencing, and it very often means something very important, and I'm afraid it's something you might not want to hear. But you should listen to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who have something to write about, write stories. People who don't have something to write about, don't. If you want to write, but you can't &quot;come up with&quot; something to write about, you need to ask yourself &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you want to write. Is it because writing is cool? It is because you want to be famous? Is it because you think writers make a lot of money? Is it because you just wish you could escape your stressful life and writing seems like fun? If it's anything like any of those reasons, forget it. You're not a writer. If you have something to write about, and you write stories &lt;em&gt;because you HAVE to&lt;/em&gt;, THEN you're a writer. But if you have to struggle and strain just to figure out what you could possibly write about, then you really need to ask yourself why you want to write. It would be like saying you want to build a dog house for your dog, but actually you don't own a dog, and, well, you're allergic to dogs anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real writers are always being asked where they get their ideas, but real writers don't even understand the question. Why don't they understand? Because real writers don't get their ideas from anywhere. Their ideas &lt;em&gt;are always there&lt;/em&gt;. Their ideas are always swimming in their heads, and popping up unbidden, and appearing without warning, and forcing themselves upon the unsuspecting writers' brains, and demanding to be presented to the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can prove me wrong, if you can say &quot;no, you're crazy, you don't know what you're talking about, you're not going to stop me!&quot; and then what I said gets you fired up and you write a dozen stories and you get them all published, then good for you! So let's see you do it. But if you think about it seriously, and you realize I'm right, then maybe I've saved you a lot of trouble and worry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T04:28:42.933" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8356" CreationDate="2013-07-09T12:11:04.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writer's block is a myth. Talent? Well, it's a problematic and often misused term if you ask me. Replace it with &quot;skill&quot; and then you have something to work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skill you can train, skill you can improve. Read books about writing, blogs, take courses, on and on. There are many ways to get a better writer. That's how you can get &quot;accomplished&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8357/99&quot;&gt;Lauren&lt;/a&gt; already answered the productive part pretty well (also I cannot upvote her answer, because I do not think that agents and submitting is still the way to go). Nonetheless let me add how &quot;writer's block&quot; can be replaced with another (better) word: laziness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some also call it &quot;resistance&quot;. No matter how you name it so, it must be challenged. We are all lazy and we must defeat this laziness every day, whatever we do. Browsing the internet, watching tv, there are so many distractions, all so much easier than doing the work that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What leads us to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8360/99&quot;&gt;Landsberg's answer&lt;/a&gt; (upvoted this time). If writing does not &lt;em&gt;matter&lt;/em&gt; to you, don't do it. If it does, do! What &quot;matter&quot; means, is exclusively defined by you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if it matters, grab your pen/keyboard and start writing. It doesn't matter if you have ideas or not. It matters if you want to write or not. Put down letters, form them to words and construct sentences. Ideas will follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T12:11:04.100" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8324" CreationDate="2013-07-09T13:08:20.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is totally self promotion, but I'd like to think what I'm working on &lt;a href=&quot;http://intelligantt.blogspot.com/2013/07/google-site-template-for-intellitask.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;addresses your problem&lt;/a&gt;. The only thing missing is a choice list for task states, but everything else I think would be covered. And heck, we busily adding features so you may see a choice list for status real soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically it works with Google Sites, which gives you data encapsulation per project. You can link one or more documents to each task. You can assign tasks to one or more people. And, you can view one or more project at a time. Let me know what you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5505" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T13:08:20.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8363" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-09T13:14:25.403" Score="3" ViewCount="250" Body="&lt;p&gt;When fiction is marketed, I often see them listed by genre, for e.g.: &quot;fantasy&quot;, &quot;science fiction&quot;, &quot;mystery&quot;, &quot;poetry&quot;, etc. Most bookstores and Web sites use essentially the same categories to classify their books and use a similar system for sorting movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone developed a comprehensive, alternative taxonomy to the common genre that brings a fresh perspective on how to quickly describe and sort a book? Is there another method used in other cultures in the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="3375" LastEditDate="2013-07-10T12:28:49.363" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T14:14:32.210" Title="Is there an alternative to the common genre-system for classifying books?" Tags="|genre|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2374" CreationDate="2013-07-09T14:07:19.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I made &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.igorsevo.com/Product.aspx?product=Scribodroid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scribodroid&lt;/a&gt;. It is a program for synonyms, collocations, rhymes and definitions. It searches online dictionaries and works as a pop-up tool in any word editing program. It can be very useful sometimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5506" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T14:07:19.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8365" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-09T15:47:15.730" Score="2" ViewCount="3874" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read that bullet points have to be consistent when it comes to content and punctuation. For example, you can't mix full sentence bullet points with fragments. Is this true for hyphen points (if there is something called hyphen points)? I'm trying to write a list of shipping instructions for a friend's small online business and not sure if the below makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Invoice must be included in the package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Ship via standard shipping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Or if I want write free shipping)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Ship via free shipping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Free shipping on orders over $25.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure id I'm punctuating the sentences above correctly, because they seem unrelated to each other and I'm mixing a full sentence with fragments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5511" LastEditorUserId="5511" LastEditDate="2013-07-09T18:18:46.470" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T13:59:09.450" Title="Using hyphen points" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8365" CreationDate="2013-07-09T17:10:25.613" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you have &quot;bullet points,&quot; the character you use for the bullet is irrelevant. If you can't mix full sentences and fragments with bullets, you can't mix them with &quot;hyphen points&quot; either. So the same rules apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• Free shipping on orders over $25&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is the same as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;~ Free shipping on orders over $25&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no difference in regards to punctuation or sentence structure. (to my amusement, SE keeps changing all my various characters to bullets...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only time the bullet character is relevant is if you have a stacked list and you want to match outline indentation levels (all the first level lines have a bullet, all the second level lines have an open circle, and so on). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T17:10:25.613" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8367" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8374" CreationDate="2013-07-10T00:10:37.937" Score="5" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a book (travelogue) about Japan, comparing it to Sweden, where I'm from. During my travels I communicated mostly in Japanese but occasionally in English and Swedish. The book is in English with some words or expressions in Japanese that I translate and/or explain in English to convey some of the differences in language and culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm considering how to best refer to people I encountered while in Japan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Swedish language: Very rarely anything but first name-basis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;English language: Last name-basis unless you have met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Japanese language: Last name-basis unless you know the person intimately.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer calling people by their first name, whether I met them or not, because I worry that the text would feel more formal if I called them by their last names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like the writing to be playful and relaxed, at the same time I wouldn't want the book to be considered sloppily written or confusing thanks to the complexities involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say I refer to someone I have not met by their last name as suggested in English, then I will still call them by their first name when quoted, since that's what I do. To make matters worse, Japanese people would call me by my last name despite the fact that we have already met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I refer to people who have inspired me, writers of the past with connections to what I'm doing or people that simply come to mind as I travel. Of course, other than translating the dialogues, I'm keeping them unchanged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example sentence: &lt;em&gt;&quot;It made me think of &lt;strong&gt;Alan Booth&lt;/strong&gt;, who walked across Japan in 1977 and wrote the book “The Roads to Sata” detailing his experiences. &lt;strong&gt;Alan&lt;/strong&gt; often spoke of [...]&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here I think &lt;strong&gt;Booth&lt;/strong&gt; sounds a bit formal, and &lt;strong&gt;Mr. Booth&lt;/strong&gt; sounds very formal, but maybe it's just because I'm not used to it - the equivalent of Mr is rarely used in Swedish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the people I communicate with in English may have different customs in their countries, but I already feel that this is becoming complicated as it is, so I'm trying to find a good compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm looking for is a relaxed way to refer to people that I have and have not met or am familiar with/know intimately, that leaves room for a cultural flavor but is not likely to confuse the reader by being too incoherent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT/Clarification:&lt;/strong&gt; The target market is English speaking countries in general, which largely excludes Sweden and Japan. I'm trying to write in American English, so I suppose the primary target is the USA if I had to pick one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5514" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T21:50:00.413" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T21:50:00.413" Title="Referring to people in a book" Tags="|naming|translation|international|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8367" CreationDate="2013-07-10T00:19:31.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Refer to people the way you think of them. If you think of him as &quot;Alan,&quot; refer to him as Alan. If you think of your Japanese friend Goto Sumiko (where Goto is her last name) as &quot;Goto,&quot; then use that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternately, if Goto Sumiko goes by &quot;Goto&quot; but you always called her &quot;Sumi Quatro&quot; because you both love the singer Suzy Quatro, then by all means refer to her as Sumi Quatro in the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just be consistent and clear, and identify everyone on first reference so the reader doesn't get lost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T00:19:31.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8369" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-10T04:06:22.557" Score="5" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a platform (web app, saas application) to manage writers and articles for a large blog. I'm looking for the following features:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I enter topics, writers can claim subjects and write about it. First come, first get, who claims it first will write about it. Other writers can see which topics have been claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Allows me to create a list of topics for writers to pick from (only visible to writers I invited to my pool).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A list of new topics is automatically sent from the web app by email to each writer on a daily base.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can easily invite new people to join my pool of writers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can rate writer's articles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When an article is ready, I can publish it to Wordpress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each writer can set pricing per article, per word, per hour,...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writers can suggest topics, which the admin needs to approve first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does such a platform exist? Or how do you tackle this workflow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5498" LastEditorUserId="5498" LastEditDate="2013-07-10T05:22:28.157" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T16:57:20.160" Title="Looking for writer's platform" Tags="|publishing|software|tools|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8370" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8386" CreationDate="2013-07-10T07:12:58.337" Score="0" ViewCount="1303" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Saki's Sixth Finger&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saki gripped her extra finger as she peered down at the beach. The plane was reaching Phuket, finally. Watching the crystalline turquoise water and shiny white sand had somehow calmed her down. Coming here had been a good decision after all. Who could possibly feel tense in such a paradise like this? But still, rivers of sweat traveled down her neck, and her black dress had glued itself to her back. Maybe something had happened to the air conditioning. Saki glanced around trying to locate a stewardess, but spotted none. They were probably taking a break. Giving up, she sank back on the her seat, and let out a sigh. &lt;em&gt;No, it's just me,&lt;/em&gt; she thought to herself. &lt;em&gt;Calm down. You just have to calm down.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  none. They were probably taking a break. Giving up, she&#xA;  sank back on the her seat, and let out a sigh. &lt;em&gt;No, it's just me,&lt;/em&gt; she thought to herself. &lt;em&gt;Calm down. You just have to calm down.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you feel like reading the story purely based on the title? How about after reading the fist sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-07-11T16:52:17.177" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T20:22:46.240" Title="Does my title/opening paragraph grab your attention?" Tags="|creative-writing|titles|openings|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8369" CreationDate="2013-07-10T10:05:01.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; which I believe will support everything you want (except the daily posting of topics, and even that should  not be too difficult to automate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a project management tool for teams that allows you to define any categories you wish for tasks (such as new topics, claimed topics, drafts submitted, payment negotiated, published etc) and to move individual tasks between them. A task can be defined by a short description, an image, a checklist, an attached file or all of the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trello is free to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T10:05:01.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8363" CreationDate="2013-07-10T10:38:31.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I think what you're looking for is too subjective to be of mass applicability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You suggest that books could be classified according to the &quot;underlying purpose, moral, or message.&quot; That's ridiculously vague and wide open to interpretation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every reader is going to have a different sense of what a novel's moral or message might be. The author has one moral in mind, and most of the readers will see another. A message which was clear and unambiguously positive in 1850 will be anything from quaint to abhorrent in 2013. A book with an evangelical Christian message will be uplifting to one audience and revolting to another. Someone from Texas will read it differently than someone from Turkey. If any given person reads a book at age 14, that same exact person isn't necessarily going to see the book the same way at 34. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might try looking up specialized reviewers or bloggers depending on what your own niche is (feminist leanings, Christianity, no animals were harmed), but trying to classify books according to what they &lt;em&gt;mean&lt;/em&gt; is something best left to a Philosophy class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T10:38:31.783" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8367" CreationDate="2013-07-10T13:41:00.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My inclination would be to say that, in general, you should use the conventions of the culture that you are writing for. If your target audience is Americans, than write the way Americans write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Anna M: As an American, if I read something that referred to famous people by their first names I would find it very jarring. Like if you were writing about World War II and instead of talking about Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin you called them Winnie and Frank and Joe, that would leap out of the page as just ... weird. If you actually knew these people personally and were describing personal conversations, that would be okay, but to talk about people you've never met by their first names sounds odd. On the other hand, if you were talking about your childhood and the other kids you played with and you referred to them as Mr Miller and Mr Brown, that would sound strange, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A big exception to this is if you're trying to give the feel of another culture. If you were writing a novel set in Sweden, I'd expect the characters to talk the way Swedes talk, not the way Americans talk. Or if you were describing a conversation by a group of Swedes, if Swedes routinely refer to famous people by their first names, then I think it would be correct to say, &quot;I said that I thought Johannes was the greatest scientist of all time. He even had a unit of measure -- the Rydberg temperature scale -- named after him. But my friend Bjorn insisted that it was Alfred. He was not only a great scientist, but had established the famous prize fund. His brother held out for Svante, pointing out that he had made contributions to both physics and chemistry ...&quot; If that's how they'd talk, then that's how I'd describe their conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're just giving general narrative, I'd use the conventions of the audience and not of the culture being described or of your home culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T13:41:00.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8365" CreationDate="2013-07-10T13:59:09.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should try to be consistent. It is very distracting if you have bullet points with wildly inconsistent text. This looks silly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Include an invoice with the package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Free shipping;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have you checked that all items for this order are carefully packed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Label,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make them similar in length, punctuation, and tone. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Invoice&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Promotional flyers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Size 3 box&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Free shipping&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep punctuation consistent. You can end each bullet point with no punctuation, with a period, with a semi-colon, etc, but make them all the same. Don't end one with a period, two with semi-colons, and three with no punctuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that some bullet points are not clear if you don't give a full sentence of explanation, then turn the rest into full sentences. You can often do this just by adding a word like &amp;quot;use&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;do&amp;quot; if there's no obvious more-specific word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid dramatically different lengths. When four bullets points are two or three words and one is a paragraph, it looks distinctly odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're really struggling, don't kill yourself over it. If you have two or three words for each bullet point, and one of them happens to be a complete sentence while the rest are not, like &amp;quot;Include invoice&amp;quot; versus &amp;quot;Free shipping&amp;quot;, I wouldn't go out of my way to figure out how to re-word that one to make it NOT a complete sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T13:59:09.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8363" CreationDate="2013-07-10T14:14:32.210" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure. Publishers routinely classify books by &quot;frontlist&quot; versus &quot;backlist&quot;, that is, new books by well-known others that are expected to sell well for at least a short period of time, versus older books and books by unknown others that may sell but at a slower pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books are routinely classified by the target age group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books are classified by when they were written: recent, 20th century, colonial era, middle ages, ancient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a totally different sense, books are routinely classified by their binding: paperback versus hardcover, or the method of binding, like perfect binding (glue) versus stiched versus wire, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bookstores routinely separate out oversized books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are all sorts of classification schemes. No classification scheme is inherently right or wrong or even good or bad of itself; it is useful or not useful for a particular purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is to judge the ideological impact of books, it might make good sense to classify them as liberal versus conservative or atheist versus Christian versus Hindu. If your goal is to allocate space to store books in a warehouse, you probably want to classify them by size and weight and you couldn't care less about the words themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For purposes of selling, its common to classify books by genre because people DO routinely say, &quot;I'd like to read a mystery story today&quot; or &quot;I'm looking for a romance.&quot; People rarely say, &quot;I want a book by a left-handed author with blonde hair&quot;, so we don't normally classify books that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T14:14:32.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8381" CreationDate="2013-07-10T16:51:49.653" Score="6" ViewCount="291" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any known variables to measure, or questions to ask in survey, in order to asses the persuasiveness of a paper? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I'm not sure if omitting a section from my paper might actually improve it. It's good writing and a good point. So I'm wondering how to take the subjectivity out of the decision so I know I'm making the right choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking I could do an A/B test - I could prepare both versions of the paper, and randomly give one to readers who volunteer to participate in a survey after reading. What kinds of questions could I ask, which would allow me to compare the answers and identify the most persuasive form the of paper? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a survey would be easiest for me to execute, but if it's not a good way to decide this, is there something I could look for as the reader is reading? Maybe, track eye movement and see what percent they skimmed? Anything along those lines? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I tell which of 2 versions of a paper is most persuasive? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could ask &quot;On a scale of 1-5 how persuasive was this paper?&quot;&#xA;And then compare the average rating from each group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5469" LastEditorUserId="5469" LastEditDate="2013-07-15T17:35:57.883" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T17:35:57.883" Title="Metrics for assessing the persuasiveness of a paper?" Tags="|technical-writing|editing|business-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8370" CreationDate="2013-07-10T17:51:13.807" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title does grab my attention. But I'm not intrigued. My reaction was a bit more like whaaat?? Is the whole novel about her sixth finger? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5521" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T17:51:13.807" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8378" CreationDate="2013-07-10T18:30:54.447" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Persuasiveness&quot; is highly subjective. I can't imagine how you would measure it other than to perform an experiment with real people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't say what the subject of your paper is, which is probably good because that helps us to discuss the question of persuasiveness without being biased by whether or not we agree with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of three basic approaches to measuring persuasiveness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Get a group of test subjects. Have them read the paper. Ask them to rate how persuasive it is on some scale, 1 to 10 or whatever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Catch: People who already agree with you will likely say that it is very persuasive, while people who disagree with you will tend say it is not persuasive at all, no matter how compelling the actual arguments are. You may well be measuring how many people agreed with you before reading the paper then anything about the paper itself. Often people disagree not over the facts themselves but over which facts are important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example -- and I'm going to use a real example here because it's hard to make this point purely in the abstract, but I'm trying to concentrate on the meta-issue of persuasiveness and not any particular issue -- so for example, suppose you were arguing against legalizing marijuana, and so you gave evidence that marijuana is bad for people's health. Someone who was pro-legalization might well say that even if true, this is irrelevant and therefore unpersuasive, because people should have the freedom to decide for themselves whether the perceived benefits outweigh the harm. On the other hand, suppose you were arguing for legalizing marijuana, and you pointed out how many people were jailed or lost their jobs or whatever just because they were caught smoking. Someone who was anti-legalization would likely reply that this is unpersuasive because the whole idea of making something illegal is to impose sanctions on people who break the law so that people will be afraid to do it: if these laws didn't hurt people, then they would be ineffective. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Get a group of test subjects. Have them read the paper. Then discuss with them what they thought the strong and weak points were. This is called a &quot;focus group&quot;. The advantage over a simple rating is that it gives you information about hows and whys. The disadvantage is that it gives no cut-and-dried answers. Advertisers often do this with planned advertising campaigns to see how people react to them. Just hearing that on a scale of 1 to 10 this advertisement got an average score of 4 tells you little. Is that good or bad? Compared to what? Does that mean people would buy the product or not? Is there something we could do to make it more effective or is that the best that we can hope for under the circumstances? Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Get a group of test subjects. Give them a pre-test asking their opinion on the subject matter. Then have them read the paper. Then give a post-test. See how many changed their minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is the most effective method because it directly measures what you are presumably trying to accomplish: changing people's minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Catch: The more controversial the subject, the fewer people will change their minds. With a small test group, the numbers may be so small that they are not statistically significant. People's opinions about controversial subjects are built up over the course of a lifetime, from many many individual facts, ideas, experiences, etc. If a person believes that, say, political position X is good for the country, he likely has hundreds of reasons for thinking so. If you present him with a reason to think it's bad, his first reaction is likely to be that your argument MUST be flawed, because he KNOWS that X is good. Even if you convince him that your argument is valid, it's still one argument against versus a hundred arguments for. He's likely to see it as a curious anomaly, not a game-changer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no matter how valid and persuasive your arguments are, any effects may be very subtle, and thus difficult to measure. There may be some number of people who were undecided and who you managed to bring into your camp. But likely there are many more who were previously 80% sure that X was right but who are now only 79% sure. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T18:30:54.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6095" CreationDate="2013-07-10T19:48:41.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've actually incorporated a short story of mine that I wrote last year into a novel I started a month ago. Using the snowflake method, I combined the short story and the outline I wrote for the novel and worked with 2 and kept expanding from there. I did that because in the short story, I had already developed some history and the personality for the main character, and I wanted to save myself some time. Also, I turned the short story into a prolouge for the entire novel (of course, i condensed it quite a bit). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write a lot of short stories, because I keep coming up with so many story ideas and characters and I don't want to wait and write later. I purposely write the short stories so that I can use them later in novels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5521" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T19:48:41.053" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8300" CreationDate="2013-07-10T21:12:24.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My two cents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps the cave is warmed up by geothermal heated groundwater from the earth's crust.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The crystals could be two types that by mere proximity have a reaction to each other that cause light.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps people left because of famine, war or extreme weather. The cave could be within a day's walk and not vulnerable to the aforementioned possibilities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The princess could know the man and like the man because he is an artist and she experienced one of his paintings or songs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The man, if he was an artist as described above, could have seen a painting/drawing as a child that described this cave/city and has always been curious. He could have dreams/visions that call to him and compel him to go on a journey.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T21:12:24.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8370" CreationDate="2013-07-10T22:28:01.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like your opening paragraph as a whole (i.e. not the first sentence). It does grab my attention. It takes me into the moment. You create suspense and I would love to find out what it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I agree with others about &quot;sixth finger&quot;. I am unsure what it means. More importantly, it has negative connotations. Ask yourself: why sixth finger? Or seventh finger? What difference does it make? People generally don't count their fingers in the way you describe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it is a cultural 'thing' (i.e. there may be cultural significance to using the sixth finger). Based on my (limited) experience, the more universal your story is, the better you can target your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T22:28:01.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8370" CreationDate="2013-07-11T00:48:38.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm intrigued by the title but not by the intro. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to an effective opening paragraph, and story as a whole, is you don't want your readers to think about sentence structure and other technicalities. You want them riding the roller coaster of your characters' experiences and emotions. This intro doesn't do that for me. One, I'm not sure where I am. At first I think I'm on a beach and then I find myself on an airplane. Then there is the use of it and and.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It had been a good decision after all&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could be written as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coming here had been a good decision after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But still, rivers of sweat traveled down her neck, and her black dress had glued itself to her back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could be written as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rivers of sweat traveled down her neck gluing her black dress to her back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5473" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T00:48:38.587" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8389" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-11T18:11:18.083" Score="1" ViewCount="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story where the main character is trying to take down a very successful, established blackmail ring.  I'm looking for some existing good stories about large-scale blackmail to get some character and dialog ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Big Sleep is an OK example, but since it's about just one incident (that ends pretty poorly for the blackmailer) that's not a perfect fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, I'm looking for a book you'd describe as &quot;The Godfather, if the Corleones were primarily in the business of blackmail.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5525" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T05:41:34.197" Title="Looking for source material on large, long-lived criminal blackmail rings" Tags="|resources|book-rec|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="281" CreationDate="2013-07-11T19:00:07.903" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;i use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prime-rhyme.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.prime-rhyme.com&lt;/a&gt;, a simple yet rich with quality rhymes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5526" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T19:00:07.903" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-07-11T19:00:07.903" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8398" CreationDate="2013-07-11T19:00:21.017" Score="4" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a book (travelogue) about Japan in English, detailing my walk across the country a few years ago. My target audience is English speaking countries, and I'm trying to write in American English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this book I'm often using units of time, distance, weight, temperature and so on. Since these measures vary from country to country and since they had a big impact on my daily life (how hot it was, how long a distance I had covered etc.) I'm considering using the Japanese system, because it was largely in this way I was thinking. Road signs were in kilometers and the Japanese units appear frequently in dialogs throughout the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Japanese use both 12- and 24-hour clocks and the Celsius scale, along with SI-units like kilograms and kilometers. During my travels it was in this way road signs told distance, and it was in this way I conversed with people about distances, temperatures and weights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For time, I think most people are familiar with a 12-hour clock, and I feel it lends itself well to writing. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I left the park at around 10 AM and walked until [...]&quot;&lt;/em&gt; [Sounds fine]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I left the park at around 10 and walked until [...]&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  [Sounds like something is missing, even though I'm using the 24-hour clock on a daily basis myself]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I left the park at around 10:00 and walked until [...]&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  [Here it's ok, but I'm specifying the minutes when I'm talking about an estimated time, which feels a little odd] &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm unsure, however, if it would bother readers using other systems, such as Americans. I'm considering writing the alternative units in parenthesis, but at the same time I'm afraid it would make the text feel a bit more clunky or rigid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Temperatures are not posing much of a problem, since they can be represented in a compact way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;X°C&lt;/em&gt; [Feels nice]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;X°C (Y°F)&lt;/em&gt; [Feels slightly clunky but works]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other units make it a little trickier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;X kilometers&lt;/em&gt; [Feels nice]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;X kilometers (Y miles)&lt;/em&gt; [Long/clunky in text]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;X km (Y mi.)&lt;/em&gt; [Short but, to me, feels a bit rough/informal]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you guys think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT/Clarfication:&lt;/strong&gt; Removed the part about Sweden, it's not very relevant to the question and is not part of the main objective of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT/Clarfication #2:&lt;/strong&gt; This is not intended as a travel guide, I'm rather trying to convey what I felt and what I experienced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5514" LastEditorUserId="5514" LastEditDate="2013-07-12T02:18:56.347" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T12:16:11.283" Title="Units to use in travelogue-book (time, weight, temperature, distance, etc)" Tags="|style|international|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8370" CreationDate="2013-07-11T20:22:46.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, sorry. I stopped reading at, &quot;crystalline turquoise water and shiny white sand&quot;. Two adjectives per noun makes for ponderous reading. Plus, the use of &quot;gripped&quot; and &quot;finally&quot; implied tension to me, which was then contradicted by the sand and water sentence. Is she tense or is she calm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mind the idea of an extra finger, but would this character really think about it as &quot;extra&quot;? If I had been born with six fingers, I wouldn't think of one in particular being the extra one. I might think of being cursed, or defective, crippled, weird, freakish, or, on the other hand, blessed, special, lucky, unique. The words you choose to describe the extra finger will say volumes about Saki as a person and her attitude towards the anomalous finger. Compare this opening sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Saki peered down and saw beach at last, relaxing her grip on Double Digit.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;versus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Sake peered down and saw beach at last, tightening her grip on the devil finger.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, she (or someone) has given the extra finger a pet name that's a pun. She sees humor in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second case implies a more negative attitude towards the extra finger. She reviles it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5527" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T20:22:46.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8332" CreationDate="2013-07-11T20:45:11.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not clear on the timing. Is this first person narrative in the moment, or the narrator recalling the event after the fact? If it is the former, it is overwritten by about 100 to 1, since someone that exhausted shouldn't be able to think such detailed imagery. If it is the latter, the present tense should be changed to past tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5527" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T20:45:11.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8394" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-11T20:53:01.303" Score="4" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished a creative non-fiction memoir about my secret life as a miracle worker.  I am using three emails to me from a now deceased wildly popular tech icon.  Our phone conversation as well as the emails are positive.  Do I need to contact his surviving wife?   This could delay my book publication.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5528" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-07-14T23:26:04.230" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T14:20:33.220" Title="permission to use emails from famous deceased person" Tags="|legal|copyright|email|memoir|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8395" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-11T21:49:39.240" Score="4" ViewCount="703" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a well balanced love triangle. The thought of a wrong-person-right-time rival seems to be weak because readers are most likely not to root for the him/her if the wrongness is obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5529" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T04:49:13.000" Title="Who is the perfect rival to the right-person-wrong-time character in a love triangle?" Tags="|romance|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8082" CreationDate="2013-07-11T22:21:17.207" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So my question is why do so many people (Mark Twain and Stephen King,&#xA;  for instance) express such loathing of adverbs and adjectives? Can you&#xA;  provide some good examples of when adjectives and adverbs are&#xA;  overused?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Count me in the loathing camp. @SF. and @jschabs have already given great answers, though I'll add one additional point: an excess of adjectives and adverbs sends a message to the reader that you don't trust their own imagination. You, the writer, leave nothing to chance, crafting each image and feeling down to the last detail. I think that's rather presumptuous. I'd rather give readers some credit by giving them a general sense of what's going on, a light touch, a nod in the right direction, and let them use their own imaginations for the rest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try this analogy on for size: I like to think of verbs as the engine of sentences and nouns as the fuel. The adjectives and adverbs are the paint and chrome of the sentence-as-vehicle, but too much of either just add dead weight. You can write an interesting and meaningful sentence without adjectives or adverbs, but try doing that without nouns or verbs!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some comparison examples, I'll start with this classic one from Robert Heinlein's &lt;em&gt;Beyond This Horizon&lt;/em&gt;. It's not even a complete sentence, it's just a clause: &quot;the door dilated&quot;. That's a classic example because it shows how one noun and one verb can speak volumes about where, or rather, when we are. He could have written, &quot;the overlapping panels of the circular door opened radially,&quot; but what useful information do all those extra words add? None.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another example, with a full break-down. Compare this sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adam slogged slowly through the frigid, gelid, and blindingly white&#xA;  drifts of snow, piling quickly up to his beleaguered hips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adam slogged through snowdrifts as high as his hips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The verb &lt;em&gt;slogged&lt;/em&gt; conveys effort, and thus, a slow speed. The reader isn't going to be imagining Adam sprinting around an Olympic track. There's no need to beat him over the head with the adverb &lt;em&gt;slowly&lt;/em&gt;. Similarly, the reader already knows snowdrifts only exist in cold places, so &lt;em&gt;frigid&lt;/em&gt; and the redundant &lt;em&gt;gelid&lt;/em&gt; don't add anything either. If snow isn't &lt;em&gt;white&lt;/em&gt;, there had better be a good reason why (as in, relevant to the plot), so that can be omitted. Arguably &quot;blindingly&quot; adds something useful about the visual conditions, but on the other hand, &quot;blindingly&quot; modifies &quot;white&quot;, so what about white is so blinding? Wouldn't it be clearer to say, in the next sentence, that the sun, reflecting off the snow, blinded him? Arguably &quot;piling up quickly&quot; gives some sense of the speed with which conditions are worsening, but hang on, now we have a problem. If the &quot;white&quot; of the snow is blinding him, how can the snowdrifts be getting bigger? That suggests conditions where there's no sun visible. That's another problem with too many adjectives and adverbs, you can easily paint yourself into a logical corner trying to juggle so many details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd like to read more examples of why adjectives and adverbs are loathsome, try any &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/winners.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bulwer-Lytton contest winner&lt;/a&gt;, like this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The shallow cave behind the mighty river’s thundering waterfall seemed&#xA;  more like a damp, cold, misty, poorly lit hallway leading from the&#xA;  shower room in some cheap-dive gym under the Elevated train where mugs&#xA;  who couldn’t crack the glass jaw of some washed-up palooka on their&#xA;  best sober day still deluded themselves that they could be somebody;&#xA;  and yet, Bill thought, “at least it’s got runnin’ water.” — Warren&#xA;  Blair, Ashburn, VA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5527" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T22:21:17.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7916" CreationDate="2013-07-11T22:58:32.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is: How does one go about involving people in a book&#xA;  that's secretly more or less about one or more ideas? For example, if&#xA;  I wanted to write a book about grammar, what are some ways to get&#xA;  readers interested in the book on a more personal level&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why must the idea be a secret? I can think of several non-fiction books I've read and remembered that were idea books front-and-center. Two off the top of my head, &lt;em&gt;Love&lt;/em&gt; by Leo Buscaglia, and &lt;em&gt;An Exaltation of Larks&lt;/em&gt; by James Lipton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To write an engaging non-fiction book, I'd want some combination of authority, passion, and novelty. Authority is important for non-fiction. People are more likely to be engaged by a book about technology if the author is an engineer or scientist, rather than a professional quarterback or a celebrity chef. Passion is arguably more important, since passion can make up for a deficit in authority to a certain extent, while all the authority in the world can't make up for a lack of passion in the idea. Finally, the idea has to tell people something they don't already know, or know but aren't fully aware of. If it's the same idea that has been rehashed a thousand times, who is going to care?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5527" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T22:58:32.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8391" CreationDate="2013-07-11T23:41:06.900" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never written a travelogue, but of the few I've read, it depends on your intention. As one of your American readers trying to retrace your steps or find specific landmarks you mention, I would prefer US units -- unless I'm traveling by car with instruments in local units. If you are more interested in capturing the experience and sense of place, I would prefer local units. I would recommend against compromising with qualifiers, parentheticals, etc. Choose one and stick with it. If you have just a ton of usages, maybe include an appendix with a conversion chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, though, this is the sort of decision your publisher or editor gets final say on. So whatever you decide, if this is an unsolicited manuscript, it might not matter since your editor/publisher might ask you to change all the units anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5527" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T23:41:06.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8391" CreationDate="2013-07-12T00:06:02.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You state that you are &lt;em&gt;trying to write in American English&lt;/em&gt;, so the units of measurements and conventions that you use should be those familiar to speakers of American English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A rather more important question is &lt;strong&gt;Why are you trying to write in American English?&lt;/strong&gt; If you believe that there is a market in the USA for a travelogue comparing life in Japan with that in Sweden then press on. On the other hand, the accessibility of your descriptions of quantities might be the least of your worries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T00:06:02.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8121" CreationDate="2013-07-12T00:49:41.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to test a dialog tag by putting the tag into a question like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What did he &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;tag&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question makes sense, and if you would answer the question with words, the tag is probably okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What did he say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a meaningful question, and you'd answer it with words. So &lt;em&gt;say&lt;/em&gt; is legit as a dialogue tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What did he laugh?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This fits only in the very rare case where the person is uttering the words as laughs.&#xA;Mostly, people don't laugh words.&#xA;So &lt;em&gt;laugh&lt;/em&gt; doesn't (usually) work as a dialogue tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What did he sigh?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same as &lt;em&gt;laugh.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The examples you chose are interesting ones.&#xA;Each action involves exhalation,&#xA;so it's possible to utter words as part of the exhalation.&#xA;And when the words are uttered as part of the exhalation,&#xA;I'm okay with them as dialogue tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But unless you mean &quot;he uttered the words while exhaling in this way,&quot;&#xA;the tag doesn't seem technically correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another fun one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Apoplexy,&quot; he belched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the examples you gave,&#xA;there is a simple fix that involves no extra words,&#xA;no extra characters.&#xA;You can simply change the comma to a period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh.&quot; He laughed. &quot;Sorry, ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes the action separate from the uttering.&#xA;Of course, this means that it is no longer a dialogue tag.&#xA;Also, it (in my mind) shifts the rhythm ever so slightly,&#xA;suggesting a slightly longer beat between &quot;oh&quot; and &quot;sorry.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T00:49:41.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8404" CreationDate="2013-07-12T02:56:50.850" Score="2" ViewCount="2747" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found that many writers of magazines or novels say something in a way that is not straightforward and to the point. Like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dressed like a latter-day Steve Jobs in a tight black long-sleeve sweater, blue jeans, and white sneakers, Dropbox founder and CEO Drew Houston addressed a crowd of developers, reporters, and some tech royalty (including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg) at the company’s first developer conference in San Francisco.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516951/how-dropbox-could-rule-a-multi-platform-world/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How Dropbox Could Rule a Multi-Platform World&lt;/a&gt; by Rachel Metz)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paragraph is about the Dropbox CEO, but leads with the half-sentence is about Steve Jobs and his dress. I am also confused why the author described Dropbox CEO's dressing. Does it imply a kind of characteristics, or any similarity with Jobs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5531" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-07-12T23:05:18.080" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T23:15:13.537" Title="Why do authors start a paragraph in an indirect way?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8401" CreationDate="2013-07-12T07:49:22.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first half isn't about Steve Job's dressing. It's about how Drew Huston is &lt;em&gt;dressing&lt;/em&gt; like Steve Jobs. I think he was simply implying that Dropbox's CEO was dressing like the late Steve Jobs and/or wanted to emulate him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to answer your questions, starting a paragraph in a non-straight way can add spice or other connotation to the paragraph. Of course, doing it too much would just confuse the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-07-12T11:56:58.337" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T11:56:58.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8395" CreationDate="2013-07-12T10:55:13.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You already have a rival: Time. Or Circumstance, or whatever your plot complication is which keeps the lovers apart because it's the Wrong Time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't it even more tragic/angsty/yearning that there's no third person keeping the two apart, just the adult recognition that the couple simply can't work out at this moment in time? That it's the choice of one or both parties that Something Else is more important than the relationship? And then the spend the rest of the arc trying to get back to one another and make it the Right Time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T10:55:13.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8401" CreationDate="2013-07-12T10:58:37.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the paragraph is explicitly comparing Drew Houston to Steve Jobs, in both dress and demeanor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an artistic way of dropping in the information. It varies sentence structure, and sometimes you can't get that description into the paragraph another way and have it read smoothly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Describing how the person is dressed for a presentation can be important if the person is not wearing standard office attire. Particularly in this case, Houston was wearing an outfit which deliberately invoked the one Steve Jobs wore for practically every Apple conference, which I'm sure was not accidental. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T10:58:37.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8405" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8406" CreationDate="2013-07-12T13:02:26.630" Score="4" ViewCount="910" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently finished reading William Strunk's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elements of Style&lt;/a&gt;. The book &lt;strike&gt;mostly&lt;/strike&gt; teaches how to write concise paragraphs (e.g. by removing, changing, and rearranging words).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I decided to apply that to my writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saki &lt;strike&gt;practically&lt;/strike&gt; spent everyday absorbed in other of her &lt;strike&gt; favorite&lt;/strike&gt; pastimes: making&#xA;  porcelain dolls. She had set a mini-studio in her room which &lt;strike&gt;mainly&lt;/strike&gt;&#xA;  consisted on a sewing machine, a &lt;strike&gt;large&lt;/strike&gt; adjustable desk, and a flexible&#xA;  lamp. Hanging on a wall, she had a wide variety of fabrics in all&#xA;  patterns and colors. Beneath, she kept the doll's &lt;strike&gt;naked&lt;/strike&gt; bodies and a&#xA;  tin can filled with tiny glass eyes. The finished dolls sat on the&#xA;  &lt;strike&gt;many&lt;/strike&gt; shelves around the room; &lt;strike&gt;, and&lt;/strike&gt; they were almost of all styles: &#xA;  Japanese, Chinese, Indian, African, even one shaped as a Tim Burton&#xA;  character. Her room &lt;strike&gt;had the characteristics of a&lt;/strike&gt; was a true doll factory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although she had nearly a hundred of dolls, she never sold any. &lt;strike&gt;Nor&#xA;  had planned to do so in the future&lt;/strike&gt;. &lt;strike&gt;She just enjoyed making them&lt;/strike&gt; &#xA;  The joy of making them was enough&#xA;  for her. She liked &lt;strike&gt;the fact that&lt;/strike&gt; how she could turn them into anything she wanted them to&#xA;  become. Or, as Saki put it &lt;strike&gt;herself&lt;/strike&gt;: into anything &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; wanted to&#xA;  become. Each doll had a flower inside, waiting to bloom. All &lt;strike&gt;that&lt;/strike&gt; Saki had to&#xA;  do was to bring it out. It felt &lt;strike&gt;so easy and&lt;/strike&gt; natural to Saki she&#xA;  sometimes felt the dolls where the ones building themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there times when it's better to be redundant in order to vary pacing or add flavor to the novel? Or is conciseness a rule  every fiction writer should follow (with no exceptions)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Most of the time I try to write like I talk. Some say it's a good approach, specially for beginners. But that won't produce very concise sentences, since people ramble a lot while they speak.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-07-12T15:20:24.283" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T22:20:33.813" Title="Should a piece of fiction be made of 100% concise writing?" Tags="|style|book|rules|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8405" CreationDate="2013-07-12T14:30:46.013" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are almost no rules which have &quot;no exceptions.&quot; (Which ones are the &quot;no exceptions&quot; is an exercise left to the student.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your writing tends to be flowy and lyrical. Tightening it up does add some motion and spark to it. I wouldn't tighten &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;, because sometimes you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; &quot;flowy and lyrical.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think tightening in general is a good thing, but just because you have a hammer doesn't make every sentence a nail. Be judicious, and check with your editor/beta readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T14:30:46.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8401" CreationDate="2013-07-12T23:15:13.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no one answer to this, and there might have been many reasons for the author tot write the article like she did. My guess is that it's an attempt to make the Dropbox CEO seem innovative and hip, like Steve Jobs was. Or it might be a comment on his attempt to seem innovative and hip by dressing up like a known innovator. Or it could simply be an attempt to portray the image the company projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what the intent was, a sentence like this can set the scene and make information more colorful. IT articles can be dry, and spicing them up with some color like this can make them more enjoyable to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, writing the same information in the same way every time would be boring to read. Changing the structure by putting the actual information after a description of the presentation can help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T23:15:13.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8408" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-13T00:32:43.643" Score="4" ViewCount="2268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write a ton of magazine articles online. My editor tells me you do not need a works cited as you do in academic work. I am wondering what kind of citing you do need and what I should be doing for that.I am used to citing MLA style so I include a shortened version of the article or source I am using after I use it in a sentence  or the writers last name if it is provided. But don't you need some kind of citing for the source at the end of the article you are writing? Shouldn't the writer's of your sources get credit in your article for the information they provided you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5535" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T18:04:58.417" Title="Citing in a Magazine Article" Tags="|citations|magazines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8346" CreationDate="2013-07-13T03:38:40.547" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bing.com/translator/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bing Translator&lt;/a&gt; translations are more official than Google's but again result will not satisfy you as because it will not provide artistic translation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.yandex.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yandex Translate&lt;/a&gt; is another option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4890" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T03:38:40.547" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8391" CreationDate="2013-07-13T12:16:11.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple solution is to use in writing whatever units are most appropriate at that specific spot in the text (probably with a heavy overweight toward the units the reader will be accustomed to, so imperial units if you are targetting a US audience), &lt;em&gt;but to include a conversion table&lt;/em&gt; right at the beginning or end of the book. (Literally; it being on the first or last page makes it easy to flip to it, check something, and flip back to wherever you were reading.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a conversion table could give a formula for doing exact conversions (for example, &lt;code&gt;°C = (°F - 32) ÷ 1.8 ≅ (°F - 30) ÷ 2&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;km = mi × 1.602 ≅ mi × 1.5&lt;/code&gt; which gives both the exact conversion as well as an approximation), as well as include enough readily converted numbers that the reader can get close enough just looking briefly at a table (&lt;code&gt;100 km ≅ 62.5 mi&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;20 °C = 68 °F&lt;/code&gt;, ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't go overboard with this, but by including enough details to give the reader a headstart in doing a mental conversion, it becomes a lot less critical which units you use in the prose. If you say that some place is 250 km from another, and there is a table that says that 100 km is approximately 62.5 miles, it doesn't take that much mental arithmetic to determine that the distance is approximately 2 × 62.5 + 62.5 ÷ 2 ≅ 125 + 31 or 155 miles. By making a table for, say, 10, 25, 50, 75, 100, 250 and 1000 km and miles respectively, going back and forth for most distances up to about 2000 km or miles becomes quite easy. For example, if you have values for 250 and 1000 km in miles and want to know the number of miles for 700 km, you get quite close by taking 625 miles (1000 km) minus 155 miles (250 km), for 450 miles (while 700 km is actually 437 miles, an error of 3%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you include temperature (°F to °C and back), distance (mi to km and back), fuel consumption (mpg to L/100 km and back), speed (mph to km/h and back) and time (12-hour to 24-hour and back), each at reasonable granularity, you should have most bases covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For travel guides, you rarely need more accurate figures that what are easily doable with a small helper table and some quick mental arithmetic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T12:16:11.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8412" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8413" CreationDate="2013-07-15T07:22:58.213" Score="0" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;Three of us have just finished the first complete draft of our first attempt at collaborative fiction. While the plot and the story are tightly knit, we have are facing trouble in maintaining the tone of the narrative. Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5540" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T09:01:24.823" Title="How to maintain an unchanging tone to the narrative while writing collaborative fiction?" Tags="|fiction|collaboration|tone|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-07-27T17:53:46.853" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8412" CreationDate="2013-07-15T09:01:24.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give each collaborator free rein to edit any part of the story for tone.  After a round or two of that, you won't be able to tell who wrote what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a multiple POV story, you can give each POV to one collaborator to edit for tone.  That way, if tone varies, it gives each character a distinct voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T09:01:24.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2013-07-15T09:58:29.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I plan my chapters out, very vaguely, before starting to write so that I have some level of understanding of the structure. However, whilst writing, the story takes on a life of its own and, usually, more chapters are added, broken down, etc. &#xA;If you read The Dark Tower series by Stephen King, there are several instances where a very long chapter is followed by a chapter that is just one sentence, this is usually due to a brief change in perspective. If someone with Stephen King's success in the written field, if you like him or not, does varying chapter lengths to that degree then I think its all a-ok!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5541" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T09:58:29.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8408" CreationDate="2013-07-15T16:08:29.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on how formal you want to be, and how likely readers are to want to check your sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing about some controversial topic, like politics or contentious social issues, then I'd give citations so opponents can't accuse you of just making stuff up. If you were writing scholarly papers -- which you say you're not -- I'd include sources so other scholars can verify and follow up on your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're writing chatty articles, putting citations could look pretentious, and be more effort than it's worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When in doubt, give a citation. It's not THAT much effort. I've gotten burned a few times because I didn't include a citation and then later someone asked me for sources, or I wanted to write something further on the same subject and I had no record of where I'd gotten my original information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if your editor or publisher says not to give citations, and if you put them in they just rip them out, then I guess there's not much point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T16:08:29.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8418" CreationDate="2013-07-16T06:15:36.227" Score="3" ViewCount="1080" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I write my short stories, I usually end up using a direct style as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tim remembered the day he had to say goodbye to Cathy. He did not really have a choice. He had to let go of Cathy, for she had no future with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'll never forget you,&quot; that was the last thing Cathy had said as he had pushed her away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The words had continued to haunt Tim all these years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tim picked up his backpack. It was time to move on again. He had just caught a glimpse of Cathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My stories usually have flashbacks and dialogues that I use to try to connect seamlessly the past to the present. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question: Does a direct style like the above appear snappy?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am after some techniques that I can use to turn a direct style (like the above) into more  interesting and captivating prose. Based on an answer below, this is a minimalist style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question: Does minimalist style need to be descriptive?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt; I hate to admit that I really do not see much wrong with the above. Perhaps this is my style of writing and I cannot improve it further. I would be very grateful for more feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="5454" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T14:07:27.093" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T00:33:56.207" Title="Techniques for creating variety in prose" Tags="|style|short-story|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8417" CreationDate="2013-07-16T07:38:10.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with you. There's nothing wrong with that direct style. I even prefer it over the indirect/complicated one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this style is called minimalism, the biggest exponents being Hemingway and Raymond Carver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said you can vary your prose and make it more captivating in the following ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start the sentence with a verb/action (e.g. Picking up his pack, Tim started moving again).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use metaphors/similes (e.g. The words had continued to haunt Tim all these years, like ghosts lurking in the shadows).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vary sentence length (e.g. Tim remembered the day he had to say goodbye to Cathy. He did not really have a choice; he had to let go of Cathy. She had no future with him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-07-17T03:39:21.650" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T03:39:21.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8405" CreationDate="2013-07-16T22:20:33.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a way, the advice to cut out unnecessary words &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; solid advice. The trouble is working out what is &quot;unnecessary&quot;. By the time you can work that out, you probably don't need the advice any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too many writers think it means that every word needs to be communicating new information, which is fine if you are just trying to get facts across. But in creative writing the words can be there for lots of other reasons such as adding to the mood or helping the &quot;flow&quot; of the narrative. Quite a few of the words you have struck out as unnecessary I would leave in. Some you have left in I would strike out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than learning &quot;rules&quot; of good style, it's far better to learn to be aware of what effect a particular style has on the reader. Then you can choose your style for the effect you want &lt;em&gt;at that particular point&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you get down to cutting out words, I think you need to pay more attention to grammar (or write in your native language if that's not English) because there are quite a few issues in that passage. Also, be careful of vague descriptions such as &quot;wide variety of fabrics&quot;, &quot;many shelves&quot;. The vague descriptions are telling us things it's good to know, but in a bland way. And are those fabrics hanging on the wall as a sort of patchwork wall-hanging, or are there rolls of them on hooks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5550" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T22:20:33.813" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-17T05:34:24.553" Score="6" ViewCount="1562" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a long-term goal to write a non-fiction book: a critical book about the current state of humanity's moral methodologies and how humanity is better off dead. Much like Friedrich Nietzsche but with a persuasive writing style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To this end, how do I learn new words? What kinds of books should I read to feed more knowledge into my brain to improve my knowledge of English?  Should I be reading books about English (like style guides)?  Should I read examples of the genre I want to write?  General English-language writing like newspapers,  magazines, or blogs?  Something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I was referred from the English forum to here.  English is my second language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5552" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-07-18T13:28:29.077" LastActivityDate="2019-08-17T02:09:12.753" Title="How do I improve my knowledge of English well enough to write in it?" Tags="|creative-writing|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8424" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8425" CreationDate="2013-07-17T07:07:42.757" Score="-1" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;'The glass filled with water slipped from Kekibhoys's hand while he was lost in his thoughts.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the opening sentence to a short story that three of us are collaborating on. I feel this sentence does not draw the reader into the story and it seems a bit off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish to convey the same idea but want it to be re-worded. Any help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: The story is fantasy woven in real life, if that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5540" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T07:59:06.897" Title="Re-phrasing help" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-07-17T07:59:45.687" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8424" CreationDate="2013-07-17T07:52:57.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think re-wording won't be enough. A character dropping a glass of water because he/she's spacing out, is not exactly what I would call intriguing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The glass of water slipped from Kekibhoys' hand as he saw the giant blood&#xA;  stain on his wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kekibhoys' glass of water fell on the floor as he saw the giant blood&#xA;  stain on his wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just an example, of course. It all depends on what your story is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-07-17T07:59:06.897" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T07:59:06.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8394" CreationDate="2013-07-17T13:16:10.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, but...&#xA;From the website of the U.S. Copyright Office:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;One of the rights accorded to the owner of copyright is the right to reproduce or to authorize others to reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords. This right is subject to certain limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the copyright law (title 17, U. S. Code). One of the more important limitations is the doctrine of “fair use.” The doctrine of fair use has developed through a substantial number of court decisions over the years and has been codified in section 107 of the copyright law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is&#xA;of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The nature of the copyrighted work &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The distinction between what is fair use and what is infringement in a particular case will not always be clear or easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for the analysis.  Memoirs and similar personal non-fiction books fall into a grey area of scholastic benefit.  They are intended for profit and for entertainment, but the subject matter is not truly educational in the way a textbook is.  A biography teaches us about the life of someone else, but that line is less distinct for autobiographies.  This is your weakest argument, but can still be reasonably argued with a straight face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are stronger on the remaining three elements of the balancing test.  The nature of the copyrighted work (emails) is not one that is typically thought of as protected.  The reasonable person would think nothing of forwarding an email someone else had written, thereby 'republishing' the initial work.  Emails typically are not written for profit and do not involve a large investment on the part of the writer.  This lack of expected protection translates into an easement of legal protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item 3 in the balancing test, the amount and substantiality of the portion used, will depend on your usage.  Reprinting the entire email in total will afford you less protection than only quoting a line or two.  This is in relation to the size of the work, too, so quoting a single line could be a substantial part of a short email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is effectively no market for this particular email, so your reprint cannot possibly affect it.  This is not like reprinting a famous painting or republishing a book, where your action dilutes the income for the original writer.  Unless this particular 'tech icon' also sells collections of his own emails, this particular email should be fair game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking all this together, you have a very strong case for saying your reprinting of the emails constitute fair use.  Strong enough that it would be unlikely to spark lawsuits.  I have to disagree with the comment that it's &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; better to get permission.  If it would be particularly difficult to get permission (as it would be from the widow of public figure who has no incentive to say 'Yes'), it might be far easier to simply reprint the email rather than jump through the hoops.  Doing so would also put you in a better legal state.  Republishing a work without permission is better than republishing a work against the express wishes of the family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, all of this discussion involves copyright law, which is why the phone calls are not covered - being oral and not written, copyright does not apply.  Defamation and fraud, however, applies to all of it.  Having the right to make a statement does not mean that statement will not still land you in hot water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T13:16:10.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8431" CreationDate="2013-07-18T01:01:56.763" Score="11" ViewCount="1327" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/922/how-much-swearing-is-too-much-and-how-much-is-not-enough&quot;&gt;this thread&lt;/a&gt;, but it didn't quite the answer a question I had about creative writing and whether profanity should be used or not, in a way that is best for &lt;em&gt;creative&lt;/em&gt; storytelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James swore under his breath, his hands rummaging through the suitcase - where was the USB drive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, the reader is allowed to imagine what the character might be saying. For the last twenty chapters, you've made your own image of 'James', and you might think he'd say things differently to how someone else might.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Versus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Shit!&quot; James cursed, his hands rummaging through the suitcase - where was the USB drive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, I've used the actual curse. Sure, there might be a bit of shock value (and we could scale up the profanity if we need to), but the reader is being told exactly what &lt;em&gt;type&lt;/em&gt; of profanity James is using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that books and movies are fundamentally different, but movies having been using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PrecisionFStrike&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Precision F-Strike&lt;/a&gt; for years, to deliver impact just to escape an unfavorable rating. Books don't have ratings, but some might argue about 'target audience'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of this argument, let's say that the target audience doesn't mind a bit of swearing (they're not children), but they're not oil-rig workers either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my main questions is: &lt;strong&gt;Is it better to use actual swearing, or use 'creative' methods like above?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, should profanity in &lt;em&gt;conversation&lt;/em&gt; be included?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I've had enough of your bullshit,&quot; Andrew snarled, throwing down his badge onto the desk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-03-01T08:47:39.347" LastActivityDate="2019-03-01T08:47:39.347" Title="Swearing - Censor, allude, or include?" Tags="|creative-writing|word-choice|profanity|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8423" CreationDate="2013-07-18T01:26:43.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was learning another language, it didn't matter what I read (well, ok, I avoided the tabloids). Books, textbooks, magazines, and good newspapers all contributed to my vocabulary and comfortable feel for the language. Everything helps! Just read as much as you can, as often as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5559" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T01:26:43.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8428" CreationDate="2013-07-18T02:17:24.100" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of it depends on your character. Is he one to toss around profanity like a kid playing catch? Or is this unusual for him? Do you want the &quot;shock value&quot; of using the actual word? Personally I prefer writing (and reading) the more creative phrasings authors use to cover up the profanity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She swore, using words no proper young lady should know and that even a construction worker wouldn't be caught dead saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can do it well, it adds a little humor. It also shows that the character is really stressed/scared/pissed off for them to do something so out of character. If profanity is more part of their vocabulary, it would be weird to use this technique so you might as well use the actual word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5303" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T02:17:24.100" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8428" CreationDate="2013-07-18T08:20:41.540" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Again not the answer you're looking for, but it depends! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't put in swear words for the sake of it, but when they add strength to a piece of dialogue then go ahead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when a man kills a man in front of another man is it better for that other man to say &lt;code&gt;&quot;What was that for?&quot;&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;&quot;What the fuck was that for?&quot;&lt;/code&gt; Note the increased impression of anger here? I could have said &lt;code&gt;&quot;What was that for?&quot; John shouted&lt;/code&gt;, but the &lt;code&gt;John shouted&lt;/code&gt; takes the reader out of the moment. It's a classic Show Don't Tell situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with any media it's easy to fill our writing with swearing, and it's hard to know when to leave it out. In your example; &lt;code&gt;James swore under his breath&lt;/code&gt;, you do a great job of expressing the way in which he swore, which is more important in that scene. By this I mean that if you'd said &lt;code&gt;&quot;Shit,&quot; James swore under his breath&lt;/code&gt;, it would have been unnecessarily clunky and would have damaged the flow of the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only external force (so not what you think fits the situation best) that you should worry about is your target audience. There are degrees of severity for swear words, and audiences who appreciate different degrees. If you're writing adult fiction (by which I mean Peter F Hamilton, Robin Hobb, China Mieville; not E L James) then any degree that is appropriate to the moment is fine, but if you're writing for kids or even teens you need to consider that degree of swear severity very carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2013-07-18T09:02:20.297" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T09:02:20.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8428" CreationDate="2013-07-18T10:29:10.867" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to consider the context. Is the swearing important or decorative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;James swore under his breath&quot; is not the important part of that scene; the important part is that he can't find the USB stick. But Anthony snarling, &quot;I've had enough of your bullshit&quot; actually &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the point of that line of dialogue, so using the profanity makes sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could go either way with the description of the young lady who makes construction workers blush. If the book is meant for a more delicate (read: younger) audience, then we don't need to hear the actual obscenities; the reader knows she's angry enough to act out of character, and we move on. If the book is for grownups, then drop the colorful metaphor and just have her spew a string of swear words. If the character has been written correctly, it will be sufficiently shocking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T10:29:10.867" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8428" CreationDate="2013-07-18T13:34:02.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll repeat the main point I tried to make in the thread you referenced: Regardless of how you think this character would actually speak in real life, and regardless of your own opinions about profanity, there are many people who find profanity distasteful or offensive, and who will not read a book if the quantity or intensity of profanity passes a certain point. Personally, I don't use profanity and I don't like to hear it. If someone uses profanity in a conversation with me, I don't faint or scold them or anything, but I don't like it. I am not going to pay for a book and go out of my way to read a book that I find unpleasant. If a book is otherwise good I'll skim over a few obscenities, but I've had plenty of books that I've thrown away because I just got tired of the vulgarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip side, I have never heard someone say that he would not read a book because it didn't contain enough profanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think that from a marketing perspective, there is little to gain and much to lose by using profanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you say in your question, in many cases you can avoid using specific vulgar words by saying &quot;Fred swore loudly&quot; or some such. In other cases you can just leave out the swear words. Instead of writing &quot;This is f---in terrible, he cried&quot; just write &quot;This is terrible, he cried.&quot; Does it really lose that much? If it's not clear to the reader that a character is angry or upset without including swear words in the dialog, there are problems with your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've said this in other context and someone will always say, &quot;Hey, what are you upset about? They're just words.&quot; But the whole reason why you're using these particular words is because they shock and offend people. You can't on the one hand say that you need to use these particular words because of the effectiveness of their shock value, and then turn around and say that you just can't understand why some silly people are shocked by them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T13:34:02.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8434" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-18T14:46:34.580" Score="5" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I find a British agency to represent me as a writer in Russia in order to publish a book there (a book written originally in Russian)? Do such agencies exist? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that it does sound screwy, however. The reason why I would prefer a British agency rather than a Russian one is simple: I am UK based and I feel that it would be easier to communicate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4838" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-07-22T02:59:22.787" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T21:56:51.077" Title="How to find a British agency that will publish a book in Russia?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|agent|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8428" CreationDate="2013-07-18T16:03:30.377" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current story, a character just came into a room and saw our protagonist standing among a room full of dead bodies. In utter shock and fear (as he had no expectation of this) he proclaimed &quot;What the fuck did you do?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think without the included profanity, the scene works. He hardly is a character to throw around profanity in regular conversation, but he isn't a priest either and if something shocks him, there is every likely it will come forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anthony&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5561" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T16:03:30.377" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8345" CreationDate="2013-07-18T19:27:15.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it reads well. One key that helped me in writing a panicked state of a character was being told to use short sentences during that scene. You do that well and I think it helps bring that sense of urgency you are going for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5561" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T19:27:15.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8438" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8439" CreationDate="2013-07-18T19:55:27.307" Score="3" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I'm writing a novel set in the future, clearly on Earth, with all the history that has happened through today. Obviously in the real world, there are numerous works of fiction that are popular and widely read. How much can I talk about them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm talking about a scenario like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An arms company in the future is run by someone who is fascinated with the fictional arms in a sci-fi series (say, Star Wars, Star Trek, or Halo). They produce some starships that look exactly like the fictional ones (or perhaps the design is just &lt;em&gt;clearly influenced&lt;/em&gt; by the fictional ones)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I do something like this (both legally and story-wise)? How should I phrase the descriptions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5565" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T13:51:55.753" Title="How much can I talk about other people's works?" Tags="|style|fiction|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8438" CreationDate="2013-07-18T20:50:51.650" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Legally, if you merely mention series names and if you write your own fairly-general descriptions of spaceships (eg,  “the ship was an overgrown pancake, with giant tailfins grafted on”) then it will be adequate to offer the usual disclaimers that   “X is a registered trademark of Y” and  “This work is not a product of or affiliated with P, Q, R”.  Here are two examples of disclaimers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Star Wars is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. The LucasArts logo is a registered trademark of LucasArts Entertainment Company. LucasArts is a trademark of LucasArts Entertainment Company. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.starwarsmush.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;starwarsmush.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: This site is in no way sponsored or endorsed by George Lucas, Lucasfilm Limited, LucasArts Entertainment Company, or any affiliates. [...] Star Wars is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Limited  [...] (&lt;a href=&quot;http://theswca.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;theswca.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, you plan to include pictures or if particular spaceship details are critical to your plot, then you should get permission in advance from the franchise owner.  In many cases, if your use is well-delimited, won't deprecate the franchise, and won't impinge on their profits, permission will be granted without charge.  If you obtain permission to use certain pictures or descriptions, include an “X is used by permission of Y” disclaimer in the novel's endpapers.  (&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt; Many books include disclaimers at the foot of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;copyright page&lt;/a&gt;, ie on the page for  “copyright notice, legal notices, publication information, printing history, cataloguing information from a national library, and an ISBN that uniquely identifies the work”.  Some books, and some web pages, place that information in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colophon_%28publishing%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;colophon&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a more-than-nominal fee is required, then look elsewhere or (as they did in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Quest&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Galaxy Quest&lt;/a&gt;) make up an original parody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt;  If you want to use specific names like “Star Wars' Imperial-II class Star Destroyers”, it is reasonable to seek permission to do so.  Note that the effect on the story due to using specific names like that may be good or bad.  If your work is aimed at avid fans, exact names may help.  If the audience is more general, having the exact name is less important than having a description; for example “Emperor-class Super Star Destroyer” (a made-up name) seems less useful than  “the Emperor's 19km-long, 10-billion-tonne, Star Buster flagship”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overly-specific names have problems:  First, they rapidly become dated, and after not many years may make the story look old-fashioned or obscure.  Second, without some work in setting up the background, they are implausible within the framework of a story that's set far in the future.  For example, if the story is set 500 years from now but revolves around a handful of names from the 20th century instead of names from the 25th century, the present-day reader is entitled to disbelieve completely.  For example, when do the toys that people are nostalgic about today date from?  Mostly from the latter half of the 20th century.  People nostalgic about toys from the 15th century are few and far between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T22:25:57.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8440" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8445" CreationDate="2013-07-18T20:59:25.010" Score="21" ViewCount="89476" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say, for example, that I want to post my favourite quote from &lt;em&gt;Babylon 5&lt;/em&gt; somewhere:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm not saying what I'm saying. I'm not saying what I'm thinking. As a matter of fact, I'm not thinking what I'm thinking.&quot; - John Sheridan, &lt;em&gt;Babylon 5&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I make it clear in the attribution that this is a line spoken by a character rather than an excerpt from a book called &lt;em&gt;Babylon 5&lt;/em&gt; written by a guy named John Sheridan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3136" LastActivityDate="2020-10-22T10:47:22.063" Title="Attributing quotes to fictional characters" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8440" CreationDate="2013-07-18T23:02:21.440" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A minimalistic approach is to place the character's name in quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur... – “John Sheridan”, Babylon 5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more-proper method is to mention the character-name in quotes, the work (or series and episode), and the author.  Here is an example from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ethicsalarms.com/2010/02/02/literary-quotation-ethics/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;literary quotation ethics &lt;/a&gt; webpage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“We are all brothers under the skin—and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.” — “Ellsworth Toohey” in the novel &lt;em&gt;The Fountainhead&lt;/em&gt; by Ayn Rand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikiquote's page about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote%3aFictional_characters&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quoting from fictional characters&lt;/a&gt; unfortunately is not helpful on this issue; the bulk of the page lists places where Wikiquote does not allow such quotes.  The page does not address how to format such quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T23:02:21.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8440" CreationDate="2013-07-19T00:40:26.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd write it as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;With all these new personalities floating around, it's a shame we can't find one for you.&quot; &amp;mdash; Holodoc to Tuvok, &quot;Infinite Regress,&quot; &lt;em&gt;Star Trek: Voyager&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd find it weird to have the character name in quotes. They look like scare quotes or &quot;this is fake&quot; quotes. You italicize the name of the show, and the put the episode name in quotes (using magazine-vs.-article logic; big things get italics, little things get quotes). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T00:40:26.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8443" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8467" CreationDate="2013-07-19T02:36:37.890" Score="10" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering how possible anonymity is when using a pen name. I have no idea how that works with modern publishers. Your real name must be public information somewhere in that transaction. So is there any reasonable expectations of privacy if you want to remain anonymous? What do the Mark Twains and George Eliots of today do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5566" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-07-19T14:13:41.990" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T10:24:39.203" Title="Expectation of privacy using a pseudonym?" Tags="|authorship|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8440" CreationDate="2013-07-19T13:50:48.100" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easy part: According to MLA Handbook, you cite a movie as: title underlined (we often use italics instead of underlining), director, distributor, and year released. You may mention writers, actors, and/or producer. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It's a Wonderful Life&lt;/em&gt;. Dir. Frank Capra. Perf. James Stewart, Donna Reed. RKO, 1946.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a TV series, they say title of the episode in quotes, title of the program underlined (or italics), title of the series  (by which they seem to mean a group of related episodes within a program) neither underlined nor in quotes, name of the network, call letters and city of the local station if applicable, and broadcast date. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Chrysalis&quot;, &lt;em&gt;Babylon 5&lt;/em&gt;, PTEN. Oct 26, 1994.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The harder part is how to attribute words of a fictional character. If you just name the character, it gives the impression that that's a real person. But if you just give the author, that loses context for people who are familiar with the character, and it could be very misleading, implying that the author really believes those words, when it could be that he put them in the mouth of a fool or a villain. Also, when you're quoting characters from a TV show or movie, it's not always easy to find out exactly who wrote the line you're quoting: many such programs have multiple screen writers and the actors may ad lib.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's common when quoting TV and movie characters to put the character's name followed by the actor in parentheses. Like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Things are not always what they seem.&quot; G'Kar (Andreas Katsulas)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's probably what I'd do for a TV show. For a novel, I'd want to mention the character and the author, but I don't know a consistent, recognized format for this and couldn't find one with a little web searching. I'd think something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sherlock Holmes, in Doyle, Arthur Conan. &quot;A Study in Scarlet&quot;, &lt;em&gt;The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes&lt;/em&gt; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T13:50:48.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8438" CreationDate="2013-07-19T14:09:35.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll ditto jwpat7 on the legal details, but I'd add, Why do you want to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As jwpat7 says in his last paragraph, it seems unlikely that people 500 years from now will model their starships after 21st century fiction. I'm hard pressed to think of a case where a 21st century designer of airplanes looked for descriptions of flying machines in 15th century literature and tried to model them. If you think about it, it would likely be very difficult if you wanted to. Airplanes look the way they do mostly because this design is functional. Trying to make a working airplane that looks like Greek drawing of Icarus would be very difficult and impractical. I rather suspect that, if and when humanity does build starships, however their drives work, etc, will lead to them looking very different from anything on Star Trek or Star Wars, because of course the people who made those programs have absolutely no idea how a real star drive might work and what it might look like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a literary point of view, if you're doing this just as a way to avoid having to make up your own descriptions, (a) that's just lazy, and (b) it does nothing for readers who haven't seen the movie you reference and remember these details. You can't assume that every reader will have seen your favorite movies, or will remember which space ship was the Star Destroyer and which was the Night Fury or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing this because you love those movies and want to pay them homage, I'd say you're better off to create your own universe and your own characters rather than try to piggyback on someone else's. It's one thing to subtly steal ideas, it's quite another to be blatant about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a little homage in a fiction story is cool. Like, I saw an sf movie once where at the beginning we see the starship go by and the name painted on the side is &quot;LEINSTER&quot; -- the name of a well-known sf writer. I thought that was cute and clever. But that was it: they didn't dwell on it, they didn't even mention it further. They just tossed it in. Because if you dwell on it, it just makes it look like you're trying to bask in someone else's glory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, of course I know nothing of your story beyond what you say in your question. Maybe you have a good reason for it and it works in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T14:09:35.533" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8447" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-19T15:17:41.970" Score="0" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the following example, the  character is a five-year-old: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saki stared at her side. Her cousin was right: she&#xA;  had indeed an extra digit on one hand. How come she hadn't notice it before?&#xA;  Maybe it'd been there all along; it's just that she hadn't paid attention to it. But her mother&#xA;  had never said a single word about it. Nor had her father. Was Rika the first one to discover it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will it sound more natural if I write it like this (making it sound more like a child her age)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saki looked at her side. Her cousin was right: she&#xA;  had one more finger in one hand. How she never noticed it before?&#xA;  Maybe it had been always there; it's just that she hadn't paid attention to it. But her mom and dad&#xA;  had never said anything about it. Was Rika the first one to see it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it unnecessary in third person narrative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Extended example:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saki first became aware of her sixth finger at age five. Her aunt had&#xA;  come to the house that evening, bringing Rika (Saki's&#xA;  favorite cousin) with her. She had come with the intention of&#xA;  discussing an 'upsetting problem' regarding her husband. So Rika's&#xA;  mother sent her daughter to join Saki, who was talking a bath at the&#xA;  moment. Once together the two girls started playing in the tub. They&#xA;  spread foam in the air, and splashed water to each other&#xA;  between laughter and giggles. This was the first time they bathed&#xA;  together, so they were very excited. But then, Rika suddenly stopped,&#xA;  fixing her eyes on her cousin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey,&quot; she said pointing to Saki's hand. &quot;You have a sixth finger.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saki stared at her side. Her cousin was right: she had an extra finger&#xA;  in one hand. How come she had never noticed it before? Maybe it had always been&#xA;  there. But her parents had never said a word about it, nor&#xA;  her friends. Was Rika the first one to notice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You didn't see it before?&quot; Saki asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rika shook her head. &quot;No that I remember.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T19:22:03.560" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T19:22:03.560" Title="Does it sound more natural to use the character's way of speaking while describing his/her inner thoughts?" Tags="|narrative|third-person|child-characters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8447" CreationDate="2013-07-19T16:04:17.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can only do this &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; the entire section is narrated this way. If you are doing the entire chapter/scene/section etc. from the five-year-old's perspective, it will work. What you cannot do is have two paragraphs in this style and then, &lt;em&gt;without a scene break,&lt;/em&gt; switch back to a normal, adult narrative style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA clarification as requested:&lt;/strong&gt; When you have two (or more) people speaking, each person has his or her own &lt;em&gt;speech patterns.&lt;/em&gt; People should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; all sound exactly the same when they speak. So if Saki is in her 20s and Rika is five, if they are talking, Rika should sound like a five-year-old (simple sentences, limited understanding of the world).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to narration, there are different perspectives one can use. &quot;Third-person omniscent&quot; sees into everyone's thoughts, and is not from the perspective of one character, so it should be as straightforward and clear as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Third-person limited&quot; can be limited in different ways. One of the ways it can be limited is to have third-person narration from the perspective of a single character (at a time). For example, the Harry Potter novels have third-person limited narration. The narration is in the third person, but always focuses on Harry (with the exception of two or three scenes). So we only see what Harry sees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have third-person narration limited to the perspective of one character, and that character is five, you can write the narration to match the perspective of a five-year-old. So the &lt;em&gt;narration&lt;/em&gt;, not just the speech, would have simple sentences and limited understanding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rika woke up. The sun was shining in her windows. It made pretty yellow squares on her wallpaper. She loved that wallpaper. Her grandma had picked it out for her and her papa had pasted it all up. Rika could smell food cooking. She sniffed. Pancakes! Pancakes were yummy. She had to get downstairs before Saki ate up all her pancakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;versus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saki woke up and stretched luxuriously beneath the sheets. She loved waking up slowly on a summer morning, with birdsong filling the grass-scented air and a complete lack of urgency to be anywhere but her bed. The sun peeked through the holes in her curtains, dappling the wallpaper with golden stripes. The wallpaper pattern was outdated, but her grandmother had chosen it, so she loved it for the familiarity. Saki inhaled deeply, and smiled. Her mother was making pancakes, like she usually did on Saturdays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of those beats are fine. What I'm saying is that if you do a scene like the first one, the &lt;em&gt;entire scene&lt;/em&gt; has to be written that way, from Rika's perspective. Same with Saki's. You can't jump from one perspective or narrative style to the other in the same scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-07-20T14:50:21.687" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T14:50:21.687" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4536" CreationDate="2013-07-19T22:28:09.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I see you are interested in creative writing, perhaps you should check out websites or blogs that encourage users to submit their own short stories as a way to see what new styles and phrases are being used. You can easily search for &quot;creative writing blogs&quot; on Google and shop around until you find some that you like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there are websites that will provide you with a writing prompt every so often; some every day, some every month, etc. Just reading the prompts can be a good way to keep up with popular themes and modern sayings without having to dedicate a lot of time to reading stories you aren't necessarily interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5571" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T22:28:09.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8423" CreationDate="2013-07-21T01:09:58.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;English is my fourth language and the three things I can recommend are (1) learn the grammar rules,  (2) learn sentence structures and (3) expand your vocabulary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch these aspects as you read different forms of writing. Words create image. There is a tone in everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the basics taken care of, you can write anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T01:09:58.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8451" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-21T10:25:18.003" Score="4" ViewCount="1103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an unpublished writer straight out of college. After graduation, I sent out a few stories to a handful of places-- no more than five or six. It is now about 1.5 months later and I just received a letter from the fiction editor of a new literary magazine with an enthusiastic offer to publish (after some edits are made.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The magazine is a thrice-annual online publication with an anthologized print issue every December with that year's best works. It is almost one year old, I believe. The piece that they accepted is one of the best ones in my collection. I am so, so excited and grateful to have been accepted for publication! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Question:&lt;/em&gt; I am still wondering if I should wait it out to see if I get any other bites? How long is appropriate to wait to respond to this editor? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am also concerned because it is such a fledgling magazine, and I've heard it is wise to be wary of online publishers who might fold easily. I do enjoy the magazine's mission and, admittedly, their issue's theme is right in keeping with my content. But I just want to make an informed decision before signing any contracts! (My body of finished work is not exactly prolific, so once this piece is published I won't have too many other chances until I can generate more material.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5575" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:54:39.747" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:54:39.747" Title="How to decide whether or not to accept publishing offer for short story?" Tags="|publishing|short-story|websites|magazines|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8452" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-21T10:42:31.393" Score="4" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a few stories that employ experimental stylistics. The piece that is giving me the most trouble, though, is split up into five sections-- each section begins on its own page. It's hard to describe exactly, but basically it is a piece about physicality and each section can be/is physically separate from one another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to send it out to some magazines and journals, but I don't know how publishers work with page number/spacing like this (considering page count of the journal, as well as the limitations of the endless scroll-down page of websites.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be unrealistic to try and get this story published, or are there some good literary outlets that would be open to this kind of work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5575" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T10:10:53.910" Title="Is it possible to publish stories with experimental spacing technique? (aka, blank pages, etc.)" Tags="|style|fiction|publishing|technique|short-story|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8451" CreationDate="2013-07-21T19:54:59.010" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answer them now.  They have put time into your story, at your request.  Do not ask them to waste their time while you decide whether you want them to publish the story that you asked them to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why most publishers forbid simultaneous submissions.  If the publisher in question allows them, give them the courtesy of a prompt reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've created a problem for yourself in two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submitting a single story to multiple markets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submitting to a market you may not want to be published in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T19:54:59.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="597" CreationDate="2013-07-21T21:34:31.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two more suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rick DiMarinis -- The Art &amp;amp; Craft of the Short Story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rust Hills -- Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T21:34:31.847" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-07-21T21:34:31.847" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8452" CreationDate="2013-07-21T23:50:27.993" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difficulty you face is that &quot;magazines and journals&quot; are built around a well-known (and successful) form factor that is incompatible with what you want to do. It is as though you announced that you had designed a new type of aircraft and ask if a ship-builder would be able to help you make it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to explore &quot;new&quot; forms of publishing, you need to think beyond traditional methods. In the 1960s, I bought a book (sic) that consisted of separately bound chapters (sic) in a cardboard box. The intention was to emphasise that after the opening section (headed &lt;em&gt;Read me first&lt;/em&gt;) all the other parts were to be taken in a random order. Some of the components had as few as four leaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds as though your project could be published in a similar form. On the other hand, there are several modes of digital publishing that could give the same result. Just don't expect to find your work bound within the covers of a conventional magazine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-07-22T02:56:23.960" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T02:56:23.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8417" CreationDate="2013-07-22T04:56:08.703" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Minimalism has great virtue in modern writing. Modernists believe the world moves too fast to be reflected accurately by overly complicated writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hemingway put the bare essentials on the page. He knew that a picture could tell an entire story, so why use more words than were necessary to create an image (a picture) in the reader's mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Raymond Carver advanced the concept. Imbue the image with implication, symbolism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now here is the challenge for you, the modern, sophisticated writer. The most artistic kind of symbolic implication is this: a characteristic of a simple object which reflects something meaningful to one of the characters in the story, even if the character in the story &lt;em&gt;cannot see it for himself&lt;/em&gt;. The reader, however, is allowed to see the meaning of the symbol. This is dramatic irony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very difficult concept. Let me give you an example, and then I will bring this concept back around to your story. Stay with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Richard Ford's story, &lt;em&gt;Rock Springs&lt;/em&gt;, a small-time criminal (who never understands why he's always on the wrong side of the law) stops with vague intent at a mobile home, but behind the home is a mine, and it is lit up with hundreds of golden lights, so that it seems like some sort of promised land. He is dazzled and distracted. The image of the mine works on him in an almost mystical way, and the reader can see its effect, and how all this fellow really wants is his one chance at having something good in his life. He just doesn't know how to get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this is said out loud. It's all by implication. It's all in the symbolism of the lights in the towers of the mining structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now you want to take your simple, direct prose, and make it just a little more complex, a little more interesting. Well, okay then. Mind you, you are on a good path already, but let's see if we can take you from Hemingway to Carver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cathy says, &amp;quot;I'll never forget you.&amp;quot; Hmm. Well, gee. Let's look in the dictionary under &amp;quot;cliche.&amp;quot; (See what I'm getting at?) So instead of this, let's make up something that is new, fresh, unique, and has a significant symbolic implication about her having &amp;quot;no future&amp;quot; with Tim. How about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He fished the tiny clip out of his pocket and pressed it into her hand. &amp;quot;This is yours.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She didn't even have to look. &amp;quot;It's the -- &amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He nodded. &amp;quot;Hair clip. Skull. I replaced the eye.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She tried to smile. &amp;quot;It's the first thing you ever gave me.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He tried to smile. &amp;quot;Now it's the last.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I'll be wearing it when I die.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Cathy!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No, sorry. I didn't mean it that way. Just, I will, someday.&amp;quot; She turned away and ran.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just one of many, many, many possibilities. I hope this opens some doors in your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T00:33:56.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8451" CreationDate="2013-07-22T05:20:11.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alex, Alex, Alex, Alex, Alex. Tsk, tsk, tsk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ACCEPT!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dale is absolutely correct. You are looking a gift horse in the mouth. You have already committed a major faux pas by submitting your story to more than one market. You have no idea how difficult it is to publish a story in any market at any time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have no idea how many writers' walls have been blanketed by rejection slips before they made their first sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Immediately tell these people how grateful and honored you are that they have accepted you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Immediately tell all the other places to which you have submitted that you went temporarily insane from the stress of your favorite pet cockroach developing leprosy and so you forgot you had already submitted your story to ONE other place (you can't even remember where), but you beg their forgiveness because you are so brand new and you really didn't even know the etiquette anyway and it will never happen again and would they kindly withdraw your story from consideration. (By the way, in case you didn't know, I'm being FACETIOUS, but you have to come up with a good, tactful excuse.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If by some chance your story doesn't wind up being published, then you can submit it elsewhere later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T05:20:11.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8452" CreationDate="2013-07-22T10:10:53.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishers may be willing to work with you to make it look the way you intend, as long as you make it clear why you want to do it that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, check out the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raw_Shark_Texts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Raw Shark Texts&lt;/a&gt; by Steven Hall, as he does some really &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/search?um=1&amp;amp;rls=com.microsoft%3aen-gb%3aIE-Address&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=raw%20shark%20texts&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&amp;amp;bvm=bv.49478099,d.d2k,pv.xjs.s.en_US.c75bKy5EQ0A.O&amp;amp;biw=1613&amp;amp;bih=925&amp;amp;wrapid=tlif137448765909221&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;source=og&amp;amp;sa=N&amp;amp;tab=wi&amp;amp;ei=eATtUanbJuib1AWspYCIDg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wonderful things with typography&lt;/a&gt; (such as making an image of a shark from the words of a page!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say it all depends on the publisher, and you know what they say: if you don't ask you don't get. If you make a pitch you may get lucky, and your chances are certainly going to be better if you reach out to digital publishers, as Fortiter says, because it will be far less effort for them to make it work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T10:10:53.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8451" CreationDate="2013-07-22T13:25:32.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What Dale said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many writers go years without getting published. I'm sure there are writers out there who have been sending out submissions for decades and have yet to be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your writing career takes off and someday you are a rich and famous author, you can afford to play games with publishers and shop around for the best offer. When you're just starting, the goal is to get published somewhere, anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T13:25:32.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8460" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-22T16:48:16.403" Score="2" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;Few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saki first became aware of her sixth finger at the age of five. Her&#xA;  aunt had come to visit the house &lt;strong&gt;that afternoon&lt;/strong&gt;, bringing Rika (Saki's&#xA;  favorite cousin).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At the time&lt;/strong&gt;, Saki was dating a classmate named Kazuo. He'd just been&#xA;  transferred from Niigata, and assigned to Saki's class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second incident occurred in Saki's &lt;strong&gt;freshmen year of college&lt;/strong&gt;. Her drama &#xA;  club was getting ready for the opening of their play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are all first sentences of flashbacks. Are the references to &quot;when&quot; the events happen (highlighted in bold) necessary? Or I can remove them without changing much the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T13:33:09.177" Title="Is it necessary to make clear &quot;when&quot; an event occur in a flashback?" Tags="|creative-writing|narrative|flashback|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8417" CreationDate="2013-07-22T17:04:46.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I Write My Stories I Like To Write Them In Old British Vocabulary. And When I Write I Attend To Add A Little Bit Of Hidden Meaning Between The Lines. I Will Add My Ideas In Yours If You Please ( PS: First Two Sentences Are Beautiful) :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tim remembered the day he had to say goodbye to Cathy. He had been given no choice but to let Cathy go. for she had no future with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'll never forget you,&quot; he spoke his last words with a sorrow melting his heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The words may have been spoken, but yet they never stopped hunting him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Tim Was About To Let Everything Behind And Move On. His Eyes Captured A Movement Far Away. It Was Cathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Storm Of Mixed Emotions left him frozen in his Spot. Was He Happy To See Her Or Was It the Wound That She Left, Opened Again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5499" LastEditorUserId="5499" LastEditDate="2013-07-27T21:13:23.377" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T21:13:23.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8462" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8469" CreationDate="2013-07-22T18:03:15.460" Score="8" ViewCount="598" Body="&lt;p&gt;I frequently have ideas for what could be called &quot;optimistic&quot; science-fiction premises - imaginary technological or social changes which I think would create an unusual and interesting setting, and &quot;optimistic&quot; in the sense that they have no immediate, obvious downside (or if they do, that's not the area I'm interested in exploring). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding conflict in a &quot;pessimistic&quot; premise is clear to me - if the premise is a cruel one (or has a central dark side), then people are suffering, and you can build your story around that. But, when I'm trying to portray a premise as mostly benign, I can't go that route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to throw out a few examples, &lt;em&gt;The Matrix&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Minority Report&lt;/em&gt; take SF-nal concepts (simulated reality, precognitive crime prevention) and find ways for them to be used for horrible oppression. Asimov's robot stories present a far gentler society, but a great many of them still boil down to &quot;How did this technology go wrong?,&quot; or &quot;How can this technology be abused?&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I introduce and explore an SF-nal premise, while focusing on its positive aspects and largely ignoring the negative ones?&lt;/strong&gt; If I want stories to explore the kind of society that would arise in a commonly-controlled simulated reality, or in one where PreCrime worked unquestionably well and was well-managed - where could I look for my story's driving conflict?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am particularly interested in responses addressing short fiction. In longer form, &quot;optimistic&quot; sf-nal premises can be a single element in a larger setting with plenty of conflict. (For example, &lt;em&gt;Star Trek&lt;/em&gt; is pretty archetypal &quot;optimistic SF,&quot; but the stories aren't much &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; transporters, replicators, and warp drives.) In short fiction, I am finding this approach unhelpful, because there simply isn't room to expand a major concept that isn't central to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2023-01-12T22:29:06.770" Title="How can I dig conflict out of an optimistic SF-nal premise?" Tags="|short-story|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8462" CreationDate="2013-07-22T19:19:49.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conflict is fairly simple: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone wants something.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;S/He/They cannot get it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does s/he/they do about it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your optimistic TECH can be the solution to the problem, rather than the problem itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basic ideas which could be solved with Happy TECH:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fish out of water:&lt;/strong&gt; an alien from some much less optimistic society arrives and flails about trying to accomplish some task&#xA;(deliver a package, meet someone, make repairs, purchase something).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fish out of water, domestic variant:&lt;/strong&gt; country bumpkin comes to big city, marvels at bright lights and big buildings. Decides to stay in&#xA;Gay Paree rather than go back to the farm.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pick a fairytale, any fairytale:&lt;/strong&gt; Puss in Boots. The Frog Prince. The Princess and the Pea. Cinderella. Any of these could be solved&#xA;faster (or at least made more interesting) with the application of TECH.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Missed connection:&lt;/strong&gt; I saw you on the train as we passed, I fell in love, now I have to find out your name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plan Mom's surprise birthday party.&lt;/strong&gt; Mom could be 150, if you like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch any sitcom, boil the plot down to an elevator pitch, and rebuild it in your universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T19:19:49.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8417" CreationDate="2013-07-22T20:56:45.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many great books repeat common phrases. For example, this is Sherlock Holmes: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1661/pg1661.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1661/pg1661.txt&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;You will see many instances of &quot;said I,&quot; &quot;said he,&quot; &quot;said Holmes.&quot; &#xA;Here's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11/pg11.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11/pg11.txt&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&quot;said Alice,&quot; &quot;said Alice to herself,&quot; &quot;said poor Alice.&quot; &#xA;This type of repetition is not noticed by the reader if your dialog drives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some notes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;~ Tim remembered the day he had to say goodbye to Cathy. He did not really have a choice. He had to let go of Cathy, for she had no future with him. -- &quot;remove&quot; equivocates. Could be removed. The phrase &quot;He had to let go of Cathy&quot; is redundant with the first sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;~ &quot;I'll never forget you,&quot; that was the last thing Cathy had said as he had pushed her away. -- &quot;that was the last thing Cathy had said as he had pushed her away&quot; could be replaced with &quot;said Cathy, as he pushed her away.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;~ The words had continued to haunt Tim all these years. -- &quot;had&quot; is unnecessary. In fact, &quot; had continued to haunt&quot; could be replaced with &quot;haunted.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;~ Tim picked up his backpack. It was time to move on again. He had just caught a glimpse of Cathy. -- &quot;It was time to move on again.&quot; could be tightened to &quot;Time to move on again.&quot; Again the &quot;had&quot; is weighing you down. He just glimpsed Cathy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5583" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T20:56:45.743" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6821" CreationDate="2013-07-22T21:03:22.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's mildly popular, and you are looking to pay editors, you might be better off concentrating your funds to pay just one editor. Writers are often pretty reliable, so one should be plenty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are any repeat commenters or authors in your community, the best (and cheapest) option is to crowdsource this. i.e., get one or more volunteers. Make it worth their while by giving them some extra perks and swag, and they can make an impact by helping your community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5583" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T21:03:22.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8443" CreationDate="2013-07-23T01:31:02.613" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've located an article that might be of some help: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsattorney.com/qa-pseudonyms-in-contracts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dsattorney.com/qa-pseudonyms-in-contracts/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author (Daniel N. Steven, a practicing attorney in Maryland and former publisher/editor) says that you can maintain privacy by using a PO Box and unlisted phone number with your pseudonym, but that a Social Security Number would still be needed for tax purposes. (His advice obviously assumes you are in the U.S.) If you didn't want to use your Social Security Number, you'd have to establish another legal entity, such as an LLC (a limited-liability company), as the copyright owner of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(His website also has a link to other legal articles on publishing that may be of interest.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastEditorUserId="5576" LastEditDate="2013-07-23T17:23:54.327" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T17:23:54.327" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8460" CreationDate="2013-07-23T01:46:07.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use flashback to explain my character's present predicament. The flashback is a specific incident. I have found that if I make the flashback complicated (i.e. with multiple timeframes), I then risk the ability to seamlessly transit back to the present. In this regard, I always indicate somehow the start and end of the flashback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In you example, I am unsure how &quot;that afternoon&quot; adds greater clarity. For a reader, I think Saki became aware of her sixth finger at the age of five is sufficient. In other words, it helps if you focus on the bigger picture (e.g. how this awareness affects Saki's present).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, a lot depends on the context of your story but in any case, phrases such as &quot;At that time&quot; are vague and become meaningless if the reader loses the thread of the story (which is very possible if you take them into the flashback).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T01:46:07.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8462" CreationDate="2013-07-23T02:13:31.290" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your change solves a problem that previously had no solution, there are likely people who have a stake in preserving the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your change solves a problem better than some previous solution, there are people who have a stake in the old solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your change opens up new possibilities for people, then people don't yet know how to make the most of the new technology or its possibilities.  They will have differing opinions about that, and those differences offer the possibility of conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new possibilities will likely draw people's attention, which will leave them less attention for some of the things that they used to attend to.  Somebody has a stake in the things people used to attend to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your change solves problems without creating any new ones [see below], then some previously low-priority problems will become the highest priority problems.  First-world problems like: &quot;My god, so many paint colors to choose from for my ping pong room. How am I ever going to choose?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;highly&lt;/em&gt; unlikely that your change solves problems without creating any new ones. If you can't think of at least three problems created by your solution, it's almost certain that you haven't thought deeply enough about the ramifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T02:13:31.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8470" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-23T07:42:33.120" Score="4" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my thesis and using notes from different lectures on the topic as a &lt;em&gt;source of sources&lt;/em&gt;. These notes cite other papers and present briefly the ideas, and I do use the lecture notes to find interesting papers on the topic, and in order to add some formal thinking to my research, but never actually quote a part of the lecture notes nor do I take any ideas directly from the notes but rather from the cited papers. I just use the general structure as a &quot;guard&quot; for my own structure and a source of good papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to cite these? It seems to me that it wouldn't be quite honest to not cite these lecture notes as they helped me a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Idea:&lt;/strong&gt; should I mention these maybe in the acknowledgement part? Or at the very end of the thesis, between conclusion and bibliography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4844" LastActivityDate="2015-03-21T01:26:25.920" Title="Citing lecture notes" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8460" CreationDate="2013-07-23T08:07:22.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's not necessary to make it clear&lt;/strong&gt;, specially because sometimes you can &quot;&lt;em&gt;play&lt;/em&gt;&quot; with it confusing the reader to create impact. There are plenty of examples. It's quite common in movies but I don't exactly remind any in books right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, &lt;strong&gt;that doesn't mean in your context it is valid&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When somebody uses subterfuges like that, he is prepared and whiling to do so. He creates all the conditions to do so. You can't just decide to use a flashback without making it clear and without preparation, or it will just be confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, it's all about context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T08:07:22.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8472" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8950" CreationDate="2013-07-23T10:28:22.647" Score="2" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;Through the last 6 years working as a designer and studying an MA Design, I have collected a library of 'design thinking methods'. I have them on a first edit in an evernote notebook presently. However, I have the urge to release this knowledge somehow. I think it would be a really valuable resource to be built upon. However, the question is, do I get it edited / or edit it myself, and then produce a book, or do I go for an online solution. A lot of the techniques lend themselves to being built upon and having people writing into them. However, I'm not that familiar with what online options I have for this. Any suggestions as to what format could work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T16:24:24.103" Title="What format should I use for this project?" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8473" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14088" CreationDate="2013-07-23T10:32:07.850" Score="3" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whilst travelling, I kept a journal and I have since written one part of my travels up as a book: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weaveoftheride.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.weaveoftheride.com&lt;/a&gt;. However, I am now writing the second book, and I am looking for new approaches to write up my journal. Before I read through the journal and augemented what I thought was interesting with my own memories. However, I am considering whehter it might be more productive to first have a structural 'idea' and then write what I can remember around that, using my journal to trigger my memories. Does anyone have any experience and advice for this lengthy process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastActivityDate="2015-03-21T22:30:47.693" Title="From Journal to first draft - most effective route to take?" Tags="|process|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-03-21T23:37:01.117" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8472" CreationDate="2013-07-23T11:14:11.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are not doing it in the write way. &lt;strong&gt;Why thinking in how you will distribute a work that does not exist&lt;/strong&gt;? First create it, then handle the distribution. Having notes about something is not the same think as having a work ready to be distributed, and I'm sure you will find it more complex to change the notes into a book that you may think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main reason I'm talking you that, is because &lt;strong&gt;your work will determine how you will distribute it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Imho, the first try is always to get published by somebody&lt;/strong&gt;. You may not like the conditions -- &lt;em&gt;and you are not forced to accept a publisher's offer&lt;/em&gt; -- but you will get some kind of feedback on how good your good is, and you will be able to decide if the low profit -- &lt;em&gt;about 10% to 15%&lt;/em&gt; -- payed by a publisher compensates not having to invest your own money and having all the trouble inherent to self publishing. After having feedback of a publisher, you may decide to go on or choose another option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;strong&gt;it helps your curriculum to have a published book by some specialized publisher&lt;/strong&gt; -- &lt;em&gt;since you want to write technical work&lt;/em&gt; -- more than choose to proceed with your own. Sometimes this may compensate the lower profits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, to have that option, you will need to show your work. To show your work, &lt;strong&gt;it must be finished unless you are so well know and/or have such expertize that may get the interest of a publisher to a project&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-publishing has its advantages, but also its risks. If you have a lot of connections that may be interested in such knowledge, can give workshops where you can sell, and &lt;strong&gt;have means to promote yourself, it can be a good option. If not, I wouldn't advise it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Online publishing is a solution I don't like. It's growing but I don't see it with so much acceptance as paper books. Also, it doesn't provides so much recognition as physical books. Some may disagree but, I'm giving my personal opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Online publishing has its own formating rules. They are easy to learn and I think the best publisher is Amazon. You will find them all easily, and you can publish in a lot of sites since most of them are not exclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resuming, I think that, after having the finished manuscript, you should weight the pros and cons and decide what path to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T11:14:11.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8460" CreationDate="2013-07-23T13:33:09.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, if it doesn't matter, if the idea is just that this happened sometime in the past, then you don't need to bog the story down with details about exactly when. I certainly wouldn't go into some long description if it doesn't matter. I mean, I wouldn't say, &quot;In the third year after she graduated college, on the tenth of June, at 3:15 in the afternoon, ...&quot; if none of that makes any difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I'd add two big caveats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) You need to make clear that this is a flashback. I've read a few stories that had a flashback with no introduction, I didn't see any clue that this was a flashback and not ongoing narrative, and I had to read quite a way before I realized, Oh, wait, this is a flashback. In one case I was about 3/4 of the way through a book before I realized that the entire story was a flashback from the first chapter. I was puzzled about how the events in that first chapter fit with everything that happened -- I thought -- after it. I think that kind of ambiguity is very, very bad. It breaks the reader's connection to the story. And usually the easiest way to tell the reader that something is a flashback to throw in a time reference. Be very careful about saying, for example, Well, it's obvious that it's a flashback because I say, &quot;As she entered the high school ...&quot; As a reader, just telling me that she entered a high school doesn't tell me that this is a flashback to when she was a teenager. She might be going to a high school re-union, visiting her children's school, attending some community event at the school, etc etc. Especially if you say that anything after the first sentence of the scene makes clear it's a flashback. If I have to read three paragraphs before it's obvious, that means that I then have to go back and revisualize those three paragraphs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) While it would vary with the story, I think you almost always need to establish at least a general time frame. Is this happening when she is 5 years old or when she is 25? Is flashback A before flashback B or after? Etc. As you are writing you no doubt have a picture of the scene in your mind. But the reader can't see that scene unless you tell him. Again, you want to avoid having the reader have a certain mental picture of the scene, and then say something that invalidates that scene. Like, if you just tell us &quot;Many years ago, she ...&quot;, I might in my mind picture a woman of 25 going through whatever events. Then if suddenly you tell me that her mother told her to put away the coloring book and go to bed because it's a school night, I'm going to get ripped out of the story and have to go back and re-visualize the scene I've just been through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are times when you deliberately want to confuse the timeline. Like if the idea of the story is that the character is an old man who is lost in his memories and can't distinguish the present from the past. But any ambiguity in a story should be careful and deliberate, not an accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T13:33:09.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8438" CreationDate="2013-07-23T13:51:55.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read Amazon.com: Lacuna: Demons of the Void eBook: David Adams: Kindle Store : &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B006RZNR3Y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Lacuna-Demons-Void-ebook/dp/B006RZNR3Y/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the story there is a very 'energetic' physicist that constantly is referencing &quot;It's like right out of Star Trek&quot; in some way or another. It was fitting as this is set just a few decades in Earths future so her being a fan makes perfect sense. It still jarred me from the story though and seems like an easy way out to explain something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another story I read described an important found tech artifact as &quot;It looked like a lightsaber without the controls.&quot; This again was fitting as set in mostly modern day earth but still it jarred me from the story for some reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be a personal thing, but I'm not a fan of it. I'm dealing with it myself in my own project. It's hard to write a post-apocalyptic story and not have a character reference The Walking Dead or one of the other popular franchises rebuilding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5561" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T13:51:55.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1804" CreationDate="2013-07-23T16:36:13.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the author of &lt;a href=&quot;http://pepperedsoftware.com/scribe.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scribe&lt;/a&gt;, an outliner for Mac OSX.  I'm happy to offer some free copies if you write me (see website).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I built Scribe because most outliners don't feel like native text editors.  There's  a separate text field for each item in the outline.  Always found that distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scribe hooks into the native text system on the Mac and builds an outliner over it.  My hope is that this makes the outlining experience much more intuitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scribe has a native file type that supports audio recording synced to your outlines, but also exports as rich text and OPML.  Scribe also can edit OPML documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also supports iCloud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5589" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T16:36:13.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6821" CreationDate="2013-07-23T17:42:12.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several job boards particularly aimed at experienced bloggers, editors, and other on-line content workers. Sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobs.problogger.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Problogger have job boards&lt;/a&gt; focused on this kind of role. You might also consider writing/editing-heavy freelancing boards like &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobs.freelanceswitch.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FreelanceSwitch.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="598" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T17:42:12.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8434" CreationDate="2013-07-23T19:18:25.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The trick is probably to get yourself an agent first of all, as any decent operation will have contacts in other markets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there are large international agencies for which this would be a more natural fit: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.andrewnurnberg.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.andrewnurnberg.com/&lt;/a&gt; spring to mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T19:18:25.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8480" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-24T02:20:11.730" Score="3" ViewCount="496" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reference documentation for an application programming interface (API) is, in modern systems, usually generated from the code itself automatically.  For example, for Java interfaces a typical tool is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/documentation/index-jsp-135444.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Javadoc&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One property of such generated documentation is that the code interfaces -- for example, method signatures -- are extracted from the code for you.  The developer is left to write a text description and, if applicable, tagged descriptions of parameters, return values, and exceptions.  The signature itself conveys the syntactic requirements (e.g. that an argument is a double, or a list of strings, or a map of integers to strings, etc).  Of course, the signature doesn't convey the &lt;em&gt;semantics&lt;/em&gt; (e.g. that that numeric value must be in the range 0-100); that's what the documentation is for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That all makes sense; I've been doing this for years in strongly-typed languages like Java and C++.  I will now be venturing into the world of a &lt;strong&gt;weakly-typed language&lt;/strong&gt; (Javascript), where the &lt;em&gt;syntax&lt;/em&gt; may only tell you that an argument is an object but, really, that object is required to have properties A (string), B (number), C (string), and D (boolean).  (See example below.)  Nothing in the syntax conveys that; it has to be handled in the documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question (at long last) is: &lt;strong&gt;what are the current best practices for formatting and describing that kind of documentation?&lt;/strong&gt;  Do you just drop an itemized list of properties into the main documentation block?  Do you try to do that in the space of a parameter description (and how does that tend to work out)?  For widely-used object patterns (e.g. several methods, perhaps in several interfaces, will use that same set of properties), do you somehow abstract out a &quot;fake&quot; type and link to it everywhere?  (In Java these would be classes that would be separately linked and described, but this isn't always the case with Javascript objects.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider a Java API for a map that displays movable items.  I might have an &lt;code&gt;Item&lt;/code&gt; class that has a &lt;code&gt;setPosition()&lt;/code&gt; method that takes a &lt;code&gt;Position&lt;/code&gt; object.  In the Javadoc you can click on that &quot;Position&quot; parameter to get to the class documentation, which tells you that it encodes latitude, longitude, altitude, and (perhaps surprisingly) timestamp.  The generated documentation tells you what you need to do to change an Item's position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Javascript, on the other hand, your &lt;code&gt;Item.setPosition()&lt;/code&gt; method just takes an &lt;code&gt;Object&lt;/code&gt;, according to the syntax.  The way you call it is something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;// setting this separately for clarify of the example&#xA;var pos =&#xA;{ latitude: 40.7,&#xA;  longitude -79.3,&#xA;  altitude: 10000&#xA;};&#xA;&#xA;// assume myItem already exists&#xA;myItem.setPosition(pos);&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When all you're going to get &quot;for free&quot; from the tool is &lt;code&gt;Item.setPosition(Object)&lt;/code&gt;, what is the best way to convey the names and types of the properties that object must set?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-07-24T15:51:31.117" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T16:39:09.287" Title="API reference doc: best practices for describing opaque parameters?" Tags="|technical-writing|api-documentation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8481" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-24T02:22:24.207" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-07-24T02:22:24.207" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T02:22:24.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8482" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-24T02:22:24.207" Score="0" Body="Application programming interfaces (APIs) are software interfaces that expose defined functionality to developers writing programs.  API documentation describes these software interfaces." OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-07-24T02:22:24.207" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T02:22:24.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8483" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-24T02:23:40.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;API documentation is a type of &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/software-documentation&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;software-documentation&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;software-documentation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;API documentation sometimes includes &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/examples&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;examples&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;examples&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T18:39:12.500" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T18:39:12.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8484" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-24T02:23:40.227" Score="0" Body="Application programming interfaces (APIs) are software interfaces that expose defined functionality to developers writing programs. API documentation describes these software interfaces." OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-07-24T02:23:40.227" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T02:23:40.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8417" CreationDate="2013-07-24T02:50:35.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, Javeer, here's some more feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thinking about style is pretty much a waste of time. What you need to be doing is thinking about &lt;em&gt;what you want to write&lt;/em&gt;. Focus on the stories you want to tell, and let your style flow from that. Your style develops naturally out of your experiences, your thoughts, your observations, your attitudes, your knowledge, your feelings, your responses to the world. Look at people, place, things, and incidents, and see what they mean to you. Put yourself in the place of your characters and imagine what they are feeling. What would they really say to each other at each moment? How would they &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; react? How would the sun really look filtering through the ancient windows in that nearly ruined train station on that particular morning? Experience the world you are creating and tell us about it, and before you know it, you won't be worrying about the style; you will be writing in &lt;em&gt;your own style&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you must, however, think about style, if you need a way to flex your style muscles, then pick out some books you love or even some you don't, and copy their style. Try to write a few paragraphs in the style of Dickens, or Mark Twain, or J. K. Rowling, or &lt;em&gt;anybody&lt;/em&gt; at all. Do it a bunch of times until you get sick of it and you find yourself saying, &quot;hey, I see how this works; let me give it a shot on my own.&quot; By that time you will have absorbed a bunch of the &quot;tricks&quot; of lots of successful writers, and you won't have to think about them, you'll just reinvent them for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do try to remember that too much attention to style can bog you down, and it has been the bane, even the death, of many writers, even many great ones. If you spend too much time picking out which hammer you want to use, you won't get the house built.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T02:50:35.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8486" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8494" CreationDate="2013-07-24T05:08:40.293" Score="3" ViewCount="1359" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently found out (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8417/techniques-for-creating-variety-in-prose&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) that my writing style can be described as minimalist. I am fascinated by this 'revelation' because it has helped me understand why I write the way I do. (I have no formal training or exposure to creative writing, so please bear with me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I let the language speak more than what is intended; I let readers create their own images based on the essential details and I prefer short descriptions that move the story rather than long descriptions that are static.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if there are any seminal writing resources that focus on this style of writing. I am after textbook materials, rather than examples (I have read Ernest Hemingway's &lt;em&gt;The Old Man and the Sea&lt;/em&gt; and I am still awed by its simplicity.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T06:28:00.877" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T06:28:00.877" Title="Resources on Minimalist Style of Creative Writing" Tags="|style|short-story|resources|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8804" CreationDate="2013-07-24T07:39:06.100" Score="3" ViewCount="711" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a website that is community based for reviews in spanish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does someone know anything?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The website is to publish stories, narrative, novels, poems and such, that would be reviewed by a community. Or something of the sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example I know that in english the is www.thenextbigwriter.com but that's it. Not much in spanish to be honest!! (That I can find)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2734" LastEditorUserId="2734" LastEditDate="2013-09-09T08:39:18.803" LastActivityDate="2018-04-12T19:41:52.150" Title="Spanish writing website?" Tags="|websites|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8480" CreationDate="2013-07-24T13:26:46.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This surely depends on the specific tool that you are using. The only tool that I am familiar with that meets your description is Javadoc, so I want to be cautious not to make assumption about how other tools might work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But with Javadoc, there is a built-in way to describe parameters. The whole point of Javadoc is to have a consistent way to document an API, so I think that given the feature is there, you should use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, nine times out of ten I put absolutely nothing in the parameter descriptions. The code itself gives the data type, and I give the parameters meaningful names, and then in the general description block I describe how they interact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When there is something interesting to be said about a particular parameter, I put it into those parameter descriptions where it belongs. Usually this means that the name is not adequate to describe what it really is. Like I might specify that &quot;String customerName&quot; can be either the name of a person or of a company, or that &quot;int delta&quot; is the signed change in the voltage over the specified time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, when the tool gives you &quot;slots&quot; to put specific data and then an area for a general description. I put as much in the specific slots as I can, to take advantage of the features that are there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would definitely NOT create fake classes or functions solely for the purpose of eliminating redundancy in the docs. That violates my sense of esthetics to clutter up code just to fool the documentation generator into producing what I want. In real life, what I usually do in such cases is nothing. I fully document the parameters or whatever the first time I use them, and then just don't on further occurrences. Okay, that's sloppy. But Javadoc does give you the feature that you can link to the documentation for another class or function. (Umm, is it &quot;@link&quot;? I forget, it's been a while since I used it.) To take a simple case, if you have an overloaded function or similar case where parameters with the same meaning are used in multiple functions, I think the right thing to do is to fully document them in the function with the longest parameter list and then link from the other functions to that one, with some explanatory text like &quot;See foobar() for description of the parameters&quot;. I say the function with the longest parameter list meaning that if there is one function that has all or most of these parameters, document them all there, in one place, and then link there, rather than documenting one here and one there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T13:26:46.930" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8462" CreationDate="2013-07-24T14:54:24.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ditto DaleEmery. Some further thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Dale says, even if a new technology or idea solves a problem, there will be people with a vested stake in the old ways, and these people will often try to limit or suppress the new technology. To take a small example: I remember when plastic plumbing pipe was invented. It reduced the amount of work it takes to do plumbing dramatically, not to mention being a lot cheaper. Do you know that it was illegal to use plastic pipe in California until 2007, and there are still extensive restrictions on it? The stated reason was that they just couldn't be sure that this new-fangled idea is safe and reliable -- despite the fact that the rest of the country had been using it with no apparent problems for 30 years or more. The real reason is that the plumbers got these laws passed because it made it too easy for home-owners to do their own plumbing work rather than hire a plumber. Even when they do hire a plumber, if the job now takes 2 hours when it used to take 4, it's hard to justify billing for 4 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So one way to write a story about a wonderful new technology is to think of someone who has a stake in the old technology and have them oppose it. This could be a businesses that produce the old machine that is now obsolete. It could be politicians whose power is undercut by the new technology, like they can no longer control the flow of information to the voters. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real life, there are pretty much always downsides to any new technology, no matter how good it is overall. Okay, you say you're aware of downsides but don't want to dwell on them. Maybe the whole point of your story is to say that people should try to create a new technology like you're describing. You could still bring up a downside, have people fight against the new technology because of this downside, or have people adversely affected by this downside, but then in the end the hero shows that overall the benefits outweigh the problems. If done well that could make for a good, serious, hard SF story. Of course if done poorly it could look like you're trying to sweep real problems under the rug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll add this caveat: No matter how overwhelmingly good you think some new technology would be, try to come up with some realistic, plausible objection. It doesn't have to be valid, just ... not stupid, something that a reader who knows people like those you describe could imagine them actually saying. Like, one lazy way that SF writers create an opponent for a new technology is to say that people object to it on some religious grounds. I usually find this boring and trite because the religious objection is invented for the purpose of the story, like the writer just invents &quot;The Church of Rocket Propulsion&quot; that believes that warp drives are sinful and we should all use chemical rockets like God intended. If you're going to posit a religious objection, I'd suggest grounding it in some actual religious belief and not something silly and made up. Another trite solution is to have people object to it purely because it's new. &quot;Faxes were good enough for my parents and they're good enough for me: we don't need this new-fangled 'e-mail'.&quot; If you just can't comprehend what this or that group could possibly be thinking when they object to a new technology, talk to them or read their stuff and find out. Don't just say, Because I don't understand how such-and-such people think, therefore I can put any irrational words in their mouths and it will be realistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third idea: I've read stories where the author's purpose was clearly to discuss some new technology -- whether it was something the author really saw as imminent or just something he found amusing to think about -- and so the new technology formed the background of the story, but the plot was about some unrelated conflict. Like, suppose a writer in 1880 saw the invention of the airplane coming and wanted to write an SF story about airplanes, but for reasons like yours he doesn't want to make the conflict actually be about airplanes. So okay, fine. Instead write a romance story where the lovers are the pilot and a stewardess on one of these new-fangled airplanes. The story can be filled with how airplanes bring the world together, revolutionize commerce, etc etc, but the conflict is all about the pilot and stewardess breaking up and getting back together. Maybe you make the fact that they work on an airplane actually relevant to the plot and maybe it's just background. (Surely you could work in something about one of them being transferred to a different airplane and now they are trying to keep their romance alive while they are hundreds of miles apart, etc.) Or make the story about two brothers fighting for control of the airline they inherited from their parents. Or a criminal sneaks aboard the airplane to escape and come up with some reason why the crew must figure out which passenger is the criminal before they land. (I'm reminded of an SF story I read once that was about teleportation machines. But while this formed the background, the plot was about a thief trying to get away from a crime at a remote location when the authorities have turned off the teleporter to prevent him from escaping. The ending of the story being that, as he spent his whole life using teleporters to travel, it never occurred to him to walk a few miles to another house.) There are plenty of space travel stories that are not really &quot;about&quot; space travel but about political conflicts, finding lost treasure, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then include all sorts of discussion about how the new technology solves the problem or changes society or whatever, without making the conflict actually about the new technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T14:54:24.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8480" CreationDate="2013-07-24T16:39:09.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scan the documentation for the Ruby standard library, which includes numerous examples. I quickly scanned the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.0/libdoc/psych/rdoc/Psych.html#method-c-load&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some YAML parser classes&lt;/a&gt;, and the idea seems to be to simply describe how a method will use its parameters. In many cases, the use isn't described, and mostly I can guess the use from the name of the parameter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T16:39:09.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8491" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8493" CreationDate="2013-07-24T17:53:54.190" Score="2" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are some passages from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geocities.jp/yoshio_osakabe/Haruki/Books/Man-Eating-E.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Man-Eating Cats by Haruki Murakami&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He'd been&lt;/strong&gt; dead set against out marriage from the start, and his tone&#xA;  of voice said &lt;strong&gt;he'd&lt;/strong&gt; finally been proved right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He had taken&lt;/strong&gt; a pair of scissors to every stitch of clothing she owned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;She had no idea&lt;/strong&gt; where he had gone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;She and her husband had been&lt;/strong&gt; high school sweet-hears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like the author decided to use contractions in some of the sentences and not to use them in others. I tried figuring out the pattern without much luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this happens to me often. I can't figure out when to use contractions and when to use complete words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any rule for this? Or I just have to figure out what &quot;sounds better&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T21:27:19.543" Title="When to use contractions and when to use complete words?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8491" CreationDate="2013-07-24T18:24:08.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contractions are generally viewed as being informal. That is, they're used by people in everyday speech, but rarely in more formal writing. I'd therefore say a good rule of thumb is to avoid them except in those circumstances where it is within character to have them e.g. it fits the speech pattern of the characters, or the narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T18:24:08.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8491" CreationDate="2013-07-24T18:29:25.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contractions are often considered inappropriate in formal writing. The more formal, the less acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are always acceptable in dialog if that is how the character would talk in real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably debatable in narration in a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where acceptable, whether to use a contraction depends on the rhythm of the sentence. Sometimes a contraction makes a sentence or part of a sentence seem too abrupt. For example, consider &quot;Where is he?&quot; You could use a contraction and replace this with &quot;Where's he?&quot; But this sounds very abrupt. I often hear people say, &quot;Where's he at?&quot; which grates on my nerves for some reason. You shortened the sentence from &quot;Where is he?&quot; to &quot;Where's he?&quot;, but then you apparently decided this was too short, so you stuck a useless extra word, &quot;at&quot; on the end to pad it back out! :-P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T18:29:25.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8486" CreationDate="2013-07-24T18:36:44.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two of my favorite books on writing are &quot;The Elements of Style&quot; by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, and &quot;On Writing Well&quot; by William Zinsser. While these books aren't about minimalist writing per se, they definitely emphasize eliminating clutter and creating clear, concise, high-impact writing. These books are useful for any writer, but I think would benefit your particular style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: As a kid, I was a huge fan of E.B. White's fiction (e.g. Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little). Now as an adult, I'm a huge fan of his non-fiction essays (e.g. One Man's Meat). You should check out his writings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5596" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T18:36:44.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5429" CreationDate="2013-07-25T00:05:04.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote my first book and, after some advices, I decided to look for an agent. Most of them never replied. Some of them said they didn't work with unpublished writers. One of them, replied in a few days and sent me a contract. Of course I asked him how he could send me a contract if he didn't have the time to read the manuscript and know if it was good. Then he said he would read and never came back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only had lucky when I start to try publishers directly and, even so, I can't say how many copies of my manuscript and I sent without receiving a single answer. I know it only passed a month since I started to contact agents and publishers but, the wait drivers you nuts. The good thing is that I received a positive answer and a negative one, and that means -- at least to me -- that it's perfectly possible to publish without an agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm still waiting for some replies, and I know they will come. A month is a very short time for answers from a publisher. Like you, I believe in my project so I decided to wait a little longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The truth is that agents are somewhat like publishers. They are more prone to invest on a famous person then to bet in a new writer&lt;/strong&gt;. You may say this is absurd but, sometimes it's better to be safe then sorry. There are a lot of writers around and -- &lt;em&gt;at least in Portuguese context&lt;/em&gt; -- more manuscripts than publishing opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agents will need to invest time in their writers. An agent will help the writer in a lot of things, not only delivering the manuscript to publishers. If they represent countless writers, they won't be able to do it right with none of them... Or, at least, with some of them. They need to pick the ones they think are most promising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember this is business. You may love your manuscript like your own son, but this is all business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, then again, comes the problem: there are a lot of writers around and more manuscripts than publishing opportunities. &lt;strong&gt;Sometimes agents and publishers just won't pay enough attention to see potential;&lt;/strong&gt; or sometimes they see a wonderful book but not something they can easily sell; if that happens, they will refuse you, even if you are good. If you believe in your project, you should keep trying. Not only with agents, but with publishers directly. I don't like self publishing so, I won't say that's the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, try to find and learn what are the best ways to approach publishers and agents. Sometimes they refuse works because the writer doesn't know how to contact them. For example, sending fantasy books to a crime fiction publisher; or demanding too much on a first approach; etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also start a blog and make yourself known. Go to literary events and talk to people. I remember some girl who shared a book in a free site and, after I don't know how many downloads (it was a lot) a publisher contact her to print the book. I also remember a lot of guys who were bloggers and published only because they had a captive public (their blog followers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, there's no magical trick. I'm in the same boat as you are and I'm doing almost the same thing as you are so, I'm telling you what I learned during the process. In a few months I will be able to say if the results came but, until there, maybe somebody else here can provide better tips than the ones I gave to approach agents and publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T00:05:04.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8496" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10279" CreationDate="2013-07-25T02:48:19.173" Score="2" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if I'm on right place to ask a simple suggestion, so please be kind and don't downvote my question. I'm not asking someone to do it for me, I just need short guidance how should I proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I'm writing a study of Blind source separation using eigenvalue decomposition. Since I'm not good at writing, I have done so far the needed programming part in Matlab. The study must be composed of ~50 pages theory about the problem. Theory should be in terms of explaining the BSS, BSS methods, ICA, and EVD which is the main topic. Can you suggest what to include in my writing since BSS has a lot of methods and it is difficult for me to decide and follow what to write and what not write. Can someone outline the order of things I should write and mention in my study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm stuck at what should I write next, so far I have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction to BSS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Definition of Independence of signals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Independence and correlation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PCA and other prewhitening methods:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;centering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whitening&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using books like: Independent Component Analysis - A Tutorial Introduction by James V. Stone; and Handbook of Blind Source Separation Independent Component Analysis and Applications 2010 by Pierre Comon, Christian Jutten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5598" LastEditorUserId="5909" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T00:38:05.660" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T00:55:46.293" Title="Which sections to cover for my graduation thesis on BSS?" Tags="|academic-writing|scientific-publishing|outline|science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3795" CreationDate="2013-07-25T02:54:02.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;This nonsense was enough! It was time to move on.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5599" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T02:54:02.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8499" CreationDate="2013-07-25T04:41:29.543" Score="3" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm answering a few questions based on Atlas Shrugged in the form of an essay, wherein I am required to discuss a particular character and relate his role to the theme of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind of clueless. Help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4807" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T13:33:54.063" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T13:33:54.063" Title="Tips for analysing character's role against the novel's general theme?" Tags="|characters|theme|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8498" CreationDate="2013-07-25T07:17:55.953" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll assume that you have identified the theme (or a theme) of the story...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some questions that might give you some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the character's role in the story? (How would the story be different if the character were not in it?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do the character's actions demonstrate the theme (or violate it)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the consequences to the character of acting in accordance with the theme (or of violating it)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do those consequences reinforce the theme, or argue against the theme, or refine the theme and demonstrate its subtlety and nuance?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T07:17:55.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8502" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9257" CreationDate="2013-07-25T18:02:15.897" Score="12" ViewCount="3623" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't remember, Choose Your Own Adventure books had bits of a story, then options for the reader to give them more of a feeling of control in their adventure: &quot;If you want to walk through the dark tunnel, turn to page 16. If you want to take the bridge, turn to page 19.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to write a similar book, only a technical manual. My initial thoughts are to write it as a PDF with internal links to various pages, like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If you already know how to engage the widget, &lt;code&gt;go to page 60&lt;/code&gt;. If you want to learn more about the history of widgets, &lt;code&gt;visit page 1010.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, two questions. 1) Can I write it in this style and have the links to pages change dynamically (say I add an entire chapter and it bumps up page 60 to 80 and page 1010 to 1030. 2) Is there recommended software for doing this? Sorry for the noob question, this will be my first venture into writing a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5592" LastEditorUserId="168" LastEditDate="2023-09-06T14:59:46.893" LastActivityDate="2023-09-06T14:59:46.893" Title="I want to write a Choose Your Own Adventure styled e-book, what's a good approach?" Tags="|software|branching-narrative|pages|interactive-fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8502" CreationDate="2013-07-25T22:06:16.320" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any decent word processor software will allow you to insert cross-references. I've used this quite frequently in Microsoft Word when writing technical documentation for software. It produces a link that the user can simply &lt;kbd&gt;Ctrl&lt;/kbd&gt;-click to navigate. You can link to a variety of different items within the document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you export the document as a PDF the cross-references will be retained as clickable links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/inserting-cross-references-HA001186680.aspx&quot;&gt;Inserting Cross-References&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5454" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T22:06:16.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8505" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-26T07:00:10.847" Score="2" ViewCount="1482" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story with the following structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scene 1: Deshi and Yuqi are in a mountain searching for an abandoned&#xA;  amusement park (Present)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scene 2: Deshi talks about how he felt when they first reached the mountain and why they came (Flashback)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scene 3: Deshi tells the reader about when they first heard about the&#xA;  abandoned amusement park (Flashback)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scene 4: Deshi and Yuqi are in their tent and this is when Yuqi&#xA;  suggests they go check the abandoned amusement park. (Flashback)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scene 4: Deshi and Yuqi reach a shrine in the mountain and decide to&#xA;  take a break. (Present)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scene 5: Deshi tells the reader about how he met Yuqi. (Flashback)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scene 6: Another anecdote related to Yuqi. (Flashback)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scene 7: They finally reach the abandoned amusement park. (Present)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as you can see the main character is relating events in the past without a chronological order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a common plot structure? Will the reader feel confused because the flashbacks don't follow a chronological order (and are totally unconnected)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T04:57:33.087" Title="Is it common for flashbacks to not to follow a chronological order?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|flashback|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8502" CreationDate="2013-07-26T08:19:38.690" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see that you've decided to go with the PDF option. Not sure that's what I would do because PDF is a standard that carries a bit more baggage than other formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about .mobi but I know .epub is just basically common or garden HTML dressed up with a few more tags. As such you can fill it with hyperlinks. I guess .mobi must be similar as you'll find many e-books on kindle include live hyperlinks. I'm not sure how well they work on older non-touch screen e-paper readers but should be fine on touch screens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I wrote a piece of software specifically for drafting this kind of book. It's for windows and it runs off a single .exe I never published it anywhere but if you drop me a line I'll see if I can sort you out with a copy if you're interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. This kind of book is, I have found, one of the most difficult kinds of things to write ever, just so's you know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T08:19:38.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8505" CreationDate="2013-07-26T09:35:44.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing inherently wrong with having a conceptual sequence rather than a chronological one. The important point is that you have some really clear signposting so the reader doesn't get confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a book you can have little titles telling people when things happened. e.g. Oregon, May 1986 | Portland, Nov 1991 etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people tend to blank over these though so it's not foolproof. Also you are having people talk to one another about things in the past so it may not work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However you can use this limitation to your advantage. Just as real people could be confused about the sequencing so the characters in the story may not get it first time also. For those that are keeping up such dialogue should be snappy to make it 'invisible' e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Out of flashback in which Professor Quimby first gains sight of the&#xA;  Forbidden Temple]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That was when I first saw the Forbidden Temple in Q'zuhnchuaat&#xA;  Valley,&quot; Professor Quimby explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So was it a surprise, finding this temple in the valley?&quot; Smith&#xA;  asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No, I had suspected, even though I didn't tell the Colonel,&quot; Quimby&#xA;  replied. &quot;You see it was the first time in 10 millennia that any man&#xA;  had laid eyes on the Temple, but I had read accounts of it. These&#xA;  stories were passed down as myths from the pictographic writings of an&#xA;  obscure valley tribe. I had studied these legends for my thesis at the&#xA;  Academy nearly a decade previously, although my studies proved&#xA;  somewhat dangerous, even then...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Into flashback that takes place a decade previous to the earlier&#xA;  flashback while the professor is still at the Academy]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2013-07-26T16:14:04.863" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T16:14:04.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8505" CreationDate="2013-07-26T13:07:37.747" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The important question is not whether it is common, but whether it works for your story. It is certainly not &quot;wrong&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flashbacks in general are certainly common enough that the technique of itself is not going to confuse readers. I don't think there's any particular expectation that flashbacks must come in order, so that coming out of order would be something bizarre that would confuse readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As One Monkey says, one way or another make sure you communicate to the reader what is present and what is a flashback. If when each flashback occurs is important, make sure that's clear. In many cases the relative order of flashbacks doesn't matter. Like it may not matter whether Deshi and Yuqi met before or after Deshi learned about the abandoned park. If it does matter, make it clear. If it doesn't, then don't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T13:07:37.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="562" CreationDate="2013-07-26T22:21:52.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Poets &amp;amp; Writers Magazine is published in print six times a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pw.org/magazine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pw.org/magazine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The magazine focuses more on writing process and publishing process than on point-by-point writing technique, but its articles explore many angles of writing and the writing life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typical topics include: inspiration; creativity; writer's block; effective writing habits; interviews with authors; Q&amp;amp;As with editors and agents; social media strategies; small presses; ebooks; self-publishing; crowdfunding; grants and awards; and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their website has many features, including additional online-only articles and resources such as searchable databases for contests, residencies and conferences.  They also started a digital format of the magazine in 2010 (though I can't speak personally to that; I subscribe to the print version).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T22:21:52.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8512" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8518" CreationDate="2013-07-27T20:07:11.080" Score="8" ViewCount="2699" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask for any guidelines that could help to determine when a story can be considered &quot;erotic&quot;. Is it based on the words, the number of scenes or on how detailed they are? Shortly, if I talk about the story, from which point on should I say &quot;It's an erotic story about [...]&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5584" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-07-27T20:25:32.107" LastActivityDate="2018-06-11T11:17:43.220" Title="At what point can a story be considered &quot;erotic&quot;?" Tags="|genre|categories|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="392" CreationDate="2013-07-27T23:24:14.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two resources that have helped me get to know my own characters more deeply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781582973722&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What Would Your Character Do?&lt;/a&gt; by Eric and Ann Maisel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780310244202&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Complete Book of Questions&lt;/a&gt; by Garry Poole. (Simply answer the questions as though you are in the character's point of view.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T23:24:14.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8517" CreationDate="2013-07-27T23:32:18.247" Score="11" ViewCount="16051" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really love -- &lt;em&gt;and most of time write in&lt;/em&gt; -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/glossary/g/firstperson.htm&quot;&gt;first person point of view&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The novel I'm writing is somewhat different from what I'm used to. I have four main characters -- &lt;em&gt;I don't see any of them as more important than the others&lt;/em&gt; -- each one of them with his own separate plot (&lt;em&gt;even being related some way to fulfill the story&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I said, I like to write using first person. I was thinking to title each chapter with the name of the dominant char -- since each chapter will be told from a single character point of view -- and write the contents in first person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example&lt;/strong&gt;: Mark - The Wishing Well&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My doubt is: &lt;strong&gt;does this work, or it can be too confusing for the reader to deal with different characters in different chapters, all using first person point of view&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen this type of subterfuge -- &lt;em&gt;chapters titled with character names for more than one main char&lt;/em&gt; -- but always from 3rd person point of view. I'm really not sure if I should go on with first person or just drop it, using instead 3rd person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="4332" LastEditDate="2013-07-28T00:54:58.480" LastActivityDate="2022-11-29T12:59:47.923" Title="First person pov with more than one main chars" Tags="|creative-writing|viewpoint|third-person|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8514" CreationDate="2013-07-28T06:46:35.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key with first person point of view is that your character's voice has to come through. So  if you write three separate first persons, they all have to sound different meaning the writing style has to be distinct for each one. You can't just slap a character name on the chapter and hope your reader can go by that alone if there is no other context or way to distinguish who's speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be easier to choose a main narrator, write that one in first person and then write everyone else in third person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5473" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T06:46:35.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8514" CreationDate="2013-07-28T07:07:11.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As lonehorseend said, it's important to make sure characters seem different - but adding the character's names is very important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case in point - go read some of the &lt;em&gt;I Am Number Four&lt;/em&gt; novels, particular the second and third novels. They swap (in third person) to different characters, without even using asterisks as breaks. It's nearly impossible to determine which character is which, and it makes for a very confusing read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you have to fall to traditional tropes, make your characters unique. Eg, have a 'bitter and moody' character, a 'mysterious past' character, a 'ditzy, but means-well' character etc. Overplay it a little bit, but the reader will clearly understand the differences between the POVs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I would go with placing the character's name at the start of the chapter - if you even think for a moment that a reader might get confused, then don't be ambiguous about it, and put the name there. There's no harm in putting it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T07:07:11.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8514" CreationDate="2013-07-28T13:17:17.870" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read at least one book which successfully did this; the author just titled each chapter &quot;Bruno&quot; and &quot;Melusine,&quot; depending on whose perspective it was. The timeline was mostly chronological, although there was some overlap so we see how one felt about the other's actions. It worked perfectly fine for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not subterfuge. Label each chapter, throw in a time stamp if you want to be crystal clear, and you're fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T13:17:17.870" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8512" CreationDate="2013-07-28T13:23:29.023" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say it's erotic if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) the sex is a major part of the action (not necessarily the plot)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) the text is explicit enough that if it were a movie, minors couldn't see it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So something which has a lot of sexual contact but the &quot;camera&quot; always cuts away before the deed starts wouldn't be erotic. Something which describes sex in gauzy or vague terms (&quot;they melted into one another's arms and twined their limbs together until they fell through the clouds and rain into bliss&quot;) wouldn't be erotic either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something which reads like a transcript of an adult film with lots of &lt;em&gt;tab A into slot B&lt;/em&gt; is erotic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T13:23:29.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8519" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-28T15:20:33.307" Score="5" ViewCount="9515" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I can't decide whether to use a semicolon or a em dash. Usually, I start with semicolons and, once I notice there are too many of them, I start replacing a few with em dashes (as I read somewhere they are interchangeable). I also use em dashes to replace parenthesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other criteria should I use while deciding when to use the first or the latter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T18:22:35.840" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T18:22:35.840" Title="When to use semicolons and when to use em dashes?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1840" CreationDate="2013-07-28T15:38:08.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a database that I built using Filemaker Pro. It's far from perfect, but I'd like to share &lt;a href=&quot;http://wp.me/p1rZqf-dA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;my notes about submission tracking&lt;/a&gt; in case they help you to decide how you would like to track your submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. this same question is being asked in a few places on here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1840/whats-a-good-program-for-tracking-submissions&quot;&gt;What&amp;#39;s a good program for tracking submissions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/433/how-do-you-track-submissions-to-publishers-markets&quot;&gt;How do you track submissions to publishers/markets?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5599" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T15:43:54.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="433" CreationDate="2013-07-28T15:42:01.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a database that I built using Filemaker Pro. It's far from perfect, but I'd like to share &lt;a href=&quot;http://wp.me/p1rZqf-dA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;my notes about submission tracking&lt;/a&gt; in case they help you to decide how you would like to track your submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. this same question is being asked in a few places on here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1840/whats-a-good-program-for-tracking-submissions&quot;&gt;What&amp;#39;s a good program for tracking submissions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/433/how-do-you-track-submissions-to-publishers-markets&quot;&gt;How do you track submissions to publishers/markets?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5599" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T15:42:01.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8519" CreationDate="2013-07-28T20:56:06.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use an em dash when the phrase on either side is not necessarily a full sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Semi-colons &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; join two full sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I turned and saw him — filthy, battered, exhausted, but unquestionably alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I turned and saw him — he was filthy, battered, exhausted — but I couldn't reach him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I turned and saw him — he was filthy, battered, and exhausted, but unquestionably alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I turned and saw him; he was filthy, battered, and exhausted, but unquestionably alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T20:56:06.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8519" CreationDate="2013-07-29T13:11:47.100" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Semicolons and dashes are not interchangeable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Semicolons are used for basically two purposes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) To join two clauses that could each stand as an independent sentence, but which you want to tie together. A semicolon is an alternative to having two separate sentences, or two sentences connected with a conjunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The car was old. The driver was young.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The car was old but the driver was young.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The car was old; the driver was young.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that a semicolon should not be used this way if either clause could not stand as a complete sentence. For example, it would be wrong to write, &amp;quot;The car was old; the driver young&amp;quot;, because &amp;quot;the driver young&amp;quot; is not a complete sentence. In that case you should use a comma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) To separate members of a list when one or more members have commas within them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world was divided into three great blocks: Britain, France, Poland, the United States; Germany, Italy, Japan; Russia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The semicolons make clear where we are ending each group. (Sure, there are other ways to do it, like placement of conjunctions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A dash is used as an alternative to parentheses. Basically, this is a matter of how big a break you want. Parentheses are a big break; dashes are a small break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we entered the garden (through the back gate) we saw Sally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we entered the garden -- through the back gate -- we saw Sally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first example tells the reader that this is a relatively unimportant fact. We could have entered the garden some other way, but it doesn't matter. The second example tells the reader that this is not an essential part of the thought, but it doesn't set it off as much as the parentheses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see Lauren Ipsum gives an example where a sentence could be written with either a dash or a semicolon. (Actually in that example I'd use a colon rather than a semicolon, but that's not the main point here.) That's valid, but I think it's a misleading way to think about it. Don't think of a dash as an alternative to a semicolon; think of it as an alternative to parentheses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T13:11:47.100" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8512" CreationDate="2013-07-29T14:29:28.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess there's no answer at all to your question, unless you are writing an erotic story. If you are writing an erotic book, by definition, it's erotic since you will do it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some countries/cultures have a much easier concept on what's erotic and what is not&lt;/strong&gt;. Maybe in USA, your book would be classified as erotic, and in France it would be quite normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember I read a wonderful fantasy book where the two main characters were gay and lovers, but it was only a fantasy book. For me, the sexual orientation of the characters didn't play such an important role to classify it as anything else than fantasy. Even so, I was quite shocked when I saw it classified as gay literature in Amazon. Like I said, it depends a lot of where and who are tracing the lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, the answer lies in my first phrase. You can't know how people will classify your work, but you know how do you classify your work. If you write an erotic book, it's erotic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing, &lt;strong&gt;being erotic depends also on the weight eroticism has in the plot&lt;/strong&gt;. You don't need to be sexually explicit – or describe in details how the characters are having sex – to make it erotic, you just have to make sure the eroticism in your book is higher than in a &quot;normal&quot; book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.karenmoning.com/kmm/darkfever.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Darkfever&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.karenmoning.com/kmm/novels/highlander-series.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Highlander&lt;/a&gt; chronicles and awesome examples. It's fantasy in it's best and, even so, it's highly erotic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mooning writes fantasy in a great way but uses large doses of eroticism and spices the story in a way women love it – &lt;em&gt;her eroticism is clearly aimed at women&lt;/em&gt; – and men also, since the fantasy plot is very good either. Even with that high doses of eroticism, her books are classified as fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resuming, &lt;strong&gt;writing an erotic book depends on what you want to write, and the context of the readers&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="25453" LastEditDate="2017-08-20T14:27:45.263" LastActivityDate="2017-08-20T14:27:45.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8505" CreationDate="2013-07-29T19:39:53.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the reader will not feel confused. &#xA;I've read a book where the flashbacks don't follow a chronological order.&#xA;In this book the main character was telling the reader what happened to her with flashbacks.&#xA;There are some books where the flashbacks are memories of the main character, like the De Overgave, it's in Dutch though. Memories (in books) are not always in a chronological order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your structure is good!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5616" LastEditorUserId="5616" LastEditDate="2013-08-11T01:14:18.590" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T01:14:18.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8527" CreationDate="2013-07-29T23:11:38.400" Score="1" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen many books covers with the following format: [Title] by [name of author]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other instances, the word 'by' is omitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any convention for using 'by' on the cover page of a book or a short story?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my mind, 'by' is superfluous in this context but there are so many examples out there that it may be historical etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T22:13:05.107" Title="Using &quot;by&quot; on the book cover" Tags="|style|creative-writing|short-story|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8526" CreationDate="2013-07-30T13:42:14.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen it both ways. I haven't counted to see which is more common. I have seven books in easy reach and none have the word &quot;by&quot; before the author's name. One does have a title, the authors' names, and then it says &quot;foreword by Grady Brooch&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's a good idea to include the &quot;by&quot; if there is possible confusion about whether this is the name of the author. For example, if the title is a person's name. If the cover says &quot;Sally Jones ... Mary Smith&quot;, is that a book about someone named Sally Jones by a writer named Mary Smith, or a book about someone named Mary Smith by a writer named Sally Jones? But if the cover says, &quot;Calculus for Engineers ... Fred Stover&quot;, few will think this is a biography of Fred Stover by Mr. Engineers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There could also be an issue if you have an unusual name or a foreign name. (Foreign to the language in which the book is written, I mean.) Like if  a book's cover said &quot;History of the Punjab ... Ananda Khan&quot;, an American reader could be forgiven for wondering if &quot;Ananda Khan&quot; is the name of the author, or if the book is about a ruler of the Punjab called &quot;the Ananda Khan&quot;. &quot;by Ananda Khan&quot; would eliminate any question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I write this, I see your name is &quot;Javeer Baker&quot;. If you wrote a book about cooking, I could see a possible ambiguity. Like, &quot;Cooking in the Outdoors ... Javeer Baker&quot;. Is Javeer Baker the author's name, or is this about some new kind of backyard grill called an &quot;Outdoors Javeer Baker&quot;. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T13:42:14.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8528" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-30T16:32:24.197" Score="2" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to improve my writing style, grammar, and vocabulary, but I'm having a hard time finding a good exemplary book. Most of books I find perfect at first, turn out to be full of flaws and/or informal expressions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a non-fiction English book that is written in formal -but not obsolete- style. An advanced level book with impeccable vocabulary, grammar, and structures that I can safely follow in my essays (for instance, in the GRE analytical writing essays).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I'm looking for a &quot;holy book&quot; for professional writers. Please let me know if you know one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5619" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T21:59:07.797" Title="Please suggest an exemplary book for professional writing" Tags="|book-rec|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-12-06T07:03:53.597" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8820" CreationDate="2013-07-30T19:10:36.447" Score="2" ViewCount="823" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all hi everyone :-)  In a formal report should the words and phrases defined in the glossary contain citations? Some of the phrases, that are going to be in the glossary, I know so well I don't need to look them up. Some of the phrases are specific to our business (and even specific to our office). On the other hand I really want to quote something the author says &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/virtual-machine-makeuseof-explains/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for a phrase in the glossary. When and how should I site glossary entries, is it only necessary if there's a direct quote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5621" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T15:15:57.573" Title="When writing a formal report should citations be used in the glossary?" Tags="|citations|academic-writing|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8514" CreationDate="2013-07-30T21:28:37.400" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a terrific, creative idea, but you have to be very skillful to pull it off. I agree that each character has to be rendered very distinctively.  Ken Kesey did something like this on his novel Sometimes a Great Notion which is a wonderful family saga where different points of view are distinguished by italics and normal fonts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5623" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T21:28:37.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8531" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-31T08:26:23.147" Score="5" ViewCount="371" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Why you so sure the stone doesn't exist?&quot; Yuki asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I took a sip from my glass, then raised my eyes. A moth was hovering&#xA;  around the wall lamp. Yuki was right: why I was so certain about it?&#xA;  True, the idea of the Flying Stone was as shapeless as&#xA;  the insect's shadow dancing on the ceiling. But what if there was something actually &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; casting it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the analogy is comparing the &lt;em&gt;idea or possibility&lt;/em&gt; of the Flying Stone to the shadow of the moth, and the moth with the actual stone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the analogy effective and clear? If not, how to improve it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-07-31T16:24:30.230" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T16:24:30.230" Title="Is the following analogy effective and clear?" Tags="|creative-writing|metaphor|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8531" CreationDate="2013-07-31T09:14:59.520" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the metaphor is quite vivid and gets the point across maybe even a little too clearly: if you see the shadow, you &lt;em&gt;do know&lt;/em&gt; there is a moth casting it. If you hear a story, you may still believe it's entirely made-up or a result of some confusion. Then, still, this would create the impression of the protagonist's conviction that yes, the stone is true and the persistence of the story is the proof (the matter whether the conviction is correct aside, that's a vivid image of a personal hunch.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On an unrelated note...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;The Plague&quot; by Albert Camus, there's a character, Joseph Grand. He writes a novel. He wants the novel to be absolutely perfect - he wants it to be so great the publisher would say &quot;Hats off, gentlemen!&quot; the day he reads the book. Grand spent years writing that book. He got as far as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One fine morning in the month of May an elegant young horsewoman might have been riding a handsome sorrel mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de Boulogne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He never got past polishing that first sentence and making it as perfect as he could. When the book ends, he's still polishing that single sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long have you been writing about that Flying Stone by now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T09:14:59.520" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8533" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-31T15:06:57.383" Score="8" ViewCount="479" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the legalities of taking something currently in the news and writing a story/novel/movie (but not a documentary/biography) about it? Take Snowden, for example. Someone went and made a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.policymic.com/articles/54093/edward-snowden-movie-the-first-one-is-here-and-it-s-awful&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;movie&lt;/a&gt; (I haven't seen it - apparently it's awful).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you need permission from the people involved or mentioned to write about them? Could you get into trouble for libel even if you make it very clear that you're writing &lt;strong&gt;fiction&lt;/strong&gt; and insisting that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_persons_fictitious_disclaimer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;any resemblance... is a coincidence&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-31T01:20:04.243" LastActivityDate="2020-07-17T02:31:41.777" Title="Legalities about fictionalizing current events?" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2013-08-01T10:41:29.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having books to teach you those fundamentals is great. But, perhaps you don't need a book at all if your purpose is to learn the basics. There are a lot of resources online where you can learn the building blocks of the craft of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some websites that I find quite informative and useful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DailyWritingTips (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailywritingtips.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dailywritingtips.com/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ChompChomp&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grammar Girl&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to get serious in your writing, then you should read these three books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/strong&gt; by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On Writing Well&lt;/strong&gt; by William Zinsser&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer&lt;/strong&gt; by Roy Peter Clark&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of people also recommend Stephen King's &lt;strong&gt;On Writing&lt;/strong&gt;. If you want to be an author, then I think reading that book will do you great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bonus Tip:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Since like me, you're concerned about your grammar, punctuation, etc. I want to share with you a free online tool that I regularly use: &lt;a href=&quot;http://spellcheckplus.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SpellCheckPlus.com&lt;/a&gt;. Have fun writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;P.S. I apologize being unable to provide a direct link in the majority of sites. Since I'm a new user, I still have limitations on the amount of links that I can use.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5631" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T10:41:29.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2013-08-01T11:26:39.190" Score="14" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Break The Rules&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the rules here already note that exceptions should always be made, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/1427/3848&quot;&gt;You must learn to walk before you can run&lt;/a&gt; is generally good advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, these rules apply mostly to the act of writing itself. There are another set of rules in writing, those of genre. Some of the best creative writing hinges on breaking moulds. An excellent example is William Gibson's Neuromancer. Gibson is &lt;a href=&quot;http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/gibson_interview.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quoted in an interview as saying&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had a sense of what the expectations of the SF industry were in&#xA;  terms of product, but I hated that product and felt such a genuine&#xA;  sense of disgust that I consciously decided to reverse expectations,&#xA;  not give publishers or readers what they wanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This example is particularly nice because it also breaks the walk-before-running rule: Neuromancer was Gibson's first attempt at a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3848" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T11:26:39.190" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-08-01T11:26:39.190" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8538" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8541" CreationDate="2013-08-01T11:43:53.813" Score="14" ViewCount="7427" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can a character be made to appear witty, or funny? That is, the character amuses other characters, not the reader, who should ideally be impressed with the characters wit. The only way that I can think of is to have the character be able to make some good jokes, but that relies on the author being funny. What if I'm not funny, or just can't think of any good jokes at the time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6670/how-does-one-write-a-character-smarter-than-oneself&quot;&gt;How does one write a character smarter than oneself?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3848" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T16:52:21.527" Title="How do you make a character witty?" Tags="|character-development|humor|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8538" CreationDate="2013-08-01T12:22:31.160" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid then you're quite stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note as the author you have significant advantages: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no fear of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier&quot;&gt;L'esprit de l'escalier&lt;/a&gt; - you can always come back and add/modify given reply, or slowly engineer given joke.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You create the situation for situational humor. Moreover, you can set up the victims of the wit to say or do things that will give the witty guy all the ammo you need.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have all the time in the world for testing and polishing (...or at least as much as the publisher allows)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can ask for external help. Get a witty friend to help you find good retorts in given passages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can finally cheat by plagiarizing - not directly, but you can adapt witty situations from other (important: Little known!) sources, edit them to match the current situation and make them your own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last but not least, gather a bunch of expressions with double meanings, have their innocent, literal meaning variants happen in the story, then have the smartass mention them in a way that arises blush.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-08-01T12:37:18.273" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T12:37:18.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8538" CreationDate="2013-08-01T14:31:21.223" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the points made in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8538/how-do-you-make-a-character-witty#8539&quot;&gt;SF.'s answer&lt;/a&gt;, one can also express the act indirectly or express the effects of the wit without showing the wit itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joe whispered something to Susan and her face contorted in an attempt to suppress her laughter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Then the waiter brought three glasses of water,&quot; Helen continued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joe interrupted quickly with a pun, and we all groaned in appreciation. &quot;Sorry, I couldn't resist. What happened after he brought the water?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You really need to get Joe to tell you the joke about the plumber and the paralegal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Joe, this is a serious meeting, so try to keep your clever remarks to yourself.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This might present Joe in an inappropriately negative light, but if said by someone who dislikes Joe or is excessively uptight about formal procedures the negativity would be reduced, possibly inverted.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I entered the room looking for Joe and saw him surrounded by several enthralled listeners.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;'That &lt;strong&gt;was&lt;/strong&gt; my plunger!'&quot; Joe concluded, and everyone cracked up laughing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Anyone who can make &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; punchline funny is probably fairly gifted.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, there is a limit to how much one can express the humor indirectly. The effectiveness of the actual jokes could be improved by indications that those jokes are actually the &lt;em&gt;weakest&lt;/em&gt; jokes the character tells (&quot;I'm disappointed, Joe. I almost managed to keep myself from laughing on that one.&quot;) or by having another character tell the joke and explain that the witty character shared it and that the witty character told it much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T14:31:21.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8538" CreationDate="2013-08-01T18:40:11.073" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first issue you need to deal with is where you say &quot;the character amuses other characters, not the reader&quot;. As Lauren Ipsum &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8538/how-do-you-make-a-character-witty#comment15063_8538&quot;&gt;points out&lt;/a&gt;, what you're basically saying here is that you're going to tell the reader the character's amusing, rather than show it. A character is believable because the &lt;em&gt;reader&lt;/em&gt; finds him believable, not because the other characters find him believable, so you're already falling at the first hurdle if you can't make the reader see him as witty. This should be your top priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other issue is the idea that the author must be witty or funny to make a witty or funny character. Not so. Must an author be a cold-blooded murderer or a withdrawn, melancholic cowboy to write those characters? Of course not, any more than an actor must be like the character they're trying to portray. What an author must be is a good observer of other people, and that's the best advice I can give you in order to write as another character. Observe friends, family or even strangers who are funny and witty, and see what makes them funny and witty. Read biographies of funny people. What made them tick? Get inside that person's head, and try to think like them. Not just how they're funny and witty, but why are they funny and witty. Do they do it to hide their own inadequacies? To divert attention? To become the centre of attention? There's an old saying: often a true word spoken in jest, so perhaps it's done to mask how they really feel in a funny way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, it's not just telling jokes that makes someone funny. It could be puns or word play, it could be the ability to poke fun at other people or even themselves, or even just the way an ordinary story is told. Being funny and witty takes on many different forms, so don't just think in terms of &quot;jokes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T18:40:11.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="392" CreationDate="2013-08-01T19:18:19.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write a three to six thousand word backstory for characters, detailing their life from birth until the moment they enter the story. Once I have this chronicle of their trials in life, I find it's much easier to understand their defining characteristics, as well as little quirks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T19:18:19.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="989" CreationDate="2013-08-02T00:35:57.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I called up the Stack Exchange page just to see if anything had changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey, Cline,&quot; I called across the room, &quot;check this out.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cline didn't even pull his nose out of the writing text. &quot;I don't have to. Architect wants to know how to introduce multiple characters, right?&quot; He flipped the back cover closed, and picked up the next book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Why don't you stop reading and start writing? And how did you know Architect was asking that?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Me to know and you to find out.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Aww, forget it.&quot; He was always ahead of me. I waved a dismissive hand at Cline and turned back to the computer, a mere second before a hand slapped me on the back of the head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Cline's always ahead of you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Static, cut it out!&quot; I spun around and grabbed his Army surplus shirt by the lapels. &quot;One of these days!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Easy, boy,&quot; Static said, laughing. &quot;We're all always ahead of you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah, well, don't rub it in.&quot; I let go of his shirt. &quot;Hey, are we going to Christopher's writing seminar or not?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As long as you're driving.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I always drive!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Okay, tell you what I'll do,&quot; Static said. &quot;Nathan and Justy are going to walk through that door in about thirty seconds. Bet you Nathan speaks first. If I'm right, you pay for the gas.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You're on!&quot; I said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We turned to watch. As predicted, Nathan and Justy walked through the door practically in step with each other, then stopped as if on a drill sergeant's command. They looked the three of us over, then turned to each other with mock disgust and said in perfect unison, &quot;How long have we known these three clowns?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Static and I groaned. Cline chuckled and just kept reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastEditorUserId="4805" LastEditDate="2013-08-02T23:52:47.540" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T23:52:47.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8538" CreationDate="2013-08-02T14:45:54.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what others have said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy enough to buy a joke book or search the Internet for jokes. Then pick a few that you can fit into your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read a book about how to be funny years ago -- not saying that I got A's in that class! -- where the writer said that an important trick is to be able to adapt jokes on the fly. You can often take a joke that was written in one context and just change some of the details around to fit it to the present context. Like, I read a joke once that involved telegrams. Well, no one sends telegrams any more. But then one day we were sitting around talking about email and I took a telegram story and just changed all the references from telegram to email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course you can't just blindly replace words. You can't necessarily just change &quot;A beautiful young woman went to see a doctor ...&quot; to &quot;A beautiful young woman went to see a database engineering consultant ...&quot; and have the story make any sense. Doctor jokes routinely hinge on the idea of the doctor behaving inappropriately, which is jarring and funny because we expect doctors to be very proper and reserved. But we expect database engineers to be crude, so there's no humor there.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T14:45:54.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8533" CreationDate="2013-08-02T20:22:18.873" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defamation requires 1. A defamatory statement 2. About a recognizable individual that is 3. published. Slander, the verbal equivalent of libel, also has requirement for actual damage to result, something you don't have to show for libel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting at the beginning, what is a defamatory statement?  This is basically anything that would tend tarnish the person's reputation and make it difficult for them to interact with others.  Specifically, the sort of damages that the courts look for are the withdrawal or the withholding of opportunities the person would normally enjoy.  Therefore, the slanderous statement is one that induces such withdrawal or withholding.  It's no good to claim the statement was an opinion or even a quote from someone else, it's still defamatory for you to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some statements, such as imputing criminal acts, infidelity, or loathsome disease to an individual are considered per se defamatory, that is defamatory without any other discussion.  Other statements may only be considered defamatory given the circumstances of the statement. In your example, Snowden is accused of a crime, which is per se defamatory.  Even assuming you're only using him as an example, I suspect the case you're talking about will still fall under the per se interpretation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which leads to the second element, who is a recognizable individual?  This is the element TV always slips in the &quot;Any resemblance between the events of this story and individuals alive or dead are entirely coincidental&quot; line for.  By explicitly stating the story is not about person X gives the author greater leeway when they later claim the story, well, is not about person X.  This isn't a license to then actually make the story about person X, but it indicates a good faith effort to use the &lt;em&gt;idea&lt;/em&gt; of the event and not the specific facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it would be impossible to write about a black teen shot by a white neighborhood watchman at the moment without calling to mind the Zimmerman trial.  But if you change key elements (make the teen younger or older, make the watchman female, set the events during a clear day instead of a rainy night, etc.), you break that automatic connection.  It's still possible to imagine what might happen, just so long as you make it clear you aren't talking about what did happen.  No amount of &quot;This is fiction&quot; labeling is going to let you say, &quot;And then George Zimmerman did...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final element, publication, just means someone else heard (or read) your defamatory statement and understood it.  There is debate in the courts as to whether that means they understood the statement or they understood the statement was defamatory.  Either way, the whole purpose of a story or a novel is for other people to understand it, so it will likely be impossible to fight this element unless you write the story for yourself and then delete it without showing it to anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are at all unsure about the law in your area, consult a lawyer before showing your writing to anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T20:22:18.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8533" CreationDate="2013-08-02T21:38:00.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a story of a ruling that could (inadvertently?) affect the use of actual people (or characters who merely &lt;em&gt;resemble&lt;/em&gt; actual people):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://io9.com/this-court-ruling-could-wreck-the-future-of-realistic-s-995447426&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://io9.com/this-court-ruling-could-wreck-the-future-of-realistic-s-995447426&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T21:38:00.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8551" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-03T01:14:36.887" Score="3" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;My kindle ebook does not display properly on my pc and mac browsers. It appears fine on the kindle app for my android phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possibe to format an ebook so that it can show up in the same way on all platforms (e.g. mac and pc browsers, kindle, iphone, android etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would this be a one step or a multiple step process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T05:10:23.973" Title="Ebook Formatting for all platforms" Tags="|formatting|ebook|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8551" CreationDate="2013-08-03T05:10:23.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: multiple-step and time-consuming/expensive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.au/search?q=ebook%20formatting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eBook formatting&lt;/a&gt; and see the hundreds of different methods for doing this. It ranges from long, in-depth methods that would require you to strip your book down to plain text and add semantic information, to supposed 'converters' that will do it all for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 'professionals' who will, for a price, convert your book manually to the different formats, and give it love and attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly speaking, I've never read a single eBook that was one-hundred-percent formatted right - there will always be some odd glitch or quirk. Some eBooks range from bare-bones formatting that barely looks better than a &lt;code&gt;.txt&lt;/code&gt; file, through to fancily done ones that are obviously professional (&lt;em&gt;Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt; comes to mind as a really well-done eBook).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking from a programming side, there are so many different devices out there - smartphones, Kindles, iPads/tablets etc, and so many different book formats that getting something to look 100% right on 100% of devices isn't going to be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to research what's right for you - are you going to individually create five or six different forms of your book, or would you rather pay and have it done? Personally, (again, speaking from my programmer side), &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; trust &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; automatic convertor to do things right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Also, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3395/best-e-book-formatting-process?rq=1&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; on eBook formatting, it has some useful links and answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T05:10:23.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8514" CreationDate="2013-08-03T11:38:22.780" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need a great example of this, read &lt;em&gt;As I Lay Dying&lt;/em&gt; by William Faulkner.  Each chapter was told from a different 1st person POV character, and the chapters were labeled with just the character's name.  The voices are very distinctive, and after awhile, I didn't need to read the chapter title to know who was narrating that chapter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5365" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T11:38:22.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8554" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8557" CreationDate="2013-08-03T14:19:24.790" Score="2" ViewCount="1230" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something I wrote (&lt;strong&gt;adult content&lt;/strong&gt;—and very bad description of sex):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Strangely, it didn't feel much like sex. I felt we&#xA;  were just exchanging feelings that we couldn't be put into words.&#xA;  Thoughts we could only share by joining our bodies as though they were&#xA;  one. It was a strange sensation—&lt;strong&gt;like I was being sucked into a dark&#xA;  void, blending with it, losing myself in it. Yet feeling completely at&#xA;  peace, understanding everything it had to tell me&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nana continued moving for a few more seconds until—not being to contain it anymore—I&#xA;  came. I came over and over again, with a violence that I had never&#xA;  experienced before. &lt;strong&gt;As if someone had punched a big hole in a dam&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  Exhausted, I spread my arms on the bed, trying to catch my breath.&#xA;  Nana got herself off, and cuddled next to me. We remained like that&#xA;  for a while, holding each other naked in the dark &lt;strong&gt;like two newborn infants.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, right now, I'm just starting my metaphors/similes with &lt;strong&gt;like&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;as  if&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In which other ways I can present them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-08-03T14:43:37.127" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T14:15:27.497" Title="Ways of presenting a metaphor/simile/analogy" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8555" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-03T16:32:15.267" Score="6" ViewCount="6363" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the use of em dashes. Is it better to omit the spaces between the words and the dash, or is it preferable to separate them with spaces instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No spaces: It's time to take a nap—a long nap.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With spaces: It's time to take a nap — a long nap.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen both used by good writers — but personally I prefer putting spaces. I'm wondering what are the experts opinion regarding the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. And, most of the time, I use three hyphens in place of it (---), which isn't usual, to my knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5631" LastActivityDate="2023-12-26T08:53:51.160" Title="Em dash: space or no space between words" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8555" CreationDate="2013-08-03T19:57:39.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As always, the golden rules: be consistent; do what your style guide tells you to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Chicago Style dictates that you must not have spaces before and after the em dash, while AP Style dictates that you should have spaces before and after, except when used to introduce items in a vertical list. (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apvschicago.com/2011/05/em-dashes-and-ellipses-closed-or-spaced.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; for more information.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not using a style guide, my advice would be for the spaces. By not putting in spaces, it almost makes the two words on either sides joined, like they're hyphenated, which can be disconcerting. I find the extra spaces to improve readability, but I don't have any proof to support that, just my personal preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T19:57:39.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8554" CreationDate="2013-08-03T20:07:34.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use other indicators other than &quot;as if&quot; and &quot;like&quot; e.g. &quot;akin to&quot;. Since it's first person, you can also say, &quot;reminding me of&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another technique is to omit those words, and write it as if it were literal; the reader will pick up the metaphor. For example, &quot;It was a strange sensation, drifting, falling, sucked into a dark void, blending with it, losing myself in it.&quot; Or, &quot;We remained like that for a while, holding each other naked in the dark, two newborn infants gazing at the world with fresh eyes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T20:07:34.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8558" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9312" CreationDate="2013-08-03T20:32:54.423" Score="7" ViewCount="455" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Usually&lt;/strong&gt;, when I write, the seed of my narrative is a specific scene: in my mind I see a specific place, and in this place there are some people, and these people become aware of each other, or of some new or changing aspect, and this new awareness provides an impulse for them to begin to interact or interact differently. This impulse for a social interaction is where I start from, and everything else grows naturally from there: I sit down with this seed of an idea and write it down and just keep writing until the story is finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do is, I have this &quot;film still&quot; and I discover the story that this moment was taken from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now&lt;/strong&gt;, I have an idea that does not naturally grow into a story. Basically, it is not an idea about how something in a specific person's life changes, so it does not provide an impetus for any specific person's actions. It is not a story idea at all, but a message or theory that I would like to wrap into a narrative, instead of describing it in an essay or a philosophical text book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to keep my ideas to myself, until I have written them, so as not to lose the impetus to write, so I'll give an example of a similar idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You believe that eating meat is not good for your health, and now you want to write a story that transports this message in an entertaining way and illustrates the positive effects of not eating meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to do go about finding a plot for an idea like this? Or do you know of any books, websites or other tools, that provide help in such a situation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T22:06:52.547" Title="How to find the plot to a message or theory" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8462" CreationDate="2013-08-03T22:53:19.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First you need to clarify how much the story is supposed to be about the technology and how much it is supposed to be about people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's mostly about people, go read some Greek literature.  Now imagine the story took place in modern times.  Would things change much?  Not really--maybe it's unmanned drones instead of swords, and maybe it's a social hack into a supposedly secure system instead of a horse statue, but the sources of interpersonal conflict--desire for power, love directed in some fashion other than reciprocally between a pair, the young striving to prove themselves by breaking free of the hard-earned &quot;wisdom&quot; of the old, etc.--are the same unless the tech has also dramatically altered human nature.  Even if it's only somewhat person-focused, all these same trends are likely to continue, and you can see their form in most every work of great literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's mostly about tech, it's almost impossible for new technology to not have both upsides and downsides.  For example, fracking is a fantastic technology for increasing our available energy resources--but we have to worry about methane leakage, groundwater contamination, earthquakes, and continued reliance on CO2.  Social networking is great, but it can be a huge time sink and make various sorts of social crimes (e.g. sex trafficking) easier to get away with.  Nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons are based on the same physical principle.  If you imagine some awesome piece of tech, even if overall it's great for it to exist, there are almost certain to be downsides to imagine too.  Once you anticipate the downsides, you can ignore them, you can focus on them as challenges even though it's obvious that overall the tech is great, or you can make the downsides be far greater than the advantages in standard dystopian style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, suppose fusion reactors become practical and can be reduced to the size of a small car.  You can quickly imagine a plot where the main characters are investigators who stop terrorists from acquiring or using such devices.  It's clear that such abundant energy is great in most cases, but there are still abuses to be curtailed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2085" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T22:53:19.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8502" CreationDate="2013-08-04T00:06:00.727" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is software and an open-source markup standard for that called &lt;a href=&quot;http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TWINE&lt;/a&gt;.  I have not used it myself, but there seems to be a robust community around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5646" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T00:06:00.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8558" CreationDate="2013-08-04T05:50:03.073" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: This may not work for everyone.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I always do is to find the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_write_a_hook_sentence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hook sentence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Two reasons: (1) It will make the reader wonder what's next in the story (2) It'll make YOU wonder what's the next in the story (so you'll continue writing it in order to find out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for your example above, I would do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) What words are related to the idea/message?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;meat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;cow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;unhealthy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;vomiting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) OK, let's write the hooking sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a. When Tony came back to his apartment, he found a giant cow sitting&#xA;  in the living room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(The cow can be the one telling Tony why eating meat is bad).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;b. Tony's vomiting started on May 16 and then--with no apparent reason--ended on June 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(The vomiting can be related to his habit of eating meat).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plot will build itself afterwards (especially since you already got the message).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-08-04T06:23:43.200" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T06:23:43.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8565" CreationDate="2013-08-04T08:15:08.423" Score="7" ViewCount="28956" Body="&lt;p&gt;While writing stories how do I describe the action of common hand gestures, for instance the &quot;come on&quot; signal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any reference? I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gestures&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a list of hand gestures in wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; but obviously it's not geared to writers so no descriptive text examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5126" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-04-02T12:40:37.507" LastActivityDate="2023-10-27T16:30:50.137" Title="Describing common hand gestures" Tags="|style|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8562" CreationDate="2013-08-04T10:01:49.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to describe a gesture is how the body physically moves to make that gesture. Here's a few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Telling someone to come here &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He swept his hand toward his body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flashing the okay sign&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He put his forefinger to his thumb forming an o and raised his other three fingers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giving thumbs up&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He turned his hand, clenched his fingers toward his palm, and pointed his thumb&#xA;  skyward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5473" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T10:01:49.657" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8562" CreationDate="2013-08-04T19:59:57.860" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many cases you don't actually need, or necessarily want, to describe the gesture itself.  It is often enough, or even preferable, to (a) convey that there was a gesture and (b) convey its &lt;em&gt;meaning&lt;/em&gt;, without describing the gesture.  There are at least two reasons for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The gesture is idiomatic and a specific description would just get in the way.  &quot;He gave her a quick thumbs-up&quot; will be understood by most, but a description of how he held his hand and extended his thumb upward will be somewhere between tedious and opaque to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The gesture is not universal.  I've been told that the American &quot;come here&quot; gesture means something different in other places, and that in at least one country (Italy) you signal &quot;come here&quot; by holding your hand differently (palm down rather than up).  Describing the gesture wouldn't necessarily tell the reader what you meant.  In cases like that it is better to say something like &quot;he beckoned to her to join him&quot; or &quot;he signaled her to join him&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does writing in your native language handle gestures?  Are you used to reading physical descriptions of gestures in place of their meanings?  Even when the language varies, you can take your cues from how others handle this problem in your field/location/market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-08-05T00:55:59.063" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T00:55:59.063" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8562" CreationDate="2013-08-04T22:23:11.260" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the basic issue you're running into here is that IRL the &quot;come here&quot; wave is quick but so far, anyway, all of the devices used to describe it are not. For instance...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He turned his hand, clenched his fingers toward his palm, and pointed his thumb skyward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...is a great way of describing a thumbs-up if this gesture is, for instance, foreign to the character narrating the scene. If he's not, it rings of trying a little too hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My ways of accomplishing this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep it short and to the point. &quot;She beckoned for me.&quot; &quot;He gave me a thumbs-up.&quot; People already know what these mean in our culture, and if someone not native the culture is reading this, well, they'll feel that much more immersed in the story because you took it for granted that they know these things.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Imply it. If your character says &quot;Good job, Jim!&quot;, you probably don't need to indicate that she also gave Jim a thumbs-up unless you want to highlight something about the thumbs-up (for instance, if it's kind of dorky and quaint and you want that to be related to the thumbs-up-giver, or if she has a large and particularly ugly thumb that Jim can't stop staring at). Or, they can just say &quot;Jim, for the love of Mike, come here! Here! Where I am standing1&quot; Can't you kind of see the hand gestures the person is giving there, even without elucidating them?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if you're running this through on your first draft and you're not sure whether or not to include the gesture, err on the side of overwriting. You can always edit on the second go (and the third, and the fourth, and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T22:23:11.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8554" CreationDate="2013-08-04T22:28:06.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By definition, similes always make the fact that you're making the comparison explicit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was as slippery as an eel, or else a very slippery thing.&#xA;  She was somewhat slippier than a bee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Metaphors on the other hand don't make the comparison explicit and leave the audience to figure this out on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mike was a lion in the Giants' backfield, roaming through the Astroturf like it was the Serengeti and not merely tackling but physically destroying his prey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, there was a simile wrapped up inside there, but the overall point was that Mike is not literally a big cat, but a stealthy, hard-hitting linebacker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's my experience that we tend to use metaphor a lot more than we realize but otherwise, it's really personal preference and what sounds better to you in a given situation. There is no real hard and fast rule as to when to use the one versus the other. Sometimes you want to be subtle, sometimes you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T22:28:06.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8538" CreationDate="2013-08-04T22:33:21.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mainly agree with most folks here, although I think that the old, old standby of &quot;show, don't tell&quot; applies. If you say that a guy is witty, at best the reader will think that whomever you've given the narrative voice to thinks the character is witty (which by the way can be useful - for instance, if you want to introduce a character who is a bit of a buffoon but who the narrator has a crush on or something, you can use that device to create some dramatic irony). If you have characters physically laughing at what a character is doing, at best you portray the idea that the other characters think this person is witty, or at least choose to laugh at their jokes. The worst case scenario in both cases is that the reader thinks you're trying too hard and puts down the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to think that I can write fairly funny prose but one thing I basically &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; do is have other characters laugh at it. Roll their eyes, yes. Sigh and tell them to get to the point, absolutely. For one thing, I like the irony that encompasses a joke not getting a laugh. For another, if someone really doesn't find the line funny, they get to sympathize with the not-laughing character. It's like a win-win for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T22:33:21.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8569" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-05T08:58:31.697" Score="7" ViewCount="2987" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to use a 12yo girl with down syndrome as main character. &lt;strong&gt;Trisomy 21 people has a low IQ, normally around 50&lt;/strong&gt;, at least according to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've known a few people with such syndrome over the years, but never so well that I could rely on what I know from them to create my character so, the most obvious choice would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Gump&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forrest Gump&lt;/a&gt;, since I don't want the character to be too much dependent (&lt;em&gt;and one thing I can say about the &lt;strong&gt;Trisomy 21 people I knew, is that they are dependent but not that much that the couldn't handle themselves in normal daily tasks&lt;/strong&gt;, on the contrary&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another awesome reference would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0121630/bio&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Corky Thacher&lt;/a&gt;, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096635/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Life Goes on&lt;/a&gt; TV Series, even because the actor that played the role has down syndrome himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that &lt;strong&gt;I don't want the main focus of the story to be the character struggle against his impairment&lt;/strong&gt;. It's not a drama. The girl will share the plot with another main characters and I don't want to develop her in such a deeply way, because of the book size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I think it's easy to fall into clichés and I don't want that&lt;/strong&gt; also. I want her to a believable character who is facing a really complicated situation with others that can help her in the same way they would help a 12yo normal child but, of course, will underestimate her because of the problem she has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is, &lt;strong&gt;did anybody work with such characters? How you managed to escape the cliché problem?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;btw, just tell me by the comments if you think this question does not fit here, and I'll delete it&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="3965" LastEditDate="2013-08-05T19:21:54.373" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T09:51:54.720" Title="How to make a intellectually disabled character believable?" Tags="|creative-writing|character-development|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8569" CreationDate="2013-08-05T12:52:30.440" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the best example of creating the POV of a developmentally disabled main character comes from the first part of Faulkner's &lt;em&gt;The Sound and the Fury&lt;/em&gt;. One big issue there, though, is that it is really, really hard reading. The character (this bit is portrayed in first person) doesn't have a great sense of how to tell narrative and as such the story jumps around all over the place and sometimes key details are left out. You pretty much have to read that part a few times over to make much sense of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, if you want to have a main character with Down's Syndrome, my advice is to do research on the subject. My guess is that you don't have a relative with it, so that's why you're asking. There are a great many pitfalls with portraying the developmentally disabled, not the least of which is presenting them as a modern-day noble savage (this is more or less exactly what &lt;em&gt;Forrest Gump&lt;/em&gt; is). As with all of your other characters, you need to create someone with their own goals, their own demeanor, and their own strengths and weaknesses, and none of those attributes should be or include &quot;Down's Syndrome&quot;. Should this influence all of that other stuff? Sure. But a good, fleshed-out character is more than a &quot;person with Down's&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T12:52:30.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8462" CreationDate="2013-08-05T13:02:32.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, here's the deal: all fiction, even speculative SF, is at its root about character. It's not abnormal to not see any good conflict before you populate a world. So... I say populate it. Create a protagonist, make up a cool backstory for them, think of someone who might be diametrically opposed to this person and create them, and you might just be on your way from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, there is a large subgenre of SF which deals with dystopic futures (side note: I never liked that phrase, as the original &lt;em&gt;Utopia&lt;/em&gt; as in the book by Thomas More is itself a dystopia) which are based largely on taking a current cultural meme - let's say, software piracy - and taking it to its logical conclusion. In &lt;strong&gt;that&lt;/strong&gt; kind of writing the conflict seems to just emanate from the milieu. If that's what you're interested in creating, then yeah, there is probably a deeper issue with your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is your issue, one thing you might try is picking up a copy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://glyphpress.com/shock/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Shock&lt;/a&gt; and playing it against yourself. It's sort of &quot;made&quot; to be a 3 player game but with a little creativity you can take on all 3 player characters yourself. Using a story-game as an idea-making exercise is kind of starting to become a thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T13:02:32.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8462" CreationDate="2013-08-05T14:42:55.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PROGRES.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there still anything left to achieve? If there is, why isn't this achieved yet? What obstacles are to be overcome? How do you overcome them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe... the utopia deemed progress is the road to ruining the utopia? In that case you have a wonderful conflict: Someone decides to &quot;improve upon the paradise&quot;. Following the premises of the utopia, this backfires horribly. We must deal with the fallout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe everything that was to be achieved has been achieved? Wouldn't that make for a bitter victory? Wouldn't you hold a grudge for being shoehorned into the role of custodian of the museum of past glory? Nothing you do can surpass your ancestors. Problems deemed unsolvable were proven unsolvable and will remain unsolved forever. It's a sad world to live in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe the descendants are even wiser. Maybe they came to a brilliant conclusion about how to avoid these caveats. In that case presenting that will make for an awesome story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you want something more down-to-the-ground, pick any of hundreds standard conflicts of our days, the ones that provide food for most heart-wrenching dramas, and subvert them in resolving them with a snap of your fingers, using the miracles of your world. Yay, that was easy!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T14:42:55.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8569" CreationDate="2013-08-05T15:08:14.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the easy answer is: Do some research. See if you can find some non-fiction accounts of the treatment or behavior of mentally handicapped people. In this Internet age, I suspect that with a little searching you could find some articles on line where parents or other care-givers talk about living with a mentally handicapped person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T15:08:14.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8558" CreationDate="2013-08-05T15:26:59.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mostly write non-fiction, I'm struggling through my first fiction story now, but I read an article by the well-known Sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov once where he said that his general approach is to come up with things in this order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;general idea&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ending&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;beginning&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;figure out how to get from the beginning to the end&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes sense to me. Usually the ending is closely tied to the point of any story. If you don't know where you're going, how will you get there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T15:26:59.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8569" CreationDate="2013-08-05T17:54:10.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking in more generic terms, we can always resort to the art of rhetoric and, particularly, to the use of the three main rhetorical styles of Logos, Pathos and Ethos to create solid, believable characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, they are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logos represents the logic. In this rethorical style, one can use logic to build a character. That is, either the character is a logic person or the narrative itself uses logic and deductions to directly or indirectly explain a character. I personally think this suits better in scientific or descriptive stories or articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ethos represents the character's beliefs. Good characters can be built when they adhere to their beliefs. That is, the character's actions throughout the story must be in accord to their ethos, or to what they believe. Please note that his beliefs don't need to be true or false or even right or wrong. What is important here is that the character has his beliefs and that he acts in accord to his beliefs and personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pathos represents the emotions. Characters that are built using pathos are those to whom we feel empathy, or disdain, or contempt. Whatever the case, we feel for such kind of characters. We feel pity for suffering characters, or anger for evil ones. We celebrate the successes or achievements of hard-working characters, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, I feel that a mix of Ethos and Pathos may be used to build a strong and believable character that suffers with down syndrome. It could be a bit cliche if the character only had an emotional appeal. It could even look &quot;pushy&quot; if someone's disability were exploited in such a way. But the ethos part, that is, the character's personality and his actions may contribute to his background. For example: instead of feel pity for him, you may lead the readers to celebrate his conquers. This is just an example...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about it in various sites and sources. In a quick search, I see these two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://courses.durhamtech.edu/perkins/aris.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A General Summary of Aristotle's Appeals&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Good old Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I strongly advice you to run further searches in this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3965" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T17:54:10.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8558" CreationDate="2013-08-05T18:32:03.840" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's one thing that is present in most good stories. It's almost a basic ruleset to help us create interesting stories. It is the Monomyth, also known as &quot;The Hero's Journey&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hero's journey is described in 12 steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The common ordinary world of our hero.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Our hero receives a call to an adventure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He may refuse the call, at first.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The meeting with a mentor, which encourages the hero to accept the call to adventure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The hero accepts his calling and crosses the threshold. He leaves his ordinary world and journeys to somewhere else, to the adventure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The hero meets new allies. He is tested for the first times as he also meets some foes or enemies or adversities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He approaches his objective, his destination. The tension increases.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The hero has his greatest challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He conquers the reward, the elixir.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With the reward, the heroe starts his journey back to his original ordinary world.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He faces secondary plots and challenges and, possibly, solves them. Maybe with his new weapon or knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The hero returns to his world. He not only brings the item, the reward, the knowledge but he is also changed. He may use the item to benefit others.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take a close look, many great stories follow this path one way or another (The Matrix, Lord of the Rings and many others)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, if you have one idea but don't know where to start. Maybe you may start by following this path. Maybe the story may start before the scene or idea you first thought of. Maybe the journey is the steps or the path your hero walks in order to put the idea into reality. His challenges may be persons or entities that oppose the idea. The greatest challenge may be a final decisive commitment to the idea. The reward is the idea itself and its coming into reality. After that, he may work on spreading the idea while still facing minor secondary threats. In the end the world benefits from the idea, but he is also changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ending may also place the changed hero at the beginning of a new path or adventure. A sequel, maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3965" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T18:32:03.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8577" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8584" CreationDate="2013-08-06T04:45:22.053" Score="9" ViewCount="2300" Body="&lt;p&gt;Setting aside the specifics of my particular plot for a moment, I have need of plot inspiration: how do I set up an escape from a death trap that seems plausible after the fact, and not too contrived?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm stuck figuring out the details of such a scene in my story. It's an adventure story, similar in theme to indiana jones or the lara croft series: adventurers exploring a temple, baddies, spells and actual magic, a treasure to be reclaimed, etc. I'm dealing with death traps: the characters are to be sacrificed at dawn in a blood ritual, and they need to discover a way to escape right before the spell is cast. How do I have protagonists escape a death trap? What tropes or mechanics are used to get the heroes out of immediate danger in a way that forces the big baddie to confront them directly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I considered having them break out of their shackles, but then the villain was inept and this is no good; also, way wait until the ritual to escape? I considered having one of the minions screw up and give the heroes a lucky break, but that's too ... easy. I figured maybe they look around the chamber and see a switch or a trap or something they can interact with, but how could they do so if the villain has them bound? I don't want them to be simply lucky -- it should take both cunning, perception, and luck -- and I want them to have only a brief moment of escape before being forced to face the main antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I certainly want the villain to seem competent, not inept and arrogant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this question is too specific or not on-topic for this QA site, I apologize; I'm going off this post for justification: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136/is-a-help-me-generate-plot-ideas-or-similar-question-on-topic&quot;&gt;Is a &amp;quot;Help me generate plot ideas?&amp;quot; or similar question on topic?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3666" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:03.470" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T05:44:37.563" Title="Plot devices for the climax of an adventure story" Tags="|plot|fantasy|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8578" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-06T05:21:30.207" Score="6" ViewCount="1059" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found Stymie magazine, but are there any other magazines devoted primarily to sports themed fiction writing? I think my story stands on its own as it is more about the relationship between the various characters than the actual sport, but it takes place entirely in a sporting context so those with an interest in sport may find it more entertaining. &#xA;If not, are there any other magazines, etc. that would publish sports fiction even if they are not a sports themed publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5659" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T21:25:17.870" Title="Where could I get a sports fiction short story published?" Tags="|short-story|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8577" CreationDate="2013-08-06T07:13:18.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I guess it depends very much on the death trap. You've already established why they need to remain alive this long, since they are a major part of the ritual, so that is a good start. I think you really just need to think of every way of escaping, eliminate the ridiculous and work with what's left. Maybe watch a few episodes of MacGuyver. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's more than one of them then maybe one can feign injury, meaning the antagonist has to intervene to keep them alive but exposes themselves in the process. This could lead to a conflict around a bloody altar with a time component because the sacrifice has to be made at the right time. The time can work better if something bad happens (like the temple they are in collapses for instance) if the spell is not cast as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5659" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T07:13:18.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8580" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8589" CreationDate="2013-08-06T11:07:32.320" Score="4" ViewCount="83" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a book review as part of my English Holiday Homework. The book (or rather, prolegomenon) that I'm reviewing is &lt;em&gt;Battle of the Books&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;em&gt;Jonathan Swift&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to obvious reasons for my inability to obtain a hard-copy of the book, I defaulted to getting a copy from the internet. I got a couple of sources, including a couple on WikiSource and &lt;a href=&quot;http://pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/digi482.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this PDF&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what should I put in the 'publisher' field in my book review ( we have to stick to a strict template :/ ):-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;WikiSource&quot; and a link? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google for a publisher that once published the book (though it's books aren't the book I'm using)? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;N/A&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I've added an answer on what I think should be put in the field (&quot;WikiSource&quot;). But if anyone can provide reasons for another answer, please add that too :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5661" LastEditorUserId="5661" LastEditDate="2013-08-11T08:32:13.300" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T08:32:13.300" Title="Publisher field in Book Review when the book is obtained for free from the internet" Tags="|style|publishing|reviews|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8581" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9620" CreationDate="2013-08-06T12:16:01.900" Score="3" ViewCount="490" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hello guys I'm sending a prospective email to a venue, regarding an event that I want to organise. But I'm unsure of my approach in firstly asking the question (it sounds out of place), and just the general tone of the email. The email is as follows:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To Whom It May Concern,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My name is _________________ and I'm contacting you on behalf of [brand], a microblogging platform and social networking website which allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Through brand exclusivity, discounts and freebies, we aim to engage our target market and attract them to our e-commerce store, and we feel your venue is perfectly aligned geographically and functionally to fulfil this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With this in mind, are there any renting vacancies available in June 2014? If so, could we please speak to a representative to submit our full business proposal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thank you for your time. I look forward to your prompt and favourable reply. If you have any questions regarding this enquiry please contact me at _____________ or by email at contact@example.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yours Faithfully,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Andrew&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5662" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-08-13T18:09:32.020" LastActivityDate="2019-08-13T18:09:32.020" Title="Tone and directness in email" Tags="|email|tone|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4124" CreationDate="2013-08-06T12:18:57.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a fellow freelance writer I can recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrike.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wrike&lt;/a&gt;. Initially I used it to set myself daily goals – like, to write 5000 words a day or to finalize a chapter by the end of the week. This simple app basically saved me from my worst enemy – procrastination.  Now, there’s no place for putting things aside today and promising myself to catch up tomorrow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I can say that the last piece I wrote took approx. 1,5 less time to finish than the one that I wrote before adapting Wrike. It also allows editing texts online. So, I made my editor a “collaborator” and now she reviews my texts right in Wrike and I can react to her comments instantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The version that I’m currently using is free, but I’m actually considering an upgrade to the paid one ‘cause there are some great features in it like Gantt chart that should be just great for visualizing my work progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5640" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T12:18:57.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2013-08-06T13:53:42.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried other mediums beside writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel your &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; is good, but your &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; is bad, maybe you should try to express yourself differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making movies, drawing  graphic novels, building video games are all different ways to tell your story. You could even try storytelling, which is much less formal than writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, all of those still require a lot of work, but they might be more suited to your personnality and existing skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="362" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T13:53:42.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8577" CreationDate="2013-08-06T14:28:11.230" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I see why you’re stuck.  Potentially so many ways to escape exist it feels paralyzing, but each idea feels weak.  That is, if you think of this problem purely as a plot exorcise.  I find that when plot traps me, story and character often show the way.  Because this escape is the climax, you’re aware of the need for a quality escape.  Perhaps it would be better to think in terms of a meaningful escape.  Meaningful to character and story, maybe even to theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you can deconstruct the problem to a solution from two directions - the protagonist and the antagonist.  Firstly, while I understand that you don’t what the villain to appear stupid, recognize that he/she will have to make a mistake.  Think about it, if the baddies did everything just right, escape would be impossible.  The mistake the antagonist makes reveals his/her character.  The mistake serving as a symbol demonstrating the nature of the antagonist.  This makes the plot point speak to character and story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, because this is your story’s climax, how the protagonist secures his/her escape must speak to character as well.  What kind of person is your hero?  Since this is an action story, I assume a person of action, but what drives that?  Why is the protagonist a person of action?  Or what type of person of action?  Restless, impatient, angry, desperate?  Ultimately the protagonist’s means of escape speaks to strength, while the antagonist’s error speaks to weakness.  The contrast of the two has the potential to reveal theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this example.  I just watched the movie “Pitch Dark.”  Early on, the anti-hero Riddick is shackled behind his back to a vertical support beam.  He notices the beam has been severed about a foot over his head.  He dislocates both of his shoulders so he can swing his arms up behind him and through the opening in the beam to secure his release.  This escape works well as plot because it meaningfully demonstrates something about Riddick’s character (they’re introducing Riddick at this point).  Specifically, Riddick is a badass with iron will.  Similarly, the mistake of securing him to the post (not a big mistake after all, most people won’t dislocate their shoulders) illustrates the antagonist’s sloppiness, later indirectly revealed as a result of his morphine addiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So use your character’s character to show you how the hero should escape and how the villain should mess up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1904" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T14:28:11.230" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8577" CreationDate="2013-08-06T18:29:58.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Design the trap with the character in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the character has a flaw or limitation.  Early in the story, demonstrate this flaw or limitation in a small way that does not call attention to itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then: Brainstorm the ways that the character might use this flaw or limitation as a tool, or might compensate for it, or might overcome it. Find a surprising twist on the flaw or limitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to list as many twists as you can, without regard for their quality, without regard to their use against any particular trap. Just list a whole lot of them as fast as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then: Pick the twist that is the most fun or most surprising, and design the trap so that it can be defeated only by that surprising twist. The villain, of course, has overlooked this quirk of the trap. It might be fun if the &lt;em&gt;villain&lt;/em&gt; designed the trap with the character in mind, but overlooked the possibility of the twist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T18:29:58.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8586" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8588" CreationDate="2013-08-06T19:04:57.070" Score="2" ViewCount="428" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently purchased a book from Amazon, and I was curious as to when it was printed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked at the copyright page, which looks like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RfKJ5.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest year number shown in this page is 1991, where it says &quot;Reprinted in Penguin Books 1991&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I deduce that the book was printed in 1991? I would consider that quite incredible; that would mean that the book was printed, put in a warehouse (or several warehouses) for &lt;strong&gt;22 years&lt;/strong&gt;, and only then sold to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could that be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I couldn't find a year number anywhere else in the book.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5666" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T10:00:17.917" Title="Figuring out when a book was printed" Tags="|publishing|book|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-08-06T21:53:16.697" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8587" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8591" CreationDate="2013-08-06T19:05:42.903" Score="3" ViewCount="1391" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just published my first &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00E3J3X58&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;short story&lt;/a&gt; at Amazon. Although many people downloaded it while in its free promotion days, no one has purchased it yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People have praised the cover (apparently I design better than I write), so I thought maybe the summary is not compelling enough:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saki travels to Patong Beach, Thailand with the objective of getting rid of a life-long affliction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking of changing it into something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saki travels to Patong Beach, Thailand to have a surgery done. One that could put an end to her life-long affliction, and finally give her the change to life a normal life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm not very sure about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to write an effective summary for a story? One that would hook the reader immediately?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited version of the summary:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saki travels to Patong Beach, Thailand to have a surgery done. One&#xA;  that could put an end to her life-long affliction, and finally give&#xA;  her the chance to live a normal life. But is her problem merely&#xA;  physical? Or is rather a condition more related to her soul?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(By the way, here's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docdroid.net/2yih/-sakis-sixth-finger.doc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full story&lt;/a&gt; via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docdroid.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Docdroid&lt;/a&gt;. There are a few typos, but I corrected them in the final version).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-24T16:10:55.450" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T16:10:55.450" Title="Writing an effective summary for a story" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8586" CreationDate="2013-08-06T19:56:54.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The FSC (the tree logo on the left) was established in 1993, and the Mix label was developed in &lt;strike&gt;1994&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;strong&gt;2004&lt;/strong&gt;, so that physical copy had to have been printed some time after that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has a website (greenpenguin.co.uk), so you could research when the website was launched. Could be 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, yes, it's possible that any given physical copy has been kicking around for two decades. It had a run of so many, some were sold, some were returned to the publisher, and the publisher warehoused them. Your ability to purchase it now is called &quot;long tail retailing.&quot; (It describes a graph with a high peak at the beginning, tapering out to a long but low &quot;tail&quot; of small steady sales.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-08-09T10:00:17.917" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T10:00:17.917" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8580" CreationDate="2013-08-07T02:41:34.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The author didn't put it up for free; the works were documented by the WikiSource Project after they came into the public domain (possibly from an earlier printed book). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that's self-publishing. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/publishing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dictionary.com&lt;/a&gt;, the definition of a publisher is ‘a person or company whose business is the publishing of books, periodicals, engravings, computer software, etc.’. Sounds like &quot;WikiSource&quot; is the right answer here...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5661" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T02:41:34.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8577" CreationDate="2013-08-07T04:59:14.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several possibilities come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the trapped characters unknowingly has a mechanism to provide escape. E.g., this might be an amulet containing magic Rusting Water (which when applied to the shackles frees the prisoners). If the trapped character did not know about this, the villain probably would also be unaware. Under stress the character puts various clues together and recognizes the means of escape.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A colleague of the villain betrays the villain. This betrayal might be motivated by secret affection for one of the prisoners, by a desire for revenge, by a loss of trust that the villain will treat colleagues well after gaining the benefit from the prisoners' deaths. This betrayal might only give the prisoners a chance but not a guaranteed escape (perhaps the colleague felt ambivalent or wanted the potential means of escape to be undetectable and/or untraceable to avoid risk of the villain discovering the betrayal). E.g., the traitor might spit on a character and give some cryptic hint about how to use it (e.g., the spittle — which might be slightly oddly colored — combined with two ingredients that the characters happen to have might enable the casting of an unlocking spell).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The spell requires unbound victims and automatically unbinds them as part of its operation. (The villain might have considered the sedation of victims an unimportant detail — or not known about such being part of the traditional ritual — and wished the victims to be conscious for their final defeat.) To add an element of cunning, perhaps one of the prisoners suspects the spell undoes certain types of bindings — e.g., manacles being unknown to that culture — and convinces the jailers to change the bindings (e.g., intentionally being caught trying to pick a lock so the bindings are changed from manacles to ropes).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Luck intervenes. E.g., if the spell of sacrifice generates bolts of electricity, perhaps one heats up a link in a chain and causes the bound character to simultaneously convulse with extraordinary strength that breaks the chain. Perhaps an element of perception/cunning (and daring) might be added by requiring the character to recognize the &lt;strong&gt;possibility&lt;/strong&gt; that such might occur if the chain is placed in a particular location at a particular time. Perhaps the character must convince one of the others to act, possibly before the bolts of electricity appear (requiring the character to recognize the ritual and to know the sequence of events).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A supernatural power intervenes. E.g., a spirit being might appear with a seemingly useless gift — perhaps coming from limitations of interference or a sense of humor. (A cup of Rusting Water could be ironic if the character given the gift had earlier made a statement like &quot;By the Spirit of Zah, I would give my right eye for a cup of water.&quot; The character might then think &quot;Now that I am about to die you give me a drink?!&quot;) The cunning/perception would be involved in recognizing the use of the gift.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A character realizes that all inanimate matter within the sacrificial area will be destroyed and no one killed (leaving them unshackled and alive but naked) if one of the group is killed within the area before the ritual is completed. If the victims of the ritual were traditionally volunteers or sedated, this aspect might not be revealed in descriptions but only recognized by an understanding of the rules of the magic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A friend of the characters or an enemy of intruders (or the villain) intervenes. This intervention might only indirectly provide a means of escape (e.g., if the person with the keys to the shackles is killed and falls close enough to the prisoners that the keys can be retrieved with some effort while the fighting continues). An element of cunning/perception might be added in the effort to retrieve the keys. E.g., if bursts of flame periodically come from holes in the Circle of Death and the key-holder happened to land on such a hole but to generate a burst strong enough to lift the body so that it can be pulled closer [perhaps a belt is caught in the Circle] other holes need to be plugged. Even the arrival of the others might be a result of a character's cleverness (e.g., leaving a clue about the villain's intention and location, knowing that they would not be in the area when the angry natives arrived if things went as planned).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were willing to forgo the immediate confrontation of the villain, two other possibilities come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The trap has a secret escape mechanism provided by the designer for the designer's own safety (or the safety of a political leader). This would not be documented in any priestly literature and might not be obvious to anyone. E.g., if a trapdoor could be opened by pressing a sequence of stones, one character might be so interested in interpreting the markings at the location — &quot;Professor, we are about to die and you are still trying to read glyphs!&quot; — as to notice a symbol out of place, improperly oriented, or otherwise not quite right. (After sliding down the escape shoot the characters would then have more opportunity to unshackle themselves.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The spell of sacrifice actually teleports the victims to the actual death chamber (perhaps separated because its operation is so dangerous that the spell caster would be injured otherwise) but the death chamber is not in working order. (The remains of a previous sacrifice might facilitate loosing the bonds and a means of leaving the death chamber might be found.) Perhaps an element of cunning/perception might be added by having a character recognize that the actual death chamber is elsewhere and probably no longer functional (perhaps a previous attempt at the ritual had failed or the failure of the actual death chamber contributed to the collapse of the previous users' culture) and prepares the others for the transfer (e.g., telling them to take a deep breath and hold it since the death chamber is under water, perhaps translating some glyphs as &quot;send you to Yugarei [the goddess of water and death]&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8584&quot;&gt;Tom's answer&lt;/a&gt; states, the mechanism of escape should reflect the nature of the characters (both heroes and villains), but perhaps the above examples might stir some helpful creativity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T04:59:14.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8587" CreationDate="2013-08-07T08:47:30.993" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a saying in Brazil -- &quot;&lt;em&gt;De graça, até injeção na testa&lt;/em&gt;&quot; / &quot;&lt;em&gt;For free, even a shot (injection) in forehead&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. That's to say, it's quite normal to have a lot of more downloads of your free book, than your payed one (even if both are the same). Remember the eBooks &quot;offer&quot; is really higher than the &quot;market&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, I think there's something is missing in your summary, probably the mystery of your story, the conflict. When I read it, I already get everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Saki goes to a beach, undergoes a surgery, gets cured, end of story.&lt;/strong&gt; Why should I buy your story if I already know everything that happens in it only by reading the summary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good summary must leave a -- &lt;em&gt;I want to know what is happening&lt;/em&gt; -- feeling in the reader/buyer. If it fails to raise your reader's attention, it won't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saki travels to Patong Beach, Thailand to have a surgery done. She was hoping to finally put an end to her life-long affliction, but things are never so easy as we thing they should be. What's is the deal with Mark? What is really happening in the hospital? Will she be able to uncover the truth before it's too late? Sometimes the cure can kill you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I don't know your story. I just invented Mark, something mysterious about the hospital to raise the reader's attention. You just need to change that eye catching phrases to something that fits your plot but, to do a good summary, you must create expectation and a desire to buy the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T08:47:30.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8587" CreationDate="2013-08-07T15:06:29.390" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are confusing three things: summary, teaser and spoiler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on the teaser. That is what you must have to entice readers. Tell them a few key things about your story and then holdback! That will excite potential readers. They must want to read the rest of your story to find out. And they will buy it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you present a summary and spolier (as you do above), you reveal the storyline and all the twists and turns that make the plot. Why would any one want to buy 20 pages when they got the gist of it in half a page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, a teaser will sell your story. Make it short (one paragraph) and snappy. Read it loudly to yourself. If it sounds exciting, it probably is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="5208" LastEditDate="2013-08-07T22:49:46.973" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T22:49:46.973" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8577" CreationDate="2013-08-07T16:33:04.250" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not knowing the mechanics of the trap itself, I would suggest looking at some real-life daring escapes and escapades, especially some of the head-scratchers. Look at some of the turn-of-the-century magicians (like Houdini) and some of their feats. Prison breaks (from actual prisons or war camps), jail breaks, cop car escapes... there are many in real life that had nothing to do with the ineptness of one side, instead luck and determination being the pros of the escapee. The McGuyver suggestion is a decent start, making something out of something else unrelated, but there are other ways. You can use a Con (Hero escapes by intellectually defeating a guard), a feint (play dead and overpower), a distraction (set something on fire, if plausible), or the Deus Ex Machina route (something extraordinary happens, and the Hero takes advantage of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Dillinger once escaped jail with soap crafted to resemble a gun, taking a guard hostage until he had access to a real gun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;James Earl Ray (MLK's killer) had outside help to help him scale the wall of his prison. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edmon Dantes (Count of Monte Cristo) tunneled his way out of Castile d'If, which took him 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sir Walter Reileigh made several escape attempts from the infamous Tower of London, including dressing himself up as a woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Mexican Rally Runs' is a term for when Mexicans try to cross the border into America by stampeding it in the hundreds, guarenteeing that most will succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Odysseus escaped an island with his crew by blinding the Cyclops that was threatening to eat them, taunting him all the while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Patricia Hurst, kidnapped by an extremist group in the 70's, was forced to rob a bank. She avoided prosecution by saying that, despite being seen aiding the robbers, she was forced under duress to rob the bank, and was told that her gun was unloaded (which, in fact, it was loaded).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harry Houdini regularly escaped straight-jackets and chains because he could dislocate his shoulders, and break out of 'inescapable' boxes by keeping a set of lockpicks secreted upon himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Great Escape is actually based off a real WWII prisoner-of-war camp escape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5670" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T16:33:04.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8594" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-07T22:47:44.167" Score="6" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted an entry to a contest that requires the work not be published. I met that criterion. I have substantially rewritten the article - it's now six pages instead of two. Basically expanded a short work to a full chapter for a book. The contest announcements are in October. My question is, are the two works considered different or are the same since they're on the same basic topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5672" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-08-08T02:51:32.753" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T00:42:12.913" Title="Can an expanded version of an article be considered an unpublished work?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7585" CreationDate="2013-08-08T15:15:10.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing isn't generally a place where you can live by hard and fast rules or quick and dirty little tricks; you generally have to go by feel, and the only way to really get a good, strong feel of what works is just to write a lot. That being said, you're sort of asking here about how to describe things, and there kind of &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a trick to this in Western literature at the very least: when you describe a room or a landscape or whatever, pick out a few little details - 3 to 5 is all you usually need - and mention them in passing. If there's something that is going to actually be used in the scene, make sure that's one of the 3-5 things. If you really want to linger on it, you can describe it in terms of the same 3-5 aspects, but bear in mind that this is also revealing extra information about the importance of this item to the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I first saw this &quot;trick&quot; in a letter from Chekhov to a fellow writer, but I know that Stephen King also invoked it in his book &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T15:15:10.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8603" CreationDate="2013-08-08T22:35:01.387" Score="5" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often come across stories where the author has described a particular scene or action of a character in minute details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. If a character has to open a door, the description is about how the character feels about going to the door, then the character going to the door, putting the key in the lock, turning the knob, pushing the door and finally stepping inside the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand intense detailing is necessary if it adds to the story (such as the above in a suspense or a thriller).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is more about the general details (which are described at great length by the author). In many cases, it appears to me that the author is insulting my level of intelligence (i.e. don't treat readers as dumb  or bore them to death).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question: How does one balance the need for details versus telling a good story?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I am asking the above question in the context of a short story (where words are premium) but it can easily apply to a novella or novel. In the latter cases, it often occurs to me that the author is padding words to increase the length of the story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T13:39:36.523" Title="Level of description in a story" Tags="|style|short-story|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8596" CreationDate="2013-08-09T00:44:46.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a novel you should just write what comes naturally to you. Me, I like to read what others may consider excessive description, and that's the way that I naturally write. This becomes very challenging for short stories though; it is very difficult not to compromise on either plot or description, since description often does not materially advance the plot. For me this occurs when trying to write to a word limit of less than about 7K words, however most short story publishers are looking for more around the 4-5K range which is even tougher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, many short stories focus on the evolution of a character. By using description to unveil aspects of the character it also has the effect of advancing the plot. I guess what I'm saying is, not all stories can be told as short stories (depending on the length of &quot;short&quot;) and forcing them usually results in a compromise. For the right story though, both description and plot can work together without either one suffering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5659" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T00:44:46.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8596" CreationDate="2013-08-09T00:49:13.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Treat details like Chekhov's Gun. They should only be there if they serve a purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the purpose is to create atmosphere, explain the setting to the reader for the first time, place a macguffin on a shelf (JK Rowling did this in &lt;em&gt;Order of the Phoenix&lt;/em&gt; when she casually listed a large ugly locket as one of the things in an enchanted cabinet, and it turned out to be a freakin' Horcrux in &lt;em&gt;Deathly Hallows&lt;/em&gt;), or describe a character, then go right ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're pouring on detail to prove that you did background research, or because you have a door fetish, then save the excess to your slush file to enjoy on your own time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T00:49:13.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8596" CreationDate="2013-08-09T07:22:49.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livingapex.com/10-tactics-in-minimalist-writing-on-minimalism/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10 Tactics in Minimalist Writing&lt;/a&gt;. It's a small text and worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately there's no easy answer for you. It's related to writing style and weight of a scene even if, most of the time, &lt;strong&gt;you should avoid unnecessary information&lt;/strong&gt;. &quot;&lt;em&gt;Unnecessary&lt;/em&gt;&quot; is dubious word that may change a lot depending on who sees the same information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will be cases when you will want to use a lot of details to create tension, suspense, or just to make it clear that something or somebody is important. That's ok, but if giving too much details becomes a constant, you will move the reader's focus from the plot to the details. That's more or less what I felt when I read &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Name_of_the_Rose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Name of the Rosa&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resuming, &lt;strong&gt;it's not necessary to give a lot of details to tell a good story&lt;/strong&gt;, but how much detail should be given is delimited by author's expertize and style, along with specific demands of scenes and characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livingapex.com/10-tactics-in-minimalist-writing-on-minimalism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10 Tactics in Minimalist Writing resume&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid wordy sentences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refrain from long words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend your time on quality writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Balance science and art&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eliminate background noise&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slash and burn the fluff&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use sensory words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practice with minimal structure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Edit diligently&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop confidence in minimalist writing:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="5114" LastEditDate="2013-08-09T10:15:03.880" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T10:15:03.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8596" CreationDate="2013-08-09T07:34:37.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The trick is being able to tell enough of the details so that the reader can get an accurate picture of the scene, with few enough details so that they don't get bogged down, and not so little that they don't know what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a delicate balance. I find that treating it like &quot;Bullet Time&quot; in the Matrix helps me. If it's something that would normally be over in the blink of an eye, but I want to make it a big thing, I put it into Bullet Time in my mind's eye, and write it like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T07:34:37.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8596" CreationDate="2013-08-09T10:22:41.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess much of this is down to style, but I like to drop descriptions in among the action to spread them out and stop them bogging down the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Joanna had red hair, shinning like copper in the sun. It was thick and full and...&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;Joanna ran a hand through her thick copper hair, cocking an eyebrow at me.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Like I said, a matter of individual style, but I feel that imbedding the description in the action keeps the story flowing. It's said that when you stop to describe something the whole story stops to wait for you, this way the story can flow unabated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T10:22:41.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8596" CreationDate="2013-08-09T13:31:00.297" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of pointers I've picked up (apologies if one of them is pulled from another post I wrote):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3-5 good descriptors are way better than 10 mediocre ones.&lt;/strong&gt; If you're describing an employee breakroom, for instance, you might want to mention the stale glow of the flourescent lights, the constant smell of microwaved burrito, and the mismatched carpeting. And that's it. Does it have cupboards as well? Don't worry, your audience will draw them in themselves. Or they'll draw in their own accoutrements based on what they think a breakroom looks like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, this is reflected in Stephen King's book &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt; as well as correspondence Chekhov sent to another writer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lingering on any one item for a long period of time tells the audience as much about the person doing the describing as the description itself.&lt;/strong&gt; You don't even have to call a woman &quot;pretty&quot;, for instance, if your main character (via first person or third person limited) notices her hair or her eyes. You don't even need to be particularly poetic in this case, although if you describe them in unflattering terms the audience will think the POV notices her because she's unattractive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same applies to an object in the room. I mean, if you spend 8 paragraphs describing a wall lamp, the audience won't necessarily think your character is in love with the wall lamp, but they will get the strong idea that this is a very, very important wall lamp. If that lamp then has no bearing on the story at all, the audience will feel cheated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Invoke more senses than sight.&lt;/strong&gt; Our primary sense is sight, of course, but it's far from our only sense and it's my experience that your readers will experience much more verisimilitude if you engage sound and (especially) taste (which often invokes some very basic, animalistic responses from humans), smell (likewise), and feel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dropping descriptive bits in later on in a scene than the beginning is a good thing to try, but it means something as well.&lt;/strong&gt; Primarily it means that for the first time in the scene your character noticed some aspect of the room or a character. Sometimes this works well; for instance, if the light catches your POV character's hair in a certain way, this would work really well. I don't know that it just works to say &quot;she ran her hand through her soft auburn hair&quot; though.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try different things out in your drafts.&lt;/strong&gt; If you're writing something that's of any length greater than a short story, you're going to probably have to go back and rewrite a few times just for clarity and consistency. For that matter, if you're writing a short story you want to eventually have published, you're expected to re-write it into near-perfection. You may as well try something out (hey, would it kill the scene if I mention that the whole factory smells of rotting fish?) and then leave it for yourself to go back in and figure out later. It's my experience that my judgment of something right after I've written it can be flawed. Sometimes I'll think something is iffy but I'll leave it in and in a later go-around I find that it actually worked really well. Other times... well, that's what rewriting is for.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are no real wrong answers here.&lt;/strong&gt; There's just what works for you and what doesn't. If you intend for your work to be published to a larger audience I would entreat you to be very critical in your rewrites, but ultimately it's your judgment. I am sure that I've read people break any if not all of the &quot;rules&quot; I noted above and write effectively in spite of that (or perhaps because they were breaking the tropes). Just try stuff, see what fits, and eventually you'll have a good feel for this sort of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T13:31:00.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8596" CreationDate="2013-08-09T13:39:36.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the general rule should be, Will the reader care?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard a speech once by an American who was a reporter in Nazi Germany during World War 2. When I saw the advertisement for his lecture I thought that sounded like it might be very interesting: someone who was there, in the midst of the enemy camp, while it all was happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He started off talking about the first time he saw Hitler speak. He said how there were a number of Western reporters in the hall. They had been placed off to the side of the podium. Well, not really beside the podium, but they weren't in front of the podium like most of the audience. They were off at an angle. Maybe a 45 degree angle from the podium. ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He went on to describe the angle and positioning of the reporters for ten or fifteen minutes. I'm sure I am not alone in saying, I didn't care. I wanted to hear what he saw of Nazi Germany that maybe I wouldn't find in an ordinary history book, not the arrangement of seats in a lecture hall. But the man was just a maze of details. If these details had led somewhere, if they had supported some important point, that would be different. But they didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the other extreme, I've read books where the descriptions were too sparse and the story was sterile. If you just say, &quot;George entered the room. It was dark. He felt scared&quot; ... well that's boring. But if you say, &quot;The room was pitch black. George carefully felt his way through the darkness. He felt that irrational fear of the dark that humans have experienced since the dawn of recorded history ... but not so irrational now. For somewhere in this room it might be lurking ...&quot; etc., maybe those couple of sentences I threw together aren't all that effective but my point is, if you describe the darkness and his fear you can draw the reader in and help them to see the scene and share his feelings. Too short a description and the reader just says, &quot;Oh, too bad for him. Whatever.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too sparse a description can also make the scene difficult to understand. As you're writing the story you normally have a picture of the scene in your mind. Perhaps in your mental picture Sally is standing by the window and Allen is standing by the door. Is this something you should mention? If what happens in the scene is mostly that Sally and Allen talk, maybe not. But if a crucial element of the scene is that Sally sees something out the window that Allen does not, or that Allen tries to jump out the window but Sally is able to block him, then such a detail may help the reader to picture the scene the same way you do and understand it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T13:39:36.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8604" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8605" CreationDate="2013-08-09T23:01:49.723" Score="3" ViewCount="234" Body="&lt;p&gt;So my book starts in the middle of action, and ends on a cliff hanger. It then goes back a week in time, and builds the story from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eg, in the start, the heroine is forced to free a demon, who walks to her, as if he is going to kill her. And then, the story moves back a week, and shows how she got kidnapped and forced to be on the run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is: When I come back to the scene where she frees the demon, I'm not sure how to make a smooth transition. At the moment, I just start a new scene that continues from the introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, the jumps looks very sudden to me, &amp;amp; I'm worried the readers won't make the connection that this scene is actually after the very first scene. I'm thinking of a few ways to get around this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat the very first scene - Unnecessary padding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give a quick summary of first scene - may look like an info dump&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anything else?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T00:15:55.913" Title="How to show that the current scene is a continuation of an earlier one?" Tags="|scene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8604" CreationDate="2013-08-10T00:15:55.913" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;End the first scene with some marker that the readers will remember. A vivid sensory detail, maybe. Or an emotional reaction. A statement or quip. Something that clearly marks the situation as the first scene ends. For example, notice something peculiar about the demon's hands, something the character notices and reacts to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you pick up again, reconnect with that marker, quickly establish the scene, and continue. For example, make a new comment about about the demon's hands, then continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick up any three bestsellers, especially ones that rotate through different viewpoints, to see how they pick up the next scene after a cliffhanger. Notice how they mark the cliffhanger, and how they connect back to it when they continue the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's good that you're noticing the challenge. The key is that when you open the continuation, you must remind the reader where you left them at the cliffhanger. But do it quickly, and move into the new scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T00:15:55.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8606" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-10T02:10:09.430" Score="5" ViewCount="13268" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I write this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I lived near Les Gobelins, which was a beautiful intersection full of trees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should it be this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I lived near Les Gobelins, which is a beautiful intersection full of trees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Les Gobelins is a neighborhood and a stop on the Paris Métro, and it existed when I was there and it still exists today. So is it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are correct so long as you're consistent. Right? It's a style/mood thing, right? Right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastEditorUserId="3421" LastEditDate="2017-03-04T19:46:41.383" LastActivityDate="2017-03-04T19:46:41.383" Title="How to deal with things that still exist when writing in past tense?" Tags="|tenses|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8607" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-10T04:40:33.480" Score="4" ViewCount="1646" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a critical review of two essays for a university class. Both of these essays have fairly long names. The essay begins like so...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This essay will compare The Propaganda of Saints in the Middle Ages,&#xA;  by Esther Cohen and What is Propaganda and How Does it Differ from&#xA;  Persuasion? By Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell. These essays&#xA;  relate in that they both discuss aspects of propaganda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to add some kind of note which says something like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Propaganda of Saints in the Middle Ages*&lt;em&gt;(to be refred to as Propaganda of Saints)&lt;/em&gt;*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an preferred way to do this in academic essays?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I also wanted to point out that it is recommended in most essay styles MLA, APA, ect. that titles are stylized, either through italicizing, underling, or quotes. Using short forms could be negative in this regard as you will end up having something like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This essay will compare &lt;em&gt;The Propaganda of Saints in the Middle&#xA;  Ages&lt;/em&gt;(henceforth ,  &lt;em&gt;Propaganda of Saints&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5680" LastEditorUserId="5680" LastEditDate="2013-08-10T19:31:50.577" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T10:01:02.207" Title="Declaring short forms in an essay" Tags="|formatting|academic-writing|essay|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8607" CreationDate="2013-08-10T05:42:42.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know what will satisfy your professors, but given the lengths of the tities, I would be tempted to refer to the articles by their authors' names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T05:42:42.420" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8606" CreationDate="2013-08-10T11:56:08.480" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if I'm missing something, but this doesn't seem confusing to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming that the person that &quot;my&quot; refers to is not Anne, in which case it's the narrator. Therefore, I'd say that the first example is more correct. The narrator is recalling a story and telling it to someone, therefore both statements should refer to the past. However, the second example you gave might make sense if the narrator is telling the story from the same location and the corridor is still quiet even today. It's still a bit jarring, however, and I would avoid it. (Perhaps &quot;has always been quiet&quot; makes a lot more sense.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Anne is the person that &quot;my&quot; refers to i.e. she's thinking it, then you need to indicate as such, and that will definitely be present tense i.e. the second example with &quot;thought Anne&quot; at the end, or at least in italics to indicate it's her thinking it. The reason for that is because you're writing the words that were thought/said, and those would not change into past tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T11:56:08.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8607" CreationDate="2013-08-10T18:44:09.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm leaning towards using the method mentioned @Mussri. Which would result in the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This essay will compare The Propaganda of Saints in the Middle&#xA;  Ages(henceforth ,  Propaganda of Saints)by Esther Cohen and What is&#xA;  Propaganda and How Does it Differ from Persuasion(henceforth&#xA;  Propaganda vs. Persuasion)? By Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell.&#xA;  These essays relate in that they both discuss aspects of propaganda.&#xA;  However these two essays differ on their definition of propaganda,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5680" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T18:44:09.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8606" CreationDate="2013-08-11T04:21:13.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For whatever reason, using past tense with everything became the &quot;normal&quot; way of writing in the West. So always, always, always use the past tense for everything you do and you'll be good. The only exception is dialogue: if someone &lt;em&gt;says&lt;/em&gt; &quot;Hey, Bob, I am going to the store right now&quot;, replacing that with &quot;Hey, Bob, I went to the store now&quot; would just be confusing. But otherwise... &quot;John was 5 foot 11 but now, through the power of mental willpower alone he had increased his height to six foot four&quot; is correct. Just don't think about it too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, rules can always be broken. In this case, breaking the past tense rule means you're breaking down the fourth wall. Instead of storytelling, for just a second you're cluing the audience in on what's going on with people in the present day. &quot;Victoria was really bummed out that the pirates didn't come to town, but if you were to ask her about it today she'd probably pretend not to remember it.&quot; Actually I think that was just some weird form of past tense that grammarians have some crazy name for, but you get the idea, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastEditorUserId="5432" LastEditDate="2013-08-12T04:44:30.483" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T04:44:30.483" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8618" CreationDate="2013-08-11T09:32:51.537" Score="3" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a short story named &lt;a href=&quot;https://raw.github.com/Seanny123/ShortStories/master/cured.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cured&lt;/a&gt; (which asks the question &quot;What if you could take a pill to increase your empathy?&quot;), in which the main character (Tony) doesn't talk or show much about himself until later, although he is described by his friends. A criticism I have received is that as a result of early self-definition, Tony is boring and completely un-engaging. This is really bad because this is supposed to be a mostly character driven story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a legitimate problem and if so, what are some heuristics that I can apply to tell if I'm not letting the main character talk/act/define himself enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if this is not a problem in general, but that my story has other issues that are crippling it, I will start a new question for the sole purpous of critique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T17:35:36.363" Title="Does a character have to define himself to be engaging?" Tags="|editing|short-story|criticism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5253" CreationDate="2013-08-11T12:32:24.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So... I'm working on re-writing a book right now (well, in fairness, by &quot;right now&quot; I mean &quot;I put it down for a year and am just getting back into the revision) which is being told from the POV of 4 different chraacters. It's also currently more than 100,000 words long and I know that publishers have flat-out told me that this is way too long for something in its genre, so changes will have to be made. Still, 4 POVs, 100k words, that's about the size of, I think points of view changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I think a lot of beginning writers get hung up on is this idea of character being &quot;oh man, I have to find a way to include a backstory here&quot; or &quot;I need some kick ass descriptions&quot;. This is false, I think. Character is action. I'll repeat that in bold type because it's important. &lt;strong&gt;Character is action.&lt;/strong&gt; People aren't going to remember your character because you wrote a couple paragraphs about how he fought in the battle of Zentronobia with just a phaser and a Model III lightshield. They're going to remember that thing he did to the other people in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say you should skimp on backstory at all. Write it all out by all means. One thing I did with this latest book is I put together character bios for all the mains: a quick summary of their strengths, weaknesses, and physical description, but also a description of their upbrining, demeaner, work and social lives, and so on. None of this is in the actual writing, although obviously I draw on it quite heavily. If this sounds like &quot;overwriting&quot; and committing too many words to something that's not going to be in a final draft, consider this: chances are, nothing you put down into that first draft is going to make it into the final draft anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This solves two separate but related issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You now have a character with information you can refer to when you're writing the story. Of course, you can always change that information down the line as you realize more about who the character is and so on, but the important thing is that you've got a vivid picture of this character in your head.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You will feel far, far less compelled to write in backstory which only needed to be there for your own edification because, well, you've already written that backstory. You'll come to a point where you say &quot;how much does my audience &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to know about this person&quot; and you'll be able to answer that concisely.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard this called the &quot;iceberg&quot; method of storytelling, although TBH I don't think that a 1k-2k word character bio quite counts as an &quot;iceberg&quot; when you're writing 60,000 or more words of narrative about said character. It's more like the &quot;ocean liner&quot; method; there's a lot to be seen above the waterline but there's a little bi below as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T12:32:24.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8395" CreationDate="2013-08-11T12:44:28.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe someone who seems to be the exact opposite of one of your leads? Which weaknesses do they have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one of them is sloppy with no real goal in life why not introduce someone who is neat, driven and successful? (or at least seems to be..)&#xA;Later on you could reveal the rivals weaknesses which are even worse then the leads. Maybe you could turn one of his/hers perceived strengths into a weaknesses by overdoing it? Or reveal him/her to be a fraud?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus points if the characters appears after the couple fought over one of his/her weaknesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5104" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T12:44:28.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8395" CreationDate="2013-08-11T12:46:06.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want real rivals, why make one of them &quot;wrong&quot;? As an exercise, why not try to make both of the romantic rivals &quot;Mister Right&quot;, just in different ways? For example, one of the more interesting aspects of the early 90s Winona Ryder / Janeane Garofalo romcom &quot;Reality Bites&quot; is that a good case could be made that the corporate guy (played by Ben Stiller) was a way, way better fit for Ryder's character than the douchey artist (Ethan Hawke). I think the movie tried way too hard to make the audience root for the latter instead of the former but that sense is still there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best romantic comedies - &lt;em&gt;Annie Hall&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;500 Days of Summer&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Celeste and James Forever&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;Silver Linings Playbook&lt;/em&gt; for 4 examples - portray people interacting with each other, sometimes finding love, sometimes falling out of it, but always acting human. A guy who is nothing but suave and awesome and &quot;Mister Right&quot; all the way through is around 18 times more boring than a guy who has strengths and who you find likable but who also real flaws beyond &quot;OH HE'S SUCH A MAAAAN&quot; or &quot;hey, he sure is messy!!! He accidentally put his tie in the refrigerator!!!!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;High Fidelity&lt;/em&gt;, the book or the movie, is another fantastic example. There you have your two main characters who aren't stuck in a &quot;right place at the wrong time situation&quot;, they've tried to make love work between them and they've mostly failed at it. The story that's told is as much a slow epiphany by Rob (the John Cusack character) that he's kind of a jerk as anything else. His &quot;rival&quot; for some of the story, the guy played by Tim Robbins in the movie, isn't really that bad of a person either, he just happens to be the guy who is currently dating Rob's ex and that alone makes him the villain in Rob's story. Rob has some real hang-ups that cause him to do some really, really bad things to his GF (whose name completely escapes me at the moment, sorry), and not all of those hang-ups are resolved by the end. We feel for him, though, because he's making a concerted effort to fix the way he thinks about things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T12:46:06.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8613" CreationDate="2013-08-11T12:50:05.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered writing out a character bio? I come at writing from a bit of an RPGing background so the idea of a character sheet is sort of normal for me, but if it's not to you, just try and put together a little dossier - an FBI file - of what you know about your person. What's his demeanor like? Did his parents love each other? What was his childhood like? Describe a typical day at work for this guy. And so on and so forth. Note that not only does not of this have to be in the story proper, none of it probably &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be in there. This is solely for you, the author, to understand who this person you're writing about is. Once you figure that out, my experience is that that character will start to come a lot more vibrant and have a lot more agency all on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T12:50:05.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8613" CreationDate="2013-08-11T14:28:50.690" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read your story. It's not that Tony is boring; the problem is that &lt;strong&gt;he's too predictable and easy to understand.&lt;/strong&gt; You only have to read the beginning of the story to know what's going on with him: he's depressed and emotionally unresponsive. There's very little the reader need to discover or know about him after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to engage the reader you have to make a character &lt;strong&gt;unpredictable and difficult to understand&lt;/strong&gt;. If you do that, the reader will feel interested even if the character is boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The character spends the whole day in his apartment cooking spaghetti.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Is he depressed? Is he an antisocial? Why spaghetti of all food?)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The character has been having a hard-on since his wife died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(What could the hard-on symbolize? Anger? Frustration? Repressed sexual desire?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The character has decided to spend the rest of his life with a cardboard on his head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Reader: OK, what the hell?)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, not the best examples, but I think you get my idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-08-11T14:35:44.637" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T14:35:44.637" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8613" CreationDate="2013-08-11T17:35:36.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does a character (presumably the protagonist) have to be definable to be engaging?  In a word, yes.  The character’s nature could be defined as anything.  In fact, inconsistent suggests conflicted (internal conflict), but the audience must be able to define the character in some way.  Otherwise, they cannot connect or care.  I’ve struggled with protagonists whom readers didn’t care about for reasons similar to what you’re facing; they were do-nothing characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plot, story, and character while independent concepts, overlap.  A character driven story is not devoid of plot, because a story without plot provides no opportunity to demonstrate the protagonist’s character.  Often we confuse characterization with true character.  Characterization are all of the details of a character - what they look like, where they’re from, how they talk, walk, or dress.  Also, what they say to themselves in they’re own head.  This is all surface, adding little to the story.  True character is demonstrated by the decisions the protagonist makes in response to events (plot).  Particularly, in response to dilemmas, the high stakes decisions. When the bulk of the plot results from the world reacting to the protagonist’s decisions, that is a character-driven story, but the character must decide.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I follow you’re question right, your protagonist lacks empathy.  His or her initial decisions must demonstrate this lack of empathy.  The events which result would then suggest to the protagonist that he or she must change.  Thus, the decision to take the empathy pill.  Or the world could force the taking of the pill, but this would lean away from character-driven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers connect with characters who feel real.  To feel real they must act (make decisions).  Without the choices, the character is a sketch, a police description describing the subject’s appearance - not a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1904" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T17:35:36.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8038" CreationDate="2013-08-11T20:50:02.073" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an old debate.  What is the difference between science fiction and fantasy?  Or more precisely, what are the differences and similarities between science fiction, fantasy, and the real world we actually occupy.  After all, all fiction is ‘made up,’ yet we intuitively understand that scifi and fantasy share the similarity that neither are the world we know.  With equal certainty, we all feel that scifi and fantasy diverge, being somehow different, perhaps opposites.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before I attempt to define science fiction and fantasy respectively, I&#xA;  think we can agree that both genres fail (including clever&#xA;  combinations of both) when they come to remind the audience of our own&#xA;  boring reality (the real world).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, no story is purely science fiction or fantasy, all have at least a little of the other.  I think the three realities (scifi, fantasy, and real world) can be defined from two perspectives, each representing a kind of spectrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mundane vs Mysterious&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real world is mundane because we know it so well - even for people leading fortunate, extraordinary lives.  For clarity, we don’t have all the answers about the real world.  What makes it FEEL mundane is that no answers are desired.  I may not know how my TV works, but I don’t want an answer either.  It is enough that I can turn it on.  In contrast stands the mysterious.  These are the things that I don’t know, but that I want an explanation for.  What were those weird lights I saw in the woods last night?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a narrative, the audience will be exposed to much: world, people, and events.  A story that confronts the audience often with mysterious elements will be understood to be a different world then our own.  This even holds if the story (scifi or fantasy) takes place on “present day Earth.”  Where the two genres diverge is how they address the audience’s need for an explanation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pure science fiction answers the audience’ questions in factual terms,&#xA;  clear and quantifiable.  Pure fantasy either provides vague&#xA;  explanations or none at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Typical vs Rare&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately mundane vs. mysterious addresses the audience’s perception of the story, but the audience perceives the story through the eyes of the characters, particularly the protagonist.  How do the characters see their world?  This largely comes down to whether a specific mysterious element is typical or rare.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everybody in a story world is a wizard and understands how magic works, then magic is typical.  If nobody in a story world has ever seen a vampire, then vampires are rare.  When elements, mysterious to the audience, are common to its characters, that is science fiction - the character’s mundane world.  When the characters share the reader’s feeling of something being new or unknown, that is fantasy.  All of this is doubly true of the protagonist.  Often, the protagonist is a stranger in a strange land sharing the perspective of the audience, amplifying their feelings about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let’s look at some science fiction and fantasy that were both partially undone by feeling a bit too much like the real world (when the mysterious elements become weak).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Star Wars&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Star Wars is a science fiction story, but the Jedi knights are a fantasy element.  Not because they fight with laser swords instead of laser guns, but because they are rare and mysterious.  Everything in the movie is mysterious to the audience (space ships, aliens, other planets), but most of it is mundane to the story’s characters.  On the other hand, neither the protagonist Luke Skywalker or population of the galactic empire have heard of the Jedi.  Effectively, only Obi Won and Vader have heard of the them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider also, Obi Won’s explanation of the force, “The force is what gives the Jedi their power.  It is an energy field, generated by all living things, that surrounds us and binds the galaxy together.”  When you think about it, this isn’t really an explanation.  There is nothing factual in the answer.  It intends to keep the Jedi mysterious.  The first three movies work fine even while combining fantasy and scifi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, consider that in the three prequel films, Jedi’s became typical, an ordinary element known to all of the story’s characters.  This shifted the Jedi into a scifi element.  Now the force could be reexplained, quantified with a midi-chlorian count.  Technically, it still doesn’t make sense, but it’s presentation is factual and mundane.  The Jedi had lost their teeth.  And since so much of the rest of the star wars universe was familiar, it too lacked mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the modern fantasy classic, magic is a mundane fact of life in the wizard world of Harry Potter, but not to Harry.  Firstly, because Harry is from the audience’s ‘real world,’ so he knows nothing of magic.  Secondly, Harry (and his friends) are kids, so while the adults (who are mysterious from the perspective of children) may know about magic, they don’t.  Further, the antagonist Voldemort is totally mysterious.  Everybody is so afraid of him, even adults won’t mention his name - the author’s device for withholding explanations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the series advanced, I thought the fantasy grew less strong.  Outside of Hogwarts, magic was so common, it became mundane to me.  Every car, building, event, even the government was magical and yet they were the cars and buildings I was familiar with.  It simply reminded me of modern life.  Also, presenting so much detail of Voldemort’s life and childhood demystified the antagonist, the story’s most mysterious element.  Here the fantasy didn’t shift to scifi, it shifted to real world.  It became ordinary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advice&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at the end of this LOOOOOOONG answer, I would give this advice.  The issue isn’t mixing scifi and fantasy, because that is done often and works fine.  The danger is failing to understand the difference, and thus accidentally referencing the real world - the mundane reality known to your audience.  Specifically, be careful with explanations for the mysterious elements you present and be mindful of how typical these elements are to your story’s characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1904" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T20:50:02.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2079" CreationDate="2013-08-12T04:42:58.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest difference between first person and third person limited is that with the former you are directly telling the story in the voice of the character. If you want to have a character tell a story themselves, with all that implies (i.e. you're fully able to make the narrator unreliable here), then first person is really great for that. There are quite a few hardboiled detective novels which use this; in fact, it's almost a cliche in that genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, don't completely discount third person limited, which still allows you to tell the story from the POV of one character but which also allows you as the author to have just a little bit of distance. So for instance if you want to tell the story from the POV of a 4 year old girl, you'd probably want to end up using third person limited or even a little more than limited so that the audience can understand her (kids that age, while fascinating, are horrible storytellers because they don't understand which details to include and which to leave out). Basically, it allows you to kind of straddle the line between actually making up a separate, coherent voice for a character and still being able to tell a (relatively) neutral narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other deal with first person which can be really off-putting for some readers comes from the idea that few if any people really think they are villains. Imagine the Game of Thrones series told from the POV of... well, most of the characters, really. You'd have people constantly making excuses and justifications for some really nasty actions, you'd probably confuse the audience a little bit with their insistence that the &quot;other side&quot; is just as two-faced and mean spirited (when that's not always clear), and why should they ever be assumed to be reliable when they lie, cheat, and steal everyone else on a daily basis? That's exactly the kind of character a reader is liable to not want to feel too close to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you're looking for something cool and experimental, all the things I just listed as &quot;flaws&quot; are rather the opposite of that. Consider Irvine Welsh's novel &lt;em&gt;Trainspotting&lt;/em&gt; (and if you've just seen the movie, I highly recommend the book). The dialect used is strange and the narrator is not always the nicest of people, but that's also kind of why it works. Faulkner had a real penchant for writing stream of consciousness style writing that really got into the heads of his characters. See also: pretty much all of Chuck Pahlianuk's novels, especially &lt;em&gt;Fight Club&lt;/em&gt; (&quot;I am Jack's whiskey-soaked liver&quot;). See also: the brogue and not-always-completely-reliable narrators employed by Irish author Roddy Doyle in books like &lt;em&gt;The Commitments&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;The Woman Who Walked Into Doors&lt;/em&gt;. First person can be a joy to read but it can also be one of the hardest things to get right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T04:42:58.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8505" CreationDate="2013-08-12T04:57:33.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Flashbacks are pretty common and certainly don't have to be in any particular order. That being said, I think the issue with your story outline is that you're not really using the flashbacks as flashbacks per se. Instead you've just created a frame for your story and then you're going back to tell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frames can be useful and fun but in my opinion they're problematic when they're just used as you're using them, literally only at the beginning and the ending. Contrast this with the movie &lt;em&gt;The Princess Bride&lt;/em&gt;, which used a framing technique of its own (granted, the regular story wasn't a series of flashbacks, but the device is otherwise the same). It worked fabulously well, at least to me, but a huge, huge part of that was that they kept coming back to the frame over and over again. At key points in the story Fred Savage would ask Peter Falk some question, or else Falk would skip over some part that he thought was too &quot;kissy kissy&quot;, and so on. It wasn't just an excuse to start with the present day and go back, it told a story of its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a frame that exists only at the beginning and the end of a story generally doesn't work all that well. Just as your audience is getting used to the situation you've thrust your characters in, you're telling them to forget about all of that and go back a few minutes. And if your story is long enough and you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; keep referencing the frame, your audience might not even remember it at all, and soon it becomes extra baggage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were in your position I would consider one of two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell the story from the second scene and just skip the first one, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Come back to the frame every other scene or every third scene to give the audience an update as to what's going on &quot;right now&quot;. This can be especially useful if, as in &lt;em&gt;Princess Bride&lt;/em&gt;, one character is relating events to another character, but it can also work in a scene where, for instance, people are in a predicament that at first glance seems dire but, once the story is told, turns out to be pretty handle-able (I'm at a loss to come up with examples of this, although I know I've seen this on TV shows a lot).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T04:57:33.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8624" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8625" CreationDate="2013-08-12T06:01:57.250" Score="0" ViewCount="225" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write short stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the more I research, the more I find that people prefer novels over short stories (irrespective of the quality of the work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be partly due to the pricing structure (e.g. Amazon Kindle) where 99 cents can buy a novel (It begs the question as to why would anyone want to pay 99 cents for a short story then).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to turn some of my short stories into novels. I am wondering what are some approaches other writers use to extend the length of their work, while at the same time, maintaining the quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I guess this applies from the start when a writer has an idea and then expands it. In my case, the idea is now a story i.e. short story, which I want to take further without losing quality.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T14:13:04.423" Title="From short fiction to a novel" Tags="|short-story|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8624" CreationDate="2013-08-12T07:15:53.687" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I share your opinion. &lt;strong&gt;I also think readers prefer novels over shorties&lt;/strong&gt; but not necessarily because of the price. In my case, I don't buy short stories because I always end with that -- &lt;em&gt;it was too short&lt;/em&gt; -- felling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a good or a bad shortie, I always end up with that feeling that I could had more. Those rare times I bought a short story, were because it was sold inside a book with a collection of short stories but, even so, I would rather have one of those shorties developed into a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, back to your question, &lt;strong&gt;the easiest and more interesting way to change a short into a novel is to use subplots&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short story will have only the main plot line, most of the times, because of space. It's all a matter of having the unexploited parallel stories of your short appended to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the short is about a police man that finds out a bomb in a post office and manage to disarm it, saving everybody inside, you could write a parallel plot about the recently fired mailman, who wrongly lost his job when he found out his boss was stealing money from the company, and decided to avenge himself by blowing everything up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also write about the unrequited love the policeman had for the girl who work at the post office, and made him to go there a lot detecting something was not wrong... And even that the girl didn't returned the love because some mob guy blackmail her for some reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main plot line is almost the same as the one in the shortie -- &lt;em&gt;a police man that finds out a bomb in a post office and manage to disarm it, saving everybody inside&lt;/em&gt; -- but the subplots will change it into a novel and allow you to develop everything into a more complex web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T07:15:53.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8606" CreationDate="2013-08-12T09:49:17.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the question of mood and style; yes, which tense to use is a matter of which tense is right. A story where a character flees a pursuer is often better in present tense, as it is more immediate and pressing, whereas a story about a person's experiences in general is often better in past tense, as it is easier to skip ahead in time without confusion.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For the examples given only the first version is correct. The second version is written in past tense, however &lt;code&gt;My end of the corridor is quiet.&lt;/code&gt; is present tense (as noted in the first version, past tense of &lt;code&gt;is&lt;/code&gt; is &lt;code&gt;was&lt;/code&gt;) and you should only use one tense or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said I have written a story where a woman is being interviewed (written in the present tense) and is describing her life (written in the past) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;She shifts in her seat, looking as uncomfortable as I am as she continues. 'I was only&#xA;ten when they came for me. The sky was dark with snow and I couldn't sleep from the&#xA;excitement.'&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For the second version to be correct it would have to be written something like this;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Anne fidgets with her hands and looks toward the door, although there have been &#xA;no footsteps. My end of the corridor is quiet.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then this whole sentence would be present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T09:49:17.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8606" CreationDate="2013-08-12T13:38:54.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I almost agree with John Craven -- I gave you an upvote, John :-) The conventional story-telling style in English is to use the past tense. So for the &quot;normal case&quot;, just make all narration in the past tense. It's simple and easy for both writer and reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in your example, it would be &quot;was quiet&quot;. Whether the hall is still quiet today is pretty much irrelevant. You're talking about what happened at the time the story takes place, not the state of the hall today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this does not apply to dialog. The tenses in dialog will depend on the context in which the characters are speaking. If a person would have said something in present or future or whatever, you don't change that because you are relating the story as a whole in the past tense. Just think about it logically. If I want to tell you that ten years ago Bob told me what he was going to do the next day, I'd write something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ten years ago Bob said, &quot;I will do that tomorrow.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob is speaking in future tense, because at the time he says it, it is future. The fact that at the time I am relating the story it is 9 years and 364 days ago doesn't change that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can write a story in the present tense. Indeed I recall a time travel story I read years ago that was written in the future tense: The story was written as the time traveler telling someone what he is going to do in the future. It was all, &quot;and then you will do this, and then this will happen, and then you will do that&quot;, etc. But the &quot;default&quot; is to use the past tense. Any other tense will jump out at the reader, and so you should only do it if you have a good reason. Also using other tenses forces you to think about it more. If the story is in past tense, then everything happens in the past, and it's simple. But if the story is in present tense, you probably will find it necessary to refer to things that happened in the past, and so you will be shifting tenses, and you have to think about it a little more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T13:38:54.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8624" CreationDate="2013-08-12T14:13:04.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;issue&amp;quot; with the stort story, such that it is, is that classically they would appear in magazines like &lt;em&gt;The Saturday Evening Post&lt;/em&gt; (a lot of Vonnegut's works appeared there for the first time) or even &lt;em&gt;Cosmopolitan&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Playboy&lt;/em&gt;. Well, readership in magazines is down in general and many magazines or at least genres which used to feature such things no longer do. There are still short-fiction presses (&lt;em&gt;Analog&lt;/em&gt; is still being made, right?) but the market has almost completely dried up, and this is a thing that happened 20 years ago. Perhaps the rise of e-literature will also cause a rise in short work - I really do think it fills a niche that is currently unfilled - but it's hard to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for novels vs. short stories, I'm not sure it's so easy to just morph the smaller into the larger one by adding subplots and the like. I mean, don't get me wrong, this is essentially exactly what Orson Scott Card did with &lt;em&gt;Ender's Game&lt;/em&gt; and Chuck Pahlianuk did with &lt;em&gt;Fight Club&lt;/em&gt;, but it's not all that easy. Having written (but, in fairness, not published) both, I find the following to be the case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; easier to keep a plot in your head over 20 pages compared to 300.&lt;/strong&gt; My own experience was that I simply could not keep track of all the balls I was tossing in the air (writing as juggling!) when I was wrote longer works without the aid of an outline. I know that some people work without outlines (for instance the American Indian detective novelist Tony Hillerman) but it's also often the case that those folks a. have done it for so long that they've gotten pretty good at it, and/or b. they often spend an extra draft or two fixing the issues that popped up as the result of not outlining things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short fiction requires a ton more precision than longer fiction.&lt;/strong&gt; To me, short fiction lies in a kind of open space between poetry and novel (or at least novella) length work. With poetry, every single syllable matters. You have to be mindful of rhythm at all times. You might spend hours perfecting a single stanza. Short fiction isn't &lt;em&gt;quite&lt;/em&gt; as demanding but writers such have Hemingway have stated that they don't think that a story even begins to feel like something they really understand until the 9th or 10th revision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, some novels do/did get rewritten that much but it's not so much of a requirement, I don't think. On top of that, there's likely to be more straight-up mechanical rewriting in a novel (tying up plot points, eliminating a description at point Y because you totally forgot you described it in detail 30 pages previously at point X, cleaning up passages to maintain consistent grammar) and I don't know, I don't feel like this is as hard work as the &amp;quot;getting it just right&amp;quot; stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can often get away with a quirky, interesting, or avant-garde style in a short story more than in a novel.&lt;/strong&gt; The only novel I've read written in second person (&amp;quot;You walk to the door. The door opens with a click. Beyond the door there is a guy you know named Joe. He has a bandage on his arm; you wonder about it for a second but then remember him talking about going to the tattoo parlor down the street the last time you talked.&amp;quot;)(that was also in present tense, so, um super-styley, I guess) is Jay McInerney's &lt;em&gt;Bright Lights Big City&lt;/em&gt;. I won't like, it gets a bit annoying. On the other hand, Lorrie Moore's collection of short stories &lt;em&gt;Self Help&lt;/em&gt; doesn't strike me as particularly jarring even though if anything it's even more unconventional (the stories are written kind of in &amp;quot;recipe form&amp;quot;, as in the first bit of &amp;quot;How To Be A Writer&amp;quot;, that goes something like &amp;quot;Try to be something else. Fail at it.&amp;quot;). I think it has to do with the fact that I'm only diving into that world for 15 or 30 minutes at a time, whereas the McInerney work represents several hours of getting acclimated to this style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I think (and this may be controversial) that there might be more fertile ground for exploration than short fiction.&lt;/strong&gt; One of my biggest issues with short fiction is that modern literary short work in particular has a bad, bad habit of using the Epiphany Plot over and over again. Person X comes in with Belief X and the whole story is about how they suddenly realize that they really should believe Belief Y. Don't get me wrong, this is used beautifully in places (see: Flannery O'Connor) and to some extent that's what happens in &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; fiction, but when it's all that happens it gets a bit old after a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I think that if you have a cool milieu with a cool plot hook and you've populated that milieu with cool characters, that's almost too much cool stuff to cram into 4,000-5,000 words. Of course, sometimes you've got a simple idea which just doesn't make sense to explode into a short story (I for one adore Chekhov's story &lt;em&gt;Sleepy&lt;/em&gt; but I couldn't imagine it stretched into 10,000 words, let alone 60,000) but the more balls you want to throw in the air (there's that metaphor again!), the better suited longer form fiction is going to be to give you the space to explore all of those... um... balls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T14:13:04.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8554" CreationDate="2013-08-12T14:15:27.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to add to Craig Sefton's note that you can use other markers and note that sometimes, you can remove markers entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can cut your passage down to, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thoughts we could only share by joining our bodies as though they were&#xA;  one. It was a strange sensation; I was being sucked into a dark void,&#xA;  blending with it, losing myself in it, yet feeling completely at peace&#xA;  and understanding everything it had to tell me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And would still make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note: &quot;Like a hole being punched in a dam.&quot;, made me explode with laughter, because of the imagery of what this mind me to the poor person on the receiving end of this orgasm. Do not take this as a personal attack. This is laughter I've heard from others quite when reading my stories, I just think you might want to consider something else a little less fluid related for describing an unprecedented orgasm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T14:15:27.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8630" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8631" CreationDate="2013-08-12T16:14:24.010" Score="2" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story with the following structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;B tells A she is gravely sick and wants to be alone (present)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A talks about how he met B in a hospital (flashback)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A talks with his friend about B's call (present)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A talks about how he continued seeing B after they met at the hospital (flashback)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A locks himself in his room (because of B) and starts getting sick (present)&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A talks about how he and B finally got together (flashback)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A continues getting sick (present)&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, each scene alternate between present and flashback (and follow a chronological order).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only story I've read which have such structure is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/2197139/All-Gods-Children-Can-Dance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;All God Children Can Dance&lt;/a&gt; by Haruki Murakami.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't find the structure particularly annoying. But I'm not sure about other readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be annoying for the reader if I write a short story with a structure like this? What other alternatives could I use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T17:31:45.043" Title="Would it be annoying for the reader if the all the scenes alternate between &quot;present&quot; and flashback?" Tags="|creative-writing|short-story|flashback|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8630" CreationDate="2013-08-12T16:50:59.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to any non-traditional story pattern is... it depends.  Why do you want to adopt this format?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most stories are written in a straight-forward chronological order because this is how we normally experience events and it is what the readers expect.  It can be jarring as a reader to learn at the end of the story some basic fact everyone in the story knew all along.  If you aren't planning on 'hiding the ball,' then you need some other logical reason for the layout.  For example, if you want to emphasize the parallels between the events, this style could work very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it depends on your ability as a writer.  Try it.  If it doesn't work, you've learned something, and may be able to change to a standard chronology later.  If it does work, you might have something special.  Either way, you don't have anything to lose but a little time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T16:50:59.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8630" CreationDate="2013-08-12T17:31:45.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that the structure itself is a problem necessarily. I'd want to make sure that the first scene is sufficiently long enough that the audience isn't like &quot;wait, what?&quot; when scene 2 ends and you jump back to the present, but sure, otherwise this is more or less exactly how a frame is supposed to work. I think I intimated yesterday that another person using flashbacks ought to use something closer to the structure that you have, actually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also don't necessarily be slavish to the &quot;one on, one off&quot; structure, but I also think that a good time to figure out when to deviate from this is when you're actually writing the story, not the outline portion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T17:31:45.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8633" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8637" CreationDate="2013-08-12T23:37:10.343" Score="5" ViewCount="2004" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would note the use of the word 'again' in the title of my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a number of short stories many years ago. This was when I was doing my first degree (in literature) just after high school. There were no creative writing courses but just analysis of novels, plays and poetry in the first degree. The 'creative writing' part of me came out one day when I thought of entering into a student run short story writing competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast forward many years later: I started working, did my postgraduate degrees (including a doctorate) but these are not in literature. They are in economics. I am a researcher and the research is of the 'academic type', not creative writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I have some free time (I am certainly not retired!!), I want to go back to creative writing. I know I can write because I have written 15 short stories and had them published in the local papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I get this lingering feeling that I cannot write any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: How can I overcome this anxiety of writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw a number of other related questions but in my case, it is neither a lack of motivation nor skill; it is just the fact that I cannot bring myself to write!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-08-13T01:15:18.903" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T04:52:25.583" Title="How do I overcome my anxiety of writing again?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8634" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8636" CreationDate="2013-08-13T04:22:07.313" Score="3" ViewCount="681" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a story called &lt;a href=&quot;https://raw.github.com/Seanny123/ShortStories/master/tempo.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tempo&lt;/a&gt;, which I enjoy (this does not mean that it is good), but that has a chunk where the main character has an internal monologue. This is usually bad, but I can't tell how bad it is or how I should go about fixing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the passage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's only as she speaks those words that I understood that I had&#xA;  thought, for some time, that relationships were the key to some&#xA;  locked-away chest of happiness. What is unsettling is that I can't&#xA;  figure out if I'm offended by her attacking me or if I'm angry at&#xA;  myself for feeling attacked. If it wasn't someone else that brought&#xA;  happiness, what was I supposed to do? Loneliness certainly didn't seem&#xA;  to be a viable option. Or maybe it is just my personal brand of&#xA;  brooding loneliness, which seems to follow me around like some&#xA;  pathetic cartoon rain cloud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the story of my life that I keep on building in my head, I had&#xA;  always drawn my idealized self with a woman. Someone to share&#xA;  experiences with. Someone to recount the tales and adventures back to&#xA;  me and say: &quot;Yes, this was worth it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;God, what a terrible fantasy. I didn't want a lover, I wanted someone&#xA;  to confirm I wasn't wasting my life and to reflect what Hollywood and&#xA;  every brainless pop song on the radio claims to be happiness. Why&#xA;  didn't I think I could have adventures on my own? Where did this&#xA;  neediness come from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I try to disguise my childish inner turmoil, talking about the weather&#xA;  in San Francisco as we pay our bills. Outside of the cafe, Dev's&#xA;  question leaks from my head to my mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could turn this into dialogue, but I don't think that would be much better. I also really don't want to cut it out completely from the story because it's kind of the main character's epiphany moment and the pay-off for all his turmoil up until then. How else should I go about transmitting this idea? Is it not the format of transmission (the inner monlogue), but it's length?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastEditorUserId="5675" LastEditDate="2013-08-14T03:33:42.283" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T12:42:09.447" Title="Does this passage break the rules of telling and not showing?" Tags="|creative-writing|short-story|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8634" CreationDate="2013-08-13T06:59:22.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, I think the internal monologue in the passage above is a clear example of telling (which could be good or bad depending on the situation). Personally, I tend to avoid internal monologue as much as I can. Here are some methods I use (plus examples taken from my own writing):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Using something from the &lt;strong&gt;character's surrounding&lt;/strong&gt; as an analogy for his emotions/thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I raised my eyes, thinking about the question. A moth was hovering&#xA;  around the wall lamp. Yuki was right: why I was so certain about it?&#xA;  True, the idea of the Flying Stone was as shapeless as the insect's&#xA;  shadow dancing on the ceiling. But what if there was something&#xA;  actually real casting it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Using a &lt;strong&gt;symbolic action&lt;/strong&gt; to show the character's emotions/thoughts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taking a few deep breaths, Saki lifted the box slowly over her head,&#xA;  and then threw it to the front with all her might. The box made a&#xA;  plunking sound as it hit the water. Saki followed it with her eyes as&#xA;  it sank in the deepness of the ocean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Note: this is the epiphany of the story)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Using a &lt;strong&gt;metaphor/simile&lt;/strong&gt; to describe the character's emotions/thoughts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eyes closed, Saki sank back into the seat, and let the darkness&#xA;  surround her. Her mind reminded tonight's events, and tried to picture&#xA;  those that would follow tomorrow. The more she thought about the them,&#xA;  the more unreal they seemed to become. But then, gradually, those&#xA;  images started to lose their shape, until they finally&#xA;  disintegrated and scattered around like sand in the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In brief, make use of &lt;strong&gt;senses&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;metaphors, and surroundings&lt;/strong&gt; to reveal the character's emotions or thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-08-13T12:40:19.087" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T12:40:19.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8633" CreationDate="2013-08-13T08:58:10.813" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer for you is the same I gave for other related questions: &lt;strong&gt;just write&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a nice saying -- &quot;&lt;em&gt;the good is a sworn enemy of the optimum&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. I've seen people like you and one of the main reasons they become anxious about writing is because they don't understand that they can't aim too high if they don't grab the arrow. The bible has an interesting story about David and Goliath, which is very illustrative for the writer's life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your goal is to defeat Goliath. Goliath is your master goal and probably is not only getting back to write but to write something good. You have your stones and sling ( &lt;em&gt;your writing tools and skill&lt;/em&gt; ) and hope to achieve defeat your anxious with the help of God ( &lt;em&gt;Creativity and willpower&lt;/em&gt; ) but some how it seems not powerful enough to kill a giant. The problem is that most people forgets that David didn't kill the giant from nothing. First he killed a bear and a lion, and probably empty beers bottles too. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's your case. You need to start hitting empty bottles. Just write. Start with small chronicles. A blog is an outstanding tool for that. They doesn't need to be good at all, at least for a start. &lt;strong&gt;You will see that as you write, you will write&lt;/strong&gt;. And I'm not being redundant here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's the inertia. You have the tendency of doing what you are doing, liking it of not&lt;/strong&gt;. You stopped writing and it's hard to invert that tendency so, you need to force yourself to do it. There's no other way. I guess the anxiety is related to the acceleration, because nobody can reach 200km/h without passing trough 30km/h. But, then again, it's all about start writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T08:58:10.813" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8634" CreationDate="2013-08-13T14:41:25.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is necessarily a problem depending on the context, but yes, this is exactly what telling vs. showing is. It's a good rule for beginning writers because there's kind of a tendency to tell everything (&quot;Bob was patient and kind&quot;) rather than showing it (putting Bob in a situation where patience and kindness is kind of a problem). That being said, almost all writers tell all the time. It's not that big of a deal. Even Raymond Carver, who was huge into minimalismm and was therefore about as show-y as you could get, told things every now and then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T14:41:25.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8634" CreationDate="2013-08-13T21:14:46.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Telling, not showing,&quot; is not really a &quot;rule&quot; that applies to &lt;em&gt;thoughts&lt;/em&gt;. In your example, you are sharing your thoughts. How would you &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; your thoughts, other than by &lt;em&gt;telling&lt;/em&gt; us what they are? Being able to share your thoughts, by telling us your thoughts, is one of the great advantages of prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to action, however, always try to show, not tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T21:14:46.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8643" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-13T21:35:30.543" Score="5" ViewCount="2232" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently bought Articy Draft to catalog my writing endeavours. It seems good for writing scripts, but what about writing a book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nevigo.com/en/articydraft/overview/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nevigo.com/en/articydraft/overview/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm planning writing a novel using this tool. It's built primarily for game design (scripts and dialogs included). It's very useful for creating your universe's database and you can relate database items (like characters) inside your scripts, so you know when/where they are used. I thought it would be a good tool for coherence's sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5695" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-23T23:04:45.997" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T23:04:45.997" Title="Can Articy Draft be used to write a book?" Tags="|software|tools|articy-draft|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8634" CreationDate="2013-08-14T23:00:42.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a tell versus show problem, but it's not really an interior monologue either. For me, an interior monologue is a soliloquy, that is, a dialog with oneself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wrote: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is unsettling is that I can't figure out if I'm offended by her attacking me or if I'm angry at myself for feeling attacked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an oversimplification, I should be able to put quotes around that and recognize it as something the character would say out loud to someone else or to the mirror. It doesn't really read that way, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like the difference between, &quot;What makes me mad is her selfishness,&quot; compared to, &quot;Damn! She's so f-ing selfish!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5527" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T23:00:42.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8643" CreationDate="2013-08-15T08:33:53.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answer from Kai Rosenkranz &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nevigo.com/en/articydraft/overview/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nevigo Developer&lt;/a&gt;&quot; in the Steam thread &lt;a href=&quot;http://steamcommunity.com/app/230780/discussions/0/846959520943948195/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Articy: Just for games?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks for your interest. Between 10 and 20 percent of our customers use articy:draft for other purposes than designing games, like novelists, screenwriters, and instructional designers (for game-based training, ...ok, that may count as game design :) ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on Kai's comment, I guess then &lt;strong&gt;it's pretty safe to affirm that Articy Draft can be used to write a book&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, by my first impressions, I would say Articy is much better as a resource tool than as a writing tool. It's also not exactly cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer would not be complete if I didn't say &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; -- &lt;em&gt;for example&lt;/em&gt; -- for one third of the price, will also allow you to manage resources -- &lt;em&gt;places, characters, concepts&lt;/em&gt; -- in a very effective way and is much more focused on writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T08:33:53.363" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8324" CreationDate="2013-08-15T12:34:44.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proofhq.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ProofHQ&lt;/a&gt; for collaborative proofing and approvals, and it's worked well particularly for distributed teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For general project management I've used Trello, which has a nice paradigm of progressing tasks through a series of stages and assigning particular people to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T12:34:44.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8650" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8656" CreationDate="2013-08-15T23:08:43.550" Score="10" ViewCount="1032" Body="&lt;p&gt;My characters' names are always easy-to-read and easy-to-remember because they are common western names (like John or Oscar). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am writing a story that has a cultural flavor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A western name sounds funny in this context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I give local names to the characters, they sound good to me (more so because I know the cultural context).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering whether it is easy, or how to make it easier, for my readers to be able to connect with a character that has a 'non-western' sounding name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-11T20:36:31.950" LastActivityDate="2019-04-11T20:36:31.950" Title="Characters with non-standard names" Tags="|creative-writing|naming|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8650" CreationDate="2013-08-15T23:49:52.663" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's necessarily a connection issue. (I connect just fine with Anakin Skywalker, or Gimli son of Gloin, or any of the &lt;em&gt;Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt; characters (who all had odd names)).  There's no correlation between connection and name pronunciation, because it's all in the description of the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, reading &lt;em&gt;A Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt; lately, I found that an absolute influx of weird and difficult-to-pronounce names made me completely gloss over a dozen or so characters that I probably should have been paying more attention to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I find that names I find difficult to read/pronounce in my own mind can throw the ease-of-reading.  Depending on your mode of writing, depends on how you could approach the challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, if it was a first-person Western character who had gone to a cultural country, he might create 'western' nicknames for the characters he encounters, using their proper names only when he is speaking to them, or when it seems neccessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's third-person all the way through, using alliteration might get more mileage. So, referring to some of the characters by description might go down well (eg, referring to them by profession, gender, or some other non-name based descriptor)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's just my thoughts, though. I guess it depends largely on your target audience and how much 'cultural experience' they have, if they're comfortable with the names you'd be using, or if it will be completely foreign to them (and thus require a learning curve on the reader's behalf)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T23:49:52.663" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8650" CreationDate="2013-08-16T04:34:57.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really think that basically anything goes when it comes to names. I've seen names used to help make a world feel less realistic (two examples I can think of: Haruki Murakami's &lt;em&gt;1Q84&lt;/em&gt; in which the female lead is named something like 'Soybeans', and Jonathan Lethem's &lt;em&gt;Chronic City&lt;/em&gt;, which is full of people with goofy names because... well, I can't say because that would be a spoiler), I've seen names used to make a non-Western story feel more exotic, I've seen Old English names used to make a story feel medieval, you name it, if it's something weird you can do with a name, it's probably been done before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only semi-admonition is don't use stupid puns as names for people, but that's more because I don't like stupid puns than anything else (and, well, even there the main character in the aforementioned &lt;em&gt;Chronic City&lt;/em&gt; is named Chase Insteadman, which is punny, so I guess even I have my exceptions there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T04:34:57.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8654" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8655" CreationDate="2013-08-16T05:30:58.480" Score="3" ViewCount="1025" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I mark multiple different non-adjacent words and/or phrases with the same endnote marker and the same endnote text in Scrivener?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, &lt;strong&gt;consectetuer adipiscing&lt;/strong&gt; elit, sed diam&#xA;  nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat&#xA;  volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation&#xA;  ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.&#xA;  Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse&#xA;  molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at&#xA;  vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent&#xA;  luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.&#xA;  Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil&#xA;  imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat facer possim assum. Typi non&#xA;  habent claritatem insitam; est usus legentis in iis qui facit eorum&#xA;  claritatem. Investigationes &lt;strong&gt;demonstraverunt lectores&lt;/strong&gt; legere me&#xA;  lius quod ii legunt saepius. Claritas est etiam processus dynamicus,&#xA;  qui sequitur mutationem consuetudium lectorum. Mirum est notare quam&#xA;  littera gothica, quam nunc putamus parum claram, anteposuerit&#xA;  litterarum formas humanitatis per seacula quarta decima et quinta&#xA;  decima. Eodem modo typi, qui nunc nobis videntur parum clari, fiant&#xA;  sollemnes in futurum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to mark both bold phrases in the text above using the endnote marker, &quot;1&quot; (as a superscript following each bold phrase) and create only a single endnote number 1 at the end of the (short; maybe 3-4 page) manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I try to do this in Scrivener and print to PDF, Scrivener assigns different endnote numbers to each bold phrase even though the endnote text is identical, and just creates two identical endnotes at the bottom of the page, numbered 1 and 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PDF format won't handle something like that, then RTF is ok with me too, but my trouble is telling Scrivener that this is what I want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this manuscript is short (2-4 pages) and I could probably do this in a word processor, I really like Scrivener's many little touches that make the documents it produces unique. This document is for a job application and I'm trying to impress in as many subtle ways as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also add something I wrote in a comment below which is that endnote symbols (dagger, double-dagger, et. al.) would suffice too, but my main problem is how to get Scrivener to render the footnote/endnote horizontal rule other than by marking text with a footnote/endnote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I print-to-PDF a document containing footnotes or endnotes in Scrivener, the PDF produces this very nice horizontal rule across about 1/3 of the bottom of the page to separate the footnotes from the main text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, can I manually insert such a horizontal rule? &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1929364/rtf-line-separator&quot;&gt;RTF seems&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8324801/richtextbox-draw-an-rtf-line&quot;&gt;allow for that&lt;/a&gt;, but I can't get any of the solutions mentioned here to render the line when I do print-to-PDF. I have the same problem when I use OS X TextEdit.App (which I had previously thought was a full-featured RTF editor that implemented the entire RTF specification).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, I don't really know how to insert raw RTF into the Scrivener editor. My attempts above may have failed because I worked around this limitation in my knowledge by closing the Scrivener project and then using vim to edit the rtf files manually, inserting the RTF code to produce a horizontal rule. Maybe this risks corrupting the Scrivener project, not sure, but I know of no other way to insert raw RTF code into the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5242" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:40:35.973" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T14:52:49.150" Title="Scrivener: marking multiple (non-adjacent) phrases in a manuscript with same footnote" Tags="|tools|footnotes|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8654" CreationDate="2013-08-16T06:37:20.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would reconsider marking it with the same footnote marker, and rather mark them as 1 and 2, with the 2nd one consisting of the word &quot;Ibid.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibid.&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ibid&lt;/a&gt; means &quot;the same place&quot;, and is &quot;used to provide an endnote or footnote citation or reference for a source that was cited in the preceding endnote or footnote&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you reference the same source more than once, but they're not together, the first footnote should be formatted formally with the full citation, but the second and subsequent footnotes can be abbreviated to a short form. Check your style guide, but for the most part, using Surname, Title, Page should suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Based on your comments, one possible solution to avoid having to manually keep track of Ibids and Op Cits is for you to handle your citations using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zotero.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zotero&lt;/a&gt; (free and open source, I believe). Although I don't personally use it, there is this blog post which describes &lt;a href=&quot;http://mossiso.com/2012/04/12/scrivener-and-zotero.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;how you can integrate Zotero and Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;. As the last paragraph states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;One alternative method is to create footnotes in Scrivener using the format {Author, Year, Page#}. Then export as an RTF document as before. Then, in Zotero, use the ‘RTF Scan’ tool in the Preferences menu. Zotero will see all of the citations and replace them nicely with formatted citations (using Ibid. and short notation for repeat books, and such). Zotero will not be aware of these citations at all, so if you need them to be Zotero aware, you might as well use the steps outlined above. If you do not expect to update citations or the text once done in Scrivener, then this may be the easiest way to go.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2013-08-16T12:46:38.547" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T12:46:38.547" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8650" CreationDate="2013-08-16T07:42:19.073" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Western names are not &quot;common&quot;, because they don't really exist&lt;/strong&gt;. The names you gave - &lt;em&gt;John or Oscar&lt;/em&gt; - are English names so belong to a subculture of the western world. &lt;strong&gt;You just assumed they are common because it's your culture&lt;/strong&gt;. I bet you might find strange to see a João in a book, but it's western also (indeed the Portuguese version of the name).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book set in Miami, for example, could have a lot of Juans and João in it but even so, somebody from another part of the USA might think the names do not fit as they are not used in such proximity with Latin cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you just can't attach too much local context &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; of that context. Local context, in a book, is not the real city's local context but the book's social context and, most important, your target readers social context. You can't expect somebody to know the context just because in the real world it is that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Basically, before starting a book you need to know who are you writing for&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They first thing you need to have in mind is that &lt;strong&gt;if you want to use local names in your book you need to contextualize the names&lt;/strong&gt; if your target audience is not used to them. Context will allow the users to leave the sound of the name behind and feel like like they know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hobb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Robin Hobb&lt;/a&gt;, who uses adjectives for names. Fitz Farseer is son of Prince Chivalry Farseer who is married to Lady Patience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those names at first seem really strange but within the book you start to like them because you understand that they define the characters, and because Robin contextualizes why the Six Duchies favor adjectives as names instead of 'real' names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current manuscript I have two characters with 'foreign' names: Dexter and Elton. I didn't choose by rolling dice. There's a why and I tried to make it really clear in the book how the characters end up with foreign names in a Brazilian context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you contextualize your book's background and names, you can use them as much as you want&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-04-02T13:08:31.757" LastActivityDate="2016-04-02T13:08:31.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8650" CreationDate="2013-08-16T13:06:59.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Names are strange things. One important thing is that the readers are able to distinguish between the characters easily (unless you are deliberately trying to confuse them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't connect to someone if you're not sure exactly who they are, so I always try to use names which are as different as possible, and never use the same name for someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;i.e. Eowynne vs Eowyhne is a very subtle difference. &#xA;More clear is Eowynne vs Elaine, &#xA;and clearer still: Eowynne vs Abigail.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T13:06:59.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8659" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-18T17:16:38.770" Score="4" ViewCount="7785" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am at a loss for a frame of reference regarding the costs associated with printing/publishing a photo book (like a coffeetable book)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure it depends, but is there any kind of scatter chart where I could at least form my own variables and make a calculated risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4815" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T10:48:12.327" Title="costs of self-publishing photo book, coffeetable" Tags="|self-publishing|printing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8650" CreationDate="2013-08-19T01:28:26.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had people complain about the names I used (traditional Scottish names, since it was set in Medieval Scotland).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does depend on the audience to an extent, a Middle Grade book probably should have simpler names then a regular novel, but just try not to make the names of various too similar to each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a friend that named his children alphabetically, I think that is a good way to go with your characters, just so they don't get mixed up in the reader's mind too easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5715" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T01:28:26.170" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8569" CreationDate="2013-08-19T01:31:10.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure to show that their internal logic makes sense to them. It won't work rather often but it is normal from their POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, when my daughter was young she discovered that adding salt to food made it taste better. She would taste food, add salt, it would taste better, so she would add more salt , rinse and repeat until the food was so salty as to be inedible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5715" LastEditorUserId="5715" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T04:15:04.493" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T04:15:04.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8569" CreationDate="2013-08-19T07:08:04.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most famous short novels ever written, John Steinbeck's &lt;em&gt;Of Mice and Men&lt;/em&gt;, has a mentally challenged character as one of its main characters. You certainly need to read this to help you understand an excellent way of treating a character of this type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hero of my own story, &quot;Conditioning,&quot; which was published in &lt;em&gt;The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,&lt;/em&gt; is a mentally challenged adult. The story is not about his mental limitations, but about certain actions he takes that are a result of how he sees the world. In order to accomplish this, I had to put myself into his head, and imagine how I would respond to certain situations if there were some characteristics of those situations that simply were unrecognizable to me, and hence to him. (And that's really the fundamental basis of how you do what you need to do to write a character like that in a sympathetic way.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a very, very, very crude example of this. Let's just say you imagine an alien creature who lands in the woods. He walks out of the woods and wants to get to a city to meet our political leaders. He comes to a highway, but has no understanding that automobiles carry people to cities. He says to himself, &lt;em&gt;wow, those sure are interesting speedy animals&lt;/em&gt;, as he sees cars going by. And he walks past the highway and walks further into the woods without ever flagging down a car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the situations and circumstances in serious fiction are much more subtle, complicated, and sophisticated than this, by far. But in a context like this web site, I hope that the broad and overly simplistic example above can give you an idea of what the basic concept is. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T07:08:04.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7761" CreationDate="2013-08-19T13:23:45.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw an effective example of this in &lt;em&gt;1634: The Baltic War&lt;/em&gt; (David Weber &amp;amp; Eric Flint) recently.  The factors that made it work were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The background speech was in italics (as you've done here).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The passages of background speech began and ended in the middle of sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There wasn't a lot of back-and-forth; for every speech chunk there were at least a few paragraphs of foreground action.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The content of the speech clearly showed passage of time (as suggested by Lauren Ipsum).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I read this I felt that this was a familiar technique -- surely I've seen it before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T13:23:45.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8659" CreationDate="2013-08-19T13:29:17.647" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was publishing my first book, I found that the best pricing I could find to self-publish a hard-cover book was from Lulu. I wasn't doing a picture book, but if they were good on other types of books, they're probably good on other types of books, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's their pricing page for picture books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://picture.com/pricing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://picture.com/pricing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also look at their &quot;regular&quot; pricing page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/calculators/bookCalc.php?cid=publish_book&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.lulu.com/calculators/bookCalc.php?cid=publish_book&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short story: self-publishing a photo book is expensive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T13:29:17.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8665" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-19T13:39:06.390" Score="5" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are starting a community site for budding authors. Here the young writers send a pdf files of there writing and we get them printed at a lower prices than other publishers. And these books are only sold through our internal network of shops. So I think we will not require any kind of Barcodes on these books. Experience publishers please clarify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5717" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T10:26:06.990" Title="ISBN codes for privately sold books?" Tags="|publishing|isbn|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8665" CreationDate="2013-08-19T14:32:55.830" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/us/isbnqa.asp#Q2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Please check the FAQ&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The purpose of the ISBN is to establish and identify one title or edition of a title from one specific publisher and is unique to that edition, allowing for more efficient marketing of products by booksellers, libraries, universities, wholesalers and distributors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will vary from each specific edition and publisher and it makes sense only if the book will be sold in open market. If your books will be only sold privately and do not need to be identified outside your own scope, there's no need to have a ISBN code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Including, &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A36BYK5S7AJ2NQ#1-23_Do_I_need_an_ISBN&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon publishing FAQ&lt;/a&gt; is quite specific on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do I need an ISBN to publish on Kindle Direct Publishing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is not required to publish content with Kindle Direct Publishing. Once your content is published on the KDP web site, Amazon.com will assign it a 10-digit ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number), which is unique to the eBook, and is an identification number for the Kindle Book on Amazon.com. If you already have an ISBN for your eBook, you’ll be able to enter it during the publishing process. Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; use an ISBN for the print book edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't require it, I think it's pretty safe to assume you don't need it either but have in mind that not having an ISBN may have it's drawbacks if you, later, decide to change the way you sell and distribute books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T14:32:55.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8667" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8673" CreationDate="2013-08-19T14:56:01.387" Score="1" ViewCount="3118" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two characters in the following dialogue. One of them (Yuki) is a tomboy. She has short hair, dresses like a man, and likes girls. I want to make her sound more masculine (but not exactly like a man).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yuki waved to the waitress and asked for another vodka. Then she&#xA;  turned back to Eri and said, &quot;Hey. Forgot to tell you. I finally got&#xA;  my visa.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Really? That’s great! So, when did you say you're going? Next year?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Next month.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh.&quot; Eri laughed. &quot;Sorry, I'm not sure what's with my memory&#xA;  tonight.&quot; She inspected Yuki's face. &quot;What's wrong?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;To tell you the truth, I'm not longer sure whether to go or not.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Come on. You're just afraid. That's normal. After all, it's your&#xA;  first time abroad.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, the thing is that, at first, the whole idea seemed very&#xA;  exciting to me. Damn, it'd been the only thing in my mind for the last&#xA;  few months. But I don't know, I'm starting to wonder whether this&#xA;  really makes sense. Like, why am I so crazy about the US anyway? It's&#xA;  not like my life's going to suddenly change because of studying in the&#xA;  most imperialist country on Earth.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You'll never find out if you don't try.&quot; Eri took a sip of her drink.&#xA;  &quot;The idea is to experience something first, and decide if it makes&#xA;  sense later.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Yeah,” Yuki said, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. “I guess you're&#xA;  right.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The waitress came back with Yuki's order, placed it on the&#xA;  table, and walked away. She did all this mechanically, as if on&#xA;  autopilot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How about you?&quot; Yuki asked. &quot;You never thought of leaving the&#xA;  country?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Not really,&quot; Eri said, resting her fist under her chin. &quot;And it's not that I’m against traveling or studying abroad. It's just&#xA;  that I'm not against staying where I am either.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Don't you feel like talking a break from your life?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, I think you ought to build your life in such a way that you&#xA;  don't feel like taking a break from it.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You think I'm escaping from something?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri shook her head. &quot;I didn't mean that. On the contrary, I think&#xA;  you're pretty good at solving problems. Not only yours, but also other&#xA;  people's.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Glad you think that,” Yuki said, smiling slightly. “But sure you can handle yours after I'm gone?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'll be OK. It'll be boring without you, though.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I guess you'll have more time to spend with Takashi.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah.&quot; Eri bit her lower lip, looking to the side. &quot;Now that you&#xA;  mention it, we haven't spent much time together, recently.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's how relationships are—everything is exciting and magical at&#xA;  the beginning. But after a few years, you can't even stand seeing each&#xA;  other's faces anymore, not even put in a cute, little photo frame.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri laughed. &quot;Nothing like that. It's just that work is keeping him&#xA;  busy this time around. That's all.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I see. Just don't let things go too far. As that U2 song says, 'it&#xA;  leaves you baby, if you don't care for it.'&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;OK, I'll keep it in mind.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-13T00:48:05.160" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T00:48:05.160" Title="Making a female character sound more boyish/masculine" Tags="|creative-writing|dialogue|gender|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7761" CreationDate="2013-08-20T11:22:38.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a reader I very much dislike fancy formatting and commingled narrative. Narrative should be linear, i.e. sticking to one point of view, and formatting should be constricted to italics for emphasis, foreign words and such. That's all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a reader perspective I would expect something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;... bla bla bla ...&quot;, Tommy said, when Ricky's attention was caught&#xA;  by a word that stood out from the general noise of the talking crowd:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;... you really must use your &lt;em&gt;pencil&lt;/em&gt; to write!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why the hell would I want to write with a pencil, Ricky thought, and&#xA;  returned his attention to Tommy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sorry, Tommy, I was distracted for a moment. What did you just say?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't put anything that Ricky does not process into your text!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sorry for the bad prose, English is not my native language. But you get the idea.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T11:22:38.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8669" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-20T13:30:45.673" Score="4" ViewCount="435" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to answer an essay question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question below is similar to one in my situation but I have taken out all the technical aspects related to my subject. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using an existing product as an example, explain the features of that&#xA;  product and how they could be implemented in a new product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So would I make three points. One - saying what the existing product is, two - explaining the features, three - explaining how they could be used in a new product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or would I make one point which explains a feature of the product and how this feature could be implemented in a new product. Then make a second point for a second feature and explain how it could be implemented, third for third. etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also what is the best way to structure each point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any help&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5723" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T14:59:16.833" Title="How to structure an essay answer?" Tags="|technique|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8665" CreationDate="2013-08-20T13:52:10.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An ISBN is the book industry's standard &quot;ordering number&quot; for a book. If you want to sell a book through bookstores or most online publishers, you pretty much have to get an ISBN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are only publishing through your own local network, and no one in that network requires an ISBN, than I guess you don't need one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, they're not that difficult to get. When I published my first book the publisher took care of that, but for my second book I got my own ISBN. I bought a block of ten so I still have nine for future projects. I just checked current pricing: In the US, it's 1 for $125, 10 for $250, 100 for $575, or 1000 for $1000. In many countries they are free. Getting them is no hassle. Again, speaking of the US, you just go to the Bowkers website, create an account, and give them your credit card number. You then use their web site to enter the title and author for each ISBN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T13:52:10.013" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8650" CreationDate="2013-08-20T14:04:41.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While unfamiliar names can make reading a little more difficult, I think it would be disconcerting if a story set in another culture used American names. I would definitely find it odd if all the Arabs are named Bob and Mary and the alien from Aldebaran IV is named Harold Smith.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I'd avoid names that are difficult for your readers to pronounce, or at least to guess at a pronunciation. If you are inventing a make-believe culture, don't give the characters names like Brzdwdlza and Qv'Lc#*x. You can make them strange enough without making them unpronounceable, like Barzdalza and Quivlax. If you're setting the story in a real culture, you might try to pick names that at least look pronounceable to English readers. And as Jonathan said, avoid picking names that look similar. When you're dealing with common English names, calling one character Jack and another Jake might be a minor source of confusion. This would be many times so with unfamiliar names, like Jagwan and Jugwen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T14:04:41.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8667" CreationDate="2013-08-20T14:17:45.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The principle surely isn't difficult: have her talk about traditionally masculine subjects like mechanics and sports rather than traditionally feminine subjects like fashion and housekeeping. Especially in asides, like metaphors and analogies that she uses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhere along the line I came across a web site that claims to be able to tell whether a piece of writing was written by a man or a woman by a mechanical analysis. I ran about half a dozen paragraph by known authors through it and it got every one right. Their technique was to look for certain key words that they say tend to be preferred by one sex or the other. Like they say women use personal pronouns, especially &quot;you&quot;, more often; while men use numbers more often. (They had a much longer list, those are just the couple I remember.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick, I think, is how far to push it. Too little and the reader may miss it; too much and it becomes blatant and over the top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I suppose that's true of any attempt at characterization. I recall seeing a movie once where the writer apparently wanted to give the idea that two people were very religious. So as the one is leaving the other says, &quot;The Lord be with you.&quot; If he'd stopped there it would have been plausible and given the message. But then the second character says something like &quot;God bless you while I'm away&quot;, and then the first makes some similar religious-theme parting statement, and then the second makes another, for like four exchanges. And I could only think, what, did the writer put every religious-sounding word or phrase he could think of into this one scene?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T14:17:45.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8667" CreationDate="2013-08-20T14:45:44.303" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another question to consider is whether your character self-consciously &lt;em&gt;tries&lt;/em&gt; to act more masculine (that is, puts on a bit of an act, perhaps through insecurity), or whether she's just naturally less feminine than most women. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If she's deliberately taking on the mannerisms of a male, she might overdo it (mock other people's emotions, boast about her own prowess in &quot;masculine&quot; tasks, use only short, incomplete sentences, speak with an overly harsh/low pitched voice, treat the wait staff aggressively, burp, slouch exaggeratedly, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If instead you are simply trying to signal &quot;tomboyish&quot; behavior, she might appear less attuned to /aware of the emotional connotations of the conversation, less inclined to plan ahead with the detail/fussiness of a woman (I know, that's a stereotype, but women love details), readier to &quot;rough it&quot; on her trip, etc. She might dress very plainly rather than fuss about clothes (her companion could notice or comment on how Yuki always seems to wear the same outfit, and Yuki could defend it in a way that signals her attitude toward clothing-- &quot;I hate shopping,&quot; &quot;This is comfortable,&quot; &quot;I want to be able to run if I feel like it,&quot; etc.). She could also feel more free to stretch/scratch/rumple her hair, etc., than most women do in public. Tomboys in books are usually either very athletic or very clumsy, so she could be either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably you don't need to establish all of this in one, dialogue filled scene, but if you do, a little bit of conflict between the characters could help-- either one could comment on what they see as the overly feminine/masculine behavior of the other (whether in relation to clothes, trip planning, manners, or something else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T14:45:44.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8667" CreationDate="2013-08-21T01:29:57.293" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not just the topics that are stereotypically masculine or feminine.  It is also the way they are discussed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women tend to discuss more about relationships and feelings and men tend to talk about accomplishments and personal worth. (I'm searching for a citation for this; I know I've read an article about it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, a woman might talk to her friend about how she went shopping with her sister so they could pick out a wedding dress together. The focus of the conversation would be on her relationship with her sister and how important it was to her that her sister valued her input and how the experience made her feel closer to her sister. The story would be a vehicle to describe the woman's emotional connection to her sister, and the listener would be expected to reflect and validate those feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A man might describe a similar situation to his friend about how he went shopping with his brother to buy a tux, but the focus would be completely different. He would be more likely to focus on the facts of the trip, how the task was accomplished, and the satisfaction that he derived from helping his brother. He would be more likely to tell the story in order to increase his status or increase the listener's respect for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what strikes me most as feminine in your dialogue is that Yuki breaks from a practical examination of her trip to discuss her friend's personal relationship.  She initiates the relationship discussion and her view is almost romantic—exciting and magical has &lt;em&gt;girl&lt;/em&gt; written all over it—and although she is admittedly jaded, her view still seems very feminine to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the conversation is suitably tomboyish, though I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T01:29:57.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8677" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8679" CreationDate="2013-08-21T08:08:48.743" Score="8" ViewCount="1381" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a short story and would like to name check &lt;em&gt;Sherlock Holmes&lt;/em&gt; as a character; according to the ever reliable (?) Wikipedia the stories of Holmes are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes#Adaptations_and_derived_works&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UK Public Domain&lt;/a&gt;. Does this mean I can use the character without royalties/etc if I publish/sell?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I will be publishing in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5728" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-05-16T18:35:40.630" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T18:35:40.630" Title="Is Sherlock Holmes public domain for use in a story?" Tags="|publishing|legal|copyright|mystery|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7094" CreationDate="2013-08-21T14:09:55.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One exercise would be to write a dialogue with characters from very different backgrounds. e.g. A poor French teenager, an old rich English man and a small town Texan housewife stranded in a train station waiting room. Besides their accents, try to capture expressions and attitudes appropriate for each character. For example the Texan might be very polite and indirect, as she comes from a small town. I guess I am saying think about how the character's age, sex, height, attractiveness, wealth, background, history and location could affect their way of speaking and how they would say it. Vary each of these things and write something from that perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another exercise could be to write a diary from a character's point of view to go alongside your story. The diary would be written directly in the character's voice - explaining what is happening in the story from their point of view and in their own language and voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example of these exercises is No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, where monologue chapters keep re-occurring in the book. These monologues are from Sheriff Bell, a Texan country sheriff getting near retirement. Bell uses expressions that I have never heard before, but also makes you feel how old he is, his regrets and his fears through the character's focus on how things used to be and his own failings. His voice is sad, tired, old, defeated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5731" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T14:09:55.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8677" CreationDate="2013-08-21T15:46:04.367" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Up front, I must say &quot;I am not a lawyer.&quot; Heed the advice given above and consult a lawyer specializing in copyright law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it seems clear to me right now that publishing in the UK should be fine, but you could open yourself to a legal challenge from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conandoyleestate.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Conan Doyle estate&lt;/a&gt; if you publish your work in the United States and do not contact the estate and purchase a license for your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I say this is because the recent films from Warner Brothers, and the series from the BBC (plus others), received a license from the Doyle estate. So did the series &quot;The Young Sherlock Holmes&quot; by Andrew Lane, which specifically &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youngsherlock.com/behind-the-scenes/original-ideaproposal/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;notes on their website&lt;/a&gt; that &quot;The character of Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain in the UK, and is thus free for use. The character is still in copyright in the USA, and will remain so until around 2020. Any book published in the USA which uses Sherlock Holmes as a character must be authorized by the Conan Doyle Estate.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there is a law suit currently in progress against the estate in the United States asking for a declaratory judgement that copyright has expired on the works of Sherlock Holmes. According to recent press reports, the estate did not respond, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/sherlock-holmes-a-step-closer-595532&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the judge has entered a default against the Doyle estate&lt;/a&gt;. Still a few legal hoops to jump through, and the judge must pass their ruling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an UPDATE here&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/conan-doyle-estate-loses-appeal-712135&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/conan-doyle-estate-loses-appeal-712135&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-05-14T15:41:16.140" LastActivityDate="2016-05-14T15:41:16.140" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8682" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8683" CreationDate="2013-08-22T12:04:57.317" Score="4" ViewCount="823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing related short-stories for years, but around 10 months ago, I started to think about a novel based on these stories. The same universe, the same main characters but a longer story which takes place during a longer part of their lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to transform one of my short-stories into a novel (like in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8624/from-short-fiction-to-a-novel&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt;) but really write a different story. My previous texts could be a kind of extension for this novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I continue to write short-stories to go deeper in several points to prepare my longer story. Is this a good idea or should I stop writing short-stories in order to write my novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5637" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T18:44:32.500" Title="Can several related short-stories make a good base to write a novel?" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|short-story|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8682" CreationDate="2013-08-22T13:14:11.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A really good example for this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Watch_%28Lukyanenko_novel%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Night Watch&lt;/a&gt;. Sergei Lukyanenko wrote three related &quot;short stories&quot; that, read together, form the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, related stories that could be linked to a same plot, could be released as a single novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point of view would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0234215&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Matrix Reloaded&lt;/a&gt;, even not being a book, but a movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Matrix is the main plot line but in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0328832/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Animatrix&lt;/a&gt; you will find a lot of related short stories that will help to understand the main plot and even open the curtains for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess this second option would fit into what you want, since you already have the shorties and want to write a novel that could extends them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T13:14:11.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8685" CreationDate="2013-08-22T14:26:57.537" Score="1" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter is set in a particular period in time, having four - at the time - in no way related characters, each of them with their own separate story. My best feeling is these stories should be presented in an &lt;em&gt;alternating&lt;/em&gt; way, while never directly interfering with each other: short fragment of one (about 3 standard pages or even less than 1 s.p. short) followed by short fragment of another and so on -  not necessarily keeping strict order.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really know how to take on on that. Problem is probably deeper than pure formatting, or organization, or composition (to paragraph each passage, to title it or not to, to order them in a certain way etc; although I don't reject any advice on that matter, neither), it's, I imagine, more to the subtleties in the very body of text, which make that kind of narrative convincing, and, having not read anything similar myself, I'd be thankful if you can come up with an example, if you can name a book, recommend a novel which uses, in any part, structure roughly similar to the one I described here, so I can study it myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(One character is in 1st person (a child, btw, who is also &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; narrator, which, when I think of it better, probably makes the schema so problematic, tricky to convincingly shift between characters), others in 3rd person. It's set in the past (two decades before main story line taking place), and is imagined to be more of a character backgrounding, catching the zeitgeist, atmosphere of time and places, less of a real action, which it can't be in all truth, because it would lead nowhere as 4 parts are separate all the way, mixing at no point, except on symbolic level. Also, idea is for it to be the middle chapter of 3 in total. Luckily, though, I haven't written a word yet, so I'm pretty flexible in every respect, and Psicofrenia's answer and Lauren Ipsum's comment have opened some perspectives for me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5737" LastEditorUserId="5737" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T17:09:47.317" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T17:09:47.317" Title="Works of fiction containing non-related but constantly alternating narrative streams?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|structure|narrative|book-rec|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8684" CreationDate="2013-08-22T14:49:50.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1371111/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cloud Atlas&lt;/a&gt;, you mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed this is basically &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_narrative&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nonlinear narrative&lt;/a&gt;. I use it a lot when I write because it can be great -- if well done -- to generate expectation and mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, &lt;strong&gt;the key of nonlinear narrative is to leave roles that the users can't fill at that point&lt;/strong&gt;. You can use other chapters to get back to the loose ends and help the readers to understand. You won't follow a right line, but you will move from different perspectives to create that line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to take real care is to drop breadcrumbs along the way, because if the readers goes for too long completely lost they will loose the interest in your story. Even not being the right time to explain everything, you need to drop small clues that will keep the readers focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T14:49:50.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8682" CreationDate="2013-08-22T17:35:36.280" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your shorts stories would be backstory to the main novel. Things that happened to the main characters before the novel. That is not unusual, the &lt;em&gt;Silmarillion&lt;/em&gt; is much the same for &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would want to have the main characters have previous interactions that they refer to and these short stories would be them. This is a good way to provide real depth to your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5715" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T17:35:36.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7094" CreationDate="2013-08-22T20:39:10.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The exercise I use is to listen to a whole lot of other people talk: friends, family, even strangers at Starbucks. The best talk is when they tell stories, like what happened last night at the club. If you are naturally good at mimicry and pastiche, that may be all you need, but there are two additional steps I take. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I pretend I'm taking dictation and try to write exactly what was said. Just a sentence or two, I'm not a court reporter. Writing verbatim forces you to ignore your own voice and just be the pen, or more to the point, the ears. I also take notes on overall speech patterns when they are interesting or unusual. I once overheard a conversation between two people where one of them spoke nothing but questions and the other kept digressing to answer: Hanna was so weird last night after the wedding rehearsal ... Jane's wedding ... you know, my neighbor from where I lived before ... no, god, not that dump, the house I shared with Tisha and John ... no, he's still in rehab, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I try writing some dialogue, or maybe a monologue, in a style of speech I'd practiced in Step 1, after I have enough material to have some ability to imitate and predict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, the more you listen to real people, the easier it becomes to give your characters different styles of speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5527" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T20:39:10.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8690" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8692" CreationDate="2013-08-23T13:53:25.847" Score="2" ViewCount="951" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of my stories, my main character was once able to speak, but after being alone for 3 or 4 years in his early 20's without speaking a word, he became mute, unable to speak at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this situation credible, or would people who speak normally become mute only as a result of accident or illness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5637" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T14:52:16.207" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T14:52:16.207" Title="Is muteness appearing without explicit reason acceptable?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|research|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8690" CreationDate="2013-08-23T14:24:38.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen so many books and movies with similar reasons for people to lose their ability to speak that, in a mere reader point of view, I would have no reason at all to doubt that it could happen. I don't think many readers would doubt it could happen also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think if you really want to know for sure, research is the way. There's a nice -- and helpful book -- titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Writers-Guide-Psychology-Accurately-Psychological/dp/1884995683/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writer's Guide to Psychology: How to Write Accurately About Psychological Disorders, Clinical Treatment &amp;amp; Human Behavior &lt;/a&gt; that I believe could do the trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a psychology degree (although I graduated 1999) so I just wanted this as a backup. I found it would be perfectly accessible to the layman, making all mental health and psychological issues easy to understand and imagine. If you write about this subject, or are interested in brushing up skills to work as a carer in mental health, you could do worse than buying this book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-08-23T14:39:06.800" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T14:39:06.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8690" CreationDate="2013-08-23T14:52:16.437" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue is that you have your character losing the ability to speak as a young adult. There has to be some kind of trauma (physical or emotional) for that to happen. The neurological pathways for language are formed starting in infancy (they really get going around 9-10 months) and continue for several years. If your character knows how to talk at 20, he's not going to abruptly lose the capacity just because he didn't use it for several years. It's not like walking where you lose muscle tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, I don't know about you, but I talk to myself all the time even when there's no one else around. I laugh out loud at things I read, I call the cat, I sing along with music, I talk back to the TV, I yell obscenities if I hurt myself, I mutter if I'm looking for something. Being in isolation for several years does not by itself mean I won't speak for several years.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there's a difference between losing the &lt;em&gt;ability&lt;/em&gt; to speak (he wants to, but can't) and losing the &lt;em&gt;desire&lt;/em&gt; to speak (he can, but doesn't want to). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be more interesting if the reason for your character's muteness is a mystery which the other characters (and the reader) have to figure out. There either is some trauma which makes him afraid to speak, or he took some kind of vow of silence so he's choosing not to speak. That could be political, religious, cultural, or just personal persnicketiness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T14:52:16.437" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8690" CreationDate="2013-08-23T17:40:37.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the point of the story to realistically discuss how this person became mute, in some clinical sense, or to spin a story around the initial premise that he is mute?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story is intended to be a discussion of medical or psychological realities, than this is the wrong place to ask. You should be asking this on a medical web site, or studying books on the brain and language development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the point of your story is just to explore what happens to this character after he becomes mute, how it affects his life or whatever, than I wouldn't worry too much about how realistic it is. Just through in a couple of lines about how the psychological trauma caused him to become mute or how that section of his brain atrophied from disuse or whatever. If it's important for your story for X to happen, then just make up some maybe-plausible-sounding explanation and do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers do this all the time. As premises for a story go, this would be far from the most implausible thing that a writer has ever tried to pull. I sincerely doubt that it is possible to travel in time and there's lot of good physics that says it's impossible to travel faster than light, but characters in science fiction do these things all the time and my technical doubts do nothing to diminish the entertainment value of the story. I find it implausible that Perry Mason only gets murder cases with innocent clients and that the person who really did it always breaks down and confesses in court. I don't believe that the thin and sexy little girls on Charlie's Angels can really beat up not just any man in the house, but every man in the house simultaneously: Women I've met who were tough enough to beat up any man in sight also tended to look tougher than any man in sight. Etc. If the story is entertaining, readers will accept an implausible premise to get it rolling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T17:40:37.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8694" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-23T18:31:03.143" Score="6" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Creative commons&lt;/code&gt; materials are popular on the web, and people are using these materials for creating new websites, as there is no severe copyright restriction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does &lt;code&gt;creative commons&lt;/code&gt; copyright allow reprint in books? For example, does it allow reprinting an entire article of &lt;code&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/code&gt; in a book? How much is creative commons similar to public domain when reprinting the material in a book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2640" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-08-23T21:45:13.413" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T12:28:23.227" Title="How to use creative commons materials?" Tags="|legal|copyright|creative-commons|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8694" CreationDate="2013-08-23T18:43:40.210" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a tricky question because the Creative Commons license allows a high degree of freedom. That means, there are lots of Creative Commons license flavors and you can check them better in &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/choose/&quot;&gt;their very page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, when you choose the Creative Commons license, you choose also -- &lt;em&gt;among other things&lt;/em&gt; -- if you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow or not people changing your work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow or not people selling and charging for your work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, every work need to have its specific CC license checked because one CC may allow you to distribute and sell the book, other may allow you to change and sell the book, other may allow you only to read and share the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T18:43:40.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8697" CreationDate="2013-08-23T19:22:58.653" Score="2" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just writing a historical overview of a battle and decided I'd write the introduction in the present tense--the present tense being a narration of a specific event during the war. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just realized though that in the last sentence, I shifted from there to describing how the events are perceived today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So instead of the present tense consistently being about how the event occurred, it shifts to how those events are perceived today at the end of the paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've fiddled around with the passage a bit, but I'm still not sure how to write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it better to stick to one tense from one perspective throughout the opening paragraph? How do I go about that? I've changed it from&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This incident has since [links it to current situation] . . . Towards the end of the struggle, the flag would have. . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This incident would go on to [links it to current situation]. . . Towards the end of the struggle, the flag would have . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the fix the issue (since the perspective remains unchanged)? To me it seems that it looks to the future from the perspective of the event whereas option earlier it shifted to things as they are now and looks back from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely I can't stay in the present tense of the event and say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This incident will go on to . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right? That sounds sloppy somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5746" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T19:50:20.163" Title="Shift in tense and starting a historical account with the present tense" Tags="|style|technique|biography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8696" CreationDate="2013-08-23T19:50:20.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which one you use I think depends on when &quot;today's&quot; perspective became popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &quot;today&quot; is recent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The colonists dump the tea into Boston Harbor to protest George III's hated tax. &lt;strong&gt;This incident has since&lt;/strong&gt; become the inspiration for the name of the neoconservative movement of the early 2010s. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs. if &quot;today&quot; was decided a long time ago and continues through today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The colonists dump the tea into Boston Harbor to protest George III's hated tax. &lt;strong&gt;This incident would go on to&lt;/strong&gt; be called the &quot;Boston Tea Party.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; use &quot;This incident will go on to...&quot; &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you are remaining in the battle for the rest of the paragraph (and just using that phrase to jump forward for a moment):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The colonists dump the tea into Boston Harbor to protest George III's hated tax. &lt;strong&gt;This incident will go on to&lt;/strong&gt; be called the &quot;Boston Tea Party,&quot; but on the morning of December 17, 1773, the &lt;em&gt;Boston Globe&lt;/em&gt; calls it &quot;The Oolong Walk Off a Short Plank.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T19:50:20.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8690" CreationDate="2013-08-25T05:58:23.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking as a physician, I find it implausible at best. As a professional writer, I find it an inadequately developed motivation. I would urge you to think quite a bit more about why such a profound life change would happen to someone. If you can't come up with a really convincing reason, then why is it in your story? In my opinion, it's not merely the fact of his muteness that should play a part in the story, but the reason for the muteness that should have something to do with the heart of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T05:58:23.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7094" CreationDate="2013-08-25T09:18:57.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to write good dialogue, you have to be able to &lt;em&gt;hear&lt;/em&gt; it. This takes a lot of listening, which of course you should be doing all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here's a way to practice listening, and then to develop it in stages into writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick out some movies or TV shows you like, and watch them in some format (such as DVD) that you can control. Pick an interesting character and listen to that character's speech over and over. And here's the crucial step: Work on imitating that character's style of talking. Start by just repeating the character's actual dialogue. Eventually throw in ad-lib dialogue in that character's style. Do it repeatedly until you can do an impersonation of that character. You want to be able to &lt;em&gt;talk&lt;/em&gt; like that person, and if you can, then you know you are hearing that voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you can hear a voice inside your head in that way, you can write in that unique voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, once you have internalized a character's mode of speaking, sit down and write a short speech that you think that character might say to a friend about something going on in his or her life. At this point, you can begin to think about what kind of word choices, phrasings, hesitations, sentence lengths, interjections, and so on, are used by that person. These are all the verbal characteristics that make that person's voice unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do this for enough characters, and you'll start to learn what it means to hear a character's voice inside your head, and you'll start to find yourself creating new voices to replace the one you felt stuck in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And by the way, screenwriters often do something pretty much like this in order to get their dialogue the way they want it; basically they &lt;em&gt;play&lt;/em&gt; the character by speaking the dialogue out loud to see if it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T09:18:57.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="61" CreationDate="2013-08-25T17:58:06.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had the same problem, I have overwhelmingly too many ideas and sometimes it can become paralyzing. I tried lots of tools for organizing and keeping my ideas and most of them weren't just 'good enough'. The best tool (method) that I found was what @Lynn Beighley mentioned (mind mapping). Mind mapping is great and there are lots of applications available (I personally use &lt;a href=&quot;http://freemind.sourceforge.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;freemind&lt;/a&gt;, it is free and easy to use. I've also used the official mind mapping software, iMindMap and it's cool). I use mind mapping quite a lot and I just love it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's a problem, whether you are mind mapping on a paper or an app, the canvas size that is available for you to work on (practically) is very limited. This is not a problem if you are trying to explore a single idea. But, when you are overwhelmed with ideas, and you just want to save them all (for dealing with them later, or whatever), &lt;strong&gt;pure&lt;/strong&gt; mind mapping is just not enough  (this is because, mind mapping is a visual thinking tool and it is effective when used with sketches, colors and other visual aids, and doing this can take some time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My solution:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, for exactly the same reason, I created a web app called &lt;a href=&quot;http://inklin.co&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;inklin&lt;/a&gt;, which lets you save your ideas the moment you have them and extend, modify and improve them very easily. This way, when your idea evolves, the notes you take can evolve with it. It is based on the idea of mind mapping, but the design makes it easier to go as deep as you like and explore every possible path that idea can take. It is optimised for quickly throwing your ideas and improving them (now or later). It is a simple app and is very easy to understand and use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;here's the link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://inklin.co&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://inklin.co&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5753" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-02-04T09:06:19.593" LastActivityDate="2015-02-04T09:06:19.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7741" CreationDate="2013-08-25T19:56:09.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;you should try mind mapping (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mind_map&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mind_map&lt;/a&gt;), it is a great way to explore ideas. there are lots of applications available for desktop as well as tablet. I personally use freemind (it's free).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and also checkout &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8701/5753&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;: )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5753" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T19:56:09.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8703" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8712" CreationDate="2013-08-25T22:31:54.020" Score="3" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I use a writer's notebook to improve my writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:54:25.817" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:54:25.817" Title="Writer's Notebook" Tags="|habits|notes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8704" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-26T00:57:38.203" Score="5" ViewCount="284" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any reputable literary magazines which publish this type of short story? I would prefer a magazine that takes free submissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5754" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T17:34:05.410" Title="Where to publish Edgar Allan Poe style fiction short story?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|short-story|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8705" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-26T06:15:49.867" Score="6" ViewCount="523" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many high fantasy settings, there is a &quot;Dark Lord&quot; that is undoubtedly evil and will cause doom to the world if he is not stopped. However, when I read &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/stupidity/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, I realize that stupidity can hurt people as bad as evil, so I'm thinking about creating a villain who causes problems because of his stupidity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on creating a stupid villain? What position of power should he be in (a stupid world leader)? What about mixing stupidity and evil? Can there be a stupid villain in high fantasy and space opera? How to make the stupid villain as scary as Darth Vader and Sauron? Any notable examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3988" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T14:03:01.340" Title="Stupid Villain rather than Dark Lord" Tags="|fantasy|characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8703" CreationDate="2013-08-26T06:49:34.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically the idea is to take notes. Supposedly, a writer is always receiving insights of creativity and new ideas. If you have a notebook, you can write them down and not forget even if you are in the middle of street or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other function of the notebook is to collect interesting things. If you know how to draw and cross a interesting fountain, you may want to draw it or write about so you can see if you can use it later in your works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what a notebook can do for you is allow you to keep notes for a later use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T06:49:34.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8705" CreationDate="2013-08-26T09:45:52.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's impossible to read Cipolla and not be affected by that essay, in any case, I think you are seeing it from the wrong perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cipolla's essay deals with actions, not motivations&lt;/strong&gt;. That means you can have a villan who is Mother Theresa of Calcutta, I mean, a really good person that is, in fact, a villan and stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say a wonderful person tries to do good and get's his whole village killed in the process? He is responsible for a lot of deaths. &lt;strong&gt;He's what Cipolla calls stupid: somebody who acts and makes himself and other people loose by his actions&lt;/strong&gt;. The stupidity is not related to his intentions but the results of his actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you are mixing things. &lt;strong&gt;You are mixing stupidity from Cipolla's perspective and normal perspective&lt;/strong&gt;. Forest Gump is a stupid person who can manage to make outstanding feats and, according to Cipolla's essay, that makes him &quot;Intelligent&quot;. I'm sorry if I'm not using the correct words but I read &quot;&lt;em&gt;Allegro ma non troppo&lt;/em&gt;&quot; in another language and don't know the ones used in the translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of bad guys in most of movies are stupid according to Cipolla's point of view because, in the end, they don't earn anything and made a lot of people also loose a lot of things before being killed by the good guy. That's stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are truly asking is: &quot;&lt;em&gt;what if I create a dumb character for the &quot;villain&quot; and he does a lot of dumb things&lt;/em&gt;&quot;? Like I said, most of movies and books do that. The only difference is they don't give the reader the perspective that the villain is stupid... But &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groo_the_Wanderer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Groo, The Wandered&lt;/a&gt; does. He is a dumb good guy instead of a dumb villain, but it's the same thing in the end. You should read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, about your questions, I think you are also getting the wrong perspective. Being a writer, in a certain way, is being the god of your writing. You can do anything you want, even having a completely moron as world's overlord. You just need to create a consistent background to explain how he did that, and make sure your story has the right mood (humor always work in such cases).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For ending, you really should read &lt;a href=&quot;http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Terry Pratchett's&lt;/a&gt; books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="5114" LastEditDate="2013-08-26T10:11:31.597" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T10:11:31.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8718" CreationDate="2013-08-26T13:35:15.090" Score="4" ViewCount="468" Body="&lt;p&gt;...and scales well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of writing a text game / &quot;Make your own adventure&quot; novel, with a fairly convoluted, non-linear plot. Getting that plot under control has proven to be a rather daunting task, and I started using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_map&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Concept Map&lt;/a&gt; to map out the interconnections between the scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is I tried pretty much everything from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept_mapping_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;List of Concept Mapping software&lt;/a&gt; and it either restrains me to tree-like structures, or (usually) concentrates on pretty presentation at cost of usability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final map will be at least 100 boxes, probably more, with mostly top-down flow and core nodes where action converges and diverges, but there will be jumps, irregularities, dependencies. (that's why not mind map, which is a tree-like structure, no freeform links.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simpler programs start getting crowded with 10 boxes and don't allow for easily scaling the map up, making it a big, easily zoomable sheet. The more complex ones throw a thousand presentation prerequisites at me; adding one node takes a few minutes, I lose the focus, flow and perspective muddled in clicking through endless dialogs designed to make the final chart pleasing to the eye of audience, a tool for presentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I tried two approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A drawing in Google Docs draw tool. It works, but it began seriously slowing down on my netbook which is my primary tool. It's burdensome, not really designed for this work but better than others - at least it let me create a huge canvas easily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/P9gT9.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.headjump.de/article/arrows-and-boxes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arrows-and-Boxes&lt;/a&gt; which is fairly fast and has all I need, but requires me to write everything in a fancy script; it's very good to look and acceptable for adding stuff, but a pain in the neck to edit/modify.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VA1aB.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, they are far from optimal. Google Docs will probably be unacceptably slow with several hundred elements to draw, and the Arrows-And-Boxes could quickly grow unmaintainable (plus syntax errors are difficult to find).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you suggest a better tool for that task? Something lightweight that scales up easily for the huge project, is easy to fill in and doesn't muddle the process of planning with irrelevant requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2018-03-31T16:23:33.683" Title="Concept map software that concentrates on ease of use?" Tags="|tools|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8705" CreationDate="2013-08-26T14:03:01.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure. Politics is surely filled with examples like this. I've often thought that movie villains are absurdly evil. I think most real villains in the world don't cackle with fiendish laughter as they gloat over how they're going to destroy all that is good and right and true. More often they say that they have to implement this program for the good of the nation or of the world, and these narrow-minded people who are standing in their way just have to be dealt with, for the greater good. Or, I just saw an interview on TV last night with some convicted con artist who talked about how this was just the only way she knew to survive, and she was sorry if others got hurt but what was she supposed to do? Etc. Oh, not that there aren't people out there who will kill someone just for kicks, but they're not the most dangerous villains. It's the well-meaning people who really believe in freedom of speech, but that group over there is just too extreme and they are really a special case, why, if we don't shut them up, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Neville Chamberlain is widely regarded as having blundered badly when he gave in to Hitler's demands rather than standing up to him. Many speculate that if Chamberlain had followed Churchill's advice and taken a hard line with Hitler, World War 2 could have been prevented. I'm sure we could debate the what-if's endlessly, but if that's true, note that no one is saying that Chamberlain was an evil man. Quite the contrary. He was a nice man in a situation where being nice just wasn't going to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started to write up another example and I can easily think of many more, but you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that for a politician to cause massive harm, he can't be a total bumbling idiot. He has to be pretty capable to get elected or to organize a coup or however he comes to power. But I think we've seen historically that the skills required to get elected or to lead an army are not necessarily the same skills that make one able to run a national economy, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I deliberately avoided using a contemporary example above. If I said that Obama is a well-meaning fool or that Bush was a well-meaning fool or Samaris or Merkel or some other current politician, half the people here would agree with me and half would say that was outrageous. I can point to politicians in the last few decades with completely opposite policies, both of whom had wide popular support. So what makes a stupid policy is not obvious to everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been talking about the harm of stupidity on a national level, but surely people do themselves and others plenty of harm on a more personal level. I suspect that most of the problems that people have in life are caused, not because they are the victims of some evil person, but because they make personal decisions that are obviously bad ideas. Not to say there aren't people out there whose lives have been ruined by a violent criminal or an oppressive regime, but I think many more people suffer because they drink too much or use dangerous drugs, or they can't hold a job because they don't bother showing up for work, or they marry someone that they know is an abusive jerk, or they ruin a perfectly good marriage by having a tawdry affair, etc, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, though, I wouldn't make such a &quot;stupid villain&quot; just incomprehensibly stupid. I'd make him follow some impulse that, even if the reader should instantly see that it's stupid, we can see how a normal human being would do that. Like, the person doesn't quit his job for no reason at all, but he has a series of escalating conflicts with the boss until he quits. He doesn't just decide one day to become a drug addict, but he has some severe personal problem that leads him to try drugs just once to escape, and then the next time a lesser problem leads him to turn to drugs, etc, until he's using drugs to escape from life in general. Basic lust leads people to do all sorts of things that are objectively stupid, and I think we all understand that immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T14:03:01.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8710" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8711" CreationDate="2013-08-26T14:15:57.433" Score="7" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a fan of minimalism so I tend to write stories which are as simple as possible. And sometimes I add elements that don't have a concrete explanation. I leave that to interpretation of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very often, I find myself wondering whether an element or scene is needed. Here are some of the things I do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I ask myself: &quot;Would the story change dramatically if I removed this element/scene?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I remove the elements/scenes that I find boring to write&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I remove the elements/scenes that makes me become confused about the plot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How else can I identify elements that are unnecessarily complex or just irrelevant? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T01:36:23.420" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T02:11:17.327" Title="Tips to identify &quot;noise&quot; or &quot;clutter&quot; in your story" Tags="|creative-writing|editing|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8710" CreationDate="2013-08-26T14:56:35.247" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not necessarily the plot that's important. I wouldn't even say it's those parts that you view as &quot;boring&quot; (boring could mean it's still important, but it needs to be rewritten).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;James N. Frey's &lt;em&gt;How to Write a Damn Good Novel&lt;/em&gt; (Chapter 3), recommends that you use a story's premise to be selective in determining what goes in and out of your story. The premise of a story is essentially &quot;a statement of what happens to the characters as a result of the core conflict of the story.&quot; For example, the premise of &lt;em&gt;The Godfather&lt;/em&gt; can be expressed as &quot;family loyalty leads to a life of crime&quot;, while &lt;em&gt;The Old Man and the Sea&lt;/em&gt; has the premise of &quot;courage leads to redemption&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You likely will not know the premise from the start, but it should become apparent from your characters, how they will likely interact with one another and the conflicts that arise, which ultimately reaches a conclusion. As Frey puts it, &quot;There is no formula for finding a premise. You simply start with a character or a situation, give the protaginist a dilemma, and then meditate on how it might go.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, once you do know your premise, you can be ruthless in removing all that has no bearing on proving the premise, which ties in nicely with the first item in your list. Like a sculptor's knife that strips away excess clay to reveal the statue, the premise whittles away the cruft from your story. As Aristotle puts it, &quot;For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T14:56:35.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8703" CreationDate="2013-08-26T15:20:12.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add on to Psicofrenia's excellent answer: Simply put, a writer &lt;em&gt;writes&lt;/em&gt;. All the time. If you're not at your desk, you're still writing in your head. The notebook gives you somewhere to put your thoughts for later perusal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you're sitting at a subway station waiting for the train on the way to work, you may observe two really interesting people having a conversation. You write that down. A year from now you need some background characters to liven up a scene, and you consult your notebook for an example of real people doing real things &amp;mdash; how they look, how they carry themselves, the cadence and slang of their speech, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your train trip takes you an hour, you have a notebook to write down the great plot bunny which attacked you on the way up the stairs. Or to write a description of just how the morning light hits the bridge on a hazy day in June, and how far into the city you can see before the buildings become indistinguishable. This is both recording real detail for later and practice for thinking about landscapes and how the weather affects them (so that when you write a fantasy story and your heroine is standing on a mountaintop in early summer, you will know that in fact she can't see twenty miles south). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you practice observing, you get better at it. Writing down your observations forces you to go into more detail. You then get better at inventing details, because you know what details exist in reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get entire scenes, pages of stuff sometimes, when I'm on the treadmill. The notebook is the place to jot that down, so that when I get out of the shower I can incorporate it (or not). It saves me from having to memorize three pages of really good interaction through the shower and a phone call and cleaning up cat puke and two emails and hey, my auction finished and now what was that scene again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having these details, these thoughts, these exercises available to you later enriches your writing. You don't have to rely on making up every bloody detail or remembering through the mists of time or researching June sunlight at a particular latitude in certain weather conditions. The things you write down in your notebook give life to your writing and keep your mental faculties sharp. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T15:20:12.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8713" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-26T19:31:31.053" Score="8" ViewCount="1482" Body="&lt;p&gt;A writer is doing blog coverage of an event which is time sensitive (happens annually).  The writer uses present tense for the coverage posts.  Should the writer go back and reformat the old posts to past-tense after the event?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a webmaster for a company that does this kind of coverage for their own events.  Generally after an event they request that all posts be changed to past tense.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The event is kicking off on August 20, 2013 and will continue through&#xA;  August 26, 2013.  John Smith will be having an autograph session&#xA;  during the event.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;becomes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The event kicked off on August 20, 2013 and continued through August&#xA;  26, 2013.  John Smith had an autograph session during the event.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if anyone else does this, or if it is standard to leave time-sensitive posts as the tense they were originally written in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5758" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-01-08T19:53:52.890" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T19:53:52.890" Title="Should blog posts be reformatted to past tense after an event?" Tags="|blog|tenses|journalism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8713" CreationDate="2013-08-26T20:12:02.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my business clients has a similar issue, although not with blog posts. They leave the information in present tense and do not change it after the fact. This sometimes means that they are posting an interview in August which reads &quot;On July 1, the following will happen...&quot; because the interview took place in June and it took until August to work its way through bureaucracy and legal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a casual reader of a blog or a series of clearly dated press releases, it wouldn't bother me either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T20:12:02.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8708" CreationDate="2013-08-27T09:20:12.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a long time since I used this software so I cannot vouch for the current version; but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ihmc.us/cmaptools.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CmapTools&lt;/a&gt; from the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition was both powerful and flexible for quite complex concept maps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T09:20:12.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8719" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-08-27T12:20:56.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;LaTeX is a macro package implemented on Donald Knuth's TeX programming language and is used primarily for creating high quality written documents. The underlying TeX system is Turing complete and LaTeX inherits this property, making it &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; (but rarely advisable) to perform arbitrary computations in LaTeX; more interestingly it makes it possible to get any layout scheme you can describe precisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://tex.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange site dedicated to LaTeX is tex.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;, which is probably a better place to ask any LaTeX-related questions than here on Writers. The other site also covers TeX and other related technologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other resources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great many problems can be solved by selecting the right existing macro package from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CTAN&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Free LaTeX Book&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3183" LastEditorUserId="3183" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T13:16:50.313" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T13:16:50.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8720" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-08-27T12:20:56.777" Score="0" Body="LaTeX is a macro package implemented on Donald Knuth's TeX programming language and is used primarily for creating high quality written documents. Note that http://tex.stackexchange.com is specifically dedicated to LaTeX questions (and TeX, and other related technologies)." OwnerUserId="3183" LastEditorUserId="3183" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T13:16:45.593" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T13:16:45.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8713" CreationDate="2013-08-27T17:08:59.147" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important thing to consider is whether or not there are valid justications for the effort of changing posts to the past tense, given that you are increasing your workload and increasing the risk of introducing errors into the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of justifications, the only one I can think of is that  readers may get confused reading something in the present tense that occured weeks or months ago. If the date of the piece is clearly and prominently displayed, then this problem can be mitigated quite simply, with no need to change the text. You could also introduce an italicized foreword of some sort explaining that this was written during the event in question. Even just a simple &quot;This event has now finished&quot; (which you could even automate to display) should make it absolutely clear to readers that the events mentioned were in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth mentioning that re-rediting the posts can create sticky situations trying to make your text work. For example, imagine there was a quote, something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;The event is kicking off on August 20, 2013 and will continue through August 26, 2013. John Smith will be having an autograph session during the event. John Smith said, &quot;I'm really looking forward to meeting the fans, and there will be a prize giveaway of my latest book.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, now you have to edit the tense. You shouldn't change the quote, since changing the quote would change the words that were actually said. Do you then say something like, &quot;Before the event, John Smith told us ...&quot;? However, what about the prize giveaway? Do you delete that? Leave it in? If you leave it in, will it make sense? Won't readers be curious to know who won, since the text now reads as if it was written after the event?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, it would be far better to simply leave the original post as is (perhaps introducing the &quot;This event is now finished&quot;), and have a follow-up piece written that reports back on the event. From a marketing perspective (assuming this is indexed by Google), this is a much better idea: you don't really want to be deleting or altering what is possibly well-indexed content, and adding new, fresh content is a good idea (making sure it's not simply duplicated content, of course). You can even link from the old, original event content to the new follow-up content e.g. &quot;The event is now finished. Have a look at what happened &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.example.com&quot;&gt;when John Smith met his fans&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T17:14:35.107" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T17:14:35.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7126" CreationDate="2013-08-27T18:50:46.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/booktype/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;booktype&lt;/a&gt;. You can read the review on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2012/02/14/booktype-book-collaboration-made-easy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;forbes.com&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Booktype, according to the article, is an open source software designed for the purpose of collaborative book writing with features like native formatting, social capabilities (you can interact with other collaborators including chat for real time conversation) and other cool features. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though this is not as mature as version control systems used in software development, I think this is very promising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5753" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T18:38:35.180" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T18:38:35.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2878" CreationDate="2013-08-27T22:33:35.417" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://myperfectpitch.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; has done some research into how many people are actually writing books seriously with a view to getting them published. The answer is a little under 1 million, with a turnaround averaging 3.5 years, meaning that is the period of time on average they stick at writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5769" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T22:33:35.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8710" CreationDate="2013-08-28T02:11:17.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I engage in the minimalist style to some degree, so I can understand why removing the 'noise' from your story is important: it causes distraction which undermines the impact of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot give you a foolproof system but the one that works for me is that I make sure each detail that I am putting in my story has a purpose/reason behind it. It must contribute to the storyline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I describe in the first few paragraphs that a character is concerned about something, I then make sure that readers become aware of exactly what is bothering him or her. If you write several paragraphs that are unrelated to the character's concerns, that is clutter!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not saying that you cannot write several paragraphs as background to your character's concerns. The key point here is that every paragraph you write must be either directly or indirectly connected to the character's concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It often comes down to good editing techniques. You know your plot and you want your readers to imagine it like you do. So edit your stories to fit the picture you have in your mind. If a detail does not make sense to you (i.e. does not contribute to the storyline), then it will not make sense to your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My golden rule is that if it is a standalone description, then it is most likely clutter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He was wearing a red jumper and standing at the back of the room (standalone - ask yourself: so what?).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He was wearing a red jumper that helped him blend into the dark setting of the room (description is not stand alone)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T02:11:17.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2878" CreationDate="2013-08-28T13:32:59.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this question asked on other sites and the answer is always, No one has any good statistics on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ballpark thinking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we do have reasonably reliable statistics that about 300,000 new titles are published each year, that's clearly the upper bound. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that most authors publish more than one book -- and clearly there are some out there who churn them out -- most of those 300,000 are probably not by new authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the number of new authors each year is likely in the tens of thousands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T13:32:59.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2878" CreationDate="2013-08-28T14:59:44.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Warning: Sources links aren't English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some research, I have found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lesnouveauxauteurs.com/docs/mission.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; which approximately said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In France [...] classical edition have its constraints and can publish only between 500 and 1 000 new authors per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not an official number, but it could make a good start point.&#xA;In the same time, around 69 000 books are published each year in France (according to registration of copyright, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bnf.fr/fr/professionnels/anx_depot_legal/a.dl_stats_biblio.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we keep the same percentage, &lt;strong&gt;for 250 000 books published each year, between 1 800 and 3 600 are books from new authors&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know they're is a lot of weaknesses in my calculation: the first number come from a marketing announcement and doesn't include self-publishing when the second one include them, so the true number is probably higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5637" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T14:59:44.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2002" CreationDate="2013-08-28T15:17:59.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well if you really want to do present tense do it, but, from past experience I've found you just switch back to past tense sooner or later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5774" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T15:17:59.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7741" CreationDate="2013-08-28T22:23:54.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;So you want to use flow charts and graphs to tell a story? Good. Go right ahead. Tools don't make the master, practice does and it sounds like you have lots. Everyone does it different anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers generally are mostly text based thinkers then visual, filmmakers are visual since their medium is visual. They make storyboards that help them see what they are planning on doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you can try something to practice on. Good look up monomyth aka Hero's Journey and enter that into you flowchart as the top level thing. Then you can break it down into how you are going to pull off each of those steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll want to create character sheets and setting sheets to round out your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing is to write a story to completion and get it out there. Use the tools you know is fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of article about how different authors did their work. The one thing every successful writer does is finish the story and put it out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5715" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T22:23:54.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8731" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-08-29T10:47:45.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with 50,000 words of a brand new novel. &lt;a href=&quot;https://nanowrimo.org/about-nano&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Learn more.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag should be added to any questions related to this challenge. Including but not limited to, how to approach it, and issues encountered while completing it, general curiosity about the challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2020-11-04T02:22:46.650" LastActivityDate="2020-11-04T02:22:46.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8732" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-08-29T10:47:45.753" Score="0" Body="For questions about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWiMo). An annual challenge where participant attempt to write a novel of 50,000 words during the month of November." OwnerUserId="5637" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2020-11-04T02:22:46.650" LastActivityDate="2020-11-04T02:22:46.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8733" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-29T15:13:17.790" Score="2" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently had an idea for a short story. As I began fleshing it out, even more ideas kept bumping my head and before I knew, the framework was too long for me to pass it off as a short story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brevity has always been an issue with me since I started writing.&#xA;Any writing exercises et al that can help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4807" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T13:51:35.133" Title="Short story becomes too intense to pack into a few pages" Tags="|short-story|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8733" CreationDate="2013-08-30T00:30:38.413" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with the comments above, the creative process is all about continually improving upon your original concept. If your mind is working and you've come up with new ideas, that's great! Many people struggle to get even &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; idea down, so if you're thinking up lots of ideas, that's a good thing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; want a short story, I suppose you need to look at what the core concept of the story is. What message are you trying to deliver, and do these extra ideas/plotlines help or hinder that main idea?  Is the short story really gaining anything by having these ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt;, well that's still a good thing!  It just means you've probably moved into novella territory, which isn't a bad thing at all.  If you think, though, that you still want a short story (for publishing in a magazine for instance), then I'd recommend you have a look at which ideas/plotlines are really true to the core storyline and essence of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T00:30:38.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6821" CreationDate="2013-08-30T02:22:44.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try www.elance.com or www.guru.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These sites are technically for individual jobs, but it would give you a chance to give potential editors a test run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5779" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T02:22:44.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8708" CreationDate="2013-08-30T06:48:43.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use CMAP tools frequently and like it, but it doesn't shine for ease of use.  Not bad, but not great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one that I believe will fit your needs best is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bubbl.us&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bubbl.us&lt;/a&gt; - it's a browser-based app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has the least friction between brain and screen.  Its disadvantage is that, unlike CMAP, it is not totally free of charge. You can make three maps free, but you have to susbscribe if you want to preserve more than three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inspiration.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Inspiration&lt;/a&gt; - but it's overkill for the use you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5782" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T06:48:43.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8738" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8740" CreationDate="2013-08-30T16:14:58.637" Score="-1" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm getting ready for the GRE and am looking for some highly challenging books. Any new bombastic dense context with long weird complex sentences would work for me. I would like to see who dense a context can be, and again, I'm not looking for something overly archaic that only a neanderthal could fully understand!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5619" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T22:46:46.093" Title="Could you please suggest a very dense book?" Tags="|book-rec|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-08-30T22:57:54.823" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8690" CreationDate="2013-08-30T16:20:30.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neurological illnesses or a conversion disorder can cause muteness with no apparent reason. See this related question over at cogsci.stackexchange.com: &lt;a href=&quot;https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/4458/why-does-a-person-temporarily-go-blind-without-any-apparent-cause&quot;&gt;https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/4458/why-does-a-person-temporarily-go-blind-without-any-apparent-cause&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:56:15.437" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T16:20:30.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8738" CreationDate="2013-08-30T22:46:46.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Doctor Faustus&lt;/em&gt; by Thomas Mann. I found it extraordinarily challenging, and worth it. Twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T22:46:46.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8741" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8744" CreationDate="2013-08-30T23:05:29.070" Score="19" ViewCount="3616" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working on a story idea for a few years now, during which I designed a world (fantasy-based) in which it would take place. The thing is that because this is a different planet, I thought it would be cool to create a world without any humans or any animals/plants found on earth. While thinking about it, however, I've become concerned with the thought that maybe a world without humans would be too difficult for readers to relate to. Even stories/movies such as Star Wars, John Carter, etc. all have humans found throughout the universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though there are no humans in the world I created, all the races are humanoid, and the plants/animals are mostly similar to earthly/fantasy plants/animals, which I thought may be able to give readers a base to start from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess my question is: Is a world without humans just too alien for a reader to get into? or do I need to re-design my world to include humans (and possibly other &quot;already known&quot; species)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5786" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-08-31T00:39:25.973" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T14:02:06.013" Title="Can Readers Relate to a Book without Humans?" Tags="|creative-writing|fantasy|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8743" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8753" CreationDate="2013-08-30T23:57:44.480" Score="-1" ViewCount="449" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to undertake a project and write a novel, but I'm not sure how should I start. I have the idea, I just don't know the best way to write it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just open &quot;Word&quot; and write what's on my mind, or should I do some research first? Does research need to be made even if I write about wordily daily life topics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw some help books that claim to help me undertake this task &quot;in 10 easy steps&quot; or so, but I have never tried those. I'm not sure if they really can help me out or even if there's an easy way to take the first steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I would like to understand what should I be aware in my work to understand if it would be classified or not as fan fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5785" LastEditorUserId="5114" LastEditDate="2013-09-01T15:52:20.883" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T15:52:20.883" Title="Writing, my first attempt" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-08-31T16:30:46.217" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8741" CreationDate="2013-08-31T00:33:53.853" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the noblest quests of science fiction is to attempt to create a convincing alien. Most of the ones we find, even in good quality science fiction, are mere variations of human beings. Yet stories, even entire novels, have certainly been written in which no human being appears. Trying to understand alien beings is an important metaphor for the crucial necessity of understanding those who are not like us, and science fiction is a marvelous place for opening our minds on this matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, of course you can, and should, try to write something with nothing but aliens in it. If I were still editing a science fiction magazine, I for one would love to see it. And I still would anyway!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastEditorUserId="4805" LastEditDate="2013-08-31T17:25:49.453" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T17:25:49.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8741" CreationDate="2013-08-31T01:06:37.633" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely. CJ Cherryh's stock-in-trade is advanced sophisticated nonhuman species, and showing how humans flail around when meeting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0756402514&quot;&gt;Foreigner&lt;/a&gt; (15 books and counting) Human among atevi&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0886778697&quot;&gt;The Faded Sun trilogy&lt;/a&gt; Human among mri&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0886779308&quot;&gt;The Chanur Saga&lt;/a&gt; Human among kif&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And those are just the ones I've &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt;. The woman is more prolific than Asimov. And she's terrifyingly good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1416532838&quot;&gt;Larry Niven's Kzinti&lt;/a&gt; are another great example. (14 books and counting, I think)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an easier on-ramp &amp;mdash; because CJ Cherryh is not for wimps &amp;mdash; there are a few Classic Trek novels by Diane Duane (&lt;em&gt;Spock's World&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;The Romulan Way&lt;/em&gt;) which are set on their respective planets, and the humans don't show up until the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you think about it, Lord of the Rings and &lt;em&gt;The Hobbit&lt;/em&gt; don't really have many humans in them either. There are two main humans in LOTR, and one of them dies a third of the way in. The rest are elves, dwarves, hobbits, wizards, orcs, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge is to make your nonhuman species relatable &amp;mdash; to make your characters behave or think in ways which humans can understand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T01:06:37.633" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8741" CreationDate="2013-08-31T01:20:03.010" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do we really connect with a character anyway?  It's not because they're human - not neccessarily, although it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But why do animated films work?  Why does an audience care if Nemo finds his Dad, or if Ratatouille becomes a chef?  They're animated animals, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reader or viewer will always emphasize and sympathize with any human or anthropomorphized animal/object, if we can see the same emotions in that object as in a human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, take classic sci-fi: Yoda.  He's a little green alien, but we can understand him. His emotions in the way he speaks and his words convey wisdom, an old master of an even older order, who has seen it all before and is forced to watch as the younger generation comes through.  We 'get' him as a character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned, Pixar and Sony have done wonders with the animated industry, allowing children and adults alike to connect with animated, often animal, but sometimes alien (Despicable Me minions, and Escape From Planet Earth blue aliens), characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's no reason a novel wouldn't work - but you need to create the same complex array of emotions that a human has, within an alien.  If the reader can laugh, cry and feel anger, and all the other emotions, then it'll work out right.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastEditorUserId="5551" LastEditDate="2013-09-01T21:39:40.893" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T21:39:40.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8743" CreationDate="2013-08-31T14:01:13.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can first write all the points that come to your mind related to the topic and then you can refer to self help books to add more information. Alternatively, you can also do research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, when you have collected sufficient information about the topic then you can arrange  it in an order to make the novel worth for reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T14:01:13.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1361" CreationDate="2013-08-31T14:48:32.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For general Interest , you can refer to below magazines :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Clann Magazine.&#xA;2) The Believer&#xA;3) Harper's Magazine&#xA;4) Reader's Digest&#xA;5) The Saturday Evening Post&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For technology content, you can refer to below magazines : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) American Heritage of Invention &amp;amp; Technology&#xA;2) Invention &amp;amp; Technology&#xA;3) 2600: The Hacker Quarterly&#xA;4) Free Open Source Magazine&#xA;5) Modern Electrics&#xA;6) PCWorld&#xA;7) Wired&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and many more.........&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T14:48:32.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8704" CreationDate="2013-08-31T16:04:58.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please have a look at these links. They can be of help : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-newspapers.com/literature.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.world-newspapers.com/literature.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This website contains all the literary magazines in which you can publish your short fiction stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writerscentre.ie/html/resources/literaryjournals.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writerscentre.ie/html/resources/literaryjournals.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This website is a long hub of literary activity that supports aspiring writers. It is a non-profit organisation, a registered charity, with the remit of promoting writers and literature at home and abroad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've used lists like these to identify magazines to submit to, you can also look at the magazines' submission guidelines, and the fiction that they have already published. These will help you narrow down your list of markets even further. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-08-31T17:34:05.410" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T17:34:05.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8743" CreationDate="2013-08-31T16:18:23.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write mixing snooker and role-playing games. It works really well for me, and maybe it can work for you too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first I conceive the world in which the plot will take place. I don't care about the characters, just the background and what is happening independent of the plot. Let's say I'm writing Little Red Hood tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In some small town near a small forest a wolf appears, after being driven away from his original home by a huntsman for killing some sheep. In the neighborhood, there aren't many animals since the local lord has gone away to fight a war and all the peasants start to hunt in the private woods, killing all the big animals. The wold was growing hunger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I need to work the plot. The only thing you know before start to play a snooker game is that it starts with all the balls aligned in a certain way, and that it will end after all your balls are in the bags. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start: Little Red Hood will take a trip to deliver some food to her grandmother.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;End: The wolf will be killed and Little Red Hood will be saved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I need to choose my balls. The balls are important events that I think are relevant, interesting or crucial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Little Red Hood will meet the wolf in the woods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The wolf will kill her grandmother.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The huntsman will show up to help with the wolf.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The snooker game is set and I'll rub chalk on my pool cue to start playing. Rubbing chalk is to details the characters and the locations (and anything else) I already know, and it's vital to have a starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrievener is great for this, since it will allow you to create sheets in the same workspace and makes the job easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it's time to play and to bag my balls. To bag my balls, I'll start to write the chapters that will take Little Red Hood from home to the encounter with the wolf, then the chapters that will take wolf from the encounters to killing the grandmother and so on. It's all a matter of linking the dots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please notice that this technique is highly fluid and mutable and you won't have full control of the story since the characters may take actions that you weren't expecting. I know you decide what the characters do, but in this kind of writing your imagination will be like a river, adapting to what is happening, not following a pre-designed pipe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means you may find yourself in strange situations some times, what will mean that you may have to spend a few days working out how the characters will be able to bag the ball. It's normal and, I must say, interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably, a lot of people here will say it isn't a good way to write. I don't share the same opinion because I understand that writing is a very personal thing. You need to know the basics and the techniques but the execution will be yours and yours alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people work with a very well structured plot, some like freedom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, structure is everything. This &quot;snooker/dot linking&quot; method also deals with a lot of structure, it just don't make structure extremely rigid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T16:18:23.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8690" CreationDate="2013-08-31T18:16:07.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Loneliness can do anything. It can make a person mute without any reason. What our subconscious mind decides strongly, it can do. It doesn't require any reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, your character is apt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T18:16:07.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8682" CreationDate="2013-08-31T18:44:32.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Passion is the main thing that gives you good writing. If short stories catch more of your interest then you can go for them. If you wish to have change or some keen interest to deliver some message via novel, then you can go for a novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or if you wish both can be done simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T18:44:32.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8669" CreationDate="2013-08-31T20:08:49.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess your essay is in paragraphs.So, first paragraph should be introductory like what the product is, how old it is , from where it is derived and then the next paragraph will consist of benefits and features of the product, after that the paragraph will be of implementation of features in new product. Last paragraph will be conclusion. This will easily make 400 or more words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you can get more idea from this example.Let's say your Product is a toothpaste.So, the starting will be like this -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First Paragraph&lt;/strong&gt; :Toothpaste name, colour, its fragrance, ingredients included, company's name or how old the company is? or since when people are using it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second Paragraph&lt;/strong&gt; : Features of toothpaste, like how it is different from others, what special quality it has so that it should be used by people, why people should prefer it and not others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third Paragraph&lt;/strong&gt; : what do you think if these features or ingredients are added to the new toothpaste then how it will be useful. For e.g: existing toothpaste consists natural herbs , new one has a chocolate flavored taste; so how do you think the combination of chocolate and natural herbs will make a toothpaste. What will be its uses and why should it be preferred by the people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;fourth Paragraph&lt;/strong&gt;: (I guess after writing all of the above, this will be your last one i.e. Conclusion) So,here you can mention what you felt about the product. say you can write like this : &quot; my existing product (here, toothpaste) has enormous features that are useful as well as helpful. (Explain any one feature that you like the most).If these features are implemented in the new product, then we can give better combination to the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like this, you can complete answer to your essay question. It's good if you can add some proverbs or anything catchy like that and relevant to your product  which draws the attention of the examiner thus providing you good marks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. Any doubts or questions are most welcomed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T20:08:49.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8633" CreationDate="2013-08-31T20:29:44.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If creative writing is one of your talents and creative ideas are coming to your mind. Don't hesitate to do so. Take a pen and start writing those. For first few days, you will feel uncomfortable but afterwards you will be habituated and things will go smoothly as it was before when you used to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T20:29:44.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8633" CreationDate="2013-08-31T22:02:51.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some famous guy said that writing was opening a vein onto the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish I was that easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is reaching into the most vulnerable parts of your soul and raising them from the depths to show their horrid beauty for all to see. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are shining light on the best and worst facets of your being and it is scary. Being that open and vulnerable is terrifying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's okay. They don't know you and how you fit together and they guess wrong all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid, you've already conquered yourself. Write and be free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5715" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T22:02:51.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8633" CreationDate="2013-09-01T04:42:31.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Javeer, I think you are so afraid of writing that you don't even want to seriously address the issue. You have yourself so tied up in knots that you are talking in self-contradictions. You say &quot;it's not lack of motivation, I just can't bring myself to write.&quot; I would say &quot;just can't bring myself to write&quot; is &lt;em&gt;precisely&lt;/em&gt; a lack of motivation. You say &quot;I know I can write,&quot; and then you talk about your &quot;lingering feeling&quot; that you can't write! Again, you're contradicting yourself. You're talking in circles because you don't want to face the fact that it's easier to talk about why you can't write than it is to actually WRITE SOMETHING.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think that's the crux of the problem. You're simply afraid of failure. Well, forget it, Javeer. So is everyone! ALL writers are afraid of failure. The greatest writers are probably more afraid of failure than anyone. It's what drives them to write more, to work harder, to do everything they can to improve so they will be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is a terrifying thing. You're putting your heart, soul, and the contents of your mind out in front of the world for everyone to see. Wouldn't that be scary? Of course it would! It's absolutely bone-chillingly horrifying, and it's what stops most of the world from being writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's the news, and I'm not going to sugar-coat it. Do you really want to write? Then let me tell you something. All the tricks and devices and gimmicks and ways of fooling yourself into getting something written aren't going to help if you can't take a deep breath and say, BY GOD I AM GOING TO DO THIS! You have to overcome the terror of the blank page, as it used to be more commonly called in the days of pens and paper and good old-fashioned typewriters. Just looking at an empty white sheet of paper onto which you were supposed to put some new writing could send some writers into something approaching panic attacks, and I'm not talking about would-be writers; I'm talking about world-class ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there you have one helpful note of reassurance: You are in very good company. And here's the one trick that actually works: Remember there is no such thing as failure. If you write something, you have already succeeded. You have overcome the terror of the blank page. Tell yourself this: You're not going to die if you write something. Does that sound silly? It's not. Writing isn't a matter of life and death. Put it in its place. Don't let it defeat you. You are the master of your own writing. If you really want to write, then that means you want to tell the world something, don't you? SO TELL IT. You can talk, can't you? TALK TO THE WORLD. In your writing. Just start talking. In written form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does any or all of this sound harsh, too tough? Fine. So be it. I teach writing. I edit writing. I have never seen anyone become a successful writer if they couldn't handle this tough love. This is the reality, Javeer. You're either a writer or you aren't, and that's defined by whether you can have the courage to write. I say put aside your fear. Believe that what you say matters, because it does. You can play around with gimmicks, or you can pick up your sword and slay the dragon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastEditorUserId="4805" LastEditDate="2013-09-06T04:52:25.583" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T04:52:25.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8761" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8764" CreationDate="2013-09-01T07:10:12.213" Score="2" ViewCount="1149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always find myself wondering whether to add add &quot;variation&quot; or &quot;symmetry&quot; to a sentence. Most of the time I can't make out my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the moon still illuminating my way, I entered the trail, which&#xA;  consisted of a narrow concrete path surrounded by &lt;strong&gt;bamboo and banana&#xA;  plants&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meaning aside, does it sound better if I balance the two words between &quot;and&quot;? By making them both &lt;em&gt;adj + noun&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the moon still illuminating my way, I entered the trail, which&#xA;  consisted of a narrow concrete path surrounded by &lt;strong&gt;tall bamboo and banana&#xA;  plants&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yet there were things she had never seen before &lt;strong&gt;like three-wheeled&#xA;  bikes and elephants.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it sound better as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yet there were things she had never seen before like &lt;strong&gt;three-wheeled&#xA;  bikes and Asian elephants.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="633" LastEditDate="2013-09-01T13:50:23.773" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T17:56:44.533" Title="&quot;Variation&quot; and &quot;symmetry&quot; in a sentence" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8761" CreationDate="2013-09-01T07:44:21.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difference is whether there is a notable difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you say elephant, I think of the big gray ones, but an Asian elephant is smaller and has shorter tusks.  Now that makes a considerable difference to the story, in terms of the readers' visualization of the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the tall bamboos is merely a descriptor. Bamboo is naturally tall, so it doesn't really make a huge difference if you specify the adjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would say that its largely a matter of creative writing style, with a few differences based on where adjectives are actually part of a Proper noun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T07:44:21.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8761" CreationDate="2013-09-01T14:22:44.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a matter of style. If you can find a noun that evokes a precise image without using an adjective, so much the better. For example, a &lt;em&gt;tricycle&lt;/em&gt; is a &quot;three-wheeled bike&quot; and so it is a noun that contains its own descriptor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the first example, my impression is that you didn't think too much about the beginning, which needs work, and are saving all your worry for what amounts to a false dilemma at the end. I would suggest you don't let yourself get locked into one way of thinking about a scene. Try alternate ways of being evocative. You may be struggling with the last part of the sentence because it's the first part that isn't carrying enough freight. Consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The moonlight carved a narrow canyon between cliffs of bamboo and banana, its walls closing in from both sides as I pushed my way along the trail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course many different ways to set this scene. But this one makes the moonlight the agent of a claustrophobic, faintly menacing presence. Cliffs are tall, so you don't have to use that adjective to describe the plants. Darkness, tallness, narrowness — all are present, but the experience of them comes alive in a way they do not when you merely trot out a string of facts. It is the age-old difference between showing and telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T14:22:44.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8761" CreationDate="2013-09-01T17:56:44.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Factors you're playing with.&lt;/strong&gt; First I'll call out a number of factors that you're playing with in addition to variety and symmetry:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rhythm.&lt;/em&gt; Adding or omitting &quot;tall&quot; in the first example shifts the rhythm of the sentence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sonority (lyrically?).&lt;/em&gt; Adding or omitting &quot;Asian&quot; in your second example changes the way the sentence flows off the tongue. It feels like of slurry to me. Something about all of the a's and n's in a row.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Precision.&lt;/em&gt; Each time you add a modifier, you make the image more precise. But it may also make a construction more ambiguous. Does &quot;tall&quot; modify banana plants, or only bamboo? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Wordiness.&lt;/em&gt; Each time you add a modifier, you make the sentence wordier.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional factors to play with.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A few other factors that remain the same throughout your examples, but which you can also play with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Word choice.&lt;/em&gt; A &lt;em&gt;modifier+noun&lt;/em&gt; pair compared with a more precise noun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Word order.&lt;/em&gt; If you shift &quot;tall bamboo&quot; to the end, it's clear that &quot;tall&quot; modifies only bamboo.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;What goes at the end of a sentence.&lt;/em&gt; I noticed that both of your examples are at the ends of sentences. The end of a sentence is a special place. That's a great place to put new or surprising or powerful ideas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;List rhythm and ordering.&lt;/em&gt; It is often easier for readers to parse a list if the shorter items appear toward the beginning of the list, and the longer items appear toward the end. Consider &quot;elephants and three-wheeled bikes.&quot; (I like elephants at the end here. For me, the surprise of elephants outweighs the length thing.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sentence and paragraph construction.&lt;/em&gt; Left as an exercise for the reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These factors all bump into each other, contradict each other, support each other. Fiddling with one also affects the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Voice is kinda the sum of your choices about these things. The way you choose becomes your unique voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, this is a matter of taste. Your question tells me that you care about this, and that the distinctions you're struggling with are subtle and interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm confident that you'll do just fine, whatever you choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T17:56:44.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8768" CreationDate="2013-09-02T12:28:11.627" Score="1" ViewCount="233" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it always better to omit &quot;that&quot; when it's not neccesary in a sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Erin realized she'd been so busy with work &lt;strong&gt;that&lt;/strong&gt; she'd forgotten to&#xA;  check if her parents were OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would that sentence be improved by removing that &quot;that?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T13:05:05.630" Title="Omitting &quot;that&quot; in fiction writing" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8767" CreationDate="2013-09-02T13:05:05.630" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;It is never &quot;always&quot; better to do anything in fiction.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;That&quot; is a frequently overused word, but underuse is equally problematic. Whether a word is grammatically necessary (or even if it's grammatically &lt;em&gt;correct&lt;/em&gt;) is less important than whether it improves or reduces the clarity of the thought being conveyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, &lt;strong&gt;read the sentence out loud each way.&lt;/strong&gt; If you find yourself needing to force the words out in an unnatural cadence for one version, then it's probably going to be difficult for your reader to parse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the sentence has a more pleasing rhythm and is more easily understood with the &quot;that&quot; intact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5766" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T13:05:05.630" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8769" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-02T16:31:12.653" Score="1" ViewCount="571" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found some &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/352/is-there-a-rule-of-thumb-about-the-number-of-pages-a-work-of-fiction-should-have/&quot;&gt;nice replies dealing with word counting&lt;/a&gt;, but my question is slightly different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if it's possible to establish a relation between word count and the number of pages in an average formatted book, so I can have an idea of how many pages my manuscript probably has so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this should be just an average, not an exact answer. Basically, I want to know, in average, how many words a page has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2023-12-13T05:48:00.760" Title="Is it possible to establish a relation between word count and page count?" Tags="|publishing|wordcount|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8769" CreationDate="2013-09-02T16:46:52.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Really?&#xA;It's not possible.&#xA;If you write a book full of dialogue, like theatre, or a book without blank typo, you won't have the same wordcount for the same number of page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a manuscript, in general, it's not the word count that you have to take. It's the character count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make an average for your book, already. You take some pages, you see the word count, you divide (?) by the number of pages, you ave an average for one of Your pages. And after, you see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I really don't think you can make a good average with other books, for yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5789" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T01:07:45.827" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T01:07:45.827" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8769" CreationDate="2013-09-02T19:01:01.177" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An easy, highly variable way:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick up a book that is formatted approximately as you think yours might be.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick five random pages in the book. Do not involve your eyes in picking the pages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Count the number of words per page, and compute the mean.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide your word count by that mean.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A more reliable way, involving somewhat more work:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick up a book that is formatted approximately as you think yours might be.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Type five pages of that book into your word processor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adjust the following settings until they appear on your screen &lt;em&gt;as closely as you can manage&lt;/em&gt; like the book you're using as a reference&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Font (face and size)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Line spacing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paragraph spacing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Page margins&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Space between scenes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extra space at the top of a chapter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Format your book using the same settings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T19:01:01.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2832" CreationDate="2013-09-02T19:14:52.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please have a look at some of the websites where you can crowdsource your writing projects: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crowdsourcing.org/navigate-search?q=writers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.crowdsourcing.org/navigate-search?q=writers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kickstarter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.kickstarter.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any one among these or all of them may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T19:14:52.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5492" CreationDate="2013-09-02T19:49:33.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the websites mentioned here can help you to find one word for a complete sentence or a phrase. Please have a look at them : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vedicaptitude.com/?page_id=87&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.vedicaptitude.com/?page_id=87&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://targetstudy.com/one-word-substitution/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://targetstudy.com/one-word-substitution/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and more...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T19:49:33.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="107" CreationDate="2013-09-02T20:20:22.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;With a view to capture reader's interest, you can do the following : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Prefer to start first line with a question. It's good to write controversial question like this &quot;Check it in or Carry it on&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) First sentence should include quotations as well that are related to the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) Use opposing opinion in first sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d) Begin your paragraph with an anecdote or short narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e) Add interesting facts to the first sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this will make the story's introduction as well as beginning quite interesting so as to catch readers and continue them to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T20:20:22.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="107" CreationDate="2013-09-03T04:40:06.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, stop using the word &quot;so&quot; at the beginning of your sentences. The current fad of starting every conversation with &quot;so&quot; is pointless and practically idiotic, and letting it slip into written English is nonsensical. And please don't point out that there are reasons to begin sentences with &quot;so.&quot; Of course there are. If you have a legitimate reason, do it. Otherwise, don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, in my opinion, the best opening lines are ones that simply put the reader into the middle of the action. Try this one on for size:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Charlie was thinking, &lt;em&gt;Bennie, I told you no way a friggin' .22&lt;/em&gt;, because look at that,the creep was only bleeding, and running, getting away, and it didn't do Charlie no good to be right about the gun now, cuz how was he gonna tell Mr. Carter and come out of that alive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to read the rest of that story? I hope to heck you do, because if you don't, I'd have to wonder if you have a pulse. You're looking at four characters, one of whom was just shot, two of whom are possibly friends and maybe rivals, a whole bunch of interaction that obviously has already happened among them, one guy who is probably going to kill another guy for not killing someone whom he wants killed... I could go on. There's a heck of a lot happening in a single sentence, isn't there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start your story in the middle, using an opening line that talks about &lt;em&gt;something that is really interesting but doesn't reveal it all&lt;/em&gt;, then go into &lt;em&gt;backstory&lt;/em&gt;, and usually your opening line will be plenty interesting enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T04:40:06.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6821" CreationDate="2013-09-03T07:35:31.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what you have so far stated in the question you already have the resource but have not yet utilized it. On every forum you will have multiple users who  are avidly active posting on blogs giving their opinions and in general helping the community off their own backs. The problem with hiring freelance people is that they would be coming onto your blog without knowing what it’s all about. By trying to find an already present user that has contributed to the blog, they already know what you, the MNC and the blog are trying to achieve. Consider creating a separate part on the blog or even a blog post advertising that you require a few part time blog editors and try find a few examples of &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobs.problogger.net/view/6708&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog job requirements&lt;/a&gt; and look for crucial parts that you need and tailor it to that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5796" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T07:35:31.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8778" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8786" CreationDate="2013-09-03T10:11:17.110" Score="1" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;The core character in my current work-in-progress is an immortal goddess (of the minor kind), who goes increasingly desperate. In her desperation she's about to do something quite terrible, and the protagonist's task is to stop her. He knows her final intent, but not the motives - why she wants to do this. About the most significant thread of the story is discovery: learning about her motives, worries and desires, and acting upon them, influencing others in ways that rekindle her hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one point the protagonist finds a tome of poetry written by that goddess, and by mantra &quot;show, don't tell&quot; I use the poems within to show her character and her worst ire: the mortals wasting their lives on what she deems follies: etiquette, lies, meddling, scheming, empty rituals of habit and tradition. Her greatest pain is the mortals pass away so fast, and then they squander the little time they have. Normally she's caring, sincere and gentle, but now she's increasingly angry, and her patience is running short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some poems that are to show her gentle side, and her regret at how fleeting mortal lives are, and I'm fairly sure I got their messages clear, but this one, is to show her anger, to make the reader understand both how to talk with her (only blunt honesty; no flattery, groveling or skirting around the subject) and what kind of change in the society would make her happy (a revolution of sincerity, living lives to the fullest, awakening courageous visionaries).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before that poem her motives seem unclear, selfish, low and unimportant, and acting upon these is a dead end. The discovery of the poems is a turning point, when the protagonist can start doing things that actually help instead of just delaying the inevitable - but will the reader understand the change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You fool in fancy lace&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      Why do you wait&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      Why do you waste&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      your breath?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      It's late!&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your life is dwindling by&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Like candle flame&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Like waning night.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Creeps death.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     For fame?&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You say I lack decorum?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     No, you lack time!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Tomorrow&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Your etiquette&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     will die.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In your short time, be smart&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Follow your dreams&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Follow the art!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Forfeit&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     your schemes.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You fool, don't you see?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Through being free,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Through honesty,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     you live&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     for me.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I teach but they forget it.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     They keep lyng,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     They don't get it!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     They strive,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     dying.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;You spit on my plight&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    That fanciful speak &lt;br&gt;&#xA;    It's blight!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    Your hive:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    They reek!&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Innocent cried for loss,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    Nations fell.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    Fraud and gloss:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    they drive&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    their hell.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The moon in the sky.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     bears scars.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Each your lie&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     kills&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     stars.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;If I find one worthy soul&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    If you oppose his deeds,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    you worthless fool,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    I'll rive&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    you to bits.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I choose this form - strongly fragmented phrases, the uneven lines, imprecise rhymes, weird rhyme scheme, to keep the emotions emphasized. This is not to be a piece polished to chrome shine, it's to be an angry shout-out, frustrated and desperate. I'm not sure though, if I didn't just lose the message in the mess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I added the stanzas in double quote. I hope the last one drives the point home. Now... are there any stanzas I should &lt;em&gt;remove&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T14:45:55.020" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T01:29:09.400" Title="Does my poem convey the character of the (fictional) author well?" Tags="|novel|character-development|poetry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2018-10-03T20:51:14.667" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8778" CreationDate="2013-09-03T12:26:06.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're getting there. Push it farther. I think your first and last stanzas/poems have the right idea. Be rougher. Be angrier. Don't worry about grammar. Show more images, and have them more raw: fire consuming, water draining, a tornado blowing things away, an sinkhole devouring buildings, lava flowing over a city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These stanzas are a little too hand-holding, if anything. She's not desperate or frustrated &lt;em&gt;enough&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Remove four, five, and six. Too mushy. The new ones are definite improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T16:23:21.147" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T16:23:21.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8778" CreationDate="2013-09-03T21:09:14.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some aspects of the poem truly do communicate the perspective of the writer. The short lines certainly present the intensity of the emotion and the sense of urgency in her plea. The somewhat irregular rhyme scheme (aba'cb ded'ce) and irregular line length might express something of her contempt for mere formality. I think this could be further emphasized by not having the last line of each stanza have a firm, proximate rhyme resolution (e.g., abcba' deced' or aba'bc ded'ec).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the long words seem to detract slightly from the force of her words. Long words (which are often more formal) might best be used in ways that express her contempt and associate such finery and artifice to the foolish mortals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The forcefulness of the accusations (and concerns) might be further increased by more use of forms of address expressing their character. E.g., addressing them as liars and not just saying that they lie. Name calling more forcefully expresses emotion (whether hostility or affection) than description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are willing to do a very extensive rewrite, you might consider using a conceptual repetition at the end of each stanza pair to present a didactic feeling (repetition of basic content) and break that expectation by having an odd number of stanzas. This might give a sense of anticipation of doom, that she may give up trying to teach these foolish mortals (particularly if the odd-numbered stanzas are more judgment oriented and the even stanzas more pleading).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The impact of ending on an odd-numbered stanza might be increased if the book or scroll ended there, particularly if some cleverness is applied in selecting a name for the volume. E.g., &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;[last, odd-numbered stanza]  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And there The Scroll of Mortals ended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A title like &quot;Book of Dreams&quot; might be more ambiguous (whether revealed to a mortal scribe in a dream-like state, referring to her aspirations for mortals, or referring to mortals' ephemeral creativity), possibly weakening the impact of that line but also possibly not telegraphing the ending or making it sound trite. If some of her earlier poems in the volume compared the mortals' brief but potentially extravagant creativity with dreams, such a title might be appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This effect might be further intensified by the protagonist not immediately recognizing how these writings offer the hoped for chance of convincing the goddess to abandon her plan to &quot;do something quite terrible&quot;. The quest has ended in failure mirroring the hopeless ending of the book. (This symbolism could also be used at the end of the novel by having the protagonist discover that the book is mysteriously larger with many blank pages added to the end — the dreams will continue.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternating judgmental and pleading stanzas might also express her tension of wishing mortals well and being frustrated by their madness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to differences in meter brought by their different tone, it might also be good to end the even/odd stanzas with different metrical feet. E.g., ending the pleading (even) stanzas with an amphibrach (unstressed, stressed, unstressed) might express something of gentle longing and opportunity for them to repent, and ending the judgment (odd) stanzas with an iamb (unstressed, stressed) might express an abruptness and forcefulness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to work &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; such tricks into such a poem may well be just too difficult. The &lt;em&gt;weakness&lt;/em&gt; of the following rephrasing of just two stanzas may hint at the difficulty:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I lack grace?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  You lack time!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Winter makes&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A fireless rime&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Of ettiquette  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear mayflies, think!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Forge your dreams&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In timeless ink&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And empty schemes&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Forfeit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Replacing &quot;decorum&quot; not only removes a longer, less forceful, more formal word but also seems to make the mortals' accusation harsher (lacking grace being perhaps worse than lacking decorum). Calling them mayflies not only directly addresses them (an affectionate condescension and a call to attention) but adds force &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; metaphor (which links to the urging to manifest their dreams). The moving of the rhyme linking the stanzas to the last line of the stanzas makes that (near) rhyme more apparent and would intensify the effect of ending on an odd stanza. Having &quot;etiquette&quot; at the end of the stanza may also increase the sense of forceful contempt she has for such. The ending of stanzas with different feet might also add some value; the near spondee perhaps having a feel of &quot;please, please&quot; (expressing urgency that there is still time to change) while the iambic pair possibly giving a sense of relentless marching doom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, this rephrasing substantially changes the specific meaning (and somewhat the general meaning) from the original and uses a more regular meter, rhyme, and line length than appropriate. &quot;Forge your dreams/ In timeless ink&quot; is poetic and I like the use of &quot;rime&quot; in that it presents etiquette as fog-like (obstructing, disguising, insubstantial) and frozen (to an entombing container) by the chill of mortality. However, the &lt;em&gt;meaning&lt;/em&gt; is very different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T01:29:09.400" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T01:29:09.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1364" CreationDate="2013-09-04T05:26:59.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples listed on &lt;a href=&quot;http://thatramblingfool.blogspot.com/2013/07/bad-writing-examples-for-literacy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my blog&lt;/a&gt;.  I chose them because I have not seen them talked about very much.  These are not entire paragraph edits, but rather examples of clips and phrases that make your writing awkward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5805" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T05:26:59.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8788" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-04T10:41:14.030" Score="6" ViewCount="22663" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend has sent me a work to critique which he hopes to make into a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_novel&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;light novel&lt;/a&gt;. I've never heard of this type of story before and a quick Google didn't give me much context about how it differs from a traditional western young-adult novella?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2020-04-11T11:27:12.350" LastActivityDate="2020-04-11T11:27:12.350" Title="What is a &quot;light novel&quot; and how does it differ from a novella?" Tags="|creative-writing|young-adult|novella|light-novel|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8788" CreationDate="2013-09-04T13:06:09.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_novel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Light Novel&lt;/a&gt; article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A light novel is a style of Japanese novel primarily targeting middle and high school students. [...] They are typically not more than 40,000–50,000 words long (the shorter ones being equivalent to a novella in US publishing terms), rarely exceed 200 pages, often have dense publishing schedules, are usually published in bunkobon size, and are often illustrated. The text is often serialized in anthology magazines before collection in book form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://ranobecafe.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/what-exactly-is-a-light-novel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What Exactly Is A Light Novel?&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you ask any ‘American’ fan of light novels why they enjoy them, many will respond it is because of their stories, and how vastly different they can be from the average books and fiction being published daily in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A novella is a short story and generally features fewer conflicts than a novel, yet more complicated ones than a short story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T19:23:53.990" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T19:23:53.990" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8769" CreationDate="2013-09-04T13:38:29.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that the average word count for a page varies from 250 to 400, in normal books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most sites I saw, indicated a media of 400 as acceptable, but you can raise it to reflect most condensed books. In that way, a good way to calculate the probably page count of a manuscript is to divide it by 400.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer was given after some more intense Internet research, where these pages arouse:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersservices.com/writersservices-self-publishing/word-count-page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Matching word count to page size&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailywritingtips.com/word-count-and-book-length/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Word Count and Book Length&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersservices.com/writersservices-self-publishing/page-estimator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Page Estimator&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://absolutewrite.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-17692.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Words per page (MS Word) Vs. Standard Sized Paperback Novel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5114" LastEditorUserId="5114" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T19:57:44.983" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T19:57:44.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8792" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8797" CreationDate="2013-09-04T15:47:47.023" Score="6" ViewCount="4254" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, I have about 7 or 8 characters (excluding the antagonist) who each have important roles in the story. My problem is that my characters tend to develop themselves, so to speak. I have no problem with this - in fact, I find it rather amusing - but it leads to an increased chance of them going out of character later. The way to prevent this is, obviously, to write up a bio - the character's personality, back story (to some extent), and some other basic traits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, how detailed should I be? I don't want to be overly basic - again, that leads to out of character moments (and plot holes) - but I also don't want to go into extreme detail on something only I am likely to see. I want to at least include some important events that helped shape who the character is now. I've finished one, and it's almost over the top in detail. I'd rather not do that 6 more times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like some advice on what I should and should not include in a character bio, as well as the level of detail I should go into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4839" LastEditorUserId="5637" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T18:09:24.137" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T14:09:22.027" Title="How detailed should I be when writing a character bio?" Tags="|creative-writing|character-development|planning|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8795" CreationDate="2013-09-04T17:19:29.417" Score="2" ViewCount="2443" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Sophmore making a simple essay about my grandmother. English is my third language, but I live in the US. I am writing an essay but as I re-read it, I just always read &quot;My grandma&quot;...&quot;My grandma&quot;... and it's very repetitive. Is there a way to avoid that? Should I switch of from using &quot;My grandma&quot; and start using her name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advanced for the advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5808" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T17:50:55.577" Title="Should I use the words &quot;My grandma&quot; repetitively to start sentences in an essay?" Tags="|structure|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8792" CreationDate="2013-09-04T17:41:20.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short&lt;/strong&gt;: It depend what you need. Write all you need to explain why your character is like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Firstly, I think you need to know what your character remember. It's obvious, but I know some people who forget it. Sure, it's could be difficult with character who have a good memory, but if you need he/she tell something of his/her past, you won't have to think about the event but only the way this event was tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you probably want to know is the rest. An important part of his or her behavior could depend of his past, and you will probably need to know this events. It could be something he/she forgot but it's why he/she is protective, greedy, paranoiac... All. If an event don't leave any kind of scar (physical or psychological) on your character, it's not necessary to write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After, some part have to be more detailed than others. You don't need to write each hour of each event of course, but the most important 'scars' would probably be more detailed than others. You can easily resume quickly what was his/her education, but you'll probably need to be more detailed on his/her first love, a first failure... If you think something is important, wrote it. If it's really important, detail it. If not, just a quick note would be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5637" LastEditorUserId="5637" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T06:59:02.670" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T06:59:02.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8793" CreationDate="2013-09-04T17:50:55.577" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, using the same word repeatedly tends to sound strange. You should try to vary it up. But at the same time, you don't want to use words or phrasing that are too unusual, and you don't want to use alternative words in a way that might make it unclear to the reader that you are talking about the same person or thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you wrote, &quot;My sister entered the room. Then my sister took off my sister's coat. I said hello to my sister and my sister replied.&quot; Saying &quot;my sister&quot; over and over again like that sounds strange and awkward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you wrote, &quot;My sister entered the room. Then Sally took off ...&quot; it might not be clear to the reader that &quot;my sister&quot; and &quot;Sally&quot; are the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, the easy solution is to use pronouns. &quot;My sister entered the room.  Then she took off her coat,&quot; etc. You can repeat pronouns many times without it sounding as awkward as repeating a description or name -- we're used to hearing repeated pronouns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often you can omit any identification. &quot;I said hello and she replied&quot;, it is not really necessary to say &quot;to her&quot; after hello. As no one else has been mentioned as being present, the reader will assume that the comment was directed to your sister.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, instead of saying &quot;sister&quot; again you could say &quot;my female sibling&quot; or &quot;my parents' other child&quot;. But in most cases those would be more awkward than repeating &quot;my sister&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I would avoid referring to your own grandmother by her proper name. This sounds decidedly ... inappropriate ... to many people. I have never referred to my parents or grandparents by their names, and I am hard-pressed to think of any time when I've heard a friend do so. (Other than a formal context where I am giving their full name. Like if I'm filling out a passport application and they ask for my mother's name, I'm not going to write &quot;mommy&quot;.) Yes, some do, and I don't see this as some profound moral issue or anything, but it sounds strange to my ears and to many others. Let me add that if your grandmother is famous and you are writing about her as an historical figure, that's different. I wouldn't expect you to write, &quot;Then Winston Churchill told my grandma ...&quot; or &quot;Major General Grandma ordered an immediate attack ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T17:50:55.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8788" CreationDate="2013-09-04T18:03:58.910" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about Sweet72's reference to Japanese literature or how that relates to English literary forms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in common American usage, a &quot;novella&quot; is a shorter work than a &quot;novel&quot;. Some give formal definitions, like a novel is over 40,000 words while a novella is 20,000 to 40,000. But I think the real, practical definition is that a novel is a story that takes a full book, while a novella is a story of such a length that you would normally put 2 to 4 together to make a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calling a story a &quot;light novel&quot; has nothing to do with length. Rather, that means that it is easy to read, fun and escapist, like an adventure story or a romance. This is as opposed to a &quot;serious novel&quot;, which has deeper themes and embodies commentary on society or history or the nature of humanity. For example, &quot;Atlas Shrugged&quot; would be considered a serious novel, because the whole point of the book is to discuss the author's ideas about politics and economics. Any of the James Bond novels would be considered &quot;light&quot; because they are about adventure and romance and make no attempt at profound themes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course any such distinction is vague and debatable. A book could include serious commentary about life while also being easy and fun to read. I've read plenty of books that are mostly adventure stories but that also include themes about the human condition. Personally I think a lot of the better science fiction falls into this category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either a light novel or a serious novel could be in pretty much any genre. You could write a light Western novel or a serious Western novel, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T18:03:58.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8792" CreationDate="2013-09-04T18:11:41.857" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before starting your story, write as much as you need to feel comfortable with the character. That could be pages and pages, or only a paragraph. (For example, the Harry Potter trio were asked to write up something in the voice of their characters. Radcliffe did a page, Watson did 20, and Grint did nothing. When asked why, he said, &quot;Ron would never turn in such an assignment.&quot; The director was like, &quot;Yep, you totally understand Ron.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your first one is &quot;over the top,&quot; then don't write the others so long. Or alternatively, go ahead; why not? Who cares if you write 50 pages of stuff only for you, if you decide you need it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you go along, keep checking back with your notes, and add, remove, or edit as needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some character trait is crucial to the plot (he's afraid of fire because his brother burned him as a child, she was inspired by her grandmother to be a singer no matter what the cost), then you need to iron that out first, and stick to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as &quot;my characters evolve out of character,&quot; either you need to be more disciplined and stick with the character you created, or you have to change your plot (and therefore your character bio) to accommodate the new information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T18:11:41.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8578" CreationDate="2013-09-04T20:50:00.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are some  countrywise sport fiction magazines in which you can publish sports fiction short stories : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For US&lt;/strong&gt; : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1) Ace Sports (Monthly)     2) The All-America Sports Magazine&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3) Best Sports (Magazine)   4) Big Sports Magazine&lt;br&gt;&#xA;5) Dime Sport(s) Magazine&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For UK&lt;/strong&gt; : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Boxing Shorts&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Racing Shorts&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For Australia&lt;/strong&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Action Sports Fiction (*)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sports Novels Magazine (Australia) (*)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For Canada&lt;/strong&gt; : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;College Sports&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exciting Sports (Canada) (*)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;New Sports Magazine (Canada) (*)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sport Story Magazine (Canada) (*)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T20:50:00.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2013-09-04T21:04:26.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide &#xA;Author : Natasha Terk&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book can serve your purpose.  It provides a step-by-step process for planning business letters, memos, e-mail, and other business documents. It teaches how to position your message from the reader's point of view, write persuasively, include the right information, and organize the information logically,expanded sections on language, punctuation, and grammar offer busy professionals the tools they need to get their message across clearly, concisely, and professionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T21:04:26.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8491" CreationDate="2013-09-04T21:27:19.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are writing something informal, it's appropriate to use contractions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, at the time of formal communication such as composing an email to colleagues,boss communicating with clients, it's advisable to avoid using contractions and use the complete words so as to make things easy to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T21:27:19.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8487" CreationDate="2013-09-04T21:36:02.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some websites where you can publish your short stories and novels in Spanish : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.e-stories.org/categories.php?&amp;amp;lan=es&amp;amp;art=s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.e-stories.org/categories.php?&amp;amp;lan=es&amp;amp;art=s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://megustaescribir.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://megustaescribir.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everywritersresource.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.everywritersresource.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="5788" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T15:59:08.843" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T15:59:08.843" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8805" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-04T22:45:04.667" Score="5" ViewCount="3437" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using Mendeley, and trying to cite this article using ACM citation style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/36/Supplement_1/S67.extract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diagnosis and Classification of Diabetes Mellitus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;American Diabetes Association&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the author be &amp;quot;N/A&amp;quot; or the name of the association?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5812" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T01:42:44.297" Title="Using ACM style, how do I cite an article without a specific author's name?" Tags="|style|citations|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8587" CreationDate="2013-09-05T14:01:20.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suspense is the thing that creates curiosity in the readers to read the story and know what's going to happen at the end ? or how the end of the story would be ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have noticed that all daily soaps end their episodes with some suspense so that viewers wait for another day and watch it to see what's going to happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Curiosity is the main thing you need to create among readers so as to make your story worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T14:01:20.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8581" CreationDate="2013-09-05T15:07:24.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To get the better idea and be more professional in your email, there are some tips that can be followed and points that can be taken into consideration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to make your email personalized, interesting , eloquent and&#xA;professional&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always proof read your email so as to rectify any grammatical errors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be appreciative for the fact that the person took time to read your email. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Formatting is most important&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Letter can be written like this : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Subject : Your brand name, day of the week, date and time for the event.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi there!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My name is &lt;strong&gt;(Your name)&lt;/strong&gt;. and I am (&lt;strong&gt;explain about your firm or website for which you are scheduling the event)&lt;/strong&gt;.I am working on booking of our event &lt;strong&gt;( explain about the event along with date, day and time)&lt;/strong&gt;.I hope that &lt;strong&gt;( on this date , day and time )&lt;/strong&gt; your venue might be available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In second paragraph, explain something about when your company was formed and what is it doing.Provide your website, social media links, review links so that the person is aware about you and your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concluding paragraph : Thanks very much for taking some time from your busy schedule to read my email. Awaiting for your prompt and positive reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[Your Name,] &#xA;[Company's Name]&#xA;[Company's website]&#xA;[Social media profile link]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short and simple letter is available here : &lt;a href=&quot;http://officewriting.com/request-letter-sample-%E2%80%93-availability-of-venue/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://officewriting.com/request-letter-sample-%E2%80%93-availability-of-venue/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T15:07:24.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8369" CreationDate="2013-09-05T16:46:46.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This website can serve your purpose : &lt;a href=&quot;http://writersplatform.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://writersplatform.net/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some important points to be considered while building a writer's platform can be known from this website :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yourwriterplatform.com/actions-to-build-writer-platform/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.yourwriterplatform.com/actions-to-build-writer-platform/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://writeabetternovel.net/a-writer%E2%80%99s-platform-want-to-publish-start-building-yours/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://writeabetternovel.net/a-writer%E2%80%99s-platform-want-to-publish-start-building-yours/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;a href=&quot;http://emeryroad.com/4-keys-to-building-a-writers-platform/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://emeryroad.com/4-keys-to-building-a-writers-platform/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="5788" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T16:57:20.160" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T16:57:20.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8317" CreationDate="2013-09-05T21:21:04.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While editing short stories in an anthology, these things are to be kept in mind : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Editor should clarify obscure allusions, giving information concerning events and persons named, clearing away difficulties to comprehension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)Apply such commentary that will help readers to appreciate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T21:21:04.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8633" CreationDate="2013-09-05T22:19:50.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the question of motivation is dependant on exactly what you want to achieve. You cant get motivated about a goal thats as amorphous as &quot;start writing again&quot;. What I've found to be useful is to decide on smaller writing targets, and accomplishing those. Initially, just personal goals (for example, my goal for this month is to write a 2000 word story about regret).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by writing a particularly bad story, a real stinker, bad spelling, weak characterization etc. I usually find that helps me get the wheel turning, and after about 15 minutes, I find my brain starts coming up with interesting ideas and, before I know it, I'm into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;flow&lt;/a&gt; again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5818" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T22:19:50.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8812" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-07T01:58:09.200" Score="5" ViewCount="374" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a short novel that has two main stories. These stories belong to relatives from different generations, but of the same age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, although the book spans through 20-30 years, I'm more interested in showing each character's current situation, rather than those things that happened in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would be a good approach, tool or technique for creating a smooth transition between both narratives?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;About the story: It's a historical short novel, and it intends to show the repercussions of one person's past actions on a younger family member. It's written in third person, and it uses quite a few parallelisms between both stories. The historical moment is crucial, as this gap between generations is also a split between two very different political scenarios.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5239" LastEditorUserId="5239" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T04:12:04.040" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T09:36:56.810" Title="Techniques for creating a bridge between protagonists from different generations" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8813" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-07T08:19:05.557" Score="4" ViewCount="1190" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a romance novel.&#xA;I have two main characters, Niranjan (male) and Jennifer.&#xA;POV is Third Person Multiple (above two).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a scene where they meet first time in a restaurant.&#xA;While the current POV is of Jennifer's and she does not know Niranjan's name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can narrator use Niranjan's name while referring him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Example, can I write &#xA;&quot;Jennifer walked inside the restaurant and saw Niranjan waiting for the free table&quot;&#xA;OR&#xA;&quot;Jennifer walked inside the restaurant and saw an Indian waiting for the free table&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one is correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5825" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2018-12-19T05:08:54.560" LastActivityDate="2018-12-19T05:08:54.560" Title="Third Person Multiple POV in a single scene, how to refer each other if one character does not know the name of other character and vice versa" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8814" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8844" CreationDate="2013-09-07T10:07:43.207" Score="5" ViewCount="462" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote the following dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After a moment, &lt;strong&gt;Eri's mother&lt;/strong&gt; appeared from the kitchen, carrying a&#xA;  tray with miso soup. Eri was startled by the amount of food. Her&#xA;  parents were definitely regarding her visit as a special occasion.&#xA;  Should I feel happy or guilty because of this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Look how thin you've become, Eri,” &lt;strong&gt;her mom&lt;/strong&gt; said, placing the soup&#xA;  on the table and sitting down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You've been losing weight?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Oh,” Eri said, inspecting herself thoroughly. &quot;I didn't notice.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It's been a while,&quot; &lt;strong&gt;her mother said.&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;You should come back home&#xA;  more often, the house had become very lonely without you.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri lowered her gaze. &quot;Sorry. I've been a bit—busy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Enough of talking, people,” &lt;strong&gt;Eri's father&lt;/strong&gt; said. &quot;Let's eat.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The three picked up their chopsticks and started on the food. The&#xA;  scene seemed strangely normal to Eri. It was as if everything were OK,&#xA;  and &lt;strong&gt;her mom&lt;/strong&gt; were perfectly healthy. In fact, she looked more lively&#xA;  and energetic than Eri remembered. The whole illness issue seemed like&#xA;  a distant, bad dream. Something that belonged to another reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Still, Eri couldn't take the thought out of her head, so she decided&#xA;  to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Uh, about the tests,&quot; she began.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her mother nodded to &lt;strong&gt;Eri's dad&lt;/strong&gt;. Then, putting down her chopsticks&#xA;  she said, &quot;Well, as you father may have told you, I've been going to&#xA;  the hospital for some medical examinations.&quot; She paused and looked up&#xA;  at Eri. &quot;And they've found a strange lump in my breast.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri's lips slighly parted. &quot;You mean, you have breast—&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No,&quot; &lt;strong&gt;Eri's father&lt;/strong&gt; said, joining the conversation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see I'm trying to alternate between Eri's mother/father, her mom/dad, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did I effectively create variation, or will this just end up annoying the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T17:40:52.823" Title="Changing the way one addresses a character in a dialogue to create variation" Tags="|creative-writing|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8813" CreationDate="2013-09-07T10:36:00.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as creative writing is concerned, nothing is right or wrong. It's entirely up to you, the writer, to describe the scenes in your own way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, writing just &lt;em&gt;&quot;Jennifer walked inside the restaurant and saw Niranjan waiting for the free table&quot;&lt;/em&gt; sounds kind of lame and plain, whereas the second kind of sentence adds a slight element of suspense to the reader and sounds better. More than saying he's just Indian, you can also use some characteristics of Niranjan (like his manners or way of talking) to imply the character. At the same time, take care to give enough hints to the reader to imply that it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; Niranjan, so that the reader isn't confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps. Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3832" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T10:36:00.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3938" CreationDate="2013-09-07T10:45:14.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;not-so-noble&lt;/em&gt; but working approach is to eavesdrop ;) If you don't mind, go sit at a coffee shop or park and listen to the conversations of random people. Write down their dialogues and try to improvise on them. Everyone has their own style of talking. Some people may sound more interesting than others. But, please don't get overexcited and start stalking them! :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3832" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T10:45:14.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8813" CreationDate="2013-09-07T12:19:35.020" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the POV is Jennifer's, we are getting her perspective, as if we're riding on her shoulder. Whether we get her thoughts is up to you, but if this is from Jennifer's eyes, then no, we cannot know his name until he gives it to her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have to describe him the way she sees him: an Indian man, a short man with skin the color of coffee beans, a tall man in a sharp dove-gray suit and a tremulous smile, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T12:19:35.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8812" CreationDate="2013-09-07T12:22:05.237" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're moving between timelines &amp;mdash; one set of events happens in 1940 and one set happens in 1990 &amp;mdash; the simplest way is to have one timeline per chapter and put the year (or detailed date) at the top of the chapter, either as a headline or a dateline in italics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing the same thing inside a chapter, you need some kind of break (at least a few hard returns, if not some kind of dingbat) and then the dateline (&lt;em&gt;June 1, 1940&lt;/em&gt;) before the text starts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T12:22:05.237" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8814" CreationDate="2013-09-07T12:24:00.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would think after you introduced them as Eri's mom and Eri's dad that you could just call them &quot;Mom&quot; and &quot;Dad&quot; in places. You wouldn't need to use &quot;her&quot; or &quot;Eri's&quot; every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5674" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T12:24:00.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8529" CreationDate="2013-09-07T15:15:57.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To know what requires citation and what doesn't , please refer this link : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.library.american.edu/tutorial/citation3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.library.american.edu/tutorial/citation3.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Ideas, opinions of your own, sharing common knowledge doesn't require citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This link will also be helpful to you : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.englishclub.com/writing/plagiarism-citation.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.englishclub.com/writing/plagiarism-citation.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T15:15:57.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8821" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8843" CreationDate="2013-09-07T16:17:36.310" Score="2" ViewCount="295" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I first wrote &quot;Gawain's Guilt-Girdle&quot; (14 lines of verse) I introduced it with a short (modernized/translated) quotation from the Middle English work &lt;em&gt;Sir Gawain and the Green Knight&lt;/em&gt;. I think my intent at the time was to point to that original work as source material, to give a feel for the alliterative verse form of that work (which is slightly hinted at in my writing), to establish the setting (archaic and heroic), and to give something of an academic feeling. (Incidentally, the quote might also communicate that the source poem is better, expressing some humility and encouraging people to read that poem.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is how it currently stands:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This is the band of that blame I bear on my neck,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  This is the humbling and the loss that I laugh to have&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Of cowardice and coveting that I have caught there;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  This is the token of untruth that I am taken in&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And I must needs it wear while I may last&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; lines 2506-2510 (modernized/translated)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This sash of shame that knights now wear in jest&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  to little make my failing, strikes its knife&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  across a heart that feels its heavy blame.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  How grave a truth may simple cloth proclaim!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  This lively, lady's green recalls that test&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  of faith and truth, my choice of breath, not life.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Yet knights would make this band a sign of fame.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  They mirror shameful marks in light good will&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  and seek to mend my fault, as one might fill&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  cracks in a hero's stone with bitter lime.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  None but God's blood could kill this evil name&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I placed upon myself by lying then--&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  faithless at last, if better than all men&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  who walk the earth in this now darker time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In hindsight I am wondering if the quote should be left untranslated (&lt;a href=&quot;http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/Gawain?rgn=main;view=fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Þis is þe bende of þis blame I bere in my nek,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Þis is þe laþe and þe losse þat I laȝt haue&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Of couardise and couetyse þat I haf caȝt þare;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Þis is þe token of vntrawþe þat I am tan inne,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And I mot nedez hit were wyle I may last;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The untranslated form makes it significantly less accessible. The work is not intended as light reading, but it is also not targeted specifically at readers familiar with Middle English. If untranslated, it would be expected that most readers would primarily only gain a sense of archaic language. The untranslated form would be more academic and more accurate as well as more archaic.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, the quotation could be dropped. I am hesitant to simply drop the quote (even though it does not add that much to the writing itself), but I could be convinced that dropping it would be best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another concern is that my own modernization/translation is inaccurate and/or inadequately modernized. For comparison here are two competent translations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;this is the bond of the blame that I bear in my neck,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  this is the harm and the loss I have suffered,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  the cowardice and covetousness in which I was caught,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  the token of my covenant in which I was taken.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And I must needs wear it so long as I live,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/publication/weston-sir-gawain-and-the-green-knight&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Translator: Michael West; 1898&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;this that I bear in my neck is the badge of this blame.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  This is the evil and the loss that I have got&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  from the cowardice and covetousness that I showed there.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  This is the token of untruth that I am taken in,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  and I must needs wear it while I may last;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/sggk_neilson.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Translator: W. A. Neilson; 1999&lt;/a&gt; (PDF))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I &lt;em&gt;seem to recall&lt;/em&gt; that I based &quot;humbling&quot; on a note in either a transcription or translation, but &quot;laugh to have&quot; was [I seem to recall] based simply on approximate transliteration and seems to be noticeably incorrect [so should be corrected]. &quot;untruth&quot; is meant in the sense of &quot;unfaithfulness&quot; (&quot;let us be true to our oaths&quot;)--more &quot;untroth&quot;, like in &quot;betrothed&quot;--but the particular case did involve a lie, so even the modern use would not be particularly inaccurate.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Providing general guidelines for when an introductory quotation is useful and when such should be translated would make an answer more generally helpful to later readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T21:51:06.950" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T21:51:06.950" Title="Should this introductory quotation be translated, untranslated, or dropped?" Tags="|language|poetry|translation|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8821" CreationDate="2013-09-07T17:44:25.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best translations I've seen (Dante's &lt;em&gt;Commedia&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Beowulf&lt;/em&gt;) have the original and the translation together. That way you can read what the sense of the text is, but if you want, you have the original for check (or so you can translate it yourself if you can). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the quoted verse improves yours, by all means include it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T17:44:25.653" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8824" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-08T04:54:59.543" Score="2" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to show students the various components of a 5-paragraph essay. Most just show the paragraphs: &quot;introduction&quot;, &quot;body&quot;, and &quot;conclusion&quot;, but I need to show the parts at a sentence level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, most body paragraphs start with a supporting statement, then have one or two sentences telling general information, and tend to end with a specific example supported by a citation. Most academic writing seems to follow this same format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do each of these different kind of sentences within the paragraph have names?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where can I find an infographic describing each part or another resource identifying and naming each part of a 5-paragraph essay?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T17:26:47.753" Title="Where to find an infographic describing the components of a 5-paragraph essay?" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8825" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-08T13:32:51.923" Score="2" ViewCount="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I write need to site a paragraph in APA style format, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quick brown fox jumped over the hill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you put the citation in front of the sentence, at the end or at the bottom of the paper or a combination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2069" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T15:38:55.090" Title="Location of cites using APA style format" Tags="|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8829" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8833" CreationDate="2013-09-08T22:25:48.043" Score="4" ViewCount="281" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since my childhood I have had a secret dream to write my own story or even a novel. I have always enjoyed reading books and writing compositions. However, I never had enough courage to start writing my own story except some fairy tales and poetry that I created as a present for my family. This was not caused by cowardice, rather by extreme exaggeration of the responsibility I would have taken on me after beginning to write. What kind of responsibility? Well, first of all, I would be responsible for declaring my life position that may be not mature or correct enough (well, what can a person know for sure when they are 16?). Second, I would be responsible for involving some real people from my surroundings, even if  I would have changed names or personalities, they would certainly guess it. Third, I would be responsible for any mistakes in  depicting the time I would describe...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is what has always stopped me from writing. However, through years I realized that a person is what they complete in their lives. Nothing else matters, you are what you do. So, maybe it is better to write a very basic story rather than not writing at all? People evolve and mature and become more skilled while time passes by... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do I think I need to write a story? Well, probably because I have faced a very important problem and have lived with it for long and eventually have developed my own opinion on it which I want to share with people so that they maybe don't repeat the same mistakes...  Besides, I have noticed that my opinion changed through time, so I could give an alternative viewpoint for a reader. And well, I wish to change from consumer to creator, in all the ways in my life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do I think that I am still not able to write a story? First of all, no previous experience. Secondly, I am always a bit confused that my ideas don't include any political or social topics. Thirdly, I doubt the amount of books I have read during my life is enough. In order to write a good story, one needs to have a huge background in reading and also in analyzing what they have read. It provides basic knowledge of concepts used in literature, enriches one's language, makes it easier to develop a correct composition... A professional needs to be familiar with the tools they use and with examples of other people's works in their field. And last, but not least: I don't know where to begin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is my question: what should I do first if I have a limited amount of free time (about 2 hours per week)? Start extensive reading course until I am satisfied (which will probably last forever, cause I am never satisfied with myself)? Study materials from the time  I wish my story to be set in? Take notes and write down short parts of my story? Launch a blog? Start to develop skills by writing something else until I am not ashamed of my style? Fight with cowardice? Change approach to less serious? If so, how can I do it if I have always been very pedantic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Sorry for mistakes, I am not a native speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4590" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T17:52:42.710" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T17:52:42.710" Title="Real, serious and based on personal experience idea, but no previous practice. Where to begin?" Tags="|preparation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8829" CreationDate="2013-09-09T00:52:41.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really don't have any special advice other than to just write. Don't worry about the quality of what you put onto paper, just commit it to paper. People will say &quot;it's probably better than you think it is&quot; but the fact is that it will probably be pretty bad. That's okay. Everybody's first draft is bad. Writing quality prose is all about rewriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're worried about grammar I recommend the &quot;Little Book&quot; by Strunk and White (the White, by the way, is E.B. White, the writer of &lt;em&gt;Charlotte's Web&lt;/em&gt;; this is not just some book written by an English prof that has no application to the real world). That being said, I have to go back to what I originally said: if you want to learn how to write forcible, meaningful prose, you have to just write prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is hard. If it was easy, everyone would be writing and publishing their memoirs. There are no magic insights I can really impart to you outside of two maxims: 1. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. 2. If it's worth doing well, it's worth doing badly for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T00:52:41.040" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8829" CreationDate="2013-09-09T01:45:08.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously. Just write. Stop worrying about whether it sucks (it probably will). Write it. Get it out. Because then you can go back and &lt;em&gt;fix it.&lt;/em&gt; You can't edit a blank page. But you can take lousy text and make it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Study materials from the time I wish my story to be set in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's historical in any way, yes. Research is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Take notes and write down short parts of my story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Launch a blog? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To what end? Might be more of an excuse not to work on your central piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Start to develop skills by writing something else until I am not ashamed of my style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt; is your unique voice, you should never be ashamed of it. If you're concerned about technical skill, you can practice until it improves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it normal that I keep inventing and even editing texts in my head, but when I come to a clear sheet of paper, I just sit stunned, afraid of putting text on the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Some of the suggestions in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2100/help-ive-got-writers-block/2106&quot;&gt;this thread about writer's block&lt;/a&gt; may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T01:45:08.747" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8855" CreationDate="2013-09-09T02:27:50.903" Score="4" ViewCount="502" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following my question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8077/punctuating-dialogue-with-oneself&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; I am still unsure if it is a 'hard and fast' rule to italicise thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My preference is to use normal quotation marks, so that if a person is thinking in a dialogue situation or description, all the text appear normal. I follow British style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you Ok?&quot; the teacher asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Damn,&quot; John thought as he tried to cover his wounded hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you OK?&quot; the teacher asked again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T17:33:15.063" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T17:33:15.063" Title="Punctuating Thoughts" Tags="|style|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8829" CreationDate="2013-09-09T04:15:59.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure whether this will work for you, but this is what I did:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started with flash fiction (900 words). Then, gradually, began writing longer pieces (3000~4000 words). At the same time, I started posting my work on this site for feedback. Also, I asked grammar questions at &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;https://english.stackexchange.com/&lt;/a&gt; (since I'm not a native English speaker, either). Finally, I started posting my work on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scribophile.com/&lt;/a&gt; for general critique/feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now I'm writing a 9000 words short story. After that I will write my full-length novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for my style, I started copying my favorite author Haruki Murakami. And then slowly began developing my own. I learned a lot by copying his plot structure and style. I think you shouldn't be ashamed of your style. As long as you like it, it'll be OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to learn (as others  said) is to &lt;strong&gt;just to write.&lt;/strong&gt; Also, getting &lt;strong&gt;a lot of feedback&lt;/strong&gt;. And of course, to &lt;strong&gt;read a lot.&lt;/strong&gt; Read your favorite authors, those who write stuff you wished you had written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took creative writing classes, but I feel I didn't learn much. Again, this may be only me, but I feel listening about how to write isn't just the same as writing and getting feedback. I believe true learning comes from making mistakes. The more mistakes you make, the more you learn.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T04:15:59.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8834" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8837" CreationDate="2013-09-09T04:52:55.110" Score="8" ViewCount="8302" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it ever a good idea to change narrators in a short story?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of my short stories, the narration starts in third person 'eye of god' mode. Then it moves to each character - there are only two of them - so the story is described as one character looks at the other and vice versa. The story ends with the third person point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to seamlessly incorporate the above points of view and I think it works well because it creates the effects that I want i.e. it personalises the story but when drastic events unfold (e.g. a murder scene), the story takes a impersonal tone with third person narration. However, one of my readers found it a bit confusing and may I say less plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it is much easier to do this in a novel, where each chapter can be told from the point of view of a different character but my question is in relation to a short story (with no internal division).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-06-22T16:05:58.050" LastActivityDate="2020-01-16T04:07:09.507" Title="Changing narrators" Tags="|style|short-story|pov|narrator|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8829" CreationDate="2013-09-09T07:43:35.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most common type of question raised by would-be writers is some version of &quot;why can't I write?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common type of answer is &quot;just write.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look through this site, you will find quite a lot of that sort of question, and that sort of answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it really does boil down to pretty much that. You are either going to spend a lot of time agonizing about why you can't write, or you are going to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because there really is no &lt;em&gt;answer&lt;/em&gt; to why you can't write. And &lt;em&gt;just writing&lt;/em&gt; is really not a solution to the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You either write, or you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life is not infinite. No one has unlimited time to write. Whether it's two hours a week or two hours a day, if you're going to write, you will. If you're not, you won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers write. People who aren't writers don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which are you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T07:43:35.970" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8832" CreationDate="2013-09-09T10:12:52.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would find this very confusing (I'm in the U.S.). I would expect thoughts to be in italics, not in quotes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T10:12:52.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8834" CreationDate="2013-09-09T10:48:11.317" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it breaks the rules you learn about writing, but it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to have a clear reason as to why you want to do it, which is a good start. In the novel &quot;The Queen of Attolia&quot; by Megan Whalen Turner, there's a fantastic example of switching viewpoints in the middle of a scene. She does it (IMHO) so smoothly that the reader barely notices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bit of a long passage, but bear with me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Eugenides.”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  He turned. The queen stood at the end of the passageway, flanked by two more soldiers and a third man.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  “What do you mean, I'm not allowed on the roof?” said Eugenides, outraged.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The queen walked toward him. The third man, Eugenides saw, was one of Galen's assistants. He glanced from the assistant back to his queen.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  “You have someone watching my door,” he accused her.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  She looked uncomfortable. Eugenides turned to the guard beside him and cursed. He turned back to the queen, still cursing. The soldiers on either side of her looked shocked.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  “You think I'm going to throw myself off the roof?” he asked.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  She did. The people in his family tended to die in falls. His mother, even his grandfather. When the palsy in his hands had grown so severe that he could no longer feed himself, he'd been unable to climb to the roof, and he'd tumbled over the railing at the top of one of the back staircases. It hadn't been a hard fall, but enough to kill an old man.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  “You started a war without mentioning it,” Eugenides snarled. “You have my rooms watched, and I'm not allowed on the roof. What do I find out next?” He pushed past her and the soldiers. He walked backward away from her. “Tell me you've enrolled me as an apprentice bookkeeper. You bought a lovely house for me in the suburbs. You have a marriage arranged with a nice girl who doesn't mind cripples!” he shouted. He had reached the corner and disappeared from sight still shouting. He was making enough noise to wake every sleeper in that wing of the palace, and he didn't care. “I can't wait to hear!” He spaced his last words out and finally was finished. There was no sound, not even that of his receding footsteps.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The queen sighed and dismissed the soldiers who'd accompanied her.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  “Shall I go back to watching his door, Your Majesty?” Galen's assistant asked.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  “Yes,” she answered heavily. “Watch him as carefully as you can.”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Returning to her room, she sighed again. The accusation about the arranged marriage had been a home shot. It was a good thing Eugenides hadn't realized it yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice how it starts off from Eugenides' POV, then shifts to the Queen's. There's a bit in the middle (from the &quot;She did.&quot; onwards) that could be from the POV of either of them, and she uses that as the transition point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will mention, however, that she only does it once in the scene. I can't say for sure whether or not it would work with multiple changes, but it does make it much harder to continually do it without confusing the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the final test is always: Does it confuse the reader? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention one of your readers being confused - that's a warning. But it doesn't necessarily mean you have to change it. What do your other readers think? Do they notice the switching as well? If only one out of, say, five to ten readers gets confused, then you've managed to pull it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T10:48:11.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8834" CreationDate="2013-09-09T11:10:19.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even in a novel, changing the narrator could be very confusing if the reader isn't warned. I think the main problem is here, not about the length of the story. If you want to change your narrator during your story because it's important for you, don't worry and do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But IMHO, you should make at least a small division. In a novel, the end of a chapter is a natural division which can be used to change the narrator. In a short story, you have to create the division required if the change is brutal, or merge the two points of view during some sentences if you want to spread the division.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need a brutal change, you can use a kind of type division, such as a line filled with a characters like &lt;code&gt;*&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;_&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your readers will tell you if it's more or less confusing than before, but don't ask only one person: he/she could be the exception of a more general opinion. Don't ignore him/her, of course. But if only one is confused when four, five or more, are not, it could be probably better to leave it like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5637" LastEditorUserId="39461" LastEditDate="2019-06-19T17:48:00.190" LastActivityDate="2019-06-19T17:48:00.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8839" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8851" CreationDate="2013-09-09T16:00:58.780" Score="4" ViewCount="184" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of writers I admire say: &quot;I didn't know how long the story would be.&quot; Me too, I'm the kind of writer who don't know where (and when) the story is going to end. So I'm confused—is it better to have a deadline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By better I mean: more likely to &lt;strong&gt;finish&lt;/strong&gt; something. And that something to be of &lt;strong&gt;good quality&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-09-09T16:07:16.807" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T07:13:02.150" Title="Is it better to have a deadline?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8832" CreationDate="2013-09-09T17:06:13.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems to me that in the majority of books I've read, a character's thought are in normal type, with no quotation marks. Like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hey, where are you going?&amp;quot;, the guard demanded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They've caught me, John thought. &amp;quot;Me, I'm just talking a walk,&amp;quot; he bluffed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I've occasionally seen thoughts in italics, but that's pretty rare. They do not go in quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T17:06:13.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8842" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-09T17:24:18.260" Score="2" ViewCount="893" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing an essay for tenth grade, and I have to write a small story in one paragraph. With a lot of imagery (to get my teacher excited). I added some, but I don't think it's enough. This isn't only limited to imagery. I don't know on whether I should expand it or make it succinct, so general improvements are appreciated too. (Hopefully I followed the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/488/clarification-of-critique-guidelines&quot;&gt;critique guidelines&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text is generally about my caring grandmother. And I am explaining the story where I fell off of a swing and hit my head on the metal bar and had to get stitches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... There have been way too many situations that show that my grandma really cares about me. One of them was when I fell on a metal bar and they had to get stitches. I was about 6 years old, residing in a summer camp. The camp was about 30 miles from where my original place of residence. It was really old, built in 1950s. Our camp group was outside on the playground. It had several swings and slides. As I was swinging on a swing, my hand suddenly slipped, and my head collided with the metal bar. I cried for help, and a supervisor ran to me, and carried to a bench. I was in shock. My head was vibrating and I couldn’t speak, it was a very dreadful moment. Later on, an ambulance was called and I was driven to a hospital. My grandmother found out about the incident only after the next day. When she got a call from the camp, she rushed to the hospital and came into my room. I was doing fine and had several stitches. She hugged me and kissed me and said ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically, to get this out of the &lt;strong&gt;hold&lt;/strong&gt;, I want to clarify. My teacher said &lt;code&gt;Include more imagery.&lt;/code&gt; It was mostly marked on that paragraph. So I need to find out where I have to add more imagery and where I have to remove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5808" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:03.470" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T04:42:24.093" Title="How do I add more imagery to this short paragraph?" Tags="|essay|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8821" CreationDate="2013-09-09T17:36:58.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, for a popular work it is bad style to include quotes in a foreign language. Most of your readers will not understand them. An old enough flavor of English is a &quot;foreign language&quot; for all practical purposes. Modern readers can struggle through Shakespeare, but much before that and I'd translate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were writing a scholarly work, or a work intended for people familiar with both languages, I'd give a completely different answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to make some point that is obscured by a translation, you might give the original along with a translation. For example, if you have some point that hinges on the precise meaning of a word in this other language, or if you have a comment about rhyme or meter in the original, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the details of the translation: All I can there is to use the best translation you can make or find. What else could one say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your post I take it this is not a scholarly work and you are not analyzing the original text, just using it as background for your own writing. So I'd just go with a decent translation and leave it at that. If a reader cares enough to want to see the original, they can look it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T17:36:58.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8814" CreationDate="2013-09-09T17:40:52.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Switching between names, descriptions and titles for people is good because it creates variety, as long as it is clear when you are talking about the same person and when you are talking about different people. I don't think a reader would be confused by the difference between &quot;mom&quot; and &quot;mother&quot;, so that's an excellent place to add some variety. Likewise, &quot;Eri's mother&quot; and &quot;her mother&quot; are good variations as long as there is no one else's mother in the scene to create confusion. As Mary says, I wouldn't repeat &quot;Eri's mother&quot; too often, I'd mostly use &quot;her mother&quot;. Constantly repeating the &quot;Eri's&quot; sounds awkward, and so should be reserved for just a few occasions to add variety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T17:40:52.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8832" CreationDate="2013-09-09T20:29:21.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hard and fast rules&quot; come from the style guide you're following; all else is convention.  I've seen both styles in fiction, so to decide which to use you can look at examples of similar type (genre, length, etc) to see what they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're submitting for publication, then the publisher might have a house style.  For example, collections of short stories from multiple authors might nonetheless be edited to be consistent in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T20:29:21.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8842" CreationDate="2013-09-09T22:14:20.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see some opportunities to add sensory details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you see or hear that tells you the camp is really old?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did the slides differ from each other? The swings?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many people in the camp group playing on the playground? What were the others doing? What sounds did they make? What did you see?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How were you swinging? Gently? Risky high swings? Twisting? How did it feel? What did you see?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What were you holding onto just before you slipped? What did you feel through your hand?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did slipping feel like to your hand?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did you feel when grandma hugged you? How did she hug you? Tightly? Gently? In a death grip? How did she smell? How did she sound?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T22:14:20.467" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8847" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-10T01:48:39.033" Score="2" ViewCount="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently designing a print flyer and I'm using quite a few statistics and a few quotes. Since space is at a minimum, and citing each individual statistic would require several lines of unsightly text (even at a small font). I'm wondering if it would be okay to cite a URL (which would never be changed or removed) where all of citations are located. In other words, is it okay to create a remote bibliography or works cited page? And yes, I would be adding superscripts and figure numbers so the corresponding citation could be found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More info: The flyer has the possibility to be handed out (distributed) and also simply made available at various locations where people could pick up a flyer if they wish. This will be a promotional flyer for a non-partisan non-profit organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5833" LastEditorUserId="5833" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T01:12:36.847" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T01:12:36.847" Title="Is it okay to create a remote bibliography or works cited page?" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8848" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-10T04:10:18.600" Score="5" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a blog that discusses grammar in local languages.  I publicized my email and asked for contributions from the readers and experts on the subject. How about copyright issues? If they contributed to my blog's content, do they own it? How can I prevent them from claiming their contents? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In honor of their contributions, should I place their names with it? How about the copyright issues? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5834" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-09-10T04:26:01.250" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T14:31:43.990" Title="Blog Contributions Copyright" Tags="|copyright|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8848" CreationDate="2013-09-10T06:07:46.980" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The contributors own the copyright to the content unless they assign it to you in some form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Submission may or may not constitute permission for you to use the content. It certainly does not assign you exclusive copyright to the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To prevent the contributors from claiming their contents, ask them to assign you exclusive rights for whatever duration you wish, or in perpetuity. They may request reasonable compensation for such rights, or unreasonable compensation. They may not be willing to assign such rights at all. They might yell at you for asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely attribute the content to the contributors unless they have explicitly agreed to assign you the rights without attribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer. Seek legal advice about this stuff. The things you're asking about are terms normally negotiated in an explicit contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T06:07:46.980" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8850" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8859" CreationDate="2013-09-10T06:43:54.647" Score="4" ViewCount="1437" Body="&lt;p&gt;My story &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/@seanaubin/cured-1d342ccb18b5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cured&lt;/a&gt; (which I've asked about before, but has undergone major revisions since then), has an extremely large section of dialogue that annoys my beta tester. I agree with her that it should be shortened, but I'm not sure how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the dialogue is to move from the plot element of the main character Tony breaking up with his girlfriend to the the next plot element where he starts taking a pill to increase his empathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That dialogue can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://pastebin.com/sYtJ1UeB&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Please note that Jad, is supposed to sound academic and is the main character's room-mate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I shorten this dialogue?&lt;/strong&gt; General rules for keeping dialogue brief are also helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I've tried to remember:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A dialogue should have two dimensions. What is being said, but also what is implied.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That telling a reader about a character is ineffective, that it is best to show their actions without explicitly reasoning about them afterwards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Excessive description will pull a reader out of the dialogue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastEditorUserId="5675" LastEditDate="2020-01-06T21:27:09.187" LastActivityDate="2020-01-06T21:27:09.187" Title="How to shorten meandering dialogue?" Tags="|creative-writing|short-story|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8839" CreationDate="2013-09-10T06:48:54.047" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see how a deadline could improve the &lt;em&gt;quality&lt;/em&gt; of what you're writing; if you don't leave yourself enough time and make yourself rush, it could have the opposite effect. It can certainly motivate you to sit down and actually &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt;, though, rather than thinking about what're going to write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've said you don't plot your stories in advance, so I'd imagine (especially if you're talking about a longer project) that it's not practical to set a deadline in your case. So obviously, in your case: no, a deadline isn't going to help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are ways of disciplining yourself - and thus making yourself more productive - even though you don't know how long you'll need to finish your story. Just set yourself some kind of accomplishment that you will do each day. Use whatever measurement makes sense for you: word count, or some more subjective measure (only don't cheat!). I use page count, as I write my first drafts by hand. However you set your limit, don't make it too easy, or too hard: just a little more than is comfortable, so you're pushing yourself a little. It's amazing how easily you can cease to be 'blocked' if you know you aren't getting up from the desk without writing your daily quota.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T06:48:54.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8850" CreationDate="2013-09-10T10:17:44.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: Dialogue is not my strength&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the problem is not that the dialogue is too long, but the fact that there's too much &lt;strong&gt;repetition&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;lack of variation&lt;/strong&gt;. You do have some of the latter at the beginning and at the end. But in the middle, almost all the dialogue consist on two lines (and each sentences has pretty much the same length) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you could do is to write more &lt;strong&gt;&quot;incomplete&quot; sentences.&lt;/strong&gt; That makes dialogue sound more natural and less formal (I think you're was a little bit too formal/academic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it was me, I would edit it like this. Hope it helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jad's wiry frame barely makes a dent in the couch cushion and he's&#xA;  jittery like he usually is when he's planning something. He reaches&#xA;  into his pocket and takes out his stress ball, rolling it between his&#xA;  hands like a therapist starting a timer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Given the evidence, I'm going&lt;/strong&gt; to hypothesize Abby broke up&#xA;  with you.&quot; he says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Yeah,&quot; I said. &quot;According to her, we drifted&lt;/strong&gt; apart over the&#xA;  summer. When we were on different sides of the country. Now that I'm&#xA;  back, she understands that it wasn't just the distance. &lt;strong&gt;She thinks&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  I'm not 'emotionally responsive' enough. What does that even mean?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Why didn't you ask her?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's hard to think when your heart is shattered. &lt;strong&gt;What? You agree with&lt;/strong&gt; her?&#xA;  , I dare to ask, making an uncomfortable&#xA;  amount of eye contact with him to read his expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Ah, well.&lt;strong&gt;Want the&lt;/strong&gt; honest answer to that question?&quot;, he&#xA;  replies, continuing to stare straight ahead at the slapstick comedy&#xA;  movie posters adorning our wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I grab another handful of jujubes in preparation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hit me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;I think she means&lt;/strong&gt; you don't connect emotionally with other&#xA;  people. She maybe doubts you even know how to connect with yourself.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Let's start with the first point. You don't seem to be able to&#xA;  sympathize with anyone or to imagine anyone complexly.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What? I understand people.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The first thing you said after I introduced you to my friend Dev was&#xA;  that he smelled pretty good for a hippy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It was a joke. I've never met a person with dreadlocks that&#xA;  wasn't a hippy. &lt;strong&gt;Not like I&lt;/strong&gt; told you he wasn't allowed in our&#xA;  apartment anymore.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;OK, anyway. Second. What&lt;/strong&gt; is it that you are actually working&#xA;  towards? You hate your studies and you've never mentioned any side&#xA;  projects.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Why do I need 'work &lt;strong&gt;towards something'?&lt;/strong&gt; Anyways,&#xA;  even if you're right and I do need to fix these 'problems', what can I&#xA;  do about that?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Okay. One question at a time. There's nothing wrong with being happy.&#xA;  You asked about improvement in the first place. As to&#xA;  what you can do about it. &lt;strong&gt;What do you want&lt;/strong&gt; to achieve anyways?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Closure? I want to see if she's right, I guess. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Do you think she's right?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I think our old friend the scientific method could help here. What if&#xA;  you tried being &lt;strong&gt;more caring&lt;/strong&gt;? You know fake it until you make&#xA;  it and analyse the results.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How do I &lt;strong&gt;fake that?&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You can try cognitive behavior therapy.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“That sounds like something out of a self-help book.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“&lt;strong&gt;Maybe there's something&lt;/strong&gt; we can print.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, maybe I messed up a bit the dialogue. But what I wanted to show you is how to apply what I just said. Also, keep in mind that not everything that your beta readers said is what they actually mean. For example, since your beta reader is a woman (I just assuming here, this may not be true for all people) she felt overwhelmed (or bored) by all the &quot;logic&quot; and &quot;analysis&quot; of the dialogue. I think most women don't like that (every time I start talking like this my girlfriend she starts yawning). So, since she felt bored, she felt the dialogue was very long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in some way I think I agree with her. I would rather prefer reading a dialogue strong in emotions and imagery rather than a dialogue that feels like an academic paper. This doesn't mean your dialogue is bad. I'm sure many people would prefer this kind of dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an example of imagery you could have used to &quot;show&quot; us how detached Tony feels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You know, sometimes I feel there's a thick wall between people and&#xA;  me. And I'm holding this hammer, trying so hard to break it. Though&#xA;  no matter how much time I spend on it, it never cracks. Not even a bit. I&#xA;  want really badly to see the person on the other side. But I never&#xA;  succeed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course this is my style. You can use any kind you like).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to ignore the points that didn't make sense. And take those you think will work for you. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="5675" LastEditDate="2013-09-11T01:07:33.700" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T01:07:33.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8741" CreationDate="2013-09-10T10:35:05.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The podcast 'Writing Excuses' talked about this in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/06/21/writing-excuses-season-3-episode-3-stumping-howard-at-conduit/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;episode&lt;/a&gt; (season 3, episode 3)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They got a question on how to make aliens convincingly alien in regards to personality and behavior as opposed to biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their guest, Eric James Stone, answered the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;One of the most difficult things to do in writing science fiction is to write from an alien point of view. For that very reason. We don't relate very well to people or things that don't think like we do. The stranger they are, the harder it is to pull off the idea that this is a thinking being yet with thinking so extraordinarily different from ours. I think what you have to do is essentially try to put yourself in the mindset of the creature and figure out its logic which may be very different from our logic. What its priorities are and how it gets to its priorities.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And Brandon Sanderson had this answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This is an excellent question. I say that because it's something that science fiction writers have been arguing over for about 100 years. Because it's a really fine balance. Science fiction in particular -- fantasy to a lesser extent honestly -- science fiction tries for realism in its aliens. There is an entire movement for this. As Eric said, the more realistic you get, the less identifiable. There are authors out there doing a brilliant job of this. I really like it when Vernor Vinge does it. He manages to do it well. I would say how does he manage to make aliens that feel so strange yet work so well? in one hand, he's building on the common attributes. He's saying what is universal between all sentient beings? What are these creatures... how are they going to be similar? And using those similarities to highlight the differences. So that when you run into one of those differences, you run smack into it face first. It's like The Left Hand of Darkness if you've read that. When some of the differences come in, you run into them face first because the book spends a lot of time building ground between the common beliefs between the humans and the aliens, and then... bam! No. There is something completely different. Using those two things to highlight one another would be what I would suggest.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T10:35:05.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8839" CreationDate="2013-09-10T13:36:21.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a deadline forces you to finish something, and make you finish something more often, it will lead to better quality of your writing. Perhaps not on the text you are currently writing, but it will improve your skill over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A teacher in a pottery class once divided the class in two. He told the first half that they would get a grade based on the quality of one vase. The other half would receive a grade based on the number of vases they produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who do you think made the vases of highest quality in the end? The half that produced many. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same principle applies to writing. If you write one book each year for ten years, the results at the end will probably better than if you focus on one book for ten years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a deadline forces you to produce more often (but perhaps of lesser quality in the beginning), it will lead to better quality over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T13:36:21.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8832" CreationDate="2013-09-10T15:25:56.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's up to you&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally like to treat thoughts the same as spoken speech, since they are in a different &quot;voice&quot; from the narrator’s.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For me, it’s not a question of what’s spoken out loud, but a way of identify whose perspective is represented by those words.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are no quotation marks the perspective is assumed to be the narrator’s, and that’s the wrong interpretation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You won’t be wrong, as long as you’re consistent and the writing isn't confusing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer to avoid italics, since they have yet another pre-existing meaning, but it can be helpful if you find it necessary to distinguish strongly between spoken and thought words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T15:25:56.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8825" CreationDate="2013-09-10T15:38:55.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In APA style, in-text citations are placed within sentences and paragraphs so that it is clear what information is being quoted or paraphrased and whose information is being cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Works by a single author&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last name of the author and the year of publication are inserted in the text at the appropriate point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from theory on bounded rationality (Simon, 1945)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the name of the author or the date appear as part of the narrative, cite only missing information in parentheses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simon (1945) posited that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T15:38:55.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8824" CreationDate="2013-09-10T17:04:39.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This powerpoint presentation or we can say handouts will definitely help you :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.create.cett.msstate.edu/create/classroom/lplan_view.asp?articleID=171&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.create.cett.msstate.edu/create/classroom/lplan_view.asp?articleID=171&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.create.cett.msstate.edu/create/classroom/handouts/Epting_CD2_Set3_Bing_Bang_Bongo_Powerpoint_Handout1_Revised.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.create.cett.msstate.edu/create/classroom/handouts/Epting_CD2_Set3_Bing_Bang_Bongo_Powerpoint_Handout1_Revised.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this link provides some examples along with the explanation on writing five paragraph essays effectively..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagonow.com/white-rhino/2012/05/if-you-teach-or-write-5-paragraph-essays-stop-it/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.chicagonow.com/white-rhino/2012/05/if-you-teach-or-write-5-paragraph-essays-stop-it/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the help of these info graphic tools, I think you can make the one on your own for your students which will help you teach them. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teachthought.com/technology/46-tools-to-make-infographics-in-the-classroom/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.teachthought.com/technology/46-tools-to-make-infographics-in-the-classroom/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This link will also help you to teach students regarding easy composition of a five paragraph essay.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nestersteachingblog.com/category/writing-prompts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nestersteachingblog.com/category/writing-prompts/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This graphic organizer can help you to an extent. It is easily printable : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teachervision.fen.com/graphic-organizers/printable/43086.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.teachervision.fen.com/graphic-organizers/printable/43086.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="5788" LastEditDate="2013-09-10T17:26:47.753" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T17:26:47.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8805" CreationDate="2013-09-10T19:06:38.843" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to mention the name of the author in ACM citation style. Please refer this link to know more about the ACM citation style&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~chryssis/specs/ACM-refguide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~chryssis/specs/ACM-refguide.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T19:06:38.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8850" CreationDate="2013-09-11T02:36:23.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With dialogue, you have to be excruciatingly careful to make sure that nobody says anything that the other person already knows, or already would know from what the speaker just said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one example. You have two people talking. They are discussing that one of them was apart from his girlfriend for the summer. One of them says, &quot;Now that I'm back...&quot; STOP. The person IS back. Both people in the conversation KNOW he's back. There is absolutely no reason for him to refer to his being back. You think you have to mention it because you think it's an essential part of the logic of what happened between this guy and his girlfriend, but since it's an obvious part of the scene happening between the two people talking, they wouldn't say it to each other. They would both understand that he means &quot;Now that I'm back&quot; when he simply says &quot;Now.&quot; And nothing more. Get it? You have to pay very careful attention to what people would REALLY say to each other at any moment given the precise circumstances of the conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you do that lengthens your dialogue unnecessarily is you use the word &quot;that&quot; frequently. &quot;I found out that she...&quot; &quot;We learned that it was not...&quot; These are not actual examples from your writing, they are just examples. Drop the &quot;that&quot; from these phrases; it is unnecessary and clunky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a more general concept, it's essential to keep in mind people do not speak in complete sentences, nor do they use correct grammar, nor do they allow each other to finish sentences. If you want to shorten your dialogue and simultaneously make it sound more real, you have to clip it into tiny pieces. And remember it takes only a few words to get your point across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; version of a segment of your dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;She says I'm 'emotionally unresponsive.' What's &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You ask her?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;My &lt;em&gt;heart&lt;/em&gt; was shattered! Wait -- you agree with her?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Honest answer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I grab some jujubes to steel myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sure.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Maybe she feels you don't connect -- &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;Connect?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Emotionally, with others.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I understand people!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just something to give you an idea of how brief and punchy dialogue can be. You can see how fast that moves, and gets the point across better because there are fewer distractions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good tip for learning to write good dialogue would be to read a bunch of screenplays of really good movies. That's where good dialogue is at a premium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastEditorUserId="4805" LastEditDate="2013-09-11T14:47:17.877" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T14:47:17.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8741" CreationDate="2013-09-11T14:02:06.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Characters appeal to us because of the element of personification. Emotions, human-like actions and thoughts is what makes them relate to us. Well, it isn't just about humans, but characters resembling things which we can relate too.. e.g. dogs, cats, sheep, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's really difficult to create characters which can't be related to humans as such. But then, in that case, you provide hints through references to human/familiar actions/attitudes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the races you are creating are humanoid, then there won't be a problem relating to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5839" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T14:02:06.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8848" CreationDate="2013-09-11T14:31:43.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dittos to Dale Emery. I'd add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legally, the author of any creative expression owns the copyright to that creative expression unless and until they sell it or give it away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many blogs, letters-to-the-editor columns in magazines, etc include text somewhere that says that by submitting your comments you agree to give away some or all of your rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the absence of any explicit agreement, I'd guess that a rational court (hopefully that's not a total oxymoron) would say that by submitting their comments to a blog, people are agreeing to an implicit contract to give you a license to post their entries, or why did they submit them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But making it explicit is probably a good idea. What rights did you want to have? In my humble opinion, it's reasonable for a blog owner to say that he wants a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive license. i.e. you can keep their post up forever and make it available anywhere, but they can use the same material elsewhere if they like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note there's a difference between &quot;giving up your copyright&quot; and &quot;giving someone a license&quot;. You can let others use your work without giving up your rights. It's very much like renting an apartment to someone: You still own the apartment, you're just letting them use it. You have a contract, perhaps written and perhaps oral, that says what they will pay you, how long they can live there, and any other details either party considers necessary to specify (like can they have pets, who mows the lawn, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T14:31:43.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8847" CreationDate="2013-09-11T14:42:30.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key question is, &quot;Okay to whom?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giving proper footnotes is a question of ethics and academic standards, not law. You're not breaking any law if you don't give any footnotes at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are (at least) three reasons to give footnotes: 1. To avoid plagiarism by clearly indicating what is your own material and what you took from someone else. 2. To establish credibility by showing where you got your information, that you didn't just make everything up. 3. To allow readers to easily further research the topic by going back to your sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that all of those criteria are met almost as well by a &quot;remote bibliography&quot; as by including the footnotes on the flyer. The most questionable would be #2. If, say, you're producing a flyer where you make some highly controversial claims about political or social topics, and you want to make clear that when you say &quot;numerous studies prove ...&quot; that you aren't just making this up, then putting the footnotes on the flyer would be better for establishing credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible option would be to include &quot;abbreviated citations&quot; in the text and then give the reference to the full citation. Like instead of saying &quot;Studies prove that ... [1]&quot; and giving the footnote elsewhere, say &quot;Studies done at the University of Melbourne and the Centers for Disease Control prove that ... [1]&quot;. Or instead of just saying, &quot;The moon is made of green cheese [2]&quot;, say, &quot;According to Dr Frederick Stover, the moon is made of green cheese [2]&quot;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T14:42:30.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8889" CreationDate="2013-09-11T22:09:53.120" Score="4" ViewCount="641" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on my first novel so forgive me for making what is probably considered the mistake of a 'novice'. My novel is set in the present, however my antagonist has a history dating back over a thousand years. When I write dialogue for him, do I write it in English and ignore the fact that he is over 1000 years old and would not have spoken English back then, or do I rewrite thousands of pages and plot points so that he speaks English... any other ideas would be appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T02:10:55.410" Title="Really Stuck: Writing Dialogue" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8863" CreationDate="2013-09-12T01:08:14.013" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your antagonist is living in the present time (but is 1000 years old), then is there any reason to believe that his speech hasn't evolved?  Think about what happens to people when they move to a new place with language patterns different from the ones they grew up with; don't they tend to adapt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, people adapt slowly, and a 1000-year-old character probably has a lot of built-up habit/precedent.  So perhaps he speaks a &lt;em&gt;slightly&lt;/em&gt; different English than other characters, one infused with archaic words and odd grammatical structures.  Don't go as far as Yoda, but you can make him linguistically &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; without having to write in a foreign language (which your readers probably won't understand).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the fact that he didn't speak English all that time, translation of dialogue into the reader's language is pretty common.  Tolkein's elves speak Elvish but you can understand most of their dialogue -- but you still know they're not human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T01:08:14.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8865" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-12T03:01:32.397" Score="4" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, this question is not quite about writer's block or dealing with self-criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find myself often in the following situation: I want to write a short piece of non-fiction and have plenty of ideas to drive the discussion from a nice introduction to the heart of topic, to an end that wraps the discussion in a nice manner. I decide what to say in the first paragraph, with a view to catch the reader's attention and to introduce the theme in an original way...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...then I am so happy with the structure I want to develop, that I get bogged down trying to construct the perfect first sentence; and it takes a looong time to make it come out just right. Then for the second paragraph the same, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am happy with the end results, but it is a drag. Now, I am aware of the notion that the first draft should be rough and that the editing process comes later. I am ok with that. What I need to know is how to quickly find the approximate turn of phrase I want in the beginning so I can continue into the main body of the piece?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5775" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T16:11:13.943" Title="Pulling an idea through in spite of the need to correct details" Tags="|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8865" CreationDate="2013-09-12T03:47:42.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that you can. Good writing is hard work. But two thoughts, neither of which is intended to be offensive. They are what I find helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I try to avoid perfectionistic tendencies. As a recovering perfectionist, I find that forcing myself past the beginning helps. I can come back and hit it later. But realistically, I do spend the most time on the opening parts of a work (both fiction and non-fiction). I spend less time once I've (hopefully) gotten the hook written, however long that takes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I like reading in the genre. If you're writing technical books, read more of them so that turns of phrase come more easily. Everyone talks about originality, but honestly, the point of writing is to communicate and that's often done by using ideas and words that people already know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5849" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T03:47:42.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8863" CreationDate="2013-09-12T03:55:41.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand the question correctly...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he grew up speaking Old English (or whatever), is still alive, and communicates with present-day people, he will by definition have to have learned modern English. If he can't speak modern English (or whatever the modern form of language is), then he won't be communicating with anyone. You can allude to the fact that his language evolved over time (all living languages change as time passes). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't write his dialogue in English (or whatever living language you're writing in), no one will be able to understand his dialogue. You can also have him use slightly stilted or idiosyncratic English to portray his different linguistic background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5849" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T03:55:41.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8865" CreationDate="2013-09-12T04:17:02.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fastest way to find the nice turn of phrase is to write the whole piece. The phrase you seek will often just fall out of your fingers as you write. Or when you read the piece after you've written it, you will notice the themes that you've weaved throughout. Or you will get a feeling or a thought or an image as you experience the whole piece after you've written it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For any of that to happen, you have to write the piece first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: You don't need to write the piece in the order that readers will read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be able to find exactly the right turn of phrase before you write the rest of the piece. But more likely it will come during or after the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T04:17:02.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8870" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-09-12T08:54:31.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about changing work from one language to another. Can cover usage rights, the use of multiple languages in one work, the tipping point between &quot;figure it out from context&quot; and &quot;translate it for the reader,&quot; how to format translated words or phrases, comparisons between original and translated texts, and the challenges of bringing a text across cultures while maintaining both flavor and meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T22:01:08.210" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T22:01:08.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8871" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-09-12T08:54:31.407" Score="0" Body="Questions about changing work from one language to another." OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T12:24:15.940" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T12:24:15.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8865" CreationDate="2013-09-12T09:55:55.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use placeholders. If you have an idea of what you want a phrase to accomplish but you aren't there yet, just jot it down in brackets so you know what to do when you come back to polish. (&quot;TK&quot; is slang for &quot;to come,&quot; and here it means &quot;I will come back and finish this.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The script for &quot;Plato's Stepchildren&quot; had Kirk being forced to kiss Uhura, making it the first interracial kiss broadcast on national television. &lt;em&gt;[TK callback to Chekov as Russian, Spock as non-human, Sulu as Asian on bridge as full-fledged characters i/o stereotypes; this is another barrier shattered]&lt;/em&gt; While the director asked for several takes where they &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; kissed, Shatner and Nichols were so keen on the groundbreaking idea that they deliberately ruined every take except the one with the historic kiss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T09:55:55.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8832" CreationDate="2013-09-12T12:21:48.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had this same issue too, as much of my novel is narrated through the mind of the protagonist. Through my own research I found it differs between writers so there are no rules on how to do this. I personally favour italics followed by a tag line but you can also use punctuation marks. I suppose the only rule is pick one and stick to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T12:21:48.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8865" CreationDate="2013-09-12T12:37:09.923" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the exact same problem whenever I sit down to write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the idea of placeholders (like Lauren suggested) and I use that a lot. If I find myself stuck while writing a sentence, I just add some placeholders or, more often, asterisks that refer to notes on a separate page. If needed I add simple sketches/illustrations to my notes so that when I come back to elaborate on that part I can recover the scene more quickly in my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first it is a little hard to get used to this process (if you are like me) because you will feel that by not writing the perfect paragraph right away you are leaving a hole behind (well, you are, in a sense). But once you get used, it is a real relief that you can go on unloading the ideas from your head more fluidly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another technique I've been trying is to first write a scene in the form of a script (play or comics format). This way I can quickly describe to myself the whole scene, the characters and a rough approximation of the dialogue I want. This allows me to review the scene iteratively while adding annotations to the narrative elements separately (e.g. dialogue, scene description, point of view, etc). It also helps me to get a clear picture of the scene almost like I would see it in a movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SCENE 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CAMERA (or point of view): on the bridge, facing the opposite of traffic direction. To the right and above a man can be seen preparing&#xA;  to jump from the top of the steel support. A few pedestrians notice&#xA;  the man and stop to look. Some are taking pictures. One of them, a&#xA;  young man, is protecting his eyes from the sun with his hands while he&#xA;  looks up and screams something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CHARACTERS (important roles in the scene): a man ready to jump into&#xA;  the river, a young man who stops to try and stop the suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DIALOGUE:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Young man screams: &quot;Hey Jeff! It is off! They are not after you&#xA;  anymore! They are leaving you alone! Don't do that!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jeff (the man ready to jump) screams back (hard to hear due to the&#xA;  strong wind): &quot;You are lying! I can hear them coming, but they won't&#xA;  follow me into the water. They can't!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, not a very creative example, but you can probably get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5855" LastEditorUserId="5855" LastEditDate="2015-11-16T16:11:13.943" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T16:11:13.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8865" CreationDate="2013-09-12T13:47:13.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe a combination of two things would work better in your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a lot of placeholders for names of things - characters, places, etc. When I'm writing fantasy, or sci-fi, for example, I don't want to go around looking for the names (I like to research everything, including names, before making a commitment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, placeholders for what you want to say might work very well, or they mightn't if you keep thinking about them. In that case, a bad sentence will work better, because the idea is spelled out, even though it's not &quot;perfect&quot;, and you can always go back later and change it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, just keep writing. It doesn't have to come out exactly the way you want it the first time. Many writers come up with a perfect first line (or paragraph) to get it going, and then wade in and get the job done - polishing it later. Most people who want perfect turns of phrase tend to lose steam and the resulting text gives off that feeling of being deflated (it might not be your case, though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5858" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T13:47:13.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8863" CreationDate="2013-09-12T14:12:16.230" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's actually a very good question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I study Languages (Linguistics included) and, in general, people will adapt their speech faster than we tend to think. Of course, some people tend to keep their accents their whole lives (which can already be interesting for your character), but somethings will change and they will incorporate new vocabulary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can give you my own example: I'm Brazilian, and I'm from Rio de Janeiro state. However, I moved to São Paulo state 13 years ago. My accent hasn't changed much, I'm still identified by my accent, but it's much softer now. However, my vocabulary choice is an odd mix of words (including slang) from Rio and São Paulo - something else which identifies me as being from Rio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you're talking about 1000 years and learning a different language, right? Actually, no, because languages change slowly - structurally, especially. You can still read Shakespeare, though we are about 500 years apart, but listening to the original would probably sound very strange to us. In the same way, I can read Camões, which is about 500 years old, as well, in Portuguese, with relative ease, but the Portuguese people have a harder time - because Portuguese in Portugal changed in different ways than Portuguese in Brazil did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take, for example, this new verb &quot;to google&quot;. Some people won't know what it means, but most do, and depending on how the world goes on, it will be incorporated into the vocabulary canon or abandoned (check out &quot;to defenestrate&quot; as something that still exists but has been abandoned).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process of learning and adapting to language changes is essentially the same: as the language changes, your character would be learning the &quot;new language&quot; as it changed, so, despite maybe some idiosyncrasies in speech, like outdated vocabulary or maybe a few odd words in, your character should speak English as well as the next guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5858" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T14:12:16.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8879" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8933" CreationDate="2013-09-12T16:15:53.370" Score="3" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;We plan to release our debut novel at the end of 2014. Unfortunately I do not have the funds to pay many of the costs involved to have the book printed en masse so I am going down the digital route for the first book. However it would be nice to have a few copies printed for family and friends to give as gifts. Is anybody aware of a company that doesn't charge 'through the nose' to have between 30-50 books printed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-09-14T21:23:50.590" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T06:51:18.133" Title="Are there any cheap printing options for a small order?" Tags="|printing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8880" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8887" CreationDate="2013-09-12T17:58:45.143" Score="2" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;My name is Richard Devine and I am currently working on a collaboration with Stephen King, (obviously NOT the original author himself). We currently act under the pseudo name 'KD Novels' (King/Devine). We don't want to print his name on the cover as we wouldn't want the reader to buy it thinking it was written by the man himself. Not that the book would dissapoint, we just don't want to ride on the back of someone elses success. However we were wondering about the legalities involved in printing his name inside the book. It is his name after all and his huge contribution deserves credit. Any other suggestions would be welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T22:31:16.073" Title="Collaborating with Stephen King, but not the original" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8880" CreationDate="2013-09-12T18:08:39.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simplest solution is for Stephen King to alter his byline somehow &amp;mdash; to Steve King, or Stephen [X.] King (whatever his middle initial is), or Stefan King, or his childhood nickname Steverino Polpettino King, or a pen name like Charles Dickens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing that, a large captioned photo on the back cover and/or inside flap would help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T18:08:39.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8882" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8989" CreationDate="2013-09-12T19:52:44.990" Score="11" ViewCount="34064" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are writing a short story based on the antagonist in our novel, a sort of extended back story if you will. We are now three chapers in and still have not found the need to introduce any dialogue. This is not to say that we wont, but so far the storyline is progressing beautifully without any. Is this commonplace in the world of short stories or do we need to rewrite?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for taking the time to answer this question. We intend to publish a special thanks page in our novel, giving the names of everybody who contributes to the development of our work. Please state if you wish to be credited, or email your request to us directly at: r.p.devine@outlook.com &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastEditorUserId="5637" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T20:17:49.533" LastActivityDate="2019-10-04T10:17:37.883" Title="Is it permissible to write a short story with little or no dialogue?" Tags="|short-story|dialogue|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8882" CreationDate="2013-09-12T20:09:14.643" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a flash fiction without any dialogue, so I don't see why it couldn't be possible in a short story.&#xA;It could be more difficult, because dialogue permit to explain some things quickly and in a easy way, but introduce a dialog only for this is often worse than trying to not use it. If you don't need a dialogue, don't write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I can't really tell if it's commonplace or not, but I don't think you need to rewrite. Even if a short story without dialogue is rare, it's always interesting to see something unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5637" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T20:09:14.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7797" CreationDate="2013-09-12T20:43:42.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To refer to the details of Proper citing code in an APA paper , here's a reference guide which may help you : &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/25/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/25/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T20:43:42.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8346" CreationDate="2013-09-12T20:58:20.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can hire any german translators from the free lancing websites such as elance.com, freelancer.com, odesk.com &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T20:58:20.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8594" CreationDate="2013-09-12T21:05:48.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically it is the content that matters. No matter how long or short the article is . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article should not be less than the minimum number of words required. If they are more, its fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, regarding the length as per my opinion ; the policy is not breached. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still you can check this with rules and regulations of the contest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T21:05:48.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8880" CreationDate="2013-09-12T22:17:28.880" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The name on the book is a brand name. It's a sales tool. It need not relate in any way to the author's real name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to think of it: If readers enjoy one of your books, you want them to be able to find and buy more of your books. So choose a name helps fans remember you and find more of your books. You do not want them to have to scan past another author's stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider using a pen name. If you want, you can mention in the author bio that the name is a pen name for Stephen King, and clarify (with as few words as possible) that it ain't &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; Stephen King.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Me, I'd go with Richard Bachman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T22:31:16.073" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T22:31:16.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8882" CreationDate="2013-09-12T22:55:15.663" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it permissible to write ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, what do you think will happen? Is there a state law against it? Will you have to pay a fee if you do it? Be imprisoned? Get shot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think the readers, publishers, agents will put you on a black list and never ever read a line written by you? How many lists have you made in the past, where you put the authors whose stories you disliked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You make a beginner's mistake. You think there are rules and when you break them someone punish you somehow. And to avoid that you panic and think &quot;I have to rewrite!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not want to know how many good stories have been sacrificed on the altar of rewriting. I tell you a little secret: If you can't write (which I do not want to claim), then no amount of rewriting will rescue you. Because rewriting is a skill of its own. If you cannot handle the skill &quot;writing&quot;, it's unlikely you've mastered the skill &quot;rewriting&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up my little rant: Write! Face your demons and publish. Do not get paralyzed by the fear on inexistent rules. It's your story. If you think it does not need a dialogue, it does not need a dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, if you want to thank us, link to our site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T22:55:15.663" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8863" CreationDate="2013-09-13T00:26:55.663" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I think everyone has made very valid contributions, the key thing is about whether your character is believable or not.  I would find it unlikely that the reader would stop and think 'hang on...he's speaking modern English!'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid very modern colloquialisms of course, but focus instead on character development, a good story and believable dialog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5861" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-09-13T02:10:55.410" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T02:10:55.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8842" CreationDate="2013-09-13T00:34:19.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Dale rightly says, include adjectives (descriptive words), which will better allow the reader to picture the scene in their mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same way you've done this with the camp (really old, built in the 1950s), try and do this with the other elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5861" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-09-13T02:11:11.350" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T02:11:11.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8882" CreationDate="2013-09-13T06:34:07.090" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the movie &quot;Up&quot; which has an entire love story without a single word being spoken.  Someone wrote that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no real rules to writing.  Writing is about transferring your thoughts from your mind into the mind of another.  If you accomplish that, then you're a writer.  If your thoughts require no dialog, then so be it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5863" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T06:34:07.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8879" CreationDate="2013-09-13T06:37:34.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/shop/index-new.ep&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lulu Press&lt;/a&gt; in the past.  You can order one book at a time if you want from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you are willing to go ebook, then look at Amazon and Barnes &amp;amp; Noble too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-publishing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article on self-publishing&lt;/a&gt; is a good general place to start searching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5863" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2013-09-13T12:41:28.197" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T12:41:28.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="210" CreationDate="2013-09-13T07:32:55.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was on the same quest, and thought this book was gold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0062730665&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Write a Movie 21 Days&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really throws you in there, and teaches you the typing structure in a brilliant way. Not the most comprehensive book on the subject, but the best I have read for people who are just starting out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also highly recommend a good writing tool, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;. Screenplays rely heavily on formatting, and with the right tool, you won't spend much time hitting the tab and shift keys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T07:32:55.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8894" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8895" CreationDate="2013-09-13T09:05:24.953" Score="2" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eri kissed her dad on the cheek, and waved goodbye to him. He entered&#xA;back into the car, and then drove off, disappearing gradually at the&#xA;far end of the street. Once he was gone, Eri glanced around. For the&#xA;first time today, she became aware of the familiar sights; the zelkova&#xA;trees behind the houses, the food stands in the sidewalks, the farmer&#xA;markets. The streetlights&#xA;casting golden ripples across the Akigawa river. The rice plantations&#xA;spreading all over the hills, and the green mountains&#xA;visible on the horizon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dad is right, Eri though, with a serene look&#xA;on her face. No matter what, I'll always have a place to come back. My&#xA;home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, I repeated &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; many times in the last part of the first paragraph. Because, they are &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; things that are familiar to Eri (OK, maybe that doesn't make sense. But I feel it sounds better with the &amp;quot;thes&amp;quot;). Also, I cut the list in the middle to avoid making it too long. Not sure how that worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is repetition justified in this case? If not, how would the piece sound better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I feel there's something wrong, though I can't tell exactly what it is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T13:20:00.973" Title="Is repetition justified in the following piece?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8894" CreationDate="2013-09-13T10:25:23.983" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nope, it's fine. The repetition and sentence structure give it a dreamy feel, which I think is exactly what you want for that moment. &quot;The&quot; is fairly invisible here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(P.S. You had &quot;Eri kissed &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; dad,&quot; and I think it's one of your other characters who is transgender, not this one.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T10:25:23.983" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8894" CreationDate="2013-09-13T13:20:00.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the paragraph is the right length, but there are a few things that I feel could be described better. Also, I feel the first sentence could be shortened, since it's really just a build-up to the epiphany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri kissed her dad on the cheek, and waved goodbye to him. He entered&#xA;  back into the car, and then drove off, disappearing gradually at the&#xA;  far end of the street. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel could be shortened to something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri kissed her dad on the cheek and then watched him drive away,&#xA;  disappearing gradually at the far end of the street.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it seems to be wasted thought on him getting into the car when we can just imply that by him driving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the rest of it, I don't feel like the repetition is the problem. Personally, I feel like &lt;code&gt;aware&lt;/code&gt; is somewhat of a understatement. I feel like you could use your trademark symbolism here to give the reader a better sense of what it feels like to see everything anew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last line is perfect though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T13:20:00.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8839" CreationDate="2013-09-13T20:21:20.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on the personality and approach of the writer. I tend to revise, edit and demand impossible perfection from myself. As a result, I am better with a deadline. There is a finite ending to the project and I know I have to accomplish everything within a designated period of time. I find it better to have a deadline so I can move forward with other projects rather than obsessing about one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5868" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T20:21:20.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8898" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8902" CreationDate="2013-09-13T23:12:04.890" Score="8" ViewCount="1148" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has research been done (at any level) that gives demographic and other statistical information about the readers of science fiction? I'm curious about age, gender, educational level, reading interests, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5849" LastEditorUserId="5849" LastEditDate="2013-09-13T23:39:15.743" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T15:17:57.363" Title="Research about science fiction readers?" Tags="|science-fiction|research|audience|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8839" CreationDate="2013-09-13T23:38:24.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, deadlines are useful. I have a hard time with the last 10% and the deadline helps me get there. Deadlines help to motivate me to write instead of doing other things, such as spending all day meandering online. If I meet the goal, I'm succeeding (at least at something). If I don't have a goal (&quot;meet the deadline&quot;), it's harder to tell when I'm failing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a novelist, I think that deadlines force me to write more and more often, keeping me in touch with the flow of the story -- therefore better quality. (Of course, at the same time, I take breaks to step back from a piece and get a fresh perspective.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, &quot;having a deadline&quot; and &quot;knowing how long the story will be&quot; are two different things. If I have a deadline and yet my story keeps getting longer, then obviously I will need to spend more time writing! It's a vote for working harder, sooner, rather than waiting until the last minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5849" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T23:38:24.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8906" CreationDate="2013-09-14T09:02:42.837" Score="-1" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are in the process of creating content to go on a website we are building to promote the launch of our book. We wondered if anyone can recommend any free website builders that host the website for free or for a small charge. It would be preferred if the website was mobile compatible too. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T19:29:28.323" Title="Can anyone recommend a free website builder?" Tags="|marketing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-09-16T18:38:56.550" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8900" CreationDate="2013-09-14T09:53:06.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say Wordpress is the simplest to use. It is free, but with some limitations on what you can change. You also get 'wordpress' in the url. If that is not a problem, I would recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T09:53:06.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8898" CreationDate="2013-09-14T15:17:57.363" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Locus Magazine has an annual poll, dating back into the 1970s.  You can search Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database (&lt;a href=&quot;http://sffrd.library.tamu.edu&quot;&gt;http://sffrd.library.tamu.edu&lt;/a&gt;) using the subject term &quot;Polls and Surveys&quot; for other sources.  The database is not full-text, so you will have to obtain the material from libraries.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5872" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T15:17:57.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8903" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8905" CreationDate="2013-09-14T18:26:44.047" Score="4" ViewCount="864" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general advice is often to focus on the content of what's said in dialogue and just write it in the reader's language, largely whether the characters would use that language or not in-universe. See for example the answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/8863/2533&quot;&gt;this recent question&lt;/a&gt; or for that matter &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TranslatorMicrobes?from=Main.UniversalTranslator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;universal translators&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, what if you really &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to show that the point-of-view character &lt;em&gt;does not understand what the other characters say?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; As he or she sees it, they are &lt;em&gt;speaking&lt;/em&gt; to each other, but the words are gibberish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the particular case I have in mind it's a made up language, but it could just as easily be a real human language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously one shouldn't overdo it (there's a reason why the general advice is for the author to translate, and I mostly agree with it), but for something like a few lines, is it acceptable to make up some such dialogue or should I just stick with something like &quot;she looked at him and spoke in [their native tongue]; I had no idea what she said, but [the result was ...]&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put another way, in what situations might it be a good idea to actually write down the actual words, rather than a translation into the reader's language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T14:52:47.720" Title="How to convey that the POV character *does not understand* what's said in dialogue?" Tags="|dialogue|translation|multilingual|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8903" CreationDate="2013-09-14T18:34:10.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would refine the advice thus: Translate &lt;em&gt;the viewpoint character's experience&lt;/em&gt; into the language of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, if the viewpoint character hears gibberish, you translate &lt;em&gt;the experience of hearing gibberish&lt;/em&gt; into the reader's language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T18:34:10.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8903" CreationDate="2013-09-14T19:01:59.850" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on a few factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Is the narrative's point of view from the person who doesn't understand, the person who does, or omniscient?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CJ Cherryh writes books where the humans are the outsiders in non-human societies. Until the human catches up with the non-human language, the human sounds like Cookie Monster. &quot;Me want food! Me went store, but no has coinage for to pay!&quot; So that's the POV of the person who &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; understand the language, because the non-speaker is obviously not speaking correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the POV is from the non-speaker, then it depends on whether the person can pick out words or whether it's gibberish. See Dale's excellent answer for suggestions there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's omniscient, you can switch or combine depending on who is the focus of a given scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Is the language one which the reader understands (or could understand) or not?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your narrative is omniscient or you're writing from the POV of a speaker, you can choose to reproduce the actual words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your language is a human one, then just put it in. A reader who understands French (etc.) will follow the dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your language is non-human, then you can use the non-human words, but you will need the translation, because the reader isn't going to follow either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Regardless of your decision, if the words are important to the plot, then the reader eventually needs a translation. If they are not important, the translation is up to you.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T19:01:59.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8900" CreationDate="2013-09-14T19:29:28.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are some websites for free website builders : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wix.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wix.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucoz.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ucoz.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webs.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.webs.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webnode.in/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.webnode.in/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.350.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.350.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T19:29:28.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8908" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-15T05:39:27.030" Score="9" ViewCount="502" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, actually, my mother-in-law told the story of her experiences as a German forced laborer in the Soviet Union after World War II.  This was given in German and recorded onto audio tape about thirty years ago by my sister-in-law.  My S.I.L. later transcribed the story in German onto twenty or so tightly typewritten foolscap sheets, and a few years ago she gave us a copy of this.  My wife and I eventually translated this into very rough English (we both speak German, my wife being a native speaker).  It is quite a story and we have determined to self-publish it as a book.  It's basically finished at this point.  So this is what I need: a word (or two) for my having put it into a final form for the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See, the original telling was done pretty much as it occurred to her to tell it, and it tends to get lost in parts, backtrack, go forward, and around the bend at times.  The final version is still her story, but it has been reworked into what I hope is a readable and understandable whole, with a beginning, a middle and an end.  I've also done a spot of research on historical matters pertaining to the story, and because some words she used were Russian, I used Google Translate and the Russian Language SE to get some more information.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the title page, I am giving the title of the book, followed by a subtitle, then the author attribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below the author attribution (she is now deceased, btw), I want to indicate that the work is a transcription and a translation of the original tale, and the word I need is for the really hard part, putting it into a coherent form for publication.  Here's what I got, so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;by &amp;lt;my mother-in-law&amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As told to her daughter &amp;lt;my sister-in-law&amp;gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Translated by her daughter &amp;lt;my wife&amp;gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  and xxxxed by &amp;lt;me&amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is that word (or words) in the xxx's?  Arranged?  Edited?  What?  Or, as someone on the ELU SE said, perhaps I shouldn't even be mentioned at all?  Although the form it was in before I worked on it for a few months was completely unpublishable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5745" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T21:37:24.793" LastActivityDate="2019-04-05T09:04:26.470" Title="What's a word for a person who took a very rough story and made it into a book?" Tags="|editing|word-choice|translation|collaboration|memoir|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8908" CreationDate="2013-09-15T07:09:29.077" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't over-complicate things. You are an Author. &quot;Authored by &lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would make more sense for you to write, &quot;As told by (grandmother's name). Translated by (daughter's name). Authored by (your name).&quot; Use an introduction to tell how this story came to be, which will explain each of your roles and your motivations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5876" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T07:09:29.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8910" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8912" CreationDate="2013-09-15T08:32:25.963" Score="4" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on my first novel which is a collaboration with a friend. We both have no experience and no contacts within the industry, so we are realistic about the prospects for the first novel and dont expect to make a great deal of money from it. We do however want to get as many reviews and as much feedback as we can so that we know what we need to keep, change and improve for the next book. We are looking for cheap ways (preferably free) that we can get the novel out there. We know we are going to have to pay for a good editor so this is going swallow up most of the capital we can afford to put into it. What are the cheapest routes available for publishing and can anybody recommend the avenues to get reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T18:01:57.153" Title="What is the best way forward for a first time author with little cash?" Tags="|marketing|reviews|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8910" CreationDate="2013-09-15T11:32:47.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the cheapest way is to publish your book via &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amazon Direct Publishing.&lt;/a&gt; It cost literally &lt;strong&gt;zero&lt;/strong&gt; (well, unless you hire someone to do the cover. In my &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00E3J3X58&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;case&lt;/a&gt;, I designed the cover myself). If people like your book (or end up hating it) you'll get some reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want detailed and quality reviews, I suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/dashboard/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scribophile&lt;/a&gt; (a community for writers to receive critique and feedback).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more reviews you can try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fictionpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fictionpress&lt;/a&gt; or even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quora&lt;/a&gt;, though the quality won't be as good as the first two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-09-15T12:16:13.643" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T12:16:13.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8910" CreationDate="2013-09-15T18:01:57.153" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once you publish something, it's out beyond your grasp. I strongly recommend against publishing a piece that you feel still has work to be done on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-publishing a novel that still needs editing is not a wise stepping stone to feedback and constructive criticism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First of all, as an unpolished book, it's unlikely to receive much attention; good critics don't go hunting the web for utterly unknown fiction to analyse. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Secondly, the criticism you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; get is likely to be unhelpful - open a random page on Amazon or Goodreads for a book you've never heard of, and you'll see that the vast majority of comments basically boil down to &quot;I liked this&quot; or &quot;I didn't like this&quot;; detailed opinions on minor books are rare, whereas distilling useful advice from scads of snarky, snippety readers is a dangerous tactic. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beyond all this, if you publish under your own name, a published book will remain associated with you and your career forever. It (and its sales ranks) will be the first thing publishers will look at on future projects. You don't want to mess that up with anything less than your best effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I suggest a three-phase plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Make it as good as you can on your own.&lt;/strong&gt; That means writing a first draft, revising until it's as good as you can make it, solving the problems that bother you, getting the manuscript into friendly format, making sure it's presentable and spellchecked and grammar-checked and anything else you can do pretty much on your own or with a little bit of help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you're ready for &lt;strong&gt;2. Get feedback from writers' workshops.&lt;/strong&gt; Now that you've polished the story as much as you can on your own, it's ready for it's first exposure. Writers' workshops, both physical and online, give you lots of opportunity to see how readers respond to your work. &lt;em&gt;Understanding&lt;/em&gt; this feedback is an art unto itself; in a nutshell, try to find reviewers who are actually in your target audience, have a thick skin (because people &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; rip your work apart), and don't take any one criticism too seriously unless you're hearing it from more than one person. Here's our pages on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/904&quot;&gt;popular online workshops&lt;/a&gt;, and on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/385/how-do-i-recover-my-confidence-after-a-harsh-writing-group&quot;&gt;absorbing harsh critiques&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The great thing about writers' workshops is, you can iterate. Post in one place; get feedback; consider; revise - then, &lt;strong&gt;repost,&lt;/strong&gt; in the same place or somewhere else. Once you start getting good reactions, you know that you're on the right track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Now&lt;/em&gt; is when you can &lt;strong&gt;3. Find a great editor.&lt;/strong&gt; Editors cost a lot of money, so you only want to bring them in once you've done everything you can with all your other avenues. But a good one is more than worthwhile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To find an editor, you've got to do your research. You want someone that you trust professionally, and you want somebody appropriate for your particular type of work. You'll look for recommendations (dig around well if you don't know them personally...), and you can also simply look for existing professionals who have done work you enjoy and respect. Once you find those people, they'll name their price. Don't try to skimp here, because someone who &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; a good match - someone you're not sure of, or someone not good for your particular book - may be cheaper, but are much more likely to disappoint you entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you'll want to assess the final product, and decide whether it's up to snuff and worth publishing. If not, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&amp;amp;vol=mette_ivie_harrison&amp;amp;article=017&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;there's no shame in that&lt;/a&gt; - you'll have learned an immense amount by completing a novel, and your next effort will be better yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a hard long slog. But it's an incredible one. And we need good critics to be our guides, telling us how far we've come so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T18:01:57.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8908" CreationDate="2013-09-15T21:02:51.273" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd go with &quot;Edited by.&quot; You are not the author (the originator). You took existing work and edited it to make it readable. I think &quot;edited&quot; makes your relationship to the work clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T21:02:51.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="236" CreationDate="2013-09-16T13:43:15.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Selling 5000 copies of a self-published book is pretty optimistic. I've self-published two books and between them, last I added it up, I'd sold about 600 copies. I'm probably up to 650 or so by now. I understand that's fairly typical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much you make per book depends on the royalty arrangements. The formulas can get complicated but if you self-publish you may end up getting about 20%-30% of the cover price, but then out of that you have to pay for any marketing yourself. If your published by a traditional publisher you get a significantly lower percentage, 10% or less, but that's all yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in my case, well, one of my books sells for $15.85, and I get between $1.50 and $5 for each copy sold (depending on the marketing channel). My other book is $40 and I get about $8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After subtracting expenses -- mostly an ad in a magazine and some modest costs to maintain a web site -- last year I made $300 from my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to write magazine articles. I once added up how much time I spent writing an article, and I figured that, even if you didn't count the articles that I never sold, I was making about $2 an hour writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So seriously, if you're looking for a way to make money, you're better off getting a job at your local hamburger place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T13:43:15.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7681" CreationDate="2013-09-16T15:38:40.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are some websites where you can advertise your e-book for free : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://ebookfreeadvertising.wonderbookland.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ebookfreeadvertising.wonderbookland.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.librarything.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.librarything.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scribd.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.goodreads.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wattpad.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wattpad.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6) &lt;a href=&quot;http://authonomy.com/?from=bookarmy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://authonomy.com/?from=bookarmy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;7) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.booktalk.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.booktalk.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;8) &lt;a href=&quot;http://list.ly/list/2hf-top-free-places-to-promote-your-ebook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://list.ly/list/2hf-top-free-places-to-promote-your-ebook&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T15:38:40.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8607" CreationDate="2013-09-16T19:39:32.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can write like this as well : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Propaganda of Saints by Esther Cohen vs. Meaning of Propaganda and how it varies from Persuasion By Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell. Both the essays are related to the in-depth&#xA;  discussion between the authors about the aspects of Propaganda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T19:39:32.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7671" CreationDate="2013-09-16T20:07:03.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can write the date like this : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. : 2nd November 2013&#xA;e.g. : From 2nd November 2013 till 29th December 2013&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever format you choose, be consistent with that..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T20:07:03.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8908" CreationDate="2013-09-16T21:32:22.443" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The border between Metilda and Lauren's answers is fuzzy and depends on how much of editing you did. If you took the story nearly verbatim, translated it, polished rough edges, added some preface and made it a smooth reading, you're the editor. If you retold that story, say, changing POV, making a set of memories into a smoothly flowing novel leaving no impression of being just told from distant memories but feeling more &quot;then and there&quot; with many artistic liberties with descriptions, places and characters, you're the author, &quot;basing on...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T21:32:22.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8922" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-17T00:43:48.993" Score="4" ViewCount="547" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the scenario. Person A may read a story in a non-English language. As time passes, he still remembers the story and passes it onto his offspring. His children ask him about the author, but the author is forgotten. So, let's say one of the children decides to put the story into written words. Does this person have to indicate the origin(s) of this story, or take full credit of the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, what happens if a grandmother retells the biblical narrative of creation to her grandchildren? Do the children cite the grandmother or a specific copy of the Bible? Are the biblical verses copyrighted or in the public domain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5886" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T23:36:22.300" Title="Is it required to cite the original author, when the original author is unknown and in a foreign language and adapted by an oral narrator?" Tags="|plagiarism|authorship|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8922" CreationDate="2013-09-17T01:48:14.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Legally, it depends.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're asking in terms of legality, then it varies depending on many factors including country of publication, the nature of the original work and the new work, how old the original is, and where the original was first shared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;In terms of &quot;best practices,&quot; always provide what information you can.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original purpose of citation is NOT legal (protecting copyrights), but so that your reader knows where to go to find more information or verify the accuracy of what you're saying. In that spirit, all possible information about the sources should be provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5766" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T01:48:14.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5384" CreationDate="2013-09-17T07:31:14.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.authorea.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Authorea&lt;/a&gt; by MIT is probably what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5888" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T07:31:14.387" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8908" CreationDate="2013-09-17T08:13:39.683" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps &lt;em&gt;Adapted by ..... from an oral history of ..... translated from the German by .....&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your contribution has been to convert from one genre (an oral recount) to another (a printed text). In many ways this is comparable to turning a book into a screenplay where &quot;adaptation&quot; is the term used to indicate that the work is not &quot;original&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T08:13:39.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8395" CreationDate="2013-09-17T11:55:01.000" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In her writing book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0898799465&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Plot&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Ansen Dibell discusses the technique of &lt;strong&gt;mirroring characters&lt;/strong&gt; - two characters who are alike in many ways, and different in others. This gives you a &quot;compare-and-contrast&quot; effect, where the contrast between the two characters naturally creates significance and tension. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.il/books?id=tHyMkHPBhEcC&amp;amp;pg=PT62&amp;amp;lpg=PT62&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This excerpt via Google Books&lt;/a&gt; has a lot of the section. She gives the classic example of &lt;em&gt;A Christmas Carol&lt;/em&gt;, which compares Scrooge to past and future versions of himself - and to other characters, from Marley to Tiny Tim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're looking for something similar: a good &lt;em&gt;contrast&lt;/em&gt; to the right-guy-wrong-time; another character on a similar spectrum which will naturally create tension with your established love-interest. So, what elements can we play around with here? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One option would be to have a &lt;strong&gt;different&lt;/strong&gt; right-guy-wrong-time, who represents a &lt;strong&gt;different&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;wrong time&quot; than the first does. If one guy would be perfect but only &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the protagonist gets her career together, the second could be someone who &lt;em&gt;would've&lt;/em&gt; been perfect if only she'd met him before she started. This turns the tension into the tension between different &quot;versions&quot; of your protagonist's self image - is she more at home with her past, or with her future? Can she reconcile between either of them and her actual present state? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(A similar option would be two right-guy-wrong-time, each &quot;corresponding&quot; to a different possible future - for example, one that'd be perfect IF her life calms down and settles into a routine, another that'd be perfect IF it speeds up to an even more frenetic pace. This way it's a clash between &quot;possible futures.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another option would be to invert the problem with right-guy-wrong-time - instead of somebody who will be terrific &lt;em&gt;but not now&lt;/em&gt;, somebody who is terrific &lt;em&gt;but at some point later, he won't be anymore.&lt;/em&gt; This gives you tension which is more future vs. present; immediate gratification vs. patience; opportunism vs. holding out in the hopes of still finding something good later on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let's try inverting along a different axis: what if the second guy is perfect for the protagonist, but for him, &lt;em&gt;she's&lt;/em&gt; the perfect-girl-wrong-time? She finds herself at the receiving end of the same problems &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt; has with Guy #1. Here, the tension is rather different: it becomes about what she can demand of a romantic partner, and what a partner can demand of her.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With more detail, you can dig deeper and find mirrors that are subtler or more complex. Perhaps &quot;right-guy-wrong-time&quot; means your protagonist has, perhaps unconsciously, a conceptual &quot;life plan,&quot; a sense of what she expects to happen when - and this guy is coming in at the wrong step. With that view, a possible mirror is another guy who &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; fit the current step - but he's got the potential the disrupt &quot;the plan&quot; entirely; send the protagonist's life on an entirely different and less certain path. Here, the tension is your protagonist's life expectations clashing with reality, with enticing opportunity, and possibly with grave risk to her other hopes and aspirations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are a few examples, and I'm sure you can spin up many more. I hope they demonstrate how you can play around with mirroring to find the complement to your love triangle! I've tried to stress how the detail you stress with your mirroring is intimately tied to the central mood, tension, and conflict you want for the story or subplot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T11:55:01.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8927" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8928" CreationDate="2013-09-17T16:19:02.683" Score="5" ViewCount="802" Body="&lt;p&gt;We intend to use the name of a well known brand within our novel and have written to them to gain permission to use their name. They have got back in touch today to say they would be honoured for us to do so. It does in no way detract from the storyline, in fact because of the popularity of the brand we feel it enhances it. I suppose there are two questions here;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Is it considered unusual to do such a thing within fiction?&#xA;2) Are there any requirements as with television to state that a brand name is placed within the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For clarity we are not being paid for doing so, simply gaining permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T16:45:02.310" Title="Is it unusual to use product placement within a fictional novel, and what are the legalities around this?" Tags="|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8927" CreationDate="2013-09-17T20:10:22.893" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have covered the legality, because you have their permission. The issue is therefore closed and complete. You have, however, possibly missed an opportunity, because you might have been able to obtain some payment for using the name, although this is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; unlikely. In films, such payments are much desired and sought, but in fiction, it is very rare for a company to pay a writer for the opportunity to put the name of a product into a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you usually don't need permission, because if the product is in the public eye, it is expected that it can be mentioned without compensation because it is as much a part of the cultural framework of our lives as, say, Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore is a famous, named entity, but you don't have to pay anyone to mention it in a book, any more than you have to pay Coca-Cola just to mention its name in a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It becomes a different thing, however, if Coca-Cola becomes a &lt;em&gt;character&lt;/em&gt; or a major plot element in your book. That's when &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; have to think about paying the Coca-Cola company to use the name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And see RhysW's comment below for an important additional note.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastEditorUserId="4805" LastEditDate="2013-09-17T22:58:15.190" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T22:58:15.190" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8922" CreationDate="2013-09-17T23:36:22.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ethically, you should make it clear that the story is not your own work. Surround it in quotes, intent it differently, do whatever you would do if the author was known. Then, where you would normally cite the original author, just say &quot;author unknown&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claiming someone else's work as your own is unethical, regardless of how you came by the work or whether the author is known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you retell a story from the christian bible you should acknowledge that fact for the benefit of the majority of the world's inhabitants who are not familiar with that document. I think the bible is either public domain or owned by Google, but in any event it is unethical to use material from any other source and claim it as your own original work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5752" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T23:36:22.300" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8927" CreationDate="2013-09-18T03:10:10.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unusual? It seems so to me. Just answering in my own experience: I can't remember reading about a specific, actual product. I've read about fictional products and companies (I primarily read science fiction).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advice I recall being given is that if the actual product makes a material difference to the story, use it; if not, don't -- you can invent one (Arthur C Clarke in 2001 -- &quot;HAL&quot; rather than &quot;IBM&quot;). (It sounds like you've already decided to go forward, but mentioning this in case it might be useful.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5849" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T03:10:10.217" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8659" CreationDate="2013-09-18T20:08:18.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend going to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.printondemand-worldwide.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PODW&lt;/a&gt; and walking through their instant quote wizard. It will give you an excellent appreciation of the sorts of decisions that you have to make, and an idea of the costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you went for some traditional book printer you'd probably get a better price, but the effort of dealing with them would make you wish for an early and painless death. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I have a publisher sitting next to me, and boy the stories I hear ...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, PODW seem like an efficient bunch of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I just looked at picture.com prices and nearly fell off my chair).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T20:08:18.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8932" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-19T03:19:56.793" Score="6" ViewCount="9021" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a native English speaker, and I find that my English writing contains too many definite article &quot;the&quot; when writing scientific reports, and too many &quot;I&quot; when writing in informal settings (like emails, or this question).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do a lot of reading (both literary books and newspapers) and see that both &quot;the&quot; and &quot;I&quot; are used in very moderate portion. Are there unwritten rules/techniques to have such nice writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5901" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-09-19T20:52:42.403" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T14:19:52.853" Title="Overusing &quot;the&quot; and &quot;I&quot;" Tags="|style|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8879" CreationDate="2013-09-19T06:51:18.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PODW &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.printondemand-worldwide.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.printondemand-worldwide.com/&lt;/a&gt; will give you an instant quote on it through their website, and that walks you through all of the choices you can make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T06:51:18.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8839" CreationDate="2013-09-19T07:13:02.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a writer, I work better with a deadline. Let's call it a very flexible deadline. It sometimes help if I break up a project into little &quot;deadlines&quot; or checkpoints. I guess it's different for everybody, what works for me may not work for you. Personally it increases my productivity if I set achievable goals and reasonable limits on myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5902" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T07:13:02.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8932" CreationDate="2013-09-19T12:14:28.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am not a native speaker&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think these are two different questions. If you feel you use too many definite articles, that might mean your grammar is wrong. Try to think at every &quot;the&quot; you write whether you really mean to write about a specific object or if you mean to write about a more general case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also notice many native speakers writing &quot;I&quot; excessively. In informal settings, especially emails you write telling someone what work you did, frequent &quot;I&quot;s might be appropriate. However, I feel that they become more frequent because people do not use conjunctive words, and therefore the &quot;I&quot; often stands repetitively at the beginning of each sentence. Another problem I face in informal, but even formal settings, is the fact that English speakers seem to be little accustomed to longer sentence structures. That leads to many repetitions you do not observe in other languages, but are necessary to form proper sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5903" LastEditorUserId="4805" LastEditDate="2013-09-21T10:22:48.967" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T10:22:48.967" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8932" CreationDate="2013-09-19T15:41:23.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rules surrounding the use of the definite article in English are quite complex and confusing for many non-native speakers. For example, 'the' is never used before a person's name unless for particular clarification:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Ron Howard's outside.&quot;&#xA;&quot;The Ron Howard? The famous director?&quot;&#xA;&quot;Yep, that one.&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, I hear many non-native speakers use it commonly before people's names. (&quot;*Did you talk with the Steve yet?&quot;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I'm using the standard mechanism of marking incorrect or unusual usages with a star.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter in this case whether the writing is technical or informal, though it would be even rarer to use the emphatic 'the' from above in technical writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other nouns, use of 'the' is so spotty as to be nearly idiomatic. Country names are a good example--for many years, English speakers referred to &quot;The Ukraine&quot;, even though they didn't refer to (for example) &quot;*The Russia.&quot; While this particular example has changed, many other examples still exist. Some are stylistic, with only minor variations in meaning and usage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;The people elected him President in 1980.&quot;&#xA;&quot;The people elected him the President of France in 1980.&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal pronouns&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The style for many years was to avoid the use of personal pronouns (I, we, you) in technical writing. This led to torturous constructions and overuse of the passive voice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The results were originally published by one of the authors (Brown, 1977).&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the 90s and 00s, the style changed, and scientific articles started using 'we' or 'I':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I originally published these results in 1977 (Brown, 1977).&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some journals still refuse to adopt this style. In general, a more impersonal style is still preferred for most technical writing, because use of &quot;I&quot; makes it sound like the text is the author's opinion, rather than their presentation of facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1192" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T15:41:23.230" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-19T21:48:02.793" Score="24" ViewCount="50353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a software that helps me develop and organize the characters for my novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;something like a filesystem, with a file for each character&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it should have or allow me to create categories like name, gender, age, backstory, and so on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;once created, these categories should automatically be available for each character&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;adding images, text files, movies and stuff, or linking to these&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it would be nice if it somehow interacted with my writing and timeline software (Scrivener and Aeon Timeline)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;creating relations between characters (married to, boss of, lives next door to, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;these relations should not be limited in number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I don't need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;character development from archetypes (as in Persona) or a list of mental disorders (as in Character Writer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I know of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.marinersoftware.com/products/persona/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Persona&lt;/a&gt;: looks nice, but has these stupid character development tools that I don't need&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.typingchimp.com/characterwriter/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Character Writer&lt;/a&gt;: looks awful&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not have to be specialized software, but something with the above functionality. If you know of some software that does all that but has some other originally intended purpose, that's fine, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Update&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some experimentation I have found that a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreadsheet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; works best for me. I use Excel, because I have it, but will try other speadsheet software before my next project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the spreadsheet, each column is a character and each row is some aspect of that character, such as traits (name, height, personality) and structural elements (development). For every story I write, I can create how many and whichever rows I need. For example, in some stories the outward appearance will be more important, so I will have rows for eye color, clothing style, and which part of their body hair they don't shave; in other stories the past of the characters is more important so the backstory row will be split into many other rows such as kindergarten, relationship to siblings, or summer camp in 1963. Colums can be added and moved around, too, which is nice if you want to see different characters side by side and work to make them more different or explore their relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I even partly develop character arcs in the spreadsheet. This question contains a (made-up) example of what this might look like: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/11142/outliner-software-with-annotations-for-os-x-or-browser-based-but-offline&quot;&gt;Outliner (software) with annotations for OS X or browser based (but offline!)&lt;/a&gt; For more detailed work on the character arcs, I switch to pen and paper and draw the kinds of graphs I have mentioned here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/24628/to-visually-and-logically-plan-out-stories/24631#24631&quot;&gt;To visually and logically plan out stories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I dislike about Excel are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the vast functionality that is unrelated to writing text into cells, which makes the program cumbersome to use for this purpose&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the visual clutter that comes from this functionality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the height limit on cells&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;limited or awkward styling and editing options (e.g. newlines within cells or alternating background adapting to newly added rows)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite these drawbacks, I find using Excel to create characters very helpful. Unless I can find a better tool, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/36453/spreadsheet-for-text-or-text-editor-with-columns-and-rows&quot;&gt;a spreadsheet for text or a text editor with columns and rows&lt;/a&gt;, I will likely stick with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2019-05-28T10:06:53.417" LastActivityDate="2023-01-12T13:19:44.283" Title="Software for developing and organizing characters" Tags="|characters|character-development|software|tools|relationships|" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6401" CreationDate="2013-09-20T06:47:38.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may not be a direct text that would give you all the necessary information but you could consider looking at the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Reviewing scientific works in Psychology, Sternberg Robert J. (ed), American Psychological Association (2006)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Peer Review and Manuscript Management in Scientific Journals, Hames, Irene, Blackwell Publishing (2007).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The contents of the second book do not talk in depth about the reviewing process but there is a section that covers that. It has got more relevance to the person who is being reviewed. The first book is all about doing the process of review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope these help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T06:47:38.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8938" CreationDate="2013-09-20T08:30:09.157" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://keepnote.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;KeepNote&lt;/a&gt;. It's open source and runs on a number of different platforms (Windows and Linux packages are available), but it doesn't do everything you want out of the box. To address your particular considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;something like a filesystem, with a file for each character&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty well check: it allows you to create categories and subcategories to organize your data any way you prefer, and it supports categories with and without text (as &quot;pages&quot; as KeepNote calls them can contain subpages as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;it should have or allow me to create categories like name, gender, age, backstory, and so on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check: just create another page (as a sibling or child to an existing page) to put the information into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;once created, these categories should automatically be available for each character&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No do. It can probably be done with a plug-in, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://keepnote.org/extensions.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Import Folder Tree&lt;/a&gt; looks promising at least as a starting point, but it isn't done out of the box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;adding images, text files, movies and stuff, or linking to these&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pages are (X)HTML web pages so in principle you can add anything that can go onto a web page. The built-in editor is somewhat minimalistic but does include many of the basic features for text editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;it would be nice if it somehow interacted with my writing and timeline software (Scrivener and Aeon Timeline)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No do, at least out of the box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;creating relations between characters (married to, boss of, lives next door to, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;these relations should not be limited in number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make a separate page or set of pages for relationships that describe them, and KeepNote supports full-text search, but there is no &lt;em&gt;native&lt;/em&gt; support for something like this that I know of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One nice thing about KeepNote is precisely that it keeps its data as HTML files along with some XML metadata files in a simple file system directory hierarchy, so backing up your work, working with the files in different software etc. is trivial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2013-09-20T18:02:42.970" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T18:02:42.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8938" CreationDate="2013-09-20T12:50:13.580" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; has features that can be used for this, specifically, templates. You can put all your character notes in one file and use that as a template for other characters. Or, if you insist on having them in separate files, you can create a folder for each character, but you might need to manually copy each file for each new character (may be as simple as an Option-drag).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major thing missing would be the relationships between characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1192" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T12:50:13.580" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8938" CreationDate="2013-09-20T20:54:22.507" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Custom Meta-Data in Scrivener.&lt;/strong&gt; You can do some custom fields in Scrivener. See the &quot;Custom Meta-Data&quot; button at the bottom of the inspector (it looks like a little tag).  Here's a photo where I added a few fields:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HpEc7.png&quot; alt=&quot;Custom metadata fields in the inspector&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add fields by clicking the gear button.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you add a metadata field, it becomes available for all documents in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also view these fields in the outline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OD4fd.png&quot; alt=&quot;Custom metadata fields in the outline&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can put multiple paragraphs into the fields if you want, but I prefer subdocuments for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fields appear in all docs.&lt;/strong&gt; You probably don't want custom character fields in your plot outline, and vice versa, so that might nudge you to keep characters in a separate project. Dunno.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Limited support for relationships.&lt;/strong&gt; This custom metadata feature doesn't let you easily add relationships from one character to another. In my outline photo, you can see a simple relationship, but it's just a text field. You can't navigate it in both directions (uh, or in either direction).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relationships via wiki links.&lt;/strong&gt; Over time, I found that I could create the relationships I needed as &quot;wiki&quot; links from one Scrivener doc to another. I'd have to add a link from each related doc to the other. And if the relationship changed, I'd have to edit both docs to express the new relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relationship docs.&lt;/strong&gt; For significant relationships, I often create a Scrivener doc for the relationship. I put the &quot;relationship&quot; doc into the folder with the most important character. This gives me a place to put all of the details about a relationship. As long as the relationships (who relates to whom) are reasonably stable, this works well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Super NoteCard.&lt;/strong&gt; A few years ago I used an app called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindola.com/supernotecard/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Super NoteCard&lt;/a&gt;. It wasn't great for writing, but it was much more flexible for organizing things. I remember that it allowed arbitrary relationships among cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T20:54:22.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8945" CreationDate="2013-09-21T05:45:48.833" Score="1" ViewCount="1022" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently noticed I use &quot;after all&quot; very often. But unlike other phrases, I never seem to find a way to replace it. Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like the books, they hadn't moved a single inch. Erin found this&#xA;  strange. Even the tiniest shaking would have been enough shift their&#xA;  position. Aluminum was as light as feather &lt;strong&gt;after all.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri knew clearly what it was. But she couldn't make herself bring up&#xA;  the topic. To her, it was like a shapeless creature moving in the&#xA;  dark. An adversary she wanted to avoid at all cost. Because, &lt;strong&gt;after&#xA;  all&lt;/strong&gt;, how could you fight something that didn't have a definite form?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Now I finally see that God didn't approve our marriage. You're a&#xA;  Buddhist &lt;strong&gt;after all&lt;/strong&gt;, and He clearly didn't want us to be together.&#xA;  Somehow I knew it all along. Yet I still decided to go against Him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I know you're worried about your mother. &lt;strong&gt;After all&lt;/strong&gt;, this is the first&#xA;  time you're dealing with something like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could the passages above be rewritten in order to avoid &lt;strong&gt;&quot;after all&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(By the way, this is 9000 word short story. And &quot;after all&quot; is used four times. Maybe that isn't so bad?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-09-21T05:51:11.667" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T06:10:49.843" Title="Ways to replace the phrase &quot;after all?&quot;" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8944" CreationDate="2013-09-21T06:10:49.843" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remove the phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might retain it for one character, to give a little POV quirk. Otherwise, none of the sentences need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T06:10:49.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8903" CreationDate="2013-09-21T07:38:09.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is one very specific situation in which it is a good idea to write down the words spoken in the language that is not understood by the point-of-view character, and it occurs when you want the reader to experience vicariously, as closely simulated as possible, whatever the POV character is experiencing when he or she hears the language being spoken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T07:38:09.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8961" CreationDate="2013-09-21T12:29:35.970" Score="1" ViewCount="337" Body="&lt;p&gt;At first I blamed coffee (I thought caffeine had a chemical which blocked &quot;editing&quot; skills). But then I realized it happens to me from time to time regardless of what I drink or in which mood I am.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I've been stuck with the following for an hour:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Takeshi crawled back to bed after finishing his cigarette. They had&#xA;  sex again. The quiet and comfortable sex they always had. No foreplay,&#xA;  nor creative positions; all they did was to wrap their arms around&#xA;  each other, and move at the rhythm of their breathing. This lack of&#xA;  fervor didn't bother Eri, though. &lt;strong&gt;[Should add something here. But not sure what!]&lt;/strong&gt; not all couples needed to be&#xA;  crazy in the bedroom. &lt;strong&gt;[Same here!]&lt;/strong&gt; the kind she had with Takeshi was just fine. Plus, it made her feel protected, at ease. A little ritual that reminded her she had&#xA;  a cozy home to come back to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this normal? Are there any tips or techniques to deal with this problem? (I welcome both technical and psychological ones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T10:15:11.810" Title="What to do when you get stuck trying to connect sentences?" Tags="|creative-writing|editing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8949" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-21T15:27:04.997" Score="1" ViewCount="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any well known (or even lesser known) books (fiction/non fiction) that are written against the beautiful backdrop of the Canadian north? i.e that talks about the nature, the history and the indigenous cultures that inhibit the boreal regions of Canada and also the canadian arctic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="593" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T15:27:04.997" Title="Book recommendations that feature the canadian north" Tags="|creative-writing|book-rec|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-09-22T02:35:35.383" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8472" CreationDate="2013-09-21T16:24:24.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use a wiki, which would open the information to others while also inviting contributions and edits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5599" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T16:24:24.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4156" CreationDate="2013-09-21T17:19:22.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Salinger does it a ton in &lt;em&gt;Catcher in the Rye&lt;/em&gt; - hence the very reason I found my way to this site/link discussion this matter - as I wanted to know more about it....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5916" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T17:19:22.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8952" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8953" CreationDate="2013-09-21T17:49:31.033" Score="-1" ViewCount="1838" Body="&lt;p&gt;After research and outlining, when it's time to start a draft what is your writing process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I actually sit down to write, I write a section, and then reread it making adjustments. Then I do this until I am happy with the section and move on, repeating this process. I usually only have the urge to reread and adjust when I reach a block of sorts. For example, when I can't think of the word I want to use, or how something should be phrased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my process. Though timely, it works well enough for me. How do you write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5917" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T19:56:28.923" Title="What is your writing process?" Tags="|process|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-09-22T02:31:54.743" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8952" CreationDate="2013-09-21T18:50:26.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our novel is my first attempt at writing so I am probably not best placed to answer this question, however it seems broad enough for me to muck in. Also I am co-writing my novel so this should hopefully be a unique answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After formulating some sort of outline to the plot (which was a whole different process in itself) I sat down with my co-author and worked on thickening the plot for the first two chapters, adding all the depth and detail.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then I would add the narrative on my own, COMPLETELY alone (how anyone can write whilst coping with the distraction of others is beyond me).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Next, like yourself, I revise what I have done (with my co-author) plugging in the gaps and restructuring to perfection, if there is such a thing. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now that we are a third of the way through the book we are getting together to revise the whole of the start of the book and the plot to make sure the whole thing flows.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there are any right or wrong ways to write, and our way may also take a little longer than others, but we know our process works for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T18:50:26.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8952" CreationDate="2013-09-21T18:58:19.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My writing process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A random idea pops into my mind (I only keep those that don't let me sleep.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Screw outlines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think about the hooking sentence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I write in order to find out what will come out from the hooking sentence (I don't stop to edit. Editing while writing can block your best ideas.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I keep writing because I want to know what will happens in the next scene (the characters  develop themselves at this point, because I'm too eager to know what they will do next. I do some Wikipedia research if necessary.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I keep writing because I want to know what kind of crazy, ridiculous ending I will come up with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I take a break. I get drunk for a couple of days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I work on the second draft (my editing brain turns on at this point.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think about another idea/project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At this point I already know whether the  story is worth the pain or not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I get dru...I mean I take a break again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I do the third draft.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I upload my manuscript to www.scribophile.com (and of course I ask questions at www.writers.stackexchange.com)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once receiving the feedback from those sites, I edit my manuscript again (forth draft).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I upload it to Amazon (and pray that there aren't any grammatical mistakes.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I repeat the process with the idea I thought about in step 9. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps (it had worked for me so far).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-09-21T19:56:28.923" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T19:56:28.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8955" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-22T04:36:01.563" Score="2" ViewCount="1675" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that my students are using a lot of these phrases at the beginning of their sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First of all...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To begin with...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All in all...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The other reason is that...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Above all...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At last but not least...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taking all the reasons and examples into consideration...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a word...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these phrases have a common name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a special term for such phrases when they do not add any meaning to the sentence they are added to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastActivityDate="2017-04-11T09:39:24.837" Title="What are these extra phrases added to the beginning of sentences called?" Tags="|terminology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8956" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8958" CreationDate="2013-09-22T04:43:15.263" Score="4" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach a course in academic writing. My students, who do not have much writing experience, add many phrases, as in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8955/what-are-these-extra-phrases-added-to-the-beginning-of-sentences-called&quot;&gt;What are these extra phrases added to the beginning of sentences called?&lt;/a&gt;, to the beginning of their sentences and in the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that the students should eliminate any extraneous language from their papers as it just makes the reader do more work to get the important ideas or the information that they want. They can use such phrases, but only when they add meaning to the paper and only when used quite sparingly. My students are not so easily convinced though, because a prior teacher told them they should add these phrases liberally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was surprised to learn about their prior teacher's advice, but will consider that possibility that the other teacher has valid reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any reasons why students should use these phrases in their academic writing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't recall ever encountering such language in my readings of academic journals. Is such language common or appropriate in certain subjects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T15:29:43.223" Title="Is extraneous language appropriate in academic writing?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8955" CreationDate="2013-09-22T05:06:54.007" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term is &lt;em&gt;metadiscourse,&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;communication about the communication.&lt;/em&gt; Sometimes they help guide the reader through a complex line of reasoning. Sometimes they add emphasis or rhythm. Sometimes they're just noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Use them liberally&quot; (from your other post) seems like coarse advice, perhaps useful until students can distinguish for themselves whether the text requires such orientation, or until they can write the text so that less orientation is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T05:06:54.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8956" CreationDate="2013-09-22T05:09:28.083" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Such &quot;metadiscourse&quot; can help guide the reader through a complex line of reasoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Use these phrases liberally&quot; seems like coarse advice, perhaps useful until students can distinguish for themselves whether the text requires such orientation, or until they can write the text so that it orients the reader without the burden of phrases like these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T05:09:28.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8955" CreationDate="2013-09-22T13:48:03.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would see these as &lt;em&gt;transitions&lt;/em&gt;, bits which help move the reader smoothly from one thought (spread over one or several paragraphs) to the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think presenting it that way will give your students a clear reason whether to use this literary tool:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Am I introducing a new thought?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Am I wrapping up the previous thought?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, then remove the phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T13:48:03.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8960" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-23T08:10:37.307" Score="3" ViewCount="2618" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if I can use expressions such as &quot;I was flooded with ideas&quot;, &quot;It would get me closer towards my desired career&quot; or &quot;it worked like a charm&quot; in my personal statement as it is considered to be formal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I avoid using these kind of expressions and how could I change them to suit the style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. The personal statement is for a university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5923" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T20:39:06.010" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T06:11:09.230" Title="Can I use idioms in my personal statement?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8948" CreationDate="2013-09-23T09:21:28.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't connect them. That's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, you are rewriting here. The most important part of rewriting is to compare the rewrite with the original version. If you have any doubt that the rewrite is improvement, don't change anything. And I guess you already tried some rewrites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to change something, you can also consider using punctuation marks instead of words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lack of fervor didn't bother Eri, though; not all couples needed to be crazy in the bedroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lack of fervor didn't bother Eri, though--not all couples needed to be crazy in the bedroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's just fine also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lack of fervor didn't bother Eri, though. Not all couples needed to be crazy in the bedroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second case you just can replace &amp;quot;kind&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;sex&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all couples needed to be crazy in the bedroom. The sex she had with Takeshi was just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't make it overly complicated. If in doubt, trust your creative voice. That's the one which wrote the first version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T09:21:28.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8962" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-23T10:54:37.203" Score="5" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;What symbols used after difficult words in a text to refer a reader to a glossary for a definition? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm really looking for the most commonly used / accepted symbols and I am wondering whether certain symbols are specific only to particular subjects such as math / literature etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5924" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T19:05:45.560" Title="What symbols are used after difficult words in a text to refer a reader to a glossary for a definition?" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8963" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8964" CreationDate="2013-09-23T16:09:24.670" Score="2" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Within a moment, a girl approached the table, holding a huge birthday&#xA;  cake with twenty flickering candles on it. They &lt;strong&gt;illuminated/lit&lt;/strong&gt; everything&#xA;  around them, like a cluster of stars in a night sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can use both &lt;strong&gt;illuminated&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;lit&lt;/strong&gt; in the example above. I think the meaning will be pretty much the same (both sound right to me.) So I decided to consider the length of the words. Is length something that has to be considered in cases like this? Or is not a very important factor in fiction writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T20:57:36.830" Title="Choosing a word according to its length" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8963" CreationDate="2013-09-23T16:42:30.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Except when I'm writing tweets for Twitter, I never consider word length &lt;em&gt;per se.&lt;/em&gt;  But I often consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rhythm -- How many syllables, which syllable is stressed, how those fit the surrounding sentence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sonority -- Hard and soft, consonants and vowels, lilt, how those fit the surrounding text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vocabulary -- Likelihood that the reader will grok the word without pause.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Concreteness -- Short words are often more concrete. Car vs vehicle vs conveyance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T16:42:30.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8963" CreationDate="2013-09-23T20:57:36.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I use short, common words rather than long, obscure words whenever possible. Some people like to use big words because they want to impress the reader with how smart they must be to know and use all these big words. I've had documents I've written for my company where an editor who came after me in the process went through and substituted long words for all my short, simple words. Like changed every occurrence of &quot;use&quot; to &quot;utilize&quot; and that sort of thing. If you ever find yourself thinking like that, stop. The purpose of writing is not to impress the reader with how smart you are, but to convey information to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this doesn't mean that I never use long words. Sometimes the long word is more specific than the short word, or more precisely conveys the intended meaning. Sometimes I'm looking for a particular rhythm in a sentence. A long word can slow down a sentence, and thus help to add just a little bit of tension before springing the last word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: As Kit says, &quot;lit&quot; means to set on fire. You should say &quot;lit up everything around them&quot;, not &quot;lit everything&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T20:57:36.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8956" CreationDate="2013-09-23T21:09:00.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether such a phrase is good depends on the context. Does it add to the meaning or clarify the meaning? If the answer is no, then I'd leave it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, consider the phrase on that list, &amp;quot;the other reason is that&amp;quot;. If you give two reasons for something, then such a phrase might well be superfluous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sample A&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two reasons why Sally was late to work yesterday. The first reason is that her car had trouble starting. The other reason is that there was a traffic jam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sample B&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sally was late to work yesterday because her car had trouble starting and because there was a traffic jam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B is clearly much more concise without losing any meaning. I'd generally prefer B because it tells the reader what I want to tell him without a lot of wasted motion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are times when you want to go slowly. For example, you may want to build up to a point. Or you may have a much longer block of text and without a separator, the reader could get lost on where the first reason ended and the second reason began.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think it's equally simplistic to say &amp;quot;use these phrases liberally&amp;quot; and to say &amp;quot;never use these phrases&amp;quot;. You need to judge each case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, I wish I could give you a more definitive answer. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T21:09:00.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8932" CreationDate="2013-09-23T21:19:06.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very common advice to say that you should avoid repeating a word. Writers are often encouraged to seek out synonyms or alternate phrasings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this rule is nowhere near as strict for pronouns, conjunctions, articles, prepositions and other short, common words. You can use the word &quot;the&quot; five times in a sentence and it is likely that no one will notice. But if you used the word &quot;altercation&quot; five times in one sentence, it would leap out at the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As several others have said, perhaps you could give us an example of writing that you fear overuses these words, so the discussion could be more concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T21:19:06.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8969" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8970" CreationDate="2013-09-24T00:20:30.173" Score="2" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a manuscript ready to go for a book on Information Management and I'm about to start approaching publishers. As I do, what should I be looking for in a publishing deal? What should I be looking out for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5927" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T15:57:49.923" Title="What should I look for or look out for in a publishing deal?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8969" CreationDate="2013-09-24T03:56:54.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What kind of book are you writing? Is it a paperback or an e-book?&#xA;The two are very different today. I have less experience with paperbacks though the journalists I work with tell me they are a very long process and much more difficult to find publishers for. It's about a year for the whole process and what you should look for is a publisher who is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;responsiveness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;good at editing? (one of my colleagues found a bunch of typos in the second to last edit before printing which caused her a lot of panic, as well as poorly organized index that did not make sense)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether they will give you an advance?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does your publisher have good contacts to help you arrange book tours and other promotions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how many revisions they are willing to go through and how many times will they patiently change the cover and title?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;of course, how much revenue do you get off sales, how do the royalties work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are there chances for sequels or other projects related? (e.g. will they build a website to help you promote...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;will they help you find a designer for the book cover? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what are your rights? This is maybe the most important because you must be very clear what your right is to republish the contents of your book (if they decide to publish a revision to update it, what happens? Do you have the rights to translations? etc...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For e-books, things can be simpler. You can self-publish if you don't find a publisher. This is a choice many authors take in the Kindle, iBooks, Google Play stores. In this case, the barriers for entry are much lower. The main things you need to worry about are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the turnaround time? Apple is famous for a much longer lead time so you need to take it into a account if you're trying to release on all platforms at the same time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;formatting issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard from newspapers printing e-books that it is very possible to self-publish so you don't have to pay a company to do this for you if you need to cut costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5928" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T03:56:54.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="715" CreationDate="2013-09-24T04:06:50.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For magazine writing, it's not so much a &quot;cover letter&quot; you're sending but more of a &lt;strong&gt;pitch&lt;/strong&gt;. This is important because you're not introducing yourself (even though you need to convince the editor that you're THE person to go with for the story), you're trying to sell the story. Hook the editor. Make the person so curious and unsatisfied they s/he must contact you to find out more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most magazine editors have told me they see your pitch as a writing sample - can I trust this person to execute?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give them the gist of the story in the first 2-3 paragraphs. Then answer the question, &quot;why should I care?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add what else is in your story (if you have already finished writing it, I'm not sure whether you should say this or not. Some editors say they don't mind. Others have told me they prefer an unfinished piece because editors love to dig their fingers in and shape the piece). &#xA;Wrap up with your credentials (like a website where they can find your clips). This doesn't necessarily mean your degrees or awards. But something like &quot;I'm a science writer who has covered X and Y and has published in A and B.&quot;&#xA;Then why you should care/hire me. And that's it. Shorter is better, but use as many words as you need to nail it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5928" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T04:06:50.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8972" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-24T04:22:03.073" Score="0" ViewCount="340" Body="&lt;p&gt;My (A)ntagonist (or antagonizing force) in my novel causes a nuclear disaster in a remote nuclear facility. I've decided on certain circumstantial plot points, such as the post-disaster coping of the surrounding characters, but I've come to realize I don't know what motivation A had in causing the disaster in the first place. I need a bit of help developing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some information about A:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gaunt, silent, more alarming than frightening&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;male, late 40's, pale, thin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;possibly under hire by some other force, though money does not seem to be a motivation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potential elements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A needs the use of the nuclear facility for ------&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My novel is more rooted in the general survival of the people involved, with some frightening quasi-otherwordly elements. Thus, I would prefer a motivation that remains plausible, but would be open to an interpretation which has some minor scifi or fantasy elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be greatly appreciated.&#xA;Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5929" LastEditorUserId="5929" LastEditDate="2013-09-24T04:27:29.007" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T09:52:47.437" Title="Antagonist motivation help" Tags="|fiction|novel|character-development|motivation|antagonist|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-09-27T00:11:21.070" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8972" CreationDate="2013-09-24T05:15:56.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was an accident. This would give him something to cope with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He works at the site, and his neglect or incompetence or other personal failing caused the problem or made it worse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He works at the site. He tried to get his superiors' attention about problems at the site. Though he did not cause the accident, he believes that he allowed it by not taking his concerns to authorities outside the site. He feels tremendous guilt about this. The managers and execs now want to silence him permanently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T05:15:56.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8972" CreationDate="2013-09-24T10:14:08.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Started a nuclear disaster, potential for otherworldly elements &amp;mdash; I'd say he's a fanatic trying to bring about the end of the world so that aliens will swoop down and rescue him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No seriously. The guy doesn't have to be sane. The chain of logic can make perfect sense in his own head (sort of a cross of Heaven's Gate, Rapture-awaiting evangelicals, and Scientologists who believe in Xenu) but be obviously nuts to everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have scenes from A's POV, you could have him &quot;receiving signals from out there,&quot; but because he's clearly unhinged and an unreliable narrative view, the reader doesn't know if the signals are real or delusional. That could leave open the possibly that he's actually &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; crazy and that the aliens &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; coming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T10:14:08.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8972" CreationDate="2013-09-24T10:38:53.897" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me reach for &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; resource and hope I don't sink in the process...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForTheEvulz&quot;&gt;For The Evulz&lt;/a&gt; - he's a destructive force, a person who &quot;likes to watch the world burn&quot;. No deeper reasons, no hate, no revenge. Simple love for destruction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One I can't find the trope for, &quot;Burn down a national park to steal a bag of french fries&quot;: the disaster and resulting chaos was an opportunity to perform a job: steal some radioactives, force people to vacate the nearby area (e.g. because there's something significantly more dangerous there), distract authorities and draw away forces from a distant area of a heist, engage rescue forces while an even more serious disaster is being prepared.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisproportionateRetribution&quot;&gt;Disproportionate Retribution&lt;/a&gt; - Whatever reason. He learned he's about to get fired. He lost something precious - say, wife left him. He's really tired with life. Let's go with a bang.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A mystery never explained. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Baptism of fire. People realize the value of their lives when these lives hang on a thread. People live to the fullest when they live as heroes. The daily dreary of work and boredom is the ultimate nightmare. Let's give them an opportunity to shine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WellIntentionedExtremist&quot;&gt;Well-Intentioned Extremist&lt;/a&gt;. It's a &lt;em&gt;remote&lt;/em&gt; nuclear facility with an inherent security flaw. There are quite a few such facilities in densely populated locations. Only the disaster will force a global shutdown of the insecure facilities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hostages/Blackmail. There are other antagonists: terrorists, agencies, whatever. They forced the hand of the one we know.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many more options...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T10:38:53.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8960" CreationDate="2013-09-24T11:06:39.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first question that you need to ask yourself is where is your personal statement going to be sent to. Is it a native English speaking place or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, using certain phrases like &quot;it would get me closer towards my desired career&quot; should not be a problem. However, when you explicitly talk about idioms, in general sense, they should be avoided. However, this does not end there. The usage of idioms in writing a personal statement has also got to do with the exact idiom that you are using. A personal statement is, in a way, a reflection of yourself. You may use an idiom or two over the statement but be careful not to use any idiom or phrase that may be difficult to be understood by the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid over usage of phrases or expressions. That conveys the idea that you do not really have a clear idea of what you want to say. At the same time you do not need to sit down with a book on idioms to decide which one goes in and which one does not. Try and keep it free flowing. That, in general, should be the way to decide if the idiom/phrase you are using should be there or not. Avoid euphemism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, keep in mind, in formal English idioms are usually (not always) avoided. At the end of the day, it also depends on the examiner who reads your statement. Some people are too picky about it and have a strict 'NO' policy for idioms while other people are more liberal about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="4640" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T12:06:30.237" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T12:06:30.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8882" CreationDate="2013-09-24T11:35:51.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer: &quot;Yes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The (slightly) long answer:&#xA;Yes, it is perfectly possible to write a story with absolutely no dialogue. I have written over 20 such stories that do not have any dialogues in them, so I am sure anyone can. There is no rule as such about inclusion of dialogues and not. Depends on what you are writing and the writing style adapted. If you feel that the content is flowing beautifully without any trouble, go ahead and forget about the dialogues. AS you mention that it is going to be a novel, as and when the need arises, use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certain writers/readers prefer dialogue based writing because for them (based on the feedback that I have received and my interactions) it conveys a little more action, but at the end of the day it is all about how you think you can put your content in a better way. If you feel dialogues are not necessary, skip them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T11:35:51.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3046" CreationDate="2013-09-24T12:06:33.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use an online ISSN checker: &lt;a href=&quot;http://journal-index.org/ISSN-validator/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://journal-index.org/ISSN-validator/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5936" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T12:06:33.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7071" CreationDate="2013-09-24T12:17:45.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider looking at a similar question here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/29267/which-equations-should-be-numbered&quot;&gt;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/29267/which-equations-should-be-numbered&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, for technical subjects, number all equations even though you may not have referenced them in the text. It is almost always recommended that you do so, so that other people can refer to it easily and also so that any queries that are asked regarding it, can be directly done. For example, if you have two unnumbered equations and your reader has a question regarding one of them, there is no way for them to do so (they would have to be ambiguous...&lt;em&gt;that equation that appears after this paragraph&lt;/em&gt;, which is something most of us would not like to do (and not preferable in an academic setting). So, in general, go ahead and number all of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:29.717" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T12:17:45.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8981" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8982" CreationDate="2013-09-24T13:32:41.903" Score="2" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rika nodded to the person, and closing her eyes, she blew out the&#xA;  candles, making the room return to its original darkness. Applause&#xA;  filled the room once again. After that people raised from their seats&#xA;  to congratulate Rika.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just then, the camera &lt;strong&gt;started&lt;/strong&gt; to shake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At first Eri though the girl was the one moving it. But then she realized&#xA;  what was in motion was the place. A roaring sound suddenly came.&#xA;  Plates and wine glasses &lt;strong&gt;began&lt;/strong&gt; dancing on the tables. A woman screamed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“What the hell did you wished for?” shouted the guy sitting next to&#xA;  Rika. “The end of the world?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“No!” Rika said, glancing nervously&#xA;  around. “Just that all of you live a long and prosperous life!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It's an earthquake, stupid!” the girl filming said to the guy. “An&#xA;  earthquake!” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Everyone &lt;strong&gt;started&lt;/strong&gt; panicking. Some crawled rapidly under&#xA;  the tables while others rushed towards the entrance. It got blocked in&#xA;  no time. Paintings tumbled to the floor. The crystals of the&#xA;  chandeliers &lt;strong&gt;started&lt;/strong&gt; falling like frozen rain. A lamp dropped from the&#xA;  ceiling, exploding into thousands of glass pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did I use too many &lt;strong&gt;started&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;began&lt;/strong&gt; in the passage above? Is that the case, how can I rewrite the sentences without them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-09-24T13:37:51.013" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T13:53:28.407" Title="Am I overusing the words &quot;started&quot; and &quot;began?&quot;" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8981" CreationDate="2013-09-24T13:53:28.407" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: they are not overused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: consider that to the reader, the things you are describing will sound like that have only just started happening as they read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, at first only the camera is shaking. Eri thinks some. There is a noise. Then the plates and glasses shake. Then someone screams. There is conversation. &lt;em&gt;Then&lt;/em&gt; everyone panics. Then people run. Then the chandelier begins dropping its crystals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the shaking slowly works its way up to being more dramatic. More and more things start shaking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems wrong to me. Eri might have time to think and there might be a pause while the audience is stunned, but everything ought to be shaking by the time someone is screaming &quot;earthquake!&quot; (which indicates that people are already panicking) and stuff should already be falling. It doesn't seem like there ought to be time to talk about what was wished for, etc. before people start running.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T13:53:28.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8882" CreationDate="2013-09-24T15:51:37.453" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several posters here have said &quot;there are no rules to writing&quot; or similar statements. That's an overstatement. There certainly are rules to writing, from &quot;pronouns should agree in number and gender with their antecedents&quot; to &quot;in academic papers, give proper credit to your sources&quot; to &quot;omit unnecessary words&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the valid point is: The rules exist to facilitate communication, not to hinder it. There are lots of rules about writing that you will hear that might be useful as guidelines or interesting ideas, but should not be taken too seriously. And for almost every rule, if your writing is more clear or more effective if you ignore the rule, then ignore the rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveat: If the rule is well-established and very commonly followed, then I'd say you should generally have a good reason to ignore the rule. Many writers think they are being innovative and edgy by ignoring basic rules just for the sake of ignoring them. You should rarely ignore a rule just as a gimmick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, while it is common to have dialog in a story, there is no rule that you must. If the story works better without dialog, there's no reason to cram dialog into it just to conform to some idea of what &quot;most stories&quot; look like. Most paragraphs include at least one comma, but if I wrote a paragraph in what seemed like the most clear and direct way and it didn't happen to include any commas, I wouldn't go back and reword it to include a comma just so it &quot;looked more like most paragraphs&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T19:16:05.960" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T19:16:05.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8984" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-24T15:54:27.730" Score="2" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not asking for any ideas about the content of the essay at all, I'm just looking for advice on citation/style. I haven't written an essay in years so I'm a little rusty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essay prompt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick a potential candidate from either the Republican or Democratic party, and describe how they would go about winning the party nomination. This paper should address the material we have covered in the unit on primaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular you should be able to discuss:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The part that momentum plays in the nomination contest.&#xA;The different rules for primaries and caucuses as well as how these might affect candidate strategy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Briefly talk about how the Iowa caucus works and why it is particularly important The role that party actors play in the nomination contest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See if there are any polls that indicate how your candidate is currently perceived.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should primarily be citing the class readings. Parenthetical citations are fine. If you cite something from outside of class please include an endnote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The part about parenthetical citations means I should just write (lastname) of the author of the article next to their idea, right? I'm going to have other sources of polling information. How do I make an endnote with that? I read the Pursue OWL page on endnotes. I know I need to put a superscript number next to the idea and then have a separate Notes page, but what do I write next to the number on the Notes page if I'm going to have a Sources Cited page too? Do I need to have a Sources Cited page and will I need to put the class readings on it too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My only issue right now is how to start the essay. Obviously, I don't want to write &amp;quot;The candidate I will be examining is _____&amp;quot; or use first person at all, but I'm not sure how to write the opening sentence. Can anyone give me an idea there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The teacher asked for no more than 1600 words. This will be handed in as a hard copy - should I include a word count? Where should I put it in the paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5938" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-04-23T12:16:19.230" LastActivityDate="2023-04-23T12:16:19.230" Title="Looking for advice on citations and beginning a college essay" Tags="|citations|essay|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8969" CreationDate="2013-09-24T15:57:49.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frankly, if this is your first book, and you are not already famous, I would not be too picky. Take any deal that does not include selling your daughter into slavery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting your first book published by a major publisher is very, very difficult. You don't want to reject a decent deal in hopes of finding something better, because the odds are, you won't find something better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've had one book published, THEN you are in a position to negotiate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like getting your first job. You don't go to the fast food place demanding a corner office, chauffeured limo, and 12 weeks vacation. You accept minimum wage and a paper hat. Once you've been working a few years and have some experience, then you are in a position to make demands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T15:57:49.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8634" CreationDate="2013-09-24T20:48:22.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless this is a screenplay you're perfectly fine describing the character's thoughts.  That's what the best authors do (If memory serves me, I think like 95% of Crime and Punishment was internal ruminations)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the problem for me is that I had a hard time deciphering the point you were trying to make.  I had to re-read it about 4 times.  For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If it wasn't someone else that brought happiness, what was I supposed to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could be more clearly written as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If being with another woman couldn't bring me happiness, what was I supposed to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the next sentence was even more confusing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I didn't want a lover, I wanted someone to confirm I wasn't wasting my life and to reflect what Hollywood and every brainless pop song on the radio claims to be happiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;since I was expecting a single thought, and had to re-read it several times to get to the point where what I believe you're saying is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.) Your character wanted companionship for abnormal reasons  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.) Your character wanted to conform to popular society's expectations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider breaking that out into at least two sentences, which gives you more room to expand on those thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5940" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T20:48:22.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8987" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-25T00:39:54.733" Score="5" ViewCount="2939" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of my favorite stories send shivers through my body every time I reread them. For example, &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1995/09/25/1995_09_25_082_TNY_CARDS_000374168&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bullet in the Brain&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; by Tobias Wolff, &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://postcolonialstudies.emory.edu/jhumpa-lahiri/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Third and Final Continent&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; by Jhumpa Lahiri and the end of &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/10/books/the-heart-s-eternal-vow.html?pagewanted=print&amp;amp;src=pm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Love in the Time of Cholera&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; by Gabriel García Márquez.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know the biological cause of this, but it feels transcendental.  I do know I have never written anything that has given me the chills, so I am wondering if it requires an element of surprise, or if my writing hasn't reached that level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a formula to produce chills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT:&lt;/em&gt; Apparently the phenomenon is called &amp;quot;frisson&amp;quot; and is well known in music. It has been tied to specific frequencies that are similar to the range of a human scream. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindupdate.com/2011/10/the-science-behind-getting-chills-from-music/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Science Behind Getting &amp;quot;Chills&amp;quot; From Music&lt;/a&gt;. From what I've found, there are few studies about frisson and literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question now is how can reading (often done in quiet solitude) evoke a biological response, and how come some writers have it, and others (apparently) don't?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this may be subjective, but if (in my opinion) good writing evokes emotion (a physiological response), what &amp;quot;tools of the trade&amp;quot; are available to evoke frisson (another physiological response)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user24" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2020-07-20T00:23:26.723" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T10:32:16.317" Title="Is there a known technique for giving your readers chills?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8634" CreationDate="2013-09-25T01:00:22.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll throw this out there even though this question has been answered.  Showing requires description.  Your passage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the story of my life that I keep on building in my head, I had always drawn my idealized self with a woman. Someone to share experiences with. Someone to recount the tales and adventures back to me and say: &quot;Yes, this was worth it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tells the reader exactly what the narrator feels.  It is almost as if he or she has direct access to his or her subconscious. A descriptive version would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I picture an ideal woman, dirty fingernails from rock-climbing, a soft bottom that is as warm as a toaster when we spoon at night. Someone who would rather wander the streets aimlessly than watch T.V. on a Tuesday night, but most of all someone who wants to be by my side until the day one of us dies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My example may not be what you are going for, but I think it has a level of descriptiveness that &lt;strong&gt;shows&lt;/strong&gt; the narrator desires someone adventurous yet tender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user24" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T01:00:22.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8882" CreationDate="2013-09-25T01:48:54.323" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;You absolutely can write a story with no dialogue. You also can write a story using &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; dialogue. You can and may do anything you wish in a work of fiction. That's what fiction is about. You have free rein. It is your story. And, importantly, it is a work of art. Would anyone have told Leonardo that he couldn't give the Mona Lisa that mysterious smile? Would anyone have told Picasso that he couldn't put both eyes on the same side of a person's head?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many, many, many stories have been written without dialogue. Many great ones have done so very effectively. It is a stylistic choice. Whether you use dialogue or not depends on only one thing: Will it accomplish the effect you want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that is becoming increasingly evident to me the more I read the questions posted here is that &lt;em&gt;the number one absolutely most important learning tool for new writers&lt;/em&gt; is being shockingly ignored. And what, you may ask, is this astoundingly marvelous device that can so miraculously help new writers learn to write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is this: Other stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see now that so many new writers have read little or no published fiction. This is shocking to me. By far, the vast majority of writers, most especially the good ones, even more especially the great ones, would never have been successful if they had not devoured the world of fiction, and most of it, in fact, before ever picking up a pencil (to use an outdated metaphor). Most of them would never even have &lt;em&gt;tried&lt;/em&gt; to write if they hadn't read tons of literature. If one has read a wealth of great stories, one can see the limitless possibilities inherent in fiction; in other words, you would already know that there is no reason you can't write essentially anything you can dream up. That is what fiction is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if somehow you haven't read most of the greatest stories ever published in English, I am sad for you, because not only are you missing some of the greatest pleasures to be had on this planet, but you are also missing the best possible instruction you could ever receive in how to write. So go read. And read. And read. And read some more. And &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T01:48:54.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8955" CreationDate="2013-09-25T01:53:20.147" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I like @Dale Emery's &quot;metadiscourse&quot;. See&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://learningnerd.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/english-grammar-types-of-phrases/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://learningnerd.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/english-grammar-types-of-phrases/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for the names of common type of phrases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you spend a lot of time talking about what you're talking about or introducing and qualifying statements instead of just saying them, it makes them more complex and tends to be distracting or annoying if it doesn't actively contribute to understanding the rest of the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phrases like this can be beneficial if you need to frame a concept in a particular context before stating it - instead of putting the context at the end of the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;In fiction writing, prepositional phrases can be used to set the tone.&#xA;&#xA;Prepositional phrases can be used to set tone in fiction writing.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first way just sounds better to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that additional phrases like these make the reader save up their contents and then apply them to the rest of the sentence. It makes them think more. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastEditorUserId="2821" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T09:11:10.030" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T09:11:10.030" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8955" CreationDate="2013-09-25T02:14:01.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure they really have an established, generally accepted &lt;em&gt;name&lt;/em&gt;, but I would suggest it would be simplest to call them &lt;em&gt;introductory phrases&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T02:14:01.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8987" CreationDate="2013-09-25T02:21:04.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there's no specific formula. &lt;strong&gt;If your story gives you the chills, then it will give the chills to your readers too&lt;/strong&gt; (or at least, it will increase the probability).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now coming up with an idea/story that does that is another thing. I think it is different for everyone. But in theory, if you read authors that give you the chills, and try to emulate (or take inspiration from them), you'll eventually write something that produces the same effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing I do is to &lt;strong&gt;come up with as many ideas/stories as possible.&lt;/strong&gt; I don't know you, but ideas pop up in my mind all the time. While jogging, taking a shower, watching a movie, taking a dump, etc. And I write them all, even the ridiculous ones (I don't necessarily finish them)—then I wait. I leave them there for a couple of months. Then I come back to them. And if the story still gives me the chills, I keep working on it. It means &lt;strong&gt;it survived the test of time.&lt;/strong&gt; Natural selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to conclude, there's no specific formula. The best you can do is to try as many ideas as you can and pick those that &amp;quot;survive.&amp;quot; If they really give the chills, they won't be defeated by the passage of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2020-07-20T00:18:51.623" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T00:18:51.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8956" CreationDate="2013-09-25T03:11:58.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By definition, anything &quot;extraneous&quot; is &quot;irrelevant or unrelated to the subject being dealt with&quot; so I would say that the answer to your question is &quot;no&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5599" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T03:11:58.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8987" CreationDate="2013-09-25T07:43:45.177" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;An excellently executed &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HiddenInPlainSight&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hidden in Plain Sight&lt;/a&gt; (warning: TVTropes link!) is a surefire trigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically: A deeply disturbing, truly scary thing which was the proverbial elephant in the room, executed well enough that the reader failed to notice it despite obvious hints. It was a menace capable of striking at any moment, stabbing our exposed backs from the middle while we stood in a circle looking outside for the danger. Maybe it did strike unnoticed a few times already, and we always boggled who or what caused it while the murderer was standing right next to the victim. It loomed at all times, feeling creepy but forgotten as a mood-building background element. Only when we reach a resolution, when we lost our primary defenses and stand exposed, vulnerable and desperate, learning long-overdue secrets, our cocky approach long snuffed, us doing our homework of research diligently, at last, we read the page that identifies our menace, and we realize it reads it over our shoulder with us, as it kept doing for past half an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the moment that sends a deep cold shiver down any reader's spine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2020-07-20T00:22:00.833" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T00:22:00.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8984" CreationDate="2013-09-25T10:05:10.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be terse, avoid padding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The candidate I will be examining is _&quot; is something you would &lt;em&gt;say&lt;/em&gt; in a conversation. I doubt that you have to &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; it that way in your essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note down what you want to write about the candidate using bullet points on a scrap of paper and then concentrate on these points without adding the padding. Go directly to the info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr Miller is a Republican for 40 years. As father of four children he's focused on family policy ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever. You know better what to write than I do. Approach the matter directly. No fillers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the other questions: Ask your teacher!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T10:05:10.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8634" CreationDate="2013-09-25T12:42:09.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that this is foreshadowing which is not strictly telling or showing. Presumably this will self-fulfill later on - just don't make the mistake of hanging a neon sign on what's happening. Let the character (in this case) ease the reader into showing (or telling)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5943" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T12:42:09.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8962" CreationDate="2013-09-25T12:46:30.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used footnotes in my book (which is in English with Maltese words used occasionally throughout). Word provides footnotes with ease. You can also make a glossary automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5943" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T12:46:30.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8999" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9001" CreationDate="2013-09-25T14:01:03.230" Score="4" ViewCount="1650" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri raised her eyes to the screen again. What a terrible thing it must&#xA;  be for an earthquake to hit right on your birthday. She wondered how&#xA;  often that happened. &lt;strong&gt;Maybe earthquakes are completely indifferent to&#xA;  what's important to us. People, special days. Perhaps to them, we're&#xA;  no more than little ants scurrying around on the surface.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds a bit strange to me, but maybe just because of the tense change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I use past tense or present tense in cases like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T01:18:49.237" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T01:18:49.237" Title="Should I use present or past tense when the narrator talks about an universal/most-often-true statement?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8812" CreationDate="2013-09-25T15:07:54.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you thought about using a MacGuffin? Something like an object or event that draws the characters together across the generations. That could work. It's a bit more sophisticated than using chapter switches. The Cloud Atlas uses both to good effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5943" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T15:07:54.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8999" CreationDate="2013-09-26T01:11:36.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Present tense in some different formatting (I like italics) if those are Eri's thoughts presented as interior dialogue. Past tense if that's her thought in narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As presented above, you have her thoughts in interior dialogue, so I'd italicize them and leave them in present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For comparison:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eri raised her eyes to the screen again. What a terrible thing it must be for an earthquake to hit right on one's birthday. She wondered how often that happened. Maybe earthquakes were completely indifferent to what was important to people. People, special days. Perhaps to them, people were no more than little ants scurrying around on the surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eri raised her eyes to the screen again. &lt;em&gt;What a terrible thing it must be for an earthquake to hit right on your birthday.&lt;/em&gt; She wondered how often that happened. &lt;em&gt;Maybe earthquakes are completely indifferent to what's important to us. People, special days. Perhaps to them, we're no more than little ants scurrying around on the surface.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T01:11:36.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8987" CreationDate="2013-09-26T03:54:37.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, according to Emily Nusbaum and Paul Silvia of the University of North Carolina (the authors of one of the most significant &lt;a href=&quot;http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/10/07/1948550610386810.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies about 'music chills'&lt;/a&gt;), the response might depend on your personal history and 'the way you are'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Musical chills, write the authors, are &amp;quot;sometimes known as aesthetic&#xA;chills, thrills, shivers, frisson, and even skin orgasms [who knew?] …&#xA;and involve a seconds-long feeling of goosebumps, tingling, and&#xA;shivers, usually on the scalp, the back of the neck, and the spine,&#xA;but occasionally across most of the body.&amp;quot; The scientific explanation&#xA;for chills is that the emotions evoked by beautiful or meaningful&#xA;music stimulate the part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which&#xA;controls primal drives such as hunger, sex and rage and also&#xA;involuntary responses like blushing and goosebumps.&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbcnews.com/health/messiah-give-you-chills-thats-clue-your-personality-1C9386871&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So music ones appear to be related not only to the emotions you evoke while listening to it but also to your &lt;em&gt;personality&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also measured their experience with music, and five main&#xA;dimensions of personality: extraversion, conscientiousness,&#xA;agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience.&#xA;Of all these dimensions, only openness to experience was related to&#xA;feeling chills. People high in openness are creative, curious about&#xA;many things, have active imaginations and like to play with ideas, and&#xA;they much more frequently feel chills in response to music.&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sagepub.com/press/2010/december/SAGE_FeelingChills.sp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, people that were more 'open to experiences' were also more likely to play a musical instrument themselves (they rated music as more important in their lives than people low in openness). I guess this makes the experience of music a bit more personal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same thing might be applied to reading. The more involved you are with what you're reading, and the more you use your imagination and relate to the story with respect to your personal life, the easier it will get to feel those chills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately it seems to depend on the reader and his/her relationship with your book. However, if you can create vivid images that relate to universal human experiences, chills shouldn't be a problem for your sensitive readers :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5239" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2020-07-20T10:32:16.317" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T10:32:16.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8812" CreationDate="2013-09-26T09:36:56.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another possible alternative might be to have &lt;strong&gt;the younger relative find a letter, diary or something like that written by and set aside by the older relative.&lt;/strong&gt; The text could recount events from the time period of the older relative, and as the younger relative reads it he/she could reflect on how what's written differs from the world they are used to or what they have been told about the time period during which the older relative lived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might not work in your &lt;em&gt;exact&lt;/em&gt; situation, depending on the specifics of the story you are writing, but don't underestimate the impact a document of its own time can have on a future individual. The revelations can believably be made profound. The hardest part would probably be to make it reasonably believable that this diary, letter or whatever has actually been sitting in limbo with no one considering it either important enough to look over or unimportant enough to throw away, for a good part of a century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T09:36:56.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8972" CreationDate="2013-09-26T09:52:47.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to make the &quot;antagonist&quot; as a scientist of sort, if the shoe fits. Perhaps he's on the verge of a nuclear-related breakthrough that led him to be careless, triggering the events. Or, if he's working for a bigger antagonist, perhaps it's simply something that he is asked to do, which he may or many not like, in exchange for funding of a useful project. Either way, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForScience&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (Warning! TVTropes!) Article shows, anything is morally justifiable for certain individuals if it's for the sake of science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I had actually also got a vague, very rough idea for a nuclear survival story, but the only good idea I had gotten is one of the main characters (or rather, &lt;strong&gt;THE&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Main Character himself.) has a terminal illness, caused by being in close proximity during the explosion, that would cause him to die in a short duration. I thought it was a good tension builder. But I can't find a scientifically plausible reason as to why he could survive a head-on nuclear explosion, which is why I scrapped the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5951" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T09:52:47.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8984" CreationDate="2013-09-26T11:21:58.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;-I assume that by parenthetical citation, you mean the Harvard referencing system. Yes, in that case you write the last name of the author followed by a comma and then the year in which that article appeared (in case of an article being cited). For example, if the article you need to cite is by John Doe published in 1405, then you would write (Doe, 1405).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-For including external sources, use endnotes like you mentioned. Add a superscripted number next to the idea, and then include a Notes page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-If you are planning to include a Sources Cited page as well, try considering an alternative. Include a References page that includes all the sources in one go. That way you do not have to include the Notes page. What I mean is, use a citation style throughout your essay (for example, consider writing numbers in square bracket [1], [2] etc.). After that in the References page, give the complete description of the citation. As an example:&#xA;[1] Doe John, A treatise about blah and blah, Journal of Blah (1405).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-If you are insistent about including a Sources Cited page and wish to work using Endnotes, then you can do the following: in the Notes page elaborate on all the endnotes. After that have two sections in the Sources Cited page, one section having internal citations (i.e. citations from class reading) and the other as external citations (which should essentially be the same as Notes page). This would lead to a repetition though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-To avoid above repetition, consider changing the Sources Cited page to Class Readings Cited or something similar. In that way, you can have the Notes page in place and also have a page for internal citations. This, in my opinion, should solve the dilemma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-You can either have a Sources Cited page or a References page. Some of the other method of elaboration of inline citations need to be present. Yes, you need to put class readings in there too. That's what your teacher has asked you to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-For starting ideas, I would recommend launching a full attack on the subject by jumping right into it. Do not look for fillers etc.  Like John has mentioned above, go directly to the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-You can include a word count as a small footer towards the right side of the end of the main text (before the Sources Cited or References page), though this is not a mandate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T11:21:58.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9008" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9013" CreationDate="2013-09-26T14:57:11.177" Score="3" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my story, I've decided to create some legends, myths, and prophecies for one of the species I used. I don't think there is any problem with this even if I haven't created this species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But one of these legends is a rewrite of the legend of Fenrir, from Nordic mythology. The link between my custom version and the original version is obvious in the story told by both versions, and it need to be obvious. It's even explained by the tellers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could this point be problematic for readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5637" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T15:19:52.723" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T15:19:52.723" Title="Create and using a custom version of a part of an existing mythology" Tags="|creative-writing|fantasy|mythology|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9009" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9010" CreationDate="2013-09-26T15:26:10.410" Score="1" ViewCount="10214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to start reviewing apps and games on my personal blog for a change, but I've never reviewed an app before. I usually write whatever comes to mind when I blog, but I have been browsing around, and I've seen people write over 1000 words of reviews for a simple app or game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a guide or a template I should follow when reviewing an app? Or should I develop it as it goes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do people usually look for in a review say for free or paid apps?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5954" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2013-10-02T18:39:09.867" LastActivityDate="2020-05-27T13:21:50.870" Title="What are good guidelines to follow when writing app reviews?" Tags="|reviews|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9009" CreationDate="2013-09-26T16:45:35.617" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;-The word count is not the most important thing. It is your blog, your review, your opinion. It is not a college assignment that it should have a word limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-The best idea to write a review for an app or a game is to &quot;develop it as it goes&quot; like you mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-The idea is to give your views about the app or the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-A couple of things that readers might want you to include in your review are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The main tasks that the app can do (what is the app supposed to do)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How good is the app at doing what it is supposed to do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How &quot;smooth&quot; is the app (how smoothly/effortlessly would the app run under specified conditions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the minimum requirements for the app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the app paid or free&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does the app compare to similar apps (names of similar apps, is this app better than them etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the app is paid, is it worth paying for?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For how long would you expect the app to stay in the market (is it something novel that may not have competitors for sometime or is it just another app that has come and will go)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any problems or missing features with the app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anything unique about the app that others do not have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any updates planned (if you have info on this, that is)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A rating out of 5 or 10 (for some reason people like rating out of 5)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your final verdict (to go for the app or not)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Write it in free flowing manner that comes naturally to you. It is your blog, after all. You are not writing an academic paper so you do not have to plan like one. Blogging can be done free style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps! If you need more details, feel free to say so!&#xA;Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T16:45:35.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9008" CreationDate="2013-09-26T16:52:15.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why should it be a problem to your readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have created a new species (or even if you do not have one). There is an existing legend. All that you are doing is tweaking it a little (or more) and giving it a shape which is tad bit different from what (perhaps) your readers may have read or heard before. That should not be a problem with the reader. Additionally, you mention that it needs to be obvious that your version is derived from the Nordic mythology. That makes it easier. Your readers should get the reference and ideally they should not mind it too much, unless of course your version is so drastically different than the original that its impossible to see both of them at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possibility is that your readers may think that you got the original tale wrong but that I think is a risk you can take for the rest of your story should clear that doubt from the readers' mind. Also, if it is a new species, I am sure your readers will give you some room and not create a problem about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer: go ahead and write it up. Should not be a problem!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T16:52:15.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9008" CreationDate="2013-09-26T19:04:29.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a bit of professional advice for you. If you are creating something for commercial purposes such as for a game, a  film or something already established in the public consciousness; you must try and sty as true as your can to the original character. This is the bedrock of lore in franchise. In this case it's a classical mythological character and isn't owned by a media entity. Specifics where the area is grey are in games such as WoW or Skyrim where classic mythology is 'borrowed' for use in that specific product. You need to make clear distinctions in either name or biography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congratulations though - you're on the first rung of transmedia!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5943" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T19:04:29.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9008" CreationDate="2013-09-26T19:31:49.020" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you think actual myths in the real world each sprang out of nothing? Everyone copied everyone else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go read &lt;em&gt;The Hero With a Thousand Faces&lt;/em&gt; by Joseph Campell, or at least &lt;em&gt;The Power of Myth&lt;/em&gt; since Campbell is pretty dense. You will very quickly see that most myths nicked from previous mythologies, added new names, tweaked the setting, and maybe mixed in other myths from another country altogether. (Gilgamesh had a flood before Noah did. Osiris rose from the dead before Jesus did. The entire Greek pantheon was renamed into the Roman pantheon. et al.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put Fenrir in your own clothing. There's plenty of historical precedent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T19:31:49.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9008" CreationDate="2013-09-26T19:35:43.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, adapting a myth or a classic story is something that is done all the time. Many, many stories are described as &quot;an updated version of Romeo and Juliet&quot; or &quot;the myth of Odysseus set on a starship&quot; etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a little curious when you say that the link between your version and the original is &quot;obvious&quot;. Do you mean &quot;obvious to anyone who knows the original myth and who will thus immediately see the parallels&quot;? Or do you mean that it's spelled out in your story that this is an allusion to Fenrir? (I think that's what you mean by &quot;it's even explained by tellers&quot;.) Like, personally, despite being of Norwegian ancestry, my knowledge of Nordic mythology is pretty slim. The name Fenrir means nothing to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But anyway, to my mind, here are the potential pitfalls:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story retells someone else's story and doesn't add anything particularly interesting, readers may view it as pointless. Why not just read the original myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if your story changes the original too much, readers may find it annoying. Personally, I really hate it when someone retells a story but turns the hero of the original into a villain or a buffoon. Many recent Hollywood remakes fall into this category. The Mission Impossible movies come to mind: in the original, Mr. Phelps and company were dedicated patriots and freedom fighters, risking their lives to help oppressed people. And they were totally matter-of-fact and humble about it, never boasting of their service to humanity or anything, just doing their jobs. Then the movie made them a bunch of egotistical jerks who sold out their country and their friends because somebody hurt their feelings. Okay, I know they're just fictional characters so there's no point defending their honor or anything, but I just found it annoying. If you don't like somebody else's hero, then don't use him. But don't turn him into a villain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the plus side, many readers will enjoy the interplay of a classic story with a modern twist of some kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T19:35:43.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7527" CreationDate="2013-09-27T08:54:59.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For ebooks, the general rule is, don't use two consecutive returns (as @Fortier mentioned in the comments). This is because the ebook readers sometimes do weird things with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is just a suggestion, and almost every Ebook vendor will allow it. Kindle only moans if you enter KDP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is, write the book, and worry about formatting later. You can easily remove double returns using regexes, which works in Word and every other processor. Google can tell you how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I'm pretty sure I've answered this question earlier, but I can't find it now. Anyone else remember where it is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T08:54:59.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8948" CreationDate="2013-09-27T10:15:11.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with John Smithers. You do not have to necessarily connect them. Keep it simple and trust what you have written. A couple of suggestions on the particular text of yours:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lack of fervor didn't bother Eri, though. As far as she was concerned, not all couples needed to be crazy in the bedroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lack of fervor didn't bother Eri, though. She knew that not all couples needed to be crazy in the bedroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lack of fervor didn't bother Eri, though. (Most) certainly not all couples needed to be crazy in the bedroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the best (according to me is):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lack of fervor didn't bother Eri, though. Not all couples needed to be crazy in the bedroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The kind of sex she had with Takeshi was just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For herself, the sex she had with Takeshi was just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sex, the kind she had with Takeshi, was just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Eri, the kind she had with Takeshi was just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your original&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The kind she had with Takeshi was just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;seems just fine to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try not to focus on connecting the sentences. What you have written is just fine. If you strain too hard to try to connect the sentences, there may be repetitive elements that may come in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Analyze and see if the sentences make sense. Both individually and in context. As long as they do, you need not try and connect them. Your readers get what you want to say. The sentences stand individually. Should work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are feeling compelled to connect your sentence, try and see if there is a way you can modify the second sentence slightly which will not change the meaning but will make the structure clearer. In that case, you will not be compelled to connect them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Words and phrases like &amp;quot;Certainly&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;As far as he/she...&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Although...&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;In spite of....&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;though, by all means...&amp;quot; etc. can be used depending on the text and the meaning you want to convey but you may end up overusing them which would not be nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try and keep such usage to minimum. In my opinion as long as the sentences flow freely and the meaning is in place, you should not bother about connecting them. An occasional usage of &lt;em&gt;connectors&lt;/em&gt; is fine to avoid bumps in sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try not to blame coffee!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps! Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T10:15:11.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8962" CreationDate="2013-09-27T10:51:22.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Usually, there are no demarcations made in the text that would tell your readers if a word is present in the glossary or not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In cases when there is a remark about something that needs to be made, a footnote is used.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In certain cases, the footnote is not explained in the footer of the same page, rather it refers to a different section usually titled &quot;Notes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For such footer symbols, the following convention is used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to explain footer at the end of the same page, start with asterisk (*) mark. If there are more than one such words on the same page, go ahead in the following order: &lt;code&gt;* , ** , *** , **** , † , ‡ , §.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are using a &quot;Notes&quot; section, then you can use any symbol (preferably from the above defined list) to mark your words&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In textbooks and articles, if words are to be included in a glossary (as is your question), there is no standard rule of using symbols. It is expected of the reader to have a look for and at the glossary, for words that they may find difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a suggestion you could &lt;em&gt;italicize&lt;/em&gt; the first occurrence of words that you have included in the glossary&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As an alternate, you can put an * mark next to the words (though this might distract your reader).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another possible solution is to include a mark in a bracket. For example you could write (&lt;em&gt;G&lt;/em&gt;) in the bracket (similar to Clayton's comment)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addition:&#xA;You can find the details about footnotes that I have referred to above at this link:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dd.dgacm.org/editorialmanual/ed-guidelines/footnotes/footnotes_chap_09.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dd.dgacm.org/editorialmanual/ed-guidelines/footnotes/footnotes_chap_09.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have taken the info about the order of symbols to be used in the footnote from the above (which happens to be a chapter from &quot;United Nations Editorial Manual&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="5909" LastEditDate="2013-09-27T19:45:14.090" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T19:45:14.090" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7651" CreationDate="2013-09-27T11:14:50.563" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before going ahead with the rest of the answer, please keep in mind that pdf is not usually considered as a true ebook format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some standards, based on a number of pdf ebooks (technically not standard but convention):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Page Size: Usually 6-by-9 inches or 7-by-10 inches (but there is no fixed size. You can even use A4 or smaller; Ebooks larger than A4 would be a rarity, I believe).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Top and Bottom Margin: Usually 1 inch (the idea is to keep both of them equal. You can tweak around with the size depending on your paper/page size)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Left and Right Margin: Usually 1 inch (the idea is to keep both of them equal. You can tweak around with the size depending on your paper/page size)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Font: Use serif/sans-serif fonts but avoid serif fonts with delicate serifs or thin strokes (the goal being, it should be easily readable). The choice of font would depend on the type of book as well. Usually Times, Times New Roman, Helvetica, Verdana, etc. are used.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Font Size: 12 (but this may change based on your paper size and also on the font that you have selected)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Line spacing: 1.15/1.5&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess these should help you get started. If you need any more specifications, please comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T11:14:50.563" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6806" CreationDate="2013-09-27T11:35:34.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Abstraction&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Abstracting&lt;/em&gt; complicated social problems to bad influence of media on “disturbed kids” is basically ignoring the main roots of the problem&#xA;  and putting the fault on the media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other suggestions (apart from &lt;em&gt;oversimplification&lt;/em&gt;) are: &lt;em&gt;curtail&lt;/em&gt; (curtailing complicated...), &lt;em&gt;restrict&lt;/em&gt; (restricting complicated social...)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T11:35:34.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9008" CreationDate="2013-09-27T13:26:15.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One solid advice how to make it fly and make sure readers who don't know the myth aren't confused, and readers who know the myth aren't annoyed: Hang one good, sturdy &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lampshade&lt;/a&gt; on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have it explained, be it through a narrator/sidenote, or by a character within the story: The original myth retold clearly and in sufficient detail (possibly separated into many parts along the chapters if a single information dump would be too much), some fundamental parallels with your story and some of the essential differences. Leave more parallels as a taste for the readers to find, and have the most startling differences to surface in a glaringly obvious way, giving them a firm contrast against the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T13:26:15.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9023" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9025" CreationDate="2013-09-27T13:36:46.223" Score="0" ViewCount="2939" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a piece of poetry for one of my short stories (the main character, Eri, writes poems). It's the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eri,&lt;/strong&gt; did you feel the earthquake last night? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are you really sure your apartment's alright?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In which planet where you wandering when it came? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is reality and the world as you know still the same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have my doubts as to whether to put a comma after &lt;strong&gt;Eri&lt;/strong&gt;. Seems to stop the whole flow. Or maybe that kind of punctuation is invisible in poetry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-09-27T15:41:50.923" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T19:32:13.530" Title="Usage of commas in poetry" Tags="|poetry|punctuation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9023" CreationDate="2013-09-27T14:47:24.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer may be more of an opinion here but I believe you must keep the comma after Eri. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of comma here adds a certain depth to your poem. It makes your reader read it in a particular way. If you were to do away with the comma, your readers will not pause after the name. The effect of the pause (according to me) is that it conveys concern and weight at the same time (depth, like I mentioned). If you remove the comma, the line becomes a little too &quot;plain&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it does not stop the whole flow. Rather it adds a slight &quot;flavour&quot; to the entire flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Not sure if my answer helps a lot)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T14:47:24.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9023" CreationDate="2013-09-27T18:46:59.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need the comma because you are addressing the person. &quot;Did you feel the earthquake last night?&quot; is a complete sentence. Adding &quot;Eri&quot; is a kind of one-word clause. You need the comma to separate the clauses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T18:46:59.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8594" CreationDate="2013-09-28T00:31:21.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the contest. If it is clearly mentioned as a part of their rules and regulations that the article should not be an extended / revised version of a published one, I would give it a skip. If it doesn't, as a matter of ethics, I would inform / confirm from the authority if it is acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest confirming with the committee now itself, as in case of a no, you still have some time left to work on a new article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T00:31:21.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1699" CreationDate="2013-09-28T00:51:56.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some relevant and detailed answers here, to which I can only add my two cents, not a bit more :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who is your target audience? If it is for beginners - can you go back to your old days of learning programming as a novice, and then try to recollect some things that you loved or hated about some books. It's more likely that the ones you loved are the common selling points that you should stress on, and vice verse. Talk to a few new programmers if you want more inputs on this. If it is a more advanced book, then I suppose it is an easier job for an advanced programmer (which I am assuming you are). You can explain things in the way you would like to know yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most of the programming books are flooded with compiled codes that spoil the learners. If you dare to be a little adventurous, and leave some work for the reader's brain to do. Sometimes those long idiomatic expressions look tiring to brain. Remember Kernighan and Ritchie's? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What's the specialty of your book? There are already a bunch of them in market, and you need to be different from them. Surely, different doesn't mean bizarre, but more useful / improved.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;General tip about writing - start with the structure first. Create the document, write down some bullets that you definitely want to address, and treat it like your own notebook for next few days. Write in plain English, without paying much attention to language. Then go back and revise. You will be surprised to see how many new ideas and improvements emerged out of the same you who was afraid of starting the task a few days back. Happens with me ALL THE TIME.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Follow some time management technique - set a daily / weekly limit on time / page that you definitely want to reach. And yes, do get your thoughts discussed, reviewed by peers once in a while. Helps bootstrap new thoughts sometimes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T00:51:56.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9028" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-28T01:05:22.520" Score="2" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often tend to treat my blog as my diary and thereby end up having a mix up personal and general blogs on my site. I understand that it does not attract readers - a mixed bag of one liner and articles dwindling between different arenas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a blogger by choice and the content of my writing has got absolutely nothing to do with my profession. I am working on becoming a better blogger, where the blog serves as a general portfolio of my thought process on several social and philosophical issues, as well as those from day-to-day life. My target audience is people in their late 20 or 30's, and I am particularly interested in writing about modern day lifestyle and philosophy - how our lives and thoughts are changing or not-changing with the rapid pace of life. For instance, our lives revolve around social media, mobile devices and fast food - but how are they impacting our rudimentary self as a person? What are our dreams and what is the root of depression for many around that age? But my blog seems somewhat undisciplined and more of a personal philosophy than a neutral well-researched article.&#xA;Besides, I do write light-hearted articles on something like coffee, conversations, travel, books, and some of them are appreciated as good reads. But my writing style some times tend to become slightly dark than amusing on such topics as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some thoughts towards this extent that can be adopted to make my blog contents more appealing and meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Precisely, I am looking for some personal practices / discipline that bloggers follow that helped them become a better blogger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5962" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-09-29T01:37:52.903" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T01:37:52.903" Title="becoming better blogger when I write about diverse topics" Tags="|style|blog|habits|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9031" CreationDate="2013-09-28T03:16:25.693" Score="8" ViewCount="31772" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always find myself wondering how to format written text: news (on TV and newspapers), text messages (from a cellphone), lyrics, and poems. Right now, I just put them in a new paragraph and italicize them. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Text Message&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;It occurred to Maria to check her phone for text messages. She went to&#xA;  her purse to get it. There was indeed a message from James. &#xA;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;em&gt;My boss just&#xA;  called. One of the freezers broke last night so we have to move all&#xA;  the food to another one before it gets bad. I think I'll spend the&#xA;  whole morning on it. Have breakfast first. I'll call u as soon as I'm&#xA;  done.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;br&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Maria let out a sigh. How could James stand this? She thought&#xA;  his boss&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Poem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Taking a bite of her sandwich, Eri pulled her notebook out of her&#xA;  purse, and re-read what she had written yesterday.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;em&gt;Eri, did you feel the earthquake last night? &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Are you really sure your&#xA;  apartment's alright?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;As though they were some kind of secret code, she examined each of the&#xA;  words. Then she fished for pen, and added two more lines.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;In which planet where you wandering when it came?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Is reality and the&#xA;  world as you know still the same?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Eri put down her pen and sipped her cup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Newspaper&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Making sure there were no other customers, she brought them back to&#xA;  her sea, and began scanning each headline.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;em&gt;Typhoon Jelawat Kills 62 in&#xA;  Okinawa. Dangerous Toxin Found in Fish for Sale. Price of Rice Raised.&#xA;  Employment Rate Going Down.&lt;/em&gt; Tina folded the newspaper and moved to the&#xA;  next one. &lt;em&gt;Taxi Collides with Car Causing 5 Deaths. Man Arrested for&#xA;  Trying to Rob a McDonald's. Temperatures forecast to be higher than&#xA;  average for Aug-Sept. Woman Finds Hat in a Tree.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;By the time Tina was&#xA;  done, she had read nearly forty headlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked around Google and some say one should use block quotes. What's the conventional way of formatting these things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-09-29T01:39:59.663" LastActivityDate="2015-10-17T15:02:21.910" Title="How to format news, poems, text messages, and other kinds of written text?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9023" CreationDate="2013-09-28T03:16:28.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not uncommon to do away with punctuation completely in poetry. However, in this case you aren't doing that -- you are using question marks. So yes, you need the comma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3686" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T03:16:28.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9029" CreationDate="2013-09-28T07:27:11.240" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not really come across any conventional way of formatting these things. Much of the (rest of my answer) is based on my readings and a few other sources (which I will be citing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer first: yes, use block quotes. Solves most of the problems. Keep the following in mind for blockquotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indent the content (usually 1 inche)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doublespace&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not include quotation marks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MLA Guideline for using block quotes can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://writingcommons.org/format/mla/621-follow-mla-guidelines-for-block-quotations&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://writingcommons.org/format/mla/621-follow-mla-guidelines-for-block-quotations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;text messages&lt;/strong&gt;, use any of the following strategies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Italicize&lt;/em&gt; the text message&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Underline the text message (a little more distracting than italics)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a different font than the main text (for example, use Courier instead of regular serifs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, you would have to do the following too: (essentially making it a block quote)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the content is in a new paragraph&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the content is indented (usually 1 inch)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;poems&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;lyrics&lt;/strong&gt;, use the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is based on a book &lt;em&gt;The Agony and the Ecstasy&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;em&gt;Irving Stone&lt;/em&gt; which includes poems in the middle of the text (was reading the book, so have used it as a reference).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indent the poem 1 inch from the main text (so if you have a margin of 1 inch, the total indentation for the poem becomes 1+1 inches)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the same line spacing as the main text&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the same font as the main text&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include an extra space before and after the poem. For example, it is a usual practice not to include double Enter between paragraphs. However, in this case, include a double paragraph (both before and after).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;newspaper&lt;/strong&gt;: (have not found any authoritative source for this)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it is just the headline(s) that you are quoting, you can simply italicize them in the main body&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you need to include a newspaper clipping, use block quotes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few other points: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The decision to use a different font is generally by the publisher. You can insist that they use a different font for a particular type of content (for example, Instant Messages or text messages)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In certain books, the content is center aligned, so I believe it is something that has got more to do with the publishing house than a convention (for example, &lt;em&gt;The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;em&gt;Mark Haddon&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope these help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T07:27:11.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9023" CreationDate="2013-09-28T13:58:18.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another thought on this question: by quoting your own character's poetry, you're also making a comment on her poetry. Is she a &quot;good&quot; poet? Is her style sentimental, form-bound, what kinds of metaphors does she tend to choose (urban life, the natural world, outer space, etc.), does she tend to push the envelope or is she pretty conventional? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think she's a poet whose poetry doesn't &quot;flow&quot; well, then you want to make sure her poetry does not flow, even if your &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; poetry would flow nicely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you might want to break some of your own rules about poetry, in order to be true to &lt;em&gt;her&lt;/em&gt; poetry and character. You don't necessarily have to write &quot;good&quot; poetry for your character, if she herself is not a &quot;good&quot; poet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3686" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T13:58:18.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9023" CreationDate="2013-09-28T19:32:13.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another way to remove the comma is to put Eri at the end of the line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4078" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T19:32:13.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9070" CreationDate="2013-09-29T00:38:12.993" Score="12" ViewCount="21568" Body="&lt;p&gt;There were a couple of other questions about this, but they were asked many years ago, so I thought I'd start a new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a long time, I used Wiki on a Stick to organise my worlds and allow for easy access. That software is no longer supported and doesn't work with more recent browsers. From there, I created my own website through HTML and CSS to function in a similar way. It works well enough, but it's a very slow process to go through all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, can anyone recommend me either paid or free software that is useful for storing information about different worlds, characters and so on, with an easy way to navigate between them and room for images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5965" LastActivityDate="2021-04-15T12:02:15.713" Title="Software to organise world building?" Tags="|creative-writing|software|world-building|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9028" CreationDate="2013-09-29T01:37:03.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience there are two main types of blogs out there, topic-focused and person-focused.  You're describing the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Person-focused blogs, which cover a range of topics and styles with the unifying theme of &quot;interesting enough for the blog author to want to write about&quot;, seem to attract a smaller audience unless you're famous.  That's ok; not everybody is trying to hit the big leagues.  Your followers will be some combination of people who know you and people whose areas of interest overlap with yours enough that they're willing to skip past the stuff they're not interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key tool for increasing the size of the latter group is &lt;em&gt;tags&lt;/em&gt;.  I read a bunch of this type of blog, and if the tagging tells me up front that this post is about World of Warcraft or Python or Dancing With the Stars, I know to just skip it.  Blogs that don't use tags (and/or good subject lines) have to have a higher density of interesting posts for me to read.  Put another way: what are you asking people to wade through to get to the good stuff, when everyone's definition of &quot;the good stuff&quot; is different?  Make it easy and you'll more-easily attract casual readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T01:37:03.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9037" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9063" CreationDate="2013-09-29T08:45:30.680" Score="1" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) Working in a wide range of positions can improve &lt;em&gt;a person’s&lt;/em&gt; experience and make &lt;em&gt;him&lt;/em&gt; more successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Working in a wide range of positions can improve &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; experience and make &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; more successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's proper way to use pronoun in an essay in above sentences? Which one looks correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5966" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-09-29T16:30:48.360" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T21:03:46.220" Title="Using pronoun in an essay: 2nd person or 3rd person?" Tags="|style|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8962" CreationDate="2013-09-29T18:59:10.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can live with it not being &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the word, my dead-trees encyclopedia which was written long before web 2.0 was all the hype uses something like the form &lt;code&gt;►someword&lt;/code&gt; (that's U+25BA from the &lt;em&gt;Geometric Shapes&lt;/em&gt; Unicode block; Black right-pointing pointer) to refer specifically to other subjects found in the encyclopedia. I can't cite any real facts to support the following, but it seems to be a fairly common notation in such works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2013-09-29T19:05:45.560" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T19:05:45.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9041" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-30T07:36:08.237" Score="3" ViewCount="291" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing an ebook with MS Word 2007, using Styles, and want to separate sections with 3 asterisks, but every time I type the 3 asterisks (using Centering Style) it proliferates into a row of asterisks. Not what I want. Appreciate any suggestions. &#xA;If this is the wrong place to ask, please redirect me.&#xA;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T19:51:57.940" Title="Question re asterisks in MS Word using Styles" Tags="|ebook|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-11-04T21:05:27.423" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9042" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9044" CreationDate="2013-09-30T10:20:40.030" Score="1" ViewCount="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The length of a standard microblog message approximately equals to the&#xA;  length of a typical newspaper headline and subheading, which makes&#xA;  microblogs a perfect medium to facilitate the produce and consume of&#xA;  news articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it lengthy (&gt; 30 words), and &quot;to the length of a typical...&quot;, where the word &quot;length&quot; appeared before &quot;the length of ....&quot;, is there any way to reduce the sentence to make it more readable ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2970" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T11:22:18.563" Title="Please help to improve the following sentence" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-09-30T15:12:18.467" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9042" CreationDate="2013-09-30T11:22:18.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The length of a standard microblog message IS approximately THE SAME AS THAT of a typical newspaper headline and subheading, which makes microblogs a perfect medium to facilitate the producTION and consumPTION of news articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also suggest the claim of a &quot;perfect medium&quot; is a little extravagant and &quot;to facilitate&quot; is unnecessary verbiage. Perhaps &quot;... an ideal medium for the production and ...&quot; would be neater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T11:22:18.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9045" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10288" CreationDate="2013-09-30T11:23:12.257" Score="6" ViewCount="307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to write technical white papers on different technologies. There should be some rules for writing professionals, some home work that needs to be done. I have never gone through any professional writing course, so I feel that I should go for that. But before I do that, I have a few questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I am writing a technical article on a software technology then is this called a white paper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any specific course(online preferred) which helps me in giving my writing skills a professional touch?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the rough points I need to down before I write an article? Are there sections that are required to be included? (For, I used to have software requirements and prerequisite knowledge as 2 mandatory sub sections.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5976" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-09-30T16:44:30.297" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T00:39:13.837" Title="Outlining for white papers" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9041" CreationDate="2013-09-30T11:31:48.903" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are triggering a built-in &quot;feature&quot; of Word. You may be able to avoid this by wrapping the active text (***) in some other characters that will hide the characters from the software but be invisible on screen. I would experiment with (one or more) non-breaking spaces (CNTL+SHIFT+SPACEBAR) before and after. (Note that an equal number of spaces after are needed to ensure true centering.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that does not work and you really want your section separator to resemble three asterisks, then you could create an image that can be inserted each time instead of typing * three times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T11:31:48.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9047" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-30T22:56:26.670" Score="2" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently in the process of writing our debut novel which is set to be released some time next year. On top of this we are writing two short stories which I guess you could call an extended back story for the protagonist and the antagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the threads from all three books are intrinsically intertwined, they also work as a stand alone piece, so one is not needed to make sense of the other (if that makes any kind of sense at all). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What has stumped me is the order in which I should release the books. It seems like such a simple question but I really want to release them in a way that is going to generate maximum interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the strategies that I have pondered - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) We release the novel first, and then release the short stories afterwards, giving the readers more depth to the characters that they already know (and hopefully love).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) We release the short stories first, familiarising the reader with our characters. Then shortly after we release the novel, a sort of 'what happened next' full blown adventure for the reader to indulge in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) We release all three at once, hoping to hell that at least one of them will attract some sort of attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T08:04:31.747" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T08:04:31.747" Title="What is the best marketing strategy for a novel and two short stories?" Tags="|novel|short-story|self-publishing|marketing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9048" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9062" CreationDate="2013-09-30T23:24:30.150" Score="6" ViewCount="759" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently in the process of writing a debut novel. Although we are still in the early stages of writing, we both feel we have the creativity and perseverance to see this through. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we don't have however, are any kind of qualifications or experience in this industry. We both left school with a 'C' grade in English (for those who don't know the UK grading guidelines, 'C' basically means crap, but not quite a fail). We have never attended any creative writing courses or seminars, nor do we possess the vast vocabulary that many seasoned writers seem to naturally possess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose the question is a simple and straightforward;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forgetting about how good the book actually is, will our lack of experience and knowledge in the industry be a hindrance when it comes to publishing, and if so, how do 'newbies' get around this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T19:08:55.663" Title="Do publishers take the time to look at works from writers who have no qualifications or experience in the industry?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9048" CreationDate="2013-10-01T03:29:57.657" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easy answer is...it depends. &#xA;I'd say if you were a computer science expert but flunked out of English consistently (and this is by no means a reflection of most technical backgrounds; most of my friends who are programmers tend to also be very logical and strong writers), it wouldn't matter because the content of what you're writing is technical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a short story novelist and never did well in writing, well, it's still not an indicator of future success. You could have written books that your teachers didn't enjoy. Or you could have really improved writing years later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think what you're actually asking isn't about writing ability but whether you can get published if you don't have connections and no prior publication experience (i.e. you've never written a book before and never worked as a journalist, for example, where you publish regularly). Yes, it's possible. Do you know people in the publishing industry? Are you writing a novel that will have a strong following? There are plenty of books in niche areas that have become hits and their writers weren't famous, e.g. JK Rowling, Stephanie Meyer, etc. But they have a specific audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My coworkers who just published their books are reputable journalists but never wrote a book so they partnered with other famous in their field to publish a book with 12 authors cooperating. Perhaps this strategy can help you find the connections and publishing houses you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, always look into ebook self-publishing. It is becoming more and more legitimate, and you can grow a following from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5928" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T03:29:57.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9035" CreationDate="2013-10-01T07:12:25.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/gollum/gollum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gollum&lt;/a&gt; wiki. It works well for me. There's no database, just wiki-formatted text files. It uses the &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;git&lt;/a&gt; version control system so you have a history of every change you make (and you don't have to know how to use git, it does it all for you). Very nice and extremely simple to use - you just start it up and do all your edits in a web browser. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only downside it doesn't run on Windows, only Unix-based systems (e.g. OS X, Linux).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T07:12:25.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9052" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9059" CreationDate="2013-10-01T09:54:21.417" Score="8" ViewCount="2122" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, I would like to know what's the optimal price for ebooks published at Amazon (via &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/&quot;&gt;Kindle Direct Publishing&lt;/a&gt;.) By &quot;optimal&quot; I mean &lt;em&gt;the price that is more likely to generate sales&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll try to be as specific as I can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Novel&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;60,000~70,000 words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Literary Fiction &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self-made cover&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Novella&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;20,000~25,000 words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Literary Fiction &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self-made cover&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;9,000~10,000 words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Literary Fiction &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self-made cover&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much should a new author charge for the cases described above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I published a 7K word short story  before, and left it as $0.99. But I heard somewhere you should never sell yourself too low?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-10-01T10:00:08.887" LastActivityDate="2017-09-13T21:45:55.940" Title="Pricing your Kindle ebooks at Amazon" Tags="|marketing|kindle|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9053" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9058" CreationDate="2013-10-01T10:20:08.590" Score="2" ViewCount="3700" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper and always want to find ways to write a punch opening for my paragraph. I'm not sure how to take an informative paragraph and find an exciting lead-in that will encourage the reader to continue and maintain his interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have some examples or suggestions on some previous experience of writing punchy openers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2970" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-10-01T15:01:57.947" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T18:49:50.480" Title="Writing a punchy paragraph opening / beginning" Tags="|academic-writing|openings|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9048" CreationDate="2013-10-01T10:41:12.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to find an agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agent will have the experience, knowledge, and connections which you don't, and may be able to steer you towards publishing houses which are more generous. Also, the agent may give you feedback on your work to improve its chances of publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T10:41:12.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8984" CreationDate="2013-10-01T15:00:27.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each school, and even each class within a school, will generally have an accepted style. You need to find out your teacher's expectations, which are usually clearly spelled out in the syllabus. As a rough guideline, classes in the sciences, including psychology, use the American Psychological Association (APA) format, which changes slightly every one to two years. Law and other, more language-focussed classes, may use the MLA style, which also changes from time to time. Other classes may have different guidelines or may enforce less strict versions of the aforementioned styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5982" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T15:00:27.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9056" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-01T15:52:43.957" Score="25" ViewCount="34958" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a master thesis (Sociology) and I'm really penalized by distractions. I would happily shift to a markdown full-screen environment but I wrote an half of the thesis in .odt via LibreOffice, so I would like to know if it's possible to convert from .odt to Markdown, maintaining the footnotes (which are the most important thing in my work) and also the formatting of the bibliographical notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe It could be useful to revert the process and, at the end of the work, go back to .odt file to reformat pages, line height and other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, there is a way to write full-screen directly in a .odt file maintaining footnotes (because FocusWriter and TextRoom doesn't have this feature)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5983" LastActivityDate="2022-11-04T17:22:05.433" Title="From Markdown to .odt and vice-versa: a possible distraction-free writing workflow?" Tags="|formatting|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9048" CreationDate="2013-10-01T18:07:35.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lack of qualifications is not as much of a hindrance as lack of ability, I'd say. If you get to the stage of a publisher starting to read your manuscript then your spelling and grammar had best be impeccable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T18:07:35.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9053" CreationDate="2013-10-01T18:49:50.480" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a mishmash of ideas...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common way to open is to state your conclusion as concisely and directly as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't always need exciting. Consider &lt;em&gt;intriguing&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;surprising&lt;/em&gt;. Maybe &lt;em&gt;controversial.&lt;/em&gt; What do you want the reader to &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; right from the start? It isn't always excitement, but it's always some feeling. Curiosity. Outrage. Wonder. Humor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of essay is it? Informative? Raising awareness? Advice? Persuasion? Write an opening sentence that tells the reader what kind of amusement park ride they're climbing onto.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surprise is often useful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A surprising observation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A surprising problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A surprising conclusion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Surprising advice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To maintain interest, you don't have to make the opening sentence of every paragraph punchy. What keeps me reading is that &lt;em&gt;I want an answer to some question that the author has raised.&lt;/em&gt; How will the author solve the problem? Justify the conclusion? Make use of the surprising observation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maintaining interest can be as much about how you finish paragraphs as how you open them. Raise a new question in my mind. Then in opening words of the next paragraph, connect to that question. Maybe begin the answer. Maybe acknowledge the question and shift the focus to some other topic that will illuminate the (promised!) answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T18:49:50.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9052" CreationDate="2013-10-01T18:55:47.043" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dean Wesley Smith famously advises against pricing anything at $0.99. That's the discount bin. It tells buyers that it's a cheap read, not that it's a good read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not price your book as if you expected readers to want it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a bunch of advice from Dean about indie pricing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?tag=pricing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?tag=pricing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T18:55:47.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7809" CreationDate="2013-10-01T20:00:13.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I realize that this question is very old, I am providing an answer should others require this information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For in-text citations, it is sufficient to construct the sentence as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;According to the terms of service for Google search, images, books, etc ...(n.d.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, in APA style, when a source does not list an author or a date of publication, you simply cite the source as (n.d.). If your sentence already references the author/title of the source, then you cite the year of publication only (2013 &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; n.d.). If there is a page number or volume number, you would include that (2013, p.4 &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; vol. 2). And if there is both an author and a page number and you have not already included any of this information in your sentence/paragraph, then you cite it as (Doe, 2013, p.4).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your references page, unless it lists an author, it would be something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Terms of service.&lt;/em&gt; (2013, October 1 &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; n.d.). Retrieved October 1, 2013, from Google, Google search terms of service website, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/accounts/TOS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/accounts/TOS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there were an author, it would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doe, J. (2013, October 1 &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; n.d.). Terms of Service. Retrieved October 1, 2013 from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/accounts/TOS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/accounts/TOS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the source is a single page and isn't part of a larger work, it would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doe, J. (2013, October 1 &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; n.d.). Terms of Service. In** *Google Search Account Terms of Service (p. 4 or section number &lt;em&gt;if there is one -- If none then omit&lt;/em&gt;). Retrieved October 1, 2013 from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/accounts/TOS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/accounts/TOS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; website is a good reference for APA style if you do not have a copy of the APA style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A rule of thumb for the APA style, for uncommon sources that aren't specifically listed in the style guide, choose the format closest to your source. Include as much information as possible. There are other possibilities depending on the source and the amount of information about the source that you have; these examples may need to be tailored to fit a specific source. But this is the general format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5985" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T20:00:13.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8354" CreationDate="2013-10-01T20:37:10.973" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question is simple: there is no minimum recommended length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write the best damn story you can possibly write, regardless of length. Put every ounce of blood, sweat and tears into it. Forget to eat, lose sleep, neglect your family — truly immerse yourself into the book. Then you edit, re-edit and maybe edit some more until you are left with nothing less than perfection. Length is just a number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastEditorUserId="5990" LastEditDate="2013-11-12T17:49:25.090" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T17:49:25.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9048" CreationDate="2013-10-01T20:44:35.760" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're looking at the wrong sort of qualifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A publisher does not care what grades you got in school. While I ended up self-publishing, I have talked to a couple of traditional publishers, and had one contract (that ultimately fell through, but whatever), and no one ever, ever asked to see a copy of my high school report card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for a simple reason: They want to see the text that you write. If your writing is clear and readable and interesting and coherent, they don't care whether you learned that in school or later, or whether you were a great writer in school but your teachers were idiots, or whatever. It doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing non-fiction, they care about credentials in the field. Like if you're writing a book about, I don't know, the oil industry say, then they're very interested in whether you have any experience working in that industry, or have worked for government agencies overseeing the industry, etc. If your answer is, &quot;No, but I've thought a lot about it and I read a magazine article about it, well, I looked at the pictures&quot; then you're going to have a hard time selling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never tried to write a novel so I suspect that experience in any particular field doesn't matter as much. If you are writing a novel set in feudal Japan and you are some sort of expert on feudal Japanese culture that would probably help, but I doubt it would be a big issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T20:44:35.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9037" CreationDate="2013-10-01T21:03:46.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Either is fine. It's a matter of style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) Be consistent. Don't write, &quot;Working in a wide range of positions can improve your experience and make him more successful.&quot; Okay, maybe that sentence sounds so obviously wrong that you wouldn't do that. But I've read plenty of things where the writer hops back and forth between second and third person from paragraph to paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) It does create a difference in tone. Saying &quot;you&quot; makes it more personal. I generally avoid using &quot;you&quot; when an article could be construed as critical of the subject. Like, &quot;If he is lazy and irresponsible ...&quot; rather than &quot;If you are lazy and irresponsible ...&quot; Unless, of course, my goal is to be direct and challenging. Also, &quot;you&quot; tends to sound more personal and informal. That could be good or bad depending. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T21:03:46.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9064" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9083" CreationDate="2013-10-01T21:14:45.407" Score="6" ViewCount="2156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working full time hours in a dead end job, I began writing a novel with a friend about five months ago now. It began really as a sort of 'bucket list' idea, something we had both always wanted to do. But now five months in, I suppose you could say I have become addicted to writing. It was a secret love, waiting to be discovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However (and to the point), working 10 hour days and then writing for 5 or 6 hours after work is really impacting other aspects of my life, on top of loosing sleep and forgetting to eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if there is enough money in writing to quit my job and write full time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the question may seem subjective but I would just like at least some indication of what an average novel (if there is such a thing) can expect to earn in a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5845" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:54:13.617" LastActivityDate="2021-07-04T16:07:27.477" Title="Is there enough money in writing for me to quit my dead end job?" Tags="|money|career|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9064" CreationDate="2013-10-01T22:42:54.927" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writing is mostly a long-term profession.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;For most professional writers, writing is a long-term prospect.&#xA;You are unlikely to make much money from one book, or five.&#xA;Of course, unlikely is not the same as impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes a professional career work:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;A reader reads one of your books, enjoys it, searches for another one, &lt;strong&gt;and finds one.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;So to make a steady, livable income, you (probably) have to write a bunch of books that readers enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Skill.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;It is possible that your first book will bring in enough money to live on.&#xA;The likelihood depends on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your skill at writing books that readers enjoy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your skill at reaching readers who would enjoy your books&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your skill at negotiating a publishing contract&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have not demonstrated any of those yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, nobody ever demonstrated those skills before their first successful book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The average novel.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;As for the earning potential of the average novel,&#xA;the answer likely depends on which &lt;em&gt;average&lt;/em&gt; you have in mind.&#xA;I think &lt;em&gt;median&lt;/em&gt; income from a novel is zero.&#xA;Most novels are never published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the median income from a published novel is also zero.&#xA;Rumor has it that seven out of ten never earn out the full advance.&#xA;So for most traditionally published novels,&#xA;the advance is the only income you will receive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alternatives to quitting your day job.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Of course, quitting your current unpleasant job in order to write full time is just one option. Some others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a job that you like. Or at least a job that you hate less.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a job that gives you more time to write, as long as it provides sufficient income.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to assess the risk.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;For risky ideas like quitting your day job, I like to ask myself three questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the worst thing that could happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the best thing that could happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is most likely to happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then pay attention to your answers.&#xA;Heck, if you can survive the worst thing that could happen,&#xA;maybe it ain't such a huge risk for you after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And revisit the questions as you learn more about the possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T22:42:54.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9066" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9074" CreationDate="2013-10-01T22:57:14.347" Score="5" ViewCount="4687" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nearly all the information I can find about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shunn.net/format/poem.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Standard Manuscript Format&lt;/a&gt; for poetry is described in terms of the visual appearance of the page. For stanzas, a space equal to the size of one line of text should occur after each and before the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the standard for how to &lt;em&gt;create&lt;/em&gt; that space, with a word processor? Is it still just two line returns, or is this now preferably done with paragraph styles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5599" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-01-08T03:50:13.920" LastActivityDate="2021-03-28T01:20:48.223" Title="Space Between Stanzas: Line Breaks or Paragraph Style?" Tags="|formatting|poetry|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9064" CreationDate="2013-10-02T16:56:22.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, of course, some people who become millionaires from their writing: JK Rowling, Stephen King, etc. But the vast majority of writers do not make anywhere near what you could make by devoting the same amount of energy to something really lucrative, like, say, flipping burgers at a fast-food place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is to make money, you have a much better chance of making a nice living if you become, say, a programmer, pharmacist, stock broker, etc. You'll get a much better return on your investment going to school to learn such a profession than practicing writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to write because you want to write, and if you make a few thousand dollars out of over the course of your lifetime, great. I suppose if you're someone who likes to take a big, all-or-nothing gamble, then writing is one of those professions where a small number of people make big bucks, so yeah, it could pay off. But the vast majority make little or nothing. Like acting and music and gambling. For every big rock star who makes a billion dollars, there are a thousand wanna bees still struggling to get their first paying gig. If you're looking for a decent-paying steady job, you're in the wrong place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write because I like to write. I've been writing on and off for 20+ years, and my total earnings to date are probably on the order of $3,000. (Ballpark guess. I haven't actually added it up. It would be too depressing.) I'm sure there are people out there and on this forum who have done better than that, but I'm sure there are plenty who have been plugging away for 20+ years and have yet to make a dime, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not trying to discourage you from writing. I think it's a fun and worthy pursuit. I do discourage you from approaching it as a business venture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T16:56:22.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9035" CreationDate="2013-10-02T23:50:31.457" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tiddlywiki.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TiddlyWiki&lt;/a&gt; is my choice. It's a free-as-in-beer single-page wiki system in the form of a single HTML file you open with your favorite browser and edit via clicking on links to create new sections called Tiddlers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can build out chapters, and internal links, and categorize different types of articles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Works great, but depends on a Java plug-in so YMMV if you are not up-to-date on your JRE and Chrome can be really really temperamental with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with those issues, it's a great tool. Check it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;em&gt;Update 2019&lt;/em&gt;  -still a great tool but has split a bit, as I mention in the comment. Think Python 2/3 - if you're just getting started use the &quot;new&quot; flavor at tiddlywiki.com, but many are still using the classic version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, you'll want &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyDesktop&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tiddly Desktop&lt;/a&gt; for editing in thie era of CORS and walled browser gardens.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3792" LastEditorUserId="3792" LastEditDate="2019-11-03T03:12:23.553" LastActivityDate="2019-11-03T03:12:23.553" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9047" CreationDate="2013-10-02T23:55:48.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chefs serve the amuse bouche before the main course, not after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the stories are thematically related to the novel, release the two short stories as a teaser for the novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider tweeting/instagramming the best excerpts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3792" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T23:55:48.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9064" CreationDate="2013-10-03T06:26:31.820" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've gotten plenty of negative answers here, which, I am sad to say, are accurate. The unfortunate truth is that writing is a horribly unrewarding profession. The fact of the matter is that, no matter how you slice it, most writers do not make enough money to support themselves from their writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when I say most writers, I mean literally ALMOST ALL WRITERS do not make enough money from writing to make what you might call an honest living. You look at all the published books and think, wait a minute, that can't be true, but when you look at the numbers, it still works out that way. In the first place, all of those published books represent a small percentage of everything that is written, and then you have to remember that for each of those books, the writer is likely a person who might be lucky to have published a few books, making a few thousand dollars from each one, and is that a living when spread over any number of years? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give you one concrete example. I was married to a woman who was a very successful professional writer. She did nothing but write full-time. In sixteen years, she published almost thirty books. She even sold one of her books to Disney and it was made into a Disney television movie. Her career was far more successful than the average writer. And even in her very best year, she didn't even earn thirty thousand dollars. Her average income was about fifteen thousand dollars a year. Could you live on that? She couldn't. Who could? And let me reiterate. She did far, far better than the average writer. And the only reason she was able to do what she did as a writer was that she had someone else to support her so she didn't have to work at another job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there you have it. You can't expect success as a writer. Even some of the most famous writers the world has ever known never in their entire lives were able to quit their day jobs. So write for the joy of it, but don't expect to make a living at it, and if you do get lucky and make it big as a writer, then we will all take off our hats to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T06:26:31.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9066" CreationDate="2013-10-03T12:30:42.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a general rule-of-thumb, &quot;hitting the Enter key twice&quot; is &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; the correct answer to any question about formatting text in a word processor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That action does not add a line space after the current paragraph, it creates an additional (empty) paragraph. If your workflow (or that of your publisher) carries out any automated task  &lt;em&gt;on each paragraph&lt;/em&gt;, those extra paragraphs will create problems later. To avoid those problems, do not create empty paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wish to change the visual appearance of a stanza, then the appropriate way is to modify its paragraph style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T12:30:42.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9075" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9086" CreationDate="2013-10-03T14:24:11.780" Score="17" ViewCount="8241" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am, at present, 50% of the way through my first novel (17 chapters (and counting), ~55,000 words, ~100 A4 pages) and yet I also had many other (what I think are) wonderful ideas pop into my head for new stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I have also begun writing three other novels alongside my &quot;main&quot; novel.  In comparison to my &quot;main&quot; novel, the other three are between 3% - 5% complete, but I still have an urge to tell the other stories, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question&lt;/strong&gt;, however, is this: is it advisable (I expect by established authors, perhaps) to simultaneously write multiple novels?  Is this a common practice?  What are the possible advantages and pitfalls?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read lots of thoughts on this take on writing, with the majority concluding that it is a good idea to write multiple novels simultaneously as it allows the author to &quot;take a break&quot;, as it were, from a single - and possibly tedious - task(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, I have read some advice which encourages authors who do choose to simultaneously write multiple novels to write them at different stages, to keep their idea fresh.  By this, they mean have one story in which you are halfway through, whereas the others might be in the first few chapters and some others towards the final stages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="5328" LastEditDate="2013-10-03T21:16:30.377" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T13:01:47.730" Title="Writing Multiple Novels Simultaneously" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2013-10-03T16:12:26.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try writing some hard sci-fi, or historical fiction, or alternate history.  They require the kind of research, analysis, etc. that you enjoy.  Personally, I like the freeware FreeMind for organizing my thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T16:12:26.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9077" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9169" CreationDate="2013-10-03T16:17:22.263" Score="5" ViewCount="284" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a technical or scientific text, such as a PhD thesis, should headings for (sub)sections be complete and sometimes repeat information from the headings of the levels above, or is it sufficient to have a short heading, assuming that it is implied that section &lt;code&gt;X.Y.Z&lt;/code&gt; is still inside &lt;code&gt;X.Y.&lt;/code&gt;?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in my PhD thesis, I have a sectioning structure like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;2. Remote sensing&#xA;2.3. Specific technologies&#xA;2.3.1. Solar&#xA;2.3.2. Terrestrial&#xA;2.3.3. Active&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supervisor said that &lt;em&gt;Solar&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Terrestrial&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Active&lt;/em&gt;, or even &lt;em&gt;Specific technologies&lt;/em&gt; are not proper section titles, but that I should rather write something along the lines of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;2.3. Specific observation technologies&#xA;2.3.1. Solar remote sensing&#xA;2.3.2. Terrestrial remote sensing&#xA;2.3.3. Active remote sensing&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;even though this repeats the heading for chapter 2.  Browsing through some books on my desk, it appears that section and subsection titles often indeed &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; repeat information from higher level headings, but it makes the mathematician buried (somewhat deep) inside me cringe a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any style guides or rules addressing this point explicitly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5496" LastEditorUserId="5496" LastEditDate="2013-10-03T16:39:39.977" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T07:47:30.847" Title="Should subsection headings sometimes repeat section headings?" Tags="|technical-writing|structure|academic-writing|titles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9075" CreationDate="2013-10-03T16:25:31.277" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I definitely do that with chapters/sections/scenes of a single novel (i.e., skip around as I'm writing).  The advantage is that each chapter/section/scene is fresh.  The difficulty is maintaining cohesion between disparate chapters/sections/scenes, written out of order, in different frames of mind.  Requires lots of rewriting.&#xA;If the chapters/sections/scenes are for different novels, that will probably increase the freshness advantage while also increasing the cohesion difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T16:25:31.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9079" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-10-03T16:28:03.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic writing entails written communication of knowledge for educational purposes. Common examples are peer-reviewed articles for publication in scientific journals, theses (Master, PhD, etc.), and text books.  Often, there are very specific sets of rules that set apart academic writing from writing other kinds of non-fictional texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5496" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-10-03T16:59:33.107" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T16:59:33.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9080" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-10-03T16:28:03.437" Score="0" Body="Writing texts in a scientific or educational setting: peer-reviewed articles, theses, text books, and others. Use the tag [scientific-publishing] in addition, if relevant." OwnerUserId="5496" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-12-24T04:30:43.003" LastActivityDate="2021-12-24T04:30:43.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9075" CreationDate="2013-10-03T17:24:20.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, unless you know you can handle this personally I don't think it is a good idea to write multiple novels at the same time -- it is too much to carry around in your head at the same time and each of them will suffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, since it is all too easy to forget the details of a new story you have developed in your head, I think it is important to get some of this &quot;down on paper&quot; so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of how to do so, I think it depends on what your writing style is.  Some authors like to plan out their entire novel in advance, all the way to the end, and then as he/she is writing, they fill in the details but at a higher level they know exactly where they are headed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other authors like to just start writing, and let a story takes its own course, often surprising the author himself with both the storyline and the ending which may be very different from what they had planed when thy started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the first type of author (you plan everything out), then I would write out an outline and save it for later, perhaps along with character descriptions of all the major characters as you may know them now.  Then you will be able to pick this up later and know where you are going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the second type of author, then keep doing what you have done already: starting off with the beginning and continuing for 1 to 5% of the story then stopping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="300" LastEditorUserId="300" LastEditDate="2013-10-03T20:12:09.293" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T20:12:09.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9075" CreationDate="2013-10-03T17:48:46.853" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every writer has his or her own way of writing. You simply can't correlate your way of doing it with anyone else's. I personally have never written only one thing at a time. Currently I am writing three mystery novels, four mainstream short stories, two serious novels, a golf instruction book, a Western screenplay, two science fiction short stories, and a few other things I can't even remember right now. I just write something until I can't stand to write it anymore and then I switch to something else. Eventually everything gets finished. But many writers absolutely have to stick to one thing until it's done. You just have to find your own path. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T17:48:46.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9064" CreationDate="2013-10-03T18:20:41.647" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Download a random ebook from Amazon, or read a random blog, and you will see that most writers are not ready for prime time. (In the old days, they got screened out by agents and publishers, so this wasn't so obvious.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not that most writers are awful (although some are), but they fall short in critical areas. Their writing is charming, but hokey. Or maybe their grammar/spelling/typing is atrocious. (That's deadly for self-publishing).  Maybe their basic idea is great, but they just can't pull it off. The plot is interesting, but the characters are all flat -- even the protagonist.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is, most people who enjoy writing are like most artists (painters, musicians, film makers, etc.). They've got talent, but nobody is going to pay money for their stuff. It's just not good enough. Everyone thinks (hopes?) they're not one of those sad people, but truthfully most people are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, you shouldn't judge your chance of success by that of the average writer. If you truly are good, then your chances are much better than average. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aggravating thing peculiar to artistry, though, is that you might not be able to earn a living at it, &lt;em&gt;even if you're really good&lt;/em&gt;. So, don't get discouraged if financial success is slow to come (or never comes).  And, as they say, don't quit your day job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="14560" LastEditDate="2015-12-02T02:06:32.060" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T02:06:32.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9052" CreationDate="2013-10-03T18:32:07.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see many people paying even $0.99 for a single short story.  There are many very good novels for $5 or less.  More than people have time to read.  OTOH, a collection of good short stories can be better than a novel.&#xA;But maybe I'm cheap.  I don't understand why anyone would pay $1 for a single song off an album.  Yet lots of people do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T18:32:07.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9085" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-03T19:15:28.580" Score="4" ViewCount="324" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where do I find ghost writers? It's for a series I am developing for the Kindle singles series, also to be combined and sold as novels. Word count will be 5k - 20k  - I am interested in splitting revenue on an ongoing basis instead of a single payout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a market place for this type of work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5993" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-01-04T23:43:59.820" LastActivityDate="2019-01-04T23:43:59.820" Title="How do I find a ghostwriter for a series of books?" Tags="|fiction|novel|collaboration|ghostwriter|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9075" CreationDate="2013-10-03T20:42:37.967" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice: Try it and see if it works out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things to watch out for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reasons for switching projects.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;What leads you to switch from one project to another?&#xA;Are you stuck?&#xA;Bored?&#xA;Something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you are bored&lt;/strong&gt; with your current story,&#xA;switching might help.&#xA;You might regain interest when you return to it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it may also be a sign that your current story is boring.&#xA;Switching won't help that.&#xA;Better to &lt;em&gt;throw out the boring stuff,&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;go back before the place where it started to get boring&#xA;and write something that's more interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you are stuck,&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;switching might help.&#xA;You might unstuck yourself while the story bubbles in the back of your mind as you write other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it may be a sign that you're giving up too easily.&#xA;Or that you would benefit from applying a few creativity tricks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next time you get stuck,&#xA;try this seemingly stupid writer trick:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Just write the next sentence.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;And the next.&#xA;Do that a bunch of times before you decide you're stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or try this:&#xA;If you've written yourself into a corner,&#xA;go back and &lt;em&gt;change something earlier in the story&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;to give yourself a way out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or &lt;em&gt;apply Wilhelm's Law.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;Award-winning writer and editor Kate Wilhelm famously advised writers to &quot;throw away your first three ideas.&quot;&#xA;Your first idea is probably obvious.&#xA;Most of your readers will have thought of it.&#xA;Many will have thought of your second idea.&#xA;Some will have thought of your third idea.&#xA;But your fourth idea,&#xA;that's probably fresh enough to seem original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've discovered an odd thing about Wilhelm's Law.&#xA;It's extraordinarily useful when I'm stuck&#xA;When I can't think of a single idea,&#xA;I apply Wilhelm's Law and think of &lt;em&gt;four&lt;/em&gt; ideas.&#xA;For some reason,&#xA;&lt;em&gt;it's easier to think of four ideas than to think of one.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;Maybe it's because when I'm looking for &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; idea, I'm seeking perfection.&#xA;But if I look for &lt;em&gt;four&lt;/em&gt; ideas, none of them has to be perfect.&#xA;This jiggles my stuck brain loose,&#xA;and then the ideas can come.&#xA;And of the four (or more),&#xA;at least one of them will be good enough to get me unstuck.&#xA;Most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set aside vs. abandoned.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Notice whether you ever come back to the stories you set aside.&#xA;If not,&#xA;you don't really have multiple projects &lt;em&gt;in progress.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;(Hint: They're in progress only if they're progressing.)&#xA;In that case,&#xA;maybe starting multiple projects is a way to rationalize not finishing anything.&#xA;Many writers (and other people doing creative things)&#xA;have a fear of finishing.&#xA;Or, more likely, a fear of being judged.&#xA;You can absolutely avoid judgment by making sure you never finish anything.&#xA;But that ain't so satisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What &quot;in progress&quot; means.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Of course,&#xA;the distinction between &lt;em&gt;set aside for a while&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;abandoned&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;is not obvious.&#xA;Note the last time you wrote new words on each project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Count only new words&lt;/em&gt; as progress.&#xA;World building is not progress.&#xA;Research is not progress.&#xA;Outlining is not progress.&#xA;Only new words are progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point--three months? nine? a year? five years?--it will be harder to call it &quot;in progress&quot; if you haven't written new words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T20:42:37.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9035" CreationDate="2013-10-04T03:13:30.203" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always used mindmaps as a way to quickly brainstorm (and more importantly, organize/reshuffle) my thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Freemind&lt;/a&gt; is the app I've used for many years, but its a bit clunky. Recently I've started using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindmup.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MindMup&lt;/a&gt;, which is browser based and allows you to store your documents in Google Drive, or in Dropbox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5818" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T03:13:30.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9090" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9092" CreationDate="2013-10-04T06:43:52.257" Score="3" ViewCount="7350" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a TV spec script for fun, and was just wondering how I would denote laughter in unison from a bunch of sailors on a boat. Would it just be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SAILORS IN BOAT&#xA;(in unison)&#xA;Hahahahahahahahahahah&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;? Or would I just describe it in the description but not in the dialogue?&#xA;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5996" LastEditorUserId="5637" LastEditDate="2013-10-04T17:26:29.473" LastActivityDate="2023-05-29T11:30:17.840" Title="In script writing, how to denote laughter in unison" Tags="|screenwriting|scriptwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9090" CreationDate="2013-10-04T08:27:25.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;- SAILORS IN BOAT Hahahahahahaha&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is that the sailors are already referred to in plural form (&amp;quot;SAILORS&amp;quot; as opposed to &amp;quot;SAILOR&amp;quot;) and thus makes the &amp;quot;in unison&amp;quot; unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-05-29T11:30:17.840" LastActivityDate="2023-05-29T11:30:17.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9090" CreationDate="2013-10-04T09:27:02.157" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do it in the description. Compare these two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SAILORS IN BOAT&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Hahahahahahahaha.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This option tells the actors exactly what they have to say, and it looks clunky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the sailors in the boat start laughing in unison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This option, on the other hand, gives a good short description of what the actors should do. You can also modify it a bit by having them all laugh exactly the same and/or stopping as soon as someone signals for them to stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2927" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-05-29T11:29:41.483" LastActivityDate="2023-05-29T11:29:41.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8117" CreationDate="2013-10-04T09:34:41.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally, your descriptions shouldn't last more than 4-5 lines per paragraph. A good rule of thumb is to try and condense what you want to describe in a few short paragraphs, with each paragraph describing one aspect of your scene. So in your case, you might have one short paragraph describing the state of the room the murderer is in (if its an important point of your script), while you would have a second paragraph describing the murderer (Is he sweating? Completely calm? Dressed unusually? Does he have some descriptive tic that will eventually give him away?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, though, a couple of other 'soft' rules - 1) Don't drag your descriptions out over multiple pages. You're writing a screenplay, not a novel. Describe what the audience would see and what's important for them to know about the scene. 2) Each page of your screenplay should ideally have a mix of dialog and other breaks. So if later in your script you find that two people are spending 3 or 4 pages talking to each other without something else happening in the scene, you're going to lose a reader very quickly. Each page of dialog should have at least one line of something descriptive happening in the scene or else a break to another scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2927" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T09:34:41.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9077" CreationDate="2013-10-04T14:34:02.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say that your current sounds fine, though you may want to prepare it as both, just to placate your adviser.  Sed would be able to help you do this if you are using something like LaTeX to prepare it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5168" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T14:34:02.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9096" CreationDate="2013-10-05T02:58:10.213" Score="3" ViewCount="1691" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to finish a short story (9000 words). But since I already have another two (7000 words and 6000 words), I was wondering whether I should publish the work as a mini collection of short stories. I thought about this because I've never seen a famous author publish a standalone short story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a new author and I'm planning to publish the ebook at Amazon via &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Direct Publishing.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be my best choice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T15:08:29.140" Title="Are collection of short stories more likely to sell than single short stories?" Tags="|publishing|kindle|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9095" CreationDate="2013-10-05T04:05:10.503" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no need to choose. Do both. Put the individual stories up as singles, and put the collection up also. Just make sure people know what's in the collection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steven King has published some standalone short stories. &quot;Ur.&quot; &quot;Riding the Bullet.&quot; Probably some others I can't think of at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T04:05:10.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9041" CreationDate="2013-10-05T19:51:47.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Word2010 (not sure about Word2007), you can turn this off easily.  When the border line (that's what it's called) gets added automatically, a little box appears at the left corner of the border line.  Click the down arrow, and there is an option to turn off the automatic border lines.&#xA;If you choose &quot;Control AutoFormat Options...&quot; then you get sent to a pop-up dialog (titled &quot;Autocorrect&quot;) that has a checkbox for border lines.  It is in the section titled, &quot;Apply as you type&quot; in the &quot;AutoFormat as you type&quot; tab.  Undoubtedly Word2007 has something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T19:51:47.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2013-10-05T21:20:16.803" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best ways to get an idea or destroy a blockade are to...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;read a book of a theme or genre you really like&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take a shower&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take a walk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;jog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;talk with other writers about their experiences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;search for websites which especially are made for authors/writers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;decide about what kind of theme you want to write (fantasy, history, love)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;think about the things you've written&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;try to imagine what could have happened if the situation wasn't the way you wrote it &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write down an own story of your characters and try to integrate it to your main story (but just if you liked the story and the way your characters interact with each other. No, you don't? Then write another one. Try your best again.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make personal descriptions of each of your characters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give each of your characters a suitable story of their lifes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be motivated to write!!!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing other stories or personal descriptions of your characters will help you to create new ideas for your actual story.&#xA;Going outside or trying to do something different than thinking about what you could write, will distract you. So there will be more space for spontaneous ideas.&#xA;Reading books about themes you like, will help you to find out what kind of story you want to write; what kind of problems you want to integrate into your story and how you can solve them. Not the way it says in the book you read, but maybe you could get an idea how to continue with all those problems and solutions in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6005" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-10-07T16:52:10.430" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T16:52:10.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9105" CreationDate="2013-10-06T05:02:49.533" Score="11" ViewCount="2974" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've asked &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8850/how-to-shorten-meandering-dialogue&quot;&gt;questions&lt;/a&gt; in the past about dialogue and I've read some &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6664/striking-the-balance-between-dialogue-and-narrative&quot;&gt;questions&lt;/a&gt; about balancing dialogue with plot, however I have discovered yet another corner case in my writing. In my story &lt;a href=&quot;https://raw.github.com/Seanny123/ShortStories/master/cured.txt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cured&lt;/a&gt;, the main character (Tony) who has taken a pill to increase his empathy is discussing his relationship with the pill with a chaplain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want this conversation to happen, because Tony needs to address some things about the pill he can't do on his own without making the story huge. Here's what I want the conversation to cover:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tony's fear that he can't function without the pill and what that means.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tony's discomfort with being beholden to something artificial and external.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I've come up with after multiple re-writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How,&quot; I ask, &quot;do you deal with the contradiction that every moment&#xA;  you live, you should be helping reduce the humongous amount of&#xA;  suffering in the world, but you don't.&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;I'm lucky enough to be in&#xA;  a position where I can every day.&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;But I mean for the average&#xA;  person. All I ever hear is the cliche 'try your best', but what does&#xA;  that even mean?&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;Well, try to notice the people around you and&#xA;  understand that their lives are just as meaningful as your own.&quot;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&quot;But apathy is always holding you back. What if, hypothetically,&#xA;  you could take a pill that made you more emotionally sensitive to&#xA;  other people's suffering. Would you take it?&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;Of course. Assuming&#xA;  that it has no ulterior cost.&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;But it's hard being empathetic. It&#xA;  tires you and it makes it easier for people to take advantage of you.&quot;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&quot;Assuming that you can avoid exploitation with thoughtfulness, it&#xA;  sounds like a move in the right direction to me.&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;But it stops&#xA;  you from being happy. It's not natural.&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;What's your natural&#xA;  state like?&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;Hypothetically?&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;Hypothetically.&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;It&#xA;  sucks. I know that I should care, but I can never make the first step.&#xA;  I keep drifting. Maybe I'm bad at being a human being.&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;Being a&#xA;  good human being isn't a default state. It's something you and I will&#xA;  always be learning. If your definitions of right and wrong didn't&#xA;  change since you were five, you would be seen as a menace to society.&quot;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&quot;So nature isn't ideal?&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;Not always. But you just have to&#xA;  keep in mind moderation. I'm assuming you only have a hypothetical&#xA;  pill and not a hypothetical brain control device accompanying it.&quot;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&quot;Just the pill. But even if it isn't addictive, a pill is still a&#xA;  dependency, shouldn't my solution come from within myself?&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;Well,&#xA;  what is the self? Actually, let's not go there. Why do you think the&#xA;  solution has to come from yourself?&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;Because it's more&#xA;  admirable?&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;Doesn't having to care offer enough admirable&#xA;  struggles?&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;But if you take the pill, you're no longer in&#xA;  control.&quot; &lt;br&gt;&quot;The way I see it, control is when you're still able to&#xA;  define and choose your own choices. This passes that test. You create&#xA;  the choice of caring and you enable it when you take the pill.&quot;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&quot;The hypothetical pill, which you hypothetically can't tell the&#xA;  cops about because this is a religious practice.&quot;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&quot;Hypothetically.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm tying to find the balance between making the dialogue sound like it's skipping over an important topic and the dialogue being excessively dry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Orson Scott Card does this type of dialogue really well and I'm going to try and find an example of that once I can get my hands on one of his books. Until then, any suggestions about where my dialogue might be going wrong (or if I'm wrong to try and shove this type of development into a dialogue in the first place) are greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T12:58:02.480" Title="How to make a debate/discussion between characters less dry?" Tags="|creative-writing|short-story|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9101" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-06T05:37:05.663" Score="6" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can get the data for ALL books.  But can anyone direct me to regular/ebook purchasing data broken down by genre (specifically sci-fi)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-11-19T16:02:16.540" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T16:02:16.540" Title="For Sci-Fi books, what is the purchasing split between regular and ebooks?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|ebook|science-fiction|sales|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9100" CreationDate="2013-10-06T06:02:04.850" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO, you need to break up the back and forth dialog.  There's too much of it in a row.  I kept losing track of who was speaking.  Plus, it sounds like a script, but I (as the reader) had to supply all of the acting, for both actors.  For example, on the line after&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;...easier for people to take advantage of you&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you could have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chaplain laughed.  I was preaching to the choir.  &quot;Yes, there's always that danger.  But assuming you can avoid...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Help the reader imagine the interaction going on.  A conversation is never just words.  Do they look at each other, at the floor, out the window?  Do either of them hesitate, take time to think of a response?  If so, what do they do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, does either one ever consider saying something, then say something else?  (I see it's 1st person narrative, so probably also 1st person POV.  Take that into account, obviously.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wouldn't want to do this for every line of dialog.  That would get tiresome.  Only at key points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, also: He's a chaplain.  He ought to mention religious stuff at some point, without being pushy about it.  (Example: Instead of him admitting nature isn't always ideal, have him wonder if nature was ever ideal, and sadly conclude that nature is now fallen.  The fallen nature of the questioner would then be his rationale for advising moderation, even in empathy.)  If your chaplain sounded more like a chaplain and less like a philosopher, it would be easier to tell his speech from the protagonist's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T06:18:51.027" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T06:18:51.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9107" CreationDate="2013-10-06T07:49:27.187" Score="3" ViewCount="16578" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my working novel, a character encounters an Aussie. Having nigh-zero knowledge of how to make dialogues in an Australian accent, I just opted to describe that he talks without any hints of an accent. However, after reading it a few times, I noticed that it would flow better overall if he talks with said accent. I just want some general tips to make the dialogue has more of a stereotypically Australian feel to it. If it helps, here's an excerpt of the book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;. “Nice.” He fist-bumped Wrangler. “Just back from London?” Slurx continued. “Sort of.” Wrangler replied. “This slippery Eel ran all the way to Windsor before I was able to nail him.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(P.S: Wrangler is the Australian character.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5951" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T21:07:35.357" Title="How to depict Australian characters" Tags="|fiction|novel|technique|character-development|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9104" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9106" CreationDate="2013-10-06T10:32:23.160" Score="1" ViewCount="445" Body="&lt;p&gt;I common critique I receive is that I add too many unnecessary actions/descriptions to a scene. Most of the time I just add them to make things &quot;flow&quot; more smoothly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a piece from a short story I'm writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri glanced at her watch. Half past four. She'd been in the subway&#xA;  since morning, doing nothing in particular—just watching trains come&#xA;  and go, people getting on and off. A typical commuting scene. Though&#xA;  Eri had always seen the subway in a different way. To her, it was the&#xA;  place where the flow of time temporarily stopped. The platform where&#xA;  life paused as one selected the next destination. Perhaps that was the&#xA;  reason she had stayed here for so long; she secretly wished time to&#xA;  come to an halt. But why did she want that? What she was afraid of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The train arrived shortly after, and Eri got on it. As they exit the&#xA;  station, she looked outside&lt;/strong&gt;, but all she could see was a fast moving&#xA;  blur. Cars, buildings, trees, they no longer formed a coherent image.&#xA;  Or at least not one she could recognize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Once reaching Akigawa Station, Eri headed to exit number three and&#xA;  waited there.&lt;/strong&gt; She glanced at her watch. She had arrived a few minutes&#xA;  earlier. Short of things to do, she watched people pass by.&#xA;  She thought about the earthquake again. She thought about how each one&#xA;  of them had experienced something she hadn't. A crucial event in the&#xA;  collective memory of the city. Would she ever be able to interact with&#xA;  them the same way as before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before long, a gray Toyota stopped along the sidewalk. It was Eri's&#xA;  father. &lt;strong&gt;She rushed down the steps, and leaped inside the car.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I edited out many of the unnecessary actions. I'm not sure whether it was enough, though. Are there still unnecessary actions/descriptions? It's there a good way to know what to skip and what to keep?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T10:46:08.247" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T12:57:00.717" Title="Am I adding too many unnecessary &quot;actions/descriptions&quot;?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9100" CreationDate="2013-10-06T12:13:03.320" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The classic solution is to introduce conflict or tension.&lt;/strong&gt; These naturally intrigue the reader and command his attention. &lt;em&gt;Any&lt;/em&gt; conflict, no matter how minor or subtle, is enough to engage the reader's curiosity to find out what happens next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context, &quot;conflict&quot; and &quot;tension&quot; are pretty much any negative outcome to the conversation that your protagonist is worried about - possibly in direct opposition to some goal of the chaplain's. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tony is afraid the chaplain will not take him seriously.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tony doesn't take the chaplain seriously, and doubts he'll be helpful even as he's asking for help.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tony is afraid that the chaplain, who is such a wiser, kinder man than Tony considers himself to be, will give Tony good advice - that weak, inferior Tony will be too weak to follow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tony wants the chaplain's advice, but he's afraid the chaplain will also guilt Tony over his dwindling devoutness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The chaplain would want the pill for himself if he discovered its existence; Tony needs to disguise how very non-hypothetical this conversation is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pre-pill, Tony did something mean to the chaplain (maybe the chaplain did something unpleasant first). The conversation begins with Tony apologizing, but the whole conversation, maybe one (or both) are still mad at the other, and/or afraid the other's still mad at them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a wide variety of tensions, of different types and intensities. Any one you choose gives you plenty of room to write little anxieties into the dialogue, and to lead into a small, satisfying wrap-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you're deliberately avoiding conflict/tension, a little dullness is just fine.&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; don't want tension in a particular scene - I could see a chaplain scene serving as a calm interlude between noisier, tenser scenes; maybe you don't want conflict here because it'd be wrong for the pacing and for the atmosphere you're aiming at. If that's the case, don't get too worried if the scene's a little slow and quiet. Slow and quiet might be what you want here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consider adding a colorful counterpoint.&lt;/strong&gt;  What you've got here is abstract, philosophical dialogue. Which addresses important subjects, but yeah, can get pretty dry. An approach that's more superficial than conflict/tension, but also simpler, is to simply provide the &quot;dry&quot; content &lt;em&gt;along&lt;/em&gt; with some additional element that gives more flavor. Give the chaplain memorable behavior and personality; focus Tony's attention on the grandeur (or the shabbiness) of the church where they're speaking; or go further afield - maybe the conversation is taking place as the two of them are setting up tables for a bake sale. Maybe they're at a bowling alley. &lt;em&gt;Any&lt;/em&gt; additional major element in the scene will give you a counterpoint to the dialogue, which you can shift to briefly when you feel the dialogue is getting cumbersome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A good way to make the discussion less abstract is to use a concrete mirror or echo.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a particular sub-case of the counterpoint method, but it has added value because it's not merely a superficial distraction. The idea here is that your &quot;counterpoint&quot; element should be some sort of thematic reflection of the topic being discussed. As a simple example, let's say the discussion is taking place on a street corner, where Tony's helping the chaplain hand out fliers asking for donations meant for the needy. They're &lt;em&gt;talking&lt;/em&gt; about the notion of kindness, but at the same time, they're also &lt;em&gt;doing&lt;/em&gt; something, an attempt to appeal to the kindness of strangers. Their actions and their opinions complement each other, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;Try to notice the people around you&lt;/code&gt; -- just as a crowd of people passes, ignoring them completely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;It tires you and it makes it easier for people to take advantage of you.&lt;/code&gt; -- Tony notes that the chaplain is shivering in the cold, clearly suffering from being out in the street.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe the chaplain zooms in on one particular person, harangues him for a couple of minutes, and gets a generous donation out of him. The stranger's donation mirrors Tony's own ability to be kind - but only in response to an external, artificial stimulus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could take &quot;thematic mirroring&quot; in a billion different ways. Maybe a teenage offender is helping out at the church, as a punishment for some misdeed he's done - helpful, but not of his own volition. Maybe the chaplain is a thoroughly ineffective character - he's &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; good will and kindness, but he never manages do actually help anybody substantially; just the reverse of where Tony's at. Etcetera, etcetera. Choosing something themeatically significant as a counterpoint is great because it makes the counterpoint seem meaningful and connected; it adds depth to the story &lt;em&gt;while simultaneously&lt;/em&gt; easing the pressure of the abstract dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T12:13:03.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9104" CreationDate="2013-10-06T12:39:21.880" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rule of thumb I use for short stories is that &lt;strong&gt;every single sentence should either add to your theme, build your setting, or give insight into your character, while progressing the plot.&lt;/strong&gt; Let me try and explain by working through your example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that everyone writes differently, and this is only my opinion - hopefully the comments elucidate my point and are helpful to others, instead of simply being &quot;do this&quot; or &quot;do that&quot; kind of feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri glanced at her watch. Half past four. She'd been in the subway since morning, doing nothing in particular—just watching trains come and go, people getting on and off. A typical commuting scene. Though Eri had always seen the subway in a different way. To her, it was the place where the flow of time temporarily stopped. The platform where life paused as one selected the next destination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the whole (I'm not going to pick at grammar or oddly phrased sentences here) this is a good paragraph to set the scene and theme. We know the theme will be based around the flow of time in some way. Each action and description reflects that, so there's no need to cut anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perhaps that was the reason she had stayed here for so long; she secretly wished time to come to an halt. But why did she want that? What she was afraid of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is rather unsubtle. You're telling, not showing. It's better to &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; us her hesitation, her unwillingness to step on a train lest time start moving again. That kills two birds with one stone - you get your &quot;the train arrived and Eri got on&quot; action, but this time it has &lt;em&gt;import&lt;/em&gt;. Her action has meaning within the greater context of things. Those are the kind of actions and descriptions you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The train arrived shortly after, and Eri got on it. As they exit the station, she looked outside, but all she could see was a fast moving blur. Cars, buildings, trees, they no longer formed a coherent image. Or at least not one she could recognize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned above, each action you describe should contribute to the greater context. The description about the scenery passing in a blur contrasts wonderfully with the start where you talk about how in the station, it seems as though time's stopped. Hence, you'd keep them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once reaching Akigawa Station, Eri headed to exit number three and waited there. She glanced at her watch. She had arrived a few minutes earlier. Short of things to do, she watched people pass by. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These actions are necessary to progress the plot, but you use a lot of simple sentences which don't add to the setting or theme. You were talking about the flow of time earlier - tie it in! (Obviously, if your main theme is something else, then adapt as necessary.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She's arrived early, so can you use that? Or perhaps you can describe the brisk pace of the people around her and how it makes her feel like she's being swept along in time's inevitable flow. You get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could use it to build your setting instead. Do you want to highlight the decay of the city? Describe the tunnel(s) or building she walks through to get to the exit accordingly. Rusted pipes, scraps of garbage, etc. Or maybe you want to highlight the false face the city shows. Then you'd talk about the flashing ads, clean white decor and shiny floors, and contrast with bits and pieces that seem out of place for such a place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She thought about the earthquake again. She thought about how each one of them had experienced something she hadn't. A crucial event in the collective memory of the city. Would she ever be able to interact with them the same way as before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does this tie in with your theme? At first I thought the story was about time, but now it seems like we're moving into memories and inter-personal relationships. If this reflection doesn't play a crucial part in the story, time to cut your darlings. If it does, then you need a much stronger link between your initial talk of time's flow and these thoughts. Thematic consistency good. Jumping randomly from theme to theme bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before long, a gray Toyota stopped along the sidewalk. It was Eri's father. She rushed down the steps, and leaped inside the car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, actions without import. If you're going to introduce her father, and the car, give them both meaning. Perhaps the car swerves out from the stream of others on the main road to pull alongside her. (Stream of time, yeah? Though you can probably think of a better action.) Or if you did bring the story across into the memories/relationships territory, then you can draw on the impending meeting between Eri and her father as context for these actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;#&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps explain it somewhat!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T12:39:21.880" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9103" CreationDate="2013-10-07T05:14:34.050" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Australia is no different to other countries in that accents can be predicated by the person's origins such as whether they grew up in a city or a rural area. In general, most Aussies tend to shorten/contract words, use informal and colloquial terms, and drop parts of sentences as though implied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately (for some) many TV and movie characters depict Aussies that are stereotypically rural types, with a pronounced drawl. That said, rural Aussies have their own distinctive phrases depending on the region of Australia they come from. Some adopt variations of the rhyming slang that is also used in the UK. Others tend to end sentences as though they are questions by the &amp;quot;eh?&amp;quot; ending. This is common in northern parts of Queensland and the Northern Territory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more typical response for Wrangler might be: &amp;quot;Mate, the bloody eel slipped back to Windsor before I nail'd 'im.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, fist bumping is viewed in Australia as more of an American act, although many Americanisms are adopted by Aussies, particularly younger generations. Back slapping is more Australian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The heavier the use of slang, the more likely the person comes from a rural area and/or has limited education (a generalisation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here're some slang terms and their meanings used across the country:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ambo : ambulance, ambulance driver.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ankle biter : small child.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She'll be apples : It'll be all right.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arvo : afternoon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Back of Bourke : a very long way away.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bastard : term of endearment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bathers : swimming costume.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Battler : someone working hard and only just making a living.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beaut, beauty : great, fantastic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Billy : teapot. Container for boiling water.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bloke : man, guy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blokey-bloke : macho man.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bloody : very (bloody hard yakka), to add emphasis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bloody oath! : that's certainly true.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blow in the bag : perform a breathalyser test.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bludger : lazy person, layabout, somebody who always relies on other people to do things or lend him things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blue : fight (&amp;quot;he was having a blue with his wife&amp;quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blue, make a : make a mistake.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Youse : You (plural)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More slang can be found here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As requested, some common contractions include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;th'sarvo meaning this afternoon: &amp;quot;I'll see ya th'sarvo&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;g'day meaning 'good day': &amp;quot;G'day, mate&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hows't meaning 'how is it': &amp;quot;Hows't goin'?&amp;quot; (pronounced 'how-zit')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ava meaning 'have a' : &amp;quot;Ava good weekend.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6011" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T15:03:51.763" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9103" CreationDate="2013-10-07T05:15:00.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When Hollywood puts an Aussie character in a movie their &quot;accent&quot; stands out like a sore thumb, I have no idea where they get their accent from but it sounds closer to British than Aussie. It's more that we don't accent sounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend going more for slang and mannerisms that accent, without overdoing them, we don't say mate every sentence. I agree with the suggestion of watching some Aussie tv shows, I think 'Neighbours' and 'Home and Away' are the longest running and targets a younger audience, 'The Project' is a more recent daily light comedy news/general info show probably with an older audience, 'Big Brother Australia' may be one to watch with real Aussies rather than actors. You can find episodes/clips of each on youtube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the short example I would think of Crocodile Dundee as a role model, laid back, brush off big things like they happen everyday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5772" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T05:15:00.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9103" CreationDate="2013-10-07T07:17:04.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you give the work a &quot;stereotypically Australian feel&quot; then you are creating caricatures not characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are deciding how &lt;em&gt;Wrangler&lt;/em&gt;(sic) will speak, you need to consider his level of education, his occupation and the people with whom he associates. These factors will all be more relevant than where he happens to have been born.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be surprised to learn that not everyone here talks like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_McKenzie&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Barry Bloody Mackenzie&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strewth, is that the emus kicking down the flamin' dunny again. A man'd better go and put a stop to that before me cheese-and-kisses does her block. Can't stand around here yackin' all day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4332" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T07:17:04.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9104" CreationDate="2013-10-07T14:57:06.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking into account Lexi's answer and your comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An express breezed by and disappeared into the tunnel.  Eri glanced at her watch: half past four.  &quot;Not long now,&quot; was all she thought.  She'd been in the subway since morning.  Trains and people, coming and going.  Eri felt at peace here, where time stopped, where life paused between destinations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her train arrived; she got on.  Late daylight flooded in as they burst aboveground.  Close by, the outside was a fast-moving blur.  Cars, buildings, trees were incoherent images of remembered things.  Only the distance was clear to Eri.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here it was, Akigawa Station.  She got off.  The crowd rushed her to exit number three, then rushed off on important business.  She glanced again at her watch.  &quot;I'm early,&quot; she said, aloud.  More time to think about the earthquake, about how everyone hurrying by had experienced something she hadn't.  It was a crucial event in the collective memory of the city, and she'd been denied participation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A gray Toyota slipped out of the traffic and stopped along the sidewalk.  Eri's father waved through the driver's window.  She rushed down the steps, and leaped inside the car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T14:57:06.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9095" CreationDate="2013-10-07T15:12:07.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From everything I've read on the subject, the collection will sell better.  The stories will necessarily be cheaper, and can easily get lost in the &quot;bargain bin.&quot;  But Dale Emery has a great point -- there's no reason to choose.  Make sure you link them all to each other, so people can see how buying the collection is a great deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T15:12:07.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9095" CreationDate="2013-10-07T15:20:06.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Kindle versions, I'd agree with the other posters that doing both is the easy way out. Maybe a little more trouble, but not all that much. If you find that one or the other has only a tiny number of sales, then maybe next time you don't bother. And hey, maybe you could let us know here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a printed book, I think you'd want to publish the collection. People rarely buy a printed book that has just one short story because it would presumably be about 20 pages long and look awfully thin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T15:20:06.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="107" CreationDate="2013-10-07T15:27:35.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first sentence doesn't need to make the reader want to read the rest of the book. -- just the second sentence.  And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the opening line of The Hobbit:  &quot;In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.&quot;  The hobbit is thus introduced right away, but in a slightly deceiving way.  Because in the next sentence Tolkien goes on to tell you about -- the hole!  He doesn't bother explaining what a hobbit is until the reader has gone several paragraphs reading about that hole (and all the time wondering about its inhabitant).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is the hole so important?  During most of the book, the hobbit is NOT in his hole.  Aah, but he &lt;em&gt;wishes&lt;/em&gt; (not for the last time) that he were.  Concentrating on the hole at the beginning establishes clearly that the book is hobbit-centric.  The POV isn't just Bilbo's.  It's the POV of a hobbit who -- despite all his adventures -- is parochial and proud of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2013-10-07T17:31:29.020" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T17:31:29.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9115" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9117" CreationDate="2013-10-07T15:39:00.720" Score="2" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having so much trouble figuring this out for some reason:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He raised his hands in mock surrender, warranting a raised eyebrow&#xA;  from Simon who proceeded to bid again anyway, setting off another&#xA;  round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble figuring out how to restyle this sentence so that it flows better. Is having so many different phrases so close together a good idea? SHould I break this apart so that it is multiple sentences maybe or am I just doing something horrendously wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6016" LastEditorUserId="6016" LastEditDate="2013-10-08T22:43:36.720" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T22:43:36.720" Title="Trouble with punctuation and style of a sentence" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-10-07T17:17:45.700" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9100" CreationDate="2013-10-07T15:51:47.013" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing you should do -- and I think you've done it pretty well here, I'm just pointing this out so if you don't realize it, you don't screw it up later -- is to make it sound like a conversation and not like people reading from a textbook. I've read plenty of &quot;philosophical interludes&quot; in stories where the characters all speak in long sentences with big words that are completely grammatically correct. Of course real people don't talk like that, and so it sounds artificial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the conversation you have is pretty good. Yes, it's all philosophical, and if there's a lot of that in the story that's going to make it appeal to a certain type of reader. But all writing appeals to a &quot;certain type of reader&quot;. A story filled with car chases and things blowing up probably appeals to a different type of reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thought: It's good to present opposing viewpoints in a conversation like this. Let one character be saying that the pill is a good thing and the other that the pill is a bad thing. They don't have to be screaming at each other. The tone of the story might be that someone just says, &quot;Well, but have you considered ...&quot; But if you do, try not to make one point of view an absurd caricature. I always hate it when I read a story that has a conversation between, whatever, a liberal and a conservative, or a Christian and an atheist, or a pacifist and a militarist, or whatever, and one side or the other is portrayed as a completely irrational idiot, whose every argument is mind-numbingly stupid, and it's just overwhelmingly obvious which side the author is on. I think it's much more interesting when both sides sound rational. And surely if you imagine that an idea you are proposing would be controversial, that must mean that you can think of arguments for either side that would be convincing to some people, if not to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T15:51:47.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9115" CreationDate="2013-10-07T16:32:02.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is very much a style issue. I'll share what I'd do but it may not work for you at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Ueland&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brenda Ueland's&lt;/a&gt; writing style (specifically in &lt;em&gt;If You Want to Write&lt;/em&gt;) taught me that most times I want to put in a comma or other spacing punctuation I'm better off with nothing, or a period. I'll be combining this with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Strunk's&lt;/a&gt; admonishment that &quot;rich, ornate prose is hard to digest&quot; and if it is &quot;your natural form of expression, [...] you will have to compensate for it by a show of vigor.&quot; I do not lay claim to sufficient vigor, so will be eliminating the rich and ornate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I don't know anything about the surrounding context I can't be as aggressive about this as I'd be with my own work. But without adulterating it too much I'll walk you through my process for working with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not going to talk about whether it's a present participial phrase or anything like that. In my experience the instant I start getting confused about which phrase modifies what or needing to think too hard about what manner of phrase it is in order to see if it's okay, I've gotten into deep trouble and need to back up right quick. The average reader is going to be more confused than the writer. If a phrase confuses me the thing for me to do is to rip it apart: the sentence is probably trying to cram too much into too little space and is stepping on its own toes. So let's split it into two sentences and see what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He raised his hands in mock surrender, warranting a raised eyebrow from Simon. Simon proceeded to bid again anyway and set off another round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeating &quot;Simon&quot; (or even an equivalent word/phrase) is a bit awkward though. If I knew the context I could use another word/phrase to describe Simon, like &quot;His rival,&quot; but how about we chop it up so that's not necessary? In the process we can emphasize the surrendering man's action as the catalyst by setting it apart. This eliminates the action-comma-result structure common to both sentences. While I'm looking at it, &quot;anyway&quot; feels weak and unnecessary: shouldn't we know from the raised eyebrow that the bidding is in spite of the surrender?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He raised his hands in mock surrender. Simon raised an eyebrow at him before proceeding to bid again, setting off another round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Improving! But the phrase after the comma feels tacked on. That &quot;proceeding/setting&quot; combination feels a bit awkward too. Do we need to say that much? &quot;Proceeding&quot; already means he's starting it. If the context assumes the reader knows that one starts a round of bidding &lt;em&gt;by bidding&lt;/em&gt;, we can tighten this up even more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He raised his hands in mock surrender. Simon raised an eyebrow at him before proceeding with another round of bidding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hmm. I feel like I could actually turn it back into one sentence now because I've cut out a lot of the fat from it. Phrases like &quot;warranting a,&quot; &quot;proceeded to,&quot; and &quot;setting off&quot; are fine when they're needed, but in this case they seem over-elaborate and unnecessary, and using so many together contributed to the original awkward sentence structure. Now that we've stripped them out and used easier language we can simply say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He raised his hands in mock surrender, and Simon raised an eyebrow at him before starting another round of bidding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now that I've got it laid out so simply... I notice that I'm saying &quot;raised&quot; twice in one sentence. Let's use a more expressive word for Simon's action, shall we?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He raised his hands in mock surrender, and Simon cocked an eyebrow at him before starting another round of bidding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5766" LastEditorUserId="5766" LastEditDate="2013-10-07T17:19:50.130" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T17:19:50.130" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9085" CreationDate="2013-10-07T18:55:31.880" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on all the info in your question: almost nowhere.  You aren't going to get somebody to write books based on your ideas/guidance, with you listed as the main (or only) author [definition of ghostwriter], unless you are famous or have deep pockets (i.e., hefty payment up-front).  The lone exception might be the person who posted a question on here about how he loves to write but can't come up with ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T18:55:31.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2013-10-08T01:07:17.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Coming up with an idea' is a self-defeating exercise. Ideas are everywhere - you just have to get used to recognising them &lt;em&gt;as&lt;/em&gt; an idea, catching them and recording them. My advice is simply to carry a small notebook and pen &lt;em&gt;everywhere&lt;/em&gt;, and cultivate a sense of openness to experience and its possibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T01:07:17.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9120" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-08T14:11:13.113" Score="10" ViewCount="348" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within my students' college writing, I found much writing referring to essentially imaginary, or not well-defined groups of people. Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These days, more and more people carpool to work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some people asked which method is best.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to tell my students to avoid this and to always have specific individuals or groups of people in mind and to state them very clearly. For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These days, more and more Germans carpool to work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recently, some students in my school asked which method is best.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am concerned though, that if I give students such a “rule” it is too general. In other words, there might be some situations where this ambiguity is needed or appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any special term to describe this kind of ambiguity in the subject?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any situations when it might be acceptable for them to refer to an undefined group of 'people'?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-10-08T16:16:40.663" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T10:12:32.533" Title="When is it acceptable to refer to an undefined group of people in academic writing?" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9120" CreationDate="2013-10-08T16:10:25.457" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see that &quot;more and more Germans&quot; is much better than &quot;more and more people.&quot;  Both are vague.  How much more?  1% more?  90% more?  And compared to when?  yesterday?  last century?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the introductions of journal articles, you will often see statements like &quot;recently, there has been interest in blahblahblah&quot; but such vague statements are backed up by references to several previously-published journal articles on blahblahblah.  The references quantify &quot;recently&quot; and &quot;interest.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T16:10:25.457" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9122" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-08T21:32:16.493" Score="7" ViewCount="12037" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to keep a digital journal on my computer. I keep a physical journal in notebooks and on pieces of sheets, but I now want to back up my journal on the computer and if needed maintain the journal on the computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of many different journaling apps. *I have tried Evernote and OneNote (my favourite of the two). But being an aspiring programmer, I have a great respect for text files. I know that text files are practically universally readable. If Evernote or OneNote is to become obsolete, I may never be able to recover my journal entries, because they are locked into the proprietory file formats in which Evernote and OneNote formats its data. I don't want to have my data locked into these file formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to keep my entries in plain-text files, marking up my file using restructured text markup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how should I keep my files for the best organization and for later compilation? Should I keep my journal entries in one large file? Or should I keep my journal entries in separate files?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;journal.txt   &amp;lt;-- contains all entries&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;2013-10-06.txt&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;2013-10-07.txt&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;2013-10-08.txt&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think is the best way to organize journal entries in plain-text files?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Keep in mind that I may later want to compile the entries into a book, using pandoc. Balance between the conveniences for now and later).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* -- If I had a Mac I would have settled for DayOne on any day, and would have bought it for any price; it's beautiful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6025" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T20:09:30.580" Title="How should I organize my journal as plain-text files?" Tags="|organization|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9122" CreationDate="2013-10-08T22:59:45.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One file per year, fixed entry header format so that you don't have to guess, was that 4.Jul or July the 4th or 4.07 or 07.04 - pick any format you want but stick to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why one massive file instead of many smaller ones? That way finding given entry is trivial using find tool. Appending at the end is less hassle than creating new files. But above all, &lt;em&gt;searching&lt;/em&gt; is much easier. I mean: you have a keyword that repeats roughly 40 times across all your entries. You know the entry you look for contains it. If you use multiple files, you'll have to click every single file found that contains that word, read, close, open another, read, close... 40 times. With single file it's as simple as &quot;find next&quot; or F3. Also, with more advanced tools you can do more advanced searches, say, you remember 2 days in sequence, in one you wrote about a camera, in another you mentioned visit to your mother. There are hundreds of entries mentioning your mother and at least 40 about cameras. &lt;code&gt;grep&lt;/code&gt; for camera including 40 context lines around each match, then find 'mother' within the found context. With one full line with specific sentence containing 'mother' you should be able to pinpoint the entry easily. You can still easily narrow down to &quot;roughly end of spring&quot; by scrolling to some halfway the length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and plain reading, entry by entry, will be much smoother too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T22:59:45.307" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9122" CreationDate="2013-10-09T16:01:03.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recommend you check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tiddlywiki.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TiddlyWiki&lt;/a&gt;, which is a single-page HTML file you can keep on your computer (or thumb drive, etc, or even check into version control). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The app creates small entries in the single-page file called Tiddlers, which you can later export to plain text for inclusion in a book, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TW offers all of the indexing, search and add-on functionality you want while requiring only a browser. Everything is done in-browser by clicking on links, and there's a journal feature which creates a new entry with the date title on a single click.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been really useful for me to keep journals, knowledge bases, copybooks, etc. Check it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3792" LastActivityDate="2013-10-09T16:01:03.640" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9120" CreationDate="2013-10-10T01:28:51.593" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When is it acceptable to refer to an undefined group of people in academic writing? I'd say only when such group has been defined previously in the text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic writing is about specificity. Think of dictionary definitions. What makes a definition valid? That it can only be applied to that particular thing you are referring to (you wouldn't define a rat as a 4-legged creature, because a cat is also a 4-legged creature). &#xA;In the same 'spirit', &lt;strong&gt;I wouldn't define something I'm describing with generic terms, unless I have defined it before, usually in the introduction.&lt;/strong&gt; Perhaps that would be a useful reasoning to tell your students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In this essay I will analyse the incidence of increasing gas prices&#xA;  on German IT technicians carpooling to work (...) Carpoolers changed their behavior after the second rise in prices...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see &quot;&lt;em&gt;These days, more and more people carpool to work&lt;/em&gt;&quot; as a valid statement in a magazine / newspaper article. As mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/9121/5239&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, for academic writing, it's too vague. What people? When? Even if the statement has an attached note (&lt;em&gt;Person, 1984&lt;/em&gt;), 'more an more people' or 'some people' are still not good subjects. In my opinion, they need to be defined more specifically, so the statements that contain them can stand by themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5239" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T01:39:24.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7100" CreationDate="2013-10-10T13:02:44.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're going to have to write SOME description (otherwise the person reading your script won't know what they're supposed to &quot;see&quot;), but you could use a clipped version of description. Check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://screenplayexplorer.com/wp-content/scripts/Alien.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;script for the first Alien film&lt;/a&gt;. The description is in a format that might suit you. An example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;INT. GALLEY&#xA;Pot now half full.&#xA;Kane watches it drip.&#xA;Inhales the fragrance.&#xA;&#xA;           KANE&#xA;    Now Dallas and Ash.&#xA;       (calls out)&#xA;    Good morning, captain.&#xA;&#xA;           DALLAS&#xA;       (voice over)&#xA;    Where's the coffee?&#xA;&#xA;           KANE&#xA;    Brewing.&#xA;&#xA;LAMBERT walks into the kitchen.&#xA;Pours herself a cup.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2927" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T13:02:44.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9127" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9128" CreationDate="2013-10-10T13:12:58.173" Score="7" ViewCount="1053" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my case, I never use dialogue and action tags in the same unit of dialogue (sorry, I just call them &lt;strong&gt;units&lt;/strong&gt; because I had no idea what they are called).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would never write something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jane heaved a sigh, finally giving up. Then she raised her eyes with a&#xA;  warm smile.&lt;/strong&gt; “It's nothing, Dad,&quot; &lt;strong&gt;she said.&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;I'm just a little worn&#xA;  out. That's all.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I read somewhere (I don't remember where) that it's unnecessary since I  already have an action tag at the beginning (so it's clear who is saying the line.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, I've seen writers adding the &lt;em&gt;he said/she said&lt;/em&gt; after having used an action tag. I'm not very sure why they do it. I guess to make the piece flow better or add a &lt;em&gt;small pause&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it usually better to not to mix dialogue and action tags in the same &quot;dialogue unit?&quot; If not, what are the situations you would like to do so? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-10-10T17:16:39.610" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T17:16:39.610" Title="Mixing dialogue and action tags" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9127" CreationDate="2013-10-10T16:20:23.957" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's about rhythm. Putting &lt;em&gt;she said&lt;/em&gt; gives readers a tiny pause as they read that bit of dialogue. Sometimes people call that small pause a &lt;em&gt;beat.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative is to insert a small action instead of &lt;em&gt;she said.&lt;/em&gt; But &lt;em&gt;she said&lt;/em&gt; works nicely if you don't want a new action in there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also rearrange the sentence to so that you get a beat without adding either &lt;em&gt;she said&lt;/em&gt; or a new action:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jane heaved a sigh, finally giving up. “It's nothing, dad.&quot; She raised her eyes with a warm smile. &quot;I'm just a little worn out. That's all.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So play around with the possibilities. For me, the choice often comes down to rhythm, pacing, and the sound of how the sentences flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T16:20:23.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9132" CreationDate="2013-10-11T01:12:52.270" Score="1" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I don't have problems establishing a rhythm in a &quot;normal&quot; paragraph. I usually just go: &lt;em&gt;short, long, long, long, short, long&lt;/em&gt; or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when it comes to lists, I always get confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the first time today, she became aware of the familiar sights; the&#xA;  zelkova trees in front of the houses, the food stands on the&#xA;  pedestrian walkways, the farmer markets. The Okutama Mountains, and&#xA;  the Akigawa river, the latter flowing through the city like a sentinel guarding&#xA;  its habitants from outsiders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the example above I have: &lt;em&gt;long, long, short, short, very long.&lt;/em&gt; An honestly, I'm not sure whether it flows smoothly or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the elements of a list usually better off being more of less the same length? If I want length variation on them, what's the kind that flows better? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the first time today, she became aware of the familiar sights; the&#xA;  zelkova trees in front of the houses, the food stands on the&#xA;  pedestrian walkways, the farmer markets on the side of the streets.&#xA;  The Okutama Mountains, resting quietly in the mist, and the Akigawa&#xA;  river—flowing through the city like a sentinel guarding its people&#xA;  from outsiders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this flow better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-10-11T04:22:03.953" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T04:22:03.953" Title="Rhythm in a list" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9131" CreationDate="2013-10-11T02:50:06.393" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short to long.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In general, lists flow better from short to long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Emphasis.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Another important consideration is what goes at the start of the list and what goes at the end. I often order a list so that the most important item goes at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this can cause a bit of a conflict. On one hand, the item at the end of the list tends to get more weight in the reader's mind. On the other hand, readers also give the longest item gets extra weight because it uses more words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hiding information.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;One final consideration: If you want to hide information in plain sight, put it toward the middle of a longer list. This can be useful in mysteries to obscure clues while &quot;playing fair&quot; with readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Patterns.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In your example, the first two items set up a bit of a pattern: [some things] [in relation to] [some place]. So readers might expect the last item to fit the same pattern, and it doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Test it.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Whenever I put a shorter item at the end, I like to read it aloud a few times to gauge the rhythms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T02:50:06.393" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9120" CreationDate="2013-10-11T20:08:16.653" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem is not the broadness or the ambiguity in the identification of the group, but rather whether there is any evidence to back up the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A statement like, &quot;People have an average body temperature of 98.6 degrees&quot; could be completely accurate even though it's very broad. A statement like, &quot;Hispanics who live in Boston all like pineapples&quot; is surely false despite being pretty specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, vague identification of a subject group can be a sign of weak thinking or even deliberate deception. I often hear people say things like, &quot;The American people want the president to do X&quot;. At best this means &quot;polls show that a majority want&quot;. Often I think what it means is &quot;my friends and I want&quot;. I think lots of people fall into the trap of observing, &quot;All the people that I hang out with at such-and-such a place agree that ...&quot; and leap from there to &quot;People agree that ...&quot; Sometimes this should be obviously ridiculous, like just because all your friends at the National Coal Miners Association agree that coal is the energy source of the future surely tells us little about what the folks at the Green Energy Coalition think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T20:08:16.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9135" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-11T21:09:20.553" Score="6" ViewCount="855" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of writing a novel, and I'm just trying to get some ideas and thought on this. I am not sure yet if I want to completely remove all dialogue, but at this point I feel that dialogue would wreck the characters and the image I am trying to convey. But I am just curious to see others' thoughts on a novel with multiple characters but no dialogue at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6047" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2013-10-12T05:47:46.247" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T05:37:09.857" Title="Is it possible to write a novel completely devoid of dialogue?" Tags="|novel|characters|dialogue|book|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9153" CreationDate="2013-10-11T22:28:56.077" Score="7" ViewCount="182" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am responsible for developing internal IT documentation but have only begun my scratching the surface on technical documentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard or best practice for the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Go to &lt;em&gt;File&lt;/em&gt; &gt; &lt;em&gt;Preferences&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Go to the &lt;em&gt;Application&lt;/em&gt; folder&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should user actions (example 1) and destinations (example 2) be treated the same way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A title or link to your favorite resource would be REALLY helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5710" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T20:23:31.150" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T20:23:31.150" Title="Standards for representing user interaction" Tags="|technical-writing|software-documentation|user-guides|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9135" CreationDate="2013-10-12T01:17:30.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible? Yes. Actually you could write it &lt;em&gt;right now.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But,&lt;/strong&gt; I think it's the same as asking yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to make a movie with no sound?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can it be enjoyable to date a girl/boy who doesn't talk?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Maybe. For some. But I'm pretty sure most people won't like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question actually is: Do you want to write a novel that MOST people would like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is no, well, then go on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(PS: If you write the novel and &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; people like it, then I retract what I said.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-10-12T01:22:49.873" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T01:22:49.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9135" CreationDate="2013-10-12T05:32:55.780" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is complicated, though, by what counts as 'dialogue'. If you read - for example - Birgit Vanderbeke's &lt;em&gt;The Mussel Feast&lt;/em&gt; (Peirene Press, 2013,  trans. Jamie Bullock) you won't find any direct speech - i.e., dialogue in quotation marks. But there's plenty of reported speech in there. It's a more difficult technique than direct speech, but the reward is that the entire texture of the prose is conditioned by the narrative voice. There's a greater cohesion, something a little more like storytelling and less like conventional prose fiction. I bring this up just an example, to show that the question has more nuance than just dialogue vs. no dialogue. It's a question primarily of form, and secondarily of content. You haven't gone into much detail about the aesthetic considerations in play, so I can't offer any advice specific to your piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as for writing a novel that &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; people would like (mentioned in another answer this this question). Screw that. Write a novel &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; think is the best novel you can write, and would be enjoyed by a reader with precisely your taste. If your taste coincides with the zeitgeist, so much the better. But if you're not writing for yourself, you will be able to smell your novel's inauthenticity from the other end of the block. (The other, complementary piece of advice is to read both broadly and deep, so your taste is as informed as it can be .... but that's a given.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T05:32:55.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9122" CreationDate="2013-10-12T05:50:21.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to use this naming convention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;yearmonthday - optional_filename_or_description.txt&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;131012 - The day I did such-and-such.txt&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This number format means that if you sort the files alphabetically they will always be in sequential order. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could add dots if it makes it easier to read: &lt;code&gt;13.10.12 - etc.txt&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to use Dropbox (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dropbox.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dropbox.com/&lt;/a&gt;) to back up my files online because it happens without you having to do anything. When I want to protect private writings and information I use TrueCrypt (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.truecrypt.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.truecrypt.org/&lt;/a&gt;‎) to encrypt the files. This is a good idea when using any digital or online backup, as you never know when you might get hacked or have your computer stolen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also use a text editor that allows me to browse an entire folder of files in a sidebar, so I can easily jump around and browse different files. This gives me the best overview of all my work in progress. I use Sublime Text, (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sublimetext.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sublimetext.com/&lt;/a&gt;‎) but this feature can probably be found in other software that is more specifically for writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5998" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T05:50:21.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9135" CreationDate="2013-10-12T08:41:20.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it would be possible but a bit boring. Furthermore your readers want information of how your characters would respond. And no one would know, how they get along with each other. &#xA;The dialogues between the different characters are very important. By the words they say, the readers will know how they relate to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, the dialogues make certain situations more interesting and give them a bit variety. It makes everything natural. In addition your characters would get more personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I have to say that I like such ideas. They are special and trying something new is always good. Make your experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6005" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T08:41:20.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9141" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-12T09:10:10.373" Score="1" ViewCount="531" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be great if you could help me phrase this sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many primary schools students also fail to recognise the importance of consuming breakfast due to &lt;strong&gt;their age&lt;/strong&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions for the replacement of &quot;age&quot; are welcome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6049" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T15:05:06.770" Title="young age, youthful age?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-10-12T16:48:44.177" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9141" CreationDate="2013-10-12T15:05:06.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;strong&gt;&quot;youth.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; (Though based on my experience with 20-somethings, I'd question whether youth is the primary cause of this misunderstanding.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5766" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T15:05:06.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8792" CreationDate="2013-10-13T14:09:22.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all you should make for each character a short personal description - what they like, what they don't like, what problems they have, how they relate to each other, and so on. Just little things to give your character a defined personality. Some bullet points would be enough.&#xA;Then write a short text only about the background story of your character. Write the things that will help you to remember the core content. That's enough because this way you'll have the possibility to embellish the story while writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the way I do it and it helps a lot to define and save the personality of my characters which I want for them.&#xA;You have a guideline but you are also not bound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6005" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T14:09:22.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9147" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9150" CreationDate="2013-10-14T08:20:19.873" Score="2" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri knelt down slowly and thought about her world. The one with the&#xA;  solid &lt;strong&gt;ground&lt;/strong&gt; in which she had stood all her life. Would that surface&#xA;  break apart one day? And when it did, what would happen to her?&#xA;  Perhaps she would end up floating aimlessly in a vast nothingness. Her&#xA;  feet never touching the &lt;strong&gt;ground&lt;/strong&gt; again. Her hands never finding anything&#xA;  to hold onto.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been trying to edit this for about an hour. It's like a chess dilemma I created myself. I can't replace &lt;em&gt;ground&lt;/em&gt; with &lt;em&gt;surface&lt;/em&gt; because I'm already using it in the next sentence. And it seems like &lt;em&gt;feet never touching the ground&lt;/em&gt; is the most natural way of saying it. I think &lt;em&gt;feet touching the soil&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;feet touching the land&lt;/em&gt; sound strange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have a simple, effective way to solve this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T10:06:23.860" Title="How can I avoid word repetition in the following paragraph?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9147" CreationDate="2013-10-14T09:22:42.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One simple, effective way to solve it: Stop editing. It's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T09:22:42.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9149" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9152" CreationDate="2013-10-14T09:40:20.823" Score="0" ViewCount="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the software we're developing, the user can '&lt;strong&gt;allocate&lt;/strong&gt;' a task to a person or group. Correspondingly he may also take a task away from them. &lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt;What word should we use: &lt;strong&gt;unallocate&lt;/strong&gt; the task or &lt;strong&gt;deallocate&lt;/strong&gt; it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6054" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T10:14:47.273" Title="Removing an allocated task from someone" Tags="|business-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-10-15T03:59:20.057" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9147" CreationDate="2013-10-14T10:05:44.090" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;touching the &lt;strong&gt;earth&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; A native speaker would use that phrasing. &quot;Earth&quot; in this context has the double meaning of literal soil and &quot;the earth,&quot; the planet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T10:05:44.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9147" CreationDate="2013-10-14T10:06:23.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Replace the &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;That&lt;/em&gt; ground.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Any ground&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;That or any other ground&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way this is no longer a repetition, but a back-reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T10:06:23.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9149" CreationDate="2013-10-14T10:14:47.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=unallocate,%20deallocate&amp;amp;year_start=1800&amp;amp;year_end=2000&amp;amp;corpus=15&amp;amp;smoothing=3&amp;amp;share=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deallocate&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although you in general &lt;strong&gt;allocate&lt;/strong&gt; a &lt;strong&gt;resource&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;assign&lt;/strong&gt; a &lt;strong&gt;task&lt;/strong&gt; (unless said task is to be treated as a resource, say, helpdesk tasked with resolving that person's troubleshooting ticket).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wV7BC.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also &lt;em&gt;free&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;release&lt;/em&gt; an allocated resource (and correspondingly, &lt;em&gt;unassign&lt;/em&gt; a task).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T10:14:47.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9136" CreationDate="2013-10-14T10:36:14.797" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard I found most common and probably most clear is to quote anything that appears on screen as &lt;code&gt;fixed-width font on grey background&lt;/code&gt;. Using unicode right arrow → is the neat, elegant way to shortcut a traverse through interface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open &lt;code&gt;File&lt;/code&gt; → &lt;code&gt;Preferences&lt;/code&gt; and pick the &lt;code&gt;Advanced&lt;/code&gt; tab.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the slider to adjust &lt;code&gt;Allocated memory&lt;/code&gt; to 30MB and confirm with &lt;code&gt;[OK]&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(preferably, a fixed-width Serif font like Courier makes it even more clear.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of any fancier icons, describe their look only if you absolutely must. Otherwise, try to use actual images. You are welcome to name them too, but the images are quite important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vOyBC.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; to create a new document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can optionally use separate markup for &lt;code&gt;[buttons]&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;[x] checkboxes&lt;/code&gt; (&lt;code&gt;[ ] unchecked too&lt;/code&gt;), &lt;code&gt;(o) radiobuttons&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;/tabs\&lt;/code&gt;, but it's fairly rare (outside of buttons, &lt;code&gt;[OK]&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;[x]&lt;/code&gt; close button are rather common.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, be descriptive what you try to achieve and what are the expected results, especially &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; given element is (&lt;em&gt;use the file dialog to go to the&lt;/em&gt; &lt;code&gt;Applications&lt;/code&gt; &lt;em&gt;folder&lt;/em&gt;; &lt;em&gt;pick&lt;/em&gt; &lt;code&gt;File&lt;/code&gt; → &lt;code&gt;Preferences&lt;/code&gt; &lt;em&gt;from the window menu&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use &lt;em&gt;italics&lt;/em&gt; to describe variable content - not literal quote. Use &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt; to describe text that is to be typed in by the user. You can combine all typographical conventions (e.g. variable user-typed content appearing on screen).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The result will appear as &lt;code&gt;NIC0-MAC:&lt;/code&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;code&gt;HW Address&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;type &lt;strong&gt;&lt;code&gt;telnet&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;code&gt;address port&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; into the command window.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-10-14T10:50:22.110" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T10:50:22.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9154" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-14T13:23:41.140" Score="6" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently &lt;a href=&quot;https://parenting.stackexchange.com/a/9132/1969&quot;&gt;wrote an answer&lt;/a&gt; on Parenting.SE about the process of learning how to read.  There are distinct sets of skills that need to be mastered before people become proficient readers, and often recognizing the skills that are being practiced is beneficial to supporting the needs of the reader. In that particular case, the child wasn't demonstrating reading comprehension, but his behaviors suggested that he wasn't quite at that stage yet, and needed practice in other areas first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the reading world, this is described as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myread.org/images/myread_stages.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reading continuum&lt;/a&gt;. There is an analogous &lt;a href=&quot;http://readingandwritingproject.com/public/themes/rwproject/resources/assessments/writing/narrative_writing_continuum.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;writing continuum&lt;/a&gt;, but because of my lack of experience with writing development, reading about the continuum has left me with these questions (which I'm hoping a literacy or writing teacher can help me with):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How are fundamental writing skills developed?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;We have to learn the shapes of letters before we can write words. I'd like a short overview of the skills involved in mastering basic writing (similar to what I outlined in my answer about reading).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How are these skills assessed?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;We can see evidence of developing reading strategies through some typical behaviors that are present at each stage of learning. Along with naming the skills, what are some ways that these skills manifest as behaviors I can recognize?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a means of figuring out what areas I am missing, or that need more practice?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of the development of basic, fundamental writing skills rather than developing specific writing styles (technical, creative, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:41:12.417" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T16:14:54.017" Title="Assessing what writing skills are missing" Tags="|process|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9160" CreationDate="2013-10-14T15:24:24.410" Score="3" ViewCount="748" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, I admit I suck at writing summaries, but based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0375704027&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;those&lt;/a&gt; I've checked on Amazon, I've realized the following pattern:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first part starts with a brief introduction of the plot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second part go over with each of the themes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I tried that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri misses an earthquake that hits her city. She doesn't remember what&#xA;  she as doing at the time, and nothing seems to have moved a single&#xA;  inch in her apartment. As she tries to uncover the mystery, the&#xA;  protagonist comes face to face with her deepest fears, reaches an&#xA;  understanding with her loneliness and alienation, and realizes that&#xA;  the world was very different to the one she once knew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Based on  &lt;em&gt;@cornbread ninja&lt;/em&gt;'s comment)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri misses an earthquake that hits her city. She doesn't remember what&#xA;  she as doing at the time, and nothing seems to have moved a single&#xA;  inch in her apartment. As she tries to uncover the mystery, she comes face to face with her deepest fears, and realizes the world around her is very different to the one she once knew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did I effectively mimic the structure? Will this summary hook the reader and give him/her a good idea of what the story is about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I wonder though if I should be doing it differently since mine is just a short story)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-10-15T09:17:25.903" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T13:53:24.983" Title="Structure of a good summary" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9120" CreationDate="2013-10-14T16:32:59.370" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your question is specific to academic writing, I would encourage you to continue to push the students to develop clarity and specificity in their writing. We expect academic writing to be rigorous in terms of backing up claims that are made. Allowing your students to get away with the kind of vague and generalized claims you provided in your examples is not doing them a favor for their future career, whether in academia or industry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to that, I would add that merely being specific isn't enough; you need to back up your claim with references (unless, of course, they are writing fiction! In which case the rules can be what you as the instructor make them, although I'd still encourage students to be precise and concise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5651" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T16:32:59.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9157" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9188" CreationDate="2013-10-14T23:38:09.157" Score="6" ViewCount="575" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am teaching some students how to write a 5-paragraph essay. Their writing is coming together, but when it comes to conclusions, they get lost. They have difficulty assembling the ideas for a conclusion. I can show them a list of ideal features, show them sample conclusions, and give them a list of types of conclusions, but I'd really like to give them a process or some steps that they can follow to help them to construct their ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nearly all of the student's essays are persuasive, e.g.: &quot;The school should build a new recreational center&quot;; &quot;More money should be spent on improving roads&quot;; or &quot;Hiking is a great activity.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any steps my students can follow which will help them to think through what they could possibly say in the conclusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-10-15T03:56:49.510" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T17:50:29.267" Title="What steps to follow in thinking through the writing of a conclusion?" Tags="|essay|process|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9158" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-15T01:48:05.003" Score="4" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a piece of fiction with GitHub, which means I have access to many version of my writing. I'm curious to see how my writing adapted over time. Did I keep eliminating then re-adding a word? Did some lines remain unchanged? Which paragraphs changed the most/least?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of the program &lt;code&gt;wdiff&lt;/code&gt; and it's ability to track word changes in two documents, but is there some way to examine multiple chronologically organized files at once? Alternatively, do I need to program this myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is not specific to GitHub and could be applied to any series of text documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm basically picturing something along the lines of the Google Doc version viewing, but with multiple versions instead of just two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastEditorUserId="5675" LastEditDate="2013-10-17T10:29:52.977" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T03:21:33.223" Title="Visualizing multiple word-based changes among many text files" Tags="|software|tools|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9157" CreationDate="2013-10-15T09:46:13.897" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different schools have different methods (for example, some insist that the last line of the introduction must be the thesis statement), but I learned that a &quot;conclusion&quot; is essentially reiterating the essay. So they summarize each paragraph in one or two sentences, and that's the conclusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the old saw about speeches with introductions and conclusions: &quot;Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em, tell 'em, and then tell 'em what you told 'em.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T09:46:13.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9155" CreationDate="2013-10-15T13:53:24.983" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading the first two sentences (earthquake, amnesia), there are several possibilities (depending on the type of the genre):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She was drugged (by herself or by others)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She has some mental disease&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some magic happened and changed her&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some magic happened and changed the world&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, that's not a complete list, but good enough. If you write &quot;she &lt;em&gt;realizes&lt;/em&gt; the world is different&quot;, then it is very likely no drugging and no mental disease. So I know more about the story than I wanted without opening the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most used element in book synopsis is probably the ellipsis (...). Leave things out, raise questions. Is she still sane? Are the others lying? But why should they? Is she really becoming mad as her father always told her?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resist to answer too much. Show the conflict, don't resolve a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T13:53:24.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9154" CreationDate="2013-10-15T16:14:54.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a professional teacher, but here are two thoughts, based upon homeschooling my kids and working with other children for many years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Children often develop a mental capability before the physical capability that it's usually paired with.  For example, children being weaned can be taught simple ASL hand signs (for &quot;please,&quot; &quot;thank you,&quot; &quot;more,&quot; and &quot;done&quot;) long before they can speak those words.  Turning to writing, children can dictate a story/report long before they can write it down.  Furthermore, children who are slow at learning handwriting (or are just slow at doing it) will often get discouraged about writing.  The physical act of putting the words down on paper becomes a big barrier to kids like that.  They conclude that they &quot;stink at writing,&quot; when in fact they merely stink at handwriting.  Teachers should look for this and seek ways to counter it.  (For example, teach kids to type and to use voice-to-text programs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The second leading cause of trouble with writing (and with reading comprehension also) stems from an inability to outline.  In the past, outlining was taught in school as a skill in itself.  Despite a moronic emphasis on &quot;proper&quot; outline formatting [I, A, 1., a., 1), a), (1), (a), proper capitalization, etc.], which turned off many students (and teachers), it was a great thing to teach, because it taught you to organize your own thoughts and to recognize the organization in other people's thoughts.  Nowadays, outlining is deemphasized as passe and time-consuming, which is ironic because word processing programs can handle the formatting of outlines, so all the person has to do is the thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T16:14:54.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8502" CreationDate="2013-10-15T19:39:24.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually wrote a piece of software to let you write books like this. It can get really difficult if you're just using a word processor and relying on cross-references (especially if you later want to shuffle up your paragraphs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hardest part about writing choose your own adventure books (or gamebooks) I found is visualising how all of the sections fit together. So this software was built from the ground-up to be graph based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crumblyheadgames.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The GameBook Authoring Tool.&lt;/a&gt;  The free version will let you write 100 sections which hopefully will be enough for your technical manual. You can export to txt, rtf and html formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6061" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T19:39:24.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9104" CreationDate="2013-10-16T12:57:00.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just have one thing to add to the above. I'd omit this line:  &quot;A typical commuting scene.&quot; Why? Because you just described 'a typical commuting scene' immediately preceding it: &quot;...trains come and go, people getting on and off.&quot; And there it's in the form of action, which is good. In my opinion, this makes the 'typcial' fragment superfluous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6062" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T12:57:00.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9122" CreationDate="2013-10-16T13:37:55.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used quite a few note-taking tools over the years, and eventually stuck with &lt;a href=&quot;http://zim-wiki.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zim Wiki&lt;/a&gt; for a few reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The underlying format is a set of plain text files automatically organized into folders when you create pages and sub-pages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The plain text files can be rendered with just the right amount of formatting (headings, bold, italics, code blocks, checklists, bullet lists).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The available plugins are awesome and can be used to embed LaTeX equations, plots from the R programming language, and more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's cross-platform, so I can store my notebook files in Dropbox and access the same files whether on my Windows workstation in the office (bleah) or my awesome Ubuntu laptop at home (whoo!). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Autosave is &lt;em&gt;awesome&lt;/em&gt;, and even more awesome when combined with a cloud syncing service like Dropbox.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple notebook support--very nice when working on multiple projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your notes for a particular day are long, you can use headings within the note, and a &quot;table of contents&quot; pane can be displayed in your window to easily navigate your entry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of the day you can export entire notebooks as markdown files, which means Zim + Pandoc = Love.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your specific purpose, Zim Wiki also has an (inbuilt) &quot;journal&quot; plugin. You can see some of the settings &lt;a href=&quot;http://zim-wiki.org/manual/Plugins/Journal.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, one of which is to generate a new file for each day, week, month, or year. Based on your choice, Zim Wiki will store your files in different ways. For example, if you were going with a daily journal, it would create, say, a folder named &quot;2013&quot;, under which it would create another folder &quot;08&quot; for &quot;August&quot;, and a plain text file named &quot;13.txt&quot; for the thirteenth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3433" LastEditorUserId="3433" LastEditDate="2013-10-16T15:59:41.547" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T15:59:41.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9166" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9203" CreationDate="2013-10-16T18:01:29.297" Score="9" ViewCount="1267" Body="&lt;p&gt;In technical documentation, sometimes the tool's automatic hyphenation makes a bad break in the middle of a term, like the name of an environment variable or function.  In these cases I would rather have a short line than hyphenation, though I want hyphenation in the document in general.  I can try to &quot;write around&quot; egregious cases to try to avoid the problem term being near the end of a line, but that's fragile.  I'm looking for a solution that fixes all of them, without me having to individually handle each case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am using DocBook, which we transform to Formatting Objects (FO) and thence to PDF.  Ideally I would like to be able to write a style directive that says &quot;don't hyphenate inside these XML elements&quot; and apply it to &amp;lt;classname&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;methodname&amp;gt;, and several others.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/PrintCustomEx.html#Hyphenation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This FO documentation&lt;/a&gt; describes a way to do this at the page-block level, e.g. to turn off hyphenation in a table of contents or a preface, but that's too coarse.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://docbook.10921.n7.nabble.com/Disabling-hyphenation-on-selected-string-td7037.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This forum post&lt;/a&gt; suggests a way to hard-wire them within the text, meaning I would have to put a special directive around &lt;em&gt;each&lt;/em&gt; class name, method name, and so on.  (Also, it sounds like it didn't work for him.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I most easily prevent bad hyphenation breaks in my code elements, working within the tool chain I have?  (I'm not free to change that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-25T19:19:48.567" LastActivityDate="2018-02-25T19:19:48.567" Title="How can I prevent, or work around, unfortunate hyphenation in critical words?" Tags="|technical-writing|formatting|tools|markup-languages|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9172" CreationDate="2013-10-17T07:00:08.943" Score="8" ViewCount="494" Body="&lt;p&gt;After having waited for three months for the first draft of my novel to &amp;quot;cool off,&amp;quot; I've finally decided to work on the second one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now I'm presented with two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Edit the first draft until I'm totally satisfied&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Edit the first draft, skip those parts I'm having problems with, and try to figure them out on the third draft.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros of Option 1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I won't have to read my novel 6 or 7 times until I get sick of it (not that it has happened to me before. Maybe it won't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'll finish editing a bit faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros of Option 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because I distance myself from a scene immediately after writing it, the third time I'll have a fresher mind to decide whether the scene is a good one or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since there are some scenes I want to rewrite completely, I'll be less likely to remove scenes that I wrote until satisfaction, thus wasting my time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you faced this dilemma before? Which option you practice, and why do you think it's better than the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="46701" LastEditDate="2020-11-15T19:01:09.267" LastActivityDate="2020-11-15T19:01:09.267" Title="Should I edit the first draft until I'm totally satisfied or should I leave that to the third draft?" Tags="|editing|novel|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9166" CreationDate="2013-10-17T07:22:35.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The post you referenced has the basics: in FO, you can't change the hyphenation property for just part of a block. You may be able to change the hyphenation dictionary (add the words you don't want to be hyphenated), but this depends on the tools you use. &lt;a href=&quot;http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/0.95/hyphenation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Information for FOP&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T07:22:35.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9077" CreationDate="2013-10-17T07:47:30.847" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @Lauren Ipsum said, go for clarity. Remember that there are times when you don't see the context, for instance when using a cross-reference. &quot;See section 2.3.2, Terrestrial&quot; is not immediately obvious to the reader.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Approach this as a writer, not a mathematician. Writing section headings that make sense even when viewed in isolation, will help readers understand what you're writing and where they can find what they're looking for. Your audience will probably include people for whom English isn't their native language; giving them a complete expression to parse will make it easier for them to read your thesis.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;About &quot;specific technologies&quot;; I'd use the word 'specific' only if you have a heading 2.1 or 2.2 that talks about &quot;general technologies&quot; so you have a juxtaposition. Otherwise the word is redundant.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T07:47:30.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9158" CreationDate="2013-10-17T08:47:32.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should use Mercurial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise you to start off with using Subversion. GIT is too complex, and unnecessarily rich in features for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you should progress towards using Mercurial (aka Hg). Perhaps, you could start with Mercurial and skip using SVN as the learning phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subversion (aka SVN), and Hg repositories can be a local folder or file. SVN is simpler to learn - but Hg is what you ultimately need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me tell you what programmers say is the difference between SVN, Hg and Git.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SVN is like Tom Cruise. Neat, same style of acting every time. Easy to be familiar with.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Git is like Woody Allen. Too complex, too flexible to be understood. So flexible in life-style that it allows you to do things that you normally shouldn't or needn't do.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Hg is like Morgan Freeman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Windows/Mac you would use TortoiseSVN, which installs as an appendage to Windows File Explorer. You activate SVN features thro the right-click context menu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Linux, there are various SVN interfaces like Rabbit SVN. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The equiv for using Hg would be TortoiseHg for Windows, Mac ad Linux.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TortoiseSVN or TortoisHg are user interface that are installed together with their command line base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These tools are called Version Control Repositories or Version Control Systems (VCS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hg intrinsically allows you to do multi-rev diff&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hg, like Git, also makes it more convenient for multiple writers to work on the same story, each with their own local repository - therefore not requiring a shared server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as they  are not modifying the same file, merging the repos is a simple process. If additions, deletions but not modifications are done to the same files, merging repos is also a quick and simple affair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both SVN and Hg allow you to pick a file or a folder and conjure a revision tree. A tree visualizing the revision and their individual changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Further &amp;amp; off-scope advice&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In VCS, you should have a project that contain a whole directory structure of your novel and auxiliary images, video, development ideas, scripts, screen-play, etc. You track a whole project not a singular file. Every time you commit a change, only the change is stored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;eg. the following folders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;+The Wind and the Hollow&#xA; + Chapters (Your novel)&#xA; + StoryTrees (Draw your rough story development)&#xA; + Genealogy (keep track of your characters)&#xA; + Notes (Take notes especially when you wake up from a dream or witness interesting events)&#xA; + Pictures &amp;amp; Illustrations&#xA; + Storyboard (Development of your story without worrying about language)&#xA; + AudioVisual (Your audiovisual notes - excerpts of plays, movies for you to develop your descriptive style)&#xA; + Phrases and style (Storage of useful phrases under various situations)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To exploit your VCS, normally your project would be like this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;+The Wind and the Hollow&#xA;  = trunk&#xA;  = branches&#xA;  = tags&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under your trunk, you will place your normal story development:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;=trunk&#xA; + Chapters&#xA; + StoryTrees&#xA; + Genealogy&#xA; + Notes&#xA; + Pictures&#xA; + Storyboard&#xA; + AudioVisual&#xA; + Phrases and style&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time you commit a set of changes, the revision number would increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, every time a significant development occurs in your story you wish to bookmark, you could tag it. In Hg, bookmark and tags are different. A tag helps you to get to a version of the story and inspect it in all its glory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, branches allow you to store different versions of your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3873" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T08:47:32.727" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9171" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-17T09:10:44.990" Score="7" ViewCount="315" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend and I have fully-fleshed out a comedic idea for a book, in a similar format to Jack Handy's &quot;Deep Thoughts&quot; (in that each page is a sentence or two).  We would like accompanying illustrations for every couple of pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how to go about getting this published?  I'm completely new to publishing, so I'm not sure who I should talk to to communicate the idea. Is self-publishing or corporate publishing the best way to go about this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6072" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-11-19T09:22:39.070" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T12:48:25.603" Title="Publishing an illustrated book- Self-Publishing or Corporate Publishing?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|artwork|comedy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9167" CreationDate="2013-10-17T11:44:11.583" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like you are paving your road to hell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ugly truths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To err is human. You are a human being. So by definition you will make mistakes and you will &lt;em&gt;never ever&lt;/em&gt; create something that you are totally satisfied it. Let me stress that: &lt;strong&gt;Never Ever!&lt;/strong&gt; You are seeking perfection, but you are human. By definition an erroneous creature like you would need &lt;em&gt;indefinite&lt;/em&gt; time to complete something perfect. You can rewrite forever, but you will never find total satisfaction. The thing which has already found you is procrastination (or Resistance as Pressfield put it). Follow this route and you will never finish, never publish, never be satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rewriting is a skill for its own. You cannot &quot;rescue&quot; your manuscript (if any rescue is necessary at all) with rewriting if you haven't mastered that skill at least to some degree. So don't overemphasize rewriting. Do what &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/9174/99&quot;&gt;Lauren suggested&lt;/a&gt;. And keep writing! (Not rewriting). Writing is the essential skill for writers. Concentrate on that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will never be totally satisfied. It will never be perfect. Nonetheless go and publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T11:57:17.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9136" CreationDate="2013-10-17T13:01:48.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good resource for this is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the Microsoft Manual of Style (the 4th edition is available via bookstores, older versions can be found on the internet as &lt;a href=&quot;http://cody.inlandgps.com/pub/MARLS/MSTP-V3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt; or Winhelp file).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;@SF's answer pretty much matches this style guide.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever convention you end up using: document it. Add a section 'About this document' where you explain what your conventions mean.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Also, don't go overboard. A document that uses 10 different styles to indicate specific types of user interaction will just confuse the reader.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you use a monospaced font, pretty much anything is better than Courier. I'm partial to the (open-source) &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/sourcecodepro.adobe/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source Code Pro&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T13:01:48.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9167" CreationDate="2013-10-17T17:31:10.557" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a Your Mileage May Vary question; there is no one right answer. My suggestion would be to go through the draft once more, fix what you think needs fixing, and then find a beta reader and/or an editor for the next round. You need input from outside your own head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T17:31:10.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9177" CreationDate="2013-10-18T04:59:29.450" Score="7" ViewCount="835" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach a course in remedial academic writing. The students should learn to write at the graduate level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the students are ELLs. They tend to include many extraneous thoughts and ideas in their essays that do not directly contribute to their thesis statements. These extra ideas are present in writing from their home countries, but seem quite unusual for academic writing in English-speaking countries. I've tried discouraging this, however, they seem determined to keep such extra points in their essay. I thought an acceptable compromise would be to let them move these into footnotes. From a typical essay, their 500-word, 5-paragraph essays would have 3 or 4 footnotes each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is that acceptable practice in academic writing for writers to throw any kind of extra thoughts about a subject into footnotes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there limits to what kind of extra thoughts can appear in footnotes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-22T17:20:29.403" LastActivityDate="2019-04-23T15:44:17.720" Title="Is it acceptable to use many footnotes to share additional ideas?" Tags="|academic-writing|essay|footnotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9175" CreationDate="2013-10-18T18:43:51.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is: It's up to you, and it depends on the context. I normally wouldn't chime in on academic writing, since we have experts here in APA and MLA, but this question seems to involve none of the usual academic style guides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To back up a little: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are often called &quot;footnotes&quot; are, in academic writing, meant to do one of a couple of things: (1) Clarify a point without interrupting the flow of the main text, or (2) serve as a mechanism for citations. (i.e., the citation will be in a footnote.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is how footnotes are used when following an academic style guide or departmental style sheet. In the context of your class, much depends on whether the essays your students are generating are on academic topics or a personal ones. In an academic context, having &quot;additional thoughts&quot; in footnotes could be seen as extraneous and amateurish. However, in a personal essay written for a class, &quot;additional thoughts&quot; might do well in footnotes. (Some writers have used footnotes in this manner in fiction.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, keep in mind that conventions used in other languages may not be relevant in English, and you might decide to be firm with your students if these essays are on strict academic topics. But I assume these are not theses or academic papers for publication, where the formatting of citations and footnotes/endnotes is rigidly defined. Being close to the material, you can use your judgment to set guidelines for your students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you do decide to allow this, I suggest letting your students bound for academia know about how footnotes are used in strict academic contexts.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T18:43:51.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2079" CreationDate="2013-10-19T04:34:08.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think one of the benefits of writing in the first person is that you are never wrong. In that, all the information that spills into the story is through one person's vision, his brain.  So he may interpret events in a twisted way, or may get his facts wrong, or choose not to address backgrounds or facts at all.  It's his choice.  In other words the advantage and disadvantage is that your story is told through one person's perspective.  The disadvantage is that you will somehow need to convey the objective truth to the reader in some way.  Perhaps in the conversations your character has with others.  It is extremely personal and I like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6086" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T04:34:08.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9179" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9510" CreationDate="2013-10-19T10:48:39.367" Score="2" ViewCount="1513" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I've been experimenting with new ways to write sentences, and I came out with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'll write very short and simple ones describing what's happening in the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After I'm done, I'll try to connect them and add/remove things from them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I think I took it from an answer from this site long time ago).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I walked past a small stream. I went up some stone steps. I finally&#xA;  reached where the red dot was. I realized it wasn't a red dot. I&#xA;  realized it wasn't floating. It was a knit cap. It was on&#xA;  someone's head. That someone was a girl. The girl was wearing a white&#xA;  sweater, gloves, and a plaid skirt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I walked past a little stream and went up some stone steps, then kept&#xA;  going straight, until I finally reached where the red dot was. Except&#xA;  it wasn't a red dot. And it wasn't floating. It was a knit cap, and it&#xA;  was on some girl's head. The girl wore a white sweater, wool gloves,&#xA;  and a plaid skirt that reached just below the knee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've spotted two advantages so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm less likely to get stuck and wonder how to write the next sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm &quot;improving&quot; sentences instead of &quot;fixing.&quot; That means it would be OK if I leave a sentence without editing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is very different from my way of writing. Where I write everything that's in my mind without caring about grammar and whether things make sense or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this writing technique have a name? Is it commonly used? What are its biggest disadvantages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-10-19T10:55:56.277" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T14:50:36.423" Title="Writing simple short sentences first and connecting them later" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9167" CreationDate="2013-10-19T22:22:14.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since it's been 3 months, you've had your cool-down period. Now you need to go through it once like a grammar teacher, letter by letter, word by word, sentence by sentence. Typing, spelling, and grammar mistakes are not acceptable in a published document. Then go through it like a literature teacher, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. Does each sentence/paragraph &lt;em&gt;say&lt;/em&gt; something or &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; something?  If a sentence/paragraph has no purpose, get rid of it. (Or, less often, add something to fix the problem.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then go through the book like a cheap movie producer. Pretend every character has to be played by an actor, who must be paid. Axe anyone not necessary. (Novels can carry more characters than short stories, obviously.) Lastly, go through it pretending to be one of your target readers. Will they find it interesting? Confusing? Funny in the right places? Sad in the right places?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is very hard work, much less fun that writing, but you need to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2020-11-15T13:04:26.557" LastActivityDate="2020-11-15T13:04:26.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2079" CreationDate="2013-10-20T03:32:47.030" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One's disadvantages are another's advantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Immersion&lt;/strong&gt; - First person is the most immersive of perspectives, even more so than the rare, &quot;elusive&quot; second person (which is specifically aimed at maximizing immersion). You live the adventures of the protagonist through his own eyes. Second-person narration is still someone telling me to do something or see something. First person is &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt; doing or seeing something. I know what I know, I see what I see, no deus-ex knowledge, if I have shortcomings, they affect the way I see the world. No immersion-breaking superpowers of a 3rd person narrator. This &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be a disadvantage if you want to detach the reader from the protagonist - all parables are 3rd person and giving very simple descriptions, so that we concentrate on events, not on people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of reflection&lt;/strong&gt; - while for &quot;colorful&quot; protagonists this is a disadvantage - it takes jumping through hoops to describe them for the reader, if your protagonist is more generic, you can freely skimp on details. Leave the protagonist nameless, faceless, maybe even in extreme cases genderless - and let the reader fill in the blanks with their own face and name. This does wonders to immersion. Instead of making your own, cherry-picked protagonist, you put your generic reader in the centre of events in person. They don't follow - they live these events! Of course this leaves you without your own cherry-picked protagonist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Surprising perspective&lt;/strong&gt; - Do cherry-pick the protagonist. Take a story that would be generic at best but tell it from perspective of a dog. Or the villain. Take a common trope: time traveller stuck with cave people. Yawn? Not if told by a caveman! Humans discovered an alien civilization? Tell that from perspective of the alien tasked with organizing their welcome! You'll never get this done so thoroughly with 3rd person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unreliable narrator&lt;/strong&gt; - There is simply no way to excuse the 3rd person narrator skipping/skimping/falsifying details. It will always feel cheap or wrong - or may cause reasonable doubt in case it's merely reported as told by others. Only first-person will let you lie to the reader with impunity and then make them jump with surprise at &quot;The protagonist is schizophrenic!&quot; - OTOH, you'll have a hard time to ascertain things are true that way. Also, hiding things behind scenes is easier. You Were Elsewhere Then. But then, you can't be everywhere!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Natural&lt;/strong&gt; - This is the fundamental way people tell their own stories. It's the classic of centuries. A war veteran will usually tell in first person!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T03:32:47.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9186" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-20T15:47:26.623" Score="3" ViewCount="5840" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story for an assignment at school - but I'm having trouble keep it short. I have a habit to go off on a tangent quite a bit, and this ends up making it a lot longer than it should be. Also, I can't seem to get to the point and tend to dance around it quite a bit. Can anyone give me advice on how to keep it precise? the limit I have is 800 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6096" LastActivityDate="2018-01-18T15:49:16.170" Title="Cutting down the length of a short story" Tags="|short-story|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9186" CreationDate="2013-10-20T17:10:42.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this habit as well. Saying the same thing in less words while getting across the same meaning is a big part of skillful writing composition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to trim your work but keep the meaning, try to find where you can &amp;quot;Compress&amp;quot; sentences, or even combine them. Read through multiple times and see where redundancy and unnecessary detail occurs that add nothing to what you are focusing on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that being said, focusing on your point will require the above regardless. Try looking at each of your paragraphs and asking what they are leading the reader to; what is the point of your story and is what you are leading the reader along accomplishing the point of your story, and are you doing so by showing not telling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Purdue Online Writing Lab, specifically this page, may be of great help to you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/687/03/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Common Pitfalls for Beginning Fiction Writers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6085" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T17:10:42.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9157" CreationDate="2013-10-20T17:29:33.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conclusions wrap up what you have been saying in your paper. They tie up any loose ends, briefly summarize the focal point of the paper, and ultimately end the paper with any relevant last words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/724/04/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Conclusions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per the linked resource from Purdue's Online Writing Lab:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Restate your topic and why it is important,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Restate your thesis/claim,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Address opposing viewpoints and explain why readers should align with your position,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Call for action or overview future research possibilities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6085" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T17:29:33.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9193" CreationDate="2013-10-20T21:55:01.763" Score="7" ViewCount="1259" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a science-fiction setting I have been kicking around for sometime, but I am not sure how to go about fleshing out events or characters that would make for stories within this setting. What are the pitfalls to fleshing out a setting before you dive into specific characters or plots within?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6085" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T17:47:45.547" Title="What are the pros and cons of building the setting before the characters and story" Tags="|fiction|science-fiction|setting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9186" CreationDate="2013-10-20T22:24:59.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing a story in 800 or fewer words can be very difficult, but in a less time-constrained writing environment you have the luxury of extensive editing. Good editing often must be ruthless; each small piece of expression, even a single word, can seem like one of your children which you must cast out of your family. Even an especially powerful phrase may need to be kept from the story. (Of course, you can save any removed content for later use.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often one must allow the readers to insert details from their imaginations even if these details conflict with your imagination. Allowing the readers to more extensively use their imaginations has the benefit of increasing the readers involvement in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a short short (500 to 1,000 words) is not about world building or even extensive characterization, so details can often be left out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also note that specific, concrete nouns and verbs can often eliminate the need for additional modifying words and phrases (particularly adjectives and adverbs; e.g., &quot;hurried&quot; rather than &quot;walked quickly&quot; or &quot;raced&quot; rather than &quot;ran as fast as he could&quot;). Similarly using active voice versus passive voice and using inanimate objects as sentence subjects can tighten sentence structure (e.g., &quot;her Corvette growled to the curb&quot; rather than &quot;she drove her Corvette to the curb&quot; [one word longer and not even including the 'growling' aspect] or the awful &quot;her Corvette was driven to the curb by her&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a complete story that is too long, not only can you remove small portions that do not add to the main point of the story but you may also choose a subplot within the story to become the plot of the shortened version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following exercise that just came to mind &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be helpful in motivating harsh reductions in word count: At the word count limit, insert an abrupt unsatisfactory ending (e.g., the characters are incinerated in a nuclear blast). The point is not to end the story in that way but to force the writer to end the story properly before that possible ending can come. (Once the story is properly ended, alternative futures are possible, almost as if the story was a fixed-length, door-lined passage ending in a doorway you do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; want to use.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2013-10-20T22:40:07.107" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T22:40:07.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9189" CreationDate="2013-10-21T06:58:57.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A dramatist once told me that he always imagines the setting first, including rooms and entries and exits. Creating a stage is like a frame of a painting, allowing the writer to be like an artist placing the rest of the characters and dialogue in place. Its a lot more fluid to have the setting in your mind physically, and then you can concretely explain how people get into and out of the scene. The advantage is that its very believable and consistent, like a movie. The usual device is to have 2 people talking to progress the dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6098" LastEditorUserId="6098" LastEditDate="2013-10-21T07:58:00.813" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T07:58:00.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9189" CreationDate="2013-10-21T10:53:35.943" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes for me, when growing the setting first, I find it generates new characters, details and interactions that lead to a story organically growing out of the exercise. There are many ways to start putting a story together and very few are right or wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A cure for writer’s block; if you want to write but don’t know where to begin, building up your world and its history can lead to unexpected inspiration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An excellent reference; by writing all your thoughts down, when you start writing you’ll already have a concise reference to aid with the writing, such as names of organisations and places and so on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strong logic; preplanning helps ensure that are no logical flaws in your plot by testing logical connections before you start writing&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A map! I often draw up a map of my world (more relevant in fantasy but still works well in sci-fi.) These maps are incredibly handy for working out things like distances, time and relationships. For instance, I once built a full political affiliations map for a nation at war, and in the process knew where my characters could safely go, and developed the story by discovering new relationships between warring factions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cushioning; when we have a lot of prebuilt content in the form of history and setting we know we have stuff we can fall back on if we hit road blocks while writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting bogged down; it’s easy to get bogged down in world/setting development, and lose track of the story itself, I have many worlds lying dormant due to this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting scared; as a world gets bigger it’s easy to believe you have to cover everything in your story. This can get scary, and can easily lead to you balking from making a start on the story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Starting with setting; it’s easy after spending so much time in world creation to want to start your story with a big descriptive piece. Remember that publishers tend to cast aside stories that start with big descriptive pieces (that’s why we use prologues to get a reader stuck in with some initial action)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;History lessons; being caught up in our world’s history makes us want to share it with our readers, but if we stop to give a history lesson the story stalls and the reader may lose interest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constricting creativity; this one’s kind of ironic as I said in Pros that this exercise can boost creativity. But too much of it can restrict creativity as it limits what changes you will allow yourself to make once you start writing as you’ve already set things in stone (so to speak)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When it comes down to it, whether developing your world first is a good idea comes down to you, and the way you write. I find it can help, but I often find that if I spend too much time working on world development I never actually write the story. Most of my stories are written by simply jumping in, but conversely; when I do that, I find that I often hit logic flaws that could have been avoided if I’d planned out my setting first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2013-10-22T08:11:52.653" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T08:11:52.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9189" CreationDate="2013-10-21T13:46:00.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't the pros and cons as such, but here's my approach that should help influence your decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always introduce elements of the setting via the actions of my character. You should never stop the story progressing, even to describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this example (excuse the arbitrary nature of it):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hallways were made from a unique metal alloy only found on the planet Andromeda 6, and as a result, it was one of the most expensive ships in the fleet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is preferred:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John's steps clanged against the hallway interior, which was clad in Andromeda 6's signature metal alloy; he could easily see why this was one of the most expensive ships in the fleet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same information, but the first example stalls the story to explain, whereas the 2nd example explains and sheds light on the setting whilst the story is progressing. Describe around the actions of the scene, don't describe and then act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorUserId="590" LastEditDate="2013-10-21T14:29:13.670" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T14:29:13.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2013-10-21T13:46:32.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I script Python by day and write by night, and personally I find version control more distracting than helpful. I get so diverted tinkering with it, I end up forgetting about the book itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the easiest scheme to just increment chapters. A hypothetical chapter 1 becomes chapter 1.2 with a new edited version for example. They alphabetically self-organize in the folder stack that way, and make it easy and clear to scroll to whatever one. When that view, hence view of what I'm doing, gets confusing to my eye I know the story is too; and find that a handy pneumonic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well done VC setups are invariably more complex then that, and ironically by their nature will hide growing mess of an author's sprawling story by conveniently compartmentalizing and organizing everything for him. Dangerous dependence for a new writer, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course, to each their own! Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6100" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T13:46:32.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2013-10-21T14:34:51.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As many of the other answers discuss, conflict with an antagonist drives plot, and plot is something that a story is obviously heavily reliant on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind however, that an antagonist doesn't necessarily have to be someone with evil intent. You can still write a story in Heaven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An antagonist can be someone whose views differ from the protagonist.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This can be as obvious as Satan who has clear evil intent, or as subtle as the protagonists best-friend. The best friend could be just as 'good' as the protagonist, but if his opinions differ slightly, or the reader is led to believe they are, then they become an antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Done correctly, this can be a hugely rewarding concept.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There will always be an antagonist, otherwise there is no story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T14:34:51.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9186" CreationDate="2013-10-21T17:36:55.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is important to keep the story in the scope of your limit. What I mean by this is don't try to tell an epic tale in 800 words. When I write flash or microfiction I do two things: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) I start in the middle of the action.&#xA;2) I keep things tight, focusing on an instant instead of a scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you set a goal and keep that in mind and only tell what the reader needs to know to make sense of what is going on, it is possible to write impactful fiction with a minimal of words. For me these tend to be emotionally evocative without being heavy on action, focusing on a change in the character rather than a change in events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a good article on this a while back which you can find on my blog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lit-handyman.livejournal.com/14869.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://lit-handyman.livejournal.com/14869.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the article I talk about word economy in relation to a flash fiction contest where you had a limit of 55 words to tell a story. I hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6101" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T17:36:55.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9198" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="39481" CreationDate="2013-10-22T02:38:35.857" Score="1" ViewCount="1417" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes journalistic articles have a brief about-the-author sort of blurb at the end, frequently italicized, of a general form resembling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;J. Random Hacker is a dog groomer for the United States National Security Agency. He likes eggs.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does one most properly refer to these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3483" LastActivityDate="2018-10-19T12:13:03.787" Title="What does one call author blurbs at the bottom of journalistic articles?" Tags="|non-fiction|business-writing|terminology|journalism|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9198" CreationDate="2013-10-22T08:13:52.633" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;That would be the &quot;author bio&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some links that may be of use:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rachellegardner.com/2011/07/how-to-write-a-terrific-author-bio/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.rachellegardner.com/2011/07/how-to-write-a-terrific-author-bio/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.absolutewrite.com/freelance_writing/bio.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.absolutewrite.com/freelance_writing/bio.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T08:13:52.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9157" CreationDate="2013-10-22T11:36:34.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the concluding paragraph you should include the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An allusion to the pattern used in the introductory paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A restatement of the thesis statement, using some of the original language or language that &quot;echoes&quot; the original language. (The restatement, however, must not be a duplicate thesis statement.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A summary of the three main points from the body of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A final statement that gives the reader signals that the discussion has come to an end. (This final statement may be a &quot;call to action&quot; in an persuasive paper.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6106" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T17:50:29.267" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T17:50:29.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9212" CreationDate="2013-10-22T15:21:39.343" Score="1" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often find myself writing stuff like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri's eyes scanned the room, stopping at the bookshelf. &lt;strong&gt;She went over&#xA;  to it&lt;/strong&gt; and, as if she were searching for a secret passage, she examined&#xA;  each of the books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It came all the way from the top of the mountain and ended right in&#xA;  the tiny pond behind me. I went over to the stream and &lt;strong&gt;immersed my fingers in it.&lt;/strong&gt; The current pushed them vigorously, with all the force of a&#xA;  living being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it'd been better if I've written them like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri's eyes scanned the room, paused abruptly, &lt;strong&gt;and went over&#xA;  to the bookshelf.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I went over and &lt;strong&gt;immersed my fingers in the stream.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if the first examples are product of some bad writing practice. Or I'm just thinking too much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-10-22T15:53:38.697" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T21:14:55.140" Title="Is it a bad practice to end sentences with phrases like: &quot;...and went over to it&quot; or &quot;...and did X to it?&quot;" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9166" CreationDate="2013-10-22T17:01:38.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;With help from a coworker I was able to fix this by adding the following to the FO stylesheet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;classname&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;  &amp;lt;fo:inline hyphenate=&quot;false&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;    &amp;lt;xsl:call-template name=&quot;inline.monoseq&quot;/&amp;gt;&#xA;  &amp;lt;/fo:inline&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And likewise for other elements that should get this treatment, like &lt;code&gt;methodname&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;literal&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This creates a wrapper around the native style, changing hyphenation only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/PrintCustomEx.html#Hyphenation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T17:01:38.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9202" CreationDate="2013-10-22T18:41:38.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took a creative writing class and my teacher said that using &quot;it&quot; instead of a proper word to describe what you are looking at or touching is &quot;boring.&quot; and in all honesty it is, i would recommend using the second set of examples. As for bad practice i'm not sure, I'm sure it works sometimes, but I would try to avoid it.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T18:41:38.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9186" CreationDate="2013-10-22T18:49:05.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need to cut things down, you can look at what is necessary to the story and what isn't. Definitely re-read your story and you might find things that you don't want in there, or perhaps a better and shorter way of writing things. i know that when I first started writing flash fiction i would reiterate the same thing at least twice. So look out for repetition. This can be helpful, when you want to keep your story without forcing you to restart completely, which i know a few students in my class had done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T18:49:05.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2013-10-22T19:03:27.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't really write a story without an antagonist. Remember an antagonist could be anything from a person, to an internal conflict in the protagonist. It's what gives readers a reason to read your books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html&lt;/a&gt; &amp;lt;-- gives more info than I intended but here goes.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/caitlingillmett/types-of-conflict-5478403&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/caitlingillmett/types-of-conflict-5478403&lt;/a&gt; &amp;lt;-- this one is better (direct info) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T19:03:27.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9167" CreationDate="2013-10-22T19:50:51.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't rewrite unless you have to. Read it over and fill in missing details, edit the work you've already done, and hand it over to an editor or a friend and have them read over it. They might give you more ideas to go with, and might see things that you haven't yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T19:50:51.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8956" CreationDate="2013-10-22T20:05:49.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are given to students to help them learn the pattern of a paragraph or essay. By telling the students not to use them, it may make it harder for the student to complete the task at hand. However, if you give them new suggestions for their papers it may do what you want it to. It's really your call, whether you want to change it or not.  These traditional transition phrases help make the paper sound more formal for young students, and keeps the student on the right track instead of veering off into another direction. In academic, students should no longer require them, and should become more creative when changing topics or introducing new information. It's really becoming a crutch in their learning development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6110" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T20:05:49.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9202" CreationDate="2013-10-22T21:02:23.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see no problem with the constructions you ask about, aside from what DragonSlayer mentions, that using a “proper word” instead of a pronoun may add interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I see as problems in the two examples are reference to eyes and fingers as if they are independent entities.  The first example implies that Eri stands there blindly as her eyes wander around the room and stop at the bookshelf.  Then Eri goes over to the bookshelf, presumably retrieving her eyes when she gets there.  (Your rewrite has Eri's eyes going over to the bookshelf by themselves, without Eri going along.)  In the second example, phrases “immersed my fingers in it” and “The current pushed them vigorously” talk about your fingers almost as if they are separate from you, and the water washes them on down the stream.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If maintaining the same sense, I'd rewrite sort of as below.  (However, changing the sense of the passages might be a good thing to do; I think examining each book on a bookshelf isn't an ordinary way of looking for a secret passage, and it isn't clear to me that the particular water being discussed came clear from the top – surely some water from lower elevations joined it on its way – and it strikes me as unrealistic to expect a flow of water to form a pool and stop there; eventually the pool will overflow, and the water continue on its way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri surveyed the room, then turned to the bookshelf. As if searching for a secret passage, she examined each book.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This water had flowed down from the top of the mountain, down into the tiny pond behind me. I knelt by the stream and dipped in my hand.  The current pushed vigorously, with all the force of a living being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T21:02:23.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9202" CreationDate="2013-10-22T21:14:55.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't feel describing character actions in this nature is a problem unless you are doing so frequently to the point that you find yourself doing these so often that they popup far more than you would like as you review your own writing, then in that case you could attempt to add more describing/showing what you are leading the characters(and the reader) to. I do think being more descriptive into exactly what IT is, and even the way in which the character is associating with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As Eri's eyes scanned the room, they paused abruptly and shifted to the bookshelf&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More powerful or descriptive verbiage will help the reader feel like you are showing and not telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6085" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T21:14:55.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9215" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-23T16:32:36.710" Score="12" ViewCount="5740" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if I want to use real people and companies or make up an entirely different world with different people, presidents, and companies than our real world. If I did the latter I would offer the possibility of other universes in the preface and then use completely fictitious people. My main characters are of course fictitious, but they will be going on a journey to uncover hidden secrets from our nation's past and even from the world's past, so I need to know if these secrets they uncover can be about real people and companies (written in our real world) or if it would be better to make up companies and similar secrets to satisfy the story(written in an alternate universe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6116" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T21:45:23.220" Title="Can I use real presidents (past and present) and real companies in a fictional story?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|fantasy|characters|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9215" CreationDate="2013-10-24T00:12:56.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Legally, Presidents are largely free game.  Largely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You run a serious legal risk using real companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with any legal advice I can offer is it's dependent on hypothetical scenarios. The law is not a clear-cut mechanism, it's diluted and subject to interpretation by plaintiffs, defendants, judges, and juries. This is not my specific area of law, but you run the risk of libel, slander and a number of other torts defined by the states. Lost dollars could mean serious trouble. You run a risk, 100% of the time, using an actual company's name. They have grounds to sue you in a US court even if you paint them as saints. – &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6120" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2015-05-06T08:37:09.787" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T08:37:09.787" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9217" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-24T02:15:16.613" Score="7" ViewCount="941" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm familiar with the 12 step outline process for heroic fantasy novels, but is there an equivalent outline structure for Romance novels?  By this I mean novels like those produced by Nicholas Sparks, not highly erotic adult novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6120" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T23:22:55.797" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T16:40:01.673" Title="Outlining Structures for Romance Novels" Tags="|outline|romance|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9215" CreationDate="2013-10-24T03:46:08.663" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The name of historical people or places is public domain(Our history is a shared one after all!) and no harm comes from involving any aspect of history in published fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, using real companies(or their products) who have trademarks and copyrights will run you into complications that might just be best to avoid all together. If you are truly curious about the details, then this article and the blog it is from might be of help to you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2010/12/can-i-mention-brand-name-products-in-my.html&quot;&gt;Can I Mention Brand Name Products in My Fiction?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6085" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T03:46:08.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9225" CreationDate="2013-10-25T11:15:59.790" Score="2" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the beginning of a novel I'm writing (not the final draft):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hiking trail consisted of pairs of uneven stone steps. On both&#xA;  sides, tall coniferous trees extended tall into the sky, like an army&#xA;  of giants guarding the forest. From between their trunks an ominous&#xA;  mist watched quietly. In the air was the scent of winter, mixed with&#xA;  the smell of soil, dry leaves, moss. If you listened careful enough,&#xA;  you could hear the chirping of birds and insects—a tune so soft, so&#xA;  subtle, you sometimes thought you were humming to yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Watching this scenery, I could see why An-Mei had chosen Alishan for&#xA;  her spiritual retreat. Something about this place made you feel&#xA;  protected, at ease. As though Mother Nature had laid you softly in her&#xA;  arms, and you no longer had to feel suffering or grief. The effect was&#xA;  soothing, almost magical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But was it enough to heal An-Mei's pain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like the hooking part comes after the first paragraph. When the narrator starts talking about An-Mei and her spiritual &lt;em&gt;wounds&lt;/em&gt;. They haven't met for a long time so this is a very important meeting for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I convey some of that in the first paragraph, and in a way that connects with the description smoothly? I've tried many options but none of them seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should I just leave it as it is? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've always been a firm believer that the first sentences ought to grab the attention of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I made my way uphill, I understood why An-Mei had chosen this place to heal her wounds. I inhaled a deep breath and stopped for a moment to absorb the scenery. The hiking trail consisted of pairs of uneven stone steps...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-10-26T02:23:20.757" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T03:48:42.813" Title="Worried that my opening is not gripping enough" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9223" CreationDate="2013-10-25T12:08:19.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always fall back on a very useful piece of info I once received: many publishers, upon reading a first paragraph that is pure description, will simply discard the piece and move on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often use prologues to give the reader a taste of the action, hooking them in before I get into the story proper, but as your story is one of self-discovery I don't think approach would sit well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simplest solution I can see is to swap the first and second paragraphs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I could see why An-Mei had chosen Alishan for her spiritual retreat.&#xA;  Something about the place made you feel protected, at ease. As though&#xA;  Mother Nature had laid you softly in her arms, and you no longer had&#xA;  to feel suffering or grief. The effect was soothing, almost magical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hiking trail consisted of pairs of uneven stone steps. On both&#xA;  sides, tall    coniferous trees extended tall into the sky, like an&#xA;  army of giants guarding the forest. From between their trunks an&#xA;  ominous mist watched quietly. In the air was the scent of winter,&#xA;  mixed with the smell of soil, dry leaves, moss. If you listened&#xA;  careful enough, you could hear the chirping of birds and insects—a&#xA;  tune so soft, so subtle, you sometimes thought you were humming to&#xA;  yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But was it enough to heal An-Mei's pain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2013-10-25T12:18:39.577" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T12:18:39.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9223" CreationDate="2013-10-25T12:47:48.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;More flair and detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mountain trail consisted of pairs of uneven granite steps. On both sides, majestic spruces and wind-torn pines pointed at the sky, like an army of giants guarding the sanctuary. From between their trunks ominous mists watched quietly. The air bore the scent of winter, soil, dry leaves and moss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hiking - sport-like activity - clashes with this mood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can solidify abstractions, do so. Stone -&gt; granite. Coniferous trees -&gt; Spruces and pines. Give them some character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trees are the forest, so they aren't guarding the forest. This would be a minor point but you are striking a tone of pathos and pathos works only if it's perfect, flawless. Every tiny slip makes it a parody, so you can't afford a forest guarding a forest.&#xA;If you do anthropomorphize, keep doing so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use passive voice only when you need to express the passive position - helplessness, laziness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, if you aim at &quot;gripping&quot; you can't afford any cheapness. Not a word. If you had time to build up a situation, you might use simple language and still grip the reader's heart, but since this is the beginning, you didn't have the time, so you must use perfection instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T12:47:48.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9226" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9245" CreationDate="2013-10-25T15:35:56.563" Score="15" ViewCount="211577" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a quick question in regards to using P.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just finished writing up a formal follow-up email for an interview. I touched over a lot of information and brought up some new topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I have noticed some issues between my email and their email in getting/receiving replies. Sometimes their reply never reaches me and so I want to add a &quot;P.S.&quot; or maybe a &quot;Note&quot; simply stating &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For some reason my email has not been receiving all of &lt;em&gt;secretary's name&lt;/em&gt; replies, i.e. I never received the interview date email until I called to check up on its status. If I&#xA;  do not reply to an email within 24 hours it is most likely due to the&#xA;  email never reaching me, so please feel free to call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I P.S./Note this, and does this sound too informal? I am stumped about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And should I note this before or after my final thank you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6136" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2013-12-28T16:44:06.753" LastActivityDate="2023-12-07T23:50:28.267" Title="Using P.S. in a formal email" Tags="|structure|email|letter|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9231" CreationDate="2013-10-25T15:36:37.980" Score="0" ViewCount="743" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been toying around with the idea of writing an abstract Novel. I was thinking about what it would be like if I were to write a book that did not follow standard plot devices, nor the norm in conflict. Maybe the characters would not be what you would expect, and later the strangeness of it all would grow on the reader, eventually making more sense than the reality of other books due to the fact that the reader was there from the beginning to learn how how everything interacts first hand Via full immersion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would a writing of this type be considered abstract?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6135" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T03:45:56.477" Title="Would this be considered abstract writing?" Tags="|novel|genre|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9227" CreationDate="2013-10-26T03:32:50.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of an &quot;abstract&quot; novel and I'm pretty sure you haven't either (otherwise you would already know you are writing an abstract novel). So I think it's impossible to answer your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would just advice you to go and write it. You don't need to know the genre of your novel to do so. In fact, that's a good thing. It means your creating something which can't be labeled, so it's very likely for it to become an original work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I warn you though, that too many abstract elements can overwhelm the reader (just as CLockWork said).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest thing to what you are describing are surreal novels. I recommend you The Wind Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami. In the novel, he breaks many standard plot devices and things get pretty surreal (naked women appear out of nowhere and wells act as passage to the realm of dreams). But somehow he does all this without making you feel anything supernatural has happened. And even stranger, he makes you feel as if everything were connected. Some people also label this magical realism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So who knows, maybe that's something similar to what you're striving for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-10-26T03:39:26.767" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T03:39:26.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4567" CreationDate="2013-10-26T09:18:01.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a good idea to begin an essay with some interesting quotes or sentences. You have to make your starting sentence attractive to grab the reader's attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6141" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-08-18T16:59:16.127" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T16:59:16.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9237" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9238" CreationDate="2013-10-27T11:07:43.077" Score="1" ViewCount="1487" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished a &quot;long&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/authors/alexandro-chen/works/ghost-earthquake-part-1-of-3/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;short story&lt;/a&gt;. And I want to include a section where I thanks &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Writers SE&lt;/a&gt; for the writing advice and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scribophile&lt;/a&gt; for the critiques and feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is that properly done? What's the format and where should I place it? (Right now, the pages are like, page 1: book cover, page 2: copyright, page 3: the story...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-09-17T00:28:28.943" Title="How to format and where to place the &quot;thanks&quot; section for websites in a book?" Tags="|formatting|ebook|kindle|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9237" CreationDate="2013-10-27T13:36:34.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the end, after the story is finished, in a section called &quot;Author's notes.&quot; You can list your thanks, your sources, and any other comments you want to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-10-27T13:36:34.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9240" CreationDate="2013-10-27T14:50:12.963" Score="11" ViewCount="464" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been reading a few questions on this site, and I've seen the terms First, Second or Third Drafts. What does this refer to actually? And could someone give a clear detail of what they are, and why specifically three drafts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5951" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-10-27T15:32:34.953" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T17:41:42.023" Title="What are First Drafts, Second Drafts, etc.?" Tags="|editing|revision|terminology|first-draft|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9239" CreationDate="2013-10-27T18:07:16.410" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;draft&quot; is one complete pass-through of writing a piece (an article, blog post, short story, novella, novel, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &quot;first draft&quot; is generally considered the first time you commit the entire thing to paper (or pixels), from beginning to end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, you can measure subsequent drafts or rounds however you like. It's reasonable to divide them as &quot;one round of writing plus one round of editing equals one draft,&quot; but there's no ironclad rule. (I'm defining &quot;a round&quot; as going through from beginning to end until you're satisfied with the corrections you want to make, and you're ready either to hand it to someone else to see or to start from the beginning again.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first draft of almost anything is usually lousy because you're focused on building and iterating your ideas. Subsequent rounds (particularly with feedback of others) allow you to develop characters, polish your turns of phrase, fix plot holes, and cut out unnecessary scenes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing magical about three drafts, or any other number of drafts. The writers who churn out several books a year I'm sure go through only a few drafts, while Mercedes Lackey famously rewrote her first trilogy &lt;em&gt;seventeen times&lt;/em&gt; before the three books published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-10-27T21:30:41.643" LastActivityDate="2013-10-27T21:30:41.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9241" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9244" CreationDate="2013-10-27T22:40:17.883" Score="5" ViewCount="1479" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some short story markets (e.g. Daily Science Fiction) request manuscripts in plain text.  How do you indicate emphasis in a plain text manuscript?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T10:17:23.453" Title="How to indicate emphasis in plain text manuscripts" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9241" CreationDate="2013-10-28T00:47:36.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Either underscores or asterisks around the words, I would think. All-caps run the risk of being printed in all-caps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T00:47:36.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9241" CreationDate="2013-10-28T02:35:49.660" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no universal answer to this, as there are many ways of indicating emphasis in plain text. Your best bet is to &lt;strong&gt;read the submission guidelines&lt;/strong&gt; of the publication that you're submitting to, as each may have different requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of Daily Science Fiction, they have a page of &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailysciencefiction.com/submit/story/formatting&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;story formatting guidelines&lt;/a&gt;. As far as I can tell, they don't want any formatting at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emphasis mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories must be submitted as plain text* via our web form. Please don't put your address, word count, title, name or other information in the form. Please don't retype your entire story--copy and paste it into the form (once you've saved your document as plain text). &lt;strong&gt;If a story is accepted for publication, we'll contact you to incorporate any formatting and layout needed.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Plain text means no smart quotes, no curvy apostrophes, no magic ellipses, no clever Microsoft formatting that sometimes makes your story harder to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would personally find this somewhat strange, but defying submission guidelines is a certain means to have your story rejected out of hand. If I were submitting to this magazine, I'd look for a way to get clarification on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in general: Read the submission guidelines. Every publication may have slightly different ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T02:35:49.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9226" CreationDate="2013-10-28T06:18:20.210" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A postscript is a passage at the end of a letter, following the signature. It only makes sense in the context of a letter composed by hand or on a typewriter, to accommodate an afterthought when you have already finished your letter, and don't want to retype or rewrite the whole thing again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes no sense in an email context - or even a paper letter composed on a word processor - because you can just insert the extra text above the signature, without having to retype the whole thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just want a way of introducing a side topic, you could just use a phrase like 'incidentally', 'on another note', 'by the way', etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T06:18:20.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5866" CreationDate="2013-10-28T08:26:18.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PaperRater is very good plagiarize checker.  I am using this from past  2 years. Because I am taking help from the on-line sites to complete my tasks. So  I am verifying the quality of content by this type of techniques. The site is very easy and also free. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6106" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T17:08:54.247" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T17:08:54.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9247" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9281" CreationDate="2013-10-28T09:33:46.493" Score="3" ViewCount="1332" Body="&lt;p&gt;Occasionally, in my job as an engineer, I write process descriptions of the technology we are selling. Those are part of commercial offers, intended to win the customer. Those are bundled with drawings, technical offers and the like. We are selling complex plants and it is safe to assume that there will be an engineer reading the offer, and maybe other management staff. I write these in German and English. This is not something I do very often, but it crops up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, the procedure has been to take the last document we did that is relevant or similar to the job on hand, and edit or expand it. There's lots of marketing speech in older documents, some of it (I think) is only understandable when one knows the technology. So when I do a session of copy, paste, edit, I change rather a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5341/what-is-the-best-way-to-learn-technical-writing&quot;&gt;This answer to another question&lt;/a&gt; suggests reading similar documentation and understanding their style. This seems to be good advice, but only partly doable because the exact style of documents I write is one that I hardly get (I write offers for plants and read offers for components).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'd like to have a few best practices or guides to follow when doing this, because I want to arrive at a consistent style that actually conveys what we are trying to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6151" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T10:20:06.660" Title="What are best practices when writing technical descriptions?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9248" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-28T14:37:19.837" Score="1" ViewCount="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not particularly experienced with using rhythm in creative writing so please note that I am only a beginner. By &quot;rhythm&quot; I am referring to anything along the lines of syllable count, sentence structure, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been given a task of writing a short story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any of you could advise me on the following scenes, I would be most grateful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A bleak, cold, November morning. Our main character is at a remembrance march.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A classic war scene similar to the D-Day landings. Our character is one of attacking soldiers. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, could you suggest a suitable register to write in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6153" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T14:37:19.837" Title="What kind of rhythm should I use for these settings?" Tags="|rhythm|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2013-10-28T15:15:07.457" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9239" CreationDate="2013-10-28T17:41:42.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dittos to Lauren Ipsum. I'd add: Don't get hung up over how many drafts to write, or whether a given set of changes is sufficient to call this a new draft. I can't imagine any value in agonizing over whether you are presently on your 4th draft or your 5th. There's no rule that says you have to make revisions all over the document with every pass. It's perfectly legitimate to make 20 drafts of chapter 4 while not worrying about chapters 3 or 5 yet. Just keep working on the document until you're happy with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T17:41:42.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9215" CreationDate="2013-10-28T18:24:15.927" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two potential categories of issues to using real people and organizations in a fiction story: legal and literary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the legal side, let me give the standard disclaimer, I am not a lawyer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Casual references are no problem. Authors are always writing, &quot;Bob drank a Coke&quot; or &quot;The old Ford had broken down again.&quot; Occasionally companies get picky about trademarks. Like writers have gotten letters from the Coca-Cola Company's lawyers because they wrote &quot;coke&quot; with a small &quot;c&quot; rather than a capital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think you run into the risk of being sued for libel if you attribute illegal or scandalous behavior to real people and organizations. If you write a story in which you describe a real company as paying bribes or covering up accidental deaths in the factory or whatever, and you name specific, real officers in the company, they might well sue you for libel. Whether they would win depends on the specific details of what you said and how it was presented, not to mention the opinions of the judge and jury. But unless your goal is to paint people or organizations that you dislike as evil, you are taking a lot of risk for no apparent gain. If your goal is to say that this is the sort of behavior that you think these folks engage in or are likely to engage in, then be prepared to face the repercussions. If you end up in court, even if you win you could be out a lot of money for lawyers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The courts generally consider political figures to be &quot;fair game&quot;. I recall a few years ago someone made a pornographic movie about a female politician that he didn't like in which he portrayed her as having sexual relations with pretty much every man she met, in which he openly used her name in the title of the movie and got an actress made up to look just like her, and I don't think it ever even went to court. I'm sure she knew she would lose and all she would accomplish would be to give free publicity to the movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a literary point of view: Putting in casual background references to real people, places, companies, etc, can add to the realism of a story. It creates the catch that if you use real details, you should go to the effort to make them right. Like if you say, &quot;Bob drove a 1967 pickup truck&quot;, no one's going to question it. But if you say, &quot;Bob drove a 1967 Studebaker pickup&quot;, a reader might have trouble with that if he happens to know that Studebaker went out of business in 1966. (I've had times when I've noticed mistakes like that in a story and I've wondered if the WRITER made a mistake or if the CHARACTER made a mistake and this turns out to be a crucial clue to the identity of the criminal or some such.) Also, if you overdo it, it can make your story sound like one long commercial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using real people, etc, in a story where they are clearly presented as heroes or villains can limit your readership. If you present, say, the Catholic Church as a corrupt institution made up of superstitious lunatics, your book may be a hit among atheists but will likely be a hard sell to Catholics. You might manage to get your book categorized as &quot;controversial&quot; so that the people you attack feel obligated to read it so they can offer rebuttals. But for the most part that's a long shot -- only one novel every few years really makes a success out of being controversial. Books that offend a large percentage of the potential market tend to just not be read, because most people will say, Why should I give this person money to deliberately insult me? Again, if your goal is to attack some person or group you dislike, then that changes the equation, then you have to figure out how to do it most effectively. But if you're just trying to write an entertaining adventure yarn, painting some group as the villains when millions of potential readers are members or at least respect them, is just sabotaging yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T18:24:15.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9251" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-29T02:59:07.760" Score="5" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is still all in the realm of the hypothetical, but given that it becomes closer to the reality, I'm very curious...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you have two new, previously unpublished and unrepresented authors who produced a collaborative novel. Let's say an agent was really interested in the novel. Would the fact that said novel was written by two people be a point against the agent picking the project up? I understand that agents don't represent books, but the writers themselves, so I have to wonder if this scenario would be problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6155" LastActivityDate="2019-03-09T18:30:06.247" Title="How would an agent approach a debut piece written by two new authors (co-authors)" Tags="|publishing|novel|legal|agent|authorship|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9254" CreationDate="2013-10-29T05:59:12.907" Score="3" ViewCount="9508" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B007QXV9S6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;novels and short&lt;/a&gt; stories nowadays capitalize the first sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example (This is from Joe Hill's Throttle):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yuM96.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two questions: 1) What's the font size of the capitalized text (right now my normal text is 18px)? 2) Is it common to do this with stories that open with dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I have a story which opens like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“What?” Eri said, eyes narrowed. “There was an earthquake last night?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it looks a bit ugly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“WHAT?” Eri said, eyes narrowed. “There was an earthquake last night?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2021-04-02T14:15:00.130" Title="Capitalized opening lines" Tags="|creative-writing|formatting|book|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9252" CreationDate="2013-10-29T08:35:24.047" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your example, the font size is the same, the capitalized part is done in 'small capitals'.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In my experience, the practice is rare. I wouldn't bother, as it does nothing to improve legibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T08:35:24.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9252" CreationDate="2013-10-29T08:44:46.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The font size remains the same irrespective of the capitalization. Like Hobbes mentioned, it is done in small capitals (for example, if you are using Microsoft Word for writing, you can right click on the selection, click on &amp;quot;Font...&amp;quot; and in the window that comes up, select &amp;quot;Small caps&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen it being done for &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; novels and I don't believe it is a regular practice. Have rarely seen it for stories, and in my opinion, can be completely done away with if the opening sentence is a dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also find this discussion of some interest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100175&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Style Question - Capitalizing entire words&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-04-02T14:15:00.130" LastActivityDate="2021-04-02T14:15:00.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9251" CreationDate="2013-10-29T09:09:14.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of a reader, I see no issue with it as long as the story is good; I've read a number of books written by multiple authors, but these are written by known authors. Still this implies that there is no particular issue with multi-authored novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Empire Trilogy by Janny Wurts and Raymond E Feist&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Good Omens by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/24000.Best_Books_Written_By_Two_Authors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/24000.Best_Books_Written_By_Two_Authors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2013-10-29T14:26:11.920" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T14:26:11.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8502" CreationDate="2013-10-29T14:45:33.773" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Surely good old HTML would be great for this? Links would work perfectly for the transitions (especially in-document # links).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6161" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T14:45:33.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9266" CreationDate="2013-10-29T15:28:28.863" Score="2" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm confused because it seems like very few people put &lt;strong&gt;&quot;a short story&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; in the cover of their short stories (only one short story.) In fact, they don't seem to put anything at all. Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0092QAMUQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;authors&lt;/a&gt; just leave it as &lt;strong&gt;&quot;a story.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how readers react to a story that doesn't specify its type (I feel they would feel cheated or something).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which alternative is better in terms of marketing and sales?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My story has 9,300 words)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-10-29T16:58:39.027" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T12:44:06.037" Title="Short story cover: &quot;a story&quot; or &quot;a short story&quot; or not putting anything at all" Tags="|publishing|marketing|kindle|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3489" CreationDate="2013-10-29T19:03:18.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;URLs which span several lines and contain special symbols simply require a short link. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://research.iarc.uaf.edu/presentations/NICOP/NICOP-DVD-ftp-files/NICOP-files-1023am-6_20/02nd%20International%20Conference%20on%20Permafrost%20-%20North%20American%20Contribution%20-%20Washington%20DC%201973.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://research.iarc.uaf.edu/presentations/NICOP/NICOP-DVD-ftp-files/NICOP-files-1023am-6_20/02nd%20International%20Conference%20on%20Permafrost%20-%20North%20American%20Contribution%20-%20Washington%20DC%201973.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a case, do not worry and use a (well-known/reliable) link shortener. Tinyurl.com has the advantage, that &lt;a href=&quot;http://preview.tinyurl.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://preview.tinyurl.com/&lt;/a&gt; ...  leads to a preview site where the user can see the url the link is leading to and then decide whether to proceed to that location or whether not to visit it. Example for the url given above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://preview.tinyurl.com/NICOP1973NA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://preview.tinyurl.com/NICOP1973NA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are using a DOI which is too long, you can use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://shortdoi.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://shortdoi.org/&lt;/a&gt;. While its target is not obvious (is a DOI obvious at all?), it is still a DOI, thus some respectability can be assumed by the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3771" LastEditorUserId="3771" LastEditDate="2015-12-02T20:12:00.640" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T20:12:00.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9260" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9261" CreationDate="2013-10-29T19:07:52.670" Score="1" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I have the following references to literature:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, H. (1999): …                          Referred to as: Miller&#xA;(1999)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, F., &amp;amp; Smith, J. (2002): …             Referred to as: Miller&#xA;&amp;amp; Smith (2002)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, A., &amp;amp; Smith, J. (2003): …             Referred to as: Miller&#xA;&amp;amp; Smith (2003)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, B.,  Smith, J., &amp;amp; Jones, K. (2001): … Referred to as: Miller&#xA;et al. (2001)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, B.,  Jones, K., &amp;amp; Smith, J. (2004): … Referred to as: Miller&#xA;et al. (2004)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to sort those entries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Logic” (?) says to first use&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, A., &amp;amp; Smith, J. (2003): … Referred to as: Miller &amp;amp; Smith&#xA;(2003)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;because all authors are “Millers” but Arthur’s given name begins with the first letter of the alphabet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, B.,  Jones, K., &amp;amp; Smith, J. (2004): … Referred to as: Miller&#xA;et al. (2004)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would follow, because “B” comes after “A” and “Jones” before “Smith”,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, B.,  Smith, J., &amp;amp; Jones, K. (2001): … Referred to as: Miller&#xA;et al. (2001)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, F., &amp;amp; Smith, J. (2002): … Referred to as: Miller &amp;amp; Smith&#xA;(2002)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, H. (1999): … Referred to as: Miller (1999)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, practically would sort as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, H. (1999): … Referred to as: Miller (1999)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;because this is a “one author reference”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, F., &amp;amp; Smith, J. (2002): … Referred to as: Miller &amp;amp; Smith&#xA;(2002)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, A., &amp;amp; Smith, J. (2003): … Referred to as: Miller &amp;amp; Smith&#xA;(2003)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because these are two-author references and “Miller &amp;amp; Smith (2002)” is chronologically before “Miller &amp;amp; Smith (2003)”. From the reference “Miller &amp;amp; Smith” the given names are not known to the reader (before looking in the references), thus sorting after the known year would make sense. Therefore also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, B.,  Smith, J., &amp;amp; Jones, K. (2001): … Referred to as: Miller&#xA;et al. (2001)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would go before&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Miller, B.,  Jones, K., &amp;amp; Smith, J. (2004): … Referred to as: Miller&#xA;et al. (2004)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which sorting order is “better”/more common? Or is there another sort of ordering which makes more sense?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no style guide, required format, standard or something like that for the planned publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3771" LastEditorUserId="3771" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T09:45:20.140" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T09:45:20.140" Title="Order of references" Tags="|academic-writing|citations|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9260" CreationDate="2013-10-30T00:43:28.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You haven't mentioned the style guide you're following; different guides have different rules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Turabian / Chicago Style, the rules applicable are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A single-author entry precedes a multiauthor entry beginning with the&#xA;  same name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Successive entries by two or more authors in which only the first&#xA;  author’s name is the same are alphabetized according to the coauthors’&#xA;  last names (regardless of how many coauthors there are).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These rules order your list; since every entry has a different set of authors, chronology doesn't come into it. The order you want (if you are following Chicago style) is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Miller, H. (1999): … Referred to as: Miller (1999)&#xA;Miller, A., &amp;amp; Smith, J. (2003): … Referred to as: Miller &amp;amp; Smith (2003)&#xA;Miller, B., Jones, K., &amp;amp; Smith, J. (2004): … Referred to as: Miller et al. (2004)&#xA;Miller, B., Smith, J., &amp;amp; Jones, K. (2001): … Referred to as: Miller et al. (2001)&#xA;Miller, F., &amp;amp; Smith, J. (2002): … Referred to as: Miller &amp;amp; Smith (2002)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T00:43:28.997" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9262" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9265" CreationDate="2013-10-30T02:39:28.370" Score="7" ViewCount="409" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm planning to create a Facebook page where I can (hopefully) build a small fan base. I've seen many authors who have a personal websites. I'm not very sure, though, how important this is, and whether it is necessary for me considering I've only published two short stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it important for a new author to have a personal website? If so, what should I put there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Money and time is not a problem since I'm a web designer/programmer and I already have a registered site.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, I finally made the &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexandrochen.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T15:53:20.293" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T10:35:54.157" Title="As an new author, how important is to have a personal website?" Tags="|marketing|authorship|audience|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9252" CreationDate="2013-10-30T10:08:44.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the books I read this is quite uncommon (and in my opinion it does not improve legibility), but frequently &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;initials&lt;/a&gt; are used. Small capitals would be LaTeXed by '\textsc{...}'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3771" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T10:08:44.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9262" CreationDate="2013-10-30T12:30:15.307" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If money and time is not a problem, then why shouldn't you? It can't hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big benefit of a personal website is that you can list all your stories there (what answers the question what you should put there ;)). So you have one page where you can link to in your e-books or mention the URL in your paper books. If the reader liked your story he can go to your website looking for more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means you should also link to places where they can buy your stuff like Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally you should add some sort of author bio page. Depending on the legal situation of your country you maybe have to add some contact possibilities. In my country that includes an e-mail address, a phone number and the address of a real building where you live or your company resides. But Germany is very strict, so it could be less dramatic where you live. Just make sure you know what is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Fiction authors and blogs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it was mentioned in the comments that a blog would be beneficial to an author's website, let me add, that you may not attract the audience you want with that blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that a regular blog (one post every two weeks or more frequently, your decision) can't hurt. If it does not work, people will just not read it (same is true for books), so no real damage done (except to your ego).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you are a fiction writer. You do not blog about photography and sell your photography books to your blog readers. You want to sell fiction. And writing about fiction to attract fiction readers is not quite that easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have encountered two types of fiction authors' blogs (a third one would be a mix of both):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing about &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt;, which attracts other authors, but not your fiction readers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing short fiction (flash fiction, whatever) to attract readers to your books.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I follow several blogs where authors write about writing. I love these blogs, yet I haven't bought one of the authors' novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If people like flash fiction, short stories, or whatever you can condense into a blog post, does not mean they would read your novels. So maybe posting a few chapters of the book and let them buy it if they want the rest? Maybe, but Amazon has already a preview feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A blog won't be easy. It needs commitment, like writing always does. If it works, you have to figure out for yourself. If you feel the urge to tell people something (whatever it is), start a blog. If you just want to do it to promote your books, it probably won't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-11-01T10:35:54.157" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T10:35:54.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9258" CreationDate="2013-10-30T12:44:06.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The length of your work is put into the description of your book automatically (page count or word count). If you do not think that's sufficient you can mention it in your explicit description you provide for your book. Besides that there may be categories for short fiction, so if you choose one of these the customer can find out what he is buying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I can understand you want to put it on the cover. If you (will) have several books, some shorts, some full length novels and readers are searching for your name, they maybe won't be aware of the category, but expect a novel if they read a novel before. Buying &quot;just&quot; a short story &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be disappointing. But they can get their money back if they want, so even that shouldn't be such a big deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel better, put &quot;short story&quot; in a small font on your cover. Not too dominant, it does not need to be readable on the small cover icon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is nothing that will hurt or increase your sale dramatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T12:44:06.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9269" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9272" CreationDate="2013-11-01T04:39:02.403" Score="6" ViewCount="27437" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am tutoring some students in the very basics of writing a 5-paragraph essay to present an argument, in preparation for more advanced academic writing. I am instructing them to include: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An introduction with thesis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three body paragraphs, each with statements that supporting the thesis and evidence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, the students want to present counter-arguments to their thesis. For example, they organized the five paragraphs like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;¶1 thesis: Dogs make great pets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;¶2 statement: Dogs can make people happy. Examples.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;¶3 statement: Dogs can rescue people. Examples.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;¶4 statement: However, dogs are not clean. Examples.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;¶5 conclusion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it okay to include an entire paragraph based around a counter-example like this. What would be the appropriate place for such a counter-example to appear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-22T14:43:02.833" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T14:43:02.833" Title="Where to put counter-examples within a 5-paragraph essay?" Tags="|academic-writing|structure|essay|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9269" CreationDate="2013-11-01T10:12:45.400" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what the &quot;point&quot; of the essay is, and how it's set up in the intro/thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the goal of the essay is to argue &quot;dogs make great pets,&quot; then there shouldn't be a counter-argument at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the goal is to present both sides of a point, then the intro needs to say that, and I would suggest Para 2 is the Pro, Para 3 is the Con, and maybe Para 4 discusses which is stronger or has more weight. At the moment your two-pro/one-con feels lopsided. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I would certainly put pro arguments before con arguments, so you're heading in the right direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T10:12:45.400" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9269" CreationDate="2013-11-01T16:05:34.333" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are a couple of equally valid ways that it could be done, depending on how they chose to structure their argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thesis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supporting Argument&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supporting Example&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Counterexample&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is perfectly fine. However I don't see that there is anything wrong with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thesis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supporting Argument&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Counterexample&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Merciless destruction of counterexample&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or even:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thesis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Counterexample&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why the counterexample is fair.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why the original thesis is better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T16:05:34.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9269" CreationDate="2013-11-01T19:28:46.127" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my humble opinion, it's a good idea in a persuasive essay to at least acknowledge counter-arguments. If you simply ignore counter-arguments, and a reader is aware of them, his response is likely to be, &quot;Well, he just completely ignored the fact that X.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Paul Clayton says, if you give the pro, then the con, then with no rebuttal or reply to the con you give your conclusion, it can make the argument look weak or disconnected. It can come across as, &quot;Here is my argument, here is why my argument is flawed, but I'm just going to ignore the flaws and stick to my original thesis.&quot; When I am writing a persuasive essay, I don't end with counter-examples. I may end with counter-examples followed by rebuttals. More often, I start with the position I disagree with, then show why it's wrong, then give my conclusion. But there are many ways to structure an essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The shorter an essay the less time you're going to spend on rebuttals. In a 5-paragraph essay I might well skip rebuttals as there's just no time to get into them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T19:28:46.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1344" CreationDate="2013-11-01T20:27:48.630" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One more perspective on the matter was addressed by XKCD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rObRU.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="793" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T20:27:48.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9269" CreationDate="2013-11-03T09:34:51.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe (and notice) that the most effective location is just before the &lt;em&gt;Conclusion&lt;/em&gt;, if the alternate opinions are elaborative and has a measure of being the &lt;em&gt;devil's advocate&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in abstracts of scientific papers, I notice that alternative opinions or theses are often placed after the declaration of the thesis. That has the intention to, as a respected scientist should, fore-warn readers that the thesis at hand is but one of multiple possibilities, or that the thesis is complementary or supplementary to other opinions - so that the thesis at hand should be taken in consideration with, or compared against, all the other theses mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3873" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T09:34:51.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9241" CreationDate="2013-11-03T09:50:36.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a modern wiki-age, we should use the MarkDown convention, in our plain text scripts if our scripts require textual emphasis or augmentation that plain text would otherwise be incapable of expressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia:MarkDown&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Markdown language was created in 2004 by John Gruber with substantial contributions from Aaron Swartz, with the goal of allowing people “to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML)”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MarkDown is the very formatting you will use in posting on StackOverflow/StackExchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As you can see from the Wikipedia page, it is very comprehensible even when viewed as plain text. That is the reason why it was invented. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You could then run it over a MarkDown viewer/editor, aka Wiki editor. Software-wise, such editors are comparatively very easy to write, compared to other kinds of formatted word-processors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experienced wiki authors do not even need a wiki-editor and could write MarkDown in plain text and texted over a phone or to their blog. Just like an aged and effectively deaf Beethoven who could still write phenomenal movements as he was able to &quot;picture&quot; the sounds of his arrangements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get used to it and you will find it a very convenient skill. It's not even a &quot;skill&quot;. It does not require much skill to read or write it - the reason why it was invented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I think Congress (of the United States) should have a bill to have all plain text documents requiring formatting be henceforth written in MarkDown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3873" LastEditorUserId="3873" LastEditDate="2013-11-03T10:01:59.110" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T10:01:59.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9279" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-03T23:35:51.743" Score="2" ViewCount="418" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently brooding over good character names for a novel I want to write. I was looking at some of the books I read recently, trying to understand why the authors picked the names they gave their protagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Before I die&quot; by Jenny Downham – which is one of the best books of my life, by the way – the two main characters are named &lt;em&gt;Ellie Parker&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Mickey McKenzie&lt;/em&gt;. Obviously surnames names are not uniformily distributed over the country, and there is a preference for different first names among different classes, so names will not only give you an idea of which region and social context a person might come from, they also trigger prejudices about a person's character. But since English is not my native tongue, and I don't live in the UK, I have no feeling for the connotations that these two names from that novel will evoke in a native English reader from the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What connotations do the names &lt;em&gt;Ellie Parker&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Mickey McKenzie&lt;/em&gt; carry?&lt;/strong&gt; What kind of persons do you imagine carry such names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T23:21:19.133" Title="What connotations do these character names confer?" Tags="|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9247" CreationDate="2013-11-04T10:20:06.660" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, let's do a cheat sheet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be logical. When you describe the technology, describe it in an order that makes sense to the customer. Use a top-down approach, starting with an overview and delving in the details only when you have given the reader the context he needs to understand them.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;E.g. when you describe a machine, follow the flow of products through a machine. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be consistent. Always refer to things (components, concepts) by the same name. Explain new terms the first time you use them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be aware of your audience. Your question indicates that you already are, so that's good. Will they be able to understand what you've written? They have your level of education, but not your experience with the technology. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure your writing is unambiguous. Is &quot;the right handle&quot; the handle on the right side of the control panel, or the correct handle?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When in doubt, ask a colleague (preferably a non-expert) if he can make sense of what you've written. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid overloading. Each sentence should have a single subject (e.g. one feature of the machine). Avoid run-on sentences. Each paragraph should have a single subject (e.g. one module of the machine)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point 3, 4 and 6 become even more important if your audience includes people for whom English/German is a second language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T10:20:06.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9279" CreationDate="2013-11-04T10:41:55.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends heavily on when a story is set, if this story was set in the Victorian era, when upper class people had &quot;upper class&quot; names, the names may have implied class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, as the story is set in the present day, they don't really imply anything. In fact, as names spread across the country the original locality of the name is meaningless too (my step mother's called McKenzie but she's in no way Scottish.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may help to know when and where your story is set. Still, I don't think you need to concern yourself too much with this, let the names come out of the story. Otherwise you're just blocking yourself from starting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This answer is based on names in the UK because the story appears to be set in present day Britain (and because I live here, so it's all I have to go on)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2013-11-05T14:34:38.030" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T14:34:38.030" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9283" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-04T21:00:59.497" Score="2" ViewCount="44753" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are quotes only for spoken text?  Can I use quotes to emphasize sarcasm, like when somebody physically makes quote symbols with their fingers while reading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6186" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-23T20:30:53.643" LastActivityDate="2019-09-26T00:11:02.413" Title="Using quotes for sarcastic text" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9284" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-04T21:48:33.167" Score="2" ViewCount="331" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a series of mini-novels based on a group of teenagers who all have different backgrounds and ethnicities. How should I introduce each character? I mean, they are all kind of main characters. Each of them is going to have a major issue in each book that will be dealt with. In a way, these are books to help teenagers. Are there similar books to mine that I can look to for reference? Is it best to have one main character that tells the story? What do you think I should do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6187" LastActivityDate="2022-07-30T19:52:31.513" Title="How should I handle this many characters?" Tags="|self-publishing|characters|book|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9279" CreationDate="2013-11-05T01:20:49.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a native English reader,though not from the UK. With that caveat, here's my two cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What connotations do the names Ellie Parker and Mickey McKenzie carry? What kind of persons do you imagine carry such names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Ellie Parker' sounds like an upper-crust dowager, set in her ways, imperiously and unconsciously demanding her own way, but likable all the same. 'Mickey McKenzie' brings to mind a farm laborer, honest, hard-working, but slightly bitter at the lot which fate has handed him. He may be jealous of Parker, but is unlikely to wish her actual harm unless he perceives that she has deliberately harmed him or his.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is of course very stereotypical, and entirely subjective. I imagine that others may have totally different interpretations of the characters names. Write your story, allow the characters to be what they will be, and the name will come to fit them--as long as the name is true to what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; think an 'Ellie Parker' or 'Mickey McKenzie' should be!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the characters are teenagers, my mental image changes a little, though not too much. Ellie Parker is snooty, rich, and blase. (Long, straight hair, too, though that shouldn't make a difference!)  Mickey McKenzie works a tech job, is smart but unambitious, given to hanging in malls and spending time online. In short, he is a typical 'kid-dult'. Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5651" LastEditorUserId="5651" LastEditDate="2013-11-05T23:21:19.133" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T23:21:19.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9284" CreationDate="2013-11-05T01:58:08.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are providing character diversity in part to make it easier for a diverse readership to identify with at least one character, then you probably do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; want one character as the narrator of the entire book. A reader naturally feels a greater emotional connection to such a narrator. Furthermore, such makes it more difficult to express the less externally observable traits of the characters (thoughts and feelings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if that is your goal (as seems to be the case based on each character having an issue to deal with), you should probably use a third person narrator, different characters as narrators for different portions, or some combination. With the stated length (&quot;mini-novel&quot;) and target audience, changing the narrator sufficiently often to give each significant character equal play may be difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to introducing multiple main characters, there are many options. The book might start out in a scene with most or all of these characters in a common situation (e.g., having lunch together at the school cafeteria, being in line to sign up for something [possibly with one or more characters behind the sign-up table, signing up for something else, or just hanging around in the area], or being addressed by the non-main character leader of a homecoming float-building group), very briefly describing each character. (Third person narrative works well in such a setting.) The action might then focus on one or two of the main characters with the focus changing over longer periods of time (with gradual or abrupt transitions). Or there might be interaction among all or most of the main characters right from the start--e.g., friendly conversation, intentional rudeness to exclude an outsider, some characters gossiping about others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible to gradually introduce characters, starting with two or three in the first scene and linking each of these to the other characters. This would tend to fit well with using multiple narrators. The introduction order can be used to contrast the significance of the character or to emphasize the relative isolation of the characters introduced later. E.g., quiet beret girl, who is not introduced until half way through the book, might be key to half the characters understanding their issues or she might be a character of no special importance whose issue is loneliness or telling a friend something difficult (both play on the isolation--in the first case being descriptive of her current state, in the latter case the isolation is something that she fears may come if she tells her friend). If quiet beret girl has the former role, it may be appropriate to foreshadow that she is significant by giving her one or two cameos early in the story. For example, the following both introduces and excludes beret girl:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey, Susan,&quot; he called from behind the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hi, Juan,&quot; she smiled, leaning to see past a girl in a grey beret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When introducing characters, particularly for your audience, length, and character count, it is helpful to present early a few memorable points onto which the reader can latch. E.g., quiet beret girl, non-nerd with glasses guy, rough-and-tumble string bean guy, brainy fashionable girl, poor leader girl, totally average guy. Such helps the reader establish a base upon which to build an understanding of the character and more easily identify the character in later scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T01:58:08.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9283" CreationDate="2013-11-05T14:15:11.677" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've only seen people make quote symbols with their fingers while speaking, not reading. If someone's speaking, you already have a set of quotes, you'd have to alternate between single and double quotes to keep them apart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As you can see, this 'premium' product is, in fact, a piece of garbage.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, works for me. If you want to know for certain, consult a style guide like the Chicago Manual of Style (only available to subscribers, alas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T14:15:11.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9283" CreationDate="2013-11-05T15:06:03.720" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can absolutely use quotes to indicate sarcasm (or irony).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the sarcasm is in dialogue, you can write it exactly as in Hobbes's example. If you want to have the additional stage business of the speaker making air quotes, you can do that too, but most readers will understand what the sarcastic quote marks mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the sarcasm is in prose, you would use double quotes in the same manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The audience can see the &quot;twist&quot; coming a mile off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T15:06:03.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="154" CreationDate="2013-11-05T15:45:43.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's 3 years since the question was posted, but I just stumbled across it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read something by Martin Luther many years ago where he discussed his efforts to translate the Bible into German. He said that he first made a word-for-word translation. Then he made a free translation that he felt conveyed the sense of the original. Then he took the two translation and tried to reconcile them, in an effort to convey the intended meaning while retaining as much of the original phrasing as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, the translations you're talking about probably bring less of a sense of weighty responsibility than Luther likely felt about translating scripture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But any translation has to balance a word-for-word translation to rigorously preserve the original writer's words with a free translation to capture the sense and avoid confusing the reader with idioms from another language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work is scholarly or technical, I'd lean more toward the word-for-word to avoid losing potentially important technical distinctions. Likewise if it's political, religious, or controversial, I'd lean toward the word-for-word to avoid putting your words and ideas in someone else's mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if it's more light and popular -- like the title of a video of a comedy -- I'd lean more toward capturing the sense. No one is going to be carefully studying these words and critiquing them. They just want to know what the movie is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A particular problem with titles is that they often involve word-play or other poetic elements, which are notoriously difficult to translate. Some of these don't even make it between two different cultures that speak (theoretically) the same language. I recall that when the British movie &quot;The Madness of George V&quot; was released in the US, they changed the title to &quot;The Madness of King George&quot;, out of fear that an American audience might not recognize &quot;George V&quot; as the name of a monarch, and think that this was the fifth installment in a &quot;Madness of George&quot; series. (Like &quot;Fast and Furious 2&quot;, etc.) Or even within a single nation, when I first heard the song title, &quot;It's All About the Benjamins, Baby&quot;, I had no idea what a &quot;Benjamin&quot; was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T15:45:43.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9292" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-05T17:24:54.973" Score="5" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first two fiction books are with a top publishing house. They have had them for three months. Six weeks ago, they told me they were prioritising looking at them. How long on average does a major house 'consider' a book before rejecting or accepting it? As I haven't heard anything since, does this mean after all this time they don't want them, or could they still be considering them both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6194" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T14:21:29.590" Title="How long on average does a major house 'consider' a book before rejecting or accepting it" Tags="|publisher|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9283" CreationDate="2013-11-05T20:26:00.147" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely use the quotes, and don't forget about this '⸮' as punctuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5168" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T20:26:00.147" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9284" CreationDate="2013-11-05T23:24:29.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Power of Five&quot; series by Anthony Horowitz tells the story of a group of five characters, and each book has one other of these characters as the protagonist (and tells the story from his or her perspective). Sharon Shinn in her &quot;Twelve Houses&quot; series does the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both start the first book like a normal novel about one character. In the course of the story the other characters are introduced (the first protagonist meets them). Each book tells a complete adventure and can be read on its own. The protagonist of that adventure is the protagonist of the book, the other group members are supporting characters. At the same time, a larger story arc runs in the background. This background story culminates in the last volume. The whole group are the heroes of that background story, and each individual's adventure is a key stone in the large storyline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both these series are constructed well, I can recommend them as good examples for this type of storytelling. (They have other weaknesses that are not relevant to your question. The best individual volumes from a pure reader perspective in my opinion are the first by Horowitz, &quot;Raven's Gate&quot;, and a post-series supplemental volume by Shinn, &quot;Fortune and Fate&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T23:24:29.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9252" CreationDate="2013-11-05T23:41:29.603" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Setting the first word, first few words, first phrase or sentence, or the complete first line &lt;em&gt;of each chapter&lt;/em&gt; in small caps, sometimes preceded by an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;initial&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160203190639/http://www.interpretationbydesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/drop_caps.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;drop cap&lt;/a&gt;, is &lt;strong&gt;done by the typesetter&lt;/strong&gt; in the course of the interior design of the book. It is &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; a part of the author's manuscript, unless, for example in scientific essay collections, the publisher explicitly asks for publication-ready, styled manuscripts and provides a style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practices regarding this vary with publisher, type of book, and/or book designer. There is no rule how this should be done, though there are style guides, like the Yale University &lt;a href=&quot;https://cseas.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Editorial%20Styles%20SEAS%202020%20rev.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SEAS Monograph Styles&lt;/a&gt;, that request: &amp;quot;First few words of each chapter: set in small caps&amp;quot; (p. 4). &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20190912001713/http://www.typophile.com/node/17024&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Typophile&lt;/a&gt; has a relevant discussion among typographers. And &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/02/book-design-6-variations-on-drop-cap-typography/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; a book designer explains the use of drop caps and recommends:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also add to the effect you’re creating at the beginning of the chapter by emphasizing the first few words following the drop cap. You’ll see this done with small caps, often with some letter spacing. To use this approach, decide on a standard number of words between 3 and 5 and keep all the chapter openings consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other common ways to emphasize the first few words after a drop cap (or without one) are italics and bold text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see the first few words in small caps often. I read a lot of SF&amp;amp;F pocket paperbacks, and it is quite common with some publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't do this in the manuscripts that you send in to a publisher!!!&lt;/strong&gt; Always follow the manuscript guides, usually published on their websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2021-04-02T14:13:24.613" LastActivityDate="2021-04-02T14:13:24.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9298" CreationDate="2013-11-06T06:49:56.177" Score="1" ViewCount="927" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Having finished her breakfast, Tsuki went to take a walk at the beach.&#xA;  She made her way through the sand barefoot, feeling the cold water and&#xA;  foam run between her toes. &lt;strong&gt;This was one of her favorite sensations in&#xA;  the world. It reminded her of a distant childhood. Afternoons at the&#xA;  beach building sand castles and swimming under the sunset. Those days&#xA;  were only memories now. Did she still own them?&lt;/strong&gt; She sat on the sand&#xA;  and gazed at the sea. There were still enormous waves, so high that&#xA;  they looked like skyscrapers. A big tree trunk was being tossed up and&#xA;  down among them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering whether the rhythm/flow in the passage above (the &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt; section) is OK. Should I add a third item in the second sentence to make it more complete? Is the last one sentence too abrupt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The &lt;em&gt;&quot;did she own them,&quot;&lt;/em&gt; part has to do with the theme of the story. The story is about ownership and belonging.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T16:31:37.570" Title="Rhythm in the following passage" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9297" CreationDate="2013-11-06T09:56:32.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Too fragmented for my liking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the brakes cry foul as you change the tempo from fast-forward &quot;Having finished her breakfast, Tsuki went to take a walk at the beach&quot; to idle foam running between toes, without as much as a paragraph break. Give us a paragraph that introduces the beach, removing shoes, touch of sand - one paragraph of braking from breakfast fast-forward to dipping your toes in sea foam is really not too much to ask for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then - sentences this short are good for rapid action, breathless fight. Definitely not good for reflexions like yours, and the descriptions are lacking depth too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It reminded her of a distant childhood: afternoons at the beach building elaborate sand castles with multitude of colorful sea shells decorating castle walls, drawbridges of driftwood and gates of sticks; swimming under the sunset, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smooth it out. Give it flair. Make the sentence flow and build upon what she's missing, make it rich and desirable. The two ending sentences build a good closure for that, bringing the paragraph to a conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, having done that, use the &quot;She sat on the sand and gazed at the sea...&quot; as start of a new paragraph. You gained an insight, ended an introspection, reached a conclusion, and now it's time to move ahead with the life - starting with a new paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-11-06T10:10:38.377" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T10:10:38.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9299" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-06T12:12:14.253" Score="0" ViewCount="521" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I check that online? How much money e.g. Stehen King or some other big name is making a year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4160" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T16:49:31.423" Title="Where to check the income of the most famous US fiction writers?" Tags="|money|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9297" CreationDate="2013-11-06T13:43:16.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmm, I don't see/feel any &quot;more-than-average&quot; rhythm/flow there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This was&lt;/strong&gt; one of her favorite sensations in the world. &lt;strong&gt;It reminded her&lt;/strong&gt; of a distant childhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would change it to something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This was one of her favorite sensations in the world, reminding her a&#xA;  distant childhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example there is a pause, so the reader can stop and think about the sensation. In my example it's presented as a fact that is not important to analyze or think about. You just accept it ;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In crime/mystery stories you can often find out what thing is important, beacuse the author mentions it more than once or use more sentences like you have done. If it's something not very important and just helps to imagine the space etc. he puts commas there ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw. try to eliminate the vast usage of This, it, those. E.g. in your 4 sentences, 3 of them started with This, It and those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, it's OK for a non-fiction to be specific, but I would be more careful in fiction and try to start sentences with less pronouns. If it's possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. try to avoid this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is my house. It is very big. And that thing is my car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4160" LastEditorUserId="4160" LastEditDate="2013-11-06T13:51:46.587" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T13:51:46.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9297" CreationDate="2013-11-06T14:10:15.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'm not a native speaker, so this will be bad English. Also, of course I know nothing about your character and story, so I'll use examples that don't fit your own work. But I guess you'll get the idea.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having finished her breakfast, Tsuki put the dishes in the sink, grabbed her beach towel and went out the terrace door. For a moment she just stood there in the bright light, letting the fresh wind off the sea clear her mind. Breathing in the smell of salt and sand, she finally and completely arrived, leaving the city, the loss of her job and her quarrel with Ben behind. Barefoot she stepped over the hot planks, away from it all, and into the warm sand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smiling from the comforting warmth she made her way through the sandy valleys between the grass covered dunes, listening to the gulls and the wind and the waves breaking louder with every step. Arriving at the beach, she was happy to see that she was alone. She dropped the towel, took off her jeans and t-shirt, and ran the short distance to the water's edge and knee-deep into the waves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feeling the cold water and foam run between her toes she stood as if in her past. This was one of her favorite sensations in the world. It drew her back to distant childhood afternoons with her parents building sand castles and swimming under the sunset. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But those days were only memories now. Did she still own them? Tsuki sat on the sand and gazed at the sea. Far out at see the waves were enormous, so high that they looked like skyscrapers. A big tree trunk was being tossed up and down among them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The idea is to provide enough detail to make the scene and the events palpable to the reader and &quot;take them there&quot;; to give cause to the character's actions; to provide transitions by following the characters from one place to another (instead of &quot;beaming&quot; them around).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2013-11-06T16:31:37.570" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T16:31:37.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9299" CreationDate="2013-11-06T14:17:54.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Blessed Geek pointed out; writers are people, and you can't just go check their wages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand; &quot;famous writers&quot; will likely have a net worth that can be found on the internet. For instance; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/profile/stephen-king/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Forbes: Stephen King's net worth&lt;/a&gt; (this from a Google search against the term &lt;code&gt;Stephen King net worth&lt;/code&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind though that a net worth will include all assets they own, and any net worth they gain from other ventures and even from film rights and merchandise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T14:17:54.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9304" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-06T14:26:52.370" Score="0" ViewCount="1217" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently I want to use this word a fair amount (&quot;she chuckled,&quot; etc.), or, more specifically, a word that means &quot;a short and [soft or gentle] laugh.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I comb online and other digital thesauri, they all seem to return the same limited list: &lt;em&gt;chortle, giggle, laugh softly, snicker, snigger, tee-hee, titter.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, only about half of those fit my description, which is pretty much the dictionary definition. I mean, &quot;snicker,&quot; really?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any recommendations? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5452" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T14:41:37.160" Title="Synonym recommendations for &quot;chuckle?&quot;" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-11-07T14:28:54.820" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9304" CreationDate="2013-11-06T14:41:37.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My recommendations would be to vary your characters' laughters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English has quite amazing number of words for different types of laughing and it allows to convey a wide gallery of expressions. So instead of having your characters always chuckle and finding synonyms for that, have your character guffaw, snort, laugh throatily, and utilize the whole wide range of expressions that is at your disposal instead of boxing them in with a few names for exactly one expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T14:41:37.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9299" CreationDate="2013-11-07T16:49:31.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Literary authors don't have a regular income. They receive &lt;a href=&quot;http://work.chron.com/average-authors-salary-one-book-7181.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;advances and royalties&lt;/a&gt; (a percentage of each individual book sale). Therefore, the monthly income varies with the author's productivity, the publisher's advances, and the numbers of readers buying his books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advances from indepentent publishers range between $1,000 and $5,000, while major publishers pay from $50,000 to $100,000. Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez received $475,000 for &lt;em&gt;The Dirty Girls Social Club&lt;/em&gt;, Jonathan Safran Foer received $500,000 for the hardcover and $925,000 the paperback rights for his first novel, &lt;em&gt;Everything Is Illuminated&lt;/em&gt;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/n_8972/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/n_8972/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of a page collecting advances, but many of the higher ones have been reported in the news, so you should be able to find many with a Google search. For example Bill Clinton received $15 million and Pope John Paul II $8.5 million (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2012/10/04/lena-dunham-bill-clinton-keith-richards-more-big-book-deals-photos.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2012/10/04/lena-dunham-bill-clinton-keith-richards-more-big-book-deals-photos.html&lt;/a&gt;), but these are not authors in the regular sense and cannot be compared to the contracts of professional novel writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T16:49:31.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9308" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-07T18:39:37.397" Score="6" ViewCount="12963" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a factual book, that will [hopefully] primarily detail real events that have happened in the past, that are related to the subject of the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real events have all been reported in the media, but do not necessarily involve famous people or &quot;public figures&quot; but just &quot;ordinary&quot; people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know if I would need written permission from the people involved in the events? I would not be expressing my opinion or any other information that was not reported in the media, so I wouldn't think libel would be an issue. But of course I would like to use names and locations (of course not an address, just country/state) of the people involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6203" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T02:22:24.810" LastActivityDate="2017-12-19T04:31:04.730" Title="Do I need permission from people I am writing about if I am writing about a true story that was reported in the media?" Tags="|non-fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8558" CreationDate="2013-11-07T22:06:52.547" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working on this for a few weeks now, and here is what I did to find my story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Flesh out my basic idea&lt;/strong&gt;: What exactly &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the idea? At first I only had a rather abstract message/theory that I wanted to convey, but then I really tried to understand how this idea relates to people in general, which people would actively be invovled with it, and how. &lt;strong&gt;What kind of person would attempt to put this theory into practice?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From this interaction between message/theory and characters, I began to develop my characters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The story/plot then just followed naturally from the characters and their relation to my message/theory: there was, for me, only one possible plot that connected all aspects of those two areas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the process of this, my message/theory took on a whole new and unexpected form. It is still the same message/theory, but the story, as it stands today, looks at it from a completely different perspective. &lt;strong&gt;It took some time and even courage to let my original perspective go.&lt;/strong&gt; This is something I learned from learning to draw: Don't be in love with your ideas or your work. The art is the process of creating, the satisfaction lies in artistic growth, not in the individual creation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps someone in a similar situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you all for your great tips, they actually put me on the right track to solving this problem. Especially Jay's idea of defining the end, the beginning, and the way between, motivated me to think about my idea from the perspective of process instead of state, thus giving me a dynamic (the plot) and an agent (my characters). Also Alexandro Chen's idea of finding the hook sentence made me start to connect the individual aspects of my message and put it in a narrative instead of list form, thus also contributing to the process aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I shied away a bit from Filipe Fedalto's idea of using the hero's journey as a blueprint, because I did not want to follow this schema in too schematic a fashion. But as I now work on the details of my story, I have grabbed a copy of Vogler's &lt;em&gt;The Writer's Journey&lt;/em&gt; from a local library along with other classics on plot construction and find them rather helpful and not at all schematic: I don't construct my plot along the hero's journey, but rather understand the plot points and create my own rhythm from this understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So again, thank you all for your inspiring feedback!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T22:06:52.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9313" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9317" CreationDate="2013-11-08T00:10:27.260" Score="2" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my research I produced random normally distributed data. The data is necessary for a statistical analysis which I describe in my paper. Is it recommended to state in the paper what tool I used to create the data? &#xA;I am not sure if so, since there are many ways how to produce these data. The output is always the same and in my case only the output (the produced data) matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4783" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T13:31:51.927" Title="State the method of how random data are produced in scientific paper?" Tags="|technique|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9314" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9316" CreationDate="2013-11-08T08:03:37.880" Score="3" ViewCount="988" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something I wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The person &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; standing in the middle of the clearing, facing away from me. It&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; a girl. She &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; wearing a red knit hat, a white sweater, an a gray plaid&#xA;  skirt that reached right below the knee. What &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; she doing here,&#xA;  alone? I looked up, and realized she &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; gazing at a huge ancient&#xA;  tree. It &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; as thick and tall as a watch tower. Its branches resembled arms,&#xA;  and the leaves &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; so few you could count them with your fingers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, that paragraph is filled with the passive voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I tried changing some into the active voice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The person &lt;em&gt;stood&lt;/em&gt; in the middle of the clearing, facing away from me. It&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; a girl. She &lt;em&gt;wore&lt;/em&gt; a red knit hat, a white sweater, an a gray plaid&#xA;  skirt that reached right below the knee. What &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; she doing here,&#xA;  alone? I looked up, and realized she &lt;em&gt;gazed&lt;/em&gt; at a huge ancient&#xA;  tree. &lt;em&gt;As&lt;/em&gt; thick and tall as a watch tower. Its branches resembled arms,&#xA;  and the leaves &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; so few you could count them with your fingers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did that improve readability? When to keep the passive voice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-11-08T10:49:40.087" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T10:49:40.087" Title="When to keep the passive voice and when to remove it" Tags="|creative-writing|tenses|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9314" CreationDate="2013-11-08T10:23:47.860" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the language level: when you show a moment from a continuous, slow or unchanging process or state - showing that the process was in progress, or the state was such already when the observation began.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On writing level - purpose: when you want to induce the feeling of stillness, create image instead of action, describe state instead of activity. Also, similarly to passive voice, to instill the impression of helplessness, laziness or dependence: things are done to subject, subject is enduring/enjoying them. In this case though this is excellent usage for describing calm, constancy, peace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first sentence was fine. &lt;em&gt;The person stood in the middle of the clearing&lt;/em&gt; might imply &quot;walked up to the middle of the clearing and stopped&quot;. &lt;em&gt;she gazed at a huge ancient tree&lt;/em&gt; might be read as &quot;turned her head to the tree and began gazing.&quot; The continuous tense leaves no doubts - the scene is very still. This creates a different, more eerie mood, an elusive feeling you lose when you chase after actions instead of painting the still image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T10:23:47.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9313" CreationDate="2013-11-08T13:31:51.927" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you used a common method which is known to produce completely random and normally distributed data, just mention its name or describe it in one short sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is often that various methods of random data generation are found to possess some bias, pattern, lesser than maximum possible entropy etc. - their randomness is not perfect. This may affect results, and for that eventuality you should at least name the method, so that in case the method is found vulnerable, your research could be verified, whether it's affected by the vulnerability or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T13:31:51.927" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9321" CreationDate="2013-11-08T15:48:55.417" Score="9" ViewCount="757" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then, as if sensing my presence, the girl turned around. She looked&#xA;  young. Probably sixteen or seventeen. She had long black hair, crimson&#xA;  red lips, and a skin so pale it made me wonder whether she had blood&#xA;  at all. But what struck me the most were her eyes. Even though there&#xA;  was nothing unusual in them, they made her face look lifeless,&#xA;  completely devoid of expression. It felt strange. Like staring at an&#xA;  empty canvas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last part I'm telling the reader the girl's eyes make her face look lifeless. I didn't actually describe them (e.g. they were black, white, etc.) But, I don't know, I think I'm also showing the reader how her face looks by stating what it's lacking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-11-08T16:09:11.357" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T12:00:13.667" Title="Am I breaking the &quot;show don't tell&quot; rule in the following passage?" Tags="|creative-writing|description|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9319" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-08T17:23:22.750" Score="3" ViewCount="348" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always thought there was a distinction between POV and narration.  You can have 1st-person POV with either 1st-person narration or 3rd-person narration.  So I think the discussions here (&lt;a href=&quot;http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/glossary/g/firstperson.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/glossary/g/firstperson.htm&lt;/a&gt;) and here (&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8514/first-person-pov-with-more-than-one-main-chars?lq=1&quot;&gt;First person pov with more than one main chars&lt;/a&gt;) are conflating two separate issues.  Am I confusing terms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T23:01:49.717" Title="1st-person POV vs. 1st-person narration" Tags="|viewpoint|narrative|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="272" CreationDate="2013-11-08T17:31:51.967" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Frankenstein: The New Prometheus&quot; by Shelley is a classic that is written entirely in 1st-person narrative, but keeps switching who the narrator is.  Actually, it's almost a tour-de-force of embedding narration within narration.  I think she manages at one point to go 4 levels deep, then pulls back, level by level, until she is back at the original 1st-person narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T17:31:51.967" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9318" CreationDate="2013-11-08T17:40:48.917" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rules are there to be broken, and here you break this rule masterfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, that is &quot;telly&quot;, but being surrounded by entirely &quot;showy&quot; parts, assuring the reader that you were diligent with the descriptions, you suddenly discard the looks and throw the impression instead; it's jarring - as it should be. It draws the reader's focus, marks the information as especially important, contrasting it with the generic description surrounding it, making that part stand out by just making it sink through telling that to us directly, overshadowing the importance of normal appearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leave as is. Yes, you broke the rule, and you did right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T17:40:48.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9319" CreationDate="2013-11-08T18:02:49.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are tightly connected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;POV (Point of View) tells about the person, &quot;through whose eyes we look&quot;. &quot;Perspective&quot; is the name for that style of view. An autobiography will be written from the author's POV, in 1st person perspective - or from POV of some protagonist. A guide will be written in 2nd person, from the reader's POV. 3rd person will be just 3rd person POV - or it may be a book which is technically 1st person, but practically 3rd person, a relation of a witness. In this case you're not stretching the truth saying it's 3rd person from given witness' POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for the narrator: this is the person, who tells the reader everything that is not said by the characters. Traditionally, and usually this is the person, whose POV is used, although not always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in theatre dramas, there is often an explicit narrator, a person who walks onto the scene to deliver a passage, e.g. connecting two acts. This is still a 3rd person experience, as we look at the scene without participating, but it's not us who are the narrators. Another example: there are two narrators, in two nested stories - a story tells about a person who tells a story. That person becomes the narrator, but they could still tell any perspective story, e.g. from some virtual protagonist's POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a finer distinction between types of narrators, reaching beyond point of view. You can talk about unreliable narrator, omniscient narrator, partially omniscient narrator, and so on. This tells more about the style of narration than just &quot;who says it, and is it us?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T18:02:49.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9318" CreationDate="2013-11-08T21:33:04.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't like &quot;Even though there was nothing unusual in them,...&quot;.  The fact that the narrator can't describe them -- except by their effect on his perception of her face -- makes them quite unusual.  My attempt at a rewrite: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But what struck me the most were her eyes.  I can remember nothing&#xA;  about them, whether blue or brown, large or small.  I only remember&#xA;  they made her face look lifeless, completely devoid of expression. I&#xA;  was staring at an empty canvas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="5675" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T03:13:29.433" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T03:13:29.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9324" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-08T22:16:00.697" Score="10" ViewCount="88634" Body="&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm doing a research and I'm would like to know actually how many copies of a specific book has been sold until now.  I really don't know where can I find this number and what is the more accurate way to get an accurate value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A pratical example:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many copies of &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.it/books/about/Bright_Earth.html?id=3Bd3KqmkhPMC&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot;&gt;Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour (2001)&lt;/a&gt; by Philip Ball have been sold until now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2023-06-28T11:08:31.880" Title="How to retrieve the number of copies sold for a specific book?" Tags="|publishing|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9319" CreationDate="2013-11-08T23:01:49.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I strongly disagree with SF's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) There &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; fictional 2nd person narrative. It's rare, but it exists. An example is given on the Wikipedia page to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-person_narrative&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2nd person narrative&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. ~ Opening lines of Jay McInerney's &lt;em&gt;Bright Lights, Big City&lt;/em&gt; (1984)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) There are different theories of narrative perspective or &lt;strong&gt;point of view&lt;/strong&gt;. The most common differentiates between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;auctorial narrator: a narrator who knows everything&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;personal narrator: the story is told from the perspective of a person who experiences the events&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;neutral narrator: like an observer, this narrator does not take part in the events, but he does not know everything (like the auctorial narrator) either&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) All narrative perspectives can be told in any grammatical person! This is called the &lt;strong&gt;narrative mode&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T23:01:49.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9318" CreationDate="2013-11-08T23:03:06.453" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Show don't tell&quot; isn't really a rule in the sense that &quot;don't murder the lead character halfway through the story&quot; is a rule. It's a guideline that is especially useful to new authors. In fact, all storytelling is, well, telling, hence the name, and at any time you're going to be doing a variety of showing and telling to get your point across while keeping the pacing solid and moving the story forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to this particular description... well, descriptions are generally speaking &quot;telly&quot; in nature. I'm not sure there's a lot of ways to get around that, except to intersperse description in amongst a scene and that may or may no work for what you want to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two points I do want to add about this kind of thing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it's your first draft, just put something there and move on. Always assume you will need to rewrite what you put down because, well, you will. I mean, unless that blocks you, then pretend that your first draft will be a magical gift. In any case, in my experience anyway it's better to make a stab at something and then move on then to spend a lot of time on the first draft getting a passage right. For all you know the passage won't even be in the final cut.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regarding description in general and first-person in particular, I think the trick here is not so much to worry about showing vs. telling but to always bear in mind that you're looking at things through your protagonist's eyes. The neat thing about first-person and limited-third descriptions is that you often tell just as much information about your narrator as you do the described object. In this case, it's a bit on the neutral side but I can already glean a bit of anti-pale people prejudice (I mean, sometimes pale folks just don't have enough sunlight! They aren't all zombies). He's also the kind of person who says words like &quot;crimson&quot; instead of &quot;red&quot;, which may or may not mean something later on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T23:03:06.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9327" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-08T23:57:09.447" Score="2" ViewCount="1073" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the proper way to punctuate a phrase such as &quot;oh so slow&quot; or &quot;oh so pretty&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find anything in Chicago about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would be something like this:&#xA;Blah blah blah happened, oh so slow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6210" LastActivityDate="2013-11-09T03:52:30.547" Title="Proper way to punctuate &quot;oh so slow&quot;" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9328" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-09T01:51:16.103" Score="3" ViewCount="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know the best way is to hire an editor. And I know you become aware of them over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to know if there are any tips or techniques to spot/correct them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example these are my common errors/typos:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Feel/fell&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Raise/rise&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Back/black&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not/no&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You/your/you're&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Where/were&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Would/would it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Over it/over to it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Quiet/quite&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kill/kills&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I/I've&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Had/have&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When it happened/when it had happened&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He was/was he&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thousands of years/ thousands years&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On/in/at&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, I can only think of searching each individual error/typo with CTRL + F and correct it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone has other suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T19:58:17.463" Title="Correcting common personal errors/typos" Tags="|creative-writing|editing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-11-13T03:18:22.990" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9327" CreationDate="2013-11-09T03:52:30.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it should be: &quot;Blah. Oh, so slow.&quot; Or &quot;Oh, so slow. Blah.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-11-09T03:52:30.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9332" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9359" CreationDate="2013-11-11T00:09:50.330" Score="3" ViewCount="2225" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A fighter is someone who fights for the pleasure of the spectator, against his or her own safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I clearly show that &lt;code&gt;his or her&lt;/code&gt; refers to the fighter and not the master?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6000" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T13:22:15.960" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T19:06:17.147" Title="When mentioning two people in a sentence, what's the proper way to use a pronoun to reference the first?" Tags="|voice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9332" CreationDate="2013-11-11T00:31:58.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Change something else in the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;A fighter is someone who fights for the pleasure of spectators, against his or her own safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;A fighter is someone who fights for the pleasure of the audience, against his or her own safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T00:31:58.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9334" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-11T03:02:39.620" Score="1" ViewCount="457" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a passage about a character who has just woken up, and then there's the line&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The room fell into silence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should it be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The room falls into silence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't get my head around which it should be. Is it a case of tenses? that the former is past tense and the latter is present? the problem is many novels that I read even if the author is describing something which seems to be happening &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; they still seem to use something like &quot;The room fell into silence&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone point out what the differences are between them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it's similar to whether I say something like..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'm sure that's wrong,&lt;/em&gt; Harry thinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'm sure that's wrong,&lt;/em&gt; Harry thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6214" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T06:09:29.297" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T09:52:25.653" Title="Are these examples of tenses? Why do writers use the tenses that they do?" Tags="|tenses|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2013-11-11T11:28:48.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two commonly recommended strategies for character naming are the perusal of popular names lists and looking up the meaning of names. Both aren't very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have to look up the meaning of a name, your readers won't know it either and it won't influence their perception of a character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And popular names aren't always perceived as positive. For example in Germany the name Kevin is one of the most popular and widespread names, but it is chosen mostly in low income families and has become associated with ADHS and low performance in school. So much so that teachers show prejudice towards pupils with that name, as research has shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what can you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am German, so the names I use as a writer are German. A research group at a German university has researched the associations that people have for certain names: how old do they imagine an Alexander, how intelligent is a Julia, how attractive a Ben? The research is still limited to a small selection of names and attributes, but it is a valuable starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One German website lets users judge names and gives top 50 lists for attributes like intelligence, attractiveness, age, masculinity/femininity and several character traits: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onomastik.com/Vornamen-Lexikon/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.onomastik.com/Vornamen-Lexikon/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I want to use a name that has not been researched, I ask friends how they imagine the person with that name. I was often surprised what negative associations people have for names I like. Some names sound fat, others unfriendly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe there is similar research for names from your culture?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T12:18:49.920" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T12:18:49.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2013-11-11T16:24:08.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I’ve done for names:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Browsed a nice thick baby-name book, which is organized by ethnicity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Looked in Wikipedia for a list of names of the appropriate ethnicity. For example, if a certain character is descended from Haitian immigrants, I might look up the membership of the Haitian national legislature to get a sense of what last names are common there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Checked the US Social Security Administration’s most-common-first-names database, which is organized by gender, state, and birth year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you’re trying to come up with names for a fantasy world, I suggest coming up with some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zompist.com/kitlong.html#sounds&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;phonology&lt;/a&gt; for a language in your fantasy world, and then &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zompist.com/gen.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;generating a bunch of words&lt;/a&gt; that match it. (You can add flavor by creating multiple languages with different phonological rules, or by imposing a rule that the pattern of sounds communicates something about a character’s gender or status.  In Mindy Klasky’s “Glasswrights” series, for example, the higher a character’s caste, the more syllables were in his or her name.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Martha above that you shouldn’t give different characters names that start with the same letter.  (Michael Chabon’s &lt;em&gt;The Mysteries of Pittsburgh&lt;/em&gt; has an Arthur and an Art, but I think Chabon was just showing off.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one other tip: full names sound better if the first and last names have a different number of syllables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T16:24:08.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9318" CreationDate="2013-11-11T16:45:35.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two problems that I see with this passage are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;“Even though there was nothing unusual in them” — You don’t need to explicitly tell the reader that something is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; unusual. (One of my least favorite tics in YA fiction is the main character describing herself as neither beautiful nor ugly.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;“It felt strange” — “Strange” is such a vague word that it really adds nothing to the description here. Maybe you could call this a “show don’t tell” rule violation, but I think that rule is overrated to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T16:45:35.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9189" CreationDate="2013-11-11T18:32:12.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Damon Knight once said that when he has an idea for some science-fictional McGuffin but doesn’t know how to incorporate it into an actual story, he asks himself, “Who would this &lt;em&gt;hurt&lt;/em&gt;?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you know enough about your setting to be able to identify a character with a problem peculiar to that setting, then you’re ready to write a story in that setting. Suppose that on your world everyone can be telepathic if they eat a certain rare plant. You can write a story about a tycoon trying to monopolize the supply of that plant, or the travails of a minority group that is non-telepathic because they are allergic to the plant, or... you get the idea. And then as you continue to develop the setting, you can concentrate on those aspects that are necessary to your chosen plot and characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T18:32:12.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9342" CreationDate="2013-11-11T20:20:40.427" Score="6" ViewCount="320" Body="&lt;p&gt;In constructing a story, I plan on following the following patterns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Hero's Journey: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero%27s_Journey&quot;&gt;The Hero's Journey&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Villain's Quest: &lt;a href=&quot;http://newauthors.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/the-villains-quest/&quot;&gt;The Villain's Quest&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what would be the structure of &quot;The Guardian's Journey&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By guardian, I mean a character that watches over and guides the hero, and even the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example of this is Gandalf from &quot;The Lord of the Rings&quot;, or Sider Ament from &quot;Legends of Shannara: Bearers of the Black Staff&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5607" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-20T08:51:14.037" LastActivityDate="2018-04-20T08:51:14.037" Title="What are the stages of The Guardian's Journey?" Tags="|fiction|structure|archetypes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9340" CreationDate="2013-11-11T21:50:37.993" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don’t think there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an archetypal “Guardian’s Journey” in the same sense that there is a Campbellian “Hero’s Journey”.  Your Guardian character can be a static force in the story, or could learn from his/her experience guiding the Hero to be an even better Guardian (Gandalf), or become disillusioned about the whole Guardian role (Saruman), or... whatever works best with your main plot line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: Before you invest too many brain cells in making your story comply with “The Hero’s Journey” archetype, you should read &lt;a href=&quot;http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/hulk-explains-why-we-should-stop-it-with-the-hero-journey-shit/&quot;&gt;these cautionary words from Film Critic Hulk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T21:50:37.993" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9343" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-11T22:24:23.137" Score="2" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story. This story will be longer than a short story and shorter than a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is of a hacker. He is at a stage in life where he wants to reflect therefore he writes his story of his dealings with cyber crimes.&#xA;While writing his story, he attains clarity about his own true self.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be better to put the revelations at the end of his life story or to share that insight where the relevant text arises?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference for the Story: Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker&lt;br&gt;&#xA;By Kevin Mitnick&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6219" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-11-12T10:56:05.360" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T10:56:05.360" Title="How should I execute this idea?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|structure|planning|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9095" CreationDate="2013-11-11T23:27:11.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note that short stories are much more difficult to sell than full-length novels. My company's just published a collection of stories in a popular genre by some pretty well-known authors, for a decently low price, distributed through mainstream channels and it's sold under 500 copies in six months. If you're after sales, write full-length fiction. If you're fairly prolific, perhaps consider giving away a short story for $0 as a sweetener for some more meaty offerings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5694" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T23:27:11.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9343" CreationDate="2013-11-12T00:22:42.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would share the insight where relevant. It's no fun to leave all of the good stuff at the end. In my experience, writing is a journey, and we need to be privy to all aspects of it. This includes the vital balancing act between &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/mihaly-csikszentmihalyi/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;flow&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;insanity&lt;/a&gt; inside the character's head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5607" LastEditorUserId="5607" LastEditDate="2013-11-12T00:30:30.170" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T00:30:30.170" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9346" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9347" CreationDate="2013-11-12T02:06:29.030" Score="1" ViewCount="83" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I had a character which was looking at a book shelf and I wanted to mention a particular book that they were looking at, let's say it's Lord of the Rings, should I put the title in quotes? something like..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jim looked at &quot;Lord of the Rings&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should it just be..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jim looked at Lord of the Rings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6214" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-11-12T05:57:32.703" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T05:57:32.703" Title="How to style a film or book title?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9346" CreationDate="2013-11-12T05:38:52.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Book titles are usually placed within quotes or &lt;em&gt;italicized&lt;/em&gt;, in order to set them apart. Which one you use is a matter of style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that your publisher has no style preference (some do), you can pick one or the other and stick to it. Whichever you use, be consistent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that all titles are not always styled the same way. It's fairly common to italicize book titles but set short story titles between quotation marks, for example. As long as a particular piece of text (an article, a story, a manuscript, etc.) is consistent in this regard, all is well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T05:38:52.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9346" CreationDate="2013-11-12T05:43:05.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chicago, MLA and APA all &lt;em&gt;italicize&lt;/em&gt; book titles. Chicago and MLA &quot;quote&quot; journal articles, APA uses no markup for those. Since these reference list formatting styles are most common, I would adhere to them even in non-scientific texts: italicize book titles, quote journal articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T05:43:05.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9349" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9350" CreationDate="2013-11-12T07:51:49.060" Score="1" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realized I have the habit of adding small sentences that don't provide much information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri searched her memory, but came out blank. She couldn’t even&#xA;  remember what she was doing at that time. &lt;strong&gt;Which was odd.&lt;/strong&gt; She didn’t&#xA;  consider herself particularly smart, but when it came to remembering&#xA;  things, her brain never failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But what struck me the most were her eyes. Even though there was nothing unusual in them, they made her face look expressionless, lifeless. &lt;strong&gt;It felt strange.&lt;/strong&gt; Like staring at an empty canvas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I don't do this all the time. Maybe two or three times per story.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But no matter how I think about it, I feel the paragraphs will lose their flow/rhythm if I remove those short sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a bad writing practice? If so, how should I modify the examples above in order to fix the issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T17:51:09.367" Title="Should I get rid of short sentences that don't provide much information?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9349" CreationDate="2013-11-12T08:50:26.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;They fulfill a good role for rhythm and flow, but they are disruptive as distinct sentences. Yes, short fragmented sentences when you're not in the middle of a breathless action are a bad practice - not terribly bad, but less than optimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is easily remedied though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eri searched her memory, but came out blank. She couldn’t even remember what she was doing at that time. &lt;strong&gt;Which was odd;&lt;/strong&gt; she didn’t consider herself particularly smart, but when it came to remembering things, her brain never failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what struck me the most were her eyes. Even though there was nothing unusual in them, they made her face look expressionless, lifeless. &lt;strong&gt;It felt strange;&lt;/strong&gt; like staring at an empty canvas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commas, semicolons, colons, dashes, ellipses are your friends in cases like these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially learn to love the semicolon. It's powerful; doesn't disrupt the flow like full stop does; can be applied nearly everywhere where full stop or colon are less than perfect choice, and once you learn to use it, you'll find it to be the missing link between the colon and full stop that finally makes your sentences flow naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this infographics&lt;/a&gt; immensely helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T09:19:28.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2363" CreationDate="2013-11-12T09:28:45.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The abstract should have an opening that identifies that particular subject matter and how the research that you have done will provide a solution. It is very important to make this clear in the initial sentence or two of the abstract as people want to know immediately what the essay is about.&#xA;An abstract is usually no more than 250 words. It is important to keep the word count in mind when writing an abstract. &#xA;Include Information on Methods and Results - Part of the abstract should briefly mention the methods and results that pertain to your topic. &#xA;At the close of the abstract it is important to briefly mention how results affect the initial problem that was mentioned in the opening of the abstract.&#xA;Review and Update the Abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6221" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T18:22:39.350" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T18:22:39.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9292" CreationDate="2013-11-12T13:32:14.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how the knowledge of an &quot;average consideration time&quot; could help you even if it were feasible to figure one out. As said in the comments: Maybe they never answer. And why should you care when they do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no need waiting for them. Put your work in front of as many people who are able to buy it or self-publish it. Or both. Honestly self-publishing has a big advantage: if your books sell, you have a much better negotiation start point. You can prove that your novel sells, what makes it much more attractive for a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't answer you can ask them what's up. Maybe they think it is impolite, because you disturb them in their working process. But letting you wait is impolite also. And it's still possible that they never answer because they gave up sending out tons of rejection letters and do not know how to use an email template for that. Or they just don't care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go, try to sell your books, one way or the other and don't care about them. Which means: send it out to other publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T13:32:14.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9095" CreationDate="2013-11-12T15:08:29.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine that you have three potential readers, Alice, Bob, and Carol, and three stories, X, Y, and Z. Alice would pay $3 for X, $2 for Y, and $1 for Z. Bob would pay $3 for Y, $2 for Z, and $1 for X. Carol would pay $3 for Z, $2 for X, and $1 for Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you offer X+Y+Z as an anthology for $6, you will get three readers for each story and $18 in gross sales. If you offer them separately for $2 each, you will get two readers for each story and $12 in gross sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why newspapers bundle up news, sports, and arts into one edition instead of selling them separately, and why cable-TV providers don’t let you subscribe to channels on an individual basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T15:08:29.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9354" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-12T16:00:25.257" Score="0" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example in a story I'm writing a character says the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Be careful,” An-Mei said, ignoring my question. “No matter what,&#xA;  don't get close to her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later on the protagonist thinks about this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had decided to avoid the mountain at night. Be&#xA;  careful. Don't get close to her, An-Mei had said. But did why people&#xA;  fear her so much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I italicize &lt;em&gt;Be careful. Don't get close to her&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-11-12T19:42:06.243" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T19:42:06.243" Title="Should I italicise when the protagonist quote other character's words?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9354" CreationDate="2013-11-12T16:08:14.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure it's necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some authors use this technique when not crediting the person who said it. This technique works best when the 'narrator' quotes it multiple times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had decided to avoid the mountain at night. &lt;em&gt;Be careful. Don't get close to her.&lt;/em&gt; But did why people fear her so much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, you're crediting the person who said it, which is a direct reference to the original scene/person. You don't need to italicise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a hard-and-fast rule to this, but I think italicising and crediting may be too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your decision also has to take into account how long ago the quote occurred. If it's too many scenes back, then you risk the user not knowing where it came from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T16:08:14.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9349" CreationDate="2013-11-12T17:48:25.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short, incomplete, or fragment sentences work really nicely for emphasis on their own, which, incidentally, is also one of the only times you should use &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; at the start of a sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just be careful not to be ambiguous. If a descriptive sentence is short, it's inherently concisely descriptive, so it should be obvious from the context what you're emphasising. Your first example works well, and it's obvious that it is the lack of memory which is odd. Your second example seems to stilt the flow a little, as you only realise when reading the subsequent sentence that it's the act of looking at her face which is strange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6073" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T17:48:25.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9354" CreationDate="2013-11-12T17:52:19.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think italics would be perfect. It makes total sense that the protagonist is recalling what someone else said &amp;mdash; it's sort of an in-line flashback. Otherwise, how are you going to indicate that it's remembered dialogue? Quote marks make it look like An-Mei is there, speaking, when she's not, and a lack of any marking looks like a mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can leave in the credit or not; I generally like to err on the side of clarity, and I think here it reads fine to leave it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T17:52:19.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9368" CreationDate="2013-11-12T19:00:35.220" Score="0" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sentence in question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As players move around the board, they buy, rent and sell properties from and to each other with each player trying to maximize his or her own wealth in a zero-sum game where everyone must lose in order for one player to win&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and I'm wondering if that is clear enough or too wordy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6000" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-11-12T19:44:30.097" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T03:40:24.327" Title="Is it bad to have sentences that are too long?" Tags="|clarity|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-11-13T06:00:02.920" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9332" CreationDate="2013-11-12T19:06:17.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I despise &quot;his or her.&quot;  It's so bad, it should be unconstitutional.  Randomly switching &quot;his&quot; and &quot;her&quot; from sentence to sentence is almost as bad.  If you're making a general statement, and you think exclusively using &quot;his&quot; is sexist, then use the plural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fighters fight for the pleasure of the spectator, against their own&#xA;  safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T19:06:17.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9358" CreationDate="2013-11-12T19:27:28.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's add some commas and trim the redundancies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;As players move around the board, they buy, rent, and sell properties from and to each other, with each player trying to maximize his or her own wealth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only does &quot;zero-sum&quot; actually &lt;em&gt;mean&lt;/em&gt; &quot;everyone must lose in order for one player to win,&quot; pretty much all board games intended for players out of preschool are zero-sum. It's kind of a given that you have one winner and everyone else loses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T19:27:28.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9361" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9408" CreationDate="2013-11-12T19:52:50.337" Score="5" ViewCount="1081" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a full, detailed outline of my planned book series before I have much of it written down. I'm not a pantser, I must have a clear idea where I'm going before I can get far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the process of doing this I've started to question the direction that I'm taking certain things. How do I know if the plot and all its threads are being resolved satisfactorily? How is the pace? Are my characters too static or too numerous? etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm wondering when and how it is appropriate to evaluate and get feedback on a summary  - plot, setting, characters - that hasn't been (fully) written yet. From what I've seen of online writing communities, criticism always seems to be about writing style rather than content. Is this something that would even be worthwhile at this point, or is it all about the delivery? And if so, how would I get that feedback?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="330" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T19:44:00.283" Title="How do I evaluate an unwritten plot/story?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|criticism|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2013-11-12T19:58:17.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use text-to-speech software.  It's available on almost every computer nowadays, for free.  The advantage of this is that the computer is stupid and will read whatever you have written, even if it makes no sense.  (Of course, this approach assumes you will recognize the mistake when you hear it.)  Human readers will instead often unconsciously fix textual mistakes as they read aloud.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(OT: My experience in teaching young children is that this human tendency to fix/guess often hinders learning to read, especially for comprehension.  Watch for that with your kids.  When they are reading aloud, don't let them paraphrase the text.  Force them to read it word for word, phrase by phrase, exactly as written.  [Scanning and speedreading are for skilled readers, not for beginners.]  If your kids can't do this with age-appropriate texts, then they either need more phonics work, or they have dislexic issues, or they are rushing too much.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T19:58:17.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9361" CreationDate="2013-11-12T21:20:35.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you're done the outline, send it to me.  If it's good, I'll steal it.  Haha, just kidding, but seriously don't work for a year on an awesome detailed outline and then show it to just anybody on an online forum.  That's a job for people you'd trust with a big envelope full of $20s and $50s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For starters, search for books/movies with similar thematic elements, and make sure you're not staking a claim on a worked-out mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too many characters: You can have lots of bit characters, and they won't get fleshed out (at least, not in one novel).  That's OK.  But you can't have more than a few main characters in a novel (or in the 1st novel in a series).  Otherwise, something has to give.  Characterization, description, or plot must suffer.  Or the book will get unbearably long.  (When did you last read &quot;War and Peace&quot;?)  It's OK, though, to gradually flesh out bit characters, and introduce new important ones, in a book series.  (The Harry Potter series is an obvious recent example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All about the delivery: Maybe some artsy types only care about the delivery, but 99% of readers want both content and delivery.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T21:20:35.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9361" CreationDate="2013-11-12T21:32:04.937" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find a good beta reader or a good editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ran into this problem myself: I had a plot which was solid and detailed but left room for expansion, I had characters I absolutely loved, I spent months in world-building, wrote 125+ pages, and then showed it to a few trusted, intelligent people to get some early feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I learned: One of my main characters was a complete idiot (and was not supposed to be), the system of government too clearly showed how I'd cobbled it together from other writers, and I could never quite boil the story down to an elevator pitch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have done was shared it with the readers &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; writing the 125+ pages, so that I could have made the decision either to fix the problems or abandon the project without having spent another year on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt;, without question, get feedback before plunging in. I am of the strong opinion that you cannot create a novel in a vacuum. I'm not a pantser either, and I think the best work comes from getting a vigorous shakedown from good critics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good critic is someone who constructively, kindly, thoroughly goes through your work and not just points out the problems but can suggest some solutions and alternatives. This is what I try to do when I'm editing someone else's book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T21:32:04.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9365" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-12T22:58:26.610" Score="4" ViewCount="4974" Body="&lt;p&gt;This here is a line of my story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As we were in the middle of our conversation, I saw a blinding light heading straight for us, followed by an abrupt honk. Mom screamed as if she saw a ghost, and her scream was interrupted as a powerful force hit the car. When it did, my head ran into the dashboard, leaving a bloody splotch. I felt several pieces of glass scrape my face, the immensely sharp pain carving into my skin. Everything was moving in slow motion. The last thing I saw before I blacked out was the horrid sight of my mother's head being lashed into window. When I woke up, wires were hooked up to my feeble body, and my whole body was in pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to make the accident more dramatic in slow motion like; you can see the lights then hear the metal hit. See the glass flying and more stuff like that but no matter how hard I try, every time I add something it does not really fit to the text. I really need help of an experienced writer or someone who is good at this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6224" LastEditorUserId="6073" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T12:35:32.697" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T02:23:36.650" Title="Who can help me to describe the text line from my story in slow motion?" Tags="|technique|description|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9361" CreationDate="2013-11-13T03:35:13.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Content and delivery go hand-in-hand. If one area is lacking, the other can't make up the difference - it's a bit like having a fancy cell phone but no service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of beta readers or an experienced fiction editor would be able to help you think through the outline and to address your specific concerns. Having a detailed outline reviewed that you expand upon and then having that new version reviewed again essentially is the approach used in television/film production - you pitch an idea, develop an outline, create an alaborate scene-by-scene synopsis, move to a first draft, etc., with an editor or a director reviewing the script at each step. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6226" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T03:35:13.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9358" CreationDate="2013-11-13T03:40:24.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sentences always are too long when they're wordy. Lauren did a nice job of tightening the sentence and makes an excellent point about zero sum. Depending on the context, the sentence might be tighten even further: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As players move around the board, they buy, rent and sell properties from and to each other, trying to maximize their wealth.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6226" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T03:40:24.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9223" CreationDate="2013-11-13T03:48:42.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ditto on the good advice and rewrites already given. Especially with a short story, you want to establish the main character and the story's central problem in that opening sentence. You might hint at the setting as well. Shifting the description of the hiking trail to the second sentence helps achieve all of that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep readers engaged in that second sentence, you may want to consider a different verb than &quot;consisted of.&quot; That's just a fancy way of saying &quot;exists as,&quot; so it acts like a passive voice being verb. Instead, infer the steps are uneven by describing how the main character must step over them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6226" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T03:48:42.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2013-11-13T08:22:46.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mentioned, that the formatting of your word processor is distracting you while reading through your text. One suggestion is using a Markup language like &lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Markdown Markup&quot;&gt;Markdown&lt;/a&gt;, that is also used on Stackexchange. This will separate your writing from formatting and you can use any text editor (like Notepad).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One tip for searching for doubled words is using the advanced search function of your word processor. Select »Regular Expressions« and use the following codes, then your doubled words will be found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;\b(\w+)\s+\1\b&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6228" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T08:22:46.713" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5866" CreationDate="2013-11-13T08:25:08.750" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When reading a plagiarized research paper turned in by a student, the signs of plagiarism may not always be obvious. However, there are some things that professors can pay special attention to when suspecting plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observe citations throughout the paper: This will help determine whether or not the required citation style was used. For example, if the citations in the paper conform to Turabian style when the MLA style was required for the paper, you may be looking at a plagiarized paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observe the writing style or styles used in the paper: Sometimes, you may notice that some of the writing used in a paper does not &quot;sound like&quot; something the student would write . The unusual words or wording may include &quot;jargon or advanced vocabulary&quot;. Other papers may include a writing style that is below average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look for signs that the paper is outdated: Sometimes, professors can find signs that the paper being read may be outdated.  If all of the sources listed in references or works cited are several years old, then the paper may be an example of plagiarism .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observe the font used in the paper: A paper may contain more than one &quot;font style or size.&quot; Different fonts throughout a paper would indicate that a student may have copied and pasted various portions of Web pages together into a word processor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6221" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T18:14:33.433" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T18:14:33.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9372" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-11-13T12:45:11.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When discussing erotica, please try to keep a professional tone; that said, there's no need to be shy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question &lt;em&gt;titles&lt;/em&gt; should be relatively clean, if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T12:45:11.967" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T12:45:11.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9373" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-11-13T12:45:11.967" Score="0" Body="Fiction served hot and steamy." OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T12:45:11.967" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T12:45:11.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9374" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9375" CreationDate="2013-11-13T14:14:58.367" Score="2" ViewCount="577" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless the answer is &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt;, when is it excusable to use those two? I think someone told me it was a &lt;strong&gt;sin&lt;/strong&gt; for a writer to use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder this because one of my favorite writer used it in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafka_on_the_Shore&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt; of his books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All of a sudden she pulls her hands away from her chin and places them&#xA;  on her lap. Two small pale knees show at her hemline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T17:17:33.083" Title="When it's forgivable to use &quot;suddenly&quot; and &quot;all of a sudden?&quot;" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-11-14T19:54:56.687" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9374" CreationDate="2013-11-13T14:41:57.567" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it is sudden: unexpected and fast. Just moving hands from chin to knees wouldn't be too sudden unless she practically slapped her knees. Don't just indicate an action that happened &quot;sourcelessly&quot; from inactive environment. Indicate a fast, rapid and unexpected action. &quot;Suddenly she drew a gun and put it to his head.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;All of sudden&quot; is more of a spoken expression. You can have the characters use it in dialogue. For actual narration, &quot;suddenly&quot; is preferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Following Lauren's comment. It's not forbidden, it's not a sin, it's just a common crutch, and easy to abuse, cheap. If you're about to use it, think if there's a better way to say it. Not always, but quite often, there is. Also, remember: It's an &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8082/whats-with-all-the-hate-on-adjectives-and-adverbs&quot;&gt;adverb&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T17:17:33.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9365" CreationDate="2013-11-13T15:20:40.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First I'm just gonna say &quot;what do I know?&quot; By that I mean, do what feels right to you because there is no universally right or wrong way when it comes to writing. With that said, you should take out &quot;Everything was moving in slow motion&quot; and replace this with more description. Try slowing down your pacing, try describing everything the character hears, smells, feels, sees, tastes. So, instead of telling me &quot;Everything was moving in slow motion&quot; show me how everything was moving in slow motion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FB&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6229" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T15:20:40.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9365" CreationDate="2013-11-13T15:20:52.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The nearest equivalent in prose to “slow motion” in video is the stream-of-consciousness style; you could describe the jumbled thoughts and “this reminds me of that” ideas cascading through the narrator’s head in between the honk and the impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N.B.: It’s an established convention in the movies that when something very dramatic happens, like a car crash, the director portrays it in slow motion.  &lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, just because that style works in the movies doesn’t mean you should use it in fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T15:20:52.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9361" CreationDate="2013-11-13T15:28:15.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can find beta readers who are willing to look at an outline and seem competent to evaluate it, then I see nothing wrong with consulting them. There are certain flaws in a novel (e.g., “if the protagonist had half a brain she would do such-and-such in Chapter Three”) that would be detectable at the outline stage and that are hard to paper over with beautiful prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T15:28:15.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9379" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9380" CreationDate="2013-11-13T18:56:44.393" Score="8" ViewCount="1873" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel which centers around a serial killer and his victims. I'm having a lot of trouble deciding whether it belongs in the horror genre (it's a disturbing, horrific slasher, and a lot of the book works on horror and dread) or in crime (because a lot is about the good guys' hunt for the killer, and also there's no supernatural element). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read other fiction which seems similarly borderline to me (&lt;em&gt;Silence of the Lambs&lt;/em&gt; by Thomas Harris, J.A. Konrath's first Jack Daniels book, and others), and on Amazon I indeed see these books listed in both categories. But I find it's important to have a single primary tag to focus on - for my elevator pitch, for query letters, for general promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I tell which genre is better for my particular book? And, once I decide on one or the other as my 'main' genre, is there anything I need to do to fit better into the genre I've chosen, and make the book less borderline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T03:09:17.693" Title="Is my serial-killer novel horror or crime?" Tags="|genre|crime|horror|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9379" CreationDate="2013-11-13T19:22:01.877" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which is the primary focus of your story: the villain, or the investigation?&#xA;Is the investigation a tool to learn more about the villain, or is the cunning villain a means to complicate the investigation? Is the duel between the investigator and the criminal the focus, or is it just means to display the twisted mind of the criminal in all gory glory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer that, and you'll know how to classify your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T19:22:01.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9379" CreationDate="2013-11-13T19:24:19.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you want so much to fit your novel in a particular genre? If you have practical reasons, well, then I understand. But as far as I know, you can select multiple categories and keywords on Amazon. I think you should be happy you're having problems classifying your novel. It means it breaks some genre conventions, therefore, in my opinion, it's more likely for it to be an original piece. Take Gillian Flynn's &lt;em&gt;Gone Girl&lt;/em&gt; as example. Reviewers are still having trouble deciding whether it belongs to genre fiction or literary fiction. It is a thriller novel, but at the same time a romance novel. But genre aside, it still got into the #1 New York Best Seller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think forcing your work to be of a particular genre is like forcing your children to be of a particular religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, if you have practical reasons for it, then I would like to hear them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T19:24:19.387" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9361" CreationDate="2013-11-13T19:41:44.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the rest. Evaluating your story before writing it is like rating a love affair before having it (OK, I know. Awful metaphor). The thing is, you &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; receive feedback from other people. That's the only way to know whether your plot, pace, characters are delivering satisfactorily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From what I've seen of online writing communities, criticism always&#xA;  seems to be about writing style rather than content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if you have tried &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/dashboard/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scribophile&lt;/a&gt;. They not only have an inline editing form but also have a template form which is divided into &lt;strong&gt;plot, pacing, description, characters, etc.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm an active member in that community and use that form most of the time. It forces me to organize my critiques and be more specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T19:48:39.793" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T19:48:39.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9365" CreationDate="2013-11-13T20:01:56.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Add more sensory details. One way to think of slow motion is that the camera (or your mind) is speeding up, so that it becomes aware of more of what is happening. To represent that, show more of what the camera sees, what the mind is aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the &quot;slow motion&quot; of an accident is accompanied by a kind of detachment, so that afterwards, it seems as if time both sped up and slowed down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I was carjacked once. A guy pointed a gun at my face and told me to get in my car. At that instant, the thought in my head was, &quot;I know this script. This is the part where I get in the car.&quot; That is a very detached thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: Sensory details. Detached thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T20:01:56.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9365" CreationDate="2013-11-13T21:52:23.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been in several car accidents.  The bad ones don't happen in slow motion.  The onset is so fast, all you can think of is &quot;Jesus!&quot;  Then you're being thrown around, during which time you don't actually think.  You feel; you experience; but you don't process it.  You're at the level of an abused animal.  Then suddenly it's over, and at some point you realize you're not dead.  Your humanity returns, and -- if you're not badly hurt -- you start crying about your wrecked car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T21:52:23.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9385" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9390" CreationDate="2013-11-13T22:12:14.920" Score="18" ViewCount="3092" Body="&lt;p&gt;More specifically: Two of my book series' main characters are (temporarily) diplomats.  It's unavoidable to the progress of the plot.  But diplomacy is inherently slow and boring.  So, the general question is: How does one handle boring but necessary scenes?  Both general and specific answers welcome.  Examples from successful books also welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T02:57:44.417" Title="Problem: Scenes that are unavoidable, but boring" Tags="|fiction|plot|pacing|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9379" CreationDate="2013-11-13T22:25:25.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm of the same mind as SF. Is the protagonist the killer or the good guys? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a crime novel, tone down the blood spatter and have more in the precinct. Lengthen the scenes where the detectives throw theories back and forth; set up more red herrings to be chased down; show us how the footwork works. Give us cop lingo and police red tape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a horror novel, then we don't really care how the cops end up where they do, only that they arrive too late. Then you'd want to spend more time setting up how the killer chooses a victim, why the victim is appealing, how he gets to each one, what he does with each one. Maybe introduce the victim at the beginning of the day and thread in the killer stalking the person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T22:25:25.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9385" CreationDate="2013-11-13T22:33:36.707" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, most authors of bestsellers ruthlessly cut out boring scenes.  I've seen comments (from such authors) that if they find a section of their own writing boring, they expect readers to find it still more so.  (This does not keep some bestselling authors from padding their books with boring stuff.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to avoid the problem is to tell what other things the characters are doing during the boring interval in their lives.  Consider a few brief sentences about the diplomat's day of work, followed by a few paragraphs or pages about their dissipated nights or intellectual evenings or telephone calls they make during breaks.  Or consider briefly listing a few extremely boring items, then saying “Such were the highlights of the week”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T22:33:36.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9385" CreationDate="2013-11-13T22:33:44.910" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the scene is boring, it’s not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about what you actually need to convey to the reader to move the plot forward, write something interesting that delivers that necessary information, and skip everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This may be a good time to break the “show, don’t tell” rule.&lt;/strong&gt; “Eight hours and two liters of vodka later, Ambassador Königsberg agreed to waive the Union’s trade rights on Svalbard VII in exchange for a military base on Copernicus Prime and five tons of unobtainium.” Carriage return, hash mark, carriage return, onward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the scene is necessary because of some shift in a character (e.g., the Ambassador decides that he wants to betray the Union), then find some interesting event that tips the balance in the character’s mind, dramatize that event, and summarize what comes before and after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T22:33:44.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9385" CreationDate="2013-11-13T22:34:56.403" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want examples of &lt;em&gt;successful&lt;/em&gt; diplomacy, try CJ Cherryh's &lt;em&gt;Foreigner&lt;/em&gt; series, which I think is up to 15 books so far. The main character, Bren, is a diplomat between humans and the non-human species who are native to the planet where the humans crash-landed. Positively fascinating. Hard going at times, but I was &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; bored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And diplomacy is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; inherently boring if the stakes are sufficiently high. If the failure of diplomacy is war, genocide, invasion, name your armageddon, then jeez, the reader is going pay attention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't make everyone invested in the outcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What if your diplomat is a &quot;cowboy&quot; who's overly impressed with&#xA;himself? Or she's a stickler for the rulebook no matter what? (You&#xA;can find both of those in &lt;em&gt;Star Trek&lt;/em&gt;, I think.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's been quipped about a certain political stalemate in our own time&#xA;that one party &quot;never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.&quot; &#xA;What if one of your diplomats is an idiot, or an obstructionist, or a religious nutcase? (Martin Sheen's president in the movie of &lt;em&gt;The Dead Zone.&lt;/em&gt;) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What if your diplomat is a sentient AI come to test your species&#xA;before annihilating it? (&lt;em&gt;Battlestar Galatica&lt;/em&gt;, the Ron Moore&#xA;version, the miniseries.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What if your diplomat doesn't speak the language, or the translator&#xA;disappears? (Also Trek, &quot;Loud as a Whisper.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T22:34:56.403" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9385" CreationDate="2013-11-13T22:36:41.597" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the always wise advice to omit the boring parts...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summarize the boring parts in a short paragraph. Maybe simply refer to them in passing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complicate the terms of the negotiation until the negotiation becomes interesting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add conflicts or problems until the scene becomes interesting. These conflicts need not be related to the subject of the negotiation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a ticking clock. The ticking clock need not be directly related to the subject of the negotiation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disable the viewpoint character in some way, such as by distraction, injury, fatigue, urgent concerns elsewhere, or some other condition that diminishes the character's abilities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase the stakes of the negotiation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complicate the relationships among the negotiating parties. Ex spouse. Former boss. Parent or child. The guy who shot the viewpoint character's father and got away with it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T22:36:41.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9394" CreationDate="2013-11-13T23:13:25.557" Score="5" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, bear with me. Think of it like this: My character is stuck in an situation whereby every time he sleeps, he wakes up at a different time (as in the past/future, not 8:00am), in a different environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He may close his eyes and open them in a future where human civilisation is no more, then sleep once more and open his eyes when dinosaurs are roaming the earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't immediately want to give away where he is or what time to the reader, because I want the reader to feel as lost as the character, but I do want my writing to reflect from the offset that he's now in a different place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I do that without giving away crucial points about the environment itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something I could to subtly through adjusting my pacing/writing style in addition to differently structured/worded descriptions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorUserId="590" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T16:00:31.207" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T02:52:38.637" Title="Best way to convey an immediate change of scenery" Tags="|style|creative-writing|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9392" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9393" CreationDate="2013-11-13T23:40:26.490" Score="9" ViewCount="1237" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the midst of writing my second &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nanowrimo.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NaNo&lt;/a&gt; novel, and I have encountered a problem I didn't anticipate. It is similar to this question, about &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5292/how-best-to-handle-revealing-a-main-characters-name-midway-through-a-long-story&quot;&gt;changing a character's name&lt;/a&gt; in the middle of a story, but the situation in my story is different enough that I think it will need a different answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first part of the story, we meet the protagonist, Nicene. After a second part (which isn't written yet), she is discovered unconscious on the streets by Shadow. During this period, the story is from Shadow's point of view and she is 'the woman'. After she regains consciousness, she tells him that her name is Cherry, and so the narrative continues with her named as Cherry. The trouble is, I am sliding back into her point of view, but I haven't let the reader know that this woman is actually Nicene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really want it to be a surprise &lt;em&gt;to the reader&lt;/em&gt; when they find out who she is, so I have made several connections between the prior part and the current part, and Shadow has made it obvious that he doesn't believe that Cherry is her real name. I am on the verge of revealing her honorifics, which are important and should be a surprise, but might also further confuse the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am stuck on how to transition from the viewpoint of someone who doesn't know her real name ('Cherry') back to her ('Nicene'), because Nicene certainly doesn't think of herself as Cherry—that's just an alter ego—but the reader might not have realized who she really is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a good way of handling this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T11:58:57.277" Title="How to handle a character when she is lying about her name" Tags="|fiction|viewpoint|naming|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9392" CreationDate="2013-11-14T00:00:55.073" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tag Nicene with an utterly distinctive physical feature. When Shadow observes that physical feature, readers will know that it is Nicene.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give Nicene some tag phrase, and have Cherry use the phrase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write an earlier scene in Nicene's POV, where she introduces herself to someone as Cherry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the scenes from Shadow's POV, introduce a character who knows Cherry as Nicene. Or maybe who vaguely remembers meeting her before, and can't remember her name, but knows it is not Cherry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it clear that Cherry knows that her name is not really Cherry. That may be enough of a hint to carry the reader across the transition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T00:00:55.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9391" CreationDate="2013-11-14T00:35:38.567" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get down inside the character's head and focus on sensory details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write what the character sees, hears, smells, feels, tastes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write what he thinks about those sensory details. Pay particular attention to any details that the character has an opinion about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T00:35:38.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9379" CreationDate="2013-11-14T03:09:17.693" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with SF and Lauren that who your POV character is affects this.  But I'll take a different approach in answering this: when you talk about your project socially (e.g. with friends/family), what do you tend to focus on?  What's exciting about this to you?  When you're not worried about making a good, professional, business impression on an editor or publisher and can &quot;just talk&quot;, what comes out of your mouth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The angle that you're most excited about is probably the right one to pursue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T03:09:17.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9392" CreationDate="2013-11-14T07:16:15.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first instinct would be to abstain from writing from Cherry's perspective until her identity is revealed, thereby making her more of a mystery character. Since Nicene is the protagonist, however, that probably won't work, unless you have a second protagonist to focus on during that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend using the name Cherry when writing from her perspective, but as Dale Emery suggests in his answer, use her thoughts to reveal to the reader that this is not her real name. You could write things like, &quot;Cherry, as Shadow calls her, ...&quot; or &quot;The woman known to Shadow as Cherry ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, there is a very good example of such a character in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0316129070&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Abaddon's Gate&lt;/a&gt; by James SA Corey. When writing from this character's perspective, the authors have her refer to herself by her fake name, while making it clear to the reader that this name is indeed fake without revealing her true identity. I think this technique can work regardless of the character's own level of investment in the name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6240" LastEditorUserId="6240" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T11:58:57.277" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T11:58:57.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9392" CreationDate="2013-11-14T07:50:24.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many stories where characters take on false names. In the dialogue, this person goes by the fake name. In the narrative (the part of the text not directly quoted from the speech of the characters) the person goes by the true name. No confusion for the reader about who this person is, because the true name always stays the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hello, my name is Sandy,&quot; Paula said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why can you not do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T07:50:24.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9398" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9419" CreationDate="2013-11-14T08:02:26.227" Score="1" ViewCount="475" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the draft of a story I'm writing (I removed the descriptions):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Sure they allow visitors?” I asked An-Mei as we headed to the pond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It's OK,” she said. “It's not solitary confinement, you know.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I admit you surprised me,” I said. “Inviting me here. After not&#xA;  seeing each other all this time.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Yeah.” An-Mei gazed at the sky with a finger under her chin. “How&#xA;  long had it  been? Two years?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“More or less.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Have I changed?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Not at all.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Neither you,” An-Mei said, inspecting me thoroughly. “You still walk&#xA;  the same way. Head down. Eyes on the ground. Like you've lost all&#xA;  purpose and meaning in life.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It's not that bad. I stumble upon a coin once in a while.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An-Mei grinned. “Idiot.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Nice place, uh?” An-Mei said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Far better than in the postcards you sent me.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“So you actually looked at them.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Of course. I even replied a few.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You did?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Uh-huh.” I counted with my fingers. “Four, I think. In the last one I&#xA;  asked you why you decided to join a place like this. You never&#xA;  answered back.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Oh, I didn't?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I gave her a nod.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An-Mei stared into the pond with a grave expression on her face. Then, pursing her lips, she said, “You know, I've been thinking lately about how vast and dark the ocean is. And so full of scary, dangerous creatures. They can eat you alive, or  drag you to the bottom. Anytime. When you least expect it.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Hey, you know,” I said, pointing to the hiking trail. “I saw someone&#xA;  strange on my way here.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An-Mei raised her eyes. “Someone strange?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I nodded. “A girl. She was alone. Deep in the forest.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Was she staring at an ancient tree?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Yeah,” I said, surprised. “How did you know?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Be careful,” An-Mei said, ignoring my question. “No matter what, don't get close to her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An-Mei&lt;/strong&gt; is more outspoken and direct. She expects people to confirm what she just said, so she often ends sentences with &lt;em&gt;uh?&lt;/em&gt; She also uses more body language and gestures, and talks in metaphors when she's trying to hide pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The protagonist&lt;/strong&gt; is more laid back, but can give quick, thoughtful answers. He's more the passive type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see both use similar words/expressions like &lt;em&gt;yeah&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;you know&lt;/em&gt;. Does this make them sound too similar? If that's the case, what can I do to make them sound more different/unique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T08:27:29.310" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T19:26:02.193" Title="Do characters sound too similar if they use the same words/expressions?" Tags="|creative-writing|dialogue|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9385" CreationDate="2013-11-14T09:42:31.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Michael A. Stackpoles trilogy &quot;Age of Discovery&quot; has a lot of fighting, but many of the characters engage in diplomacy. Diplomacy is a major part of the plot and actually driving the plot (conflicts between bureaucracy and the government, conflicts between nations, conflicts inside the nation). I thought a lot of this made the world seem more real, and especially gave the characters opportunity to think and develop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The diplomacy basically happens between enemies. All parties stick to the protocol, but find ways to insult each other. Conspiracy is another type of diplomacy. Everyone has their goals, everything is trickery. Sometimes the cards are laid open, but only when the other has no other choice than accepting an offer. I feel there is nothing more boring than stereotype characters. The &quot;bad guy&quot; is not bound to be evil, the &quot;good guy&quot; is manipulating as well, bureaucracy does their thing and engages in conspiracy in the worst possible way, too. The characters draw conclusions and learn, develop. Growing/developing characters are interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6241" LastEditorUserId="6241" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T14:42:44.013" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T14:42:44.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9385" CreationDate="2013-11-14T11:55:14.513" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers have shown how diplomacy can be interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But lets assume your question means that it is important to your plot that your characters are diplomats, but that their work as diplomats is not important to your plot, for example because their role as diplomats allows them to easily cross a border or gain access to some place or information or simply gives them a cover story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is similar to a character sleeping: its what they have to do, but its not usually interesting from the point of the plot and you wouldn't bore the readers with telling how your character lays down, pulls up the blanket, closes his eyes, starts to drift off listening to the wind, what he dreams about, how he moves in REM phases, how the light changes with the clouds moving across the moon etc. You just briefly state that they sleep, no more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With everything else, like diplomacy, you can do the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After he was done, John went to bed. When he got up in the morning ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pete and Paul went to meet the ambassador. When they came out of the embassy ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might include the topics discussed, the outcome of the conversation and anything else in such a short summary, or simply have the visit to the ambassador happen between scenes and let your characters discuss the meeting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Okay, let's go see the ambassador.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When they came out, Bob and John looked at each other and shrugged. &amp;quot;Well, that was probably the most boring hour in my life.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T11:55:14.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9403" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-14T14:46:52.393" Score="5" ViewCount="1410" Body="&lt;p&gt;In direction of one of the most famous stories of Hans Christian Andersen &quot;The Little Match Girl&quot;, I want to write a tragedy &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; children; a story dealing with children who are suffering and who may not even have hope for the future. I want to acknowledge such children, who are rarely mentioned in mainstream children's fiction. But I don't know what kind of endings I can write which will be interesting and less horrific. Some of my professional writer friends who read one of my drafts said that the atmosphere of my work is too &lt;em&gt;dark&lt;/em&gt; for a child. One of them said: &quot;It is &lt;em&gt;dangerous&lt;/em&gt; for a child to read this because its ending is too &lt;em&gt;interesting&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;dark&lt;/em&gt; for a child, and there is a fear that he/she lose his/her way of life in this &lt;em&gt;darkness&lt;/em&gt;!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I tell, by myself, the difference between a tragedy for children and a tragedy for adults? What differences are appropriate, in endings or other parts of the story? What kind of usual tragic endings are adequate for children? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like very much to see examples from famous tragic books &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; children (as  appropriate endings) and quotes from drama theoreticians or other professionals (for inappropriate endings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6242" LastEditorDisplayName="user6242" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T23:06:44.103" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T21:06:28.983" Title="How can I write a tragedy for children?" Tags="|fiction|children|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9403" CreationDate="2013-11-14T15:25:15.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A classic one can be for example the Spanish &quot;Lazarillo de Tormes&quot;, I am not really sure if it is adapted, but it is really important in my country: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarillo_de_Tormes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarillo_de_Tormes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then a modern one can be &quot;The boy in the striped pyjamas&quot;, the main idea of the plot is different, but you can feel how the boy suffers: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_in_the_Striped_Pyjamas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_in_the_Striped_Pyjamas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: both are tragedy about children, but not for children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6247" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T15:25:15.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9403" CreationDate="2013-11-14T18:42:16.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of the original Grimm and Andersen fairytales had tragic elements in their endings. The Little Mermaid got legs, but every step felt like walking on broken glass, and she doesn't win the prince; she dissolves into seafoam and bubbles without ever getting her voice back. Cinderella's stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to fit the glass slipper, and her stepmother had to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she dropped dead. Sleeping Beauty was raped in her bespelled sleep, and only awoke when one of the twins she bore sucked on her finger and pulled out the poisoned bit of wood. These were stories &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; children. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the difference between tragedy for children and for adults is mostly in degree, not in kind. The Grimms don't talk about how the knife feels cutting through the foot, or how the blood fills the toe of the slipper and spills out onto the floor which Cinderella (originally Ashputtel) spent so many hours on her knees scrubbing. You get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T18:42:16.133" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9392" CreationDate="2013-11-14T18:58:52.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you need is &lt;strong&gt;a tell.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give Nicene some clear, identifying characteristic. She has purple hair; she doesn't let anybody touch her; she refers to any sort of weapon as a &quot;thingamabob&quot;; whatever. Then, whenever it is you want the reader to understand who she is, you just let her &quot;tell&quot; show:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm Cherry,&quot; the woman said. She wasn't looking him in the eyes; instead, she was examining his sword cautiously. &quot;Say,&quot; she said, &quot;nice thingamabob you've got there.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's particularly effective if you also provide some standard clue that she's not using her real name. What you're doing here is relying on narrative convention - sure, Cherry &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be some complete stranger who happens to have the same mannerism, but the reader understands that this is your way of identifying her for who she really is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever hinting you can give as to Cherry being a false identity will be helpful - the moment the reader &lt;em&gt;recognizes&lt;/em&gt; your character, they'll be wondering why she's in hiding, so you should either answer that question, or else simply acknowledge it every now and again, until it's time to give the answer. That way the reader knows that you, the author, haven't simply forgotten about a huge plot hole, and the they, the reader, haven't missed the crucial dozen pages explaining everything that's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T18:58:52.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9361" CreationDate="2013-11-14T19:44:00.283" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write a synopsis.&lt;/strong&gt; Then get feedback on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your synopsis should be as brief as possible, conveying only the elements that are absolutely crucial to the story - the elements without which the story would be absolutely different. If you were summarizing the first Harry Potter book, you don't need to say &quot;and then he went to a Potions class, and then he went to a Quidditch game, and then...&quot;. Instead, it'd look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Harry&lt;/strong&gt; is an orphan sorely mistreated by his aunt and uncle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;On his 11th birthday, he is suddenly summoned to Hogwarts, a wizarding school. His aunt and uncle try to stop it, but their attempts are in vain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Harry has a secret past: evil Voldemort killed his parents and disappeared; Harry is famous as &quot;The Boy Who Lived.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Harry has lots of exciting adventures at school as he learns about the secret wizarding world. One of his teachers is Snape, who is cruel; another is Quirrell, who is bumbling and pleasant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Bad things are happening at Hogwarts - attacks and destruction. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Harry and his friends find out about the Philospher's Stone, which grants eternal life, and is hidden in Hogwarts. They realize Voldemort is after the stone. They think he is acting through cruel Snape.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;There is a break-in aimed at the stone. Harry and his friends race to reach it first, overcoming wizardly tests and challenges.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It turns out the villain is Quirrel, who is harboring Voldemort. Snape has been trying to protect Harry all along; Harry's misunderstood him completely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The last line of defense makes sure the Stone will go only to someone who wants the Stone itself, rather then the long life and riches it can provide. Harry gets the stone and defeats Voldemort's current incarnation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Harry is sent back to Privet Drive for the summer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this is a very simple, straightforward plot, that skips almost all the &quot;meat&quot; of the book. That's fine. That's what you're after - just the absolute essentials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now your synopsis is critique-able. &lt;strong&gt;If you have any overarching problem that would destroy your story's credibility, it would be evident at this point.&lt;/strong&gt; This plot is clear enough for questions like &quot;How can he possibly write a virus for an alien computer system he's never seen?&quot; or &quot;Why doesn't she just call the cops?&quot; or &quot;He does all that just to get the girl? That sounds awfully stalker-y to me&quot; or &quot;This doesn't seem to have an actual ending&quot; - narrative problems big enough to substantially affect your entire book, not just a couple of scenes. Since you've eliminated all the non-crucial details, it's safe to assume that as long as you stick to the outline, anything &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; that you introduce might still raise narrative problems - but they'll be local, a single character or chapter that needs to be fixed, rather than &quot;this whole book makes no sense.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If necessary, your synopsis might touch on the cast of characters; you might include subplots, or have a seperate synopsis for each major plot thread. The important thing is to include everything that's crucial &lt;em&gt;to the whole&lt;/em&gt;, and leave out anything that isn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, treat feedback with caution. Some reactions you'll be able to dismiss; others will point out weaknesses that you should take care to shore up; some might demolish your plans entirely. Figure out which is which before you get too worked up about any of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T19:44:00.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2013-11-14T20:50:14.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that most of my mistakes occur at or across line breaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After your first proof-reading pass, &lt;strong&gt;change the margin slightly&lt;/strong&gt; on your window - perhaps just by half an inch. This will cause all the text to wrap at a different point and previously hidden errors will become apparent on the second pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I think that (as others have suggested) reading it out loud is the very best way, this way is quick and will always turn up a few more. In fact, it will reveal errors that will be MISSED by reading it aloud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6256" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T20:50:14.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9392" CreationDate="2013-11-14T22:51:28.787" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be almost the polar opposite of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/9396&quot;&gt;Stephan's&lt;/a&gt;; I think you ought to try switching back to Nicene/Cherry's viewpoint, at least temporarily, very soon after she's found by Shadow.  While in her viewpoint, make sure to have Shadow address her as &quot;Cherry&quot;, while consistently using her real name in narrative and any internal thoughts.  Done right, this should make it clear to the reader that these two names refer to the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, one option would be to &lt;strong&gt;retell the initial encounter from both characters' viewpoints.&lt;/strong&gt;  That way, you can first describe from Shadow's viewpoint how he finds the strange unconscious woman, and have her introduce herself as Cherry, and then (immediately, or at least fairly soon) switch back to her viewpoint and show how &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt; feels about waking up and being confronted by a strange man, and then directly show what she's thinking as she decides to give a false name for herself.  You can then continue the story for a while from her viewpoint, and then, if you want, switch back to his when a convenient opportunity presents itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, giving some clues (like, say, a distinctive physical appearance, as suggested in some of the other answers) about Nicene/Cherry's identity even before you switch to her viewpoint could help further reduce the interval during which the reader might be unsure of who she it.  Still, even if you deliberately go out of your way &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to provide any such clues, it could still work as long as you do the viewpoint switch soon enough.  In fact, one possible opportunity for the switch might be &lt;em&gt;immediately&lt;/em&gt; after she introduces herself as Cherry:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You can call me Shadow,&quot; he said.  &quot;It's as good a name as any.  And what's your name, sweetheart?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The woman took a while to reply, her eyes flicking between his face and the room, as if she was trying to make a decision.  &quot;Cherry.  My name's Cherry,&quot; she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;#&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first thing Nicene became aware of was the pain in her head.  The pain, and the strange fleeting lights and shapes that slowly gave way to an unfamiliar room as she opened her eyes.  In the doorway, watching her, stood a man she didn't recognize.  She wasn't sure how long he'd been there, but he seemed content to just stand there and wait as she gathered her senses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Who are you?&quot; she asked the man.  It didn't seem like the most original thing to ask, but then, she wasn't feeling very original right then.  &quot;What is this place?&quot; she continued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You can call me Shadow,&quot; he said.  &quot;It's as good a name as any.  And what's your name, sweetheart?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Apologies for stealing your character names for the example above.  Any resemblance of the example, or of the characters in it, to your actual story should be considered entirely coincidental.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3172" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T22:51:28.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9403" CreationDate="2013-11-15T09:14:37.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you will find &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; tragedy for children found acceptable in these times. Grimm and Andersen got &quot;grandfathered in&quot; for being classics, even though they were rewritten in more &quot;acceptable&quot; forms for wide public. Currently though, when &lt;em&gt;Uncle Tom's Cabin&lt;/em&gt; is found racist for using real language of times it describes, when &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; is bashed for promoting occult practices, when you hear angry voices of angry moms whenever a cartoon displays anything but sweet cheerful imagery, the market for tragedy for children is pretty much dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a hundred good ways to do this, but you can be sure there will be people &lt;em&gt;outraged&lt;/em&gt; at the very idea, and unable to accept even the most gentle of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extend the story past death. The soul finds peace.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reunion when it's too late. Finding peace while mortally ill, on deathbed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ride into the setting sun - abandon hopes that were ruined, give up in a vain struggle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...and on moonless nights you can see a ghost picking flowers, where...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The life was such a struggle, that a peaceful death is a welcome respite.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sentenced to an eternal duty, never able to get the deserved rest. The ultimate fate is bad, but isn't the worst.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to make the ending bittersweet, not just bitter. Give the reader a small candy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can give you one &lt;em&gt;modern&lt;/em&gt; example: Spielberg's &lt;em&gt;A.I.&lt;/em&gt;. It would be a story of futile search sentenced to ultimate failure, but it's given an extra ending, where the protagonist is given &lt;em&gt;one day&lt;/em&gt; of his wish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T09:14:37.193" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2013-11-15T13:14:21.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine recommended James N. Frey’s work (&lt;em&gt;How to Write a Damn Good Novel&lt;/em&gt;, and so on). I was underwhelmed by those books, but I noticed that Frey frequently cited Lajos Egri’s &lt;em&gt;The Art of Dramatic Writing&lt;/em&gt;, which I &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; find very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend John Gardner’s &lt;em&gt;The Art of Fiction&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T13:14:21.963" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-11-15T13:14:21.963" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2" CreationDate="2013-11-15T14:47:03.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;James Wood, in &lt;em&gt;How Fiction Works&lt;/em&gt;, said that in a first-person narrative, the narrator is talking &lt;em&gt;to someone&lt;/em&gt;. I don’t know if that’s a hard-and-fast rule of fiction, but it’s a powerful idea. Let’s say you’re writing a love story with a first-person male narrator. Is the narrator telling this story to his mother? To his lover’s child? To a male friend? To the woman he started dating on the rebound after he was dumped?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T14:47:03.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="392" CreationDate="2013-11-15T17:20:53.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a short story whose two characters were a white-collar criminal being held under house arrest in rural Maine, and a guerrilla soldier who broke into her house. It became clear as I developed the story that these characters had different value systems: the soldier saw himself as a warrior with honor and pride, and the criminal saw herself as a rational businesswoman. On the one hand, I really liked the dynamic that this contrast gave to the story. On the other hand, I haven’t sold it yet. :-/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T17:20:53.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5609" CreationDate="2013-11-15T17:29:08.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It’s hard to give a useful answer to this question, because the vast majority of work submitted for publication is really, really awful. One editor has a “rough breakdown of manuscript characteristics, from most to least obvious rejections” &lt;a href=&quot;http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/004641.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (scroll down to the numbered list). If you can write a story that is engaging to &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; reader who is not a close relative or otherwise concerned about hurting your feelings, then you are not guaranteed a sale, but you are already ahead of the curve, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T17:29:08.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2013-11-15T18:43:44.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Print out your work, as others have suggested. Print 2 or even 4 pages per sheet, thus using fewer trees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newer versions of Word (and most other word processors, I'd imagine) attempt to catch words that are spelled correctly but used in the wrong context. An example I see all the time is 'been' for 'being'. E.g. 'Are you been serious?'. In Word, potential errors like this are highlighted in blue when the grammar checker's on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I use an online editor called Autocrit. It's one of the few pieces of software I pay for. It highlights commonly overused words, repeated words and much more. &#xA;For the novel I recently published, I put the whole thing through Autocrit before giving it to my human editor. It took me ages to review and address the issues this showed up, but it livened up my writing no end and left my editor free to focus on higher-level issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastEditorUserId="6266" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T18:50:17.840" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T18:50:17.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9398" CreationDate="2013-11-15T19:09:29.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Characters can use similar verbal expressions if they come from the same backgrounds. Still, even in the case of minor characters, each should have his/her own unique expression or tic to set him/her apart from the others. With minor characters, often this is based on their purpose in the story (A receptionist might be polite, an overworked police officer gruff, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With major characters, the characters should sound distinct. That's not just because you want readers to easily distinguish them from one but because each character has his/her own motivation and personality. Dialogue is a way to show readers what those motivations/personalities are and to push the plot forward as characters speak to press forward with achieving their goals via their motivations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, you’ve done a nice job in the above passage of ensuring the dialogue centers on each character attempting to achieve his/her goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6226" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-11-24T19:26:02.193" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T19:26:02.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9189" CreationDate="2013-11-15T19:52:34.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In science fiction, setting typically is more vital to the story than in other genres. By definition, the location in a science fiction story must be a place in which some scientific discovery or concept alters the world so that it looks different than the one in which we live. Because of this, many science fiction authors start writing their stories by creating the setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this, a lot of science fiction works around the “edges of ideas”; that is, technology and the background setting come onstage. People generally lead different kinds of lives in science fiction stories than they do in our world because the technology and background affects their day-to-day decisions, from the most trivial of our habits to the most profound of cultural shifts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of this in regards to new technology might be a civilization capable of producing a light, flexible and strong type of carbon nanotube on an industrial scale. How would this world be different than ours? On a mundane level, you might never have to buy more than one toothbrush in your life as the bristles are made from this material. Perhaps rather than being disposable, a toothbrush that stays with you throughout your life becomes as significant to people as other objects that follow us through our lives, such as cuff links or a necklace. More profoundly, such a material would allow us to build space elevators, opening us to becoming a spacefaring civilization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of edges of ideas in regards to the background would be if living in a tidally locked planet around an M-class star. On such a world, people only reside in the open air along a narrow strip between the side facing the star and the side facing away. So how does this affect them? Well, there’s no night, just perpetual twilight. How does that affect their biorhythms and their sense of romance (There are no sunsets to watch, after all.). In addition, ground transportation systems mostly run in two directions (north and south), greatly affecting the flow of resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From either of these settings, you easily could build characters and a plot. Ask yourself how the science fiction setting you’ve created might symbolize an idea that your characters would differ over. For example, on our tidally locked planet, the civilization may be used to living in its confined strip but one character wants to venture into the cold dark side and explore…something that his colleagues and family find expensive, dangerous and even silly. Going to the planet’s dark side could be a metaphor for some people’s ambitions in our world to explore outer space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6226" LastEditorUserId="590" LastEditDate="2013-11-22T17:47:45.547" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T17:47:45.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9403" CreationDate="2013-11-15T23:46:34.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read aloud to my children regularly, and, knowing nothing about the book other than it had won a Newbery Medal, I naively picked up &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_to_Terabithia_%28novel%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bridge to Terabithia&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our nightly read-alouds. If you're not familiar with the book, it has, shall we say, a &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; tragic plot twist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Years later, when a movie based on the book was released, I remember reading a lot of consternated letters from irate parents. Apparently, many parents were caught off-guard in a similar manner, going to the theater with excited smiles, and driving home wiping tears from their cheeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming it's very well-written, if you end up authoring a book that doesn't have the usual storybook happy ending, be prepared to face both high praise and sharp criticism. &lt;em&gt;Terabithia&lt;/em&gt; has received plenty of both in its day. Some give high praise for the way the author handles its delicate and mature subject matter, some express ire at giving children so much to grieve over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line?  Remember your audience. Find some way to let the kids down easy after you've punched them in the gut and knocked the wind out of them. Do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; be graphic about a beloved character's demise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read nightly to my kids for about 20 years. We went through some very memorable books, but no book ever hit me harder than &lt;em&gt;Terabithia&lt;/em&gt;. That said, if I had a chance to go back in time and make a more informed decision, I would take the book home again without hesitation. Sure, it was a rough read, but we had more than enough fairytale endings in other books to make up for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an epilogue, all my children seem very well-adjusted to this day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T23:46:34.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9385" CreationDate="2013-11-16T02:57:44.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm partial to a bored diplomat:&lt;p&gt;&#xA;&quot;... would such a ratio be acceptable?&quot; The question hung between the diplomats like a point of contention. As Julie began to form her answer she wondered what ratios had to do with the color of her nail polish and the remembered they were talking about commodities, Peruvian coffee or was it pork bellies? Oh shit!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T02:57:44.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3152" CreationDate="2013-11-16T03:22:35.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't use Microsoft Word. When you pay more attention to what the font looks like than your character's motives you get beautifully typeset crap. Unless you have need of six different types of quotes, don't even look at your font until you are negotiating with a publisher, and with the increased ebook market maybe that is a decision that is out of your hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T03:22:35.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9425" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9426" CreationDate="2013-11-16T11:18:27.977" Score="0" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked this question earlier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9340/what-are-the-stages-of-the-guardians-journey&quot;&gt;What are the stages of The Guardian&amp;#39;s Journey?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In constructing a story, I plan on following the following patterns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Hero's Journey: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero%27s_Journey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Hero's Journey&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Villain's Quest: &lt;a href=&quot;http://newauthors.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/the-villains-quest/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Villain's Quest&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is, what would be the structure of &quot;The Guardian's Journey&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After talking with my sister, who has a Masters in Education and English, I discovered that what I'm looking for doesn't actually exist. She suggested that I do my own research to create this new thing. Again, this is &quot;The Hero's Journey&quot; mixed with &quot;The Goddess's Journey&quot;, &quot;The Villain's Journey&quot;, and &quot;The Guardian's Journey&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is literary research, which is something I'm not really experienced in. Where do I start, and what would be the process in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5607" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T22:57:11.863" Title="How do I do literary research on an unresearched topic?" Tags="|research|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9425" CreationDate="2013-11-16T14:58:00.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd lay out the existing journeys in some kind of grid (Excel might actually work for this) and see what commonalities there are, or if some kind of theme appears. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a list of what defines a Guardian. Some suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this character interact with the Hero?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this character intervene to protect the Hero? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this character advise the Hero?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where does the Guardian show up in the story?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where does the Guardian's arc start and end?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the Guardian learn or change?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you have a Guardian if any of those elements are missing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know what you're looking for, then you have to start looking for stories with that character archetype, and see how many of those stories match up to your hypothesis. So yes, lots of reading and watching movies. Revise your hypothesis as the evidence mounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Please note that &lt;em&gt;Guardian&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Hero&lt;/em&gt; are gender-neutral terms in this context.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T14:58:00.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9427" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9433" CreationDate="2013-11-17T12:46:30.040" Score="2" ViewCount="349" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story about a girl whose boyfriend is doing in internship in another city. She goes to visit him every week. But the guy always call at the last minute, saying he can't come and gives her some lame excuse. So every time, the girl ends up sitting alone in the city's train station, at &lt;em&gt;Sushi Express&lt;/em&gt;, eating sushi and meeting some strange characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to call the story &lt;em&gt;Sushi Express&lt;/em&gt; which is a real &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yelp.com/biz/sushi-express-evans-mills&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sushi&lt;/a&gt; shop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it legally OK to use it as the title of my short story? If not, what trick can I use to sort this out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I thought of other names but they sound terrible: &lt;em&gt;Sushi Expressway, High-speed Sushi, Speedy Sushi,&lt;/em&gt; etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not planning to publish the story yet. But I hope I won't have any problems in the future (based on the legal system of all over the world, since I'm more likely to publish it on Amazon.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-11-17T15:16:53.010" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T16:10:08.433" Title="Can you use a company's name as title for a short story?" Tags="|creative-writing|legal|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9428" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-17T15:36:18.647" Score="0" ViewCount="5659" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a curriculum vitae and in &lt;strong&gt;Special skills&lt;/strong&gt; section I wrote as the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;8- Special skills&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the following skills:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;C++&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Objective-C&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I indent &quot;I have the following skills&quot; line to be exactly above the dots or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6278" LastEditorUserId="6022" LastEditDate="2013-11-19T08:48:18.237" LastActivityDate="2021-10-08T06:30:06.417" Title="Should I indent when I write just a short sentence?" Tags="|style|resume|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9429" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9443" CreationDate="2013-11-17T19:45:06.200" Score="3" ViewCount="2959" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once again, I traveled three hours only to eat sushi, alone. Cars passed by and people streamed along the sidewalk. Hanging in the air, I could feel the faint scent of spring. Or maybe it was just the smell of the lilies in the flower shop next to me. Their stem curved ever so slightly, and their orange petals sought the sunlight that poured through the window. The weather was humid, just as Taipei has always been. And terribly hot! But a breeze would come along now and then, softly caressing my skin. It felt really pleasant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wasn't sure if this scenery reflected my mood, though. In fact, I&#xA;  wasn't sure what my emotions were right now. Anger? Frustration?&#xA;  Disappointment? I've never been sure of my own feelings. Sometimes I&#xA;  confuse them with one another, sometimes they mix together. And from&#xA;  time to time, they evaporate. Hiss. Just like water on hot pavement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What had A-Ken come up with this time? Oh, yeah. His lab experiment had&#xA;  failed. Something about making flies mate, lay eggs, and observe the&#xA;  inherited features of each generation. He had accidentally put too much&#xA;  alcohol to the cotton in the bottle—and recklessly assassinated them. The idea&#xA;  had been to just use the right amount to put the flies asleep, so he could&#xA;  examine each characteristic. Now that every single of them was dead,&#xA;  he had to start all over again. I had no idea why this research&#xA;  interested him so much. How much fun it was to spend the whole day&#xA;  watching flies fuck?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Correct Answer: Female.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the narrator feel like a female? I know every woman is different (just as every man is different. Well, not that different), but I think they share similar ways of perceiving the surroundings, and expressing their feelings and thoughts. If I didn't archive that, how can I improve it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's more, in case you're bored or taking a long break:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I stopped listening. Heat began rising in my head. I could feel the anger starting to take control over me.&#xA;  Fortunately, I'm very good at dealing with it. The thing I usually do is&#xA;  to picture a stone sinking into a pond. And I watch it as it gradually vanishes into its shallow waters. That usually&#xA;  does it. Don't ask me why. The thing just works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I felt a burning sensation in my heart. I wanted to cry. I wanted to&#xA;  shout at him, tell him that, yes, it would be good for his&#xA;  relationship with his professor—but it would damage ours. And besides,&#xA;  I was already here! However, I knew I couldn't protest. It was my fault. I had come too&#xA;  early, and he probably thought I was still in Nantou. I closed my eyes&#xA;  and pictured my beloved stone. Anger is a survival strategy, just like&#xA;  any other feeling. I always wondered what would happened if you got&#xA;  rid of it. In theory, you would die faster; you would be less likely&#xA;  to scare or stay away from the people who can hurt you. But anyway,&#xA;  that wasn't an option for me. I couldn't just leave A-Ken. I just&#xA;  couldn't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-11-19T16:47:31.620" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T20:27:40.277" Title="What gender do you think the narrator is?" Tags="|creative-writing|characters|narrative|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-11-19T16:39:28.333" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9430" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-17T21:41:42.980" Score="1" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw - I think at least a few times now - authors separating sections of a story with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;~MC~MC~MC~&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or something similar. What does that mean? Is it an acronym for something, or just some odd artistic liberty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-27T17:10:52.283" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T17:10:52.283" Title="What does &quot;MC&quot; in section break mean?" Tags="|style|formatting|structure|acronyms|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9429" CreationDate="2013-11-17T21:43:30.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;mostly no. Overall the three paragraphs read without significant gender hints. the third paragraph might hint a little bit of feminine characteristics, but only in context (in this case the title of your question). On the other hand there are also no significant male hints either. What you have written could be used for male, female, neuter, or undisclosed depending on the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T21:43:30.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9428" CreationDate="2013-11-17T22:03:07.220" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep the style consistent across the whole document, no matter how short the paragraphs. If you indent any paragraph above a list, keep doing so. There are various guidelines if you should indent or not, but none of them are solid rules. Consistency is an ancient rule of style though. So, no rule, but don't make exceptions for short lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a recommendation: In recent times, paragraph indent has given way to wider inter-paragraph breaks. OTOH, lists are frequently indented whole - bullets/numbers and list items alike. So, the recommendation would be: don't indent. Keep it flush with all non-list text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T22:03:07.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9427" CreationDate="2013-11-17T22:07:37.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there is one simple and universal answer: Ask Sushi Express for written permission. If the story puts their shop in a good light, they should be glad to provide it (free publicity/product placement) and you'll be in the clear legally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, BESW's comment is right; that depends on your local legal system. Answers will vary depending on where you and Sushi Express are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T22:07:37.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9391" CreationDate="2013-11-17T22:18:39.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ceiling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's amazing how much and how little one can tell about their environment from observing the little piece of ceiling above their head. It's the first thing you see as you open your eyes (while sleeping on your back), and combining with Dale's answer, will give a clear and obvious sense of difference: while you can hear birds that weren't there, or your roommate started working on a soundtrack for a movie, it's damn hard to replace your apartment roof with a canopy of giant ferns and horsetails, or a dome with view on ocean from below. Additionally, after waking up your eyes focus slowly, and your brain goes up to speed slowly too, so you may skimp on detail or expand them (mentioning glaze on eyes and haze in mind) as you see fit, to differentiate between just &quot;different&quot; and describing what place that actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T22:18:39.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9427" CreationDate="2013-11-17T22:20:13.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the united states what you are as is probably fair use (fair dealing in other jurisdictions) but few companies understand fair use, so you will probably be sued and even if you win which might be problematic, I have seen district court judges ignore fair use, might be very expensive, so be careful. I would personally recommend a longer title such as Thursday at sushi express, and licencing or endorsement. (ask sushi express if they would like you to promote their second best selling dish and collect a little money. which would be an implicit licence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never heard anything specific about this restaurant's legal practices or their lawyers, so my advice is based on typical corporations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T22:20:13.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9430" CreationDate="2013-11-17T22:33:32.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you hit a utf8 error. I have seen cases where the author will select some fancy character because they want something prettier than a horizontal rule, and because the character is not part of the expected characters for the software tools in the workflow garbage is produced. I could give you the full technical details, but you probably don't care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line think of it as a botched horizontal rule, and try not to repeat the mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T22:33:32.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9391" CreationDate="2013-11-18T02:52:38.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The waking trigger could be different each time.  Present: annoying alarm clock buzz.  Past: Cuckoo clock chiming.  Way Past: Blacksmith's anvil.  WayWay Past: Giant dragonfly buzzing.  Future: Talking robot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T02:52:38.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9429" CreationDate="2013-11-18T02:59:30.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is true that nothing you wrote specifically says it is a female narrator, I do think that the perception is of one, due to the attention to small details of a flower, and the inner dialogue about emotions.  I'm not saying that it HAS to be a female, but I would think it was based on that, and I also e-mailed the snippet to a couple of others who both said it sounded feminine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6275" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T02:59:30.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-18T03:29:40.240" Score="8" ViewCount="2625" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this question could be considered a &quot;list&quot; question, or &quot;subjective&quot;, but I think that it is a valid question and can be quite helpful for a lot of authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, as a self-published author, how can I go about promoting my book if it is written under a pen name?  Very few friends/family know that I wrote it, and I don't want to really tell everyone that I am the author.  I have thought about trying to do a &quot;book signing&quot; at a bookstore, but cannot do it in my hometown, due to being &quot;known&quot;.  And I also don't know how to do a signing for a person that doesn't technically exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have six books published, and have had some good things said about a couple of them.  But the word of mouth is extremely slow, and I have sold less than 20 copies of any book.  I enjoy writing, but get discouraged when I see that no one has read my work.  Someone suggested I send some review copies various places and ask them to do reviews, but this costs money, and I also do not know how or who to approach about doing reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6275" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-22T03:55:24.623" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T03:55:24.623" Title="Promoting your books when you've written under a pseudonym/pen name" Tags="|self-publishing|marketing|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9215" CreationDate="2013-11-18T04:00:32.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love alternate history, this is where you take a historical account and change something, aliens invade during world war two, I travel back in time to kill my grandfather, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are specific rules to handling historical characters, firstly they aren't your character, be true to their known character. If you change a historical character you must have a good and obvious reason for the change that is clearly explained. Companies are built of people If you change a company you must either change the regulatory environment first, or change which people or change a historical character subject to the above guidelines, otherwise the company is not your character, be as accurate as possible. when in doubt let the company or historical character be great whether it be like taco bell in demolition man or like Sampson as he died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a historical character won't do what you want, kill him, all dead men are heroes or mayrters and the guy who took over can be your own creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although these rules may not fit what you are doing exactly I still think they may be of help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T04:00:32.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9429" CreationDate="2013-11-18T12:00:34.340" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read a book on Creative Writing before that suggested that if you describe an acquaintance of the protagonist as beautiful, then they will (in the reader's mind) automatically become the protagonists love interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discriminations aside, if the protagonist does certain things, or you describe certain things, it does give readers some preconceptions about the scene, in much the way that my example above does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the cool breeze caressing the skin, the detailed description of the flowers and the 'faint scent of spring' in the first paragraph certainly gives me the impression of the female/feminine narrator. The second two paragraphs don't perpetuate this, but the question is: has the seed already been planted in the first paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These descriptions are quite feminine observations (again, discrimination aside), and too many of them in one go does give the reader a distinct impression about the narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a lot to do with the characteristics of the reader as much as it is about the words you've written, and how they project their selves into what they read. All readers will try to identify with some aspects of what they're reading and subconsciously make decisions about whether or not the written words support them. As a male reader, I felt that the first paragraph paints the scene of a female narrator. Female readers (or readers of different personalities) may not feel the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T12:00:34.340" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9444" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9446" CreationDate="2013-11-18T13:49:16.757" Score="2" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of writing a book and through my plans I know I have a fairly crucial, game-changing scene coming up. I can't help but put it off!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to force myself to sit and write it through because quality will suffer. How do I help this procrastination and regain the spirit of my writing enough to hit this scene?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any techniques, or ideas, about how I can overcome this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read through the question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/495/how-do-you-deal-with-procrastination-when-writing&quot;&gt;How do you deal with procrastination when writing?&lt;/a&gt; but this seems to do with procrastination on a whole story level rather than what I'm dealing with, which is avoiding writing a particular scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in a situation whereby I'm procrastinating too much and I feel I'm overexpanding the scenes around my game-changer and as a result they are getting bloated. I'm almost over-writing the scenes around it to sort of delay the actual writing of the scene!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T18:05:09.520" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T18:05:09.520" Title="Procrastination on a Crucial Scene in my Book" Tags="|psychology-of-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9444" CreationDate="2013-11-18T14:26:03.073" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know it's a critical scene, and you're scared to screw it up. That's reasonable. The problem is that you're so scared of screwing it up that you can't even let yourself start, because you're afraid of &quot;breaking it.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rationally, of course, you know that you can edit, rewrite, or start over. But the fear of the blank page can be crushing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you find ways around it. Some suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sit down with a good friend and a recording device. &lt;em&gt;Tell&lt;/em&gt; your&#xA;friend about the scene, in minute detail.&lt;/strong&gt; Explain what you want to&#xA;do. Tell the friend who is in the scene, what they're doing, what&#xA;your goals are as the author. Share some dialogue. Totally riff.&#xA;Don't be afraid to say things out of context or jump back and forth&#xA;in the storyline. Have a conversation. The next day, play back the&#xA;recording and transcribe as much as you can. That will give you&#xA;something on the page which you can then edit and flesh out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write a detailed outline, or detailed notes.&lt;/strong&gt; Don't worry about the&#xA;wording. In fact, make it choppy on purpose, so you are deliberately&#xA;NOT worried about how it sounds. Just do a dump of everything you&#xA;want to accomplish in that scene, and then you can rearrange the&#xA;bits. Again, this gives you something on the page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write it backwards.&lt;/strong&gt; Seriously. Why not? Start from the last line and&#xA;put things before it. Takes some of the pressure off because you've&#xA;already gotten to the end part.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that you cannot edit a blank page. You need to get something underway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T14:26:03.073" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9444" CreationDate="2013-11-18T15:00:53.503" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are two reasons you might be procrastinating on the scene:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are afraid of doing it wrong (in that case follow Lauren Ipsum's advice).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's boring and you don't feel like writing it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's the second choice I suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. &lt;strong&gt;Remove the scene.&lt;/strong&gt; I know it hurts. But something I realized is that progress is not how many words you write, but how many &lt;em&gt;decisions&lt;/em&gt; you make for your story. Removing a complete scene is a very big decision. Hence an important one. (But since you said it's a crucial scene, maybe this isn't the case.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. &lt;strong&gt;Change the scene so it becomes fun/exciting to write.&lt;/strong&gt; In the past I procrastinated on various scenes. Later I realized it was because I felt they were cliched/boring. Once I came up with a new and exciting way of writing them I couldn't stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-11-18T15:06:09.663" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T15:06:09.663" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9427" CreationDate="2013-11-18T15:53:11.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(disclaimer: I am not a lawyer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Sushi Express” is presumably a trademark, so if you use it as the title of the story, then you are trying to profit off their corporate reputation.  Even if the story portrays the store in a favorable light, some insufficiently busy lawyer in Sushi Express’s corporate headquarters might decide that if anyone is going to make money off short stories using their trademark, then by God, they should get a piece of the action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T15:53:11.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9425" CreationDate="2013-11-18T16:10:54.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read a lot of books with Guardian characters, and as you read, &lt;em&gt;pay attention to your own reactions to the story&lt;/em&gt;. Then step back and ask yourself why certain scenes or paths of character development worked or didn’t work for you as a reader.  It can be especially helpful to collect examples of stories that work &lt;em&gt;badly&lt;/em&gt;, and stories that “break the rules” but seem to work anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adler and Van Doren’s &lt;em&gt;How to Read a Book&lt;/em&gt; also provides some useful tips on research in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T16:10:54.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9403" CreationDate="2013-11-18T16:28:18.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;God save the next generation from adults who don’t want children to feel sad, ever, for any reason (except perhaps for failing to follow the advice of their elders).  If I ever write a story that makes children cry the way that &lt;em&gt;Bridge to Terabithia&lt;/em&gt; made me cry, I will feel like I’ve accomplished something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a series of DVDs on paleontology (dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals) that my kids just love.  Each episode tells the story of some plucky little animal, emblematic of its era, and in most of the episodes, the hero is tragically eaten, or starves to death, or chokes on dust kicked up from a meteor strike, or some such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this show was produced by the BBC.  If an American company had made it, all the stories would have happy endings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T16:28:18.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2013-11-18T17:51:23.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you doing any technical writing? I work for a professional services company that does a lot of technical writing. We use automated scripts to help us with the trivial stuff so we can focus on content. One example is dealing with acronyms and making sure that they are called out correctly. This can take hours of your valuable time if you do it manually but goes much faster with a little technical help.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Becoming part of a strong team would be my second advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6280" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-11-18T18:36:58.600" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T18:36:58.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9440" CreationDate="2013-11-18T18:44:52.327" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Do book signings outside your home town.  How well-known are you?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Unless your pseudonym is the opposite sex from you, just sign with your pseudonym.  I'm sure Mark Twain didn't sign books as &quot;Samuel Clemens.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) You REALLY need to put in the work to figure out how to make digital editions.  You will find that it's worth the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T18:44:52.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9425" CreationDate="2013-11-18T22:57:11.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe I don't understand, but (I think) the whole point of a Guardian is that they DON'T change, they DON'T undergo a journey.  At least, classically.  The hero is the one who changes, who undergoes a journey, who experiences peril.  The Guardian is above all that, which is why the Guardian is usually a god or demigod of some sort.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Gandalf the Grey is a mix of Guardian and Hero.  To Bilbo, GtG is unchanging, a Guardian.  GtG pops in and out of &quot;The Hobbit,&quot; almost as a deus ex machina.  Only in a few places does GtG exhibit Hero attributes.  In contrast, to the Fellowship in LotR, GtG is more Hero, less Guardian.  After his death and return, he's undergone an apotheosis (sort-of).  Gandalf the White is almost pure Guardian.  His limitations are self-imposed.  He is only allowed to aid the Heroes, not do everything for them.  (In the books, that is.  The 3rd LotR movie has GtW as a defeatable UberHero, a more powerful version of GtG.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is that, once you have Guardians undergoing journeys, you're just writing about Heroes.  That is why you can't find anything about &quot;The Guardian's Journey.&quot;  However, Guardians and Heroes are archetypes.  Clearly you CAN have mixtures of them in a single character.  Perhaps what you really need is &quot;The Journey from Hero to Guardian.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T22:57:11.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9429" CreationDate="2013-11-19T00:52:54.113" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I can't tell if the &lt;em&gt;narrator&lt;/em&gt; is supposed to be male or female, but I do kind of get the feeling that the &lt;em&gt;author&lt;/em&gt; is probably male — especially if the narrator is supposed to be female.  (And yes, I got that impression even before looking at your name and profile picture.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, let me unpack that a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first paragraph, what stand out (at least in the context of this question) are the mentions of scents and soft tactile sensations (&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;breeze [...] softly caressing my skin&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;).  That doesn't necessarily signify anything about the narrator's gender — he/she might just be in a mood to notice such things.&#xA;Still, there is a stereotype saying that women are &lt;em&gt;supposed&lt;/em&gt; to pay more attention to such things than men.  It's quite prominent in popular culture and media; just look at the portrayal of men and women in advertising on television, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, another aspect of the stereotype is that &lt;em&gt;men&lt;/em&gt; are supposed to associate such things &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; women: pay a bit more attention, and a lot of the ads featuring young women enjoying gentle sensations are actually aimed at least as much at male as at female viewers.  So if I &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt; to guess the author's and/or the narrator's gender based on this paragraph, I'd guess that the author was a man writing about a woman, in a manner they've learned to associate as &amp;quot;feminine&amp;quot; from popular media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next paragraph also evokes a female stereotype: it deals with the narrator's emotions, which is something women are supposed to be stereotypically more aware of.  On the other hand, the paragraph doesn't actually portray the narrator as being particularly well in touch with his/her feelings: it even explicitly says that he/she's &amp;quot;never been sure of&amp;quot; them.  So all I'm really getting from this paragraph is that the narrator is being introspective, but not used to it (or possibly that they're used to being habitually confused about their own emotions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the whole of it, I'd take the second paragraph as (weak) evidence for either that the narrator is male, or possibly that they're a stereotypical female portrayed by a male author.  Simply and rather crudely put, while I'm sure women can be just as confused about their emotions as men, I wouldn't expect most women in current western culture to &lt;em&gt;admit&lt;/em&gt; to it in quite those words, describing their lack of self-awareness almost as if it were something to be proud of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the last paragraph, the only part of it that I find potentially gender-signifying in any way is the last word, &amp;quot;fuck&amp;quot;, which in some western subcultures might be considered as a rather &amp;quot;unfeminine&amp;quot; term to use.  Still, without further cultural context, that's hardly conclusive evidence either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I'm getting a rather strong impression of the narrator's mood and/or personality, but not much about their gender so far.  Also, even if I might've occasionally sounded a bit critical above, from the excerpt alone I can't actually find any real fault in the characterization: if anything, the narrator sounds like an interesting character, and I'd like to see more of his/her personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; it later turned out that all those references to scents, flowers and emotions were there just to make the narrator seem stereotypically female, I &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; feel quite sorely disappointed — especially since they don't even do that very effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I'd like to finish this with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/352821-a-man-once-asked-me-how-i-managed-in&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a quote&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_L._Sayers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dorothy L. Sayers&lt;/a&gt; that someone else once brought up in a similar discussion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. &amp;quot;Well,&amp;quot; said the man, &amp;quot;I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3172" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T00:52:54.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2013-11-19T01:21:29.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for you to practice Ernest Hemingway's advice of leaving some time between writing and proofreading so you come to it fresher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6281" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T01:21:29.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9455" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9464" CreationDate="2013-11-19T04:29:55.720" Score="1" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to figure out whether I need to cite these poems or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Out, Out—” has its morbid description of a young boy bleeding out and&#xA;  its underlying theme of death. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” has its&#xA;  pessimistic theme that nothing beautiful can stay beautiful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I speak so generally that I&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have no idea if it's ethical or not to exclude citation&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What I would cite were I to. Generally you cite poems by line numbers. If one were to cite a poem based on a description of its theme, doesn't that encompass the &lt;em&gt;entire&lt;/em&gt; poem? This has more to do with the in-text citation part. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6283" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-12-20T03:16:21.140" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T03:16:21.140" Title="Is an MLA citation needed for a broad description of a poem's theme?" Tags="|academic-writing|citations|essay|poetry|mla|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9457" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9478" CreationDate="2013-11-19T10:00:20.593" Score="2" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;The bigger, and more famous, a city, the more it tends to show up in thrillers. The biggest ones - New York, London, Paris, Tokyo - have been set-pieces in any number of thrillers, and I can assume most of my readers have read other novels using them for setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write a thriller featuring a major city like this, I'm not sure what atmosphere I should be aiming for: Do I want my description of the city to play to the reader's expectations, to give them what they're expecting? Or should I prefer a fresh angle, an unusual take, something substantially different from the typical portrayal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like familiarity risks cliche and dullness; but a significant twist may leave readers feeling cheated, not getting what they love about the familiar settings to begin with. Narratively, I could go either way here; my choices in detail and atmosphere will obviously affect the segments within the major cities, but the novel as a whole will be fine either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T09:02:23.670" Title="In a thriller, should my famous cities be familiar, or fresh?" Tags="|setting|thriller|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9457" CreationDate="2013-11-19T11:02:00.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're going to set something in a familiar city, I want all the details to prove you know it. I want it to be like when we watch &lt;em&gt;Elementary&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Person of Interest&lt;/em&gt; and we're constantly pausing to see what street the show was filmed on because we recognize the bodega on the corner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're just setting the book in A Major City, and the character and flavor and personality of the city are not any real part of the story, then pick something fresh. Don't send your character to W80th Street and not bother to mention Zabar's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T11:02:00.607" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9101" CreationDate="2013-11-19T11:11:52.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://franzabaleta.com/component/lyftenbloggie/2013/06/17/280-despegan-las-ventas-de-ebooks-independientes-&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; from Jun 2013, they say that in the UK, the total of ebooks sold are 12%. However, Sci-Fi has about 20% of ebook sales. It provides some links in English, but I couldn't find more info for free. Only some research to buy (and I'm not going to pay for it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6247" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T11:11:52.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9457" CreationDate="2013-11-19T11:24:48.657" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make the atmosphere and the perspective serve the story, not vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a different story if your own home - the place you know in and out - transforms into a battle arena and either serves as your weapon, its nooks and crannies providing an advantage over the oppressor, or a traitor - a years-old companion turning on you and places you knew to be your safe haven becoming deathtraps. Or maybe you knew and hated the city forever, and today the city hates you back? Or maybe the streets you'd known long open a new mystery, where an unknown force operates - and you don't understand it. In time you may form an alliance with the living city, against the invasive force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a different story if you're thrown into a big, strange, alien place and forced to swim upstream - while under fire. The city is a jungle which you need to overcome, find a way, where the antagonist feels at home and uses the advantages mercilessly. Or it's a second, impartial antagonist, hostile both to you and to your opponent - giving you little advantages when you're about to declare your rage and hate, betraying and thwarting an opponent you'd never beat alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summing up: Think of the city as yet another character in your story, a live, feeling character in one of primary roles. What role you assign that character is entirely up to you. A villain, an impartial observer, a condescending god, a trusted friend, a traitor, a prankster, a judge - it's all up to you, as the writer of the story. Pick a different role and the story will change. Characterize it as if you'd characterize a person. Is it a person the protagonist (and readers) know well, or a mysterious stranger - that's up to you to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T11:24:48.657" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9429" CreationDate="2013-11-19T14:38:23.537" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you’re coming at this problem from the wrong premise. Your female narrator does not need to drop hints about her gender in every third paragraph. Think about your own life: do you spend every waking minute conscious of your gender (“I am a man and I am eating this sandwich in a manly way, tearing the bread and smoked turkey with my sharp teeth”)? Probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There’s nothing wrong with having a character who likes flowers and is especially conscious of tactile sensation, but you shouldn’t feel a &lt;em&gt;duty&lt;/em&gt; to signal a character’s gender with such things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend reading Nisi Shawl’s &lt;em&gt;Writing the Other&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T14:38:23.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9463" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9468" CreationDate="2013-11-19T16:59:47.877" Score="0" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;NOT your personal favorites (subjective)!  The best-sellers (objective).  Group book series together.  Anyone know?  Educated guesses are OK, but documented answers are preferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I'm &lt;em&gt;guessing&lt;/em&gt; that, for sci-fi, the top 3 are the Dune series, the Foundation series, and the Ender series.  Or maybe the Space Odyssey series?  Or, heck, maybe the Star Wars or Star Trek or Honor Harrington series?  See, I don't know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[For admins: I think this question should have all the genres as tags, but only 5 are allowed.  I could make it 13 different questions, one for each genre, but that seems like gaming the system to gain rep.  Also seems not as useful.  But whatever you want is fine with me.  If this question is handled elsewhere, then let me know, and delete this question.  Thanks.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" OwnerDisplayName="dmm" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2013-11-19T19:43:24.440" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T01:01:26.270" Title="What are the 3 all-time best-sellers in each genre?" Tags="|fantasy|science-fiction|children|thriller|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9455" CreationDate="2013-11-19T20:36:41.327" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, citations are pretty much required any time you use or reference someone else's work in a scholarly or academic paper. If you're writing a popular article, then it's far more questionable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I would certainly include citations. A citation serves two purposes: 1. It acknowledges that a work is not your own, so that you are not claiming credit for someone else's work. And 2. It gives the reader sufficient information to find the original and read it for himself. In this case, if you're discussing a poem, it is unlikely that people would think you had written the poem yourself. But they might very well want to look up the original and read it in its entirely, they might want to see other poems in the same collection for comparison, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, if you are discussing the poem in its entirely, then there's no meaning in giving line numbers. Just reference the entire poem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T20:36:41.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9465" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-19T22:50:08.160" Score="13" ViewCount="437" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not long ago I read a novel set in the near future (mid-21st century).  My suspension of disbelief was totally &lt;em&gt;fine&lt;/em&gt; with time travel, an implanted &quot;universal translator&quot; of sorts, major medical advances... but balked at plot points that depended on people being limited to land-lines (no mobile communication devices, and no &quot;tech failure&quot; that eliminated them).  The novel was written in 1992, just a few years before cell phones hit the consumer market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, what can I do to help my near-future stories age well?  Do I just need to be a great visionary (or settle for getting it wrong, since I'm probabably not), or are there things I can do to track &quot;up and coming, society-changing&quot; trends?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T06:23:34.843" Title="How do I avoid tech/social errors in near-future fiction?" Tags="|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9465" CreationDate="2013-11-19T23:41:37.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sci-fi sets a story in the future or in an alternative universe in order to make a point about here and now. Some of the best &quot;classic&quot; sci-fi by Arthur C Clarke et al was written before personal computers, let alone cell-phones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steampunk is a handy way of getting round this, by positing societies that through some apocalyptic failure have had to regress to steam power, airships etc, while still retaining sci-fi ethos. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should base your fiction on what is possible now, even if it's just in the testing stage, and find a way to explain that further advance on this was rendered impossible - maybe through global monetary collapse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6281" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T23:41:37.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9455" CreationDate="2013-11-20T00:47:30.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Out, Out—” has its morbid description of a young boy bleeding out and its underlying theme of death. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” has its pessimistic theme that nothing beautiful can stay beautiful.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the text you have included within the quotation marks above are merely the poems' titles (which I assume they are), then according to MLA you would write the in-text citation as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Out, Out—&lt;/em&gt; (Author) has its morbid description.... etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;N.B.&lt;/strong&gt; titles need to be italicized, but lines of poetry need to be contained within quote marks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at this &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MLA style&lt;/a&gt; guide too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6289" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T00:47:30.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9463" CreationDate="2013-11-20T01:01:26.270" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could look at these links and figure most of it out for yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_authors &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5387" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T01:01:26.270" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9465" CreationDate="2013-11-20T02:09:13.293" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider general problems/trends/concepts instead of specific realizations/models, then think up techs that resolve/accentuate the general ideas you started with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Techs&lt;/strong&gt; here don't have to be electronic. Anything that has a clear method/blueprint is a tech to me. So, a government, a math theorem, a tablet, a pen and a paper, a template of anything, a human language, a programming language, and so on and so forth, are all techs as far as I'm concerned. Although I'm sure I'm butchering the definition of the word right now--apologies.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So instead of &quot;cell-phones&quot;, think &quot;easy communication&quot;. Radio waves were already being utilized for radio/TV and various military uses. Sure it'd be desirable to have the hassle-free (physically, no wires and all) way of radio communication be more accessible. Now, how does it become available? Is it an offshoot from a high-budget military project? The brainchild of a mad scientist? How would it be different in either case (or in others)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice, I didn't say &lt;em&gt;&quot;imagine its final look and function&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. I said, &lt;em&gt;&quot;get the general concept, think up/find sources that could help make it real,&quot;&lt;/em&gt; and then, &lt;em&gt;&quot;see how it'd differ, being the result of these different beginnings, each considered in isolation or close pairs&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, don't pick a reference frame, just keep jumping and paint a fuzzy as fuzzy can be mental map of the relations between the different ways to realize your conceptual tech in the real world, as it is considered from the different perspectives of different beginning points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, instead of little note-pad-sized screens with keys, cell-phones could have started off as a sort of portable communications portal,still reliant on central com-stations? Like, a bracelet that lets the wearer access a phone-box (small ones, that are themselves wireless, but bigger than modern mobiles), the bracelet being his number. Or maybe it began with text messaging, and that became cell-phones' dominant use afterwards. Sure, it sounds ridiculous to &lt;em&gt;us&lt;/em&gt;, but I'd have no problem believing it, considering the different origin stories of the concept and its realization (though I haven't talked yet about origin stories for concepts, that's to come).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, let's take a modern example... &lt;s&gt;Let me know in the comments which you prefer:&lt;/s&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trans-humanism;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I pick trans-humanism. Expect an edit&lt;/em&gt; soon-ish.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Global communications, AIs and virtual reality;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This would be more difficult than I'm willing to handle. Fair warning, Matrix and like-minded movies aren't good examples here. A better one would be the Riverworld series, which is still far off the mark.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Space travel and inter-planetary -stellar colonization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;See the manga/anime &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Planetes&lt;/a&gt;. It handles this quite nicely and is fairly accurate as to what we can do in the present and what we strongly suspect we'll be able to do in the near future. The story takes place around 2075, so it's a 'future on the doorstep'. I'll try to find a work where society is more significantly different from now.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be warned, however, that I'm not even a 'respectable amateur' in any of these subjects. So my detailed example would be quite a bit detached from the latest in the fields. After it's posted and judged, tell me whether it's &lt;em&gt;yeah&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;urgh&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;please no&lt;/em&gt;. I'll try to explain it in a more abstract manner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;That wasn't as detailed as I'd hoped I could make it. For now I'll ask you to accept it as is... Let's see if I don't botch it up in a later edit ;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2934" LastEditorUserId="2934" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T19:34:29.013" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T19:34:29.013" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9470" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9473" CreationDate="2013-11-20T02:23:46.423" Score="5" ViewCount="509" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to start a webcomic. For this, I expect I'll be doing a lot of writing. I once had someone draw a webcomic based on my writing and it was a nonsensical mess. The art was good, but nobody knew what was going on at any given moment, even with narration boxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: How do I write for webcomics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I plan on making this series a 10 year run at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5607" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T10:54:05.737" Title="How do I write for webcomics?" Tags="|websites|getting-started|comics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9465" CreationDate="2013-11-20T02:57:26.087" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, part of the answer is in your question. If you don't want all the technical information, and the explanations of why things are, just skip to the last section, then look for explanation as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's go over individual parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The novel was written in 1992&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the year 1992. In 1992, information was rather limited. There was no way to search the internet (the first fully text based search service came out in 1994), and the Internet was still brand new (to the public). Online communities were still in their really early phases. Even in existing online communities, something a few years away may not have been known about yet. In short, it could be very difficult to know about up-and-coming technologies back then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the Internet (and everywhere else) &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;, you have several sources and tools at your fingertips, which you can use to make predictions about technology advances (or even make them up). There's a pretty major contrast between what information you could find then and what you can find now (as well as the difficulty of finding such information).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this leaves the question of what you need to do unanswered. It merely provides some explanation on how much easier it will be now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Near future (mid-21st century)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding &lt;em&gt;near-future&lt;/em&gt;, there are obviously going to be some things that simply aren't that advanced. Even today, there are some industries that are years behind others in terms of what they could be now. It's simply because that hasn't been the focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on just how far in the future &quot;near future&quot; is (10-minutes-into-the-future alternate world, or 25 years down the line?), you can get away with variable amounts of stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;no &quot;tech failure&quot; that eliminated them. [No explanation as to why it's that primitive]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the short answer is that as long as you can provide an adequate explanation for why certain technology is as advanced (or as archaic) as it is, you can maintain an adequate suspension of disbelief. It's apparent that the author of the book you read failed in that respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Now for my own addition&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a science fiction author (not published yet - still working on my book), here's my advice. Look at the big picture as well as the many individual small pictures. On top of that, know the limitations of certain technologies (and perhaps even research). Knowing the limitations allows you to manipulate them or even make subtle indications as to why something isn't as advanced as one might expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the tools you have available can help you get a good idea of what might be coming up, and this can make it easier to make certain advancements (or non-advancements) seem logical. Looking at the big picture allows you to make adjustments to the technologies and also see why something might not be as advanced. Knowing limitations will allow you to bend the rules, or even give strict adherence to the rules, but with slightly unrealistic advances (such as something that would normally be 25 years ahead of its time in your book's world). Combining these techniques allows you to make minor stretches in several of the fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose you want to make sure there aren't any anachronisms. One easy way is to just not mention technology that isn't critical to the story. You can also use existing ideas, with your own touch. The fewer things you have to explain, the fewer things you have to worry about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're into adding a bit of a comedic spin, you can even lampshade the fact that something's not as advanced as it should be. There are numerous methods for doing this. I particularly like it when a character has to work with a certain primitive technology, and it goes through his/her mind (or he/she even says) that there's really no good reason for it not to be advanced. If you're unfamiliar with &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging&quot;&gt;Lampshade Hanging&lt;/a&gt; (and by extension, TVTropes), the article will give you a good idea of how to go about it, as well as give you plentiful examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4839" LastEditorUserId="4839" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T03:04:39.227" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T03:04:39.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9472" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-20T02:59:03.103" Score="3" ViewCount="364" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing about my life experiences and I want to use email correspondence between myself and another to tell part of the story. I have not used real names in my work and have altered the emails accordingly. Do I need permission to use these emails?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6291" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T16:30:41.637" Title="Using emails in an autobiography" Tags="|non-fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9470" CreationDate="2013-11-20T03:00:47.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A comic -- web or paper, cartoon strip or sophisticated graphic novel -- is a different medium from conventional written stories.  The biggest difference is that it's hard to do exposition; those long explanatory passages that you could slip into a novel don't fit into a few panels.  It's also hard to convey nuances like meaningful gazes.  So think about the tools you have available in a comic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dialogue  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;coarse (not subtle) gestures and body language  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;short narrative bits&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm calling &quot;short narrative bits&quot; are the inserts you sometimes see, the &quot;meanwhile, back at the ranch...&quot; context switches.  While some comics have longer passages (taking up entire panels) to connect story bits (e.g. Prince Valiant), it's not common.  If you're just getting started, you probably want to stick with the common approaches; don't make your audience read through a wall of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comics have way more dialogue than most other storytelling media.  Look at a random sampling of comics and you'll see a lot of voice bubbles (and occasional thought bubbles).  While some comics do convey story well through well-done, nuanced art (e.g. &lt;em&gt;Sandman&lt;/em&gt;), it's the exception.  Since you don't have a top-notch artist to work with, you should probably be thinking in terms of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dorktower.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;less-ambitious&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dilbert.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;drawing&lt;/a&gt;, perhaps even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xkcd.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stick figures&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simpler art is even more of a consideration for web comics.  The publishers of comic books know they're printing at 600dpi (or whatever) on a certain page size.  Computer displays don't have anywhere near that resolution &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; people might be reading your comic on anything from a regular monitor to a tablet to a phone.  If your comic relies on subtleties in the art, some of your readers are going to miss it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said you expect to be doing &quot;a lot of writing&quot; for this project.  I suggest -- from the perspective of a reader, not writer, of comics -- that you not think in terms of &quot;a lot&quot; of writing, but rather think about how to boil down your story into comic-installment-sized chunks of mostly dialogue and simple action.  Further, if you're planning a long-running project, your style will almost certainly change over time, so as you improve your skills you can take on more challenges.  You don't need to start on day one with the most-ambitious goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T15:53:00.227" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T15:53:00.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9476" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9482" CreationDate="2013-11-20T07:58:00.530" Score="5" ViewCount="1791" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I started writing a story. Two equally important protagonists, omniscient 3rd person narrator, a rather sweet romance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it was not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interactions felt shallow. Despite the ability to get into mind of any of the characters, I was rarely getting in mind of either, and the descriptions of their actions felt dry and not compelling, not immersive at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a try, I shifted the perspective, 1st person of one of the protagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Immediately, I could jump in her mind, add much needed impressions, observations, the descriptions gained depth, the story got captivating and pretty good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion 1. Rewrite the whole as 1st person. That works. I can do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion 2. I suck at writing 3rd person. I can't write that immersively. Can't strike balance between peeking right in mind of the protagonist and keeping distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I fix that? Any exercises? Suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2019-07-16T21:28:19.413" Title="Exercises for improving 3rd person perspective writing" Tags="|creative-writing|third-person|perspective|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9457" CreationDate="2013-11-20T09:02:23.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can have &lt;strong&gt;both&lt;/strong&gt; in the story. I think the reader won't feel cheated as long as you don't make a big geographical mistake. What you can do is to add little details to add some familiarity, and use the rest to produce something fresh (the unique way in which the character sees the world). For instance, in the novels I read, authors describe the surroundings in such a way that seems very new and unique. But they also add a few subtle details like mentioning 7-Elevens and Mcdonalds. It makes me think: &quot;Oh, this is just like in my city. &lt;em&gt;Feels&lt;/em&gt; familiar.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give you another example, in a story I'm writing, I chose a famous mountain in my country (though not very famous worldwide). I did my research and I added some accurate geographical info (e.g. coniferous trees, forest railway, etc). But also, &lt;strong&gt;at the same time&lt;/strong&gt;, I describe the surroundings based on the character's feelings. Like, when he first arrives the mountain he sees the trees as &lt;em&gt;giants guarding the forest&lt;/em&gt; (since he feels at ease, protected). Later on, when he's following a mysterious girl through the forest, he describe being in the woods as &lt;em&gt;being at the bottom of a dark sea or being an intruder&lt;/em&gt; (reflecting his fear and uncertainty). I believe the surroundings should be a reflection of the character &lt;strong&gt;moods and feelings&lt;/strong&gt; (Or as SF. said, &quot;...it should serve the story&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T09:02:23.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9479" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9739" CreationDate="2013-11-20T10:05:27.837" Score="1" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an experienced content writer and I write Search Engine friendly content writing. I am sorry to say that most of the people browsing internet consider top 10 results as the best results but then actually it's not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result you see there are Search Engine Optimized content and at times, got nothing to do with the quality of content (in terms of grammar, syntax and the like). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At times, I need to compromise the sentence structure as to include keywords/phrase. How do I tackle this issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6294" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T10:47:01.630" Title="Quality over SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages)" Tags="|websites|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9484" CreationDate="2013-11-20T10:10:30.860" Score="6" ViewCount="612" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything about our culture has changed so dramatically over the course of the last hundred years that it’s very hard to believe that we’d be the same as we are now in five hundred years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an issue I have when writing and reading far future science fiction; it seems difficult to believe that people would talk the same as they do now, and hold to the same values and cultural norms. Yet if we don’t write that way then we remove our readers’ ability to connect to the characters and setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this is, in part, a question of suspension of belief. It’s not so unreasonable to use behaviours, values and even modes of speech, to create a connection between reader and characters. But how daft does it seem when confronted with punks straight out of the 80s in a dystopian future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way that we can show believable change in humanity over time, while retaining enough recognisability to enable readers to connect? The closest I’ve seen is Joe Haldeman’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forever_War_series&quot;&gt;Forever War&lt;/a&gt; series, in which he uses people like us as outcasts in the future to bridge the gap. Are then any other examples that you’ve seen work well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T11:06:53.213" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T20:05:21.287" Title="Can we enable readers to connect to far future humanity, without pretending they wouldn’t be different?" Tags="|science-fiction|genre|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9480" CreationDate="2013-11-20T11:07:29.173" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're confusing motives and details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned people from 500 years ago being very different from us. What concerns do we share over the centuries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Survival basics: food, shelter, clothing.&lt;/strong&gt; There really wasn't a &quot;middle class&quot; in 1513, but you could argue there was a merchant class, so a Genovese trader could be worried whether his next shipment of cloth will survive the storm season and pirate raids and make port so he can sell enough to pay his liege lord, compared to a middle manager at Wernham-Hogg who's worried that she'll be laid off and won't be able to pay her mortgage. Project it forward: How do people acquire homes in this future setting, and how could that be jeopardized?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Family troubles: marriages, children, grandchildren, siblings.&lt;/strong&gt; The&#xA;Genovese trader might be trying to make a good match for his daughter&#xA;with the son of the duke. The middle manager might be worried that&#xA;her sister is settling for a boyfriend who treats her poorly because&#xA;she's afraid of being alone. People will still have families in the&#xA;future. Will they still marry? Maybe marriages will be limited-term&#xA;renewable contracts, and the concern is whether someone will renew,&#xA;or how to convince someone to sign a five-year instead of a one-year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Job concerns:&lt;/strong&gt; Workplaces have politics. Invent some macguffins to&#xA;worry about.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on and so forth. Don't worry about whether people are talking via smoke signal, telegraph, wrist radio, Facebook, or shunt squirt. Focus on the conversation. Our connection to future humanity (and past) is that we have similar problems and concerns and loves. The particulars may change, but mothers are still going to remind their daughters to pee before a long trip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T11:07:29.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9476" CreationDate="2013-11-20T12:39:47.763" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, writing with a omniscient 3rd person character is the most difficult exercice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're seem to be able to write as 1st person, I think this exercice can help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, try to write a scene, discussion or anything else, between at least two character with the perspective of each character to have the point of view from each protagonist.&#xA;Focus on their feelings, their impressions, proper to themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After, write the same scene with an external point of view. You won't have to think about the feelings, the more important is to have a distant description of this scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, you can write with an omniscient 3rd person narrator. Since you've previously have written each internal point of view, jumping into one mind and changing when it's needed will be easier. And since you have the external description, you don't have to think of some new details. You just have to take some part from each previous work and merge them until your final work satisfy yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, you still have to find the correct balance between the distance and the immersion on each protagonist, but by this method, when you're working on this balance, you won't have to think about the story itself, only on the way to tell it. It will be easier to find your balance with all elements avaible. And when you'll find it, writing the previous parts won't be necessary anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5637" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T12:39:47.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9480" CreationDate="2013-11-20T13:20:57.283" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I look at historic and literary sources from the past 3000 years, from the epics of Homer to the present day, I cannot find any fundamental differences between the people that have lived then and those that live today, at least none that are greater than intercultural, class or gender differences among the present populace. We are all driven by the same basic needs and motivations, we have the same variety of character and temperament, the same faults and abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see why people 500 years in the future should be more different from us than people 3000 years in the past. Evolution is a &lt;em&gt;slow&lt;/em&gt; process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as far as language goes, you ask as if you were unaware that not everywhere on the world today people speak the same language as you. How can an American writer write a novel about people from Mexico, Japan, or Native Americans, who all do not share his language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously, how is that a problem? SF that attempts to show futurity through future English has always felt ridiculous to me. Just write in your own language. People will understand that Japanese talk Japanese, even if their dialogue is written in English in an English language novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a novel about Japan, how do you show readers that they are now in Japan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;State it. Pleople don't expect &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; to be different. Japanese are people. They eat. They wear clothes. So just say that we are now in Japan and give Japanese street names.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show the relevant differences. Japanese eat sushi. Explain what sushi is and how it is eaten. Don't talk about clothes, because they are basically the same, and you only need to mention kimonos when they are relevant to your story. (In a story set in the US you don't mention cowboy hats either, if they are not important, althought they signify the US in the eyes of many foreigners.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same goes for the future. Based on the assumption that much will probably be the same (people will still lie down on soft surfacs to sleep, sit down to eat, defecate in private, wear clothes in cold climate and develop or maintain a sense of physical decency etc.) you can leave out a lot. Just show the parts that are different and relevant to your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even technically, a lot of inventions and changes have been predicted over the last decades, many of which never happend or never found their way into everyday culture. We still don't have an elevator to space. We still don't have electric cars (yes, we have, but so few that they are largely irrelevant in a novel about our time as compared to the 50s). We have the internet, but its just a way to connect. People will do that differently in 500 years, but they will still check messages, create profiles, play games etc. So really no need to show all the small differences. Just give some different sounding names (let people talk into their implants instead of a mobile phone or give them munti to eat instead of potatoes) and that's enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T14:07:18.540" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T14:07:18.540" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9480" CreationDate="2013-11-20T18:02:48.137" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter how different science fiction characters are from humans – whether they be extraterrestrials, artificial intelligences, or a far future species evolved from Homo sapiens – they must be relevant to readers. That doesn’t necessarily mean that readers identify with those characters, only that those characters “say” something about humanity that the reader then finds relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To achieve that, ask if these non-human “others” in story serve any of these purposes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Metaphors or stand-ins for human characteristics – For example, Mr. Spock with his logic stands for the human philosophy of rationality and logic. HAL 9000 represents how the inability to distinguish between two contradictions can lead to paranoia. The metaphor/stand-on approach is especially useful for writers wishing to criticize a specific human characteristic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mirrors/counterpoints for humans – In “Star Trek,” the Vulcans’ suppression of emotions is a counterpoint to humans’ expression of them. An alien species that develops space travel might consider those races lacking it (such as humans) to be less evolved, just as we might consider technology-vacant Homo erectus to be less evolved than us.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shed light on the human condition through their interactions – Data of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” does this by questioning his crewmates about what being human means.  Such interactions need not be between the non-human and a human but can be between two of the non-humans; as we learn about them, readers then learn something about themselves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arguably, as a human writer, all of your non-human characters can’t help but possess some characteristics of humanity because that’s your only frame of reference to work from. Whether or not that be the case, what matters most to a reader is how relevant you make such characters (Whether or not the nonhuman character has a scientifically plausible basis for existing is important, too, but a topic for a different discussion!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6226" LastEditorUserId="590" LastEditDate="2013-11-22T17:47:56.093" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T17:47:56.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9476" CreationDate="2013-11-20T18:28:22.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may not &quot;suck&quot; at all at third-person. I'd suggest that the problem is that the story you're penning isn't well-suited to a third person narrative. You've actually already discovered that as you've found that first person works much better for the tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A major strength of a third-person omniscient point of view is it can reveal anything and everything about any of the characters – their perceptions, thoughts and observations. This is useful in science fiction if no human viewpoint can encapsulate the story, as is the case with aliens and artificial intelligences. The viewpoint also is excellent for humorous, satirical stories because the characters’ absurdity – which the main character wouldn’t notice – can be shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, third-person omniscient gives the author more freedom than first-person point of views when developing a story. This is because he can change locations and use multiple viewpoints; first-person, of course, is limited to the main character’s perceptions, so only action that he is directly involved in can be shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, third-person omniscient has its drawbacks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It imposes distance between reader and the main character – Events in a story often gain a certain formality as the narrator telling the story is ill-defined. An aloofness in the narrator also can create distance. After all, how could a god (the story’s narrator) ever exist man-to-man with the story’s main character?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dramatic tension can be more easily defused – When the story is told from the main character’s perspective, readers can more directly feel and relate to his stress and challenge. Third-person narration is like being told about the walk through a haunted house rather than actually going through one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Know-it-all voice can intrude on the narration – As with a backseat driver, some omniscient narrators are just darn irritating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing when to choose third-person rather than a first-person is a matter of understanding what kind of story you want to tell. Each point of view has tradeoffs. If the story you want to tell best matches the advantages that a particular point of view offers, then go with that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6226" LastEditorUserId="590" LastEditDate="2013-11-22T17:47:03.980" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T17:47:03.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9476" CreationDate="2013-11-20T18:34:33.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most people suck at writing omniscient 3rd person, because it’s like writing poetry in free verse: without a structure that provides some boundaries on what you can say, there is a greater risk that your story will turn into the narrative equivalent of a slime mold, smeared out randomly across the page without a skeleton to guide it. If, for example, a plot development depends on one character knowing a secret and the other one finding it out, how can the omniscient narrator &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; reveal the secret to the reader at the earliest opportunity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best (possibly the only) effective use of omniscient POV in contemporary fiction that I’ve seen is in Elsa Morante’s &lt;em&gt;History: A Novel&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Catherine Jinks’s &lt;em&gt;The Reformed Vampire Support Group&lt;/em&gt;, the whole narrative is told in first person, but there is one chapter where the narrator opens with something like “I didn’t know it at the time, but while we were doing XYZ, this other thing was happening....” (If the events the narrator described in that chapter were things that she could never have credibly found out about later, then that trick wouldn’t have worked.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T18:34:33.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9480" CreationDate="2013-11-20T18:53:27.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some cultural changes over the past century or five have been very deep, and some have been shallow.  It’s much easier for women to get divorced; that’s a deep change.  They often announce those divorces on Facebook; that’s a shallow change. (The growth of social media &lt;em&gt;in general&lt;/em&gt; is a deep change, but &lt;em&gt;this particular use of those media&lt;/em&gt; is shallow.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For world-building a novel set in the future, I would suggest concentrating on a few deep changes (the ones most relevant to the plot you want to write) and then providing lots of shallow changes to convey the atmosphere. Your protagonist could be anxious about getting a marriage contract renewed, and your story could explore the various expectations, conflicts, jargon, child-rearing practices, etc. etc. surrounding renewable marriages... but you can also drop in occasional references to self-cleaning clothes, robot butlers, and functional health-insurance companies, just to prevent the reader from feeling that your setting is “just like 2013 but with renewable marriages”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T18:53:27.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9470" CreationDate="2013-11-20T20:43:16.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Joe Sacco, an excellent comic artist (printed, not web), does sometimes do “illustrated narrative” comics, where there’s quite a bit of writing in narrative form, not dialogue, but the illustration still dominates (so it’s still a comic, not an illustrated novel).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have to get to the fourth page of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gunnerkrigg Court&lt;/a&gt; before you see any dialogue. Before then, it’s all first-person narration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.khaoskomix.com/komix/steves-story-cover&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Khaos Komix&lt;/a&gt; has quite a lot of first-person narration, nicely mixed with dialogue. Tab’s latest venture, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.discordcomics.com/shades-cover/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Shades of A&lt;/a&gt;, has a similar structure, but it’s laid out visually differently, as printed text between panels (page 6 is a particularly nice example). I’ve not seen that style used elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20021104&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Girl Genius&lt;/a&gt; opens with a storyteller character, who narrates the next page, but after that we never hear from him again. (Actually, he does turn up as a character in the story, many months later, but there isn’t any more narration.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there is more than one way to write a comic. A comic with &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; dialogue would certainly be unusual, and I can’t think of an example, but it would be one way to go about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="537" LastEditorUserId="537" LastEditDate="2013-11-21T10:54:05.737" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T10:54:05.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9470" CreationDate="2013-11-20T21:22:50.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;scene (notes to the illustrator) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;action (notes to the illustrator)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dialog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know, this sounds like a script, so write a script, nothing more, nothing less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T21:22:50.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9492" CreationDate="2013-11-20T21:36:08.310" Score="4" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been a long time since I last tried to write a play, and I hated it, not the play (which became a short story), but writing one. The word processors made working with script layout a pain, and I detested marking which character was speaking. I still prefer prose and poetry, but I was wondering are there any tools that makes writing a script easier? Are any of them open source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T18:24:29.330" Title="tools for writing scripts" Tags="|software|tools|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9490" CreationDate="2013-11-20T22:05:03.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried Scrivener? I haven't used it for screenwriting, but it looks like &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php?show=features#section-scriptwriting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it's got a great tool for it. &lt;/a&gt; It's not open source, but $45 is fairly cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T22:05:03.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9465" CreationDate="2013-11-21T06:23:34.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The web has lots of research trade e-zines, with articles written by and for laymen, that would help you.  Then there are magazines like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics.  Also magazines like Scientific American, Science News, Science Daily, and Wired Science.  Omni magazine is coming back, supposedly.  Also, go to a book store, find books by Alvin Toffler, and closely-related books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not hard to predict (in general terms) the future of technology 10 or even 20 years out, if you're paying attention.  Things often take 10~20 years to go from lab bench to store shelf.  Where it gets hard is 30~40 years out, because some of the discoveries have not yet been made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T06:23:34.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9499" CreationDate="2013-11-21T09:11:46.987" Score="3" ViewCount="1165" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without lifting my head from the pillow, I glanced at my watch. Two in&#xA;the morning. Sleep still seemed faraway. I'd been staring at the maze&#xA;pattern on the ceiling for hours, occasionally switching to the&#xA;intricate window frames, and the floral curtains of the window. &lt;em&gt;My&#xA;mind always seeks for complex figures and shapes when I'm still, in&#xA;the dark. I'm not sure why. Maybe my head's constantly trying to make&#xA;sense of things, even if my body is completely relaxed. It's something I&#xA;can't avoid.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So after lying there for another hour, I gave up. I dressed, grabbed my keys, and went out for a walk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I could have written it like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My&#xA;mind always sought for complex figures and shapes when I was still, in&#xA;the dark. I wasn't sure why. Maybe my head was constantly trying to make&#xA;sense of things, even if my body was totally relaxed. It was something I&#xA;couldn't avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mind if the narrator is still doing that. It doesn't affect much the story. I just want to know which way reads/flow better. Does it feel jarring when you read the last part of the first paragraph (present tense) and immediately jump to the second (past tense)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T19:23:44.713" Title="Should I switch to present tense when the narrator is talking about one of his habits?" Tags="|creative-writing|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9158" CreationDate="2013-11-21T09:24:08.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a tool for my own use that will almost do what you want, but I hadn't thought that anyone else would use it, so it is a bit rough around the edges, it would only take me a couple minutes to add wdiff to it, but it assumes POSIX (unix/linux/OSX) is written in perl, has no documentation, and the command syntax is arcane. Would you like to try it out? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: now available at &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/hildred/diff.cgi.git&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://github.com/hildred/diff.cgi.git&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2013-11-22T03:21:33.223" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T03:21:33.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9494" CreationDate="2013-11-21T10:17:52.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the present tense sounds better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read it in present, I feel the narrator is describing himself.&#xA;However, when I read the second one, I have the feeling that all those sentences occur only in that certain moment. Not as a &quot;habit&quot; or &quot;this is me&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6247" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-11-21T10:51:26.490" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T10:51:26.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9494" CreationDate="2013-11-21T13:08:05.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both are fine - which to use depends on your goal. It shifts focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Past tense focuses on the fact it was nothing new at that time. It began much earlier and lasted at least until then. For me it's a tone of excuse and explanation, &quot;I couldn't have done anything about that by then&quot;. Also, it tells nothing about whether the protagonist fought it down until the time of telling, so it leaves a small window open for both changes and suspicion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Present tense focuses on the nature of the person. It's something permanent; the reader is left without doubt whether this will change or not. It focuses on the person, and not on the situation, describes the protagonist in general, and not protagonist-versus-that-problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T13:08:05.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9494" CreationDate="2013-11-21T16:17:28.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find both versions quite jarring, not so much because of tense but because of tone.  Vociferous adverbs like &lt;em&gt;always, constantly, completely, totally&lt;/em&gt; settle too much weight on what probably should be a minor thought, an incidental self-revelation, rather than a significant clinical observation of oneself.  Perhaps leave out all those vociferous adverbs, soften the tone, shorten the passage, add some ambiguity; eg&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My mind sought complex figures and shapes as I lay there still and in the dark.  I was often like this, my mind flying far from my inert body in a quest to make the day make sense. I didn't know why; I never would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T16:17:28.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7824" CreationDate="2013-11-21T19:38:53.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the first paragraph provide a short summery of all the events. a good way to start it would be &quot;The past have been eventful to say the least...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second paragraph provide clear facts and add in a few points of how the character is feeling but infer them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next say how the character is feeling and what action they will take on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally summarise everything you have said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6303" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T19:38:53.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9494" CreationDate="2013-11-21T20:03:06.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writers should stick to one tense. Shifting between tenses jars the reader. After all, if you start in past tense, you're telling the reader, &quot;This happened to me in the past&quot; but when shifting to present tense, you're telling the reader &quot;This is happening to me now.&quot; It sounds schizophrenic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll add that short story and novel writers rarely should use present tense (A screenplay or theater production is different, however.). In the hands of a master, such as Margaret Atwood in her novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” it can be used to great effect by creating a sense of immediacy and making the narrators’ voice unique. But present tense largely is an unnatural way of telling a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, you can improve the above past tense passage by getting rid of the adverbial leeches and using active voice verbs rather than switching to present tense. The passive voice verbs and -ly words flatten the sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6226" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-11-24T19:23:44.713" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T19:23:44.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9490" CreationDate="2013-11-21T23:39:34.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Final Draft is the most common one that I know of. But it's not free. Once you've finished your script and want industry people to read it, you'll need a recognized script formatting program like Final Draft or Movie Magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6039" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T23:39:34.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9507" CreationDate="2013-11-22T01:02:01.743" Score="18" ViewCount="1755" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I'm creating a unique world for my book. New planet, maybe new species, complex society with complex rules, history, government, and so on. Some of these details are absolutely necessary to understand the plot of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to give this information to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prologue of some kind:&lt;/strong&gt; Anne McCaffrey had this in the beginning of her original dragon trilogy, explaining how humans came to Pern, what dragons were in this context, what Thread was (both in scientific reality and what it meant to the Pernese), and how things had changed and developed to leave the society as it was when the story opened. David &amp;amp; Leigh Eddings did something similar for the Belgariad and Malloreon series, although theirs were more faux historical documents, with each book's prologue having a different tone and style and giving a different piece of history. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jump in and learn along the way:&lt;/strong&gt; Mercedes Lackey's Arrows of the Queen trilogy just starts, and we learn about the society and Companions as the same time as the 13-year-old narrator.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Where is the tipping point between explaining the world as the narrator is introduced and the story gets underway, and setting the scene before the story starts so that you're not infodumping and having characters say ridiculously obvious things for the reader's benefit? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At what point is a world so complex that you kind of have to explain some of it before getting underway? Is it always &quot;lazy&quot; to have this kind of prologue? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm not talking about a recap prologue, by the way &amp;mdash; sometimes you need a refresher, and I'd honestly rather have that in the prologue than have characters waste time thinking about what happened in the previous book just to remind the reader.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T02:45:46.987" Title="When do I explain my created world scenario in a prologue vs. letting it unfold in the story?" Tags="|science-fiction|world-building|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9505" CreationDate="2013-11-22T03:30:53.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your characters don't know, and won't find out but the reader needs to know, a prologue is necessary. In all other cases, It depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T03:30:53.863" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9505" CreationDate="2013-11-22T07:40:04.050" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can do it in the story, and the story will not lose on it, do it. If this would hurt the story, do it in prologue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few reasonable tipping points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BORING. If the elements of the world would not add to the story. It would be lengthy and tedious. Do a quick info dump and be done with it as painlessly as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No room for good cabbagehead. It's a team of experts, or a pair of elder gods. There is simply no room for a rookie or apprentice to learn along the way, no good excuse to deliver the lectures. Or opposite - the characters are all cabbageheads and there's nobody competent to explain what is going on, but the reader needs to know the essence. Stories too alien to introduce a reasonable cabbagehead will fall under this too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No TIME for cabbagehead. The story starts with action depending on the setting too much that the reader would be completely lost without some kind of intro.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perfect room for a prologue. Opposite of the necessities above. You have a great, bite-sized piece of history that is completely disconnected from the main tale, but introduces the concepts and simultaneously captivates the reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optional. You're writing a sequel/expansion which ties in with backstory of the original. These who read the original would find recaps in the main story tedious. These who didn't, would feel lost. So, &quot;in last episode...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hanging some chekov guns. You have no good opportunity to do that from the main story, but there are things you simply must foreshadow early on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This list is not complete, by any means, nor ultimate - e.g. quite often you can do an interesting and captivating recap of past events in a sequel without need for an intro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T07:40:04.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9509" CreationDate="2013-11-22T10:28:06.510" Score="2" ViewCount="332" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current novel is of the satire/humour genre.  Another novel that is currently in the works is still humorous, but is more of a fantasy novel.  A third novel that I am currently working on - I like to keep busy - is of the thriller/&quot;morbid&quot; genre and I have very good ideas for a further horror novel, also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have received highly positive feedback from numerous sources for each novel so far, which implies that I am able to successfully write across these genres, but I am enquiring as to whether it is considered good practice to write across multiple genres or to just stick to one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also make it clear that I do not assume that I can write anything and that I am generally amazing - not at all.  For example, I wouldn't know where to begin with a romance novel.  However, I personally find that I am just as comfortable writing about horror as I am humour and would like to know if others have any experience of such a phenomenon (for lack of a better word)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, how would we all feel if Stephen King were to bash out a few satire novels?  Or if Terry Pratchett were to pen a couple of crime thrillers?  Would it &quot;tarnish&quot; your view of their work in any ways?  Personally, it would slightly tarnish my view as one of my favourite authors - Tom Holt - is popular in the humorous fantasy genre, yet he has also written some historical novels as well as poetry.  In my mind, he will always be a humorous fantasy writer and, for some reason that I myself can't explain, this makes me a little uneasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have others experienced the dilemma of not being able to pin down &quot;your&quot; genre, or is it possible that people may still view your work with just as much respect across multiple genres as opposed to just one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/199/writing-different-genres?rq=1&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; addresses an element of the problem and a possible solution, but it doesn't quite cover what I'm looking for as it focuses mainly on pseudonyms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T16:33:29.027" Title="Writing Across Multiple Genres" Tags="|genre|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9508" CreationDate="2013-11-22T11:32:56.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will ultimately depend on the quality of the writing, but no, I have no problem with authors crossing genres. JK Rowling wrote a crime novel and... whatever the hell &lt;em&gt;The Casual Vacancy&lt;/em&gt; was supposed to be after the Harry Potter series. It doesn't make me think less of her because she's not writing a fantasy or a &quot;young adult&quot; book. If anything, I'm pleased that she's stretching and proving she's not stuck in a rut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T11:32:56.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9179" CreationDate="2013-11-22T12:09:43.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if there is an official term for this method of practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a good approach &lt;em&gt;if it works for you&lt;/em&gt;, but I wouldn't recommend it for anybody who wishes to create a substantial piece of work - such as a novel, for example - in a reasonable and realistic length of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method may well possibly take twice, maybe even three times as long as you will have to keep going back and adapting everything that you have already written.  Furthermore, if you can't think of anything else to add to each sentence as you scrutnise it, you will be no further along in your journey than when you first began as your intentions were to clearly add more meat to the bones of each sentence, as it were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you know precisely what your aim is and what you ultimately hope to achieve, and find that this way is actually more productive than unproductive for you, then by all means continue with it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am certain that others may also be able to use this particular technique and put it to good use as it can encourage them to be productive, rather than being sat there with lots of ideas but paralysed with the fear of putting down a short sentence that may be perceived as &quot;incorrect&quot;, or worrying that it doesn't qualify, in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="5328" LastEditDate="2015-03-18T14:50:36.423" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T14:50:36.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9511" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-22T13:08:00.230" Score="4" ViewCount="451" Body="&lt;p&gt;My story calls for the main characters to break up for at least two years, before getting back together. (In this particular case, the breakup is for ethical reasons - the relationship began when the two were therapist and patient)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I keep them apart but still keep the story going?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6305" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T19:30:54.637" LastActivityDate="2015-08-16T02:28:54.797" Title="How can I get my romance through a two-year breakup?" Tags="|novel|plot|romance|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9511" CreationDate="2013-11-22T13:29:46.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing in the first person, you can just continue with the story of the MC and what happens with his/her life during that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing in the third person, you can try to combine both stories during the time. Is he still the therapist during the two years and they &quot;only&quot; break the relationship or do they stop the therapy too? If they stop completely, you can just write their lives separated, each time one chapter or mixing the threads in the same one and divide chapters by &quot;real-story&quot; time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6247" LastEditorUserId="14925" LastEditDate="2015-08-15T11:44:26.207" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T11:44:26.207" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9508" CreationDate="2013-11-22T13:42:43.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the opposite problem. I'm constantly worrying that I'll produce something which can be labeled. I really care whether my work is &#xA;original or not. Not fitting any genre makes a story more likely to fit that purpose. My stories have elements of literary fiction, subtle traces of magical realism/surrealism, as well as hints of horror and mystery. And I'm very happy with that. Regarding other authors, I tend to admire more those who produce work which can't be labeled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not being able to label your work or writing across multiple genres isn't a bad thing. Focus more in the quality of your writing. Just as Lauren says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-11-22T14:23:09.990" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T14:23:09.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-22T13:56:21.130" Score="1" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I relive a scene in the third person if I am writing in the first person? The main character has broken up with her man and she is reliving a scene in her mind where they&lt;br&gt;&#xA;where spending an afternoon together, does it mess with the flow to write the entire scene in the third person? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6305" LastEditorUserId="6305" LastEditDate="2013-11-22T15:36:20.150" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T18:15:17.797" Title="If I am writing in the first person can I have the MC relive a scene as an observer and write it in the third person?" Tags="|plot|structure|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9518" CreationDate="2013-11-22T16:32:27.870" Score="0" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a quote from one of my favorite movies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories.&quot; - Synecdoche, New Work (2008)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why didn't he just write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;them&lt;/strong&gt; is an extra...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the same problem when I'm writing fiction. When to repeat yourself and when to use a pronoun?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-11-22T22:56:58.620" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T22:56:58.620" Title="When to use pronouns, and when to repeat yourself?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9508" CreationDate="2013-11-22T16:33:29.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you established a reputation? Does your audience already expect more of the same? If yes, I would recommend not diluting your reputation. Pen names establish alternate reputations to not dilute your original one. If you have not yet established a reputation you are freer to craft your reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T16:33:29.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9514" CreationDate="2013-11-22T17:10:29.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do that. You'll need to separate the relived scene typographically, perhaps by placing it in italics and possibly by setting it off with line breaks from the rest of the text. If a lengthy scene, perhaps it will be its own chapter with the place/time indicated in bold beneath the chapter's heading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, I'd urge against shifting the point of view. Jumping around is confusing to readers. It also creates a number of plotting issues for you that causes the reader to feel cheated...after all, if you break the point of view for one scene by telling it in first person from one character's perspective, why not tell another scene from another character's first person perspective? Often writers break the point of view to resolve plotting issues by revealing information about a character so that her motivations are better understood because the current point of view they're using doesn't satisfactorily reveal them. In such cases, ask yourself if you would not be better to tell the entire story from the point of view you switched to for that one scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6226" LastEditorUserId="590" LastEditDate="2013-11-22T17:47:15.950" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T17:47:15.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9515" CreationDate="2013-11-22T17:48:01.320" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's pretty much by ear. You have to go with what sounds good. In this case, the writer thought &quot;people&quot; was important enough to repeat. I happen to agree with you that &quot;them&quot; would have been sufficient, but sometimes the repetition works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lincoln could have said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;government of, by, and for the people&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;government of the people, by them, and for them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but the repetition makes it nearly poetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T17:48:01.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9490" CreationDate="2013-11-22T18:24:29.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.celtx.com/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Celtx&lt;/a&gt; is free, &lt;em&gt;mostly&lt;/em&gt; open-source (it has a nonstandard license and there are some closed components) and very good. It does script formatting, plus a bunch of other organisational stuff (keeping track of characters, storyboards). I haven't used it for a while, but I found it very intuitive and so on. There is even some collaborative stuff built into it, though you have to pay to get access to that (or at least you did when I was using it -- these are the closed-source components).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5765" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T18:24:29.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9480" CreationDate="2013-11-22T20:05:21.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to decide if your far-future (500 yrs) humanity is a continuation of our current society, and if things &quot;went well.&quot;  If so, medical advances would have increased their healthy lifespans to virtual immortality.  People would live so long that the dominant cause of death would be freak accidents.  That would HAVE to create huge changes in society.  And that's just ONE area of advancement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T20:05:21.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9522" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9527" CreationDate="2013-11-23T01:17:24.623" Score="2" ViewCount="483" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just noticed I have the tendency of &quot;lecturing&quot; my readers now and then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I almost let everything out. But, funny, I didn't do it. I didn't want&#xA;  him to feel bad. Which made me wonder if maybe I enjoyed punishing&#xA;  myself. Maybe we all have that secret wish. &lt;em&gt;Maybe that's the reason&#xA;  humanity created gods, bad spirits, and demons: to have something to&#xA;  punish us when nothing real does. I didn't believe in any of those, though.&#xA;  In my case, I had to do it myself.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I knew two months wasn't a big deal for most people. But to me, it was&#xA;  an endless torture. Especially since I was waiting for someone dear to&#xA;  come back. That's why I hate it when people say to me: “It isn't that&#xA;  long. You'll see. It'll be over before you know it!” &lt;em&gt;They forget&#xA;  time is relative. Just like Einstein said. You can watch time fly&#xA;  while watching your favorite TV show, or feel it extend forever while&#xA;  clutching a piece of burning coal.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried removing those, and the narrative reads perfectly fine. I'm curious though, about other's opinion. Should I remove them, keep them, or make them shorter? Is this an example of breaking the rule show don't tell? I was also thinking I could stick them into a dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T04:37:39.060" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T22:19:03.023" Title="Should I avoid &quot;lecturing&quot; my readers?" Tags="|creative-writing|narrative|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9522" CreationDate="2013-11-23T04:33:37.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the passages in Italics are perfectly fine; since the narrative is first-person, you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; showing that person's inner life and motivation. Personally I would put more exposition, ie the stuff in regular font, between the thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6281" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T04:33:37.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5985" CreationDate="2013-11-23T05:29:37.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading your question brought to mind the writings of Wen Spencer. Her Elfhome books (Tinker, Wolf who Rules) are set in a near future Pittsburgh where her science fiction world is filled with elements of European and Oriental myth. Her Eight million gods showcases an american in Japan discovering that the world she thought she understood is full of magic. This skillful blending of ideas not normally seen to gather is a pleasure to read, but don't believe it is as easy as she makes it look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T05:29:37.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1714" CreationDate="2013-11-23T06:00:53.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My process is to only mark things that interfere with the reading process on the first pass. This is that I try to read for pleasure, and anything that reminds me that the world actually exists out side of the story gets marked now. The second pass is for plot, the third pass is for story telling, the forth is for grammar spelling and punctuation. then I start over. the ninth pass is layout. Then I read something else, anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T06:00:53.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9522" CreationDate="2013-11-23T06:12:47.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In first person, this is fine.  The lecturing is coming from the MC.  In third person, I think it depends on who is the narrator.  Lecturing from an omniscient narrator would be bad, IMHO, unless it were very clever lecturing.  But that is possible.  Consider the opening line from Austen's &quot;Pride and Prejudice&quot;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in&#xA;  possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T06:12:47.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9522" CreationDate="2013-11-23T07:13:53.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also questioned the validity of the internal &quot;lecturing&quot; monologue, but much to my surprise, people often said this was their favourite part of the story. When I added other monologues to my other stories, they once again became the highlight of the story for a few people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Green does this a lot too. In an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/48658-an-abundance-of-katherines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Abundance of Katherines&lt;/a&gt;, the vast majority of memorable moments come from the main character's &quot;lecturing&quot; inner monologues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently, based off of my expansive experience of my own two data points and my adoration for John Green, I give you the following guidelines, that are mostly truisms that I've tried to repackage here, for your benefit as well as my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you cannot build momentum with &quot;lecturing&quot; monologues. Monologues are for when you already have momentum and you want to drive home a point into the reader's mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, it is a good idea to keep them short, as you have. The maximum being a couple of paragraphs is what I've noticed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of your text specifically, I found the point in your second paragraph to be a bit cliché and might actually be better as dialogue as you mention, unless the character is supposed to seem shy and isolated as you mention. I see it playing out more along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It isn't that long. You'll see. It'll be over before you know it!” &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Hey, would mind sticking your finger into a power outlet for a couple&#xA;  of second. It isn't that long. It will be over before you know it!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastEditorUserId="5675" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T01:52:59.960" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T01:52:59.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9528" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9529" CreationDate="2013-11-23T15:59:18.707" Score="-1" ViewCount="1049" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a few interests, and among them belong fiction, math and computer science, and so naturally I like to imagine/think about the possibility of a piece of fiction living in the intersection of these fields. I wonder, what does it mean to &quot;code a novel&quot;? Is there already such a thing as algorithmic fiction? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6309" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T17:38:42.690" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T16:53:36.197" Title="What does/would it mean to code a novel?" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9528" CreationDate="2013-11-23T16:22:08.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not quite algorithmic, but there are quite a few books on story structure that you may find interesting. If you're like me, understanding how and why stories work can provide you some sort of framework out of which you can build a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's about movies, and half of the people here will hate me forever for daring mention it, but I found &lt;strong&gt;Save the Cat&lt;/strong&gt; very useful (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00340ESIS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Save-Cat-Blake-Snyder-ebook/dp/B00340ESIS&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T16:22:08.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9522" CreationDate="2013-11-23T16:23:40.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short amounts, as you've done above, such &quot;lecturing&quot; is okay in first person. You're really not lecturing the reader so much as showing the narrator's state of mind. The trick is to ensure that these statements (also known as interior monologues) don't become long rants that are authorial intrusions and slow the forward movement of the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6226" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-11-24T19:23:25.930" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T19:23:25.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9528" CreationDate="2013-11-23T16:40:27.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to be a coder, too (PHP, Ruby, Javascript, etc). But my main thing was design. And I used to have the same wish as you: I wanted to think of fiction writing as &quot;designing&quot; a story. But later on, I understood that, even though they share some similarities, they are different kind of thought processes. It was only when I accepted that that I figured out how to be a better writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I don't think you can code or design a novel. You can only &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T16:45:37.800" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T16:45:37.800" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9171" CreationDate="2013-11-23T22:20:55.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dean W Smith&lt;/a&gt; often recommends this. Self publish the book, and then send a copy to traditional publishers. Many legacy publishers now buy top selling Indie authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Selling to legacy publishers will be hard, unless you are already famous, or a best seller. If you publish it yourself, you can start making money immediately, and later on, may sell to a traditional publisher, if you get a good deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T22:20:55.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9505" CreationDate="2013-11-24T02:45:46.987" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to keep three things in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If Page One of your story does not entertain the reader, he or she is unlikely to go on to the really good stuff on Page Two, let alone Page Seventeen. If there is one immutable rule of good writing, this is it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exposition is usually less entertaining than action. That’s not an immutable rule—people do, after all, purchase non-fiction books and read them for pleasure—but it’s a tendency to be aware of.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An extremely common flaw in novice fiction is putting stuff in the beginning of the story that is not actually necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you really think that your readers cannot even begin to enjoy the action of your story without getting some background information first, and if you can present that background information in a prologue that is an entertaining read in its own right and not like homework the reader must slog through, then go with the prologue. Otherwise, jump in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T02:45:46.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9511" CreationDate="2013-11-24T13:23:10.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;She is audited by the ethics arm of the board which gave her her professional license. He's a former patient. The board tells her to break it off or lose her license. In the intervening two years, she realizes that he is worth losing her license for, or alternately finds another job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T13:23:10.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9537" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9541" CreationDate="2013-11-24T18:00:24.330" Score="6" ViewCount="2656" Body="&lt;p&gt;I respect that with the power of language, we don't necessarily need to capitalise anything, because a description of how a character is speaking is more powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take my example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hooded man took another hard right through a thin gap between two&#xA;stalls, forcing Rett to speed up again. With the man out of sight, he&#xA;sped up, half in desperation, half in fear of losing him permanently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Watch it!” a man cried as Rett pushed him out of his way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He bumped into a woman as he shoved past, spilling the contents of her bag onto&#xA;the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Sorry, ma’am!” Rett shouted back, without stopping to help. He wove his way through and between more shoppers, and quickly took the same right turn that the man did. He ground to a halt when he realised that the man was gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His breathing quickened. “DAMN it!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've already got Rett shouting back toward the woman after spilling her bag, but his final words are a curse. A different type of shouting; a real exclamation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do? Is capitalising here okay, or should I return it to normal case and give explanation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2022-12-07T22:50:40.100" Title="Using capital letters for shouting" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9538" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-24T18:07:45.913" Score="2" ViewCount="2481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper on &quot;The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass&quot; and I need to include an allusion in my introduction paragraph. Can my allusion be a direct quote from Nelson Mandela that highlights a theme similar to the one I am going to discuss in my paper? Or is a direct quote too specific to be an allusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6312" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-21T19:50:52.817" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T19:50:52.817" Title="Does a thematic quote qualify as an allusion?" Tags="|academic-writing|essay|terminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9528" CreationDate="2013-11-24T18:51:22.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can &quot;code&quot; a novel, at least in terms of creating an algorithm for writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;al·go·rithm&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      ˈalgəˌriT͟Həm&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      noun&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      1.&#xA;      A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, esp. by a computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically an algorithm is a set of rules you need to follow to get something done right.  I believe it is perfectly within the scope of an &quot;algorithmic&quot; thought process to define steps to writing a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, you need to set a scope for the novel, setting, where you want to go with it, etc.  Then you need to develop characters, locales, history, etc.  Then you need to detail those things.  And finally you need to get from start to finish.  (Sounds simple, eh?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High fantasy setting, scope could be end of the world scenario, and you want a hero to save the world.&#xA;Developing characters, you need a hero/heroine.  I want a sidekick for him/her.  Evil badguy.  Etc, etc.  Develop some locales, little country village where hero is from, big city, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Develop history, 500 years ago the evil was defeated but not for good, thousands of years ago there was an advanced civilization, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detail these things.  My heroine's name is Elisa, she is the daughter of the Mayor of Middlebrook, a small village on the edge of a vast forest.  She is slim and petite, light brown hair and green eyes.  She is adventurous and always getting into trouble.  She finds out she has control of magic, and decides she needs to go on a journey to find out how to use it.  Her boyfriend, Rice, decides to follow her to protect her.  Rice is a tall, lanky kid with tousled brown hair, people think he is goofy and isn't a serious person.  He is deeply devoted to Elisa, though, to the point that he leaves his parent's farm to follow her when she goes to the capital city of Camelot.  Camelot is ruled by a Queen Guinevere.  Etc, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting from start to finish.  Elisa and Rice make their way to a larger village on the road to Camelot.  A local witch senses her magic ability and tries to capture her so she can drink her blood and steal her power.  Elisa manages to kill the witch using her magic, but collapses from the shock of the power.  Rice manages to carry her out of a burning building and out of town before the townspeople notice anything.  The witches sister senses something is amiss and manages to find the trail and follow them.  After several more close calls, Rice and Elisa manage to kill the second witch.  They are nearly to Camelot now, and are awed by the sight.  After getting to the city, Elisa starts asking after a Magician to teach her to use her powers.  She meets Merlin, who agrees to teach her.  Merlin tells her to meet him somewhere at a certain time.  When she shows up with Rice, they are ambushed, and Rice is thrown in prison.  Elisa is taken into the palace, where Merlin resides as the Royal Magician.  He tells her of his plan to use her blood at the full moon to summon a Balrog, which Merlin will capture in a soulstone and use the Balrog's power to become the most powerful Magician in the world.  Rice, with the help of a cunning mouse, manages to escape the dungeon, and he manages to find where Elisa is.  Elisa, meanwhile, has managed to figure out how to use her magic to escape her bonds, and she is planning on how to overpower Merlin.  Rice bungles into the room, and Merlin attacks him.  Elisa tries to save Rice by attacking Merlin, but she is too late.  She manages to kill Merlin, but at great cost.  Her boyfriend Rice is dead at his hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, that is a real quick thing showing how you take a formula/algorithm and break things into smaller parts, and then even smaller details.  This will not help you automatically write a story with a computer, but it is a formula you can use to write a novel yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6275" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-11-30T16:53:36.197" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T16:53:36.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9528" CreationDate="2013-11-24T19:07:52.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What about interactive novels - e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Visual Novels&lt;/a&gt;, a genre rather popular in Japan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can certainly &lt;em&gt;code&lt;/em&gt; these. Western world knew these as &quot;text adventure games&quot; but they usually featured a map of locations between which you could go. Visual Novels, OTOH, read like a book, with points where you make a decision. They are more similar to &quot;Make your own adventure&quot; books, but frequently surpass these in means of complexity by strides, most complex of them often containing thousands of decision nodes, many of them implicit - not obvious to the player, but resulting from prior choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T19:07:52.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9537" CreationDate="2013-11-24T19:37:02.140" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd be fine with all caps here. It's emphatic in a different way than italics. To me I hear the volume and force behind the word, not just the intensity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His breathing quickened. &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Damn&lt;/em&gt; it!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His breathing quickened. &amp;quot;DAMN it!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one could be under his breath — vehement, but not necessarily meant to be heard. The second one is definitely a shout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T19:37:02.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9537" CreationDate="2013-11-24T22:21:52.093" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Text in all capitals is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_caps&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;harder to read&lt;/a&gt; than text in mixed case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 1955 study by Miles Tinker showed that “all-capital text retarded speed of reading from 9.5 to 19.0 per cent for the 5 and 10-minute time limits, and 13.9 per cent for the whole 20-minute period.” Tinker concluded that, “Obviously, all-capital printing slows reading to a marked degree in comparison with Roman lower case.”  (found via &lt;a href=&quot;https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/11046/5400&quot;&gt;this post on UX&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of a single word this probably doesn't matter, but for consistency you will want to use the same style everywhere in your work that calls for extra shouting.  Will that always be just a word or two?  Full sentences in all-caps are likely to impede your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to use italics, which has long been the typography standard for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emphasis_(typography)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;emphasis&lt;/a&gt;.  Emphasis isn't the same as shouting, but it may convey your intent in context.  However, in fiction specifically, be aware that sometimes italic text is used to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/1124/1993&quot;&gt;convey thoughts rather than speech&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is no perfect solution.  In making a decision consider all the places in your work where you will need to apply it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T22:21:52.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9543" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-25T04:33:59.237" Score="7" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back when Bill Clinton was President of the United States, Al Franken (formerly a &lt;em&gt;Saturday Night Live&lt;/em&gt; comedian, now a US Senator) gave him lessons in comedy.  He needed these lessons because the press corps expected a certain Borscht-Belt-ish style of self-deprecating humor from a president, but this was not the kind of humor that Clinton, as a Southerner, was familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story haunts me, because I’m familiar with Jewish humor, and as a long-time fan of BBC comedy I think I’ve picked up English humo[u]r... but if I have a character who is neither Jewish nor English and I want him or her to say something funny or even slightly witty, how do I come up with wit (sarcasm, irony, hyperbole, etc.) that is appropriate to the character’s background?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And this is even before worrying about whether or not the joke is funny.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T22:18:14.467" Title="Variation in humor among ethnic/cultural groups" Tags="|fiction|character-development|humor|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9528" CreationDate="2013-11-25T05:32:05.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If by &quot;code a novel,&quot; you meant &quot;write computer code that makes a novel,&quot; then it is (sort-of) already being commonly done, in two different ways.  One type is called computer games, and they have become quite sophisticated, both as code and as (partly interactive) novels.  The other type is called &quot;CGI animation,&quot; and is used to make movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in these two types, the computer code is completely hidden from the consumer, who would have zero interest in it.  Besides which, you don't &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; computer games and movies.  Besides, I'm pretty sure you know about those two types!  So perhaps you are asking instead if there is computer code that the consumer actually reads, and which is also a novel.  If you could pull that off (successfully), you'd deserve both a Nobel and a Pulitzer!  But, alas, the set of your target audience would be the intersection of the set of literati and the set of geeks.  That does not bode well for sales.  :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T05:32:05.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9543" CreationDate="2013-11-25T05:37:11.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two thoughts that come to mind are ask someone of that ethnic background if it exists, and for fictional backgrounds think about how the back story affects humor. A great example is where Teal'c tells a joke on Stargate SG-1. Tea'lc coming from a very alien background appears to have no sense of humor prior to his attempt to tell his joke, and only he laughs. You also might look at Reader Digest's contest to find the world funniest joke. It is a great short survey of jokes of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="5766" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T06:13:58.133" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T06:13:58.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3829" CreationDate="2013-11-25T05:48:03.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to disagree with everyone else, you can write a book that is driven by humor instead of plot. I've seen it done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heroics for Beginners has the lousiest most simple minded plot that I have seen since Bud Abbott and Lou Costello met &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_and_Costello_Meet_Frankenstein&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their first monster&lt;/a&gt;. The plot is completely predictable. The only reason it works is that the plot is another joke, and the book is short enough that it is over before you can't laugh anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to duplicate this method. It is not as easy as it looks. A good plot is so much easier to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-05-10T19:00:39.470" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T19:00:39.470" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2013-11-25T06:34:32.737" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was told &quot;Normally I tell people to never use the word conclusion in the conclusion, but leave it.&quot; If you hear something similar, you did it right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T06:34:32.737" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-11-25T06:34:32.737" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9528" CreationDate="2013-11-25T08:14:00.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find this an annoying question. You appear to have no idea, what you yourself mean by the words you use. You paste words together and then try to come up with a second-hand meaning for that undefined term. Code my nutrition. Sounds interesting. What could that mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good thinking means you have an idea and you try to realize it, not you have a name and try to fill it with meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since &quot;code&quot; in relation to computation means &quot;To put into the form required by a code&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/35581&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OED&lt;/a&gt;), we can come up with the following answers to what your phrase might mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Creation:&lt;/strong&gt; Software to create literary texts has been around for decades. The linguistic structures of text are well known, and programmers have developed algorithms that create artificial text (both prose and poetry) at least as early as the sixties. Google something like &quot;computer generated writing&quot;, which will come up with interesting results such as this one: &lt;a href=&quot;http://singularityhub.com/2012/12/13/patented-book-writing-system-lets-one-professor-create-hundreds-of-thousands-of-amazon-books-and-counting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://singularityhub.com/2012/12/13/patented-book-writing-system-lets-one-professor-create-hundreds-of-thousands-of-amazon-books-and-counting/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Analysis:&lt;/strong&gt; Computational analysis of literary text is equally old. The purpose is to discover text-linguistic structure and elements. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_linguistics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_linguistics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T08:14:00.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9543" CreationDate="2013-11-25T08:25:27.740" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jokes have been extensivle researched by folklorists, linguists, ethnologists etc. If you need to write about humor in China, go read a book or journal article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;amp;q=humor%20china&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;lr=&quot;&gt;humor in China&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, writers need to learn to research like scientists and journalists. Don't think like a writer (&quot;How can I make this up?&quot;) but like a researcher (&quot;Where can I find this information?&quot;). If you don't know how and where to search and which tools to use, take a research course for any science at the university library near you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T08:25:27.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9543" CreationDate="2013-11-25T10:04:40.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you enjoy the story you are writing? If your readers like the same story as you then they will most likely like the same humour as you do. If the readers don't like the joke then they may imagine the character as someone with a bad sense of humour. Is having a character with a bad sense of humour really going to destroy the rest of the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most quips are spur of the moment and relate to the current surroundings or recent events. The reader of your book is the one that has to like the humour and should bear more influence than characters origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the jokes don't have a strong violent, racial or hateful twist that would be considered in bad taste or vulgar by many you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5772" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T10:04:40.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9538" CreationDate="2013-11-25T10:16:14.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anything can qualify as allusion. The caveat is, it must go smoothly with the main theme, and contain another, veiled message; it must have a simple main theme, which is different from the theme it alludes to. So, if your quote teaches us two different things, and your introduction is about one of them, it will allude to the other one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't just drop a quote alone. You must have the quote relate directly, simply to paragraph it's included in, and simultaneously contain an allusion to whatever subject to which you wish to allude (different from the theme of that paragraph).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T10:16:14.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9528" CreationDate="2013-11-25T17:36:15.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A novel is usually a story of people trying to solve problems in their lives.  Writing a computer program that could realistically describe people who have problems and what they do to solve it seems to me like an “AI-complete” problem—a computer that can do that would be a human-equivalent intellect in its own right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I suppose you could compose a story of a polyamorous community whose characters’ quest for the ideal arrangement of partners is isomorphic to the four-color map theorem, and then come up with a scheme for translating a proof of that theorem into a novel.  That would be... an interesting intellectual exercise, but I’m not sure it would be a book to take to the beach.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more intriguing—and potentially soluble—question would be: what new apps would make it easier to write novels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T17:36:15.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9528" CreationDate="2013-11-25T18:38:06.910" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thirty or more years ago, a computer program named &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Racter&lt;/a&gt; &quot;wrote&quot; a very interesting book called &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.com/dp/0446380512/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=dalehemer-20&amp;amp;camp=0&amp;amp;creative=0&amp;amp;linkCode=as4&amp;amp;creativeASIN=0446380512&amp;amp;adid=1SPQQDER225G5K44S4EQ&amp;amp;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The programmer plugged in a variety of sentence, paragraph, story, and poem templates, and a bunch of words and the relationships among them. Every time he ran Racter, he got a different pseudo-random story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the programmer selected the ones that were worth putting in a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly the stories and poems were delightfully weird. This is my favorite:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More than iron, more than lead, more than gold I need electricity.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  I need it for my dreams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very eerie, that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Racter also had a short story published in &lt;em&gt;Omni&lt;/em&gt; magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was also Gahan Wilson's delightful &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://buzzdixon.com/writing-2/the-gahan-wilson-sci-fi-horror-movie-pocket-computer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Science Fiction Horror Movie Pocket Calculator&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; a flowchart for generating stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used that to learn programming. My favorite story was&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Earth falls into the sun and nearly everybody dies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T18:38:06.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9543" CreationDate="2013-11-25T20:54:54.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, &quot;funny&quot; depends upon the unexpected.  Jokes get told different ways, and the object of the joke changes (self-deprecating, racist, blonde, yo' mama, etc.), but the unexpected is what always gives the punch line its punch.  The unexpected can be unexpected for various reasons: time, space, juxtaposition/comparison of two very different things, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex 1: &quot;Yo' mama is so fat, she weighs 800 pounds.&quot;  That's not funny.  You expected an exaggeration of your mother's weight, and that's all you got.  So the joke is stupid.  It is the kind of joke that a 5-year-old or a Vulcan might come up with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex 2: &quot;Yo' mama is so fat, she has her own climate.&quot;  That's funny because you didn't expect the fat woman to be compared to an entire continent.  Your mind tries to picture a woman that fat, and it can't because there are too many ridiculous things about it, and that makes it funny.  (However, a 5-year-old would not find this funny, because he doesn't know about climates and continents.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is that foreign/alien humor would work the same way, but it would operate under a different set of expectations.  Unless you understand the culture and/or language and/or history, you won't get the jokes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your foreign/alien characters can still MAKE jokes, though.  You will just have to explain them to your readers, at first.  Make the explanations funny.  &quot;Suggesting Princess Suzie might enjoy rock moss was Gryznak's idea of a joke.  (I found this out later.  There's a hideously ugly creature in the Plains of Gxyap that eats rock moss.)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T20:54:54.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9543" CreationDate="2013-11-25T22:18:14.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Humor is notoriously difficult to translate. To take an extreme case, I saw an interview once with an American woman who had written a humor book. The publisher decided to produce a British edition, but they found that the book was filled with American cultural references and words that are different between the two countries, and so they added footnotes in the back of the book (okay, endnotes if you want to get technical) to explain all these references. For example, one of her jokes made a reference to a &quot;cloverleaf&quot;, and so they dutifully footnoted this and explained it as, &quot;an interchange on a motorway in the shape of a cloverleaf&quot;. And the writer commented, &quot;By the time someone has read one of my jokes, and then finished flipping back and forth to the back of the book to look up all the references, I'm sure they're just going to say, 'Oh, I wonder why someone would do that.'&quot; I say that's an extreme case because we're talking about the cultural barrier between two English-speaking countries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T22:18:14.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2425" CreationDate="2013-11-26T09:22:12.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/158297134X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;World-Building&lt;/a&gt; -- A writer's guide to constructing star systems and life-supporting planets, by Stephen L. Gillett.  The author has a PhD in geology, and so he covers topics like plate tectonics, water and air, magnetic fields, colors, etc.  The book also covers various aspects of planets and stars, orbits, gravity, seasons and tidal action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="300" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T09:22:12.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2013-11-27T00:47:59.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My average is 1500 typically, which doesn't sound like too much but I think that I manage to provide a reasonably large amount of story in each portion. It all depends on how you write, I think. I'm not usually one to drag things out, but it's different for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6329" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T00:47:59.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9056" CreationDate="2013-11-28T06:16:59.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been playing around with odt2txt. It strips out all formatting, leaving just plain text, perfect for diffs, and an acceptable starting place for doing your markup, and if you combine it with @AnandaMahto's suggestion to use Pandoc to convert it back, I have some ugly papers to try this on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T06:16:59.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9564" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9566" CreationDate="2013-11-28T06:34:14.813" Score="2" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a common problem I have. I always find myself debating whether I should write a sentence as &lt;em&gt;&quot;no longer knowing&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;&quot;without knowing...anymore.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I looked at Faye's cat smile, and for a fleeting instant, I forgot&#xA;  about everything. I forgot about buses, waiting lines, ticket&#xA;  counters, miniature toilets, sleepless nights on a seat. The feeling of&#xA;  exhaustion that never left my body. &lt;strong&gt;The feeling of anxiety upon&#xA;  arriving to a city that wasn't my own. And the even stronger feeling&#xA;  of detachment upon reaching mine without knowing who I was anymore.&lt;/strong&gt; I&#xA;  finally understood it at that moment. All this traveling had really&#xA;  alienated me from myself. To the point I no longer recognized my own&#xA;  skin, my own feelings, or my own thoughts. But thanks to Faye I could&#xA;  finally find myself again—that part of me that almost got lost forever on the&#xA;  highway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could have written it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The feeling of anxiety upon&#xA;  arriving to a city that wasn't my own. And the even stronger feeling&#xA;  of detachment upon reaching mine, &lt;strong&gt;no longer knowing who I was.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one should I choose in cases like this? The shorter one? The one that sounds &quot;better&quot;? I think I've read the sentence so many times I no longer/don't know which one is the best choice (anymore).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-11-28T07:10:15.363" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T11:42:26.707" Title="&quot;No longer knowing&quot; vs &quot;without knowing...anymore.&quot;" Tags="|creative-writing|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9537" CreationDate="2013-11-28T11:39:30.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His breathing quickened. &quot;Damn it!&quot; he shouted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His breathing quickened and he shouted, &quot;Damn it!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All caps reads as amateurish, at least to my eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6338" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-11-30T17:02:46.733" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T17:02:46.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9564" CreationDate="2013-11-28T11:42:26.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difference in emphasis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;no longer knowing&lt;/em&gt; is more about passage of time - you forgot, or the facts changed and your former knowledge is now obsolete, or there were some events in the past that took that knowledge away from you. The moment when you stopped knowing could be quite distant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;not knowing anymore&lt;/em&gt; is about loss - confusion, changes, learning new (contradictory) facts. It's usually about losing that knowledge quite recently, and not through natural process of forgetting, but by it being invalidated by developments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A person who just forgot is &lt;em&gt;no longer knowing&lt;/em&gt;. A person who got very confused, &lt;em&gt;doesn't know anymore&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T11:42:26.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2013-11-28T19:10:02.230" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no hard and fast rule for when to end or start a new chapter. Like word choice or sentence length, it's a matter of feel, of craftsmanship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, there ought to be a good reason for beginning and ending a chapter. Given this, being aware of some of the reasons why you might end/start a chapter is helpful.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among the more common reasons for beginning a new chapter are to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show significant new action –&lt;/strong&gt; While scenes might occur only a short length of time apart from one another or even occur concurrent with one another, a chapter signifies a major new action or movement in the story. For example, one chapter might have the heroes planning an assault on a warehouse to free someone who has been kidnapped; the next chapter has our heroes actually assaulting the warehouse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enhance the dramatic effect –&lt;/strong&gt; A cliffhanger is a good example of this. A chapter could end with a character in a situation that he likely can't get out of it (such as being corned by an assassin), and the next chapter then could show how he overcomes the crisis (such as asking as a condemned man to enjoy a last cigarette, which actually delivers a dart with an instant knockout potion in it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reveal important information –&lt;/strong&gt; When our main character learns something of such great significance that he must radically change his view or plan to resolve a problem, a chapter likely can end. For example, a wife about to sit down with her husband to talk about their lack of communication might learn he is cheating on her.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Present new point of view –&lt;/strong&gt; When the perspective character in the novel shifts, then a new chapter should begin. If you are telling the story from the point of view of a commander on a spaceship and then the commanding officer on the planet below, when switching between action occurring on the ship and the planet you may want to start a new chapter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps because television shows have acts that are equal in length – it's always the same number of minutes between commercials – new novelists these days feel they also must have chapters of the same length. While that might work for some stories, for others it is an artificiality that actually is detrimental to the story by disrupting its flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, novels need not be divided into chapters at all. Though uncommon, sometimes shorter novels (often of less than 150 pages) can simply use line breaks between scenes rather than resort to chapters that are only three or four pages long. In longer novels, the book may simply be divided into parts (Part I, Part II, Part III, etc.) with each of those sections treated as a long short story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6226" LastEditorUserId="7" LastEditDate="2013-11-29T02:53:28.880" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T02:53:28.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9580" CreationDate="2013-11-29T17:46:21.137" Score="3" ViewCount="538" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just spent the better half of a month writing and perfecting my prologue. It sets the tone for the rest of the story with an event which kickstarts the main narrative of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why should I avoid a prologue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it the type/style of narrative in a prologue that needs to be avoided or is it the stigma of a prologue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorUserId="590" LastEditDate="2013-11-29T18:14:48.110" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T21:59:38.727" Title="Elmore Leonard said Avoid Prologues... Why?" Tags="|prologues|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9570" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9572" CreationDate="2013-11-29T20:33:59.003" Score="5" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a character, who is part of a unique arm of the law, higher than the city guard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't a secret arm of the law; in the universe in which my novel is set, the characters of my book are already aware of what it is and how it fits in with the current law enforcement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I go about explaining to the reader what this arm of the law is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll give you a run-down of the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My character is in a bar where he's just caused some trouble. Once the place calms down, the barmaid turns to him and says &quot;What's a member of the Inner Circle doing in my bar, causing trouble with my patrons?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking about perhaps drip-feeding this information to the reader via the prying barmaid to allow the reader to figure the Inner Circle out for themselves. However, I'm worried that it'll sound forced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how do I ensure, using this method, that all my readers, whoever they may be, extract the right and same information from the explanation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-03T09:02:57.607" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T09:02:57.607" Title="How can I dripfeed new concepts to a reader?" Tags="|technique|fantasy|readers|showing-telling|concept|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9569" CreationDate="2013-11-29T21:47:25.613" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to start the story with a hook, something to get interest started, the hook can be in the prologue, but seldom is, and once hooked switching on your reader tickes them off. Does the prologue draw people into your narrative? If it does then it is fine, otherwise It should be less than 3/4 page and in a different font so that a bored reader will know that the story will start at the bottom of the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main reason prologues are frowned upon is they often tell instead of showing, when you should normally show instead of tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T21:47:25.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9570" CreationDate="2013-11-29T21:59:50.363" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What if your barmaid doesn't know that he is a member of the inner circle until the guard arrives? she can demand his arrest, make blunders, etc. and become polite, deferential, and apologetic. this sets up a minor mystery in the mind of the reader: what is the inner circle. Now that you have a minor mystery Your reader is primed for a history lesson after a delay. One caution: history lessons early in the book should ask more questions than they answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T21:59:50.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-30T06:09:32.230" Score="1" ViewCount="184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to write a thank quote and wanted to seek advice on how to make it sound more eloquent...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;To my joyful and loving /name of person/, who brings me the joy and peace to be able to do my work&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there better words for loving?  someone who has a lot of love to give and always give good love?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies in advance but my native language is not english.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6347" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T16:43:34.390" Title="how to make this thank quote sound more eloquent" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-11-30T20:34:24.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9573" CreationDate="2013-11-30T08:19:26.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can use a metaphor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For X, the fuel that keeps me going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course, something less cliched than that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Metaphors can make a quote more eloquent without sounding too cheesy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I compared my relationship with a girl with a &lt;em&gt;ghost hunt&lt;/em&gt;. And she actually cried (of joy, I think).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-11-30T16:43:34.390" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T16:43:34.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9569" CreationDate="2013-11-30T14:29:49.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about your prologue, but as a reader I seriously despise prologues that don't feature the protagonists, for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read novels, because I am interested what happens to the protagnonists that I identify with and care about. When I alread know what and who the novel is about, I don't care about &quot;what went before&quot; but befell someone else. I always skip the prologue and start right at the first chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I don't know what will happen in the novel and start with the prologue, beginning to care about the characters in it, I will feel cheated when they are replaced by the true protagonists in the first chapter. I have often found it difficult to get into the characters after a captivating prologue. There is some resistance in me, like the hesitation I feel at the end of a great book that keeps me from immediately starting in on the next book. I want to remain with the people I love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T14:29:49.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9576" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9577" CreationDate="2013-11-30T15:16:10.553" Score="-1" ViewCount="2304" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been set homework from my English teacher to answer this question in the &quot;Of Mice and Men&quot; book by John Steinbeck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that you are a reporter for the local newspaper in Soledad where Carlson has taken Curley to have his broken hand treated, following his fight with Lennie. You manage to get Curley to tell you the real reason of how his hand got smashed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using ICT if possible, write an article on the incident based on your interviews with Curley and Carlson. Explain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how the fight started&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who was to blame&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what Curley's and Carlson's impressions are of Lennie&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what, if any, action should be taken against him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read this part of the book and have watched the whole movie in class, so I understand the situation, but need help on writing as a reporter, as I have not written a newspaper article before and am not sure how to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6348" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-01-30T13:50:14.627" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T13:50:14.627" Title="Local Newspaper article, homework, on &quot;Of Mice and Men&quot; book" Tags="|journalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-12-02T01:53:08.817" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9576" CreationDate="2013-11-30T16:55:50.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best reporting is as simple as possible, factual and as clear as the events reported on. Limit yourself to 6th grade reading level. When reporting opinions of participants, use quotes. Your opinions should be kept out of the reporting. Since your teacher is also asking for opinion, I would turn in two articles, and make the second an editorial where you argue for your position. Further since you are working with fiction you do not need to limit your quotes to the book, but you can use what the characters would say to the questions you ask them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T16:55:50.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2013-11-30T17:54:13.327" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One Idea, event or decision that moves the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A rabbit trail if I may:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you check my profile you will note that I am a poet, what Is not mentioned is my background in industrial automation. Now one of the major challenges in industrial scale production is to determine the Ideal Batch Size. Larger batches have lower per unit costs, and smaller batches have lower inventory costs. There is a lot of math involved. Doctoral dissertations have been written about the math involved. Then along came a fellow who said, 'what is a batch?' and many realized that the factors that we thought were in opposition, were in fact not related and that the ideal batch size is one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I read a lot, both fiction and technical. Some books have chapters that are too long, they try to cram too much information together. Some books have chapters that are too short, they don't expand the idea enough for you to understand. I have even seen books with chapters that were all the same length that had both problems. Sometimes in the same chapter. In many respects the word count is the wrong question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T09:30:58.547" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T09:30:58.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9569" CreationDate="2013-11-30T20:32:32.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Orson Scott Card has discussed, in several places, how prologues (particularly to fantasy epics) tend to be dull, disembodied history lessons. For example, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/qp7-migration-books/card-interview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an interview&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most common mistakes come in picking where and how to begin their story. Too many people believe that old canard about plunging into the middle of the action: &lt;em&gt;in medias res&lt;/em&gt;, the way the classic epic poems began. We see it now in the meaningless car chase, where you don’t know who is in either car, so you don’t care whether the fleer is caught or gets away. The lonely sad person crying, as we then flash back through the entire story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(snip)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the flip side of the in medias res opening is the hideous dump-the-trunk prologue opening, where the writer thinks we won’t understand anything unless we are first told these eight paragraphs (or eighteen pages) of really boring, unintelligible, and unmemorable facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beginnings are all about expository flow — getting information from your head into the reader’s head as painlessly and memorably as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you have selected the right point-of-view character, then you can simply tell us, as it comes up, what the character already knows and is already thinking about, and then bring up each new piece of information as he or she learns it. If you need a prologue, or a flashback within the first chapter, or a long explanation to catch the reader up, you’ve started in the wrong place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And most — no, nearly all — first novels make one or the other mistake in how the opening of the story or novel is handled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To generalize a bit further, I'd say this: Even if your prologue is a great snippet of riveting fiction, it probably feels &lt;em&gt;disconnected&lt;/em&gt; from your first few actual chapters. (If it weren't, it wouldn't be a prologue. It'd be Chapter 1.) But the beginning of your novel is a really miserable place to have a &lt;em&gt;disconnected&lt;/em&gt; piece of fiction. The reader wants to find out what the story is and what it's about; starting out in one direction and than shifting immediately into another becomes an obstacle to doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As all writing advice, there's no rule without exceptions. I don't recall anybody objecting to the prologue in the first &lt;em&gt;Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; book, which sets up a major menace and also introduces important parts of the setting before the main plot can get there. &lt;em&gt;The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy&lt;/em&gt; has a short little prologue which is pitch-perfect in setting the tone for the entire book. Understand the risks, know what problems to watch out for, and then you'll have a decent idea of whether your own prologue is problematic or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T20:32:32.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9581" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9596" CreationDate="2013-11-30T21:18:32.193" Score="7" ViewCount="5244" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is a book labelled &quot;romance&quot; expected to a have a happy ending? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard advice that &quot;romance&quot; novels are meant to satisfy, well, a desire for romance, and so an ending without a &quot;happily ever after&quot; disqualifies a book from the genre. And indeed, it's hard for me to recall a &quot;straight&quot; romance that doesn't end well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, romance is a rich genre with lots of character attention; I could see a well-written &quot;unhappy&quot; ending being tragic, but satisfying. And I've just read several YA books (&lt;em&gt;Every Day&lt;/em&gt; by David Levithan and &lt;em&gt;The Fault In Our Stars&lt;/em&gt; by John Green) which are almost entirely about one romantic relationship, but have sad endings. (Is it possible these aren't romances? If not romances, what are they?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genre boundaries are pretty important for marketing purposes, telling the reader what to expect. That's why it's important for me to understand whether &quot;unhappy ending&quot; falls within the &quot;typical&quot; boundaries of the romance genres, or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-07-05T17:56:57.337" LastActivityDate="2019-07-15T15:10:12.480" Title="Do romances need to have a happy ending?" Tags="|genre|romance|ending|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9582" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9600" CreationDate="2013-11-30T21:35:14.563" Score="11" ViewCount="1244" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've gotten feedback for a complete draft of my WIP fantasy novel. Overall it's looking good, but a couple of friends noticed a significant loophole in the system of magic I use in the book. The book introduces the basic rules of how magic works in my fantasy setting. Without making this too specific about my particular magic ruleset, reviewers liked the magic system, but these two figured out the same basic loophole, which basically makes it possible to gain a ridiculous amount of magical power (way beyond anything anybody has in my book, and certainly way beyond what my protagonists have). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might be able to find a small tweak to the rules that could close the loophole. But if I don't find something simple, easy to explain, that makes sense with the rest - is there anything I can do to solve a major flaw in my magic system, without needing to rewrite the whole system and novel from the start?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2018-05-24T17:36:46.763" Title="Can I plug a loophole in my magic rules without rewriting the whole novel?" Tags="|fantasy|world-building|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9581" CreationDate="2013-11-30T21:43:06.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am German. You will soon understand why I state this up front. In German cultural theory a difference is made between so called 'serious' literature, music, painting and so on, and 'entertaining' literature, music etc. 'Serious' works are 'art'; 'entertaining' literature is called 'trivial literature'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Entertaining' or 'trivial' literature are all genre works: crime, SF, romance, western, horror etc. They follow genre rules, such as the happy end, or consciously play with and break them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your concept of art, 'serious' literature, or literature as 'art', might attempt to capture the sublime, represent reality, deconstruct a discourse, or something like that. There are no rules for the creation of art, although, again depending on your concept of art, they might reflect Aristotle's rules of the comedy (not funny!) or some other poetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my eyes this is a useful distinction. You examples would be 'art' or 'serious' literature. They do not aim at entertainment, but at &lt;em&gt;developing&lt;/em&gt; the personality of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T21:43:06.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9582" CreationDate="2013-11-30T23:35:41.267" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Novice&lt;/strong&gt;: Master, if I understand correctly, it looks to me like if we do [insert loop hole] that we could eventually gain unlimited power.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Master&lt;/strong&gt;: Yes, that would be the case and in the early times of magical exploration many magic users tried this. All of them disintegrated. You see, because of the [insert closure of loophole] that means that beings in this realm cannot harness more than [insert maximum level of magical power].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't remember where I first read the phrase, possibly Science of the Discworld, but essentially this is &quot;lies to children&quot;. You first tell them that gravity is 10 ms&lt;sup&gt;-2&lt;/sup&gt; and then when they are better at physics you explain that gravity is 9.8 ms&lt;sup&gt;-2&lt;/sup&gt; and then when they learn some more you explain that gravity is actually variable dependent on how close you are to a body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So cover up your loophole by saying that what has been previously explained is an over simplification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3857" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T23:35:41.267" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9581" CreationDate="2013-11-30T23:59:54.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Love Story&quot; by Erich Segal.  (Book and movie)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Way We Were&quot; (movie only)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Gone With the Wind&quot; by Margaret Mitchell (book and movie)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Romeo and Juliet&quot; by...really, I could have just led with this!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to go on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T23:59:54.183" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9582" CreationDate="2013-12-01T03:55:33.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why plug it? Have the loophole pointed out or discovered in the epilogue. It can be discovered by the bad guy, or by an innocent who is easily captured/corrupted by the bad guy. Presto: instant sequel!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T03:55:33.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9582" CreationDate="2013-12-01T11:58:52.440" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The same solution as every decent DM has to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Pun-Pun_%283.5e_Optimized_Character_Build%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pun Pun&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You Are Not The First Who Thought Of It. And the one who did think of it first really doesn't like competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are a background god, one who avoids spotlight and acts following own motives, rarely heard of. You rarely hear of them in particular, because the moment you think of a viable way of gaining means to beat them, you draw their focus to yourself, and die a very gory death. So, my advice is, don't think about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T20:59:44.820" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T20:59:44.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9581" CreationDate="2013-12-01T12:49:26.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, literary genres are not defined in terms of “your story must have A and B, but not C, in order to belong to genre X”. Rather, they are defined by “A, B, and C, are exemplars of genre X”. So &lt;em&gt;even if&lt;/em&gt; contemporary category romances all have happy endings, your story can run against that trend as long as it resembles the classics of the genre in other respects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T12:49:26.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9590" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-01T13:32:03.463" Score="1" ViewCount="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just finished writing my thesis and would like to learn more about proof reading techniques. Is there any book that is recommended to begin proof-reading? I would like to learn it a systematic way, thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2970" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T21:12:46.623" Title="Book recommendations for proofreaders" Tags="|proofreading|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-12-02T03:19:44.187" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9591" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9592" CreationDate="2013-12-01T13:50:09.687" Score="5" ViewCount="583" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a young-adult story, that is quite clearly set in my home town, because this is where I grew up as a young adult and it is easier to write about. Everyone speaks English, but speaks French when they're talking to a person of authority. The bus schedule sucks. The town is mostly white. These will all be used in an appropriately interesting manner without distracting from the main plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm curious is if this will detract from the general approachability of my story to young-adults or if this can be done appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware this is related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6456/deciding-the-setting-real-or-invented&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, but neither the asker, nor do any of the answers address young-adult fiction in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My evidence for and against this is as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of John Green books take in place in specific real places, with real land-marks that affect the story. He does this well, but I'm not sure what distinguishes his use of place from other stories I've read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a counter example, I remember reading as a youth Kit's Wilderness and being bored to tears by all the details about the mining community. This further backs up what I've heard that when writing young adult stories, it's somewhat important to leave wiggle room for the reader to project themselves at least partly into the role of a character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, is there a rule of thumb for deciding the level of detail in regards to place in a young adult story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T08:20:23.787" Title="Is having a specific town for a setting in a young-adult novel a bad thing?" Tags="|creative-writing|setting|young-adult|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9591" CreationDate="2013-12-01T15:58:46.900" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's important to figure out &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you were bored by the mining community setting. Is it because the character made too much of the details without giving the reader a sense of why they were important? For example, if the reader is following the character through a day in the mines, are the details important because we don't know if at any moment the mine is going to collapse on the protagonist or her father? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's less important to make the setting generic as is it to make the underlying meaning relatable. I can identify with feeling isolated, out of place, like I don't belong, but done correctly, it shouldn't matter if the isolated protagonist is in New York City, Amish country, Paris (France), Paris (Texas), Poughkeepsie, or Peoria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T15:58:46.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9582" CreationDate="2013-12-01T19:04:57.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The intriguing thing about magic is that you can imagine being able to do things that you cannot do in real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But characters that can do anything are exceedingly boring. What drives a plot for me is the limitation that the character has to work under. The story of an all-powerful god would be boring and short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;He did anything he wanted.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you do need a limitation to make magic interesting. And that limitation must not be a random &quot;plug to a loophole&quot;, it must be constructed as a foundation of the world and a defining element of the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The story of the all-powerful god might have an interesing sequel: &quot;After centuries of this he got bored and killed himself / gave up his power to life as a human / turned mad / ...&quot; The limitation here is boredom. This gives the story something that makes us interested.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T19:04:57.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9594" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-01T19:30:15.367" Score="11" ViewCount="2791" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of the most popular YA novels are pretty brutal, rape and murder are a common ingredient. Many show teenagers having sex. But how far can you go, before you cross the line into adult fiction, simply by being too detailed or too extreme?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel about a young woman who gets drawn into a terrorist network and commits some atrocious acts before she turns from this path. I attempted to describe what she does in a way that makes the reader experience some of the distress the protagonists feels witnessing her own deeds. I feel this is integral to the development of the character and the direction of the plot. It may not be, but this question does not aim at what is necessary, but what is allowable. Do I leave YA fiction with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-07T10:17:00.437" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T18:19:04.117" Title="How explicit can violence and sex be in a YA novel?" Tags="|young-adult|sex|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9590" CreationDate="2013-12-01T21:12:46.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reminded of the method banks use to train tellers to recognize counterfeits. They only handle real money. Lots of real money. The way I learned to proofread, was to diagram sentences, while reading my high-school grammar text, and reading Larry Niven, and other detail obsessed authors. So when my classmates work crossed my pencil, I asked 'Is this what a pro would do? why not?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn grammar systemically, proofreading is just paying attention to details, and practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T21:12:46.623" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9581" CreationDate="2013-12-01T22:45:56.370" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you want to piss your readers off? No? Then call a tragedy a tragedy, a drama a drama and a romance a romance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is all about customers' expectations. You can call your story a romance and end it in disaster. But be prepared to disappoint a lot of readers (also be prepared for their reviews).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course not all readers expect a romance to end happily. But I think it's safe to say, that most readers do. To start with an opposite view, let me cite &lt;a href=&quot;http://thescriptlab.com/screenplay/genre/romance?ModPagespeed=noscript&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the script lab&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whether the end is happy or tragic, Romance film aims to evoke strong emotions in the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Happy or tragic&quot;, ok, we get it. But it's about movie scripts, not novels. Does that make a difference? I'm not sure. But in my opinion if it ends tragically, why don't you call it a tragedy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rjeffers.com/RomanceGenre.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Romance Writers of America&lt;/a&gt; define the basic elements of a romance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an&#xA;  emotionally-satisfying and optimistic ending. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happy end! Must-have according to the Romance Writers (whoever they are).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B003E7ETEY&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan&lt;/a&gt; define the &quot;basic formula&quot; of a romance as &quot;deceptively simple&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Boy meets girl.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Holy crap, shit happens!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Eventually, the boy gets the girl back.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  They live Happily Ever After.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Happily Ever After&quot; is written uppercase in the book, no typo from my side. Maybe they want to make a point. (Oh, and they are talking about heterosexual romances only here, where the main audience are women. Maybe it's different for gay romance. I do not know.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can Happily name your tragedy a romance and live Ever After with the angry mob tearing apart your book on Amazon, or ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, it's all about readers' expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T22:45:56.370" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9594" CreationDate="2013-12-01T23:04:56.293" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;My sense (as a reader, not someone who's published a YA novel) is that you kind of want to liken it to a PG-13 movie. If it's too graphic for a 13-year-old to be watching in a movie theatre, it's probably too graphic to be published in the YA category. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) as John Smithers points out, that doesn't mean your protagonist can't still be a teenager. It just means you may have to change the marketing or publishing niche. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) you can go into great detail about her &lt;em&gt;emotions&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;thoughts&lt;/em&gt; without going into great deal about the &lt;em&gt;acts&lt;/em&gt;. The atrocities can happen off-camera, as it were, and that would make the text still suitable for the YA market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T23:04:56.293" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9598" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9601" CreationDate="2013-12-02T01:19:59.970" Score="2" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which is more appropriate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The air carried a bitter chill, but was clear and unpolluted.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Oh wow,” I said. “I know how Black Friday has a reputation for crowds, but this takes it to a new level!”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“That’s why we don’t usually go shopping on Black Friday, honey,” my mother replied, squeezing my shoulder, &quot;but I think we can make an exception this time.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The air, clear and unpolluted, carried a bitter chill.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Oh, wow,&quot; I said. &quot;I know how Black Friday has a reputation for crowds, but this takes it to a new level!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;That's why we don't usually go shopping on Black Friday, honey,&quot; replied my mother as she squeezed my shoulder, &quot;but I think we can make an exception this time.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6352" LastEditorUserId="6352" LastEditDate="2013-12-02T13:16:53.460" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T14:31:46.670" Title="Where should I put a minor action within a piece of dialogue?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9598" CreationDate="2013-12-02T01:55:08.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand there is no real better here other than personal preference and consistency of style. I still line the first one, it's more optimistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T01:55:08.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9582" CreationDate="2013-12-02T02:04:05.327" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That something is possible within a system doesn't mean it's a good idea.  You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; drive your car 180MPH on public roads (if the speedometer labeling is accurate), but if you do you'll soon be getting used to a bicycle.  You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; subsist on nothing but Big Macs and Coke for a year, but you may face medical problems.  You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; make a deal with the devil for great reward in this world, but you'll probably find yourself on the receiving end of an exploit and you'll be handing your soul over much sooner than you planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of your magic system, then, the following could be used to prevent use of the loophole (or make for interesting stories when people do it anyway):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an authority that will do something bad to you if you try it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a great personal cost (health, sanity, related magical powers, a curse, whatever)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a correction factor in the magic system itself; magical forces will compensate for the loophole exploit in a way that will make the exploiter unhappy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T02:04:05.327" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9598" CreationDate="2013-12-02T03:15:06.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to a question of style will always be, &lt;em&gt;it depends&lt;/em&gt;. In the example given, I'd say that the minor action disrupts the dialog, but that's without knowing the context of this excerpt. And this is meant to be an example. There's no rule for how to place minor detail, but there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; helpful ways to think about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every reader imagines the story a little differently. How much detail to provide is a writer's choice. The choices made will, over time, make up their style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minor details are generally given to flesh out a world. The color of someone's eyes, the make of a car, the address of someone's apartment—these are all examples of details that are given to make a world seem more real. The person's face, the car, the apartment—these are details that will guide the reader's imagination towards the picture the author has in mind.  Similarly, minor &lt;em&gt;actions&lt;/em&gt; can give context to a character's larger actions, bringing a character's &lt;em&gt;behavior&lt;/em&gt; closer to what a writer wants. If all goes well, this will result in well-drawn locations and characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may say, this is all excellent, but how does it help? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When asking where to place a minor detail or action, you might do better than looking at any one example. Have a look at your own writing. In particular, try to find some favorite passages, ones you feel worked well. Bits of action and description that you're proud of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where did you put colorful details? Did you interrupt dialog? Did you find clever ways to work it in? Did you have expository sections? There are no correct choices, only the ones that work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to find commonalities between these passages and use that as a guide, but don't be bound by anything. Know your strengths, but don't worry about taking risks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T03:15:06.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9598" CreationDate="2013-12-02T05:19:53.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that the answer is &quot;it depends.&quot; I personally would write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mother squeezed my shoulder. &quot;That's why we don't usually go shopping on Black Friday, honey, but I think we can make an exception this time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, if Mum is squeezing my shoulder, it goes without saying that the sentence following within the quotation marks is her reply. But then again, I'm making the supposition that you'll have a fair bit of speech in your story and will be looking for ways to stop saying &quot;said&quot; and &quot;replied&quot; repeatedly. If there's some show after the tell, your first example is just fine - as is the second!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6281" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T05:19:53.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9598" CreationDate="2013-12-02T12:30:23.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Appropriate? Are you kidding us? This is not a question about appropriateness. Sounds like your English teacher shoved too much unnecessary stuff into your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a question of style. It's about &lt;em&gt;find your voice&lt;/em&gt;. The only person capable to answer its &quot;appropriateness&quot; is &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;. Which version do you like better? What does your gut tell you? Then that's exactly the right choice. Learn to trust yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you really can't decide: No one complains if he has to read fewer words. So choose the version with the fewer amount of words if in doubt.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T12:30:23.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9598" CreationDate="2013-12-02T14:31:46.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some authors claim it's bad style to tag a speaker with action instead of &quot;said&quot;. - I strongly disagree If you teach your readers that they can rely on you sticking to &quot;one speaker per paragraph&quot; and that you never mix emotes of one speaker with words of another, just skip &quot;said&quot; if there's an action taking place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's why we don't usually go shopping on Black Friday, honey.&quot; My mother squeezed my shoulder. &quot;But I think we can make an exception this time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less verbiage, less clutter, everyone knows that she &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt; this and unless she spoke it in an entirely atypical manner, really no need to remind the readers that what's in quotes is being said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, there are specific punctuation rules in cases like these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Action&quot; interruptions (like in my example) are separated with a full stop, treated as a separate sentence. In this case starting a new sentence with &lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt; is forgivable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Speaking&quot; interruptions (&lt;em&gt;said, muttered, shouted, admonished&lt;/em&gt;) are separated with a comma: &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;...Black Friday, honey,&quot; my mother said, &quot;but I think...&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T14:31:46.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9522" CreationDate="2013-12-02T22:19:03.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you question the utility of these passages because they stick out. This time you saw them as lecturing. Of course, &quot;lecturing&quot; differs from delivering a good lecture. Lecturing is boring. A teen feels an adult is lecturing when they make a point that is not relevant. That may be what is happening here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In paragraph 1, you bring up the origin of deities which you then state that you don't believe in. The reader traveled into a blind cul-de-sac and was left there. They now must try to trust that the next time you make a point with colorful description that it will contribute to the narration and lead them toward the satisfaction of their interests in your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In paragraph 2, you invoke Einstein instead of deities. You then add two ways in which time can seem relative--examples that may be from Einstein or may be from the 1st person narrator. It may be that you go on to connect these examples to what is happening in the narrative, but if you don't, they will continue to seem like the lecturing adult, failing to make a relevant point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the short answer to your question is this. If you feel that your narrator is lecturing, and it is not the purpose of the narration to appear as lecturing, then you should avoid it. As Einstein says, lecturing is relative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6360" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T22:19:03.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="99" CreationDate="2013-12-03T12:44:35.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need the character's thoughts but want only action in the first part, there is no reason not to use 3rd person limited. It allows both pure action without thought and then action accompanied by thought. 3rd person limited does not limit you to only thought or only action; it can do both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John picked up the book. He read it. He turned the pages. He stopped on a page and read for a while. His sister came into the room and picked up the newspaper and placed it on the kitchen table. John looked at her. He wondered what she would do today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See? You can go from pure action to thought.&#xA;Hope this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6364" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-12-05T16:21:09.083" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T16:21:09.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9608" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-03T13:23:40.293" Score="3" ViewCount="2340" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I bought a box of sushi, and sat at the round table beside me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Opening the plastic container made me feel as though I was unlocking&#xA;  a treasure chest. I peeked inside to admired its content. Under the&#xA;  store's lamp, the mini-eggs glistened like pearls. The red, white, and&#xA;  orange fish slices resembled legendary jewels from the bottom of the&#xA;  sea. And the pieces of omelet were as smooth and shiny as gold bars. I couldn't stand another&#xA;  second, so I picked up my chopsticks and got started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I ate the sushi in less than a minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the paragraph starts comparing the action as opening a treasure chest. And the metaphors/similes that follow are all related to it (pearls, jewels, gold bars).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also tried writing the analogies in different ways (using as, like, and resembled).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will all these metaphors/similes be too much for the reader? Or are they OK since they're part of the same &lt;em&gt;theme&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will this sound better? (using &lt;strong&gt;looked like&lt;/strong&gt; and just repeating &lt;strong&gt;like&lt;/strong&gt; afterwards):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Opening the plastic container made me feel as though I were unlocking&#xA;  a treasure chest. I peeked inside to admired its content. Under the&#xA;  store's lamp, the mini-eggs looked like glistening pearls. The red,&#xA;  white, and orange fish slices like legendary jewels from the bottom of&#xA;  the sea. And the pieces of shining omelet like gold bars. I couldn't&#xA;  stand another second, so I picked up my chopsticks and got started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-12-03T13:56:14.300" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T07:50:45.093" Title="Is the following extended metaphor/group of metaphors too overwhelming?" Tags="|creative-writing|metaphor|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9608" CreationDate="2013-12-03T14:27:09.850" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oy. Chop, chop, chop. You establish the metaphor of the treasure chest, so you can just declare that A=B without the transitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The plastic container was a treasure chest of food. I peeked inside to admire its content. Under the store's lamp, the tiny eggs glistened like pearls. The red, white, and orange fish slices were edible jewels, the omelet smooth and shiny as a gold bar. I couldn't stand another second, so I picked up my chopsticks and got started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T14:27:09.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9608" CreationDate="2013-12-03T15:52:06.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number of treasure-similies seems over-the-top to me, the prose equivalent of a scene from &lt;em&gt;Tampopo&lt;/em&gt;. Maybe I would appreciate them better in the context of the rest of the story, or maybe I would appreciate them better if I liked sushi. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second version is definitely wrong. More verbs needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T15:52:06.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9608" CreationDate="2013-12-04T07:50:45.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi: I laid out my notes to you per sentence from your revised paragraph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Opening the plastic container made me feel as though I were unlocking a treasure chest. I peeked inside to admired its content.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To strengthen the connection between the object (container) and its symbol (chest), strip away as many mediating words as possible. &quot;made me feel as though I were&quot; waters down the connection between the box and the chest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Opaque words cloud our appreciation of the metaphor. &quot;plastic container&quot; &quot;its content&quot; These phrases are flat and unspecific. It flattens and cheapens the metaphor of the treasure chest, too. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, &quot;opening&quot; and &quot;unlocking&quot; are not equivalent here. This makes me think that you may have been searching for another word so that you didn't repeat &quot;opening&quot;. When this happens to me, I check to see if I have made a redundant comparison. &quot;I peeked into the sushi box. It was like opening a treasure chest.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Under the store's lamp, the mini-eggs looked like glistening pearls.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a filmmaker, I approach narration with a description of light, so when I see this sentence, I want to know more about the shop. Is it a cheap sushi shop? Is it truly a store, like a grocery store? Is there only one lamp in it or are there rows of fluorescents that hum and color everything green? Light is responsible for the pearls glistening. It is important to know the light.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Mini-eggs&quot; are miniature eggs? Or is this strict a sushi term? I'm not sure. It seems that sushi terminology would underscore the narrator's knowledge of the topic. If you could name the actual eggs, this would make your comparison more specific.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;looked like&quot; here again, it's possible to prune away the mediating language. If you describe how the eggs look, then they indeed did &quot;look like&quot; something (in this case glistening pearls). &quot;glistened like pearls&quot; gets you out of having to use the redundant &quot;looked like&quot;. These mediating words simply push the object and the symbol farther apart.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The red, white, and orange fish slices resembled legendary jewels from the bottom of the sea.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here again, you are probably talking about maguro, hamachi and sake. As a reader, I want to know how much the narrator knows about the dish. Colored fish is not as much of a treasure as elusive fatty tuna. To use an extreme example: &quot;The stuff was like legendary jewels.&quot; If we don't have a clear picture of the stuff, the comparison is one-sided. This is when you begin to feel that the comparison is &quot;overwhelming&quot; the thing being described.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;legendary jewels from the bottom of the sea&quot; are you referring to a specific story about a treasure chest? Using &quot;legendary&quot; and &quot;from the bottom of the sea&quot; implies that we are supposed to be able to envision these jewels. If you are referencing mankind's &quot;common knowledge&quot; pile of jewels picture, then you aren't really describing it to us. Everyone has their own image of this. Either you need to describe it or the reader probably doesn't need to know it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And the pieces of shining omelet like gold bars.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hmm. Maybe a comparison mismatch. But remember, your extended comparison only has to jumpstart the reader's interest in knowing more about the object. Once you've convinced the reader that the sushi is delicious and desirable, they don't want gold bars, they want to eat. What if you zoomed in to describe the omelet, transitioning the reader from inedible treasure to purely edible ones?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More focus on the food as you go will balance the comparisons and get the reader ready to join the narrator in this unstoppable first bite...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I couldn't stand another second, so I picked up my chopsticks and got started.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6360" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T07:50:45.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9047" CreationDate="2013-12-04T08:03:58.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A strategy that I have had a lot of success with is to release a series of short stories and price them each at 99 cents, then also offer the collection of all the short stories at a lower price than the cost of all of them bought separately. I have had a considerable amount of success doing this with one of my pen names, and I am getting ready to use the same strategy using a second pen name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to start with KDP and not any others (Nook Press for example), then you might want to take advantage of the KDP Select program. With KDP Select, you promise to distribute your work through Amazon exclusively. In return, they allow you to choose any five days you want over the course of three months during which you can set the price of a title to free. I know several authors who have done this for a lead-in story as a means of introducing people to the actual novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, I would recommend releasing all three at the same time. You could then choose certain dates for making the first short story free, and then a month or so later, offer the second short story for free. That way you could have a couple of different opportunities to introduce people to the full novel, which is where you would make your money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the approach you take, you will want to sell all three individually, and then also provide the option to buy all three together in a collection. The whole idea is to maximize your exposure and opportunities for generating revenue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with releasing them one at a time is that you lose out on the opportunity to obtain repeat customers. If somebody reads one of your works and really enjoys it, then they are likely to look for other works you have completed. If you don't have anything out there, then you will have a much harder time getting that reader back again. The whole idea is to keep them coming back for more, which only works if you have more to offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A web site that you might want to visit is the Writer's Café on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kboards.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Boards&lt;/a&gt;, which is a forum for self-published authors. You will find a lot of advice and suggestions on publishing and promoting, and it is specifically focused on writers who are using KDP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T08:03:58.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9591" CreationDate="2013-12-04T08:20:23.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing to consider is just how important the setting is to the story. If there are key aspects of the setting that factor into the story, then that could enhance the actual story. For example, &quot;To Kill a Mockingbird&quot; would not have had anywhere near the same impact if it had been set in New York City rather than the emotionally charged and racially segregated South. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your own example, how important is it that the readers know that people speak French when speaking to a person of authority? What is the significance of it, and why would the reader care? Will it make a difference to the story? You could ask the same questions about the bus schedule. If you can answer those questions in a way that indicates that these factors provide added relevance to your story, then go ahead and use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many books could just as easily take place in other locations without really having a major impact on the story itself. For example, the Twilight series could have just as easily been set in the Florida everglades or some remote region in Arkansas. There isn't really anything significant enough about the location for that series that makes it important enough to demand that the story take place there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of your location as another character in your story. If it isn't important and doesn't provide an added element to the story, then don't spend too much time dwelling on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T08:20:23.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9618" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-04T09:33:24.970" Score="12" ViewCount="4495" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is about publishing under a pen-name.&#xA;Does it have to be registered as a trademark?&#xA;If it's not registered as a trademark, can someone sue a writer for using it? Because every name you pick is surely also someone else's name. (Every name I could think of returns thousands of results in Google...)&#xA;I just basically try to understand how to use a pen name without getting into trouble...Is there maybe a place online where I can get a legal consultation on this topic?&#xA;Thanks in advance!&#xA;Jackie&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6370" LastEditorUserId="5637" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T13:44:37.903" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T15:50:25.470" Title="Using a pen-name: possible legal issues" Tags="|legal|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9618" CreationDate="2013-12-04T17:11:30.170" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Massachusetts, the state bar association has a referral service: if you go through them to find a lawyer, the person you talk to will charge only $25 for a half-hour consultation.  If your state has something similar and you want a definitive answer, I would encourage you to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, here is my opinion as a non-lawyer: if your pen name is not being used professionally &lt;em&gt;by another writer&lt;/em&gt;, and you’re not using the name of someone who is famous for another reason, you should be safe. Basically, you don’t want anyone to be able to convince a judge that you are trying to profit from their reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T17:11:30.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8581" CreationDate="2013-12-04T21:02:34.160" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You sound like you're trying to seduce them -- all you want to know is whether they have availability for a booking of their facility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, if I got an email like that I'd say &quot;No&quot; just based on my assessment that you're trying to be my best friend, not engage in a business transaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Dear Sir,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;I represent ...., and we are looking for a venue for an event in [insert time period]. We would need the following facilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Can you please confirm what availability you have in this period that would be suitable, and a rate guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Regards, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T21:02:34.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7835" CreationDate="2013-12-05T00:09:38.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might consider creating an account at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.librarything.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LibraryThing&lt;/a&gt;. They have an on going feature called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.librarything.com/er/list&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Early Reviewers&lt;/a&gt; where someone can request an advance copy of a book in exchange for a review. You will be able to see a copy of the book cover along with a brief synopsis, so you can scroll through the pages and just request books that interest you. The books are listed for anywhere from a week to a month, and at the end of the listing, they randomly select the people who will receive a copy. For example, if 150 people request the book, but the author is only providing 30 copies, then LibraryThing will randomly select 30 people from the 150 who requested it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For authors, you can take advantage of this to provide copies of your book (including e-books) in exchange for honest reviews. In my experience, I have found that anywhere from 6-15% of those requesting your book will actually follow through with the review. It's not a great return, but it's better than nothing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option would be to visit any of the many writer's forums and post a message that you are accepting books to review. I would NOT recommend this approach. I know a few people who did this and ended up being inundated with requests. We writers can tend to be a greedy bunch, so be careful about opening those doors!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T00:09:38.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9622" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-05T05:04:46.980" Score="2" ViewCount="475" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working on this piece for about a week in a creative writing workshop. We need to wrap up our current stories at a minimum of six pages to a maximum of eight pages. I've always had a tough time with deadlines and endings (haven't we all?). I am looking for any sort of feedback that can help me fix up what is already there and also keep moving forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions to choose from for critique:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Does the title work?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Are there any words or sentences that distract you from your reading?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What were some moments of pleasure during your reading?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Does this character introduction seem smooth and believable?&lt;br&gt; &#xA;How can I show more and tell less?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Would you want to keep reading this?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What would you expect to happen next?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;How could I improve the dialogue?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you had to describe my main character in three words, what would they be?&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here is my work thus far: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Losing Time&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My apartment was a walk-in closet advertised as a spacious studio with a view of downtown Minneapolis. The thick smell of greasy pizza rose from Bianchi's below around lunch and right before bar time. If you dared to look down, which I always did, you might spot some squirming garbage bags heaped over thick green dumpsters in the back alley. On occasion, a head peeks out and scans the perimeter for safe crossing before darting across the alley with its meal for the day. These heads don't look up, and I don't blame them. The art of dumpster diving is a fine one that can be practiced by all- from a group of drunk college kids to the lone homeless man scrounging to get by. This is the metal kingdom's wildlife just trying to survive.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    I took a sip of cold coffee and spit it back into my cup. My broke and lonely eyes scanned the newspaper. Landing on a paid volunteer experiment held in some special apartments over at UofM, I examined the fine print. It read, &lt;em&gt;Human subjects needed for a sleep study in a world without time. No clocks, windows, radios, television, or phones. Research funded. Participants paid.&lt;/em&gt; This is uncharted territory for some people- a looming alien planet. Not for me. My eyes darted around my cage cluttered with halfway read books, empty bottles and coffee mugs. Why not nestle into a new one and get paid to be a guinea pig?&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    Three days, two phone calls, and one hell of a long bus ride later, things were set in motion. The interview was a fluorescent-lit interrogation sprinkled with small-talk and paper signing.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    The doctor introduced himself as Dr. Schwartz as he folded his long boney hands and leaned forward. Behind bushy white eyebrows, his wolfish leaden-blue eyes stared into me as they tried to climb inside my head to discover some hidden truth. I match his gaze in a captive stand-off. I'm sure he's got some truth well hidden too.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “So, Mr. Casey, I understand you'd be willing to stay with us for a while. Is that correct?”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “That's right. I'm taking some time off. Might as well forget about it altogether, right?.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “Exactly how long would you be interested in participating in this project?” chimed the bright woman.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “As long as you'll be here,” I smiled. She raised her eyebrows. My eyes locked on the corners of her lips twitching back a small smirk.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    The intern scribbled away behind his yellow notepad. He's silent and still tries to capture everything, and I admired him for that.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “Mr. Casey, I must inform you we will be studying the normal sleep pattern with virtually no external variables. You will not be permitted drugs, alcohol, or sex throughout your stay here,” Schwartz furrows his face and talks with his hands.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “Shit, that's not normal,” I slammed my hand onto the table and laughed. The sound made the woman jump in her seat, the doctor's eyebrows raise, and the intern's eyes and hands stop moving for just a second.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt; &#xA;    “I mean, once this trial run is completed, how about we try it again with all three? You all can monitor away.” I grinned at the thought and tried to catch the scarlet lady's eyes as she grabbed more papers for me to sign.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “I love your enthusiasm, Mr. Casey, but that won't be necessary,” the doctor now fought back a smile.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “Why don't we start off with a contract of two months,” she pushed more papers towards me, expecting me to glance over the highlighted lines.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “Make it three,” I pushed them back.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “I'm afraid subjects are usually over-confident when predicting how much time they will be able to spend, or rather lose, during this experiment. Let's stick with two months and see where it goes from there,” Dr. Schwartz slid the papers back to my hands. His eyes gleamed.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “Good thing I'm not a normal subject,” I signed my name and removed my watch.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    Two weeks passed and at times I felt like a prisoner trading my youth for cash. I paced the fully furnished yet windowless apartment. An upgrade from my walk-in closet studio, sure, but I still longed for the ceaseless distractions of the outside world. I missed being able to walk the busy downtown streets on nights where I couldn't sleep. I missed having a drink when my boredom peaked.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    Instead, I had books and year old magazines to keep me busy. I started painting again and found some time for writing. I wrote letters to loved ones, but never sent them. I took some stabs at found poetry between random words and phrases that would strike me with electricity when read, until I started finding my own voice. When the written words didn't match the voice inside my head, I'd groan, crumple, and toss the pages away. Piles of clumped or shredded paper soon covered every counter and every corner. Every once and a while, I caught a researcher, AKA my babysitters, sneaking a glance at something flattened out and wrinkled. Sometimes they cringed, sometimes they smiled. I pleaded with many of them to let me write and paint the walls of this place.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “These white walls are too damn dreary,” I'd say.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “We'll have to ask Dr. Schwartz,” they'd say.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    The researchers were a little strange. They came and went and spoke to me in machine-gun rhythm.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “How're you feeling today?”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “Let's check those vital signs.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “It's getting cold out there.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    They were more interested in controlling the lights and examining my piss than in hearing about some fascinating dreams I'd been having. I wrote them down anyways. Blood samples were taken twice a day, right before I would fall asleep ad again after waking up. A catheter latched into my arm and a probe up my ass were both attached to a moveable pole. After a while, they felt like a part of me. I hated needles, but I got used to them. I once thought of sleep as the cousin to death, but now I was in love with it.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    They were vague on instruction, said that this project started out with Dr. Schwartz and his colleagues needing to find out the ideal length of a day for scheduling those who would go off in submarines and spacecraft. There were other researchers on board who would be monitoring different factors of the study at the same time. They'd tell me more afterwards, so they claimed. I didn't worry about it. No one had ever paid me to sleep before, and besides the loneliness I had nothing to complain about.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    I decided early on to abandon trying to figure out the time. I only tallied the days by carving slashes along the edge of a cheap coffee table leg. However, there was one glorious day when a technician stumbled in just as I was about to go to bed. Unusually clumsy, his tired bloodshot eyes swayed over his paperwork. His hands shook over the blood test equipment. The purple skin below his eyes revealed a lack of sleep. Old liquor lurched from his breath.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “Pretty rough night, eh?”I grinned when he came over to me lounging on the couch.       When I woke up, he was gone. I would never see him again.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    I listened to his replacement fumble around in the kitchen making no effort to quiet the clanging of pots and pans. I rubbed my eyes and sat up slowly until I grumbled my way into the kitchen. Grease hissed from an open pan and the savory smells of maple, coffee, and bacon flooded the room. All irritation vanished. My heart sped as my gaze met the table. Behind a newspaper and steaming mug stained by a single smudge of lipstick sat the scarlet haired woman. To my horror, a stack of flattened out papers sat on the counter behind her.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    Her lashes didn't budge from her reading when she said, “About time you woke up.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    A stupid grin spread across my face, “About time you visited. I was starting to worry you forgot about me.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “How could I forget you?” she blew the steam away from her mug and took a sip, eyes still darting rapidly across the page, perhaps savoring the last few words of an article. She looks up at me and I manage to hide my stupid grin. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “So, are you any less lonely?” she asked as she stood up and walked over the the stove. The question struck through my bones. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “Who says I'm lonely?”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “You do.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “I do?”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “In your writing.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “Who said you could read that?”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “Who said I couldn't?”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “I didn't say I was lonely.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    “You wrote about me, so you must be.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    She laughed, and my stupid grin returned. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, some different ideas I have for wrapping this up include having the Scarlet Lady- later her name will be introduced as Zoe- give Casey a leather journal to keep his work in. She will question his position in life and lack of risk-taking. He will fall in love with her even more. She will lead him on, but use him and his work to further her own research and career. Some tentative ending ideas include Zoe being married all along, Casey doing something horrible in his past that prevents him from moving on, Dr. Schwartz using both of them for his own research, and/or Casey eventually going completely insane by the end for investing so much time into losing time throughout this experiment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will take any answers, advice, or opinions you can throw at me. I'm looking forward to reading some thoughtful responses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6374" LastEditorDisplayName="user6374" LastEditDate="2013-12-05T07:50:02.703" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T07:50:02.703" Title="Where should I go with this short story?" Tags="|fiction|short-story|characters|ideas|writers-block|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-12-05T06:49:08.823" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9623" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9624" CreationDate="2013-12-05T07:14:42.047" Score="5" ViewCount="1204" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I'm a new writer, I don't know how to get copyright for my first book. Could anyone help me please? My book is an e-book in E-Pub format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6375" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-02-16T01:31:49.710" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T22:04:25.267" Title="How can I get a copyright for my e-book?" Tags="|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9623" CreationDate="2013-12-05T09:26:48.013" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;WHERE? It differs from country to country.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, you can register it with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/forms/&quot;&gt;Copyright Office&lt;/a&gt;. In other countries usually there's some counterpart to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note - you already own copyright for your book. It happened the moment you saved the final form, automatically. Still, if you want your rights protected, you need &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; means of proving that you own copyright to that work - otherwise it's just your word against word of whoever plagiarized your work. There is a number of methods of proving you own the copyright, but registering your work with the copyright office is about the most reliable and simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T09:26:48.013" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2013-12-05T12:53:13.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Paul Carr is a British writer, one of the best I have read. Have a look here  &lt;a href=&quot;http://thebooksmap.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/books-for-writers-and-enterpreneurs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://thebooksmap.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/books-for-writers-and-enterpreneurs.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6378" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2013-12-15T23:34:12.827" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T23:34:12.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="99" CreationDate="2013-12-05T17:03:45.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming for a moment you can't use third person limited or omniscient for whatever reason*, I think the best thing to do is start studying tv shows, films, plays, etc. They're storytelling mediums which are faced with a similar problem yet manage to be effective, and there's lots of analogies that can be made&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shot angle - what viewpoint you choose to describe. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Music - sentence length, pace, language used, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lighting, shot composition, symbolism - exactly the same!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on. This stuff is all important in writing in general, of course. But when you can't reveal what a character is thinking, and so lose a (often major) way to communicate with the reader, you have to work them harder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*I'm currently writing a short dit in third person objective. I tried several drafts in subjective and omniscient, but it just didn't seem to work. There are several pieces of data the reader can't know up front, and it's very difficult to relay any character's thoughts/feelings about events without revealing them in a way that is pleasant to read - the snippets I could reveal felt abrupt, while the 'big reveals' when they came felt like a cheat. Switching to objective has been difficult but a breath of fresh air, and probably a very useful exercise in how to convey mood/emotions/etc via other means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4710" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T17:03:45.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9630" CreationDate="2013-12-05T17:39:01.557" Score="2" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The green pieces of paper folded up in your pocket, the balance in your checking account, your mortgage, and that time you paid for dinner with your friend and she said that the next time is on her. These are all forms of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That feels awkward, and Microsoft Word isn't too happy with it either. It's some fragments strewn together - but seems out of place. What's the proper way (or a better way) to handle this for a work of non-fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6000" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-12-05T22:28:48.443" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T07:06:56.753" Title="How to list concepts and tie them in together?" Tags="|style|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9629" CreationDate="2013-12-05T18:57:23.000" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make them a list of sentence fragments. Poetic license. They sound better, and it helps each thought stand distinctly.The run-on is a little exhausting to the ear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The green pieces of paper folded up in your pocket. The balance in your checking account. Your mortgage. That time you paid for dinner with your friend and she said that the next time is on her. These are all forms of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T18:57:23.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9629" CreationDate="2013-12-05T21:46:57.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might consider creating more topography in this seemingly parallel list. The green pieces of paper are of course seen as money. They &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; the money. Calling attention to the obvious will help you make your point when you can connect the rest with a conjunction like but or however. This will improve the contrast of the clear example to the other items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6360" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T21:46:57.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2013-12-05T21:52:15.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are two books that have influenced my self study of the novel and narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Letters to a Young Novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa. MVL writes to a fictional young novelist about process and the conceptual work of writing a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster. EMF writes about the elements of a novel: plot, narration, etc. Originally delivered as lectures at Cambridge. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Together, the two books create a sort of 3D image of fiction writing that spoke to me. Of course, there is not one, singular best book in this space. You will find one (or more) that helps you in the way you want to learn and grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6360" LastEditorUserId="6360" LastEditDate="2013-12-05T21:59:07.797" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T21:59:07.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9633" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9644" CreationDate="2013-12-05T23:32:46.473" Score="5" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started writing a short story that involved demonic possession. The nature of the possession is symbolic. The story is an allegory. When I shared the initial draft among some friends, I had feedback that included some questions about which plane the demon came from, and some criticisms about the mechanics of the possession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The demons and mechanics of demon magic are based on the symbolism I want the story to use, not any particular mythology. I know that not everyone will love my writing, and some people won't get the allegory, but how can I help the reader understand at the beginning of the story that I am not writing fanfic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't include other fantasy elements and I'm not riffing on any particular construct. The allegory is about how we allow our desires to possess us, only in this case, the desires are 'personified'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastEditorUserId="2074" LastEditDate="2013-12-06T14:46:31.667" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T20:37:50.883" Title="Method for handling non-canonical fantasy fiction" Tags="|fantasy|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9056" CreationDate="2013-12-06T00:11:35.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you looked into &lt;a href=&quot;http://writemonkey.com/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WriteMonkey&lt;/a&gt;?  There doesn't seem to be a plug-in to do what you want, but it is a robust distraction free markdown environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If converting to html and then to MD works, this might be the ideal editing environment for you.  WriteMonkey will export MD to MS Word, which could then be opened in LibreOffice when you're done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6382" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T00:11:35.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9636" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9640" CreationDate="2013-12-06T00:18:53.533" Score="9" ViewCount="3263" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously, you're not allowed to use trademarked characters like Superman or Batman in your published works.  If I wrote a novel about Superman fighting Lex Luthor, I could get sued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about referencing those characters in a real-world context?  If I wrote a book about a child fighting to survive cancer and his family using Superman as a central role model to motivate him, would that similarly break the trademark?  What about a book that has nothing to do with Superman or Batman, but which features a scene where two friends casually discuss which superhero would win in a fight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a distinction between &quot;using&quot; a trademarked character and &quot;referencing&quot; that same character?  If so, what is the dividing line?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; Thanks to a very helpful comment, I've edited my post to change &quot;copyright&quot; to &quot;trademark.&quot;  I'd still love for someone to help me navigate the possible repercussions, though!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6380" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-01-10T06:00:50.270" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T06:00:50.270" Title="Referencing, but not using, trademarked characters" Tags="|copyright|trademark|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9633" CreationDate="2013-12-06T01:33:51.870" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a situation like this, I'd probably use what's often called a &quot;lampshade,&quot; which is where you make an unusual or strange event more acceptable to your audience by pointing it out.  For example, if a character with money problems suddenly wins the lottery, it seems like lazy writing; but if a character with money problems suddenly wins the lottery and then their best friend says &lt;em&gt;&quot;That is the craziest, most perfectly timed thing I've ever seen in my life,&quot;&lt;/em&gt; it becomes funny and much more acceptable in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the way you do it will depend on the style of your writing and your story.  Lampshades often are easier in comedy, which may not work for you.  But for example, you could easily have someone say something like &lt;em&gt;&quot;That's not like any possession I've ever heard of...&quot;&lt;/em&gt; and then have another character agree.  That would not only let the reader know that this is an unusual case, it might also open them up to examining more abstract and allegorical meanings behind the possession, which sounds like what you're going for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also remember: be sure that your INTERNAL mechanics remain consistent.  If a demon can only enter you when you're angry, you'll confuse your reader if a person gets possessed when they're sad.  You don't need to adhere to the rules of any pre-existing religion or published work, but your own rules need to be well-thought-out and consistent in order to be acceptable to your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6380" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T01:33:51.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9636" CreationDate="2013-12-06T03:42:49.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If writing practice is the same, you would inform the publishing house when submitting your manuscript that you had referenced trademarked characters, and they would take it from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI the same goes for copywrited material - at the front of loads of Stephen King novels you see thank-yous to writers of songs he's quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6281" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T03:42:49.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9629" CreationDate="2013-12-06T08:50:55.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, your sentence it is perfectly understandable. I don't feel it's weird when I read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6247" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T08:50:55.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9636" CreationDate="2013-12-06T08:54:55.180" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use the trademark name without problems while you're not doing a story about that character, i.e.&quot;He was as strong as Superman&quot; is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further information, I recommend you this article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2010/12/can-i-mention-brand-name-products-in-my.html&quot;&gt;http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2010/12/can-i-mention-brand-name-products-in-my.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6247" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T08:54:55.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9633" CreationDate="2013-12-06T10:19:20.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alexander has &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/9637/26&quot;&gt;a good point&lt;/a&gt;. Another possible approach is to get back to basics. The original meaning of the word demon was 'functionary spirit', that is a minor spirit that performed a single particular task e.g. guarding someone's hearth in their home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some joker who knew this etymological tidbit at the dawning of the email protocol decided to call the relay programmes that shuttle email on to its destination 'mailer-daemons'. You can still occasionally see this term in undeliverable bouncebacks something along the lines of: 'The mailer daemon at domain whatever returned code whatever'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As time went on the followers of the devil, and evil spirits were referred to as demons because the pejorative was intended to connote their relative lack of power. Eventually this notion was lost and demon became synonymous with 'evil spirit'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, apart from being a neat bit of trivia, finding some way to communicate that you are going back to the roots of the idea in the story will tell the audience that you are intending to re-make the mythology to some degree. It's a trick people do all the time with more common monsters such as vampires and werewolves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T20:37:50.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9643" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9649" CreationDate="2013-12-06T11:06:06.747" Score="5" ViewCount="582" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not after earning money but to spread knowledge about something for free. But if money is neglected, what else can be the disadvantage of publishing it online?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5705" LastActivityDate="2024-01-24T08:17:39.620" Title="Is it good to publish a novel online for free?" Tags="|creative-writing|publishing|novel|self-publishing|electronic-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9633" CreationDate="2013-12-06T13:52:47.520" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how can I help the reader understand at the beginning of the story that I am not writing fanfic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless it's published on a fan-fiction website or otherwise marked as a fanfic, I would generally assume that a work put before me was 'original'. I think this is the case for most people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is likely down to one of two things: either your friends are very primed to see things through a Dungeons and Dragons (or other similar game) lens (do they play tabletop RPGs? Although I myself am a fantasy and mythology nerd, many people who play those games don't explore any deeper than the D&amp;amp;D manuals, and assume that those are the &lt;em&gt;definitive&lt;/em&gt; versions of the monsters etc.); or (as @CLockWork suggests in a comment) your work is so derivative of D&amp;amp;D (or whatever) that is breaks past the initial assumption of originality and makes people think 'Drows? Prismatic Dragons? Oh, this must be a fanfiction'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your best bet is to show it to some people outside of your immediate friendship group. From judging their reactions you should be able to narrow down which of these things is the cause of your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5765" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T13:52:47.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9645" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-06T14:29:05.317" Score="7" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written my first novel in Spanish, my native language. The main character is Spanish and starts in Madrid, then goes to Zürich and ends up in the Alps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried to get it published with no success so far. Independently of the self-publishing idea, my &quot;Plan B&quot; is to translate it to English and try to find an US-based publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking a simple translation may not be enough if I want this to succeed in the American market; I'm thinking of making the character an American and starting the action in some city in the US, before moving the plot to Madrid. The main character's nationality doesn't affect the plot, and I can work a change in location between the inciting incident and the end of the first act without substantially altering the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this sound sensible? Is it obviously the right thing to do? Are there compelling arguments &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2017-12-13T15:28:50.437" Title="Plain translation or cultural adaptation?" Tags="|translation|international|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9645" CreationDate="2013-12-06T19:20:40.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a reader I would tend to argue for direct translation: It gives a window into something I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer I would argue for retelling: who wants to tell the exact same story again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case I would make it clear which you did, so that speakers of both languages can decide If they want to read both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T19:20:40.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9647" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9665" CreationDate="2013-12-06T21:05:35.663" Score="2" ViewCount="907" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read a few screenplays and i am a bit confused how the quality of a screenplay is judged by the Osacar panel.  It is not as obvious to judge the quality of a screenplay as opposed to the quality of cinematography or sound editing or acting.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Are there any authoritative sources that spell out how to evaluate screenplays so as to separate the good from the ordinary? What do they say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="593" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-02-22T22:00:50.327" LastActivityDate="2015-02-22T22:00:50.327" Title="Criteria for a good screenplay" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2013-12-16T06:06:05.273" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9648" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9651" CreationDate="2013-12-06T22:10:06.633" Score="2" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is many things, as we’ll see in Chapter TBD, but at its heart, it is just software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard it was bad to use contractions, but it seems a bit wordy to say: &lt;em&gt;as we will see&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6000" LastEditorUserId="5810" LastEditDate="2013-12-07T22:39:07.257" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T22:39:07.257" Title="Should I use contractions on a non-fiction work?" Tags="|style|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-12-16T06:05:37.053" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9643" CreationDate="2013-12-07T00:10:51.447" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few potential disadvantages that I can see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It isn't necessarily a solution to the biggest issue for new/unknown authors: getting eyes on the page (or screen, in this case). Putting something on the internet alone isn't enough to get people to read, you still need to have produced something of quality (or something so bad it's funny!), have people find it, be willing to expend the effort to read, and then recommend/link to others. It is possible, but for any given book, exceedingly unlikely (what was the last novel you stumbled across online, read in entirety, enjoyed and recommended to all your friends?). You're competing with the rest of the internet for attention spans.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some people still consider something given away for free as being valueless (whereas of course we know that &quot;price&quot; and &quot;value&quot; are different, right?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You've exhausted your &quot;first print&quot; rights (electronic ones, anyway), something that publishers may still consider valuable. That is, to get published in the traditional manner &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; releasing free online, you'd need to develop an enormous following to make it worth a publisher's while.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is always the fear that &quot;someone will steal my work&quot;. I think the chance of this is happening in any meaningful way is vanishingly small, but it is a concern a lot of people have. People do copy and re-post things on the internet, so it definitely happens, but if your work was copied and then got popular from someone else, a) at least it's popular (which is really your goal?), and b) when the internet&lt;sup&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; sees something it considers &quot;a wrong&quot;, it is quite good at investigating and outing the truth (a process which -- if it happened -- would likely generate an order of magnitude more publicity).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Costs associated with production, hosting and maintenance (as Bruce mentioned above).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a postscript, putting something online for free doesn't mean you can't make money. There are lots of business models you can look at: support via donations or &quot;pay what you want&quot;; popularity can open new opportunities for employment, expert comment, speaking, etc; selling physical goods to go along with the electronic (high quality print versions, for example). There are many others, I'm sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&amp;dagger; Yes, I referred to the internet as if it's a conscious entity in it's own right. It is, isn't it? ;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="65" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T00:10:51.447" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9618" CreationDate="2013-12-07T02:49:38.780" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had something like this happen: someone I worked with many years ago, but whom I did not know well, published two books (or more) using my first and last name as a pen name.  The problem?  First of all, it was an embarrassing book on a psychological disorder, and at least twice in my career I was asked if I had it before I knew about the book.  Secondly, we are very different people with very different views, and while my work enjoyed some degree of success later in life, the earlier pen name has been used a few times to misrepresent who the 'Elizabeth Best' is that wrote her vs. my books.  One well known book sales company had it set up so that when you clicked her pen name,  it went to my books, without a photo.  I don't think they did it on purpose, but it caused a great deal of trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many states, I believe it is illegal to purposefully without permission use someone's name, even if they are not well known as a pen name, precisely because of the possibility of a scam such as above.  It can be used to infringe on copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6393" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T02:49:38.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9648" CreationDate="2013-12-07T05:05:45.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're exactly right, as using &quot;we will&quot; might seem excessively formal even for non-fiction, but you've avoided &quot;it's&quot; which, apart from the informality, increases the chance that somewhere one instance will lose it's comma, or one will sneak into the possessive as in the example a few words ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6281" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T05:05:45.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9659" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9667" CreationDate="2013-12-08T03:33:27.053" Score="1" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there an official or unofficial source that ranks recent book releases (past 5 yrs) by number of copies sold? This would be a valuable tool to know what exactly readers prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often I am tempted by a certain book but it helps to know what the rest of the world thinks about that book with respect to other books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="593" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T18:03:54.043" Title="Book rankings by copies sold" Tags="|research|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9594" CreationDate="2013-12-08T18:30:21.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Québec, we have Patrick Senecal who writes YA books (or the French Canadian cultural equivalent, «romans jeunesses»), and eh is known for his gory and disturbing stories. I think it's an author's decision whether or not to be graphic, and a reader's choice whether or not to read books with very graphic and or disturbing description. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3660" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T18:30:21.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-08T19:52:52.890" Score="6" ViewCount="5884" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm translating a book. I would like to do it with a software that allows me to see the original one in a window and my translation in the other with an auto-scroll down. Can I do it with LibreOffice? What prominent software applications are used by the publishing industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastEditorUserId="6353" LastEditDate="2013-12-09T11:31:29.630" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T11:42:37.803" Title="What software applications are used for translating a book?" Tags="|software|translation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9662" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9671" CreationDate="2013-12-08T22:47:56.770" Score="2" ViewCount="695" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under what specific condition should I use 'bazaar'and what famous writers have used it? I know some Indian writers have, but does someone know any notable English writer who has used that word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6408" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T02:52:02.867" Title="Does the word 'bazaar' instead of 'market' seem more catchy?" Tags="|editing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9662" CreationDate="2013-12-08T23:01:10.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I hear market I think of someplace where I can find what I'm looking to buy, sometimes something I didn't know about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I hear bazaar I think of someplace where I might eventually find what I looking to buy, but will definitely find things I didn't know anyone would sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read both words in so many places, I don't pay any special attention. It would be like asking which writers of westerns used the word fireplace. (probably most of them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T23:01:10.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9647" CreationDate="2013-12-09T02:40:05.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are at least two ways to read a screenplay - as literature and as specification. Oscar reviewers, as peers in the movie industry, read for both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The document must describe a filmable movie, using the correct technical language and perspective. I can write a script about oranges or plate tectonics but I can't make that filmable, any more than a blueprint of a Tipler time travel cylinder makes the thing actually buildable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The screenplay must also give the director enough cues to tell a story without being overly specific - it needs to invite input from the director and department heads without being a connect-the-dots exercise or so overly specific that it would have to be taken apart and rebuilt to be filmable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the technical criteria is met the aesthetic kicks in - is the screenplay interesting? Does it have a good story, compelling settings? Is the conflict and arc clear? Do the characters relate to each other believeably, no matter how fantastic the world? Can I read the screenplay and at the end understand the story before any images are recorded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary - the screenplay is the functional specificaiton of a movie. It has to fill three prerequisites and the ones that surpass these by the most would, in a just world, be the Oscar candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can we read it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could we film it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do we want to make the effort?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3792" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T02:40:05.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9662" CreationDate="2013-12-09T07:52:20.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bazaar?s=t&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dictionary&lt;/a&gt;, the word &lt;strong&gt;bazaar&lt;/strong&gt; is a marketplace &lt;em&gt;especially one in the Middle East&lt;/em&gt;. Those Indian writers might be accustomed in using the word &quot;bazaar&quot; instead of &quot;market&quot; (although India is not actually part of Middle East). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another definition of bazaar is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(esp in the Orient) a market area, esp a street of small stalls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bazaar&lt;/strong&gt; is used mainly in Asia, so those English writers may not be used to that word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6353" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T07:52:20.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9659" CreationDate="2013-12-09T08:22:55.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishers don't publish sales figures. Therefore they are not available. For anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best estimations are those like the New York Times bestseller lists (or the equivalent in other countries), which are based on sales figures from a more or less representative selection of stores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NYT explain the procedure on this web page: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/&lt;/a&gt;. Click on &quot;Read a full explanation of our methodology.&quot; at the bottom of that page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T08:22:55.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9537" CreationDate="2013-12-09T08:39:13.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different styles of emphasis: underlining, spacing, italics, bold face, all caps and small caps, change of font face, color etc. Some of them can be found in printed magazines, others have been in use in the past, yet others are common on the internet or in typewritten manuscripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question, which style of emphasis you might want to use is a question of &lt;em&gt;usage&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;em&gt;What do publishers do, and what, therefore, do readers expect?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go to a book store and flip through a shelf of recent publications, you will notice: &lt;strong&gt;Most novels do not use emphasis at all!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some novels use &lt;em&gt;italics&lt;/em&gt; for something like thoughts. And that's about it. Sometimes SF novels use other kinds of emphasis to mark brain-to-brain thought communication, computer voices etc. But no novel I remember reading uses any kind of emphasis to mark change in volume or intensity of speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T08:39:13.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9669" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9701" CreationDate="2013-12-09T09:42:49.187" Score="8" ViewCount="1466" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a heist scene where five thieves are supposed to enter a corporate building and steal a few documents. It's supposed to be a major scene so it won't be short. I need the readers to visualize most of the parts of the building so that they can know why the sidekick is choosing a specific path even though it was not a part of the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, will describing the checkpoints 'on-the-fly' slow down the pace? Or should I describe the place before the actual heist starts in a scene where the protagonist is taken on a tour of the place so that he (and the reader) get accustomed to the place before the robbery starts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-12-09T13:36:57.097" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T12:33:19.623" Title="Good idea to describe the heist place before the heist begins?" Tags="|description|scene|crime|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9661" CreationDate="2013-12-09T10:00:26.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia lists a selection of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-assisted_translation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;computer-assisted translation&lt;/a&gt; tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also try to search your favourite search engine for &quot;translation workstation&quot; or &quot;translator's workstation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T10:00:26.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9662" CreationDate="2013-12-09T10:10:25.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I hear market, I see a teeny tiny bit of organization, stacks of fresh oranges, an early morning crowd and a women talking about inviting her husband's boss and his wife over for dinner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I hear the word bazaar, I see a dense street; stalls lining up on both sides of the street, aromas of different spices, a dense crowd and a fast chase scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all depends on the tone of the scene. As a writer, you should be more interested in choosing the right words to set the right mood. Also, I agree with Nubia on the regional factor. However, I personally don't consider it. I'm fine with a few technical errors as long as it's setting the right visual I want it to set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just stumbled upon this yesterday night while reading the novel.&#xA;The word bazaar is used by Robert Ludlum in The Bourne Supremacy when Jason Bourne is asked to meet The Taipan in the Walled City in Kowloon. Again, notice how he used the word Bazaar instead of the term market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="1768" LastEditDate="2013-12-12T02:52:02.867" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T02:52:02.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9669" CreationDate="2013-12-09T10:18:12.403" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that a book is not a movie (yes, this sounds trivial and stupid, but bear with me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Movies uses images so they are easy imaginable. Opposite to that producing images in the reader's head is the hard part. And you want to produce these images &lt;em&gt;and make them rememberable&lt;/em&gt; without the interesting, thrilling action (the heist) you need it for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, either you have another exciting scene at the same place (where you have the same problem like you have now) and make the place visible and rememberable, or you describe what you need during the heist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware, that a reader could take his time. So if you use two scenes and the reader needs two days till he reaches the second scene (because he has not much reading time), will he still remember?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two scenes or one, whatever you give the reader to read, make it interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T10:18:12.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9669" CreationDate="2013-12-09T10:44:40.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Provide a map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the layout of the building is really important, give the reader a map to follow. It's an ancient and proud tradition in books of all sorts, not just mystery/heist novels. Doesn't have to be really detailed, a sketch of the floorplan is usually all that's needed. It's a skeleton on which the reader can hang the flesh of your in-text descriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5766" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T10:44:40.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9669" CreationDate="2013-12-09T11:16:52.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Watch the show &lt;em&gt;Leverage.&lt;/em&gt; (It's about five criminals who turn Robin Hood, and they spend quite a bit of time breaking into buildings and stealing things.) Watch the entire first season, at least. Take notes on how often you get the layout of the place before it's broken into and how often it's not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T11:16:52.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9669" CreationDate="2013-12-09T11:38:28.977" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write the scene where the protagonist takes a tour. That shouldn't take too long to do, and it'll probably help you firm up your idea of the layout of the place in your own mind as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write the heist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now try putting the two together. There's at least 4 outcomes I can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It works great with the separate layout descriptions first. Keep it like that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The separate layout description is helpful, but having it all at the beginning slows things down too much. In that case you could try splitting the layout description and the heist itself up into sections, then alternate back and forth in time between the two.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having a separate layout description doesn't work, but you like the way you wrote it. Cannibalise it, taking the parts you like and work them into the heist description itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The separate layout is entirely unnecessary. Discard it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point overall is that this is a difficult question to ask in an abstract manner. Sometimes writing a description first may work, sometimes it won't. I think your best bet is, if you feel led to write it, then go ahead and write it. Don't let worrying about the overall structure slow you down now - fix that later once you've tried writing it once and have a better perspective on the work as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4710" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T11:38:28.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9669" CreationDate="2013-12-09T12:45:10.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want that in deep detail, provide a tour. If you want to cut on detail a little, make a scene of pre-heist briefing (or security briefing if that's the narrator's side).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The leader describes key elements, may show footage - photos or video of more important elements, may show images - that way you can fine-tune the amount of detail you convey as you like - filtered through three layers of narration (1. preparing materials for the briefing, 2. actual briefing, 3. your own narration) the amount of detail conveyed to the reader can be as fine-grained as you only desire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T12:45:10.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9677" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-09T13:27:03.143" Score="8" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question. I have self-published a book through Partridge publishing. &#xA;This is what my contract says -&#xA;&quot;1.4. You will retain all rights to the content of the Work. We do not own rights to your Work and we are NOT responsible for editing the Work and have no editorial control over your Work. As part of the Services, you may purchase copy editing services provided by us. You will have final authority with respect to suggested editing changes made by our copy editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.5. You acknowledge that you may not utilise the formatted Work, International Standard Book Number (ISBN), and cover with any other publisher.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone please tell me what exactly this means and if this means I can/cannot publish this book with another publisher after a period of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6413" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T23:10:38.583" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T23:10:38.583" Title="Copyright - Can I go to any other publisher?" Tags="|self-publishing|legal|copyright|publisher|concept|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9677" CreationDate="2013-12-09T13:30:12.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 1st part basically says that Partridge are not responsible for your book, they're literally just providing a publication service. It's completely yours, and you can do with it what you like in-terms of the actual content/words/ideas of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2nd part is a standard exclusivity clause.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You can only publish this work with them and nobody else. &lt;strong&gt;There is no note on period of time&lt;/strong&gt;, just that you can only publish this work with them and no other publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This clause is fairly standard between publishers. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=You%20acknowledge%20that%20you%20may%20not%20utilise%20the%20formatted%20Work,%20International%20Standard%20Book%20Number%20%28ISBN%29,%20and%20cover%20with%20any%20other%20publisher&amp;amp;oq=You%20acknowledge%20that%20you%20may%20not%20utilise%20the%20formatted%20Work,%20International%20Standard%20Book%20Number%20%28ISBN%29,%20and%20cover%20with%20any%20other%20publisher&amp;amp;aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;espv=210&amp;amp;es_sm=119&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I Googled the terminology of the line&lt;/a&gt; and you can see Partridge, Swift, AuthorHouse, WestBow, Legacy Isle and many more. Seems to be quite standard even in terms of the legalese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorUserId="590" LastEditDate="2013-12-09T13:38:36.937" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T13:38:36.937" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9677" CreationDate="2013-12-09T16:34:13.847" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL, and you should ask a lawyer (and in the future, please, never ever again sign a contract you do not understand), but for me it reads like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You will &lt;strong&gt;retain all rights&lt;/strong&gt; to the &lt;strong&gt;content&lt;/strong&gt; of the Work. We do &lt;strong&gt;not own rights&lt;/strong&gt; to your Work ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You haven't sold any rights. You still hold every right of your work. Which includes publishing it elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... not utilise the &lt;strong&gt;formatted&lt;/strong&gt; Work, &lt;strong&gt;International Standard Book Number (ISBN)&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;cover&lt;/strong&gt; with any other publisher&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They didn't buy your rights, but you didn't buy their rights either. If they provided the cover, then they hold the copyright on the cover and you are not allowed to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they formatted your work for printing (making it readable in a paper book), then it's their book design (interior design). If this is distinguishable from other designs, you are not allowed to use it. No big deal, because a new publisher will use his own interior design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;must not&lt;/em&gt; reuse the ISBN anyway. An ISBN is bound to the publisher. If you hire a new publisher then he must use a new ISBN (and will; no legitimate publisher will reuse an existing ISBN).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T16:34:13.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9659" CreationDate="2013-12-09T18:03:54.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at the links in the Wikepedia articles referenced in this question:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9463/what-are-the-3-all-time-best-sellers-in-each-genre&quot;&gt;What are the 3 all-time best-sellers in each genre?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Might be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T18:03:54.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9677" CreationDate="2013-12-09T20:47:06.947" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;With those terms, you can publish it with another publisher SIMULTANEOUSLY.  You just can't take Partridge's formatted version, after they've done the work of formatting your text, and let someone else publish the exact same thing.  The .txt or .doc (or whatever) file that YOU made, that you originally brought to Partridge, is YOURS, and you can take THAT to another publisher.  IANAL but that is pretty clear.  OTOH, the editorial changes, if you paid for those, are less clear.  It sounds like you would have paid separately for those, as part of a &quot;copy editing service.&quot;  In other words, you paid them to do a job for you (copy editing).  You didn't offer them co-authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T20:47:06.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4888" CreationDate="2013-12-10T16:11:25.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any of the different converters that have been mentioned here may work, but more than likely, you will find at least some problems with certain formulas. Because each of the different conversion programs use different processes or algorithms, it would be nearly impossible to write one document that would work for all of the different formats you want. For example, one converter might render a decent version for the mobi file, but the epub file turns out to be unreadable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way I have found to address this is to convert all of your formulas to images. It's fairly simple to do by just taking a screenshot and opening it MS Paint or any other imaging software and then cropping out the portion of the image that you don't need. I have done this with great results for a number of books that I have formatted for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One word of caution, however. If you have large images due to long, complex formulas, then people using smaller reading devices (smart phones) may have a hard time enlarging the image enough to make it readable. You can test this by converting your file and then opening it on a smart phone to test it out before sending it off to be published. If the image is too large, you may want to break it up into sections from top to bottom. Don't ever section it from side to side because that will cause the images to appear out of order. If your formulas are too wide, you may have to rewrite them so that they can be displayed better from top to bottom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T16:11:25.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9685" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9686" CreationDate="2013-12-10T19:30:16.073" Score="6" ViewCount="951" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked my Calculus Professor for a recommendation. He said, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sure. No problem. But write me an essay about yourself and since you're a computer guy, do it in LaTeX.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I've never used LaTeX before and I'm not sure why he asked me to do it this way (except for he was being cheeky). As far as I see it, it's just a standard essay. What are your thoughts on using LaTeX to enhance my writing, maybe for emphasis/fancy formatting, or would it detract from what I'm actually trying to say? I've contemplated just doing in in Word and not responding to his jibe at all, but I'm curious to see how he responds when I turn in a .tex file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I gave him a normal document, but threw in an inline command as a joke. I really enjoyed reading some of your responses, and I decided to join the TeX exchange to actually learn some LaTeX. Thanks guys&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;DOUBLE UPDATE:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd upvote you all, but lack the reputation. Sorry&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="6416" LastEditDate="2013-12-10T22:42:40.897" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T03:32:27.853" Title="Using LaTex medium to enhance writing" Tags="|formatting|software|medium|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9685" CreationDate="2013-12-10T19:54:38.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using LaTeX is unlikely to enhance your writing (or to detract either, as long as you start out with a complete and properly-formatted example LaTeX file and merely add your paragraphs separated by two linefeeds).  Generally the LaTeX process should have little effect on the writing quality, but if you aren't familiar with LaTeX commands you may initially spend quite a while web-searching for answers.  Note that if you plan to publish mathematics papers, or in some cases computer science papers, knowledge of LaTeX is valuable and for some journals is essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commonly, LaTeX systems are not WYSIWYG and do not include an editor.  Some  LaTeX systems are WYSIWYG, and if you have to see how your text looks on the page as you type it, you may need to seek out such a system.  That aside, the  editor that you use is likely to have the most impact on how you feel about the process, because after the initial learning speed bumps you will spend most of your time interacting with the editor rather than with LaTeX itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While LaTeX can emphasize text via boldface and italics, underlining is problematic.   LaTeX also can be used for  fancy formatting but that is best left for people with years or decades of experience, or for people who don't mind begging in &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;tex.stackexchange&lt;/a&gt; or at other LaTeX sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2619" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:29.717" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T19:54:38.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9685" CreationDate="2013-12-10T20:27:59.713" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;LaTeX for writing books - especially for writing scientific books, with equations or technical drawings - is what HTML is to writing webpages. It's a metalanguage which will get your formatting right, it allows you to write complex equations fluently, moving sections of text will not make the whole thing collapse terribly, and while for things like an essay it's overkill, once your book on Calculus crosses 70 pages mark in MS Word, you will begin understanding why LaTeX would have been a better choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, in most WYSIWYG editors, and notoriously MS Word, scalability (in the computational meaning) is a serious problem; once your document is big enough things that should happen &quot;automagically&quot; don't, or happen well past the moment you've taken steps to mitigate their lack (and only got disastrous results) or happen halfway, or appear on screen but not on printout... The bigger and more complex your document, the less reliably the editor behaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LaTeX suffers none of these problems. A rendering run may take longer or shorter, but the product won't differ in quality whether it has 10 or 1000 pages and 10 or 1000 equations, pictures, footnotes, margin notes, font changes or nested tables. Sure, instead of seeing the result &quot;immediately&quot; on screen you just type &lt;code&gt;\arcane_code{your text}&lt;/code&gt; but you may be sure what you see in preview will appear just the same in print. And LaTeX has thousands of &quot;arcane codes&quot;, of which quite a few you will need to learn before you get to write your first essay. Still, once you do learn them, this will help you in your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T20:27:59.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9685" CreationDate="2013-12-10T21:28:58.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;LaTeX is a fantastic piece of software. I do all my text writing in it - papers, letters, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are known to get totally addicted to it. Wander over to tex.stackexchange.com, and you'll find lots of such people there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some overhead involved in learning it. However, this overhead is mostly caused by things like graphics and mathematics. A personal essay should not have any of these unless you are a graphics artist or a mathematical researcher. And if you were the latter you would already know LaTeX. :-) For a personal essay, the minimal level of markup required is trivial; just the beginning and end bits, which look as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;\documentclass{article}&#xA;\begin{document}&#xA;&#xA;\title{my title}&#xA;\maketitle&#xA;&#xA;some stuff&#xA;&#xA;\end{document}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See? Nothing to it. Put this in a text file called &lt;code&gt;something.tex&lt;/code&gt;, and then do &lt;code&gt;pdflatex something.tex&lt;/code&gt; and you get a &lt;code&gt;something.pdf&lt;/code&gt;. Of course you need a LaTeX distribution installed, but if you are using a sensible OS like any of the Linux-based OS's, that is a piece of cake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your professor may be having a little joke, or maybe he just wanted to see if you would show some initiative. Regardless, I recommend you follow his suggestion, and turn in a LaTeX file. Even if it is a bit rough, he should be impressed. Make sure to mention you've never used LaTeX before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people at tex.sx are very friendly. If you need help, go and talk to them. Chat is a good way. If you have questions, make sure to check the site first to make sure it has not already been answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2422" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T21:28:58.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9643" CreationDate="2013-12-11T07:51:59.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think one of the greatest disadvantages is, that the web is not considered to be a media for professional publishing. There are some great books published on the web (for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://practicaltypography.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Butterbrick’s Practical Typography&lt;/a&gt;) but most content cannot compete with printed books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no matter how much you know about your topic, if your website doesn’t look professional, many readers could think your content isn’t as good as something in a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6228" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T07:51:59.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9623" CreationDate="2013-12-11T11:59:09.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The important part here is that you always and already own the copyright to your work, at least in all 167 countries that have signed the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Berne Convention&lt;/a&gt;. There is nothing you need to do to own it. Even in the US, registration of a work with the Copyright Office is not a prerequisite for copyright protection, according to s&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html#408&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ection 408 of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to do is make sure you can &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; that it is your work and, for questions of plagiarism, &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; you created it. That is the purpose of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_registration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;copyright registration&lt;/a&gt; in the US. It is also required in the US for some benefits, such as awards of statutory damages. Usually adequate proof is created when your work is published, e.g. by having your book printed by a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your work remains unpublished and you are not in the US (and cannot register your work), you can deposit a copy of your work with a lawyer or notary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from the links provided in my answer, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FAQ of the US Copyright Office&lt;/a&gt; provides a lot of useful information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T10:51:13.737" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T10:51:13.737" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9643" CreationDate="2013-12-11T16:39:59.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Money talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I see that a novel has the imprint of a professional publishing house, I know that some editor actually convinced his or her boss that this book was worth paying the author money up front, in the expectation that other people would buy the book once it was published.  That’s certainly no guarantee of quality, but it does narrow down the field.  Book reviewers feel the same way, so if I rely on reviews to decide what I should read next, those reviews are going to point me at a professionally published work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more books for sale plus books in my public library plus public-domain work from Gutenberg than I could possibly keep up with.  And then there are eleventy-gazillion works of contemporary fiction that other people are offering to the public for free.  I’m sure some of those free books are actually worth reading, and if someone whose taste I respect gives me a nudge and says “you should read this”, I’ll check it out. But otherwise, why should I make the effort to sift through them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T16:39:59.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9669" CreationDate="2013-12-11T16:58:05.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe description &quot;on the fly&quot; will slow the pace. It's more likely to keep the action immediate. Your characters will have done their research in advance; consider using the research scene(s) to lay the geographical groundwork without going into huge detail. (One or a few points will be challenging &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt;...) Then, in the event, the group's collective problem-solving skills can highlight the salient points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6431" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T16:58:05.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9693" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-11T17:26:37.567" Score="5" ViewCount="166596" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a paper for a Political Science class. We are allowed to use &quot;any standard citation format&quot;, so I've decided to use MLA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My university, the University of Florida, encourages students to use Purdue OWL as a source to find guidelines on MLA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question regards in-text parenthetical citations. There's a paragraph in my essay where I'm summarizing the history of country to provide historical context for the essay's debate topic, and I'm mainly using the CIA's World Handbook as my source for the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm not directly quoting the site (rewording it to make it a more condensed summary), I realize I need to cite the website in multiple sentences in a single paragraph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In APA, I've been taught that when you source paraphrased information for multiple sentences in a paragraph, once you have one sentence with the () part for a source, you can omit the &quot;()&quot; part at the end of the sentence from all sentences written in the same paragraph that use the same citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an equivalent rule for MLA? It seems a bit redundant to have the same () part after nearly every sentence in a given paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6433" OwnerDisplayName="Chris" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T18:56:39.337" Title="Multiple Same Source Citations in the same Paragraph in MLA format?" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9693" CreationDate="2013-12-11T19:10:05.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That would be a nice scenario to use &lt;em&gt;ibid.&lt;/em&gt;, but sadly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.studyhood.com/english/mla_style.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;that's discouraged in MLA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm surprised that you can omit them in APA, but so what. Be aware why marking the citations is needed: to distinguish your ideas from the ones you borrowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the paragraph includes your sentences embedded with in-text citations, you should mark each sentence individually. Even if it seems redundant, it makes it clear and precise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if your whole paragraph is more or less a summary of your source, you do not need to use the parentheses () at all. You can just mention your source at the beginning of the paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the CIA World Handbook ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you like that better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here a short summary of &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MLA in-text citations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T19:10:05.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9669" CreationDate="2013-12-11T19:19:38.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a good rule of thumb would be: Up-front, in preparation, the story can characterize &lt;strong&gt;one or two major challenges the heist will need to overcome.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's enough to whet the reader's appetite and to build anticipation. It's also enough to allow you to write very quick explanations &lt;em&gt;while&lt;/em&gt; the action is happening. If we know the bank is patrolled by robotic guardian leopards, then you don't need to explain ahead of time how the team is going to sneak in through the decorative fountain and then remotely detonate a catnip distraction. For these smaller details, you can shed light on the explanations as you go along with the actual action:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We were leaking water out of our boots, but it had worked - the robo-pussies never went near the water, and hadn't noticed us. Yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You ready, Brenda?&quot; I muttered. She was taking her sweet time opening up the watertight bag. &#xA;  She didn't answer immediately, and for a moment, I was afraid the bag had sprung a hole, and we were all dead meat. But then she breathed out, and raised the detonator out of the bag. &quot;High and dry,&quot; she said. &quot;Hope the pussies like their catnip.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For heist scenes, the reader generally is willing to accept that he won't be privy to the full plan before it goes down. If he had to wade through all the details when the protagonists do, they'd be ridiculously boring, and then there'd be a big long heist scene which'd be boring because now the reader knows what's going to happen. So revealing the details as you go is a great way of avoiding a huge infodump, and it does a good job of conveying the suspense, the meticulous planning, the careful consideration of branching possibilities - just as they become relevant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; need to do is have those major obstacles in place already, familiar to the reader - otherwise you'll have your characters climbing out of the fountain and then stopping for a long explanation of robo-leopards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T19:19:38.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9696" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-11T20:20:19.723" Score="0" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in no academic circles, nor have any friends who are interested in writing, so it is difficult for me to get any feedback regarding my writing. Any of what I've learned has been through reading other masters of writing, like Emerson or Thoreau. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I am reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0062735233&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a book&lt;/a&gt; that talks about the importance of reducing clutter and unnecessary words, and from my perspective, I've stripped the following piece of writing to its bare minimum. But from an outside perspective, I'm sure there are many things I'm not seeing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mo is a haplessly supercilious man who apparently refers to&#xA;  himself in third person. All self shaming aside, I like to write, some&#xA;  what garrulously, and use words that I just learnt yesterday and&#xA;  pretend I’ve known them my whole life. It is my goal to one day write&#xA;  in a way that would make Emerson proud (or cry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By craft and means I am a software developer, specifically iOS. Since&#xA;  young, I have been an interloper, trying my hands at all sorts of&#xA;  crafts to find one that I might marry. My passions have alighted from&#xA;  bough to bough, but as I have grown older, my fleeting attention span&#xA;  has abated and settled on to a trade that has made me an all too&#xA;  comfortable man, and this is the state from which I am currently&#xA;  trying to flee. The thrill of living is the pursuit of survival, but&#xA;  once this has been secured, life withers and creativity parches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have mostly been, in all my life, a reclusive, social&#xA;  intro-extrovert, with capriciously varying cycles. As of late, I have&#xA;  been surreptitious about my life, for I have been of the thought that&#xA;  the less people know about you, the less they can trouble you. But&#xA;  this has been an unproductive outlook, and this here — this expounding&#xA;  of my life and habits — is an attempt to reverse that, and share&#xA;  perhaps what I would have otherwise been uncomfortable sharing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are some words not necessary, and can safely be omitted without destroying the message?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Overall objective and subjective opinion, respectively. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1564" LastEditorUserId="1564" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T20:30:44.660" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T21:00:53.667" Title="Can this statement be simplified, and is it effective?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9685" CreationDate="2013-12-12T11:58:24.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most natural way to write is writing &quot;surface text&quot;: text that looks the way you want it to look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to emphasize a word, you want to see it emphasized. Because that is the &lt;em&gt;text&lt;/em&gt; you are writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LaTeX (or HTML or the markup behind a Word document) are not text. They are commands that tell an interpreting software what the text should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't live in a blueprint, you live in a house. You don't eat a recipe, you eat a meal. Similar, readers don't read markup, they read the text the browser or printer creates from that markup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a writer's point of view, markup is something that stands between you and your text. Working on a passage of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cake was \emph{huge} for a cup cake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;feels very different from working on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cake was &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; for a cup cake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that my writing process should let me work on the surface of my text. My software must hide the markup from me. That doesn't mean that I don't use LaTeX, only that I use it &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; I finished writing. For example, I might write my mathematical formula on a paper, label it with &quot;Formula 3&quot; and note in my Word document: &quot;insert Formula 3 here&quot;. Later I copy-paste the text from Word into a text editor and mark it up in TaTeX, inserting the formulas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning LaTeX is great, if you want to use LaTeX to create &lt;em&gt;documents&lt;/em&gt;. It is counterproductive for the writing process and no writer needs it for &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T11:58:24.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9669" CreationDate="2013-12-12T12:23:29.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Location, in a novel, is a protagonist. Protagonists act. If they are not taking part in an action, they don't appear in that section of text. If the location does not take a meaningful part in the action, it must not appear in the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example with person:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your novel is about John and Hannah. In the present scene, John goes to the supermarket alone. You will not write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John when to the supermarket alone. John entered the supermaket, Hannah didn't. John picked up some apples, while Hannah, who was not there, picked up nothing. John paid for the apples without Hannah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example with location:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John has an accident. You will not write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John slowly drove along the road. The steering wheel was black, the upholstery was a dark blue. The lights on the dashboard were red. The windshield was a bit dirty at the edges. The road was straight, the asphalt faded to a light grey with age. Yellow lines ran along the curb on either side, glowing softly in the fading evening light. Birds were crossing from left to right on their way to their roost. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you will do is describe only what the protagonists &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt;, in relation to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the lights on the dashboard irritate the driver, say so, otherwise don't mention them. If the road marking distracts the driver, who is from a country where they have a different color, say so, otherwise don't mention them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most actions scenes, you don't need a lot of description of the location where that action takes place. I just read &lt;em&gt;Flash&lt;/em&gt;, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr., a SciFi thriller, and there is a scene where the protagonist enters a building and assassinates another character. He pretends to be visiting one person, but on his way to her kills another person by pretending to going to the toilet (which will explain the time he spent in the builing). All I know after reading that scene is that there is a building, it contains offices, there is a porter, a toilet, an elevator, and hallways. I have no idea what the layout of the building is, how far it is from the toilet to the elevator, or even in which floor the action takes place. Because that is not part of the action the location brings to the story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are novels that wallow in pages of detailed description. But I guess that using the word &quot;heist&quot; you are not writing in that genre. In your case (as I imagine it) I would reduce the description of place (and characters!) to the bare essentials. That way, the reader will create the place (and person) that for him or her most fits the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favourite example is beauty: If you want your protagonist to be beautiful, just say she is beautiful. Don't add any details. That way every reader will see the person he or she finds most beautiful, instead of reading a description that will be hard to transform into an image and that might not be attractive for that particular person, destroying the impact of your plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T12:23:29.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9669" CreationDate="2013-12-12T12:33:19.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many movies and novels there is a &lt;strong&gt;scene where the heist is planned&lt;/strong&gt;. Bankrobbers don't usually spontaneously draw their guns when they pass a bank on their way to the supermarket. They have to have a pretty good idea of who will be where at what time, if the heist is supposed to work. So they plan. And this planning phase can be used to describe the (neccessary particulars of – see my other answer) the location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a perfect method, because it keeps the action scene free of non-action elements. The reader already knows the location, so you can run him through it at full speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it creates a riddle/solution scene (or however you play the planning) that can be entertaining and exciting in itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it allows you to play the actual events against the &quot;blueprint&quot;, showing how the action deviates from the plan, how the characters are creative or fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A planning scene, of course, only makes sense, if the heist is complicated enough to make witnessing the planning entertaining. If all you need is a long corridor, that is something you can throw in when the person runs through it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T12:33:19.623" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9702" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9703" CreationDate="2013-12-12T16:56:25.027" Score="3" ViewCount="4604" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a short story (maximum of 6,000 words) and realized that I will need to have two point-of-view (POV) characters. Let's call them Greg and Jeff. This became necessary when I saw that Greg, whom I had been using as the POV character, would have to leave a crucial scene for a moment but the story needed to continue in that place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't use Jeff as the POV character for the whole story because Greg still needs a scene after he leaves the room. I hesitate to have a story of 10 scenes or so with only 1 using a different POV character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good mix of scenes for two POV characters in one short story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5085" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T19:14:31.070" Title="Multiple Point of View characters in a short story" Tags="|short-story|characters|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9702" CreationDate="2013-12-12T18:21:23.443" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Serve the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually don't mind having a 10:1 ratio if the one scene packs a real punch. I wouldn't arbitrarily make half your scenes the other POV if it doesn't do anything to advance or improve your story. Don't fix what ain't broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T18:21:23.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9702" CreationDate="2013-12-12T19:14:31.070" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/9703/26&quot;&gt;Lauren's answer&lt;/a&gt;; there's no sense in &quot;balancing&quot; things for the sake of one scene. There are a few ways I can see to handle this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can &lt;strong&gt;encapsulate narrators&lt;/strong&gt; to keep a single viewpoint, sorta. I have an example from a friend named Joe, although I wasn't around when Phil told me about it. Phil says: &quot;In response to my question, Joe looked up from his book. He said, 'It's okay to have a viewpoint encapsulated inside a retelling'. Then Joe looked thoughtful. 'Just make sure it's doubly clear who's talking to avoid confusing the reader.'&quot; Phil nodded and said, &quot;Joe was dead right. Recursive quotations can be damn tricky.&quot; And so they are. I've edited this paragraph twice and still may have gotten this wrong. So use this carefully.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can &lt;strong&gt;make an exception for one section&lt;/strong&gt;, carefully labeling it as an alternate viewpoint. This can throw the reader out of the story if you're not careful, but it may be easier to handle if it's, say, a prologue or an interstitial chapter in-between major sections of the book. (Dropping into omniscient viewpoint might be best if you're going to do this.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can just &lt;strong&gt;embed what the viewpoint character needs to know in other scenes&lt;/strong&gt;. This is usually my preference and it would probably be easiest for the reader to handle, but will take you a bit of time to write/edit this. I suggest making a list of critical information and see where you can fit it in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, remember that the story and characters are the most important thing. Any method of including information needs to either move the story forward, add needed atmosphere, or build a character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T19:14:31.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9696" CreationDate="2013-12-12T21:00:53.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Objective&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reducing clutter is almost always a good idea in writing.  Why 'almost always'? Because sometimes you want to produce long, flowing, 'garrulous' prose.  The paragraph you have produced is very weighty, I worry cutting support words out may cause it to collapse under itself.  Clearer language does not always mean less language.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Number one aside, the word 'that' is generally superfluous.  &quot;And use words just learnt yesterday...&quot; &quot;Trying my hands at all sorts of crafts to find one I might marry...&quot; &quot;For I have thought the more people know about you...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do need 'that', use it with a noun. &quot;I believe that idea/statement/idiom...&quot; instead of  just &quot;I believe that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subjective&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend cutting some of the &quot;I&quot;s from your prose.  It can make your writing sound stilted.  For example, compare &quot;and share perhaps what I would have otherwise been uncomfortable sharing&quot; to &quot;and perhaps to share what would otherwise have been uncomfortable to share.&quot;  The repetition of the word 'share,' in the same form, links the beginning and ending of the phrase.  Eliminating the word 'I' allows the reader to join the sentiment instead of listen to it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some what, in this sense, is one word.  Self shaming is two words, but hyphenated as self-shaming.  Interloper is just the wrong word to use here, try dilettante instead.  Alighting means 'to land', and 'landing from branch to branch' sounds odd.  There needs to be some taking off between landings.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T21:00:53.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9706" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-12T23:20:47.380" Score="-2" ViewCount="3660" Body="&lt;p&gt;I emailed some people on LinkedIn asking them some questions about their expertise. Most of them responded back and asked me to send my questions via email. I did. Now it's been over a week since and no reply yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I write a reminder email that is: &#xA;- polite&#xA;- saying &quot;If they're busy maybe they can refer me to other people&quot; without coming off as impatient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've looked in similar topics but the emails were addresses to co-workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6451" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-12-13T03:59:04.150" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T20:09:06.050" Title="How to write a reminder LinkedIn email to a stranger?" Tags="|email|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9706" CreationDate="2013-12-13T04:06:07.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different roles call for different styles of writing, and how to phrase an email like this will hinge on whether you're a job seeker, someone who's networking, a recruiter, etc. But the techniques laid out in the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/1284/26&quot;&gt;How to write a polite reminder email?&lt;/a&gt; will also apply here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on easy questions that will save them time. (Hopefully you've already done this in your original reply.) For example, a simple question is more likely to be answered than a multipage questionnaire. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include the original message for reference. (Most email programs do this automatically, I'm not sure what the LinkedIn message editor does.) This will be helpful and will save time for the recipient. If they have to look up your original message, they're less likely to take the time to answer you. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let the recipient know that you have a specific reason for messaging them a second time. Saying that you're waiting for them before you can do [something in particular] may remove the &quot;annoyance factor&quot; and help them prioritize. So, &quot;Since I emailed you last, I've discovered that I need this information to do the thingamajig&quot; can come across as friendly when compared to &quot;It's been a week and you have not replied.&quot;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it easy for them. If you want them to refer you to someone else, make it a simple matter for them to do this quickly. Laying out the sort of people you're looking for may help. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, keep in mind that if you're messaging people cold, you just may not hear back from them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T18:14:12.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9645" CreationDate="2013-12-13T09:16:59.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm also Spanish and when I read a translated book, let's say Harry Potter (his nationality doesn't affect to the plot), I don't care if he's British or wherever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wrote the story in the way you think is the best, I don't think you should change it; even more when you say it (the nationality) doesn't affect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6247" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T09:16:59.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9472" CreationDate="2013-12-13T09:21:36.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL, but I think if you don't reveal the identity of the other person and there's nothing that can help other to relate him with your story, it is not a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, just in case, I will ask a lawyer or, better, the other person if you can use those mails. If it's for a good reason, I think the other would help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6247" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T09:21:36.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9472" CreationDate="2013-12-13T13:30:37.307" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess the answer will depend on your country. In many European countries, emails fall under the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Secrecy of Correspondence&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, and breaking this can result in a prison sentence. What the laws of your country say about this, I wouldn't know. The Wikipedia article mentions the situation in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another legal question in this situation is reputational damage. There may be more, so I would ask a lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you might want to consider if your relationship to the sender of the emails or his family and friends will suffer and if you want that – and how you generally feel about breaking another person's confidentiality. I wouldn't like it, if someone published my emails to them, so I wouldn't do it unless I felt the general public needs to be informed of some illegality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2013-12-13T13:39:20.250" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T13:39:20.250" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9472" CreationDate="2013-12-13T17:20:26.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL but I believe that in the US, the author of an email owns the copyright to it, so if you reproduce someone else’s email to you in your autobiography, you have to either get their permission or be prepared to make a fair-use defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T17:20:26.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9100" CreationDate="2013-12-13T18:51:11.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mention “Tony's fear that he can't function without the pill and what that means”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of &lt;em&gt;a specific thing&lt;/em&gt; that Tony is afraid he won’t be able to do without the pill, and organize the dialogue around that fear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T18:51:11.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9706" CreationDate="2013-12-13T20:09:06.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Your (second set of?) questions turned out to be more time-consuming than the responders thought they would be, based on your original contact.  So, they don't want to do it, but are too cowardly to tell you, and they are hoping you will just go away.  If you can determine that this is the problem, then maybe you can make your questions simpler or fewer.  In this case, your follow-up email would have the perfect excuse: you are sending them an easier questionnaire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Your (second set of?) questions turned out to be more specific than the readers thought they would be.  Unless they know you personally, they may even be afraid that you are a spy.  (Do a search on &quot;humint&quot; and you will see why.)  Even if they know you're not a spy, they may have asked for permission at work and been told, &quot;No way!  This is proprietary info.&quot;  In this case, make your questions more generic, if you can.  And again your follow-up email has the perfect excuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) They are just typical lazy/busy people.  You are low on their priority list, so you keep getting put on the bottom of the stack.  In this case, you'll have to be a nag.  No getting around it.  Just be a nag in the nicest way possible, of course.  Pity might be your ally.  &quot;Out of 20 people, nobody has responded yet.&quot;  Even better, combine that with some peer pressure: &quot;Out of 25 people, only 2 have responded.&quot;  Then you can keep sending reminder letters with the increasing count of respondees, to ratchet up the pity/pressure.  (You won't get 100%; don't even try.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T20:09:06.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9100" CreationDate="2013-12-14T12:58:02.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good question is always:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What makes a conversion interesting for you in real life, and how do you perceive it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually you do not just hear the words spoken and see or perceive nothing else. Even if you are on the telephone, stuff will happen around you or you will stare at the blank wall and see things in your minds eye. Introduce this into your dialogue, because it can reflect what the dialogue means to the characters. Descripe guestures, facial expressions that reflect the emotions of the characters: &quot;While John spoke, Pete looked at a passing girl, obviously bored with Johns monologue, but he turned his attention back at him, when ...&quot;, or describe how their minds wander: &quot;While John kept on about how Sue had left him, I thought back to how she had left me for John a year before.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find your dialogue tedious to listen to, summarize it: &quot;John explained to Pete how he had felt when he met Sue [and we know this, because we read the last chapters, so you don't have to report it here again], but he stopped when I noticed how Pete didn't appear to be listening but kept watching the girls walking by.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T12:58:02.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6868" CreationDate="2013-12-15T12:26:55.040" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Human names are often extremley alien.&lt;/strong&gt; Think of bushman names with click sound. Or think of French names and how unhappy your French teacher was with your desperate attempts at pronouncing them correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not the strangeness and unpronouncability of a name that make it non-human. So there is no reason to attempt that. You are not writing for historcial accuracy. You are writing for your readers. A character name must make sense to your reader, within the frame of reference of your reader's mother tongue. This includes foreign languages the sounds of which your reader will be familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, for an English speaking reader, the frame of familiarity is English sounds, alienness is signified, to differing degrees, by Spanish, French, Irish, German, Scandinavian, Slavic sounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you want to invent a SciFi name for someone from the home culture of your protagonist, you use English sounds. Make up a non-existing word that adheres to the rules of the English language, and you got your name: Bilbo. Ged. Katniss. [Oops, didn't know &amp;quot;katniss&amp;quot; was the name of an existing plant. I thought that was made up.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to invent a SciFi name for someone from an alien world or race, use sounds from a language not native to but familiar to your readers: Elrond. Tehanu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, the reader can read, pronounce and remember the names. They sound good. And they sound uncommon enough to be from the future or the otherworld.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, take note of the naming tradition of your genre. Fantasy names are very often Celtic or Norse, because the mythology that much of fantasy is based on is from those cultural contexts. SF names are often much more mundane, because they extrapolate current culture into the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to follow those conventions, but you should be aware of them and what it means if your elves have African sounding names, or your aliens sound somehow Asian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some authors on how they find character names:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://suvudu.com/2013/12/whats-in-a-name-thirteen-writers-on-how-they-name-their-characters.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://suvudu.com/2013/12/whats-in-a-name-thirteen-writers-on-how-they-name-their-characters.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sf-fantasy.suvudu.com/2013/12/drew-karpyshyn-on-character-names-and-evoking-the-mythical.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://sf-fantasy.suvudu.com/2013/12/drew-karpyshyn-on-character-names-and-evoking-the-mythical.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These character names should be banned forever:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://io9.com/5977781/these-character-names-should-be-banned-forever&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://io9.com/5977781/these-character-names-should-be-banned-forever&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &amp;quot;Dreams must explain themselves&amp;quot;, Ursula K. LeGuin explains that she chooses character &lt;strong&gt;names whose sound is meaningful&lt;/strong&gt; to her. I do the same. In the language that you are writing in, certain sounds will evoke certain characteristics, of people or things. This begins with the fact that male and female names are different and certain sounds, or sound combinations, are more prevalent (or popular) in male or female names. Other sounds sound hard or soft, bright or dark, elegant or quick, and so on. So what I do is define my character and his or her personality, and then get a large enough sample of possible names and select those whose look and sound fit my character best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my current SF novel I needed the name of the human female protagonist. I wanted the name to feel and look slightly exotic, but still familiar and not completele strang. It should be acceptable as a name today, maybe look like a future variant of a common name, sort of like Jula to Julia. So I downloaded the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heise.de/ct/ftp/07/17/182/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of 40.000 names&lt;/a&gt;, deleted all the male and male/female names, and then scanned the file, deleting any names that I did not like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is faster than it may sound. I scroll the file and soon realize that I do not like the sound and look of names beginning with &amp;quot;V&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;Zh&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;J&amp;quot;, so I can delete whole ranges of names. I don't like names ending in &amp;quot;drun&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;ise&amp;quot; (because they have a certain feel in my publication language), so I do a regex search with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grep&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;grep&lt;/a&gt; within TextWrangler to search-and-replace those names with nothing. I delete all names beginning with the same letters as other character names. After an hour of systematically deleting names with sounds or letters I find unpleasant or unfitting to my character description, I'm left with 173 names. I take another hour to look at each name, try to imagine my character with that name, and if it does not fit, I delete it. I'm left with 35 names that might fit. I google for images of persons of that name, and pick the name with the most pretty representatives. After half a day I have a name that feels perfect to me, if only because it is based on a selection process that leaves me satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't usually cast my characters (i.e. find images of real persons to represent them), because then I start writing the character to fit that person, but if I'm beginning to get confused during the name selection process, and all names start to feel equally fitting or wrong, I find an image that represents the most important characteristic of the character (e.g. the secret weakness or the final new identity) and open that image alongside my list. Then I match the names to that image. Later I delete that image and return to my own (and changing in the course of the plot) mental image of my character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A powerful core sentence from the story outline (e.g. &amp;quot;She cut his heart out.&amp;quot;) works fine as such an anchor also. I paste it into a separate file and have that open beside my list, so I always see. Then I compare the name with that sentence, sort of like a mathematical equation: does that name equal that sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lina ≠ &amp;quot;She cut his heart out.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anu, Aive, ... = &amp;quot;She cut his heart out.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use anything that for you represents the core of your character: a piece of wood, a certain food, an activity or hobby, or a landscape, where she lives. Compare the look and sound of the name to this, and feel how it fits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the type of story I want to tell, I use lists of names or lists of words (from different languages) to find my character names. I ususally don't make up new words, because I feel lost in the endless space of all possible letter combinations. But while I scan my lists, I might sometimes feel that a slight change to a word or a different representation of the same sounds will make the perfect name for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my characters have first and last names, I always find the part of the name first that I will use for most of the novel. If the story is about a teenager and I and the other characters will refer to her by her first name, I find her first name first. If the story is about a politician and I and the other characters will refer to him by his last name, I will find the last name first. I'll then google for that name to see what first or last names it is often combined with, to get a feel for that. Often I just pick one of those names that come up, or make up something along those lines. I don't torture myself much over the part of the name that only rarely appears in my text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T08:34:53.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9722" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-15T18:13:37.307" Score="2" ViewCount="1470" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing an essay which is entirely a response to a single source.  I mention the source in my introduction paragraph, and I give a full reference at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it also required that I include inline citations for every direct quote or idea that I use, when the reader knows it is all coming from one place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be stating &quot;The author says, &quot;....&quot; so it should be clear that the thoughts are not my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6469" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T11:51:14.390" Title="Inline Citations when Critiquing a Single Source (APA)" Tags="|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9722" CreationDate="2013-12-15T18:21:29.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would reference page, paragraph, or section numbers, in my inline/footnote citations and omit everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T18:21:29.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9727" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9728" CreationDate="2013-12-16T06:50:07.453" Score="1" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm newbie in writing books. How can I learn to write thrillers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/148/what-are-good-reads-about-writing&quot;&gt;books to learn how to write&lt;/a&gt;, and other resources. But how can I learn to specifically write thrillers? What skills do I need to learn, compared to writing in more general genres?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any books to which I can refer for writing some thriller stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6375" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:54:02.017" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:54:02.017" Title="How can I learn to write thrillers?" Tags="|thriller|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9727" CreationDate="2013-12-16T09:08:44.500" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is not necessary to read about writing thrillers to write them. Insted, I'd read thrillers directly, so you can see how they're written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you can also check these links with some advices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Thriller-Novel&quot;&gt;http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Thriller-Novel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.creative-writing-now.com/how-to-write-a-thriller.html&quot;&gt;http://www.creative-writing-now.com/how-to-write-a-thriller.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://davidmorrell.net/on-writing/writing-advice/&quot;&gt;http://davidmorrell.net/on-writing/writing-advice/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope it's useful for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6247" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T09:08:44.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1614" CreationDate="2013-12-16T15:45:24.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;DAMASTOR- It deals with the Black Plague in England, and it also deals with present day where violence reigns. An embittered angel has had enough with saving stolen souls from hell and wishes to save only one more, knowing full well that he is incurring the wrath of the All-Mighty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6479" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T15:45:24.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1614" CreationDate="2013-12-16T17:23:30.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 1999, a book called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Last Ringbearer&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; was published in Russia: it’s an account of the War of the Ring, from the losers’ perspective. It hasn’t been professionally published in the US, out of fear that the Tolkien estate’s lawyers would descend on the publisher like a swarm of Ring-Wraiths. However, an English translation is available for download.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T17:23:30.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9731" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9735" CreationDate="2013-12-16T23:01:20.363" Score="3" ViewCount="1009" Body="&lt;p&gt;My antagonist sends my protagonist a note that says &quot;See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this is the story of the the three wise monkeys, but I'd like this to relate to something different in my fantasy universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've written a sub-story, that will act as 'Lore' for my universe. I want this sub-story to utilise this saying instead; the story bears resemblance to the sentiment of the three wise monkeys but is otherwise unrelated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story will be 'common knowledge' to the characters, like some popular fables and stories are to us (the ones that everyone knows). The protagonist will summarise the story briefly in conversation to explain how it links with the note. Later in the book, I'll challenge this retelling by looking at a 'how it really happened' style revelation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the repercussions of re-imagining a fable/story like this to fit it within my fantasy universe? I guess I'd like to know if the reader would be okay with this, or if they'll dislike it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorUserId="590" LastEditDate="2013-12-17T07:12:16.860" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T16:55:19.590" Title="Rewriting an existing story (fable) to fit it within my fantasy universe" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9732" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-17T00:25:35.743" Score="6" ViewCount="2009" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for complete examples of nonfiction book proposals. Preferably, these would be proposals that resulted in actual published works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've already read &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/158297702X&quot;&gt;Larsen's book&lt;/a&gt;, and it does have some samples in it. I am also curious about the actual format in which these are generally submitted - MS Word, PDF, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6484" LastEditorUserId="6484" LastEditDate="2013-12-17T00:30:41.330" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T17:54:40.843" Title="Where can I find examples of nonfiction book proposals?" Tags="|publishing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2116" CreationDate="2013-12-17T00:28:39.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with @iajrz. For non-fiction, you should write the proposal first. Publishers and agents do not want to deal with a &lt;em&gt;fait accompli&lt;/em&gt;. Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/158297702X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Larsen's book&lt;/a&gt;. It's a great walkthrough of the entire process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I published a computer book in 2001, and sold 10,000 copies, so I know a little bit about this subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6484" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T00:28:39.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9727" CreationDate="2013-12-17T01:47:01.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Learning to write any genre of fiction is mostly the same set of skills - character exposition, scene setting, pacing, and so on.  Start with the general and then move on to the specifics would be my suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't follow the thriller genre much, but in my chosen genre (science fiction) there are a lot of popular authors who write blogs where they discuss writing topics.  Are you following your favourite authors' blogs?  It's also worth looking for publishing industry blogs (e.g. editors or agents) that might put a broader perspective on things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, as always, make sure you're reading a lot.  Be well-read both inside and outside your genre -- both are critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6437" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T01:47:01.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9731" CreationDate="2013-12-17T02:03:34.510" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing I'd ask myself if writing this is whether the reader would find the story interesting.  In order for the note to work, it seems to me you'd have to have told them the story &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; your protagonist receives the note (otherwise it would lose its impact).  But before they receive the note, there's no obvious reason why they would be interested in the story.  It would be a diversion from the main story, and something they'd likely find uninteresting if you just dropped it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key, then, seems to be that you would have to find a way of weaving it in to the main story in a way that's interesting and doesn't feel forced.  As an example from a novel series I'm working on, one of my main characters is repeatedly described as resembling a historical personality and has been selected for her role as a priestess because of this resemblance.  A few dropped hints throughout the early chapters give the reader reason to think this person is important, so when eventually somebody tells my protagonist a story about her life, I hope this is enough to make the reader interested to find out more about her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6437" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T02:03:34.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9731" CreationDate="2013-12-17T04:32:25.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;read &quot;another day another dungeon&quot; and its sequel &quot;one quest hold the dragons&quot; for a good example of how to incorporate character storytelling. I particularly like the contradictory explanations of greep. not all of the accounts of the origin/memories of greep are particularly consistent with the theme of the book (humor), but because of the placement, and discussion of the storys they work well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your story you need to have not only told the story of the three bears, but little blue boots, and ravenlocks and the three panthers to pull off what you are trying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T04:32:25.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9731" CreationDate="2013-12-17T08:57:21.943" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Myths, fables, fairy tales, classics are incorporated, remixed and reused over and over in all kinds of media. See a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6189/whats-the-significance-of-ancient-mythology-in-literature&quot;&gt;related question&lt;/a&gt;. The repercussions will be that people will notice, and will expect some twist, something to make the old story new. If you fail to deliver that, you will disappoint them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your story will be shoehorned by critics as a &quot;&lt;em&gt;retelling&lt;/em&gt;&quot; but that's not really a bad thing. It's just like if you put vampires in, it's automatically labeled &quot;horror&quot;, doesn't mean vampires or horrors are bad - it's just that if you want to maintain a different identity of the story, it will be difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expectations will be higher. People are more forgiving for crappy original stories than to crappy retellings - but if you write it well, you have nothing to worry. This applies only to the bottom-scrappers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But other than that, you're fine. As long as the tale is old enough not to be covered by copyrights, you're just doing what half the &quot;industry&quot; does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T08:57:21.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9479" CreationDate="2013-12-17T09:23:23.890" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't incorporate the keyword smoothly, that keyword is irrelevant to the site, and you're doing both the site and the Internet as a whole a disservice. You will gather more visits - and more negative attention as soon as visitors detect they were deceived. Legitimate business lose customers that way - the very reasonable train of thought is &quot;if they cheat at SEO, how sure am I they won't cheat at the cash register, or at warranty service?&quot; - in essence, wrong keywords mark a site as dodgy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write actual, real, meaningful content. Not empty marketing blurbs but valid, helpful, professional articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm no SEO expert, but I maintain one site in a rather competitive area. I suggested the owner to write a series of advices to customers, short articles blog-like, detailing advanced techniques, common errors, proper maintenance, misconceptions, &quot;industry horror stories&quot;, and so on. The language he uses is his own - not a smooth marketing slimeball, but an honest craftman, master of the trade, who is not afraid to call things their real names, or snark at idiocy of people who e.g. find a way to silence operation of a naturally noisy mechanism, completely compromising its purpose (and endangering their own lives) in the process.&#xA;That is incorporated in the page right next to a clear price list, testimonials of high-profile customers, contact and all the traditional elements of such a page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The articles not only show in-depth knowledge of the author, they are quoted and linked on multiple fora on that subject. Result? Google's #1 on search for [main keyword][location], above competitors who pay SEO firms for increasing positioning of their domains. Sometimes he falls to #3 or so - but that's always temporary. SEO tricks don't beat actual content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T10:47:01.630" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T10:47:01.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9740" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9776" CreationDate="2013-12-17T16:05:32.147" Score="6" ViewCount="649" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm creating a story based on the D&amp;amp;D Forgotten Realms campaign. Considering the main adversary in this case is a balor demon named Bob, an ally of the adventurers is a gold dragon named Joe, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I add humor to this story without destroying the action? Can you also add some examples? Also, the characters should have all the abilities and weaknesses of a true D&amp;amp;D character such that I can create a stat block for each of them that can actually make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6491" LastEditorUserId="6491" LastEditDate="2013-12-21T21:42:49.847" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T16:27:40.537" Title="Humor in a fantasy setting" Tags="|fantasy|humor|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9740" CreationDate="2013-12-17T17:39:20.953" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've gotten a good start with the name. Part of humor comes from confounding expectations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have this big snarly demon... named Bob. Maybe the damsel in distress is a guy in drag who was just trying to avoid the draft, and couldn't get out of his lie fast enough. Maybe the hero reveals he's bi, and that he's entirely cool with a male damsel. Maybe the bad guy is four kids operating a suit of armor by remote control. Maybe the hero's mage is Sherlock Holmes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go through the D&amp;amp;D tropes and turn them sideways. How much you pile on depends on whether you want it to be merely funny or a rip-roaring parody which still plays by the rules. (Which I would totally read, by the way.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T17:39:20.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9740" CreationDate="2013-12-17T17:51:38.880" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question made me think of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goblinscomic.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Goblins webcomic&lt;/a&gt; that has a very cartoony/silly approach to D&amp;amp;D-style fantasy, while still allowing for some interesting story-telling and character development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I feel that in order to find humor in the fantastical I would say finding how far you want to take that humor would be a big part of it. The Hobbit is peppered with light humor of the world and the various quirks of the characters(Especially their races.) while something like say Disc-World is humor-driven unto itself with plays on names, locations, and characters that mimic more &quot;Serious&quot; fantasy settings and stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it just depends how big a part you want humor to play in the story you are trying to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6085" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-12-17T20:18:32.783" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T20:18:32.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9743" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9746" CreationDate="2013-12-17T22:28:12.350" Score="3" ViewCount="2275" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a dialogue heavy scene. The protagonist has met with a group of mercenaries that he spent a great deal of his younger days with. He doesn't come to them for a catch-up however, he has ulterior motives for the meet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist is sat at a table with his three old friends. He's filling them in on a prior event (one that happened away from the pages of the book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my question...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the protagonist is doing 70-80% of the talking, how to I involve the user enough so that they don't forget about the other characters? For example, the protagonist directs a question at Person A, and they riff on this question a little together. How do I involve Person B and C enough in this part so that they don't disappear from thought?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T02:04:01.210" Title="Conversation with Multiple Characters" Tags="|characters|dialogue|scene|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9743" CreationDate="2013-12-17T23:26:19.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Smart remarks and sarcasm. and given that this is military recruitment trite maxims are great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;... and Then the king -&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;fell flat on his face,&quot; B interrupted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;no, no, no that only happens when some one important is watching,&quot; said C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P tried to get things back on track, &quot;proclaimed that the princess -&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;is as ugly as the frog she married,&quot; interrupted C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T23:26:19.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9740" CreationDate="2013-12-17T23:40:49.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the paladin and the cleric should be madly in love with each other, and keep trying to convert the other to their religion so they can get married. This gives you a great time to call someone a heretic during lovers quarrels. This can be made funnier if the religions are closely related like Methodist and Lutheran, and the other guys are followers of widely divergent religions like if the barbarian was a druid and the elf was constantly visiting witch doctors and fortune tellers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend the web comic &quot;order of the stick&quot; and the book &quot;one quest hold the dragons&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T23:40:49.177" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9743" CreationDate="2013-12-18T02:04:01.210" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stage business. B takes a drink. C eats something. B lounges back in his chair, looking thoughtful as he listens. C winks at the serving guy. B rolls his eyes at something the protagonist said, and C smacks his arm to make him stop. B plays with a coin, a ring, a belt loop. C starts polishing her knives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that you're watching the scene in a movie. The other two are still there, still moving and reacting and doing stuff. Write that down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T02:04:01.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9685" CreationDate="2013-12-18T03:32:27.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lyx.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lyx&lt;/a&gt;. It looks a lot like a normal word processor, but creates LaTex documents and has a lot of things like desktop publishing features in it as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't use it, but it would probably do exactly what you needed here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what it would do with equations, but I wouldn't be surprised if it handled them nicely as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T03:32:27.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9748" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9749" CreationDate="2013-12-18T03:48:03.153" Score="1" ViewCount="1143" Body="&lt;p&gt;Legally can you name characters after songs (poems, etc.) so long as those characters don't purport to affiliated w/ the song or the song writer/author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/291/are-names-of-characters-copyrighted-by-authors&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; asks the opposite question and the answer seems to be pretty encouraging that (in my case) a song would fail to properly describe the character of it's namesake such that it would be held up in court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6496" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T12:58:03.240" Title="Legal issue of naming a character after a song character" Tags="|characters|legal|naming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9748" CreationDate="2013-12-18T11:20:27.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the question you've linked to, it discussed in depth about how copyright works with characters. Surely your question is answered there? Regardless of the medium, the same applies. The key point is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a fictional character must be specifically described and fully developed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is nigh-on impossible to achieve in a song, given the limited length.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;IANAL but I think you'll be safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-16T12:58:03.240" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T12:58:03.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9732" CreationDate="2013-12-18T13:49:36.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have searched a bit on the internet and I have found this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://writersedgeservice.com/sample-book-proposal-from-a-professional-literary-agency/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://writersedgeservice.com/sample-book-proposal-from-a-professional-literary-agency/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6247" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T13:49:36.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8038" CreationDate="2013-12-18T19:54:40.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to read Harry Turtledove's &quot;Case of the toxic spell Dump&quot; It is a mystery set in a high tech magic based world. It is a interesting blend of science fiction and fantasy, in that all the high tech elements are built on magic and that this creates a world much like our own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T19:54:40.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9752" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9763" CreationDate="2013-12-18T22:49:23.620" Score="9" ViewCount="370" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a sci-fi book series.  As a true nerd, I want to use some characters to &quot;do homage&quot; to famous scientists, acronyms for experimental methods, and (here's the question) trademarked instruments.  All would be disguised somewhat; i.e., they are insider jokes (&quot;easter eggs&quot;).  Either I would change the spelling, or use an anagram.  So my question is: I'm on solid legal ground, here, right?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example1 (not in my books, though): Pepsi Cola =&gt; Spice Lopa, the village sweetheart&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example2 (also not in my books): Microsoft =&gt; Mike Rosoff, the scheming alderman&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know none of you are lawyers, but I'm hoping someone might know anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-27T17:15:45.567" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T17:15:45.567" Title="Is it legal to name a character in a story after a disguised trademark?" Tags="|character-development|legal|naming|acronyms|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9752" CreationDate="2013-12-19T03:54:16.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never encountered such a rule or law that prohibits the use of names derived from reality that you already altered. I can't give you any basis, but I am sure that it is allowed and that you are not violating any laws. I may edit my answer if I happen to see my basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6353" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T03:54:16.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9754" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-19T04:41:18.413" Score="5" ViewCount="3082" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have good examples from modern day fiction where backstory is given to the reader in a &quot;good&quot; way?  I'm trying to get a feel for what sounds natural in writing.  In real life there are lots of interruptions, organic conversation.  I understand that but in fiction that has to be tailored somewhat.  So, I'm looking for good examples of how information given in dialogue should be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T08:50:56.233" Title="What are good examples of backstory in natural dialogue?" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9755" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9759" CreationDate="2013-12-19T04:58:54.127" Score="5" ViewCount="638" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, if you have a guy who is an Indian (from India), and you say something like,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sukant answered in his Northern Bhojpuri accent, &quot;Yes.  It is indeed&#xA;  true.  Many people come into my store but not everyone for buying&#xA;  something.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now later in the story, do I have to write things that &quot;sound&quot; Indian.  You know, I don't have to make them somehow sound like the Indian guy in The Simpsons.  I figure that as long as I subtly mention it a few times in the story, the reader will supply it naturally.  Maybe I can use some idioms from his hometown, if it is important to the story, but other than that I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say like a guy was from the South (like Alabama).  Does he really have to say &quot;y'all all the time&quot;?  &quot;Howdy&quot;?  &quot;Fixin'&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T00:03:33.013" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T00:03:33.013" Title="Is it okay to mention a person's nationality and accent only once or twice in a story?" Tags="|dialogue|language|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9755" CreationDate="2013-12-19T09:14:39.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reading a Spanish book and there is an Argentinean guy in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer says it once or twice at the beginning and after that he just simulates the oral accent. He uses typical idioms or words like, for example, &quot;carro&quot; instead of &quot;coche&quot; when they say &quot;car&quot;. They also put the accent in different syllables in some words (this is easier for a Spanish writer, since we can use graphic accent to mark it; he uses italics if the word is wrong written because of this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, the use of stereotypes can be useful, for example the people from Argentina are known as good psychologists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now when I read it, I imagine him talking with Argentinean accent and I don't need the author to remind me anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6247" LastEditorUserId="14925" LastEditDate="2015-08-15T11:44:43.063" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T11:44:43.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9755" CreationDate="2013-12-19T09:18:36.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't make it too heavy unless you're aiming at comical effect. It's better to keep it as a part of the story (show) than tell it like you did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I have no clue how Northern Bhojpuri sounds like. I'd feel estranged by such a mention. Instead, we can base this on someone else's knowledge, taking it at face value without dwelling on deeper meaning, and driving the point home stronger than just by such narrator's interruption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Yes. It is indeed true. Many people come into my store but not everyone for buying something,&amp;quot; Sukant said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You don't live here very long, do you? Where are you from?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Yes, I am from India, Northern Bhojpuri. Does it show in my speech so much?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Quite a bit.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way informed reader will know what they see, uninformed but curious can look it up, and the rest will just accept it and let their imagination fill in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's great if you can make character's lines stand out as his own by the way they speak alone, but don't overdo it, don't turn them into parody of themselves. It's better to make a character sound bland, than fake. So - balance, and rather err on the side of &amp;quot;too little accent&amp;quot;, than on the side of &amp;quot;too much accent&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you write a comedy. In this case accent bordering on intelligible is a valid comical device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T09:18:36.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9755" CreationDate="2013-12-19T10:57:23.923" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of at least two ways to demonstrate your character's nationality and accent without having to mention it constantly or write the dialogue crazily:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) There is a difference between &lt;em&gt;accent&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;dialect.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Accent&lt;/em&gt; is more or less the generally recognized version of the language, taught in textbooks, but with regional flavor to pronunciation. Maybe there's a lilt to the voice, or a drawl, or the Gs get dropped, or Rs added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dialect&lt;/em&gt; is when vocabulary and grammar change along with accent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accent: &quot;I'm gonna do something about that.&quot; &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Dialect: &quot;I'm fixin' to do somethin' 'bout that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accent: &quot;Maybe something could happen.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Dialect: &quot;Somethin' might could happen.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accent: &quot;Should I call you in the morning?&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Dialect: &quot;Shall I knock you up in the morning, then?&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Dialect: &quot;You want I should come call f'you tomorrow morning?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The upshot is that you want enough differences from General American/English Speech to indicate that your speaker is of Indian descent speaking English as a second language, but not so much that it's impossible to read his dialogue written down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) When someone is learning English (or whatever) as second language, the speaker will often use the grammar of the native language, because s/he is still translating.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Native speaker: &quot;My hair is so straight.&quot; &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Native Italian, English ESL: &quot;It's so straight, my hair.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T10:57:23.923" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9760" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-19T15:18:00.420" Score="12" ViewCount="371" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once read an interview with some Fantasy author, who told how she wrote her first novel in the breaks between classes when she was working as a teacher, because she couldn't write at home due to her four children (I forget the exact details, but you get the idea).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working creatively within such a restricted time frame seems difficult if not impossible to me, but I'd like to attempt it, because for me at the moment it's either write while my kids brush their teeth or not write at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does writing your novel for a couple of hours uninterrupted each day compare to writing whenever you have five minutes? What are the problems? What are good strategies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T11:29:07.847" Title="How to write a novel if you only have five minutes here, ten minutes there to work on it?" Tags="|organization|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9760" CreationDate="2013-12-19T15:44:25.900" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mix both techniques of habit, I can write in my lunch hour and get a good forty minutes in but then if I have ten minutes before work in the morning it's incredible how those sprints stack up. It's the same theory as those bank accounts that round up spends by diverting the difference into a savings account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of it is that you get a good stack of words over a period of weeks without feeling too much pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to success at this is planning. The one downfall of short spurt writing is having to spend an age remembering where you're up to. I write out the plan of what I'm working on as a series of story tasks. Things I have to get across to the audience in order for the story to make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I work on the story one task at a time from point A to point B. So when I check in for a five minute burst I am only focused on the next task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you may lack the time to map out every task in one go. So to combat that I use a technique called splitting. When you split you take a relatively large chunk of story and split it into two smaller chunks. Then you split those chunks into two more down and down until you have a chunk small enough to be a task that will cover a couple of paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you're not actually writing the novel with your five minutes you can be splitting your plan. You have to have the attitude of a marathon runner to get this done but it will pay off eventually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: In response to the comment below I'll go into what I call a story task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a famous trope in writing that you want to give your story dynamism by boiling it down to a single sentence e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;An epic tale of love and betrayal set against the backdrop of the Great War.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this boiled down hyper synopsis you can make a short list of things that this story should include to be &quot;fit for purpose&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must include love&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must include betrayal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must be set during the Great War&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So obviously you're going to go off and read a bunch of stuff about the Great War for verisimilitude points. Let's not worry about that. Let's worry about love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you think generally about love stories they all describe how, as Shakespeare put it, &quot;the path of true love never did run smooth&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know you will have at least two characters, they are going to be the two people who fall in love so we get a whole new implied list of things we already know about our story from this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will detail a troubled love affair&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will have two characters who fall in love&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's split it down further. Let's take just one of our two lovers. Let's call him Daniel. We already know some stuff about Daniel just from our set up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is a romantic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lived during the Great War&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the latter we could probably take the path of least resistance and make him a soldier. So many were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is a soldier&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was twenty two at the outbreak of war&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I made up the second one because I figured mid-twenties would be a good age for a soldier and half of a love pair during the great war. This means he was born in 1892. I'm British so, following the path of least resistance again, I'll make him British too. Now we have some more story decisions to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story I'm imagining has the implication of epic, from the Great War setting, but how much &lt;em&gt;grit&lt;/em&gt; do I want it to have? Well, I don't want it to be totally fluffy, I may as well shift the setting then, but I also don't want the trench foot and starvation to detract from the melodrama. So we can think of a few things that it would be helpful for Daniel to be to make the magic happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daniel is reasonably well off.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daniel is intelligent enough and wealthy enough to be an officer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being rich, particularly in a time of war risks making him unlikeable so let's make him super nice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daniel is courageous, generous and kind, he cares deeply about the men in his charge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can keep riffing like this back and forth in the interplay between the reality we are trying to portray and the functions the various parts of the story have to perform for the audience to both buy it and like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not very romantic, from a creative perspective, but our characters, settings etc. are our tools. If we craft them wrong then the story won't behave. We might know that Daniel is kind and brave but we have to communicate that for the story to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we come to two story tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task One: Establish that Daniel is kind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task Two: Establish that Daniel is brave.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also have tasks left over from the big story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task Three: Describe Daniel's first meeting with Joanna (I just made up that the woman he falls in love with is called Joanna.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, breaking the story down into things that need to be there and then turning those necessities into tasks is a process that can be done in the odd five minutes here and there. Eventually you will end up with a massive list of tasks. Then any short writing stint is just a matter of crafting the next task into prose and the business of writing is just slogging through the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a first step and it won't produce the finished product whole and unblemished but it will get you between 70-80% along the road to completion. (DISCLAIMER: That last 20-30% though, that's the doozy, edit and polish, edit and polish...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2013-12-20T10:07:00.673" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T10:07:00.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9752" CreationDate="2013-12-19T21:09:14.057" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The specific issues you are dancing around are &quot;Trade mark dilution&quot; and &quot;Libel and slander&quot;. Trade mark worries can be mitigated by: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not using the exact mark, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not using it in the same industry. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pepsi and Microsoft do not write novels. Using anagrams of the mark is not the same mark. For example, Pepsi-cola and Coca-cola are different trademarks. For libel and slander concerns as long as your work can be considered a parody, satire, or allegory, they would have a very weak case. Also, as lawyers tend to be literalists, they won't notice if you don't get too blatant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T15:53:58.877" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T15:53:58.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9760" CreationDate="2013-12-20T09:24:47.380" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my case the answer is: you write it all the time. You write it down in the little breaks but you create in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to write while on the bus, or at work in between tasks. I take a bit longer for each &quot;piece&quot; - 30-45 minutes. Still, I rarely get to sit down and keep writing continuously - I often run out of ideas and get stuck if I try. So how do I write when I have a plenty of time allocated to write? I take my netbook, get on a bicycle, ride a kilometer or two to some Café, order a cup of tea and write my ideas while the cup lasts. Then another piece of ride and another café or restaurant or bar. The physical exercise, fresh air and possibly increased blood flow really helps me gather my thoughts and plan out upcoming parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too bad I can only drink so much tea/coffee in one day. At times this is what puts a stop to my writing spree ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T09:24:47.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9334" CreationDate="2013-12-20T09:52:25.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you're about to choose the tense of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7150/what-work-better-for-the-following-piece-of-writing-past-or-present-tense/7165#7165&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; about comparison of when and how to use which tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Past tense is the standard, something great most of stories is written in. It feels most natural - this is how you tell stories from your own past after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Present tense introduces the sense of immediacy, rapid flow of events, things changing at startling pace. It works well for action scenes, and fast-paced short stories but it wears off rather quickly, as soon as the action winds down, and begins to feel awkward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few more exceptions but they are pretty marginal comparing to the bulk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Picking the past tense for your writing is the &lt;em&gt;safe&lt;/em&gt; choice. There is no situation when it would be wrong. Present tense can &quot;liven up&quot; your action but it's easy to overdo it. Also, hectic mixing of tenses is the common newbie writer's mistake. Stick to one tense until you've mastered switching tenses smoothly - it's possible but tricky to do in a way that won't be jarring to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T09:52:25.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9760" CreationDate="2013-12-20T11:29:07.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think I could write anything decent in five or ten minute breaks. This is true if you are painting, sculpting, acting, playing an instrument, singing or even training to participate in a sports competition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do in those ten or fifteen minutes is to do &lt;em&gt;sketch&lt;/em&gt; down ideas; jot down inspirations, clarify, edit a piece of work, think of alternative ways of writing a scene. Use those 15 minute breaks etc. for short  intense periods of activity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you need time just to be able to think, to mull over things. To liberate your mind. Multi-tasking is a myth; do too many things at the same time and quality will be sacrificed. To dedicate an hour a day, &lt;em&gt;uninterrupted&lt;/em&gt;, to your craft is I believe, a duty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There must be a time in the day when children are asleep, or at school when a person can gather their thoughts, and sit down at their writing desk. Your craft must then take priority, nothing must intrude or distract your attention. Set aside religiously that one hour a day, and keep to it. Children will learn that &quot;mummy&quot; is working now, and will wait patiently or play with each other.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not easy, I know, but once you have established that routine, it becomes easier to maintain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5294" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T11:29:07.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9771" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-20T12:56:05.527" Score="3" ViewCount="7380" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the ISBN the same as the ISBN Barcode or are these 2 different things? I want to publish my own books, so need some clarification. Which one will help me save on my publishing cost?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6515" LastEditorUserId="2074" LastEditDate="2013-12-23T00:42:42.103" LastActivityDate="2019-03-10T20:23:08.317" Title="What is the difference between an ISBN and an ISBN Barcode?" Tags="|self-publishing|isbn|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9771" CreationDate="2013-12-20T13:17:52.290" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NzXvM.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(picture can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dlsoft.com/default.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dLSoft&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;978-3-16-148410-0 is the ISBN (number).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The vertical strokes below that number are the barcode (which represents the number above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T13:17:52.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9752" CreationDate="2013-12-20T16:48:22.593" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't forget this precedent: the HAL 9000 computer in Clarke's &lt;em&gt;2001: A Space Odyssey&lt;/em&gt; was formed by transposing the letters of IBM down one letter in the alphabet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;H &amp;lt;- I  &#xA;A &amp;lt;- B  &#xA;L &amp;lt;- M&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T16:48:22.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9771" CreationDate="2013-12-21T02:56:05.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Older ISBN numbers are ten digits long and divided into four fields, the country/language code, the publisher code, the book code, and the check digit. they were printed in ocr-a (a font designed for machine reading). Newer isbn numbers are actually ean numbers with ean checksums and use ean barcodes, with isbn numbers having 2 ean country codes (978 being used as the prefix for legacy isbn numbers, with the checksum recalculated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T02:56:05.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9661" CreationDate="2013-12-21T11:42:37.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found &lt;a href=&quot;http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center/translation-table&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Translation Table&lt;/a&gt; for LibreOffice this is not an advanced tool but for little works is useful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Translation Table creates a two column table, where in the first&#xA;  column you get the source text segmented by sentence, each sentence in&#xA;  a cell, and in the second column you can put your translated&#xA;  sentences, each one in opposite cells to the source sentences. It is&#xA;  not a CAT (Computer Aided Translation) tool, for such, please take a&#xA;  look to Anaphraseus extension or OmegaT project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T11:42:37.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9740" CreationDate="2013-12-22T02:08:35.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One easy way to go about portioning humor is picking a comical character (or two) and peppering the story with their wit, ineptitude, craziness, grave pessimism, or whichever other approach that makes them humorous that you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In D&amp;amp;D settings that character would &lt;em&gt;traditionally&lt;/em&gt; be some kind of bard, a person whose job was to be funny - making all the companions the butt of his humor and annoying them to no end, being a pragmatical coward in face of impossible odds, or opposite, charging bravely on the forefront with a song on his mouth. (&quot;I was trying to bluff!&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the rest of the team takes the reality of the world in all seriousness, he keeps a healthy distance. Which may get him in trouble or resolve problems in equal proportions. Let's say the dragon introduces himself as &lt;em&gt;Joerniperissimus Nightmare of The Dreaded Gorge&lt;/em&gt; and the joker is the one to address him as &lt;em&gt;Joe&lt;/em&gt; first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T02:08:35.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9754" CreationDate="2013-12-22T04:59:38.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a concept called &lt;strong&gt;Exposition as Ammunition&lt;/strong&gt; that is a pretty standard approach for presenting character background.  The idea is that if two character's are arguing, background facts can be hidden with the conflict.  This works because exposition (such as a character's backstory) is inherently undramatic, while an argument containing some background facts is more demonstrative of the backstory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I answered a question about Exposition as Ammunition a while back:  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1745/what-does-exposition-and-ammunition-back-story-mean-in-screenwriting/2707#2707&quot;&gt;What does &amp;quot;Exposition and Ammunition – back story&amp;quot; mean in screenwriting?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1904" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T04:59:38.683" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9778" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9837" CreationDate="2013-12-22T11:11:45.917" Score="5" ViewCount="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine has published a short story in Hebrew, and I'm currently translating it into English, for submission to short fiction magazines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is any information about the original publication necessary in our initial submission, beyond &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;This story was originally published in &lt;code&gt;Publication Name X&lt;/code&gt;, in &lt;code&gt;Country Y&lt;/code&gt;, in &lt;code&gt;Language Z&lt;/code&gt;.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T15:31:03.387" Title="What information should I provide when submitting a translated, previously-published story?" Tags="|short-story|translation|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9795" CreationDate="2013-12-22T11:28:31.267" Score="3" ViewCount="1343" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm away from the house but I have my .scriv file on cloud storage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, can I get to a particular chapter in my story and make some quick edits? Will changing these files break the program when I launch it next?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastActivityDate="2017-09-22T03:28:09.523" Title="Scrivener: Editing the source files" Tags="|tools|scrivener|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9780" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-22T12:00:59.547" Score="6" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine has published a short story in Hebrew, and I'm currently translating it into English, for submission to short fiction magazines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If accepted, will the editing process be any different than normal? Will the publication feel &quot;constrained&quot; to match up perfectly with the original, or are they likely to request changes as with any new story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T21:52:59.040" Title="What editing can I expect for a translation of a previously-published story?" Tags="|editing|short-story|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9514" CreationDate="2013-12-22T18:15:17.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it will mess with the flow. Yes, you can do it. If you want an introspection, the protagonist just reliving it alone, you'll be better off shifting the tense, e.g. writing the scene in present tense. OTOH, you can get away with switching the perspective very neatly if you &lt;em&gt;bracket&lt;/em&gt; the retrospection within the main story right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have the protagonist tell it to someone. Have her write that down as an entry in a diary, or as a letter never meant to be sent. Simply instead of shifting directly into that person's mind, following direct thoughts, have them become the active third-person narrator telling the story in a frame where this shift is obvious and fully justified, a story-within-story. That way you are not disrupting the current perspective, just setting it on the back burner while the new story is being told from the new perspective embedded in the story above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T18:15:17.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9782" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-23T16:11:56.137" Score="5" ViewCount="434" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a piece of fiction and am having some difficulty locking down which perspective/s to utilize.  The main issue at hand is that I have 4 characters that will play &quot;lead&quot; roles and different intervals once they are introduced eventually becoming part of a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am far from a professional when it comes to writing and am having trouble maintaining consistent perspective when writing.  There are points where the character is speaking and narrating and other points where I flip to a 3rd person story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am looking for is examples of first  or third person perspective writing that tell a story from multiple character perspectives by chapter (limited 3rd person is the direction I am leaning).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concern I have with a first person, or limited third person perspective, even thought I would prefer to tell the story from a non-omniscient view, is I am introducing a new universe/world etc and I want to demonstrate involvement in a broader social/political conflict that is brewing and I am not sure how to do this without utilizing an obvious mechanism or device that I feel can detract from storytelling.  Any suggestions for balancing the two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the examples and advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6524" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T20:22:36.477" Title="Perspective and Balance with Multiple Characters" Tags="|style|fiction|book|perspective|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9783" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9788" CreationDate="2013-12-23T16:29:19.703" Score="4" ViewCount="758" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for examples of authors who manage to have sarcastic/funny characters exist in a very serious, end of the world type of scenario.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue I am trying to resolve is when I write character dialogue several are quite sarcastic, and rarely serious but find themselves in dire situations...how do I balance the levity and the plot line without detracting from the seriousness of the situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6524" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T17:38:42.043" Title="Balancing character levity in a serious narrative" Tags="|fiction|plot|characters|humor|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9784" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-23T18:42:28.280" Score="2" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question for a friend in prison who wants to write a book. He asked me to get him a BOOK that helps him describe locations. He knows he can ask me for help, but being in prison he cannot always talk to me and therefore, having an old-fashioned printed book will help him. Does anyone know of a book? I searched the internet but couldn't really find one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6526" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T23:13:08.577" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T23:13:08.577" Title="Location description" Tags="|short-story|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9784" CreationDate="2013-12-23T20:20:40.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Learning to describe starts with learning to observe. If he wants to learn to observe, start with Sherlock Holmes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you start observing, then you practice putting your observations into words. Then it just takes practice writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T20:20:40.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9782" CreationDate="2013-12-23T20:22:36.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;George R.R. Martin's &lt;em&gt;A Song of Ice and Fire,&lt;/em&gt; aka &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt;, is the biggest current example. Three dozen? perspectives and counting. Introduces a new world with a huge political social conflict. Pretty much the textbook for what you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T20:22:36.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9787" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-23T21:55:08.450" Score="2" ViewCount="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently completed a strategy paper for a market research and publishing firm. They are planning to send me monthly statements associated with the number of copies sold. I don't know if this is strange question to ask, since this is my first time working as an author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: How do I know if they are reporting the accurate numbers and not under reporting the number of copies sold?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6527" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2013-12-29T22:00:50.870" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T22:25:10.393" Title="Royalties and Monthly Sales Statements" Tags="|authorship|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9783" CreationDate="2013-12-24T03:24:58.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One method I have seen was where a character was constantly making smart remarks (many of which were very funny), In scenes where the author wanted a more serious tone, the jokes told were not as funny, as if the character was trying to break the tension, and not doing a very good job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another method is to have a running joke that is more sad or touching at a climatic scene. this is often seen where a character jokes about being a hero while acting cowardly until the climax, where he lays aside the cowardice and saves the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T03:24:58.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9789" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-24T05:54:18.530" Score="5" ViewCount="339" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a master's thesis in the humanities undergoing its final throes before readers' examinations. The university's formatting rules are, understandably, very strict and, unfortunately, demand a unique template. So I'm afraid the demands here aren't optional:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So then, do any of you know how to go about limiting a chronological run of lower-case roman numerals, which also must include a few intermittent blank pages, yet they are counted in the chronology? After the Front Matter, the numbering turns into arabic numerals until one gets to the Works Cited title page; then the instructions demand other sporadic blank numerals, and the appendix, too, has its quirks yet is counted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6528" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T18:40:35.663" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T20:56:26.853" Title="Are there straightforward instructions for MS WORD 2013 for numbering in different formats, yet maintaining a chronological count?" Tags="|formatting|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9771" CreationDate="2013-12-24T10:29:38.137" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;ISBN or International Standard Book Number is a unique number assigned to a book. It is issued by a central ISBN agency in your country. In USA, you can obtain your ISBN numbers from the Bowker Agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the basic difference between 2 is just of the form. As ISBN is just a Number and ISBN Barcode is a Barcode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.simplybarcodes.net/barcode-book.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ISBN Barcode&lt;/a&gt; is a unique commercial book identifier barcode. It is encoded in an EAN-13 format barcode with a Price Supplemental barcode. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uVUun.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ISBN Code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Human Readable Text (optional)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pricing Supplemental Code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This 2-part barcode is required by traditional book sellers such as Barnes &amp;amp; Nobles, Books-a-Million, and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6531" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T10:29:38.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4329" CreationDate="2013-12-24T11:45:27.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my country there are publishing houses which publish &quot;highbrow&quot; experimental poetry, often with very brutal descriptions and vulgar language, and one of such books that has appeared this year (2013) contains some &quot;4chan-isms&quot;. But, due to the local context, such stuff occupies a lot more of the poetry scene, I guess, than in other countries where really pop poetry can easily get away with it - maybe I'm incorrect, but that is my impression, that there are more poetry readers and, therefore, more interest in things types of poetry that are not experimental. So you may have to rely on self-publishing after all (if you don't manage to find a publishing house that promotes exactly this kind of poetry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6532" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T11:45:27.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9792" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9799" CreationDate="2013-12-24T12:55:58.903" Score="9" ViewCount="1071" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I am a experienced software developer and looking at question made by friends that are learning, questions over the internet and StackExchange, I noticed that I eventually could help more people by writing a book. Not an advanced, a book for beginners that should be fun and nice to read an to learn how to program basic things using C/C++.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's a huge problem. I am a Software Developer, not a writer. I just do not have a clue how to start building a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here I leave the question: how to get started?  I'm asking about writing the text itself, not other factors (like marketing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6533" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T21:35:31.663" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T20:39:46.800" Title="How to start a technical book?" Tags="|technical-writing|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9792" CreationDate="2013-12-24T14:33:23.470" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first step I would always recommend for any writing, but in particular for technical writing is to brainstorm and outline.  Start by simply compiling a list of topics that you want to cover.  Once you have that list begin putting them in a logical order.  When you start putting them in order you will likely identify transition topics and support topics that didn't come to mind while you were brain storming.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in a software development shop and as a piece of advice don't assume your readers know certain facts or points.  If your intent is to create a beginner's guide make sure you cover the basics.  I have troubles with some developers who assume people know some of the basics of programming just because it is so second nature to them (by no means are developers the only people who over look the basics of their expertise). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6524" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T14:33:23.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9789" CreationDate="2013-12-24T15:21:38.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge the answer to this is no.  Unless you are using a stock format provided with Word out of the box there really isn't an easy way to set up a custom format.  (The pre-built templates/styles are also apparently developed by grade school kids making holiday cards for their parents...cute but not useful in any sort of professional or educational setting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said you CAN set up your own custom template...with patience.  Note that rarely if ever does copying a full document into a template actually yield the results you will want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing I can stress when creating a custom template is to make absolutely zero changes to the document prior to setting up your template...the remnants of anything you manipulate prior seem to never disappear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an effort not to get your hopes up...if they still were at this point...you will have to do some manual manipulation in the end, I recommend saving that until you are essentially done with the document since any editing/proofreading will make you have to repeat parts of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for an educational paper I would guess you have to change at the very least the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Font&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Font Size&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spacing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indent numbering and spacing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Page numbering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Table of contents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Works Cited/Bibliography&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Margins&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few of these are pretty strait forward I go into font, font size, or page numbering (unless someone asks) but for the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spacing&lt;/strong&gt;:  A quick rant...whoever changed the default spacing from what it used to be in word is in fact a demon in human form that is hoping to crush our spirits and reap our souls in the end.   ANYWAYS...under the &lt;em&gt;home&lt;/em&gt; tab go to the paragraph section and find the &lt;em&gt;line and paragraph spacing&lt;/em&gt; button and select &lt;em&gt;line spacing options&lt;/em&gt;.  The third section (Spacing) is generally what I find myself needing to manipulate.  Set the before and after options to 0 (unless your paper format calls for something else) and then line spacing to single or double (it defaults to multiple...I am rolling my eyes at MS) and then check the box for &lt;em&gt;Dont add a space between paragraphs of the same style&lt;/em&gt;.  Even if you do add lines it takes a single stroke of the enter key and you can be in control of the style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Indent numbering and spacing&lt;/strong&gt;:  This one is...challenging.  Again under the &lt;em&gt;Paragraph&lt;/em&gt; section of the &lt;em&gt;Home&lt;/em&gt; tab select the &lt;em&gt;Multilevel list&lt;/em&gt; button and click &lt;em&gt;define new multilevel list&lt;/em&gt;.  In the window that pops up you can manipulate the amount of indent for each level and the format of the numbering/lettering system.  This will require some playing around to get familiar with.  When executing this you will likely have breaks in your numbering due to images or well a whole host of things.  If you start a new numbered section but want the numbering to continue, right click on the formatting numbering and select continue numbering (cant recall the exact wording...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That leaves the reference items, ToC and Works/Bib:&lt;/strong&gt;  IF you can get the formatting to fit your style MS actually included some pretty handy reference tools.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;ToC&lt;/strong&gt; is pretty easy.  Simply navigate to the &lt;em&gt;References&lt;/em&gt; tab and find the &lt;em&gt;Table of Contents&lt;/em&gt; section, click on the button and insert the table of contents.  To use this functionality (you thought it was going to be easy) you have to utilize the styles that are found on the &lt;em&gt;Home&lt;/em&gt; tab.  By default I believe &lt;em&gt;Heading 1 and 2&lt;/em&gt; will appear on the ToC.  Chances are unless this paper is for your mom and sports a reindeer with a very shiny nose, you will need to change the format of the Heading styles.  Find them in the list and right click, it will allow you to edit the styles.  Apply the styles to the headings you want to appear on the ToC and you are good to go...probably.  I would do this just before your final formatting...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Endnotes and footnotes&lt;/strong&gt; are pretty strait forward and tend to have much simpler styles and rarely require custom formatting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Citations&lt;/strong&gt; this one...well lets see.  Under the &lt;em&gt;References&lt;/em&gt; tab again find the &lt;em&gt;Citations and Bibliography&lt;/em&gt; section.  Several styles are build into word including APA, MLA and a few others.  Hopefully one of them is yours.  In which case this is actually pretty slick.  At the point in your paper where you want the citation click on insert citation and add the reference content you need.  Like the table of contents I would wait until the end to manipulate this, again, just before your final tweaks are done.  I suggest highlighting text that will later need to be sourced...I use blue :)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end creating templates can save you time...the template can be reused...maybe as a graduation gift back to your school you can provide a template built to fit their required format.  It would be a great holiday gift for future students ;) good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6524" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T15:21:38.063" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9779" CreationDate="2013-12-24T16:54:17.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you using scrivener on another computer to edit it? If so, you shouldn't have any issues, just make sure you save, and let your cloud platform fully sync before you go to work on your main computer again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not using scrivener, make a backup of the file before you try!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6535" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T16:54:17.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9789" CreationDate="2013-12-24T17:13:12.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a big fan of cheating (and I hate Word). Make each section a separate document. Start page numbering at whatever number in whatever format you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to create a TOC, use a working document to calculate it &amp;mdash; figure out what your page numbers are by changing the numbering scheme of the entire document and printing out the result, then changing the numbering scheme for the next section as needed, and so on &amp;mdash; and then create it manually in the real document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Print each piece individually and bind them together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Alternatively, use something more powerful like InDesign, but I realize that might not be an option.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T17:13:12.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9783" CreationDate="2013-12-24T17:19:04.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why is it an issue? Don't you know anyone with a black sense of humor? People crack jokes, particularly sarcastic ones, in the darkest of hours. I wouldn't find it problematic, particularly if you've established that the sarcastic character is a wiseass who uses humor to deflect or to ratchet down emotionally intense situations as a character trait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd read true-life cop stories or military memoirs for something like this. First responders develop &quot;gallows humor&quot; to help cope with the stress of the job. Try the BBC documentary series &lt;em&gt;Inside Afghanistan.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T17:19:04.810" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9789" CreationDate="2013-12-24T18:09:54.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did anyone else write a thesis following these guidelines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find a former, already accepted thesis document by someone else, eviscerate it of all content leaving only stubs to retain formatting and fill it with your own content, using their styles, numerators, sections etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think &lt;em&gt;formatting&lt;/em&gt; of a document can be copyrighted, and if their thesis passed the scrutiny regarding formatting, yours should too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T18:09:54.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9792" CreationDate="2013-12-24T21:25:24.267" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you're a software developer, I encourage you to think about the book the way you think about a significant application.  You (probably) don't just start writing code; you do some requirements analysis, maybe some use-case analysis (please don't shatter my dreams :-) ), some high-level design... and then, if you're like most of us, you start implementing, discover some things you can improve and other things you didn't think about, and iterate.  This isn't that different other than that you're producing text instead of code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/9793/1993&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; says, an early step should be brainstorming about content and starting to organize it into an outline.  This outline isn't cast in stone; think of it as being cast in Jell-O.  But you need a starting point.  You will probably end up with a list of specific topics (chapters? sections?), along with an introduction.  &lt;em&gt;Skip the introduction.&lt;/em&gt;  Intros are hard; save it for later.  Instead pick one of the concrete topics you've identified and start writing that in isolation.  Think of it like a blog post on steroids or a single lecture in a class: you know there'll be other context and that you'll have to add some connective tissue, but what do you need to get across on &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; topic?  Write that.  Don't polish yet; just get stuff down as coherently as you can.  Then do another one.  Then one more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you've done a few, you'll start to see where you have cross-dependencies, what questions you didn't consider, and what patterns are starting to arise in your writing (like how and how much you talk about code samples).  Great -- now you can pause the writing, assess where you are, refactor, maybe throw some stuff out, and proceed with a better idea of where you're going.  Books take time and tend to turn up surprises; don't assume your first outline will survive contact with reality.  But you've got to start &lt;em&gt;somewhere&lt;/em&gt;, so pick something and go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been in the software world, as both a tech writer and a programmer, for, um, rather a few years.  This answer is based on my experience and observations of the field.  Oh, and I still write my introductions last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T21:25:24.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9783" CreationDate="2013-12-24T22:08:05.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of Inigo Montoya in &quot;The Princess Bride.&quot;  It's funny in a sad way how he fixates on wanting to say, &quot;Allo.  My name is...[etc].&quot;  Then in the castle fight it's pretty funny.  And finally his &quot;punch line&quot; to his &quot;joke&quot; at the end.  That was powerful, because there was humor, hatred, rage, helplessness, and vengeance all mixed up.  You cheered for him, high-fived him for the cleverness, and yet mourned with him that satisfying his vengeance still left him empty -- he could never have his father back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point: Jokes don't always have to be &quot;haha&quot; funny to be effective.  In fact, during the worst times, the crisis moments, they really shouldn't be &quot;haha&quot; funny.  At that point, re-use an often-repeated joke -- only now it's not funny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also study &quot;Stargate SG1.&quot;  That's a TV show, not a book, but Jack's character is, IMHO, a great example of what you're talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T22:08:05.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8577" CreationDate="2013-12-24T23:01:10.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The classic method is to have the villain over-gloat.  Written badly, it will fail, unless you are being purposely campy.  But it can be done believably -- at least, believably enough to not destroy suspension-of-disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: Lord of the Rings (books, not movie).  [spoilers]  At the Black Gate, Sauron can't help but gloat, via his emissary, the Mouth of Sauron.  But his gloating reveals that he does NOT have the One Ring, that at least one of the hobbits is still alive, and that he fears both Aragorn and Gandalf.  That info gives the heroes the extra courage they need to fight just a little bit harder and longer (against impossible odds), which gives the hobbits the time they need to destroy the Ring.  Also, Sauron's pride and confidence prevented him from assassinating Aragorn during the parley.  [p.s.: Aragorn assassinating the Mouth in the movie version = unforgiveable &quot;artistic license&quot;, totally out of character.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T23:01:10.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8577" CreationDate="2013-12-25T05:44:37.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best, most climactic climax is when it seems every single route of escape seems blocked and there is no hope, only to fire a well-hidden Chekov gun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, give the protagonist a geis. A weakness, a lasting, recurring problem, a burden to struggle against, that gradually becomes such an ingrained part of the character we just forget about it. It can be such a deeply ingrained phobia it causes completely irrational and disproportionate response. It can be a rare sickness with weird symptoms. It may be a curse of complex mechanisms broken when touched by that person. It may be a dire secret connected with a classic geis, that would bring doom to its bearer as soon as uttered out loud. Whatever it is, make it a burden, and NOT crucial to the plot, nor in any way centric to the antagonist and endgame - make it seem like a flavor, not a plot device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then design the multi-layered trap - with multiple ways out, each requiring the key, and the protagonist in possession of all, or most of the keys - and then every of them is &quot;out of the game&quot;. All backup allies caught. All secret weapons confiscated. All tricky gadgets broken, used up, lost. Secret power words appear to be fakes. Apparently unlocked escape routes got re-locked. There is no hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the antagonist, taking it all away from the protagonist, triggers the geis. Say, they stole the secret from the mind of protagonist, and say it out loud, as in a &quot;Well, interesting that...&quot; manner. They contract the weird medical condition or it happens to thwart the key element of the trap. The phobia makes the character perform an act of strength they would be completely unable to perform normally. What until now was always a burden and never an advantage, turns out to be beneficial - and critical, possibly as the antagonist simply has no clue how to deal with it, or the &quot;reflective&quot; nature of the item makes whatever power, corruption, or other strength of the bearer act against them, manageable in protagonist's hands, destructive in the antagonist's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T05:44:37.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="904" CreationDate="2013-12-25T13:30:45.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.typeitout.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Type It Out&lt;/a&gt; is a website that I started for exactly the same thing: reading, rating and proving feedback to each others' works. But as of now, the community is small. Since I have some writers who write on a wide variety of subjects, readership won't be a problem. You may try &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertscolumn.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Expertscolumn.com&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wikinut.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikinut&lt;/a&gt; that already have an established community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6539" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2013-12-25T16:12:30.273" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T16:12:30.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9806" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-26T01:43:41.187" Score="6" ViewCount="563" Body="&lt;p&gt;Accidents are a part of our real life. It is possible to see an old friend accidentally. It is possible to find a fallen comet accidentally. It is possible to kill someone by an accident, etc. Many stories of our real life are based on an accident. Also many good &quot;realistic&quot; stories begin by occurrence of an accident for the main character. But based on my personal experience in the life I think occurrence of &quot;two&quot; independent accidents in a &quot;single&quot; drama is rare and strange. So it seems if I want to write a realistic story I should avoid occurrence of frequent accidents in it. In the other words it seems that a story which begins with an accident could be reasonably realistic even if this accident is too strange or rare to happen but a story with more than one accident seems unnatural and unrealistic.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Does frequent occurrence of accidents in a single story harm its realistic content? As an example, can we be almost sure that a story which its main character accidentally sees his old friend in the street and also finds a comet in his garden in the same day, is not a story based on the truth? Do these stories produce a sense of being unrealistic for their audiences?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6242" LastEditorDisplayName="user6242" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T02:22:33.883" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T23:00:32.847" Title="On the role of &quot;accidents&quot; in &quot;realistic&quot; stories" Tags="|style|novel|structure|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9807" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9809" CreationDate="2013-12-26T02:04:47.763" Score="4" ViewCount="26169" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally when listing a group of people you would simply separate each with a comma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please send the memo to Jason, Sarah, and Courtney. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if you want to include the title of each person&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jason, Chief Information Officer&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Sarah, President&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Courtney, Investor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would end up looking like a list 6 people (or 5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please send the memo to Jason, Chief Information Officer, Sarah, President, and Courtney, an investor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a proper way to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5680" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T03:33:40.813" LastActivityDate="2020-06-02T20:01:05.567" Title="Listing names with titles" Tags="|style|formatting|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9806" CreationDate="2013-12-26T03:22:03.937" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can have as many coincidences/accidents as you like, as long as you are able to maintain &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief&quot;&gt;suspension of disbelief&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to spend more time on Tv Tropes where you will find variations on coincidences/accidents such as Contrived Coincidence, Coincidence Magnet, and Theory of Narrative Causality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can suspend disbelief in your audience you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPbvFv6BJvU&quot;&gt;turn Lake Michigan into a hot fudge sundae&lt;/a&gt;, at least on the radio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6542" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T03:22:03.937" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9807" CreationDate="2013-12-26T03:52:35.563" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a list like this, you have several options for how you want to style the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In business writing, such as an email, you can always format this as a bulleted list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please send the email to the following recipients:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jason, Chief Information Officer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sarah, President&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Courtney, Investor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has the advantage of being easily scanned, but might be a little cumbersome for just three items. Alternately, you can style the list as a &lt;em&gt;horizontal list&lt;/em&gt;, using semicolons to separate out the name/title pairs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please send the memo to Jason, Chief Information Officer; Sarah, President; and Courtney, an investor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the horizontal list should be used sparingly, since one with more than two or three items tough to parse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's not important to keep the name/title pairs intact, you could always split the titles out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please send the memo to Jason, Sarah, and Courtney. These people have the roles of our Chief Information Officer, our President, and an investor in the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an informal situation where the context is clear, perhaps you don't even need the titles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please send the memo to Jason, Sarah, and Courtney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: As always, check if you are to follow any style guides or style sheets. Academic, technical, and scientific writing almost certainly will have these. Larger companies may have corporate style sheets, and even some non-profits. If this is the case, you may already have guidance to follow.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T06:01:06.380" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9806" CreationDate="2013-12-26T14:17:03.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're concerned about too many accidents, then try to find a way to add some purpose to some of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) It's doubtful that you can find a way for a comet to land in someone's garden deliberately if you're not writing &lt;em&gt;Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.&lt;/em&gt; But if you need for A to meet up with old friend B, you could set up some background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's May. A's niece is graduating college. While shopping for a&#xA;gift/traveling to attend the graduation, A starts thinking about her&#xA;own college graduation. This makes her think of the friends she had&#xA;in college. One of them is B. When she gets home, she looks up B on&#xA;Facebook and sends B a quick message. B responds with an email. They&#xA;agree to meet for lunch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's Christmas. A is prepping her gift card list. A pulls out an old&#xA;address book to find Auntie So-and-So's address. B's name is in it. Follow on as above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's spring cleaning time. A is cleaning out her closets and finds&#xA;mementos from college/a scrapbook/an old sweater etc. Something&#xA;reminds her of B.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could of course reverse any of those so that B finds A, although that may feel too much like coincidence (which is similar to accident). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Or you could take the opposite tack and have the &quot;accidental&quot; meeting in the street turn out to be very deliberate, but the reader and/or character doesn't discover the machinations until much later in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T14:17:03.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9822" CreationDate="2013-12-26T15:03:59.337" Score="15" ViewCount="4579" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a dialogue as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then he said to her: &quot;I told you I won't do that! (And I think you shouldn't either)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somebody then asked me: How is a speech in a parenthesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know if you can understand that it is something said in a lower tone, as if it didn't belong to the main line of thought or not. Is it usual in writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen some posts such as the following and they look pretty dubious to me: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingforums.org/threads/can-you-use-parentheses-in-dialogue.61993/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.writingforums.org/threads/can-you-use-parentheses-in-dialogue.61993/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions, then, are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it correct?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it usual?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it understandable?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there alternatives?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3985" LastEditorUserId="3985" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T17:05:32.093" LastActivityDate="2021-06-13T03:46:30.297" Title="Can I use parenthesis in a conversation" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9812" CreationDate="2013-12-26T15:26:35.013" Score="17" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then he said to her: &quot;I told you I won't do that!” In an undertone, he added, “And I think you shouldn’t either.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I think that’s the best you can do. I’ve hardly ever seen parentheses used as punctuation within dialogue, so if I saw it now, I would have no idea how to interpret them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T15:26:35.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9812" CreationDate="2013-12-26T17:12:37.983" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although rare complex punctuation can be used in dialog (although in your example I would use an em&amp;nbsp;dash), but as most dialog is simple; because outside of a classroom, most of us aren't paying close enough attention to speech to get great subtleties; the normal approach is to simplify your dialog to make it easier to understand and more realistic. Two exceptions to this are language geeks (some of the things I've said need serious parsing) and technical transcripts where punctuation is implied by the speaker particularly when the topic under discussion is primarily written such as formal grammars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T17:12:37.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9806" CreationDate="2013-12-26T17:22:53.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's two things about accidents in stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) A literary text focusses on the people and events that pertain to the story and excludes everything else. Of course fictional characters go to the toilet or meet neighbors when they leave the house, but if the neighbors or the bowel movements don't help the plot along, you don't write about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if your character meets an old pal from high school by accident, you don't mention it, if it is not important for your story. And if it is important for your story, it becomes meaningful in retrospekt (see 2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Many things in our lives happen by accident. You meeting your future wife, is a good example. You could simple not have met her, if you had not gone to that party or not taken up that job or wherever you met her. And you children, your divorce etc. would never have happened. The same goes for almost anything in your life: your job (it was an accident, that this job was free at the moment you were looking for one), your body shape (it was an accident that this particular sperm fertilizet that egg) etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But human beings have the tendency to try to make sense of things. We see faces in clouds, monsters in shadows, and purpose when we look back on our lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we walk into the future, we encounter accidents. As we look back, we see the line of events that followed from that accident and gave it restrospective meaning. Since you spent 20 years with that woman, it could not have been accident that you met her. The 20 years give that chance meeting a deeper meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what does that have to do with story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as much that happens in your life is accidental, a lot that happens in a story is of course accidental, too (at least on the level of story logic; of course nothing is accidental from the writer's point of view). The later lovers meet by accident (unless your story is magical and there is something like fate at work). The gun does not go off by accident. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question is not how many accidents happen in a story (because there will be countless), but if what you write down becomes meaningful for the protagonists on their quest. If it does, it is no longer an accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T17:22:53.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9806" CreationDate="2013-12-26T18:12:30.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb: If a accident makes a character’s life worse, you can put it anywhere in the story, because it becomes just one more challenge for the character to overcome. If an accident makes a character’s life &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt;, then putting it anywhere &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; the beginning of the story weakens the story, because it feels like cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for example, you can &lt;em&gt;begin&lt;/em&gt; a story with a character receiving a winning lottery ticket, and then the character’s wealth is the backdrop to the other events (or perhaps, the story can be about some challenge associated with all this new money).  But if your main character spends a hundred pages trapped by financial difficulties, you can’t introduce the winning lottery ticket on page 101. (Unless, perhaps, the money leads to even more intense problems, showing the reader that the main character’s problem all along was something other than poverty.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T18:12:30.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9806" CreationDate="2013-12-26T19:05:19.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like this question and I think it points to an important idea.  In fiction (I don't see this applying to non-fiction) a reader is generally going to have to have a certain suspension of disbelief, or simply, accept that highly improbable event occurred/s to facilitate a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most obvious example I can think of comes from film actually...Transformers.  If you aren't familiar there have been three movies made.  In movie #1 an artifact drifts through space and lands on earth, the probability is minuscule of that happening of course but without it there is no reason for giant alien robots to be on earth and thus no story...so ok yeah I am good with that because I can accept that while it is unlikely the thing had to land somewhere right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What killed me with the following two movies (aside from the terrible dialogue, and giant robot balls...Michael Bay I despise you...) is that equally improbable chance happenings occurred in both.  Now I have a problem because not only did this artifact land on earth, but you also have ancient ancestors building sun eating machines on earth several millenia ago (which none of the current actors knew about) and you have a ship that crashed on the far side of the moon after also drifting through space for who knows how long...at this point the story is so ridiculous that even giant alien robot fights...which are hard not to love, can't save the movie from being terrible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scale of the event, or the likelihood of it occurring is important as well.  World altering events...yeah probably shouldn't have more than one...two people that live in the same apartment building running into each other around the neighborhood...much more likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your two accidents...maybe they dont happen on the same day.  Maybe the comet falls and the character finds it.  Then in the rush and excitement of it all the character runs into his/her old friend.  Maybe that happens in reverse...depends on what purpose the friend plays.  Now if that old friend is also and astro-physicist or astronomer...then you have to be more careful...if things seem far to convenient they probably are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really liked the question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6524" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T19:05:19.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9812" CreationDate="2013-12-26T19:39:55.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Seth Gordon. Parentheses in dialogue are so rarely seen, they could be interpreted in many ways. I would recommend being explicit in dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6535" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T19:39:55.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9135" CreationDate="2013-12-26T19:53:40.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;E.L. Doctorow's 1975 novel &lt;em&gt;Ragtime&lt;/em&gt; had no dialogue in it, although it did have descriptions of conversations. The book did not contain any dialogue in &quot;quotes.&quot; It's a widely acclaimed novel, and has even been turned into a film (released in 1981, directed by Milos &quot;One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest&quot; Forman) and a Broadway musical. So it is possible. But Doctorow is a damn good storyteller, which helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6546" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T19:53:40.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9135" CreationDate="2013-12-26T20:49:27.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following English language novels have no dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0156011166&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journey to the End of the Millennium&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Abraham B. Yehoshua&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Diary_of_Adrian_Mole,_Aged_13%C2%BE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Sue Townsend (turned into a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Diary_of_Adrian_Mole_%28TV_series%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tv series&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_Americans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Making of Americans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Gertrude Stein&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following German novels have no dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.de/Exerzierplatz-Roman-Siegfried-Lenz/dp/3423109947&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Exerzierplatz&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0805009434&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Training Ground&lt;/a&gt;) by Sigfried Lenz&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Treffen_in_Telgte&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Das Treffen in Telgte&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meeting_at_Telgte&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Meeting at Telgte&lt;/a&gt;) by Günter Grass&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.de/Die-Herrlichkeit-Lebens-Michael-Kumpfm%C3%BCller/dp/3462043269&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Die Herrlichkeit des Lebens&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Michael Kumpfmüller&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Vorleser&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Der Vorleser&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reader&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Reader&lt;/a&gt;) by Bernhard Schlink (turned into a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reader_%282008_film%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;movie&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.de/Gut-gegen-Nordwind-Daniel-Glattauer/dp/3442465869&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gut gegen Nordwind&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Daniel Glattauer (This novel consists of the email conversations of a woman with a man who erroneously received her first email, the cancellation of a magazine subscription, due to a typo in the email address. The novel sells well, ranking 642 in books on amazon.de.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following French novels have no dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%80_rebours&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;À rebours&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%80_rebours&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Against Nature / Against the Grain&lt;/a&gt;) by Joris-Karl Huysmans (a classic)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.fr/La-Petite-Robe-Paul-Grimbert/dp/2253068195/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;La petite robe de Paul&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (Paul's Little Dress) by Philippe Grimbert&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Derniers_Jours_de_Stefan_Zweig&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Les Derniers Jours de Stefan Zweig&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Laurent Seksik&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lame_de_fond_%28roman_de_L%C3%AA%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lame de fond&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Linda Lê&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Nuit_zoologique&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;La nuit zoologique&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Claude Durand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T21:41:29.260" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T21:41:29.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9812" CreationDate="2013-12-27T00:50:23.623" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it correct? Strictly speaking, it's not &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt;, but it's really hard to hear someone saying a parenthesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it usual? No. In fact, I can't remember ever seeing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it understandable? I guess, although I would do a massive double take and think that the author was being too bookish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there alternatives? Yes. I'd use M-dashes, commas, or stage business as noted in Seth Gordon's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T00:50:23.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9823" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9824" CreationDate="2013-12-27T01:18:31.893" Score="1" ViewCount="226" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I wanted to create an ironic situation in a piece of writing, but make it &quot;hidden&quot;, how can I put it in such a way that any reader will be able to see it and understand it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6491" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T17:05:48.887" Title="How can I make sure readers find irony?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9823" CreationDate="2013-12-27T01:22:57.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Follow the way in which all composition is meant to sound human: read it out to yourself and attempt to conform it to what would sound ironic, even if it is the characters own inner-dialogue; there is no one way to seem ironic either, but it really depends what the definition of ironic is to the character as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, try to think of what definition of ironic is to the character or narrator, and go with that when writing the piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6085" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T01:22:57.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9826" CreationDate="2013-12-27T13:04:38.420" Score="6" ViewCount="1728" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realized I tend to state directly the message/moral of the story in my stories (as dialogue in most of the cases). My plots are rather ambiguous, though. And I use a lot of metaphors/symbols so the connection is not always clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ghost Earthquake&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is about a girl who misses an earthquake that hits her city. She doesn't remember what she was doing at the time, and nothing seems to have moved a single inch in her apartment. As she tries to uncover the mystery, she comes face to face with her deepest fears, and realizes the world around her is very different to the one she once knew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Around the middle, the protagonist's boyfriend says (while discussing about earthquakes):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Maybe what we see around us isn't as solid as we think. In fact,&#xA;  sometimes I think the concept of things being solid is just a human&#xA;  thought. Perhaps nothing is really solid in the universe. Instead,&#xA;  everything's constantly breaking apart, taking a new form.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Kid with the Gigaku Mask&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About a girl who encounters a mysterious kid while on vacation at the beach. It's a story about ownership and belonging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning of the story one of the protagonist's friend says (while discussing about his friend's runaway cat):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Anyway, those things happen.” Kazuo took a long drink of his beer.&#xA;  “Nothing can be taken for granted. In fact, sometimes I wonder if&#xA;  anything really belongs to us in this world.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sushi Break&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is about a girl who travels every weekend to another city to see her boyfriend. But he cancels every time, so she ends up eating sushi alone in a sushi stand. It's about love, distance, and how happiness can come from the strangest places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Near the end, the protagonist's friend says (after the protagonist has already stopped questioning the reasons her boyfriend is avoiding her):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You know,” Faye said, “sometimes I think the best thing to do is to&#xA;  stop trying to think about reasons. You have to stop trying to make&#xA;  sense of your pain, and actually do something to avoid it. If you&#xA;  don't, you'll find all kinds of ways to rationalize it, or find things&#xA;  to temporally fill the void they produce. I'm not saying it's bad.&#xA;  It's OK to find happiness in little things, little experiences. Just&#xA;  remember you gotta keep moving. No matter what. You gotta keep&#xA;  moving.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope these examples helped to illustrate (of course, the characters don't bring the matter all of the sudden. The transition is smooth most of the time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my favorite writers do this, sometimes. But I'm wondering, is this an example of bad writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T15:43:42.693" LastActivityDate="2019-09-12T19:15:36.073" Title="Is it bad idea to directly state the message/moral of a story?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|theme|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9825" CreationDate="2013-12-27T14:32:47.277" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ayn Rand was pretty explicit about the morals of her stories, and she sold twenty metric gajillion copies of her novels, so it’s clearly an approach that can work. But I think it’s an inferior technique.  If the events of your story clearly illustrate the moral that you’re hoping to express, you don’t need to state it explicitly (&lt;strong&gt;although&lt;/strong&gt; if it would be in-character for one of your characters to make that kind of observation, that’s acceptable).  If the events don’t illustrate the moral, then stating it explicitly is making an unproven assertion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Israeli novelist Amos Oz once said that if he has a question and he knows the answer to it, he writes an essay, but if he has a question and doesn’t know the answer, he writes a novel. That’s an approach worth considering, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T14:32:47.277" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9823" CreationDate="2013-12-27T17:05:48.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find things are either ironic or they aren't. I think by it's nature it is both hidden and obvious. It's generally been used as an addition for the reader or viewer, highlighting the disparity between two things, whether it's in dialogue, situation, or action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe if the writing and situation are clear, then it is hard to miss irony, no matter how subtle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of irony are you specifically after? What is the situation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6535" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T17:05:48.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9825" CreationDate="2013-12-28T11:43:18.033" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of my favourite authors are my favourites because their novels are ripe with great philosophical ideas. What you call your &quot;message&quot; is a philosophical idea. Reading your story, I might not understand it as the message of your story at all, but rather as a bonus, that does not prevent me from understanding the story in a completely different way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a character (or the narrator) reflect and &lt;em&gt;comment&lt;/em&gt; on the events, does not make these comments the only possible interpretation in the mind of a reader. The only danger I see is that an author writes with a raised finger: dear reader, let me tell you what you must learn from this story. You might want to avoid that, because your readers will want to resist your preaching. I call this the &quot;but-induction&quot;: If you state a supposedly universal truth, every thinking person automatically contradicts you. &quot;Smoking is unhealthy.&quot; &quot;Yes, but ... .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want to educate your readers and lead them to &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; conclusion, you must let them experience your truth. The best learning is always through experience. But if your &quot;message&quot; is provided as interesting thought that you allow the reader to consider and either adopt or discard, then I don't see a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T11:43:18.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9829" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-28T17:04:16.893" Score="8" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm signed with a publisher working on my first genre fiction novel. The editor is driving me crazy not getting her work done and putting the rewrites on me at the last minute up against the deadlines. Is this standard operating procedure in the industry, or should I contact the publisher with my concerns? Is there a normal timeline for how long I have to make the changes she suggests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6562" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-12-28T18:57:59.277" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T17:51:07.387" Title="What is the standard editorial timeline for genre fiction novels?" Tags="|fiction|novel|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9833" CreationDate="2013-12-29T03:37:51.860" Score="8" ViewCount="1048" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing my first novel. One of the main characters was born &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; a soul. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is her description, which also reflects her personality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She had long black hair, crimson red lips, and a skin so pale it made&#xA;  me wonder whether she had blood at all. But what struck me the most were&#xA;  her eyes. Even though there was nothing unusual in them, they made her&#xA;  face look expressionless, lifeless. It felt&#xA;  odd—like staring at an empty canvas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, she is a little complicated. She's less expressive than a &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt; person and display less emotions. However (I know this will sound a bit contradictory), she is able to cry, love, and feel pain, though she usually shows it in unconventional ways (e.g. running away to visit a dead tree).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm fearing that the reader won't be able to relate or care about the character because she &lt;em&gt;seems&lt;/em&gt; to lack human emotions, or because she expresses it in strange ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will this happens? If so, what should I do so the reader can care/relate to the character? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T14:01:15.897" Title="Will my readers find it hard to care/identify with a character who seems to lack human emotions?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|plot|character-development|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9832" CreationDate="2013-12-29T05:03:27.250" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, a word of warning, the first thing most people will think after reading that paragraph describing your character is that she is a vampire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the vampiric similarities, I think your best bet to create an enjoyable character without human emotions is to look at how other similar characters have been portrayed previously and take what you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The few that I can think of off the top of my head are Spock and Data from Star Trek, Sheldon from the Big Bang theory and to a certain extant Dr. Manhattan, but I'm sure there are better examples out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based off my laughable sample size and the assumption that if a reader finds a character interesting, then they care about the character, there's only one trend I can think of, the emotionless character's struggle to understand the human condition. They bring an interesting perspective to it. I would never run off to see a dead tree when I'm angry, but if you draw a parallel between this emotionally strange behavior and what humans usually do, I won't start putting the book down and I won't feel alienated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that feeling alienated from a character isn't a bad thing as long as they move the plot forward, although it could be argued that they become more of a force of nature and less of a character in that case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastEditorUserId="6491" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T21:14:05.137" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T21:14:05.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9778" CreationDate="2013-12-29T15:31:03.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The magazine is most interested in the legal situation. So you should mention if the offeror (probably your friend) holds all necessary rights of the translation (made by you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it should be clear that the story is not licensed in its original version in a way that would make it impossible for the magazine to publish it (like: a different publisher holds the translation rights).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should make it crystal-clear. You do not want the magazine to dismiss it and take the next offered story, just because the legal issues are uncertain. They could write an email and ask your friend, but maybe it's just not worth the effort for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T15:31:03.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9780" CreationDate="2013-12-29T21:52:59.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no experience in this field, but I cannot imagine that the editing process would be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I understand this correctly, then your main concern is that the edited version of the translation could diverge too much from the original work. That's not nice, that's true, and people reading both version will recognize that, maybe even getting upset about it, but from the publisher perspective I have to ask: so what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many English books are translated to German and I know many discussions how the translation differs and that it would be better to read the original version (Lord of the Rings, Song of Ice and Fire to name just two examples). Probably you know these discussions with Hebrew translations, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is: No matter how much the publisher tries to keep the translation true to the original work, people will complain. That's life, you cannot suit them all, and the publisher knows that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the publisher has the choice to make a story better (i.e. selling better in the opinion of the publisher) by sacrificing the accuracy of the translation, why shouldn't the publisher do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one who (might) cares about it, is your friend. And depending how much he cares about it, he must control these edits. Which means: there must be something in the contract giving him this power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T21:52:59.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9787" CreationDate="2013-12-29T22:25:10.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on your contract and the legal situation in your country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Germany the law gives the author the possibility to check the accounting records of the publisher. I spare you the details (I am not a lawyer anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you do not have to blindly trust them, but which tools are in your hands to check their account books depends on the law of your country (and the terms of your contract).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the law, read your contract, ask a lawyer. (In this order.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T22:25:10.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9832" CreationDate="2013-12-29T22:39:02.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am confused. Does without a soul mean without emotions? Or is the reverse true: no emotions means no soul? Emotional repression is more common than I care to admit, and at least according to genesis animals don't have souls and I know from experience that they have emotions. Therefore souls and emotions may or may not be synonymous depending on your definition of the word &quot;soul.&quot; It seems to me that you are describing emotional repression/autism. Forest Gump is a prime example. Their fundamental need is for friendship and acceptance. Often times they can't accept themselves, which only compounds the problem. It is only through emphasizing that the character is behaving strangely with the motive of reaching out and grasping after a somewhat imaginary friendship to satisfy her relational hunger. Characters of this nature are typically introverts and often melancholics who tend to fixate on a certain friendship to the exclusion of all others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was incorrect and you wish to emphasize the deficit of a soul and not necessarily emotions then this paragraph may help... else wise quit reading here. Maybe describe her with positives instead of negatives, which means starting with something lesser and adding instead of something greater and subtracting. Unless of course you wish to vilify her. We use insults to reduce people to objects (he is a dick!), and we exaggerate their positive qualities to flatter them (he has a big heart...). It seems that you wish to portray her in a positive light. Therefore I suggest starting the description with something less than human aka an animal and adding the human physical features and intangible attributes like intelligence. Emotions seem to come naturally enough to animals, which display primal responses not entirely unlike young children. I think the refinement of societal structures beyond a basic hierarchy or pecking order may also be indicative of human attributes. Comparing apes and humans would seem the simplest, but using any specific animal would complicate the narrative like a fractal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2005" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T22:39:02.943" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9832" CreationDate="2013-12-30T03:36:44.847" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;That depends on your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote about a character with depression, suffering of terrible self-esteem, self-hate, very subdued emotions, complete disregard for own well-being resulting in suicidal bravery, a situation that would make others freak out taken in a firm stride, the most of his emotion shown when being murdered by the villain, after thwarting their plans, instead of screaming in pain he laughs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some readers accused me of making a robot. Literal quote: &lt;em&gt;&quot;The character doesn't even care about himself. Why should I?&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;He was very similar in characterization to Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando. Just throw yourself heroically at danger with all the emotion of a turnip.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply, the extroverted reader was unable to identify with my character. He didn't get his state of mind, despite hints of what was really going on in the protagonist's head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I got a slew of praise from readers who are introverted, who can identify with depressive characters, who didn't need much to simply get in character. They understand that personality well, and can read the hidden hints perfectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, concluding:Yes, many of your readers will find your character hard to identify with. That doesn't mean you should change a thing. You limit your audience, but the part of audience that will be able to identify with your character will love you for writing that. The rest will go &lt;em&gt;meh&lt;/em&gt;,. but you can't satisfy everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T03:36:44.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9832" CreationDate="2013-12-30T05:10:23.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no problem in a character who is emotionless. Readers can accept it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Condition:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will have to make sure that you provide the explanation regarding why the person is emotionless. If that person has suffered so much in past, that now he/she won't be ready to feel that pain again. And if you succeed in writing such a story, then readers may accept a person without emotions. (And sometimes, even sympathize towards him/her.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BUT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are clear that it is soulless and not just emotionless, then I am afraid, not all readers will accept it. And more or less, it will depend on the description you write out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4640" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T05:10:23.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9832" CreationDate="2013-12-30T05:30:49.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, a reader doesn't need to relate to a character through their traits. A reader wants to know her story. And if like she has a love story, people could relate to that story. &#xA;Still, some people were called numb for not feeling their friends' attraction to them. I guess that seems like a soulless person, and it can somehow relate people to your character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6473" LastEditorUserId="6473" LastEditDate="2014-01-03T02:54:18.433" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T02:54:18.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9135" CreationDate="2013-12-30T05:37:09.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's like... a silent movie.&#xA;It is good in short stories.&#xA;But in novel, maybe if it's a first person perspective. But if not, make sure the story is compelling.&#xA;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6473" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T05:37:09.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9859" CreationDate="2013-12-30T06:39:32.810" Score="3" ViewCount="700" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any widely accepted step by step method for writing a creative article in a professional manner. I want to improve my English writing skills in relation to creative article writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read some related sites like:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Write-Articles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Write Articles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proarticlewriting.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Well-Researched, High Quality Articles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6569" LastEditorUserId="6085" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T20:54:40.307" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T04:44:54.367" Title="Best way to write an article professionally" Tags="|creative-writing|technical-writing|getting-started|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-30T10:36:20.063" Score="3" ViewCount="452" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend says, it is okay. Not so nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please read and comment. Almost anything is welcome. Also could you say in what am I lacking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I pulled myself escaping from him. I don't why I did that,but my legs raced down the pavement, until I couldn't catch my breath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hey! Wait' A voice came thrusting my heart to death. It's him &amp;quot;Why are you picking your pace so hard?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stopped dead. For a minute, I allowed the silence to pass on, until his words pierced me.'So, it was true'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I licked my dry lips and tried really hard to at-least have a look at him. But my eyes couldn't move from gazing down my bare feet.I noticed one of my nail paint chirped out. Why have you turned to see him? I questioned myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Can't you answer me?&amp;quot; He cupped my cheeks gently and shook me lightly to stop gazing down.I looked at his magical blue eyes and his concerned frown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;So, It was true' His voice shook me again. Then, I don't recall what made me to kiss him. I closed my eyes and let the world to go back. Then, I noticed myself sobbing and at the same time enjoying kissing him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'What happened?' He said slowly and I felt his lips retreating back. Harder than my first cry that happened when I saw this world first, I sobbed and cried hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'I... I wanna leave now' I finished fast and without hearing anything from him. I walked fast and hailed a taxi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6573" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T20:30:10.710" Title="How is my writing. Please review.?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-12-30T12:04:48.450" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9846" CreationDate="2013-12-30T11:19:43.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your writing Look very good but i suggest to put some paragraph it Look like much better. here i put some writing points that helps you much better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Paragraphs help to break up large chunks of text and makes the content easier for readers to digest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A paragraph should be composed of sentences that develop one main idea. It must have a topic sentence that states the main idea and supporting sentences which explain, prove, illustrate, or add details to the main idea. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any sentence that does not develop the main idea should be taken out, to give your paragraph strength and purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6569" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T11:19:43.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9848" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-30T12:14:42.117" Score="8" ViewCount="2311" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an engineer with a fair knowledge of the English language. I can converse with people in English and write as well, but now I'm interested in learning to write cover letters and blogs. I see plenty of books on writing letters in different ways; however, I am still left with the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In what format can I write a cover letter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I include technical terms in a cover letter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are cover letters sent through email differently than written letters?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6574" OwnerDisplayName="Rudra" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-05T08:53:11.750" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T07:18:39.063" Title="How do I write a proper cover letter?" Tags="|blog|email|letter|cover-letter|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9848" CreationDate="2013-12-30T14:26:44.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A cover Letter has a fixed structure: &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first paragraph describes which position you are applying for and where you found the position. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second paragraph explains why you think you are suitable for this position. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The third paragraph is set for follow-up actions you are expecting or you may take (such as hearing from you or &quot;I will call you to discuss more details&quot;, etc). Also, keep the cover letter to one page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I reckon you use as few technical terms as possible because the covering letter is usually read by HR staff, they merely need to know your general working experience. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are significant differences between an email cover letter and one sent by post, in the header and footer sections. In brief, you don't need header information in an email (addressee info, date, sender name and address, etc) and length isn't as big of a deal in an email, although you still should keep an email cover letter short. You may find more info &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobsearch.about.com/od/emailcoverlettersamples/qt/email-cover-letter-format.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on this page&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6577" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T22:46:23.967" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T22:46:23.967" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9845" CreationDate="2013-12-30T15:44:15.303" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You probably should join a writers group where you can get reviews and feedback for your writing, and support from other writers. In your question I noticed at least one grammar error in every sentence, so I would recommend reviewing the basics: sentence structure, verbals, and punctuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T23:09:39.863" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T23:09:39.863" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9832" CreationDate="2013-12-30T16:57:16.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Readers empathize with a character who &lt;em&gt;wants things&lt;/em&gt;—even when they don’t approve of the things that the character wants. (Think of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, or Satan in &lt;em&gt;Paradise Lost&lt;/em&gt;.)  Even a person who does not express or feel emotion in conventional ways can still want things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as long as you can show that your character has desires and makes sacrifices in her attempts to fulfill them, you should be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T16:57:16.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9853" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-30T18:54:09.950" Score="1" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on my first Press Release and the challenge I'm having is that I should really be part of the announcement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable to say .. &quot;Acme Co. has appointed Y as its new marketing manager...&quot; and then have the Media Contact be Y?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems a little strange to me but then most PR are from larger companies where its not difficult to put somebody else as the Media Contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3364" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T19:13:10.023" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T19:13:10.023" Title="How to write a press release announcing my own appointment?" Tags="|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9853" CreationDate="2013-12-30T19:10:38.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is Y not the media contact for all purposes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, then you should write &quot;AcmeCo has appointed Y as its new marketing manager. Y will also serve as AcmeCo's Media Contact. For more information, please reach out to him/her at....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Y is not the media contact normally, then don't use that wording. &quot;AcmeCo has appointed Y as its new marketing manager. Please reach out to Y at.... for all your Acme Marketing needs.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T19:10:38.223" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9832" CreationDate="2013-12-30T19:21:00.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there is REASON behind the characters disposition/way of doing things(Not just for the sake of it... Think along the same lines as a antagonist that is evil for the sake of being evil and you can see how interesting THAT is.) then there can be a relation found there, but if the character is [insert emotional dispositions and motivations here] for no explained or implied reason then you run the risk of your character being seen as a cardboard cutout that ultimately the readers will not attach themselves to(Thus denying you from truly expounding upon any attachment with ensuing struggles the character will face.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I would look at is what is the purpose of the protagonist or this character specifically in the story? Are they the focus or is their adventure/journey the focus? You can get away with having a mysterious character with little background explained if they are not the entire focus of the story, but ultimately their adventure and struggle therein is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6085" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T19:21:00.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9848" CreationDate="2013-12-30T22:40:38.233" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think post by sotondolphin (based on info in the included link) is pretty good, but I have the following disagreements / additions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it mistake-free.  [Many hirers' attitude is, &quot;If&#xA;they can't avoid mistakes in a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;cover letter&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, then it's&#xA;guaranteed their work will be even sloppier after I hire them.&quot;]    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I disagree about the technical terms.  Often, HR staff don't &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;    cover letters or resumes/CVs; they just look for buzzwords.  The&#xA;    right buzzwords get you passed along to the next level.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A corollary to that is: Your cover letter is for the people for/with&#xA;    whom you'll actually be working.  Speak to them, not the HR staff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want the job, then &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;YOU&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; get back to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;THEM&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, not the&#xA;    other way around.  [p.s. The same goes for getting a date, or (since this is a writer's site) getting something published. :-) ]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T22:40:38.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9845" CreationDate="2013-12-30T23:22:13.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing creatively in a language that is not your native language is &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; difficult.  I don't know how authors like Joseph Conrad managed it.  My advice is to write first in your native language, then put it through a translation program, then fix the translation.  Then reverse the translation, and see if it's close to what you originally said.  Also, you will have to change (or eliminate) most idioms you've used, because they are probably different in the two languages.*  By doing this process a lot, you may eventually learn to write like a native, without this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*(For example, Google Translate faithfully renders &quot;I'm so hungry I could eat a horse&quot; to the literal equivalent in French &quot;Je suis tellement faim que je pourrais manger un cheval,&quot; and no Frenchman would understand that.  The correct translation is &quot;J'ai faim du loup,&quot; which literally means &quot;I have hunger of the wolf.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T23:22:13.647" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9845" CreationDate="2013-12-30T23:23:48.263" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/9851/26&quot;&gt;hildred's answer&lt;/a&gt; that a review of the basics is in order here: Sentence structure, grammar, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no standards for general-interest articles, but academic papers &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have such standards. Without knowing what, exactly, you want to write, it's hard to give you advice on structure. But I can give a few suggestions that might help you get started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Read a lot&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you want to write articles, read a lot of articles of the type you want to produce. You'll get a thought for how people choose to structure them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Just write&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone has thousands of terrible sentences in them. It's in your interest to get them out of you as quickly as possible. (I'm paraphrasing Chuck Jones here.) It's okay to write pages and pages of terrible essays. It's good practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Structure&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try ordering your work. Put related points next to each other, try to eliminate redundancies. Adding paragraph breaks helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;three paragraph essay&lt;/strong&gt; is an old format used in schools. It's oversimplified, but a good way to learn to write until you learn on your own. It goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introductory paragraph - tell people what the thesis is. (i.e., tell 'em what you're gonna say.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your main essay - what you want to say. (This can be more than one paragraph.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Concluding paragraph&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try &lt;strong&gt;outlining&lt;/strong&gt;. For this answer, an outline would look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General thoughts on standards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read a lot of stuff&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vomit out text, gain experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Common basic structure devices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading the question on this site may also help. A basic book on writing like &lt;em&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt; might be a good idea. (There are questions about those on this site, and I'd look for something brief.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T23:23:48.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9848" CreationDate="2013-12-30T23:26:30.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. In what format can I write a cover letter?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the job posting carefully and see if they have any requirements, number one priority is to follow all instructions exactly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general you want to start by stating the position you're applying for. After that you can use any format you'd like if you believe it will be professional and beneficial. There is no set format and I've gotten interviews from single paragraph cover letters, and from lengthy ones consisting of 5 or 6 paragraphs. It is about the structure, content, and reason. Just as any writing - say what needs to be said and remove the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Can I include technical terms in a cover letter?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely. I would be be careful not to repeat your résumé though. If you state in your résumé, &quot;skill in &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;technical term&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; then there is no reason to repeat yourself in the cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Are cover letters sent through email different from written letters?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, not really. Just make sure that any minor changes needed are made. For example in an email you might say somewhere &quot;My résumé is attached in both .pdf and .doc for your convenience.&quot; Which wouldn't make sense if mailing it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MOST IMPORTANT: Follow any instructions given. If the company specifies to state something, state it. If they ask for a format, use it. If they want a particular filetype, do it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3364" LastEditorUserId="3364" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T23:34:43.413" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T23:34:43.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9861" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-31T01:50:09.763" Score="3" ViewCount="1998" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I create a collection of original 19th century public domain poems without violating copyright laws?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6582" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2013-12-31T02:28:32.423" LastActivityDate="2017-10-15T21:56:47.800" Title="Create and publish collection of public domain poems from 19th century" Tags="|legal|poetry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9861" CreationDate="2013-12-31T11:43:34.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;While technically you could claim a copyright on your collection, you would not have any claim of copyright for any of the individual poems included in that collection. The problem would be in getting any publisher to allow you to actually publish the collection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the major e-book publishers have very strict guidelines regarding the republishing of public domain works. Amazon's Kindle guidelines in particular expressly forbid the publishing of any public domain works &lt;strong&gt;as part of a collection&lt;/strong&gt;. They specifically require that you differentiate your work from the original in one of the following ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• (Translated) - A unique translation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• (Annotated) - Contains annotations (unique, hand-crafted additional&#xA;  content including study guides, literary critiques, detailed&#xA;  biographies, or detailed historical context)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• (Illustrated) - Includes 10 or more unique illustrations relevant to&#xA;  the book &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Books that meet this criteria must include (Translated), (Annotated),&#xA;  or (Illustrated) in the title field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A2OHLJURFVK57Q&quot;&gt;KDP - Publishing Public Domain Content&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to note that this criteria pertains specifically to the republishing of a complete public domain work. If you are trying to publish a collection of works, for example poetry, then their guidelines will not permit you to do so. This is especially true if these poems are freely available on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you will want to make absolutely certain that the poems you want to include truly are in the public domain. It is rare that individual poems are registered for a copyright because it is easier for a publisher to copyright a collection or an anthology. If any of the poems you want to use in your collection were copyrighted as part of another collection or an anthology, then that copyright may have been passed along to heirs or other parties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of that, it is not uncommon for poetry to be published in multiple forms. For example, a poem may have been published in two different collections, but the author may have chosen to retain the copyright on only one of those collections. Another possibility is that the rights to a poem were sold to a publisher to be included in an anthology. In this example, the original author might have granted ownership of the copyright to the publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a lot easier to ascertain that a full novel is in the public domain because it is essentially a single title. However, with something like poetry or short stories that tend to appear in many types of publications, it is harder to verify that each individual title is truly in the public domain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T11:43:34.807" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9863" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-31T14:41:57.303" Score="4" ViewCount="1857" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am no expert in the English language. Things I need to improve are clarity, style and correct use of grammar. Any tips would be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing a large document and plan to proof read it myself. What are the best tips you have. I am also looking for information on writing style (a reference book would be a good help) on writing text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6584" OwnerDisplayName="Jagte" LastEditorUserId="4244" LastEditDate="2013-12-31T15:38:29.840" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T19:21:28.520" Title="How do I find mistakes in grammar and style in my own writings?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9863" CreationDate="2013-12-31T14:58:05.497" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few things you can do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read your work out loud. This will give you a sense of whether your sentence structure works, whether any words are out of place or whether you have redundancy that needs to be fixed. Most of the time you'll catch egregious stuff by just reading things out loud and making sure it sounds right. If you're writing slowly, do this after each paragraph. Make sure you also do it for the whole document when you are finished.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set your work aside for at least a day, then read it to yourself. Be critical; fix anything new you find.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get someone else to read your work, preferably a native speaker.  If you don't have someone in real life to do this, try to find someone online who is willing to give you feedback on it. Be open to constructive feedback and make changes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will help your grammar, but you also seem to be looking for some advice on composition, so here's what I can give you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mind your audience. Know what you are writing for, know the conventions of your target audience and make sure you follow them. If you're writing a paper for a conference or class, be sure to understand the standards you need to meet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start with something smaller, or break your work up into small chunks. If you have time, write several smaller pieces before you take on a big work. If you're writing a novel, try a short story first. If you're writing a research paper, try a summary first.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work off of an outline. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to ramble. As a beginner try to outline each paragraph you're going to write before you write it. In this way your paper will to some degree write itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do these things, you'll be just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4244" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2013-12-31T18:39:49.293" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T18:39:49.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9863" CreationDate="2013-12-31T18:00:48.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One trick that works for me is to read the pages in reverse order.  This stops the text from flowing, and disrupts your tendency to read what you thought you wrote rather than what you actually wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, try anything that stops it looking familiar: change the font to a different font from the one you used when you wrote it.  If you're proofreading on screen (or using a colour printer) change the colours.  Anything you can think of that will make it seem less familiar as you're reading through it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6437" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T18:00:48.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9863" CreationDate="2013-12-31T19:21:28.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Listen to a text-to-speech program read your work to you.  The nice thing about those programs is their stupidity -- whatever you wrote, that's exactly what they read.  If you have a word twice in a row, most humans will skip the repeat and never notice.  If you leave out a word, most humans will supply it and never notice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do a repeated find on commonly mixed-up words, like &quot;there/they're/their,&quot; &quot;your/you're,&quot; and &quot;its/it's.&quot;  Verify each time that you are using the correct word.  (You can get a personal list of these bugaboo words by searching for &quot;commonly misused words&quot; or &quot;commonly misspelled words,&quot; and eliminating the ones that you know you don't mix up.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Run spell check!  It is inexcusable to have blatantly misspelled words in a MSS that you're submitting to someone -- even if it's your editor -- since it's so easy to run spell check.  Don't waste other people's time.  Even if you're paying them.  (Especially if you're paying them??)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ditto for grammar check.  Even though grammar check is not as reliable as spell check, you should still run it.  Make sure that any/all grammar flags are either false positives (i.e., not actually bad grammar) or are purposely breaking a grammar rule for effect (and BTW don't do that too often).  Again, don't waste people's time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read each paragraph, one by one, and ask yourself: &quot;Is the first sentence a proper leading sentence for this paragraph?&quot;  If not, fix it, or fix the paragraph.  In most writing, especially non-fiction, you should be able to get the gist of a MSS from &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; the leading sentences of paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;MS Word has something called outline view.  This can be very useful for getting your thoughts organized and ordered (and keeping them that way), especially for long, complex MSSs.  If you have outline view available (or something similar), I suggest you figure out how it works and use it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T19:21:28.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9792" CreationDate="2013-12-31T20:39:46.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you make the outline, think about the scope of the book as well: what would you expect in such a book? What would you rather not see? For example, if this a book on advanced C++ techiques and threads, you probably don't want to explain what a class is. Think about your target audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6594" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T20:39:46.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7671" CreationDate="2013-12-31T20:48:26.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO in CVs the day is not that important, so you could go with Month Year, like Nov 2013 - Dec 2013: worked for Xmas Inc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6594" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T20:48:26.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7671" CreationDate="2014-01-01T14:18:18.983" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The format that best preserves both clarity, brevity and formality is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;21 Nov, 2013&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6597" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T14:18:18.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9880" CreationDate="2014-01-02T03:01:14.857" Score="10" ViewCount="2871" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background: Im working on a rather long instructional book, and have just started trying to use LaTeX. The book doesn't have any scientific notation in it, and most of the diagrams I made in other software and rendered to still images. This will be the first thing I submit to publishers. It seems like LaTeX is most useful for writers who end up being in control of the distribution of their own work, I could be wrong though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Should a writer spend much time using LaTeX if ultimately handing the pack to a publisher? Will they even want a .tex file? Or will they want just a Word file or similar, to which they will apply their own styling to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will probably keep learning and using LaTeX because it seems to create very nice and neat work. But I'm more curious in regards to LaTeX and publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6535" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T21:13:14.827" Title="Using LaTeX with publishers?" Tags="|publishing|technical-writing|latex|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9877" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9879" CreationDate="2014-01-02T12:19:27.013" Score="1" ViewCount="1531" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the proper rules for indentation in text?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When should there be larger spaces separating paragraphs?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular example, I am writing a math book, so there are several different &quot;parts&quot; (theorems, proofs, definitions, examples), so it is more complicated than say a plain essay or novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I am using LaTeX, this is equivalent to the question &quot;What is proper use of \noindent, \bigskip, \medskip and \smallskip?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: So, this is more about how to do the layout, (in this case, I use LaTeX, so I would be happiest with an answer that tells me how to do it in LaTeX, but the question is syntax-agnostic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1396" LastEditorUserId="1396" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T15:49:19.757" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T16:38:59.787" Title="Indentation, paragraph spacing, when?" Tags="|style|latex|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9877" CreationDate="2014-01-02T14:00:15.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most novels I see, the text is indented on each paragraph, with no blank lines in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, when the story is moved to another location/time, some separator appears between the two sections such as a line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6601" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:00:15.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9877" CreationDate="2014-01-02T14:12:22.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that software offers certain possibilities of markup does not mean that you should use them. A good example is underlining. To my knowledge all software allows underlining of text; nevertheless underlining is not longer used in professional publications from newspapers to magazines to books since the demise of the typewriter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, &lt;strong&gt;indentation&lt;/strong&gt; has two main uses in regular prose texts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to identify the beginning of a paragraph, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to mark long quotes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually the vertical distance between paragraphs is the same as that between the lines within one paragraph. If the last line of one paragraph ends close to or at the right margin, it is hard if not impossible to discern wether or not the next sentence continues the present paragraph or is the first in a new one. If you indent this sentence, the paragraph beginning becomes unmistakeable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the same reason, you &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; indent the first line in the first paragraph of a chapter, because it is already clear from the chapter heading that a new paragraph starts here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vertical spacing&lt;/strong&gt; is used to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;separate subchapters, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mark long quotes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to divide your text into sections that are smaller than chapters but longer than paragraphs, you can use a large space to separate these sections. Sometimes a narrow horizontal rule or three asterisks or some ornament are added to the space dividing these sections of text. Especially the three asterisks, which echo the three dots of an ellipsis, are used when there is a jump forward in time and the story continues after a summary of the events that were not narrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common rule says that quotes longer than 40 words should be indented (sometimes from both sides) and separated from the main text with a space above and below. Some style guides even ask for smaller type size. In narrative text this is used to mark up letters, newspaper articles, graffitti etc. that the protagonist encounters and reads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How deep an indentation, or how large a space separating subchapters should be, is a design question and has no universal rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T14:23:24.403" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:23:24.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9875" CreationDate="2014-01-02T14:59:30.943" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would guess that most &lt;em&gt;editors&lt;/em&gt; want &lt;strong&gt;readable&lt;/strong&gt; copies of text, so either a printed version or a common file format such as PDF or Word. You can create both from (La)TeX. Wether or not a publisher will appreciate a .tex file &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the manuscript as been accepted for publication by the editor will depend on the publishing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Format:&lt;/strong&gt; Scientific journals and books usually require &lt;strong&gt;Word&lt;/strong&gt; documents (usually .doc, not .docx, as the latter often causes problems), some accept RTF, Wordperfect and Open Office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Layout:&lt;/strong&gt; Publishers often require &lt;strong&gt;plain text&lt;/strong&gt;, that is text with no markup. Sometimes they allow italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the manuscript guidelines of one of the largest publishers of scientific texts, Sage, who only accepts Word files: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sagepub.com/repository/binaries/Manuscripts.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sagepub.com/repository/binaries/Manuscripts.pdf&lt;/a&gt;. The requirements of many scientific publishers are similar. Springer on the other hand accepts TeX besides Word and others: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/instr_print_10459.061023.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/instr_print_10459.061023.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For scientific manuscript submission I don't see any benefit in using (La)TeX, because every publisher either accepts or requires Word.&lt;/strong&gt; If TeX is a benefit for your writing process or even for the preparation of a Word file is a question I cannot answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please view the comment by Martin Schröder below who adds that LaTeX is a requirement in some natural sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-03T10:37:35.940" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T10:37:35.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9877" CreationDate="2014-01-02T15:58:52.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indentation will always depend on the style guide you're using, so you should always check that first. The following assumes Chicago rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards, to paragraph indentation, see: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3152/should-i-indent-the-first-line-of-the-first-paragraph-in-a-chapter/3155#3155&quot;&gt;Should I indent the first line of the first paragraph in a chapter?&lt;/a&gt; In addition to the indentation rules, you should also have no extra spaces separating your paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other usages of indentation occur when doing block indentation, in which case, see this answer here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2904/how-to-cite-an-entire-paragraph/2905#2905&quot;&gt;How to cite an entire paragraph?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T15:58:52.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9882" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9892" CreationDate="2014-01-02T16:06:28.220" Score="7" ViewCount="64676" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I send a manuscript to a publisher, what should I put in the letter to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6491" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T06:33:46.603" Title="How do I write a letter to a publisher?" Tags="|letter|publisher|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9877" CreationDate="2014-01-02T16:38:59.787" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would indent the first line of each paragraph except for the first in a chapter. my reasoning for doing so is that with math texts you may have multi-line formulas in the middle of sentences (which you should try to minimize) and paragraphs this would allow you to break the paragraph for the formula without indicating the start of a new paragraph. I also like a half line break between paragraphs in documents discussing complex subjects because every bit of clarity helps with comprehension. For purposes of this discussion a chapter is a group of paragraphs separated from the previous and next such group by at a minimum a heading and identified by a number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T16:38:59.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9783" CreationDate="2014-01-02T17:38:42.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think one of the best examples is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaroslav_Ha%C5%A1ek&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jaroslav Hašek&lt;/a&gt;'s masterpiece &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Good Soldier Švejk&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The novel is set during World War I in Austria-Hungary, a multi-ethnic&#xA;  empire full of long-standing tensions. Fifteen million people died in&#xA;  the War, one million of them Austro-Hungarian soldiers of whom around&#xA;  140,000 were Czechs. Jaroslav Hašek participated in this conflict and&#xA;  examined it in The Good Soldier Švejk.  [..]  The character of Josef&#xA;  Švejk is a development of this theme. Through possibly-feigned idiocy&#xA;  or incompetence he repeatedly manages to frustrate military authority&#xA;  and expose its stupidity in a form of passive resistance: the reader&#xA;  is left unclear, however, as to whether Švejk is genuinely&#xA;  incompetent, or acting quite deliberately with dumb insolence. These&#xA;  absurd events reach a climax when Švejk, wearing a Russian uniform, is&#xA;  mistakenly taken prisoner by his own troops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6603" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T17:38:42.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9885" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-02T19:24:09.827" Score="7" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any online &lt;em&gt;video courses&lt;/em&gt; for creative writing? Preferably free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm referring to university-type courses, which are filmed and then published online. An outstanding example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/user/WriteAboutDragons/videos?flow=list&amp;amp;view=1&quot;&gt;Brandon Sanderson's courses&lt;/a&gt; on YouTube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of blog/podcast videos, but they're not well structured. Courses prepared for teaching at a uni level are more helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6604" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T06:36:40.470" Title="Formal video-based creative writing courses" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|resources|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9885" CreationDate="2014-01-02T20:28:54.607" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about free ones. Dean Wesley Smith's workshops and lectures have been tremendously helpful for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dean's workshops cost $300 each, and run for six weeks.&#xA;Each week, you get about an hour of video instruction,&#xA;and a homework assignment that will stretch and challenge you.&#xA;You get brief, helpful personal response from Dean about your assignment.&#xA;And each week's videos include a brief general discussion of the assignments&#xA;(general comments, with nobody's work singled out).&#xA;You can find them here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=7474&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=7474&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lectures are mostly $50 each, though a few are $75.&#xA;Several of them are presented by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.&#xA;Each lecture consists of about 10 videos, for a total of about 60 to 100 minutes of ideas.&#xA;You can find them here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=8597&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=8597&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T20:28:54.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9875" CreationDate="2014-01-02T20:46:42.383" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;LaTeX is fine as it will deliver a printable .pdf for initial approval to a publisher and many templates from scientific publishers, freely available from a basic web search can be loaded, including Springer and many others&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latextemplates.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LaTeX templates&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Springer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6179" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T20:46:42.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9889" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-03T10:47:40.217" Score="3" ViewCount="919" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several books that provide an excellent breakdown of the elements that make a good story or script. For example, The Writer's Journey by Christopher Volger identifies common archtypes and narrative structures, and the various stages of the hero's journey. Save The Cat by Blake Snyder breaks down the three act structure of a film into beats and even script page numbers where certain things must happen: all is lost moment, theme stated, catalyst etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does one use these structures, but not become a slave to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T16:23:50.783" Title="How to avoid formulaic fictional structures while still using tried and tested techniques?" Tags="|fiction|structure|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9885" CreationDate="2014-01-03T11:00:41.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an English language course on &lt;a href=&quot;https://iversity.org/courses/the-future-of-storytelling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Future of Storytelling&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;https://iversity.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Iversity&lt;/a&gt;. The focus, as the course title implies, is on more recent developments in storytelling such as interactive and transmedia storytelling. The course is introductory and provides an overview of storytelling theory, not actual writing training. Its a good starting point, but you will have to pick up some of the recommended books. As a novel writer I found it vaguely interesting, for example in thinking beyond your book to the marketing and franchising of your product. The course is well made and inspiring if you are tolerant of the awkward English of some of the non-native presenters. The main teacher is pretty and fun to watch :-) The course is free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-03T11:48:39.467" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T11:48:39.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9889" CreationDate="2014-01-03T11:57:42.643" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the same way that you don't become the slave of any other rules and laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you walk through your city at night and there are no traffic and no children to learn from your bad example, you cross the street although the traffic light is red. If your plot has an internal logic that contradicts three act structure, you follow your plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing instructors often use examples. They analyse a novel, find the three act structure, and then use this novel to illustrate their formula. But if you actually take up that book and read it for yourself, you will usually find deviations from and contradictions to that formula. Plot formulae are a simplifictation of real novels, just as the rules of etiquette are a simplification of real-life human interactions and don't always apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beauty, as psychologists have recently found, is not perfection. Perfection is boring and unexciting. Of course symmetrical faces are generally found more attractive than unsymmetrical faces by the average person. But for a specific individual what is most attractive are specific deviations from perfection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formulaic fiction is utterly uninteresting. What kicks you in the balls is the deviation from the expected (as you can easily experience with my choice of words here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to get the direction of the chain of cause and effect right here. Good fiction is not constructed after a formula. Formulas can be found if you simplify good fiction. Why? Because &lt;em&gt;life&lt;/em&gt; itself is perceived in retrospect by human beings as events leading up to a culmination and turning point, after which there is an aftermath of returning life to normal. Formulas can be found in stories, because they reflect how human beings make sense of their lives. So if you write a story that makes sense, it will always contain elements of a formula. You don't have to construct your story around that formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the formula is to help you get an outside view of your own writing. You know the story you want to tell, you understand what's going on etc., but will your reader? You could simply let your text rest for a year or two and then come back to it with a clear mind, but since you are in a hurry you use a formula to compare your text against. The formula is the average, &quot;normative&quot; reader. If your text works for him, it does make sense. But no more. It might not be good, it might not be entertaining, all you know is that it works on the most basic level. So don't trust the formula beyond what it can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-03T13:02:07.923" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T13:02:07.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9882" CreationDate="2014-01-03T12:47:05.193" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dear [Name of Editor],&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;my name is [Your Name], I'm [your age] old and work as [your job] in [your town]. I have [never published anything before / published the following stories and novels:]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title of Short Story, Anthology, Year, Number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title of Novel, Year, Publisher&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enclosed you will find [the first draft / treatment and first 50 pages / whatever] of my novel &quot;[Title of Novel]&quot;. I would love to publish my novel in [your house], because the topic of my novel, which is [your topic], perfectly complements [your publishing program with this author and that author and their books X and Y].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sincerely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this seems not as obvious to some as I thought it would be: Do some careful research on the publisher you are sending your manuscript to. &lt;strong&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; write &quot;your house&quot; or &quot;your publishing program&quot;, but the &lt;em&gt;name&lt;/em&gt; of that publisher and the name or a description (other authors) that your novels fits in to.&lt;/strong&gt; Replace all other placeholders, too (your name, name of editor, your age, your job, your town etc.). And don't just copy/paste this text. It is an example. I'll spell the basics out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;introduce yourself; give all the details that may be relevant to the publication of your text (if you, the author, are an interesting person, that may help sell your book, so let the publisher know that you scaled Mount Everest, worked in a jail, or are only 12 years old)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give your publishing history; if you have published nothing yet, say so (omit this only if your name is Stephen King)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;state why you chose this specific publisher; why does your book fit them; why do they fit you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make sure you have the name of the right editor and address the letter to him or her personally; if necessary, call the reception and ask&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;include a stamped, self-addressed envelope, or a postcard where they can tick &quot;we are not interested&quot; or &quot;call me at ....&quot;; make a reply easy and free for them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic idea is: treat this similar to a job application. (Research job application, if you have no idea how to write a letter applying for a job, I was taking it for granted that you all know how to apply for jobs and wouldn't write &quot;your house&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this makes my answer a bit more clear, folks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a how-to by a literary agent that tells you what they expect. It's surprisingly similar to what I wrote above: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dystel.com/submission-requirements/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dystel.com/submission-requirements/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrary to popular belief, we like our unsolicited queries to be concise, well-written and well-proofed, and as devoid of gimmicks as possible. Tell us who you are (past writing credits or celebrity status is helpful to know about but not mandatory), what your project is (a summary paragraph is good), and whether you have submitted this project to the entire publishing community already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to get your foot in the door remember that appearances count. We don’t like to see handwritten queries with coffee stains on them. We don’t like our names misspelled. We don’t like a lot of typos in general. We don’t like generic “Dear Agent” letters, but we don’t like overly chummy greetings, either. Photographs generally don’t help – unless you’re George Clooney. Plain and simple works best for us. Don’t try to convince us that you’ve written the next GONE WITH THE WIND… we’ve heard that one before. Let your project speak for itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Enclose a cover letter, outline or brief synopsis of the work (with word count if possible), a sample chapter, and a stamped, self-addressed envelope for our response. Please type all of your correspondence and double space everything other than the cover letter. E-mail queries are fine, but keep them brief and make sure your cover letter is in the body of the e-mail. We won’t open attachments if they come with a blank e-mail. Please be sure to query only one agent at this agency. We will not review queries sent to more than one of us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's more valuable advice from them on their &quot;Queries&quot; page: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dystel.com/category/queries/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dystel.com/category/queries/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T09:00:26.500" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T09:00:26.500" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9889" CreationDate="2014-01-03T15:10:39.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are what many would consider formulas out there, and they have their purpose.  I prefer to think of them as a framework.  These common themes and trends can help make sure we dont forget anything that makes a story a full experience.  My personal favorite is Joseph Campbell.  His book &lt;em&gt;The Hero with a Thousand Faces&lt;/em&gt; is a comparative mythology.  He distills the similarities in the stories from around the globe into the 'Hero's Journey'.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ai76c.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this diagram a particularly useful representation.  Like the answer above mentioned it is how you differ, challenge and change the narrative that makes a story great (well ok it &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; make a story great...sometimes it makes a story terrible).  In my writing I have used the below to formulate the overarching story and then write my way within.  Though when I proofread and review I often find that this path appears in subsections of the story as well.  There are steps in the life of any character, and the steps are important because these things that recur in fiction are common to humanity...they are what help pull readers in because things are familiar.  How you execute and twist the expected is what makes a story great (in my opinion).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say don't be afraid to utilize these frameworks/formulas...they exist for good reason, just make sure along the way you make it your own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6524" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T15:10:39.647" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9900" CreationDate="2014-01-03T18:15:30.743" Score="3" ViewCount="17852" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you distort words into sounding sick, as in with the cold? I want it to be a really comical scene, but I'm not sure how to write it. Do I replace some letters with others or remove certain consonants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6615" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-09-08T18:35:07.077" LastActivityDate="2019-09-08T18:35:07.077" Title="How can I make a person sound sick?" Tags="|dialogue|language|humor|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9897" CreationDate="2014-01-03T20:57:57.590" Score="7" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a recording device.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Press &lt;em&gt;record&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hold your nose tightly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speak your dialogue. Add coughing, wheezing, and other effects as appropriate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Press &lt;em&gt;stop.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Press &lt;em&gt;play.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transcribe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T20:57:57.590" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9897" CreationDate="2014-01-03T21:09:44.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Messed-up speech is usually funnier on TV/stage/screen than in writing, because (#1) it's hard to figure out what the person is saying, and (#2) the comic effect depends on the readers' skill at rendering messed-up words (either out loud or in their heads).  But, if you want to try it, give yourself the affliction the character has, say his/her lines, and write down phonetically what you say.  Literally stuff your nose with something for a stuffy nose.  Prop your mouth open with a carrot for a broken jaw.  Grab and hold half your face for a paralysis (which better be temporary, or your dialogue will NOT be funny).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would go light on the distorted speech.  Probably it would be funnier if the sick character were a bit loopy, either because of the sickness or the meds.  Then you can have lots of inanity, non-sequiturs, inappropriate sharing, emoting, melodrama, etc.  People who think/insist they're dying when they're obviously merely sick are a staple of comedy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T21:09:44.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9897" CreationDate="2014-01-03T22:08:03.633" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many children's books have scenes where a character talks with an obstructed nose (e.g. head in bucket). Usually what they do is a combination of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;k, p, t =&gt; g, b, d&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;n =&gt; ng/g&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;m, v/f =&gt; b&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works well only if you restrict this to a sentence or two. Then it is funny. Otherwise it becomes tiresome to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T22:08:03.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9901" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-04T00:40:48.357" Score="3" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been told that my writing had the right idea and aim, but my words weren't strong enough to support that. I need some tips and tricks to help strengthen my writing. I've been told that I have been &quot;telling and not showing&quot;. What does that mean? I need to know how to add more support into my words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6618" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T17:06:35.973" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T17:06:35.973" Title="What does &quot;telling and not showing&quot; mean?" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8960" CreationDate="2014-01-04T05:28:31.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number one rule of writing is &lt;strong&gt;know your audience.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, you have a very specific audience - perhaps one or two people initially.  So why not put on your &quot;investigator's hat&quot; and &lt;strong&gt;call them up&lt;/strong&gt; and find out &lt;strong&gt;exactly&lt;/strong&gt; what they want?  First get some practice calling some other universities, and get a little more experience in the kinds of questions you want answered and how to get information - learn the landscape.  Then call your target university.  Universities usually have all kinds of student services that are happy to help.  If a person says &quot;I don't know&quot; you can ask, &quot;is there someone who would know or who could point me in the right direction?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, find some students that were recently accepted to your university of choice and ask if they could &quot;help you&quot; with your personal statement.  They might even share their own personal statement with you and you'll get a better idea of the kinds of things that pass the admission process mustard (cheesy idiom intended).  Other than getting some general ideas, I would take their advice &quot;with a grain of salt&quot;.  Ultimately, you'll want to use your own voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW - &quot;It worked like a charm&quot; sounds cheesy to me.  Some idioms are so trite or cliche you'll want to &quot;avoid them like the plague&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6619" LastEditorUserId="6619" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T06:11:09.230" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T06:11:09.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9903" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-04T07:18:01.853" Score="0" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a fictional book. I have no idea how to introduce the new country and the history. I already have three ideas on how to start the book, but I don't know which one to use and which is better. If you have a better idea on how to go about this, please share it with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;1: [Explaining the history first]&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2: [Jumping straight into it and explain the history as we go later in the book]&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;3: [Explain a bit of the history and explain the rest later]&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I am open to other ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6618" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T10:46:45.643" Title="Which opening for my book is better?" Tags="|style|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-01-04T17:08:02.123" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9903" CreationDate="2014-01-04T10:42:57.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is not a question for us so much as it is a question for you, the author. Superb books of all three varieties, and more, exist. There is no wrong answer. This is about your story. So, with that in mind, if you don't immediately see which is better for you, I would recommend sitting down and listing out the pros and cons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get you started:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Explaining the history first could affect your readers' attention, expectations, and the pace of the narrative. If you aren't particularly good at writing history, the readers who came to your book for its narrative may find themselves initially put-off. So you have to write it well. But you are probably at greater risk of the first section of the book feeling tangibly different from the rest -- and for good reason. This is easier made a weakness, but could also become a strength. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This makes for a quicker pace for most writers. You may get readers involved more quickly, but there is a greater risk of readers missing the metanarrative that the history would introduce -- and that can be a death-blow for some stories. Also, as an author, you may find yourself at the mercy of these bits of history -- you may not be able to allow your characters or settings to display the full richness of their cultural or contextual milieu. This has the potential to cripple what would otherwise be a very colorful character, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is a middle-of-the-road situation which allows the author to adopt both the typical strengths and weaknesses of the other two approaches, but in milder forms.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All three are useful. But only you know your story and your style. Think about what your story needs to be and how readers are best to discover this -- and then compare that with your own strengths and weaknesses. Play to your strengths, of course, but don't be afraid to push your own limitations a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5194" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T10:42:57.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9903" CreationDate="2014-01-04T10:46:45.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As always, I'd like to start out with mentioning that readers are different and that this is only my personal taste:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am bored to death by historical or any other explanatory introduction. I don't like prologues. &lt;strong&gt;I want to get into the story from the first sentence onwards.&lt;/strong&gt; I even skip long passages of history and other explanations, dreams, reflective monologue etc. later in the text, if they don't propell the story forward. I only read &lt;em&gt;what happens&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to entertain &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt;, you'll have to make everything, that you want me to know, known through the events of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if there is a university in that town, don't just state it, let the characters visit the university or let one of them be a student or teacher. If they don't visit the university, and if none of them works there, I don't need to know about it. The same goes for history: I don't need to know the history of a country to understand the suffering caused by a civil war. The question is: What is your story about? If it is about the suffering of civil war, skip the history. I'll relate your story to real life history and understand the background of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like you don't describe the advertisements on the outside of the bus your characters take. I simply put it there in my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your readers are not stupid, so don't bore them with what they know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T10:46:45.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9901" CreationDate="2014-01-04T10:57:34.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, this closely relates to the answer I gave to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9903/which-opening-for-my-book-is-better&quot;&gt;your other question&lt;/a&gt; (history first?). Readers love things happening. They love people interacting with other people. They love emotions. They don't want to read how many centimetres your protagonist is tall, but that his opponent has to look up to him, stumbling backwards, his eyes wide open in fear. Don't &lt;strong&gt;tell&lt;/strong&gt; your readers the measurement, but &lt;strong&gt;show&lt;/strong&gt; them the effects it has on the characters and the events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chuck Palahniuk, author of &lt;em&gt;Fight Club&lt;/em&gt;, gives the best possible how-to here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://litreactor.com/essays/chuck-palahniuk/nuts-and-bolts-%E2%80%9Cthought%E2%80%9D-verbs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://litreactor.com/essays/chuck-palahniuk/nuts-and-bolts-%E2%80%9Cthought%E2%80%9D-verbs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T10:57:34.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9901" CreationDate="2014-01-04T12:39:42.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Create an image&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make it visual. Strive for vivid images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Telling&lt;/strong&gt;: He sits on the couch holding his guitar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Showing&lt;/strong&gt;: His eyes are closed, and he’s cradling the guitar in his arms like a lover. It’s as if he’s trying to hold on to something that wants to let go.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailywritingtips.com/show-dont-tell/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Be careful with 'thought' words&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to avoid words like &lt;em&gt;thinks, knows, believes, wants, realizes&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your story will always be stronger if you just show the physical actions and details of your characters and allow your reader to do the thinking and knowing.  And loving and hating. [..] In short, no more short-cuts.  Only specific sensory detail: action, smell, taste, sound, and feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(see details and examples in &lt;a href=&quot;http://litreactor.com/essays/chuck-palahniuk/nuts-and-bolts-%E2%80%9Cthought%E2%80%9D-verbs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nuts and Bolts: “Thought” Verbs&lt;/a&gt; by Chuck Palahniuk)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Be concise&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be as specific as possible. Avoid redundancy, wordy phrases, and unnecessary modifiers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;to be + nouns&lt;/em&gt;: What we found was a solution to the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Strong verb&lt;/em&gt;: We solved the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(and other examples &lt;a href=&quot;http://makemyday.at.ua/publ/effective_sentence/1-1-0-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2550" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T12:39:42.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9910" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9911" CreationDate="2014-01-04T15:59:03.490" Score="3" ViewCount="1204" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always try to avoid cliches as much as I can. But sometimes I just can't; they seem to be the perfect bridge between one scene and the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the current novel I'm writing, the friend of the protagonist gets raped by her father (I know, the cliches of cliches). So I tried to write it so it sounds original (at least to me): the girl and her father were very close when she was a child. But he suddenly became distant when her first period came. She thinks this event somehow disrupted the relationship she had with her father. She thinks somehow she became &lt;em&gt;dirty&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;unwanted.&lt;/em&gt; But later that night, her father comes to her room, and rapes her (I don't directly state this. I use similes/metaphors like &quot;burning from the inside&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, I'm not sure whether I succeeded in turning this cliche into something more or less original. I wonder, though, if I should just drop the whole scene and start fresh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This happens to me a lot. I would like to hear your opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T16:06:32.690" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T20:36:15.087" Title="Is it possible to turn a cliche into something original?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9910" CreationDate="2014-01-04T19:46:47.647" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rape is a very delicate issue to handle well and the reason it often seems cliche is that there are few good ways to handle it. The rest of my advice will ignore this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to approach cliches avoid them or twist them. Some of my favorite ways to twist cliches include looking at them backwards (dog walks man, man bites dog) and innovative pairing (boy scout abducted by aliens while helping old lady cross street, NSA spies on FBI sting of anarchists message board).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T19:46:47.647" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9910" CreationDate="2014-01-04T20:36:15.087" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason that I &lt;em&gt;try&lt;/em&gt; to avoid cliches is because they are sometimes boring. I'm assuming that you don't purposely try to make your story boring, so my following advice fits when you hit a cliche &lt;strong&gt;that makes your story boring&lt;/strong&gt; and you don't know how to get around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a few tactics that I've stolen from various sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://io9.com/5916970/the-22-rules-of-storytelling-according-to-pixar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the 22 Pixar rules of writing&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;When you're stuck, make a list of what WOULDN'T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When I get stuck, it's usually because I'm missing something from the other characters, or I haven't made them interesting enough. I'll give them random features (They're a librarian! A librarian of skeletons from a genocide!) until something sticks, that I want to write about. You did mention that you've re-written this book three times, so maybe that isn't really an option for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As RhysW implies, you can also look at your event as an input/output system. Can you replace your event with something else weirder that would have the same effect and same fit, but with a more interesting delivery?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T20:36:15.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9806" CreationDate="2014-01-04T23:00:32.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I'd like to clarify your use of &quot;comet&quot;.  A little googling indicates comets are typically measured at about 8 km = 5 mi.  Something like that &quot;landing in someone's back yard&quot; would be a globally catastrophic event.  That itself could be a good story, but perhaps you meant a meteorite, a small piece of space debris that survived it's fall to earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, and more important, within the last (rough guess) decade or two, the idea that our lives meander through a series of arbitrary chance occurrences (could be &quot;accidents&quot;) has made it's way into some more mainstream books and movies.  The theme is at least as old as existentialism, finding it's modern roots in Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;But based on my personal experience in the life I think occurrence of &quot;two&quot; independent accidents in a &quot;single&quot; drama is rare and strange. So it seems if I want to write a realistic story I should avoid occurrence of frequent accidents in it. In the other words it seems that a story which begins with an accident could be reasonably realistic even if this accident is too strange or rare to happen but a story with more than one accident seems unnatural and unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Sullivan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Roy Sullivan&lt;/a&gt; has reportedly been hit by lightning seven times.  While I think you're right in general, that a particular genre cannot have too many wild accidents, there are also cases where several accidents combined can create a type of mystery and confusion, such as an innocent man being found guilty of a crime, a guilty person getting away, etc.  There's also the genre based on Shakespeare's, &quot;The Comedy of Errors&quot;.  And finally, realistic accounts of wars include many instances of both tragic and fortunate accidents that in total contributed greatly to the final outcome outside the control man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what the heck am I saying?  Be original.  If you want a lot of accidents, feel free to have them.  Just make sure they make sense.  One way of having something make sense is to be unapologetic about it - let the reader you know it would &lt;em&gt;normally&lt;/em&gt; be absurd to see it this way, but from the perspective of your story (or the perspective a character) it is perfectly logical.  Or in other words, ditto on what everyone else says... learn the rules but then feel free to break them in any way you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6619" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T23:00:32.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9914" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-04T23:04:41.137" Score="1" ViewCount="699" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often times I have a good idea for a story, however short it may be. A good title, good characters, good story line, good concept, good setting. My one problem is that I can never follow through with my idea. I always end up never finishing the story. Is there a way to solve this? Or are my ideas, in actuality, just not interesting enough for even me to finish it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6625" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T23:42:17.763" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T16:35:18.137" Title="How to follow through with a good idea?" Tags="|creative-writing|ideas|discipline|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9915" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-01-04T23:43:51.240" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T23:43:51.240" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T23:43:51.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9916" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-01-04T23:43:51.240" Score="0" Body="These questions are for writers having trouble finishing work, or those stuck in the planning phase. " OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T23:43:51.240" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T23:43:51.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9917" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-05T01:01:11.790" Score="11" ViewCount="567" Body="&lt;p&gt;Participating in writing-related sites (for example on critique sites) sometimes involves describing a plot problem or sharing an excerpt from my work.  I'm usually vague because of the fear that someone might steal my ideas.  I already know that I'm being paranoid, but I've worked too hard to have my work stolen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I post my book ideas on sites like this one for critique, can my work be stolen?  What should I do to protect myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6618" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-20T16:13:03.030" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T16:13:03.030" Title="Can my work be stolen if I post excerpts and ideas on critique sites?" Tags="|copyright|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9917" CreationDate="2014-01-05T02:47:43.663" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, it's certainly &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; that posting on the internet could lead to someone stealing your ideas. But will this actually happen? There are risks, however small, to showing your work to &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt;. Most writers that publish know the benefits of peer feedback, and take the risk anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people have reaped benefits from posting excerpts on the web for critique. On any site that you're considering posting, I'd suggest browsing the critique questions already up. Does the site do a good job at giving feedback? Knowing that will help you decide if the benefit to you is worth the uncertainty and unease it might cause to post draft material publicly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Peace of mind&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you feel that it's likely that someone will steal your ideas? If posting stuff on the web for feedback will make you uneasy, you have the option of sticking to in-person writers groups, or forums that are password-protected, or even an email-only criticism group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Framework and execution&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a difference between book ideas and an excerpt you'd post for criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writing world is filled with people who come up with ideas for novels, or a grand epic series of novels. It's so common that we even have a name for it: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writing.stackexchange.com/q/796/26&quot;&gt;world-builder's syndrome&lt;/a&gt;. The framework behind a novel &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; important, and it's vital that the structure of a story be interesting and sturdy. But the execution is what's truly unique. An excerpt of actual writing posted on the web is a piece of that execution. It's &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; unlikely to be stolen, but I don't think anyone can prove this or even cite you vague numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Legal issues&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this is meant to say that people shouldn't post for critique here, but they should be aware of the possible issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Posting work on the web could, theoretically, cause problems with &lt;strong&gt;first-publication rights&lt;/strong&gt; (what you would give a publisher). Small excerpts posted on the web are unlikely to be a problem, though. (Anything posted here would likely be an early draft in any case.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also read the user agreements of where you post. This very site used to allow critiques, and there were issues associated with it. I'm not a lawyer, but this is how I understand the problem: When you post on a Stack Exchange site, you have agreed that what your words on the Stack Exchange site will become a Creative Commons work. I &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; that this includes the excerpt you post - if so, it can be distributed without further permission from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think this means you give up your copyright to the excerpt, and perhaps the previous copyright on the words means you're just giving permission to use it and not converting the excerpt into CC material? I'm particularly unclear on this part. This issue &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/123501/149375&quot;&gt;has been discussed&lt;/a&gt;, but and I haven't seen a definitive answer to this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Are critiques allowed on this site?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. You can use your own work as a way of illustrating a specific, answerable question, but you can't post work for general critique. Critiques &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166/what-are-the-guidelines-for-asking-for-a-critique-of-my-work&quot;&gt;used to be on-topic here&lt;/a&gt; but it didn't work out well; the community has since decided that they're &lt;a href=&quot;https://writing.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/878/does-writers-se-accept-critique-requests/879#879&quot;&gt;off-topic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd probably be fine posting work on the web for critique, but there's no certainty. You need to decide for yourself if the feedback you might get is important enough to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T15:46:25.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9914" CreationDate="2014-01-05T04:29:42.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the idea peter out? Do you lose enthusiasm? Do you get distracted? For many very creative people the new idea is the obsession. They have gobs of ideas and not enough time to finish all of them. Or they just love coming up with story ideas, but don't like writing. Or the idea might not be complete and need to be stuck under the pillow. Or it could be a bad idea (I have lots of those).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could just be a time management issue. To help identify where the problem lies I recommend that you pick three ideas for three stories. All other ideas get sorted into piles: characters, settings, plot twists, story ideas, etc. You can add to the piles, but don't work on them. You only work on the three. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you get stuck one one story, if what you need can be found in a pile (like a character or setting), pull from that pile; otherwise set it aside and focus on the next. The only time you can start on another story is if you decide that the idea wasn't any good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may not be the way you want to work, but it should help you narrow what you need, which may be someone to hold you accountable (like a group of friends). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T04:53:41.170" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T04:53:41.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9922" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-05T05:23:35.863" Score="5" ViewCount="439" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the beginning of my science fiction book that I am currently writing. I tried to be more specific, but without giving away the full idea. I might have failed at that.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I wanted to know if this opener entices to continue to read. if you have any suggestions, I am more than happy to consider them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just the first draft and I am not finished with it. I just wanted to know if the beginning was good before I continued. Please be critical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today was the day; the day that everyone had to worry about. There wasn’t really a name for it, although it was well known. After all, it was the age when a person is legally able to be boosted. Seventeen years old; otherwise known as the Emergence Age.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most teenagers were afraid. They had the fear of emerging. This would mean that you were compatible with the Booster. Why should you be scared of this? Being compatible with the booster would increase your chances on having to go outside the Divide, into Purgatory. No one wanted that. That was pretty much like tying a rope around your neck and knocking over the chair. Most people saw it this way. Others viewed it from a different angle. There were so many ways that people thought of it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Me? I didn’t know what to think. No one in my entire family has ever emerged. Was I going to be the first? Or was I just going to be like the rest of my family? No one would know for sure, unless I got boosted and today was the day that I would find out.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A lot of people think that Sector C is a horrible place to grow up in. To tell the truth, it wasn’t that bad. Well I mean, at least it wasn’t Sector D. My sister often refers to this Sector as a dump filled with delinquents and thieves. I, on the other hand, was used to it. Once you know the places to avoid, it’s wasn’t a bad place. It is true that there are a lot of shady characters here, but most of the people here are just poor families trying to get by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6618" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T05:35:14.423" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T18:13:13.520" Title="Does this entice the reader to continue?" Tags="|science-fiction|openings|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-01-05T07:50:31.010" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9922" CreationDate="2014-01-05T05:54:54.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're in the right direction. However, the first two sentences are a little bit too general. Basically, what they are saying is this: today is an &lt;em&gt;especial&lt;/em&gt; day for pretty much &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good hooking sentence should provide some information and rise questions at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today was the day. Most teenagers were afraid; they had the fear of&#xA;  emerging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in this case, the reader will ask himself/herself: Why were the teenagers afraid? Why emerging is scary? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T05:54:54.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9922" CreationDate="2014-01-05T06:03:37.570" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Introducing some kind of mystery is a common technique for hooking a reader's interest, but by itself it feels like teasing: the writer knows something but won't share it with the reader yet. So no, this does not entice me; it annoys me, makes me feel manipulated because your narrator is being deliberately coy. Try combining it with another technique: engage us with the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it is, we know nothing about your narrator. He is a blank emptiness upon which the world imposes itself: we are told about things which happen to him and the people around him, but the one time he ventures an opinion, it is to say he does not have one. If you give us a better sense of your narrator's personality, provide us an opportunity to care about the narrator, then we have a reason to care about the mystery beyond idle curiosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can make us want to spend more time with the main character, you don't even need a mystery to hook us in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5766" LastEditorUserId="5766" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T06:13:58.990" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T06:13:58.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9922" CreationDate="2014-01-05T09:58:28.557" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This beginning does not grip me. Indeed it puts me off. For three reasons: I've had quite enough of books beginning with some dystopian teenage initiation rite. The claim that &quot;this is the day&quot; is completely vague and unexciting. And after the third unfamiliar concept (Booster, Emergence, Divide, Purgatory) I'm completely bored and ready to close the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can't do anything about the first problem. If that is what your story is about, then that's your story. There will be readers who are waiting for the next Hunger Games. But I'd not put this so blatantly on the first page and rather emphasize what differentiates your story from its famous and bestselling predecessors. You don't want to sound like a rip-off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the second problem, your are breaking the show-don't-tell rule. You claim that this is a special day, you even give it a name and report that everybody is afraid of it, but that is not making me afraid. What you need to do, and in the very first sentence, is create an emotion in the reader. If you write genre fiction, the first sentence needs to be the best in your book. I'll come to an easy solution after talking about the third problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read fiction I don't want to learn vocabulary. There are quite a few successful books out there that are written in some imaginary future English and spill over with foreign terms. There are also many books that feature more characters than a teacher has pupils to learn the names of in his life time. I don't like this type of book, but some obviously do. If you want to grip &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt;, you'll have to be very careful and introduce foreign words slowly and with some kind of mnemonic device for me to remember it by. For example, if there is a Booster, introduce its name when you show what it does. I'll certainly remember what happens, and I'll memorize the name alongside the event. Or, and now we come to the example of the good first sentence, you could give names that are at least partially self-explanatory, like Sector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you write about Sectors C and D, I don't exaclty know what delimits those sectors, but since people live there (see how you name the object while showing what happens there?) and since the word sector means something that is closed off, I have an image of some kind of city block that is separated from other such city blocks by some technical means or guards and for some reason that I am curious to learn (see how you evoke an emotion in me?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would do with your snippet of text is &lt;strong&gt;delete the first three paragraphs completely and start with the fourth&lt;/strong&gt;. &quot;A lot of people think that Sector C is a horrible place to grow up in.&quot; That makes for a great, gripping first sentence. It makes me curious. Why is it thought to be a horrible place to grow up in? And (see above) why are these people living in sectors instead of towns? Where are we and what kind of world is this? I actually want to read that book and learn more! And the second sentence is great, also. Why is it actually okay to grow up in Sector C if everybody thinks it's horrible? Thieves? Interesting. Used to it? Even more interesting. Now I want to learn about that person, what kind of person he is and how he lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a common experience that the first part of your first draft is usually rubbish and that you can just delete it completely. Don't rewrite it or work on it, just throw it away. Not the content, of course, you can (and might need to) tell everything about boosting and stuff in the course of your book, but get rid of the warming up that you needed to write to get into your text. These first three paragraphs are like a sportsperson jogging and stretching before they attempt to jump 7 meters. Necessary, but not what we came to see (well, except for those voyeurs on YouTube posting closeups of athlete's asses, but you can satisfy your voyeurs on your writer's blog).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, how I assumed the narrator is a boy. I'm not sure what made me think so. Maybe because I'm male I project a male perspective in non-specified characters. Maybe because &quot;he&quot; has a sister, and I'm sort of balancing this. Anyway, make sure that you let readers know right away what gender this person is, but in a natural way. It could be stated in the blurb. Or you could do something like &quot;... horrible to grow up &lt;em&gt;for a girl&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, though I wouldn't tamper with the first sentence. Make it clear somewhere in the first paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, somehow the term &quot;Emergence&quot; reminded me of Veronica Roth's &lt;em&gt;Divergent&lt;/em&gt; trilogy (with the titles &lt;em&gt;Divergent&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Insurgent&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;Allegiant&lt;/em&gt;). I mistakenly thought one of those books had the title &lt;em&gt;Emergence&lt;/em&gt;. But when I search on Amazon, I can actually find multiple books with the titles &lt;em&gt;Emergence&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Emergent&lt;/em&gt;. Look at them and make sure it is not a problem for you that some readers might think of one of those books – or the trilogy by Roth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T19:56:53.500" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T19:56:53.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9917" CreationDate="2014-01-05T10:19:05.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even when no-one steals my ideas, I don't want the bones of my book exhibited on the internet for all my readers and critics to pick over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only post ideas and excerpts in closed forums with a small number of members that I personally know. If I hand out text for feedback, I have the recipients sign a non-disclosure agreement. Also I give paper copies instead of digital files, even if I have to send them by post, which makes digital distribution more unlikely, especially since I ask for my copy back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T10:19:05.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="796" CreationDate="2014-01-05T11:40:10.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question to me is &lt;em&gt;what you want&lt;/em&gt;. If you want to publish novels, then write novels. Bestselling author Elle Casey pumps out one novel &lt;em&gt;per month&lt;/em&gt;. You need to get your priorities straight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you enjoy worldbuilding, maybe that is your way of relaxing from writing. Other writers go jogging, play the guitar, or visit friends. You build worlds. So it just happens that your hobby, that you indulge in when you take time off of your job as a writer, is related to your writing. No problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if worldbuilding gets in the way of your writing, keeping you from doing the 2000 words a day you aim for ... oh, you didn't define your writing goals? Why the hell not!? Do you do any other job without having a clear goal? No. You know what you need to do and when you need to have it done. If you have no goals, you cannot meet them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All prolific writers either write a certain number of words per day or a certain number of hours. Set yourself a goal and meet it every day. The rest of the day you are free to goof off and design the insignia on the uniforms of your orcs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if writing is not your job but only your hobby, then what does it matter how much you write? Enjoy!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T11:40:10.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9929" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9930" CreationDate="2014-01-05T15:11:09.200" Score="2" ViewCount="337" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the opening of a short story I'm writing (second draft):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A deep silence enveloped the room as the words escaped from my mouth. I turned to the side to look at Akiko. She was staring vacantly at the&#xA;  ceiling, with eyes that didn't reflect disgust, shock, nor anger.&#xA;  None of the reactions that I had expected. She wasn't saying anything,&#xA;  either. It was as if my words had sealed something within her, in the&#xA;  very core of her soul. I felt miles and miles away from her. Maybe&#xA;  what I was looking at wasn't my wife—only her dead, empty container. She was&#xA;  probably in a very distant place; somewhere I didn't and would never&#xA;  have access to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You really want that?” Akiko finally said, her tone was neither cold nor&#xA;  indifferent. Just neutral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Yep,” I said. “I'm been thinking about it for a while. But if you&#xA;  don't want to, it's OK. I don't wanna force you into anything.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The room fell quiet again. Suddenly, I regretted bringing the topic&#xA;  up. What was going on with me tonight? What made me think she would&#xA;  agree with the whole thing? I gazed out the window. Under the&#xA;  moonlight, the zelkova trees were taking all kinds of strange shapes.&#xA;  They looked eerie, sinister, like ancient creatures from the&#xA;  forest. Perhaps that was what Akiko saw in me now; a monster that had&#xA;  been hiding in the darkness, and that had finally decided to come out.&#xA;  The thought was unbearable. Even worst than I had imagined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Without being able to stand it anymore, I jumped out of bed and went&#xA;  to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of Scotch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid that I'm not providing enough information to keep the reader gripped (or even worst, annoying him/her for the lack of clues). I only reveal what the husband told his wife in the next scenes (the following one starts with something like: &quot;The thought first came to my mind a few months ago...&quot;). So the reader is left with a feeling of vagueness until then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will this work? Should I make the opening more explicit (e.g. directly stating what I'm hiding from the reader)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T15:32:21.810" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T02:29:08.820" Title="Am I providing enough information to keep the reader gripped?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|openings|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9929" CreationDate="2014-01-05T18:30:38.667" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted sensory details in the first few paragraphs. I had no idea what kind of room the characters were in. At first I thought it was some kind of operating theater, where some kind of weird procedure would happen--the MC on one operating table, and Akiko on another. When I learned that it was their bedroom, I felt jarred. I had to re-imagine what I was looking at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: More sensory details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for keeping secrets from the reader: That's hard to do in first person. In order to play fair with the reader, you must say what's on the character's mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way of saying this: In order to hide something from the reader, you must arrange for the character not to think about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any novel, I'll allow you exactly one occurrence of &quot;And then I knew what I had to do,&quot; without revealing the plan. Or one occurrence of &quot;And then I knew who the killer was,&quot; without revealing the killer. And in each case, you have to do a chapter break or a scene break and jump forward in time. Otherwise the character will think about the plan or the killer, and you'll have to tell us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can't make it a habit, or I'll yell at your book. I'll say truly horrible things and your book will feel bad. Just ask any of Dan Brown's books how mean I can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a theory that most of the things an author wants to hide from the reader aren't really worth hiding. And that any time you try to hide information by jumping to abstraction (&quot;What he saw next made his blood ran cold&quot;), you're cheating. Give us whatever sensory details the character is experiencing. Give us the character's thoughts. Play fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T18:30:38.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9931" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9933" CreationDate="2014-01-05T22:55:11.543" Score="10" ViewCount="12068" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often see writers use &quot;said&quot; instead of &quot;asked&quot; when their character asks a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. From &lt;em&gt;The Hobbit&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Where else should I be?” said the wizard&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a mistake that hasn't been caught by the editor, or is it acceptable to ask a question with &quot;said&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6634" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T23:21:46.850" LastActivityDate="2019-10-18T12:54:21.937" Title="Why do writers use &quot;said&quot; instead of &quot;asked&quot; when someone asks a question?" Tags="|dialogue|language|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9931" CreationDate="2014-01-05T23:08:42.043" Score="10" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Because it's less intrusive.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything you speak is something you say; &quot;asking&quot; is merely a more specific description of how the thing is being said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writing wisdom holds that using &quot;said&quot; is lazy/boring, but always using specific descriptors like &quot;asked&quot; when the questioning tone is obvious from context can be equally disruptive to the flow of reading. &quot;Said&quot; doesn't call attention to itself like &quot;asked&quot; does, and lets the reader continue the conversation with minimal interruption. Overuse of more descriptive verbs may lead to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swifty&quot;&gt;Tom Swifties&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5766" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T23:08:42.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9931" CreationDate="2014-01-05T23:08:50.197" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's stylistic. You can use either. &quot;Said&quot; isn't wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers feel very strongly about &quot;bookisms,&quot; which is using words instead of &quot;said&quot; which tend to be more elaborate and give some action to speaking. (&lt;em&gt;hissed, crooned, muttered, sighed, barked, laughed, snarled, grumbled&lt;/em&gt;) Personally I'm fine with them if they are used appropriately and judiciously, but your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Asked&quot; isn't really a bookism, but it is a touch redundant (you pretty much only ask a question). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Plus look, we're talking Tolkien, and linguistics professors can do whatever the hell they like with languages.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T23:08:50.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9931" CreationDate="2014-01-06T04:18:54.780" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case he wasn't expecting an answer. Gandalf, that is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T15:46:50.600" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T15:46:50.600" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9935" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-06T07:45:19.150" Score="6" ViewCount="13112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my first book. It is a book with the history of my village.&#xA;I have read that most people use MS Word, so did I.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that my book contains lots of pictures. This has increased the size of my Word file to more than 300MB. This makes it (amongst other things) slow to load.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any mostly used software where I could just include the path to the file, and just have the image file in the same folder? Can I do this with MS Word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My book contains &lt;strong&gt;lots of photos and tables&lt;/strong&gt;. Which software do you propose that I should use? (I have experience with LaTeX and I could use it if advised so. Is it a good idea, concerning my design?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6639" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-01-23T18:49:04.037" LastActivityDate="2020-09-13T16:01:10.937" Title="What software can I use to write a book with lots of photos?" Tags="|software|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9935" CreationDate="2014-01-06T10:01:34.867" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can link to images in Word. When you insert an image, you get a dialog where you can select the image. The 'Insert' button in this dialog is actually a drop-down menu. One of the menu choices is 'Link to file'.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two basic workflows when publishing a book:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the writer supplies the text and images to the publisher, and the publisher creates the layout in e.g. Adobe InDesign.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the writer does everything, and supplies a print-ready PDF to the publisher.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use workflow 1, you'll have to use the program recommended by the publisher.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you use workflow 2, use a program suitable for publishing large documents. Adobe FrameMaker is very good in this regard. You can use LaTeX, but as far as I know, changing the layout of a LaTeX document is more difficult than in FrameMaker: FrameMaker is WYSIWYG, LaTex uses programming code to define the layout. Use what you're comfortable with.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you're stuck with Word, there are a couple of rules to follow to avoid most of the headaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the formatting simple. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do your page layout once, at the end of the project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only use paragraph and character styles for your text formatting. No ad-hoc formatting. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For importing images, use Link to File. When you need to share your document with someone else, create a copy of the file and use a macro to convert the linked images to embedded images. The file will become very large, but it's the only way to ensure that the images are visible when you open the Word file on another computer. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before major changes, make a backup of the Word file. This way you'll be able to revert to a clean backup if the major change has unwanted consequences. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T10:01:34.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9935" CreationDate="2014-01-06T10:22:31.673" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number one rule is always to &lt;strong&gt;ask your publisher&lt;/strong&gt; what file types they can handle. If you self-publish, ask your printer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many publishers expect &lt;strong&gt;one file per chapter&lt;/strong&gt;. This will also reduce the individual file size and make it easier to handle for you on your system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you self-publish, you might want to get a decent desktop publishing software such as FrameMaker, InDesign or QuarkXPress that allows you to fine tune your layout. These softwares allow you to link to external files such as image files. The separate files will only be assembled in the printer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget to ask about file format, resolution, color profiles, and dot gain, for your image files, too. Get the printing machine's color profile (ideally one that fits the paper you'll print on) and do some color management. Printing images is a science of its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T18:59:25.513" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T18:59:25.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9938" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9940" CreationDate="2014-01-06T13:26:01.730" Score="6" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;A problem I have when writing is that all of my characters behavior and speech ends up mirroring that of my own. As a result nearly all of my characters end up being practically indistinguishable from each other, they aren't unique in how they talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to give my characters individual mannerisms and different voices but I feel like I have a limited pool to pick from and they all end up sounding and acting very similarly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried 'Interviewing the characters' to find out more about them from their perspective, but I have the same issue of &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt; ending up answering the questions nearly all the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I broaden my own understanding of my characters to better differentiate them from each other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5881" LastEditorDisplayName="user5881" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T13:31:28.393" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T21:42:16.927" Title="How can I broaden my understanding of my characters?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9922" CreationDate="2014-01-06T14:50:07.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If this is a day when something culturally important happens, then the culture will have a name to distinguish it (cf. “confirmation”, “bar mitzvah”, “quinceañera”).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who is the first-person narrator talking to? Why would this audience need to be told about boosting, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;“Others viewed it from a different angle. There were so many ways that people thought of it.” What different angle? What ways? Two paragraphs into the story and you’re already vague: this is not tantalizing but irritating. Furthermore, why should I as a reader care what people think of “boosting” if I don’t even know what it is?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The character that you portray here doesn’t seem to want anything, but is content to just let things happen to him/her and then find out how it goes.  This is a weak place to begin a plot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It wasn’t clear to me how the fourth paragraph connects to the preceding three. On my first reading, I thought that the “dump filled with delinquents and thieves” is Sector D, rather than the Sector C that the narrator apparently lives in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T14:50:07.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9938" CreationDate="2014-01-06T16:04:40.423" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem is that your characters aren't rounded. They don't have distinguishable voices because they aren't distinguishable people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do this as an exercise: Pick your favorite TV show, movie, book. Pick two or three characters from each. Interview &lt;em&gt;them.&lt;/em&gt; For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What's your favorite book?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John: &lt;em&gt;Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.&lt;/em&gt; Read it to tatters in Afghanistan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sherlock: &quot;Favourite&quot; would imply affection. I do not feel affection for inanimate objects. If you are asking which book I find most useful, that varies from case to case. A group of Chinese smugglers once used &lt;em&gt;London A to Z&lt;/em&gt; as a cipher key &amp;mdash;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John: Yes, let's not revisit that case, shall we? I ended up tied to a chair with a crossbow pointed at me because they thought I was &lt;em&gt;you.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wilson: I'm really enjoying &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;House: So am I. By which I mean the show, with all the boobs, not the big doorstopper novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wilson: Boobs and politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;House: Politics and boobs. Best of both worlds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go through your &quot;interview questions&quot; or find the email surveys which go around and practice interviewing someone else's characters. It's a bit fanficcy, but it will teach you how to look at a character and answer in someone else's voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you need to figure out the &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;. Why does Sherlock not have a favorite book he returns to? What does John get out of rereading something he knows by heart? Does House find the act of reading boring or too time-consuming? Does Wilson enjoy the soap opera or the intricate politics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've taught yourself to analyze an existing distinct character, you can use those tools to make &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; characters more rounded. When you have a character who feels like a real person, it's much easier to have that person speak in his or her own voice, &lt;em&gt;which is not yours.&lt;/em&gt; Remember that your motivation and your characters' motivation are not the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T16:04:40.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9914" CreationDate="2014-01-06T16:13:57.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer is simple: don't stick with a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; idea, stick with an &lt;strong&gt;idea you're in &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; with.&lt;/strong&gt; Your situation actually happens to me a lot. I have all these good ideas, and most of them end up abandoning my mind pretty quickly. This is a good thing. It's my brain telling me: &quot;Buddy, I'm sorry but they don't worth your time and effort.&quot; Now, when I come up with an idea that I fall in &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; with, I find it impossible not to finish it. Even if the writing ends up looking like crap, I find myself coming back to it. Over and over again. I tell myself: &quot;Hey, come back and fix this. This idea deserves beautiful, lyrical sentences and an excellent, mind-blowing plot.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A personal example: I was drinking some beers with a friend when he suddenly asked me: &quot;Hey, did you feel the earthquake last night?&quot; I just looked at him, confused and said, &quot;What earthquake?&quot; Because I hadn't feel anything (the thing is still a mystery to me). Then, later, when I was going back home the idea struck me: Hey, what if I write a story about someone who misses an earthquake, and does everything he/she can to find out why? Even though I felt like dropping the project more than once, the idea kept coming back to me again and again. Until I had no other choice but to finish it. Otherwise, I would never sleep again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice is that: try to find an idea that you &lt;strong&gt;truly love.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T16:35:18.137" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T16:35:18.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9922" CreationDate="2014-01-06T18:13:13.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the others here that the beginning is a good idea, but not executed well. I think there are two ways you can remedy this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First idea.&lt;/strong&gt; I don't want the narrator to talk to me. Your narrator is trying to tease me by not telling me every important thing I should already know because I live in this dystopian world but don't know because I don't live in this dystopian world. Your narrator leaves me with the impression that he feels very smug about not explaining just the right things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So instead of telling &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt;, drop in the middle of the action and have your narrator talk to someone, or more than one person, about what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Well, kid, you seem pretty cool-headed for a youngling about to get Boosted,&amp;quot; the technician chortled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Meh, no one in my family has ever emerged, so I don't see why everyone freaks out about getting tested,&amp;quot; I replied, hoping I sounded nonchalant even as my palms were sweating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He laughed. &amp;quot;Last kid said the same thing right before he vanished.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of format helps in two ways. First, you get to introduce new vocabulary in an appropriate context. It is still mysterious what it means exactly, but you've got appropriate clues to begin guessing and they feel like natural context cues rather than something you are purposefully trying to feed me in order to keep me confused.  Second, you build your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second idea.&lt;/strong&gt; I don't mind your narrator talking to me if he's telling me a story. It's a harder format, but some conversational stories are very engaging. But don't have your narrator tell me about how people generally feel about this generic case of this event. Make it personal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I'd want your narrator to fill me in on the stuff that's important to the story, just like you would do if you were telling me about that time you went fishing with your uncle and you completely misunderstood what he meant when he said 'throw him back'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I grew up hard. Not as hard as some, but harder than most. So you can imagine I was scared as a rabbit when I turned seventeen and there was no one in my family who'd ever emerged. There was always one, you see—in every generation of a family, there was always one who got boosted, and the more of my family who didn't, well, the more likely it would be me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it's true that Emergents have a certain status, and that's enviable, but on the other hand, there's always the danger they will go outside the Divide into Purgatory. I grew up on the streets, and I've seen some things, but Purgatory is a whole other level of unkindness. I can't say that risk is something I'm much willing to take, even given the privileges of being Boosted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the vocabulary is introduced with enough context that you can feel how the narrator feels about it. This helps develop the character, and although there is still mystery about what all these terms mean, we hopefully have a pretty clear picture of how the narrator feels about what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also, you could blend these two ideas together. In any case, I think the core of the story could be interesting. The rest is just editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T18:13:13.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9944" CreationDate="2014-01-06T13:24:45.840" Score="4" ViewCount="2206" Body="&lt;p&gt;My girlfriend and I want to write a story about science fiction. I'm a fan of Star Wars, and many of the ideas in this universe are fantastic, but I do not want to plagiarize anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way of knowing what ideas I can use without infringing the copyright of the original work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Accepted answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I liked the comments and answers to my question, thank you all. However ticked in response to response #Lonstar. His idea that helped me formulate the context of my new science fiction story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will create a different Star Wars story, but with some concepts, such as an order of warriors (not with sabers), an empire and aliens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to edit the grammar, I'm not very experienced with English.&#xA;Will create new questions to develop my story legally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for all!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6646" OwnerDisplayName="Diego Hillesheim" LastEditorUserId="137" LastEditDate="2015-06-04T20:34:29.450" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T20:34:29.450" Title="Using ideas from other authors without infringing copyright" Tags="|copyright|fan-fiction|copying|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9943" CreationDate="2014-01-06T21:16:32.463" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First...&#xA;&amp;lt;&amp;lt;&amp;lt; Not a lawyer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I think you mean &quot;write a science fiction story&quot; rather than &quot;write a story about science fiction&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really do want to write &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; Star Wars the franchise, that's journalism, and unless you're passing off someone's work as your own you don't generally need to worry about copyright problems with using parts of the work of others so long as you are using &lt;em&gt;short excerpts&lt;/em&gt; (exact quantity is open to debate but should be easy to verify, and you should).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm assuming you want to write actual science fiction and so the short answer to your question: &lt;em&gt;Is there any way of knowing what ideas I can use without infringing the copyright of the original work?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is - no. Someone could decide that you're ripping them off and sue you for pretty much any basis. Now whether they can prove to a judge's satisfaction that you ripped them off is the cross-product of how much you actually did rip them off and how much you are willing to commit to the fight. (this is the bottom scum patent trolls feed from).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I can't tell you how your work will turn out or whether you will get sued, but I can recommend this - watch &quot;Chopped&quot; on the Food Network. The elements of story, the things we've gathered around different kinds of campfires to repeat to each other for a thousand years, are the chicken breasts, noodles, lamb's brains, cotton candy of fiction. They're what Ecclesiates was referring to when he said &quot;There is nothing new under the sun&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What -is- new under the sun is how creatively you take these elements and present them. Like the judges on Chopped, your audience knows what you are working with - it's why they chose your work. So you're making something with chicken. But watch what the judges do - they look at the guy who cooked the chicken, made a pan sauce and put a piece of broccoli on it and cut him because they have seen that 10,000 times before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the gal who made a sugar glaze, boiled the chicken to a foam and made ice cream out of it...well, you would never eat that crap but it's -interesting-. And that's what makes you original - take the same ingredients whoever you're &quot;paying homage&quot; to and make a new dish out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what Lucas did - he took from 1000 western and World War II and Japanese samurai movies, threw in some literary theory (Campbell's hero's journey) and made a new dish. To some it was chicken foam ice cream and to some it was the gateway drug to 1000 new flavors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I believe Lucas did get sued, because if you're successful there will always be cockroaches and silverfish that will scuttle out and try to get a nibble. It doesn't mean you're dirty - it just means you have something worth nibbling on. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3792" LastEditorUserId="3792" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T21:22:55.757" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T21:22:55.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9943" CreationDate="2014-01-06T22:24:32.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL - not a lawyer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly doubt that writing your story as fan fiction gives you any&#xA;legal rights that you would not have otherwise. However, if the Star&#xA;War franchise has been tolerating fan fiction without taking any legal&#xA;action, you can draw two consequences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the franchise is probably not likely to pick on you more than on&#xA;anyone else;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;not enforcing for some time the prohibition of fan fiction weakens&#xA;their legal right to do it in your case, or at least to seek damages.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take the characters, or the names used in Star Wars, this is&#xA;probably an infringement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is just some ideas, you are probably not infringing. For&#xA;example, Ursula le Guin used in a novel a communication device called&#xA;the ansible. This was reused by other authors (Orson Scott Card), and&#xA;I do not know that anyone considered it plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally you can quote other works, or make references to event&#xA;that occurred in other works without plagiarizing, and I guess without&#xA;infringing the copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reusing the precise setting of a work, as in fan fiction can be more&#xA;touchy. Some authors will not tolerate fan fiction. Others will not&#xA;mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One case is usually not considered copyright infringement : satyre.&#xA;If you reuse the characters (usually slightly misnamed) and the&#xA;setting of a well known novel or franchise to make a satyrical version&#xA;of it, that is allowed in the copyright law of many countries, as fair&#xA;use or under some other denomination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story ideas cannot be copyrighted by themselves, but if you use&#xA;someones story idea, you should make sure that your treatment of the&#xA;idea is really original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One good principle that comes from academia. If you are reusing ideas&#xA;or other creatives contributions from another author, just be clear&#xA;about it, and say it explicitly somewhere (footnote, end notes,&#xA;... whatever). This will at least show you are not trying to cheat&#xA;anyone, that you do thing in good faith. Though, in principle, good&#xA;faith may not have legal value in many cases, it can still help a lot&#xA;mitigating legal conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are really creative, and clear about what you borrow, I doubt&#xA;anyone can accuse you of plagiarism. But recall that plagiarism and&#xA;copyright infringement are not necessarily the same. One is moral and&#xA;the other is legal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6647" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T22:24:32.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9943" CreationDate="2014-01-06T23:05:10.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Is there any way of knowing what ideas I can use without infringing the copyright of the original work?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mean, aside from either asking permission from the copyright holder, or going ahead and publishing something and then successfully defending yourself against a claim of copyright infringement?  No, not really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disney, and LucasArts before them, has a pretty strong history of asserting trademarks on each and every name or unique term derived from the Star Wars universe, and character copyright on not only their unique characters, but also their fictional homes, vehicles, technology, and associations.  You absolutely cannot write a story about a Jedi, a Droid, someone with a lightsaber, or a member of any of the defined species that appear in the Star wars films or extended universe material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that both trademark (the term itself) and &quot;character copyright&quot; (the characteristics of a fictional entity that themselves can constitute a copyrightable work) are distinct items of intellectual property.  While there is some allowance for use of trademarks when referring to the thing they are protecting, and some significant debate about what is and is not a protectable &quot;character copyright&quot;, unless you're willing to fight the most feared IP legal team on the planet in open court, you should steer clear of Star Wars or beg permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And, for the love of all that is holy, realize that &quot;fan fiction&quot; is just &quot;copyright infringing works that aren't worth a lawyer's time&quot;!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, a good measure for which ideas and concepts appear in Star Wars but are nevertheless free to use is anything that appeared in a &lt;strong&gt;PUBLISHED WORK&lt;/strong&gt; other than Star Wars that was not licensed or used with permission.  Things like faster-than-light travel (near every interstellar sci-fi), a special group of semi-mystical protectors (lensmen, green lantern), and even robot slaves (Asimov, Metropolis) are all fair game, in the abstract, so long as you don't make exact copies of how Lucas (or the other author) did them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T23:05:10.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9861" CreationDate="2014-01-06T23:58:29.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL - not a lawyer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard to answer your question, because though it seems very&#xA;simple, it is probably not the question you wanted to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you create a collection of works. Certainly, even if they are&#xA;still under copyright, as long as it is for your own use, and not made&#xA;public. If you want to publish that collection, even if only on your&#xA;personnal web site, for free, you have to get permission from the&#xA;copyright holder or to restrict yourself to works in the public&#xA;domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You specify that you are interested in &quot;19th century public domain&#xA;poems&quot;. If it is public domain, you have nothing to worry about&#xA;(skipping possibly moral rights in some countries). But then why&#xA;specify &quot;19th century&quot;, which is an irrelevant information ?  I&#xA;suspect, possibly wrongly, that you think that they should be public&#xA;domain because they were written in the 19th century. That is a wrong&#xA;assumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The assumption is probably true if the poems were first published in&#xA;the USA; I am not sure, since the history of copyright law in the USA&#xA;created a very messy situation. However, even if written in English,&#xA;or authored by an american citizen, these works could have been published first&#xA;in another country than the USA. Then this other country is considered&#xA;as &lt;strong&gt;country of origin&lt;/strong&gt; of the work (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html#P109_16834&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Berne Convention art. 5&lt;/a&gt;). In that case, the&#xA;general rules of the Berne convention apply, even for works published&#xA;before 1923, and it is essentially the current US copyright law that&#xA;has to be taken into account. The duration of copyright is author's&#xA;life + 70 years. This means that the early works of an author who died&#xA;in 1960 at the age of 90 will not be in the public domain before 2031,&#xA;even though they were published in the 19th century. (this is in&#xA;agreement with the comment of user dmm, though I do not know where he&#xA;got the 150 years figure, which makes no sense to me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, furthermore that when the country of origin is not the USA, the&#xA;work need not be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office for its&#xA;copyright to be protected in the U.S.A. (unlike works of&#xA;U.S. origin). But the protection remains minimal without registration&#xA;(see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html#411&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;articles 411&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html#412&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;412&lt;/a&gt; of US Copyright Law).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, to know about the copyright situation, you have to investigate&#xA;among other things were the work was initially published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that copyright ownership may have changed hands, through sale&#xA;or heritage, is totally irrelevant, except for the fact that only the&#xA;current holder of the copyright may give you permission, and he must&#xA;be identified and contacted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the poem may have been published in several anthologies&#xA;or collections is irrelevant. The country of origin for the copyright results from the first&#xA;publication (see country of origin issue above). That means however that you may&#xA;have to ascertain where a particular piece was published first, which may not be obvious for a small piece that may have been published several times, as part of different collections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is often the case that copyright is transferred to the publisher&#xA;when the work is published, but this is not always the case. It is&#xA;purely a contractual matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point is that copyright is not a monolithic entity. It can be&#xA;cut in pieces. For example the author may have tranferred copyright&#xA;for printed publication to his publisher, while retaining digital&#xA;copyright.  This is implicitly the case in some (many?) countries as&#xA;the publication contracts before 2000 did not generally include&#xA;transfer of digital rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you intend to publish your collection, the kind of rights you&#xA;have to clear, and the rights holders who can grant permission, are&#xA;not necessarily the same, depending on how you want to publish. However, the duration of these rights is the&#xA;same and depend only on the date of the author's demise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you do not have to depend on publishers. It is quite possible to publish books without them. Indeed, one may wonder whether there is any reason for their existence in the digital world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point is whether you can claim some rights over your&#xA;collection. Essentially, yes, if it can show originality or serious investment (laws vary ... which is a problem for Internet publication), which does&#xA;not mean simply being different from other collections - a very&#xA;subjective assessment. This gives you no right over individual works&#xA;in the collection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course there are even more complicated situations. Copyright is mostly an exercise in futile complexity and obfuscation, at the expense of authors and public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6647" LastEditorUserId="6647" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T23:27:35.497" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T23:27:35.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9929" CreationDate="2014-01-07T02:29:08.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm less dismayed by the lack of sensory details than I am the disagrement within the details you did provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A deep &lt;strong&gt;silence&lt;/strong&gt; enveloped the room &lt;strong&gt;as the words escaped&lt;/strong&gt; from my mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This implies that the silence enveloped the room while you were speaking, as if you were suddenly placed under a cone of silence and couldn't complete the phrase.  Some split in the time would be nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She was staring vacantly at the ceiling, with eyes that didn't reflect disgust, shock, nor anger. None of the reactions that I had expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should use &quot;or&quot; there, not &quot;nor&quot;.   Perhaps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... with eyes that reflected neither disgust, shock, nor anger.  Not one of the reactions I had expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could see &quot;None of &quot; were it a grammatical quirk, but it feels flat to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maybe what I was looking at...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be definitive in your subjective opinion.  &quot;It was as if&quot; is better than &quot;Maybe&quot;, here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could try trimming some of the subjective interpretation, and instead add an image to enforce how sudden the silence is.  You could hear a heartbeat, or the echo of your own words, or, if you want to improve your flow, you could hear the wife's breathing, and tie that into her mood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T02:29:08.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9889" CreationDate="2014-01-07T03:05:26.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In painting, using a canvas and paint is not becoming a slave to rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in any expertise field, you can find &quot;rules&quot; (I would call them &lt;strong&gt;patterns&lt;/strong&gt;) and &lt;strong&gt;frameworks&lt;/strong&gt;. The difference between them is that a pattern is proven to be beneficial in particular circumstances, while the use of a framework, as James stated in the answer above, is up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Storytelling is a field that looks to raise reader's feelings, and usually a good way to assure some of them is the well known three-act structure. The overall tension should be incremental, the climax should be somewhere near the end, the set-up should be near the beginning, etc. There are some basics that is risky to play with, and there are more particular structures which you can use at your discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm not saying you can't play with them. You can do whatever you want, the hard task is to make it funny to read. I would feel cheated by a story without a climax at the end. But then, I look at Tolkien as he put the climax near the middle of the last book and kept babbling to the reader ad nauseam 'til the end, and he is getting more and more fans each year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A last word about your &lt;em&gt;Save The Cat&lt;/em&gt; reference: As Larry Brooks explains in his books &lt;em&gt;Story Engineering&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Story Physics&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;there are plot points in concrete milestones&lt;/strong&gt; of the story (as concrete as a particular page, if we're talking about a short story like a script), but &lt;strong&gt;they are not the only plot twists and events&lt;/strong&gt;. In fact, they don't even need to be the most shocking ones, nor the ones that are meant to be the most important to the reader. He just says they have to be fullfilling certain tasks for the main plot strand, and that's all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't let structures use you. Use them instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6650" LastEditorUserId="6650" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T11:54:57.237" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T11:54:57.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7126" CreationDate="2014-01-07T11:45:05.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://hackpad.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hackpad&lt;/a&gt; is nice. &lt;a href=&quot;http://learning.cgscholar.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CGScholar&lt;/a&gt; can be interesting to look at. I &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.diigo.com/user/hennis/writing%20tools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bookmarked&lt;/a&gt; a few others as well, maybe worth checking out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6654" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T15:24:25.137" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T15:24:25.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9889" CreationDate="2014-01-07T16:23:50.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer Robert McKee’s &lt;em&gt;Story&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;Save the Cat&lt;/em&gt; and the Hero’s Journey stuff.  Instead of telling aspiring writers what pattern a story must follow from beginning to end, McKee talks about elements that can be combined in various ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, he defines an “act” as a series of scenes culminating in a major reversal of a character’s condition.  You need to have acts.  You don’t need to have &lt;em&gt;three&lt;/em&gt; acts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T16:23:50.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9954" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-07T18:31:08.347" Score="3" ViewCount="624" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a guideline for when it's a good idea to write a pilot as a two-part episode, as opposed to a single-part?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously certain stories call for two-part pilots more naturally (e.g. &lt;em&gt;Lost&lt;/em&gt; yes, &lt;em&gt;How I Met Your Mother&lt;/em&gt; no, etc) and you should always do what's best for your story, but I'm looking for any kind of structural rule-of-thumb.  Something akin to &quot;first-time writers are much less likely to sell two-part pilots than one-part versions&quot; or &quot;networks are generally only interested in two-part pilots for sci-fi shows&quot; or &quot;cable networks are much more likely to buy them than the traditional networks are,&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any guidelines like that to keep in mind, or is it pretty much just &quot;go for what works for your story, and the structure doesn't have as big an impact as you think&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6380" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T20:33:39.283" Title="1-Part vs 2-Part pilot scripts?" Tags="|structure|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9938" CreationDate="2014-01-07T19:34:44.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend journaling as the characters.  If you are a ways into a story (or even if you have outlined a story) you likely have a few events that they will experience in mind.  Write journal reviews of how the characters felt about the situation, what they experienced, things like that.  This will help identify what drives characters, how they feel about specific items/people/actions/scenarios and will help you differentiate your characters in your own head.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;edit&lt;/em&gt;:  A side note.  Putting the characters in situations OTHER than what are going to appear in your story can be very useful as well.  You can never tell the day to day story of a character's life, a story usually hits the big events...write a journal or two on a day where nothing of note takes place...I woke up, I went to the grocery store because I wanted to make tuna sandwiches for lunch.  They didnt have tuna.  I went to a different store because I was really jonesing for tuna... &lt;em&gt;/edit&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mind you, writing characters other than yourself still requires a certain amount of mental discipline.  Any exercise that we suggest still requires that you step out of how you would respond and think about how another would respond.  It may be useful to use people you know as a basis for your characters...a sort of jumping off point to get started.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to speech, or voice, it can be tough to separate characters.  One method can be to write in an accent or dialect...this is challenging though, being consistent with non-grammatically correct or spelling/pronunciation errors is a pain.  The best and most reliable way is to make sure the characters' responses are different because the characters are different.  If you can get to a point where people can identify the speaker based on WHAT is said as opposed to HOW they say it or even by plain telling people who is talking you can consider the process a success.  This takes a lot of practice and rewriting...a lot.  At least for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6524" LastEditorUserId="6524" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T22:13:36.850" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T22:13:36.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9956" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9957" CreationDate="2014-01-07T21:01:35.567" Score="5" ViewCount="1683" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just saw a documentary featuring interviews with a few Hollywood screenwriters. Many of them said they had been working as screenwriters for around a decade, yet had never had any of their scripts turned into a movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do these people make a living? Do they get paid for their unused scripts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T22:18:53.400" Title="How do screenwriters earn money, if none of their scripts get turned into movies?" Tags="|screenwriting|money|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9956" CreationDate="2014-01-07T22:04:49.207" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://johnaugust.com/2008/money-101-for-screenwriters&quot;&gt;They do not quit their day job&lt;/a&gt;. That's true for many other writers, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But besides that, yes, they get paid for unused scripts if these scripts were &lt;a href=&quot;http://work.chron.com/much-money-can-screenwriter-make-22426.html&quot;&gt;optioned&lt;/a&gt;. I. e. a producer pays them money for the exclusive right to the script for a certain amount of time. During that time the producer can think about turning it into a movie without fearing that a competitor is taking the rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T22:04:49.207" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9956" CreationDate="2014-01-07T22:18:53.400" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;INT. STARBUCKS, LOS ANGELES&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;People are sitting at tables and on couches, some on smartphones, many typing away on laptops. We pan to a man in his 40's, with a ponytail and reading glasses. He is concentrating fiercely, reading something on a Macbook.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;JOE&lt;/strong&gt; (looks up at camera): &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Oh, hello there! I didn't see you. Welcome to Screenwriter's Corner. Today we have a question from a viewer. &quot;How do screenwriters earn money, if their scripts don't get turned into movies?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;JOE closes his laptop, and looks thoughtful.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;JOE:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br&gt;(CONT'D) &lt;br&gt;&#xA;That's a great question, and one we've all wondered about. Some scripts are commissioned, or sold, but never make it through what we call &quot;development hell&quot;. Some are not. There are many screenwriters who make a living this way, or at least a partial living. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Hollywood is also is filled with people who have a story in them, but have found that making a living as a writer is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; hard. And selling a script is even harder than selling a novel. Like painters, musicians, and sculptors, for every person who makes money selling their art, there are many who never do. Some who want to write but can't sell their novel may find jobs in a related field. They may be editors, or people who market books. They may be English teachers, or teach college graduates how to write a resume. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word &quot;professional&quot; sometimes means &lt;em&gt;someone who makes money at a task&lt;/em&gt;, but the word also describes ability. A high standard, if you will. Going back to novels, think of self-publishing. Where writers sell their work on their own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;JOE opens his laptop again, and clicks a few times. He opens a movie, and we see it in an INSET. We see a sampling of self-produced scenes as he talks.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;JOE:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br&gt;(CONT'D) &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Screenwriters who can't sell their screenplays to Hollywood are increasingly choosing to make their films reality on their own. They may produce professional-quality work, they may make slipshod films. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The montage of scenes changes to show HD video cameras, high-powered computers with editing software, and recording boom rigs&lt;/em&gt;*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;JOE:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br&gt;(CONT'D) &lt;br&gt;&#xA;But fueled by the availability of affordable cameras and CGI and editing software, there are countless films available on the web. People may be pursuing their dreams as a hobby, or for the exposure. I'm not gonna say that all wannabe screenwriters are amateurs; the situation is far too complicated for that sort of elitism. But there is a divide between people making films for the studio system and on their own. Like small, private publishers bridge the chasm between publishing houses and self-published work, some small production companies are filling the gaps between the two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;JOE pauses as the montage disappears. We return to the Starbucks.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;JOE:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br&gt;(CONT'D) &lt;br&gt;&#xA;But you asked how people writing screenplays and not selling them are paying the rent. Well, asking how the entire population of underemployed screenwriters makes money is a question that's hard to answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, some screenwriters have day jobs as accountants and carpenters, undertakers and event planners. But others may be set designers or key grips, or they may work in some other aspect of the movie business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, we're just about out of time. I hope we've managed to answer your question. Thanks for tuning in to Screenwriter's Corner, and I'll see you here next week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;JOE returns to his laptop.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FADE TO BLACK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T22:18:53.400" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9959" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T04:38:21.033" Score="3" ViewCount="317" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I took the advice of very helpful people on my last question. I considered many possibilities to start my book, but I chose this one.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is only a snippet of my opening. I am going for a strong grip. If I am heading in the right direction, but need strengthening then please tell me. Please be critical:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The house felt so empty when Grace wasn’t here. My sister was almost always at work, trying to make ends meet. I kept wishing that I could do something to help her, but there wasn’t much legal work for a sixteen year old in Sector C. So in the end, her job was the only thing keeping a roof over our heads.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was lying down on the couch and staring at the ceiling while I waited for her. It was my favorite spot to relax and think. It wasn’t extremely comfortable or expensive. It was an old, worn down couch with a disgusting brown color. It was practically falling apart, but I still liked it. The thing made me feel at peace when I laid on it. Time felt like it just passed by much faster when I laid here. Just five minutes on the couch would zone me out entirely.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Drake? Hey, wake up.”  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My eyes opened to someone standing over me. She had steel gray eyes and long, black hair that fell to her side. She was young and beautiful yet, she gave off a mature vibe.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Oh, welcome home Grace.” I said, yawning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She was still in her work uniform. She wore a black vest over a white dress shirt with a skirt. She had just gotten home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6618" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2018-06-14T10:07:11.597" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T10:07:11.597" Title="Does this opening somewhat grip the reader?" Tags="|science-fiction|openings|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-01-05T07:46:02.560" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1361" CreationDate="2014-01-08T07:34:40.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For technology related content, you’d maybe like to read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smashingmagazine.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Smashing Magazine&quot;&gt;Smashing Magazine&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6228" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T07:34:40.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9959" CreationDate="2014-01-08T08:07:23.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're floating in void. It might be a mars colony or a soviet siberian town, or a suburb in colonial Brasil, or the last human city of postapocalyptic Earth, &#xA;I just can't picture the place, nor the characters. I still don't know the narrator's gender. It's an uncomfortable void and instead of trying to get into the minds of characters I'm grasping at straws struggling to build the scene and the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give us a snapshot picture of the world, then I might start considering other emotions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T08:07:23.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9959" CreationDate="2014-01-08T09:28:45.693" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Drake? Hey, wake up.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My eyes opened to someone standing over me. She had steel gray eyes&#xA;  and long, black hair that fell to her side. She was young and&#xA;  beautiful yet, she gave off a mature vibe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Oh, welcome home Grace.” I said, yawning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brandon Sanderson did this time and again in The Alloy of Law and it drove me crazy;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My eyes opened to someone standing over me. She had steel gray eyes&#xA;  and long, black hair...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me this says that he doesn't recognise her, if he did he wouldn't say &lt;code&gt;someone&lt;/code&gt;, he'd say &lt;code&gt;Grace&lt;/code&gt;, because he knows who she is. Starting with an unnamed someone and describing her features in that way is normally reserved for when a character meets someone they don't know (because looking at their feature is one of the first things they do.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;instead I feel something like this would work better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Drake? Hey, wake up.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I opened my eyes to find Grace standing over me, her steel blue eyes catching the light behind a curtain of long black hair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Oh, welcome home Grace.” I said, yawning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the &lt;code&gt;mature vibe&lt;/code&gt; bit would come across better in context; don't tell us she's mature, show us she is in her actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In respect to the overall piece I'm concerned that rather than being impactive it's actually quite slow. Perhaps if we could see what happens next? As it is it's just a guy ruminating on how he likes to veg out on the sofa. And I agree with SF, I have no idea where and when this is set. The Sector C thing makes me think it's a Sci-Fi, is that right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T09:28:45.693" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9056" CreationDate="2014-01-08T12:44:33.407" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your first option is, really, &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pandoc&lt;/a&gt;, which was already mentioned. Its usage is quite straightforward. I've done some converting along these lines myself, and it's brilliant. It's included in Debian repositories, so I'd think acquiring an installation wouldn't be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You indeed want to convert to HTML first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;pandoc OdtFile.odt -o HtmlFile.html&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then proceed to create markdown file the same way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;pandoc HtmlFile.html -o MarkDown.text&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and yes, you could go back from markdown to odt the same way. You also could enforce your own style set by mentioning style template odt file, the README will tell you, how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also find it useful to &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/a/62990248/2455413&quot;&gt;preserve paragraphs&lt;/a&gt; with the flag &lt;code&gt;--wrap=none&lt;/code&gt; - i.e. prevent pandoc breaking pars with newlines every 72 chars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To prevent odd HTML formatting (such as you get where the original doc has embedded links: pandoc endows those in the output markdown text with underline html tags), &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/a/62963659/2455413&quot;&gt;specify the markdown version as markdown_github-raw_html&lt;/a&gt; with &lt;code&gt;-t markdown_github-raw_html&lt;/code&gt;. (Might be preferable to change the source doc's default link formatting in the Office app that created it, if you can).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to forego markdown for some kind of TeX solution (to which format you also could convert your already written text with Pandoc), the advantages being the abilities to insert images, tables and math equations in text, though, I'm afraid, that will close the way back to odt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6663" LastEditorUserId="56788" LastEditDate="2022-11-04T17:22:05.433" LastActivityDate="2022-11-04T17:22:05.433" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9965" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T15:17:25.657" Score="2" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a fictional novel that rewrites history surrounding the Gulf war. It involves at one point the actions of the english Prime Minister at the time. In the novel he takes us to war with Iraq under false pretences (some would say that was the case anyway) however my explanation as to why he invades Iraq is different from the accepted reasons, and some might consider it to be unjustified. Am I on dodgy ground here? Could I be done for libelling the PM? Can i mention his name, and if not, will changing his name take away from the realism of the novel? Or should I just not mention his name even though everyone will know who I am talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6664" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T20:29:50.300" Title="Can i use the name of a real UK Prime Minister in a fictional Novel?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-01-08T21:32:22.073" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9965" CreationDate="2014-01-08T17:29:58.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am writing a fictional novel that rewrites history surrounding the Gulf war ... Could I be done for libelling the PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly.  The laws about slander and libel vary widely from nation to nation, and a fig leaf of &quot;it's fictional&quot; would probably not be enough in and of itself to survive a challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're better off making a thinly veiled analog with a different name and significantly different characteristics, especially if your novel's PM is at all villainous in any way.  If omitting all personally identifiable details can be done, that may also suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in addition to a possible claim of libel, be aware that you might be hit with trademark or privacy laws as well.  Make a novelization about a news story of some living person's heroics, and you may be presented with a bill for using their likeness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you shouldn't worry too much about legal affairs (aside from copyright) when &lt;strong&gt;writing&lt;/strong&gt;.  Once you have a completed work and want to move into &lt;strong&gt;publishing&lt;/strong&gt; is the time you'll want to worry about what changes may be necessary to comply with libel, trademark, or privacy laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T17:29:58.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9965" CreationDate="2014-01-08T17:44:15.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you just mention that e.g. Tony Blair was prime minister of the UK at the time of your fictional events, then that is similar to stating that there is a city called London. It will be no problem at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you describe Tony Blair doing what all prime ministers do (e.g. be friendly to a journalist) or what is a historical, documented, published and proven fact (and you mention this documentation and give your sources in an appendix), there will be no problem at all. Just make sure you quote the source correctly: if the source says &quot;it might have been&quot;, you must describe the events with the same possibility of doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as soon as you have any real and existing person do anything in any kind of fictional work that either you have made up or that may be interpreted as reflecting negatively on that person, from picking his nose to starting a war, you will most certainly recieve a letter from that person's lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would never do it. The newspapers are full of lawsuits for journalists mentioning the names of the children of celebrities, stating that a celebrity dyed their hair (German chancellor Gerhard Schröder sued a newspaper over this) and similar apparent banalities. I can't imagine the backlash you will face when you imply a politician might have lied to the public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person is dead, go ahead, but as long as he is alive, make up an imaginary prime minster, just like American movies always have fake presidents in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your whole idea hangs on working with something that everybody knows to be true but has never been legally proven, talk to a lawyer experienced in the relevant field (journalism, personal rights, rights over one's own image, slander, etc.) and pay for legal advice that you can rely on (and never trust anything written by anonymous persons on the web).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T18:37:36.527" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T18:37:36.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9965" CreationDate="2014-01-08T20:29:50.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with what others have said, both here and in the above-referenced question (which I reproduce here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/9215/1993&quot;&gt;writers.stackexchange.com/q/9215/1993&lt;/a&gt;).  To wit (always wanted to say that), &lt;strong&gt;change the person&lt;/strong&gt;.  In your specific case, start your novel with Tony Blair losing the election.  Instead, the PM is Snidely Beckinsworth.  You can then make Snidely whatever you want -- egotistic, money-grubbing, cowardly, sadistic, stupid, war-mongering, etc. -- and nobody can complain.  Snidely is your stand-in for Tony (with cosmetic details changed), but you are covered because your novel already makes clear that Snidely is not Tony.  I suppose Mr. Blair could still try to sue for libel, but then he'd have to prove that, despite the internal evidence of your novel, your unflattering PM is obviously him.  (But that's self-defeating.  If it's obviously him, then it isn't libel.)  The free publicity from such a lawsuit would easily pay for a five-quid barrister.  Just don't make Snidely exactly like Tony, except that he's a lying jerk, because that WOULD get you into trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T20:29:50.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9938" CreationDate="2014-01-08T21:42:16.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try making them ridiculously exaggerated in your first (zeroth?) draft.  Then gradually dial them back as you revise.  Call it &quot;simulated annealing for writers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T21:42:16.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9959" CreationDate="2014-01-08T22:52:03.227" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Between the second and third paragraph is an idefinite stretch of time where your character sleeps and nothing happens. Even if you don't explicitly count the seconds in your writing, that time with nothing happening is still there in the mind of the reader, creating a false start for them. Don't begin your novel with telling your readers that nothing is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like for your last version of your beginning I'm gonna recommend that you start with the third paragraph and drop the first two entirely. Work in their content later in the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Drake? Hey, wake up.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;makes for a perfect beginning, if you rework the next (now second) paragraph in the way CLockeWork recommended in his answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; start a book with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The house felt so empty when Grace wasn’t here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a good first sentence. But after it you proceed to &lt;strong&gt;explain&lt;/strong&gt; (tell), instead of letting the reader &lt;strong&gt;experience&lt;/strong&gt; (show) how it feels empty. If you want a slow altmospheric beginning, you need to make the emptiness interesting. Here is someting I might do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The house felt so empty when Grace wasn't there. Lying on the sofa I slowly sank deeper and deeper into myself, looking up at the faraway ceiling as if from the bottom of the sea. Light reflected from the windshields of the passing cars glided past on the dirty plaster like strange underwater creatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would set up a motif (strange creatures underwater) that I would take up later and that would gain some meaning, while at the same time creating some emotion related to the emptiness of the house. What that empty house means for &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, you need to define in the context of your story. If it means nothing, then don't start the novel with it. Because the first sentence sets the theme of your book (if it is a good first sentence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first sentence and first paragraphs also set the tone, so if the novel is filled with exciting action, the beginning should not be introspective like my example; if on the other hand the book is a lot about how your protagonist feels and what he thinks, then a funny or actionpacked beginning does not fit either. Don't mislead your readers, but draw them in by condensing the essence of your novel into the first sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, &lt;strong&gt;you need to define for yourself, what your book is about&lt;/strong&gt; and write the first sentence from that understanding, pointing it like an arrow at the heart of your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it about the emptiness the protagnoist has inside him, and how he finally finds something that gives him a meaning for his life once he crossed the seemingly endless waste at his core and finds his strength and love and a means to save the world? =&gt; start with the emptiness&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it about a boy looking up to his sister and following her around until he finally finds his own feet and in the end stands looking down at her after he saved her, healing the wound of his broken family? =&gt; start with her standing over him&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it about a dystopia? =&gt; Start with &quot;A lot of people think that Sector C is a horrible place to grow up in.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ursula K. LeGuin's &lt;em&gt;The Dispossessed&lt;/em&gt; has one of the greatest beginnings. You may not like it, and you might disagree with my interpretation (below), but it will make clear how the beginning of a good novel works. Here it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Looked at from one side, the wall enclosed a barren sixty-acre field called the Port of Anarres. On the field there were a couple of large gantry cranes, a rocket pad, three warehouses, a truck garage, and a dormitory. The dormitory looked durable, grimy, and mournful; it had no gardens, no children; plainly nobody lived there or was even meant to stay there long. It was in fact a quarantine. The wall shut in not only the landing field but also the ships that came down out of space, and the men that came on the ships, and the worlds they came from, and the rest of the universe. It enclosed the universe, leaving Anarres outside, free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Looked at from the other side, the wall enclosed Anarres: the whole planet was inside it, a great prison camp, cut off from other worlds and other men, in quarantine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A number of people were coming along the road towards the landing field ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this a great beginning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) The first sentence is so ridiculously concise, it makes you want to laugh out loud. Its banality and brevity are like a perverse riddle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) The next sentence creates tension. If the wall were unimportant, it would not be mentioned in the first sentence. The narrator just told us implicitly that it was important. So its existence (in that first sentence on the level of the written novel) contradicts its appearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(c) The first two paragraphs are an elegant and concise allegory of LeGuin's basic philosophy: how the belief in differences between humans causes evil. This beginning defines what the novel will be about. In this, this novel is very classical, giving everything away right at the beginning, and then proceeding to illustrate the premise. Novels are not usually written that way today, but they still start with the theme. See Stephenie Meyer's &lt;em&gt;Twilight&lt;/em&gt;. First sentence: &quot;I'd never given much thought to how I would die&quot;, which anticipates the death at the hands of James that Edward saved Bella from, as well as the &quot;death&quot; that makes her immortal when Edward bites her in a later book in the series, which is in fact what the whole series is about: the transcendence of death in eternal love, the basic romantic idea. Meyer's books may be stupid and puerile, but they work their readers well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(d) The third and fourth paragraphs define the world we are on. Completely. From here on out you know where you are. If you want, everything can be pure action and no more description after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a moment of surprise and/or tension and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;define the topic / motif / theme of your novel in the first sentence;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a clear sense of place in the first paragraphs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Break these rules only if you know what you are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T12:06:23.967" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T12:06:23.967" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9789" CreationDate="2014-01-09T11:34:13.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide your document into sections, with a section break where you want to change the number formatting. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Switch off the 'link to previous' option for each section.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up the page numbering for each section.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A blank page at the end of a section is counted by default. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T11:34:13.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6411" CreationDate="2014-01-09T16:15:15.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is common practice to mail not-yet-published, unpublished and unaccessible scientific articles to colleagues working in the same field upon request. But to my experience, authors don't just mail out a copy to random strangers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must understand, that those articles receive reputation through the peer review process provided by respected journals. These journals are financed through sales of their issues. If authors gave away their research for free, this would cut the money from the journals and in turn destroy the peer review process that scientific reputation relies upon. So it is in their own best interest that authors restrict free copies to rare cases. There are other models for financing, and the situation is currently changing, but &lt;em&gt;propriety&lt;/em&gt; is a strong factor when an inquiry such as yours is considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, who is a deserving recipient of a free copy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually a researcher will be affiliated with some institution that has its own email domain. Usually researchers will use this email domain to send email, when they enquire with colleagues. Thus, any author can easily verify that the inquiry comes from someone actually working in their field (or at least a fellow academic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have sent out several requests for papers to authors. I have always explained:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;where I study/work,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what my research interest is,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and what I need the article for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I have added an explanation why I could not access the article through the usual means (no university access to the online publication) or that I needed it faster than I could receive it through interlibrary loan. Sometimes the article was not published (such as test manuals or the tests themselves), so an explanation was not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were two authors that did not answer me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T16:15:15.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9977" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-09T16:31:10.760" Score="2" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lists with YA bestsellers. What they don't tell me is which books are bought by girls, and which by boys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any resources showing (YA) bestsellers by reader's gender?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T06:42:15.960" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T01:39:24.517" Title="YA bestsellers by reader's gender" Tags="|gender|readers|sales|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9978" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-01-09T17:20:20.917" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T17:20:20.917" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T17:20:20.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9979" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-01-09T17:20:20.917" Score="0" Body="Questions about sex scenes, erotica, etc. Also see the &quot;gender&quot; tag. " OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T17:20:20.917" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T17:20:20.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9980" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-01-09T17:22:27.567" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T17:22:27.567" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T17:22:27.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9981" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-01-09T17:22:27.567" Score="0" Body="General legal questions. There are also separate tags for &quot;copyright&quot; and &quot;creative commons&quot;.  Make sure to specify the relevant jurisdiction." OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2017-10-13T17:34:19.697" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T17:34:19.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9982" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-01-09T17:23:50.717" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T17:23:50.717" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T17:23:50.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9983" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-01-09T17:23:50.717" Score="0" Body="Issues that specifically target readers, marketing to particular sets of readers" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T17:23:50.717" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T17:23:50.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2014-01-09T19:16:36.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed a pattern in your writing. It seems like you start off with lots of enthusiasm but your enthusiasm dies out after you write a sufficient amount of pages. This could be that when you are writing you are not being creative but actually taking a mechanical approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I self-published 3 books so far and each of them were at least 30 pages in length. They were not fiction but business/self-improvement advice but the same principals still apply while writing anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The initial draft you make don't worry too much, don't think about perfect, don't worry about making any changes to the formatting (bold, bullets, italics, etc...), just write! Let your right brain take full control and go as outrageous as the story can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have written sufficient amount (say 60 pages) whether in one sitting or more, then go back and start using your left brain to scrutinize your stories, characters and their relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First get into the habit of writing enough without any interruption from your left brain and then worry about the technical aspects of the story or the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6679" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T21:34:39.367" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T21:34:39.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9954" CreationDate="2014-01-09T20:33:39.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some thoughts to help guide you on your way (and by no means authoritative.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the pilot intended to be aired? How long will the episodes be? How long will the pilot be? How many acts per episode? How many acts in the pilot? Is the pilot the start of the story, a first draft of the story, or just another episode?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the pilot is a draft your only constraint on the number of parts is the dictates of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the pilot is just another episode, I would recommend structuring it for broadcast (special two part ...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the pilot is a merging of episodes, look to see if they can be split (might work, might not)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the pilot is the start of the story reruns become much easier if it will split (to be continued)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T20:33:39.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9986" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-09T23:13:04.067" Score="2" ViewCount="4447" Body="&lt;p&gt;So years ago, I worked with a man who used to format the logbook date with a &quot;day.month.year&quot; style e.g. 1.9.14.  I've grown fond of this since it eases the eye in deciphering the date by seeing the numbers as a set yet not being distracted by the period being used as a delimiter.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tried searching google and on here for more information, maybe even the source of where this is used since it's quite clever.  All I have as a clue is he was born in Germany then immigrated to the states as a child (no accent whatsoever), and perhaps learned it in the schooling system in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone shed some light on the use/origin of this method of date formatting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6684" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T21:36:05.310" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T12:38:44.950" Title="Seeking information regarding the use of a period between the day, month, and year formatting" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9986" CreationDate="2014-01-10T04:10:23.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not an answer, strictly speaking, but perhaps pertinent info: U.S. DoD writes dates like 02Jan2014 or 02 Jan 2014.  Probably they got that from NATO.  On forms it's not unusual to see that as 02/01/2014.  Until the Y2K &quot;crisis,&quot; they would leave out the 19 in the year, which made for a nice symmetry: dd/mm/yy.  Are you sure your friend left out the leading zeros?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T04:10:23.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4549" CreationDate="2014-01-10T13:02:56.093" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an old thread, but maybe this contribution will still be helpful: I've written several books using emacs, and am also the author of the Woodnotes Guide for Emacs for Writers (not Coders) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.therandymon.com/index.php?/197-Woodnotes-Guide-to-Emacs-for-Writers.html&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; and produced a cheatsheet &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.therandymon.com/index.php?/196-Woodnotes-Guide-to-Emacs-for-Writers-Cheatsheet.html&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; of commands and settings I find useful.  Both are totally free/Creative Commons licensed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're curious, on the same site you'll find an article I wrote about how I use emacs and other Linux tools to write books and another on how to make an epub from text files (for example, created using Vim or Emacs).  I don't have a &quot;10 reputation&quot; so SE won't let me post more than two links.  Have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6689" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T13:02:56.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9986" CreationDate="2014-01-10T16:41:31.143" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Orthography&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In German a date is written like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;10. Januar 2014&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is of course a space between all &quot;words&quot;. The dot behind the number for the day is a writing convention for ordinal numbers. E.g. &lt;code&gt;10&lt;/code&gt; is &quot;ten&quot; and &lt;code&gt;10.&lt;/code&gt; is &quot;tenth&quot; in German orthography. So the above example reads &quot;tenth january two thousand fourteen&quot;, if you translate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the month can be abbreviated as a number, too. Using the same example from above, we would get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;10. 1. 2014&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;10. 01. 2014&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the spaces behind the dots, as what you write is considered a word, which is only represented as a number. This, with spaces, is how most people write a date. (Typographers recommend an eighth of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_%28typography%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quad&lt;/a&gt; instead of a full space.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is in fact an industrial norm (&lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datumsformat#DIN_5008&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DIN 5008&lt;/a&gt;), which defines design rules for text (such as business letters), and this norm requires that you writes dates without a space:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;10.1.2014&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;10.01.2014&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking through some of my recent letters I can confirm that government institutions and my university use the format without spaces. (The expanded version, with the month spelled out, &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; must have spaces.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In handwriting or informal letters (written by non-secretaries), the space behind the dot is the norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;History&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically the German convention to write dates rises naturally from how dates are spoken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dot is a common convention for ordinal numbers, and in German the day is said before the month, so, if you think about it, it is not actually a convention for writing dates at all, but how a German would naturally write a date if there was no convention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This natural way to write dates as it was habitually found in letters at the time was defined as an orthographic convention in 1928 through the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_5008#Entstehung_und_Entwicklung_der_DIN_5008&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guidelines for the Treatment of Business Mail&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by the German government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know where the dot to mark an ordinal number in numeral form came from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T16:51:01.517" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T16:51:01.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9991" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-10T19:57:59.163" Score="3" ViewCount="1423" Body="&lt;p&gt;After some time outlining quite a complex story, I came to the conclusion I need more than one point of view to tell it all. However, I need to have one of those points of view's character as the protagonist, to make him stand out among the others, to &lt;strong&gt;make the reader feel this is his story&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of the traits a main character has to have in order to make for a good protagonist: Induce empathy, have bravery to try, have flaws, make him fail because of them, have a purpose, make him evolve... But I think all of those should apply as well for any well designed POV character, if one is to hold reader's interest at its best. What are the traits that would make a main character &lt;em&gt;the important one&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things I think can influence this feeling are the order of appearence, the ambitiousness or importance of his task to the world, the amount of backstory, and how much the reader is induced to care for each one, but I am sure there is more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will use &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt; as a reference here, trying to avoid spoilers though: In &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt; book, where each chapter is written from a different POV and none seems more important than the rest, the story led me to feel as if Ned Stark was the main character, even when he appeared with much less frequency than others did. And, considering the ending, I think this was done on purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can that difference between him and the others be spotlighted? I know having the narrator switch between 1st and 3rd person would help, but I'm looking for more subtle ways, as I'm trying to keep everything in a 3rd person view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T13:54:12.393" Title="How to highlight a main character among several points of view?" Tags="|creative-writing|character-development|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9991" CreationDate="2014-01-10T21:23:18.707" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything is &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other characters talk about him, plot about him, worry about him, try to contact him. Everything is about what he's doing or where he's going and with whom. Scenes where he isn't there detail the effect his actions or words had on the other characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's his story, then tell his story. The TV show &lt;em&gt;Person of Interest&lt;/em&gt; is primarily about Mr. Finch and Mr. Reese. The other characters have lives and families, but we don't see those lives and families every episode. We primarily see them working with the two main characters, doing work for them, protecting them, talking to them, carrying out orders, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T21:23:18.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9991" CreationDate="2014-01-10T23:14:03.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A classic method of uniting multiple POVs is to have characters tell what happened to them (in first person) for a whole chapter.  Usually they are telling their story to the main character.  Example: Canterbury Tales, Frankenstein, Arabian Nights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a complex story can have more than one protagonist, and might not have one MAIN protagonist.  (Or if there is ONE, it might require some insight to realize that.) Examples: The Silmarillion, Lord of the Rings, War and Peace, the Foundation series, the Bible.     [everyone feel free to edit and add others]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T23:14:03.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9995" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-11T02:07:22.837" Score="3" ViewCount="5409" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the universal format followed when we write a date in a newspaper article (for example: &lt;em&gt;24th November&lt;/em&gt;)? I looked around for some examples and didn't find them to be consistent. Is there any hard format at all or is it to the author's discretion? Is it different for different countries and styles, akin to how spellings vary between British English and American English?    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6215" LastEditorUserId="3298" LastEditDate="2014-01-11T14:27:46.067" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T17:19:44.607" Title="Dates and numbers in newspaper articles" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2014-01-11T07:00:21.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to suffer from the same disease. This is how I dealt with it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I started looking at each character as a &quot;short story.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; This is truth for any novel; every character produces a subplot which is somehow connected with the main one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I accepted that a novel can never be perfect.&lt;/strong&gt;  As the saying goes: &quot;You write a novel when you don't know what you want to say or how you want to say it.&quot; So look at your novels as little lab experiments instead of something that has to be perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If none of this works for you, you can try this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write a novel that consist on many intertwined short stories.&lt;/strong&gt; David Mitchell does this beautifully on his magnus opus Cloud Atlas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write two or three parallel stories.&lt;/strong&gt; Haruki Murakami does this pretty well in his novel 1Q84. The two protagonists alternate in each chapter (a third one is added in the middle).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-01-11T07:06:09.890" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T07:06:09.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9998" CreationDate="2014-01-11T10:22:34.860" Score="2" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;My cousin is giving birth to twins, and I am preparing the invitation cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Twice as much love&#xA;Two blessings from above&#xA;&#xA;Anthony a lovely boy&#xA;And Joya brings the joy&#xA;&#xA;The glorified delivery&#xA;Is on the 17th of January&#xA;&#xA;May their lives be filled with Love and laughter&#xA;And may God bless them with happiness forever&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, I have to use certain keywords, like delivery and January, can the term glorified delivery be used to describe giving birth, is there a better term?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And is it &quot;Okay&quot; that the last 2 sentences are longer than the others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4990" LastEditorUserId="4990" LastEditDate="2014-01-11T12:02:48.357" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T14:10:05.510" Title="Can the term &quot;Glorified delivery&quot; be used to signify giving birth?" Tags="|editing|poetry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9997" CreationDate="2014-01-11T11:36:45.717" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a poem; you can say anything you want, and you can make the lines however long you'd like. Whether or not the end result will be perceived as inspirational or corny is another matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's true the invitation will need to contain certain information, I disagree with your assertion that you must &quot;use certain keywords, like &lt;em&gt;delivery&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; There are many ways to get the point across, without using the word &lt;em&gt;delivery&lt;/em&gt;. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The newborn twins will first be seen&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  On January seventeen&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the varying lengths of the lines, I prefer consistency in that regard, particularly when there is rhyme involved. However, that's just my personal preference, and I don't think you'd be the first poet to end a poem with lines that stretch a little longer than the others. However, if you're trying to keep the poem consistent, and those lines are longer simply because you're forcing a rhyme, then I'd suggest working at it until your poem flowed a little more evenly. Just like in any other form of writing, the difference between a mediocre work and a very good work is often found in the amount of effort spent polishing and revising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;May God bless them ever after&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Filled with hope and love and laughter&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T11:36:45.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9986" CreationDate="2014-01-11T12:38:44.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's interesting how phone numbers sometimes use dots nowadays, too. While the U.S. standard format was – and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unlikelymoose.com/blog/comments/559_0_1_0_C/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; would argue, still is, or, at least, still should be – (818) 555-1892, you might now see 818.555.1892. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When choosing a format for a date, there are several factors involved, such as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you want the date to look modern, or traditional?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you type these using a keyboard or keypad, or write them by hand?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there some sort of benefit to saving character space?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will the dates be somehow used for electronic calculations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it absolutely essential that no one ever misread a date?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this for personal use, mass marketing, or a database?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you using this in an environment where a convention is already established?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed several movie posters using the &quot;dot&quot; format, with some variations, including using dots even when the month is spelled out (see samples below). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think you'll find a consensus answer about the best way to always format a date, although I'm sure you can find quite a bit of emotional and contentious debate on the subject. Some fellow named &lt;a href=&quot;http://bytes.com/topic/asp-classic/answers/53864-dateadd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ray&lt;/a&gt; wrote: &quot;Whoever started putting dots in dates and phone numbers should be eliminated!&quot; That seems a little harsh to me. Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.sportslogos.net/topic/89121-usa-today-to-get-redesign-sept-14th/page-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;discussion board post&lt;/a&gt; reads: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The date format is kinda &quot;fadish&quot;, meaning that it's &quot;cool&quot; right now to use dots in dates and phone numbers, but that'll wear off eventually. Also, since Y2K, I'm not used to seeing 2012 expressed as just 12. Hope that doesn't become common again.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We'll see if it'll &quot;wear off eventually.&quot; As for using just a &quot;12&quot; for &quot;2012&quot;, I say that's context-dependent (I wouldn't do that in my software, but I don't have a problem with someone writing it that way on a postcard).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lee.org/blog/2011/10/22/dont-use-periods-in-your-phone-number/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ranter&lt;/a&gt; opined that the dot format increased when internet addresses became popular. I wonder, though: How many sci-fi fans might scoff at that assertion, having used dots for decades, reminiscent of &lt;em&gt;Star Trek's&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;stardates&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NFWtb.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T12:38:44.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9997" CreationDate="2014-01-11T14:10:05.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is that &quot;glorified&quot; is a sarcastic term. In means &quot;wannabe&quot; or &quot;dressed up attempting to be something else.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you put a big fancy necklace on a dog, it's a &quot;glorified collar.&quot; The thing actually is a collar, but you're dressing it up to try to make it more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A novel which has clearly been padded, stuffed, and overextended could be a &quot;glorified novella.&quot; (So it &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be a novella if you take the fat out.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would never read &quot;glorified delivery&quot; as &quot;a delivery full of glory,&quot; which what you intended. A glorified delivery is when the Publishers Clearing House people show up with balloons and TV cameras and a band to hand you an envelope which the mail carrier would have done without all the fuss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T14:10:05.510" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-11T16:39:20.240" Score="4" ViewCount="2657" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using Scrivener under Windows to write a text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How am I supposed to generate a document (Word, OpenOffice.org, LaTeX or something else) with a table of contents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found some tutorials for doing this on the Mac version of Scrivener, but I'm working under Windows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6696" LastActivityDate="2021-01-14T03:04:35.370" Title="How to create a document with a table of contents in Scrivener on Windows?" Tags="|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10002" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10004" CreationDate="2014-01-11T21:44:24.823" Score="5" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have plenty of writing experience as an academic and as a technician but am new to technical writing &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;.&#xA;A retailer of engineering equipment wants me to write unique, user-friendly content for their web site because I'm a subject matter expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They said that it should take only 60 to 90 minutes to rewrite a manufacturer's technical description/specification, converting it into their own-style 250 to 300 word product overview.&#xA;Is that reasonable? My test project took considerably (3X) longer to complete, perhaps because it was a more difficult-to-understand than usual piece of equipment. &#xA;Am I far too slow or will I become quicker with practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6693" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-03-02T16:10:53.877" LastActivityDate="2018-03-02T16:10:53.877" Title="What is a reasonable amount of time to spend writing a product overview?" Tags="|technical-writing|planning|websites|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10002" CreationDate="2014-01-12T05:07:44.440" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ah, the &quot;you can write in one context, so you must be an expert in writing in another context&quot; fallacy.  I've been on the receiving end of that too.  Being a good academic writer, or engineering writer, or anything else doesn't mean you can automatically write good user-oriented material (or vice-versa).  The person asking you to do this is making an unwarranted leap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, for the task you describe -- 250-300 word user-oriented summary -- it is probably not unreasonable for someone with some experience in user-focused writing, who is already a SME, to produce a reasonable draft in 60-90 minutes, though I think that's rather aggressive for a final product.  So while you won't be able to do it that quickly to start (because you don't yet have experience with this kind of writing), it's not impossible for you to get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complexity of the product is a relevant factor, but if the word-count isn't increasing with complexity, the impact is on your learning the product more than on the writing.  Consider what you would write in a 250-word user-oriented summary of an automobile; while the engine and onboard computer and crash-avoidance tech and whatnot may be complex, you won't have room to get into that.  If your focus is on the &lt;em&gt;user&lt;/em&gt; then it's on &lt;em&gt;capabilities&lt;/em&gt;, not &lt;em&gt;implementation details&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To assess what kind of productivity you can achieve, you're going to need to do a few more -- and, ideally, examine some written by other people if you haven't already.  If you don't yet have assignments for others, I would suggest trying a few on your own -- pick products you already know that are of comparable complexity, write summaries like those being requested, and track how long it takes you.  Once you have more data you'll be able to have a more-productive conversation with the person assigning you these tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I've been doing tech writing in the software domain for 20+ years.  I mostly write for programmers, not for end users.  I avoid marketing as much as possible.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T05:27:48.493" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T05:27:48.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10006" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10007" CreationDate="2014-01-12T13:50:50.543" Score="9" ViewCount="70854" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I put an old painting on the cover of my book without violating the law?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AFAIK the copyright for a painting expires after 70 years. Hence, if a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proserpine_%28Rossetti_painting%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;painting&lt;/a&gt; was created in 1874 and 70 years expired in 1944, it should be legal to put in on a cover of a book to appear in 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6696" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-12T15:44:55.487" LastActivityDate="2022-03-13T20:29:34.330" Title="Is it legal to use an old painting on the cover of a book?" Tags="|copyright|book|artwork|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10006" CreationDate="2014-01-12T15:56:11.787" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The copyright may have expired after 70 years. But, depending on the law of the relevant country, the owner of the painting (or any other object) may have the right to forbid the commercial use of reproductions of his property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to a &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_release&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;model release&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, with which a human model allows a photographer the usage of her likeness, there is a &amp;quot;property release&amp;quot; for photos made on or of someone's property. Here is the one from &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.bigstockphoto.com/s/article/model-property-releases-important-information?language=en_US&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Big Stock Photo&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-gallery-rules&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gallery rules&lt;/a&gt;, published on their website, the Tate states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can take photos in the gallery unless it is stated otherwise. Photography must be for personal, non-commercial use only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that any image (= photographic reproduction) you might grab from the web was either made for non-commercial use (scholarly publication) or for a specific commercial use (excluding yours).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to use an image (= photo) of one of the paintings in the collection of the Tate commercially, you must use their &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/image-licensing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;image licensing service&lt;/a&gt; at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tate-images.com/index.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.tate-images.com&lt;/a&gt;, which will also provide you with an image file you can use in the publishing process. If you register you can calculate the price for your usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2022-03-13T20:29:34.330" LastActivityDate="2022-03-13T20:29:34.330" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9991" CreationDate="2014-01-12T16:26:50.223" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also have multiple POVs in the story I'm currently working on, each mini-chapter switching between main characters and supporting ones, and the way I try to convey who the protagonist is is by making her related to all the conflicts that take place, whether her role in each conflict is central or minor. Of course the main story-line is hers, but when I switch to another character's POV there will at least be a mentioning of her, or the actions that happen on the POV character's side of story affect her story, directly or indirectly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also read from a writing guide that it's possible to have many POV characters, a huge cast, multiple subplots  and still manage to show whose story is the book mainly about by giving the protagonist the most pages or chapters. So for example, if there are twenty chapters, then you can have like ten chapters dedicated to the protagonist, while you split the rest among the other major (or minor) characters. A good example of how this is done is Shōgun by James Clavell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps you in someway.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6702" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T13:54:12.393" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T13:54:12.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10009" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-11T07:01:18.840" Score="0" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;The misery of a self-didactic literary analysis lies with its perpetuity. One can go on and on and on, especially when a thesis is on the line.&#xA; Besides scoping text and narrative for examples to correspond with one's choice of critical approach,* &lt;strong&gt;how does one know when to stop&lt;/strong&gt;? A close reading of even a short story, let alone a novel, can become a hydra. &#xA;Garnered requirements seem to be the following, but is a category missing?&#xA; - Theme&#xA; - Structure&#xA; - Style&#xA; - Discussion sifted through a specific critical approach*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for learned opinions and knowledge of the discipline.&#xA;(*maybe say, a &quot;Bakhtinian analysis&quot; or a &quot;feminist analysis&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6528" OwnerDisplayName="FountainpenLady" LastEditorUserId="3857" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T13:16:43.437" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T13:16:43.437" Title="Literary analysis: Requisites for a formal critique?" Tags="|process|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10009" CreationDate="2014-01-13T04:42:42.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally the approach is to present one idea per academic paper. You have one basic hypothesis, and one method to test it. If you have more methods to try, you present those experiments in other papers. If you have more hypotheses, you test them in other papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the natural sciences you usually find that a research team publishes a string of papers on the same research topic (e.g. time perception). In literary studies you can both find a scholar testing the applicability of one method (e.g. feminist reading) to a wide variety of texts, as well as a scholar applying a variety of methods to one text or corpus (e.g. a specific author or literary epoch or even an outstanding single work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A monograph can then be a collection of all results that you and/or your fellow researchers found. The theme of the monograph can be defined by a methodology, a genre, an author, an epoch, etc., or a combination of these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scientific progress is cumulative. No one expects one scholar to fathom the complete width and breadth of one topic.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my time, the criterion for the success of a scholarly dissertation was that it had to present new insights and contribute something new to its field. The best way to learn about the scope of a dissertation, is to read other dissertations, ideally from the same field you work in. The closer their topic and methodology to your own, the better. And read the original dissertations, not the re-written versions published as books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T11:19:42.067" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T11:19:42.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10011" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-13T11:32:48.870" Score="5" ViewCount="541" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have loved writing since early in high school and it has helped me tremendously, not only in my emotional well being, but also in music. I have started writing on a lot of things, which I wanted to take seriously, but I never got around to it. Now I'm working on a new piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to be &quot;overly&quot; descriptive of the character and his/her/its environment. I like the idea of the reader feeling like they have been there or can see it clearly in their minds, but how much description can you give before it ruins the plot? Too much detail makes it feel like a text book and too little makes it too vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where as a writer would you draw the line? 50/50 description and plot? or do you have another mix that guides your writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6707" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T11:55:59.737" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T05:44:03.210" Title="Where to draw the line between being descriptive and getting on with the story?" Tags="|style|fiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10011" CreationDate="2014-01-13T11:54:14.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funny, I do exactly that: 50-50 (I think it's a bit neurotic, though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The bus reached the station a few minutes later. &lt;strong&gt;I got off, pulled&#xA;  out my umbrella, and glanced at the colorless city. For the first time&#xA;  in my life, rain felt depressing and heavy on my skin. Each drop fell&#xA;  like a tiny bomb, leaving behind a slight trace of pain.&lt;/strong&gt; How could&#xA;  some people stand being far from their loved ones? How did they deal&#xA;  with the continuous traveling, and the sense of instability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My stomach grumbled. I remembered that I hadn't eaten breakfast; just&#xA;  a coffee and that had been it. I didn't want to walk too far. I was so&#xA;  tired. I decided to grab something here at the station. I wandered&#xA;  around for a while without much success—either the prices were too&#xA;  high, or the food looked less than appealing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was about to give up when a shop caught my attention. &lt;strong&gt;It was a&#xA;  tiny sushi stand painted in black and red, with large white letters at&#xA;  the top that read Sushi Break. On the display case, there was all&#xA;  kinds of sushi. Tuna, salmon, roe, shrimp, squid, you name it. Their&#xA;  bright colors contrasted greatly with the grayness of the city, so&#xA;  much they almost seemed to glow. They looked tasty, and were&#xA;  incredibly cheap.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing, though. I think it's not necessary for you to think of plot and description as two separated things. Like in the sample above, even though I &quot;classify&quot; them as description, they are deeply embedded in the plot. How the character feels. Which is fundamentally what moves a plot forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I usually do is to see the character's surroundings as an extension or metaphor of his/her feelings or thoughts. That way, the line between description and plot suddenly disappears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the &quot;mix&quot; that guides my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T15:10:42.550" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T15:10:42.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10011" CreationDate="2014-01-13T14:07:25.767" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no firm rule. Not only various subjects require various amount of detail, some readers will find the same text too dry while others will find that very piece too verbose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best you can do is get feedback from multiple readers and adjust, confronting their opinions. Over time you'll learn to strike balance that satisfies most (you'll never satisfy all), and you'll learn to portion descriptions in order to steer the mood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples of where and how portioning and altering the styles of descriptions works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tranquil scenes of reflective mood - long, florid descriptions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;impressive locations of grandeur - same.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;locations or objects that are sure to be important or incite strong feelings - detailed, although to the point descriptions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;locations that matter to the plot - to the point descriptions that contain all the necessities but little beyond that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;presenting important characters that are to recur - focused descriptions about their characteristic traits, only skimming the remainder&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;very intense impressions - use strong metaphors and similes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;secondary characters - short focused descriptions, most essential details&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fast scenes - fights, run, cover - descriptions to the minimum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;things out of place - make sure to re-draw them, after skimming over them in generic description do a surprised double-take.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;climax point - a very detailed, slow-motion description.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dazed, concussed - slim descriptions with weird focus, e.g. emphasizing some completely mundane traits you'd normally gloss over.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dream sequences - tell, don't show. Impressions and facts instead of images and processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;altered states of consciousness - quite otherworldly descriptions using completely nonintuitive similes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, you need to know your audience, your goal and understand your style to know how much is &quot;long, florid&quot; and how much is &quot;to the point&quot;. Unfortunately as the author you lack the perspective, and that's where feedback is really essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T14:07:25.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9472" CreationDate="2014-01-13T16:30:41.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For what you need to do &lt;em&gt;legally&lt;/em&gt;, you'll need to consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction.  Laws vary.  The rest of this answer is about &lt;em&gt;practical&lt;/em&gt; considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, are you on good terms with the person whose email you want to use?  Do you want to be on good terms after you publish your work?  If so, then &lt;em&gt;talk with this person&lt;/em&gt;.  Nobody likes surprises, and there is a presumption that private correspondence is, well, &lt;em&gt;private&lt;/em&gt;.  (If the email came from a large, well-distributed, archived mailing list, that's a little different -- but I would still ask.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, even if you change the names, given a large-enough corpus a person who knows what he's doing can identify the person (to a fair degree of confidence) anyway.  Everybody writes with certain &quot;markers&quot; that help to identify their work; what they are varies and you probably don't know you're doing it, but you are.  This isn't just spy-agency stuff here; corpus analysis is a standard tool in fields like linguistics and statistics -- and, for that matter, certain software domains.  What this means is that scrubbing the names &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; necessarily anonymize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend that you first talk with the person about your desires, and then work together with that person to transform the email you want to quote in a way that satisfies both of you.  This could involve selective quoting, summarizing rather than directly quoting, and/or rewriting passages (that is, you do the rewriting, not the original author).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T16:30:41.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10011" CreationDate="2014-01-13T20:41:40.557" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let the character drive.&#xA;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=4477&quot;&gt;Dean Wesley Smith says&lt;/a&gt;:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;All setting is opinion.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So make sure you describe everything that the character has an opinion about&#xA;(or a reaction to) in the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to describe something else,&#xA;give your character a good reason to have an opinion about it.&#xA;But be careful here.&#xA;It's easy to slip into describing things for &lt;em&gt;writerly&lt;/em&gt; reasons&#xA;rather than &lt;em&gt;character&lt;/em&gt; reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has a lot of useful effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It makes the description interesting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It makes your description do double duty.&#xA;It not only describes the setting but also characterizes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It helps with pacing.&#xA;Characters notice (and opine on) different things depending&#xA;on the pace and intensity of what's going on around them,&#xA;and what's happening inside them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can highlight the plot.&#xA;In particular,&#xA;it can highlight the character's desires,&#xA;and the things that are most troubling or frustrating or threatening for them&#xA;at any moment in the plot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is for me an example of a principle I made up a long time ago:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Most questions of balance are better framed as questions of selection.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;That is, instead of &lt;em&gt;how much&lt;/em&gt;, ask &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of &quot;How much description?&quot; ask &quot;Which things shall I describe?&quot;&#xA;I like Dean's criterion for selecting.&#xA;There are likely other good criteria, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T20:41:40.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10016" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-14T02:05:05.590" Score="2" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is now my third attempt of writing the opening of my book. I took What's advice and tried to send a message to the readers. the message was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What makes us strong is our courage.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the story, the protagonist was weak and finds himself being beaten by strong people. Later in the story he grows stronger, but is still faced with stronger people who abused their power. He still continues to fight them, even though he isn't as strong. He has determination and courage; this is what drives him forward.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I finally think that I've found my beginning, but I might not be wording it correctly. Please tell me if it does relate to the message. Please be critical.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The dog was weak and fragile. There was nothing it could do to protect itself from them. That didn’t stop them from kicking it around. They were laughing at its pain and continued to beat it to death. The pup had bruises all over itself. The poor thing could barely open its eyes. Yet, they didn’t stop.&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I couldn’t stand there. It made me sick to my stomach to see this. It was infuriating to just stand and watch. Before I knew it, I was throwing punches and taking hits to the gut. They outnumbered and overpowered me. I had taken the dog’s place. It hurt immensely, but it was nothing compared to the pain of not doing anything.&lt;/strong&gt;     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The strong picked on the weak. It was a simple as that. Nothing more, nothing less. But, what makes someone strong? Muscles? How hard you could hit? No. It wasn’t either of those. There had to be something that made someone stronger than others. So, the question remains.&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What makes someone strong?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                                         *****&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The cuts on my face burned as my sister cleaned them. She used an old, red rag dipped in cool water to wipe my face. Her expression was calm and understanding. It always was; this was our regular routine almost every day. I would always come home with cuts and bruises, but she wouldn’t say a word until she was almost done tending to my injuries.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“What happened this time?” She asked, soaking the rag in water.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“Nothing. I just fell down some steps.” I lied.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“You say that every time you come home bruised up like this.” She asked once more. “Now, what really happened?”&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I sighed. “There were these jerks and they were beating this dog and I-“&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“-and you couldn’t let it slide.” She finished for me.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“Yeah.” I admitted. “Are you mad?”&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“No.” She answered.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Of course she wasn’t. She never got mad. Her only emotions were kindness and caring. All she would do was just fix me up and tell me to be more careful.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“Just be more careful.” She said after finishing up.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I lied again. “I will.”&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“Good.” She stood up. “Come on. It’s time to go.”&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6618" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T04:39:38.257" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T04:39:38.257" Title="Does this opening relate to the message?" Tags="|science-fiction|openings|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-01-05T07:46:23.290" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10016" CreationDate="2014-01-14T04:24:37.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's well done. But to me it reads like the aftermath of the opening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T04:24:37.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10011" CreationDate="2014-01-14T05:44:03.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your first responsibility to the reader is to get on with the story. This is exciting and keeps the reader reading your book until the end - something they don't have to do if you bore them with too much description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially don't sacrifice story for description, as this will turn the reader off really quickly. So keep your descriptions brief, but colorful, to evoke a feeling without being flowery and turning the reader off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you could describe a character entering an alley at night. You could describe how dirty the alley is by listing all the dirty things: the stink of the bin, the rubbish, the mud, the kitchen smells, the rats, the bums around fires, the flickering lights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, use this technique for writing brief descriptions: let one or two things SIGNIFY for the whole - e.g. the puddle in this case: &quot;Phillips crept into the dark alley. His foot squelched into a filthy puddle and grey mud oozed over his shoes and soaked into his socks.&quot; The reader gets the idea that the alley is filthy, without the author having to make a checklist that bores them. And it is still part of the action of the scene too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read some noir detective fiction to help boil down your descriptions to absolute essentials - as this genre is very good at this. e.g. &quot;She's a charming middle age lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she's washed her hair since Coolidge's second term, I'll eat my spare tire, rim and all&quot; from Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler. Authors like Dashiel Hammet and Raymond Chandler are recommended, but there are plenty of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5731" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T05:44:03.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10016" CreationDate="2014-01-14T05:45:03.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a suggestion, why not open with the altercation itself? &#xA;You can use the fight to illustrate your protagonist. Is he short and slight? Tall and gangly? (Also think about how this might change as the story progresses.) &#xA;Show his reaction to the dog's mistreatment as a way to provide insight into his internal motivations. Why is he fighting? Most especially, why is he fighting when he probably knows he won't win?&#xA;Give a brief glance of who he is fighting. Is this a 'same-bullies-different-day' fight, or an unknown group? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Painting a compelling snapshot of your protagonist (not just appearance, but his frame of mind, motivations etc.) right from the beginning emotionally invests the reader in who he is as a person and drives interest in who he might become by the end of the story. Beginning with the fight would, imho, be a strong entrance that is true to your theme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6708" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T05:45:03.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10016" CreationDate="2014-01-14T05:54:10.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like it a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel the part about falling down the steps is a bit unbelievable, because if he comes home with cuts and bruises every day, his sister must already know that he gets into fights. So I wouldn't have him try to evade the truth but let him tell it straight-away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, if you really want it, you could comment on it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Nothing. I just fell down some steps.&quot; It's what I always said, since the first time, though by now we both knew I never fell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or something like that. That way it does not appear contradictory (him attempting the same lie every day). And delete the &quot;There was nothing I could hide from her&quot;. If this happens every day, there is nothing to hide anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that I like it very much. Cool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd let it stand like that (with the little edits, if you want) and then work on the rest of the story and only come back to the beginning after you finished everything else. Because after you wrote your book, you will know if this beginning works for you or if you need to adapt it to what you found out while you wrote it. Don't try to perfect the beginning, before the book is finished! Since the beginning is the most important part, polish it last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A comment on the other answers (by NE1HOME and Dale Emery):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll have to think about this yourself (and, as I said, I'd suggest you wait with it until you wrote everything else), but I don't think you need to start with a fight or any kind of action. It depends on the type of book you want to write. Is it a book about action? Then start with action? Is it more reflective, focussing on the inner strength of the protagonist, his personal growth, the relationship to this sister? Then I would start with those. Start with what the book is about. Not every book is a thriller. But if it is, you need to thrill in the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T05:54:10.063" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10001" CreationDate="2014-01-14T08:10:21.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/documentation/scrivener-manual-win-a4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener for Windows documentation&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you need your work to enter a standard word processor workflow, this will be your go-to method. MultiMarkdown's ODF support is comprehensive [... meaning the document can] &lt;strong&gt;use the table of contents feature of a word processor.&lt;/strong&gt; It represents &lt;strong&gt;the only output method in Scrivener that offers this support&lt;/strong&gt;, making MMD an enticing option for those who do not mind learning how to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The documentation goes on to explain that LibreOffice (and OpenOffice, with the correct update installed) supports this format, and from there you can convert to other popular formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So (as I understand it) the process should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convert to OpenDocument Format, resulting in a &lt;code&gt;.fodt&lt;/code&gt; file.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open in LibreOffice, and create table of contents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Export to format of your choosing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T08:10:21.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10016" CreationDate="2014-01-14T11:06:02.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like it, it gripped me to read more and that's what makes me read and write in the first place. I would have rather started with the protagonist being in the fight to emphasize his current standing in his scenario and then merged into this segment you have here, but that of course is only a suggestion and how I would have done it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep at it, it's looking good :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6707" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T11:06:02.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10028" CreationDate="2014-01-14T11:12:55.743" Score="0" ViewCount="13334" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know most people want to see courier, well, at least that is what I think (correct me if I'm wrong.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would probably never be able to finish a novel or any kind of book for that matter (not skilled enough to try) and my current platform is largely web based. In the world of the online writer, which font would you recommend? The courier font looks a bit, how can I put it, bland? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I ramble on into infinity my question boils down to this, which font and sizes should I use when writing with the intent to publish online?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any input would be highly appreciated and thank you in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6707" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T07:32:45.627" Title="Which font should I use when I'm writing?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2014-01-16T09:11:06.910" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10025" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-14T12:12:29.920" Score="3" ViewCount="844" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see all over the web that LaTeX specializes in correct presentation of mathematical formulas, used widely in science, engineering, math, and other highly technical fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to have something similar to use for my non-technical writing.  I'd like proper support for headings, footnotes, citations, and so on. I'm aware of markdown, but I'm thinking several notches up from that in sophistication.  I'm not interested in WYSIWYG solutions, and I'm not interested in proprietary ones, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone know of anything that matches this description? Or would LaTeX still be the way to go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-01-14T14:54:11.720" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T08:58:07.640" Title="What non-WYSIWYG, non-proprietary alternatives to (La)TeX exist for the humanities, journalism, and other non-technical disciplines?" Tags="|tools|latex|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10027" CreationDate="2014-01-14T12:40:21.670" Score="5" ViewCount="3022" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company is hiring a contract technical writer to improve our product's documentation. As the maintainer, I'm currently using Google Docs, and very happy with it's collaborative nature (multiple simultaneous editors, web based, comment/response system), ease of use, and ability to produce PDF output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technical writing resource needs to create/apply standard styles to our various documents, rework/reduce much of the content (we're software engineers, not writers), add tables of contents and indexes, and allow output to web friendly HTML (while still allowing us to produce PDF).  By &quot;web friendly&quot;, I mean the standard content on the right with navigation on the left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this all be accomplished using Google Docs? What are the alternatives? I'm concerned with switching to something that isn't cloud based or locks me into a proprietary binary that only runs on Windows or OSX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6711" LastEditorUserId="47470" LastEditDate="2021-03-31T02:58:32.037" LastActivityDate="2021-03-31T02:58:32.037" Title="Can Google Docs be used for technical product documentation?" Tags="|technical-writing|software|google-docs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10026" CreationDate="2014-01-14T17:11:55.273" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google Docs is fairly limited in its word-processing feature set. It has a very basic set of styles which can be applied to text. From what I can see there is no way to change the list of styles although you can customize how they appear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It allows export to .doc, .pdf, and several other formats and has a &quot;publish to the web&quot; feature &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f7d6ddfU2yfa6ONYn38r8In8HCRlJd5-ax-DESQYtnw/pub&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;which you can see in action here&lt;/a&gt;. This probably isn't what you want, so there's also an export to html which presumably allows you to host the document somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There doesn't seem to be any control over how the navigation appeears on the publish-to-web version. Publishing to web and publishing on paper are fairly different tasks and Gdocs seems to be designed with a paper-first model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gdocs are fine for basic document editing and collaborative document editing but they lack many important features for advanced users. I suspect you will be disappointed. However, it may be possible to export your data from gdocs to some other tool, especially if you have programmers on hand to massage the output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for it being cloud-based: I'm going to suggest that you already have a &quot;cloud&quot; where you can store your documents: your version control system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T17:11:55.273" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10024" CreationDate="2014-01-14T18:13:42.733" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you publish online, you have two basic options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Do not specify a font. Your text will appear in the user's default web font. This is actually a good option. Many websites do just that. Those fonts are easy to read and unobtrusive in the best way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Use one of the web fonts that all computers today have installed. The most common fonts on websites are Arial and Verdana.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these fonts, both in option one and two, are specifically designed to be easy to read on a computer screen. Print fonts often are a bit blurry and merge in the details, making them less attractive on a screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more fonts for option two, and a third option (defining different fonts for different operating systems) and a fourth (including fonts in your document or including it from an online resource), and if you want you can learn about fonts on the web, which is a vast field and can be pretty complicated, but the above options are perfectly fine and standard and will serve you well without much effort on your part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T18:13:42.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10025" CreationDate="2014-01-14T18:18:50.170" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for a step up from Markdown but not as complex as LaTeX, take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MultiMarkdown&lt;/a&gt;. It's Markdown but with lots of extra features added and easy conversion to LaTeX, PDF or HTML.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MultiMarkdown adds these features to the basic Markdown syntax:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;footnotes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;tables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;citations and bibliography (works best in LaTeX using BibTeX)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;math support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;automatic cross-referencing ability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;smart typography, with support for multiple languages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;image attributes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;table and image captions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;definition lists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;glossary entries (LaTeX only)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;document metadata (e.g. title, author, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/features/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/features/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6555" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T18:18:50.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10025" CreationDate="2014-01-15T02:27:26.783" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would still recommend latex. Its maintainable, I have edited ten year old documents.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6584" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T02:27:26.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10031" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-15T02:32:49.197" Score="5" ViewCount="408" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a reference book that details everything I must keep in mind while writing scientific and technical documents. It should include both practical advice, do's and dont's as well as standard style information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6584" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T05:47:25.960" LastActivityDate="2020-05-01T18:41:33.347" Title="Is there a great manual for technical and scientific writing?" Tags="|resources|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10031" CreationDate="2014-01-15T07:18:29.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well I am not sure if there is a reference book that will tell you &lt;strong&gt;everything&lt;/strong&gt; but there are quite a few guides around that should cover most of it. Here are a list of few books (not really following any referencing standard here):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0844232750&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Handbook for Technical Writing&lt;/a&gt; by James H. Shelton&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/076561572X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Elements of International English Style: A Guide to Writing Correspondence, Reports, Technical Documents, and Internet Pages for a Global Audience&lt;/a&gt; by Edmond H. Weiss&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/8176257516&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Textbook of Scientific and Technical Communication Writing for Engineers and Professionals&lt;/a&gt; by S. D. Sharma&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1559346477&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing&lt;/a&gt; by Leslie Perelman, Edward Barrett&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0321477472&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing for the Technical Professions&lt;/a&gt; by Kristin R. Woolever&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing in English: A Practical Handbook for Scientific and Technical Writers by Zuzana Svobodova (you can find an online copy by a simple Google search).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from these, there are several guides written by faculties at various Universities. They might be suited for some but not all purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider looking for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.un.org/depts/OHRM/sds/lcp/English/resources_un.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UN guides&lt;/a&gt;. They contain some very good content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope some of this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T07:18:29.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10024" CreationDate="2014-01-15T11:11:48.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I read the question, I think you mean what font you should use &lt;em&gt;while&lt;/em&gt; writing (as opposed to &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; finishing writing)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Crimson Text&lt;/strong&gt; is gorgeous. I'll make you finish your manuscript even if the story is absolute crap:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BM3Xc.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T11:11:48.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7351" CreationDate="2014-01-15T11:31:06.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may be interested in this competition link for a novella.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://griffithreview.com/the-novella-project-2-call-for-submissions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://griffithreview.com/the-novella-project-2-call-for-submissions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6725" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T11:31:06.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10037" CreationDate="2014-01-15T11:40:46.467" Score="4" ViewCount="4338" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you describe your methodology of writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am submitting the outline of my novella for a competition and this is one of the requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The outline must include a summary of the Novella as well as the methodology and approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6725" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T01:00:35.980" Title="How do you describe a methodology of writing?" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10025" CreationDate="2014-01-15T13:00:08.820" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To follow up on Steph's comment, we've also just released a new rich text editor mode for writeLaTeX - see &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.writelatex.com/blog/81&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; for more details. Although it's still in beta, it's already received a very positive response, and we'll be continuing to add to it over the coming months. I'm one of the developers, and if you give it a try I'd welcome any feedback, thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5146" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T13:00:08.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10035" CreationDate="2014-01-15T14:37:37.073" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;John's advice is correct: seek their advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think it's pretty straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word &quot;methodology&quot; simply means the system of methods used for a particular activity, field of study etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what they're asking for is an outline of your writing methods that you used during the process of creating your novella. I imagine it would include, and not be limited to, the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subject research (e.g. did you write and skip over the bits you didn't know about, and come back later to fill in the blanks after researching in the library, or did you research the subject matter in depth, did it come from a newspaper, or was it even a personal event that happened to you?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Character construction (how did you identify and construct your protagonist, your villain, your supporting characters; where did you look to for inspiration. What techniques did you use to expand them e.g. interview them, base them on real life individuals you know ...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scene planning and construction (Is this based on a place you've been, from photographs, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plot construction (e.g. did you outline your story scene by scene using post-it notes on a board)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your &quot;system&quot; of writing (did you wake up early each day and write fresh without thinking, did you use mind maps for ideas, do you meticulously plan each scene with a summary of what would happen, who was in it, and then sit and just write and so on)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did you edit your novella, converting it from a first draft to a finished product (e.g. did you edit as you go along, did you stick it in a drawer for a couple weeks before going back and editing).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The old saying of &quot;do whatever works for you&quot; means that every writer will have their own methods that they find works for them (sometimes even only for that particular book), and that's probably what they're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T14:37:37.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10038" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-15T17:15:32.503" Score="2" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been offered &quot;exchanges&quot; for an article in a very small publication in my vacation town, that does not have the budget to pay for articles. What does that mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6728" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T21:27:36.263" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T22:22:53.620" Title="What is an &quot;exchange&quot; in magazine publishing?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7351" CreationDate="2014-01-15T17:38:41.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand why you have reservations about self-publishing, but the market for novellas has always been thin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If none of the outlets you find through Duotrope et al. suit your story, and you don’t want to just publish it directly, your best bet might be to build up your professional portfolio with shorter stories, and then publish an anthology that includes those stories plus your novella.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T17:38:41.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10038" CreationDate="2014-01-15T19:26:06.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing it means they will give you printed copies of their publication in exchange for your article.  You could keep one copy in your portfolio, and distribute the other copies to agents or editors (to show that you're a published author).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, it means they will give you advertising space in exchange for your article, which you could use yourself or sell to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T19:26:06.543" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10024" CreationDate="2014-01-15T23:29:00.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I write the book, I pick a font that I find visually pleasing, personally.  It can always be changed later before being sent to a publisher.  It is best to actually work on it when you like what you are looking at.  My current favorite is Calibri (body).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6732" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T23:29:00.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10024" CreationDate="2014-01-16T07:32:45.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best fonts to use are the ones that are common and easy to read are Calibri (body). No bold, italics, or any other font effects used.  Writers choose particular font because it looks good and shows proper standard of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6734" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T07:32:45.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10035" CreationDate="2014-01-16T11:41:27.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Six steps to describe a methodology of writing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research – Research your topic on internet, academic databases and the library. Submerge yourself in the words of enormous thinkers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Analysis – Starting with Good knowledge stand, visibly define the claims. Do the SWOT analysis which will help you judge better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thesis - Pick and choose your best idea, attach it down in a clear contention and summed up in a brief sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Paragraphs - Each individual paragraph should be focused on a single idea that supports your thesis. Begin paragraphs with topic sentences, support assertions with evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion - Gracefully exit your writing by making end on some memorable thought, perhaps a quotation, or an interesting twist of logic. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Language - Polished your language by correcting the grammar, making sentences flow, incorporating rhythm and other intuitive edits. Proofread until it reads just how you want it to sound. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6735" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T14:09:29.013" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T14:09:29.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9885" CreationDate="2014-01-16T12:03:27.560" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like &lt;a href=&quot;https://iversity.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Iversity&lt;/a&gt; there are other similar websites that offer online courses. One such is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Coursera&lt;/a&gt; which allows you to take courses (typically University standard) for free. At the time of writing this reply there are no direct courses available on creative writing but there are a few courses that might come in handy. Of course you can always check back to see if something new has come up (the courses keep getting updated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A typical course usually involves video lectures and then reading materials, powerpoint presentations, and assignments etc. (which are evaluated so you can have feedback coming in).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember seeing courses on poetry, writing styles, and other stuff that might come in handy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best wishes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T12:03:27.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10046" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10051" CreationDate="2014-01-16T14:50:35.787" Score="3" ViewCount="3950" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company currently maintains our technical documentation (User's Guide) in Google Docs. With each release I produce a PDF that we host on our website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the features of Google Docs that work well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaboration: Multiple simultaneous editors, comment/reply/resolve system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ease of use: Cloud based, built-in backups and revision history&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Features: WYSIWYG editing, Table of Contents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the not so nice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inability to produce an index&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limited styling capabilities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limited HTML export capability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm tasked with finding a new &quot;tool&quot; that supports the following needs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It must produce HTML with the classic left-pane-navigation / right-pane-content model&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Functionally, it must support index creation (for both PDF and HTML), and more powerful styling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm open to ideas with respect to platform, though I'd love something cloud based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6711" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T02:14:22.170" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T02:14:22.170" Title="What are the tool choices for producing technical documentation in PDF and web site ready HTML?" Tags="|technical-writing|software|tools|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10046" CreationDate="2014-01-16T16:03:00.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I may be inferring to much from your question but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be worth your time to look at a collaboration suite...with a shop that small it wont cost much and the tools offer cloud storage and versioning, web publication, you can edit the documents from the tool...approvals, sharing, discussions, all sorts of stuff.  Now these are...peripheral to whatever tool actually creates the document.  So you could host a word doc or a pdf in the cloud on one of these tools (Word can manage all the items you listed) I have not seen a tool that both creates and publishes documents (at least not effectively...) they may be integrated and from the same provider but its usually two tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess my suggestion boils down to, use the document creation tool you want and then use a collaboration tool to manage publishing, reviews, concurrent work etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at some of the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Atlassian Confluence &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tool is 10/user/month offers document sharing and collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://huddle.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Huddle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Huddle is a little more expensive, 20/User/Month, but is very feature rich...it can do all sorts of cool stuff including pre-built apps for mobile access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perforce.com/product/commons&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Perforce Commons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is a little less robust but is free for up to 20 users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this helps, if I am way off target let me know, I can always remove this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6524" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T16:03:00.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10048" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-16T17:07:16.587" Score="3" ViewCount="921" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need some help on the topic of title case following the Economist Style Guide.  Does the possessive pronoun &quot;its&quot; get a capital in Economist style title case or not.  There was a recent headline &quot;Israel Protects Its Offshore Gas Fields&quot; and the discussion was whether &quot;its&quot; should be lower case because it's short and not a principal word, or with a capital because it's a possessive pronoun.  Any insights?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6738" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T13:20:51.623" Title="Does the word &quot;Its&quot; get a capital in The Economist Style title case?" Tags="|style|titles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10046" CreationDate="2014-01-16T18:05:56.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helpandmanual.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Help &amp;amp; Manual&lt;/a&gt; for seven years. Has approximately 8 output formats, uses XML as back end, integrates fine with svn and is easily translated using OmegaT. Allows concurrent user licenses (we have two). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6741" LastEditorUserId="23244" LastEditDate="2017-01-27T21:46:57.523" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T21:46:57.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10002" CreationDate="2014-01-16T19:30:13.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For our own technical products (rather complex and new technology) we typically need 5 mandays of academic to accurately and correctly derive business value readable for normal humans and Google optimized. Summarizing it in various length takes approximately 60 minutes then. &#xA;I have hired people writing it in a few hours, but the results were insufficient in terms of capturing the product's value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6741" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T19:30:13.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10046" CreationDate="2014-01-16T20:01:33.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's what we do for that.  It's not cloud-based, but it is source-control-backed, like (I hope) your code already is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools and technologies involved:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;source control&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;DocBook DTD&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;your favorite editor for XML files (WYSIWYG possible)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;XSLTProc (with ant, but you could do make or something else instead)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;XEP (PDF generator)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(deprecated, but I'll mention it anyway): HTMLHelp Compiler&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We write our documentation source against the DocBook DTD.  This is a well-established documentation standard, and while the whole spec is big, you probably only need about 20 XML elements (tags).  All the usual stuff is there -- divisions (book, chapter, section, etc), formatting (emphasis, code, etc), semantics (classname, methodname, command, guielement, etc), indexing, TOC, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alongside the DocBook XML source are stylesheets that translate your XML input into whatever output you like.  DocBook comes with some of these.  We feed the XML source and the stylesheets to XSLTProc to produce an intermediate output, &lt;em&gt;formatting objects&lt;/em&gt; (FO).  We then have a step to transform that into PDF (using XEP), HTML (using XSLTProc), and (we don't do this part any more) a CHM file of HTML doc (using HTMLHelp Compiler).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We pack all those generation steps up into an ant build file (ant is what we use for our software builds already), but there's no reason you couldn't do it through make or whatever your build tool of choice is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The XML source is checked into source control and collaboration is accomplished in the usual way.  XML supports file inclusion, so you can modularize your books however you like.  Because the docs are in our source-control system, it's easy to branch and tag them, and the automated nightly builds include documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the source is XML, not some binary format, diff and merge work as you would expect, and you can use whatever editor you like.  Some of our people use Abortext Epic (pretty high-end), some use Oxygen, some use NotePad+XML, and at least one old-fashioned person (ahem) uses emacs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T20:01:33.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10052" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-16T20:56:58.640" Score="6" ViewCount="810" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each of our software releases is accompanied by a set of release notes, which include short descriptions of the following: new features, important or breaking changes to old features, and important bug fixes.  New features are pretty easy; people know what's happening there.  Our challenge is with the other two, which boil down to changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way this document gets compiled now is something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bugs, when created or anytime thereafter, may or may not be annotated with &quot;affects doc&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Toward the end of the cycle, the assigned writer queries for all those bugs and starts asking around about other things that should be mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, the contents of the bug (description or fix) are not sufficiently illuminating to said assigned writer, who then starts asking for clarification from the people involved.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The writer takes his best stab at it and sends a draft out for review.  Iterations happen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can almost never take something directly from the bug because, hey, bugs are written by developers speaking to other developers and aren't meant to be user-facing.  A sufficiently technical writer can translate the one into the other, but not all shops have those (and if they do, they're probably writing other documents -- release notes tend to fall to more-junior writers).  Many developers &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; write reasonable blurbs for release notes (these aren't high art), but they need to think of that as a separate task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, with all that as background, my question is: how can we improve our workflow to produce decent release notes more easily, with less back-and-forth and less of a scavenger hunt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-20T17:36:09.113" LastActivityDate="2018-02-20T17:36:09.113" Title="How can we make compiling release notes less chaotic?" Tags="|technical-writing|process|release-notes|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10052" CreationDate="2014-01-16T23:28:50.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, technical non-writers make better technical writers, than non-technical writers do. They usually can write in a way &lt;em&gt;mostly&lt;/em&gt; understandable to layman and factually correct (as opposed to non-technical writers who'll often write something perfectly clear, but completely wrong), they just need to be asked to do so - they won't, if they don't know they should!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of non-technical people assembling the notes, have technical people tasked with assembling them in a relatively reader-friendly manner. Best, if everyone in the team wrote short release notes on everything they did in person, every bug they filed, asked to explain it in relatively non-technical manner (typical to release notes - they know what release notes are). It's 10 minutes of work per month, and you have a good preliminary draft almost complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only then have the non-technical writer edit the draft, making it pretty, correcting errors or smoothing out still too technical language. If something is hard to understand, consult, perform the usual back-and-forth, but the number of these cases should drop to 2-3 per iteration from dozens. Simply, instead of asking the non-technical writers to reach across the chasm to the professionals, have them meet halfway - essentially, everyone becomes the writer, but you're getting one good editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T23:28:50.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10054" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10059" CreationDate="2014-01-16T23:45:56.067" Score="0" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will shortly be moving to another a role within the same organisation and was wondering if you could advise on how I could improve the language and structure of this farewell email. It seems a bit drawn out at the moment and I'd like it to retain the sincerity yet exude a sharpness that will create future opportunities by extending bridges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear all,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As many of you know, today is my last day with compliance. Through&#xA;  this farewell email, I wanted to thank you for your continued support&#xA;  and guidance. During the last six months, I have had the privilege to&#xA;  work with genuinely talented people like yourself, who have helped me&#xA;  grow both personally and professionally.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With my first rotation&#xA;  drawing to a close, I look back with pleasure on everything that we&#xA;  have accomplished together. I only hope that I find in my new role a&#xA;  fraction of the encouragement, gratitude and opportunities that I have&#xA;  found here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have really enjoyed my time and will miss working with&#xA;  you all. I owe you an enormous debt of gratitude and I wish each one&#xA;  of you, the very best in all your future endeavours, both professional&#xA;  and personal. Thanks again for everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4076" LastEditorUserId="4076" LastEditDate="2014-01-16T23:51:08.093" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T07:27:10.497" Title="How would I improve the language and structure of this farewell email?" Tags="|email|career|letter|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-07-28T10:50:33.687" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2467" CreationDate="2014-01-17T01:22:13.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for a place to share lyrics, I've created a platform that's just for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rappad.co/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RapPad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also helps you in the creative process of writing lyrics online — it's a pretty neat tool that has a great community behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6747" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-09-21T16:02:11.097" LastActivityDate="2022-09-21T16:02:11.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10056" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10057" CreationDate="2014-01-17T04:27:19.867" Score="2" ViewCount="1070" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hemingway has the canonical very short story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For sale: baby shoes, never worn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This piece manages to evoke a strong emotion of &lt;em&gt;sadness&lt;/em&gt;. Wired &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;has a piece&lt;/a&gt; on this motif. In it there are several other examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longed for him. Got him. Shit. - Margaret Atwood&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so. - Joss Whedon&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kirby had never eaten toes before. - Kevin Smith&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;each of these (there are more on the linked pages of varying degrees of quality) manage to evoke a strong emotion. They do this, I think, by deceiving our expectations. While &lt;em&gt;relief&lt;/em&gt; could follow from this formula, I don't see how the general feeling of &lt;em&gt;happiness&lt;/em&gt; could. How then, could a writer envoke the feeling of happiness in such a condensed prose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6748" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T08:11:26.877" Title="Evoking happiness in a very short story" Tags="|short-story|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10056" CreationDate="2014-01-17T05:42:58.133" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The micro-stories you list all reside on a significant amount of wordplay and context, which combine with our expectations to instill a primal response.  Fear, sadness, and relief are all very simple to evoke by way of a few concise images.  Happiness, however, is more difficult, since a feeling of happiness requires some empathy for the characters to be more than a simple declaration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is really one of basic human psychology.  We are hard wired to be most empathic to others when something is WRONG.  Absent turmoil, we have a natural kind of pseudo-autism, where we stop feeling as much for the other person and would rather turn ourselves to our own issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're about half right that they work by deceiving our expectations.  In actually, the rely upon our expectations to fill in the rest of the story being told.  And truth be told, I'm not sure it's even POSSIBLE to feel empathic happiness strongly.  Especially if you want to invoke it artificially via a story and not an expression of relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadness is easy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He proposed last night, though not to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relief is harder:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He proposed last night, though not to me.  Thank God.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happiness is a hallmark card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He proposed last night, and she said yes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T05:42:58.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10052" CreationDate="2014-01-17T05:54:36.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Compiling release notes is &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; the job of a single author.  It's ideally part and parcel of your source control and project management system.  Your developers would have a set of automated tests for all reported bugs and documented features, and any necessary changes would require a change in said test, which could automatically note a change for the release notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New Features would mean new tests, which happily could have supporting documentation.  New Test -&gt; New feature added to release notes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changes to existing features mean some old tests stopped working.  Change a test -&gt; note that &quot;action X and Y no longer does Z.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs, after being recorded internally and having a test written to demonstate the error, can be identified and marked as closed once a &quot;known-bad&quot; test no longer breaks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider, btw, how two games do their release notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://community.eveonline.com/news/patch-notes/patch-notes-for-rubicon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eve Online&lt;/a&gt; does release notes in mammoth lists, introduced by blog posts for major new features and a discussion forum where changes are suggested. Notably, bug fixes are &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; detailed, as there's no public bug repository.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://mojang.com/2014/01/minecraft-snapshot-14w02a/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Minecraft&lt;/a&gt;, on the other hand, has a public bug list and includes links to their actual bug database for resolved fixes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T05:54:36.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10054" CreationDate="2014-01-17T06:34:12.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a bit gushing but I guess that's your style. It looks good -- you don't really need help with writing. Except&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capitalize &quot;Compliance&quot; if it's a department name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Replace &quot;talented people like yourself,&quot; with &quot;talented people,&quot; -- they know you're addressing them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Replace &quot;I only hope that I find in my new role a fraction of the encouragement&quot; with &quot;I hope that I find in my new role the encouragement&quot; -- toning it down a notch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6693" LastEditorUserId="6693" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T07:27:10.497" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T07:27:10.497" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10056" CreationDate="2014-01-17T08:11:26.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three arguments against your claim that it is more easy to evoke sadness than happiness through any type of text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) There are experiences, such as the loss of an unborn or newborn child, that will universally evoke sadness. The reasons for happiness appear much more varied and individual. But I'm sure you could find things that make most people happy, if you think about it: some reward (just don't specify it), sunshine, the return of a loved person, etc. It is just that out culture is preoccupied with negative emotions (lies, distrust, fear, anxiety etc.), and that therefore we find these emotions much easier to frame with words. After all, a story that plods happily along bores us. It is even claimed that a utopian life without conflict would bore us to tears (which I don't believe, but is commonly accepted as a valid argument against striving for it). And the happy ending of a tale is a sign of unrealistic kitsch, isn't it? Real life is seen to end at best neutrally and usually bad. People who feel good about their lives fill us with the suspicion that something is not quite right with them. Evoking happiness is just as easy, but we find it harder to think of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Most readers will no actually &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; sad after reading Hemingway's sentence, especially not strongly, as you claim, only be reminded of sadness and consider the idea of sadness after the loss of a child cognitively. I'm generally a very empathic person and often cry over nothing, but Hemingway's sentence barely passed the door to the garden with the well of sadness for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Also, while sadness is a mild emotion, happiness is an extreme emotion (maximally pleasurable). Evoking happiness is in fact not harder than evoking despair (maximum sadness). So you are in fact comparing apples and oranges here, because I have never read any fictional text that made me feel real despair. There are lots of texts that evoke a pleasant feeling in me, comparable to the vague sadness some others evoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T08:11:26.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10052" CreationDate="2014-01-17T12:49:57.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of letting the developers write the notes will shatter on the cliff of reality. Most developers don't want to write them, so even if you force them somehow, you will only get a mess and not a note. Just for the record: I am a developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do is just improve your existing workflow a little bit. A little bit often does wonders and you will never get a perfect workflow anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means, there will always be some back and forth, you already know that. So best workflows are automated, because they skip that damn human factor. Try to automate as much as possible. (Never send a human to do a machine's job.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;annotate with 'affects docs'&quot; - skip that. That's relying on humans and therefore error-prone. I bet you have a priority level on bugs. Define that bugs of the most upper two levels get annotated automatically with &quot;affect docs&quot;. Do you really care about the other ones? Developers don't.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Toward the end of the cycle ...&quot; - Ouch! You know what happens if you shift a task at the &lt;em&gt;end&lt;/em&gt; of a cycle, so why do you do it? You get the list of relevant bugs now automatically. Have a meeting (a real one, not a lame one) every week, every two weeks, whatever, with the project lead. Go through the list, ask your questions, get answers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;...  not sufficiently illuminating&quot; - If things are still unclear (within that one week or two week rhythm) ask the developers. You can never avoid speaking to that lousy pack from time to time. It's a shame.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Iterations happen&quot; - Development &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; iteration. By its very definition. You'll never get rid of that. Embrace it. It's a cure, not a disease.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T12:49:57.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10065" CreationDate="2014-01-17T14:20:45.050" Score="1" ViewCount="2288" Body="&lt;p&gt;The novel's in first person. I'm working on a scene where there are five people dispersed on different floors of a building, all talking to each other via tiny mics and micro-earpieces. The protagonist too has those. He is inside a room, talking to his group when suddenly, an outsider comes and he is forced to shut up and answer the newcomer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, does this piece work? Is it correct to portray the dialogues like this? If not, any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You’re on the wrong floor,” a sudden voice said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I turned around, my follower was here. I took a step back, “I’m&#xA;  sorry?” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I said you’re on the wrong floor. You were supposed to check the&#xA;  copiers down on the sixth,” he said, gesturing me to come outside,&#xA;  “Come.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I stood there, confused, voices screaming inside my left ear, “He&#xA;  might be inside the tower. You guys need to back out right now!”—&#xA;  “He’s not here, I’m sure of that.”— “Did you check?”— “Lynn did; Lynn,&#xA;  you did right?”— “I... Yes, Yes I did. Yes.” — “Greg, where the fuck are you?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Oh,” I never replied to Brady. I scratched my nose and told the&#xA;  person standing five feet from me, “Yes,” I added, &quot;I've informed my&#xA;  guys. They'll be here any minute now.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="1768" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T18:16:29.997" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T14:34:17.507" Title="A good approach to show dialogues over radio communication?" Tags="|technique|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-01-16T17:53:39.453" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10062" CreationDate="2014-01-17T15:37:08.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing I would do is adopt a typography style to indicate radio communication that can be heard in the focus scene originating from somewhere else, and you should have been using it long enough for your reader to recognize what it means when this scene rolls around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second thing I would do is recognize the inherent social awkwardness in this scene and highlight it to distract from the awkwardness of the storytelling in this scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T19:05:48.820" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T19:05:48.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7912" CreationDate="2014-01-17T15:46:23.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are on the right track. but I would omit the words Reissue edition, change Origional edition to First edition and add a note about translation so it would read something like &quot;(First edition 1998. Translated by Ralph McInery 19XX.&#xA;    Original Latin published around 1080)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T15:46:23.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10062" CreationDate="2014-01-17T15:49:57.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your dialog itself is fine as-is, though I would suggest not using dashes and quotation marks to separate the infra-paragraph speakers.  Unquoted italics may be appropriate, or just list them as quotations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technique you're using is treating the distant speakers as a kind of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_chorus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;greek chorus&lt;/a&gt;, albeit one made up of named characters and not an undesignated mob.  It works very well in the flow of the text provided, and is significantly superior to listing each voice on its own paragraph, as common typology demands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternately, you could not list the dialog of those not present, although doing so would require a significant re-working of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a different note, it's slightly jarring to switch from &quot;a sudden voice&quot; to &quot;my follower&quot;.  FWIW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T15:49:57.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10066" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10067" CreationDate="2014-01-17T17:23:06.497" Score="4" ViewCount="37167" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing papers I sometimes discover texts online which are published without any kind of name attached. Often times these individuals want to be anonymous or simply do not reference themselves in the work. Should I just use the word &quot;anonymous&quot; or is there a better way to cite that individual in APA or Turabian style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6753" LastActivityDate="2020-10-02T19:58:27.410" Title="What is the best way to cite an anonymous writer?" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10066" CreationDate="2014-01-17T18:20:06.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/03/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA guidelines&lt;/a&gt;, to cite anonymous authors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unknown Author: If the work does not have an author, cite the source by its title in the signal phrase or use the first word or two in the parentheses. Titles of books and reports are italicized or underlined; titles of articles, chapters, and web pages are in quotation marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A similar study was done of students learning to format research papers (&quot;Using APA,&quot; 2001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note: In the rare case the &quot;Anonymous&quot; is used for the author, treat it as the author's name (Anonymous, 2001). In the reference list, use the name Anonymous as the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/717/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chicago style&lt;/a&gt; recommends the following when the author is unknown:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sources that have no known author or editor should be cited by title. Follow the basic format for &quot;Footnote or Endnote&quot; and &quot;Corresponding Bibliographical Entry&quot; that are exemplified above omitting author and/or editor names and beginning respective entries with the title of the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Turabian style is almost the same as Chicago so I guess the above holds. If you are being very specific, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eturabian.com/turabian/BookTutorialNoAuthor.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; is the place to look for Turabian. It gives the following examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bibliography:&#xA;  The Book Title: A Subtitle; A Second Subtitle. CityOfPublication: PublisherName, PublishedYear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Footnote:&#xA;  The Book Title: A Subtitle; A Second Subtitle (CityOfPublication: PublisherName, PublishedYear), pageNr.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author-only shortened note:&#xA;  Book Title, pageNr.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author-title shortened note:&#xA;  Book Title, pageNr.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Title capitalization: Headline style&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reference:&#xA;  The book title: A subtitle; A second subtitle. PublishedYear. CityOfPublication: PublisherName.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Parenthetical:&#xA;  (Book title PublishedYear, pageNr)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Title capitalization: Sentence style&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T18:20:06.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7797" CreationDate="2014-01-17T18:42:48.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;APA offers the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usq.edu.au/library/referencing/apa-referencing-guide#Other_electronic_media&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;following guidelines&lt;/a&gt; for citing a computer program/software/programming language (under the &quot;Other electronic media&quot; section):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reference list entries are not necessary for standard off-the-shelf software and programming languages.  Provide entries for specialized software or programs with limited distribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In text, give the name of the software, the version number and year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not italicise the names of software, programs, or languages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If an individual has proprietary rights to the software, name him or her as the author; otherwise, treat such references as unauthored works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Immediately after the title and version, identify with a source type such as [Computer program], [Computer language], or [Computer software]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If no version number is available, include the retrieval date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the program can be downloaded or ordered from the web, give this information in the publisher position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Schoonjans, F. (2008). MedCalc Statistical Software (Version 9.5.2.0) [Computer software]. Retrieved from 3D2F.COM Software Directory: &lt;a href=&quot;http://3d2f.com/programs/13-638-medcalc-statistical-software-download.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://3d2f.com/programs/13-638-medcalc-statistical-software-download.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Accurate Personality Test [Computer software]. (2007). Retrieved June 19, 2008, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sharewareconnection.com/accurate-personality-test.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sharewareconnection.com/accurate-personality-test.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tools and applications.&#xA;  CultureGPS lite (Version 1.13) [Computer software]. (2011). Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://itunes.apple.com/app/culturegps-lite/id297051765?mt=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://itunes.apple.com/app/culturegps-lite/id297051765?mt=8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pages (Version 1.5) [Computer software]. (2011). Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://itunes.apple.com/us/pages/id361309726?mt=8&amp;amp;ls=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://itunes.apple.com/us/pages/id361309726?mt=8&amp;amp;ls=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scott, C. (2011). Treasure hunt - the interactive boardgame (Version 1.1) [Computer software]. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/treasure-hunt-the-interactive/id4425986640?mt=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/treasure-hunt-the-interactive/id4425986640?mt=8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://uark.libguides.com/content.php?pid=155080&amp;amp;sid=1780817&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; for a few helpful tips too (not APA though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T18:42:48.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8805" CreationDate="2014-01-17T19:11:34.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case the author is not &lt;em&gt;unknown&lt;/em&gt;. The author is the association. In this case, &quot;American Diabetes Association&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though there are no direct guidelines but this is the case with almost all citation styles. Also, if you export this citation, the name of the author reads as &quot;American Diabetes Association&quot;. Zotero also reads the name as that. The same holds true if you look up the article on PubMed. Thus, I think the name should be the name of the association.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T19:11:34.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-17T21:28:50.027" Score="3" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm toying with the idea of writing a single standalone book and then later follow it with a series, in the same world with some of the same characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any examples of this? I couldn't think of any. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, is this a good idea? Any major detractors to doing this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6517" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T20:38:33.753" Title="Standalone book, followed by series" Tags="|series|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10071" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-17T23:44:06.950" Score="6" ViewCount="1673" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a romance novel and want to include some scenes that are described first from the female protagonist point of view and then from the male. Will readers think it's a waste of time (as the same events are described twice) or is it a legitimate thing to do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6754" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T12:49:29.117" Title="Can I write same scene from 2 viewpoints?" Tags="|novel|structure|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10071" CreationDate="2014-01-18T00:48:06.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this twice. Once in Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 and Natsuo Kirino's Out. The reaction of the readers was: &quot;Hey, you already told me that!&quot; My reaction was: &quot;Damn, you already told me that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-01-18T03:46:08.173" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T03:46:08.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10071" CreationDate="2014-01-18T02:55:26.977" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A varying viewpoint can be a useful component of the story, but &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; if there is some plot advancement.  (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RashomonStyle&quot;&gt;TVTrope's Rashomon Style&lt;/a&gt; entry for various examples.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the differences from the two character's perspectives are of pivotal importance to the story, don't do it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T02:55:26.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10070" CreationDate="2014-01-18T04:19:05.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Rama&lt;/em&gt; series by Arthur Clarke would fit that bill. the first book was very hard scifi, basically a history book, and books 2 to 4 were a trilogy about a specific family and their travails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T04:19:05.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10071" CreationDate="2014-01-18T06:41:32.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not? The most famous example is probably from film: Akira Kurosawa's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rashomon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example that immediately comes to mind in the romance context is a short story I once read (but don't remember the author or title) where a couple, who are happy in love, remember how they met each other and got together, but in the retelling they realize that they have completely different and contradictory memories, which gives the impression that the person they are talking to (in the present) could not possibly be their partner at all. In this case, the memory is told in alternating direct speech, with the beginning of the memory being identical, but then more and more differences appear, until they are no longer compatible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other popular examples are crime stories that are often told from the perspective of the criminal and the sleuth. A love story is not that different from a crime story. In love, too, we have two &quot;opposing&quot; protagonists who experience different aspects of the same events. And their misunderstandings, differing aims and ideals, and so on, are what makes love exciting (and a bit frightening) in real life. So a story that tells falling in love as the &quot;crime&quot; plot it is, elaborating how two different people finally arrive at the same goal despite their contradictory expectations, can increase the value of the story, if it is handled well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T05:51:01.783" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T05:51:01.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-18T11:03:55.223" Score="2" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize fan fiction and rights is a stupid question because you are picking up from where a creator has already traveled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about a fictional character I create while writing fan fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, I have extended the history of a favorite series much backwards and tried imagining how things began. In the process, I propped up a new character which is not a part of the original series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I have a right over this new character I have created (partly) over someone else's storyline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4807" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T07:40:47.993" Title="Rights over a fanfic character not in the original work?" Tags="|copyright|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10070" CreationDate="2014-01-18T11:18:26.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many series consist of books that conclude their respective plots and don't continue it in the next volume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Safe-Keepers series by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Shinn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sharon Shinn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Twelve Houses series by Sharon Shinn, has an ongoing subplot, but this only comes to the foreground of the storytelling in the fourth volume which sort of wraps up everything that had been going on and appeared as separate events until then (pretty realistic story structure, actually, because in real life we often don't recognize the connections between different events, too)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Saga of Recluce by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._E._Modesitt,_Jr.&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;L. E. Modesitt, Jr.&lt;/a&gt;, the series tells the history of a fictional land in non-chronological order; some characters appear in several books, and then the earlier events are taken up and continue, but mostly there are several independent storylines that are connected only by the fact that some historical events lay the ground for some that follow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;many of the series of SF authors that play in the same universe work like this, e.g. the Hainish cycle by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ursula K. Le Guin&lt;/a&gt; or the novels in the Alliance-Union universe of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._J._Cherryh&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;C. J. Cherryh&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any series that starts with a pilot and continues with a series, except the Rama novels by Clarke (who wrote the first volume alone and as a standalone) and Gentry Lee (who persuaded Clarke to turn this into a series and cowrite it) that Lauren Ipsum mentioned, but I have the feeling that some first volumes were originally conceived as standalone books and only continued as a series because of their success. You can see this in publication dates (long hiatus between first and following books) as well as in the closed structure of the first and the open structure of the following volumes. I've had this experience often, but can't at the moment think of any example besides Rama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T11:18:26.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10076" CreationDate="2014-01-18T11:38:12.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, so the conclusions (in parenthesis) are merely assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Character copyright is separate from the copyright of the work this character appears in. (If you turn this around, it means that a character who did not appear in any of the works you are writing fanfiction of, cannot yet be copyrighted. In fact, the copyright of any of the characters you create in that copyrighted universe are your own, if it is sufficiently delineated, see below.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A charcter can be copyrighted only if it is sufficiently delineated. Stock characters cannot be copyrighted. (So if James Bond sits besides some person in a bar, who otherwise plays no role in any of the movies, you can turn that person into the protagonist of your own story and will hold the copyright to it. But if a character you made up – in a fan fiction or elsewhere – is only a stock character, you do not hold any copyright to it.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://io9.com/5933976/are-fan-fiction-and-fan-art-legal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://io9.com/5933976/are-fan-fiction-and-fan-art-legal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T07:40:47.993" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T07:40:47.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10071" CreationDate="2014-01-18T15:46:50.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, this example is not a novel, nor even great art, but bear with me.  I'm thinking of the opening of &quot;Grease.&quot;  First you have the &lt;em&gt;true&lt;/em&gt; summer romance of Danny and Sandy.  Then later you have the interwoven telling of the summer romance, by Danny to his guy friends, and by Sandy to her new girl friends.  Danny's account exaggerates the physical, while Sandy's account exaggerates the spiritual/emotional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that this movie was a success, and this was a great opening to the movie (setting up much of the plot), I conclude that what you are proposing CAN be done successfully.  However, I think it's going to be REALLY hard to do it successfully in a novel.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to use third person narrative, but then have your two romantic protagonists tell their version of the events (in first person narrative, of course) to someone else.  That &quot;someone else&quot; could be the same person(s) or different person(s).  In this manner, you add plot elements in the twice-telling of one event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T15:46:50.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10081" CreationDate="2014-01-18T16:18:30.227" Score="5" ViewCount="29378" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just noticed I tend to use &quot;but&quot; and 'however&quot; in almost every paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples (all of them are from the same story):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I almost let everything out. &lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt;, funny, I didn't. I didn't want him&#xA;  to feel bad. Which made me wonder if maybe I enjoyed punishing myself. &lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt; what for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This was the first time we were going to be apart for so long. Two&#xA;  months wasn't a big deal for most people. &lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt; for me, it was an&#xA;  endless torture. &lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt; as I stood there, watching the bus disappear down&#xA;  the street, I reminded myself that it wasn't so bad. That we would&#xA;  still see each other on weekends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Li was holding me from behind. I liked to sit like that—feeling his&#xA;  warmth on my back, and his moist breath on my neck. It made me feel&#xA;  protected, at ease. As though nothing in the world could hurt me.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, that day, something disturbed that feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wanted to cry. I wanted to shout at him, tell him that I was already&#xA;  here. &lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, I knew I couldn't protest. It was my fault, after&#xA;  all. I had come too early, and he probably thought I was still in&#xA;  Nantou.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is their use justifiable? Or should I use something else instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T06:43:13.113" Title="What can I use instead of &quot;but&quot; and &quot;however&quot;?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10080" CreationDate="2014-01-18T18:07:22.727" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many synonyms to &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt;. For the meaning you are pointing out in your question, some of them would be &lt;em&gt;still, nevertheless, nonetheless, though, although,&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;yet&lt;/em&gt;. You can find these and the ones for the other meanings in any site with synonyms lookup function, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://thesaurus.com/browse/but&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thesaurus (&quot;but&quot; synonyms)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, it should be noted that it can be counterproductive to sprinkle your story with synonyms of a common word just for the sake of non-repetition. Just as it happens with the word &quot;said&quot;: Many people think you should not abuse of &quot;said&quot; synonyms in dialog tags (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing-world.com/grammar/said.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Use and Abuse of Dialogue Tags&lt;/a&gt;, for example), because it &quot;draws [the readers'] attention away from the dialogue and yank them out of the story&quot;. Same can happen with &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt;. The abundance of random synonyms might rather obstruct the reading experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to show two ideas are opposed, there can be workarounds, thinking outside the box. Some times these ideas are not inherently opposed (in your first example, &quot;Funny enough, I didn't&quot;); some other times, the causal relationship can be implied (in your fourth example, just removing it would keep the meaning: &quot;As I stood there...&quot;); and some other times, it can be necessary (the rest of your examples fall in this category, in my opinion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To finish, a workaround example, one that I don't pretend to be substitutive nor better, just to explain the idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I wanted to cry. I wanted to shout at him, tell him that I was already here. As I opened my mouth, I realized I couldn't protest. It was my fault, after all.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6650" LastEditorUserId="6650" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T20:24:26.573" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T20:24:26.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10076" CreationDate="2014-01-18T18:21:50.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YES.&lt;/strong&gt;  You have ownership rights over anything and everything you write.   Just because you happened to wrote a work so derivitive it's unpublishable without express permission of someone else doesn't mean you lose your copyright; it just means that you can't do anything with what you wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Literature is likely filled with characters who began within unpublishable fan-fiction that was never shared, who were latter extracted, distilled, and appeared in works with no relation to their original origin.  You won't find any documentation on this, of course, since that might bring the whole matter into an ugly lawsuit, and no one wants that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T18:21:50.967" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10070" CreationDate="2014-01-18T18:27:26.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can be justified it is indeed a very good idea, if you want to publish it through a classic publishing house. This is because publishers prefer to try how well a book sells before committing to a full series, and finding, halfway through, it would be better (from a business point of view) to discontinue it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently doing this very technique, because I started with a standalone idea, and there are many things left to explain about the world and characters, but I am not a published author yet. A thing I learned and would be worth pointing is that it's better if you have at least an intuition of the direction and/or ending of the series, the most important pieces, so you can hide in your first book some &lt;em&gt;Chekhov's guns&lt;/em&gt; for later use, allowing yourself the freedom to play with them and their relevance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in Harry Potter series, (SPOILER ALERT) concretely in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (the 2nd in the series),  the plot centers on an object (Tom Riddle's diary) which turns out to be of pivotal importance in the series, but until the 6th book you won't suspect its story hasn't finished already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/7-ways-to-write-a-stand-alone-book-with-series-potential&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ways to write a stand-alone book pilot to a series&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T18:27:26.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10070" CreationDate="2014-01-18T20:38:33.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on the idea that What presented that a wildly successful book sometimes draws sequels, after Jim Baen's death It was mentioned that David Weber's Honor books did not meet this pattern and that &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; was unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T20:38:33.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10071" CreationDate="2014-01-18T20:45:11.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen this done well. John Scalsi Did it in Zoé's Tail where he retold events from an earlier novel from another perspective (the earlier book was told from the father's point of view this one from the daughter's). He did it well. He also said it was vary difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T20:45:11.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10080" CreationDate="2014-01-19T02:17:00.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;But is a conjunction that has a specific place and a specific meaning. It strikes me that your issue isn't so much with overusing the word &quot;but&quot; but* with using repetitive sentence structure. Please note, for instance, that you really, really aren't supposed to start a sentence with a conjunction because the whole point of a conjunction is to link two items together &quot;I like coffee and tea.&quot; &quot;I like coffee but I don't like tea.&quot; &quot;I would like coffee or tea.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That isn't to say that you can't ever break this rule, but as with all grammatical rules, there are consequences. I think the primary consequence of breaking the &quot;no conjunctions at the beginning of a sentence&quot; rule is that it looks like you or your character finished a thought and then remembered they wanted to add something else. If you use it all the time, well... your viewpoint will sound like they're very, very confused. If that's what you're going for, don't worry about the overuse of &quot;but&quot; at all. If you're looking for normal, free-flowing prose, at least consider grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Note: I just typed but but.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T02:17:00.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10080" CreationDate="2014-01-19T04:44:51.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I don't see the problem with many of the uses in your example. The first example reads well. In the second I would remove the first &quot;but.&quot; The third and fourth sound fine to my ears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I second the advice that too much variety is potentially more distracting than the repetition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T04:44:51.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9779" CreationDate="2014-01-19T05:11:56.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work on my Scrivener files outside of Scrivener (using Vim and Multimarkdown Composer) more than I do inside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do so, set Scrivener to sync your project using external files (File &gt; Sync &gt; with External Folder) to a folder in Dropbox (or whatever syncing service you are using). I recommend setting Scrivener to automatically sync on opening and closing a project, which is an option available in the dialog when you are setting it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then your Scrivener documents will all be stored as individual files that you can edit at will with whatever editor suits your fancy on whatever computer/device has access to your synced files. When you open the project, Scrivener will check and sync that folder to bring in your edits. If you add new documents to that folder, Scrivener detects them on the next sync and verifies you want to bring them into the project. They end up in your research folder until you put them in the proper place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work primarily in Markdown, but it works fine with RTF files and RTF capable editors as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a significantly safer alternative than opening .scriv files on multiple computers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T05:11:56.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10080" CreationDate="2014-01-19T12:39:35.307" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like Chris I don't see a problem and would only have deleted the first &quot;but&quot; in the second text snippet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must understand that &quot;but&quot; is something like the 23rd most frequent word in English (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordfrequency.info/free.asp?s=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wordfrequency.info/free.asp?s=y&lt;/a&gt;). It would be uncommon, if it did not appear often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want, you can use this online service to calculate word frequencies for your own text: &lt;a href=&quot;http://darylkinsman.ca/tools/wordfreq.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://darylkinsman.ca/tools/wordfreq.shtml&lt;/a&gt; I just input my last novel and found that &quot;but&quot; was the 23rd most frequent word with 316 instances (of 50038) at 0.6%. If an analysis of your test shows significantly higher percentages (maybe more than 1%), you can start to worry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T12:45:40.733" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T12:45:40.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2014-01-20T12:00:54.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try using some sort of text-to-speech program. Once you've finished your writing, get the text-to-speech software to read it out to you. Missing words will stand out much more, and you can do it as often as you want without annoying a human :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the voices can be a bit awkward, but it should work well enough for your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add a &quot;Speak&quot; command to Microsoft word, which will read out the selected text, by following &lt;a href=&quot;https://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word-help/using-the-speak-text-to-speech-feature-HA102066711.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;these steps&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(copied from the linked page)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Next to the Quick Access Toolbar, click Customize Quick Access Toolbar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quick Access Toolbar Speak command&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click More Commands.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the Choose commands from list, select All Commands.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scroll down to the Speak command, select it, and then click Add.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click OK.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then just selected some text, and click the &quot;Speak&quot; button to hear it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6253" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T12:00:54.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10080" CreationDate="2014-01-21T07:45:15.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You asked &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What can I use instead of “but” and “however”?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without further ado, here are the possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, on the contrary, otherwise, yet, even though, though ... still,  rather, unexpectedly, despite, in spite of,  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;He is a good hire. I love his honesty, but his honesty could lead us into trouble.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;We should hire him. I love his honesty.  On the other hand, his honesty could lead us into trouble.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The new medicine is giving people a lot of hope, but it is dangerous hope as it is not well tested yet.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I do not agree with the new medicine that is giving people a lot of hope. On the contrary, I feel it is dangerous as it is not well tested yet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The govt is not interested in people becoming rich, but they would want you to pay your taxes.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The govt is not interested in people becoming rich. Rather, they would want you to pay your taxes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The sky was clear and the weather was mild, but then it there was a thunderstorm and it started to rain.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The sky was clear and the weather was mild. Unexpectedly, there was a thunderstorm and it started to rain.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;She was born with debilitating condition, but she was successful in becoming a doctor.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Even though she was born with debilitating condition, she was successful in becoming a doctor.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Though she was born with debilitating condition, she was successful in becoming a doctor still.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;She was born with debilitating condition, yet she was successful in becoming a doctor. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;She persevered towards her success in becoming a doctor, otherwise she would have wallowed in her congenital debilitating condition.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;She persevered towards her success in becoming a doctor, despite her congenital debilitating condition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In spite of her being born with a debilitating condition, she was successful in becoming a doctor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3873" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T07:45:15.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9754" CreationDate="2014-01-21T08:50:56.233" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a good example is actually &lt;em&gt;The Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;. As we know, the backstory is massive, yet the novel starts right in on the action without introducing the world or its history or mythology first. We learn about that through the explanations the characters give each other and of course by their encounters and interactions with that backstory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might object that &lt;em&gt;The Hobbit&lt;/em&gt; was written before &lt;em&gt;The Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; and that it serves as its backstory, but I read the LotR without having read the Hobbit and found it completely comprehensible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are sections in &lt;em&gt;The Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; that are entirely backstory, without any (inter)action of the protagonists, but these are told in an entertaining way, embedded in a fitting situation (e.g. while the characters rest), never too long (for my taste), and in fact contribute to this type of worldbuilding story, which partly becomes interesting through backstory alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if this is not a contemporary setting, I believe it is a good example, because it illustrates the importance of what type of text you are writing: your genre and writing style. In some genres, like historical or crime fiction, the readers expect a certain amount of background information. A sleuth is expected to uncover what went on before (which is actually a great device to organically divulge it), and every novel set in a time before our own takes part of its appeal through extended descriptions and meandering side stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good examples in contemporary settings are countless. Just read any well criticized book. They all contain some amount of backstory, and &lt;strong&gt;it is less a matter of how to elegantly explain the backstory, but rather how to elegantly write in general&lt;/strong&gt;. For example a sentence like &quot;On his way home from work ...&quot; already tells you that this person has a job. If that is not a great example of literary writing, then not because it contains backstory, but because I'm unable to form pleasing sentences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T08:50:56.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7229" CreationDate="2014-01-21T10:44:39.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really love the dialogue in the Guest translation of the Mabinogion, it adds to the feeling that you are reading a text from a different time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;A horseman spoke to Pwyll.&#xA;&quot;...,&quot; said he.&#xA;&quot;...,&quot; said Pwyll.&#xA;&quot;...,&quot; said he.&#xA;&quot;...,&quot; said he.&#xA;&quot;...,&quot; said he.&#xA;etc.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No variation, and only the first speaker is named, the following turns are all not identifed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It won't help you write good dialogue today, but it shows that there is not one single genre of fiction with universal rules, and that maybe sometimes a bit of courage to find your own style of writing will make your book stand out and prevail among a host of formulaic bestseller clones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And as he was setting on his dogs he saw a horseman coming towards him upon a large light-grey steed, with a hunting horn round his neck, and clad in garments of grey woollen in the fashion of a hunting garb. And the horseman drew near and spoke unto him thus. &quot;Chieftain,&quot; said he, &quot;I know who thou art, and I greet thee not.&quot; &quot;Peradventure,&quot; said Pwyll, &quot;thou art of such dignity that thou shouldest not do so.&quot; &quot;Verily,&quot; answered he, &quot;it is not my dignity that prevents me.&quot; &quot;What is it then, O Chieftain?&quot; asked he. &quot;By Heaven, it is by reason of thine own ignorance and want of courtesy.&quot; &quot;What discourtesy, Chieftain, hast thou seen in me?&quot; &quot;Greater discourtesy saw I never in man,&quot; said he, &quot;than to drive away the dogs that were killing the stag and to set upon it thine own. This was discourteous, and though I may not be revenged upon thee, yet I declare to Heaven that I will do thee more dishonour than the value of an hundred stags.&quot; &quot;O Chieftain,&quot; he replied, &quot;if I have done ill I will redeem thy friendship.&quot; &quot;How wilt thou redeem it?&quot; &quot;According as thy dignity may be, but I know not who thou art?&quot; &quot;A crowned king am I in the land whence I come.&quot; &quot;Lord,&quot; said he, &quot;may the day prosper with thee, and from what land comest thou?&quot; &quot;From Annwvyn,&quot; answered he; &quot;Arawn, a King of Annwvyn am I.&quot; &quot;Lord,&quot; said he, &quot;how may I gain thy friendship?&quot; &quot;After this manner mayest thou,&quot; he said. &quot;There is a man whose dominions are opposite to mine, who is ever warring against me, and he is Havgan, a King of Annwvyn, and by ridding me of this oppression, which thou canst easily do, shalt thou gain my friendship.&quot; &quot;Gladly will I do this,&quot; said he. &quot;Show me how I may.&quot; &quot;I will show thee. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T10:44:39.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7229" CreationDate="2014-01-21T11:41:42.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use non-conversation bits to show where pauses or lulls in the conversation occur. They can be short, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey,&quot; said Bob.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey yourself.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;So...&quot; Bob started and then cleared his throat. This was only my third week on the job but I knew even at that early date that when Bob cleared his throat, he had something truly stupid to say. &quot;Do you have those TPS reports?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stared at Bob incredulously. What did he think this was, &lt;em&gt;Office Space&lt;/em&gt;? &quot;No, Bob, I do not have them. Perhaps they got lost in the year 1998.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully that first one demonstrated a little awkward pause while the main character thought up a (semi) witty response. You can also make them longer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Nancy, what do you think of the global dilemma?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Patricia was always asking Nancy stupid questions like this. She was soooo dumb. If she really wanted an answer, couldn't she just look it up on like Wikipedia or something? Maybe she could ask Jeeves. Oh my god! Was Ask Jeeves even still around? Maybe Jeeves had been replaced by a younger, hunkier guy named like Falco or something. No, that was stupid; computers don't get old and only rich guys ever used Ask Jeeves so they'd probably always want some fake old butler dude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Nancy, are you even listening to me?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can just add he said/she said to the end of each line; in fact, your readers will generally get the hang of it after an exchange or two (especially if your dialogue is strong enough) and you really don't need to add any tags at all. The thing about doing that is, it makes the conversation feel like a high-speed, no-pause madcap comedy style banter (think: Gilmore Girls), and if your characters are just talking about what went on that day at school it's going to feel a bit off. Additionally, there becomes a risk of making the characters seem like disembodied talking heads if you keep it up for too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One little trick you can do - that I recommend doing for dialogue in general - is on your subsequent drafts, go in and read it out loud. For one thing, in my experience this really roots out any inauthentic sounding verbiage, sentences that are too long to be said within one breath, and so on. For another, I think that with dialogue in particular you get a pretty good sense of how long those filled pauses occur. In real life, people say &quot;um&quot; and &quot;ah&quot; a lot; readers won't like you to drop those in (unless you want to portray a dullard) but they do kind of expect the &quot;pause&quot; side of the filled pause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T11:41:42.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10097" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-21T17:42:55.763" Score="3" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TinyURL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tinyURL&lt;/a&gt; recommended for news or magazine-style writing where AP style prevails--but then I see online warnings that clicking a tinyURL may take readers to sites they do not (at all) want to visit.&#xA;I'm writing source-rich articles on such topics as polar bears, global warming, and hydraulic fracturing.  If I use such in-line attributions as  &quot;According to the Polar Bear Specialist Group of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature)&quot; my text quickly becomes unreadable.  Long URLs attached to every line containing a fact from a different online source--that is, attached to nearly every line--present the same problem.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought tinyURL might offer a solution--but now apparently spammers are using tinyURLs to hijack readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will appreciate any advice on how to cite sources responsibly (and allow readers to confirm facts I am presenting) without producing cluttered, hard-to-read text.  Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6779" LastEditorUserId="6649" LastEditDate="2014-01-21T23:12:22.233" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T04:32:33.057" Title="tinyURL seen as risky by readers?" Tags="|citations|ap-style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10097" CreationDate="2014-01-21T17:57:59.537" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a bibliography I would always give the full original URL. When it goes offline, or a reader does not currently have internet access, people can at least still deduce the publishing context from the domain name or folder structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inline, the source is not quoted in full, according to APA. You use a short form, e.g. last name of author(s) and year of publication, and list the full source in a reference section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not familiar with the APA style, here's an online guide: &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/10/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/10/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see from my link, the URL tells you it is published by the Online Writing Lab (OWL) of Purdue University, so just from the URL you know it is a source you can trust and what part of Purdue created that content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-22T04:32:33.057" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T04:32:33.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10099" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-21T18:41:10.980" Score="3" ViewCount="638" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does a character in a short story/novella/novel really do while soliloquizing? Are they talking to themselves or thinking silently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of this occurs in &lt;em&gt;Jane Eyre&lt;/em&gt;, where the titular character &quot;soliloquizes&quot; somewhat lengthy soliloquys. How should the reader interpret this behavior?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5886" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T03:17:09.207" Title="What does a character in a short story/novella/novel really do while &quot;soliloquizing&quot;?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10099" CreationDate="2014-01-21T19:10:07.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different kinds of ways a soliloquy might be presented in writing. In a play or a movie, the character is usually shown to be either talking out loud to themselves (some people do this in real life) or they are breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience. In writing, it's common for the narrator to break the fourth wall and address the reader, or to present at length the thoughts of the author, narrator, or one of the characters. This is typically just considered part of the narration and not necessarily part of the story. Therefore nothing happens while it is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in-story characters presented as talking out loud, as Jane is in Jane Eyre:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary bridle-path, which I had been pursuing an hour or more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;My strength is quite failing me,&amp;quot; I said in a soliloquy. &amp;quot;I feel I cannot go much farther. Shall I be an outcast again this night? While the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched ground?....&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=Xqon3jNYhCIC&amp;amp;pg=PA200&amp;amp;lpg=PA200&amp;amp;dq=jane+eyre+soliloquy&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=wzcZroPDSk&amp;amp;sig=Jr-8d95Niid-0wurin7L-rp0XEs&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=usLeUqG5K9O_sQSW_IGYBw&amp;amp;ved=0CFMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=jane%20eyre%20soliloquy&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;from Google Books&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the above passage, the literal interpretation is that Jane is actually talking out loud. It doesn't seem unbelievable for her to do that, but you could choose to interpret it as a bit of dramatization of the telling of her story. If you do opt for the literal interpretation (as I do), then as to what &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; she might be doing at that moment, I'd say, is up to your imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T19:10:07.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10099" CreationDate="2014-01-21T19:21:28.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the OED, the noun &lt;em&gt;soliloquy&lt;/em&gt; has the following meanings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1.&#xA;    a. An instance of talking to or conversing with oneself, or of uttering one's thoughts&#xA;       aloud without addressing any person. &#xA;    b. A literary production representing or imitating a discourse of this nature.&#xA;2. Without article: the act of talking to oneself; soliloquizing.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The verb &lt;em&gt;soliloquize&lt;/em&gt; has these meanings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. intr. To engage in soliloquy; to talk to oneself.&#xA;2. trans.&#xA;    a. To utter in soliloquy.&#xA;        1854   Fraser's Mag. 50 72   Balder soliloquises his ambition.&#xA;    b. To address or apostrophize in soliloquy.&#xA;        1823   New Monthly Mag. 7 332   When you are soliloquizing the moon.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I gave two more uncommon of the many usage examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if someone &quot;soliloquizes&quot;, &lt;strong&gt;they either talk or write to themselves, address an inanimate object (Hamlet's skull), or write in the literary genre of the soliloquy&lt;/strong&gt;. The context should make clear, what exactly the character does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a sense, writing a diary could be understood as soliloquizing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Soliloquy+of+a+Farmer%E2%80%99s+Wife&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Soliloquy of a Farmer's Wife. The Diary of Annie Elliott Perrin&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a drama, a monologue, a soliloquy and an aside are differentiated thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;monologue is long, breaking the back and forth of normal conversation, but it is addressed at other characters (who may be off stage, e.g. on the telephone)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;during a soliloquy, which may be long or only a few words, the speaker is &lt;strong&gt;alone on the stage&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an aside is addressed at the audience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short soliloquy would be one of two characters exiting the stage, the remaining character uttering: &quot;Well, there he goes ...,&quot; and the next charactering coming onto the stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most famous soliloquy is probably the &quot;to be or not to be&quot;-speech in Shakespeare's &lt;em&gt;Hamlet&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-22T05:48:39.037" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T05:48:39.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10080" CreationDate="2014-01-22T06:43:13.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the other good answers, &quot;but ...&quot; is a negation or restriction of the thing or condition it refers to. It &quot;takes away&quot; from it. It also breaks the flow of thought/action (which is fine when it's on purpose.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people use this in speech and writing all the time as a matter of habit, even when it's not really necessary or appropriate. A lot of the time two ideas are just in sequence and could simply be stated or even joined with &quot;and&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second example shows both (as possibilities - not as I'm right/you're wrong!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For me, it was an endless torture. As I stood there, watching the bus&#xA;  disappear down the street, I reminded myself that it wasn't so bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For me, it was an endless torture and as I stood there, watching the&#xA;  bus disappear down the street, I reminded myself that it wasn't so&#xA;  bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a whole study called Conscious Languaging which teaches people to reduce or eliminate such usages because it can be a form of self sabotage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip side of this, using &quot;but&quot; can help convey uncertainty, hesitation, low self esteem, or intentional negating of the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Garrison Keillor (in his A Prairie Home Companion radio show) uses this to great effect with his Norwegian bachelor farmers' &quot;Yuh,but ...&quot;, where they have a reason why almost anything good won't work out - which serves mainly as a reflection on their state of mind rather than on the subject itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T06:43:13.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10025" CreationDate="2014-01-22T08:58:07.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are asking about writing tools, you might want to try Lyx. Lyx is a front-end to LaTex and for that reason is a writing tool rather than a typesetting tool. Scrivener is another writing tool, but it is proprietary. Scrivener supports Multimarkdown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you may have read all over the web that LaTex is all about scientific and manual formulae, in the words of its creator Donald Knuth, the program was designed to &quot;create beautiful books&quot;.  It is first and foremost a typesetting program. Create your document using another tool and when you are ready to typeset it, use LaTex. You can write in Open Office or Libre Office and export to LaTex. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about typesetting programs which are alternatives to LaTex, there are LaTex derivatives such as ConText, LuaLaTex and XeLatex. Lout is another possibility. There are proprietary solutions such as Quark and InDesign. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6784" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T08:58:07.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10071" CreationDate="2014-01-22T16:27:10.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gone Girl does this to a certain extent but it does make an effort to forward the plot with the separate view points. Long as you're doing something with it, I don't see why not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6785" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T16:27:10.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10106" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-23T01:28:28.480" Score="1" ViewCount="378" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have used the phrase:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There are not enough words in the tongues of men, elves, dwarves, trolls, goblins, or beasts to describe how disgusting...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in a couple of reviews of mine, which someone has pointed out is very similar to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of men for this treachery.&quot; by Treebeard from Lord of the Rings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the meaning of the sentence and the sentence structure are similar, they only share one or two words. &lt;strong&gt;Is this plagiarism, or just two similar sentences?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6790" LastEditorUserId="6649" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T04:16:17.863" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T07:23:31.223" Title="How similar is too similar?" Tags="|quotes|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10106" CreationDate="2014-01-23T02:48:38.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's the &quot;tongues&quot; which caught everyone's eye. That faux high English hearkens back to Tolkien's diction, which makes people recall his version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change it up. Rearrange the order and add a little hyperbole:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In all the dialects of all the languages of all the cultures of men, elves, dwarves, trolls, goblins, or beasts, there are not enough words to describe how disgusting...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T02:48:38.823" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10106" CreationDate="2014-01-23T03:00:46.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm hoping those weren't restaurant reviews!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, IMHO, your phrase is a nod to Tolkien, a literary allusion.  That is not plagiarism, any more than it would be plagiarism to say at the end of a review of a robotics show, &quot;Next year, for sure, I'll be back.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T03:00:46.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10099" CreationDate="2014-01-23T03:17:09.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless the author tells me otherwise, I always picture the character going about his business half talking to himself out loud and half talking to himself in his head.  I picture it that way because that's what I do when I'm alone and in deep thought.  OTOH, if the author actually uses the word soliloquy (or a form of it) to describe what the character is doing, then I would picture the character almost orating, out loud, to himself.  How melodramatic my mind-picture would be would depend upon the character's previously described behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T03:17:09.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10110" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-23T04:58:40.710" Score="9" ViewCount="1439" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here's a summary of the plot:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main character goes to a mountain to visit his half-sister. He hasn't seen her in years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She went there to undergo a &lt;em&gt;spiritual healing&lt;/em&gt;. Later he discovers her &lt;em&gt;wound&lt;/em&gt; has something to do with their elder brother, and that she needs him (the protagonist) in order to recover from this affliction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that isn't all. While he's in the mountain he meets a girl who (apparently) doesn't possess a &lt;em&gt;soul&lt;/em&gt;. She is often seen in the forest near ancient trees. After he meets her she tells him that he didn't only come to the mountain looking for his half-sister, but also looking for her. That he must help her to accomplish something. Something of utter importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's sure he hasn't seen her before, though she looks a lot like a girl he met once when he was a kid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm more or less satisfied with this plot, however, I can't shake off the feeling that the protagonist is more a &quot;spectator&quot; rather than someone who's playing an &quot;active&quot; role in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't happening in another story I'm writing. The story is about a man who tells his wife about a sexual fantasy he has. But that he's OK if she doesn't want to go along with it. However, the wife suddenly stops talking to him, and after that a series of surreal things start to happen to him: he's visited at night by a black bird, and meets a young girl in the forest nearby their house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike the first story, in this one I feel the main character is deeply rooted in the plot; the story is after all about his relationship with his wife and his sexual desires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do to solve the problem with the first story? Or should I just drop the entire project (or let it cool down, at least) and focus on the second one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've already written 16,000 words for the first one, and 5,000 for the second one (both are second drafts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I usually write two stories simultaneously. When I feel I'm &quot;stuck&quot; with one I jump to the other to &quot;relax.&quot; Yeah, I don't have many hobbies.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T05:28:16.140" LastActivityDate="2021-01-22T21:29:36.350" Title="I feel my protagonist is too &quot;detached&quot; from the main plot. What should I do?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|plot|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10106" CreationDate="2014-01-23T07:23:31.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a phrase from a novel or movie becomes so widespread that it can be considered a common figure of speech, using it is no longer plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No-one in their right mind would accuse you of plagiarism when you opened a review with: &quot;To read or not to read, that is the question.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tolkien's &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; is one of the most read books of our time, and using certain catchphrases from it cannot be seen as plagiarism, for the simple fact that everyone and their grandmother recognize the borrowing. &lt;strong&gt;The basic prerequisite for plagiarsim is that you want to deceive your readers about the authorship of your sentences, and you cannot deceive anyone if everyone knows that that sentence is not from you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it doesn't matter, if &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; thought that that was your sentence and the similarity is merely coincidental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T07:23:31.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10110" CreationDate="2014-01-23T10:45:16.693" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Raise the stakes. Give him some urgent reason for doing something or being there. Take something away from him which he has to find, recover, or fix. Add a ticking clock. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is he visiting his half-sister now? Maybe their shared parent is&#xA;dying? Maybe he's dying?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is he going to the mountain? Maybe he's been diagnosed as missing&#xA;a soul, or his soul is dying, and something/one on the mountain can&#xA;fix that? Maybe he had a dream that he had to give a soul to someone&#xA;on the mountain, or he was told a prophecy?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a deadline for getting &lt;em&gt;off&lt;/em&gt; the mountain? The earthquake&#xA;from Eri's story? Foresters, clear-cutters, a flood, a plague?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the &quot;something of utter importance&quot;? Can you tie it to&#xA;something earlier in the story? Can you foreshadow something going on&#xA;with his wife, husband, child, job, dog, house which only this soulless person can fix?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just riffing, but basically your protagonist is detached because he wandered into the plot. Give him a reason to be there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T10:45:16.693" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10110" CreationDate="2014-01-23T11:20:18.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Internal secret. Something about him that kept bothering him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emphasize the fact &quot;she looks a lot like a girl he met once when he was a kid.&quot; Recurring dreams. Weird events. Memories mismatching reality; flawed deja vu. Hint that he is not a normal person, and make it true in the end. Even if he's essentially a live McGufin to be delivered from point A to point B by other characters of the story, he's bound into the plot. Or write this as two stories, two threads - one external, the mountains, the girl, and another internal, daydreams, dreams, memories, irrational feelings and sourceless knowledge, the two threads converging towards the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T11:20:18.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10066" CreationDate="2014-01-23T12:40:29.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In such a situation, you may do two things. You may either cite the link or source referring to its title or you may cite it as “anonymous” in your references. The title of the book can be referred to in the bibliography in the name of “anonymous”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6735" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T18:31:08.197" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T18:31:08.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9171" CreationDate="2014-01-23T12:48:25.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dean Smith, whom Shantnu Tiwari mentions in his/her answer, is an established writer with many books on the market published by established publishers. As a new writer, being published by a publishing house means that there was some selection process that filtered out the worst writers. As a reader, blindly grabbing a book from any of the big publishing houses means, that I will not be completely disappointed, even if it may not be my favourite book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I travel a lot by train, and I often pick up books in train station book stores that I know nothing about, and it has always been an entertaining read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paying for and investing time in a self-published book is always a risk, and I have often been completely surprised by the total lack of storytelling ability, ideas and orthography. I only buy self-published books, if I know for sure that the book is good, and that is usually only the case with authors I know and like or if the reviews are overwhelmingly positive and written by reviewers I trust (such as in a newspaper of my choice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, personally, would always try publishing houses first, because they have the expertise to print the book well and market it, both of which I totally lack. Only if no-one wanted to publish it, would I self-publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T12:48:25.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10119" CreationDate="2014-01-23T15:18:21.703" Score="2" ViewCount="284" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am trying to craft a fantasy story, but I am having trouble creating a realistic backstory that can explain character actions well. How can I fix that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6491" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T08:43:57.227" Title="How to write engaging and relevant backstory" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10046" CreationDate="2014-01-23T15:23:28.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to support documentation for multiple products, content reuse (in a more efficient manner than copy&amp;amp;paste) becomes desirable. If that's the case, a tool like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.author-it.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Author-it&lt;/a&gt; fits your requirements: multiple output formats including PDF and HTML, proper book formatting (TOC, index, etc), highly customizable styles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its collaboration features are structured a bit differently from the Google Docs model: one author can work on a piece of text at a time, but that piece of text can be small (one section). The writer sets up a review workflow where others can comment, but not directly change the source. This prevents edit wars and screwing up painstakingly-written content by amateurs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sets it apart from the usual office collaboration tools is the ability to reuse content from single sentences to entire chapters. This saves a lot of time if you create documentation for multiple products. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T15:23:28.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10117" CreationDate="2014-01-23T19:09:28.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Backstory does not need to be either engaging or relevant.  If it were both, it would be &quot;story.&quot;  Unless you have particular need to detail someone's backstory, &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt;.  There are numerous examples of heroes, villains, and bystanders in literature who don't have a lick of precedent for why they are acting as they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T19:09:28.500" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10120" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10185" CreationDate="2014-01-24T04:40:27.320" Score="0" ViewCount="934" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my undergraduate thesis paper on a topic in which a lot of work has been done. So, it is important to maintain the flow of progress of my subject of interest through out the years. As, a result I often see a lot of work of many different researchers in the related/relevant work section. It is not possible to go through all of these papers. So, I am trying to paraphrase their work as mentioned in the relevant work section. Now, how am I going to cite the work of the original authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6792" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T13:05:24.803" Title="Citing authors already cited in a paper" Tags="|citations|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10121" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T06:11:24.690" Score="1" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this character. I am still debating whether I should allow him to read the first line of the King James Version of the Bible, &quot;In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth...&quot; and cut off right there or just summarize what goes on by narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5886" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T10:15:15.187" Title="Can a character read a short excerpt from published literature?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10121" CreationDate="2014-01-24T11:39:29.173" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Bible itself is public domain, but particular versions might not be. So the only thing is not to mention the particular version ie. &quot;Scofield KJV&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you start using the editor's footnotes or personal inserts, then you may run into an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6796" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-01-26T10:15:15.187" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T10:15:15.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10071" CreationDate="2014-01-24T13:18:17.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, If you are going to describe the same events from 2 POVs I won't really like it unless you use one POV to start the event and things start to escalade and advance form the other POV. Like instead of talking about the same event you can sort of advance the events. A perfect example would be a recent book I read by Veronica Roth (Allegiant).  Although it seemed kind of weird when I heard she was going to write it that way, it actually turned out great and every POV was different and contributed to the twist in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6798" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T13:18:17.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10126" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T15:16:51.727" Score="1" ViewCount="3004" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any corporate publishers that still accept neat handwritten manuscripts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about manuscripts written in beautiful calligraphy and the author wants to capture the form of the writing (as part of the character) as much as the content of the writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5886" LastEditorUserId="5909" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T14:25:23.170" LastActivityDate="2022-02-15T02:50:44.320" Title="Are there any corporate publishers that still accept neat handwritten manuscripts?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T16:04:36.977" Score="1" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you casually address a child in the Midwestern dialect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5886" LastEditorUserId="5886" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T22:37:32.233" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T22:11:38.373" Title="How do you casually address a child in the Midwestern dialect?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2014-02-05T09:40:49.907" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10126" CreationDate="2014-01-24T16:05:25.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe we have any publishers on here, and I can't say for definite. Still: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They won't be able to scan the manuscript because they'll have very specific formatting and size requirements, as well as the need to be able produce the text in different formats (paper back, hard back, ebook, etc...) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They would have to type up your manuscript and then format it (or more likely tell you to do it.) That's if they accept it. Every submission process I've seen requires very strict formatting. I have seen requests for paper submissions, but they would still end up writing up the document into an electronic format before publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in the comments, your best bet is to go for a standard submission and make it clear that you would like to use calligraphy. Steven Hall managed wonderful things with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rawsharktexts.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Raw Shark Texts&lt;/a&gt; this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final note, it would be incredibly hard to read an entire book in calligraphy (impossible for many people) so the chances of that option being taken is likely slim, and as such forcing it on the publisher may well stop them from taking a manuscript they may have taken otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T16:05:25.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10120" CreationDate="2014-01-24T16:33:53.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in the process of writing a PhD thesis myself. Here in Russia we have a requirement that each PhD work shall include a chapter on the current state of the theme in the scientific community. The aspirant (PhD-to-be) is supposed to read at least some of them (most relevant to his/her particular theme, most cited, etc) and reference them, like in scientific paper. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Most commonly those works address the use of&#xA;SLM in optical manipulation to generate multiple traps, but there is&#xA;considerable number of researchers who shape laser beam into single trap with&#xA;some specific properties.  For example, recent study of Rodrigo et al. [1] ad-&#xA;dresses shaping of the light field into an arbitrary 3D-curve, producing a sort&#xA;of “light rope”. The study contains experimental results of moving&#xA;microobjects along those curves due to phase gradient.&#xA;&#xA;On the other hand, hard DOE — reliefs etched in glass or quartz plate — are also&#xA;of interest. Huang et al.[2] discovered a way to produce elongated area of high&#xA;intensity in the path of a laser beam. There is also a number of work done by&#xA;our colleagues in this area.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, you present some quick summary of all known to you works in your field in one chapter, and then, in other chapters of your thesis you're supposed to just mention them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;It was shown ([1]), that microobjects would move in the direction of &#xA;the phase gradient, therefore...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, of course, at the end of thesis you have Bibliography pages in which you state in full all the data on cited works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[1] J. A. Rodrigo, T. Alieva, E. Abramochkin, and I. Castro,&#xA;Opt. Express 21, 20544 (2013).&#xA;[2] K. Huang, P. Shi, X.-l. Kang, X. Zhang, and Y.-p. Li,&#xA;Opt. Lett. 35, 965 (2010).&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many styles in which to present the bibliography. If you're not constrained by your institution guidelines, take your pick: Zotero or BibTeX are able to format bibliography list in many styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPD: Here, I updated examples, now they are real citations from my text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6663" LastEditorUserId="6663" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T18:51:26.293" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T18:51:26.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10127" CreationDate="2014-01-24T17:12:12.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the child is a boy, &quot;son&quot; or &quot;junior&quot; is common here in the south.  I can't think of much for girls other than the pet names you mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6802" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T17:12:12.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10150" CreationDate="2014-01-24T18:41:45.680" Score="4" ViewCount="765" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a book for fun and have thought a lot about character development. Is character development as important as the actual dialog of the story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I was reading a book this weekend that was written by one of the biggest legal thriller writers at the moment. The main character is in prison and then at the end moves to some place in South America and finds himself wealthy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought that the story was good and the characters seem well described. But is the character development of the person needed before the story really gets going? Should the first chapters develop the character in the mind of the reader or can it build and add new items through the course of the story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard people say that some authors spend too much time describing a character or a scene and not enough on dialog. To me I like a good story but I had an English teacher tell me that you have to have the character developed in the beginning of the story rather than develop them throughout the course of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6432" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T19:13:49.250" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T16:00:25.263" Title="Character development in a story?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10131" CreationDate="2014-01-24T19:12:39.480" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should &lt;em&gt;establish&lt;/em&gt; the character early on, but I don't think you can &lt;em&gt;develop&lt;/em&gt; anyone all in the beginning. What point is there for the story, then, if the character is done developing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader should have some sense of who the person is before the real meat of the tale gets underway. Revealing parts of the character as you go is part of the point of a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think either you misunderstood your teacher or the teacher was flat-out wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T19:12:39.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10134" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T19:14:31.350" Score="2" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an idea but before i run with it I need to know if you heard of a show going from, let's say, drama to fantasy. I have smooth transitions from one to the other and the B-plot  carries through. The only changes are the characters and the A and C-plots. I think it could work but I need more opinions on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6796" LastEditorUserId="6796" LastEditDate="2014-01-25T01:21:43.160" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T12:57:17.970" Title="When writing TV scripts, is it heard of to change not only the characters but the type of story?" Tags="|character-development|plot|script|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10131" CreationDate="2014-01-24T19:26:30.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I started out i got a lot of dialog on paper. But I was missing something, personalities. I recently downloaded an app that helped me with that. It asked detailed questions about my characters. From fears and education to eye color. Now it is easier for me to write out feelings. knowing your characters is very important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6796" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T19:26:30.293" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10121" CreationDate="2014-01-24T19:47:40.677" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, you cannot include in your own fiction an excerpt from published literature &lt;strong&gt;without permission&lt;/strong&gt;.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US copyright office's Fair Use FAQ&lt;/a&gt; recommends always getting permission if there is any doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work is in public domain, as the text of many classics are, you could insert the whole thing without permission or even attribution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that, as @evilsoup noted in the comments, the King James Bible is protected by a royal copyright within the United Kingdom until 2039, and if you were to publish there you would need to obtain permission from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cambridge.org/rights/corporate/permission.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cambrige University Press&lt;/a&gt;.  (The New King James Version, btw, is a far more recent edition and you'd want to contact &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/New-King-James-Version-NKJV-Bible/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thomas Nelson Publishers&lt;/a&gt; for permission.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, unless you're self-publishing, you shouldn't worry about the excerpts you use aside from noting them and being prepared to substitute something else.  If you're writing, WRITE, and worry about permission to use your quotations latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you finally find a publisher, their legal department may very well already have permission to use various quotations in their works, and will certainly be far more aware of the precedent and standards for your market than random strangers on the internet ever could be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T19:47:40.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10127" CreationDate="2014-01-24T20:28:10.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a male in my mid-forties -- born, bred, and still living in Minnesota. I believe that qualifies as &quot;Midwestern&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When addressing young girls, I typically use one of &quot;sweety&quot;, &quot;hon&quot;, &quot;honey&quot;, &quot;sweet&quot;, or their name or nickname (if I know either). Not infrequently I'll use a combination (e.g., &quot;Haley sweet - could you please pick up those wrappers and throw them away?&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When addressing you buys other than my son, I'll typically use one of &quot;bud&quot;, &quot;dude&quot;, &quot;buddy&quot;, their nickname, or their name (assuming I know either). Occasionally, if they're &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; young, I'll use &quot;sweety&quot; or &quot;hon&quot; with boys, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the exception of &quot;dude&quot;, I hear these same terms frequently from other adults here in Minnesota, as well as in Wisconsin and North Dakota.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My son is a special case. In addition to the terms I use for addressing other young boys, I'll also use the more sugary terms I use with girls, as well as some of the special nicknames he's picked up over the years. I'm careful not to use the &quot;sweeter&quot; terms around other kids, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T22:11:38.373" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T22:11:38.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10131" CreationDate="2014-01-25T00:46:08.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Lauren I think you're confusing character &lt;em&gt;establishment&lt;/em&gt; with character &lt;em&gt;development.&lt;/em&gt; Character development is something you do before or &lt;em&gt;while&lt;/em&gt; you're writing the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm the type who develops the characters while writing the story (throughout the story not only at the beginning). For me, they can only become alive if I see them interacting with the story because, in a sense, &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; are the story. Then after they are somehow developed I go back and develop them a bit more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I think developing too much a character is never a bad thing, I don't understand why you want to see it as something separated from the story or dialogue. The story is the character, and the character is the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T00:46:08.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10140" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-25T03:47:55.423" Score="5" ViewCount="1476" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say an author is fluent in three different languages. And now, let's say this author wants to create a trilingual story. The narration may be done in English, but the dialogue may be done in all three languages, and it must be so because the author wants to use bilingual wordplays and puns, which means translation is not feasible. Is there a market for that type of work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will publishers accept bilingual or multilingual works?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If publishers do not accept works in that format, in what ways may the author insert a trilingual character who has a sense of humor and a penchant for language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5886" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-09T08:01:39.540" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T08:01:39.540" Title="Will publishers accept bilingual or multilingual works?" Tags="|creative-writing|publishing|multilingual|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10141" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10142" CreationDate="2014-01-25T06:07:33.443" Score="4" ViewCount="252" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a review of a novel, which I guess is postmodern in a nonstrict way. And I need help with terms.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you call a technique when the main character is the author of the novel and along the plot he writes the novel itself, discusses excerpts of it with other characters, doubts what to write and what not to write etc.? When the novel is part of its own plot. The narrative is first-person, however the novel is not in a form of diary, rather memoirs (not exactly, but close).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also, what brightest examples of such technique from authoritative writers can you name as an exemplar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6805" LastEditorUserId="6805" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T09:44:51.223" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T09:44:51.223" Title="Referencing the process of writing the novel as a part of the novel's plot" Tags="|technique|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10141" CreationDate="2014-01-25T08:23:10.807" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The technical terms in literature and art theory used in relation to this are &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_abyme#Literature_and_film&quot;&gt;mise-en-abyme&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafiction&quot;&gt;metafiction&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, and &quot;s&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-reference#In_literature.2C_film.2C_and_popular_culture&quot;&gt;elf-referentiality&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. All may denote slightly different aspects of the phenomenon, depending on the definitions used by the respective theorists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T08:23:10.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10140" CreationDate="2014-01-25T15:14:32.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the publisher of a book needs to think that there's enough of an audience for the work. So, they need to believe that there's enough people who speak all of the relevant languages fluently (puns are usually lost on less skilled speakers of a language), AND who like to read, AND who read whatever genre the book is in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's starting to sound like a small set of people, no matter which languages you pick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how could one get such a thing published? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, as the comments indicate, try to find such works. I have no idea how to search for such a thing, so I'd probably go around to minority language bookstores in the area (Spanish speaking stores in the US, for instance) and see what they can tell me. If you find a publisher of such works, that's the place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next up, try publishers of minority works (there are publishers of Spanish works in the US, for instance). They already serve a bi-lingual population, so perhaps they'd be up for such a work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't work, and the author believes in the form, I'd say go the self-pub route. Do an e-book, do POD. No it's not a publisher contract, and yes it's a lot of work on the author's part, and no, the money isn't going to be there, but if there's no existing distribution channel for such works then it may be that there's not enough interest to get a publisher on board at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="679" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T15:14:32.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10140" CreationDate="2014-01-25T16:39:57.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Russian editions of Tolstoy (particularly of his &quot;War and Peace&quot;) are bilingual --- French was the language of nobles in Russian Empire at the time, so characters often talk and write letters in French. All French fragments come with footnotes, so bilingual readers (who, in fact, was Tolstoy's intended readers when he wrote those texts) could read two languages and the rest could follow the footnotes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those parts are actually interesting ones, though the rest of the book is dead boring. The point is, however, that you could indeed get published with bilingual (at least) book if you provide footnotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6663" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T16:39:57.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10140" CreationDate="2014-01-25T19:17:29.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the main argument against a book written in multiple languages is aesthetic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And we are not talking about books, like War and Peace, that have small parts in another language, or quote texts in the original language, but books truly written in two or more languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a book can be easily imagined, when you listen to people who grow up multilingually: for example, here, in Germany, there is a large community of adolescents of Turkish origin. These youths often speak Turkish at home and German in school and with their non-Turkish friends. When you listen to two Turkish kids on the bus, they communicate in a Pidgin mix of German and Turkish. They do so, because some things are better or more easily said in on language than the other, so they switch to whatever comes most easily or sound most cool, or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this example – and maybe you have witnessed such a conversation yourself – you can easily imagine a book being written in the same way, with every section or sentence or part of sentence being written in the language that either best conveys the authors intention or sounds best or comes most easily to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But why is that a problem, aesthetically, if your readers are fluent in all the used languages? Because the reasons given are not acceptable reasons from an aesthetic perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is a form of art. The assumption is that not everyone can write at a level worthy of publication, or that at least they have to learn it. It takes training to achieve a level of mastery that results in elegant and pleasing sentences. And it takes talent and/or diligent training over many years to enter the ranks of the literary greats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea to write (in one or more languages) as you find it most easy, contradicts the idea of art. Art is based on the idea of ingenuity: of fighting hard, and against the inherent obstactles of a language, for a beautiful text. Writing in multiple languages because that way you can better express yourself means that you take it easy, that you are lazy, that you did not master language, but that it masters you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-26T15:20:37.700" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T15:20:37.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10117" CreationDate="2014-01-26T03:10:11.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;JK Rowling is great in backstories. You check out hers to get an idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once Upon A Time created a Rumpelstiltskin backstory; check it out too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Me, I'm particularly gossipy and nosy. During that course of my everyday life when I hear one-line rumors, I arrive to conclusions that the person might be like this, like that. On news, when a headline was read, you'd jump to conclusions on the possible reasons why it happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that pretty well starts a good backstory. You think of a simple reason why the person turned to that type of him. Then, since it's fantasy, you'd do well in incorporating twists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need a clear sense of who your characters are. Their likes, passion, mannerisms, principles. With that, you could bind their backstory to the present story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6473" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T03:10:11.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10126" CreationDate="2014-01-26T04:39:28.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somewhere in my father's library he has a book that was not typeset. The scholar who penned it had an incredibly regular and readable hand, and since this book was an index and typos would be a major problem, the decision was made to photograph the manuscript. My father has thousands of books. One was not typeset. Unless your handwriting is almost as good as a linotype, just type it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T04:39:28.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10126" CreationDate="2014-01-26T06:19:59.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the handwriting is part of the art, every publisher will consider publishing a facsimile of a handwritten text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example is the work of Swiss artist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_W%C3%B6lfli&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adolf Wölfli&lt;/a&gt;. Wölfli was a farm laborer suffering from a mental disorder, who started to create art while living in a psychiatric ward. His &quot;writing&quot; is interwoven with drawings and ornaments, and is published as facsimile, instead of typeset, because the special quality of his art would be lost. An example is his narrative &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adolfwoelfli.ch/index.php?c=d&amp;amp;level=4&amp;amp;sublevel=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Von der Wiege bis zum Graab&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The criterion by which publishers decide to publish a facsimile of a handwritten text is that the physical object of the paper with the writing on it is a piece of art and not simply a container of narrative. Narrative text can be rendered in any script and is not dependent on the handwriting. So a novel would certainly never be published in facsimile handwriting (except for scholars studying a famous writer and his writing process). But an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_book&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;artist's book&lt;/a&gt; will always be reproduced as facsimile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with any other type of publication, you have to find a suitable publisher and convince them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your questions (about multilingual and handwritten texts) seem to show that you have a view of writing, literature and reading that may be somewhat distinct from the bestseller market. Basically, as an answer to all your questions, there is a market for everything. There is a wide variety of non-standard books published by specialized publishers for a small and specialized readership. Some books have a print run of only a handful copies, and cost a fortune. But if you want to publish through a major publishing house and reach a large audience, you will have the best chance if your books look like any other book – though there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Peregrine%27s_Home_for_Peculiar_Children&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;exceptions&lt;/a&gt;. But if you perceive of your work as art and find that it must be handwritten and in multiple languages, then that is how it must be, and all you need to do is resign yourself to being read by a small readership or not at all. The numbers of writers who created outstanding works but were never appreciated by the general public is legion. Bestsellers are not usually the greatest books. You must decide: Do you want to sell books? Or do you want to satisfy your own whims? Both is legitimate, but both paths lead to different outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-26T06:34:23.660" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T06:34:23.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10141" CreationDate="2014-01-26T12:05:37.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keyed into Google &quot;A movie about itself&quot;, and I got this link to Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-reference&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-reference&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Metareference, a metafiction technique, is a situation in a work of fiction whereby characters display an awareness that they are in such a work, such as a film, television show or book. Sometimes it may even just be a form of editing or film-making technique that comments on the programme/film/book itself. It is also sometimes known as &quot;Breaking the Fourth Wall&quot;, in reference to the theatrical tradition of playing as if there were no audience, as if a wall existed between them and the actors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Metareference in fiction is jarring to the reader, but can be comical, such as in Jasper Fforde's novel Lost in a Good Book. The character Thursday Next remarks to her husband that she feels uncomfortable having sex in front of so many people; he is confused since they are alone in their bedroom, so she explains, &quot;all the people reading us&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which led to this link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafiction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Metafiction&quot; is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3873" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T12:05:37.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10131" CreationDate="2014-01-26T12:56:22.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like reading stories where the characters are given an initial run-down as they are introduced into the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The run-down could roast the character in sarcasm, describing what others say and had said about the character, or praise him/her, would include their hitherto history and known accomplishment, rumours and hearsay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I classify the contents of a run-down into&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The author's personal description about the character/personality of the character. (&lt;em&gt;Character of the character? Silly, but how else could I say it?&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The author's revelation about the thought history, desires and disappointments of the character that only the author would have known.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The character's known history&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;known by general public&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;known by a select few&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;known by a partner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;History of chatter, opinions, roasts, allegations found in item 3 concerning the character, but written without direct opinion from the author about the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General public chatter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Excerpts of chatter within family, colleagues, nemeses, small unknown parties&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Past interactions with spouse, children, close friends, nemesis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The run-down is lightened up and made entertaining with roasts and sarcasm. A run-down is written as an intriguing short story within the story. I am not saying the run-down is compartmentalized into the four categories. Rather, the run-down relies on those four categories written as a short story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as the story proceeds, the actual character of those persons would take twists and turns, that would prove the initial run-down as wrong, inadequate or vindicated, besides the changes in the personality and experiences of the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember reading Dune. I remember the doctor who betrayed Duke Leto Atreides. However, I also recall observing Frank Herbert's writing of the series having become darker and relying more on author's personal perception in the initial run-down of a character, after the death of his wife. I think when an author becomes lazy making the initial run-down an op-ed piece rather than an intriguing short-story - that ruins the whole story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3873" LastEditorUserId="3873" LastEditDate="2014-01-26T13:02:48.090" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T13:02:48.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10151" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-26T23:02:39.767" Score="3" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to documentary writing and would like to write a script for a short film. The subject is a local free medical clinic for folks who don't have medical insurance. It's run by a local ER doctor, and operates a few times a month out of a local church.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I go about writing a documentary about an afternoon at the clinic? Do documentaries have scripts? Thanks for your help. Much appreciated. If I've written this question in the wrong place, please advise as to where I should move it to. Thanks :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6446" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T17:26:41.287" Title="Writing a short documentary about a medical clinic" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10151" CreationDate="2014-01-27T00:05:26.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have only limited experience with this, but I imagine that the first step would be to film as much of the behind-the-scenes action as you can. Get the staff used to having a camera crew around. As you film, look for patterns and themes. Conduct interviews, and ask lots of questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are done with this step, you should have a better idea of how the clinic really works. You'll know which kinds of things you've seen are common, and which are anomalies. Figure out which of the clips you've collected need to be in the final production, and which are destined for the editing room floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my mind, the script writing would happen only after all the pieces of the puzzle are in place. The script becomes something that ties everything together, and presents an overarching theme to the viewer, instead of a seemingly random hodgepodge of clips, leaving the viewer wondering what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T00:05:26.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10151" CreationDate="2014-01-27T12:39:31.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, Who is the audience? Patients without insurance. Okay...everything from alzheimers to pregnancy? What is the objective of the piece? Goals? What is the tone of the piece? eg: Hard, soft? What kind of services are provided at the clinic? Who is eligible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interviews you say need to be done? With whom? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the no more than six messages you want to convey? Will you need animation for any part of the project? Will it have on-screen or off screen narration, or no narration at all?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Music? Make sure it is rights free, or put it into your budget to produce or buy music beds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember when interviewing patients or staff you MUST get their approval to use their voices and images. Similarly, you MUST get the camera person to sign off their rights. If they do not sign off, they own the video, not you, even if you have paid them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then shoot the video based on your audience, theme and tone mentioned above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the video is aimed at patients alone, keep it short. 5-10 minutes.&#xA;Also ask yourself how the video will be seen? Online? As new patients enter the ER for the first time? A lot of videos end up on the bookshelf collecting dust without a plan on how they will be used. Also keep in mind, video has a shelf life. The girl in the mini-skirt will someday look kinda dusty and musty. Or the Dr. with huge side-burns and polyester shirt will look like a character in a pimp movie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure to get necessary 'B' roll footage such as exteriors, or in an interview, some shots of the interviewer nodding. This kind of stuff can always be thrown out, but it is good to have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can edit the video by yourself with all the tools available. Unfortunately there is a learning curve. So it might be best to get someone involved who has editing experience using a non-destructive editor like Adobe, Sony Vegas, Apple, or on the Linux side of things, Kdenlive.. Lotsa choices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have all the elements you think you need, write the script from the outline you have created. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once in the editing situation, you may find you want to use some fancy effects suggested, or perhaps move 'scenes' around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6814" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T12:39:31.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10131" CreationDate="2014-01-27T16:00:25.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I, as a reader, cannot really know what a character is like until I see that character tested. Any clod can say “I love you”, but what if the beloved replies “If you really loved me, you’d kill my ex-husband”?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T16:00:25.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8555" CreationDate="2014-01-28T00:37:10.693" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No spaces is the best usage of the mutton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.The dog ran outside—and promptly shat in the yard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.The dog ran outside -- and promptly shat in the yard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.The dog ran outside — and promptly shat in the yard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All are correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The -- was for &quot;back in tha day&quot; when computers could not &#xA;render — properly. We have modern browsers and JavaScript&#xA;so editors need to chill. Using — is ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6816" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T00:37:10.693" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10176" CreationDate="2014-01-28T02:27:21.630" Score="3" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PR headline I provided was,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acme Co to exhibit in western states for first time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The editor changed it to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acme Co expands sales program to western United States&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are fundamentally different ideas. Acme Co already has some dealers in the western United States. Acme Co however has never traveled west to exhibit at any trade shows. Additionally, Acme Co sells exclusively through dealers. I find the new headline a bit misleading and not suited to our goal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We already have dealers in the West. We're looking to expand our dealer network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What methods can I use to address this or since it is in a sense &quot;free advertising&quot; is it best to just let it go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3364" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T02:07:25.263" Title="Editor of a publication changed Press Release headline to the point the meaning changed, what can be done?" Tags="|press-release|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10157" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-01-28T02:29:08.250" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T02:29:08.250" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T02:29:08.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10158" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-01-28T02:29:08.250" Score="0" Body="A Press Release, or PR, is an official statement issued to newspapers giving information on a particular matter. Questions using this tag should be asking something related to the writing, editing, format, or distribution of such statements." OwnerUserId="3364" LastEditorUserId="3364" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T04:33:09.057" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T04:33:09.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10062" CreationDate="2014-01-28T15:19:33.850" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about using fonts more. Go wild and play with various fonts. Add a quick &quot;font key&quot; in the front of your book for the different fonts you use and their use in your book—font x for radio dialog, font y for drunken dialog, etc...  It always surprises me that writers don't do more with fonts, using them as visual cues or a way to manipulate the mood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6816" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T15:19:33.850" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10160" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10161" CreationDate="2014-01-28T15:51:28.647" Score="3" ViewCount="693" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it bad to use an Introduction and/or a Prologue in Middle Grade Fiction?  I have a lot of information that is useful, but the information in dialogue will sound fake and way too much info-dump like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I liked the way Jurassic Park does it.  Has an introduction with the fake backstory and history over the years, and then the prologue for the present story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a bad thing for this age group, as long as I don't drone on too long?  It's historical, and I've got to have something to bring the reader up to speed.  OTOH, I worry because the story doesn't start off with something exploding or having a vampire, so the reader doesn't care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen most of this,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/993/when-is-a-prologue-useful&quot;&gt;When is a prologue useful?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mainly want to know about children/middle grade/young adult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T17:49:51.097" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T17:49:51.097" Title="Is an Introduction and a Prologue good or bad, especially in middle grade fiction?" Tags="|fiction|introduction|prologues|middle-grade|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10160" CreationDate="2014-01-28T19:33:03.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Middle-grade targeted or not, I think backstory should be exposed gradually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can remember kids (and not-so-kids) complain about a long piece of text without dialogue. At some age of one's reading career, one realizes that's where many interesting things happen (or else that one doesn't like reading), and then complains about too long descriptions and information dumps. I won't enter in discussing if that's the way of getting old or getting used to boring stuff. What is sure is that kids don't want boring stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the question you should ask yourself, as What said in his comment above, is if your prologue is boring. I have a prologue that starts with dialogue and continues with blood spilling, swords swinging and stuff blowing up, so I don't believe a prologue means info dump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best is to hook the readers with questions, not answers. Is all your backstory absolutely essential to understand anything of what is going on? Maybe you can leave some stuff to be explained later. You can also try to identify the one thing that matters the most as backstory, and then explain it with a scene (some action happening that explains the backstory) that will conform the prologue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering the question directly, it can be good (look at Rowling's HP and The Philosopher's Stone), and it can be bad as in any other book. I think the middle grade fiction demands higher quality standards at least, not lesser, than other targets; because middle graders get bored more easily, they are new in reading, they have to be captivated to keep them, and they have a lot more things to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T19:33:03.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10141" CreationDate="2014-01-28T21:24:03.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the later novels of Jerzy Kosinski are good examples of metafiction, as is Příběh inženýra lidských duší (The Engineer of Human Souls), 1977, by Josef Skvorecky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6736" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T21:24:03.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10160" CreationDate="2014-01-29T07:29:57.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An intro OR a prologue might be fine.  An intro AND a prologue would not be fine.  If you must have one, pick only one.  Jurassic Park was a book written for adults, and even so it amazes me that it managed to have both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T07:29:57.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2014-01-29T11:30:49.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;An antagonist doesn't have to be a physical or internal entity, so i'd argue no. Any good story has a force of any description that opposes the hero, that in the long run they have to overcome. For instance, the &quot;antagonist&quot; in a psychological thriller might be the main character's mental illness and how it might inhibit them along the course of their journey. In Disaster movies, the Antagonist is usually the disaster itself, although this obviously doesn't have to be exclusive. In Post Apocalyptic stories showing how the main characters survive, often the antagonist turns out to be the apocalypse itself and how it turns mankind against itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Antagonist is crucial for any story, because otherwise its not a story, its just a series of events that happen. Without an antagonist of any description there is nothing for the hero to overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6828" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T11:30:49.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2014-01-29T12:35:58.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course there is narrative fiction without conflict. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adalbert Stifter's novel &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Nachsommer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Der Nachsommer&lt;/a&gt; describes the idyllic life and growth from childhood to maturity of a young man during &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biedermeier&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Biedermeier&lt;/a&gt;. The story is completely devoid of any kind of conflict.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many children's books tell tales that do not feature an antagonist and are free of conflict, instead they focus on learning (usually without resistance on the part of the protagonist) or happiness (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_How_Much_I_Love_You&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Guess how much I love you&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find many examples in adult fiction, too, if you stop confusing the presence of conflict with an antagonist. An antagonist is an opposing force that the protagonist has to overcome to reach his one central goal. There is much fiction, where the protagnoist does not have a goal (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_in_Las_Vegas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas&lt;/a&gt;), or where conflict is not opposed to the protagonist's goal and does not have to be overcome (e.g. much of documentary fiction).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T12:35:58.057" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10168" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-29T15:41:39.380" Score="0" ViewCount="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current style is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do&#xA;  eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad&#xA;  minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut&#xA;  aliquip ex ea commodo consequat&lt;sup&gt;&lt;code&gt;[1]&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. Duis aute irure dolor&#xA;  in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla&#xA;  pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in&#xA;  culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example.com: A detailed article about a topic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When am quoting the source, does it mean, that everything from the previous &quot;&lt;code&gt;.&lt;/code&gt;&quot; is quoted, or the entire paragraph? and the following text after the&lt;sup&gt;&lt;code&gt;[1]&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, is not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the official reference style when quoting a source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also if what am quoting is a hundred page long PDF, should i post the link with the PDF only, or also the page number where my quote and source came from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6343" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T02:31:28.267" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T02:31:28.267" Title="Official reference style when quoting a source" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10169" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10171" CreationDate="2014-01-29T16:33:43.950" Score="2" ViewCount="512" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a new author and, for some strange circumstances, I ended up finishing three stories (first drafts):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ghost Earthquake&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri misses an earthquake that hits her city. She doesn't remember what&#xA;  she as doing at the time, and nothing seems to have moved a single&#xA;  inch in her apartment. As she tries to uncover the mystery, she comes&#xA;  face to face with her deepest fears, and realizes the world around her&#xA;  is very different to the one she once knew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Themes: earthquakes, alienation, change&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Girl without a Soul&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main character goes to a mountain to visit his half-sister. He&#xA;  hasn't seen her in years. She went there to undergo a spiritual&#xA;  healing. Later he discovers her wound has something to do with their&#xA;  elder brother, and that she needs him (the protagonist) in order to&#xA;  recover from this affliction. But that isn't all. While he's in the&#xA;  mountain he meets a girl who (apparently) doesn't possess a soul. She&#xA;  is often seen in the forest near ancient trees. After he meets her she&#xA;  tells him that he didn't only come to the mountain looking for his&#xA;  half-sister, but also looking for her. That he must help her to&#xA;  accomplish something. Something of utter importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Themes: love, isolation, the soul&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Black Cuckoo&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A story about a man who tells his wife about a sexual fantasy he has.&#xA;  But that he's OK if she doesn't want to go along with it. However, the&#xA;  wife suddenly stops talking to him, and after that a series of surreal&#xA;  things start to happen to him: he's visited at night by a black bird,&#xA;  and meets a young girl in the forest nearby their house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Themes: love, relationships, fantasies&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in love with all of them. But I've been wondering which one is more likely to appeal to a wider audience, given that I'm a new unpublished author. I'm thinking of publishing on Amazon via &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;KDP&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I choose the one with the most appealing title (I think The Girl without a Soul is the best choice). Or the one with the most promising premise (Ghost Earthquake)? Or decide for the one with more appealing themes (Black Cuckoo since it involves sexual fantasies, horror, and magical-realism)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm confused, which one should I choose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-01-29T17:03:05.947" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T07:15:24.397" Title="I'm a new author and I have three projects with complete drafts. Which one should I focus on first?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10168" CreationDate="2014-01-29T16:51:48.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I learned that in APA a reference only refers to the current or preceding sentence, and that you should signify a continued reference through backreference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the second sentence refers to the article by Bob and Paul, because the &quot;they&quot; takes up the preceding sencence's subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In their study, Bob and Paul (1999) found that some boys like girls. They observed that on average boys smile more when they look at girls compared to when they look at each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the only way to paraphrase a source over multiple sentences in APA. You &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; refer to the source in each sentence, either directly, or by refering to another sentence by pronouns or phrases such as &quot;the authors&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single reference for more than one sentence is possible only for direct quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Some boys like girls. We observed that on average boys smile quite a lot more while they look at girls, as compared to when they look at other boys. We also looked at the girls a bit. And then we ate lunch.&quot; (Bob &amp;amp; Paul, 1999)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't credit a source in a sentence, then that sentence is your own (or pretends to be, which might lead to plagiarism complaints). Contrary to the first example above, in the following example the second sentence contains an unfounded claim that is not backed by research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In their study, Bob and Paul (1999) found that some boys like girls. Boys smile more when they look at girls than when they look at each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, the first sentence is an unfounded claim, as the reference in the second sentence does not reach back to it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some boys like girls. Boys smile more when they look at girls than when they look at each other (Bob &amp;amp; Paul, 1999).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reference must be inside the punctuation, not following it. This is wrong:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some boys like girls. Boys smile more when they look at girls than when they look at each other. (Bob &amp;amp; Paul, 1999)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which reference style you need to use (APA, MLA, ...) depends on your field of study. Here are short introductions into the basics of APA, MLA and Chicago style: &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T16:51:48.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10169" CreationDate="2014-01-29T17:34:43.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @Standback said in his comment, you might want to consider a &lt;strong&gt;publishing scedule&lt;/strong&gt;, instead of a writing schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When readers finish your book, and they liked it, they will want to read more from you. If there is nothing, they will move on to another author and forget you, before your next book comes out. You will have to do all your marketing from zero again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that perspective, it does not matter which book you &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; first. Just write the one that you want to write now, then write the others, and in two years start with publishing and marketing them all, and in parallel write your fourth book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for which story is most promising, I find the Black Cockoo least interesting to me, and least appealing (as far as I can judge) to the general public. The protagonist is married which is unattractive to some readers. Sex as a central plot element is difficult. Could turn into obscenities, or turn me off, if it is the wrong kind of kink. Sex as an add-on is nice, but not as the driving force. So, I don't know about this one. The only interesting part is the girl in the forest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the books that sold best in recent times and were made into movies were young adult novels with female protagonists. Ghost Earthquake has the most straightforward and attractive plot. It's easy to understand what I'll get myself into, if I read that book. The plot sounds direct and uncomplicated. I'd read that first, if I had all three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Girl without a Soul sounds more interesting than the Earthquake, but also somewhat complicated. What kind of book will that actually be? Interesting, but takes some more mental effort to think myself into. So while its still high, its second on my want-to-read list. Or maybe not. Its already intriguing me, and I want to know more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Earthquake and Soul books would make a great pair that would sell well together or in succession. The Black Cockoo is something else and does not quite fit. Different target audience. Whichever you start on first, do that one last. Or communicate the plot differently through the blurb and cover, maybe I'm getting it all wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-29T17:50:54.507" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T17:50:54.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-29T19:24:56.770" Score="1" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a story in which a set of events occurred that the main character cannot remember, but they come back to him in his dreams. Basically the entire actual story takes place in his dreams, but my real question is:&#xA;How do I pad the dream sequences? It is clearly bad writing form to say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He woke up from his dream, went about his day, and then at night, went to sleep and dreamed...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the story, life outside his dreams is supposed to be decidedly ordinary. How do I pad the extraordinary with the ordinary without it being boring?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6790" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T03:16:49.333" Title="Writing in between dream sequences" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10172" CreationDate="2014-01-29T19:34:59.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, what's the character's reaction to his real (waking) life? Is &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; bored? Impatient? Dazed? Curious? Eager? Anxious? Take us through his reactions rather than his day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John listened to his patients with half an ear, most of his attention on the clock. Would the day never end? Twice between appointments he got up to check that the battery hadn't died, and once he actually stopped an old woman who was nattering on about her bad knees to listen intently, convinced that the ticking &amp;mdash; and time itself &amp;mdash; had stopped. The Tube ride seemed interminable. &lt;em&gt;Must this really stop at &lt;strong&gt;every&lt;/strong&gt; station on the line? Can't these people just get in the damn carriage and quit holding up the doors?&lt;/em&gt; When he finally, &lt;em&gt;finally&lt;/em&gt; arrived at the flat, he rushed up the stairs as quietly as he could in the hopes that his talkative landlady wouldn't waylay him for a chat. His bed called to him, a siren of sheets and pillows and duvet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T19:34:59.823" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10169" CreationDate="2014-01-29T20:34:17.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently have 4 pending projects. For one book, which I wrote during the Nanowrimo, I have a first draft, almost complete, and I'm already working on the 2nd draft and hope to publish it soon. I only have outlines and notes for my other projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the way I deal with my dilemma is that I work a little on all of them, however, I've chosen one particular project - the Nanowrimo one to publish first because of the fact that I have all the information I need for the second draft. I have a very good idea of how my other projects will look like in the end, but I chose the one that is closest to being published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, like one of the members commented, if you publish one book and the readers like it, they will look forward to the next one. So work on the one you think will attract a wide audience (so far I think that the Earthquake one is very promising) and try to get it published, but work on the other ones as well. If you want, you can even publish novellas/short stories, as many young adult authors are doing right now, so that your readers don't forget about you too soon and have something to look forward to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6833" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T20:34:17.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10048" CreationDate="2014-01-30T01:27:18.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took a look at the Economist style guide capitals section &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/style-guide/capitals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and found no mention of &amp;quot;its.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A search of the Economist website turned up articles with the following titles (bold for emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multinationals: China loses &lt;strong&gt;its&lt;/strong&gt; allure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kenya and &lt;strong&gt;its&lt;/strong&gt; Somalis: Go back home!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turkey and &lt;strong&gt;its&lt;/strong&gt; neighbours: A reset?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So although the style guide doesn't specifically address the possessive pronoun &amp;quot;its,&amp;quot; they consistently leave it lower-case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6838" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T01:27:18.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10156" CreationDate="2014-01-30T02:07:25.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even though I'm late to the game, I'll submit in the hope that my answer will be useful in the future. &lt;em&gt;The following may come off as cynical but it isn't meant that way&lt;/em&gt; - it's just my opinion on the purpose and intent of a corporate PR publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned (justifiable) concern that the revised headline is misleading, but when it comes to corporate press releases, accuracy and clarity of message are generally secondary in importance. That's because they're more advertising than reporting. If people expected objectivity and accuracy from corporate press releases, they'd look to car manufacturers for useful reviews on their models, energy companies for updates on the latest developments in solar panel tech, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the edits in the context of other publications you've submitted. That will probably tell you if the editor changed the wording out of incompetence/sloppiness or because they wanted to communicate another idea - no matter how inaccurate. For example, Acme co. may want to re-emphasize their presence in the area. &lt;strong&gt;Since a company is not expected to adhere to principles of journalistic integrity, they might have decided the best way to grab potential dealers' attention is to give the impression they're &quot;breaking into&quot; the region.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, consider the chances that the editor changed the wording intentionally rather than carelessly, and raise/don't raise the issue depending on your conclusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6838" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T02:07:25.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10172" CreationDate="2014-01-30T03:03:44.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How do I pad the extraordinary with the ordinary without it being boring?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not believe you are having the chore of padding a main interesting story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to have two interesting stories. In fact, you should not be in the dilemma where you have a story which you wish to portray as a series of someone's dreams but looking for a 2nd story to fill in the blanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are putting the cart before the horse. You are deciding to eat with chopsticks before you even know what you would be eating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be in the dilemma of having two compelling stories you wish to intertwine but not knowing how to intertwine them, and then voila! You found that having one as a series of dreams is the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Lewis Carroll decide first that he wanted to write a story about Alice passing thro a mirror, or did he have a sequel to Alice in Wonderland and faced the dilemma of how to avoid making the rabbit hole strategy look stale? And voila! He looked in the mirror and decided it was a great idea? Just speculating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you have to get back to your drawing board, or thinking couch, to think of two sets of compelling messages you wish to indoctrinate your readers with, and you face the problem of how to intertwine them. How would you like your pair of compelling story lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Two messages that have completely different sets of morals. Each compellingly right in their own individual way but they are each other's evil when juxtaposed. You want to confuse the reader's self-worth and ruin their perky confidence in moral and ethical judgment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Two parallel stories with similar messages, trying to tell the reader that no matter which side of the universe you live in, the same principle would run its natural course.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Two complementary stories each looking for a solution to their respective set of problems. You gradually let the reader discover they are actually each a solution to the other's problems. But they are separated by dimensional segregation and therefore, impossible for the two to come together. You tease the reader's intellect cheering for a way to bring the two stories to resolve each other.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;etc, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you decide, hmmm, how do I intertwine them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3873" LastEditorUserId="3873" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T03:16:49.333" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T03:16:49.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10160" CreationDate="2014-01-30T03:22:56.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I read your question, I couldn't help but think back to the time I first read Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone. I was in grade 2 and I don't remember if there was a prologue or not, however, the introduction to Harry's world felt like a prologue (or it wouldn't have been a problem if it was in this particular book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story has an unusual setting, premise or unusual characters/any other unique aspect in the novel, then it would be nice to include a prologue. It's like a sample for what the story is going to be like. However, if you want to pull the reader right into your story or are afraid that the prologue might give the reader not the right expectations of what is to happen later on, I would avoid it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking back to the Harry Potter book, I remember loving the background info that was presented to the reader through a scene, rather than telling the history. If your prologue is very short, then you should be able to get away with a Jurassic Park-like intro. It should be a sampler scene/monologue that entices your readers to proceed to the first chapter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a question I've been pondering over for quite some time, which is why every time I open a novel that has a prologue, I analyze my reactions or expectations to it and how it affects the novel as a whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6833" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T03:22:56.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10179" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T06:30:17.647" Score="6" ViewCount="3419" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any restrictions in publishing of material with expired copyrights?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Twist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oliver Twist&lt;/a&gt; is a famous story by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Charles Dickens&lt;/a&gt;, and people still buy the book. I would think that the cost of publishing (especially online instead of hardcopy) is low compared to the potential profits that can be earned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, what is stopping anyone and &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; from publishing the book to rake in profits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2558" LastEditorUserId="2558" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T16:03:10.203" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T16:03:10.203" Title="Why doesn't everyone publish public domain books?" Tags="|publishing|copyright|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10169" CreationDate="2014-01-30T07:15:24.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an author too with 4 published books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to say that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Get alone with yourself&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2- Don't think about anything related to writing&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3- Listen musics different than your playlist - in your mind included&lt;br&gt;&#xA;4- Watch movies from other languages&lt;br&gt;&#xA;5- Call some friends you haven't seen for a long time&lt;br&gt;&#xA;6- Do something unrelated to yourself but helping for someone&lt;br&gt;&#xA;7- Spend few days without computer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's your 1 week prescription for seeing a life which is you are already surrounded with.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all there is no doubt about what to do next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6742" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T07:15:24.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10179" CreationDate="2014-01-30T09:41:24.597" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the contrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.millcitypress.net/author-royalties&quot;&gt;copyright/royalties costs&lt;/a&gt; are relatively minor comparing to per-unit cost, marketing cost, distribution costs (per shop/point of sales), retailer's cut, taxes - generally the author rarely sees more than 20% of the retail price, often less than 10%, at least in traditional distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the books, being old, are available from the library for free, are often found in personal libraries and second-hand sale (and sites like Project Gutenberg), meaning the demand is quite low. Trying to break even on these costs with such a competition may be difficult. Why would I buy a hardback &lt;em&gt;Olivier Twist&lt;/em&gt; for $20, when I can have the e-book version for free, legally and without need to walk to the store?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With new, copyrighted books, in exchange for the royalties the publisher gets exclusivity: nobody can sell the same book cheaper, nobody can legally put it on the web for free, the libraries still have to purchase it (and then, during the &quot;reaping the profits&quot; period of a year, there will be maybe 10 or so buyers &quot;lost&quot; per a  library copy - and if the book was &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; these may still buy a personal copy!) - essentially, copyright protects the interest of the publisher more than the interest of the author!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T10:04:44.133" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T10:04:44.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10183" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10184" CreationDate="2014-01-30T11:30:04.240" Score="2" ViewCount="2061" Body="&lt;p&gt;Long story short. A few years ago I suffered from depersonalization and I still struggle with identity and motivation issues. This has deprived me almost entirely of the ability to feel emotion in dreams and allowed me to dream from the perspective of an observer far more often than the usual person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can feel only a limited spectrum of mild emotions that have somewhat specific triggers. For example, I can only get angry at my parents. I cannot feel fear. (I can feel a far larger array of emotions when awake, although I might react in an inappropriate manner at times.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I haven't socialised much, nor written fiction since this has happened, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and try my hand at forum role-playing. Thinking my dreams were bizarre and cool and being interested in the topic, I joined a semi-literate RP, where some disturbance happens in another dimension, making people unable to wake up and causing dreams to merge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my problem. The character I created comes from a different background and does not share much of my personality and values. I want her dreams to reflect her inner world, but every time I start writing, she ends up taking a passive role. It's as if I'm observing her observing what other people do in her dream. While I came up with a sketchy reason as to why she is more passive, I still need her to feel emotions and act normally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The style in which we role-play is the usual third person, past tense, &quot;show, don't tell&quot;. It's meant to be somewhat character-based and I think the plot will be rather linear once all our dreams merge. We're still at the &quot;introductory posts&quot; stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. If you need to know more about my character, please tell me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6842" LastEditorUserId="6842" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T13:30:14.753" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T13:30:14.753" Title="How to narrate a fictional dream in third person?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|writers-block|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10183" CreationDate="2014-01-30T12:54:09.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically a writer can write from two sources: her own experiences or research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, even when we write about people who are different from us and go through experiences we have not had, we assume that there is a basic similarity between most human beings and that we can infer their emotions and thoughts by translating our own experiences into theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example, even though I am a man, I can imagine how a woman must feel like when she gives birth, because I have experienced pain, have been in extreme, possible life-threatening situations, and am a father of a child (so I understand the fears and joys that accompany birth). So I can quite well imagine what giving birth would be like. Not completely, certainly, but sufficiently to narrate such an event in a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of giving birth, my imagination is complemented by reading about and talking to women who have given birth. But if you want to write about something that is so unlike your own experiences that you cannot extrapolate from those, you will have to rely completely on research. For example, if I want to write about a psychopath with an inner world that is almost no longer human, what I must do is read accounts by people who have studied their mental processes, and, if they exist, accounts of their thinking and emotions that psychopaths themselves have written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if I understand you correctly, you no longer dream like the average person dreams, and you find it hard to narrate a dream from such a person's perspective, because you simply no longer know how their dreams work and feel for them. So what you need to do is research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read dreams, as they were recorded by real dreamers. Read dreams as they are narracted in fiction. But be careful with the latter, because many fictional dreams have little in common with real dreams. Yet you may learn how dreams are conventionally narrated in fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you feel you have studied enough and understand the formal principles of average dreams, fake it. Recreate that superficial form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T13:00:26.917" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T13:00:26.917" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10120" CreationDate="2014-01-30T13:37:54.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually you do something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Bla bla.&quot; (Murray, 1987, quoted from Harper, 2001)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you list &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; sources in your reference list. The actual format will differ depending on the style guide you use (the above is APA).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is discouraged, because it means that you basically have no idea about the contents of the original article. It could be misrepresented in the article that quotes it. All you know is a sentence out of context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field (psychology) we may only quote what we have read ourselves. That there is too much to read is not an acceptable excuse. Limit the scope of your research project, or take the time to read the relevant literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only situation where you can quote through a third text is if the original source is impossible for you to get with reasonable effort, like very old sources that you would have to read in the natonal library of some foreign country, or documents in private hands (like letters). For everything else there is interlibrary loan. And if the publication is hidden behind a paywall, most authors are happy to mail you a PDF of their article, if you are doing research. Just explain your affiliation (where you study) and what research you are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T13:44:21.537" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T13:44:21.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10179" CreationDate="2014-01-30T18:46:37.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...the cost of publishing (especially online instead of hardcopy) is&#xA;  low compared to the potential profits that can be earned.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For publishing online, the costs are low.  But anyone can do it.  That is why you can buy the collected works of Dickens, nicely formatted for whatever ereader you use, and with an interactive table of contents, for 99 cents.  Or get the individual works free from Project Gutenberg (although they will hit you up for a donation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For hard copy, the costs are &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; low.  Try the following experiment: Figure out how long Oliver Twist would be, formatted as a book, and then price the cost of printing it using Staples.com or OfficeMax.com or someplace like that.  You will find a cost of 5 to 10 dollars, depending on your options.  And that's not even a real book binding!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, either way, it's not easy to &quot;rake in profits&quot; from out-of-copyright books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Eerie coincidence: I started reading Oliver Twist this morning.  (On a Kindle.)]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T18:46:37.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10188" CreationDate="2014-01-30T22:09:24.473" Score="5" ViewCount="1065" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working on my first book, a sci-fi comedy set on an alternate history Earth which has progressed at twice the rate of our own planet (they were at our current tech when William the Conqueror was born). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I notice that my primary character basically has one of the most classic origin stories: he's a human being from our own near future (around 2065) who ends up on that alternate history earth due to events outside his influence and learns that he is put there because he needs to resolve an enormous issue which is kept on the down low for the normal public. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is done in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;HHGttG (Arthur Dent has the meaning of life in his brain)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Futurama (Fry is sent a millenium in the future because of brain waves)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sword of Truth series (Richard Cypher is the only one who can save the world)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wheel of Time (Rand Al'Thor is the only one who can save the world) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and nearly every other sci-fi/fantasy book, game or movie.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main character is basically &quot;generic fictional hero with prophetic cause&quot; number 23496. He even bears a striking resemblance to the first example mentioned above. Because it's comedy, I had the idea of extreme lampshade hanging for the sake of comedy, and fish-out-of-water references and shout-outs by the main character to those other stories, as well as celebrities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The hope is that any readers of similar fiction will find the references and shoutouts funny. However, I don't know how far I can take these references.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I use them as throwaway comments? Minor plot points? Character naming? Plot twists? Entire chapter premises? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, I'm kinda hesitating to continue working on my book (even though I only have basically a rough outline of the first 30 or so chapters, the idea for my main character and some disconnected ideas) because I don't know how far I can go in handling this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6845" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-23T21:54:32.180" LastActivityDate="2019-10-04T10:19:48.467" Title="My first comedy plot draft is very bland - how far can I go on calling this out?" Tags="|plot|science-fiction|first-draft|comedy|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10187" CreationDate="2014-01-30T22:40:18.033" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;For now, write to amuse yourself. It might also amuse other people, but that's not something to worry about now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T22:40:18.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10140" CreationDate="2014-01-31T00:52:56.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say there's no harm in trying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I do not know of any works that are really equally split between more than one language, the number of successful books that make use of non-English jokes, idioms, and dialogue shows people are willing to perhaps work or think a little harder (e.g. online dictionaries for words/phrases) to enjoy something good. I also think the bi- and trilingual audience is there and would probably appreciate uniquely engaging literature. Additionally, if done right, you don't only have to aim for those who are fluent in your languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two prominent examples of authors who have incorporated a second language into their writing: Junot Díaz and (to a lesser extent) David Foster Wallace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've not read any of Díaz's work yet, I'd suggest you do so in order to see the way he masterfully incorporates Spanish language and Dominican culture into his dialogue and narration. I don't speak any Spanish, though I know a moderate amount of French, and I often have enough of a feel for a line or word through context that I don't need to look it up. Because the narrator is always fluent in Spanish and in a community where he speaks it daily, it makes complete sense that it is such an integral part of Díaz's writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really haven't read enough Foster Wallace to know if this is a trend—and I suspect it's not— but there are a fair amount of references to Québécois French in &lt;em&gt;Infinite Jest&lt;/em&gt;, mostly in the end-/footnotes and as throwaway jokes. A group of characters are from Quebec, one man has some unfortunate circumstances where his incomprehension of the (untranslated—so it is the reader's perhaps incomprehension as well) French dialogue poses a, er, fatal problem, and there is one particular instance where a non-French speaker mishears a French word. I forget what that specific word was, or what it was misheard as, but I remember having to repeat the botched English phonetic pronunciation aloud a few times fast before I realized what the original word was and had a good smile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, I think the most important piece of advice is to make sure the writing is good! Even if the publisher doesn't specialize in multilingual text, if the work is objectively good, they will probably try to figure something out. I would also recommend sending inline translations to your readers if meaning won't be clear from context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3810" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T00:52:56.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10187" CreationDate="2014-01-31T01:19:14.693" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get it on paper, and make sure it's funny to &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;. Then find beta readers and editors and see if it's funny to others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always fix something after it's written, but you can't edit a blank page. Start writing. Figure out the joke too far later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. please reference Martin Freeman, for several obvious reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T01:19:14.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10194" CreationDate="2014-01-31T02:39:32.233" Score="-1" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking on writing a short story of a non-religious person asking questions to an alternate version of Jesus. Do His answers must be of a deep meaning or could I just write anything as his word (forgiving the blasphemy it would be)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe his answers could be justified because it would be a different Jesus but, how credible would he be if his thougths are not serious and deep reflections about moral, ethics and such? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The target audience ranges from teens to 30 year olds with interest in Sci-fi and computers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6846" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T04:38:32.457" Title="Hypothetical interview with Jesus Christ. Has to be deep?" Tags="|fiction|short-story|characters|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-01-31T05:49:50.733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10193" CreationDate="2014-01-31T03:20:55.290" Score="1" ViewCount="541" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not very sure if they &lt;em&gt;count&lt;/em&gt; as dialogue tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” Akiko suddenly said, placing her&#xA;  hand on my mine. “But you know me, I just keep going on and on after a&#xA;  few glasses.” She was talking about her answer to Mrs. Kondo's&#xA;  question. We were reminiscing about our past relationships, and she'd&#xA;  asked Akiko about her first love (she'd only had two in her life: me&#xA;  and her high school sweetheart). At first Akiko had been a bit&#xA;  reluctant to answer, however, as the cocktails flowed, she became more&#xA;  and more enthusiastic. She talked about everything; the places they&#xA;  had been, the moments they had shared, the things they had enjoyed&#xA;  doing together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“Don't worry. I was cool with it.” Which was truth; I hadn't actually&#xA;  minded.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Akiko heaved a sigh. “What a relief. After I was done, all I could think of&#xA;  was how you were feeling. I felt so guilty, so&#xA;  insensitive. I really thought I'd hurt you. I'm so glad I didn't.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I write this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Don't worry,&quot; &lt;strong&gt;I said.&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;I was cool with it.” Which was truth; I hadn't actually&#xA;  minded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Don't worry. I was cool with it,” &lt;strong&gt;I said.&lt;/strong&gt; Which was truth; I hadn't actually&#xA;  minded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make the dialogue less confusing? Or is it redundant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T03:26:06.987" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T06:39:26.643" Title="Should write &quot;I/he/she said&quot; in dialogue with ambiguous action tags?" Tags="|creative-writing|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10192" CreationDate="2014-01-31T04:19:56.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dialog tags such as &amp;quot;Alexandro Chen wrote&amp;quot; are always optional when there is some other unambiguous indicator as to whom spoke.  For the line in question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Don't worry. I was cool with it.” Which was truth; I hadn't actually minded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no way that, even out of context, to attribute the quote to anyone but the narrator.  And in prose, your context can often entirely omit the need for even an imferred attribution.  Consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Can I take your order?&amp;quot; she asked with a bored drawl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I answered without looking at the menu.  &amp;quot;A cheeseburger and fries, please.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We stopped selling fries.  See the menu?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh.  Well, just the cheeseburger then.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I technically could add &amp;quot;I said&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;she said&amp;quot; lines in the 3rd and 4th paragraphs, they're largely superfluous and would make what is already a droll passage even worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T04:19:56.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10191" CreationDate="2014-01-31T04:38:32.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a purely artistic view, no, you can have a fictional Jesus Christ say whatever you want.  There's no reason for a straw-man named Jesus to be deep, and Lord knows there have been enough straw-man Jesus characterizations throughout the year that are far more offensive to Christians than just some conversations in a sci-fi story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that, depending on how hard your sci-fi is, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrystalDragonJesus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Crystal Dragon Jesus&lt;/a&gt; may be a nice way to sidestep the entire issue.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to not be offensive and hew to the image that most Christians have of our messiah, you should be able to fit Him into the story easily enough.  I'd offer the following guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide early on if you're going to have &quot;Jesus Christ the Christian Deity&quot; or &quot;historical human named Jesus but God doesn't exist&quot;, or be purposefully opaque.  All are acceptable choices, but you should be consistent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jesus as depcited in the gospels was not a fire-and-brimstone, old-testament preacher.  He was the guy who preached the sermon on the mount (&quot;Love God as yourself, Love thy neighbor&quot;) and stood up for a prostitute who would have been stoned to death (&quot;Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jesus &lt;strong&gt;did&lt;/strong&gt; get angry in a few cases, most famously when he kicked the money-changers out of the temple.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you noted in your question, Jesus as depicted in the gospels was given to making very profound statements.  He taught largely through some profound pronouncements and a slew of parables, and at once expected more of men that they could achieve and yet accepted them as they failed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to just answering some questions from a non-belieiver, your characterization of Christ will be driven very largely by the topic of your story.  If it's a tract for Agnosticism, or Christianity, or Atheism, you'll undoutably wind up treading on someone's toes.  If it's more of a speculation story about alien life and space travel and how they'd fit into Christian thought, anything from &quot;they are already christians&quot; to &quot;aliens are demons&quot; would be plausible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T04:38:32.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10192" CreationDate="2014-01-31T06:39:26.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You lack tags not just where you bolded out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” Akiko suddenly said, placing her hand on my mine. “But you know me, I just keep going on and on after a few glasses.” &lt;strong&gt;[1]&lt;/strong&gt; She was talking about her answer to Mrs. Kondo's question. We were reminiscing about our past relationships, and &lt;strong&gt;she'd asked Akiko[2]&lt;/strong&gt; about her &lt;strong&gt;[3]&lt;/strong&gt; first love (she'd only had two in her life: me and her high school sweetheart). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First let's get through smaller offenders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[2]&lt;/strong&gt; Garden path. &quot;Akiko&quot; is the default &quot;she&quot; (from just after [1]).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[3]&lt;/strong&gt; The next &quot;her&quot; and its following &quot;she'd&quot; becomes entirely ambiguous as you have mixed up the default 'she'[1] and the garden-pathed[2]. Akiko's first love or Mrs. Kondo's first love (and Akiko's knowledge about him/her)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now back to &lt;strong&gt;[1]&lt;/strong&gt; which led me down the garden path all the way down  to the next paragraph! &lt;em&gt;she &lt;strong&gt;meant&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/em&gt; not &lt;em&gt;she &lt;strong&gt;was talking about&lt;/strong&gt;!&lt;/em&gt; My first, natural parsing was that, (gears grinding of pace shift, as you've shown you're prone to at an earlier occasion), she kept on talking after the first, verbatim sentence you quoted, and you summarized what she said right now. Only as you mention the cocktails I'm making a slow double-take and understand your meaning of &quot;was talking about&quot; - as back-reference explaining the meaning of the first sentence (&lt;em&gt;meant&lt;/em&gt;), not following activity (&lt;em&gt;and she kept talking about...&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only upon encountering your bolded paragraph and its tag I understand how long a garden path I've been led.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, if you only make sure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are only two participants of the dialogue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;any deviation from the natural dialogue are clearly tagged (party skipping their turn, or continuing after a pause) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you don't need any extra tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you change pace - introduce a paragraph that converts to several minutes of dialogue (&quot;At first Akiko had been a bit reluctant to answer, however, as the cocktails flowed...&quot;)  you must retag the sentences if you return to natural pace. Which would be the case here if not that this is the fake (garden path) meaning. In fact the sentences &quot;Sorry if I made you uncomfortable&quot; and &quot;Don't worry&quot; follow within seconds from each other, and as such need no extra tags. It's the &quot;she talked about&quot; followed by lengthy paragraph that misguides the reader into thinking there was some extra dialogue, that &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; require retag - except it does not, it just need rephrasing into something not misguiding!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T06:39:26.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10196" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10197" CreationDate="2014-01-31T08:36:09.977" Score="2" ViewCount="2016" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, the answer might be pretty much obvious (that there is no clear way to distinguish these characters) but I would still very much like to have perspectives (and perhaps even get an answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in the habit of writing short stories without naming any of my characters. Often I run into trouble because there are multiple (let us say) male characters and there is no way I can distinguish between &quot;he&quot; and the other &quot;he&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He saw them again. They had moved to the center of the dance floor, almost still. Couples danced all around her, the faster ones to the outside, the slower ones towards the inner side. Yet in the center, he could only see them. She was flushed. Her hands rested on his shoulders, just the way they rested on his when she was tired after taking a walk. “You are fickle, my dear” he whispered to himself, a harsh smile on his face, his eyes cold yet loving. He could never hate her. He only had love for her. A while back when she had passed him, on her way to the dance, he had smelled her perfume. The sweet overpowering smell that he had always loved. The only smell in the world that consumed him. A smell he could never drive out of his mind. That had been the only moment when his hands shook a little, the ice in the glass making a slight “clink”. She had not noticed, of course, her hands in his, walking away as admiring eyes followed them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in this case there are two characters. The first &quot;he&quot; who is seeing everything while the other &quot;he&quot; who is with the lady. In this case the confusion might not be so apparent however there often are situations when the reader might get confused as to who is being referred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: is there any way I could distinguish the characters without significantly altering the writing style? One possibility that strikes me is the use of capitalization for one of the characters (&quot;He&quot; vs &quot;he&quot;). I seem to recall a few stories that have done something similar. What else could be done? Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T00:47:14.747" Title="Multiple characters without names: how to address" Tags="|style|creative-writing|short-story|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10196" CreationDate="2014-01-31T10:43:13.537" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to identify them somehow. Use adjectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tall man vs. the short man&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The older man vs. the younger man&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The long-haired man vs. the man with the thistle-down hair&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The carpenter vs. the electrician&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The French man vs. the German man&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may get repetitive to say &quot;her hands rested on the carpenter's shoulders, just they way they rested on the electrician's when she were tired after talking a walk,&quot; but that's pretty much what you're stuck with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T10:43:13.537" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10198" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-31T10:46:35.830" Score="1" ViewCount="226" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to write a technical description for an industrial process. The description will follow logical blocks, or blocks from the PFD of the process. This a sales document aimed at engineers. Because of the sales aspect, I need should emphasize all the elements that make us unique. Several parts will repeat throughout the plant, other parts I need to describe that can hardly be placed in one specific logical block - like interconnecting pipework or control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea is to describe components when they first show up as a subchapter of the block they are in, and reference this subchapter when a component shows up in another block. &lt;strong&gt;Is there a better way to do this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit to add:&lt;/strong&gt; An alternative would be to have the component descriptions in every place the component shows up. Some would be repeated two or three times. This would pad the document. The pro would be that a reader who just looks up one part of the process does not need to jump around the whole text, but I would have to trust my readers to skip the parts they already read elsewhere. What to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6151" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T01:50:24.737" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T01:50:24.737" Title="How should I handle repeating parts in a technical description?" Tags="|technical-writing|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10199" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-31T11:09:59.170" Score="4" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to write a technical description for an industrial process. The description will follow logical blocks, or blocks from the PFD of the process. This a sales document aimed at (mostly) engineers. My idea is to have a short paragraph at the start of every chapter, that will explain the purpose of the block to be described and notable inputs and outputs. My thinking is that the document will probably not only be read in one sitting, but that someone will come back to it to look up specific things. So I want to help the readers to orient themselves. The only downside I see is that's a little extra text. &lt;strong&gt;Should I do this, is there a better way to make my description accessible?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6151" LastEditorUserId="10460" LastEditDate="2016-06-16T05:31:01.230" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T05:31:01.230" Title="Should I have an introducing paragraph in every chapter of my description?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10199" CreationDate="2014-01-31T17:11:35.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should have introductory text for every chapter in a technical work.  However, you don't necessarily need to have a dedicated paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you would use the chapter's title to clearly indicate what the chapter is about.  And if each chapter describes a step in a process that has distinct inputs and outputs, you may want to include a plainly labeled &quot;Inputs and Outputs&quot; section (or sections) in each chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T17:11:35.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10199" CreationDate="2014-01-31T17:38:13.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think an abstract or quick summary isn't a bad idea at all, especially if your audience is not necessarily familiar with the process or the parts, or if there's a lot of jargon involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may not remember the difference between the Widgetizer and Widget Processing, but if you explain &quot;The Widgetizer is the machine which inserts the ding-dong into the hoo-ha&quot; and &quot;Widget Processing is the process of moving fully interlocked widgets off the assembly line into the shipping boxes,&quot; I'll know which chapter I need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T17:38:13.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10203" CreationDate="2014-01-31T21:35:40.363" Score="5" ViewCount="5114" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a big fan of certain authors' writing styles and stories and I am convinced that when I sit down to start writing my first book, I'm bound to copy an idea or theme from an author. How do I create my own original work inspired by other authors without risking plagiarism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6850" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T17:35:08.813" Title="What is the best way to use your favorite authors as inspiration without plagiarism?" Tags="|plagiarism|inspiration|originality|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10202" CreationDate="2014-01-31T22:04:52.780" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider that the theme in author A's book that is inspiring you was almost certainly found by author A in author B's work and inspired &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;, and so on. What's important is that you find a unique and original way to weave a story around that theme. For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Humble, unremarkable individual finds, quite by accident, some&#xA;  supremely important object that draws the individual unwittingly into&#xA;  a huge conflict between a small but hopeful force and a dark, menacing&#xA;  foe. Individual, along with their accumulated companions, must&#xA;  transport the important object into the stronghold of the foe with the&#xA;  ultimate goal of using the object to defeat the foe and end the&#xA;  conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What did I just describe? Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings? The same elements and themes can be brought together in a thousand different ways and still be original works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is all a rather long-winded way of saying, &quot;Find the core elements of the idea that inspire you, divorced from the trappings of the original work's worldbuilding, and build your original work from those building blocks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; I don't yet have the rep to add comments, but I want to respond to the answer below from &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt;. I am in no way suggesting that you intentionally scour external sources for inspiration as &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; appears to be implying. The primary question was not &quot;where can I find inspiration for my writing&quot;. As writers, we know that one of the most important things we can do is read. It is inevitable that during the course of that reading, we will hit upon things that will spark ideas in our minds. The OP was asking what was the best way to expound upon those ideas without plagiarism. And for that, my answer of &quot;distill the inspiration down to its barest form and then refashion it using your own ideas/experience/worldbuilding&quot; is still appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6851" LastEditorUserId="6851" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T16:56:32.927" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T16:56:32.927" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10202" CreationDate="2014-01-31T22:12:17.690" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take elements from multiple sources and combine them in a unique way. The reality is that none of us is entirely original; we all borrow (consciously or unconsciously) from others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;French writer Georges Polti claimed in the 19th century that there were only &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;36 dramatic situations&lt;/a&gt; that could occur in a story or performance. More recently Christopher Booker distilled &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;seven basic plots&lt;/a&gt; of heroic stories. We could debate whether these counts are accurate or complete, but the point is that themes and ideas are reusable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't help letting your favorite authors influence your work, but if you combine your ideas in your own way, the story will be all yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T22:12:17.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10196" CreationDate="2014-02-01T00:47:14.747" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a problem I run into regularly as a short story writer. Sometimes I don't ever plan to give someone a name. Particularly if they are going to be disposed of in some fashion not warranting the effort of naming them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Name them by what they are wearing, i.e. a mugger in a red jacket becomes Red Jacket for the sake of the internal dialog of my main character. He isn't interested in them, he just needs a way to identify them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This trick works as long as there are only a few people who don't need names and the interaction with the characters will be a short one. More than a few pages of this and people may become annoyed and hope for Red Jacket's grisly demise to happen sooner rather than later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can simply decide to name them by a personal descriptive attribute, i.e. big hands, dark eyes, scary man with a lisp. Each of these focuses on a threatening aspect of the person allowing you to build around that descriptive element. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the case of big hands he is a bit fidgety, with many scars criss-crossing his rough and callused flesh. He becomes more than just a pair of hands, he becomes the essence of physical violence (that he is the survivor of) giving him a greater menace without giving him a name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dark eyes has a penetrating (and perceived to be unblinking) stare which bares the soul of anyone who gazes into them. The victim of said stare always turns away.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scary man with a lisp is a hulking brute, but his lisp, which he is very sensitive about, detracts from his menace. This upsets him and makes him even more violent. Think Mike Tyson and his very distracting voice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't always need to give your characters names as long as you give them presence with the descriptions when they come onto the scene. This information cements them into the consciousness of the reader and their names become less important than whatever they represent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3739" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T00:47:14.747" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4961" CreationDate="2014-02-01T01:08:52.187" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just been through the experience of having obtained a Kirkus Review. I paid for the expedited version. I feel violated. The review was worse than disappointing.  The review gave an introductory somewhat inaccurate plot summary, and then added some comments that were so damaging that they would guarantee that no-one would want to read the book. The comments were distorted. For example, the book was a memoir and I describe a legendary London folk club where many famous singer-songwriter musicians were discovered. The reviewer states that the people that I met in this place were &quot;increasingly notorious.&quot; I wrote to Kirkus to complain that this was very inaccurate and I got a response that it was the subjective view of their qualified reviewer. This changes the entire thrust of the book from a young girl finding mentors and role models to a young girl being corrupted by disreputable people. Basically, the review was a joke, and you could almost hear the staff at Kirkus laughing as they took my money and gave me a handful of beans in return. There should be laws against this. What I experienced was fraud. I would have understood if the review had been legitimately critical of real flaws -- but it was more along the lines of being insulted, and they refused to change the insulting wording, stating that it was in their contract that it was subjective. My view is this: if a company promises to help a writer get all kinds of amazing offers and they cannot deliver - they will invent a reason to pan the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6853" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T01:08:52.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10198" CreationDate="2014-02-01T03:39:30.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say it's a sales document, aimed at engineers.  In that case, describing every part of your process in detail -- including the non-unique ones -- seems to me both unnecessary and counterproductive.  Your readers will get bored out of their minds, will start skimming through your document, and will probably miss the unique aspects of your process.  Result: no sale.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to have an executive summary of the process at the front, in which only YOUR unique stuff is detailed.  Everything else in the process would be described as succinctly as possible.  Then, the main body of your document would repeat the process description, but explaining all parts of the process (although still highlighting your unique stuff).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A glossary of terms is also a good idea.  In the text, use a different font for terms in the glossary, so readers know they've got help if they want it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. My primary job is scientist/engineer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T03:39:30.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10198" CreationDate="2014-02-01T11:39:59.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an instruction manual I would expect every section to me maximally self-contained. If I want to know how to change some setting in some appliance, I don't want to leaf back and forth following references to other parts of the document. I want quick results, not learn how this machine works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write for engineers, who, if I understand correctly, will have intimate knowledge of your product, you can safely assume that they will familiarize themselves more deeply with this document, because they will want to evaluate how it works and what problems they might face if they chose to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a situation, I would expect a technical description to explain the basic principles and functions in an introductory chapter (if they are unfamiliar to your readers) or an appendix (if you think they know most of it but might want to look something up or see how you do this), and then refer to these basics in the descriptions of the overall process and practical usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the structure of the whole document, if it is not technical documentation (which might be ordered alphabetically or hierachically by component) but an introduction for experts unfamiliar with your &quot;machine&quot;, I would expect some kind of ordering narrative or storyline. This could follow the incoming raw materials or pre-assembled parts through the process until they leave the factory when they have been assembled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the process is not linear, &lt;strong&gt;tell it like a story&lt;/strong&gt; with mulitiple protagonists: start with one and tell his story until he meets the girl; then switch to the girl and tell her story until she meets the man; then continue with their story, until they separate; when they separate, tell their individual parallel stories one after the other, until they come together again; if one spouse has an affair, halt the main plot and insert the story of the third character until he meets the woman or man; then coninue the main plot with all three protagonists; and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean, if it did not become clear, is to pick one subprocess, ideally the one that starts first or is most central, and follow it through to the end. When other processes come into play, insert their descriptions where they &quot;meet up with&quot; the main process. If something repeats, refer back to the relevant description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can summarize the central aspects of the section you refer to in one or two sentences, do so. That helps your readers to jog their memory, they don't have to re-read it (but may, if they forgot or skipped it earlier), and they are not bored by reading anything twice, because the summary is concise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T11:39:59.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10202" CreationDate="2014-02-01T15:55:21.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answers by Roger and Bruce Alderman recommend to actively look for inspiration in the work of your favourite authors: &quot;find the core elements&quot;, &quot;take elements and combine&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you do nothing of the sort, if you want to find your own voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inspiration is not fandom. If you read the Lord of the Rings and feel you want to write a book like the Lord of the Rings, then you are not inspired, but suffer from post partum depression: you are sad that the book ends and you can no longer live in that fictional universe. If, on the other hand, you read the Lord of the Rings and you feel that you need to tell a different story, then that is inspiration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inspiration happens, when you feel that the story you read took a wrong turn and you want to tell a story taking the right turn. Inspiration happens when you feel that the characters would not act in that way, and you tell how they would truly behave. Inspiration happens, when you encounter an idea that was not developed, and you develop it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, inspiration happens, when you feel the need to &lt;strong&gt;go beyond the original work&lt;/strong&gt;, and tell us more, something new, something different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you do, you do not need to worry that we will notice the relation, because a subsequent work &lt;em&gt;commenting on&lt;/em&gt; its predecessors is not only legitimate but what we expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But instead of merely elaborating on an existing work, you could also write from the core of your own being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life leaves a residue in your self. This &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt;, as we call it, stems from your real life adventures, from media (e.g. books), and from your reflections on it all. If you draw your inspiration from there; if, for example, your job, your relationships, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the Lord of the Rings came together and sparked an idea (just like the Second World War, his family and norse mythology sparked the Lord of the Rings for Tolkien); then you have inspiration of a higher order – and the potential to write a groundbreaking work that will inspire other writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And no one, again, will care, if they can identify what about the Lord of the Rings lit the spark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T03:20:19.167" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T03:20:19.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10199" CreationDate="2014-02-01T16:12:15.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How thick/voluminous will this document be? I think the answer depends on the overall length as well as the length of each chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A summary is not necessary if the chapter is only a few paragraphs. But if the whole documentation had textbook length (800+ pages), an introduction, summary and even a table of contents for &lt;em&gt;each section&lt;/em&gt; could be of great help to your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to a library or bookstore and look at textbooks for students of the natural sciences to see how they break down their books into sections, then chapters, add an overview or table of contents and an introduction to all parts, add summaries, conclusions and a bibliography or study questions to the end of each chapter, and how they lay out the book, taking out sections of text into separate highlighted blocks on each page, etc. There are even books that have a short abstract for each subsection of a chapter, sometimes only a few paragraphs long!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course those textbooks are designed in this way to facilitate learning, but since you write a manual that you want to be used as reference, then maybe a textbook is not so completely different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishers like Pearson create well designed textbooks. Take them as an example and take what you find useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T16:12:15.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10213" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10214" CreationDate="2014-02-01T16:27:59.157" Score="-1" ViewCount="346" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wish to assign a multimedia project to a creative writing class of which I am a tutor, but I am running dry on ideas. Songs, narratives and dances have become commonplace. Any suggestions for something new for students on the undergraduate level that would both stimulate their creativity and help fulfil the criteria of a multimedia project? Thanks in advance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6215" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T17:28:34.197" Title="Multimedia Project" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-02-01T23:32:01.317" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10213" CreationDate="2014-02-01T16:43:53.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your examples, I guess that the question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What forms of multimedia could students use to tell a story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They could create:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;photonovel (static on a page or as slideshow-movie)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;comic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;animation (stop motion, Flash etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;radio show (War of the Worlds)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;computer game (text adventure, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;advertising&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;music video&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tv interview&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;illustrated newspaper article&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;story with illustrations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dance to spoken text&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;animate lego blocks or other toys and narrate a story with it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;opera (sing and act a story)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make a silent (!) movie and play live music to it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;film someone writing a story in sand (at the beach or wipe when you reach the edge of the sand box)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write a story in morse code with tansliteration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;film someone writing a story with a finger on a person's back and that person speaking it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write a user's manual as a poem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just combine any one or two media into something new! Endless possibilities. Interesting results :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-02-01T17:28:34.197" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T17:28:34.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9064" CreationDate="2014-02-02T07:08:40.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have the problem of a daytime job.  I've been out of work for FIVE years and, as such, I have plenty of time to write non-fiction books.  I've written three books and all three have gotten a contract offer.  Two of the books are in publication and the third will be published later this year.  Since no employer will hire me (I'm over 50 and age prejudice has destroyed my employability) I'm FORCED to write.  The only way to earn enough money to even approach a lower-middle class income is to write three, four, five, six, seven books over the same number of years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6863" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T07:08:40.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10220" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-02T12:13:45.963" Score="0" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cautiously I rose, briefly leaving his side. Turning to the lugubrious window when suddenly I was forced to duck down as cantankerous Nazis dehisced from behind great timber doors, parading across the turbid ground moving in synchronization like irate geese. Something was happening; something bad. We were ensnared in a never-ending cycle of death; invisible to those who once cared. Reluctantly I stared at battered wagons of the dead. Emotionless. Cold, shallow corpses grossly shoveled into immeasurable heads like unwanted leaves in a school playground. What has happened?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6865" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T15:45:20.473" Title="Is this a good description of a jew looking out the window at nazis?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|description|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-02-02T15:40:13.337" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10221" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-01T23:39:28.157" Score="3" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable to use I multiple times over and over  when writing dialogue and quotes for memoirs.  I have been told that if you are using quotes in dialogue that nothing is wrong.  I am reading a story now and see the word I as many as 25 times on the page.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user64417" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-09-01T17:16:41.213" LastActivityDate="2022-09-01T17:16:41.213" Title="Overuse of 'I' in a memoir" Tags="|style|pronouns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10222" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-02T14:06:25.423" Score="6" ViewCount="3426" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a Radio or TV needs to be audible. How is that written in a Script?  Is it written like the characters, or is written in the description in parentheses?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6796" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T22:24:12.130" Title="Script Writing as it pertains to TV and Radio lines" Tags="|formatting|dialogue|script|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10222" CreationDate="2014-02-02T15:44:15.130" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd write it in the script. You have to hire someone to read the lines, and it's audible dialogue which the characters and audience have to hear and react to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GREG&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I've got the tea. Where are the biscuits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JOHN &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Upper cabinet to the left of the sink, bottom shelf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RADIO ANNOUNCER &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;And now, we present for your enjoyment the dramatization of Neil Gaiman's &lt;em&gt;Neverwhere,&lt;/em&gt; with James McAvoy as Richard Mayhew, Natalie Dormer as Door, David Harewood as the Marquis de Carabas, and Benedict Cumberbatch as the Angel Islington.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JOHN &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Hurry up!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GREG &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;All right, all right! You'd think the man's never heard a radio drama before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RADIO &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;{voice singing}&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;If ever thou gavest hosen or shoon,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Then every night and all&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Sit thou down and put them on,&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;And Christ receive thy soul...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T15:44:15.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10220" CreationDate="2014-02-02T15:45:20.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The vocabulary starting in your second sentence is very uneven.  While I'm a fan of large words, they should be used sparingly and to import a sense of characte, especially when you're writing in first-person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's hard to follow the narrative of this section.  Are the Nazis outside, or inside?  Where did the wagons come from?  Are the Nazis disposing of corpses in a mass grave, or are they themselves corpse-like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some of your imagery is incongruent with other imagery.  Irate geese usually don't work in lockstep, and are more comical that fearsome.  (of course, assuming there's a mass grave, corpses as &quot;discarded leaves&quot; is excellently chilling.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To improve the piece, I would encourage you to either simplify its vocabulary or insert some Yiddish, Hebrew, or biblical references.  Either omitting the name &quot;Nazi&quot; or moving it to the initial mention of the soldiers would also improve the section's flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T15:45:20.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10221" CreationDate="2014-02-02T17:10:36.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use of &quot;I&quot; is perfectly acceptable in a narrative first-person memoir.  Especially if it is written in either a conversational or confessional style (i.e., a diary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quotation marks for dialog or excerpts are appropriate, and should of course be written in as faithful a recording as possible.  (or, if it's a fictional &quot;memoir&quot;, should be from the POV of the fictional source.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T17:10:36.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9995" CreationDate="2014-02-02T17:19:44.607" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Newspapers are perhaps the iconic manifestation of &quot;house style.&quot;  Several publications have been in print near-continuously since before we had ample standardization of grammar and formats, and are likely the source of several &quot;American&quot; or &quot;British&quot; standards.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing for an existing publication, inquire with the submission editor for the specific rules they expect of submissions, or examine their printed issues for reference.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, instead, you're editing a newspaper and want to form a consistent style, consider purchasing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apstylebook.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Associated Press Stylebook&lt;/a&gt;, which has quoted prices between $20 and $30 for various resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be more clear, there is no universal style for dates, and such varies both per-country and per-publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T17:19:44.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10222" CreationDate="2014-02-02T21:13:20.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Number 13 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.screenwritersuniversity.com/resources/20-common-sense-script-rules-in-no-particular-order&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on this page&lt;/a&gt; explains that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...if there’s a TV, and a reporter is talking, and your character is engaged with it, you need to provide all the dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if its just background noise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes, there’s such a thing as walla. That’s background noise, the indistinct chatter of others in public places.   You don’t have to write that in. But you do have to write in anything in which your protagonist or character is engaged, and would therefore hear ‘in the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it appears if it's significant, it should be written like any other dialogue in the script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The script for &lt;em&gt;Night of the Living Dead&lt;/em&gt; - available &lt;a href=&quot;http://wdjoyner.org/zombies/romero-etal_night-of-the-living-dead_script-1968.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; as a pdf - treats audible dialog from a television like dialog from the other characters (see pp. 5-6)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6838" LastEditorUserId="6838" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T22:24:12.130" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T22:24:12.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10229" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10395" CreationDate="2014-02-03T04:39:18.417" Score="6" ViewCount="538" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a textbook which contains some lists of recommended Web sites. Unlike the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1045/how-should-be-the-format-for-literature-references-that-are-websites-urls&quot;&gt;How should be the format for literature references that are websites (URLs)?&lt;/a&gt;, these will not be references. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Here are some magazines about geography:&#xA;- Canadian Geographic (http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/)&#xA;- Geographical (www.geographical.co.uk)&#xA;- Australian Geographical (http://australiangeographic.com.au/)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should the URL be written? Is it more formal and professional to include or exclude &quot;http://&quot; and the &quot;/&quot; at the end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T21:28:35.247" Title="How to display URLs in a textbook?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10230" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10231" CreationDate="2014-02-03T06:59:02.233" Score="4" ViewCount="11008" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it alright to use the same figure twice (but different figure number) in a report? If so, do I have to use separate captions, to avoid confusion in the table of figures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6871" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T14:22:41.727" Title="Can I use the same figure twice in a report?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10230" CreationDate="2014-02-03T08:51:57.760" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless the figure is central to both problems discussed and quite a bit away in text from both, avoid this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the figure is, say, 2-4 pages back (not forward. Introduce it with first reference, then backreference. Don't make forward references) just reference it by name, &quot;Figure X from page Y&quot;, don't copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the second occurrence is chapters away but just a mention, with the figure being helpful but not essential, backreference it just the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the FIRST occurrence is just a mention, and the figure is central to the second occurrence, this is where you are allowed to make a forward reference and place the picture by the second occurrence, mentioning it &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; appear and receive more detailed attention further on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the occurrences are chapters away, but still the picture is essential to both:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do copy the picture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make it perfectly clear this is the same picture as in the earlier occurrence (&quot;Now let us have a look at the graph of ... from chapter X again:&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;skip the repeated occurrence in numbering and the table of figures altogether&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, it is plain better to have the other figure differ - if only in emphasis. Underline other elements, emphasize descriptions, crop - if it's to illustrate a different thing, it can illustrate it differently, mention the changed emphasis in description, and have the two be two different pictures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T14:22:41.727" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T14:22:41.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10229" CreationDate="2014-02-03T08:59:47.213" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leading &lt;code&gt;http://&lt;/code&gt;, no trailing &lt;code&gt;/&lt;/code&gt;, monospace font.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With modern domain names, without &lt;code&gt;http://&lt;/code&gt; it may get confusing. Would you say &lt;em&gt;the.british.museum&lt;/em&gt; is an URL at first glance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is to appear in an electronic format (even for offline reading) adding spaces between the braces and the URL is a nice user-friendly gesture making copy&amp;amp;paste easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T08:59:47.213" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10202" CreationDate="2014-02-03T17:35:08.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difference between copyright violation, plagiarism, and inspiration is a range and not three distinct points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously -- I think this is obvious anyway -- if you copy somebody else's story word for word and put your own title and by-line on it, that's copyright violation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take somebody else's story and make just enough changes to avoid copyright law -- like you go through and rewrite all the text in your own words while not changing the plot or characters in any way -- that's unimaginative, if not plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we all get ideas from others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often hear people criticize a story as &quot;just a copy&quot; of some other story based on the thinnest of similarities. Like any movie that presents the same incident from two different points of view seems to inevitably be called a rip-off of Roshomon. I've heard stories called copies of Romeo and Juliet despite having no discernible similarity other than also being a love story. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yeah, I've seen movies where it appears that someone took the script for some other movie that made a ton of money and just went through doing search-and-replace with a word processor to change the names of all the characters and places, then shuffled a few scenes around, added a couple of car chases and explosions, and made their own movie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I've also read plenty of books that borrow ideas from each other but then explore them in different ways. Just because two books are both about, say, time travel doesn't mean that they are the same story. There are lots of things you can do with that idea. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T17:35:08.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10229" CreationDate="2014-02-03T22:32:11.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're including URL's inline, format them with the protocol (http://) and either a trailing slash or filename, plus any required parameters.  Include any canonical items that appear when you click a link back to the site's home page, such as a leading &quot;www&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a table of &quot;useful websites&quot; with the URL in a distinct column, you can instead omit much of the url and include only the optional subdomain, domain name, and TLD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T22:32:11.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10238" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-04T14:06:46.240" Score="1" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The next morning I went to the forest—not the &lt;em&gt;mini-scale&lt;/em&gt; forest but&#xA;  the real one. It extended miles and miles around the house. We were&#xA;  well aware of it when Akiko and I bought the house. In fact, that was&#xA;  one of the main reasons we chose it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the overuse of &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt; make the passage above sound flat and ambiguous? Would it better if I do something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The next morning I went to the forest—not the &lt;em&gt;mini-scale&lt;/em&gt; forest but&#xA;  the real one. It extended miles and miles around the house. We were&#xA;  well aware of its existence when Akiko and I bought the house. In fact, that was&#xA;  one of the main reasons we chose the place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T15:39:53.467" Title="Should one avoid overusing &quot;it&quot; in prose?" Tags="|style|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10238" CreationDate="2014-02-04T14:31:03.170" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I only take issue with the last &quot;it&quot;. The previous two instances both refer to the forest, while this one refers to the house, so the switch can be confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think &quot;its existence&quot; is too wordy. &quot;It&quot; works just fine in this spot because it's unambiguous what the pronoun refers to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were the editor, I would leave the first two and only change the last one to be more clear that it's the house being referred to, not the forest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6851" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T14:31:03.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10238" CreationDate="2014-02-04T15:39:53.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally with pronouns, so long as the subject doesn't change you wont cause confusion.  When there is only one male or one female in the scene, pronoun to your heart's content...course I try to balance that with reminders via the dialogue because the repetition can be...distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you start getting into scenes with more complexity you need to be a little more deliberate about what/who/where (etc) is being referenced.  (Like roger pointed out with the &quot;it&quot; at the end of your sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6524" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T15:39:53.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9829" CreationDate="2014-02-04T17:51:07.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This all depends on the editor and publisher you are working with. Each team at any publishing house has their own time frame. The amount of time taken should be stated in your contract. An editor should not be taking so much time that you have only a couple of days to finish rewrites. That does not sound professional to me. Sends up a red flag. Did you read up on this company, or at least this editor before signing the contract? The publisher pushing to get your work done before the end of the year for tax write offs doesn't sound right either. A good place to check if someone is on the &quot;writer beware&quot; list is :&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good resource to use for the least chance of finding an editor or publisher that will scam  you is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersmarket.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writersmarket.com&lt;/a&gt;  You have to pay for a subscription, but it is well worth it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7878" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T17:51:07.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10242" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10246" CreationDate="2014-02-04T21:10:26.143" Score="4" ViewCount="1485" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have authored a particular fanfiction, which has garnered a moderate following on the fanfiction website I published it to. As of now, the story has 279 users following it for updates, as well as 45 users watching me in particular for &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; I post (there is some overlap, but it isn't 100%). The story is currently over 100k words split between 18 chapters, with 3k story views and 23k chapter views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My story is not finished, but over the last few chapters, my rate of updates has slowed. Chapters 1-13 were every week or every other week; 14-17 were approximately every month, and chapter 18 took me 2 months to put out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't to say I spent two entire months writing chapter 18, far from it! I spent about 3 days doing the actual writing (and then editing time added onto that), and while I spent more time figuring out the plotline, most of it was &amp;quot;sunk cost,&amp;quot; as the plotline is a continuation of the previous chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 18 has been up for almost &lt;em&gt;five months&lt;/em&gt; now, and I still haven't put a single word down for chapter 19. I'm not actually suffering from writer's block as I understand the term: I know what elements need to go into the chapter, and I even have specific plans for many (if not all) of the scenes that will take place. The problem &lt;strong&gt;seems to be&lt;/strong&gt; a lack of motivation to spend the requisite time to do the writing in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I certainly haven't lost interest in the subject of the story, either. The story is a crossover between my favorite tabletop RPG setting (which has a new edition coming out soon) and my favorite animated series. In fact, my Gravatar is from one of the books for the RPG.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques might I employ to get myself &amp;quot;back in the game,&amp;quot; as it were? I admit that I'm not the best at time management, so recommendations on time management techniques (esp. those which apply to writing) would not be unwarranted, but &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; recommendations for how to get back on the horse would apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Complications&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was pumping out a chapter a week, I was unemployed, out of school, and living with my parents. The only calls on my time were a weekly card game league I participated in, and a weekly game night with my friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, I have a full-time job, I now &lt;em&gt;run&lt;/em&gt; the aforementioned league, I still have a weekly game night, I have picked up a MMO game, and (particularly relevant to concentrating while writing) one of my house-mates often sings to himself, frequently loudly and always poorly (or alternatively, talks to himself, sometimes loudly). The singing and talking is the result of a mental handicap, and while he does oblige if asked to keep things down, he's only able to keep it in check for a limited duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Bonus&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my other housemates is a fan of my story, so he could potentially be a source of encouragement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a subscription to &lt;a href=&quot;http://focusatwill.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;focus@will&lt;/a&gt;, which I did utilize (before being a paid subscriber) while writing chapters 17 and 18. f@w won't specifically get me to open up Word and start writing, but it does help with concentration while working on something. According to f@w's blog, it can also build a Pavlovian response by associating f@w's music with &amp;quot;work time.&amp;quot; I can't comment on that personally, but then I doubt anyone conditioned for something would be able to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6245" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2024-02-04T11:24:29.260" Title="How can I get myself writing again?" Tags="|creative-writing|discipline|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10242" CreationDate="2014-02-04T21:42:13.443" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have struggled with the some of the same problems myself. Life always seems to come before writing. Here's some of the things I've learned over the last few years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Don't try to write a chapter&lt;/em&gt; - Jot down your ideas as they come to&#xA;you. That's very important because you will forget what you want to&#xA;write when you want to write! Then when you have time, go look at&#xA;the notes you've made and start building the story from there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Write something different&lt;/em&gt; - Something comes after&#xA;Chapter 18, right? Well, if you get an idea for that, start there&#xA;and complete that chapter then go back.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Be mobile in your writing&lt;/em&gt; - If you have a tablet or laptop, great.&#xA;If you don't, a good old fashioned notebook will do. Just have&#xA;something around you so that when you get that urge to write, you&#xA;can. Also, the change of scenery will help. I used to get stuck when&#xA;writing on my computer. But then I'd go off with my little IPod&#xA;touch, watch TV, and the next thing I'd know it'd be four hours&#xA;later, TV's on the music channel, and I've got a good chunk of&#xA;writing done.  (I've since switched to an 8 inch tablet, much easier&#xA;on the eyes and the brain!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5473" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T21:42:13.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10242" CreationDate="2014-02-04T23:10:46.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, if it's fanfic specifically, then something about the source material got your brain going. Go back and rewatch the show, play the game, chat online with other fans, surf tumblr, read other folks' fic. Get back into the headspace of the fandom and see if that re-ignites your creative spark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, drop the MMO game. The mental energy you would be expending on plotting is going into the twists of gaming. Keep the game night, because you want to interact with actual, you know, live human beings. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T23:10:46.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="459" CreationDate="2014-02-05T01:25:31.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing my murder/mystery debut novel. It takes place between 1980 and 2005. In 1980 someone gets murdered, and the killer(whoever it is) gets away with it, planting evidence on another character. That is my main plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe every character should have their own subplot-- Every character is living their ordinary life, when they get pulled into the story. In 2005, certain events happen that bring the original plot back on the surface. The case gets opened back up, when my protagonist looks into what had happened in 1980, and I go back and fourth between the 1980 plot, and the present day plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel the need to do it this way, so the reader does not get confused.  What i do is, if my last chapter was in 2005, and i wanna go back to 1980, is at the top of the new chapter, i put a subtitle.(July 4,1980), and when i go back to 2005, i put the subtitle (September 12,2005). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way the reader knows exactly where they are, and they can see flashbacks of how the original plot comes together with the present day plot, until the final resolution. They get to see what brought certain characters together, and the reader can eventually connect the dots to the whole story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7882" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T15:22:16.810" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T15:22:16.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10242" CreationDate="2014-02-05T10:09:55.037" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously there's no one answer to this. These are simply my observations on dealing with this issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found writing in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;frm=1&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CC0QFjAA&amp;amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.writelatex.com%2F&amp;amp;ei=SgvyUrOaHKbR7Abm8YEo&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNG-wqxY80irURRujIqfPpx6qWa96A&amp;amp;bvm=bv.60799247,d.ZGU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LaTeX&lt;/a&gt; to be quite liberating; by planning the rough shape of the story (sections or chapters) I can then create a separate module that will contain each chapter or section. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each module contains a comment at the top with the rough plot for the module and some things to keep in mind. This way I can just pick up a new module, free of the weight of previous work, free of the worrying over formatting and layout, and just write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This wikibook is invaluable for this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm stumped on a section I've often it's because I don't like it. Scrapping it an going back to the end of the last section often kickstarts my writing again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I’m really stumped I get my wife to give me a word, and use it as inspiration to kick off a new piece. Sometimes going and working on a short for a while clears my head, and I can come back to main piece ready to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was unemployed I did way more writing than I do now. If you really want to write, you need to make solid time for it (which you had plenty of time for back then.) Set aside some time, even if it's only half an hour a day. The more you stick to this the easier it will get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Lauren said; ditch the MMO. You know those things are addictive and you'll never make the time to write if you're playing them (and if you do you'll be distracted by thoughts of the game.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer to listen to instrumental music when I’m writing. There's a ton of great free music like this on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;frm=1&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CC0QFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.jamendo.com/&amp;amp;ei=HAryUrHqDOnB7AbDrYCoCQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGPuU6sdSE65b2KEwP8FNJ_FW1pBA&amp;amp;bvm=bv.60799247,d.ZGU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jamendo&lt;/a&gt;. (For fantasy check out Celestial Aeon Project.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I really like finding music that fits the theme of what I'm writing, to help carry on that inspiration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're friend keeps singing get some good headphones and drown it out with some non-distracting music. Note I like instrumental music because I find myself stopping to listen to the lyrics if there are any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some people planning out the whole story helps them stay on track, but for others it stalls their creativity entirely. Spend some time figuring out what works best for you and then put it into place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As lonehorseend said, find somewhere comfortable to write. I use a laptop so I can sit wherever I want, and if I can't take it with me I take a notepad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a notepad also allows to me to write without worrying about how it looks and sounds; I can polish it up when I type it up. This allows me to write quicker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure you don't slip into the trap of using a need for a better environment/equipment as an excuse to not write. That one's caught me out many a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, writing should be fun, we should enjoy it, but it's also about work. If you don't put in solid time you won't get the output. The problem, as you know, is getting started. Hopefully some of these things will help, but I think the biggest one is setting time aside every day. If you can make this routine then eventually you won't even notice it, it'll just be what you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally watch out for distractions, and that includes distracting yourself. Sometime sitting down to a big piece can seem daunting, and it's easy to avoid the whole thing. But it's worth it not to. Just stick to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T09:15:26.440" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T09:15:26.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9722" CreationDate="2014-02-05T11:07:41.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When citing the same source multiple times in a paragraph (and from there an extension being to the entire paper, as is the case in your question), you can do the following (borrowed from &lt;a href=&quot;http://owll.massey.ac.nz/referencing/apa-in-text-citation.php#multiple-citations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introduce the source early in the paragraph, with the author as part of the sentence rather than in brackets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: Lazar (2006) describes several aspects of the data gathering process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the rest of the paragraph, you can refer back to the author by name or pronoun when elaborating on their ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: He notes that the relevance and number of questions can affect participation rates. Lazar also found that…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as it is clear to the reader that all of the ideas come from that same source, there is no risk of plagiarism and the paragraph flows well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that if you put the author's name in brackets later on in the paragraph (for example, if you include a quotation from that source) you should always include the year of publication in the brackets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://owll.massey.ac.nz/referencing/apa-in-text-citation.php#multiple-citations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://owll.massey.ac.nz/referencing/apa-in-text-citation.php#multiple-citations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.css.edu/content.php?pid=61826&amp;amp;sid=454619&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://libguides.css.edu/content.php?pid=61826&amp;amp;sid=454619&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nova.campusguides.com/apa-citing-in-body-of-paper&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://nova.campusguides.com/apa-citing-in-body-of-paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T11:07:41.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9693" CreationDate="2014-02-05T11:27:05.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apsu.edu/sites/apsu.edu/files/academic-support-center/MLA_Style.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; (pdf guide by Austin Peay State University) states the following about citing the same source multiple time in the same paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When citing a source the first time, use the author’s name(s) unless the name is used as part of the sentence that introduces the source’s text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: The expert of writing claims, “MLA Style of formatting is the easiest style to use” (Modern 45).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When citing same source again, cite only by page number (if hardcopy source) for subsequent citations unless you switch sources (i.e., use another source).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: The expert adds, “MLA Style does not require a title page like APA and Chicago Style do” (48).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ithacalibrary.com/research/mla_parenthetical.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; (pdf guide by Ithaca College Library) states the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write a paragraph that quotes more than once from the same page of the same source—and no other source is quoted—you may use a single parenthesis after the last quotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not too sure about citing websites multiple times (have not found anything concrete in such a case) but you might consider introducing the source in the beginning and then at the end of the paragraph including the details of the website?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T11:27:05.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10229" CreationDate="2014-02-05T12:29:42.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When making something similar to a &quot;list of recommended websites&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Name of the source &gt;whitespace&amp;lt; description &gt;whitespace&amp;lt; link&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where the link can be specified as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acfonline.org.au/default.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.acfonline.org.au/default.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ourcoolschool.org/select/state/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ourcoolschool.org/select/state/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it is not a mandate to specify the description or even the name of the source. Some people may simply tend to create a list of the websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, there are two types of conventions seen when writing the URLs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the page name does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; explicitly end in an extension (for example, .com, .au, .org , .edu etc. then include &lt;strong&gt;/&lt;/strong&gt; at the end of the URL. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the page name explicitly ends in an extension (for example, .html, .asp, .aspx, .php, etc.) then the trailing / is skipped and the extension is mentioned. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/write/fieldguide/index.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/write/fieldguide/index.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, &lt;strong&gt;http&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;https&lt;/strong&gt; is mentioned. So is the &lt;strong&gt;www&lt;/strong&gt; following the //.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The choice of the font in which it is written depends on the publisher. Usually, when the manuscript is being discussed, the publisher will provide a template. The template will specify exactly which font (and style) URLs need to be written in. If none is specified, you may choose to separate the URL from the main text by using a monospaced font (as recommended by SF) or else keep it consistent with the rest of the text. Certain others might recommend using main body font and italics (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/stylesheet.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;O'Reilly&lt;/a&gt; recommends this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;List of sources for the answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Looking at several textbooks which have a &quot;Recommended&quot; list (apart from References/Bibliography)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A paper (&lt;a href=&quot;http://sisaljournal.org/archives/sep11/howard/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) I found which has a &quot;Recommended Website&quot; list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.thehotrock.org.au/index.php/more-hotrock-resources/recommended-resources/14-website-list-pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Hot Rock&lt;/a&gt; list of recommended resources which uses a table type format for specifying list of websites&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want more details/sources, please comment. Hope this answer helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T12:29:42.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="459" CreationDate="2014-02-05T16:23:40.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most common reason to tell a story out of order is to put an exciting scene at the beginning to get the reader interested. Then go back and put in all the exposition to explain how that scene came to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason is if telling the story in order would give away important information to soon. Others have mentioned mystery stories. If you're writing a mystery where the reader is supposed to be trying to figure out who the villain is along with the detective, than of course starting out with the scene where the villain commits the crime could give it all away. Of course many stories have a &quot;mystery&quot; without being mystery stories in the sense of being about a crime, and the same reasoning might apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some stories involve numerous flashbacks as information is progressively revealed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any given story might naturally call for non-linear time for any number of reasons. A story about an old man reminiscing about the past would quite naturally involve flashbacks. Perhaps you want to display the chaotic state of the hero's mind. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As John Smithers says, if you do write a non-linear story, be careful that it is clear what is the present and what is the past. I have occasionally read stories where something was supposed to be a flashback and I didn't realize it, and the story was confusing until I figured it out. This can be done as simply as putting a date at the front of each section or giving clear introductions to the flashbacks, like &quot;Jack thought back to when ...&quot; Remember to also make it clear when the flashback is over, by the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T16:23:40.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10242" CreationDate="2014-02-05T16:50:21.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;A writer is someone who writes.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychologist Paul J. Silvia, in &lt;em&gt;How to Write a Lot&lt;/em&gt;, a guide to academic writing, states that there is no such thing as writer's block. What people perceive as &amp;quot;writer's block&amp;quot; is caused by waiting for inspiration to hit before you start to write. The fact is that inspiration will happen &lt;em&gt;while&lt;/em&gt; you write. Always. Therefore Silvia's one stop solution to all writing problems is to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really recommend that helpful book. It was recommended to me by my psychology professor. A short summary is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set yourself a time for writing. It can be half an hour each week, or three hours each day, or whatever time you have available. It does not matter at all how much time you can invest, but it must be a fixed time, the same each week, and you must sit down and write during that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you find adhering to some random schedule difficult, perceive that writing time as you perceive your job. A problem that many non-professional writers face is that they themselves don't take their writing serious enough. You wouldn't not go to your job because you didn't feel like it. Unless you are seriously ill, you get up, get dressed, drive to work, and work. It may not be your best day, but you get through it. Do the same with your writing. No matter if you didn't sleep well or have no ideas or would rather cuddle with your girl friend – get up, get dressed, go to wherever you can write without being distracted, and write. And don't be late. (You may work overtime, but you cannot substract that from the next appointed time.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The quality of you writing does not matter. Your first task is only to write. If you want, you can delete/throw away everything you wrote at the end of each session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It does not matter what you write. Just write whatever comes to your head. With time this will sort itself out and you will get into what you really want to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep at it. No excuses. The idea behind this strategy is that you need to build a habit of writing. If you don't believe in this strategy, set yourself a date until which you will adhere to this schedule and then evaluate its usefulness. You must do this for at least 30 days, for it to become effective. Three months is better. Habits don't happen in one repetition, so give yourself some time, before you decide this is not for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot find the time to write, you should accept that writing is not important enough for you, and stop agonizing over it. Enjoy the things you do! One can be happy without writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writer Steven Pressfield in his non-fiction instructional manual on how to &amp;quot;break through the blocks and win your inner creative battles&amp;quot;, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_Art_%28book%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The War of Art&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, recommends the same strategy for &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;going pro&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;. He lists ten principles you need to apply to your writing if you want to write professionally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show up every day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show up no matter what&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stay on the job all day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commit yourself over the long haul&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The stakes are high and real&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept remuneration for our labor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not overidentify with your job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Master the technique of your job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a sense of humor about your job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You receive praise or blame in the real world&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to comment on a few of these principles, as they apply to the non-professional writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;re 1. That's essentially the idea I already outlined above: Create a schedule that you as a hobbyist with a job other than writing can fulfill, and then stick to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;re 2. Take your writing serious and don't make any excuses. If writing is something you want to do, you need to follow this &lt;em&gt;decision&lt;/em&gt; with the necessary discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;re 3. Again, I already mentioned this: If you set yourself an hour to write, then write an hour. You can work longer, but you as your own boss should make sure you stay on the job for the time that you expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;re 4. Don't see yourself as writing this story or writing for one month, but conceive of yourself as writing from now on. Make writing a habit like brushing your teeth. You want to be a writer (a person who writes) not an author (someone who once wrote a book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;re 5. and 6. If you can and dare, reduce your daytime job and earn money with your writing. Or find another way so that failing to write will seriously impact you and your life. This is one killer motivator, but not for everyone, certainly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;re 7. Steve Pressfield writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We may take pride in our work, we may stay late and come in on weekends, but we recognize that we are not our job descriptions. The amateur, on the other hand, overidentifies with his avocation, his artistic aspiration. He defines himself by it. He is a musician, a painter, a playwright. Resistance [Pressfield's concept for what keeps you from creating, what others call &amp;quot;writer's block&amp;quot; or procrastination] loves this. Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and overterrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I call amateur writing &amp;quot;masturbation&amp;quot;. The amateur artist creates art to satisfy himself. He is not a lover, who communicates with his partner to please both himself and her, but a social incompetent loner. The professional creates art for a paying audience to earn a living. The real art in creating art, as in any job, is to find the right balance, where you have fun &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; your customers are satisfied with the product they buy from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a hobby writer, you can still write from this same perspective, and I believe that you need to create art that someone else than yourself cares about, if you truly want to make yourself happy. Because the true &amp;quot;fun&amp;quot; in writing comes not from expressing your inner self in a way meaningful only to you, but in writing what someone else wants to read in a way that only you could have written it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;re 8. That's in fact part of learning the craft of writing: to find your own themes and style, yet tell your stories in a way that interests and excites a significant number of readers. Write socially, like a lover of your audience, not to pleasure only yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;re 9. Humor implies that you don't overidentify. If you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; your writing, then any critique will feel like it devalues you. Distance yourself from your writing in the same way that a baker does not get a depression when a customer does not like his bread. Attempt to bake good bread, of course, but take it lightly, if not everyone loves it. &lt;em&gt;You are not your writing&lt;/em&gt;, you are a writer. Don't love your writing (i.e. your texts) in a way that makes it impossible for you to heed constructive criticism, but love writing (i.e. the creation of texts). Laugh at your bad writing of last year and learn to do better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Apart from these ten principles, I didn't find Pressfield's&lt;/em&gt; The War of Art &lt;em&gt;very useful. I do not recommend that book.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="60280" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2024-02-03T19:57:50.260" LastActivityDate="2024-02-03T19:57:50.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5895" CreationDate="2014-02-05T17:05:43.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;specify which pictures from my resources go where&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do this with the placement of the &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;$IMG&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; tag (though it may not be available in the Windows version). See &lt;a href=&quot;http://gwenhernandez.com/2013/05/28/tech-tuesday-inserting-images-in-scrivener/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Specify a caption that goes with a picture&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something that scrivener seems a little counter-intuitive on, but here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&amp;amp;t=26000&amp;amp;p=169152&amp;amp;hilit=caption#p169032&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; on the Literature and Latte forum that describes how to use figure/image captions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;have the compile process figure out based on a figure's position in text what the numbering should be (simple 1 to n will suffice)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems to be covered &lt;a href=&quot;http://unvexed.blogspot.com/2012/07/how-to-do-cross-references-in-scrivener.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The cross-reference callout functionality seems to allow for automatic numbering based on image position in a manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6838" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T17:05:43.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10613" CreationDate="2014-02-06T01:09:15.883" Score="4" ViewCount="1752" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm preparing technical documentation for some software. For the installation, there are lots of screen grabs and they all have &lt;code&gt;Figure x&lt;/code&gt; captions. What's the correct styling and means of referencing figures from text? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if one step says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Click &lt;strong&gt;OK&lt;/strong&gt; to continue (see &lt;strong&gt;Figure 9&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6446" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T09:28:02.903" Title="How to reference a figure from text in a technical document" Tags="|style|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10229" CreationDate="2014-02-06T10:32:24.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You set a bounty and wrote in the comment you want a &quot;credible and/or official source&quot;. And I'm not sure what's the purpose of that. It's a matter of style. You got some decent suggestions. If you choose one than that's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; style, and that should be &quot;credible&quot; by definition. Otherwise why do you write the textbook in the first place if you are not credible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several &quot;official&quot; styles out there and they contradict each other in many topics. So if there isn't a given style (e.g. chosen by your publisher), you can just pick your own. You even can &lt;em&gt;create&lt;/em&gt; your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you think that you need some sort of feeling safe, the APA Style suggests &lt;em&gt;http://&lt;/em&gt; an the beginning and no slash at the end (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/cite-website.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/cite-website.aspx&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T10:32:24.977" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10262" CreationDate="2014-02-06T15:20:04.620" Score="5" ViewCount="16897" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I submit a manuscript, I'm supposed to include a wordcount. I understand that this is not simply the number of words in the document (as calculated by Word or Google Docs wordcount tools), but something else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found different and contradictory explanations of how to calculate this. What's the right way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2018-07-30T12:44:36.570" Title="How do I calculate wordcount for a manuscript?" Tags="|wordcount|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10261" CreationDate="2014-02-06T15:20:04.620" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the context of a formatted manuscript, the &quot;word count&quot; isn't the precise number of words, nor is it directly inferred from the number of pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're actually doing here is finding the number of &lt;em&gt;lines&lt;/em&gt; your manuscript will take, because a line with just a few words on it still takes up as much page space as a line that's full to the end. But even this description is imprecise, because you need to adjust this calculation around the specifics of how you formatted your particular document. (Intuitively: if I produce two manuscripts which are identical, but one has wider margins then the other, then that one will have &quot;more lines&quot; in the ms. -- but they'll obviously be identical in final layout.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are different ways to make this estimate. Here's what I've used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Format your manuscript for submission. Among other things, this means:&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You'll be using a monospaced font (where each character is the same width, e.g. &lt;code&gt;Courier New&lt;/code&gt;), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Each full page will have the same number of lines on it. (You'll turn off &quot;Widows and Orphans&quot; - that's the option that prevents dangling lines on their lonesome by shifting lines from one page to another. You want that option off for your MS.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;So now every page has the same number of lines, and every line has a cap of how many characters long it can be.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Choose a &quot;full&quot; line, one that begins on one end of the page and reaches all the way to the end. Count how many &lt;strong&gt;characters&lt;/strong&gt; are in the line (in Word, you can just check the column for the last character). &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You can artificially &quot;create&quot; a full line by typing &lt;code&gt;aaaaaaaa...&lt;/code&gt; until you fill up one full line, just to count. Make sure not to start with a tab indentation!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Divide your number of characters-per-line by 6. This is your &lt;strong&gt;Words-Per-Line.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;So if a full line is 60 characters long, your words-per-line is 10.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Count the number of lines in one page. This is your &lt;strong&gt;Lines-Per-Page.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your Wordcount = Words-Per-Line x Lines-Per-Page x Numer-Of-Pages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other variations exist, and they're all fine - wordcount is an estimate, not a precise calculation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find more information on manuscript formatting and wordcount estimation here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/what-is-a-word/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chuck Rothman, &lt;em&gt;SFWA - What Is A Word?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;William Shunn - &lt;em&gt;Proper Manuscript Format&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.punctuationmadesimple.com/PMSWordCount.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Punctuation Made Simple - &lt;em&gt;Word Count&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T20:05:31.473" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T20:05:31.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10263" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-06T16:10:00.480" Score="0" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;My school requests a research question for a project. I came up with one like this: (different topic but very similar, due to NDA)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the behavior of a bike, depending on speed, time in use and temperature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is about the research, and defines what is wanted. However this is way too much for the time I will work at the project. My task is to design, build and verify the bike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I leave the research question as it is, I will be having trouble at the end, because I cannot answer it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rephrasing the question to something like below feels not right, it does not contain the whole assignment. Must a research question really be a question, or can it also be a statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you build a bike?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Build and verify a bike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project is done at a company by me as a bachelor assignment. The company has a problem which is pretty hard to solve (my part of the project won't solve it either). To further investigate the problem they need this bike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really have a clue how this research question is used in these kind of assignments where it is &lt;code&gt;build and verify x&lt;/code&gt;. Usually the research question is defined at the beginning, and in your conclusions at the end of the project you are able to give an answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5346" LastEditorUserId="5346" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T20:39:06.147" LastActivityDate="2019-08-15T10:33:14.267" Title="How to define a research question when the output is a product, used in research?" Tags="|research|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10265" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10266" CreationDate="2014-02-06T19:26:51.017" Score="4" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to include a chart in my thesis to visualize an idea but the chart is not based on real data, it just helps me to explain a concept. How can I label it so it's not confused for actual data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is similar to this famous RUP hump chart which is also just educated guess of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EIpfd.gif&quot; alt=&quot;RUP hump chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2329" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T22:06:50.557" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T22:06:50.557" Title="Marking a chart that is not based on real data" Tags="|technical-writing|graphics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10265" CreationDate="2014-02-06T19:29:26.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've done this in a number of documents, where I state clearly that it is &quot;illustrative&quot; or &quot;used to demonstrate a concept and the rough proportions of one item to another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found I have the least amount of confusion by stating in the paragraph just before the chart appears, and then stating in the graph somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T19:29:26.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10265" CreationDate="2014-02-06T20:34:17.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this done with a &quot;watermark&quot; that says (usually) &quot;sample data&quot; (kind of like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ablebits.com/_img-blog/excel-insert-watermark/watermark-in-worksheet.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ablebits.com/office-addins-blog/2013/09/19/insert-watermark-excel-worksheets/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, though that's a table rather than a chart).  Think of the &quot;draft&quot; watermark you sometimes see on documents; same idea.  Saying something in the text (or figure caption) can be helpful, but this approach has the advantage of embedding the information directly in the graphic -- particularly useful if you're publishing online where somebody might save and reuse your image file, or if you're using the same chart in multiple sections of your document or multiple documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T21:01:21.440" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T21:01:21.440" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3042" CreationDate="2014-02-07T04:11:30.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Using &amp;quot;P.S.&amp;quot; decreases your signal-to-noise ratio and degrades your ability to communicate clearly.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. may be appropriate when using set ink or stone, however, in modern times, &lt;strong&gt;it is archaic&lt;/strong&gt; and inexcusable as you can easily move text around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;As such, PS should never be used in an email.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(unless you do not care about communicating clearly)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;By using PS in an email, you have demonstrated a failure to ask:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the point of this email?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What type of response do I want from it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your intention was to find out if someone still enjoyed making clothes,&#xA;then your first sentence should have been:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;Do you still enjoy making clothes?&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it wasn't the most pressing issue in the email, than it should have been tied closely to the sentence that was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, if you were just curious, say so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;I'm curious, do you still enjoy making clothes?&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/scitable/ebooks/english-communication-for-scientists-14053993&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/scitable/ebooks/english-communication-for-scientists-14053993&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324735104578117193149868504&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324735104578117193149868504&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9226/using-p-s-in-a-formal-email#&quot;&gt;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9226/using-p-s-in-a-formal-email#&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7903" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T08:33:29.480" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10242" CreationDate="2014-02-07T05:08:34.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Work backwards.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Visualize the completed work in it's entirety&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Dr. Wayne W. Dyer's PBS special 'Excuses Be Gone' he recommends actually having the cover sleeve made before trying to sit and write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Break it down&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In writing research papers, I usually start with having a full outline of each section, including figures.  With a book, however, there is no reason you not to brainstorm what each chapter might be about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, you can consider the substory; what things will you cover in each chapter and how will they flow?  And you may also want to consider if there will be sub-chapters, or some other form of sectioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Fill in the blanks&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't already been inspired to just start writing at this point, start writing down possible topics for each paragraph you'll write.  When you've run out of ideas, consider how to organize them, or move them in with other chapters if necessary.  Then just start expanding the topics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Save formatting and editing until the end&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CLockeWork's suggestion of using LaTeX shouldn't be ignored.  Use a logical editor instead of a WYSIWYG one if possible, or just write inside notepad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Save the typesetting, punctuation, and spell checking, and grammar for when you are stuck.  Chances are the editing process will spur new ideas and allow you to keep progressing forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7903" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T05:08:34.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10270" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10274" CreationDate="2014-02-07T07:18:18.137" Score="3" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently received and email from someone regarding potential business. However, a small part of me suspects that they may have an alternate motive for contacting me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Common business closings, such as regards, can come across as a bit stiff.  Yet, it seems the casualness of our original interaction is likely one of the reasons they wanted to do business with me in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;As such, I'm looking for a closing that can convey a sense of informality and warmth, without possibly expressing desire.  Any suggestions?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7903" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T17:10:39.180" Title="What closings can I use to convey friendship but not desire?" Tags="|email|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4376" CreationDate="2014-02-07T08:44:21.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Get rid of it!&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Clear communication is easiest when you have a high-signal-to-noise ratio; your signature is noise.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveat: if you are certain the person you are emailing actually needs it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;If in doubt, link to your company's page: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ginkgobioworks.com/about.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;contact&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, link to your professional &lt;a href=&quot;http://lnkd.in/_4Ag3x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;profile&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;If inadequate, create and link to a private &lt;a href=&quot;http://npdoty.name/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hcard&lt;/a&gt; or text file.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is best done via a service like Dropbox or Google drive's &lt;code&gt;share via private link&lt;/code&gt; feature and coupled with a custom URL shortener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;If you must use a URL, ensure it is small but obvious&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/in/jhfuller&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;linkedin.com/in/jhfuller&lt;/a&gt;  vs  &lt;a href=&quot;https://tinyurl.com/ljhtn7o&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://tinyurl.com/ljhtn7o&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7903" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T08:44:21.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10265" CreationDate="2014-02-07T09:33:27.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The graph will have a description with it. Just like every figure and table have. For example, Figure 5: Blah Blah Blah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can, after describing the entire graph, write in brackets something on the lines of &quot;chart based on hypothetical data; for illustrative purposes only&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T09:33:27.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10270" CreationDate="2014-02-07T09:49:13.883" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about something on the lines of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Looking forward to doing business with you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Kind Regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your name&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe &quot;Best Regards&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/09/27/57-ways-to-sign-off-on-an-email/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; list for some nice suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T09:49:13.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10275" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-07T13:16:37.723" Score="3" ViewCount="394" Body="&lt;p&gt;By type in this case I mean ways of grouping rhyme.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;There are a number of ways to categorise rhyme, based on what element you're looking at.  for example masculine/feminine refers to the number of syllables, while family/Perfect refers to the sound type.  Here are the types I know about:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sonic connection&lt;/strong&gt;: Perfect, Family, Assonance, Consonance, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;rhyme pair length&lt;/strong&gt;: Masculine, Feminine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;relational&lt;/strong&gt;: Additive, Subtractive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are exotic types like the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mirror Rhyme&lt;/em&gt; - Pair sound opposite to each other, like Pool/loop, or Dare/Raid&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking to get a list of rhyme types not included in the above list, &#xA;Bonus points for exotic types similar to mirror rhyme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5518" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T15:14:08.447" Title="Types/Categories of rhyme?" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10275" CreationDate="2014-02-07T15:14:08.447" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eye Rhyme:&lt;/strong&gt;   Rhyme on words that look the same but which are actually pronounced differently – for example “bough” and “rough”. The opening four lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, for example, go : &#xA;      Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?&#xA;      Thou art more lovely and more temperate:&#xA;      Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,&#xA;      And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: &#xA;Here, “temperate” and “date” look as though they rhyme, but few readers would pronounce “temperate” so that they did. Beware that pronunciations can drift over time and that rhymes can end up as eye rhymes when they were originally full (and vice versa).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rich Rhymes:&lt;/strong&gt;  Rhyme using two different words that happen to sound the same (i.e. homonyms) – for example “raise” and “raze”. The following example – a triple rich rhyme – is from Thomas Hood’s” A First Attempt in Rhyme” : &#xA;      Partake the fire divine that burns,&#xA;      In Milton, Pope, and Scottish Burns,&#xA;      Who sang his native braes and burns.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Slant Rhymes:&lt;/strong&gt; (sometimes called imperfect, partial, near, oblique, off etc.)&#xA;Rhyme in which two words share just a vowel sound (assonance – e.g. “heart” and “star”) or in which they share just a consonant sound (consonance – e.g. “milk” and “walk”). Slant rhyme is a technique perhaps more in tune with the uncertainties of the modern age than strong rhyme. The following example is also from Seamus Heaney’s “Digging” : &#xA;      Between my finger and my thumb&#xA;      The squat pen rests; snug as a gun   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailywritingtips.com/types-of-rhyme/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Daily Writing Tips&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6524" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T15:14:08.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10263" CreationDate="2014-02-07T15:33:30.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are &lt;strong&gt;constructing a prototype&lt;/strong&gt;. This prototype must serve in resolving the question you quoted, and this is pretty much what you must ask about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;What prototype bike is suitable for research of...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Is prototype X of bike suitable for research...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;How to construct a prototype of bike suitable for research...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;How to adapt a [generic brand bike] as a suitable prototype for tests in research...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T15:33:30.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10257" CreationDate="2014-02-07T19:53:06.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest abbreviating the word &quot;Figure&quot; to &quot;Fig.&quot;. As  could construe from scientific articles I've read(and I've read ~100 of them), it's more common. In all, you're perfectly correct: just a number would be fine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;See Fig. 8 for details. As depicted in the Fig. 14...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, what text editor/publishing system are you using? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, TeX-like document styles handle those issues themselves and even much hated MS Word has a couple of suitable presets. So the author has to choose the style once and for all and stick to it. Consistency is conciseness and clarity, and beauty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6663" LastEditorUserId="6663" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T20:22:16.980" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T20:22:16.980" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8496" CreationDate="2014-02-07T20:58:27.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction to BSS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Definition of Independence of signals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Independence and correlation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Methods of BSS&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PCA and other prewhitening methods&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;centering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whitening&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ICA based methods for BSS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SVD as a method for BSS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Information maximization approach&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Matrix Factorization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other Methods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is not based on any expertise on the subject. However, the general suggestion is to separate the methods section into two components: give individual sub-heading (level 2) weightage to methods that are important and frequently used for BSS (for example, ICA, and PCA). Once you are done covering the major techniques, include a sub-heading (level 2) like &quot;Other Methods&quot; wherein you can cover (briefly, based on the number of pages and the importance of each of these sub-sub-headings) topics like Dependent Component Analysis, and so on (level 3).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.42.5991&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.68.4632&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; which have a ranking of algorithms used for BSS according to the number of citations received. This should help you in separating important and newer algorithms (to be taken under level 2) vs. the older and obsolete ones (level 3; under the Other Methods section).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps (though I guess it is a little too late).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T20:58:27.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="178" CreationDate="2014-02-08T00:42:40.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think,if you want to be a non-native english writer you have to do more and more hard work.It's depands on your around circumstances,is it helpful for english practising.If not.IT will be more challenging for you.In this situation you may take help of english movie,news,news paper,talkshow,variety cultural program and english speaking with native speaker in online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7908" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T00:42:40.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10281" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10282" CreationDate="2014-02-08T02:12:38.203" Score="5" ViewCount="2455" Body="&lt;p&gt;First page of my fantasy novel. I'm told my writing is disjointed and jerky, but have no idea in what way! And it's driving me crazy that I don't know where the holes in my boat are so I can't really patch them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was a stupid idea. Heh, like all his others. His foes could have tailed and moreover, he was lost. The Far Moon rose and found Ruso scrabbling over the briars, his bow slung over a shoulder. Through a stream he splashed, chasing the wind, whilst the air blew acrid and his hearthsoul tipped. Ever so faintly the land drifted, groaning. It sped him onward until it calmed again, whereupon he searched for the tallest hill. Zaithe paced visibly atop it. She seemed taut and fidgety. Not such a menacing mercenary anymore, eh? Now that the darkness had receded, she no longer blended into the murk; her skin was a deeper brown than his hair, her tunic darker still. Belted at her waist were those assassin pouches. They could save a life, or take one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was with some care that Ruso approached. “Found the gem, mate,” he recited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“No, you didn’t.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He thanked his luck fairy—it was safe—and climbed over a fallen pine, landing with a scuff. There were few leaves here and a chill nipped the breeze. It meant that the warp must have been south- or westward. Ruso tried to envision which of the three wheels this would involve as he asked, “You got my map?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“No, curse them gods.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Curse your own gods,” he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“What do you care. They dumped us anyway.” The mercenary’s breath fogged. She halted to glare at him and he fixed her with one of Echeris’s flat, grey stares. Then she said, “Why weren’t you on vigil?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I changed the first paragraph, hope it's less confusing and the narrative doesn't switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was a stupid idea. Heh, like all his others. His foes could have followed and moreover, he was lost. The Far Moon had set and Ruso was still scrabbling through the darkness, thorns hooking him back, tripping him. He clambered up again and doffed his rabbithide shawl, tightening it around his waist for protection. It snagged on the briars as he scrambled. He was headed downwind towards the warp, until finally the air became sour and torrid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the land groaned, shifting, and sped him along with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7909" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T13:45:36.083" Title="Is my writing 'disjointed', and if so how can I fix it?" Tags="|style|fiction|fantasy|introduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10281" CreationDate="2014-02-08T03:17:59.410" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;To start with, you have too many invented terms without definition all in a row. Hearthsoul, assassin pouches, luck fairy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have enough mistakes that I really can't tell if some of these things are typos or more jargon. His enemies tailed? The &lt;em&gt;land&lt;/em&gt; drifted? What does that even mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &quot;recite&quot; something which is repeated or often said; it's not just a synonym for speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The narrative voice goes back and forth from almost a prose of his thoughts to standard third-person omniscient. Pick one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He fixed her with whose stare? That's incoherent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's in medias res and there's WTF is going on. You aren't setting the scene enough for us to understand what's happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, slow down, explain more, and quit trying to impress us with your cool world-building until we care about these people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA&lt;/strong&gt; You want more? okay...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This was a stupid idea. Heh, like all his others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the &quot;heh&quot; indicates that you're narrating his thoughts. Either do &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the narrative text like this or &lt;em&gt;none&lt;/em&gt; of the narrative text like this. You can't have it both ways. It's like switching to first person in the middle of a paragraph, just for one sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was headed downwind towards the warp, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new undefined term.  You did much better in your revised para, but we still don't know what this is. Geographical feature? Building? Weaving item? Part of the &lt;em&gt;Enterprise&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;until finally the air became sour and torrid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Torrid&quot; means &quot;passionate.&quot; Unless you're describing how the air is filled with pheromones which cause every living thing breathing it to suddenly start humping whatever's nearest (which would be a very different kind of story), this is not what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then the land groaned, shifting, and sped him along with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;THIS IS A BIG DEAL.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Land does not &lt;em&gt;move&lt;/em&gt;. You don't indicate that it's an earthquake; the protagonist acts like he just stepped onto an escalator. You are introducing a HUGE world-building element here &amp;mdash; that the land is capable of motion &amp;mdash; and you ignore it. You don't have to &lt;em&gt;explain&lt;/em&gt; it, but you do have to give us enough context and detail that we understand that you meant to do this, that it's a natural part of this planet/dimension/etc., and what the planet, flora, fauna, architecture, transit, society, government, and characters have done to adapt to &quot;ground that doesn't stay put.&quot; I could go on for a page and half about why this is such a big fat hairy deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Found the gem, mate,” he recited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You explain in the comments that this is their passphrase. You do not indicate in the &lt;em&gt;text&lt;/em&gt; that this is their passphrase. If it's a call-and-response, then you have to show one or both characters treating it &lt;em&gt;as&lt;/em&gt; a passphrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He thanked his luck fairy&amp;mdash;it was safe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only is this an undefined term, you have an ambiguous pronoun. Is he literally saying a word of gratitude to a sprite? Is s/he in his pocket? What is &quot;it&quot; that he's grateful for? Is he thanking the fairy, and then also grateful that the fairy is safe? Is he thanking the fairy that the gem is safe? Thanking the fairy that Zaithe, who is later a &quot;she,&quot; is safe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It meant that the warp must have been south- or westward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the land warped in this direction? I finally got that after the &lt;em&gt;eighth or ninth read.&lt;/em&gt; I previously thought this might have meant the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ruso tried to envision which of the three wheels this would involve&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this means &quot;wheels under the planet's surface moving the ground around,&quot; I will at least buy it for now. The previous eight times I read this as some kind of religious gibberish like &quot;the wheel turns, and sometimes you end up on top and sometimes you end up on the bottom.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He fixed her with one of Echeris’s flat, grey stares. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this supposed to imply that he's looking at her the way, what, their old shared teacher or commander used to do? Because otherwise he's literally borrowing someone else's face to look at her, which is incoherent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a chance that this works in a longer excerpt, but broadly, you are throwing too many terms at the reader which are invented and out of context, and expecting us to not just catch up but already understand and follow along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, because you have mechanical errors, our attempts to divine meaning and context from what do you give us are thwarted because we can't understand what we &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T13:45:36.083" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T13:45:36.083" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10283" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-08T13:29:03.400" Score="1" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Good. You've done your homework.” The girl turned around and started&#xA;  inspecting a decaying tree, as if checking its health. “Funny, isn't?&#xA;  How nature can make us do things that don't benefit our survival.&#xA;  Things that are just a complete waste of time and energy. Or even worst,&#xA;  things that may hurt us—or those around us. Why is that? It&#xA;  doesn't make sense at all.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea why things turned out like this (damn, that word again). And I'm not sure how to solve it. Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T00:41:03.220" Title="How can I get rid of the &quot;things&quot; in the following passage?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10284" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10296" CreationDate="2014-02-08T13:31:42.420" Score="6" ViewCount="938" Body="&lt;p&gt;I regularly write texts in LaTeX. Its book class places page numbers on pages of normal text but not on chapter-starting pages. Some books use roman letters in the beginning, and I was criticised by TeX users for using roman letters in the bibliography as required by my institutions guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does typography provide a statement when and where to use which types of page numbering? My intuition tells me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use lowercase roman letters in the front matter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not use any pagination on special pages like the table of contents, chapter-beginnings etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not change the arabic pagination in the end of the book, i.e., continue as in the main part&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think? I am looking forward to both your opinion and references to typographic practices concerning page numbering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7910" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T01:30:36.860" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T16:19:06.877" Title="Typography of page numbers" Tags="|editing|academic-writing|latex|pages|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10283" CreationDate="2014-02-08T14:21:14.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only one which actually seems repetitious is the third one; the first one is perfect and the second is a deliberate sentence-fragment echo. I literally didn't notice them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for the third:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or even worse, we end up doing something that may hurt us &amp;mdash; or those around us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T14:21:14.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10283" CreationDate="2014-02-08T19:53:51.847" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I'd say it really depends on your character. It could very much fight with the character. Otherwise, you could increase the complexity potentially with something like&#xA;&quot;Funny, isn't it? How nature can make us act in ways that don't benefit our survival? Sometimes we just waste our time and energy...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, all too often characters just write themselves. They might say Things a hundred and two times, and drive you crazy, but whenever you try to put different words in that character's mouth, they just spit them out. - Kidding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastEditorUserId="7897" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T00:41:03.220" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T00:41:03.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9045" CreationDate="2014-02-09T00:39:13.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the comments above, the question is really broad, but hopefully here's a couple of points that can help. I'm a solution architect, and so I write very technical documents, I write semi-technical documents, I write business documents and I've written articles and blog postings. In the past I have also written product reviews for a magazine. I believe these points apply to all of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q1. If I am writing a technical article on a software technology then is this called a white paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends, if you worked at the company (or you had invented it) and were explaining how it worked and were helping people wrap their heads around it, then yes. But if you say, had tried Xamarin and wrote about your thoughts regarding developing iPhone apps with it versus with Apple's Xcode, then that would be more of a product review. There are also editorials where people review, and discuss the technology and potentially what it means going forward, etc.There are also architecture documents, analysis documents and the list goes on and on. It really depends on your context and intent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q2. Is there any specific course(online preferred) which helps me in giving my writing skills a professional touch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are, but I can't help on the exact path there. Would I generally recommend to people is not to over-educate themselves, and instead get into it and then get feedback. It can be easier to figure out what kind of course you need, when you come to understand your deficiencies and strengths, than trying to guess. Also, I have met a lot of people who hide behind courses instead of jumping you. You will never be &quot;completely&quot; prepared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q3. What are the rough points I need to down before I write an article? Are there sections that are required to be included? (For, I used to have software requirements and prerequisite knowledge as 2 mandatory sub sections.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Articles is a very broad topic, so in terms of what sections, I can't help you there. It's too broad / too vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when I've written articles I always start with&#xA;1. Making points about the audience and what I want them to take away. I use this to remind me as I write who they are, their level of technical understanding, etc.&#xA;2. Figure out where you are trying to go, break down the key top level points. You shouldn't have too many of them, otherwise you will lose your audience.&#xA;3. WRITE. Whatever, wherever, just start getting the thoughts out and organize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T00:39:13.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10289" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-09T01:34:07.373" Score="6" ViewCount="1194" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdiet.com/WT.php?home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This site's writing reports&lt;/a&gt; claim that excessive use of prepositions makes writing unclear. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The principle &lt;strong&gt;of&lt;/strong&gt; keeping nouns and verbs &lt;strong&gt;as&lt;/strong&gt; close to each other &lt;strong&gt;as&lt;/strong&gt; possible &lt;strong&gt;for&lt;/strong&gt; the benefit &lt;strong&gt;of&lt;/strong&gt; readers has many benefits&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's not quite clear to me why this is a bad thing. Why is excessive use of prepositions a bad thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4250" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T03:31:45.763" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T23:56:14.670" Title="Does excessive use of prepositions make writing unclear?" Tags="|academic-writing|tools|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8659" CreationDate="2014-02-09T10:48:12.327" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must protest!  While my response, elsewhere on this page, may have been a tad anecdotal, I think there was some useful information there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to be more explicit:  since you're going to print/publish this yourself, and you need to know what the cost variables are, your choices are limited -- which is good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find &quot;a kind of scatter chart&quot;, or spreadsheet or application, that somebody else has put together and posted online (for whatever reason, most likely to make money for themselves down the line) which is honest and knowledgeable and accurate and into which you can plug some numbers.  Out of that will come a range of book-production costs, with very little effort on your part.  This is very close to looking for a magical solution, simply because you cannot know the source or accuracy or intentions behind the application. The chances of its accuracy are very dim.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go to one of the many online vanity publishers (like lulu.com, as mentioned above), look through their little catalog of design and formatting choices, and be knocked flat on your back at the costs.  They are far, far more than a normal production house charges, and the quality will probably be abysmal (based on a number of such little books I've seen sitting hopefully on tables in art galleries in Los Angeles and Brussels, my two towns).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The best choice: make an appointment with the largest printing house that does color work on coated paper in your vicinity.  It will be an impressive operation, color work always is.  You will be taken around the presses and warehouse and shown examples of their work.  They will be prepared to set text in any of thousands of fonts and layouts.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you will almost surely find someone there who knows exactly what kind of operation would be most reasonable for you.  They probably will not have an inhouse bindery, but they will have local connections.  They will also assume that you are going around to several other printers, to compare costs and quality of work.  Thus the chances are they will give you their best prices over a range of quantities and quality.  (And you should, in fact go to at least two other large color printers, assuming there are that many around your town.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't want to do it by long distance -- you have to do it in person or there will be disappointments. And needless to say, you have to be able to describe the book you want to produce.  If it's a book of photos, have an envelope of the photos with you, and an idea of the amount and layout of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an eye-opening experience and well worth the effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7892" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T10:48:12.327" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10292" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-09T11:33:27.657" Score="4" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;They following is from a short story I'm writing. The main character and his friend are sitting in a bar while discussing about the the former's wife: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I see,” he said, thinking this over, as if trying to solve an&#xA;  intricate puzzle. “You must have really upset her. But weird, it seems&#xA;  like she hasn't told anything to my lady. They tell each other&#xA;  everything, you know that. And the strangest thing is that she acted&#xA;  normal when she came to the house yesterday. She just avoided talking&#xA;  about you. Well, that's the extent of what I know. Sorry. Wish I could&#xA;  be of more help.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I told him it was OK. That this was something I had to deal with&#xA;  myself. We didn't say anything for a while. I watched the fluorescent&#xA;  light of the counter pass through my glass and split itself into a&#xA;  rainbow. I fixed my eyes on it. Curiously, when you grab paint and mix&#xA;  all the colors together (in equal amounts), you get the color black.&#xA;  In this case, however, the combined result was white. I wondered which&#xA;  one was the real nature of rainbows.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Anyway, it'll pass.” Mr. Kondo sipped his Corona. He drank nothing&#xA;  but beer. “Women are cyclical creatures. The moon rises and sets, the&#xA;  tides go up and down. After they've gone through the full cycle, they&#xA;  always come back. So don't worry too much.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if I'm being clear enough, or whether the passage is confusing. What I want to say is that when light is split you get the colors of the rainbow, but when you mix many colors together you get black. Which is a bit strange (at least for the protagonist). This can be interpreted as the character wondering what's the true nature of the human heart: light or darkness. This reflects his own behavior: he isn't sure if telling his wife about his perverted &lt;em&gt;fantasy&lt;/em&gt; makes him posses a dark, twisted heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T16:42:36.470" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T20:26:20.587" Title="Is the following passage confusing?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10289" CreationDate="2014-02-09T15:44:12.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people have difficulty with complex and subtle concepts. These ideas are hard to express with simple sentences. Using simple sentences to express these ideas makes you sound wordy and pedantic. Using this method to slow down the flow of ideas may make them easier to understand for some people. Some people will not understand no matter how you present the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mistaking the symptom of involved sentence structure for the cause of complex ideas in the critiquing of writing particularly in automated comprehension assessment tools is common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;sorry for being meta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T15:44:12.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10292" CreationDate="2014-02-09T15:53:21.123" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had no trouble following what you wrote, but I am not typical in that I have a engineering and physics background and spent my childhood in a print shop, so I know about all three color wheels and recognized that your character was confusing  the additive and subtractive color wheels with the artists. by the way mixing of paint like that will result in grey brown as expected with the artist's color wheel. Ink uses the subtractive and will give black.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T15:53:21.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10284" CreationDate="2014-02-09T16:19:06.877" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an understanding of some of the terms used in the answer (which is essentially quoting of sections from CMS), consider looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://printwiki.org/Book_Typography&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For a quick answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style (borrowed from &lt;a href=&quot;http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/resdoc5e/res5e_ch10_s1-0006.html#RES5e_ch10_p0229&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) has the following to say about pagination:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using arabic numerals, number the pages in the upper right corner. Do not number the title page but count it in the manuscript numbering; that is, the first page of the text will be numbered 2. Depending on your instructor’s preference, you may also use a short title or your last name before the page numbers to help identify pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For a detailed look:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further quoting the Chicago Manual of Style (1.62):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part titles and their versos are counted in the pagination, even though their page numbers do not appear (unless a part introduction begins on either of these pages)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting section &lt;strong&gt;1.100&lt;/strong&gt; (on pagination):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern books are paginated consecutively, and all leaves (except endpapers) are counted in the pagination whether or not the numbers appear. Various locations on the page are acceptable for the page number, or folio. It is most commonly found at the top of the page, flush left verso, flush right recto. The folio may also be printed at the bottom of the page, and in that location it is called a drop folio. Drop folios usually appear either centered on each page or flush left verso and flush right recto. A page number that does not appear is known as blind folio. Not paginated are leaves or signatures—such as color illustrations or photo galleries—that are inserted after pages have been made up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.101&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The front matter of a book, especially in the United States, is paginated with lowercase roman numerals. This traditional practice is also expedient, for some of these pages (for example, the preface, acknowledgments, and dedication)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.102&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No page number appears on display pages (half title, title, copyright, dedication, epigraph). A drop folio (or no folio) is used on the opening page of each succeeding section of the front matter. Blank pages show no page number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.103&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text begins with arabic page 1. If the text begins with a second half title or with a part title, the half title or part title counts as page 1, its verso counts as page 2, and the first arabic number to appear is the drop folio (3) on the first page of text. If there is no part title or half title, the first page of the text proper becomes page 1. Page numbers generally do not appear on part titles, but if text appears on a part title, a drop&#xA;folio may be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.104&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opening page of each chapter and of each section in the back matter carries either a drop folio or no page number. Page numbers and running heads are usually omitted on pages containing only illustrations or tables, except in books with long sequences of figures or tables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summarized version of CMS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2009/10/self-publishing-basics-book-pagination-for-fun-and-profit/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; we see a short discussion on pagination, which is more or less the same as Chicago Manual of Style. To quote segments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are numerous pages in a book that are considered display pages. These include the half title(s), title page, copyright, dedication, and epigraph. If a part title page has no text on it, it is usually considered a display page as well. No page number appears on these display pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States it is common practice to paginate the front matter of a book with lowercase roman numerals (i, ii, iii).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first page of text begins with arabic page 1. If the text opens with a second half title, or if the book uses part titles, and the text begins with the title for Part I, the half title or part title counts as page 1, its reverse (verso) is (page) 2, and the first arabic number that would appear is the drop folio (page) 3 on the first text page. If text appears on the part title, a drop folio (page) 1 can appear also. If there’s no part title or half title, the first page of the text becomes page 1. Usually, page numbers (and running heads) are left off pages that have only illustrations, charts or tables, unless the book has an extended number of pages dedicated to a long sequence of figures or tables or similar content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T16:19:06.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10292" CreationDate="2014-02-09T16:42:45.830" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this passage works brilliantly to set the mood. The transition from the bolded paragraph back to the story is a little abrupt, but this may be smoothed over by the momentum of reading this in context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your attempted metaphor - additive versus subtractive color - may or may not be obvious to people. I went to art school, and I got what you were saying immediately. Others may not, but it's okay to use something as a non-obvious metaphor. Whether you echo this elsewhere in the story is up to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practical matters: I'm not sure if white light would split into a rainbow cleanly in this situation. But a messy refraction of color could also be a nice device. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T16:42:45.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10289" CreationDate="2014-02-10T05:17:00.293" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since we don't have the sample text that was analyzed, it's hard to answer this question in any specific sense. But I'd guess that this overuse of prepositions is actually the overuse of prepositional phrases. You can't eliminate prepositions, since English depends on them so heavily, but you can minimize them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Background&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's back up here: What's a preposition? What's a prepositional phrase? What's the difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/phrases.htm#preposition&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;go as deeply into the grammatical rabbit hole as you like&lt;/a&gt;, but in brief, prepositions are words like &lt;em&gt;of&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt;. There's a more comprehensive list &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailygrammar.com/Lesson-177-Prepositional-Phrases.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, along with a fairly accessible definition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A preposition is a word that begins a prepositional phrase and shows the relationship between its object and another word in the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's... unhelpful by itself, but the examples from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adpositional_phrase#Prepositional_phrases&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on prepositional phrases&lt;/a&gt; are helpful here. Prepositional phrases in italics, prepositions bolded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. She walked &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;around&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;his desk&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;b. Ryan could see her &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;in&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;the room&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;c. David walked &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;on&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;top of the building&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prepositional phrases can pile up and get complicated. (That third Wiki example phrase has a preposition inside it, after the main preposition.) Now, let's have a look at the University of Wisconsin's &lt;a href=&quot;http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/CCS_prepphrases.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writer's Handbook&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes prepositional phrases aren't really necessary, especially when you use them (instead of an apostrophe + s) to denote possession of an object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Examples:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This example, from the same University of Wisconsin page, probably illustrates the point best. Try to pick out the prepositional phrases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unnecessary phrase:&lt;/strong&gt; It is a matter &lt;em&gt;of&lt;/em&gt; the gravest possible importance &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; the health &lt;em&gt;of&lt;/em&gt; anyone &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; a history &lt;em&gt;of&lt;/em&gt; a problem &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; disease &lt;em&gt;of&lt;/em&gt; the heart that he or she should avoid the sort &lt;em&gt;of&lt;/em&gt; foods &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; a high percentage &lt;em&gt;of&lt;/em&gt; saturated fats.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Holy freaking recursiveness! It's tough to isolate specific phrases here. The structure is very muddy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking for prepositions and cutting them out won't help, but looking for prepositional phrases will let you simplify the structure of your writing. In other words, sentences with simpler structure (and more easily identified prepositional phrases) are easier to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The University of Wisconsin also gives us a better version of the above sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Correction:&lt;/strong&gt; Anyone with a history of heart disease should avoid saturated fats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T05:17:00.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10289" CreationDate="2014-02-10T16:26:02.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The principle of keeping nouns and verbs as close to each other as possible for the benefit of readers has many benefits&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That has 6 prepositions.  Replace with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't separate subjects and verbs unnecessarily.  Your readers will benefit, in many ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That has 1 preposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T16:26:02.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10270" CreationDate="2014-02-10T17:10:39.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be careful when greeting across cultures.  Many years ago, I was learning German.  My prof told me that &quot;&lt;em&gt;Wie gehts?&lt;/em&gt;&quot; was replacing the more formal &quot;&lt;em&gt;Wie geht es Ihnen?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, especially among close acquaintances.  Soon after, I happened to visit my &quot;uncle&quot; (really, a close family friend), who emigrated to the U.S. from Germany as a teen soon after WWII.  I greeted him with a jaunty &quot;&lt;em&gt;Wie gehts?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, hoping to impress him with my slick German.  He was mortified!  After growling something in German, he informed me that &quot;&lt;em&gt;Wie gehts?&lt;/em&gt;&quot; was a greeting that only very low-class Germans would use, and that using it with one's uncle was insulting.  (Ach, those class-conscious Germans!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is, even when you think you know the culture, I would err on the side of formality for a first email.  Your greetings can gradually get less formal as you trade correspondence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T17:10:39.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10229" CreationDate="2014-02-10T17:34:26.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been a trend in print to supply minimised URLs such as ow.ly or tinyurl.com as this makes typing the link easier on the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However as style goes it is vital to find a way to be consistent yet remain within the technical understanding of the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many news outlets create online portions that act as a gateway so that the links are all branded for example &quot;... you can find links to  at www.oursite.etc/LinksToTopic ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What matters most here is clarity and consistency. Most professional manuals of style appear professional because they impose consistency and this creates familiarity. As URLs in print are still relatively new and most publishing groups (even the BBC) are still struggling to understand how to link to a source the standard is still something that has yet to be established. This allows the likes of you and I to decide what works best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd make the most of that freedom if I were you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T17:34:26.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10187" CreationDate="2014-02-10T17:42:32.360" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;With comedy writing one of the best things you can do is to write everything that seems even remotely amusing and then remove anything that later turns out to be a bit limp. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact &quot;just go for it; have as much fun as possible and then edit after&quot; is easier to do then &quot;carefully write everything perfectly the first time around&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way in all fairness to figure out how funny you can make things is to write it and see how funny you can make it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you throw it away after you will have learned more by writing and stopping than by not writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="7926" LastEditDate="2019-06-30T16:14:41.030" LastActivityDate="2019-06-30T16:14:41.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10110" CreationDate="2014-02-10T17:51:49.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the character you have written does not seem to care about the plot hook then the chances are you and the reader don't care too much. Spend some time getting into the answer &quot;why should I care?&quot; When you have really gotten that answer clear then the characters will feel like they want to engage when you write them and story will engage the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say yourself that where the character is deeply rooted in what is going on arround him then the story comes to life. That because when your character is deeply rooted into the story so are you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T17:51:49.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10292" CreationDate="2014-02-10T20:26:20.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It makes sense, though I think there's a lot of repetition that doesn't add to the message. 'I watched' and then 'I fixed my eyes on it' relays the same information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think (in equal amounts) also takes away from the strength of your statement because it's information not needed to get the analogy across. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might also be good to change the wording from &quot;when you grab.. you get&quot; to the character  reflecting about when they have done that. If the character themselves is contemplating the nature of good/evil in himself, I think it's appropriate to link the mixture of paint to their own personal experience instead of the objective-scientific view of saying 'you'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reflection of the glass is something that character internalizes to their own experience, and the mixing of the paint is externalized as something that happens to other people. Does the character think his own experiences are light and white, while the experiences of others are black/paint? I'm thinking along the lines of judging oneself by their intentions, and others by their behaviors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm probably reading too into it - but I wanted to give you a thorough, honest opinion. I liked the piece too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5143" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T20:26:20.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10307" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10308" CreationDate="2014-02-11T03:21:30.523" Score="3" ViewCount="969" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working with a friend on a essay and we have encountered a capitalization question. The book we are analyzing is &lt;em&gt;The Assault&lt;/em&gt; by Harry Mulisch. The central event in the book is the attack on his family which we have been referring to as either the assault or the Assault. My reasoning is that it is a one time event and so it should be capitalized but my friend thinks otherwise. Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked it up in the Chicago Manual of Style and found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the Revolution;the revolutionary war&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7928" LastEditorUserId="7928" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T03:27:13.980" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T11:01:29.337" Title="Capitalization of personal event names" Tags="|style|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10307" CreationDate="2014-02-11T04:18:27.573" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something may be a one-time event, but that doesn't mean it's capitalized. I would refer to &quot;the assault&quot; throughout unless you're using the book's title. &quot;The assault that takes place in &lt;em&gt;The Assault&lt;/em&gt; assulted my senses.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In English, aside from capitalizing the first word of a sentence, the only time words are generally capitalized if they are proper nouns or titles: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Names (&quot;John&quot;, &quot;New Jersey&quot;, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Formal titles when used as a form of address (&quot;Doctor, it hurts when I do this&quot; and &quot;Mother, will you pass the salt?&quot; but &quot;My doctor says to never, ever stand on my head&quot; and &quot;My mother passed the salt.&quot;) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Titles of books, movies, and other works (&quot;Arguing that the empire portrayed in &lt;em&gt;The Empire Strikes Back&lt;/em&gt; is representative of the Roman Empire is a weak argument.&quot;)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more arcane rules of capitalization for edge cases, and the style book you're using can affect how you handle some situations. (For example, do you treat the text after a colon as a new sentence or a fragment?) Here are a couple of good examples that are freely available: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/capital.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;grammarbook.com: Capitalization Rules&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/style-guide/capitals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Economist Style Guide: Capitals&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are informal situations where you can decide to capitalize a word regardless of these rules. Fiction will sometimes do this, and I do it in emails for effect to point out The Big Concepts, but this can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://magnificentnose.com/2011/09/19/particularly-important-words/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;overused far too easily&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, pick a method and stick to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T04:18:27.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10309" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-11T10:11:17.897" Score="16" ViewCount="122823" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is usually a lot of confusion when it comes to these two terms. Some sources say that there is no (practical) difference between the two while other sources talk of various kinds of differences. However, I have not run into any authentic source that answers my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is as follows:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In the context to a film/TV show etc., what is the difference between a script and a screenplay? (There ought to be a difference because the credits always have different sections for script and screenplay).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, in context to the theatre, is there any difference between the two words (I have not come across anyone using the term &quot;screenplay&quot; in context of the theatre)? Are the two interchangeable? If not, what is the difference in the writing style for both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-18T13:02:28.263" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T22:25:58.243" Title="What are the differences between a script and a screenplay?" Tags="|style|screenwriting|script|dramatic-writing|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10307" CreationDate="2014-02-11T11:01:29.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would only capitalize &quot;the Assault&quot; in this context if the people involved are imbuing the event with such importance that there can only ever be one assault in their lives. It's THE assault, so they give it proper noun status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sort of like the conflict which occurred from 1914 to 1918 was originally called the Great War, because there had never been one so large or destructive before. It was THE war. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T11:01:29.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10309" CreationDate="2014-02-11T11:04:04.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I am not in the business, I would imagine that the screenplay is the original finished creative work, and the script, sometimes called &quot;the shooting script,&quot; is what people use on set or on stage to actually film or perform the thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the script is the living, working, occasionally minorly changed piece, which might have additional stage directions or lighting notes for people executing the words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T11:04:04.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10120" CreationDate="2014-02-11T13:05:24.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have different types of citations like APA citation style, MLA citation style and Harvard citation style. These styles can be depends upon the educational institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://buythesis.net/thesis-formatting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Thesis citation format&quot;&gt;BuyThesis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7932" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T13:05:24.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10313" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-11T15:04:09.367" Score="7" ViewCount="2760" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it okay to keep foreign names of companies, organisations, etc even if they have official English translations? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 1:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A now defunct limited company in Sweden &quot;Norrbottens Järnverk AB&quot; has an official translation (North-Bothnian Steelworks, Ltd) but it doesn't feel like an ideal solution. Is it better to write something like: &quot;The northern Swedish steelworks company Norrbottens Järnverk AB&quot; the first time it's being mentioned and then just use the Swedish name in the rest of the text? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, should I include the official English translation in a footnote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;SSAB&quot; is the name of another steelworks company (also an acronym for the Swedish name &quot;Svenskt Stål AB&quot;), but there is also an official English name &quot;Swedish Steel AB&quot;. Again, this English just doesn't feel right. I'm thinking I should add a short description to make it clear that it's about a steel works company. So: &quot;The Swedish steel works company Swedish Steel AB&quot;. But this sounds a bit redundant and clunky, so then I'm thinking why not just use the original name with the description: &quot;The Swedish steel works company SSAB&quot;, and refer to it as SSAB in the rest of the text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What practice do you recommend for examples like these? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, is it more important that I'm consistent and stick to either original or English, or should I choose language from case to case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to find a style guide for this but none of them seem to bring this situation up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After considering this some more, and reading your helpful answers below, I am currently leaning towards keeping the original foreign name but with a short description the first time the name is mentioned. And also, the first time the foreign name is mentioned, to include a footnote with the official English translation, if there is one, or something like &quot;Translates as bla bla&quot; if there isn't an official translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7933" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-27T17:14:54.047" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T17:14:54.047" Title="Should I translate foreign names of companies, organisations, political parties etc?" Tags="|naming|translation|acronyms|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10179" CreationDate="2014-02-11T15:39:17.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The very purpose of copyright, at least for publishers (then called&#xA;stationers - early 18th century), was precisely to get a monopoly on&#xA;the publishing of a work, so as to improve their return on investment.&#xA;You do not have that monopoly with the public domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it is not completely true that public domain is uninteresting for them, depending on the&#xA;competitiveness of the market structures.  Foreign books were not&#xA;protected by copyright in the USA for most of the nineteenth century. Mark Twain&#xA;fought valiantly to defend the copyrights of British authors ... so&#xA;that they would not be unfair competition to his own works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also true that big publishers still publish a lot of public domain&#xA;books, but only for very popular works which they are sure to sell.&#xA;Small publishing houses may publish more specialized public domain&#xA;works for specific audience. It is a very honorable activity, but they&#xA;do not get very rich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the digital world, there is no longer that much investment to&#xA;produce copies of a book (copyright is about making&#xA;copies). Publishers were acting pretty much as banker who invested&#xA;money up front to produce a number of copies (so that each copy would&#xA;not be too expensive), and recouped the investment as copies were&#xA;being sold, if they were.  This is no longer needed in the digital world,&#xA;and publishers have lost their main usefulness.  They had other roles&#xA;that can still be provided as service, not as an industry controling&#xA;the whole business of textual publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect publishers will cease to exist as we know them in a not very&#xA;distant future. Not needed economically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6647" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T15:39:17.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10313" CreationDate="2014-02-11T18:09:49.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the context - audience and what information you are relaying. If you are informing an English audience who will do business in Sweden, then it's probably best to include the Swedish name and also the English translation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself&#xA;- Who is my audience?&#xA;- What information am I relaying?&#xA;- How do I anticipate the audience will use this information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it doesn't feel like an ideal solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you think it doesn't feel like an ideal solution? If a company provides an official translation, then (as a reader) I would feel more acquainted with the translated name as an English speaker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, is it more important that I'm consistent and stick to either original or English, or should I choose language from case to case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel consistency is important, unless there's an explicit contextual reason for changing the name. Otherwise, I would get confused by referring to the same company in two different ways (unless you're always referring to them as both). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5143" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T18:09:49.567" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10316" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-11T18:49:48.883" Score="1" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that, in a similar way to movies, there is no waranty that a good book will be turned into a good audiobook. I've realised that after listening to some of the best sellers books recorded as unabridged audiobooks. In particular in The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov narated by William Dufris, the female voices are so awful, that I can't belive I finally finished the entire audiobook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking for the best narrators, I stumbled with a couple of web sites that list the so called &quot;Golden Voice&quot; narrators. Maybe an equivalent to the &quot;Academy Awards&quot; for audiobooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sites are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/the-best-narrated-audio-books-167299&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/gvpages/short_profile.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thepassivevoice.com/12/2011/why-do-audiobooks-suck/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; other post was the reason why I choose to post the question here, since It may be of interest to some writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4556" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T19:57:48.320" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T22:25:09.927" Title="Where to find a the best narrators and producers to turn a good written work into a good audiobook" Tags="|characters|publisher|audiobook|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10316" CreationDate="2014-02-11T20:38:08.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Audies&quot; are pretty close: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theaudies.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.theaudies.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T20:38:08.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10006" CreationDate="2014-02-11T22:30:02.117" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer of @what is not quite correct, though his comment contradicting his own answer is.  But I realized that they were the same person only after writing this answer. I will still include it as it may possibly clarify the logic of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright last up to 70 years post mortem auctoris (that means&#xA;&quot;after the author's death&quot;, but Latin is so chic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your painting, the painter was most likely dead before the&#xA;end of 1943, which puts the painting in the public domain on january&#xA;1st 2014. So you are OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, my favorite painter, who happens to be Russian, is Wassily&#xA;Kandinsky who died in december 1944, and will enter the public domain&#xA;next january.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Checking wikipedia, Dante Gabriel Rossetti died in 1882. So you are&#xA;pretty safe on that part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the painting is under copyright, you cannot use publicly without&#xA;permission any copy (reproduction) you may own or find. This is true&#xA;even if you are the actual owner of the original painting. You own the&#xA;object, not the right to copy it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it sits in your living room, you can publish photographs including&#xA;it only if it is clearly part of the surrounding rather than a major&#xA;component of the photograph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My institute could not publish photos of its main building, because&#xA;they had forgotten to include that right in the contract with the&#xA;architect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the work enters the public domain, these restrictions fall. The owner&#xA;may have the right to forbid people to take photograph of his property, but cannot&#xA;forbid using existing copies, or making secondary copies from them.&#xA;There is ownership, but no longer a copyright.  Pretty logical, whether&#xA;you like it or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, ownership of art works has nothing to do with copyright,&#xA;though Europe has  included one aspect in its&#xA;copyright legislation with the so-called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_suite&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;droit de suite&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. There are a few other cases where a copyright legislation can concern ownership; they are usually related to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;moral rights&lt;/a&gt;, which may have no time limit.&#xA;So whether the owner can forbid you to make copies of his property is&#xA;a matter of local legislation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite possible that using a picture of a&#xA;painting illegally taken in Tate Gallery would be illegal in the UK but legal in&#xA;Russia. And I have no idea whether Tate would be able to sue you when&#xA;you come to UK if they cannot prove you were the one who took the&#xA;picture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you have to be careful.  If a reproduction of the painting&#xA;has been made by a professional with specific care, he can claim that&#xA;his copy is an original work ... as a particularly good copy of the&#xA;painting, and consequently claim a copyright on his copy. This is of&#xA;course disputable in court, as he has to show that his own creativity&#xA;shows in the quality of the photo, that it is an artwork on its own,&#xA;that other people would have done it differently. Courts may take it&#xA;or leave it. Copyright is supposed to protect only original work, and a photocopy of a work is in no way original work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gallery claims over reproduction rights of the (average quality)&#xA;copies they sell are sometimes very debatable ... but who wants to go&#xA;to court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IANAL - not a lawyer - this is no advice&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6647" LastEditorUserId="6647" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T00:05:26.240" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T00:05:26.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10313" CreationDate="2014-02-11T23:03:44.553" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your example text is bad. Not because the companies are poor examples of your problem but because right after identifying the official translation you don't use it. Instead you make the error of translating the sentence with the name in it instead of translating the name then the sentence. The official English name is &quot;Swedish Steel AB&quot; not &quot;The Swedish steel company&quot;. There is nothing wrong with using the original language name which appears to be what you want to do, and consistency is certainly valuable, but using weak examples to try to validate your gut makes you look indecisive, instead of merely undecided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Names and their meanings are important particularly those that are self chosen. I think your core desire to do due diligence in this regard is admirable. So the first questions are what are your core goals? Accuracy? Readability? Preservation of Style? I suspect that you are torn between the desires to preserve the original accuracy, preserve the subtlety, and preserve the style. unfortunately subtly is incredibly difficult to preserve in translation, particularly with names. Often the best way to preserve that which is hinted is to state it which interferes with style. I suspect your gut is right in that in this case you want to use the Swedish name, but I would supplement with a foot note of the form &quot;means &lt;em&gt;meaning&lt;/em&gt;. official translation &lt;em&gt;Name&lt;/em&gt;&quot;or similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T05:01:45.777" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T05:01:45.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10320" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10322" CreationDate="2014-02-12T03:47:51.953" Score="6" ViewCount="2029" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story. The main character is visited by a strange black bird during the night (first draft):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I glanced around but there was no sign of the bird. I didn't spot it&#xA;  in any nearby trees, street poles, or roofs. It had dissolved into the&#xA;  darkness. Just like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Had it been a bird, or something else? But if that was the case, what&#xA;  was &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt;? An hallucination? No, it hadn't been product of my&#xA;  imagination. It had been a real bird—with real eyes, real feathers,&#xA;  and a real beak. I went over to check the window. There wasn't a&#xA;  single scratch on it. On the contrary, it looked smooth and spotless&#xA;  as always. Should there be at least a tiny mark? Maybe the bird didn't&#xA;  shove the window as hard as I thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if I should use &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; instead &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt; to refer to the bird. Would this improve the clarity of the text? Is this a common practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Had it been a bird, or something else? But if that was the case, what&#xA;  was &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;? An hallucination? No, &lt;strong&gt;he&lt;/strong&gt; hadn't been product of my&#xA;  imagination. &lt;strong&gt;He'd&lt;/strong&gt; been a real bird—with real eyes, real feathers,&#xA;  and a real beak. I went over to check the window. There wasn't a&#xA;  single scratch on it. On the contrary, it looked smooth and spotless&#xA;  as always. Should there be at least a tiny mark? Maybe the bird didn't&#xA;  shove the window as hard as I thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T03:53:18.837" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T23:41:51.430" Title="Using &quot;he/she&quot; instead of &quot;it&quot; for animals" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10320" CreationDate="2014-02-12T04:04:47.040" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, I think &quot;it&quot; is correct here because IT could have been a hallucination. Given that this is first person, it (for me at least) defines a 'distance' between the narrator and the object (bird).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the narrator had an intuitive or &quot;can't explain it yet&quot; strong understanding and sense of the bird, then indicating gender (like using he) would hint this to me as the reader. &quot;Hey, how does the narrator know that the bird was male? The narrator must know something I don't yet.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that's my 2 cents&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T04:04:47.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10320" CreationDate="2014-02-12T11:05:24.810" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would only use the gendered pronoun if you know the gender of the animal in question. Lions have manes; lionesses don't. A calico or tortiseshell housecat is 99% guaranteed to be female, while an all-orange tabby housecat is 99% guaranteed to be male. Male robins have the bright red breast while female robins are brown. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your piece, the character has no idea if the bird is male or female, or even real, so &quot;it&quot; is appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T16:02:16.433" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T16:02:16.433" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10313" CreationDate="2014-02-12T14:55:26.437" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd go by the following guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One, if the company has an &quot;English version&quot; of its name that could at all be called &quot;well known&quot;, I would use it. If you call a car company the &quot;Modern Era Company&quot;, that might be a perfectly good and valid translation of the name. But everybody else in the English-speaking world calls it Hyundai, and it will just be confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two, if a translation of the name is coincidental to what the company is about, for example, if it includes a personal name or place name, I'd follow rule #1 as used for the original name. For example, the name of the French city of Dunkirk comes from words meaning &quot;dune church&quot;. But if I was translating the name of a company called Meubles de Dunkerque, I'd say Dunkirk Furniture, not Dune Church Furniture. That translation would imply to English speakers that the company makes furniture for use in churches, rather than that they make furniture and they are based in a city named Dunkirk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three, otherwise, I would generally translate the name. I would definitely prefer &quot;Swedish Steel AB&quot; over &quot;Svenskt Stål AB&quot;. It's more meaningful and easier to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you capitalize the words and put the &quot;AB&quot; on the end should make clear that this is the name of a specific company and not a generic description. If that's not clear, you can add a few words to clarify, like &quot;the company named Swedish Steel&quot; or &quot;Swedish Steel, a Scandinavian company ...&quot; Yes, it sounds redundant to stay, &quot;Swedish Steel, a Swedish steel-making company ...&quot;, so I'd find an alternative wording. In any case, lots of companies in the US and UK have such generic-sounding names. British Rail, Bank of America, and U.S. Steel immediately come to mind. (Tangent: U.S. Steel changed its name to USX Corporation years ago, explaining that they now made many products other than steel. And thus they threw away what was at the time one of the most widely-recognized company names in America, generally ranking up there with McDonalds and Coca-Cola. Seemed pretty stupid to me, that would be like AT&amp;amp;T changing its name because they no longer operate telegraph systems. But whatever, different subject.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T14:55:26.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10320" CreationDate="2014-02-13T03:31:19.777" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're writing in the first person, so I'd argue that correctness is less important than the way your character sees the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people, I suspect, would use &quot;it&quot; in this case, but if your character is the sort to identify with or anthropomorphize animals, they might prefer to think of the bird as &quot;he&quot; or &quot;she&quot;. If that is the case, you might want to put in a brief moment when the narrator decides to give the bird a gender (&quot;It looked like a he&quot;). Otherwise, as Driss Zouak has pointed out, the reader might wonder if they've missed something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7945" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T03:31:19.777" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10320" CreationDate="2014-02-13T23:41:51.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Driss and I'd add the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am making the assumption that the bird is an important symbol that represents something about the underlying theme of your story. That symbol or theme should be what determines the gender of the bird in your story, rather than what is typical of native English speakers talking about birds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, I'd use 'it' if the qualities of the bird were important (like freedom through flight, shrewdness, visiting in the night, eating carrion). On the other hand, if the bird represented an avenging angel, I'd use 'she' (like in &lt;em&gt;The Crow&lt;/em&gt;). But if it were symbolic of being haunted by a shadowy and complicated relationship with a former lover, I would use 'he'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The selection of the pronoun doesn't need to make the connection &lt;em&gt;obvious&lt;/em&gt;. You don't need to spell it out, but it gives consistency to your underlying theme, and hints at its existence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T23:41:51.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10327" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-14T09:37:49.243" Score="2" ViewCount="703" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like some alternatives to using a mindmap to organize my thoughts while writing. Mindmapping is good, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't preserve the sequence/order, therefore it makes things difficult when I try to organize my thoughts into paragraphs and linking them. Anyone use any other tools? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2970" LastEditorUserId="5909" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T12:57:22.393" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T12:57:22.393" Title="Alternative to mindmap software" Tags="|software|tools|organization|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10327" CreationDate="2014-02-14T10:55:41.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; for this kind of thing. You can put each thought onto an individual page, and then drag them around as you see fit. It even has a virtual corkboard screen so you can see many individual notes at a glance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T10:55:41.213" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="511" CreationDate="2014-02-15T05:23:05.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When listening, it's not a simple matter to flip back ten pages when you've forgotten who the heck Character X is again. One thing that may help is to remind the reader of a trait or profession or other identifying sign once in a while, especially if the character hasn't been seen much yet/lately. (Everything in moderation, of course — doing this too often can result in so-called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critters.org/turkeycity.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Burly Detective&quot; Syndrome&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to be big on very naturalistic dialogue, complete with ums and ers and half-finished sentences. After several years of listening to audiobooks, however, I'm starting to lean the other way. Having characters stammer and constantly interrupt one another can be tough for a reader to pull off well. So yes, write sentences that people might actually say, but also let them get their thoughts out, at least most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, snatches of dialogue, as some authors use to capture crowd scenes (&lt;em&gt;&quot;It's her!&quot; &quot;...hasn't been seen in seven months...&quot; &quot;...swore up and down she was dead!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;) or dialogue that's only half-audible to the viewpoint character, can sound silly even in the hands of a good narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it probably goes without saying that very visual devices like online chat or computer code, while they may provide some nice flavour in print, don't translate well to audio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum:&lt;/strong&gt; Text that's only set off typographically is tricky too. There have been a couple of books where I've been confused by a paragraph-long flashback that was set in italics, or by a stream-of-consciousness passage without attributions. (The audio versions of several of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels used reverb on the voice of Death, whose dialogue was always set in small caps, but this sort of thing is rare.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7945" LastEditorUserId="7945" LastEditDate="2014-02-16T04:37:22.303" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T04:37:22.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10327" CreationDate="2014-02-15T09:36:24.833" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;strong&gt;paper and a pencil&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paper is extremely flexible. You can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cut out sections and re-arrange them in any way you want (even stack them)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have an infinite canvas (as large as your living-room floor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;see everything you wrote at the same time and therefore better grasp and play with it in your mind than when only a small section of your work is visible on your small laptop screen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;glue papers together when you notice you need more room to the left&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;view revisions simultaneously&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can draw whatever and wherever you like and are not limited by what the software allows you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can even add anything you want to your mindmap, including physical objects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take a photograph, if you need to preserve it (use a tripod)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my paper notes from 25 years ago are still compatible with my eyes, while I have many digital texts from ten years ago that I can no longer open in any software and that are now completely lost to me; since I often put projects in the cupboard and reanimate them years later, this is important to me&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mindmapping by hand appears to facilitate creativity for me, while using software hampers my thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I can come up with ideas and paragraphs now, but organizing them into correct logical flow kills me. –  cherhan 22 hours ago&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I print out my text, cut out the individual paragraphs, and then rearrange them physically on the floor. You can write numbers or keywords (&quot;John goes home&quot;) on the snippets with a thick marker to better identify the content from a standing distance. After I have found the order I like, I stack the snippets in this order, and then one by one rearrange the text sections in my software. After that I work on the transitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But maybe you need to step even further back from the current state of your work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read everything you wrote.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Close your software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do whatever else you want or need to do for at least one day (sleep over it) or a week or however long it takes for you to forget the details of your writing. In some cases, where I'm very stuck, I take off at least two weeks or even write something else in the meantime.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sit down and write a rough outline of your story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use this outline to arrange your fragments. (If your outline is too rough to know where some fragments need to go, flesh out the outline slowly layer by layer until you have enough detail to identify the correct place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact this is the writing strategy recommended by some writers: When you rewrite, write from the ground up, instead of working on your previous draft. I forget his name, but one author wrote a book on how to write and said he used to completely rewrite his one novel seven times with this method (I have it from him). I think this is great advice, since it allows your mind to free itself of your earlier misconceptions and come up, if necessary, with even a new basic plot idea. I had a book that turned from a present day romance to an action SF in this way (with the same basic story!). You can still go back to an earlier draft and copy-paste well-written sections after you finished the rewrite, but don't do it while you rewrite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T16:55:04.660" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T16:55:04.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10313" CreationDate="2014-02-15T10:33:28.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every morning I read the largest national newspaper in Germany. I just retrieved it from the waste paper collection and opened the business and economics section. There is an article about mismanagement in European banks. What they do is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give the original name of the company and its official acronym in parenthesis when the company is mentioned for the first time, e.g. &quot;Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;add some explanation about how this company is relevant to the context of the article, e.g. &quot;the third lagest financial institution in Europe&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;later refer to the bank by its acronym, e.g. &quot;RBS&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part of this will differ depending on the topic of &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; text. If, say, it were about human resources, you might add the number of employees. If you write about companies from different fields you might add what each produces. In the above mentioned article, &quot;third lagest in Europe&quot; explains the importance the RBS has for the stability of the European financial market (and thus explains why the article mentions this bank and not one of the thousand of other banks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I chose an example from a national newspaper, because that medium is published for an educated but not expert audience. So you would expect the text to explain more than it would if it were aimed at an expert audience of, say, bankers. For them the mere name without any explanation would suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So identify your audience. Do they know the companies you mention? Then you don't need to explain them. Do they not know them? Then give a short explanation of a handful of words about how this company is relevant in your context. Don't translate the names in either case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translate the name only if you write about the company history or specifically explain the name or if the meaning of the name is in any way relevant to your topic. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Guilda degli Insegnanti, the 'Guild of Teachers', Italy's first labor union for teachers, was founded in 1988. The 'Guild' chose its name as a reference to medieval confederations that were formed to protect the quality of their profession against feudal influence. With this choice of name the Guilda degli Insignanti want to signify their fight for an appreciation and protection of the &lt;em&gt;professorato&lt;/em&gt;, the Italian teaching degree.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T10:50:38.853" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T10:50:38.853" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="511" CreationDate="2014-02-15T19:04:50.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to first listen to a few audiobooks yourself, not just the great stuff like Jim Dale's Harry Potter, but head over to LibriVox and listen to some of those volunteer audiobooks, some are good, some less so. You'll learn a lot from other's mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember to let the narrator breathe. You can write really long sentences in a book, but real people need to breathe. Shorter sentences and judicious use of commas is handy. Narrators can figure out places to breathe but make their lives easier and do that work for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple way to hear how your story sounds is to let the computer do text-to-speach for you. It doesn't sound great but it will help you catch the big problems early. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have any unusual names, a pronunciation guide would be handy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5715" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T19:04:50.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9623" CreationDate="2014-02-16T01:11:44.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ownership of the copyright is de facto attributed to the author as&#xA;he creates the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you may have to prove that you are the author against&#xA;possible claims by someone else. All means that can prove your&#xA;authorship are appropriate. You can register it with a public notary,&#xA;or you can publish an unforgeable signature (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SHA1&lt;/a&gt;) on the Internet and&#xA;manage to have it stored by the Internet archive. Or you can publish&#xA;that signature as a classified ad in a newspaper (some corporations&#xA;did that). What is important is to have a date officialised when you&#xA;were the only one (plus your trusted ones) to know the content of the&#xA;book.  Publishing may do that too, if you intend to go through a&#xA;professional publisher, which not everyone does any longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book is published in the USA first, you need to register it&#xA;with the  US copyright office if you want to be able to sue copyright&#xA;infringers in the USA (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html#411&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article 411 of copyright law&lt;/a&gt;). You can register at any time, but it has to be before the infringement started if you seek statutory damages or attorney fees (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html#412&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article 412 of copyright law&lt;/a&gt;). Registration does&#xA;not grant you the copyright (you already have it) but it grants the right to sue&#xA;to whoever owns the copyright (it can be sold).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if you publish first in another country, you can sue copyright&#xA;violations in the USA without registering (as a consequence of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Berne&#xA;Convention&lt;/a&gt;). However, you cannot claim damage or attorney fees if you&#xA;had not registered before the infringement started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that it is the country of first publication that matters, not the&#xA;nationality of the author, or the country where it was written, or the&#xA;language used. So, for an e-book, try to make it available in another country first, so that it is better protected in the USA, strange as it may seem. This works for US citizens too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all other countries (member of one of the major treaties on intellectual property), afaik, you can simply sue all copyright&#xA;violations, and with at least the same legal protections as local&#xA;citizens (even when they are subjects). There is no registration formality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A last point is that copyright violation is not the same as&#xA;plagiarism. Copyright violation is duplicating your book without your&#xA;consent. Plagiarism is pretending to be the author of your book, or of&#xA;parts of your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authorship is a moral right, independent from copyright. You can sell&#xA;your copyright, in whole or in parts. But authorship remains with the&#xA;author. It is protected by article 6bis of the Berne Convention. You can sue for plagiarism even when you do not own the copyright, but the specifics are country dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;IANAL - this is no advice and I am not a lawyer  ... I probably do not even exist.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6647" LastEditorUserId="6647" LastEditDate="2014-02-16T23:57:15.273" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T23:57:15.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10338" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-16T04:30:50.073" Score="1" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am learning to write better, and have read books such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0451627121&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;The Lively Art of Writing&quot;&gt;The Lively art of writing&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/020530902X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Element of Style&lt;/a&gt;. I realize what I am missing is the grammar books that teaches me the different ways to construct a grammatical sentence with style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any non-fiction book out there, that is related to this? Please note this is not a duplicate of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3916/book-recommendations-for-writing-better-technical-papers&quot;&gt;Book recommendations for writing better technical papers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2970" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T15:52:28.877" Title="Grammar books recommendation" Tags="|style|academic-writing|book|book-rec|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-02-17T00:42:25.197" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10338" CreationDate="2014-02-16T13:44:48.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The one grammar book that has been recommended to me by school teachers and university lecturers again and again is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Raymond Murphy, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Grammar_In_Use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;English Grammar in Use&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are different editions, some &quot;with answers&quot; and a CD-ROM, there's an accompanying workbook, and other supplementary material. I own the second edition from 1991 without any of the gimmicks, and I can recommend it wholeheartedly. It is comprehensive, well-written, even fun to read, and covers most everything I ever wanted to know about English grammar. I still make mistakes, though ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should note that this book is not specifically concerned with literary writing and how to employ sentence structure stylistically, only in teaching you &lt;em&gt;correct&lt;/em&gt; grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-02-16T15:52:28.877" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T15:52:28.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7912" CreationDate="2014-02-16T17:54:10.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;s&gt;USA&lt;/s&gt; New York: Oxford University Press&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;s&gt;Reissue edition. Original edition 1998.&lt;/s&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why delete that? No one cares if that book is an unchanged reissue. You only tell the reader if the book you quote from is a different &lt;em&gt;editon&lt;/em&gt; (e.g. 2nd ed.), because that means that there have been changes to the text, and therefore it is important to identify the correct edition. In your case you have an unchanged reissue, and if someone wanting to look at your source text picked up the first edtion from 1998 he would find the same text on the same pages. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=hXXBBuJ2MocC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=%22Anselm%20of%20Canterbury%3a%20The%20Major%20Works%22&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=kfkAU-alOonTsgaj7oBA&amp;amp;ved=0CDgQ6AEwAQ#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=%22on%20truth%22%20%22preface%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Books shows you that the text is on the same page in the 1998 printing&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you get is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anselm. (2008). On Truth (R. McInery, Trans.). In B. Davies &amp;amp; G. Evans (Eds.), &lt;em&gt;Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works&lt;/em&gt; (pp. 151-174). New York: Oxford University Press. (Original work published around 1080).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really and truly need this quotation to be perfect, ask on the APA style blog: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.apastyle.org/&lt;/a&gt; – they helped me with some complicated quote from a 19th century French text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that in text you should use the following citation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Anselm, 1080/2008)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For an official example see no. 21 on page 203f. of the 2009 6th editon of the APA Publication Manual.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from a certain formatting style, the basic APA rule is to &lt;strong&gt;include everything necessary to clearly identify a source&lt;/strong&gt;. You don't have to go beyond that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-02-16T18:08:36.293" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T18:08:36.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9217" CreationDate="2014-02-17T19:42:38.773" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly you should have in my mind what you want to write about. Try to imagine the characters; their names and how they look like. Try to imagine what type of individual each character it is. Start with a few topics that later will be developed into many why, where, how and what and because. Don't be afraid to google synonyms. Try to write small sentences or paragraphs. And read other heroic fantasy novels. Imagine some sort of conflict. There is no  perfect formula for this. Try to build details about your story. You should also find a writing routine that works for you. Do some research. Use the library. When you feel ready, sit down and begin writing the first draft of your novel. Set small goals  to keep yourself motivated. Practice self-editing. Print out your novel and read it aloud :) Consider trying to publish your novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7965" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T19:42:38.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10343" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-17T22:14:29.353" Score="5" ViewCount="621" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to make the transition into screenplays, but it feels odd to start developing characters and setting just by letting them talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it normal for screenwriters to start writing directly in script mode and develop characters and setting from their dialogue or action, or do many start out with more &quot;regular novel prose&quot; first?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T01:27:52.440" Title="Do screenwriters freewrite/outline directly in script mode?" Tags="|screenwriting|outline|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10242" CreationDate="2014-02-18T17:04:27.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm terrible at time management too. So instead of times, I have PLACES where I write. There's a tea shop and a bar where I go when I need to get words on paper. I leave my networked devices at home and take a notebook and pencil with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T17:04:27.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10346" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10356" CreationDate="2014-02-18T17:07:33.110" Score="4" ViewCount="23799" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a resource that will give connotative meanings (English) if one exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.connotative.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.connotative.com/&lt;/a&gt; but despite the footer showing 2013 the images lead me to believe its highly dated and the Products link doesn't even work. I tried &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;One Look Reverse Dictionary&quot;&gt;One Look Reverse Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; from this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3707/finding-words-through-meanings&quot; title=&quot;Finding words through meanings&quot;&gt;Finding Words Through Meanings&lt;/a&gt; but it wasn't very effective at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any websites such as Thesaurus.com but with additional notes about connotation and minor differences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example on Thesaurus.com &lt;code&gt;Read&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Scan&lt;/code&gt; are synonyms. But in use if I &lt;code&gt;read something&lt;/code&gt; it means I read it entirely. If I &lt;code&gt;scan something&lt;/code&gt; it is generally closer to skimming through it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any resources whether online or books dedicated to this topic so I could look up a word and have a more complete idea of what the minor differences in synonym usage is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3364" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2023-02-15T13:36:14.463" Title="Is there a resource to help find the right connotative meaning?" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9217" CreationDate="2014-02-18T17:49:17.173" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A and B meet. A and B fall in love. Optional: A and B enjoy snugglebunnies. Obstacle gets between A and B. A and/or B overcome obstacle. Omnia vincit amor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(since it was requested that I turn this into an answer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T17:49:17.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10348" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T02:55:36.610" Score="2" ViewCount="1869" Body="&lt;p&gt;When using multiple sources to critique an article in APA, do I need to cite the article being critiqued separately from my other references used for the critique in the reference list or do I just include the article being critiqued alphabetically with the other references in the list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7994" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T16:15:19.730" Title="APA article critique reference page" Tags="|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10348" CreationDate="2014-02-19T09:40:12.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In literature theory or theology, the &quot;original&quot; works and religious texts (can) go in one list, and the scholarly articles in another. That is because your subject of study are texts. So for example, in the first list you have the works of Hemingway, and in the second list you have the scholarship that &lt;em&gt;studies&lt;/em&gt; the works of Hemingway. In the natural sciences, your subject of study are the world and the living beings in it. You don't usually list these, or if you want to supply the data they created, you append it in an appendix. So in the natural sciences, you only have the second list, so to speak, because (usually) all your sources should be citable scholarly publications. Therefore, in APA, which was developed for a natural science (psychology):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Every source you use goes in the same list.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a scientific publication all sources are scrutinized critically and then used in support of your own hypotheses. If you agree with your source, you use it to support your hypotheses, if you disagree, you use it to build your hypotheses in contrast with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a review, instead of your own hypotheses you compare every other source against the article you are going to review. But other than your focus on it, it does not have a special place. You could focus on any of the other articles and use the article you originally wanted to review as a source to critically inspect that other one. You should come to the same conclusions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only difference between a review and a research overview is that in a review you do the research overview and then don't stop but continue to elaborate on how the article you review stands in relation to the current state of research. To use an analogy, a resarch overview is like a map: you draw every house in town into it. In a review you draw the same map, and then mark one of the houses with a red dot and note how far it is to the train station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T10:10:06.193" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T10:10:06.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10350" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10351" CreationDate="2014-02-19T14:08:47.057" Score="0" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I peered through the glass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a bird. At first I thought it was a crow because of its black&#xA;  feathers; they were so black they shone in the moonlight like a pair&#xA;  of sword blades. However, after looking at it keenly, I realized it&#xA;  wasn't. First, its beak wasn't that big. &lt;strong&gt;The beak of a crow&lt;/strong&gt; was thick&#xA;  and long, as if it were an extension of its face. &lt;strong&gt;The beak of this&#xA;  bird&lt;/strong&gt;, on the other hand, was almost as small as a needle. Also, unlike&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;the angry eyes of a crow, this bird's were round and expressionless&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  They didn't convey any feeling—just pure, indifference void. The&#xA;  most noticeable feature, though, was a yellow spot on each wing. They&#xA;  looked like the rank badges that officials wear on their shoulders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see I repeat The X of the crow...and X of the bird twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the repetition above unnecessary? Should I use another phrasing instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T00:33:12.323" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T00:33:12.323" Title="Is the following repetition unnecessary?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10350" CreationDate="2014-02-19T14:29:53.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, that repetition is unnecsssary.  No, you do not necessarily need to change it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parallel construction is a valuable tool and can make your paragraph easier to read, especially if you're including a comparison as in this narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to adjust your other comparisons so that they all have similar structures, but doing so is purely a stylistic choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On an un-related note, you should standardize your tense.  You switch between past and present too quickly.  (&quot;realize&quot; should be &quot;realized&quot;, for instance.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T14:29:53.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10327" CreationDate="2014-02-19T20:54:18.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about Powerpoint (or similar)?  Advantage over word-processors is you have &quot;slides&quot; that you can move about.  Slides can contain pictures or text.  You can label each slide with a large label.  Then you can look at a bunch of slides in &quot;slide view&quot; and rearrange them.  Disadvantage is that this only has two levels of organization.  [i.e., You can 1)rearrange text boxes on a slide, and 2) rearrange slides.  {I'm ignoring nesting textboxes within textboxes, which is much clumsier.}]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think what you really want is an outline.  Most word-processors have an &quot;outline view&quot; which works sort of like a multi-level version of Powerpoint's &quot;slide view.&quot;  You can expand and collapse whatever section(s) you want, at any level.  You can change the order of sections by a simple click and drag, or by easy keystrokes (e.g., Ctrl-UpArrow).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try one or both of these two methods.  If you find one or both helpful, but are still frustrated by limitations and/or clumsiness, then probably you want something more sophisticated like Scrivener (which @Lauren Ipsum suggested in another answer).  I checked out her link, and found that the makers of Scrivener supply links to competing software (which almost makes me want to buy theirs just to reward their good behaviour).  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/links.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Links for Writers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T22:19:34.973" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T22:19:34.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10343" CreationDate="2014-02-20T00:16:53.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't written a screen play myself, however I am a writer and I'm drawing on the experience of watching several friends write their plays over the past decade. That being said, here are some hopefully helpful thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are clearly different styles, and ultimately you end up at pretty much the same destination. One of my friends starts out with the conceptual idea that the viewer has just a blank canvas that is gradually being painted into a vivid slice of life by the actions and words of the characters. He is someone who thinks of the core happenings almost like a secret that he is sharing a piece at a time, and it allows the audience/viewer to digest what he is providing as you go through. It builds a sense of intimacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another friend of mine takes the approach of laying the table and telling you what you are going to be eating, before starting any sense. He is also a lot more of a structured person and needs to feel he knows where he stands, and where everyone else does, relative to what is going on in the world. Without a sense of distance and relationships between things (he's a 3D type of thinker) he can't visualize (as he writes) how people would act and how they would think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these friends go through the same refinement process, though pretty much in opposite directions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the fiction that I've been writing I found when I tried to take a highly structured approach (triggered by having a new writing app) after years of writing &quot;off the cuff&quot; I found I just couldn't write. I was stuck. It was like I'd taken everything out of the box, and now I didn't have that required joy of taking things out a piece at a time and marvelling at them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for normal, I think it comes to style. I would argue &quot;get going and figure your style out.&quot; If you get blocked, stop, look at what's working and what you suspect isn't working and adjust. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T00:16:53.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10346" CreationDate="2014-02-20T02:05:54.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this may be somewhat what you mean &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.visuwords.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.visuwords.com/&lt;/a&gt; It can be a little difficult to use but sometimes comes up with some great words. I will occasionally check out a word and then look at the synonyms of its synonyms, but always use caution with the thesaurus and make sure the word is used correctly. Also connotations are subject to changes from colloquialism, vernacular, and/or cultures. Like here in New England things are &quot;wicked good&quot; and the connotation is positive but in other places wicked has a strong negative connotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8007" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T02:05:54.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10359" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12234" CreationDate="2014-02-20T13:52:51.287" Score="12" ViewCount="806" Body="&lt;p&gt;What software tools do publishers use to produce books for the blind, i.e. containing embossed Braille?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is LaTeX one of them? There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/braille&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;braille&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt; LaTeX package, which can be used to &lt;em&gt;print&lt;/em&gt; Braille, but I'm not sure it can be used to &lt;em&gt;emboss&lt;/em&gt; Braille. If not LaTex, what do publishers use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be keen to work on a LaTeX package for both printing and embossing Braille but, first, I need to know whether there would be an interest for such a solution...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zoCIj.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5096" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-17T03:46:13.707" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T03:46:13.707" Title="Do publishers use LaTeX to produce books for the blind?" Tags="|publishing|tools|printing|latex|accessibility|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10309" CreationDate="2014-02-20T15:06:09.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main difference between the terms script and screen play (or screenplay as one word) is that typically people think of a script as for theater whereas a screenplay is clearly for the film industry. However, since a script can also be a screen play, it is interchangeable in that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screenplays are also usually subject to a script formatting rules. There are many examples of this and it is easy to find. Industry people who would read your screen play tend to be very particular about proper formatting. Bad formatting is clear evidence of a beginner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theater scripts are not nearly so fussy about format. Often unpublished theater scripts look like screenplays in format while published plays look very different.  This is because script writing software tends to use the screen play format but publishers of plays use a tighter format to save paper and costs to publish.  This can be confusing because a writer will use the publishers tight formatting scheme thinking it is a generally accepted format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.playwriting101.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.playwriting101.com/&lt;/a&gt; for a detailed discussion of formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8016" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T15:06:09.837" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10187" CreationDate="2014-02-20T15:14:42.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Comedy needs to have context for people to &quot;get it&quot;; to understand what the joke is.  A lampshade on the head is not funny on it's own because there is not much context. I lampshade on the head where everyone else is dressed formally is more funny. Comedy is based on surprise.  You must surprise people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find some books that you like and read them multiple times. Try the exercise of writing the same book of characters in a different plot, or even the same plot, to hone your skills at crafting narration and dialogue.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read ALL THE TIME. This is the best education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8016" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T15:14:42.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10346" CreationDate="2014-02-20T20:04:10.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to find out the connotation of a word is to ask a lot of users. There are many questions about connotation on the Stack Exchange site, &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/connotation&quot;&gt;English Language and Usage&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3686" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T20:04:10.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10363" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-20T22:09:50.427" Score="2" ViewCount="298" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm making a poster of one of my favorite quotes from Almost Famous:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You'll meet them all again on their long journey to the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote was spoken by the character of Lester Bangs, who was written by Cameron Crowe, BUT the character was based on the real-life Lester Bangs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To whom would you attribute the quote in this situation? I can't find out if Cameron Crowe was actually quoting the real Lester Bangs in this case, or if Crowe just invented the quote for the character, so I'm stumped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8018" LastEditorUserId="3857" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T22:46:24.383" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T16:12:28.373" Title="Attributing Quote to Fictional Characters (Who are based on real people)" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10364" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10365" CreationDate="2014-02-20T22:44:15.893" Score="4" ViewCount="4064" Body="&lt;p&gt;This came up when I was writing my thesis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually it is recommended that when writing a thesis, one sticks to passive voice and use sentences that read like &quot;The study showed the effect that blah blah has on the blah of blah&quot; and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In certain situations, one needs to mention something analogous to &quot;Through this study we showed blah blah&quot;. In such a situation, how does one go about writing it? The thesis is supposed to be an individual's attempt and so the usage of &quot;we&quot; seems inappropriate. In the same way, use of &quot;I&quot; is frowned upon. How does one write sentences like these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using alternates like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Through this study the author showed&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This study showed&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;seem a little redundant because of over usage of &quot;the author&quot; or &quot;the study&quot;. Are there other alternatives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, in a paper one can write sentences like &quot;We believe that the effect of X on Y is because of the presence of Z&quot; but how does one write similar sentences in a thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T08:32:35.663" Title="Thesis writing: how to address &quot;self&quot;" Tags="|technical-writing|word-choice|academic-writing|research|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10364" CreationDate="2014-02-21T00:29:51.660" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often run into this problem too. I think in the end it usually sounds redundant anyways but I use phrases like &quot;the data suggest&quot; or &quot;the results suggest&quot; in the discussion and in the introduction I usually just state the claim without attributing it to myself since it's assumed it is &quot;this study&quot; (unless it's cited information). You don't technically have to attribute the statements unless there things you citing from your previous work or others works. Other times it's useful to just write the sentence and then edit it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Through this study we showed the influence of three iron oxides concentration on soil color&quot; becomes &quot;The concentration of these three iron oxides influences soil color by blah&quot; or &quot;The influence of these three iron oxides concentration on soil color is blah.&quot; Which makes the sentence more concise and direct while removing any need of attribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When referring to other authors work I generally just rely on the in-text citation but sometimes I'll say something like &quot;has been described by (Authors)&quot; or &quot;hypotheses developed by (Authors) suggest&quot; or &quot;a (year) study by (Authors) concluded that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the last sentence I would probably write something like &quot;The effect of X on Y appears to be influenced by the presence of Z which is supported by the data (chart or table or statistical output)&quot; or &quot;Z influences interactions between X and Y by blah.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, avoid making statements that affirm definite causation like &quot;is because of&quot; or &quot;prove&quot; and instead use some form of suggests or supports/is supported by. And this may be just a stylistic choice but I try not to use show/shows/showed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8007" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T00:29:51.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10368" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10370" CreationDate="2014-02-21T05:12:49.147" Score="0" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;I discovered I tend to use &quot;at first&quot; a lot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We were reminiscing about our past relationships, and Mrs. Kondo asked&#xA;  Akiko about her first love (she'd only had two in her life: me and her&#xA;  high school sweetheart). &lt;strong&gt;At first&lt;/strong&gt; Akiko had been a reluctant to&#xA;  answer, however, as the cocktails flowed, she became more and more&#xA;  enthusiastic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I peered through the glass.&#xA;  It was a bird. &lt;strong&gt;At first&lt;/strong&gt; I thought it was a crow because of its black feathers; they were so black they shone in the moonlight like a pair of sword blades. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suddenly, something came to my mind—the remnants of the dream I had before waking up. They were extremely fuzzy &lt;strong&gt;at first&lt;/strong&gt;. But then, gradually, they began taking a more coherent shape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After exploring for some time, I heard some steps. &lt;strong&gt;At first&lt;/strong&gt; I thought they belonged to an animal, but then, after listening carefully, I realized they were more like a human’s. They paced slowly, thoughtfully, almost in a contemplative way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just omit them? Or change them for something else? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T05:42:07.307" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T21:37:27.267" Title="Should I omit the &quot;at first&quot;s in the following pieces?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10363" CreationDate="2014-02-21T16:12:28.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The primary attribution is always to the author of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only then you can go about clarifying, if you feel the need to do so - &amp;quot;X has his character Y, based on real person Z, say...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;the quote&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— &lt;em&gt;[Character] (based on [Person]), [Title] by [Author]&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the order of dropping detail is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— &lt;em&gt;[Character] (based on [Person]), [Title] by [Author]&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— &lt;em&gt;[Character], [Title] by [Author]&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— &lt;em&gt;[Title] by [Author]&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— &lt;em&gt;[Author]&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really, really want to get the focus to that real &lt;em&gt;[person]&lt;/em&gt;, without dropping them into the bottom of the pecking order, pretend you've never heard of the &lt;em&gt;[title]&lt;/em&gt;, and just do&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— &lt;em&gt;(attributed to [person])&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way your attribution is factually inaccurate (or, honestly, a blatant lie) but it &lt;em&gt;seems&lt;/em&gt; accurate, and considering who &amp;quot;said it really&amp;quot;, your &amp;quot;mistake&amp;quot; is quite excusable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always remember, as Benjamin Franklin said, &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;People lack all criticism when it comes to believing in attribution of quotes to famous people on the Internet.&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T16:12:28.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10368" CreationDate="2014-02-21T16:26:32.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the first case, I think you don't need it. The sentence paints the picture without it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second case, it reads fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the third case you should consider replacing At First with something like &quot;Initially, the images were extremely fuzzy.&quot; Alternatively, if it were me, I'd just imply it with something like &quot;Gradually the images became more coherent, as the veil of sleep was lifted&quot; I'd drop the first part entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the fourth case, I would drop it. &quot;I thought they belonged to an animal, but then..&quot; the &quot;but then&quot; highlights to me that the &quot;I thought they...&quot; part preceded it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's my 2 cents,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T16:26:32.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10368" CreationDate="2014-02-21T21:37:27.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is hard to say whether there are too many 'at first's without knowing how long the story is and how frequently this phrase appears with respect to other phrases. On the other hand, the phrase itself has an impact on your writing that you may or may not want to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you use &lt;em&gt;at first&lt;/em&gt;, you pull the reader out of the immediate narrative to reflect on a sequence of events. You are doing this because you are numbering the things that happened, so to the reader, none of it can be happening right now. You might want to do this—if you are filling in back story, for instance—but if that's not your intent, you'll need to take a different approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I want to tell you about a girl I met last night, I use the &lt;em&gt;at first&lt;/em&gt; version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were reminiscing about our past relationships, and Mrs. Kondo asked Akiko about her first love (she'd only had two in her life: me and her high school sweetheart). At first Akiko had been a reluctant to answer, however, as the cocktails flowed, she became more and more enthusiastic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I want the reader to sit invisibly next to me while this is actually happening, then the form needs to be different, and probably would be expanded with dialog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I remember my first kiss,&amp;quot; Mrs. Kondo smiled faintly. &amp;quot;Under the cherry blossoms at my parent's house. What about you, Akiko?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Akiko avoided her gaze and slipped a second glass off the nearest tray. I watched her take the first drink, a little deeper than usual, before she squared her shoulders slightly. She drew in a breath to reply, then caught my eye and faltered. &amp;quot;It wasn't quite that romantic,&amp;quot; she smiled graciously. &amp;quot;Not like when you were young.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mrs. Kondo patted her shoulder and prattled on, Akiko drinking faster and faster as the night progressed. The alcohol and boredom loosened her lips and as I left, she was filling Mrs. Kondo in on the details of the dance where I told her I loved her for the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a lengthy example, but I mean to demonstrate how you can show the kind of progress that you would otherwise tell with an 'at first' style statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T21:37:27.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10375" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-22T00:39:02.257" Score="8" ViewCount="147941" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to write a feature article for school. However, I'm confused how an abstract [a summary of my points] is different to an intro [Where you outline the points you're going to be elaborating in the body paragraphs]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Title: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Single Mothers, ‘the damaged goods’ of society?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They’re the unrepresented minorities in our society. Victims of social prejudice, these women are marginalised in media as a whole different class of people. They’re irresponsible sluts; ‘the damaged goods’. They’re woefully incapable of raising a baby with morals. They’re dependent; Work-shy-unambitious class of beings who only live off well-fare. Sadly, they’re the Single Mothers of our society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introduction: Confused! Shouldn't my 'abstract' text be my introduction paragraph?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: Remember that I am NOT writing a research paper, rather, a persuasive article, when writing your answers please.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8029" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-01-19T02:15:08.587" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T13:37:51.057" Title="Difference between an 'Abstract' and an 'Introduction' in a feature article?" Tags="|essay|introduction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10375" CreationDate="2014-02-22T02:15:38.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The abstract should have the main ideas you'll be supporting in your text. You probably don' t want to put ideas in your abstract that conflict with what you're going to be defending but mostly those ideas that you want other people to agree with.  Also, don't put everything there, only the main ideas. Writing the abstract is a good exercise on summarizing your text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The introduction, on the other hand, should contain not only what you want to &quot;prove&quot; but also other ways and ideas on the subject. Here you'll put the contrasting ideas you want to dismiss or show it's not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your example, assuming you want to picture single mothers as marginalised victims, you could write something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Single mothers are often victims of social prejudice, being described as &quot;damaged goods&quot;. However, while carrying this extra burden in raising their children, they many times are desperately aware on how important it is to give their best to avoid a similar future for the new generation. As such, supportive programs and actions by churches and others have an important role in protecting this minority and avoiding their perpetuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plase keep in mind that this topic is not on my area of knowledge, and hence the example above could probably be more persuasive.  The important point here is to write the abstract with  mostly what you will be trying to defend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other constrasting ideas (&quot;hey’re irresponsible sluts&quot;, &quot;they’re woefully incapable of raising a baby with morals&quot;, etc) can (and should) be mentioned in the introduction to give the context of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8030" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T02:15:38.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-22T04:49:09.640" Score="6" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;My brother and I want to work on a screenplay together and are looking for a true real-time collaboration software that is also secure.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plotbot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Plotbot&lt;/a&gt; shows edits by all parties in real-time, but you have to trust Plotbot to safeguard your script as it lives on their server.  I have tried &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.celtx.com/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Celtx&lt;/a&gt; but it wasn't true real-time.  In fact, we never could figure out what series of steps finally synced the scripts.  It made me nervous that text would be lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone had a good experience working collaboratively on a screenplay and would like to share what tools they used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I know tools like Google Docs exist and while it has good collaboration tools, it doesn't have screenwriting-specific tools like formatting, cards, timelines etc. I am not looking for collaborative &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; tools but rather collaborative &lt;em&gt;screenwriting&lt;/em&gt; tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8031" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T23:27:51.880" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T23:27:51.880" Title="Good screenwriting-specific collaboration software" Tags="|software|screenwriting|tools|collaboration|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10375" CreationDate="2014-02-22T16:14:00.160" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;An abstract is a quick summary or overview of the entire piece. It's used for search results (manual or computerized) &amp;mdash; basically, the reader is saying, &quot;Is this the piece I need as a source for X task?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The introduction can vary in information and tone. It can be the classic &quot;Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em,&quot; it can be a way to guide the reader into the topic with the thesis statement as the last sentence, it can be a teaser, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Single mothers are often disparaged by society. This piece discusses some causes of single motherhood, how single mothers are viewed by various demographic groups, and potential means of raising their influence and societal status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introduction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Single mothers. Who are they? A cluster of teenagers pushing strollers along the boardwalk. Young women barely in their 20s with a toddler on the stoop and another on the way. Professional women in their thirties whose marriages fall apart, and now have to juggle custody alongside Scout meeetings and soccer practice. A fortysomething hearing her biological clock clanging, paging desperately through bios of sperm donors. Different circumstances, different reasons, different lives, but all have one thing in common: each one is a woman with one or more children, and no partner. And all of them are slammed by society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T16:14:00.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10379" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10380" CreationDate="2014-02-22T17:38:31.893" Score="3" ViewCount="950" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always struggle to write my ideas in English. Structuring my work/idea when it comes to writing leaves me blank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when I'm very clear about what I want to write, I will still struggle with putting it on a paper. I'm more comfortable when it comes to speak in English and people have mentioned that I have a good command over the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consider at intermediate level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any online/offline course, book or anything else available? Any technique to follow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your help on this will be much appreciated. I want to learn asap as this is affecting my professional life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks BB&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8036" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T19:39:35.303" Title="Struggling to writing in English" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|business-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10379" CreationDate="2014-02-22T21:52:01.337" Score="-8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are facing a normal &quot;writer's block&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=writer%27s+block&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/search?q=writer%27s+block&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8038" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-02-23T07:31:18.330" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T07:31:18.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10381" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10384" CreationDate="2014-02-22T23:40:03.493" Score="3" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a discussion I had with another writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a screenplay, a young man who is being led astray by a charismatic character lies to that person's wife to avoid exposing the other character's infidelity. The lie works and the situation is saved. He has ensuing qualms about the cover-up and says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I hate telling lies.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereupon the man he was covering for replies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;That wasn't a lie. You were telling her what she needed to hear.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read this exchange, I criticized the &quot;That wasn't a lie&quot; part of the dialogue as  wrong, and suggested omitting it completely or replacing it by &quot;I wouldn't call it a lie.&quot;, to avoid this character who is supposed to be duplicitous but also smart and charismatic to seem like a fool. However, the other writer disagreed, stating that the line was strong as it stands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you feel about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8039" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T00:21:46.080" Title="Can a statement that is incorrect still characterize someone as wise?" Tags="|characters|dialogue|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10379" CreationDate="2014-02-22T23:41:16.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writer's block is probably part of it, but another part is just knowing how to make ideas and words flow grammatically. I noticed you had a few minor mistakes in grammar, such as that you should have said, &quot;when it comes to speaking in English,&quot; and &quot;I consider myself to be at an intermediate level.&quot; (Although I would've said &quot;I think I'm at an...&quot; because it's more casual.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what will help you the most is reading as much as you can. The books don't have to be really hard, just whatever you enjoy, whether that's informational books or works of fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps. (:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8040" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T23:41:16.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10379" CreationDate="2014-02-23T00:08:14.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it easier for you to write in another language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is,&#xA;consider separating your writing into two steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write first in your favored language to get the ideas written.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then,&#xA;once you've said what you want to say,&#xA;translate it into English.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T00:08:14.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10381" CreationDate="2014-02-23T00:21:46.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I agree with your specific objection, and would never myself call an intentionally untrue statement intended to conceal some fact anything but a lie, I am not a character in a fictional work and the character in question is certainly not me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The line &quot;That isn't a lie&quot; is fine as-is, and it also serves the useful secondary purpose of expressing the viewpoint of the character who speaks it.  Specifically, it says that they are a character comfortable with white lies who sees nothing amoral with enabling someone else's self-deception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And it'd be fair to call our remorseful liar wise despite their falsehood, fwiw.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T00:21:46.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10385" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-23T02:07:54.230" Score="0" ViewCount="2519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've finished writing my first fiction novel and while it's being edited, and trying to nail down how I am going to get it printed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Lightning Source is an option, I've also found interesting options off Ali Baba that could result in significantly less cost. The site shows ratings, etc. for the companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the critical things I should be aware of? Has anyone had experience in dealing with any one printing company over there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard that shipping take can unpredictably long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T15:57:59.113" Title="Experience Dealing with Chinese book printers?" Tags="|self-publishing|printing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10386" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-23T03:29:09.347" Score="25" ViewCount="5390" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the copyright pages in many books I find the following &quot;countdown&quot; numbers and I am wondering what the significance of this is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a non-fiction book I have, &quot;The Call of the Mild&quot; it looks like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in a fiction book, &quot;Homeward Bound&quot; it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which rather looks like some sort of odd vs even thing, and not a &quot;countdown&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like it might have something to do with the edition, but what is this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5745" LastActivityDate="2022-06-28T17:02:34.353" Title="What are those &quot;countdown&quot; numbers on the copyright page?" Tags="|publishing|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10386" CreationDate="2014-02-23T03:40:22.497" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, having asked the question I then went to Bing.com to investigate further.  I was surprised to find the answer quickly.  I found it &lt;a href=&quot;https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070410-01/?p=27303&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in a blog article by Raymond Chen&lt;/a&gt; and I reproduce it in this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the row of numbers, the smallest number shown tells you which printing of the book you have. For example, if you see &amp;quot;10 9 8 7 6 5 4&amp;quot; then you have a fourth printing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for all this is as follows: It has to do with how books were historically manufactured. Each page of a book is converted to a metal plate which is used to make impressions. If another printing run is necessary, you load the plates back onto the printing machine and off you go. But how do you indicate that this is a second printing? It would be expensive to burn a brand new plate just to change the word &amp;quot;first&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;second&amp;quot; on the copyright page. Instead, you pre-load all the printing numbers onto your master, and each time you start a new printing run, you scratch off the lowest number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though a lot of book printing nowadays is done with computers rather than metal plates, the old method of indicating a printing is retained out of tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often the numbers are odd on one side, even on the other, with 10 in the middle, so that you alternately scrape off the LHS and RHS of the list of numbers. This would help to keep centered text centered on the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5745" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2022-06-28T17:02:34.353" LastActivityDate="2022-06-28T17:02:34.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10379" CreationDate="2014-02-23T11:44:54.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should know that most people have trouble putting their ideas on paper – on the first try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to good writing is rewriting. It usually takes more than one attempt to get your writing polished. I imagine this is even more true in a second language, though I'm not fluent enough in any second language to try my hand at writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be liberating for you to remember that your first draft is a long way away from your final draft. You might be able to get more ideas down in one sitting if you don't worry too much about making it perfect the first time around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T11:44:54.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10390" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10394" CreationDate="2014-02-23T13:06:19.490" Score="2" ViewCount="765" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which one should be used for a story written in the past tense? Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But just as I was about to consider that possibility, I spotted&#xA;  something: a blood-stained feather. It was caught between two&#xA;  strands of grass, a few inches above the ground, beating in wind like a&#xA;  little flag. I knelt down and picked it up. Yes, it definitely&#xA;  belonged to the faceless man. &lt;strong&gt;But where had he gone?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should I have said, &lt;strong&gt;But where did he go,&lt;/strong&gt; instead? The former I think is gramatically correct, but the seocnd one sounds more natural to me for some reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about this passage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The room fell quiet again. I regretted bringing up the topic. What was&#xA;  I thinking? Did I really believe she would agree? I gazed out the&#xA;  window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T00:36:49.560" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T00:36:49.560" Title="&quot;Where did X go?&quot; vs &quot;where had X gone.&quot;" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|tenses|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10400" CreationDate="2014-02-23T18:19:09.787" Score="2" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm nearly at the end of my story, and I'm struggling to finish it. Ashley (male) and Anna were best friends since childhood, until they grew apart and didn't talk to each other for many years. When they are both in their thirties, they meet again and go on a trip to Ireland together, initially hesitant but gradually getting to know one another again, solidifying a new friendship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, I want Ashley to present Anna with a gift that symbolises their new friendship, but I'm absolutely stuck for ideas. Their relationship isn't romantic, so something lovey-dovey isn't appropriate. It should be something meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could I make this gift symbolise their new friendship in a way the reader can understand? What techniques could I use to bind one item to this meaning or to any symbolism in a story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8045" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-02-24T23:17:08.647" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T14:27:29.230" Title="Story resolution issue - A symbolic gift for two new friends" Tags="|plot|ideas|ending|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10391" CreationDate="2014-02-23T18:25:38.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beyond John Smithers's excellent answer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have the proverbial thorn for Androcles to remove from the lion's paw, you can choose something which is symbolic in general, so people immediately understand what it means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if A presents B with a diamond ring, and B wears it on the left ring finger, in most of the western world that's an engagement ring. A claddagh ring (two hands clasping a heart) is often given as a friendship ring, which would work well here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claddagh_ring#Usage_and_symbolism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claddagh_ring#Usage_and_symbolism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if you want to emphasize their interconnectedness in the story (destiny, the idea of soulmates, the idea that they will always be joined, reincarnation, etc.) you could try an Ourobouros (snake eating its own tail) or a ring with Celtic knotwork all around, so that the design is infinitely intertwined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Those three are also all Irish/Gaelic/Celtic in origin, I believe, so they'll dovetail with your setting. But you could tweak it for any location.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T14:27:29.230" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T14:27:29.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10390" CreationDate="2014-02-23T21:01:35.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &quot;gone&quot; fits better with what you have written. My reasoning is that he had left that area a while before the character had come to this conclusion. If the faceless man had been in the presence of the character, but the character had lost track of him, then I would lean the other way &quot;He'd been there a moment ago, now I was left wondering, where did he go?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T21:01:35.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10229" CreationDate="2014-02-23T21:28:35.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/std66&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;STD 66&lt;/a&gt; (which is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RFC 3986&lt;/a&gt; currently) is the standard for URIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It contains a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986#appendix-C&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;section &amp;quot;Delimiting a URI in Context&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, in which it says (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;URIs are often transmitted through formats that do not provide a&#xA;clear context for their interpretation.  For example, there are many&#xA;occasions when a URI is included in plain text; examples include text&#xA;sent in email, USENET news, and &lt;strong&gt;on printed paper&lt;/strong&gt;.  In such cases, it&#xA;is important to be able to delimit the URI from the rest of the text,&#xA;and in particular from punctuation marks that might be mistaken for&#xA;part of the URI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It lists the following methods:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;within &lt;strong&gt;double-quotes&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://example.com/&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;within &lt;strong&gt;angle brackets&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://example.com/&lt;/a&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;by using &lt;strong&gt;whitespace&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;     &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://example.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it more formal and professional to include or exclude &amp;quot;http://&amp;quot; and the &amp;quot;/&amp;quot; at the end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should definitely include the URI scheme. While currently most people and also tools like browsers assume &lt;code&gt;http&lt;/code&gt;, this can change in the future. And even today, some Web pages might not work with &lt;code&gt;http&lt;/code&gt; (e.g., &lt;code&gt;https&lt;/code&gt; only), some documents might be available via &lt;code&gt;ftp&lt;/code&gt;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the URIs don’t contain a path (e.g., &lt;code&gt;http://example.com/&lt;/code&gt;), the trailing slash &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be omitted. It doesn’t make a difference. However, a trailing slash in an URI path (e.g., the last slash in &lt;code&gt;http://example.com/foo/&lt;/code&gt;) should definitely be included. If you omit it, the URI might point to a different (or non-existent) document (if not now, then maybe in the future).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8050" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2021-10-07T06:47:20.403" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T21:28:35.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10390" CreationDate="2014-02-23T21:33:26.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both phrasings refer to an action that occurred in the past (his going).  The additional nuance you need to consider here is whether the &lt;em&gt;question itself&lt;/em&gt; sounds like it occurred in the past.  A question that is part of the narrative should sound like a past question, just like the other events you report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Where had he gone?&quot; fits in with the past-tense telling of the story.  While yes, you could imagine someone asking &quot;where had he gone?&quot; in a present-tense setting, it's not the most natural formation.  With &quot;where had he gone?&quot;, both the going and the asking are in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Where did he go&quot;, while referring to an action in the past (his going), sounds like a &lt;em&gt;question&lt;/em&gt; in the present.  &quot;Had gone&quot; is a marker for the past perfect (completed action), while &quot;did go&quot; sounds like a still-current action.  (I am desperately reaching for proper grammar terms here and failing.  Sorry.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this example: you're standing on a street corner minding your own business when a suspicious-looking person carrying a bag of money runs past you.  Soon after a policeman arrives and asks you about the person he was chasing.  What do you think he asks you?  Most likely &quot;which way did he go?&quot; -- indicating a current question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are telling a story of past events, so you want the question to come across as a past event too, in order to fit in.  Therefore, &quot;which way had he gone?&quot; will fit better in your narrative if it is the narrator who's asking the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach would be to have a &lt;em&gt;character&lt;/em&gt; ask the question (possibly your POV character asking himself mentally); if your character asks the question as a question in the story, then &quot;which way did he go?&quot; would be better because from &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; point of view the situation is current and active.  If you do that, use the standard dialogue markers -- either or both of quotation marks and something like &quot;he wondered&quot; or &quot;he asked himself&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T21:33:26.147" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10364" CreationDate="2014-02-24T13:35:49.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trying to avoid the word &quot;I&quot; often leads to convoluted prose. The active voice and use of &quot;I&quot; result in easy-to-read, unambiguous sentences.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So unless the style guide of your university &lt;em&gt;forbids&lt;/em&gt; the use of &quot;I&quot;, I wouldn't worry and use the active voice. &#xA;Here's an example of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/thesis.html#clear&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a thesis style guide&lt;/a&gt; that recommends the use of active voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T13:35:49.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10410" CreationDate="2014-02-25T08:09:19.877" Score="7" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm often uncertain about how I should capitalise headlines for professional writing on the Web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two options I'm talking about are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just capitalise the first word and any other words that would need&#xA;capitalising in a normal sentence (sentence case).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Capitalise Every Word in the Sentence Apart from Articles, Prepositions and Other Bits     and Pieces. (Title Case / Headline Case).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concerns are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sentence case seems easier on the eye to me, and is less aggressive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sentence case may seem &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; casual though, even for the Web, and&#xA;appear unprofessional.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Title case can seem 'spammy' and may be associated with low-quality&#xA;content.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that the Web offers a lot of variety in formality and what is appropriate, so my question focuses specifically on 'Web only' writing that doesn't easily fit into traditional categories such as magazine, newspaper or encyclopaedia content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR Should I use title case or sentence case for professional writing on the Web?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6161" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T08:19:02.937" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T16:10:45.390" Title="How should I capitalise headlines for professional Web writing? (Sentence case vs title case)" Tags="|style|websites|headlines|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10391" CreationDate="2014-02-25T10:20:46.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you want to use a gift as a symbol, then it should be an object that has meaning to the protagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It only has meaning to the protagonists when it has meaning to your story. You should have introduced it during your story, the protagonists used/handled/interacted with it somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it has meaning to the story, the reader understands the symbol automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The symbol does not need to be something fancy. It just must be special to Ashley and Anna.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even a rusty nail would serve. If Ashley stepped into it during the story and Anna removed the nail, cleaned and dressed the wound, that nail could become a symbol of their friendship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ashley could say &quot;Thank you&quot;, Anna shrugs and says &quot;That's what friends do&quot;. Then you have linked the rusty nail to their friendship. And the reader would understand the symbol when the rusty nail is the gift at the end of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T10:20:46.593" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10402" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10409" CreationDate="2014-02-25T17:03:16.027" Score="10" ViewCount="401" Body="&lt;p&gt;The texts I am writing will be translated by people who are not experts in the topic and in some cases by a machine with next to none human editing afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What strategies should I employ to ensure that the final reader will be able to make sense of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5214" LastEditorUserId="5214" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T12:19:24.107" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T12:19:24.107" Title="How to write to accommodate subsequent automatic translation" Tags="|technical-writing|translation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10402" CreationDate="2014-02-25T18:00:37.013" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't guarantee the reader will make sense of your translated text without a layer of human intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anything, you should have two: one who &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an expert in the field, to make sure content wasn't lost in translation, and one to read for native-language coherence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translating text is not like changing fonts. You must have a human read it at some point. A machine may perfectly render &quot;Sei una testa di cipuda&quot; into &quot;You are an onion-head,&quot; but it loses the actual &lt;em&gt;sense&lt;/em&gt; of &quot;You're an idiot.&quot; Or &quot;calzaiuolo,&quot; which literally means a cobbler or shoemaker, but has the slang sense of &quot;has bigoted social attitudes stuck in the past.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T18:00:37.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10402" CreationDate="2014-02-26T01:08:23.730" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The European Union has a detailed guide to &lt;a href=&quot;http://cdt.europa.eu/cdt%20publication%20book/writing%20for%20translation/writing_for_translation_en.pdf&quot;&gt;Writing for Translation&lt;/a&gt; (pdf).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the key points they cover:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use explanatory headings and summaries, and limit each paragraph to one idea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sentence structure unambiguous&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid long sentences with a complicated structure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use vertical lists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid empty verbs and ‘nominalisation disease’ &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the active voice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beware of noun strings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always use the same term for the same concept&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For technical writing, there is more to consider.  Many open source projects are translated by non-experts, so have recommendations on how to write, such as: &lt;a href=&quot;https://developer.gnome.org/gdp-style-guide/stable/locale.html.en&quot;&gt;Gnome Developer - Writing Documentation for an International Audience&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some further tips from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.translution.com/translation_tips.aspx&quot;&gt;machine translation company&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the structure of your sentence clear, simple, and direct&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If possible, avoid colloquialisms, idiomatic expressions and slang&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spell correctly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid ambiguity and vague references&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use standard, formal language&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the definite article even when you don't want to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5747" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T01:08:23.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10399" CreationDate="2014-02-26T01:36:08.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work with an organization that has an official manual of style regarding the web. They strictly enforce sentence case, even in buttons on a web application &quot;Save thing&quot; instead of the more normal &quot;Save Thing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It comes down to style and standards. It's more important, in my opinion, to be consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For myself, I tend to slow down and read all of the capitalized words in the second example. I speed read a lot of things, and so the Sentence Case doesn't optimize the sentence for my speed consumption. Non-capitalized words I can pretty much ignore. It's not scientific, but it's one opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think for a headline, you want people to stop and notice, in which case I want Title Case. You mention it's more aggressive, but if it's a headline, you want to be aggressive. You usually want to yell &quot;Hey! Over here!&quot; After the user has committed to reading it, then it's best to switch (as you suggest). The user is now committed, so slow everything down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T01:36:08.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10408" CreationDate="2014-02-26T03:06:41.023" Score="4" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that Australian English has many spellings in common with British English, but (as with Canadian English) the two are not identical. Are there standard, authoritative dictionaries for Australian English? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I prefer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Merrian-Webster&lt;/a&gt; when verifying spellings in American English and &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/british/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cambridge&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oxford&lt;/a&gt; when editing British publications, but I don't know of any standards for Australian English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resources that lay out rule of grammar and punctuation would be doubly useful, but that may be the domain of style guides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T05:41:56.663" Title="Resources: Dictionaries of Australian English" Tags="|editing|resources|dictionary|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10407" CreationDate="2014-02-26T03:15:26.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Macquarie Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; is usually considered the most reliable source for Australian English words, and Australian usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.booktopia.com.au/search.ep?keywords=macquarie%20dictionary&amp;amp;productType=917504&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;range of editions&lt;/a&gt; in print, as well as the (paywall) online version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://australiannationaldictionary.com.au/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Australian National Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;, although it focuses on purely &quot;Australian&quot; words and their first usage. Rather than the real language used in Australia which (like most forms of English) is a mix of British, American and local words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For basic checking of spelling, your word processor may have an &quot;Australian English&quot; option.  Open Office does, and most of the words that are missing (like arvo) are probably a bit colloquial for the web anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a style guide, see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://style.radionational.net.au/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ABC Radio National Style Guide&lt;/a&gt;.  Covers very Australian things like the way the Labor Party is spelt like that, and labour is the way the work is spelt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5747" LastEditorUserId="5747" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T05:41:56.663" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T05:41:56.663" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10402" CreationDate="2014-02-26T03:38:25.430" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me add some tips regarding computer translation, although I believe Rob Hoare's answer is great:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write the original in a 'popular' language for the simple reason that those are most tested and most optimized. If for example you will be using Google Translate then it's mostly like the the node distance to any language is smallest from English (or maybe sometimes Spanish). They used to give some indication of this in the past, but now have forsaken this in favour of a simpler user experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use short sentences and use commas purely for clauses and lists, do not use commas where dashes could be used as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Place the English term behind &lt;em&gt;expert&lt;/em&gt; terms in square brackets like &lt;code&gt;suggestopedia [DNTenglish: DNTsuggestopedia]&lt;/code&gt; when first used, then remove those from the original and hand translated versions, and do a replace in the computer translated versions for &lt;code&gt;DNT&lt;/code&gt; with '' (nothing) leaving &lt;code&gt;suggestopedie [english: suggestopedia]&lt;/code&gt; (The &lt;code&gt;DNT&lt;/code&gt; is there to make the word invalid so it won't get translated). True, it takes a bit of hand work, but as those terms sometimes get mistranslated this allows the reader to figure that out for himself. (Sadly sometimes the word order get's mixed up leaving the note in the wrong place, it might be  a good thing to add a remark warning readers of this together with the general warning regarding computer translations)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If using Google translate, be aware of the fact that it is a system that has 'learned' languages by being fed thousands and thousands of hand translated documents. Those documents were mostly formal and literary works, thus those are the kind of language styles it is most fluent at translating. Just to put the &quot;Use standard, formal language&quot; a bit into context.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This doesn't fall within the scope of &lt;code&gt;Writers SE&lt;/code&gt;, but build a feedback mechanism for readers to improve upon the machine based translations. And make sure to always add some reference to the original version of the text. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh well, just a few thoughts :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8070" LastEditorUserId="8070" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T22:49:14.120" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T22:49:14.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10399" CreationDate="2014-02-26T08:00:38.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would look around and see how &lt;strong&gt;other web sites in my field&lt;/strong&gt; do it. If I wrote a political blog, I'd look at the most popular politicial blogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Difference (from other web sites) is good when it comes to visuals (photography, fashion, design websites etc.), but similarity is better when you provide verbal content (text blogs, news sites etc.). It's all about how easily your site visitors can navigate your site and read your content, so it is good to adhere to what readers are used to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other great examples are popular &lt;strong&gt;design or typography blogs&lt;/strong&gt;. They are usually made by people who have training in creating pleasing and at the same time usable web design. I always liked &lt;a href=&quot;http://alistapart.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A List Apart&lt;/a&gt;, and usually look at some recent web design awards to get inspiration, but always filter this through the related sites mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="6693" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T20:17:59.357" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T20:17:59.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10364" CreationDate="2014-02-26T08:24:08.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I studied literature twentyfive years ago and now study psychology. When I dealt with literary theory and analysis a quarter of a century ago, I learned to avoid any direct reference to myself by using convoluted sentence structure and passive voice. If I could not avoid that reverence or needed to use it, I would use a &lt;em&gt;pluralis majestatis&lt;/em&gt; to inluce both the author(s) and the readers. This worked, because usually what was described in those texts was in fact actively done by both authors and readers: &quot;Looking at the plot, &lt;em&gt;we&lt;/em&gt; can see that ...&quot; – and of course the readers can see what the author sees as well. Otherwise it would not be objective and therefore not scholarship. So that plural is fitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In psychology (and other natural sciences), articles usually describe an experiment and its results. The experiment is not conducted by the readers, but by the author(s) of the article. So the rule is to refer to the author(s). If it is one author, this person refers to him- or herself as &quot;I&quot;. If it is a team, they write of themselves as &quot;we&quot;. Simple and straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the authors believe something, they write &quot;We believe&quot; and argue why they do so. (In the natural sciences, belief is not worth much, you want proof. So you won't find a sentence like that very often.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the study found something, you write: &quot;There is a significant correlation between ...&quot;. No need to write about the study at all. Just stick closely to the facts. The only time you refer to the study is when you describe its place in the research history: you undertake that study, because you want to find out if ... After that you describe what you do, what comes out, and how that relates to other studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study does not show anything! In science there can always only be proof &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; something: Hypothesis: All swans are white. Observation: Black swan. Result: Hypothesis disproved. You can never prove anything!!! Because you cannot observe everything everywhere always. Even if in fact all swans are either white or black, you can never be sure, because maybe there was one brown mutation a hundred years ago (or will be a hundred years in the future). So studies do not show anything, you can only disprove a hypothesis. And that you can write like that. No need to refer to the study at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The best practice is always to pick a selecton of professional publications in your field and do like they do.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T08:32:35.663" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T08:32:35.663" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10412" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10413" CreationDate="2014-02-26T16:54:22.313" Score="8" ViewCount="2802" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a fantasy series and have been keeping a Word document full of backstory, character/location information, and other world-building elements. At 160+ pages, it's reached the point where it is difficult to search for a topic if I want to go back and edit it. Even with a plethora of subheadings, it's become a bit unwieldy to scroll through dozens of pages to find the subject I'm looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why I'm looking for a better tool than Word. Something more like a personal wiki that breaks things up into separate pages would be nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Features I'm looking for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has to be able to link internally&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to edit pages/entries (don't want to be looking at html and css code)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to change font styles/sizes/colours (I'm looking at you TiddlyWiki)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Free&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compatible with Mac OS X &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it would ideally work offline. This isn't strictly necessary, but since I'm the only person who's going to be looking at this thing, it doesn't need to be online. In this respect, Wikidpad seemed like a good option... until I tried to install it for Mac and realized I had no clue how to do so :S&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS I'm aware that you can link internally in MS Word, but the process (at least in Word 2008 for Mac) is a pain in the ass  and it still doesn't solve the problem of having one gigantic document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8077" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T16:24:12.783" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T14:03:36.970" Title="What is a good tool for organizing story notes?" Tags="|software|tools|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10412" CreationDate="2014-02-26T17:19:32.600" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Allow me to introduce you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is a word processor which allows you to create unlimited documents within a single project, and see all your documents in a nice document tree in a side pane. You can create folders and subfolders, drag items around from here to there, link documents within the project, tag documents for easy searching, and even display your documents as note cards on a cork board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener exports as Word and text, so you're not stuck in a proprietary format, and it has a full-screen environment if you need to cut out distractions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$45 and made for Mac OSX. You can test it full-featured for 30 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can search for other discussions of Scrivener &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/search?q=scrivener&quot;&gt;on this SE&lt;/a&gt;, including a lot of cheerleading from me. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T17:19:32.600" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="385" CreationDate="2014-02-27T16:20:39.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Writing Fiction for Dummies&lt;/em&gt; (page 294), the authors also touch on the proper style of critique and how it varies from writer to writer. They aver that there is a thick-skinned type of writer, who needs forthright criticism, and that there is the sensitive type, who requires very gentle criticism. I’ll take their word on that, but I haven’t met the first kind yet. Whenever I thought I had, it turned out that they were either good at disguising their vulnerability or they showed it ways I didn’t understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case it’s probably a failing of the other students to adapt their style of critique to your personality. It is fairly easy to convert just about any criticism into a gentle breeze without compromising its honesty. It will require some understanding of your perspective, but people who work with language and especially fiction writers, who also work with characters, should be able to pull it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I must admit that my answer may be not so much about retaining or regaining confidence in writing skills but more about removing one’s identity or self-image or self-esteem from the front lines of the battle. Then again the first part of the accepted answer is as well. What I’m missing there is the &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don’t view writing as an end in itself. Abandon the idea of art of art’s sake. (If you don’t mind, that is.) Authors like Sandra Cisneros or Toni Morrison write to move. They want to honor the struggles of a past generation, fight prejudice and misinformation, and guide us along many other paths to the betterment of society. That way, fiction becomes their vehicle for a higher purpose, and that way, they can achieve what JSBձոգչ recommends, to let criticism of their work be only that and not criticism of them personally. (Unless the critic actually attacks the theme of the story, but that’s a whole new level.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a quick-and-dirty metaphor, I’m still decent at opening locks, and I have a friend who knows the public transportation network of the whole city and surroundings by heart. So assuming I get an email from another friend who locked themselves out of their apartment, and I reply that I’ll be there in a jiffy to help. Then I ask my friend with the near-eidetic memory how I can get there as quickly as possible, and he tells me that I have to change three times, take rail replacement buses, and walk half a mile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’ll realize that it’ll take me a whole dozen jiffies at least, but even if he’s very forthright with his revelation, it won’t feel like an attack on my self-identification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Welp, that’s what helped me at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8082" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T16:20:39.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10412" CreationDate="2014-02-27T19:19:07.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sadly I've been relying on Yahoo notepad which is free but terrible and I've been looking to upgrade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think in my case the solution is Microsoft OneNote Online.  It is completely free and it is hosted online so I can access it from any of my devices which is great when I'm 'on the go'.  It has the ability to create sections and pages which can organize your chapters, events, and character bios.  You can even copy sections from Word documents, images, or even Excel cells and paste them anywhere on the page (suppose you happen to be an artist and have sketches, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has to be able to link internally = yes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to edit pages = yes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to change font styles = yes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Free = yes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compatible with Mac OS X = suspect yes since online but not 100% sure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To access OneNote Online, you will need to create a Microsoft account which is free and can be done from Bing.com . Once you have the Microsoft account you also get a free 7GB of online file storage via OneDrive which is an added benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5940" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T19:19:07.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10412" CreationDate="2014-02-27T19:27:17.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I needed a tool that worked on my iPad, iPhone as well as on my Mac, and not having experience with Scrivener, I used Storyist. I wrote a quick &lt;a href=&quot;http://drisszouak.com/2014/02/01/writing-apps-ended-storyist/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;review here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is likely not as polished as Scrivener, I really needed universal access, and it synching with drop box was a key feature for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the highlights of the points from my experience with Storyist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Works on Mac, iPad and iPhone and synchronizes w/DropBox.&#xA;This is awesome because it allows me to add notes when I'm on the train (iPhone), work when at a coffee and have a couple of minutes (iPad), or take on full writing sessions. Because it's a synch (for iPad and iPhone), rather than live save, this means you can work disconnected but if you don't synch your changes back, you can end up with multiple copies and will need to manually reconcile them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provides a left toolbar where you can have characters, plot points, scenes, etc. I like that I can create my own and define what type of items can go within them. For example, I've add technology or &quot;Trilogy plot points&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can have &quot;scenes&quot; and attach character development points to them, or plot points, typing together the different elements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It provides those &quot;cork board&quot; views like competing software&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Took about half an hour to get used to. Given that I'd been writing with MS Word or Apple Pages for the most part, with Things to store my 'to do' story points, it was pretty painless to get used to it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things it doesn't do well enough:&#xA;1. Support the export process for editing. When I exported to MS word, it didn't use Word styles properly, which was an issue for me. I had to go and redo them manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall am I happy with it? Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastEditorUserId="7897" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T03:34:47.390" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T03:34:47.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10379" CreationDate="2014-02-27T19:39:35.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have ideas and are good at speaking but just hate writing you can always try speech to text software, or record yourself with your phone and then get a transcript or just play it back and manually type it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5940" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T19:39:35.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10418" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10422" CreationDate="2014-02-28T05:11:58.500" Score="2" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a sentence in my literature review that goes something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... has only been thoroughly evaluated by a relatively small number of experts in the xx literature (author1992; author1994; author1998; author2001; author2009; etc etc etc etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I go about NOT listing every single resource/reference/citation. What can I write that accomplishes the point of listing just a subset of the references from the &quot;small&quot; total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8089" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T05:52:03.530" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T12:45:06.030" Title="How do I claim the number of scholarly articles on a niche subject is relatively small without listing every single one of those citations?" Tags="|academic-writing|citations|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10420" CreationDate="2014-02-28T08:32:43.300" Score="2" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;By not-so-famous countries I mean those you don't usually find in novels, movies, TV, magazines, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example is Chile (the place I was born). I'm not sure about America/Europe but if you go to Asia and say you are from Chile, almost no one will know where it exactly is or what language the people speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example is Taiwan (the place I'm currently living in). Most people (OK, by most people, I mean those that I've met) think it is just a province in China. Others even confuse it with Thailand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, do novels that are set in countries like those mentioned above sell less? Would they sell more if they were set in more popular counties like America or Japan? (assuming that the audience includes people from all around the world).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T08:44:10.900" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T07:24:53.197" Title="Do novels that are set in not-so-famous countries sell less?" Tags="|fiction|marketing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10419" CreationDate="2014-02-28T14:23:22.197" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To John's point, Fantasy and Sci-fi usually take place on made up worlds. Other novels take place anywhere from big cities like Hong Kong, New York, London, Toronto or small cities, sometimes in well known places and sometimes in &quot;exotic&quot; locations (what is exotic depends on your audience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think when you base a story in a lesser known environment relative to the audience you are targeting, you have a responsibility of painting a clearer picture for them as to local culture and feel. To base a story somewhere that a reader is likely unfamiliar, but to make it &quot;yet another standard city with nothing different&quot; is kind of a waste in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you used Taiwan (which, for example, anyone I know is well aware it is a &quot;Rogue Status&quot; province, making it both a country and not a country, and some of us are aware that some of those who fled Mao in the revolution went there, and no I have no Asian heritage), I would recommend you take 'informing the reader' of some of these elements so that you can be certain of what they know, and so that you can leverage it. For example, by painting some of this story, you could then have a family that is split between those who think Taiwan really should rejoin China fully, and those who believe that it should be independent and no longer under China's umbrella.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it comes down to what are you going to do with the location. I just advise don't set the story somewhere really interesting, and do nothing with that location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T14:23:22.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10418" CreationDate="2014-02-28T19:17:20.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider something like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... has only been thoroughly evaluated by a small number of experts in the xx literature, the most significant of which are (author1992, author1994, ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By casting it this way you're not implying that you're listing all of them &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; you're also not just picking some at random.  You are saying to your reader: &quot;these are the best of what's out there&quot;, with an implied &quot;and that's not enough, which is why I'm writing this article&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T19:17:20.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10424" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-28T23:34:50.320" Score="0" ViewCount="390" Body="&lt;p&gt;My illustrator designed the cover of my book, but my publisher did not want to use his cover. They wanted their illustration department to do it. What I didn't know was that they copyrighted the cover and the interior of the book. Does this mean I can't use that cover or my illustration ever again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8095" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2019-03-26T19:23:52.590" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T19:23:52.590" Title="My publisher copyrighted my book cover and interior" Tags="|publishing|copyright|legal|book-cover|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10424" CreationDate="2014-03-01T05:46:46.720" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's their cover and their interior. Naturally they would copyright those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the rights to your book ever revert to you, you can publish it with whatever cover and interior you can get the rights to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T05:46:46.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10418" CreationDate="2014-03-01T12:38:45.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often read meta-analyses. What they do is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;explain how they searched for relevant studies (i.e. which databases or bibliographies they used, sometimes even which keywords)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give the number of studies they found&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;list the studies in the reference list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They never list any sources when they state how many sources they found. Instead they explain how they searched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the databases, bibliographies and other sources you use for your search are not common knowledge in your field, list them in the reference list and cite them in text when you explain your search strategy. For example, if you use the bibliography in the back of a book published 1765, you would list that book and cite it where you mention it in your text. Don't list or cite common databases like PubMed (but mention if and how you used them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever a meta-analysis claims that there is no more than they found, or an author wants to delineate the development of a research topic from the first publication to its climax and beyond to its decline (i.e. when it is important to accurately know how much has been published on a certain topic at a certain time), the authors explain their search strategy in enough detail to allow a reader of their article to reconstruct that strategy and evaluate it. For example, if they used a databases, they list the keywords they used for their search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-03-01T12:45:06.030" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T12:45:06.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10343" CreationDate="2014-03-01T21:53:10.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm aspiring screenwriter. The way I do is as follows...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First you come up with a concept, the basic idea and theme of the story. How do I come up with an idea? There are many ways. There is nothing to solve when there are no problem. So first you see the problems around you, around society, you see the issues in the society, you think about things thatyouI care about. Sometime you don't start with a problem, but you innovate. You just imagine things, make things, how about if things happen like this, in a different way, you ask yourself. Sometimes, when you watch a movie, you'll suddenly get some new idea, totally different or partially related to concept the movie you're watching but with a different thought or way. You'll get ideas when you read news, when you go out, when you watch some uncommon incidents, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So now you have an idea. How do you tell this as a story? You need a plot, you need something like a begging, middle and end, it's called 3 act structure. All movies not 3 act structure. So it can be in a different structure also. But you need a plot of one or two pages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now you have a plot. A plot doesn't include all the characters. Initially, when write, you don't care about the characters, just think like how to tell the story. How to start with, what is the problem, how it get solved, etc. This is called plot based/driven story. There's another way, it's called character based story. I'll explain that at the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So when you have a draft version of the plot, you start developing the plot by adding few main characters and clearly specifying the problems, issues, goals, and how it solved, etc. And you'll give get some clear structure of your entire story. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now you have a better plot. You know some of the main characters of your story. Now you have to get into details. Who is the main character, why he is even in the story? What he is doing? Why he becomes a lead character in the story? What's his job? Where he lives and with whom? What is his problem? What are his strengths? What are his characteristics? Who is the antagonist? The antagonist is not always a person. How does the protagonist pull into the problem? How does he solve? This ways you write a draft version. So this draft version includes scenes, locations, dialogs, etc. When you write the plot, there is no formatting rules, you just write whatever the way you like, but when you start writing the script, you actually write in screenplay format. Use software like Celtx, Final Draft. Celtx has a free version, it's great software for beginners.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now you'll polish the script. Looks at the problems in your script. Is there something totally unbelievable? Is there any logical problem? Is the dialogs natural? Polish all the dialogs, makes it more natural. Is there any scenes which are unnecessary? Do you need to inject any new scenes or dialogues, in order to create conflicts, create emotions, or interest for the audience. How to make your script unique? What elements you have in script that none or most of the movies didn't have? So like this you write 3 to 5 times of revisions of your scripts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Next, you tell the story to others. Make them to read. Get feedback. Validate them. Analyze it. Make necessary changes. So again, you work for months to improve it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned earlier, there is another way called &quot;character based/driven story&quot;. In this you mainly start with an interesting character, his problems, is ways of doing things, etc. So you don't create the plot mainly based on your idea, but you take the idea and the character, and you mainly follow your character to create the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a chance, you surround with people having similar interests. You brainstorm your idea, get feedback, and further develop it. Sometimes, two people write the story together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many times you lock yourself in a dark room, and imagine the story, visualize the characters, locations, scene, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you start writing your story, mostly you'll know what kind/genre you are writing, so you'll watch similar genre movies and read same genre scripts. You'll get an idea from that. You'll also go to library, read only about the story you are writing, you do your research. For example, if you are writing a story about a farmer, you need to read about farmers, their life, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also storyboard your thoughts, scenes, locations, actions, etc. You can do it by yourself, or take someone help, or use some softwares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot more things. You can also read some screenwriting teaching books. You can submit your script to screenwrting competition and get feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7915" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T21:53:10.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10431" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-02T10:09:51.837" Score="1" ViewCount="636" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reading the The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elements of Style&lt;/a&gt; and one of the rules says you should avoid writing in the negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I encountered that on my own writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A deep silence followed after the words left my mouth. I turned to&#xA;  look at Akiko. She was staring vacantly at the ceiling, with eyes that&#xA;  reflected neither anger, shock, nor disgust. None of the reactions I&#xA;  had expected. She hadn't said anything, either. It was as if my words&#xA;  had sealed something inside her, in the deepest corner of her soul. I&#xA;  felt miles and miles away from her. I felt it wasn't my wife who I was&#xA;  looking at—just her empty shell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I tried rewriting it in the positive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A deep silence followed after the words left my mouth. I turned to&#xA;  look at Akiko. She was staring vacantly at the ceiling. Strange, I had&#xA;  expected anger, shock, or at least disgust...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A deep silence followed after the words left my mouth. I turned to look at Akiko. I had expected anger, shock, or disgust, but nothing; she just stared vacantly at the ceiling...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for some reason, I find myself preferring the original one. Maybe this passage fits the negative better? Or I'm editing it incorrectly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T18:11:10.793" Title="Rewritting the following passage from the negative to the positive" Tags="|creative-writing|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10431" CreationDate="2014-03-02T18:11:10.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things style guides don't do and can't do (in my opinion) is account for the psychological impact of how you present something, how you create an image, in someone's mind through writing. There are times where passive voice is the right thing, and where the negative perspective is far more impactful. I think of the style reference as telling you what you should avoid doing all the time, and if you do it, to know that you are doing it on purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading the passage above, I agree with you that the first one is more important. Here's a breakdown of what I mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;with eyes that reflected neither anger, shock nor disgust&quot;&#xA;This leaves me, as the reader, very much wondering &quot;Well, I wonder what reaction she's having. Clearly it's not an overt strong one... maybe the character is puzzled as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now rewritten as your last example (slightly changed)&#xA;&quot;I had expected anger, shock or &lt;strong&gt;maybe&lt;/strong&gt; disgust but &lt;strong&gt;instead&lt;/strong&gt; she was just staring vacantly.&quot; Now this brings me immediately to wondering about why is she staring vacantly. A subtle difference. I wonder if she didn't react because of what she heard, or maybe it's something wrong in her, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the second one isn't about positive or negative, but rather about where you bring me as a reader. I'm now engaged in the vacancy, as opposed to engaged about the absence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully that helps,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T18:11:10.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10433" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10434" CreationDate="2014-03-02T20:51:09.673" Score="6" ViewCount="5146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a user manual for an IT system. And inside the user manual I have sentences such as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Users can delete Servers that do not have Customers assigned to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the use of present-tense verbs such as &quot;do&quot; and &quot;does&quot; considered a professional way to write formal documents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8109" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-25T19:21:24.727" LastActivityDate="2022-04-08T21:47:44.907" Title="Present tense in user manuals" Tags="|technical-writing|tenses|user-guides|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10433" CreationDate="2014-03-02T23:28:07.987" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's break down your illustrative sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Users can delete Servers &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This statement describes a capability -- users &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; perform this action.  I'm hard-pressed to imagine how a different tense could be used here.  Some technical writers (or style guides) make this overly passive -- &quot;the system supports user deletion of servers&quot; or some such.  Speaking from 20+ years of experience in the field I say: don't do that.  It's harder to read, harder to translate, and cumbersome without cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;that do not have Customers assigned to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This looks like a present-tense verb (&quot;do not have&quot;), but its function here is as a &lt;em&gt;description of state&lt;/em&gt;.  What is important is that these servers do not, at the time that a user tries to delete them, have customers.  This is perfectly acceptable.  You may sometimes see &quot;...that have not had Customers assigned to them&quot; instead;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; do whatever is consistent with the documentation set your work is part of.  (Possibly there's a house style guide that calls this out, but you may just have to read other examples to determine this.)  I have only anecdotal evidence here, but I've found that the &quot;present&quot; formation (&quot;do not have&quot;) leads to better reader comprehension (measured in requests for help) than the &quot;past&quot; formation (&quot;have not had&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical documentation, unlike some other forms of writing, speaks to the reader in the present -- he has a problem to solve and he consults the documentation to find out what to do.  Technical documentation is usually imperative (&quot;do X&quot;), and trying to combine the imperative mode with past tense can get confusing.  You will still use &quot;past-flavored&quot; phrases like &quot;after you have done X&quot;, or &quot;if you have previously done Y&quot;, but the main thread of your documentation will make the most sense to readers in an imperative/present style as I've described (and as you've naturally gravitated toward).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This answer applies to English-language technical writing.  I'm not qualified to address other languages.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;em&gt;Technically&lt;/em&gt; this is not an equivalent statement; if the system allows customers to be assigned and then un-assigned, then a server might &lt;em&gt;have had customers assigned&lt;/em&gt; but still &lt;em&gt;not have customers assigned&lt;/em&gt; (at the present time).  If you're going to use the &quot;past&quot; formation, make sure this does not render your documentation incorrect!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-03-17T21:17:31.743" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T21:17:31.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10419" CreationDate="2014-03-03T07:24:53.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the majority of readers want to identify with the characters, setting and events of a story. That is why fiction featuring common characters taking place in well-known places and dealing with problems everyone encounters are the most popular. Of course all novels have an element that is uncommon and not everyday, like the murder, the stranger, or even a futuristic setting, but novels that are completely alien in too many aspects are not attractive for the majority of readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch tv one evening in a certain country. Most series will take place in a location like the place you are living in, or a popular place in your country. If they don't take place in the viewer's country, they take place in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now these are series, but the same is true for movies and novels, although to a lesser degree. But you will note that if they take place in foreign places, these are often places of a familiar type: the harbour, the desert, the space ship, the jail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories that take place in completely unfamiliar places are typically viewed by a charater from the reader's country travelling there and &quot;translating&quot; the strangeness for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most popular books feature some aspect of familiarity that allows the reader to easily step into the storyworld without too much effort. Exceptions are SF &amp;amp; F novels where the purpose is the difference and the reader picks those books because he enjoys the effort to understand a strange world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T07:24:53.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10437" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10438" CreationDate="2014-03-03T16:55:31.990" Score="6" ViewCount="10548" Body="&lt;p&gt;A writer can either choose to use bullets or else stick to conventional (or in certain cases non-conventional) numbering. Are there set guidelines about when to use what? Is the use of numbering preferred over bullets in more professional settings (example, academic writing, technical reports, theses, etc.) or is it left to the choice of the writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-03-02T16:09:52.800" LastActivityDate="2023-12-19T03:13:26.327" Title="Bullets vs. Numbering: which to use when?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|formatting|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10437" CreationDate="2014-03-03T17:08:20.867" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In everyday writing, (say on the web, or an email) I'd use bullets where possible. I think they're more accessible and quicker to scan. Unless there were some reason to actually number things. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3aManual_of_Style#Bulleted_and_numbered_lists&quot;&gt;Wikipedia style manual&lt;/a&gt; spells this out well: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use numbers rather than bullets only if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A need to refer to the elements by number may arise;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The sequence of the items is critical; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The numbering has some independent meaning, for example in a listing of musical tracks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academic or tech writing, the governing style sheets or style guides (MLA, APA, etc.) should always be consulted. I'll leave it to our resident tech writers to provide more detail, but I'd consult those resources and only then use the logic above: Use my own preference for bullet points unless there's a reason not to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that style guides all have specific requirements for how lists are used and formatted. APA at least seems to boil down to similar but more detailed advice as the wikipedia style guide; i.e., have a good reason for using the format you employ. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;APA on &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/02/lists-part-4-numbered-lists.html&quot;&gt;numbered lists&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/03/lists-part-5-bulleted-lists.html&quot;&gt;bulleted lists&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MLA on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docstyles.com/mlacrib.htm#Sec22&quot;&gt;seriation&lt;/a&gt; (conventional lists and in-paragraph lists) (Note that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_7675414_use-bullets-lists-research-paper.html&quot;&gt;MLA style seems to prohibit use of bulleted lists&lt;/a&gt;.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-03T23:26:26.540" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T23:26:26.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7944" CreationDate="2014-03-03T18:18:56.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned before, you need to follow your publisher's guidelines, if there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; any that cover this situation. If it's up to the author, I personally prefer to have &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; written on the page, even if it's just the page number. That way, it's clear that the page wasn't accidentally skipped during printing. Some publishers even require something like &quot;This page intentionally left blank&quot;, to make it clear that you're not missing something. I once bought a reference book where a whole bunch of (non-contiguous) pages were blank due to a printing error. From the context, it was clear that something was missing, but it may not always be so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8117" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T18:18:56.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-03T20:24:40.187" Score="12" ViewCount="5293" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just that: What do you need version control for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never had the feeling I needed to undo any changes in my (fiction or academic) writing. So what is version control good for? How do you write that you need it?  (I am not asking about &lt;em&gt;backups&lt;/em&gt;, which I make.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inspired by this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/289/do-you-use-any-version-controlling-software-methods-as-writers&quot;&gt;Do You Use Any Version Controlling Software/Methods As Writers?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-12-27T16:59:49.723" LastActivityDate="2020-08-02T19:08:30.187" Title="What is the purpose of version control?" Tags="|version-control|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10440" CreationDate="2014-03-03T22:18:58.550" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first scenario is check pointing to safe guard against those moments (and I've had them) where you come to realize a section of the document is missing. This happened when accidentally, without me noticing, as well as when one of my kids happened to hit the keyboard and I had a section of text selected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other use though is before I'm going to rework something significant. If I'm going to remove a character or change the raison d'etre for a character, and I'm going back and working through it and realize &quot;Crap, this was a bad idea.&quot; I just go back to the last version before I made the change. Also having a checkpoint (checked in version) prior to editing or incorporating feedback, etc. these can be quite useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you do this by just having copies of files? Yes, however, the issue is the following tends to happen (at least to me)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You start having copies all over the place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reason for the backup, and what was incorporated up to that point, isn't clear.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only the last one tends to be valuable (so you delete the rest) only to discover the thing you needed was 2 versions before that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T11:47:57.450" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T11:47:57.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10440" CreationDate="2014-03-03T22:39:14.267" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are one of those rare people who can write, straight through, without any major refactorings or changes of direction along the way, more power to you.  But for many people, and IMO any long-running project, source control is a major benefit.  Here are some of the reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you realize the path you're going down is a bad idea, you can roll back to a prior version (not necessarily the most-recent save).  Sure, you could save a bunch of numbered/timestamped files to simulate this, but then you are spending your own mental energy on something that the tool can just do for you.  Would you rather be writing or doing administrative tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Manual &quot;version control&quot; (the numbered-files approach) encourages you to work in one large document (easier to manage).  But often you are better off breaking your document down into separate files and creating a master document that includes them all.  (And don't forget about any graphics you're including, like diagrams or screen shots; those are files too.)  Automated version control makes this no harder than working with one file, but manual &quot;version control&quot; does so you probably won't break it down.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Source control lets you intentionally branch files to try out a change.  If you don't like it, abandon the branch.  This is subtly different from rolling back to prior versions; with branching you can focus on one change (remove this character from the novel, replace the running example in the manual, whatever).  Rollbacks are usually after-the-fact realizations and you'll lose whatever other work you were doing at the same time; branching helps you to be more intentional.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Branching allows you to work on changes independently.  If you tend to have a lot of idea in play at once, or you have only short bursts of time to work on your document, or you're just very distractable and want to &quot;do all the things&quot; now, source control can help you separate those tasks so you don't end up with half of idea 1 and a third of idea 2 and the bare outline of idea 3 all mixed up together in a document that you now need to untangle because your editor wants a snapshot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most source-control systems have the concept of a label, so you can easily annotate the files for important events like &quot;submitted for first review&quot; or &quot;delivered draft to customer&quot; or &quot;release 3.1&quot;.  Trust me, if you work on long-running projects, eventually somebody is going to ask you for a copy of exactly what was sent to such-and-such customer a year and a half ago.  If you dropped a label at the time, you can do that without having had to archive a copy of everything.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you will ever be working with co-authors, or editors who want to directly edit your source documents, source control is essential to avoid collisions.  That way you can keep working and later you can merge in your co-author's additions or your editor's changes.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;  (Merging can get messy depending on the type of change, so there's more to discuss here, but that seems to be getting too far afield of your question.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Source-control systems have built-in comparison tools, so it's easy to see the differences between your current working copy and the last one you checked in, or those between two previous checkins, &lt;em&gt;so long as you use a suitable format&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;  This helps to remind you of what you changed in this &quot;session&quot;, and if you're doing something like addressing review comments, you can compare the comments to your diff to make sure you got them all.  Similarly, when you're doing something new, like updating a set of screen shots, you can check to see if you got them all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With source-control systems, checkins are (nearly) &quot;free&quot; so you can check in small, granular changes.  One thing this does is to limit your risk; if something happens to your current work (cat across the keyboard, misplaced &quot;rm*&quot;, etc), you can get back to the last version you checked in.  More importantly, though, by reviewing the comments you made on each checkin (do make meaningful checkin comments; it's important), you can easily get a sense of the progression of work, what you've done already, and what remains.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source control isn't necessarily a win for everybody; I don't bother to use it for blog posts, Stack Exchange answers, short one-off documents, and so on.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;  And you have to either use an Internet service or set up your own server (non-trivial for most people).  But for many projects, and especially if source control is already available (e.g. for the code) and you just need to opt in, it's well worth using.  As a technical writer I insist on it, even if I'm (at the time) the sole writer.  I have never regretted that.  (Granted that I work in the software field so the issue is just &lt;em&gt;access&lt;/em&gt; to the source-control system, not &lt;em&gt;setting one up&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; You cannot diff and merge binary formats.  This only works if your source is &lt;em&gt;text&lt;/em&gt; of some sort, whether that's some XML flavor, HTML, LaTeX, or something like that.  Many modern tools can export as XML, but that might not help you -- if your diff tool is sensitive to white space, then each export is likely to change the line wrap so rewriting one sentence could cause the rest of a paragraph to show as different.  Check both your writing tool (how it does exports) and your source-control tool (how it handles this kind of variation).  I write all my source in a text editor that won't try to &quot;prettify&quot; or format/export for me, and I can merge and review diffs easily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Actually, I did use Git a few times for Stack Exchange posts, because they were joint efforts and this made collaboration easier.  So even there, occasionally it's helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T15:02:08.793" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T15:02:08.793" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10444" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10451" CreationDate="2014-03-04T09:29:43.617" Score="4" ViewCount="372" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know there are similar questions around (like &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6682/believable-but-easy-archaic-english&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7102/how-do-authors-gain-strong-familiarity-with-archaic-and-extremely-rare-words&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;) but they don't really have an answer that works for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any specific resources that would give me an idea about writing in archaic English? I am not really talking about 'Old English' or 'Shakespearean English' but more on the lines of archaic forms of words and verbs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;em&gt;'Tis&lt;/em&gt; for &lt;em&gt;it is&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;beareth&lt;/em&gt; for &lt;em&gt;bear&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;groom'd&lt;/em&gt; for &lt;em&gt;groomed&lt;/em&gt; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we be sure about the spellings and style of writing when using archaic forms? Of course, one idea is to read a lot but anything apart from that? Any resource that could perhaps look at variants of spellings over time? The trouble with reading and picking up words (specially from the modern writers) is that you can never be sure if they are accurate and more so, it reflects a spelling from a particular time. Looking at something like a &lt;em&gt;timeline&lt;/em&gt; of spellings would help in a choosing a more 'generalized' variant which may not be time specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-07-22T22:16:45.373" Title="Resource on archaic English" Tags="|resources|language|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10440" CreationDate="2014-03-04T10:26:29.367" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people in this forum are from a technical background, so they automatically look for technical solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't write a book how you write code. When writing code, you dig in, change a line here, add a function there. This can break the whole system, which is why you have version control and testing and continuous integration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books, and especially fiction, isn't written like that. Perhaps if you are writing a technical book, it maybe useful, but I'm not sure how. You write your first draft, where you type in everything you have. And then you start a new draft, where you fix any issues you want. And so on, for as many drafts as you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With code, you can make hundreds of changes in a week, which become impossible to track, which is why you need version control. Do you really write hundreds of drafts? If not, using version control is an overkill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't agree with Monica's answer. I have never felt the need to &quot;branch&quot; my book. If I want to try something new, I just create a new chapter (which in Scrivener, is as simple as creating a new text page). If I don't like it, I remove it in the next draft. Using Git to &quot;branch&quot; out everytime you have a new idea is an overkill, and not the way most authors work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, it looks like forcing the tools of one domain to another, without understanding why those tools are used in the original domain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;: Use version control if you like it, but it is not required; I'll go one step ahead and say its a distraction, another toy that stops you from working. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2024" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T10:26:29.367" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10424" CreationDate="2014-03-04T11:01:21.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally you are the automatic copyright holder of original content, and assign publication rights (territory, language and media-specific) to a publisher or publishers for an agreed period. The publisher's copyright would extend to the layout and design, I would have thought, unless the contract has been drawn up to assign copyright entirely to them. Check your contract terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8127" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T11:01:21.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3759" CreationDate="2014-03-04T11:53:20.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Descriptive Writing&lt;/strong&gt; paints pictures with words or recreates a scene or experience for the reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Narrative Writing&lt;/strong&gt; on the other hand, relates a series of events either real or imaginary or chronologically arranged and from a particular point of view.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For short, the descriptive is to describe and the narrative is to tell information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8129" LastEditorUserId="47470" LastEditDate="2021-01-19T21:19:02.860" LastActivityDate="2021-01-19T21:19:02.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10448" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10453" CreationDate="2014-03-04T17:11:20.587" Score="9" ViewCount="13671" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I express shouting in a question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a non-question sentence, I just put an exclamation mark at the end and/or use words like &quot;shouted&quot;/&quot;yelled&quot;/etc in the &quot;said&quot; tag and it feels fine. But what do you do for a question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How dare you?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should it be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How dare you?!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How dare you!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8133" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T18:07:36.103" LastActivityDate="2018-07-09T12:26:30.930" Title="Shouting in a question" Tags="|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10448" CreationDate="2014-03-04T19:15:40.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your particular issue is that this is a rhetorical question. A real question is &amp;quot;Where is she?&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;How do I defuse the bomb?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use italics, caps, and maybe bold, depending on what else you've used that formatting for. The ?! construction connotes a particular emotion, so I wouldn't throw it in for decoration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Batman slammed the Joker up against the wall. &amp;quot;WHERE IS SHE?&amp;quot; he roared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sherlock looked up at John, frantic. &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;How do I defuse the bomb?&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;quot;I don't know!&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;quot;As you keep reminding everyone, you were a soldier!&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;John flailed his hands. &amp;quot;I'm a doctor! I wasn't in bomb disposal!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T09:23:50.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10444" CreationDate="2014-03-05T00:48:25.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends what you mean by 'archaic'. For a wider cultural reference to Archaic England, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/archaicengland00unkngoog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harold Bayley's Archaic England&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/stream/adictionaryarch00unkngoog#page/n6/mode/2up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Halliwell's&lt;/a&gt; dictionary covers 14th century usage, and is particularly good on dialects. It references other works which you may find useful for other periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/asecondanglosax00sweegoog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sweet's&lt;/a&gt; work is Anglo-Saxon in focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several region-specific dictionaries that cover 'archaic' English use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you also get a feel for period-specific writing from primary sources - The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Asser's Life of Alfred, Chaucer, Caxton's Aesop, Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England (not the right title, but it's on the Harvard law school website - sometimes referred to as Brancton), but avoid Victorian pseudo-archaic usage, which is a style in its own right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've got a specific period in mind, you may get some advice that is more specifically targeted. In the meantime, I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ADDITIONALLY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also ASNC spoken word page &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asnc.cam.ac.uk/spokenword/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8127" LastEditorUserId="8127" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T07:07:26.850" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T07:07:26.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7944" CreationDate="2014-03-05T11:01:15.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A blank page (no number) is ambiguous: it could mean that there has been a printing error and there should have been content on that page, or the blank page could be intentional.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you put a page number on the page, there's no ambiguity: there's no printing error, so the blank page must be intentional. This also means you can avoid the cumbersome &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionally_blank_page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this page has intentionally been left blank&lt;/a&gt;&quot; you sometimes see.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Example of the use of 'intentionally left blank' in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=pos1R1000229&amp;amp;aid=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IBM manual&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastEditorUserId="6022" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T12:23:36.803" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T12:23:36.803" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10448" CreationDate="2014-03-05T11:15:32.547" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm averse to all caps in general and italics as emphasis. There is a reason why some publishers expect manuscript submission in plain text. You need italics only if you give the title of a book or words in a foreign language, i.e. in literary writing all mark-up is &lt;em&gt;formal&lt;/em&gt;, not prosodic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to show that direct speech is being shouted, you can say so, or use an exclamation mark:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;Where is she?&quot; John shouted and grabbed the front of my shirt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;John grabbed the front of my shirt. &quot;Where is she!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sentence structure makes it clear that the second version is a question, so a question mark is not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer the second version over the first because of show-don't-tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3 . John looked at me confused. &quot;Where is she?!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the third version to mean that the speaker is surprised and not necessarily speaking very loud, while the second version means he is shouting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T12:28:48.950" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T12:28:48.950" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10440" CreationDate="2014-03-05T17:23:06.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of one reason: If you have a co-writer, it gives you the confidence to revert to a previous form if you don't like their writing. Or combine conflicts if both of you are writing the same section. This is the original purpose of version control in programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I've said in a comment, very often it's best to rewrite back to a previous draft instead of reverting. There are so many advantages to rewriting. Sometimes reverting might make you neglect important recent changes - you'll rarely be able to revert just one chapter after changing all the other chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use version control only because I'm familiar with it and find it a really fast way to backup things. A full time writer with no experience with version control will probably waste more time than they save.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4312" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T17:23:06.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10440" CreationDate="2014-03-05T19:38:41.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The principal reason would be to easily collaborate on a document with multiple authors and avoid overwriting each others copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would also help you open up your book to public contributions, corrections and suggestions if you used a social platform such as github.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3594" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T19:38:41.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10440" CreationDate="2014-03-06T19:34:03.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write when I can. (Full-time job, family, house, church, etc. takes up most of my time.)  Currently working on a book series with a complicated plot, so I often don't write linearly.  (Heck, the plot's not even linear!)  Once or twice per week I save under a new version number.  It's been invaluable, because I've often cut a section (to paste elsewhere), then gotten busy with two dozen minor changes I just noticed, then gotten interrupted, then cut and pasted a phrase, then put that section where I wanted to move it.  &quot;What???  Oh crap!  I just lost a whole section!&quot;  At that point I can undo a half-hour's editing to get my section back, or -- tada! -- go grab it from an earlier version of the saved document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important point is to start your numbering at 001.  Not 1, and not even 01.  You'll be surprised how many versions you generate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would love to have software that automatically does the versioning for me, but I just use Word, and in an unsophisticated way (fancy typewriter).  [Does anyone know if the lastest Word will automatically version your saves?  Answer as comment.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T19:34:03.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10466" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-07T11:07:20.097" Score="3" ViewCount="1719" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing a proofing check of a book prior to submitting to publication and want to make sure it's as neat as possible before doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, I've had to merge two versions of the document - from Pages on iPad to Word on a PC and I need to check that none of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://desktoppub.about.com/od/glossary/g/tickmark.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tick marks&lt;/a&gt; that appear in the Pages version appear in the Word document, as I need to change them to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark_glyphs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;smart quotes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way of searching specifically for a character? I can't find the option in the Search box! Help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8127" LastEditorUserId="5909" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T13:48:28.543" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T22:34:40.543" Title="How do I search for tick marks not smart quotes in Word?" Tags="|formatting|software|tools|punctuation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10466" CreationDate="2014-03-07T11:10:20.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Word doesn't recognize the difference between tick marks and smart apostrophes in the Find/Replace dialog. Just type the apostrophe character in both fields. As long as the preferences in your document are set to &quot;smarten quotes,&quot; it will replace them all with smart apostrophes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T11:10:20.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10468" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10471" CreationDate="2014-03-07T15:07:59.207" Score="8" ViewCount="662" Body="&lt;p&gt;A whole lot of publishing houses look at works posted on blogs as &quot;previously published&quot;.&#xA;Now, let us say I put something on my blog and it is around for some months (or an year or two). One (not-so) fine (a) day I decide to get stuff published. I take down the (let us say) story off from my blog, wait for a few months (hoping that the cached versions will be wiped out) and then submit it to a publishing group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: does it still count as &quot;previously published&quot;? Ethically, I would say yes but what would be the legal status on it? If no one can see it, does it still remain published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S: I understand that Writers is not a legal advisory group but as writers, what are your opinions from experience (in case a straight forward answer is not possible)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T18:19:03.523" Title="Published on blog but taken down: Still remains previously-published?" Tags="|publishing|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10468" CreationDate="2014-03-07T16:26:53.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question, and I don't have a definitive answer. I believe the answer is no (in the book sense), I've been told there is a difference between &quot;previously available&quot; and &quot;published.&quot; A good thing to check out would be those books that are actually just compilations of blog entries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For myself, I would likely put on the copyright page of the book &quot;Parts of this book were originally available on my blog xyz.abc&quot; so that it's clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T16:26:53.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10468" CreationDate="2014-03-07T16:45:37.580" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would it count as &quot;previously published&quot; if it appeared in your (print) newspaper, but it was three years ago and nobody is likely to still have old copies lying around?  This seems like an analogous case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your blog post, if it was at any time public, probably &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; still out there, in the Wayback Machine if nothing else.  (And the newspaper might well be in an archive at the local library.)  Once published you lose control over propagation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am neither a lawyer nor a publisher, but I've seen friends who submit stories for publication (successfully) be extremely careful about not posting them publicly first, even temporarily, even on Internet-based critique sites that aren't locked somehow.  It seems to me from all this that &quot;previously published&quot; means &quot;&lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; previously published&quot;, not &quot;is still findable from a previous publication&quot;.  Of course, you should seek clarification of what any particular publisher means by that contractual language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T16:45:37.580" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10468" CreationDate="2014-03-07T18:19:03.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds as if you're looking for an authoritative definition of &quot;previously published.&quot; There may be such a definition, but I suspect not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly: I don't think you need one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, &lt;strong&gt;let the publishers decide&lt;/strong&gt;. When you submit your manuscript, inform them of where and when you previously made your book available to the public, and let them decide. They can use their own definition. Or if your book is sufficiently compelling, they can relax their rules and accept it anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T18:19:03.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10474" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10477" CreationDate="2014-03-07T19:08:30.703" Score="0" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;So my fantasy story starts out with two characters travelling by foot through endless woods. They can't take the roads because of an oppressive like government, but the woods are apparently safe. But I realized that doesn't make much sense. Why not have the government patrol the woods to make sure fugitives and other baddies aren't hiding there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then my characters would run into more trouble than is needed for the plot. Only the first 1/5 of the story has them travelling in secret, and then an event later happens that completely removes the need for secrecy. I'm just looking for ideas on how to write the travel scenes and not adding little conflicts to pad things up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would they get around the patrols in the woods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8158" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T20:18:20.887" Title="How to travel in a government restricted setting?" Tags="|fiction|plot|fantasy|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2014-03-07T23:34:46.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10474" CreationDate="2014-03-07T20:00:53.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the roads like (maintained / protected by govt. troops?  Paved?)  What are the woods like - wild animals that most people try to avoid?  Muddy / slow travel?  Lots of reasons that woods would not be patrolled except for when hunting major fugitives.  Also, even if woods are generally patrolled, how well?  Maybe easy to avoid patrols?  Average patroller is probably not happy to be traipsing thru the woods, would make noise, not be well trained, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How badly are your characters wanted in the first 1/5 of book?  That drives the answer to a lot of the above.  A sentence or two of handwaving are all that are needed unless they have a huge bounty on their heads or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8160" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T20:00:53.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10474" CreationDate="2014-03-07T20:01:00.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No I think you're over thinking it.  Why would the regime need to secure every last patch of land when they could just secure their own buildings and actual assets?  Maybe they have scouts which could add an element of suspense, but in a vast forest there's no guarantee they'd always be effective in spotting intruders.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5940" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T20:01:00.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10474" CreationDate="2014-03-07T20:01:13.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mostly for the same reason real life law enforcement agencies patrol mainly the roads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More difficult to navigate:&lt;/strong&gt; Roads are purposely made for travel to be easier. Patrols can cover a wide range easily. Woods on the other hand, would restrict movements, and make patrols more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More dangerous:&lt;/strong&gt; If all the bandits or rebels hide in the forests, this is not the best place to be as a government agent.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nobody important to protect anyway:&lt;/strong&gt; Good citizens walk the roads. Bandits hide in the woods. Patrols want to protect the citizens, so they protect the roads.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note however that there &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be a specialized unit tasked with patrolling the woods. But they would most likely be smaller and easier to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4272" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T20:01:13.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10474" CreationDate="2014-03-07T20:18:20.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does controlling an area work in the real world? Governments that want to control a wild area usually cut an aisle through the forest and patrol and watch that. For example no one much cares how many people travel through the woods to the left or right of a country's border, but they stop anyone who tries to cross. Transfer this principle to the inland. It's completely unnecessary to watch every square metre of an area, all you do is watch its circumference and who goes in or out. And since roads are in fact aisles between sections of woodland, it is enough to closely watch the roads. Everyone who leaves the road and enters the forest, will eventually have to come out on some road somewhere. As the government in your country, I would keep my troops out of the woods and have them watch every inch of every road, by camera, troops, satellite, drones, photosensors with spring guns etc., and maybe even fence it it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your characters will be perfectly safe and alone in the woods, but they will have a very hard time getting in and out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T20:18:20.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10466" CreationDate="2014-03-07T23:43:04.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can search based on ASCII char codes. ASCII for single quote will be 39 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you search for single quote as ^039&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vVcPv.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8165" LastEditorUserId="8165" LastEditDate="2014-03-12T22:34:40.543" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T22:34:40.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10488" CreationDate="2014-03-09T01:06:46.883" Score="0" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach a course preparing students for college-level writing. In one writing task, the students need to read a passage written by one author, listen to an audio recording by another (who disagrees), then essentially describe and compare the two differing ideas. The writing typically fits into patterns like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;White says the sky is blue&lt;code&gt;, but&lt;/code&gt; Torres says it is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;While&lt;/code&gt; White argues that the sky is blue&lt;code&gt;,&lt;/code&gt; Torres argues that it is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to White, the sky is blue. Torres, contends&lt;code&gt;, however,&lt;/code&gt; that it is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;White claims that the sky is blue. Torres&lt;code&gt;, on the other hand,&lt;/code&gt; presents the case that it is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each of the examples above, there are markers which help the reader to understand that an apposing view is being presented:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;..., but...&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;While...&lt;/code&gt; &lt;code&gt;...,...&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;..., however,...&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;..., on the other hand,...&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_%28grammar%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, these are all examples of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_%28grammar%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;conjunctions&lt;/a&gt;, however, I need a more specific term to refer to these, meaning something like &amp;quot;conjunctions that tell readers that two contrasting ideas are presented&amp;quot; or simply &amp;quot;conjunctions that tell readers that two somewhat different ideas are presented&amp;quot;. In other words, I need a term with this meaning, excluding the other types of conjunctions listed in Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_%28grammar%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;entry&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In writing, is there a term used to describe these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T07:30:38.757" Title="What term describes the language used in comparing the ideas of different authors?" Tags="|terminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10481" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-09T04:35:18.737" Score="2" ViewCount="374" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be creating a blog article that talks about Illuminati in our local country. I will be talking about the &quot;organization's&quot; role in making specific artists popular (for a duration) and in return the artists will follow the organization's orders, and their work will corrupt the minds of the people to further the Illuminati's agenda. I will be connecting the artists' personal lives to the conspiracy. My problem is, I will be listing the local artists that may be involved, and I will be posting pictures of them wearing items of symbolic importance, or having such symbols in background. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please refer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#Philippines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; for local law reference. Also our country is also member of the UN, and this text from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a19&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UN Declaration of Human Rights&lt;/a&gt; is relevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. - Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I truly understand that I need to seek legal advise on the matter, but I also need to know how to write to avoid libel issues. How do I tackle this, still revealing the artists, but playing it safe? What &lt;strong&gt;writing approach&lt;/strong&gt; should I take in order not to be hit with a libel suit? What wording can I specifically use or avoid? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5834" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-10T02:05:43.697" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T07:27:22.410" Title="Writing an article avoiding Libel" Tags="|style|technique|legal|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10481" CreationDate="2014-03-09T13:16:23.167" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have seen what you are writing about yourself, then it is not libel. Also if you are using pictures as support for your story, then I would be inclined to blot out the faces of people in the photo's unless they are publicly protesting and looking for public support for their cause.&#xA;Back to the start of this answer, you could be libel for a statement if you heard it from someone else, even if true, but not if you were the person that it was aimed at and therefore you are just recounting personal involvement.&#xA;Please be aware that this is in my country though and I can not talk for your laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8172" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T13:16:23.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10481" CreationDate="2014-03-09T22:20:20.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not at all sure what you're trying to do. Are you writing satire? As far as I know, there isn't really such a thing as the Illuminati. The Bavarian Illuminati was a pro-Enlightenment movement that more or less dissipated in the 19th century, and while many other people have claimed over the years that there are shadowy figures behind everything, this group represents perhaps the silliest of all the silly conspiracy theories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So given that, I would say that accusing someone of being a member of the Illuminati would be seen by your country as the attempt at funny satire that it's presented as. Fire away. Say that the person in question is a 9 foot tall lizard as well so you can bring David Icke into the equation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're really being serious... it's a secret group. They're not going to sue you for libel because then they'd have to come out and say that there truly is an Illuminati, maaaaaan. They'll just stalk and kill you in the night or perhaps build a robot replica of yourself and replace you one day while nobody else is watching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T22:20:20.720" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8317" CreationDate="2014-03-09T22:29:09.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By and large, if you're sending a work to someone like a literary review magazine or an anthology in hopes it will be published, you must assume that they will only accept your work if it's 100% ready for publication. For one thing, the editors at these places simply do not have the time to engage in lengthy correspondence with 10 or 15 writers to help them polish their work up. For another, it's my experience, particular among beginning writers, that when you reach the point where you think a work is around 90% finished, it is in fact around 20% finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to give one an idea of the kind of polished manuscript editors expect, Ernest Hemingway used to say that he didn't feel that he even really understood a story until he'd rewritten it for around the 9th time or so, and he'd generally have a story undergo revisions well into the double digits. I'm not saying that you have to rewrite a story 10 times any time you get it published - everyone's process is different - but if it even looks like a rough draft, you are literally competing against people who have taken Hemingway to heart, and you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be judged harshly for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, one should note that from an editor's standpoint, even if a story seems like it's almost there, there is a very good chance that the author simply is not going to agree with whatever changes the editor would like to make to the story. You aren't (necessarily) developing a long-term relationship with an editor here the way you would with a full-fledged novel (which can be a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; sloppier than a short story nowadays anyway). You're trying to get someone who is probably not getting paid a whole lot to see your vision in the 15 minutes it takes them to read your story. You simply can't afford to put out anything but the best possible version of the story you're writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T22:29:09.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9308" CreationDate="2014-03-09T22:43:01.353" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a legal standpoint, I'm pretty sure that so long as you don't introduce new information which is not necessarily true (&quot;Unbeknownst to his family, Bob was a Satan worshipper who was responsible for the recent spate of sea otter murders in the area&quot;), and specifically untrue in a way which could make it look like you have an ax to grind against a certain individual (i.e. nobody's going to care if you wrongly assert that someone's eyes are brown when in fact they're blue), you're probably in good shape. Outside of the UK, libel is exceedingly hard to prove, and in parts of the US as well as several other countries, if someone initiates a frivolous libel action against you, the judge can dismiss the case and require the plaintiff to pay all court costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &quot;is this good writing&quot; standpoint, I'm not so sure. Taking something that is &quot;ripped from the headlines&quot; is a nice start that lots and lots of writers do, but if you'll notice, you'll see that much of the time what these folks do is &lt;em&gt;base&lt;/em&gt; their work on a true story rather than actually try to ground it in reality. There are a few really good reasons for this, libel being frankly way, way down the list. Reason #1: the difference between writing narrative fiction and writing journalism is that in the former you get to make stuff up. Primarily, you get to make up what people were thinking. In reality, you will &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; be able to get behind another person's eyes, not even if you're married to them for 50 years. In fiction, that person's in your head in the first place so you can do whatever you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, fiction is in many ways required to be more logical than real life. In real life, sometimes stuff just happens. You catch a cold and miss work the day an angry co-worker shoots up the workplace. You buy a rat from a big box pet store and it gives your child an extremely rare disease which he dies from. You, a woman who is named Svetlana who is a widow of a famous architect and who had a child also named Svetlana who died, seek out another woman named Svetlana to act as your foster daughter, and this new Svetlana turns out to be Josef Stalin's actual daughter. You put any of these events into fiction and people will say &quot;okay, dude, put down the pipe and give me something &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. People have a natural, perhaps instinctual reaction against weird things just happening for no apparent reason and while that may fly in real life because it's the truth, it's not necessarily going to fly in fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, real life can be convenient and the great thing about making a story up in the first place - even one based on real events - is that when you run into a roadblock you can just make something up that will explain it. It may be that the person who you think killed the Black Dahlia or whoever had a perfectly good alibi the night of the murder. If you're only basing your book loosely on the story, you can do whatever you want to make that alibi hold true or not hold true. If you're trying to write journalism, then, well, even putting the libel angle aside, asserting that someone is lying without actually having proof is not good for your credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T22:43:01.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10481" CreationDate="2014-03-10T02:53:06.007" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no way to absolutely prevent lawsuits; if you're going to cover controversial topics and name names, there's a risk that people will get upset and seek to take action.  But there are some things you can do to &quot;write defensively&quot;, so to speak.  Following are some things I was taught in college in a journalism context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Attribute claims to sources.  Don't just say &quot;so-and-so secretly works for this organization&quot;; show how you know.  &quot;According to {the organization boss, last year's tax filing, such-and-such article in the newspaper...}, this person wroks for...&quot;.  Don't &lt;em&gt;originate&lt;/em&gt; claims if you can instead &lt;em&gt;report&lt;/em&gt; them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Have&lt;/em&gt; sources.  Often the truth is a defense against libel or slander, so if you do get sued, being able to prove what you said will be enormously helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you need to make claims of your own, phrase them so as to show a path from what you know to your conclusion.  Don't just assert.  &quot;We know X and Y, and in other cases X and Y mean Z, and it seems to me that Z is possible here...&quot;.  Sometimes this involves &quot;weasel words&quot; (&quot;maybe&quot;, &quot;it appears&quot;, etc) and that can be distasteful.  I'm not saying that you shouldn't make strong assertions of fact; I'm saying that you should choose when it's important enough to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unless your specific goal is some sort of polemic or other &quot;rile people up&quot; presentation, keep the rhetoric and emotions in check.  If your presentation sounds calm and logical it may upset fewer people.  Nobody likes to feel like he's being ranted about.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T02:53:06.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10480" CreationDate="2014-03-10T07:30:38.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contrasting/adversative conjunctions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/adversative&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;adversative&lt;/a&gt; (ədˈvɜːsətɪv) grammar&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  adj&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1. (Linguistics) (of a word, phrase, or clause) implying opposition or contrast. &lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;although&lt;/em&gt; are &lt;strong&gt;adversative conjunctions&lt;/strong&gt; introducing adversative clauses&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  n&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  2. (Linguistics) an adversative word or speech element   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3873" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T07:30:38.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10491" CreationDate="2014-03-10T17:11:18.977" Score="16" ViewCount="6669" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to write an assignment in which there's an English character talking with a English as a Second Language (ESL) character. It is turning out really, really badly. I have a general idea of what the characters need to say to each other to advance the plot, but I can't get the characters to sound realistic. Well... the English one does, but the ESL character doesn't. He just sounds like an English speaker who doesn't really speak English well. He's supposed to be good enough to get by, but not fluent in English. I'm interested in psychology, and I thought I would be able to use that to help me better create this character, &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; that hasn't seemed to work either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ESL character is of Asian descent (but I haven't picked from where the character originates, so I'm not really able to ask for specifics or anything) and in order to gain an understanding of what people from Asian countries who learn English are like, I talked to a friend who is Japanese (and a psychology minor, she's the one who gave me some psychology paperwork to look into on the subject of language affecting thoughts and speech). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She pointed me to some studies (they're books and I can't find great references on Google but basically things like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cogsci.northwestern.edu/cogsci2004/papers/paper575.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;) where language is brought up as something that influences thought. The example I gave talks about time, but there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linguisticsociety.org/files/Does_Language_Influence.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;other papers&lt;/a&gt; that could probably be more sufficient. The idea was that if I could find studies on how language affected thought in whatever language I chose for this guy's native language, I could use the studies to make general changes to his dialogue to make him seem more realistic (instead of my character saying &quot;X broke the vase&quot;, he would say &quot;The vase broke&quot; since English speakers tend to assign blame more than Asian speakers do, for example). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also talked to my friend to learn about her experience in learning English, but she's fluent in English now (so I can't pick up on how she speaks for my character) and says it's hard to remember the kinds of mistakes she made-- she said she remembers just being wrong all the time and now looking back it's hard to pinpoint any one time that taught her anything important. Other people I've talked to have less problems remembering mistakes, but I just can't get my character to sound right even with their help. He sounds too fluent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus far, this is what I've gleaned from research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Few contractions, if any.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Little slang. Difficulty using slang words that are often used like &quot;gonna&quot; or &quot;dunno&quot; if particularly weak at English&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tag questions. Most of them are affirmation types, asking for corrections and so forth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incorrect tenses, but it depends on how far along in English the character is. Irregular verbs are more difficult, but also past progressive tenses and things like that aren't bound to be completely understood. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If puns/idioms are used, often they should be directly translated from the native language.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simple, short sentences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professional sounding English, since they aren't taught colloquial English&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what else to do. If anyone has advice on how to make an ESL character sound realistic, I would appreciate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T16:23:34.737" LastActivityDate="2019-05-27T19:18:20.417" Title="How do I make an ESL character sound realistic?" Tags="|character-development|dialogue|language|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10489" CreationDate="2014-03-10T17:25:33.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best advice I can give you is to find actual ESL speakers and listen to them. If you can find an ESL class in your area, talk to the teacher. Ask permission from teacher and students to audit and/or record the class, so you can hear what word choices are being made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T17:25:33.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10489" CreationDate="2014-03-10T17:50:04.897" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not all ESL speakers will sound the same, for the simple reason that &lt;em&gt;they all had a first language.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to add realism, you need to determine what language they natively speak.  Your native language shapes your ideas of tense, sentence structure, and what phonemes you're used to considering as actual word-sounds and not mere noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some oriental languages have a sentence order distinct from English's subject-verb-object, and translate word-for-word without changing the order when they are just learning or stressed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some oriental languages do not have verb tenses.  If so, they may not use tenses at all at first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many languages have built-in cultural hierarchies, such as the rendering of nouns in some romance language or the myriad social-order suffixes in Japanese.  These may be strangely translated or even used directly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given the preponderance of English, it's likely that even a far-flung language has some loan-words taken from our tongue.  There will be some words that the ESL student speaks and uses perfectly, because they don't have to be translated at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, remember that the ESL speaker already has a wide vocabulary already at their disposal, and will almost certainly insert a term or phrase from their native tongue into their speech.  Especially for under-their-breath utterances or exclamations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I agree with @Lauren-Ipsum's suggestion that you may want to audit a class, you may get as much or more traction out of taking a class in your character's first language than listening to a collection of ESL speakers who will all have their own native tongues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T17:50:04.897" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10481" CreationDate="2014-03-10T17:54:50.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to avoid libel, you need to either &lt;strong&gt;not name real people&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;not say anything you won't swear to in a court of law.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some jurisdictions where simply claiming &quot;this is a work of fiction&quot; is enough.  But there are other jurisdictions where that fig leaf is not enough, but a stronger disclaimer that your claims are false would suffice.  But, in actuality, the only way to make an untrue statement about someone and not run the risk of a libel claim is to not say anything about a real person that you wouldn't testify to in a court of law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T17:54:50.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10489" CreationDate="2014-03-10T18:12:03.243" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, Chinese ESL speakers routinely make mistakes with definite and indefinite articles.  They leave them out, use them when not needed, or mix the two.  They also mess up indefinite plurals and pronouns, and verb tenses.  All of this is due to structural differences between Mandarin and English.  So, this answer might sound like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Chinese ESL speaker routinely make a mistake with the definite and&#xA;  the indefinite article.  They leave article out, use article when it&#xA;  not need, or mix two.  Also, they are messing up many indefinite&#xA;  plural and the pronoun, also messing up verb tense.  All this due&#xA;  to many difference in structure between the Mandarin and the English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice, then, is to study the basic grammar differences between English and your ESL speaker's language.  This will be more effective than trying to imitate things like mistakes in consonant or vowel sounds.  (e.g., &quot;Herro!  So solly!&quot;)  Doing that just makes you sound bigoted, as if you're trying to make fun of someone's accent, plus it makes your text hard to read.  Even doing what I recommend should be used carefully.  A little goes a long way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. Sorry, I can't give advice specific to Japanese.  Maybe read some badly-translated manga?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T18:12:03.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10466" CreationDate="2014-03-10T18:33:52.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can search for a particular UTF glylph by entering its decimal representation after a carret and a u in the &quot;find&quot; box, when &quot;use wildcards&quot; is not checked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to find U+2018 (the left single quotation mark), you need to first convert the Hexadecimal number 2018 to its decimal equivalent of 8216, and then enter &lt;code&gt;^u8216&lt;/code&gt; in the &quot;Find&quot; box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can follow the directions at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm&lt;/a&gt; for converting a hexidecimal number to decimal, or if you have Excel you could just use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/hex2dec-HP005209111.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HEX2DEC&lt;/a&gt; function.  If you have a character already, you can copy it into Excel and use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/unicode-function-HA102753274.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UNICODE&lt;/a&gt; function instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that the &quot;find unicode&quot; functionality doesn't work with Word's &quot;use wildcards&quot; option turned on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if you just want to make sure your quotes are all the right &quot;smart&quot; quotes, you can rely upon Word to automatically convert to and from smart quotes in its find and replace box.  The correct common the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark_glyphs#Quotation_marks_in_Unicode&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UTF codes&lt;/a&gt; for quotation marks and apostrophes are treated more or less as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;U+2018 (left single quotation mark) and U+2019 (right single quotation mark) are treated as a simple apostrophe (').&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;U+201C (left double quotation mark) and U+201D (right double quotation mark) are treated as a simple quotation mark  (&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both the apostrophe (') and the quotation mark (&quot;) are translated automatically based on your current AutoFormat settings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if all you want is to apply the standard autoformat settings, just do a &quot;find and replace&quot; for &lt;code&gt;'&lt;/code&gt; to &lt;code&gt;'&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;&quot;&lt;/code&gt; to &lt;code&gt;&quot;&lt;/code&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to step through them one at a time, you can usually perform a &quot;search again&quot; in Word by pressing Ctrl + PageDown or Ctrl + PageUp, though you may need to make a minor adjustment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastEditorUserId="6649" LastEditDate="2014-03-10T18:52:26.393" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T18:52:26.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10489" CreationDate="2014-03-10T19:28:39.573" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing typical for all languages would be the speaker using the wrong word when they translate to the same word in their native language. For example, my native language has the same word for both 'roof' and 'ceiling' and I used to have trouble picking the correct one in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another one would be having slightly awkward phrasing: not the perfect choice of words all the time. Maybe a word or two missing. (I make that sort of mistakes all the time. See my edits for a minor example.) Try not to refine the lines, but leave them at 'draft quality'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They might also have a couple of uncommon words in their vocabulary that they looked up from the dictionary to express some word often used in their language. (&lt;em&gt;'We don't usually say something like that'&lt;/em&gt; is a fairly common response in the language SEs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Japanese, I'll refer you to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/mistake_english/archive&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;series of articles&lt;/a&gt; (by Melanie Barr) that points out typical mistakes the Japanese (supposedly) make when speaking English. Updates are posted weekly. The articles are in Japanese but you should have no trouble gleaning the English sentences from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also make the mistakes the Chinese do as described in @dmm's answer. (Although I don't think the Japanese have trouble with plurals.) In addition, some people overuse the passive voice since it lets them speak/write in a more natural word order. (Japanese puts the verb last. Example: &lt;em&gt;The problem that encoding of 5.1 channel source didn't work was revised.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another peculiarity of theirs would be the use of certain English compounds that might sound nonsensical; this is known as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gairaigo_and_wasei-eigo_terms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;'wasei-eigo'&lt;/a&gt; ('English made in Japan') and an example of it -- quite ironically -- has found its way into the logo of the site in the first link: 'One point English'. Better phrased, it would be 'A quick lesson in English'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8182" LastEditorUserId="8182" LastEditDate="2014-03-11T10:54:13.587" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T10:54:13.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10399" CreationDate="2014-03-11T00:43:12.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The case of your headings doesn't matter as long as you are consistent in the way you head them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you already supposed, you might want to put formal blog posts in title case and casual posts in sentence case. Yet, because a blog is sort of a book-in-serial, I would make a decision for all posts and stand by it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned above, it's also good practice to write your own manual of style. It will help you maintain consistency in all writing. For instance U.S. or US? Internet or internet? There really is no right or wrong (although the AP might disagree) as long as you are consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8183" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T00:43:12.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10489" CreationDate="2014-03-11T01:21:50.970" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a book called &quot;Learner English&quot; that discusses common issues of transference between various languages and English.  It's an excellent read in addition to possibly being useful for your assignment.  You might also consider taking a linguistics class, because it's difficult to manipulate the mistakes that an ELL might make if you don't actually understand the structure of English grammar, syntax, and vocabulary first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, Asia is a huge continent.  India alone has around 400 languages… languages, not dialects.  Asia is incredibly diverse linguistically.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8184" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T01:21:50.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10489" CreationDate="2014-03-11T08:10:21.813" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two things that advanced non-native speakers do: they have to paraphrase vocabulary that they lack (e.g. &quot;electrical bus&quot; for trolley bus), and they make typical grammar errors, which will depend on their native language (e.g. a lack of articles if the native language does not have them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The internet is full of non-natives (like myself) writing English. What I would do is read around on Stack Exchange or another forum with a high percentage of non-English users until I found one person whose &quot;foreign English&quot; I liked and then look at all this person's posts and emulate his usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best places would be sites where people have to express complicated thoughts, like &lt;a href=&quot;https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/&lt;/a&gt;. Look at the edit history of the questions, because often other users with a better grasp of English edit the questions. Here's an example: &lt;a href=&quot;https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/posts/5934/revisions&quot;&gt;https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/posts/5934/revisions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not attempt to &lt;em&gt;construct&lt;/em&gt; ESL through the &quot;grammar rules&quot; of that &quot;dialect&quot;, as has been suggested by some other answers, because the result will be faux ESL, similar to the embarassing German and French you can hear in Hollywood movies. Just like you learn a foreign language best from its native speakers, you learn ESL best from its native speakers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:56:15.437" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T08:16:15.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3489" CreationDate="2014-03-11T12:43:57.077" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your example confuses the issue just a bit. There is a difference between print documents that are available online, and online articles. In the former case you don't need to give a link at all, and when you do, you are doing it simply to make the document more accessible. In this case you can use any link shortener that you like. The url is irrelevant to the publication and is just a host.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the latter case you need to give the exact url. This applies to blogs, online newspaper articles, online only journals, and so on. It makes a difference insofar as you obscure the &quot;publisher&quot; by removing the original url. Yes, your reader can still get there by clicking the link, but this is not usually the point of foot-/end-notes. I, as you reader, don't want to click through every single note; but if I see a citation from a website that I know I don't trust, I can now check out that information more thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T12:43:57.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10501" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-13T01:37:28.217" Score="8" ViewCount="2525" Body="&lt;p&gt;Programmers can write comments in code that can be automatically turned into API documentation (like Javadoc).  All I have to do is add some comments explaining what a class or method does and what arguments it takes, and software turns those comments and the signatures from the code into reference documentation.  For example, I can write something like this in my code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;/* Finds the value for the given ID.&#xA; * @param id  the item to look up&#xA; * @return    the value&#xA; */&#xA; public String findValue(int id) {...}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds great, but my readers tell me that my documentation isn't very helpful.  I can't write a book in code comments but I want my documentation to be useful, so what should I be doing to make better API reference docs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm asking this on behalf of somebody else.  Having already answered that person, I wanted to also answer it here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T20:24:54.133" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T20:24:54.133" Title="How can I write better code-based reference documentation for programming interfaces?" Tags="|technical-writing|software-documentation|api-documentation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10501" CreationDate="2014-03-13T01:37:28.217" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/documentation/index-137868.html#styleguide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;style guidelines from Oracle for Javadoc&lt;/a&gt;.  While those guidelines are written for the Javadoc tool (and the Java language) in particular, the principles there apply to the corresponding tools for other languages.  (I've seen this kind of documentation for C++, C#, and JavaScript APIs.)  This answer augments that style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to critique your example as a way of illustrating some principles.  Let's start with the description you wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finds the value for the given ID.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a method named &lt;code&gt;findValue&lt;/code&gt;, this doesn't tell us very much.  Especially when we can see from the signature that it takes an argument named &lt;code&gt;id&lt;/code&gt; (which your documentation says is &amp;quot;the item to look up&amp;quot;).  We could have figured all that out from the signature itself; this documentation doesn't add anything.  &lt;em&gt;Don't expend effort writing documentation that's already obvious.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what should you write for the description?  Start by clarifying what &amp;quot;find&amp;quot; means.  Is this a lightweight operation that returns a value from an in-memory map?  Is it making a database call?  Is it calling a service on a slow connection?  Don't reveal implementation if it's not part of the contract, but &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; give readers some hints about what to expect.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fetches the value for the object of the given ID, either from a local cache (if previously fetched) or from a remote data store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you've added information not obvious from the signature.  You've told the reader that a first fetch may be slow but subsequent ones may be faster -- but you've made no specific promises, and you've implied that it still might be slower than a simple in-memory lookup.  (Maybe that's why you named this &lt;code&gt;findValue&lt;/code&gt; instead of &lt;code&gt;getValue&lt;/code&gt;.)  You've told the caller &amp;quot;hey, maybe you don't want to make this call inside a tight loop that has to be really fast&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you're not done.  You should be asking yourself some questions about this interface.  What happens if the ID isn't recognized?  What happens if there's no object mapped to that ID?  What happens if you can't complete the operation for some reason (like the network is down)?  Your &lt;em&gt;code&lt;/em&gt; probably accounts for these cases, so &lt;em&gt;tell the reader what to expect&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare your documentation to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;/* Fetches the value for the object of the given ID, either from a local&#xA; * cache (if previously fetched) or from a remote data store. &#xA; *&#xA; * @param id  the item to look up (a positive integer returned from&#xA; *            createEntry)&#xA; * @return    the value of id if set, or null if there is no value, or&#xA; *            INVALID_ID if id is not recognized&#xA; * @throws AccessException  if the data could not be accessed; this is an&#xA; *            internal error that may require administrator attention&#xA; */&#xA; public String findValue(int id) throws AccessException {...}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you may have noticed that I modified your code to add the exception.  That's because there wasn't a good answer for the question about what to do if you can't contact the database -- we hadn't thought of that problem and hadn't accounted for it. Ideally you're writing your documentation &lt;em&gt;while you write the code&lt;/em&gt;, so you can catch issues like this and make the necessary changes before you release your code.  If that wasn't the case here, then you'd instead need to write some more documentation to explain what happens in that case.  (And obviously another writer shouldn't come along later and modify your code like this; I'm assuming in this answer that you have control over this.)  &lt;em&gt;The process of documenting an interface can reveal problems in that interface, so start early.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I added two things to your parameter description for &lt;code&gt;id&lt;/code&gt;.  First, that it's a positive integer; it turns out that in your code (which I hypothetically read while writing this answer), IDs can't be negative.  The signature doesn't convey this (it just says it's an integer), so document it.  Second, I said where IDs come from.  (In the actual documentation this would be a link to the &lt;code&gt;createEntry&lt;/code&gt; method documentation.)  This isn't necessary but might be helpful, particularly if invalid IDs are a problem for your users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I added the information about invalid IDs and null values to the documentation for the return value.  You could instead add it to the description of what the method does; there are reasonable arguments to be made for both ways.  But explain it somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the documentation of the (new) exception says both what it means (without revealing implementation details) and what might need to be done about it.  In this case the caller can't do anything to fix the error, but he might want to notify his user or log the problem.  We leave that decision up to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You were concerned about having to write a book to improve your API documentation, but all you really needed were another couple well-thought-out phrases.  You don't &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; a book; good API documentation tells the reader all and only what he needs to know.  This can be done concisely, and your readers will thank you for not making them read through a bunch of extra text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some key points to writing good API reference documentation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document the contract, not the implementation.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain fuzzy verbs.  What does &amp;quot;find&amp;quot; mean, versus &amp;quot;get&amp;quot;?  Set users' expectations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document restrictions on arguments or return values that aren't fully conveyed by the signature (like that an integer has to be positive, or in the range 1-100, etc).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cover failure and not just success.  Can arguments be invalid?  Can your code behave in abnormal ways even if the inputs are valid?  How do you signal errors or other problems?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be thorough but not verbose.  Don't repeat information that's clear from the signature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; To do this you need to determine what the contract actually &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; -- what promises are you making to your users?  This is a large software-design topic beyond the scope of this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T15:22:42.860" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10489" CreationDate="2014-03-13T06:10:29.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting problem you've got there.  I'm a &quot;native English&quot; speaker - Californian - living in Thailand for quite a few years now, with frequent trips into Laos and Cambodia and Yunnan. There are only a handful of native English speakers in my little town, all British, plus the occasional American tourist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For years now I've talked almost exclusively to local people who have taken a few years of English instruction in the public schools, generally from teachers whose English is quite weak (or utterly lacking).  You made the following guesses &quot;gleaned from research&quot; --&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Few contractions.&quot;  In my experience, NO contractions. Even as simple a contraction as &quot;won't&quot; would seldom be used by the SE Asians I know. The reason probably is that Asians generally perceive English as a string of words, the order of which is often a puzzle to be worked out.  When they speak English they often get word-order wrong. Putting in a complex double-word into the mix, like &quot;won't,&quot; just soars past them.  (And being gentle Buddhists, they will never humiliate you by suggesting that you're failing to communicate, so they're likely to just smile and nod.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Little slang.&quot; Younger Asians love to use English slang, even if they don't speak the language at all, but they always seem to get it wrong -- wrong context, wrong word order, missing words, wildly mispronounced words.  If you try to put that in your characters' mouths it will sound like you're making fun of them, which probably isn't your intent.  If I were you I'd stay clear of slang.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Tag questions&quot; -- sorry, don't understand this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Incorrect tenses, irregular verbs.&quot;  Simple past is as far as Asians I talk with can get, and they use it as seldom as possible. On the other hand, if I use any kind of a past tense -- or god help us, progressive tenses and so on -- it's hardly ever understood.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Puns/idioms.&quot;  Absolutely not understood.  The best speaker that I know owns a restaurant here, and she has a Masters in English from Chulalongkorn University.  Puns and most any idioms either puzzle or annoy her, and being educated, she's quite willing to show her annoyance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Simple short sentences.&quot;  Better still, think in terms of simple phrases, not tied together with connecting words. Keep your vocabulary down to a hundred very basic words -- the fewer the better -- all spoken very clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Professional sounding English&quot; rather than colloquial.  No, please don't make it professional sounding, just simple!  And always be on the outlook for something not having been understood.  Repeat it as many times as it takes, changing word order and simplifying, until it seems to be comprehended.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can build on all this, but (IMHO) it should be your baseline.  If your ESL character is somewhat better educated, then let her not misunderstand so much, and perhaps she can even speak in connected phrases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7892" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T06:10:29.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10504" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-13T16:11:43.847" Score="8" ViewCount="6928" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in translating an English book into my native language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I get permission to translate the book? Would that also include permission to republish the book in the native language or is it another process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8206" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T16:28:08.520" LastActivityDate="2022-01-05T03:38:13.223" Title="How can I get permission to translate and republish a book?" Tags="|publishing|legal|copyright|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10504" CreationDate="2014-03-13T18:36:58.453" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book's copyright page will identify who owns the copyright to the material. This will typically be the author, or the publisher, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contact the copyright owner and negotiate to obtain the rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need more than that,&#xA;see  &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1413324266&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Copyright Handbook&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;which has a chapter on how to obtain copyright permissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-01-05T03:38:13.223" LastActivityDate="2022-01-05T03:38:13.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10507" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10546" CreationDate="2014-03-14T23:58:45.537" Score="3" ViewCount="5140" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a character unleash a monster hiccup in a scene. I'd like advice regarding whether or not it should be in quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the scene, in summary&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hiccup!&quot; Jane tried not to look embarrassed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Characters carry on]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hiccup!&quot; This time, she was embarrassed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Conversation turns to focus on the hiccups]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-15T15:26:36.010" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T21:43:39.120" Title="Quotes or no, for Hiccup" Tags="|style|dialogue|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7630" CreationDate="2014-03-15T00:49:35.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot; It sounded to me like something she had taken from an ancient Chinese tale, or a bad marijuana trip. Surely, not something that belonged to this world. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion as a somewhat would be writer and reader,&#xA;    I don't like the line 'bad marijuana trip' in this context. You talk about something taken from an ancient chinese tale, then use the line 'bad marijuana trip', then use the line something that didn't belong in this world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If its your intent to portray something that didn't belong in this world I would say rather that line is doing the opposite effectively grounding us in this world. I think its anticlimactic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I liked the rest :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8149" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T00:49:35.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10509" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-15T01:04:41.240" Score="1" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hear a lot of things about how one should give the name of their character early in the writing setting etc. My question is is it ok not to name your character, not to be specific about your setting till a little later say toward the end of the first chapter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example if it were a movie, the screen would be black you would see nothing, slow thoughts would gradually progress into a picture. Various images would appear on the screen and the watcher would not know what they ment till later or what was even going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8149" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T06:43:36.573" Title="When opening a book" Tags="|fantasy|openings|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10507" CreationDate="2014-03-15T01:12:49.347" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you really feel the need to have whatever noise she makes expressed as dialogue, I would write it as &quot;Hic!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I personally would either write it as &lt;em&gt;Hic!&lt;/em&gt; to indicate it's more of a sound than speech, or just relate it narratively:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jane hiccuped loudly, startling even herself. She tried not to look embarrassed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T01:12:49.347" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10509" CreationDate="2014-03-15T04:06:38.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming you're referring only to the main protagonist or narrator. &#xA;I think it depends on whether or not you are writing in first person. If you are, it's going to be a lot easier to do without having to say 'the boy in the ragged shirt' or 'the youth' every two sentences or so. If used correctly, it could add an element of mystery to the entire novel. However, you must make sure that the reader will not get too flustered trying to keep track of what's happening (the death knell of any book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you could do that in third person, I think it might help if you kept the cast of characters small, or, made them very different from the main character (a boy in a world of men). It would actually be a nice literary touch on your part, and it might even help build suspense. &#xA;(see the short story 'The First Miracle' by Jeffery Archer. I know, it's not a novel, but it's still a nice read).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another story that keeps the identity of one of the pivotal characters a mystery, and indeed, only alludes to his true identity throughout the entire novel, would be 'Master and Margarita' by Mikhail Bulgakov. It's funny and witty, and definitely worth your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no hard and fast rule, really; it all comes down to your skill in the end. Write the story, set it aside for a week or so till you've forgotten about it, and then re-read it, pretending it's someone else's work. See then, if you get that magical desire of wanting to turn the page to find out what happened next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8214" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T04:06:38.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10513" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10514" CreationDate="2014-03-15T05:52:52.907" Score="1" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;The publication is in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gobierno de Perú. Ministerio de Agricultura. 2012. Plan estratégico sectorial multiannual 2012-2016. Lima.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or should that be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Government of Peru. Ministry of Agriculture. 2012. Plan estratégico sectorial multiannual 2012-2016. Lima.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8216" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T21:24:58.137" LastActivityDate="2024-02-20T20:47:03.983" Title="Publisher of foreign-language citation - do I translate &quot;Gobierno de&quot; to &quot;Government of&quot;?" Tags="|citations|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10513" CreationDate="2014-03-15T09:10:29.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The correct answer will depend on your style guide. Usually (e.g. in APA) you don't tranlsate author names, publishers, etc. &lt;strong&gt;You give everything as it was in the original publication, with no changes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only part you do translate (into the language of your paper) is the title of the work you cite, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ministerio de Agricultura. (2012). &lt;em&gt;Plan estratégico sectorial multiannual 2012-2016&lt;/em&gt; [Multiannual sectoral strategic plan 2012-2016]. Lima: Ministerio de Agricultura. Available online at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.minag.gob.pe/portal/download/pdf/marcolegal/normaslegales/resolucionesministeriales/2012/mayo/pesem2012-2016.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.minag.gob.pe/portal/download/pdf/marcolegal/normaslegales/resolucionesministeriales/2012/mayo/pesem2012-2016.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just guessing the meaning of the title here, you'll have to correctly translate that yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not put &quot;Gobierno de Perú&quot; as part of the author name. The government did not author that document. If Peter Swanwick of the University of Nebraska writes a paper, the author is not &quot;University of Nebraska, Peter Swanwick&quot;. Your publication was authored by the ministry of agriculture, not the whole of the government, so the government must not appear as part of the author name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-03-15T09:22:39.753" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T09:22:39.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10509" CreationDate="2014-03-15T09:38:32.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are hugely different types of books. There is fiction written with no regard of possible readers, merely to experiment with language and style and literary conventions, to express the inner truth of the author, to analyse society, to create art, etc. And there is fiction written to sell as many books as possible and to make a lot of money with this job. Only the latter kind of book needs to care about how you &quot;should&quot; this or that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to sell your book to genre readers, follow genre conventions. In a thriller this could mean to withhold information like the identity of the murderer whom we observe at his deed in the first chapter until the end of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to sell to the widest possible audience, keep it simple and straightforward. In a romance novel this could mean to identify the protagonist in the first sentence or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What readers expect or feel exited about or comfortable with will also depend on what the plot of your novel is. You can tell the same story in many different ways. Think of Faulkner's &lt;em&gt;The Sound and the Fury&lt;/em&gt;. He could have begun the book with: &quot;Benjamin Compson was castrated after he assaulted a girl.&quot; You know he didn't, and that he didn't is part of what makes this book the eminent work of art it is. On the other hand not many people buy and read that book, if you ask around your non-writer friends. Obviously most people prefer a lighter fare for their bedtime reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you already know the answer. You can do what you like. There is no right or wrong in writing, as long as what you do follows from your plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T09:38:32.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10516" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10517" CreationDate="2014-03-15T11:24:57.860" Score="4" ViewCount="811" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a couple of folders with artwork, maps etc. I would like to include this folders to my scrivener project but I don't know how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The furthest I've got is to drag files from folder to Scrivener window. That way I can open my files, but they are all put in folder with all the other files and get renamed to a number (in scrivener project folder /files/docs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want is to have an &quot;external&quot; folder inside my project. I want to have a folder which would be outside of the project directory but at the same time be able to view its contents and open files from scrivener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also any other solution that doesn't require to open the project from scrivener to change/add/remove/etc files is completely acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that all of this &quot;externel&quot; files would be images or sound files. I often work on and organize only the images and don't want to have to open scrivener every single time I want to add an image.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4293" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T21:01:46.320" Title="External folders in scrivener?" Tags="|organization|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10516" CreationDate="2014-03-15T11:45:07.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can add external references to a Scrivener Project. Gwen Hernandes &lt;a href=&quot;http://gwenhernandez.com/2013/10/23/references-in-scrivener/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;describes the procedure in her blog&lt;/a&gt; (images below taken from the linked site):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Click the References button in the inspector, then click the header of the References pane to toggle between Project References and Document References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TXCCL.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Click the + to &quot;Look Up &amp;amp; Add External Reference ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2d7Na.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The files added to that folder are not added to Scrivener automatically. If you are adventurous, you could have &lt;code&gt;launchd&lt;/code&gt; watch that folder for changes and trigger a Shell script that edits the relevant Scrivener project files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-03-15T21:01:46.320" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T21:01:46.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10519" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10523" CreationDate="2014-03-15T22:00:40.863" Score="4" ViewCount="888" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've often had situations where I'm unsure of the correct word to be used, either when writing or proofreading. How can this sense be indicated in writing? Someone mentioned adding a question mark just before it to indicate that the writer is unsure of that particular word. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These were not simply sewage treatment workers, but an elite ?cadre of sewage treatment workers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the word in question is cadre, and we're trying to indicate that the writer is aware that's not the perfect word to use in the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a generally accepted way of indicating such a thing? I haven't seen it often enough to make me think so, but it feels better than placing the question mark after the word, which might make it read like a question instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8220" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T17:29:45.673" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T17:29:45.673" Title="Indicating a word choice you're unsure of" Tags="|word-choice|punctuation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10519" CreationDate="2014-03-15T22:11:22.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't a standard syntax for this.  I've had the same experience in my own writing, and have even seen a need for formal ambiguity in written text, such as a sci-fi &quot;translation&quot; from an alien language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The practice I use is parenthesis around the questionable content, which allows for a phrase to be inserted instead of just a single word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T22:11:22.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10519" CreationDate="2014-03-15T22:52:59.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm writing, I simply mark the word for later review. How I mark it depends on my writing tool: highlight by changing the background or foreground color, insert a note or comment, wrap in [square brackets], some other way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T22:52:59.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10519" CreationDate="2014-03-16T01:42:49.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Similar to Dale, I'd use square brackets and color the word magenta. The magenta is a crossover from my design job, where anything in magenta is placeholder text. Magenta in a writing context would immediately signal to me &quot;This item needs to be changed or replaced in some fashion.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T01:42:49.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10519" CreationDate="2014-03-16T09:27:27.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my editing markup I prefer a style that does not overlap and interfere with what might be part of the text I am editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since square brackets indicate comments or amendments in quotes in some editing styles, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rogers found in his study that &quot;some [apples] are tasty&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or destroyed text when transcribing manuscripts, I do not use them for anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A question mark in front of the word seems clear in its meaning to me in your context, but as a linguist I have been using the phonetic alphabet, and in this the question mark represents a glottal stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this and other reasons &lt;em&gt;I avoid using characters as inline editing markup&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I want to mark a word or passage in a software, &lt;strong&gt;I change the background color&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6g0O6.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not change font color, because much of what is published on websites or in print magazines actually has colored text, so this could be misunderstood or overlooked by a second editor (or even myself), but I haven't yet had anything published with a single word or phrase with a colored background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colored background seems the most unambiguous markup to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some software, like Word, allows the use of comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nOAWH.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I like about this is that you can comment on the reason of your markup, make suggestions etc., but I rarely use these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I ever need to mark a word or passage in plain text, I use the number sign:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;an elite ###cadre### of sewage treatment workers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always use three, because a single one might be part of the text, but I have yet to come upon a text with three before and after a word. Also I haven't yet written or edited a text that contained the number sign (but question marks are quite frequent), so they are easy to search (and replace) with grep, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;###.+?###&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;finds everything between three number signs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-03-16T09:53:15.933" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T09:53:15.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10524" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10526" CreationDate="2014-03-16T12:00:29.637" Score="8" ViewCount="2131" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently written a screenplay about an alien invasion. A friend immediately commented that he found similarities (some general ideas, plot devices) with &lt;strong&gt;Half-Life 2: Ep 2&lt;/strong&gt;, which I haven't even played - and from what he tells me, the similarities are striking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I think 99% of alien invasion movies follow the same pattern - aliens invade, good guys regroup, good guys strike them with some success, aliens strike back with devastating effects, the heroes somehow save the day. There aren't that many unique plot ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid of doing anything with this screenplay, e.g. sending it to competitions, because of the &quot;original work&quot; clause, and the potential of getting sued. I'm 100% sure it's my original work as I've written 100% of it and the characters are original, but there's always the potential of someone saying &lt;em&gt;&quot;wait, that's actually a screen adaptation of Half-Life 2, not your original work&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To complicate things further, I understand plagiarism must include &quot;an intention to deceive&quot;. However, there's this company that makes &lt;strong&gt;Snakes on a Train&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Transmorphers&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Alien vs Hunter&lt;/strong&gt; which &lt;em&gt;clearly&lt;/em&gt; intend to deceive and profit from the more famous movie's publicity, and even in that case &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockbuster#Legality&quot;&gt;the response seems mild&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... what are the limits of plagiarism? Realistically, how concerned should I, a completely unknown and amateur writer, be afraid of submitting a screenplay that could be considered &quot;derivative&quot; to a screenwriting competition? (I'm not asking for legal advice. I know we're not lawyers here. I'm asking for practical advice out of experience). I wouldn't want my screenplay to die unread in my drawer. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2022-08-07T12:55:52.213" Title="I'm afraid of [accidental] plagiarism" Tags="|screenwriting|plagiarism|originality|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7524" CreationDate="2014-03-16T15:40:32.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to write like a native speaker, try to read a variety of texts and learn to use phrasal verbs and idioms. Most of the time, we are exposed to formal English in news channels and always use formal language in our workplace. But a native speaker won't speak this way. They will use more informal language in daily conversations and informal writing such as diaries. Try to get one or two friends using English as their native language and start to write to them using phrasal verbs and idioms in the format of a diary or some casual online chat. That would improve your English a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8225" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-04-12T00:37:49.040" LastActivityDate="2023-04-12T00:37:49.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10524" CreationDate="2014-03-16T15:43:23.043" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing new under the sun, my friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read TV Tropes you might be forgiven for thinking that all plots are like all other plots. However it is not the plots (there are considered to be only seven or so actual plots anyway) but the characterisations, details, names etc that make your world unique to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are worried that you have by chance become exactly like something else I would finish writing as if this was the first time anyone had had this idea. Don't worry because you will spend your entire time second guessing yourself. Then in the later revision and editing sessions you could check out the plots you are fearful of having replicated and look for ways to maximise what is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all else fails you could hang a lampshade on the problem and have a witty character bitch about this being the plot to Half Life. If you time this for a point in the plot when some comic relief is needed then you can play this for laughs as well as cultural references especially if another character has never played the game and thinks they are in a some other SciFi movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chances are that by the time you have finished your work that you will have found plenty of ways in which your story is different. It is always easier to fix a finished draft than try and improve something that you've not written yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chances are that if the editor sees value in your work then they will give you feedback on how you can maximise that value and avoid being derivative. Also if a station picks up your script for production the legal team would double check this as part of their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-08-07T12:55:52.213" LastActivityDate="2022-08-07T12:55:52.213" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10524" CreationDate="2014-03-17T07:57:14.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I constantly read books and watch movies that are totally unlike anything that I have ever read or seen before. There is an unlimited wealth of stories that have never been told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is like &quot;all other&quot; alien invasion stories, then that is because you have seen or read those other stories, learned their underlying schema, and now have applied it unconsciously. I would guess that your story would bore me to tears and that – please! – no movie needs to be made of it, because I, too, have see it several times before. But then we all know that the Hollywood movie industry prefers to make the same five movies over and over again and would probably be deeply grateful for another take on the same boring old idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I wouldn't worry about questions of plagiarism but instead take your friend's comment as an indication that you are on the right track to write a blockbuster movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T07:57:14.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7524" CreationDate="2014-03-17T09:49:11.830" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only authors I know that have mastered writing in a language not their native tongue have been living in the countries of their secondary language. To achieve a native level, you have to be immersed in the language continually for a significant time. If you spend most of your time in your own native tongue – even if you live in a foreign country but speak your native tongue with your family and friends at home –, the grammar and vocabulary of that language will remain dominant and always influence your secondary language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to know a language on a near-native level, you should keep that language apart from your mother tongue in your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; use bilingual dictionaries, do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; translate text, but &lt;strong&gt;use a monolingual dictionary&lt;/strong&gt; or sources like Wikipedia, and try to understand the meaning of the words you don't know from the context of their usage. This is really the first and most important advice: use English to understand English. Because if you use Spanish to understand English, your production of English will always originate in Spanish thinking or, even if you begin to form thoughts in English, continue to take the detour over Spanish, and in that way you will continue to inject Spanish grammar, vocabulary and style into English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of how children learn a language. They do not need to have it explained in another language, yet they learn it well. Learn a secondary language like a child learns its first, without the first-language crutch, and, I would say, even without grammar books. Your grasp of English must become intuitive, you should avoild congnitively constructing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The internet is full of colloquial and secondary-language English. For example, I am not a native speaker, and I'm not writing English like a native speaker would. Yet, by reading my answer, you learn from me, if you want to or not. Other forums my be full of native speakers, but as you know from your own language, not every native speaker speaks their own laguage well or on a standard level. So &lt;strong&gt;expose yourself you the kind of English your want to learn and avoid bad English&lt;/strong&gt;. Read books (fiction and non-fiction) and newspapers (subscribe to an English newspaper and read it every day), watch English tv and movies, listen to English radio and radio plays, etc. (English here means the language, of course, not the part of the UK.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Immerse yourself as completely in English as you can. Swith everything that you possibly can into English. Use an English operating system and the English versions of software. Spend your holidays in English speaking countries. I already mentioned newspapers and media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our university hires native speakers as language teachers. They have a fixed-term contract limited to three years. After that the university hires another native speaker directly from their home country. The idea is, that if a native speaker of for example English lives in Germany for three years, his English will have begun to adapt to German and they will become unable to speak and teach English on a native level. Think about this, and implement the consequences in your strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not believe that age will hinder your learning. I know many adults who came to Germany as adults with no knowledge of German and they speak it fluently and without accent after a few years. The only difference between adults and children when it comes to learning a language is that children do nothing but learn the world through a language for the first years of their lives, and that as an adult you don't have the same level of motivation and dedication, because you already know the (relevant aspects of) the world and have other things to take care of like earning money. But if learning a secondary language becomes important enough for your survival and well-being, you will learn it easily enough despite your less flexible brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why don't you write in Spanish and hire a translator? Two large markets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T09:57:02.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10529" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-17T14:32:58.963" Score="4" ViewCount="34309" Body="&lt;p&gt;I said shshshsh! I know I could say shush, but there are times when I really have to say shshshshsh. What would be the best way of writing this. Maybe Shhhhhh?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8228" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-17T18:53:20.910" LastActivityDate="2023-04-03T18:01:25.510" Title="How should I write &quot;shush&quot; in a narrative?" Tags="|style|dialogue|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10529" CreationDate="2014-03-17T17:25:45.570" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a transliteration of a sound, so write what you hear. If it's one long sound you write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shhhhhhhh!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(however many Hs amuse you)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a short one, you write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shhh!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with three Hs. One or two look like a typo (&lt;em&gt;Sh!&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Shh!&lt;/em&gt;). Four and it becomes the long version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I actually say the word &quot;Shush!&quot; so I'd write that word, but that's not the &lt;em&gt;shhh!&lt;/em&gt; sound you're after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your speaker is actually repeating the short sound over and over (so there's absolutely no sustain on the hiss, as if you were trying to say &quot;she&quot; and stuttering), then your first example is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He began to whimper. &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Shshshshsh, baby, don't cry,&quot; she soothed him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T17:25:45.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10531" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-18T10:07:45.960" Score="2" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I sit down and put words on paper or type into my computer, that aspect of creating a text (like a novel or software manual) is called &quot;writing&quot;: I store the content of my text in letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when I plan what I want to write, develop my &quot;story&quot;, construct the plot, or research the facts, I'm not yet actually &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; my novel or news article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the superordinate term for that non-writing aspect of a writer's work?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best term I found is &quot;narrative&quot;, but that denotes what you create, not the process of creating it. I need a term not for the object that you work on, but for the work you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T17:24:24.640" Title="How do you call the non-writing parts of creating a text?" Tags="|planning|research|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10531" CreationDate="2014-03-18T10:20:30.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use lots of words for different parts of the work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;plotting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;researching&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;brainstorming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;practicing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;warming up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sketching&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;outlining&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;procrastinating ;-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of a single word that covers all of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T10:20:30.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10529" CreationDate="2014-03-18T13:52:31.017" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shush&lt;/strong&gt; is a verb. The Oxford English Dictionary definies it as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To call or reduce (someone) to silence by uttering the sounds denoted by &lt;em&gt;sh-sh&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sh&lt;/strong&gt; is also a verb. The OED defines it as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To reduce to silence or tranquillity with the sound of ‘sh!’, or attempt to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what is interesting are the examples the OED gives. The first is from P. G. Wodehouse and uses the vers &lt;em&gt;sh&lt;/em&gt; as we would expect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She uttered a ‘Sh!’ of such significance that Grayce instinctively lowered her voice. ‘Mrs. Molloy!’ ‘Sh!’ Grayce might have retorted that she had sh-ed and that if she sh-ed any further she could become inaudible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second example is from Boyd Cable and contradicts Lauren's stuttering example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ainsley ‘sh-sh-sh-ed’ him to silence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand this to mean that Ainsley is not stuttering but shushing &quot;him&quot; through a prolonged &lt;em&gt;sh&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently the OED lists this variant under &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Forms:  Also sh-sh-sh&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Google the variants return the following number of hits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;shh  - 5.210.000&#xA;shhh - 2.680.000&#xA;shhhh - 1.130.000&#xA;shhhhh - 672.000 (and Google asks if I mean &quot;shhh&quot;)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searches with variants of &quot;sh-sh&quot; (in quotation marks) turn up stuttering like &quot;Sh Sh Sh Shark Attack!&quot; or abbreviations like the career portal &quot;SH SH&quot;, but no shushing, so usage appears to contradict the OED and confirm Lauren's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Searches were performed from Germany on Google.de and will return different results for other user profiles.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a result from my research, I would use &quot;shhh&quot; (with three &quot;h&quot; and no hyphen).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And +1 to Lauren, because I agree with her :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T13:52:31.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10529" CreationDate="2014-03-18T15:27:42.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to above answers: You could add description of the shhh, to specify its length, intensity, feeling, etc. and to help set the mood.  Examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scary: She laid a shaking finger to her dry lips.  &quot;Shhh,&quot; she said, as quietly as possible, like a ghost rustling the curtains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funny: &quot;Shhhhhhh!&quot; he hissed loudly, like the brakes on an old locomotive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sexy: &quot;Shh,&quot; she purred, putting his finger to her moist lips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T15:27:42.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10531" CreationDate="2014-03-18T15:39:08.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I beg to differ with you.  For lack of a better all-inclusive word, I call all of that &quot;writing.&quot;  The actual setting-down of the words is just one part of writing.  And even once that is done, you still have to edit the words, which is more writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, we should have a proper word for the whole process.  Maybe, &quot;writering.&quot;  That way, when I'm laying on the couch composing a scene in my imagination, my wife could say to my kids, &quot;Leave Daddy alone.  He's writering.&quot;  Sounds so much better than &quot;napping.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T15:39:08.927" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10519" CreationDate="2014-03-18T17:19:41.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) If the ? is for yourself, then use two in row, which would never show up in regular text.  That way you can search for them before submitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If the ? is for the reader, then I'd say never ever do that.  It's the writer's job to find the right word or phrase! You don't put a placeholder there with &quot;punctuation&quot; to indicate that it's not right.  Yuck!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, having said that, there CAN be situations where the right word to describe something is not what the people in the story would use to describe themselves.  (For example, terrorists describing themselves as &quot;freedom fighters,&quot; or sewer workers describing themselves as an &quot;elite cadre.&quot;)  In those situations, you can either let your readers discover the irony themselves, or you can point it out.  Example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These were not simply sewage treatment workers.  No, they were an&#xA;  elite cadre -- or so they told themselves, as they slogged through human waste a foot deep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T17:19:41.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10531" CreationDate="2014-03-18T17:24:24.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd call that &lt;strong&gt;development&lt;/strong&gt;. It covers everything in Dale's excellent list and dmm's couch time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T17:24:24.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10538" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-18T18:27:26.070" Score="2" ViewCount="2115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have convinced myself that in a narative where someone is reading from a menu, the dish name should be capitalised. I feel that this is correct because the order would use the definate article &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example; &quot;I'll have the  Smoked Salmon Tagliatelle.&quot; Read from the menu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect that &quot;I'll have a smoked salmon tagliatelle,&quot; using the indefinate article would not be capitalized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, would it be acceptable to use capitals in the following example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Rugby Club parties are famously wild.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what the speaker is actually saying is that Hull University Rugby Club parties are famously wild, but the narrative doesn't require the whole name as it is understood and would be stylistically pedantic, but the speaker is referring to specific club.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8228" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T23:45:34.190" Title="Capitals for menu items in narrative" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10538" CreationDate="2014-03-18T23:45:34.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) I would only capitalize the name if the restaurant considers it the proper name of the dish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Denny's (a diner-type restaurant chain) at one point served an item called Moons Over My Hammy (hush, it was tasty), which would take capitals. So would their Grand Slam breakfast. But if you were getting two eggs, two sausage links, and home fries, or roast beef au jus, that's just descriptive. It's not a name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to decide if the restaurant serves smoked salmon over several different kinds of pasta, or pasta with different choices of chicken/meat/fish, or if there's a specific dish known as Smoked Salmon Tagliatelle and the other entr&amp;eacute;es are Duck Confit with Scallion Cr&amp;ecirc;pes, Braised Filet Mignon with Horseradish New Potatoes, Vegan Falafel Rounds on a Bed of Wild Greens with Raspberry Vinaigrette, and Scrapple with Ambrosia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Your logic is exactly correct. If the group is called the Song of Ice and Fire Don't Get Attached Club, you would say &quot;Don't Get Attached Club parties get pretty wild.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, if the university had six different clubs named after the families of Westeros, but no other clubs, you would just say &quot;the club parties get pretty wild.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T23:45:34.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10542" CreationDate="2014-03-19T11:59:44.917" Score="0" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing about algorithms in a paper and I wonder how to best express increasing the speed of an algorithm. Is it clear when I write &quot;The performance increased by doing X&quot; or can this be ambigious, as performance can also be measured in the quality of the output?&#xA;&quot;The algorithm has been sped up&quot; sounds somehow strange and informal to me but I'm not a native speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: If the algorithm is both faster and the output has a higher quality, can I write &quot;The performance has been increased both qualitatively and quantitatively&quot; or is it not clear that quantitatively relates to the speed? How to rephrase that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T12:53:44.620" Title="&quot;Performance&quot; to indicate speed ambigous?" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10541" CreationDate="2014-03-19T14:21:04.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't comment. Sorry about this, I had a question, but... I'll have to make it into an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;em&gt;sounds&lt;/em&gt; like you want to use Big O notation, which is helpful when talking about algorithmic efficiency. In which case, Big O Notation might be the best bet for you right now. I was going to comment to ask if your problem could be solved with this, but just in case the answer to that is no, here's a less technical answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to talk about a specific resource (time, manpower, etc. etc.) then you need to state what that resource is instead of saying &quot;performance&quot; (because like you said, it does get confusing). For example, say your algorithm uses less time if you give it a sorted list of items to parse through. Then you can say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The time taken for X_algorithm to run is decreased when the list is sorted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if the decreased time is significant, you could say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The time taken for X_algorithm to run is greatly decreased when the list is sorted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, by changing the algorithm slightly, the end product turns out to be better quality because of the changes made, you might say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not only does sorting the list of inputs shorten the runtime, but X_algorithm also produces more relevant results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way you're talking about both things that have increased in quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to what I wanted to ask in a comment, your last question is what made me think about using Big O notation. If you want to talk about performance in general, I'd suggest talking in terms of Big O, unless there was no large, sweeping change. (Big O is used for algorithm efficiency like I said, but it characterizes things based on growth rates.) For example if by changing your algorithm you change it's growth rate from logarithmic (O(log n)) to quadratic (O(n^2)), that would be more useful to the reader than saying that the performance changed qualitatively and quantitatively. But if the change to the algorithm doesn't significantly change the notation... then the above answer is the best bet. Also, if the paper is non-technical you wouldn't use Big O Notation, since it's a little complicated to understand for most people. So, it depends a lot on your reader too. The paper sounds like it's supposed to be technical though? But I'm just hazarding a guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know (or can't use) Big O Notation, my only real helpful comment is to stay away from the word &quot;performance&quot; because it's too general. Since performance is something that varies depending on what aspect of the algorithm you look at, you either need to define performance as &quot;time taken for the algorithm to run/algorithm speed&quot; beforehand or constantly mention that the performance has to do with speed. But if you just say &quot;the performance increased when XXYY&quot; then the reader can assume the performance is anything-- the quality of the answer, the time taken, the space used in memory-- and increased performance could take on different meanings with different contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if both the runtime and the output have become better quality, &quot;quantitative&quot; doesn't necessarily evoke the meaning you think. Even making up a word like &quot;speedwise&quot; to put into that sentence could explain what you're thinking better. (But don't make up words, though.) It could be clarified by saying something along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because the runtime has changed, the quality of the output is more/less relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When we change the time it takes for the algorithm to run, we also see a change in the quality of the output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you define performance beforehand, though, you could just say something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The performance and the end product have both increased in quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T14:21:04.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10544" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-19T20:38:04.653" Score="6" ViewCount="1208" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the standard fiction disclaimer (... any resemblance to persons living or dead...) have any legal effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am most interested in citations of reasonably authoritative legal opinions. Especially summaries written for a lay audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not interested in speculation. There's plenty of that on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T21:12:04.533" Title="Legal effect of standard fiction disclaimer" Tags="|fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10507" CreationDate="2014-03-20T00:10:17.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would not use quotations, because it implies that she shouts hiccup rather than hiccups. If you replace hiccup with bang the difference becomes more apparent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;she hiccuped = A women has just hiccuped, and this refers more to the action than the sound itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hiccup! = A sound occurs, and it specifically sounded like the word used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hiccup!&quot; = Someone shouts hiccup. Presumably Stoick, from How To Train Your Dragon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8250" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T00:10:17.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10547" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-20T05:02:08.673" Score="4" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a medium or a type of live book that's somewhat like a wiki or a blog, but with linear order, like a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean by this is, paper books and ebooks are arranged by the author so that reading from cover to cover gradually educates the reader in the a linear process that the author considers effective. I want that inherent order for the work I'm writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I also want the huge benefits of digital platforms - the ability to update the text without releasing a whole new edition, and the ability for readers to comment and ask questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to me like an obvious, powerful combination, but I'm having trouble actually finding books of this type, or a platform I can use. I've had no luck searching and suspect I'm just missing that key phrase that anyone using such a thing knows instantly, like &quot;authoring framework&quot; or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this kind of platform exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I've found something just about spot on &lt;a href=&quot;http://hgbook.red-bean.com/read/how-did-we-get-here.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; based on DocBook markup but the platform has been written by the author. See how it reads more like a book than a wiki and readers can leave comments on each paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He makes the platform freely available which is great, but it would still be good to know if there's a name for this sort of live, commentable ebook format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;update 2&lt;/strong&gt;: Amazon ebooks allow commenting and highlighting, which anyone with (the ebook and) a kindle or kindle app can turn on public comments and highlights (ln the settings) to view them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8254" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T10:00:38.047" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T20:47:13.750" Title="Does a writing medium exist which preserves reading order but also allows commenting and editing?" Tags="|ebook|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10509" CreationDate="2014-03-20T06:43:36.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless there's a fantastic reason for not being specific (i.e. doing so for some specific effect), keeping the reader up-to-date is usually the best idea. Readers like clarity, they don't like to be confused, and they get angry if they feel they've been misled (mystery novels are an exception -- readers expect to be misled). Always be honest with the reader, that's my motto. Obfuscation can work, but I wouldn't wait until &lt;em&gt;the end of the chapter&lt;/em&gt; to identify the character we're reading about and where he/she is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8255" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T06:43:36.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10549" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10559" CreationDate="2014-03-20T08:27:23.997" Score="3" ViewCount="747" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suck at writing.  There, I admitted it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More often than not, I find my self staring at a blank moleskine page, or the blinking cursor.  You see, the problem lies not in writing itself, but writing on a certain topic, or any topic for that matter.  For example, &quot;Why dogs make great pets&quot;.  You could say, &quot;Dogs make great pets because they're loyal, obedient, and aid mental illnesses&quot;.  It seems easy enough, right? Well, with my creative writing skills, not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point you're probably saying, &quot;You just came up with a topic to write about, so what exactly is the problem?&quot;.  Let me explain further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that writing is like any other skill. Meaning it can be learned, manipulated, and mastered.  However, more often than not, I find myself extremely frustrated when I'm trying to write a blog post.  I've read that most people can write a post in less that 20 minute, whereas I, take up to two hours to get no more than 250 words.  That's bad, very bad and not productive. To be honest, it took me 57 minutes to write this short question.  Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, I've tried everything, from free writing to outlining.  I just want to be able to write about anything, whether be it Justin Beiber (Yes, I am a belieber), or my new socks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In brief, how can I effectively develop topics out of thin air without research, or spending hours before actually writing?  Moreover, how can improve my creative side without spending hours brainstorming?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8256" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:53:16.163" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:53:16.163" Title="How to invoke my creative side without investing too much time?" Tags="|creative-writing|writers-block|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10550" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-20T09:15:51.793" Score="1" ViewCount="1495" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my English class I was assigned to write a short essay, the instructions for which are as follows:&#xA;&quot;In a well-developed, well-organized essay, argue whether or not you think the statue in Overland Park Arboretum should be removed.  Include a context for your argument by defining obscenity and decency, art and pornography...Also consider the effects of the indictment of the arboretum by the women who demands its removal.&quot;&#xA;The controversy to which the article refers is one about a woman who saw a statue of a half-naked, fragmented woman photographing herself.  She thought the statue was obscene and not only wanted it removed, but wanted to bring charges against the arboretum for hosting it.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Here are the guidelines:&#xA;&quot;All successful essays will:&#xA;- summarize the controversy&#xA;-claim a clear, arguable thesis statement&#xA;prove the thesis in well-developed and organized body paragraphs with topic sentences, evidence, and analysis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know if you think the following essay accomplishes these goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because the product of a creative mind raises uncomfortable questions does not mean that it should be hidden from public view.   One person’s  -- or small group of people’s – sensitivity to a particular issue should not impose censure on the expression of the ideas of a person addressing the issue, nor should the public be deprived of the insight that exposure to this idea may provide.  If a person is offended by a work of art, this is their problem, and theirs alone.  There is no reason everyone else should suffer because of another’s limited comprehension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A resident of Johnson County, Kansas and mother of two, Joanne Hughes, took drastic measure upon encountering what she considered a lewd and misplaced bronze sculpture in an arboretum in her community (1).  This statue depicted a headless women, scantily clad, her limbs partially severed, photographing herself (4).  Hughes thought this image too obscene for her young daughters’ eyes, and was worried that it could invoke what she would consider immoral or corrupt thoughts in the mind of any child who sees it.  Her simplistic misinterpretation of the statue, that it “seemed to glorify sexting” (2), was the spark that ignited her crusade against what she believes to be vulgar, provocative, and offensive art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An interesting comment is made by Johnson County District Attorney Stephen Howe, in which he states that “proving something is “obscene” from a legal standpoint is very difficult.”  There is a reason for this.  The distinction between what is obscene and what is not is, at best, vague.  It is a purely subjective judgment.   What one person finds offensive another may find enlightening.  Should the latter person be deprived of enlightenment because another person, too weak-minded and clouded by their own hazy sense of morality to understand the message being conveyed, deems it inappropriate for public consumption? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No background on Hughes is given, but it is safe to assume she comes from a conservative, and perhaps religious, background.  She believes what she believes because that is what, for her entire life, she was told to believe.  The indoctrinated values she holds form the motive for her derailment of the statue in question.  I must doubt her ability to think for herself, based on her shallow and inflammatory response to a sharp and insightful work of art.  The social implications of the sculpture flew right over her head, and all she saw was obscenity.  But, being the sheepish and emotionally driven person that she is, she was not willing to stop at mere disagreement.  She demanded that the statue be removed and, further, that the arboretum be prosecuted for daring to expose its visitors to such corruptive vulgarity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is ludicrous.  She proposes that time, money, and effort be needlessly spent on removing the statue and pressing charges against the proprietors of a benign service to the community.  All of this drastic action simply because, in her state of emotional confusion, she was offended by something she failed to understand.  The whole controversy is about her, yet she claims it is about the children; that they should not be exposed to prickly concepts at such a young and impressionable age.  For the moment I will give Hughes the benefit of the doubt, and consider her argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is only a matter of time before children of any social strata encounter the unpleasant and downright nasty aspects of civilization.  The longer a child is sheltered, and fed idealized and fictitiously moral concepts of what constitute human life and society, the more of a shock it will be when these artificial ideals are shattered in the face of reality.  Why not expose children to these concepts early on?  Not only will they be long prepared when these issues arise, but they will develop critical thinking skills when their brains are still highly plastic and absorptive, and may even devise strategies for how to deal with these issues when they do arise.  These children will be far better off than those who, when confronted with problems of which they are entirely unfamiliar, run for cover at first sight of them, desperately seeking the artificial values imposed upon them by their deluded parents.  This will only carry through successive generations, creating hordes of close-minded idealists unable to think for themselves.  What good are these attributes to those who hold them, or to the society in which they reside?  None at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this argument is accepted, the censorship of personal expression is a far greater detriment to society than any idea ever could be.  Ideas are ideas; it is how these ideas are interpreted that makes them decent or obscene.  In Eric Schlosser’s essay “Empire of the Obscene”, it is noted that in the 1950’s, even the most back-handed suggestion of sexuality was denounced as obscene.  The government imposed upon the populace its own half-realized conceptions of morality, and went to great measures to hide from the public those materials which it considered unfit for public consumption.  Upon what were these moral standards based?  They were based upon the moral values of dogmatic religious organizations, whose own standards were derived from the words of a book they blindly followed.  This is evidence of the flimsy foundations upon which a culturally, democratically, and financially costly campaign against obscenity can be founded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The explosive reaction of Joanne Hughes mirrors such irresponsible and juvenile behavior.       If we are to allow the lazy interpretation of a piece of art to determine which ideas the public can and cannot embrace, then the freedom of the citizens of the society in which this censorship is occurring is seriously impeded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is but a single occurrence, seemingly insignificant, in a relatively unknown area of the United States.  But all magnanimous events start small.  Without realizing it, Hughes is promoting ideas that fly in the face of the primary tenet upon which this country is based:  freedom of expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And nothing could be more obscene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8257" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T19:08:06.767" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T19:08:06.767" Title="Does my essay follow guidelines for a &quot;well-developed, well organized argument&quot;?" Tags="|structure|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10549" CreationDate="2014-03-20T09:18:36.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found the best solution to improving creative productivity is to practice self-discipline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discipline is also a skill, so it will take time to find a routine that works for you. Find an hour or so in which you believe you're the most productive and set it aside exclusively for writing, eliminate any distractions or commitments. Every day, go to your 'work station' and start writing. If you do this repeatedly, you'll find that your creative flow will improve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By introducing a form of stability into your workflow, you're allowing your brain to prepare for a creative session. You're essentially telling yourself, &quot;this is the time to be creative.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be precious about words. If you want to write for a particular topic then make a list of points you'd like to hit or quickly list your thoughts on that subject. You don't need to start with a complete thought and at this point nothing you write needs to make sense. What matters is that killing the horrible anxiety that a blank page brings. Once you've emptied yourself of those initial thoughts, start rambling about a point that piques your interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your writing skills will improve with time and your ability to write complete pieces within a given period of time will also improve as you grow confident in your abilities. Keep reading. Keep writing. There are no shortcuts for mastering this particular skill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8197" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T09:18:36.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10550" CreationDate="2014-03-20T09:51:28.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the message you were trying to get across appeared clear enough: One person should not have the right to act as public censor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your supporting arguments sounded logical enough, but I'd put my appeal to authority (the Johnson County District Attorney) last, and put my appeal to historical precedent (from Eric Schlosser's essay) first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might assume that Hughes comes from a morally conservative background, but I don't think she's necessarily emotionally driven.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, I agree that children cannot be sheltered forever, though the parents are not necessarily deluded. They are simply adhering to the values they had received from their parents who had lived that way for generations before the proliferation of television and the mass media brought alternative philosophies, cultures, and ideals to their living rooms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I think this essay has potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8214" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T09:51:28.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10549" CreationDate="2014-03-20T09:55:55.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You identify two problems in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is &quot;how can I effectively develop topics out of thin air without research, or spending hours before actually writing?&quot; This is a &quot;what to write about&quot; question, which is not on-topic for Writers. (Plus, there's no such thing as &quot;developing topics without research.&quot; You may have done the &quot;research&quot; by reading 40 issues of &lt;em&gt;Tiger Beat,&lt;/em&gt; but that's still research. If your problem is &quot;how do I research a topic so I can organize my thoughts and write about it?&quot; then ask that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other is that you struggle to get words to paper. So the real issue here is why? Are you afraid of writing the &quot;wrong&quot; word? Are you afraid that you'll put it down and it won't look right or read well? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, if you were asked to sit down and chat with a friend about a random topic, do you have the same issues of coming up with spontaneous content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If spontaneous content (why is Justin Bieber's hair that particular shade in that photo?) is not a problem for you when speaking, then you're &quot;making the perfect the enemy of the good,&quot; and there are other questions here you could read to help you with that kind of writer's block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem is that you literally can't think of the word, any word, like &quot;literally,&quot; then that may be a wiring problem beyond the scope of Stack Exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to determine what's getting between your brain and your fingers first before we can suggest a solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T09:55:55.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10549" CreationDate="2014-03-20T10:16:51.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're just worrying too much about the act of writing itself. Just have confidence in what you're doing, and sit down and enjoy yourself. Of course, you need strong fundamentals for that (sizable vocabulary, good grammar, and a knowledge of what you are writing about). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're having trouble developing your creative skills, then I'd recommend you read 'Daily Rituals: How Artists Work' by Mason Currey. It's a good read, if nothing else, and provides valuable insights into how the greats used to unleash their creativity (one writer filled his drawer with writing apples so that he could write, and another actually made a round of the block before sitting down to write and after). The point of this book is that different people work in different ways, and most of them have one thing in common: Consistency. They wrote a lot, and formed strong associations with their triggers for creativity. That, in a sense, was their shortcut. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said you've tried everything already, but have you tried just doing nothing? Turn off your television (from Stephen King), chuck away your iPhone and iPad. You will find that your creative output will increase greatly. I'm an Engineering student, and I find that when I have too much work, I have a lot of dreams that are worth writing about (I'm desperately bored at times). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creativity isn't just about discipline: It's also about being able and willing to form new associations. Do an exercise with me: Take an apple, a pencil, or any object you can think of, then sit down and try to write as many words you can associate with it in one minute. The obvious would be red, juicy, fragrant, lunch. The not-so-obvious would be death (think of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. I know, the exact species wasn't specified in the Good Book), roast (roasted pig with an apple in its mouth), throat (Adam's apple), paper bag (the thing we usually place apples in), and destruction (an apple is capable of causing destruction to an anthill). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, the only real solution is to love writing. Love it, and be captivated by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8214" LastEditorUserId="8214" LastEditDate="2014-03-20T10:22:47.797" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T10:22:47.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10555" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-20T11:10:54.397" Score="2" ViewCount="725" Body="&lt;p&gt;The criteria that come to mind are not exclusive to horror novels, so I'm a little confused and annoyed (annoyed because I find horror novels scary, and yet just cannot define it logically when I try to distill the reasons in words). Some of the criteria that come to mind are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blood and gore (also found in war novels)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Death and destruction (war novels)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fear of the unknown (Crew of a nuclear submarine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Supernatural (Beautiful Creatures)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monsters (Twilight, Warm Bodies). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The powerlessness of the protagonists (crew of a nuclear submarine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isolation and loneliness (Count of Monte Christo)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Protagonists who die along the way&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Societal chaos and disorder (novels set in a post-apocalyptic world)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any criteria or books to suggest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8214" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2019-06-07T09:21:50.957" LastActivityDate="2019-06-07T09:21:50.957" Title="What are the Criteria that Distinguish a Thriller from Horror?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|style|genre|paranormal|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10541" CreationDate="2014-03-20T12:53:44.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are correct, &quot;performance&quot; is ambiguous. You could simply say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the algorithm is faster (than the old one)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but you probably want to indicate by how much its speed has increased:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the new algorithm is n% faster than the reference version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have more than one number (n% for problems of class X, m% for problems of class Y), you should present the results in a table. Sentences stuffed with numbers are difficult to read and can lead to misinterpretation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The performance has been increased both qualitatively and quantitatively&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could rephrase this as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The algoritm is faster and produces better-quality output. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That still leaves unsaid what the quality of the output constitutes. How do you decide if the quality is good or bad? Make this explicit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The algoritm produces output that conforms to our mathematical model with an error of less than .00001%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T12:53:44.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7524" CreationDate="2014-03-20T14:58:31.367" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have three suggestions for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read what you write out loud. I'm a native speaker and sometimes just saying what I've written aloud helps me decide if it &quot;sounds right.&quot; Because &quot;sounds like&quot; a native speaker is easier to hear when you say it aloud and actually hear the sounds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read newspaper articles out loud. It will help you get used to reading out loud and you'll remember some phrases from it. Same goes for music. Sing along with the lyrics and you'll benefit as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use Google to search, not just Google books. I'm a native speaker and I do the same thing when I decide on word choice. I search the two phrasings I'm debating and then go for the one with more results if there is a huge difference. This is also how I decide if a phrase is American or British - by the URL.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is based on my experience as a native speaker, editor, English teacher, and writer. Here is some more advice on how and why to read out loud: &lt;a href=&quot;http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/reading-aloud/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/reading-aloud/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and here is some more on why saying things help you remember them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201005/say-it-loud-i-m-creating-distinctive-memory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201005/say-it-loud-i-m-creating-distinctive-memory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8233" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T14:58:31.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10549" CreationDate="2014-03-20T20:00:30.767" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem I see with writing (and drawing) is that people believe that they should be able to do it without any training. We all learn to write in school, we all can compose a coherent narrative, for example in a letter to our grandparents or a &amp;quot;what I did during the summer holidays&amp;quot; essay for school, and we all have been drawing since we were able to hold a pencil. So we all &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; write and draw, yet when we sit down and want to write a novel or draw a likeness of our girl friends, we cannot. So we assume that we lack &amp;quot;talent&amp;quot; or some secret knowledge that we try to find in books on writing or drawing, creative writing courses, drawing DVDs, or ask for on the internet. And whatever people tell us, it does not give us this flash of divine inspiration. We feel like before, so we don't think that advice was the missing secret. So we buy more and more books on writing (or drawing), visit course after course, and in the end we give up and never draw or write again, because we believe we have finally understood that we don't have it in us to write or draw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in reality &lt;strong&gt;everyone can learn to write or draw&lt;/strong&gt;. Maybe not everyone can draw like [insert the name of the artist you admire most] or write like [your favourite author], but we all can write and draw like the many people who make a living with drawing and writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If only we would heed the one advice that is being repeated by professionals of all fields over and over again since the beginning of time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Practice!&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what is &amp;quot;practice&amp;quot;? Is it based on some secret knowledge of obscure Himalayan monks? Do you need this rare brush or expensive software that no-one who knows about it will tell you? No!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Practice is sitting on your chair and doing what you want to learn!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no mystery about it. Not secret to divulge. You know it all already. If you want to run a marathon, will you be able after having spent the last fifteen years on your sofa? No! Why do people understand that they have to train for sports, for speaking a foreign language, for driving a car or skateboard, for cooking, for a job, for anything, but expect to be able to write or draw immediately or not at all?!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not a legend but a simple fact that the masters of any craft, from music to science to art, have put in thousands of hours of training before they achieved their level of mastery, so all you need to do to learn to be creative and have great ideas or to write well is to &lt;strong&gt;put in a few thousand hours into training&lt;/strong&gt;. Write, write, and write. That is all the secret there is to writing well. Develop ideas, and keep developing them, for hours, weeks and months, and with time your ideas will get better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is extremely simple and straightforward. You need nothing, except &lt;strong&gt;to stop expecting mastery to happen within the first fifteen minutes and give yourself time&lt;/strong&gt;. The important ingredients are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;diligence and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;patience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question has been asked a billion times on the net, and my recommendation is the same it always is to similar questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Make writing a habit.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;identify the times that you have time to write (e.g. half an hour every evening before you go to bed, on the train to work, in your lunch hour, sunday before church, ...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make that your writing time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;perceive writing similarly to a job: do it, no matter what&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to begin, write whatever comes to mind&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quality does not matter, the only important thing is that you write&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;again, perceive it like a job: you are doing time, it does not matter how much you write or what the quality of your writing is, write like you work on a job you hate while your boss is watching you: just do it, pretend, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it takes twenty to thirty days to build a habit, so keep at it one month before you evaluate your practice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;after some time (depends on how regularly you write, for how long, and your basic creativity) you will begin to have ideas and a story (or whatever you aim for) will develop&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Craig Sefton gives some additional (and better phrased) tips &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/2285/5645&quot;&gt;in his answer&lt;/a&gt; to another question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's this fantastic book by psychologist Paul J. Silvia, &lt;em&gt;How to Write a Lot&lt;/em&gt;. It is about academic writing, but that does not matter. In this book, Silvia studies how successful writers (like Stephen King) work and distills their practice into his tips (which I briefly outlined above). There are many writers that Silvia does not mention in his book, but whenever I read how they work, they all do the same: they set a fixed daily time that they sit down to write, not matter what. They &lt;strong&gt;never wait for creativity to happen&lt;/strong&gt;, they just fill the blank page with words. Just write what you think, or what you see out the window, or what you just did, or what you will do after you are done, or whatever, and after about fifteen minutes of this &amp;quot;warming up&amp;quot;, ideas start to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-04-12T04:39:20.210" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7524" CreationDate="2014-03-21T00:25:01.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no easy answer to this question, but tips, certainly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Live in an English speaking country&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the best tip. You'll be immersed in the language: people speaking it everywhere you go, newspapers, magazines, television, billboards, signs, and so on. I spent three years living in Germany and picked up more of the language &quot;casually&quot; than I ever did when I studied it at university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Speak English as often as you can&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're living in an English speaking country, then this should be no problem. The more you use a foreign language, the faster that language becomes your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Internet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Internet is a vast repository of the English language: newspapers, books, articles. From the complete works of Shakespeare and Chaucer, to today's news about what's happening in your city or town.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the Internet for pleasure, too. I imagine you have a few hobbies outside of writing -- let's say, for example, you're into art history. There are hundreds of websites in English devoted to the history of art: museums, art galleries, art appreciation sites, personal blogs. Enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to reading, listen. Many news websites have video feeds (e.g. CNN, BBC) and Youtube is swamped with movies and TV programs, and countless homemade videos of &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;, from explaining how to defrost your car to packing a suitcase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which English?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a speaker of Spanish, you'll appreciate that the Spanish spoken in Madrid is different to that spoken in, say, Buenos Aires. Likewise, the English spoken in the United States is different to that spoken in England, or Australia, or India. So, if you're writing your novels in, say, London, it's probably not a great idea to bone up on the sentences of Australian English. Mate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Books&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're doing this already, and continue to do so: Read, read, read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copying sentences out is actually a great idea. Getting &lt;em&gt;forensic&lt;/em&gt; with a language, although time consuming, will not be time wasted. The closer you study something, the more you will learn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What if you're not living in an English speaking country?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It'll be harder, for sure. Use the Internet and read books. And seek out native English speakers in your city -- if you're really lucky, find a bunch of them who hang out together (maybe they get together to play sports, put on plays, or have a book group).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8255" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T00:25:01.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10555" CreationDate="2014-03-21T13:12:18.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;(This is better now that it's been edited...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may sound odd, but I think the main criterion is how the story treats &lt;em&gt;death.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If death is one possible threat among many (being captured, being tortured, the macguffin falling to the enemy, blackmail, heartbreak, public exposure, humiliation, political scandal, strategic losses, military losses, code being broken, plague being released), I'd call it a thriller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If death or near-fatal injury is the main threat (nurse threatening to chop off feet, having to cut off your hand to get out of a bear trap, running through the woods to get away from chainsaw-wielding maniac, serial killer, rabid dog trying to break into car, psychotic supernatural clown drowning you in sewer), I'd call it horror. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T13:12:18.640" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6599" CreationDate="2014-03-21T14:14:23.317" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me start by saying that this question has already been answered and the answer is no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been writing and publishing haiku for about a decade now, so I wanted to weigh in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Western haiku writers, starting more or less in the early 1900s used the 5-7-5 syllable form in imitation of the Japanese. But because of the way the Japanese language works (it tends to use very standard-length sounds as opposed to English, for example, where a single syllable can be various lengths) those writing in the haiku form started to break away from strict adherence to the 5-7-5 rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at any haiku publication today (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theheronsnest.com/December2021/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Heron's Nest&lt;/a&gt;, for example), you'll see haiku in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some haiku consist of only a single word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing that makes a haiku a haiku is the spirit of the poem. But that's a whole other topic. And books have been written by far better writers than myself on the topic so I won't try to recapitulate that here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, if you want to write in 5-7-5 you can, of course. Some still do. But the syllables contained in the poem are not as important as the spirit of the poem. You can read a history of people trying to define it on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hsa-haiku.org/hsa-definitions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Haiku Society of America&lt;/a&gt; site, but the best way, IMHO, is to read good haiku and learn from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean by the spirit of the poem (I know, it's pretty vague, right?) is the feeling you get when you read a good haiku. A haiku is traditionally made up of two parts. You have two images, not necessarily related, and then the spark that jumps between them when you read the poem. That's what I'm trying to get at as the spirit of haiku.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buson wrote a famous haiku that goes something like &amp;quot;sudden chill/ in the bedroom/ stepping on my dead wife's comb&amp;quot;. This can perhaps give you an idea of the sort of mild jolt between the two halves. (Like I said, books have been written on these subjects, so please forgive the necessarily sketchy nature of my reply.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example is a haiku by Nick Virgilio: &amp;quot;lily:/ out of the water.../ out of itself&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some commentators on haiku have said that they are unfinished poems, that the reader finishes the poem in his or her mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8259" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-02-27T20:25:51.333" LastActivityDate="2022-02-27T20:25:51.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10564" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-21T18:54:26.503" Score="0" ViewCount="606" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a short story here &lt;a href=&quot;http://zecountess.deviantart.com/art/Mirrors-440990952&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://zecountess.deviantart.com/art/Mirrors-440990952&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;whose ending explains everything that is narrated before.&#xA;The feedback I got from my readers is varied, and none of them are anywhere close to what I had in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To paraphrase Umberto Eco, there is the book that the writer writes and the book that the reader reads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of now, I call it Mirrors.&#xA;Would it be fair to change it to 'Psychomanteum' to nudge readers a little?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4807" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T21:09:29.557" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T21:09:29.557" Title="Changing a story's title to hint at story's meaning" Tags="|short-story|titles|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10564" CreationDate="2014-03-21T19:35:04.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should heed Eco and let your story go. Stories are like children: they don't live their lives for you. If you force them to make you happy, you destroy their spirit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this were my story, I would chose &quot;I could hear someone sobbing softly&quot; as its title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title should &lt;em&gt;attract&lt;/em&gt; the reader. It is like the cover of a magazine, a movie poster, or a newspaper headline. It should not &lt;em&gt;explain&lt;/em&gt;, but &lt;em&gt;grab attention&lt;/em&gt;. The explaining must be done within the tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the readers of your genre find &quot;mirrors&quot; or a &quot;psychomanteum&quot; gripping, then those are good titles. I personally find &quot;mirrors&quot; boring, because they are such a worn-out subject, and &quot;psychowhatsthat&quot; off-putting, because I must make an effort (of looking that word up) before I can even begin to read, and it makes me expect something either learned and difficult and unentertaining or something badly written and filled with clever name-dropping to impress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at popular books or stories and see what kind of titles they have. Usually they are condensed versions of first sentences and, like them, chosen to hook the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T08:39:47.017" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T08:39:47.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10549" CreationDate="2014-03-21T21:34:16.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;without investing too much time&quot; part could be a little problematic, depending on what you mean by that. In my experience (and contrary to what a lot of people believe), creativity is something you practice. That means two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is going to take some time to get good at. Maybe a lot of time. In this sense, there is no getting around the amount of time you'll need to invest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But since it is something you practice, you don't have to get good at it all at once. You can write for 15 minutes a day, or 30 minutes, or an hour -- whatever you have at your disposal and feels comfortable to you. In &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; sense, it doesn't take much time at all. Your small daily efforts add up over time, and eventually you find it doesn't take much effort at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6118" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T21:34:16.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10567" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-21T23:02:18.680" Score="1" ViewCount="244" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an idea for a story, but I realize that many of the idea's elements are similar to another story out there. (The attire of the main character, fighting style and structure of some social groups, and tech gadgets. That last one is not that similar, actually.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole drive of my story is original, but it was inspired by some of these elements, and I decided to modify them. This makes me wonder if it's wrong or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why I asked this question. In terms of taking reference from some elements of another story, how much reference, or &quot;copying&quot; is enough? (Obviously, a complete copy is out of the question, and I'll never do that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8267" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-22T20:58:06.290" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T18:39:28.737" Title="How much copying is okay?" Tags="|creative-writing|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10568" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10571" CreationDate="2014-03-22T01:41:27.583" Score="5" ViewCount="856" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an amateur at worldbuilding and I am already building a sci-fi themed world with fantasy elements.&#xA;In my world there will be different kinds of new elements to the periodic table and some fantastic environments and creatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: since my universe starts plenty of years before and after our actual time, how can I &quot;defy&quot; physics and include new elements to the periodic table? I don't want it to be hard science, I don't need a deep level of detail, just some theoretical science to push the existence of unknown periodic elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tip: My &quot;universe&quot; is not and neither near Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8269" LastEditorUserId="5909" LastEditDate="2014-03-24T13:20:19.873" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T05:11:02.737" Title="How to &quot;defy&quot; physics on a sci-fi?" Tags="|creative-writing|science-fiction|world-building|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10564" CreationDate="2014-03-22T04:15:33.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that we should take the readers' expectations into account when writing a short story. Giving your story an exotic title makes me expect something overly sophisticated (I know, I tend to fold quickly. Just puff out your literary chest a little, and I'll walk out of the bar rather than draw my six-shooter). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; your story's title should be changed if you're confident that it'll draw your readers' attention. Just make sure that you get the audience you are aiming for. If your audience are the kind of people who find googling something a chore (believe me, some people choose to back away from a story with an unfamiliar word rather than look up a good dictionary), you might want to reconsider changing your title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8214" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T04:15:33.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10568" CreationDate="2014-03-22T04:24:19.123" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the big mistakes I've seen in some people's writing is that they focus on wanting to show the reader that &quot;Hey, I've thought about these things and they are really important!&quot; when they aren't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're story is going to be about physicists or chemists or other scientists dealing with the particular periodic table elements, then I can understand having them but if you're wanting to use them as parts of the molecule that is used to support teleportation, you probably don't need them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key for world building, in my humble opinion, is focusing from the people and story out. Sometimes we have a desire to try and nail everything down, don't. Sometimes we want to answer all questions, but that can weigh down a story or limit where you could go in the future with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer to your question is you write the story and see where it is essential that you introduce them, and then you look at what do you need to describe and what you don't. For example, having a scientist in a lab trying to figure out where Impossiblium came from both introduces an elements, and allows the reader to see things from the scientist's perspective as she tries to figure out the mystery. But you don't need to get to the electron charge level, etc. unless it helps drive the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's my 2 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T04:24:19.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10568" CreationDate="2014-03-22T04:35:16.357" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't actually have to care much about hard-core physics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your sci-fi world is set in another universe entirely (Star Wars and the Force), you needn't even bother about following the periodic table or conventional physics. After all, the Force isn't even something the Jedi (in their Universe) can explain completely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's okay to create imaginary material with the materials we currently have in the periodic table. Avatar (the movie) is set in the future in this universe, and the filmmakers decided to  introduce Unobtainium, a material based on sci-fi physics (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Unobtanium&quot;&gt;http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Unobtanium&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your universe is not anywhere near Earth, than that just makes things easier for you. We think we've got the laws of the universe figured out, but who knows, really, what will happen under extreme conditions not found anywhere near Earth, especially when we do not have the equipment to reproduce them? Example: Albert Einstein said that black holes were ridiculous when they were first proposed. It sounded ridiculous; a mass so great that not even light could escape it, a mass so great that it would crush itself. My point is that you do not even need to look too far from our current laws of physics: Just bend them to the extreme, and say whatever you want. An actual example closer to home would be the fact that the Sun's corona is millions of Kelvin hotter than its surface (Coronal heating problem).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists still haven't come up with a theory to explain the effect (as far as I know).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screw it all, there are even things in our oceans that have our scientists' jaws on the floor (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2081787/Hydrothermal-vents-Lost-world-unknown-species-Antarctic-sea-bed.html&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2081787/Hydrothermal-vents-Lost-world-unknown-species-Antarctic-sea-bed.html&lt;/a&gt;) :&#xA;&quot;&#xA;They were exploring off the coast of Antarctica and found colonies of marine life including crabs, an octopus and starfish totally new to science, living in the murky depths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason their existence is remarkable is that they were found on top of undersea volcanoes called hydrothermal vents, which pump out plumes of black smoke causing temperatures to rise to 380C - &lt;strong&gt;hot enough to melt lead&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a word: Don't worry too much about having to follow mainstream physics. Science Fiction is about what &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; happen, not what &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; happen. If you're writing Science Fantasy (even more whacky than Science Fiction), then you have even less to worry about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8214" LastEditorUserId="8214" LastEditDate="2014-03-22T13:40:45.887" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T13:40:45.887" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10555" CreationDate="2014-03-22T07:07:45.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that it is how the viewer or reader treats the Death. I mean, if there is a maniac that wants to kill you shoting your head with a gun. There would be no horror on it. Because, dying by being shot is something that we are used to see in movies and read in books, even in the social media nowdays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you are in a dark place, or have your senses blocked by someway or something, and you know that something never aknowledge by the masses is running after you to do God knows what and then kill you in an unknow manner and alone, then I would call it horror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not the simple fear of death or anything bad that could happen to you, it is the fear of something that is not seen or heard or touched or aknowledged by the masses, something that was hidden and for an unknow motive decided to appear to you and only you or to a closed group individuals. And you feel in you very soul that it is going to do something really bad to you and everyone else. Not only kill you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take it by the fact that there isn't horror movies depicted in large scale areas and with many people witnessing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is just my guess, and you can clearly see that I am an amateur on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8269" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T07:07:45.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-22T14:25:49.300" Score="0" ViewCount="204" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a book but I don't know where to start. I'd like to know if is it there any structure for a book to be written, or if somebody could tell me how to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8272" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T18:21:56.717" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T18:21:56.717" Title="Is there any structure to write a book?" Tags="|book|planning|getting-started|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-03-28T14:08:44.450" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10568" CreationDate="2014-03-22T15:34:38.310" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of those instances where understanding the history of things matters.  If you're building a science-fantasy world with the equivalent of modern chemistry, have some fictional elements with distinct properties, and have any concern at all for the periodic table, you really only have four choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make the new element something strange and apart, so it doesn't have to fit into the categorization at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What's the atomic weight of Victorium?  We have no idea.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make the new &quot;element&quot; really an isotope of an existing element.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thanks to Victorum, which is a strange isotope of Aluminium, we can build radiation-proof starships&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pick a spot on the periodic table and slap the new element there.  Anything above 54 with a name you don't recognize is fair game to be replaced, especially if you're going to substitute &quot;magic&quot; for &quot;radiation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Good Witch &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie&quot;&gt;Curie&lt;/a&gt; discovered Victorum's mana-like properties in a lab.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Abandon the periodic table.  If there were elements that simply did not fit into the framework when it was being devised, it would never have been adopted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Alchemists even claimed once that elements could be arrange neatly by their number of protons. As if Victorium didn't even exist!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same practice is true for any aspect of world-building in which you deviate from the modern day.  In a draft awhile back I realized that I couldn't use the world &quot;commute&quot; to describe a daily journey to and from work without some historic installation of public transportation, since said usage derives from the &quot;commuted&quot; fair offered those who bought train-tickets in bulk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need go to overboard of course, but a significant part of high fantasy or non-terrestrial sci fi is very much the world-buliding, and it's worth spending some time thinking about how to get it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T15:34:38.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10573" CreationDate="2014-03-22T15:48:58.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are LOTS of ways to structure a book.  Depending on what you're writing, there may or may not be any expected frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long-Form Fiction&lt;/strong&gt;, such as speculative fiction novels, movie scripts, and semi-fanciful &quot;alternate histories&quot; usually progress lineally along one or more character's perspectives along a three-act progression, though more acts are non uncommon and strict adherence is not necessary.  Some genre fiction have more expected structures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Non-fiction Reference Material&lt;/strong&gt;, such as a wikipedia page or the manual for a piece of software, tends to begin with an overall review of the topic, follow with specific details or instructions arranged in some discernible order (complexity, alphabetically, or historical progression), and end with any needed reference materials.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Non-fiction polemics&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;short-form fiction&lt;/strong&gt; both are highly variable in their form and structure.  Aside from the mechanical need to quickly attract a reader's interest, their choice of structure is entirely part of an author's craft and can be as important as word choice or phrasing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how to actually write any of the above: start with an idea, add in various notes, and then sit down and write a first draft from beginning to end.  Skip ahead if appropriate.  Once your draft is done, read it once and then begin your editing process.  Be aware you may need to throw it all away and start again with a new first draft, on possibly an entirely separate project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T15:48:58.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10573" CreationDate="2014-03-22T15:52:13.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the kind of book you're writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast-paced, action-packed books tend to leap straight into the thick of things and introduce their characters at the same time (Matthew Reilly kind of books. I know, he's not exactly an avant garde writer, but he &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; one end of the spectrum when it comes to explosions and many, many exclamation marks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern romance novels that are highly successful tend to have the romantic interest pop up in the first chapter in a cute meet (forgive me if I have offended any sensibilities) with the protagonist or narrator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're actually talking about what to put on the first page of the book, you could start with describing a particularly vivid mental image that sets the backdrop for the first scene in your story. Your imagination should take over from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The overall structure of books that I've read tends to go like this: Introduction (start slow, introduce characters, set tone for the story), buildup(things happen, information gradually becomes available), climax(the highest point of tension in the book or the main event all the other events have been building up to), and resolution (or the ending). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't let that formula confine you too much. Some of them have an ambiguous resolution (I know they call it a resolution, but the end of Twilight leaves you wondering if Edward turned Bella - more of a teaser, really), and some of them have the climax and resolution on the same page (the Notebook: The protagonist's love interest finally remembers him, which is the miraculous event you've been unconsciously waiting for all this while, and then the novel ends- Climax and resolution on the same page).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A shortcut would be to look up a few bestsellers that you think are similar enough to the book you want to write in terms of genre, mood, pacing and length, and then narrow it down to one or two of your favorite ones (or all of them, if you are like me). Use them (or it) as a guide, but don't overdo it, or all you'll get is another piece of fanfic. It would really help if you had strong original characters with quirks and idiosyncrasies that your references do not have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enjoy your journey!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8214" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T15:52:13.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10577" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-22T16:50:38.643" Score="4" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whilst writing technical documentation, there is commonly a section on troubleshooting or frequently asked questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know a FAQ should be real questions - not ones the publisher &lt;em&gt;thinks&lt;/em&gt; might be asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when wording the question header, should it take the form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Why does blah blah happen? &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Blah blah happens, Why?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former might be a more natural way of simply asking the question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the latter the &lt;em&gt;thing that is happening&lt;/em&gt; appears earlier in the phrase making it easier for readers to recognize relevance earlier. That's especially the case if there's a long list of questions, where it might appear odd to have every question starting Why, How, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also wondering about 'a third way'!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Blah blah is happening.&#xA;&#xA;I can't find the blah blah.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that it's in a FAQ implicitly suggests this is a question, so maybe it's enough to say what is happening, without explicitly wording it as a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be recommended, and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8274" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-22T20:54:37.303" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T20:54:37.303" Title="In a FAQ, should a question header take the form &quot;Why does blah blah?&quot; or &quot;Blah blah happens, Why?&quot; And why?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10577" CreationDate="2014-03-22T18:19:50.280" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can write the FAQ in a mixed fashion. Depending on what the actual question is, you could choose any of the three styles (or maybe alternate styles too) that you have mentioned to frame that particular question. The idea should be that the readers find it useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is something obvious, then the style differences might not be too much of a deal. For example, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why is the red light flashing continuously?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;may not be too different from&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I switch the device on. The red light is flashing continuously. What do I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the question is pertaining to a particular series of steps that the answer gives, then it might be useful to frame it as a question. For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I get this annoying feature to stop annoying me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is something that turns up after the user has followed a series of steps, it might be more appropriate to word the question as a descriptive one. For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While jumping from one tree to another tree, I realized mid-air that the other tree has disappeared! What do I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the different kinds of FAQs that I have read through I have seen people use all these variants depending on the question and not sticking to one single style. It might also be of importance to note that wording some questions in a particular style might sometimes be inconvenient or lead to vague/not-user-friendly questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T18:19:50.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10567" CreationDate="2014-03-23T20:50:10.777" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my humble opinion, as long as your works don't profit, and you give credit for inspiration, as the author, you are entitled to create whatever you want. The question you have to ask yourself is &quot;Have I made it different enough to warrant this? Or does it just appear a meaningless close copy&quot; You have to make sure to add something that is truly your own to it, and that changes the story as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8281" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T20:50:10.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-24T03:32:18.653" Score="1" ViewCount="936" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the name of the structure of a novel that is not in chronological order but moves between characters (viewing the same or different topic)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8282" LastEditorUserId="5909" LastEditDate="2014-03-24T13:19:54.297" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T14:35:39.597" Title="Name of writing style or structure of novel that is in non-chronological order" Tags="|style|technique|structure|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10583" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10584" CreationDate="2014-03-24T10:02:38.860" Score="1" ViewCount="627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing my thesis and one chapter is about a software product. The chapter contains three paragraphs with general information about the product that I collected from the product documentation. It's my own text (sort of like a summary), but all the facts come straight from the documentation. In my thesis I'm using APA style citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I cite this product documentation? Do I have to use in-line citation or is it sufficient to just add it to the reference list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have to use in-line citation, how often and where do I cite the product documentation? I found some information where they'd cite in the first sentence and then in the second sentence they would say something like &quot;The authors .. etc.,&quot; but I'm not sure if that would work in this case, because it's just general information I used to write my own text. Also I don't know if I'd have to use it in every paragraph, or just the first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8284" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T10:32:52.280" Title="How to cite (APA style) a whole chapter about a product?" Tags="|style|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10583" CreationDate="2014-03-24T10:32:52.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like you mentioned, introducing the source in the first line is usually what is done in case of citing the same source multiple times in the same paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could state the first line as something similar to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product documentation (inline citation) states that blah blah blah&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can continue writing the rest of the lines in your paragraph. Keep referring back to the user manual. For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manual mentions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the recommendations in the manual it is apparent that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;blah blah, as defined in the user manual&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When changing the paragraph you can continue writing in a style that keeps hinting that you are talking about the same source. As long as you have not introduced any other references in between, you should be good to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the information that you have from the user manual, your inline citation would change. For example, if by any chance you have the name(s) of the authors, you will be using that in the citation. Else, as mentioned in the answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/9060/5909&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; you can simply refer to the user manual with a &lt;em&gt;n.d.&lt;/em&gt; mention. Or you may choose to attribute the authorship to the Organization (depending on how the user manual is written).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address the last part of your question, if the information that you have is too general and obvious (like common sense), you may not need to cite it to any source. However, if the information is borrowed from a source (which I think is your case), you will have to mention the source. Do it once in the beginning and then keep writing. In the references, mention the complete reference. Have a look at the second last answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/25/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (citing Apple's user manual).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T10:32:52.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10573" CreationDate="2014-03-24T14:25:51.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a terse summary of Peter Seibel's &lt;a href=&quot;http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2007/04/10/how-to-write-a-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Write a Book&lt;/a&gt; blog entry:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Step 1&lt;/strong&gt; Write the index.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Step 2&lt;/strong&gt; Write a hierarchical outline.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Step 3&lt;/strong&gt; Write a flattened outline.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And &lt;strong&gt;Step 4&lt;/strong&gt; Write the book.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Seibel has written two technical books and you may take his approach as especially practical for a technical book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8285" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T14:25:51.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-24T15:59:00.727" Score="2" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a crime novel, which is on its final draft before seeking publication now. The novel is set in my hometown.  A major &quot;set piece&quot; scene is set in a real location, a business, which I would like to keep in the novel, owing to the unique design of the building.  I don't portray the business in any bad light, as far as I am concerned, but a couple of pretty violent murders occur there.  Any thoughts on whether I should change this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8289" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T17:34:04.807" Title="I need advice regarding the use of real-world locations in a novel" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10586" CreationDate="2014-03-24T17:34:04.807" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends in part on how recognizable the landmark is to readers.  On the one hand, if your scene is set in Times Square, it's hard to change anything -- enough people know the place that if you do, it'll just draw attention to your changes (which may be distracting).  On the other hand, if your scene is set in Joe's House of Gourmet Eggplant in some small town most people haven't heard of, then readers will probably recognize &lt;em&gt;neither&lt;/em&gt; the landmark &lt;em&gt;nor&lt;/em&gt; any changes you make to it.  So in that case, you could change the name of the business with no harm done to your story, and if you're at all concerned that would be safe.  You said you want to use it because of the building; does it matter what the name of the business occupying that building is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you might just approach the business owner about it; maybe he'd actually like the exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T17:34:04.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10590" CreationDate="2014-03-24T20:35:37.077" Score="2" ViewCount="1264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I downloaded &lt;a href=&quot;http://calibre-ebook.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Calibre&lt;/a&gt; two days ago. According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/metadata.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Calibre user manual (website)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Click the book you want to edit and then click the Edit metadata button or press the E key. A dialog opens that allows you to edit all aspects of the metadata. It has various features to make editing faster and more efficient. A list of the commonly used tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ISBN box will have a red background if you enter an invalid ISBN. It will be green for valid ISBNs&amp;quot; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/metadata.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/metadata.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see no ISBN box, red, green or otherwise in the edit metadata dialogue. On another Calibre page I see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you might want to display the ISBN, a field that calibre does not display. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/template_lang.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/template_lang.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...followed by something about &amp;quot;simply hover your mouse over the column header&amp;quot; in the Calibre template language, which I cannot find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do I add an ISBN (which I have) to the publication I need to convert to ebook?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8216" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T22:16:55.387" Title="How do I add an ISBN to Calibre ebook?" Tags="|software|tools|ebook|isbn|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10589" CreationDate="2014-03-24T22:16:55.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Click the button next to &quot;Ids&quot; in the middle column of the &quot;Edit Metadata&quot; dialog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UNJ0M.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T22:16:55.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10581" CreationDate="2014-03-25T05:55:29.137" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know any one word that encompasses both. But if a narrative is not chronological, it's &lt;strong&gt;anachronic&lt;/strong&gt;, and if it follows multiple characters, it's &lt;strong&gt;heterodiegetic&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe &lt;strong&gt;heterodiegetic anachrony&lt;/strong&gt; is the term you're looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Gérard Genette, &lt;em&gt;Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method&lt;/em&gt;, trans. by Jane Lewin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T05:55:29.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10593" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-25T13:34:58.733" Score="3" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common tactic for capturing attention is using a headline &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; something for something&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example on Copyblogger some headlines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The 5 Things Every (Great) Marketing Story Needs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;7 Scientifically-Backed Copywriting Tips&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or here is a screenshot from a Google Search showing 5 of the top articles on this query all employed this tactic (&quot;These five astonishing...&quot; is spelled out but still counts)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PUntU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;headlines&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another one on page 1 (above it was some paid ads) again showing the exact same thing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KXUoC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;headlines 2&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since What is still disputing and claiming its only for things that make good lists, here's a page 1 search of &quot;Affordable Care Act&quot; again a top result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rzwBo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;headlines 3&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is - have any studies been done on print media to show the same tactic works? All I can think of is the &quot;grocery store&quot; mags will often have on the cover something like &quot;10 ways to please your man&quot; or &quot;6 steps to rock hard abs&quot; but I really have no idea if there's any data to support using this tactic in print?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it seems @What just thinks I'm making stuff up about this method being proven here's one of my articles you can find with data supporting it: &lt;a href=&quot;http://moz.com/blog/5-data-insights-into-the-headlines-readers-click&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://moz.com/blog/5-data-insights-into-the-headlines-readers-click&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is if there's any data to show it also works in print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3364" LastEditorUserId="3364" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T13:46:59.767" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T17:42:17.363" Title="Are headlines about lists superior in print as they are in web content?" Tags="|marketing|titles|copywriting|headlines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10596" CreationDate="2014-03-25T20:11:26.807" Score="6" ViewCount="6061" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am on a small journey to help me understand what the definition of a poem is to different people, what poems mean to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This made me wonder, some poems are longer than others, so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How short can a poem be until it can no longer be a poem? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8302" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T20:55:08.140" LastActivityDate="2024-01-05T05:47:19.670" Title="How short can a poem be until it can no longer be a poem?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|technique|poetry|perspective|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10595" CreationDate="2014-03-25T20:20:08.657" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The shortest poems are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;lighght&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/S4lFf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;m&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aram_Saroyan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aram Saroyan&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T20:20:08.657" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10595" CreationDate="2014-03-25T20:34:15.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't that qualify?  It rhymes, keeps a meter, and &amp;quot;says&amp;quot; more than it says.  That's pretty much my definition of poetry.  Not saying it's any good, though.  Even more minimal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Wow, that's soooo deep.  The minimalism powerfully evokes the impoverishment of social interactions in a technological society, especially with regard to oppressed minority groups.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T20:34:15.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10550" CreationDate="2014-03-25T23:13:08.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though your writing is mechanically sound (except for the misuse of the word &quot;magnanimous&quot;) and your thesis is clear, it falls way short of the guidelines simply because it contains too many unsubstantiated editorial comments.  By &quot;too many&quot; I mean greater than or equal to one.  As a point of reference, I was once dinged on a college essay for sarcastically describing a murky statement as &quot;crystal clear&quot; instead of providing an objective argument for why I believed the statement was murky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cursory glance of your essay finds the following editorial comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simplistic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weak-minded&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hazy sense of morality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shallow and inflammatory response&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being the sheepish and emotionally driven person that she is&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Needlessly spent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drastic action&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;State of emotional confusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blindly followed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flimsy foundations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explosive reaction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Irresponsible and juvenile behavior&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lazy interpretation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter if you're right or wrong about any of this.  The point is, the only thing you're proving by making such statements is that you have a strong opinion about the subject.  But so does Mrs. Hughes.  Either back up you opinions with fact, or leave them out of the essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also beg the question with remarks such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sharp and insightful work of art&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Benign service&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Misinterpretation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Safe to assume…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She believes what she believes because…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I must doubt her ability to think for herself…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flew right over her head&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument you're making with these statements is that the issue is cut &amp;amp; dried, and therefore needs no substantiation.  Your teacher might not agree.  You're also weakening your own argument by assuming that those who disagree with you are obviously mentally inferior and therefore warrant no response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paragraph that begins with &quot;It is only a matter of time...&quot; is well-presented and is more what I would expect from an essay.  You could strengthen this paragraph by dealing with a counter-argument.  For example, an opponent might argue that we should expose toddlers to blood and gore horror movies in order to acquaint them with the harsh realities of life.  Do you agree?  If not, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have the time, you would benefit from trying to write the essay from the opposite point of view.  With eyes clear from the stain of sin and with the authority of the Word of God, it's obvious that proponents of the statue are sex-crazed perverts with no sense of artistic taste.  Right?  Or imagine how would you feel about a statue of a giant swastika, or a flaming cross.  You'll see that issues such as these are controversial because they aren't as clear-cut as each side tends to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4437" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T23:13:08.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10601" CreationDate="2014-03-26T05:39:19.673" Score="3" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I reference a character, whom, for the current context is given a label, such as &quot;The Skull&quot;, should I include the word &quot;The&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following snippet should clarify my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;Our mission is to assassinate an elite member of a crime syndicate. In my clan, he is known as &quot;The Skull&quot;, a title reflective of the image that covers his head. &lt;i&gt;The Skull&lt;/i&gt; ...&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the initial label be &lt;code&gt;the &quot;Skull&quot;&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;&quot;The Skull&quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8304" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T22:14:28.277" Title="Should the word &quot;The&quot; be included in a label when labelling a character?" Tags="|naming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10599" CreationDate="2014-03-26T09:59:47.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're tipping so far into melodrama that you've called your villain &lt;em&gt;The Skull,&lt;/em&gt; then embrace it and capitalize &quot;The.&quot; You can even make a bit of gallows humor out of it and have the protagonists joke about whether Jack The Ripper or Winnie The Pooh were named for him, whether he stole the idea from The Donald, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T09:59:47.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10595" CreationDate="2014-03-26T11:23:03.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since asking the question, I stumbled across another single-letter poem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Poem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was skeptical about accepting such poems as true poems, but this is a rather neat one I have to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JqsJs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Critique&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The letter i with the author's own unique thumbprint to complete it. The thumbprint is the most meaningful symbol that can express the meaning of the object it labels - more so than a name (names rarely are unique, at least in English). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8302" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T11:23:03.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10606" CreationDate="2014-03-26T13:15:13.577" Score="1" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the history of the world I am building, there is a big time spam, divided by some important events that changed the course of human history many times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brief:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At first, we have these two ships that parted from a lunar base to a&#xA;  planet hundreds of lightyears away, using speeds that could almost hit&#xA;  the speed of light. Both ships had planned they course and had&#xA;  determined the exact date of arrival in Julian Days and Universal&#xA;  Time. The first would start the colonization and the second would come&#xA;  with the rest of the remaining population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem was that the first ship passed through a space anomaly&#xA;  that strongly bent space-time and made it go directly to its system&#xA;  destination, but at an speed so incredible that not even light could&#xA;  compare to it, making it go back in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To be more precise, it arrived in its destination before the humans&#xA;  even existed in Earth, something like 3.0 million years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They settled, build the colonies and time passed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The problem is:&lt;/strong&gt; What can I use as calendar for the period before the second ship arrives if Julian Days start in 4714 BC?&#xA;The humans on the new planet need a new way to count time, something not relative to Earth or the Solar System. After the second ship arrives(in the determied date) the calendar will be based on Julian Days as it is the standard calendar used for space exploration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thousands of years after the second ship arrival, the calendar is readjusted to reflect a new type of time unit based on a pulsar located somewhere near the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sorry for any typos, english is not my mother language.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8269" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T13:58:47.107" Title="Stardate(Julian Day) - Problem" Tags="|creative-writing|world-building|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10605" CreationDate="2014-03-26T13:58:47.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As we've seen on earth, communities count time in reference to key events -- the creation of the world, the birth of a new religious figure, the beginning of a king's reign (these ones have less staying power), and so on.  When calendar systems encounter each other (I say the year is 5774; you say it's 2014; now what?), some sort of reconciliation happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your colonists have the notion of a 24-hour day regardless of the solar events they're now experiencing, &lt;em&gt;and if they know they went through a time-warping anomaly&lt;/em&gt;, then it's not unreasonable for them to start counting in those days from that event.  So they arrive in, say, year 1, month 10, day 3 AA (after anomaly), and go from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't know they went through an anomaly, then nothing changes for them -- they count time as they always did.  That they're &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; isn't known to &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;, only to the &lt;em&gt;reader&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, if they went millions of years into the past and there's no relevant tech magic, they'll live the rest of their lives never having to reconcile their calendar.  The reader, on the other hand, will be tracking a story with two timelines and two dating systems, but this probably isn't a burden because those timelines don't interact.  Plus, we've all read stories told partially in the present and partially in flashbacks without getting confused about time; this is similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T13:58:47.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10309" CreationDate="2014-03-26T16:05:54.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A screenplay is a preproduction tool, whereas a script is a production/post production tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the filmmaking side, being on set, we refer to the printed copy as a script. The script is a tool that the actor and rest of the crew use while on set at a particular location, and is often only a portion of the entire screenplay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Directors, actors, continuity directors, script supervisors, and film loaders (clapper/slate operators) often make notations on their own copy of the script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The screenplay would be the entire thing, in its original form. You might submit a screenplay, but you wouldn't submit a script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8311" LastEditorUserId="8311" LastEditDate="2018-04-24T20:41:50.840" LastActivityDate="2018-04-24T20:41:50.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10564" CreationDate="2014-03-26T16:26:07.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've witnessed many writers and musicians being coy about what a song, story, or poem means because they don't want to dismiss any special meaning that the reader or listener might have attributed to the piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your novel becomes a classic, then scholars and Cliffs notes will make your point for you. I say, why not be clear instead of coy? If you're talented, you can lead most of your audience wherever you want them to go. If it's important to you that the reader gets it, then take the time to help them get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers don't seem to mind the obvious, as long as it's entertaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can change your title to something that helps the reader reach the conclusions that you want them to reach, without being too much of a spoiler, then do it. Yet, it's questionable whether &quot;Psychomanteum&quot; is more clear than &quot;Mirrors&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8311" LastEditorUserId="8311" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T16:31:12.520" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T16:31:12.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10433" CreationDate="2014-03-26T16:44:03.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would rewrite that sentence completely, as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You may delete servers that do not have customers assigned to them.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I also removed the unnecessary capitalization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8312" LastEditorUserId="54999" LastEditDate="2022-04-08T21:47:44.907" LastActivityDate="2022-04-08T21:47:44.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10257" CreationDate="2014-03-26T17:03:05.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Left to my own devices, I don't use figure numbering (or table numbering either). However, I have worked on some assignments where its use was mandated by the corporate style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always insert images right where I discuss them and make sure I use formatting that will keep the figure with the related text. In that case, there's no need to refer to the figure elsewhere. If I need to refer to the figure again, I'm not shy about re-inserting the figure at the point of the new reference in the text. If I do need to refer to a figure, I use a linked cross-reference to the topic heading (e.g., see the image shown in &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;How to trim your tree&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an environment where heading numbering is required, I'll use a linked cross-reference to the figure number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm moderately allergic to abbreviations. I prefer to spell out things rather than abbreviate them. For words that are lengthy, I add a shortened version to my AutoCorrect list in Word and the shortened version is thus automatically replaced with the proper word. I also suspect that abbreviations can cause issues in translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8312" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T17:03:05.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2014-03-26T17:15:14.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a scene where you find yourself cutting the dialog, maybe the entire scene needs to be cut (or cut down). Everything, dialog or not, should be furthering the story or the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8311" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T17:15:14.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10567" CreationDate="2014-03-26T17:35:27.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copying discrete details, outside of parody, is plagiarism and is often protected under copyright laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way. Copying large ideas is okay. Copying the actual details or implementation of those larger ideas is violating someone's rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a story about a boy who goes to wizardry school is okay. Writing a story about a boy with round glasses who goes to Hogwarts school of wizardry will get you into trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8311" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T17:35:27.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10257" CreationDate="2014-03-26T17:47:31.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the absence of a style guide saying otherwise, your approach is fine.  (So is abbreviating to &amp;quot;Fig.&amp;quot;, though I prefer to spend the extra three letters and use the full word.  It's also consistent with &amp;quot;Table&amp;quot;, which I haven't seen abbreviated as &amp;quot;Tab.&amp;quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, be consistent -- refer to all of your figures as &amp;quot;Figure N&amp;quot; and use that same text in the figure captions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the figure isn't immediately adjacent to the text, use a cross-reference.  I believe all modern documentation formats support this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final thought: if your style permits this, for step-by-step instructions consider dispensing with the figure references.  Do the 15 screen shots involved in configuring such-and-such preferences for your product really need to be individually numbered and listed in the table of contents (or table of figures)?  Consider instead the following style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Select &amp;quot;File -&amp;gt; Preferences&amp;quot; to open the preferences panel:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;[screen shot of preferences panel]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Select the &amp;quot;Advanced&amp;quot; tab:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;[screen shot of advanced tab]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Click the &amp;quot;Configure SSL&amp;quot; button to (blah blah blah):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this style, the screen shots become part of the narrative.  This only works if each screen shot is only relevant once, in its immediate context; if you'll need to refer to them from elsewhere in the document, numbering will make that easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T17:47:31.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10549" CreationDate="2014-03-26T18:22:01.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your main problem may be that you're sitting down to write without the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A PURPOSE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite often, for an article, you're simply looking for an &quot;angle&quot;. Angles don't just spontaneously come to us. We &quot;look&quot; for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm assigned to write about something particular, I research it, and I try to find an angle within the actual subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote an article about this pretzel brand, and in my research, I found out that the back story behind the company and its name was very interesting, but not well known, so I had my angle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a topic and an angle, you have a purpose. Write the first sentence. The first sentence should hook the audience. By the end of the first paragraph, the audience should know your angle. Now, write the rest of the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With practice, you'll find new angles even in old topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Musicians often call their own voice mail to hum a tune that was in their head. This doesn't happen to most folks. However, if you were a musician, you'd have tunes in your head too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, of tunes, writers get story ideas in their heads. Keep a notepad and jot down story ideas as you &quot;discover&quot; them. You'll find that the more you write them down, the more you'll get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stay tuned in. Keep up to date on current events. Read. Watch. Listen. Ideas spawn other ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8311" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T18:22:01.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10507" CreationDate="2014-03-26T18:53:19.327" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Surprise requires context, so don't worry too much about it not being at the beginning of a sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jane listened intently, nodding, then immediately hiccuped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob smiled slightly but kept going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side, note, if she was simply &amp;quot;embarrassed&amp;quot;, that's probably obvious, and could be omitted. Now, if she did something to show that she were embarrassed, you might want to write that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jane hiccuped again and covered her mouth, blushing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8311" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T18:53:19.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10507" CreationDate="2014-03-26T21:43:39.120" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd consider rewriting, I don't think it's common to put such bodily interruptions into dialogue. Consider this wince from Harrison Bergeron, by Vonnegut:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George what the latest  sound had been.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer,&amp;quot; said George.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1536" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T21:43:39.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10595" CreationDate="2014-03-26T23:47:07.817" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike a work of prose, which has a generally accepted predefined length (be it a short story, novella, novel, etc.) poetry is not governed by such precepts. Poetry is akin to art. A white canvas with a single stroke of paint on it can be a painting, if that is the intention of its creator. A poem can be any number of words, or just one, or even one letter, if that is the intent of its author. Public acceptance of such a work as a poem, however, is another matter entirely. Nearly 100 years ago, Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal labelled &quot;R.Mutt&quot; to an art exhibition, and people have been arguing &quot;Is it art?&quot; ever since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8255" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T23:47:07.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10549" CreationDate="2014-03-27T06:50:44.753" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say, &quot;I understand that writing is like any other skill. Meaning it can be learned, manipulated, and mastered.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You left out having a capability for the &quot;skill&quot; to begin with. Sorry to say it, but you sound like the last person who should be thinking of becoming a writer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it novels and short stories you want to write?  Or just faster emails?  All the writers I know knew they wanted to write from childhood. They read endlessly and continue to this day accumulating books in one form or another, usually reading for hours a day.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AND they took all the writing courses their schools offered and got to know at least a few professors personally.  Writers typically (in my experience) have circles of friends who are also compulsive about writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is an extension of thinking.  It's also a way of life.  There are certainly skills involved, but first the writer is driven to write, thinks about it all of the time and has a natural inclination for storytelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7892" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T06:50:44.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10581" CreationDate="2014-03-27T21:53:37.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always called it &quot;nonlinear multi-perspective&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rashomon&lt;/em&gt; is probably the best known example of this structure in storytelling. It's a movie based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa's short story &quot;In a Grove&quot; (the movie's title is from another of Akutagawa's stories). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_a_Grove&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_a_Grove&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%ABnosuke_Akutagawa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%ABnosuke_Akutagawa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_(film)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_(film)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8255" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T21:53:37.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10599" CreationDate="2014-03-27T22:14:28.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do the bad guys' buddies call him when talking to him?  &quot;Good morning, The Skull, how did you sleep?&quot;  Or is it, &quot;Good morning, Skull, how did you sleep?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more telling, is how his buddies refer to him in the third person.  &quot;I hope The Skull tells me to make coffee.&quot;  Or, &quot;I hope Skull tells me to make coffee.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also telling is how the bad guy introduces himself.  &quot;Hello, I'm The Skull.&quot;  Or, &quot;Hello, I'm Skull.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &quot;Skull&quot; is more like a title (e.g., Boss, Colonel), then it's definitely lowercase &quot;t&quot;.  Example: &quot;I'm making coffee for the Skull.  What's that, Skull?  OK, Skull.  The Skull wants you to make him some scrambled eggs.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T22:14:28.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7764" CreationDate="2014-03-27T23:56:44.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't copyright an idea, only the expression of one. If your story is a lot like someone else's, then don't rewrite that other person's story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there will naturally be similarities between two stories if they &lt;em&gt;play on same field&lt;/em&gt;. Serial killer stories are an excellent example. There are countless crime novels (not to mention movies and TV programs) about serial killers (I'm writing one myself), and certain elements are obvious and expected (e.g. a killer, a series of murders).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is not to let &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; story about a serial killer get too close to &lt;em&gt;someone else's&lt;/em&gt;. Think of your story as a circle. The other person's story is also a circle. Both stories together form a Venn diagram. The intersection (that part in the middle where the circles overlap) contains all the usual obvious and expected stuff (killer, series of murders). There may be a few more similarities in there, too, making the intersection a little bigger (maybe both stories are set in New York, both have male protagonists, both are set in winter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too many similarities, and that intersection is going to start getting too big. Depending on how much your story is &lt;strong&gt;like&lt;/strong&gt; the other, your readers will go from &quot;It's a lot like...&quot; to &quot;It's a copy of...&quot;, until someone says the P word. Plagiarism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep your intersection as tight as you can. That's my suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8255" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T23:56:44.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9122" CreationDate="2014-03-28T00:33:28.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted the same thing as you - the ability to do a journal, fully searchable, all text files.  I also wanted to be able to cross reference things to create a sort of commonplace book without duplicating work.  It took a lot of looking but I eventually found &lt;a href=&quot;http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikidpad&lt;/a&gt; and have been using it ever since.  It's really powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8328" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T00:33:28.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10628" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-28T18:33:18.487" Score="8" ViewCount="1975" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking about starting a novel by having the first sentence be internal dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the potential problems this could raise? What are the benefits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By internal dialogue I mean something like: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It's so high up here&lt;/em&gt;. Thought Sam while...(sentence continues)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8335" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2018-08-06T12:16:10.857" LastActivityDate="2018-08-06T12:16:10.857" Title="What are the pros and cons of starting a novel with internal dialogue?" Tags="|fiction|novel|dialogue|openings|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10636" CreationDate="2014-03-28T18:53:43.890" Score="8" ViewCount="6258" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does the “twist / ten / 転” phase in the Japanese &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish%C5%8Dtenketsu&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;kishōtenketsu&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; narrative structure differ from the “plot twist” that is a standard element of many Western stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m thinking, for example, of the way many American police dramas (such as &lt;em&gt;Law &amp;amp; Order&lt;/em&gt;) adhere to the following structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The viewers are introduced to the crime, the detectives, and the initial suspects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of the suspects is captured and it seems like all the evidence points to him/her.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Surprise! New evidence comes to light, or someone makes a confession, that destroys the prosecution’s case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A fresh round of investigation reveals the true criminal, who is brought to justice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a &lt;em&gt;kishōtenketsu&lt;/em&gt; plot, or is there some subtlety that I am missing? Can anyone familiar with both Western and Asian stories clarify things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T19:15:16.723" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T15:05:39.513" Title="Twist in kishōtenketsu vs. twist in Western plots" Tags="|technique|plot|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10628" CreationDate="2014-03-28T21:19:37.380" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no reason why it couldn't work, as long as you quickly make clear that it's internal dialogue. If it's a first-person narrative, the entire &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; is &quot;internal dialogue,&quot; in a sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main benefit is to give the reader immediate access to the character's inner life, which may help us identify with him/her/it/them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only real con I could see is if it's written in such a way that the reader is confused whether the text is narration or internal monologue, or if you can't tell who's speaking/thinking for a while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T21:19:37.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10628" CreationDate="2014-03-28T22:55:08.743" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your title, first sentence, paragraph, page, and chapter are your hooks to catch the reader.  Make sure they are baited well.  So, if you start with internal monologue, it had better be interesting, not just bland, random thoughts about how it's high up on the wherever.  I realize that was just an example, but compare:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bad: &quot;It's so high up here,&quot; thought Sam as he climbed a tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK: &quot;It's so high up here,&quot; thought Sam from the claws of the giant&#xA;eagle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better: &quot;I can see the whole Shire,&quot; marveled Sam, then screamed as he began to fall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T22:55:08.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9122" CreationDate="2014-03-29T22:37:06.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Text files quickly become annoying when you have more than a few thousand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would write my journal into a &lt;strong&gt;MySQL database&lt;/strong&gt; on my web space, create a simple PHP web interface to update, search and display entries, do more advanced operations in phpMySQL or through a direct SSH connection to the database server, and create a cronjob that will back it up in daily data dumps that get saved on the web server and emailed to me, with dumps older than 30 days automatically deleted. This way you have raw data that you can work on in any way to want, a one-file backup that you can open in any old text editor that reads plain text files, and you can create an interface that does everything you want and nothing more you don't need. You can export through PHP or Python or whatever you want into any format, from HTML to LaTeX to RTF, and you can easily re-arrange the different &quot;sections&quot; of your content (date, entry text, headline, keywords, etc.), if ever you think you want the date after the text instead of before it, as you wrote it in your text file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T22:37:06.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10549" CreationDate="2014-03-31T14:48:46.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your main problem/complaint seems to be that your thoughts don't automatically organize themselves.  Take comfort.  You are normal.  Try the following (in order): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) First, just get ideas down.  I like to use FreeMind for this phase, and also a spiral-bound notebook that has no purpose except to jot down ideas.  Note that &quot;jotting down an idea&quot; can run on for a while, several pages sometimes, but it is still very rough.  This is the research and ideating phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Turn your FreeMind diagram and your jotted-down ideas into an outline.  It is VERY important to outline in the proper manner.  You do NOT write I, then A, then 1., then a., then 1), etc.  Nooooo!  You write I, II, III, IV, etc.  Only then do you go back and put in A, B, C, etc. for your main points.  And so on as you get more and more detailed.  You do NOT try to flesh out the skeleton until you've got the whole skeleton.  Otherwise, you lose the forest for the trees (sorry, mixing my metaphors here) and you get bogged down in a slough of despond (literary allusion, Google it).  This is the organizing phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) After you've got a nice detailed outline, then start writing sentences for each sub-point.  You can also start pulling in paragraphs you may have in your &quot;jotting-down&quot; notebook.  You might also want to talk against your outline, using a speech-to-text program.  Don't stop to fix any mistakes in the machine transcription.  Don't even look at it.  Just keep talking.  This is the &quot;crappy first draft&quot; stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Go back and do a first edit of what you've go so far.  At this point, you're just trying to make it coherent.  Don't worry about the perfect word or turn of phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Go away from what you just wrote.  Do something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6) Come back and do a final edit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;7) Post it; mail it; turn it in to the teacher.  You'll never make it perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last note: Obviously, depending on the length and importance of your final written whatever, you can speed through some of these steps.  But this should be your standard operating procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T14:48:46.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10629" CreationDate="2014-03-31T15:05:39.513" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difference between kishoutenketsu and Western twists... I hadn't thought about that before. I can think of a few differences, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever seen a yonkoma manga? They're four panel comics that normally follow kishoutenketsu structure. The idea is that the first panel is &lt;strong&gt;ki&lt;/strong&gt;, the second is &lt;strong&gt;shou&lt;/strong&gt;, the third is &lt;strong&gt;ten&lt;/strong&gt;, and the fourth is &lt;strong&gt;ketsu&lt;/strong&gt;. So the panels usually work like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ki&lt;/strong&gt;: A scene is set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shou&lt;/strong&gt;: Elaboration on the scene from the first panel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ten&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Climax, an unforseen event that doesn't have to do with ki and shou directly&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ketsu&lt;/strong&gt;: Resolution, effects of third panel on first two panels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you flesh out Kishoutenketsu to a TV show or something like that... the difference between a Western twist and the Kishoutenketsu is that Kishotenketsu doesn't have conflicts written into them. But Western twists have conflict written into them. Let's use your example to determine the structure of a Western twist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m thinking, for example, of the way many American police dramas (such as Law &amp;amp; Order) adhere to the following structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The viewers are introduced to the crime, the detectives, and the initial suspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the suspects is captured and it seems like all the evidence points to him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Surprise! New evidence comes to light, or someone makes a confession, that destroys the prosecution’s case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A fresh round of investigation reveals the true criminal, who is brought to justice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This structure works like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act 1&lt;/strong&gt;: Introduce a conflict&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act 2&lt;/strong&gt;: Builds on act 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act 3&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Twist based on acts 1 and 2&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act 4&lt;/strong&gt;: Resolution based on twist from Act 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it sounds like Kishoutenketsu, but the major difference is in the twist, which you've noted. However, act 4 and Ketsu are also changed because of the twist/ten. For Kishoutenketsu, ketsu is the sum of all the parts-- what happened in ki and shou plus the seemingly unrelated third act come together in the end. But for Western twists, Act 4 is based almost completely on act 3, though it's resolving a problem from either act 1 or 2 (depending on where the problem originates, in Law and Order conflict is usually set up in act 1, but some cartoons/pilot episodes set up the problem in act 2 and use act 1 to set up the setting and characters). It doesn't really sum everything up... per se. Examples would help, probably so here you go!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kishoutenketsu (for the most part) has two acts that are &amp;quot;straight&amp;quot;, by which I mean they follow each other logically. For example: if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ki&lt;/strong&gt; is &amp;quot;a boy sees a vending machine&amp;quot;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;shou&lt;/strong&gt; could be &amp;quot;boy buys soda from vending machine, receives drink&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;strong&gt;ten&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;doesn't have to be related to &lt;strong&gt;ki&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;shou&lt;/strong&gt; at all&lt;/em&gt;. It can be disconnected (it usually is disconnected). So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ten&lt;/strong&gt; could be &amp;quot;boy goes into his house&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ketsu&lt;/strong&gt; would then be &amp;quot;boy notices the same soda he bought sitting on the table in his house&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ketsu brings the three acts together by showing the effects of the third panel on the first two. You can't really compare ki and ketsu, the connection between the two isn't apparent unless you know what happened in shou and ten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the western style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;act 1&lt;/strong&gt; is &amp;quot;boy sees vending machine&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Act 2 is &amp;quot;Boy buys drink from vending machine,&amp;quot; but there's no conflict if he just gets a drink. Act 3 is a twist based on act 1 and 2, and act 1 hasn't brought anything up but the vending machine. Act 2 needs to build on act 1. In Western style writing usually has the protagonist in conflict with something-- in this case, the vending machine. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;act 2&lt;/strong&gt; would probably be &amp;quot;Boy buys drink from vending machine, doesn't get drink&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as that is a legitimate way to build on act 1's situation.  But Act 3 probably isn't &amp;quot;boy goes home,&amp;quot; since that isn't based on act 1 and 2. What's more likely to happen is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;act 3&lt;/strong&gt; is &amp;quot;boy kicks machine&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or something like that. Then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;act 4&lt;/strong&gt; as the resolution would be something like &amp;quot;boy gets drink&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Act 4 resolves the conflict in act 2, but it doesn't really unify acts 1 and 3 much. I mean, act 1 is just the set-up for act 2, and act 3 is the &amp;quot;defeat&amp;quot; of the problem laid out in act 2, but act 4 doesn't really unify everything. Act 1 and Act 4 could be compared to show what the story itself is about. The protagonist was without a drink (act 1) and becomes a protagonist with a drink (act 4).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't really explain the &amp;quot;without conflict&amp;quot; part of it because I picked a pretty bad example, but... in the kishoutenketsu example, there's no real conflict. Think about it-- there's no struggle, there's no fighting, there's nothing fundamentally &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; happening. It's just a situation at hand. I mean... the protagonist isn't really &amp;quot;against&amp;quot; anything, right? He's just buying a drink and going home. But in the Western example, the protagonist is against the vending machine. The machine denies him a drink and he &amp;quot;defeats&amp;quot; the machine. There's conflict there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are probably other differences between the two, but I'm not well-versed in kishoutenketsu as far as TV shows/movies are concerned... I've never noticed this structure in a show, is what I mean. But I don't watch much Japanese TV since I'm not in Japan (I've watched Japanese movies, but I don't know if it's applied to movies). I do notice it in books (and manga) though, and for the most part it follows a similar structure to what I've explained here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T15:05:39.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10343" CreationDate="2014-03-31T22:55:58.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Developing a book or a screenplay both begin in much the same way: plot and characters. The formatting and presentation of both once written couldn't be more different. Books are usually written in paragraphs and chapters, where screenplays adhere to strict formatting rules and are always in present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no right or wrong way to start writing a script, as there is no right or wrong way to write a novel. Some will start with a treatment (a prose telling of the story), others will dive right in and &quot;find&quot; the story through the dialog. Some screenwriters (e.g. Paul Schrader) claim to imagine the whole movie in their heads before committing anything to paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to find what's &quot;normal&quot; for you. I've written a few short screenplays in the past, and for me, the method that works is to start with a one page treatment and then launch into a first draft of the script. Followed by &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of rewriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8255" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T22:55:58.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10639" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-01T09:48:00.493" Score="2" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished writing this essay and so my ability to impartially judge it is impaired.  Please critique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The essay is supposed to use a recent controversy in the art world as a launchpad to explore the societal implications of censorship; specifically, does censorship help or harm our society?  My argument is that knowledge is always better than ignorance, even if ignorance is in many cases more comfortable; and that censorship can only be of detriment, considering that it is the moral values of a small group of people, a system of values not necessarily representative of all who are subjected to the censorship, that is the determinant of what is and is not fit for public consumption, and which in effect leaves much room for corruption and abuse.  Is this argument clear in the essay?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;L'etat c'est moi&quot; in English is &quot;I am the state.&quot;  I had to type it in French because the source I cited had it in French.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the paragraph concerning the misleading nature of the mainstream press, I was considering taking a headline from a well-known newspaper and breaking it down, showing how the title leads the reader to assumptions that aren't necessarily true.  For instance, just to make something up:  &quot;Japanese Business Magnate Stifles Competition Once Again&quot;.  This title leads the reader to assume that the businessman is intentionally harming his competitors, as opposed to just doing business (thus giving his character an immoral bent), and giving off the impression, from the start, that the guy is a callous and cutthroat businessman.  Would this be more appropriate than what I've already written?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance to anyone who combs through and gives an honest critique.  It will be much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A woman is brutally raped, decapitated, and her headless corpse defiled; a baby is molested the moment it leaves the womb; a man unwittingly rapes his only son.  These are but a few of the grisly, unsettling scenes contained in the notorious Serbian feature, aptly titled “A Serbian Film”; scenes that brought censure and censorship upon the film worldwide.  Netflix refuses to host it.  In Germany, the film had to be cut by thirteen minutes in order for its distribution to avoid violating German federal law.  It is banned outright in Spain, Norway, New Zealand, and Australia.  In the U.S. and Britain, it was until only recently available in versions cut by over four minutes.  It isn't off the mark to remark that “A Serbian Film” offended quite a few people.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many critics dismissed it as a cheap exploitation film, appealing to people's inexplicable yet undeniable attraction to sex and violence (and particularly their combination) to turn a profit.  The director – first-time Serbian auteur Srdan Spasojevic – , however, states otherwise.  To him, the film is an overt attack on the understated oppression of his government; a narrative representation of the intangible violations of personal freedom imposed upon Serbians by those who have usurped the state.  “This is a diary of our own molestation by the Serbian government,” said Spasojevic.  “It's about the monolithic power of leaders to hypnotize you to do things you don't want to do.  You have to feel the violence to know what it's about.”(Kohn, par 7).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is this hypnotism of which the director speaks?  Is it some imperceptible coercion, brought about not through the use of force but by psychological manipulation on a mass scale?  And if so, what does any of this have to do with murder or rape?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The invisible hand by which governments regiment their respective societies is not wholly unlike rape.  “In the days when kings were kings, Louis XIV made his modest remark, “L'Etat c'est moi1.”  He was nearly right,” begins the second chapter of Edward Bernays' seminal propaganda manual, Propaganda.  He goes on to explain how printing and public education made possible the transfer of power from monarchs and aristocrats – who, prior to these liberating inventions, had a virtual monopoly on information – to the less endowed, and how information rapidly trickled down through the hierarchy, until anyone with a desire to learn could do so for the cost of a couple of books.  This newly informed public posed a threat to those in power, as they were no longer blithely blinded to the nature of their dispositions.  And so, as Bernays put it, “the masses promised to become king.”(Bernays, 47).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When faced with a situation in which their lofty stature is threatened, a government must take action to ensure that this threat remains a threat.  Violence against its people is not an option, as this will brand it worldwide as a ruthless totalitarian regime, and thus mar the country's global image.  They must, therefore, take a subtler approach.  This approach is succinctly defined in the following passage: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.  Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”(Bernays, 37). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But a lack of physical violence does not mean all is well, as this pernicious form of control deprives all who unwittingly submit of the greatest freedom there is:  the freedom to think for oneself.  This deprivation, this psychic rape, is the underlying theme of “A Serbian Film”; and despite its exploitative veneer, the film carries a deep message about the unspoken horrors of autocratic regimentation.  It is perhaps the film's deeply disturbing implications, more so than its overt depictions of gruesome violence, that stirred up so much controversy around the globe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Human beings prefer comfort.  Naturally.  One of the common themes of humanity is the constant search for a better life, a life of emotional and material well-being; the billions of dollars spent per year on higher education is a testament to this.  And once this comfort level is attained, most are loathe to relinquish it, for any reason – even knowledge.  Blind eyes and deaf ears are the best insurance against distress, and the ease with which any one person can ignore the unpleasant aspects of his or her society allows such ignorance to thrive.  Governments and their corporate associates make it as easy as possible for us to remain unaware of what they are doing, why they are doing it, and that they are doing anything at all worth notice besides, of course, valiantly serving their citizens and customers.  This atmosphere of illusions, while fully exploiting humans' natural tendency toward placidity, does succeed in keeping civil affairs comparatively quiet.  Some (mainly bureaucrats and the commercial entities who serve them) argue that the forfeiture of self-control is both validated by the peace that it brings and necessary; that the common citizen is incapable of serving his or her own needs, and requires an elite assembly to look after them.  And it seems most citizens tacitly agree.  Maintenance of luxury is, for many, of a higher priority than self-determination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A prevalent problem, indeed; and just the issue that Spasojevic addresses in his debut film.  According to a report on censorship within the Serbian media, “Soft censorship can cause pervasive self-censorship that restricts reporting while maintaining the appearance of media freedom.”(Lansner, 4).  The constricted market for breaking news has created a scarcity of funds for the over one thousand media outlets, public and private, who are now engaged in a bitter game of survival of the fittest, fighting to survive in an environment where “safeguards against monopolies and a framework for free competition are very weak.”(Lansner, 9).  Media companies, facing an apathetic public numbed to executive corruption, and who spend less money on newspapers and more time watching television than the populace of any other country worldwide, are almost entirely dependent on extrinsic funding to operate.  This puts the Serbian government and state-owned business in an advantageous position:  they, with the aid of a minimum 10% personal income tax rate (Tax, 7), have the sole power to determine which outlets survive, and which wither and die from fiscal starvation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Between two media outlets – one that reports favorably upon the government and one that reports the facts – it is simple to ascertain which shall receive assistance, and which shall not.  As stated in the report on Serbian media censorship, “Most public funds that reach Serbia's media are distributed arbitrarily and in a nontransparent manner, without clear or measurable criteria, public procedures, or controls.  These funding methods are drastically undermining free competition in the media industry.  The most prominent forms of state intervention in the media sector are instrumental in translating financial power of state bodies and organizations into political influence on media content.”(Lansner, 12).  This is troubling information, as a politicized media is more insidious than no media at all.  In a state-imposed communications blackout, the citizens are at least aware that they are being deprived of information; the victims of indirect censorship have no such benefit.  They receive the news, convinced – because they want to believe – that the information they are receiving is legitimate, and that they are now informed citizens, well aware of the machinations of those behind the ruse.  Of course this is never true, as the only information worth having, at least as pertains to governmental affairs, is that which governments try their best to hide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The media situation in Serbia is not unique.  Citizens across the world are or have been the victims of government propaganda; this includes supposedly developed countries such as the United States and those in Western Europe.  This is evidenced by the following exposition, referring to the use of propaganda against the citizens of the United States and Great Britain prior to the first world war:&#xA;     “...it was not until 1915 that governments first systematically deployed the entire range of modern media to rouse their populations to fanatical assent.  Here was an extraordinary state accomplishment:  mass enthusiasm at the prospect of a global brawl that otherwise would mystify those very masses, and that shattered most of those who actually took part in it.”(Bernays, 11).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And in every instance when a citizenry discovered themselves as the targets of mass manipulation, they were outraged.  There is evidence of this in the form of the term 'propaganda'; a word that, despite its relatively innocent origins, is now a universal pejorative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Such was the reaction of Spasojevic, who responded with a vicious backlash against his government's attempts at thought-control with his widely censored debut.  The film revolves around former male porn star, Milos, who, while hot property in his younger days, is now a bit washed up.  He has money stashed away from past productions (which continually declined in quality), but not enough to support himself and his family until their expiration.  An old industry friend informs him of a lucrative new gig:  a lavish production produced by an eccentric billionaire, Vukmir, that promises to pay a salary that will carry even his five-year-old son to the grave.  Initially reluctant – as the sole condition of the contract is that he is denied access to the contents of the script – Milos eventually accepts, unable to resist the exorbitant pay he is promised to receive.  He soon realizes the gravity of his mistake, as he is thereafter forced by threat of mortal violence to torture, rape, and kill a number of women and children (including his own five-year-old son, in an especially disturbing scene), and is drugged, raped, brutalized, and psychologically tortured all the way through to the film's acutely distressing climax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The characters in “A Serbian Film” are abstracted representations of the relationship between the Serbian people and their government.  Serbia is a new democracy, having shed its Communist ideals only a little over a decade ago.  A hopeful public, eager to rid their country of incessant inter-warfare, widespread poverty, and Soviet-style corruption, these long-conflicted Serbians wanted only the opportunity to live freely in an open society, where individualism flourishes and personal aspirations are not stunted by rampant bureaucratic greed.  They were granted none of this.  Instead, they were transitioned into an environment in which “free-market competition is absent...due to the state's interference and systemic corruption”, and where “democratization of the media system...was more a function of the new elites' political will than an intrinsic evolution as part of overall democratization.”(Lansner, 9).  In short, their hopes were shattered.  It is no wonder that many of them slunk desolately into their armchairs, drowning out their misery with the mind-numbing opium that is broadcast television.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Milos, along with all of the women and children he was forced to victimize, represents the Serbian people:  a people striving toward a lifestyle of freedom and dignity, only to be repeatedly raped by those in a more propitious position.  Vukmir, the ominous sadist catapulted to the heights of ecstasy at the sight of human suffering, represents the new Serbian regime – callous and ravenous, a ruthless psychopath with depravity in his blood and a taste for all things inhumane.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The film's ending presents a perceptive metaphor that contains a chilling significance:  are we – the willing objects of deception – equally responsible for the debasement of our societies?  Do we, in our relentless pursuit of comfort and peace of mind, allow such corruption to flourish?  These are pertinent questions, the ignorance of whose answers is made easy by the cunning use of mainstream media by politico-commercial interests.  In the American mainstream press, for instance, the only condemnations of government officials on public access media are highly superficial:  moral lapses such as infidelity, drug use, and the like.  Nothing of real consequence is reported upon until an independent newsgroup digs up something serious and circulates it on the web – that ultimate instrument of information liberation; then mainstream outlets, aware that if they fail to address the issue in their broadcasts the omission will be noticed, discuss the issue, at this point having nothing to lose.  Outside of these ostentatious displays of honest journalism, mainstream media are more likely to report upon the vices of celebrities than those of public officials.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are, of course, alternative sources of information, whose sole purpose is to deliver the truth to all those willing to accept it.  But this is where the will of the citizens becomes a vital factor:  if they choose to ignore information that could potentially disrupt their pleasant views of how society operates – views gladly fostered by the journalistic benefactors of political image – in order to retain their state of emotional comfort, then the fault of ignorance lies entirely with them.  When all is considered, it is the individual's right and responsibility to stay informed, whatever the emotional cost of this may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regardless of individual ignorance, however, governments must still be held responsible for what cannot be considered anything but purposeful censorship, in that those subjects that are – on the word of a narrow, ill-representative segment of the population – conveniently branded as obscene are simply omitted by those sources of information which, at the core of their philosophy, are meant to provide us with the necessary knowledge for self-regulation – the crux of any democratic society.  When this information is skewed, altered, or presented in a misleading way, the fundamental purpose of public media assumes a sinister new form.  No longer is it the honest, responsible, vigilant distributor of crucial information, but a tool of government deception; and if we, as a world citizenry, genuinely wish to live in a democratic society, it is imperative that we, by means of exercising the autonomy with which we are all endowed and well able to practice with sufficient intellectual effort, resist all attempts at indoctrination by those who wish to mold our minds.  Only with this concerted effort can we hope to build and maintain a world civilization that can by any standard be considered free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“A Serbian Film” shocked audiences around the world with its depictions of brutal violence and its abrasive political themes.  This is just what the writer-director intended.  In his creation of this harrowing film he made a statement, loud and strong, against censorship of any kind, wishing to tell the world of the pernicious effects of the Serbian government's indoctrination of his people through the use of media manipulation, and to warn us all of the capabilities of our own ruling bodies to do the same.  The social message of his debut was missed by many who, instead of appreciating such a passionate indictment of underhanded government oppression, saw only pornographic exploitation.  As one British film critic said:  “...it is worth pointing out that the BBFC's decision is symptomatic of a general reluctance among certain British institutions to consider film as art.  It is because the British censors can only see cinema as entertainment that their understanding of 'A Serbian Film' remained shockingly literal, and that they misconstrued the film as a violent spectacle, instead of seeing it for the denunciation of violence that it very clearly is.”  A damning quote.  The surface violence of the film is less troubling than its belligerent political statement, simply because, while the graphic, often over-the-top bloodshed on display is a distant fiction, an exception to everyday reality, government indoctrination through the quiet manipulation of the press is a constant threat.  It is this uncomfortable aspect of our societies that Spasojevic meant to convey, and framing his admonition in the context of the depths of human savagery was the most effective method by which he could convey it.  And it worked; the world listened.  Yet the censors and those with like minds refused to absorb the film's message, and, seeing only its blood-stained facade, accused it of promoting primitive savagery.  Grievous transgressions require violent denunciations, but, on account of all who choose comfort over clarity, it is often the denunciation, and not the iniquity itself, that is mindlessly labeled obscene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8257" LastEditorUserId="8257" LastEditDate="2014-04-08T21:49:22.220" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T21:49:22.220" Title="Is Mine a Convincing Argument Concerning the Effects of Censorship?" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-04-08T15:56:02.460" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="72" CreationDate="2014-04-01T15:50:18.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Apple and the Microsoft style manuals (do not have the exact names with me to provide) are valuable for as style guides for software documentation and any writing about computers. They were formerly available easily on the websites, but have become harder to find. Maybe someone has archived these? Search around in MSDN and you'll find the current Microsoft UI documentation guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were THE definitive guides for whether &quot;double-click&quot; has a hyphen (it does), what to call an interface thingy that you click to select one of several options (MS calls it an &quot;option button&quot;, Apply calls it a &quot;radio button&quot; and that sort of thing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8355" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T15:50:18.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10481" CreationDate="2014-04-01T17:58:54.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Too many legal questions to ask writers about. You need advice from a legal expert on the laws in the jurisdiction where you are publishing. Libel laws in the UK and US are quite different (but I'm not an expert). And to get useful advice, you need to have a completed manuscript that the expert can review. Anything else is pointless hypotheticals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8356" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T17:58:54.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10643" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10646" CreationDate="2014-04-01T20:51:09.473" Score="14" ViewCount="3466" Body="&lt;p&gt;Software products evolve more rapidly each day. Technical documentation for those products must also follow their evolution. One of the biggest challenges is to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/3785&quot;&gt;maintain screenshots&lt;/a&gt; when the graphical user interface (GUI) changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An easy way to reduce the pain of updating screenshots is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to use them except when they're really useful. It's been debated before, namely &lt;a href=&quot;http://user-assistance.blogspot.ca/2009/10/screen-shots-in-documentation.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see lots of technical documents that use text to get the job done, e.g.,  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Go to &lt;strong&gt;Start Menu&lt;/strong&gt; &gt; &lt;strong&gt;Search programs and files&lt;/strong&gt; and enter &quot;snipping tool&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;rather than putting up three screenshots showing all those steps. It assumes, however, that users are going to know where the &quot;Start&quot; menu is, etc. With some software, it's obvious. Also, the user's skill level plays a role in whether or not it's useful to provide screenshots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The GNOME project has recommendations for online help and printed materials, including &lt;a href=&quot;https://developer.gnome.org/gdp-style-guide/stable/infodesign-8.html.en#infodesign-10&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;screenshots&lt;/a&gt;, but it seems that it's limited to one type of software (GNOME Desktop distributions). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given limited technical writing (training) resources, every screenshot has a risk that it will need updating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of a &lt;strong&gt;set of heuristics&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;evidence-based reasoning&lt;/strong&gt; on &lt;strong&gt;how to decide whether a screenshot is worth the maintenance risk to put in training documentation&lt;/strong&gt;? I'm looking for official policy, similar to that of the GNOME reference above, but for other types of software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Please don't assume that the technical writers are working for the company producing the software. Many writers have to produce training materials for open-source software used in organizations. Such software is often powerful, but not intuitive; trainers fill the gaps to explain how to use the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8357" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T20:27:39.387" LastActivityDate="2020-03-06T23:23:10.940" Title="When is a screenshot really useful in training documentation?" Tags="|technical-writing|training-materials|graphics|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10644" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-02T05:40:24.647" Score="3" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a novel based on my past life experiences, however the story involves a few people who might not like the idea of getting their stories published. What is the legal and social effects that I should consider and take care of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3861" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T10:14:59.373" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T08:37:53.107" Title="Legal and Social effect of story involving real life people" Tags="|legal|biography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10643" CreationDate="2014-04-02T10:32:17.673" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am just sharing the guidelines I work by. If required, we can discuss the reasoning behind these guidelines and may be even specific examples. (Say, for example, beyond maintainability and localization costs, yet another reason text is better for less-than-complex steps is search engine optimization.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When &lt;strong&gt;to use&lt;/strong&gt; screenshots?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need the context of the UI to make a targeted point about how to accomplish a specific task. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It highlights an unusual interface choice or adds clarity and permits brevity of text, that is, it saves several descriptive sentences about options necessary to complete a procedure. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To refer to an unnamed UI element in a task, and the reader cannot easily identify or find it without a callout.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To highlight differences between two versions of the product, for example, old vs. new, or Mac vs. Windows.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When &lt;strong&gt;not to use&lt;/strong&gt; screenshots?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To track the user’s progress through various screens encountered in a workflow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solely for the purpose of helping the reader locate easily identifiable UI elements. You can use an inline icon if you think there is a need for a graphic element to help the reader. For example, if the UI has a non-standard icon then place a 16x16 icon inline in the instructions asking user to click the icon. Also, situate the user on the UI using text like top-left corner, right side panel, left side bar, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of a step in a task, solely for showing a result of the step, unless the screenshot serves to provide reassurance to the user during a complex procedure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5464" LastEditorUserId="5464" LastEditDate="2018-06-07T07:26:04.143" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T07:26:04.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10643" CreationDate="2014-04-02T14:53:38.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll give you an answer not as a writer (I don't write technical documentation), but as a &lt;strong&gt;user&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to &lt;em&gt;sell&lt;/em&gt; your software, because selling your software will give you a job as a writer of software documentation. You sell your software by great user experience. Great user experience relies to a large part on easy to use software documentation. So making the software documentation pleasurable for the end user will help you keep making your livelihood. Just so you get the right perspective on your job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the 20 years that I have been using computers and software, there have been many programs that received raving reviews and that (supposedly) did exactly what I wanted them to do and that I bought and paid for, but that I stopped using pretty quickly, because getting around the documentation was continually annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much can go wrong with documentation, but since your question is about sceenshots, I will focus on those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do all people love movies and tv, but not books? Why do we write to dating profiles with images, not without? Why do we use PowerPoint and not just talk to our audience? Because human beings prefer visual over text information. We can process it more quickly, and in larger volumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I search for a software problem on the web, I open the first few Google hits in my browser and then go through the open tabs. If the solution is text only, I close it immediately without reading it. Reading a handful of paragraphs of text to understand if the page even addresses my problem takes much too much time. If I can see an image, I know with one quick glance if the help page is about what I want to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course with your documentation I won't be searching the web and clicking it away for the next document, but in my overall experience with solutions to software problems I will compare it to everything I have seen. And in this comparison, (meaningful, no-noise) images are a definite plus. So: &lt;strong&gt;Screenshots help the user to navigate the documentation and identify the relevant help section.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do people love cook books with step by step images? Because their kitchen is not text. Their kitchen is a visual experience, and if the cook book shows how the kitchen (or a part of it: the pot) should look like, that makes understanding the procedure and checking if what the hobby cook does is according to plan so much more easy, quick and fun. The same goes for software: When I have a problem, I have the software open and do what the documentation tells me to do. I just &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; if I can scroll up the manual annotated screenshot by annotated screenshot while I do what I'm shown in the side-by-side software window. Why do kids follow the bad example of their smoking (or non-smoking parents) instead of what they are told? Because they do what they &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt;! So: &lt;strong&gt;Screenshots help users understand and learn how to use their software.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Words are abstract, and abstraction does not come natural to most (if not all) people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Images are the natural &quot;language&quot; of your world-experience. If you present information in visual form, it arrives in the heads of your users much more easily and pleasurably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more visual a software experience is, the less text it needs to be mastered, the better it sells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T14:53:38.570" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10628" CreationDate="2014-04-02T15:37:21.117" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read several stories where this sort of technique is employed. The most memorable had something to do with the character pondering their own death, and the rest of the story consisted of the events leading up to it. It started with something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hadn't expected to die so young.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I admit this might have worked purely because of the shock value of the first sentence, but I don't think that it was just the shock value. It was neat to be inside a character's head starting at the very beginning. The reader gets to know the character very quickly that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main difference between this example and what you proposed is that your example is in third person and this example is in first person. I think you might have to play with the structure more to have it be a strong hook in third person, and you'd have a lot of quick introduction to make, but it could definitely work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5303" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T15:37:21.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10650" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10659" CreationDate="2014-04-02T15:42:33.383" Score="6" ViewCount="44022" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an essay (MLA style) for class and I am quoting a whole sentence within my sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&#xA;They published a “manifesto” proclaiming that “[a]ll are welcome to walk through our doors and speak.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the article the word 'all' is capitalized because it is the beginning of the sentence. &#xA;However, when quoting the sentence do I keep it capitalized, can I just switch it to lowercase, or do I have it right as is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8364" LastEditorUserId="5909" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T09:44:09.473" LastActivityDate="2018-11-03T20:56:04.647" Title="Changing Capitalization in a Quote - MLA" Tags="|style|academic-writing|essay|quotes|mla|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9122" CreationDate="2014-04-02T18:06:59.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've kept journals in a variety of formats some that have gone obsolete, and I have settled on a big old .rtf as a reasonable solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a key combo to insert a date and time stamp so I don't even have to worry about the formatting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The .rft format allows for some basic formatting that allows for some nuance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I go back and read a single file per year makes it very easy to read over that year, and the file size is more then small enough to be easy to store on all sorts of platforms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I find I sometimes have to do is add contextual details to old entries because I forgot why that was a big deal. If you weren't in the loop at the time someone reading it later just has no clue what it all means and why it was important to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do need to do a better job tagging my images because they are important too so they can be related back to the context as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5715" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T18:06:59.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10187" CreationDate="2014-04-02T19:51:24.750" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your main concern is unoriginality. Don't worry about this. First of all, originality is over-rated. It is a cultural value that was not always there. In his Ars Poetica, Horace urges his reader to avoid originality, and only do something new if he absolutely must. The classical writers were not concerned with being original, but rather with telling it 'otherwise', putting a new spin on something old. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editorial-type worrying will slaughter you. You cannot write with the same brain that you edit with. They are mutually exclusive. It may be that all your efforts come to nothing, which is one of the main risks of the writing profession, but it is better to finish something and realize that you can't use it than to stop working on something because you have editorial concern X. The moment you listen to those concerns, they multiply. There is no end to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, consider how original plot moves CAN be. Plot is abstract structure, as such it is one of the aspects of a book that can be translated into another language almost perfectly (mathematics can be translated perfectly because it is pure abstract structure). The closer you get to the skeleton of the story, the closer you get to the plot, the more abstract and general everything becomes. On this level, stories begin to resemble each other more and more and as such, originality of plot is not even really a virtue of plot. A much more important virtue for plot is coherence, elegance of construction, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All human beings have the same skeleton but you don't go around looking for a lover with an original skeleton. Do you?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8367" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T19:51:24.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10653" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10654" CreationDate="2014-04-02T21:02:00.420" Score="2" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has it happened to you that &quot;you're in love&quot; with an idea of yours? Like a core idea that you won't let go no matter what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard that people usually write, check and recheck the story they write, putting much effort into polishing. But once it fails due to some reason, they move to another one. If I speak of a story as the current assembly of elements that the story have, then maybe the story it's dead there. But If I talk about the core idea that drives the story, not the way it is told, wouldn't it be different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a story that was once presented to an editor, and rejected, be perfected in order to be presented to another editor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8267" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:53:10.507" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:53:10.507" Title="Can stories be &quot;revived&quot;?" Tags="|creative-writing|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10653" CreationDate="2014-04-02T22:14:33.873" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. When an editor rejects a story, you can revise it and submit it somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also submit it to another editor &lt;strong&gt;without revising it&lt;/strong&gt;. Editors are human, and have individual tastes. And their slush readers are humans with individual tastes. One editor or reader may hate a story, and another love it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, editors tastes differ from yours, which means that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An editor may love one of your stories that you don't think is very good.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The things you do to &quot;perfect&quot; a story might make it less suitable for any given editor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rejection may not be entirely (or even largely) about the story. It's just a mismatch between the story and the editors tastes and needs &lt;strong&gt;at that moment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So make the story as good as you know how. Don't worry about perfection. And try lots of editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T22:14:33.873" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10639" CreationDate="2014-04-03T00:59:16.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a few notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;understated oppression&quot; - doesn't make sense. Reporting on the oppression can be understated, but not the oppression itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same with &quot;blithely blinded&quot;. The blithely seems to refer to the doer who does the blinding, not the people who are unconcerned about being blinded as was probably your intent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you start a new thought or branch off from a current one, it really helps to start a new paragraph. IMHO, this needs quite a few of these. I constantly had to force myself not to skim instead of reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This concerns important and complex issues. Depending on the intended audience, it might benefit from shorter sentences and giving the audience smaller bites to swallow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am reminded of George Orwell's statement: &quot;He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, the whole issue of awareness is what lies behind all of this. The more aware (especially self-aware) an individual is, the less effective any &quot;propaganda&quot; or other forms of manipulation will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the main goals of those who wish to control others is to limit and channel their awareness. This runs the whole gamut from a magician's sleight of hand to assertions of the existence of weapons of mass destruction. It even finds its way into dictionaries where the meanings of words are subtly altered to reduce their power and accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T00:59:16.263" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10187" CreationDate="2014-04-03T06:10:00.760" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exploit your own weakness!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you've got a problem - but luckily for you, you're writing a &lt;em&gt;comedy&lt;/em&gt;, and your problem is actually &lt;em&gt;funny&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should openly address the issue of having &quot;Mr. Save-The-Day&quot; cliche. Turn it into a main theme in the story. Let your main character actually be distressed by it, or maybe even neglect his duty because of it. It makes the story unbelievable - so your character shouldn't believe it either! (Which will actually make the story believable again.) You can even refer to it as &quot;&lt;code&gt;generic fictional hero with prophetic cause #23496&lt;/code&gt;&quot; during the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T06:10:00.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10650" CreationDate="2014-04-03T13:01:29.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When using the MLA guideline and quoting a text, if you are introducing any modifications into the quotation, mark the same by placing square brackets [ ] at the appropriate spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example (adapted from &lt;a href=&quot;https://depts.washington.edu/engl/askbetty/changing_quotations.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Original quotation: &quot;Reading is also a process and it also changes you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;1) Margaret Atwood wants her readers to realize that &quot;[r]eading is also a process and it also changes [them]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;2) According to Atwood, reading can &quot;also change[] you&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Example 1, in order for the direct quotation to fit into the writer's sentence, the capitalized letter at the beginning of the quote and the pronoun at the end need to be changed. The square brackets around [r] and [them] indicate that these are the writer's modifications and do not appear in the original source text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Example 2, the writer has changed the verb tense by removing the &quot;s&quot; from &quot;changes.&quot; Empty square brackets indicate this change from the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are typographical or grammatical error in the source being quoted, do not correct the mistake. However, include a &quot;&lt;strong&gt;(sic)&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; (without the quotes but with the brackets) at the appropriate spot to indicate that there is a error in the quoted source. &lt;em&gt;Sic&lt;/em&gt; (Latin) translates to something like &quot;just as that&quot; or &quot;thus&quot; or &quot;so&quot;, indicating that you have taken the quote just the way it originally appeared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may also be worthwhile to have a look at the following references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Principal reference: &lt;a href=&quot;https://depts.washington.edu/engl/askbetty/changing_quotations.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://depts.washington.edu/engl/askbetty/changing_quotations.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/01/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/01/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000043.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000043.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://victorianconversations.blogspot.in/2008/03/mla-quotation-style-review.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://victorianconversations.blogspot.in/2008/03/mla-quotation-style-review.html&lt;/a&gt; (you can search for &quot;capitalization&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T13:01:29.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10650" CreationDate="2014-04-03T13:44:17.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd leave the capital letter in. Seems less problematic to have a capital letter than to have that bracket monstrosity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They published a “manifesto” proclaiming “All are welcome to walk through our doors and speak.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a suggestion. Style should be about helping readers, not creating symbolically correct code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8356" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T13:44:17.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-03T13:45:54.403" Score="0" ViewCount="1186" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the correct capitalization of the phrase &quot;One-on-one assistance&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One-on-one assistance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One-on-One assistance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One-on-One Assistance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am using it in a lower third title in a video. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8372" LastEditorUserId="4219" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T20:26:53.113" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T21:08:40.513" Title="Capitalization of Phrases: One-on-one assistance" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-04-04T01:02:52.053" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10664" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10674" CreationDate="2014-04-03T21:04:42.147" Score="6" ViewCount="972" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a visual novel my friend and I are writing, I created a female character who is obsessed with making furniture out of (living) people. Yeah, it's weird, but everyone in the story has their quirks. In the story, a bunch of social pariahs are trapped together in a hotel. She's one of the characters, but isn't a main character. She, along with the other non-main characters, all are supposed to seem a little off-kilter, so that it's reasonable to think they just snapped and murdered someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This woman says things in an odd, sometimes sexual, way especially if it's furniture related. If offered a seat, she'd say something along the lines of &quot;I disapprove of seats that aren't quivering with anticipation beneath me,&quot; or something like that (and then she forces someone into &quot;becoming a chair&quot;). She also doesn't notice people's faces first, instead noting some other part of them that's good for furniture. She refers to everyone in the story as &quot;it&quot; or &quot;that [furniture item]&quot; and talks about regular furniture items in a similar way (so she confuses some of the other characters when she talks to them). She also berates the characters who &quot;aren't beautiful&quot; for being &quot;defects&quot; and doesn't address them as furniture but &quot;materials,&quot; &quot;kindling,&quot; or something similar. But her furniture fetish isn't sexual (as in she's not getting any sort of sexual pleasure out of making people into furniture), just an oddity that she has. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite this, she's one of the more intelligent characters and so she has a lot of dialogue in the story. The problem is that my friend and I disagree on how prominent this feature of hers should be. I don't think she should constantly be saying things in that way, especially since her furniture fetish doesn't come into play much even if the others are talking to her. The way I write her, it's not very prominent at all (and not very sexual, normally). But my friend seems to like the idea of her being completely and totally obsessed with furniture and plays up the sexual aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I'd have her (Alice is her name) say (after being accused of killing another character):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Ah, I see. Indeed, it is true. I have no patience for unruly furniture or defective materials. But I hardly see why I would destroy something that doesn't drip with the pleasure of doing my bidding.&quot; She takes a drag from her cigarette, staring at me. I'm unsure if I should move or not-- Alice sometimes gets weird when she talks...like this. She blows out a stream of smoke and sighs. &quot;You see, footstool, I cherish my furniture whether or not it is misbehaving. And misbehavior is nothing that a good upholstering won't fix. For example, you would be a better footstool if you rid yourself of those itchy fabrics... but I'd settle for you changing the fabric every day. I'd probably fix you all the same, though. A good footstool should give foot massages.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my friend would make it extremely sexual on top of already being about furniture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ah, I see. Indeed, it is true. I have no patience for unruly furniture or defective materials. But I hardly see why I would destroy something that doesn't drip with the pleasure of doing my bidding. I do rather like the smell of sweating leathers...&quot; She takes a drag from her cigarette, staring at me. I'm unsure if I should move or not, she... could be thinking weird things about me again. She blows out a stream of smoke and sighs. &quot;You see, footstool, I cherish my furniture whether or not it is misbehaving. That is nothing that a good upholstering won't fix. A couple minutes with my tools and I'm sure any furniture would be begging to do as I say. In your case, footstool, I'd need to teach you proper etiquette. You don't prostrate yourself immediately when I enter, you never give me foot massages... It's almost as though I need to install some sort of vibrator to get what I want. Ah, yes, I rather like that. A vibrating mechanism would make you rather twitchy, wouldn't it? Perhaps then you could give me foot massages.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ugh... I can't write how my friend does. Well, you get what I mean, right? She &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt; elaborates when it comes to something that could be considered even slightly sexual. She'll even have the character derail conversations to talk about some sexual aspect of people becoming furniture. That does make her seem odd, though. On the other hand, if every now and then she says something sexual about furniture, that could also make her seem off, especially considering just how smart she is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to determine what would make her seem more off. Should we highlight the sexual way she talks about furniture and make it prominent in the way she talks? Or should we downplay it and make her say one-off comments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T14:26:42.020" Title="Should I highlight or downplay a character's quirk to make her seem more odd?" Tags="|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10661" CreationDate="2014-04-03T21:08:40.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Used as a title: &quot;One-on-One Assistance&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8255" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T21:08:40.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10666" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-04T02:07:28.240" Score="2" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;A local bookstore has decided to charge $35 to stock my book for 6 months.  For each book sold, they get 40%  and I get 60%.  The stocking charge is new.  Is this common and reasonable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8379" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T19:11:08.437" Title="Paying a bookstore to stock your self-published book" Tags="|sales|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10667" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11138" CreationDate="2014-04-04T05:00:42.277" Score="15" ViewCount="2495" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a non-fiction book that is ready for publishing, and I am weighing between whether to self-publish via modern methods made available by the internet, or go the more traditional route of searching for some kind of agency or publisher. My current feeling on the matter is that the pros of traditional representation no longer sufficiently outshine self-publishing. I realize this is a contentious issue, though, so I am only trying to express what I think might work best for me, not trying to make any general pronouncements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even though self publishing seem the best way forward for me at this stage, I am always adverse to closing any doors, and I wonder if doors do get closed by self publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering using the suite of Amazon services for eBook, Print on Demand, and audiobook distribution. If I do this, then, at some time in the future, if the opportunity to work with a publisher should arise, or if I become motivated to try and find representation, does the fact that I have already made my book available sour the desire for any agent or publisher to want to take my book further?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2753" LastEditorUserId="2753" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T12:26:24.840" LastActivityDate="2016-10-15T16:02:46.703" Title="Does self publishing via Amazon or similar services make your book ineligible for later acceptance by a publisher?" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10668" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-04T05:18:30.800" Score="6" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently leaning toward self-publishing my book via Amazon services. However, before I do, I am considering the pros and cons of searching for an agent or publisher. Please note that everything I am saying here is particular to my own situation, and I am not trying to make a general standpoint about the state of traditional or self publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, my book is complete and professionally edited, I am not that bothered about making money, and I just want my book to have the widest audience possible. That being the case, it seems publishers only have three advantages over self publishing. Access to distribution in book stores, marketing assistance, and the credibility of being associated with a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue of credibility is too multifaceted to cover in this question, so I'll just put that aside. More concretely, if I am willing to give up on access to book stores since distribution by online services seems sufficient for me, then all I really want is help in getting the word out about my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there people or companies who will help only with promotion in concert with online self-publishing? I might be using the wrong search terms on Google, but it seems all my queries end up at the same place, traditional publishing companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If book promotion specialists exist, do any of them work for percentages of sales? I would be hesitant to hand over cash in lump sums for the promise of promotion, as it seems their financial motivation would be in pulling in authors and not in pushing books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2753" LastActivityDate="2018-03-23T14:50:37.527" Title="Are there agents or representatives who only specialize in book promotion and not distribution?" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10666" CreationDate="2014-04-04T05:23:44.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the store gets 40% of the sale price, with a guaranteed minimum of $35 over 6 months, then that sounds reasonable.  After all, it costs them money to provide you with shelf space, whether your book sells or not.  But 40% PLUS the $35 seems unfair.  To me.  It seems like they don't want to run any risk of your book being a flop, but they also want to benefit in case the book is a hit.  I'd bargain for a better deal, or find another bookstore.  However, I'm not an expert on local bookstore policies.  You might try selling it as an e-book first.  A proven seller should merit a better deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T05:23:44.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10670" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10683" CreationDate="2014-04-04T10:54:47.023" Score="0" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been nurturing a story in my mind for a while. I want to write it as a novel and publish it online. But I find this whole writing thing intimidating and there seems to be a lot of things that I think I should consider before getting into action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An English degree. I guess it has been answered &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3186/no-english-degree-what-are-my-chances-on-successfully-publishing-a-novel&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am not a native English speaker. I learned, or more like grasped, English from a variety of sources like schools, movies, books, tv, blogs, webzines, etc. So I am afraid my paragraphs and sentences are going to lack persistence. How do I tackle it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My grammar is not bad. But is 'not bad' good enough?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the other things(if any) that I should consider? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6323" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T07:44:08.647" Title="Things to consider while writing a novel" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-04-07T12:07:10.783" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10667" CreationDate="2014-04-04T12:33:58.563" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read your comments: Lauren is right, CLockeWork is wrong. (Ok, ok, I'm oversimplifying)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=8408&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;There is a trend in publishing&lt;/a&gt; that suggests, that one of the best methods nowadays to get traditionally published, is by showing that your book has a (paying) audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/kiriblakeley/2011/03/24/kindle-millionaire-amanda-hocking-goes-traditional/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;If you self-publish your book and it sells&lt;/a&gt;, you have a very compelling reason for publishers to take your book. And &lt;a href=&quot;http://janefriedman.com/2012/12/12/getting-a-traditional-book-deal-after-self-publishing/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;if you can show that your book makes money&lt;/a&gt;, they don't give a damn about &quot;first rights&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book is successful, you should ask yourself, if you still need traditional publishing and why you shouldn't make more money without giving them a share. But that's totally up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book does not sell, then it is hard to convince a publisher to take it. And the &quot;first right&quot; problem will be the slightest issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to convince them, that your book sells, one way or the other. Hoping, that it will sell, because of the publisher's marketing is futile. Traditional publishers spend their marketing money on the books with the very high expectations. If your book is &quot;mid-list&quot; for them, you are out of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T19:27:53.177" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T19:27:53.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10664" CreationDate="2014-04-04T14:02:20.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think if she's a major secondary character, you should try a draft where you go big with the weirdness &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; trying to explain her or &quot;civilize&quot; her. Make her weird. Embrace her weirdness without apology. &lt;em&gt;She&lt;/em&gt; should embrace her weirdness without apology. And just as important, keep her mysterious &amp;mdash; don't explain or justify her kink or have her explain herself to anyone else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People have to go to her for answers (received wisdom), but she's strange and off-putting, yet somewhat appealing, and a bit naughty. So the main characters have to put up with her to get her knowledge. I think that gives you an opening for some interesting character tension. It leaves your main characters feeling off-kilter, because they're not entirely sure they can trust her, but they have no choice about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And she's going to do her weird aggressive flirting thing like in your second example, and the protagonists have to take it. Or not &amp;mdash; one could push back, and Alice gets pissed and leaves, and then the protagonists have to apologize and make it up to her. Or one of the protagonists decides that maybe she finds the idea of being Alice's footstool is somewhat intriguing, despite herself. More interesting tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say run with Domme Mame. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T14:02:20.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10664" CreationDate="2014-04-04T14:26:42.020" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like her better in your version. It's more interesting that she sees the entire world in terms of furniture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you make her aggressive sexually, than aggressive sexuality—regardless of kink—becomes the major feature of her character and that's pretty boring, even if the kink is pretty bizarre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of stories out there with kinky dominatrices in them, but vanishingly few have a person who is such a strong sociopath that they literally see other people as nothing more than talking furniture. That's pretty intriguing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T14:26:42.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10675" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-04T15:15:35.310" Score="0" ViewCount="3330" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it professionally acceptable to place a dash after a question mark in the following example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob: 'I don't like asking Matt but I need some help.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peter: 'Why don't you go and ask him to help you? - He's a really nice guy.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to use the dash to highlight the reason for the function of the question which is to encourage Bob to ask.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5924" LastActivityDate="2022-10-28T14:24:13.417" Title="Is it acceptable to place a dash after a question mark?" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10675" CreationDate="2014-04-04T16:04:44.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, because the dash (which should properly be an M-dash, like this — ) is an interrupter. You can use it at the end of a broken-off phrase, or if a sentence is interrupted, but you need some kind of narration in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Why &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; you go and ask him to help you? He's a really nice guy,&amp;quot; Peter added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Why &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; you go and ask him to help you?&amp;quot; Peter quickly added, &amp;quot;He's a really nice guy.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Why &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; you go and ask him to help you? I know you don't like him —&amp;quot; Peter continued, his tone clearly indicating what he thought of Bob's attitude, &amp;quot;— but he's really a nice guy.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Why &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; you go and ask him to help you? I know you don't like him —&amp;quot; Bob made a face; Peter shrugged. &amp;quot;— but he's really a nice guy.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I don't like to ask Matt for help — &amp;quot;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&amp;quot;Why &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; you go and ask him to help you? He's a really nice guy,&amp;quot; Peter added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T16:04:44.427" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9122" CreationDate="2014-04-04T16:56:22.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer completely depends on what you want to do with the files--&lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you want to access them in the future. Otherwise, organization doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to access them programmatically, using a program to read and operate on the text files? Open files manually, separately, and view them? Decide specifically how you want to access them later, and the organization should arise naturally from that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said you want to convert them using pandoc, but--what output? That's what I mean. Pandoc can manage whatever organization scheme you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Myself, I keep a journal in a single markdown file. Each #heading is a day's entry. Then, I can search a single file. I could easily do &quot;one file a day&quot;, but I have no reason to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8384" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T16:56:22.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10666" CreationDate="2014-04-04T19:11:08.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don’t know about the bookstore industry specifically, but stocking fees are pretty common in the retail business (at least in the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T19:11:08.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10679" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10680" CreationDate="2014-04-05T12:28:59.900" Score="-1" ViewCount="507" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the opening of a short story I'm writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1996 was the year I became obsessed with animal suicide. I guess you&#xA;  can say it became my reason to live—the sun in my sky, the very air I&#xA;  breathed. I talked about it the all the time: at home, at college, at&#xA;  parties, even at family reunions. So I wasn't surprised when people&#xA;  decided to keep a distance from me. I didn't blame them, though. No one wants&#xA;  to picture a drowning cat while enjoying a meal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This new found passion also interfered with my dating life. It turns&#xA;  out animal suicide isn't the best topic for a romantic dinner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Animal suicide?&quot; The guy I was dating stared at me across the table&#xA;  as though I had brought him some bad news. &quot;That's what your research&#xA;  is about?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, it's more like a side project,&quot; I explained. &quot;It's so&#xA;  interesting! Now I'm reading about thirty cows that threw themselves&#xA;  mysteriously off of a cliff. No one knows the reason, not even the&#xA;  person who wrote the article. Strange, isn't? What kind of existential&#xA;  crisis could lead cows to do that?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The guy never called again. Too bad. I was beginning to like him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I though the gender of the narrator would become apparent after the dinner part. But someone told me he couldn't figure out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I make the gender of the narrator more obvious? If so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2023-03-23T15:46:08.933" Title="Should I make the gender of the narrator more obvious?" Tags="|creative-writing|narrative|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10679" CreationDate="2014-04-05T13:30:42.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason you think it's obvious is that you assume that only a woman would be having a romantic dinner with a man. Your baseline assumption is that everyone is straight. There is absolutely nothing in the text which precludes the narrator from being a gay or bi man having a romantic dinner with another gay or bi man. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to assert her gender, you could throw in a bit of third-person description, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So I wasn't surprised when people decided to keep a distance from &quot;the lemming lady.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or the narrator's date could use her name:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's what your research is about, Sonya?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T13:30:42.720" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10681" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10684" CreationDate="2014-04-05T18:31:32.420" Score="3" ViewCount="371" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having encountered errors in technical documentation that almost certainly came from incomplete editing after copying from earlier documentation, I am curious about what techniques can be used to avoid this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, it seems difficult to strictly apply the programming principle of Don't Repeat Yourself since much of the documentation is written in a human language which is less friendly to automated macro insertion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Automatic consistency might be possible for tables and diagrams with a regular structure, and often such features could be generated automatically from lower level data. This would not necessarily guarantee consistency with the actual product, but [barring bugs in the translation software] descriptions would be consistent from the lower level upward. If this extended down to the hardware description language, only translation bugs would be an issue, but I do not know if that is practical and such would apply less to architectural documentation than to implementation documentation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using macros as much as practical would help (e.g., many numerical substitutions could be automated), and it might be possible to include dependency information to highlight when changes in certain parts of the document (or system of information) might require changes in other parts of the document. In some cases, automatic generation of documentation that only needs modest modification for readability might be practical and minimize the use of copy-paste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What practical techniques help avoid incomplete changes to documentation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T10:22:13.430" Title="How does one avoid incomplete changes to documentation?" Tags="|technical-writing|editing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10682" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-06T16:26:49.367" Score="9" ViewCount="911" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was intending to create an audiobook version of my book by recording my own narration, and then upload and distribute it via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acx.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon's ACX service&lt;/a&gt;, which in turn makes the audiobook available on Amazon, iTunes, and Audible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, just today I noticed that unlike Amazon's Kindle and CreateSpace (POD) services, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acx.com/help/the-basics/200474410#international&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ACX &lt;strong&gt;publishing&lt;/strong&gt; is only available for people in the US and UK&lt;/a&gt;, and I am in neither. It is not enough to be able to provide an address in either place, there are tax forms that are required which make it more than a simple matter of using a friend's or relative's address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to make the audiobook version of my book available on Amazon, iTunes, and Audible, ideally by going through a single service. Does such a service exist for those of us not in the US or UK?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have, of course, done some Google searching, but I am getting a bit lost between services that want to narrate the book for you by connecting you with professional narrators, and publishing services that want to approach the issue of considering representing your audiobook like a traditional publisher. I'm just looking for a way to upload and distribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2753" LastEditorUserId="2753" LastEditDate="2016-01-04T06:05:44.677" LastActivityDate="2017-10-24T17:16:10.527" Title="Is there an equivalent of ACX for people outside the US and the UK?" Tags="|audiobook|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10670" CreationDate="2014-04-06T21:14:14.367" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Completing a novel, especially a large one, is more about mental preparation and discipline than skill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're set on writing your novel in English, then find a friend that has a strong grasp in the English language or find a native English speaker online that is willing to read and edit your work. This person could essentially double as your 'cheerleader', a person you go to to help you stay motivated and to bounce ideas off of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the most ruthless part of writing is the isolation, so try to surround yourself with other writers or creative-types that are passionate about their work. If you can't find friends or a writing group in your area then you can join online forums. Events like &lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nanowrimo&lt;/a&gt; (and its spring/summer version, &lt;a href=&quot;https://campnanowrimo.org/sign_in&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Camp Nanowrimo&lt;/a&gt; are great opportunities to connect with other passionate writers that are in the same position as you are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that you set aside a consistent period of time for your writing. If you're disciplined and you always write at a particular time and/or on a particular day then you're making it just a little easier for yourself because you're mentally preparing yourself for writing. That time doesn't have to be spent just writing either. If you haven't already, you should spend time researching the topics necessary to make your characters, plot, and setting plausible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Preparation is a significant aide when doing long-term projects. So, I recommend you write an outline with all of the major points you would like to hit. Whenever you sit down to write, look at this outline and pick the points in your story that you would like to work out that day. Using your outline as a sort of to-do list helps to turn your project into a list of much smaller, easy-to-complete tasks. Just don't allow your preparation to become a way to procrastinate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I think it's important to remember that your first draft is for &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;. You don't need to show anyone your first draft if you don't want to and you probably shouldn't. Don't jump in expecting your first draft to be a work of art. Allow it to be messy. Use bullet points. Leave entire sections as poorly punctuated notes. It doesn't matter, just as long as your first draft contains everything you need to craft the final product. So, even if you feel you aren't prepared, just write! Dump everything you're thinking about the story onto paper (be it real or digital) instead of keeping it as a glorious image in your mind. This will allow you to see what you really have and it will eliminate the dreaded blank page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8197" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T21:14:14.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10681" CreationDate="2014-04-07T03:32:16.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a hard problem.  Unless your company has the resources to do full reviews of all the documentation on each release -- and if they do, I wonder how they stay competitive -- then you are at risk here.  In my experience you can do some things to &lt;em&gt;address&lt;/em&gt; the problem when it happens, and some things to &lt;em&gt;reduce its chance of occurring&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are techniques I've used to find and fix missing updates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Quick visual scan of the most-relevant documentation.  This isn't a full review (you probably don't have time), but I try to at least pass my eyeballs over each page in related documents/sections to allow for the chance that something will jump out at me.  This actually happens.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If a feature (API function, GUI element, schema element, etc) was changed or removed, I search the documentation for relevant keywords like the name of the function/element (however we talk about it in the documentation).  This helps find stray references, such as the documentation of some &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; function that compares it to the one that changed.  This has helped me catch cases like &quot;The X function does blah blah blah; it's similar to the Y function except...&quot; where Y changed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If behavior changed then test cases probably also changed.  I try to chat with the testers who'll be testing the newly-changed feature to find out what &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; test cases they had to change.  (Note: even though I have access to their test-case repository, I find it easier to spend a little time talking with a tester instead.  The testers know their test cases way better than I ever will.  For similar reasons, they generally ask me what significant changes I made in the documentation.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On a project with multiple writers, I choose peer reviewers who've worked on parts of the documentation that I haven't spent as much time on.  They'll notice &quot;oh if that changed then this other thing in 'my' doc needs to change too&quot; before I will.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some techniques I've used to prevent, or at least reduce the likelihood of, this problem.  Think of this as &lt;em&gt;defensive writing&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the spirit of &quot;don't repeat yourself&quot; (DRY), if I need to include the same information in more than one place, I try to abstract it out into one blob that I can include by reference in all places it needs to go.  Writing fragmented documentation like this is harder (you have to be careful to make sure that your blob remains valid in all contexts), but this level of repetition doesn't happen &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; much in my experience.  But it happens some, so use include tools when it does.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you know when you're writing something that it's interconnected with some other part of the documentation.  Use comments (or whatever annotation mechanism your tool supports) to add findable reminders to yourself.  Comments aren't just for code; they can be useful in doc source too.  (My source is XML; your mileage may vary.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I haven't done this one yet in &quot;production&quot; (only as a test), but &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/3785/1993&quot;&gt;annotate your screen shotes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to your bugs database, be nosy.  I am automatically copied on all bugs in certain components, and I review new bugs often and add myself to the CC list on any that look like they might affect me.  Yes, this generates a lot of email, but it's worth it to catch notes from testers, and also ones from developers who found they had to change something else in order to implement this.  I get a lot of my best information from Bugzilla notifications. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be more thorough in initial project estimation.  At the beginning of the release-planning cycle, when the product manager, development team, et al are laying out the work to be done, you probably -- if you're like most people -- added a line to the project plan that said something like &quot;update doc (N weeks)&quot;.  But if you do a little more up front, you can avoid some problems for yourself &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; for the testers.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;  While the developers are doing their analysis of what will change if they do such-and-such, you can be doing the same for the doc.  So instead of that &quot;update doc&quot; line you might have items like &quot;document new feature X&quot;, &quot;update feature Y (that changed because of X)&quot;, &quot;update doc of example that uses Y and Z&quot;, and &quot;review doc of Y for impact&quot;.  While you're talking with your friendly tester about this, you might learn that your tester knows that some part of Z is going to have to change too, so you can start thinking about that earlier.  In other words, the more your team talks about the impact early on, the easier it will be for you to make your doc changes systematically and with less of a panicked rush at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; You may be getting the idea by now that I think the testers are your natural allies.  They are.  You and they are often at the end of the information pipeline, not because anybody meant to exclude you but because people focused on a narrow task don't always realize the implications themselves.  Work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T03:32:16.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10670" CreationDate="2014-04-07T07:44:08.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would you run a marathon without training first? Probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither would I recommend writing something as extensive as a novel without finishing something smaller first. You will probably end up discouraged and quit before the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @TerriMorgan very correctly states above, finishing a novel is mostly about mental preparation and discipline, and that is something you need to train for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write every day. Preferably at the same time every day. Don't worry too much about being creative. That will come naturally when you work every day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T07:44:08.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10687" CreationDate="2014-04-07T07:49:21.353" Score="5" ViewCount="4724" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen two main methods of writing a character's inner monologue&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is to use italics&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Dean is being silly&lt;/em&gt; thought Sam&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another is to quote the text&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&quot;Dean is being silly&quot; thought Sam&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could avoid it altogether and simply relate what the character thought&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Sam thought Dean was being silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I don't like to quote thoughts as it can lead to confusion between their speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the correct way to indicate that you're quoting their internal monologue as opposed to your characters' spoken word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8373" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T17:13:50.640" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T04:38:45.153" Title="How do you write a character's internal monologue?" Tags="|style|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10686" CreationDate="2014-04-07T08:16:24.417" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use italics, I find it is the clearest way to define thought as different to speech, and denoting actual thought as a form of dialogue can help draw distinctions between actual thought and narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In third person narrative it is common to write from the perspective of the character in question, and colour the tone of your writing with the way they think. As an example I'd refer you to the First Law trilogy by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joeabercrombie.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joe Abercrombie&lt;/a&gt;. Each chapter is devoted to the perspective of a particular character, and each is written in third person limited perspective (so you're effectively inside the character's head.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The inquisitor is prone to self-analysis, so even though the narrative is effectively coloured with his way of thinking he also thinks as dialogue — in italics — as a way of differentiating those thoughts. Conversely the barbarian Nine Fingers basically never thinks, his narrative is more straight forward and inner dialogue is rarely — if ever — used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the authors I read do the same so it's certainly a strong convention, but as PraveshParekh says, all are viable options. So while there is no “correct” way, if you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; going to use inner dialogue then I believe that sticking to italics — and convention — helps avoid confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T08:57:41.933" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T08:57:41.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10686" CreationDate="2014-04-07T08:29:46.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;h3&gt;In the books I read (mostly SF &amp;amp; F and YA) the thoughts are given in direct speech but not marked up.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the first six books I randomly pulled from my book shelf:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Robert Charles Wilson, &lt;em&gt;Bios&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Even so. It's different, isn't it, when the landscape is alive under you?&amp;quot;&lt;br&gt;Alive, Zoe thought. Yes, that was the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kim Stanley Robinson, &lt;em&gt;The Wild Shore&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We'd be able to [...] do what we pleased.&amp;quot;&lt;br&gt;And not what your father tells you to, I thought to myself. But I felt the pull of what he said, I admit it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sarah Dessen, &lt;em&gt;Along for the Ride&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, dear, I thought. Out loud I said, &amp;quot;Oh, right. Of course.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gene Wolfe, &lt;em&gt;Home Fires&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goodbye, Mort! Sometimes I see you in my dreams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The only counter-example is:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Suzanne Collins, &lt;em&gt;The Hunger Games: Mockingjay&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I killed you,&lt;/em&gt; I think as I pass a pile. &lt;em&gt;And you. And you.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining eight hundred or so are refugees in District 12 – which, as far as I'm concerned, is the same thing as being homeless for ever.&lt;br&gt;I know I shouldn't think that; I know I should be grateful [...].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, Collins uses italics for some few thoughts, but not for others. In fact the &lt;em&gt;whole novel&lt;/em&gt;, told in the first person, consists of the interior monologue of the protagonist, Katniss. The italic parts within this interior monologue appear to be more outward directed (what Katniss imagines she might have said), while the non-italic parts are everything else that goes on in Katniss' brain: what she thinks &lt;em&gt;to herself&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br&gt;Here is a third quote from Collins, where this distinction becomes more apparent: again the unspoken words are directed from a speaker to a listener, but here it is not Katniss who &amp;quot;speaks&amp;quot; them in her mind, instead she imagines &lt;em&gt;hearing&lt;/em&gt; them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Positioned on my dresser, that white-as-snow rose is a personal message to me. It speaks of unfinished business. It whispers, &lt;em&gt;I can find you. I can reach you. Perhaps I am watching you now.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I pulled out some other books, too, but those were told in the third person and did not have any interior monologue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Other uses of italics:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;L.E. Modesitt, Jr., &lt;em&gt;The Ethos Effect&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Here italics signify (technical) telekinesis between different persons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Right now, that's all I know, but we'll keep you informed as we can. That is all.&amp;quot;&lt;br&gt;&lt;em&gt;Weapons status?&lt;/em&gt; Van snapped across the shipnet to Lieutenant Michael.&lt;br&gt;&lt;em&gt;Tenty-one torps left, ser.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thanks, Weapons.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gene Wolfe, &lt;em&gt;Home Fires&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Here italics signify voices on the telephone (in quotation marks), Spanish or Latin text (in the dialogue or in the narration), and names of ships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, marking up thoughts with italics feels like an amateurish device to me. Wilson, Robinson and Wolfe are writers of the highest order – and they don't use them! In all examples (even including Collins) the distinction between thought and non-thought is unmistakeable without italics, just by the grammar of the sentences and the explicit statement of &amp;quot;I think/tought&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without italics (as markup for thoughts – or shouting) the text appears more elegant and of higher literary quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T04:38:45.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10568" CreationDate="2014-04-07T20:05:37.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A hint where you could actually place the new elements: You could put them in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_island&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;island of stability&lt;/a&gt;. If some people expect half-lifes of millions of years, it's not much of a stretch to also put some stable element there (although a very long half-life may be good enough; after all, uranium is instable, and yet we even have quite a bit of naturally occurring uranium).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be more future-proof, you can also put your elements in the second island of stability (see near the end of the Wikipedia article).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T20:05:37.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10568" CreationDate="2014-04-08T17:21:55.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sci-fi readers and fictional world fans are often very concerned how stuff works. Adding new element is popular choice to explain certain unusual phenomena like FTL travel speeds, teleports, energy shields and weapons. However there is very little space to develop your new element. Theoretically, there should not be anything before hydrogen, but for example Mass Effect put  &lt;em&gt;Element Zero&lt;/em&gt; there. Zero because of zero atomic number. This element, called eezo in the universe, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;when subjected to an electrical current, releases dark energy which&#xA;  can be manipulated into a mass effect field, raising or lowering the&#xA;  mass of all objects within that field. (via&lt;a href=&quot;http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Element_Zero&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ME Wiki&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can easily bend Newtonian and Einsteinian physics to allow said phenomena.&#xA;Stargate uses Naquadah in similar manner, but does not explain where in periodic table would be Naquadah found (maybe it does and I don't remember it, I suggest confirmation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As was said before, if you want to use some new element, place it somewhere in the island of stability. Or you can place it before Hydrogen (I would not suggest that solution since ME already did that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally I can say that best way to bend physics to your will and make it believable is to find some real scientific theory, that would be working for you and use it. If you have basic understanding of physics and what keep us from doing things you would like people in your universe to do, you can identify the obstacles and design your new element so it renders these obstacles non existent or irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8398" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T17:21:55.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10667" CreationDate="2014-04-08T19:49:34.213" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was a publicist / marketing manager at a publishing house. I left the profession prior to the e-book revolution. Traditionally, based on the niche market I served (technical topics), here's how you might want to test the waters for self publishing (vanity publishing); the marketing plan. Following is a grass roots direct-marketing test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a marketing piece that includes a good hook, bullet points of compelling description, a peek into a few passages, offer &quot;Pre-order&quot;* special price (knock a few dollars off) with deadline. Give them some idea of arrival date, too. Create urgency -- underscored! Keep the piece light. Not tons of paragraphs to weigh through. You want to create interest in the first few second of your at a glance hook with the bullet points. If the brochure is weak, you're sunk at the get go. Self mailers are the most economical. Talk to the bulk mail specialist at the mail post office. They can send you a package describing ways to further save on a mass mailing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Develop a circulation list. Think about your target audience / market. Research mailing lists or e-mail lists (or other vehicles). The more names you buy, obviously your percentage of return will increase. You have to be the judge on marketing ROI. Research lists (mail or email). You should ask how recently the list has been refreshed. That's crucial. You don't want returned mail! Ask the rep for their audience breakdowns (attributes) ... age, areas of interest; whatever matters to you for the target market.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you've done the first wave, track which attribute mix had the best response rate. Next time you buy the list refine it to that mix. Continue the measurement process til the numbers start decline to a level you deem insufficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be a good start to mulling. It worked for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also hit the pavement and set up appointments with some independent book stores. If you get bites, try to get it in the shop window. Who knows, maybe they'd even promote a reading. Free coffee, cookies, and you -- lol!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;About arrival date, here are some basics. It's a given that you've already done your homework with a few vanity publishers -- if you're going print. Nail the financials and quantity break points ($). The first run is most expensive because of the set up. Remember that if you start taking &quot;pre-order&quot; money, you have to follow through with the product!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry but I wrote this in stream of consciousness. It isn't a bible; just some high points for a possible vanity publishing sales effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I left the business prior to the e-book revolution. Can't help you there, but would imagine it's a whole lot less expensive.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8413" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T19:49:34.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10681" CreationDate="2014-04-09T10:22:13.430" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The code is already a form of documentation of what the system does. That is rather much the point of high level language code, to ease the understanding of systems for human readers of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a hint to a solution. Ask yourself, &quot;who is the documentation for?&quot; Is it for programmers to communicate to other programmers within your organization? Then do what you can to make the code clear, concise, not surprising, and DRY. DRY is about the future more than it is about the present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there is no point to keeping broken documentation. You would be better off discarding the docs and eliminating any chance someone might make a technical error by trusting potentially erroneous documentation. Bad documentation isn't known to be bad until it blows up in your face. Until then, it provides a false sense of security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it for a program manager? Then seek to write documentation that is clear, concise, and doesn't hide behind technical buzzwords and faux legalese. Most people don't keep up with documentation because they find it difficult to understand what is already written, difficult to emulate the style, and despise doing make-work. There is little point in putting minute technical detail into documentation. Otherwise, we would have designed a programming language that uses MS Word documents as source files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it for users? Then your documentation is part of your product. You need to dedicate specific time, and probably specific people who make careers out of writing use documentation, to the tasks. The project iteration is no more complete without the user documentation--a form of user interface--than the features it would cover. I tend to prefer to put such explanatory text on the screen next to the feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is generally a problem with all parts of a system: how closely located are tightly coupled components? You will see it happen in you database schema definitions if you manage them through raw SQL scripts. It will happen to reports generated in your system if the report code is &quot;far away&quot; from the report UI. Keeping related bits of the system located together is the only way to avoid them drifting apart, like some two samples of a species diverging over time after getting separated by an ocean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also realize that you don't have to follow the &quot;obvious&quot; process for writing documentation that program managers always seem to love. The last time I worked in a heavily documented environment, I spent at least 50% of my time on documentation. But though my program manager wanted the documentation written before the code, I did no such thing. I wrote them in tandem. I needed to write the code to figure out what would go in the documentation. I was lauded for having the best documentation and deadline rate in the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the moral of the story is not &quot;do it my way&quot;. It is that every company has its own culture that will value certain things over others. Use that knowledge to your advantage. Steal coding time from documentation time or vice versa. Write whatever code you have to to automate repetitive tasks. Question fundamental assertions and seek to minimize the work load.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8421" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T10:22:13.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10675" CreationDate="2014-04-09T10:33:33.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key here is that you know what it would feel like to try to speak with these sentences in mind, but you don't know what it would actually sound like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people, in speaking, do not speak in complete sentences. David Mamet is a master of portraying realistic dialogue on page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But most people, in reading well written, properly grammatical text, don't realize it is not at all how they would speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is to not mix the two. Don't try to write as it would sound and write grammatically at the same time. The disparity between the two is jarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8421" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T10:33:33.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9308" CreationDate="2014-04-09T12:26:11.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has nothing to do with the law, but my own personal ethics. Understand that the two are in no way correlated, given that the law is often an arbitrary beast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a saying--often attributed to Admiral Grace Hopper--that it is often better to ask forgiveness than permission. I don't believe in asking permission to do anything creative or productive (as opposed to destructive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I do find it better to inform people of what I am doing. It fills their need to have been asked permission (at least notionally), while maintaining my sovereignty. It gives them a chance to voice their displeasure, and I get to take that into account in my decision to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found people are usually much more receptive than I think they will be.  People only tend to block things as a knee jerk reaction. Approaching them before hand prevents reactionary responses to last minute revelations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8421" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T12:26:11.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9308" CreationDate="2014-04-09T13:10:29.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most countries have laws that protect the privacy of their citizens. This includes the right to not have images or information about you published without your consent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only situation that allows private information or images to be published despite an individual's wishes to the contrary is if the public need-to-know is rated higher than the individual's wish for privacy. This is the case if the individual and his or her activities are of obvious public interest. For example, a politician meeting with economic leaders in private is newsworthy, because it is assumed that the meeting is not actually privated but relevant to his political activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is considered to be of public interest differs from country to country, from court to court, and from individual to individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would take the following steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research if there are similar cases and how they were recieved in the media.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consult a lawyer specialized in this area.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Depending on what he recommends and what the story is, I would contact the concerned individuals (and organizations!) and ask for their consent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the concerned individuals did not consent, I would again ask my lawyer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only after all this would I start work on my book – or abandon it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, and from a moral standpoint, I would never write about an existing person without their consent unless I felt they had commited a crime and I perceived my publication as part of the fight against their criminal activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T13:10:29.567" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10701" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10703" CreationDate="2014-04-09T13:32:58.790" Score="4" ViewCount="693" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to learn to write fiction books (historical and science fiction) in American English. My native tongue is Russian and I speak fluently German, since I grew up in Austria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My English is good enough for technical or business communication, but I can't express myself in English as colorful as in Russian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to write fiction in English, I need (among other things) to master the language so good that I can &quot;paint&quot; pictures with it (i. e. make use of slang, idioms, have a feeling on how a particular sentence will affect the reader etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would highly appreciate, if you answered the following question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What methods (apart from those given below) can I use to learn literary English (provided that I am willing to put lots of effort in this undertaking) so that I can express myself in written English as vividly as in written Russian?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Known methods:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read as much good English literature as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read and practice &quot;Elements of style&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-read &quot;On writing well&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Watch lots of American movies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read American newspapers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Memorize words from American slang dictionaries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6696" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T19:13:23.677" Title="How to master literary American English as a second language?" Tags="|language|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10701" CreationDate="2014-04-09T14:41:10.593" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only method that I can think of that you've missed off your list is &lt;em&gt;practice&lt;/em&gt;. Write as much as you can and put it in front of native English speakers (especially Americans, since that's the dialect you're going for, but other native English speakers probably won't hurt either). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interacting with native speakers can also help in general, so it might help to take part in American-dominated web forums (which will have the double benefit of giving you an audience for criticising your work). It's all very well memorising slang words, but you really have to see/hear them in context to use them properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5765" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T14:41:10.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1702" CreationDate="2014-04-10T11:06:54.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of White's book, you might want to check out Joseph Williams' &lt;em&gt;Style: Towards Clarity and Grace&lt;/em&gt;. It's much better. There are several widely differing editions. Use the original Chicago Press, 1990 edition or the Harper Collins, 4th edition 1993. All the other editions have been mangled in various ways.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8427" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T11:06:54.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10679" CreationDate="2014-04-10T11:29:24.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you should make the gender more obvious unless it needs to be more obvious.  By choosing a 1st person narration the character uncovers him/herself and the logic should flow from how you have conceived this character to express themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is gender really a duality anyway?  Men and women express their gender in such a variety of ways that you could end up just creating an uninteresting and generic character if you start throwing in some token references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7939" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T11:29:24.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10679" CreationDate="2014-04-10T15:52:17.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the gender and sexual ambiguity only makes this story that much more compelling. I've written similarly vague characters in the past and consider it not only more difficult to hide a character's gender throughout the narrative but also a pretty big compliment. You can even use this technique to conduct your own mini-experiment of people's perceptions of differences between male and female voice--and potentially use that to strengthen your writing otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8429" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T15:52:17.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10701" CreationDate="2014-04-10T16:33:56.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;EvilSoup is right. If you've got English grammar and spelling down--the meat and potatoes of any language--then the next step is to practice it. 'Literary' American English is so wonderfully diverse! There's really no single style and it's constantly evolving. My suggestion? Don't try to &quot;study&quot; and &quot;memorize&quot; anything--talk to Americans, ask them about their lives, watch how they use language. Immerse yourself in the culture and you'll understand not just how they use words but why they use them the way they do. That will also help you take care of the other aspect of good fiction--real, fleshed-out characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8429" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T16:33:56.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10593" CreationDate="2014-04-10T17:42:17.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't come across any specific data regarding the effect being carried over into print but I doubt it does--right now at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, what kind of reading do people do in print? Usually it's of the attention-demanding kind--novels, textbooks--for which they've already made the mental commitment. Certain types of print material (magazines, newspapers) have made occasional use of lists in the past and will continue to do so but again that's because people don't always pick up a newspaper prepared to devote their whole attention to reading the thing in one go. (And more people prefer these online now anyway.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, articles in print are not fighting for attention in a hyperstimulating environment like articles online are--there are no CTA's like &quot;click here&quot;, &quot;google this&quot;, &quot;watch this video&quot;, or other such distractions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even if we don't have any significant effects right now, we will likely see more print material adopting this format in the future. We've already got evidence that Internet/screen reading impacts the brain's reading style both offline and online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;1. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/serious-reading-takes-a-hit-from-online-scanning-and-skimming-researchers-say/2014/04/06/088028d2-b5d2-11e3-b899-20667de76985_story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/serious-reading-takes-a-hit-from-online-scanning-and-skimming-researchers-say/2014/04/06/088028d2-b5d2-11e3-b899-20667de76985_story.html&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;2. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8429" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T17:42:17.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10701" CreationDate="2014-04-10T19:13:23.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not write your first book in the first person POV, with the narrator a Russian?  You won't have to fake the Russian &quot;accent.&quot;  One good thing about Americans: we don't mind when our language is butchered.  :-)  Look at how successful Chekov was as a character on Star Trek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you'd be writing in English (which would be good practice, no matter what) but maybe you'd also be getting something marketable out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's your first book's opening: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Please excuse my English.  I am Russian.  But we are in no hurry here.&quot;  That was how I always began my interrogations -- with a joke.  Then I would throw the switch.  It is important to set the mood, right at the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T19:13:23.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10710" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-11T07:09:24.283" Score="2" ViewCount="184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in the process of trying to make my book available for purchase on Amazon and similar services. My hope is to ultimately be able to offer my book in eBook, Print On Demand, and audiobook formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, in none of the interfaces I have been working with, such as Amazon or CreateSpace, is there a way I can see for sending someone a free copy of the book. I have a number of people that I want to send my book to, some in hopes of getting them to give me a promotional blurb, some in hopes they'll give it a review, and some in gratitude for past help on my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I could potentially send these people a &quot;raw&quot; PDF copy of my written book, or the MP3 files for my audio book. However, that feels problematic to me for a few reasons, which are a little lengthy, but let's just say it would feel a lot better to say to someone &quot;sure, let me give you a free copy of my book on Amazon&quot;, as opposed to, &quot;can I email you a PDF file (that you'll have to figure out how to open on your Kindle or whatever because you're not going to want to read it on your laptop screen)?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have a properly formatted Kindle book, can I make and distribute promotional copies? Can I do it through the Amazon system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can something similar be done with audiobooks on Audible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, what about Print on Demand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I realize I am asking about three different formats, which might justify three different questions. If the community feels that's merited, I can go along with that. But, it's all about how to make promotional free copies, so for now I'm thinking that unifies the question.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2753" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T06:09:56.323" Title="What are my options for free preview copies if I self publish via online services?" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10710" CreationDate="2014-04-11T08:10:30.077" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;With CreateSpace, you can buy print copies of the book and send them to anyone you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can make an epub file, you can send that to anyone you like, and they can read it with their favorite reader app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use Jutoh to make epub files. There are other apps, but I don't know enough about them to offer a recommendation. Jutoh is awkward, but produces epub files that work flawlessly with Kindle, Kobo, and Smashwords. And I can read them with iBooks and Adobe Digital Editions (though I haven't uploaded them to sell through Apple or Nook yet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach is to make your ebook available on Smashwords. Then you can create coupons on Smashwords for discounted or free versions, and send those coupons to people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Smashwords, you don't have to create an epub file yourself (though I do). You can instead upload a properly formatted Word file, and they will convert it to epub and mobi and maybe a few other formats. Find the Smashwords Style Guide on their site for lots of details about what &quot;properly formatted&quot; means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could buy a copy yourself from Smashwords (or perhaps download the preview version that they create for you) and send that to people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to roll your own mobi file (for use with Kindle devices and apps), Jutoh can create those. Or if you already have an epub file, you can use Amazon's free Kindle Previewer app to convert it to mobi format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T08:10:30.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7499" CreationDate="2014-04-12T07:00:13.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of market research it sounds like you have identified the niche that you want to target but have come up dry on what to do next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working with the information you have given me you seem to want to write about TV shows (nice choice) and need to find a buyer for those writings. The question is then who would buy such work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here I would suggest that the people buying such work would be &quot;selling&quot; it too. So I would want to find blogs, magazines or publications that specialize in TV shows. Adding in my own knowledge of this niche I know that there are genre specific sites - for example Sci-Fi has a lot of specialised publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my search in Google would be for pages talking about the shows I think might have some milage. I would start with the most popular shows that you can think of as this will produce the most hits. Depending on the quality of the sites I find I might simply note some good sources or scale down to more specialised to reduce &quot;noise&quot; results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a good list of sites that use the kind of content that you want to produce you would need to do what I would do which is to try and figure out if they take freelance stuff. If they do do they accept unsolicited work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unsolicited means that you speculatively submit the work and hope that they want it and will pay you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solicited means that you approach them with the idea and they commission the work if they like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases you are probably going to have to approach the publication editors and ask them about freelance or non-staff writers. The best way to ask this is the subject for another question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally you should have a list of publications and the way that the editors like to get writer leads (submissions or commissions). Then it is all down to you to make the sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T07:00:13.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10644" CreationDate="2014-04-12T07:19:35.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in comments this question has been addressed before but as a fellow writer I cannot resist talking about my own experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tell a lot of stories that involve my friends and family. I also (when the daylight allows) run a writer's group. An exercise I give the group is to write a description of several people in the group without using their name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only do the group members find that they work differently but their descriptions are much more engaging than their regular work (showing that working from life is a good way to make art) but the group found it very hard to identify themselves from their friends perceptions of themselves. In most cases the subjects were flattered to be described even when the writer was largely unkind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the legal implications are a different story. You need to do enough to be able to claim that while inspired by true events and characters the story is fictional. The advice is generally that you should not name or use significantly identifiable characteristics. The test being that a reasonable person might be able to identify the subject from the work - we've shown that this is actually quite hard when the writer is not trying to hide anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So go read the good advice of others but also carry out some fiction writer's science. Write a paragraph description of several friends and then ask them and an equal number of not described friends to first identify the people being described. The test group will not see themselves any more often than the control group. Then tell them that they are in there and to identify their description (don't let them know which group they are in - tell them all that they are in there). I would expect you to find that the control group will pick a description out as being themselves about as often as the subject group do but that the subject group will be not be hugely accurate. You are likely to find that people find it hard to pick out themselves and friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T07:19:35.267" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10726" CreationDate="2014-04-12T16:09:36.427" Score="2" ViewCount="4349" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some analogies tend to be very common, becoming almost idiomatic. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He entered the doctor's office at 4:59 PM on a Friday. The secretary's stare was icy cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is reversing those kind of analogies still considered the same stylistic device, or does it have a different name? For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Snow was still falling when she got out. The icy cold air welcomed her, the way a secretary welcomes you on a Friday at 4:59PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both seem to be analogies/similes, but at the same time they both seem to be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are both these things the same stylistic device, or is there a way to differentiate them?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4272" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T10:21:49.293" Title="Is there such a thing as a &quot;reverse analogy&quot;?" Tags="|language|metaphor|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10727" CreationDate="2014-04-14T08:28:20.647" Score="0" ViewCount="960" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been - quite passionately - writing a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of Pokémon fan-fiction. However, in contrast to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/50/fan-fiction-a-crutch-or-a-good-start&quot;&gt;Fan Fiction: a crutch or a good start?&lt;/a&gt;, I've been using it to build an entire world extending from canon. While I have been keeping to canon as much as possible, my stories take place in my own Region, and I fill in a lot of holes - for instance, I've polished up the story of why Arceus created other Legendaries (basically self-preservation because his body was not strong enough for his power), and expanded on the roles of the Legendaries (most notably, Giratina rules over the Afterlife in my stories).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I may give an example of my work, &lt;a href=&quot;http://q.pokefarm.org/forum/thread/730/Injustice-oneshot&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Injustice&lt;/a&gt; is a short story I wrote a while ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My stories almost always revolve around the perspective of the Pokémon. I feel there's a whole unexplored world there (and the Mystery Dungeon games barely scratch the surface of it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main question, however, is this: My work tends to be much more... well, I don't think it's for as young children as Pokémon is in general. My stories tend to feature very harsh situations (I'm currently working on a series where the antagonist is cruel, manipulative, and ruthless in his pursuit of the main characters, ultimately killing them quite horrifically - but, thanks to Giratina, Death is Cheap given the right circumstances!) I've even written an &lt;a href=&quot;http://buizeltails.thedarkworld.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;erotic fan-fiction&lt;/a&gt; (don't judge me!)... the point is, the &quot;target audience&quot; is really &quot;other people who have grown up with Pokémon for a long time&quot;, rather than younger, newer fans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a problem? Am I doing something wrong by writing these stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, if I decide to publish my stories elsewhere than online (ie. physical copies)... is that even allowed? Considering the &quot;giant boobs&quot; in certain Pokémon Manga, I get the feeling there's some leeway there, but... I'm just hesitant to put so much work into something only to have it shut down for some reason XD&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know... I guess I'm just hoping for some general guidance on the do's and don'ts of fan-fiction...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8450" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T19:26:03.590" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T19:26:03.590" Title="Fan works... are they allowed?" Tags="|publishing|legal|fan-fiction|sex|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10720" CreationDate="2014-04-14T15:17:10.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are we simply suggesting that any secretary will be irritated by late comers?  If you are simply using the secretary as an analogy I am not sure it makes a lot of sense unless the secretary is relevant to the story...and &quot;Like a secretary at closing time on Friday&quot; is not really idiomatic...people can figure out the reference sure but not the same as icy stare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would avoid the analogy if it inst story relevant, but if it is I would probably go with adding something to ensure the specific person that is known to be frosty is the subject at hand.  If you make it known that the secretary is frosty &lt;strong&gt;first&lt;/strong&gt; then the second example can work well enough...and I like that it describes the environment utilizing a reference to a character's personality...that's interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Snow was still falling when she got out. The icy cold air welcomed her, the way a &lt;strong&gt;certain&lt;/strong&gt; secretary welcomes you on a Friday at 4:59PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said it does not carry the same idiomatic value as in the first example.  In the second description it is an adjective describing the weather, in the first the secretary.  The &quot;icy cold&quot; idiom is only an idiom if you aren't talking about actual icy cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6524" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T15:17:10.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10724" CreationDate="2014-04-14T16:29:25.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're a pokefarm user too, yay! Uh... anyway...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this a problem? Am I doing something wrong by writing these stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume you're asking this in a legal sense, and it's not a problem &lt;em&gt;if you're not making profit from it&lt;/em&gt;. Make sure you've got disclaimers and all that good stuff. If' you're not asking in a legal sense, then: You can write whatever you want and post it (pretty much) anywhere, although obviously some places will just boot you for posting your story on their websites. But writing fanfiction isn't really a problem in this sense either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Additionally, if I decide to publish my stories elsewhere than online (ie. physical copies)... is that even allowed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tch, publishing... I'm not particularly knowledgeable on Pokemon, but some authors expressed that you can't write fictions in their universes, some authors would prefer if you didn't profit from their material, and so on. Also, some places are strict about copyright infringement and so on. In Japan, publishers couldn't give less of a crap about people publishing works from their copyrighted material, though. That's why doujinshis are rampant over there. &lt;em&gt;Rampant.&lt;/em&gt; In Japan, publishers think of doujinshis as pretty much &quot;free press coverage&quot; so... they don't care. In America (which is where I am, I don't really have a frame of reference for outside of America, sorry), that's grounds to get you sued. What you see in manga is, very likely, a result of better selling doujinshi (or just doujinshi artists being asked to make official material), but... the culture in Japan and the cultures outside of Japan towards copyright is way, way too different for me to tell you it's cool for you to publish your work in America (or elsewhere) without seeking permission first. When you ask about publishing a fan work (physically) on fanfiction websites, you normally get rerouted to answers like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.writingclasses.com/WritersResources/AskTheWriterDetail.php?ID=137&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. You can distribute your work not-for-profit here in America electronically, but I'm not sure about publishing a hard copy and distributing that. It's okay if it's copies for you and your friends, but you seem to want to publish and sell, like a business? In which case, no, not in America, you can't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said... You're allowed to sell physical copies of your fan work at conventions. You still need to know the stance of the copyright holder (and there are more licensing issues if you're outside of Japan), because they can absolutely still sue you into next week. But conventions normally set limits as to how much you can sell (for example, only 300 copies of your self-published comic or something like that, though the pricing is also kind of important) and they also tend to have &quot;permission&quot; from licensing companies, who send lawyers to check out the works being sold. If your work does have mature themes, you will probably have to notify convention staff. They'll put you in an artist alley section (if they have it) for mature audiences. That way, younger people can't buy your material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't mean you can go crazy (you should check the limitations to your publishing rights) but you absolutely can sell your fan work at an Artist Alley of your choice. Just know you're not going to be making billions off your work (or thousands. You'd be lucky to pull like $300 with one work alone, depending on your convention). Lawyers patrol the Artist Alleys, so you can get called out if they think you're overstepping your boundaries. You sound like you're a writer, someone who isn't producing a comic or artwork, I mean. I think they might read your stuff at the convention or at least page through it? Definitely talk with the convention staff if you want to know what to expect from the lawyers at conventions. Also, talk to people on websites outside of Pokefarm. &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.deviantart.com/art/general/1828593/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DeviantArt&lt;/a&gt; is probably your best bet for finding out about Pokemon licensing initially (there are a lot of people who do this sort of stuff on DeviantArt, so it's a good place to ask about where to look for information, who to ask for information, what things are okay, and what things aren't okay) but if you want to be safe, branch out from there. It's a legal issue if this is the route you're pursuing, so I can't help and I don't know how much Writers SE can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But like I said you can still absolutely be sued. But you'll get a Cease and Desist notice first, most likely. Parodies normally get off with a little more lee-way, fan-art and fan-work is subjective. Again, this gets into legal issues I don't know much about, so...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you need to really ask around about your particular fandom before publishing works for profit from that fandom willy-nilly. If you want to sell your work, you have to do it at the right places-- a comic book store can't sell your work next to licensed material, a bookstore won't take your fan novel, etc. etc. Long story short, do your homework!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T16:29:25.853" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10728" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10732" CreationDate="2014-04-14T19:04:04.523" Score="1" ViewCount="1303" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a site or sites that describe minimalist writing (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism_%28technical_communication%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism_(technical_communication)&lt;/a&gt;). The Wikipedia article is so minimalist it doesn't provide such links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you employ this technique and can point me to some useful that explain it, I would appreciate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks,&#xA;Linda&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8440" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T16:46:47.657" Title="Looking for sites that describe minimalist writing for technical content" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10730" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10731" CreationDate="2014-04-16T06:36:53.153" Score="4" ViewCount="25478" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing a non-fiction book for self publication via Amazon, Print on Demand, and other online services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, my book has the following sections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Title page&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Copyright&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dedication&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Acknowledgements&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Table of contents&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Main body&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bibliography&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some online resources, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/02/self-publishing-basics-how-to-organize-your-books-front-matter/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;, seem to indicate that acknowledgements should come after the table of contents. For various reasons, I'd like to keep the acknowledgements ahead of the table of contents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some reason the acknowledgements necessarily must precede the table of contents, or can I go my own way with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2753" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T15:18:42.220" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T15:18:42.220" Title="Do acknowledgements have to come after the table of contents?" Tags="|self-publishing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10730" CreationDate="2014-04-16T07:44:06.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing a quick survey on a few books, I have seen that there is no consensus. I have books (non-fiction, technical books) that have Acknowledgements before and after the Contents page. However, I did see a larger number inclined towards including the Acknowledgment page &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the Contents page even though there are books which have it before the Contents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not see any obvious advantage or disadvantage of either of the methods. When writing a thesis one usually has a style guide as to where to include which part of the thesis and hence it is not a question in that case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per books, I would say that it is based on the publishing house and the style guide that they would like to follow. Usually a particular publishing house will have a fixed standard style which they apply to all of their books (for example, Blackwell Science usually has a fixed font style and overall design). Hence, I would say that you can go ahead and do it the way you would prefer it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;---Edit---&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226288536&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Getting It Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)&lt;/a&gt; talks about the front matter of the books. However, at no point have they clearly mention explicitly mention anything about the &lt;em&gt;arrangement&lt;/em&gt; of the front matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing have Acknowledgements after the TOC. However, they do not mention anything about the order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1582977186&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing: Everything You Need to Know to Write, Publish, Promote and Sell Your Own Book&lt;/a&gt; does not mention anything about the ordering of the various content of the front matter but has Acknowledgements before the TOC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These and others seem to highlight that the order is more about the style guide selected rather than a matter of strict consistency. Given the heterogeneity, one might as well go ahead and do it the way they want it to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="5909" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T08:25:19.727" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T08:25:19.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10728" CreationDate="2014-04-16T08:42:30.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not employ the technique but here are a few web links that I have found about the use of minimalism in technical writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A discussion on the principles of minimalistic writing as described by Carroll  &lt;a href=&quot;http://everypageispageone.com/2013/07/02/what-is-minimalism/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://everypageispageone.com/2013/07/02/what-is-minimalism/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A brief discussion by IBM: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibmpressbooks.com/articles/article.asp?p=1745125&amp;amp;seqNum=5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ibmpressbooks.com/articles/article.asp?p=1745125&amp;amp;seqNum=5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using minimalism: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tcworld.info/rss/article/minimalism-in-documentation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tcworld.info/rss/article/minimalism-in-documentation/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Brief discussion and bibliography: &lt;a href=&quot;http://users.edte.utwente.nl/meij/minimalism.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://users.edte.utwente.nl/meij/minimalism.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assessment of the minimalist approach to computer user documentation [PDF Document] &lt;a href=&quot;http://doc.utwente.nl/26433/1/Meij93assessment.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://doc.utwente.nl/26433/1/Meij93assessment.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Few more resources here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Documentation/Technical-Writing/Minimalism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Documentation/Technical-Writing/Minimalism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Minimalism: Does it work for expert users? &lt;a href=&quot;http://tier1.wordpress.com/tag/technical-writing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tier1.wordpress.com/tag/technical-writing/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The art of saying less: Minimalism &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.technicalwritingireland.com/blog/the-art-of-saying-less-minimalism-3/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.technicalwritingireland.com/blog/the-art-of-saying-less-minimalism-3/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why minimalism matters (may not be too relevant) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publishingsmarter.com/resources/books-and-articles/why-minimalism-matters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.publishingsmarter.com/resources/books-and-articles/why-minimalism-matters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A course on minimalistic writing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stc.org/education/online-education/certificate-courses/item/minimalist-writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.stc.org/education/online-education/certificate-courses/item/minimalist-writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T08:42:30.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10257" CreationDate="2014-04-16T09:28:02.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;See Figure 9&quot; is fine when you're referring to a figure on the same page. If you're referring to a figure that's further away, you also need a page number (&quot;See figure 9 on page 72&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T09:28:02.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10735" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-16T11:36:12.947" Score="5" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine I want to write a fictional book, whose purpose is to show what will happen to the world, if something changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: How will we live, if...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;crowdsourced funding (microfinance in M. Yunus style) is widely adopted?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cheap robots replace low-paid workers (cleaning jobs, waiters etc.) ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;final consumers of news (instead of news corporations) pay journalists to deliver information on topics, which interest them (X thousand people each pay 20 bucks to send a neutral journalist to Crimea to show and tell those paying people what is actually happening there) ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of such innovations affect different aspects of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To write an interesting book, I have to take the current world, change one variable in it and see what happens to different aspects of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm primarily interested in modelling &lt;strong&gt;near-future&lt;/strong&gt; worlds, i. e. our current world with only one innovation added (I do not want to invent a completely new world).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What tools (except FCM, see below) can I use to make such &quot;what-if&quot; analyses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fuzzy cognitive maps&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_cognitive_map&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fuzzy cognitive maps&lt;/a&gt; work in this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You define a set of variables, e. g. &lt;em&gt;probability of war in region A&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;influence of country B in region&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;influence of country C in region A&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;degree of rivalry between countries B and C&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;economic growth in region A&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then you define how the variables affect each other. For example, &lt;em&gt;degree of rivalry between countries B and C&lt;/em&gt; may increase &lt;em&gt;probability of war in region A&lt;/em&gt;, while &lt;em&gt;economic growth in region A&lt;/em&gt; decreases it. Basically, you put a plus (A increases B) or minus (A decreases B) sign on every connection between variables. A connection means that one variable affects the other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then you quantify the effects of one variable (formalize your opinion on that effect). For example, &lt;em&gt;degree of rivalry between countries B and C&lt;/em&gt; increases &lt;em&gt;probability of war in region A&lt;/em&gt; by one unit and &lt;em&gt;economic growth in region A&lt;/em&gt; decreases it by 10 units.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you've setup such graph, you can use some mathematical apparatus to set values of the variables and look at what happens to other variables. In that way you can model different scenarios.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Another useful tool may be some of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_system_dynamics_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;system dynamics software&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6696" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-04-20T03:31:49.943" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T03:31:49.943" Title="Tools for modelling near-future world" Tags="|tools|world-building|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10736" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-16T13:42:06.343" Score="0" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm taking a CITI course and one of the sections dealt with authoring on manuscripts.  The gist is that you don't add authors when no work has been done (such as adding a notable person for their reputation, where that person didn't actually contribute anything).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where there is gray area is when it comes to acknowledgement vs. co-authoring as pertains to application developers &amp;amp; DBAs.  In cases where the developer is on regular meetings, is self-guided on the project, contributes ideas for workflow &amp;amp; organization of project, and writes a paragraph of text for the manuscript, is this person a legitimate co-author?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8462" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T02:47:55.400" Title="Should programmers/DBAs be co-authored on papers for their contributions?" Tags="|academic-writing|scientific-publishing|authorship|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-16T14:30:16.747" Score="5" ViewCount="2193" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say that you operate a popular blog that routinely dispenses your personal opinions and expert advice on various topics. A business believes that your audience contains many potential customers for their product or service. They write you a nice introductory e-mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the e-mail, the business explains that they'd like you to consider reviewing their product or service, because it might be of interest to your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it appropriate to ask for payment from the business in exchange for the review?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would your opinion of the ethics of the situation change if the &lt;em&gt;business&lt;/em&gt; offered you the payment first?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assume that you'd disclose that such payment was received for your services.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I'm interested in whether there are commonly-used ethical standards adhered to by journalists, bloggers, etc., which preclude or encourage this sort of practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8463" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-11-24T18:15:40.887" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T18:15:40.887" Title="Is it considered ethical to accept payment from a business for reviewing a product or service?" Tags="|blog|journalism|reviews|ethics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10738" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10747" CreationDate="2014-04-16T14:34:15.000" Score="0" ViewCount="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have come across a situation which drives me mad, and I cannot find any satisfying answer in the Oxford Guide to Style, which I tend to follow. The problem concerns the phrase &quot;Start Your Own Business&quot;, and when it is used as the name of a project. I'm really confused about two things: capitalization and hyphenation. I've written it in capitals and without hyphens here, but that doesn't mean I prefer it that way. I think I would prefer it like this: the Start-Your-Own-Business project. Any ideas what is recommended here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8464" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-10T00:43:12.403" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T00:43:12.403" Title="Capitalize and/or hyphenate &quot;the Start Your Own Business project&quot;?" Tags="|style|punctuation|capitalization|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10780" CreationDate="2014-04-16T14:54:49.623" Score="6" ViewCount="2198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working on a novel, in which one of the POV characters is a slave. He was born to a slave (so he was born a slave) of a rich merchant family and was treated well most of his life. One day he travels with his master to a foreign country where slavery had been abolished. The interaction with the foreign &quot;free&quot; people makes him doubt his position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Might be relevant that he is of a different race than his masters, and the population of the foreign country he travels to belongs to his race.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially I want him to not see the injustice in his state and to love his master (they have a close relationship since they grew up together), yet I (born into a &lt;em&gt;mostly&lt;/em&gt; slave-free world) have no idea how to portray him. Almost anything I try to write about him feels contrived. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could I better identify with him?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any reference to a novel (historical fiction preferred, could be any period in history) with a slave POV character (third-person preferred) will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8048" LastEditorUserId="8048" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T15:37:16.537" LastActivityDate="2017-11-30T19:25:09.893" Title="A POV character who's a slave?" Tags="|resources|characters|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10736" CreationDate="2014-04-16T15:04:06.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a scientist who also does programming.  The way I've always done it with my colleagues is this: If the success of your project depends upon my computer code, then I'm a co-author on your FIRST journal paper.  After that, if you're just re-using the same code, then I just get an acknowledgement.  But if I have to do significant re-coding (not just bug fixes), then that's another co-authorship.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't like that deal, they can write their own code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm going to backtrack: If a code starts to find wide use, then I wouldn't expect everyone using it to make me a co-author.  There's no need to be greedy.  (But I ALWAYS put my name in the Help, and I wouldn't share code without stipulating that my name stay there.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T02:47:55.400" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T02:47:55.400" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10737" CreationDate="2014-04-16T15:21:49.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are asking for &lt;em&gt;opinion&lt;/em&gt;, and this, I believe, is offtopic on this site. But as long as your question stands, here is &lt;strong&gt;my opinion:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this time and age, grabbing money wherever you can, is the norm. Not taking money, when you can, is generally considered stupid. So you should. Everybody does. Fooling the customer is not unethical, otherwise advertising would be forbidden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as a consumer searching for information on the quality of products and services, &lt;strong&gt;the only thing of true value for me is the truth&lt;/strong&gt;, i.e. honest reviews by users of those products and services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a time where blog posts, Amazon reviews, and forum threads, are being created or paid for by the sellers, it has become almost impossible to find trustworthy information on the products I consider. Creating a resource that users can trust, is worth more, both to the public and to your income (in advertising or affiliate revenues), than whatever payment the producers might offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating a reputation for honesty is time consuming, but for a review writer it will pay off in the end. Getting paid for advertising-disguised-as-review is a short term strategy only, because once people buy what you falsely praised, they will avoid your site like the plague. If you want to work towards a future as an expert that users turn to, then honesty is your most lucrative investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T15:21:49.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10737" CreationDate="2014-04-16T15:22:29.950" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I see it, getting paid for reviews can be broken down into different scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You work for someone that pays you to review other products i.e. you're being paid by a neutral party with no affiliation to the product itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are approached by someone with a vested interest in the product, and are either paid to review that product, or get given the product for free, but the expectation is that your review is your own, and in no way needs to be positive or negative.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Same as above, but you are expected to write a positive, glowing review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first scenario, this is generally okay. Many companies - consumer magazines, newspapers etc. - do exactly this. Whenever there may be a conflict of interest, it's always wise to be transparent and reveal it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the third scenario, this is clearly unethical. It is tantamount to a bribe - &quot;we'll give you money if you say something nice&quot; -  and it's for this reason that such reviews are viewed as being unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second scenario, especially if you're getting paid, can be a grey area. For example, you may be more inclined to say something nice, or to tone down your negativity, in order to ensure you get similar work in future. If you are really critical, you essentially shoot yourself in the foot because no-one's going to come back to you if you're posting negative reviews about their products, and no-one else will want to approach you to review their products at the risk of you saying something negative (unless, of course, you have such a large readership that it's worth the gamble).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I used to DJ and get free promo records from companies, and in return I needed to give feedback. After being brutally honest with a few reviews, I ceased receiving any more records from certain labels, so the pressure to be more forgiving and positive is real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question you have to ask yourself is, what is the purpose of the reviews for you and your business model? Is the revenue to come from the businesses in question, or is it to come from increasing your profile and build your readership to make more money from them (e.g. donations, clicks on advertising on your site, purchase referrals etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's your readership that you're focusing on, then it seems obvious that you should maintain your impartiality, and not accept payment for the things you review. You need your readership to trust you. In most cases, getting access to the product for free (e.g. getting a free book, access to the service etc.) should be enough. If you build up your readership, and become an influencer because you're honest, constructive and transparent, you'll find you're more likely to get access to more free stuff. I would also recommend always mentioning that you were given the product for free in order to do the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the revenue is to come from the businesses, and you can't think a way of changing that business model, then at the very least you should be transparent by revealing to your readership that you were paid to do the review, but I wouldn't recommend this approach, since the question always lingers as to whether or not you were truly impartial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reviewer, all you have is your integrity and honesty. Lose that, and you lose your readership. They'll no longer trust you, and that can lead to the end of your online profile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T15:35:23.357" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T15:35:23.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10735" CreationDate="2014-04-16T15:34:41.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The one tool you need is expertise in the affected areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you know what effects cheap robots replacing low-paid workers would have? By being an expert in psychology (how does it affect the persons owning, using or working with them?), economics (how does the changing money flow influence the economy?), job market (what would you do with the unemployed?), criminalistics (how does unemployment change crime and what can be done?) etc. If you are not an expert in any of the relevant areas, you will find yourself unable to make meaningful predictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To become an expert, writers have been know to read books (i.e. study those fields like any student would) or consult experts (i.e. have them as advisors). The acknowledgements in many SF books or thrillers testify to both strategies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-04-19T06:19:43.320" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T06:19:43.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10739" CreationDate="2014-04-16T16:19:19.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although not a slave in the sense you're describing, I would recommend reading Nelson Mandela's first volume of his auto biography, Long Walk To Freedom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is quite interesting in this book is that he starts off not really seeing the injustice of his situation, or that of his people, primarily because of where he is raised, how he is raised, the education he receives, and the benefits that he gets from his situation (for example, access to education that is done to make him and other black South Africans be more like a British concept of a 'gentleman'). While he was among a small minority that could get education, the general populace were left to live as they always had, and given the &quot;freedom&quot; to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one particular moment I recall in the book where Mandela is undergoing his right of passage to becoming a man in Xhosa culture, and a local chief who was the guest speaker (I forget who, apologies) gives a speech about how the Xhosa people are not free, and Mandela gets angry thinking this man is being so ungrateful for what they have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True, Mandela was not directly a slave, or owned by someone, but the same principles apply: you grow up in a world where you don't know any better, and you're often purposefully left uneducated so you don't ask awkward questions, but given enough to improve your lot that you are grateful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even during slavery in America, slaves often stayed with their masters not just because of the threat of violence or intimidation, but were content with their lot, often because many didn't know anything different, were uneducated, and only knew how to perform manual labour. They had somewhere to live, food, and some were given autonomy to practise various manual skills and even hire out their skills for a wage. Their friends and family were around them, and they lived in places that they considered their homes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know in South Africa, religion was often a powerful tool to keep people in line too, where it was adapted to show the inferiority of other races to the white man, and I suspect something similar occurred during slavery as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prison of the mind is far more effective in controlling people than the stick, so if your character loves his master, it's likely because he's grateful for his position in relation to a situation where no-one knows any different. For example, his master may allow some leniency that others don't: perhaps teaching him carpentry, brick laying or other skills. Maybe his master welcomes him into his home regularly, gives him a good place to live while many others may not be so fortunate etc. Maybe his master saved his life once when he was being attacked by those who were racist or xenophobic, or even helped deliver his slave's son.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are complex, and while things like slavery are often portrayed in binary terms, it's never so neat as we make out when we're dealing with real people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T16:19:19.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10737" CreationDate="2014-04-16T17:48:17.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the financial world, it is common for a company to pay a credit rating agency to review their company's ability to repay debt (meaning their ability to repay bond holders) and make that review publicly available. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfr.org/financial-crises/credit-rating-controversy/p22328#p3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cfr.org/financial-crises/credit-rating-controversy/p22328#p3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8473" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T17:48:17.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10737" CreationDate="2014-04-16T17:49:19.763" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;An important consideration is that in the US, the FTC requires clear disclosure of paid reviews by bloggers. Both the advertiser and the blogger may be held liable if the blogger does not disclose that the review was paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/press-releases/ftc-publishes-final-guides-governing-endorsements-testimonials/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/press-releases/ftc-publishes-final-guides-governing-endorsements-testimonials/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Example 5: A skin care products advertiser participates in a blog advertising service. The&#xA;  service matches up advertisers with bloggers who will promote the advertiser’s products on&#xA;  their personal blogs. The advertiser requests that a blogger try a new body lotion and write&#xA;  a review of the product on her blog. Although the advertiser does not make any specific&#xA;  claims about the lotion’s ability to cure skin conditions and the blogger does not ask the&#xA;  advertiser whether there is substantiation for the claim, in her review the blogger writes&#xA;  that the lotion cures eczema and recommends the product to her blog readers who suffer&#xA;  from this condition. The advertiser is subject to liability for misleading or unsubstantiated&#xA;  representations made through the blogger’s endorsement. The blogger also is subject to&#xA;  liability for misleading or unsubstantiated representations made in the course of her&#xA;  endorsement. &lt;strong&gt;The blogger is also liable if she fails to disclose clearly and conspicuously&#xA;  that she is being paid for her services.&lt;/strong&gt; [See§ 255.5.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8472" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T17:49:19.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10738" CreationDate="2014-04-16T18:51:12.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hyphens indicate a compound adjective: &lt;em&gt;a do-it-yourself project.&lt;/em&gt; The hyphens are to let the reader know that all the hyphenated words belong to one thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using capitals to denote a proper name, the hyphens are unnecessary. The caps make it a unit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T18:51:12.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10749" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-17T10:05:32.650" Score="1" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a creative copywriter and I've done the odd voice-over writing gig. Think ads and brand videos. I enjoy them a lot, and thought I'd seek out some agencies that specialise in creative copy for video and ads, but I'm struggling to find them.  How can I go about searching for agencies who can help me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8480" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T16:06:11.800" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T16:34:47.003" Title="How can I find an agency for copywriting/script writing (for advertising) in the UK?" Tags="|creative-writing|script|copywriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10750" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10957" CreationDate="2014-04-17T11:42:22.683" Score="9" ViewCount="23400" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed that proper nouns, such as names of theorems or techniques are often set in italics in scientific writing but not always. Are there rules about it, for example each proper noun should be set in italic the first time it occurs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A contrived example&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many different methods for adding two numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Very Simple Addition (VSA)&lt;/em&gt; works by calculating &lt;code&gt;a+b&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Unnecessary Complicated Addition (UCA)&lt;/em&gt; works by calculating &lt;code&gt;-(-a-b)&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VSA is the method used by everyone but the British who use UCA because of tradition along with their foot-inch based measurement system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastEditorUserId="3983" LastEditDate="2014-04-18T11:50:49.470" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T17:02:53.920" Title="When should I use italics in scientific writing?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10751" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-17T12:26:07.037" Score="1" ViewCount="191" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am facing this situation where description of the personality of a character is quite important. Is it good to describe the personality traits or shall I let the readers deduce it based on the action. Is this description worth, compared to the amount of content it would take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3861" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T13:18:54.813" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T02:19:44.947" Title="Whether to describe personality of a character or let the readers deduce it based on the actions" Tags="|characters|description|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10751" CreationDate="2014-04-17T13:18:45.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, if you don't have time or space in your story to show some aspect of a character's personality, why bother with it? Does it matter if your character refuses to shop at Walmart because of their abusive business practices if the story is about how he hates strawberries? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the characteristic is that important to the story, then yes, you need to spend the time and content showing us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other problem is that you may run into what's called an &quot;informed characteristic,&quot; which is when the writer &lt;em&gt;tells&lt;/em&gt; us that the character is X (for example, brave and daring), and the other characters treat him like he's brave and daring, but we only &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; the character being nervous and risk-averse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T13:18:45.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10754" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:57:17.303" Score="5" ViewCount="277" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have signed up for Amazon's Kindle service for making an eBook, and for Amazon's Createspace for making a print on demand book. With both those services, what country I am in or from were not issues, I was never prompted to provide any tax information. Literally within minutes I was at an interface to upload my book text and select options for how I want to make it available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Amazon's ACX service for publishing audiobooks, I was first stonewalled by the fact that I am not in the US or UK. I used a relative's address to sign up just to poke around a bit and see what it was like, and there are all sorts of procedures to verify tax information and social security numbers. Some stages seemed to involve faxing (!) documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's even putting aside the fact that ACX is currently unavailable for people outside the US and UK. For those of us ineligible for ACXs services, it seems that Audible does not accept direct submissions, and trying to find a go-between is as bad as trying to find a traditional publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a professionally narrated and edited audio version of my book ready to go, but pretty much nowhere to take it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between the process of making a eBook or POD book versus an audiobook has left me baffled. Why is an audio version of a book so much more complicated and difficult to distribute? It's the exact same content, just one you see and one you hear. So why should taxes, legalities, and country of origin matter in one and not the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2753" LastEditorUserId="2753" LastEditDate="2014-04-18T02:37:07.513" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T22:20:11.697" Title="Why is distributing an audiobook so much more complicated than POD or eBooks?" Tags="|audiobook|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7917" CreationDate="2014-04-17T22:21:32.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;And then of course, there's all the rest of us who don't live in the US or the UK. I'm South African. I've grown up reading American and British books (and Irish, Canadian, Australian, South African, etc.). I learned that there are different varieties of English, and gained an understanding of them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently read the Hunger Games series, and the edition of the second book (Catching Fire) happened to be for the UK market. I didn't twig when it came to spelling (I guess I really don't notice colour vs. color), but when Haymitch said &quot;Done the maths?&quot; it jumped off the page at me - and not in a good way. And when Katniss went about a &quot;KILOMETRE&quot; along the security fence - well, I wanted to strangle the 'translator'. That was overstepping the mark. It really jolted me out of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishers: your readers are not stupid. Those few who can't handle other varieties of English may well be greatly outnumbered by those who prefer to read a story in its original flavour. But the majority of readers probably don't care either way, as long as they are entertained. Stop wasting money on this nonsense, and use it to promote authors!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8487" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T22:21:32.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10750" CreationDate="2014-04-18T08:35:32.920" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Italics are a common way to &lt;em&gt;emphasize&lt;/em&gt; words. As such, it's best to use italics sparingly. A text where every proper noun is italicized gets very annoying to read; it'd be like listening to a commercial.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you're writing for a specific publication, check their style guide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T08:35:32.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6164" CreationDate="2014-04-18T12:30:50.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;if you want to own the story and dont want the director to change it in anyway, than you can put little camera angles not too much but if you dont mind changes on yo story then let the director do their job, dont include angles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8490" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T12:30:50.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10759" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10760" CreationDate="2014-04-18T14:21:26.260" Score="1" ViewCount="558" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really apologize, this is something that just came to my mind (and while sitting on the toilet). There's no editing. The reason is, I'll remove the whole passage if the protagonist sounds childish. It's an experiment so I'm not really sure of the result. Harsh comments are welcomed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ming had two hours left sitting in that cafe. His girlfriend, Ai-Ling,&#xA;  would be back around five. He hoped. If everything went fine. It was a&#xA;  long time but Ming was good at waiting. In fact, that was one of his&#xA;  most prominent skills. He could do it for hours. He would read a book,&#xA;  write on his laptop, or if he didn't carry any of that he would gaze&#xA;  out of the window and do his typical exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He would stare at people and wonder what they'll do if, while walking,&#xA;  suddenly realized they were naked. He had no idea how the thought&#xA;  first came to him. And it hadn't started as a perverted fantasy while&#xA;  watching a passing lady or anything like that. Nor it was out of&#xA;  malice or because he liked to make fun of people. In fact, he would&#xA;  have felt better if he didn't had such strange thoughts. The thought&#xA;  just came to him almost as abrupt as a thunder from the sky. And from&#xA;  that day it stuck to him like a little cold the couldn't get rid off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So that was what he did. The first victim was an old business man who was tying his shoes at&#xA;  the entrance of the subway. He had a pregnant-women belly size and no&#xA;  hair except inside his ears. After loosing his clothes Ming pictured&#xA;  him running around the street, his bald glimmering under the sun, his&#xA;  fat tissue bobbing, screaming off his lungs to catch a cab. All the&#xA;  while wondering where is his lather shoes and his two-hundred dollars&#xA;  suit. Next he pictured a girl—blonde dyed hair, thick eyelashes—who&#xA;  could as well been a model hiding in the bushes of the park. And stay&#xA;  there until the sun melted from the sky. Not because she's afraid of&#xA;  being seen naked but because she is somehow aware that her left breast&#xA;  is slightly bigger that the right one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lastly, he imagined a school kid passing on the sidewalk, a huge&#xA;  backpack on hick back, licking an ice cream (just as the other two, it&#xA;  was random. Ming was no pedophile). Realizing he had no clothes the&#xA;  kid continued licking his ice cream while wondering if some sort of&#xA;  magic spell had produced this. Or whether his mom had actually&#xA;  forgotten to wash his clothes. She was kind of forgetful after all. He&#xA;  then finished his ice cream and walked away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can really tell people by how they react while naked, he though as&#xA;  if musing about a deep philosophical question. You can totally tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ai-Ling arrived a half past five. She dangled from the window of the&#xA;  coffee shop and after glancing around for a while she finally spotted&#xA;  Ming. She then walked over and sank on the wooden seat with a big&#xA;  sigh. Her long black hair was slightly damp and her silky white skin&#xA;  glittering from the sun that poured from the window. She looked&#xA;  exhausted, as if she'd been running in a marathon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sorry,&quot; she said, still panting. &quot;It took me longer that I imagined.&#xA;  That exam had more than forty pages.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's all right.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What you been doing?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Nothing,&quot; I said. &quot;Just picturing people naked.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ai-Ling wiped her forehead. &quot;Good.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(God, posting a first draft feels like being seen naked).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-04-18T14:37:55.663" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T16:27:46.360" Title="Does the narrator sound childish?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2019-03-16T18:41:39.680" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10759" CreationDate="2014-04-18T16:27:46.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends what you think is childish. Is picturing random people naked, childish? I dont know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't immediately get the childish impression, maybe teenage, and I say that because of how the sentences are structured. The short and abrupt sentences like these remind me of teenagers for some reason or another. Maybe it's the start and stop nature of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;He hoped. If everything went fine.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You can totally tell.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6535" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T16:27:46.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10749" CreationDate="2014-04-18T16:34:47.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd just approach it like any job:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell everyone you know you're looking for some work and specifically what you're looking for, and if they know anyone they could introduce you to or if they have any gigs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cold calls/emails to agencies (both ones you'd like to work for and one you wouldn't, having a strong CV only helps over time). Google them, then call and speak to someone about possible positions, then follow up via email with your CV&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to events held by agencies and hit them with business cards and make connections and ask around for what you're looking for&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6535" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T16:34:47.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10751" CreationDate="2014-04-18T17:12:08.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Picture a few people that you have formed opinions of.....friends, family, coworkers, celebrities, strangers. Reflect on how you formed those opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely they came from your own experiences interacting with and observing these people, and maybe from hearing other people characterize them. Almost certainly little to none of your opinions are based on how these people describe themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now picture how you want your reader to view your character. Act accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use your own psychology as a sounding board for your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T17:12:08.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10763" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-18T18:07:06.617" Score="0" ViewCount="607" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing the introduction to a story. The intro starts with a dream, then the main character wakes up, and then he and one of the secondary characters have a conversation while waiting for a bus. The dream is extremely different from reality and so I wanted to have the main character being jolted out of the dream. This is the first rough draft I've written for it, but I'm having trouble with it. It's annoying me and I can't keep writing because there's something off about it. I've never started a story with a dream sequence before, so I'm having difficulty pinning down exactly what's wrong about the dream sequence without also trying to add more to the dream itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of stuff about this opening that's annoying me. It seems sort of not-quite-there when I read it. It feels really... I guess maybe segregated from the reader? I don't know how to put it, but it feels really clunky. I want it to be slightly unsettling, it doesn't come across in my writing at all (to me, in any case). And I don't particularly like the transition out of the dream either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd like a critique. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this dream sequence work as an introduction? I'm worried about how long it is and whether or not it's boring. The dream sequence is pretty important and needs to be exciting, but I don't think it is. But I'm also worried that if it's too exciting, it might act like an anti-hook and make everything after it seem boring. What I ended up with seems drab, though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the dream sequence unsettling? I'm not really going for mysterious, but I don't really linger on any of the images in the dream, so I feel like the whole scene isn't &quot;strange&quot; which is how I want it to come across.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the transition from the dream into reality okay as it is? What I mean is, is it not jarring enough to break out of the dream? Is it too weak a transition for the dream sequence?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The characters Felix and Dante have a conversation afterwards that I think is sort of unwieldy/unrealistic. Would you say the same? It's supposed to be a pretty lazy conversation that could go anywhere... but I don't think that comes across very well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpt is &lt;a href=&quot;http://pastebin.com/GDgJBfkG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; at Pastebin.com. For some reason, though, the bolding and the italics in the piece kept deleting words when I entered this into Pastebin, so in the end I just used the notation that we use on SE for bolded words and italicized words. ** surround bolded text and * surround italicized text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T18:15:39.897" Title="Does this dream sequence work in my introduction?" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-03-11T19:24:28.827" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10735" CreationDate="2014-04-19T10:54:46.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, if a fiction book's purpose is &quot;to show what will happen to the world, if something changes,&quot; then that's going to be one booooring book.  Take, for example, Gattica.  You might say the book's purpose was to show the effect of widespread genetic engineering on society -- and you'd be wrong.  The book's purpose was twofold: 1) to entertain, and 2) to show the triumph of the human spirit over technology.  See Robert Heinlein's essay, &quot;On the Writing of Speculative Fiction.&quot;  (Summarized &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.karenwoodward.org/2013/09/robert-heinlein-on-writing-of.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, to answer your question, start by reading a bunch of articles and books by futurists, whose entire job is to predict the future based on current trends and emerging technology.  For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://io9.com/20-crucial-terms-every-21st-century-futurist-should-kno-1545499202&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, which I found by Googling &quot;futurist.&quot;  Or go to an online bookstore and search for &quot;futurist&quot; or &quot;near-future.&quot;  Since you're looking for NEAR-future, you won't have to read far into any book.  Another good source for very solid near-future predictions is the beginning of every issue of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, MIT's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.technologyreview.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Technology Review&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, and a plethora of other journals and trade magazines.  There the editor(s) will summarize the main articles in that issue and will often speculate on the importance of the articles' findings.  You can find these online and at your local library.  For example, search for &quot;trade magazines&quot;, and follow the links.  End-of-year and start-of-year issues are especially rich in predictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T10:54:46.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10763" CreationDate="2014-04-19T14:29:17.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the dream sequence is a much better read than the dialog after it.  There are some minor things in the dream sequence that make it a little confusing for me - for example in paragraph 13 there are so many emotions at play, - guilt, relief, fear, shame, happiness, conflict/indecision.  Is he really &quot;happy&quot; that it is her in the machine, or is he ashamed that he is relieved it is not him?  It was also not clear to me why he would die if he stayed.  Is the same threat that put her into the machine now threatening him?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your transition out of the dream was good, and although it is graphic, it works.  I don't think it would be a bad thing to be a little more explicit in paragraph 19 that he is waking up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What was the most jolting for me was the setting when he woke up.  At first I was picturing two gay men in bed together.  I thought Felix and Dante were lovers, and was confused why he was dressed in bed, then more confused why he would be so deep in REM/dream sleep on a bus stop bench.  That, and the dialog felt like it was forced.  Are there more subtle ways to fill the reader in on the racial profiles of the two friends?  The dialog felt too forced to get that point across to the reader.  They know each other's backgrounds (at least the tone of this dialog suggests they are close friends who have known each other for a while) so to be so explicit sounded unnatural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would focus less on the dream because that is pretty solid, and more on rewriting what comes next.  I think the dream works as an intro, but was confused by your comment - not going for mysterious, but want it to seem strange - it is definitely mysterious and elements (locked shut, alien tools) are strange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8498" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T14:29:17.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10769" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10770" CreationDate="2014-04-20T13:25:06.893" Score="4" ViewCount="1087" Body="&lt;p&gt;What should I do about a story that has been in uneducated development for the past ten years? Should I delete the story and do something else with my life? Below I provided a quick summary of the current development of the story for additional information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been plagued with an interesting story of which I feel unqualified to write. It has been 10 years since I first conceived the plot of this story and it still continues to grow and improve over time in my head. The story mixes fantasy, science, and mythology which appealed to me as a scientist. I wrote four scenes (30 pages) and submitted for peer review to two English professors of whom I have met as friendly acquaintances in my old Electrical Engineering college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently spoke with one of the English professors from my Electrical Engineering college. She told me that the story was based on an interesting idea, but the story was (1) unoriginal, (2) the dialogue was poorly developed, and (3) the character development was poor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reason numbers (2) and (3) made sense to me, because the submitted document contains scenes that are literally cut from the middle of the story with very little explanation of the character's and their back stories. I selected those four scenes, because the characters that spoke provided their quickest general overview of the story. I did not intend to give her the whole story as a 100+ page document, because the story is not completely written on paper yet. It might have been better to have given her a plot outline as opposed to a plucked scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reason number (1) did not make sense to me. I was told by many that stories in general are not truly original. She may have implied that the mythology was simply a copy and paste with my own scientific spin, but I do not understand why that is necessarily a bad way to develop a story. Although when I asked her for specifics on what was unoriginal about the story, she failed to provide specific examples about the story. She did state general reasons such as the use of stereotypical character rolls and the plot was original, but she did not go into specifics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking towards the future I feel that it is impractical for me to write this story due to my inexperience as a writer and not much time to develop creative writing skills. I am about to attend a graduate program in Physics, in another college, to spend the next 5 years of my life working 60 hours a week in the lab. I am considering to talk to the English department at my Physics graduate school to see if there is away to develop my creative writing skills, but I fear my Physics graduate program will keep me too busy to attempt such a feat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am also contemplating the idea of giving the story to someone else who has the experience and the time to write a good developed story and let them take all the credit. Giving the story to someone else seems rude and irresponsible to me though. I feel like I have cursed myself with this story and I wish there was away to forget about it and be relieved from this burden. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scope of the story can be humorously summarized as four books: Book zero is a beginning of time and mythology like story. Book one is a medieval like story. Book two is a modern cold war like story. Book three is a space exploration like story. All of which take place on another planet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The historical development of this story seems outrageous and crazy to me every time I look back since its beginning. The story start out as several unrelated, sometimes childish, stories that slowly over time joined together to form an expanding universe with some level of coherence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions to what I should with this story either deleting it or going with it would be much appreciated. Thank you for your time and consideration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8504" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-04-20T17:33:37.727" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T00:35:54.283" Title="Thinking of a story for the past 10 years as an inexperienced writer, what should I do?" Tags="|creative-writing|planning|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10769" CreationDate="2014-04-20T13:52:55.123" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like you have been building a world, not developing a story. A story, in the bestselling sense of the word, is about characters who overcome obstactles and grow in the process. I miss that aspect in your description of your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without reading anything, it is hard to nail down the problems your aquaintance saw, or recommend what to do with what you have. But I'll speak from my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know quite a few hobbyists who have been developing, writing and drawing on one single novel or comic since their adolescence and well into their thirties or fourties. They accumulate heaps of sketches, excerpts, fragments, draw maps, invent mythologies, develop complicated systems of races, languages, names and laws. They write and rewrite and re-rewrite over and over again, but they never come to the point where the story is finished for them and they can tell &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always been a bit appalled at how a person could remain stuck in the rut of one idea for decades. It is as if a part of their minds was frozen in time and refused to mature. But since there are examples among the great works of art that have taken a lifetime to complete, maybe I just lack the width and depth of mind to understand this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me the answer you seek depends on what you want from your life, not what you want from that story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you love immersing yourself in that story, then keep deepening and widening it, and forget about publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to publish, let it go for the time being, and begin and finish one other project. &lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Novel Writing Month&lt;/a&gt; is a great event for this. Then begin and finish another. And while you do your smaller projects, learn about plot, character, and whatever else is important for a story that grips its readers. And when you feel ready – and have found some emotional distance from your lifetime project – tackle it with the new skills you have built. A hiatus of a year or two isn't much for a ten year project, but it'll be enough to give you a fresh view and more critical opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you love worldbuilding &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; want to plublish, find a co-author, e.g. on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://absolutewrite.com/forums/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Absolute Write forums&lt;/a&gt;. If you do, trust this person to understand plotting etc., and allow them to make changes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this is the law, obviously. It's just what come to mind first. A variation or combination or something else might be the solution for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I see is that you may be too deep in your creation to clearly see it as your readers would see it. That is the distance you need. Get it by having a co-author look in from the outside, or get out yourself by doing something else for some time. You need to fall out of love with your mind's child and see it as what it is: a bit interesting, a bit boring – just like all ideas, before they have been treated and polished by a hard working writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-04-20T17:56:37.887" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T17:56:37.887" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10771" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10772" CreationDate="2014-04-20T19:07:27.287" Score="7" ViewCount="3595" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have probably seen it in fantasy movies or games - a mage or a paladin with a massive grimoire or spellbook or whatever strapped to his side, which he would in times of need open and recite a chant/cast a spell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been writing diaries since childhood, so several years ago I decided to make something GRAND, bought lots of writing paper and hacked together a thick notebook. Thick like 6-6.5cm thick, with 500-600 pages IIRC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question that's been tormenting me since then is 'how the hell do they write in these books?!' because obviously the closer to the bottom of the page the more your hand hangs in the air. The last few lines are written with basically no support for your wrist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried putting down something for support, but having another device the size of the book itself is not very convenient. For now I have to do it (depending on the mood) either in a way that resembles drawing with a brush (which is tiring, slow and sloppy) or supporting my right hand with my left (the pages are blank, so I have to put a lined sheet underneath the current page, and it requires the left hand to push the page down for the lines to be visible - therefore the second method doesn't work very well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick Google search doesn't give any useful info, only advice about using writing mats, but I suspect they won't be very useful with a notebook this thick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I dive into a futile endeavor of hacking together a miraculous wrist-supporting compact folding contraption, are there any alternatives you know of which I have missed? Some technique to hold your hand in a special way? Ways to put the book in a certain position to alleviate the problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book itself is modifiable to an extent (meaning I can dismantle it and probably assemble back), so advice on reconfiguring the book itself is also acceptable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8505" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-11-18T23:47:35.513" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T23:47:35.513" Title="How to write in a VERY thick notebook" Tags="|handwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10771" CreationDate="2014-04-20T20:37:12.010" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I turn the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write what I can comfortably write at the top of the page, then turn the book and write &quot;from the bottom up&quot; or from the side in or from the middle out, whatever feels most comfortable. I number the sections to mark their order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is for a &lt;em&gt;note book&lt;/em&gt; – a book to take notes in, not a grimoire to be passed on to my wizard successor. You know that those old handwritten books were written on single sheets of paper or parchment, and only bound &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; they had been finished, don't you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O5cSL.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T03:10:39.167" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T03:10:39.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10773" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10776" CreationDate="2014-04-20T21:39:01.247" Score="3" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;If an author is not concerned about making money from her story, but rather would like to publish the story to protect the story from copy right yet allow others to read and review the story for critical improvement, is there such an open source website or facility that promotes such a peer review environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8504" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-04-20T22:29:25.230" LastActivityDate="2020-08-06T04:31:18.213" Title="Open Source Publishing?" Tags="|fiction|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10769" CreationDate="2014-04-21T04:08:36.023" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First I will be discouraging, then I will be encouraging, then I will be fatherly.  OK?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Judging by the text of your question, your writing skills are not (currently) up to the task of writing &lt;em&gt;an epic 4-volume novel&lt;/em&gt; (which is what you are proposing).  Your writing is rife with grammatical errors (not just typos) and other problems.  Sorry to be blunt, but you needed someone to say that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Based on available data, I estimate your age at 23 +/- 1.  You are &lt;strong&gt;young&lt;/strong&gt;!  You do not need to write your magnum opus now.  It will wait for you to mature.  As you write scientific papers, work closely with the technical editor who reviews your manuscripts.  Don't just accept the fixes -- ask why your original was wrong.  Also, writing papers is a great way to learn how to tell a complicated story in an ordered and coherent manner.  That will be good training for your tetralogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) While pursuing your PhD, you will NEED to have some non-scientific downtime, or you'll go nutso.  So, you can putter some more with your story for the next 5 years.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Concentrate on the STORYLINE and the CHARACTERS.  Make them sparkle.  Meanwhile, technology will march on, and you will be in the midst of it.  My twenty-something son is convinced that graphic novels and immersive video games are the future of literature.  Learn computer visualization techniques while you obtain your physics PhD.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) OK, here's the fatherly part: I'm sensing reluctance from you about the PhD program, as if you're not sure you want to head in that direction.  From personal experience I can tell you that you will need a strong commitment to the PhD in order to finish.  It's a long, hard haul (as you seem to fear).  However, you &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; have a life outside physics, especially after the first year or two.  And you're not signing up for the Foreign Legion, dude!  :-)  Throw yourself into it wholeheartedly.  Psychologically commit yourself for one year.  If you like it, good, commit for another year.  If you hate it, drop out and fall back on your BSEE.  Either way, you'll be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T04:08:36.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10773" CreationDate="2014-04-21T11:24:57.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create an ebook and distribute it through Amazon's &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Direct Publishing&lt;/a&gt; (or other ebook selling platforms) for $0.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amazon KDP allows to give away your book for free for some limited time, after that you have to sell it for at least $0.99. But you can publish it for free elsewhere, and since Amazon always wants to have the cheapes prices, once you report that your book is available for free elsewhere, you can lower your price to free on Amazon, too. I never tried this, just read about it in forums and blogs. Google to find a more detailed how to. Of course you can always ignore Amazon and just use other platforms, but Amazon has the widest reach, so I would try to be on there, if I could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be hasty and throw away your idea just yet. Take some time to evaluate all options, let some experienced readers read it and give you feedback (find bloggers doing reviews in your genre and ask them for feedback), if they are even half positive, either educate yourself to write well or find a co-author, etc. You can always publish your book free, but maybe some better ideas come along in the next weeks or months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T11:36:24.650" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T11:36:24.650" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10769" CreationDate="2014-04-21T16:50:17.083" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't remember where I read it, but there is a story about a sculpting teacher who did an experiment on a class. He divided the class in two, and told one half that they should spend the entire semester focusing on one pot or vase, and that they would be graded on the quality of that one object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other half was told that they would be graded purely on the quantity of vases they made. The more vases, the better the grade, no matter how bad they were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which half do you think made the best vases in the end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The half who focused on quantity. Why? Because sculpting, like writing, is a skill, and the only way to get better at it is by doing it a lot. The ones who made many vases started getting the feeling for what made a vase good. By messing up all the time, they started getting a sense for what worked and what didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should do the same. Write. A. Lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write crap. Write things that makes you cringe in embarrassment (don't show it to anyone). But finish it. Make sure you finish it, however bad it turns out, and move on to the next project. That is the only way to get better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to finish things is by starting small. Write short stories. Don't start with a novel. Would you run the New York Marathon without practising first? Probably not. So don't do the writing equivalent of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As other have mentioned, you seem to need some guidance on structure, plot and characters. I find &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1582979987&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt; on the subject indispensable. It should appeal well to someone with a scientific nature (do be warned that the author comes off as a bit cocky).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T16:50:17.083" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10739" CreationDate="2014-04-21T19:34:03.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for first-hand accounts, I'd recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1499102534/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;camp=1634&amp;amp;creative=19450&amp;amp;creativeASIN=1499102534&amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;tag=nonshewro0a-21&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ten Years a Slave&lt;/a&gt;. It's an autobiographical account of a free black man who was forced into slavery, and it's pretty shocking. It was also made into a (wonderful/horrific) film last year, which I'd recommend looking out for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a short-read, there's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/to-my-old-master.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Letter to my Old Master&lt;/a&gt;, a letter - believed to be real - from a freed slave to his old master, who asked him to return to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not quite a first-hand account, but I'd also recommend looking up the YouTube series Ask a Slave; it's based on the real-life, modern experiences of an actress working in a historical house, where she portrayed a slave and had to answer questions from visitors about her 'daily life'. What's quite interesting is seeing the inherent beliefs and misunderstandings people still have today about slavery and race.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I don't have any books to recommend but it might be worth looking into Stockholme Syndrome and domestic abuse as well as slavery, to help with the angle of your character loving the slave owner. It might help your character feel less contrived if, instead of being naive, he's been manipulated. I think you can believe anything is 'your fault' if someone tells you so long enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some more generic thoughts about your story, a person who has been raised in slavery from birth would most likely be indoctrined in the religion and custom of their slavers, which could potentially help mould the thoughts of your character. I'm not certain if your story takes place in this world? It might help your story to create some specific, rather racist religion if it doesn't, but even if it does some people have interpreted the Curse of Ham in the Bible as a condemnation of dark skin - as if it's something you're cursed with - and the Book of Mormon has mentions of God 'setting a mark upon' sinners, which has been interpreted as meaning giving them dark skin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now obviously that's hogswash, but if you lived in a culture of slavery, you would want to find reasons to justify your actions and ways of seeing your slaves as something lesser than you, and you could easily find meanings in religious passages to support your needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Ten Years a Slave, the slave owners regularly gather the slaves to listen to Christian sermons and speeches, and if you were brought up having people read from important-sounding books every day, and explaining that the passages mean you're indebted to them, you might well believe it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think the older you got, the more difficult it would be to believe. As What said, you would most likely be aware of the injustice. I think it would be entirely human to ask, 'Why me? What's the difference between me and my master?' You would compare yourself to them, especially if you were brought up together, and I'm sure more than once you'd see injustice directly, even if it was small - say he hit you with a stick or stole sweets from the pantry. When &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; skin didn't 'darken' and he wasn't beaten, you would have to question why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gets harder if there are more slaves, as there are likely to be, as you would be exposed to more points of view which would likely be different, and it would be very easy to be jaded and bitter from very early on. Even 'kind' masters didn't treat their slaves &lt;em&gt;well&lt;/em&gt;; a slave is a slave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how grim a story yours is, but in American slavery, we have accounts of children being taken away from parents and sold, and young women being raped; it would be pretty easy to see the injustice there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, as Craig pointed out, some slaves in America stayed with their masters because it was the only life they'd known - a home and daily meals (and not being killed for running away) would seem the sensible option to many people. That doesn't mean they were &lt;em&gt;happy&lt;/em&gt;. It's not really comparable but just as an example of human psychology, in 2011 Gallup reported 71% of American workers hate their jobs - I think it's fair to say a lot of people, no matter the situation, will take the devil they know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there's a very interesting and complex psychology there to explore. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T19:34:03.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10782" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T02:32:58.593" Score="3" ViewCount="681" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came up with a theory that story telling would be a fun way to improve my style and narrative structure in fiction. Does anyone have any experience doing this? Currently, I am making up mostly bed time stories for children and some stories during car trips with adults.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8516" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T05:19:50.713" Title="Story-telling to improve writing skills?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2014-06-01T05:03:09.557" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10739" CreationDate="2014-04-22T03:09:58.357" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like from the description, you are writing a &quot;slave narrative.&quot; This was a popular literary genre in the US around the Civil War. It can either be fiction or non-fiction. One of the most famous examples and my personal suggestion is the &lt;em&gt;Life of Fredrick Douglas&lt;/em&gt;. He was born a slave and later became a leader in the American Abolition Movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I learned from his book is that freedom isn't inherently obvious. Before Douglas was taught to read by his master, he was very happy as a slave. His realization that he was a free-born person came slowly over time and then he was compelled to run away as slavery became an unbearable condition. The problem was not that his master was cruel, but the knowledge about the alternative. That seems to a theme in your book, so that's why I suggest it as a starting place for your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The WPA's Federal Writer's Project did 2300 interviews ex-slaves during the Great Depression. That research is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt; That seems like a great resource to understand what the average slave thought about slavery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8516" LastEditorUserId="8516" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T03:47:51.683" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T03:47:51.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10784" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T04:54:02.793" Score="1" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We resumed our way, until we finally exited the woods and reached a&#xA;  valley. Two ridges stood on both sides, meeting together on the far&#xA;  horizon. In the middle was a river, its quiet surface perfectly&#xA;  reflecting the moon in the sky. There were no trees. Only bushes and autumn-colored&#xA;  shrubs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the passage above, this part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where were no trees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote it so I have a short sentence in a paragraph full of long ones. The next sentence is connected to it. So I could have written:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There were no trees: only bushes and autumn-colored&#xA;  shrubs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes more sense grammatically, but I'll end up with sentences of almost the same length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could also write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the middle was a river. Its quiet surface perfectly reflected the&#xA;  moon in the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which puts me in the same dilemma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should take precedence? Rhythm or clarity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T23:38:00.530" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T15:02:12.723" Title="What should take precedence? Rhythm or clarity?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|pacing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10784" CreationDate="2014-04-22T05:17:30.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Splitting up the sentences didn't alter the rhythm substantially. However, it did alter the meaning, in the sense that it sounds as if you are trying to emphasize that there were &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; trees and &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; bushes. Using very short sentence fragments can alter rhythm, but it does this by adding emphasis to elements.  Within your.  Writing. I don't think that was your intention, since that sounds normal for a valley on the outskirts of a woods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8516" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T05:17:30.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10787" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T18:08:22.933" Score="1" ViewCount="2772" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new author and as I am writing my novels, I need a little revenue.&#xA;Are there sites that would pay for articles being written?&#xA;Any suggestions would be great!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T05:38:46.787" Title="what is the best way to make money on the side as a beginning author?" Tags="|novel|money|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10787" CreationDate="2014-04-22T19:25:14.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Try to find something that requires lots of time but little hands-on time, like house-sitting, pet-sitting, old-people-sitting, and infant-sitting.  (But NOT child-sitting!)  Or night watchman.  The pay will be lousy (minimum wage or less), but you'll have lots of free time doing it, so you can do it a lot.  You can work 12 hours a day at jobs like that, without giving up much writing time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) It is impossible to answer your question about sites that pay for articles, without knowing your other talents.  Many magazine/e-zine articles would require the author to have some bona fides in fashion, science, technology, food/dining, crafting, travel, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) If you are good at science, there are companies that pay people to take journal submissions written in poor English and turn them into journal submissions written in good English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) NOBODY is going to pay an unknown freelancer to &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; an article for them.  They MIGHT pay for an &lt;em&gt;already-written&lt;/em&gt; article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T19:25:14.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10787" CreationDate="2014-04-23T07:57:56.237" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I advise against writing as a side job for a writer.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To write your novels (or whatever) you need a special kind of creativity and mental energy. You only have a limited amount of this, before it runs out each day. Most writers notice that after a certain time writing the quality of their ideas and writing deteriorates. What they need is to take a break and replenish their creativity and mental writing energy by not-writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you earn money writing, you'll have less creativity and mental energy left for your essential writing: that of your novel. I once tried to write a novel while studying, but researching, structuring, developing and writing my seminar papers took away all the creativity and mental energy that I had. I had lots of time, but I wrote not a single word for my novel in a whole year. But taking off a month from my studies for NaNoWriMo, I wrote a 50.000 words first draft in ten days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't mind taking forever to finish your novel while wasting your creativity on writing stuff you don't care about, then that's no problem, but since you probably want to make a living as a writer of novels, you might want to find a non-writing side job, like @dmm recommends in his answer, and focus your whole writing energy on writing what you want to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would do is: deliver the mail, bake fries at Mac D., do lawn mowing and gardening. The best side job for a writer, in my opinion, is mentally effortless, relatively stressfree, and physically invigorating. I've been driving taxi (during the day, chauffeuring old people to the doctor and such), delivering parcels, and working as a gardener's help. Great jobs to be creative alongside. Think &quot;student job&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And I recommend that you find a job that leaves you time to write whenever you have your most creative time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people find that they are the most creative and mentally fresh before lunch. So find a job that starts after lunch. Others love to write at night. So find a job in the morning or afternoon (however long you need to sleep), relax a bit or do sports, then write in the evening. Or whatever suits you. Just don't give your best time away for your moneymaking. Scedule your money job at your most useless time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T12:41:03.953" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T12:41:03.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10784" CreationDate="2014-04-23T15:02:12.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sentence length is pacing, and a component of rhythm, and sets up subtle expectations, whether for more of the same or something different. After three long sentences, a short and simply declarative one produces a certain affect, and feels good, rhythmically. But breaking the pattern and changing the rhythm also changes the emphasis, and (as I hear it) gives those words a higher level of significance than the more purely descriptive words and phrases of the previous sentences. Their meaning changes, however subtly. And if a change in rhythm brings about a change in meaning, then rhythm or clarity is not an either/or question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I think the best solution would be to use a dash instead of a period, and keep it one sentence. This would let you retain most of the emphasis effect of the four single-syllable words at the start of the sentence, without creating a grammatical issue. You could accomplish similar with a semicolon, but it lacks the urgency of the dash (at least in part because it's less visually dramatic), and doesn't visually set off the words that follow. It might also feel a little &quot;stuffy&quot; in what seems like a relatively &quot;poetic&quot; context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wanted to keep it two sentences, then (again to my ear), the word 'Only' feels too rhythmically soft to begin a new sentence following that short one, and so you might consider changing it to 'Just', which has a harder tone, and would better work as a bridge between the crispness of the previous words, and the longer, slower pace that returns for the rest of the sentence. It's still grammatically questionable, but that might be easier to buy if the rhythm and sound of the words help justify it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8096" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T15:02:12.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10791" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T15:48:42.117" Score="3" ViewCount="3167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story. And I realized the opening is filled with question marks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ming was disturbed by the faint sound of a piano. He put down his&#xA;  guitar tuner and glanced at the clock. 12:01. &lt;strong&gt;Isn't a little late for&#xA;  practicing?&lt;/strong&gt; Curious, he pressed his ear against the wall. The song was&#xA;  coming from the apartment next door. It seemed to be classical music.&#xA;  Probably Mozart or Beethoven. &lt;em&gt;But weird,&lt;/em&gt; Ming thought, &lt;em&gt;no one is&#xA;  living in there.&lt;/em&gt; And there was a good reason for it: the ceiling in&#xA;  that room was constantly leaking. It was so serious that—after many&#xA;  attempts to fix the problem—the landlord finally gave up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now, however, it wasn't the sound of water but of a musical&#xA;  instrument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He put on his jeans, grabbed his key, and exited&#xA;  his apartment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hallway was silent, as usual. Moonlight streamed&#xA;  through the window, giving the walls an eerie blue hue. Ming stood&#xA;  before room 312 and eavesdropped again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To his surprise, he could no longer hear anything. &lt;strong&gt;Had he imagined the&#xA;  whole thing?&lt;/strong&gt; He thought of knocking on the door. &lt;strong&gt;But what would he say&#xA;  if someone came out?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Oh, I thought the piano was being played by a&#xA;  ghost. Sorry for the disturbance.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ming realized the absurdity of the situation. &lt;strong&gt;What was wrong with him&#xA;  tonight?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a bad practice? If so, how to fix it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I thought of starting the sentences with &lt;em&gt;&quot;he wondered&quot;&lt;/em&gt; instead: &lt;code&gt;He wondered if he had imagined the whole thing&lt;/code&gt; But this adds three extra words.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T15:54:50.887" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T13:13:17.007" Title="Asking questions in the middle of a narrative" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10791" CreationDate="2014-04-23T16:09:26.540" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The questions are fine. They tell us what is on Ming's mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would put first one in past tense (Wasn't it a little late...) to match the surrounding tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T16:09:26.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10791" CreationDate="2014-04-23T18:47:04.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree. The questions don't detract here. It builds some suspense in your writing, so I like them. It makes the character seem very unsure of his situation, too, which fits with the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wanted to leave them out, you can just narrate what he's thinking. You might want to do this later, so I will give some examples how to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He put down his guitar tuner and glanced at the clock. 12:01. Isn't a little late for practicing?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might say: It was a little late for practicing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To his surprise, he could no longer hear anything. Had he imagined the whole thing? He thought of knocking on the door. But what would he say if someone came out? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Maybe he imagined the whole thing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second question takes a work around. What is he feeling here? You can let the reader know why he's afraid of someone coming out, so use a description. This is a bad example, but you'll get the idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The thought of confrontation left him tongue tied.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ming realized the absurdity of the situation. What was wrong with him tonight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest a work around again to tell us why he thinks somethings wrong with him. Is this out of character for him, maybe? &#xA;&quot;Always priding himself on his objectivity, what insanity it was to be chased by shadows and the bumps in the night&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8516" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T18:47:04.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10800" CreationDate="2014-04-24T06:17:21.807" Score="0" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a plot in mind without any details. I am planning to write it down as a story and then a screenplay, without any background in writing or reading books but just watching movies. When going through online articles its seen that following certain structures for plots is useful and is widely followed by many.  One example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://2012.scriptfrenzy.org/node/402156&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I wonder if I should just write what comes to my mind or plan and do some homework and build the story methodologically. What usually works good in writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS:I'll provide a rough synopsis on request if that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8533" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T10:04:37.890" Title="Is it better to follow some structure or just write following intuition" Tags="|structure|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10799" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10806" CreationDate="2014-04-24T06:33:40.983" Score="0" ViewCount="916" Body="&lt;p&gt;What sort of criteria should I consider when listing items in fiction? For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was wearing a knit cap, a flower-patterned shirt, and faded jeans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ordered the items from top to bottom. (That's what makes most sense to me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe I should order them in a way it sounds better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was wearing a knit cap, faded jeans, a flower-patterned shirt. (Placing the longest item in the end, makes it sound better I think.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T19:15:51.833" Title="Listing items in fiction" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10798" CreationDate="2014-04-24T06:54:23.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is best to &lt;strong&gt;find your story&lt;/strong&gt; following your &lt;em&gt;intuition&lt;/em&gt;, then &lt;em&gt;structure&lt;/em&gt; it to &lt;strong&gt;write your story&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creativity and originality flow best if unimpeded, so don't hinder your ideas by attempting to force them into a structure when you are at the stage of developing your story idea. But stories read better if they are not confusing; they are more satisfying, if they have rhythm and a certain builtup and release of tension; so carve out their inherent structure, clarify, simplify, and polish, when you're at the writing strage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T10:04:37.890" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T10:04:37.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10730" CreationDate="2014-04-24T07:37:48.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the books I've read and checked have Acknowledgements &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; the Table of Contents. Though this will really also depends on your preference and/or your publisher's/editor's preference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some non-technical or fiction books even have their acknowledgements at the end of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8530" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T07:37:48.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10803" CreationDate="2014-04-24T11:18:56.783" Score="7" ViewCount="777" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this in another answer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there are considered to be only seven or so actual plots anyway&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Is it like plots are generalized into a couple of types or forms? Where can I read more about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8533" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2018-04-09T09:21:08.340" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T09:21:08.340" Title="&quot;There are considered to be only seven or so actual plots&quot; - is this true?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10802" CreationDate="2014-04-24T12:37:00.463" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is true to a point. As you suggest, they are generalized form encapsulations of conflict. In other words, they are archetypes. Similarly, you will hear folks say there are only 32 plots at times, too. The number varies. Often one will be more popular than others for a while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding them can be helpful at times if you're studying story and story story structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has a nice &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots&quot;&gt;summary&lt;/a&gt; of the seven basic plots. The resources and external links at the bottom might lead to other helpful articles. I didn't follow them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8461" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T12:37:00.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10804" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10805" CreationDate="2014-04-24T15:34:07.740" Score="5" ViewCount="623" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been looking about on #MSWL on Twitter, and I see editors using some kind of informal scale for the intensity of the sexual content in a romance novel. For example: &quot;sweet to hot,&quot; &quot;erotic,&quot; &quot;hot to erotic,&quot; and so-on. What does this mean? What can I expect from a sweet novel as opposed to a hot novel? Is this common jargon? What are the origins of this scale? Does it only include sweet, hot, and erotic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8536" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T16:41:44.097" Title="Intensity scale for romance novels?" Tags="|genre|romance|audience|sex|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10804" CreationDate="2014-04-24T16:41:44.097" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not well versed in romance novels, but I did run across this stuff while I was researching for a game I was writing. So while I can't tell you anything about origins, I can tell you some pretty basic stuff about the heat/sensuality system. That's what this is called, in case you want to look it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First and foremost, this system is not standardized... at all. Some people use different words that may or may not be clear, some have way, way more stages than others-- If I were you, I'd ask people for scales if you're getting stories (or giving stories) to them. Personally, I'd be surprised if the people who are asking for manuscripts on Twitter using that hashtag have a system in play for romance novels in particular. I mean, maybe they do? But I think most people use the three most basic levels for the systems I've come across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking though, I noted that most systems had a system similar to this in play:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kissing Only&lt;/strong&gt;: In which there is nothing but kissing in the story. This one is usually combined with the next one, but some people do explicitly mention that there's no sex/sensuality/physical romance and there's only kisses. There isn't even any allusions to anything other than kissing. This is extremely heavy on emotional aspects of the characters. I figured it would be worth adding in because occasionally people ask for &quot;kissing only&quot; stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sweet/Subtle&lt;/strong&gt;: While the naming convention varies, this basically is either nothing but kissing or kissing and touching. But generally, no descriptions of physical romance. If it happens, the focus is on the emotional aspect of it and it's almost always an allusion. From what I understand, there's no use of euphemisms either.... I guess that varies depending on author, though?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Warm/Hot&lt;/strong&gt;: Basically moderate to explicit sensuality. Physical things are described, but not graphic on the warm end of this stage, with a lot left to the imagination. And euphemisms, lots of those. But there's still a focus on emotions and feelings, and there aren't many scenes when people are doing anything physical, like... one or two at best. On the hot side, explicit scenes are explored to a much more graphic end. There are more physical scenes, the scenes are longer, and euphemisms again are heavily used. But emotions and feelings are still pretty important. I've sometimes heard this just called &quot;romance&quot; while the stage above is called &quot;sweet&quot; or &quot;love&quot; and the stage below is called &quot;romantica&quot;, but I'm not sure if that's mainstream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Romantica/Erotica&lt;/strong&gt;: This is the thin line between romance and erotica. Although it has a tendency to just be erotica (in which there is a heavy focus on physical aspects with very little emotional focus). In these there's almost no euphemisms and the focus is on physical things, so the focus on emotions and feelings dies down a bit. In return, there's a large focus on desires/sexual feelings. And sometimes these books can literally just be about sex. These are as graphic as you can get, too. Romantica is the &quot;low&quot; end here. It has some emotional aspects, but it's played down a lot. It uses euphemisms, though not necessarily sparingly. Meanwhile, erotica is just on the cusp of not being romance anymore. It loses most of the euphemisms and feelings. It's pretty much as close as you can get to just writing a sex book without writing a sex book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Erotic&lt;/strong&gt;: Sex. The book. It's literally just people having sex. And for the most part, it's really, really detailed, includes fetishistic things, has a tendency to focus on desires, and doesn't at all dwell on emotional things. And euphemisms go out the window. This is usually not even considered as a stage because erotic stories and romance stories are profoundly different. When people do consider it, they're usually combining it with the stage above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This list is based on stuff I picked up in a forum and this was some time ago... so this scale is sort of iffy at best. But the sensuality scale is something publishing companies (that specialize in romance) apparently do a lot. Here's an example of one for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.turquoisemorningpressbookstore.com/pages/romance-novel-heat-levels&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Turquoise Morning Press&lt;/a&gt;, although I've... never heard of them. I think Harlequin Romance is the most popular published of romance novels, and I'm pretty sure their ranking system is their series names? I remember that they have series called &quot;Heartwarming&quot; and &quot;Blaze&quot; and I think that's their ranking system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, different companies/people rate stories in different ways, but the scales are similar enough that this might work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T16:41:44.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10799" CreationDate="2014-04-24T19:15:51.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lists tend to give a more dispassionate sense, and so may be less appropriate in fiction. Your example might be rephrased as something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His flower-patterned shirt brightened his otherwise drab knit cap and faded jeans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His knit cap and faded jeans denied the spring cheer declared by his flower-patterned shirt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or even a more neutral&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was wearing faded jeans topped with a flower-patterned shirt and knit cap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, using a list with a preceding categorization might be appropriate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was dressed casually—faded jeans, a knit cap and a flower-patterned shirt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you noted, there are tradeoffs between logical ordering and lyrical ordering. Comprehensibility and contextual significance add further tradeoffs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a knit cap, a flower-patterned shirt, and faded jeans&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is a logical ordering—top to bottom. Logical ordering can be usefully mnemonic, especially for longer lists. As they introduce an expectation, starting with a logical ordering can be used to increase emphasis on a contrasting element. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;faded jeans, a flower-patterned shirt, a knit cap, and bunny slippers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives a sense of the viewer's gaze moving upward and then going back to the feet with less emphasis than taking the last item out of the list like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;faded jeans, a flower-patterned shirt, and a knit cap—and bunny slippers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alphabetical or acrostic ordering is less likely in fiction, but more common logical ordering would be by typical significance such as rarity (including rank, cost, or even peculiarity), by location (e.g., progressing vertically, horizontally, along a meridian, along a parallel), and by time. A strong logical ordering implies a significance to the ordering principle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g., when listing places to which a character has traveled, time ordering gives a biographical feeling and may be important to placing events described later or reveal aspects of the character's personality. A geographical ordering could emphasis a &lt;em&gt;logical&lt;/em&gt; migration or flight (even if the path &lt;em&gt;in time&lt;/em&gt; was not so regular) or a logical homing on a critical location. Ordering by population/urbanization or tourist popularity might present a feeling of logical character development. Declining popularity or population might subtly imply increased isolation, self-confidence (not relying on social support structures), or eclectic tastes; increasing on that scale might imply increasing conformity, self-acceptance (not being burdened by social disapproval), or sophistication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These effects can—and often should—be subtle and, if intentional, their effects may need to be reinforced by further context. E.g., in the example list, the downward movement of the gaze might very weakly imply an initial looking at the face with some emphasis on social interaction but then a downward examining of social signals (perhaps implying a lack of familiarity or even a judgmental attitude). This might be used to reinforce a perception of social disapproval given by other cues. An upward movement might imply that the viewer initial looks more downward which might imply social awkwardness, possibly general, sexual, or related to social standing. This might be used, e.g., to emphasize the excellence of the character or to encourage a sympathy with a character's social awkwardness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reader identifies with the narrator (as if mentally describing the scene), subtle cues can place the reader in relationship to the character or setting by declaring how the reader sees the character or setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lyrical aspect of ordering is probably more important than logical ordering for short lists. Ordering can influence the position of stressed syllables and the strength of alliteration and assonance which can influence the pacing and atmosphere of the text as well as the emphasis of items (countering or reinforcing the position in the list). Avoiding or exploiting alliteration or a particular meter may justify using a non-logical ordering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g.,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was wearing faded jeans, a flower-patterned shirt, and a knit cap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;might be slightly more appropriate in a more upbeat setting because of the mild alliteration and the ending of the list and sentence with a pair of stressed syllables.  Whereas&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was wearing a knit cap, a flower-patterned shirt, and faded jeans&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;minimizes alliteration and moves the paired stressed syllables to the beginning of the list where the emphasis is somewhat muted by being in the middle of the sentence. This ordering might be more appropriate for a more somber mood. Conceptually, ending with &quot;faded jeans&quot; would also fit a more somber mood and placing &quot;flower&quot; in the middle reduces its upbeat sense. Moving &quot;patterned&quot; closer to the end and to &quot;faded jeans&quot; may also very weakly imply a dark fate, but that is likely an imagined impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like the lyrical aspect, the length and conceptual complexity of items may be significant in choosing the ordering most appropriate for the sense being communicated. Long or conceptually complex (or even unfamiliar) items are usually less disruptive at the beginning or end of a list because they slow the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For unfamiliar items, placement at the end of a list allows later explanation without a distant antecedent, though a very brief explanation of the first item may also avoid reader disruption since the list has not yet been observed as a list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a long list, such a slowing of the reader may be used break the list into two parts, which may make such a long list more readable without violating the perception that it is a single list (e.g., consider the pause effect of &quot;five gold rings&quot; in &quot;The Twelve Days of Christmas&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contextual significance of the items is another consideration for ordering. A list ordered by common significance gives no additional contextual information beyond the scale and direction chosen. If the items have substantially expected ordering, then any exception is likely to feel jarring (which may be the desired effect) or emphasize items placed out of expected order. A ham and cheese sandwich is ordinary, a cheese and ham sandwich emphasizes the cheese. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the items do not have a strongly expected order, then the order can be used to more subtly communicate impressions specific to a setting, scene, or characters. The readers generally expect an ordering to have meaning even if not significant meaning, and the writer can exploit this non-conscious pattern recognition to effect implicit observations. Affirming and subverting such implicit observations have well-known effects, but neglecting them can also be useful to allow different audiences to understand the work in different ways (the &quot;let the reader imagine&quot; alternative to &quot;show&quot; or &quot;tell&quot;) or to encourage a curiosity about whether the observations are correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As has been mentioned, subverting such guidelines can be used in much the same way as other forms of subverting the reader's expectations. Subversion can include using a different scale or direction than seems obvious from the items with the revelation near the end of the list or only later in the story. Even the use of a list can imply some significance which expectation can be affirmed or subverted. E.g., in a mystery, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the drawer opened smoothly to reveal a stash of stationery and pens, a silver letter opener, and a small jar of rubber cement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;might deceptively emphasize the items in or absent from the drawer when the significant clue is in the drawer opening smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The felt-lined interior held only four items: the key to his first car, his mother's wedding ring, an individually-wrapped Tootsie Roll, and a picture of June.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two are obviously items of sentimental value and the list seems to be progressing in intensity of sentiment, though a historical progression would also make sense. The picture is understandably the most significant (or most recent), but the positioning of the candy in such a list in anomalous. Placing this anomaly next to the most significant item intensifies the mystery; the proximity to the picture of a presumed lost love and enclosure between two romantic items might hint at the candy being significant to his relationship with June. This ordering also makes the picture more ambiguous; there is an alteration between positive and mixed feelings—a presumably positive (unless the car is associated with a painful memory) feeling, mixed grief and love, comfort, and whatever the picture represents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the candy had been placed first, a historical order might be reasonably assumed: childhood, late adolescence/early adulthood, his mother's later life and death, and finally June. In which case one can almost imagine the character asking himself &quot;Why did my summer come so late?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An ordering of key, candy, ring, picture would de-emphasize the candy and bind the ring and picture more closely together. An ordering of ring, key, candy, picture might be taken as reversed historical order, implying that June was significant in his early childhood and remained significant. An ordering of ring, key, picture, candy might imply an order of descending significance, making the picture more mysterious since one is less likely to keep a picture less significant than that key in a special collection; the candy as least important would also be less strange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This list is naturally more emotionally charged than a list of clothing someone is wearing, but subtle cues in ordinary descriptions can be used to enhance the presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For lists generated by characters, the character's nature and circumstances should usually be more important than effects like mood setting, but this does not exclude using ordering for external effect, especially when the character's choice would otherwise be arbitrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with any writing, what is being communicated should guide choices and not all decisions are equally significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T19:15:51.833" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10807" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-25T03:42:52.630" Score="1" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;This always confuses me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Louise and Jizanthapus were sitting on the floor of her room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Louise is the main character, so I assume she should go first? Or should I put her after Jizanthapus so it becomes clearer that &lt;em&gt;her room&lt;/em&gt; refers to Louise's room?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T15:05:44.933" Title="X and Y vs Y and X" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10807" CreationDate="2014-04-25T06:45:31.443" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difficulty in the example is that Louise is clearly a female to me, while the J. appears be an alien or animal. Or is that a human name? So to me &quot;her&quot; can only refer to Louise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;code&gt;Louise and Anna were sitting on the floor of her room&lt;/code&gt;, &quot;her&quot; refers to Louise, because Louise is in the syntactically dominant first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;code&gt;Peter and Louise were sitting in her room&lt;/code&gt; the obvious gender overrides syntax, because Peter cannot be female (in my culture).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a text the ambiguity might be more clearly resolved, for example by picking up the subject in the next sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Louise and Anna were sitting on the floor of her room. Louise pointed at a picture showing her at the beach with her parents. &quot;That's my mom.&quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would not write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Louise and Anna were sittting on the floor of her room. She pointed at a picture showing her at the beach with her parents. &quot;That's my mom.&quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T06:52:20.353" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T06:52:20.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10807" CreationDate="2014-04-25T15:05:44.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would never write that, unless the room's ownership were obvious from the preceding context.  Assuming it isn't (otherwise the question is pointless), I would leave &quot;of her room&quot; out of the statement altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Louise and Jizanthapus were sitting on the floor.  Jizanthapus leaned back against her bed, ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With no introduction it is now strongly implied that Jizanthapus is female and that the room belongs to her.  (Or at least to both the females.  Later text could clear up the slight ambiguity.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically, Jizanthapus could be male and the &quot;her&quot; could be referring to Louise.  But that would jar the reader, violating a major dictum of fiction writing -- the very thing I was trying to avoid in the first place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NEVER GIVE THE READER CAUSE TO WONDER &quot;WHAT DOES THE AUTHOR MEAN?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to be confused with &quot;what did that character mean&quot; or even &quot;what does this story mean,&quot; which are totally different.  You never want to take the reader out of the story, unless your narrator is doing it purposely for dramatic effect (and you've got to be careful with that).  Messing up the suspension of disbelief without good cause is a violation of the contract between reader and author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T15:05:44.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10810" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-25T15:13:46.700" Score="2" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one looks around there are many screenplay samples online. Almost all of them seem to me to break at least one or two of the &quot;rules&quot; that it is suggested be followed when writing a script to be picked up for optioning or outright purchase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They give direction where it's not welcome &#xA;They write dialog that's unreadable.&#xA;They number scenes &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a resource of scripts or even a script of which it can be said: &quot;this is 'to code',  This is acceptable. This does not violate our rules.&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so please post links with your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people learn by example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8544" LastEditorUserId="8544" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T20:15:26.597" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T23:06:02.070" Title="Is there a canonical sample screen play for reference as a speculative script?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10802" CreationDate="2014-04-25T17:03:56.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I took an SF writing class from Joe Haldeman, he said there was only one basic plot: &lt;strong&gt;Trouble.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T17:03:56.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10812" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-25T18:16:52.077" Score="5" ViewCount="1521" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a motivational speaker and am self publishing a nonfiction book about child abuse. i ahve some inappropriate language in the book and want to know if my designer by law can use a parental advisory sticker on my cover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8547" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T22:01:31.293" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T20:43:10.843" Title="Is it legal to use a parental advisory on a book?" Tags="|publishing|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10813" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-25T18:23:24.887" Score="4" ViewCount="15421" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am choosing fonts for book design and want to know what font the average book uses? Is it possible to use calligraphy as a font in a book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8547" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T06:14:04.570" Title="what is the most commonly used font in book publishing?" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10812" CreationDate="2014-04-26T02:07:13.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the country's laws and target-audience of the book. Books in general do not have a parental advisory on them as would a video-game or CD would. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the sensitive topic of the book, you may wish to view articles on the reactions on &lt;strong&gt;Speak&lt;/strong&gt; by Laurie Halse Anderson. A book that has language in it does not mean it's illegal, but it also does not prevent it from being proposed as ban-able by those offended by its publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information check out the ALA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ala.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ala.org/&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8550" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T02:07:13.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10564" CreationDate="2014-04-26T02:57:17.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go with your heart's desire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every story that a writer writes, the reader reads differently. It is because each one of us has different perception and interpretation of stories. I doubt that two person could even interpret a piece in exact same way, down to the feelings and nuisances of emotions we feel whenever we read a piece, much more to match it with what the author has in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you just write, not for your readers but for yourself. Then let them think, interpret, and relate to it the way they want to. The title may have bearings but it is not the be all and end all of your piece. Remember, the story will always speak for itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8530" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T02:57:17.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10769" CreationDate="2014-04-26T03:26:25.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can relate to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started my journey in the writing world because of a story that couldn't quite leave me. I feel the weight of the responsibility to deliver it, to write it and breathe life to it. And I did. But not in the way I thought I would, which is by writing a novel or book about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't write a novel because I couldn't quite make it perfect. The story keeps on developing in my mind and it will seem that there will be no end, and even if there is, I won't be able to give justice in writing it, or will I find the ending complete enough to put a period to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet I still write it. I open a blog (which you could also do) and release all those stories that was bottled up inside me. Sometimes two of my blog entries will be related to each other, a continuation of each other stories, other times the story stands alone. The point is, I was able to write it and I really enjoyed writing those stories, and I even gained quite a few blog followers! :) Plus, I keep my sanity intact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't give up, but don't be burden with your muses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And please, don't let the others write your story, not because of the credits (or anything to do with it) but because it wouldn't be the same as the story you had in mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a reason why that particular story speaks to you and not to anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8530" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T03:26:25.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10818" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-26T07:48:53.233" Score="1" ViewCount="492" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an essay in CMS style. I have a quotation I use in the beginning of the essay that I cite. I reference part of the quote later in quotation marks. Do I need a citation the second time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8554" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T03:19:15.623" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T03:19:15.623" Title="Using the same quotation a second time" Tags="|essay|citations|chicago-manual-of-style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10802" CreationDate="2014-04-26T13:37:58.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This site has lists of 3,7,20, and 36 respectively&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will post the list of 7 here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;7 basic plots as remembered from second grade by IPL volunteer librarian Jessamyn West:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[wo]man vs. nature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[wo]man vs. [wo]man&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[wo]man vs. the environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[wo]man vs. machines/technology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[wo]man vs. the supernatural&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[wo]man vs. self&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[wo]man vs. god/religion&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8556" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-07T19:11:50.227" LastActivityDate="2018-04-07T19:11:50.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10818" CreationDate="2014-04-26T14:15:33.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're using footnotes, use a full citation the first time and only author and page number the second time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8549" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T14:15:33.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10813" CreationDate="2014-04-26T15:31:27.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Choosing a font is a strictly stylistic choice where the font should match your subject and your way of writing. For example, using a silly font like jokerwood for a serious nonfiction piece could be considered an incorrect utilization of font.&#xA;Here is a link with the top 10 most widely used fonts used by book design winners: &lt;a href=&quot;http://fontfeed.com/archives/top-ten-typefaces-used-by-book-design-winners/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fontfeed.com/archives/top-ten-typefaces-used-by-book-design-winners/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8537" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T15:31:27.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10818" CreationDate="2014-04-26T16:00:54.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you cite an included full quotation and immediately discuss it phrase by phrase, then you don't have to cite every phrase, every time.  That's just silly.  I'd go so far as to say it's insulting, as it implies you think your readers are morons.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the partial quotes are some paragraphs removed from the original quote, with discussion between that might reasonably cause a reader to forget the original citation, then definitely you should re-cite (but using only author and page number for the re-cites, as @Sel pointed out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveat: If you cite another work by the same author in between the original cite and the re-cite, then your first re-cite of the original quote must include enough info to make clear which work by that author you are referring to.  Check the guidelines for particulars, but use good judgment.  For example, if you are discussing different publishers' versions of &quot;The Hobbit,&quot; then you might need a full citation every time you switch the version you're referring to.  But if the different versions came out in different years, then re-cites could just use the publication date to differentiate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2014-04-26T16:10:25.513" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T16:10:25.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10813" CreationDate="2014-04-26T21:48:51.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Common typefaces include Minion, Adobe Garamond, Caslon, and Palatino.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The typeface can depend on what type of book (fiction? nonfiction? kids' picture book?), and what type of text (body, chapter title, title, subhead, etc. etc.). A calligraphy-style typeface might be acceptable for a title or heading, but it'd most likely be hard to read with body text. I'd probably advise against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choosing a font is a stylistic choice, but keep in mind that the font and design of your book have to contribute to a comfortable reading experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8558" LastEditorUserId="8558" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T06:14:04.570" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T06:14:04.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10668" CreationDate="2014-04-27T05:27:35.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditional publishers may &quot;only&quot; have three advantages over self-publishing, but they are &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; advantages. Houses tend to have money, experience, power, connections, and presence that self-publishers haven't had the time or resources to develop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the answer to your question is a definite yes, and it's very possible to market a self-published book successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try searching for &quot;book promotion packages&quot; or &quot;self-publishing promotion packages&quot;. The first turned up a lot of links, but you'll have to sift through them yourself:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enchantedbookpromotions.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.enchantedbookpromotions.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bookbaby.com/bookpromo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bookbaby.com/bookpromo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edc-creations.com/publicity.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.edc-creations.com/publicity.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infinitypublishing.com/additional-book-publishing-services/book-marketing-services.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.infinitypublishing.com/additional-book-publishing-services/book-marketing-services.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dgtbookpromotions.com/book-promotion-services&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dgtbookpromotions.com/book-promotion-services&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're probably most often referred to as &quot;packages&quot;, so that's a keyword you may want to use in your searches. The help or information sections of self-publishing sites will also often have a section on packages they offer for editing or promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I'm guessing on this one, but I don't think it's realistic to expect promoters to work for a percentage of sales. Your sales aren't entirely directly correlated to their efforts, and aren't guaranteed. Publishing houses can afford to make risky bets like that, but not everyone can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About agents and traditional publishers: Looking for one &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; take a lot of time and a lot of effort (and you'll have to deal with the unavoidable rejections), so it may or may not be your top option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8558" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T05:27:35.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8389" CreationDate="2014-04-27T05:41:34.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there's the aptly titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00367782W&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Blackmail Ring&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, a 1932 pulp thriller by Walter B. Gibson. Other than that, searching for fiction about blackmail just seems to turn up a lot of romance novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, the fact that it doesn't seem to be a popular novel topic can be in your favor. It won't be a setting that readers are intimately familiar with (unlike, say, the NYPD or the mafia), so as long as your dialogue and characters are well-written and &lt;em&gt;seem&lt;/em&gt; appropriate, readers won't have preconceived notions about the speech or people they'll see and won't question what you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still want to do research, I'd suggest looking for news articles about blackmail. That can be informative too. Past that, you'll just have to be creative!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8558" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T05:41:34.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10787" CreationDate="2014-04-27T05:54:27.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://elance.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;elance.com&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://odesk.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;odesk.com&lt;/a&gt;. They're online freelancing, and there's sections for writers to pick up jobs like copywriting, article writing, translating, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you have to be aware of a couple things. First, companies are often unrealistic about what they expect and what your work is worth. You may get paid in pennies. Second, writers are often unrealistic about what they expect and what their work is worth. You shouldn't expect to buy a mansion any time soon. But it's definitely an option and worth checking out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard of creative types in LA taking up driving for car services like Uber or Lyft as a day job. It doesn't give you time to write on the job, of course, but hours are flexible and it doesn't require an excess of mental energy. That's what you want in a day job when you're just starting out: something that won't drain you or take up all your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8558" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T05:54:27.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10710" CreationDate="2014-04-27T06:09:56.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wouldn't you just have to buy copies of the book and send them out to people yourself? The difference between buying it yourself and sending/giving it to them and somehow allowing them to download it themselves seems negligible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it'd hurt to send someone a professional, polished-looking .epub file (and attach some options for e-readers, if you like), but I'd avoid sending .pdfs. .pdfs are a nuisance because they can't be easily reformatted or zoomed for comfortable reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could perhaps buy Amazon gift cards, or create a second instance of your book in Createspace that has no cost and keep the visibility of it set to private? But that seems like a nightmare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8558" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T06:09:56.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10564" CreationDate="2014-04-27T08:18:00.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a fine balance between writing for the writer and writing for the reader. On one hand, you shouldn't condescend to readers, and not everybody is part of your audience, and so not everybody needs to &quot;get&quot; the story; on the other, you do generally want your intent to come through. The balance is different for every story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that's a non-answer. But in this specific case, I don't think the title needs to nudge anyone anywhere. I think you're just fine. I actually like &quot;Mirrors&quot; much better than &quot;Psychomanteum&quot;; the second just means nothing to me. Obscure words aren't bad, and again, you shouldn't condescend to people like me, but I'd bet that a large percentage of your readership would find that it is not &lt;em&gt;meaningful&lt;/em&gt; to them at first glance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8558" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T08:18:00.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10810" CreationDate="2014-04-27T10:36:55.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer my own question (partially) I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://filmschoolonline.com/sample_lessons/sample_lesson_format.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it does not have an entire script, but a single page, and some good information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8544" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T10:36:55.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10836" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10838" CreationDate="2014-04-28T15:29:39.993" Score="2" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question pertains to author/contributor order and grouping on a technical document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I performed tests on some equipment and had two other people directly involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My boss and his boss need to both be listed on the document as they ordered the testing and the paper needs them on it to have any validity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There were several other people who were not actively involved but made contributions ranging from from a comment like &quot;hey, don't forget to test XYZ&quot; to providing a part needed in testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I order the people involved in testing and do I separate the active testers from 'other' contributors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below is a screenshot of what I've got right now. (names and subject are changed)&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cbwbB.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8564" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T15:36:49.380" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T20:28:29.660" Title="Author order and grouping on technical document" Tags="|technical-writing|formatting|academic-writing|titles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10836" CreationDate="2014-04-28T20:28:29.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) A comment like &quot;hey, don't forget to test XYZ&quot; gets an acknowledgement at the end.&#xA;2) I've never seen a format like this, where you actually separate the author list into two sections.  I like it.  Just have never seen it.&#xA;3) Bosses go at the end of the author list.  In academia or government, they should be left off if they had no real involvement.  But well-known people often get author credit just for their name recognition.  Everyone agrees it is unethical, but many people do it anyway.  Industry may be different.&#xA;4) Providing a part: Not enough info to decide.  Normally, someone who just made something to your specs, using only standard techniques, would not get any share of the authorship.  That goes for machining, mixing chemicals, soldering a circuit, etc.  Use an acknowledgement.&#xA;5) Some journals require an explanation of what each author did, and it gets published with the paper (in a boxed footnote on the first page, in a tiny font).  I love that; helps keep people honest.  In your case, it would probably defeat the purpose of your publication.  &quot;All the real work was done by the first three guys.  Our boss told us to take the measurements.  The Vice-President of Research did nothing whatsoever.&quot;  Not a good career strategy.  Sadly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T20:28:29.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10840" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-29T00:47:15.393" Score="2" ViewCount="356" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess that title sounds very abstract and &quot;meta.&quot; But it points to a real issue that has interfered with my desire to get published and paid as a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For background, I have been a writer in various senses of the term, on and off, for many years. The feedback I've gotten from many quarters suggests that my writing skills are at least good--maybe excellent. But subject matter expertise, that's another thing. I'm interested in--and know a little bit about--a great many things. And occasionally I am pleasantly surprised to find that others consider me an expert on one or another thing, but my own feeling is that I don't have much in-depth knowledge of anything in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's okay, because if you're a writer, and you don't know enough about the topic, you do research, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you need to know when research (or more research) is required. And that's where I seem to have a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About ten years ago--the last time I made a serious attempt to get started as a professional writer--there was an incident that really shook my confidence. I had written a chapter for a web development textbook, and then I got assignments from a well-known online technical journal to report on a couple of open source development projects. My first article was very well-received; the second, not so much. I don't think anyone thought it was a &lt;em&gt;terrible&lt;/em&gt; piece, but I heard from readers that it was rather superficial and maybe insufficiently objective. If I remember right, the editor agreed that the article was weak, but didn't consider it a major issue (i.e. he would have been happy at that point to accept more work from me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I got cold feet after that was not simply that I had made a mistake, but that I felt that it could easily have been prevented--if I had just known that I needed to do more homework. And yet, prior to getting the feedback from readers, I had &lt;em&gt;no clue&lt;/em&gt;. There was no little voice inside saying &quot;wait, are you sure?&quot; As far as I could tell at the time I submitted it, the unsuccessful article was just as good as the successful one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What that experience (and some other similar incidents) tells me is that I have a huge blind spot regarding my own understanding of things, which could easily trip me up again any time I try to write on a new topic. And I feel that if I want to get published and keep getting published, I can't afford that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: has anyone else encountered this problem? If so, have you learned how to deal with it? Is there a specific method you follow to check your understanding of a topic? Are there any warning signs you have learned to look for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8567" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T08:38:17.480" Title="How do you determine whether you know enough to write on a topic?" Tags="|non-fiction|research|process|freelance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10840" CreationDate="2014-04-29T08:38:17.480" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is who you want to write for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read one of the major daily newspapers of my country every day. The articles appear well researched (and are well written), and I feel I learn something reading them. But whenever an article deals with a topic in which I am an expert myself, I see many flaws: false information, central concepts not touched upon, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journalists writing these articles are not experts in any of the topics they write about (except maybe the political and economic journalists), but intelligent laypeople with limited time and resources writing for an intelligent lay audience expecting a knowledgeable but quickly readable overview of some base points and current trends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For them, the mistakes an expert finds are not a serious problem, because all they want is an introduction: there is this field, these are its topics and protagonists, and this is how far we got. If they want more, they'll find more elsewhere. They understand that a few hundred words will not explain it all to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand your audience are experts (software developers reading about software development, bankers reading about finances, farmers reading about cows), they expect the author to know &lt;strong&gt;more&lt;/strong&gt; than them, otherwise they have no reason to read his articles, because &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; will always know more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you need to define for yourself (a) what you want to write about and (b) who you want to write for. If you write for an expert audience, you need to be able to provide new information for them. This can be manifold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are better at what they do and can teach them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you observe what's going on at the fringes, where their field touches and interacts with other fields&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you observe the &lt;em&gt;politics&lt;/em&gt; of their field (hiring, company mergers, laws), while they are manily focussing on the actual &quot;science&quot; of it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are writing about the culture of a hard science, or the science of culture, or whatever uncommon aspect gives new insights to old hands&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution to your problem is being interested in what you write about. If you want to know and understand, this will drive you to gather the information you will need to write about it. And while you gather information, you will see the level of knowledge that is common to the field. Finally your audience will tell you if they find your article too difficult and advanced, or too boring because they already knew it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding the correct level is like adapting to your partner in a dialogue. How do you explain maths to a child of a certain age? You &lt;strong&gt;try&lt;/strong&gt;. And then you observe the reaction of the child (did he understand? did he already know what you told him? or did it excite him and make him want to know more?), and you will adapt your next explanation to that &lt;strong&gt;feedback&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reaction of the readers and editor of your second article should not have discouraged you (though I totally understand that it did). You should have seen it for what it was: feedback. If you didn't get feedback and people would simply not read your stuff, you would never know what was wrong with it. But they told you and thus gave you an opportunity to adapt to their needs in the next article – or find another audience that better fit your interests and abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read the letters to the editor in my newspaper, many of them are harsh critiques of the articles. But the authors don't take every bad critique as meaning: &quot;You are too stupid to write for us. Please stop.&quot; They – hopefully – take it as meaning: &quot;It is nice that you want to provide this service for us, and we are grateful, because we need it. But you would help us more, if you did this or that a little different. That would be really nice. Can you?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be grateful for that feedback, however harsh it may be phrased, and &lt;strong&gt;use it&lt;/strong&gt; to your advantage, because it is like a blueprint, telling you exactly what you need to succeed. Don't be afraid of critique and failure, but be grateful for the opportunity to understand the needs of your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as a first step and basic prerequisite, make sure you write only about what interests you. Only your own need to know will help you get over the unkind reactions that will also come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T08:38:17.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10844" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-29T13:31:07.967" Score="1" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I decided that my book would be better suited to university students in other countries and some other select groups, such as Russian Christians. Some of the theory is considered very controversial and considered a strange topic in the US, but not in Europe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not against using a professional publisher, per se, but I have chosen this avenue for artistic reasons and I haven't needed one yet. I have no idea where to start to reach these markets. I give lectures in the US, but I'm unenthuzed about traveling to global events unless it would reach a very large market, such as a TV interview. (I wish...) Does anyone know about international self-publishing for academic and boutique markets?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8516" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T16:10:45.113" Title="International self publishing: where to start?" Tags="|self-publishing|international|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-29T12:52:46.557" Score="6" ViewCount="10013" Body="&lt;p&gt;If both the author's name and the pen name are known, should one cite by one name or both names? If one, which?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Cody LaBarber" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T15:29:04.477" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T15:29:04.477" Title="How to Cite an Author Who Has a Pen Name" Tags="|style|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10846" CreationDate="2014-04-29T13:10:29.790" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;David Becker has written about APA citations for pseudonyms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Citing pseudonyms can seem tricky at first, but it becomes much simpler when you take into account one of APA Style’s key mottos: Cite what you see.  When it comes to citing an author, cite whatever name is used by the source, whether it be a real name or a pseudonym.  For example, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer lists Mark Twain as its author, not Samuel Clemens, so you should cite the author’s pseudonym rather than his real name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/02/how-to-cite-pseudonyms.html&quot;&gt;full article&lt;/a&gt; deals with other peculiarities like titles (Dalai Lama) and how to distinguish Dr&amp;nbsp;Seuss from Theodor Geissel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5480" OwnerDisplayName="Andrew Leach" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T13:10:29.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10782" CreationDate="2014-04-29T17:21:24.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've attended a writer's workshop and one of the seminars was strictly storytelling; in that sense, it seems the writers hosting the workshop seem to find some value to storytelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of improving style: how can a style really be improved?  It is the way &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; write.  Storytelling will reinforce your style; when you tell your stories to children, you can pick up the kind of stories you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to tell, and how you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to tell it.  You get a better sense of your style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of narrative structure: when you tell stories vocally repeatedly, you might sometimes notice that &quot;this part&quot; would have more effect if I tell it before &quot;this part&quot;; or, &quot;I should probably do a better set up so the next part has more impact!&quot;.  Maybe even, &quot;huh, this part really doesn't do anything now that I hear it... and it's boring the kids&quot;.  It improves narrative structure by allowing you to understand how it flows, and whether you're running on and should probably just end it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of word usage, writing a story exactly how you tell it will sound corny; but telling stories will help you better understand how each part of the story should sound and fit together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8576" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T17:21:24.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10849" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10850" CreationDate="2014-04-29T18:40:05.640" Score="3" ViewCount="1170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble with keeping &quot;units&quot; on the same line, or together. For example, g C m&lt;sup&gt;-2&lt;/sup&gt; (grams of carbon per square meter) often gets broken between the &quot;-&quot; and &quot;2&quot;. I realize it's possible to use non-breaking spaces, but this doesn't help in this situation because there aren't spaces between &quot;-&quot; and &quot;2&quot;. Any ideas? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using Microsoft Word 2007 on a PC (and mac). &#xA;Apologies if this is not an appropriate question for this site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8577" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T00:16:13.313" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T00:54:21.980" Title="Preventing units from being &quot;broken&quot; to the next line" Tags="|formatting|academic-writing|software|tools|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10849" CreationDate="2014-04-29T19:21:26.047" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you need a nonbreaking hyphen. It'll keep the characters before and after it from breaking across lines. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://practicaltypography.com/nonbreaking-hyphens.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Butterick's Practical Typography&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your word proces­sor as­sumes that any hy­phen marks a safe place to flow the text onto a new line or page. Sim­i­lar to the non­break­ing space, the non­break­ing hy­phen looks iden­ti­cal to a hy­phen but will not be used as a place for a line break or page break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/insert-a-hyphen-HA010096395.aspx#BM2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;In Word 2007&lt;/a&gt; for Windows, Press CTRL+SHIFT+HYPHEN. On Word for Mac 2010, press command-shift-dash or Insert &gt; Symbol &gt; Advanced Symbol. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T00:54:21.980" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T00:54:21.980" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10851" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10854" CreationDate="2014-04-29T19:31:47.800" Score="3" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;For many stories I have seen, written or otherwise, a fight or some intimate moment is used to hook the reader.  It is done A LOT, if not every time.  Does a hook have to be in the beginning?  Are hooks even needed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8576" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T13:18:12.297" Title="If not in the prologue/intro, where would a hook be?" Tags="|style|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10851" CreationDate="2014-04-29T23:42:01.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Books of the last, say, 75 years are set in what's called &lt;em&gt;in medias res,&lt;/em&gt; in the middle of things. The story starts where the plot starts, more or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But back in, for example, Victorian novels, it was much more common to give the entire life story of the protagonist. The really exciting part of &lt;em&gt;Jane Eyre&lt;/em&gt; is when she goes to be a governess for Mr. Rochester and all the events which happen as part of that, but the book starts when Jane is a child. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So technically speaking, no, you don't need a &quot;hook&quot; per se, and you don't need to put it in the beginning. But if you don't, your book will feel old-fashioned. That may be a feature rather than a bug, if you're doing it deliberately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T23:42:01.200" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10851" CreationDate="2014-04-30T11:31:50.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hooks can be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;book cover&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;blurb&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;book or story title&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;author name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;editor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;publisher&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reviews&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;advertising&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;film adaptation or  movie right sales&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these can signify to the reader that the story or book is worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new Stephen King novel will sell no matter its first sentence. I have numerous books (and music records) that I only bought because I loved the cover. I do trust some publishers or editors to select quality books and buy books published in certain series without thinking. If the blurb contains angels, dead children or other things that put me off, I don't buy the book. I did not want to buy &lt;em&gt;Divergent&lt;/em&gt; when I read its beginning in the book store, but now that it was made into a movie, I bought it and will read it. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hook in the first sentence or paragraph is most necessary for new books by unknown authors. The more quality signals accompany a text, the less gripping can the story beginning be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T11:42:10.570" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T11:42:10.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10855" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-30T12:28:52.753" Score="9" ViewCount="8587" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing sort of a space-opera and I was wondering what would the best way to explain everything about the world to my readers. The story is kind of a political intrigue, and it would be very easy for the reader to get confused. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this universe there is quite a lot of propaganda and government disinformation in magazines and such. I'm thinking about placing these in-between my chapters as a way of explaining the setting to the reader. &#xA;Is it a good idea? And in general &lt;strong&gt;how do you explain a made-up setting to the reader?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(also, it's my first post, yay !)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8581" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-04-17T12:29:41.553" LastActivityDate="2017-10-07T10:57:33.337" Title="How to introduce a world that's alien to the reader" Tags="|fiction|technique|science-fiction|description|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10855" CreationDate="2014-04-30T13:10:27.890" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short version: Carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long Version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is definitely true that any kind of fantasy/sci if setting that departs in its construction significantly from the shabby parade of commitment phobic half-truths we call reality will require some explanation to, and understanding from, that most ferociously temperamental creature known as the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best approach to this whole ugly, messy business is to ignore it as much as possible. Consider, for a moment, the opening of the original Star Wars (the one called &lt;em&gt;A New Hope&lt;/em&gt; these days, kids). A large spaceship chases a small spaceship through the inky blackness of the void of space. The large spaceship bears down on its quarry...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we need to know much more? Or do we recognize the David and Goliath rematch where Goliath is making all the right moves and David is on the ropes? Do we need to know much more, or care about it, to get right into this story? No, of course not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A New Hope&lt;/em&gt; drip feeds you information as and when you need it to make sense of a character beat or a story moment. The characters and story, told in broad universal strokes, are the focus, the world-info is used to colour the broader themes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thankfully the Star Wars saga also gives us a &quot;Things to avoid&quot; in the shape of the opening of &lt;em&gt;The Phantom Menace&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's happening at the beginning of &lt;em&gt;The Phantom Menace&lt;/em&gt;? Something to do with trade delegations, blockades, diplomatic Jedi. It's a mess. The amount of info you need just to parse the dramatic stakes is too large to be comfortably accommodated.  &lt;em&gt;The Phantom Menace&lt;/em&gt; then goes on to bludgeon us with overegged explanations of stuff we don't really care about for the remaining time it graces the screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: concentrate on characters in universally relatable scenarios and then flavour their trials and tribulations with bits and pieces from the wider world. Doing it the other way round is a sure recipe for getting quickly out of your depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re: Deus Ex Machina (see comments)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially what I'm saying is that these universal characters in universal situations are the thing that should be the focus. When Han shot Greedo first (honest) it was not a Deus Ex Machina because twenty minutes ago Ben had labelled Mos Eisley a &quot;wretched hive of scum and villainy&quot;. Logically, as Han is the kind of guy to hang out in such a dive, it is unsurprising that his character should indulge in such antisocial antics as a means of survival.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile the audience is gently introduced to the idea that Tatooine is one kind of place rather than another. Following a viewing of &lt;em&gt;A New Hope&lt;/em&gt;, an audience member could tell you that on Tatooine there are honest moisture farmers trying to eke out a living under the boot of the empire but there is also a space port on the planet called Mos Eisley which has a reputation as not being the most savoury of places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also learn that there's a gangster on the world called Jabba, who will dispatch hitmen to deal with smugglers who give them problems... although in the original editions Jabba's character was not fully, heh, fleshed out until &lt;em&gt;Return of the Jedi&lt;/em&gt; and then retconned back into the Special Edition of &lt;em&gt;A New Hope&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case all world building here serves to flavour the plot and characters. So, once again, the key point is to have great characters involved in easily relatable actions as long as the world still needs explaining. That, of course, is the tricky bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-04-18T19:51:56.150" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T19:51:56.150" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10855" CreationDate="2014-04-30T13:51:16.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A prologue that no one will read? Kidding..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all seriousness, a technique I often use is pretty simple. I'll grab a young character that's being forced to learn history and have them read short spurts from a book or argue with the teacher to get some basic points across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another technique would be to use a character on the run due to their failure to obey the cultural norms/laws as an entry in to the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither need to have anything to do with the story itself. They're sole purpose is the introduce your world to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8412" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T13:51:16.190" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10855" CreationDate="2014-04-30T16:06:30.630" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm always a bit surprised by this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first impulse is to ask: Don't you &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; the type of book you want to write?!? You should remember how the world was introduced in those books, and how you reacted to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I never read prologues, interludes and similar detours from the main plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Just write your story.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever you introduce a new concept, then &lt;strong&gt;just explain it then and there&lt;/strong&gt;. And if your story runs smoothly without all the background of myths and politics and races and foods, then &lt;strong&gt;don't explain it at all&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T16:06:30.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10855" CreationDate="2014-04-30T16:39:00.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike @what, I often enjoy the extra material, particularly if you have it set up as a chapter interstitial or a page or two of introductory material before a chapter gets underway. It allows the reader to get another view of the world which could not be presented through the eyes of the characters &amp;mdash; what's being discussed on TV, how people in other countries are viewing the events, newspaper editorials, email interchanges, etc. I think in particular the government propaganda could be really fascinating as an interstitial. It's not something you want to stop the actual story for in medias res, but as a &quot;here's what Jack and Sally were talking about earlier&quot; reference, it can be useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write it and ask your betas for feedback. You can't edit a blank page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T16:39:00.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10860" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14166" CreationDate="2014-04-30T19:31:39.807" Score="8" ViewCount="108217" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm peer-reviewing/editing a paper for a final in my English course and in it, the author has a character singing a song (of the author's creation). The character is singing in dialogue, like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It's time to stand up and be a man/Be the husband that you told her you were gonna be/Forever/But I can't see what's wrong with you/You've got a wife, a hot one too/If you keep this up you won't end up together&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I'm having is I'm not sure if the slash should be in the dialogue. At the same time, I don't know what she could put in that gets across the same meaning. Ellipsis? Commas? Write it in sentence form with correct punctuation and say that the character sang the words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I don't like that there's no spaces between a word and the slash, but I don't know if that's necessarily something &amp;quot;wrong&amp;quot; or if it's something I just don't like. But to be fair, I don't like the slashes because I think they make the dialogue hard to read. The previous editor removed the punctuation in this part of her writing, but left the slashes in. I'm not sure if this editor also removed the spaces around the slashes or if it was always like that. However, I feel like punctuation would make this altogether way more easy to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a point in the text where the same song is playing on the radio and the narration has the lyrics, centered and italicized. Like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;But I can't see what's wrong with you&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You've got a wife, a hot one too&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If you keep on looking you won't end up together&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I think this works even though nothing ends with punctuation. The author said the previous editor removed the slashes &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the punctuation from the narration lyrics. I'm inclined to believe that removing the slashes was the right move (it matches up with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.pstcc.edu/content.php?pid=24540&amp;amp;sid=1751623&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MLA guide for citing poetry&lt;/a&gt;) but I'm not particularly sure about leaving the italics or the punctuation removal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, we aren't using the MLA format. Even if we &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; using that format, more than three lines would be made into a block and wouldn't be in one line, in the case of the first example. Also she just flat out made up the song that she's using (I'm not using her lyrics), so it's not like she needs to follow the guidelines for citing poetry. The other editor didn't actually leave notes as to why he or she made the changes they did make, so I'm not sure if they're following some standard I'm not aware of or if they just made stuff up or what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to remove the slashes and make the song into a block in the dialogue and I want to put punctuation in the blocks. But I don't want to &amp;quot;correct&amp;quot; her if she's already correct or if it's just stylistic choice. I tried looking this up, but I don't really get very much information, just stuff on MLA or APA format. Is there a standard for dealing with lyrics in dialogue and narration in creative writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; The song I used was &lt;a href=&quot;http://americandad.wikia.com/wiki/Rubberneckers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is She Not Hot Enough?&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;em&gt;American Dad&lt;/em&gt;. Sorry, it's just stuck in my head right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2020-03-03T21:07:06.563" Title="Is there a standard for dealing with lyrics in dialogue and narration in creative writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|formatting|punctuation|lyrics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10544" CreationDate="2014-04-30T20:40:02.403" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer. Following that disclaimer, about disclaimers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The disclaimer is used to combat accusations of defamation. Defamation requires:&#xA;1. A defamatory statement, 2. Of and concerning the plaintiff, 3. Publication, and 4. Damages. (2nd Restatement of Torts Section 558). Damages are presumed in a libel action and presumably publication (technically communication to a 3rd party) is the goal. The disclaimer, therefore, only really affects the first two elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, the disclaimer tries to raise the burden of proof on these two elements by explicitly, and preemptively, stating the opposite. My story cannot possibly be about John Smith because I said it wasn't about anyone. Even if it were about John, which it's not, these things didn't actually happen anyway. Generally, it is more difficult to pass the 'of and concerning' element than the defamatory statement element, so I will concentrate there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not a statement is of or concerning an individual is typically a question of fact left to the jury (Diaz v. NBC Universal). Effectively, this makes the question a toss-up. If there are a significant number of specific details, the jury could find defamation despite the disclaimer. For example, in Fetler v. Houghton Mifflin, the 2nd Circuit overturned a lower court ruling, finding there was enough of a question of identity to put the question to the jury where, &quot;there are few, if any, other families with a minister father and thirteen children in which the third, fourth and eighth are girls and the eldest a son with great responsibility, who toured Europe in a bus in the 1930's giving family concerts.&quot; The disclaimer in that case was given considerable weight by the lower court, but was completely dismissed by the 2nd circuit because it wasn't included on the initial drafts sent to the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some courts give the disclaimer a lot of weight. (Smith v. Huntington, dismissing a suit expressly because no reasonable jury could identify plaintiff in light of the disclaimer). Others give it less weight depending on wording, location, and other considerations. (Stanton v. Metro Corp, ignoring the disclaimer as the reasonable reader could miss reading it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Takeaways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Include a disclaimer. Make it prominent (at the front is better than at the back, large font is better than smaller). At best, it will keep you out of court. At worst, it will be considered as a factor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Include the disclaimer on every copy. &quot;Publication&quot; in the law means communication to a third party, which includes test readers, the publishing house itself, your family, or anyone who could identify the potential plaintiff and recognize the defamatory meaning of your statement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't think the disclaimer makes you invincible. Even the best disclaimer will not help if you follow it with, &quot;My neighbor, John Smith, at 123 Fake St., spends his weekends at his adopted nephew's lakehouse in Skagway torturing puppies.&quot; The more truth you include, the harder it will be for the jury to believe you when you claim fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Defamation is State Law governed. All the aforementioned could go out the window depending on state law. This includes your state (presuming someone there reads it), the publishing house's state (presuming someone &lt;em&gt;there&lt;/em&gt; reads it), and possibly any state where the story is distributed. If you are concerned, talk to a lawyer before you show the book to anyone. Any statements to your lawyer are covered by privilege, so hey, at least you've got one test reader.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T20:40:02.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10864" CreationDate="2014-05-01T07:57:17.560" Score="2" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, I began questioning the kid. What was her name? Where were&#xA;  her parents? And most important, what was she doing outside in this&#xA;  horrible weather? She replied to none of that. In fact, she didn’t&#xA;  utter a single word; all she did was to stare at me with her uncanny&#xA;  eyes. &lt;strong&gt;Luckily, I obtained that information by other means.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That night, after the kid had gone to sleep, I found a letter in her&#xA;  backpack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, I began questioning the kid. What was her name? Where were&#xA;  her parents? And most important, what was she doing outside in this&#xA;  horrible weather? She replied to none of that. In fact, she didn’t&#xA;  utter a single word; all she did was to stare at me with her uncanny&#xA;  eyes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Luckily, I obtained that information by other means.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That night, after the kid had gone to sleep, I found a letter in her&#xA;  backpack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, I began questioning the kid. What was her name? Where were&#xA;  her parents? And most important, what was she doing outside in this&#xA;  horrible weather? She replied to none of that. In fact, she didn’t&#xA;  utter a single word; all she did was to stare at me with her uncanny&#xA;  eyes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Luckily, I obtained that information by other means.&lt;/strong&gt; That night, after the kid had gone to sleep, I found a letter in her&#xA;  backpack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does the meaning/tone differ in passages above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T18:49:20.367" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T19:36:34.153" Title="How does the placement of transition sentences affects the meaning/tone of a piece?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|editing|pacing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10865" CreationDate="2014-05-01T08:58:35.637" Score="1" ViewCount="1644" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a book, can I mention famous person or something copyrighted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like, for instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And as I was walking down the road, I saw Stephen King..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This book is even better than Murakami's 1Q84..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to inform the person that has copyrighted these books (or the person whose name I'm mentioning) ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6276" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T12:20:43.867" Title="Can I mention any famous name etc in my work?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10862" CreationDate="2014-05-01T10:13:57.983" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your sentence implies that action took place which the reader is not seeing (the &quot;other means&quot;). Wherever that sentence is, that's where/when you're placing this off-screen action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, because the action of finding the letter physically happens in the next paragraph (that is, it's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; off-screen), it has to be the idea or the decision to search her backpack which is the Other Means in that sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the first example, the Other Means sounds like an idea which&#xA;occurs to the narrator while s/he's questioning the girl.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the second example, the Other Means is being presented as a&#xA;narrative device: this is the narrator explaining something to the&#xA;reader as though we were in the room with him/her, having an actual&#xA;conversation about these events.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the third example, it sounds like the narrator only came up with&#xA;the idea to search the girl's backpack after she'd fallen asleep.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one works better is simply a matter of when you want the idea to occur to the narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T10:13:57.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10863" CreationDate="2014-05-01T12:20:43.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In theory you should be able to use the names of famous people in fiction, but there is nothing to stop those real people from suing you if they choose to. Even if they don't expect to win, they can make your life miserable, and they probably have a lot more money than you to pay legal fees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of your legal rights, the key thing is whether you are slandering them or not. If you are simply mentioning their name, as in &quot;I was walking down the road, I saw Stephen King and I was so surprised I nearly fell into a ditch,&quot; it would be hard to argue that you are damaging his personal name in any way. However, if you said &quot;I saw Stephen King beating an old lady with a steel rod&quot; then you might be in danger of legal action. Of course, if you really did see him beating an old lady with a steel rod then you could potentially win a court case because it really happened. (You would be really inviting a court case though, and would waste a lot of time you could have spent writing your novel.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes down to it, it might not be worth it to risk legal action, and you can only really be safe if you have written permission from the person named. If an editor wants to publish your book they will advise you to change anything that might get you in trouble, so maybe just write what you want, with that in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5998" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T12:20:43.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10855" CreationDate="2014-05-01T12:48:42.400" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may be interested in Brandon Sanderson's lecture series on writing long form fantasy and science fiction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/user/WriteAboutDragons/videos&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/user/WriteAboutDragons/videos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an excellent series on the practical craft of writing and particularly about what you asked about, writing about what is alien to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He talks at one point about the dangers of &quot;Infodump&quot;, ie dumping a lot of information on the reader about your &quot;alien&quot; world, particularly at the beginning of the book. His main advice was to ground the reader in the scene by using concrete language and description, while layering abstract information on top. A description of a concrete object can say a lot about the world and the characters. One of his examples was to describe the wall of a city. One character might notice that it was an excellent wall to fend off a siege. This tells us that siege warfare is a reality in this world, and also that the character has a military background, while still keeping us grounded in an image of the physical scene. Every concrete description can have a multiple purpose that tells us something about the alien world. In a very alien world the trick is in keeping an appropriate balance. If you can show everything through the eyes of your characters you will avoid going off into abstract descriptions of things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth considering that it may not be necessary for all of the details of your world to actually make it in to the book. Their presence can be felt without an explicit description. That feeling of realness comes from all the things you don't see as much as those you do. Just think about Tolkein's Silmarillion. He had a whole mythical history for Middle Earth that was never published in his lifetime, but the weight of that detail can be felt in his published fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5998" LastEditorUserId="5998" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T21:07:22.650" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T21:07:22.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10867" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-01T19:08:43.507" Score="1" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a scene (one of many) and I am having trouble with voice (in all of them).  I find first person handy in some situations and third in others.  Below are two excerpts from the same scene the first is in first person, the second is in third person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I really want to know is which better brings the character and story to life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do have much longer extracts if that will help, I didn't want to overkill it to start with though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First Person&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The boredom is by far the worst part of the job.  For example right&#xA;  now, right at this moment I am laying on my back in the dirt, my face&#xA;  is four inches from the floor of the porch above me and every time&#xA;  someone walks overhead dust drifts into my face.  At this moment I&#xA;  want nothing more than to be able to scratch my nose.  I really&#xA;  thought that being a guild thief would be more…glamorous. But here I&#xA;  am my first day as a professional “wealth re-distributor” lying in the&#xA;  dirt, sweating and clenching my whole face in an effort not to sneeze.&#xA;  I used to wander the market liberating poorly secured coin purses&#xA;  day-dreaming about what real thieving would be like.  I always&#xA;  imagined dressing all in black, scaling walls with ropes and sneaking&#xA;  through sleeping houses to help myself to giant gems and sparkling&#xA;  life-size golden statues.  But no, I am dirty and smelly and waiting&#xA;  for a fat old man to leave his office so that I can take…are you ready&#xA;  for this?  Some paper, well, ok a specific piece of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third person:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Running can be fun, and they say it's good for you, but as Nirin tore&#xA;  through the streets and alleyways of Akrovasi dodging walkers, carts&#xA;  of goods and vendors hawking their wares, it occurred to her that&#xA;  'they' probably didn't include being chased by armed guards in their&#xA;  evaluation of the activity's health benefits.  The wide stone streets&#xA;  of the merchant quarter that zigzagged away from the central market&#xA;  were crowded with shoppers and the litters of rich ladies riding on&#xA;  the shoulders of servants.  The stone roads had been smoothed over the&#xA;  countless years of pedestrian (and sometimes thief) feet.  Despite the&#xA;  fear that drove her forward she never felt more alive than she did at&#xA;  times like this.  Her body knew just what to do.  She sprinted toward&#xA;  one of the more flamboyant palanquins, a gilded seat draped in bright&#xA;  blue silks.  Nirin had just enough time to notice the rider, a giant&#xA;  woman with at least three chins.  She ducked between the two large&#xA;  tattooed men on the front of the poles and slid beneath the raised&#xA;  seat and popping back to her feet on the far side as she sprinted on. &#xA;  She looked over her shoulder just in time to see the guards and&#xA;  servants getting tangled and the woman, her chair and chins toppling&#xA;  to the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6524" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-05-01T21:55:39.900" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T22:02:16.783" Title="Please evaluate the effectiveness of both voices, which better brings the character to life?" Tags="|characters|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10867" CreationDate="2014-05-01T22:02:16.783" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I much preferred reading the first-person excerpt, but that doesn't mean much when taken out of context like this. There's no simple answer here. First person has certain advantages, third person has other ones. Which you use depends on the story. Can you tell us more about the larger work? Is it a personal story, or is it a grand, uber-epic tale? Are there other characters you're following? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a doubt, the text in first person gives us a much better idea of the character. It gives us an intimate moment, lets us get a sense of the character's inner thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the story is better moved forward by the third person paragraph. It moves the story forward and there's more action. This may be because the two paragraphs really aren't the same action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to do is look at your story as a whole, and decide if you need to give us a better sense of story or character. In which aspect is your tale lacking? That should give you your answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T22:02:16.783" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10869" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10885" CreationDate="2014-05-02T03:29:01.450" Score="2" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/authors/alexandro-chen/works/sonata-of-solitude/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;short story&lt;/a&gt;. One recurring critique is that the flashbacks don't feel like flashbacks, so the readers get confused. The story is about a man who hears a piano next door. Nothing unusual—except the room hasn't been unoccupied since he moved in. The story alternates between present, past, present, past (this is another cause of the confusion). Here are two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, just as he closed his eyes, the song returned. Noticeably&#xA;  louder this time. But because of his exhaustion, he didn't do&#xA;  anything; he just lay there, letting the tune sink into his&#xA;  consciousness, mix with the dream that was about to come. And&#xA;  peacefully like that, he fell asleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;* * *&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pianos always brought Ming bad memories. They reminded him of Ai-Ling,&#xA;  his deceased girlfriend. He met her three years ago in a musical&#xA;  instrument store (while searching new strings for his guitar). Usually, it&#xA;  didn't take him long. But that day something caught his attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So, have you heard the piano?&quot; Ming sat up and refilled his glass of&#xA;  wine. They alway drank wine after having sex. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Li-Mei shook her head.&#xA;  &quot;But I think you can show me.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sure you want?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If I want to listen&#xA;  to a piano play in an empty room? Hell yeah!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;All right, I'll show&#xA;  you tonight.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;* * * &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From that afternoon in the cafe, Ming and Ai-Ling became a couple. It happened naturally. As if they’d been connected since the&#xA;  day they were born. Plus they both had passion for music, so, though&#xA;  their tastes differed (Ming liked punk rock and Ai-Ling classical),&#xA;  they never ran out of topic to talk about. Their contrasting&#xA;  preferences balanced each other in a fine, delicate way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that the case? If so, how can I fix it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(someone suggested adding &lt;code&gt;had&lt;/code&gt;s in the flashbacks. Like, &lt;code&gt;Pianos had always brought Ming bad memories.&lt;/code&gt; Is that the best solution?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T05:10:45.663" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T23:22:01.033" Title="Do the following scenes feel like flashbacks?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10871" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10872" CreationDate="2014-05-03T18:32:21.373" Score="10" ViewCount="40564" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing about a female person. I noticed most of my sentences start with &quot;she&quot;. Is there a way to avoid using this pronoun too many times, and use an alternative word instead? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried using her name from time to time, but the sentences seem to be unconnected when I switch from she to her name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8611" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-05-09T17:31:09.633" LastActivityDate="2022-11-13T15:39:42.610" Title="Alternative word for &quot;she&quot;" Tags="|fiction|word-choice|pronouns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10871" CreationDate="2014-05-04T01:51:20.187" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of four ways to lessen the repetitive use of sentences starting with a nominative pronoun like &amp;quot;She&amp;quot; (other than using the person's name).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Changing the subject to a part or aspect of the character&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, one can present the action as performed by some part or aspect of the person. While this will typically use the genitive form of the pronoun, it can still reduce the perception of repetition. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She looked down at her plate and remembered how much she disliked broccoli.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could become:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her eyes dropped down to her plate, even the melted cheese could not cover the recall of her dislike of broccoli.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She was bored. She yawned openly as the lecturer's voice droned on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could become:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her body ached with boredom, and her uncovered yawn brought no relief as the lecturer's voice droned on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of change can give an excessive emphasis on the aspect of the character (e.g., the body), potentially reducing the recognition of the character's other attributes. On the other hand, this may encourage an excessive interest in the character because the description tends to seem more vivid; if the reader is meant to identify more deeply with the character, this may be appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Making the character the object of the sentence&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, one can have an object acting upon the character. This would also not remove the pronoun but change its case (from nominative to objective) and position. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She hurried out the shed, fleeing the stench of rotting wood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could become:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stench of rotting wood chased her from the shed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She looked at the pearl necklace and longed for a man who thought her worthy of such a gift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could become:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pearl necklace held her gaze and stirred her longing for a man who thought her worthy of such a gift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may not even be necessary to include the character in the action. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She returned the plate of uneaten broccoli to the kitchen and went to cure her boredom with some television.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could become:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plate of broccoli returned to the kitchen uneaten; the television's offer of distraction was irresistible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She slept fitfully and woke unrested to rumpled bed coverings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could become:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rumpled bed coverings declared another restless night of fitful sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of change can give the impression of abstracting the character from the scene. Sometimes this may be desirable for presenting the character as less active (e.g., bored, depressed, or trapped) or perhaps even just to give the scene a more subdued tone or an impression of an uninvolved observer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Changing an action to a thought&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, the character's action can be translated into a thought. This would typically change the third person pronoun to the first person pronoun. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She wondered how long she had been waiting for the bus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could become:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How long have I been waiting for this bus?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She struggled to suppress a bored yawn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could become:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This lecture is&lt;/em&gt; so &lt;em&gt;boring. I can barely keep from yawning.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allowing the reader to read the character's thoughts would work against building a sense of separation or of mystery between the reader and the character or even between the character and others (as if the reader's knowledge leaks to the other characters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Use filler material&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it is sometimes possible to delay the introduction of the character in the sentence. While this does not remove the nominative pronoun, it reduces the obviousness of its use and the feeling of repetition. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She smiled as Sharon came over to her table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could become:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Sharon approached her table, she smiled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She pushed fiercely against the stuck door. She knew her stalker was close behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The door was jammed; she pushed against it fiercely, knowing her stalker was close behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even interposing a sentence describing the setting can lessen the impression of repetition. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She got up and walked alone to the bathroom before leaving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could become:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a few couples still cuddled in less lit spots, the party was winding down. She got up and walked alone to the bathroom before leaving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She walked over to the buffet table and started to reload her plate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could become:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The buffet table was fully stocked with comfort foods. She walked over and started to reload her plate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of change can easily change the pace of the text or distract from the important action. However, it can also be used to provide a richer context for the action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As noted, these kinds of changes can alter the tone or pace of the text. Even when such a change would work somewhat against the intended tone or pace, it may offer a better tradeoff than repeatedly starting sentences with a nominative pronoun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should also be noted that frequent use of nominative pronouns is natural and can be less visible to the reader than one might expect from an abstract analysis. Using the character's name instead of a pronoun can introduce a distance between the reader and the character or emphasize the particular character's action. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She pulled apart the drapes. She had never seen the street so peaceful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;versus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sarah pulled apart the drapes. Sarah had never seen the street so peaceful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter makes the opening of the drapes a stronger, more intentional, more personal action and emphasizes Sarah's perception more and the peacefulness of the street less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T17:14:42.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10769" CreationDate="2014-05-04T17:34:29.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend reading the book immediate fiction to help you with #1 and #2. If you are really serious there are a lot of good books on writing on Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;World building in itself is a means to an end of making a good story (I got this from Orson Scott Card's book).  Just look at the Hobbit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to study up on writing and go for it. In life we regret the risks not taken, not the failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record it is very hard to come up with something original, and many things you see is original are not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8618" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T17:34:29.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10875" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-05T03:12:56.617" Score="6" ViewCount="3661" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently and in the past I have been practicing writing as a hobby.  I enjoy the creative pleasure it provides, but am hitting major road blocks in the process.  My trouble is in seeing the big picture.  In college I studied math and physics, and am very good at analyzing,  but have enormous difficulties when it comes to creating something.  Whenever I write, the material always comes out as a sequence or list.  I usually end up listing attributes of a character, events, or details of the setting.  I can't seem to tie these things together and make a real story.  I feel like every sentence I write is disconnected from the rest.  What exercises can I do to improve in this aspect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8619" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T10:43:54.100" Title="What can I do to make my writing less choppy?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10875" CreationDate="2014-05-05T09:15:47.277" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with writing like that in first draft. Get events in order, write down attributes, reasons, settings, in a way that is comfortable for &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;. Have all the essentials in an easily accessible order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then perform major editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;show, don't tell.&lt;/strong&gt; Look at every single attribute you list and think how you could replace it with a segment of text that shows it. In many cases it would be forced, so skip these, but in a lot of cases instead of just telling the reader something is this-and-this, have someone ask a question about it, have it perform a role in the plot, imply it through effects, change an attribute to an actor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He had short braids in his beard, with bow of red ribbon on the tips&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A small stream of beer ran down his beard and dripped from one of his short braids. As he guffawed, droplets of the liquid scattered from the bow of red ribbon tied at the braid's end.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cut&lt;/strong&gt;. Delay exposure of things that are not essential now. Mix order - events, descriptions, dialogues, no clear separation 'here I introduce the setting, here - characters, and here I have them interacting' but put it in one flow, mixing these. Chop into finer pieces and mix together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, &lt;strong&gt;Camera work&lt;/strong&gt;. When writing descriptions, think in terms of moving camera (or eye focus), and instead of just setting the camera on a tripod and dumping the static image it has within view frame, pan it, zoom in, zoom out, turn around, wander, make a double-take at something that at first seemed normal, but appeared out of place. Currently, you imagine a scene and describe it point by point, in some specific order. Instead, just think how to move the camera around, zoom in on important aspects, or opposite, zoom out from a detail into vista, for large image. Your list is an excellent help in getting what is to be shown, but transform it into a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always think in &lt;strong&gt;three layers&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actual, physical events, 'the real world', &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cold logic of the characters - expectations, plans, intentions, knowledge, awareness, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;emotions: desires, fears, hang-ups, motives, reasons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every moment of action is a result of these three, and always have them in mind. You can always remix them - emotions showing up as facial expressions, cold logic coming as determination or just displayed in smart actions, observations of real world reflected through emotions - but keep all three in the flow. If you spend a whole page only displaying real events and never peeking into the thoughts and emotions of your characters, your writing gets dry. If you spend half a page on dwelling just on internal thoughts of a character, your readers start yawning. Mix these up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Continuity&lt;/strong&gt;. While 'cut' was on microscale, mixing most immediate elements, also break continuity on macroscale. Start later into the story and bring the beginning through reminiscences. Disassociate the reader from the place - observe the story through TV news, tell it by grandpa's mouth, have a character brag about past endeavors. Change scenes, skip through time, don't just list events in original order but keep parts a mystery to be revealed later, or even just guessed by the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pacing&lt;/strong&gt;. Some events require deep detail, time grinding almost to a halt, others span a long time and require a fast-forward view. Similarly to camera works though, change of pacing should be smooth. Events follow at certain pace, and you must use smooth transitions if the pace changes (outside of chapter/section breaks). Speed up or slow down gradually, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9297/rhythm-in-the-following-passage/9298#9298&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; for an example, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5477/how-do-i-cleanly-show-the-passage-of-time-with-multiple-varying-time-scales/12649#12649&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; for a more detailed analysis. There is a wide range of paces - Genesis in the Bible has whole generations pass within single paragraphs, meanwhile Tom Clancy has a sizable chapter in his &lt;em&gt;Sum of All Fears&lt;/em&gt;, that spans under a microsecond of real time. Still, unless you break a scene or a chapter, if you do speed up or slow down the pace, do this gradually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T07:49:47.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10875" CreationDate="2014-05-05T10:11:11.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to SF's excellent advice for the nuts and bolts of writing, if you're having difficulty coming up with a skeleton to hang your story on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) For a tried-and-true classic, try the &lt;strong&gt;Hero's Journey&lt;/strong&gt;. (&lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; is the perfect contemporary example.) Something happens, person goes on quest to fix it, gets help and hindrance along the way, is successful, returns home. Christopher Vogler wrote an excellent, step-by-step tutorial on creating these stories, called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/193290736X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Writer's Journey.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If your story doesn't fall into that structure (and it certainly doesn't have to), I found Randy Ingermanson's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Snowflake Method&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; of plotting to be really useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You start with your plot as one sentence. Then you expand to one paragraph. Then to a page. Then you start blocking out acts (he calls this &quot;three disasters and an ending, if I recall correctly). Basically the structure helps you to expand your story naturally, filling in the details where it's important to have them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other methods, but these two are well-proven and can help you to join up your bullet lists into an actual plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T10:11:11.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10769" CreationDate="2014-05-05T10:26:27.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I come from a similar situation as yours. I guess I understand what you are going through.&#xA;From my experience...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You read few great fantasy series and loved to put yourself in those characters and role played few of them (in your own world aka mind, at least). You have a great concept to build the story on (Research students in general love to explore a concept and dive deeper into it). You dream in your created world few times. I'd say, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't worry about professional reviews. Keep writing. Let it be read by unprofessional people who will see your plot, world, and characters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep Writing. Make a group of people who likes your story. Break your story into small chapters. Release them to the group and collect their reviews every week. You will push yourself to write more if people start showing more interest in your work and wait for more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep 1 hour a day to write and 2 hrs on weekends. Edit only once, the day before your weekly release is best.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create more groups.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forget the chronological order for now. Forget 3 and 4 books for now. Write book 1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All graduate students have other passions and hobbies too. Some dance, some drink, some sleep. Make this yours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read for a week and not write. Do this once in 5 weeks. It will change your perspective and writing style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everything else goes later. YOU WILL PUBLISH.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8623" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T10:26:27.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10851" CreationDate="2014-05-05T13:18:12.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should open your story by creating a question in the reader’s mind that can only be answered by reading onward.  Conflict is a popular way to start, because it raises the question “who’s gonna win?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the conflict doesn’t have to involve fistfights and explosions.  In the first chapter of &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice&lt;/em&gt;, the narrative question is “who is going to marry this fantastically wealthy single man who just moved into the neighborhood?”  That’s a perfectly effective hook (especially for Austen’s original audience—think of &lt;em&gt;P&amp;amp;P&lt;/em&gt; as the Regency-England precursor to &lt;em&gt;The Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; open with a violent conflict, but the reader doesn’t give a damn who wins or loses, it’s a bad hook.  And if you open with a good hook, but then switch to twenty pages of boring exposition that has nothing to do with it, you will lose the reader in spite of the hook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T13:18:12.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10881" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-05T14:27:25.807" Score="1" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I always replace &quot;In order to&quot; with the shorter &quot;To&quot; in scientific writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In order to prevent corrupting the data, regular updates are required.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To prevent corrupting the data, regular updates are required.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T16:10:14.617" Title="&quot;In order to&quot; vs &quot;To&quot;" Tags="|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10881" CreationDate="2014-05-05T16:10:14.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would think yes, since &quot;in order&quot; is a bit superfluous, but there are always exceptions in context. You can probably take it out most of the time (like 85 to 90 percent). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T16:10:14.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10869" CreationDate="2014-05-06T14:21:11.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well... I can't tell what are and aren't flashbacks from your examples but I do have some tips on how to write a flashback. If you edit your question to have more context (see KitFox's comment) then I can edit this to better suit you. You don't have to do &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of these things, but incorporating some might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hook the reader.&lt;/strong&gt; I guess you're always trying to hook the reader, but for flashbacks this is essential. If your reader is uninterested in your character or your character's motivation, a flashback to something that informs your character is meaningless. Definitely try to have flashbacks following strong scenes or at least have them take place outside of present day action. The last thing you want to do is be in the middle of enticing a reader and then ripping them out of the action to make them read something only tangentially related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make sure your reader knows you're moving back in time (or forward in time).&lt;/strong&gt; One of the things that people tend to do when they can't seamlessly move back and forth in time via the text itself is to use some sort of ASCII/text image like ____ or *** or something like that. This doesn't really work because this isn't assuring your reader that you're moving forward or backwards in time. It's just an interruption that doesn't tell them anything in particular. For example, I could write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining officers on the scene gazed after the quickly disappearing ambulance. &amp;quot;Peter wouldn't hurt her. At least... I don't he would.&amp;quot; Maria said. &amp;quot;After all... isn't Liz the only one who trusted him...?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;***&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Liz threw the papers onto the chief's desk. &amp;quot;This is clearly the work of the Providence killer. And it's another person who slighted Peter Ashcraft! What more do you need? We should just bring him in!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We brought him in on the first two. They were related to him, but he was out of town.&amp;quot; The chief said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But he must know &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when you read it, you wouldn't know when either of those lines were taking place. It could be happening literally seconds after each other. It could be happening days apart. If you say when things are happening, it makes things a lot more easy to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining officers on the scene gazed after the quickly disappearing ambulance. &amp;quot;Peter wouldn't hurt her. At least... I don't he would.&amp;quot; Maria said. &amp;quot;After all... isn't Liz the only one who trusted him...?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Two Months Earlier&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Liz threw the papers onto the chief's desk. &amp;quot;This is clearly the work of the Providence killer. And it's another person who slighted Peter Ashcraft! What more do you need? We should just bring him in!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We brought him in on the first two. They were related to him, but he was out of town.&amp;quot; The chief said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But he must know &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to let your reader know when things are happening. You can add it into the narration or have an interruption, but you can't just use a visual representation of time progression alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use a different tense in your flashback.&lt;/strong&gt; You don't even have to stick with the new tense. you can start off with past perfect and then move into past tense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;She &lt;strong&gt;had had&lt;/strong&gt; a couple of drinks before he &lt;strong&gt;sauntered&lt;/strong&gt; over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hello beautiful,&amp;quot; He said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a short flashback, like one or two lines, using past perfect tense all the way is probably your best bet. but if it's particularly long, consider writing the beginning in past perfect tense and then shifting into past tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make it natural.&lt;/strong&gt; Consider flashbacks in real life. For example, do you ever think about some specific childhood memory after looking at a picture? That's pretty much a real life flashback. An organic flashback, more or less, has some kind of trigger. You could use the trigger to segue easily into a flashback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He hadn't heard Classical Gas for years. He could still remember the first time he heard it. His father had been busy that week, but still had managed to find the time to bring him to the old park. The place was in complete disrepair, but there was an old stage where bands played during town events. That day, some nameless musician was playing that song...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make the flashback text different from the regular narration's text.&lt;/strong&gt; This works better if there aren't &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; flashbacks, but if you're having one or two flashbacks, you can separate them from the regular text using formatting. For example, you could make all of your flashbacks be written in italics. Or you could center the text for your flashback sequences. If you make the reader notice &lt;em&gt;this is different&lt;/em&gt; then they are more likely to be able to tell the difference between regular narration and flashback narration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T14:21:11.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10769" CreationDate="2014-05-07T00:35:54.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you mind to step out of the Realm Of Ordinary for a while?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have not yet done this before - I suggest you to try to spend &lt;strong&gt;some time&lt;/strong&gt; living in the world you're creating with your writing. Immerse in it, feel it. Might be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm saying that because I've also been a science student in my youth. And scientific thinking tends to be analytic, not immersive one. Works for writing science papers, not for stories and novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to immerse? Well... Have you played tabletop roleplaying games? Especially so-called storytelling systems are good for that. Games like these allow to immerse in the world created by your writing &lt;strong&gt;together with your friends&lt;/strong&gt;. There are several benefits at once. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, 'loneliness is the biggest dream-killer'. But game means friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you get feedback without having to feel ashamed for faults - because all the experience is fun for everybody involved. The faults stop being faults at all, at least no one will perceive them as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, you can polish the game world (along the characters populating it, surroundings, etc.) during the game. With inspiration!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, you will learn a lot from the game experience. Not only writing skills, but social, acting, problem-solving... Just recently I read about script writers for Game of Thrones, saying that they owe their success to roleplaying games they played for many years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have friends who play roleplaying games? If not, know that our folks are ve-ery friendly to newcomers! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8637" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T00:35:54.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10889" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10899" CreationDate="2014-05-07T17:35:38.643" Score="3" ViewCount="179" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if it would be unwise to get a very solid foundation in writing by starting with flash fiction, then working my way up to larger works.  I suppose I'm being naive in a sense, because I'm sure any decent writer would say that any medium/genre is an art form in itself, but humor me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8644" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T18:45:01.803" Title="Learning to write flash fiction first?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10890" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-07T18:32:08.457" Score="7" ViewCount="1303" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a large collection of poems which I've been meaning to submit for publication, but I need to know which format is used to send these babies. I don't want to send a word document because it seems like I'm just throwing all my work out there without any regard to the risk involved in a plain text document. Which format should I save and send my collection in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8646" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T06:31:03.913" Title="Is there a format I can save my poems in that will make the publisher unable to copy and paste?" Tags="|publishing|poetry|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10889" CreationDate="2014-05-07T18:49:11.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this might be a good idea.  Flash fiction allows the writer to just write, unhindered, without the pressure to produce instantly usable material.  I think this is a useful exercise and something you may want to hone, as this can definitely free up your writing style when you get to writing the first draft of something substantially longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8647" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T18:49:11.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10862" CreationDate="2014-05-07T19:36:34.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as tone goes, I think the first and third are equivalent.  In the 2nd case, putting the sentence in a paragraph of its own adds emphasis to the statement.  Also in this particular case the statement is vague which hints to the reader that the details are forthcoming which is a trick often used to build suspense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5940" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T19:36:34.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10893" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-08T00:42:45.037" Score="0" ViewCount="2029" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing a work of non-fiction, specifically a motivational/psychology piece. It's my first book. The book is written primarily in second and third person,  but also first when I feel the need to speak directly to the reader. For my writing process, I'm a fan of letting it flow and worrying about stuff like tenses/phrasing later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it inconsistent or unheard of to use all three perspectives? Or is it more usual to edit and remove second person in favor or third?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: when &lt;strong&gt;we&lt;/strong&gt; let go of our ego...blah blah blah. Every time &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; release this, a new part opens up. &lt;strong&gt;I've&lt;/strong&gt; seen the changes in my life when....blah blah blah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8648" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T23:46:38.473" Title="Writing non-fiction in three perspectives?" Tags="|non-fiction|perspective|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10890" CreationDate="2014-05-08T02:45:00.690" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under no circumstances will you be able to protect textual works. From a technical standpoint. Not on Kindle, not on iBooks, not on Nook, not on your smartphone, not on the web, not in a Word document, not in an encrypted email, not via voice recording. Even if you send a bitmap or some other format, if a human can read it, they can OCR it. Period end of story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your protection consists of a) working with reputable publishers b) submitting to reputable sites c) understanding that textual content can be trivially stolen/harvested and d) realizing that if your stuff is good enough to BE stolen, that's actually not a bad problem for a starting author (especially a poet) to have!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2555" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T02:45:00.690" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10893" CreationDate="2014-05-08T02:56:08.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just don't fall into the trap of multiple perspectives and tenses for multiple perspectives' and tenses' sake. In the hands of a good writer with a concrete vision, these are effective techniques. Otherwise if your vision isn't concrete, probably best to channel some Strunk and White and focus on simple, serviceable writing that tells a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2nd-person perspective is almost never used outside of experimental fiction, flash fiction, or episodic sections within a larger piece. Similarly, you probably won't publish many stories written in the future tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2555" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T02:56:08.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10896" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10897" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:36:08.617" Score="1" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been tasked with defining a process to write and share content to social media. We are a small company and while we have people that create content, there will be nobody fully dedicated to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen some content created by a previous employee and it's very bad, so I'm trying to figure out how to create a foolproof method so the content is at least readable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this commonly done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8654" LastEditorUserId="40124" LastEditDate="2023-05-18T18:51:36.380" LastActivityDate="2023-05-22T15:23:44.013" Title="Common process for creating social media content?" Tags="|marketing|process|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10896" CreationDate="2014-05-08T15:54:10.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no foolproof method, but here are some ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, go through the documentation with someone from different parts of the company and have them highlight when they find a line that they think is most important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you form the comment in an interactive question?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you make the comment stand out in 70 characters or less followed by a clickable link?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow the rule of 3rds. If you company's focus is &amp;quot;Blah&amp;quot;, only make 1 of 3 posts about &amp;quot;Blah&amp;quot;. Two posts in between each &amp;quot;Blah&amp;quot; post should be interactive and customer focused. The other two posts could be success stories or giveaways or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always have a second person review the posts before they go out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe have a check list like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post is &amp;quot;correct&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spell check.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grammar check (unless intentional for space issues.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Useless word check.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check that no word and hashtag are the same.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are correct people or hashtags tagged?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Content&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it safe for work (SFW)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it accurate? Fact checked?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can anything be offensive?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can anything be misinterpreted as offensive?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would any customer stop being a customer because you post this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post is engaging 1 2 3 4 5 (1 worst 5 best)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a question? +1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it funny, awesome, nostalgic, exciting, or important? +1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it boring? -1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it selling something? -1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it giving something? +1 (you sell more giving than by selling)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;*Safely controversial? +1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was your last post about the same thing? -1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Safely = Who is better Superman or Batman? Unsafe = political, religious, bigoted or otherwise negatively controversial - unless you are representing such group and trying to change the world for the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8655" LastEditorUserId="40124" LastEditDate="2023-05-22T15:23:44.013" LastActivityDate="2023-05-22T15:23:44.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10889" CreationDate="2014-05-08T18:45:01.803" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Starting with flash fiction alone would involve a number of tradeoffs. On the positive side, the shorter length can seem less intimidating as a goal and can provide more frequent positive feedback from completion. Flash fiction also tends to force the writer to ruthlessly edit the work to meet the strict length limits. Learning to kill one's children (cutting out even a single phrase may seem like murder) and to rework one's writing beyond completion into being finished is useful. Such short fiction may also teach how to imply information rather than showing or telling and to accept unintended interpretations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the negative side, such length limits can reduce the &lt;em&gt;fun&lt;/em&gt; of writing by restricting the writer's expression and requiring the hard work of aggressive editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flash fiction may also increase the pressure to complete (but not finish) the work in a single sitting. This may be helpful as a discipline to prevent stopping and to force the dedication of significant, undistracted time to writing. However, it may also increase frustration from writer's block and teach a false sense that editing is less important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;suspect&lt;/em&gt; that using a 500 word &lt;em&gt;minimum&lt;/em&gt; for a completed work would be more helpful for a beginner in providing a sense of substantial accomplishment without being overwhelming, while allowing more freedom of expression than the 300 to 1,000 word &lt;em&gt;maximum&lt;/em&gt; of flash fiction. Taking each first draft and requiring at least a 20% cut in word count in the first series of edits might provide some of the benefit of flash fiction's constrained length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common suggestion for beginning writes is to have the means to jot down story ideas and snippets of text. These can be useful in dealing with the dreaded blank page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common suggestion is to dedicate a minimum amount of time to writing and to recognize that research, organization of materials, and editing are part of the writer's work. If a creative block is reached, it is often better to spend the dedicated time editing, organizing and reexamining notes, or even doing research than to stare at a screen. Editing is perhaps the most helpful since it is more likely to stir the writing mood, but sometimes even editing can be unproductive and the other tasks would be more useful and more affirming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having multiple stories in progress provides more opportunities to shift between tasks and types of tasks, but there is a danger of having too many uncompleted stories. Having many uncompleted stories can discourage writing by giving the impression of there being too much work to do and of one never completing one's stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T18:45:01.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10900" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-08T19:09:09.920" Score="0" ViewCount="711" Body="&lt;p&gt;My criteria for 'good' here is &quot;not linkbait&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to avoid all kinds of useless linkbait articles in my various social feeds, (&quot;This guy does blah...&quot;, &quot;She comes on stage and smeh...&quot;) and it seems like the simplest way might be just to filter anything that has a pronoun in it, but I don't want to miss anything that might contain genuine content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there circumstances where a pronoun is relevant in an article headline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8656" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T06:16:39.073" Title="Can a good headline contain a pronoun?" Tags="|headlines|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10900" CreationDate="2014-05-08T19:26:43.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My original thought was &quot;Of course a good headline can have a pronoun,&quot; but wow, a bit of research shows having &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; pronouns in headlines is actually quite rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;NY Times&lt;/em&gt;: Moving Your Show to Broadway? Not So Fast&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;WSJ&lt;/em&gt;: Hedge Funds Extend Their Slide&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Newsweek&lt;/em&gt;: Her Biggest Race&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T00:13:03.430" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T00:13:03.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10902" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-08T22:15:45.967" Score="2" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was never interested in writing until I was around forty years of age.  I have done a fair amount of writing in the past decade or more, mostly emails, personal letters, and messages to various online discussion forums. in the past two years, I have written over a hundred essays, of one to four thousand words each, on a variety of topics and am now interested in publishing a collection of them. I have read &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5227/how-can-i-make-a-collection-of-essays-arguments-more-attractive-to-publishers&quot;&gt;How can I make a collection of essays / arguments more attractive to publishers? &lt;/a&gt; and am looking for further advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I realize the odds of success are quite low and any “reasonable” person would tell me to just give up my dream and not even try. Call me a fool or worse, but I must assume that I am brilliant, and that others will be interested in my views on the human condition. How do I get from where I am to having my work published and being read?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8638" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T17:57:42.533" Title="How can I (as a new author) publish a collection of essays?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10869" CreationDate="2014-05-08T23:22:01.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;They don't feel like flashback to me either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ice-9 gave you some good options, let me add some more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to enter the flashback: there are two opposite ways, &amp;quot;by the hand&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;throwing into deep water&amp;quot;. Your approach sits squat in between the two, falling short of either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First one eases the reader into the flashback slowly, explaining how, when the flashback is entered, bringing the events forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ming sat in his armchair, leaning into the smooth leather. He closed his eyes, and visions of the past came to him unasked. His thoughts wandered towards the events three years ago, that afternoon in the cafe, when he and Ai-Ling became a couple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It happened naturally. As if they’d been connected since the day they were born. Plus they both had passion for music, so, though their tastes differed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way the reader is clearly told that a flashback begins. This is good way for reported-speech flashbacks, or like in your case, general/abstract ones, compressing larger periods or telling of facts of the past. It's good when the character tries to recall things, puts a conscious effort to bring the memories forth. These aren't really &lt;strong&gt;flash&lt;/strong&gt;-backs. They are just reminiscences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For real flashbacks, use &amp;quot;Throwing into deep water&amp;quot;. It's more &amp;quot;juicy&amp;quot;, draws the reader in, and can be just as clear, but can't be applied everywhere. You start a new section at 1:1 (real time) playback speed, up close to the characters, reporting their activity honestly and without fancy flourishes. The entered scene must clash violently with where you left off, getting the reader to scramble for hooks, where (and when) it is located. Give these hooks. Season, location, maybe date through some subtle means, but keep it entirely disconnected from 'current times'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sound of piano brought Ming some bad memories. He looked at his guitar hanging on the wall. A thick layer of dust collected on its surface untouched since Ai-Ling died three years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several sets of strings for guitar lay spread on the counter. The shopkeeper left Ming with his choice, and began servicing other customer. Ming picked up one of the plastic sleeves - for the fifteenth time in past half hour - and opened it, knocking the string inside with his fingertip, rubbing it with his nail to feel its texture. He'd never spent so much time selecting strings for his guitar before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I can help you pick the right strings, if you tell me what you play, and how you play.&amp;quot; The voice behind him was female, young, with a little rasp. Ming didn't turn around. Somehow, curiosity passed him by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Punk rock. I'm not easy on the guitar. I need new strings way too often.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Then you will love Muza. They are hard, strong, and they sing with anger. My name's Ai-Ling, by the way.&amp;quot; The girl stood next to Ming now, and he turned his head to her. [description follows]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice: close detail, literal dialogue, no introductions, no &amp;quot;smooth edges&amp;quot;. These are obtrusive reminiscences that come unasked, and push into our minds against our efforts to the contrary, vivid and detailed. That's why they feel 'stronger'. Try this, it's not all that hard. Rough cut, completely disconnected scene transition, only bare background details connecting the two scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T23:22:01.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10902" CreationDate="2014-05-09T03:20:08.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider publishing them yourself. It's not hard to do these days. I won't say it's easy (learning the tools will take a bit of time), but it's certainly doable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the turn of the year I knew absolutely nothing about producing books. In the four months since then, I have published four short stories as electronic books through various distributors (Kindle, iBooks, Kobo, and Smashwords), and one short story as a paperback (through CreateSpace).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T03:20:08.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8538" CreationDate="2014-05-09T11:12:25.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that you, like most writers, are one single individual with a limited experince of the world. You have never murdered anyone, you don't really remember how you felt as a child, and you don't score 160 in an IQ test, yet you write about murderers, children, or brilliant scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is, of course, &lt;strong&gt;impossible for you to know how these people think or feel&lt;/strong&gt;. So how can you write about them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;You fake them.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychology has found that people can usually judge another person's intelligence pretty accurately just from seeing that person. They don't have the person perform an IQ test, they just look at &lt;strong&gt;cues&lt;/strong&gt; like facial features and signals of education and expertise like dress style and accessories (glasses, laptop case), academic degrees, who that person associates with and how he interacts and moves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is generally assumed that intelligent persons are successful in all aspects of life, good looking, socially competent etc. Of course this is not true (or at least not in such a simple correlation), but that are the cues that we use to judge a person's intelligence. Wit, of course, is partly intelligence, partly social competence, and partly humor. So markers for intelligence will give a clue about wit also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Movie creators use these markers and carefully select the dress, car, and furniture of their characters. Some movie characters appear intelligent on first impression, because of what they look like and where we first see them (e.g. the lab).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A German theatre director went even further. &lt;strong&gt;He wrote the character's IQ on their forehead.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you cannot do this in a novel, but you can do something similar: just state that they are witty, or have one character say it about another. If you don't want to be so direct, equip your character with cues of wittiness: people laughing with him or her, and if you cannot show interaction, use the other cues I mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But let's assume that you are a witty person yourself, and you don't have to fake your character's wit. &lt;strong&gt;There is a danger with this.&lt;/strong&gt; Unlike intelligence, where we all can agreee that a person winning the nobel prize cannot be stupid, &lt;strong&gt;wit is a question of personal taste&lt;/strong&gt;. What I will find intelligently funny, you might think inane. It is also a question of context, current emotional state, and (sub)culture. Since you cannot control who reads your book, you run the danger of your readers finding your witty character's wit rather crude. If you &lt;strong&gt;tell and don't show&lt;/strong&gt;, this won't happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always say: Do not describe your characters. If the protagonist falls in love with that person, the reader will imagine that person to be beautiful after the model of his own taste. If you give the love interest a specific appearance, chances are that your reader finds that look unattractive and won't be able to follow your protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the same with all things that vary among your readers. &lt;strong&gt;Tell your readers of the effect that a character has, but&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;leave it up to the reader to imagine the kind of person that would cause such an effect.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T11:12:25.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4396" CreationDate="2014-05-09T15:16:26.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;JUST WRITE!  That is why it is called a &quot;rough draft&quot;.  It is rough and yes, it needs a lot of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have written the entire story (no matter how words it is) go back. Read it again, and pretend you have never seen the book before.  Think like a reader of your published work would.  Find anything you want to change and change it.  Ask LOTS of people what you should change, because many people have different opinions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with RobotNerd about descriptions. Adding small things that give life to the object is helpful, especially if you can use it to move the plot along...  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dog barked fearfully.  The shrill howls echoed past your bedroom window.  That wasn't a good sign. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try more description, but remember to keep it action packed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8663" LastEditorUserId="8147" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T22:10:47.340" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T22:10:47.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8538" CreationDate="2014-05-09T16:52:21.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you need to decide: what KIND of funny?  Watch a bunch of comedy shows / movies / standups.  Analyze them, and you'll find that there are MANY kinds of funny.  Too many to list here, but examples are: dry, intellectual, self-deprecating, wry, wise-ass, idiot, childish, buffoon, crude, goofy, crazy, hostile, nerdy, gallows.  You must pick ONE (or maybe two) of these for your funny character, and of course it must fit his/her other characteristics.  Also, it must fit the other characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That leads me to my second point: you'll need at least one straight man (who could be a woman).  The straight man can also be funny, but in an opposite manner.  He is funny as a receiver.  His reactions make the jokester funny.  A stupid, corny joke instantly becomes funnier if the hard-boiled, no-nonsense guy responds with, &quot;Haha.  You're a laugh a minute.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which leads to my third point: people are funniest in combination.  That's why stand-up comedy is so hard, and why so many stand-ups have multiple personas in their act.  That's why sit-coms have a variety of characters.  Most jokes need a foil, a target.  A couple of idiots acting stupid isn't very funny.  A couple of idiots acting stupid, but one of them thinks he's smart, is funnier.  Those idiots inadvertently embarrassing their dignified, cultured, and intelligent companion is very funny (or could be), especially if the uptight guy is forced by circumstances to depend on those clods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T16:52:21.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10912" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10915" CreationDate="2014-05-10T21:44:01.817" Score="4" ViewCount="16277" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if a character was in a nighclub or at a concert. How do you represent the music?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It got me thinking that writing is a very non musical medium and that it is actually pretty hard to make the reader hear what you want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8618" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-05-11T04:04:29.817" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T19:46:18.243" Title="How can you represent music in writing" Tags="|creative-writing|description|scene|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10913" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-10T23:07:05.697" Score="2" ViewCount="186" Body="&lt;p&gt;First and foremost, I do believe this is an appropriate question for this site, but my apologies if not!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My class has been asked to publish our individual research papers in a public setting. In a minimum of one paragraph we are to present our work, be it in a relevant blog, as a Wikipedia entry related to our research topic, magazine, local newspaper, scholarship site, contest, and any other sort of relevant outlet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regrettably, I'm entirely unsure of where I might go about posting something in regards to my own topic, and I was wondering if anyone had some ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below is my abstraction and thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thesis:&lt;/strong&gt; Google has bettered the world by offering these within the implementation of its business model, contributions and innovations in computer products and services, and its attention to researching and developing products guided towards the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract:&lt;/strong&gt; Google has been able to succeed in a market that had already been largely filled with competitors that had a considerable foothold by using advertising as a revenue generator. By innovating and making itself a sole provider of certain services, and offering alternatives to those already available that were of high quality, Google has been able to acquire an immense user base to fuel the effectiveness of its advertising platform, adwords. As a direct result of these things, Google has acted as a stellar example of what innovation can produce. Increasing the standard quality of software available to the public for free, it has resulted in a raised standard of software, and that the mindset to innovate and bring something new and useful to the market can allow some corporations to thrive. Google[x] has implemented several future oriented projects, those being the Loon and Contact Lens projects. Google Loon and Google Contact Lens are examples of such, Google Loon to give internet access to people in rural and remote areas, provide service in coverage gaps, and to people after disasters, and Contact Lens to allow diabetics glucose monitoring in the form of a contact lens. Google’s products and services, researching and developing towards the future, and its business model have factors that have bettered the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8677" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T13:19:12.890" Title="What is a good location to publish my research in a public setting?" Tags="|publishing|research|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10912" CreationDate="2014-05-11T09:08:58.523" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;All mediums have their limitations. The medium of books is the written word. Despite the popular dictum of &quot;show don't tell&quot;, you cannot address any senses directly through writing, you have to describe everything that your readers are then asked to imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Music is no different than any other aspect of reality, when it comes to writing about it. There is a large specialized vocabulary to describe the different aspects of music, if you want to be very accurate and detailed, but just like all technical jargon this is usually not readily comprehensible to the layperson. Everyone can &lt;em&gt;hear&lt;/em&gt; a crescendo, for example, but most people do not know that that term denotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you must make a decision: Do you write as an expert to experts, in a similar way as some technical science fiction relies on a good understanding of the relevant technology in its readers? Or do you use common but vague terms like &quot;loud&quot;, &quot;rhythmic&quot; or &quot;exciting&quot; to allude to experiences with music that most of us share?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write to a non-specialist audience, think about writing about music as similar to writing about anything else. You describe a house in your story without being an architect and knowing what architrave is. You describe emotions without being a psychologist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just carefully observe the music and your characters response to it, and describe that. And leave the readers some leeway to fill in what a &quot;heavy beat&quot; or &quot;pleasant melody&quot; might be for them. It does not matter, if the music they imagine differs from the one you have in mind, what is important is that this music has the same &lt;em&gt;effect&lt;/em&gt; on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you must consider, though, is the character of your narrator. Is he an omniscient, neutral narrator? Then he would use standardized, educated, but non-specialist language. Is your tale told by a music enthusiast? Then you need the terminology of music, because she will think in it. (You can still write for a lay audience, if your terminology explains itself from the context, or its exact meaning is irrelevant to the plot.) Is your narrator an teenage boy? Then use the language of teenagers to describe the music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing fiction, &lt;strong&gt;your narrator will dictate how you write about music&lt;/strong&gt;. Make yourself familiar with how such a person speaks by doing research. The internet is full of all types of people discussing music, so this should be fairly easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-05-11T13:21:48.037" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T13:21:48.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10916" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10923" CreationDate="2014-05-11T12:31:10.430" Score="10" ViewCount="2012" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;logline&lt;/em&gt; is a one to three sentence summary of a story, used to pitch a script to producers and other buyers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should contain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the protagonist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the goal of the protagonist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the antagonist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the stakes of failure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the logline must hook the audience of prospective buyers by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;irony&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;evoking a compelling mental picture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, here's the logline for the movie &lt;em&gt;Jaws&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A police chief, with a phobia for open water, battles a gigantic shark with an appetite for swimmers and boat captains, in spite of a greedy town council who demands that the beach stay open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are numerous descriptions of the purpose and structure of a logline, and many examples from real films, published in books and on websites. There are even some exercises explaining how to distill a script or novel plot into a logline, but I find they don't yield good results. Maybe my plot is not good, but maybe I don't really understand how to get from my plot to a logline, despite the vague hints in those hyped screenwriting books. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How do you distill a plot into a logline?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Please provide a cookbook step-by-step that even an idiot like me can follow.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite having provided my own &amp;quot;answer&amp;quot; below, I am still interested in this last aspect of my question: the step-by-step how-to. Most texts on the logline are very general, and don't help you much with how to make your logline &lt;em&gt;hook&lt;/em&gt;. I'm still hoping to read &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;your answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, so please give it a shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T20:30:51.303" Title="How to distill a plot into a logline?" Tags="|technique|outline|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10912" CreationDate="2014-05-11T15:43:33.473" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me add a lengthy quote from &quot;The Serpent Mage&quot; by Greg Bear, narrating the entirety of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9BfL2g5fXc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mahler's &lt;em&gt;Tenth Symphony&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. This is to give you a clue how deep in detail one can get, how you can convey a whole concerto piece through a written text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first movement of the Tenth was an elegiac adagio in F sharp major-minor. Michael fell into the music despite its intense anxiety and sadness. The weave of the music was hypnotic, swinging from domestic tranquility to ominous warning. What ensued was almost painful in its intensity - a dissonant clash of the orchestra, topped by a solo trumpet blaring a high A note - death and destruction, shock and dismay. The adagio, now concluded, seemed complete in itself, and it left Michael almost empty of feeling, drained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second movement, a scherzo - the first of two - was a complete contrast, beginning with a heavily satiric taunt in changing rhythms and tempos and then transforming the theme of the first movement into a happy country dance. It concluded joyously in the major key, leaving Michael with an overwhelming sensation of hope.&#xA;  That sensation was tempered by the third movement, titled Purgatorio. In B flat minor and 2/4 time, it drew its own conclusions after seesawing between anxiety and hope, sun and cold shadow… and those conclusions were dark, declining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'&quot;Oh God, why hast thou forsaken me?'&quot; Kristine whispered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What?&quot; Michael asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's what Mahler wrote on the original score.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The beginning of the second scherzo nearly lifted him from his seat - a shrill blast from horns and strings and then back to the dance with life and hope, decline and death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The poor, sad German.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I was not responsible for Mahler. Or for his child. That was not my work at all.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The scherzo brought to mind that long-past snippet of conversation between Mora and Clarkham under the Pleasure Dome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Did Mahler lose one of his children?&quot; Michael asked Kristine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A daughter,&quot; she said. &quot;His other daughter was incarcerated in a concentration camp during World War II,&quot; Kristine added softly, leaning to speak into his ear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He was dead then,&quot; Michael said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Maybe he could tell what was coming. Seeing what the old world would bring.&quot;&#xA;  Michael felt a thrill run up his spine. Yes… Old world passing into new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More anxiety after a rich, romantic interlude. Horns, xylophone accents, clarinets and French horns - that hideous solo trumpet again, intruding into the anxiety, presaging a delicious, horrible revelation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Michael was frozen in his seat. He could hardly think about what was occurring within him. Old world into new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yet all this was accidental - the matching of the Tenth -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfinished. Interrupted by death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;- with The Infinity Concerto.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Uplift, again the anxious strains, and back to domestic normality, the world and social life and children -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mixed with a foreboding of disaster to come -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of change and trauma and anticipation, foresight -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Harbinger of a new age, of fear and even disaster -&#xA;  Then quiet, skeletal strings, thinning out the fabric of reality, extending the cold from his stomach to his head. Drums pounded unobtrusively, ominously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the stage, the largest drum - an eight-foot-wide monster - was assaulted by the drummer with one shattering beat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The coldness vanished, leaving him suspended in the auditorium, hardly aware of seats, orchestra, walls, ceiling. He could feel the sky beyond. In his left palm lay a pearly sphere. He closed his hand to conceal it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Camouflage. Everything had been camouflaged to mislead, misdirect. The Infinity Concerto was not by itself a Song of Power. The similarities had seemed merely coincidental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mahler's Tenth was leading the way, closing out the old world, describing the end of a long age (sixty million years! or just the end of European peace - or merely the tranquility of one man's life, blighted by the death pf a daughter… perhaps feeling what the second daughter would have to suffer in a new world gone twice mad) and expressing hope for a time beyond. Rich, anxious, neurotic, jumping with each tic and twitch of things going awry, trying to maintain decorum and probity in the midst of coming chaos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The beats of the huge drum accented a funeral dirge. Again the skeletal tones, this time from muted trumpets . . and then heralding horns, a light and lovely flute song of hope developed by the strings…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;becoming strained again, overblown, life lived too hard, tics and twitches -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drum beat. A tragic triad of notes on the trumpet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drum beat. Low bassoons vibrating apart the seconds of his life. Michael still could not move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Deception. Camouflage. Misdirection.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tempo increasing into a new dance, new hope - recovery and healing - and yet another decline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Michael was growing weary of the seesaw, but only because it was too close to the everyday pace of his life. Life in this world, world passing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rise to triad and…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A disaster. The entire orchestra seemed to join in a dissonant clash, trumpet holding on the high A again, matched by more horns, another clash that made his head ache, reprise of the theme of everyday life…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And then the trumpet, released somewhat from its harsh warning role, was allowed a small solo. The triad reoccurred on other instruments, in a major key and hopeful, not shattering, and then domesticity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a segue, connective tissue old to new&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How much like what had happened recently, the weirdness mixed unpredictably with Earth's solid reality and inner silence of mind. There seemed to be a rise in intensity to some anticipated triumph, thoughtful, loving and accepting… but not acceding. Quiet contemplation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Michael could move again. He glanced nervously at Kristine to see if she had noticed. The symphony was coming to a conclusion, and he felt his inner strength surge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Triumph. Quiet, strong and sure - overcoming all tragedy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Triumph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The last notes of the Tenth faded, and Crooke seemed to reappear on the podium, and the orchestra seemed to become real again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course in your everyday writing you hardly ever need to go into this level of detail. Give the genre, give the mood. You may give the title, music is at hands' reach of today's readers so if they are compelled to do so, they can play it freely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Music can give background to the scenes, follow them - describe its changes of the beat to reflect the effects. It can guide, influence the characters. It may hint, explain, or pretty much do everything a secondary character that can't physically touch the protagonist can do. You can make the music an actor - like in the above piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can go the easier way. Reflect the music in the impressions of the characters - instead of writing about the music, write about their reactions. Tapping the rhythm, going into melancholy, getting annoyed, getting cheered up against their wishes, calming down, delving into reminiscences. That's the easy way, music being the background. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The neat thing about that approach is that you filter the music through the perception of a character. Two different people will react differently to the same piece of music. An omniscient narrator, or a switch of perspective can give a nice bit of exposure of a character's mind through showing how they react to given piece. &quot;That lie aimed at kids who don't know any better&quot; vs &quot;that piece which truly inspires to greatness&quot;? &quot;That little annoying tune&quot; vs &quot;an uplifting, cheerful melody&quot;? &quot;The legend of magnificence and harmony&quot; vs &quot;that boring, long thing snobs listen to, to show how elaborate they are&quot;? You can use music to ask questions, and have the reader judge the characters by the answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2014-05-11T19:46:18.243" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T19:46:18.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4396" CreationDate="2014-05-11T17:57:49.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to focus on dialogue and add description, describe the dialogue. Describe how they talk, including their body language and movements as they talk, and how the other character(s) listen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When there's two characters with different enough voices and/or points of view it's tempting to just have a page of dialogue without anything more than the first &quot;she said&quot;. Find long chunks like this and work on breaking them up and enriching them with more detail. You (probably) don't want people to feel they're reading a dry transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Describing every line is too much unless the conversation is very slow and measured, or important, but that's the opposite problem to yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8674" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T17:57:49.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10916" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:31:16.110" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; boil down your novel into a logline (or &quot;elevator pitch,&quot; which is how I learned it), then you may actually have a problem with your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've provided the structure of your answer in your own question. An elevator pitch must have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the protagonist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the goal of the protagonist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the antagonist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the stakes of failure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So pick those out of your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quick example: &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Protagonists: Nine Walkers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their Goals: Get the One Ring to Mordor under Sauron's nose&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Antagonist: Sauron and his cronies (Saruman and orcs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Stakes: the end of Middle-Earth, the dominion of Sauron&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have them, then the main job is to reword the sentence until it's a hook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nine people from disparate cultures must join together to destroy the magical artifact which will allow the ultimate evil to rule the realm.&lt;/em&gt; Meh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A mighty wizard leads a reluctant band of men, hobbits, a dwarf, and an elf on a terrifying quest to destroy the One Ring before an ancient evil god becomes manifest and destroys all Middle-Earth.&lt;/em&gt; Now we're getting somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T11:21:03.463" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T11:21:03.463" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10924" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-12T17:42:20.677" Score="5" ViewCount="6847" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm mulling over a story that doesn't follow the standard story template of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero (or anti-hero)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero has problem (or is problem)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero fights problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero succeeds (or problem succeeds and all the permutations and varieties of hero and problem.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero is transformed. (Or not. Or eaten.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any stories that successfully break this template? What I'm looking for is not variants on the Hero's Journey where the parts are different or ironic but where the template itself is not used or referenced.  The only thing that comes to mind are the existential novels of Camus or Sarte but those are rather depressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8665" LastEditorUserId="8665" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T20:58:57.640" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T20:58:57.640" Title="Successful stories that don't follow the standard story template?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10924" CreationDate="2014-05-12T19:39:14.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That particular structure is called the &quot;Hero's Journey,&quot; and yes, there are many stories which aren't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;1984, Animal Farm, Death of a Salesman, Brokeback Mountain&lt;/em&gt; &amp;mdash; look for stories with sad endings, because that often means the hero&#xA;didn't succeed in overcoming the problem, and wasn't transformed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch&lt;/em&gt; is literally a day in the life of a prisoner in a gulag, so there isn't any kind of journey&#xA;there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I realize it's an episode of a TV show and not a novel, but &lt;em&gt;Star&#xA;Trek: Voyager&lt;/em&gt; had a two-parter called &quot;Year of Hell.&quot; Alternate&#xA;timelines were heavily featured. At the end of part two, the Reset&#xA;Button is hit, and all the alternate timelines are wiped out. The&#xA;antagonist decides not to start the temporal mucking about, which&#xA;might sort of qualify as &quot;transformed,&quot; but no one remembers the&#xA;events of the episodes, so no problem is overcome.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T19:39:14.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10924" CreationDate="2014-05-12T19:40:40.013" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tragedy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero has problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero fights problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problem fights back&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero fails&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-discovery&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero thinks he has problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero fights problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero succeeds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problem escalates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero is transformed and recognized he was the problem in the first place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story of the road&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero has a string of problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero is transformed with each of them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The sum of transformations leads to victory, for better or worse (downfall/corruption?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflict of many greys&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple Heroes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Heroes are each other's problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They fight and form alliances&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some win, some lose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It transforms them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Horror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero has problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero blunders blindly to discover the source of the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Upon discovering the final clue the source of the problem is breathing on the hero's back.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unwilling hero&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone has a problem. Not the hero.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They force the hero to deal with the problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero has two problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the hero has now the alternative, submit and deal with original problem or fight back.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fool's travel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero has problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero fights problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero loses, but problem becomes moot through external means.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero is none the wiser believing to be victorious.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story with a twist&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero has problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero fights problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero succeeds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hero discovers there were seven other problems along the way and they all got resolved through his course of action and behind-the-scenes influences. They were hinted all along the way but only now are revealed fully.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, have a look at my old question:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7052/resource-for-generic-plot-hooks&quot;&gt;Resources for generic hooks&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;The answers detail pretty much what you seek, in many more variants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T19:40:40.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10916" CreationDate="2014-05-13T14:17:30.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems like step 2 of the 3-step method of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7793/how-to-come-up-with-a-good-title/7798#7798&quot;&gt;coming up with the title&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First step: you compress the story into a half-page summary, that catches the essentials, piques interests, and so on. You condense events from the chapters into single sentences, cull unnecessary fluff, replace revelations with mysteries, spoilers with questions. That way you obtain the blurb, the kind of thing that is printed on the back envelope of a book, or as a summary on the page where you buy one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second step&lt;/strong&gt;: you compress the blurb into 1-3 sentences. You ignore the original story, you summarize only what the blurb says. It's currently short enough, that you should be able to grasp its essence and pick the juiciest pieces. &lt;strong&gt;This is your logline.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then you can compress the logline into one word or a short phrase, and that's how you get the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T14:17:30.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10916" CreationDate="2014-05-14T08:57:20.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While loglines (or log lines) serve as &quot;elevator pitch&quot; once you have finished your screenplay or novel, some authors, like Blake Snyder in &lt;em&gt;Save the Cat!&lt;/em&gt; recommend that you come up with your log line &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you embark on the journey of writing, because like the &lt;em&gt;premise&lt;/em&gt; it will serve as orientation whether you are still on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A logline must be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one to at most three sentences long&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an optimum lies around &lt;strong&gt;25 words&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;written in the present tense&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;written from the perspective of the protagonist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;identify the genre and setting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if possible give a timeframe (&quot;[protagonist] has 48 hours to [goal] before [stakes]&quot;) to instill a &lt;strong&gt;sense of urgency&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have two sentences, often:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the first sentence describes the outer conflict and outer goal of the protagonist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the second sentence describes the inner conflict, the psychological barriers, and the emotional development of the protagonist, as it relates to the moral premise of the story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A logline &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; contain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;who&lt;/strong&gt; is your main character &lt;em&gt;(protagonist)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; are they trying to accomplish &lt;em&gt;(goal)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;who&lt;/strong&gt; is trying to stop them &lt;em&gt;(antagonist)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; happens if they succeed or fail &lt;em&gt;(stakes)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A logline &lt;em&gt;must not&lt;/em&gt; contain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the ending&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Do not reveal, wether or not the protagnoist succeeds.&#xA;The logline &lt;strong&gt;is not a summary&lt;/strong&gt; of the plot, it focusses on the first and second act: the setup or starting situation, the inciting incident, and the conflict.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you try to come up with a logline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;do not name&lt;/em&gt; the protagonist (or antagonist), but use a &lt;strong&gt;descriptive noun&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;br&gt;&quot;A hobbit...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;describe the &lt;strong&gt;inner conflict&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;imperfection&lt;/strong&gt; of the protagonist with an adjective or short phrase that the viewers can sympathise with:&lt;br&gt;&quot;A self-doubting hobbit and his discordant companions...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use a verb that shows the protagonist as intensely &lt;strong&gt;proactive&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;br&gt;&quot;A self-doubting hobbit and his discordant companions battle...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if the antagonist appears &lt;strong&gt;humane&lt;/strong&gt;, the conflict becomes even more torturous:&lt;br&gt;&quot;A self-doubting hobbit and his discordant companions battle the pitiable creatures of evil as well as their own greed for power...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a &lt;strong&gt;clear&lt;/strong&gt; goal &lt;strong&gt;that any reader can understand&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;br&gt;&quot;A self-doubting hobbit and his discordant companions battle the pitiable creatures of evil as well as their own greed for power to destroy the ring that holds their minds in thrall...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;raise the stakes &lt;strong&gt;as high as possible&lt;/strong&gt; in the context of your story:&lt;br&gt;&quot;A self-doubting hobbit and his discordant companions battle the pitiable creatures of evil as well as their own greed for power to destroy the ring that holds their minds in thrall and save their idyllic country community from the corruption of capitalist industrialization.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might disagree with my description of the LotR – and I drag the moral premise too much into the foreground and totally neglect the surface plot –, but I guess you get the idea ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now rewrite this logline until it shines. Then &lt;strong&gt;go out and test it&lt;/strong&gt;: approach strangers of the intended target audience and ask them if you can tell them of the book/screenplay you are writing and see if it excites them. If they are bored, work on your logline a bit more and test the new version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T09:43:56.393" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T09:43:56.393" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10934" CreationDate="2014-05-14T14:33:58.943" Score="3" ViewCount="722" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is my first time writing a third-person omniscient narrator. And just got stucked in a dilemma. This is the opening of the story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once again Kuo found himself standing face to face with Mei-Ling at the&#xA;  airport. He looked to his side. Sunlight poured in through the window&#xA;  of the observation area. An gloomy orange. Beyond the glass, a Boeing&#xA;  747 parked in profile, its wings curving slightly upwards, its&#xA;  metallic surface mirroring the evening sky. A giant silver bird&#xA;  designed to help people fly to their dreams, to their journeys, to&#xA;  their new destinations. Kuo turned back to Mei-Ling who was carrying&#xA;  medium-sized Boston bag and an Asus Laptop case. &lt;strong&gt;Unlike most girls,&#xA;  she liked to travel light; she hated carrying too many heavy things on&#xA;  her shoulders. It was something she wanted to avoid at all cost. Even&#xA;  for long trip like this one.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bolded part is told in the POV of the protagonist's girlfriend. Should I put it in a different paragraph since it's a different POV? Or it's just OK where it is? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T08:08:10.447" Title="Is it OK to have two different POVs in a same paragraph (third-person omniscient narrator)?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10933" CreationDate="2014-05-14T15:22:48.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, if you have two POV narrators in the same section, you must at &lt;em&gt;least&lt;/em&gt; put her POV in another paragraph. Think of it as similar to speech; if you'd put a new speaker on a new line or in a new paragraph, you must do the same with POV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are her thoughts. You have to differentiate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T15:22:48.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10933" CreationDate="2014-05-14T15:59:32.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I agree with Lauren’s answer to the question of &quot;Is it OK to have two POVs in one paragraph,” this piece could easily be read as the narrator knowing his girlfriend well enough to know that she travels light, and why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opening line; &quot;Unlike most girls,&quot; seems more like something &lt;em&gt;he'd&lt;/em&gt; think of her than something &lt;em&gt;she'd&lt;/em&gt; think of herself. The rest of the piece could easily be something I’d say about my wife, and feels perfectly natural as being from the boyfriend’s perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, if you hadn’t have asked your question around the piece I would have assumed that the POV had not changed to hers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you plan on then moving on to the rest of the piece being in her POV then I'd recommend splitting out the last part into its own paragraph. But if you intend to remain in the POV of the boyfriend for the rest of the section then keeping the piece as it is will work fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, keeping the piece as it is will help avoid the far greater confusion of a sudden change of POV followed by a sudden change back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T15:59:32.180" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10933" CreationDate="2014-05-14T18:26:56.230" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I studied linguistics, I took a seminar on text linguistics. In that seminar, we learned about &lt;strong&gt;paragraph markers&lt;/strong&gt;. Written text is not always visually structured in accordance with linguistic paragraph markers, of course. Often readability and layout concerns have an equal weight. But lets push those aside for the moment and look at the linguistic markers only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't remember all the markers, but the one I most prominently remember is this: Each paragraph has its own subject. At or close to the beginning this subject is introduced by name, and the following instances refer back to this first mention by pronoun:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kuo ... himself ... He ... his ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following the signals of this type of paragraph marker, as soon as another subject is introduced by name, a new paragraph begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mei-Ling is not a new subject in the first sentence, but an object of Kuo. Also, no new paragraph begins within a sentence, obviously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the airplane is a new subject, so here is the next paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a Boeing 747 ... its ... its ... A giant silver bird ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;An gloomy orange.&quot; is a bit of a halfway sentence, as it stands. As a separate sentence it seems to introduce a new subject (the gloomy orange, which may refer to the outside view in general), but it does not make much sense as its own paragraph, because on its own it is strangely void of action and purpose. Also we can understand the &quot;gloomy orange&quot; to be a description of the sunlight pouring &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; in the previous sentence, so the gloomy orange is still on the inside and actually a part of the first paragraph. I would include it in the preceding sentence, which makes the whole construction more elegant and the meaning more clear: &quot;Sunlight poured in through the window of the observation area, a gloomy orange.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next subject, after the Boeing, seems to be Kuo again, because he is the first person named in the next sentence, and he is the first subject acting in relation to an object (turning towards Mei-Ling). But &lt;em&gt;within the same sentence&lt;/em&gt; Kuo loses subject status as soon as Mei-Ling appears: &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt; is the subject of everything following her name:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kuo =&gt; Mei-Ling who ... she ... she ... her ... she ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in fact Kuo is not the subject here, he only serves as facilitator of a transition from him to her. He is a sort of conjunction, like the words &quot;and&quot;, &quot;but&quot; and &quot;meanwhile&quot;. You could do without Kuo in this last part, without losing any of your meaning (except that we would think of Kuo still looking outside, and the transition would seem somewhat aprupt).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other pragraph markers, such as words and phrases defining time and place, e.g. &quot;beyond the glass&quot; in your text. Along with the change of subject, the change of location signifies that with the Boeing a new paragraph begins. &quot;Kuo turned back&quot; has the same location shifting purpose, which supports my analysis that Kuo is not necessarily the subject here, but only serves to shift the narration to a different place and topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to put it all together, in my opinion the paragraph structure of that fragment is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once again Kuo found himself standing face to face with Mei-Ling at the airport. He looked to his side. Sunlight poured in through the window of the observation area, a gloomy orange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beyond the glass, a Boeing 747 parked in profile, its wings curving slightly upwards, its metallic surface mirroring the evening sky. A giant silver bird designed to help people fly to their dreams, to their journeys, to their new destinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kuo turned back to Mei-Ling who was carrying medium-sized Boston bag and an Asus Laptop case. Unlike most girls, she liked to travel light; she hated carrying too many heavy things on her shoulders. It was something she wanted to avoid at all cost. Even for long trip like this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After we have considered linguistic paragraph makers, in the end we need to return to layout and readability concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A one line paragraph will appear uncommon outside of direct speech and therefore emphasized. If you don't want that emphasis, just paste this sentence to the preceding paragraph, ideally with an appropriate concunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. don't do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peter [very long paragraph].&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  John stood outside and smoked.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Peter [very long paragraph].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peter [very long paragraph], while John stood outside and smoked.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Peter [next long paragraph]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only if you want to emphasize that John is doing nothing while Pete works his ass off, do the first and give him a separate paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paragraphs that span several pages will make your text hard to read, so break it even if the subject remains the same. The reverse holds true for very short paragraphs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John took a card.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Pete took a card.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  John took another card.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Pete frowned.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  John smiled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this is certainly easy to read, apart from being bad style, this will look strangely chopped if it goes on for a few lines. Better put all these short sentences in one paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John took a card. Pete took a card. John took another card. Pete frowned. John smiled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linguistically these are all different paragraphs, and we do not want to connect the sentences with conjunctions (&quot;John ..., and then Pete ..., while John ...&quot;), because the abruptness of the transitions intensifies the competitiveness of the situation. Still, this feels like a completely fine paragraph, because, we might say, John &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; Pete are the subjects here, and their alternating ping-pong activity is the unifying action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this applies to your example, I just want to add these considerations of readability, layout and semantics for the sake of completeness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T08:08:10.447" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T08:08:10.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-14T19:13:07.540" Score="2" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do UK or US based literary agents accept (unpublished) manuscripts in a foreign language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example the author could provide a rough translation of the whole text and himself pay for a literary translation of the first pages, so the agent could judge the story as well as the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is such a thing heard of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T20:28:27.510" Title="Do UK or US based literary agents accept (unpublished) manuscripts in a foreign language?" Tags="|translation|agent|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-15T04:48:02.633" Score="4" ViewCount="1077" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I'm a contrarian and like to think things through backward.  What about thinking first of a movie and then writing a novel about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it make sense to storyboard and script a novel before writing it?  Do any authors use this as a work process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8665" LastActivityDate="2022-07-20T15:50:35.973" Title="Storyboard a Novel?" Tags="|novel|plot|setting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10938" CreationDate="2014-05-15T05:29:51.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about first writing, and then adapting a script or a storyboard, but I've seen some &lt;em&gt;novelisations&lt;/em&gt; of movies - person A creates a successful movie; person B writes a book that 'legally plagiarizes' the movie plot (with proper license to do so).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0425128644&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Platoon&lt;/em&gt; by Dale A. Dye&lt;/a&gt;, based on movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091763/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Platoon&lt;/em&gt; by Oliver Stone&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T05:29:51.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10720" CreationDate="2014-05-15T06:01:05.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, both analogies and similes are symmetrical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If &lt;em&gt;A is like B&lt;/em&gt;, then &lt;em&gt;B is like A&lt;/em&gt; (similes).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the &lt;em&gt;relation between A and B is like relation between C and D&lt;/em&gt; then &lt;em&gt;relation between C and D is like relation between A and B&lt;/em&gt;. (analogies)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be hard to think up the exotic examples when that might not be true. So, technically, a reverse analogy is just an analogy, and a reverse simile is still a simile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you create a simile of something relatively simple (&lt;em&gt;cold air&lt;/em&gt;) to something overly long and descriptive (&lt;em&gt;a doctor's secretary sending you a glare at 4:59PM on friday&lt;/em&gt;) this is called &lt;strong&gt;Epic simile&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeric_simile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Homeric simile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; after these being common in the Illiad and the Odyssey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In modern prose and poetry they are rarely welcome, because it usually results in purple prose, with parodistic tones at best, plain pathetic at worst, and you need absolute mastery to use them in a way that won't make the reader wince. (Your air-secretary simile certainly qualifies as wince-inducing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T06:01:05.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10938" CreationDate="2014-05-15T08:46:27.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once wrote a book as a long screenplay that I then turned into a book. The result? Fairly good dialogue, thin descriptive writing, weak prose overall. Not that this is inevitable but I found that once you've been through a story once as dialogue, scenes and sound cues it makes it a hell of a chore to go through again and turn it into a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for story boards, the whole point of these is to give an indication of shot composition and visual coherence to a visually oriented project, usually a film (but could be a sketch draft of a comic strip), that allows the creators to better make an integrated visual experience. The pictorial parts of a storyboard would really serve no useful purpose in the creation of a novel that was intended to be words on a page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T08:46:27.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10937" CreationDate="2014-05-15T18:40:18.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I inquired with a US agency and they replied that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;they do accept manuscripts that are translated into English&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if they are interested in the project after reading the short summary in the query letter, they will request a sample of three chapters which &lt;strong&gt;need to be a professional translation&lt;/strong&gt;, so they can judge the work's true potential; a rough translation will not suffice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T18:40:18.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10952" CreationDate="2014-05-15T18:56:16.153" Score="4" ViewCount="1615" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need help with the concept of my story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My protagonists live in a mild dystopia. Think of your own country today ;-) They have the opportunity to kill about 20 persons, which will cause a fundamental change in their society that makes life much better for everyone. Imagine the effect being similar to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no one needing to work more than 50%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;with the prices remaining the same, everyone earning at least twice your current average national income&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no one earning more than twenty times that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;free public transport, housing, schooling, health services&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get the idea. No anarchy, socialism, or whatever, just what we have today with less inequality and better social system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story can have three endings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the protagonists cannot decide -- this might make for an intriguing but unsatisfying end&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the protagonists kill the 20 -- this be satisfying to the readers, but at the same time morally questionable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the protagonists walk away -- this will be morally superior, but unsatisfying&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I managed to tell all three stories in a gripping and convincing way so that all endings resulted naturally from the storyline and characters, which end wozld satisfy readers most and what end would they expect in a YA dystopian novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit [2014-05-21]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In comments and answers there has been some complaint that you don't know enough to know what ending readers will prefer. You don't know about my protagonists, you don't know the society or &amp;quot;the 20&amp;quot;, so obviously all depends on how I tell that tale. Sure. But that's not what I'm asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I'm telling you what kind of society it is. My question says: Imagine your own country. So – I hope – you know what kind of society you should consider. As for the protagonists or &amp;quot;the 20&amp;quot; (which is just a random number, not the number of people in my story), they really don't matter to this question, because this question is &lt;strong&gt;not about my story&lt;/strong&gt;, but about &lt;em&gt;genre conventions&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;reader expectations&lt;/em&gt; as they exsit before those readers even pick up this book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: Given a society like your own, which ending would readers expect or be most satisfied with, &lt;strong&gt;disregarding any specific plot&lt;/strong&gt;. Do readers expect protagonists to kill the bad guys? Would they feel better if the protagonists had moral qualms and did nothing? In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Do readers enjoy self-administered vigilante justice? Or do they prefer moral heroes?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Seventies there was widespread support and approval among German students when the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Red Army Faction&lt;/a&gt; killed employer and industry representative &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Martin_Schleyer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hanns Martin Schleyer&lt;/a&gt;. How do readers of YA dystopian fiction today feel about social revolutionary terrorists killing key figures from politics to attempt a change in society?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing beyond the genre you need to know to answer this question. All you need is familiarity with the genre, current politics, and readers of YA fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-08-06T15:08:21.363" Title="Genre conventions: Which end do readers expect?" Tags="|plot|young-adult|ending|morality|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10945" CreationDate="2014-05-16T03:46:47.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;strong&gt;readers want a good story&lt;/strong&gt;, not a particular type of ending. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After writing (or even just outlining) all three endings, you'll be able to decide, better than we can, which is the best. We really can't say without more of the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(On those details, though, I will say that: it depends greatly on the 20. Are they a secret society of corrupt leaders who greedily steal most of the society's money for themselves? Or just ordinary people. Why those 20?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T03:46:47.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10947" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10958" CreationDate="2014-05-16T05:36:47.950" Score="5" ViewCount="738" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working on my thesis and need to cite a specific section of the C# Language Specification Version 5.0.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specification is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7029&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but I can't find the authors and the publisher of the specification and so I don't know how to cite it correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until version 2.0, it had been an ECMA standard (available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-334.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), but it &lt;a href=&quot;http://csharpindepth.com/Articles/Chapter1/Specifications.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;seems&lt;/a&gt; that this is not true for versions 3.0-5.0.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it even possible to cite it? If yes, who are the authors and the publisher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In my school there is not a strict style guideline, but for citations it's common to use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://guides.is.uwa.edu.au/harvard&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harvard citation style&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8712" LastEditorUserId="8712" LastEditDate="2014-05-17T11:13:45.237" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T09:25:51.390" Title="How to cite the C# Language Specification Version 5.0" Tags="|style|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10945" CreationDate="2014-05-16T12:55:46.870" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which end do readers expect? Either of the ones you given. Some will expect one, others the other&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why you should choose neither.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have two obvious options, plus a dull 'no choice made'. That's one point where the difference between a common book and an excellent one is made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where the protagonist should not just decide or fail to make a decision. It's where the protagonist should get off the rails, refuse the choices given, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TakeAThirdOption&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;find a third way&lt;/a&gt;.(Warning! TVTropes). It should be a brilliant way that breaks the rules, sets things right, and as a bonus, leaves the one who set the rules out in the cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who knows what it would be. Maybe blackmail them and force them to comply. Maybe show mercy, and when the mercy is taken for weakness, show them his true strength, terrorize them and cow them into submission. Maybe start killing, one by one, until the rest does what he wants. Maybe convince them, through sincerity, or opposite, bluff them into submission. Maybe let them talk in their defense, and then stand by their side. Maybe force them through a trial of fire, that will change them. Maybe recognize they are all figureheads, and kill the true mastermind - possibly finding the mastermind was his sidekick all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what twist fits your story, but this is definitely the place where a twist should go. Always, see two simple options: choose third.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T12:55:46.870" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10949" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10950" CreationDate="2014-05-16T13:34:35.467" Score="2" ViewCount="529" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote 3 short stories a long time ago, and I realized there's still room to expand them. Recently I made the decision to write a novel with the purpose of starting a writing career. So my plan is to pick one of the stories and turn it into a novel (I have a tight schedule right now so I want to focus on only one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of them got good reviews (from people that I know and from writing communities like this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt;). But the one that got the best reviews was the one called &lt;strong&gt;Sushi Break.&lt;/strong&gt; Which is a story about a girl who travels 3 hours every weekend to see her boyfriend (the boyfriend is doing an internship and doesn't have time visit her). Things are OK for a moment, but after some days the boyfriend starts cancelling the meetings at the last minute (usually with some lame excuse). However, the girl keeps traveling to the city to eat in a sushi place she fell in love with. In this place, she meets all kind of strange but friendly characters who help her reflect on her relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alexandrochen.quora.com/Sushi-Break-a-Short-Story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is the story for those who are interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think people liked this story because (unlike my other ones) it's quite straight forward, it has a nice imagery, and it doesn't have the kind of magical realism that I usually add to my stories. They also said that the protagonist has a &quot;strong&quot; voice and they can really identify with her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I pick this story because is the one that is more likely to succeed (by succeeding I mean selling a good number of copies)? Or should I choose one that is closer to &quot;my style&quot; instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-05-16T14:02:42.930" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T07:29:16.947" Title="3 short stories that can be turned into a novel. Should I pick the one with best reviews?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10949" CreationDate="2014-05-16T16:03:20.747" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should you pick a story to expand on based on which one people reviewed the best?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No you absolutely should not. What matters when picking a story to expand upon is not the reviews it's received but how well you can expand it. You should look at each story and ask yourself several questions; Where can I go with this? How can the characters develop further? Will a larger story still work well as a cohesive whole? Because surprisingly often they won't. Many stories work well in shorter form because they are short stories and thus nicely contained without any distractions from the point, they're straight forward. I've seen many writers fall into the trap of thinking that their story needs to be longer than it really does and they wind up added events and scenes that don't actually contribute to the plot or character development in any way. If Sushi Break is a story you feel you can run with and take it much further then it would be an excellent choice but if you're only considering it because of how well it did forget about it. Remember write for yourself first and worry about if anyone likes it after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8714" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T16:03:20.747" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10945" CreationDate="2014-05-16T20:49:57.753" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is highly, highly subjective. But I personally dislike almost every YA dystopian future novel I've ever read (they're all the same thing to me and they're all predictable), so I think if you're asking about reader expectations, I might be a good person to answer the question... mostly because I see similarities in all of the YA novels I've slogged through. So maybe I can point out what things I think readers expect. But again, not a fan of YA dystopias. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the links. They are all to TVTropes. You're welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What end would they expect in a YA dystopian novel?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnderdogsNeverLose&quot;&gt;Either the underdogs win or the underdogs win&lt;/a&gt;. So, you know. Choice 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't to say that &lt;em&gt;this is the best ending&lt;/em&gt;, but it is what people expect. If you put a rag-tag team together in real life to battle it out against 20 other people who (assumedly) are a group, then... they probably won't make it if the 20 people are a bunch of rich philanthropists willing to throw money at some crazy plan to all become equal parts Lex Luthor. In a book, though? The underdogs probably win. Even against those odds. It's not even a surprise, it's just something we consider to be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway this is still pretty dependent on the 20 people-- if they're the 20 people running the dystopian future, then your heroes going through with it but now having a moral quandary on their hands is expected. We expect Batman to beat the Joker because the Joker is the bad guy doing bad guy stuff and working for the forces of bad. If the 20 people are people working to keep the dsytopia running and they are doing bad stuff to do it, then it is ending 2 is expected. Unexpected is &quot;So then we all talked about what to do and ended up doing nothing&quot; even though that's realistic (based on protagonist age and socio-economic status among other things).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you're saying that the description you gave us is basically all the readers get (I think?) in which case we don't know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the 20 are working together&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the 20 are the cause of the dystopia's inner workings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the 20 are good/bad people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the 20 are related (to each other or to the protagonists)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the 20 are corrupt somehow and could be fixed another way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the 20 know each other&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in that case, indiscriminately killing 20 people we know nothing about would probably end pretty badly. Sure, there's a chance our heroes are killing bad guys. But they could also be killing good guys. Or morally ambiguous guys. What do we expect when you're killing indiscriminately with no reason? We expect &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NeverBeAHero&quot;&gt;punishment even if the characters are supposed to be doing &quot;good&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Recalling that no matter how awesome you are, &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoNotDoThisCoolThing&quot;&gt;CRIME&lt;/a&gt; DOES NOT PAY&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (except for the women and the cars and the money and the Towers of Doom), anyone who is just skulking around killing people should eventually get their come-uppance, unless they're good guys being &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoreThanMindControl&quot;&gt;forced&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; to do such a thing in which case, &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DirtyBusiness&quot;&gt;they will be&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IDidWhatIHadToDo&quot;&gt;vindicated&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will also note that the other two endings are usually routes taken by &quot;weak&quot; characters. In our YA dystopian books/movies that are now popular, the protagonists are always proactive, even if there are obvious downfalls to their pro-activity, and then they get out of those with sheer pluckiness. Weak characters are indecisive and walk away from problems instead of being chipper plucky problem solvers (generalization). Sometimes this is the best decision. But we play them up like they are not. Even if the protagonists act weak (are indecisive) they will come to a conclusion that is generally not of the &quot;go home and suffer quietly&quot; variety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which end would satisfy readers most?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is... kind of reader based. Generally speaking, I think the second ending is the most satisfying, even though it's expected... but that's still not saying much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of it could be that people like to be right-- if they guess that at the end of your book, the 20 people are dead and then... you end the book and the 20 people are dead, they feel good. Harry Potter spent 7 books killing Voldemort and we all knew Voldemort's number was up after book 1. Sure there were probably people wishing he'd live, but I don't doubt most people were aware he couldn't make it past the last book and still be evil. We aren't surprised by the ending itself. The surprise is how the ending is reached, how smoothly it's executed, and so on. So people expect something and thinking they'll be right, they read through and hopefully come to the conclusion that they are right. And being right can conjure up feelings of satisfaction, so long as there are surprises along the way. On the other hand, it can also bring up the notion &quot;this is tired,&quot; if the story isn't written well enough for someone's personal tastes. Given that there are multiple types of people reading your story each with different tastes and experiences... there is no surefire way to know for certain what will be the most satisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judging by the way we have been writing books (and interpreting them for the masses), it is far more likely that you'll reach wider audiences with ending 2. And by reaching wider audiences, you would end up satisfying/letting down a greater range of people. Then it just turns into a numbers game, but with a large audience reached successfully... you would be able to tailor the book to satisfy the majority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T20:49:57.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4041" CreationDate="2014-05-18T21:49:41.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great advice here, I would add a couple of things I learned that really helped me in a course I took recently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since most people will read email on a smartphone a good portion of the time. Don't write any more than can fit on one phone screen. If you have to write more, do an attachment, and don't copy long threads, just a word or two in the subject to remind them. Important info doesn't get read or seen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if they are over 45 use at least 14 pt font.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Limit an email to one point or two. If you have more then write a couple. have mercy on the person you are writing to.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;and don't put anything in writing you don't want someone, or anyone to see. In this day and age, anything we put in writing on line can and will end up in front of the wrong eyes. Be safe.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the course was on skillfeed.com by the way and it was great, short, and cheap, especially if on skill feed already. it  is called something like &quot;Get more done writing effective emails.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8723" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T21:49:41.997" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10956" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-19T06:41:19.083" Score="0" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I've decided to become an Author. Frankly I have respect for the learning curve.&#xA;My biggest problem that I have run into thus far is the conversations between characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would like to ask this community for advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastEditorUserId="8727" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T16:52:50.580" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T16:52:50.580" Title="Creating Dialogue" Tags="|fiction|novel|dialogue|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-05-19T12:07:20.763" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10750" CreationDate="2014-05-19T08:57:53.733" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Style Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2009, pp. 104-106) is very clear on the use of italics. Note especially the bold section (bold emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use italics for&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;titles of books, periodicals, films&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;exception:&lt;/em&gt; italic words in the title (reverse italicization)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;genera, species, and varietes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;introduction of a new technical term&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (after a term has been used once, do not italicize it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;a letter, word, or phrase cited as a linguistic example&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (&quot;words such as &lt;em&gt;big&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;little&lt;/em&gt;&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;words that could be misread&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (&quot;the &lt;em&gt;small&lt;/em&gt; group&quot;, meaning a designation, not group size)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;letters used as statistical symbols or algebraic variables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;some test scores and scales&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;periodical volume numbers in reference lists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;anchors of scale&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (&quot;health ratings ranged from 1 (&lt;em&gt;poor&lt;/em&gt;) to 5 (&lt;em&gt;excellent&lt;/em&gt;)&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not use italics for&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;foreign phrases and abbreviations common in English&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;chemical terms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;trigonometric terms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;nonstatistial subscripts to statistical symbols or mathematical expressions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Greek letters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;mere emphasis. (Italics are acceptable if emphasis might otherwise be lost; in general, however, use syntax to provide emphasis.)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Incorrect:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  it is &lt;em&gt;important&lt;/em&gt; to bear in mind that &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; process is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; proposed as a &lt;em&gt;stage&lt;/em&gt; theory of developments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;letters used as abbreviations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been writing both in APA and MLA style, and I have never needed to &lt;em&gt;emphasize&lt;/em&gt; words. Scientific discourse is encouraged to be neutral and self-constrained, and there are other, semantic, means to direct the reader's attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T17:02:53.920" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T17:02:53.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10947" CreationDate="2014-05-19T09:25:51.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifications fall under the same clause as &lt;a href=&quot;http://guides.is.uwa.edu.au/content.php?pid=43218&amp;amp;sid=381007&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;standards&lt;/a&gt; (regardless of whether they are official standards or failed to acquire such a status). In your case, it's a standard retrieved from a database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identifying elements such as patent/standard numbers should be included&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If no individual author is available, a corporate author can be used in the in-text reference&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In-Text Citation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Standards Australia 1994)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference List Entry:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standards Australia 2008, &lt;em&gt;Personal floatation devices - General requirements.&lt;/em&gt; AS 4758.1-2008. Available from: Standards Australia Online. [1 December 2008].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you have no author but a corporate entity: &lt;strong&gt;© 1999-2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.&lt;/strong&gt; The 'Details' entry on the download page gives: &lt;strong&gt;Date Published: 6/7/2013&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An in-text citation would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Microsoft Corporation 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Reference List Entry for, say, referencing the &lt;code&gt;true&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;false&lt;/code&gt; literals, would look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Corporation, &lt;em&gt;C# Language Specification Version 5.0: chapter 2.4.4.1 Boolean literals.&lt;/em&gt; Available from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7029&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7029&lt;/a&gt; [7 June 2013]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T09:25:51.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10956" CreationDate="2014-05-19T10:05:24.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's the same advice as for everything in the writer's craft: Write a lot and fail a lot. Publish wherever, on amateur prose sites, listen to critique, and improve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first you'll keep writing crap. Then, for a long time you'll keep writing crap but gradually you'll start noticing where you're going wrong, and start improving. And finally, some five novels worth of text later, you'll start writing decently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, you'll never fix your mistakes without external feedback. Find some community editors/proofreaders to point your mistakes out to you (and next time you write, scan your own text for these, before submitting to editor!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialogue is one of easier parts of writing. Absorb some rules that will make both your and your readers' life easier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no less than one paragraph per speaker, usually exactly one paragraph per speaker.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;actors don't float in void exchanging lines. Mix actions and emotes with the speech.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;until you've mastered assigning voices to characters, try to keep dialogues between two persons. Getting a dialogue of 3 or more is tricky for a beginner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn to give your characters some characteristic voices that make them distinguishable without tagging them in the dialogue. Don't overdo that, don't make them sound like some parodies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try some exercises:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;describe an object through dialogue: one person asks, the other describes. The object is never named, though it's something moderately common (think a medieval peasant describing a helicopter.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write a whole dialogue in a description. Two people talk behind soundproof glass, describe them in such a way that the reader will know what they talk about.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sneak a message past a dialogue party. One party of the dialogue is deadly scared of something, but keeps that a secret from the other. Make it apparent to the reader while keeping the other party of the dialogue in the dark. Bonus points: never name the feeling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sneak a message past the reader. Make a dialogue, in which the reader will never suspect one asked an entirely off-topic question, and the other answered; covering with idle chatter the two exchange secret info which becomes known only when explained later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have an entirely non-verbal dialogue. Not a single word spoken, only emotes, but the two come to an agreement, or otherwise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;try to write a dialogue between three or more parties, tagging them only in the beginning and never later, leaving the reader without doubt who speaks what. Bonus points: no fancy accents or very mannered speaking. All three have the same education and ethnic background.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A dialogue where one party never speaks. Specifically, not a monologue. Bonus points: make the speaker quite satisfied with the result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...but the best way to get them to work is to interweave them as parts of your works, not separate pieces. Most of them can add quite a bit to the value of the story, when executed right. I'd say non-verbal dialogues are ones of the best. Then, of course, you will fail a lot - but that is expectable. Just keep trying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T10:05:24.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10964" CreationDate="2014-05-19T20:05:59.397" Score="3" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;An example might be the following: &quot;Romeo, wherefore art thou Romo?&quot; from the classic Shakespeare play. Suppose I changed it slightly to &quot;Roberto, why are you Roberto?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a computer program or algorithm that would detect the fact that I basically used synonyms for each word in the original, and thereby produced a high degree of correlation with the original? And would it be able to measure the &quot;degree&quot; of plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T20:13:49.583" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T16:44:29.743" Title="Are there any &quot;quantitative&quot; (computer) programs that measure plagiarism?" Tags="|tools|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10945" CreationDate="2014-05-19T21:04:23.597" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know I’m “bucking the hypo” here (as the law students say), but I have a lot of trouble with the premise that only 20 corpses stand between a mildly dystopian society and something radically better than even the most liberal real-world government can offer its citizens.  If those 20 people have been profiting off of the misery and inequality of the society beneath them, then there should be another 20—maybe another 200—waiting in line to replace them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T21:04:23.597" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10962" CreationDate="2014-05-20T10:12:06.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my last university course the department insisted everything was submitted to a system called &quot;TurnItIn&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://turnitin.com/en_us/home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://turnitin.com/en_us/home&lt;/a&gt;) but there are loads of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TurnItIn gave a load of different metrics for direct copies of other material, rephrasing and the like. Only problem I found was it often got confused with citations and references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8732" LastEditorUserId="8732" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T13:43:02.737" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T13:43:02.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10945" CreationDate="2014-05-20T13:16:24.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the substance of your question: The maxim that Robert McKee passes along in &lt;em&gt;Story&lt;/em&gt; is “give the readers what they expect, but not the way they expect it”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first option, where the protagonists don’t decide, is clearly unsatisfying. Even Hamlet eventually made a choice and acted on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second option, killing the bad guys, makes this a standard thriller plot.  If the 20 targets are shown to be sufficiently evil, then that addresses the moral question.  To add moral/thematic depth, the characters can lose something at the same time that they win their primary goal: they might discover that the revolutionary government is not as progressive as they originally thought, or they might be forced to suffer the infamy of being assassins because the true evil-ness of their targets has to remain secret, or... something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third option, in which they choose to walk away, is unsatisfying all by itself, because if you’ve spent a whole novel setting up how evil the 20 targets are, then you can’t have the protagonists say “actually, never mind”. But they can walk away from their original mission &lt;em&gt;and do something else&lt;/em&gt;. For example, I can think of two SF novels from the 70s (perhaps I shouldn’t name them here) where the protagonists were rebelling against a dystopian society, and when they got near the core of The Secret Conspiracy That Rules Everything, a high-level dystopiocrat (I just made that word up) says “Congratulations for having such an independent mind and seeing through the illusions that we have constructed to control this society!  You’re just the kind of person we need to join us in the ruling elite.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T13:16:24.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10945" CreationDate="2014-05-20T14:00:19.097" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to spin this around for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Jeffrey Schechter's &lt;em&gt;My Story Can Beat Up Your Story&lt;/em&gt;, Schechter suggests that a lot of theme is about &lt;strong&gt;the protagonist asking a thematic question&lt;/strong&gt;, e.g., &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;Should I settle for less romantically?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;Can I balance 'ordinary' responsibilities with my secret identity?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;How do I decide who to trust?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in opposition, you have &lt;strong&gt;an antagonist making a thematic argument&lt;/strong&gt; on the subject, e.g., &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;Give up the puppy-eyed longing, 'true love' with butterflies in your stomach is just a fairy tale for Disney movies!&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;Never give up! You true love is out there somewhere, so &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; compromise on anybody who doesn't feel absolutely perfect for you!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The antagonist's argument can be compelling, but it should (usually!) be also, ultimately, be wrong. The antagonist's confidence in his argument is what lets him be forceful, aggressive, unyielding. The fact that his argument is &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; (or, at least, flawed) is what lets the protagonist triumph at the end, finding a better answer to the thematic question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the case you're describing, it sounds like a lot of the thematic question is, &quot;Is killing justified if it guarantees utopia for all?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What will make a resolution satisfying, or unsatisfying, is less &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; resolution you choose, and more what options you've set up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have an antagonist who lets personal morality get in the way of responsibility, then killing the 20 could be overcoming that antagonist's argument. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But if you have an antagonist who claims practicality and responsibility override the requirement to act morally, then you'd want to go the other way, affirming morality even at great cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These are just examples; your question and argument might be entirely different from what I've presented here. Maybe the question is &quot;Is this dull life, filled only with drudgery and hard work, worthwhile?&quot;, and the antagonist argues &quot;Make do with what you have, don't wish for more than what's realistic,&quot; and then ending it with killing the 20 might be saying &quot;Yes, the drudgery really is &lt;em&gt;so bad&lt;/em&gt; that it's worth dying or killing to eradicate it.&quot; You can go all kinds of different ways.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have an idea of what the conflict is - the thematic question and the thematic argument - then you'll have a better sense of what kind of conclusion actually addresses the argument, and resolves the thematic question to some extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you do that, I think you'll be absolutely fine with reader expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T14:00:19.097" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10967" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12318" CreationDate="2014-05-20T23:38:31.640" Score="5" ViewCount="1975" Body="&lt;p&gt;The process for movies and music is pretty well-known and thoroughly documented on Wikipedia.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You shoot a movie, edit it and then you produce a &quot;master copy&quot; from which all later copies of the movie will be derived, like for example, all the films that will go into theaters, all the DVDs, all the Blu-Rays and stuff like that.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Same thing goes for music: you track an album (or a song), mix it, master it and then all future copies of your work will be made from said master copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, how does that work for books? Or magazines or any other kind of thing that comes out of a printer and is distributed on a large scale?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, I assume something like this happens and I'm pretty surprised I couldn't find anything about it online (I guess I may be using the wrong wording for this entire thing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I'm a publisher and I've got my book ready to be printed.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What's the standard format publishers use to do this? Is it just PDF files or is it something more complex like LaTeX or XML? Or is it just all rastered down to, like, a series of bitmap files? [In that case, what's the kind of file they use BEFORE rastering it all down to simple pictures]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, perhaps more interestingly, what kind of files are used to STORE such &quot;master copies&quot; in a publisher's digital &quot;repository&quot;? (I'm sorry if my language is not very field-specific but I barely know anything in this field).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Does it make a difference if the book is filled with pictures and illustrations? Are they stored in the same file as the text? And what's the standard resolution at which such pictures are preserved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8740" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T10:17:56.700" Title="Is there such a thing as the &quot;master copy&quot; of a book?" Tags="|publishing|formatting|software|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10962" CreationDate="2014-05-20T23:46:44.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my college they use &lt;a href=&quot;http://compilatio.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; software to determine the authenticity of a thesis when submitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8740" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T23:46:44.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10967" CreationDate="2014-05-21T08:01:53.140" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do films need master copies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because playing a movie, or even copying it, involves the film (i.e. the physical celluloid strip) to be dragged through a machine, and this handling causes abrasion, scratches, and with time &lt;strong&gt;destroys the film&lt;/strong&gt;. So instead of copying the original film a thousand times for all the cinemas out there and in this process destroying the original, a so called &quot;master copy&quot; is made which is copied a handful of times. These first copies are then used to create the thousands of cinema copies, thus preserving an original, from with new first copies can be made in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copies of celluloid film are of lower quality than the original: less sharp, worse colors, etc. Which is why we cannot use a copy to make copies, but need a &quot;master copy&quot; as close as possible to the original cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we still need master copies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Playing a digital movie does not abrade the original file. What you need now are backups to avoid losing the data, but any copy can serve as the original, because there is no deterioration of quality involved and each copy has the same quality as the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do books need master copies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books are text. Printing a books traditionally, the text was set with lead letters when it was to be printed. After the printing the letters were sorted back into the letter case, to be available for other books. The manuscript of the text was the original from with a new text would be set for a re-printing. This process introduced different typesetter's errors in each re-print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, the text was set digitally and a photographic print of the text (a socalled &quot;film&quot;) was used to print books. This was stored, because creating it costs money, but basically this was not necessary, because a new copy could be made from the original digital file, or even the manuscript, and no abrasion was involved in the process of creating it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the digital age, we still print directly from a digital file. The only difference is that now even the manuscript is digital. Again, no abrasion is involved, so no &quot;master copies&quot; are made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books are printed from different technical systems. Some books (like scientific symposion reports) are printed directly from Word or PDF files from common PCs, others are printed from specialized typesetting file formats created on specialized typesetting workstations running specialized software and operating systems, common only among print professionals. These files are of course stored (digitally) after printing, to avoid typesetting cost when a reprint is made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Master copies are necessary where the process of creating copies causes quality loss in the original. This happens with celluloid film, but it does not happen in books, nor in digital movies today.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T08:07:00.320" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T08:07:00.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10975" CreationDate="2014-05-21T14:03:15.427" Score="1" ViewCount="1801" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to write a paper that defines the word &amp;quot;simulation&amp;quot;. As part of my paper, for historical reasons I've decided to use a quote from Francis Bacon's Essay &lt;em&gt;Of Simulation and Dissimulation&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I am currently experiencing is I can't figure out how to cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a lot of research I was finally able to figure out the publication date (1597), but I have yet to figure out how it was originally published, which is a problem, since MLA has different formats depending on whether the essay was published individually or as part of a collection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While investigating this problem, I've seen advice that says that if you cannot determine which case is true (collection or individually) you can MLA cite it as an essay published in a collection by finding a collection not published by the original author that contains the work (example: &lt;em&gt;Best English Papers of All Time&lt;/em&gt; or something of that nature). I was able to find a collection that was created by a person that only contains Francis Bacon essays, however to me, citing a collection that was done by someone other than the original author seems rather peculiar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6433" LastEditorUserId="22083" LastEditDate="2022-09-26T14:10:39.807" LastActivityDate="2022-09-26T14:10:39.807" Title="How To Cite Francis Bacon's Of Simulation and Dissimulation Essay" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10967" CreationDate="2014-05-21T14:06:23.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do books need master copies? Do we still need master copies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to both questions is yes. Even though the original copy of a book might be digital, it still needs a master copy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one thing, digital degrades. It might not happen as fast as with physical copies, but images degrade as they get copied (one of the downsides of image compression tech). Also, errors (formatting, spelling, and extraneous) are introduced into text as it is copied more and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even if digital didn't suffer from degradation, you should still have a master (or archival) copy. It's not a good idea to assume that you will always be able to find a good quality copy in the future should you need to create a new edition. Chances are it will be a degraded copy with lower quality images and other issues introduced in the conversion process&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should that master copy contain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion: Everything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would archive everything from the original source documents and images to the intermediate file formats and including whatever preferred archival file format is common at the moment. Don't forget to also include any material discarded from the published book; it could prove useful in a future edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8743" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T14:06:23.930" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10945" CreationDate="2014-05-21T20:30:35.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your idealistic young heroes kill the 20, thereby getting what's necessary to change their dystopia into a utopia (at great personal sacrifice) -- and then watch in horror as human nature takes over.  See: history of communism.  See also: history of right-wing dictators.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Utopias are highly unstable.  Power corrupts.  Everyone lies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T20:30:35.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10949" CreationDate="2014-05-22T07:16:46.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Sushi story is nice, well worth telling. But before you jump into a novelization you need to do some serious study of punctuation, the use of commas particularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7892" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T07:16:46.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10949" CreationDate="2014-05-22T07:29:16.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't read either of your stories, so all I know is the short summary of the Sushi story and that the others contain magical realism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know about your home country. Magical realism seems to be popular in Latin America. But from your other questions and comments I gleaned that you want to write in English and (thus) publish to an English speaking audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I know about successful English language publications, and especially books with teenage protagonists (i.e. Young Adult fiction), magical realism is not a part of any of the books that I know. There is some (adult) fantasy that has it (e.g. some aspects of the work of Patricia McKillip), but it is generally rare and not something that can be found in bestsellers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What (teen) readers love is a realistic, contemporary love story with protagonists they can identify with. Your Sushi plot sounds like a book Sarah Dessen might write, and I am convinced that, like her books, it will be an instant bestseller (if you write it well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would write the Sushi book, because to me it appears most compatible with reader taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T07:29:16.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10970" CreationDate="2014-05-22T08:36:16.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; quote the source that you read, not the original publication, if they differ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some style manuals require that you give the original publication date, e.g. in MLA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bacon, Francis. &quot;Of Simulation and Dissimulation&quot;. 1625. &lt;em&gt;Essays&lt;/em&gt;. Ed. Michael J. Hawkins. London: J. M. Dent, 1973. pp-pp. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Replace &quot;pp&quot; with the appropriate page numbers. And of course change all of this to the edition you used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia, in an article on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_%28Francis_Bacon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Essays&lt;/em&gt; of Francis Bacon&lt;/a&gt;, says that the first edition from 1597 did not contain &quot;Of Simulation and Dissimulation&quot;. This was published in the third edition from 1625.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this might not be the first publication of that essay, it could have been collected there from a previous publication such as in a periodical. The editor's introduction of the modern edition should explain the publication history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T07:10:35.263" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T07:10:35.263" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10977" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-22T14:47:43.407" Score="3" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing an article and needs to be heavily cited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My statement is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jinisys Software Inc is a partner of Cisco.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cisco website does not have a static list of partners, and instead they have a search box that dynamically enables you to search for a partner which can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://tools.cisco.com/WWChannels/LOCATR/openBasicSearch.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://tools.cisco.com/WWChannels/LOCATR/openBasicSearch.do&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you need to do is input &quot;Jinisys Software Inc&quot; as Company and Philippines as country. After searching, they don't provide a &lt;strong&gt;url&lt;/strong&gt; that can be used as citation that directs to a specific result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I cite this kind of source like for example I will be using it for Wikipedia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a type of citation that tells the readers to do an action like the act of searching the company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What citation style should I use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a normal type of referencing to a source. Thanks for your consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5834" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T10:31:14.473" Title="How to add difficult Web Citation?" Tags="|style|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10977" CreationDate="2014-05-22T15:29:36.960" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't say which style guide you want to use, so I'm giving an example for APA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When you quote dynamic web content, you give the URL to the online form and describe your query.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you quote the results from a Google search, you simply describe your search terms (and don't even give an URL, because that is common knowledge):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Google query for &quot;Jinisys Philippines&quot; returned ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An explanation and published example are given on the APA style blog at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2013/10/how-do-i-cite-a-search-in-apa-style.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2013/10/how-do-i-cite-a-search-in-apa-style.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the Cisco Partner Locator is not as commonly known as Google, in your case your citation would need an URL:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jinisys Software Inc is a partner of Cisco. (Cisco, n.d.)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  References:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Cisco. (n.d.) &lt;em&gt;Partner Locator&lt;/em&gt;. Retrieved May 22, 2014 from &lt;a href=&quot;https://tools.cisco.com/WWChannels/LOCATR/openBasicSearch.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://tools.cisco.com/WWChannels/LOCATR/openBasicSearch.do&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I added the date of the database query, because databases change!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to explain to enter &quot;Jinisys&quot; in the search field, because that will be clear to the reader, but you might need to add some information about the country, if selecting the country is necessary for the search and this information is not given in the preceding text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jinisys Software Inc. (Philippines) is a partner of Cisco. (Cisco, n.d.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be extra careful and spell out detailed instructions, just add them to the text as explained in the APA Style Blog example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Entering &quot;Jinisys&quot; into the &quot;Company&quot; field and selecting &quot;Philippines&quot; as &quot;Country&quot;, the Cisco &lt;em&gt;Partner Locator&lt;/em&gt; (Cisco, n.d.) shows that Jinisys Software Inc. is a partner of Cisco.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I used the spelling that Jinisys use themselves, without comma, but with a dot: &lt;code&gt;Jinisys Software Inc.&lt;/code&gt;. See the top answer to this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/142620/should-you-use-a-comma-before-the-inc-in-a-company-name&quot;&gt;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/142620/should-you-use-a-comma-before-the-inc-in-a-company-name&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T10:31:14.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-22T16:11:17.483" Score="9" ViewCount="1641" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many screenwriting theories hold that the protagonist should be flawed at the story's beginning and overcome this flaw by its end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there are stories where the protagonist is thrown out of a seemingly normal, happy and functional life only by the intervention of the antagonist. Think of all the tales of killed or abducted wives and children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the protagonist of such a story need or usually have a &quot;flaw&quot; beyond the desperation, hate, or guilt caused by the antagonist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T17:01:56.030" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T17:01:56.030" Title="Must protagonists be flawed for satisfying character evolution?" Tags="|fiction|characters|character-development|protagonist|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10979" CreationDate="2014-05-22T16:33:06.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;People have flaws. If a character is portrayed as flawless then that character comes off as having somewhat less substance than otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abduction or murder of a relative is not a character, it is an event. The character comes through in the way the protagonist reacts to the event. In &quot;Taken&quot; Liam Neeson's character is pretty bullet proof during the main part of the action but the film takes care to acknowledge (at least in passing) that Neeson's character is, in normal reality, deeply dysfunctional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Jason Statham thriller Hummingbird the character study angle of a fairly thin revenge plot is extrapolated to the point where the genre of the thriller becomes de-focused. The movie is more interested in putting together the character of a man who would exact revenge for the death of someone close to them in the manner he chooses to do so rather than concentrating on the mechanics of the act itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: And to push the revenge trope even further the very new &quot;Blue Ruin&quot; presents a man getting revenge with the entire hook being that he is the least likely candidate for vengeful retribution you could probably think of. At one point someone tells him he's &quot;weak&quot; and he doesn't reply at all, just stands there looking mopey. This either signals the guy is not very self-aware (because he goes through a hell of a lot in the course of the movie), or that he can't deal with verbal confrontation, or that he is, at some level, deceptive in the way he presents himself. All of these are flaws and the movie seeks to make the protagonist complex and problematic in order to deepen what is, like the former examples, a fairly bland revenge narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="231" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T16:46:13.907" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T16:46:13.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10945" CreationDate="2014-05-23T00:36:15.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do readers enjoy self-administered vigilante justice? Or do they&#xA;  prefer moral heroes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me put it this way: A common trope in American popular fiction is the hero who lives by his (or her; cf. &lt;em&gt;The Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt;) own moral code, a code that is not necessarily consistent with the law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T00:36:15.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10979" CreationDate="2014-05-23T10:56:09.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that characters need not have flaws, in the sense that they have negative character traits or are unsuccessful at life or unable to face and complete the story task, but rather that the story induces them to change and grow even further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Characters must be &quot;flawed&quot; at story onset only in relation to who they become at its end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2014-05-23T12:03:18.660" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T12:03:18.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10983" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-23T11:44:37.663" Score="0" ViewCount="1054" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a memoir through a workshop taught by a known writer.  A friend now in book publishing made a mock up prototype and added my pictures without my knowledge - I loved it - what legal obligation do I have to those seen in those pictures living and dead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8752" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T22:41:54.207" Title="Using pictures in my memoir" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10979" CreationDate="2014-05-23T12:08:57.050" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're at a serious risk of running into a &quot;Mary Sue&quot; issue if your protagonist lacks flaws. It's dubious that you can create a truly interesting story with the protagonist being absolutely perfect, unless you think it as some kind of satire, where that perfection is actually a flaw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, take &quot;The Iron Dream&quot; by Norman Spinrad, a &quot;a metafictional 1972 alternate history novel&quot;. It's a book-within-book thing, with like 90% of the content being verbatim contents of the inner book: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Lord of the Swastika&quot;, by Adolf Hitler, a renowned Sci-Fi writer, winner of the Hugo award&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist of &quot;Lord of the Swastika&quot; is perfect in all respects. Feric Jaggar is a proud, young, strong and genetically pure male with blonde hair and blue eyes. He reinforces the lacking strength of the falling bastion of genetically pure humanity and begins conquest against countless mutant hordes, unstoppable and unchallenged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only thanks to &quot;Preface&quot; and &quot;Afterword&quot; what would be really just a total purple prose takes on some perspective, placing the book within a world where IIWW never took place, where deep flaws of character of the writer (Hitler) are reflected as special strengths and preferences of the protagonist, and the whole thing becomes a strong satire and a social commentary instead of just author's wet dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, your example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the protagonist is thrown out of a seemingly normal, happy and functional life only by the intervention of the antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the flaw. Lulled into comfortable, calm life; weak; incompetent as a fighter, and lacking courage. A hen-pecked puppy becomes a war dog. Or opposite, the flaws become the strengths. Or even more opposite, a character appearing flawless in the beginning begins to exhibit increasingly more flaws as the story progresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without flaws there is no difficulty in resolving the conflict. Without difficulty there is no sense of reward, no sense of risk or danger. Perfect protagonists are &lt;em&gt;boring.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T12:08:57.050" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10979" CreationDate="2014-05-23T12:31:26.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Building on @what's answer (to his own question ;-) ), I'd say that the question is falsely assuming the protagonist will &lt;em&gt;improve&lt;/em&gt;.  Much more interesting is the case where the protagonist changes due to new circumstances, and the readers/viewers/gameplayers are left wondering to themselves if that was a good change.  For instance, a gentle person becomes a killer.  Or even, a hardened killer becomes a committed pacifist.  Or how about a double change (having nothing to do with killing), like in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Flowers for Algernon&quot;&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T12:31:26.867" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10501" CreationDate="2014-05-23T15:51:28.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask your readers to point you to API documentation that they &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; find helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get clarification from your readers. Do they mean that the &quot;javadoc&quot; is too vague? incomplete? poorly worded? Or do they mean that they can understand the reference doc, but it doesn't help them write an application using the API.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my edit of the original example. I had to add some assumptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;/* Finds the [message string] for the given [message ID]. If the [message ID] doesn't&#xA; * exist, returns an empty String&#xA; *&#xA; * @param id  the [message ID] to find&#xA; * @return    the [message string], or if the [message ID] doesn't exist, returns an&#xA; *            empty String&#xA; */&#xA; public String findValue(int id) {...}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By substituting [message ID] for item, I'm trying to point out that the documentation&#xA;should be specific as possible. If you find that you're repeating the parameter's name&#xA;in the description, then something may be wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Point 1 also holds for the return value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that the developer has handled the case in which there's no corresponding String&#xA;for [message ID].&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, as a good API tech writer, you should watch for programming problems. When a&#xA;method returns a String, it shouldn't return null if there's nothing to return. &#xA;Instead, it should return an empty String. This simplifies testing the method's return&#xA;value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not finding the item is a really severe error, meaning that the application should&#xA;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; continue, the method should throw an Exception. This Exception should also be&#xA;documented.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T15:51:28.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10987" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-23T17:11:09.367" Score="11" ViewCount="34269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to write some gory scenes. I'm having a few problems, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked around online and determined that I need to really highlight the senses when I'm writing something like this. Mostly people said to describe everything in exact detail. Also, people told me to diversify my language and to stay away from overused cliches and vocabulary. Finally, I was told to get creative about the way I describe gory scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the last one is true enough, but some gory scenes that I remember are really...plain. It's just that the build-up made the reveal seem so gruesome that I remember the scene, but not the description. The other two I'm sort of on the fence about. I'd agree that describing a dead body is better than just saying plainly that there is a dead body, but can there be too much description? Will it start becoming a parody of gory scenes if I describe too much? And I feel as though it would become less engaging if I use words that aren't common, but repetitive if I use common words often. There's a good balance between the two, but how important is a diverse vocabulary when it comes to gory scenes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like some more tips on writing gory scenes in general or maybe even some clarification on how to utilize what tips  I have now. I would ask &quot;what makes a gory scene memorable,&quot; but that might be too opinion based. If anyone can think of any particularly good gory scenes or literature that would help guide me, that would be much appreciated too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;To clarify, the scenes I am trying to write are generally revolting. There are a couple of scenes that aren't really as revolting as much as they're just bloody messes, so I'd call them messy more than gory. There are a few scenes that I'd rather come across as scary, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the scenes are... Varying. A few are endings and they happen to the main character, the player character. A few are deaths that occur right in front of the main character, and there is sufficient buildup to let the player know that the death will happen, but they will be doing actions throughout the process to try and stop the death from occurring. And finally there are scenes that the characters will just come across. Some are older than others. The player character might be scared in game but I do sort of want to get an emotional response from the people reading along too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-04-16T19:20:21.873" LastActivityDate="2019-11-28T22:35:15.073" Title="How do I write a gory scene?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|horror|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10987" CreationDate="2014-05-23T23:15:41.503" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned, what a reader feels when they read about a gory sight - more generally, what a reader feels when they read &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; evocative - is strongly influenced by what comes before. If you think in terms of horror films, the effect of the reveal is heightened by the tension leading up to it; it's why we have things like slow, lingering shots of the hero(ine) reaching towards the door handle, rather than just cutting from them deciding to search the house directly to whatever they find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it's less about what exactly you write and more about putting your reader in a state of mind that whatever you do write (within reason, of course) will seem scary rather than silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general terms, this means foreshadowing the gore, whether directly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As he walked towards the door, he saw a few dark red spots of blood&#xA;  dotting the carpet in front of it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...or through the viewpoint character's thoughts and actions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He took a deep breath and reached for the door's handle, trying to&#xA;  push away thoughts of what might be on the other side.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and keeping the pace fast enough to be moving towards the reveal, but slow enough to be suspenseful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a more granular sense, short sentences and &quot;sharp&quot; words can create a feeling of tension, if you go in for that sort of analytical writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's no opportunity to foreshadow the gore in terms of in-work timeline - for example, if it is a total surprise to the viewpoint character and you can't convey any apprehension beforehand - you can still create a lead-up to the reveal for the reader. A good way to do this is to describe a character's reaction &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; describing what they're reacting to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;His breath caught in his throat as he tried not to retch at the&#xA;  sight. He wanted to look away, &lt;em&gt;needed&lt;/em&gt; to tear his eyes away, but he&#xA;  could not. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Add more here.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Lying in a pool of blood in the centre of the room was...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, get your readers in the right state of mind &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the gore, and they'll likely take the gore the way you intend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of not making it seem parodical or silly, I'd say the key is just to be reasonable. Use a wide vocabulary, but keep it simple. The two possible mistakes that come to mind right now are being overly technical, and being melodramatic. Don't write a coroner's report; the point is to have your reader empathise with the fear or horror felt by that character, so use the words that your &lt;em&gt;character&lt;/em&gt; is probably using in their mental narrative as they see the gore. On the other hand, avoid overly dramatic diction; again, it's just a matter of considering what sort of words your character is probably &quot;thinking with.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, empathy is key, so visceral, emotive words that show the character's response to the scene can be very effective. Overall, it terms of diction, just use your common sense; you will probably be able to see if something is becoming silly rather than serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the description of the scene doesn't have a character - if a disembodied narrator is describing a scene for the reader's benefit alone - it will be much harder to get the reaction you want in the reader. That said, if you must do this, I would generally recommend using the diction that your lead protagonist would use in his/her mental narrative of the scene if he were there to see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T23:15:41.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10893" CreationDate="2014-05-23T23:46:38.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not entirely clear, but from your description and example, I'm not entirely sure that the issue is &quot;perspective.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we talk about &quot;narrative 1st/3rd/(rarely)2nd person,&quot; it generally refers to the narrator of a story, and is a bit more complex than exactly what pronouns you use. Your description and example seem to indicate that rather than a &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt;, you are writing or have written more of a discursive, flow-of-consciousness piece; in other words, you're explaining something to your reader, rather than detailing a series of events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Perspective,&quot; or what we call &quot;narrative person,&quot; as in &quot;first-person narrator,&quot; only applies when you are a narrator describing &lt;em&gt;events&lt;/em&gt; which have happened, are happening, or are going to happen. Discursive writing has no narrator; it's you talking directly to the reader, not to detail something that happened, but to give them information or an opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To look at your example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;when &lt;strong&gt;we&lt;/strong&gt; let go of our ego&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could have two meanings, since the fragment is short enough to be ambiguous. It might mean &quot;After we (the characters of the story) let go of our ego, X happened.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What seems more likely, though, is that you are saying &quot;When we (humanity; the reader and the writer treated as a unit) let go of our ego (a hypothetical situation), X happens.&quot; It that case, you're not being a narrator at all, so there is no &quot;person&quot; or perspective. What you're actually doing, in that case, is using a corrupted form of the technically more correct &quot;When &lt;strong&gt;one&lt;/strong&gt; lets go of &lt;strong&gt;one's&lt;/strong&gt; ego...&quot;, rather than using the plural first-person &quot;we&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Not that it's incorrect the way you've used it; you've used the colloquial version, which sounds a lot less pretentious, and only a very strict English teacher would ever really complain. I was just explaining what form of writing you are technically using)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every time &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; release this, a new part opens up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is almost certainly the same as what I thought happened in the &quot;we&quot; example; I seriously doubt that you are telling the reader about a specific event in their own life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;correct&quot; (but, again, unnecessarily pretentious) way of writing this would be &quot;Every time &lt;strong&gt;one&lt;/strong&gt; releases this, a new part opens up.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I've&lt;/strong&gt; seen the changes in my life when...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is a bit of an odd one out, because it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have a narrator. What you've done here is, in the middle of your discursive writing, you've jumped into a small section of narrative writing to provide evidence for the point you're proposing. It could be a sentence of narration, or a paragraph, or a chapter, but it now have slightly different rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this fragment, you're using 1st-person narrative voice (&quot;&lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt; did X&quot;). So long as while you're telling &lt;em&gt;this particular story&lt;/em&gt; you stick to 1st person, you're fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's important to note is that in a &lt;em&gt;different story&lt;/em&gt; within &lt;em&gt;the same piece of writing&lt;/em&gt;, you are entirely allowed to write in a different person. If you finish the anecdote you started with the quote above, and move on to tell another story entirely about your Aunt Polly, you can (and probably should) use 3rd person narrative to tell her story. If you want, you can present a different, hypothetical story &quot;about&quot; your reader in 2nd person if it helps to make your point; so long as each story is internally consistent, you're good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; You probably don't need to worry about which &quot;perspective&quot; or narrative voice you're using if you're writing discursively, giving advice, information or an opinion to the reader instead of telling a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T23:46:38.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10987" CreationDate="2014-05-23T23:59:42.880" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doesn't all of this depend on what you are trying to achieve with your guts and gore? You might be trying to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convince readers that a murderous character (or group) is sadistic, evil, callous, etc. (perhaps so that they want to see that character brought to justice)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For example, if you are writing a story about a psychopath, your description of the corpse may be more technical, to suggest the dehumanization of the psychopaths's approach. You will probably also come up with repellent things that the psychopath has done to the body (however, if you get too disgusting and disturbing, you run the risk that the reader will withdraw emotionally from the scene). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are trying to build horrified sympathy for the victim, &lt;strong&gt;the key may not be word-choice so much as detail choice.&lt;/strong&gt; Focus on some small, human, relatable detail. Talk about how the young victim's hand, sticking out of the shallow grave, displayed freshly painted nails because she had been having a manicure with her mother. Have your character notice and react to these things. The reader can already identify with the details, and therefore can doubly identify with the character's reaction to them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demonstrate that some activity is dangerous (perhaps to build suspense or to highlight the protagonist's courage in continuing to pursue it)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may want to emphasize that this death came without warning in circumstances that would normally feel safe (the whole, &quot;I should feel safe there,&quot; is surely part of the effectiveness of the famed Psycho shower scene). Kill someone the reader would never have expected to die (for instance, the person who appeared to be shaping up as the love interest)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a kind of titillation for readers (either by scaring them, shocking them, or just grossing them out)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This probably goes with more &quot;pulpy&quot; writing, and it sounds like you are trying to avoid cliches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicate something about your protagonist's personality&#xA;-Is there something that your character particularly fears? Perhaps someone else was killed that way. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I think that you need to think about the purpose of your gory scene, and go from there. Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T23:59:42.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10992" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10993" CreationDate="2014-05-24T08:11:11.207" Score="12" ViewCount="945" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing fiction set in the near future (~15-20 years). The world is still mostly the same and thus familiar to the reader, but an important part of the story is that a few things are radically different in subtle ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder what some ways are to show those subtle differences without being too blunt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: Let's say that in the future, TVs track how many people are watching and refuse to show certain content if too many people are watching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My character could say &lt;code&gt;Man, remember in the old days when you could cram an entire classroom into your living room and just watch a movie? That new system sucks!&lt;/code&gt;, but that is rather blunt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option is to have the characters run into the restriction head on: &lt;code&gt;Henry arrived late to the party. To the great anger of the group, the TV detected him as an additional viewer and refused to show any more until the extra group fee was paid&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it may not always be feasible to have the characters run into that restriction, sometimes I just want to show it's there without the characters really paying attention to it since to &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; it's perfectly normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the exact solution greatly depends on the story, I wonder if there are established techniques for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T17:17:03.350" Title="How to show that something is different than in real life?" Tags="|fiction|science-fiction|exposition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10992" CreationDate="2014-05-24T08:54:45.650" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's actually totally easy. Just let your characters interact with their environment in a natrual way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a real world example, showing different systems of paying the fare for a public bus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Out of breath from running to the bus stop, John was still struggling with the ticket machine when the bus approached around the corner. (Konstanz, Germany)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The conductor was blocking the aisle, so Pete sat in the last free seat with a grin while John had to unpack half his rucksack to get at the money for their ticket. (Russia)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The bus driver did not want to accept John's 50 Euro bill, claiming he had no change. &quot;Either you have change or you get off,&quot; he said in a bored voice. John promised himself never to come to Germany again. (Reutlingen, Germany)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;John was about to push a coin into the slot of the ticket machine, when the bus suddenly started, throwing him off balance, and the coin rolled away below the seats. (Tübingen, Germany)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All examples explain where and how you pay for your bus ticket (a machine outside the bus at the bus stop; a conductor riding in the bus; the bus driver; a machine inside the bus) in a way that someone living there would tell what happened to him to another local and without breaking the action. Do the same for imaginary environments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John walked down the hot orange plastic of the street, wondering if his implant had enough credit for the hoverbus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, as in your example with the viewing restriction, things are &quot;just there&quot; but don't activate, people still take note of them. For example, Henry, being late to a pre-paid viewing, would think about the potential problem of not being paid for. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Henry arrived late to the party, worrying he would interrupt the movie. The payment detector blinked, slowly counting the changed number of viewers, but obviously Bob had paid one extra, because the tv kept showing the movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can, give the appliance a name, and chose a descriptive one. When you navigate your own world, you constantly notice and name stuff in your head, so let your characters do the same, it will appear normal (see the &quot;hoverbus&quot; example, which tells everything you need to know about public transportation with one word).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T17:17:03.350" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T17:17:03.350" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10994" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12192" CreationDate="2014-05-24T13:06:18.680" Score="3" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question, essentially about how to best format and make a PoD-appropriate version of a large manuscript. In this case it is a Bible version, but other people might have other large volumes that meet the same issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reviews at &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1494913402&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1494913402/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;creative=9325&amp;amp;creativeASIN=1494913402&amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;tag=jonascorn-20&lt;/a&gt; identify two issues with the Classic Orthodox Bible as it is presently published:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: The formatting is terrible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: The physical paperback book is huge even though the Old Testament is in too small print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one I have a clear picture of how to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one is a point where I would like to better know my options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regular Bibles, printed on superthin paper, are printed using technology under conditions where it is only profitable to print ~10,000 Bibles per print run. The paperback Classic Orthodox Bible is printed using CreateSpace PoD, where I was barely able to get things in at the existing font size using the largest trim size and overall the largest font size I could get in under the maximum size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second one, what are my options to produce a (perhaps behemothic) single volume that has the Bible in question, has all text at a readably large font size, and given all these things, is as manageable in physical size as is reasonably possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8761" LastEditorUserId="8761" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T14:45:12.480" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T13:57:59.210" Title="What are PoD options for a 5M Bible?" Tags="|publishing|printing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10728" CreationDate="2014-05-24T16:46:47.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an example from the Android online documentation:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.android.com/training/location/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Making Your App Location-Aware&lt;/a&gt;. It's a &quot;training&quot; that leads you through doing a task, but it's not a tutorial since it doesn't show you how to do a particular app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T16:46:47.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10643" CreationDate="2014-05-24T16:49:59.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the screenshot add to what you're saying, or is just there to be pretty? I think that marketing materials should be &quot;pretty&quot;, but technical work should focus on teaching and understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, too, that you should make all of your documentation accessible to users who have less than perfect vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T16:49:59.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10501" CreationDate="2014-05-24T18:58:00.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a software developer (C#, .NET, yada, yada), Monica's answer resounded nicely with me. (I don't have enough rep yet to comment on it, so my additions have to go here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add that I find great value in API documentation that is as explicit as it can be, but not overburdened with meaningless details. Further, it's very important to me that the documentation tells me what the API is &lt;em&gt;supposed&lt;/em&gt; to do, not what it actually does. (Some will disagree with me about this; however, if the software doesn't do what the reference says it should be doing, that's a defect, requiring resolution.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the return type of a method is List, will the method return null, or is it guaranteed to always return a non-null reference of zero or more items?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a method takes a reference type, will it throw if the argument is null? If the argument is defined as out or ref, will it throw if the argument has not been initialized? If the argument is an array or list, will it throw if the sequence is empty? Does the method throw if a required configuration setting is missing or invalid? (If so, what configuration setting(s) does it depend on?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are things of immense value to a software developer. Having to track them down by wading through potentially hundreds of thousands of lines of code wastes time and money, and increases risk and the chance that I'll make a mistake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, be as explicit as you can be, and no further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8762" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T18:58:00.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10938" CreationDate="2014-05-24T19:13:38.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrivener contains a feature it calls &quot;Corkboard,&quot; which sounds very much like your &quot;Storyboard.&quot; It presents scenes as small 3x5 index cards with a synopsis on them, and you can rearrange them to your heart's content. It's a popular feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In answer to your question, it sounds like yes, this is something that is done with great frequency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use it myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8762" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T19:13:38.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-24T20:17:45.963" Score="1" ViewCount="944" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is printed on very nice paper. The letters are detailed, elegant and pitch black with slightly blurred edges. You can feel the ink soaking gently in the fibres, right after it was punched by masterly cut metal heavily into the paper. You can imagine an old fellow with a magnifying glass studying the meandering symbiosis of shape and however you want to call what is not a shape. At first glance the letters look like handwriting, you wonder why, and then you realise that they are all different, even the letters you thought ought to be the same. An 'e' should be always an 'e'. But it never is. Letters never are the same, their nature is changed with every word. It is only natural that, here, they emphasise their unique meaning with a unique form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is weird that I cannot decide what I want. The core of my self ignores my wishes. The core of my self never changes its mind, how often I beg doesn't matter. The core of my self is pure and flawless and I wish it wasn't part of me; constantly it reveals the truth of my desires. To. My. Self. Shit. Fotzenherz. Most of all I hate it for loving you. Yes, I am still talking about the core of my self which I hate. It is ridiculous and makes to sense. It would be so much easier, if it would just change with my present needs. If I could just move on with my life. I would direct it to where I feel light and comfortable. Be happy. Instead my naked feet haunt dust and tiny rocks. My core is stuck in the past. The problem is that the past is nowhere to be found. It is gone, and does it ever come back? I don't think so. I play with a wooden stick. I rip off its leaves and throw the remains over the edge. One step further and I would be weightless. Airstreams would flow through my hair like magic pillows. And then. Nothing. I would go back to where I came from.&#xA;I would like to go home actually, but over the years I got so used to being with you, that I feel like you took my home with me. My home is indivisibly linked with you. It is you. And that makes makes makes me angry. It is my home after all, and I have no power over it. I feel stupid and weak and there is nothing more to say. Seriously, that's it. This is the reason why this is a short story and no book. Some truths can be neatly arranged in just so many words. I'm not sure if these were enough though. What do you think? Do you recognise who I am now? Would you like to know more, should I tell you something about myself?&#xA;I am as old as you are. I live where you once lived, and I am in pain like you are or will be or have been. We share this. My heart pumps pulsing blood through my fragile body until I feel my veins exploding, but they don't. I am alive. Fuck. After all I am not you. My core, my soul, my self, still thinks we are one. But apparently we are not. And I don't want to love you anymore. But do I have any saying that? No. I open my eyes and then I jump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to worry about me, this was just happening in my head. I didn't really jump. In reality I didn't do it. I swear. I like living in general. I sit on one of the rocks, rest my hands on its cold surface and sigh. An older couple with walking sticks passes by, laughing, arguing and teasing themselves. And I think that I just hate living now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hello hello, this was my short story. I have no idea if this is more something for a diary I will never show to anyone, and just read it from time to time with shameful tears in my eyes. I guess my technique is terrible, and it is obvious I am not a native english speaker. But the words still mean something to me. I hope that it is not redundant for other peoples minds, but honestly - I have no idea. But I am curious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paragraph above was still part of the story, it's a character I created recently. His name is Hank, but he calls himself Finn to stay anonymous. He posts short personal stories online and hopes for positive response. What do you think?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it disturbing that the story jumps around from being on a mountain and thoughts of Hank/Finn, or does it read fluently?   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, I introduce a &quot;you&quot;. Is it understandable that Hank/Finn is talking to a lost love?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the introduction of the author Hank/Finn ridicule the story, or does it help to identify with it?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After reading this, do you feel interested in more Hank/Finn stories?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8764" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T00:27:53.073" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T09:35:37.263" Title="insecurity with a short story about mountains and love" Tags="|short-story|characters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11000" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11004" CreationDate="2014-05-25T07:10:09.400" Score="2" ViewCount="371" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a fiction/fantasy/horror novel, and I have only written some pages.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I have published the first part of the novel especially for &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I make my first lines attractive, suspenseful, hooking...?&#xA;You can read what I have written by &lt;a href=&quot;http://vivastemcell.com/enigma.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;clicking here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8765" LastEditorUserId="3986" LastEditDate="2021-07-05T16:42:45.363" LastActivityDate="2021-07-05T16:42:45.363" Title="How to make the first lines of my novel attractive and hooking?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|reviews|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10999" CreationDate="2014-05-25T08:35:46.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't want to critique the story, but the concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, what you're doing is not mainstream fiction. You are experimenting with form and media. You don't mention and I don't understand the unifying concept behind your approach, but if it makes sense within the framework of your project, it would be absolutely fitting, if you emulated the awkward style of amateur attemps at literatur posted all over the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors (of mainstream fiction) writing in the voice of different characters use slang terms and grammar or eloquent academic terminology. The choice of linguistic form is based on the type of character that language is supposed to convey. Since you write not as an omniscient narrator, telling about the short story writing of your protagonist, but rather let him speak for himself, it is not only appropriate but neccessary that your language reflects his style and level of competency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you must make sure, though, is that your errors are not your own, but his. If the story, as you say, &quot;jumps around&quot;, that must be intentional: it should show that &lt;em&gt;your protagonist&lt;/em&gt; cannot write better (or wants his story that way), not that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; cannot do better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So put your pen (or keyboard) aside for a moment and reflect on what story you want to tell. That is your first question. Then, from there, define the details of your story: Who is your character, what is his goal, how does he go about it, where does this lead him, and how does he develop and grow in the process? When you have answered all this for yourself, then decide which literary devices can best transport your story to your readers. Maybe you'll need the jumping around, but maybe, at this point in the story, your protagonist needs to write &quot;better&quot; or differently. But you must be clear on this, else &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are just an amateur writing around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add that I find the idea of having your protagonist publish short pieces on the web quite interesting. If you manage to tell his story through this, this could become a quite engaging book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T08:35:46.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7623" CreationDate="2014-05-25T10:08:35.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe this can work fine in translation of non-literary, standardized documents, e.g. technical documentation, medical reports, and the like. The more both format and language (terms) are standardized, the better this will work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Preparation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must &lt;strong&gt;write with automatic translation in mind&lt;/strong&gt;. Use the same words and phrases always with the same meaning and syntactical structure. For example, &lt;strong&gt;do not&lt;/strong&gt; use &amp;quot;road&amp;quot; to refer both to a hard flat surface for vehicles, people, and animals to travel on &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; a process or a course of action that leads to a certain result. If you use &amp;quot;road&amp;quot; with both meanings, chances are that those meanings are expressed with two different words in your target language, and a translation programm must make a decision it is not equipped for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you keep meaning distinct and grammatical structure simple, the errors from automatic translation will always be caused by the same phenomenon that you can then correct automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Autocorrection&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; need to replace &amp;quot;road&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;Track&amp;quot;, just do a search and replace. You can do this manually in any word editor, or write a script in any programming language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use a script, create a matrix or two arrays, one with the errors to be replaced, one with the correct replacements, and let an inbuilt function such as string replacement or regular expression replacement scan the document for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, this, of course, only works if there are no instances of &amp;quot;road&amp;quot; that you need to keep or that need to be replaced with something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Human Control&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always let a human being familiar with the meaning you want to convey read your document and correct final mistakes (or add new words to the two arrays).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T10:08:35.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11000" CreationDate="2014-05-25T11:38:56.997" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hooking lines make the reader ask one or more of the following questions:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;What? Why? How? When? Where?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example are the stories of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Willow,_Sleeping_Woman&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Haruki Murakami&lt;/a&gt; (yes, I'm sick of the &quot;Call me Ishmael&quot;, and the &quot;they shot the white girl first&quot; examples).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Man-Eating Cats&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I bought a newspaper at the harbor and came across an article about an&#xA;  old woman who had been eaten by cats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What&lt;/strong&gt; the f...? &lt;strong&gt;How&lt;/strong&gt; can a bunch of cats eat a woman?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The Ice Man&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My husband's an Ice Man&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An iceman? &lt;strong&gt;How&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;where&lt;/strong&gt; did she meet him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Nausea 1979&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks to his rare talent for keeping a diary over an extended period&#xA;  of time without missing a single day, he was able to cite the exact&#xA;  date his vomiting stopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why&lt;/strong&gt; did he vomit for so long? &lt;strong&gt;What&lt;/strong&gt; was the cause?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;A Shinagawa Monkey&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recently she'd had trouble remembering her own name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How&lt;/strong&gt; can someone forget his/her own name? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good hooking sentences make the reader ask one or more questions without causing too much confusion. They cause wonder and provide information and at the same time in a perfect, balanced way. The worst you can do is to leave the reader thinking: &lt;em&gt;So what?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I checked your link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stars… I look at them, dream of them… They are so close, and yet, so&#xA;  far… They sparkle like tiny fireflies on the dark canvas of the bluish&#xA;  sky. The horns of the half-moon have newly vanished out of sight from&#xA;  the horizon, leaving behind them tenebrous ash. It seems the moon is&#xA;  looking at me with its silver-shining beam. I suddenly remember my&#xA;  great-grandfather’s old telescope of which my mother told me about an&#xA;  epoch ago (I might be exaggerating). His death was very enigmatic.&#xA;  Nobody knew how he disappeared. Nobody saw his cadaver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone look at the stars and dream of them, and it doesn't raise any &lt;strong&gt;what, why how...&lt;/strong&gt; question. Not a good hooking sentence. Consider this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Watching the stars, I suddenly remembered&#xA;  great-grandfather’s old telescope of which my mother told me about an&#xA;  epoch ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What&lt;/strong&gt; is so special about the telescope? &lt;strong&gt;How&lt;/strong&gt; come he still remembers it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My great-grandfather's death was very enigmatic.&#xA;  Nobody knew how he disappeared. Nobody saw his cadaver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How&lt;/strong&gt; did he die? &lt;strong&gt;Why&lt;/strong&gt; was his death enigmatic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T16:11:03.933" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T16:11:03.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11006" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11026" CreationDate="2014-05-25T14:51:46.440" Score="0" ViewCount="1350" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I create suspense in this writing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;h1&gt;The Enigma&lt;sup&gt;x&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;    &lt;p&gt;&#xA;      Stars… I look at them, dream of them… They are so close, and yet, so far… They sparkle like tiny fireflies on the dark canvas of the&#xA;  bluish sky. The horns of the half-moon have newly vanished out of&#xA;  sight from the horizon, leaving behind them tenebrous ash. It seems&#xA;  the moon is looking at me with its silver-shining beam. I suddenly&#xA;  remember my great-grandfather’s old telescope of which my mother told&#xA;  me about an epoch ago (I might be exaggerating). His death was very&#xA;  enigmatic. Nobody knew how he disappeared. Nobody saw his cadaver.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Mum? Mum! Do you remember great-granddad’s telescope you&#xA;  told me about?”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Yes,” she answers slowly while walking down the stairs.&#xA;  “Why?”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I want it.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She suddenly becomes very pale. “What for?”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The moon?” I say.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Ugh… Now, the moon. You just don’t stop wanting things,&#xA;  do you?”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Just give it. What could happen?”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I don’t know where it is.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don’t think she doesn’t know. I am going to find that&#xA;  telescope.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am&#xA;  very bored. And I don’t have one of those fancy PlayStation thingies&#xA;  to entertain me with. So I decide to write.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I throw the pen aside. I look at the blank paper in&#xA;  front of me. I can’t write. Not now. I stare at the starry sky through&#xA;  the window. The moon is beaming down at me, gleaming beautifully among&#xA;  the stars. I let my mind drift away. When will this end?&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I open the door. I hear hurried steps coming toward me.&#xA;  It’s Mum.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Where do you think you’re going at this&#xA;  hour?!”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I have a … a school affair. It won’t be long.” I say,&#xA;  trying to sound casual.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“School affair? Bill! Where are you, Bill? You hear&#xA;  that? Your son has a school affair at midnight!”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dad approaches but doesn’t show any sign of objection. I&#xA;  didn’t see him return from work. He and mum exchange significant&#xA;  glances, and then he says:&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Well, if it’s all about school, go on. And don’t be&#xA;  late.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Thank you, Dad, for trusting me.” I say, glaring at my&#xA;  mother.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Standing on the threshold, I let the cool breeze welcome&#xA;  my face. Let’s hope that this night I won’t be late, or at least, the&#xA;  late.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I know I don’t have to be here, but I am. I look at the&#xA;  yellowish walls of the hall. There are portraits hanged on both sides&#xA;  of them. Portraits of old principles, maybe. I can feel their eyes&#xA;  upon me. It’s a weird sensation. Everything’s looking at me. I can&#xA;  smell rotten flesh and hear eerie whispers. Do I have to do this? My&#xA;  heart starts thumping madly like a drum. My hands are sweating. My&#xA;  feet feel cold. I can’t move a single muscle. Paralysed at the sight&#xA;  of the dark hallway, I decide to stride down as quickly as I can.&#xA;  Where is my torch? I reach my bag and grasp the torch. It’s the only&#xA;  thing that will light my path…, my destiny. Either dead or alive, I&#xA;  will find what’s on the other end of this hall. I throw a final glance&#xA;  at the stairs leading to the first floor. I never liked these stairs,&#xA;  anyway. Time to move.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I proceed. I hear the muffled echo of my footsteps. From&#xA;  time to time, I stop. And each time I put my feet on the floor, I feel&#xA;  my body get heavier. I start to shiver as I observe the light at the&#xA;  end of the hallway get lower. I move densely, hesitating on my&#xA;  decision. A layer of stress covers me up as I hear the worrying&#xA;  whispers get louder. Suddenly, my torch switches off. Either I am&#xA;  going to swoon, or my head is going to explode. After a state of&#xA;  unconsciousness, I gather myself and move vigorously forward.&#xA;  Destination is unknown, object is none. Just curiosity. “Curiosity&#xA;  kills,” Gran says. I look at my watch. It’s late. The whispers vanish.&#xA;  As I whiff, I feel queasy because of the vile odour. I decide to&#xA;  return. Maybe I’ll do this later.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today’s a good day because Mum and Dad are invited to&#xA;  the neighbour’s wedding ceremony. I nagged to stay home. This was the&#xA;  perfect chance to find the telescope. But Jared and Arthur call me and&#xA;  tell me that they’d be glad to accompany me to the school’s mysterious&#xA;  basement, where I was yesterday. The same things happen. I hold my&#xA;  breath and accelerate my steps. We heed the creak of the wooden stale&#xA;  parquet. As we advance, we hear the creaks get louder. I notice a&#xA;  small brown shag adorned carpet and feel something underneath as I&#xA;  step on it. I take a step back, and halt.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Halt!”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“What?” Shouts Arthur.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“There is something underneath this.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Hey, you. Stop talking literary English. You’re getting&#xA;  on my nerves.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I do not think this is the right time for&#xA;  this.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Now figure out what he said.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I lean to see what that is. I throw the carpet away and&#xA;  notice a square dusty trapdoor. It has two circular knobs attached to&#xA;  it. I try to open the trapdoor by these; my efforts are in&#xA;  vain.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Man, stop.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I assemble all my forces and send them to my hands.&#xA;  After several times and tries the trapdoor crashes of a&#xA;  sudden…&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Aaaaaaaa!” And I fall… I fall in an endless&#xA;  abyss.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can’t feel my body. I haven’t touched the floor yet,&#xA;  if there is one… Time flies, so do I…&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt; The pain in my feet is excruciating. It is merely tolerable. I&#xA;  cannot open my eyes, trying to vanquish the pain. I smell the old, the&#xA;  dust and the mould. I hear annoying scary droplets… Water? Or blood!?&#xA;  What is the aftermath of my thoughts? Should I take this perilous&#xA;  course? Ah, what was I thinking…? What has happened to Jared and&#xA;  Arthur? Finally, I feel myself and try to get up. I cannot stand up.&#xA;  The ground is dragging me down. I am woozy; I see everything foggy. I&#xA;  squint at three arched ebony doors. When I get better, I see&#xA;  engravings on each one of them. Surprisingly, I notice leo on the&#xA;  first door. On the second one, I see mørk. And skjebne on the last&#xA;  door. What do these mean? These doors do look malevolent and&#xA;  vindictive… to me. Shall I open one of them? Or shall I go back? I&#xA;  look up. Oh, no, I don’t see the hole where I fell from! I have no&#xA;  choice. My fate is trapped between these doors. These malicious,&#xA;  spiteful and scary doors! I crawl like a lizard toward the first door,&#xA;  because, obviously, it carries my name on it. I reach my hand to the&#xA;  metallic doorknob and a cold gush sweeps through my body. I open the&#xA;  wooden door. The cold air envelopes my body. I hear loud, whispered,&#xA;  maniacal laughters and high-pitched shuddery intermittent moans. As I&#xA;  enter, I (try to) stand up. The gravity is normal, I suppose. The door&#xA;  slams begrudgingly and hard. I shiver, though ice has replaced my&#xA;  spine. A slimmer of blue light comes from behind. It divides into&#xA;  three. Blue atmospheric ghost lights… What are those?&#xA;  Will-o’-the-wisps? They resemble flickering lamps. They chant, and&#xA;  continuously pronounce leo. They move. Two of them disappear. I try to&#xA;  touch the last one–it disappears too, but appears a little farther&#xA;  from me. I chase it; it goes away. The ground is marshy. Am I walking&#xA;  on a bog? I take another step forward, and feel my feet sink. I try to&#xA;  take off my foot but it’s glued. The bog continues its swallowing&#xA;  process, and I, desperately, give up on my efforts and wait for a&#xA;  consequence.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Whoa whoa whoa whoa, man,” I hear Arthur’s voice. It&#xA;  can’t be. “We’re gonna getcha.”&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It really is he. And there’s Jared here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8765" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T14:07:04.090" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T14:56:10.010" Title="How can I create better suspense in this passage?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|fantasy|suspense|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11007" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-25T15:23:35.793" Score="12" ViewCount="3333" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to visualize the internal structure of my plot. I noticed several contradictions, and want to better understand what's going on in my tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not talking about different characters doing parallel stuff in different places. My plot has one single chronological thread. What I want to visualize are topics, themes, artifacts, that appear and reappear during that plot, are related to and influence each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, my two protagonists argue about something, sometimes leaning to this, sometimes more to another conclusion. When they take up the argument again a few days and pages later (having been together but not discussed the topic), both may have thought about it for themselves and changed their opinions, but at the same time, the other person will not know where they now stand, so that person must continue as if to the last opinion of his partner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm getting a bit confused in my rather convoluted plot, and want to get the continuity straight. Since I'm a visual person and am currently lost in a flood of paper notes and computer files that I cannot view at the same time and therefore can't put in relation to each other with my small working memory, I'd like to somehow draw it all in a timeline-like graph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you recommend? What do you use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you visualize plot structure?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what tools do you use for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="26683" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T15:18:07.560" LastActivityDate="2019-03-13T22:08:26.523" Title="How do you visualize plot structure?" Tags="|plot|structure|software|tools|planning|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11007" CreationDate="2014-05-25T17:34:25.160" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/657/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This XKCD strip&lt;/a&gt; shows a visualization approach for tracking character interactions -- who's with whom when.  It works pretty well even with a complex plot with many characters (one of the examples is &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I haven't tried this myself, in your shoes I would try a similar approach, adding lines for the artifacts and themes you want to track.  When a character &quot;touches&quot; a theme (talks about it, takes action based on it, etc), treat it as that character &quot;meeting&quot; that theme.  Artifacts can be modeled as characters directly using this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for tools, since my goal is information not art, I would use any graphics tool that can model lines and connections (Visio, Open Office's drawing tool, Visual Thought, etc).  Or, lower-tech, consider a whiteboard -- or possibly a corkboard with push pins and string.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T17:34:25.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11007" CreationDate="2014-05-25T18:35:30.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have the ending in mind and backtrace from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The events serve one fundamental purpose: reaching the final resolution. Everything else is secondary, hides or reveals motives, caveats and necessities, introduces complications or resolves them - but there is this one primary thread that inevitably leads to a certain end. An end you should know&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See where you are, see where you want to get, and think of points in time where current themes morph - towards the desired outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm less visually-oriented, I think more in terms of abstract graphs of dependencies, but that doesn't change the essence: think of state of every major character, item, problem, conflict and relation as they are at the end. Possibly draw them out - the rightmost side of the graph Monica linked. Think of them at the current point of your story. Then think of all necessary transitions that will lead to that end. If they seem overly simple, complicate them; add unexpected encounters or wrong, non-intuitive outcomes. Personally, at this point I don't need to draw anything, I just grasp all the necessities and simply write them out. It's a rare case for them to be too simple; more often I need to butcher fragments because they would be too lengthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, work in nodes: given character's opinion morphs from A to B, passing through (...). The morphing occurs when confronted with another character, whose opinion was C, but it's to reach B if they are to come to agreement, so it goes through complimentary transitions. Then think &quot;down&quot; to arguments that would affect the opinion given way, revelations or insights that would affect it, and work down from goals to dialogues that achieve these goals, solidize abstracts into words, put them in writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*) There is another method to write. Start with interesting conflict, interesting characters, and interesting setting, and then iteratively progress each by a step ahead, a bit like playing chess against yourself, both sides of the chessboard taking optimal moves in sequence. You don't know the outcome until it looms at you all by itself, obvious and awesome. Or you reach a stalemate and put your never-finished story aside, that happens too, it's a risk firmly bound with this method. Still, thanks to the writer not knowing what is to come, writing that way is quite attractive - similar to reading a fascinating book, each page giving new revelations - not just filling gaps in, in a story you already know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T18:35:30.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10501" CreationDate="2014-05-25T19:20:28.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a user, you use API for certain purposes. You have certain goals you want to achieve, and the API is a tool that should help you achieve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your problem is, how to achieve these goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of API &quot;hardwareToolbox&quot;, which is a common toolbox in your garage. There's a hammer, there's a set of wrenches, a screwdriver, there's a hacksaw and an electric drill. Each of them are classes that have their methods. You also have nails, screws, screw anchors, etc. (all provided by right Factory objects.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to hang a picture on the wall. You have no clue how to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The right procedure is to drill the hole in the wall, put a screw anchor in, using a hammer, and then screw a screw in. As the user you know you need a screw in the wall, but not much more beyond this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's look at your documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  Class Electric_hammer_drill. Makes holes.&#xA;  @methods: drill, hammer.&#xA;&#xA;  method drill: Makes holes in material that doesn't need hammering&#xA;  @params: tool, depth, direction&#xA;  @return: hole&#xA;&#xA;  method hammer: Makes holes in material that needs hammering&#xA;  @params: tool, depth, direction&#xA;  @return: hole&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;  Class Hammer. Applies kinetic impulse to objects.&#xA;  @methods: hit.&#xA;&#xA;  method hit:  Applies kinetic impulse to object&#xA;  @params: object, strength, location&#xA;&#xA;  Factory Screw_anchor: anchors screw to wall.&#xA;  @params: inner_diameter, outer_diameter, length&#xA;&#xA;  Factory Screw: Binds things together&#xA;  @params: diameter, length.&#xA;&#xA;  Class Screwdriver: Turns screws.&#xA;  @methods turn&#xA;&#xA;  Method turn: Turns screw.&#xA;  @params: direction, rotations, hole, screw.&#xA;&#xA;  ...and about 40 other tools and items you don't need.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you see where I'm going?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The user will deduce: I need a screw in the wall. To move screw I need screwdriver. Screwdriver requires hole. To make hole I need the drill. By a lot of trial and error I discover wall requires hammering, and a masonry bit for a tool to obtain a hole. (or I just drill one with wood bit, cursing the inefficiency of the API.) Then I try to fit the screw and it doesn't hold, and I'm all frustrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need is use patterns. Examples. PURPOSES.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  method drill: Makes holes in material that doesn't need hammering, like wood, metal or plastic. Check table@... for right tool for the material.&#xA;  @params: tool, depth, direction&#xA;  @return: hole&#xA;&#xA;  method hammer: Makes holes in material that needs hammering, specifically concrete. Use masonry bit for a tool.&#xA;  @params: tool, depth, direction&#xA;  @return: hole&#xA;&#xA;  Factory Screw: Binds things together. Requires hole of matching diameter in flexible materials like wood, threaded hole in metal, or a screw anchor of matching inner diameter in concrete.&#xA;  @params: diameter, length.&#xA;&#xA;  Factory Screw_anchor: anchors screw to wall. Requires a hole of outer_diameter in concrete type material. Provides hole of inner_diameter in flexible type material. Should be installed using a hammer. Typical use is allowing installing screws in walls.&#xA;  @params: inner_diameter, outer_diameter, length&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basing on such a documentation the user should be able to deduce the correct procedure for installing the screw for the picture frame. It contains purposes, actual practical requisites (as opposed to formal), hints on how to use given tools, when to use them, and if they have specific requisites in specific situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even better is to provide rich examples, but these are to appear outside the direct function documentation. Nevertheless, besides writing &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; a function does, write its &lt;strong&gt;what for&lt;/strong&gt; (purpose - why'd you ever need that result), &lt;strong&gt;actual requisites&lt;/strong&gt; (not just a list of params it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; take, but params it absolutely &lt;em&gt;needs&lt;/em&gt;, typical &lt;strong&gt;usage patterns&lt;/strong&gt; (hammer concrete, drill all the rest, a screw anchor needs to be driven by a hammer) and &lt;strong&gt;caveats&lt;/strong&gt; (screw won't hold in raw concrete, needs screw anchor.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just telling &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; a function does is not helpful if I never know &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it does it, and &lt;em&gt;how to get it to do it right&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T19:20:28.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11013" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-26T05:55:26.797" Score="6" ViewCount="1648" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that I find helpful when trying to create a character is some sort of grid stereotypes. For example, Dungeons &amp;amp; Dragons (before they broke it in 4e, but that's another story) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_%28Dungeons_&amp;amp;_Dragons%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;has a 3x3 grid of Good vs. Evil and Lawful vs. Chaotic&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;+----------------+--------------+-----------------+&#xA;| Lawful Good    | Neutral Good | Chaotic Good    |&#xA;+----------------+--------------+-----------------+&#xA;| Lawful Neutral | Neutral      | Chaotic Neutral |&#xA;+----------------+--------------+-----------------+&#xA;| Lawful Evil    | Neutral Evil | Chaotic Evil    |&#xA;+----------------+--------------+-----------------+&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A system like that helps me to know the general vibe of the character and other characters to liken them to (e.g., &quot;Chaotic Good&quot; includes characters like Robin Hood but also 1984's Winston), although of course it's quite limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder - are there other easy grids like that which allow me to differentiate between different stereotypes and opposite character traits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastEditorUserId="68" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T08:40:02.047" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T22:03:18.617" Title="Are there more character alignment grids (like D&amp;D)" Tags="|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11013" CreationDate="2014-05-26T06:39:15.010" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at different &lt;strong&gt;psychological theories of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_type&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;personality types&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the beginnings of time, scholars have attempted to categorize human character (as well as body type, race, and so on). Most such theories have been shown to bear no relation to reality, but for character building they are as good or better as the morality based D&amp;amp;D system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The currently most widely used and accepted &lt;strong&gt;general system of measuring personality dimensions&lt;/strong&gt; is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Five Factor Model of personality traits&lt;/a&gt;, also called the &quot;Big 5&quot;. There are many, many different systems, most developed for a specific purpose (such as selecting suitable applicants for a certain job), so it would depend on your story which would be most appropriate for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a &lt;strong&gt;fantasy world building&lt;/strong&gt; game, that focusses on crafts (woodworker, hunter, scholar, warrior etc.), &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_Codes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Holland's occupational themes&lt;/a&gt; (often abbreviated to RIASEC and used in many career choice tests) might be useful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your story deals with &lt;strong&gt;political intrigue and warfare&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dark triad of leadership personality types&lt;/a&gt; might make sense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a &lt;strong&gt;romantic story&lt;/strong&gt; dealing with relationships and interpersonal interaction, the a variant of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_circumplex&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Interpersonal Circumplex&lt;/a&gt; will help you understand the relevant aspects of your persons character.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. There are just too many systems to list, much less explain them all, here, but if you are interested in psychology and want to take the time, you can certainly find one or merge several and create your own. Just follow the in-text links and articles listed under &quot;See also&quot; in the Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_type&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;personality types&lt;/a&gt;, to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one character building software for writers, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.characterwriter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Character Writer&lt;/a&gt;, that has incorporated the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagram_of_Personality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Enneagram&lt;/a&gt;. Another software, &lt;a href=&quot;https://marinersoftware.com/products/persona/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Persona&lt;/a&gt;, uses its own system. See my own question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8938/software-for-developing-and-organizing-characters&quot;&gt;Software for developing and organizing characters&lt;/a&gt;. I find those software systems limiting and unflexible, though, and would rather use a different theory of my own choice for each kind of story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T07:56:28.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11015" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11018" CreationDate="2014-05-26T20:54:09.583" Score="6" ViewCount="2111" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the correct dash usage when naming a title?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an essay with the title:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The success factors for successful e-commerce - A Linux-based e-commerce platform from an economic perspective&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the correct dash usage between e-commerce &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; A Linux...?&#xA;And should there be a space between e and A?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8733" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T17:57:43.590" LastActivityDate="2021-01-11T09:02:18.157" Title="Hyphen or en-dash" Tags="|style|editing|punctuation|titles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11006" CreationDate="2014-05-26T22:34:59.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his book Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer (by Roy Peter Clark).&#xA;He mentions a couple of ways that you can add suspense and tension:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By delaying the main subject and verb&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before the prayer warriors massed outside her window, before gavels&#xA;  pounded in six courts, before the Vatican issues a statement, before&#xA;  the president signed a midnight law and the Supreme Court turned its&#xA;  head, Terri Schiavo was just an ordinary girl, with two overweight&#xA;  cats, an unglamorous job and a typical American life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His other strategy is use of internal cliffhangers, his examples from Dan Brown's work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before Sophie and Teabing could respond, a sea of blue police lights&#xA;  and sirens erupted at the bottom of the hill and began snaking up the&#xA;  half-mile driveway&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As he fell, he thought for a moment he saw a pale ghost hovering over&#xA;  him, clutching a gun. Then everything went black.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite a handy book, though for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://reflectionsinapuddle.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/in-books-writing-tools-50-essential-strategies-for-every-writer-by-roy-peter-clark/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cliffnotes&lt;/a&gt; you can check this site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5024" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T22:34:59.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11017" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11019" CreationDate="2014-05-26T22:42:24.577" Score="1" ViewCount="930" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that you should have &lt;code&gt;a new paragraph for a new speaker&lt;/code&gt; however what should the indentation be with subsequent speakers like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have this case in my writing, each is currently indented but as they're all indented (rather than alternating) I'm not sure it's clear enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Come on,&amp;quot; Aki said, striding off into the dim light, &amp;quot;It's not far, a few minutes’ walk.&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remy caught up quickly and fell in step beside him, &amp;quot;You've been there before?&amp;quot; he asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Okaasan snuck me in a few times...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5024" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T23:11:57.087" Title="How should you format short speech by consecutive speakers?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11015" CreationDate="2014-05-26T23:10:47.287" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neither; it should be an em-dash or a colon. A hyphen is used to connect a compound (&lt;em&gt;a must-read book, Linux-based&lt;/em&gt;) and an en-dash connects a range of numbers (&lt;em&gt;1966–69&lt;/em&gt;). I prefer the colon if you must have a subtitle. If you use the em-dash, I prefer spaces around it, but that's up to the house style of where you're publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, titles should be in title case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Success Factors for Successful E-Commerce: A Linux-Based E-Commerce Platform from an Economic Perspective&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Success Factors for Successful E-Commerce &amp;mdash; A Linux-Based E-Commerce Platform from an Economic Perspective&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand your second question, as there is nowhere in the title where &lt;em&gt;e&lt;/em&gt; is next to &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T23:10:47.287" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11017" CreationDate="2014-05-26T23:11:57.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way you have it is fine. It's clear that each paragraph is a different speaker, even if the dialogue doesn't begin the paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to browse other questions here under the &lt;code&gt;dialogue&lt;/code&gt; tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T23:11:57.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11024" CreationDate="2014-05-27T09:05:55.883" Score="7" ViewCount="8927" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could anybody, please, enlighten me as to what &quot;off&quot; means in the following excerpts taken from the script for the TV show &quot;Breaking Bad&quot;? (I've also come across the same use of &quot;off&quot; in other scripts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Our two scary Cousins glare at Heisenberg. Off them, wrathful and&#xA;  unblinking, their lips moving in silent prayer... and us thinking ”Oh&#xA;  shit. THIS can’t be good...”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He stands chest-high, frantically splashing water at the last few&#xA;  lumps of cash still BURNING poolside. Off our hero...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PAMELA Alright. I usually open with “So sorry you’re here...” (off&#xA;  Sky’s sad smile) Where would you like to begin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PAMELA And it’s not an apartment, it’s a house that you live in? (off&#xA;  Skyler’s nod) Do you own outright, or is there a mortgage, or do you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SKYLER Okay. I will think about that. **Off the two of them shaking&#xA;  hand**s -- friendly, but strained&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Off Walt, staring at him... then lowering his head in assent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Off her, frustrated and grieving and not allowed by circumstance to&#xA;  even explain herself to her son...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The two slices are carefully mated. Off come the crusts, sliced with a&#xA;  sharp knife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Off come their Canali suits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Off these strange events...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MARIE He must have! Why not just say it?! -- Off Marie, left stewing&#xA;  now&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Off Jesse, maybe just now beginning to see the light...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8776" LastEditorUserId="5909" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T09:17:32.803" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T14:27:10.957" Title="What does &quot;OFF&quot; mean in a script?" Tags="|screenwriting|script|dramatic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11022" CreationDate="2014-05-27T09:16:52.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a screenplay, &quot;Off&quot; is an abbreviation for &quot;off-screen&quot; or &quot;off-stage&quot; or &quot;off-camera&quot;. Thus, whatever actions are happening, are happening off camera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look here for basics on the terms used while writing a screenplay/stageplay/etc.: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.screenwriting.info/glossary.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.screenwriting.info/glossary.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T09:16:52.063" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11022" CreationDate="2014-05-27T09:55:12.187" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the context you've provided, &lt;code&gt;OFF Marie, left stewing now&lt;/code&gt; means &quot;this is the last thing the camera sees before it moves &lt;em&gt;off&lt;/em&gt; her to the next shot.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are framing directions to the camera person. Look at the parentheticals: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PAMELA And it’s not an apartment, it’s a house that you live in? &lt;code&gt;(off Skyler’s nod)&lt;/code&gt; Do you own outright, or is there a mortgage, or do you...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means that while Pamela is speaking, the camera either cuts to Skyler so the audience can see her nodding or the camera has been focusing on Skyler while Pamela is speaking out of the frame and then cuts (back) to Pamela with Skyler's nod.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T14:27:10.957" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T14:27:10.957" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10810" CreationDate="2014-05-27T11:11:11.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the screenplay to the movie &lt;em&gt;The Sixth Sense&lt;/em&gt;. I do not know if it strictly follows all the guidelines but I have seen this being used as a reference at quite a few places (a screenplay writing competition had provided a sample of this to be used as an example...can't find the link to it anymore!). So it &lt;strong&gt;might&lt;/strong&gt; be what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The screenplay can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lexwilliford.com/Workshops/Screenwriting/Scripts/Adobe%20Acrobat%20Scripts/Sixth%20Sense.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.screenplaydb.com/film/all/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; has a bunch of screenplays/scripts of movies. It might be of good use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T11:11:11.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11006" CreationDate="2014-05-27T14:56:10.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't always recommend these guys because sometimes they have tips I don't think are great, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/6-secrets-to-creating-and-sustaining-suspense&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writer's Digest&lt;/a&gt; has a pretty good article on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing I think you need to do is connect us more to the main character (basically the first point in the Writer's Digest article). The main character seems really rushed. I tried to remember the main character's name without looking... and I don't think I ever learned it. Well, going back I noted that he crawls towards a door that &quot;obviously has his name on it&quot; but we were never told &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; his name was. Leo was the door. Is the character's name Lionel? Leon? Is he just named Leo? Who &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; he? Why do I care about him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main character says and does a lot of things that I don't particularly understand, but it isn't done in a suspenseful way, per se. Rather, it seems more haphazard than suspenseful. There's a lot of jumping and &quot;mysterious&quot; things happening with no actual substance. For example, something like this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stars… I look at them, dream of them… They are so close, and yet, so far… They sparkle like tiny fireflies on the dark canvas of the bluish sky. The horns of the half-moon have newly vanished out of sight from the horizon, leaving behind them tenebrous ash. It seems the moon is looking at me with its silver-shining beam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...sounds romantic and intriguing. Following this with these lines...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I suddenly remember my great-grandfather’s old telescope of which my mother told me about an epoch ago (I might be exaggerating). His death was very enigmatic. Nobody knew how he disappeared. Nobody saw his cadaver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...ruins that mood. It's so quick and sudden, it's just jarring. I'm not sure if the main character is a dreamer or just someone who likes stars and the sudden &quot;my great-grandfather owned a telescope and died mysteriously&quot; change of pace doesn't draw me in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In exchange, keeping the romantic mood but still being able to talk about the great-grandfather and the mystery surrounding him would be easier to digest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, in some places you seem to be rushing to create mysteries without giving us purpose to care, then quickly drop the topic and move to something else. Here is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don’t think she doesn’t know. I am going to find that telescope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am very bored. And I don’t have one of those fancy PlayStation thingies to entertain me with. So I decide to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one sentence, we're talking about a telescope, which was the focus (mostly) of everything that came before it. And then in the next sentence, all of a sudden, for no reason, the character is bored and wants to start writing. Just as quickly, you wheel around to another thing the character is doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I throw the pen aside. I look at the blank paper in front of me. I can’t write. Not now. I stare at the starry sky through the window. The moon is beaming down at me, gleaming beautifully among the stars. I let my mind drift away. When will this end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I open the door. I hear hurried steps coming toward me. It’s Mum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do have questions, lots of them, but I'm not in suspense. There's no actual tension in any of the scenes here at all. My questions are like &quot;When will what end? Nothing seems to be happening. Is the character tired of monotony? It seems like he is pretty monotonous himself, so why does it matter to him? Is the monotony strange for his world?&quot; The second point in the Writer's Digest article is helpful here-- When a reader says &lt;em&gt;nothing is happening*&lt;/em&gt; it doesn't mean there is no action but rather that no promises are being made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I am writing something with a lot of horror and gore aspects to it so I kind of get the idea of trying to write suspense with a lot of action in it, but the slow, empty periods where it seems nothing is happening is where suspense is built. If you carefully lay the foundation for the action ahead, you build tension and tension is the essence of suspense. The best way to do that is to make &quot;promises&quot;, which more or less is you telling the reader, &quot;Something terrible here/because of this will happen for sure if you read on&quot;. For example, the character goes to a school basement. He calls it &quot;mysterious&quot; but to the reader, there is nothing mysterious about it. We don't know anything about the school basement at all, so it's hard for us to think &quot;Oh, this is a place where something might happen&quot;. But if you build it up to be mysterious or strange and &lt;strong&gt;then&lt;/strong&gt; the character is dragged into the basement, you pretty much have made it clear that &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; will happen down there. You've made the readers begin to worry about the main character. Instead of constantly throwing the characters into scenes where they are in immediate danger, let the readers acclimate, even if the process is agonizingly slow, to the atmosphere of your character's world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last pointer I would give you is that you need to make sure that you're using all the time you can. What I mean is, there are times when you actually do need to speed up your story, but sometimes it isn't necessary. This...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today’s a good day because Mum and Dad are invited to the neighbour’s wedding ceremony. I nagged to stay home. This was the perfect chance to find the telescope. But Jared and Arthur call me and tell me that they’d be glad to accompany me to the school’s mysterious basement, where I was yesterday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...was unnecessary. Firstly, it would have been helpful to know why finding the telescope was at all important. But for whatever reason, the main character is also interested in the school basement-- why? There's no reason for him to be interested in it, but he is. What's the purpose? What got him interested in it? Why do I care about the basement? Secondly, a full day passed and I know nothing about it. The neighbor's wedding came flying out of nowhere-- you'd think the character or their parents might've brought it up earlier. Who are Jared and Arthur-- why do we care about them? There was a whole day to give these loose ends some meaning, but instead of using that time, you jumped forward to the action. These people and these events and all of the things you're talking about are necessary things for a reader to know. To jump from &quot;I went into the school basement and it was weird&quot; to &quot;A day passed and I went into the school basement and it was weird&quot; diffuses tension so it's not suspenseful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use your time wisely. Spend the time you have laying the foundation to create truly suspenseful moments. Action alone is not suspenseful. A tense moment between characters or an overwhelmingly heavy atmosphere will make your story more suspenseful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T14:56:10.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10938" CreationDate="2014-05-27T19:02:12.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to consider the medium you should use when telling a story because each method has a unique advantage overs its counterparts. For instance, stories that are mostly about a character's interior evolution are best suited to novels because the written word lends itself to investigating a character's innermost thoughts. Films are able to provoke mood through the use of sound and imagery, lending itself to stories that are driven by the senses or by actions rather than a character's thoughts. In fact, films tend to fall flat when they attempt to include characters' thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approaching your book like it's a movie may mean you'll miss out on the advantages of &lt;em&gt;writing a book&lt;/em&gt;. Instead, you may focus on the elements that are ill-suited to novels, but are great for films. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Storyboarding scenes from a novel may be a good idea if you're writing a story that contains a lot of action or heavily relies on the characters' environments because you can then create a visual reference that includes characters' positions and movements. No more teleporting characters in the middle of scenes. Writing a script before diving into prose may be a good idea if you have difficulty getting through the first draft because it will give a layered approach to writing. Instead of struggling with all elements of prose at once, you tackle each piece one at a time, giving your story multiple passes to make it rich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, your process is personal, so whether or not others think it's a good idea, you should try it and see how it feels. Writing (and drawing) your story in another format may not be the most efficient way to write a story intended to be a novel, but if doing that gives you better insight into your story then your process isn't wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8197" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T19:02:12.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12290" CreationDate="2014-05-27T21:48:28.193" Score="1" ViewCount="281" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some years ago, I wrote &quot;alternative lyrics to the song, &quot;Laura.&quot; It basically diverged from the original except for the third and fourth lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Original lyrics)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A laugh, that floats on a summer night, &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  That I could never quite recall. &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My version)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She sent my heart into reckless flight.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Which I could never quite re-call. &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the &quot;key word&quot; in both fourth lines is recall/ re-call. (The rest is &quot;filler.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that in the original version, &quot;recall,&quot; means to &quot;remember&quot; or &quot;recollect.&quot; In my version, &quot;re-call,&quot; (with the hyphen) is meant to mean &quot;to call back.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have long wondered, if I wrote a similar passage intending a rather different meaning for the key word, does this constitute plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T23:01:18.100" Title="Is it plagiarism if you use the same, or similar expression with different meanings or contexts?" Tags="|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11013" CreationDate="2014-05-27T22:03:18.617" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Magic: the Gathering&lt;/strong&gt; has built its entire platform around the five colors of magic, and each one of them has a very distinct set of characteristics that tell you what color or colors you are. The &quot;Guru&quot; of the &quot;Color Pie&quot; is Mark Rosewater, currently the Lead Designer of &lt;strong&gt;Magic&lt;/strong&gt;, and is often asked on his blog to elaborate on the color identity of various fictional and real figures (usually comic book characters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a brief rundown (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Color_Pie&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MTG Salvation&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;White &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;White puts value in the group, the community, and its civilization as a whole. White's ultimate goal is peace, harmony, and perfection — a world where everyone gets along and no one seeks to disturb the bonds of unity that White had worked so long to forge. To govern and protect its community, White makes use of and puts value in a number of broad concepts; morality (ethics, grace, truth), order (law, discipline, duty), uniformity (conformity, religion), and structure (government, planning, reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blue&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blue is the color that looks on the world and sees opportunity. For Blue, life is a chance to contemplate oneself, and what is possible, and to bring about the best of both. Blue reasons that if it is to make itself better, it must become capable of everything it could be capable of, for that is to &quot;merely add&quot; to its own capabilities. Blue believes it can't possibly be bad to acquire the potential for any conscious action. Blue decides that it must understand everything; for truly, understanding can only improve one's effectiveness in any task. Since knowledge itself will inform every other decision, Blue forms its principle goal: omniscience, the knowledge of all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Black&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Black is the color of self-indulgence, parasitism, amorality and unfettered desire for power. It believes that the world is made for its taking and that the weak exist to be exploited by the strong. The essence of Black is to see one's own ego&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Color_Pie&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; as so supremely invaluable, that the prospect of enslavement, of subordinating that ego to another, is utterly inadmissible. So, to be in accord with its perceptions and beliefs, Black simply must discard all obligations but to acquire power for itself. It can be no less than the one supreme being who is subordinate to no other, the possessor of all power in the universe - it must become omnipotent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Above all else, red values freedom of expression. It wants to do what it wants, when it wants, to whom it wants, and nobody can tell it otherwise. It believes that life would be much more fun if everyone stopped caring about rules, laws and personal appearances and just spent their time indulging their desires. This leads into red's other core value: chaos. Red sees order of any kind as pointlessly inhibiting, believing that only through embracing anarchy could everyone really be free to enjoy life to the fullest. Finally, red is the color of immediate action and immediate gratification. If it wants something it will act on its impulses and take it, regardless of the consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Green&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Green is the color of nature, growth, interdependence and instinct. It believes that obedience the natural order alone is the best way to exist and thus favors a simplistic way of living in harmony with the rest of the world. This can often lead to it be perceived as a pacifistic color, as it does not seek to make conflict with the other colors as long as they leave it alone and do not disrespect nature. However, it is fierce when it feels threatened and can be predatory and aggressive if its instincts dictate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this isn't exactly a matrix, it's a wheel. And a wheel is really 1 dimensional (if you think about it, it all travels in 1 direction - the spokes aren't really used except to keep the track from collapsing on itself...) This wheel has what are known as &quot;allied&quot; and &quot;enemy&quot; colors. In the order listed, White - Blue - Black - Red - Green - White (with white being repeated because it's a wheel, that goes around... the pattern repeats forever) The two colors that surround a given color are considered allied colors. So Black is considered allies with Blue and Red, and enemies with Green and White. And indeed, the enemy philosophies are often considered conflicting. &lt;strong&gt;This is very close to what you're looking for in terms of a &quot;opposite character trait&quot; matrix&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a person is not always simply Black or White (or Blue or Red or Green!) Here's a couple examples that might help you flesh out how to slot people on the color pie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tony Stark (Ironman) - One of the world's greatest inventors, cares deeply about the advancement of science. Clearly Blue. (Note: he's Blue because he CARES, not because HE'S SMART.) But, he has no problem demolishing cities with collateral damage to achieve his goals. This chaotic streak labels him Red as well. Early renditions of him might be considered Black, as he can be considered quite selfish, but this appears to be disappearing over time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oliver Queen (The Green Arrow) - Early Oliver could easily be considered Black Green. He is incredibly raw and rugged (even though his Billionaire-playboy alter ego was pretty Red, this changed when he became a superhero and is mostly just for show to divert attention from his true self.) He's also willing to go to just about any extreme to extinguish his enemies and has no concept of mercy. After the death of his friend, he reaches a new sense of honor and enlightenment and decides to actively abolish his Black past and transitions to a more merciful White course of action.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bruce Wayne (Batman) - Bruce himself is a very Blue White person. His curious nature as a tinkerer and inventor and pushing the limits of technology solidifies himself as Blue (much like Stark), but his motivations are simply to save a widely troubled Gotham City. He wants to eliminate crime and establish order, which is a purly White motivation. However, his persona as Batman appears Black. While he really isn't into slaughtering people (which would eliminate crime, but that's not how he wants to do it) he still instills fear in those criminals. So while he wouldn't actually slaughter them in cold blood, he certainly has no problems making them THINK he would, and using this fear to his advantage. This isn't exactly a Black trait, but it is borderline, and certainly could be characterized as Faux Black.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There exists a world in the &lt;strong&gt;Magic&lt;/strong&gt; universe called Ravnica that has ten guilds, one for each color pair, that also help to characterize one facet of that pair. (This isn't to say that a guild comprises all the characteristic-economy of that color pair, only to serve as one good example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Boros Legion - (Red/White) - A worldwide military/police agency, they keep order, using force where necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Golgari Swarm - (Green/Black) - A sect emphasizing that death is an essential part of life, and that death and plague fosters regrowth and endurance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Selensya Conclave (White/Green) - Zealous defenders of keeping life in balance, they hold true to the axiom that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;House Dimir (Blue/Black) - A network of assassins and spies, most common folk don't believe it even exists. &quot;There are nine guilds&quot; was a popular meme for some time (especially considering the other 9 guilds can be mapped to the 3x3 DnD alignment matrix).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Orzhov Syndicate (Black/white) - Religion in the front, mafia in the back, these extortionists control most of the spiritual and economic goings-on of the entire planet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Izzet League (Blue/Red) - While their inventions keep the Ravnican technosphere afloat, they are more like mad scientists who have caused more than one fatal explosion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Gruul Clans (Red/Green) - Not so much a guild anymore due to their savage nature, these clansman represent those who live outside the comforts of the world-spanning city that is Ravnica.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Azorius Senate (Blue/White) - The lawmakers of Ravnica, they protect the status quo at all costs. Their Blue comes from their pursuit of knowledge, which is immensely useful in politics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Cult of Rakdos (Red/Black) - Just your every-day ritualistic-torturing, demon worshipping, murderous cult. Death isn't the objective, it's merely the end of the road of their true goal, torture and pain. I recommend politely declining party invites.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Simic Combine (Green/Blue) - Originally, the Simic wanted to protect the ever-shrinking natural population as the world-spanning city took over mile after mile of land. As resources dwindle, they must get more creative to keep their quarry alive, to the extent that the creatures they once wished to protect now bear little resemblance to the current population.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's plenty of further reading on the matter, with Mark himself writing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/features.aspx?tag=color%20pie&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;22 articles so far&lt;/a&gt; on the matter in his weekly &lt;strong&gt;Magic&lt;/strong&gt; column. It isn't perfect, but in writing especially, you can generally take any group of 5 characters and say which one is the Green one, the Blue one, the Red one, the Black one, and the White one. It's something that tends to happen naturally even without knowing the color pie. This just puts a little science behind that natural phenomenon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1691" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T22:03:18.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11031" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-28T04:30:11.417" Score="6" ViewCount="1249" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of genre, at what point does sex stop becoming art and become the erotic blubbering of a perverse mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ever since middleschool my writing has had a sensual twist, and it has become more detailed with age and ... experience. But now I am concerned that the story line might start to get lost, if i continue focusing on sex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much is too much? Where does sex stop being entertaining and begin to be a distraction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8781" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T08:34:55.467" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T13:25:29.403" Title="Sex: How much is too much?" Tags="|creative-writing|sex|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11031" CreationDate="2014-05-28T08:32:29.173" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a question of personal taste and genre that does not have a definite answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously there are books in which sex happens but that don't tell of the sex itself, leaving it to the reader to infer it all from hints. And there are books that describe the taste and smell of body fluids in so much detail that what you eat while you read begins to taste of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a continuum from showing nothing to overwhelming the reader (or at least attempting to), not only in sex, but in violence, death, emotions, and everything else that humans do, think and feel. There is no right or wrong when it comes to content, only the laws of your country and the taste of the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the story you want to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the real question is: Is your story about sex, or are you allowing yourself to get sidetracked from the real plot into arousing yourself by indulging in sexual fantasies? Are you daydreaming, or are you writing? Because writing is not just the process of putting words on paper, but the craft of forming a coherent narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your sex scenes are like a cancer growing on the side of the story, disfiguring it, growing over it, overtaking it, then the sex is too much. If your sex enhances the story, drives the plot forward, brings the characters to life, then it is just right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you tell?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observe yourself. Do you enjoy indulging those fantasies? Or do you plan them to further your plot? I'm sure you can tell, if you take note of how you approach those sex scenes and how they affect you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside of the romance genre, my approach would be to delete all the sex and see how little of it my story can endure to still work. I would then leave it like that: no more sex than is absolutely necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sex is like any other basic behavior: I don't let my characters munch on something to eat all the time, just because I'm hungry while I write. I mention food, defecation, personal hygiene and sex, only if those common behaviors are necessary for the plot. If they are not, I let readers assume that my protagonists perform them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean that I don't relax from my real writing with an hour or two of having my protagonists f**k like mad, every now and then. I just delete it from the manuscript later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing erotic stories, there is no too much. Or maybe there is? Porn without plot soon becomes stale. The most erotic stories I read didn't have a lot of actual sex in them, but they were sizzling hot because of how the characters got to the point where they had sex. Again, it seems, plot is king. Everything else needs to serve the plot, even in romance and porn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-05-28T13:25:29.403" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T13:25:29.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8938" CreationDate="2014-05-28T10:34:56.923" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As requested, here is a little more insight into &lt;a href=&quot;https://charahub.com/refer/ev6l&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Charahub.com&lt;/a&gt;. It's a website intended for writers and artists to store and/or share their characters in a central location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d162/zellithe/se_chub_01.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot of Charahub&amp;#39;s user profile&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Free accounts have a limit of a hundred characters upon signing up. Additional characters may be earned through referral. You can divide characters into user-created groups. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d162/zellithe/se_chub_05.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot of Charahub&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d162/zellithe/se_chub_02.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot of Charahub&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The profile and question sections have set questions that you can fill out. I believe user-created questions is in development right now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d162/zellithe/se_chub_03.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot of Charahub&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You expressed some concern over privacy. Charahub sets your character profiles as public by default, but it's easy to change. I tested this specific feature by searching for my characters. I can confirm that it worked as expected. Once set to hidden or private your character profiles are no longer searchable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d162/zellithe/se_chub_04.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot of Charahub&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Free accounts are able to upload ten images per character, each image with a max image size of 500KB&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d162/zellithe/se_chub_06.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot of Charahub&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d162/zellithe/se_chub_07.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot of Charahub&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The panel called 'Links' is a flexible way to create relationships between your characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The features you were looking for that are not in Charahub are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to create new questions and/or categories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to add videos and/or text files directly into the document. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any function that relates to third-party writing software, such as Scrivener. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limitless character creation, the maximum for free accounts is a hundred characters. For gold accounts ($3/mo) you get 250 characters, 25 images/character with max image size of 1024KB, no adverts, and priority support. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, this website is in its infancy, so it's not a known quantity. If it works for you, excellent, but definitely take precautions. Back up your work to an offline location. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8197" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:45.360" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T10:34:56.923" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11045" CreationDate="2014-05-28T18:38:28.417" Score="5" ViewCount="1544" Body="&lt;p&gt;People throw around reading levels when it comes to writing: &quot;5th grade level,&quot; &quot;10th grade level,&quot; &quot;college level,&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What concrete steps do you take to write for a specific reading level?  Is there software to help with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8665" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T03:09:36.970" Title="What concrete steps do you take to write for a specific reading level?" Tags="|fiction|non-fiction|essay|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11040" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11041" CreationDate="2014-05-29T12:34:38.303" Score="0" ViewCount="340" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished the first draft of my novel. From my &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10949/3-short-stories-that-can-be-turned-into-a-novel-should-i-pick-the-one-with-best&quot;&gt;previous&lt;/a&gt; question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sushi Break&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A story about a girl who travels 3 hours every weekend to see her&#xA;  boyfriend (the boyfriend is doing an internship and doesn't have time&#xA;  visit her). Things are OK for a moment, but after some days the&#xA;  boyfriend starts cancelling the meetings at the last minute (usually&#xA;  with some lame excuse). However, the girl keeps traveling to the city&#xA;  to eat in a sushi place she fell in love with. In this place, she&#xA;  meets all kind of strange but friendly characters who help her reflect&#xA;  on her relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is an outline a made to remember what the chapters are about (the flashbacks are those with a summary):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OPENING&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TELL ABOUT INTERNSHIP (Boyfriend tells protagonist about the internship)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FIRST EXCUSE (The first time the boyfriend stands up the protagonist)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MEET AI-LING&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SPY WITH AI-LING&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MEET DE-SHI (How the protagonist met her boyfriend)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AI-LING GONE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MEET A-KEN&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AT ROXY 99&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FRIENDS COME&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TOILET CALL&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;KUO ALONE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FIRST KISS (Protagonist and boyfriend first kiss) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AT KUO’S HOUSE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MEET AI-LING AGAIN&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TAMSUI NIGHT MARKET&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AI-LING DATE SHOWS UP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LANTERN FESTIVAL&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LANTERN FESTIVAL FLASHBACK (Protagonist and boyfriend first holiday)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;STUDENT PROTEST 2014&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MISCARRIAGE 1 (Flashback about the protagonist's miscarriage)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MISCARRIAGE 2 (Flashback about the protagonist's miscarriage continued)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BUS STOPS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DECLINE RELATIONSHIP (The first time the protagonist notices a decline in the relationship)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BUS ACCIDENT 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BUS ACCIDENT 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WITH A-KEN AT THE HOSPITAL&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ENDING&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see the flashbacks are ordered chronologically (but not all of them) and are composed of whole chapters (sometimes two). Most have smooth transitions (e.g. X reminded me of the time...[next chapter]). But some just show up randomly in the next chapter (I did this to break the pattern and add variety).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if this will confuse or annoy the reader? (the way flashbacks are sorted and the fact that they occupy whole chapters)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T13:15:59.927" Title="Flashbacks as chapters ordered (almost) chronologically" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|flashback|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11040" CreationDate="2014-05-29T13:15:59.927" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, there must be two rules with flashbacks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 They must be ordered in the sequence that they slowly unfold the truth, and only when the last flashback is told, can the reader resolve the whole mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 They must not hold back information in an artificial manner. For example the present story might remind the character of something and he thinks of it, but the author withholds that info from the reader. That's cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both rules partly contradict each other, because if you hold back the main truth until the end, while the protagonist knows it, you are of course cheating. So while the protagonist always know everything about his past, you have to let the understanding of that past, and the order in which he considers it, slowly develop in accordance with your plot and the understanding of the readers. All three must be in tune.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How the order of the flashbacks relates to their chronological ordering is irrelevant. It must relate to the development of your plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also does not matter if there are two or more chapters of flashback in a row. I HATE books that have one chapter from the boy's perspective, then one from the girl's perspective, then the boy again, girl again, and so on, keeping it equal just for the sake of equality. If the plot demands that, then its fine, but if you find that you create dummy chapters just to because now it's the boy's turn again, then that's not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, again, just let the plot dictate the ordering of whatever you need to tell. If it makes sense on the plot level, readers will follow you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T13:15:59.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11035" CreationDate="2014-05-29T14:38:17.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read books&lt;/strong&gt; published for that age range / reading level. This gives me a general feel for themes, characters, plot compexity etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find definitions&lt;/strong&gt; of those levels. Often publishers explain how they define the reading levels on their website for parents (who buy the books) to understand where their own child ranges. (Children's reading level varies greatly at the same age!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understand children and their development&lt;/strong&gt; by observing the children I have or know and at books on developmental psychology to understand what children learn at what age: which letters can they read (if you write texts for first readers)? what vocabulary do they know? how do they look at and understand the world? etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing Young Adult, so I read a lot of YA fiction, read around for what publishers, readers, and critics say YA is (and how it relates to Middle Grade or New Adult or adult genre fiction), and read books on adolescence, visit forums frequented by adolescent users, try to remember my own experiences at that age, and observe those youths I have access to (e.g. in the bus, in courses I give etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T14:38:17.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10750" CreationDate="2014-05-29T18:17:06.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Italics are used to emphasize words in general writing, but in technical writing you may have to use them for other forms of distinctive treatment. For that reason, I do not use italics (or bold) for emphasis. Generally, I use bold to highlight terms that I think the reader won't know. I only use italics when my style guide calls for them. I generally ignore Chicago, MLA, and so forth for rules regarding distinctive treatment, unless my own style guide doesn't say anything. Even then, I discuss the style rules I use with the other people on my team before I put them into force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that concise, clear, and consistent documentation is our goal. Correct style is subservient to that goal. Other technical writers may question your choice, but readers won't be conscious of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T18:17:06.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8185" CreationDate="2014-05-29T18:26:04.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My previous company faced this issue in many situations. They handled it in several ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The company registered a domain name, so that we could use it as an example domain in URLs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For names, we used characters from famous works of fiction. My favorite was Elizabeth Bennett. I also used famous authors, like Emily Dickinson.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For addresses, I used the street address of public buildings. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC is always a good one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you preface a telephone number with 800-555, you can't go wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything else is up to you. I don't think that you have to be depressingly serious with this type of data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T18:26:04.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11035" CreationDate="2014-05-29T19:27:26.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Readability Formula &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 1: Calculate the average number of words used per sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 2: Calculate the average number of syllables per word. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 3: Multiply the average number of words by 0.39 and add it to the average number of syllables per word multiplied by 11.8. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 4: Subtract 15.59 from the result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific mathematical formula is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FKRA = (0.39 x ASL) + (11.8 x ASW) - 15.59 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FKRA = Flesch-Kincaid Reading Age &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ASL = Average Sentence Length (i.e., the number of words divided by the number of sentences) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ASW = Average number of Syllable per Word (i.e., the number of syllables divided by the number of words) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analyzing the results is a simple exercise. For instance, a score of 5.0 indicates a grade-school level; i.e., a score of 9.3 means that a ninth grader would be able to read the document. This score makes it easier for teachers, parents, librarians, and others to judge the readability level of various books and texts for the students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theoretically, the lowest grade level score could be -3.4, but since there are no real passages that have every sentence consisting of a one-syllable word, it is a highly improbable result in practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second suggestion would be to find an app to analyze your writing level, please see:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sarahktyler.com/code/sample.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sarahktyler.com/code/sample.php&lt;/a&gt;.  There are many more apps available and it certainly depends upon who you are writing for and about.  Workplace indicates a 10th year grade level is the best for technical writing.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another tool for analysis is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/writing-reader-friendly-check-8-readability-testing-web-tools/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/writing-reader-friendly-check-8-readability-testing-web-tools/&lt;/a&gt;  You should know your audience and read a few documents that are in the document libraries, although styles may change over the years due to the natural writing style of authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8789" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T19:27:26.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2014-05-29T20:28:43.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might sound very Silly, but the best thing you can do is to use the notepad with a different font, so that you like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formatting will be a big waste of time, and using conventional MS Word or others different than the usual notepad won't allow you to use version control .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best control version is through TXT files!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After finishing your story, edited, corrected, applied version control. Then you can use latex, Word, Libre Office, whatever you need to create a great formatting, or simply deal with the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, the most important thing is the content, not the format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you are worried about the format, you can do it with latex in a very easy way, just check this templates&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/books&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/books&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8790" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T20:28:43.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2014-05-29T21:44:36.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;h1&gt;No.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write &lt;em&gt;books&lt;/em&gt;. The reading experience of a book comes not only from the abstract content of the text, but from its visual appearance as well. Text has a surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write, I need to see the text as it will appear on the printed page, otherwise I am unable to compose its visual rhythm and structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T21:50:10.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10782" CreationDate="2014-05-29T22:44:47.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Storytelling would help improve your writing skills because of two things: Hearing what you're saying, and instant feedback from your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of hearing what you're saying, I think we've all had moments where something that sounded not just well-composed but absolutely masterful in your head ends up sounding contrived or silly when you say it out loud. The disconnect between thinking the words and hearing your voice say them brings clarity and a new perspective in a way that I've found writing doesn't; telling stories will help you develop the skill of analysing your writing in this way without reading every passage out loud - something which, if I'm honest, I still sometimes find necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest benefit I can see, though, is the fact that when telling a story, you can gauge your audience's reaction instantly, not just to the plot, but to smaller things like characters and even words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will help your narrative structure; you will quickly learn the degree of tension and progression required to keep the attention of your audience, and, as 'user2738698' said, you will learn a lot about the order and composition of narrative elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't mention it in your question, but you will also learn to create compelling characters. Speaking for a character engages part of your brain that simply isn't normally active when you're merely writing about them, a part that is responsible for understanding motive, emotion and growth, which are cornerstones of strong characters. At the same time, you will learn to present only those parts of a character which are necessary for developing their role in the story; unnecessary cruft only weighs down your character if it serves no purpose for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'user2738698' seems to want to imply that storytelling won't help your word usage, but I disagree. He's totally correct to say that writing a story as you tell it would sound corny; the written word just lacks the subtleties of emphasis and intonation available in the spoken word. But telling stories will teach you the effect a single well-placed word can have on your audience, and after the first few times you've struggled to explain what exactly you meant to a misunderstanding listener, you'll learn the importance of choosing &lt;em&gt;precisely&lt;/em&gt; the right word to say what you want to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on about the general helpfulness of immediate feedback, but I think you get the idea. The last thing I'd like to mention is that storytelling will teach you to tailor your diction, grammar and plot to your target audience; just don't get stuck in the mindset of a person writing for young children - unless you want that to be your career - just because they're the most likely age group to sit down and listen to a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T22:44:47.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10782" CreationDate="2014-05-30T00:25:54.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the good writers I know personally are good storytellers.  One of my personal aphorisms is that &quot;Man is the animal who tells stories.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A professor I once worked for always told his grad students about &quot;Research by Walking Around.&quot; He said, &quot;In your daily life, look at everything like a research project. Ask questions about everything you encounter.  That's how you will come up with your thesis.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what I do for getting story ideas.  I'm always making up stories based on what I've seen and telling them to myself or to others.  The good ones I write down for later use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing fiction and nonfiction is the craft of telling a story. Practice your craft as often as you can.  Tell stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8665" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T00:25:54.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10782" CreationDate="2014-05-30T05:19:50.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, generally it is that &quot;Great story writers are always good at telling stories, too.&quot; But I am not sure if its true vice-versa. I have my own reasons for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a person who loves reading, and fond of writing, too. And my friends used to like my short stories. But when it comes to story telling to the kids, I stammer. (Which story to tell? How well to describe without losing their interest?) These are the two basic issues I always face. And after starting story, I sometimes linger on wrong parts instead of focusing on right part of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So may be its just due to my inability but that's what my experience say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To become a good writer, you should have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nice imagination power.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowledge regarding the topic or person or area you choose in story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Little insight of what readers would like&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's just what I think :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4640" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T05:19:50.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11053" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-30T11:55:49.177" Score="3" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a book series and have 1-3 out of 4 written.  So now I'm looking to publish, and I need cover illustrations.  (At least.  I'd actually like small B&amp;amp;W pen-and-ink illustrations for each chapter.)  It's not hard to find web sites with illustrators for hire.  My question is, how do you sift through all those illustrators?  There are hundreds on each site.  Is there an easier way than: look through all portfolios; narrow it down to 50 or so; contact them all for prices and mutual interest; get samples; pick one and make a contract?  Seems like that will take a LOT of time, which I want to spend finishing book 4.  Am I over-complicating this?    (&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/518/where-and-how-to-look-for-a-picture-for-illustration&quot;&gt;RelatedQuestion&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T12:12:49.927" Title="How to sift through all those illustrators?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|artwork|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11054" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-30T14:27:07.243" Score="4" ViewCount="3325" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was taught to leave a blank line between two paragraphs but &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; indent the first line of the next paragraph. I noticed that many people seem to not leave the line and choose to indent instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a convention for this or is it entirely personal preference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8793" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T08:09:11.767" Title="Is there a standard - tab versus blank line?" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11055" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-30T15:21:27.020" Score="0" ViewCount="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;If two characters have a conversation one in a foreign tongue the other in english should there ba an asterisk and a translation of foreign language some where else or from the english speaking characters dialogue could the other be inferred&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8781" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T05:35:16.937" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T05:35:16.937" Title="conversation language translation" Tags="|translation|language|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-05-31T17:46:28.843" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11054" CreationDate="2014-05-30T15:43:10.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what exactly you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;For print&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the usual convention is to &lt;strong&gt;indent the first line of each paragraph&lt;/strong&gt;, except for the first paragraph in a given section, &lt;strong&gt;with no blank line between paragraphs&lt;/strong&gt;. This is primarily because adding in those blank lines would increase the number of pages used, and therefore make things more expensive to produce; many people also find this more pleasing to look at. If you were, for example, self-publishing a novel, you would want to follow this standard or risk looking like a complete amateur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reports in the office and so on will often be just as you describe, mostly because that is the default of word processors. This is also makes it easier to put notes around the edges in the extra space, which is why many schoolteachers prefer it. In both of those cases, the most correct thing to do would be what is expected (unless you really feel like making a stand on aesthetic grounds).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The web&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(and email and other associated media), with no space limitations, tends to use the &lt;strong&gt;blank-line-and-no-indent&lt;/strong&gt; form. Similarly to office reports, this is mostly because that's the default; some websites prefer to emulate print texts, but they have to make a conscious choice to do so. I personally find them both equally easy to read, and prefer indented text to look at; this is the realm of personal preference, really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Ebooks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;mostly seem to &lt;strong&gt;copy the web&lt;/strong&gt; (yes, even those from big publishers), again because this is the default. I think that indents would be better here, for the reason of putting more text on the 7&amp;quot; screen of the average ebook-reader; but this also comes down to personal preference. The medium is too young for there to be established conventions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5765" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T08:09:11.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11057" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11135" CreationDate="2014-05-30T20:18:32.337" Score="4" ViewCount="20289" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before I launch into this, I've perused these threads and they don't quite answer the specific question I have in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9314/when-to-keep-the-passive-voice-and-when-to-remove-it&quot;&gt;When to keep the passive voice and when to remove it&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2325/when-should-i-use-passive-voice&quot;&gt;When *should* I use passive voice?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm making decent progress on a story, and I tend to do my drafts in Microsoft Word and use Grammarly to get additional grammar checking as I go along. One of the features of these that I have been working on is active vs. passive voice, for which these tools are immensely helpful. I've found that I have gotten much better at writing in active voice, but there are times when I am certain that mangling a sentence to use active voice, as suggested by the tools, ruins the mood or feel of the scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therein lies the real question: &lt;strong&gt;How peevish are editors about the use of passive voice in fiction, really?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worry that I'm spending too much time agonizing over voice, when I should be spending more time just &lt;em&gt;writing.&lt;/em&gt; (See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing&quot;&gt;The &amp;quot;Rules&amp;quot; of Writing&lt;/a&gt;) Even if I just stop and start blasting out volumes of text, I might later blindly follow every voice suggestion to my detriment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find myself in need of advice from those who actually have experience. Therefore, I turn to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, I'm a first-time writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8762" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2018-08-08T20:54:57.240" Title="Fiction Novels &amp; Active vs. Passive Voice" Tags="|fiction|voice|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10900" CreationDate="2014-05-31T05:52:02.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know I'm late to the party, but here's my advice: Don't filter out the pronouns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why pronouns never made it into print (and by extension, web versions of print publications) was to save space in the paper. This is why copy editors would always change &quot;due to the fact that&quot; to &quot;because.&quot; The same went for headlines. &quot;Man bends over, splits pants&quot; would save more space in print than &quot;A man bends over and splits his pants&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the Internet age, this is really nothing more than a holdover from print, and as far as I've observed, it's a trend that's slowly changing. So if you were to filter out all pronouns, you'd eventually start snagging a lot of articles from reputable sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your original question, even in print pronouns would still appear as part of publication titles, films, music and anything trademarked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a better approach would be to filter out obviously sensational words or phrases. Common ones I've seen are mostly adjectives: &quot;awesome,&quot; &quot;amazing,&quot; &quot;phenomenal,&quot; and (everyone's favorite) &quot;you won't believe&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: I'm a journalist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8798" LastEditorUserId="8798" LastEditDate="2014-05-31T06:16:39.073" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T06:16:39.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11057" CreationDate="2014-05-31T12:29:06.990" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go with your gut. Quit worrying about voice. Get it down on paper, walk away, come back and revise it, find a beta or pay an editor. Let your reader worry about the passive voice for the first draft. Tell the person to keep an eye out for it, and if your reader comes back with &quot;yeah, this part sounded egregious,&quot; you can cut it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. Just write. Polish later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T12:29:06.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11063" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-31T20:12:47.760" Score="21" ViewCount="953" Body="&lt;p&gt;Until now, I have mostly written in settings similar enough to Earth, mostly with human beings. For the first time, I am writing a short story set on a different planet, where the protagonists are not human and will have no interaction at all with Earth or human beings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the more I write, the more I realize how many things I just &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; say. I try to write using senses (especially smells and colors), and that is where it is the most problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;She smelled like fresh &lt;strong&gt;lilacs&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they even &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; lilacs? Would they call it lilacs? What if she smelled like fish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And that is how &lt;strong&gt;Earth&lt;/strong&gt; was granted to &lt;strong&gt;humanity&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would they call their planet Earth? Would they call themselves humans? How does a race name itself when there is no other race to compare itself to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He had never seen eyes as &lt;strong&gt;blue&lt;/strong&gt; as hers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they even have the color blue? Would they call it blue? I know this sound a bit extreme, but where do you draw the line of what is common between a fictional race/world and ours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of the possibility of using fictional words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And that is how Blardt was granted to Twibns&quot; she said, her hair&#xA;  smelling like fresh garozias.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...but somehow this seems cheesy/cliché/old-school to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a tried and true method for dealing with this issue? If there are several methods, what are the good and bad points of each?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;P.S. The Earth/humanity might be better off as a separate question, but is relevant enoughthat I felt it might be redundant to ask about it separately. Note that &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2480/potential-confusion-referring-to-home-planet-as-earth&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; seems related, but doesn't really help with the issues I am talking about.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4272" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2018-09-24T16:34:24.023" Title="How to deal with common Earth references in a non-Earth setting?" Tags="|fiction|science-fiction|naming|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11064" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-31T22:08:35.183" Score="1" ViewCount="11968" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently starting a college essay off with &quot;Google-esque. Google-esque is....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to use a sentence that only contains one word with the following sentence describing the first? Or is this too &quot;played out&quot; or cliché? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8802" LastActivityDate="2017-09-04T15:17:15.143" Title="Beginning an article/essay with a one word sentence, cliché?" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11063" CreationDate="2014-06-01T01:55:26.273" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the choice of words depends on the desired feel of the story. The reader might be an invisible observer of this alien world with a fellow human guide explaining various details. This expert may be a tourist or have a more scientific bent (e.g., sociological, biological, or physical/chemical). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With such a feel, wording would be more human-oriented and descriptive of what a human would observe. In this case, using words specific to human, terrestrial experience is not problematic, though wording would be biased by the guide's bent. (E.g., a &quot;tourist&quot; guide might use more emotive phrasings while technical phrasing would be more typical of a &quot;scientific&quot; guide.)  However, interleaving native dialog with such narration could be tricky, especially for less formal dialog where native emotional traits are common. (Note: it is conceivable that the native culture considers phrasings that are not generic or technical to be extremely provocative—taboo in ordinary communication—or possibly even unknown.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, the world might be presented as if by a native guide, who has some familiarity with humans but is still biased by native assumptions. Such a native guide might bias the presentation as if trying to interest a tourist or a scholar. This will have a less abstracted but still strange feeling, more like meeting a friend's family for the first time than visiting a foreign country. There may be strange events (comparable to in-family jokes) that are never explained but there is enough commonness and welcoming that one is still inside the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another alternative viewpoint would be closer to being telepathically linked to the natives. With this kind of perspective, when alien terms are used their basic meaning should be easily discerned from context or previous use and the reader is made to feel as if a native to that strange world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to sensory descriptions, many can use common terms even if the use does not exactly correspond to what a human would sense. For the human-guide perspective, these terms would be used as a human would use them and analogies would be more clearly declared as analogies. An immersive story would generally use terms in their native sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The light spectrum is universal. Generic color names such as red, green, and blue can be used freely even if the perception of color does not exactly match ranges in the electromagnetic spectrum associated with such by human standards. E.g., if the planet orbits a red dwarf, the natives might shift color names so that red is actually in the human infrared portion of the spectrum. (Even human perception of color does not precisely map to the electromagnetic spectrum, but it is a close enough mapping for general use.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Color names associated with specific chemicals, e.g., rust, could also be used freely, though this may present consistency issues if the color spectrum names are shifted or otherwise adjusted. A character calling something &quot;rusty green&quot; may seem very odd; without preceding context the reader might even guess that copper is the common metal on this planet for some reason or otherwise takes the place of iron in people's thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scents and tastes are related to chemical qualities which are often generic even if only by biological analogue. Sweetness is a common nutritional cue, and the native analogue could be so named even if a human would not notice any distinctive taste. Bitterness is a common indicator of toxicity. Sourness is a common indicator of spoilage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is somewhat reasonable to expect that many biological aspects found on Earth will have analogues in other biological systems. E.g., analogs to molds and fungi are likely to exist, so saying that there is a musty smell is reasonable. (However, such organisms may thrive in a different environment than their Earth analogs, so a character might say something odd-sounding like &quot;the air was dry and musty&quot;.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are likely to be mobile organisms, which are likely to be heterotrophs, which can be called animals. There are likely to be sessile organisms (likely autotrophs), some of which may attract animals to distribute genetic material, the sexual components of these &lt;em&gt;plants&lt;/em&gt; could be called &lt;em&gt;flowers&lt;/em&gt;. A common characteristic of such flowers is a distinctive scent which might be called &lt;em&gt;floral&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(However, it is quite possible that the native flowers commonly use carrior eaters, as some Earth species do, so a floral scent might not be pleasantly sweet. The floral odor might not even be an &quot;organic smell&quot; if some other chemical had a particular nutritional importance. E.g., on an iron poor world where flowers organically mimic the scent of iron, a character might say something like &quot;metallic meteorites are often detectable by their floral odor&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore one can use words like said or read even if the communication was not auditory or visual. If persistent information is stored magnetically and retrieved by something similar to a platypus' bill, one could still write that the information was read even if the storage has a more analogue component (weakly analogous to word connotations and font/layout choices in print). It may even be convenient to use analogy that is closest in perception rather than physics. E.g., if bioluminescence is used for common communication, one might write that a character heard what another was saying, particularly for a more immersive perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In English, the use of non-generic terms is more common when the communication is either technical where specificity can be important or emotive where connotations can be more important. If a native is describing a moving observation, it would be ordinary to use native similes and metaphors like &quot;his tendrils spread wide like &lt;em&gt;iliar&lt;/em&gt; petals, calling to entwine with mine&quot;. Even without translation it is clear that &lt;em&gt;iliar&lt;/em&gt; is some type of flower (this is probably a reasonable biological analogy) and like a flower the spreading has a welcoming/calling aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And that is how people were given the world,&quot; she concluded, her hair smelling comfortingly like fresh &lt;em&gt;garozias&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would be less jarring by avoiding dense use of foreign terms and giving a sense of the connotation of &lt;em&gt;garozias&lt;/em&gt; than&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And that is how Blardt was granted to Twibns&quot; she said, her hair smelling like fresh garozias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(though it might be that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Word_for_World_Is_Forest&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Word for World Is Forest&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using proper names could be appropriate if a distinction is necessary (e.g., the people are aware of multiple habitable planets or multiple peoples), especially if the distinction is important. It should also be noted that a longer sample of text would typically not have such a high average density of alien terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Another part of using a foreign language is to have the &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; of the language be consistent. Since the vocabulary is relatively small, it may well be desirable for the sound to be more similar than an ordinary language would be in order to seem realistic.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using native vocabulary has the same issues—and &lt;em&gt;benefits&lt;/em&gt;—as using a foreign language or even just unusual words. Such can distract and confuse the reader if there is not enough context to discern at least the general meaning, but such can also provide a distinctive sense of place or tone. Some readers enjoy fiction that frequently uses alien terms, sometimes even when a decent understanding requires using a glossary, but most readers are not amateur ethnologists or linguists and prefer to have the &lt;em&gt;basic&lt;/em&gt; meaning be evident even if they also enjoy being able to look up such terms at their convenience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T01:55:26.273" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11057" CreationDate="2014-06-01T12:41:13.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wasn't even aware of any rule saying to avoid passive voice. If there is, it is a rule to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Active and passive aren't narrative devices in the same way that first or third person narrators are. Active and passive are plain simple grammar and depend on the perspective from which you narrate an action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every action (expressed through a verb) has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_%28grammar%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;agent&lt;/a&gt; (the person who does something), and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_%28grammar%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;patient&lt;/a&gt; (the person he does it to). For example, a murderer (the agent) kills (the action) his victim (the patient).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now your rule to tell everything in an active voice would make it completely impossible for you to tell the story of that murder from the perspective of the victim!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all protagonists are always active. Sometimes you need to tell the story from the perspective of someone having something happening to him. How would you do that without passive voice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T12:41:13.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11069" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11071" CreationDate="2014-06-01T18:44:00.530" Score="2" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sending a draft to my coauthor (senior and more experienced). I'm new to the world of coauthoring and was wondering what would be a good way to suggest that he has absolute liberty to change anything and I would not be offended by that. I feel awkward to say this directly, because it can imply an assumption on my part that he couldn't do that without me telling him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8805" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T04:49:39.593" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T04:49:39.593" Title="I want my coauthor to feel comfortable making changes to my work" Tags="|academic-writing|revision|first-draft|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11069" CreationDate="2014-06-01T22:56:16.543" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my 25+ years of academic co-authorship: Your co-author definitely &lt;em&gt;won't&lt;/em&gt; feel free to change everything unless you tell him so directly.  Don't feel awkward.  Some people fall in love with their first draft and only want the co-author to &quot;improve&quot; it but not &quot;change&quot; it.  If it's a really good first draft that's not so bad, as it will speed publication.  But usually, the first draft needs changing, not just improving.  And sometimes serious changing.  So let your co-author know you're not one of those types.  Your wording sounds good to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T22:56:16.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-02T05:41:08.650" Score="3" ViewCount="579" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an artist and want to illustrate a poem and self publish it for my family. The poem was written in the early 1900's and is on LibraVox as a work in the public domain. Can I do this legally? I have no experience with writing prior to this so I am sadly ignorant and found all the different things I read confusing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8816" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T08:16:15.283" Title="I would like to illustrate a poem" Tags="|poetry|artwork|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11075" CreationDate="2014-06-02T08:16:15.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the work is in public domain, you can do mostly anything with it - including creating derivative works, in particular illustrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it was still copyrighted, you'd still probably be able to create illustrations but they wouldn't do much good as stand-alone, and bundling them with the original work would require license to use the original work for the compound product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T08:16:15.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11064" CreationDate="2014-06-02T09:23:55.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;(a) It's not cliché to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) A first sentence is never the first thing a reader reads. In an article, its title comes before the first sentence; in a book, the title, cover image and blurb influence reader expectation. So the first question is: How does the title of your essay continue into its first sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write an essay on the word &quot;google-esque&quot; or on Google, the company, why not use &quot;Google-esque&quot; as the title, or as the first part of it (e.g. &quot;Google-esque: How we perceive the world through a search engine.&quot;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(c) I would always begin an essay with its aim or &quot;setting&quot;, to provide the readers with a stepping stone into my argument. If they read &quot;Google-esque.&quot;, they have no idea why you throw that word at them. If, on the other hand, you open with something like &quot;Internet users today ...&quot; or &quot;We must ... or else ...&quot;, your readers can follow you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would do something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Google-esque: Whatever your title is.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why your readers should care about what you write. Then you write it ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T09:23:55.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7162" CreationDate="2014-06-02T11:27:56.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a teenager I once wrote a letter to my then favourite author. That was before email and internet, so it was written on paper and travelled across the atlantic by ship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A month or two later I received a friendly and lengthy reply to my many questions about that author's work and life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would guess that just as I am overwhelmed by spam email today, that author might no longer find the time and will to reply to most fan mail. Some of my favourite authors today have websites, and in their FAQ they explain why they can no longer reply to email and that all inquiries should go to their agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic problem of your idea to write one of your favourite authors is that at least ten other fans will have the same idea each day. Most authors spell it out to their fans: If they would reply to even a small part of the fan mail they receive, they would no longer find the time to write new books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those authors that even still read all those emails will usually answer the most common questions on their websites and blogs. And in fact writer's blogs offer almost all the information and more that you could have received in a personal email. So make Google your friend and find what is already out there. It's a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T11:27:56.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11064" CreationDate="2014-06-02T14:32:41.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A one-word sentence in the beginning of an essay isn't cliche. I think you'd be in a different ballpark if we were talking about a one-word sentence beginning a piece of creative writing. But as far as using the one-word sentence at all, I think it depends on your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing this essay for an English class, my suggestion is... don't do this. Your audience is an English teacher (and some related major TAs, probably). A one word sentence in a college essay for a teacher you don't know (or TA's who you don't know) would seem sloppy, especially if it's the first thing they read after the title. It's worse if your title is the same thing as the sentence, as in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Google-esque&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google-esque. Google-esque is...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know your teacher and your teacher's flexible about this stuff, I'd still advise against it. Your first and second lines can be consolidated into one sentence, unless you're trying to make some sort of point with the first line. If you are, I would isolate what that point is and then try to flesh it out more. For example, if by just stating &amp;quot;google-esque&amp;quot; you want the reader to think &amp;quot;what a weird word, what does it mean?&amp;quot; I'd ay it's better to say exactly that. Unless your title already explains it. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Google-esque: The Art of Mimicking Google&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is Google-esque? Google-esque is the art of mimicking Google.**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, you would want to clarify the second sentence more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But say you were writing this essay for a different kind of class, maybe you could get away with something like this. I just don't know what class it would be. I don't think this works in a technical paper or anything like that. Your audience is still a &amp;quot;professional&amp;quot; (or again, TAs) and this sentence structure isn't... abnormal, but it's not all that normal either. And if it's a weak structure, it makes the overall reading a little weaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want to use the one-word sentence, I'd suggest not saying Google-esque in the beginning of both of the sentences. The repetition is sort of off-putting. &amp;quot;Google-esque. Google-esque is...&amp;quot; has the same word, rapid fire twice in a row. If your title is also &amp;quot;Google-esque&amp;quot; that's three times. It sounds... monotonous. If you change the second sentence's structure, maybe you could get away with your first line being a one-word sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T17:37:02.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1038" CreationDate="2014-06-02T15:54:35.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've become a member of &lt;a href=&quot;http://winningwriters.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.winningwriters.com&lt;/a&gt; and they provide a database of writing (all forms) contests. I've found it to be an excellent resource as I can search for free-to-enter contests as well as searching by subject. Another useful thing they do is review a majority of the contest which provides a general idea as to the quality of the competition. Oh yeah...and it's FREE!! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3946" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T15:54:35.840" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-06-02T15:54:35.840" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4961" CreationDate="2014-06-02T16:57:32.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I obtained a Kirkus review at the suggestion of my publisher. While the review was not bad, as far as my book was concerned, it instantly became apparent that this reviewer had no idea what he was doing and did not have a clear understanding of literary genres. (He reviewed a historical fiction novel as if it were a biography and a history book.) He missed major sections of the book and misstated facts in comparing it to other books on the same topic. I suspect my reviewer was a first or second year college student. Obviously, a writer can’t stop Kirkus from reviewing a book if they choose to do so, but I would say do not invite or request it. Based upon the skill level of the reviewer I have seen you would be far better off to have it reviewed by a literature professor or another person qualified to review it properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8821" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T16:57:32.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11064" CreationDate="2014-06-03T11:47:36.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your general question is: no, not cliché, and yes, you could do it in a college essay &lt;strong&gt;IF&lt;/strong&gt; you write well enough to carry it off.  But it's a risk.  It's like a woman attempting a triple axel is figure skating.  If she can carry it off, it's a big plus, but the odds and cost of failure are high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your example, I'd say that's an example of a failure.  When you say, &quot;Google-esque. Google-esque is...,&quot; you are just being repetitive.  You are breaking a grammar rule for dramatic effect, and then not getting any dramatic effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to do something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google-esque.  It is a strange, awkward, and ugly word, bordering on a monstrosity.  Why then would anyone use such a word?  A better question, perhaps, is &quot;why is the word even necessary?&quot;  To answer that, one must explore 21st century culture.  Google is the dominant... etc etc etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even better, you would make your essay Google-esque.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T11:47:36.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11053" CreationDate="2014-06-03T14:18:53.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you intend to self-publish, you will need to spend a lot of time doing the non-creative tasks, such as marketing. A cover image is part of marketing. It is, in fact, one of the most important elements. It's the first thing that the customers see and they'll judge whether they want your book or not by it. If that cover doesn't attract and/or meet their expectations, then they'll disregard your book without hearing or seeing a single word about it. The cover illustrations are &lt;em&gt;important&lt;/em&gt; for your book, so treat it like an important task. The wrong artist for your book can make it much more difficult for the right audience to find you. A particularly skilled artist can significantly boost your sales. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make this task easier on yourself by doing your research. Research the sort of covers used in your genre and determine the essential qualities that you'll carry or break in yours. Then, find some estimates for book illustrations. Determine what you can budget towards an artist. This will determine where you search. A low budget means you may have to hire a more inexperienced artist (from places like Deviantart or Behance). A higher budget means you can save yourself some time and find artist representatives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Art agencies are the closest thing to a 'quality check' you'll likely find in illustration. By going through an art agency, you will find an already curated list of artists that fit within that agency's niche. Those artists are a known quantity to their agents. The agents will have an idea of which artist can do what in what timeline and how much money they'll need to do it. They'll also be able to give you an idea of which of their artists would work best with your project because they, like art directors, work with many artists and/or businesses and have honed their eyes to what does and doesn't work. If any problems arise then the artists' agent will mediate. Even if the agent cannot help you, they might direct you towards an artist or a place that can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a budget that allows for that, however, then you'll just need to buckle down and look through portfolios. Do a couple at a time while you're eating or taking a break from writing. Looking at images is a quick process, especially if you did your research and predetermined what you need out of your book covers. You should know if an artist is right or not after looking at about 2-3 of their images. When you find a couple that you like (perhaps five or less), contact them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you looked at those artists' portfolios, you shouldn't need any additional samples -- at least, none that require the artist to do &lt;em&gt;unpaid&lt;/em&gt; work for you. To get the most out of your interaction with an illustrator, be thorough. Tell them your intentions with the images, how much money you budgeted for this project, what images of theirs you particularly liked and when you'll need those images. If your budget is not quite enough for what you're asking for, they'll at least have an opportunity to make creative suggestions that fit within your budget. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8197" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T14:18:53.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11053" CreationDate="2014-06-03T16:46:50.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider one of the &quot;crowdsourced design&quot; sites. The idea is that you hold a design contest, and pay for the winner. The process takes a week or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not used crowdsourced designs myself, so I cannot recommend one. (I use stock images from &lt;a href=&quot;http://dreamstime.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dreamstime&lt;/a&gt; for my covers). The Self-Publishing Podcast guys seem to like &lt;a href=&quot;http://99designs.com/book-cover-design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;99 Designs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T16:46:50.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11089" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12162" CreationDate="2014-06-03T18:52:53.607" Score="2" ViewCount="2088" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a story that features an illiterate Indian woman. Of course, while there are things only Hindi can satisfactorily express, I was wondering what would be a good way to construct dialogues for someone like that- an illiterate woman in her forties, world weary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Just finished reading the Mayor of Casterbridge. Not sure if I could pick up much from there though.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4807" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-15T16:28:52.423" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T16:28:52.423" Title="Writing dialogue for a non-English speaker in English?" Tags="|dialogue|language|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11089" CreationDate="2014-06-03T20:37:55.087" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is research. Find a &quot;Little India&quot; community, wander around, and listen. Sit at a corner coffeeshop for a few days. Walk through the retail area. Don't stalk people, but pay attention to who is speaking and what they're saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may get just a lot of Hindi, but if you're in an English-speaking city, you're bound to find someone speaking in broken English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T20:37:55.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11091" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12157" CreationDate="2014-06-04T09:10:10.097" Score="14" ViewCount="3423" Body="&lt;p&gt;At a writing conference I've managed to snag a 15 minute appointment with a publisher (who published Terry Pratchett, my favourite author).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a debut fantasy novelist. She will have received a cover letter, one line story summary, one page story synopsis and the first 30 pages of one of my stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm a sufferer of social anxiety so being prepared is my only defense. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm not confident about my work being 'snapped up' so I don't want to waste our time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found a few snippets suggesting what questions an author might be asked, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ideaplatforms.com/blog/five-questions-publisher-will-ask-prospective-author&quot;&gt;these for example&lt;/a&gt; but none from the other way around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What questions should I ask the publisher in order to make the most of this opportunity? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5024" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T18:27:39.100" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T17:53:36.787" Title="Meeting with a respected publisher, what questions should I ask?" Tags="|publishing|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11053" CreationDate="2014-06-04T12:12:49.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I scoured &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deviantart.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DeviantArt&lt;/a&gt; for artists with styles that I liked and approached artists through that about commissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, cover art is quite a different beast, often a mix of photography and graphic design so your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiverr.com/search/gigs?utf8=%E2%9C%93&amp;amp;search_in=everywhere&amp;amp;query=ebook%20cover%20art&amp;amp;x=0&amp;amp;y=0&amp;amp;page=1-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fiverr&lt;/a&gt; is a super cheap place to go for outsourcing design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://bettinamarson.deviantart.com/gallery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bettina&lt;/a&gt; on DeviantArt who did an awesome job of my full-book cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5024" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T12:12:49.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11093" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11103" CreationDate="2014-06-04T16:24:57.657" Score="1" ViewCount="707" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I made my way uphill, I understood why An-Mei chose this place for&#xA;  her spiritual healing. I glanced around. &lt;strong&gt;Gorgeous&lt;/strong&gt; conifers stretched up &lt;strong&gt;endlessly&lt;/strong&gt;, like&#xA;  pillars connecting the earth with the sky. Pierced by sunlight, their&#xA;  leaves emitted a &lt;strong&gt;dazzling&lt;/strong&gt; green glow which contrasted &lt;strong&gt;greatly&lt;/strong&gt; with the&#xA;  grayness of their trunks. The air was fresh; it purified my lungs&#xA;  with every exhalation. Somewhere nearby, I could hear the the chirping&#xA;  of birds, the chorus of cicadas—sounds that sank &lt;strong&gt;gently&lt;/strong&gt; into my head,&#xA;  calming all my anxieties, dissolving every thought. Alishan had an&#xA;  uplifting, almost repairing effect on the mind. It was &lt;strong&gt;definitely&lt;/strong&gt; a&#xA;  marvelous place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of removing the &lt;strong&gt;bolded&lt;/strong&gt; adjectives/adverbs. Will the passage flow better if I remove them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T16:49:19.213" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T12:26:11.037" Title="Am I using too many adjectives/adverbs in the following piece?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-07-29T16:53:11.890" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11093" CreationDate="2014-06-04T18:02:13.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, not necessarily. I don't think you're over describing things. I could understand some of the bolded words being removed, but not all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If things don't add to the mood, then I'd get rid of them. You're talking about a beautiful place-- mentioning that things are beautiful is only adding to that. So saying that the conifers are gorgeous isn't a bad thing-- maybe all conifers are gorgeous, but these are exceptionally so, so much so that the main character had to mention it. Or maybe it's just that this character never took the time out to notice how beautiful conifers are. Or maybe it's just this place. But using the word &quot;gorgeous&quot; only adds to the mood. Now, if every other time you mention conifers you say &quot;gorgeous&quot; then you're probably over doing it. It doesn't hold that much of a punch if the character thinks all conifers are gorgeous. You don't have anything in your excerpt that sticks out to me, as detracting from the mood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some things you have to just ask yourself &quot;is this overstating?&quot; For example, &quot;contrast&quot; means &quot;being strikingly different from something else&quot; (more or less). You wouldn't have to say that a contrast is great, that's overstating it. If the contrast is so different that you want to really punch it up, you'd probably want to use a more... exuberant phrasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing you can try is asking yourself &quot;does this make sense/how does [phrase] work?&quot; Take the &quot;sounds that sank gently&quot; phrase, how does that work? What does it mean? What feeling to you want it to convey? Odds are you might find you'll make a new phrase that works better for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8147" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T18:02:13.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11063" CreationDate="2014-06-04T18:47:15.493" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, think about what is universal and what is specific to our own planet, species, or culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like, would aliens have the color blue? Color is a basic phenomenon of physics. The same colors exist everywhere in the universe. I suppose it's possible that there would not be any blue things on their planet, but this seems pretty unlikely. Surely something, somewhere on the planet is blue. As human beings have learned to synthesize colors electronically, I have yet to hear someone say, &quot;Zounds, if we generate just this frequency of light, there's a color totally unlike any color that anyone has seen before!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose an alien might not be able to see the color blue. But frankly, unless you're going to build a plot point around that -- the humans are able to sneak messages past the aliens because they write them in blue and the aliens can't see blue, or something of that sort -- I think it just gets too obscure to be worth worrying about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, do they have lilacs on this alien planet? Well, I suppose at that point you get into theories of origins. An evolutionist would surely say that the probability of something as specific as one particular species of plant evolving twice on two different planets is pretty small. A creationist would say that a creator God COULD create the same plant on two different planets, but would he? Considering the diversity of life on Earth, even a creationist wouldn't expect to find ALL the same plants and animals on another planet, any more than he expects to find all the same plants and animals in Australia that one finds in Norway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, I think you have pretty much no choice but to make up names for the plants and animals on their world. If you make a big deal of all these made-up names it could sound silly and contrived. Like I wouldn't have a scene where a character goes for a walk and says, &quot;Oh look, a burgwhal tree. And there are some mijnik flowers. And see the wagmeers flying overhead ...&quot; I'd keep the number of made-up species to a minimum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And remember that the reader will have no idea what you have in mind when you refer to a made-up species unless you explain it. Like if you say, &quot;He was walking down the road when suddenly he saw a majneek!&quot; Well if you've never before said what a majneek is, the reader has no idea if that is a dangerous wild animal, a pleasant-smelling flower, an occupational title, a hand tool, or what. If it's not important to the story, explaining many such references would just get tedious and boring. Where possible I'd use such words in a context that makes the nature of the thing obvious, at least in a general way. I mean, you don't need to say, &quot;Suddenly he saw a majneek! On this world, a majneek is a large, orange furry animal that inhabits the tropical regions, and that ...&quot; whatever. Rather, you could say, &quot;Suddenly he was attacked by a large, ferocious majneek! He grabbed hold of its furry mane and tried to wrestle it to the ground.&quot; Or, &quot;He handed his girlfriend a bouquet of beautiful majneeks. 'I picked these for you', he said&quot;. If the reader doesn't need to know exactly what the thing looks like or it's hibernation patterns or mating cycle, then don't slow down the story by bringing it up. If I was writing such a story, I'd certainly use a made-up name for, say, a local flower rather than saying &quot;roses&quot; in such a context. The reader will get the idea and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the aliens wouldn't even know the word &quot;Earth&quot; as presumably they don't speak English. I'd guess that you are writing your story in English (or whatever your native language is), and all dialog is assumed to be translated from the alien language into English. In such a case, calling their planet &quot;Earth&quot; would just be confusing. Earth is the (English) name of our planet, not theirs. Likewise it wouldn't make much sense for them to call themselves &quot;humans&quot;. &quot;Human&quot; doesn't mean &quot;us&quot;, it is the name of a specific species. You could debate more general terms. I presume aliens would call themselves &quot;living beings&quot;. (Unless you're supposing they are not &quot;living&quot; in some sense.) Of course aliens wouldn't call themselves &quot;aliens&quot;, they'd consider Earth people to be aliens. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thought: If you use a made-up word in a context where it is supposed to be a surprise or a dramatic revelation -- like if the climax of your story is when the hero says, &quot;Suddenly I realized that Frabnar was a majneek!&quot; -- that is not a good time to explain what the word means, because then you ruin the suspense. So come up with an excuse to refer use this word and explain it earlier in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I am reminded of an article I read about writing science fiction many years ago, where the writer urged the reader to be careful about casual references that don't make sense in context. One example he gave that I recall was to point out that the phrase &quot;Try a different tack&quot; is a reference to sailboats, and so someone living on a world with no seas would be unlikely to use any such phrase. Or in Disney's cartoon &quot;The Little Mermaid&quot;, they had what I thought was a very clever line where a mermaid is making fun of the lack of courage of another sea creature, and says, &quot;You're such a guppy.&quot; I had to give them credit: A human might say, &quot;You're such a chicken&quot;, but of course a mermaid probably wouldn't even know what a chicken is, never mind make a casual reference to one. But calling someone a &quot;guppy&quot; -- I can easily imagine that being an equivalent insult for a mermaid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T18:52:54.673" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T18:52:54.673" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11035" CreationDate="2014-06-04T19:36:36.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As user8789 says, there are formulas to calculate the reading level of a sample of text. Personally, I wouldn't take these too seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, consider this paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The children were playing with a soccer ball in the yard, and when Bethany kicked it, it went way over the fence, into the neighbor's yard, and then it rolled very far down the hill before it finally came to a stop at the river.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this site -- &lt;a href=&quot;https://readability-score.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://readability-score.com&lt;/a&gt; -- it's Flesch-Kinkaid grade level is 17.2. That is, it requires a post-graduate degree to understand.  Do you really think that you need a PhD to understand that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now consider this paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Intel CPU executes 16 million FIPS per second. It uses a high speed front-side bus to help move data between the RAM and the registers. It has a very large instruction set. This includes commands for basic adding and subtracting, indexing, and moving text data. It has a width of 64 bits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That has a Flesch-Kinkaid grade level score of 5.2. So any 13 year old should easily be able to understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with these readability formulas is that they only look at lengths of words and lengths of sentences, not at the complexity of the ideas. A simple sentence like, &quot;In my closet I found a ball, a cardboard box, three adorable dolls, a pack of baseball cars, two pairs of trousers, and a sweater&quot; gets a fairly high grade level because there are many words in the sentence and several that are quite long. I can easily write paragraphs about computers that score very low even though they are very complex because computer people tend to use short words for very complex ideas, like &quot;bit&quot; and &quot;list&quot; and &quot;float&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, these formulas only consider the number of words in the sentence, and not the complexity of the sentence structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;George Washington was the commander-in-chief of the continental army. He was also the first president of the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grade level 7.6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;George Washington was the commander-in-chief of the continental army and he was the first president of the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grade level: 11.1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, just joining two sentences with an &quot;and&quot; jumps the difficulty by 3 1/2 grade levels. In real life, I think not. Is it more difficult to read the one long sentence? I suppose. But not that much more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before you consider that, you -- and all readers -- should look at other suggestions, many of them subtle, which are found in the books we talked about earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FK: 11.5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I walked down the street and I passed the grocery store, the barber shop, the bakery, the auto mechanic, an Italian restaurant, two Laundromats, and a school with a big playground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FK 14.4&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second sentence scores higher because it has more words and longer words. But surely it is far easier to understand because the structure of the sentence is simple. It's just a long list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying the formulas are worthless. I'm just saying that I don't think they're worth very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this sounds like a rant, well, maybe it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T19:36:36.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11089" CreationDate="2014-06-04T20:46:45.317" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lauren's answer is the best way I can think of to go about it, but if for whatever reason you can't or don't want to do as she suggested:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A person who isn't a fully competent speaker of any language, like English, will normally carry over idiosyncrasies from &quot;their&quot; language. The main example I can give is that home-language speakers of Afrikaans, which uses only one word (&quot;is&quot;, pronounced like the &quot;iss&quot; in &quot;hiss&quot;) for both &quot;is&quot; and &quot;are&quot;, &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; often use &quot;is&quot; and &quot;are&quot; inappropriately; some, because of the similarity between the English &quot;is&quot; and the Afrikaans &quot;is&quot;, barely use &quot;are&quot; at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common slip-up I see with Afrikaans speakers is grammar, specifically word order. People tend to instinctively use the sentence structure used in their mother tongue, rather than that in the new language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I don't know anything whatsoever about Hindi, but I get the impression from what you wrote that you do know the language, at least to some degree. Look at the sentence structure and anything peculiar to the language, and use those as starting points. Although I wouldn't recommend using them as-is in dialogue, word-for-word direct translations of Hindi sentences would be a good way to find these idiosyncrasies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last note about word choice: The difference between a technically correct word and a situationally correct word is one of the last things someone learning a language grasps. Using not-quite-right words can be a good way to convey that someone doesn't speak a language well, while still making what they're saying fully comprehensible to your reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first example that comes to mind is that while &quot;He was driving very &lt;em&gt;quick&lt;/em&gt;&quot; conveys the same idea as &quot;He was driving very &lt;em&gt;fast&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; only one seems correct to an English speaker; not so to someone new to the language, who only knows the broad meaning of the words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastEditorUserId="8758" LastEditDate="2014-06-08T10:20:49.607" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T10:20:49.607" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11063" CreationDate="2014-06-04T20:53:38.247" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first and most important thing to consider is your reader and, for the most part, I imagine they're humans. Writing a science fiction story where there is nothing for the reader to relate to becomes tedious, and unintelligible. To carry it to its extreme, assuming you're writing your story in English (sorry, you did mention you're not a native English speaker, but you don't mention the language you're writing in), would they even speak English?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, with some of your specific examples, it makes sense to substitute species-specific or world-specific references for some things like nouns. I doubt lilacs would grow on their planet (who knows, maybe someone imported them from earth), so it makes sense to make reference to a different plant. Likewise, they would have a name for their planet, and they would have a name for their own species, so use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal take is to approach it as someone would approach reading a translated book that was originally written in a foreign language in a foreign country (think someone living in the middle of the Sahara desert trying to read a book that was written by someone in Iceland). For them to read it, that book would need to be translated into their language, with a smattering of names and terms that simply cannot be translated accurately, but can be explained in a given context.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With your specific examples, you could say, &quot;She smelt like garozia petals&quot; (indicates it's a flower) or &quot;She smelt like the spawning falar he remembered watching in the river as a child, their flapping fins secreting their rotting odour into the night sky. Sexy.&quot; Give context that the reader can relate to, and don't just drop in the name. And yes, try to use the foreign terms sparingly, if possible; you're correct with your instinct that it can be clichéd if overused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, that often a translator has to substitute a word or phrase for one that the reader would understand, and that best suits the context. In the above example, I used the word &quot;child&quot;, but obviously that may not be suitable for them as a species. Perhaps they're a bird-like race, in which case use the word &quot;chick&quot; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, make the narrator someone who is human telling this alien tale. Maybe he heard it from someone else, or was there himself, in which case you avoid many of these issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever route you take, just remember that your readers aren't stupid, they'll understand, and will thank you for at least writing a readable book that they can relate to while at the same time being drawn into this other alien world. The best advice I can give is, write for your human audience, and don't over-think it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T20:53:38.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11099" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-04T21:07:33.850" Score="8" ViewCount="1491" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are planning to create a user guide for internal use only. It's 150-page document in Word for a self-developed SW tool. The user guide will require constant update. No translation is needed. We would like to have &#xA;- an easy-to-use interface for the tool&#xA;- easy to update&#xA;- good functionality on change history control, better to have change history detailed to each functionality of the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have a recommendation on the tool?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8835" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T02:10:25.137" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T13:44:56.140" Title="Best Tool to Create User Guides" Tags="|technical-writing|software|version-control|user-guides|maintenance|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12147" CreationDate="2014-06-04T22:08:16.913" Score="4" ViewCount="861" Body="&lt;p&gt;High school level essay to be exact, but I'd like to also know if &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spivak pronouns&lt;/a&gt; could be used in papers or publications. Should I just rephrase everything using the &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; pronoun or singular they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a native English speaker&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8838" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-06-29T21:24:58.640" LastActivityDate="2022-06-30T01:24:08.193" Title="Is it considered faulty language to use Spivak pronouns in an essay?" Tags="|style|gender|pronouns|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11100" CreationDate="2014-06-05T00:35:09.870" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask your teacher. I had one who didn't mind, and the others suggested ways to write around the problem (variously, use the &quot;universal he,&quot; use the &quot;universal she,&quot; alternate he and she, recast the sentence as plural). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each teacher will have different preferences. It doesn't hurt to ask upfront.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T00:35:09.870" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11093" CreationDate="2014-06-05T00:58:42.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think the highlighted modifiers are generally redundant. However, I offer some alternative phrasings, which may or may not better communicate the intended effect, but more importantly are likely to provide some sense of the tradeoffs in different phrasings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possible alternative to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gorgeous conifers stretched up endlessly, like pillars connecting the earth with the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conifers stretched up endlessly, like magnificent pillars connecting the earth with the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving the modifier into the simile seems to give greater emphasis on &quot;endlessly&quot;, which may fit a more awesome than lovely sense. This placement also seems to stretch the flow of the sentence (matching the stretching of the trees). Replacing &quot;gorgeous&quot; with &quot;magnificent&quot; further moves the sense in the direction of awe and away from loveliness, which may not be desirable. Replacing &quot;the earth with the sky&quot; with &quot;earth and heaven&quot; might fit a more spiritual tone, but it seems that the character may be experiencing a more worldly peace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pierced by sunlight, their leaves emitted a dazzling green glow which contrasted greatly with the grayness of their trunks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could be rephrased as something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Warm sunlight pierced their leaves, the dazzling green a breathtaking contrast to their trunks' somber gray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Glow&quot; seems to have a softer connotation, which seems less fitting with dazzling. Replacing the somewhat generic &quot;greatly&quot; with &quot;breathtaking&quot; seems to intensify the effect and segues somewhat into the respiratory aspect of the next sentence. Adding &quot;warm&quot; and &quot;somber&quot; slows the pace again and softens the tone (&quot;warm&quot; brings a welcoming feeling as well). If these are pine trees, using &quot;needles&quot; might allow an intensification of the sense of heart-piercing beauty (but would seem to require other changes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One different phrasing of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The air was fresh; it purified my lungs with every exhalation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every breath of the fresh air purified my lungs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a simpler (but less precise) word in place of &quot;exhalation&quot; seems to fit a calmer tone. Using a single clause might well be less appropriate as it tends to hasten the pace and reduces the emphasis on the environment; by using &quot;The air was fresh&quot;, an emphasis is placed on the environment. This phrasing would be more appropriate if the focus was more on the effect on the character than on the marvelousness of the setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Somewhere nearby, I could hear the chirping of birds, the chorus of cicadas—sounds that sank gently into my head, calming all my anxieties, dissolving every thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could alternatively be written as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Happy birdsong and a chorus of cicadas echoed through the trees, their sounds sinking gently into my head, calming all my anxieties, dissolving every thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This alternative increases the passivity of the character. Removing &quot;nearby&quot; may slightly reduce the sense of attachment/closeness of the character to the place, but this loss may be small. &quot;Happy&quot; does not seem quite fitting, but there seemed to be a need for a few soft syllables to provide a softer pacing. Using three participles seems to soften the tone and emphasize the gradual effect and the passivity of the character. Replacing &quot;I could hear&quot; with &quot;echoed through the trees&quot; focuses on the setting and increases the passivity of the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was definitely a marvelous place&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could be replaced with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It truly was a marvelous place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context &quot;truly&quot; seems like a better intensifier because it has a softer, less mentally intensive feel than &quot;definitely&quot; (i.e., seemingly more fitting to the calming sense of the scene). By moving it away from &quot;marvelous&quot; the pacing of the sentence seems better, allowing both &quot;truly&quot; and &quot;marvelous&quot; to have more time/emphasis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/11094/5232&quot;&gt;Ice-9's answer&lt;/a&gt; indicates, such choices depend on the sense one seeks to communicate. In this case, using more modifiers than normal is likely to be appropriate both because this is an extraordinary setting and because such will tend to slow the pace (which is appropriate for a peaceful setting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting the alternative phrasings together with the unaltered sentences gives a better feel for the strengths and weaknesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I made my way uphill, I understood why An-Mei chose this place for her spiritual healing. I glanced around. Conifers stretched up endlessly, like magnificent pillars connecting the earth with the sky. Warm sunlight pierced their leaves, the dazzling green a breathtaking contrast to their trunks' somber gray. Every breath of the fresh air purified my lungs. Happy birdsong and a chorus of cicadas echoed through the trees, their sounds sinking gently into my head, calming all my anxieties, dissolving every thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alishan had an uplifting, almost repairing effect on the mind. It truly was a marvelous place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paragraph break separates the more passive portion of the text and may increase the emphasis of the last sentence without the seeming awkwardness of that sentence being a paragraph by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T11:20:34.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11104" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11109" CreationDate="2014-06-05T02:37:49.973" Score="2" ViewCount="716" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend do this a lot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A straight curve appeared after a moment. I slowed my pace and circled&#xA;  around. Once I came out of it, &lt;strong&gt;I caught sight of something.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It was a&#xA;  girl.&lt;/strong&gt; Probably a sixteen or seventeen. She was standing right in the&#xA;  middle of the trail, facing to the right, sunlight pouring on her from above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if I should write this instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A straight curve appeared after a moment. I slowed my pace and circled&#xA;  around. Once I came out of it, &lt;strong&gt;I caught sight of a girl.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She was probably a sixteen or seventeen. She was standing right in the&#xA;  middle of the trail, facing to the right, pouring on her from above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the second example read/sound better? Since I'm not delaying the narrative/action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An straight curve appeared after a moment. &lt;strong&gt;I slowed my pace and&#xA;  circled around.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Once I came out of it,&lt;/strong&gt; I caught sight of a girl.&#xA;  Probably a sixteen or seventeen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T03:16:30.453" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T13:31:49.660" Title="Delaying narrative/actions" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11099" CreationDate="2014-06-05T03:51:25.047" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;For internal documentation I've found wikis to be quite useful.  A wiki has several useful features for this task:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;built-in change-tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;doc can be structured as several pages (e.g. one per major section) for easier management; individual pages can then be edited without any need to merge changes into a master document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some (most?) wiki platforms detect impending edit conflicts; if someone else has the page open for edit you'll find out (so no messy merges later)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can be accessed by anybody with a browser, on any device (try reading a Word doc or PDF on your phone...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if your wiki keeps a &quot;recent changes&quot; page, work is visible and thus more likely to receive additional helpful edits or comments (more collaboration)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does have some disadvantages -- you have to run a server, and printing isn't very practical.  If you ever decided to publish the documentation to a wider audience you'd need to port it to something.  But, that said, you could probably script most of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T03:51:25.047" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11093" CreationDate="2014-06-05T10:26:05.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is not &lt;em&gt;too much&lt;/em&gt;. The problem is they are &lt;em&gt;hollow&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all 'telly, not showy'. In particular, 'Gorgeous' and 'greatly' are worst offenders. Instead of depicting a gorgeous scene, you tell the reader that it is gorgeous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Descriptive expressions (&quot;green glow&quot;, &quot; grayness&quot;) - facts, are good, and don't skimp on them. They can truly add life to a scene and make it impressive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reflective ones (&quot;dazzling&quot;, &quot;uplifting&quot;, &quot;gently&quot;) - direct, sensory impressions - don't work quite as well, but they still contribute in a positive way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evaluative (&quot;great&quot;, &quot;gorgeous&quot;) - indirect impressions, appraisal of the summary aesthetic value - are counter-productive, hollow and definitely reduce the quality of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T10:32:17.343" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T10:32:17.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11104" CreationDate="2014-06-05T10:43:59.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, each version seems better than the last. The final version is much shorter, but conveys the same information, which is a sign of success to me. Rewriting over and over is always a good thing. Removing as many unnecessary words as you can is a good thing. Also, if you read the final version out loud, it sounds better to the ear. The early versions are a bit stuttery and distracting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like this quote from Paul Auster, and often thing about it as I write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...what I’m constantly striving for in my prose is clarity. So that, ideally, the writing will become so transparent that the reader will forget that the medium of communication is language.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.believermag.com/issues/200502/?read=interview_auster&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.believermag.com/issues/200502/?read=interview_auster&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is definately not everyone's style. If you like flowery poetic prose, you want people to pay attention to the words. If you want the reader to sink into the story, you want the words to become &quot;transparent&quot;, as non-distracting as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5998" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T10:43:59.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11104" CreationDate="2014-06-05T10:59:27.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're &lt;em&gt;focusing&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;zooming in&lt;/em&gt; on an element appearing in field of view. Think in terms of eyes or camera, and time one spends reading the text as time spent looking at the object, and pace the description accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you walk into a room, and the middle is occupied by an elephant, and you approached from its front, delaying the shock at seeing an elephant will be completely misplaced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, as you observe a silhouette coming out from morning mist, you will resolve details gradually, as they become visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, &quot;something&quot; is a terrible placeholder for an out-of-focus object. If she was hard to see at first, you can give &quot;a silhouette&quot;. If she was well visible, &quot;a girl&quot; or at least &quot;someone&quot;. Unless you were stumbling in pitch darkness, you saw thousands of &quot;somethings&quot; and another one really doesn't help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your situation, you need about as much time as one takes to read &quot;I caught sight of a girl.&quot; to catch sight of a girl standing nearby in bright sunlight when you emerge from behind a curve, so the second approach is right. Now if it was dusk, fog, and she lay huddled under a bush, you might go for the first description, possibly adding approaching and peering through the gloom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply, pace exposure matching speed of reading to speed of focusing on the elements of the scene as if it was for real. Obvious, clearly visible object - immediate focus. Fine detail - huddled at the end of the description. Approaching a hard-to-see object - start with vague and solidify as details become visible. Passing in a blur - just a blurry hint of shape. Vision impaired - perception impaired. Need a second or two to evaluate what/whom you actually see - paragraph break. And match that first glance impression to what you actually see at a first glance. Reserve &quot;something&quot; for severely impaired sight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I don't really like the second option you give. &quot;As I came out of it...&quot; would be better, &quot;once&quot; seems to imply the curve took quite some time and effort.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T10:59:27.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11104" CreationDate="2014-06-05T13:31:49.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would unequivocally say: It depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it is good to add a small delay to build anticipation or mystery. If the intent of the paragraph is that at first the hero isn't sure what it is he sees, and then as he gets closer or looks more carefully he begins to make it out, then it is good to break it into multiple sentences. The more mystery that you want and that is appropriate, the more extra sentences would be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You certainly should not use this technique all the time. You don't want every paragraph in a story to be, &quot;I walked to another place. It was a room. There was something in the room. It was a person. The person was a man. The man was my friend Bob. I said something to Bob. What I said was a greeting. The greeting was the word 'hello'. Bob replied. Bob said words. ...&quot; Etc. That would be tedious and ridiculous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at key places where something is supposed to be a surprise or a revelation, dragging it out a little can be very good and appropriate. Like, &quot;And then I realized who the killer was. It was Fred&quot; builds just a little bit of tension before the revelation, while, &quot;And then I realized that Fred was the killer&quot; does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, if the point and the context is that seeing this girl in the woods was a surprise, and that when he first saw her he did not realize it was a girl, your first paragraph is appropriate. If the intent is that he saw her and immediately realized it was a girl, then your first paragraph is unnecessarily cumbersome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T13:31:49.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11100" CreationDate="2014-06-05T13:32:56.357" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scientific and other non-literary publications are usually required to employ standard English. &lt;strong&gt;Spivak pronouns are not standard English usage&lt;/strong&gt;, so would most likely not be accepted by most publishers, unless the publication deals with questions of gender-neutral language specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In scientific publications the master rule for style is to write clearly and concisely. The most fundamental demand is that &lt;strong&gt;you must not be misunderstood&lt;/strong&gt;. Everything else has to submit to this demand. Spivak pronouns are confusing, as @Jay has explained in his answer, and therefore run counter to the basic purpose of scientific (and journalist) writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most scientific associations have published recommendations for &lt;strong&gt;unbiased language&lt;/strong&gt;. As far as I know, none of these include the use of Spivak pronouns, instead they recommend (quoted from &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/14/&quot;&gt;Purdue's online resource on the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To avoid the bias of using gendered pronouns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Rephrase the sentence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Use plural nouns or plural pronouns - this way you can use &quot;they&quot; or &quot;their&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Replace the pronoun with an article - instead of &quot;his,&quot; use &quot;the&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Drop the pronoun - many sentences sound fine if you just omit the troublesome &quot;his&quot; from the sentence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Replace the pronoun with a noun such as &quot;person,&quot; &quot;individual,&quot; &quot;child,&quot; &quot;researcher,&quot; etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publisher acceptance aside, outside of the narrow field of gender studies I would at least explain Spivak pronouns in a footnote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T22:06:12.250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T22:06:12.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11111" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11112" CreationDate="2014-06-05T13:36:55.930" Score="4" ViewCount="12382" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure where I picked up this habit. Here are two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I pictured An-Mei’s slim fingers running across their smooth surface,&#xA;  her hand, and then the body connected to it. But try as I might, I&#xA;  couldn’t recall her face. All I saw were scattered facial features&#xA;  that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t put together; they were&#xA;  like jigsaw pieces that slipped from my hands the moment I grabbed&#xA;  them. Was time capable of erasing such memories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The trail turned into&#xA;  a sharp curve, a mountain of fens blocking what lay ahead. I circled&#xA;  around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She was short and relatively thin. Her hair was cut at the forehead&#xA;  with two long strands hanging limply above her shoulders. She was&#xA;  wearing a red knit cap, a white cotton sweater, and a plaid skirt that&#xA;  reached just below her knees. On top of all that, she had a thick&#xA;  leather jacket. Comfortable clothes. Not the kind you’d bring to a&#xA;  hiking trip, though. What was she doing standing there? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Following her&#xA;  line of vision, I realized she was staring at a huge ancient tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess my intention was to use the question to connect the paragraph to the next one (or to give the paragraph a summary/ending). Does this feel amateurish? If so, what should I be doing instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2018-05-24T07:41:56.060" Title="Is it a bad writing practice to end a paragraph with question?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11111" CreationDate="2014-06-05T13:42:59.250" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've certainly never heard of it being &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; to end paragraphs with questions, and it doesn't seem wrong to my eye. In fact, I don't think it's even a question of grammar; it seems to be more of a stylistic choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's your writing style, go for it. It works well in the extracts you included, and in general I'd say it's a good way to create a more &quot;personal&quot; narrative style with a first-person narrator. Like all elements of writing style, you should just be wary of overdoing it; ending every paragraph with a question would bug me quite a lot after a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T13:42:59.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11113" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11116" CreationDate="2014-06-05T13:55:17.030" Score="3" ViewCount="4786" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the general approach to using parenthesis (the grammatical construct, not the punctuation mark) in fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an internal &quot;ranking&quot; of them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comma-delineated parenthesis, like this, is the most natural and&#xA;normally suffices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Em-dash-delineated parenthesis - like this - is more abrupt, but&#xA;still acceptable in a story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bracket-delineated parenthesis (like this) is too abrupt (or perhaps&#xA;too formal) to be used in narrative writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's basically what feels natural to me when I'm writing. However, I've received critiques where people have said that I shouldn't use em-dashes for parenthesis, and upon consideration, I haven't actually seen many authors use it, at least not as often as I do. Is there any kind of standard for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-09-27T14:08:31.890" LastActivityDate="2019-09-28T14:06:30.257" Title="Parenthesis Types in Fiction" Tags="|fiction|grammar|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11100" CreationDate="2014-06-05T13:55:58.347" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are writing the essay for a class in gender studies, or if the teacher is an extreme feminist, I would say yes, go ahead and use synthetic gender-neutral pronouns. If the essay is about sexism, maybe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, no. Very few English speakers are familiar with any given proposed set of gender-neutral pronouns. There are dozens of such proposals out there. Many English speakers have heard of the idea, but no one proposal is widely used. When I read your question, I recalled that spivak pronouns were a proposed set of gender-neutral pronouns, but I didn't remember just what they were. (Grateful for the link, though I suppose a search for &quot;spivak pronouns&quot; would have turned them up fast enough.) And I'm someone interested enough in language to be active on two English language forums. I haven't taken a survey, but I'd be surprised if more than 5% of English speakers could tell you what &quot;spivak pronouns&quot; are or would recognize them if they saw them in text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For most people, when they first encounter such a pronoun in your text, they will think it is a typo. I suppose after they see a few they will figure out that this is something you are doing deliberately. They will have a hard time looking it up anywhere. If someone doesn't know that the pronouns you are using are called &quot;spivak pronouns&quot;, what would he look up? Looking up &quot;e&quot; with Google is not going to give useful results. I suppose they could figure out what the pronouns mean from reading the context. But at the least it will be distracting and at the worst very confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, by the way, why I think it will be very hard for any such set of gender-neutral pronouns to become widely accepted. If you invent a new word for a new idea or invention, you can introduce that word in the context of discussing the new thing. If it's truly something totally new, people will be grasping for a word to identify it concisely rather than having to describe it every time they refer to it. Like when the cell phone was invented, you COULD say, &quot;One of those new phones, you know, the kind that use radio waves to connect to the communications network rather than wires, and that you can carry around in your pocket&quot;. But it gets pretty tedious if every time you want to refer to the thing you have to give a 15 minute explanation. So somewhere along the line someone said &quot;let's call them cell phones&quot; and someone else said &quot;let's call them mobile phones&quot; and maybe a few other proposals, but those two have become popular. When those words were new, they only came up in the context of talking about these new devices, so it wasn't a big deal to explain them when you used them. People expected you to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But with new pronouns ... we already have pronouns. Yes, there are some complaints about implicit sexism, but the words we have do the job. Many people see no need for new words at all, and most don't see a very large need. And pronouns are used all the time, in everything you read or write, over and over. These words don't come up in just one specific context: they come up literally EVERYWHERE. When I'm reading about a new idea or invention, I expect to have to learn some new words. When I'm reading about mundane or familiar subjects, I don't. It's annoying and distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you personally fervently believe that we should use such pronouns, I suppose you could try and see what reaction you get. If you want people to understand them, you pretty much have to include a paragraph at the beginning of your text stating that you are going to use these new pronouns and listing them. Which, again, becomes a distraction from whatever you are actually trying to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T13:55:58.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11113" CreationDate="2014-06-05T14:10:11.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my mind, it's a matter of how &quot;big a break&quot; you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commas are a small break. Dashes are a bigger break. And parentheses are a bigger break yet. (When I say &quot;parentheses&quot; in this post, I mean the punctuation mark. Personally I use the phrase &quot;parenthetical statement&quot; or &quot;parenthetical remark&quot; to refer to the words themselves.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use parentheses a lot it can be very distracting. It makes the narrative seem choppy. Dashes are less imposing -- you can use them much more before they get distracting. You can use commas a great, great deal before people find them distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally avoid using parentheses in dialog because it's not clear how the reader is supposed to read it. In my mind I picture a lower or more casual tone of voice. But it's ambiguous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen many writers use dashes for parenthetical remarks. I'm sure there are English teachers and grammar Nazis who say it's wrong, but I think it's pretty common these days, most people accept it, and it is readily understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, I'd just say: whatever you do, don't overdo it. If every sentence you write as parentheses in it, you want to rethink that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T14:10:11.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11113" CreationDate="2014-06-05T15:02:45.510" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, &lt;strong&gt;brackets&lt;/strong&gt; imply some kind of &lt;em&gt;meta comment:&lt;/em&gt; a thought or remark that does not reside on the same level as the rest of the text and is therefore taken out of it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Commas (don't confuse them with colons!) look like little Nines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fiction there is no meta level, where you, the author, speak to the reader. The &lt;em&gt;narrator&lt;/em&gt; may address the reader, but this is still a fictional construct, a literary device, and takes place on the level of the narration. The author himself can only speak in a preface or afterword, or elsewhere outside the text of the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Commas&lt;/strong&gt; are just syntactic devices integrating &lt;em&gt;adjunct clauses&lt;/em&gt; from the end of a sentence into its middle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ladder collapsed because it was old.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The ladder, because it was old, collapsed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dashes&lt;/strong&gt; signify a &lt;em&gt;break in the text&lt;/em&gt; and insert content from outside the chronological or argumentative order of the narration, e.g. a bit of backstory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John — he was the oldest of Paul's three sons — did not hesitate to ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can convey the same information with commas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John, the oldest of Paul's three sons, did not hesitate to ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference, to me, is that with commas you just quickly provide the information while your story keeps running, while the dashes pause the story and take the reader for a short trip to another story, in this case the story of John's childhood. And even if the inserted clause only hints at that childhood, as in the preceding example, the dashes draw the reader's attention to this bit of information and signify its importance. You can, of course, provide more detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John — he was the oldest of Paul's three sons and had been beaten severely by his drunken father — did not hesitate to ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That detour can be as long as you want, and you may repeat relevant parts of your surrounding sentence after the insertion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John — he was the oldest of Paul's three sons and had been beaten severely whenever his father caught him gazing at his sister taking a shower through the bathroom keyhole —, John did not hesitate to ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T15:24:36.063" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T15:24:36.063" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11121" CreationDate="2014-06-05T16:10:00.347" Score="5" ViewCount="416" Body="&lt;p&gt;While many aspects of a culture, etc, can be researched - there are intrinsic difficulties to writing from the PoV of a woman as a male author and vice versa, and I'd argue even harder for an adult to write from the PoV of a child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly authors throughout history have successfully managed this - but how? Are there any clear guidelines for building believable characters from a PoV that is quite different from one's own? I know the old adage of 'write what you know', but diverse characters populate and enrich stories, so remaining boxed entirely by my personal experience seems too limited and unimaginative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8705" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T15:37:20.390" Title="Methods for writing from an alternate gender/age/cultural viewpoint?" Tags="|fiction|technique|characters|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11111" CreationDate="2014-06-06T00:34:48.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you have a question like that in narration, you are essentially narrating the protagonist's thoughts. If you put quotes around them, or italicized them, and made them present tense, they would be dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you keep that in mind (and don't overuse the technique, as Watercleave correctly notes), it's perfectly fine to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T00:34:48.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11117" CreationDate="2014-06-06T08:22:18.290" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I stand to be corrected on this, but I don't give too much credit to the idea that culture, gender or even age (over the age of 13, at least) play a greater role in a character's outlook than their own inherent character traits. The quiet, subdued, but kind parish pastor is probably far more different from his raucous, impulsive and violent parishioner than from the equally quiet and kind keeper of the new Hindu temple across the street, or from the equally subdued leader of the women's Bible study group at the church. In fact, the dynamic between the pastor and the parishioner may well be reflected in both of the other contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the difference between people of different ages, genders and often cultures is not one of inherent character, but one of situation. Of &lt;em&gt;course&lt;/em&gt; the Saudi Arabian woman's enforced seclusion by virtue of the culture she grew up in has &lt;em&gt;affected&lt;/em&gt; her character, but it is the situation, not the culture that created it, that has affected her; an America girl would experience the same effects were &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt; to be put in that situation. Likewise, growing up during the Cold War would affect an older character, but only in the same way it would affect me if it has continued into the 1990s and 2000s. All you need to do is understand the situations, challenges and encounters the character's context and attributes produce, and you can work out the rest in the same way you would work out any other character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one major exception to this is culture; different cultures often have different outlooks on many things. That said, these differences are often exaggerated; the only ones likely to come up in a story are social and relational differences, particularly how people interact with their elders, their father and their mother. Research is your only resort here, I'm afraid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of establishing character, &lt;strong&gt;vocabulary&lt;/strong&gt; is essential. It will always come up in dialogue; if you're using a first-person narrator, it will permeate the narrative as well. You can even use it subtly with &quot;tight&quot; third-person narrative (I think the technical term is &quot;limited third-person narrative&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to write for different characters is about twenty different questions, depending on what sort of character you want to write. A few have been asked here before, and once you have an idea for a specific character, you can always ask a question about that character specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a &quot;child&quot; character can be split into two categories: Over-thirteen and under-thirteen characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Children&quot; can be surprisingly adult over or even at the age of 13. The main difference between teenagers and adults is their social context, how they interact with each other and with people of different age groups. Again, a little research, even if it's just talking with a group of teenagers, will go a long way in helping you to characterise them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teenagers are also, of course, known for rebellion against authority, and young characters are often naive, but there's no real difference between these traits and the rebelliousness and naivete that some adult characters might possess. And, of course, their vocabulary and use of language is likely to be different to any other social group, but again, it's a matter of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid I can't in good faith tell you anything about writing characters under the age of 13 except that I suspect it would be incredibly difficult, especially as the viewpoint character. I'd imagine it's rather a large topic, so you might want to ask it as a question on its own, where hopefully someone can give a better answer than I.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T08:22:18.290" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10035" CreationDate="2014-06-06T11:23:12.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The methods section of a research paper provides the information by which a study’s validity is judged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An effectively written methodology section should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce the overall methodological approach for investigating your research problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indicate how the approach fits the overall research design.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe the specific methods of data collection you are going to use&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain how you intend to analyze your results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide background and rationale for methodologies that are unfamiliar for your readers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a rationale for subject selection and sampling procedure. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Address potential limitations. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8849" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T14:08:55.387" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T14:08:55.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11117" CreationDate="2014-06-06T11:55:59.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make yourself intimately familiar with the kind of person you are writing about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you write about a child, spend time with children. Observe, how they behave, how they react, what interests them, what they don't understand, how they deal with emotions, etc. Children (and adults) change fundamentally over the course of their development. Become a psychologist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt; Do not make the mistake of thinking adult personality is stable. An eighty year old is as different from a forty year old as a preschooler is from a teenager.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you write about a foreign culture, visit that culture and live there. Immerse yourself in the customs, beliefs, and morals of that culture. Become an ethnologist.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you write about a person of the opposite gender, do not believe popular myths. To understand the differences, become a sociologist. To understand the similarities, become a lover.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enhance your experience with books, reflection and by interviewing the subjects of your studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fake what you don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be fooled by how well some authors seem to portray the experience of a child, a psychopath or some other &quot;alien&quot;. Often these characters appear well-realized to the reader only because the reader is unfamiliar with that kind of person, too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write about cats, only a cat would know how well you understood it, so if you fake the cat's perspective well, humans will commend you on your understanding of cats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most fiction is not written &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; a certain type of person, but &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; a certain type of person: the intended audience. Unless you are writing literary or experimental fiction, or non-fiction, your characters must reflect your readers. They must feel believable and relevant to your readers from their perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write a parenting guidebook, your portrayal of children must be accurate, because you want the parents to understand their children. But if you write a novel for adult readers featuring a child protagonist, that fictional character, while being believable as a child, must reflect adult concerns and wishes about childhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example to illustrate this is that what makes a happy childhood for a child is not how most adults imagine a happy childhood. Anti-authoritarian experiments, creating an adult ideal of nonrestrictive parenting, result in disorientation, social dysfunctions and unhappiness for most children. Children need frustration, boredom and boundaries. But if you want to write about a happy childhood for adults, you'd do well to give your child characters the total freedom to do whatever they like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same goes for books with female leads written for men (or vice versa). The male or female protagonist of a book written for readers of the opposide gender must fulfill an erotic fantasy, even if it pretends to explain &quot;what men are really like&quot;. In fiction, men are &quot;really&quot; as women want them (or as they love to hate them). Which is, why in fiction men are rapists and saviors, while in reality most men are just girls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T12:27:30.270" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T12:27:30.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10667" CreationDate="2014-06-06T14:04:26.363" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a traditional publisher agrees to take your book, neither you nor they know if your book will be a success. So they will give you some pile of money as an advance (so that if the book does not sell, at least you get some compensation for your effort), arrange to take the lion’s share of the profit (so that if the book &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; sell well, the publisher’s profit on it will more than make up for their loss on other books), and allocate some money to cover design, marketing, etc. (in the hope that such investment will be good for your book’s sales and hence for their profits).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you self-publish through Amazon, neither you nor Amazon knows if your book will be a success. Amazon, however, doesn’t give a damn: they aren’t paying you anything up front, they aren’t investing their own money in marketing, and they can make a profit off your book even if it only sells a single copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you self-publish through Amazon &lt;em&gt;and then&lt;/em&gt; try to market the same book to a traditional publisher, your book &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a known quantity. In a happy world, you are one of those self-publishers who sells so many kajillions of copies that a traditional publisher says “my precious, we wantssss it” and offers you a sweet deal. In a slightly less happy world, your book is selling on Amazon, and would be profitable for whatever traditional publisher picked it up—but only if they bought it on the same terms they give to their other midlist authors, which are less favorable than the terms you are already getting from Amazon. And in an unhappy world, your Amazon sales figures prove to a traditional publisher that your book &lt;em&gt;wouldn’t&lt;/em&gt; be profitable for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T14:04:26.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11117" CreationDate="2014-06-06T14:48:51.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first thought is, Don't be afraid to use stereotypes, but don't overdo them. Most stereotypes came to be widely circulated because they have at least an element of truth. Like years ago I read somewhere, Nobody tells jokes whose punch line is that Jews drink too much, or that Irish people secretly rule the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example, it's a classic stereotype that women want a husband who is rich, while men want a wife who is beautiful. And I just saw a survey recently that found -- shock of all shocks -- that women are indeed far more likely to consider how much money a man makes before getting married than men care about a woman's income, indeed the men often said they would be cautious about marrying a woman who made more than he did. Likewise men cared more about looks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to employ a stereotype without being simplistic or carrying it to an extreme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a character who only appears briefly in a story, of course we don't expect an in-depth, complex character study. If a character only says two sentences and then disappears, he can be a simplistic stereotype. But if the main character in your story has only one apparent motivation that explains everything he does, the story will be shallow and probably boring. Have you seen Star Wars Episode I? I recall when watching that thinking to myself, Every character in this movie can be completely described in one sentence or less. There's the wise old man, the brave but reckless youth, the good queen who is just trying to do what's best for her people, the villain who will torture and kill to stay in power, etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also want to be careful not to make all the characters who are members of the &quot;group&quot; interchangeable. If you have, say, a female character whose overriding concern is to protect her children, sure, that's a stereotype, but it's a stereotype with truth to it and most readers would find such a character quite believable. (Assuming it was done well, of course.) But if the only apparent motivation of EVERY female character in the story is to protect her children, I'd take a step back and rethink the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And just by the way, it's not only writing people of a different gender or age that can be difficult. Some of the lamest writing I've ever seen involved people trying to write a character of a different political persuasion or religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T14:48:51.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11117" CreationDate="2014-06-06T15:37:20.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;1). Research. How? Other fiction that deals with the identity you wish to write from. One of the primary functions of fiction is to teach us what it is like to be others. Plus it may inspire you in other ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2). Listen. But not just as research, rather as a lifestyle. You can't just go out and intentionally overhear all of the insights you need. You must collect through your life. Better to start now than never, if you haven't. Carry a notebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3). Don't try too hard. Human beings can be different on deep levels, but they are the same on the deepest level. If you understand yourself, and you know enough context, you will imagine a realistic human being. Better to put yourself in another person's shoes, I think, then to pretend you &quot;truly&quot; understand them. Because let's be honest, you can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8852" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T15:37:20.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10667" CreationDate="2014-06-06T15:45:10.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple answer: No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may ask why not. The reason is because if you and a publisher sign an agreement to publish a book together you will have to sign a contract with them. Many publishers issue a boilerplate which includes a clause demanding first serial publishing rights to your work but this is as easy to exclude or waive as putting a line through it or signing a copy of the contract in which that clause has been removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question becomes why would it be in a publisher's interest to remove that clause? The hard fact is that usually it is because the author has some kind of proven success in selling their books without the aid of a publisher beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lauren mentioned Hocking but of course she is not alone in the club of people who signed on the dotted line with that clause removed. Hugh Howey is now published by Arrow but Wool went up on Smashwords first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps more surprising to many people Dan Brown hawked copies of his first novel &quot;Digital Fortress&quot; out of the boot of his car before a publisher agreed to work with him. I'm not sure whether they initially retained his services to write his second book Deception Point only but they certainly signed a distribution deal regards Fortress when the Da Vinci Code hit the big time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a smaller scale again Matthew Reilly's Contest was initially a self-published work where the numbers worked out to, assumedly mutual, benefit and so the book was re:published by a big house after Reilly had earned his pips selling the work off his own back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is possible, and not just for people making dump trucks of money, but the devil will always be in the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T15:45:10.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11100" CreationDate="2014-06-06T15:58:17.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Always think of what is best for the particular piece you are writing. Spivak pronouns are not widely accepted, used, or even recognized. Therefore they will be distracting. Unless the distracting nature of the pronouns somehow supports the argument you are making, don't use them. As other answers have illustrated, you have more options. I personally recommend feminine pronouns no matter your identity. That choice will convey an awareness of linguistic and academic gender bias clear enough without being distracting. Mixing pronouns should only be done with care, because done poorly it can be very distracting as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8852" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T15:58:17.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11130" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-06T16:06:08.527" Score="1" ViewCount="310" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm keen to write stories from my imagination. However, my grammar is not up to the mark. I use very simple words, not complicated words like the ones used in novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read many great books, such as &lt;em&gt;To Kill a Mockingbird&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Gone with the Wind&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Kane and Abel&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Atlas Shrugged&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The Fountainhead&lt;/em&gt; and many more. I understand them very well, but while writing I make grammatical mistakes and I use simple English like we use in school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I improve my English? My native language is not English, but that doesn't mean that I should not be proficient in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8853" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2021-05-26T11:01:28.707" LastActivityDate="2021-05-26T11:01:28.707" Title="Improving my English" Tags="|language|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11064" CreationDate="2014-06-06T16:10:52.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely not cliche, but . . . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1). Be aware that you are setting a snappy, informal tone for your essay. Is that what you want? More importantly, can you maintain that tone for the whole essay? Leading off with an atonally snappy opening sentence is a very common mistake. (Hook 'em with a real worm, not a rubber one!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2). Don't repeat the word directly after! That immediately alerts the reader to the potential inefficiency of a one word sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8852" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T16:10:52.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11099" CreationDate="2014-06-06T16:11:25.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past, I've used a wiki for this type of work. However, a tool doesn't organize itself. The best wiki sites are heavily edited from every level from copy to development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T16:11:25.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11063" CreationDate="2014-06-06T16:23:07.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, read some of your favorite science fiction closely. Seeing words in action is more useful than advice here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I'll propose one of a million approaches: Forget about it. Modern readers are pretty good at seeing past self-awareness in fiction. Some readers, like myself, even appreciate stories that don't pursue the impossible simulacrum of a fictional world, but rather put that extra effort into something beautifully and uniquely imagined and described. Whatever you do, just be consistent and do it well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8852" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T16:23:07.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11057" CreationDate="2014-06-06T17:08:26.757" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Forget any rules you've heard about passive voice! Instead, learn exactly what is happening when you use a passive voice, and use it well. How do you learn? Through close reading! A good writer is able to predict the range of inferences stirred up in a reader by her sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The officer hit Jeff. --VS-- Jeff was hit by the officer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The officer hit Jeff.&#xA; - Without context the reader assumes the officer hit Jeff intentionally.&#xA; - Emphasis on the officer's agency/power to act.&#xA; - Emphasis that the officer acted and not someone else&#xA; - The sentence reveals almost nothing about Jeff other than having been hit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeff was hit by the officer.&#xA; - Unclear whether the hit was intentional.&#xA; - Emphasis that Jeff was the one hit and not someone else.&#xA; - Emphasis on the fact that the act happened (Jeff &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; hit)&#xA; - Jeff loses agency in the world&#xA; - The officer perhaps acted as a part of a larger system rather than as an individual&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to ensure the sets of inferences your sentence structures generate are the ones you want. In a story about police cruelty, you would probably write, &quot;The officer hit Jeff.&quot; In a story in which Jeff is a powerless character, you might write, &quot;Jeff was hit by the officer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8852" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T17:08:26.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11057" CreationDate="2014-06-06T19:11:28.007" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Passive voice is not exactly incorrect. There is no rule against. But your readers will usually put down a book filled with passive voice. A passive voice sentence is usually extremely boring. Is that what you want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem isn't so much passive voice. The problem is really &amp;quot;weak sentences.&amp;quot; It just so happens that 90+% of the time that you find a passive voice sentence it is also a weak sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weak sentences are only bad at release time, though. Weak sentences are great for writing time! Just finishing a novel is a lot of work and if you need to use weak sentences to get your story out, do it. Now that your story is out, fix the weak sentences in a revision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example where I discuss that a sentence can be weak even after changing it from passive to active voice.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jabrambarneck.com/2012/09/17/painting-away-passive-voice/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://jabrambarneck.com/2012/09/17/painting-away-passive-voice/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was tired and sleepy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just changing the sentence to be active doesn't make it a good sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I felt tired and sleepy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feeling tired, sleepiness overwhelmed me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both these have active verbs but they are both still weak sentences. After some analysis of the characters and setting, you should formulate a strong sentence that grabs the reader in a way that puts them in the story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My heavy eyelids dropped involuntarily until I forced them back open.&#xA;My lower back complained as I asked it to ache for a few minutes&#xA;longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every reader has one time or another had to fight to keep their eyes open; has had to ask their tired and aching body to stay awake longer than it should. So these sentences allow the reader to better identify with the story and the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is filled with weak sentences, you will get rejection after rejection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8655" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T19:11:28.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11130" CreationDate="2014-06-06T19:27:42.037" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read. Read some more. Then read. Then Read some more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read over 200 books on my &quot;Read&quot; list on GoodReads and I haven't even added them all. In comparison, others have read a lot more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read in English of course. Just read two books a month, and in a year, you will be at 24 books and in 5 years you will have 120 books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more you fill your mind with higher quality grammar, the more your own grammar will improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studying grammar will help, but not without the reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing that will help more than reading is reading out loud. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8655" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T19:27:42.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11130" CreationDate="2014-06-06T20:16:05.587" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Word has spelling &amp;amp; grammar checker. It also compiles readability statistics &amp;amp; lets the user chose writing style, i.e. casual, standard, etc. The app isn't 100% reliable but it gives you a starting place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A site you might find helpful is the Perdue Online Writing Lab [OWL] @ &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/&lt;/a&gt;. Most of the information is grammar related. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8856" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T20:16:05.587" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10667" CreationDate="2014-06-06T20:41:00.543" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Multiple indie authors have signed with with publishers after being indie. It is actually easier to get a publisher when you are a successful indie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look up Jessica Sorenson and  John G. Hartness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jessica Sorenson is now with Hachette Book Group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John G. Hartness is now with Bell Bridge Books&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could give you more examples but those are the ones I am familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you self publish and have signed no contracts you are free to sign any contract with anyone you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; sign a contract with a vanity press or other small press, you may have issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8655" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T20:41:00.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11144" CreationDate="2014-06-07T04:44:27.370" Score="6" ViewCount="708" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a college textbook/workbook to correspond with some courses I teach. Once finished, I'll have about 30 chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than publish just one 30-chapter, generic book, I want to create separate versions of the book for students of different majors, i.e.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(subject) for Business&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(subject) for Trades&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(subject) for Engineers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(subject) for Artists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that I can keep the work manageable, each version will contain similar content, but some parts are unique:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only those chapters relevant to each major will be included in that version.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The writing samples in the book will be adjusted to fit each major.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The exercises in the book will be adjusted to fit each major.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will readers feel I am just cheating them by publishing the same content, but assembled in different orders, with different minor details, in many different books? Do publishers allow or discourage this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T16:57:19.907" Title="Is it acceptable to reuse chapters across multiple books?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11139" CreationDate="2014-06-07T08:02:25.247" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who sometimes reused chapters from one book to another. Each time he reused a chapter, he included a note mentioning where the chapter was first published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His books were all with the same publisher, though. To do this across publishers, you'd have to take care with the copyrights, and with how you license rights to each publisher. Seems complicated to me, but a copyright lawyer would probably know what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T08:02:25.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11142" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-07T13:06:26.837" Score="3" ViewCount="2170" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, there are like a billion outliners out there but I'm not sure if there is one that does what I want. Maybe you can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to write chunks of text &lt;strong&gt;without headline, numbering, bullets&lt;/strong&gt;. Just text like in a text editor, one sentence/paragraph/fragment after another.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One chunk of text should appear immediately below the other. Also just like text in a text editor window.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to be able to create &lt;strong&gt;columns of annotations&lt;/strong&gt; that represent the story throughlines, e.g. one column for the protagonist's outer quest, one column for his inner development, one for the antagonist, one for the romance, and so on. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to be able to drag each row of outline+annoations to anywhere else in the document, or copy/paste it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to be able to copy &lt;strong&gt;only the outline text&lt;/strong&gt; without annotations and paste it into a separate text document so you can read, print or mail it around.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It would be perfect but I guess no software has this feature if I could draw arrows from any part of the document to any other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what the working area should look like. Done in Excel, which does what I want, but which I hate because it is so visually unappealing and constantly reminds me that I'm writing text into a software that was made to deal with data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4D9HS.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T22:16:55.093" Title="Outliner (software) with annotations for OS X or browser based (but offline!)" Tags="|software|outline|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11139" CreationDate="2014-06-07T16:03:56.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think readers are more likely to be annoyed by the reduced availability of used versions than directly by the reuse. That is, when a student sees that a copy of &lt;em&gt;X for Engineers&lt;/em&gt; and of &lt;em&gt;X for Trades&lt;/em&gt; are available but the student needs &lt;em&gt;X for Artists&lt;/em&gt; and the books are by the same author and only differ modestly, the student might be somewhat upset. This is similar to the effect of frequently updating versions. This feeling would be amplified when the author is recognized as the teacher or being from the same department or university; the feeling of artificial profiteering is increased by the perceived lock-in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the cost of the book in new and used forms, the availability of different versions (especially in used form), and the amount of shared material will influence the perception. If a new textbook is substantially less expensive than other textbooks for the field (e.g., art textbooks might typically be more expensive than textbooks in other fields), the annoyance of having to buy a more expensive new version is reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the different versions are released in different years, especially if the most structurally similar versions are the most separated in release time, then this feeling might be reduced somewhat. The perception is then conveyed that the more recent version is not just a rearrangement of content but an update. This release timing might also have practical benefits for the author and editors. Using more distinct titles would also reduce the appearance of reuse. E.g.: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Practical X for Tradesmen&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Business Use of X&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;An Engineer's Manual for&lt;/em&gt; [or &lt;em&gt;Guide to&lt;/em&gt;] &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;X for the Creative Mind&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If certain core material is both broadly applicable and enduring, it &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be useful to provide a smaller number of versions of the core text (perhaps one for all users or perhaps two versions) with a supplemental paperback book with different versions. An ebook &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be acceptable for a supplement which only included exercises and might reduce the cost of diversity. While having to buy (and use) two books would probably annoy students, the annoyance of having to buy a $35 used version of the core and a $20 new version of the supplement might be less than that of having to buy one $80 book when a $40 used version with mostly the same material is available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general people do not have an intuitive sense of the costs of developing and making available a textbook. If a textbook has unused chapters, a person is likely to feel that the book would have been cheaper if the excess material was excluded, not realizing the interplay between fixed and incremental costs. If a book has 80% of the same content as a book with half the price (even when comparing new to used), there may be an impression of being cheated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-06-07T16:17:45.743" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T16:17:45.743" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-06-07T16:03:56.940" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11139" CreationDate="2014-06-07T16:57:19.907" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In versions of a textbook geared at different audiences, this is perfectly acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example is the German textbook on Personality Psychology by Jens B. Asendorpf, published by Springer, which is published in a version for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.de/Pers%C3%B6nlichkeitspsychologie-Bachelor-Lesen-Lernen-Springer-Lehrbuch/dp/364219883X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1402158587&amp;amp;sr=8-1-fkmr1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bachelor&lt;/a&gt; and one for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.de/Psychologie-Pers%C3%B6nlichkeit-Springer-Lehrbuch-Jens-Asendorpf/dp/3642302637/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1402158587&amp;amp;sr=8-3-fkmr1&amp;amp;keywords=pers%C3%B6nlichkeitspsychologie%20master%20bachelor&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Master Students&lt;/a&gt;, which take into account the different requirements of different examination regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the differences between these different editions of the same book have to be clearly explained in the book's description (backcover blurb, Amazon summary, etc.) and prominently marked (see the &quot;Bachelor&quot; in the image below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bacvo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If such an understandable reason to reuse text blocks across different publications is missing, I would avoid it, even if you repeat the content of the text. For example, scientists rewriting journal articles into book chapters, handbook entries or news articles usually don't copy/paste text, but truly rewrite the whole article, because the different formats require a different structure, argumentation, language, and so on. The maximum of repetition that I have found in such cases, where the content was (partly) identical, was the re-use of central and striking phrases (e.g. definitions of terms), no longer than a sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the same author &quot;reuses&quot; a text block in a publication on another topic, he must quote it just as he would quote other authors. If he doesn't it might be considered &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism#The_concept_of_self-plagiarism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;self-plagiarism&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T16:57:19.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11130" CreationDate="2014-06-07T19:15:58.123" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR - Read. Learn. Write. Finish what you write. Never stop repeating the cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reading&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading and writing is a cultural conversation. People write books to say something. Other people read those books and a few of those write books in return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Rhyous has pointed out in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/11136/26&quot;&gt;their fine answer&lt;/a&gt;, you should read. You want to write books and stories and contribute to the cultural conversation? That's great! Read a variety of books in different genres, from different eras. Pay attention to what you've read, internalize it. This is exactly how native speakers learn the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find that books build off of each other. So read books that you enjoy. Read books from genres you loathe. (Well, skim them at least.) When things confuse you, ask a friend, &lt;em&gt;what the hell is going on in this book?&lt;/em&gt; The answer may lead you to another book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll get, from all of this reading, a feel for tone, pacing, and story. You may even enjoy the reading! (It is important this not feel like a chore.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this reading will show you how words are put together, and probably help increase your &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/vocabulary&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;vocabulary&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;vocabulary&lt;/a&gt; at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Educating yourself&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm stressing this section because you're not a native speaker, but it's applicable to all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; need to be a grammarian to write. But you do need to learn to put a sentence together in a logical way. Most writers pick up grammar by osmosis, through reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read through a good style book like &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/1702/26&quot;&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. I take that back, read that book. It's very short and is filled with (mostly) good examples of simple writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are good books on writing out there. My favorite is Stephen King's &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt;, but there are &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/148/26&quot;&gt;many others&lt;/a&gt;. The best ones are short and to the point and fun to read. (If the writer of the book can't keep you turning pages, why would you take their advice?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These books will teach you in a formal way what reading will show you: How to structure a story so the reader cares what happens next, how to make characters the reader would take a bullet for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Writing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point, you'll want to write. You won't feel that you're ready, but you should write anyway. Accept that you will suck for a while. That's okay, all you have to do is write something better than the last thing you wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, you could start writing right now. Why? Because there's an adage: We all have thousands of bad pages inside us, or dozens of pad paintings, or terrible songs. The goal is to get them out of us by creating until our ability catches up with our taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get feedback from people whose work you respect: Reading groups, editors, beta readers, and agents. (&amp;quot;Feedback&amp;quot; from friends and family is usually just friends and family discharging an obligation.) Revise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important: Finish what you start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Believe in yourself. Keep writing, no matter what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T19:15:58.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3759" CreationDate="2014-06-08T14:36:51.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Differences&#xA;Narration often employs first person point of view, using words like &quot;I&quot; and &quot;me,&quot; while other modes including description do not. The biggest difference between the two is that a narrative essay includes action, but the descriptive essay does not. Narration follows a logical order, typically chronological. In contrast, description typically contains no time elements, so organize descriptive essays by some other reasonable means, such as how you physically move around in a space or with a paragraph for each of the senses you use to describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8861" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T14:36:51.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11063" CreationDate="2014-06-08T16:46:29.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a right answer for what you're asking. At the end of the day, you're writing in English. English, like any language, reflects the history and collective views of the society it came from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, English has many words for water related things, especially about things that relate to sailing, because throughout its history (through the vikings and Normans, and finally the more modern English who were seafarers as well) the English nation has been sailing. That's just how that is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the way I see it, you have three options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stop thinking over it and just write in a way that's natural to you. Alternatively, introduce a human element to the story, or have the narrator be human. Make it natural for you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write up a variation on English, as you've said, but always be careful to strike a balance between making it sound authentic and making it understandable by humans.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do what Tolkien did with his elves. Granted, they did have human interaction, and they did speak (to protagonists) in &quot;common speech&quot;, but what Tolkien did was he invented a language (a few languages, actually) for his elves, to match a society he invented for them, and everything he wrote about them, he wrote with that in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He could chose a different word order in a sentence, or have they choose specific words, or act in a certain manner that was uniquely elvish. And then, everything fell into place with elves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is by far the most difficult way to go, but it's also, in my opinion, the most rewarding. It sounds right, when you write it down. There's a lot of learning to do, though, and a lot of work after it. If this is the course of action you want to go with, a great book to start with is Mark Rosenfelder's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zompist.com/kit.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Language Construction Kit&lt;/a&gt;, available both online for free, and on paper or pdf as an extended version.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck to you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8087" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T16:46:29.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11100" CreationDate="2014-06-09T11:30:21.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I use and recommend singular they. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's good enough for - among others - William Shakespeare, is well known enough that a teacher will know what you're trying to do rather than thinking you've made a mistake, and (for my money at least) looks better on the page than alternating hes and shes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not to mention the fact that we live in a more-and-more non-binary world when it comes to gender issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="975" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T11:30:21.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8927" CreationDate="2014-06-09T16:45:02.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two questions are posed above:  Do you need permission, and what are the legalities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No you do not need permission, however, you shouldn't be doing it for free.&#xA;If you only use the name in a favorable way, no problem.  Unfavorable and you can get into heap big trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm chiming in here because it is not uncommon to be paid by major corporations, or even smaller operations, for promoting their products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an advertisers point of view, the cost per thousand is so minimal, they jump at the chance for another place to see their name mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not have to be a best selling author to be considered, but it is doubtful you will make much if your book does not sell well.  Advertisers don't waste resources on nickel and dimes.  But many will cut a check for three or ten dollars, if your book sales warrant same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently the most lucrative advertisers for authors are the liquor, beer, and tobacco industries.  Followed closely by footwear, and internet based businesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many already have simple contracts available that show the amount they pay, either as coinage or a percentage of the books price, and the number of books, or pay level reached before they pay anything at all.  Some are as few as 250 books, some pay at 500 books, and a few do not pay until you cross 1000 books sold.  The latter is actually the better deal, because the percentage goes up along with book sales.  A half-penny per book may not sound like much, until you cross 1000 books and it jumps to 3 cents per book for the next 10,000 books, or jumps to a nickel at 25,000 books.  The higher you move on the charts, in some cases, the higher percentage an advertiser pays.  Some are simply a fixed amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you are intending to use a name brand in your book, and in a favorable light, check to see if the company offers a contract for authors, and if so, send them at least the pages before and after their name is mentioned, and the page it is mentioned on.  If you have previous successful book sales, provide your rankings and book sales information, as this can up the amount they offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VTY&#xA;Dutch Rhudy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9868" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T16:45:02.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12150" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-09T18:08:41.720" Score="5" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anyone point me to an RDF vocabulary used for story-telling?  A Resource Description Framework is a technique for structuring data in a way that computers can easily process it and connect simple pieces of data together in order to form complex knowledge graphs.  I'm looking for a vocabulary, that is a data description, that applies to fiction plots.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously literature is meant to be read, it is meant to be experienced; it is more than just the summation of the semantic information in the statements that compose it. However, I have been considering that there could be some real benefit to having a story &quot;transcoded&quot; into a structured format that a machine could &quot;understand&quot; in the vein of the semantic web. For instance, if you're trying to remember when a character was introduced, or you want to know whatever happened to that one suspicious acting flight-attendant, or &quot;did I miss something, how did they get to Instanbul?&quot;, a machine with sufficient semantic information about the story could answer those questions much more easily than say a plain-text keyword search. Such a machine could even be used for things like dynamic plot summaries, testing comprehension, even &quot;explaining&quot; difficult or convoluted story lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've considered using things like RDFa, microdata, and microformats to markup my story. I think that using these techniques I can include a lot of machine-readable semantic metadata about &lt;em&gt;objects&lt;/em&gt; in my story: characters, places, artificats, props, etc. &lt;strong&gt;But what I'm looking for is a way to encode the actual &lt;em&gt;plot&lt;/em&gt; of the story,&lt;/strong&gt; either by tagging/marking-up my actual story, or possibly even in a separate document with possible cross references to parts of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For context, I'm writing in plain text and will generate the book in various formats (PDF, EPUB, HTML, etc.) when I'm finished, so inline semantic markup like HTML is good option and can easily be extracted/removed later as needed.  This question is about finding a vocabulary, not about tools; I've just included this for context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T14:54:18.777" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T10:12:03.147" Title="RDF vocabularly for storytelling" Tags="|plot|tools|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11091" CreationDate="2014-06-09T20:46:10.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would hesitate to ask: &quot;What are you looking for?&quot; because you should already know this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishers usually list this info on their submission guidelines or blog posts by their agents. Do some research. Find out what they are looking for, then list the ways your writing fills what they are looking for. Once you have that info, ask something like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You are looking for T, and my story is T in these ways. If I were to&#xA;  revise my novel to better fit your needs, what elements of T would you&#xA;  want me to enhance or add?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(where T equals the type of story they are looking for)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prepare a couple ideas for them that you have (or new ideas that you can write for them). If they are not interested in your current story, tell them about these ideas then ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do these ideas feel like they fit? Which idea excites you the most?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if they turn you down for your current story, they may be excited to hear from you on a few of your other ideas and you've kept the dialogue open and kept your foot in the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8655" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T20:46:10.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10668" CreationDate="2014-06-10T00:47:50.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are numerous places to promote your book, many for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do it yourself, or hire a promoter to place the information for you, for a fee of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand why you don't want to take advantage of distributors, most of my sales were from their sales points, until I hired a promoter to place my books on sites I had not found on my own yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt very much if you are going to find someone to work for a percentage of sales, because 99% of books are a flop, no matter how well edited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you consider only one in fifteen thousand submissions to trad publishers are ever accepted for publication.  This means 14,999 made zilch because they landed in the slush pile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-published authors are gaining ground with one in five thousand earning a decent income stream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the first questions a promoter is going to ask you is how well established is your existing platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many pages of hits does your 'author name' get on Google?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many promoters will advertise your book in five or more major readers blogs, and ten to twenty secondary blogs, for between 150 and 300 bucks.  But they can't guarantee sales, not even a ball park figure as a guess.  Too many variables.  Is your cover grabbing and attractive or mundane?  What about the title and genre?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advertising can sell almost anything to anyone, no matter what it is, if the ad is luring enough.  Consider rocks that cost three bucks ton, with the right packaging and advertising campaign, you can sell those rocks for seven dollars each, and yes people will buy them.  Want proof?  Look up &quot;Pet Rocks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point here is, with the right packaging (cover) and jacket (blurb), your book will sell.  Will it sell well and become a household name (sell by word of mouth) or become a flop like Ford's Edsel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excellent books die, while some horrible books top the charts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you hire a promoter, unless you do a lot of the preliminary work yourself to build your platform, get your name out there, just because they see your book advertised, don't mean they will click-through to buy it.  Something has to motivate them.  I've had over 10,000 splash ads in a row, to selected readers groups, without a single click-through on a major website.  No Matter, each of those splash ads is placing my name in front of readers at the rate of around 50 to 100 per day.  So when they do stumble across my book elsewhere, amid other selections, my name will be remembered, and hopefully produce another sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A salesman may get the door slammed in his face 199 times, before hitting a sale.  It is expected.  Selling books is no different!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9868" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-23T10:19:21.403" LastActivityDate="2018-03-23T10:19:21.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12153" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-10T00:49:28.810" Score="4" ViewCount="19804" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sure it varies a bit (both in length and in number) but, on average, how many poems does a chapbook contain? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5599" LastActivityDate="2019-07-24T15:50:06.593" Title="How Many Poems Does a Chapbook Typically Contain?" Tags="|poetry|book-length|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10035" CreationDate="2014-06-10T01:00:35.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may find it useful to borrow from other disciplines, here. In the visual arts, the description of the artist's methodology is called an &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_statement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;artist statement&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and there are loads of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.artstudy.org/art-and-design-careers/sample-artist-statement.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;examples&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cgu.edu/pages/7483.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;guides&lt;/a&gt; to those on the Internet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5599" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T01:00:35.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12153" CreationDate="2014-06-10T03:26:51.477" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poemfish.com/download/CreatingAChapbook.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This guide to creating a chapbook&lt;/a&gt; (PDF) suggests a length of 20 to 30 pages with no more than one poem per page, so roughly 25 shorter poems. If a poem takes more than one page, it would be inappropriate to start the next poem on the same page the previous poem ended, so assuming 12-point font, 8-inch high page, and roughly 1 inch top and bottom margins, one might fit 36 lines per page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapbook&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; indicates &quot;up to about 40 pages&quot;, which agrees with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and-quandaries/what-is-a-poetry-chapbook&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Writer's Digest blog post&lt;/a&gt;. This would suggest a maximum of about 40 poems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally feel that for &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; short poems, the restriction of no more than one poem per page is stingy. While fitting two sonnets with titles onto a single page would be cramped, two title lines and 16 body lines (including spacing lines between stanzas) might reasonably fit on a page even with a font size that is comfortable for relaxed reading. However, one may be unlikely to have two such very short poems which are close enough in theme to work on a single page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T03:50:02.923" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T03:50:02.923" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-06-10T03:26:51.477" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12158" CreationDate="2014-06-10T07:51:32.160" Score="31" ViewCount="62571" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, I'm not actually asking you to tell me how to predict the future!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several pieces of fiction I've read/watched recently have prophecies. One of my favourites is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh, when no&#xA;  living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a Question will&#xA;  be asked, a question that must never, ever be answered.&#xA;  - Doctor Who&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the story the viewers know massive amounts of this, we know the question, the planet but the final story was a real surprise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the best techniques to create an interesting prophecy which keeps the reader guessing until it is revealed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8373" LastActivityDate="2018-01-05T20:29:19.907" Title="How to write a prophecy?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11091" CreationDate="2014-06-10T09:29:12.590" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not clear on whether you see this is a pitch session (i.e., with the explicit goal of interesting the publisher in your novel), or simply an opportunity for a one-on-one conversation. Either way, though, I think the best way to go here (and to get through your nervousness) is to take this excellent advice from Janet Reid, classily entitled: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/rant-pitch-sessions-are-spawn-of-satan.html&quot;&gt;Pitch Sessions Are Spawn of Satan&lt;/a&gt;. Whether or not you're actually pitching, Reid's article makes clear what she considers the greatest benefit of a one-on-one session: the opportunity for the pro to share their expertise, attention, and assistance. So that's what you want to ask for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, Reid contends that the most productive thing a pro can do is to &lt;em&gt;give detailed feedback on the sample or pitch&lt;/em&gt;. If you're a debut novelist, and I'm an established publishing gatekeeper, the best thing I can do is give you a &quot;run-through&quot; of how I'd react to your work, &lt;em&gt;and why&lt;/em&gt;. And then there's this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Writers might still be nervous, but if all they have to do is hand an agent a query, and take notes on what she says, and ask questions, I guarantee there will be less vomit involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the thing: &lt;strong&gt;in your situation, the publisher is the expert. You &lt;em&gt;shouldn't be required&lt;/em&gt; to guess what questions you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be asking.&lt;/strong&gt; Heck, if you know what questions to ask, you'd probably be able to find the answers on your own! No: the publisher knows all kinds of interesting stuff, and will probably be a better judge than you of what might be the most helpful. (&lt;em&gt;Particularly&lt;/em&gt; if you feel, to begin with, that you don't have specific questions or problems that are bothering you.) And the sample you're providing gives this publisher plenty to work with, to gauge where you are and what advice will be appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your basic approach can be this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want to give the publisher enough information about you and your writing that he has something to work with. That's your synopses and sample pages, and it's also how you introduce yourself: &quot;Hi, I'm ((name)), I mostly work in ((genre A)) and ((genre B)), I've written ((number of short stories, novels, and WIPs)), and the goal I'm working towards now is ((to get a big-publishing contract/to get a small-press contract/to self-publish/to find an agent/to make my English teacher proud/OTHER)).&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain exactly what you'd like to get out of the session. &quot;I don't have a list of questions; I mostly want feedback on my pages, feedback on how effective my summary and my synopsis are, and maybe if you have some more general career advice or details about publishing you think it'd be good for me to know, that would be terrific too.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let the pro give you feedback. Listen well; don't argue with &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt;; take notes. (Don't argue -- not because the particular pro is necessarily right about everything; just because you're here to hear &lt;em&gt;his reaction&lt;/em&gt;, not to start arguing.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt; after a few minutes you feel like you're not getting much from the pro, take a moment to consider why that is, and then raise the point politely, and ask to switch focus to some other helpful thing. &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Listen, I want to make sure we have time to look at...&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I'm sorry, you're using some terms I'm not familiar with, could you explain what you mean by...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I understand your point about this passage, and I don't think I need more explanation there. I'd rather move on to your next thought, is that OK?&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;You're being a little vague and general, can I ask you to show me a particular example in my writing of what you're talking about?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it! All you want to do is let the pro guide the conversation, and let him know that that's what you want. With any luck, everything should be smooth from there on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T13:38:07.643" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T13:38:07.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12156" CreationDate="2014-06-10T09:32:17.563" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;As usually with all riddles, start from the end - what the prophecy describes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write or at least plan thoroughly the story, leaving a placeholder where the prophecy has to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then sum up the events that are to be prophesized, actors involved, their role, the effects. Try to get that into about the size you want your prophecy to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then get to convoluting it. Start replacing names with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5583/creating-metaphors-in-poetry&quot;&gt;metaphors&lt;/a&gt;, involving deeds or characteristics of the subjects involved. You may consider writing it as a &lt;a href=&quot;https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/105/how-do-you-come-up-with-a-good-classic-rhyme-riddle&quot;&gt;rhymed riddle&lt;/a&gt;. Make sure to obfuscate, give it double meanings; good if the second meanings are deceiving - match both the actual subject and some completely different subject that still has a prominent place in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending if you want the prophecy, or a part of it to be understandable from moment one, involve factors that are already known at the time the prophecy is encountered. The parts that are to remain unclear should reference factors either not known to the reader at the time, or not yet fully understood. Nevertheless, spice it up with a few grains of clarity, something the reader can understand readily and grasp as obviously relevant - say, alternate name of a place, or an obvious, unique trait of a significant character. If the whole prophecy is a mystical mumbo-jumbo without a single good hint, it will not be attractive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:50:55.397" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T15:59:55.887" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12156" CreationDate="2014-06-10T13:53:10.460" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;@SF has given a good answer. A couple of other thoughts that occur to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to be saying that you want a prophecy that is cryptically worded. Depending on the point of the story, one could have a very clear prophecy, like, &quot;You will have seven years of abundant harvest followed by seven years of famine.&quot; If the point is to show that the prophet really does have a special connection to God or has magical powers or whatever, making it clear and unambiguous would do that better than something cryptic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want it to be cryptic, presumably so that figuring out what it means is an interesting puzzle, something I'd carefully consider is whether you want it to be so vague that no matter what happens, someone could say that it came true. Like there's the famous prophecy of the Oracle at Delphi to King Croesus. He asked if he should attack Persia, and the Oracle said that if he did, he would &quot;destroy a great empire&quot;. So he attacked and lost the war badly. And so the true believers in the Oracle declared that what the Oracle meant was that the empire that he destroyed &quot;would be his own&quot;. But of course if he had won the war, they would have said, See, the Oracle was right, he destroyed Persia. Or like those psychics who offer to help solve crimes and then make statements like, &quot;The letter R will be important.&quot; Then when the case is solved the psychic can find something in there that has the letter R in it -- some geographical feature near where the body was found may start with an R, or some store nearby, or the first, middle, or last name of the person who found the body, or some object near the body, etc. There could be dozens or hundreds of people, places, and things that are in some way related to solving the crime, and just by shear probabilities one of them should have a name that starts with any given letter. If I read such a prophecy in a story, then unless the point is to say that no matter what happened the prophet could claim to have been right, I'd find that very unsatisfying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the ideal mysterious riddle would be one that sounds very cryptic and could mean anything when you first hear it, but when you finally get to the solution, it suddenly sounds very clear and explicit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and maybe this is obvious: No matter how cryptic or mysterious the prophecy to the reader, make sure that YOU know exactly what it means when you write it. Don't just make up something bizarre and think you're going to figure out what it means later. This is the age of word processors: if something you put in your prophecy in chapter 1 turns out to just not work out by the time you get to chapter 20, go back and change it. Any mystery in a story you write should be baffling and mysterious to the reader, not to the writer. You should know where you're going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T13:53:10.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12150" CreationDate="2014-06-10T17:27:17.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I know enough about RDF to comment on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I have observed, reading entirely too many books about writing when I ought to be writing, is that different authors of how-to-write books have different ideas about how to define basic technical terms... like “plot”.  It’s like becoming a biology major and discovering that the professors in two different classes that you take can’t agree on whether or not a spider is an insect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the field cannot come to any consensus about what these terms mean in informal English, I rather doubt that there’s a universally acceptable way to encode their relationships in RDF.  You could invent your own vocabulary, of course—I’m enough of a geek to think that would be a cool thing—but I’m not sure the tools that you create would be useful to writers (even geeky writers) in general, and the vocabulary you construct to help you create your first novel might need to be heavily revised for writing your second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T17:27:17.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11091" CreationDate="2014-06-10T17:53:36.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;15 minutes isn't a lot of time so make it short and sweet. Here's a possible list of questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you think of my novel proposal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you interested in publishing this novel?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How could I change this work so that you would be interested in publishing this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there other publishing houses who would be interested in publishing this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would you be interested in my next novel proposal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Five questions is about the maximum you can ask in 15 minutes.  But reframe the setting as best you can from An Interview With A Publisher to a convivial meeting with a friend or colleague who's interested in your work.  We all like to work with people who we like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8665" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T17:53:36.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11089" CreationDate="2014-06-11T03:34:56.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's more important? Her inability to speak in English? or her story that will be narrated?&#xA;And even if you began writing disjointed sentences as an attempt to show that she is not a native English speaker, are you absolutely sure that the readers will keep on reading it?&#xA;Disjointed, grammatically wrong sentences are fine in dialogues. But only when you use them sparingly. They are used as a tag to say 'this guy is not a native English speaker' or 'this girl comes from a not so elite social environment of the English classes'... or you get the drill. Perfect example, the character of Eliza in G.B Shaw's Pygmalion who had a cocknea accent with a not so good grammar. And this is London we're talking about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;G.B Shaw was so (obsessed is the right word?) with phonetics that there are some instances where he wrote Eliza's dialogues in cocknea English accent and then provided the proper worded dialogues in brackets for those who couldn't get it the first time. Pygmnalion was a play. Yours isn't. And this is not Edwardian London. My point is, what matters is your story and your characters. When the characters are developed fine, they seem real, they'll start speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, don't worry about the way your dialogues will appear. Worry about the story. Those hints will be enough in the beginning because when the reader will be half-way through the story, they won't be concerned with the way she speaks. They will be concerned of what's supposed to happen next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T03:34:56.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12163" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12165" CreationDate="2014-06-11T08:37:32.703" Score="4" ViewCount="932" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a story in which one of the main characters is Deaf, and therefore communicates with other leads using sign language. Not being a native speaker of English, I am having trouble with coming up the appropriate way to remind the reader that the characters are communicating using sign language. Here are a few examples I have thought of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;How was your school today?&amp;quot; Anna signed to Emily. &amp;quot;What did you learn?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I can draw a butterfly now.&amp;quot; Emily signed back with enthusiasm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We will go to the park tomorrow and chase a lot of butterflies.&amp;quot; Anna signed Emily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it correct to use &amp;quot;Anna signed to Emily&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Emily signed back&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Anna signed Emily&amp;quot;? Are there better ways to phrase this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, once the plot is set and the readers made aware that these two characters always use sign language to communicate, I am thinking of dropping the reference to sign language, and maybe mention it once in a while to remind the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to hear what native speakers think about this approach. Any tips/suggestions are very much welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9882" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-10-24T23:56:04.567" LastActivityDate="2021-10-24T23:56:04.567" Title="Referring to sign language in conversations" Tags="|dialogue|language|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12163" CreationDate="2014-06-11T09:42:52.277" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use guillemets « » for signed speech, as discussed in this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4815/how-does-one-present-spoken-dialogue-as-a-secondary-language-to-signed-speech&quot;&gt;How does one present spoken dialogue as a secondary language to signed speech?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then your reader will &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; know when someone is signing or speaking aloud, and you can use the tag &quot;signed&quot; as often as you'd use &quot;said.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T09:42:52.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12163" CreationDate="2014-06-11T10:03:24.863" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a signed language user or expert, though I had once to learn a bit&#xA;about it. I think replacing &quot;to say&quot; by &quot;to sign&quot; is probably OK. But&#xA;some other verbs can be used as usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, why write  &quot;Emily signed back&quot; rather than &quot;Emily&#xA;replied&quot;, which is independent of the communication medium, unless&#xA;insisting on the medium, or on a change of medium, is important.&#xA;You would probably not write &quot;Emily said back&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example also: &quot;« why don't you draw a flower too » suggested&#xA;Anna&quot; does not need to insist in the medium. (independently of the use&#xA;of « »).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6647" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T10:03:24.863" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-11T10:41:41.157" Score="1" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an aspiring writer who feels blocked in terms of writing a novel because I am lacking knowledge of craft.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have taken two continuing education type writing courses in the past five years:  ED2GO's &quot;Write Like A Pro&quot; and University Wisconsin-Madison continuing studies' &quot;How To Write Compelling Fiction&quot;.  I have also read Larry Brook's &quot;Story Engineering&quot; and &quot;Story Physics&quot;.  As an aside, this has served to confuse me, because each source divides plot somewhat differently (such as 3 parts, 4 parts, and 5 parts -- and some with sub parts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to develop characters, outline a plot, and write the first chapter of a novel so that I can submit it to a critique group.  But in the meantime I have found several books in the Writer's Digest's &quot;Write Great Fiction&quot; series:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) &quot;Plot &amp;amp; Structure&quot; by by James Scott Bell shows you how to develop a believable and engaging plot that keeps readers enchanted from beginning to end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) &quot;Characters, Emotion &amp;amp; Viewpoint&quot; by Nancy Kress delivers proven methods for creating characters readers will believe in with scenes that deliver emotional impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) &quot;Dialogue&quot; by Gloria Kempton offers advice on writing dialogue that sizzles regardless of genre, ways to fix common problems and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) &quot;Description &amp;amp; Setting&quot; by Ron Rozelle helps you master the important, but often-overlooked subject of your story's setting and how it's described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(5) Revision &amp;amp; Self-Editing by James Scott Bell gives you tips on how to successfully develop first drafts into a final draft as well as techniques that improve your chance of publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another interesting book, among others, is Laurel Yourke's Take Your Characters To Dinner&quot; about characterization.  All of the above books have exercises, and it would be neat to have them critiqued, but I think maybe critique groups are looking more for book chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure at this point what philosophy to have:  try to have perfect knowledge upfront (at the expense of doing exercises as opposed to writing longer pieces), or writing a chapter (even if it is badly written), and submit it to a critique group to learn how to improve that way.  If I were to go the craft book route, who would be available to critique the exercises? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sincerely,&#xA;Craig&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9885" LastEditorUserId="9885" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T10:47:15.540" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T00:12:20.690" Title="Craft group exercises or chapters in critique groups?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|education|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12166" CreationDate="2014-06-11T11:19:33.703" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get out of your own head. Write. Just write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop worrying about whether it's perfect. Stop worrying about which book to follow. You've got a list taller than the coffee table and they can contradict each other. Just write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get something on paper. If you're really flailing around, pick your first book about plotting, follow some of the advice there, and put your plot together. Just write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot edit, improve, or critique a blank page. You need actual text to work with. Just write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a &lt;em&gt;novel&lt;/em&gt; written, never mind the first chapter, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; you can go back and worry about setting, description, characters, a critique group, etc. etc. But until then... just write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T11:19:33.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12166" CreationDate="2014-06-11T14:01:22.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest mistake that aspiring writers make is believing that writing islike cooking and that those how-to-write books contain the recipes for a successful novel: take 200 g three act structure, mix it with 1 protagonist and 1 antagonist, add a spoonful of stakes, and you got a bestseller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a novel is not an object built from parts following a blueprint. A novel is the result, almost a byproduct, of an &lt;em&gt;activity&lt;/em&gt;: something you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt;, and either do well, or don't do well. In that, writing is like drawing or making music. What you have to learn is not the ingredients to the novel, but &lt;strong&gt;how to write&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you start to think about writing as a skill similar to swimming or riding a bike, you're on the right track. Of course watching other people swim will give you a basic idea of what  the essential idea of swimming is, but beyond that nothing will teach you to swim but getting in the water and practicing the moves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Great first novels get written by writing ten awful novels first.&lt;/strong&gt; If you want to learn to write novels, write a novel. And when you're done, analyze your mistakes and do better next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T17:32:01.663" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T17:32:01.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-12T03:29:16.440" Score="4" ViewCount="573" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took a look tonight at the post titled &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9189/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-building-the-setting-before-the-characters-and-sto&quot;&gt;What are the pros and cons of building the setting before the characters and story?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It answered questions that I had concerning setting being more important in a science fiction work than character and story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that in the case of characters it can be helpful, in &quot;regular fiction&quot;, to write character sketches to show characters' external and internal characteristics in order to develop plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a book on science fiction that I briefly read, the author makes the distinction that in science fiction it is the idea that is most important. Sometimes situations are developed to handle certain characters, and sometimes characters are developed to handle situations. Needless to say, world building is very important. So, I am having a conflict between character and setting, at least in my own mind (sort of chicken or the egg problem). How would I hone my synopsis to make it mesh with characters? Would writing software help with organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there such a thing as a setting sketch for science fiction to help develop character AND plot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9885" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T12:51:51.540" Title="Is there such a thing as a &quot;setting sketch&quot; for a science fiction writing?" Tags="|plot|characters|science-fiction|setting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12172" CreationDate="2014-06-12T20:26:56.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to the question of honing your synopsis to mesh with characters won't be what you expect. The synopsis is primarily there to briefly lay out the plot. Character sketches and world building are entirely separate from the synopsis, even though they'll contribute to the final outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a book I'm writing, I have about six main characters, excluding the few main antagonists there are. Each one has his/her own character sketch (some longer than others, one actually nonexistent). This allows me to define how they interact with the world around them and with each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;World development and character development can be done concurrently, but I don't think there's a good way to mesh them together until both the world and the characters have been defined on a basic level. A basic level for characters would include things such as personality, background, motivations, any relationships/affiliations you may know of at the time. For the world, a basic level would include geography (to an extent), general culture (which can be refined later), environments, threats, and politics to some extent. From there, you're able to fine tune the two of them so that they fit together in order to create a full sketch that fills in the blanks that inevitably arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will actually be places where you won't be able to develop a character enough without using the setting.. At the same time, there are parts of the setting that can't be defined or developed without certain characters. This is why it's at least necessary to have the basics so that you can easily fill in holes as you go along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A decent example of the above (because I feel I wasn't very clear) is from my writing. I have a character for whom I couldn't even come up with a good personality until I had enough of an idea of what roles were still needed in the setting. At the same time, there were major parts of the setting/plot that I couldn't define until I knew what some of my characters were like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it's possible to make a setting sketch, but doing it from scratch (trying to define the world and characters at the same time in the same sketch) would be highly infeasible. The best route would be to start with the basics of each, then merge them. This is where I would start worrying about character vs. setting. At some point, it becomes necessary to develop both because one will often need the other to be clearly defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4839" LastEditorUserId="4839" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T20:44:59.140" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T20:44:59.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12172" CreationDate="2014-06-12T20:47:04.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A setting sketch is as important, if not more important than a character sketch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also maintain sketches on structures, roads, livestock, pets, vehicles, etc.  Especially when working with long time lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another term that may help you find more information than you will ever need is to use &quot;World Building&quot; as your key search word.  World building can contain hundreds of setting and scene sketches.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also draw maps, lots of maps, sometimes only a year apart from the previous overarching map, at other times I may skip a whole decade.  Then have smaller location specific maps for the setting and the scenes end up more in storyboard fashion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working in this way makes problematic areas stick out like a sore thumb, before their rear their ugly head in your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also helps to know where everything is to prevent making directional mistakes in your writing.  I can't count the number of times a character went west, then later on in the next scene arrived back at their starting point by continuing west.  Or they entered the event with a maroon shirt, and during the event their navy blue shirt was torn.  Or since this is about setting sketches.  The character is said to have walked uphill from his car to the event.  Then later he was still going uphill to get back to his car.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Was editing a chapter for a friend in our critique group last month, where a delivery truck had trouble climbing the steep drive to the customers house.  He turned the truck around to unload the heavy equipment into their garage. (This means the front of the truck was facing downhill).  Later in the story, while they were in the garage uncrating and assembling the device, the truck jumped out of gear and rolled backwards down the hill, causing a huge street sign to end up inside the back of the truck.  (Impossible scenario).  It was fixed simply by removing 'backwards' and having the street sign come through the windshield instead.&#xA;I've also read many Sci-Fi novels where the ship crossed the same range twice without a mention of it returning.  In this case, the loop back trip was cut from the story, so it was there originally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VTY&#xA;Dutch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9868" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T20:47:04.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7704" CreationDate="2014-06-12T20:55:13.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of wasting so much time doing it that way.&#xA;But it is not uncommon to write a single paragraph, and then create a series of short one or two line MRUs (Motivation Reaction Unit) lines from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method is used a lot in mysteries so you do not overlook clues, or use them, or a description of something more than once.  Or to prevent redundant descriptions of a scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I am compiling my research notes, I often write a list of keywords or short sentences to glance over quickly for what I'm looking for.  The programs I use now let me link the notes to the articles, so if I forget what my note meant, I can click on it and it takes me to the article.  I often have several links to the same article to cover all facets of what it contained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VTY&#xA;Dutch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9868" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T20:55:13.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12166" CreationDate="2014-06-13T00:12:20.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although Lauren and what have pretty much covered it, I also want to add - &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt;. I don't mean craft books, either. I mean, read what you want to write. Read, and read a lot. Hell, read what you don't want to write, so you know what to avoid. Read a lot, and read widely. Writing is so subjective, and you'll find that there are many authors who break the rules - yet you still love their work with a fiery passion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't simply read, either. When you get to the end, pull it apart. What did you like? How did the author make it work? It could be something as simple as the cadence of their sentences or the perfection of their metaphors. Perhaps it's how they structured the plot so everything came together in the end. Analyse how they pulled it off, what kind of methods they used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then think about what didn't you like, and why? Perhaps there was nothing, which is cool. But there'll be other books where certain elements grate at you, and you find yourself jerked out of the story or rolling your eyes at things. What is it that didn't work for you? Was it the flat characters or dialogue? The lack of world-building? The awkward sentences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, you should be writing things you personally want to read, things you enjoy. All the writing craft books, while providing a fantastic foundation, can't give the the answer to that. You need to read a lot to know what you like and what you don't. What styles you like, perhaps even what genres. And that will come across in your own writing as you find your own voice and structures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as everyone else has said, don't stop writing. Keep writing, keep churning out pieces even if you think they're crap. After all, sometimes you need to burn through all the crap before you get to the gold. You'll only improve from it, and slowly learn to find your voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T00:12:20.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12172" CreationDate="2014-06-13T12:59:19.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's worth considering the fact that characters are a product of their world, and their world is a product of key characters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I work in IT,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  working in IT defines a big part of who I am,&lt;br&gt; &#xA;  IT makes up a huge part of the world I live in,&lt;br&gt; &#xA;  IT is a product of people like Babbage and Turing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short I find World Building is best as a free form exercise and Character Building is as much a part of world building as world building is a part of character building. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write in LaTeX and use a template with a folder containing a file for plot details, one for world details and one for characters: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.writelatex.com/templates/fiction-template/mmkvyycphbbc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Write LaTeX Fiction Template&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that it best to just start chucking down thoughts and as stuff develops I jump files and add things as needed. As an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Kingdom Reynolds&lt;/em&gt; – Born the last son of the High Vassal to the king of Hengholm, Kingdom had no hope of ever taking his father’s&#xA;  prestigious position. Instead he devoted his life to making as much disreputable &#xA;  use of his tenuous title as possible. A decision he may come to&#xA;  regret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just came up with it, it isn’t much (or very original) but all of a sudden I have a world name, a ruler, a social structure…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;The King&lt;/em&gt; – Once a man of grace and power, the King brought peace to the land and hammered the warring nations into the vassalages that now hold the land together in peace. He has not been seen in person for many years, and the High Vassals are often vague on their interactions; it isn't that they're lying, it's more like they can't remember all of their encounter with him.^&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Location:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Hengholm&lt;/em&gt; – the kingdom of Hengholm is a rigid and war-ridden place. Held together by fragile vassalages the kingdom must use force to hold&#xA;  its grip on its fractured people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Politics:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Vassalage&lt;/em&gt; – Each region of Hengholm is in fact an independent nation, tied to the kingdom via vassalage. The High Vassal is a role&#xA;  more important than that of any prince or other ruler of a region,&#xA;  even if they are merely puppets to the King.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;^Look, some plot's beginning to develop!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Characters are a vital part of any story, and the world they are in is a major factor of who they are. Both should be dynamic and both should fit together, so the best way to &quot;sketch out&quot; your characters and plot is to do it &lt;em&gt;as&lt;/em&gt; you sketch out your world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;let it all come together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T12:59:19.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12180" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-13T16:28:05.720" Score="8" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of what to use flash/micro fiction for. I've had several flash fiction works published, and the process was quite illuminating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm ready to start exploring short fiction length, aiming for works at 2500 and 5000 words. I have some idea from working in flash fiction that composing stories of this length will eventually teach me what short fiction can be used for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also anticipate that the editorial process for short fiction will be much different than what I have currently encountered, because reading short stories takes more time than reading flash fiction and because short fiction allows for a broader exploration of whatever theme I've chosen. Therefore, I imagine it will be harder to find volunteers to read and provide feedback for longer work, and it will take longer to do revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I should take some time and read some literary magazines and collections of short stories to get a feel for the length. I should also just write some and see what it is like. That said, I developed flash fiction more quickly when I had a deadline and an editor who helped give me direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So I'm looking for someone experienced to share the advantages and disadvantages of two alternative methods I have envisioned:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just freely writing short fiction pieces until I feel like I understand the tool and the differences in the editorial process between flash and short fiction. I imagine in this scenario, I would write something, have a kind volunteer or two read it, revise, etc, then save up several pieces and engage a freelance editor to give me professional input. After I did all that, and hopefully then understood short fiction better, I would look for lit magazines that seemed appropriate and either submit finished work that looked like it met their requirements, or write new material for submission to meet their requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this scenario, I spend a lot of time producing work before I get to the really helpful parts. I end up with a body of work that is solid, but may sit for a long time before it gets published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Looking for a few literary magazines that I think fit my style, and then use their guidelines, themes, deadlines, etc to focus and give structure to a particular piece or pieces. I spend less time with volunteer readers and instead skip to freelance editing more quickly because I can be much more specific about what my goals with any given piece are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this scenario, I spend more money (I'm not sure how difficult it will be to get a freelancer to look at individual works of short fiction), but produce work that is already eligible for submission. Even rejected pieces would theoretically still be sufficiently polished that they could be submitted elsewhere or I could hold them and put them in an eventual collection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-04-12T17:47:39.540" LastActivityDate="2018-04-12T17:47:39.540" Title="Getting short fiction published" Tags="|publishing|short-story|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12181" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-13T23:39:17.733" Score="2" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that nearly all college textbooks are self-contained. All of the readings, exercises, and multimedia (e.g. videos on a provided CD) are provided in a single package. I think textbooks suffer from offering students a limited perspective. I found that my college freshmen and sophomores are not developing good reading and writing skills because they only read college textbooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to create a college textbook/workbook that heavily relies heavily on outside materials. For example, each chapter will suggest that students analyze a specific documentaries or films, journal articles, or chapter from a novel or non-fiction book. The front of the book will provide a list of books that students will need to purchase or locate at their library. Here is a simplified example of how an outside source might be integrated into the textbook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Chapter 1&#xA;&#xA;(a brief introduction to film X)&#xA;&#xA;(some explained background knowledge needed to understand the film's context better)&#xA;&#xA;Before watching the film X (1999), consider the following questions:&#xA;&#xA;1. Have you ever ... ?&#xA;&#xA;2. What did ... ?&#xA;&#xA;After watching the film, answer the following questions:&#xA;&#xA;1. When ... ?&#xA;&#xA;2. Why did ... ?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never encountered a textbook that heavily relies on outside works in this manner, so I wonder if there is something preventing textbook authors from doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there some legal or other reason why textbook authors avoid relying heavily on other work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would this be considered some kind of plagiarism?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="3375" LastEditDate="2014-06-15T12:22:47.967" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T12:58:27.090" Title="Can a textbook contain heavy reference to other materials?" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12180" CreationDate="2014-06-14T03:30:34.430" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking as a book publisher, I think that some parameters will be the same for short fiction as for books; it would be better to contact the magazines or whichever places you envisage submitting your work to, and asking them for their guidelines. These will tend to differ from one publisher to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the question from the point of view of the publisher, they aren't likely to want to spend time on random guesswork; in the case of book publishing, the bigger publishers get hundreds of submissions each week, so one needs to know what the rules are before writing anything. Magazines are likely to be in a similar position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't find a friendly editor with time to spare, then it would help to do what you've already mentioned - read magazines and collections, preferably in the genre you like, and supplement this with surfing the net for additional guidance. If an editor can see that you've made an effort before submitting stories, he's far more likely look at your work favourably. Keep in mind that typically, editors have limited time to spare, but lots of submissions to choose from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9895" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T03:30:34.430" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12183" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12185" CreationDate="2014-06-14T08:35:13.553" Score="0" ViewCount="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story with a character from another planet, but also human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning, people will not believe he comes from another planet, so they will check it out, by asking questions or requesting something to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of questions or requests could they use? I would prefer to avoid things like &quot;look, that is my space ship&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9897" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T10:20:00.693" Title="Alien checking, by making questions" Tags="|science-fiction|introduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-06-15T01:09:58.557" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12150" CreationDate="2014-06-14T10:12:03.147" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a couple of vocabularies (aka ontologies) out there (which I've been helping develop). Have a look at Ontomedia and Stories Ontologies: &lt;a href=&quot;http://contextus.net/&quot;&gt;http://contextus.net/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been investigating this kind of thing for a while (see, for instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.r4isstatic.com/54&quot;&gt;http://www.r4isstatic.com/54&lt;/a&gt;), and would be happy to chat more about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can always use a collection of other ontologies, such as FOAF (for people/characters) and the Event Ontology to describe most elements of plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As has been pointed out, there's probably never going to be a perfect one-size-fits-all vocabulary to encapsulate the whole of 'storytelling', as we traditionally experience it. But I agree it's worth trying to build general frameworks that help capture some of the semantics, at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as said, the beauty of RDF is that it's not about defining a worldwide standard - you can make your own, and then hook it up (via 'sameAs' relationships) later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9898" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T10:12:03.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12183" CreationDate="2014-06-14T10:20:00.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing they could do is to ask questions about his home worlds with the intention to find inconsistencies that prove he's making things up. That would as a side effect also make the reader familiar with that home world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So you are from a far-away planet? So where is this planet?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Well, do you see that bright star over there?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;You mean Vega?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;I think you call it Vega, yes. My home world is a planet orbiting it.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;But isn't Vega a young star? A planet around that would certainly not have had enough time to develop life!&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;You're right, it never developed life. It's not our planet of origin. We settled on it a long time ago, however, and now you wouldn't be able to distinguish it from a planet with native life.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;So, describe some animal that lives on that planet.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Well, there are some pretty birds. [description] And there are those nasty Bullitows, which are a real plague.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;But if you brought life there, surely you would made that planet a paradise!&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Well, not quite. You know, there are always some unwanted species hiding somewhere in the space ships. You humans always consider space ships as clean, essentially sterile environments, but that couldn't be farther from truth.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;So you claim you've got the technology to travel through space at tremendously high speed, but don't have the technology to keep your ships clean?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;It's simply impossible to keep unwanted life forms completely away from bigger space ships. If you had ever been on one, it would be obvious to you.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;So how come that you didn't bring any unwanted species down to earth when you came here?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Well, I didn't come with a big settler's ship — I obviously didn't come to make this planet a colony of ours —, but with a small personal space ship. Those are much easier to keep unwanted life forms off. But honestly, I cannot completely exclude the possibility that I've brought some.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;But if you had, we certainly would have heard something about that by now, right?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Not necessarily. Some species need centuries until they even reach a noticeable population. Also, how do you know that the insect that bit you yesterday wasn't actually an alien life form?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another type of question could be why it is so non-obvious that he's not human. Why does he not look alien? How did he learn the human language so well? How could he adapt to human culture so well that he wouldn't stand out? Why can he eat the same food that humans eat (or if he doesn't, why did nobody notice, and where does he get his food from)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course the question of how he could come to earth. Of course they would question the ability of travelling fast enough, but that one he can easily dismiss with &quot;I don't know &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; it works, I've never been into science; I just know &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; it works.&quot; But then, there would be questions like how he could land on earth without anyone noticing, despite the military watching every section of the planet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and BTW, it would be unrealistic that &quot;show us your space ship&quot; never gets asked. You might find a good reason why he can't (maybe his landing didn't go well, and it sank into the deep ocean?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T10:20:00.693" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10385" CreationDate="2014-06-14T15:57:59.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With your first book, you have no idea (honestly...) how it will sell. So, your 500 copies may well take a long time to sell, and in the meantime, you have to keep them in a damp proof storage location, preferably not on metal shelving (winter cold creates damp that way), and other factors apply, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, it's much easier and cheaper to use POD (Print On Demand) from a firm like Lightning Source, so you can just print 50 or so, and replenish how many or few when needed. This also improves your cashflow, loss of investment potential (of the bigger print run cost, and possibly storage costs). If you're in the UK, safe storage is often a hassle, USA may be easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, back to first time author scenario - even regular publishers don't always know how a book is going to perform; a self-pub author is even more so the case - it's adviseable to do a POD run first, until you've worked out your marketing and distribution strategies, and established the need for a bigger print run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if your book is doing great, and you sell overseas as well, Lightning Source will print it and deliver it to order overseas, and USA as well. Their postal costs are much lower than yours, so that helps, too. Also, if they supply distributor orders, e.g. to a bookshop, there are times there's no postage cost to you at all. If you have an ISBN and sell via Amazon, they supply Amazon with no delivery cost to you, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just please remember that I don't know your full details, e.g. how you intend to supply print-ready copy, and much more, so I can't say whether some other solution may be better for you - it may help to use say, CreateSpace. You need to really investigate self-pub in depth to establish your best route. I can only say, fairly confidently, that doing biggish initial print runs, especially in China without having good contacts first, is not likely your best option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, My wife and I have been in publishing (UK) for the last 18 years, and we do most of our books on POD with Lightning Source until we know how they perform. The days of big print runs as a norm are long gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't done so already, you could also read up a few self-pub books, there are many around that give you a lot of valuable information. When we started, I read up Dan Poynter's books, and I still tell people how useful his books and website are. Look him up on amazon.com, and his website is, if I recall right, [www.parapub.com]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9895" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T15:57:59.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10667" CreationDate="2014-06-14T17:25:43.397" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife and I own two small publishing companies in the UK, and have been in the business for about 18 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The brief answer to your question is that doing your self-pub thing doesn't hurt at all. As mentioned above, self-pub success lets the publisher know the book may be worthwhile. In fact, many of the bigger publishers keep an eye on the ebook markets so they can pick up successful books. The book trade isn't in good shape nowadays, and too many books don't perform well, so publishers aren't that keen on new, untested writers - prior success helps eliminate that uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A further point - because of the state of the book trade, it's harder than ever to break into it. Most first time authors have no choice but to self-publish. As small publishers, we've found it worthwhile to provide self-pub services ourselves to writers, there's no reason nowadays to let your manuscript languish, as was the case in the old days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, if you don't try to get a publisher first of all, then you might be missing out on a deal. Try, but don't be heartbroken by rejection letters, and look into self-pub anyway - it isn't vanity publishing - that is when a so-called publisher deceives someone in order to take a lot of money off them while misleading them as to their chances of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9895" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T17:25:43.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12188" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12211" CreationDate="2014-06-14T19:42:38.213" Score="6" ViewCount="2656" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a (non-comedic) story where the philosophical implications of the existence of any way of predicting the future (except by accident) happen to be unacceptable or incompatible with the laws or the spirit of the story, &lt;strong&gt;what are some good ways to foreshadow important&lt;/strong&gt; (either on a personal or a grand scale) &lt;strong&gt;future events?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should explain myself a little. Any story with strong foreshadowing that I know of matches at least one of the following descriptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's in the high fantasy genre, where &lt;a href=&quot;https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Dagor_Dagorath&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;prophecies&lt;/a&gt; are acceptable and make sense in the idealistic and often religious framework of the story world.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It contains supernatural elements that affect the lives of the characters, such as magic or deities, that allow the characters &lt;a href=&quot;https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Greensight&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some kinds of foresight&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The artist didn't really care about the (in-story) philosophical and metaphysical implications of the existence of prophecies, signs, divination, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The thing that's foreshadowed is an obvious &lt;a href=&quot;https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/There_and_Back_Again:_J.R.R._Tolkien_and_the_Origins_of_The_Hobbit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;premise of the story&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lerqs.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;done for comedic effect&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way to foreshadow events in a story where none of the above is applicable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4689" LastEditorUserId="13002" LastEditDate="2023-04-23T12:32:04.680" LastActivityDate="2023-04-23T12:32:04.680" Title="How can we have foreshadowing in a story that takes place in a universe where the future can't be known beforehand?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|technique|foreshadowing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12188" CreationDate="2014-06-15T00:44:21.797" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Foreshadowing is used in all kinds of stories. There is foreshadowing in most mystery stories for example (often as both red herrings and 'proper' foreshadowing), and that doesn't fit anything on your list. Foreshadowing is something the author does, not the characters. It may be through a character giving a prophecy etc. but that is not the only way or even the normal way, even in fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a clumsy example but you could foreshadow an event like the death of the protagonist's mother at the climax by mentioning other people's dead mothers, by mentioning the death of the grandmother, by hinting that the mother is ill, etc. These are all fairly explicit means of foreshadowing the death. Less obvious would be making a theme of the cycle of life, death, growing up, independence, great loss, change or whatever the deeper meaning of the death is supposed to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8674" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T00:44:21.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12188" CreationDate="2014-06-15T01:26:01.107" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're confusing &quot;foreshadowing&quot; with &quot;prophesizing.&quot; Foreshadow is derived literally from &quot;before&quot; + &quot;shadow&quot; — the shadow of an event falls before the event itself. The &quot;shadow&quot; means the reader can see something coming before it happens. (Imagine a very tall tree falling. The shadow of the tree reaches the ground before the tree does. You can see that the tree is going to hit the ground somewhere because you can see where its shadow is.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that the &lt;em&gt;reader&lt;/em&gt; can predict &quot;Gosh, there's a big red button on that console with a 'Don't Touch' sign on it. Oh look, some nameless sod just touched it and he's being dragged off to be executed. Hmm, the heroine and her plucky comic relief sidekick just entered the room. &lt;em&gt;I bet the sidekick is going to touch the big red button, will be sentenced to death, and will have to be rescued.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The foreshadowing is &quot;the nameless sod just touched it and he's being dragged off to be executed.&quot; Usually an event like that is put into a story for a later payoff: someone &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; touches the button, some &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; random event occurs and the person is executed (thus showing the depravity of the leader), et cetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characters are not predicting events by supernatural means. Foreshadowing happens between the author and the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T01:26:01.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5706" CreationDate="2014-06-15T03:04:39.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Do I still need to follow these arbitrary word count limits&quot;. Firstly, no, you don't have to -as a self-pubber, you're the publisher and you do what you want with your book.&#xA;Secondly, as a reader, the reader decides whether your book suits his tastes, his expectations price-wise, quality-wise, length wise, etc.&#xA;Thirdly, as a publisher of some 18 years standing, although I also started with similar feelings to yours, I can assure you that such limits/guidelines aren't arbitrary; they grow from experience and the realization that the reader's opinion is all that counts, if you want his money. The saying &quot;customer is king&quot; applies to books as well as other products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ebooks are much less restrictive than paper books but the reader is still the final arbiter, so it's well worth doing all one can to get the formula right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9895" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T03:04:39.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10994" CreationDate="2014-06-15T04:31:06.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you appear to have established the ways in which yours differs from the others. Then, also look at other POD providers - I take it you're also concerned with the matter of print costs, but that's difficult to avoid with a massive tome. POD / CreateSpace may not be the right answer, however appealing it may sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also talk to Lightning Source besides the likes of Lulu and CreateSpace - they do large print runs as well as the usual POD quantities. I don't know the large scale charges, but they fill our publishing needs very well compared to Lulu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm not insensitive nor an atheist, I'm serious about my suggestions and I hope you resolve a worthwhile project, but I can't resist ending this answer with: Amen...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Neil quite rightly suggests that I go more deeply into the specific POD printers I mentioned. However, this particular case - a massive bible - is exceptional, and any printer would need to discuss the parameters with the author/publisher concerned, otherwise I would happily check myself; I don't have full details, e.g. budget available, whether two volumes is viable, and so forth. Being a publisher myself, I know this is the scenario for extreme projects. Standard ones are usually easily checked out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9895" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-06-16T01:01:42.973" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T01:01:42.973" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12193" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-15T06:50:35.143" Score="6" ViewCount="8045" Body="&lt;p&gt;In German, traditionally narrative texts are written in the past tense. When the pace of the action picks up, the narrator can increase immediacy and urgency by switching into the present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is such a tense shift acceptable in English also?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last friday, I went to ... On my way home, it was around three, I sat waiting for the bus, when suddenly a car pulls up in front of the bus stop and three thugs jump out and start shooting at me. I throw myself to the floor ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T08:23:39.697" LastActivityDate="2023-05-20T03:30:51.283" Title="Switching from past to present tense to increase narrative speed?" Tags="|narrator|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12193" CreationDate="2014-06-15T10:24:28.943" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you can only do that if you're making some sort of break or shift in narrative style. If the story switches to a dream, for instance, or if the characters enter a Fae realm or another universe where they perceive time differently, you might be able to get away with it, but in English prose, if you're not literally going somewhere fantastical, your story is pretty much in one tense for the entire piece. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T10:24:28.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12209" CreationDate="2014-06-15T17:48:58.023" Score="11" ViewCount="8920" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, I know I was warned, but what can I do? I had this question for a very long time. I have decided where to write (platform like computer or notepad), I am in the middle of deciding my way of writing, but the most important decision is still to make, &quot;Language&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am struggling to choose between my &quot;Mother Tongue&quot; and &quot;Other Language&quot;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be more specific, I am a Hindi speaker, North Indian, and my entire education till 10+2 was in Hindi. I studied English as foreign language, and then went for computer engineering (Not literature). I had all my interest in writing and I have been writing since 2004, in both English and Hindi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never really focused on my language as I went with the flow. But now, as I have started taking this seriously, and want to make money with writing. It's really important for me to be clear about what language I should choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing worth mentioning here (though it is not a roadblock) is, that I prefer a computer to draft my compositions and I am skillful in typing in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the facts above, which language do you suggest I choose for my writing? I have been scratching my mind for a very long time over it. Then thought discussing it with experts will be better before taking any final decision. Please take some of your precious time to help me out with this. I really appreciate your patience and suggestions. Thanks a ton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2088" LastEditorUserId="23134" LastEditDate="2019-08-09T08:09:11.290" LastActivityDate="2019-08-09T08:09:11.290" Title="Choosing between your Mother Tongue and another language" Tags="|style|structure|language|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12196" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-15T22:58:11.957" Score="2" ViewCount="1999" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are questions here about specific use of tenses, but I wonder if there is a more complete guide on what tense to use when?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a fictional novel, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7150/what-work-better-for-the-following-piece-of-writing-past-or-present-tense/7165#7165&quot;&gt;Past Tense&lt;/a&gt; is the accepted choice. But which one? Simple, Perfect, Progressive, Past Progressive? When would I change? Would I be mixing tenses as part of the normal flow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, take this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was hiding in the dumpster. He had been hiding here for more than&#xA;  two hours already, and he knew that it would be at least two hours&#xA;  before we could leave. Finally, they were gone and he climbed out of&#xA;  the trash. He unsuccessfully tried to hail a cab -- even cab drivers&#xA;  have standards here -- and walked to his hotel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is mixing past (and even future) tenses without use of a device that I would normally consider an acceptable reason to change (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4344/should-a-flashback-be-in-past-tense-or-past-perfect&quot;&gt;Flashbacks&lt;/a&gt; or reading out a Newspaper article).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a guidance I could use to figure out what specific past tense I should be using in what context?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T03:45:32.413" Title="Is there a complete guideline for which tense to use?" Tags="|fiction|tenses|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12196" CreationDate="2014-06-16T12:05:31.453" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to fiction there is no accepted tense. As long as you don't change tense, perspective or person midstream you're fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes past tense is most common but I've read future, present, and past tense and I've read first, third and even second person (that one took a little getting used to but was very well used by Charles Stross)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real answer is that there is no &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; tense, person or perspective. Instead it is very much down to what suits the specific story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most out-there I've managed was a present tense, third person from the protagonist's perspective, in which she is being interviewed about her past. Much of the story is in first person past tense. Here the transition between tense and person is made clear in that the first person/present tense sections are strictly restricted to her dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So just keep an eye on you tense usage, but feel free to use whatever feels natural. For your example I would write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was hiding in the dumpster. He had been hiding here for more than&#xA;two hours already, and he knew that it would be at least two hours&#xA;before we could leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, they were gone and he climbed out of&#xA;the trash. He unsuccessfully tried to hail a cab -- even cab drivers&#xA;had standards here -- and walked to his hotel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T12:05:31.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12195" CreationDate="2014-06-16T12:21:10.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in a similar situation, where I alternate between english and french (my native tongue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know my english is not good enough to write an entire novel, but I often write short stories and exercise writing in both english and french. I don't know how hindi compares to english, but I assume it's pretty different in it's structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing the same story in different languages can drastically change it's pacing and tone; one language being moreable to handle certain kinds of writing styles. At least that's what I've gathered from my experience.For example I love writing /reading science-fiction in english while I strongly prefer french for thriller-type stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For now I'd say &lt;strong&gt;experiment writing the same stories in both languages&lt;/strong&gt; and see how it turns out. Chances are you'll find what languages goes best with the type of stories you want to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8581" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T12:21:10.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12195" CreationDate="2014-06-16T12:49:20.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, think of your audience, and potentially co-workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who will read what you write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm fairly adept at my native language, but still I write in English, simply because my potential English-speaking audience is roughly twenty times bigger than the local one - I write for a certain niche, which is popular in the US, not nearly so locally though. (That of course means I have to compete with more authors too, but - oh well, it's not like the reader can't choose &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; me and the other authors.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who will you work with, on what you write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a collaborative effort, say, a piece of software, using native language is preferred simply because your coworkers, your immediate testers and first audience will likely be local, so creating it will be easier. Still, if you write a computer program, add language switching facilities from moment one. By the time they are needed modifying the software to be multi-language will be a torment. And if the system is implemented well, you'll be able to translate it, and have both versions at your disposal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T12:49:20.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12196" CreationDate="2014-06-16T18:18:27.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Primarily simple past tense.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;When fiction is past tense, the primary tense is simple past tense.&#xA;The other tenses are used briefly, for specific purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Past perfect to indicate that an action was already completed.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;This is the grammatical effect of past perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Past perfect for timeframe transitions.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Writers often use past perfect tense&#xA;to switch into and out of flashbacks.&#xA;You're writing a scene in simple past tense.&#xA;To dip into a flashback,&#xA;you switch to past perfect for a sentence or two or three.&#xA;You continue the flashback in simple past tense.&#xA;Then you use a few sentences of past perfect&#xA;to transition back to the timeline of the main narrative.&#xA;The switch in tense becomes a hint to the reader&#xA;that you're switching timeframes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Past progressive to relate an event to an ongoing action.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;As far as I can tell,&#xA;this is used mostly to indicate that some event occurred&#xA;while some other action or condition was ongoing.&#xA;&lt;em&gt;As I was going to Saint Ives [ongoing action, past progressive],&#xA;I met a man with seven wives [event, simple past].&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;So use this when it's important to indicate&#xA;&lt;em&gt;the timing&lt;/em&gt; of some event&#xA;with respect to some ongoing activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Helping verbs.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In English,&#xA;past perfect and past progressive both use helping verbs.&#xA;Because of this,&#xA;it would be tedious to read a whole novel&#xA;(and probably a short story)&#xA;written entirely in these tenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T18:18:27.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12202" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-16T20:06:52.857" Score="2" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;Formal verse appears vulnerable to seeming archaic because it has generally fallen out of fashion. It may also increase the sense of immaturity, particularly with strict following of obvious forms (perhaps from a singsong effect, perhaps from not expertly breaking the rules).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I rarely object to and have sometimes fully embraced an archaic sense, there may be times when a more modern feel is desired. Since a juvenile feeling is commonly associated with lack of quality, I would like to avoid it more generally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously reading good modern formal verse would help, but such verse is less common and less well filtered by time. Years ago, when I was more interesting in poetry, I read some Robert Frost (which sometimes seemed a little archaic because of its rural emphasis) and a little Edna St. Vincent Millay (which I enjoyed less, perhaps because of a more modern &lt;em&gt;sentiment&lt;/em&gt;), and works in &lt;em&gt;The Lyric&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Plains Poetry Journal&lt;/em&gt; (to which I subscribed in part because they were likely targets for my own writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I would certainly benefit from more extensive reading, &lt;strong&gt;I am interested in what techniques can be applied to avoid a juvenile or archaic feel without abandoning the creativity-enhancing constraints and aesthetic quality of formalism.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Techniques which seem to have been somewhat helpful include the use of longer lines, non-iambic feet, and more complex rhyming patterns as well as the mild violation of strict formal rules. Vocabulary and setting might also play significant roles in the feel of verse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, what the verse is seeking to communicate introduces constraints, but within such constraints there remains significant flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sentimental, idealistic, and playful inclinations may exacerbate this issue, but I do not wish to exclude such from my writing. (I am a something of a sentimentalist by Oscar Wilde's definition: &quot;a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing&quot;—&lt;em&gt;Lady Windermere's Fan&lt;/em&gt;, Third Act.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, I have &lt;em&gt;enjoyed&lt;/em&gt; playing with less familiar forms such as analyzed rhyme and alliterative verse (as from &lt;em&gt;Sir Gawain and the Green Knight&lt;/em&gt;), so I am reasonably open to unusual forms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-06-16T21:46:05.113" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T16:42:45.690" Title="Avoiding a juvenile/archaic feel in formal verse" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12181" CreationDate="2014-06-16T22:15:21.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are textbooks for homeschooling that do exactly what you are saying.  So, I'm pretty sure it isn't illegal or plagiarism.  However, homeschoolers are an independent lot -- not representative of the general public.  Also, even among homeschoolers the non-self-contained textbooks are used more by the &quot;hard core&quot; homeschoolers (who are becoming more and more of a minority as homeschooling spreads into the general public). Try a web search on &lt;code&gt;homeschool &quot;great books&quot;&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nice thing about the type of textbook you describe is that it is cheap -- &lt;em&gt;assuming the user has access to a good library&lt;/em&gt; (which isn't being laid waste by other users).  Otherwise, the user has to buy and keep track of lots of books instead of just one.  Most people find that annoying and/or troublesome.  OTOH, when you're reading &quot;Huck Finn&quot; you only need to carry around one little paperback instead of a gigantic tome that contains 10 novels.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, if the books under study are all out of copyright, then you can get them all for free from the web and put them on an e-reader.  That's super convenient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, a big advantage to self-contained textbooks is that notes and questions can be put right into the primary material under study.  Students like that.  It's super convenient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing would be to have your textbook be an e-book, and have it link to stuff on the web (books, essays, movies, etc.)  But you'd have to do that cheaply somehow, because people don't trust that those web links will last for years (therefore your e-book would have low [NO?] resale value).  Linking to out-of-copyright stuff is fine.  Any links to copyrighted stuff will require usage fees, which will add to the cost of your textbook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, I think what you are proposing is the wave of the future, but people are still trying to figure out how to do it profitably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T12:58:27.090" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T12:58:27.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12202" CreationDate="2014-06-17T00:14:39.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create your own meter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One that defies the rules. One that does follow constraints but not classical ones, but ones you've created by yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My example approach: rhyming scheme:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A B A C B&lt;br&gt;&#xA;D E D C D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Five-verse stanzas with one verse rhymed across stanzas. That's unorthodox. That's modern. That's restraining and challenging, but it doesn't fall into old, worn schemes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Touch upon old, archaic schemes, like sonnet which requires repeating rhymes across stanzas (ABBA ABBA CDC CDC) or other restricting forms, a pantoum, a villanelle, but adapt them, change them to be your own, to violate the rules in ways you allow - or add restrictions of your own. You aren't immature creator of doggerel or a petrified, old writer of epic hexameter. You set your own rules - and then you follow them. You respect the ancients but you don't let them restrain you - or you shove additional restraints in their face. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are countless meters. And roughly half of them is ancient and classic. Just reach for the other half without falling for the pitfall of some doggerel. Or violate the rules in some other way - adapt a classic scheme but subvert the topic, force modern themes into ancient frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Their indices bedecked from one to n,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Commingled in an endless Markov chain!&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     And every vector dreams of matrices.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     It whispers of a more ergodic zone.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     We shall encounter, counting, face to face.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'll grant thee random access to my heart,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     And in our bound partition never part.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     A root or two, a torus and a node:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     The inverse of my verse, a null domain.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ellipse of bliss, converse, O lips divine!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     The product of our scalars is defined!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     cuts capers like a happy haversine.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Bernoulli would have been content to die,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     Had he but known such a squared cosine 2 phi!&lt;br&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From The Cyberiad, by Stanislaw Lem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T00:14:39.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12195" CreationDate="2014-06-17T08:45:52.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you can write in the language you are most comfortable using. I also agree with experimentation, where you write in both languages and see how it will turn out. Or if you'd like, you can choose to write in Hindi then hire a translator or vice versa. It will be costly on your part, but you also have an advantage since you already have better grasp of both languages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9911" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T08:45:52.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12195" CreationDate="2014-06-17T13:10:10.893" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends in part on who your audience is, as already noted.  It also depends on what kind of editorial support you'll have and on what your goals are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen lots of work, both drafts and published work, by &lt;em&gt;native&lt;/em&gt; speakers that doesn't really measure up.  English is a difficult language full of quirks and borrowings from all over the place, and I imagine it would be much worse for somebody learning it as a second language.  (I'm a native speaker.)  If you're working with an editor who can take the time to help you deal with those quirks then writing in English could work out for you, but without an editor you'll be more challenged.  (Your question, for instance, contains some things that would need to be edited before publication.  Please don't take that comment amiss; your question is quite understandable and your English is way better than my second language.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is to get published, and particularly if you can't hire an editor, then I recommend writing in your native language for these reasons.  If, on the other hand, your goal is to grow as a writer, then I recommend writing in English because you're obviously interested in doing so and you'll be able to interact with more people.  There are many online writing groups and sites in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know anything about tools for typing Hindi.  For English there are lots of different tools and approaches -- different software for typing, but also different kinds of keyboards, and voice-to-speech software to avoid (or reduce) typing.  Maybe there are other tools that could better support Hindi than what you're currently using?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, beware the challenges of translation, particularly for creative work.  Unless you have professional translators available, you should plan to write in the language in which your work will be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T13:10:10.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12195" CreationDate="2014-06-17T14:33:15.493" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a complex question requiring a complex answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What market do you aim for and what is the language of that market?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write in English, you are obviously writing for speakers of English (because writing in English and having the book translated to your mother tongue makes no sense). But is your subject matter of interest to them? Or would you find more enthusiastic readers in Hindi?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many books are of course translated to foreign languages and read by people of different cultures, and many topics are of universal appeal, but it seems to me that, with few exceptions, only British and US authors consistently sell well worldwide, while most non-US/UK fiction is popular only in its culture of origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it is not the language that keeps readers from picking up books but the cultural background of your writing. Having your story take place in a US city does not change this cultural background. Different cultures have different traditions of characterization, plot rhythm, use of metaphors, topics etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you write in a genre that is unpopular in your home culture, you might find an audience by publishing in another language. But that language might not be English! For example, if you write magical realism, you might find a larger audience if you publish in Spanish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So define your target audience and find out what language it speaks. If this is not English, there is no reason to write in English. Translations to Spanish are equally possible from Hindi.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which language are you most comfortable to write in&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only in rare cases is this not the mother tongue, for example if a writer has emmigrated and been living in a foreign country for so long that he has achieved a near native mastery of that language. Nabokov is the prime example for this, but most writers who still live in the context of their mother tongue simply cannot write in a foreign language as well as in their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have studied English at university, and I've been reading SF exclusively in English for thirty years now, and many ideas and phrases come to me in English first. Nevertheless my grammar is often wrong and I simply lack the words to express myself well in English. I tried to write a novel in Engish once, and a native speaker found so many weird word choices, syntactic peculiarities, and plain mistakes, that I gave up on that idea immediately. Now I write in my mother tongue. It is a bit of an effort, because, as I said, much of my writing-related thinking is in English, but the resulting texts are correct and read well. I have been commended on my mastery of language, so obviously writing in my mother tongue is the right choice for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find out which language is least of an obstacle for you. If you are unsure, write a (different) short story in both English and Hindi and give it to native (!) speakers to read and judge. Choose the language that you get better feedback for.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who will edit your text?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you plan to write the text from first draft to published text all by yourself, you'll need a mastery of language that your question shows you are lacking in English. Either you'll have to invest a lot of time to learn better English, or you'll have to pay an editor to polish your writing. But if you pay an editor, why not write in Hindi and pay a translator?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't just focus on the first step in the publishing process, but consider every step from writing, to editing, to publishing, to marketing, to distribution. How does your manuscript get from your computer to the reader, who is involved in this process, and what do their services cost?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key word for me in my answer is the word &quot;&lt;strong&gt;obstacle&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. Language is a tool, and as a writer I must not evaluate this tool by what others can achieve with it, but by how well this tool serves my own purpose. Only when I write in my own mother tongue can I express myself with ease, or rather with tolerable difficulty. And although I aim at the English market, I take the detour over my mother tongue, first publish in it, and then have my text translated and published in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T06:16:45.107" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T06:16:45.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12188" CreationDate="2014-06-17T19:01:28.123" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;As LaurenIpsum says, &quot;foreshadowing&quot; is not the same thing as &quot;prophesying&quot; or &quot;predicting the future&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foreshadowing simply means giving the reader clues as to what is going to happen next. The alternative to foreshadowing is a story in which things happen for no apparent reason, or in which problems or solutions come out of nowhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you read a detective story. Someone is murdered, the detective arrives on the scene and investigates the clues, etc. Various characters are introduced as potential suspects. And then on the last page of the story a character who we've never seen before appears and confesses to the crime. The end. Wouldn't you feel a little, well, cheated? Like, wait, I've spent this whole book trying to figure out which of the characters was the killer based on the clues scattered through the story, and now you tell me that was all irrelevant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a mystery story, we expect the killer to be introduced early in the story and for there to be clues that a reader could follow to figure out who the killer is. That's one kind of foreshadowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or likewise, if the hero is going through all sorts of struggles, and just as the reader is wondering how he can possibly get out of this, suddenly we're told that he has this rich uncle who is a doctor who comes along and pays all his bills and performs the operation to cure that seemingly incurable illness and oh by the way the uncle is a skilled relationship counselor and talks the hero's wife into returning to him. Wouldn't you say, Oh come on, where did this guy from? But if the uncle is introduced early in the story, and the hero asks him for help and he says no, and then there's some reason given why the uncle would now be willing to help him, then it sounds fair and reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update *&#xA;I just got an upvote on this years after posting it that brought it back to my attention and in re-reading, I think I did not make one important point clear. So let me try to add this clarification:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Foreshadowing&quot; does not mean &quot;predicting the future&quot; in the sense of having psychic powers or receiving messages from God. It COULD mean that in a story where such a thing fits. But more often it means &quot;predicting the future&quot; in a much more mundane sense. I don't need magic powers to say, &quot;If you quit your job you won't be able to pay your bills&quot;, or &quot;If you have a baby you will be taking on big responsibilities.&quot; That's more the kind of &quot;prediction&quot; that most foreshadowing is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most stories, foreshadowing is things like, we're told early on that Bob spent years studying karate, and then later in the story there is a crucial scene where Bob is attacked and he uses these karate skills to defend himself. Or, early in the story Fred helps a rich man with a personal problem, and then later when Fred needs money this rich man helps him out. Or, early in the story we say that Sally can become violent when she gets mad, and then later in the story in a crucial scene Sally ruins everything by becoming angry and violent over a trivial offense. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key idea of foreshadowing is that we don't want a story to look like things happen for no reason or just come out of the blue. In the best written stories, important events come as a surprise to the reader, but if you look back over the story you can see the clues that this was going to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2020-04-17T16:50:04.090" LastActivityDate="2020-04-17T16:50:04.090" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12188" CreationDate="2014-06-17T19:41:48.703" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Foreshadowing occurs even in real life.  Suppose you know some 10-year-old who is mouthy and disrespectful to adults, including his own parents.  You say to yourself, &quot;He'll turn out badly.&quot;  You're not surprised to hear, 10 years later, that he's been convicted of armed robbery.  His early behavior gave you a hint about his (likely) later life.  If you hear instead that he turned out to be a loving and selfless person, you WILL be surprised.  &quot;Wow, really?  That brat?  Great!  What happened?&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other real-life foreshadowing: the brainy nerd starts a tech company; the rich BMOC jock goes into politics; the prom queen becomes a newscaster (via the weather girl route); the floozy bimbo winds up a single mother; the stoner turns up dead.  None of these things surprise us, with no prophecy necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In writing, you as the author merely present facts selectively to enhance the foreshadowing (or the irony/twist/surprise).  Hopefully you do it less clumsily than my examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T19:41:48.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12213" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-18T07:44:31.867" Score="7" ViewCount="1125" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have posted twice before to writers.stackexchange and I compliment the people who answered me.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, I am going to start writing seriously without over reliance on craft books, even if I put out pure crap for awhile.  However, I still couldn't help myself from reading one more craft book titled &quot;Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy&quot; by David Gerrold.  Gerrold emphasizes that his book is about coaching, not teaching, and espouses some of the same philosophies as the people who answered my first post (&quot;critique groups...&quot;).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gerrold's book also helps address my second post (&quot;world sketches...&quot;) along with the other responders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get to my question, Gerrold states that world building requires research.  He also advocates setting daily quotas for the number of words written for discipline.  If I chose to outline a book to research because I think it will help with the writing, then I am spending time on that project and not writing .  Does research time count as writing time, should multiple projects be worked on at the same time to &quot;keep feeding the pipeline&quot;, or some other scheme be used to meet quota?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Craig&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9885" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-12-20T01:40:20.073" LastActivityDate="2017-12-20T01:40:20.073" Title="In Science Fiction, how does one do research, but write at the same time?" Tags="|research|world-building|time-management|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12188" CreationDate="2014-06-18T08:08:54.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;When we try to answer this question, we must not forget that the author does not write the story for the sake of the protagonist, but for the sake of the reader.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I explained in my comments to some of the other answers, &lt;strong&gt;foreshadowing is a literary device to let the reader know that the action of the protagonist will inevitably meet a specific end&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Foreshadowing signifies unavoidability.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to imply that the protagonist is &amp;quot;fated&amp;quot; and nothing he can do will allow him to escape that fate. But this is not so. Note that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;foreshadowing does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; let the reader know that &lt;em&gt;the protagonist&lt;/em&gt; will meet a specific end,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the action of the protagonist&lt;/strong&gt; will meet a specific end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a universe without fate, foreshadowing serves to show &lt;strong&gt;how the protagonist refuses to learn and grow but continues in his &lt;em&gt;flawed&lt;/em&gt; habits and therefore fails to achieve his goals&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is why we only see foreshadowing in a tragedy and &lt;strong&gt;happy ends must not be foreshadowed&lt;/strong&gt; but must take the reader by surprise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foreshadowing a tragic end increases the reader's desperation over the protagonist's lack of understanding and inability or unwillingness to change thus heightening the story's narrative tension. Of course this tragic end is not truly unavoidable. The author may allow the protagonist a life-saving insight at the moment the ax falls, thus saving him with a dramatic turn of events. This is the action story ending. The &amp;quot;literary&amp;quot; end usually does not allow the protagonist this insight but forces the reader to witness the fatal outcome of an unwillingness to change, thus driving home a message that the author hopes will help &lt;em&gt;the reader&lt;/em&gt; grow in his own life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T08:08:54.217" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12213" CreationDate="2014-06-18T08:13:10.480" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends greatly on the writer. You might need to try a few different methods to find what works for you. For me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I dedicate four hours every morning. Measuring by word count doesn't work for me because I think different scenes require writing at different speeds, also: research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I need momentum to write, so I try to never leave more than two days between writing actual words for a story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I reach a part that requires specific research I might take one or two days of my writing time to do the research, depending. But never more than two days!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I need to do longer research for the book as a whole I'll research a little every day outside of my writing time, knowing that a lot of that research will have to be applied in the revision (for example, I'm working on a large scifi world at the moment so while I'm writing I'm reading history books to help with my fictional history).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, I think you have to ask yourself two questions. One, what do I want to make? And two, what do I need to make it? If you think the novel you want to write requires you to do certain research, then that research is just as important as the writing itself. Without it you'll have a novel, but not the one you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8852" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T08:13:10.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12213" CreationDate="2014-06-18T09:02:11.580" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his guide to productive academic writing, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/320424/A_review_of_the_book_How_to_write_a_lot_A_practical_guide_to_productive_academic_writing_&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Write a Lot&lt;/a&gt;, psychologist Paul J. Silvia recommends that you perceive and organize your writing as a job:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;set aside regular and fixed periods of time for your writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do not let anything come between you and writing: neither &quot;not feeling like it&quot; nor a bored spouse must keep you from getting to work on your writing, just as these wouldn't count as valid reasons to stay home from your day job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Through research and experience Silvia found that successful writers &lt;strong&gt;make a habit of writing&lt;/strong&gt;. They adhere to strict schedules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Silvia, from the writing-as-job perspective, &lt;strong&gt;everything that you need to do to actually put words on paper counts as &quot;writing&quot;, including planning and research&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this is similar to any other job. A secretary is not expected to buy photocopying paper in her leisure time. Of course there are limits to what counts as work, and you must not use this perspective as an excuse to avoid actually sitting down and typing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get a better idea of how much time you should actually spend writing in the more narrow sense of the word, observe what goes on when you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first you will need to &quot;get into it&quot;: there will be a half hour or so that you re-read what you wrote the previous day, make corrections, or &quot;warm up&quot; with some writing exercise. Or you try to write, but it takes some time for your ideas to start, and at the beginning you write and delete a lot, before you get into the flow. No matter how you &quot;get into it&quot;, these seemingly unproductive first minutes are necessary and you should observe yourself and note how long this period usually takes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there will be a long stretch of time during which you write more or less effortlessly. You fill page after page, only taking short breaks to drink or eat or visit the toilet. (Turn off the phone and don't check email!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But after some hours of this, you will notice that your ideas peter out. You make more mistakes, have to correct more often, have a harder time to find the right words. Your thoughts begin to stray, and you feel the urge to check your email or make phone calls. &lt;strong&gt;Note when this begins.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find it difficult to note this moment while you're in it, re-read what you wrote the next day. You'll notice that at some point the quality of your writing deteriorates and you have to re-write it more. If you save different versions of your text (e.g. by appending version numbers to your file or by using a version tracking software) you can look at the creation date of that file to identify that moment. &lt;strong&gt;That is the maximum time you should spend writing on any day.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, this, &lt;em&gt;plus the warm up time&lt;/em&gt;, is the &lt;strong&gt;minimum time&lt;/strong&gt; you should, if your day job and family life allow, give yourself to actually write (in the narrow sense). All your research and planning should take place outside of this core writing time, if possible. Then you will work at your most productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long this core writing time is will vary with training (after a year of writing you'll be able to write longer) and with where you are in your novel (there may be no writing in the planning stage of your novel, and almost no planning in the writing stage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you balance writing and research will largely depend on how you write. David, in his answer, explained that he researches parallel to his writing. I prefer to take a few weeks or months and dedicate them completely to research and outlining the story, and when I write I have everything in my head (or folders) and do nothing but write for another few weeks or months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a technique I learned from academic writing, where you have to complete your research and conduct your experiment before you know the results that you can then write about. While I research, I work on my characters and plot and create a detailed outline. When this is finished, my research is also finished, and I take that skeleton structure and flesh it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silvia's book is my favourite book on writing and I recommend it wholeheartedly. That it is about academic writing does not matter, because while some part of the book is dedicated to that the first half or so is dedicated to writing productively in any genre by addressing such questions as writer's block (which does not exist, according to Silvia, but is simply a lack of habit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T12:05:33.567" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T12:05:33.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12217" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-18T09:02:22.727" Score="-1" ViewCount="370" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently earn a little extra money by doing freelance journalism on the side, in addition to working a day job. This is professional, paid work from more than one outlet so I would hope I could claim to be at least a reasonably proficient writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Increasingly I feel I'd like to try my hand at a little fiction. Nothing fancy - a few short stories just to see how I manage at the form. In the past I've done this by &quot;fictionalising&quot; real-world events and I've not been unhappy with the results. But I've got some more free form ideas that I'd like to try turning into tales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is simple, yet vast: whenever I start on something, I realise that I have very little idea how to write convincing characters or sufficiently structured plots. I'm happy with the narrative, description and pacing of what I create, but they tend to be highly predictable affairs populated with stereotypical protagonists. That won't do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my &quot;fictionalising&quot; these things are taken care of for me: I can draw on the actual events that inspired me. But I can't do that if I'm creating more or less than scratch, stories about things that I have no useful real-life experience to build with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is - what can I do to &quot;learn&quot; to write better plots and characters? Reading stories and novels obviously isn't enough as I do plenty of that already. Or should I just stick to my existing skills and carry on with my real-world fictions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6371" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T12:49:07.127" Title="How do I develop skills at writing and planning plots and characters?" Tags="|plot|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-06-19T05:42:54.780" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12218" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12220" CreationDate="2014-06-18T09:38:22.680" Score="0" ViewCount="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have made a dissertation about a type of insect called Pine Processionary Moth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have applied some statistical methods on it: data analysis and cluster analysis!! We have almost finished, but I have to present it in front of my teacher and jury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to know is, how do I present my thesis?&#xA;What are the points to talk about, taking into consideration that I have 15 minutes to present it ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9913" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-02-23T14:31:42.307" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T14:31:42.307" Title="Write a presentation of a dissertation" Tags="|style|creative-writing|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-06-18T13:10:01.207" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12217" CreationDate="2014-06-18T09:38:37.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, as Standback comments, practice is the solution to most writing problems. But it seems to me that you are beyond the basics and need a little &lt;strong&gt;eye opening&lt;/strong&gt;. For that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;books&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– on plotting, character development and whatever ails you – &lt;strong&gt;can be extremely helpful&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you read them, you'll note that you already know everything those books tell you and just didn't think of it. That does not make reading those books superfluous. To use a metaphor: you are standing in the right place, looking in the wrong direction. All you need is someone to help you gain a different perspective on what you know to enable you to draw the right conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you don't take creative writing books as manuals or blueprints to construct your books from, but as a mentor showing you how &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; work and encouraging you to experiment and find &lt;em&gt;your own method&lt;/em&gt;, they can quickly help you over your current obstacle, which of course you would eventually also cross with patient practice. But why reinvent the wheel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which books might help you will depend on what exactly you need. Read the reviews at Amazon and elsewhere, look at the websites of the book's authors, and do not forget to look across into related fields such as sceenwriting, character development for animation and so on. Sometimes some trick of the trade has been better explained there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Warning:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I repeat myself, but I feel it is necessary to explicitly spell this out: The three act structure, the hero's journey and similar constructs are not blueprints to construct stories from, but rather are the simplified common denominator found through the analysis of many stories. Again: &lt;strong&gt;They are constructs for the analysis of stories, not building blocks to create stories from.&lt;/strong&gt; Any individual story will deviate from these constructs in many ways, or even contradict them, and that does not make them bad stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use these and all other &lt;em&gt;ideas&lt;/em&gt; only as inspiration. &lt;em&gt;They are not law.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T09:46:56.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12218" CreationDate="2014-06-18T10:06:46.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of a presentation as something between an abstract and a journal article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journal articles are usually written along a strict formula, with certain information given in specific places:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what do you study and why is this relevant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what is the theoretical background and what other research has been done or is related&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what is your hypothesis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what are your methods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what are the results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how do you interpret the results in the context of the other research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what future research do you recommend&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract is a condensed version, explaining only what you studied, how, and what the results are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A presentation is like an &lt;strong&gt;extended abstract&lt;/strong&gt;. You don't go into the theoretical background (if it is common knowledge among your audience), don't report any of the other research (unless you are doing a replication), and you give only a minimal interpretation at the end, leaving this to the discussion. So all you need to do is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;open with a few sentences on what you did&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;explain your methodology in a concise but understandable way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give your results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give some hint at an interpretation that will stimulate a lively discussion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do that in five minutes. Use another five minutes to add interesting tidbits, some jokes, and allow the last five minutes for something to go wrong and take up some of your time. Plan to speak only ten minutes, and you will speak fifteen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure your graphics and visual text are easy to scan and attractive and &lt;em&gt;complement&lt;/em&gt; your talk, not repeat it. People can &quot;read&quot; short text and look at graphics while they listen to you saying something else. So don't bore an audience of intelligent experts with unnecessary redundancy. At the same time your visuals must be as clear and pleasing as if you were illustrating a children's book on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T10:06:46.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12217" CreationDate="2014-06-18T12:49:07.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Approach (Mine, in fact)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, crack dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? There's this weird ouroboros effect between characterisation and dialogue. Dialogue establishes character BUT dialogue emerges FROM character. Weirdly, you can exploit this by swimming a little against the tide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take two character stubs that you have in mind. They really don't need to be all that developed, could be as little as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jake: Fussy, lazy, prim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tony: Sharp, fidgety, sarcastic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then put them in a room and make them wait for something. This is an exercise I like to call &quot;Rosencrantz and the Dumb Godot in Bruges&quot; after scripts in which a pair of characters famously fill in time whilst waiting for something (note that in three out of the four the characters are spies/hitmen).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now your brain is marinated in that free association space where you can let the dialogue flow. Two characters is enough to just get the focus right and allow them freedom to express themselves a bit better than in a crowd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tony is clearly going to be the one most ill-at-ease with waiting around so we'll give him something to do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TONY is looking at his shoes. (NOTE: Why is he looking at his shoes? Well, he's fidgety. So I could have decided to have him be prepared and to bring a small rubber ball with him or something, or lucky and have him find a set up for a small gallery of targets at which to pitch rocks. I decided to make him both unprepared and unlucky so he is reduced to examining his shoes for inspiration.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JAKE is laid out with a newspaper over his face, as if napping. (NOTE: So JAKE is more prepared than TONY. He brought a newspaper. He can probably tell that TONY is uncomfortable with nothing to do but is using his newspaper as an eyeshield. This indicates that JAKE is selfish.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TONY: I think my shoes need cleaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JAKE (Under the newspaper): So get them cleaned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TONY: I will. Not now, obviously, but I will, as soon as we get back to the city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JAKE (Under the newspaper): Good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TONY: I'd do it myself. I'd do it now. But, one, I don't think I do as good a job as a professional shoe shiner and two, I don't have any polish. I mean, who'd bring polish along on a job like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JAKE (Under the newspaper): Only a lunatic, for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TONY: That's a terrible job... shoe shiner. Of course, there hasn't been the type of war that puts shoe shiners on the streets in a while. It's hard to find someone who'll shine your shoes. I think people regard the job as menial and humiliating. It's a shame. Most shoes just go around scuffed and dirty these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JAKE: Shoes are a lot cheaper than they used to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TONY: I know, right? I'm not sure that's a good thing. Shoes are important. They cushion you as you walk. Walking is vital to communication. If we couldn't walk then we couldn't have got here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JAKE: We could have teleconferenced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TONY: Mister Black didn't want to teleconference, he wanted face to face. He's old school, Mister Black.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And just pootle on like that for as long as you can. &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3938/dialogue-writing-practices/3944#3944&quot;&gt;There are even dialogue writing exercises that can help you out with that.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, mix it up a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat the first process for a number of natural character pairs. The character pair is the basic atom of show-don't-tell character development and revelation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your next stage is to mix up the characters you have paired and put them in new situations. You might want to generate or acquire a number of situations where the two characters could be forced to wait. Also change up the pre-existent relationships between them. Make a male and a female character husband and wife (even if you don't intend that they end up that way in your proposed novel), have two characters who know each other well talk as if they have never met. Note that there is, in any two-handed conversation, an actor (the person who proposes the topic and trajectory of the conversation) and a reactor (the person who fills in with their own reactions to the actors actions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that you want to start widening the circle. The number of people involved in a scene up to about eight largely dictates what will happen between them due to the rules governing permutations thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A person alone: with a completely dedicated and individual agenda. By default an unreliable narrator.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actor and Reactor: feeding off each other, pressing one another on, seeking companionship for its own end. A partnership is, by default, accepts a level of intimate intensity. Most prosaically this manifests as romantic love, but could equally well be obsessive hatred, or any other kind of odd thing in between. Each partner in a duo will tend to reveal more of themselves to the other than they intend as neither of them can be distracted by anyone else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The couple and the lodger: Always two people will be united in purpose and the last will be identified as &quot;other&quot;, &quot;outsider&quot; or &quot;leader&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The double date: People pair off and a love of symmetery makes two couples who police each other's status for some kind of equilibrium obsessively. Unlike a couple left to their own devices any point of conflict will be deflated or defeated by the other unit. Subtext begins to become a thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The troublemaker: As this is an odd number the &quot;spare&quot; character is free to sow chaos among the other four people's stable set up. The &quot;outsider&quot; can prevent couple A from stabilising couple &quot;B&quot; or vice versa. The fifth party is always likely to be a source of contention.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The dinner party: Three couples mean that each person in any de facto couple takes an opportunity to stand on their own, the number of permutations of one-to-one interaction here is large but finite. Although friction in certain actions may lead to much ado about very little this party is ultimately static in its bonds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The King or The Fool: Here the odd person, introduced into the dinner party scenario, has an opportunity to unite everyone (either in ordered placidity or in terrifying hatred of them), or to sew the seeds of ultimate chaos splitting the party into smaller subdivisions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Gathering: A bigger dinner party. The larger the group from this point the more that each person present has to shout louder and be clearer to &quot;control&quot; or &quot;own&quot; the conversation. Now people will be very careful about things like social norms projecting an image of someone as &quot;the type of person they want to be&quot;, idiosyncrasy in character will decrease, the wisdom and madness of groupthink will emerge, interaction becomes increasingly pageant like. There may be a &quot;leader&quot; but instead of emerging naturally through personality and charismatic dominance the leader is more likely to be, in some sense, elected and therefore take on the mantle of governmental power rather than personal charisma.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that point on the behaviour of crowds and leaders just multiplies. Two leaders and a crowd make a war, three leaders and a crowd suggests a courtroom, four leaders and a crowd suggest some kind of cold war. Always, the more people are added the more difficult it becomes for people to be established as &quot;leaders&quot;. The tendency of large mobs is always towards chaos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that overview I would tend to practice with scenes involving up to five characters. After that you're entering the realm of &quot;crowd scenes&quot; which are easier tackled when you have a lot of context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, to the matter of plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people, Elmore Leonard famously, have a very woolly idea of what the plot actually is, they like to assemble patchworks of character scenes into a narrative and leave it at that. This could be your thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, you should work out how your characters, who you should know quite a bit about by now, will achieve the ends of your initial plot. Some &quot;plot problems&quot; may seem intractable but I have never yet found one that can't be thought about until it is tweaked out of existence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the first two parts of this answer will probably get you going in the right direction. After that it's all about sewing up the plot holes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T12:49:07.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2323" CreationDate="2014-06-18T17:30:19.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose different people have different tastes. I agree much more with Craig than with Kate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read Confederacy of Dunces or any of the other stories mentioned here except Macbeth, so I can't comment on the specifics of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I've read stories and seen movies and so on with heroes who I find totally unlikeable. And I routinely find that I quickly get bored with the story because I don't really care what happens to the hero. If the character is basically a good and decent person, I am cheering him on and wanting him to succeed. But if he is a total villain, I DON'T want him to succeed. He deserves to fail and I want him to fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If others find that they can be fascinated by a story about a horribly evil person ... okay. I guess I wouldn't rule out the possibility, but I can't think of such a story that I've enjoyed reading. I think this is quite distinct from a biography of a real evil person, by the way. I might well be interested in a book about Hitler or bin Laden or Blackmun or whomever, but I don't read such a book the same way I read a novel. I'm not getting immersed in the character and wondering what happens next and hoping for him to succeed and so on. I'm reading purely to learn historical facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read lots of stories where objectively the hero is a very evil person, but the writer is clearly trying to paint him in a way that gets us to want him to win. I find such stories distasteful. Like, I'm supposed to cheer when the serial rapist gets off by pulling that clever legal technicality? Umm, no. I don't like the story and I resent the attempted manipulation. (Note this is not the same as a story where I am supposed to cheer that the villain has reformed himself. I'm talking about the stories where I'm supposed to cheer because the villain got away with the crime.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not to say that a hero has to be a perfect human being for me to be interested in a story. Some of the best fiction is about a person who overcomes his character flaws. And a very common story theme is the &quot;redemption&quot; story -- the character who starts out evil but turns good by the end. Indeed, a hero who is too perfect might be boring because he is too distant from the reader. (Not to mention that a hero who is too perfect becomes difficult to believe. I'm reminded of a really bad movie I saw once where two characters get into a conflict, and they just went so over the top, every step of the way, to make the hero 100% right and the other character 100% wrong, that I just found myself saying, &quot;Oh, come on! He never, ever acted foolishly or got nasty or ANYTHING?&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T17:30:19.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12181" CreationDate="2014-06-19T03:18:57.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a workbook I can see this methodology working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you do not plagiarize the original works, you cite them, and refer the reader to them, I am not aware of any laws which would be in conflict (note: I am a US citizen and laws in other countries are something I know absolutely nothing about).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this were a textbook, as a student I would question whether it was appropriate.  A textbook in my view is one which teaches/instructs.  It does not present a potentially-biased summary, ask for a pre-judgement on the unknown, request the intake of that item, and then ask for my own judgement... how does such a process teach or instruct?  It is impossible to know what every student will think beforehand and afterwards and then educate them based on their analysis, so how does one continue the segment afterwards?  While exceptional cases may facilitate such a method, to do an entire textbook via such a method is likely to not achieve the goal a textbook is designed to achieve and could easily be replaced by a list of items to be read/viewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take, for example, John Gardner's &quot;The Art Of Fiction&quot;.  It cites many writings by numerous authors and very often includes excerpts.  I am not sure if this is a textbook by raw definition (I bought it for non-formal education purposes).  In each of the citings, though, an analysis is included as to how that particular passage establishes a point being made.  Sometimes a contrast is made between two different passages in order to demonstrate the point.  Such a demonstration serves a fundamental purpose in that it allows the author of the work to choose the examples and then specifically address areas of excellence or areas where improvement can be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we leave, as I gather from your question, the analysis up to the reader, we are asking only for self-reflection and providing little guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, perhaps you have found the key dmm has referred to in the answer's closing section, but it seems to me that the reason you do not see a plethora of such works at this time has nothing to do with legalty and is because highly-effective, proven methods of instruction are what authors lean toward (not that anyone is necessarily biased towards other methods such as you have suggested).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9914" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T03:18:57.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12196" CreationDate="2014-06-19T11:08:54.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the way I understand the tenses is as follows (&lt;strong&gt;warning:&lt;/strong&gt; this is my personal understanding, which might not be entirely correct, especially since I'm not a native English speaker; if anything is wrong, corrections are welcome):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &quot;baseline&quot; tense, past, present or future, which tells you the time of the main event line relative to the narrator. Since in everyday life, if we tell someone about real events it is almost always about events in the past, the &quot;natural&quot; tense for narrations is the past tense. However if you think about a reporter telling you about current events, he'll certainly use the present tense. Thus the present tense gives you some &quot;immediacy&quot;, like if you were reported some current events. The probably rarest &quot;baseline&quot; tense would be the future tense, which would be used for example in prophecy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this also affects what the narrator can know: In a present-tense story, I'd be very surprised if the narrator could tell you about events which haven't yet happened in the story timeline, unless it's a prediction. In a past tense story, there's no such restriction; after all the whole story &quot;already happened&quot; so it's to expect that the narrator knows something about events to come, because for the narrator they already happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there's a &quot;modifier&quot; telling you the ordering of events relative to the current point in the story line. The story line itself goes in the simple time. Perfect time is for things which already have happened at the &quot;story current time&quot;, &quot;relative future&quot; (&quot;is/was going to&quot;, &quot;would&quot;, I don't know the correct grammatical term) for events which have not yet occurred in the story timeline, continuous for ongoing actions. Since most of the story telling is chronological, those would be used more rarely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, things can get more complicated: If a narrator is part of the story, parts of the story can be at different times relative to the time of narration. For example, someone telling his children about past events would report about the events in the past in past times, but in between switch into present time to tell something about what it means for the current situation, or even to the future tense. For example: &quot;Then I finally had enough money to buy the house. It is the very house we are currently living in, and I hope I will be able to stay in it until the end of my life.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you make a longer detour, the baseline will naturally shift to the story line of the detour, and back after the detour (this is what Dale Emery stated as &quot;past perfect for timeframe transitions&quot;). Also, a temporary switch from past tense to present tense for action scenes could be done to give that specific scene more immediacy. And of course, the story may itself have an embedded narrator whose time of narration then is the story baseline, while the baseline of &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; narration would then be timed relative to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summarize:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are actually three time frames determining the tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &quot;narration time&quot;, possibly not explicitly specified, which is the time when the narrator tells the story,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &quot;baseline time&quot; which is the &quot;current&quot; time in the story, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &quot;event/action time&quot; which is the point in time or timespan when the event happens.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the &quot;baseline time&quot; is not independent of the &quot;event time&quot;, but essentially a sort of running average &quot;event time&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The relative position between narration time and baseline time determines the &quot;base tense&quot; (past/present/future).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The relative position between baseline time and event time determined the &quot;modifier&quot; (simple/perfect/&quot;relative future&quot;/continuous).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the actually used tense may temporarily deviate from the tense determined by those rules for dramatic effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T11:08:54.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12228" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17482" CreationDate="2014-06-19T15:20:21.317" Score="1" ViewCount="934" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes write rather vicious satirical pieces that heavily reference (arguably - but possibly beyond the point of plagiarism; definitely the same setting, the same characters, strong references to events) the works upon which the satire is written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expectably, authors, or their fans, aren't entirely happy about that, and try to shut me down one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the safe haven of Fair Use for Satire applies. Yes, I'd win a lawsuit if it ever came to that, but I definitely try to first argue, to a point where the other party won't start a lawsuit, or where DMCA or moderator action could get my publication removed; prove to them that their actions would be unlawful. But getting just this through some thick skulls is difficult. So, let us for a moment forget the Fair Use clause, and have a look at one other vector of defense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thing is, these pieces I write about are usually fanfiction. Based upon a setting, characters, and events that belong to a popular franchise, with trademarked characters, popular following and a big corporate entity with an army of lawyers ready to C&amp;amp;D anyone who tries to commercialize on their success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In effect, anyone waving their copyrights to their fanfic in front of my face gets slapped with &quot;Could you show me your copy of license from [Bigcorp ltd.] that grants you the right to pursue the copyright on my use of &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; characters and setting?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works very efficiently actually; I never had anyone follow up on their threats after that. Still, I'd like to know - does it work like that, or am I merely throwing a bluff in their face?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summing up: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Entity A possesses some franchise. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Entity B creates a derivative work of franchise A, which is possibly infringing upon its trademarks/copyrights (although A doesn't pursue that, leaving the infringement alone.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now, entity C creates a derivative work based on work of B to a degree that could be considered infringing, had B's work been fully original. (never mind infringing upon A; they remain 'inert').&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, can B legally demand C to remove their content, due to the potential infringement, or does B's own infringement void any further claims to derived content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="36699" LastEditDate="2019-08-19T08:47:18.563" LastActivityDate="2019-08-19T08:47:18.563" Title="Can a plagiarist sue one who plagiarized them?" Tags="|legal|copyright|fan-fiction|trademark|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12202" CreationDate="2014-06-19T16:42:45.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that poetry feels juvenile when it gives off the sense that the form (meter, rhyme, etc.) drove the composition, instead of the other way around. An extreme example of this is when a poet meanders through multiple subjects just to achieve rhyme (something I see in a lot of children's compositions), but can also be visible in someone imitating old-fashioned formal verse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do your poems vigorously express ideas, images, and feelings? Do you focus on what you wish to say, and let the &quot;archaic&quot; style serve your message? Or, on the other hand, do you find yourself trying to come up with things to say that will fit your meter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formal verse could be a fascinating medium if reduced to a tool for your work instead of an end of itself. If you expressed modern ideas in an unusual way, formal verse might serve you well indeed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion on method might seem a little counter-intuitive. I would suggest that that you try the old-fashioned custom of &lt;strong&gt;first&lt;/strong&gt; working on many imitative formal verse efforts until the style comes to you as effortlessly as possible. Once you understand formal verse from its roots, as it where, it will be much easier to &quot;think in formal verse&quot; and therefore to express your own poetry creatively and individually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point, a formal verse poem about, say, the futility of cat pictures on the internet might feel quite mature and non-juvenile. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T16:42:45.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12228" CreationDate="2014-06-19T18:04:44.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am not a lawyer. This is based on my understanding of U.S. copyright laws.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any part of B's story which is unique to B is, I believe, the property of B. So if B is writing an &lt;em&gt;X-Files&lt;/em&gt; fanfic about Mulder, Scully, and an original character who is a female agent for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and C writes a parody-bordering-on-plagiarism about Mulder, Scully, and Jack St. Georgina, then B probably has legs to go after C if the story, &quot;Wyverns of the Heart,&quot; significantly lifts text from B's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If C's story is merely parody, then it falls under the same Fair Use rules as any other parody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that since the original character is an invention of B, B actually does have the copyright to that character, and B does have the copyright to the original story, plot, and text. So there might be grounds for a plagiarism claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since B's work is &quot;transformative&quot; of A's copyrighted work, I think B would be hard-pressed to find a lawyer willing to take the case on. But the possibility exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; right in that you can't be sued. However, I do wonder why you're expending so much energy trolling these people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T18:04:44.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12193" CreationDate="2014-06-19T18:10:39.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No this is not appropriate in English. However, a common place where I've seen transition between present and past tense is when the story is primarily written in the present tense and then, when characters think about things past, the tense will switch. This has an effect of slowing the pacing down for those scenes written in the past, giving the reader an easy transition between things past and things present. This style of writing can be seen heavily in The Hunger Games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this same reason switching tenses from past to present, can indicate that the past was the narrator's retrospect. For instance your passage could be interpreted as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I was &lt;em&gt;thinking&lt;/em&gt; about what I did last Friday when all of a sudden a car rolled up and 2 gunmen jumped out.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9926" LastEditorUserId="9926" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T16:40:04.550" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T16:40:04.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12232" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-19T19:20:13.480" Score="4" ViewCount="863" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am formatting a document as a novel using OpenOffice Writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a paragraph style for the main body, and another style derived from it that is the first paragraph in a chapter. I've set up this &amp;quot;first paragraph&amp;quot; style to use a Drop Cap for the first letter, but I'd also like it to apply Small Caps to the rest of the first line, but &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the whole paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible using paragraph styles? If so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9sj0W.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9sj0W.png&quot; alt=&quot;paragraph with drop cap and the rest of the first line is in ALL (small) CAPS&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9928" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-04-26T19:16:28.583" LastActivityDate="2023-04-26T19:16:28.583" Title="How to capitalize the first line of a paragraph using styles in OpenOffice?" Tags="|formatting|tools|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12232" CreationDate="2014-06-20T02:34:28.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes you can apply small caps to the rest of the first line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost the same way you set-up the Drop Cap, except you select the Font tab, then select the number of characters you would like changed to small caps.  Also check the 'whole word' box.  You can select the character style in a box on the same set-up screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDITED:  I failed to mention you need to set a new style by selecting Style Format NEW, Give this a name like 'First Line Caps.'  While in the Organizer set the Next Style and Linked With.  Back to this in a second.&#xA;Next go to Font Effects and turn on Capitals.&#xA;Then go to Indents &amp;amp; Spacing - First Line and set the desired amount of space after the drop cap.  I'm not sure if checking the Automatic works for all width drop caps.&#xA;Here is the caveat.  When you reach the end of the line with caps, you must use a paragraph return to invoke the NEXT STYLE which you will set without using First Line Indent, so the text does not get shoved in on the second line of the first paragraph.  In essence, you are creating two separate paragraphs, but linking them together as one.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So you need your Drop Cap Style; First Line Caps Style; Rest of First Paragraph Style; and this last style must be linked to the Paragraph Style you are using for the rest of the paragraphs on the page.&#xA;I just tested this before replying and it worked just fine.  I used a three line Drop Cap, with the rest of the first line all in Caps, and the second line of the first paragraph, forced with a paragraph return to use the Rest of First Paragraph Style.  The next return brought me back to First Line Indent for the next paragraph in normal lower case text.&#xA;NOTE:  This will not convert to e-books, but does save as a PDF for POD print books.&#xA;End of Edit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you plan on publishing as an e-book, because of the flowable text, it may cause parsing problems in the different readers out there.  If you are going print, it converts OK to a PDF for POD printers like CreateSpace or Ingram.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VTY&#xA;Dutch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9868" LastEditorUserId="9868" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T20:24:01.047" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T20:24:01.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10359" CreationDate="2014-06-20T03:30:27.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this up for quite a while now and will take a stab at answering your question.  However, the answer is much more complicated than the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is yes, Python is used to convert text to braille tags, and a LaTex package is used to print out the symbols.  IF the brailler you are using is not designed for use with a proprietary package.  I think Bookmaker and Express machines come with open ports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a GNU/Linux user myself, I find it hard to find open source drivers for most hardware.  So I have a lot of boat anchors sitting around here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for the complicated answer, simplified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do Publishers use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Duxbury Braille Translator for Windoze is fairly universal among publishers.  It can drive a Thermoform machine, most Embossers, as well as the top plate embossing machines, such as the ET PED-30.&#xA;It also works perfectly with the ET BraillePlace double-sided embossing for making books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in producing books, the lowest cost commercial grade double-sided Brailler I am aware of is the ET Bookmaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the final part of your question about interest in software.&#xA;I would say no, because of the proprietary nature of the hardware.&#xA;As you are well aware, even SANE cannot obtain enough information from manufacturers to create drivers for most of the scanners, printers, and other hardware available.  Most of the manufacturers are in bed with Mickey$oft and could care less about the rest of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VTY&#xA;Dutch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9868" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T03:30:27.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2014-06-20T12:55:09.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Worrying about giving up first publication rights is the last thing I would be worried about if I wanted to order two hundred copies for friends and family. If you truly have written the next Harry Potter, your desperate publisher will simply acquire these rights from Lulu if they even exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question, try short run printers and galley publishers (publishers of advance reading copies). These might meet your requirements. Start with 25 copies. When these are gone, you can order more. If you have more a localized distribution need, such as giving a copy of a book about sales tips to everyone in your sales organization, you can order more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another cost-effective alternative is to print a postcard with a link to your e-book. This marries meeting the need for a physical exchange with digital distribution. After you distribute the first 25 copies you can give the postcards away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6784" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T12:55:09.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3677" CreationDate="2014-06-20T16:22:14.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difference is sales to strangers. &#xA;Vanity publishing means printing and ordering books. After giving a few copies to friends and family, the undistributed books sit on a pallet in the garage. &#xA;Indie publishing means getting a book into a distribution channel, like Amazon, where it can be bought by anyone. &#xA;Sales to strangers is the key difference. &#xA;In the U.K., at least in the non-fiction and specialty markets, an author is often required to fund publication in part. It's pay to play. So there at least, the distinction between paying for publication and being paid for publication breaks down. &#xA;There is a lot of blurring at the edges of these definitions. Is a bookstore owner who publishes his friends (and himself) a self-publisher? What about City Lights Books? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6784" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T16:22:14.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12238" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-20T16:59:45.843" Score="6" ViewCount="9848" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been asked to write a story as an assignment. It should have as the main male character an unusually smart, clever, insightful and thoughtful guy who is somewhat reserved and mysterious. The point is that I cannot figure out how to draw a good, lively and convincing description without being stereotypical or boring. I guess that this kind of character is quite common: can you suggest me some examples of good descriptions that can be found online so that I get an idea about how to proceed?&#xA;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9933" LastEditorUserId="9933" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T17:08:37.343" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T15:51:37.217" Title="Main male character description" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|short-story|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12238" CreationDate="2014-06-20T17:26:22.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I would focus on is the character's backstory. You're correct that the combination of traits that you describe could be pretty common, but what is unique is the why behind it. What happened in the character's past that has caused him to be so reserved? What sorts of influences did he have that nurtured his cleverness and insight? Different answers to those sorts of questions will yield vastly different characters, even though those core traits are still present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6851" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T17:26:22.960" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12238" CreationDate="2014-06-20T17:35:08.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to @roger's answer, another thing that can make a character unique is giving them an atypical profession or hobby. Since these things will influence what the character will do everyday they are a part of who he is. A good example is Walter Mitty, a typical shy guy but works in negative assents for Life magazine. Interesting enough his job also defines a fresh context for a story that has been told a thousand times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9926" LastEditorUserId="9926" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T17:40:11.360" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T17:40:11.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12238" CreationDate="2014-06-20T19:14:29.300" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Smart, clever, insightful, thoughtful, reserved, and mysterious are all abstract qualities. They are summaries. And the summaries lack all of the juicy details that lead people to attribute those qualities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of describing such abstract characteristics, demonstrate them. Show the character doing clever things, or mysterious things. Let the reader reach the conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T19:14:29.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12193" CreationDate="2014-06-20T20:02:13.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I respectfully disagree with the prior respondents. I don't see why shifts in tense are inappropriate English if used with discipline. It's no different, to my mind, than a temporary shift in point of view. It's just a device. What's important is that the writer not sloppily mix past and present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9935" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T20:02:13.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12193" CreationDate="2014-06-20T21:40:54.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is extremely rare and very difficult to execute smoothly. While switching into present tense when the action picks up is usually fine, it's very difficult to create a smooth transition in the opposite direction - action ends, and you want to switch back to past tense - it's hard not to make it sound awkward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; common, is use of (&quot;timeless&quot;) noun phrases for quick passages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The door swung open and he strode in. &lt;em&gt;A swift punch to his jaw, a kick to his groin, elbow into exposed neck, then landing with my weight on his back, handcuffs snapping on his wrists forcefully drawn behind his back,&lt;/em&gt; and I stood up, smoothing out my suit. He gave out a long, pained groan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way the transition in both directions is smooth and we create the sense of  rapid, hectic sequence of actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T21:40:54.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12244" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-21T16:44:44.470" Score="1" ViewCount="1121" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you use a line or phrase from a really famous poem that most can recite as a title for a novella, is it stealing?  What can be done to give proper credit? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8781" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T18:54:31.700" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T03:11:00.823" Title="Are there copyright issues with a novella title if it's a famous line?" Tags="|legal|copyright|titles|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12244" CreationDate="2014-06-21T19:11:18.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't do it.  Here's why.  The copyright holder of the poem can invoke the Lanham Act to protect their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It falls under 'unfair competition' and/or 'passing off.'  &quot;Passing off&quot; is where they usually nail you to the wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title of a stand-alone book cannot be copyrighted.&#xA;However, the main title of a series can be trademarked and registered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could seek permission from the copyright holder of the poem to use a line from the poem as the title of a book.  If they allow it, they may also ask you to give credit for same on your copyright page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stealing of book titles is quite common, and you often find the same title by different authors in book listings.  However, doing so can get you in legal trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is quote pulled from the &quot;Rights of Writers&quot; website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here's how the Second Circuit Court of Appeals explained &quot;secondary&#xA;  meaning&quot; in Rogers v. Grimaldi:  The purchaser of a book, like the&#xA;  purchaser of a can of peas, has a right not to be misled as to the&#xA;  source of the product. Thus, it is well established that where the&#xA;  title of a movie or a book has acquired secondary meaning — that is,&#xA;  where the title is sufficiently well known that consumers associate it&#xA;  with a particular author's work — the holder of the rights to that&#xA;  title may prevent the use of the same or confusingly similar titles by&#xA;  other authors . . . .  Indeed, it would be ironic if, in the name of&#xA;  the First Amendment, courts did not recognize the right of authors to&#xA;  protect titles of their creative work against infringement by other&#xA;  authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VTY&#xA;Dutch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9868" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T19:11:18.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12246" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-22T04:59:19.060" Score="9" ViewCount="661" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Warning: spoilers of A Song of Ice and Fire.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was reading through this site that you should avoid telling what a character is by using other characters, example &lt;em&gt;&quot;Dan is the funniest person I know&quot; - Jack&lt;/em&gt;, instead, you should show that Dan is funny, &quot;show don't tell&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I was wondering, is Jaime Lannister an example of this? through A Song of Ice and Fire we hear how good of a swordsman Jaime is, over and over, but he never actually does anything that would prove this, he is captured in one of the first fights we see him in (might actually be the first, and we don't even actually see/read the fight), and even here we read how many people he killed before being captured, and yet again we're being told, not shown, and then he's captive for a while and ends up getting his hand cut, in which point we can't see him doing any fighting anymore because now he lost his fighting hand... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Jaime Lannister a perfect example of telling not showing, or did I get the concept wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9944" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-24T13:07:02.727" LastActivityDate="2019-07-18T22:59:11.107" Title="Is Jaime Lannister a &quot;telling not showing&quot; example?" Tags="|characters|fantasy|showing-telling|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12246" CreationDate="2014-06-22T17:09:29.823" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would disagree on this. I believe that the showing and not telling rule is followed mostly on the facts that are directly relevant to the story. Indirect relevance of facts are given by the back story. Jamie's swordsmanship is important to A Song of Fire and Ice. But it's not directly relevant to A Game of Thrones. However, it is directly relevant to A Clash of Kings (where Jaime is shown taking active part in The War of The Five Kings which forms an important chunk of the novel), thus, it is shown and not told in that novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe, to build a character, certain necessities are required. The showing and telling rule can be relaxed for back stories which have a vast range to cover (The total span of years for A Song of Fire and Ice is 1000 years). The thumb rule is not to be followed blindly. No rule in writing is to be followed blindly. Again, no rule is to be discarded blindly. Understanding the underlying principles of why a set of rules are followed is always necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T17:09:29.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12238" CreationDate="2014-06-22T18:01:45.157" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might benefit from some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Avoid the info dump (a long description scene)&#xA;2. Add your description in showing/active sentences&#xA;3. Use character contrasting (contrast one character to another)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I explain more here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jabrambarneck.com/2014/04/23/how-to-describe-your-point-of-view-character-in-a-first-person-novel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to describe your point of view character in a first person novel?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want your character to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;unusually smart clever, insightful and thoughtful guy who is somewhat reserved and mysterious&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then Let your character develop as you write. You can do some pre-work. For each description in your list, ask this question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your character doing or going to do that is (smart)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep these tag lines around and as you write, just make the character act these ways. I don't know what your character will do. So here is an example from my book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My character is also smart. I don't actually ever say he is smart. I do say he is a Jeek, half jock half geek. He plays chess. He is watches the some college videos on chemistry just before his high school senior senior year to help prepare himself for AP chemistry. He talks about getting a scholarship either with sports or grades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8655" LastEditorUserId="8655" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T13:43:40.747" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T13:43:40.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12238" CreationDate="2014-06-23T06:53:28.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So you've got a few adjectives for the character, to start off with.&#xA;Some people are a fan of the figure-your-character-out-as-you-write approach, and some prefer outlining the character first. Since this is an assignment, and you don't want the character who spontaneously appeared as you wrote to differ from the one described in the assignment, I'd have to recommend the latter approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What makes a &quot;good&quot; or &quot;lively&quot; character:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Details!&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;What are his quirks? Does he wrinkle his nose when something disgusts him, or wipe his right hand on his pants?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What does the world look from his point of view?&lt;/strong&gt; What's his job? Does he like it? Any best friends? How'd he grow up? Since he's smart, insightful, and thoughtful, how did this shape his philosophy? You need to know to write him well, and we as readers find difficulty relating to him unless we can get inside his head a little. This will also be crucial for your self-description.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Give him flaws.&lt;/strong&gt; Up until now he seems a little Gary-Stu-ish. He's smart, thoughtful, insightful, clever--he's most likely gone far in whatever he's done. Reserved and mysterious? Even better, the girls are swarming and we're all jealous of him and wondering what he's up to. Now balance that out. Is he arrogant because of this? Or is he eager to make people like him and bends over backwards for them? Or does he not have this success at all and is angry at the world for not giving him what he thinks he ought to get? This and the point above will most likely determine how he reacts to others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last but not least: &lt;strong&gt;We don't see his biography, we see him in action.&lt;/strong&gt; Specific to your situation it seems like you're forced to give a little biography, but my general advice would be not to make it too long, and intersperse the rest of your biography in with the action, if you need to add it at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've got a character, you know how he thinks, now it's time to throw him in a situation. Roll dice if you have to: 1 for getting mugged, 2 for being fired, 3 for meeting with an ex, so forth and so on. And build the situation such so that you can show most of his character traits in the situation. Think about what he might do to show the qualities you want to highlight.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance getting mugged: &lt;em&gt;Your main character stops/talks down the attacker, maybe makes some comment about the mugger's motivation that obviously hits the nail on the head&lt;/em&gt; (because he's smart and insightful) &lt;em&gt;, and lets him get away with a &quot;dummy wallet&quot; with only a few dollars&lt;/em&gt; (clever, well-prepared) &lt;em&gt;and continues on his way. This scene is observed by an acquaintance who is following the main character and wondering what he's doing in that part of town at night, without having told anyone&lt;/em&gt; (mysterious and reserved) &lt;em&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9951" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T06:53:28.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="392" CreationDate="2014-06-23T10:09:04.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found character sheets for online roleplayers in MMOs to be very helpful for fleshing out characters; after all, the main thing that their writing is based off of &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; their character and the world.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously some points have been added to the character sheets to accomodate the peculiarities of the fantasy/game world, but they're easy enough to delete/change when copying the sheet over into Word/Open Office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forcing myself to fill these out--and fill them out extensively--has always been very helpful for me to invent a well-rounded character whom I know well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously a lot of this has to come from your own creativity, too. It wouldn't necessarily occur to me to list &quot;narcolepsy&quot; under random quirks without a lot of practice in thinking outside of the box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I can only post two links because of my current reputation, so I had to cherry-pick out of the many different resources for roleplayers (and therefore character-building) I found. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://aionroleplayers.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&amp;amp;t=5332&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A player character description template and interview for the game of Aion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I am not recommending this necessarily because of the quality of the character described here, but because of the templates and interview, which can be borrowed for personal use and filled out for your own characters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://asgardianthunder.tumblr.com/post/12903597383/the-most-in-depth-30-day-character-development-meme&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A &quot;30-Day&quot; Questionnaire covering most aspects of a character&lt;/a&gt; which can be filled out in far less than 30 days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, loves, hates, motivations, and a distinct voice and &quot;feel&quot; will make your character stand out to the reader, and I assume that's what you're going for. These are just tools to maybe help you figure that out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9951" LastEditorUserId="9951" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T17:51:17.073" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T17:51:17.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12246" CreationDate="2014-06-23T16:09:27.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't read the book you're referring to, so I can't comment directly. But in general, as @AminMohamedAjani says, this rule, like many rules, can be applied too slavishly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose in a story you want the reader to know that Jaime is the greatest swordsman in the country. You could say, &quot;Jaime is the greatest swordsman in the country.&quot; Then the reader will immediately know. But how would you show this? You could write a scene where he wins a duel. But that just tells the reader that he is better than this one other swordsman, not that he is better than all other swordsmen. You would have to write a whole series of scenes of him winning duels, gradually building up to establishing that he is the greatest swordsmen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the whole point of the story is to trace how Jaime became the greatest swordsmen in the country, then just writing, &quot;Jaime lived in such-and-such a place. He became the greatest swordsman in the country. The end.&quot; would make for a short and boring story. You would want to give all the details and build up the drama. But if this is a tiny piece of background to support what the story is really about -- maybe a minor contributing detail, or maybe an extremely important point, either way -- then just writing that one sentence tells the reader what he needs to know and you move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you think about it, no one really applies the idea of &quot;show, don't tell&quot; 100%. Lots of stories mention &quot;France&quot; without giving the entire history of where the country came from and the origins of its name. Many stories begin at the interesting point of a person's life, without giving the details of where he was born and his childhood if these are not relevant to the story. You can write, &quot;Bob was born to a poor family&quot; without describing the entire process of conception, development in the womb, his parents' trip to the hospital, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T16:09:27.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12244" CreationDate="2014-06-23T16:22:46.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's done often enough. I can think of books and stories with titles that come from poems, Bible quotes, etc. Like Hemingway's &quot;The Sun Also Rises&quot; is a quote from Ecclesiastes, and there's a fairly well-known science fiction story called &quot;By the Waters of Babylon&quot;, also a Bible quote. There's a story by Heinlein called &quot;And he Built a Crooked House&quot;, which is a line from the poem, &quot;There Was a Crooked Man.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note this is not about copyright but about trademarks, which is entirely different rules. Depending on the details, the writer of the original poem might have grounds for a trademark suit against you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IANAL, but my guess is that if it's a poem that has long since gone out of copyright, you'd be pretty safe. But if you took a line from, say, music lyrics of a song that just came out last year, you'd probably be on thin ice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion would be: Unless you have a really strong reason to want to do this, I'd avoid it just to avoid potential trouble. If it's not necessary, why take the chance on a lawsuit, even if you were pretty sure you would probably win?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I gladly yield to any trademark lawyers who can give a more definitive answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T16:22:46.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12196" CreationDate="2014-06-24T00:27:14.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are going to want simple past most of the time. Simple past gives you the widest array of active verbs, and it's the active verbs that you absolutely need to make your narrative vivid. I should say, actually, that this explanation only applies to people writing in English, written by people for whom English is the primary language and for whom their lives are rooted in a world outlook and culture that is derived from any place where Britain once controlled and/or influenced, AND that the writer is writing for an audience within the same general culture, language, and outlook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other languages and cultures may have a different way to go about telling a story. Many other languages do not have the array of tenses that English has, and some languages tell their stories in tenses that we lack!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, considering all of that, the majority of stories written in English for an english speaking audience will be a combination of simple past and past progressive. It's all about what you want your reader to pay the most attention to in a dynamic setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at how the same action sentence can be changed by each tense. The scene for this sentence would be a gladiatorial arena where a gladiator is performing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simple past:&#xA;--He brandished his claymore and excited the jeering crowd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;past progressive:&#xA;--He was exciting the jeering crowd by brandishing his claymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;past perfect:&#xA;--Though the crowd had jeered at him, they were excited because he had brandished his claymore for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;past perfect progressive:&#xA;--He had been brandishing his claymore before the exited crowd, which had been jeering at him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Past habitual:&#xA;--When he was in the arena and the crowd jeered at him, he would brandish his claymore and that would excite them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you go down the different ways to write this sentence in past tense, do you notice how the sentences keep getting longer? That is because you are inserting verbs into your action that don't go anywhere, and it has the effect on your readers of pulling them out of the position of being a participant in your scene and into the position of an observer to the scene or worse, an observer to the narrator who is himself observing the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal in the modern style is to immerse your reader. This means to be able to get your reader to feel as if they are right inside or right above the character's perspective. Simple past does this job without the help of &quot;was&quot;, or &quot;to be&quot; or &quot;Had&quot;, all that these three verbs accomplish is weak, passive, clinical storytelling. You should avoid them whenever possible. There are exceptions for certain types of scenes, such as flashbacks and summary, or if you use a narrative device like a storyteller frame, but for the most part, every use of those three verbs in your writing will grind the action incrementally to a standstill and add unnecessarily to your word count. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Average story crafters bounce back and forth between past progressive and simple past, confusing the two all the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, there are writers that write in present tense. Suzanne Collins wrote the Hunger Games in present tense. At the risk of inserting personal opinion here, It's a perfect thing for script writing, but in a novel, it seems a bit strange. While a script can get away with present action because it is directing an actor to that action, a story pulls the past forward into the present. It's safest to make sure that your story is a storytelling rather than a play-by-play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was hiding in the dumpster. He had been hiding here for more than&#xA;  two hours already, and he knew that it would be at least two hours&#xA;  before we could leave. Finally, they were gone and he climbed out of&#xA;  the trash. He unsuccessfully tried to hail a cab -- even cab drivers&#xA;  have standards here -- and walked to his hotel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was hiding in the dumpster--past progressive, by the use of the verb &quot;was&quot; followed by the action verb in the present tense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He had been hiding. . .This is past perfect progressive, you can tell that by the use of &quot;had been&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. . .He knew that it would be. . .--this is tricky, but this is actually simple past. YOu are just revealing the character's inner sense of time. Your character is estimating two more hours before &quot;they&quot; are gone. the estimation is being done past tense because the important verb here is the word &quot;knew&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. . .They were gone. . . Past progressive&#xA;...and he climbed. . . simple past&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. . .tried to hail a cab. . .simple past&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. . .walked to his hotel... simple past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nope, no future tenses here. Now, Let's look at this paragraph with clarity of tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;simple past:&#xA;Two hours after his dive into the dumpster, he knew that they still sought him so he stayed another two just to be safe. After those four hours bedding down in the muck, he crawled out of the trash, finally convinced of his safety. He tried to hail a cab unsucessfully-- even cab drivers have standards here -- and walked to his hotel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Past progressive:&#xA;He was hiding in the dumpster. He was hiding there for two hours, and after those two hours he was certain that he should stay for two more. Finally, they were gone and he was able to climb out of the trash. He was walking home because though he was trying to hail a cab, even cab drivers have standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Past perfect:&#xA;He had hid in the dumpster for more than two hours, and he had known after those first two hours that it would take a total of at least four before he could leave. Finally, they had called off the search and he had climbed out of the trash so that he could try to hail a cab. Since cab drivers generally had standards of cleanliness, he was unsuccessful, and so he'd given up and he'd walked to his hotel instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;past perfect progressive:&#xA;He had been hiding in the dumpster for more than two hours already out of a four hour wait. He had been aware that it would take at least that long before he could leave. Sure enough, after he had been waiting all of that time in the filth and slime, they had been disinclined to stick around and he had been inclined to climb out of the trash. He'd been walking home because he'd been unsuccessful in hailing a cab due to the cab drivers' standards for clean passengers in their vehicles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9957" LastEditorUserId="9957" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T03:45:32.413" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T03:45:32.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12246" CreationDate="2014-06-24T13:26:02.383" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;An author cannot demonstrate in action &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; trait of &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; character. It's all about separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Jaime Lannister is probably not an example of telling instead of showing, and here's why: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The problem with &quot;telling&quot; is that it alienates readers from the&#xA;characters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another problem is that it creates characters that are shallow and&#xA;emotionally inauthentic, which inhibits their growth through the&#xA;story. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a character has too many &quot;virtues&quot; piled on, readers will&#xA;    resent it on principle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt Jaime Lannister fulfils any of these points. Near as I can tell, he is a pretty popular character, which many readers find compelling -- ergo, emotionally authentic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this? If Jaime as a character is defined by his swordsmanship, why don't readers feel cheated out of seeing him perform as a master swordsman? This is where the chaff metaphor comes in. What's important about Jaime is his redemption arc. What would have made readers feel cheated, is if the narrative insisted that Jaime is a reformed/redeeming antagonist, but failed to demonstrate either: 1) his terrible actions at first, or 2) his good actions consequently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, &lt;strong&gt;bottom line&lt;/strong&gt;, without getting too mired in the details of one specific character, the lesson is this: when you show, &lt;strong&gt;focus on the traits that are most critical to the character's growth arc.&lt;/strong&gt; Generally, it's more important to demonstrate personality traits or habit behaviors, as opposed to rank skill. This is usually also the difference between character flaws that are successful versus ones that feel tacked on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T13:26:02.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2014-06-24T15:46:43.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Translate it (that is, manually, yourself, not using an app) into another language. If you are monolingual, consider learning Esperanto for that purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9961" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T15:46:43.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12258" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-25T06:32:32.290" Score="5" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have made several stories, not short, but not long. They might make a small book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm new and don't know anything,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where should I publish it, I mean, safely, as they could rip off the idea or just throw the work away. Any advice will be appreciated too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9962" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2022-04-20T11:21:36.247" LastActivityDate="2022-04-22T19:53:30.720" Title="Where and how to publish new work?" Tags="|publishing|science-fiction|publisher|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12258" CreationDate="2014-06-25T09:49:56.363" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can publish them yourself. If you do that, you retain &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the rights to the stories and the book. That way, nobody can get the rights to the book and throw them away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To publish an ebook, you can make an epub file and distribute it through Kindle, Apple iBooks, Kobo, Nook, Smashwords, and other places. They won't steal it. They want to sell it for you, so they can take their 30%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To publish a paperback, you can design the cover and the interior, make PDFs of those, and use CreateSpace (print-on-demand) to print and ship it. CreateSpace sells through their own online store, and through Amazon. Depending on how you price the book, they can also distribute it more widely for you (so that it could end up in brick-and-mortar stores).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do all of the above. There are likely many other options, especially for ebooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T09:49:56.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10377" CreationDate="2014-06-25T16:43:57.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since we never put anything out on a public server, aka Cloud, I don't know if Trelby is what you need or not.&#xA;On the bright side, it's FREE, so no harm in taking a look to see.&#xA;I've never heard of Plotbot, but have used Celtx.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number one screenwriting software is Final Draft.  It is expensive, crashes often, and not universal among platforms.  For this reason, serious screenwriters are drifting away from the slow behemoth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trelby is fast and easy to use.  No known problems with it, other than copy n paste is difficult to master, unless they fixed this since the last time I used it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Celtx had a slight delay that became more annoying the longer I used it.  But as you pointed out, it's not real time and not truly collaborative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use a commercial server version of something that looks like Final Draft at work, and I know several are working on the same project at the same time from all over the country.  But I'm not in that department, nor do I know if the home version has the same features.  The only thing I can say for certain about Final Draft is it crashes way to often.  Nor do they support universal publishers platforms.  For these reasons I would not fork over the high price they want for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish I could give you a better information about Trelby.  Those I know who use it, rave about it, so it must be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VTY&#xA;Dutch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9868" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T16:43:57.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12262" CreationDate="2014-06-25T20:08:07.297" Score="2" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a character who's supposed to be a talented tactician. Because of the setup of the story, this character is contrasted with another character by means of giving them contradictory or complementary traits. It's meant to both generate conflict and also allow them to more effectively solve problems together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically relevant to my question here, their decision-making style. Since the other character is primarily analytic: in order to arrive at a conclusion she must pay attention to each piece of information available to her and then put them all together. By contrast, I want her friend to be a more intuitive type, where if one would ask him how he arrived at his conclusion he would not necessarily be able to explain it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a certain point I became suspicious that this characterization conflicts with the tactical aspect of his story. Aren't tacticians supposed to be highly analytic in their thinking? I feel like including both might leave readers confused or frustrated with the seeming inconsistency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T22:36:13.287" Title="Tactician's Viewpoint and Contradictory Characterization" Tags="|fiction|character-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12261" CreationDate="2014-06-25T20:58:37.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's call your characters Dave (the intuitive tactician) and Kate (the analytic) so we have some way to refer to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kate can be &lt;em&gt;so&lt;/em&gt; analytical, &lt;em&gt;so&lt;/em&gt; dependent on data, that she feels like she can't ever commit to a decision. But what if there's one more supply train coming? Did we think of every single possible scenario and prepare for it? Do we &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; know how much the enemy has in munitions? These two intelligence reports conflict; which one is right? And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dave totally gets how armies move. He couldn't call a pincer movement by name, he can't articulate why he'd want light cavalry over heavy, but if you put him in front of a battle mockup board he will totally plan out your strategy by moving counters around and saying &quot;Okay, these guys &lt;em&gt;here&lt;/em&gt;, and that troop &lt;em&gt;there,&lt;/em&gt; and when the enemy comes in we do &lt;em&gt;this,&lt;/em&gt; and Bob's your uncle.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes Kate insane, because Dave can't connect his intuitive understanding of mass movements to any data she has on hand. Sure, if you point out that foot troops can cope with marshland better than mounted troops he'll agree with you, but he couldn't come up with that sentence on his own. Kate makes Dave insane because she takes so much time wibbling over the data and refusing to &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; anything that the enemy decides the battle for her. He's already figuring out how to take the highlands and she can't decide whether to attack at dawn or at noon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's not typical to have an &quot;intuitive tactician,&quot; you might be able to pull it off if you consistently show that he knows what he's doing. The &quot;over-analytical analyst&quot; is more common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T20:58:37.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12261" CreationDate="2014-06-25T22:36:13.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone with a tactical bent  quickly &quot;resolves a problem into its clearest, simplest form&quot; (Conrad Hilton). Someone of the other kind &quot;overthinks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second person is actually more analytical, but the first person &quot;gets to the point&quot; faster with less &quot;circumlocution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T22:36:13.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12265" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-25T23:49:19.030" Score="2" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were to publish a book, is there any chance for it to become very popular? let's assume is a good book, would it go unnoticed for being an author's first book or does it entirely depend on the book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9944" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T09:55:38.200" Title="Is it possible for an author's first book to be popular?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12266" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-26T00:06:59.787" Score="3" ViewCount="13218" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable for a writer to jump back in time for a whole chapter? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean a flashback, I mean more like, for example, chapter 5 happening in 25/06/2014 and then the next (Chapter 6) happening in 24/06/2014? I would be using this to explain how certain thing came to pass, example, army 1 is fighting army 2 and currently losing, and then all of the sudden army 3 arrives and saves the day, but noone knows how or why army 3 arrived, so in the next chapter I go back in time to explain how army 3 got there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And sometimes I would go even further back, example, chapter 7 being in 26/06/2014 and then chapter 8 in 12/09/1932, because something happened in 1932 that is now going to affect events in 2014 heavily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would this be an acceptable thing to do? And if the books kept jumping in time every chapter&lt;/strong&gt; (of course stating the date at the beggining) &lt;strong&gt;Would it still be acceptable?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9944" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T19:51:25.570" Title="Jumping between points in time in narrative" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12266" CreationDate="2014-06-26T00:23:20.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you very clearly indicate the date at the beginning of each chapter, so the reader isn't lost, sure, go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T00:23:20.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12265" CreationDate="2014-06-26T00:25:44.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;of course debuts can do well if they're good. Some of it will also depend on marketing and genre, but there's nothing stopping a first novel from being a smash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T00:25:44.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12266" CreationDate="2014-06-26T02:39:32.883" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nonlinear narratives are a particular favorite of mine. Yes, it's possible to do this, but it can be tricky to set things up so they're not confusing to the reader. But if you have a good reason to present things to the reader out of order, it can be a very powerful way to set up a book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll have to do some work to make sure the reader is oriented. Putting a date at the beginning of a chapter is a start, but lots of clues in the story itself would also help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonlinear techniques allow you to present information to the reader exactly when they need it. They also let you start a story in the most interesting part of the tale, and pace it however you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite movies is &lt;em&gt;Pulp Fiction&lt;/em&gt;, and that film succeeds in great part to its use of these devices. We get a great view of the characters due to the order in which we encounter them. The film goes so far as to have a character die, then we see him again (but we know he's doomed). Yet it's never confusing, because the story is very clear. The script is available online, you may want to spend some time reading it. (It's also a hell of a page-turner.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T02:39:32.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12265" CreationDate="2014-06-26T05:11:39.293" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;J.K. Rowling's debut novel was &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Philosopher%27s_Stone&quot;&gt;Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. It was pretty successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T05:11:39.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4976" CreationDate="2014-06-26T05:41:11.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order of descending utility, IMO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project/feature/bug tracking software, for well-defined product changes. A must.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Email notification to other writers (broadcast) that refers to entries in #1 or to a wiki entry describing the doc change.  The email summarizes the context &amp;amp; change enough that other writers can tell whether it affects them.  The wiki entry provides details. Wiki &lt;strong&gt;tags&lt;/strong&gt; provide organization/classification and facilitate search/lookup. Tags can include project names/numbers, bug numbers, and other thingies in #1.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Comments embedded in the doc can help point out details and locations of some doc changes. Source-control change logs can also help for this, but are coarse-grained.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;#1 is preferable, when it can be used. Many doc changes reflect product changes, including bug fixes and new features. The doc changes for these can/should be managed together with the changes to the rest of the product (the doc is of course part of the product).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;#2 supplements #1 - it is for anything that doesn't fit in #1 and doesn't need to be in the doc itself. But it is often possible for #2 to reference thingies in #1. An example of content for #2 might be a doc reorg - but even then it is often better to create a product project for the reorg, i.e., a doc project, and track it in #1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;#3 can help a writer who visits the result of your changes later. It can point out things that are not obvious and are specific to particular content - like good code comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9970" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T05:41:11.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12266" CreationDate="2014-06-26T06:51:01.223" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jumping around in time is the sort of narrative technique that you need a very compelling reason to include. It requires more work of the reader and so it also needs to provide commensurate reward. Assuming you're writing a story that's more or less plot-driven, that means you're not including literary devices solely for their own aesthetic value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means time-skips should only be used to control the flow of information. It's also advisable, although not strictly necessary, to restrict the switches to different groups of characters in different locations. An example: in chapter one you follow events in a besieged city, and in chapter two you switch to showing events leading up to the siege, but from the point of view of the attacking army, camped some miles away. This will usually help with clarity and make it easier for readers to follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the bottom line is, you can use any device you want as often as you want. The real question is, is the benefit worth the expense? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T06:51:01.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12273" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12274" CreationDate="2014-06-26T07:47:31.200" Score="3" ViewCount="4668" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I'm writing a sentence such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I was talking to Alison the other day she said 'I like your shirt!'&quot;&#xA;  Lisa commented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here Lisa is quoting Alison, how should Alison's speech be punctuated? I've used a single quote - is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8373" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T08:17:44.110" Title="How to handle speech within speech?" Tags="|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12273" CreationDate="2014-06-26T08:10:18.180" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you use two different sets of quotation marks readers should easily be able to follow the conversation. However, I think it would be more correct and more readable if you added a comma before the inner quotation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you could always avoid the dilemma by having Lisa describe Alison's words to her rather than recite them verbatim, &quot;she told me&quot; rather than &quot;she said&quot;. This may also be more naturalistic, but that depends on Lisa's manner of speech. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T08:10:18.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12246" CreationDate="2014-06-26T09:11:50.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;His swordsmanship is mentioned and talked about as part of the myth the realm has built around him. Some of these things are true, some are not. In reality is all about his place in the world as other sees it. This is to establish his place in relationship to those that look up to him, hate him, or simply envy him. We learn that he is a masterful sword fighter in the eyes of others. That and his other trait (Kingslayer) might or might not be true. We are shown that these are the traits upon which others judge him. So what happens when this is taken from him? This is, in my mind at least, where his &quot;show, don't tell&quot; starts. He is suddenly no longer that same master of martial arts as he once was. People fear him less or not at all. How will Jamie deal with that? Or something along those lines at least. My pointis, his actual skill with a sword is irrelevant really, as long as everyone else thinks he is one of the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2403" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T09:11:50.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12265" CreationDate="2014-06-26T09:55:38.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some writers, ONLY their first book was popular.  (Some only write one book.  Success can be as crippling as failure.)&#xA;Here's a list: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/5477.Authors_With_Only_One_Whole_Novel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/5477.Authors_With_Only_One_Whole_Novel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although that list isn't counting plays and short stories, which is certainly unfair, I find it telling how many famous writers only wrote one novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T09:55:38.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12277" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-26T17:44:46.393" Score="3" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a difference in quality between a hardcover book offered at WalMart (I have heard these described as &quot;mass&quot; hardcovers) and the same book sold through a bookstore?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9975" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T03:50:35.917" Title="Is there a quality difference in purchased hardcovers?" Tags="|book|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12277" CreationDate="2014-06-26T20:35:36.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are numerous types of bindings and methods used to produce a hardback book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discount hardbound are normally bound using the &quot;Cardboard Article&quot; method.&#xA;In essence, this is nothing more than a paperback with hard covers.&#xA;The spine is glued as on a paperback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One step up from this has the spine covered but not the hardcover spine area is part of the covers and not glued to the spine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether paperback or hardbound, most books today use &quot;Perfect Binding.&quot;  This means the pages are cut and glued, rather than stitched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether or not the books sold in Walmart have a different binding as the same book when purchased from a bookstore.  It is highly unlikely a publisher would risk an extra run or set-up for a different binding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, when one considers the number of Walmart stores, they could easily be buying a complete production run of a novel, bound exclusively for Walmart.  However, most of the books I've seen in Walmart have the exact same binding as purchased from a bookstore or book retailer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VTY&#xA;Dutch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9868" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T20:35:36.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12244" CreationDate="2014-06-27T16:30:32.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I, too, am not a lawyer, so cannot give you advice. I can, however, tell you how I think I would act in your circumstances, as I understand them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding of copyright protection is that it does not protect every word or line in a work; it protects only significant portions of a work. As such, I can quote a work verbatim without compensating the copyright holder as long as (a) the size of my quote is not substantial, and (b) I don't decrease the value of the copyright holder's interest in his or her own work. I believe that, in practice, such quotations can even arouse curiosity in readers and thus increase value of the copyright holder's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I take the Second Court's decision, as quoted above from the &lt;strong&gt;Rights of Writers&lt;/strong&gt; site, as their interpretation of trademark law, not copyright law. In trademark law, I see a title, cover artwork, and publisher's logo as the &quot;brand&quot; or &quot;trademark&quot; of a book or album. It seems to represent the work and who produced it. As long as I present my work with a sufficiently different cover, subtitle, font, or other characteristics, I should be able to use the same title. The key is that I make it clear that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; am the author of the work and that the work cannot reasonably be confused as coming from another author, even though I may be playing another riff, so to speak, on the same theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Amazon lists two book titles, &quot;Where No Man Has Gone Before&quot;, and one even has an obvious Star Trek theme. But I would expect that no court would sustain a claim from Gene Roddenberry's heirs that either of these violate his copyright to the opening sequence of the series, and I certainly don't confuse it as that opening sequence or having been written by Gene Roddenberry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might also publish a book with the same title as long as it is clear that this is not a product of the Star Trek franchise. It may be my commentary on the franchise, or how I see that Star Trek has foreshadowed reality, but not a work from the same writers, directors, and/or producers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as I say, this is all just my view of the issue. If you need advice about your particular use of a line from a song or poem, please seek the opinion of a qualified trademark and copyright attorney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9982" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T16:30:32.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3759" CreationDate="2014-06-27T16:34:08.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The core of narrative writing is strong verbs. Descriptive writing might have some verbs, usually weak ones, but the main tools are nouns and adjectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9982" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T16:34:08.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12283" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12284" CreationDate="2014-06-27T17:57:44.243" Score="2" ViewCount="2741" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm very confused in regards of copyrighted names, some say you can copy right names, and then I read that you can only trademark names and copyright them ONLY if the book/movie is named after them, and then I read that you can copyright names but not names itself, rather, the character as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to make it simpler for me to understand, if I had a big baddass orc, all strong, savage and dumb, full heavy armor, using a shield and a sword, and I were to name him Gandalf, would I get sued or would I get away with it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, can someone copyright or trademark names that they didn't create/invent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9944" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T18:18:57.017" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T22:23:57.343" Title="Copyrighted Names" Tags="|legal|copyright|trademark|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12283" CreationDate="2014-06-27T22:23:57.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can a name be copyrighted?  No!&#xA;However, a unique name used in your book is covered by copyright along with your works.  But it does not afford you any protection until such time the name has a &quot;secondary meaning.&quot;&#xA;In other words, when the characters name becomes recognized as belonging to your work as a &quot;source identifier.&quot;&#xA;Once you meet the above two requirements, then you could apply for a &quot;trademark&quot; of your characters name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not check on the name 'Gandalf' you mentioned.  But there are other laws that may or may not let you use that name.  As an assumption, let's say the name 'Gandalf' is not trademarked, and is not restricted by the books copyright notice (more on this in a moment).&#xA;The copyright holder of the work where 'Gandalf' was first used, could come after you using any one of several laws.  One of these is 'anti-dilution,' another is 'passing-off.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the protection clauses my publisher added to all my works contains the following line.  &quot;All fictional product names, business names, or location names, that appear in this publication are the property of the author and may not be used as names, bylines or slogans for real products, businesses, locations or services without the prior written permission of the author.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This same clause also allows me to retain all rights, so if an item, doll, character, toy, hat, beer mug, company, you name it, I can place said name under contract.  More money is often made from the sale of goods, products, or services, based on a line or name found in a book.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In other words, cover your bases as best as allowed by law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside:  The name 'Gandalf' comes from Norse Mythology, which means it is public domain.  However, the Character 'Gandalf' as used in &quot;Lord of the Rings&quot; is Trademarked, as are the dolls, film character, etc.&#xA;As long as YOUR character 'Gandalf' in no way resembles Tolkien's character, you may have a leg to stand on.  The question is, do you want to risk it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not an attorney and this is not to be construed as legal advice.&#xA;Merely as commentary from a fellow author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VTY&#xA;Dutch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9868" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T22:23:57.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10983" CreationDate="2014-06-27T22:41:54.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends where the photo was taken.&#xA;What the photo is being used for.&#xA;And whether any minors are in the photo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person or subject of the photo is who you are writing about, you will probably need a release.  There are a few exceptions, such as a public figure, and/or editorials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took a photo in a crowded public park to capture a certain person of interest.&#xA;The article which accompanied the photo focused on this single individual.&#xA;Had this person been wearing normal clothing, I would have needed a 'release' to use their image in the manner in which it was used.&#xA;However, because they were dressed in what could be determined a costume, and their goal was to garner the attention of the public, this made them the equivalent of a public figure.  So I could do what I did without obtaining a release.  But there was one caveat.  A minor was also in the un-cropped image and had to be photo-shopped out of the image before the publication could be re-released.  I chose to use a close-up instead, and many faces were recognizable, but the photo was taken in a public place, and no attention brought to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are writing a memoir, are you bringing attention to certain individuals in the photo?  Was the photo taken in a public place or in a private home or private gathering?  If in private, then the people in the image have a right to their privacy and you will need a release from those living, also from the family of those deceased.  Unless your memoir is presented only to family members as a private publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not an attorney, and this is not to be considered legal advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VTY&#xA;Dutch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9868" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T22:41:54.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12293" CreationDate="2014-06-28T03:56:14.103" Score="4" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I am writing a chapter about some deep technical subject (say, for instance, &quot;boolean variables&quot;). This theme is riddled with idiosyncrasies and misunderstandings, so I would like to present the most confusing topics and to straighten them out. My question is: is the following section title suitable for a technical book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Ins and Outs of Boolean Variables&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure I have come across this expression many times, but as a nonnative speaker I really don't have a feel for how formal or adequate it sounds. Also, if this title is not adequate, what alternatives could be used in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual topic in this chapter is not really boolean variables; this was intended as an example. But the suggestions here are so good that I'm tempted to use them if the text touches upon that particular subject in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6162" LastEditorUserId="6162" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T01:21:40.187" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T01:21:40.187" Title="Is this title suitable for a chapter section?" Tags="|technical-writing|titles|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11142" CreationDate="2014-06-28T21:20:24.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apples own Numbers app is what you looking for, it's excel injected with desktop publishing steroids. Else there is omnioutliner one of the best there is for this exact requirement...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9989" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T21:20:24.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10810" CreationDate="2014-06-28T22:45:08.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of what you'll find on-line are not spec scripts, but production scripts which have been scene numbered or otherwise slightly altered by directors and ADs to facilitate shooting.  Additionally, if you're reading a script of a writer/director, then you need to understand it might as well have been written in crayon as it was never going to be a spec sale.  These can &lt;em&gt;legitimately&lt;/em&gt; use all sorts of cheats a spec script might easily be rejected for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advise would be to check out the book, &quot;The Hollywood Standard&quot; (second edition) by Christopher Riley.  It details all the minutia of format in dealing with pretty much every circumstance you can possibly think of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you've read it, you'll get a much better understanding of what is considered basic formatting.  More importantly, you'll also gain a bit of understanding as to why certain elements are the way they are, something you'd never get just looking at a sample page.  For instance, why you'd use a parenthetical comment under a character's name, but never in scene description.  Why you'd UPPER CASE some items in scene description, but not others.  Follow that and nobody will ever complain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give it a look.  I know it's available on Amazon.  You don't have to pay full price either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9990" LastEditorUserId="9990" LastEditDate="2014-06-28T23:06:02.070" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T23:06:02.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11029" CreationDate="2014-06-28T23:01:18.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copying ideas is not plagiarism.  Copying execution is.  Further, some phrases are so common they couldn't possibly be considered plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of being unable to quite recall something is not unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a little bit like me using the phrase, &quot;it's a little bit like.&quot;  I'm sure if you did a google search of the phrase, &quot;I could never quite recall&quot; it would return a plethora of hits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9990" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T23:01:18.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12244" CreationDate="2014-06-29T03:11:00.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the poem is that famous, it's probably out of copyright.  So you can pilfer that, as long as you don't get into trademark issues.  Anything by Shakespeare or some other long-dead author is fair game.  Traditional poems, like Mother Goose rhymes, would also be fair game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, famous old works like that present you with another problem: probably lots of authors have taken parts of those works' famous lines and used them as book titles.  For example, you might think &quot;Jacob Have I Loved&quot; (from the Bible) would be a cool title, but you (probably) can't use it because somebody else already has, and that book is still under copyright.  (I say &quot;probably&quot; because IANAL.)  So, do a thorough search first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trademarks are tricky.  It is difficult to trademark a common word for your sole use.  (Consider the trademark problems that Apple had.)  That is why companies often use non-standard spellings and made-up words.  It is much easier to claim sole use on &quot;Xerox&quot; than it would be for &quot;Copycat&quot; or &quot;Mimic.&quot;  If a photocopier company liked the name &quot;Copycat&quot; they would probably trademark it as &quot;CopyKat&quot; or &quot;KopyCat.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why am I discussing that?  Because &quot;StarWars&quot; is trademarked, but you could title a sci-fi book &quot;Chronicles of the Delta Quadrant Star Wars.&quot;  OTOH, that might be a bad idea, because somebody with deep enough pockets might destroy your book by threatening lawsuits against anyone distributing it.  Even though legally you didn't do anything wrong, and you'd eventually prevail in court, you'd still be doomed.  (Unless you could prove that the lawsuits were frivolous and harmful.  Then your opponent's deep pockets would work in your favor.  But do you want to write, or sue people?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T03:11:00.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12286" CreationDate="2014-06-29T05:15:38.967" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not that it's unsuitable, but the word play of &quot;Ins and Outs&quot; isn't very well matched with the subject of &quot;Boolean Variables.&quot;  &quot;Ins and Outs&quot; sounds like it's more about GPIO pins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be tempted to do something like;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If This_Chapter == About_Boolean_Variables {Read}&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9990" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T05:15:38.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12286" CreationDate="2014-06-29T08:22:58.957" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;An informal, jokey title is perfectly appropriate. This is especially true if, as I surmise, you're writing a progrmming manual of some sort. Computer science is a pretty informal field, after all. It's almost expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title isn't very eye-catching, but it's a common enough turn of phrase and there's nothing wrong with it, as such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T08:22:58.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1602" CreationDate="2014-06-29T23:39:47.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was literally decades ago (the 1980s), but what I used to do was to &quot;splice&quot; characters  by mixing and matching the traits of my heroes and heroines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in one novel, I gave the fictitious heroine my jet black hair, my real-life boss, and my English pub, while otherwise keeping her true to her &quot;other&quot; counterpart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I gave the fictitious hero the real life heroine's blonde locks and sense of adventure, while giving him many of my other traits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you have to make each &quot;person&quot; a few things that the original clearly is &quot;not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one recognized either of us for who we were, and people had quite a few laughs when they found out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2014-12-24T17:42:23.570" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T17:42:23.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4705" CreationDate="2014-06-30T08:24:11.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking back at my own writing, my recommendation is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;You'll have to find out yourself.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two main directions writing can take, often called &amp;quot;outline&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;no outline&amp;quot;. The no outline approach means that you sit down with the seed of an idea (a scene, a character, a first sentence) and just start writing, letting yourself be surprised by where the story takes you. The outline approach means that you develop every important aspect of your story (characters, beginning, end, conflict, antagonist, etc.) and then &amp;quot;flesh out&amp;quot; this skeleton. There are many different methods for the outline and the no outline approach, giving you a wide variety of approaches you can take. &lt;strong&gt;You will not know which one is right for you without experimenting.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is why, if this is your first story or novel, you should &lt;strong&gt;just start in whatever way feels right to you and see what obstacles you encounter&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can chose any one approach that a random anonymous person recommends on the internet, but chances are that this is the wrong approach for you. It is much more likely that doing what feels right for you at the moment will be a good basis to find your own method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you write with no outline but find that the final first draft is inconsistent or that you want to constantly rewrite what you already wrote to adapt it to new ideas you have later, you might try outline first with your next novel. Or if you find that creating an outline stifles your imagination and takes the fun out of writing, abandon the outline and write without one. In any case you will have learned something &lt;strong&gt;about yourself&lt;/strong&gt;, because that is what learning to write is about: it is not learning a given method and adapting it mindlessly, but &lt;strong&gt;finding out what kind of writer you are&lt;/strong&gt;. And the best way to find this out, in writing as in any other art (think of art school students trying different painting styles), is to experiment and allow yourself to fail. Your first novel should not be the only book you ever want to write, but the first of many attempts at creating better and better novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T08:24:11.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12298" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12300" CreationDate="2014-06-30T17:40:42.940" Score="4" ViewCount="545" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the caveat that I'm sure it varies based on publisher, genre, etc., but -- generally, if you were an author who was published and the book cover was designed by the publisher, but you wanted to do marketing on your own -- would you be able to use that book cover image on a personal website, in paid ads on social media, on flyers, etc.? Would you need to pay a licensing fee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10004" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-22T03:35:14.390" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T03:35:14.390" Title="Do published authors have rights to use their own book cover images?" Tags="|publishing|legal|marketing|artwork|book-cover|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12298" CreationDate="2014-06-30T17:51:46.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, &quot;no&quot;. Not unless there's a contract or license that allows it. The cover was commissioned and paid for by the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, non-deceptive use for the purpose of selling more books would probably be happily approved by the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T17:51:46.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12298" CreationDate="2014-06-30T17:55:09.710" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your contract should spell out what, if any, rights you have to use the cover art and/or book excerpts for promotional purposes. Typically, smaller or independent presses will be more than happy to add in those rights during negotiation since they will typically have a much smaller budget for promotion and will rely on the author to do much of the promotional work themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Larger presses, on the other hand, usually have a large marketing department that will handle all of the initial press push for the book and will be less likely to want the author doing any additional promotion that may go against their particular policies or strategies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6851" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T17:55:09.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12304" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12305" CreationDate="2014-07-01T06:34:24.177" Score="0" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am helping a friend of mine create a story website. He says he wants &lt;code&gt;Genre&lt;/code&gt; as well as &lt;code&gt;Tags&lt;/code&gt; for his site. Implementing &lt;code&gt;Genres&lt;/code&gt; is easy enough.- I can have a list like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; - Romance &#xA; - Horror  &#xA; - Humor  &#xA; - Tragedy&#xA; - ...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author can select couple of these while writing his story. The reader can also search/filter using these genres. We can tag-cloud, show number of items in each etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with tagging that I have, is that it can become too convoluted. Stories can be tagged for just about anything. And tags can start becoming duplicated due to spelling mistakes, slightly different words used etc. This can end up with the site getting cluttered with tags and it can really be no value add at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So should tagging be there? As a reader/writer how would you expect a tagging functionality to work for a writing site?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10008" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T06:46:50.703" Title="Using Genres and Tags in a writing website" Tags="|genre|websites|categories|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-07-01T15:05:50.163" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12304" CreationDate="2014-07-01T06:46:50.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The website maker should disallow additional tags created by the user.&#xA;For example, if someone writes &lt;code&gt;fiktion&lt;/code&gt;, the website should suggest the tag &lt;code&gt;fiction&lt;/code&gt; as it does in StackExchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is feasible, but the coding is a bit hard (I have experience in website-making).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or when the reader types in (the inputbox) the letter &lt;code&gt;f&lt;/code&gt; the input should suggest &lt;code&gt;fiction, fantasy&lt;/code&gt;... like &lt;code&gt;autocomplete.&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;For example, in this website &lt;a href=&quot;http://codepen.io/curthusting/pen/FLhpE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://codepen.io/curthusting/pen/FLhpE&lt;/a&gt; there is a code and a demonstration of this. Show your friend this code, I think he'll understand. Try to type &lt;code&gt;ap&lt;/code&gt; it will already suggest you apple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or the website maker should make an OPTION list and make the user choose a genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8765" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T06:46:50.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3087" CreationDate="2014-07-01T06:53:52.340" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should publish the book, and then create a Wiki.&#xA;If you want to know the truth, after publishing my novel, I am gong to write an encyclopedia (printed Wiki) to be sold. After that I'd create articles in Wikipedia (e.g. J. K. Rowling). Let's think. Imagine publishing your wikis even before the book is published. Perhaps it would help your book sell more, but on the other hand, I don't see why people would read that wiki even before the book is published. E.g, for Harry Potter, it was not J. K. who created the Wikis, but her fans. She also told that she would write an encyclopedia of Harry Potter. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/apr/16/harry-potter-encyclopedia-jk-rowling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/apr/16/harry-potter-encyclopedia-jk-rowling&lt;/a&gt;) Let's take the example of Half Bad (by Sally Green). It's been two months since the book has been published and there's merely only one article about the book, although, it has its own universe and terms... The choice is up to you. I would recommend you to wait until your book is sold, then make an encyclopedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8765" LastEditorUserId="8765" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T05:56:42.287" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T05:56:42.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10967" CreationDate="2014-07-01T21:32:54.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there none that can supply some &quot;trade&quot; information regarding the methods, file formats etc - of modern books / manuscripts? I expect, if the graphics was ever available as such - or designed so by the publisher - they would be stored as vector graphics, unrendered or uncompressed original formats. Complex images though, aren't impossible to do by vector - but extremely time consuming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As have nicely been informed by the other users here - with older, &quot;analog&quot; media (video and audio), the primary function of the &quot;Master&quot; was to branch out a handful of copies, and duplicate further from those - due to physical wear and tear during the copy process. Books were &quot;set&quot; manually, and the letters separated after the print was run. Original manuscripts were usually print or writing on paper, depending on age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In modern day - the &quot;Master&quot; still serves as an unadulterated original (and this is usually duplicated several times) - but not primarily due to wear and tear during a copy process. A straight 1:1 digital copy does not pose any wear on the original, or detoriation of the new copy. Its all 1s and 0s. Most data transfer processes have data corruption control. The &quot;recieving&quot; end will let the &quot;sender&quot; know what it actually got. If the data don't match the original, the &quot;sender&quot; will send that package again. This will loop util it &quot;gets it right&quot; or a defined limited set of times (whatever occurs first) - this &quot;limit&quot; can be indefinite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't confuse this with the actual manufacturing of &quot;digital media&quot; like CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. The actual transfer process from the &quot;manufacturing master&quot;, is physical pressing. Any physical pressing procedure, is actually very much analog - and thus both long-time wear or a foreign object like a speck of dust, can introduce detoriation (resulting in data corruption).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 2 other important aspects of &quot;Digital Master Copies&quot; to keep in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off - most of todays digital storage media, &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; be detoriate with time. This is mostly down to physical properties of the materials the storage media is manufactured from. Paper and cellulose film will deteriorate too. So will modern polyester film eventually, but its designed to last for hundreds of years given ideal circumstances. But the good thing about digital media, is that its fairly easy and little work - to replicate and migrate to a new &quot;Master Copy&quot;. It is also fairly easy to make it automated, if you administer hundreds or thousands of &quot;Masters&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: A digital master copy is usually completely without compression. Which means, its VERY, VERY, VERY large. If the format is 24 frames per second - then thats what this copy will be: 24 full uncompressed images per second of &quot;film&quot;. A &quot;standard&quot; Blu-Ray disc (double layer) may hold up to 50 Gigabyte of data. Special triple layer discs may hold as much as 128 Gigabytes, although these are rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now consider a modern, HQ shot 3D movie like &lt;em&gt;The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug&lt;/em&gt; . This was shot in 48fps, 3D 5K resolution. Now lets do the math for the uncompressed, RAW digital video data (without sound). (Some numbers are theoretical likeliness, as I couldn't find those filming details) :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;24 (bit color depth) * 5120 (pixels horiz.) * 2700 (pixels vert.) * 48 (frames per second) * 2 (for 3D, stereo (2 images &quot;per frame&quot;)). Without ANY compression, that is 31.850.496.00 bits per second of film - or 3,7 Gigabytes. Per second of film. Thats almost &lt;strong&gt;50 Terrabytes&lt;/strong&gt; for a 3 and a half hour movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, even a FullHD (1080p), 24 fps movie at this bit depth would be ~142 Megabytes per second, ~1.8 Terrabyte for 3.5 hours. It goes without saying - you can't store that Digital Master spread over a thousand (or 35 in the &quot;1880p/24fps case&quot;) Blu-Ray discs - some other storage media must be used. And to squeeze this raw digital movie footage onto a Blu-Ray disc, is actually going to require some very serious compression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10012" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T21:32:54.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9048" CreationDate="2014-07-02T13:48:14.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Despite being flooded with manuscripts, &lt;strong&gt;agents and publishers are constantly on the lookout for new talent&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;German SF writer Andreas Eschbach &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.andreaseschbach.de/schreiben/phantastisch/folge2/folge2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;writes on his website&lt;/a&gt; that he once had the chance to look at the one and a half metre pile that constituted the last two weeks of submitted manuscripts beside the desk of an editor. Unsure of the competitive quality of his own writing, he wanted to see what the first five pages of other authors looked like and found that &quot;a distressing number&quot; of them were simply awful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What I saw allayed my fears. The first five pages? In the majority of manuscripts the first five &lt;em&gt;sentences&lt;/em&gt; where enough to lose all interest. (my translation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is why publishers – not only in Germany but all over the world – create short story contests or watch amateur publications, and actively approach talented young writers to develop stories with them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your manuscript is good,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you submit to a publisher or agent that is interested in your genre, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;follow their submission guidelines – &lt;em&gt;look at their website!&lt;/em&gt; –,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;=&gt; you will get a positive reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T19:08:55.663" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T19:08:55.663" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12266" CreationDate="2014-07-02T19:51:25.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like that and do that in my writings. But many people say it is not good to break the chronology of a story, it would disturb the flow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a fantasy novel and would like to start it directly from the part action is made, and then, in the next chapter, tell how things happened. I think what you're willing to do is flashback. This can also create confusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check this link for managing flashbacks: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pete-walker.com/13StepsManageFlashbacks.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pete-walker.com/13StepsManageFlashbacks.htm&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question is&amp;mdash;yes, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; acceptable. But think before doing. Try to avoid them as much as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8765" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T19:51:25.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12286" CreationDate="2014-07-02T20:44:17.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on how formal or informal the technical writing is and whether the target audience is beginner's or advanced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more specific and accurate chapter would be ideal. &quot;Ins and Outs&quot; is too vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10020" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T20:44:17.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12286" CreationDate="2014-07-02T21:01:24.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Im tempted with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The true and false of Boolean Variables...&#xA;There is nothing !true about this.&#xA;When you can't tell your true from your not-so-false&#xA;The universal !false!&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10008" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T21:01:24.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12313" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-03T00:58:39.700" Score="3" ViewCount="352" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing my first serious novel and I have 155 pages with 60,000 words. I'm wondering whether this is normal. I still want to write at least another 100 pages or more, but I don't want to write too much or publishers won't even look at it. My novel is fiction and more of a teen read than an adult. So, do I have too much for the amount of pages I have written? If so, what is the average I should be at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10022" LastEditorUserId="10022" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T02:10:37.790" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T12:09:28.167" Title="How do you know if you have too many words for the amount of pages you have written?" Tags="|fiction|novel|wordcount|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12314" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12315" CreationDate="2014-07-03T02:25:39.023" Score="2" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't follow any kind of time or word limit. I write when I have time and stop when the time is over (e.g. time to eat, to work, to sleep).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now I'm thinking of setting myself some daily goals to see if this improves the quality of my writing (e.g. 2000 per day, 5 hours a day), as well as my mental health and sanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you set yourself daily goals? Do you stop once you've reached them? What are the pro and cons you've noticed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T02:31:03.090" LastActivityDate="2023-03-02T13:19:49.683" Title="Do you set yourself daily goals and stop once you've reached them?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12314" CreationDate="2014-07-03T09:20:53.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes to the first! Emphatic no to the second. If I'm on a roll, I'll keep writing until I run out of words. In order to start writing, I have to make a plan and stick to it, otherwise I'll get distracted and forget. I also have to purge my mind of the idea of &quot;writing mood&quot; because if I wait until I'm in the mood, I end up writing nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting aside time to write is a good disciplinary practice. Setting word goals is also helpful, if only so that you can fail to reach them. Failure allows you to better gauge how much you can really write in a set time period. Last month I made myself a spreadsheet to track my daily words, but life interfered and I got very little done. This month I am more optimistic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though concrete goals have a lot of advantages, not everyone can work with them, just as not everyone can work from an outline, and not everyone can write a snappy, plot-driven story. It's hard work to find the routine that works for you, but it's incredibly rewarding once you start reaping the results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T09:20:53.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12313" CreationDate="2014-07-03T09:52:53.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about the number of pages, that is dependent on the way the eventual book is typeset. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question you want to ask, as the writer, is &quot;do I have too many words (or too few) for the amount of &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; I have written.&quot; It's perfectly possible to use too many words to tell too little story, or too few words to tell too much, but the number of pages is the typesetter's problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you eventually want to submit the manuscript to a publisher/agent they will let you know via their submission guidelines how they want the text formatted – for example: double-spaced, 12 point, Times New Roman, with inch-wide margins – and this will determine the ratio of words to pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9967" LastEditorUserId="9967" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T11:43:16.663" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T11:43:16.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10967" CreationDate="2014-07-03T10:17:56.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most publishers use InDesign for the text block and Photoshop for the cover, and there are a variety of these files stored on the relevant staff members' computers. The closest you get to the &quot;master copy&quot; would be the most recent version of the work provided by the writer that has been through the editing process and contains the most up-to-date edits (ditto with the covers). This will tend to be stored on a shared drive to which the editorial team will all have access (usually &quot;read only,&quot; but with write access when required). Again, this will tend to be in InDesign format, but it's also possible that there are more up-to-date edits somewhere on paper, or in Word, or in an email exchange with the writer/agent/editor that need to be incorporated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book is always in an unfinished state, even after publication (when errors, inconsistencies, and things the writer just wants to change, suddenly becoming glaringly obvious) and the file maintenance conventions publishers adopt reflect this. Reprints of books, new editions, different sized editions, editions for different markets, paper/electronic versions (etc.,etc.) will all require differently formatted files that reflect the most current version of the edit, so there's never a real &quot;master copy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9967" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T10:17:56.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12313" CreationDate="2014-07-03T12:09:28.167" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Word count matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some posts about what word counts are acceptable for which genre and age group:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://literaticat.blogspot.ca/2011/05/wordcount-dracula.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://literaticat.blogspot.ca/2011/05/wordcount-dracula.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literaryrejections.com/word-count/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.literaryrejections.com/word-count/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/word-count-for-novels-and-childrens-books-the-definitive-post&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/word-count-for-novels-and-childrens-books-the-definitive-post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New writers should stay within those limits. Only if you are a bestselling author will publishers accept manuscripts that are much longer or shorter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can simply add words to your story, then you are writing it wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your hero has solved his quest, then you cannot simply add another quest (this would be another book) or cut a supporting character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very rare that a story of a certain type cannot be told within the word count limits given in the posts linked above. If your story is longer or shorter, very likely there is either something missing or something that needs to be deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell your story as it needs to be told, and the word count will most likeyl be right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T12:09:28.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12320" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12321" CreationDate="2014-07-03T23:46:27.657" Score="1" ViewCount="3879" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent Snapple cap of mine &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snapple.com/real-facts/cap-view/809&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;proclaimed&lt;/a&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;French author Michel Thayer published a 233 page novel which has no verbs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does anyone know the name of this book?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can anyone explain how this is possible?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10027" LastActivityDate="2018-01-15T21:58:06.467" Title="A novel without verbs?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12320" CreationDate="2014-07-04T01:09:54.907" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Train_de_Nulle_Part&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Le Train de Nulle Part (The Train from Nowhere)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a gimmick.  Nothing more.  Oh sure, he gets all high and mighty about it, but even in his explanation of why he did it he breaks his own rule about never using verbs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Wikipedia page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thaler surmised, &quot;The verb is like a weed in a field of flowers. You&#xA;  have to get rid of it to allow the flowers to grow and flourish. Take&#xA;  away the verbs and the language speaks for itself.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody said it was a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; novel.  ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9990" LastEditorUserId="10027" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T12:52:00.387" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T12:52:00.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12320" CreationDate="2014-07-04T07:31:37.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your second question, an example of how the writing flows is given on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Train_de_Nulle_Part&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;French Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quelle aubaine! Une place de libre, ou presque, dans ce compartiment. Une escale provisoire, pourquoi pas! Donc, ma nouvelle adresse dans ce train de nulle part: voiture 12, 3e compartiment dans le sens de la marche. Encore une fois, pourquoi pas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What a stroke of luck! A free seat, or almost, in this compartment. A provisional stop, why not! So my new address in this train from nowhere: car 12, 3rd compartment in the direction of travel. Again, why not? (edited Google translation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T07:31:37.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12325" CreationDate="2014-07-04T08:10:07.947" Score="0" ViewCount="2725" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to English (three years) and I want help describing this video for my fantasy novel: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymcen0EjmiU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymcen0EjmiU&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want you to do it at my place, but I really want to see how &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; would describe it (especially after 0:32). I have difficulties describing actions and voices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be greatly appreciated.&#xA;Thanks for your response, time, and consideration!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Thank you for your help, I already described this scene and it turned out to be really good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8765" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T21:39:30.083" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T21:39:30.083" Title="How to Describe a Scene from Video?" Tags="|fantasy|description|scene|young-adult|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12273" CreationDate="2014-07-04T08:17:44.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're using American English, your sentence is like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I was talking to Alison the other day she said 'I like your shirt!'&quot;&#xA;  Lisa commented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means add single quotes inside the double quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So I was walking with Chris,&quot; said Nick, &quot;and he said 'Madison's having a party.'&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using British English, your sentence is like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'I was talking to Alison the other day she said &quot;I like your shirt!&quot;'&#xA;  Lisa commented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means add double quotes inside the single quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8765" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T08:17:44.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12323" CreationDate="2014-07-04T09:53:51.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I won't try to describe it, but here's how I would go about it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put myself deep inside Brave's viewpoint. Notice what details she is taking in through her senses (see, hear, smell, touch, taste). Especially focus on her opinions of those sensory details. Whatever she has an opinion about, write that. Stay with her senses and opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T09:53:51.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9581" CreationDate="2014-07-04T10:58:56.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an amateur writer I'm writing my first novel and this question came up when I was searching on writing tips on how to end my novel and I posed that same question which is how I got here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking the boundaries of what is romance and what is other genres like Drama, Thriller or Crime can be blended to create your story if you remain true to your goals and the eventual story being told. This can play out in series like many contemporary romance/drama authors, there's a wealth of them out there that end the book on a serious note, enticing you into buying the next in the series. &#xA;You capture the readers attention with the love story, throw in drama, maybe a crime or thriller situation and then end it alluding to the next book continuing the hero/heroines story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that you should write to your soul and not worry, if you want to publish your work and no firm wants it, self publish, there's plenty of us readers and avid novelists out there who read all types of genres many of them self published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life like literature and writing in general, is not always about happy endings, break the boundaries and find what works and write, its not about what others think in the end, you have to be proud of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10031" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2018-09-07T12:53:36.863" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T12:53:36.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8882" CreationDate="2014-07-04T11:32:05.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't particularly think you need dialogue in a story to make it good. Writing is an art, and the author is the artist. You don't try and take away a brush from a painter and force them to paint what you think they should. In the same way nobody can force you to write what you don't want to write. I have read many good stories with little or no dialogue to them. So, yes I think it is permissible to write a story with little or no dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10033" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T11:32:05.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12328" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-04T15:37:13.310" Score="2" ViewCount="480" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a template or guidelines for how to write a technical report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report is IT-related and intended for a project manager to review the work of the investigation of a IT-related issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8733" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T00:50:59.553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T00:50:59.553" Title="Template for IT technical report?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12329" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-04T19:20:27.590" Score="0" ViewCount="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my thesis report and I am doubt which one is acceptable and correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1- Section 1&lt;br&gt; 1-2- Subsection 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1 Section 1&lt;br&gt; 1-2 Subsection 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please indicate if using a dash is preferable to using a dot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible, please give references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8794" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T18:00:09.250" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T18:00:09.250" Title="Use of dash in section numbering" Tags="|style|formatting|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12329" CreationDate="2014-07-04T19:41:56.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no universally correct answer to this question – this kind of formatting is usually determined by the submission regulations of the institution and department to which you are submitting the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either check the regulations provided by the department, or take a trip to the library and ask to see examples of theses submitted in your subject area (these should be formatted according to the regulations). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no regulation governing section numbering, then choose the convention most commonly used at your institution and make sure you use it consistently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9967" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T19:41:56.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12328" CreationDate="2014-07-04T21:54:55.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chose the right title -- it's the hardest part in writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain your targets and goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain what do you wish in the future based on this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10028" LastEditorUserId="10027" LastEditDate="2014-07-08T23:55:17.713" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T23:55:17.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4705" CreationDate="2014-07-05T10:30:45.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To develop story for any novel, first you need to have a start and an end points. Now the whole story and the characters in it will be moving according to this final goal point. You can add as many characters as you want but one condition they need to support your story and shouldn’t go beyond your perception of the story because this will confuse the readers. One more important point about readers is don’t write story in readers view. Some may like the story and some may think its useless. Pour your heart where you need some sympathy on the characters. Make readers involve and feel the story;It all depends on how well you can tell a story. Before writing practice story telling. Cook stories and tell them to your buddies, colleagues, family members (I'm suggesting you to cook stories for your hobby not encouraging lies. :-) ) this story telling will expand your imagination power. Hope I my suggestion would help you in your story writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10040" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T10:30:45.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12323" CreationDate="2014-07-05T17:50:58.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dale brings up a good point; for the most part, motion pictures are primarily told from the third person perspective.  It's not better or worse, simply a constraint of the medium.  Generally speaking, a motion picture story is what the audience can objectively see.  By contrast, novels aren't constrained by perspective and can also include what the character is subjectively feeling in the first person as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When people talk about the differences between books and film adaptations, this is one of the biggest.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9990" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T17:50:58.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12334" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12336" CreationDate="2014-07-05T17:59:20.250" Score="4" ViewCount="398" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an action scene and I'd like for the POV and the readers to realize something at around the same time. Specifically, why another character is physically stuck and unable to escape an advancing danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the readers figure out that it's the POV's fault before the POV does, they might wonder why the POV is so stupid, or blind, or whatever, even though I'm going to great lengths to show the character as being clever. If, on the other hand, the POV realizes something that the readers couldn't've foreseen, it will look like the author hasn't done his job setting the scene and placing hints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, ideally, the reader and the POV would figure it out at the same time. The problem is that I as the author know the surprise, so I can't pretend to figure it out. I know there are authors out there who are really good at surprising the reader with things the reader should've already figured out. Are there strategies for achieving this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3666" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T13:20:52.137" Title="What are some strategies for surprising the reader?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7722" CreationDate="2014-07-05T18:11:09.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Secondary stress in poetic meter gets promoted (or emphasized) when surrounded by non-stressed syllables:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His &lt;strong&gt;po&lt;/strong&gt; e &lt;strong&gt;try&lt;/strong&gt; was &lt;strong&gt;bad&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His &lt;strong&gt;po&lt;/strong&gt; etry &lt;strong&gt;hurt&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linguistically speaking the English language has 3 or 4 levels of stress (depending on who you ask). Poetic meter only has two however - thus it is the relative level of stress that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10042" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T18:11:09.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12334" CreationDate="2014-07-05T20:47:01.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common approach is to give the detail, but to disguise its significance. Mystery writers are masters of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One trick is to insert the relevant detail in the middle of a long list. Readers tend to skim long lists. They read the first item and the second, and then skim to the last. So you can hide the clue in plain sight by writing it as the fourth item in a list of six or seven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Veteran mystery readers are onto this trick. But mostly you can get away with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, study a few mysteries. Notice the moments where the sleuth has that nagging feeling of having missed some important detail. Later, when the sleuth remembers the detail, go back and find where it first appeared in the text. Notice how the writer disguised the significance of the detail, and how the viewpoint character noticed the detail but overlooked its importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T20:47:01.603" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5626" CreationDate="2014-07-06T10:34:31.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been said that writers are different and all approaches are valid. Generally, writers fall into two categories (with many combining both approaches to different extents):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are writers that start with an &lt;strong&gt;outline&lt;/strong&gt;. They know what they write towards, before they begin. This gives them more control and reduces the necessity for rewriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are other writers, who need or enjoy the feeling of &lt;strong&gt;exploring&lt;/strong&gt; their story world so much that knowing the end would stifle their creativity. The drawback for them is that they will have to do more rewriting, because of plot holes and inconsistencies that happen along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you really think about this, you'll notice that &lt;em&gt;those aren't different approaches at all&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In both approaches there is a phase where you find your story by exploring your fantasy world. In one approach the writers uses writing to find the story, in the other the writer &lt;strong&gt;does the same thing in his or her head&lt;/strong&gt; and just takes brief notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In both approaches there is a phase of rewriting. In one approach the writer actually writes the novel (or parts of it) a second or multiple times. In the other approach, again, the writer does this in his or her head, only adjusting the notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In both approaches there is a final phase, where you write the final version of the novel. For the one approach this is the first time the writer actually sits down to write. For the other it is the last revision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this the answer to your question follows naturally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;All writers know the end of their stories before they write the final version.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only difference is how they do the pleasurable exploring: in text, or in notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T10:34:31.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12328" CreationDate="2014-07-06T11:29:18.873" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Title&lt;/strong&gt;: Meaningful but not overly long&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rendering 1500 Users Helpless: An IT Project Report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt;: Summarize the report in one paragraph&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Problem.  Management Fix.  IT Implementation.  User Reception.  Coverup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sec. 1, Introduction&lt;/strong&gt;: Give background on the project.  (What led to it?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The recent release of Win8 with its BadIphone interface has created a furor in the IT world.  Some like it because of blah blah.  Others hate it because of blah blah.  In May 2014 our clueless upper management directed IT to switch everyone from Win7 to Win8, whether they wanted it or not.  This led to a near-revolt in the IT department.  Etc etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At end of intro, explain the format of the rest of the report in a few sentences.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Sec. 2 we explain our methodology for correcting the problem.  In&#xA;  Sec. 3 we explain the implementation.  In Sec. 4 we discuss user&#xA;  reaction to the change.  Yadda yadda yadda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sec. 2-4??, Main Body of Report&lt;/strong&gt;:  Ideally you would have a separate section for each aspect of the project.  (I took a stab at it above in Intro description.  Don't feel bound by that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sec. Last#, Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;:  Here you can wax eloquent with your opinions, which you have hopefully kept out of the rest of the sections.  You should end with a summary, which will sound a lot like the abstract but can be longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Footnotes&lt;/strong&gt;, if any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T11:29:18.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12341" CreationDate="2014-07-06T13:47:34.353" Score="1" ViewCount="3709" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a piece of text in an essay where I'm quoting different pieces of a paragraph found on the same page. I'm not sure how to cite this. &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9693/multiple-same-source-citations-in-the-same-paragraph-in-mla-format&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; shows how to cite if there are different pages, but if they are on the same page, do I just mark the same page again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mrs. Miller lives a lonely life, having “no friends to speak of”&#xA;  (Capote 2), “narrow” (2) interests and rarely travelling “farther than&#xA;  the corner grocery” (2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, what's the alternative? Am I not supposed to have this scenario in the first place? I assumed it was acceptable, since I'm imitating the style I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ahttp://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/IFR/article/download/13422/14505&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T13:47:34.353" Title="MLA sequential quotes on same page" Tags="|formatting|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12340" CreationDate="2014-07-06T13:47:34.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to page two of &lt;a href=&quot;http://ithacalibrary.com/research/mla_parenthetical.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this guide&lt;/a&gt;, it is acceptable to put the references at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using my previous example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mrs. Miller lives a lonely life, having “no friends to speak of”&#xA;  , “narrow” interests and rarely travelling “farther than&#xA;  the corner grocery” (Capote 2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T13:47:34.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8882" CreationDate="2014-07-06T17:36:06.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write short stories lately, to keep preoccupied in between novel writing, and try my hand at different strokes. I never liked books with dialogue &quot;this&quot; person and &quot;that&quot; person. An artist word smith using narrative of characters, interjecting internalized thoughts, and that's the best way to involve the readers point of view IN MY OPINION. Thought rolling along, the now, the before and later doesn't have to include quotes to be achieved. Enough with interpersonal conversation, people can visualize without it. Description isn't all telling a story, but rather personality of character, what their thinking is the revealing acts of their plans. Thank you, 'Be immune to rumor' Jimmy Nuzz&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10046" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T17:36:06.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12343" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-06T20:53:46.277" Score="0" ViewCount="1453" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an obstacle writing articles that have consistent verb tenses. Generally, I've been told that if I start an article in the past tense, I should keep other verbs in the past tense. But as I read more articles, books. I get confused by the verb tenses used in those literatures. Take for example in the following article. I believe it started in the past tense (the 1st paragraph), yet the second paragraph switched to the present tense (it &lt;strong&gt;sounds&lt;/strong&gt; like the...). In the third paragraph a mixed on the past and present tense are used (the word &lt;strong&gt;gave&lt;/strong&gt; is in past tense yet &lt;strong&gt;remain&lt;/strong&gt; is in the present tense). Why in this article and many other literatures I get the impression that the author was changing verb tenses? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;REPRESSED&lt;/strong&gt; for decades, the anger burst like a summer storm. Rioting&#xA;  youths &lt;strong&gt;flooded&lt;/strong&gt; city streets. The shaken regime granted hasty&#xA;  concessions: freer speech; an end to one-party rule; real elections.&#xA;  But when Islamists &lt;strong&gt;surged&lt;/strong&gt; towards victory in the first free elections&#xA;  the army stepped in, provoking a bloody struggle that lasted until the&#xA;  people, exhausted, acquiesced to a government similar in outlook,&#xA;  repression and even personnel to that which they had revolted against&#xA;  in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It &lt;strong&gt;sounds&lt;/strong&gt; like the recent history of several Arab countries: Bahrain,&#xA;  Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen, the states of the 2011 Arab&#xA;  spring, have seen some or all of the story unfold. But this is also,&#xA;  and originally, Algeria, a quarter of a century earlier—the first&#xA;  major political crisis in the age of modern Islamism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A flurry of freedom in the late 1980s &lt;strong&gt;gave&lt;/strong&gt; way to a vicious civil war&#xA;  in the 1990s that left as many as 200,000 dead and Algeria’s Islamists&#xA;  more or less defeated, but not eradicated. Today the country’s&#xA;  citizens &lt;strong&gt;remain&lt;/strong&gt; powerless spectators to a continued stand-off between&#xA;  what they call le pouvoir—the entrenched oligarchy that controls the&#xA;  state, the oil money and the army—and the now-marginalised Islamist&#xA;  radicals, who serve more as a justification for ongoing repression&#xA;  than as any sort of inspiration to ordinary people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10048" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T22:36:42.193" Title="Confusion on inconsistent verb tenses in a magazine article" Tags="|tenses|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12344" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12346" CreationDate="2014-07-06T21:19:45.773" Score="-1" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;So this website we are building allows users to post stories. Now we have a bunch of &lt;code&gt;tags/genres&lt;/code&gt;. I call them &lt;code&gt;tags/genres&lt;/code&gt; because they are a predefined list and is basically meant to give the stories some kind of &lt;code&gt;categorization&lt;/code&gt; and nothing more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also have ratings - from &lt;code&gt;K&lt;/code&gt; to &lt;code&gt;MA&lt;/code&gt;. We were not planning to link or add dependencies between tag/genres and ratings. But we are finding this scenario where someone could select &lt;code&gt;two contradictory tags/genres&lt;/code&gt; like &lt;code&gt;Children's&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Horror&lt;/code&gt; or maybe add a &lt;code&gt;tag/genre&lt;/code&gt; called &lt;code&gt;Erotica&lt;/code&gt; and then make the rating &lt;code&gt;K&lt;/code&gt;. We are thinking about programmatically handling this, but my fear is that there is just too many permutations and combinations that managing such linking can become very cumbersome and chaotic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you guys have any insights or suggestions on what can be done to make this a little more easy - both on the administrators of the site as well as the users?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any input is appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10008" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T06:50:29.640" Title="Managing genre and rating for a story" Tags="|genre|websites|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-07-07T15:23:17.327" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12343" CreationDate="2014-07-06T22:36:42.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The tenses &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; changing because there are two sets of past events and two sets of present events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the first paragraph the action described occurred in the past: the&#xA;anger was repressed, the youths flooded the streets, the Islamists&#xA;surged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second paragraph says &quot;Right now as you're sitting here reading&#xA;this, that description sounds like the news.&quot; So the present tense is&#xA;fine, because it is referring to the paragraph which you just read a&#xA;moment ago (which is basically now, the present).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The third paragraph's first sentence describes the past (the late&#xA;1980s) and the second sentence clearly refers to today, to an ongoing&#xA;situation happening right now in the present.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with that piece; the tenses are correct for what is being discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T22:36:42.193" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12344" CreationDate="2014-07-07T00:10:28.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think the current state of artificial intelligence is up to the task, so I do not believe you will be able to accomplish this programmatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though writers and critics throughout history have been fascinated with placing stories into categories, there still is no universally agreed upon taxonomy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm.  Originally folktales, considered by some to be stories for children, but if you read them, frequently they're horrific.  Quite a few, if written today, would not pass most parental advisory group's notions about stories appropriate for children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dove.org/family-friendly-movie-film-reviews/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Dove Foundation&lt;/a&gt;, a &quot;family friendly&quot; review group concerned mostly with film.  Contrast their rating system to something you may be more familiar with, the MPAA.  Right way or wrong way isn't the issue here; the issue is who decides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find all forms of censorship abhorrent.  I feel if the person is old enough to read and understand the material, they're old enough to read and understand the material.  Any attempt to &quot;shelter&quot; the individual is ultimately futile.  But that's just me.  Parents with children might not feel the same way and it's a fact writers need to deal with if they're going to publish traditionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to enlist your users.  Write standards and crowd source your ratings possibly with up and down votes on individual stories taxonomy/ratings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9990" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T00:10:28.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12334" CreationDate="2014-07-07T01:03:49.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I think about books which have truly surprised me with unexpected discoveries, they are usually books that avoid obvious genre tropes. When Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice, readers were probably surprised along with Elizabeth to discover that Mr. Darcy was actually a much better man than George Wickham (Jane Austen did prepare the ground for this by allowing Wickham to show that he was a bit inconsistent in ways that Elizabeth only noticed later). However, now that the boy-meets-girl-they-hate-each-other-oh-look-they-are-in-love trope has become so universal, readers will assume that the heroine is going to fall for the first apparently rude but handsome fellow with whom she exchanges witty banter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as one method of surprising readers, do something that goes against genre tropes. Maybe the handsome man who banters with the heroine turns out to be kind of a boring fellow upon further acquaintance. Maybe the plucky protagonist who enters the boxing tournament against all odds, in a desperate bid to clear his father's farm from debt, actually loses. If you build up the event in a fairly normal manner, readers may miss your clues because they expect a typical outcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T01:03:49.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12344" CreationDate="2014-07-07T09:04:27.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I manage a similar site. What we do is let the person, who submits a story, choose up to five genres or categories from a list of about thirty. This list was created by combining all lists of genres I could find on the net and merging rare subgenres into larger genres (e.g. splatterpunk goes into horror). Only popular subgenres are listed separately (e.g. slice-of-life). There is one field where they can propose a new genre. If there are enough proposals for a certain genre, I add it to the list. (This has not happened yet.) I do not check if the genres actually fit the story, after all it is just a categorization for readers to better find what they like to read, not science. If I wanted to be really serious, I'd not create a list of genres, but a list of literary motifs (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TV Tropes&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson_classification_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aarne-Tompson tale type index&lt;/a&gt;), but such accuracy is impractical and would only confuse users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-07-08T06:50:29.640" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T06:50:29.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12334" CreationDate="2014-07-07T13:20:52.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Dale's excellent answer, try ending a chapter or a scene break on a phrase or sentence which can be slightly misinterpreted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example I'm thinking of is from Anne McCaffrey's &lt;em&gt;Moreta&lt;/em&gt;. Briefly, people ride dragons, who have the ability to teleport in both time and space. When teleporting, the dragon is said to &quot;go &lt;em&gt;between&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; which is a place of blackness and cold, for three to five seconds. Too long, however, and the dragon is &quot;lost &lt;em&gt;between&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &amp;mdash; they never arrive at the destination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK'S END&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Near the end of &lt;em&gt;Moreta,&lt;/em&gt; one of the characters has been doing multiple time-hops (on the order of 15-minute increments) on an old dragon who isn't her bonded dragon. She's exhausted, the dragon is exhausted, and she gives the dragon the order to teleport without really clearly giving the dragon spatial and temporal coordinates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Moreta looked at the sun and wondered with a terrible lethargy what time it was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;Let's go, Orth.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;They went &lt;em&gt;between.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And scene break. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realized there was something... &lt;em&gt;off&lt;/em&gt; about that the first time I read it. I flipped forward several pages (cheating) to see if I was right, because something didn't sit right about that. And yes, it turns out that they go &lt;em&gt;between&lt;/em&gt; and don't come out again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase &quot;They went &lt;em&gt;between&lt;/em&gt;&quot; is used all over the place in the Dragonriders series, but not on an ominous, scene-ending note like that. That's how the reader is surprised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So take something innocuous like &quot;They went through the door&quot; or &quot;over the hill&quot; or whatever and set it up so that the reader doesn't realize until a moment later that it's much more than simply going through a door. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T13:20:52.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7122" CreationDate="2014-07-07T21:53:36.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bit late I know, but the best I can think of is to componentize the ad. What elements are present that you can utilize to build an idea? There's the 4x4. A train. A level crossing. A boom. Train tracks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The saying of stopping something in its tracks comes to mind. So how about: &quot;The new Blah 4x4. Stop them in their tracks&quot; or something alone those (railway) lines? This fits with the visuals but also projects an idea of respect or jealousy on the part of the onlooker. The boom becomes a cognitive metaphor for the train driver's desire for the 4x4 and suggests that other onlookers would do the same. And of course, because it's a big, hulking train that could actually crush a normal car, it must be the appearance of the car's toughness that did the actual stopping. And so on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer the question, there's nothing wrong with your headlines; they just don't associate well into the visual elements of the situation. But I think the image presented is something of a brain teaser so I hope you came right in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10059" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T21:53:36.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12352" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-07T22:49:17.067" Score="1" ViewCount="1055" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I had read one of Ernest Hemingway's books without knowing who the author was, I would not have been able to distinguish that the writing was exceptional, and, I daresay, Nobel prize winning!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also began reading an Alice Munro book (She won Nobel prize in 2013), and I have still yet to notice anything particularly spellbinding about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I supposed to notice something immediately when I read works from these great authors? Or do I have to read several of their books before I can begin to see what makes them so special?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify further, when I read Emerson, or even Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby, the writing style is so heavy and evident that it is obvious and easy to see what makes them great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But with Hemingway or Munro, their writing style is intentionally light and subtle, so you can't quite see it. So how do you know it's there? And how do you know it's effective? Meaning, at what point in reading The Sun Also Rises am I supposed to think to myself, this writing is so simple and neutral, that it has led me to better appreciate the story, or has created a more powerful experience for me? I just don't get that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edit&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess what I'm asking is, if I've written something myself, how do I know it is not Nobel prize worthy, since I cannot distinguish the quality of what I wrote from the quality of a famous author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10060" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T07:08:37.993" Title="How do I distinguish what makes a masterpiece?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-07-08T12:12:16.380" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12352" CreationDate="2014-07-08T09:06:20.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Let's turn this into a writing question and answer it accordingly:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nancy Kress, in &lt;em&gt;Beginnings, Middles, &amp;amp; Ends&lt;/em&gt;, identified &lt;strong&gt;talent&lt;/strong&gt; with vision. She says that you can learn the &lt;em&gt;craft&lt;/em&gt; of writing, but not the vision, because it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;comes from everything about you: your experiences, your imagination, your beliefs about the world, your powers of perception, your interests, your sophistication, your previous reading, your soul. Vision, sometimes called talent, is not a teachable attribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, according to Nancy Kress, you can learn how to write well, but you cannot learn how to find something interesting to write about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what does this, which pertains to the act of writing, have to do with the act of reading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very simple: Writing &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; reading. When you write a novel or short story or anything else, what enables you to write well? That you can tell if what you wrote is crap! You &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; your text, and you know if it is good or needs further rewriting. That is what makes a good writer. A bad writer cannot tell if his text is bad and where it went wrong. He cannot &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt;. He can only type words, and feels his text is finished when he arrives at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reader, you need the same writer's talent to tell if a text is good or, if not, what is wrong with it. Only someone who could potentially be a good writer has the talent and vision to discern good writing from bad. It cannot be taught. You have it, or you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hemingway, Munro, Emerson, and Joyce are not great authors because they write well. Opinions about that will differ. They are great because their writing contains a vision. And any good writer (or reader), although he or she might not enjoy the prose of &lt;em&gt;Ulysses&lt;/em&gt;, can recognize and appreaciate that vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you might object that different people (or cultures) have different standards or tastes and will not agree on what is a good book. Even master writers will disagree on what is masterful writing. That is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychological research into human-to-human attraction has long tried to find the common denominator for beauty by calculating the average beautiful face. But the truth is that the average beautiful face is just pleasant, not beautiful. It is, in truth, a bit boring. The individual beautiful face is always more beautiful to the person who likes such a face. It seems that individual taste just varies too much to distill a universal principle of human physical beauty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what almost everyone can agree on is what they find ugly. This is not good news for ugly people, but certain facial features are simply not found beautiful by anyone. There is widespread agreement across individuals about what constitutes ugliness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same goes for other aesthetic areas, for example writing. &lt;strong&gt;There is writing that is not masterful for anyone.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that reason, I would propose to turn this question around. Instead of asking about mastery – which readers and writers cannot agree on – we should ask about &lt;em&gt;lack of mastery&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How do I distinguish bad writing?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because that is what ails bad writers: they cannot tell what is wrong with their texts. It may be grammatically correct, even elegantly written, and yet readers are bored instead of inspired. And why is that? The answer remains the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That text lacks vision.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are texts that have vision but bore you because you do not share that vision. But there are no texts that excite anyone and do not have vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To not be bad (for everyone) but good (for some) your text needs vision.&lt;/strong&gt; And vision is talent, and talent cannot be learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T07:08:37.993" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6868" CreationDate="2014-07-09T06:26:57.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot create names with no connection to any existing human culture because... you're human. What I gather you're asking is more along the lines of: How do I select names that don't sound &lt;em&gt;too obviously&lt;/em&gt; connected to one specific language (or language group)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a basic level, anything you come up with is going to sound like something, or it's going to sound like crap. If you string together a few consonants and call it a day, there's always gonna be someone who thinks, &quot;Hey, that intergalactic warlord's name sounds a lot like the Azer word for 'sneeze'!&quot; That's fine. In fact, it's better than the alternative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of your readers. Are you thinking primarily (or exclusively) about speakers of your native language? Also, is that language English? This makes a big difference. Honestly, almost anything sounds alien to native English speakers. If you pick a language that's &quot;obscure&quot; to English speakers, most readers may accept it as alien. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to go with the stringing-together-consonants thing, try to form an idea of the kind of phonology they use. Readers notice implicitly if all Skarokii have names full of hard consonants and most Endaara have names with soft consonants and lots of vowels. If most of the male characters have personal names ending with an 'a', no reader is going to mistake them for NASA astronauts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T06:26:57.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12356" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12359" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:39:50.530" Score="2" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now I'm not sure whether this is something that's an accepted teaching with regards to structuring paragraphs, or just something that is commonly used...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm talking about paragraphs that are structured as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Quote,&quot; attribution, &quot;continuance&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see this throughout literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, can I break this norm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Quote,&quot; attribution, &quot;continuance,&quot; further explanation, &quot;completion of quote.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Dawn once told me about a problem she once had with her step-mother.&quot; &lt;strong&gt;Wendy cast a furtive glance at Dawn, to check that she allowed Wendy to continue,&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;The one where she found her step-mother...&quot; &lt;strong&gt;she reduced her volume considerably,&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;with someone who was not her father.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've emboldened the narrative away from the quotation to illustrate what I mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this acceptable?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Granted, this is a fairly trivial example, but the the principle of what I'm asking remains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T10:03:29.877" Title="Normal structure for Dialogue paragraphs" Tags="|structure|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12356" CreationDate="2014-07-09T21:08:41.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the prose in the middle is stage business, and there are only so many times you can interrupt with stage business. I think you have to punctuate the non-dialogue bits as sentences, not interrupters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“Dawn once told me about a problem she once had with her step-mother.&quot; Wendy cast a furtive glance at Dawn, to check that she was allowing Wendy to continue. &quot;The one where she found her step-mother...&quot; She reduced her volume considerably. &quot;...with someone who was not her father.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The continuing dialogue can have ellipses and dashes and whatnot to indicate that the speaker hasn't actually stopped speaking, but I'd be hard-pressed to think of an example where you can interrupt with prose more than once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA&lt;/strong&gt; @what actually gives a decent example, although I note in my comment that it only works if the entire piece is structured in the same loose way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T10:03:29.877" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T10:03:29.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6868" CreationDate="2014-07-09T21:40:21.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Constrained Randomness.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;One fun trick is to take a bunch of names from one or more cultures with lexically interesting names, then &lt;em&gt;generate random names&lt;/em&gt; that are different but lexically similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Gibberizer.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I created a free (and open source) tool to do generate such lexically similar names:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://code.google.com/p/gibberizer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Gibberizer&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;It's a little old, but it still works just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is this:&#xA;You give The Gibberizer a bunch of text (e.g. names),&#xA;and it gives you back a bunch of text that is lexically similar to the text you gave it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can fiddle with some of the input parameters,&#xA;such as &lt;em&gt;how similar&lt;/em&gt; its output should be to your input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Different but similar.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Because the generated names are lexically similar to the ones you entered,&#xA;they are more-or-less pronounceable,&#xA;and reasonably familiar-sounding.&#xA;Because they are random,&#xA;they can sometimes be weird.&#xA;You can adjust the weirdness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T21:40:21.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12356" CreationDate="2014-07-10T07:59:29.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can insert narrative into dialogue &lt;strong&gt;wherever a speaker might pause&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You,&quot; she finally looks at me, &quot;have been,&quot; her finger touches me on the chest, &quot;much too reckless with my heart.&quot; She pushes me away and stands. &quot;Go!&quot; She points at the door. &quot;And don't come back.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the speaker pauses will depend not on syntactic rules but on what makes sense in your story. For me even this feels fine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You,&quot; she finally looks at me, &quot;have been,&quot; her finger touches me on the chest, &quot;much too reckless,&quot; she leans close, &quot;with,&quot; kisses me, &quot;my heart.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interweaving the description and dialogue in this way makes sense because the behavior and the words flow in unison. You can imagine the speaker pausing for effect when her actions become increasingly contradictory to her words. Still, you might find a clear separation more sylistically elegant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She finally looks at me and touches me on the chest &quot;You have been much to reckless with my heart.&quot; She kisses me, then pushes me away and stands. &quot;Go!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is of course not the same chain of events, and you might prefer words and action in parallel. But you must not overuse such a &quot;special effect&quot;, because it soon becomes annoying to the reader, as any deviation from the usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T07:59:29.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12365" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12366" CreationDate="2014-07-11T18:45:14.740" Score="11" ViewCount="878" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay so I want to write a fiction where a character is learning something, for example a language, such as Japanese. I want to show the entire process of learning the language with all the details included, but I also don't want it to bore the reader. Is this possible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking of showing the thought processes of the character, for example the character going &quot;Ah!, So these are the vowels in the Japanese language.&quot; But I fear doing this repeatedly for everything might end up boring the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10082" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-10-02T02:06:03.587" LastActivityDate="2019-10-02T15:57:51.277" Title="How to show characters learning something in a non-boring way?" Tags="|fiction|characters|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12365" CreationDate="2014-07-11T19:34:00.767" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you as the writer find the process of X fascinating, you will be able to translate that to the page in a way which makes it fascinating for the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you enjoy math, you talk about the satisfying click of numbers as they slide into place, and how there is always a right and a wrong, unlike the slipperiness of philosophy. If you love languages, you show the character uncovering the parallels between French and Italian, and then Italian and Spanish, and suddenly making the leap to Portuguese. If you're into puzzles, you channel Sherlock Holmes. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest way to get this on paper for your first draft is to transcribe, in a sense, what it was like for you do process X. Never mind the character for the moment; just write down your experience as if you were writing a blog post or a diary entry or a letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the entire lesson/scene on the page, then you can start rewriting it for your character, and adding fictional flourishes and compressing time etc. to make it more readable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T19:34:00.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12365" CreationDate="2014-07-11T20:37:59.743" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each of these techniques will apply better to some topics than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make the learning process interesting.&lt;/strong&gt; A few years ago, when my wife and I were preparing to visit Ecuador, we learned a little bit of Spanish. Every day I would listen to the next 30-minute Pimsleur Spanish lesson. And that evening we would walk the dog together, trying to tell each other jokes using the eight or ten or twenty Spanish words we had learned. It was a lot of fun, and helped us learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make the learning experiential.&lt;/strong&gt; Not merely learning by rote, but by &lt;em&gt;interacting&lt;/em&gt; with the material in some way. I have attended scores of experiential workshops, and designed and delivered dozens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea with experiential learning is to arrange for much of the learning as possible to come from the learner, rather than the “teacher.” Learning activities are designed to introduce a certain small amount of frustration, and the “teacher” helps the learners to make sense of what happened. The learning comes (mostly) from from the learners. Then the next activity applies what has already been learned, and introduces a new twist that leads to the next learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What’s fascinating to me is how “sticky” the learning is from experiential workshops. &lt;strong&gt;You not only learn something new, but you also remember the story of how you learned each thing.&lt;/strong&gt; The stories are rich and interesting, and make the learning unforgettable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experiential learning is tricky for topics such as languages, where the body of knowledge is well-defined in great detail. But there are ways to make even that more experiential. Take a look at these videos, using techniques designed by Evan Gardner and Willem Larsen for their work to preserve dying languages: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whereareyourkeys.org&quot;&gt;http://www.whereareyourkeys.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Precociousness.&lt;/strong&gt; The learner becomes a little cocky, and tries to do something beyond their skill. Perhaps &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; beyond their skill. Hilarity (or disaster) ensues. They have more to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once used precociousness to my advantage. I had learned to count only to 12 in Spanish. We travelled to Ecuador, and visited a market in the Andes. As I was haggling with the vendors, any time they said a number higher than twelve, I didn’t know what the number was. So I shook my head and frowned. When they finally said a number I recognized, then I’d start haggling further, offering prices of my own. (It is possible that nothing I bought for $12 was worth more than $3. But I also have this fun story, and that’s worth $9.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Embed or interweave&lt;/strong&gt; the learning in some other interesting activity. Maybe the characters argue about something while they learn. Or they're flirting as they, uh, drill each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sample the learner's progress.&lt;/strong&gt; Show the learner learning something basic. Then something intermediate. Then something advanced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conflict (or contest).&lt;/strong&gt; Make the learning a central feature of some conflict. The hero wants the girl. She needs tutoring. She asks the hero’s handsome arch-rival to tutor her. Or the hero confronts the teacher, or bests the teacher in some (explicit or subtle) contest. Or the students compete for the teacher’s respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Karate Kid&lt;/em&gt; makes the learning process interesting, and creates conflict. (Why the heck am I learning wax on wax off?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Patrick Rothfuss's &lt;em&gt;The Name of the Wind&lt;/em&gt; includes numerous battles between Kvoth and his teachers. And also a disastrous example of precociousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dead Poet's Society&lt;/em&gt; embeds the learning in a larger story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T20:37:59.743" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12365" CreationDate="2014-07-11T20:43:05.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your fears are correct: &quot;all the details included&quot; is a terrible way to write fiction.  If all the details were included it wouldn't be fiction, it would be a textbook--and we all know how much fun those are to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The power of fiction lies in the reader's imagination--what you want is enough detail to &lt;em&gt;prompt&lt;/em&gt; their imagination, while still giving it some room to work with.  In your case, what this means is that you should provide the reader with only the most interesting or surprising details, then let them fill in the rest.  Your readers can probably guess that Japanese has vowels--that is not a very interesting detail.  However, it might surprise them to learn that written Japanese is a mix of letters (representing sounds) and pictograms (representing concepts).  That is the kind of detail that might be good to include, especially if it has some other relevance to the plot (see Dale Emery's answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easiest to separate the interesting details from the boring ones when you yourself have some familiarity with the subject, so you might want to go do some research on the Japanese language first, then take the details that surprised/delighted/intrigued you and put them into your story as your character's thoughts and observations (see Lauren Ipsum's answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: For the advanced techniques, &lt;a href=&quot;https://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/writing/real-learning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;go read this essay.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10083" LastEditorUserId="10083" LastEditDate="2019-10-02T15:57:51.277" LastActivityDate="2019-10-02T15:57:51.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12369" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12374" CreationDate="2014-07-12T02:56:33.577" Score="7" ViewCount="1103" Body="&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mary sat in front of the computer and fired up Google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mary sat in front of the computer and fired up the search engine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jack started up his old car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jack started up his old Subaru.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob nodded and took a sip of his Budweiser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob nodded and took a sip of his beer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the pro and cons of using real life brand/company names? Which option do you use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T19:08:22.083" Title="Pros and cons of using real brand/company names?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12370" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-12T03:41:24.210" Score="9" ViewCount="10487" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing you should know: I'm writing the first book in a trilogy and I'm at that beautiful moment where I'm ending it. I know exactly how I want to end it BUT there's one problem. I've been reading a lot of comments where people say they absolutely hate cliffhangers. They say that it's only a ploy that authors use to get you to buy the next novel. My book ends on a cliffhanger and honestly, there's no other way I feel I can end it. &#xA;Is it really that bad to end your novel with a cliffhanger? Am I a bad author if I do end it with a cliffhanger?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10086" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T02:52:56.937" Title="Is it okay to end a novel with a cliffhanger?" Tags="|fiction|novel|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12320" CreationDate="2014-07-12T03:46:21.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's much easier to do in French than English, but it's possible. There is no &quot;method&quot; for doing so, though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, you can do this with almost any part of speech. Language is weird. For example, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is a grammatically correct sentence in English--but really, who the fu*k would ever want to write such a sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8384" LastEditorUserId="8384" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T20:15:14.013" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T20:15:14.013" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12277" CreationDate="2014-07-12T03:50:35.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The real-world answer is &quot;it depends&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are too many variations on book imprints to answer your question correctly. It depends on the book, the size, the publisher, the production run, the market, the outlet, the edition, and a half-dozen other less-important things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, in general, &quot;mass market&quot; refers to paperbacks, not hardcovers. The &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; difference in a mass market book, quality-wise, is paper quality. Mass market books often (but not &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt;) use a slightly lower quality paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8384" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T03:50:35.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12370" CreationDate="2014-07-12T11:29:44.330" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write it the way you feel it should be written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would then finish the entire trilogy before finding an agent and shopping it to publishers or publishing it yourself. That way you can either promise your self-pub readers that the next two books are coming, or let your agent pitch that it's a finished trilogy. (I can't see a publisher taking on something so obviously ending in a cliffhanger if the other two books aren't completed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember at least one book in David Eddings's Belgariad series ending on an absolute cliffhanger, so it's not like it can't ever be done. But the Belgariad was sold as a trilogy and re-broken into five books, so the publisher bought the entire series at a shot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T11:29:44.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12369" CreationDate="2014-07-12T11:31:27.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that unless the brand name plays a critical part in your story, don't use it. You don't want to risk the wrath of corporate lawyers unless you absolutely must. Why build your entire story around &quot;do you eat the cookie part of the Oreo or the cream?&quot; and then have Nabisco refuse to give you permission, so you have to rewrite it as &quot;chocolate wafer sandwich cookie&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T14:09:12.323" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T14:09:12.323" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12369" CreationDate="2014-07-13T04:12:19.023" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main con is fear of corporate lawyers if they think you're portraying them negatively.  I am not a lawyer (nor a writer or publisher of fiction), but my impression as a reader is that minor mentions don't provoke their wrath but if your plot hinges on, say, a horribly-malfunctioning vehicle, you might not want to name a brand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main pro, on the other hand, is adding detail.  &amp;quot;She fired up the search engine&amp;quot; is bland.  People don't talk like that.  (People don't talk like that &lt;em&gt;so much&lt;/em&gt; that companies like Xerox and Kleenex have had to vigorously defend their trademarks to avoid losing them to common usage.)  Using a name is &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; way to add detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it's not the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; way to add detail and it might not be the best way.  Consider the following examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joe got a cola from the vending machine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joe got a Coke from the vending machine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joe took the can from the vending machine, opened it, and took a long drink.  Ah, he thought, just what I needed -- cold caffeinated carbonation.  This should help me stay awake in my next class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example it doesn't really matter if it's Coke or Pepsi or something else.  The brand isn't important to the story; you were only reaching for &amp;quot;Coke&amp;quot; because most people don't talk about drinking &amp;quot;a cola&amp;quot;.  But you can show what's important about his drink without actually saying the brand; you get the richer detail and nobody who owns a trademark has grounds for complaint.  (Though in this case it seems unlikely that Coca-Cola Inc would object.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, the last option is longer.  This won't always work.  And once you've introduced it, you can be terse in future references.  In your example it might be just fine for Bob to drink &amp;quot;a beer&amp;quot; if you've already placed him in the bar.  There isn't one approach that's always best; context matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T04:12:19.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-13T14:12:23.660" Score="2" ViewCount="2148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I start my master's thesis the coming fall, and I have started planning how to structure and set up the document (in LaTeX). My thesis is in essence one large laboratory experiment (as analytical chemistry theses often are), and I will most likely structure the thesis in the traditional IMRAD[C] style (Introduction - Methods - Results &amp;amp; Discussion [- Conclusion]).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thesis will likely be around 60-100 pages, with separate main headings as defined by the IMRAD structure. But, should I divide these headings as separate open-right chapters, or should &quot;2. Methods&quot; just follow &quot;1. Introduction&quot;, without starting on a separate page? What follows are some arguments for both alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main headings are all interconnected, yet stand on their own, somehow. The preliminary pages all start on their own separate page, and so I thought about carrying that style over to the main matter. Separate chapters give the readers breaks at logical points in very long document, and clearly state to the reader that a new part of the thesis starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, laboratory reports are all written with sections following each other, with no page breaks, and published articles are divided into sections. These documents are not nearly as long as a thesis, though, and chapters here would just make the document very chopped up. Almost all master's thesis from the university are divided into sections, but no formal style guide exists; I am pretty much free to do as I please.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally think that separate chapters would benefit the readers more than sections, since the document is so long. Chapters also make nested numbering of tables and figures more logical, in my opinion. I lean towards the chapter style, but I wanted to get input from others who have already been through this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate all opinions on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10096" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T04:31:52.850" Title="Master's Thesis Structure: Separate-Page Chapters or Same-Page Sections?" Tags="|structure|academic-writing|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12380" CreationDate="2014-07-14T00:46:07.760" Score="-1" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;What The Perfect Rules Or Perfect Template To Write A fantasy story..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what I most Reading?&#xA;  From Where I start The story?&#xA;  What I need Before writing fantasy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10028" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T10:32:21.837" Title="Rules Of Fantasy Story?" Tags="|style|fantasy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-07-14T15:03:36.773" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12379" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12390" CreationDate="2014-07-14T05:48:28.410" Score="6" ViewCount="709" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short film that has the vast majority scenes set in a pub, with the main male character about to approach a woman, and he imagines/projects some of the possibilities of this - it goes nowhere, leads to sex, leads to long term relationship, leads to his murder (Basic Instinct style), leads to his imprisonment through weird chain of events, gets slapped for attempting a threesome, she's the mother of his children, etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically someone with a vast imagination but using this to show the beauty of standing before a nexus in life that can branch off in limitless directions - which is the theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the screenplay is a large collection of very short scenes, that are happening at different times.&#xA;Some of these are past, in that he's implied it's happened before and could happen again.&#xA;The story starts and ends in the present, and we come back to it a few times to keep it grounded and at times for comedic effect.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The rest of the scenes are either future or imagined - same thing really, as he's imagining the future, but I believe a slugline is typically written as &amp;quot;later&amp;quot; in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I had a lot of sluglines that begin :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Int. bar,  night&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I started writing slugs like :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Int. bar,  night (original scene)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Int. bar,  night (later)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Int. bar,  night (another time)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the reader can follow it a little easier, but i'm not sure if this is correct.&#xA;Also i'm unsure for imagined scenes (things that have never actually happened - he's just projecting to the possibilities) if I should label them numerically :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Int. bar,  night (Fantasy 1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So i guess the general question comes down to :&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Is there an standard way to write slugs to differentiate scenes set in the same location that are in the future, past, present, and imagined?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T19:17:04.687" Title="Sluglines for same location but different periods, real and imagined" Tags="|formatting|screenwriting|scriptwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12378" CreationDate="2014-07-14T10:32:21.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The perfect template to write fantasy is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use a medieval world&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;add magic, dragons, faeries and/or other supernatural elements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have a hero complete a quest&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;add some romance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T10:32:21.837" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12365" CreationDate="2014-07-14T15:34:55.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;with all the details included&quot; If you mean that literally, then your book will be teaching the reader Japanese. Which probably won't make for an interesting novel. If you can really merge together teaching the reader a new language with an entertaining story, that would be a great achievement, and your book could become very popular with educators. But wow, that sounds difficult. I'm a software developer by profession. I can't imagine writing a book that would include all the details of how to program in Java and also be an interesting story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if there are some things about the Japanese language that you think are particularly interesting and that you want to work into a novel, that's a different thing. I don't know anything about Japanese, but I can easily think of many ways that some detail about a language could be made relevant to a story. A story could have an important plot point where a difficulty in translating created misunderstandings. A character might realize something important about his friend from this society or about the culture in general from some characteristic of the language. (I'm suddenly reminded of a TV show I saw years ago where a character talks about the tropical paradise that he plans to retire to, and he says, &quot;The natives there have no word for 'work', but they have a hundred different words for 'cocktail umbrella'.&quot;) Some subtlety in grammar could turn out to be an important clue in solving the mystery. (In the Bible, in Matthew 21:31-32, Jesus makes a theological argument based entirely on the tense of a verb used in a scripture quote, that makes sense in English but is more pointed in Hebrew.) Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be possible to write a story where the learning process itself is made interesting? Maybe. I think it would be hard. You could certainly have a scene where a character who has been struggling to learn some difficult subject suddenly gets a burst of understanding, and has a &quot;eureka&quot; moment. Plenty of stories have been written where the struggling student suddenly has a breakthrough and demonstrates that he can now beat the master in a sword fight or chess game or whatever. But could you do that over and over again as he meets each new challenge? I think it would get tedious. I'm not saying it can't be done, and more power to you if you can pull it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T15:34:55.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12382" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12389" CreationDate="2014-07-14T18:00:57.157" Score="10" ViewCount="1740" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I had asked in another part of Stackexchange (didn't know about this part until some comments there) I'm writing manuals (mostly for computer games, but in addition to this also for tabletop games, pen and paper rpg games) and sourcebooks (world books for tabletop games).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I've run into a few troubles there with MS Word, as the text grew fast very cumbersome to organize (I lost oversight quite fast and had to search for parts of the text quite long time and again) and in addition to that I couldn't position text as I needed and also including pictures (screenshots and graphics) was more cumbersome than I would have liked (also using pictures as backgrounds for some of the pages was cumbersome).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: Are there any good tools out there where I can create such manuals and sourcebooks with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a note here: I'll have to print out those manuals/sourcebooks but also want to put them into PDFs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;As it was asked in a comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pictures are very present. Part as charts, part as pieces of art to lighten up the book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some pics are taking up a whole page, others take up only part of a page and are in between a section and its text, and others again are background images above which text is printed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are up to 8 different types of texts (titles,...) At some locations the text must be even displayed so that &quot;2 columns&quot; are on the page while on most it's 1 column per page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10102" LastEditorUserId="10460" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T12:31:38.017" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T12:39:06.910" Title="Good tools for writing (game) manuals and sourcebooks" Tags="|technical-writing|tools|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12382" CreationDate="2014-07-14T19:08:56.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a job for &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener!&lt;/a&gt; :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is an incredibly flexible writing program. It allows you to sort your thoughts into multiple documents within a project, see two documents at once, create hyperlinks, drop in photos and audio files, and then export as Word or print to PDF. You can view your documents as notecards on a corkboard with tags and summaries so you can rearrange things easily. You can create &quot;folders&quot; for your documents and view them like a file tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you search the site for Scrivener and check the &lt;code&gt;scrivener&lt;/code&gt; tag, you'll find more comments here from other users detailing the program's usefulness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other recommendation I could make would be InDesign if the layout is very important, but that's only for the design part, not the organizing and writing part. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T19:08:56.577" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12384" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12392" CreationDate="2014-07-15T03:30:39.213" Score="2" ViewCount="1503" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am editing a novel manuscript for a client of mine. It's a historical fiction set in 1948, so not that long ago. The main character lives in a house above a cafe that I believe is fictional within the real city the novel is set in. At one point, the address of the cafe is mentioned. Currently, the full address is not given, just the street it is on and some dashes in place of a house number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ethical to give a house address in a fictional novel that corresponds to a real-world place? Would the owners of that house be annoyed? Would it be better to come up with a non-existent house number along the desired street? (If so, would that be hard?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client is considering self-publishing, so there is no publishing house editor I should ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10099" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-11-24T18:15:20.180" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T18:15:20.180" Title="What are the ethics of using real-world house addresses in historical fiction?" Tags="|fiction|non-fiction|setting|ethics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12384" CreationDate="2014-07-15T03:42:41.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a case like this I would recommend looking up town records and using an old residential address that has since been demolished. This might take a bit of work, but gives the accuracy that your client seems to be looking for. Otherwise, look up some addresses and pick a number in between. Only locals would know the problem, and it would be a Platform 9 3/4 problem to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10107" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T03:42:41.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12376" CreationDate="2014-07-15T04:31:52.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A disproportionate researchers fail to write the thesis. The number is so large that there is an acronym for it ABD - All But Dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general projects (PhD can be thought of as project) fail when there is a large untested block of work to be done at the very end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To succeed in a project that large block must be broken into small chunks that can be accomplished in between the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if instead of writing your dissertation at the very end of your PhD, chapters of the PhD get written earlier and the last 3 to 6 months of the dissertation are spent in re-editing the chapters already written so that they become a coherent whole, you will get past the ABD problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapters written in open on right hand page will be quickly assembled into the final PhD document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take care that the numbering scheme for Tables and figures etc is robust (automated 'seq' fields in Word) and you do not need to renumber anything when it is assembled into the whole document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10108" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T04:31:52.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12382" CreationDate="2014-07-15T08:31:37.353" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Lauren loves Scrivener I love LaTeX! It lets you code your books, build reusable modules and makes laying out text a breeze.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.writelatex.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writelatex.com&lt;/a&gt; is an amazing free site that lets you work with LaTeX online, work collaboratively and save your documents as Zips or PDFs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use it to write the rulebooks for our tabletop games and RPG systems; we have a template set up with modules that you can elect to include (box contents, aim, setup, etc...) and a default style. Using a style sheet much like CSS we can comment in or out different styles as required, so that we can keep a uniform structure but theme the document on the game in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also use LaTeX for my writing, using a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.writelatex.com/templates/fiction-template/mmkvyycphbbc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;template&lt;/a&gt; to split sections into separate modules with a defined plot guide and a handy &quot;things to look for&quot; checklist at the top of each module. I've found splitting the story out into manageable chunks makes it easier to write and stops me from ending up in plot-falls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall I find LaTeX to be not only useful for it's flexability but also for the way that having pre-built, modular documents makes writing a new rulebook a matter of simply changing some options and adding some text. The time it saves us, and the consistency it gives us, is well worth the effort of getting your head round it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T08:20:55.973" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T08:20:55.973" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12379" CreationDate="2014-07-15T10:19:17.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not know if there is a &lt;em&gt;standard&lt;/em&gt; way, but I would write it in whatever way makes it crystal clear when the events are taking place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd create distinct sluglines for each alternate universe and use them strictly and consistently. Because this is a screenplay (meant to be used as a working document to create a film, correct?) and not a novel or even a play, I wouldn't worry about &quot;spoiling&quot; the reader by revealing the ending with the sluglines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you might use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reality Present&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fantasy 1 Dead End&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fantasy 2 Murder&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fantasy 3 Threesome&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fantasy 4 Prison&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fantasy 5 How I Met Your Mother&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fantasy 6 Reality Last March&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used &quot;Fantasy 4 Reality Last March&quot; as an example of describing &quot;action which the protagonist is imagining, but genuinely happened in the past.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For timestamps, if &quot;(later)&quot; is clear enough for you, use that. I would prefer &quot;(9:15 p.m.)&quot; or similar so there's absolutely &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; doubt when events are occurring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If at any point you intend this to be a written work rather than a performed one, then just number them Fantasy 1, 2, 3 etc. so that you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; spoil the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T10:19:17.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12384" CreationDate="2014-07-15T10:22:38.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use a fictional house number. You don't want to end up with the 221B Baker Street problem &amp;mdash; so many people over the years thought Sherlock Holmes was real and tried to reach him that the genuine flat is now a Sherlock Holmes museum; nobody can live there. (The BBC had to film their series &lt;em&gt;Sherlock&lt;/em&gt; on another street, because the actual Baker Street is covered in Holmes imagery.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T10:22:38.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12384" CreationDate="2014-07-15T13:57:36.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In historical fiction use real address for real historical events. If a real historical figure lived in a house that is there to this day, use it. If some real place was a famous hangout of some society, use it. If you know of historical events that took at a specific location, have them re-enacted there in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say, you write a story about the artistic society of Young Poland, in Cracow. Even if your artist is purely fictional, it would be entirely shameful if he didn't hang out at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamamichalika.pl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jama Michalika&lt;/a&gt;. That's where all the artists stayed, in particular encouraged by the owner accepting the tab being paid with sketches, drawings, paintings and murals (depending on size of the tab, as you can guess some were quite sizable...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things like these really add immense amount of flavor for historical fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't hesitate either, if that's a public building - a school, a church, a museum, an embassy. These are a fair game and feel free to put your action in there. Even if that was a private house back in the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you need a generic location at a private house, and you need to give the address - best if you pick one that did exist back then but doesn't, anymore. Razed, entirely rebuilt, even just numbering changed. A place where fans can come and say &quot;And here stood the house of...&quot;&#xA;If you have trouble finding such a location, then make up one. Tack a number or two at the end of a street. Make it at crossing of two streets that don't cross. Place it between two buildings that are adjacent to each other.&#xA;And if you don't need to give an address, give a real description of the building without pointing its exact location. It's another bit of flavor, &quot;the house with a relief of two cherubs above the gate&quot;, it's a very nice touch and you're still safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's one more approach. Pick a historical figure and &quot;hijack&quot; their history, while keeping locations true to that person's history. Say, you write a steampunk novel, with a genius scientist developing distillation of crude oil into volatile fuels? Why, make &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacy_%C5%81ukasiewicz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;him&lt;/a&gt; work at a pharmacy in the building of the city hall of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.pl/maps/@49.657828,21.157539,3a,42.9y,178.83h,94.06t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sJJwTCwjE6-wwiB2iA9ltoA!2e0!6m1!1e1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gorlice.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T13:57:36.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12370" CreationDate="2014-07-15T15:24:11.310" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless readers know they've picked up a trilogy or a book in a story arc, most will find a cliffhanger ending unsatisfying and wonder why the author didn't finish the story. As most television show episodes, motion pictures, novels and short stories have a clear beginning-middle-end, readers have become accustomed to tales that follow such a plot line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wish to open the way for a sequel, consider structuring your novel so it completes one story that is part of a larger tale. For example, a trilogy might be about an unlikely band of characters going on a quest. To complete the first part of the journey, they must overcome some major obstacle that cements them together as a team. This leaves an opening for them to pick up their quest in progress in the next novel, which has them overcome a specific goal necessary for them to continue their journey (Perhaps to reach a specific spot they must solve some large puzzle). The third novel would follow this pattern by following another specific adventure in the quest. Indeed, most of the original King Arthur stories about the quest for the Holy Grail were written using this structure – as self-contained stories that each bring the characters a little closer to achieving their overall goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possibility for including the cliffhanger in a novel is to add as an epilogue. Once the segment of the heroes’ adventure has been completed in the novel’s chapters, the epilogue is an extra that doesn’t feel tacked on but opens the ways for a sequel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get a novel with a cliffhanger to not end that way, you’ll likely need to add the solution to the cliffhanger in one last chapter. That may require editing some sections out of the story to prevent it from being too long. In a worst-case scenario, you may need to revisit the story’s plot and revise it so it contains a self-contained story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rob Bignell&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6226" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T15:24:11.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12370" CreationDate="2014-07-15T18:22:30.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;More than likely you will alienate whatever readers did pick up your book.&#xA;They PAID to buy your story, and you did not provide them with a complete story.&#xA;A Series does not mean each story segment is left unfinished.&#xA;If it is made clear up front your Trilogy is an ongoing SERIAL which requires all three books to reach the conclusion, you might get by with it.&#xA;But you don't find booksellers offering SERIAL as an option for categorizing the books they sell.&#xA;Another option is to only sell your story as a three book SET.  Do not allow individual sales of each book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a very long series spanning 175 years.  In each book I cover the major events that take place within the time frame established for that book.  Readers will know the story doesn't end.  But they won't be left wondering what happened.  Each book can stand-alone, but is not written in episodic fashion either.  EG:  One book may lead through teens to early adult and end before marriage, or at graduation.  The next book may start with the wedding and carry the story through married life and up until the kids begin leaving the nest.  But the reader will not be cheated on finding out what happened during the specified time frame.  Perhaps a mild hook, did he marry his college sweetheart?&#xA;The only way to find out is to buy the next book, but no topics started in the book are left unanswered, unless impossible to answer them until the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VTY&#xA;Dutch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9868" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T18:22:30.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12395" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12396" CreationDate="2014-07-15T21:34:03.707" Score="1" ViewCount="537" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been wondering a lot recently about a method of writing which I haven't read about anywhere but seems like it must exist. It would fall somewhere in the &quot;plotting&quot; style of writing, where you would plan out the story before you start. The main key being that you come up with the story separate to the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, I think, would let you start, knowing what your story is ultimately going to be about, and then write a plot that is woven around that rather than writing your plot first. This would let you freely create mystery, suspense, and twists in your plot while avoiding cliches that you will inevitably run to if you are trying to create the work &quot;plot first&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here are some movie/book stories that I have summarized (spoilers?):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;a game of thrones&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;the stark family is reluctantly pulled into royal politics and forced down a path of war when ned is killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;fight club&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;a schizophrenic insomniac starts a bare knuckle fight club for stress relief which turns into a dangerous underground anarchist movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;edge of tomorrow&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;in a war against attacking aliens, a reluctant hero stumbles upon the power to restart the day after he dies and uses it to defeat the aliens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you started at that point and &lt;strong&gt;then&lt;/strong&gt; came up with the plot scene by scene, it seems easier than coming up with the cool plot elements and then trying to think of somewhere to go with them or how to explain them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, this is kind of a rambling post but I was just wondering if this is actually a style of plot creation and if it is, where can I read more about it? I haven't been able to find anything. If it's not, do you think it could be or is there something wrong with the approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10116" LastEditorUserId="10116" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T22:52:22.243" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T23:21:38.010" Title="Story first approach in plot outlining" Tags="|fiction|novel|structure|plot|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12395" CreationDate="2014-07-15T23:21:38.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen some books that talk about a related idea. Stanley D. Williams's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1932907130&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Moral Premise&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; focuses more heavily on what life lesson the story illustrates. Williams doesn't necessarily encourage &lt;em&gt;starting&lt;/em&gt; with the moral premise in mind. That can lead to a pitfall that I'll say more about below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sandra Scofield has a very nice, short audio workshop about &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.audible.com/pd/Self-Development/Writing-from-Premise-Audiobook/B002UUKJRW/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1405465549&amp;amp;sr=1-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing from Premise&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt; This is not the same as Williams's moral premise. It's about what you are trying to say with the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your approach less about the premise (the point you are trying to make with the story), and more like a one-line description focused on the core challenge or conflict. Some people call that the &quot;spine&quot; or the &quot;through line.&quot; See for example Robert McKee's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060391685&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Story&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Others refer to &quot;the dramatic question,&quot; which is a related idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Randy Ingermanson developed an approach he calls &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the snowflake method&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; You start with a one-liner (perhaps similar to your approach), then incrementally expand it into a plot. Lots of people like that approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never written a story starting from the spine/through-line/premise. My preference these days is to start with &lt;em&gt;as little as I possibly can,&lt;/em&gt; and see where it goes. I don't know whether that makes my stories any better, and it frequently leads me into dead ends that I can't write my way out of, but it gets me writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One pitfall I've heard when writing from premise is that the story may feel forced, rather than organically arising from the characters. Depending on how strongly the premise includes a moral element, the story can come out sounding less like a story and more like a lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers avoid the pitfall by writing the first draft without having a theme strongly in mind. When they're done, they &lt;em&gt;discover&lt;/em&gt; the theme in their draft. Then while they revise, they consciously edit to support the theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line:&#xA;I think that anything that helps you put words on the page is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T23:21:38.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12397" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-16T03:57:17.673" Score="5" ViewCount="2366" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the book I am working on will be published in two different countries, it has two ISBN. The tricky question here is this: must both the ISBN barcode be placed onto the back cover of the book? One of the ISBN is from U.S and seems like it is a must to have a barcode on the cover. But having two barcodes is just a little confusing. Please give some advice. Thanks! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10119" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T22:47:26.870" Title="How to deal with two ISBN from two different countries?" Tags="|publishing|editing|isbn|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12370" CreationDate="2014-07-16T10:20:16.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The whole trilogy fad started with the &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; being published in three volumes instead of one as its author intended, because of post war paper shortage and to keep down the price (of one single &amp;quot;book&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A trilogy in this original sense is one book that is so long that publishing it in one volume is impractical. Its story runs smoothly through all three volumes, as if the text was undivided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only recently have trilogies been planned as marketing strategy: write one great book that ends in mid story so readers are left hooked. Then publish two mediocre volumes that consist mostly of boring filler and a weak or irritating end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the marketing practice today it follows that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;trilogies &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; end with a cliffhanger!&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise the bad reviews of the second and third volume will keep your readers from buying them. Only the cliffhanger forces them to pay for that s**t despite their better judgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or in other words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any literary work should be composed as a whole.&lt;/strong&gt; If you plan to write a trilogy, think of the story arch as stretching from the fist page until page 10.000. Consequently the arc of suspence should increase over all three volumes, and the climax and the resolution of the great mystery should happen close to the end of the last volume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think in the three act structure or the hero's journey or Schneyders beats or whatever, they must be spread across the three volumes equally. Do not use up all your ideas and plot twists in the first volume. Instead, make the second volume &lt;strong&gt;more intense&lt;/strong&gt; than the fist, and the third volume a veritable emotional bomb. The first volume is the first act. It ends with the point of no return, not with the final battle between hero and antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write your first volume as both first part of a trilogy &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; a standalone novel, the second and third volumes will disappoint. Only if you allow your first book to set the stage and the other two books to finish it, will the whole trilogy succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course, the point of no return, or &amp;quot;door&amp;quot;, &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a cliffhanger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T10:31:17.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12399" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-16T12:36:52.823" Score="6" ViewCount="1002" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been said that you should avoid similar sounding character names. One recommendation is to let character names begin with different letters of the alphabet, and not having them rhyme or alliterate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about similar charater versus object names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in a science fiction novel a person could be named &lt;strong&gt;Anton Hilfinger&lt;/strong&gt; and a planet &lt;strong&gt;Helmin&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would that cause confusion? Even is the character was refered to his first name almost exclusively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Or would you not confuse the names, but subliminally perceive some relation between them?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T17:46:15.137" Title="Does it confuse readers if a character name is similar to the name of an object?" Tags="|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12399" CreationDate="2014-07-16T13:15:02.057" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't stress about it. There are only so many consonants in the English language. The similarity would have to be pretty big before anyone noticed it. In the specific case you give, I don't think it is. Sure, they both start with the same letter, but other than that they have almost nothing in common. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the number of characters, locations and items in your story. They all need names. There is a limit to how many unique combinations of syllables you can imagine, and that limit goes down when you remove the tongue-tying ones and all the dirty words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had, for example, a character named Aster and a planet named Astarte, I'd understand the concern. I could easily imagine a reader confusing them, especially in the early parts of the story. That's because the shared portion is quite large incomparison with the differentiating portion. Aster and Astrophel would be more easily distinguished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T13:15:02.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="281" CreationDate="2014-07-16T15:48:30.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rhymedesk.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.rhymedesk.com&lt;/a&gt; is quite good. It has more extensive list of near rhymes than on other sites. Also you can conveniently write your texts and search for words on the same page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10129" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T15:48:30.510" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-07-16T15:48:30.510" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12399" CreationDate="2014-07-16T19:45:19.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the Topic rather than the comment following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several character names that are the same as an object.&#xA;Richard Castle&#xA;Jessica Steele&#xA;Robert Stone&#xA;Henry Block&#xA;Jason Sand, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Names sounding like their origin.&#xA;Mork from Ork.&#xA;Elmer of Selmer&#xA;Bluto from Pluto, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would stay away from many names to avoid confusion.&#xA;That being said, many characters have nicknames, and to compound the issue even further, some character have different nicknames depending upon who they are communicating with.&#xA;In one of my novels Martin Thomas Hurston refers to his boss John Homer Blaine simply as J.B., while other employee's refer to him as Mr. Blaine, and his close friends just call him John.  Only one person in the story knows the H. in Mr. Blaine's name stands for Homer, and only used once in the story.&#xA;Ella Thornton is also known as Rose Thorn, and a few other names she was known as is mentioned also then quickly brushed aside not to be used again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hard part is trying to fit a name to a character that rings right with the story being told.  I often change a characters name as I get further along in the first rough draft, because something else comes along that just fits the character better.  Then too, sometimes I switch back to the original name I started with, adding a modification or slight change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you stumble on a name when reading your story out loud to yourself, then obviously that name is not a good fit.  I also listen when others read my story back to me orally and listen for areas where they get tripped up, and then try to fix it.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I have one word in a current WIP that everyone gets tripped up on when trying to say it out loud.  deacidification&#xA;Unfortunately, there is no synonym for this word, and it is the name of the process used to prepare pulp paper historic documents for long-term storage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck selecting your names, I know it's not easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VTY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dutch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9868" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T19:45:19.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12399" CreationDate="2014-07-16T21:29:44.710" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of everything in the story in terms of &amp;quot;actors&amp;quot;. Do they appear near enough to be confusable? Do they appear in contexts where one can be confused with the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case it's rather distant. Sure, there are contexts where they can be problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're going to hitch a ride to Hilfinger&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're going to hitch a ride to Helmin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's one example. I bet it would be a rather rare one to occur in the story, so don't sweat it, but such things &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; confuse the reader if you don't make them clear from the context. It's not much of a problem, don't worry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you write a story about a team of soldiers, the sniper calling his gun Culler, and the heavy weapons guy named Culley, you're asking for trouble. Why the hell is the sniper carrying the heavy weapons guy on his back? Wait. Did the sniper gun just speak?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T21:29:44.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12370" CreationDate="2014-07-16T21:49:19.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of most important aspects of a good story - I'd say about the most important of all - is the &lt;strong&gt;aftertaste&lt;/strong&gt;. It's the feeling left after finishing the story. Satisfying or disturbing, puzzling, leaving us thoughtful - that's all achieved by closures, by finishing various threads in various ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some stories are &lt;em&gt;open-ended&lt;/em&gt;. It could be said they end where another story could begin, but they end in such a way that the reader can create that story in his/her head, keep the story going on past the end of the written text. The text left enough clues, enough threads firmly heading in a certain direction, that the next few unwritten pages are simply obvious to the reader - and then the story spins off in wild tangents in their imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can say some of very best stories are open-ended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are stories with a cliffhanger. Ones that cut off right at a point where the next seconds are a total mystery to the reader, and force them to wait, seek a sequel, but primarily get very frustrated at the terrible interruption. Cliffhangers are &lt;em&gt;cheap&lt;/em&gt;. They are annoying and leave a bad aftertaste which the reader might hope to wash off with the continuation. Nobody likes cliffhangers, maybe except people who make money off them. Some readers are tolerant, they accept the mantra &quot;good things come to those who wait.&quot; Others - like me - have been burned with false promise of a continuation a few times too many, and outright hate and despise cliffhangers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean you can't leave a hook for a sequel. Bring a forgotten side-thread into focus and show how its unresolved issue is about to escalate. Have someone do just the wrong thing at the wrong moment. Make a revelation that was barely hinted so far. But for goodness sake, if you have one or two primary, major threads, close them! If there are two major antagonists, and the book ends with beating the weaker one while the stronger one just finished building an army, you're going to receive all my hate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T21:49:19.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-16T21:51:38.410" Score="5" ViewCount="2196" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question. I am planing to write to a fairy-tale like a Brother Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson type of fairy-tale set in the modern time but after conducting research(reading fairy-tales of these literary greats). Its hard. I know every story is so different and so unique and that's whats make them awesome. The delima is that &lt;strong&gt;i need to know what are the typical features of a fairy tale especially a princess and prince story. These kind of show how girls should follow their dreams etc but i can't really understand how i should establish a plot. What should be the climax etc&lt;/strong&gt;. I hope you can help me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10136" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T09:49:08.087" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T13:52:30.340" Title="Typical Fairy-tale Story Especially Princess Stories" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|technique|structure|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12397" CreationDate="2014-07-16T23:10:03.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with what the commenters have already said (and think some of them should be turned into answers), so assume this is building upon their replies. As they said, you usually only have one ISBN per book, only changing ISBNs if something substantial changes about the book. If the publisher changes, if the size changes, or if it changes from hardcover to paperback to ebook, then you'd get a new ISBN each time. Each ISBN comes with its own barcode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there's a few different points that might be leading to this confusion for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) There are two different kinds of ISBNs. Grab a book published around 2006 and flip to the inside front cover. You'll likely see two ISBNs, one with 10 digits (beginning with 0) and one with 13 digits (beginning with 978). This is because &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iso.org/iso/home.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the organization that standardizes ISBNs&lt;/a&gt; begun with a 10-digit ISBN and then switched to a 13-digit one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lac-bac.gc.ca/isn/041011-1020-e.html#d&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in 2007&lt;/a&gt;, but not all publishers have transitioned to only using the 13-digit one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4OvWg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;HP7 hardcover&quot;&gt;&#xA;Behold my extremely terrible photography. This book is a first-edition hardcover copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, published in 2007. Note the two ISBNs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although two ISBNs are listed, both refer to the same book. Consider them to be different versions of the same number, in the way that &quot;1+1&quot; and &quot;2&quot; are different versions of the same number. Also note that there is only one barcode on the back of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Many publishers will print different editions of their books for the different countries they print in, with translations for each language. Each edition will usually have different cover art to distinguish it, and is given &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isbn.org/faqs_general_questions#isbn_faq23&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;different ISBNs if they're in different languages&lt;/a&gt;. Patrick Rothfuss's books have been published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://thetinkerspacks.bigcartel.com/category/pat-s-books&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;multiple languages&lt;/a&gt; and so each new language edition has a new ISBN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, note that each book is complete in and of itself. Each book will only have one ISBN. Therefore, if your book needs to be published in two different languages, each language will have its own ISBN, but one book would only have one ISBN on the front cover. It wouldn't make any sense to put the ISBN referring to the French edition &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the ISBN referring to the English edition on the English book. Thus, the English book would only have one ISBN: the one referring specifically to that translation of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10099" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T23:10:03.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12407" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-17T12:25:20.673" Score="1" ViewCount="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many radio shows or blog memes ask what you would take with you to a lonely island. In a similar vein I'm currently setting up my &lt;a href=&quot;http://selfcontrolapp.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SelfControl&lt;/a&gt; whitelist. As yet it only contains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dictionaries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my university library catalogue (I sit in the uni library to write)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This made me wonder:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the absolute bare essential online tools that a writer needs while he is writing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm less interested in the different websites that different writers use, but in the &lt;strong&gt;turning point&lt;/strong&gt; where too little resources will hinder you and too many resources begin to distract you or stifle your creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sometimes tried to take my laptop to the public pool or a park, but I soon found I had to go home again because being unable to look up a synonym got me stuck. The library (or the park outside the library) is a good place for me to write, because I can turn off the internet, and at the same time only have to walk a few stairs to have all kinds of printed resources available to me (or even a public computer, if I'm really need something online).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers recommend going completely offline while writing, but it seems to me that being totally alone with only your &quot;paper&quot; (real or virtual) cannot work. You do need &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; resources, because you cannot have everything in your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what is it that the normal writer (who is not a genius) absolutely needs, that he cannot do without, and &lt;strong&gt;at what point do resources become counterproductive?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both answers (by CLockeWork and Dale Emery) recommend to not get stuck on missing information and instead use a placeholder and continue. That is what I did while I pumped out the first draft of my novel in the course of ten days. It is filled with placeholders. Now I am writing my second draft, and the writing process consists mostly of filling those placeholders and polishing my prose. Not writing finished sentences is not an option anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T06:57:27.160" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T17:48:23.347" Title="Necessary online resources while writing: too much versus too little" Tags="|tools|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12407" CreationDate="2014-07-17T15:11:38.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This comes down to what exactly you mean by &quot;while writing.&quot; To me writing is the act of getting the story down, just as laying out the plot is preparing, and editing and proofreading are different stages again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; online resource can be a distraction. That's one reason why I've favoured pen and paper for so long: it doesn't matter how good your first draft is, you can get access to the net and all that shiny stuff once you're cleaning it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By now you probably know that I love WriteLaTeX.com, but even that can be distracting -- going off to look for some formatting code for instance. Hell even the squiggly red lines of a spell checker error can be distracting where you're trying to get in-the-zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So perhaps the tipping point is being online in the first place; as soon as you stop writing to go look something up you've been distracted. By the time you get back you may have to ramp up your flow again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As an example, I was recently reading a Charles Stross book, Singularity Sky. At one point a man was talking to another man who was smoking a pipe. The pipe was being used as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/04/using-beats-to-bring-your-dialogue-to-life-turn-the-beat-around/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dialogue beat&lt;/a&gt; but halfway through the conversation the man was smoking a cigar and the beats related to what actions that may entail. Clearly he'd stopped writing mid-section and had then forgotten the man was smoking a pipe.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Luckily there's a very simple solution to all of this, and I tend to use it even when I'm online: Anything you want a synonym for, don't know the name of, or don’t have the exact detail of: wrap a quick description of what you want to go there in square brackets and then just move on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The landscape was littered with the jagged and tumbling corpses of &lt;strong&gt;[mine shaft&#xA;  tower things]&lt;/strong&gt;, abandoned after the Source was discovered -- the only things standing on the barren tundra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm editing, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; I can go find out that a &lt;strong&gt;mine shaft tower thing&lt;/strong&gt; is called a &lt;strong&gt;Winding Tower&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T15:11:38.250" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12405" CreationDate="2014-07-17T21:56:09.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh, it's easy! What you need is a villain!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, think up a reason, why someone wouldn't want the princess to meet the prince. What is it in that connection, that someone might hate? Any reason?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing the reason, think of means of keeping the two apart. Lies? Betrayal? Poisonous, controlling relationship? Dependence? Guilt trip? Force? Dark magic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then build the character around the motive and the means - flesh out the villain, and the relationship of that villain with the prince and the princess. Lurking in shadows? Pretending to be a best friend? Looming as an overlord? Being a competitive, jealous scoundrel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, once you have the villain and his(her) power developed - you fleshed out the way of keeping the lovers apart in detail - start poking at it, looking for weak spots. Negligence, ignorance, paranoia, whatever vice the villain has that can be exploited to break through the barrier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then flesh out the royal pair, sharing between them skills and powers that will make overcoming the barrier possible, though difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then just write it down in order. Introduction of the actors, building their relationships, then fight against the barrier, breaking through the barrier, happy ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the basic structure, which you may convolute some, for extra effect. Like: The princess and the prince don't go along with each other in the least, and only through common trials they overcome the differences. Or: The meddler opposes the breaking through the wall. Another approach must be taken. Or: The meddler poisons the relationship. Or any of countless mutations, like the princess choosing not to marry the prince, or the prince appearing to be the actual meddler, with the obvious one being actually a &quot;hard love&quot; good person, or one of the lovers getting corrupted in the process... sky is the limit, but that's all just mutations of the simple scheme described above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T21:56:09.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12407" CreationDate="2014-07-17T22:06:28.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there's an assumption at the center of your question:&#xA;That when you lack some crucial piece of information&#xA;that is not readily available in your head or your offline files,&#xA;you are therefore stuck and cannot make progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that assumption is false and problematic.&#xA;What makes you stuck is never lack of information.&#xA;What makes you stuck is insisting&#xA;that progress is impossible without the thing you lack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; ways to make progress,&#xA;because in writing,&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;stuckness is always local.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you lack just the right word:&#xA;Write an almost-right word,&#xA;mark it in some way,&#xA;and make a note to find the right word later.&#xA;Your stuckness is local to that one word.&#xA;Skip to the next word.&#xA;Then keep writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the sentence or paragraph or scene or chapter&#xA;depends on the details&#xA;of some critical bit of information you don't have:&#xA;Write something approximate or generic or just plain wrong,&#xA;mark it,&#xA;and make a note to fill in with the right information later.&#xA;Your stuckness is local to that one sentence or paragraph or scene or chapter.&#xA;Skip to the next one.&#xA;Then keep writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;em&gt;the entire remainder of the story hinges on the missing information&lt;/em&gt;,&#xA;set that project aside.&#xA;Your stuckness is local to that one story.&#xA;Open another story.&#xA;Then keep writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stuckness is always local.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Skip to the next word, the next sentence, the next scene, the next story.&#xA;Then keep writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T22:39:17.770" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T22:39:17.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12405" CreationDate="2014-07-18T00:16:11.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;They typically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fall in love with one another, hate each other at first, get lied about, always have misunderstandings, almost die, are betrothed to each other or someone else, involve a witch, have an evil/good stepmother, princesses are either helpless or more macho than the man hero, they try to quit being royal and go gallivanting off with peasants, always wonder why the bad guy is doing this to them, the first kiss is true love's kiss, have a death in the family, the sidekick who dies or is a bad comedian, and the list is sure a long one. See a couple of movies or books and you'll find more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Establishing a plot: &#xA;Sometimes you only have a few scenes to start with for your character to perform. Write them out, the story can/will grow from there. You're in control of who and what your story revolves around. What do you want to happen? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Climax:&#xA;Depends on what you find out about your character and what's in and what's going on in their world as you write about them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10146" LastEditorUserId="10146" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T15:38:05.530" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T15:38:05.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12414" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-18T03:08:46.970" Score="0" ViewCount="2473" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excuse me, does anyone know if the following two sentences are equal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No matter whether it is a good book, I will not read it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether it is a good book, I will not read it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;can we switch between &quot;no matter whether&quot; and &quot;whether&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10147" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T08:12:45.190" Title="no matter whether = whether?" Tags="|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-07-20T12:39:09.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12414" CreationDate="2014-07-18T06:58:38.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second is probably grammatically correct, but it doesn't feel right to me somehow. I'm not sure why. I want an &quot;or not&quot; in there somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T06:58:38.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12414" CreationDate="2014-07-18T08:21:56.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second sentence does not feel to be grammatically correct.  The second sentence should be &quot;Whether it is a good book &lt;strong&gt;or not&lt;/strong&gt;, I will not read it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be even made simple by writing &quot;Even if it is a good book, I will not read it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10151" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T08:21:56.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12692" CreationDate="2014-07-18T09:53:14.110" Score="10" ViewCount="3406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noted in this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5341/what-is-the-best-way-to-learn-technical-writing/7962#7962&quot;&gt;What is the best way to learn technical writing?&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...that a rated method to learn how to write technical documents is to imbibe good examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you recommend any examples of good code/ database documentation that have proven useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was also a really useful thread in terms of documenting code: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10501/how-can-i-write-better-code-based-reference-documentation-for-programming-interf&quot;&gt;How can I write better code-based reference documentation for programming interfaces?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am documenting a large number of programs so that developers can rewrite and maintain the code and database. The documentation will be directed at developers who will be maintaining and re-writing the code, rather than end-users. Any advice, dos/ don'ts, words to the wise  much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8307" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T18:52:06.493" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T18:52:06.493" Title="Good Examples of and Practices in Code Documentation" Tags="|technical-writing|software-documentation|api-documentation|examples|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12418" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-18T12:03:59.283" Score="3" ViewCount="639" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to post some short stories on my blog. But I am not sure about the copyrights of those stories. Because those stories were available in many places online. Can I publish them on my site or should I ask for any permission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10125" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T19:34:58.807" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T06:29:13.423" Title="Can I use general short stories to publish on my site, blog, etc.?" Tags="|publishing|short-story|copyright|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12414" CreationDate="2014-07-18T14:39:54.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No matter&lt;/strong&gt; whether it is a good book, I will not read it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whether it is a good book &lt;strong&gt;or not&lt;/strong&gt;, I will not read it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T08:12:45.190" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T08:12:45.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12399" CreationDate="2014-07-18T15:31:54.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on just how well you portray your words. You can have a variety of different names to chose from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of how you shouldn't name your characters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apple was a smart student and she had a knack for climbing trees.&#xA;  Apple did not fall far from the tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet you can simply take an imaginary name such as Auburn and simply portray him/her simply by the context of their name. Be blunt. Be brave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Auburn, just as his name implies, had eyes and hair of that color.&#xA;  Even his clothes went well when they were the right shade of brown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;But for your purposes, why does it matter?&lt;/em&gt; Many writers make up names, refer to object's names, or even fabricate one out of gibberish. It all comes down to one very simple rule in the English language: &lt;strong&gt;It needs to make sense.&lt;/strong&gt; You can name anyone anything, give them the most amazing persona, have them do amazing things, and tell an awesome story but their name &lt;em&gt;doesnt make jacksquat sense&lt;/em&gt;. As long as the name you chose isn't easily (and I mean &lt;em&gt;easily&lt;/em&gt;) confused in a particular sentence, then don't use it. Or if you think it is the world's most fitting name for your character, then simply &lt;strong&gt;avoid&lt;/strong&gt; using those sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The name Apple would be a great nickname. Now don't ever use it in a sentence that alludes to anything that might hint Apple as an object, and not a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10145" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T15:31:54.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12405" CreationDate="2014-07-18T16:31:09.460" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are confusing a traditional fairy tale with the Disney version of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The traditonal fairy tale does not &quot;show how girls should follow their dreams&quot;. They either show how disregarding common contemporary moral standards leads to a tragic end, or how acting in accordance with morality leads to a happy end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cinderella does not get the prince because she follows her dreams at all, but because she works hard and diligently, is honest and kind, even to her stepmother and step sisters who treat her bad. Her sisters on the other hand follow their dreams of wealth and marrying the prince and are punished for their greed and unkindness! Cinderella does not aim for nobility and riches at all, she is rewarded with true love because she is a &quot;good&quot; person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The little mermaid in Anderson's tale dies, because she follows her dream! Snow White gets the prince because she diligently worked as a servant for the dwarves. She did not even know that there &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; a prince, she never aspired to anything beyond her current lot. If anything she was happy as the maid to the dwarves! And so on. Fairy tale protagonists don't succeed in pursuing their dreams. The fairy tale morality is quite opposed to current American individualism. Fairy tales reward subservience, modesty, humility, loving your parents (even if they are evil) and so on. And fairy tales harshly punish stupidity! Think of all the nice persons that get killed just for being naive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fairy tales tell you to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be good (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_virtues&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in the Christian sense of the word&lt;/a&gt;), but&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't be stupid (because the world is bad).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are looking for is not the structure of the fairy tale, but the common Hollywood romance plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T16:36:48.613" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T16:36:48.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12370" CreationDate="2014-07-18T20:45:38.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you can't please everybody, you might as well please yourself. Write the book that you would like to read. Life itself is a series of cliffhangers, isn't it?  Picture that friend or relative who would love reading a book like yours, then picture him turning the last page and it's a cliffhanger. What will he say to you? But overall, write the book that you want to write. If your book ever gets picked up by a publisher, believe me, their editor will tell you exactly how to finish your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10156" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T20:45:38.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-19T13:22:55.163" Score="4" ViewCount="2301" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always wanted to write fiction, but I've been afraid I'd sooner or later be limited by my lack of exposure to the world (or having any desire thereof). I barely watched television growing up, so my knowledge of pop-culture has always been abysmal; I don't remember anything that's not important to me, like people's names, restaurant names, and dates of events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, I seem to have uncanny recall for things surrounding &lt;em&gt;emotions&lt;/em&gt; that matter to me, like how a certain string of words, casually remarked by a friend while driving him to work, actually revealed a hint of an insecurity.  Outside the &quot;emotional&quot; scenarios however, I feel completely oblivious to the world. Furthermore I feel unworldly, because I've never traveled, nor do I feel very much desire to travel—there's so much to do in my room alone!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid that I'll never become a good writer, because though I may possess all the floor plans, I have no brick with which to manifest my ideas.  Could I, for example, write a book like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here, Megan says something that betrays that she's hopeful, despite insisting she's indifferent...  At this point in the story, Jason should do or say something that reveals a non-malicious but still condescending or patronizing attitude toward Esther... Somewhere around here, the phrase &quot;run away from your problems,&quot; needs to be stressed, as it's a phrase that Jane is sensitive to and easily misconstrues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it possible to make a story entirely out of abstract thoughts, in the absence of concrete experience to draw from? Are there successful books or authors that operate that way?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10023" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-02T16:08:10.517" LastActivityDate="2023-01-29T22:10:37.910" Title="Is it possible to write entirely abstract fiction?" Tags="|fiction|technique|resources|research|conventions|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12418" CreationDate="2014-07-19T18:20:32.173" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot post any copyrighted material for which you do not have copyright. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, you can provide links to those materials from your blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really need to publish,  then better ask for a written permission from the original author or the person who holds the copyright. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because something is available in multiple places on internet does not imply that your site too can do the same without permission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10151" LastEditorUserId="10151" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T06:29:13.423" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T06:29:13.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12405" CreationDate="2014-07-20T09:20:25.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned in my comment above, the &lt;strong&gt;Aarne-Thompson classification&lt;/strong&gt;, specifically the section on fairy-tales, may be useful to you. A handy summary can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson_classification_system#Fairy_tales&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. It classifies stories by theme and gives common examples which are likely to be familiar to you. It also lists lots of fairy-tales that have become forgotten in recent years, which you may find inspiring to your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fairy stories are classified by the role of the suprnatural in the plot. If you want a &quot;prince and princess&quot; story you might look at stories with &lt;strong&gt;supernatural wives or husbands&lt;/strong&gt;, of which there are many: &lt;em&gt;East of the Sun, West of the Moon&lt;/em&gt; is a semi-well-known example. &lt;em&gt;The Frog Prince&lt;/em&gt; might be more famous. If you do take to this plot, absolutely check out the tale of &lt;strong&gt;Eros and Psyche&lt;/strong&gt; from Greek mythology, which some folklorists call &quot;the first fairy tale&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T09:20:25.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12427" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12429" CreationDate="2014-07-20T12:08:00.430" Score="7" ViewCount="1762" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a non-fiction book that I want to create an index for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any standard for what items should be included in an index? Some things are obvious like names and proper nouns. But, is there any set of guidelines I can or should refer to in order to determine what defines a complete index?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2753" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T15:09:59.367" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T15:09:59.367" Title="Is there a standard for what should be included in an index?" Tags="|non-fiction|indexing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12427" CreationDate="2014-07-20T12:40:36.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What goes in your index will be defined by your topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book on prefixes will list prefixes. Other books won't. Names of authors of scientific papers don't usually go into the index, but historical figures will. And so on. You might even have words in your index that don't appear in your text but are different names for the same thing (e.g. Latin plant names, if your text uses common English names).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't just blindly index all names and nouns, &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; about what the readers of your book might be interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T12:40:36.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12427" CreationDate="2014-07-20T17:19:55.667" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;What goes into your index will be defined by your readers' needs.  How will they use your book?  Will they come in with knowledge of (and vocabulary from) a related subject?  Are they experts or novices or some of each?  An index's primary job is to have an answer when somebody comes to it with a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some guidelines that I've learned over many years of doing technical writing.  I never formally learned this and style guides don't tend to cover indexing in any detail, so this is just one person's accumulated experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Index entries about operations get at least two entries, one for the noun and one for the verb.  People might try to find out how to insert a whatsit by looking under either &quot;inserting, whatsits&quot; or &quot;whatsits, inserting&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use those index entries &lt;em&gt;everywhere&lt;/em&gt; they're relevant, not just the first mention.  For example, do you have a &quot;troubleshooting&quot; section that covers problems with inserting whatsits?  Index that; if somebody's having trouble inserting his whatsit, you want him to find that.  If your index never lists more than one page number for an entry, you're probably missing something.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Standardize your verbs early.  You don't want to have some of your entries under &quot;inserting&quot; and others under &quot;adding&quot;, unless there are precise technical differences between the two.  If there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; such differences, consider see-alsos under the two verbs.  As for which verbs to use, I know this sounds circular but you want to use the verbs that your readers will naturally reach for, so there's a &quot;know your users&quot; issue here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Index concepts (things people need to &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt;, as opposed to things they'll &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt;) if your readers might reasonably need to look that up, but not if it's passing or unimportant.  Don't fill up your index with too much &quot;just in case&quot; entries; they make it harder to find the ones people actually need.  (In a digital copy you can be more generous because people can search, but for paper, make it easy to use.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find some way to test your index.  Nobody ever seems to review those carefully, but maybe you can do some informal user testing.  If you have access to reader feedback after release (bug reports, for example), look closely at the ones where there &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; documentation but they apparently didn't find it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In my experience gerund verbs and plural nouns are most common as index entries.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T17:19:55.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12407" CreationDate="2014-07-20T17:48:23.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm addressing the below edit to the question specifically as I think both of the previous answers would still apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both answers (by CLockeWork and Dale Emery) recommend to not get stuck&#xA;  on missing information and instead use a placeholder and continue.&#xA;  That is what I did while I pumped out the first draft of my novel in&#xA;  the course of ten days. It is filled with placeholders. Now I am&#xA;  writing my second draft, and the writing process consists mostly of&#xA;  filling those placeholders and polishing my prose. Not writing&#xA;  finished sentences is not an option anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a very similar method whether I'm writing fiction for pleasure or technical documentation for work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After finishing the first draft, marking place holders where I've gotten hung up on words or ideas, I make two lists. The first list is a list of all the placeholders where I need just a word or phrase. Synonyms, idioms, specific technical terms, error messages, these all go into that list. The second list is a list of all the placeholders marking places where I realized I need to do more detailed research. Anything from the steps in a related process to more information on the command structure of Russian Intelligence during WWII would go on this list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take a day or two to work through the first list. During this time, I'm not actually writing or editing. Just filling in the placeholders with the necessary words. After I'm finished with that, I break the second list into chunks. If it's a novel, for example, I'll do the research for every placeholder in the first five chapters and take copious notes. Then I'll go back and begin the actual revisions to the chapters, incorporating the new information into those placeholders based off my notes. If I again get stuck during this process, I'll start with fresh placeholders and new lists for later. Then, I'll take on the research for the placeholders in the next five chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I've worked my way through the original lists, I start over again with the new lists I've created during revisions. This way I've essentially split my time into a cycle of &quot;research time&quot;, when it's okay to go online or read offline source materials, and &quot;writing time&quot;, when it's just me and my notebooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10153" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T17:48:23.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12431" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-20T18:37:50.690" Score="3" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;At what page number would a short story become a novella and at what point does a novella become a book manuscript? Is there a specific length that the story has to be to achieve to use those terms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8781" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T12:50:32.453" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T12:50:32.453" Title="Story length and the term used" Tags="|short-story|book-length|novella|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12431" CreationDate="2014-07-20T19:44:52.480" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/nebula-awards/rules/&quot;&gt;Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America&lt;/a&gt; gives these ranges:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Short story: Fewer than 7500 words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Novelette: 7500 to 17499 words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Novella: 17500 to 39999 words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Novel: 40000 or more words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these are defined in terms of word count, not page count. The number of pages depends greatly on formatting, so is imprecise as measure of story length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T19:44:52.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12433" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12439" CreationDate="2014-07-20T19:59:42.137" Score="3" ViewCount="1193" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story I'm working on features a &quot;slow burn&quot; type romance with a long build-up. The arc begins with (what's mean to be) obvious attraction, and proceeds through a long period in which the female protagonist is strongly opposed to starting a relationship. Meanwhile the male love interest is persistently flirtatious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From experience, I know that romances that start from more-or-less antagonistic relationships can work very well, or they can work very poorly. I'm just having a hard time pinning down the tipping point between good and bad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At what point does a reader start thinking the love interest is a nuisance, or the heroine is annoyingly indecisive? Will my readers lose respect for the heroine if she &quot;gives in&quot; and initiates a relationship? Or will they be annoyed by how long she was holding out? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the signs that the characters engaging in playfully antagonistic flirting aren't being very playful? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T05:25:34.970" Title="When Is a Relationship Too Antagonistic?" Tags="|characters|romance|readers|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12427" CreationDate="2014-07-20T20:29:30.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From experience I would suggest as much as possible. Many writers/editors try to be smart and reduce the size of the index, but then you end up looking for something you know is in the book, but you can't find it. If you want include a qucik index with the most common or prominent items too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing is the TOC, I would suggest two versions there two, a quick TOC on 2 pages max, where you just see the main headers. And a little longer one where you can see everything in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing is worse than having a good book that you can't use properly, and people are used to full text search from almost every computer program, so you should have at least the possible paper equivalent of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10164" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T20:29:30.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12437" CreationDate="2014-07-21T03:24:27.203" Score="1" ViewCount="457" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I am writing and know that somebody kind of famous did something illegal and horrible (it's a well known fact with this individual, but they were never charged), can it be put in writing or does that qualify as defamation of their name or character, which could lead to potential trouble?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10166" LastEditorUserId="10166" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T20:21:33.887" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T20:21:33.887" Title="Inserting truthful (derogatory) statements in text" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12435" CreationDate="2014-07-21T10:11:04.150" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; careful. Just because 'everyone knows' something doesn't mean that it's actually true, or that there's enough evidence for you to convince a judge that it's true when you get sued for libel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to write something that could be seen as an attack against someone, make sure you have all your evidence to hand before you do so, and make sure that it's beyond question. Get yourself some legal advice, too, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, even if you do have all your ducks in a row, there's nothing stopping someone from suing anyway, and the lawyer's fees alone can be crippling. If they're a little bit savvy, and you've published what you've written online (or otherwise internationally), they might even engage in a bit of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism&quot;&gt;libel tourism&lt;/a&gt;. Again: be careful, get advice from a lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5765" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T10:11:04.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12433" CreationDate="2014-07-21T11:10:42.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A classic take on this from the Bard is &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sydney.edu.au/engineering/it/~matty/Shakespeare/texts/comedies/muchadoaboutnothing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Much Ado About Nothing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (I also recommend this &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0000714BZ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wonderful filmed version,&lt;/a&gt; which stays fairly close to the text).&#xA;Beatrice and Benedick both swear they will never marry, are not interested in relationships, and are &lt;em&gt;certainly&lt;/em&gt; not attracted to each other. They preen and posture and announce and declare, but when their friends and family decide to fix them up, a hint to Benedick that Beatrice likes him but is too shy to say so tips him over immediately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In more modern romantic comedies, you have two people who profess to be unable to stand one another, but when they are talking with friends, will protest too loudly about some facet of the other person or will admit &quot;Oh, yes, he's certainly handsome/witty/smart/charitable etc., but I could never date him,&quot; and the friends correctly read that as &quot;Well, I could if I was talked into it.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is less comedic, then each interaction has to have some element of the wall being chipped away (with one or two reversals so it's not too obvious). In scene 4 she thinks &quot;Wow, we managed to get through a conversation without Dave being an arse.&quot; In scene 7 she watches him help an old lady across the street (but doesn't interact with him). In scene 10 he says something which she actually finds funny. Et cetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, your love interest cannot be an actual jerk. He can do things which are annoying to the heroine (&quot;I hate how he dresses like a slob and sits sideways on the furniture!&quot;), but he can't be so antagonistic that the reader doesn't want to see them together (kicking puppies, using homophobic slurs). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As she warms to him, he should also be listening to her complaints and responding to them. So he may not dress in a suit, but maybe he buys new jeans and tucks in his T-shirt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to create a gentle slope of forward progress almost from the beginning, although much of the progress is going to be internal monologue or conversations with characters who are not the love interest, so we see that the heroine's mind is changing even if the love interest doesn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sharp banter can continue throughout, but can be leavened with more genuine compliments, or changed with tone/expression/smiles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will feel like it's gone too long if there's &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; change in her internal monologue about him. If every time she thinks about him or interacts with him her feelings are the same, then he comes off as an annoying stalker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T11:10:42.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12433" CreationDate="2014-07-21T12:52:07.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another way to add interest is to create a situation in which the heroine's reasons for refusing to consider the hero are tied to her own personal issues. For instance, in Muriel Barbery's &lt;em&gt;The Elegance of the Hedgehog&lt;/em&gt;, the protagonist (a lowly concierge) hides her brilliant mind from her upper-class employers because of deep-seated fears that are based on childhood experiences in which the lowly get hurt when they mix with the elevated. Because of this, she is very skittish of a friendship-maybe-something-more that a wealthy man is trying to offer. Or, for another instance, Dorothy Sayers has several mysteries in which Harriet Vane (although attracted to Lord Peter Wimsey, whose detective work saved her from the hangman's noose) continues to reject him, in part because she doesn't want to be saved and swept off her feet by a man, and in part because she fears that to love is incompatible with real independence of mind and life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The focus in these stories is on character development and the events that change the characters' minds. That is what makes them work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not so much that the heroines in these stories learn to better value their romantic interests, but that their own characters develop to the point where they are ready to risk loving someone. I love stories in which characters change and develop, so this kind of story holds my interest much more easily than one in which the characters are more static. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-04-25T05:25:34.970" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T05:25:34.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12440" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12442" CreationDate="2014-07-21T13:16:27.597" Score="7" ViewCount="320" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm tasked with rewriting an entire user guide that hasn't been updated for years at a company and I am the only technical writer on the team. Only release notes were sent out all these years. The company adopts the agile development process, and a sprint typically spans three weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking how I should approach this task. Should I be writing the guide using whatever is in the system at the time of writing, then, when all the sections are complete, incorporate what was missed in the release notes? Or should I be writing the sections involved in the sprints first, then work on other sections when I am free? Are there other better approaches?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10171" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-03-02T16:12:18.477" LastActivityDate="2018-03-02T17:19:38.717" Title="How do I approach rewriting an entire user guide in an agile environment?" Tags="|technical-writing|process|user-guides|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12405" CreationDate="2014-07-21T13:52:30.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to learn about plotting fairy-tale stories I recommend you to read &quot;Morphology of the Folktale&quot; by Vladimir Propp. It is a study that dissect the different elements of the folk tales from examples and present a common structure composed by 31 &quot;functions&quot;. It is easy to structure your tale after that schema. &#xA;You can have a bit of it by reading Wikipedia article on Propp (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Propp&lt;/a&gt;). However, if you are interested in the field like I am I recommend you to get your hands in the book. &#xA;I recommend also to have a look at John Campbell's take on the monomyth (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Monomyth&lt;/a&gt;) if you plan to write a heroe/heroine based tale. This one is more focused on the inner development of the hero than Propp's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with another answer in that you don't seem to want the real traditional folk tales (i.e. gory original Grimm Bros. stories) but the decaf post-victorian Disney like version of them but that is compatible with the works I referenced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10173" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T13:52:30.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12440" CreationDate="2014-07-21T14:49:22.080" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written manuals under a Scrum process, so I'll describe what worked for my team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to treat your task as if you're writing a new book.  From your description, you'd be replacing the vast majority of the content anyway, so better to think of it as a new book (for which you might be able to take advantage of the occasional previously-written bit) than an update.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First you're going to need to come up with an outline or broad plan of attack.  What topics do you need to cover (in what detail)?  Is the organization of the original book workable now, or do you need to re-arrange things?  In (or prior to!) your first sprint, come up with your initial list of work to be done.  Start thinking about how it breaks down into stories.  (This is the initial backlog; you should expect to discover more things that will need to be covered as sprints progress.  Use your usual process for managing those; in our case newly-discovered issues got added to the backlog and considered in the next planning session.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During sprint planning, you (plural) should identify which of these tasks to work on now -- due to urgency, or code stability, or whatever other criteria are at play in your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During each sprint you should be working on the following types of tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Writing new material (scoped to fit the sprint, less the other work you need to do in this sprint)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Addressing feedback from what you wrote in the last sprint (you should be getting feedback from developers, testers, and user representatives as you go)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Updating prior work for changes in the code, if applicable -- if you're working on the doc alongside the developers working on the code, there are probably going to be changes that you'll need to address&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the last couple of sprints before the release, start thinking about what will need to go into the release notes.  I assume that the release notes are a team project, as they usually include things like a bug list from QA.  Your part of this is to identify what is important enough to document that isn't going to make it into the user guide, and then figure out how to address that in release notes.  This should result in a story for your last sprint, with the team agreeing on the tasks to be included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I should mention that on my last agile team the release notes were actually managed by the QA team, not by the technical writers, so my advice on that point is based on what I've seen/heard others do, not on direct personal experience.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2018-03-02T17:19:38.717" LastActivityDate="2018-03-02T17:19:38.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12418" CreationDate="2014-07-21T17:23:55.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for stories that you can safely publish online, there are a few good resources for you. @Vivek is right that you definitely cannot publish works to which someone else holds the copyright. It's always safer to try and find a reliable source where those works are already published and simply link to them. That way, if it turns out there are copyright problems, your site won't get in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are many stories that are in the public domain because their copyright has expired. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Gutenberg&lt;/a&gt; is my favorite resource for public domain books. You can freely read and download any ebook listed on their site, and as most of their books are no longer bound by copyright, it is legal to reuse those published works as you desire. I would, however, recommend reading the entire &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_Project_Gutenberg_License&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Gutenburg Licence&lt;/a&gt; before reusing any of their works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Redistributing section of their licence (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If an individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are located in the United States, we &lt;strong&gt;do not&lt;/strong&gt; claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is restricted to the United States, as international copyright laws may vary. They also have a few caveats for use that they would like you to follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note as well that not all of the works hosted on their website are in the public domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[*] This particular work is one of the few copyrighted individual works included with the permission of the copyright holder. Information on the copyright owner for this particular work and the terms of use imposed by the copyright holder on this work are set forth at the beginning of this work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those works will be marked at the beginning of their files on their webpages, so you should keep an eye out for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.feedbooks.com/publicdomain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Feedbooks&lt;/a&gt;, has a section of works that in the public domain in France. Again, be sure to read through their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.feedbooks.com/termsofuse#t5-user&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Terms of Use&lt;/a&gt; before redistributing any of the works given. Wikipedia has a handy page called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_in_public_domain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2014 in Public Domain&lt;/a&gt; that lists all the authors whose works will be coming into the public domain in various countries each year. It has a similar page for each year, so you could start with an author and then find a story from there. You can find many similar sites by simply searching &quot;short stories public domain&quot; on your favorite search engine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing to remember is that you need to avoid infringing on any copyrights. For each story you want to publish, you need to find the original author and ascertain whether his works have been released into the public domain within your country or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most countries say that works enter the public domain 70 years after the author's death. If the story is more than two hundred years old, it's safe to say it's within the public domain. Stories from the Bible, for example, are going to be in the public domain, but exactly reproducing a specific newer translation might not be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to check out &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6824/how-to-publish-public-domain-books?rq=1&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; and its answers, which explains a lot about works that are in the public domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10099" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T17:23:55.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12423" CreationDate="2014-07-21T20:35:07.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like what you have written in your example is an outline, not a story. I think it's perfectly possible to go through and write an outline in the manner you have described, but the primary story-writing work will take place when you go through and fill in all the blanks you left when creating the outline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I empathize with your dilemma, but it's important to realize that you do eventually need to fill in the details. It sounds like you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have all the &quot;brick&quot; you need to start writing a story- your story will just be driven by the characters, not by the world they inhabit. You'll make good, realistic characters that cope with their world and their problems in ways the readers can connect to. You do, however, need to come up with some problems that they need to cope with - all of which can be character-driven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know anything about the writing processes of authors, but I do believe that you can learn to write by reading. Here are some books you can read that are primarily character-driven:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An Abundance of Katherines&lt;/strong&gt; by John Green, where the main action and problems revolve almost entirely around a single character. (Many of John Green's other works are also character-driven, including &lt;strong&gt;Paper Towns&lt;/strong&gt;. I did not include The Fault in Our Stars because the primary problem those characters face is external, namely their cancer, although it does feature excellent characterization.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Much Ado About Nothing&lt;/strong&gt; by William Shakespeare, which is a romantic comedy. Most romances are, of necessity, character-driven.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bridge to Terebithia&lt;/strong&gt; by Katherine Paterson. Although it includes a magical forest, it is an escape dreamed up by the main characters involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Secret Garden&lt;/strong&gt; by Frances Hodgson Burnett, for a story where the setting &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; important, but it would be meaningless without the powerful characterization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These books have plots that revolve around the character's problems and what they do about them. The setting in these books is not as important, and there are no magical effects or otherwise external situations that impact the character's behavior. These books are all about people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10099" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T20:35:07.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12445" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12449" CreationDate="2014-07-21T22:46:58.217" Score="3" ViewCount="435" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I wrote a book. Suppose it had a normal modern fictional story about it. Suppose that the characters aren't based on real people and have no relation to anyone. Suppose &lt;em&gt;in the background of the story&lt;/em&gt; I'd depict Tim Tebow shooting heroin in the bathroom (not to sound goofy; it's just an example) but its not a major plot point, but only serves as device to introduce the setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, because its a minor detail, would this be considered &quot;harsh fiction&quot; or &quot;libel&quot; and just how far does it extend?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because it was said in one line of text doesn't mean I'm defaming Tebow; I'm simply posing a fictional scenario to give setting that the world the character is in is a world based off of pop culture (to allude to modern society in the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose instead I wrote a character saying, &quot;Brittany Spears is a whore.&quot; Despite that its a fictional character saying something that literally is meant to defame Brittany, is not meant in true reality to defame her. (Even though she already defamed herself. haha)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does libel extend this easily into fiction? Does it depend on how I write and what its about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'm not actually writing about Tebow or Spears. It was an example.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10145" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T23:33:14.417" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T07:12:49.717" Title="How far does libel extend in writing?" Tags="|fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12238" CreationDate="2014-07-22T02:27:19.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others here have mentioned, you want to show, not tell--have your smart, clever, insightful and thoughtful guy do smart, clever, insightful and thoughtful things, rather than just dictating a description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you can't think of smart, clever, insightful and thoughtful things for your character to do, here's a way to cheat: think of some people you &lt;em&gt;actually know&lt;/em&gt; who are smart, clever, insightful or thoughtful, and model your character after them.  This is an easy and effective way to add detail and realism to your characters.  The adage &quot;good artists borrow, great artists steal&quot; applies to real-life experiences as well as other artists!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10083" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T02:27:19.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12445" CreationDate="2014-07-23T14:06:32.870" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I'm a great believer in a very broad interpretation of freedom of speech. But surely even the most extreme advocates of freedom of speech would not say that it means you have the right to say absolutely anything that you want about anyone with no fear of consequences. Like if you said on the witness stand in court that you saw Mr Jones commit the murder, and then it later turns out that Mr Jones is completely innocent and you were lying because you have some personal vendetta against him, I don't think you would escape a perjury charge by claiming &quot;freedom of speech&quot;, and you'd be hard pressed to find many people who'd say that that is a valid exercise of free speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there's a difference between fiction and non-fiction. If you wrote a newspaper article, which was presented as completely factual, in which you said that Tom Tebow uses heroin ... I don't know much about Mr Tebow, but I'm guessing that he does not use heroin ... that would be a pretty clear case for libel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you put a scene in a fiction story in which you depicted him using heroin that would be less clear. There was a case that went to the Supreme Court a few years ago where a pornographic magazine printed a cartoon depicting a well-known religious leader of the time having sex with his mother in an outhouse. The preacher sued for libel ... and lost. The court said that a reasonable person would understand the cartoon to be a joke -- a crude joke, but a joke -- and not a claim to be reporting actual events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are you trying to accomplish? If your point is just to add some cultural feel to a story, I'd say: Why take the risk of being sued for libel and having to defend yourself? Remember that whether someone can sue you is a very different question from whether someone can win a suit. Can someone sue you? Yes. People have sued for all sorts of ridiculous things. If it's ridiculous enough sometimes the court will order the plaintiff to pay the defendant's legal bills, but very often not. Are a couple of stray paragraphs in a story for flavor worth the risk of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your point is just to add some flavor, I would think it would be counter-productive to put in things that are contrary to the person's character, or at least to what is known about him. I suppose that if you said that Mr Tebow was secretly a drug addict that some people who don't like Mr Tebow or his religion would laugh and say, &quot;Yeah, he probably does do stuff like that. Those people are all a bunch of hypocrites.&quot; But someone who likes Mr Tebow or shares his religion would probably not find it amusing, possibly even offensive. And plenty of people would be saying, &quot;What? Huh? That doesn't make sense.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd think you'd be more successful at adding cultural flavor by saying things that are morally neutral and clearly plausible. More like, &quot;Tom Tebow scored a touchdown&quot; or &quot;He saw Brittany Spears on a magazine cover.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if your goal is to make slams against people or groups that you don't like, that's a different story. If the reason you're writing this book is because you want to attack Brittany Spears or Tom Tebow or pop singers in general or Christians or Libertarians or environmentalists or whomever, then prompting lawsuits or at least threats of lawsuits would be a sign of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, bear in mind that references to celebrities can be dated quickly. Sure, 50 years later people still know who the Beatles and Gilligan's Island were. But how many celebrities from 20 or more years ago can you name? Lots of people can't tell you who was president 20 years ago. I think very few could tell you who was vice-president, and fewer still could tell you who ran for president but lost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T14:06:32.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12452" CreationDate="2014-07-23T14:35:34.903" Score="1" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story where later on (three or four chapters after) a second main character is introduced. And after that the chapters will alternate between the first MC and this second one. At first I thought of keeping the POV of the first MC since this second character is actually someone the first MC is looking at in a videotape (the first MC is investigating about an earthquake, and the second MC is a person who got trapped in the ruins of a building and filmed the whole thing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the narration goes like, &lt;em&gt;The camera was now pointing at the wall, showing half of Y's back. X could imaging herself being there...&lt;/em&gt; (Maybe having one character performing the actions and the other adding her thoughts is a bit awkward?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder though if I should just narrate those chapters using the second MC's POV: &lt;em&gt;Y stared at the wall, his back to the camera. He wondered for how long he'd been trapped in this tomb of rubble...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know, maybe this way I can have access to his thoughts, hence making the narration more compelling? On the other hand, would be changing POVs so late in in the story feel clumsy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T15:04:04.640" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T17:15:49.400" Title="Should I change POVs in the following case?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12451" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-23T16:40:16.973" Score="3" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it standard practice to format a synopsis in the same manner as a manuscript (double line spacing, indented first line, 12 point, aligned left, times new roman size 12) when submitting  to an agent/publisher? Or am I ok to switch back to single line spacing and no indentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10188" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T11:55:36.630" Title="How to format a novel synopsis" Tags="|novel|formatting|submitting-work|synopsis|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12450" CreationDate="2014-07-23T17:15:49.400" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you label the chapters with the name of the POV character, you're fine. George RR Martin famously has like a dozen POV characters per 700-page book. At least one that I remember had to take on a new identity, so her POV chapter name changed from A to B. I just finished a Patricia Briggs novel with 20ish chapters. Eighteen are in the first person, told by Mercy, and two (8 and 16, so not sequential) are told in the third person by her husband. Those two chapters have &quot;Adam&quot; at the top. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do whatever works and label it so it's clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T17:15:49.400" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12453" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12454" CreationDate="2014-07-23T20:27:30.990" Score="8" ViewCount="5018" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can plan all sorts of specific aspects in a novel such as characters, locations, and the plot in general, but I struggle to actually write it the way it is in my head. How do I learn to write rather than just think about what I want to write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10166" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T10:59:50.107" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T15:41:28.100" Title="Can't write, can plan" Tags="|plot|planning|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12453" CreationDate="2014-07-23T22:13:57.040" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really comes down to two things, and nearly all professional writers recommend both of them: read a lot, and write even more. Just like anything else, you need to &lt;em&gt;practice&lt;/em&gt;. Practice, practice, practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to develop your own unique voice, and the only way to do that is through trial and failure. See what works, see what doesn't, and if you persevere, you'll learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6839" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T22:13:57.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12453" CreationDate="2014-07-23T22:39:58.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Participating in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nanowrimo.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Novel Writing Month&lt;/a&gt; (November) helped me with this same problem. No excuses, no edits, no revisions, &lt;em&gt;just write&lt;/em&gt;, for 30 days. I had a few friends who participated, and we supported each other in the Writers.SE &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/164/the-overlook-hotel&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It helped me break out of the idea that I needed to compose in my head so that what I put on paper was the perfect expression of my thoughts. It helped me get over the notion that I always had to know the whole story before I could consider writing it. These were two major road blocks for me prior to two years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T22:39:58.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12453" CreationDate="2014-07-24T00:28:49.103" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The relationship between planning and doing is a bit tricky, isn't it? I used to have a great deal of trouble with this, too. In my case, it was because I planned things that I didn't really know how to write. I would envision scenes in which someone dealt with a difficult, emotional situation that I have never experienced; scenes in which my characters would convey various informational tidbits to the readers (I wasn't quite sure how); or scenes that looked good in my outline but just wouldn't come together. For me, planning a novel was a little too much like making an overly-ambitious to-do-list (the kind that can never be completed because it isn't realistic!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as has been noted in the other answers to your question, the solution was to practice. More experience writing was really a double solution: it helped me to execute more of my plans, and also to know how to make plans that are more realistically useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several things helped me get the practice that I needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Starting small: When I worked on vignettes and short stories, it helped me to plan something that I could actually execute, because the entire piece centered around a small and manageable event. As I worked on these pieces, I learned about my own writing abilities, and was able to build a more realistic sense of how to plan.   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Choosing familiar material (the old adage about writing what you know): I realized that I needed to write the kind of stories that I have read most often. For me, it helped a great deal to take the typical outlines and tropes of folk tales and rework them. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Learning to start over: My writing got a whole lot better when I was forced to take several longer pieces and trim them down to the bone. This practice helped prepare me to cut my work with new ruthlessness. It is hard to abandon a scene that isn't working, especially if it seems vital to your novel outline, but sometimes you just have to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Linking the writing and planning process: for me, it is important to be writing scenes from a story &lt;strong&gt;while&lt;/strong&gt; I plan the overall plot. If I don't, I still lose my feel for reality and plan stuff I can't write. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4751" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T00:28:49.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10994" CreationDate="2014-07-24T03:22:51.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of good formatting is using good fonts. I recommend the fonts &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/family/itc_weidemann_itc/All/All/Bestsellers/4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Weidemann&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/paratype/octava&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Octava&lt;/a&gt;, which were designed for use in bibles and are good for large volumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6784" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-08-10T13:57:59.210" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T13:57:59.210" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12451" CreationDate="2014-07-24T11:55:36.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you already have a completed manuscript, you are putting the cart before the horse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you intend to use an agent, you'll need to see what that agent requires, which is usually a query--outline, sample chapter, synopsis, and so on. Most agents (and publishers) no longer need or want the manuscript in paper format. Each has differing requirements (usually triple-spaced). But a query differs significantly from the completed manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a variety of books on manuscript preparation, and you should consult them; but you should first determine what the agent/publisher requires. The most important element is to finish your work. Leave everything else until your manuscript is complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10194" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T11:55:36.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12365" CreationDate="2014-07-24T15:00:34.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were writing it, I might include some descriptions of the physical process - using flash cards, reading books, labels in Japanese stuck on the refrigerator - as well as descriptions of how the language becomes clearer in the character's mind. For example, she might overhear (and you might show) spoken Japanese regularly that starts out as gibberish, then has a few intelligible words, then phrases, then misheard things, and finally makes sense. She might find herself beginning to substitute Japanese words for words in her native language, and she might dream in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her learning Japanese should illuminate who she is or move her toward her goal. Is she determined? Diligent? Is she a dreamy type who wants to speak the language, but struggles with doing the actual work? Does she show off what she's doing, or hide her book in a cover while she studies on the bus? Does she take out her mother's diary and get a little further every time toward understanding why she disappeared so suddenly in 1963? Figure out why you need to show her learning the language, and it should fall into place.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10195" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T15:00:34.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12460" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-24T19:46:54.757" Score="1" ViewCount="101" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to write a story in which the sun has essentially gone out and visibility is constantly limited, and sometimes completely gone. Being a very visual person, I'm finding it hard to describe things in a way that keeps the reader's interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sole source of help I am drawing on so far is a sequence in &lt;em&gt;Rhapsody&lt;/em&gt; by Elizabeth Haydon where the main characters travel through the core of the planet, most of the time in complete darkness. I feel like it is very well written and interesting, but I think I could be helped by more examples of such sequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody have some memorable or notable sections of such stories they could point me to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10115" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T20:24:39.090" Title="Best blind sequence?" Tags="|technique|resources|description|setting|inspiration|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-07-24T21:51:11.260" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12460" CreationDate="2014-07-24T20:24:39.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not just put a blindfold on and walk around your house for a few hours? Take notes into a recorder or a voice note app about what you're feeling, thinking, smelling, hearing, about whether other senses have sharpened, if you're slowing down, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the children's book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0140364854&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Follow My Leader&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is quite good about showing how a previously sighted boy adapts to blindness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T20:24:39.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12462" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12463" CreationDate="2014-07-25T02:45:03.670" Score="0" ViewCount="1162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that money isn't a good reason to write, but I am wondering if writing as a new author is even profitable anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes a book successful? It seems less that it is the story or prose and more &quot;Oprah's Book Club&quot; or some other major publicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See: 50 Shades Series...horrible books from what I have heard (never read for myself), yet they made the author massive amount of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10166" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T10:54:43.940" Title="Is writing even profitable" Tags="|money|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-07-25T14:33:17.090" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12462" CreationDate="2014-07-25T10:54:43.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Profit&quot; is simply &quot;bringing in more money than you spent to create/achieve X task.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you bake cookies, and the ingredients and stove fuel work out to cost you 15 cents a cookie and you sell them for 25 cents a cookie, you've made 10 cents profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; question is whether you can &lt;em&gt;live&lt;/em&gt; on those profits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the entire batch of cookies, how much does the 10-cents-a-cookie add up to? How long did it take you to bake the cookies? What is your time worth? What did you not do while making those cookies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the same with anything else. Yes, you can write a novel. How long will it take you? What did you not do while writing that novel? How much will it cost to publish? After you sell a copy and subtract the publication costs, what's left?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even writers with contracts from publishing companies may struggle to live on the profits (the royalties) if the book isn't a gangbuster (and really, how many are). So you may &quot;make a profit,&quot; but you have to figure out if that profit will pay your bills while you spend all your time writing the next one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T10:54:43.940" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12464" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-25T15:57:40.963" Score="-2" ViewCount="889" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished &quot;The House of the Seven Gables&quot; by Hawthorne.  I was struck by how often he switched tenses.  Mostly the narration was in past tense, but then he would switch to present or even future tense.  Sometimes the tense would change for a sentence or a paragraph; other times it would change for a whole chapter.  It was a bit jarring, since it's hardly ever done, to the point where it is almost an iron-clad rule.  (As in: Any competent editor or English teacher will always mark it wrong.)  But it worked well the way Hawthorne did it in this novel.  This set me thinking (and here's the question): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are some (other) great examples where authors of novels successfully break the &quot;rules&quot; for writing?&lt;/strong&gt;  (And of course, what was the broken rule?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean rule-breaking once in a blue moon, for dramatic emphasis.  I mean a lot -- multiple chapters, or the whole book.  And I'm restricting this to novels, because short stories are much more experimental.  And by &quot;successfully,&quot; I mean that the novel sold well and is fairly well-known.  Also, I'm not necessarily asking for a list of ground-breaking novels, which broke &quot;rules&quot; that once seemed important but no longer stand.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example would be &quot;Slaughterhouse-Five&quot; by Vonnegut.  (For a variety of reasons!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T17:57:12.903" Title="Examples of Successful Rule-Breaking in Novels" Tags="|style|creative-writing|rules|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ClosedDate="2014-07-26T01:56:50.023" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12466" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-25T17:55:17.473" Score="3" ViewCount="380" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I submitted a manuscript for a children's book to a publisher, they expressed an interest but wanted me to improve the style and cadence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The syntax and cadence would possibly work well in an oral retelling of the story, but on paper, they seem to be awkward and stilted in parts.  The narrative's tone seems inconsistent -- in some parts formal and old-fashioned, in other parts too casual and modern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea of what techniques or method of writing I can implement. Are there any universal suggestions for style and cadence when composing a children's fable for the ages of 6-10? Should a casual, modern tone be preferred over an older fashion? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publisher I cited is very strict about exercising their right to have option over submitted materials, so I have to be careful about presenting excerpts. In any case, here are some small passages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The little squirrel begged and pleaded for the buzzard. He even offered up his mother, stating she was a whole lot fatter than he and could last him 3 meals. Too bad for that little squirrel though, that old buzzard was concerned about what was easiest and not who was the fattest. That was how he became the best hunter in the bird world. The little squirrel was so disappointed and hoped to be eaten by a “more amazing bird.” That old buzzard was offended when he heard that the squirrel or anyone else could think there was a more amazing bird than he.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“A bird more amazing than I,” the buzzard was also curious. “Oh, yes, yes. I saw an eagle once that was swifter than the fishes of the sea and could catch as many as 7 mid-air with one swoop and I was just amazed to see it fly. I bet 6 of the feathers from your marvelous feathered mane could do it all the more better.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Oh mighty buzzard, please do not despair. I know of one more challenge you can manage right over here. I once saw a falcon so fast that it flew between the jaws of an alligator but I am sure you could do that twice but be careful, those old alligators have never been known for being nice.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This time, that old buzzard pulled it off. He was able to dive, not passed through, the jaws of not one but two alligators but, it was close; so close the the air from the clack of the alligators' teeth nearly caused him to tumble mid-air. Right then and there he knew it was his time to bail but that poor buzzard, he did not notice the alligator's tail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10199" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T17:54:37.087" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T17:54:37.087" Title="Suggestions for revising style and cadence within a children's book" Tags="|technique|children|tone|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12464" CreationDate="2014-07-25T17:57:12.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I could suggest the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0451454499&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Water!&lt;/em&gt; trilogy&lt;/a&gt; by Gael Baudino, but it's not well-known and I found the experimental format exhausting. Still, Your Mileage May Vary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the three books (&lt;em&gt;O Greenest Branch, The Dove Looked In, Branch and Crown&lt;/em&gt;) she kept switching not merely narrator and POV, but the entire narrative style: parts were standard narration, then parts were being told by a marketing guy as he was getting mugged, then parts were a stone-cutting manual which was increasingly crossed out and being used as a religious text.... I guess in the end the story was told, but it was kind of painful after a while. And I &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; loved Baudino's other works (The Elven series, &lt;em&gt;Gossamer Axe&lt;/em&gt;), so this was a letdown for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T17:57:12.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12471" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-27T07:13:49.940" Score="0" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those days mining in the depth of the earth of West Virginia have pushed out the flamy spring that had lain dormant deep beneath since my first day on Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this convey the image of a spring of flame pushed out of my heart into open air, overflowing like a spring flowing along the mountainside, hillside or whatever slopes down: a sign of passion now active and ready to take on whatever the world throws at me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what about the style, grammar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5800" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-07-29T06:16:08.013" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T06:16:08.013" Title="Does this image convey bursting passion and confidence?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12472" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12477" CreationDate="2014-07-24T23:05:08.387" Score="17" ViewCount="22313" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do competent authors, in a refined and perhaps (slightly) formal way, refer to themselves without saying &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;? I've seen the term &quot;this writer&quot; somewhere. How is it with a native? Are there other terms that are a little bit more formal and delicate than &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11127" OwnerDisplayName="Itsme" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T19:49:41.607" Title="How do expert writers avoid using &quot;I&quot; when they have to refer to themselves in their article?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12472" CreationDate="2014-07-24T23:13:47.413" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Competence precludes finding oneself needing to mean &quot;I&quot; but having to say &quot;this writer&quot; - or, variously:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the author&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your correspondent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this ink-stained wretch (please, no!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TBH, the form hardly matters - silk purses and sow's ears, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10208" OwnerDisplayName="Ben M" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T23:13:47.413" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12472" CreationDate="2014-07-24T23:14:02.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This writer&lt;/strong&gt; is correct. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exercise has many benefits. Proponents of exercise find there is a large variety of exercise options to fit different lifestyles. Barack Obama goes running in the morning. Jane Doe attends a weekly dancing class. I myself do press ups and stomach crunches in between writing stints through out the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer can remove the first person perspective by replace 'I myself' with 'this writer'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exercise has many benefits. Proponents of exercise find there is a large variety of exercise options to fit different lifestyles. Barack Obama goes running in the morning. Jane Doe attends a weekly dancing class.This writer does press ups and stomach crunches in between writing stints through his writing day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14366" OwnerDisplayName="dwjohnston" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T23:14:02.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12472" CreationDate="2014-07-25T02:50:06.613" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many competent writers will challenge the assertion that &quot;the perpendicular pronoun&quot; (I) really needs to be avoided. Others seem to believe that only third person is acceptable, or that no person should ever be mentioned unless specifically talking about people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own take is that this is all a matter of style, and whatever you pick -- as long as it sounds natural and you're consistent about it -- is probably fine. If I'm writing for my employer, I'll follow my employer's style guidelines. If I'm writing for publication, I'll follow the publication's preferences. If I'm writing without those constraints, my writing is generally only slightly more formal than my speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8125" OwnerDisplayName="keshlam" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T02:50:06.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12472" CreationDate="2014-07-25T09:39:12.010" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In science, it is quite common to use &quot;we&quot; instead of &quot;I&quot; even if there is only one author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10212" OwnerDisplayName="painfulenglish" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T09:39:12.010" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12472" CreationDate="2014-07-25T17:40:19.773" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use of pronouns like &quot;I&quot; and &quot;me&quot; in a narrative will tend to cast the writer as the protagonist.  Use of other forms such as &quot;yours truly&quot; or non-reflexive &quot;myself&quot; tends to cast the author into a &quot;supporting character&quot; role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose someone is writing about Mr. Smith's performance in a chess tournament and, after saying &quot;In round one, Mr. Smith played against Alec Jones&quot; and describing his performance in that round, went on to say &quot;In round two, Mr. Smith played against me&quot;.  A reader might expect the description of the round to be focused on the writer, rather than on Mr. Smith.  If instead the text had been &quot;In round two, Mr. Smith played against yours truly.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people cringe at non-reflexive usages of &quot;myself&quot;.  I personally don't find them objectionable when used in either the imperative or passive voice, with the purpose of suggesting semantic equivalence between the person writing or speaking and others.  For example, if Mr. Smith asks people &quot;Please submit reports to Mrs. Robinson, Mrs. Jones, or to me&quot;, that would suggest that submissions to him would be perceived differently.  Using the non-reflexive &quot;...or to myself&quot; would suggest that the set of people to whom forms may be submitted includes him, but he has no special significance within that set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though the non-reflexive &quot;myself&quot; is often useful, there are many places where it just doesn't work, especially with the active voice, or when used with verbs that would be amenable to reflexive usage.  For narrative situations, &quot;yours truly&quot; is concise but effective; it conveys no implication that the character in the story were affected by the fact that they would later be written about.  By contrast, &quot;this author&quot; implies that the writer's status as an author was significant to the events described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's important is to recognize that there are many ways an author can refer to himself, and usage of forms other than simple first-person pronouns is not merely a matter of being &quot;cute&quot;, but often carries somewhat different meanings and implications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10206" OwnerDisplayName="supercat" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T17:40:19.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12472" CreationDate="2014-07-25T20:29:07.473" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the writer is truly an expert, then they refer to themselves so enigmatically that they set the 2000-year-old standard for how to subtly promote oneself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciple_whom_Jesus_loved&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciple_whom_Jesus_loved&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3419474" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T20:29:07.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12472" CreationDate="2014-07-25T21:13:53.553" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to depend on the context, and even more so on the type of writing.  Some answers have addressed it, it's strange that none have aggregated different scenarios where one would want to avoid referring to oneself directly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In journalism, it's generally frowned upon to use &quot;I.&quot;  I've seen many cases of &quot;your correspondent&quot; in most of the articles I read.  &quot;Your author&quot; is also possible, though maybe not so much for journalism.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In most scientific cases, authors sometimes avoid using a reference to themselves entirely by using the passive voice.  I found that this is common &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monash.edu.au/lls/llonline/writing/arts/sociology/2.3.1.xml&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In other academic scenarios, many do use &quot;I&quot; but I've seen many research papers which use &quot;we&quot; even when referring to the single author.  Mathematic proofs, for example, always say &quot;we know that...&quot; or &quot;we can see from ... that...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's always good to do a bit of research on the particular scenario in which you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="George Capote" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T22:05:03.340" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12472" CreationDate="2014-07-26T09:47:24.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two main contexts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The author of the work is also relevant to the subject under discussion. Then the author should use the third person and a name. &quot;Reports must be submitted in triplicate to both Itsme and Steve Jessop&quot;. &quot;Mr. Jessop has responsibility for X, whereas Itsme handles Y&quot;. It might matter which of us wrote that text, we might have collaborated on it. Someone who cares can check the top of the document, but it's not relevant to the matter at hand, so let's not mess about identifying professional responsibilities relative to authorship of the document.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The author wants to personalize the authorial voice. This generally isn't what you want in formal writing, but might be done from an excess of ego or an excess of honesty that you're writing a personal opinion or experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, assuming you want to avoid &quot;I&quot;, then you say &quot;the author&quot;, &quot;this author&quot;, &quot;this reviewer&quot;, &quot;this observer&quot;, and so on. Identify the role whose point of view you're trying to inject. So for example a journalist who attended a political event might first lay out the facts in the usual way, and then mention &quot;this observer&quot; when giving a more subjective view: &quot;Following the speeches a fistfight occurred, but this observer was unable to determine who started it&quot; makes clear that even to those in the room it was not necessarily obvious what was going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you should want to avoid &quot;I&quot; at all is probably outside the scope of the question, but personally I think it depends in large part on whether you think the reader knows or cares who is addressing them. Extreme case, a newspaper report with no by-line shouldn't use &quot;I&quot;, because the reader can't know who that is even if they want to. Even with a by-line, a reporter's style avoids it. An opinion piece has a lot more scope to use &quot;I&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8477" OwnerDisplayName="Steve Jessop" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T10:13:59.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12472" CreationDate="2014-07-26T13:09:56.050" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use &quot;I&quot; all you want. I was taught the same thing in school: &quot;don't use &quot;I&quot; because of whatever&quot;. That's total BS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't already, read &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Journey to the End of the Night&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; by Celine, one of the best books in French literature. You'll see how you can write a masterpiece not just using &quot;I&quot; everywhere, but also making intentional grammar/syntax errors in every other sentence!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: the book is translated from the French at Project Nutenberg, for free...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user83260" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T13:09:56.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12472" CreationDate="2014-07-26T22:58:53.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the work has a list of references, then refer one can refer to the reference as if referring to any one else's reference.  As an alternative, one can refer to the name of the content of what they want to reference instead of using the attribution of the content's creator (ie, &quot;I&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dmitry Rubanovich" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T22:58:53.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12471" CreationDate="2014-07-27T16:54:28.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, my first read, I thought the spring was a real spring in the Earth, like a geiser, because right before you're talking about real mining. Maybe try something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those days mining in the depths of West Virginia have released the&#xA;  flamy springs that had lain dormant in me since my first day on Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6535" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T16:54:28.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12471" CreationDate="2014-07-28T02:54:46.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like @elburz, I also thought the spring was a real spring in the earth. However, the real point of confusion for me was that I would &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; readily identify a &quot;flamy spring... dormant in me&quot; as a sign of overflowing passion. I feel to properly get this idea across, more elaboration would be needed, a la:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those days mining in the depths of West Virginia have released something that had lain dormant in me since my first day on Earth. Like a spring of flame, it leaped out of my heart into the mountain air, invigorating the world and filling it with passion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, so the last phrase is pure invention and you could definitely say it better, but you get the idea. I made the first sentence focus on the &lt;em&gt;release&lt;/em&gt; of the feeling, and the second sentence focus on the feeling itself. The last phrase is meant to describe some specifics of how the feeling is transforming your view of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10099" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T02:54:46.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12486" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12487" CreationDate="2014-07-28T04:58:44.800" Score="5" ViewCount="1068" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can a novel have a twist at the end? Sure, a short story can be well written towards a not-so-obvious twist, but a 200+ page novel...can you suddenly whip it around at the end and change the ending just enough to surprise the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10166" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-04-25T05:45:34.037" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T05:51:06.240" Title="Can novels have twist endings?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12486" CreationDate="2014-07-28T07:14:53.433" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Novels frequently (usually, even) contain plot twists. The thing is, a twist in a novel is very different from a twist in a short story. You can make a twist &lt;strong&gt;the core of a short story&lt;/strong&gt;, the one element that gives the whole work its theme and meaning. A good example is short horror fiction, where many (many many) stories rely on a surprise ending to &quot;push home&quot; the reader's horrified reaction a la &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EarthAllAlong&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;It was Earth all along&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Murder mysteries of the &lt;strong&gt;whodunnit&lt;/strong&gt; type are also expected to contain an element of surprise -- the identity of the killer. A reader who is unsurprised by the ending of a mystery is &lt;strong&gt;a disappointed reader&lt;/strong&gt;. Most novels, however, rely on a certain back-and-forth between reader and narrator. Readers require certain reassurances, which vary by style and genre. In order to be effective, a surprising ending must be somewhat &lt;strong&gt;obvious in hindsight&lt;/strong&gt;. Solid example: any of the first three &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; books, arguably the later ones as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A twist in a novel has to have a narrative purpose. That's why &lt;strong&gt;twists belong in the middle of the book&lt;/strong&gt;, and only rarely near the end. If you put a twist about two thirds of the way in, it can be used to show that things are getting worse for the protagonist. Example: betrayal by a major ally. The very end of the book is meant to be somehow cathartic -- unless it's actually the first part of a longer story. Example: &lt;em&gt;A Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt; with its by now famous death scene.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-04-25T05:51:06.240" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T05:51:06.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12471" CreationDate="2014-07-28T07:21:23.970" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a contradiction in the visual imagery. &quot;Flame&quot; and &quot;spring&quot; are not very compatible as metaphors for emotion. A spring is not generally a very fierce body of water, unlike a raging river or a maelstrom or whatnot. Visualizing a spring erupting is a little odd, to me. I could see a bubbling spring of cool, fresh water being &lt;em&gt;contrasted&lt;/em&gt; with a steaming geiser as metaphors for different types of love. As it stands, though, the narrator sounds confused about both love and geology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T07:21:23.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12472" CreationDate="2014-07-28T09:33:16.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the natural sciences, the use of the personal pronouns &amp;quot;I&amp;quot; (for one author) and &amp;quot;we&amp;quot; (for two or more authors) is perfectly fine. In fact, you &lt;strong&gt;must use&lt;/strong&gt; these pronouns, if you refer to yourself!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example the Manual (2009) of the American Psychological Association clearly states (pp. 69-70):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Attribution.&lt;/strong&gt; Inappropriately or illogically attribution action in an effort to be objective can be misleading. Examples of undesirable attribution include use of the third person, anthropomorphism, and use of the editorial &lt;em&gt;we&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third person.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; To avoid ambiguity, use a personal pronoun rather than the thrid person when describing steps taken in your experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Correct:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;We reviewed the literature.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Incorrect:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The authors reviewed the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anthropomorphism.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; Do not attribute human characteristics to animals or to inanimate sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Correct:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The staff for the community program was persuaded to allow ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Incorrect:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The community program was persuaded to allow ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An experiment cannot &lt;em&gt;attempt to demonstrate&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;control unwanted variables&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;interpret findings&lt;/em&gt;, nor can tables or figures &lt;em&gt;compare&lt;/em&gt; (all of these can, however, &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;indicate&lt;/em&gt;). Use a pronoun or an appropriate noun as the subject of these verbs. &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;we&lt;/em&gt; (meaning the author or authors) can replace &lt;em&gt;the experiment&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Editorial&lt;/em&gt; we.&lt;/strong&gt; For clarity, restrict your use of &lt;em&gt;we&lt;/em&gt; to refer only to yourself and your coauthors (use &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; if you are the sole author of the paper). Broader uses of &lt;em&gt;we&lt;/em&gt; may leave your readers wondering to whom you are referring; instead substitute an appropriate noun or clarify your usage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Correct:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As behaviorists, we tend to dispute ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Incorrect:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;We  tend to dispute ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fundamental rule of all APA syle are &amp;quot;precision and clarity&amp;quot; (p. 68):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&amp;quot;Make certain that every word means exactly what you intend it to mean.&amp;quot;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also this post in the APA Style Blog: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/09/use-of-first-person-in-apa-style.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Use of First Person in APA Style&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T09:39:35.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12491" CreationDate="2014-07-28T11:13:40.983" Score="5" ViewCount="4581" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to write a stressful situation for a character (specifically she's about to be injured) and I'm trying to convey her terror at the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My usual trick is to use short snappy sentences and shut off the analytical side of her mind and only focus on what she can see and hear but I'm not very happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques can I use to express her terror of her impending injury to the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8373" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T14:44:52.010" Title="What techniques can be used to describe a character's terror?" Tags="|fiction|description|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12490" CreationDate="2014-07-28T14:44:52.010" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of the &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt; you're writing (as opposed to techniques like staccato sentences), a good starting point (or a way to reinforce your existing prose) might be doing some research into the symptoms of panic attacks and anxiety disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Symptoms like a pounding heart, involuntary shaking, profuse sweating, a loss of breath, nausea, dizziness, and fleeting shivers all paint a physiologically accurate picture of someone going through a terrifying trauma. On top of that, you get the added bonus of a reader being able to relate to these symptoms on their own (everyone's had shivers or shakes, right?), but rarely all at once. If you can effectively put the character's terror into feelings your reader can feel and empathize with, they'll be just as terrified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2907" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T14:44:52.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12466" CreationDate="2014-07-28T20:12:28.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a few problems here. One is basic command of grammar. You have run-on sentences, weird dialogue attributes, and just outright incorrect sentence structure. You need a proofreader before anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other, as the publisher pointed out, is that you go back and forth from &quot;artificially antique and formal&quot; (&lt;em&gt;Oh, mighty buzzard, please do not despair&lt;/em&gt;) to casual and modern (&lt;em&gt;Too bad for that little squirrel, though&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;This time, that old buzzard pulled it off.&lt;/em&gt;)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either you are trying to tell a modern story or you are pretending to relate an old fable. Pick one and make everything that style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formal: &quot;Oh mighty buzzard, please do not despair.&quot; &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Casual: &quot;Hey, big guy, don't worry &amp;mdash; I bet I know one more trick you could do.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formal: This time the great bird met with success. &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Casual: This time, that old buzzard pulled it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T20:12:28.947" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12494" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T03:35:46.403" Score="2" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on some unpublished texts that cover a period of over ten years and many thousands of pages. These texts need to be distilled into key ideas that ideally would be available as a kind of &quot;top layer&quot; document--with the original, more lengthy source document available as a &quot;link&quot; on another layer. Likewise the ability to have another layer of commentary would be very useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if anyone can suggest software that can handle this. It is a non profit project so a team of volunteers would be using the software. I have been looking at the outlining feature in Ms Word and also Scrivener but wondering if there are any other suggestions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps scholars who work on very long documents or translators may have some experience with this kind of challenge. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10227" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T22:43:48.893" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T23:39:11.253" Title="Looking for software that can create annotation/outline layers" Tags="|software|tools|outline|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12494" CreationDate="2014-07-30T12:50:02.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gimp is a good software for this, so is Dia, and also OODraw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a link: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openlogic.com/wazi/bid/285446/Image-annotation-in-GIMP-Dia-and-OpenOffice-Draw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.openlogic.com/wazi/bid/285446/Image-annotation-in-GIMP-Dia-and-OpenOffice-Draw&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OODraw is part of the Open Office Suite, so just google that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're meaning creating annotations and layers when writing then just find a tutorial online; but Open Office has some good templates for their writer software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10229" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T12:50:02.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12497" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12498" CreationDate="2014-07-30T15:25:04.660" Score="4" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to write stuff like this a lot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(dialogue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They remained silent for a while.&lt;/strong&gt; “Where is my mind” by Pixies was now&#xA;  playing in the background. Eri stared at her palm beneath the Heineken&#xA;  neon sign next to her. Its light made her skin look greenish, like&#xA;  that of a traveler from a far away civilization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(dialogue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(dialogue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The room fell silent.&lt;/strong&gt; An ambulance could be heard at the distance. Its sound grew&#xA;  louder and louder, then gradually faded into the silence of the&#xA;  night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(dialogue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I added the &lt;strong&gt;bolded&lt;/strong&gt; part was to make the transition between dialogue and action smoother. Are they unnecessary? Would it be better if I write this instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(dialogue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The background song changed to “Where is my&#xA;  mind” by Pixies. Eri stared at her palm beneath the Heineken neon sign&#xA;  next to her. Its light made her skin look greenish, like that of a&#xA;  traveler from a far away civilization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(dialogue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(dialogue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The siren of an ambulance blared in the distance. Its sound grew louder and louder, then gradually faded into the silence of the night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(dialogue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the actions imply (or give the feeling) that there is a pause in the dialogue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T14:56:47.980" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T14:56:47.980" Title="Is it unnecessary to mention that there is a silence in the following cases?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12497" CreationDate="2014-07-30T17:30:05.660" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to indicate that they've stopped talking, you should do so. There are many ways: you could spell it out as you have, or you could describe their actions, indicating that they are doing something and not talking. In your first example, Eri stares at her palm, but it's not clear if she is doing that &lt;em&gt;while&lt;/em&gt; talking or &lt;em&gt;instead&lt;/em&gt; of talking. In your second example, there is almost nothing to indicate the passage of any time, but a careful reading would let you guess that at least enough time went by for that ambulance to pass. That takes, what, a few seconds? Maybe a minute if they're in a quiet place and can hear the ambulance from far off - but in such places ambulances often don't use their sirens because there's no need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd say you need to put &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; there to define the silence, if it's important to you that there be one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T17:30:05.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12494" CreationDate="2014-07-30T17:35:36.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your needs are basic:&#xA;1) low cost&#xA;2) collection of documents&#xA;3) links between them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then it sounds like simple HTML files could do the trick. But if you want more, you could consider storing documents in something like Google Docs. You can add links to other Google docs within a document and Google Docs keeps track of revisions made. It also has basic formatting and outlining capabilities, and supports more and more document types as they improve the product. You could register with Google Apps for Business and set up a central repository, or else you could just use a single Google account and share the documents to whomever you feel needs access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T17:35:36.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12497" CreationDate="2014-07-31T14:56:11.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The[y] remained silent for a while. “Where is my mind” by Pixies was now playing in the background. Eri stared at her palm beneath the Heineken neon sign next to her. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this first case it is redundant, as the rest of the text implies the silence between them already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The room fell silent. An ambulance could be heard at the distance. Its sound grew louder and louder [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this second case it is useful to show that they were not interrupted by the sound, but heard it because the room fell silent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10235" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T14:56:11.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12510" CreationDate="2014-08-01T07:56:37.240" Score="2" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote the following for a poem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the candid sky of hope,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A glittering light was shown,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Darkest of the clouds danced along,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In a beastly hourly moan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, there is the usage of metaphors. But the readers don't get easily what is being said here. How can a metaphor be better formed and to what extent can they be used, while you want to convey something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8857" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2014-08-03T12:31:49.133" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T14:11:55.223" Title="Usage of metaphors" Tags="|poetry|metaphor|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10812" CreationDate="2014-08-01T20:43:10.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not quite sure what you're asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you mean, Can I legally put some words on the cover of my book that say that the material is not suitable for children? I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be surprised if there's any country in the world that says you are not allowed to do that. I can't imagine someone saying, &quot;It's okay to publish a book with this highly sensitive material as long as you DON'T warn people that it may not be appropriate for children.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you mean, Can I use a specific symbol or logo invented by someone else? I would check with the inventor of the symbol to see if they are claiming trademark protection on it, and if so if they will agree to let you use it and under what circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe possibly you mean, Will putting a warning on my book protect me from laws in my country against publishing potentially offensive or disturbing material? That would be very specific to the laws of your home country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or possibly you mean, Am I REQUIRED to put such a notice on my book? Again, that would depend on the laws of your country. Where are you from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T20:43:10.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12518" CreationDate="2014-08-02T03:59:06.433" Score="-1" ViewCount="196" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I write school papers (Essays and projects) I try to make it as succint as possible. I'll say this is my preferred style of writing. Compared to other students that like writing explicit write-ups.  I want to inquire if it really matters if my school papers are as long as those other students? Will I get as much marks as those that wrote explicitly if we both cover the listed points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10246" LastEditorUserId="10246" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T18:36:53.850" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T04:16:00.337" Title="Writing succintly. Does it matter?" Tags="|academic-writing|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12573" CreationDate="2014-08-02T04:47:33.960" Score="7" ViewCount="24825" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually I just use the synonym suggestions at dictionary.com (or its tie-in site thesaurus.com) but it's pretty lame. Most of the synonyms it suggests are basic and well-known words I already know. In the interest of writing novels, for instance, sometimes it's nice to be able to sprinkle in those more rarely used words to make the writing a little more artful, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To that end, what's a good online thesaurus that might be able to help me expand my vocabulary or find words I might not normally think of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8077" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-11-03T18:20:34.280" LastActivityDate="2017-10-26T19:49:00.043" Title="Where can I find a good online thesaurus?" Tags="|tools|thesaurus|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12505" CreationDate="2014-08-03T01:40:41.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally prefer a physical thesaurus for research... there's just a feel to it when crawling through topical sections I have not found online -- searching for a word online is just not the same as trolling through the sections and getting led along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1911 version of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.roget.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Roget's Thesaurus&lt;/a&gt; is online and searchable. Being 100+ years old now, it could serve to provide the words you don't already know.  I'd, of course, be careful about using antiquated words more likely to cause confusion than provide clariy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9914" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T01:40:41.003" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12509" CreationDate="2014-08-03T11:13:48.267" Score="9" ViewCount="1607" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a book with the particular twist that between chapters it switches the point of view. For example, in the first chapter it is from the main character's point of view, then in the second chapter it is the sidekick's point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would I introduce the sidekick in that second chapter? I want people to know it is from a different point of view, but how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10250" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T06:43:06.023" LastActivityDate="2017-05-13T02:09:39.140" Title="How should changing the point of view be handled?" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12508" CreationDate="2014-08-03T12:31:26.920" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Label the chapters with the character names. George RR Martin does this at the top of every chapter of his monolith books, since he easily has a dozen POV narrators per book. No muss, no fuss, crystal clear. Roberta Gellis did the same thing in her &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B007MXQTN0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Fires of Winter&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;/a&gt; and Patricia Briggs does it in her most recent book (which is mostly from the first-person POV of her main character but has two chapters from the POV of her husband, and those two are headed &quot;Adam&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T12:31:26.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12501" CreationDate="2014-08-03T14:11:55.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's another question about &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5583/creating-metaphors-in-poetry&quot;&gt;quick&amp;amp;easy creation of metaphors.&lt;/a&gt; But that's not really what you're asking. You've asked a very difficult question, essentially a question that is at the core of &quot;How to write good poetry?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no single good recipe to writing good poetry. I can give you a few tips and guidelines, but it's to each poet to find their own way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First thing is about striking balance between triviality and obscurity of a metaphor. The metaphor should elicit a vivid imagery firmly bound with its subject, and serve more than just obscuring the meanings - it should bring forth the traits the poem tries to focus on - and still, it should be distant enough from the subject you write about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the outer layer of your poem: light in the sky, rumbling of storm clouds. I don't understand what it tries to tell me. What is &quot;the candid sky of hope?&quot; If you write just about the sky, this confuses the reader into thinking &quot;candid sky of hope&quot; is a metaphor meaning something quite different; they look for hints as to what it means and find none. All the rest refers just to meteorological phenomena. Then, if it's &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; about the sky, then this is not really a metaphor, it's a try at description, that, due to weird wording looks like a metaphor. If you wanted to write a metaphor about the sky, you'd use &quot;infinite valut&quot; or &quot;blue canopy&quot;, not alliterate the name 'sky'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your poem doesn't name its subject, then, like in a riddle, provide multiple hints. Try to make sure metaphors are recognizable to be metaphors - simple phrases. If you're not sure, how - use similes. &quot;[plain name] like [metaphor]&quot;, to focus on a specific trait without obscuring the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for goodness sake, stick to one level of metaphors. If you write about subject X, pick any number of metaphors, each related to subject X. But don't use any meta-metaphors - which relate to metaphors related to subject X. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T14:11:55.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12508" CreationDate="2014-08-03T20:09:08.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lauren Ipsum has one suggestion. There are dozens of ways to do it. For example, you could simply start Chapter 2 with &quot;His sidekick did not agree. Michael Fisher dumped the cheap beer over the cobblestones and went for his knife.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We the reader now know we're in the sidekick, Mr Fisher,'s POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But like I said, there are many many ways of doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8034" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T20:09:08.883" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12508" CreationDate="2014-08-03T23:28:46.210" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter what else you do,&#xA;make sure you do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly distinguish the sidekick's personality from the main character's.&#xA;Different attitudes.&#xA;Different &quot;voice,&quot;&#xA;such as diction or accent or sentence structures.&#xA;Different level of education.&#xA;Different background.&#xA;Different opinions about everything.&#xA;Different desires and agendas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then write from within the sidekick's personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do both of those things,&#xA;readers won't have trouble distinguishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to give readers additional cues,&#xA;you can label the chapters,&#xA;as Lauren says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or use James Patterson's trick:&#xA;Write the main character's viewpoint scenes in first person,&#xA;and other characters' scenes in third person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But never rely &lt;em&gt;solely&lt;/em&gt; on chapter labels or first/third person&#xA;to orient the reader.&#xA;You still need to make the viewpoints distinct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T23:28:46.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12513" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-04T02:13:28.743" Score="4" ViewCount="4833" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started sending my synopsis and cover letter out for my first novel about a month ago. In that time, 3 publishing houses responded that they were interested in reading my manuscript, and will get back to me &quot;in due time.&quot; 1 publishing house said that they are &quot;full&quot; at the moment but that they still want to look at my manuscript. And the last house read two sample chapters and requested the full manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how long does it take for publishing houses to respond to the ACTUAL manuscript? I have had fast turn around for the cover letter and synopsis, but just wondering what I should brace myself for in terms of response to the whole manuscript. I definitely don't want to get my hopes up, expressing interest in a manuscript and liking it are two entirely different things. But I am thinking if they responded quickly to my query, won't they respond just as quickly if they actually liked my manuscript?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks as I have never done this before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10256" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T06:56:35.497" Title="How long does it take publisher to respond to requested manuscript?" Tags="|publishing|novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-04T10:15:23.183" Score="5" ViewCount="778" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my main writing projects centers around a character rich with vices. Probably chief among them is self-interest, followed by dishonesty. When I say dishonesty, I mean more than lying to get by. This character is close-lipped about her past, goes by a false name, generally attempts to distance herself from her personal history. Readers are introduced to this character as she's living under a persona which she has constructed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A major plot point involves her constructing a new persona in much the same way. Other major characters react to this in various ways, not all of them negatively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like I might have bitten off more than I can chew. I'm familiar with characters creating new identities (link to TV Tropes redacted), mostly as part of a villainous transformation. This is an idea I'm trying to play with, but I wish to present it in a less binary way. Shortly: the humble, virtuous identity is not less or more authentic than the grandiose, power-grabbing one that replaces it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a character like this too complicated, too alienating? Does she require some measure of genuine backstory in order to function effectively as a disingenuous manipulator? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T16:27:26.273" Title="Handling an Inauthentic Character" Tags="|technique|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12514" CreationDate="2014-08-04T10:37:55.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think any character is ever too complicated. Some may be alienating to more &quot;mainstream&quot; readers, but that only means you shift your target audience to more ambitious readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, of course, everything happens for some reason. The character being that way is a result of a certain backstory. That backstory must exist, and be consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, whether the backstory exists locked forever in your drawer, is merely hinted in the book, or just revealed through some confession or reminiscence, is your decision. In case of a character so complex, personally I'd choose to drip small hints along the way, building the complete backstory as the book goes - it's something that has enough flavor to keep the reader's curiosity piqued, keep them wanting more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not giving out the backstory would be a waste - because backstory of a character so complex is bound to be interesting. Still, even if you decide to keep it hidden, keep it fleshed out - YOU need to know what makes the character tick, what fears, motivations, disappointments, dreams, vengeance twisted a person's personality that far. If you skip it, you'll have a much harder time fleshing out the character and keeping the motivations consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T10:37:55.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12514" CreationDate="2014-08-04T11:05:44.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If &quot;the humble, virtuous identity is not less or more authentic than the grandiose, power-grabbing one that replaces it,&quot; then both those (apparently contradictory) sets of characteristics exist in the same person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to figure out how that's possible. Her backstory is critical to that. Did she grow up as the child of a monastery's charwoman? Was the monastery headed by a Cardinal Richelieu type? Was the monastery run by kind, humble monks who were eventually destroyed by a powerful political leader who adopted her as heir? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just riffing here, but my point is the same as SF's: for one person to hold such contradictory personalities but have them both be authentic, she has to have had a complex life. Whether the change is caused by internal or external factors, you as the author must account for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My feeling as a reader is that if I can't &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt; why she can be Polly Pure and then flip over to Killer Katrine with a sidebar of Emo Emily along the way, I'm going to think that you as the writer don't know what you're doing, and I'll abandon the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other things you have to think about while you're constructing this backstory: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If her Polly Pure self is authentic, but she takes on multiple other&#xA;personae to hide her past, does she hate that Polly Pure self? Does&#xA;she look back on her innocent past with contempt?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does she keep changing personae for other people (that is, so they&#xA;don't know who she is) or for herself (because she can't stand to&#xA;look at herself in the mirror any more)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is she protecting with the constant changes? Whose past is she trying to conceal? Could she be trying to keep her past secret because revealing it would reveal someone &lt;em&gt;else's&lt;/em&gt; past or secret?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could she have multiple personality disorder? (you just don't see enough of this in fiction, AFAIC.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the &lt;em&gt;reader&lt;/em&gt; supposed to think of her various personae? Are we supposed to like them all? Sympathize with them? Is there a persona we shouldn't like? feel sorry for?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T11:05:44.133" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12514" CreationDate="2014-08-04T16:27:26.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To a large extent, whether a character is plausible or implausible depends on how well you justify it in the story. I've often read stories where I find myself saying, &quot;Oh come on! Why would he do that?!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It occurs to me that the more common problem in fiction is that characters are too simple rather than too complicated. I've read lots of stories where I say, &quot;Oh brother, you can describe every character in this story completely with one sentence. He's the 'idealistic young man who can't deal with practical realities', or 'the villain who will stop at nothing in his pursuit of power', or 'the young woman who constantly puts herself in danger for no apparent reason and has to be repeatedly rescued by the hero', etc.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the nature of the story and how central this character is, you may be able to justify her behavior with two sentences of explanation, or the whole point of the story could be to explain how she came to be this way. As long as you give SOME explanation, and it's at least reasonably plausible. Like, don't just say &quot;because she had a rough childhood&quot; or &quot;because she's crazy&quot;. But if you briefly said that, say, when she was a young woman she wanted to do X, and she lived in an environment where everyone around her hated X, and so she had to put on a façade her whole life, and she became accustomed to telling others what they wanted to hear and hiding her true feelings and so .... That might be enough to make me believe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T16:27:26.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12504" CreationDate="2014-08-04T16:46:11.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being concise is certainly a worthy goal. If you can convey an idea in 300 words that someone else takes 3000 words to express, that's a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if what you write is very short that might mean that you don't have very much to say, or that you didn't do the research to get all the relevant information, or that you didn't think through all the implications of what you're saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no way anyone can say, &quot;The ideal length for a history paper is 20 pages&quot; or whatever number. Like if you wrote a paper on the proper pronunciation of the name &quot;Caesar&quot;, I'd probably be bored if it went more than a paragraph or two (though I'm sure there are linguists who could debate the subject for hours). &quot;The Roman Empire&quot; is a subject about which people have written many many books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a class room setting, usually you are given a target length. If the teacher says you are to write a 20 page paper, then I would turn in 20 pages. If I found that I could only get 10 pages of material on my subject, I'd broaden it, and if I was on page 50 and still going, I'd narrow the focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T16:46:11.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12519" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-04T18:38:04.880" Score="3" ViewCount="3810" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to write an escape scene in a fantasy novel. My problem is that I've spent a fair amount of effort explaining what a dire predicament my hero is in, and now I don't know how to get him out. All my latest tries have involved someone else rescuing him. I need him to escape by himself. How can I do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In my specific case, it's a forester and an elf who have been captured by Werewolves and are about to be delivered to the Goblin King. I'm asking the question in general, but using this situation in your examples would be great.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10263" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-08-10T11:19:32.740" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T09:07:54.467" Title="My Hero is captured, now what?" Tags="|fiction|plot|fantasy|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12519" CreationDate="2014-08-04T20:45:40.250" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What strengths does he have? What weaknesses do they have? Especially, hidden, non-obvious, difficult to trigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all up to you, foreshadowing given strengths and weaknesses, and letting them shine when the time comes. There are countless. What weaknesses can be exploited? Gambling? Ambition? Greed? Gluttony? Stupidity? Arrogance? What strengths can be employed? Cunning? Obnoxiousness? Confidence? Kindness? Wisdom? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Game them against each other, and then think of the scenario to employ them. Maybe a trade - be it real, or a trick. Maybe a challenge they won't refuse. Maybe just skill of stealth and subterfuge. Maybe a song so annoying they throw the prisoner out, unable to suffer him any longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know your story, and neither should I - it's your story and it's up to you to decide upon what to write and how to write it. I'm here just to offer a help - don't start from the very bottom - events of daring escape. Start higher, at what makes the characters tick, and how the protagonist is stronger than the enemies. Once you know the strength, pick the method of using it, and with the method write the events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T20:45:40.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12519" CreationDate="2014-08-04T23:28:36.957" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless your hero's enemies are all intensely stupid, he and his companions will be totally unarmed, and will have been carefully searched for anything valuable.  Really, unless your goblins are nobler than those in most stories, readers will expect goblins to take everything from their captives.  Your hero can't pull a lockpick or a poisoned pin from the seam of his coat or sole of his shoe, because he has no coat and no shoe.  He's wearing goblin rags (if that).  So, that's your hero's big problem.  You've put him in a corner with no way out.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or does he?  Your hero's bad situation is also your hero's opportunity.  His enemies assume he is now helpless.  Naturally, being lazy goblins, they're not going to guard him too closely.  Now is the time to reveal that he soaks his hair in poison, or that he knows a couple magic spells, or can talk to moths (!), or can control weak minds (especially drunken ones).  Or has a pixie in one lung.  (THAT's why he's been short of breath!)  Perhaps also now would be the proper time for him to tell his companions that he PLANNED all along to get caught, because that was the only way to get to the Goblin King, and that he is, in fact, a walking time-bomb.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem for you, the writer, is to put a twist on this age-old formula.  In real life, of course, the hero would just die.  That's often how RL is: good people die, ignominiously and needlessly, for no good end.  The bad guys win.  But that makes for a lousy story, unless your story has multiple heroes so that one or more is expendable.  Assuming you don't want to kill off this guy, you have to think of a way to save him that readers won't expect but also won't reject.  You both need and don't want a &lt;em&gt;Deus ex machina&lt;/em&gt;.  So, after you've saved your hero with this totally unexpected twist, you have to go back (like Mac Cooper said) and set it up in the earlier part of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T23:28:36.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12522" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12525" CreationDate="2014-08-05T01:52:06.567" Score="2" ViewCount="427" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eri, did you feel the earthquake that night?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Are you sure your apartment's alright? &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In which planet where you when it came? &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Is reality and the world you know still the same?*&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Satisfied,&lt;/strong&gt; Erin dropped her pen. &lt;strong&gt;Not bad.&lt;/strong&gt; At least something good had&#xA;  come from the earthquake. Unfortunately, the poem wasn’t helping her&#xA;  to understand the mystery. On the contrary, it did nothing but raise&#xA;  more questions. &lt;strong&gt;This had never happened before.&lt;/strong&gt; She felt as though she&#xA;  was fighting with a mutant vine; the more she cut the more it sprang&#xA;  up again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Erin continued eating her breakfast...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I put that &lt;strong&gt;satisfied&lt;/strong&gt; there to avoid having two consecutive paragraphs starting with Erin, and the &lt;strong&gt;this had never happened...&lt;/strong&gt; so that the paragraph flows better (a short sentence among many long ones), same with the &lt;strong&gt;not bad&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do this kind of stuff a lot. Is it a bad writing practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T08:18:56.717" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T15:23:38.437" Title="Is it a bad practice to add extra words/phrases just to add rhythm/make the text look smoother?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12523" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-05T06:28:45.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The exact definition of science fiction is controversial. Generally, if what's happening in the story is impossible, but explained by scientific principles, it will qualify as sci-fi. &quot;Hard&quot; sci-fi focuses on strict extrapolation from contemporary scientific theories. &quot;Soft&quot; sci-fi is more apt to use hand-waving science in order to move the plot forward. Social sci-fi focuses not on technological advancements, but on the social, political, and ethical implications thereof. If the impossible things in your story are only explainable by magic, toddle over to the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/fantasy&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;fantasy&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;fantasy&lt;/a&gt; tag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2018-10-08T21:37:44.010" LastActivityDate="2018-10-08T21:37:44.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12524" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-05T06:28:45.363" Score="0" Body="Stories about space, technology, the future, and other things that could be real but aren't. " OwnerUserId="9960" LastEditorUserId="9960" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T00:23:17.873" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T00:23:17.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12522" CreationDate="2014-08-05T07:54:34.703" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although you are writing prose, not poetry, your text must still have rhythm for it to be pleasant to read. Adding words or rearranging the syntactic structure are good and common ways to create that rhythm. I think, your text reads better with the bold additions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rhythm aside, I also think that the additions add meaningful content. Knowing that Erin was satisfied and thought she did well makes her character and her behavior more rich and interesting to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T07:54:34.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12534" CreationDate="2014-08-05T08:42:59.947" Score="5" ViewCount="8702" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm toying with a scenario however it's crucial to the plot that the murder doesn't know they're guilty and has to work with their friends to try and solve the murder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably set in the real world, maybe historical possibly fantasy but I'd rather keep this element as real world as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've thought about drugging, the &quot;criminal&quot; being blind drunk or taking a whack to the head but it strikes me all of these would leave some sort of evidence which could tip off the guilty party (hangovers/injuries). I'm really hoping to build that &quot;Oh - it's me!&quot; moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I arrange a murder without tipping off the murder that they are the criminal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8373" LastEditorUserId="8373" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T13:22:30.357" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T13:22:30.357" Title="How could a criminal forget a crime?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="21" ClosedDate="2014-08-06T18:08:32.000" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12519" CreationDate="2014-08-05T09:44:32.163" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possible routes to escape (they can be combined):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Luck - the captors make a mistake, or something completely unexpected happens that the hero can exploit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preparation - the hero, knowing that capture was possible or imminent, prepared something (a tool, spell or ally) that would help him escape.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowledge - the hero knows what the captors want, need or fear, and can use that against them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Charm - the hero negotiates with or sweet-talks the captors into releasing him. May take the form of a bluff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Connections - the hero knows someone the captors respect or deal with. Or maybe one of the captors knows &lt;em&gt;him&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4225" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T09:44:32.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T10:26:21.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe this is part of the plot of the movie (spoiler below)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Memento&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;although I'm going on the Wikipedia summary, as I've never seen it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read at least one sci-fi short story (dystopian future) where criminals went to a black market memory wiper and had their memories erased. The criminal became a different person; that &quot;person&quot; isn't the one who committed the crime. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I suppose the post-wiped person could become a detective who specializes in cold cases, and she eventually comes across a murder which is starting to sound naggingly familiar but she can't put her finger on why... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T10:26:21.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T10:31:09.063" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head, solmnambulation and memory-impairing drugs are probably the easiest and most probable. Human memory is somewhat frail. In real life this generally impacts the accuracy and availability of memories, but yes, under the right circumstances people can fail to remember having done something. Many things affect memory, and with a little research I'm certain you could find at least ten scenarios that I'm not even thinking of right now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am working off of the assumption that you're not interested in trauma-related memory suppression. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Sleep-walking&lt;/strong&gt; is not uncommon, and people who sleep-walk are able to perform all sorts of complex actions while immersed in slow-wave sleep. Look up homicidal sleepwalking on Wikipedia, it's a hoot. As a bonus &lt;strong&gt;some medications can cause sleep-walking&lt;/strong&gt; as a side-effect, including a certain popular insomnia aid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Certain drugs can cause memory loss or poor memory formation. One such is &lt;strong&gt;GHB&lt;/strong&gt; which has gained some notoriety for its use in date rape. It's also occassionally found to have been used in cases of mugging and the like, and it can be difficult to detect. There are certainly other drugs that affect memory, too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Just in case, there is always the possibility of &lt;strong&gt;post-traumatic memory loss&lt;/strong&gt;. In fiction (especially movies) one commonly finds this trope in conjunction with hypnosis. Memory repression hearkens back to Freudian psychoanalysis. This choice has a strong whiff of pop-psychology, and hypnosis therapy in particular is &lt;em&gt;highly&lt;/em&gt; controversial. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully these options can give you something to chew on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T10:31:09.063" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12519" CreationDate="2014-08-05T11:15:47.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Werewolves or goblins? Which one captured him. Perhaps just say the werewolves are bounty hunters and the bounty was to bring them alive to the goblin king. I don't consider werewolves to be the merciful types so there needs to be a reason they didn't just eat the heroes outright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10273" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T11:15:47.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12552" CreationDate="2014-08-05T11:44:20.103" Score="3" ViewCount="1909" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been running a film reviewing blog (hosted on Blogger.com) for around 4 months now, as the sole author. I would like to increase the amount of people reading my reviews if possible, and as such I always post links to new reviews on my Facebook and Twitter accounts. I already use Hashtags to try and help my Tweets reach a larger audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other ways to promote my blog? I would really like to increase the audience I am reaching, preferably for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As requested, my blog is &lt;a href=&quot;http://screennerds.blogspot.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://screennerds.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10276" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-08-17T11:24:10.797" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T12:05:02.360" Title="How can I better promote my film review blog?" Tags="|marketing|blog|reviews|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12519" CreationDate="2014-08-05T12:41:36.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;He'll have been carefully searched, sure, but that might not be enough to find everything. And a good idea when hiding something, is never do - always hide two things, because when one gets found, they usually stop looking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character of mine (with a reputation for low cunning, but not exactly intelligence) was captured. Before leaving, his captor gloated that she'd found his set of lockpicks strapped to the inside of his kilt. (The 'obvious foreigner=stupid' assumption was something he'd made use of before.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After waiting a while to make sure his captor had left, the character stuck his fingers down his throat, and threw up. This produced (apart from the obvious) a small, sealed plastic capsule (of a size difficult to swallow, but not impossible), and inside was a length of serrated wire wrapped around two finger grips. (A flexible saw.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A funny moment came shortly after, when the captor tried to use the lockpicks for an unrelated task, and they snapped. This led to her finding out they were fake lockpicks (he'd originally bought them from a joke novelty shop), so he couldn't have used them anyway, even if he'd known how (he didn't have a clue about how to pick locks) and been capable (he was hamfisted and fairly clumsy) anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10277" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T12:41:36.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T12:56:19.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is your story based in the present day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned Poirot which is of course based during WWII.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story based in the past as well, you could maybe work medicine into this, specifically medical practices which used to be valid and have since been discredited as harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe your character thinks they are helping the victim by providing a certain medical treatment, the victim dies, the coroner asserts that they have been poisoned, and then the main character sets out to track down the perpetrator, only to find out it was them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5011" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T12:56:19.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T13:11:31.740" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you search &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; for scientific publications on the matter. For example, Porter, Birt, Yuille and Hervé (2001) list several publications that report real cases of perpetrators forgetting that they committed homicide or other extreme violence. This is the abstact for that paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mental health professionals and legal decision-makers often hear reports of memory&#xA;  impairment from both perpetrators of extreme violence such as homicide (e.g., Kopelman,&#xA;  1995; Roesch &amp;amp; Golding, 1986; Schacter, 1986a), and from complainants and eyewitnesses&#xA;  (e.g., Loftus, 1993). Adult complainants, for example, have testified about their recovery of repressed memories for a violent incident(s) following a lengthy period of amnesia (e.g.,&#xA;  Loftus, 1997; Porter, Yuille, &amp;amp; Lehman, 1999). Although these two types of cases differ in the timing of the memory loss (current vs. historical), both require a consideration of the validity of dissociative amnesia. Dissociative amnesia refers to amnesia for a traumatic (and, in this context, criminal) experience which has a psychological origin. Whereas dissociative amnesia refers to a process of forgetting following a traumatic experience, a&#xA;  dissociative state refers to an altered state of consciousness occurring during a traumatic experience. Dissociation is the more general term referring to the separation of any normally integrated psychological processes, encompassing both dissociative amnesia and the dissociative state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there is more than that, this was on the first page of search results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Porter, S., Birt, A. R., Yuille, J. C., &amp;amp; Hervé, H. F. (2001). Memory for murder: A psychological perspective on dissociative amnesia in legal contexts. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 24(1), 23-42. Available online at &lt;a href=&quot;http://forensicpsychiatry.stanford.edu/PAU/memory%20for%20muder.pdf&quot;&gt;http://forensicpsychiatry.stanford.edu/PAU/memory%20for%20muder.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T13:11:31.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T13:51:02.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plot of Angel Heart, he was effectively reborn when he sold his soul&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He commits the murder by accident, e.g. he wonders what a switch does, flicks it nothing happens. That causes someone to be electrocuted outside (but with a few layers of indirection)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Time travel, he hasn't killed him yet&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Something dangerous laying around that without thinking he tells a child to just get rid of, that child posts it through the neighbours letter box, e.g. peanut butter, allergic reaction follows&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Similar where he tells someone to 'just take care of it', later he finds that the person took care of it by cutting power to a building, the building hosts life support (e.g. a criminal will leave a building so cutting power stops the lifts, he's lazy so won't go out)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10280" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T13:51:02.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T13:56:49.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some bacterial/viral diseases have been known to affect the formation of new memories (see the famous case study of Clive Wearing).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a character is yet unaware of their diagnosis, and things in their life start &quot;slipping through the cracks&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lack of attention promptly after an event can also interfere with the formation of memory. Perhaps something startling happens to the character exactly after or even during the fatal event. This is a little far-fetched unless the killing itself is somewhat accidental or even incidental, as such a powerful emotion (associated with committing a major crime) would dominate one's attention.  But for example, someone could &quot;bump&quot; something on the road, be concerned about it, but before checking up on the matter receive a phone call from one's mum.  Two weeks later the character hears about a hit and run and finally realizes it was that fateful bump. Quite a moral dilemma here whether or not to turn oneself in. Perhaps the character calls back her mum to see if she remembers anything notable from the time of that call--looking for clues/salvation/deniability. What a taught conversation that would be. hth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10281" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T13:56:49.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T14:52:43.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I might suggest the idea of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-fugue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fugue states&lt;/a&gt;. While more commonly caused by drug or alcohol abuse, they can also be caused by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3841600/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;epileptic seizures&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My father experienced Grand mal seizures and if he had a seizure while no one else was around, was sometimes found later with no memory of the seizure or the time before or after it. Later in life, when he was on a number of heavy medications to address them, he specifically began doing (or attempting to) dangerous things directly after a seizure (like standing in front of an oncoming train believing that he was impervious). He had no conscious memories of any of his activities or even his seizure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4775" LastEditorUserId="4775" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T14:57:46.473" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T14:57:46.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T15:28:40.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;2 ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was a planed murder (poison/trap/bomb) and the Character interupted the plan... and unknowingly triggered the Dead condition .. prepared by somebody else.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;taking poisoned drink to some one else..  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;detonated a bomb with a phone call..  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dropped a banana .. and 2 minutes after, someone behind him broke his neck...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Just work out a nice chain of events.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.This is bit cooler: Commiting a crime by NOT acting.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; - a friend calls &quot;It is urgent please tell me...&quot;, &quot;sorry dude no time for this now I'm at work&quot;. Two days later you get  the news your friend is dead ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA; - &quot;Son please go to see the old lady next door, she asked for some help&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10283" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T15:28:40.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T15:29:52.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say that making the character drunk wouldn't work because there'd be evidence, e.g. a hangover. But so what? If someone woke up with a hangover, he'd know he'd been drunk, maybe he'd realize that he didn't remember anything he did the night before, but it would be quite a leap from &quot;I was so drunk I don't remember what I did last night&quot; to &quot;I must have murdered someone&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ditto various other drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of a brilliant detective being a drunkard or a drug addict seems a little out of character to me, but you could always come up with a reason why this one time he did something out of character, like an extreme personal problem. Or someone deliberately drugged him. (Ooh, suddenly gave me an amusing idea: A woman wakes up to realize that someone has given her a date-rape drug. While she's trying to figure out just who did it and what he did to her, she finds out that while she was drugged, she murdered someone. Like, she's thinking she was the victim and then it turns out she was the criminal.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who have amnesia don't remember what they did. That's pretty much the definition of amnesia. You'd have to give some explanation for it -- you can't just say, &quot;oh, by the way, he had amnesia&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a science fiction story, you can always invent some machine that erases memories. Then you can introduce the machine early in the story and have it be a part of the plot way before you reveal that it was used on the detective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To follow up on someone else's suggestion: Is it necessary to your story for the hero to have deliberately killed the person? If not, then it could be some sort of accident and he doesn't realize anyone was killed. Ranging from &quot;I wonder what this switch does?&quot; to &quot;I thought I hit someone with my car in the dark but there's no sign of a body&quot;, like because the person was thrown somewhere that the hero can't see the body, or maybe he runs away and dies somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW saying this or that scenario would leave evidence: That would be a good thing, so there is some foreshadowing. You don't want to get to the final scene in the story and then with absolutely no warning say, &quot;And then he noticed that the glove found at the scene was a perfect match for the one glove in his own coat pocket. He suddenly realized that he himself was the murderer. The end.&quot; There have to be some clues building up to this point. An early scene where the detective has a period of time that he doesn't remember what he did, which is then explained away in some plausible manner, and then brought back at the end, if done properly could be a nice piece of foreshadowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T15:29:52.530" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T15:38:06.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen a similar scenario on the TV show House MD which goes like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A person sets up a situation where they bring the target into a situation that seems safe, however their unconscious adds in an element that they &quot;want&quot;, and turns out to be dangerous for the target, that in hindsight the person knew it was dangerous, but not at the time they made the decision - it simply wasn't on their mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10284" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T15:38:06.707" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T15:49:17.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going at a slight tangent, Derren Brown once convinces a man that he committed a murder (which he did not), and forgot about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The episode is called &quot;The Guilt Trip&quot; from the series &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-the-experiments/4od&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;The Experiments&quot;&gt;The Experiments&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He does this through conditioning and triggers to invoke a feeling of guilt. Everyone around him are actors and he uses them to start messing with his memory and make him doubt his own mind. Getting actors to change clothes when he's not looking, swapping food plates...etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He sets up a motive and then uses a drunken night and the triggers to convince him of the murder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10285" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T15:49:17.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T15:59:03.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let your character be a greedy, busy bounty hunter. He does everything as long as it is well paid. Murder, surveillance, investigation. All for money. He does not really cares about who he kills and who he helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guy deserves to end up inquiring into one of his own old murdering contracts!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10286" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T15:59:03.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T16:09:09.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_consolidation#Protein_synthesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Protein synthesis is required for memory consolidation&lt;/a&gt;, so you can use &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_synthesis_inhibitor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;protein synthesis inhibitor&lt;/a&gt; to block formation of long term memories in theory. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18054504&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gold. Protein synthesis inhibition and memory: formation vs amnesia (2008)&lt;/a&gt; for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10287" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T16:09:09.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T17:13:32.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sleepwalking, as many have mentioned, is one way to pull this off.  I also don't see why a night of heavy drinking is out of the question.  So they woke up with a heavy hangover and their shoes missing (or something) one morning--so what?  Especially if the character has a history of heavy drinking, this won't seem out of the ordinary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's another option: what if they do remember everything about the crime, but don't realize its significance until later?  In other words, the murder was a complete accident.  Perhaps the victim died in a fire, and your character only realizes much later that the fire was started by a cigarette they forgot to put out.  Like any detective story, the chain of events here can be as simple or as complex as you like, and it could give you plenty of opportunities to throw out hints and red herrings along the way.  Plus, it requires no supernatural elements, drugs, amnesia, sleepwalking, split personalities, or other unusual elements--just simple carelessness or ignorance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10083" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T17:13:32.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-05T17:37:02.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Recall_(1990_film)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Total Recall&quot;&gt;Total Recall&lt;/a&gt;  They simply have a machine that does &quot;memory implants&quot; and &quot;memory wipes.&quot;  Based on Philip K. Dick's short story &quot;We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slight spoiler, mostly from Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; Douglas Quaid is a construction worker who discovers that he is actually&#xA; a secret agent formerly named Carl Hauser.  He travels to Mars to&#xA; uncover his true identity and why his memory was erased.  Adventures ensue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worse spoiler, from me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; In the end, you are left wondering which person really exists.  Is the&#xA; spy Hauser only a figment of Quaid's imagination, and everything that&#xA; seemed to have happened on Mars only the result of a malfunctioning&#xA; &quot;vacation machine,&quot; exactly like his wife and friends were telling him&#xA; at the beginning?  Did Quaid reject his mundane real-life for a much&#xA; more interesting dream-life?  And if so, is he really worse off?   Or,&#xA; was part of the Mars adventure real, but the spy Hauser was only a&#xA; memory implanted by the bad guy into Quaid, to use Quaid to ferret out&#xA; the resistance, as the bad guy mockingly tells Quaid 3/4 into the&#xA; movie?  Or, is Quaid real, and Hauser was an implanted persona to&#xA; neutralize Quaid without killing him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T20:40:02.550" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T20:40:02.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12513" CreationDate="2014-08-05T21:29:53.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends upon the house that requested the completed manuscript. Did you check Writer's Market for the information? Most houses listed in Writer's Market give a general time frame for response to both queries and full manuscripts. Check that first. Most houses worth anything will provide that information up front. But, after waiting the time frame in Writer's Market, it is certainly not bad form to send a note to the publisher requesting an update on the manuscript status. By all means, continue to market your manuscript. Don't wait on a response. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10182" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T21:29:53.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-08-06T00:03:07.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;“If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.”&#xA;― Thomas de Quincey&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a book--the title and author of which I have utterly forgotten--where a ferry captain is involved in smuggling; he is bribed to contrive to bring a van aboard the ship without its going through Customs.  Halfway through the voyage (from the Netherlands to the UK, I think), he becomes convinced that the police at the destination have been tipped off.  Panicked, he stages a bomb-threat and has his crew push the van off the ship into the North Sea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, he learns that the van's cargo was illegal aliens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would something like that do?  The person is convinced to commit a crime, but one that he does not realize will lead to a death (a burglary of vital medication or medical equipment perhaps?)  At some point, he discovers the connection, which he cannot expose without condemning himself as an accomplice and co-conspirator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T00:03:07.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12548" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-06T00:44:20.027" Score="4" ViewCount="2074" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of writing a memoir covering several years of my life while I was at Google and working on the earliest versions of Chromebook.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goals are to write a book which is simultaneously non-fiction, information, and interesting to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most memoirs and autobiographies are written in a historical narrative style or published diaries.  Are there any examples of memoirs which diverge from this template? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a popular book about Microsoft's early days, Microserfs, was written as an epistle, although it was supposedly a non-fiction accounting of the events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would it be received if I wrote a non-fiction novelization of the events, rather than a historical narrative?  Most importantly, what other writing styles are available and are there any famous examples of such publications? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10299" LastEditorUserId="10299" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T03:48:59.450" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T10:27:07.677" Title="What are some creative memoir writing styles?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|biography|memoir|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12486" CreationDate="2014-08-06T01:26:27.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not opposed to twist endings, but consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A twist has to be earned.  Remember &lt;em&gt;The Sixth Sense&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;The Crying Game&lt;/em&gt;.  People loved those movies, because the twists made sense.  Compare the 2001 version of &lt;em&gt;The Planet Of The Apes&lt;/em&gt;.  At the end, Marky Mark finds himself in Washington DC at the Aperaham Lincoln Memorial.  Everyone was like, &quot;Huh?&quot; and wanted their money back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But remember, &lt;em&gt;The Sixth Sense&lt;/em&gt; was only two hours long.  The twist in &lt;em&gt;The Crying Game&lt;/em&gt; happened less than halfway through.  A book takes days, even weeks to read.  The reader puts it down, walks around, thinks about, even talks to other people about it.  Plenty of chances to see through your cunning plan.  Which means either&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your twist makes no sense and will just annoy your reader, &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your twist does make sense and your reader will therefore probably figure it out long before the Big Reveal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hey, maybe you are incredibly clever.  Be careful anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once was writing a book with a twist ending and started explaining the whole plot to my wife.  I got halfway through Chapter One (about two sentences in my summary) and she guessed the whole thing, twist and all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T01:26:27.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12504" CreationDate="2014-08-06T04:16:00.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Never &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; be afraid to edit. Bad writing is always full of unnecessary words and sentences. Take what you need to say and say it in as clear and concise a way as you can. Make no apologies for that. Any prof worth his salt will reward content, not length. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10301" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T04:16:00.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12508" CreationDate="2014-08-06T05:15:17.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once read a book I can't even remember the name of, Eternities End or some trite, it was terrible. Its one redeeming quality was that it was constantly switching between first person narratives of maybe half a dozen characters. They were only differentiated by the subtle differences in their diction (and other more obvious clues). At first it was a little hard to follow but in short order it became an exercise akin to discerning an accent (is that Scottish or Irish?) It was actually kind of a fun. It must of taken an awesome degree of control though because the shifts in voice were slight but very consistent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10301" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T05:15:17.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12531" CreationDate="2014-08-06T07:24:53.707" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Leave comments&lt;/strong&gt;: There are many film review blogs. Comment under their reviews. Like: &quot;Interestingly, we have really different view on quality of the movie. &lt;em&gt;some detail from your review&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw, The comments should be on topic, interesting and not bragging ones. Everyone hates &quot;hey, visit my awesome blog!&quot; comment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Do giveaways and promos&lt;/strong&gt; Do you have spare DVD? Did you get movie poster? Offer it to your readers! Obviously, giveaway rule is, that in order to win, you have to subscribe to the blog&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Socialize:&lt;/strong&gt; If someone left a comment, leave them a comment. If there is blogger waiting for the movie to be released in their country, offer them posting a review on their site. (With backling to your blog, obviously)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4) Socialize even more:&lt;/strong&gt; Share posts to Facebook and twitter. If there is some movie nerdy group, think about joining them and going to see a premiere together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And last but not least:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5) Make the text somewhat interesting.&lt;/strong&gt; I saw your blog, scrolled through it, and ... meh. Nothing catched my eye enough to actually continue reading. I see you saw the Guardians of the Galaxy. And I am totally hyped about seeing them in the cinema. Why should I read yet another article with totally boring title &lt;em&gt;Guardians of the Galaxy review&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ideas how to spice up the headlines (because, yes, they sell):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Guardians of the Galaxy will kick your ass&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Guardians of the Galaxy: Someone will almost die: You. Out of boredom.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Guardians of the Galaxy: The one movie to see before you die&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you steal Guardians of the Galaxy, you will make no harm to anyone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;11 of 10: Guardians of the Galaxy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one more extra:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6) Don’t be afraid to introduce your own rating system:&lt;/strong&gt; I personally use percentage system. Example: &lt;em&gt;Kickass Guardians of the Galaxy! (95%)&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;But you can be crative. Give your movie popcorn holders rating (how much popcorn are you going to eat while watching this), or bladder rating (how much will you want to pee during the movie)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, finally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have fun:&lt;/strong&gt; Show your readers movies are fun. Show them why they should watch totally shitty movie, show them your love for movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T07:24:53.707" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12508" CreationDate="2014-08-06T09:37:25.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first questions here are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Between how many viewpoints do you switch?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many changes in point of view are there?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For how long do you switch?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the purpose of the switch?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last question is the most important, because you can tell the exact same story without switches, from only one point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In her answer, Lauren Ipsum assumes that you are narrating the lives of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensemble_cast&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ensemble cast&lt;/a&gt;, where each character is equally important and has roughly the same time in the &quot;center of the stage&quot;. Dale Emery assumes that you are switching between one central and several minor characters. But there are other possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might tell a love story from the perspective of two protagonists that are easily distinguishable by their individual voices and concerns and easily identifiable because there are only two options.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might only switch once. For example, many crime novels start with a prologue from the perspective of the criminal or the first victim, and the rest of the novel is told from the perspective of the sleuth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might change the point of view only for a short paragraph or sentence, as Stephen King does.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and so on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these and the many other &quot;rhythms of switching&quot; must be handled differently, and how you handle them will be dictated by the &lt;strong&gt;purpose of the switch&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you want to show contrasting views of the same events, as in a two-viewpoint love story or legal drama (e.g. the movie &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rashomon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you want to create mystery and leave the reader wondering who it is that we see acting, as in a detective novel when we see the murderer doing things before we can identify him?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you tell the tale of a whole world over many generations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are as many ways to handle viewpoints and viewpoint transitions as there are novels. There is no recipe for this, rather it is an artistic decision that you must make according to your artistic vision.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most famous multi-perspective novels is probably William Faulkner's &lt;em&gt;The Sound and the Fury&lt;/em&gt;. Each of the four chapers is told from the viewpoint of a different person, but the chapter headings and first sentences do not tell us who the viewpoint belongs to. It takes the reader a while until he realizes the identity of the protagonist (in fact many of my class mates needed the teacher to tell them). This is not a shortcoming of this novel, but obviously the author's intention. I don't want to speculate on the purpose, others have done so and you may read up on their arguments, but it is clear that you don't have to label your sections, if you feel that your novel works better without them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One preliminary choice you'll have to make in this context is &lt;em&gt;if you want to change viewpoint at all&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I find that viewpoint changes tend to throw me out of the story. I have gotten into the character, am interested in his or her fate, and now I have to make an emotional and cognitive effort to get into the next person. And then back to the first person in the next chapter. And back and forth, all through the book. Which is why I seriously dislike action novels told from mulitple viewpoints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read George R. R. Martin's &lt;em&gt;A Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt;, I found that I began to skip over the chapters with different viewpoints to the next chapter told from the same characters's perspective. And near the end of the series I stopped reading those character's chapters that I disliked or found uninteresting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The viewpoint switches work in Faulner because there are only four chapters and those chapters are long enough to be read as complete tales unto themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure there are many people who love getting into many people's heads, but I am equally sure that I am not the only person who dislikes this. During my writing I have found that I sometimes want to switch viewpoints because it makes my telling of the tale easier. &lt;strong&gt;It is often not a choice that promotes my vision, but a choice based on laziness and a lack of ability.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure, before you think about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to switch, that you really need the switch to tell your story at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T06:41:32.690" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T06:41:32.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12554" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-06T10:04:35.323" Score="1" ViewCount="932" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a software developer and now i have to deal with a project regarding magazine editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure about the different hierarchies through which an article is passed and edited and the roles and duties of these hierarchies. Can anyone explain the process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10305" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T14:30:15.270" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T14:30:15.270" Title="The structure of magazine editing hierarchies" Tags="|magazines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12531" CreationDate="2014-08-06T10:18:09.737" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to add some things to the already great answer given by Pavel above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Have a Twitter box and Facebook box.&lt;/strong&gt; I want to follow you on Twitter or like you on Facebook, but you're not doing anything to help me. I have to search for your Twitter handle on Google and for most people that's just cumbersome. I can't even get to your Facebook page btw. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;Get a better blog theme&lt;/strong&gt; As it is, your blog theme is not inspiring me anything. Only the fact that you didn't bother to choose something beyond the default theme. You may want your writing to shine, but most people want bother to look for more, if the blog doesn't look appealing to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;strong&gt;Go beyond reviews&lt;/strong&gt; Writing about movies means more than just reviews. You can have a lot of fun compiling tops, like Top Ten Movies from the 90s, Top Ten Directors who Changed the World, Top 5 Moments from Avatar, etc. You can also post trailers, be excited by upcoming movies, talk about tv shows, movie character intervies. You should also retweet more about movies news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;strong&gt;Post more!&lt;/strong&gt; If you post just a few blog posts every month, you're not going to build an audience pretty soon. Your posts don't have to be long (right now your reviews are kind of long, about 1000), but they have to showcase your personality or your uniqueness. You should also study how other movie reviewing blogs manage to post daily and reproduce what they're doing in your own way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard maintaining a blog (I know as I'm trying to post as much as I can on my own), but you have to remember that if you don't put an effort, then nobody is going to give it a chance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10304" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T10:18:09.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12486" CreationDate="2014-08-06T11:11:22.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The bestselling genre novel features a protagonist on a quest. The novel either ends with the hero reaching his goal (if the hero learns his lesson and changes) or not reaching it (if he resists change and fails at his life task).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The novel begins with a &amp;quot;call to adventure&amp;quot;, and from this call the reader will know the goal of the hero. If the call is a murder, the goal is to catch the murderer. From the goal, the reader will know where the story is going: either the hero achieves his goal (catches the murderer), or he fails. This makes the end somewhat predictable: there are only two possible outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make the novel not boring, it must be open right until the end which of the two outcomes will be achieved. Since the reader has a 50% chance to guess the end from clues in the text, you really have to do your best to surprise him. This is done through plot twists: every time the reader starts thinking that he knows where the story will lead, he must be surprised. Therefore:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The reader must not be able to guess if the hero will suceed or fail &lt;em&gt;right until the end&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either the end is not what the reader expected, or it does not happen &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the reader expected it. In any case,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;the end must be a twist, or your end will bore the reader because he saw it coming.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Many novels of course have a denouement &amp;quot;after&amp;quot; the end: the hero returning home or Harry Potter married to Ginny Weasley nineteen years later. This has the purpose of completing the circular journey and tying up secondary story lines. When I say &amp;quot;end&amp;quot; in my argument above, I don't mean the last word of the text, but the end of the fight for the goal.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T11:11:22.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12554" CreationDate="2014-08-06T11:26:35.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sadly, best answer is: &quot;Depends on specific company&quot; I will describe you, how I do it in our little group of fandom newspaper which we publish just for fun:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Roles:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Head editor:&lt;/strong&gt; Agrees of content of the whole new edition (new issue of the magazine), agrees on timelines (who delivers what and when), is responsible for overall look and structure of the new issue. in our case also puts the final issue to the print&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Writer:&lt;/strong&gt; Writes the agreed content&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Editor:&lt;/strong&gt; Checks the content of the article. Fixes tpyos and grrrammmatycal isssues&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Process:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) All agree on what should be written&lt;/strong&gt; (Pavel doees the interview, Alice does the article on X and Bob delvers the funny story)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Writers submit they work for peer review:&lt;/strong&gt; Every writer submits their first version. Everyone then has a discussion about the article (Pavel, you should also ask about the hedgehog!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3)&lt;/strong&gt; Once peer reviewed, writer tweaks on their story and submits new version to peer review&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4)&lt;/strong&gt; Once everyone (or most of the group) agrees on the article is final, the article is sent to editor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5)&lt;/strong&gt; editor check the article for grammar issues and after finished, sends back to head editor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6)&lt;/strong&gt; Head editor puts all articles into issues and posts first version of whole magazine (PDF file) to peer review. Everyone checks for layout issues, left out typos and overall look and feel of the magazine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;7)&lt;/strong&gt; The whole magazine issue goes through tweaking and peer review once all (or most of the group) agrees on the whole issue is final.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;8)&lt;/strong&gt; new issue of the magazine is published&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Side note: We publish four issues a year, so we can afford having quite thoughtful process. And obviously, one person can have two or more roles&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T11:26:35.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12486" CreationDate="2014-08-06T16:31:20.090" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: Yes, and it can be done very well too. Take Ender's Game and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone as good examples. Note that they use foreshadowing in such a way that you don't realize what was going on until it's revealed, but when you do, it seems obvious, like you would have guessed it if you hadn't been too engrossed in the story to pause and mull it over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10308" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T16:31:20.090" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12370" CreationDate="2014-08-06T21:53:10.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some things you can do to soften the blow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resolve a major subplot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include the first chapter of boom two as a teaser after the ending&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release the whole series as fast as you can, if not all at once&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leave things unresolved but draw attention to what is resolved and don't emphasize the unresolved parts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show that your hero has a plan and is going to resolve things ASAP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce something new and fascinating for your readers to chew on while they wait&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't out the climax of the whole book on the page; put a climax somewhere in the middle in addition. To the cliffhanger so the book doesn't feel incomplete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan ahead so that the readers who come back for book two are well rewarded for their patience; don't pull a Sherlock and leave things ambiguous even after the wait&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10308" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T21:53:10.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12560" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-07T15:06:09.650" Score="7" ViewCount="442" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a sci-fi novel where some of the characters are computer hackers. In some of the conversations they use the term &quot;owned&quot; which has a broad set of meanings in English. So I wonder if I should write the word as &quot;pwned&quot; like most of the hackers would do in a chat session or an Internet forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No, I owned that server last month - said Kevin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No, I pwned that server last month - said Kevin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which should I use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10313" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T23:14:21.407" Title="Should I write Internet slang as it is spoken or as it is written?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12562" CreationDate="2014-08-07T17:11:21.303" Score="1" ViewCount="9756" Body="&lt;p&gt;My story is told by one of the characters and frequently uses the past tense when describing events. But occasionally I feel like some of the events should be told in the present tense, and I switch between the two. Does this as an example work? Is it alright to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Our guest grabbed a bread stick without asking, and as Jack, I now also wanted to get to know this stranger a bit better. “Thank you for taking away the burden of us having to order. What is your name?” I asked him. My guess is that it would have to do with either eyebrows or a hypnotized cat.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4969" LastActivityDate="2018-07-23T19:14:36.593" Title="Can I change between the use of past tense to present tense for the story being told by a character in first person?" Tags="|tenses|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12561" CreationDate="2014-08-07T18:01:25.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the yo-yo effect is jarring to the reader. This is even worse when it's character voice changing. Changing &quot;now also wanted&quot; to &quot;wanted&quot; and &quot;is that&quot; to &quot;was that&quot; is fairly minimal and an easier read. I don't believe it impacts your writing negatively to keep the tenses consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10316" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T18:01:25.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1861" CreationDate="2014-08-07T18:25:04.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using speech tags is alright. As a reader, I developed a sort of blindness for the word &quot;said&quot; and just track who said the line. No reader would complain about seeing too much &quot;said&quot;s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10313" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T18:25:04.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12564" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-07T18:30:19.310" Score="4" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a native English speaker and I have a hard time finding good words sometimes. Sometimes I feel like there should be an idiom for the thing I want to say, but cannot remember it correctly. For example, the case I'm struggling with currently is that I want to express a van door opening abruptly. I think maybe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The van door busted open&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The van door blasted open&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But none of those feel right. So I have two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there some resource on the Internet (or a computer program) where I could type &quot;door opening abruptly&quot; and get the related idioms if they exist&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on the door dilemma above?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10313" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T18:33:03.123" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T15:02:11.327" Title="Resource for idioms" Tags="|word-choice|tools|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12560" CreationDate="2014-08-07T21:24:38.420" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My general rule with slang is that if it's in quoted text (e.g. dialogue), it should be spelled colloquially (&lt;em&gt;pwned&lt;/em&gt;); otherwise, slang in prose should be written properly, when possible (&lt;em&gt;owned&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like if you had a southern hillbilly speaking with slang, you would probably quote him saying, &quot;He be talkin' like this'ur,&quot; but rarely would you write talkin' like this'ur outside of quotes. It's the difference his/her voice and yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This rule also has the added benefit of guiding pronunciation: as a reader I'd find it odd to find pwn in the middle of a paragraph, and someone like @Lauren Ipsum might worry how to pronounce it. In dialogue, however, it's been my experience that readers feel better about not knowing exactly how s'thin's sayed, and are free t'bring (or come up with) their own pronunciation for the words your speaker might as well be making up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2907" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T21:24:38.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12513" CreationDate="2014-08-07T22:41:13.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's my own experience so far. I started sending off queries and requested sample chapters to small but reputable presses (without an agent) less than a month ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, using both mail and email, I contacted roughly 20 houses. Out of those houses, 6 have read and approved my proposal, and requested/confirmed they will be reading my full manuscript. Another house said they do not publish works over 90 000 words, and if I ever chose to reduce my manuscript (nearly an impossible feat given my subject matter), they would be glad to review my full manuscript. And 1 more said they were full till 2017, but still wished me well and gave me a new list of publishers she thought might be interested in the manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am still waiting on response from the other guys, but given how fast the first few responded, I am not holding my breath.I did look up typical response times, but even they time the houses said they would take to process my proposal (6 months plus) was reduced to 2 days to 2 weeks to tell me they were considering my full. So, now I feel like if the houses like your work, they won't be sitting on it. Which makes me all the more anxious when I check my inbox and mail everyday to see if someone has read my manuscript yet! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10256" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T06:56:35.497" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T06:56:35.497" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12567" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-08T03:03:01.333" Score="3" ViewCount="735" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this question may be a little nit-picky I realize chapters do help the flow of a book, and, since I'm now plotting a novel, I figured it's a good time to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a non-lineary storyline, I've noticed two ways chapters are laid out; I think the best way to describe it is &lt;em&gt;dynamic&lt;/em&gt; versus &lt;em&gt;static&lt;/em&gt; chapter sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Static&lt;/strong&gt; chapter sequences I would describe as a round-robin approach to subplots. For example, if there are 3 subplots, each &quot;act&quot; will be broken up into 3 chapters, with the order of subplots constant with each act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A real-world example of this is &lt;em&gt;Burning Paradise&lt;/em&gt; by Robert Charles Wilson. When I was reading this the subplots were per-chapter to the point where it became annoying and monotonous for me. With this sequence, I see a few pros and cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pro: the reader is able to predict what chapter goes with with subplot so they're not having to guess for the first few paragraphs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Con: since chapters can control the flow of the story, the chapters may not coincide with the story flow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dynamic&lt;/strong&gt; chapter sequences go with the flow of the story. You may follow one subplot for several chapters while another subplot may get a chapter here and there (and, in most cases, they end up getting an equal share at the end of the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A real-world example of this (that I'm reading right now) is    The &lt;em&gt;Girl with the Dragon Tattoo&lt;/em&gt; by Stieg Larsson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For about half the book I was wondering if Salander was still alive (meaning she wasn't mentioned a whole lot). Pros and cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pro: the chapters follow the flow of the story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Con: The reader may forget about small sublots.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I using the correct terminology? Is my question too confusing? Thanks, in any case! :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10310" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T22:15:49.333" Title="Non-Linear Storyline: Dynamic vs. Static chapter sequence" Tags="|plot|flow|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12568" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12571" CreationDate="2014-08-08T04:00:40.693" Score="6" ViewCount="287" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a book about my three weeks of travel in Belize (is that even enough time for a book?), and I'm wondering how I can cover the first day and build a foundation without being boring. There were only a few interesting details at best on the flight between the here and Belize City, but I would like to include it to set a stage for the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I cover this time period skipping from place to place coherently and interestingly? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my first time trying to do any writing for my own benefit (not academics), all help appreciated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10319" LastActivityDate="2020-12-18T21:05:36.367" Title="How do I cover a lengthy time period with only a few interesting details?" Tags="|style|time-depiction|memoir|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12560" CreationDate="2014-08-08T06:29:08.823" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I strongly oppose drusepth's answer. Slang is &lt;em&gt;spoken language&lt;/em&gt;. Internet slang is &lt;em&gt;written language&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;You cannot speak it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about how you would speak to a friend. You are unable to say &lt;code&gt;pwned&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;l33t&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;n00b&lt;/code&gt; out loud. You will say &quot;owned&quot;, &quot;leet&quot; and &quot;noob&quot;. So, when you write a representation of spoken language such as dialogue you must use what the person would actually say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use internet slang in internal monologue and stream of consciousness, because, after all, you can &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; the literal representation of a word. So if your narrator is a /b/tard, he&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; would certainly use internet slang and not Standard English in his narration, i.e. &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; the dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; There are no girls on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, letters are not sounds, and we do not actually say &quot;noob&quot;, but (in IPA) /nuːb/. But since the overwhelming majority of readers do not differentiate between phonemes and graphemes but take the letters for the sounds and even &quot;hear&quot; the words as they read, letters are being used as the common representation of spoken language. &lt;strong&gt;Such a habitual and unconscious equation of letters and sounds does not yet exist for internet slang&lt;/strong&gt;, at least not for the general public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;strong&gt;if you write for a nerd audience&lt;/strong&gt; and publish in a nerd publication such as &lt;em&gt;Wired&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;if your text is heavily ironic&lt;/strong&gt;, you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; use internet slang in dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write for a non-nerd audience, do not forget to explain the slang you use in a note before, or footnote at, the beginning of the text. Just as not everyone in the world can read Lowland Scots, most people would understand &quot;pwned&quot; as a typo and not buy a book that is consistently misspelled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T06:46:32.010" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T06:46:32.010" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12561" CreationDate="2014-08-08T08:12:18.453" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as there are ever hard-and-fast rules in writing (which there aren't!) you should avoid switching tense within a paragraph or even scene unless the change is consistent. Just as you should avoid changing person mid paragraph or section. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any change that jars the reader pulls them out of the story. And any time a reader is pulled out there is a chance they won't bother to go back in.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example; in a scene in Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton, there is a scene where he changes person &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; time mid-section. He goes from a soldier walking up a beach being pelted with stones as he walks through the town, to a woman watching the soldier begin to emerge from the water and gathering stones to start throwing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the change is consistent it can be handled, particularly if it is clear why the change is happening, but if the change just happens it will be impossible for the reader to become accustomed to it. Every time I hit a change like this, whether it’s time, tense, person or even a consistency fail — a pipe becoming a cigar because the writer forgot the character was smoking a pipe — I’m thrown out of the world and back into my chair while I try to figure out what just happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Peter F. Hamilton’s one of my favourite authors, despite his faults, and I give him time and allowances I would not give an author I was reading for the first time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your example specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I now also wanted to get to know...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using &lt;code&gt;now&lt;/code&gt; in this context doesn't have to be a tense change, it can still be used in past tense, and simply adds a sense of immediacy to the moment without changing tense. On the other hand...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My guess is that it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is definitely present tense and is a sudden and jarring change. The edits that Aibrean suggests would be ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T08:12:18.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12568" CreationDate="2014-08-08T11:17:12.423" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to writing, you should not try to portray things as you have seen them so, because it would not make the readers interested in it if the things you describe are not special or unusual ones. Whether you go to the places that are special or not, The writing can make them special. Or you should show the readers how did you see, feel about that, and simultaneously why did you experience it in that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &amp;quot;when I was in the plane with merry mood awaiting for a spectacular touring experience. It happens in people's life when they are floating with boastful emotions, something will strike them with depressing and anxious memories of past. So as that it happened for me when I look at an air hostess who resembled like first love. It remembered me of how I was desperate for her. Still could not let, the feelings for her, go. In order to distract myself from emotional eruptions due to the memories of past, i look through the window and I was awestruck by the bird view about Belize.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just for namesake, I created a scene it can be vividly described in more elaborate manner. You describe a place in different perspective with metaphors or with interconnections with your past experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10323" LastEditorUserId="47470" LastEditDate="2020-12-18T21:05:36.367" LastActivityDate="2020-12-18T21:05:36.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12567" CreationDate="2014-08-08T13:28:44.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your terminology is fine, and I think either way might work depending on your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that we're left wondering if a character is alive may be quite deliberate on the author's part. Whether the reader is frustrated or writhing in suspense is, again, dependent on the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't object to the idea of making the reader work a bit at remembering subplots, and that also allows for a pleasurable subsequent re-read, as you go through remembering where so-and-so was and seeing how the author deliberately put that character to the side for the other plots to develop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you have enough subplots to make George R.R. Martin reach for a scorecard, then consistent scene cycling wouldn't be a bad thing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would lean towards what you're terming dynamic, because I think it will generally serve the story better, but the static structure could be equally effective if warranted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T13:28:44.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12505" CreationDate="2014-08-08T13:29:29.087" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordnik.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.wordnik.com&lt;/a&gt; seems to be the best online thesaurus, though one is presented with such a hailstorm of synonyms and near-synonyms and synonyms from divergent disciplines it can be rather overwhelming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used it for several years, but recently found a thesaurus called &quot;Artha&quot; that sits on the desktop and is spectacularly well-designed.  It's easy to find (just google &quot;Artha thesaurus&quot;) and there are many places to download it from.  I use it on Linux; hopefully it's available for other OS's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7892" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T13:29:29.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12574" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-08T15:10:19.613" Score="1" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always find myself using CTRL + F to remove the words/phrases I think I'm repeating too much (most of the time they are metaphors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the following passage, however, I'm not very sure whether the repetition is apparent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite my efforts to resist, I couldn't help catching a glimpse of&#xA;  her side boob. It poked out from her tank top &lt;strong&gt;like&lt;/strong&gt; a half sun.&#xA;  Needless to say, it gave me a massive erection, which I tried to hid by&#xA;  lying on my stomach and pretending I was looking for a good angle to&#xA;  blow on the fire. I hated that. It was &lt;strong&gt;as if&lt;/strong&gt; my entire life had&#xA;  consisted on hiding hard-ons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, a log caught fire, followed by the rest. It was very sudden.&#xA;  And in no time Paola and I had a display of dancing flames before us.&#xA;  Their warmth entered every pore of my skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You're pretty good.&quot; Paola looked genuinely impressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I used to do it a lot,&quot; I explained, &quot;when I was a kid.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I see. I think it's nice—having a skill.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Building a fire isn't a very useful one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's still nice, though.&quot; Paola gazed thoughtfully at the flames, &lt;strong&gt;as&#xA;  though&lt;/strong&gt; trying to find a hidden meaning in their glow. &quot;A skill that&#xA;  has nothing to do with money. I think it's more simple, more pure. And&#xA;  you do it just because you enjoy it. Sometimes we forget to do things&#xA;  just for the sheer pleasure of it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I'm overdoing this &quot;repetition deletion&quot; thing? (I use a lot of metaphors. So there are a lot of &quot;like&quot; and &quot;as if/as though&quot; in my writing. I picked this up from the Japanese authors I read, like Haruki Murakami and Yukio Mishima.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T15:41:19.040" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T15:48:02.287" Title="When does repetition start becoming tedious (especially metaphors)?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12568" CreationDate="2014-08-08T15:27:11.393" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might intersperse your travel with the basic history and geography of Belize (the interesting parts).  Pretend you (in your story) are reading a book about Belize, and skipping to the juicy bits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T15:27:11.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12574" CreationDate="2014-08-08T15:45:48.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a baseline I personally try to avoid repeating similar words and phrases in the same paragraph as a bare minimum. In this case the repetition isn't as obvious, (well, the fact that you bolded it makes it quite obvious, but still...) but you could probably get away with straight removing 'as though' in that last paragraph, and maybe even that first instance as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;as if&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;also as though&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   like something was actually so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of repetition, I don't think it's ever bad to check for repetition, just don't let it get in the way of your actual writing process (i.e. don't over-edit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second case, removing 'as though' leaves you with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paola gazed thoughtfully at the flames, trying to find a hidden meaning in their glow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She may not actually be trying to decipher their meaning, hence the 'as though', but the image is still there. Based on that, I as a reader get the sense that she has a thoughtful look on her face (you could also remove 'thoughtfully' from the first part). The image is still there, and in my opinion removing 'as though' only enhances it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first instance, removing 'as if' (and a little rewording) would leave you with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My entire life had consisted on hiding hard-ons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously it includes the 'feels like my life's about this' sense, but clearly your narrator is a young boy going through puberty (or older than that, even). I could believe that this would be a perception he might have or a statement he might make, however ridiculous it might sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10201" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T15:45:48.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12574" CreationDate="2014-08-08T15:48:02.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As soon as you use 'as if', 'as though' or 'like' you are leaving metaphor territory and heading into the land of similes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally think simile-light writing is more dynamic, more exciting, funnier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;...poking out from her top, a glorious, golden half-sun, about as perilous to idle gawkers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I was scared to think of the hours I'd wasted in my life concealing erections.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Paola gazed into the flames, searching for some hidden meaning in their bright, hungry tongues.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always think a like or an as if signals half a thought, a lack of commitment to lyrical writing. I think this may be a personal point of view however. Similes are something that can definitely be overdone however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T15:48:02.287" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12560" CreationDate="2014-08-08T23:14:21.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can try to avoid the Internet spelling of things, and it'll come out a little more formal, but I think the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. Consider: &quot;noob&quot; and &quot;n00b&quot; actually mean slightly different things, and &quot;newb&quot; is something entirely different! You lose meaning by conforming to a formal style. Admittedly, the interlocutor is hearing it and doesn't know for certain which one is in use, but they* have the tone and inflection, so it's only fair that we, the readers, should get the letters (and numbers) in their true form. You have the artistic license to use whichever spelling best conveys the meaning you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pwn is a tricky case. It's not uncommon to hear hackers (and company) pronounce the &quot;P&quot; in &quot;pwn,&quot; especially in Pwnie Express, but also in general use. (DEF CON is this weekend if you want to ask around, our you can just take my word for it.) Using a &quot;P&quot; better expresses your character's roots in the Internet, and using an &quot;O&quot; better conveys how your character is pronouncing it. I don't think the pronunciation is actually a solid factor, though. After all, you say &quot;tomato&quot; and I say &quot;tomato,&quot; but they're both spelled T-O-M-A-T-O because they're both red fruitgtables that taste good slathered across a pizza. If pronunciation were any basis for spelling, Americans would write &quot;wader&quot; and &quot;rondayvoo.&quot; As a computer scientist, my recommendation is to keep the &quot;P.&quot; Merriam-Webster may not include &quot;pwn,&quot; but it doesn't quite include the Internet definition under &quot;own&quot; either, and where that definition is concerned, &quot;pwn&quot; really is the correct spelling, no matter how it's said. And finally, if nothing else, it adds some flair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Don't believe everything 4Chan tells you about females. In fact, don't believe anything 4Chan tells you about females.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10308" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T23:14:21.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12522" CreationDate="2014-08-09T15:23:38.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't agree that the sentences you added are just padding. They have inadvertently given us some insight into the character. The rather bold statement &quot;This had never happened before&quot;, tells us something about the character. She is precise and determined and expects positive outcomes. Maybe she has become accustomed to her way of thinking and problem solving but this is different. Now she has a challenge. It's such an insignificant line but I've managed to get a small glimpse of her thought process. It feels as if she is saying the words to herself in frustration. The use of &quot;Not bad&quot; just reinforces this idea.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10329" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T15:23:38.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12582" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12584" CreationDate="2014-08-10T04:23:56.613" Score="3" ViewCount="1587" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel, called Animal Suicide, about a girl who tried to commit suicide but then postponed the plan after a phone call she received. Everything OK. But then I realized...wait a minute...this is 1st person narrative, obviously she cannot die. Can I still create tension (will the reader eventually &quot;forget&quot; about this)? Or should I change the narration to the present tense (that way it is possible for the main character to die)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Here's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexandrochen.com/short-story-animal-suicide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;short story&lt;/a&gt; version for those who are interested.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-08-10T06:51:11.507" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T06:35:38.690" Title="Tension built upon whether the main character will commit suicide or not. Problem: I'm using first person narrative" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12582" CreationDate="2014-08-10T07:28:58.610" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possible solution would be to structure the narrative in such a way that the reader might come to believe it is a (rather long and drawn out) suicide note, explaining your character's reasons for her act.  Obviously, this would only work if the potential suicide is right at the end of your story, rather than in the middle...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6437" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T07:28:58.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12582" CreationDate="2014-08-10T11:42:36.120" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First person narrative is just a device, and it doesn't necessarily imply that the narrator lives through the story. For example, plenty of horror stories end with something on the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And then the beast's bloated tentacles began to squeeze me. The world grew dark, and I knew no more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...or some such. (Shel Silverstein did this in &lt;a href=&quot;http://kalantarian.org/artak/Literature/Shel.htm#_Toc451715643&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;True Story&lt;/a&gt;, although that's tongue-in-cheek...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, first-person doesn't mean the narrator actually sat down after the story ended and wrote a book about it. It's just a choice of style and narration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will grant that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; readers will expect (incorrectly) that first person means the character lives, but if this were a serious barrier, you could have &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; first-person fiction relying on suspense from danger to the narrator's life. (Suicide isn't your problem here; it's &quot;did the character make it to the end of the book or not.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best guideline is to write the story as you see fit, and then get some reader reactions to it. If people tell you &quot;Listen, this didn't work because I knew the character lives,&quot; then fine, figure out a way to change it. If they don't then you're fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one exception to this is: if you first person narrator is &lt;em&gt;actively&lt;/em&gt; referring to things that happen &quot;later.&quot; For example, &lt;em&gt;How I Met Your Mother&lt;/em&gt; is essentially in past-tense/first-person, but the narrator is established as &quot;telling the story to his kids.&quot; He drops references like &quot;That's how I met your Aunt Robin&quot; or &quot;Of course, we only found out about that years later&quot; - which clearly establish a lot of facts about what happens &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the primary story is over. If you do &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;, then yes, suspense over &quot;Will the narrator live through the story?&quot; will be very weak (similar to how in &lt;em&gt;How I Met Your Mother&lt;/em&gt;, suspense over &quot;Will &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; relationship be Ted's Happily-Ever-After?&quot; was very weak and usually not the focus).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-08-10T15:30:17.280" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T15:30:17.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12587" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-10T18:59:39.450" Score="9" ViewCount="5546" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to be writing some user-facing documentation for a database that visitors can query.  That is, the people writing queries are not the ones who created the database; they can come in, look at what the database offers, and write their SQL queries.  Think of something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.stackexchange.com/help&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SEDE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could just give people the database schema, but that only tells you so much.  For example, if a value is an integer but it's an enumeration (1 means this, 2 means that, 3 means this other thing, etc), you can't get that from the schema alone.  So I need to produce some documentation for the tables and columns in the database, which also provides me the opportunity to present the information in whatever organizational structure makes the most sense for our users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: are there best practices for going from a DB schema to documentation?  If this were an API, for example, then in some languages I could write inline comments that could be automatically turned into reference documentation using tools like Javadoc or Doxygen.  Is there something like that for DB schemas, or would I have to write my own transformation tools (which isn't worth the effort for the size of this project)?  Or do people writing schemas just inspect the schema and write separate documentation?  Are there conventions for doing this?  I'm an experienced technical writer but I'm new to databases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In case it matters, I need to deliver HTML.  This is a volunteer project (not actually open-source, but along those lines) and I have no budget for tools.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T18:55:31.970" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T18:55:31.970" Title="How should I document a database schema?" Tags="|technical-writing|software-documentation|user-guides|information-architecture|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12486" CreationDate="2014-08-11T00:25:03.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Twist endings are the best kind of endings.&#xA;One story which has become a recent favorite of mine was &#xA;&quot;One flew over the cuckoo nest&quot;(Novel/movie)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the title you can tell that one of the Mental institution patients was going to get the better of the asylum.&#xA;Naturally the reader assumes its the main character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(SPOILER)&#xA;Surprise: At the end of the story the main character gets lobotomized. Then the native american who was revealed to be pretending to be a retarded mute escapes.&#xA;(after mercifully killing the main character and taking his spirit as per native american beliefs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastEditorUserId="8727" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T00:30:25.690" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T00:30:25.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12589" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-11T06:29:28.163" Score="5" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I proofread technical documents that have been translated from Japanese into English.  The translations must be &quot;literal.&quot;  I cannot, generally, make them more concise.  One thing that pops up over and over are the dreaded -ing words.  I can make the argument that a phrase should be changed if the construction makes it difficult to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example &quot;For separating connector A and connector B, the worker first must......&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My gut and all my writing baggage really want it to say &quot;In order to separate...&quot; but I cannot articulate why.  Can someone point me to a concise explanation that would make sense to non-native speakers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to tell me this is a &quot;happy&quot; to &quot;glad&quot; change and I will attempt to stop sweating it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10338" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T12:48:08.447" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T14:13:56.370" Title="&quot;ing&quot; words in technical translations from Japanese to English" Tags="|legal|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12582" CreationDate="2014-08-11T08:11:32.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a very simple solution to the first-person-narrators-cannot-die-at-the-end rule:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set the story in present tense.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story is set in present tense anything that happens later happens in the narrator’s future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the last breath of air rushed from my lungs, as blackness claimed my life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Becomes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the last breath of air rushes from my lungs, as blackness claims my-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T08:11:32.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12589" CreationDate="2014-08-11T09:52:43.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Invert the sentence to parse it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The worker first must engage the wedge for separating connector A and connector B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that sentence, &quot;the wedge for separating&quot; becomes an adjective phrase. That means there's &lt;em&gt;a wedge for separating&lt;/em&gt; but there's also &lt;em&gt;a wedge for cutting,&lt;/em&gt; meaning it's another of the same object but it does a different task. I don't think that's what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd use &quot;to separate&quot; instead of &quot;In order to separate,&quot; which might be a happy medium between the exact translation and your version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inverted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The worker first must engage the wedge to separate connector A and connector B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actual translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To separate connector A and connector B, the worker first must engage the wedge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes it clear that there's only one &lt;em&gt;wedge,&lt;/em&gt; and its job is only &lt;em&gt;to separate&lt;/em&gt; two things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T09:52:43.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12567" CreationDate="2014-08-11T13:22:01.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is how I see it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Static:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can easier edit some subplots to fit better to main story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to follow by reader&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can give away the information, that &lt;em&gt;every chapter is new subplot. duh&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The overall flow of the story can be boring&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Dynamic:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Better flow of the story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reader is given away the information exactly at time you want them to know&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Harder to follow by reader&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Harder to edit in the later stages &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, as writer, I incline more to the static story building scheme. As reader, I totally love the dynamic one. Great example of totally well built dynamic story is Terry Prachett &lt;em&gt;Discoworld&lt;/em&gt; stories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T13:22:01.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12567" CreationDate="2014-08-11T22:15:49.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A static division can make variation in chapter length feel more natural. Satisfying the expectation that a chapter will contain a particular subplot can counter the violating the expectation of similar chapter length. Such variation can be exploited to influence the pacing and tone within a chapter and among chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if one subplot has a character crossing a desert but not much is actually happening, a very short chapter can increase dramatic tension and the impact of the minimal activity (an effect similar to that of using short sentences and short paragraphs) &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt;, when placed between longer chapters can increase the feeling of isolation (as might be appropriate for a desert passage or merely to emphasize the danger). Imagine the effect of this extremely short chapter when placed between two longer chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;[Expletive]!&quot; She bashed the fuel gauge with her hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rising sun was already draining precious water from her body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a dynamic sequence such a short chapter might be harder to justify and the effect of greater connection with the character from the lack of a local antecedent for &quot;she&quot; (&quot;of course, I know Julia; you don't have to introduce me&quot;) may be more pronounced. Even if chapters are labeled with the protagonists' names, a repeating sequence will make the reader skip over such labeling quickly (after the pattern has been well established).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A static sequence can also use the expectation of the presence of a subplot to emphasize the early ending of that subplot, reminding the reader—or even declaring without preceding explanation—that characters or the goal of that subplot have been removed. The tightening of the cycle from dropping one subplot can also increase pacing and tension without changing chapter length. For example, after a shipwreck plot lines for survivors might end with rescue or death. A skilled writer may even be able to drop a plot line without explicit statement whether it ended with death or rescue. Sudden dropping of a plot line can increase uncertainty by the unexpected breaking of expectation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expectation can also be exploited for a dynamic sequence as a recognizable pattern will tend to stand out from an otherwise arbitrary ordering. For example, with four subplots a series of chapters alternating between two subplots could be used to hint at romantic coupling (the protagonists dance around each other), to show separate sharing of similar experiences, or to emphasize the (possibly growing) difference between protagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The transition to a recognizable pattern can also hint that seemingly random events may have some subtle connection, that chaos is being overcome, that individuals are becoming a team. The changing pattern of chapter sequence can foreshadow or reinforce the actual direction of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exploiting expectation is a standard component of writing, whether the expectation is satisfied, violated, or subverted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T22:15:49.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12596" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-12T05:29:22.613" Score="4" ViewCount="2700" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not even sure if I need to since I often see statistics on website and blog posts without a source. Do I need to? And how should I do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've seen when the source is mentioned, people usually do it one of these ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blah blah blah 922% &lt;em&gt;(Name of source)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blah blah blah 12312% &lt;em&gt;(Name of source, Year Published)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of those are correct? And do I need to do something different if I reword the statistic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10341" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-02-10T17:27:34.533" Title="How do I cite or give credit to a statistic on a website?" Tags="|publishing|citations|blog|websites|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12596" CreationDate="2014-08-12T06:50:40.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely cite any hard numbers you use. It's good practice and not nearly common enough, which means it should be encouraged. Given how quickly statistics become outdated, I would definitely cite at least the year of the study/article/whatnot. On Wikipedia some editors would include the date of publication and also &lt;em&gt;date accessed&lt;/em&gt;, which is relevant to web sources. I don't think that's mandatory, though. Use it if you have reason to believe the source is likely to be edited, e.g. a blog post. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T06:50:40.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12596" CreationDate="2014-08-12T07:16:18.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the concern is your blog post, I would recommend you either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) The hedgehog is 25% more spiky, if raised in temperature 5°C less than average (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;new study from DPKR&lt;/a&gt;, the hedgehog is 25% more spiky, if raised in temperature 5°C less than average &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several people are nowadays afraid of SEO, so they do something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) The hedgehog is 25% more spiky, if raised in temperature 5°C less than average (source: Google)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my personal view is: &lt;strong&gt;Give credit&lt;/strong&gt; to the original source and &lt;strong&gt;let your readers have a chance to visit the source.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even in the case when original source seems to be &quot;dodgy&quot; (Here I used DPKR science research as an example) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T07:16:18.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12602" CreationDate="2014-08-12T08:43:18.480" Score="0" ViewCount="445" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of all the people who wanted to join the trip, Paola was the the last I expected would come. It surprised me. We barely knew each other at school, and I was pretty sure she wasn't interested in me. I didn't pride myself on being a ladies' man. But if all my rejections had taught me anything, it was this: if a girl never looks at you, it probably means &quot;not a chance.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I turned to check on her. She was ambling among the rocks, her back to&#xA;  me, almost a dot in the distance. Despite that, I could still make out&#xA;  her figure: her sharp shoulder blades, her bony arms, her childlike&#xA;  yet feminine hips. Frail but charming features. What I liked the most,&#xA;  though, was her long blonde hair. It contrasted beautifully with her&#xA;  bronze skin. Like Spring and Fall, fire and wood. Light and darkness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With a sigh, I resumed my way down the beach...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another concern I have is that it takes a while after the setting is explicitly stated (the beach). Maybe &lt;em&gt;trip&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;rocks&lt;/em&gt; are enough for the meanwhile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T06:24:43.653" LastActivityDate="2022-01-03T15:36:32.980" Title="Does the following opening grip you?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|openings|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2022-01-07T05:22:14.757" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12601" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-12T11:44:15.683" Score="4" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I regularly write advertisements for a client who insists that capitalizing &quot;the&quot; improves conversion rates (the number of people that click or buy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that it's technically wrong and it drives me crazy!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have a similar experience or has anyone done A/B testing to see the effect of capitalizing or not capitalizing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discover The Taste Of Croatia -&#xA;You'll Love Our Croatian Tours -&#xA;Make Memories Of A Lifetime!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8233" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-08-17T18:22:38.380" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T18:22:38.380" Title="Capitalizing &quot;The&quot; in Title Case - Increases Engagement?" Tags="|style|business-writing|marketing|headlines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12599" CreationDate="2014-08-12T12:36:25.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overall, the opening seems fine. I've seen worse. I don't see a problem with the setting being mentioned a couple of paragraphs below. The only thing I can't figure out is the genre. Every genre is suited different types of opening. If it's a short story (I see on your profile that's what you like to write), then it's a pretty good opening. For an YA novel, I would consider rewriting it, maybe starting directly with something happening on that beach and then incorporate various details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a problem with this line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But if all my rejections had taught me anything, it was this: if a&#xA;  girl never looks at you, it probably means &quot;not a chance.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes me think: &quot;Okay, so this is a story of boy pining after girl and that's it.&quot; I'm not sure if I would read that. The story on itself might be good, but if you're showing me the conclusion right in the beginning, why bother reading? Then again, if the story takes a totally different turn (boy ends with girl), it's different. But something interesting must happen soon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the next paragraph, you say that the girl is &quot;almost a dot in the distance&quot;. You can't distinguish features if people are so far away. You can say that he remembers her features, or that he sees her almost like she was near him.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last paragraph, I'm not sure why the guy is sighing. Does he think the girl is too beautiful for him? Is he tired? Is he cranky for some reason? We are in his head, so we should have a better view on his emotions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10304" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T08:03:17.273" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T08:03:17.273" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12582" CreationDate="2014-08-12T13:10:09.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The tense in narrative fiction is not a time specification but a &lt;strong&gt;narrative convention&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a story is narrated in present tense it does not mean that what is told happens &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;, which is why linguists call it &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_present&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;historical present&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tempus in literary writing does not have the function of locating an event in time, but, among others, of creating immediacy or distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is therefore no reason, why a character telling a tale in the past tense, cannot die in the course of the telling.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The past tense might make some readers expect that the protagonist will not go through with her plan to kill herself, but &lt;strong&gt;page count will be a much stronger hint&lt;/strong&gt;: The consciousness of the narrator can only extinguish in the last sentence on the last page. If there are pages following the attempted suicide, I will know that either the narrator did not kill herself, or &lt;strong&gt;tells the tale from her afterlife&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any way, you can lead the reader to believe what you want, by (falsely) foreshadowing the outcome you want them to believe will come true. This is called a plot twist and works here as it works anywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T13:10:09.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12596" CreationDate="2014-08-12T14:02:00.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The APA style &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/web-page-no-author.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recommends&lt;/a&gt; the following for citing anything from web sites (which would include any claim you're reporting from one):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New child vaccine gets funding boost. (2001). Retrieved March 21, 2001, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ninemsn.com.au/health/story_13178.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://news.ninemsn.com.au/health/story_13178.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cite in text the first few words of the reference list entry (usually the title) and the year. Use double quotation marks around the title or abbreviated title.: (&amp;quot;New Child Vaccine,&amp;quot; 2001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Include the URL you used (I would make it an active link if you're writing on the web) and the date you retrieved it (because the web is not static).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you're directly quoting a source or summarizing its contents, it's important to cite that source.  This helps readers verify your claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T14:02:00.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12519" CreationDate="2014-08-12T14:06:58.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're forgetting, and no one seems to be mentioning, is that you are the AUTHOR. You CAN and SHOULD go back, rewrite a section so that he can pull a rabbit, pixie, lockpick, magic spell, etc. from his ass, so that he can save the day (or his ass) in this situation. Go back several chapters. Reveal that he has been studying the forbidden and damned works of the Qkuiktolp sorcerers in secret. The spells there are cursed for a reason - whoever uses them damns their soul and the souls of all their friends to the wastes of Kquidlpl. BUT, they save the hero and his friends PHYSICALLY. Now what do they do, since the Goblin King and his entourage have been transported physically to hell? They interrupt their quest to find a way to save their souls of course! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5982" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T14:06:58.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12472" CreationDate="2014-08-12T19:49:41.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In legal writing there is an easy answer: you refer to the roles played rather than the individuals who undertook them. So if you are writing a brief and complaining that the judge did something you didn't like, you wouldn't write, &quot;the judge did not let me present evidence&quot; but, &quot;counsel for plaintiff was prevented from presenting evidence.&quot; Because in this context personalities do not matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this question is directed towards non-fiction, the winds of what the French call &quot;autofiction&quot; are blowing and I think we will see a greater use of the first person in all types of writing. Even though Rimbaud famously wrote, &quot;&lt;em&gt;Je&lt;/em&gt; est un autre.&quot; (&lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; is someone else.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6784" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T19:49:41.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12608" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12617" CreationDate="2014-08-13T13:55:09.197" Score="3" ViewCount="518" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across several disciplines of writing which one must know while writing (especially beginners), concerning narrative conventions and the rules of story logic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the sources for this include &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt;, some internet articles and precious advice from Writers SE answers. I noticed that these focus on giving advice to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;beginners&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Answers explained the exceptions (made by the expert writers) of what they had really asked &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; at the same time advised that they should go with the traditional rules only. Some include: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761&quot;&gt;The &quot;Rules&quot; of writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;experienced writers will respond by saying &quot;there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to writing&quot;, or &quot;rules are made to be broken&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/54&quot;&gt;When is it okay to tell?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you look at the great authors, they break the rules &lt;strong&gt;all the time&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does one really need rules of logic and narrative convention? If there is a discipline that is often broken by the experts themselves, then why should a beginner follow it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6752" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T11:01:19.483" Title="Beginners can break rules too?" Tags="|description|rules|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12608" CreationDate="2014-08-13T14:48:34.227" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is what I learned the hard way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rules are there to support you in getting from A to B and do a decent job regardless of skill level. Following a set of tried and trusted rules allows you as the author room to concentrate on the aspects of a story that you find interesting. Following rules is like a less restrictive form of re-telling an established story, re-tellings give even more support as you already know who the characters are and the events that happen in the story. Sometimes this is a big help if the story itself is weird, obscure or unhelpful, for example I recently completed a project to retell the story of Taliesin and was surprised how much challenge was left despite having full knowledge of the shape of the story's events. Retelling Snow White may not give you so much latitude (although lord knows Hollywood's had a good old go at it over and over recently).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People moan constantly about formula plots, tired characters and obvious plot points. What this tells you is that even writing a story that follows the rules is hard. Hollywood films almost exclusively follow formula and genre approaches but rarely do we get a Star Wars, a Back to the Future, a Matrix or an Iron Man out of the sausage factory. Stories that deliberately flout the rules or work hard against them tend to take a long while to find an audience, if they do at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like a lot of writers I started out by tearing up a rulebook I'd never actually read, just heard tell of as some sort of strait-jacket for creativity. This hypothetical rule book isn't any such thing. Don't get me wrong there are strait jackets for creativity, for example feeling you should, as a writer, be trying to produce a clone of the current genre-fic flavour du jour to please an audience perceived to be highly intolerant of any thing that isn't a melodrama crammed to the gills with soap operatic vampires. These scenarios are creatively restrictive and artistically questionable. Writers rules are no such thing, they are, rather, a bank of accumulated wisdom intended to add a smoothness to your working process until a time where you instinctively know all the rules and so departing from them always fulfils a specific artistic agenda of which you, the artist, are fully in control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T14:48:34.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12608" CreationDate="2014-08-13T14:51:09.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rules are there to give a pretty good outline of what is good writing and what is bad writing. Breaking a &quot;rule&quot; typically requires doing something else to accommodate it, and this web of complexity typically requires an experienced writer who knows these connections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, one rule you might hear would be to stay away from cliches. But there are things you can do to use cliches well, like turning it into a cliche storm, or injecting self-referencing humor that pokes fun at the cliches you are using, or making it a homage into the original cliches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another rule might be to never start a sentence with &quot;and&quot;, but when you're trying to invoke a certain feeling in the reader, you may find short, staccato sentences have the best rhythm for representing a heated moment, and in those cases it's perfectly acceptable to start sentences with and, rather than appending to the previous statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, you'll follow &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; of the rules, and just find a few to break to make the story &lt;em&gt;yours&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2907" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T14:51:09.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12608" CreationDate="2014-08-13T14:52:48.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very difficult topic. But this is something that I've noticed over the years: &lt;strong&gt;when a beginner breaks a rule you feel like he has broken a rule, when an expert breaks a rule you feel like he &lt;em&gt;wanted&lt;/em&gt; to break that rule.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best example I can come up with is the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation_(film)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adaptation&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the movie, the protagonist (Charlie Kaufman) says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Okay. But, I'm saying, it's like, I don't want to cram in sex or guns&#xA;  or car chases, you know... or characters, you know, learning profound&#xA;  life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming&#xA;  obstacles to succeed in the end, you know. I mean... The book isn't&#xA;  like that, and life isn't like that. You know, it just isn't. And... I&#xA;  feel very strongly about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then the movie includes every single of those elements!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's made in such elegant and &quot;self-aware&quot; way that you know the screenwriters was intentionally doing it. Breaking his own rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that's how following the rules and breaking them can coexist with each other. By making it apparent that you are breaking them, and not just becoming a victim of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T14:52:48.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12608" CreationDate="2014-08-13T15:18:59.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(a) Short answer: There are no rules. Read and write a lot to build your intuitive understanding of narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) Long answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To understand the rules of writing, let us look at language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People learn and speak their mother tongue without ever consulting a grammar or dictionary. In fact, language existed before any grammar was ever written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now how did the first grammar come into existence? Did God give the First Linguist a sacred tablet with stone carved grammatical rules, warning that you will go to hell if you break them? No. Linguists &lt;em&gt;observed&lt;/em&gt; the verbal behavior of people and tried to the best of their ability to deduce the underlying rules that they suspected must govern a language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important words here are: &quot;tried&quot;, &quot;deduce&quot; and &quot;suspected&quot;. It is really, really important to note that not all linguists believe that there actually is such a thing as &quot;grammar&quot;. It is equally important that those linguists that believe in grammar or find the concept of grammar helpful in analysing human verbal behavior do not agree on how this grammar works. The first grammars were created for Classical Latin and Ancient Greek, and the grammatical systems derived from those languages where then imposed on other languages that have little or no relation to Latin or Greek. Recently linguists have proposed grammatical systems that have a fundamentally different structure from Latin grammar (with its cases, declensions and so on). For example, is one linguist, Ulrich Engel, who claims that German does not have a tempus system (past, present and future)! What he means with this need not concern us here, but it serves to show that grammar is a &lt;strong&gt;model&lt;/strong&gt; for how people think that language might work, and that there are several competing models. &lt;strong&gt;All, we should note, for the same observed linguistic behavior.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what role does grammar play in the actual production of language by its speakers? The answer is: none. People who speak English or any other language do not know grammar. They do not understand what they do, and attempting to understand it does not make them better speakers. In fact I have found that &lt;em&gt;completely ignoring grammar and vocabulary&lt;/em&gt; when you want to learn a language helps you to learn it better! I tried to learn Latin by learning Latin grammar and lists of Latin words with their German translations, but I never learned Latin. On the other hand, I stopped learning English grammar when I was 14 years old and instead started reading English novels, listening to English songs, and watching English tv. What you read here today is the result of that immersion. English is my second language, I have absolutely no idea of English grammar, but I still speak and write it reasonably well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what does this have to do with the so called &quot;rules of (literary) writing&quot;? I'm sure you already know: The rules of writing are not God given, but were deduced from written texts in an attempt to identify the underlying &quot;narrative grammar&quot;. This attempt was lead by the modernistic belief that &lt;em&gt;there actually is&lt;/em&gt; such a set of rules governing writing. Post-modern theory, fluent since about the middle of the 20th century, on the other hand believes that such rules do not exist. Neither in narration nor in grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course texts are not random and it is not true that &quot;everything goes&quot;. There are unreadable texts, there are annoyingly bad texts. But still, what makes good, readable, fun texts, is not the result of following a set of rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But why? To understand this, let us look at how you learn to draw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many books and courses that attempt to teach to anatomically correct figure drawing by teaching you about proportions and how the human body can be simplified to geometrical forms such as balls, tubes or angular blocks. Students are supposed to learn that the body is 8 heads high and then construct the body by following certain rules of construction. The result of such attempts is invariably boring and stiff. The figures look correct, yet lifeless, like puppets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now there is another way to learn to draw. This involves the student drawing, without any rules, what he sees. Over and over and over again, for many thousands of hours. His first drawings will be abominable, and many will be discouraged and either give up drawing or switch to the other system, which gives quicker results. But for those that stick to this method, there will come a moment, when things suddenly &quot;click&quot;. Almost from one day to the next their drawing look lifelike and true-to-life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same goes for speaking a language. Children (or adult learners) try to repeat what they hear, and they make many mistakes. But suddenly something &quot;clicks&quot; for them and they stop making those mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try to learn writing by following the rules (the grammar, the proportions), but what you write will be lifeless and stiff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can simply read and write, read and write, read and write, over and over and over again, until things suddenly &quot;click&quot; and your texts start to be literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is said that experts need to train 10.000 hours. This is independent of the discipline. There is no shortcut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, sometimes a gammar book, proportion sheet or creative writing course can give you a feedback on your speaking, drawing or writing that helps you see in which direction you might want to practice. But beyond that, they are not necessary and largely a distraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T15:18:59.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12613" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-13T15:28:54.987" Score="3" ViewCount="1479" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the last 15 years I'm keeping some kind of writer's notebook. Everything I come across, and is seemingly important, goes into the notebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ideas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conversations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writings (primarily on the road)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal entries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Todo list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calendar and Appointments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quotes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lists for everything. Books to read, books to buy, movies to watch, gift ideas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scribbles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Letter/Email drafts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I'm also a software developer my notebooks contain further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Class/Object/Sequence diagrams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mathematical equations and formulas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc., etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the years I've collected about 15 notebooks. Full of information. I guess some of you will also have that many (or even more) notebooks. So my question is how can I stay on top of this information? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that I'm writing a story today. How do I know that a conversation I preserved in 2002 can be important for my current writing? Because there are currently only 15 notebooks in my desk drawer, I can flip through them and eventually find something that is useful for me now. But this will have a limit. I think 25 or 30 notebooks will be already too many to flip through. Besides that it is not really &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt;, rather &lt;em&gt;stumbling across&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I handle the various bits and pieces that I record? Can I digitize these notebooks, either through typing or scanning? Or should I maintainin some kind of index?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I'm a &lt;em&gt;pen and paper&lt;/em&gt;-Lover and I would really like to hear about some paper-based systems, I'm open to hearing about digital workflows as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10348" LastEditorUserId="10348" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T07:48:23.370" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T22:19:32.607" Title="How to handle multiple notebooks?" Tags="|paper|notes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12614" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12684" CreationDate="2014-08-13T15:36:32.293" Score="8" ViewCount="20465" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my understanding you can only edit the header and footer through the compile settings. Here we can customise using tokens:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;$compilegroup&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;$projecttitle&amp;gt; &#xA;&amp;lt;$abbr_projecttitle&amp;gt; &#xA;&amp;lt;$sectiontitle&amp;gt;  &#xA;&amp;lt;$p&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So on... What I would really like is to have facing pages which I have set up correctly and have headers such as:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Page number | Chapter 1 : Sub title&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is where it gets slightly complicated. I don't want this on my chapter headings. The options Scrivener gives are:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No header on first page and pages following page breaks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No header or footer on single pages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problems&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets say I have a chapter description and it goes over one page, this invalidates number 2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page breaks, by using this the layout gets quite messy and the headings will appear as:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Page number | Chapter 1 : Chapter 1 Binder title&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone can advise a possible solution, perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10351" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T00:40:42.183" Title="Scrivener customising the header and footer" Tags="|style|scrivener|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12613" CreationDate="2014-08-13T17:28:21.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, this is a non-answer, actually, but I'll post it anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use my notebooks to collect my thoughts. This has two purposes: to help me not forget something; and, thereby, to free my mind. The second purpose is important. When you have a notebook with you and ideas pop into your mind, noting down an idea allows your mind to let that idea go and come up with a new idea. Because you can no longer forget that thought, you can let it go and think of something else. Thus, noting down ideas results in a continous flow of ideas. If, on the other hand, you have no notebook with you and try not to forget an idea, you are stuck on that idea and your flow of ideas is blocked. This makes my head ache and makes me unhappy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what do I do when I finally sit down at my table and actually want to continue (or start) writing? Do I take all these notes and type them into my computer and expand and refine them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes. But usually not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I come to my table with the ideas busily flowing, &lt;strong&gt;I just put my notebook back in my pocket and write down those &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; ideas&lt;/strong&gt;. They are usually equally good, or even better, or simply the same, as the ideas I had before. Because, the truth is that when my mind is not stuck on one idea I try not to forget, then I don't forget that idea. I may forget the exact form or some details, but while my ideas flow I'm usually &lt;strong&gt;in the world of my story&lt;/strong&gt; (or scientific journal article) and can easily juggle a myriad of information without forgetting it. I may not be able to actively remember an idea I had, but when I come to the place in my writing where I need it, it invariably pops into my head again, without me having to consult my notebook. It come again, because my mind is not stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only when I sit at my desk and the ideas stop (or don't start) to flow, because I'm not in the mood and not in my story world, do I use my notebook to prompt me. This happens when I don't walk to my desk but take the bus, because ideas flow best when I walk, so the notebook is like conserved walks that I can open and inhale to get my ideas flowing, when I have been not walking for too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, notebooks help me to let go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should maybe note that I use my notebooks solely for ideas. I keep the ideas and the to-do apart. I put shopping lists, appointments and email drafts on snippets of paper that I throw away after the task is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T17:35:35.783" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T17:35:35.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12608" CreationDate="2014-08-13T22:13:23.487" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When to break the rules? &lt;strong&gt;When you know what you're doing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking the rules &quot;the good way&quot; always serves some purpose. It's never done &quot;just because&quot;. Writing is all about eliciting certain moods and feelings in the reader, and the rules prevent jarring, unpleasant surprises, breaking of immersion, and countless other errors that simply take away from the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But sometimes you want to shake the reader out of the comfort zone. Sometimes you want to convey some message on subliminal level without ever alliterating it in the text. Sometimes you want to surprise the reader. If a rule stands in your way to do so, break it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, there's the rule about giving good, detailed descriptions of locations when they are new scenes of the story. You're writing in first person perspective. Your protagonist steps out onto balcony overlooking the street, to take the city in. You should follow the rule to the dot. Dynamics, sounds, colors, people and their clothes, smell, lighting, little scenes of slice of life playing out down in the streets. The scene serves presenting the city and the protagonist takes time to observe it. Your description is equivalent of a detailed oil painting of the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, your protagonist is wounded, exhausted, possibly concussed, and on the run, escaping onto a balcony. It would be entirely silly to describe it in such deep detail. Yes, there's assault of color, people milling many floors below, maybe downpour - but the protagonist is definitely in no condition to pay attention to details. Your description will be skeletal, a stick figure sketch. It would be completely unacceptable in general storytelling contexts, but here you break the rule to emphasize the urgency, the bad condition of the protagonist, and how the scene below simply doesn't matter right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now a beginner will likely present such a stick figure sketch regardless of context; they want to go on with the story and just lack patience to write out what is so vivid and obvious in their imagination they deem it doesn't require detailed description. As result, the world lacks depth, the reader grasps for detail trying to imagine the scene, often misguided into believing it to be something entirely different. It's a beginner's error resulting from negligent violation of the rule resulting from laziness or ignorance. As opposed to the above - purposeful violation of the rule for specific effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T22:13:23.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12599" CreationDate="2014-08-14T01:38:45.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a little slow to develop. I prefer a short simple paragraph with some phrase that's either intriguing or &quot;sticky&quot; that I can't get out my head, like the hook to a pop song.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an edit that lacks the hook but gets to the point quicker:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of all the people on the trip, Paola was the the last I expected. We barely knew each other at school, and I was pretty sure she wasn't interested in me. I turned to check on her. She was ambling among the rocks, her back to me. Her long blonde hair contrasted with her bronze skin. Like Spring and Fall, fire and wood. Light and darkness. With a sigh, I resumed my way down the beach...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8665" LastEditorUserId="8665" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T19:15:12.117" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T19:15:12.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12623" CreationDate="2014-08-14T06:51:29.383" Score="0" ViewCount="600" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a dialogue from a short story I'm writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, a log caught fire, followed by the rest. And in no time Paola&#xA;  and I had a display of dancing flames before us, their warmth entering&#xA;  every pore of our skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You're pretty good.&quot; Paola looked genuinely impressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I used to do it a lot,&quot; I explained, &quot;when I was a kid.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I see. I think it's nice—having a skill.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Building a fire isn't a very useful one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's still nice, though.&quot; Paola gazed thoughtfully at the flames, as&#xA;  though trying to find a hidden meaning in their glow. &quot;A skill that&#xA;  has nothing to do with money. I think it's more simple, more pure. And&#xA;  you do it just because you enjoy it. Sometimes we forget to do things&#xA;  just for the sheer pleasure of it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Um. Never thought of it that way . . .&quot; I was surprised. Paola had&#xA;  suddenly become more talkative. That's when I realized I had no idea&#xA;  what was crossing her mind. I might as well have been peering into the&#xA;  murky water of a swamp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once the fire died down a bit, we took out the grill net and started&#xA;  working on the barbecue. Not that there was a lot to prepare. The&#xA;  things we bought at the supermarket—the chicken pieces, the diced&#xA;  beef, the sausages, the pepper and onions—were already seasoned. All&#xA;  we had to do was to slide them onto the skewers and throw them on the&#xA;  grill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While we waited for the meat to cook, we sat side by side, drinking&#xA;  the beers we brought along. It was already dark, and the only light on&#xA;  the beach was our improvised fire. Now and then, a piece of wood would&#xA;  fall off, sending millions of sparks around. Short-lived fireflies&#xA;  fluttering under a darkened sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Uh, Paola?&quot; This was the best moment to bring it up. &quot;Can I ask you&#xA;  something?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paola held her can in mid-air. &quot;Sure.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Why did you decide to come? I mean, even though the rest backed&#xA;  out—including Natalia. She's the only one in the group you know, isn't&#xA;  she? Please don't take it in a bad way. I'm just curious.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You think it's weird?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well . . . just a little bit. We don't know each other after all.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I figured you wouldn't try anything funny. Oh, are you that kind of&#xA;  guy? I warn you, if you try something I'll chop your dick off and feed&#xA;  it to the fish.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Wow,&quot; I said, &quot;no need for that. You just killed a week's worth of&#xA;  boners with that one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We both laughed. I could feel the atmosphere&#xA;  relax, become warmer. And it wasn't just because of the fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paola said, &quot;Joking aside, I came to visit my mom.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Your mom?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paola nodded. A drop of fat fell into the fire, creating a flame that&#xA;  illuminated the rocks nearby for a couple of seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sorry,&quot; I said, &quot;I don't follow.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;She disappeared long ago in the sea.&quot; Paola took a sip of her beer.&#xA;  &quot;Not here, in Viña. I was eleven at the time. Mom was teaching me to&#xA;  swim when this huge wave came up and crashed against us. A really big&#xA;  one. The size of a skyscraper.&quot; A deep crease formed between her&#xA;  brows. &quot;After that, I don't remember much—just that I was surrounded&#xA;  by this mess of water, panic, and bubbles. Then total darkness. When I&#xA;  woke up I was in a hospital bed. My father had rescued me. As for my&#xA;  mom . . . he couldn’t find her, nor could the rescue crew. She just&#xA;  vanished under that wave.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I stared at Paola. I didn't know what to say. And I felt a simple “I'm&#xA;  sorry” wouldn't be enough, so I stayed quiet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She continued, &quot;Anyway, that’s why I’m here. Since I’m moving to&#xA;  Santiago after graduation, I wanted to visit the sea one last time, to&#xA;  say goodbye to Mom.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But I don't understand,” I said. “Why here? You&#xA;  said the . . . the incident, happened in Viña.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;All the oceans are connected, you know? They are, in fact, a single&#xA;  mass of water that goes all over the globe. So, no matter where you&#xA;  drown, you immediately become part of that wholeness.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it sound stiff and formal at times? If so, how can I fix that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T14:07:07.037" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T14:07:07.037" Title="Does the following dialogue sound stiff and formal?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|dialogue|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3628" CreationDate="2014-08-14T13:21:52.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some publishers offer publishing deals for series, I myself have finished 3 drafts of my first novel and I plan that the 4th draft will be my last.  But I am waiting to revise my final draft so right now I got a good idea for the sequel and I began writing it.  It does not mess up my flow with the previous book and I think it's a better idea but of course that is just my own opinion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10359" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T13:21:52.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12621" CreationDate="2014-08-14T14:01:24.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few points that got kinda stiff for me as a reader and as a writer were when you split a sentence with a dialogue tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I used to do it a lot,&amp;quot; I explained, &amp;quot;when I was a kid.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Wow,&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;no need for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the dialogue you split with action tags was fantastic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Uh, Paola?&amp;quot; This was the best moment to bring it up. &amp;quot;Can I ask you something?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among many others so well done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few points below sounded awkward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She continued, &amp;quot;Anyway, that’s why I’m here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paola said, &amp;quot;Joking aside, I came to visit my mom.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re-word those with a description of some sort and they'll fit right into your scene. Content-wise your dialogue felt natural, honestly. Not stiff in the slightest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10201" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T14:01:24.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12625" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-14T15:18:19.533" Score="2" ViewCount="1071" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book which the quote is from is also being cited throughout the thesis, so naturally it is included in the bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should the citation look like? Should it be consistent with the citation style used in the text, or is including the full title favorable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10361" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T12:39:21.887" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T14:04:47.910" Title="How do I cite a standalone quote at the beginning of a doctoral thesis?" Tags="|academic-writing|citations|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12587" CreationDate="2014-08-14T22:39:59.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blessed Geek suggested UML enumeration, but this assumes that the users understand UML. Your question shows that you know technology well enough to know the capabilities of your users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers often use Javadoc or Doxygen to generate API documentation because those tools easily generate new docs when the API itself changes. Updating the documentation as the code changes is useful when the code is changing a lot. For your database schema, however, that may not be a consideration. Schemas don't change very often, and when they do, they're usually added to. The technical impact of deleting or modifying fields in a database is large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy enough to print out field names and types from a database using its tools. From this printout, you can produce an HTML table that has a blank column where you can provide more documentation about the field. An image that's something like a simplified UML diagram can help readers understand how the tables of the database are related to each other. If you want some additional ideas, take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/providers/contacts-provider.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Contacts Provider&lt;/a&gt; in the Android documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T22:39:59.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3628" CreationDate="2014-08-15T00:57:08.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's a choice between writing the sequel and not writing, by all means write the sequel- practice helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also consider writing a stand-alone short story that uses the world you've built, and possibly some of the characters. If you decide to go the self-publishing route, you can use the story as a freebie teaser for your novel. If the short story came to a satisfactory conclusion and I enjoyed it, I'd be a lot more likely to buy the novel or give the series a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10365" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T00:57:08.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9977" CreationDate="2014-08-15T01:39:24.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://childrensbooks.about.com/od/5youngadultbooks/a/Teen-Reading-Trends-Current.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;interview&lt;/a&gt; with the president of the Young Adult Library Services (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). She mentions that there are very few male readers of YA &lt;em&gt;fiction&lt;/em&gt;, but that boys tend to read nonfiction on subjects that interest them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've attended YA writing panels at SF conventions, and almost all of the published YA authors attending are female. Their work tends to have strong romance elements, which I'd guess would appeal more to a female audience. A couple of them also mentioned that their sons don't want to be seen reading books with 'girly' covers. These authors would be considered more 'midlist' than bestsellers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10365" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T01:39:24.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3670" CreationDate="2014-08-15T04:34:18.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of something like,&quot;Suddenly,I heard a scream behind me.I was scared by that sudden scream.&quot;,try something like,&#xA;&quot;Out of the blue..&#xA;'SCREECH!'a loud shriek sounded behind my back,and I froze in terror,puzzled and alarmed at the same time.&quot;Using phrases would make the writing a little more interesting,and try using direct speech and sound effects to make the reader excited,and continue reading the story/composition or whatever it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10366" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T04:34:18.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3628" CreationDate="2014-08-15T05:59:36.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important thing an author can do is write. Reading is the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have written your novel the events are set in stone.&#xA;What if you want to change something in the first novel in order to have the something you changed lead into the second novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes write the next novel or at least start it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastEditorUserId="8727" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T00:21:43.797" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T00:21:43.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3628" CreationDate="2014-08-15T09:28:33.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Brandon Sanderson in lecture 13, Brandon's Revision Process (which is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKHLuGyjRi8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;online on his YouTube channel&lt;/a&gt;), explains his process thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First draft&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Polish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give to Alpha Readers&lt;br&gt;&#xA;------------------------&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;6 months break&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;------------------------&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work in Feedback from Alphas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give to Betas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work in Feedback from Betas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Polish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may have forgotten a step, but that is not important here (watch the video). What is important is that Brandon lets his manuscript rest for half a year to gain some distance from it that will allow him to better rewrite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And during this break,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;he writes the first draft of the next book.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T09:28:33.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12587" CreationDate="2014-08-15T16:21:08.090" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is user-facing documentation, then make up a data dictionary that describes the tables and columns with supplementary blurbs about the meaning of the data (e.g. the meanings of specific values in a column).  This can be a straightforward HTML document with the supplementary descriptions as text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to produce E/R diagrams then Visio professional (version 2010 and earlier) has a passably good database diagramming feature and should be fairly widely available.  There are other tools that will do this as well.  Unfortunately Visio's SVG output is pretty crap and I'm not aware of any modelling tool that will produce good SVG diagrams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dia is an open-source diagramming tool and has a UML modeller which could be co-opted to produce usable E-R diagrams that will render in SVG.  If you can live with bitmap illustrations of the data model then you can get away with taking screenshots from Visio.  In this case, split the model into subsystems and make illustrations of the parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For user documentation this will be far more useful than any model-based approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2527" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T18:03:59.293" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T18:03:59.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12519" CreationDate="2014-08-16T01:13:00.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another route you could take with the story is for your hero to use trickery on one of his captors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for example: Hero shows a few gold coins to a guard. Guard reaches his arm through the bar to get them. Hero grabs guards arm and pulls. The guards head hits the iron bars and renders him unconscious. Hero grabs guards keys. Freedom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another great escape that comes to mind would be Game of thrones by George RR Martin.&#xA;Tyrion lannister escapes from the Eyrie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T01:13:00.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12519" CreationDate="2014-08-16T09:07:54.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another possibility that has not yet been mentioned is magic that works differently on humans and goblins. For example, the hero could have worn an amulet that offers some magic protection for humans, but has a very bad effect on any goblin wearing it. Of course the goblins would have stolen that amulet, but not knowing about its special properties, some goblin (maybe the guard taking it away from the hero, maybe even the goblin king) would put it on (the hero wore it, and is known to be knowledgeable on all types of magic, so it must have a good effect on the wearer, right?). Whatever effect it has on the goblins weakens them enough for the hero to escape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T09:07:54.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12608" CreationDate="2014-08-16T10:01:10.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is in any way specific to writing. For example in physics, there are many wannabe-Einsteins who think that if you just claim the previous physicists were wrong and dream up your own theory, you can revolutionize physics. The result are crackpot theories, because unlike Einstein, those people didn't really know the physical theories which they tried to replace, nor did they have a clear idea of where those theories have their shortcomings, and where the new theory has to reproduce the old theories instead of completely replacing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, modern music has violated many principles which have been considered essential before. Yet you'll make no good music by just putting one note after the other while completely ignoring all the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe a good metaphor is a swamp, where some safe ways have been marked. If you just go astray in the swamp, you're likely to sink in and die. Slavishly following the known safe ways will make you survive, but restricts yourself to the same ways lots of others have gone before. But initially, it is certainly a good idea to keep on the same ways, but at the same time observe the swamp, figuring out why those ways are safe, observing others who leave the way and yet cross the swamp without problems, and learn also from those who left the way and didn't succeed. Over time, you'll learn to understand the swamp, to recognize how to determine safe ways even if they are not marked, and how to pass less safe ways without sinking in the swamp. Eventually you'll be experienced enough that you don't care any more about the marked ways, because you know quite well how to survive in the swamp without them. But if you had not cared about those marked ways in the very beginning, you'd at least have had a much harder time learning how to safely cross the swamp on your own, if you ever managed it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T10:01:10.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12608" CreationDate="2014-08-16T11:01:19.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We teach children not to cross the street on a red light. If they follow this principle, and wait for the green light, they will cross the road safely every time (assuming the drivers keep their end of the deal).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you grow older, your senses develop, and you can tell when it is safe to cross the road, even when the lights are red.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T11:01:19.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12599" CreationDate="2014-08-16T13:16:21.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The voice in your first paragraph reminds me of Holden Caulfield. More a monologue than a narrative; a thought process noted in great detail, slowing the pace. To me this is promising. It could be YA or something else - The Catcher in the Rye is only YA on the surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the next paragraph the plain-speaking teenager seems a different person, I don't believe him waxing poetic: &quot;Like Spring and Fall, fire and wood. Light and darkness.&quot; If he's a poet that's fine - but set him up as a poet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Cristina: if the girl is &quot;almost a dot in the distance&quot;, I don't believe him, saying he can make out her figure. This matters because I do a double-take: did I miss something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't like the sigh - it's vague and melodramatic, feels like something added for effect. I want every sentence to be essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10343" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T13:16:21.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12599" CreationDate="2014-08-16T14:00:03.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first few sentences left me puzzled:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of all the people who wanted to join the trip, Paola was the the last I expected would come. It surprised me. We barely knew each other at school, and I was pretty sure she wasn't interested in me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the only reason why someone would join a trip with several people joining is that the person in question was interested in the narrator? While that certainly is a valid reason to go to a trip with him, it certainly is not the first reason which would come to my mind, &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; if it is a trip with several people joining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there a specific reason (told later in the story) that the narrator would make that assumption? If not, at least to me as a reader it would be unsatisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T14:00:03.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12582" CreationDate="2014-08-17T03:21:19.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you writing a ghost story?  A ghost story can be written in first-person, and have the narrator die at any point -- including before the story begins, partway through the story, or at the end.  You can even have the story be entirely about when the narrator was alive, so the narrator dies after the end of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10378" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T03:21:19.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12582" CreationDate="2014-08-17T06:35:38.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand the question so that the story continues after the (postponed) death. Usually the reader knows how far into the story he is, so if there's too much story left, the reader &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; know, or at least expect, in advance that the first-person narrator will not die (unless it's a ghost story, as Jasper guessed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then, tension may still build up on what event will cause the suicide not to occur, or to occur but not be successful. After all, in the classic criminal story we know from the beginning that the crime will be resolved. Yet it would be a bad criminal story that would not build up tension anyway, because we don't know in advance &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; it will be resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more you make the suicide seem inevitable, the more tension there will be how this suicide is ultimately avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if that postponed suicide is close enough to the end of the story that the reader could reasonably expect it to occur at its end (or you're not close to the end, but the pace of your narration makes it still reasonable to expect the suicide to be at the end), then the question of whether the character commits suicide may of course also be a source of tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note I've not read your short story, so I can't comment on if it creates tension as is (but then, given your spoiler I would have known what will happen anyway, which certainly reduces the probability of tension building up significantly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T06:35:38.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12601" CreationDate="2014-08-17T13:03:45.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Capitalizing 'the' gives a strong  impression of &quot;one and only&quot;, which might bring a feeling to the reader of the advertisement that the advertising company is very confident about the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example,  &quot;Discover THE best meal in XYZ restaurant.&quot; is more impressive than &quot;Discover the best meal in our XYZ restaurant. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10151" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T13:03:45.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5477" CreationDate="2014-08-17T23:33:33.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought (taught long ago so foggy here) that the simple use of &lt;em&gt;*&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;at the end of a chapter showed passage of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the actual writing (when done properly) is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just wondering &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10385" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T23:33:33.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5477" CreationDate="2014-08-18T07:36:58.173" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;how to cleanly change time scale and avoid making a somewhat jarring break in temporal continuity?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gradually.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are allowed to suddenly shift speed of passage of time only at &lt;code&gt;* * *&lt;/code&gt; section breaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speed of passage of time between paragraphs must be gradual, at least one paragraph per speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paragraph of second-by-second,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;paragraph of few minutes,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;paragraph of an hour,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;paragraph of several hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may compress this process into a single paragraph of speed shift, but you must alliterate that speed shift, literally, expressly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's shift from seconds to hours in span of three paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything was lost. Gasping hard, he wiped sweat off his forehead with his sleeve, rested his back against the wall, and collapsed to the floor. The message buzzed in his head, repeated over and over. There was nothing left, no reason to move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His breath calmed down to quiet sobs, as he held his head with both hands, expecting the search to find him any minute now. Rapid steps thudded in the distance. Sounds of dripping water filled the moments of silence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Numb to the surroundings, unmoving, he awaited the inevitable. Distant alarms would break him out of stupor now and then. Dimming of corridor lights signified start of artificial evening, but the search continued through the night, gradually closing in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here I shift from second-by-second to years, within span of two paragraphs, but they give time passage literally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything was lost. Gasping hard, he wiped sweat off his forehead with his sleeve, rested his back against the wall, and collapsed to the floor. The message buzzed in his head, repeated over and over. There was nothing left, no reason to move. Minutes changed to hours as he sat motionlessly, and hours passed, distant screams of alarms coming and turning back to silence, while he sat holding his head with both hands, numb to the surroundings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He didn't even flinch when they came, took him away, locked in jail. The questioning, the trial, it all passed in a blur. It was only three years into serving his sentence, when...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course that's one of the &amp;quot;rules that exist to be broken&amp;quot;. If you have a good reason to rapidly shift gears, do so. &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;He remained still over the next three seconds. Then he continued to remain still for another two centuries.&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T14:51:43.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12650" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12651" CreationDate="2014-08-18T09:11:27.717" Score="2" ViewCount="244" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing some fiction about a lord and I'm struggling with when I should capitalise his title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When someone is referring to him or about him using his title:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Of course my lord.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the title is used as part of his name:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Welcome Lord Smith.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or in the third person:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What did the lord say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pattern I've found is to only capitalise when the title is used as part of the character's proper name - Lord Smith. When used in place of his name I've not capitalised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What did the young Lord say?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't look right to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this approach correct? Is there a better rule to follow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8373" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T10:21:19.277" Title="What is the correct casing for a character's title?" Tags="|style|naming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12650" CreationDate="2014-08-18T10:21:19.277" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you have everything right except the last one, which should be &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What did the young lord say?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're essentially following &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/735/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AP style&lt;/a&gt; for titles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Generally, capitalize formal titles when they appear before a person’s name, but lowercase titles if they are informal, appear without a person’s name, follow a person’s name or are set off before a name by commas. Also, lowercase adjectives that designate the status of a title. If a title is long, place it after the person’s name, or set it off with commas before the person’s name. Examples: President Bush; President-elect Obama; Sen. Harry Reid; Evan Bayh, a senator from Indiana; the senior senator from Indiana, Dick Lugar; former President George H.W. Bush; Paul Schneider, deputy secretary of homeland security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T10:21:19.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12652" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-18T14:02:44.380" Score="2" ViewCount="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know where to reference what true or real names and events can be used in fiction novel.  Example:  Can you use words such as NFL or names of awards?  I understand you cannot use lyrics in songs but you can use titles (which are not copywrited).  Thanks for any help you can give me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10389" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T00:13:16.833" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T00:13:16.833" Title="Using true/real names and events in a fiction novel" Tags="|fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-08-19T22:30:32.267" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12653" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-18T14:40:22.007" Score="4" ViewCount="741" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in writing a nonfiction book on social media. The book will be primarily practical advice based on my experience. However, I'm planning to personally interview some industry professionals to add their advice to the circle. I may even do Q&amp;amp;As with a few select people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In journalism, it's no problem to use quotes from people. However, since this is a book, what are the rules or general practices concerning the content of an interview? Do I need to get them to sign a consent form? Do I need to pay the interview subjects? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice is appreciated! Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10390" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T23:52:22.300" Title="Nonfiction: Need signed releases and/or pay subjects I am interviewing?" Tags="|legal|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12655" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12660" CreationDate="2014-08-18T23:01:31.553" Score="3" ViewCount="874" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently read an article (&lt;em&gt;The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing&lt;/em&gt;, chapter 7) concerning plot twists, or complications. It discusses the difference between twists and mere situations. The concept seems clear enough: a situation is an event that occurs, but a complication is how that event influences the character to act. A complication either illuminates, thwarts, or alters what the character wants. All seems well to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of the article then presents an example, however, that goes as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ralph's beloved wife is terminally ill. The complication is that she&#xA;  asks him to write her will. (What Ralph wants is to avoid facing the&#xA;  rest of his life alone)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author says that this is not a complication because it includes no 'point of departure.' But it seems to me that it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a complication, because it thwarts what Ralph wants. It makes him face the fact that he will have to live his life alone. Hence my question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I understanding this wrong? Is there some important difference between situations and complications that I am missing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An extension of this question may be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/16175/twist-complication-situation-whats-the-difference&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T19:27:25.493" Title="What is the difference between a complication/twist and a situation?" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12658" CreationDate="2014-08-19T00:23:18.310" Score="5" ViewCount="1938" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a variable bounded between 0 and 1 inclusive, [0,1], should I use a leading zero when quoting a number? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. the probability of rain is 0.5 or .5 (I realize this should technically be 50%, but I hope you accept the premise of the question). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;And obligatory apology for the likely quite straightforward answer (a coauthor and I disagree), and thanks for whoever helps.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10396" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T01:02:27.597" LastActivityDate="2022-09-29T17:59:43.840" Title="Do Decimals Bounded Between 0 and 1 (inclusive) Need a Leading Zero?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12656" CreationDate="2014-08-19T01:03:44.677" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226104206&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; says that the inclusion or omission of a leading 0 depends on whether quantity could be greater than 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the quantity could be greater than than 1, include the leading 0. Especially if quantities greater than 1 appear in the same context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For quantities that are always less than 1, it is typical to omit the leading 0. CMoS gives several examples: Probabilities and baseball batting averages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Odd choices of examples, given that 1 is a perfectly valid value for probabilities and batting averages. Likely they meant &quot;never greater than 1. Coulda used better editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other style manuals may give other advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T01:03:44.677" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12656" CreationDate="2014-08-19T04:39:37.493" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you have a very good reason not to, you should include the leading zero.  The combination of leading zero and decimal point is far more recognizable than the decimal point by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10378" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T04:39:37.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12659" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-19T08:08:15.823" Score="1" ViewCount="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to achieve a collection of books by the same author that I can give to my grandchildren. I have collected first editions and mostly first prints. But I am not clear that if I collect the same author from different publishers whether the collection is, strictly speaking, as good as a collection of same author and same publisher &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10398" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T08:08:15.823" Title="Collecting books" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-08-19T11:30:34.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12655" CreationDate="2014-08-19T10:26:39.543" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the confusion around this example is because the problem is going to happen no matter what Ralph does, so his actions won't change anything. He will have to face living alone whether he writes the will or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having not read the book, I can only guess that the author is trying to draw a line between things which can be changed and things which can't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if instead it read &quot;Ralph's blind wife has fallen in love with another man. The [complication/twist] is that she wants him to write a love letter to her new boyfriend.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The thing being thwarted&lt;/em&gt; is &quot;Ralph's love for his wife/Ralph's marriage.&quot; The &lt;em&gt;complication&lt;/em&gt; is &quot;the love letter.&quot; What Ralph could do here is write a bad letter, not write the letter, or write it and then try to win his wife back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example given, Ralph's wife will die no matter what he does. That's why there's no &quot;point of departure.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T10:26:39.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12655" CreationDate="2014-08-19T15:16:25.307" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Situation is expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twist is unexpected. As always, the difference is blurred; you can set up a twist, foreshadow it, build up to it, and smart readers will foresee it, so for them it will be more of situation. But unforseen situation is a twist, something that changes the game. Forseen twist is a situation, something inevitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both can create a choice, or become no-choice, but while one goes with the flow of the story, the other changes the flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ralph can still refuse to write that will, but that's merely a denial, that doesn't change the outcome. Since we know the wife will die, no matter what Ralph does, the ultimate end will be the same. We can see the struggle, we can see small victories or even deeper loss, but the end will be just as the situation dictates it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now a twist would be if a cure for Ralph's wife is discovered. It may be readily available, or it may require a major challenge to obtain. It changes the game though - from waiting for the inevitable and a combat lost before it started, to a game that offers a chance of victory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give you another example of these. The game called &quot;Summoner&quot; creates one huge twist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist, Joseph, is a commoner in a medieval country, who has a tattoo on his hand, that grants his unique talent - or curse, depending how you look at it. He is able to summon demons. Which may, or may not do his bidding. In his childhood that led to a demon burning his home village. The demons now released threaten the realm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The game revolves around Joseph gathering magic rings that can be used to control the demons. Gathering a ragtag team, following guidance of a mysterious King's advisor Jago, Joseph is to gather the rings and destroy them in Gods' Forge, in order to banish the demons. There's a side-thread of a hostile neighbor kingdom preparing for a war, world torn by conflicting forces, armies gathering, and in this climate we face the situation: gather the rings or face doom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, Joseph with the complete set of rings reaches the gods' forge, and immerses his ring-clad hand in the fires of the forge.&#xA;And now comes the twist. Jago was possessed by one of the demons. This was all a ploy. Not only destruction of the rings releases any restraints that held the demons, Joseph loses his hand, which removes the only tool that - with proper training - could have opposed the threat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The demons ravage the world, conquering both nations. And Joseph, and his ragtag team must oppose the foe against which apparently there's no power that could oppose them. Still, a new plan is forged, involving restoring Joseph's lost hand, and facing the enemies after mastering his powers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here we have two considerably distinct situations placed apart by a plot twist. If you pay close attention to minor clues and discover that Jago is indeed acting on malevolent motives, the twist becomes a part of the first situation, a fool's run towards inevitable doom. Still, most players will miss the hints, and the twist comes as a total surprise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, these were situation vs twist. Let us add complication to the set.&#xA;The complication is the enemy army. It exists as a side thread that adds to the complexity. At one point Joseph faces the king. The king realizes severity of the situation but can't offer Joseph any major help. The quote would go along the lines &quot;If it were a different day, I'd offer a unit of finest soldiers to your case. But with war looming over our borders, I can only spare this one soldier&quot; [who joins your ragtag team]. The situation is the threat of demons and need to find rings. The complication is the looming war. It's not the central plot point, but it affects a lot. Prices and supply change rapidly. Trust is in short supply as enemy spies roam the realm. It creates minor twists, as villages that would welcome you peacefully, conquered, become a battlefield. It changes the game, but in a manner you can expect. A complication is a mutation of a situation, something that makes it less straightforward, requires additional measures, add difficulties. In your example, let us imagine Ralph suffers crippling memories of his prior, lost love, that keep him from acting rationally. Or he lives under repressive totalitarian government, that makes access to medicine difficult, and forces actions of dubious legality in his hopeless struggle. These would be complications. Ralph's wife's request for writing the will is not central to the plot. It affects Ralph, but it will not change the outcome. It's a point to deal with, but it's the sickness that's central to the plot; the request may be heart-wrenching, but it is meaningless in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarizing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Situation: Central to the plot, constructed, long-run, the outcome can depend on it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Twist: Unexpected change, affects the situation, may change the outcome or provide an unexpected complication (or resolution).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complication: Not central to the plot, constructed, more or less long-run.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course a complication may turn into a plot twist (Ralph's wife was infected by government agents because she &quot;knew too much&quot;, the story becomes a story of revenge), a plot twist may turn a situation into complication and vice versa, a complication may become a plot twist (suddenly the oppressive government finds Ralph's wife's case to be a viable PR stunt, giving her medication not normally available to common citizens), and so on. As stated before, the borders may be blurred, and it's merely an attempt to qualify elements of prose, something that isn't easily qualified...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T22:10:30.127" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T22:10:30.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12662" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-19T15:21:19.900" Score="2" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that when we choose the plainest and most pointed words to express a thought, our options for rhythms are so limited that they prevent us from using voices that sound majestic. If we look at the King James Bible, the New Testament writings in particular, we see that each book has a distinct voice, which is highly poetic because it is expressed through beautiful rhythms. The thing that I fail to understand is, I would assume that the King James Bible employs techniques that hinder clarity, but in most cases it follows many of the rules we have today. I wonder if it is possible to invent a derivation of one of the biblical voices, and to write in modern English a clear piece that uses it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can always make arguments related to the use of stylistic devices, such as those that pertain to parallelism, but the use of parallelism and other devices is not a sufficient explanation for the fluidity we find in the text. There is something about the sound of the words themselves. These sounds would not be present if others words were chosen, and  would not be available if the author wanted to express different thoughts. For instance, taking the grammatical structure of any passage in the Bible, and substituting words that pertain to different thoughts, one will produce prose that does not sound like it was written by the biblical authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It remains then, as a last possibility, that choosing different grammatical structures, we can emulate the biblical voices, but we cannot do so without violating rules about clarity. There is some thoughts which are most clearly expressed in only a certain way, and revising a clear passage numerous times to achieve one of those voice will end up bringing nominalizations, passive constructions, and awkward prepositional phrases into the text, which will ultimately fail to sound like the biblical authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore the English language seems to favor the majesty of thought conveyed in the King James Bible. If the English language would yield itself to an emulation of its voices, or even allow the use of a derivation, by what means could those voices be used, seeing the words in our English language are not naturally bent toward these voices for every thought?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10405" LastEditorDisplayName="user10405" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T15:43:01.307" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T02:06:54.270" Title="Do the guidelines for clear style that we use today get in the way of rhythm?" Tags="|style|rhythm|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12656" CreationDate="2014-08-19T19:54:46.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This guy is from Drexel, so he must be right: use the leading zero.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20171110142402/http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/52352.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found one quote on that site especially interesting, since it implies that the leading zero was customarily left out in the English system of units, but was strongly urged in the metric system of units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In the United States, the standard decimal marker is a dot on the&#xA;line (i.e., a period or 'decimal point'). When writing numbers less&#xA;than one, add a zero before the decimal marker. For example, on a&#xA;drawing you might define a small length in English units as&#xA;.032 in., but write the metric length as 0.81 mm.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the leading zero is especially important in Europe (birthplace of the decimal system), where many write decimals using a comma: 0,81 mm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex: The length is small ,81 mm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the error? Is there a missing comma, or is the comma misplaced? See how confusing that is, without the leading zero?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2022-09-14T08:52:47.390" LastActivityDate="2022-09-14T08:52:47.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-19T20:05:12.320" Score="2" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;An example is &quot;Miley Cyrus transformation - a marketing approach&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wont use their stuff inside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No copyrighted material, for example, pictures&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for my previous example, i would write how miley started as innocent, then to appeal to an other crowd, she appears extremely sexual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for my previous example, could i be sued be her/her PR/ her label?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I live in Europe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10408" LastEditorUserId="10408" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T22:04:49.613" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T13:35:57.700" Title="DIT:Is it legal if a write a book about an artist?" Tags="|legal|marketing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12664" CreationDate="2014-08-19T20:41:49.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., anyone can sue anyone.  That doesn't mean they win, and you can counter-sue for your damages incurred defending against a baseless lawsuit.  Plus, of course, most celebs wouldn't want to be seen as bullies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stick to the facts and you will be fine.  However, start injecting your opinions in there, and you could get into trouble.  This is especially so, if your opinions are disparaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you must NOT say anything like &quot;Miley started out pure, but now she's a BLEEP.&quot;  That would be lawsuit-bait.  Give evidence-based statements only, for example: time plots of the surface area of her costumes, statements she has made to the media (then vs. now), average age of her fans, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IANAL!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T20:41:49.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12666" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12669" CreationDate="2014-08-19T22:02:15.533" Score="4" ViewCount="794" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an aspiring author. I've often heard that you have to keep your 'target audience' in mind. It makes sense - certain genres attract certain crowds. Well... I want my books to reach as many people as possible. &#xA;I've heard of books that transcend - or contain - two genres. &lt;em&gt;Snow Falling on Cedars&lt;/em&gt; is a good example. Though I have not read it, from what I have heard, it appears to be both a mystery and a romance novel. &#xA;A book I have in mind has an interesting premise involving time travel. It obviously starts out as a science fiction genre, but could easily delve into historical. Mystery and romance could also be viable genres, based on what happens. The overall genre of the book, however, would likely remain Science Fiction, thus avoiding that dreaded title 'uncategorized.' If I transcended, say, four or five genres, my book would likely attract people of all kinds, right? &#xA;Or is there a disadvantage to transcending more than two genres? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T19:19:01.863" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T21:06:26.690" Title="Is there a disadvantage to transcending genre?" Tags="|fiction|genre|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12664" CreationDate="2014-08-19T23:07:54.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I am not a lawyer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing an unauthorized biography of a celebrity, I imagine that falls under journalism and libel rules. So as long as you could cite every source you used, and you did not write anything which is demonstrably false, you would probably be okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are describing what's basically an extended case study or an academic thesis. If the point of the biography is to show not this person's life from birth to some arbitrary point but to demonstrate how the artist's popularity was manipulated, strategized, packaged, and distributed, then it's really more of an industry how-to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your line of concern is fact and evidence. Whatever events you present as fact must have evidence to back them up: a newspaper article, an interview, a TV program, a photograph. Whatever you don't have evidence for is either conjecture (which you must label as such, and that still might not get you out of trouble) or your opinion/analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lawsuit would have grounds if you wrote something false or defamatory and proclaimed it as fact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting on the facts of her twerking performance at the MTV Awards&#xA;is not false (as long as you describe what actually happened and can&#xA;back it up with a source). If you want to discuss and analyze why she performed that way, you&#xA;are presenting that as your opinion (which I believe is not&#xA;defamation or libel). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are theorizing &quot;she performed this    provocative move to&#xA;increase brand awareness, and a poll taken the    next week showed&#xA;that 27% more American adults aged 35&amp;ndash;50 could    identify her from a&#xA;photo than two weeks before the show,&quot; that's analysis based on fact. It may or may not be the reason she performed that way, but if you have the polls in question, you can make the argument.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But if you say &quot;she performed provocatively because she's strung out&#xA;on various recreational pharmaceuticals&quot; or &quot;she performed provocatively in order to piss off her conservative parents and corporate overlords,&quot; and you have no hard&#xA;evidence to back that up, that's libel, and grounds for a lawsuit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to argue that Cyrus deliberately changed and sexualized her image in order to appeal to a new audience beyond her &lt;em&gt;Hannah Montana&lt;/em&gt; origins, then you will have to lay out that case with a lot of facts and figures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can show her &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_Score&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Q scores&lt;/a&gt; at different points in her career, and try to demonstrate correlation with the change in her image. You can cite polls, album sales, concert receipts, and merchandizing information. You can publish excerpts from interviews and track increases in her followers on social media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; do is speculate on Cyrus's thoughts or choices and proclaim your analysis to be truth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T23:07:54.393" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12653" CreationDate="2014-08-19T23:52:22.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of paying an interviewee for an article or book. I have never done it. There are books available on the art of the interview, which you should consult. You can record the interview, with permission (included in the recording) which is a protection for both writer and interviewee, and is a release of sorts; you can offer to provide pertinent sections of your final article or book &lt;em&gt;in context&lt;/em&gt;. Any publisher is going to make certain there are no litigious issues prior to publication; but many contracts allow the publisher to hang you out to dry if you are involved in legal issues after publication, so consult an attorney before the interview. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10409" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T23:52:22.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12666" CreationDate="2014-08-20T01:43:44.737" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even multi-tools generally place significantly more emphasis on one or two of the tools; Swiss Army &lt;em&gt;Knives&lt;/em&gt; concentrate on providing a decent pocket knife.  Even so, people use them not because any of the tools are as good as a tool dedicated to a specific purpose but because they are convenient and good enough for limited uses. There is a reason for the saying &quot;Jack of all trades and master of none.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are targeting airport bookstores, this kind of broad appeal with low risk but low reward may be appropriate. Your readers may pass along the book to others as a broadly entertaining light read, but they will not be particularly interested in re-reading it or talking about it with others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you want people to get excited about your novel and share their enthusiasm with others, then concentrating on one genre is much more likely to accomplish that goal, especially for a less experienced writer. An inexperienced writer trying to combine multiple genres is much more likely to create a Frankenstein's monster of parts than a complex organic organism. Growing a novel that is true to its DNA will produce rich complexity that the reader will accept as natural and fitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every genre includes expectations and the expectations of different genres can easily conflict. While an attraction to the rational is common in both science fiction and mysteries, it is less common in fantasy. Romance and fantasy are both often set in the past (in terms of technology and culture) and tend to be less focused on realism and more drawn to idealism, but this tends to conflict with the more rational orientation of mysteries. Even the greater departure from realism of fantasy may reduce the enjoyment from the perspective of some lovers of romance, for whom identification with a protagonist (and so some degree of realism) is more important than wonder at the fanciful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as the world and the people in it are complex, so a great novel is unlikely to be so focused on one genre that all other genres are excluded. However, this complexity should flow from the novel's verisimilitude, not from an attempt to cater to the preferences of as many readers as possible. It is true because it is rich; it is rich because it is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being human, authors are complex and will naturally not be satisfied with something that does not richly resonate with their sense of truth. Perhaps the best and simplest advice to a new author is to be human and express this extraordinary humanity in your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be surprised at how powerfully a good story can speak to the hearts of those who would not have thought its genre could have any appeal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T01:43:44.737" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12670" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-20T02:49:30.577" Score="1" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want my writings to be &quot;to-the-point&quot; and no-nonsense, but at the same time, I want them to be entertaining so that they grip attention. By entertaining I don't only mean funny, slang-ish, or humourous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do I strike a balance between a formal tone and an informal tone? I end up writing either full-formal or full-informal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10410" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T02:49:30.577" Title="How can I balance between a formal and informal tone?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-08-21T00:26:30.973" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12666" CreationDate="2014-08-20T09:19:12.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will just broaden very great answer by few insights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You will never make everyone happy&lt;/strong&gt; There are people who generally hate Shakespeare. And there are best selling books which confuse most of people. The &lt;em&gt;Fifty Shades of Grey&lt;/em&gt; is great example of such book (and movie. Yes, they made it into movie).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, ultimately, &lt;strong&gt;focus on telling a story&lt;/strong&gt;. Although I am sci-fi and fantasy lover, if there is gread story to read, I read it. Example in my case is &lt;em&gt;The Beach&lt;/em&gt; which is totally out of my normal area of interest, but I loved the book totally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And downside?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Crossing genres too much can be overkill&lt;/strong&gt;: Yes, I bought recently a movie which got translated to my language as &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2130142/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Attack of Nazi zombies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; because I was really really curious, how bad the movie can be. (It was so bad, that I did throw it out half an hour in).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have idea for a story where Mr Spock and Luke Skywalker got warped to nazi Germany and fight nazi zombies using fantasy spells (and then they fall in love to each other), try to write it down. But, if you cross genres too much, the outcome story will be mostly &quot;just plain stupid&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And last but not least: &lt;strong&gt;Good examples of things which cross genres:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Her&lt;/a&gt; - Is it romance? Is it sci-fi? Is it psychological drama? You decide&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272152/?ref_=nv_sr_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;K-Pax&lt;/a&gt; - is it sci-fi? Is it psychological?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280720/?ref_=nv_sr_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Guru&lt;/a&gt; - great mixture of bolywood and romance comedy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486655/?ref_=nv_sr_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stardust&lt;/a&gt; - half fairy tale, half fantasy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T09:19:12.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12664" CreationDate="2014-08-20T11:28:31.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;FYI, I am not lawyer and I don’t know the background behind the book which I am about to show you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to let you know, that something similar was already done. Take look at book &lt;em&gt;Inside Steve's brain&lt;/em&gt; by Leander Kahney. it is mixture of Apple history and author's opinions about why Apple was so popular, with added business how-to (How to make another Apple like company).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T11:28:31.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12666" CreationDate="2014-08-20T15:54:44.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been my experience that a well-written book that engages an audience reaches many people, regardless of genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But one thing to keep in mind. If you plan on writing more than one book, and most of us do, do you want to have to build a new audience each time? And as a new author, it's much harder to sell a book that doesn't &quot;fit&quot; into a category, than it is for an experienced and well-known author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was in school, one of the popular pieces of advice was -- break the rules after you have followed them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10413" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T15:54:44.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12674" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12675" CreationDate="2014-08-20T16:57:45.557" Score="6" ViewCount="387" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across prologues of several novels, and I noticed that they all were different from each other. Some had a short excerpt picked somewhere from the novel, a few included some private notes from the author, while others had an introductory part by the narrator of the story (in either first person or third person).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these variations are stretching the definition of a prologue (at least for me). So I need a clear explanation: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What is a prologue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Why does an author need one? Is it is really important? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What is the proper way of writing a prologue? (Which way is the original method?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Can one violate the original methods to write a prologue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6752" LastEditorUserId="6752" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T06:48:16.347" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T06:48:16.347" Title="Defining a Prologue" Tags="|style|novel|structure|prologues|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12674" CreationDate="2014-08-20T18:24:39.617" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A prologue is &lt;em&gt;pro&lt;/em&gt;, before, the &lt;em&gt;logos,&lt;/em&gt; word. It's text before the main body of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether a work needs a prologue is entirely up to the author. There is no right or wrong way to write one. There is no right or wrong content. It can serve as an introduction, a teaser, a flashback, background material, a recap, or anything else the author thinks might be useful or interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there are no rules, there's nothing to violate. It's purely Your Mileage May Vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T18:24:39.617" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12674" CreationDate="2014-08-20T19:18:22.307" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12675/26&quot;&gt;Lauren's answer&lt;/a&gt;: A prologue is anything before the main body of a text, and can be whatever the author wants it to be. What matters is that it reads well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in my experience, an introduction, preface, or forward is usually written in the writer's or editor's voice;  prologues are usually (but not always) part of the novel's story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these sections - along with acknowledgements, copyright page, title page, table of contents - can be referred to collectively as &lt;em&gt;front matter&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T19:18:22.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12674" CreationDate="2014-08-20T23:16:14.213" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually a prologue is outside the main flow of the story in some way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tease with an out-of-sequence scene.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The prologue might tease us by previewing a pivotal scene&#xA;that will occur later in the main storyline.&#xA;Often this is a snippet of the climax.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Give context through a different viewpoint.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A prologue might put the story into a wider context&#xA;by offering a viewpoint that does not otherwise occur&#xA;in the main storyline.&#xA;Perhaps the viewpoint of a character&#xA;who does not otherwise have a viewpoint scene&#xA;(or appear directly in the story at all).&#xA;Or a viewpoint from a different timeframe,&#xA;either before or after the main story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dramatic irony.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A prologue might tease us by giving information&#xA;that the hero will lot learn until much later in the story.&#xA;Thrillers,&#xA;for example,&#xA;often feature prologues from the bad guys' viewpoint,&#xA;giving us readers information&#xA;about the scope and dastardliness of the bad guys' plans.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T23:16:14.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12674" CreationDate="2014-08-21T01:38:16.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a prologue is used if Fantasy, Science Fiction, or Historical novels it's common to show some of the historical, cultural, or political background leading up to the action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10365" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T01:38:16.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12662" CreationDate="2014-08-21T02:06:54.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be worthwhile to read different styles of contemporary poetry, looking for examples that are clear but have a sense of rhythm that appeals to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside the KJV Bible, it's worth remembering that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bulwer-Lytton,_1st_Baron_Lytton&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Edward Bulwer-Lytton&lt;/a&gt; was an very popular and successful author in his day, with a style people loved, but now his prose style is a joke, with an award for horrible writing named after him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our literary education is quite different as well. The writing style and complexity of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuffey_Reader&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;McGuffey Readers&lt;/a&gt; seems to be at a much higher level, even for very young readers. If contemporary readers had grown up with that style, they'd probably be more willing to tackle it as adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10365" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T02:06:54.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12666" CreationDate="2014-08-21T02:37:26.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Genres like Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction are mostly defined by their &lt;strong&gt;setting&lt;/strong&gt; rather than the type of story. Thinking of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/2011/08/07/writing-excuses-6-10-scott-cards-m-i-c-e-quotient/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Orson Scott Card's MICE Quotient&lt;/a&gt;... Within any of those settings, you will find many stories that are primarily about Milieu (exploration, travel), Idea (mystery, problem-solving), Character, and Event (disaster, war). They can also include elements of horror, romance, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think combining a setting with a story type creates the same sort of problems as doing a mash-up - like a Jane Austen zombie novel. If your book could interest two different groups of readers equally, i.e. SF and Romance, you can market to both groups, though if the SF setting is mostly window-dressing, for example, I'd concentrate most of my efforts on romance readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10365" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T02:37:26.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10048" CreationDate="2014-08-21T02:58:36.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, no. Use normal sentence case, where you capitalize the first word of a headline only. The exceptions are proper nouns, or other capitalized words listed in the style guide's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/style-guide/capitals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;section on capitals&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guide doesn't address words like &amp;quot;its&amp;quot;; &lt;em&gt;The Economist&lt;/em&gt; has little patience with this sort of minutiae. However, as has been pointed out in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10175/26&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The Economist&lt;/em&gt; uses sentence case for their headlines and taglines. Reading some recent examples, I found the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Demonstrations in Hong Kong&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Poles apart&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Hong Kong seems doomed to months of ugly confrontation over its political future&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;LinkedIn&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Workers of the world, log in&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The social network has already shaken up the way professionals are hired. Its ambitions go far beyond that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth reading the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;em&gt;The Economist Style Guide&lt;/em&gt;, Tenth Edition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;capitals&lt;/strong&gt; A balance has to be struck between so many capitals that the eyes dance and so few that the reader is diverted more by our style than by our substance. The general rule is to dignify with capital letters organisations and institutions, but not people; and full names, but not informal ones. More exact rules are laid out below. Even these, however, leave some decisions to individual judgement. If in doubt use lower case unless it looks absurd. And remember that &amp;quot;a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds&amp;quot; (Ralph Waldo Emerson).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(p.24)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T13:20:51.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12682" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-21T11:52:16.110" Score="4" ViewCount="827" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just volunteered to produce the concert program booklets for a recital series starting in October and I'm wondering what is the best way to go about creating a multi-page booklet that would include things like program notes, performer biographies, the evening's selections, some advertisements, contributor lists, and more odds and ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose I could do battle with Microsoft Word, but when I used it some years back to produce a physics instructor's manual I suffered greatly.  Are there online tools I could learn to use that might do this job?  Is there a Google Drive tool that would work for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a habit of reinventing the wheel and working too hard instead of finding out the easy way to do things, so I'd appreciate any advice before I start.&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;i&gt;Added--&lt;/i&gt;Thanks for the Scribus suggestion!  I downloaded it into my Mac and got it working rather quickly.  I started working through the tutorial and see that there are quite a few differences between versions that make it a little hard to know where to look for a box to check for this or that, but I think I can learn to use this to good effect if I put in the time ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10422" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-17T03:48:19.170" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T03:48:19.170" Title="Free or cheap way to lay out a concert program booklet?" Tags="|formatting|software|tools|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12682" CreationDate="2014-08-21T12:45:42.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, in my case, fandom magazine, we decided to put the final layouting inside &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scribus&lt;/a&gt; which is open source and available for all operating systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For documents sharing, we use Facebook closed group, becase it offers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document upload (for writing texts we use either Libre Office or MS Ofice)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussion for every document version&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And of course, document version support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And, &lt;em&gt;Everyone is on Facebook nowadays ;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T12:45:42.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12614" CreationDate="2014-08-21T17:24:29.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Response from Scrivener Staff:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid that there are limits to how much headers and footers can be customised from within Scrivener itself and you've hit up against that. While Scrivener is capable of creating verso headers and footers (right and left), and it can create a different header/footer style for the &quot;first pages&quot; of the manuscript, it cannot create a separate header/footer for the first page of each chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid this level of customisation would have to be done by compiling to Word and making the changes there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Credits go to:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Jeff&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Literature and Latte Support&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10351" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T17:24:29.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12666" CreationDate="2014-08-22T21:06:26.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say you want your books to reach as many people as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my writing, I focus on a very specific audience: people who are technologists or love technology and who think about the future. When I focus this specifically, I'm always going to alienate some people who fall outside my target audience. But on the other hand, the audience I'm writing for is going to love my books even more deeply, and recommend them to friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world is an enormous place, with over 3 billion literate people, and about 330 million of those native English speakers. If a book appeals to one percent of people, that's 3.3 million people who would enjoy it in English, and 30 million in all languages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the bestselling books of all time on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. They have sold in the 10s of millions. A book that appeals to just 1% of the population could become the bestselling book of all time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book that a few people will love will probably do better than a book that many people may like a little. Those few who love it will spread word-of-mouth far better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10432" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T21:06:26.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12238" CreationDate="2014-08-23T00:55:25.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, show, don't tell. Because that advice is rather vague, however, allow me to explain. The way I understand 'show, don't tell' is 'let the reader form his own conclusions. Just make sure they are the ones he is supposed to form.' For example, you don't need to say that someone rolled their eyes in exasperation. The fact that they rolled their eyes alone will usually make the reader deduce that they did it in exasperation. The same thing can go for characters. If they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; smart, clever, insightful, and show it, you won't need to tell the reader that. He'll already know it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T00:55:25.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12689" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12691" CreationDate="2014-08-23T05:42:57.850" Score="5" ViewCount="2956" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write articles on a website about anime, manga, cosplay, etc. I want to know whether I should italicise the names of anime or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some articles, I have to put the name of a certain anime too many times. It looks bad with so much italics...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: &lt;strong&gt;What's the ideal usage of italics concerning names?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10410" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T22:29:00.797" Title="What's the ideal usage for italics for names?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12689" CreationDate="2014-08-23T16:41:32.747" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rule of thumb about italics vs. quotes is &quot;big things get italics, little things (or pieces of big things) get quotes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's the name of a book or magazine, italicize it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's the name of an article or blog post, put it in quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's the name of a movie, italicize it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TV shows have become debatable, because they are getting &quot;bigger&quot; in the sense of being longer and becoming more important. So I think you'd have to consider the context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you talk about TV shows and movies in the same piece, use quotes&#xA;for the TV show. (Basil Rathbone in &lt;em&gt;The Hound of the Baskervilles&lt;/em&gt; vs. Benedict Cumberbatch in the BBC's &quot;Sherlock&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are only talking about various TV shows, use italics. (Benedict Cumberbatch in the BBC's &lt;em&gt;Sherlock&lt;/em&gt; vs. Jonny Lee Miller in CBS's &lt;em&gt;Elementary&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are talking about a TV show as a whole &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the names of&#xA;various episodes, use italics for the show name and quotes for the&#xA;episode names. (&lt;em&gt;Sherlock&lt;/em&gt;'s Season 3 was &quot;The Empty Hearse,&quot; &quot;The Sign of Three,&quot; and &quot;His Last Vow&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it looks silly that you're italicizing the name so many times, maybe you need to edit the piece so you aren't saying the name so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA at Neil's request&lt;/strong&gt; While this may seem contrary, I would say that a series of books which has a formal title doesn't get formatting at all: the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Last Herald-Mage trilogy, the Belgariad, the Malloreon, the Dragonriders of Pern series. My instinct is that each of these is a name for a collection of things, an umbrella term, rather than a proper name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-08-24T02:07:59.043" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T02:07:59.043" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12417" CreationDate="2014-08-23T20:04:45.533" Score="12" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Introduction&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Biggest reason documentation is written is to help developers learn about the software system and give them a reference to the tools they are using. This is a broad question and I must admit most of the tips I will give will be my opinions and things I've found helpful. Below are some guidelines and design aspects you can use to help improve you documentation.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Know Your Audience&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may sound like a silly thing but it is very important. &lt;strong&gt;Knowing your audience helps you decide how much detail you need and what information you need to provide.&lt;/strong&gt; For example, You don't want to present all this unnecessary low level details about your system, and techno jargon to someone who just wants to fix little bugs in your system or test your programs. You also want to accommodate for the advance developers you want to really change your system, they don't want to many abstractions and not enough detail about a system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Django&lt;/a&gt; is an example that does a good job identifying their audience and accommodating for their different targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Make It Easy to Find Information&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When developers get stuck on a problem or want a quick look at what arguments some function takes or what it does, &lt;strong&gt;they don't want to have to look through thousands of links just to find what they are looking for&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Just like you might not want to read all of this answer if I didn't have headers.&lt;/em&gt; Creating an easy navigation system for your documentation makes it clearer. I would suggest a contents table or a searching function. Also creating a structure for you documentation help readers find what they are looking for better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.android.com/index.html#&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Android&lt;/a&gt; does a terrific job with this. Dividing their content into Design, Develop, and Distribute gives developers and idea of where to find the information they are looking for. Their search function makes finding information easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Spruce It Up&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give you audience a choice on how they want to receive the info. &lt;strong&gt;Not everyone wants to read long lines of text&lt;/strong&gt;. Some people might want to watch videos, others might want to look at an infographic. Even if you you just want to use text then put your documentation in the form of a story, or make it more personal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Qt does a good job providing different mediums of documentation. Ooc programming language does a good job sprucing up their tutorial by making it into a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Closing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing documentation is boring and difficult but it can be very helpful to your software. Just always remember who you are writing for and why you are writing. You can use any guidelines you want. Hope you found this helpful and I would welcome any criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10435" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T19:41:04.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12417" CreationDate="2014-08-23T22:29:37.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;test-driven development&lt;/a&gt; the emphasis is on writing tests that clarify what code should do, rather than extensive documentation. Future maintainers of the code can then ensure that the code continues to exhibit the behavior it should by virtue of the tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way tests are named form a type of documentation of the proper behavior of the code. Here is an example from the Ruby world:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;describe &quot;REST interface&quot; do&#xA;  describe &quot;create&quot; do&#xA;    context &quot;with valid parameters&quot;&#xA;      it &quot;should create an object in the database&quot; do&#xA;        # test logic goes here&#xA;      end&#xA;      it &quot;should return HTTP 200&quot; do&#xA;        # test logic goes here&#xA;      end&#xA;    end&#xA;&#xA;    context &quot;with invalid parameters&quot; do&#xA;      it &quot;should not change the DB&quot; do&#xA;        # test logic here&#xA;      end&#xA;      it &quot;should return HTTP 400&quot; do&#xA;        # test logic here&quot;&#xA;    end&#xA;  end&#xA;end&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The block names are chained together, so that you can read them in English and they make sense: &lt;strong&gt;REST interface create with valid parameters should create an object in the database&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10432" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T22:29:37.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12695" CreationDate="2014-08-24T04:21:51.673" Score="2" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So how did this animal suicide thing start? Ironically, it began with&#xA;  my own death wish. But why? I had perfect health, friends and family&#xA;  who cared about me, plus I had just been admitted into college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well, basically, I stopped finding meaning in things. Not in a&#xA;  spiritual or philosophical way, though; things simply ceased to make&#xA;  sense. I'd be riding the train or crossing the street and ask myself:&#xA;  What's the meaning of all this? You wake up, go to work, eat, poop,&#xA;  crawl back to bed—then die. Yes, some will remember you, but those&#xA;  people will die, too. And even if you make yourself a place in&#xA;  history, all traces of that will disappear once we blow ourselves up&#xA;  with nuclear weapons, or  once the universe undergoes a cosmic&#xA;  explosion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I concluded the most logical thing to do was to end with my life.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My mind made up, I holed up in my apartment one night to think of the&#xA;  most suitable method.&lt;/strong&gt; Jumping from a building wasn't an option; I was&#xA;  afraid of heights. Hanging—I was terrible at tying knots. Even my&#xA;  shoe's, which untangled every 5 minutes. After giving it a lot of&#xA;  though, I decided on pills. Easy: grab a bunch, pop them into your&#xA;  mouth, then wash them down with water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm especially concerned about the transition between monologue and action/scene (is that how they're called?), which I marked with &lt;strong&gt;bold.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me know if you want me to include more paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T04:45:37.907" Title="Does this text flow smoothly (description of suicidal thoughts)?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|description|narrative|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12694" CreationDate="2014-08-24T04:45:37.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The transition seems fairly smooth to me, probably because the action doesn't feel like action: It feels like the continuation of the musings in the earlier paragraphs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this is because we're not seeing the setup, but I think the entire excerpt feels rushed. This is someone who's thinking through reasons why life just doesn't make sense, but I'm not buying any of it: It seems detached, almost philosophical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that easing us into this more gradually and giving the reader some anchor points - something like motivations or action touchpoints - would help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T04:45:37.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12696" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-24T07:29:10.383" Score="1" ViewCount="671" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if this is on topic here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember back when I was a kid, I read a story about a US president.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When he was a kid, he was stupid and fooled by people.&#xA;They often gave him a choice of a nickel and a dime. He didn't know, so he chose the bigger one which is the nickel. From then on, he became a joke for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They would give him the two coins and ask him to choose, and then walked away laughing.&#xA;One day a woman, being a good person, taught him that people were making fun of him and that the dime is smaller, but has more value than the nickel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The kid (being a future president) said that he had known that a long time ago. However, if he had started picking the right coin, then people would have stopped giving him money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought that is quite impressive, but I don't quite remember exactly the name of that president or if this anecdotal story is true. If it is, I hope someone can name him here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10302" LastEditorUserId="10302" LastEditDate="2014-08-24T07:50:17.470" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T07:50:17.470" Title="The president, the nickel and the dime" Tags="|short-story|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-08-24T13:48:18.750" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12697" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-25T03:21:51.773" Score="1" ViewCount="179" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a person trying to write poetry, I always have a problem trying to get subject material(especially for the past six months) and formatting it, or trying to put it to specific forms like a verse. Also, I seem to have a problem with keeping on point with the main topic of the poem, and I seem to go off with imagery to the point where it can be jumbled. I believe this came from both of my creative writing classes because we never went in depth on fiction, writing, poetry, rules, genres, ect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I may ask without trying to sound like a previously asked question, what are some tips from  you all? Am I over-thinking everything or confused or what? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I apologize if I sound like another inquiry into the matter. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, as I am brand new to this site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10442" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T07:37:17.000" Title="Writing and Formatting and Tips on Poetry" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-08-25T13:02:35.173" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12697" CreationDate="2014-08-25T07:37:17.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I am (co)author of one self-published poem issue called &lt;em&gt;Havran Blije&lt;/em&gt; (Raven vomits in English), I will describe you the creative process behind it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Being disgusted:&lt;/strong&gt; So many new poem authors do not care about rythm or rhyme. They just &quot;vomit&quot; whatever feeling they have on the paper and thats it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Being in community which poems. A lot&lt;/strong&gt; And they exactly post poems in form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_verse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;free verse&lt;/a&gt; which is just the random thoughts they have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Its sunny down in the park&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I have good feelings from it&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Found chesnut, lying on the ground&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;And there is vomitting raven&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Idea!&lt;/strong&gt; What if. What if people, who care about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;true poems&lt;/a&gt; gathered together and output together something, what cares about rhyme, form and the whole structure of poems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Even stupider idea:&lt;/strong&gt; What if we show this on poems which are not &quot;deep&quot; in any sense of the word, but its still perfected in matter of form?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5. Even stupider idea:&lt;/strong&gt; Wow, one of the grup member can draw!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6. Gather around and have fun about the stupid ideas we just had&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;7. Write them down and perfect the poems, so that they have correct form&lt;/strong&gt;. We have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;haiku&lt;/a&gt; in correct form, We have one poem in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iambic_pentameter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;iambic pentameter&lt;/a&gt; (which is totally hardcore to do in Czech language) and many more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;8. Publish&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16113300/Havran%20blije.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ta-da&lt;/a&gt;! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HqB3L.png&quot; alt=&quot;raven vomits&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it answers the question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T07:37:17.000" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-25T22:03:16.317" Score="3" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have no relevant degree or experience and am a recent graduate. What steps can I take to break into the industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10454" LastActivityDate="2015-02-15T16:52:52.517" Title="How does one break into journalism?" Tags="|journalism|jobs|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-02-15T17:32:01.417" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12702" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-26T00:15:20.307" Score="5" ViewCount="1160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 7 publishing houses currently evaluating my manuscript for possible publication. Some houses have already read a few chapters and have requested the entire manuscript, others are basing their evaluation on their interest in my synopsis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sent another house (not included in the above tally) my full manuscript because on their website they said that they accepted unsolicited fulls. I got a reply in about one month. It was a rejection, but with an offer to look at the work again should I substantially revise the manuscript (they made a few suggestions) as well as an offer to consider another book when I complete it (I am working on a second novel now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, has anyone revised a manuscript and actually managed to get published with a house that has asked them to do this? Of course I am going to wait back to hear from the others before I even attempt to make the changes they ask for. I am not even sure the changes are doable, given the scope of the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am willing to perform surgery on my novel, if you will, but it would be much easier to work with a publisher that is willing to invest in me and guide me through the changes that they want made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any similar experiences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10256" LastActivityDate="2017-10-02T03:39:09.737" Title="Revising a manuscript and resubmitting to same publisher?" Tags="|publishing|novel|editing|publisher|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12703" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12710" CreationDate="2014-08-26T02:18:02.910" Score="6" ViewCount="545" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the 'About the Author' section of Cuckoo's calling, it says that Robert Galbraith spent several years in the military etc etc. But now that we all know who Robert Galbraith is...does this not constitute a lie? Is an author allowed to lie about himself/herself like this? How is it legal?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can any one write a book and then lie about their background to gain credibility?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="593" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T07:32:10.273" Title="Misleading facts in the About the Author section" Tags="|fiction|publishing|novel|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12704" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-26T06:20:59.770" Score="2" ViewCount="375" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if this opening of my book enticed readers to read further. The book is a dystopian novel. This is NOT a complete chapter, it is only a part of it. Please leave comments on how I can improve this or what changes are needed. Please be critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My eyes were open before my alarm sounded. Normally I would be tired or groggy, but not today. I was wide awake. After quickly shutting off the alarm, I sat up and glanced at the display. 8:30am, August 31. The last day of the month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got up and headed to the bathroom. There wasn’t a need to splash cold water on my face to wake myself up, but I did it anyway. Going back to my room, I found an outfit of clothes already put out for me. Mom; she must be worried. There wasn’t any other reason a parent would dress their 17 year old son.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Downstairs, my mom was cooking breakfast in the kitchen. I smelled eggs and toast. The smell of eggs made my mouth water a little. We rarely had eggs for a meal. The only way to get eggs in Sector 4 was to buy them from the market at the crack of dawn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When my mom saw me, she put on a smile. “Morning, sweetie.” Her eyes had slightly dark circles under them. It looked like she barely got any sleep last night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Morning mom.” I took a seat at the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She brought over a plate of eggs and toast along with a glass of water. “Here you go.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as I began eating, my dad came through the front door. He had taken the night shift and must have just gotten off. He was dressed in his work clothes which consisted of an orange vest, white shirt, jeans and boots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was a Divide Keeper; they monitored the wall and made sure it was secure. Many of the residents of Sector 4 were Divide Keepers. The hours weren’t too long and it paid enough. It was one of the only decent jobs anyone in our position could get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Hey buddy, good morning!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Morning Dad.” I said, “Want some breakfast?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was obviously tired, but he grinned at the sight of the food. “Are those eggs?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mom placed another plate of eggs on the table. “Yes they are and these are for you.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He sat down next to me and shook salt onto his eggs. “So, are you nervous?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I wasn’t. I knew I should have been a least a bit nervous, but I really wasn’t. “No, I don’t think so.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mom pitched in. “It’s alright to be a little nervous, but you’ve got nothing to worry about.” Somehow, I don’t think she was talking to me. It felt like she was saying it to my dad and herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I’m fine guys, really.” I assured them. “Besides, they say it's only a 2% chance I'd be compatible.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You never know bud, you never know.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6618" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T07:02:32.893" Title="Does this urge you to read further or stop?" Tags="|fiction|science-fiction|openings|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2017-01-05T07:49:36.043" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12703" CreationDate="2014-08-26T06:57:49.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;This book is a work of fiction...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T06:57:49.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12704" CreationDate="2014-08-26T07:01:42.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion? &lt;strong&gt;Do not rush it.&lt;/strong&gt; Do I need to know that its 31st August? Do I need to know that main character is 17 years old boy? Do I need to know that there is some &amp;quot;Wall&amp;quot; which needs to be protected?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The intro should give me a hint about what’s going to happen. And not little details about something which can be revealed &lt;em&gt;later.&lt;/em&gt; I will think about it and edit my answer later on, how you could improve on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, yes, it makes me wonder what is going to happen. But also, I am going to place a bet on the fact, that the main character will be compatible (whatever it means)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;. Ok, here we go. I don’t know why, but I feel like that you should write the dystopian scifi in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardboiled&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hardboiled&lt;/a&gt; way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did hit the snooze button exactly one second after it went off. There was no need for alarm today, I was already wide awake. I knew what is going on today, but still, it was time for my every day routine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glanced at myself in the bathroom mirror. There was no need to splash self with cold water, but I did it anyway. &amp;quot;Today is the day,&amp;quot; I tried my best deep voice, but it sounded more like child who is trying to impress someone. And I was not impressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smell of the eggs from downstairs made my mouth water. Another reminder, that today is somewhat special day. My mother had to go to the market when it was still night, just to get those for me today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I came down, my father just went in from his night shift at the Wall. &amp;quot;Good morning! Are those eggs?&amp;quot; he smiled, but wrinkles on his eyes gave me the information, that this was yet another hard day in the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mom was just preparing the breakfast - and dinner for my dad: &amp;quot;Yes. And there are some for you.&amp;quot; answered and gave him kiss on the cheek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Happy 17th birthday,&amp;quot; told me when I received my plate. &amp;quot;Today is the day.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My dad looked me in the eye and told me: &amp;quot;It’s all right to be a little nervous, but you’ve got nothing to worry about.” Somehow, I don’t think he was talking to me. It felt like he was saying it to my mom and himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I’m fine guys, really.” I assured them. “Besides, they say it's only a 2% chance I'd be compatible.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You never know bud, you never know.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T07:41:53.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12703" CreationDate="2014-08-26T10:46:44.687" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Preliminary Note&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently reading the novel &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_%28Roman%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Indigo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Austrian author &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clemens_J._Setz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clemens J. Setz&lt;/a&gt;. The novel tells the story of Clemens Setz, who, after studying mathematics and German, does an internship as mathematics tutor at the Helianau boarding school in the Austrian Bundesland &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styria&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Styria&lt;/a&gt;, a school for &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_children&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Indigo children&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, whose presence makes those around them feel nausea, dizziness and headache. The author biography in the front of the book states that the author, Clemens J. Setz, born in Graz, Austria, after studying mathematics and German, worked as a mathematics tutor at the Proximity Awareness &amp;amp; Learning Center Helianau and is suffering from the long-term effects of the Indigo-contamination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is that the Helianau boarding school does not exist, and that the author Setz never did an internship in a school for indigo children and is not suffering from the after-effects of anything. But the whole book is a tapestry of fiction and fact, interwoven so masterfully, that without extensive research (or an uncommonly broad educational background) you won't be able to tell one from the other. There are many things in the book which I was surprised to find were actually true, and many I was irritated to find were untrue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite obviously, the pretense that the book recounts factual events, is part of its concept. Also quite obviously, the author biography serves to affirm and substantiate that pretense by misusing the reader's expectation that an author biography presents the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of &amp;quot;Robert Galbraith's&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;The Cuckoo's Calling&lt;/em&gt;, while the author is not part of the perceptibly fictional story, &amp;quot;his&amp;quot; military background gives his fictional works the appearance of being based on real life experiences, similar to real-life intelligence officer Ian Fleming's tales of the fictional spy James Bond. An author who as experienced and knows what he writes about, even if it is fictionalized, is more attractive to many readers than an author how has no idea &amp;quot;what it is really like&amp;quot; and makes it all up. For the same reason, books are often published under pseudonyms with a different gender than that of the acutal writer, because readers often prefer to read about certain topics when they are written by a man or a women, believing that only men or women can really understand whatever the book is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author's implicit (pseudonym gender) or stated biography is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; a part of both the narrative and the marketing of the book, and carefully crafted. An author's biography, in other words, is a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_technique&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;literary device&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The public image of public figures is largely made up or manipulated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Politicians hold doctorate degrees by questionable foreign universities or are being convicted of plagiarism. Degrees signify expertise to the voters, but take time and effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;George Clooney and other stars supposedly pay young women to play their spouses for some time so as to appear desirable to their target audience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every job applicant tunes their curriculum vitae and pretends to have knowledge and experience that they don't have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is that you should not trust the biography of anyone. Usually the sham isn't so blatant, but &lt;strong&gt;a biography is always a part of the marketing of the &lt;em&gt;autor as a brand&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (or the neighbor as being more financially successful). Distrust it, until you see proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T07:32:10.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12703" CreationDate="2014-08-26T10:46:57.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note: I am not a lawyer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Czech, we have saying: &quot;When there is no lawsuit, there is no damage&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words. Someone lied to you. &lt;em&gt;So what?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can you accuse them from? What is the damage caused to you? The question is not about &lt;em&gt;legality&lt;/em&gt; but more over about &lt;em&gt;morality&lt;/em&gt; because the only damage caused can be, that you are not going to buy a book (movie...) from such author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T10:46:57.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12382" CreationDate="2014-08-26T12:39:06.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have the financial resources, the manpower (a team for a synchronized multitasked work environment), the time for self (or paid) training and the will to participate in a much slower than SE community for help, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adobe.com/products/technicalcommunicationsuite.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adobe's &quot;Technical Communication Suite&quot;&lt;/a&gt; is your solution. It's the top notch, state-of-the-art, standards supporting &quot;technical documentation&quot; solution on the market. Just Framemaker itself would convince technical writers to try it for once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as I've stated above it has its drawbacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a &quot;one man show&quot;, you should stick with open source solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10460" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T12:39:06.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12703" CreationDate="2014-08-26T12:49:29.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it constitutes a lie, technically speaking. Yes, it is legal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of pseudonyms is an established practice in publishing. There's a wide range of reasons where writing under a pseudonym might be obviously beneficial to the author:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author's real name is similar to the name of a more-popular author; readers might confuse the two.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author is writing something that would be embarrassing to have linked to their real name, e.g. erotica.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author has written previous books which have been commercial failures; they want to distance themselves and &quot;start afresh.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The book addresses incendiary topics, and the author's identity needs to remain secret to avoid retribution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author fears they will not be taken seriously if their identity is known, e.g. a woman writing in a male-dominated field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider, also, the practice of ghost-writing - where the publisher presents the book as being written by one author, usually a celebrity, when the actual writing was done by an author who worked for hire.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mere use of a fake name is, obviously, a lie. Supporting biographical facts are also lies. But the acceptance of pseudonyms in publishing is long-standing, because it's generally to our benefit to let everyone publish whatever their identity and their privacy needs, and because we usually care a whole lot more about the content of the book than about the identity of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, lying is not illegal. Indeed, there are special legal provisions for writing under a pseudonym (particularly to establish ownership of copyright).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a point at which lying about your background can be outright fraudulent - for example, if you claim your book is non-fictional autobiography, but the facts turn out to be false. I don't know if even this is outright illegal, but it certainly can provoke outrage or sever contracts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, simply lying about who you are, for the purposes of author information in a fiction book, is generally not seen as problematic. It's simply part of the author's brand and persona, and it's difficult to spin that as being harmful to anybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T12:49:29.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12712" CreationDate="2014-08-26T14:12:01.397" Score="2" ViewCount="294" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example (excerpt from a story I'm writing):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To make things worse, my schoolmates started calling me “Hanging Pup”&#xA;  from then on (yes, news spread like a diseases at my university. The&#xA;  dumber they were, the faster they propagated). At least they could have&#xA;  chosen a more feminine one. Like “Hara-kitty” or “Floor-jumping&#xA;  Bunny.” Anyway, I didn’t care. I’d never cared much about how people&#xA;  call me or what they think about me. I was usually too busy with my&#xA;  own thoughts to care about other’s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem arose when the story reached my mother. She went to&#xA;  one of these aerobic dancing classes housewives organize in parks.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;(Not that she was out of shape. On the contrary, she had an dazzling&#xA;  figure: firm breasts, a diminute waist, and hips that, though wide,&#xA;  had no traces of ever having carried a child. She just did it for&#xA;  fun.)&lt;/strong&gt; The group was mainly composed by my schoolmate’s mothers, so Mom&#xA;  probably heard it from there. She called me that same night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“This suicide thing again?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Not suicide, Mom. Animal suicide.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I tried to do (&lt;strong&gt;bolded&lt;/strong&gt; part) was to take advantage of the exercise part to describe the mother's physical appearance. I wonder, though, if that chunk will pull the reader out of the narrative, or make the piece harder to read? (I'm worried of this because it's relatively long).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T15:44:32.053" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T21:28:36.623" Title="Pulling the reader out of the narrative: When it's too much?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|narrative|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12711" CreationDate="2014-08-26T21:28:36.623" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The bits you put in parentheses don't (necessarily) take me out of the narrative. They are the character's opinions of people and events. That takes me deeper into the character, which is a big part of where the story is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One test for such parentheticals is: Do these opinions characterize the character in a way that serves the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Lauren points out, the bolded bit may be showing a side of the character that you did not intend. If it serves your story to show the character as having a creepy, sexualized view of his mother, leave that in. If not, change it. Or drop it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this passage, it seems to me that the parentheses themselves call attention to the parenthetical statements. The parentheses announce that the narrator thinks of the statements as side comments, and chooses to include them anyway. Again, this characterizes the narrator. So the question is: Does that characterization serve the story? If so, leave the parentheses in. If not, take them out, and just put the statements into the flow of the paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T21:28:36.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12704" CreationDate="2014-08-27T01:34:32.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just tightened it up, removing verbs of the to-be form, removing adverbs, and any redundancies. I agree that the Sectors seem a little too Hunger Games, but otherwise I didn't have a problem with it. As one of the other posters said, lots of books start out like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a professional writer, I think the writing style could use some revision and honing to make me want to keep writing. In terms of the subject matter, I'm interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My eyes opened before my alarm sounded. Normally tired and groggy when I woke, today I was wide awake. I waited in bed until the alarm went off. 8:30am, August 31. The last day of the month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was no need to splash cold water on my face to wake myself up, but I did it anyway. In my room I found an outfit of clothes already put out for me. Mom must be worried. There wasn’t any other reason a parent would dress their 17 year old son.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Downstairs, I smelled eggs, my mouth watering as the unexpected treat. The only way to get eggs in Sector 4 was to buy them at the crack of dawn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I entered, my mom put on a smile. “Morning, sweetie.” Her eyes had dark circles under them, like she'd barely gotten any sleep last night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Morning, mom.” I took a seat at the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She brought over a plate of eggs and toast. “Here you go.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I took the first bite, my dad came through the front door, still dress in the orange vest, white shirt and jeans he wore to work. He'd taken the night shift and just got home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was a Divide Keeper, his job was to monitor the wall and keep it secure. Many residents of Sector 4 were Divide Keepers because the hours weren’t too long and it paid enough. It was one of the only decent jobs anyone in our position could get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Hey buddy, good morning!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Morning Dad.” I said, “Want some breakfast?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was obviously tired, but he grinned at the sight of the food. “Are those eggs?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mom placed another plate of eggs on the table. “Yes, they are. These are for you.” She kissed him on the cheek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He sat next to me and shook salt onto his eggs. “So, are you nervous?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mom stared at us, frozen in mid-step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I wasn’t. I knew I should have been, a least a bit, but I really wasn’t. “No, I don’t think so.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mom pitched in. “It’s alright to be a little nervous, but you’ve got nothing to worry about.” Somehow, I don’t think she was talking to me. It felt like she was saying it to my dad and herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I’m fine guys, really.” I assured them. “Besides, they say it's only a 2% chance I'd be compatible.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You never know, bud, you never know.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10432" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T01:34:32.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12704" CreationDate="2014-08-27T07:02:32.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's science fiction, and more specifically dystopic fiction. That means the purpose of the story is to highlight the differences between the fictional, 'incorrect' reality and our own 'correct' one.^ That means that in order to keep the reader interested, you have to start the &lt;strong&gt;scavenger search for anomalies&lt;/strong&gt; as soon as possible. What you should be concerned about is the reader being &lt;em&gt;bored&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarities between the fictional world and ours serve to throw the horror of dystopia into relief, at least in a novel. They become more effective the more the reader knows about the underlying horror. Due to the pacing the introduction you write reads more like a short story with a punchy twist ending. A lovely genre in its own right, but radically different stylistic conventions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the best, most memorable openings I recall in all the SFF I read introduced &lt;strong&gt;abnormality&lt;/strong&gt; (and &lt;strong&gt;by extension mystery&lt;/strong&gt;) in the first or second sentence. Here, the reader &lt;strong&gt;doesn't know the significance&lt;/strong&gt; of the last day of the month, or of fried eggs, which makes them boring. I can see that you're trying to create &lt;strong&gt;an ironic paralel&lt;/strong&gt; between a typical 'first day of school' story and what I assume is some sort of human sacrifice. You want the reader to know that &lt;em&gt;as soon as possible&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make the opening gripping you need to move it along more briskly and trim the fat. &lt;strong&gt;Establish the significance&lt;/strong&gt; of the event early on. Skim on the day-to-day details, and focus on the &lt;strong&gt;narrator's reaction&lt;/strong&gt;. Instead of describing dad salting the eggs and letting the reader surmise that the narrator slept poorly due to fear, try doing the opposite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion: think about the story from a reader's point of view. The question a reader asks immediately upon opening a book is, &lt;strong&gt;'Why am I reading this?'&lt;/strong&gt; To find your perfect opening scene you need to identify the answer to this question. And then deliver what you promised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;^Unless you want to get political by allegorizing an injustice in our own present day world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T07:02:32.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12716" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12732" CreationDate="2014-08-27T07:46:59.030" Score="8" ViewCount="584" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a series of interconnected metafiction stories revolving around epic fantasy tropes. The basic premise involves gradually building up an epic narrative and then breaking it down, and the interaction between the original story and the deconstructed one. As such, the fictionality of all the characters is very central, because the over-arcing story approaches them as ideas rather than purely naturalistic characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I explained the idea to a friend of mine who's read at least as much fantasy as I have, she seemed to like it, but insisted that I should focus on the &lt;em&gt;readers&lt;/em&gt; as characters. Her argument was that she has no reason to care about the 'first-level' characters, because, &quot;you just told me they aren't real.&quot; What I got from that is that metafiction breaks suspension of disbelief unless it includes meta-characters as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is hard for me to grasp because I never did believe that the stories I read are real, nor want to. Part of my ability to enjoy stories so brutal and violent, and characters so gray and unlikeable, is rooted in the reassurance that, well, no one's getting hurt. Needing to believe the reality of the story is an idea I have trouble wrapping my head around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a typical example of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YourMileageMayVary&quot;&gt;YMMV&lt;/a&gt; (warning! TV Tropes link) reaction, or is it more a gap between reader position and writer position? If it's the former, I can accept that. However, if I'm being blindsided by my status as the author, that's a bias I need to try and fix. After all, what's fun to write and what's fun to read can be very, &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summation: &lt;strong&gt;Do readers need the option to believe that the events in the story really transpired?&lt;/strong&gt; Is the (fictional) author the real main character of my story, as opposed to the characters that he created? Do I need to &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WatsonianVersusDoylist&quot;&gt;Watsinate&lt;/a&gt; my story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T08:17:25.677" Title="Needing to Believe the Story Is Real" Tags="|characters|fantasy|readers|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12718" CreationDate="2014-08-27T07:48:41.493" Score="11" ViewCount="18874" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel, and I just realized I don't describe be main character's appearance until Chapter 3 (each chapter is 1500~2000 words long and there are 25 chapters in total).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; mention that the MC is 'skinny' in Chapter 1. Is that enough for the reader until he/she reaches Chapter 3?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other information that I mention in Chapter 1 and 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character's gender.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character's age (just entered college).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character's ethnicity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character's nationality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I didn't describe the character earlier, is that I didn't want the description to sound forced. Still, I wonder if I should try to move it to the beginning? To prevent the reader from forming a false physical image of the MC?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T07:54:41.100" LastActivityDate="2019-03-17T15:27:16.143" Title="Is it better to describe the main character's physical appearance early on in the story?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|characters|description|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12717" CreationDate="2014-08-27T08:39:46.457" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest risk you have by describing the physical appearance of your character later on in your story is that your readers' mental image is shattered when you describe your character in detail. This can be quite jarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way you're going to know for sure is when you ask someone to review your novel. Perhaps once you're ready you could ask them to read until chapter 3 then write a set of bullet points about MC? Are they the same points at the end of the third chapter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've said that you do describe aspects of your characters in previous chapters (presumably through other characters talking or thinking about them). Could these characters throw in some extra physical details?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kelly remembered the time she'd thrown mud at Kate, the slick brown earth&#xA;  had coated her long blonde hair for hours until they'd finally returned home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use this style of drip feeding description quite a lot. Often I wait until another character meets your subject for the first time. Then, while that character is seeing and weighing them up is often the perfect time to move on to more detailed descriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8373" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T08:39:46.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12717" CreationDate="2014-08-27T08:40:37.230" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best answer would be &lt;em&gt;depends on the story&lt;/em&gt;. One of my favourite writers, Stephen King, does leave a very little info about the characters in their story. I remember, that in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Writing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;On Writing&lt;/a&gt;, he said, that Carrie was originally described only as shy girl, always having wearied off sweater on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you keep vague description about the characters, you will leave room for reader to fill in the gaps. Everyone will have different image about the MC &lt;em&gt;and that’s good&lt;/em&gt;. My cultural background is different than yours, so if you will provide me info about someone's ethnicity, I will have different image in my head than you originally had (works best with something I really know, like Eastern European ethnicity, where I have totally different images in head than people from USA)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question you need to ask is: Is it really necessary for the reader to know that MC is skinny?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also, &lt;strong&gt;show it. Do not describe it, just show it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means. If MC is skinny and its important for reader to know that MC is skinny, its better to throw some dialogue over dinner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Geez! How do you do it?&amp;quot; gasped Pavel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Do what?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I just had salad and I feel like I gained several pounds. And you. You can eat all this...&amp;quot; Pavel made gesto on the table, &amp;quot;and still remain so thin!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Than just describing it like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And Pavel entered room. His skinny body blocked almost no light entering the room&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T08:40:37.230" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12716" CreationDate="2014-08-27T09:25:47.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quick glance into European novels and movies: One of my favourite Czech writer is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%99%C3%AD_Kulh%C3%A1nek&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jiří Kulhánek&lt;/a&gt; (link goes to English wiki page), who always writes in first person, his stories are (almost) always set in Prague, present time, there is (almost) always reference to actual things happening at the time when book is written ... but also, once he claims he is vampire, once he claims he is possessed by daemon...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And sometimes part of Prague gets demolished in really supernatural way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, &lt;strong&gt;the story is somewhat consistent&lt;/strong&gt;. Reading it, I don’t believe that something like that &lt;em&gt;actually happened.&lt;/em&gt; But the story sets some rules which are (almost) always followed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Myself, I am more in parody style of writing. So, once I gave my super enemy character button &lt;em&gt;Rule the world&lt;/em&gt; which actually could rule the world. Luckily, he was stopped by cunning, sexy, musculature main hero at the last time. And name of my arch Enemy is always &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Magnifique&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Colonel Karpof&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The inner rules make the reader to hold into.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t care, that &lt;em&gt;Klingons&lt;/em&gt; in the Star Trek are actually human actors with rubber forehead glued to their face. What makes Klingons really believable is, that there is culture in behind, there are some desires. And that makes them look real and believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;strong&gt;you don’t have to explain everything&lt;/strong&gt;. Every Star Wars fan I know got totally angry when Episode 1 had to explain, that The Force is actually caused by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midichlorian#Midichlorians&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Midichlorians&lt;/a&gt; in the blood. its the type of &quot;Watsination&quot; which actually caused more confusion than anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rule of thumb is, &lt;strong&gt;every character in your story should desire something&lt;/strong&gt;. Even if it is glass of water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give your characters a life. Even if its about to end really soon. The lady you killed on the street was actually going to shop. The bus what exploded was driven by someone who will be missed. The story can be brutal, full of blood, full of superpowers,full of magic ... but make it consistent. Please&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T09:25:47.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12716" CreationDate="2014-08-27T09:53:20.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the kind of story you're trying to tell, and the experience you want the reader to have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that in your case, since you are creating characters which are meant to be read as archetypes rather than rounded people, you're fine with the Doylist (meta) approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do include metacharacters, then the metacharacters are the ones who are &quot;experiencing&quot; the story, and the reader is watching &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; story unfold (which is what happens in a non-meta book; the reader comes to the work to watch someone's story happen). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, is your book a movie or a role-playing game? Is your reader passively absorbing your story, or participating in it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's an RPG, go for it. I think it sounds fascinating as an experiment. I also think it's going to be an acquired taste (as your friend's objection illustrates). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T09:53:20.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12717" CreationDate="2014-08-27T10:19:09.970" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you should define your main characters, and especially the love interest, only as much as absolutely necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is important that the protagonist is male, write that he is male. If not, keep this ambiguous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is important that the love interest is thin, write that she is. If not, keep this ambiguous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? Because you want as many readers as possible to be able to identify with your protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your reader is female and likes to imagine herself as being an action hero, then leaving the gender of the action hero of your novel ambiguous will allow men &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; women readers to imagine themselves as the story's hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your reader is not thin, she will be offended by yet another male protagonist falling in love with yet another thin woman. Leaving the exact looks of the love interest ambiguous will allow all female readers to imagine the sexy hero to fall in love with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your question, define the protagonists &lt;strong&gt;early on&lt;/strong&gt;, for the reasons given in the other answers, but define them &lt;strong&gt;as little as possible&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T10:19:09.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12723" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12724" CreationDate="2014-08-27T11:43:01.107" Score="6" ViewCount="942" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a novel I am currently writing, characters frequently express thoughts. Following the advice I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://theeditorsblog.net/2012/02/28/inner-dialogue-writing-character-thoughts/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, which states: &quot;Never use quotation marks for thoughts, even if those thoughts are inner dialogue, a character talking to himself. Reserve quotation marks for speech that’s vocalized.&quot; It generally seems to be recommended to use italics when showing that a character is thinking instead of talking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all fine, but now I am running into the problem that I also need to add emphasis sometimes. For example: &quot;And what have &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; done all this time?&quot; I usually also do this with italics, since boldface is too strong - It literally catches the attention too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now my (probably stupid) problem: What do I do when a character is thinking something with emphasis?&#xA;Example: He thought &lt;em&gt;Yeah, YOU'RE one to talk&lt;/em&gt;. Now, I could just use capital letters, as I did here for illustration purposes, but these look very unprofessional to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any advice on how to circumvent this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9866" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T11:55:47.177" Title="How can I add emphasis in an internal dialogue, given that I am already using italics for character thoughts?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12723" CreationDate="2014-08-27T11:55:47.177" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You could always&lt;/em&gt; not italicize &lt;em&gt;parts that should stand out. The key point is to break up the flow of the text so that it is&lt;/em&gt; visible &lt;em&gt;somehow.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Capitalization could be interpreted as an internal EMOTIONAL SHOUT more than a&lt;/em&gt; sarcastic tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1083" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T11:55:47.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12717" CreationDate="2014-08-27T12:47:51.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is so far no rule or restriction for placing description of a character in earlier or later chapters of a novel. It is not necessary to portray the appearance of the protagonist in the very beginning of story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In some situation you have to give the same feel to the readers what you are trying to express in the novel. So at least you should provide some fuzzy description about character in order to avoid the preconceived ideas from the readers' life which would come forward and prognosticate incompatible emotions adhere to the storyline. This is ultimately spoil the course of novel to proceed in lucid manner.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If the novel is of like self-realization of protagonist, portrayal of protagonist in the beginning may sometimes may not be favor, making little to portray in the upcoming chapters of the novel.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Whenever you tend to specific events in novel, you should describe the character a little with petty events as mentioned by &lt;strong&gt;Pavel Janick(User 3415)&lt;/strong&gt; , in fuzzy manner to avoid emotions arising prejudices of readers from different ethnicity and nationality.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10323" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T12:47:51.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12728" CreationDate="2014-08-27T15:48:16.920" Score="4" ViewCount="209" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That's when the thought hit me: I had to find out. I had to solve this&#xA;  mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And so, I decided to call off my suicide plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At least for the time being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Next chapter)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The first place I decided to visit was the Forensics Department / I decided to visit the Forensics Department in February, as soon as the semester began...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Destiny, however, had another plan for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The gods would hear my plea and send the help that I'd been waiting&#xA;  for all along. The help that would revive the flame that almost died&#xA;  inside me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Next chapter)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My morning classes had just ended, and I was eating at the university's cafeteria / &#xA;  Two days had passed after the incident in the Forensics Department. My morning classes had just ended and I was eating at the university's cafeteria...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worry that, if I don't specify the day/date, the reader will wonder, &quot;OK, how, is this a day or a year after the previous chapter?&quot; On the other hand, the 'dateless&quot; version seems to flow better. So I'm confused about which one to use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T01:52:36.877" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T17:45:13.223" Title="Should I specify the time/date at the beginning of a scene?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12717" CreationDate="2014-08-27T16:44:17.063" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, only describe what you need to describe.  And only when you need to.  At least that's what I try and do in my writing.&#xA;I recall in an Isaac Asimov novel, I forget which, he kept back the detail that a particular character had dwarfism until quite near the end but it was crucial to the plot.  Until then, the reader assumed, (a dangerous thing!), the character was about the same height as the others around him.&#xA;This may sound vague but it's a variation on something I read about years and years ago.  A girl of nine or ten was asked whether she preferred reading or watching TV.&#xA;'Reading,' she replied.  'The pictures are better.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10474" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T16:44:17.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12726" CreationDate="2014-08-27T18:47:44.410" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Saying &quot;In the end of June&quot; is a form of telling instead of showing. That is, you've told us time had passed, but it's not meaningful to us in terms of what it means for the character, setting, or plot. With just a little more information, it does flow well with the time information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had finals to finish and an apartment to pack up, so despite the&#xA;  urgency of learning more it was nearly the end of June before I finally made it to the&#xA;  forensic department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10432" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T18:47:44.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12726" CreationDate="2014-08-27T18:50:36.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please please please PLEASE use date/time of day references. Please. With chocolate on top. It's way too easy to get lost in the flow of narration and not have a damn clue when we are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it morning? Is it night? Shouldn't the moon be out? How can the narrator see the cows jumping off the cliff if it's the middle of the night? Why is daylight slanting through the blinds if it's noon? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as an editor, I pay close attention to all the pretty details which the writer adds to give the scene flavor, and sometimes missing the time of day, or the day of the week, can entirely snarl up a plot if the character is supposed to be at work on Tuesday morning but the writer forgot that it's Wednesday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T18:50:36.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12568" CreationDate="2014-08-27T18:52:28.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start the story with where it is interesting. It's not necessary to know that you checked your luggage, showed your passport, and got a seat on the plane. All readers know that stuff happened. So tell if it the telling adds to the story, and skip if it doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that the decision to go to Belize is probably interesting, so you might want to start with that, and then jump right to being in Belize. Or skip that, and start with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After six years of dreaming, and a frantic four months of compulsive&#xA;  planning and preparation, I was finally in Belize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10432" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T18:52:28.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12716" CreationDate="2014-08-27T21:46:52.873" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yeah, mileages do vary, and your friend might just be an oddball reader.  Don't worry about it too much.  Just write your story the way you want to write it, and see if it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it's quite possible that you could get even your friend interested in the story without having to &quot;Watsinate&quot; it.  What your friend is expressing concern about is that, if you openly describe your characters as fictional, your friend might end up losing interest in them &quot;since they're only fictional&quot;, and might thereby end up uttering the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EightDeadlyWords&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;eight deadly words&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;[TVTropes again!]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(One reason your friend may be concerned is that they may have been overexposed to the common technique where fiction within fiction is deliberately presented as &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StylisticSuck&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cruder and less realistic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[yeah, it's that site again]&lt;/sup&gt; than the main story, in order to highlight its metafictionality and to differentiate it from the surrounding story.  If that's what your friend (subconsciously) expects, it's no wonder they feel like a whole book full of such meta-story would be boring.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid your friend (and other readers like them) losing interest in your story, you need to get them to identify with the characters &lt;em&gt;despite&lt;/em&gt; their acknowledged fictionality.  The way to do that is simply to portray the characters as consistent, well-rounded individuals that appear to have a genuine personality and free will, &lt;em&gt;even if&lt;/em&gt; they're &quot;stuck in a fictional world.&quot;  Ideally, your friend should end up feeling that, even if the &lt;em&gt;world&lt;/em&gt; in which they live is purely (meta)fictional and subject to authorial whim, the characters still come across as realistic people whose goals and desires matter, rather than merely as hollow avatars of a nebulous author figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that's generally as desirable goal in writing, anyway, so in that sense your situation is in no way unusual.  You may just have a bit more initial resistance to overcome, and may need to be a bit more careful with some things, such as if you wish to present the fictional author as directly influencing the characters' thoughts or personalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3172" LastEditorUserId="3172" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T08:17:25.677" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T08:17:25.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12733" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-28T03:07:27.840" Score="5" ViewCount="390" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been at looking at the different resources but many of them are for meetups in real life. What if I wanted to collaborate over the internet rather than face to face? Where could I go for that specifically?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10481" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T06:28:59.277" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T06:28:59.277" Title="What resources are there for finding ONLINE writing partners?" Tags="|resources|collaboration|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12734" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12735" CreationDate="2014-08-28T17:50:37.107" Score="5" ViewCount="23247" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a fiction book and noticed that my paragraphs seemed excessively long, most having three or more sentences in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/606/01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Online Writing Lab's page &quot;On Paragraphs&quot;&lt;/a&gt; is helpful, but as a new writer I am looking for more specific advice on paragraph length. One idea I had was to compose sentences as separate paragraphs and then go back and merge these paragraphs when they deal with a single idea (e.g., describe a tree).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there simple rules on when paragraph breaks should be used in order to form appropriate length paragraphs?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10486" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T18:01:35.630" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T18:01:35.630" Title="Simple rules for separating paragraphs in books?" Tags="|fiction|book|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12734" CreationDate="2014-08-28T20:04:07.310" Score="8" Body="&lt;h3&gt;What paragraphs accomplish&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Text that isn't split up into paragraphs is often referred to as a &amp;quot;wall of text&amp;quot; and can be very difficult to read. Paragraphs are used for a few reasons: Organization, pacing, and to give the reader a chance to pause, similarly to what the end of a sentence does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paragraphs exist to group sentences on the same topic together. For example, sentences that all explain why a tree was planted might be grouped into a single paragraph, then sentences describing the tree might be a second paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when paragraphs get too long, it's usually a good idea to break those up, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers have a habit of writing paragraphs of roughly equal length. This generally will put the reader to sleep, so it's a good idea to vary paragraph length occasionally. You can think of a paragraph as analogous to a sentence, but instead of being made up of words, a paragraph's components are sentences. And just as sentences have their own rhythm, so do paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Dialog&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Dialog is a special case,&amp;quot; said Mary. &amp;quot;The convention in English is that, within a single paragraph, there's only one character speaking.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joe thought for a minute, then asked, &amp;quot;does that mean that when a new character is speaking, there should be a new paragraph?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Yes,&amp;quot; said Mary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Formatting&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paragraph breaks should be visually clear. There should either be white space in between paragraphs, or each paragraph's first line should be indented on the left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the web, it's generally easiest to type an extra return between each paragraph to create white space. There are solutions within HTML and CSS that will accomplish the same thing, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T20:20:04.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12734" CreationDate="2014-08-28T20:54:48.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are two guidelines I use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Camera Shot.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In &lt;em&gt;Zen in the Art of Writing,&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;Ray Bradbury offers this simple and useful idea:&#xA;Think of each paragraph as a single camera shot in a movie.&#xA;Every time the shot changes&#xA;(e.g. change in camera angle),&#xA;start a new paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character tempo.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;This is a more complex idea.&#xA;At what &quot;tempo&quot; is the character experiencing&#xA;the events in the text?&#xA;If the character is experiencing events very rapidly,&#xA;use shorter paragraphs.&#xA;If the character is experiencing events more slowly,&#xA;use longer paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Study any of James Patterson's Alex Cross novels.&#xA;In most scenes,&#xA;things are happening rapidly.&#xA;The paragraphs are short.&#xA;But in the scenes at home,&#xA;the paragraphs are generally longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way,&#xA;these two guidelines are more or less equivalent.&#xA;They each have a similar effect on the pace&#xA;that the reader experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they feel different to me when I apply them.&#xA;When I use &quot;camera shot&quot; trick,&#xA;I'm watching the scene as a writer or director.&#xA;So it can feel (to me, at least) kinda writerly.&#xA;There's a little danger there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I use the &quot;character tempo&quot; trick,&#xA;I'm experiencing the scene as the character.&#xA;It feels more organic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T20:54:48.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-29T01:52:19.737" Score="1" ViewCount="27793" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good day! I'm working at Sales Dept. in a manufacturing enterprise. Lately my company strategy is to find other suppliers to have more competitive prices and I appointed to do this task. But I make a trouble now about the ideas as well as the contents how to write quotation request to them. There are a lot of suppliers (in textile sector) i have in hand and i don't want to just write some paragraphs then copy &amp;amp; past them to send to all. I'm a newcomer here, I hope to have your kind supports. Thank you so much!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10491" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T10:03:37.893" Title="How to write a polite quotation request email?" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-08-29T14:04:11.313" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12737" CreationDate="2014-08-29T10:03:37.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask a person from the supply dept - how they request supplies from 3rd party companies - raw materials, equipment, machines, whatever your company needs but doesn't manufacture. Phrase your quote request just the same, just exchange the articles you're asking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, in your situation, there's really nothing wrong about copy&amp;amp;paste to multiple recipients. It's strictly a business letter, not some kind of courtesy mail like thank-you, congratulations or apology letters, so &quot;personal touches&quot; are really not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T10:03:37.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12741" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12756" CreationDate="2014-08-29T13:19:03.897" Score="3" ViewCount="3065" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just started writing my first proper novel, I've written short stories and started to write before, but never really had the motivation, but now I have a new, interesting storyline to write about, and I've just set the character and established some relationships, introduced the setting etc in the opening chapter but it only amounts to 2.1k words. Normally opening chapters, in my experience have been much longer. Anyone have anything to reply? Should I add more in, or does that risk cluttering and overwhelming the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10498" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T13:25:54.320" LastActivityDate="2021-05-06T18:10:31.980" Title="Is my opening chapter too short?" Tags="|fiction|novel|plot|openings|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12743" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12767" CreationDate="2014-08-29T21:32:59.947" Score="3" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a novel which is set in the late 1920s, and the protagonist is a minor Lord in England. I wrote the first four chapters and handed it to an American friend, whose criticism largely consisted of how poorly I understood English society and that my characters behaved in utterly unbelievable ways toward each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having a hard time with this criticism because I've seen other works (written, film, television), in which characters behaved similarly, some of which are by English writers, and some predate or are contemporary with the period of which I'm writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: let's say that she is at least partly right, how does one strike a balance between creating believable characters and situations, and telling the story one wants to tell, when one is writing pseudo-historically in an alternate universe. I've often found that you can stretch the reality to the point of it being irritating as a reader/viewer even when it's obvious fantasy, for example, H.G. Wells in Warehouse 13.  Is it a matter of setting expectations early on, about how much the story sticks to reality? Is this really just a question of personal taste? She was also confused about the time period (she thought it was Victorian, and in such case the upperclass/lowerclass distinctions were different). I wonder if perhaps I needed to make this more obvious as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10500" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T12:47:33.510" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T16:18:12.990" Title="Alternate universe vs. historicity: how to set the threshold/expectations?" Tags="|novel|fantasy|historical|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12743" CreationDate="2014-08-29T23:22:11.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You first described it as &quot;set in the late 1920s&quot;, and then later said you were &quot;writing pseudo-historically in an alternate universe&quot;.  I'm not bringing this up to nit-pick your question but, rather, to point out that these are two different things.  There is &lt;em&gt;historical fiction&lt;/em&gt;, where authors try to remain accurate, and there is &lt;em&gt;alternate history&lt;/em&gt;, where authors use history as a jumping-off point but take liberties.  Both are fine; both are done -- but your readers need to be able to tell which you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you do that?  There's of course the brute-force way, saying it up front (&quot;(Title) - An Alternate History&quot;), but that's a little clunky.  Fortunately, you have another path (one not so readily available to those writing historical fiction): introduce some element early on that is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; historically accurate.  I trust that if your reader was confused then you're not writing something as blatant as Victorian vampires, but there are other ways to handle this.  One is to refer to a historical or contemporary event (or state) that either didn't happen or happened very differently -- a passing reference to Britain's American colonies, or the long period of peace (no WW I), or that a character is looking forward to his upcoming cruise on the Titanic -- pick anything that works, major or minor, so long as it's obvious to the reader.  Another approach is to introduce a technology that didn't exist then, though you'll need to walk the fine line between justifying it (why is that man wearing a digital watch?) and over-exposition (if this change isn't central to your story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you got feedback from &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; reader; as Lauren said in a comment, do seek other readers before you rewrite your work.  This person might be wrong, or inattentive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T23:22:11.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12747" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-30T15:58:22.383" Score="3" ViewCount="7583" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a short book on an unusual topic which is definitely not fit for publication with traditional measures. Nonetheless, I still care very much for layout and design, but have no budget to hire an artist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any good self publishing software that can help me put this book into print? I looked at blurb, and a few others, but it's not obvious how to choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10506" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-08-30T20:51:23.393" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T23:03:36.880" Title="What's the best software for self-publishing?" Tags="|software|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12741" CreationDate="2014-08-30T20:50:37.810" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, chapter length does not matter. Your book may look more 'impressive' or 'official' with long chapters, but are they necessary to the book itself? No. As long as the first chapter does what the first chapter is supposed to do (be that introducing the protagonist, setting the scene, introducing the conflict, etc.), it doesn't matter if it is only 2.1k words. &#xA;To use an example, if you read &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; closely, you'll find that there are a few good stopping places in nearly every chapter. If the chapter ended at every one of them, the book would have been the same, just with shorter chapters. Length really doesn't contribute to content. &#xA;Do keep in mind I am only an aspiring author myself, however. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T20:50:37.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12749" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12754" CreationDate="2014-08-30T21:15:05.503" Score="3" ViewCount="626" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background/scene for question&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character witnesses his wife killed before him. While holding her, he begins screaming her name. With each time he utters her name, the world around him shifts as he uses magic he was previously unaware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world shifts because he is using magic that is not of this world, ripping it from another world to revive his dead wife. The shift is like the difference felt right after an earthquake where nothing feels quite right. There are no physical changes, but you just know something is different. Like a shudder in the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(These shudders will slowly affect and change how the world works later in the novel)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &quot;shudder&quot; is felt strongly every time he screams her name until she is finally revived much to her displeasure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now the question&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking how I can show this shift that is happening in the air around him, in this particular scene, in a believable way that makes sense to the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am hoping other writers may have knowledge of this sort of scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8858" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T01:30:26.897" Title="How to describe a scene involving a shift in the environment due to forbidden magic?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|technique|scene|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12741" CreationDate="2014-08-30T21:30:08.203" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, and from research into other's writing and professional opinions, the length or lack there of does not matter. Only you can know when your chapter is officially over. If you feel you have accomplished what you intended when you wrote that first chapter, than it is a success. If you feel it is lacking, than it probably is. Reread it and see what questions it leaves unanswered. Maybe allow a beta reader (someone to edit and proofread) to look it over and get an outside opinion on what it needs or does not need if you trust others to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first chapter of my current book is 6.7k characters (11.5 pages at size 12 Times New Roman). And I had a similar question at first, except in the realm of it being too long perhaps. But I came to the same conclusion, that though it may be longer than some other books, it accomplishes what it needs too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sets the scene, &#xA;Starts with trouble,&#xA;Introduces the main POV and his environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does your short first chapter have at least these three things? If so than I would leave it as it is for now and continue writing. Otherwise you can remain focused on this one chapter and never make it to the next chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps and does not ramble. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8858" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T21:30:08.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12749" CreationDate="2014-08-31T03:41:42.730" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't call specific examples to mind right now, but I've seen this sort of &amp;quot;wait, the world is not quite as it should be&amp;quot; situation handled by sharing the POV character's inner dialogue as he gradually notices peculiarities.  Something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Sharon, no!&amp;quot; he shouted to no one in particular as he cradled her in his arms.  &amp;quot;Sharon!&amp;quot;  He shuddered as he began to absorb the shock of it, then shuddered again.  What was that odd feeling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Sharon!&amp;quot; he repeated.  Beads of sweat formed on his forehead.  Why was it suddenly so warm in here?  And quiet -- the sounds of the traffic outside seemed muffled.  He shook his head to clear it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nope, definitely getting warmer.  Stuffier, too.  It almost felt like the walls were closing in on him.  Gotta knock off the coffee, he thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He looked again at the lifeless body in his lap.  How could they have snatched her away from him?  It was wrong!  Unfair!  Nearly shouting, irrationally hoping he could yet bring her back, he screamed -- &amp;quot;Sharon!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point I'm trying to make is that we get hints as the main character gets &amp;quot;that niggling feeling&amp;quot; that things are Not Right, but he's focused on something else so his tendency is to dismiss them -- his head is fuzzy from the shock, he's had too much coffee, etc.  The reader will figure out that things are changing before the character does, and then will get the pleasure of watching the character work it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T03:41:42.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12749" CreationDate="2014-08-31T12:30:16.593" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Monica is on the right track, but I'd push it more. If he's howling the name of his murdered wife in his grief, he's not aware of &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; outside that grief. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would actually &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; show the husband being aware of the changes while they're happening. Maybe, possibly, flashes of light (which cast different shadows on her face), or he feels his ears pop, or the floor tilts — basically, alterations in the physical world which he can't overlook because they are interacting with him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the &quot;muffled traffic&quot; is something you notice when you're reading, not when your heart has been shattered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there could be other people in the room who &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; notice the changes, and once the wife wakes up, the other characters could start wondering aloud if the changes in atmosphere were related to her resurrection. Or the husband distantly realizing &quot;my ears popped&quot; is the other characters saying &quot;the entire building just levitated two hundred feet and then dropped&quot; or something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T12:30:16.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12741" CreationDate="2014-08-31T19:30:45.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm personally of the opinion chapters exist more to organize information and events. It's functionally identical in most cases to have 20 chapters to having 10 chapters twice as long. Of course formatting or specific requirements might come in (publishers wanting specific chapter lengths, for example, and if this is a potential concern, you should research that specifically), but there's no solid rule and never will be for a &quot;good&quot; chapter length in numbers of pages or words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to end my chapters along thematic or time boundaries and I think such a practice makes far more sense than dividing chapters rather arbitrarily on page length like a lot of writers seem to do. I also like to open my chapters with quotes or such things, so keeping the chapters divided up along themes helps make the overall result look more coherent and planned. That said, if you think it's a sensible place to end the chapter, it probably is. You are, after all, the person who knows the story best, and should stand by your decisions in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, 2100 words for introducing the background seems a little small. It depends heavily on the setting, but that seems like it might be terse unless the setting is very narrow. The first chapter of the story I am currently writing is about 4000 words, ignoring the fact I have a prologue and some other formalities before that, and I consider myself incredibly to the point. I can't say without looking at the actual writing if there is a problem there, though. If you are bordering on an infodump first chapter, you might want to consider a prologue which simply does so, or ignoring it completely and add in flashbacks later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10515" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T19:30:45.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12741" CreationDate="2014-08-31T19:54:59.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If to you the chapter seems good, and it seems to be fulfilling your purpose for it, I would not worry about it now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; too short, what that really means one of the following: either you didn't establish as much in the opening chapter as you think you did, or else there's some other major problem (e.g. it's short because you're &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/info-dump&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;infodumping&lt;/a&gt;, or because you've forgotten to type in the vowels). In other words, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;too short&quot; &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be a symptom, but it's certainly not a problem in and of itself.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it doesn't establish enough, you'll find that out as you continue writing. You'll realize you're missing key information which needs to be established earlier, and at some point you'll rewrite to include that. That's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's some other problem, you'll find that out when you pass your work around for feedback. Someone will tell you that a character is unclear, and you'll find yourself adding in huge scenes to establish him better. Someone will tell you the opening isn't very gripping, and you'll decide to add in a major sequence to the very beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, readers will tell you that it's terrific and you shouldn't change a thing. Because if you know what you're doing, and your only concern about your opening chapter is that &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; books have &lt;em&gt;longer&lt;/em&gt; chapters at their start - well, then that sounds like a pretty strong opening to me :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom line: keep writing. &quot;Too short&quot; isn't a problem. If there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a problem, you'll find it - later.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T19:54:59.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12749" CreationDate="2014-09-01T01:30:26.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has been said by others, it sort of depends on the perspective. This might be troubling to write in first person for the exact reason mentioned - the character is probably not paying attention. In that case, you might be better off having him revisit the experience in a flashback later. However, if we're dealing with any other perspective, I think it's reasonable to present things happening that the character might not be aware of but that are happening around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question of &lt;em&gt;how to present that&lt;/em&gt;, assuming it does make sense in your context, I would suggest to keep it as simple as possible. Here is an example I just wrote in my third-person-objective story of this same sort of general situation happening:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Clover is in the office of Starswirl, inside the university.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You've already picked your side: the losing side. Have fun with&#xA;  that,” Starswirl said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A flash of blue light enveloped Clover and he stood on the purple&#xA;  street of the Whitehorn Road, in front of the university gate. He&#xA;  turned around, almost ready to run back into the university, but&#xA;  merely remained in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I did not betray you! You betrayed me!” He yelled. Only the gate&#xA;  guards noticed and chose to ignore him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10515" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T01:30:26.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12743" CreationDate="2014-09-01T11:31:39.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As to establishing an alternative universe or setting an alt-historical theme I'm a big believer in the Nineteen Eighty Four slap-in-the-face method:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking&#xA;  thirteen&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monica's suggestion of making reference to some clear and obvious anachronism dropped into the narrative flow in an almost throwaway fashion is ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to establishing believable characters. There are levels. I wrote a short series of novels set in a US based cop show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e. the books were intended to pastiche a cop show, not portray actual US cops as I have zero experience of the way actual US cops talk outside of my reading Homicide by David Simon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this I came to understand that I should really be embracing writing dialogue for characters I could really get a good rhythm going for. Think of Pegg, Wright and Frost in Hot Fuzz. They were parodying US Action Blockbusters but an essential part of their parody was to ground characters and scenarios in a very recognisable Britishness because I think that they felt pretending to be Americans would be somewhat crass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean that you can never get the timbre right, particuarly if you have a UK-language and culture editor to point out obvious howlers but that is adding another layer of work to the already challenging process of producing a novel in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="231" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T11:31:39.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12747" CreationDate="2014-09-01T17:22:20.537" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;For layout:  Scribe is a free open source page layout program.&#xA;For typesetting: you can use LaTex to typeset your book.&#xA;For writing: I would recommend Scrivener. If you need a free program, use LibreOffice or Openoffice. &#xA;Do you have $5? Lots of artists and cover designers advertise on fiverr.com. Many offer high quality work. &#xA;If you want to get your text out there, simply post the plain text on pastebin. No need for layout or typesetting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: If you just want a &quot;nice-looking book,&quot; use LaTex. Lyx is a front end to LaTex and is a good stepping-stone to LaTex. Both are free. While many people think that LaTex is for math or academic papers only, its creator, Donald Knuth, said that it was designed &quot;to create beautiful books.&quot; Many typesetting and page layout decisions will be made for you (within the general specifications you set, such as page size, font, etc.) by LaTex. This is much easier than to have to make these design decisions yourself. Why not stand on the shoulders of giants? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6784" LastEditorUserId="6784" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T15:50:42.527" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T15:50:42.527" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12761" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-01T19:02:59.417" Score="7" ViewCount="6443" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a story I am writing an insane character speaks to another. Unfortunately, I don't know how I can convey a person's insanity through their speech. What in their verbal behaviour makes a person appear insane?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10523" LastEditorUserId="21768" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-12-01T14:12:37.383" LastActivityDate="2017-12-01T14:12:37.383" Title="How can I capture the voice of an insane person?" Tags="|characters|character-development|dialogue|horror|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12762" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-02T13:21:38.397" Score="0" ViewCount="1185" Body="&lt;p&gt;The trick is that the book is in three languages... layout becomes tricky fast. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10506" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T18:03:20.037" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T18:03:20.037" Title="What's a good LaTeX template for self-publishing a short children's book?" Tags="|self-publishing|children|latex|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12765" CreationDate="2014-09-02T22:04:07.430" Score="9" ViewCount="22595" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm finishing up a 350 page book that I will self publish. I plan on printing my book at a local printing store but they charge $6 to bind each book. I'm paying my tuition with the profit of this book and would like keep my expenses to a minimum. What is cheapest way to bind a large book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10531" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T10:30:41.610" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T19:58:46.860" Title="Cheapest way to self-bind a large book" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12733" CreationDate="2014-09-02T22:04:22.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing to offer an idea for a solution rather than a straight answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May I suggest that you register free with any number of writers' websites (you may already be a member of, for example, AWAIonline or WealthyWebWriter) to make a posting on one or all of their forums.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happy Writing! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10530" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T22:04:22.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2014-09-03T01:45:24.030" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I self-published a book some years ago I had the copy shop apply &lt;em&gt;comb bindings&lt;/em&gt; for me.  At the time this cost about $1/book, but it appears that Stapes and Office Depot now charge closer to $3 for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your print run is small, or if you are truly willing to trade time for expense, you can buy a binding machine and the plastic combs and do it yourself.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B009FFXN4Q&quot;&gt;This binding machine&lt;/a&gt; is about $120 at Amazon and binds up to 300 sheets; a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B001BE3146&quot;&gt;10-pack of combs&lt;/a&gt; costs $6.  You might be able to improve on these prices, particularly by looking for a second-hand binding machine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books with comb bindings, like spiral-bound books, can be opened flat and even folded over (though not quite as cleanly as spiral-bound books).  Occasionally some of the plastic &quot;teeth&quot; will try to pop out of the casing, but in my experience this is only after heavy use.  A plastic binding may not look as professional as a glued-in binding or even a metal spiral binding, but it's more affordable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T01:45:24.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2014-09-03T12:20:35.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could look into &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXMfmpF-znI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thermal Binding&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The price should be quite similar, the result looks far more professional than comb binding, although the durability is worse - if that's a book you read just one time or a few times, that's quite sufficient, but if you use it frequently, like a handbook, it will come apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, the thermal binder machine is often cheaper than comb binder, the covers cost peanuts and the work is easier too, in case you choose to do it yourself. The cost shouldn't be much different from comb binding, and scale better with size; comb binding of 300 pages takes much more work than that of 30 pages, while for thermal it's only a matter of cover with larger spine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T06:04:35.917" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T06:04:35.917" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12743" CreationDate="2014-09-03T16:18:12.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You only have to watch Downton Abbey to realize that the 1920s were a period of rapid social upheaval in the UK.  Some people clung to the old ways with a death-grip; others cast aside all conventional behavior (and mostly got ostracized for it).  Most people sought a middle ground, which was tricky because the ground kept shifting.  So, the first thing you must do is establish which kind of person your main character is.  Then, no matter your choice for him, you've got to set up conflict with people who've made other choices.  This has nothing to do with your main plot.  It's just the setting of the time period.  There was widespread disagreement as to what ought to constitute proper social and moral behavior for the &quot;modern&quot; day (i.e., post-WWI) British.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you must maintain this, or your world won't be recognizably 1920s UK, even as an alternate reality.  So, for example, if your minor lord has a valet, he might or might not treat his &quot;inferior&quot; with respect.  But your minor lord's not going to treat his valet as an equal unless your minor lord is incredibly rebellious against the social order.  In that case, the valet would probably be uncomfortable with that level of familiarity.  Even if the two of them are fine with being pals, most people around them would be shocked by it and would come up with bad explanations for it.  And of course that begs the question (both for the reader and in-world): why does such a lord HAVE a valet?  [character development and plot development opportunity]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T16:18:12.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12768" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12769" CreationDate="2014-09-03T17:24:48.517" Score="7" ViewCount="5580" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an aspiring author, but I intend to start publishing soon. I have several ideas for potential books; however, they are all series. I am hesitant about starting my writing with a series. What if it isn't successful? Then I would be stuck with a series that is going nowhere. If, however, I wrote a stand-alone book, I could easily move on whether or not it was successful. &#xA;It seems that a stand-alone would be the way to go. Unfortunately, all my ideas are for series. Also, there have been best-selling authors who have started out with a series. J. K. Rowling and Christopher Paolini come to mind. &#xA;What do you think? Should a beginning writer start with a series or a stand-alone? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:52:55.070" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:52:55.070" Title="Should a beginning writer start with a series or a stand-alone?" Tags="|publishing|series|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12768" CreationDate="2014-09-03T18:58:28.147" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Really simple answer is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write one book. Tie up all the loose ends. Make it one complete story. But imagine it as book one of a series. Don't let we the reader know that -- it should be undetectable to us, but you will know there's potential for a series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When sending to agents and publishers ensure you include the golden words: &quot;Stand-alone novel with series potential&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it sells really well and they want a series, then you've got the ideas ready and you can crack on with the second book of what is now a series!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few publishers will want to take on a series from a debut author. What if it doesn't sell too well? Now they've promised a series that they won't want to publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have the potential there, but ensure book one stands alone perfectly on it's own merit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And Good Luck!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus: You mentioned Rowling, well ... it's true &lt;em&gt;Stone&lt;/em&gt; leads into a series, but it has no loose ends. Sure, we wonder what happens next to Harry, and we're pretty sure Voldemort isn't gone forever, but the entire plot of Harry's first year is completely wrapped up. Compare with the &lt;em&gt;Half-Blood Prince&lt;/em&gt;, where they find the locket with the note. There &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; to be something next from the 6th book because of that loose end, but the first doesn't have that same need for a sequel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From @Paul A. Clayton's comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might also be worth noting that publishers do not want to break up a series among different publishers and so may reject one book if another in the same series is rejected. From the &quot;Author's Afterword&quot; of Lois McMaster Bujold's Young Miles: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Seven months later Warrior's was returned unread from its first submission, because they'd decided not to take the revised Shards and didn't want to break up the set. This was devastating at the time, but I was in fact grateful later.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8034" LastEditorUserId="8034" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T15:08:12.757" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T15:08:12.757" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12768" CreationDate="2014-09-04T06:37:04.960" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The examples of Paolini and Rowling are not useful as blueprint for a different reason than that stated in the comments: &lt;strong&gt;they are exceptions&lt;/strong&gt;. Overwhelming success is rare, not the rule. It happens to a small percentage of published works only, and you cannot plan it. What you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; plan, though, is a more moderate, general success. And this depends largely on simple skill. If you can write, that is, if you can form pleasant sentences, construct a gripping plot with a satisfying end and cast engaging characters, then your book will sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As almost all published writers have said, getting to this point is only a question of diligence and a lack of narcissism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lack of narcisssism means: Don't be so in love with your ideas that you cannot let a failed attempt go and continue to the next work. Write a book. Finish it as best you can within a reasonable time (no more than a year or two) then submit it. If it does not get published, write the next book. And the next, and the next, and the next, until one book is published. When you have published a few books, maybe go back and rewrite the first unpublished books with your now advanced level of skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know your level of skill, but since you are apparently unpublished and probably an average writer, you very likely need to train more. Brandon Sanderson explains this very well in the videos from the writing class he teaches (available for free in his YouTube channel). Most continually unpublished wanna-be-writers are too emotionally attached to the one &amp;quot;great&amp;quot; idea they had as a teenager and that they have been struggling with for the past ten or twenty years. They are so in love with themselves (because their idea &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; themselves) that they cannot let it go and so they are stuck forever in something they can't get to work and cannot see why other people don't value it as much as they do so they feel misunderstood, etc. The problem is that they misunderstand the art of writing. They believe writing is about expressing yourself, while in truth it is first and foremost a craft that you have to learn. Expressing yourself can come after that, if you want to write literary fiction, but even then you first have to build a solid base of writing skills which allow you to actually express yourself in a way that others can understand and relate to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the point where unpublished wannabees like to say: But, this or that writer was an international bestselling success with his first book he wrote without ever having written a single word before! Yes. Sure. But how many such writers are there? Maybe a hundred in all of history. Or, if you want, make that five hundred. And how many writers who have tried that but failed are there? Millions each year. Everyone I know has tried to write a novel, been rejected, and given up (or has secretly and to the detriment of his self-worth kept revising it for the past twenty years without even his friends wanting to read all of it). And how many writers have been published after writing ten or so unpublished complete novels? &lt;strong&gt;Millions and millions!&lt;/strong&gt; Every single book worldwide and in all of history except for the five hundred immediate success-wonders. The vast and overwhelming majority of books on the market is by writers who have written one book after another until they got publshed! How did they manage that? By not being in love with their first book, or at least not in love enough to find themselves unable to get to the next book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;So the real answer to your question is not: series, or: stand-alone. While I don't think Mac Cooper's answer is false, what will really get your fist novel published is not that it is self-contained, but that it is well written. If it is the well-written obvious first part of a series, it will get published. The editor will ask you to write the second and maybe third part, before they publish it, because the question in a well written book is not wether the market will accept it, but wether the author can continually deliver good quality. That's the real problem with series'! If you submit a finished trilogy and its great, it will get published!&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editors and agents get overwhelmed with unbearably bad writing. They don't reject books because they have too many good books to publish, but because the books they reject are just plain bad. If you write a good book, it will get published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So just simply write the book that you want to write, send it out and keep sending it out until you are sure you have exhaused all options, &lt;strong&gt;and in the meantime start writing your next book&lt;/strong&gt;. Then send that out and in the meantime write your next book. And so on, until one book gets published. If you don't give up – and I don't mean: don't give up on that first book, but don't give up writing &lt;em&gt;new books&lt;/em&gt; – you will gain the level of skill that will eventually persuade an editor. And then you have a wealth of drafts that you can turn into new works quite quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work hard!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In reply to the comment by Mac Cooper:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may disagree, but do you have the publishing experience to support your disagreement? I prefer to believe those writers who have been publishing successfully or the agents who have sold their books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my answer, I sum up what bestselling author Brandon Sanderson says here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbL-84SkT4Q&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbL-84SkT4Q&lt;/a&gt; (&amp;quot;writing is not about inspiration, ideas, or luck, it is about skill&amp;quot;) and here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3JlBLG7xOI&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3JlBLG7xOI&lt;/a&gt; (&amp;quot;lay the 10 year project aside and write the next book&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agent Rachelle Gardner writes: &amp;quot;Sometimes a first-time author will get a contract for a three-book deal &lt;strong&gt;if the series is strong&lt;/strong&gt;, so you definitely want to mention it’s a series&amp;quot; (my emphasis; source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rachellegardner.com/writing-a-series/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.rachellegardner.com/writing-a-series/&lt;/a&gt;). Agent Barbara Poelle answers the OP's question with: &amp;quot;don’t believe everything you hear. &lt;strong&gt;I have sold stand-alone books and series across the board&lt;/strong&gt;, and whether or not there is a franchise possibility has nothing to do with my consideration of representation whatsoever. &lt;strong&gt;Just be good.&lt;/strong&gt; I like that part the best.&amp;quot; (my emphasis; source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/literary-agents-unleashed-answers-to-questions-youre-too-afraid-to-ask&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/literary-agents-unleashed-answers-to-questions-youre-too-afraid-to-ask&lt;/a&gt; ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of your comments either supports my answer (Rowling and Paoline being exceptions is my argument for not using them as examples, so your statement that they are exceptions does not oppose my answer) or irrelevant to my argument (if your book gets published by the 8th publisher you submit it to, you still have spent your time well if you didn't wait for the reply but wrote the next book in the meantime – you should always be writing the next book, no matter if the first does eventually get published or never).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T12:44:53.857" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12775" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12776" CreationDate="2014-09-04T16:15:38.883" Score="10" ViewCount="793" Body="&lt;p&gt;I plan to write a series of books set in the same universe, with a major plot about war, destruction, murder, killing, love, betrayal etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I am having problem getting the big view of my universe plot and each separate book plot. Does any one of you know of a program, tool, anything that can help me get a better picture of the plot as I write the different books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of programs for writers I have seen have only the option for one plotline - the one the specific book is about - but I need one where I can put in the major plotlines and what happens in the universe and then put in each separate bookplot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody have an idea for a nice tool or program to use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10258" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-17T03:50:15.917" LastActivityDate="2024-01-27T11:06:45.180" Title="Software for plot building across multiple books" Tags="|plot|software|tools|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12775" CreationDate="2014-09-04T18:02:05.933" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Allow me to introduce you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is a word processor which allows you to create unlimited documents within a single project, and organize them into folders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have each book project as a folder, and within a book folder have multiple subfolders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see all your documents in a nice document tree in a side pane. You can drag items around from here to there, link documents within the project, tag documents for easy searching, and even display your documents as note cards on a cork board. You can also have two documents open at once, top/bottom or side by side, so you can look at a reference document while typing in another document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener exports as Word and text, so you're not stuck in a proprietary format, and it has a full-screen environment if you need to cut out distractions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$45 for Mac OSX, $40 for Windows. You can test it full-featured for 30 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can search for other discussions of Scrivener &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/search?q=scrivener&quot;&gt;on this SE&lt;/a&gt;, including a lot of cheerleading from me. :) In fact, I picked up this answer from another similar question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10412/what-is-a-good-tool-for-organizing-story-notes&quot;&gt;What is a good tool for organizing story notes?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also use Excel to keep track of scene details, and some people use mindmap software (although I find that kind of interface overwhelming). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T11:53:40.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12777" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-04T20:10:57.697" Score="7" ViewCount="6359" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing has turned out to be lonely profession.  After a successful career of working with collaborative teams on technology projects, I have just completed the story development for my first fiction novel and it is time to start writing.  I would prefer to collaborate and co-author with a like minded (and skilled) writer.  I am not looking for a ghost writer.  I can get this done on my own if needed.  I feel that co-authoring would be great fun.  Perhaps I am wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I best explore this avenue?  Should I even attempt to co-author?  Are there other like minded individuals out there or am I showing my complete ignorance of the writing and publishing process?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10547" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T20:23:50.560" Title="Where can I find co-authors willing to share writing duties for a fiction novel?" Tags="|fiction|collaboration|process|authorship|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12775" CreationDate="2014-09-04T22:57:56.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a writer, but I know of a software tool that is used by writers in game development, specifically in games that are very story-heavy. It's called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nevigo.com/en/articydraft/overview/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Articy Draft&lt;/a&gt;. It allows writers to view the story at various levels of detail and it also makes non-linear storytelling (a big thing in games) easier to manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1583" LastEditorUserId="1583" LastEditDate="2019-05-25T17:32:15.233" LastActivityDate="2019-05-25T17:32:15.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12783" CreationDate="2014-09-05T01:06:11.143" Score="3" ViewCount="502" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often noticed this in many books and movies (mostly mysteries) that information is kept hidden from the reader. Like the character goes to some place and returns but what happens in between remains hidden from the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that a good technique? I often feel that the reader wants to be a part of the story. For example, in a mystery, the reader wants to solve the mystery on his own. Sometimes, an important fact which could be helpful in solving the mystery is known to the protagonist but is kept hidden from the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is hiding information like this effective? Isn't it some sort of cheating with the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8669" LastEditorUserId="8669" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T08:04:58.233" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T11:47:21.090" Title="Hiding information" Tags="|structure|plot|mystery|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12780" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12781" CreationDate="2014-09-05T01:56:13.613" Score="3" ViewCount="876" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is from a story I'm writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Goodbye Choco,&quot; my mother said, to end the prayer, “may your soul&#xA;  rest in peace,” and crossed herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Sorry I couldn’t come earlier,” I said. “I’ve been busy.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“That’s alright, sweetheart. You selected more courses this year?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Actually joined a club.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Oh, that’s great. You’ve never joined a club before, right? What’s&#xA;  its name?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Animal Self-Destruction Observation Group.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“That’s good. A club that’s not from your department. A completely&#xA;  different experience.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Yeah, I like variety.” Luckily my mother&#xA;  wasn’t ‘attentive’ enough to catch the meaning of complicated names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Is it fun?” Mom asked. “What do you do there?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Well, I don’t know yet—but I’ll find out tomorrow.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Please take care in the camping. Did you pack your clothes, sun&#xA;  blocker, your Hello Kitty doll?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Mom, I'm nineteen.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You're right, honey. Sorry. Sometimes I forget you’ve grown up.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I've noticed that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I know sometimes you think I worry too much. But all parents are like&#xA;  that. All we want is for our children to grow healthy and happy.&#xA;  Especially happy. I hope you understand that.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I nodded. &lt;em&gt;To grow happy&lt;/em&gt;. I wondered how Mom would have felt if she’d known I almost committed suicide. How she would have felt if she’d learned I’d been unhappy most of my adult life. The thought stabbed right into my heart. But, well, that was a thing of the past—an ancient tomb buried under layers and layers of sand. At least for the time being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the MC and her mother are in the backyard performing a burial for their dog. I feel the mother talks too much like a 'mother' from time to time. I can change it. The problem is that what she says is essential to the plot/theme (suicide). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way I can work this around? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T06:40:30.390" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T22:31:39.527" Title="How to deal with cliche dialogue?" Tags="|style|fiction|creative-writing|dialogue|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12780" CreationDate="2014-09-05T10:05:38.657" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Lengthen it. You're not going to have rat-a-tat-tat patter graveside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Take each phrase you feel is clich&amp;eacute;d, determine the meaning, and rewrite it in different words. &quot;All we want is for our children to grow healthy and happy&quot; becomes &quot;That's my biggest responsibility and my biggest hope &amp;mdash; that my children are healthy and happy, and we didn't break them too much on the way to adulthood.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Try the exercise I recommended in my answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3938/dialogue-writing-practices&quot;&gt;this question,&lt;/a&gt; where you and a friend ad-lib the scene and record it. Play it back and see how real, unscripted dialogue sounds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T10:05:38.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12779" CreationDate="2014-09-05T10:15:14.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not at all cheating. The narrative &quot;camera&quot; can't be in all places at all times or your book will be a thousand pages long and only cover an hour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, part of the joy of a mystery is that the reader &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; know what Person A did offscreen, and has to work it out. The detective/cop/agent/etc. (whoever is solving the mystery) can't be in all places at all times with all characters, so the detective him/herself isn't going to have access to all the information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is not to frustrate your reader to the point where the reader has to put the book down. You leave clues (Person A and Person B are talking; Person A realizes afterward that her brush is missing; later on Person A's DNA is found at a crime scene and she has to spend the rest of the book figuring out how she was framed, and the answer is that Person B pickpocketed her brush) which an alert reader can figure out or can be recognized on a second reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you shouldn't do (unless you intend to do it as a gag) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00005RDRO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Murder by Death&lt;/a&gt; plotting, where you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; ever reveal the clues which the reader (or protagonist) could use to figure out the mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's fine to hide some actions; that's what makes it a mystery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T10:15:14.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12779" CreationDate="2014-09-05T11:47:21.090" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a balance between &lt;strong&gt;maintaining point of view&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;maintaining suspense,&lt;/strong&gt; which can crop up whenever your protagonist or your POV (point-of-view) character is &lt;em&gt;planning ahead in any detail&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficulty is this: If in your story your POV character is making plans and preparations, and then afterwards he puts those plans and preparations into action, then the reader has to wade through the same essential scene twice: first in planning, then in practice. That means that the important scene, the action scene where everything's on the line, is at risk of feeling repetitive and dull.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we stick purely to good POV practice, then the reader should really know anything important that the POV character knows. Doing otherwise creates distance between the reader and the character, and makes the reader more aware of the author's artifice and manipulation. But that means we simply can't have a story where the POV character plans something of any importance and then carries it out (or even some of it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A really common example is heist stories. If there's a detailed scene laying out the plan before a heist attempt, then inevitably the plan gets messed up really early, so the plan we already know is tossed out the window. But if the planning stage is skipped over or cut past, that's because the &lt;em&gt;execution of the plan&lt;/em&gt; needs to be suspenseful, which means they can't tell us most of the plan yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;information-hiding of this type is kind of a cheat or a compromise, sacrificing point-of-view consistency in order to create suspense.&lt;/strong&gt; It's a commonly-used technique, and readers are used to it, and will usually not object. It's particularly helpful if the reader &lt;em&gt;knows&lt;/em&gt; the information being hidden is going to be revealed to him, and fairly soon - for example, if the heist gang leader says &quot;OK, here's the plan,&quot; and then we launch right into the actual heist scene, where the plan is carried out. In this case, it's clear to the reader that's the characters know more then he does, but it's also clear &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; this information was hidden, and the information is about to be shared (by showing, not telling! :) ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In mysteries, information-hiding serves the same purpose - to keep up suspense that we wouldn't have if we knew everything the POV knows. It carries the same price - it hurts POV, it feels artificial, the reader feels as if he's being toyed with and strung along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll have to judge each case individually, mostly to see how big a breach of POV it is. &lt;strong&gt;In general, I would avoid leaning on information-hiding if possible, but I wouldn't hesitate to use it when it's the right tool for the job.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you do use it, you want to minimize the damage. Let your protagonists have one or two mysteries; don't have huge swaths of the story the readers constantly feel shut out of. Know what other contracts you're committed to; if you're writing a fair-play mystery, then it's OK for the detective to know things the reader doesn't, but you've still got to write fair-play and actually provide all the clues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different, well-known solution to the problem is to create a Watson, a sidekick-ish character who naturally isn't privy to all the details and planning, who serves as the narrator. This lets the detective detect, and know far more than the reader, without breaking the Watson's POV (because &lt;em&gt;Watson&lt;/em&gt; knows what we do, not what the detective knows). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T11:47:21.090" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14277" CreationDate="2014-09-05T16:02:51.873" Score="5" ViewCount="3850" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any good books to learn about character development for mystery/thriller genre fiction? For example, when to introduce the character(s), how much background info to give about each character, how to make the character evolve through the struggles etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="593" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T18:18:49.910" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T17:53:59.250" Title="Books on character development" Tags="|resources|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12786" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12824" CreationDate="2014-09-05T16:05:28.697" Score="8" ViewCount="489" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a writer of YA science fiction and fantasy action romance, using social media to connect to my audience, &lt;strong&gt;which are the most important and most &quot;converting&quot; (i.e. turning visitors into readers) social media platforms today?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T05:36:29.657" Title="Which social media platforms should writers use to build a readership?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12794" CreationDate="2014-09-05T18:32:58.740" Score="14" ViewCount="3115" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If I have certain minor rituals/garments/culture tidbits in a fantasy setting that mirror those of Earth, and I describe them using the real-world vocabulary, will that disengage readers from the fantasy world I've built up?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have a fantasy world with absolutely no in-story relation to Earth whatsoever, and I want readers to truly be absorbed in the environment. Let's also say I have a character in this world who wears a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheongsam&quot;&gt;qipao&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term qipao (or &quot;cheongsam&quot; or &quot;mandarin gown&quot;) is a simple and efficient way to describe the garment. However, will using one of those terms get readers thinking about China and therefore draw them out of the fantasy world? Will they start to associate the character with Chinese culture and not with whatever fantasy culture I've placed them in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10555" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-15T18:01:58.310" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T18:01:58.310" Title="Will using real-world cultural vocabulary in a fantasy setting disengage readers?" Tags="|fiction|technique|fantasy|word-choice|language|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2014-09-05T18:40:54.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have time, a Japanese side-stab hand binding is relatively easy to do by hand, and more durable than glue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.designsponge.com/2013/03/bookbinding-101-japanese-four-hold-binding.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.designsponge.com/2013/03/bookbinding-101-japanese-four-hold-binding.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May not be suitable for 350pp unless you have a fine drill to pierce the block of pages, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7998" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T18:40:54.950" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12788" CreationDate="2014-09-05T20:57:37.820" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in this question also, but for sci-fi that is unrelated to Earth or Earth culture.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your specific example: I am probably better educated about other societies than the average American (which isn't saying much), but I've never heard the term &lt;em&gt;qipao&lt;/em&gt;.  How about &lt;em&gt;kimono&lt;/em&gt;?  Not the same thing, but a more familiar word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your general question: I put a disclaimer in my preface, to the effect that I'm not going to invent a new word for every object in my world.  So if I say the people are eating chicken, that doesn't mean they are eating Gallus gallus domesticus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, I'm writing sci-fi, and my world is &lt;em&gt;supposed&lt;/em&gt; to seem (mostly) familiar.  Fantasy might be different.  However, I've seen lots of fantasy books that used Earth names for weapons and classes of people, and those Earth words didn't throw me out of the fantasy world.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what you do with an unfamiliar term like &lt;em&gt;qipao&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;arquebus&lt;/em&gt; is to use it, assuming the reader will know what that is.  But since most will &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt;, you should weave descriptive phrases into your story that will allow most readers to puzzle out (subconsciously) the main features of the item.  You definitely don't &lt;em&gt;assume&lt;/em&gt; they know what a &lt;em&gt;qipao&lt;/em&gt; is, and then have a plot point turn on the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you say something like, &quot;As Cain lifted his arms, the long sleeves of his silky qipao fell back, revealing the twin tattoos on his forearms -- dragon and tiger.  The ruffian outlaw wet himself.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T21:26:49.163" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T21:26:49.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12788" CreationDate="2014-09-06T07:19:49.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on what you write further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first your readers might think, &quot;Hey Chinese...&quot;, but as you write on, what you write will change their view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you stick to the stereotypical Chinese stuff, yes they will keep thinking Chinese, but if you write away from or not about stereotypial chinese stuff, they will follow you into whatever you are writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10258" LastEditorUserId="14925" LastEditDate="2015-08-15T11:45:00.143" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T11:45:00.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12788" CreationDate="2014-09-06T10:17:49.870" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you use obscure terms most readers never heard of, you're bound to alienate the readers. For me &lt;em&gt;quipao&lt;/em&gt; doesn't elicit any connotations; I don't know this word, so it will be entirely alien to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the world has no connection to Earth whatsoever, you'd better have a very good excuse for them developing a copy of Chinese culture. A dimensional gate? A connection with Chinese monks through meditation? An alien civilization that is 1:1 copy of one of more exotic Earth civilizations, down to fashion details is a bad cliche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do: First check the question on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/7537/4291&quot;&gt;How should I introduce new and complex technologies or tools?&lt;/a&gt; - introducing new cultural contexts falls under the same mechanics. Then designate a literal or virtual &lt;strong&gt;cabbagehead&lt;/strong&gt;, a literal or virtual &lt;strong&gt;teacher&lt;/strong&gt;, and provide a bit of exposure on every unique item. After we get the first explanation on what &lt;em&gt;quipao&lt;/em&gt; is, where it comes from and how it looks like, you can then use the term freely - the reader got accustomed with it. You can build the whole culture like that, just try not to bore the reader to death with insignificant details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and if you're talking about an entire planet, making it monocultural a'la single rather small country would be one of the worse cliches. Sure, one location - country, continent, colony - why not? But entire planet - blah...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T10:17:49.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12788" CreationDate="2014-09-06T10:31:54.873" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is like writing English. Obviously people in a fantasy world or the far future won't speak English, yet you present their dialogue in English (or whatever language you write in). Does that put readers off? Certainly not. Writing in a fantasy language is what would put readers off!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terms are the same. If you use the current (in your language) &lt;em&gt;general&lt;/em&gt; term for an item, people will accept that as a translation of some fantasy language word into their language. For example, a poncho, while not an English word, is the common term in English for a certain from of garment. If you use that word in a fantasy novel, it will feel just as natural at using it in the real world. Same would go for a sarong, a toga, a turban, and other really well known exotic garments. Wether or not a qipao is one of those, I can't say. I just read the word for the first time, so would think it was an invention of yours when I read your book. Which would not put me off, because inveting terminology is a common convention, so you are on the safe side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question, on the other hand, is if the &lt;strong&gt;object&lt;/strong&gt; itself is so universal that readers will accept it in a fantasy setting. A table is obviously a type of furniture that exists in different parts of the world and at different times, so encountering it in a fantasy novel will be acceptable. But a paper handkerchief is a recent development and not used in all parts of the world, so reading that someone uses it in a fantasy setting must be motivated. You cannot just have it there, but need to explain its existence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other question is that of your narrative viewpoint. There are fantastic tales told from the viewpoint of one of our contemporaries. Usually that's when a person from our time and culture gets transported to a parallel fantasy universe or travels to the past or future in a time machine. This person will of course describe the alien world with our own words. But if the word was not exactly fitting the object, this narrator would certainly comment on that and explain to the audience how it was different (&amp;quot;they wore what looked like ..., but upon close inspection revealed itself to actually be ...&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it is a &lt;strong&gt;universal object&lt;/strong&gt;, you can use our word for it, even if that word is not native to the language you write in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the word denotes an object that only exists in our culture or time, don't use it to describe a fantasy world with a different culture or (level of) technology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: &lt;strong&gt;To describe a fantasy world, use either &lt;em&gt;neutral&lt;/em&gt; terms, or made up words.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T10:31:54.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12780" CreationDate="2014-09-06T10:42:07.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh, you are doing well here. Very well. You are breaking a rule about cliche dialogues exactly where it should be broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are writing a meaningless, dull prattle that lulls the reader into slightly bored indifference and then you drop the bomb of “Animal Self-Destruction Observation Group” which makes me go &quot;What?!&quot; - and then you drop another - “That’s good.”, the mother completely missing it, suddenly adding a lot of depth to the story, by showing how shallow and ignorant a person she is. And from that point on what was so far dull and boring, despite not changing the tone the least bit, looks sinister and gritting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is exactly a very well executed trick of lulling the reader into boredom only to shock them out of it. Well done and don't change it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T10:42:07.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2014-09-06T10:54:42.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, the question says &lt;strong&gt;cheapest&lt;/strong&gt; way. So any answer involving hiring someone to bind the book or buying a machine must not be acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;mildlydiverting's answer is fantastic, and it works well for books as thick as you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I bound a fat slab of several hundred sheets of paper in the following way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perfectly align the sheets of paper. If you want, put some cover and backcover on the top and bottom of the stack.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put one narrow piece of wood below the stack and another narrow piece above it. The wood needs to be as long as the side you want to bind, and about two to three fingers broad.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put another two pieces of wood beside the narrow piece. These can be as broad as the rest of the paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a bar clamps to press the papers and woods together. Use one set of bar clamps on the narrow woods, another set on the second woods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using a drill and the thinnest (but long enough) drill bit you own or can lend from a friend, drill a row of holes along the side of the block that you want to bind. Drill through the narrow woods. The more holes and the closer together they are, the more stable the binding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove the clamps that hold the narrow (but not the second) woods and remove these narrow woods. The other woods should continue to keep the paper in position.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use wire or a needle and thick yarn to sew the papers together. Make sure your sewing is tight. If you use wire, use flat nose pliers to wind the ends of the wire together&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want, get some pretty duct tape and stick it over the &quot;back&quot; of the &quot;book&quot; and a bit over the front and back to cover your sewing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove the second set of clamps and woods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You got yourself a book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the help of some clamps or a vise you can realize any bookbinding technique, even saddle stitched, without much cost, all by yourself. The net is full of instructional blog posts and videos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is certainly the cheapest way, because all you have to buy is wire or a needle and yarn. Everything else you have or lend from friends or (the wood) find in the trash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T10:54:42.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2014-09-06T12:30:03.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Making this into an answer to better benefit others looking for a variety of answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Duct Tape&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It costs peanuts (like £1.50 for a thick roll) and each book will only use a tiny bit: the height of the page plus about an inch. It is also a very quick and simple method. Simply stack up your pages, rifle the &quot;spine&quot; edge (the edge you want to bind) and lay it upon a sticky-side up length of Duct Tape. The amount the paper should overlap the tape is basically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Width of tape - thickness of paper sheaf) / 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it only has to be rough: you want roughly the same amount of tape visible on the front and back of the bound book but rulers et al really aren't necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a thicker pad of paper, a line of basic PVA glue along the duct tape will give it extra strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then simply fold the Duct Tape up, pushing it against the spine, and over to the front of the paper. A lot of words but this is what you'll achieve:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BQf6U.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Credit to Instructables&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tape is your spine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Altogether this takes about 25 seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, dump something heavy on top (or better yet, use bulldog clamps) (only necessary if one used glue), set it aside and get to work on the next copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glue drying time should be given about 3 hours just to be absolutely sure but I've not had a problem over an hour and a half. Depends how generous you are with the glue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Costs maybe £3.00 to get everything you need and takes less than thirty seconds a copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8034" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T12:30:03.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12726" CreationDate="2014-09-06T17:38:24.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that you should definitely include time/date, but as was mentioned above, you should show, not tell. If you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to tell, I would use the chapter header mentioned by Mac Cooper. But actually stating that information within the body of the text itself might not be a good idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is to have a very good sense of time, date, and place yourself, while you are writing. If you do, part of that sense will come across. It will also avoid mix-ups like Lauren Ipsum mentioned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing I would do is use descriptions (also mentioned by Lauren) that show what time it is. If the moon is out, the reader will probably conclude that it is night. We usually don't need to know the exact minute of the time, though novels will of course vary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also usually get away with a very brief amount of telling. For example, you could say, &quot;early in the morning,&quot; or, &quot;a few minutes later,&quot; or, &quot;around dinner time.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I've had plots where I couldn't keep track of what was happening on which day. I found that actually putting a label (day 1, morning; day 3, night) for myself on each scene really helped while forming the plot, and later helped me know 'when I was' while writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T17:45:13.223" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T17:45:13.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12785" CreationDate="2014-09-06T21:42:06.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not about characters in mystery/thrillers specifically, but Orson Scott Cards &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9441466-characters-viewpoint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Characters &amp;amp; Viewpoint&lt;/a&gt; is considered by many (myself included) to be one of the best books on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a more general description of character develpoment in a plot i highly recommend Larry Brooks' &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9912752-story-engineering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Story Engineering&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T21:42:06.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12801" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-07T00:41:40.657" Score="0" ViewCount="2619" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember hearing about this formula where it showed a graph of what makes a poem good. It had something to do with increasing length to increase enjoyability. I was wondering if anyone remembered the name of the theory or theorist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10569" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T16:35:41.263" Title="Person who invented &quot;formula&quot; for good poetry" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12802" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-07T03:32:27.017" Score="1" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a little book which explains all equations that first year students will use. There is a law that requires many assumptions and I have referred the student to the page in the textbook that explains the assumptions. Is this safe to do? I'm worried that I can be charged for derivative work as I am using the textbook's explanation to help the student understand my explanation of the formula. Any comments will be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10531" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T15:14:05.963" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T15:14:05.963" Title="Copyright issue when referring to a textbook" Tags="|academic-writing|copyright|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12804" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-07T07:21:17.547" Score="3" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing fiction in german. I am looking for a place to share my work, where I can get constructive criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site should provide some mechanism that encouraged constructive feedback and some kind of voting mechanism for published stories. I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critters.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;critters&lt;/a&gt;, which would be what I'm looking for. Except it's english only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a functioning online critique community for german content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4343" LastEditorUserId="4343" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T15:01:36.217" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T15:01:36.217" Title="Is there an online critique community for stories written in german?" Tags="|language|criticism|community|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12804" CreationDate="2014-09-07T08:13:40.553" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found the site wortkrieger.de (formerly kurzgeschichten.de) myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't know if it is functioning well and I didn't find information about how this site works in the FAQ section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone has experience with this site please add a comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4343" LastEditorUserId="4343" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T09:24:10.360" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T09:24:10.360" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12806" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12807" CreationDate="2014-09-07T12:27:11.133" Score="16" ViewCount="1775" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished a new release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I encountered a passage in the book that doesn't quite make sense.&#xA;Just a single sentence that is out of place.&#xA;Grammatically it is fine, but in context it doesn't seem like it fits there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it may be a left-over from when a draft was being revised.&#xA;The extra detail would have fit in to a slightly different piece of plot than is in the book. It feels like it is a left-over reference to that plot point that was not edited out, when the rest was replaced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can I/Should I contact the author/publisher and ask if that section is meant to be there?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Perhaps I should post on their forum and ask about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this was software I would file a bug report.&#xA;Fiction books don't have bug reports.&#xA;Though I have seen them for nonfiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3827" LastEditorUserId="5810" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T18:09:12.737" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T05:43:49.813" Title="Can I, as a reader, submit a &quot;Bug Report&quot; for a novel?" Tags="|fiction|editing|revision|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12806" CreationDate="2014-09-07T15:01:03.133" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is always a good idea for readers to provide feedback to the authors. When authors read their work they don't get the same experience as the reader. Most books' authors will have a way for you to contact them about their books. You said it has a forum; you should see if that is an appropriate place for suggestions on the book. If the author has a personal website you can find their contact information there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10435" LastEditorUserId="10576" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T05:43:49.813" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T05:43:49.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12806" CreationDate="2014-09-07T16:53:57.863" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, go for it. One of my favorite books has two entire chapters where the name of one of the major characters is misspelled in every single reference. This was fixed in later editions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it was intentional, the author may appreciate a chance to explain it. If it was a mistake, the publishing house would probably like a chance to fix it. In either case, be extremely polite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T16:53:57.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12804" CreationDate="2014-09-07T20:46:46.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;All German language forums for writers as well as most forums for fans and writers of specific literary genres have subforums where you can post your own work and receive critique. Use any search engine and search for either &quot;Schriftsteller Forum&quot; or &quot;[your genre] Forum&quot; (e.g. &quot;Fantasy Forum&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsfo.de/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dsfo.de/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.schreibwerkstatt.de/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.schreibwerkstatt.de/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://autorenforum.montsegur.de/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://autorenforum.montsegur.de/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.42erautoren.de/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://forum.42erautoren.de/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bod.de/autorenpool/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bod.de/autorenpool/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literaturforum.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.literaturforum.net/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T20:46:46.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12788" CreationDate="2014-09-08T07:51:25.947" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;An excellent question, and a permanent source of controversy and disagreement in fantasy and science fiction. Let's try to break this down: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Basics of worldbuilding&lt;/strong&gt;. You cannot construct an entire world out of whole cloth. It's simply not possible, primarily because the world is much larger than most of us tend to notice on a day-to-day basis. If your ambition is to create a perfectly innovative and alien environment, you need to let go of that and &lt;strong&gt;learn to compromise&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cultural context&lt;/strong&gt;. Depending on your reader demographics, and even more-so on your own cultural environment, different things can seem normal, natural, neutral, exotic, note-worthy and so on. A Chinese reader may well consider the word qipao to be a perfectly neutral noun to describe a skirted one-piece garment (I am not a speaker or reader of Chinese, so I wouldn't know). A reader native to English may prefer &lt;em&gt;gown&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;kirtle&lt;/em&gt; to serve in the same capacity. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In-story context&lt;/strong&gt;. Focus on what's impostant to your story. You describe the elements that you're concerned about as being '&lt;em&gt;minor&lt;/em&gt;'. Usually that's a pretty good sign that you're overthinking things. What leads you to want to describe a garment as a qipao? Do you need the reader to visualize a certain specific style of garment? If so, &lt;strong&gt;why is this important?&lt;/strong&gt; Cut out the fat. The details to include are the ones that reward the story most. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assumption of inertia&lt;/strong&gt;. If you don't describe something specifically, readers will substitute what's familiar from their own lives. This is necessary and inevitable (see point #1). &lt;em&gt;Most&lt;/em&gt; of what's in your story will be similar to the real world. This is true of all fantasy stories, and readers (including myself) still find them plenty immersive. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: all words are culturally-specific. Even (especially!) ones that you think of as being perfectly neutral. The mark of the culture you live in will be seen on your writing. If you wish to use (for example) Chinese words to describe a fantastical element, those words will be read &lt;strong&gt;in context&lt;/strong&gt;. If your world otherwise draws from medieval England (consciously or not), it will stick out like a sore thumb. But! I have not read your story, so I don't know whether this is the case. My experience only teaches me that many SFF writers bring &lt;strong&gt;unconscious cultural assumptions&lt;/strong&gt; into their worldbuilding, a la, '&lt;em&gt;They all meet in a tavern&lt;/em&gt;.' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T07:51:25.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12548" CreationDate="2014-09-08T10:27:07.677" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have the exact term for the style, but the one autobiography that I still think about (even though I am not a writer) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stephen King's 'On Writing'&lt;/a&gt;. He started with  his childhood and the further you've read, more of each page became about the art of writing and less about what other bios I read contain - unabashed chivalry, heroic deeds, monumental sacrifices and general nonsense repeatedly underlying 'what an awesome human being the person was.' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;King's autobio just slowly faded him as a human and focused on the entire process of writing and through this process you learned a few things here and there about the real world events in his life, but mostly as marginalia. I think after reading it, I better understood him in some sense than had I read 400 pages of war stories that some other authors left of their life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10581" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T10:27:07.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12813" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-08T14:36:33.587" Score="10" ViewCount="11712" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that I never mention in my stories is how the characters are dressed. Well, except when they are being described for the first time, when the main character first meets them. How important is it for the reader to know this information? Do famous authors spend time doing this, say, mentioning how the characters are dressed on different occasions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-07T12:19:58.907" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T12:55:25.707" Title="Is it important to describe how the characters are dressed?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|characters|description|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12777" CreationDate="2014-09-08T15:04:54.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a writer too (although not published... yet). I use a site called Wattpad (wattpad.co.uk).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a writing and reading community where you can communicate with other writers. I find it a very enjoyable website to be a part of. My account name on there is MISThomas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10585" LastEditorDisplayName="user18397" LastEditDate="2017-09-21T04:12:57.083" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T04:12:57.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10844" CreationDate="2014-09-08T15:07:24.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure how you want to self-publish exactly but there is wattpad.com or wattpad.co.uk (have a look there though I am not sure if it is what you are looking for). My account name on there is MISThomas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10585" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T15:07:24.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12816" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-08T15:52:49.953" Score="3" ViewCount="502" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a book which includes a review of old software and I would like to add a couple of screenshots for some of them. How do I go about this legally or, alternatively, does this qualify as &quot;fair use&quot;, without need for any explicit permission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any of you already encountered this situation before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10586" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T19:31:41.100" Title="How to get permission for using software screenshots in book?" Tags="|legal|copyright|book|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12813" CreationDate="2014-09-08T16:08:39.240" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;If how the character is dressed is important to the story, then you should certainly describe it. If not, then don't bring it up. Give as much detail as is relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, for example, you picture Mr Jones as always being immaculately dressed in a formal business suit and carrying a walking stick, I'd mention that, at least once up front. Or at the other extreme, if you picture him attending a very formal event, like a wedding or a reception for the governor, wearing beat-up blue jeans and a cowboy hat, I'd mention that. But if you picture him wearing a business suit to his job as a lawyer, or wearing blue jeans when he's working in the yard, well, that's pretty much what the reader would expect, so it probably doesn't need to be mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or if an important point of the scene is that the heroine is looking incredibly beautiful and wildly sexy, going on at length about how just what and how much she is showing could help to build the mood. Make clear exactly why all the men can't take their eyes off of her, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if how the person is dressed is relevant, you can often say all the reader needs to know in a couple of words. Like, &quot;Sally was modestly dressed and carrying a briefcase ...&quot;, or &quot;Bob arrived looking more formal than was really appropriate to the occasion ...&quot; might be quite sufficient. The exact color and style of their clothes might make no difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I certainly would not go into a detailed description of what every character is wearing under normal circumstances. This would really bog down a story. Like, &quot;As Smith, the master spy, entered his hotel room, suddenly three assassins leaped up and attacked him! The first was wearing a blue shirt and black pants, with a black belt. His shirt had a pocket on the front. He carried a white handkerchief in his back pocket. His belt had four holes and a slightly triangular shape to the tip. His shoes were made of brown leather with rubber soles. One of his shoelaces had a damaged end. There was a ridge pattern to the soles. The second was wearing a brown shirt and khaki pants. The pants were originally permanent press but the seam was somewhat faded from many washings ...&quot; Unless any of this later proved to be important to the story, that would be really tedious, and would really take away from the potential excitement of an action scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A follow-up thought: If how a character is dressed is relevant to the story, you should convey this information as early in the scene as possible. If you do not reveal this early on, then when you DO reveal it, the reader has to backtrack in how he pictured the scene. Like is you say, &quot;Sally arrived at the pig farm early in the morning and set to work cleaning out the manure from the pig stalls ...&quot;, the reader is going to immediately have an impression in his head of Sally wearing some grubby clothes suitable to such work. If five pages later you mention that Sally is wearing a formal ball gown which she has carefully managed to keep immaculately clean through this task, the reader is going to have to rethink his entire mental picture of the scene up to this point. That kind of backtracking is often the punch line of a joke, and it might work for a humor story, but anywhere else it would just be disconcerting and confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T19:44:00.233" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T19:44:00.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12786" CreationDate="2014-09-08T16:22:35.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GOOGLE+&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/b1UDi.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're targeting a specific niche I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Goodreads&lt;/a&gt;, just go to the forums of the authors/genre that inspired you and post your work there. Same for Facebook and Google+ (post on their respective pages/communities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T16:28:18.527" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T16:28:18.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12786" CreationDate="2014-09-08T17:05:05.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wattpad is a really good place to start. Almost everyone there is an aspiring writer and hence encourage other writers immensely. You can update status and post messages to your audience. There are many clubs within Wattpad to promote your works. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wattpad.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.wattpad.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10551" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T17:05:05.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12813" CreationDate="2014-09-08T19:36:17.263" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like most things, it really depends on what kind of story you're writing and what effect you want to achieve. I can think of an example on both sides of the metaphorical clothing descriptor coin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a technique present in older fiction where the author will lengthily go through the description of a character's outfits, gardens, or houses in order to express the personality of the character or the nature of the setting as told through objects and people. Parts of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1257/1257-h/1257-h.htm#the-antechamber-of-m-de-treville&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chapter 2&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1257/1257-h/1257-h.htm#the-interior-of-the-musketeers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chapter 7&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;em&gt;The Three Musketeers&lt;/em&gt; by Alexandre Dumas are good examples of this. Applying this type of long, seemingly inane description to somebody's outfit at various points in the story can serve a few purposes-- expressing the personality of the character with the way they dress, expressing their role in the setting (Do they stand out? Do they look like the average person? What does this say about the character?), and even delving into their backstory (Are they wearing some kind of antique, maybe?). This can all be done without the character saying a single word, but you run the risk of being long-winded and dull. There's a reason many modern novels have shied away from this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov&amp;#39;s_gun&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chekhov's gun&lt;/a&gt; approach. Or, I guess in this case, the Chekhov's socks approach. If you have a description somewhere in your work that Chekhov's socks are neon blue with backlighting, then those neon blue backlit socks had better alert the cops during his climactic midnight chase scene with their outrageous luminosity. There's no reason to describe &quot;her brown hair with a fresh flower in it&quot; or &quot;his cleanly hemmed trousers&quot; because that isn't going to save them from the nuclear blast later on in the story. This is a really minimalist approach. Let the readers think what they want until you mention otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally like it when authors use a combination of both. I'm thinking of &lt;em&gt;Atonement&lt;/em&gt; right now (I don't have the book on me) when Ian McEwan describes Cecilia's dinner party dress. If I remember correctly, the description doesn't have a point besides for essentially saying &quot;Cecilia is like, &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; hot right now and totally knows it, guys, like, daaaang.&quot; But, hey, it works and it gives you a visual image for why Robbie is interested in her. And again, if I remember correctly, the book doesn't have much else describing things clothing-wise, because there wouldn't have been a true effective purpose behind those kinds of descriptions in the rest of the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in conclusion, describing a character's clothing is only as important as the purpose you give it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10555" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T19:36:17.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12813" CreationDate="2014-09-08T21:05:38.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, you build an impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your character is a rich cloud of emotions, feelings, attractions, fears, repulsions, desires, cold logic and secrets. This is what really acts upon the reader and interacts with their imagination, &quot;makes the story tick&quot;. It all boils down to emotional level, and it's the only level that truly matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wouldn't it be nice if we could mix these like chemicals in a test cylinder to produce just the right mix? But as writers we must use more indirect approach. Especially, &quot;show, don't tell.&quot; So you can't tell the reader your character is organized, or rebellious, or sinister, or kind. You must show them. In order to do so, you reach to standard tools in writer's arsenal: events, descriptions, little and big actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clothes can tell a lot about certain traits of character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of a man wearing a suit. Impeccably white, perfectly tailored? Or salmon-colored with overstuffed shoulder pads? Or one grey, clean, ironed, but decades out of fashion, faded and nearly threadbare on the sleeves? One ten numbers too big, and with just bare chest underneath? Shiny golden with pearl patterns? With elaborately mismatched sides, one sleeve white, one black, but the composition not clashing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all some ways to show certain traits of character, be it permanent, or temporary quirks of mood. Say, shirt partially sticking out of trousers, one side of the collar sticking up? Certainly the person didn't pay much attention wearing them, be it to laziness, or to being in a hurry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't think about describing clothes in terms of some duty, to fill some gap. Think it as a neat tool of building character. If you can describe someone's character in a way that entirely skirts the issue of their outer appearance, that's great! You managed not to bore the reader with unnecessary descriptions! Our protagonists tracked effects and actions without ever seeing the character, and now as they learn about his/her name, the readers know the character so thoroughly they just don't need the looks of their clothes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But more often than not you are forced to introduce the character's first impression in span of half a page or so, and giving them outer looks, including clothes, is the easy, fast, reliable, tested and true method of providing that first impression. It's a very basic tool, and it's not that you &quot;should describe clothes&quot;. You should create a compelling, complete first impression that won't leave the reader puzzled and grasping at straws as to who is given character. Giving the description of clothes is a good way to achieve that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T21:05:38.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12816" CreationDate="2014-09-08T22:18:24.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply write to the publisher or author, you will usually find the appropriate contact information in the about screen. They will more than likely grant you permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10590" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T10:05:01.327" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T10:05:01.327" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12786" CreationDate="2014-09-09T05:36:29.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every author and book is different. I've sold about 50,000 books in 3 years, so I'm a solid mid-list author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use my blog, Facebook, and Twitter the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Facebook is where I tend to get the most intimate engagement. I'll throw out plot questions or title brainstorming for my work-in-progress, and fans and friends and family will chime in with ideas. Lots of fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twitter is where I tend to announce stuff that gets coverage to the broader world. I have a modest number of followers, but some of my followers have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers, so when they retweet, it gets a very big audience. This helps me get exposure to new people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My blog is ultimately where I'm going to send people to find out about new books, write longer articles, find my entire list of books in order, and so forth. I consider that the most essential aspect of my online presence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And lastly I have a mailing list, with signup through my blog. I only email out to that list once per month, but it has a very high level of response from fans. (I use mailchimp to maintain the list.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order of priority:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;blog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mailing list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;twitter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;facebook&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also on Google+ but I use it the least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10432" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T05:36:29.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12777" CreationDate="2014-09-09T05:47:48.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have any experience with cowriting, so take my advice with a grain of salt. But I have two thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First: If you're relatively new to writing (it sounds like you have yet to write your first novel), then I think there's probably a period of self-discovery and learning ahead of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your coauthor says &quot;let's do X&quot;, but you don't have the experience and confidence to know if that's right, how would you handle that? It would be hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It feels like it would be valuable to learn all the parts yourself first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The counter argument, of course, would be that two people could learn together. And I think that argument has merit, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: I've been in three different critique groups, and one of the things I've learned is that nearly all writers work at different speeds, accelerate in their learning at different rates, and have different goals. The result is the most critique groups either fall apart or have a regular exchange of members as some leave and new ones join.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find writing to be lonely, and coauthoring doesn't work out, another idea might be to start a regular critique group of writers at roughly the same stage to coach each other and give each other feedback. If your coauthor bails on you, you've got problems. If a critique group member bails, it's no big deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some writers do &quot;write-ins&quot; at local coffee shops. One way that works is to plan 3 hours at the coffee shop. Start with 15 minutes of socializing, then everyone writes for 45 minutes. Then repeat each hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found local writers a few different ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;taking local writing classes (moderate)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;attending local science fiction conventions (cheap)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;attending local writing conventions (expensive)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;looking on meetup (free)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10432" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T05:47:48.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12777" CreationDate="2014-09-09T07:27:45.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Where to find co-authors&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some years ago I was looking for an author (not co-author) to write a webcomic I wanted to draw. I'm in Germany, so I posted on some German forums and websites, but I also published my &amp;quot;ad&amp;quot; in the &lt;em&gt;Comic Books and Graphic Novels&lt;/em&gt; subforum of the&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://absolutewrite.com/forums/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Absolute Write Water Cooler&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I quickly deleted the ad in the Absolute Write Water Cooler again, because I had found a German author through a German forum, but in the day or two that it was online, I got a promising response by a young Canadian studying some kind of writing at some college or university (I forget the details). The samples he sent me were well-written, and his approach and mindset were professional, so I would have tried to work with him and only chose a German author because she lived close by and I preferred the idea of being able to meet in person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was maybe ten years ago, so I cannot vouch for the users of Absolute Write today, but from a few visits I still get the idea that it is one of the main places in the English speaking web where young, amateur, and semi-professional authors meet, so there is a rich reservoir of people who have not yet made it and wait for their opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only offer one link, but maybe it will help you find more if I describe what I did to find the German forums and websites where I posted my ad. What I did was very simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first thing I did was look for forums for authors. I posted an ad in relevant subforums in all forums that had either a lot of members or focussed on my genre (fantasy and comics). That is I posted in the largest writing forums and in all comic and fantasy forums. There aren't so many of these in German, but in English you might want to be more selective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I then searched for ads looking for authors. What I found where some of the forums I had already found, but also some literary magazines with ad sections and simple ad websites (like Craig's List). I then posted an ad on these sites.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got a lot of feedback and found a very talented writer with whom I was extremely happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;How to co-author&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; to work with a co-author. But he would have to do the rewriting. I'm what some call a &amp;quot;discovery writer&amp;quot;, and once the first draft is done I can barely bring myself to look at it again. I would be soooo happy, if someone else took my draft and turned it into a plublishable text. And I wouldn't even care how much he changed it, as long as I didn't have to deal with my word vomit again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this should tell you is that you need to look at how you write, and how you work in general, and what kind of person and process could complement this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you like to dream up your story ideas alone. But maybe you like to have someone to play idea ping pong with you. Maybe you like to draft, like I do, and would love someone do the rewriting. Or maybe you love to rewrite and would love for someone to give you a draft to chew on. Maybe you like to &amp;quot;converse&amp;quot;, and would love to write a novel from two viewpoints, with each writer writing one. Maybe you are a team worker and would want to send the manuscript back and forth every day so each author can continually work on everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you will have to try what works best for you, but maybe you already have a good idea of your strengths and weaknesses, of your likes and dislikes, and can condense this into an idea of what kind of co-author you are dreaming about. You might want to put this in your ad, it will help attract the right applicants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Should you co-author?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not? Great authors have written novels together. One recent team that comes to mind are John Green and David Levithan, both successful YA authors in their own right. I don't see how co-authoring could be bad for your career or brand in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I generally believe that you profit from living experimentally. Try different things, or doing things differently. At worst, it will be an experience to learn from. And maybe you will discover new aspects of yourself or life, that will make you more happy or successful. Try singing, try dancing, and try co-authoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just, like in any marriage, take your time to find the right partner. You might need to date a few guys or girls, before you commit to one. If dating involves just talking or a one night stand (write a short story) is, of course, up to you :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T08:02:50.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12827" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-09T09:51:33.960" Score="1" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a 5th grade teacher at a private school.  I have a student whose primary language is Chinese.  He has come a long way in learning English, but he still struggles with reading and comprehending the language.  I am looking for an easy and cost effective way to translate his text books (mostly history and science) into Chinese.  Is there a software out there where I can scan the book and have it translated?  The publishing company does not offer the book in any other language oth er than English.  Thanks for your assistance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10594" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T04:59:40.823" Title="Book translations for a student" Tags="|translation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12828" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-09T13:00:58.200" Score="3" ViewCount="9961" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several times during my studies I have heard about American and European styles in writing essays. From what I've gathered, the American style is supposed to be more argumentative. On the other hand it seems to be unrelated to the issue of American vs. British spelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to see a more comprehensive review of the two styles. The answer I would like to get should also contain a reference or two to an authoritative source on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Responses to comments&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28137/whats-the-difference-between-the-american-and-the-european-style-in-essay-writi&quot;&gt;@Robert&lt;/a&gt; I have two references. First is is an excerpt from a handout in an Academic writing course that I translated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Hana Kostovičová] defines [the European style] as an &lt;strong&gt;effort to provide objective analysis&lt;/strong&gt; and the American style as an &lt;strong&gt;effort to come up with arguments supporting the author's personal views&lt;/strong&gt;. I confirm the existence of this difference and although I strongly incline towards the European, in style as well as in politics, I don't force you to choose one or the other. That is what makes me European.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is my personal experience. I wrote an essay about whether animal testing should be banned. I wrote more or less in the European style: The issues is controversial, there are good arguments against (1909 Syphilis cure), good arguments for (moral issues, in silico experiments), the recent trend is towards it (activists persuaded mayor Airlines to stop transporting research animals), it should be decided on case by case basis. The teacher who graded it was an American and the feedback I got was that I am supposed to pick a side, not to be on the fence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5214" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T18:05:25.317" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T18:05:25.317" Title="What's the difference between the American and the European style in essay writing?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12829" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-09T14:46:28.540" Score="-2" ViewCount="633" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this problem - I generally dislike fantasy worlds and science fiction set up in space or different planets. So I don't want to write about such things. I always loved more grounded stories about the real world. It doesn't matter if there is fantasy of science fiction elements in there, it is setting has to be close to reality as we know it, not the story itself. &#xA;The common advice for writers in realistic setting is 'Write about what you know', but there is the problem. I really don't want to set the novel I write in my own country for several reasons. And I don't feel like I can realistically present a culture and everyday lives of people from other countries. I've done insane amounts of research over the course of my life, studying several foreign cultures. I can answer almost every question about several countries and their cultures. But that's just facts, you can't actually think like representative of another culture, you can't actually 'get it' if you never been there, in that environment.&#xA;What should I do then? Try to invent a setting that looks like reality but isn't actually a real world? This approach seems cheap and even if it didn't, I'm not sure how to come up with something like that for it to not to cause repulsion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10596" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T07:46:42.647" Title="How to come up with the setting for the fiction novel?" Tags="|novel|setting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12829" CreationDate="2014-09-09T15:00:30.073" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Write what you know&quot; is a guideline, not a law, or every book would be an autobiography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to write about other countries, you say you've done a lot of research, which is a great start. That will keep you from making basic mistakes, like having your characters drive on the incorrect side of the road or dress inappropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, either visit the other country in question and get your own experiences, or find one or several natives of that country to act as your cultural nitpicker. Or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T15:00:30.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12828" CreationDate="2014-09-09T16:29:13.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia really &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;explains it all&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say that there is a European versus an American style of writing essays. The difference is between the (traditionally often unstructured and meandering) reflections of a learned person, which in many cultures is called an essay in the French pronunciation, with the stress on the second syllable, and the structured written argument, usually written by a pupil or student in an exam or to receive study credits, which was originally called an essay only in English, but this term has spread to other academic systems with the Americanization of the European educational system and is pronounced as in English, with the stress on the first syllable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T16:29:13.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10547" CreationDate="2014-09-09T18:54:54.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medium&lt;/a&gt; is a professional writing platform that allows readers to comment and offer feedback on individual paragraphs without disrupting reading order, before or after the work is published.  It sounds like exactly what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10083" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T18:54:54.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5139" CreationDate="2014-09-09T21:33:39.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I remember correctly, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pragprog.com/book/tpp/the-pragmatic-programmer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Pragmatic Programmer&lt;/a&gt; specifically describes in the book how they built their writing system to make the code extract-able and executable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10598" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T21:33:39.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12761" CreationDate="2014-09-10T00:27:02.523" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The type of mental illness the character is suffering from is important, if you want to be convincing. I agree with @what about doing research at the library on some case studies.  But also important is, why are they suffering from this illness - is it genetic?  Damage from a head injury? Addiction-induced brain chemistry changes?  How does this illness manifest itself?  Do they have problems with impulse control, paranoia, their temper, do they see things, hear voices, etc? Given that character's personality, how might that person characteristically respond to their illness?  Thinking about it in these terms may help figure out how they should be speaking.  Thinking about the character as a real person will help you better render his or her voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10500" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T00:27:02.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12835" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12838" CreationDate="2014-09-10T05:37:08.227" Score="5" ViewCount="9046" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am creating an index for a non-fiction book, and I am using LibreOffice writer. It has functions that help generate an index. When it does so, some of my entries look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;stuff..... 9, 12pp., 20, 27, 134p.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I can't figure out is what these &quot;p.&quot; and &quot;pp.&quot; designations stand for. I think it has to do with the entry being on contiguous pages or not, but by looking through my index and their entries, sometimes more than one page is involved, sometimes not... it's not easy to discern the pattern from what is happening in my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, of course I looked around the web, and I've seen &quot;pp&quot; used when designating sequences of pages, but in that case the beginning and end are identified, something like &quot;pp18~20&quot;. I've also seen &quot;pg&quot; mentioned as being a single page, but I'm not clear on why you would need that, and if it's different from a single &quot;p&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does &quot;pp.&quot; mean, and what does &quot;p.&quot; mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note that this is not a technical question&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; about whether or nor I can or can make LibreOffice create or not create these &quot;pp.&quot; and &quot;p.&quot; designations. First I want to know what they mean from the point of view of creating an index in general. Once I understand what they are, then I'll work out whether or not it's worth dealing with the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2753" LastActivityDate="2018-05-17T02:21:58.317" Title="What do &quot;p&quot; and &quot;pp&quot; mean in the context of an index?" Tags="|indexing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12829" CreationDate="2014-09-10T07:07:23.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you write to portrait life in a specific culture, fiction is mainly about &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt;, and people are basically the same everywhere. Everyone wants physical safety, health, social connections, love, entertainment, and so on. People everywhere love their children, are jealous, strive for economic success, feel insecure or happy or sad. &lt;strong&gt;Since you are a human being and have spent your life with other human beings, you know how human beings work, and can write about what you know.&lt;/strong&gt; Setting is just the background for the human drama, and as long as the setting is plausible to your readers (who do not live in the culture you write about) they won't care about the correct description of tax systems or public transportation as long as the descriptions of the people and their motivations and behavior are truthful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T07:07:23.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12835" CreationDate="2014-09-10T14:41:44.220" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This does not seem to follow conventional usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is common in indexes or other references to a page number, that if you want to specify that something begins on one page but continues or repeats on the following pages, you give the page number followed by &quot;ff&quot;, e.g. &quot;page 24 ff&quot;, meaning, &quot;page 24 and following&quot;. In a condensed format like an index, you might just put &quot;24ff&quot;, like &quot;foobars ... 5,17,123ff,204&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;p&quot; is often used as an abbreviation for &quot;page&quot; and &quot;pp&quot; for pages, with or without a period, as in &quot;found on p. 10&quot; or &quot;See also pp 33-39&quot;. But I've never seen this put after the page number and I'm not sure what it would mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the developers of your software just invented their own convention. Or perhaps this is a convention used in some specific field. Or maybe it's a regionalism, something commonly done in Ruritanian English or whatever but not in other parts of the world. Anybody know who can chime in on that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T14:41:44.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12839" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12841" CreationDate="2014-09-10T15:55:55.887" Score="52" ViewCount="30969" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an aspiring author, but I have written several short 'test novels.' With each of those, it became increasingly clear how you have to develop the main character, the protagonist. After all, the story is &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; the protagonist. The reader needs to like the protagonist and want him to win, otherwise he will stop reading. Therefore, I am unsure about killing off the protagonist. This is not because I like the character too much, but because the reader might stop reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked up &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7230/killing-off-a-character-deciding-if-when-and-how&quot;&gt;Killing off a Character&lt;/a&gt;, but it didn't quite answer my question: Should you kill off the protagonist. It dealt more with main characters - characters that are important to the novel but not necessarily the protagonist. My question deals more with the hero, the person everyone is rooting for. How can you kill that person without losing the reader? Is it possible at all? Is it even advisable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking over the above linked question, I understand the points being made. Don't make the death meaningless, don't kill someone just because he's in the way, etc. The death has to &lt;em&gt;mean&lt;/em&gt; something. But how can you justify anything the death has to prove by killing off the hero, basically the main reason the reader is reading? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is especially a problem for first-person novels. If the hero keeps on narrating after death, the reader is probably going to wonder where he is. Heaven? Hell? Did the character die at all? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only place I could see the hero dying without catastrophic results would be at the very end of the book. If his death can prove something and then the book ends immediately after that... that could work. However, the problem still remains that the reader will doubtless be displeased. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;is it advisable to kill the protagonist?&lt;/strong&gt; If it is, how can you do so without alienating the reader? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: After reviewing all of the excellent answers that have been submitted for this question, I feel that most of them each have a part of the answer. If I were to choose one, however, I would have to select the comment supplied by @GreenAsJade on clockwork's answer, which was also very good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2022-07-10T03:41:36.637" Title="Killing the protagonist - should it be done?" Tags="|fiction|plot|characters|" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12839" CreationDate="2014-09-10T16:46:36.997" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've addressed &quot;the protagonist continues to talk after dying, even in first person&quot; here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5740/ways-for-main-character-to-influence-world-following-their-death&quot;&gt;Ways for main character to influence world following their death&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7612/1st-person-story-but-the-main-character-will-die-in-the-end-and-some-of-the-sto&quot;&gt;1st person story, but the main character will die in the end and some of the story needs to be told after his death. How to solve this problem?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your concern is that the death of the protagonist means the absolute end of the storyline. As in, there's no room for sequels, nothing for the reader to wonder about, no way for the story to go on and on in the reader's imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Okay, it ends.&lt;/strong&gt; So what? Not every story has to be part of a series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Only kill the main character at the end of a series.&lt;/strong&gt; If the character dies at the end of book 10 after a lengthy arc and struggle, it's a very different feeling than if the character lives and dies in one book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) The series continues from the POV of another character.&lt;/strong&gt; To take a recent modern example, both the book and the TV show of &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt; feature a particular character in the first book/season who then dies shockingly about 90% of the way in. Most readers/watchers were gobsmacked because this person seemed to be one of the pivots of the tale. Other characters took up the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4) The Reichenbach Gambit, aka &quot;Surprise! I'm not dead after all.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Your character might &lt;em&gt;appear&lt;/em&gt; to be dead to the other characters but in fact isn't, for whatever reason. This catapults you into the sequel, as the other characters will inevitably find out the greatly exaggerated reports. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;strong&gt;ETA&lt;/strong&gt; This isn't just the &quot;I faked my death&quot; trope, but also might have a sci-fi component, like the Trill in Star Trek. They are a joined species, so the symbiont can take a new host and retain the memories of its previous life. So Dax, the symbiont, remembers being part of the host Curzon, and when Curzon dies and Dax is joined to a new host Jadzia, Jadzia Dax now has the memory of Dax's friendship with Sisko.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-05-12T09:46:02.013" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T09:46:02.013" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12839" CreationDate="2014-09-10T18:28:53.903" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's definitely possible to do this without losing the reader. The New Testament is a story where the &quot;protagonist&quot; dies towards the end. I'm sure plenty of readers are quite satisfied with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much like the Gospels, &lt;strong&gt;killing the protagonist is advisable only if it really means something&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emphasis on the &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt;. Even if you make your character a martyr whose death brings about a sweeping social change that lasts for centuries and cleanses you of your sins, it doesn't mean anything if your reader doesn't care. Does your reader sob when the protagonist finally breaks the chains of his oppressors and dies a free man? Does your reader smile at the earnest deathbed confession of your protagonist, who has finally come to terms with his life and family after all those years of struggling? Can your reader not stop thinking of the warrior who bravely held her ground until the very end? Does the death of the salesman point out the futility and meaninglessness in this world and brings up philosophical questions in the reader's mind? Does your reader understand why the death had to happen (even if they wanted a happy ending for the character)? Then you can kill your main character. Delicately. Carefully. Probably with the intent from the very beginning that you're going to kill this protagonist off and that is the definite culmination of their entire purpose or character arc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if their death is at the beginning of the story and the entire rest of the fiction is just flashbacks, it has to mean something and it has to be their purpose. Don’t just shuffle them out of the way by saying, “Oh yeah, and then she fell down the stairs, how tragic, oopsie daisy,” because that's when readers start feeling ripped off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are plenty of stories out there (besides the New Testament) you can look at that pulled this off successfully. I’m afraid to bring any up because, hello, spoiler alert, but I can think of a good one where the death is the main point of the piece.  One of my favorite short stories is &lt;a href=&quot;http://pov.imv.au.dk/Issue_27/section_1/artc2A.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Bullet in the Brain&quot;&lt;/a&gt; which is a quick read that handles the death of the main character in an interesting way. I think this is a good example of how you've really got a lot of options out there for where and when to kill off the protagonist. It just depends on how you want the story to flow and what kind of meaning you want to give to said death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10555" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-09-13T18:18:31.997" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T18:18:31.997" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12839" CreationDate="2014-09-10T20:54:55.180" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/X7yIO.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you have introduced another character to take his place, and that at that point the reader has already developed some connection with it. From that point forward, work to intensify the connection between them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1719" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T20:54:55.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12761" CreationDate="2014-09-10T21:16:56.917" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As many have pointed out, insanity is a very broad term and there are much more specific mental ailments.  If this is a major character I'd suggest doing a bit of planning to really determine what their mental illness is and then stay consistent.  For example if they have multiple personality disorder, then maybe they're helpful one minute and something cause them to 'snap' and become violent, sort of like a Jeckyl and Hyde character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if this is just a minor character then you probably don't need to do any research, you just need to make them seem crazy.  Suppose the main character asks the insane person a valid question.  Some possibilities include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insane person responds to a totally different question in an obsessive level of detail, completely ignoring the original question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insane person mutters gibberish that isn't grammatically valid&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insane person responds to the original question but substitutes their own unique words for common things&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insane person responds with an answer that is completely wrong or childishly nieve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, on that last one, suppose the main character is asking for a lift out of town.  The insane person takes him to a rusted-out frame of an automobile from the '60s with weeds growning inside and then hands him a quarter to start it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5940" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T21:16:56.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12839" CreationDate="2014-09-10T22:34:40.020" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not an accomplished writer (heck, I'm not even an unaccomplished writer), but here are some techniques used by actual real-life authors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Charlotte's Web&lt;/strong&gt;: The eponymous character (the spider) dies near the end, but the author deals with this by having two main characters; the spider and the pig. When the spider dies, the attention is drawn to the pig, and then the spider's children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Uncle Tom's Cabin&lt;/strong&gt;: Again, the eponymous character dies towards the end, but the story continues with the rest of the cast, focusing on the effect that Uncle Tom had on them and its repercussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sounder&lt;/strong&gt;: I have no idea how this ended, because I read it as a kid, hated the fact that they killed the dog, and never read it again. There may be a lesson there, not sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bridge to Terabithia&lt;/strong&gt;: Again, two main characters, one dies, and the book switches to the other character and the first main character's sister, who was previously a nobody in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8177" LastEditorUserId="30918" LastEditDate="2022-07-10T03:41:36.637" LastActivityDate="2022-07-10T03:41:36.637" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12839" CreationDate="2014-09-10T23:39:50.633" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even if readers are radically and nearly exclusively committed to the protagonist, there are several ways for the protagonist to &quot;speak after death&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist's legacy can speak. (This is covered in the answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/5740/5232&quot;&gt;&quot;Ways for main character to influence world following their death&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, linked in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12840/5232&quot;&gt;Lauren Ipsum's answer&lt;/a&gt;. The legacy of a Cause does not seem to be mentioned in those answers, though &quot;What Would Dead Guy Do?&quot; comes close.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may take the form of writings, recollections, and the surviving influence on individuals and the society. One technique for doing this is to introduce shorter stories after the death branching off from an earlier action. For example, if the protagonist as an imperial soldier intervened in an injustice by another soldier, a young observer might be moved to recognize that the imperial soldiers are not just bullies and later prevent an uprising (which might incidentally have diverted troops from guarding a border at a very critical time as covered in the main story). Such can act as a kind of extended eulogy or memorial offering, so even a reader focused on the protagonist may appreciate such side stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, the narrative order may deviate from the temporal order. This includes flashbacks as mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12841/5232&quot;&gt;clockwork's answer&lt;/a&gt; but even an inverted order could be used where successive narrative sections are set earlier in the protagonist's life. For example, a novel could begin with the funeral and immediate impact of the protagonist's death, proceed to shortly before his death (showing a part of why he was mourned as he was) and show his last words to his wife, then show how the couple came to love each other so, then show how the conflict which proved their love developed, etc., each section ending with a link to a previous time. A fully reversed order would be challenging to write well, but such is an extreme of the temporal reorderings possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility, mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12840/5232&quot;&gt;Lauren Ipsen's answer&lt;/a&gt;, is that the death is not complete or permanent. This can be a very dangerous method since the reader can easily feel cheated (tricked with inadequate benefit) and lose some degree of suspension of disbelief. This can also make death seem less final and the risk of death less serious. If risk of death is not a common component of the story, it becoming less serious will have limited impact. If the survival reinforces the nature of the protagonist (e.g., tough to kill or crazy prepared), the protagonist's relationship with others (e.g., rescued by insignificant (and so unnoticed) beings, spared by a villain for better sport, rescued by a villain's henchman), or the protagonist's destiny (protected by fate), then this can strengthen the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also qualify the statement in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12841/5232&quot;&gt;clockwork's answer&lt;/a&gt; that &quot;it has to mean something and it has to be their purpose&quot;. There are several ways that a relatively meaningless death can have meaning in the context of the story. Obviously, for a dark tale, pointlessness may be the point. While such may not be popular, it can provide a meaningful story and press the reader to consider the philosophical question of what is the ultimate purpose of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, the author can hint, possibly even heavily, at a less obvious meaning to the protagonist's death. Subtle hints may even allow various readers to insert their own meanings. One way to hint at such meaning is for the protagonist to have been significantly influenced by a similarly meaningless death; the meaninglessness of the death then becomes part of the protagonist's legacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A meaningless death can also be used to display the character of the protagonist (e.g., displaying a sense of humor even in tragedy or raging against the dishonor of dying in bed of amoebic dysentery) and of those close to the protagonist. The effect of the death on others can be reveal how the protagonist impacted their lives. Do they focus on the pointless death or the rich life? Do they fall to despair or find new courage as they try to honor the memory of the protagonist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as has been pointed out in other answers, even if the reader has a strong favorable attachment to the protagonist, it is possible to transfer the mantle of significance to one or more other characters after the protagonist's death. This may be most easily done if there is a common cause championed by the protagonist such that the protagonist's death is largely a passing of the baton. However, if other characters are well-developed before the death, they may naturally fill the significance vacuum, especially if their initial actions are significantly informed by the protagonist's life and loss (not just taking up slack and mourning but also discovering how significant the protagonist was to them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T23:39:50.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12761" CreationDate="2014-09-11T08:24:45.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my own tries to create horror, I used &amp;quot;insanity&amp;quot; as one of the factor to create the proper horror setting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;What did you do to Pavel?&amp;quot; asked Janette&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Sleeping, hehehe, he is sleeping. Sleeping!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I don’t understand what you mean&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Sleeping! I put him to sleep! Now he is sleeping, hahaha!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, that most horror stories are really inaccurate about mental illnesses. If you will read about schizophrenia, you will realise that person suffering from that is only &lt;em&gt;perceived&lt;/em&gt; as more dangerous. Whereas in horror setting, such person is (almost) &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; very dangerous to their surroundings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, being you, I would not care (that much) about accurate description of mental illness. I would go for perception of such illness and deep beliefs about such illness. Do not forget, that purpose of horror is to scare people. Not to educate them (sadly)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T08:24:45.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12839" CreationDate="2014-09-11T08:47:55.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Not an answer, just some additions to the existing answers.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;@karlphillip: &amp;quot;Make sure you have introduced another character to take his place [...].&amp;quot;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously you can easily kill one character in an ensemble cast. If you have a team of heroes, all except one can die. One from the team must fulfill the task, the rest are expendable. Because you don't have a protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a protagonist – and protagonist, in Greek, literally means the one single central and primary figure, with every other character being secondary (Deuteragonist) or tertiary (Tritagonist) to him – and if you understand death to be the end of life and not the beginning of afterlife or zombiehood, of course the story ends with his death. A story that casts death as permanent and final, ends with the death of the protagonist. All that can come after it is an epilogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly you don't have to &lt;em&gt;narrate&lt;/em&gt; the story chronologically, and there are novels that begin with the protagonist's death and are all flashbacks, but the &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; still ends with his death. (We, as writers, should not confuse the terms &amp;quot;novel&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;story&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;narration&amp;quot;, and &amp;quot;plot&amp;quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;@clockwork: &amp;quot;[...] plenty of readers are quite satisfied with that.&amp;quot;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Novels are not about a protagonist surviving, but about &lt;strong&gt;satisfying the reader&lt;/strong&gt;. A story can end with the hero attaining his goal, or with him failing his task. A story can have a happy end, or an unhappy end. A story can end with the lovers living happily ever after, or with the protagonist dying. The question is not what happens, but if what happens follows from what the protagonist did in a way that it satisfies the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a simple high concept plot, the hero gets what he deserves. If he learns and grows, he is rewarded. If he fails to change, he fails. Death, in terms of narrative, is failure (unless you tell the protagonist's whole life and death is the natural closure to a life lived to the fullest). In a postmodern plot, the hero is exposed to the randomness of life, and death is just a thing that happens. Having the hero get hit by a car just after he finally found the courage to approach the woman he has yearned for his whole life – and she happily accepted his advances – is what sometimes happens. It will satisfy the reader (of this type of novel) because he expects it to be cynical and random.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you understand what kind of novel you are writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T08:47:55.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12839" CreationDate="2014-09-11T09:40:41.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of instances of this being done well in both book and film. However there are also a number of instances of it being done badly - so you are right to be cautious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples where it does work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Film: American Beauty&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; The film actually starts with the protagonist narrating that this is the year he dies, and the film does end with his death. The question is how and why he dies not whether it happens and the question as to how he is narrating is never addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Book &amp;amp; Film: The Lovely Bones&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; Starts with the narrator being murdered. The rest is shown from her perspective watching what happens afterwards from the afterlife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Books: A lot of David Gemmell's books&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A running theme through his books is sacrifice and redemption. One of his books has the main group of &quot;heroes&quot; being called the &quot;Ghosts Yet To Be&quot; for the entire novel, with very good reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; The main protagonist of David Gemell's first book (Legend) dies at the end of the book yet this is still his most famous novel and launched his entire writing career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading/watching these and other similar works where the protagonist dies will let you see for yourself how it can be done, how it can work, and how it makes you feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10615" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T09:40:41.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12849" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12851" CreationDate="2014-09-11T15:31:02.843" Score="5" ViewCount="1241" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been pondering this for a while. Now, I'm not so worried about losing readers than affecting the &lt;em&gt;quality&lt;/em&gt; of my writing. Preaching too much instead of telling the actual story. Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mom proceeded by reading a passage from the Bible. &lt;em&gt;A time to be born&#xA;  and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to&#xA;  kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build up...&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  I wasn’t familiar with the passage. Mainly because I wasn’t a&#xA;  Christian like my mom (she wasn’t the conventional type, however; yes,&#xA;  she prayed at night and went to church every Sunday, but also lit an&#xA;  incense for Buddha now and then).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For my part I didn’t mind her belief. In fact, I was glad she had&#xA;  found it. With my father dead, she really needed something to hold&#xA;  onto. Still, I couldn't help noticing the conflict: if Christianity &#xA;  was truth, then her parents, her grandparents, her great-grandparents,&#xA;  and pretty much all our ancestors were burning in hell right now. Because&#xA;  they didn’t believe in Christ. He wasn’t popular at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both the mother and the protagonist are Chinese. That's why the protagonist is saying her ancestors are burning in hell. Because Christianity wasn't popular in that part of Asia at the time (this theory is debatable, but I don't want to go off-topic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you might have guessed I'm an atheist. Not the 'aggressive' kind, though (one of my best friends is a Christian). But I can't help dropping these atheist 'bombs' now and then in my writing. I'm not sure why. I guess my intention is to make my readers question their beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I risk scaring readers way by doing this? Does it affect the quality of my writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T10:39:22.193" LastActivityDate="2020-07-07T13:46:16.347" Title="Do I risk losing reader if I put too many religious/anti-religious views?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12839" CreationDate="2014-09-11T16:11:27.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's right to ask if it's advisable. From the tone of your question it seems you're asking whether it would be too harmful to kill your protagonist. So it's more of a binary &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot; question than a question of if it is a recommended practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the research and other answers, the short answer is: Yes, if there is anything else to the novel apart from your protagonist. Otherwise, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say the former is much more common so it would only be rare writing styles that are very specific to the protagonist, mostly excerpts from their diary for example or letters they've been sending. There will be some cases where these can still be continued as well so it's still simple enough to continue the story without them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Situations where the character has friends, family, a goal and these concepts have been mentioned throughout the novel, I see no problem with having the protagonist die. Just by doing so you enrich your supporting characters back-story that little bit more by having them experience the loss as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As discussed above, various recommended ways to continue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Narrating from beyond the grave&#xA;A companion takes up the fight&#xA;Time passes and someone investigates the death or a next of kin takes up the story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10621" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T20:02:00.353" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T20:02:00.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12849" CreationDate="2014-09-11T20:07:01.610" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to ask yourself why you add these references in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they relevant to the development of your characters or the plot of your story? When not, you should sacrifice them to &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLawOfConservationOfDetail&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the law of conservation of detail&lt;/a&gt;. There is little point in wasting your readers time with indulging in your personal pet-issue when it doesn't lead anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, when the reason you are writing the story is &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; you want the reader to question their believes, you should go all the way and make the question of religion vs. atheism a central theme of your story. You can do this by making the religious views of your characters an important aspect of their character development and make it the motivation behind plot-affecting decisions your characters make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But be aware that this will make your story controversial, no matter which side you pick (and even when you try your best to not pick a side). This isn't necessarily bad: Controversial stories are the stories people talk about, and when people talk about them, people want to read them. However, be prepared for very harsh reviews and negative feedback by those who don't agree with your point of view (or what they interpret as your point of view). They will not just attack your point, they will attack your whole work and they might even attack you personally. When you can't take that heat, stay away from controversial issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, when you want to make your religious views a theme of a story, be aware of part 25 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springhole.net/writing/marysue.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Mary Sue Litmus Test&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does your character voice political, social, and/or religious opinions&#xA;  or beliefs which you share? (There is nothing inherently wrong with a character sharing some of your views, of course.  Problems come in when it becomes clear that your character exists primarily or solely to make it clear how superior your views on everything are)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does xe convince others that xir way of thinking is right?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is spreading these views one of your character's biggest motivations,&#xA;  or even xir sole motivation?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If religious, does your character explicitly have divine support or&#xA;  assistance in gaining converts and/or confronting nonbelievers?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do characters who disagree with your character's views/beliefs simply&#xA;  do so out of spite, stubbornness, and/or ignorance? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone who doesn't adopt your character's ideals by the end of&#xA;  the story end up beaten up, humiliated, miserable, and/or dead?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these are signs of dangerous mary-sue-ness. You can counter them by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having your character seriously question and maybe even change their believes over the course of the story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also having sympathetic characters with different views (your Christian friend might serve an inspiration for such a character) and unsympathetic characters sharing your view&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a character representing your viewpoint &lt;em&gt;lose&lt;/em&gt; an argument about religion once in a while (remember: just because &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; can counter any pro-religion argument doesn't mean your character can)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T09:06:48.363" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T09:06:48.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12849" CreationDate="2014-09-11T20:58:24.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's some overt preaching there!  I'd say that, as done, it is detrimental.  For one thing, you'll automatically turn off many Western readers, who might decide never to read anything of yours ever again.  Human nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, though, the character's (your) line of reasoning is weak.  The argument assumes things that not all Christians agree on.  Even if the argument's assumptions are all true, then the mother's rejection of Christianity won't help her ancestors.  (Indeed, wouldn't they urge her to accept it?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you're getting into deep water there: You'll have to carefully explain the mother's beliefs (without unintentionally misrepresenting beliefs that you, the author, disagree with and probably don't want to investigate carefully).  Then you'll have to introduce another character for your protagonist to debate, and not just toss up strawmen for your protagonist to shoot down.  A well-done debate like that &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be interesting, if it were spliced into the story, in short pieces, in a meaningful way that helped drive the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you could purposefully leave the son's blithe condemnation of his mother's faith as it is currently written, to show that he is simultaneously arrogant and shallow (even while loving his mother and wanting her to be happy).  That's not a bad thing in a protag, provided your story builds on that.  Perhaps he grows over time to realize that things aren't so simple, and neither is his mother.  Perhaps he suffers for his arrogance and shallowness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it is necessarily bad, as a writer, to ask your readers to question their beliefs.  But if you venture into that territory in such a blatant manner, you'd better do it well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize: I doubt that many readers will appreciate this know-it-all young protagonist's facile criticism of a faith that is held by 1/3 of the human race.  Especially since one could switch the same argument to many other religions, so now you've just insulted ~70% of humanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2020-07-07T13:46:16.347" LastActivityDate="2020-07-07T13:46:16.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12849" CreationDate="2014-09-11T22:07:57.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writers should make their Characters relate to their audience.&#xA;You are an Atheist writing about the lives of Christian characters,&#xA;While sneaking in sacrilegious text. So its a recipe for disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a Christian reader reads about the life of another Christian they say&#xA;'This character is Christian and I am Christian therefore I like this character(and by extension the book)'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to create characters that relate to your audience's current lives.&#xA;You can make them so that your characters are living lives that your audience would want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&#xA;In the Eragon series, Christopher Paolini created a character who had a special connection with a dragon. This is something that many lovers of the fantasy Genre would want in their lives. Therefore, the people who love fantasy will relate to the character in that sense, and enjoy the story of this character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastEditorUserId="44041" LastEditDate="2020-07-07T13:35:05.683" LastActivityDate="2020-07-07T13:35:05.683" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12854" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12855" CreationDate="2014-09-12T01:18:22.450" Score="6" ViewCount="2322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to add a few chapters that don't push the story forward; they only explore the background and motivations of the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best example I can think of is the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_(Breaking_Bad)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; episode in &lt;em&gt;Breaking Bad&lt;/em&gt;. The characters spend the whole episode chasing a fly while confessing things to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the story I'm writing, I want to write two subplots (each one chapter long). One to make the reader understand the origin of the protagonist's depression. And the other to explore the protagonist's feelings towards the person she loves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought it would be nice to give the reader a &lt;em&gt;break&lt;/em&gt; from the main plot (and explore the characters a bit more). Or maybe I should leave these chapters out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-09-13T06:16:57.460" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T23:35:18.153" Title="Is it bad to include subplots that don't push the story forward?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12854" CreationDate="2014-09-12T02:11:30.057" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every line you write should have some goal or purpose in your story: drawing the reader into &lt;strong&gt;plot&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;character&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;setting&lt;/strong&gt;. (In fact, having each line, or as many lines as you can, do two or more of these can work very well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the Fly episode presumably increases your empathy with characters, sets up important moments later on, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your break doesn't do any of these, what's the point? Leave it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it does: what purpose does it serve to have a break here? Have you just had some tense scenes and need to relieve pressure so you can build it up again? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="67" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T23:30:58.233" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T23:30:58.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12849" CreationDate="2014-09-12T03:16:23.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I didn't see a problem with it, at least in that short excerpt. Fictional characters can have their own prejudices and opinions, and if that's a source of conflict in the story it's showing not telling. In a story, I'd like to see that difference between the characters have some active consequences rather than being represented by stuck-in speeches or thought-bubbles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T03:16:23.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12829" CreationDate="2014-09-12T03:30:21.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As part of your research, you could get to know some people who come from that area. Even better, see if any of them would be willing to be alpha or beta readers and look for mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10365" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T03:30:21.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12839" CreationDate="2014-09-12T04:12:53.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reader needs to like the protagonist and want him to win, otherwise he will stop reading. Therefore, I am unsure about killing off the protagonist. This is not because I like the character too much, but because the reader might stop reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Your level of storytelling ability determines whether the readers stop reading. I often read short horror stories with unlikable protagonists. If you create interesting ideas and characters that appeal to your readers (note that &quot;like&quot; is not the same thing as &quot;appeal to&quot;), they will continue reading. I have put down many books with likable protagonists because they were just generally awful stories (technically speaking as well as plot-wise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, &lt;em&gt;wanting&lt;/em&gt; a protagonist to win is totally independent of whether the protagonist dies. If you are afraid that readers will put down your book because the protagonist dies, you are over thinking things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only place I could see the hero dying without catastrophic results would be at the very end of the book. [..] However, the problem still remains that the reader will doubtless be displeased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your character dies anywhere but (roughly) the end, you don't have a story. Literally.&#xA;If the protagonist begins the story dead, then it is a flashback (someone else is telling the story) or they are speaking from beyond the grave (no explanations necessary, except perhaps they are somewhere else now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you create any character that is likable, the reader will be displeased at their death. The important thing is to make it worth the readers while. They will hate you for making death too much like real life (i.e. generally meaningless).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So is it advisable to kill the protagonist? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it advisable? No. Not unless they really deserve it or it's an integral part of the story (even if to show how much of an impact the protagonist had on other characters). If you do do it, then you will have to consider carefully the how's and why's to make sure the reader understands that you aren't simply doing it for shock value or to simply create a depressing story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can you [kill a protagonist] without alienating the reader? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By telling such a good story in the meantime that the reader hardly cares the protagonist dies. The only hard and fast rule in my opinion is that the death should make sense within the arc of the story -- that given the plot line, it is a logical and reasonable event within the scope of what you have laid out in your story universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Two Final Points&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, in real life, most people stay very much alive for long periods of time. So killing a protagonist is similarly limited in most kinds of reading material, just because it's a more accurate representation of what happens to most people (at least till they get too old). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, killing unlikeable characters often creates joy and killing likable characters will create a depressing atmosphere. Readers are generally fine with the first and not so fine with the second. If too many of your books are depressing, readers will likely be hesitant to adopt them because of this, even if they are excellent stories. Many people read books to escape unhappy lives and reminding them that things suck in print isn't always a way to win hearts. So use unhappy stuff sparingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10627" LastEditorUserId="10627" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T04:18:56.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T04:18:56.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12854" CreationDate="2014-09-12T04:45:51.920" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh my, yes. Just a personal opinion, but these lose me faster than anything else. I have a love/hate with Stephen King for the same reason. He gets so much into &quot;atmosphere&quot; (read - useless backstory) that I can hardly finish a large part of his books (and literally skip paragraphs and paragraphs when reading to get to the salient points).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10627" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T04:45:51.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12854" CreationDate="2014-09-12T07:04:05.247" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;All depends on what kind of book you write. The great novels of the past often meander like a continent-crossing river. The bestselling novels of today, on the other hand, quickly build tension and keep it taut and rising until the final explosive resolution. The price for this break neck speed is depth and meaning: many novels of today are meaningless beyond facilitating a short holiday from the reader's life and you quickly forget them. Meandering does not mean that earlier novels where random. Of course everything in Proust serves the purpose of the plot. But the plot of literary fiction is not concerned with tickling the basest instincts of the readers, as much of current genre fiction does. Everything, always, must serve the plot, but there are different plots, and between wam-bam action and the memoires of a dandy anything is possible. You need to know what you (want to) write and subordinate all your impulses to that objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know at what point of your writing you are, but I usually recommend to &lt;strong&gt;write what you feel you want to write, and edit out superfluous junk during the revision process&lt;/strong&gt;. That way, you don't get stuck during the telling of your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to control your flow of ideas while you write, you might block yourself. So just enjoy the hot sex scenes that would turn your YA novel into porn, and delete them when you have cooled off ;-) Do the same with this subplot or anything else you are unsure about: just write it, and keep going until your book is finished. Then either delete it because you know it does not fit, or get some feedback from test readers, and then decide based on their reactions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="67" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T23:35:18.153" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T23:35:18.153" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12854" CreationDate="2014-09-12T07:23:11.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider adding them as appendices. This gives readers the choice when, if at all, to break from the main plot, or delve deeper into the character backgrounds after finishing the main plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10630" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T07:23:11.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12849" CreationDate="2014-09-12T07:24:57.137" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(a)&lt;/strong&gt; Try to differentiate yourself from your narrator and protagonist. That person is not you. Define that person in relation to the plot: what is his goal, how does he see the world, how does he behave, and how does the world react to him. If you have difficulty with this, write relevant passages in third person and then &quot;translate&quot; them to first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(b)&lt;/strong&gt; A novel is not an essay. You can &lt;em&gt;illustrate&lt;/em&gt; your world view through the telling of a story, but you must not put forth your opinion in an argumentative manner nor discuss it. Yes, there are novels that do argue quite extensively, but they are from another time and mostly not popular today. Today you need to be more subtle. Educate the reader by letting him &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt; what brought you to your opinion, but let him come to it (or another opinion) by himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(c)&lt;/strong&gt; If your story is about a person from a non-christian society being christian, then of course religion is a central part of your plot and you need to spend time telling about it. Since you would look at that character (the mother) through the eyes of another character (the narrator), of course that character would think about his mother and the reader would witness his thoughts. In that context, I find nothing wrong with your example, only that you could try to show-not-tell: show how the narrator does not mind, how he is glad, how the ancestors lived, and so on. What you do here is not so much a problem with the topic (religion) but with prescribing his interpretation to the reader. In this, it is the same as saying someone is hungry versus showing how he gets irritable, can't concentrate (because he is thinking of food) and finally gorges himself at the chocolate bar machine, afterwards feeling bad etc. Do religion like everything else: show us what it is and does to the different characters, and then let the readers come to any conclusion they like. A novel is not a text book, so you don't have to make sure your readers don't misunderstand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T07:24:57.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12829" CreationDate="2014-09-12T07:46:42.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not forget, that you do not have to include any details. Recently I saw quite below average thriller &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0988849/?ref_=nv_sr_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Donkey Punch&lt;/a&gt; which is being placed in Spain. But whole Spain serves just as &lt;em&gt;background&lt;/em&gt; to the story and because it actually takes place on a yacht in the middle of sea, you could successfully move the story to Hawaii without any influence to the story itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend one better rule: &lt;strong&gt;Be creative&lt;/strong&gt;. In one of my parody stories, I used &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_Tower&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Canton Tower&lt;/a&gt; as hideout of the bad guys. I do not know anything about China, or that tower in particular. I just liked the picture of it. And the setup of parody offered me possibility to use that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T07:46:42.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12613" CreationDate="2014-09-12T07:56:43.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I never have maintained these sort of notebooks but have done plenty of sorting with my study notes. I suggest you use colored Post-It's and colored bookmarks. Color-code your work. Stick one on each page and write the topic on it. Identifying colors is easier than reading a huge index. And when you start with a new notebook, divide the book into sections and as far as possible write into that particular section only. This way when you need to refer to it later, you will have to search only a small portion. You could even buy 6-in-1 (or similar) notebooks that are already sectioned into different colors. &lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10551" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T07:56:43.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12802" CreationDate="2014-09-12T09:33:06.787" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your question it sounds like you are making a compilation of the equations. If you are not including any new material in your book (explanations or ideas) it is necessary that you provide a reference to all content in it. &lt;br/&gt; If you provide an explanation and want your readers to refer to another textbook, then say so within your text. Most authors provide footnotes for this. &lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&quot;First year students&quot; refers to students studying what? If the contents of your book are something which will be useful for only a small group of people, it would be a better idea to publish your compilation on a blog rather than go through the laborious process of bringing out a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10551" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T09:33:06.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12854" CreationDate="2014-09-12T10:41:14.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All depends on pacing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine the main plot needs a lot of slow build-up. You'd bore the reader. So introduce a sub-plot, an alternate layer that tells some backstories - captivating, thrilling backstories. Pepper your main story with episodes of the new thread to carry the reader through slow times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you can give the reader a breather in case of really rapid action. The team hunkers down under fire and tries to wait out the enemy, they might exchange their stories from home and tell of their personal dramas while bullets whizz over their heads. Still, don't stretch that into whole chapters. Section of such slowdown at most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, if you just give a slow, boring backstory, while the main story progresses at moderate pace, really try to keep it to minimum. It frustrates and bores to no end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T10:41:14.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12849" CreationDate="2014-09-12T22:01:53.493" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you make comments that are critical of someone's religion or politics or social beliefs or whatever, some number of people will find it annoying or offensive and be uninterested in reading your stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the flip side. You say you're an atheist. Suppose you read a book that had many sections that attacked atheism in one way or another. I'd guess that as you were reading you'd be thinking of rebuttals to these attacks. But at some point wouldn't you be likely to say, &quot;I'm tired of reading all these attacks on my beliefs and opinions. I just want to read a fun escapist story, not a religious or political diatribe!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's face it, you don't have to be a closed-minded bigot to say that you just don't want to get into a debate right now, you want to relax. If I was running for office and in a formal debate my opponent challenged some political belief I had, of course it would be absurd to say, &quot;How dare you criticize me! I refuse to discuss this. These are my beliefs, and you should respect them!&quot; But if I'm sitting at home, tired after a hard day of work, and I just want to read a light novel and relax, I might well not want to get into a debate. I just want to read something fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this would, I think, depend a lot on the nature of the comments and the attitude of the reader. If the comments are rare and mildly worded, a reader might just brush them off and get on with the story. If the comments are expressed in serious philosophical terms and not just nasty ridicule, a reader might find them thoughtful rather than offensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd especially say that if your comments are vicious attacks on caricatures of someone else's beliefs, I mean if you make statements that make it clear that you have no idea what your opponents really say, but you are just taking any negative statement about them that you can think of, distorting their views to make them sound as absurd as possible, etc, then people are going to be much less interested in continuing to read your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a Fundamentalist Christian. I've read lots of stories by atheists that criticize Christianity. In a few cases, the criticism has been intellectually interesting. Like a writer might bring up a point of Christian belief or practice that is not well thought out or consistent. In some cases I'll say, &quot;Hmm, that's a good point. How can I respond to that,&quot; and it leads me to think. I'm hard pressed to think of a fiction story that has led me to seriously question my beliefs, but some have been interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But frankly, most atheist attacks that I read on Christianity are just silly and annoying. The writer clearly has no idea what Christians really believe and he's just hurling insults. I'm not going to knowingly buy a book whose purpose is to make rude, gratuitous insults against me. This is not a comment about atheism, by the way, but about specific writers. I don't doubt that there are Christian books that make childish insults against atheists, or Muslim books that make childish insults against Hindus, etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And just by the way, as a Fundamentalist Christian, I don't find anything about the paragraphs you quoted in your post insulting or offensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and one more by-the-way: If your PURPOSE is to challenge people's religion and persuade them to change their beliefs, then of course the idea that this might cost you some readers is just a price you have to pay. Then the issue becomes, What is the most effective way to get this material into my story? If I'm very blatant, will I shock people into realizing the absurdity of their beliefs? Or will they tune me out before listening to what I have to say? If I am very subtle, will people skim over it and miss the point? Or will I slip thoughts into their head that might germinate later? Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-09-13T18:49:47.617" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T18:49:47.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12802" CreationDate="2014-09-12T22:19:21.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you copying material from this textbook into your book? Or do you mean that you are just writing, &quot;See page 42 of Such-and-such book&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usual disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. But as I understand U.S. copyright law, if you are not copying the actual words from another book, you are in no danger of violating copyright. You can certainly refer people to another book. You can rewrite the material from another book in your own words -- just make sure &quot;your own words&quot; are sufficiently different from the other writer's words, you can't just change two words in ten pages of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the &quot;fair use doctrine&quot; that says you can quote small sections of someone else's work. The rules here are not hard and fast, but if you quote three paragraphs from a 200 page book, you are not likely to get into trouble. If you quote 100 pages word for word from a 200 page book, you are asking for trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T22:19:21.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12854" CreationDate="2014-09-13T10:26:37.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main plot of your story is what keeps the reader coming back for more. If that suddenly grinds to a halt, you run the risk of losing the reader. Just how entertaining and important &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; these chapters? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could someone skip them and still enjoy the story? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the reader likely to become frustrated that the story has suddenly stopped? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can the reader fill in the backgrounds/motivations for themselves? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you really need to explain everything, and if you do: Why can't these sides of their characters be revealed in the &lt;em&gt;main story&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still feel you need these chapters, then make sure that you present them as an &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; subplot -- which is to say, &lt;em&gt;a separate story that runs alongside the main one&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You use the word &quot;subplot&quot; in your title, but then describe something which sounds like vague disconnected chapters. If there's another story to be had here, then there's no reason to not run it in parallel with your main one. That's often extremely enjoyable for your readers (just about every TV show episode has several stories, for example, that aren't all necessarily connected).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth remembering that the FLY episode of Breaking Bad stopped the main story to delve into the characters, and the reaction by a lot of fans was VERY negative -- despite the fact that the episode itself is actually very well written and directed. It's generally not a good idea just to stop and meander, and when TV shows do it it's usually because of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_episode&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;budgetary constraints&lt;/a&gt;. (Plus, it's worth noting that the episode DID progress the main storyline, if only slightly.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So be honest with yourself, and your readers, and ask yourself if these extra chapters are entertaining. If you really thought the answer was &quot;yes&quot;, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be asking your question, so maybe you can take the information from them and make it more interesting somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4927" LastEditorUserId="4927" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T10:24:31.653" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T10:24:31.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12854" CreationDate="2014-09-13T12:38:00.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a hobby writer and a learning coder, and I stumbled on this place. Very cool to find writers here, and what an excellent question. The answers above are excellent too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for subplots, the above fly episode, which I have not seen sounds interesting. Sometimes a writer needs to add exposition, and it would seem this person has done it in an interesting way. Many writers don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard it said that a true sub plot looks at how a secondary character would deal with an issue very like the main characters but in a different way. It allows an examination of the road not taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a great writers site called Scribophile.com if you have further questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just my thoughts. I wish you luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10649" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T12:38:00.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12871" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12872" CreationDate="2014-09-13T14:48:00.030" Score="4" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a bit complicated to explain. Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She had green eyes and extremely curly hair. It looked like a&#xA;  cluster of ferns in a mountain forest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, that was an awful metaphor, but you get the idea. Is it OK as long as the next sentence is clear about which item is referring to? Or should I write something like this instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She had green eyes and extremely curly hair. The hair looked like a&#xA;  cluster of ferns in a mountain forest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T16:52:40.173" Title="When mentioning two items in a sentence, should I specify which one I'm referring to in the next one?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12871" CreationDate="2014-09-13T15:15:10.143" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Unless your following metaphor is easily related to one or the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;She has green eyes and red hair. It looked like a wild forrest fire....&quot; Then people can easily relate it to the hair, and not the eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10258" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T15:15:10.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12871" CreationDate="2014-09-13T18:05:36.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you'd do better moving the mention of hair to the second sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She had green eyes. Her hair curled like ferns clustered in a mountain forest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or one sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She had green eyes and her hair curled like ferns clustered in a mountain forest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I'm not really able to picture ferns as hair, but that might just be me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T18:05:36.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12894" CreationDate="2014-09-13T22:04:48.180" Score="3" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that publishers get a lot of manuscripts to read, so I am wondering, are publishers known to reject a story from an unknown author the moment that realize he is using a so called experimental style?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, suppose that I have written a novel from a second person perspective, also suppose that a publisher has already accepted my synopsis and now wants the first few chapters, is it likely that they would automatically reject it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically should I stick to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing&quot;&gt;rules of thumb&lt;/a&gt; without question for my first few stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10382" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:52:45.140" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:52:45.140" Title="Do publisher ever automatically reject unread stories" Tags="|style|publishing|rules|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12876" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12882" CreationDate="2014-09-13T22:25:32.730" Score="0" ViewCount="1868" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was in school, my English teacher told me that a short story's beginning should mirror its ending, or at least the conclusion should in some way parallel the starting point of the story; but I was never told why.  Is this a well accepted rule of thumb or is this just one type of writing style?  If it is generally advisable, then please tell me why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More information: At the time I automatically rejected it as her style, but now I am older I willing to find out if she had a point.  Sadly I cannot just go ask her, thus I came to ask here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a very short example. It is only to give an example of the concept, please do not critique, I know it is very rough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Babies cry' I groaned at my wife 'go back to &lt;em&gt;sleep&lt;/em&gt;'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'But,' she yawned 'I just thought our neighbour was childless'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I gasped, we dashed out the house to peek over his fence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'It is only a cat singing a midnight song,' I gritted my teeth 'what waste of an hour'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But when we returned to our house, guess who needed a lullaby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10382" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:52:33.340" LastActivityDate="2021-08-30T03:02:22.523" Title="Should the opening of a short story mirror the ending?" Tags="|style|short-story|planning|openings|ending|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12871" CreationDate="2014-09-14T03:52:19.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could even use it to keep people in suspense, I suppose. Maybe tell a story about it, whatever it is.. You just hint at it from various angles, before finally revealing what this 'it' is that you were keeping people in suspense over...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10657" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T03:52:19.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12876" CreationDate="2014-09-14T06:43:00.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.. That is one type of writing style. Some stories have the concept at the endings as they have at beginnings as you said. This is because to tell the truth or concept whatever it is strongly to readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume that you want to say something in a story, which is right. But, the people in the society do wrongly. So, You need to add this concept at a incident in the story wrongly at either the beginning or middle as the people do. Then, at the end of the story You should mention the same concept correctly that the people will change the habit of doing something wrongly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10658" LastEditorUserId="10658" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T12:47:56.177" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T12:47:56.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12876" CreationDate="2014-09-14T14:54:58.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many types of endings. The one your professor is referring to is just one kind. What I really want to know, though, is what he means by &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;? If &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; means it should be like that so the story is successful, then no. For a story to be successful it has to grip the reader. So the opening sentence has to be gripping. If by &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; he means it should be like that so the story becomes a classic, then no again. There are many classics with open endings, or with endings that have nothing to do with the opening. It all depends on the meaning of &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;. In my opinion, the most important purpose of the opening is to hook the reader. What good is a story if no one wants to read it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T15:17:25.243" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T15:17:25.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12883" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-14T16:10:14.440" Score="4" ViewCount="1274" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to write various technical and non-technical articles about computer usage, Windows usage (perhaps some Mac and *nix as well if they let me), Windows repair, and various other technology and computer centric topics.  Unfortunately I have to choose the topics as well as generate the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to write articles that are in demand and of interest, vs just pulling topics out of my butt that I think are interesting.  With my background, I find that I don't (very often) necessarily think the things that others think are interesting to be very interesting or useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can one do when looking into determining topics of large interest?  Is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/trends/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Trends&lt;/a&gt; the pinnacle of available resources for such hunting &amp;amp; research or are there other options that will yield high value topics to create spot on market interest based content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE&lt;/strong&gt;: The target audience are general readers of all types.  It is for a periodical that is for general consumption in a mixed environment of generally less savvy consumers, but with some occasional more savvy readers.  Most readers will appreciate more layman explanations to issues they may run into with general usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10660" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T21:12:52.760" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T22:03:28.433" Title="How to research and discover topic popularity and trends to determine topic selection for article writing?" Tags="|technical-writing|marketing|research|getting-started|journalism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10844" CreationDate="2014-09-14T16:10:45.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amazon has a near-global reach. To reach many countries, this is enough. Readers in some countries may find that your books are not available to them unless they open an Amazon US or Canadian account--this is especially true in the Middle East. As an indie publisher, there will be no warning that this is the case. Amazon has no presence in Russia, though, so you will have to find an alternative outlet. You can also sell through Apple's iTunes, but I do not know if they have a presence in Russia. It is currently not possible to sell Chinese-language texts through iTunes in China. China Mobile (the mobile phone company) is the largest purveyor of e-books in China. They take a hefty commission and there are limits on the amount you can charge for your books. I am tempted to say, &quot;take a look at the International Literary Market Place&quot; but unfortunately it's not all that helpful unless you want to find an agent. If you're looking for Russian rights buyers and translators it will be helpful. Make sure you look at volume II of the ILMP, that's where the listings are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Selling into a foreign local market requires specialized knowledge. You might try to find a foreign publicist who is willing to work with you. What social media do the foreign university students use to communicate? Try to frame an advertising campaign using that media, as a start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6784" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T16:10:45.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12883" CreationDate="2014-09-14T17:11:11.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to be aware of is what your target audience is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A professional software developer already knows how to make your PC faster by installing the right device drivers, while a home user can't get much out of reading your in-depth analysis of Clang vs. GCC. An IT manager doesn't want to know which is the best graphic card for playing Battlefield 4, while a gamer isn't interested much in your cost-benefit analysis of virtualizing Linux servers on IBM mainframes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you aren't sure, ask your superiors what target audience they are aiming for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you found out who your target audience is, you need to find out what they want to read about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's new? Any brand-new technology your audience might want to use is always worth writing about. Tell them what it can do what their current technology can't, how to do this, and why they should (or should not) buy it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's popular? What are the technologies your target audience uses daily? What tips can you give them about how to make more out of them? Any technical details they might be interested in?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's unpopular? Which are the main issues and annoyances your target audience faces daily and what advise can you give them about how to solve these issues?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T17:17:03.403" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T17:17:03.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12876" CreationDate="2014-09-14T17:58:11.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very hard to guess what precisely your teacher meant, but here's the closest piece of advice that I know: &lt;strong&gt;A story's ending should mirror its beginning, because otherwise, you have probably begun or ended you story in the wrong place.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider: where is the best place to begin the story? Usually you want to begin it with the introduction of the central conflict. Otherwise you're just marking time until the conflict actually begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And where's the best place to end the story? Pretty much as soon as the central conflict is resolved. Readers won't stand for you ending the story &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you resolved the primary conflict, and if you continue for long &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; its resolved, then the main tension is gone and the reader doesn't really understand why the book keeps on going when the story is over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add to this that the reader will generally understand the &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; conflict presented as the story's major one. It would be very confusing to begin a murder mystery with a scene focusing on a romantic relationship, or a romance with a scene focusing on solving a crime - while these would be fine as secondary plots, whatever you introduce &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; is usually what the reader will understand as being the more important, central conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we could phrase all this advice as: &lt;strong&gt;Clearly set up your primary conflict in your opening, and clearly resolve it in your conclusion.&lt;/strong&gt; You don't always need to follow this advice to the letter and down to individual line - but particularly if you're talking about short fiction, which needs to be very concise and free of flab, it's a very good guideline. And making the mirroring very explicit is a good tool to make the conflict and its resolution clear and powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T17:58:11.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12871" CreationDate="2014-09-14T18:10:05.793" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second option is OK, if you can smooth out the phrasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be more ideal is if you could rephrase to avoid the problem, to avoid lumping the two items together in the first place - for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She had green eyes, and curly hair that looked like a cluster of ferns in a mountain forest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is completing the list, and then finding some way to go back and focus on one individual item. &lt;em&gt;You should be able to find some justification for this,&lt;/em&gt; because you've already found some reason that the one item deserves extra attention. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She had green eyes and curly hair. Oh, such extraordinarily curly hair! -- it looked like a cluster of ferns in a mountain forest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T18:10:05.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12890" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12891" CreationDate="2014-09-15T01:58:55.483" Score="-5" ViewCount="1177" Body="&lt;p&gt;His name is going to be Mr. Price. What should his first name be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10489" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T03:04:51.680" Title="What is a good name for a character who loves money?" Tags="|naming|money|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-09-15T06:05:51.823" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12890" CreationDate="2014-09-15T03:04:51.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Characters really ought to be multifaceted.  If the last name is &quot;Price&quot; exposing a facet of his personality, then the first name should be random (exposing nothing else) or about another characteristic.  Say, for instance he is loose with is money, &quot;Lax Price&quot; or tight &quot;Hardy Price&quot; or, perhaps, inconsiderate of the value &quot;Shorty Price&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, going a non-money relationship, perhaps he's conniving and you want to be obtuse going off of &quot;machinate&quot; and call him, &quot;Mack Price&quot;... That's how I go about doing names... innuendo, abbreviation, and oftentimes reference to the latin/Greek/origin of the word -- Meet &quot;Ergo Lars&quot; (derived from &quot;ergo&quot; and &quot;dol-lars&quot;). ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9914" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T03:04:51.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12871" CreationDate="2014-09-15T16:52:40.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key is to make the connection reasonably obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simple example. &quot;Bob and Fred entered the office. He sat behind the desk.&quot; Who sat behind the desk, Bob or Fred? We don't know. You'd have to change something to make it clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, &quot;Bob and Sally entered the office. He sat behind the desk.&quot; Now there's no ambiguity. If it was Sally who sat behind the desk we would have written &quot;she&quot;, not &quot;he&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often we can pretty well guess which is meant from our general knowledge of the nature of things. &quot;The man and his cat entered the office. The doorway was so low that he bumped his head as they entered.&quot; I think we'd assume that it was the man who bumped his head, because people are normally taller than cats. If your intent is that this is a very large cat, then you need to spell it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers sometimes get tripped up on what they think is obvious versus what the reader thinks is obvious. My mind went blank on real examples, but I know I've stumbled across these now and then. If there's any possible ambiguity, I'd spell it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, it's hard to imagine how someone's eyes could look like a cluster of ferns, so I don't see this as being much of a problem. But ... maybe someone would think that your intent was to say that her eyes were green like ferns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When in doubt, reword to make it clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T16:52:40.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12747" CreationDate="2014-09-15T23:03:36.880" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Professional typesetters usually use Adobe InDesign. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write novels in a program called Scrivener. I normally export from Scrivener directly into MOBI and EPUB (for ebooks), which is supported by Scrivener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my print books, I would normally export from Scrivener into Microsoft Word, and then give the Word file to my designer, who would use InDesign. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a programmer by day, and a writer by night, so I decided to see if I could build a solution to automatically typeset the printed book. I exported HTML from Scrivener, wrote some Ruby code to structure the HTML, then styled everything using CSS, and used a program called PrinceXML to turn that into a PDF. However, like LaTeX, this is a complicated, technical solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending how complicated your book is (just words or lots of structured information and/or graphics), you may be able to hire a designer for as little as $200 or as much as $1000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't technical, and can't afford a designer, you can do a reasonable job using Microsoft Word if you take the time to learn all the print design principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10432" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T23:03:36.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12875" CreationDate="2014-09-15T23:09:32.600" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishers are always looking for a reason to reject submissions, because it is easy to reject (takes a few seconds), and much more work to accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was once on an elevator with an editor and the elevator got stuck. The editor got out his phone and said &quot;I can use this time to reject some submissions.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to know the editor and what they usually publish. If they publish experimental stuff, then send them experimental stuff. If they don't publish experimental stuff, don't send it to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10432" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T23:09:32.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2014-09-16T07:39:16.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Low fantasy&lt;/strong&gt; is a label that's somewhat commonly used for stories set in secondary worlds, where the tone of the story is dark and the worldbuilding leans towards realism. Frequently these stories will involve worlds populated entirely by humans (meaning absence of nonhuman sapients like elves or whatnot), no obviously metaphysical or arcane element (although they may contain astrology, alchemy or other such &quot;historical&quot; magical analogues), and focus on characters from the criminal element, or who are otherwise amoral or morally gray. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is, the readers of books that self-style as low fantasy will probably find your story satisfying. At least potentially. When trying to pin a story's genre, that's my usual rule of thumb: &lt;strong&gt;who would want to read this&lt;/strong&gt; and what they already read. To give an example of books that might fit the genre you're looking for, maybe try Cynthia Voigt's Jackaroo cycle. That's the only example that pops to mind off-hand. At your own peril, you may find &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LowFantasy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TV Tropes' article&lt;/a&gt; on the subject interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T07:39:16.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10667" CreationDate="2014-09-16T14:03:01.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When self Publishing with Amazon stand for a open statue of independence  of your literacy work.  If your work is already or ever have been published on Kindle, Nook, or even on Itunes the publisher will only look at the sample of your book  it's more easy for them to see if you have the potential of being successful with the stories you write, also like the open steps of creating a story proposal; but the most and important thing that publishers look for is your sales rank, rank of stars and reviews.&#xA;Independent writing is different for company well-known author's because we live on a different status of freedom of speech and open creativity without someone telling us what we should and shouldn't write.  Crossing the border of writing rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing about publishers when you have already self published your title is that they wonder if you are the type of writer they want to promote or will you write the stories that they 'll looking for to be a success.  Publishing companies are tough like a pile of bricks.  If you are looking for an open way to have your book be notice  as an independent author start with a book agent first not a publisher.  Book agents live on a different status and yes this will means that you must do your own profound research of the type of book agent who will love your book or who is willing to work with you. &#xA;Book agents aren't the type of people who's willing to change you or your book, but is willing to help authors.  Here is website that I think will begin a perfect start for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This website will help you find the perfect book agent, they will tell you what they want and ,what types of books they would read-ect. This is to help you perform a well search of book agents.  Good Luck and have many blessings.  These will also means great patience but is worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pw.org/search/query&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pw.org/search/query&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10675" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T14:03:01.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12912" CreationDate="2014-09-16T20:31:48.740" Score="2" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the technical term &lt;em&gt;4-terminal&lt;/em&gt;: if I were to start a paragraph with this term, or using it as column heading in a table, would I have to capitalize the &lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt; or not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that it should not be capitalized because it is the &lt;em&gt;4&lt;/em&gt; which counts as first symbol, but maybe I am wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10679" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T13:18:59.153" Title="Capitalization with compound nouns starting with a number" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12901" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-16T20:37:08.777" Score="1" ViewCount="4136" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to write a story with a single character and no development of that character at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10680" LastEditorUserId="47470" LastEditDate="2021-01-25T05:49:28.120" LastActivityDate="2021-01-28T10:49:09.410" Title="Is it possible to have a character who does not develop?" Tags="|creative-writing|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12901" CreationDate="2014-09-16T21:01:43.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anything is possible in writing.&#xA;There may be quality issues though.&#xA;Wait, let me get this straight.&#xA;You want to write a single story with one static character total?&#xA;You could, but I can only think of one other story that a single character and thats Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and that was a dynamic character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastEditorUserId="8727" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T23:11:49.867" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T23:11:49.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12901" CreationDate="2014-09-16T21:35:26.440" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible? Probably. It may depend on the definition of &quot;character development&quot;. I was just looking for a definition and didn't find one in 30 seconds, but it's normally understood to mean (a) revealing the nature of a character to the reader, and/or (b) a character growing and changing over the course of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition (a), if you write, &quot;Bob walked into the room&quot;, you have told us several things about the character: He is named &quot;Bob&quot;. He is capable of walking. He has some reason for wanting to be in this room. Okay, trivial things, but you have begun the process of character development. It's hard to imagine a story where you literally tell the reader absolutely nothing about any of the characters, even indirectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a little more plausible by definition (b). I suppose you could imagine a story where the characters learn nothing and do not change in any way. But at the very least, you would think that SOMETHING must happen to the characters in the course of the story, so if nothing else they have gained experience. Even if you do not spell out how the character's react to these experiences, the reader is likely to draw inferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could be more specific about what you have in mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T21:35:26.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12901" CreationDate="2014-09-16T22:08:18.297" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can always have a character who doesn't develop; flat Disney villains come to mind. But the flat character is generally in opposition to the hero/ine, who &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; develop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is, &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; would you write such a story? What could possibly happen in it? If you have one character, period, and that character doesn't develop, what is that person &lt;em&gt;doing&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T22:08:18.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12905" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12909" CreationDate="2014-09-17T01:09:23.287" Score="4" ViewCount="539" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to describe this character:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7e3tc.png&quot; height=&quot;400&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120812173749/nanoha/images/3/35/Load_de_Arche_GoD.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her attire is pretty easy to describe, Purple and Gold (while it looks yellow she addresses herself with majestic plural, so gold would be more fitting) clothing with a black coat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, her hair is a bit of a problem. I want to describe its colour almost exactly as it's seen here and while initially one could say it's like a silver colour there seems to be a bit more of a cream color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This hasn't been the first time I've gone to describe a colour, however other times I've known the base colour (Red/Blue) and from there looked up on Wikipedia to looks at its &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_red&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;shades&lt;/a&gt;. However, that won't help here when I can't be sure what base colour her hair colour would be in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am wondering, is there a place online where I could submit a hexadecimal value and get results of similar colors? (eg. if I submitted #FF91A4 I could get Pink and Salmon) That way I can use that in the future. (Since obviously there isn't an SE Site where IDing colours in an image would be on topic.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: as you can probably guess, the character is &quot;Anime Style&quot;. As such natural hair colours don't follow real life norms (some characters can be born with blue, green and pink hair).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-01-30T11:13:28.317" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T11:13:28.317" Title="How can I learn the name of a colour to use in a description?" Tags="|fiction|resources|description|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12901" CreationDate="2014-09-17T01:54:38.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible. How, I know not, but it is possible. I once wrote a story that was literally a narration of events with no character, and the community (it was a fan fiction) really liked it. I still don't know how that happened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character did appear later on, but there was no character development. The closest it got was when the character almost sacrificed himself so someone could escape, but that event had no impact on anything else whatsoever. The character never changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, that was written before I knew anything about development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T01:54:38.387" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12905" CreationDate="2014-09-17T09:51:50.833" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;For color-to-name converter, a quick Google search gives me this link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chir.ag/projects/name-that-color/#C0C0C0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://chir.ag/projects/name-that-color/#C0C0C0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In which you can just pick a color from the color wheel to see its name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KewTC.png&quot; alt=&quot;http://chir.ag/projects/name-that-color/#C0C0C0&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the color you want is &quot;Mercury&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mdhyr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt;, as Phillipp said, you might better explain the color in words more frequently used, instead of using some rather pedantic terms. You can say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She has a gray hair&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or if you want to invoke more imagination from your readers, you can try something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her hair color reminds me of my highschool year, when I accidentally broke a thermometer during one science experiment, causing the liquid inside to spill over all the places, covering the floor with the shiny silver color of mercury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6724" LastEditorUserId="6724" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T02:24:21.587" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T02:24:21.587" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12625" CreationDate="2014-09-17T11:23:34.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not cite the quote differently than any other reference in your thesis. So which ever format your discipline uses (APA, MLA etc...) would be what you would use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10132" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T11:23:34.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12625" CreationDate="2014-09-17T12:45:38.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I upvoted Greg's answer, because that is what I would do, &lt;em&gt;if for some reason I could not ask the relevant authorities&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first step should be to get a copy of the thesis formatting guide or manual of your institution. Most universities have one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second step, if this guide does not answer your question, should be to ask the examination authority of your institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your third step, if the examination authority is unable or unwilling to provide a definite answer, should be to ask your professor(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, for some unimaginable reason, you still have not been given an answer, do as Greg said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T14:04:47.910" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T14:04:47.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12900" CreationDate="2014-09-17T13:18:59.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Per the discussion in the comments: if you're using sentence case, I'd go with 4-terminal (lowercase T) because the 4 is the first character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I would still flinch to see a sentence which started with &quot;4-terminal&quot; instead of &quot;Four-terminal,&quot; but I'm not in technical writing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T13:18:59.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12905" CreationDate="2014-09-17T20:55:16.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are two sites that you might want to check out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kodisha.net/color-names/?color=FF91A4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://kodisha.net/color-names/?color=FF91A4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colorhexa.com/ff91a4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.colorhexa.com/ff91a4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10530" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T20:55:16.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12827" CreationDate="2014-09-17T21:38:43.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick search provided the following link (of which there are many), which may be of help to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scroll down to the middle of the following link to &quot;online services&quot; where they offer individuals and businesses of all sizes on-demand translation services of Web pages, written texts, or Microsoft Office files:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.systransoft.com/translation-products/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.systransoft.com/translation-products/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10530" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T21:38:43.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12564" CreationDate="2014-09-17T22:02:38.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Idiom is defined as:  an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements, as in  &quot;kick the bucket&quot;;; &#xA;OR -- a construction or expression of one language whose parts correspond to elements in another language but whose total structure or meaning is not matched in the same way in the second language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if given your example (&quot;door opening abruptly&quot;), that it falls into the definition of idiom.  (Note:  might you be looking for some kind of &quot;similar phrase&quot; resource?  that would be different.)  Doing a quick search for idiom resources provides quite a few results.  Here are a couple of links you can check out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idiomreference.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.idiomreference.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10530" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T14:31:01.993" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T14:31:01.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12564" CreationDate="2014-09-17T22:24:43.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see your problem. This is something that I run into all the time.&#xA;When you can't figure out the right word.&#xA;just use a free online dictionary and go through the synonym list for the word you decided doesn't sound right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T22:24:43.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12918" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T05:16:49.380" Score="8" ViewCount="14907" Body="&lt;p&gt;I looked all over CreateSpace, but cannot find anything to tell me if the service is 100% free to use. I wonder if there are hidden costs. I read that some people paid for a printed copy to make sure there are no errors in the printing. Is that required?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the services I need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I upload a PDF of my book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People can buy a print-on-demand copy of the book from Amazon.com.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People can buy a Kindle or e-book copy (optional, if free I will use it).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't need other services such as international selling, advertising, special bar codes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is getting books out to customers 100% free for the writers or are there some hidden fees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="3375" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T06:01:03.577" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T22:54:48.630" Title="Is CreateSpace 100% free for self-publishing?" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12905" CreationDate="2014-09-18T11:39:43.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a Mac, you could try &lt;a href=&quot;https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sip/id507257563?mt=12&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sip&lt;/a&gt; app. You pick the color and then it may tell you what the name is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10687" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T11:39:43.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12905" CreationDate="2014-09-18T12:27:08.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love the apps linked in the other answers, but I see a basic problem with this whole question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's try an experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choose three color names that for you describe a very specific color.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now give these names to a few people and ask them to select all the colors that would fit that color term from this color chart: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pantone-colours.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pantone-colours.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How wide is the range of colors for each term? Does it include the color you thought of?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure you can imagine the outcome of this experiment: &lt;strong&gt;Everyone has a different idea about what a color term signifies.&lt;/strong&gt; Because in fact individuals perceive color differently. Friendly arguments are fought about where exacly blue and green begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So trying to &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; name a color with words is &lt;strong&gt;futile&lt;/strong&gt;. Everyone will imagine what you describe differently, and there is nothing you can do about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T12:27:08.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12905" CreationDate="2014-09-18T12:54:01.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you to describe the hair of that character as &quot;white&quot; or &quot;grey&quot;. Maybe &quot;silver&quot; when you want to be a bit more lyrical, but that's the furthest I would go into detail about the haircolor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The artist of that image likely decided to put a tiny bit of yellow into the color-shade, because pure shades of grey generally look boring and sterile in artwork. But that's a problem which only applies to &lt;em&gt;visual&lt;/em&gt; media. As a &lt;em&gt;writer&lt;/em&gt; such design details aren't really as important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of taking multiple paragraphs to describe your characters appearances in great detail, you should rather focus on describing their personality and motivation. You might drop a few key-aspects of their appearance, but only when it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something &lt;em&gt;other characters&lt;/em&gt; would notice immediately and which would &lt;em&gt;affect the way they interact with her&lt;/em&gt;. A young woman with grey hair might be something unusual in your fictional universe and a reason for others to notice her. Maybe having grey hair at a young age is a telltale sign that she practices black magic and would make it impossible for her to conceal this (in that case you could mention that her hair isn't completely grey but still shows a tiny bit of her original haircolor as a sign that she is not completely corrupted yet). Or maybe young people with grey hair aren't anything special in your universe. Then it's an irrelevant detail you have little reason to mention at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something which is a key hint to their personality. When a characters dress style is described as a lot more extravagant than appropriate for the situation, it might be a sign that they are vain or proud of their social status. When they openly carry a weapon everywhere they go, they might be paranoid, militant or like to intimidate people. When they have scars, it should be a crucial part of their background story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something you need to identify the character. When you don't want the reader to learn her name (yet), you might want to refer to her only as &quot;the grey-haired girl&quot;. Also, other characters which don't know the name of another character will refer to them in their inner and outer monologue by visual details (like &quot;the girl with the sad eyes&quot; to give an example from your source material). To make it clear which character they are talking about, it should be a distinct detail you mentioned before (Although on the other hand, you could also deceive the reader by intentionally picking a detail you left out so the reader does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; know which character they talk about even though the reader already knows her. So the reveal of her identity will surprise the reader as much as it surprises the characters).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But describing the appearance of a character just so the reader can picture them better is unnecessary. When you omit irrelevant details, the reader will unconsciously fill in the blanks by making them up on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T07:46:52.250" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T07:46:52.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12901" CreationDate="2014-09-18T14:25:36.750" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The TV show &quot;Seinfeld&quot; is an example of a show where the characters didn't develop. They never learn anything about themselves and this was a source of humor in the show. Or at least it must have been for the people who liked it (and there was a lot of them), personally I never really got into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think also some of Samuel Beckett's work would have one or two characters and little or no character development, some of it is also comic, and indeed absurd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10688" LastEditorUserId="10688" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T14:43:14.053" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T14:43:14.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12564" CreationDate="2014-09-18T14:48:57.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The van door &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sprang&lt;/a&gt; open.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am unsure about the common &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collocation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;collocations&lt;/a&gt; of a word, I use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordance_%28publishing%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;concordance&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write in German, so I use German references and cannot recommend any resources that I have experience with, but from a quick search this appears to be a useful English concordance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lextutor.ca/conc/eng/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://lextutor.ca/conc/eng/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you search for other concordances, make sure they use sources that have the level of language you strive for. Concordances created from internet content include English written by non-native speakers, slang and other non-standard uses you might want to avoid. Best use a concordance built from newspapers or literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some references list the most common words that appear with your search term, for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://oxforddictionary.so8848.com/search?word=door&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://oxforddictionary.so8848.com/search?word=door&lt;/a&gt;. Others output a collocation graph. Again, the usefulness of this depends on the number and quality of the corpus. Here is a collocation graph for &quot;door&quot; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://collocations.ooz.ie/search?q=door&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://collocations.ooz.ie/search?q=door&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8F0vq.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also endorse user8727's answer. I do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T15:02:11.327" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T15:02:11.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12901" CreationDate="2014-09-18T14:51:11.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am actually adding a second answer based on something @user16583 mentioned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some long-running comic strips, characters don't age or change. Strips like &lt;em&gt;FoxTrot&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Sally Forth&lt;/em&gt; occasionally make sly meta-jokes referencing the idea that the kids in the strip have been 10 or 12 for decades. Beetle Bailey has been doing the same thing for 70 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; long-running strips have some changes: The cast of &lt;em&gt;Peanuts&lt;/em&gt; expanded, Blondie has gotten a job, there have been new platoon members and sexual harassment training at Camp Swampy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while you might be able to pull this off with a series of short stories (like &lt;em&gt;Jeeves &amp;amp; Wooster,&lt;/em&gt; perhaps) or a graphic novel, particularly if the stories are meant to be funny, I think you'd be hard-pressed to make it work with drama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T14:51:11.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12925" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T15:12:44.493" Score="4" ViewCount="6882" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must write a book for the university and I am looking for software. The style that I want is like the books of O'Reilly, Apress or Packt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insert a table of contents (automatic).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide and numerate chapters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insert code. Highlighting (automatic).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insert formulas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insert notes, warning boxes...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insert elements: images, schemas, tables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insert a table of figures/images (automatic).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insert a index (automatic).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Custom design: custom layout, fonts, colors...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Export document: PDF, HTML.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software/tools that I have considered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microsoft Word&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A markdown editor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LaTeX&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adobe InDesign&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inconveniences that I have found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MS Word is hard for hightligh syntax (?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Markdown editors are limited for complex structures (?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't used LaTeX and InDesign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which is the more appropriate software/tools for write a tech book?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I don't have reputation enough for tag correctly this question.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10689" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T20:16:04.193" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T20:16:04.193" Title="What software is good for writing a technical book?" Tags="|technical-writing|software|tools|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2014-09-19T20:15:34.707" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12926" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12927" CreationDate="2014-09-18T19:56:13.053" Score="3" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I send a finished book manuscript to an agent while I am waiting to receive the permission I have requested to use for the quotes that are in the manuscript? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10691" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T20:39:14.590" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T20:39:14.590" Title="Can I submit to an agent before permission to use quotations is finalized?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12926" CreationDate="2014-09-18T20:20:13.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since permissions let you use a quote for &lt;em&gt;publishing&lt;/em&gt;, the permission needs to be granted before the book actually goes to market. That being said, the process you go through with an agent happens before the publishing process, so I think it's fine for you to have some &quot;pending&quot; permissions, as long as you're clear with your agent/editor about which ones are still pending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some references:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wiley.com/legacy/authors/guidelines/stmguides/3frames.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Check the &quot;When you should apply&quot; section&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oceansidepubl.com/permission.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Example of a publication requiring permission be granted before publishing, not necessarily before the agent process&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6844" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T20:20:13.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12928" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-19T05:14:47.983" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T05:14:47.983" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T05:14:47.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12929" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-19T05:14:47.983" Score="0" Body="A book covering a technical topic, e.g. teaching a programming language." OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T05:14:47.983" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T05:14:47.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12925" CreationDate="2014-09-19T06:43:49.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;LaTeX is the way to go. MS Word has improved a lot since the beginning (at least, so I'v been told, because I personally don't use it), but for equations and few other things (e.g. microkerning) it cannot compete with LaTeX. Adobe InDesign is more for professional typographers than writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically publishers of technical books provide to their authors LaTeX classes which conform to the publisher's style; other, possibly customizable, book classes can be found in LaTeX distributions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10679" LastEditorUserId="10679" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T14:25:12.627" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T14:25:12.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12925" CreationDate="2014-09-19T13:49:18.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want a book to look like O'Reilly books, perhaps try &lt;a href=&quot;http://docbook.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DockBook&lt;/a&gt;, a system developed by that publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T13:49:18.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12932" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12936" CreationDate="2014-09-19T17:57:40.373" Score="3" ViewCount="1961" Body="&lt;p&gt;You always hear about what has to be removed. Usually unnecessary stuff that doens't contribute to the plot. How about the opposite? How do you know when your story is lacking something? Say, more description, chapters, characters, or elements in the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T16:42:14.360" Title="How do you know when there's something missing in your story?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12934" CreationDate="2014-09-19T19:47:32.200" Score="6" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I'll write something where there's a few paragraphs of buildup, then a &quot;whammy line&quot; or two. I wrote a quick example, pretend it's a climactic moment from a bad YA romance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She wrung her hands together, staring at her chipped nails, her&#xA;  calloused fingers, and the motor oil stained into the grooves in her&#xA;  palms. She looked at his delicate features, his pale cheekbones, his&#xA;  gorgeous monitor-tan, and that perfect dimple. When she met his eyes,&#xA;  she knew she had to say it now and she had to mean it more than&#xA;  anything else in this whole world. She whispered her ultimatum,&#xA;  voice dripping with the built-up passion of the last five years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I love you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He looked at her for what seemed like an eternity, grabbed his coat,&#xA;  and walked out the door. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She collapsed to her knees, sobbing up at the gray storm clouds that&#xA;  suddenly appeared indoors with no preamble, her reason for living now crushed.&#xA;  It started to rain, and the water washed away her tears. &quot;Why?&quot; she cried out, with a ton of angst and dramatic inflection. &quot;Why!?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually put a newline in-between the whammy line(s) and the surrounding paragraphs (See: &quot;I love you&quot; and &quot;He looked at her...&quot;). My idea since I've been doing this is that adding some blank space after a buildup gives a reader time to &quot;digest&quot; what they just read and therefore give the whammy line more weight. The line(s) that I want to impact you also stand out against the paragraphs of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if those are correct assumptions. Does the previous example tug on your inner tween heartstrings more than...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She wrung her hands together, staring at her chipped nails, her&#xA;  calloused fingers, and the motor oil stained into the grooves in her&#xA;  palms. She looked at his delicate features, his pale cheekbones, his&#xA;  gorgeous monitor-tan, and that perfect dimple. When she met his eyes,&#xA;  she knew she had to say it now and she had to mean it more than&#xA;  anything else in this whole world. She whispered her ultimatum,&#xA;  voice dripping with the built-up passion of the last five years. &quot;I love you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He looked at her for what seemed like an eternity, grabbed his coat,&#xA;  and walked out the door.  She collapsed to her knees, sobbing up at the gray storm clouds that&#xA;  suddenly appeared indoors with no preamble, her reason for living now crushed.&#xA;  It started to rain, and the water washed away her tears. &quot;Why?&quot; she cried out, with a ton of angst and dramatic inflection. &quot;Why!?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are newlines effective for adding an emphasis to certain phrases? Does it interrupt the flow? Or is it trivial? &lt;strong&gt;What is the overall effect of adding newlines between important sentences&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10555" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T17:31:45.907" Title="Are newlines effective for adding weight to certain phrases?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12933" CreationDate="2014-09-19T20:02:09.417" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Putting a sentence in a paragraph by itself does give it emphasis.&#xA;It can also break up the monotony&#xA;of a sequence of long paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brandon Sanderson once said (on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing Excuses&lt;/a&gt; podcast)&#xA;that he likes to add a one-sentence paragraph&#xA;after every few long paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But take care not to use this trick so often that the reader notices.&#xA;What constitutes &quot;overdoing&quot; depends a great deal&#xA;on the pace of the surrounding paragraphs.&#xA;In a fast-paced scene,&#xA;you'll have lots of short paragraphs,&#xA;and those one-sentence paragraphs won't stick out&#xA;(but they also won't get any special emphasis&#xA;among all the other short paragraphs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genre also significantly influences how frequently&#xA;you can use this trick&#xA;without the reader noticing.&#xA;For example, an abundance of such one-liners&#xA;may feel out of place in a literary work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T17:31:45.907" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T17:31:45.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12901" CreationDate="2014-09-19T23:54:45.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally, when the main character remains static, that character is actually a catalyst character and the world or characters around them are the true protagonists. A popular example is &lt;em&gt;Ferris Bueller's Day Off&lt;/em&gt;. Ferris Bueller may be the titular character, but it is more or less agreed that his best friend Cameron is the real protagonist, Ferris merely gives Cameron an impetus to change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be an interesting route to try if you were to write a story with a single unchanging character! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some&lt;/em&gt; development must occur to have a successful story, even if it's a change in the audience's understanding rather than one inside of the story itself. Otherwise, there would be no point in consuming it, it'd be the literary equivalent of empty calories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8197" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T23:54:45.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12932" CreationDate="2014-09-19T23:56:38.867" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best get someone to read it. Some seasoned writer is good, but anyone will do, except close friends and family who'd praise you no matter what abomination you produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You too, let your story sit for a couple months until you forget its key points and try to read it &quot;as new&quot;. Still, it will never be quite as efficient at catching simple omissions: missing tags in confusing dialogue, too skeletal location descriptions, thought shortcuts, your assumptions about reader's knowledge, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, there is a significant piece you can spot for yourself without external help: closures. List all characters; more or less significant. (include significant non-person actors too). Recall all more significant actions they performed. Think of their consequences, a week, a month past the ending of the story. Do they get away with their shenanigans? Do they receive honors? Do they recover? Did they learn something new?&#xA;Cull the ones that really, really don't matter, and check whether you included all the rest. Make sure every thread, every event received a closure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking from experience, as a reader - I often focus my attention at some background characters and really just keep reading to receive the closure on their specific thread. Say, two minor flunkies of the villain who happened to be exceptionally nasty jerks, and appeared early on, bullying the protagonist. Then I witness the rest of the story: the struggle, the growth, the challenge, the battle, the epilogue - but the two presented early on never appear again, their fate is never even implied. And I don't care about the ending. I didn't receive my closure and I'm disappointed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: Close all your threads, and you don't need external help with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T23:56:38.867" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12901" CreationDate="2014-09-20T09:02:56.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many books on writing, a story is defined as the emotional journey (change) of the protagonist. Plot is the physical journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you buy into that (as I do), then you need change in order to have a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T09:02:56.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12828" CreationDate="2014-09-20T18:22:50.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any reflection written in an European context is based on a philosophical idea of reasoning. It means the issue is deepened and put in perspective.  Each development brings a new nuance.  This however, has nothing to do with &quot;not picking a side&quot; (as this has to do with writing a report or a argumentative essay).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any reflection written in an American context does indeed pick a side and will support a definite conclusion.  This explains why more complex issues often have to be simplified or considered in a narrower focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to writing mechanics, the rules also change.  As a general rule, the American conventions are stricter and more rigid.  Quality of reflection is usually prized above all in European standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10698" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T18:22:50.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12940" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12941" CreationDate="2014-09-20T21:14:31.843" Score="1" ViewCount="1387" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sure you don't remember me. Asked quiet a few questions a year ago. Never came back for round 2. Was working on your advices. Writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm nearing the climax of my novel. There's a scene. Sort of a revelation where a character and the MC talk and the backstory is given to the reader about how the MC had assumed things wrong. Now, the scene is set in a chamber where the two guys are chained to the walls. There are just chunks of dialogues. No movement, no body language, just a scene filled with dialogues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, in a scene where I want to dump critical information, or when the MC is backed into the corner, I go about it like this- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Character says his dialogue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Short shock. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MC begins analysing in his head.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MC says his dialogue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Character says his dialogue (I'm writing in first person).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this goes about in a loop until I reach where I want to reach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in this particular scene, I don't want to show the short shock or the analyzing or the non verbal reaction of the MC at all. Not even minimum. I want it 0. I have this weird inclination to make the &lt;em&gt;conversation&lt;/em&gt; give the shock to the MC and the readers without me explicitly showing it or even mentioning a much needed monologue. I want to give them just chunks of dialogues. Nothing else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This scene marks the end of the second act with the goals changed and the stakes increased. So, I think the conversation will be compelling enough and the readers will just focus on the dialogues and not the environment or any actions. But again, that's what I think).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the question is, will it weird things out? Should I do it? That is, should I just make a scene of pure chunks of dialogues if they're compelling enough? What do you think?&#xA;Please, help me out here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T03:16:48.533" Title="Good idea to write a scene with just pure dialogue exchange?" Tags="|dialogue|scene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12940" CreationDate="2014-09-21T03:16:48.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no reason you can't do this, as long as it's the reader understands the information you're giving them. The clearer way to do something is nearly always preferred. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; formatted scenes as screenplays within a novel, but it's a rare, experimental device. It also evokes a cinematic feel, which may not be what you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long passages of dialog without &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; descriptive text will tend to run into one problem: It becomes hard to follow who's saying what. You can only incorporate so many instances of characters naming other characters in their speech before it becomes artificial. It's hard to replace &quot;she said&quot; with &quot;So, Sue, let me tell you a thing...&quot; more than once. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest you minimize descriptive text and dialog tags, but not remove them entirely. That'll keep the scene very stark and dialog-focused but make it easy to follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T03:16:48.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-21T15:19:16.503" Score="1" ViewCount="1295" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a fantasy story that has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LanguageofMagic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Language of Power&lt;/a&gt; (TVTROPES) in it and I was trying to look around online to find an automatic translator for the language I came up with but can't find any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there an automatic translator out there for custom made languages that I'm not seeing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10703" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T16:35:36.463" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T16:13:12.647" Title="What's a good custom language translator?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|fantasy|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12943" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-21T17:42:15.767" Score="2" ViewCount="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing an analytical synopsis for a fiction book, is it common to bring in a developmental editor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am new at writing. As I understand it, the developmental editor could help more in this stage, am I right? Or do I not understand the job of the a developmental editor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10701" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T15:34:17.397" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T15:34:17.397" Title="Is it common to bring in a developmental editor when you are at the stage of synopsis?" Tags="|fiction|editing|planning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12943" CreationDate="2014-09-22T15:34:06.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's probably useful to think of a developmental editor as a project manager. While it's often associated with non-fiction, but it's not unheard of for novelists to hire a developmental editor. (I see job posts like this every so often.) Whether you should hire a developmental editor for fiction is a hard question to answer without knowing more about the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To define Developmental editing: Its where an editor will assist a writer in organizing a manuscript, bringing structure to it, or even suggesting new sections of text to be written. A novel is traditionally a statement by a single writer, and by its nature, these developmental activities make more sense with non-fiction books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A developmental editor could definitely help you develop a synopsis for a fiction narrative,  but I think this would mean the editor has edged ever so slightly into the realm of collaborator. If you have them generate manuscript text with you, that would firm this up. Of course, much of this depends on your agreement with that editor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The line between conventional editing and developmental editing can sometimes be blurred. For example, I do a lot of line editing, or editing of text on a sentence-by-sentence level. I'm looking at pacing and language and clarity, but I also leave notes where I think a book's structure could be improved. I've also guided the creation of additional book sections and moved/abridged sections. These could be called developmental editing tasks, even within jobs not labeled &quot;developmental editing&quot;. What matters is that the writer and editor are both clear with each other about what's to be done.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the event that you can't get started on an outline, or that you've stalled on the synopsis, you may just want to seek out help from a writers group (real life or online). Writers chat rooms can also be helpful places to brainstorm a bit. Once you have a better idea of what you want from this project, you can make a better decision about whether you need a developmental editor or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T15:34:06.213" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2990" CreationDate="2014-09-23T00:37:09.723" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;there is no story without characters, because there is nobody then to experience the passing of time. In this case, no changes, events, etc. can happen and therefore it is not a &quot;story&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10711" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T00:37:09.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6127" CreationDate="2014-09-23T17:11:26.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need a comma before the &quot;and&quot; just before &quot;to the Republic.&quot;  There are supposed to be three commas entirely.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10717" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T17:11:26.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12948" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-23T21:18:24.940" Score="4" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team uses MadCap Flare for documentation and we have an editor on the team.  When a writer is ready, we assemble a review package in Flare and send it to the editor, and she makes changes and sends it back to the writer for resolution.  (The writer has the final say, and responsibility for making sure edits don't change the technical accuracy of the documentation.)  The review bundle sent back to the writer contains marked-up changes similar to those in Word's &quot;track changes&quot; mode -- cross-outs for deletions, a different color for insertions, and annotations (call-outs) for other editor-to-writer communication.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all fine, but Flare requires that each change be individually accepted or rejected, and the problem we're having is that an edit for a single paragraph might produce a dozen individual changes, each of which needs to be handled.&#xA;If you were to accidentally accept 11 of them and decline one, you'd have messed-up text because the changes are all related.  We want &lt;em&gt;atomic change groups&lt;/em&gt; -- accept all or none of these -- in this situation.  (Flare does support &quot;accept all&quot; or &quot;reject all&quot; at the file level, but that's too coarse-grained.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've tried Google and we've got some pretty experienced Flare users on the team, and the best we've come up with, when a block of text requires many small edits, is to have the editor cut/paste the text into a new block, edit &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;, and then delete the original.  But that's tedious if done all the time and hard to anticipate if making changes while editing.  The editor shouldn't have to make two passes, one to read and then a second to go back and make changes either &quot;inline&quot; (if just a few) or by this more-elaborate cut/paste routine (if more extensive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to cause Flare to group a selected set of changes together to support atomicity?  I envision the editor being able to mark all changes in a paragraph as being part of the same group, and the writer then being able to say &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot; to that group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are using a mix of version 9 and 10.  If upgrading everybody to version 10 would help we can do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T22:40:52.767" Title="In Flare, how can we make atomic change groups in review?" Tags="|editing|software|tools|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2990" CreationDate="2014-09-24T18:05:19.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This one is so easy to answer: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0312427905&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The World Without Us -- see at Amazon.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all about the world after we are all gone.  And it is definitely &lt;strong&gt;speculative&lt;/strong&gt; fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How did everyone miss this easy answer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T18:05:19.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12951" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12958" CreationDate="2014-09-25T03:46:05.977" Score="0" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm preparing a book release for a book I publish via CreateSpace, and being a noob I wonder if press releases normally go out with cover letters, or just stuffed in an envelope?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using snail mail to send to newspaper book editors, since I've found it easier to come up with mailing addresses as opposed to email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5745" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T17:36:29.473" Title="When sending out press releases, do you include a cover letter?" Tags="|press-release|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12952" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12955" CreationDate="2014-09-25T07:22:04.067" Score="13" ViewCount="31807" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing my book for print-on-demand through Amazon's CreateSpace service, and I am trying to understand the options for getting an ISBN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a little confused. CreateSpace offers a &quot;free&quot; ISBN, and calls it an &quot;ISBN&quot;, but says &quot;This ISBN can only be used with the CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.&quot; So... it's not really an ISBN, it's just an internal version of an ISBN that only works within Amazon's services?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that buying an ISBN elsewhere, even though I've read hints here and there that it is possible to do it for cheap or free, seems to cost around 125 US$, or the equivalent in other currencies (I've looked at Canadian and UK options). That CreateSpace is offering me one for free does seem appealing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this ISBN offered by CreateSpace a real ISBN or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this is my main question: If I go with CreateSpace's free ISBN now, and then later I the opportunity comes up (or I just decide) to make my book available through distribution channels, can I then buy a &quot;regular&quot; ISBN and go with that? Would I need to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Please note that I am not American, and a lot of what I've read on the internet is very focused on options available for people in the US, which makes me even less certain of my options.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2753" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-09T01:05:13.480" LastActivityDate="2019-02-09T01:05:13.480" Title="If I get a free ISBN through Amazon's CreateSpace now, will that impact any decisions about getting my own ISBN later?" Tags="|self-publishing|isbn|amazon|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12952" CreationDate="2014-09-25T08:28:09.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please note that the &quot;N&quot; in &quot;ISBN&quot; stands for &quot;number&quot;, so &quot;ISBN number&quot; actually means &quot;international standard book &lt;strong&gt;number number&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the structure of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ISBN&lt;/a&gt; you will note that it is made up of parts that identify, in this order, the &lt;strong&gt;country&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;strong&gt;publisher&lt;/strong&gt; and the &lt;strong&gt;publication&lt;/strong&gt;. Actual terminology is different, but for this explanation these terms are more comprehensible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you &lt;em&gt;publish&lt;/em&gt; (!) your book through the &lt;em&gt;publisher&lt;/em&gt; (!) Amazon, the book will get an ISBN that says that the publisher of that book is Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you buy your own ISBN, then &lt;em&gt;you are the publisher&lt;/em&gt;, and obviously you cannot use that ISBN to publish through another publisher, like Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, you can of course &lt;strong&gt;publish the same book through several publishers at the same time&lt;/strong&gt;. For example, the US Science Fiction Book Club often publishes books (under their own ISBN) that are available through the original publisher, also. Usually distribution channels differ for these different publications of the same book. Or, another example, different editions of the same book (hardcover, paperback, movie-tie-in etc.) are sometimes published by different publishers (or different imprints of the same publishing house) and carry different ISBNs. Or, a last example, some, usually large scientific, publishers have dependencies in multiple countries, and sometimes the same book has multiple ISBNs, one for each country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, your book can have as many ISBNs as you want, but the publishers that you work with might not agree to such a publication scheme, because if they put money and effort into publishing and marketing your book, they might not want other publishers to profit from their effort. I would suspect that &lt;strong&gt;Amazon's contract details&lt;/strong&gt; forbid you to publish your book elsewhere, if you publish it through them. So read their terms and conditions, before you employ their services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T08:28:09.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12952" CreationDate="2014-09-25T10:32:20.930" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CreateSpace ISBNs are real, legitimate ISBNs.&lt;/strong&gt; You can use them to distribute your book anywhere in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key limitation is this: If your book has a CreateSpace ISBN, you must buy your copies from CreateSpace. That is, you can't use another printer to print books with an ISBN you got from CreateSpace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find the &quot;details&quot; here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/ISBNs.jsp&quot;&gt;https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/ISBNs.jsp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I put &quot;details&quot; in scare quotes because it is not obvious (to me, at least) what some of the terminology means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CreateSpace Free ISBNs.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;For the free ones, you have to use CreateSpace's imprint (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform). That has the disadvantage of making it obvious that your book is self-published. Some bookstores frown on stocking books with the CreateSpace imprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CreateSpace $10 Custom ISBN.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;CreateSpace offers a $10 Custom ISBN, and you can use whatever name you want for the imprint. If you use that, CreateSpace will distribute your book to bookstores. They will not distribute it to libraries and academic institutions. This Custom ISBN is a ton cheaper than the Bowker price for a single ISBN. (And I think Bowker's price is going up by 50% in a few weeks, though maybe that's only for batches of 1000 ISBNs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your own ISBN.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If you use your own ISBN (as I do), you can put your own imprint on the book. CreateSpace will handle the distribution through the channels you choose (with some limits), and will print the books for those channels. You can distribute the book yourself through other channels, and you can get them printed wherever you like (CreateSpace or elsewhere).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CreateSpace $99 Custom Universal ISBN.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I'm not clear on the benefits and limitations of this one.&#xA;It looks like it has all the benefits of an ISBN you obtain from a registrar,&#xA;but at a slight discount from Bowker's single-ISBN price.&#xA;I'm not confident that I understand this option fully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One ISBN per edition.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;No matter where you obtain your ISBN, you may use it only for one edition of the book. If you publish multiple editions (audio, ebook, another trim size, a significant change of content), and you want ISBNs on those, you will have to obtain a distinct ISBN for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T10:32:20.930" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12952" CreationDate="2014-09-25T17:26:56.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should check into the requirements to get an ISBN in your own country. In many countries you can get one for free, which will then be your own that you can use as you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my first book, the publisher gave me an ISBN of theirs. For my second book, I bought a block of 10 ISBNs from Bowkers, the American distributor of ISBNs. I think it cost me $250 for 10, which, if I do the intense calculation, comes to $25 each. I've only used one so far, but when I finally get my next book out -- so many distractions and procrastination! -- I'll have another available. I may not get through all 10 in my lifetime, but hey, maybe when I retire from my day job I can get serious about writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think Dale Emery went through Create Space's options nicely so I won't repeat his material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that if you were to start out self-publishing a book, and then managed to convince a mainstream publisher to pick it up, they're going to use an ISBN of their own, not one you bought and not one from Create Space. So that's pretty much a non-issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get a Create Space ISBN and then sell the book door to door or from your own web site, I don't think there's anything that would stop you from selling the book with the Create Space ISBN, as long as the copies you sell are still printed by Create Space. If you went to another printer, then there might be issues with using a Create Space ISBN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T17:26:56.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12918" CreationDate="2014-09-25T17:34:23.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone feel free to correct me if I'm out of date, it's been a while since I set up a book with Create Space, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you can get set up for free with Create Space. I believe you are required to print and pay for at least one proof copy for you to review and insure that it is coming out the way you want, so there is that up-front cost. How much it is depends on the size and format of the book, but it's going to be in the neighborhood of $15 or $20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one time you had to pay a fee to have the book made available for distribution anywhere other than amazon.com. I think they no longer charge that fee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where Create Space makes its money is that they take a percentage of every sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's not &quot;free&quot; in the sense that Create Space will print all these books and do a whole bunch of work for you for nothing, just because they love you and want to help you out or something. It's &quot;free&quot; in the sense that there is no setup charge or up-front cost, other than the proof copy. You can get started without giving them any cash, they'll just take their cut out of the cash that would have gone back to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T17:34:23.233" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12951" CreationDate="2014-09-25T17:36:29.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never put a cover letter on a press release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are services out there that will send a press release to hundreds of media outlets for you for a couple of hundred dollars. I've got responses from press releases I've sent out this way and I've seen my press releases show up on web sites, so at least some of these are not scams. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T17:36:29.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12959" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12961" CreationDate="2014-09-25T19:06:06.450" Score="1" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an amateur writer who's never been published. I think my stuff is good, I've had others tell me it's good, but I truly don't know where I stand. I love the fiction that get published in popular journals like Paris Review or McSweeneys, but I don't presume my stuff deserves to be in that category. However, when submitting, I submit to the more popular journals as well, even if I think the story isn't my best work (you never know what will impress an editor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I only send my top manuscripts to the popular journals? How many submissions per &quot;season&quot; (Labor Day to Memorial Day) is reasonable for a beginner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6844" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T08:02:58.320" Title="Should I have some restraint when submitting to the more prestigious journals?" Tags="|fiction|short-story|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12918" CreationDate="2014-09-25T19:16:56.880" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have sent eight books through CreateSpace this year,&#xA;including one that I'm proofing right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; upfront cost is the printed proof copy,&#xA;and you can forego that&#xA;(though it is highly recommended).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Proof Copy.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;CreateSpace requires that you proof your book.&#xA;You may choose to do this entirely through their online proofing tool,&#xA;in which case there are &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; upfront costs for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you purchase a printed proof copy,&#xA;they charge their usual printing costs plus shipping costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reasons to buy a proof copy.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;CreateSpace strongly recommends that new users purchase a physical proof copy. There are very good reasons for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The printed cover always looks different.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Because of the differences between computer screens  and the printing process, the book cover's colors may look noticeably different from the image you see in the online proofer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that when I choose a matte cover,&#xA;the colors of the printed book appear slightly muted compared to what was on my screen when I designed the cover.&#xA;When I choose a glossy cover,&#xA;the colors seem richer that what was on my screen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CreateSpace may adjust your cover.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If your cover PDF differs only slightly from their requirements,&#xA;they may adjust the PDF rather than rejecting it.&#xA;The effects of this can be subtle, and hard to see on screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example,&#xA;one time the text on the spine of one of my books&#xA;was slightly wider than their specifications allowed.&#xA;They narrowed the over-wide text to fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another time, I sent them a PDF with layers.&#xA;They require a &quot;flat&quot; PDF.&#xA;They flattened the PDF for me,&#xA;and gave a warning that the flattening process&#xA;might change things in unpredictable ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each case,&#xA;I redid the cover and sent them a new PDF that they would not have to adjust.&#xA;But you could accept their adjustments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE:&lt;/strong&gt; If they adjust the PDF, they will notify you very clearly.&#xA;You won't ever wonder whether they adjusted it.&#xA;So you might choose to forego the printed proof,&#xA;and just pay extra attention when proofing online.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reading onscreen text vs. printed text.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;As far as I can tell,&#xA;I notice different things when reading on screen&#xA;than when reading print.&#xA;Or maybe I just notice additional things&#xA;on a second reading.&#xA;In any case,&#xA;I always notice errors in the printed copy&#xA;that I wanted to correct,&#xA;even though I had already viewed the book&#xA;in the online proofer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bragging Rights.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You can wag your proof copy at your friends&#xA;and say, &quot;Yo, peeps! I got a book!&quot;&#xA;(You may, of course, use alternate phrasing.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've published enough books&#xA;that you can reliably predict what a printed cover will look like,&#xA;it's safer to proof using only the online tool.&#xA;I've used CreateSpace for eight books this year,&#xA;and I still don't feel confident&#xA;that I can predict how the printed covers will look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Printed proof is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; required.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If cost outweighs those considerations for you,&#xA;you may proof your books&#xA;using only CreateSpace's online proofing tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CreateSpace charges per page.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;CreateSpace charges a printing fee every time they print a book.&#xA;For a color cover and black text on white/cream paper,&#xA;the printing fee is &lt;em&gt;entirely&lt;/em&gt; based on page count.&#xA;Trim size does not matter.&#xA;A 200-page 6&quot;x9&quot; book&#xA;costs exactly the same amount as a 200-page 5&quot;x8&quot; book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No extra charge for additional distribution channels.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;CreateSpace will distribute your book&#xA;through a variety of channels,&#xA;including the CreateSpace estore,&#xA;Amazon,&#xA;and &quot;extended distribution&quot; channels,&#xA;which makes your book available&#xA;through many, many book stores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You choose which channels they should use.&#xA;They &lt;strong&gt;do not&lt;/strong&gt; charge any fees for this,&#xA;regardless of your choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But different distribution channels&#xA;do impose lower limits on the price of your book.&#xA;That is because&#xA;each retailer wants a cut.&#xA;And the retailers want the list price to be high enough&#xA;that they could sell the book at a discount&#xA;and still make money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CreateSpace estore takes the lowest percentage (20% of list price),&#xA;the &quot;extended distribution&quot; retailers the highest (60%),&#xA;and Amazon somewhere in between (40%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you sell a book through Amazon or extended distribution,&#xA;the retailer takes their cut (40% for Amazon, 60% for other retailers).&#xA;CreateSpace charges you &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; the printing fee.&#xA;And you get what's left over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you sell a book through the CreateSpace estore,&#xA;CreateSpace gets the printing fee&#xA;and their &quot;retailer&quot; percentage (20% of list price).&#xA;You get what's left over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Royalties.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;When a retailer sells a book,&#xA;the retailer gets a fixed percentage of the &lt;strong&gt;list price.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;CreateSpace gets its printing fee.&#xA;You get &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the rest of the money&#xA;as a royalty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you approve your book for sale,&#xA;CreateSpace will tell you exactly how much your royalty will&#xA;be for a book sold through any of the channels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bar Code.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You need not purchase a bar code.&#xA;CreateSpace requires that you leave a blank spot on your cover.&#xA;They will print the bar code there.&#xA;They have a preferred spot,&#xA;but you a bit of leeway about where you put the blank spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CreateSpace to Kindle.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;CreateSpace will offer to create a Kindle version for you.&#xA;I have never chosen that option,&#xA;because &lt;strong&gt;there is no way on God's Green Earth&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;that an ebook translated automatically from a print PDF&#xA;will ever look right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one thing,&#xA;in the print books for my short stories,&#xA;I include a teaser on the front page&#xA;(about 1/3 of a page of text from inside the story).&#xA;I also include both a title page and a half-title page.&#xA;There is no need for that in an ebook.&#xA;In print,&#xA;I include a list of my books&#xA;in the front and the back of each book.&#xA;For ebooks I put that only in the back.&#xA;If I ever have pull quotes in a book,&#xA;I would want those only in the print book,&#xA;and not in the ebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general,&#xA;for ebooks &lt;strong&gt;I greatly reduce the amount of front matter.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The reason for this is that&#xA;when Amazon creates a sample,&#xA;the always start at the front of the book.&#xA;Some of my books are short stories,&#xA;as small as 3000 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first Kindle book was a 5500-word short story with a bunch of front matter.&#xA;The sample that Amazon extracted&#xA;ended in the middle of the table of contents.&#xA;Not good.&#xA;So I reformatted the book to take out the front matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T06:16:08.493" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T06:16:08.493" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12959" CreationDate="2014-09-25T20:28:03.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Let the editor decide.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Send your story.&#xA;Editors can't buy a story you don't send.&#xA;They know more than you do about what they want.&#xA;And you are almost certainly not a great judge of your own stories.&#xA;They may like a story that you think is not your best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many writers and editors are horrified by this advice.&#xA;They are concerned,&#xA;I think,&#xA;that writers will overwhelm editors with crap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is nowhere near the &quot;quality&quot; that an editor needs&#xA;(whatever &quot;quality&quot; means),&#xA;they will know within a paragraph or two.&#xA;And they likely have slush readers for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Err in favor of sending the story.&#xA;Let the editor decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Know the market.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If you read each journal,&#xA;you know something about the kinds of stories they buy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read each journal's submission guidelines.&#xA;Those will describe (among other things)&#xA;what genres they are interested in.&#xA;They are often quite good at expressing&#xA;what kinds of stories they &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have a strong reason&#xA;to believe that a particular journal&#xA;does not want this kind of story,&#xA;lean toward sending it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Err in favor of sending the story.&#xA;Let the editor decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How many to send.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;As for how many to send out:&#xA;Read each journal's subscription guidelines.&#xA;There are two phrases to look for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Multiple submissions&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;means submitting more than one story to the same journal.&#xA;Some journals are happy to have more than one of your stories&#xA;in their queue.&#xA;Others want you to send them only one at a time.&#xA;Still others ask that you wait for a short time&#xA;after a rejection&#xA;before you send them another story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simultaneous submissions&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;means submitting your story to more than one journal at a time.&#xA;Many journals clearly forbid simultaneous submissions&#xA;in their guidelines.&#xA;(And some writers ignore this.)&#xA;Some journals explicitly say that simultaneous okay.&#xA;They usually request&#xA;that you inform them immediately if you sell your story elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers ignore the &lt;em&gt;no simultaneous submissions&lt;/em&gt; rule.&#xA;But when editors make clear what they want,&#xA;I try to abide by that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a journal accepts multiple submissions,&#xA;send them as many stories as you can write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T08:02:58.320" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T08:02:58.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2014-09-25T20:57:51.683" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered checking out Kickstarter? It is a crowd sourcing website that could get you the money you need. They like for you to offer a gift in return for people who donate more than $1 - $5. For smaller amounts you send them a postcard with your heartfelt thanks, larger amounts get a book. For the biggest donations, you could autograph each copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a loan. You have to give 5% for Kickstarter and another 5% to Amazon (I think). It is worth looking into. The site seem especially committed to supporting the arts.&#xA;Within about 30 days you could have the money you need to get published. Check it out.&#xA;www.kickstarter.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10736" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T20:57:51.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12918" CreationDate="2014-09-25T23:38:14.647" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dale Emery did an excellent job explaining all the different costs associated with using CreateSpace, but the bottom line is that you as the author do not have to incur any cost up front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to point out a couple of other factors that you need to take into consideration, however. First of all, don't assume that you can just convert a Word document to a PDF document and upload it and that is all you have to do. The PDF document you use will need to be formatted for whatever size you choose for the actual book. If your PDF is in 8x10 and your book is going to be 4x6, then you'll have a problem. There are a lot of other factors to consider when you format your document, so make sure you address them. If you aren't comfortable with doing the formatting yourself, then you may have to pay someone to do it for you, so that is an upfront cost that is not directly associated with CreateSpace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also need an image to use as your book cover. This can either be an image you provide, or you can use their cover creator, which will generate a generic cover for you. The problem with their creator is that their options are limited, so there is a good chance somebody else will end up with a cover very similar to yours. If you want to hire someone to create a cover image for you, that is another upfront cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, just because you create a print on demand book with CreateSpace doesn't mean that there will be a Kindle version immediately available. You have to go through a completely different process to create a Kindle version, and that file will require a different format as well. If you don't know how to create that format, then you may have another cost associated with creating the e-book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T23:38:14.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14216" CreationDate="2014-09-26T21:16:02.783" Score="10" ViewCount="1588" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some books published without a back-of-book index, which I feel is a dreadful shame. As part of my research I decided to create an index of one such book. Doing so is legal for my own use, and would be illegal (I guess) if I tried to sell copies...but what if I shared the new index on a website, or gave printed copies away for free?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a book that is 'out of copyright' in my country then I guess this is allowed? What if the book is not in the public domain? I assume we have to look at the 4 'fair use' guidelines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't copied anything verbatim from the original book, just individual words. I haven't detracted from the book's sales or rivalled the publisher's business in any way. I am not making a profit. I'm doing this for scholarly reasons. I'm a complete amateur at indexing and am not trying to showcase my skills in order to get hired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you could argue that the magnitude of my act somehow encompasses the entirety of the original book. Perhaps the author/publisher would feel annoyed that I'd somehow usurped their authority in some way? Am I on safe ground?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you argue my usage was &quot;transformative&quot; enough to go beyond being a copy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I could ask the copyright holder's permission, but let us imagine they are impossible to track down, or that I end up with 100 such indexes to share.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You cannot give me legal advice, of course, but has anyone seen a similar situation which helps shed light on this grey area? Or heard about something along the same lines in another industry? I'm in the UK but am interested in answers about the US situation too.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="804" LastEditorUserId="804" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T22:10:06.903" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T06:06:10.133" Title="Is it legal to share an index you made from someone else's book?" Tags="|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12966" CreationDate="2014-09-27T13:20:06.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your index doesn't contain any of the original work's text, I fail to see how it could be considered copyright infringement. Since it can't be used without the original text, it's not infringing on the author's ability to make a living off their work. Possibly even the contrary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T13:20:06.697" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12970" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-27T13:43:23.147" Score="2" ViewCount="452" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to publish the English translation of my novel, originally written in Spanish. In the original Spanish edition I thank my &quot;experimental readers&quot;, and especially someone who did a thorough editing pass on the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how to handle this in the acknowledgements section of the English edition. Thanking the original readers still makes sense because they pointed out plot holes and such that are relevant in both languages, but what about the Spanish fixes? That is completely irrelevant to the English edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I thank him anyway (specifying &quot;in the original Spanish&quot;) or remove the mention from the English edition? Or maybe thank him as one of the readers without emphasizing the language editing aspect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T15:38:26.117" Title="Acknowledgements in translated editions" Tags="|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12972" CreationDate="2014-09-27T13:51:00.817" Score="5" ViewCount="517" Body="&lt;p&gt;My protagonist introduced herself to me through a sequence of set-pieces.  She has a very specific altruistic goal, and the conflicts she enters are with other characters who have well-defined agendas.  The arc of the plot is established... except for the last act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried letting the characters speak to me (and they do).  But they say too many things.  There are too many equally interesting choices that they might make, too many good branches the plot might follow.  My problem is how to prune this tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am working very hard to stay away from any &lt;a href=&quot;http://dresdencodak.com/2009/05/11/42-essential-3rd-act-twists/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reverse McGuffins&lt;/a&gt;, or similar devices.  I don't need a device, I need a process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your answers might tell me about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt; any process you might follow to (systematically?) map-out and evaluate the possibilities;&#xA;&lt;li&gt; any way you find works best to change your point of view, as the author, of the characters and events in your story, and thus discover a previously unseen branch to explore;&#xA;&lt;li&gt; any way that I should try interrogating the characters to find out if the choices they are revealing to me are genuine.&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10746" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:52:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:52:22.183" Title="Writing an Ending: how to prune away the Wrong ones?" Tags="|plot|ending|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12971" CreationDate="2014-09-27T17:18:34.290" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a moment abandon the crew of your story and have a peek at your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, before that prune endings that are too expectable, out of characters or otherwise faulty, but once you come with the decent set...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which ending would be most satisfying? Which would elicit most of the emotions which you want to create?  Instead of thinking within the story world, you just construct a satisfactory product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the cheap approach, but one that works well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T17:18:34.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-27T20:02:06.263" Score="2" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing my bachelor's thesis and I'm using the IEEE citations. Now lets say I want to directly quote the following sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The barn was on fire&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; so I ran away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with something like this in the footnote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1)    Some Research Study, 2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would I cite this directly? The source I'm using doesn't provide any more information than the name of the Research Study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The barn was on fire (Some Research Study, 2011) so I ran away.&quot; [13]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10750" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T04:52:43.463" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T08:52:17.677" Title="Quote a sentence with references" Tags="|quotes|citations|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12932" CreationDate="2014-09-27T20:04:19.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is in your head and what is on the page may be very different things.  The characters, places and developments of your story may seem a tightly woven tapestry in your head.  But the fresh eyes of another will clearly see loose threads, tears and great big holes in the fabric.  Always be open to the critiques of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By all means, do trust your &quot;gut&quot;.  Perhaps you do know better than anyone what (for example) your protagonist should or shouldn't do.  If you want to follow that feeling, then attempt to be as specific as possible about what it is that feels wrong.  Can you explain how, objectively, that part that bothers you does not integrate with the rest?  The finer the level of detail you can muster, the more certain you will become.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two previous are examples when the holes are subtle.  In contrast, when I'm writing, the most &lt;i&gt;blatant&lt;/i&gt; signs of lacking content I run up against are things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An unintentional unevenness in the pace.  Does an incidental travel scene take up more pages than events leading up to the conversation that informs the moral dilemma of the of story?  Perhaps trim some descriptions of the quality of light on the trees, and unfold more of the character's inner frustration at their own inability to articulate their beliefs.&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actions that advance the plot and are consistent with the character and the world (as known to the writer) but have no previous mention in the text itself.  During a sweep of revision it can be worth combing back through the text to check that all elements that combine in the central events of the plot have some seeds planted previously.&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10746" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T20:04:19.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6545" CreationDate="2014-09-28T08:32:37.483" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's also a sort of ellipsis signifying a break in narrative time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10754" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T08:32:37.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12976" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12977" CreationDate="2014-09-28T10:57:39.627" Score="8" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finished writing my essay about Sam Selvons &lt;em&gt;&quot;The Lonely Londoners&quot;&lt;/em&gt; which is written in &lt;em&gt;creolized English&lt;/em&gt;. The use of creolized English comes with many grammatical as well as spelling errors. Now I am not sure whether to use &quot;sic&quot; after every error (that would be many, many sics) or just put a phrase at the beginning or the end of the essay, which tells exactly that. To me it feels wrong to use 2 sics in each quote on average...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing in the MLA-Standard format using LaTeX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used the search function to find an answer, but I was not able to find an appropriate solution. Looking forward to reading your answers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10755" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T19:31:23.833" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T19:31:23.833" Title="Many quotations of a black British novel which used creolized English language. When to use sic?" Tags="|essay|language|mla|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12976" CreationDate="2014-09-28T11:05:21.697" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely - not just a phrase but at least a paragraph discussing the language, possibly detailing some characteristic points of it, early on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note - they aren't necessarily errors. That's a dialect, and as long as the spelling and grammar is true to that dialect, it's not erroneous; it just isn't Standard English. Think of it as quotations in a foreign language. If you write a sentence in Latin you don't put [sic] after every single word simply because it's not correct English (but correct Latin). It's the same here, the partial overlap with Standard English notwithstanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course keep your own essay in proper Standard English (AmE, BrE or whatever is your proper variant). If you use expressions from the original outside quotes, but in their original spelling, make them stand out as such, e.g. by writing them in italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T11:22:53.673" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T11:22:53.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12970" CreationDate="2014-09-28T15:38:26.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In books that go through multiple editions, you will sometimes see &quot;preface to the first edition&quot;, &quot;preface to the second edition&quot;, etc.  In other words, there is precedent for not editing it out but instead adding to it, even if -- for all we know -- the stuff people helped with in the first edition has since been removed.  Your original novel had help from people on both plot and language and you thanked them; you've now taken that work farther and have more people to thank.  That doesn't mean the first people are no longer relevant.  Even if some of them only helped you with Spanish issues, could that work have then helped produce a better English translation (by having a better baseline)?  Possibly.  So their contributions might not be so irrelevant after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, it costs you very little to thank people and, potentially, quite a bit to &lt;em&gt;decline&lt;/em&gt; to thank people by editing them out of the new edition.  I assume you want to stay on good terms with them and might want their help with future novels, so erring on the side of too much rather than too little when it comes to thanking people is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would recommend something like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would like to thank Alice, Bob, and Carol for their feedback on the earlier (Spanish) edition of this book, and Dan, Emma, and Frank for their feedback on this English translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't ascribe credit to Alic/Bob/Carol for work they didn't do on the English version, but don't leave them out either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T15:38:26.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12966" CreationDate="2014-09-28T15:44:45.897" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;has anyone seen a similar situation which helps shed light on this grey area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have in front of me two publications: &lt;em&gt;Common LISP: The Language&lt;/em&gt;, by Guy Steele (et al.) and published by Digital Press, and &lt;em&gt;Common LISP: The Index&lt;/em&gt;, by Rosemary Simpson and published by Coral Software Corp and Franz Inc.  Both were published in the US in the 1980s.  I was fairly active in the LISP community at the time and I didn't hear a ruckus about that index — just cheering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that the two publishers cooperated (the cover design of the index is clearly derived from the original book), but I don't know.  There is no acknowledgment section in the index.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the index doesn't reuse content from the original I don't see how it could infringe.  I offer this one example where somebody did exactly that without apparent repercussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it legal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer and you should consult one rather than just trusting people on the Internet.  That said, another answerer argues that an index infringes copyright because it is &quot;an exact duplicate of single words from another work&quot;, and I dispute that claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Words cannot be copyrighted.  Even &lt;em&gt;book titles&lt;/em&gt; cannot be copyrighted, as demonstrated by the number of duplicate and mostly-overlapping titles out there, so surely single words cannot be.  (If you invented the word you might be able to pursue a trademark, but that's different.  And rare, within the domain of things you might want to put into an index.)  Using words like &quot;iterator&quot; and &quot;class&quot; and &quot;inheritance&quot; in an index does not infringe the rights of the person who wrote the programming book you're indexing; if it did, then using those words in contexts other than an index would also infringe, yet we see many many books on the same topics and no record of the person who got there first successfully suing the others.  Conclusion: either this is legal or there is a vast untapped market of prospective, successful lawsuits that lawyers have routinely ignored.  Which do you think more likely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T21:05:40.020" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T21:05:40.020" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12973" CreationDate="2014-09-28T15:56:33.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;That looks about right to me. It might depend on the field of study and the conventions thereof. For example, as I recall, in my biology classes we were meant to cite in-text by author and year e.g. (Author et al., 2011). The bibliography, of course, will contain much more information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T15:56:33.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12981" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12982" CreationDate="2014-09-29T00:29:37.337" Score="0" ViewCount="4181" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you read an article then write a paragraph based on what you learned, do you cite the article at the end of the paragraph? Or do you have to cite after each time you mention something that isn't common knowledge? I've only been able to find help on citing quotes and single sentences. What if I have more 2-3 sentences back to back that are not quoted but from the same source? I would imagine its just at the end since it would look weird having the same citation after each sentence wouldn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10761" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T07:54:42.527" Title="APA Citation Single Source" Tags="|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12981" CreationDate="2014-09-29T07:16:21.197" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just once at the end of the last sentence. The only reason you would need to cite the same source twice is if you refer to it in different places in the text. If all the information from one source is sequential, you only need to cite once. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T07:16:21.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12971" CreationDate="2014-09-29T07:33:46.070" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question seems to be primarily about how to integrate plot and characterization. This is an issue I've been working hard on in my recent writing, so I'm going to make an unearthly effort to keep this answer short and to the point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My writing philosophy is this: &lt;strong&gt;every character is a question that needs answering&lt;/strong&gt;. Every character starts the story with a gap or wound in their lives, that needs filling or healing. Your job as a writer is to make that gap or wound a central part of your narrative. It doesn't &lt;em&gt;necessarily&lt;/em&gt; need to be the central axis of the plot. If your character is an orphan who feels like they have no place in the world, they might defeat an evil dragon and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; find out that they are the long-lost heirs to the kingdom. And that ending might look cheap to you, but it's satisfying to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ask yourself, for each of your characters, &lt;strong&gt;what is the question that drives them?&lt;/strong&gt; Common types of questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? How can I be the best? Characters may not &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; what their question is, and then it's your role as writer to give them an ending of &lt;strong&gt;what they &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; as opposed to what they want&lt;/strong&gt;. Example: Disney's &lt;em&gt;The Princess and the Frog&lt;/em&gt; has &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lkyqLhLXQ4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an entire song&lt;/a&gt; about this very subject. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion: to find your plot's most satisfying conclusion, find the question that your protagonist most &lt;em&gt;needs&lt;/em&gt; to answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T09:51:59.183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T09:51:59.183" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12990" CreationDate="2014-09-29T11:41:09.033" Score="5" ViewCount="5630" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read Harry Potter and am a big fan of J.K. Rowling's writing and I had always had this urge to blog &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; to write. So, I started a blog - &lt;a href=&quot;http://2200ce.blogspot.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2200 Common Era&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've the basic idea of writing a science fiction set in the backdrop of space.&#xA;I don't know the whole story or to say, I don't have the whole story in my mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decide what should be written next only when I am writing that. So, I want to ask what should I do? Should I build the whole story and then reproduce it in written, or think of story each time I write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10765" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T20:30:28.230" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T21:07:32.893" Title="Is it OK to invent as I write, or should I plan the entire story first?" Tags="|plot|planning|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12984" CreationDate="2014-09-29T11:53:53.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common practice is to envision a scene and then write the story towards that scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quentin tarantino Thought up a scene where 3 men with 2 pistols each were pointing their handguns at each other in a mexican standoff. He didn't know who any of them were or what quarrel they had, but that was what he started with to make his story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question about JK Rowling.&#xA;I'm pretty sure that she came up with the idea of the deathly hollows around the making&#xA;of the last book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastEditorUserId="8727" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T04:19:19.717" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T04:19:19.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12986" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12988" CreationDate="2014-09-24T23:06:15.933" Score="9" ViewCount="14141" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately I've noticed some news articles using (usually) a single sentence per paragraph. Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29341850&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29341850&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/61477320/five-years-in-bali-jail-possible-for-nz-man.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/61477320/five-years-in-bali-jail-possible-for-nz-man.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was taught in school to use about 3-4, and while I'm sure there are exceptions it seems strange to me to see a single sentence per paragraph, and it sounds kind of stilted when I read it in my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a modern change of thought on sentences-per-paragraph, or is this to achieve a certain effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10767" OwnerDisplayName="Crummy" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T14:06:37.590" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T10:12:08.517" Title="Why one sentence per paragraph in these news articles?" Tags="|style|journalism|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12986" CreationDate="2014-09-24T23:44:21.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Single sentence paragraphing is perfectly acceptable, it is a stylistic choice. It's common in online journalism and tabloids. It's intended use is to make reading easier. Online newspaper articles and blogs are frequently viewed on mobile phones which make webpages look very narrow when compared to a typical computer monitor. If written this way then at least one sentence is able to be read before needing to scroll down. It's also used to keep readers interested by using single sentences rather than lengthy paragraphs. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2011/07/paragraph.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; blog article for more info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Mr_CryptoPrime" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T23:44:21.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12986" CreationDate="2014-09-25T00:12:42.460" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;While you may see this as a recent change in news reporting, it is neither restricted to the press nor a new development, though the nature of online media consumption may have promoted it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no requirement that paragraphs be of a certain length or contain a certain number of sentences.&lt;/strong&gt; Those considerations, as well as whether or not to organize ideas into paragraphs in the first place, depend on the medium. Single-sentence paragraphs can be found in works written centuries ago, and in literature, political writing, technical writing, and every other sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;News writing&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would accept that news may be particularly susceptible to the phenomenon. In expository writing as taught in schools, information is presented piece by piece, supporting a thesis and leading up to a conclusion. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_style&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;News reporting&lt;/a&gt;, on the other hand, organizes information by relative newsworthiness, with the most striking information presented in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/78697&quot;&gt;lede&lt;/a&gt;— no thesis, no conclusion. In a story written in the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/chip-on-your-shoulder/12754/writing-from-the-top-down-pros-and-cons-of-the-inverted-pyramid/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;inverted pyramid&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; style, one could cut off the story at the end of most paragraphs and remain cohesive. Information of subordinate newsworthiness is pushed into later paragraphs, and if only one sentence of information is worthy to sit at a certain place, so be it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newspaper articles (and their online equivalents) are not essays, and have not been for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/chip-on-your-shoulder/12755/birth-of-the-inverted-pyramid-a-child-of-technology-commerce-and-history/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a very long time&lt;/a&gt;. If you look up newspapers from the mid-20th century, you can see that articles opening with one- or two-sentence paragraphs is hardly new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Online writing&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These materials being presented &lt;em&gt;online&lt;/em&gt; is another factor. Reading from a computer screen is slower and more fatiguing than reading from a printed page: long line lengths on screen that make it difficult to follow multiple lines of text; the flicker of CRT monitors and the insomnia-promoting blue of LED backlights increase eye fatigue; poor screen resolution makes characters more difficult for the brain to comprehend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyu.edu/employees/resources-and-services/media-and-communications/styleguide/website/writing-for-the-web.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;various&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/content/tips/index_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;guidelines&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/writing-for-the-web.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;writing on the web&lt;/a&gt; emphasize brevity (short sentences and paragraphs) and chunking (organizing material in to small groups with a headline, for easy scanning while scrolling). It is easier to keep your place in text if there are only three vertical lines to scan, not ten. And we are more likely to remain on a website which is easier to read. Online forum participants perpetually complain about the failure of new members to break up their text, and the expression &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tldr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TL;DR&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is lobbed against responses such as the one I am composing right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="choster" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T00:12:42.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12986" CreationDate="2014-09-29T14:22:17.420" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two reasons.  First, as described in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12988/1993&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, news articles are written as an inverted pyramid and are designed to be cut at any paragraph break and still work.  In the late stages of newspaper assembly, the editor making the decisions about what goes where and making it all fit is not going to read and decide -- he's going to lop it off at a paragraph break.  So you need paragraph breaks at &quot;steps&quot; in content-importance, and the more a writer does this the easier the editor's job is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, journalism style developed in the context of print newspapers.  A typical newspaper has 4-6 columns of text on a page, each column being fairly narrow.  You want to avoid the &quot;wall of text&quot; where a story goes for several inches without paragraph breaks, because readers facing that tend to bail.  This tends to push for shorter paragraphs (by word- or sentence-count), so that the final newspaper presentation will still be usable.  While the constraints are different for online news read on desktop computers, two points: (a) some people read on phones (as noted in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12987/1993&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;), and (b) the same story has to work for print and online because the editor doesn't want to double his work.  So if the online media site has a corresponding print edition, it's going to tend to follow this constraint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer is based on what I learned working on, and ultimately being editor-in-chief of, a student newspaper in college (where I did late-stage editing with an X-acto knife -- &quot;cut&quot; was literal).  I do not have professional journalism experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T14:22:17.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12984" CreationDate="2014-09-29T16:18:52.920" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I decide what should be written next only when I am writing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This called being a &quot;pants writer&quot; or a &quot;pantser,&quot; meaning that you write by the seat of your pants. It's completely valid as a workflow, &lt;em&gt;IF&lt;/em&gt; you are then willing to go back to the beginning when you're finished and edit with a firm, even harsh hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because it spews out of you doesn't mean the plot will work, the characters will be intriguing, or all the questions will be answered. So you will have to go back and tweak, fix, rewrite, and possibly unravel chunks of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you can't edit a blank page. If you pants the entire thing, you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; have a book to wrangle into shape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say go for it. Write what comes out, write to the end, and then go back and fix it afterward. Just remember that for a pantser, the editing and rewriting are part of your &lt;em&gt;first draft&lt;/em&gt; process, not optional passes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T09:46:01.370" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T09:46:01.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12762" CreationDate="2014-09-29T20:26:57.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're asking for is probably more suited to the TeX stack exchange; they've got a similar answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/31196/template-for-a-book-for-children&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, along with some template information. I think you'd be wise to look here before continuing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nice thing about LaTeX, however, is that the plain-text nature of it makes it easier to modify existing templates to suit your needs. So, maybe the link I included will point you to something you could use for this. The added benefit here is that you'll get some TeX practice while working on your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10769" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:29.717" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T20:26:57.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12984" CreationDate="2014-09-29T22:12:38.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is bad to write with no plan whatsoever.  Your story will meander too much.  It might be an interesting trip, but you'll get lost and go nowhere.  At the absolute minimum, you need an ending toward which you are working (according to every professional writer I've ever seen/read interviewed).  [edit: But see discussion in comments below.]  Preferably, you should also have &quot;way points,&quot; which are mini end points -- rest stops on your journey.  That means you need at least a very rough outline of your story arc.  After that, feel free to explore the &quot;scenic countryside&quot; of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T21:40:50.723" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T21:40:50.723" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12984" CreationDate="2014-09-30T01:02:05.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This fits firmly into the category of &quot;do what works for you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that the more I plan ahead, the less likely I'm going to reach my destination. I work best when I have an open story ahead, and my world and its characters are allowed to grow in their own ways. This has the added benefit of allowing me to be surprised a bit by my own writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, writing without a plan does have some issues that need to be addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Inconsistencies and contradictions are easier to come by. Enjoying creative freedom is no excuse for sloppy writing. It is important to keep combing through what has been written to make sure there is continuity with is currently in your head. It may be necessary to create an outline after the fact to keep track of what has happened so far.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;New ideas, characters and settings that pop in to your story need to make sense. Some things cannot be just added in at the point where you are writing, it will often be necessary to go back and introduce plot points earlier in the story so that they will make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be prepared to crash and burn. It is easy for a story to get lost. You may very well get to a point where you have no idea where to go next. I have no good advice for that other than don't lose hope.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10132" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T01:02:05.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12994" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12996" CreationDate="2014-09-30T02:23:50.973" Score="4" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Half-crouching, I went over to the railing and pointed my flashlight&#xA;  down &lt;strong&gt;(to the ground).&lt;/strong&gt; It was approximately a two-storey fall. Not incredibly high, but&#xA;  high enough to kill a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cath covered her nose &lt;strong&gt;(with her hand).&lt;/strong&gt; “Damn. That stinks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt; text necessary? When to be specific and when to let context fill in the holes (e.g. the surrounding sentences)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T12:58:58.887" Title="When to be specific and when to let context fill in the holes?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|description|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12995" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-30T08:01:35.963" Score="2" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many companies I've seen it that more than 1 person are writing at the same documentation (be it user manual or technical documentation) for a computer application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have seen in usage was mostly svn in combination with windows word. This combination never worked out quite well and was quite a hindrance as far as I've seen. Other solutions&#xA;that functioned better for multiple users used clouds to store the data (example google docs) but that could be a problem with company policies in regards to storing important data externally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question would is, if there are any tools that fullfill the following requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PDF files are generateable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does not use an external cloud for storage but instead can either be used locally OR the company using it can setup their own cloud for it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no large overhead for having multiple users work on the same part of the documentation at the same time (or on different parts in the same file)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10102" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T19:06:35.067" Title="Tools for multiple creators/writers documentation without clouds" Tags="|tools|api-documentation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12994" CreationDate="2014-09-30T09:50:55.570" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My thought is, if you can remove the text (which you've bolded) and it still makes sense &amp;mdash; that is, if there is no other reasonable interpretation &amp;mdash; you can take it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can Cath reasonably cover her nose with her knee? with a bandana? If not, you're fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T09:50:55.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12995" CreationDate="2014-09-30T16:19:59.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main challenge of having multiple writers is dealing with conflicts -- either you have to lock files to prevent concurrent edits (as Word does), or you need a way to compare and merge changes.  Locking files can be pretty limiting (especially as your group grows), but source-control systems give you the latter if you don't use a binary file format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a lot elsewhere about &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10443/1993&quot;&gt;the advantages of using source control for documentation&lt;/a&gt;.  The key factors for you are the support for comparison (diff), merging, and branching.  In my previous position I spent many years using Perforce (for source control) and XML (DocBook) source for documentation with a small documentation team.  We had &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; few problems with conflicts -- only if two people made differently-drastic changes to the same section without talking with each other first.  We learned to talk with each other first -- coordination for things like wholesale restructurings is still important, but we could just fix bugs and make minor updates without worrying.  In my current position my team of about a dozen uses svn with HTML files; I haven't done an svn merge yet but I know it's possible.  (I've been told it's not quite as nice as Perforce's, but it works.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparison and merge tools depend on having meaningful source to compare, so that means you need to use some text source, not binary blobs.  Regardless of what WYSIWYG editor you might use to edit your files, you want the stored format to be XML or HTML or LaTeX or some other text format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for generating PDF, there are lots of ways to attack this.  I explained elsewhere &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10051/1993&quot;&gt;how to generate PDF from DocBook source&lt;/a&gt;.  Flare projects can be built to produce PDF (and HTML), which you can invoke from within the tool or externally.  (We have a nightly build that builds from our Flare source in svn.)  LaTeX's natural habitat is the command line and, again, it can produce PDF.  (This is a placeholder for Scrivener, which I haven't used but I've heard great things about.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: use source control and use a comparison-friendly source format to allow multiple writers to work in the same doc set, and there are many ways to generate PDF depending on what you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T16:19:59.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7217" CreationDate="2014-09-30T16:38:10.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds pretty good, in that I can kind of picture the scenes. (Of course, I actually know a couple with these names.)&#xA;If you're worried, though, play around a little with the scenes. Record yourself saying the dialogue out loud. Then playback, listening with fresh ears. (Kind of like when you revise.) Listen for anything that sounds too stilted &amp;amp; edit. &#xA;Take a break if you need it. One teacher advised our class to carry a writer's notebook (memo pad, journal, whatever you like). Go out and observe. Jot down ideas, snippets of overheard conversations. (And snippets - you don't need to transcribe word-for-word. Add a general descriptive or two of who's speaking - young/old, male/female, friends/strangers, etc. You're just giving yourself a little context.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10773" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T16:38:10.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12994" CreationDate="2014-09-30T19:09:47.820" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;These two examples make the scene more specific in a particular way: By adding modifiers.  In these cases: By adding adverbial phrases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your temptation to add the modifiers is telling you something.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Some word elsewhere in your sentences &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be too abstract.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your concern about adding words is telling you something.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Some words elsewhere in your sentences &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be too abstract.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My recommendation.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;When you are puzzling about whether to add a modifier,&#xA;look at the other words.&#xA;One or more of them is probably abstract enough&#xA;that they don't paint a vivid picture.&#xA;See if you can find stronger words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cath pressed her hand to her nose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Covered&quot; was unnecessarily abstract.&#xA;&quot;Pressed her hand&quot; is more vivid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often you can remove a word that is not carrying its weight:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Half-crouching, I went over to the railing and pointed my flashlight at the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Down&quot; added little to the sentence. Drop it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveats.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I'm not recommending, as some advisors do, that you eliminate all modifiers.&#xA;Modifiers have all sorts of wonderful uses,&#xA;such as&#xA;expressing the POV character's attitude&#xA;or improving rhythm and lyricality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; function&#xA;that a modifier serves&#xA;is to supply details to make the scene vivid,&#xA;see if you can find another way to accomplish that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a modifier is the only way I can think of&#xA;to supply the necessary details.&#xA;So I modify, shrug, and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T19:09:47.820" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12994" CreationDate="2014-09-30T20:10:35.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seem to be two basic issues in this question. The first is similar to the issue of when a pronoun's antecedent is clear; is the extra information necessary for an understanding of the basic meaning of the text. This is addressed by &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12996&quot;&gt;Lauren Ipsum's answer&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;if there is no other reasonable interpretation&quot; when the extra information is excluded, then &quot;you can take it out.&quot; As with pronouns and antecedents, this &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be less than obvious to the writer in some cases since the writer knows what was meant, but typically an analytical reading can make the determination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other issue is whether the extra information serves a function other than expressing the basic meaning. Extraneous information can be used to provide the desired length or rhythm (e.g., for a slower pace), to communicate in sound or connotation some addition information, to express some effect from the level of detail itself, to provide a foundation or link for adding information, to make a subtle point, or even to include some element of repetition that is significant to the theme of the story or to one of the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Use for length or rhythm&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this is generally not the best method for adding length, it can be acceptable, particularly when other purposes carry part of the weight of the extraneous information. In the first example, &quot;to the ground&quot; would seem to be acceptable for a slower pace if the narrator is casually considering death (in which case the more casual &quot;nearly&quot; might replace the more analytical &quot;approximately&quot; and a comma replace the period after &quot;fall&quot;), especially with the sound/connotation effect of ground (explained later). In the second example, the pacing is presumably meant to be fast so extra syllables would be counterproductive. (Also &quot;pinched&quot; might be a more precise and accurate verb than &quot;covered&quot;, having the side benefit of a harsh sound and sharp connotation, with sound similarity to &quot;pain&quot;, &quot;punch&quot;, and &quot;pin&quot; and a sense of squeezing tightly to the point of mild pain, which fits with the olfactory &quot;pain&quot; caused by the stench. It also has one less syllable, further improving pacing and sharpness.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While extreme attention to rhythm is more significant for poetry, in some cases prose can benefit from changes that allow continuing a regular beat or disrupting the rhythm. This is closely related to pacing (length and the rhythm of natural stresses both influence pacing), but can also present subtle effects like implying order with a regular rhythm or strengthening a transition or a &quot;harsh&quot; concept by breaking an established rhythm. In the first example, &quot;'ted my flashlight down to the ground&quot; scans as ˘ ˘ ´ ˘  ´ ˘ ˘ ´ where the intermediate iamb, nearly a spondee (´ ´), &quot;'light down&quot; almost gives a sense of the tension of tripping with the following anapest (˘ ˘ ´) perhaps hinting at a short fall (two unstressed syllables) and final impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Use of the sound or connotation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, the denotation of the words is not essential but the sound and sense of the words adds worthwhile meaning. In the first example text, &quot;ground&quot; has a harsh sound and a hard connotation, perhaps hinting at the impact from a fall. This effect is somewhat enhanced by its following the somewhat repetitive (and mildly oppressive) in meaning and sound &quot;down&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extensive use of such effects is less appropriate for prose (where sound and connotation are expected to be used more subtly) and would be jarring if noticeable. However, used judiciously, such effects can provide some of the emotive effects associated with poetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Use as unusually extensive detail&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Including seemingly extraneous information can present an effect from the level of detail itself. This might parallel the pacing use in presenting a calm or bored tone (&quot;counting flowers on the wall&quot;), but it can also express extreme observation (à la Sherlock Holmes) or a consciousness of specific aspects (e.g., attention to a person's body). For the latter, this would typically be joined with adding further information. For example, if the narrator particularly notices Cath's bodily features (e.g., romantically or in comparison), «Cath turned her head, her petite hand holding her nose, &quot;Oi, what a stench!&quot;» states not only that the narrator notes that her hand is small (perhaps cute, reinforced with &quot;Oi&quot; and the slightly softer sounding &quot;stench&quot;) but also that attention is paid to her physical form. (The slower pace of that sentence would further emphasize the narrator's attention to Cath.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excessive detail can also be used as distraction, by casually drawing attention to a feature the reader can be deceived into believing that there is some significance to that feature. This drawing of attention may also make other information less noticeable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Use for adding information&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A word or phrase which is unnecessary by itself can be used to allow adding information, whether by description of the extraneous component or providing a link that naturally flows into the additional information. For example, «Cath stopped her nose with her fingers, revealing her ring, &quot;Woo! What died in here!&quot;» uses &quot;with her fingers&quot; to mention the showing of the ring where &quot;stopped her nose, revealing her ring&quot; is less clear. (Incidentally, that phrasing could be used to imply the narrator feeling, after the revelation of the engagement ring, &quot;my hope for a romantic relationship [is what died]&quot;.) Similarly, &quot;Cath pinched her nose with her bleeding hand&quot; allows the addition of &quot;bleeding&quot; (perhaps she cut it earlier and only then is revealed to be bleeding).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Use for subtext&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is somewhat related to providing additional information with the distinction that the information is not explicitly declared. For example, &quot;Cath pinched her nose with her left hand.&quot; might be used to subtly remind the reader that fingers in her right hand were in a splint. Alternatively, the use of her hand, although natural, might be a &lt;em&gt;deviation&lt;/em&gt; from her expected lady-like use of a handkerchief; this would mildly reinforce her atypical use of coarse language (she did not say &quot;My word! What an unpleasant odor!&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first example text, being able to see the ground might be used to indicate that no awnings or other obstruction would break a person's fall. This lack of obstructions need not be unusual to be noteworthy, but it would require that some preceding (or possibly merely proximate) statement provided the appropriate context. (For example, in the previous chapter, the narrator might have been looking out a high-rise apartment window and see &quot;the awnings like cheerfully colored firemen's nets stretched out from the bottom of the building&quot;; this might even be used in that portion to express an urging to jump or to foreshadow such.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Use of repetitive concepts&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unnecessary content can also be used to reinforce something significant to the theme of the story or to one of the characters. This is effectively a broader and probably lighter-handed use of subtext and connotation. By using unnecessary words that consistently point to a particular idea or feeling, the idea or feeling can be subtly established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the words are unnecessary, their inclusion implies an unknown significance. This can be used as a background sound that the reader may only notice at the end or may never consciously realize is contributing to the emotional effect of the writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explicitly stating &quot;with her hand&quot; might be one of many mentions of that character or people generally using their hands (&quot;she sprinkled on the cheese with her fingers&quot;, &quot;she grasped the knob in her hand&quot;, etc.), foreshadowing a reveal that the narrator has a crippled hand (and these were all reminders of what was lost) or that the character will lose the use of her hand (reinforcing the tragedy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, &quot;ground&quot; could be used as one of many references of varying subtly to burial (and thus death).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, in a shorter writing, such cues can be inserted more frequently and with somewhat less subtly without the reader becoming fully aware of the intent before the writer intends. It may also be possible in a longer work to introduce a Pavlovian response to particular concepts. This would be an effect similar to background music but likely with less benefit from a common human or cultural association of concepts with the desired expectation. Like background music, the intended effect can be lost if it becomes noticeable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to asking if a particular phrase is necessary, a writer can ask if it is &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt;. In non-fiction, extraneous content generally works against the desired clarity and conciseness, but in fiction (and poetry) clarity and brevity may be less important than other considerations such as emotive effect and may even be contrary to the goals of the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T12:58:58.887" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12984" CreationDate="2014-10-01T06:46:58.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with writing off the cuff: trying to keep written conversation flowing nicely by a version of stream-of-consciousness i.e. if you type reasonably fast its almost like &quot;recording&quot; your own imagination-dialogue. Done well it makes for excellent material - well-paced and &quot;natural&quot; on read-back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rub comes when you've finished first splurge: editing, distilling your material, layering in the 'bigger picture' content, quality and all the while maintaining that original immersive flow. It's a technique worth practising and one can do it anywhere, even eavesdropping on the subway. Soon enough even the narrative embellishments/description start including themselves in the 'stream'...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10777" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T06:46:58.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12981" CreationDate="2014-10-01T07:54:42.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The answer by Lea is wrong in APA!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two kinds of citations: direct quotes and paraphrases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Direct quotes&lt;/strong&gt; of less than 40 words are enclosed in quotations marks. Direct quotes of 40 words or more are set off from the surrounding text as &quot;block quotes&quot;. Direct quotes can be several sentences, even several paragraphs long, and the source for them is given once, usually at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Paraphrases&lt;/strong&gt; are handled differently. In APA the reference to a paraphrase must be given &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; the paraphrasing sentence, that is: before the closing full stop. The reference, therefore, can only apply to the sentence (or clause) that it is part of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example (note the position of the full stop):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;s&gt;Bla bla bla. (Source, 2014)&lt;/s&gt; &amp;lt;= This is wrong!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Bla bla bla (Source, 2014). &amp;lt;= This is right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If your paraphrase spans several sentences, each sentence must contain a reference to the source!&lt;/strong&gt; The APA Manual (2009, pp. 175f.) gives two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among epidemiological samples, Kessler (2003) found that early onset social anxiety disorder results in a more potent and severe course. Kessler also found.... The study also showed that there was a high rate of comorbidity with alcohol abuse or dependence and major depression (Kessler, 2003).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Early onset results in a more persistent and severe course (Kessler, 2003). Kessler (2003) also found....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T07:54:42.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12971" CreationDate="2014-10-01T08:41:16.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lea has given a great answer (and +1), but, as Nicole noted in her comment, &lt;strong&gt;there are many possible answers to the question that is your character&lt;/strong&gt;, so I would like to expand on Lea's answer a bit (and will use SF's answer to do so).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To find the &amp;quot;correct&amp;quot; answer to the question that is your character, &lt;strong&gt;your character and his behavior do not matter at all&lt;/strong&gt;. What matters is that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;the end must fit the &lt;em&gt;tone&lt;/em&gt; of your narration.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A gritty story must have a gritty end, no matter if the character did only good. A light summer read must end well, even if the character did a lot of wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reader satisfaction does not happen when characters get what they deserve. Reader satisfaction happens when the end fits the world the narrator creates for the reader. The voice of your narrator – which can be cynical or loving, earnest or humorous, and so on – sets the reader's expectations, and your end must fit that voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T08:41:16.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13007" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-01T21:49:04.473" Score="-1" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've opened a question in another section: &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6911/is-this-question-possible-in-this-section&quot;&gt;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6911/is-this-question-possible-in-this-section&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is pretty unclear but for me is really hard to improve the way I'm writing and often it's hard even to understand what exactly I should change in my style. I can realize that it's not charming but it's like in a chess play where I don't know what exactly to check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cite a small part of the question itself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; Visual Studio is one of the best editors for writing code in .net. But I&#xA;  also &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; it's not completely mature. I always get lost trying to&#xA;  follow the code from one class to the other. &lt;strong&gt;And I &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; productivity&#xA;  in software development is really low compared to others sectors like&#xA;  the building of an auto (&lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; to the concept of a pipeline).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Modifying a single functionality in code may require to go ahead and&#xA;  back between 5 or 10 files. Which makes people become dumb :-p&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bolded sentence is something I strongly believe but it's not needed here. It explains the motivation which pushed me to open the question, but I suspect that sentence made me verbose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also repeating a lot the word think. I use it because people may prefer an opinion expressed in that way. But still I think it is bad for the &quot;look&quot; of my text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How could I improve my way of writing? I don't have a problem with grammar, are there books which are focusing specifically on my problem?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ps: I read already. I write in communities, cinema reviews but I really dislike my style. I've read also this Q&amp;amp;A: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7589/ways-to-improve-your-writing-skills&quot;&gt;Ways to improve your writing skills&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T20:12:37.310" Title="Are there books to improve the style?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13008" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13009" CreationDate="2014-10-02T02:13:14.613" Score="1" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's start with a scenario: a dozen babies are left on an island in the middle of the ocean and are brought up by monkeys. When they come of age, they are mean to find a message somewhere on the island, possibly a tablet or a book. Only there is one problem: &lt;strong&gt;there is no way for the children to understand English.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The children may have come up with their own form of verbal communication, but that is a big if. Nonetheless, it is definitely not going to be English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can these children be taught to speak and read English if they are abandoned before they even begin to crawl?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest situation like this that I can think of would be &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Flies&lt;/em&gt;, but they are already quite fluent by the time they get to the island.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10644" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T06:53:34.440" Title="Stranded Society Speaking Same Language" Tags="|fiction|planning|plot|language|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13008" CreationDate="2014-10-02T02:35:29.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The original Tarzan book deals with this situation.  His parents had several years' worth of picture and children's books, which they intended to use to educate him while they did whatever they were doing in Africa (which I forget) before they were marooned by pirates.  [edit: Then they both died while Tarzan was still a baby.]  So, yeah, they had a homeschooling curriculum, and Tarzan [later, as a grown ape-man]used it to self-educate himself.  Plus he had his parents' books and their diary.  When Tarzan met Jane, he could read and write English but not speak it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, don't expect ordinary mortals to get these kinds of self-instructed homeschooling results!  According to Wikipedia, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Tarzan] learns a new language in days, ultimately speaking many&#xA;  languages, including that of the great apes, French, English, Dutch,&#xA;  German, Swahili, many Bantu dialects, Arabic, ancient Greek, ancient&#xA;  Latin, Mayan, the languages of the Ant Men and of Pellucidar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He also communicates with many species of jungle animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus he won the Scripps Spelling Bee.  ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking your kids won't all be homeschooled uber-men like Tarzan.  OTOH, you have a bunch of them, so they could work together on the problem.  That makes figuring out written language not outside the realm of possibility.  J.R.R. Tolkien and his sister had their own language.  Kids are really smart when they're not wasting their minds on TV and video games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T12:18:54.987" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T12:18:54.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12973" CreationDate="2014-10-02T03:17:33.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would do that as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The barn was on fire so I ran away.&quot; [13] (Citing [14])&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where [13] is where you got the quote and [14] is Some Research Study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or even&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The barn was on fire1 so I ran away.&quot; [13] (Citing [14] as 1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where the 1 would be superscripted, as in the original.  (Sorry, can't figure out how to do that here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would change the quote as little as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this might be pertinent for you (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.york.ac.uk/integrity/ieee.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.york.ac.uk/integrity/ieee.html&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Only published works, those due for publication and unpublished work available in a library or archive are included in citations.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if Some Research Study is unpublished and not likely to be in any library or archive, then IEEE guidelines are to not cite it.  Problem solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T03:17:33.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13011" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-02T04:39:12.157" Score="1" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the themes in my book is Good vs Evil.&#xA;I have chosen to portray the south African Idealogy of Ubuntu in a fictional culture in my book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actual text from my book:&#xA;Ubuntu literally means 'Humanity towards others'.We are not many nations.  We are one nation,and we are one people called the human race.&#xA;All peoples have more similarities than differances, therefore no one has any right to treat another like a lesser being. Humanity is something that we owe to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another piece of information that I feel is relevant is that I added other things to my fictional culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did this because my antagonists culture is evil and I felt that my book could use a protagonist culture that was Good for the contrast. And I felt that such an ideology deserves to become more known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the afterword I did say that it is a South African Idealogy and that I did not come up with it. Thus giving credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What possible consequences do I face from doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T19:28:46.720" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T19:00:09.067" Title="Non-fictional ideology in a fictional culture" Tags="|non-fiction|philosophy|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12827" CreationDate="2014-10-02T05:02:11.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're better off with a translation service, or a bilingual person, than a sort of &quot;DIY&quot; translation. (Unless you know Chinese well enough yourself?) Meaning can get lost in translation, especially when English is involved. An easy example? Just look at the word &quot;lead&quot; and its possible definitions. And your student may have an easier time understanding math &amp;amp; science in English. When I was an exchange student, even though I didn't know all the words, I still did better in my chemistry &amp;amp; calculus classes than language &amp;amp; history, even though those first two were not usually my best subject. And, yes, foreign students usually attend English language schools to immerse themselves, and it's best to help them in English, etc. But sometimes the answers are too hard to understand, and then getting some explanations in their native language benefits them better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10773" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T05:02:11.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13011" CreationDate="2014-10-02T06:24:13.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possible consequences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People get mad:&lt;/strong&gt; Especially if the story gets popular. And the madness can come from unexpected directions. Good example is &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; which is claimed to promote Satanism an Witchcraft by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter#Controversies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Christian community&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People will try to correct you:&lt;/strong&gt; Especially in fiction book and if becomes popular. It is clear that you cannot describe the Ubuntu philosophy to every detail and every possible scenario. If the book gets popular, however, expect that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; people will try to tell you (through critics) that your book should get to more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People may use your book as propaganda&lt;/strong&gt; Obviously, this depends on how much the philosophy will be inside your original book and how good will it look. And also, this obviously happens only the really REALLY popular books. But you wanted to know the consequences, so here you go :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: This answer was written from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ubuntu.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; operating system. Maybe consider giving the philosophy different name, since it is inside fictional world&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T06:24:13.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12973" CreationDate="2014-10-02T07:26:39.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't quote quotes. &lt;strong&gt;Go to the original publication and quote from there.&lt;/strong&gt; Only if that is not available to you (which is rarely believable with almost everything being available online or through interlibrary loan) may you quote from a secondary source.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you quote a quote or paraphrase, &lt;strong&gt;quote it verbatim&lt;/strong&gt;. The footnote is not part of the text, so don't insert it there. How you handle the quote depends on what exactly you are citing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume what you have lying on your desk is an article by Miller (2018), which quotes a book by Johnson (1873). Johnson's argument is that the barn was on fire; Miller's argument is that he ran away (but did not see the fire, so he quotes Johnson to explain that part of the events).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. If you want to discuss Johnson's claim that the barn was on fire, you would do something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Johnson (1873; quoted from Miller, 2013) claimed that the barn was on fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot give a direct quote, because that is not given in Miller's article, so you have to paraphrase. If there was a direct quote from Johnson in Miller, your quote of it would look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The barn is on fire.&quot; (Johnson, 1873; quoted from Miller, 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. If you want to discuss Miller's running away (irrelevant of wether or not there was a fire) you would either paraphrase it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Miller (2013) ran away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or quote it directly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The barn was on fire&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; so I ran away.&quot; (Miller, 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases (a and b) you &lt;strong&gt;do not cite the footnote&lt;/strong&gt;, nor give the reference in your bibliography, because you are not concerned with the fire, only with the running away.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may help you to imagine your thesis as an argument. Are you arguing with Miller or with Johnson? Quote the text of the author that you are &quot;talking to&quot;. Quote it verbatim, including in-text references as they are printed. Handle them like typos (which you must not correct, either!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most basic rule is that &lt;strong&gt;you can only cite texts that you have read&lt;/strong&gt;! You cannot cite what others have read. The simple reason is that Miller might misrepresent Johnson. Maybe &quot;the barn is on fire&quot; does not mean in the context of Johnson's argumentation how Miller uses it in his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of exceptions are: lost texts that have only survived in quotes and must be reconstructed from there (e.g. ancient philosophers), or valuable manuscripts that have not been digitized and can only be accessed by travelling to a foreign country (e.g. an unpublished collection of letters). In all other cases you must get the original text and &lt;strong&gt;read&lt;/strong&gt; that. Of course a bachelor's thesis is not a doctoral dissertation, so you will not spend lots of money on acquiring literature, and you may not have the time to wait the weeks that some international interlibrary loans take, but make a decent effort and at least grab a copy of every digital source that you can access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm quoting APA style because I'm more familiar with that, but what I discuss here is indepentent of the style you use. Simply adapt my examples to your style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T07:26:39.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13008" CreationDate="2014-10-02T07:51:07.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why does the message have to be in English?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Messages that are meant to be understood across languages are usually encoded visually. Think of the pictograms used to direct people on airports, or the comic-book-like saftey instructions in the nets at the backs of airplane seats. Or think of making drinking gestures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I wanted to communicate a message to those kids, I would draw a comic, in very simple images, using objects from their context. They might puzzle over this for a while, not having seen drawings before, but I would guess they will make sense of it very much faster than a written text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many comic books and graphic novels without text. Some even illustrate abstract concepts such as evolution (Jens Harder, &lt;em&gt;Alpha ... directions&lt;/em&gt;). Of course, the meaning of a wordless comic will become more vague and ambivalent, the more complex the message is. But words aren't exact in their meaning either, and abstract concepts such as freedom or love are interpreted quite differently by different people and cultures. The more complex the message is, the more difficult it will be to make it understood by those children, no matter if it is encoded in words or images or some other means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the message must be written, then think about how people learn languages most easily. Current language teaching uses images or movies in connection with written or spoken text, the images showing what the words mean. One of the best examples is the Rosetta Stone program, which begins with children (&quot;boy&quot;, &quot;girl&quot;) playing (&quot;the children jump&quot;) and other simple objects (colors, fruits etc.). The program is completely in the language you are learning, with no grammar or other explanations, just presenting language and images in the same way that parents teach language to children. The astronauts use this program to learn Russian in a few months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything else is highly unlikely to work in the real world. People having to deal with survival won't form a community of scholars that will attempt to make sense of a sheet of paper covered in what to them will look like some random texture. How are they even supposed to know that writing is a form of encoding messages? (Also, how many linguists are there in a given population? Maybe there are one or two kids with that kind of talent and interest in your group, but two kids did not crack the hieroglyphs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a complex language might not develop in a few years. It is very well possible that those kids will be communicating in grunts and gestures and have no concept of language as we know it at all; or that their &quot;culture&quot; will be so different from ours that an accurate translation of a given English sentence will be impossible without making those kids familiar with out culture and its concepts first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that if the person abandoning those kids on that island plans to later give them a message, he would be stupid not to give them the means to decode it also. That is, to increase the probability of success of his plan he would give those kids a means to learn English (or whatever language he wants to use).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T06:53:34.440" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T06:53:34.440" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13008" CreationDate="2014-10-02T14:23:01.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I largely agree with @dmm's answer and I upvoted it. Let me add: Depending on what you're trying to do with this story, you could make a significant portion of the story be the children's effort to decipher the message. They could find an artifact with the message on it, and figure out that those lines and scratches must be some sort of writing. Lots of civilizations have thought of the idea of writing, so it wouldn't be a stretch to suppose that these children can grasp the idea when they see it even if they don't think of it themselves. Then someone remembers seeing some picture books with similar scratches in the wreckage of the ship or whatever, and they compare and see, yes, the same arrangement of lines occurs in both. Etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd guess it would be very unlikely that they could decipher a foreign language without SOME sort of key. Archaeologists have puzzled over some ancient languages for centuries without figuring them out, and that's lots of smart people with all sorts of resources. If the children are totally abandoned and have to invent their own language, then presumably no one can leave them an English/islander dictionary. So they'd have to have some other key -- like dmm's/Edgar Rice Burroughs's idea of picture books intended to teach children to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T14:23:01.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13007" CreationDate="2014-10-02T16:25:09.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Steven Pinker recently published a book called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00INIYG74&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Sense of Style&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. It's intended to help competent writers of nonfiction become good writers, and addresses these types of questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also try the classic &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/020530902X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Strunk &amp;amp; White, which is smaller and simpler, but about a century out of date. Nonetheless, most people will tell you it's required reading for all writers of prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10789" LastEditorUserId="10789" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T20:12:37.310" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T20:12:37.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12995" CreationDate="2014-10-02T19:06:35.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have used source control in documentation for several reasons besides multiple writers working on the same file. Some other uses are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tracking and communicating changes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deploying documentation to a web site&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integrating documentation with software builds. For example, I worked in a doc/software system that facilitated linking javadoc to other documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation review. Depending on the format of your documentation, you can use the same review tools that software engineers use for reviewing their code. For example, HTML documentation is relatively easy to review this way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think that you should strive to divide up documentation tasks so that writers work on their own set of files whenever possible. I can think of a huge number of reasons that this approach is preferable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all this, here are my specific answers to the OP's question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can generate PDF from HTML or XML, given the right tools. PDF is so popular that many tools support it out of the box. Because PDF is Adobe, the best PDF generation support is from FrameMaker, alas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want source control without a cloud server, you should look at Git, which is an open-source distributed system. Technically speaking, Git doesn't have a &quot;central&quot; repository. Instead, everybody that's interested in a set of software , documentation, and so forth gets their own copy, which is called a repository. All repositories are created equal, and each one can be branched and merged at will. Most of Git's software handles merging and conflict resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't answer for the overhead of the tools for generating PDF, but the overhead for Git depends on the number of files and the type of each file in each repository. Internally, Git tracks changes to text files rather than the entire file itself, but Git can't do this for binary files (such as .fm or .doc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10791" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T19:06:35.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13007" CreationDate="2014-10-02T19:18:38.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I do not &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt;, that Visual Studio is a good editor (or even IDE). &lt;em&gt;In my opinion&lt;/em&gt; only people who have never worked with something different than Visual Studio can come to the conclusion that it is any good. &lt;em&gt;As far as I see it&lt;/em&gt; you will change your mind as soon as you have put your hands on IntelliJ IDEA. (Well, there is a plug-in for VS, but I have already digressed enough.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are terrible styles out there in the Internet and I understand your wish to improve yourself (even though your style is already ahead of many others). But the most overlooked part is not style, it is the meaning. Care about meaningful stuff first. Write a lot and you will develop your own voice/style. There are enough people who are rhetorically brilliant, but have nothing to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a problem with repetition (thinkthinkthink), then skip the repetition. You can use other expressions like I did above, but in most cases/discussions people are aware that you are telling your opinion. You do not have to repeat that all the time. If you want to make it clear nonetheless, you can do that one time at the beginning (&quot;All of the following is my personal opinion, YMMW:&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think your sentences are too long/verbose, split them. Setting another period isn't that hard. And after splitting you can often easily see, what you need to keep and what you can throw away. Like unnecessary &lt;em&gt;thinkers&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, that's at least what I think :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T19:18:38.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7589" CreationDate="2014-10-02T20:30:59.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers are correct to say that you need to read a lot. But it's not enough just to read. You have to read like a writer. Anytime you read a passage that is particularly clear or compelling, stop and try to figure out what made it so. Later, try to mimic that style in your own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When choosing what to read, look for writers who are masters of their craft. You won't learn good technique from bad writers. (Best-selling authors and popular bloggers tend to be excellent writers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10789" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T20:30:59.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13011" CreationDate="2014-10-03T19:39:50.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see no problem with this. There are many books that take a real world thought system and put it into a fictional universe. Think of samurai western movies, buddhist monks in space operas, meditation and yoga and all kinds of philosophical views in countless novels or films, and not to forget christian values reflected almost everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from the specific thought system you use, there is nothing uncommon about what you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T19:39:50.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12984" CreationDate="2014-10-03T19:57:13.307" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I firmly believe that you should try both approaches and experience yourself what works best for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you marry someone that you have never seen? Would you sign up for a job, or employ a new worker, without some practical probation? Would you buy a car without testdriving it? Would you decide on a lifelong diet without trying at least one meal? Do you try on your shoes and clothes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why the hell would you decide to write in a certain way without having tried the other way at least once?!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are different. What works fine for some of the answerers here, might not work for you. Not everyone finds the same persons attractive. Not everyone likes the same kind of food. Not everyone wants the same job. Not all clothes fit everyone equally well. To find out what fits &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; in writing, you have to try it on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both outline and no outline have their advantages and disadvantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outlining gives you more control and usually results in a more tight arc of suspense and satisfying end. No outline on the other hand often feels less constucted and flows more naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No outline writing will require more painful rewriting, since cleaning up the loose ends and filling the plot holes will force you to change what on the gut level feels right to you. No outline writers often have writer's block in the rewriting phase, losing the feeling for their work. Also, having to write the same thing twice is often almost impossible for &quot;discovery writers&quot;, as they are sometimes called: writing for them is experiencing, and they have already lived this life, and living it again is simply not possible. Rewriting makes their story feel stale and wrong for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outline writing carries the danger of overthinking, overplanning, and too much backstory. Outline writers sometimes get lost in research, world building, and characterization, and they will sometimes find it difficult to clearly see how much needs to be included in the story and what needs to be trimmed and deleted, or what is missing because while they know it their readers won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some professionals have found, through trial and error, a combination of both approaches that works for them. Some, like Brandon Sanderson, create a rough outline of the plot, so they know the route they are taking, but leave the character development and those characters' exact actions open for discovery during the writing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good procedure will depend a lot on the kind of story you want to tell. A detective story will need more planning, or else the riddles, clues and resolution won't add up. A character study like a story of a cast of characters forced together in a difficult situation will need more character planning, and might leave the development of the story open for discovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, what works for you will depend on the kind of person you are, and only you can find that out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-10-04T12:11:45.640" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T12:11:45.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12976" CreationDate="2014-10-03T20:20:13.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that you add sic only if the reader can be confused wether he is seeing a typo in your text or in the source that you quote. If you quote texts whose orthography differs systematically or consistently from current standards, such as Victorian age or older texts, dialect or slang, you can expect your readers to know that their spelling will be different, and an extra marker will be unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing for non expert readers, some introductory comments on how creole writers come to spell the way they do will help them gain the appropriate perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T20:20:13.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12966" CreationDate="2014-10-03T20:46:40.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think if you create and publish an index to the copyrighted work of another person you are infringing on their copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically what you are doing is using their work to create a derivative work, similar to making a movie of a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you should note that giving your index away for free does not.change anything. If you made a movie from one of Stephen King's novels and gave away the DVDs for free you'd still have broken the law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Make sure you ask a lawyer.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T20:46:40.747" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13011" CreationDate="2014-10-06T07:47:07.597" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with taking a real-world believe system and implanting it in a fantasy world is that it greatly stretches the suspension of disbelieve when you use the same terms the real-world believe system is using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The terms are usually the result of cultural circumstances during the founding of the believe system. When your believe system is indeed universally applicable, it might be plausible that a completely different culture which invented the believe system under completely different circumstances. But it is quite hard to imagine that they would come up with exactly the same words for everything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A justification might be when you personally believe that your believe system is inspired by a divine being which stretches universe boundaries and exists both in the real-world and in the fictional universe you created. This would be appropriate for the Abrahamic religions, for example. But I don't know how well it would be applicable to the Ubuntu believe system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when you would like to explore the Ubuntu believe system in a fantastic context, you could easily camouflage it by just using different terms for everything. You would then have a believe system which is in every way identical to the Ubuntu philosophy, but just uses different terms. This would also give you an excuse for any personal liberties you take with the interpretation of that believe system (both intentionally or unintentionally).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T08:02:16.737" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T08:02:16.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13011" CreationDate="2014-10-06T09:04:24.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know you, so I don't know your level of familiarity with Ubuntu philosophy and the cultural lexicon that stems from it. However, it is worth noting that a situation such as you describe is &lt;strong&gt;not at all uncommon&lt;/strong&gt;. A great many English language authors (for example) have been inspired by philosophical ideals not native to the culture they were raised in. Terms like &lt;em&gt;Tao&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;karma&lt;/em&gt; and many, many others became common in English language usage (and other languages as well) due to influences like this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these authors were dabblers. Their understanding of the terms they used was incomplete and &lt;strong&gt;influenced by their own cultural ideals&lt;/strong&gt; and biases. When their works became widely disseminated, the altered concepts then became well-known in their home cultures. Frequently, this meant that they &lt;strong&gt;supplemented the meaning of the original&lt;/strong&gt;, non-derivative terms. It's also worth noting that this time of cultural migration tends to be conspicuously one-directional. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pavel provides a pretty good example of this process in his answer, above. The name &lt;em&gt;Ubuntu&lt;/em&gt; was given to a build of the operating system Linux, and for many people this will always be its primary meaning. Just as for many people, &lt;em&gt;Java&lt;/em&gt; will be a programming language (or a synonym for coffee) rather than the location of the Indonesian capital Jakarta. There are many other such examples, I am only pulling from computer science because that's what's familiar to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can decide yourself whether or not this is at all relevant to your decision making process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T09:04:24.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13030" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13031" CreationDate="2014-10-06T16:55:17.353" Score="8" ViewCount="2790" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing an apocalypse themed story.  As with the territory, death and/or injuries happen. &lt;strong&gt;I'm wondering how other writers write these scenes realistically as far as science, medicine, and biology are concerned?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meaning, if I injure a character's eye, knowing what happens if I do that, what methods can be used on the injured character when there is no sufficient medical expertise available, or the consequences of not having that medical treatment. Do writers just go by reading other materials of the same theme, looking into medical articles? I'm not really sure where to go to research this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google doesn't seem to be sufficient because if I look up an injury, it's going to tell me, &quot;Seek medical attention&quot; on some medical site and well, if this is the end of the world, what's going to happen to this character who can't seek this medical attention?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for any resources or tips. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10810" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T01:06:39.093" LastActivityDate="2020-08-03T14:53:01.730" Title="How to write realistic injury scenes?" Tags="|fiction|resources|research|science|horror|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13030" CreationDate="2014-10-06T17:13:22.397" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seek medical advice. Find a medical or health care professional who will answer your questions. If you can't figure it out from a book, find a doctor, nurse, EMT, etc. who is willing to sit down with you for half an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T17:13:22.397" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13011" CreationDate="2014-10-06T19:00:09.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you walk a dangerous line here, especially considering your subject position (by your profile picture, at least, you appear white, and while there are certainly white South Africans, their presence is due to a long history of violent colonial oppression). You come dangerously close to engaging in cultural appropriation; by being, as lea writes above, a &quot;dabbler,&quot; rather than someone immersed in that culture, you run the risk of dangerously oversimplifying the philosophy, especially considering the truncated description that you offer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also important to remember that, at least to some theorists, ideology is not simply a set of ideas, but one that has the ability to shape (or even determine) the way in which people recognize themselves as individuals, and in lifting the Ubuntu philosophy from the culture, you run the risk of mass marketing the cultural ideas to people for whom they do not bear the same sort of cultural significance. In essence, you are taking something from a group of people by using the name Ubuntu for what you are describing, and by taking that set of complex cultural phenomena out of the culture from which they originate, and putting it into a culture of your invention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thus have two recommendations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Call it something else, something that does not have the same sort of cultural meanings and regional specificity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go for it, but be very prepared for people to find fault with your analysis, and to go so far as to call you racist for doing what you're doing. Because that will almost certainly happen, especially given the climate surrounding contemporary identity politics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10769" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T19:00:09.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13034" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-06T23:05:32.763" Score="4" ViewCount="1290" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a book on Windows and I need some guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the cover of the book, as part of the subtitle, may I include Windows® in it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inside the book, do I have to use the ® every single little time I mention it, or will it be (legally speaking) implied by that point?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm not necessarily talking bad about Windows, but I am showing how to do things on Windows that the owners of the trademark probably wouldn't like.  Books like The Shellcoder's Handbook show you how to write exploits, and include chapters dedicated to this operating system.  Is this a legal grey area or am I free to use it as I please?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a reference I saw that didn't answer all of my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/IntellectualProperty/Trademarks/Usage/General.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/IntellectualProperty/Trademarks/Usage/General.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10813" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T03:11:08.967" LastActivityDate="2022-06-30T13:10:34.553" Title="Use of Registered trademark" Tags="|technical-writing|copyright|book|citations|trademark|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13030" CreationDate="2014-10-07T07:33:13.443" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difference between a successful writer and a wannabe writer is that the latter says that &quot;unfortunately I don't know anyone in the field,&quot; whereas the successful writer grabs a copy of the yellow pages, finds a doctor, and makes an appointment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A further difference is that the wannabe writer uses Google to find information, and that the successful writer knows about publication databases such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; and uses these from within a university library that has access to the paywalled content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The successful writer also knows that there are medical libraries full of books that teach medical students about injuries, what they look like, what effects they have, and how to treat them, and he has the confidence that if first semester medical students can grasp this information in the few weeks they learn for an exam, he can do so too, so he finds the next medical or university library and takes the next bus to read a copy of &lt;em&gt;The Wills Eye Manual: Office and Emergency Room Diagnosis and Treatment of Eye Disease&lt;/em&gt; or something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T07:33:13.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13034" CreationDate="2014-10-07T08:23:21.510" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll answer this question from an uncommon perspective. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) recommends that you &lt;strong&gt;do not use&lt;/strong&gt; the ™ or ® symbols but requires that you capitalize trade and brand names (2009, p. 102-103).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If a whole science can do without these symbols, so can you.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are unsure, look how respectable publishers like Addison Wesley or O'Reilly handle the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;O'Reilly mostly does not use the trademark symbols on the covers of their &lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.oreilly.com/category/browse-subjects/personal-computing/windows.do&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;books on Windows&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VRycb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;O&amp;#39;Reilly cover without trademark symbol&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but sometimes they do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/W2kyF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;O&amp;#39;Reilly cover with trademark symbol&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet in the interior text of the Windows® 8.1 Bible O'Reilly does &lt;strong&gt;not use&lt;/strong&gt; the trademark symbol that they printed on the cover. You can see a large part of the book online in &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=jbjQAgAAQBAJ&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;hl=de#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Books&lt;/a&gt; (direct link):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sKYjZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;text example from the Windows 8.1 Bible&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What they do is print a trademark attribution on the copyright page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WxAJm.png&quot; alt=&quot;excerpt from copyright page&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only if you sell or advertise trademarked products do you need to follow the trademark owner's guidelines. What you must make sure, though, is that it is clear that your publication is not official or endorsed by Microsoft in any way, and that you do not use their trademarks to market your publication (so, for example, do not make &quot;Windows&quot; bigger than other text on the cover).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the trademark owner, you don't have to use trademark symbols. For example, Apple does not use trademark symbols with their hardware, software or brand name. They have no legal implications. Their only purpose is to quickly identify trademarked words and phrases, but their absence does not mean that a word or phrase is not trademarked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that you should be safe if you do what other publishers do, but personally, I would &lt;strong&gt;consult a lawyer&lt;/strong&gt;, especially if your publication is critical of Microsoft or its products. Paying for legal advice is cheaper than having Microsoft's lawyers destroying your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T08:37:54.677" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T08:37:54.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13037" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-07T12:14:16.890" Score="0" ViewCount="2053" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you use real-world languages in a fantasy world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the fantasy world Nuvo there are witches who speak “Russian”. Since this fantasy world has no relation to the real world, or to Russian people in the real world, could someone still have their witches speak “Russian”?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10817" LastEditorUserId="537" LastEditDate="2016-09-15T13:55:54.347" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T13:55:54.347" Title="Use of real-world languages in a fantasy world" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|language|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13037" CreationDate="2014-10-07T13:29:59.530" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen books where the author prefaces the book by saying it's a translation of some other-worldly book, and then goes on to use real-world languages as a stand-in for the in-world languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tolkien did this to a minor degree when he used some more archaic English words for the Rohirrim, whose language was meant to be like an older form of the language everyone else spoke. Thus they use &lt;em&gt;thee&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;thou&lt;/em&gt; and such while everyone else uses &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as a reader I feel that it's always a little odd that the people in the book speak English and in a fantasy setting I'd be inclined to strip out every possible linguistic connection to English. So nothing in-story would depend on features of English, such as its facility for acronyms, or the etymology of its words, or its relation to other languages. English and Russian have some cognate words due to their historical development. Would there be any reason for the witches to have the same cognates as the other people in your story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, if the readers are meant to understand the witches' speech, you'd write it in English and just tell the reader if they're speaking some other language, or typeset it differently (put it in square brackets, or italics, or something). Since you're contemplating Russian, I assume you want most readers to be unable to read it? In which case a made-up language would be more realistic, albeit potentially much harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T13:29:59.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13037" CreationDate="2014-10-07T15:20:56.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;They can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can use the language itself within a book without specifying which is the matching language of the real world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you have a fantasy world with witches who speak a &quot;strange language&quot;, you can put the words in russian and never tell within the story that this is a real language spoken by real people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10774" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T15:20:56.447" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12801" CreationDate="2014-10-07T16:35:41.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Distillation of the comments:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you talking about the famous &lt;a href=&quot;http://emptymirror.livejournal.com/84005.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;J. Evans Pritchard&lt;/a&gt; quoted in &lt;em&gt;Dead Poets Society&lt;/em&gt;? He is apparently a pseudonym for Laurence Perrine, and the text is more or less taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1428289704&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T16:35:41.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13037" CreationDate="2014-10-07T17:03:04.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would agree with Mr. Shiny that the simplest way might be to say that they are speaking in their 'strange language,' and then just tell the reader what they said in English. For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I should think not,&quot; said the witch, still speaking in her strange&#xA;  tongue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do NOT want the reader to understand the witch, a made-up language would be best. If the phrases that are not meant to be understood are few enough, you likely won't even need a 'language.' Just a few words will do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T17:03:04.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12984" CreationDate="2014-10-07T23:33:17.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience it goes both ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either you start with an outline and write chapters and scenes from it, or once you've written your first draft &quot;by the seat of your pants&quot; you might end up creating what looks pretty much like an outline, or a scene list, just to get a grip of the often chaotic mass of text in the first draft. (This is at least how it works for me when I do it &quot;by the seats of my pants&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should probably refrain from submitting/publishing anything until you've rewritten the text in several drafts and know how things begin, tie together in the middle, and end. If you want to write at the top of your capacity several rewrites and lots of figuring things out and getting things to fit together is a must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody writes a first draft and gets it published, not even your favourite author :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sense in your question you might want to publish the text on a blog? You might copy the approach of TV shows and write episodes. However I have no experience with that kind of writing, but I am guessing they pretty much know the general details of every episode of the season before they air anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, going with an outline first or not... try one approach. If you don't like the result, try another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also finish a chapter at a time, polish it until it shines and then go on to the next. It's an approach between &quot;seats of the pants&quot; and outlining. Just like &quot;seats of the pants&quot;, it might end in a big nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also look into another form of outlining called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Snowflake Method&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, remember. It's all about creating the final manuscript... what method you use to get there is in fact irrelevant... Once you've written a few scripts you'll create your own process, and it may be anything between &quot;outlining&quot; and &quot;seats of the pants&quot; or both or something completely different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.s. I am not a native English speaker, and I don't write in English, so read between any grammatical errors! :D.s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T23:33:17.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13046" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-08T08:14:30.347" Score="3" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many of my course books, the header of each page includes a page number, and the name of the current chapter and section. Only in a few of the books the headers include the chapter and section number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the advantages of using only a section title in page headers? Section numbers are vastly more useful for finding my way around a book (if I'm at 5.4 and looking for 3.8, I know which way to go; if I'm at &lt;code&gt;Classical optimization, A review of methods&lt;/code&gt; and I'm looking for &lt;code&gt;Stochastic methods, Limitations&lt;/code&gt; I know nothing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really more about typesetting/publishing than writing, but I didn't find a better suited SE for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10831" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-10-11T12:57:20.033" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T12:57:20.033" Title="Why do page headers seldom include chapter/section numbers?" Tags="|style|formatting|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13046" CreationDate="2014-10-08T13:17:04.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you know which chapter/section number you need - you know it from table of contents. And that means you know the page number and know which way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, if you remember &quot;Stochastic methods, Limitations&quot; was roughly 2/3 into the book, you can flip pages quickly, skimming the headers, and find required section easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd find it really surprising to have readers remember section numbers only. They are quite useful in organizing the book and creating cross-references before the page numbering is fixed, but their usability to end users is marginal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T13:17:04.690" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13053" CreationDate="2014-10-08T16:37:04.647" Score="3" ViewCount="480" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an aspiring author. Though I am fairly certain of the answer to the question below, I figured I would make sure, or at least collect opinions, since I have not 'been there.' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: &lt;strong&gt;In the event that you are writing a series, is there a disadvantageous number of books you can publish in that series?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some series are trilogies. Some contain seven books, some four, some five, and some just seem to go on with no end. Is there a disadvantageous number of books you can have in a series? And if so, why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I am aware that it can be a bad idea to write more books in a series simply because the first book was successful. This question is aimed more at planned series. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2021-01-25T03:41:23.973" Title="Series: Is there a disadvantage to the number of books?" Tags="|series|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13050" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-08T17:00:26.813" Score="3" ViewCount="896" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a sci-fi/fantasy story, which is arguably not yet a novel, and has general similarities with most fantasy stories. I have a back story set and a fairly good idea on how the story is supposed to end. What I'm missing, however, is the filler content which propels that story towards its ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Thanks for letting me know of those shortcomings. I'll try to be a bit more specific here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Plot&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now while it's true that the plot details are up to me, what I want to know is how to connect the dots in an effective manner. Like I said, I have all the events that happened way before the actual story takes place, in other words, the back story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I make those events relevant to the current story line? How do I plan and write the story itself using this historical framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10833" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T06:07:19.260" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T00:23:26.880" Title="How do you effectively develop a plot when you have a proper back story?" Tags="|dialogue|character-development|science-fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13049" CreationDate="2014-10-08T21:31:32.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number of books in the series is irrelevant. What matters is whether you still have story to tell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JK Rowling planned the Potter series to have seven books; Harry's arc is finished. GRRMartin originally planned for four, but he's got so much to say that he's expanded to at least seven (and eight wouldn't surprise me if he lives that long). David Eddings's Belgariad was written as three books, but the publisher broke it somewhat arbitrarily into five. CE Murphy's Walker Papers needed 10 books and a novella to complete Joanne's story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, I thought Carol Berg's &lt;em&gt;Transformation&lt;/em&gt; was a perfect standalone, and I disliked the second and third in the rai-kirah trilogy. I thought the concepts introduced were boring and obscure, and didn't add anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it doesn't matter how many books are in the series. It matters whether the characters still have interesting things to do, and whether we care about them doing those things. That can take one book or twenty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T21:31:32.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13054" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13055" CreationDate="2014-10-08T21:52:27.163" Score="6" ViewCount="4746" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read this question:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2126/what-exactly-is-an-editor&quot;&gt;What exactly is an editor?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that anwers the 'what an editor is' &#xA;So, my question would rather be, How do you become an editor? Which skills must an editor have? Is it different from genre to genre?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10774" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-08-19T13:14:27.000" Title="Which skills should an editor have?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13054" CreationDate="2014-10-09T02:54:19.157" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You become a book editor by getting a job as an editor, and you do that by demonstrating competence and getting references. It's the same chicken-or-the-egg dilemma as in any field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editors of manuscripts need a fairly consistent set of skills. There's no standard educational background for an editor, although an English degree is useful to get a job with a publishing house or book agency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fiction, editors need a good feel for story, structure, and language. Editors should be at least reasonably well-read, with an appreciation for the history of the genre a book is in. If an editor doesn't appreciate that plot X has been done before numerous times, they can't help a writer avoid a clichéd plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-fiction, editors need not only knowledge of book structure and section design, but knowledge of several style manuals and their common applications. (Chicago for general text, AP for journalistic work, APA/MLA for academic/medical/tech work, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For any manuscript, editors need a working knowledge of grammar, language, and syntax. Editors don't need to be grammarians: I've met more than a few who can barely tell the difference between an adverb and an adjective but have an uncanny sense of correct phrasing and grammar. At the very least an editor needs to know enough grammar to guide a writer in the right direction. Of course, technical knowledge of grammar is extremely helpful to both editors and writers, in the same way that music theory is helpful to musicians. And there are many situations where the &quot;correct&quot; way is not the right way to write something, and an editor needs an eye for style to appreciate these moments. (For example, correcting all the uses of passive voice is a classic new-editor mistake.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, all editors need to be able to suggest changes in a helpful, diplomatic way. Telling a writer &quot;this sentence is ridiculously overwritten&quot; will often make a writer bristle and get defensive, where simply writing &quot;this would be more effective if streamlined, like so&quot; is offering a useful, helpful suggestion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T02:54:19.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13049" CreationDate="2014-10-09T09:22:39.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that there are two numbers that I would avoid: 1 and 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are duologies, but they are rare. I don't remember ever having encountered one personally. To me a two volume series feels like neither fish nor fowl. It is not a finished, rounded whole like a single-volume novel, nor does it have the appeal to live in an alternate universe for a significant stretch of time. A duology is like an aborted holiday, where someone got sick or you had to take care of a threat to your business. Certainly there are great things to be done with two volumes (lovers of symmetries as well as black and white thinkers will have great ideas, I'm sure), but the sense of incompleteness remains for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what about the one volume series? That's the series that did not sell, or that sold its second volume to a publishing house that went brankrupt, or that the author did not have the stamina to see through. Some of the best books I have read are of this kind, but as an author I would avoid this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T09:22:39.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13054" CreationDate="2014-10-09T09:24:58.277" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are asking how to get a job as an editor in some specific area of publishing, i.e. practical advice/info, or as per answer above, what skills are required to become a genuinely competent editor (as opposed to simply a test reader with a lot of specific comments for instance)..?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer from Neil is a Fein one. I'd stress his final point: an editor needs above all else to be &lt;em&gt;en rapport&lt;/em&gt; with the writer. It's very much a collaborative process, can be tedious and pedantic at times, emotionally charged (e.g. no author likes to hear an objective &quot;cut this&quot; about some precious scene) and stressful. The editor has to balance an objectivity, an eye for audience and reader &quot;eye&quot; or &quot;engagement&quot;, should be well-versed in subject matter and existing publications in the genre, as well as being able to see the wood for the trees throughout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is to say: editor should empathize sincerely with the writer's aims and understand what the writer is trying to achieve with the work at all levels - book as a whole, by chapter, per scene, in each sequence, with each sentence  - while avoiding being overly mechanical/rigid or risk of homogenizing the work (especially if creative fiction). An editor may also have many concurrent projects but mustn't let this detract from reaching close sympathy with each individual writer under his/her care. The list goes on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of the ideal editor as a mediator between writer and audience and this phase of writing being akin to bringing a busy blurry 'picture' into crisp, perfect focus. Originality is in the eye of the beholder (audience, reader) in the end, like it or not, as far as any work we presume to lay before the world. Good editors are an invualuable quality control and judge of whether content is merely reiterating the familiar, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, not being an editor myself I must say it may be one of the most demanding, unforgiving and thankless of jobs; yet crucial to the process. It's a vocation for some. Bad editors destroy. Good ones can be the essential bridge between writer and reader in countless unseen, never perceived ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Splurge ends!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10777" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T09:24:58.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13058" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14163" CreationDate="2014-10-09T12:38:08.300" Score="2" ViewCount="7576" Body="&lt;p&gt;What should a cover letter for a short story contain? Do I need to tell what is it about, try to &quot;sell&quot; it? Should I write about myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8408" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-05T14:29:56.527" LastActivityDate="2018-05-05T14:29:56.527" Title="How to write a cover letter for The New Yorker fiction section?" Tags="|email|submitting-work|cover-letter|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13046" CreationDate="2014-10-09T13:52:21.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only harm I see in adding numbers is that it takes up more space, and in some cases may make it that the entire heading no longer fits on one line, or a heading on the left runs into a heading on the right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's so much a matter of weighing gain versus harm, as a &quot;why bother&quot;. I'm hard pressed to think of cases where I say,  &quot;Now I want to flip to section 6.3&quot;. If it's something I've already read, I'm more likely to remember the title than the number. If I'm flipping through a book I haven't read before looking for material of interest to me, I might well say, &quot;Stochastic methods, that's something I've always been curious about.&quot; I can't imagine saying, &quot;I've always wanted to read a section numbered 6.12 -- so many book end chapter 6 with section 11.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, if a book has cross references that say &quot;see equation 5.3&quot;, then it should have chapter numbers in the page headers or footers. But even with that, if chapter 5 is long and has only a few equations, finding equation 5.3 could still be a search. A well-designed book would give the page number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes when you ask, &quot;Why don't people do good thing X?&quot;, the answer is, &quot;Because they're lazy and or stupid&quot;, sometimes it's &quot;because there is this really good reason to NOT do it&quot;, and sometimes, as here, it's &quot;because it isn't all that great an idea, it might help sometimes, but most people don't care enough to bother.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T13:52:21.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13060" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-09T15:11:01.920" Score="0" ViewCount="5689" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TED DIBAR&lt;/strong&gt;, (40s) swings his cape to the side, as he approaches Felix. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to continue to use the character's full name, or can I shorten it in subsequent mentions?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10834" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T19:33:03.263" LastActivityDate="2020-01-21T00:48:01.067" Title="Screenplay format: Can character names be shortened after the first mention?" Tags="|style|characters|screenwriting|naming|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13061" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-09T15:20:31.157" Score="2" ViewCount="851" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a screenplay, if you have a single character whose appearance and significance changes at some point - how do you note/explain that it's the same character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I might have a MASKED ASSASSIN in an early scene, and then in a later scene she appears as MARTHA MARIGOLD, without the Assassin Get-up. How should I describe this in the script?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10834" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T17:10:03.590" LastActivityDate="2014-10-10T09:29:10.337" Title="How do you mention the same character with two very different descriptions?" Tags="|characters|screenwriting|naming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13060" CreationDate="2014-10-09T19:05:34.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep your &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.screenwriting.info/06.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;script consistent&lt;/a&gt;. You do not want to confuse the readers. So, yes, always use the full name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T19:05:34.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12816" CreationDate="2014-10-09T19:31:41.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Beware: Here are no lawyers!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fair use&lt;/a&gt; includes &lt;em&gt;commentary, criticism, teaching.&lt;/em&gt; So I guess you would be safe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially in &quot;the absence of a free alternative&quot; as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Non-free_software_screenshot&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia puts it for its own screenshots&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Beware: I'm not a lawyer!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T19:31:41.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12984" CreationDate="2014-10-09T21:07:32.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely nothing wrong with writing a story this way. I personally believe the end-product of this method has potential to be more engaging than its counterpart. You are basing the content of your writing entirely upon inspiration rather than finding a means to an end. You will, however, need to do a fair amount more revising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10841" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T21:07:32.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13030" CreationDate="2014-10-09T21:15:18.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Optimally, you will find all the answers you need via medical journals, medical dictionaries, doctors, and the web, however, this is unrealistic. You will find that some 'injuries' you write about do not have an explanation because they are too specific or esoteric; in this case, it is important to use prior knowledge and critical reasoning to infer what &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; happen in such a case. This being said, make sure to do as much research as possible before resorting to inference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10841" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T21:15:18.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13037" CreationDate="2014-10-09T21:24:32.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it would depend on whether or not Russia exists in 'Nuvo'. If it doesn't it might be confusing to the reader and may take away from the over all fantastical feel of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10841" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T21:24:32.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7589" CreationDate="2014-10-09T21:32:42.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two simple answers to this question: read and write. Considering you are a CS major &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/me-ugoffice/communication/technical-writing.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this powerpoint&lt;/a&gt; that I read recently might help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try writing like a computer scientist. Read books about computer programming (technical, fictional, or nonfictional) and observe the way that the author writes. Try to implement their styles into your own writing and, with enough time and practice, you will eventually develop a style of your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10841" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T21:32:42.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13070" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13074" CreationDate="2014-10-10T03:46:07.837" Score="1" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a scene where one of the characters is explaining the process of natural selection:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Think of it as a beach full of crab holes of various shapes and sizes, and&#xA;  with little pebbles on the upper part, sculpted over hundreds and hundreds of&#xA;  years by crashing waves. The pebbles are constantly being dragged down&#xA;  by the waves and occasionally fall inside the crab holes. These&#xA;  'selected' pebbles aren't necessarily smoother or more symmetrical. On&#xA;  the contrary, they could be the most deformed of the bunch, it's&#xA;  just that they had the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; shape for a certain hole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the analogy above effective and clear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-10-10T13:39:56.460" LastActivityDate="2017-10-29T16:48:27.867" Title="Is the following analogy of natural selection effective and clear?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13071" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14091" CreationDate="2014-10-10T06:18:32.243" Score="-1" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to insert a text segment in a figure in my conference paper. Like &quot;number of cups per user&quot;, can I use &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;#cups/user&lt;/strong&gt; ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think &quot;cups/user&quot; means an average value, right?&#xA;What I need is a X-Y plot where X-axis is user ID, Y-axis is the numbers of cups of each user (not an average). It is supposed to look like:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0IzAo.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10842" LastEditorUserId="10842" LastEditDate="2014-10-10T14:20:12.007" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T00:20:49.047" Title="How to write &quot;number of cups per user&quot; for short using symbols?" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13061" CreationDate="2014-10-10T09:21:37.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A screenplay is written primarily for the production crew, not for the audience, so you don't have to be afraid of spoiling any plot points by mentioning that two apparently different persons are in fact the same character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you want both the MASKED ASSASSIN and MARTHA MARIGOLD to be portrayed by the same actress, you would refer to both under the same name, so nobody gets confused about how many actors need to be cast and which actors need to be present for the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make clear in which identity the character appears, you would mention the current identity in the stage direction when they appear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MARTHA MARIGOLD dressed in the MASKED ASSASSIN DISGUISE enters the room through the window &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                 MARTHA MARIGOLD: &#xA;             Time for you to die, fool!&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Martha Marigold stabs the man with a DAGGER. He falls to the ground and dies. Martha Marigold jumps out of the window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Martha Marigold, now without disguise, enters the room through the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                 MARTHA MARIGOLD: &#xA;       Oh no! Someone murdered him! Help! Police!&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2014-10-10T09:29:10.337" LastActivityDate="2014-10-10T09:29:10.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13070" CreationDate="2014-10-10T09:59:57.670" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Close. Part of the process of evolution is that it doesn't happen once, but repeatedly over a long period of time, and that &quot;falling through a particular hole&quot; allows something beneficial to happen later on (reproduction and thereby continuance of the species).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the pebble doesn't fall through the hole, you have to explain what bad thing would happen. And once the pebble is through the hole, something else needs to occur so that the cycle can repeat, and the next pebble is better-suited to do the next thing, whatever it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you've described is the beginning of natural selection, but you haven't completed the analogy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-10-10T09:59:57.670" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13075" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14110" CreationDate="2014-10-10T20:16:33.133" Score="1" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any good books or Web sites to help get started? I've always had a desire to write and would like to try it out, in this age of the Internet is that the best way to go or are magazines and papers still the way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10847" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:52:09.507" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:52:09.507" Title="What's the best way to break into freelance writing?" Tags="|resources|freelance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13077" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-11T05:58:07.743" Score="1" ViewCount="3393" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I attempt to publish a short story in a magazine, can there be an issue of copywriting? Do I need to somehow &quot;insure&quot; my work before I send it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8408" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T18:40:05.907" Title="Do I need to copyright a short story before I send it?" Tags="|publishing|short-story|copyright|copywriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13078" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-11T06:01:56.533" Score="5" ViewCount="1303" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a sci-fi/fantasy story and I have quite a number of characters that I want to deploy in the story. However, these characters should each have their own agendas in life, their own internal battles, shortcomings etc. In short, each of my characters should be as real and as human as possible. Memorable personalities which leave a mark upon the reader long after they've put my story down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My story seems to have a pretty good and solid back story. The main problem I'm facing is the development of characters. To me, they appear shallow and one dimensional. What I want to know is how I take these one dimensional characters and make them real. Make them someone you can connect to and remember long after you've read my story. What techniques can I use to make them more visceral, so to speak? This is also why I am concerned about dialogues between characters. The dialogues seem to be shallow and lacking right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10833" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-14T09:44:38.537" LastActivityDate="2020-08-03T07:59:21.370" Title="Making characters multidimensional and unique. What can I do?" Tags="|characters|dialogue|character-development|plot|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3245" CreationDate="2014-10-11T11:07:39.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found it interesting to think in terms of words written probably 1-2 million words for most writers (note this isn't necessarily the amount you will need to get published- but to be good. But it is important that you do 'deliberate practice' as part of this otherwise you will just become a prolific hack. It is an even older adage that it takes 10 years of writing to make a master (sorry folks). But I'm sure that depends on how many hours you put in and how hard you work on improving your craft. You could well be published long before you become a master- you just have to make sure that you don;t become complacent when you reach a certain level. But I think there are no guarantees of anything. after all Barbara Cartland wrote about 700 novels I believe but she was never a literary genius. Most writers don;t have personal trainers and don't push themselves as hard as Olympic athletes, but perhaps that means there is more scope for the diligent writer to excel &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10850" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T11:07:39.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13078" CreationDate="2014-10-11T16:01:28.840" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Give the characters something unique:&lt;/em&gt; It doesn't have to be something mind-blowing or some kind of superpower. It could be something as simple as a toe fetish or not being able to remember dates.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Give them an unexpected behavior:&lt;/em&gt; The wife of one of them left him and he reacted by ... cleaning the house from morning to night?! What? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Give them an inexplicable behavior:&lt;/em&gt; Maybe they like to collect canned cocktails or go to the beach during hurricanes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Give them complex back stories:&lt;/em&gt; Humans are complex beings. If you want your characters to be more human, enliven them with rich back stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Don't make them cliched:&lt;/em&gt; The mad scientist, the jock, the drunk wife beater, you know them. However, you can also grab a cliched character and turn it into a non-cliched character (e.g. Tom is a jock ... who secretly attends ballet classes at night).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Don't make them black and white:&lt;/em&gt; I'm not talking about race but to avoid making your characters either completely good or completely bad. These characters are boring, because they are easy to predict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I think your characters should be a reflection of your plot. If your &lt;strong&gt;plot&lt;/strong&gt; is interesting, your &lt;strong&gt;characters&lt;/strong&gt; will be interesting (it also works the other way around).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-10-14T01:37:28.110" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T01:37:28.110" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3245" CreationDate="2014-10-11T18:26:06.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing is that people tend to confuse writing with writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think, for a moment, of winning a marathon or singing an opera. Everyone can hurry along to a degree or sing under the shower, yet no one who has been hurrying to work for fifty years or singing under the shower every morning for decades would expect to win the NY Marathon or to be hired to perform in Mozart's Figaro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, returning to writing, you must certainly realize that writing, in the sense of drawing letters, is not the same as writing in the sense of having an interesting story idea, understanding human psychology enough to create believable characters, knowing genre conventions to be able to create a suspenseful and satisfying plot, and finally being able to step outside your own head and tell the story in a way that is intriguing to a sizable market share. Oh, and let's not forget a mastery of language that includes a feeling for syntactic rhythm and a general ability to form pleasant and understandable sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing, in the sense of crafting narratives, can no more be learned by writing shopping lists, emails or academic journal articles than walking to the bus is adequate training for a marathon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why people tend to confuse the two is a complete mystery to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T18:26:06.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3245" CreationDate="2014-10-11T21:28:20.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mark twain said &quot;Write what you know&quot;&#xA;If you are passionate about what you are writing then you are capable of producing brilliant art.&#xA;It's still for the best to seek out as much knowledge as you can about whatever art you have chosen though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T21:28:20.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13077" CreationDate="2014-10-11T23:47:13.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No it is not necessary to insure your work before sending it. International law will garantee copyright&#xA;ownership to the author &lt;em&gt;without any formality&lt;/em&gt;. This is stated in the&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/text.jsp?file_id=283698#P109_16834&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Berne convention in article 5.2&lt;/a&gt;, and repeated in the main&#xA;international treaties on copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is necessary to be able to prove that you are the author&#xA;in casesomeone else pretends to be the author. You can try to prove&#xA;that by any mean at your disposal. Registering with a copyright&#xA;office is one such mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note however that, in the USA at least, you must register with the copyright office if you want effective enforcement of your copyright in a court. Without registration, you cannot claim damage or attorney fees, though you can get an injunction against infringement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6647" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T23:47:13.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13050" CreationDate="2014-10-12T04:57:07.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plot combines all the aspects of a hook (beginning) and a great ending with steps to get from one to the other.  Great stories come from conflict. Put your character in a situation that seems nearly impossible to resolve, and then step by step resolve it; adding new challenges along the way.  The Middle section is most problematic for you. Keep out of the sagging middle by working more problems for your character.&#xA;Decide how long you want your story. SF stories tend to be longer 90K-120K word count because of the need to world build. Your back story sounds like you have your world created.  This is good. If you were writing a novella, you would have 20K words.  Divide the number of words into chapters. 100K/2500=40 chapters….or if you want longer chapters 100K/4000w=25 chapters. Divide the chapters into quarters—assign 25% to the set up/beginning; 25% to the ending (climax and resolve) and the rest 50% is your middle.&#xA;Create a main character with a flaw (at least one that is not disgusting, e.g. pedophile), who has a dream/goal/desire/passion.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Create an antagonist who believes s/he is the hero/ine of his/her own story and blocks the ambitions of the main character.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;By your first (three) chapter(s), you should have a MC with a goal, and show what obstacle prevents him/her from achieving it.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Write goal, motivation and conflict for every scene (usually 2-3 scenes per chapter) and identify the POV. &#xA;e.g. Harry Potter wanted to learn how to be a wizard(G); he had missed out on his parents and upbringing as a wizard and he felt he had to prove himself as the chosen one(M); he had many enemies in Slytherin, the Death Eaters and Voldemort who provided conflict/disasters(C/D).&#xA;You can do this by outlining (plotter) or writing by the seat of your pants (pantser). Every chapter must end with either a disaster or a resolution. Disasters create tension and make the story a page turner. Resolutions give the tension a break. Don’t use too many resolutions before the end.&#xA;The minute things are going well, throw in a problem. There should be a main arc (problem) to resolve, but each scene should have a problem (or resolution). &#xA;Ways to improve the above: take a class, join a writers group, write every day-some, and read, read, read.  Great books on writing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B008CC5L8Y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rock Your Plot by Cathy Yardley&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00DZ01FRY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Goal Motivation and Conflict by Debra Dixon&lt;/a&gt;; [Write Active Setting (Books 1, 2, 3&amp;amp; 4)  by Mary Buckham.][3] [SavvyAuthors.com][4] offers low cost classes by writers. [The MuseOnlineConference][5] offers a free conference. &#xA;I hope this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10857" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T04:57:07.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14085" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-12T05:45:35.297" Score="3" ViewCount="13965" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the past 4 years, I've developed a severe problem with writing anxiety. It's become so bad, that I had to drop out of my first university because I wasn't able to keep up with the course work. I've tried to manage the problem on my own, but with very limited success. Part of my problem is that the reaction is very visceral. I quite literally feel like throwing up when I approach a writing assignment. I haven't been able to unlearn that reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect a great deal of my anxiety is coming from perfectionism. I know I shouldn't strive to make my first draft perfect, but it's like I can't help it. I have a lot of difficulty bypassing my inner critic when writing first drafts, so it makes the whole process very stress-inducing and unpleasant, which makes me put off the writing entirely, which then leads to binge-writing sessions which are just terrible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if anyone had some tricks for bypassing the inner critic and mitigating the nausea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10858" LastActivityDate="2019-12-18T08:12:27.927" Title="What are some tricks for managing debilitating writing anxiety/phobia?" Tags="|academic-writing|essay|process|discipline|writers-block|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14086" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14094" CreationDate="2014-10-12T12:45:19.800" Score="2" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We reached the place a few minutes later, which turned out to be—a record store?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The room was tiny but nice. Simple, and with the comfort and coziness of the countryside. Plus it had everything we needed: a closet, a basic table, a bathroom, and ONLY ONE BED!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I did this was to give the impression that the narrator is right &lt;em&gt;there&lt;/em&gt; experiencing the action, instead of talking about something that happened in the &lt;em&gt;past&lt;/em&gt; (does it make sense?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this allowed in fiction writing? If not, what's a better alternative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-19T17:12:31.737" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T17:12:31.737" Title="Are the following passages examples of tense change? Are they allowed in fiction writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|narrative|tenses|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8473" CreationDate="2014-10-12T18:26:36.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with a lot of writing advice out there, I'd suggest focusing on what &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; find interesting in your travels, and using this as your theme (or structure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the travel was only to a single location, then what drew you there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether vacation or work, you or your business chose to go there - focus on those reasons as a starting point, and you can draw all sorts of comparisons between expectations and reality (as well as conclusions, should you be so inclined) which in itself is already a simple theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the travel was multiple locations, what was the purpose? What was the plan? Was the purpose met, did the plan change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, answering this will give you a simple structure in and of itself. I'm sure there are many other approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T18:26:36.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7624" CreationDate="2014-10-12T21:04:22.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;U.S.&lt;/strong&gt; the real name is available from either the copyright office or Amazon in a legal dispute. Using a publishing name doesn't change that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, here only the account number is used for direct deposit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10862" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T21:04:22.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12613" CreationDate="2014-10-12T22:19:32.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To address these issues, I have had to become less pen and paper. I use a stylus to write on a tablet with handwriting recognition. This is the best in between solution to the problems. From your past writings, scanning and doing OCR can be probably the only way to salvage the important information. Because trying to remember or scan it all is going to be hard. Making a library out of it is a science and art. And OCR is not going to be perfect. From the digitized version you can search and sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4969" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T22:19:32.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13071" CreationDate="2014-10-13T00:20:49.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would just be &quot;cups&quot; on the y axis of the histogram you are describing. (Though you could not explicitly show the numbered axis, put the number on the histogram bars, and title it &quot;Cups&quot; or &quot;Cups Consumed&quot; or &quot;Cups per Year&quot; as appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10864" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T00:20:49.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9318" CreationDate="2014-10-13T12:00:13.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suggest minor edits:&#xA;As if sensing my presence, the girl turned around. She looked young. Probably sixteen or seventeen. Her long black hair, crimson red lips, and skin so pale made me wonder whether she had any blood at all. What struck me most were her eyes. There was nothing unusual in them, but they made her face look lifeless, completely devoid of expression. It felt strange. Like staring at an empty canvas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10865" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T12:00:13.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14086" CreationDate="2014-10-13T18:04:46.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see any tense changes in your examples. It all appears to be in past tense. The reason the reader has the perception of the passages happening in present tense is due to the narrator presenting their rendition of the events in the way a storyteller would. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, your examples give the impression of somebody telling a story around a campfire, where the speaker would add pauses and dramatic realizations to build up the listener's interest.  The text emphasis only increases the overall of effect of &quot;we're being physically told a story right now by someone who experienced it.&quot; Your use of caps lock and dashes and exclamation points generally amplify that effect by giving the impression of someone YELLING REALLY LOUD or... having a dramatic pause... or becoming really excited! Wow!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, that's all totally fine. Keep at it if you like it. Although, be warned about the overuse of gimmicky text effects unless if you're absolutely positive you can pull it off-- it's somewhat annoying to your average reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative is to just tell the story entirely in present tense, as it happens. You might have to change a few things to transition the perception of events into real time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We reach it a few minutes later. It looks like a record store from the outside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The room is tiny but nice. Simple, and with the comfort and coziness of the countryside. Plus, it has everything we need: a&#xA;  closet, a basic table, a bathroom, and only one bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also do a &quot;stream of consciousness&quot; sort of thing, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Plus, it has everything we need: closet, a basic table, a bathroom,&#xA;  and only one bed. Wait a sec, only one bed? That's a little odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've known a few people who cannot stand present tense, but again, it's all up to personal taste and how you want to present your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10555" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T18:04:46.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14095" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-13T20:21:36.633" Score="3" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been trying to write stories about  possible but improbable futures sort of like Idiocracy or Conan O'Brian's &quot;in the year two thousand&quot; skit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Will&lt;/em&gt; sounds too much like &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; makes the story sound dependent on  present action.  I want a story that describes  &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; future not &lt;em&gt;THE&lt;/em&gt; future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way I go I overuse &lt;em&gt;could, may, will&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What wording would fit such improbable prophecies - unlikely future claims? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10873" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2014-10-13T21:53:51.257" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T22:01:26.683" Title="Satirical prophecy" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14086" CreationDate="2014-10-13T21:53:05.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing technically wrong with doing this, but you're right to think it sounds fishy. I'd suggest confining exclamations like these to dialog. Ultimately, though, you'll have to rely on your ear and the ears of your beta readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10789" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T21:53:05.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14095" CreationDate="2014-10-13T22:01:26.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, if it's to be &lt;em&gt;satirical&lt;/em&gt;, I'd forfeit all &quot;may, might, could&quot; etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd go with &lt;em&gt;Simple Present&lt;/em&gt;, then augment every single claim with &quot;or not.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In the year 3000 all religions are recognized as highly infective memetic diseases. Or not.&lt;br&gt; All &quot;infected/believers&quot; are quarantined in closed &quot;holy cities&quot;. Or not.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T22:01:26.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14098" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14100" CreationDate="2014-10-14T06:14:54.153" Score="1" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story, and need to avoid excessive use of a subject. Using &amp;quot;he,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;his,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;the man&amp;quot; will get very repetitive over time since the character has no name. I'm hoping to find some way to make a subject only need to be declared a few times per page. I don't mind breaking some rules of the English language to get the desired result; I just need to avoid confusing the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A man sits alone on a bench, a peach in one hand, a spoon in the other. What an odd and wonderful day to be sitting on a bench, at least until it drizzles. He wipes off some fuzz; the peach fur is pleasant to feel, chemicals n'all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At his feet lies a puddle with a mustache, bushy brows, and a peanut-sized nose. The peach reveals itself as wetter than a bad snog; his pants accept sponging duty. With swift realization, the man jumps, and swahpps his pants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving the peach held in his jaw, he reaches into his coat pocket for a hanky; all recollection of its' earlier activities seem to have stayed in his pocket. The expression on his face is that of man who has just done something incredibly daft, and realizes it. The peach is happily dripping across his chin; his pants still on active duty. A women walks past, and cringes in a very lol-cat like fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see in this little piece alone there are 14 instances, way too many.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10874" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-06-08T18:42:25.573" LastActivityDate="2022-06-08T18:42:25.573" Title="Need A Way To Avoid Excessive Use Of Subject When Refering To Character" Tags="|technique|short-story|pronouns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14105" CreationDate="2014-10-14T06:56:39.030" Score="2" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I smiled and gave her a nod. I was beginning to like her more, plus I&#xA;  realized we had some things in common. Like our&#xA;  attempts of suicide. The difference was striking, of course. &lt;strong&gt;Kate’s&#xA;  problem had been physical, whereas mine had been psychological. Kate had been&#xA;  motivated by an excess of sensations, whereas for me had been a lack of&#xA;  them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should I write instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I smiled and gave her a nod. I was beginning to like her more, plus I&#xA;  realized we had some things in common. Like our&#xA;  attempts of suicide. The difference was striking, of course. &lt;strong&gt;Whereas Kate’s&#xA;  problem had been physical, mine had been psychological. Whereas Kate had been&#xA;  motivated by an excess of sensations, for me had been a lack of&#xA;  them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's something awkward about the wording, but I can't pinpoint what it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-10-14T08:58:07.920" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T00:08:48.593" Title="Improving the flow/rhythm of the following comparison" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|flow|rhythm|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14098" CreationDate="2014-10-14T07:21:05.827" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The pronouns do not feel repetitive to me at all. Whichever novel you read, it will have an endless row of &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt;s or &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt;s or &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;s throughout the text. It is the common and therefore &lt;strong&gt;neutral&lt;/strong&gt; way, and does not stand out or annoy. Only &quot;the man&quot; may get repetitive, because we are used to reading a person's name, usually once per paragraph. But if you keep &quot;the man&quot; to once per paragraph, too, it certainly wouldn't irritate me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As your paragraph stands, it is perfectly fine to me.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, if for some reason you want to reduce the &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt;s and &lt;em&gt;the man&lt;/em&gt;s, I'd switch to present continous where it is possible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;s&gt;A man sits&lt;/s&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Sitting&lt;/strong&gt; alone on a bench, a peach in one hand, a spoon in the other. What an odd and wonderful day &lt;s&gt;to be sitting on a bench&lt;/s&gt;, at least until it drizzles. &lt;strong&gt;The man&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;s&gt;he&lt;/s&gt; wipes off some fuzz; the peach fur is pleasant to feel, chemicals n'all. &lt;s&gt;At his feet lies a puddle&lt;/s&gt; &lt;strong&gt;A puddle lies&lt;/strong&gt; with &lt;s&gt;a&lt;/s&gt; mustache, bushy brows, and a peanut-sized nose. The peach reveals itself as wetter than a bad snog; &lt;s&gt;his&lt;/s&gt; &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; pants accept sponging duty. With swift realization, the man jumps, and swahpps (wipes/swaps?) his pants. &lt;s&gt;Leaving the p&lt;/s&gt; &lt;strong&gt;P&lt;/strong&gt;each held in &lt;s&gt;his&lt;/s&gt; jaw, he reaches into his coat pocket for a hanky; all recollection of its' earlier activities seem to have stayed in &lt;s&gt;his&lt;/s&gt; &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; pocket. The expression on his face is that of &lt;s&gt;man&lt;/s&gt; &lt;strong&gt;someone&lt;/strong&gt; who has just done something incredibly daft, and realizes it. The peach is happily dripping across his chin; &lt;s&gt;his&lt;/s&gt; &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; pants still on active duty. A women walks past, and cringes in a very lol-cat like fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying this is better. These are just examples of how to avoid pronouns and &lt;em&gt;the man&lt;/em&gt;. You'd need to change some of the syntactic structure, add some conjunctions, and so on, to create a pleasant rhythm, but I didn't want to change the text beyond recognition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I feel your sample is fine and needs at most some minor changes when it comes to the pronouns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T07:21:05.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14102" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14104" CreationDate="2014-10-14T07:30:17.377" Score="12" ViewCount="3466" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of adding a sub-plot to my story where we have say, Adam and Eve. They do not quite like each other but one thing leads to another and they have sex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, Adam wonders if he should do something for Eve, influenced by the fact that he slept with her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to show the erotic scene in the story to explain their motives throughout the rest of the story, but I am torn as to how detailed the scene should be written and even how to describe it altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I be abstract / metaphorical (magma eruptions all over the place), or should I be direct (see hidden quote below)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; His  erect penis entered her tight, wet vagina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice on how to approach this would be great, thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T08:29:24.973" LastActivityDate="2018-09-30T04:46:19.767" Title="How to write good erotic scene?" Tags="|plot|ideas|erotica|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14102" CreationDate="2014-10-14T10:19:27.247" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the goal of the scene is to show why a person decides what he or she decides, then you only give the detail necessary to demonstrate that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If part of what changes Adam's mind afterwards is the way she &lt;em&gt;looks&lt;/em&gt;, you need to focus on her appearance and not the act. (&quot;He watched her face change as he slid into her&quot; or &quot;his eyes roamed hungrily over her breasts&quot;). But if it's about the &lt;em&gt;act&lt;/em&gt;, then you focus on how he feels rather than what she looks like (&quot;Sparks of pleasure shot up his spine at each thrust&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's not about the act, you can elide a lot of the descriptions of genitalia into pronouns and vague references (he slid himself into her, she took him into her mouth, he touched the core of her, etc.). That gets the idea across without going too far into adult territory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T10:19:27.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14099" CreationDate="2014-10-14T10:22:07.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's &quot;whereas.&quot; It's a formal and slightly clunky word. Plus you're using the exact same sentence structure twice in a row, but &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; twice. Once is fine, and three times is an effect, but two looks like a mistake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kate’s problem had been physical, but mine had been psychological. She had been motivated by an excess of sensations. My problem was a lack of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA&lt;/strong&gt; Off Paul's excellent comment, here's a better version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kate’s problem had been physical, but mine had been psychological. She suffered from an excess of sensations. I lacked them altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-10-14T14:58:43.193" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T14:58:43.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2014-10-14T11:24:43.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have struggled with my inner critic for a long time and here are some things that have worked for me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talking to someone you trust about your writing: Everyone writes differently but I don't think anyone gets it how they want it first time. Find someone who is either an avid reader or studying English that you know and trust and show them some of your writing. Seeing someone enjoy your writing can really help reduce anxiety. Someone who is a good critic is always helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set short goals: If you are writing for an assignment/dissertation/etc it can be hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. When I had to write my PhD thesis my supervisor gave me the advice to set short goals and use bullet points to layout the structure (a bullet point per paragraph with the basic idea).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break the monotony: Along with short goals give yourself rewards for achieving them. They don't need to be big. Ones I use include: a nice cup of tea, chocolate, reading a short story, a short walk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still struggle with my inner critic but these techniques helped me churn out a nearly 200 page thesis in about half a year. It does get easier once you get going I assure you :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have tried all these things with limited success then seeking professional help via therapy (as suggested by several commenters) is probably the way forwards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8204" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T11:24:43.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2014-10-14T13:12:13.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gee, I agree with &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt;. You need a specialist. Something that helped me, though (I was a perfectionist, too) is this quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Art is never finished, only abandoned.&quot; - Leonardo da Vinci&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Give up perfection&lt;/strong&gt;. Look at your writing as something that improves incrementally rather than something that is fixed. You can always come back and edit later; something that's even easier with all the technology we have today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-10-14T13:17:51.927" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T13:17:51.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10860" CreationDate="2014-10-14T14:47:08.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/04/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Online Writing Lab&lt;/a&gt; concerning quoting poetry (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the quotation is three lines or longer, set it off like a block quotation (see above). Some writers prefer to set off two-line verse quotations for emphasis. Quote the poem line by line &lt;strong&gt;as it appears on the original page&lt;/strong&gt;. Do not use quotation marks, and indent one inch from the left margin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In his poem 'Mending Wall,' Robert Frost questions the building of barriers and walls:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Before I built a wall I'd ask to know&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;    What I was walling in or walling out,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;    And to whom I was like to give offense.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is more for an essay-type of format rather than dialogue or narration, but I agree that having slashes in dialogue doesn't seem right. I regularly use &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Purdue University's Online Writing Lab&lt;/a&gt; for little problems like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10878" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-10-14T15:21:52.873" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T15:21:52.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13058" CreationDate="2014-10-14T14:57:52.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use the Purdue Online Writing Lab for almost every writing question I come across. You can check out what they have to say about cover letters here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/723/03/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/723/03/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have this to say about the argument portion of your letter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Your argument is an important part of your cover letter, because it allows you to persuade your reader why you are a good fit for the company and the job. Carefully choose what to include in your argument. You want your argument to be as powerful as possible, but it shouldn't cloud your main points by including excessive or irrelevant details about your past. In addition, use your resume (and refer to it) as the source of &quot;data&quot; you will use and expand on in your cover letter.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're supposed to be persuading the recipient why you're a good fit for whatever position you're applying for, I suggest doing a little bit of both of your suggestions. Give some good teasers from your story that will make your characters and story lines sound desirable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But most importantly, you definitely need to write about yourself. You're selling yourself with this letter, not just a short story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10878" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T14:57:52.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13075" CreationDate="2014-10-14T15:09:44.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, even magazines and newspapers are online now. Plus, the responses and results might be a little quicker online. I'd say give them both a try and just see which one gives you more results. I know you can easily search for freelance writing jobs on Craigslist here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freelancewriting.com/freelancejobs/craigslist.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.freelancewriting.com/freelancejobs/craigslist.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also countless other sites that were made strictly for helping beginner freelance writers like yourself. Just Google it and see what comes up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck to you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10878" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T15:09:44.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14102" CreationDate="2014-10-14T15:12:47.597" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all: it's your choice how far you want to go into detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When two characters having sex is a plot point in a story which is not supposed to be erotic or not even romantic, a detailed description of the deed can seem out of place, especially when you aren't really comfortable writing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can go so far as to just imply that sex has taken place (chapter n ends with a flirtatious dialogue between the characters, chapter n+1 starts with them waking up next to each other) or handled with a single sentence (&quot;Then they went to his hotel room and had sex.&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you decide to go into more detail, for example because you want to use the sex scene itself to further character development or just because you think a bit of &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FanService&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fanservice&lt;/a&gt; can't hurt [TVTROPES WARNING], you should generally stay away from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;purple prose&lt;/a&gt; and stay consistent in your overall writing style. When you usually don't use flowering methaphors, don't start using them suddenly just because you are writing about sex. Otherwise the scene will look out of place just because of the writing style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are writing for a readership which is old enough to read erotic scenes, you can assume that your readership knows how sex works. This means that overly detailed description of the exact interactions of various bodyparts is usually unnecessary (except when you want to write explicit porn). What's much more important, though, is to describe the characters feelings and impressions. Not &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; are they doing, &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; are they doing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they love their partner or is it just about sex (or money, power, duty, fear, something completely different)? Are they sensual, aggressive or even violent lovers? Are they shy and ashamed or openly expressing their desires? Do they care more about satisfying their partner or more about satisfying themselves? Do they cuddle afterwards or get dressed and leave? These aspects can tell much about the personality of your characters and their relation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further reading I can also recommend the article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SoYouWantTo/WriteASexScene&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;So You Want To Write A Sex Scene&lt;/a&gt;&quot; on TVTropes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2015-04-12T18:04:48.477" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T18:04:48.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2014-10-14T21:41:50.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The comments on your post suggest therapy, and I think it is good advice. This is more than just writer's block or procrastination. It sounds like you have serious anxiety that's triggered by writing. Here are some things you might try if you can't afford a therapist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, pick a book and copy the text out of it. This will help you get used to the physical activity of typing or writing by hand without being concerned with what you are writing. When you can copy text without feeling anxious, then you are ready to move to the next step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, move around the text you copied. Try rearranging the sentences in paragraph, or taking one sentence out of each paragraph to make a new story with the same words. Don't worry about how legible it is. You're getting used to the feeling of editing. When you feel comfortable moving text around like this, move on to the next part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, play with the text you copied. Take a passage and substitute a few verbs and nouns with a synonym chosen from a thesaurus at random. Rewrite it using different pronouns (instead of third-person &quot;he/she/it/them&quot;, write it in second-person &quot;you&quot;, for instance). Rearrange the words in the sentences. Remove all the conjunctions. Do some small things like this to help yourself see that the same thing can be expressed in many different ways, and none of these is right or wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, write something short that's not important. Something that has no deadline or grade or degree attached to it. A fake advertisement for an imaginary product might suffice. Write as much as you can in ten minutes, and then walk away from it. Come back to it in a day or a week, and revise it until you like it, or throw it away if you hate it. Then do it all again next week. From here, work your way into writing some things that carry more baggage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These steps will hopefully lead you to feel that you are in control of your work. Hopefully, a few exercises like this, and you'll be over the worst parts of your anxiety.  You can do this. You wrote this question here, so that's encouraging!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T21:41:50.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14098" CreationDate="2014-10-14T23:38:00.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found a happy medium in referencing the name of the character, or in this case &quot;the man&quot;, about every 3-4 uses of the pronoun, which ends up being about once a paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your writing tends to unexpectedly switch between third and first person and I don't quite feel like I'm understanding parts of your writing so I apologise if I get some parts wrong, but here is how I would rework it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What an odd and wonderful day to be sitting on a bench, &lt;strong&gt;the man&lt;/strong&gt; thinks, holding a peach in one hand and a spoon in the other. &lt;strong&gt;He&lt;/strong&gt; wipes off some fuzz as it begins to drizzle and feels the fur of the peach, chemicals and all. At &lt;strong&gt;his&lt;/strong&gt; feet lies a puddle reflecting a face with a moustache, bushy brows and a peanut sized nose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Biting down on the peach, it reveals itself as wetter than a bad snog and his pants dutifully become a sponge for the juice. &lt;strong&gt;He&lt;/strong&gt; jumps up in realisation of what has transpired and reaches into &lt;strong&gt;his&lt;/strong&gt; coat pocket with the peach still held in &lt;strong&gt;his&lt;/strong&gt; mouth. Out comes a handkerchief; its prior history going unnoticed as &lt;strong&gt;he&lt;/strong&gt; lets out a sigh of frustration. All the while &lt;strong&gt;his&lt;/strong&gt; pants are collecting more of the sweet juice from the peach, now dripping from &lt;strong&gt;his&lt;/strong&gt; chin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The man&lt;/strong&gt; expresses a daft look as a woman walks past and cringes slightly at the sight of &lt;strong&gt;his&lt;/strong&gt; clumsy situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2014-10-15T00:18:20.187" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T00:18:20.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8077" CreationDate="2014-10-15T03:52:14.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In all written English, dialogue by a character should be quoted as well as any other vocalized words. Ei. the character is talking to himself. Inner dialogue and thoughts should be italicized. The only real difference between dialects should be small punctuation changes, like whether to use single quotes or double.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10883" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T03:52:14.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14102" CreationDate="2014-10-15T08:49:42.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To clarify on the alternative method that the others have posted: instead of writing the erotic scene, build up to it and fade to black just before it starts. Leave the act itself to the imagination of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with erotic scenes is that it's easy to write a scene, but it's hard to write it well, and it's even harder to write it so that it fits the overall theme of the book and the style of the writer. There is a reason that there are multiple &quot;worst sex scene in literature&quot; awards handed out every year, with winners often being so badly written that readers often just laugh at scenes like female genitals being ripped out (one of the top 3 laureates in a contest last decade), even when they're intended for drama and seriousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem is that people often read books on public transport (train, bus, metro), and some people rather would rather not read erotic scenes on such transport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concern is also that, if the book is in a series, there are often fans who form personal &quot;ideal pairings&quot;, or &quot;Shippings&quot;, as they're called. These often even involve slash-shipping, with people of the same gender. Fans can get heavily disappointed, sometimes even upset, if their favorite shipping doesn't actually happen. Of course, this also happens with the fade-to-method I described above, but people can always imagine that something got in-between at the last moment, like a prophylactic that didn't cooperate or a sudden emergency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to shipping: it might actually be advantageous to just not have sex happen at all, not even allusions to the act. Often, people really quickly figure out that there's sexual tension between characters, or it's blindingly obvious that 2 characters are intended to get it on. If you then subvert that, by keeping the tension unresolved (or not acting on it until the end of the book), the book becomes less clichéd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6845" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T08:49:42.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14122" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-15T23:24:27.033" Score="4" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a course book series with 4-5 workbooks. Each subsequent chapter is highly dependent on material in previous sections. Few readers using the workbooks will be able to skip sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a later date, it is likely that I'll release a revision. Since this would involve both reorganizing the material and expanding the series to include new workbooks, readers couldn't really skip from the old series to the new, e.g. starting with books 1-2 of the old, then switching to 3-10 of the new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the heavy interconnectivity of the chapters, I'd release it as a single book, if it weren't for the limitation of page count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I release future revisions of this series without angering my readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-10-16T00:30:41.257" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T14:41:46.480" Title="How to release a heavy revision to a series without upsetting readers?" Tags="|academic-writing|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14099" CreationDate="2014-10-15T23:58:57.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just as a side note, I would alter the second/third sentence to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was beginning to like her more. I also realized we had some things in common, like our attempts of suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Like&quot; should be part of the previous sentence.  With that in mind, the two examples in Lauren Ipsum's answer are great. Here's another:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I smiled and gave her a nod. I was beginning to like her more. I also realized we had some things in common, like our attempts of suicide. That's where the similarities ended, however. Kate was motivated by an excess of physical sensations. Mine was psychological. I lacked them altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your paragraph is intriguing though. I felt like riffing on this, if that's okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've always wished I could feel more; to feel excited, angry, surprised or to love. It never came, though. Somehow I could never react the way normal people do. In thinking about Kate, it was as if she wanted what I had, and yet we both wanted out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2014-10-16T00:08:48.593" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T00:08:48.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14122" CreationDate="2014-10-16T00:38:17.733" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: You can't. But you shouldn't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good textbooks get updated. They are refreshed and corrected, new material is added, things are changed to reflect reader/student/teacher feedback, and items which are no longer valid are removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; thing. I'm not saying you have to put out a new edition every year, but updating a textbook or workbook series every five or 10 years is hardly something to complain about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New students will be getting whatever the current version is. Older students can't expect that the book they bought in 1995 is still 100% applicable in 2014. The world changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Amusing and related anecdote: I took a history course in college. My textbook was R.R. Palmer's &lt;em&gt;A History of the Modern World.&lt;/em&gt; I think it was the 7th edition. I went home on break, and I happened to be looking through my mother's bookshelves. She also had R.R. Palmer's &lt;em&gt;A History of the Modern World&lt;/em&gt;... the &lt;em&gt;3rd&lt;/em&gt; edition. I would not have expected to be able to grab her copy from 30 years prior and use it in my class.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T00:38:17.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14126" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-16T04:49:22.643" Score="0" ViewCount="632" Body="&lt;p&gt;What makes a good 'story' - a short creative writing prompt that has to be influenced by a stimulus (the topic being 'discovery')?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any general rules, apart from the fact that it has to be third person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10901" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T12:43:44.390" Title="Rules for creative writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-10-17T13:06:20.197" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14126" CreationDate="2014-10-16T07:49:15.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) It does not to have to be in third person&lt;/strong&gt; : I don’t know if it was part of your assigment to write it in third person, but to make good story, you do not have to write it in third person. Third person does not imply that it will be good story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Make it unusual:&lt;/strong&gt; Few ideas on &quot;discovery&quot; topic which may make good story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dog puppy discovering its neighbourhood for the first time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Young couple discovering their bodies for first time (quite &quot;problematic&quot; topic, especially if you are still on school)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seeing usual object (like cup of tea) by looking at it as if you see it for the first time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Tell a story&lt;/strong&gt; You can describe Egypt pyramids the way it will make everyone sleepy. Or you can tell a story about mighty Pharaoh, who just deceased. And people build him tomb deserving the greatness of his actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4) Write about something you know&lt;/strong&gt; While writing story about discovering India might sound cool for me (being from Europe), but telling something &quot;spicy&quot; about my own neighbourhood will make more plausible story, without any clichés.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5) Write something funny or interesting at the end.&lt;/strong&gt; Especially if it is short story. Such story should have good point. And good story has great point. Will you guess the stories from the points?:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was Earth the whole time!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The main villain is actually a father of main hero!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He was dead the whole time!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The detective is actually the killer!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T07:49:15.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13054" CreationDate="2014-10-16T10:55:26.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Fiction&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First and foremost the work of an editor is about &lt;strong&gt;knowing the market and selecting works that sell&lt;/strong&gt; (or, if it is a cultural publisher: works that have cultural impact).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An editor creates a line of publication. He is responsible for the profile of his imprint and creates its brand. For that, the editor needs to have a clear understanding of current trends and his target audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The editor &lt;strong&gt;needs to be a psychologist and coach&lt;/strong&gt;. Not only is networking a major part of an editor's job, connecting with different people in the print, publishing, media, and culture industries – so he has to be outgoing, social, and fun to work with –, but also he has to be a substitute parent and therapist for all the writers with social phobias, manias, depression, substance abuse problems, or other psychological dysfunctions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An editor needs not only understand what makes a good text, but most of all needs to be able to &lt;strong&gt;explain to the writer what the writer can do to turn the bad text into a good text&lt;/strong&gt;. (Because the editor does not do the editing!) This is more difficult than it sounds, because the editor must overcome the writer's love of his mental ejaculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Science&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific editors are usually scholars in the field, often researchers working in a research institution such as a university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific manuscripts are judged less on the level of style and structure, because style and structure are usually prescribed by the discipline's conventions or style manuals. Following the style manual and submitting an error-free manuscript is the job of the author. The author usually employs a student to do the copy-editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike the fiction editor, the scientific editor does not usually actively search for authors. Authors submit manuscripts, and the editor has to judge their relevance (based on his intimate knowledge of the field) and &amp;quot;scientificness&amp;quot;, i.e. he has to judge, with the help of peer reviewers, wether or not the research or theoretical work has been done according to the scientific standards of the discipline, used accepted methods, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific editors are part of the scientific community and manage the community's publishing process as representatives of that community. What they need, besides what every scientist needs, is &lt;strong&gt;reputation&lt;/strong&gt;. Reputation, i.e. being a bit more equal than the others, allows them to judge and select the works of their peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Non-Fiction (not science)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-scientific non-fiction editors are somewhere between fiction and scientific editors. They work with authors in a way similar to that of fiction editors. And they need understanding of a field to judge the information value of a manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T10:55:26.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13060" CreationDate="2014-10-16T11:05:43.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the screenplays I have seen always &lt;strong&gt;use the form of the name that the character is known by to the audience&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you tell the tale of Robert Williams, but all the other characters always address him as &quot;Bob&quot;, you use &quot;Bob&quot; as the marker for this character. If, on the other hand, Mr. Williams is a teacher and only his wife calls him &quot;Bob&quot;, while his students call him &quot;Mr. Williams&quot;, use the form of the name that is used where the story happens: if it is a story about a teacher and told mostly in school, call him &quot;Mr. Williams&quot; in your script; if the story is about a husband who just happens to be a teacher but takes place mostly in private circumstances at home and with friends, call him &quot;Bob&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; use abbreviations (&quot;B.&quot;), unless the character is called &quot;B.&quot; by his co-characters (e.g. &quot;J.R.&quot; Ewing in &lt;em&gt;Dallas&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If first names alone are confusing (maybe because the cast is so large or names are too similar), use the full name, even if the characters in the play/movie use the first name. But this should not happen, unless you need confusing names for plot reasons (e.g. a story about two women named &quot;Joan&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T11:05:43.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14122" CreationDate="2014-10-16T14:41:46.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Presumably each book contains a certain set of important facts, ideas, exercises, etc. Let's call the first editions books 1.0, 2.0, etc, and the second editions books 1.1, 2.1, etc. If you want a reader to be able to go from book 4.0 to 5.1, then 5.1 needs to contain a chapter that summarizes the changes from 1.0-4.0 -&gt; 1.1-4.1. In many fields this sort of thing is possible, but depending on your content it might not be possible or practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible solution is to continue to sell the later books in the series, and phase them out gradually, so that readers who started with the old series can continue that series until they finish the whole program. This would make sense if there is nothing inherently wrong with the old series. For example, a language textbook series might undergo a revision where the vocabulary choices and the exercises are changed, the dialogues are updated to be more relevant or more interesting, the exercises are better, the overall organization is improved, etc. None of these improvements diminish the original edition, so you can keep selling it for a period of time if there is demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the series of books is meant to take many years to work through then continuity is more important. If the series is meant to be worked through in a short time, such as one or two years, then this is less of a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T14:41:46.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7612" CreationDate="2014-10-16T20:43:02.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had this question a while ago and I guess there are 2 good ways to do it.&#xA;1) In [insert very popular YA book here], the [number] book of the series is written in 2 POV's, unlike the rest of the series. So when [main character that I was actually glad died b/c I was trying to prove a point to my friend] died, the other character narrated.&#xA;2) Newspaper articles and emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10907" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T20:43:02.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8077" CreationDate="2014-10-17T02:14:36.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style says that &quot;unspoken discourse&quot; can be either in quotations marks or not according to the author's preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Referencing some of the other respondents' contributions, Chicago does mention that in some countries em dashes are used for dialogue. I can only come from an American English perspective on this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good way to bypass this problem altogether is to write thoughts less like dialogue and, well, more like thoughts or urges, fleeting ideas floating through the synapses of the character's brain. Instead of &quot;Joe thought, &quot;I want an apple&quot; write &quot;Joe had a sudden hankering for an apple.&quot; Or, referencing your examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could I be so complacent, Alex said to himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Alex wondered how he could have been so complacent.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will not give in, Alex told himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Alex told himself not to give in.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10909" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T02:14:36.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14139" CreationDate="2014-10-17T02:56:19.643" Score="2" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The forest was so dense I was practically swimming through it. A dark,&#xA;  murky ocean of shrubs, trees, and bamboo shoots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The forest was so dense I was practically swimming through it. A dark,&#xA;  murky ocean of shrubs and trees and bamboo shoots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the effect different? How so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T23:07:59.697" Title="Writing &quot;X, Y, and Z&quot; vs &quot;X and Y and Z.&quot;" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7612" CreationDate="2014-10-17T08:03:43.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is to write absolutely nothing more because your character is dead and consider what you would have wanted to add as the beginning of your next book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10882" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T08:03:43.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14136" CreationDate="2014-10-17T09:14:28.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to give a quick summary of its effects. So I'll offer some terminology to aid your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That technique is called &lt;em&gt;polysyndeton&lt;/em&gt;. Wikipedia has a little bit about the effects: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysyndeton&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysyndeton&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also go in the other direction and remove all of the conjunctions. That is called &lt;em&gt;asyndeton&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asyndeton&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asyndeton&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T09:14:28.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14136" CreationDate="2014-10-17T12:35:12.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to Dale Emery's answer, besides the effects listed in Wikipedia, one basic effect is that of &lt;strong&gt;emphasizing the staggering number of thing&lt;/strong&gt;s:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;there were apples, oranges, and bananas&amp;quot; is just a &lt;em&gt;neutral list&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whereas &amp;quot;there were apples and oranges and bananas&amp;quot; emphasizes the fact that &lt;em&gt;there are impressively many different fruits to choose from&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many common phrases that emphasize &lt;strong&gt;endlessness&lt;/strong&gt; through the repetition of conjunctions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It went on and on and on forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &lt;code&gt;and&lt;/code&gt; is just the standard end of a list, several &lt;code&gt;and&lt;/code&gt;s are repetitive, and repetition conveys &lt;strong&gt;monotony and sheer volume&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to use your own exampes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;shrubs, trees, and bamboo shoots&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;means that &lt;em&gt;there were these three types of plants&lt;/em&gt; (and no more or nothing else of significance), and you're stating that in a neutral manner, while&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;shrubs and trees and bamboo shoots&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;means that &lt;strong&gt;there was an impenetrable jungle of plants&lt;/strong&gt; that contains the three plants and many others, and your narrator is very emotional about that fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T12:35:12.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14126" CreationDate="2014-10-17T12:43:44.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers are different and enjoy different things. Every rule will result in a text that is uninteresting for someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find your text interesting, others will, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You did not ask how to write stories that sell or stories that are reviewed well. You asked what makes a good story. I answered that question. There is no agreement on what is &quot;good&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T12:43:44.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14142" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14164" CreationDate="2014-10-17T18:33:45.130" Score="0" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to make a character, who is agnostic of electricity, electromagnetic fields, and any modern age theories, refer to electromagnetic phenomena.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ancient cultures, like greeks, chinese, were somewhat aware of electricity and magnetism.&#xA;Few examples are: thunder and yellow amber, which has an electrostatic property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, I'm using yellow amber to refer to the phenomenon. But I'm not very satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There is no yellow amber in the region.&quot;, says a character who sees an improbable electromagnetic phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To clarify:&lt;/strong&gt; we're in an ancient civilization. The character is aware of some electromagnetism effects, like electrostatic field effects, or thunder. He does not fully understand why these effect happen, in details. But he understand that in certain conditions, it happens. Now, he sees these effects happening in a situation where those conditions are unmet. He is confused about it and in his thought he needs to refers to electromagnetism using words of his culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His culture is theocratic and is known as the most technologically advanced culture in the world. It is said that they have no new discoveries to do : they think they know everything there is to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character, here, has a proof that they don't. Hence, he will need to say something like :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;I have found the proof that something about [electromagnetism] cannot be explained by our current knowledge, despite our belief that it is complete&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A replacement for &quot;electromagnetism&quot; is this sentence is what I am looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I can probably invent some word refering to a wrong, imaginary, inexistent cause for electromagnetism effects. But I would like to avoid referring to some God of Thunder. Their religion is monotheistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what I need is a somewhat realistic term to replace &quot;electromagnetism&quot; in the bold sentence, that would refer to an misbelief about the causes of electromagnetism effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10910" LastEditorUserId="10910" LastEditDate="2014-10-19T07:09:34.153" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T07:55:25.230" Title="How to refer to magnetism in ancient cultures?" Tags="|science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14167" CreationDate="2014-10-17T18:45:55.933" Score="2" ViewCount="7730" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I have a kid's book with children of varying skin tones: a boy with British/Germanic background, a girl with Indian parents in the middle point of Indian skin tones, a girl with a Germanic background mother and a Turkish father, and an African-American boy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some good words to use to describe those skin tones without using the generic and not actually that descriptive black, white, and tan? Also, avoiding the use of food to describe darker skin tones, as this association with food is sometimes considered offensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for vocabulary, mostly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10909" LastEditorUserId="10909" LastEditDate="2014-10-18T14:56:19.373" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T19:12:35.673" Title="What are some rich but respectful ways to describe various skin colors?" Tags="|fiction|description|vocabulary|young-adult|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14165" CreationDate="2014-10-17T18:55:11.640" Score="8" ViewCount="2279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a fictional short story where part 2 is embedded in part 1. Has anyone heard of this or tried this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas of resources would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine a story where every letter could be turned into another letter (or every word into another word) if the person converting those letters or words had a secret key (a code or password, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, imagine if a story, which was written as fiction or literary fiction for example, had a second story, again fiction or literary fiction, embedded within its letters and/or words that, when converted with the key or password, turned into a brand new story—perhaps a continuation or sequel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10818" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2023-08-09T11:58:59.600" LastActivityDate="2023-08-09T11:58:59.600" Title="Writing a short story with a secret code" Tags="|short-story|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14145" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14147" CreationDate="2014-10-17T18:59:22.510" Score="0" ViewCount="3038" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to write a character sketch, and I have to pick an object (example: vase, key, dress, ect.) to base the character on. So the object has to be important, but my professor doesn't want it to be a plot device. Also more showing than telling (of course). Is a character sketch like a mini story? Because how am I supposed to show them the character if they are not doing anything, like in a story they are doing something? I'm really really confused! I looked at character sketch examples online, but most of them are essays analyzing works of literature, and weird outlines that tell you orders to write about the character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have an example of THEIR OWN character sketch of their original character?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10911" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T20:09:12.720" Title="How do I write my own character sketch?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|characters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14146" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-17T19:49:57.500" Score="0" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do most books and videos on creative writing refer to the protagonist as the hero and the antagonist as the villain such as with thrillers, action or crime stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel which doesn't have either. It's historical fiction with a current day romance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are my problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm struggling to work out where my hero and villains would fit in. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After reading several online blogs and books, and watching many videos, I'm not sure what my back story really is and how it fits into my main storyline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most say flashbacks are a no-no, however it's not possible to have an historical novel without flashbacks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The synopsis is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A present day woman inherits an apartment in Paris from her mother. Her Jewish mother was 4 years old in 1942, orphaned during the Second World War and hidden in a small village in the south of France. She then emigrated with her adoptive parents to Australia. The mother couldn't or didn't want to remember about her childhood and never spoke about it. Thus the daughter follows the trail of her ancestors in Paris under occupation to discover an incredible story of survival. Along the way, the woman's goal is to find romance in the &quot;City of Love&quot;, which she does eventually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10912" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T18:08:16.893" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T22:02:26.593" Title="Writing is it the plot, subplot or backstory" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14145" CreationDate="2014-10-17T20:09:12.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see from also searching online as you did that most people seem to think of character sketches as just filling out forms or writing a straight description. But I remember writing &quot;character sketches&quot; in college and we basically wrote &quot;mini stories&quot; as you've said. I think I wrote a sketch describing a man's character using his hat as an analogy for his personality and life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it from my college classes (throwing aside what Google says), a character sketch is like an artist's sketch. It's a loose rendering of a character without the formal trappings of a book or story. Think of a character sketch as proof of your character's personality. First, create the character, decide what they look like, what their personality is like, what their wants and desires are. When you've done that I can see this going one of two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Describe them as you would if introducing them in a book. Don't just give bare facts, of course. Show, as you say, don't tell. But you don't necessarily have to have the character doing anything. Show their personality through their possessions or their room or the way they move or sit or some other way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do plop them into a mini-story. Put them into a situation that will show that character's personality without telling about it directly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in Harry Potter, Rowling could have just written &quot;The Dudleys were cruel, vindictive, heedless, stupid money-grubbers,&quot; but instead she showed us these traits by their actions and responses in the first couple chapters (of pretty much all seven books). These chapters give us a character sketch of the Dudleys. But the first chapters aren't actually a story in themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever way you do it, if I were your professor (which I'm not, so take this with a grain of salt), I would want to read your character sketch and be able to know the sorts of things about the character that I would know from people-watching a real life human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write a lot of descriptions and character sketches as practice. You might try reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirandaregan.com/2014/10/10/word-doodle-diana-frog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one about Diana and the Frog&lt;/a&gt; for an example of number 2 and see what you think Diana is like as a person. Keep in mind that I didn't bother to include any physical description of her, which you'd probably need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10909" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T20:09:12.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14146" CreationDate="2014-10-17T22:04:37.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like an interesting story. Some writing books tend to &quot;dumb down&quot; the components of stories, using words like &quot;hero&quot; and &quot;villain&quot;. They can still be useful, if viewed from an angle, especially for more down to earth stories like yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be inclined to think the mother is actually the protagonist (hero) for a lot of this story and the Germans the villains (antagonists). The daughter would have her own moments of course, being the one doing the searching and finding romance in Paris.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can maintain a relevancy and emotional connection between the three characters (mother, daughter and romantic interest), I think this could be an interesting read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T22:04:37.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14146" CreationDate="2014-10-17T22:11:30.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh, wow, where to begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are people who &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnaugust.com/2005/whats-the-difference-between-hero-main-character-and-protagonist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;differentiate between protagonist and hero&lt;/a&gt;, and there are some who use these words as synonym. That really shouldn't stop you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most (genre) novels there is a person who wants something really badly and you want this person in the spotlight. And on the other side there is someone who wants really badly that the person does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; succeed. Two boys want the same girl. No one needs to be a villain here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't struggle to fit something in. Write your novel. Write it like you think it is right. If you do not have an opinion about &quot;being right&quot; or if you are unsure, just ignore your insecurity and write. Listen to your heart, not your brain, have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every novel, no matter the genre, can be written without flashbacks. Every single one. Easiest solution is to put everything in the correct chronological order. If that is a good idea, is a different question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have questions about flashbacks here, search them. You can use flashbacks all over the place. Best option is to do it in a way that does not puzzle your readers. But you can think about that, after finishing your first draft. Write the damn novel. Put in every flash you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your back story is what you have made up for your story, but will not necessarily show up in your book. Let's say a character was a priest. You show in your story that he is a religious man without mentioning that he was priest. And it is totally irrelevant for the plot if he was a priest or a butcher, then being a priest is his back story, but not part of the storyline. I hope you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now go and write your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T22:11:30.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5317" CreationDate="2014-10-17T23:35:29.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A production requires several experts who handle specific elements at the request of the director. The CAPS are specific to help those experts do their task. All props and foley sounds are in caps so the prop director and sound engineer are are alert to their task. CAPs are also used to introduce a new character (though only the first time they appear) and at times to emphasize a certain action. Again, they are not to be used as a mere gesture to emphasize a word, but rather have a very specific purpose   JOHN runs in the room and pulls a GUN, he pull the trigger  twice to no avail, then finally a SHOT rings out  ( this is only correct if John had just appeared in the script for the first time)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10915" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T23:35:29.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14142" CreationDate="2014-10-18T02:02:38.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure what you are aiming for here, but it sounds like you need people in an ancient culture to refer to electricity and magnetism without actually using those words. Describe the effects. Is the piece of metal moving? The reader will probably come up with magnetism. Is there a spark? The reader will probably guess electricity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not what you're after, I might suggest adding a few details to the question. What is the context for this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T02:02:38.457" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14152" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14153" CreationDate="2014-10-18T04:52:48.963" Score="2" ViewCount="374" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just realized my prose is filled with &lt;em&gt;somethings&lt;/em&gt;. Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was already&#xA;  too far away to go back, and I figured the dog (if it'd been a real&#xA;  one) had ran back to where it had came from—which meant there was&#xA;  another way into the forest. At least that’s what I hoped for. Not a&#xA;  minute passed, however, when &lt;strong&gt;something&lt;/strong&gt; made me stop again. The&#xA;  rottweiler! I spotted his eerie green eyes right behind a bush. It&#xA;  sprinted away as soon as it saw me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I thought the dog wanted to cross the bridge. But no, it suddenly&#xA;  turned to the right and, as if in an agility competition, jumped over&#xA;  the barrier. At that same moment &lt;strong&gt;something&lt;/strong&gt; shoved me, sending me to&#xA;  the floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“No, I believe you,&quot; he said, &quot;I'm just wondering what the rottweiler wanted to do. Dogs don’t usually make you chase them—they are the ones that make the chase. Based on what you just told me, it seems like the dog wanted to lure you into a trap or &lt;strong&gt;something&lt;/strong&gt;.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a sign of bad writing? If that's the case, what can I do to fix it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T21:30:08.750" Title="Is it a bad habit to write &quot;something&quot; too much? If so, how to get rid of it?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14152" CreationDate="2014-10-18T10:13:47.093" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;By and large, overusing a specific word or phrase is not great style. &lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, what I see here is the same word used three times with three different meanings. The &lt;strong&gt;first&lt;/strong&gt; usage references a mental idea or thought process. This could probably stand to be more specific (what made the narrator stop?) but otherwise is a perfectly cromulent usage. The &lt;strong&gt;second&lt;/strong&gt; is in reference to a physical object or person, which the narrator cannot see and/or identify. As for the &lt;strong&gt;third&lt;/strong&gt; usage, &quot;or something&quot; is a basic turn of phrase used to express ambiguity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for the specific examples you cite, I don't think there's anything wrong with them or that they necessarily need changing. Of course, like all things stylistic, a lot of it is down to personal preference. In a more general sense, if you find yourself using the same word or phrase over and over, look more closely into &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you use it, and whether there's a better way to express it that's more specific or simpler to understand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T10:13:47.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14146" CreationDate="2014-10-18T10:40:43.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In real life, there is no universal plot structure that is common to all fiction. But when you read a lot of books, you will recognize certain elements that appear and reappear in several works of fiction – simply because books generally deal with people, and people act in relation to other people and have similar problems and lives insofar as they all love and hate and survive and die and so on. If you collect these similarities and try to join them together, something like a common plot structure appears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No intelligent person would claim that all books follow the same structure, but since human beings seem to prefer a simplified version of the world to the real world, books describing this simplified common plot structure and &quot;finding&quot; it (i.e. finding parts of it and projecting the missing rest and ignoring any deviations) are very popular, especially among those that have no clue or are gifted with only little brain power or find it unbearable that the world is not kind and not comprehensible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Protagonist&quot; (literally the main or primary actor, besides the &quot;Deuteragonist&quot; and &quot;Tritagonist&quot;, the second and thrid actors in classical Greek theatre) is the &lt;em&gt;name&lt;/em&gt; given to one of these structural elements: the person, whose story is being told. In another traditon, which does not derive from philology and the study of ancient drama theory but from ethnology and the study of magic and religion, the name for this person is the &quot;hero&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;hero&quot; in this sense is not a hero in the sense of a person performing heoric feats, but simply the person whose life is disrupted by a call to adventure. The hero is not up against an antagonist, but against his own need to grow and transform. Unlike the hero, who only wants to return home and live the life he has always lived, but must change to preserve that life and thereby changes himself and it, the protagonist has an outward goal, he wants away from the life he as always lived, and the antagonist is the force or person that attempts to keep him from getting there. So we have two traditions of the simplification of literature, and they propose completely differing views of what goes on in fiction, and yet there are people who are not satisfied with that and try to merge these two structures into one even more simple one. They identify the antagonist with the hero's own inner obstacles to growth, but, as I said earlier, this identification (and all others) are caused by a need for simplification that has no correspondence in a complex reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the hero is one way of simplifying literary diversity, the protagonist is another, and both are not true in the sense that all literature has a hero or antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-10-18T11:05:17.890" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T11:05:17.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14143" CreationDate="2014-10-18T11:04:42.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of, often erotic, fiction that spends quite some time describing the sensual qualities of the surface appearance of people (color, shape, texture, smell, sound). Usually that literature chooses color terms that both describe the color well (we all have a clear image of what chestnut hair looks like) and evoke a pleasant sensual image (cockroach hair my be the same color, but most of us wouldn't be attracted by it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a person might be described as having a &lt;strong&gt;cream&lt;/strong&gt; colored skin, and cream is something that we associate with cake or rich soup or the already-sexualized coffee or other tasty and pleasant foods, so a cream colored skin is loaded with what those foods mean for us: sensuality, delight, plesasure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see how food analogies must be offensive, except to those to whom any taking note of skin color is offensive. I think that being momentarily overwhelmed by the sensuality of someone's appearance and ignoring for the time being that person's intelligence and wit is completely fine and not a sign of disrespect or shallowness. Your description of your character's skin will be embedded in a depiction of that character's humanity, and if that well-rounded character has &quot;beautiful chocolate skin&quot; in the eyes of another well-rounded character, who both have a multi-faceted relationship with each other, then why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The politically correct alternative would not even be to use Pantone color numbers or RGB codes, but to not to refer to skin color at all. But since we cannot avoid perceiving skin color in real life and are always influenced by that perception, showing that influnce on your characters is to me necessary and a sign of xxx.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your character is a racist, you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; show how he perceives skin color in a prejudiced way, maybe by using negative analogies, and if he is in love with the person he looks at, you must show how he perceives skin color in a prejudiced way also, except that here the prejudice is a positive one. Your descriptions are part of your characterization – only not of the person you describe, but of the person who is described as looking at them. So think about &lt;strong&gt;who is looking&lt;/strong&gt;, what their relationship is to the person they look at, and how this person would perceive that other. Then chose the right words to illustrate that perception. And if the right word is &quot;olive&quot; or, an example from a comedian, &quot;whore skin umber&quot;, then use that word to effect in your readers those emotions you aim for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is your narrator who describes a character, and not another character, think of the narrator as a character and different from yourself. Give your narrator a personality that is expressed in the way he or she narrates, and choose the decriptive terms to illustrate that personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-10-18T11:55:53.047" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T11:55:53.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14152" CreationDate="2014-10-18T12:33:59.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about the repetition, but I feel the &lt;code&gt;something&lt;/code&gt;s are bad style for different reasons. Avoiding &quot;something&quot; makes your text feel less wishy-washy and more intense and to the point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not a minute passed, however, when the rottweiler stopped me again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At that same moment I was pushed to the floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“... it seems like the dog wanted to lure you into a trap.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution, in my opinion, is to &lt;em&gt;name&lt;/em&gt; the &quot;something&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the dog stopped him, why first state that &quot;something&quot; stopped him, only to immediatly clarify that it was the dog? The man wouldn't stop if he did not recognize the dog right away. If he thought it was just a bush, he would keep going. So he sees the dog, then stops. Why not retain that immediacy, by naming the dog, instead of causing a hesitation in the narrative that is not there in the action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, why does he say that the dog wanted to lure him into &quot;a trap or something&quot;? What other something could there be that he could be lured into? I have no idea. This sounds like you have no idea what other something could be there, either. So just delete it. The dog wanted to lure him into a trap. And that sentence ends with a nice clear and unconfusing &quot;bang&quot;, just like the trap would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or something like that ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just went to your website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can try to delete superfluous words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;s&gt;Once&lt;/s&gt; again, I traveled three hours &lt;s&gt;only&lt;/s&gt; to eat sushi, alone. Cars passed &lt;s&gt;by&lt;/s&gt; and people streamed along the sidewalk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Again I traveled, three hours, to eat sushi alone. Cars passed and people streamed along the sidewalk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write like a guy with a lot of muscle: less words, more impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Once again&quot; does not tell me more than a simple &quot;again&quot;. The &quot;only&quot; is a comment by the narrator, not a description of the character or the action. Hold the narrator back and let the reader come to their own conclusion. Yes, cars pass &quot;by&quot;, when they pass, we know that, so don't tell us what we know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if there are things that the readers cannot know, some things left out for the reader to wonder and guess create tension and interest, where detailing out every particular just creates impatience and boredom. Be brief to the point of omission, and suddenly your narrative will become rich with meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The somethings are the same: too many words, where less words say the same or even work to create interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-10-18T12:55:05.250" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T12:55:05.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14157" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14161" CreationDate="2014-10-18T20:06:09.340" Score="21" ViewCount="26461" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you bold punctuation directly after &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/current&quot;&gt;linked&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;em&gt;italic&lt;/em&gt; text? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10919" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T15:32:05.310" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T15:32:05.310" Title="Do you bold punctuation directly after bold text?" Tags="|style|formatting|punctuation|websites|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14157" CreationDate="2014-10-18T21:24:19.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a matter of style and totally up to you. In most cases (period, comma) people will not see the difference. For exclamation marks and question marks it is more obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me it looks better when these marks are italicized:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you really want to eat &lt;em&gt;this?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I would never make them bold or include them into the link formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's me. You can find a different approach on &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/italics.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;commnet.edu&lt;/a&gt;. (&amp;larr; see, period not included :))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T21:24:19.153" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14152" CreationDate="2014-10-18T22:36:38.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, such generic placeholders are definitely washing out the image. The reader reads descriptions to gain knowledge of given situation, and these are empty, useless duds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the information is limited, give the scraps that are still available. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;A surprising sight&lt;/strong&gt; made me stop again.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Two hands&lt;/strong&gt; shoved me, or &lt;strong&gt;a mass against my back&lt;/strong&gt; shoved me.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only use &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; when the data is insufficient to provide any meaningful info. &quot;Something's rattling inside the box.&quot; There's very little to be said about whatever's rattling, so &quot;something&quot; is justified here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same goes for &quot;A kind of&quot; or &quot;Some sort of.&quot; There's hardly a worse way to describe an object than as &quot;some sort of object&quot;, especially if it's generic and exists in thousands variations. &quot;We arrived at some sort of castle&quot; is the laziest way of getting out of describing the castle while still &lt;em&gt;technically&lt;/em&gt; describing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for curbing that... well, Ctrl+F is your friend. Just find all occurrences and think of improving them. After several dozens corrected, you'll start catching yourself when you write that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T22:36:38.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14157" CreationDate="2014-10-19T09:27:46.483" Score="19" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Germany&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typographic rules (e.g. Forssman/de Jong, &lt;em&gt;Detailtypographie&lt;/em&gt;), the most prominent, quasi-official orthographic authority (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/newsletter/duden-newsletter-vom-06-08-10&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Duden&lt;/a&gt;), and &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Typografie#Schriftauszeichnung&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; all say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A punctuation mark following emphasized text (in italics, boldface, small caps, caps, letter spacing, etc.) is also emphasized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exceptions are quotation marks and brackets, especially if only one of the pair would be emphasized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;US&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/strong&gt; changed its recommendations from the fourteenth to the fifteenth edition. Where the older rule said that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, punctuation marks are printed in the same style or font of type as the word, letter, character, or symbol immediately preceding them. (14th ed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it now says that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All punctuation marks should appear in the same font – roman or italic – as the main or surrounding text, except for punctuation that belongs to a title or an exclamation in a different font. This departure from Chicago's former usage serves both simplicity and logic. (15th ed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find any recommendation on the matter in the &lt;strong&gt;APA&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;MLA&lt;/strong&gt; style manuals, both of which I have at hand and consulted, although there is at least one &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=2aUEAAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA584&amp;amp;lpg=PA584&amp;amp;dq=apa%20%22punctuation%20following%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=3RQ97sPsVM&amp;amp;sig=PZB-E8cMqoCQHskxDKJ-suBeZyU&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=GYBDVKHHOoz3auGHgpgD&amp;amp;ved=0CFcQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=apa%20%22punctuation%20following%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; that claims that &amp;quot;[punctuation] following italicized text is also italicized in APA style&amp;quot;. I don't trust that unsubstantiated claim, but maybe someone else can find an official (i.e. APA or MLA published) opinion on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;House styles may differ, as &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/a/90775/32638&quot;&gt;the accepted answer to the same question on English.SE&lt;/a&gt; states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-19T09:41:24.410" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6682" CreationDate="2014-10-19T18:30:48.837" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When used sparingly or in the right context, archaic language can be fun. I won't argue any literary position, but to answer the OP's question about services or rules, incase anyone (or a future visitor) is curious, this is what I found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few automated services :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://whilstr.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://whilstr.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lingojam.com/EnglishtoShakespearean&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://lingojam.com/EnglishtoShakespearean&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://speakshakespeare.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://speakshakespeare.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some rules :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://whilstr.org/rules.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://whilstr.org/rules.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dan.tobias.name/frivolity/archaic-grammar.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dan.tobias.name/frivolity/archaic-grammar.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10925" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2014-10-20T01:05:10.490" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T01:05:10.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13058" CreationDate="2014-10-20T00:10:36.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/about/contact&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the magazine's website&lt;/a&gt; doesn't have anything useful to say. So one would imagine that standard cover letter advice would apply here. (I got some of this information from the links at the end of this answer, but have condensed, and reworded significantly.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your name, contact info, and a word count&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow their cover letter guidelines (where they have them - in this case there are none)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The letter should be to a specific person, when you can do that (for The New Yorker, just &amp;quot;Fiction Editor, The New Yorker&amp;quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mention the magazine, but briefly. (So that it's clear your note isn't a form letter)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this a simultaneous submission? Some magazines want to know that. Some don't allow it at all. (Check their guidelines.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep it short.&lt;/strong&gt; Magazines get a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of submissions, and a long cover letter is unlikely to be read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the New Yorker doesn't really say what they need, I'd either &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/about/contact&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;contact them&lt;/a&gt; and ask for clarification or find out what other writers have done. Do they even want a cover letter? Maybe this info should just be in the email? Or maybe they just want an email address and nothing else? Ask, or put together a very brief letter. (A short cover letter is unlikely to be a problem.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;More information:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Review Review: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thereviewreview.net/publishing-tips/your-perfect-cover-letter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Your Perfect Cover Letter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lightningdroplets.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/6-tips-for-perfect-professional-cover-letters-for-literary-magazines/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;6 Tips for Perfect (Professional) Cover Letters for Literary Magazines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T00:10:36.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14142" CreationDate="2014-10-20T07:55:25.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The explanation I loved most is from Terry Prachett's &quot;Discoworld&quot; universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magnetism: &quot;See this metal? It is special kind of metal which is loved by all other metals. So when other metals are around, they are atracted to it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electricity: &quot;I finally bound the lighting to the metal and can produce my own small lightnings.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want your character to speak about it, you should say: &quot;I found out, that we know that this metal is attracted to other metals. But our knowledge cannot explain why&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can give to it in-universe explanation - for example alchemy would be best to apply in this case (essence of metal is bound very deep to this piece)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T07:55:25.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14144" CreationDate="2014-10-20T13:45:18.187" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could certainly &lt;em&gt;try&lt;/em&gt;, but it sounds like the main story would come out gibberish to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only example of this which springs to mind is the Sherlock Holmes story &quot;The Adventure of the Gloria Scott.&quot; A character receives a letter which reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The supply of game for London is going steadily up. Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders for fly-paper and for preservation of your hen pheasant's life.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which sounds kind of incoherent. It's actually in skip code, so every third word is the real message:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;The&lt;/strong&gt; supply of &lt;strong&gt;game&lt;/strong&gt; for London &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; going steadily &lt;strong&gt;up&lt;/strong&gt;. Head-keeper &lt;strong&gt;Hudson&lt;/strong&gt;, we believe, &lt;strong&gt;has&lt;/strong&gt; been now &lt;strong&gt;told&lt;/strong&gt; to receive &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; orders for &lt;strong&gt;fly&lt;/strong&gt;-paper and &lt;strong&gt;for&lt;/strong&gt; preservation of &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; hen pheasant's &lt;strong&gt;life.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The game is up. Hudson has told all. Fly for your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I honestly don't know how you'd make a framing story which was readable and had plot and character development while also going through all the coding circumlocutions to create the embedded story. Or conversely, the main story would be readable and the second story would be a short, oddly-worded missive because you could only use the terms from the main story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like either you'd sacrifice readability of the main story to create the second, or the second would be seriously hobbled by being subject to whatever you could pick out of the main narrative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T13:45:18.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10860" CreationDate="2014-10-20T17:28:00.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Chicago, poetry or verse (which lyrics are), of more than two lines should be in block quotes. A blockquote is indented either left or right and can be further set off by being a smaller or different font. As to whether it should be italics, Chicago doesn't require it. That would seem to be a stylistic choice and, as long it is done consistently, probably the decision could be left to the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that if some of the lines of the lyrics are long, they should be bumped down to the next line and indented one em from the line above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slashes are only used if the verse is two lines or less so it was quite correct to remove them. When they are used, there is a space to each side of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Poetry (and really, what are songs but sung poetry?) can be punctuated or unpunctuated, but the removal of the punctuation is a stylistic choice, not a necessary one. I've read quite a bit of poetry that was punctuated normally. And then I've read E. E. Cummings. Since the author chose to punctuate the lyrics, I would leave the punctuation in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10909" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T17:28:00.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14143" CreationDate="2014-10-20T19:12:35.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since it is a children's book, you can't use &quot;umber&quot; or &quot;sienna&quot; or complicated color words.  (Heck, I still don't know what &quot;khaki&quot; is!)  And you said you don't want to use food.  That means you need to think of things that 1) are always (roughly) the same color, and 2) are well-known to children.  Shades of brown are going to be tough.  Random ideas that come to mind: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Animals.  This could be used to comi-tragic effect.  For example, if there are best friends, one of whom is unusually pale and the other unusually dark, the bigoted kids could call them the &quot;skunkers.&quot;  Or, the two friends might be proud of their contrasting skin colors, and call themselves &quot;the panda pair&quot; or &quot;team zebra.&quot;  (Or &quot;team orca,&quot; then go beat the crap out of the bigots.  But I guess that's not a children's book.)  Other colored animals: brown mouse, brown bear, black bear, polar bear (white!), black crow, light brown mountain lion, black jaguar, black Lab (dog).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cartoon/TV characters.  Charlie Brown (very fair) and Dora the Explorer (light brown) come to mind.  Not my area of expertise, and your book could get dated quickly if you choose badly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building materials.  Fresh sidewalk (lily white), asphalt (very black, but don't use &quot;tar&quot; since historically that was a slur), pine wood (light brown or tanned white), oak table (medium brown).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People groups.  This obviously requires the readers to know something about other people groups.  But &quot;black as a Nigerian fieldhand&quot; is probably as dark a skin tone as exists, and &quot;white as a Swedish gamer in December&quot; is probably as light a skin tone as exists (absent albinos).  Most middle-schoolers would probably figure those out.  The in-between tones will be tough, especially since most people groups with in-between tones have a wide range of tones.  So, &quot;Arab brown&quot; and &quot;Mexican brown&quot; are meaningless.  &quot;Northern Italian&quot; and &quot;Southern Italian&quot; would be meaningful to most adult readers, at least as tropes, but most middle-schoolers won't know the (supposed) difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I think you'll have to approach describing skin color from a variety of angles, if getting the correct tone/shading is important to your story.  Which begs the question: Is it?  If not, then don't stress about it.  Just say &quot;light brown,&quot; &quot;brown,&quot; &quot;dark brown,&quot; etc. and let the readers colorize your characters with their imaginations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T19:12:35.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-21T04:56:15.060" Score="3" ViewCount="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am contemplating gathering a collection of quotations from a single writer, similar to &lt;em&gt;The Quotable [C.S.] Lewis&lt;/em&gt; by Wayne Martindale [Tyndale]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the writers works remain under copyright, and I recognize (as in the case of the aforementioned text) that permission would need to be gained from each of the publishers/texts from which quotations are taken. However, search as I might, I've been unable to discover how this sort of thing is &quot;normally&quot; done. My questions related to the general topic include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the editor of the collection pursue the permissions, or the publisher of the new work in question?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a standard format for such requests?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are fees charged for the permissions? (This would seem unlikely, as it would essentially make such a collection impossible.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of the Lewis collection, the volume notes quotations are &quot;used by permission&quot; from eleven different publishers (of probably forty different volumes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance to anyone who can help me with this matter... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10936" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T10:30:09.113" Title="What is the Normal Process for Gathering Permissions for Quotation Collections" Tags="|non-fiction|citations|copyright|publisher|queries|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14172" CreationDate="2014-10-21T10:30:09.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually it's the author or the author's estate/agent/descendant who holds the original copyrights, so you don't need to contact a large number of publishers, just that one entity for bulk of works. In rare cases the author might have fully sold copyrights (as opposed to licensing the publishers for release) and in these cases you will need to contact these publishers. That's fairly uncommon though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your publisher may help you find the contact with the author and if they are exceptionally generous, manage it, but most likely the main burden is on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a standard format for such request, the publisher will have it too, though usually just a polite, formal letter will do better than some request form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for fees, this is completely individual and depends entirely on the author/estate. Depending on their will, your personal charisma and the volume of the citations, it may be waived entirely, be rather token amount, a part of royalties from publishing, or just turning your request down either by a plain &quot;no&quot; or by some excessive charge you're bound to turn down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a book based entirely on works of a single author, definitely don't expect it to be available for free, although working with the author's estate you should be able to work out a split-royalties deal. They may help with publishing too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T10:30:09.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14174" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-21T11:22:03.763" Score="3" ViewCount="11162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently started writing a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_book&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;chapter book&lt;/a&gt;, which is &quot;a story book intended for intermediate readers generally between 7-10 years old&quot;. The book is only 29 pages long and I am nearing the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many more pages do I need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10939" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T18:09:02.327" LastActivityDate="2015-12-08T19:51:48.630" Title="How many pages long should a chapter book be?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|children|book-length|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-21T11:35:40.270" Score="1" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story in present tense. One sentence is a little tricky for me, and I don't know if I should use past or present tense: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Present tense&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The tree was so massive, that it even withholds the strongest storms.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Past tense&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The tree was so massive, that it even withheld the strongest storms.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure because it is a fact that could still last today, but the whole story is written in past tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10938" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T13:12:32.537" Title="Use past or present tense for lasting fact" Tags="|tenses|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14175" CreationDate="2014-10-21T12:06:49.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your sentences aren't in the present tense. This would be present tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tree is so massive it even withheld the strongest storm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, regarding your past-tense sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tree was so massive it even withheld the strongest storm.&#xA;  (Not lasting fact)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tree was so massive it could have withhold the strongest&#xA;  storm. (Lasting fact)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, lasting facts should be written in the present tense (aside of few exceptions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T12:06:49.443" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14175" CreationDate="2014-10-21T12:40:02.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, &amp;quot;withheld&amp;quot; means &amp;quot;held something back from,&amp;quot; as in &amp;quot;she withheld the cookies from her child&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;he withheld the information from Congress.&amp;quot; So it doesn't mean &amp;quot;hold up to&amp;quot; a big storm. The word you want is &amp;quot;survive.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, Alex &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; has it right in his second example. You have a few options in the past tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The tree was so massive it could have survived the strongest storm.&lt;/strong&gt; (&amp;quot;The strongest storm&amp;quot; has happened, but we don't know whether the tree was exposed to it. If it was, then clearly it survived.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The tree was so massive it could survive the strongest storm.&lt;/strong&gt; (Hypothetical: &amp;quot;The strongest storm&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;hasn't&lt;/em&gt; happened. We project that the tree could survive it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In present tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The tree is so massive it could survive the strongest storm.&lt;/strong&gt; (Hypothetical again. Even if we are in the present, the strongest storm is in the future.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T13:12:32.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14174" CreationDate="2014-10-21T13:56:16.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've made the same mistake I did. You've picked up a book and realised that it has 500+ pages of text, you've started writing and got to the end and realised you're 475 shy of writing the next epic novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're approaching the task backwards and there are a few things to realise very early on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A good story starts and ends when it should. How many films have been inflated/shortened past when it's enjoyable!? Your plot and your story determines the length your book should be not an arbitrary page number.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing 500 pages of high quality fiction takes time... a LOT of time!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind if you want to write a book you need to plan a story which will fill a book. That's not to say your plot for One With Water is no good, it may make a fantastic short story... or it may be the starting point for a much more complex piece of fiction!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/12431/story-length-and-the-term-used/12432#12432&quot;&gt;This answer&lt;/a&gt; discusses appropriate classifications of story and the rough word counts associated with each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to either finish, pat yourself on the back and consider it a good Short Story or really get into it and work out where the plot can go. Is there more in there you've not explored? Can your short story form the plan/introduction for a larger piece?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8373" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T05:29:46.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14179" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14187" CreationDate="2014-10-21T19:23:06.583" Score="2" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is generally accepted method or writing a good song? To start with the hook and let the rest of the song point to it, or start from the beginning and let the hook come naturally? Is there a &quot;best-practice&quot; stated somewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8854" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:51:56.060" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:51:56.060" Title="What comes first: the hook or the rest?" Tags="|lyrics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12453" CreationDate="2014-10-21T21:12:09.243" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are really two distinct challenges to writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;emotional&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;technical&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Emotional Challenge&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are stuck emotionally, then you may feel as if everything you write is just a waste of time.  If this is your challenge, then you simply must change the way you perceive the writing that you do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not Writing Is The Only Failure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of considering it a failure to write poorly, begin to consider &quot;not writing&quot; your only failure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is that no matter how poorly you write, if you do in fact write, then you can begin to learn how to make things better.  Of course, if you do not ever write, there will never be a way to evaluate whether or not you write well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many writers love language and have read great books and the emotional problem they have is that if they write and it turns out poorly then they have an idea in their mind that they will only have proven to themselves that they are not the actually great writers they dream of being.  All day long they dream of sitting and writing but are crippled by this fear of failure. They start and stop continually without ever achieving anything significant in fear of proving to themselves that they are not great writers.  This is too bad and is summarized beautifully in a great quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No one ever became perfect by doing nothing. ~Anonymous&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much writing advice often concentrates on (and often becomes distracted by) emotional difficulties and unfortunately does not provide very much technical help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Great Thought Experiment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine if a publisher contacted you and said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm writing up a contract that guarantees you $10,000 if you'll&#xA;  simply complete a 250 page novel.  I don't care how good you believe&#xA;  it is.  All I want is a completed text of 250 pages.  Can you please&#xA;  churn it out in 6 weeks?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm betting that you'd at least start in the 5th week and churn out 250 pages of something.&#xA;Well, why do you need that motivation?  Why not &lt;em&gt;write 250 pages just to see how it feels&lt;/em&gt;?&#xA;Why is it that the money would make you feel as if you weren't wasting your time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For Help, Try This Book&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;There are a number of books over the last 20 years that I've read that have actually helped me become a better writer. I may not be the greatest writer, but I am far better than I was 20 years ago, so it must be something.  I must've learned something.&#xA;One of those books is very old but has some great information that the author stumbled upon about how your brain works with writing. It's Becoming A Writer, by Dorothea Brande.  Am I allowed to add links to books here?  I hope so. &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2px0dPc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Amazon Link to Becoming A Writer&quot;&gt;Amazon link to Becoming A Writer, by Dorothea Brande&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That book walks the reader through a lot of the emotional and has you set up Writing Appointments.  You determine an exact time each day to write and then you watch yourself to see if you follow through.  Basically, she says, if you never show up, your not a writer.  Interesting and much more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical Difficulties&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Now to the technical difficulties.  If you are worried about your writing not being good and learning that you are not the &lt;strong&gt;Great Writer of Our Time&lt;/strong&gt;, then you need to work on your technical ability so that you can be a better writer, so that people will actually enjoy your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first problem however, of getting technical help, is the problem of defining what great writing actually is.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I define it here as:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Writing That Works&lt;/strong&gt; (more in a moment on the inspiration of this phrase)&#xA;But, what does that mean?  That seems very loosely defined.&#xA;That is why I further define Writing That Works as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clarity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing that is appropriate for the context&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stimulus / Response Writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smooth transitions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Music&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Style&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were to successfully achieve all of these with your writing, then it would be great writing -- and, of course, great reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some quick notes on each of these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarity&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If readers cannot tell what you're saying and are forced to re-read your sentences they will not suffer your writing long.  Make it clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Appropriate&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If you are writing about the mating habits of the swallow tail butterfly in your novel about a bank robbery you are not writing a novel about a bank robbery.  If you show a gun in the first scene, have it go off in the third scene - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov&amp;#39;s_gun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ala Chekhov's Gun&lt;/a&gt;.  Show the reader, only what is appropriate for your story.  Consider this at every moment as you edit your story and you'll get something done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stimulus / Response Writing&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Learned it from &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYjXwN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jack Bickham's book, Scene &amp;amp; Structure (at Amazon)&lt;/a&gt;. Once I learned this little gem I understood what to write and what not to write.  Make things happen.  When it happens follow the natural response.  Continue on.  A story will break out and your readers will be able to follow what is going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Smooth Transitions&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;When you write the next thing that the reader is thinking because you've led the reader to think that, then you know you are writing great.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Music&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;I hope you know that the sound that the words make in your readers' heads actually matter.&#xA;That's why some people can write anything and you want to read it.  It's about phrasing and sentence lengths and more.  You can learn this stuff.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Style&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Many authors have such a strong voice you can tell it is them writing even without knowing who wrote a piece.  Write like you talk. You can learn style by reading various authors and counting the words in their sentences, examining closely what types of words they use.  And then finally learn like the artists of old, by copying what they've written.  Try to get your sentences phrased so they sound like their sentences.  It's a fun game and you'll learn a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Desert Island Book&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if I were marooned on an desert isle and could only have one writing book it would be the one that teaches all of this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qEWv3K&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Make Your Words Work, by Gary Provost - Amazon link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solve Technical, Resolve Emotional&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as you concentrate on the technical you will find much of the emotional just slides away.  Most likely that is because you are distracted by the work and learning but it is also because you'll become a better writer and you'll know it.  As &lt;strong&gt;Norman Mailer&lt;/strong&gt; famously said, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Writer's block is only a failure of the ego.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you trust yourself you'll probably find the block falls away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-10-22T21:47:23.743" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T21:47:23.743" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14144" CreationDate="2014-10-22T02:51:34.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps something like what you're trying to do could be done by inserting the second story inside the first one, but backwards, starting at the bottom of the last page, and working its way up, maybe combined with one or more skip codes (one specifying skipped words, another skipped pages.) Would the two stores need to be of equal &quot;weight&quot; or complexity? Having both read coherently and &quot;naturally&quot; would require each undergoing some interesting adjustments and compromises in style and readability. I imagine it could be done. But for how many words? I'm sure there are examples of music being written this way, though I can't think of any offhand -- though the idea brings to mind Brian Eno's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CSnBmPejxE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Driving Me Backwards&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5925" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T02:51:34.867" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14186" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-22T13:49:04.403" Score="5" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm preparing my book for print-on-demand distribution with CreateSpace. As part of the process, I'm being asked to select a BISAC Category for my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My book is a non-fiction book which covers a few different topics, so there's no single obvious choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How important is it that I select the correct BISAC Category? How does it influence where and how my book might be seen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2753" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T15:13:02.813" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T15:13:02.813" Title="How important is a BISAC Category?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|non-fiction|amazon|categories|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14179" CreationDate="2014-10-22T14:49:06.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can point you to a very good resource on hooks in songs, whether you are talking about lyric or musical hooks.  The resource is the great (albeit older) book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qzxaJt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Craft of Lyric Writing, by Sheila Davis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book is filled withe examples from real hits and other songs which have been produced by actual recording companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author touches upon the entire process of song writing and how the hook impacts the song and how the song impacts the hook.  Also, explains the importance of a hook is actually based in the audience's memory.  In other words, you create the hooks to help the audience (whether listener or producer) remember your song.&#xA;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T18:42:41.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14188" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-22T15:05:35.167" Score="1" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently putting together verbiage for a website redesign and I am finding it difficult to determine the best format for submission. The content needs to be reviewed by stakeholders and submitted to translators, web designers, and IT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard document that writers currently use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: The new site design is not yet completed. We are expected to write a document that details content which will be carried over as well as new content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10950" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T12:41:36.470" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T12:21:41.917" Title="Writing for the web: how do you submit your content" Tags="|tools|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14192" CreationDate="2014-10-22T18:07:27.657" Score="7" ViewCount="17375" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may seem like blasphemy to a lot of you, but can I become a good writer without doing incredible amounts of reading? I never read for fun growing up (thank you, videogames) and have just recently started enjoying it, however I don't have as much free time as I did when I was young. Is there any hope for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give you an idea of my bandwidth I began to read the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time back in December of 2013 and I just finished the last book in September of this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8854" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:51:33.110" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:51:33.110" Title="Can I be a good writer without reading a lot?" Tags="|readers|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2014-10-22T19:19:01.453" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; Possibly, are you a genius with lots of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer:&lt;/strong&gt; I guess you could ask the same question about any field. Can I be a good painter without looking at other paintings? Can I be a good carpenter without looking at other cabinets? Can I be a good architect without looking at other buildings. (Fyi: I refuse to enter the building of an architect who has never seen a building before because he's probably some sort of sentient alien lightform or something.) Could I be a good zookeeper without watching other people zookeep?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I suppose you could be, but you'd basically be reinventing the wheel. Literally, if you're an engineer making a car without actually looking at a car. Unless you're a natural genius, (which you could be and if you are congrats!) I think it would take take you significantly more time to get good by yourself (as judged based by a book-reading world) then it would to just read a little more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you want to speed up your progress and focus your reading time, I would suggest reading some books on how to write well. &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt; by Stephen King is popular on over-all creative writing. For nonfiction, I enjoyed &lt;em&gt;On Writing Well&lt;/em&gt; by William Zinsser. &lt;em&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt; by Strunk and White is good for the basic building blocks. For mortaring the building blocks together, I took a class that used &lt;em&gt;Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace&lt;/em&gt; by Joseph M. Williams and Joseph Bizup to great effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...wow, man, that sounds like a lot reading, huh? =) Guess you're not going to escape that whole reading thing entirely. But good news! I think you'll find that the more you read, the faster you'll get and more you'll read in one go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10909" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T19:19:01.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2014-10-22T19:21:41.010" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not really, no. That would be like trying to learn a foreign language without ever hearing it spoken or seeing it written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can certainly write, inasmuch as you can write words down on a page. But that's not &quot;becoming a good writer.&quot; if you have no idea what other books look like, then you'll basically be trying to invent the modern novel from scratch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You won't have any sense of what works and what to avoid; what can be powerful and what's already been done to death; what expectations readers will demand you meet and what surprises will knock their socks off. I should qualify -- it's not that you'll have no sense at all, because you presumably have seen movies and TV and so on. You're not brand new to &lt;em&gt;stories&lt;/em&gt;. And yet, prose is a very different form, with a different audience, a different language, and different terrain. You will not blunder your way into greatness, or even competence, by sheer serendipity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider: you want to write a book that you, apparently, would rather not read, because it's a book. How likely are you to be pleased with this book, then? How will you be able to tell if you're doing &quot;well&quot; or &quot;not well&quot;? Who, precisely, do you think will be a good audience for your work, and how can you tell if they'll like it without knowing what &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; they enjoy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is, reading is not a very onerous hobby to break into. It doesn't take a lot of time or effort, you can start with whatever catches your fancy, you can go at your own pace. Heck, you can read on the bus, or listen to books on tape, and soak fiction up by the liter. (Also, pro tip: if you don't have time to read, then when is it you think you'll have time to write?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, you don't necessarily need to have read a ton in order to &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; becoming a good writer. You've read some Tolkien? &lt;em&gt;Great&lt;/em&gt;, now you know how those books look; you have a model and something to imitate. Read another fantasy book or two, if that's your style - you'll learn more about fantasy, and you'll also see some differences from Tolkien. Great; you've got a broader range than you did two books ago. Keep reading; keep writing; and keep looking for books that are in the general vicinity of what you're writing - because that's the area that will help you most, and most immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't be a good writer without reading at all, but once you are reading, however little, you are advancing in the right direction. You can figure out the pace you want as you go along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T19:21:41.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2014-10-22T19:21:52.043" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have contemplated a question similar to this which is:&#xA;Can a person read &quot;how to write&quot; books and learn to write?&#xA;I believe you can, if you read the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; books. &#xA;Now, what I believe you are actually asking is: Are there any shortcuts to learning to write well?  You also seem to be asking this in light of the fact that you seem to also understand that learning to write well does require a lot of reading so you can see examples of good and bad writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read Numerous Passages From Many Books&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, I contemplated the same thing and discovered that if you read the right passages from a large number of books you can gain a lot of insight quickly.  But who has compiled a large list of passages and provided commentary on the good and bad of those examples?  Okay, well, here goes some gratuitous self promotion: My book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2oXCFEw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fiction Writing Gems&lt;/a&gt; is available on amazon and provides exactly this from a large number of published books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Survey Many Books&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it means is that you can read passages which are only around 250 - 300 words from published books and then learn why the passage was good or bad.  You can then apply that learning to your own writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Library Staycation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I learned this while doing my own survey of 100 fiction novels at the local library.  Have you ever read the first page of 100 novels in one sitting?  It is both fascinating and nauseating.  :)&#xA;You can read my blog about that at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://newtonsaber.com/blog?articleId=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;To Write Great, Get Jaded&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I've provided some new ideas for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T14:59:48.897" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:59:48.897" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2014-10-22T20:14:42.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course you can!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is a myth that you need to read a lot to be a good writer. &lt;strong&gt;I have never seen a scientific study that supported that claim.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you need to watch a lot of sports to be a good sportsman? Do you need to listen to a lot of music to be a good singer? No. It will certainly help in your understanding of a craft to witness a master at work, but I don't think observing a craft has a similar impact on your performance as actually training that craft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You certainly need to be or become a master of language, but language does not only happen in literature, and much of contemporary literatur is not even written in a &quot;literary&quot; style, but rather emulates oral history and audiovisual media. And those that read a lot don't usually write a masterpiece on the first try, either. They, too, have to learn how to actively use the language they have until then only consumed passively. Because, as we should all know, &lt;strong&gt;eating a lot is not the same as understanding how the food is made&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just do what you like and don't worry about dogmas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, let us look more closely at the exact claim that is made. Because it is not said that writers simply need to &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; a lot, but that they need to &lt;em&gt;read literary works&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone who can read and write has read something. It would seem improbably that someone knows how to write without being able to read as well, so you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; read texts (in the widest sense of the word) and you very probably still read more than you are aware of even today. For example, it is commonly claimed that girls read more than boys. In a study (which I am too lazy to find now) the authors found that boys do in fact read &lt;em&gt;just as much&lt;/em&gt; as girls, only they don't read &lt;em&gt;books!&lt;/em&gt; What they read is: magazines, cereal boxes (sic) and non-fiction books. But because &quot;reading&quot; means &quot;reading fiction novels&quot; in the minds of most parents, teachers and scholars, it seems as if boys did not read as much as girls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as I wrote, language is not only written language. There is spoken language as well. Some of the &quot;literary&quot; masterpieces where composed &lt;em&gt;without writing&lt;/em&gt;, purely in the minds of their authors, and &quot;published&quot; by orally narrating the work to their audience. Most ancient and medieval literature is of this type, and it was often not recorded by the author, but by someone who &lt;em&gt;heard&lt;/em&gt; the narrative, and often not directly from the author either. So, even if you assume that the ability of composing narratives requires familiarity with other narratives, you can become familiar with narrative traditions and standards by listening to audio books, watching movies, and playing computer games. After all, writers use books that teach screen writing to learn writing novels! Why should watching movies not help them understand plot structure, characterization, and current motifs, then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, reading a lot of something will not make you have more ideas. Much of genre fiction is just plagiarism: having the &quot;idea&quot; of writing a story like what you have read. Tolkien did not read Fantasy to write Fantasy. Wells did not read Science Fiction to write Science Fiction. The greatest works establish new genres, and their authors have never read anything like what they themselves wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, assuming that language and style can be learnt by other means than reading fiction, there are many writers whose first books was not written because they loved to read, but because they had had experiences or gained knowledge that they wanted to impart. Think of all the autobiographies. Of course some autobiographists loved to read and had read a lot of books before they wrote about their lives. But some have not, and the first book they read was their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And since writing is not only about literary quality, but also about writing something that interests your readers, the claim that books written by writers that did not read a lot are less elegant and eloquent does not really matter, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final thought, though, I am quite sure that writing will make you interested in reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T08:08:52.123" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T08:08:52.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2014-10-22T22:15:09.897" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand where you're coming from. Free time is a precious resource, especially as an adult. There's only so much to go around, however this may be a case of &lt;em&gt;what you're reading&lt;/em&gt; rather than how much you read. In other words, reading higher quality writing less often is usually better than reading lower quality writing more often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start by picking the genre you'd like to write. The important thing is to write something that you would like to read. As author Tony Morrison eloquently put it, &lt;em&gt;&quot;If there's a book you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to try your hand at fantasy, pick a novel or a series of novels, either mainstream or classic, that has high recommendations. People either won't stop talking about it, such as those with entire Wikis devoted to them, or those that appear regularly on various lists such as a &quot;Top 10 Fantasy Novels&quot; list or similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, don't discount activities that involve stories outside reading alone. They are everywhere such as video games, movies and comics, and television is a prime example. Whether you're watching a story or playing it, you can always take a step back and ask, &quot;How are the creators telling the story?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions you might ask yourself are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why did the show writers choose this particular scene to end on&#xA;before the commercial break?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did the game writers make me feel such strong sympathy for the&#xA;characters I'm playing with?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is the dialogue in this scene written, and how well did it translate to the delivery by the actor and its effect on me, the viewer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in a crafty approach, I would recommend &quot;Reading Like a Writer&quot; by &#xA;Francine Prose. I'll be honest - it's a fairly technical guide but the benefit is that you'll be able to develop the awareness one needs when it comes to considering other people's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck and happy writing and reading!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2014-10-22T23:51:34.740" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T23:51:34.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2014-10-22T23:25:47.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems like a very weird question to me. Why are you writing, exactly, if you don't like books? Do you think it's going to be a quick path to fame in lieu of an actual career? Because that's the feeling I'm getting from your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you've come to like books as an adult but you don't feel like you have the time to read, just remember that practice is the key to everything. Write a lot, ask for constructive criticism and input, and you will get better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't get better if you have no compass to guide you, be it a mentor, online community like this or reading at large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10963" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2014-10-22T23:40:11.593" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T23:40:11.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12453" CreationDate="2014-10-22T23:40:05.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you deserve some credit for being able plan and envision your story. When it comes to writing, you can be more of a &lt;em&gt;Plotter&lt;/em&gt;, someone who outlines beforehand, or a &lt;em&gt;Pantser&lt;/em&gt;, who is someone led by their gut feeling. A Google search yields some hefty results like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.autocrit.com/editing/library/plotter-or-pantser-the-best-of-both-worlds/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; that can give you the down low on how both approaches can help you get the best results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, as far as translating the vision in your head onto paper, the journey of a writing a story begins with the first word. I recommend looking at Anne Lamott's &quot;Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life&quot; for some inspiration. Here are some great passages that I look to whenever I face a blank page and can't seem to start:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, &quot;Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If perfectionism is your enemy, you can consider this passage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, it's okay not to get it right the first time: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“But how?&quot; my [writing] students ask. &quot;How do you actually do it?&quot; &#xA;  You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on the computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind -- a scene, a locale, a character, whatever -- and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you just have to take it word by word. Without the words, there is no novel, regardless of how planned your story is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T00:39:47.440" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T00:39:47.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13050" CreationDate="2014-10-23T02:51:12.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I notice that you didn’t mention theme among the basic elements you had in place.  You didn’t say much with your question, so forgive me if I wander off into speculation.  In fact, I’ll toss a couple of ideas out there and hopefully something will stick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several writer friends of mine and certainly many successful pros are plot-focused, genre writers.  There’s nothing wrong that.  My genre writing buddies rock at plot; it just pours out of them, but I just can’t do that.  I’m not pumping myself up.  I’m saying I literally am incapable of creating any plot without knowing what I’m trying to say as a writer in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are just too many possibilities.  Consider how many car chases there could conceivably be for example.  How do you know what kind of car chase works for your story?  Knowing the point my story intends to demonstrate, helps me understand the job of each scene or chapter.  Combining this with the need to develop the character really helps hem me in, reducing the possibilities to a manageable few.  Some people are more creative without constraints, but I need them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility I’ll throw out there (and I really am speculating here) is that you’re writing the wrong story.  You didn’t say much, but you mentioned you had the backstory set, but only had a good idea of the story.  This suggests you understand the protagonist’s past better that their present.  But your story occurs in the present.  Consider this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’ve noticed in the work of my writer friends a funny tendency to hide from their own character’s emotions.  This takes the form of a tragic and defining backstory contrasting a more standard, factual, plot-based story.  Often they reference the backstory as exposition when the story’s current events run out of steam.  If you find that your protagonist’s backstory excited you into writing in the first place and not the, “basic elements of most fantasy stories,” it might suggest that the better story is the backstory.  If so, write that story.  Just a thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1904" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T06:13:31.293" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T06:13:31.293" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14202" CreationDate="2014-10-23T05:48:26.843" Score="1" ViewCount="2332" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an e-mail similar to this, where is it correct to add a post script?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before or after the signature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Professor X,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am John Smith....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;​Sincerely yours, ​&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Smith&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P.S. Position 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;VLSI Design Lab &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  Department of Computer Engineering &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  X University of Technology 11155-11365&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P.S. Position 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10967" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T06:06:27.533" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T07:31:46.520" Title="Precedence: P.S or Address?" Tags="|formatting|email|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13050" CreationDate="2014-10-23T06:00:52.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you don't really have a &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; yet, but a &lt;em&gt;world&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a story is &lt;em&gt;the journey of a character who wants something&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try one of these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start with a &lt;strong&gt;character&lt;/strong&gt; who lives in your world. What do they want? How they get it is your story. (If they have everything they want, you don't have a story; take something away from them). OR&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start with a big &lt;strong&gt;conflict/problem/goal&lt;/strong&gt; that might happen in your world. Who'd be most affected by it? That could be your main character. How they handle, maybe overcome, this challenge, is your story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It's a common problem for new sci-fi/fantasy authors to focus too much on worldbuilding in the beginning, and that's fine, but don't fall for the illusion that the world is 90% of the job. Characters and their problems/struggles/growth are still the main part of any storytelling).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend books on the writing craft in general, google:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Truby's &lt;em&gt;Anatomy of a Story&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Writing Excuses&lt;/em&gt; Podcast&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt; by Stephen King&lt;br&gt;&#xA;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="67" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T06:17:55.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T06:17:55.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14200" CreationDate="2014-10-23T07:12:42.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A postscriptum was added to a handwritten letter to avoid having to copy all of it only to add in an afterthought. When you write digitally and have the option to easily rewrite any part of your letter before you email it, &lt;strong&gt;a postscriptum is completely out of place&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An email, especially to a person of consequence to your carreer, should be a carefully thought out and crafted piece of writing, so take the time and make the effort to work in your afterthought into the body of your email. Even if it is completely unrelated to the rest of your email, there is still no reason why you could not open another topic and insert it before the complimentary close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Example:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Handwritten letter&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sincerely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your Name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;P.S. Joan just told me that she will be in Paris tomorrow and could meet you on short notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Email&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joan will be in Paris tomorrow, and if you have time for a meeting on such short notice, let her know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sincerely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your Name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; add a postscript, and you give your address as a signature at the end of your email, add the postscript immediatly after the complimentary close, and &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the signature. The postscript is part of the &quot;letter&quot;, the signature is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many signatures are separated from the email by a dashed line or other elements, and adding the postscript after the signature will make it appear as part of that signature (and possibly overlooked).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sincerely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your Name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-------------------&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Your Name&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  25, Your Street&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Your City, NN 12345&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Phone 123-456-890&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;P.S. Stuff that will seem as if you add it to every email and will be ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T07:31:46.520" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T07:31:46.520" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14203" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14204" CreationDate="2014-10-23T11:48:18.123" Score="3" ViewCount="886" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there significant differences between satire and parody?  Can you provide examples of the difference?  Do you know of a book which is considered satire; one which is considered parody?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T13:47:40.953" Title="In modern writing is there a a significant difference between satire and parody?" Tags="|style|genre|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14203" CreationDate="2014-10-23T12:08:40.480" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Parody&lt;/strong&gt; is a mockery of a specific existing thing. Weird Al Yankovic writes parodies &amp;mdash; &quot;Beat It&quot; as &quot;Eat It,&quot; for example. &lt;em&gt;Saturday Night Live&lt;/em&gt; parodies political figures by mimicking their qualities to extremes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Satire&lt;/strong&gt; mocks general things and overall qualities and stereotypes, by being an exaggerated copy or twisting some element ironically. In &lt;em&gt;South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut,&lt;/em&gt; Satan's big song &quot;Up There&quot; was a satire of Disney &quot;hero/ine has a dream&quot; songs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Blazing Saddles&lt;/em&gt; is a satire of Westerns; &lt;em&gt;Men in Tights&lt;/em&gt; is a parody of the Robin Hood myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA&lt;/strong&gt; examples in books: in addition to @what's good examples, you have Sol Weinstein's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_10?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;amp;field-keywords=sol%20weinstein&amp;amp;sprefix=sol+weinst%2Caps%2C379&quot;&gt;Israel Bond series&lt;/a&gt;, which are parodies of James Bond. There's the &lt;em&gt;Barry Trotter&lt;/em&gt; unauthorized parodies of the Harry Potter series. You could argue that &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice and Zombies&lt;/em&gt; is a parody. &lt;em&gt;The Wind Done Gone&lt;/em&gt; is both parody and satire. Ian Doescher has &lt;em&gt;brilliantly&lt;/em&gt; rewritten the &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; trilogy as Shakespearean plays. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Catch-22&lt;/em&gt; is a satire of the military, government, and war. Jonathan Swift's &quot;A Modest Proposal&quot; is a satirical suggestion for dealing with overpopulation, and &lt;em&gt;Gulliver's Travels&lt;/em&gt; satirizes various faults of character of different groups of people. Hugh Laurie's &lt;em&gt;The Gun Seller&lt;/em&gt; starts as a satire of noir pulp but changes to an actual noir about halfway through. Douglas Adams's &lt;em&gt;Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy&lt;/em&gt; satirizes bureaucracy (among many other subjects). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you google &quot;satire novels&quot; and &quot;parody novels&quot; you will come up with plenty of examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T13:47:40.953" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T13:47:40.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14203" CreationDate="2014-10-23T13:07:37.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;parody&lt;/strong&gt; makes fun of an artistic work by applying the characteristic style or theme to unlikely subjects. Example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bored_of_the_Rings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bored of the Rings&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Satire&lt;/strong&gt; mocks real people, their behavior, and their opinions. One of the most famous satires is probably George Orwell's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Animal Farm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, a satire of Stalinism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T13:07:37.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2670" CreationDate="2014-10-23T19:16:41.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on the context of your presentation, but here are some quick, general suggestions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Lowdown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Down n' Dirty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Nitty Gritty &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Play by Play&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Deets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T19:16:41.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14210" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14221" CreationDate="2014-10-23T21:32:25.060" Score="2" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you point out some reference books on literary criticism – from a &lt;em&gt;theoretical&lt;/em&gt; as well as &lt;em&gt;practical&lt;/em&gt; point of view – to hone and systematize my skills, acquired through first-hand reading of lots of books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10974" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-10-24T07:36:54.200" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T18:43:56.083" Title="Literary criticism handbook" Tags="|style|creative-writing|novel|criticism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12453" CreationDate="2014-10-23T21:35:51.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add to @Elliot's &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12454/10083&quot;&gt;excellent answer&lt;/a&gt; by saying that it doesn't really matter &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; you write, so long as you just keep practicing. If you're reluctant to start writing your &quot;dream project&quot; because you want to do it justice, then work on a different project first.  Try improvising a story, without planning anything about who the characters are or how it'll turn out--just start writing and see what happens.  Do some other &lt;a href=&quot;http://writingexercises.co.uk/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;writing exercises&lt;/a&gt; or participate in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/904/what-are-good-places-to-post-your-work-where-it-will-be-read-by-others&quot;&gt;workshops&lt;/a&gt;.  Commit to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nanowrimo.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NaNoWriMo&lt;/a&gt;.  Or do what I did: keep a journal and write something in it, &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt;, every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, don't get discouraged if you end up writing a lot of garbage--in fact, you should expect to.  If you're challenging yourself enough to get better, most of your writing will be way worse than if you'd played it safe--but the stuff that's worth keeping will get much, &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10083" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T21:35:51.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14146" CreationDate="2014-10-23T22:02:26.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Labels like &quot;hero&quot; and &quot;villain&quot; are terms intended to simplify, but your story does not have to be so cut and dry. As with any craft, there's not so many hard and fast rules as there are guidelines. Use your bets judgment; choose what feels right for your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would stick to terms like &quot;protagonist&quot; (the lead character that takes the journey) and the &quot;antagonist&quot; (the character that keeps the protagonist from getting what he or she wants). Though your story is a historical fiction, it has an element of mystery to it too: your main character sets off on a journey to discover a truth that can change her life in some way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as backstory goes, you should only incorporate it if it reveals something about your character that the reader didn't already know, and/or if the information will somehow move the plot forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If flashbacks are integral to your plot, you could possibly have alternating chapters: one set in the past and one set in the present. It would be an interesting way to weave the mother and daughter's story together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some  historical novels that I would reference for inspiration would be &quot;The Historian&quot; by Elizabeth Kostova and &quot;Possession&quot; by A.S. Byatt. &quot;The Thirteenth Tale&quot; by Dianne Setterfield would be good read as well, since it has to do with unraveling the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T22:02:26.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14210" CreationDate="2014-10-24T00:23:35.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my go-tos is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0199691347&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Jonathan Culler. It's great for people who are new to literary theory, or for veterans that are looking to brush up on the basics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T00:23:35.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3759" CreationDate="2014-10-24T03:52:18.453" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Narrative is the experience  of the narrator in his own words whereas descriptive story is analysis of any topic desired..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10977" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T03:52:18.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14210" CreationDate="2014-10-24T04:55:42.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the standard introductions for university students is &lt;em&gt;Literary Theory: An Introduction&lt;/em&gt; by Terry Eagleton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T04:55:42.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12966" CreationDate="2014-10-24T06:06:10.133" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer this question, I inquired with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asindexing.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Society for Indexing&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it legal to create an index of a book and publish that index, without consulting the autor or publisher of that book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I received the following answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to US copyright law, copyright in an index exists separately from the original work that is being indexed, although upon payment of the fee to the indexer by the publisher or author, the rights to publish the index are given to the publisher/author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accordingly, it is possible for an indexer to create an index that is publishable. A good example is the &amp;quot;Good Old Index,&amp;quot; which is a separately published index to the Doubleday edition of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand this answer to mean that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Yes, it is legal to share an index you made from someone else's book.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T06:06:10.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14217" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14219" CreationDate="2014-10-24T13:24:18.757" Score="3" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very often, I happen to have to offer my feedback on friends' short stories or novels or poetry. However, I find it very difficult to give a throughout feedback on this kind of writing which is not &quot;technical&quot; so to say. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read many books over the course of my life and have some experience with literary criticism, however I would appreciate some suggestions (or reference books) by expert writers or editors (or anyone who has two cents to put in really) on the appropriate way to give a &lt;em&gt;professional&lt;/em&gt; comment on works of literature (in particular, novels, short stories, an poetry, as I said before).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I asked a similar question (&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/14210/literary-criticism-handbook&quot;&gt;Literary criticism handbook&lt;/a&gt;), which is indeed &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; a reference request, but this one has broader scope in my opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10974" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-08T13:10:08.277" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T13:10:08.277" Title="On offering feedback to stories/novels/poetry" Tags="|style|novel|poetry|criticism|feedback|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14217" CreationDate="2014-10-24T13:35:18.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My 2 cents: Focus on the objective of the writer, and let your feelings and taste aside. Everyone have the right to have a taste, but a professional critics needs, in my opinion, give a guidance to the writer so the creator can fulfill his objectives, not the critics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="552" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T13:35:18.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14217" CreationDate="2014-10-24T13:35:25.123" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Literary criticism&quot; and &quot;editing feedback&quot; are two entirely different beasts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Litcrit is about looking at an existing text and analyzing it. You look at the author's intent, you look at symbolism, at context, at what the writer wanted to achieve, at how it fits into X genre canon, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editing feedback is what you give on an &lt;em&gt;unfinished&lt;/em&gt; piece of work with the intent of giving the author tools to &lt;em&gt;change&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;improve&lt;/em&gt; it. You may be able to use litcrit tools to frame your feedback (&quot;The house symbolizes X, so what if Y and Z happened and what if Mary did A and B?&quot;), but as an editor, your job is to help the writer shape the work into its final form. Literary criticism is something you do with a work which is already final and published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, litcrit is generally not done with the author. You can critique something in a classroom, a book, an essay, or a blog post, but editing feedback is personal and one-on-one, deliberately done with (and &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; with) the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T13:35:25.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14217" CreationDate="2014-10-24T14:02:19.063" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this all comes down to the one question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the writing work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiction writers often attempt to escape critique (and criticism) by saying, &quot;well, who can say if it is right or wrong, it is Art.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take It To An Extreme&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, let's take that to an extreme.  Imagine if I created an a piece of writing that was so original that it used a new language. Here's my story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Igto fraxim gelsim dee, hopta angko mazzin frim.  Zilla tark il niteo&#xA;  arv vis a erfto.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stop Being Ridiculous&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you could say, &quot;Stop being ridiculous.&quot;  I could respond, &quot;I'm an Artist and I'm ahead of my time. Just wait, 50 years from now, people will be reading my stories and begging for more.&quot;  Who can say?  And the writer escapes critique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now We Can Talk About Writing That Works&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Well, I would say that fiction writers who say, &quot;Well, who can say whether it is good or not,&quot; are in the same boat as the previous example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Something Measurable&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;That means we need something measurable then to use as a guide to give a writer an idea of whether or not her writing is great or good or terrible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Suggested Categories of Critique&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few suggested categories which can help you evaluate and provide some actionable changes for the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarity&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Can you tell what the writer is attempting to communicate?  As simple as that.  If you have to re-read the piece for meaning or simple understanding explain to the author where you got stuck and why.  Was the entire thing cloudy? Let the author know.  Writers must be clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Appropriate&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Did the author take a lot of tangents? If the author is writing about the mating habits of the swallow tail butterfly in her novel about a bank robbery she is not writing a novel about a bank robbery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stimulus / Response Writing&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Authors are often confused about how events happen.&#xA;You may read something like:&#xA;The boy was injured by the speeding car.&#xA;How about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sam was humming a song as he stepped into the street. He looked up too&#xA;  late to see the red Chevy Bronco bearing down on him.  He screamed as&#xA;  the vehicle slammed into him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing should happen which stimulates another thing.  Does the author consistently miss this?  Let him know. You can learn much more about this in Jack Bickham's great book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYjXwN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scene &amp;amp; Structure (at Amazon)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Smooth Transitions&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Authors who jump around confuse readers.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When an author writes the next thing that the reader is thinking because she's led the reader to think the next thought, then she is writing great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Music&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;The sounds that the words make in readers' heads actually matter. That's why some writers can write anything and you want to read it. Does the author take this into account or are sentences difficult to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Style&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;What is the overall tone?  Did you enjoy reading it?  Let the author know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many more actionable types of criteria you can use, but if you used these you would provide the author with many great actionable items she could use to make her stories better.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can learn much more from Gary Provost's great book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qEWv3K&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Make Your Words Work&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T18:46:16.283" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T18:46:16.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14210" CreationDate="2014-10-24T17:29:39.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very good read which is informative and entertaining is, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pIHDnL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How To Read Literature Like a Professor&lt;/a&gt;, by Thomas C. Foster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another very good book is &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pIGUmm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice&lt;/a&gt;  by Charles Bressler.  A bit more academic, but quite good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T18:43:56.083" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T18:43:56.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14222" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14224" CreationDate="2014-10-24T17:31:37.580" Score="5" ViewCount="316" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read a story on the news that made me go: Oh my, this would make a great short story. I've never written a story based on a news article before. So I'm wondering, will someone sue me? Am I infringing some copyright law?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not planning to write an exact copy, though anyone who reads the story would make the connection with the original story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-12-06T14:01:21.857" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T14:01:21.857" Title="Stories based on news: are they allowed?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14226" CreationDate="2014-10-24T17:33:10.630" Score="1" ViewCount="1192" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm creating an ebook that has images in it. What size / resolution should images in an ebook be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T03:59:08.707" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T03:59:08.707" Title="What size should images in eBooks be?" Tags="|ebook|artwork|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14222" CreationDate="2014-10-24T18:06:44.293" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In brief: Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you make a direct (word-for-word) copy of a news story, then you'll be in breach of copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you write a story with characters in it who are clearly based on specific living people then you (or your publishers) risk being sued for libel by those people if they think that your story disparages them unfairly. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the situation here in the UK. If you say where in the world you are then someone else may have other advice which is more relevant to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10985" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T18:06:44.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8470" CreationDate="2014-10-24T18:38:33.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you don't have a bunch of &quot;sources of sources&quot; -- just this one -- you have three easy ways to remain honest and give due credit.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a way to cite the notes directly as a reference, preferably before you cite anything you were led to by the notes.  Directly quoting something is not a prerequisite for citing it as a reference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you suggested, put a sentence in the acknowledgements section.  Something like: The lecture notes from Dr. Smith's course, &quot;Alien Spaceships,&quot; were used to provide overall direction and as a source of references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do both, just to be clear.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2014-10-24T21:30:34.847" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T21:30:34.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14223" CreationDate="2014-10-24T19:36:25.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the deal with Kindle images. The bigger, the better -- up to the max size (in bytes 5Mb) The largest Height x Width possible so users can zoom in.  Why do I say this?  Because the &lt;strong&gt;Kindle Reader now allows the reader to click the image and then zoom in on it&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means you want the image to have a high resolution so the user can click on the image inline (in the text) and the Kindle Reader will take over and allow the user to zoom in using multitouch features of pads (iPad, iPhone, Android, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the better the resolution the better the experience.  I know this is true because I've tested it in my own books where I've used graphics and I've also been pleased and annoyed by other author's books I've bought which had good or bad resolutions set and then I couldn't really see their images clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2014-10-25T15:59:12.633" LastActivityDate="2014-10-25T15:59:12.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14186" CreationDate="2014-10-24T22:18:17.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does it influence where and how my book might be seen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the first step to get visible to the readers at all. It is the 'genre' of your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just look how you yourself by books. In a store the books are 'categorized' by aisles. If you want a book about Microsoft Word you go to the aisle with the sign &quot;Computer&quot;. If there is one with the more specific category &quot;Software&quot; you would choose that one. Never ever would it come to your mind to look in the &quot;Gardening&quot; corner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same is true in an online shop (like Amazon). The categories/genres are the entry points to search new books (if you do not have an author or a title already in mind). Even if you do not click through the categories, you can define them in your search phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this meta information is one of the corner stones for the visibility of your book. It's the way books are categorized, it's the way people search for new books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T22:18:17.123" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14188" CreationDate="2014-10-24T22:39:28.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not fully understand your question. Do you already have a working site which is incomplete, but some of the content and design is already there? Are you in a pure planning phase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, nonetheless let me give you an answer. I do not know how much of your part is 'to program' that website, but I am a programmer, so I tell you my favorite approach. And that is: Use the smallest available 'chunk' which can represent your website (in a browser) and continually improve from that base. Then whatever part is finished, can be reviewed by the stakeholders easily using a browser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would mean the website must be built in some way. Which means that you need some kind of sources to build the site (content, style info). That &lt;em&gt;source&lt;/em&gt; (like &lt;em&gt;source code&lt;/em&gt;) should be best available in human readable file formats (Word format &amp;lt;&gt; human readable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have sources in human readable formats, you can use source control software (SVN, Git) to store these sources. Everyone can change them. The changes are kept in a history, can be reviewed, tracked, committed, rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source&lt;/em&gt; does not necessarily means &lt;em&gt;HTML code&lt;/em&gt; or something like this. People who are only interested in the content, should be able to only see and touch the content files. The build process has to care about putting these files into something that is visible in the browser (html, php, I do not want to go in the details, this is not StackOverflow).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love tracking all changes using source control, but I know that managers can be easily horrified by this (like I can be horrified by Word documents). So a lot of people have to agree to this concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T22:39:28.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14136" CreationDate="2014-10-24T23:07:59.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The additional &quot;and&quot; changes the rhythm of the list. It elongates it, which can have the perhaps paradoxical effect of increasing a sense of pace and tension. &quot;Monotony&quot; isn't simply a matter something being boring or tedious. Used properly, it can convey a meaning of fullness and richness. Somewhat comparable to how &quot;said&quot; disappears in dialog, the additional &quot;and&quot; in such a list disappears (precisely &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of its repetition) and has the effect adding a kind of urgency. Each additional &quot;and&quot; builds on the previous one (even if there are only two total) and creates momentum. There is a limit to how many you can get away with before it starts getting tedious, but in the proper context two or three, perhaps even four, can be very effective in controlling pace and conveying mood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5925" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T23:07:59.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2014-10-25T01:58:18.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most stories, one doesn't necessarily need a lot of dialogue but it sure helps to display the character's personality more than just &lt;em&gt;telling&lt;/em&gt; your readers what they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think of it as &quot;showing&quot; vs &quot;telling.&quot; A short expletive of especially creative invention can go a long way to describe who your character is, instead of using a lengthy sentence to describe their frustration, for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I often start out with summary, then attempt to play it out in an active scene between two or more people, to see if this helps further my story. Sometimes I get new and better ideas this way, also; a sort of &quot;improv&quot; workshop cut just for that scene. It may &quot;pad&quot; it a slight bit, but it usually adds a richer experience for the reader, making those extra few pages worth it in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10988" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2014-10-26T17:27:38.720" LastActivityDate="2014-10-26T17:27:38.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14217" CreationDate="2014-10-25T08:38:23.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say that the persons asking you for feedback are friends. You are not asking how to criicize the work of other professionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A professional writer is, in my opinion, someone who takes writing as serious as a job. He or she wants to excel in their writing, and when they ask for feekback, I would expect they want it honest and detailed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend is someone who expects you to support them. This support is usually not professional, but &lt;em&gt;emotional&lt;/em&gt;. For example, when friend tells you of some bad experience, they don't want you to explain to them what they did wrong, but that you &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt; how they feel and provide a secure situation where they can cry or be angry or feel however they feel, &lt;em&gt;without being judged&lt;/em&gt; for letting their guard down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This expectation of emotional support, that comes with friendship, makes feedback for the artistic work of a friend somewhat tricky. On the one hand the friend might really want to learn what is wrong with their work and how they can improve it. On the other hand they might want you to share in their pride and joy at having accomplished something and to reinforce their sense of purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a small son, and as his parent I understand my role towards him to be twofold: I provide an example of how to live well, and I support him in his attempts at doing so, himself. When he shows me his homework, I don't point out his mistakes to him. Instead I share in his joy and with that teach him the joy of doing homework. Learning the joy of doing work is much more important than learning to correctly spell a difficult word. Teaching him spelling, is the job of his teacher. Teaching him work ethics is my job. I think friendship is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a creative person I have friends who are creative. My personal opinion is that it is my job to make them feel good and have the courage and energy to do what they want to do. My job is to say: It is so cool that you want to be a writer! Do that! I am the person giving them support, where others say: But making a living as a writer is hard. My job is not to teach them how to be a writer, except by example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I therefore only offer critical feedback if I am asked a very specific question. If they say, how do you like it, I know that they are uncertain. So my answer is: I think it is a great accomplishment that you did this. Now, why don't you show it to the people who will be your readers and see how they react? I don't tell them how &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; like it. I like that they finished it, and I show that. Only if they specifically ask: I'm unsure about X, what do you think of it? Only then will I say: I think that ..., and maybe you could try ... . I never give detailed feedback when I was asked for general feedback, because what that friend really wants is support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-25T08:38:23.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14232" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14236" CreationDate="2014-10-25T14:18:02.547" Score="2" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a bit hard to explain, so here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His room was an exact replica of mine. The only difference were the&#xA;  things he had brought along: &lt;strong&gt;his zoology books, his backpack, and of&#xA;  course his climbing equipment.&lt;/strong&gt; Little objects that told me something&#xA;  about him, but that at the same time, pushed him further away, into a mist&#xA;  of &lt;strong&gt;knowledge and practicality.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the second list follows the 'sequence' of the first one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Knowledge = zoology books&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Practicality = his backpack, climbing equipment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do writers follow this rule? Or it doesn't matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I ask is because I want to write &lt;em&gt;a mist of practicality and knowledge&lt;/em&gt; instead (it sounds better to me for some weird reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-10-26T13:50:10.703" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T17:36:46.570" Title="Do items on a list have to follow the order/logic of the previous one?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14233" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-25T15:38:13.117" Score="1" ViewCount="642" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been writing erotic stories that are based on true incidents in my life. Since some of those incidents (which occurred many years ago now) have been of questionable legality, I am unsure if publishing them could lead to my facing any legal problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I get my stories published?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I publish the stories, am I likely to face legal difficulties because of those events?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10990" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-10-25T18:58:15.650" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T02:54:40.467" Title="Consequences of autobiographical stories whose events are potentially illegal?" Tags="|legal|erotica|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14232" CreationDate="2014-10-25T18:59:16.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question makes me come up with the following example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For twenty years I lived in the land of milk and honey - along with the bees and cows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this sounds better than:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;s&gt;For twenty years I lived in the land of milk and honey - along with the cows and bees.&lt;/s&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't explain (though I find Lauren Ipsum's explanation in the comment below quite plausible), and others might disagree, but my gut feeling says that in this case &lt;strong&gt;it is better to reverse the order&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following up on the comments, &quot;practicality and knowledge&quot; sounds better to me than &quot;knowledge and practicality&quot;, because &lt;code&gt;/ˈnɑlədʒ/&lt;/code&gt; has only one stressed syllable, while &lt;code&gt;/ˌpræktəˈkælədi/&lt;/code&gt; has at least two (and more syllables overall), which creates two rhythmic patterns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;knowledge and practicality&#xA;  /  x    x     /  x / x x&#xA;&#xA;practicality and knowledge&#xA;  /  x / x x x     /  x&#xA;&#xA;/ = stressed, x = unstressed; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scansion&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second rhythmic pattern (&quot;p. and k.&quot;) has a distinctive finishing subpattern at the end (&lt;code&gt;/ x&lt;/code&gt;), while the first pattern (&quot;k. and p.&quot;) sort of &quot;peters out&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which pattern works better in your context would depend on &lt;strong&gt;what kind of effect&lt;/strong&gt; you prefer: a strong, finalising statement (&quot;p. and k.&quot;) or a more uncertain, open almost-question (&quot;k. and p.&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-10-26T09:09:26.853" LastActivityDate="2014-10-26T09:09:26.853" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14237" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14260" CreationDate="2014-10-25T23:46:02.317" Score="3" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the criteria an acquisitions editor uses to judge whether or not s/he accepts a manuscript for publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2014-10-27T15:29:35.643" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T15:54:46.257" Title="Criteria used by acquisition editors (for Fiction or Non-Fiction)" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8470" CreationDate="2014-10-26T17:42:35.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to divide your bibliography in two sections: the first section can be titled, for example, &lt;em&gt;Cited works&lt;/em&gt; (or something similar); the second one can be titled &lt;em&gt;Further references&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning of the &lt;em&gt;Further references&lt;/em&gt; section you should add a brief text explaining which kind of references you have included in this section and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10679" LastActivityDate="2014-10-26T17:42:35.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14240" CreationDate="2014-10-26T21:58:45.463" Score="2" ViewCount="1138" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to start writing a science-fiction novel, and having only ever written technical documents before, I have very little experience in the finer details of creative writing. In particular, I was wondering Do chapters always need a title or is acceptable to have Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc... with no title?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11001" LastEditorUserId="11001" LastEditDate="2014-10-27T09:12:40.423" LastActivityDate="2014-10-27T09:55:04.680" Title="Chapter titles or numbers?" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14239" CreationDate="2014-10-26T23:03:10.477" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chapters don't need to have a title. &amp;quot;Chapter NN&amp;quot; is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can have &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; a title — that's generally when the title identifies some kind of shift, like a different time, location, or narrator/POV focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 47&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Location:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vulcan, 2265&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;POV:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brienne&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few hours later&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-27T09:55:04.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14241" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14242" CreationDate="2014-10-27T09:16:15.960" Score="2" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed in some books I read that under each chapter title, there is a citation, somewhat related to what the chapter in question is about. I was thinking of maybe using the same technique for my (first) novel. I have no experience in creative writing and so I was wondering whether this is frowned upon or generally accepted? Are there any legal considerations when quoting somebody in a book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11001" LastActivityDate="2014-10-27T10:00:42.190" Title="Using citations in chapter headings?" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|technique|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14241" CreationDate="2014-10-27T10:00:42.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is widely accepted, a rather common &quot;flavor&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are legal implications, unless you use public domain works or made-up citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of citations from works still covered by copyright, such use is not covered by Fair Use clause (unless you're parodying the content of the citation in in the following chapter, or referring to it by some other Fair Use clause) so either you obtain permission from the copyright holder (not always for free, not always granted at all), or you just violate the copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While such minor copyright violations are hardly ever pursued by the copyright holder if the work is niche, you're likely to hear from their lawyers if you publish a popular book that earns you significant profits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...that's why you'll usually find the quotes from Shakespeare, authors good 200 years old, or ancient philosophers. Quoting a modern pop song lyrics is asking for trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-10-27T10:00:42.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2014-10-27T12:10:37.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The real difference about whether or not you use dialog is based in two terms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Narrative&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exposition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one you choose and to what extent will completely alter your story.&#xA;Here are a couple of drastic examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Narrative&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Robinsky felt very angry and decided to obtain revenge upon his&#xA;  company for the way they had abused him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exposition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Robinsky slammed his fist down on his desk.  &quot;Blast!  You can't&#xA;  do this to me again.&quot;  He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them&#xA;  again and smiled.  &quot;No.  You won't ever be able to do this to me or&#xA;  anyone again,&quot; John whispered.  &quot;I'll make sure.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is whether you have a (more) distant narrative voice &lt;strong&gt;telling&lt;/strong&gt; the reader how John felt or you &lt;strong&gt;show&lt;/strong&gt; actions and words spoken to &lt;em&gt;indicate&lt;/em&gt; to the reader what John is feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exposition is often more difficult to write, but it is generally far more interesting to read.  As a writer you have to see the action taking place in the mind's eye and then transcribe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, note that exposition employs the reader far more and engages her much more as she has to figure out what is being communicated by the actions and dialog she sees in the story.  For this reason it is generally far more immersive than narrative voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also why a larger percentage of readers like stories with dialog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2014-10-27T12:10:37.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14245" CreationDate="2014-10-27T13:18:08.343" Score="14" ViewCount="8429" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if it's just my idea but I rarely see colons and semicolons in dialogue (especially in modern novels). Is it because they don't simulate normal speech? Because their use is more a &lt;em&gt;semantic&lt;/em&gt; one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm wrong, could you please give me some examples of authors who do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T04:56:54.473" LastActivityDate="2021-12-31T03:13:12.713" Title="Are modern authors still using colons and semicolons in dialogue?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14244" CreationDate="2014-10-27T13:30:35.527" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The point of a Horcrux is, as Professor Slughorn explained, to keep part of the self hidden and safe, not to fling it into somebody else's path and run the risk that they might destroy it — as indeed happened: That particular fragment of soul is no more; you saw to that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://preview.tinyurl.com/ng3eaj5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, J. K. Rowling&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Lord Voldemort liked to collect trophies, and he preferred objects with a powerful magical history. His pride, his belief in his own superiority, his determination to carve for himself a startling place in magical history; these things suggest to me that Voldemort would have chosen his Horcruxes with some care, favoring objects worthy of the honor.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://preview.tinyurl.com/nox8t33&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, J. K. Rowling&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10985" LastEditorUserId="10985" LastEditDate="2014-10-28T14:21:59.900" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T14:21:59.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14244" CreationDate="2014-10-27T13:45:42.683" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Linguists have found that semicolons, colons, and even commas, are on the wane in everyday usage, and that many speakers no longer understand the use of a semicolon. Non-writers – and you will see this in emails, forum posts, and other written messages – often do not use punctuation at all, but rather let all &amp;quot;sentences&amp;quot; flow into each other, only putting rows of exclamation marks for emphasis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are of course extreme forms, but those may be your readers, if you write genre fiction, and knowing that some of your readers may not readily understand the difference between a comma and a semicolon or a full stop and a semicolon might as well make you hesitate to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand the semicolon is still in heavy use in literary fiction and academic writing, so if you aim for an educated audience, by all means make full use of all the tools that language provides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An edit to answer Alexandro Chen's question in the comment below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Rudolph, literary agent at Dystel &amp;amp; Goderich Literary Management, writes in a blog post on the &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150311190340/http://www.dystel.com/2012/07/the-great-semicolon-debate/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Great Semicolon Debate&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I’ve had a negative opinion of semicolons, and as an editor I would regularly strike them from authors’ manuscripts. My feeling, echoed by every copyeditor I ever worked with, was that in kids’ books they stood out like sore thumbs. Indeed, I loved the comment from the sixth-grade teacher, who wrote that when she sees a semicolon in a kid’s paper, it’s invariably plagiarized. It’s just not a device that feels natural to a kid’s way of viewing the world, and as such, should probably be avoided at all costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now that I’m an agent and working on a lot of adult projects, I’m finding that in certain contexts and genres, semicolons not only make sense but fill a vital role. Certainly in nonfiction, I agree with the author [of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/semicolons-a-love-story/?_php=true&amp;amp;_type=blogs&amp;amp;hp&amp;amp;_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Times article&lt;/a&gt; that inspired Rudolph's blog post] that the deft use of a semicolon can suggest a connection that other forms of punctuation—especially my beloved em-dashes—can’t quite pull off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With YA being somewhere in between MG (no semicolons) and adult (with semicolons), you are in a grey transitional area where I'd say the use of semicolons will depend on the &amp;quot;adultness&amp;quot; of your topics and writing style. In a light and funny summer romance I would maybe avoid them; in a reflective, thought-provoking, difficult book they might be a valuable stylistic instrument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T09:26:26.003" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12717" CreationDate="2014-10-27T19:23:18.353" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose my answer might sound old school, but I greatly enjoy when the author describes the physical features of the characters in their story. I prefer knowing just how the author envisioned the character. From there I can build around the character and their corresponding thoughts and actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't lack imagination but I do like the author's authenticity right down to the characterization as they saw it when they created their characters. I find it very disappointing should these stories be made into movies and the actors chosen look nothing like what I envisioned. I often choose not to watch the film adaptation for this very reason, especially since the author is often consulted on the subject. (And true book lovers know the movies are never as good as the book). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally like knowing about hair color, eye color, height, a stilted gait, dimpled chin or a crooked nose that had been broken one too many times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11009" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-30T08:29:46.307" LastActivityDate="2018-05-30T08:29:46.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14244" CreationDate="2014-10-27T20:54:03.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The real answer here is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whatever makes your message the most clear to your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn to use punctuation as properly as possible, because this is what people learn at schools.  Since they learn it there they tend to understand it as &lt;em&gt;common usage&lt;/em&gt; and it's easier for them to gather meaning.  And since most people learn to read at school, a common set of expectations arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine if everyone defined their own meaning for the period.  Some might use it to indicate a contraction such as don.t (don't) and others might use it to indicate a capital word such as .sally (Sally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could get to be a ridiculous mess.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;So, the answer is&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Learn the rules of writing that the largest number of readers will&#xA;  recognize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't it interesting that no one worries this much about speaking?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So, if you make your writing sound very similar to your speaking, then you'll probably match the greatest percentage of readers anyway. I generally speak without any use of a colon or semi-colon.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides those symbols originally simply indicated length of pause for a speaker who was using notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you read this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm extremely annoyed,&quot; said Ted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What do you mean?  Is it because the mail is late today,&quot; Julie&#xA;  asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What?  No.&quot; Ted waved a piece of paper frantically in the air.  &quot;The&#xA;  city just hit us for 6 months of taxes.  All at once.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh no.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yep, it's that new semicolon law; the one that charges $5.00 for&#xA;  every time a person speaks a sentence with a semicolon in it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2014-10-27T20:54:03.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14249" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-27T21:45:12.347" Score="1" ViewCount="295" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was asked if I could suggest a website (in English) where one can create a profile and post short-stories, poetry, or other pieces of literary work in an &quot;informal&quot; way. Additionally, such website should allow the writer to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;edit the work (without the edits being visible) and eventually delete it at any time;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;receive some sort of feedback from a community (in the form of comments and &quot;upvotes&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know some good forums with good communities that I may suggest, but they don't fit the two additional requirements. Does any of you know some more fitting website?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10974" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T18:49:54.220" Title="Resources for writers: websites for posting stories and poetry" Tags="|publishing|short-story|self-publishing|poetry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-10-29T23:49:10.603" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14263" CreationDate="2014-10-28T02:22:50.957" Score="2" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok let's pretend I'm writing about abuse (or bullying or another topic( and my experience with it (I don't want to state the real topic here). I want to write a psychological and scientific article/paper/post that is about my experience with abuse and the negative effects of it (like the emotional damage of domestic abuse that women feel for example). I am not a scientist, but I want to write an article for it. I know how to do research, but I don't know how to structure my article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10911" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T20:21:18.703" Title="How do I write an article about the negative effects of a topic and my experiences with that topic?" Tags="|non-fiction|research|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14251" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-28T07:36:42.797" Score="7" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;I already had practice with very short stories, like with 1-3k words, writing literally first things that came to my head. The next logical step would be to write something about 8-12k words, because what I'm trying to practice here is planning the actual plot. &#xA;But every idea for a plot I come up with seems to be excessively long, suitable only for big novels.&#xA;I don't want to skip to that right away for several reasons. The most important one is that I'm pretty sure I won't be able to finish it. &#xA;Any advices on how to come up with something short? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10596" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-10-28T15:28:39.877" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T15:31:21.233" Title="Every idea for a story I come up with seems excessively long" Tags="|plot|short-story|planning|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14251" CreationDate="2014-10-28T09:16:17.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write down the ideas that are too long for later use (and to free your mind) and just keep developing new ideas until you hit on something that has the right length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generating ideas works best if you don't censor your thoughts, and trying to limit your ideas to the right length will only impede your idea generator. So let it flow. Eventually something will pop up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T09:16:17.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14244" CreationDate="2014-10-28T11:14:25.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sad truth is that semicolons are slowly dying. &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%3B&amp;amp;year_start=1800&amp;amp;year_end=2000&amp;amp;corpus=15&amp;amp;smoothing=0&amp;amp;share=&amp;amp;direct_url=t1%3B%2C%3B%3B%2Cc0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NGrams&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However as one of the few people who still attempt to use semicolons in writing (and a programmer) I sincerely hope they don't die out. Ultimately a lot of it boils down to a lack of proper teaching; teachers these days do not often teach students the correct use of semicolons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an attempt to stop them dying, I'd like to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Using a semicolon isn't hard; I once saw a party gorilla do it.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11019" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T11:14:25.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14254" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14262" CreationDate="2014-10-28T13:02:28.263" Score="2" ViewCount="1621" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a beginner at writing and am currently trying to write a more or less long story. Now the problem that I have is, that two of my Characters(a guy and a girl) are attacked in a Park and I'm not sure how to show the scene not focused on just one but both characters on the same time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the scene they were captured while eavesdropping and the leader of the bad guys switches between the two until he gives some order and starts to talk to the guy, while the girl is getting forcefully undressed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I write about the conversation and the action in a way, that the reader sees these two things at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My native language is german so my english might not be that good, but I hope you understand what I'm asking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10886" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T19:49:23.433" Title="Multiple Characters in one scene" Tags="|perspective|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14251" CreationDate="2014-10-28T13:03:56.443" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe there really are long ideas or short ideas.&#xA;Instead, there are just ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you say that your plot is very detailed, it doesn't really matter.  Instead, it all depends upon how you write the scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the entire Wizard Of Oz (by Frank Baum) story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The year is 1935.  The place, a dirt road, somewhere in Kansas. &#xA;  Dorothy, a teenager, is walking home on a dirt road with her Cairn&#xA;  Terrier, Toto.  Dorothy looks up at the black swirling sky.  &quot;It looks&#xA;  like bad weather, Toto.&quot; She runs for the house. &quot;Auntie Em...A&#xA;  tornado is coming!&quot; Dorothy runs to her bedroom.  The tornado touches&#xA;  down outside and her window blows open, the frame hits her in the head&#xA;  knocking her unconscious.&#xA;  *** Dorothy wakes up with Toto licking her face.  Cheerful singing greets her.  &quot;The wicked witch is dead...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Where am I,&quot; she asks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You're in Oz,&quot; a high pitched voice answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suddenly she is surrounded by little people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I must get home,&quot; Dorothy said.  &quot;Auntie Em and all my uncles will be&#xA;  worried about me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, you want to get home?  You must visit the Wizard.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Who,&quot; Dorothy asks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The wonderful Wizard of OZ,&quot; another of the little people said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How do I find him?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Follow the yellow brick road,&quot; said Mayor Little-person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Wait.  Hold on a second,&quot; said Lyle the little-person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What is it now, Lyle,&quot; asked Mayor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Look the shoes the Wicked Witch of the East's feet.  They are&#xA;  glowing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At that same moment a glowing ball of light appears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What's that,&quot; asked Dorothy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's not a that, it's a who,&quot; said the glowing ball of light.  Then&#xA;  the ball of light turned into a princess with a magic wand.  &quot;I'm&#xA;  Glenda and I'm good.  Now the ruby slippers shall be yours.  They will&#xA;  give you some kind of powers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Instantly the ruby slippers which were on the dead witches feet were&#xA;  on Dorothy. Dorothy felt her feet tingle.  &quot;Oh, I don't know.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bamf! Now an old green-faced crone appeared in front of Dorothy and&#xA;  screamed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's right you don't know.  Those slippers are mine.  You killed my&#xA;  sister and I'll get you my little pretty.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, such a bother,&quot; said Glenda. &quot;Now, off with you.&quot; Glenda pointed&#xA;  her wand and an arc of lightning erupted from it and hit the Witch and&#xA;  she screamed out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You've won for now, little girl.  But I'll get you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Glenda turned to Dorothy.  &quot;Do not worry about her.  But now you must&#xA;  be off.  You must get to the wizard so he can take you back to&#xA;  Kansas.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Follow the yellow brick road,&quot; the group of little people sang.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So Dorothy followed the yellow brick road. There she found a scarecrow&#xA;  who could talk. He didn't believe he was too bright so he asked to go&#xA;  along to meet the wizard so he could ask for some brains. &quot;If I only&#xA;  had a brain...&quot; he sang. And they were off again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally they came to a forest with angry trees.  As they were running from the trees they ran into a tin man who had gotten stuck in&#xA;  a rain storm and had rusted up. They oiled him up and he told them&#xA;  he'd like to go along because he wanted to get a heart. Dorothy and&#xA;  Scarecrow assured the Tin Man that the Wizard would give him one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Later they met a lion who tried to scare them, but who had no courage. They invited him along and he went too. Again, they all sang,&#xA;  &quot;We're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz.&quot; All their&#xA;  hopes and dreams were stored up in anticipation of meeting the Wizard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After a long journey they met the Wizard but he sent them away. They had to bring him the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West.&#xA;  She was none to happy to see them coming after her. She set scarecrow&#xA;  on fire.  Dorothy grabbed a bucket of water and threw it on scarecrow&#xA;  to put him out, but some of the water landed on the witch -- who&#xA;  hadn't bathed in over 200 years -- and the water melted her down to&#xA;  nothing. Hurrah! The witch is dead. They grabbed her broom and&#xA;  skedaddled back to the Wizard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was not happy to see them. &quot;Go away,&quot; said the wizard. &quot;You are a bad man and you are not keeping your word,&quot; Dorothy said. &quot;oh,&#xA;  you've got me,&quot; said the Wizard. He came out and Dorothy and him got&#xA;  in a hot air balloon to sail back to Kansas. But, before they could,&#xA;  Dorothy woke up. She was back in her bed in Kansas.  She had just been&#xA;  knocked unconscious and had dreamed the whole thing. Or had she...?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;~~~ The End ~~~~&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ridiculous Example?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was a ridiculous example, right?&#xA;It shows you something.  Write your story out as quickly as possible; as short as possible.  Next go back and fill in the parts of the story that will make it more interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I tell you how she met the scarecrow with very few details.  You could add a very lengthy scene there.  However, you do not have to.  You could leave this story as it is and it would be short and &lt;strong&gt;not necessarily incomplete&lt;/strong&gt;.  It all depends upon what is important to your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could tell the entire story like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Extreme Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dorothy travels to a magical land but all she really wants is to get&#xA;  back home. She must find the Wizard of Oz who has magical powers and&#xA;  convince him to take her back home.  On the way to find him she meets&#xA;  Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion who travel with her. The Wizard of Oz&#xA;  requires her to defeat an evil witch.  When she does the Wizard&#xA;  doesn't want to help her anyway.  She and her three friends convince&#xA;  the Wizard to help Dorothy, but in the end she wakes up and learns the&#xA;  entire thing was a dream anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Secret&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this should indicate a secret of writing. That secret is : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write in layers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get your idea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write it out fast&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add layers of detail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no long or short ideas.&#xA;There are just ideas.  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T13:03:56.443" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14244" CreationDate="2014-10-28T13:13:59.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree that a colon does not simulate normal speech. A classic example would be when I enumerate something to my dialog partner: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey Joe, we offer the following colours: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Gray&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Blue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Yellow.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There, maybe even with semicola in a single line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey Joe, we offer the following colours: Light Gray, Dark Gray and Eternal Gray; California Orange, Funky Orange and Citrus Yellow; Abnormal Blue and Abyss Almost Black Blue.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to construct these without colons and semicola makes them look funky and emotionless:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey Joe, we offer the following colours. Light Gray and Dark Gray. California Orange and Citrus Yellow.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if the latter is even &lt;em&gt;correct&lt;/em&gt; English, but in a language where it's incorrect, one would have to reconstruct the whole sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey Joe! Light Gray and Dark Gray are the colours we offer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't talk like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11024" LastEditorUserId="11024" LastEditDate="2014-10-28T14:06:50.980" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T14:06:50.980" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14251" CreationDate="2014-10-28T15:32:32.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short stories are great because they concentrate on a single moment: the moment after which something in the character's life has changed and they can no longer ignore it. You can keep the story short by concentrating only on how the character reacts to this change, and you know that the story is done when they arrive at a decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can look to Raymond Carver and Ernest Hemingway to see how they handle minimalism. I would also look at Tim O'Brien's &quot;The Things They Carried&quot; for pacing (technically this work is considered a collection, even though each story shares a lot of the same characters). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T15:32:32.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14254" CreationDate="2014-10-28T15:38:28.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two comments, of which one will address your question, and the other will address the reception of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick that I've found to any scene is to start very deeply grounded in one character's point of view. You have to imagine that we can only hear the thoughts in one character's mind, only see things from their perspective. Now, who should that character be? Your protagonist? The guy? The girl? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing a short story, they are most often told from only a single point-of-view (POV). So you should stick with the same POV character throughout, whoever that is. If you have a novel, you can do multiple point-of-view characters, but that's doesn't mean infinite. It means you can pick two or three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have multiple options (e.g. if all of these three characters appear in many scenes and any could be a valid point-of-view character), then usually it makes sense to take the point-of-view of the character with the most to lose. So probably the guy or the girl, depending on where the emotional stakes are highest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you've decided on your POV character, you must tell the scene from their perspective. What they see, what they feel. This forces limitations on the story. If you tell the story from the point of view of the girl, but she's in a different room than the guy, then she can't know what's happening to him. This might seem hard to deal with, but that's the challenge you have to address as a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now a comment on your plot: If the only purpose the girl serves is to be forcibly undressed, then you are underutilizing that character. In fact, the scene sounds very cliche. Both the cliche and the threat of rape (realized or not) is going to turn off some or many readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if the scene was reversed? What if the guy is being forced to undress? (Does that make you uncomfortable? Then imagine how your female readers feel.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many, many ways you can raise the stakes that don't depend on a rape to demean a woman. Be creative!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10432" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T15:38:28.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14254" CreationDate="2014-10-28T15:48:13.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I won't write the exact story you are talking about but here's a sample with multiple characters and different viewpoint and a possible way of handling the situation.  See what you think.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John opened the door and Mr. Maruzzi walked in followed by Lenny. &#xA;  John stared at Lenny too long as he thought about how much he looked&#xA;  like a huge gorilla stuffed into an expensive suit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What,&quot; Lenny said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's a really nice suit,&quot; John said.  &quot;Where'd you get it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Thanks.  Picked it up at - &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Enough. We ain't here to talk about no suit,&quot; Mr. Maruzzi said. &#xA;  &quot;Where's Diego?  The kid with you?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John motioned toward the room down the hall.  &quot;He's getting his&#xA;  stuff.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So you're both, here, right,&quot; Maruzzi asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John wanted to say something along the lines of 'Captain Obvious', but&#xA;  then thought about Maruzzi and looked up at Lenny and thought better&#xA;  of it. &quot;Yeah, he'll be out.&quot;  Then he yelled down the hall, &quot;Diego, we&#xA;  got visitors.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The door at the end of the hallway opened and Diego stepped out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maruzzi said, &quot;Now&quot; and Lenny pulled out large pistol and waved it at&#xA;  Diego.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Be so kind as to take a seat in here with us, all right, kid,&quot;&#xA;  Maruzzi said.   Then he pointed at John, &quot;Take a seat.  We are going&#xA;  to have us a discussion.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Diego walked in and sat down on the couch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John sat down next to him.  He looked at the coffee table where a pack&#xA;  of Marlboro cigarettes lay.  He nodded his head toward them.  &quot;Mind if&#xA;  I smoke while we talk.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Suit yourself,&quot; Maruzzi said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John picked up the pack, lit one and drew in the smoke, trying to stay&#xA;  cool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What's up,&quot; Diego asked.  &quot;Is there a problem.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There is a problem, kid,&quot; Maruzzi said.  &quot;I need to know where the&#xA;  money is.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John took another long drag on the cigarette.  &quot;We have it hidden to&#xA;  insure our safety.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, you see,&quot; Maruzzi said and looked at Lenny.  &quot;It's just that&#xA;  Lenny gets a little nervious.  He starts thinking maybe you guys ain't&#xA;  even got the money.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We've got the money,&quot; John said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Tell me where it is then,&quot; Maruzzi said.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I can tell -&quot;, Diego said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Shut up, kid,&quot; John said.  &quot;Are you an idiot?  You tell them where it&#xA;  is and we're dead.&quot; Lenny grabbed John by the neck and pressed the gun&#xA;  barrel into his cheek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As you can see Lenny is ready to terminate our little contract,&quot;&#xA;  Maruzzi said.  &quot;I suggest you shut up while Diego tells us where the&#xA;  money is.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Uh, I...&quot; Diego stuttered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A little shy, Diego?  Tell you what.  Lenny will take you into the&#xA;  other room and have a conversation with you privately.&quot;  Maruzzi&#xA;  pulled out his own pistol and pointed at John.  &quot;I'll keep an eye on&#xA;  him, while you do your work, Lenny.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lenny pushed John down to the floor and grabbed Diego and shoved him&#xA;  toward the room down the hallway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Now, he goes to work,&quot; Maruzzi said.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John's eyes flashed toward the fire escape as he thought about a way&#xA;  to escape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maruzzi saw him and adjusted his aim.  &quot;Don't even think about making&#xA;  a break.  I'm good shot.  I'm always down at the range practicing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John heard the Diego's screams as Lenny went to work on him.  It&#xA;  wouldn't be much longer and the kid would talk or he would be&#xA;  unconscious or worse and it would be his turn for the torture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could now switch the scene to Diego and Lenny right here. You really don't want to flip to the other character's viewpoint without&#xA;actually switching scenes.  Otherwise readers may get confused about whose story it really is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example which&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Switches Viewpoint Too Much&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lenny grabbed John's right hand and pulled on the thumb.   John&#xA;  screamed and he heard a loud snap and knew his thumb was broken. &#xA;  Lenny let go and the thumb dangled.   Diego stared the thumb and&#xA;  thought he should just tell them where the money was, but didn't know&#xA;  if they would kill him anyway.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John saw Diego opening his mouth and he said, &quot;Tell them nothing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lenny grabbed Diego pulled him into a bear hug, crushing him.  Diego's&#xA;  eyes floated back and Maruzzi saw the whites of his eyes.  &quot;Easy, you&#xA;  oaf,&quot; Maruzzi yelled.  &quot;If you knock him out we won't get any&#xA;  information from him.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John's eyes flickered toward the fire escape and a plan formed. &#xA;  &quot;Okay,&quot; he said. &quot;I'll tell you where the money is.  It's right here&#xA;  in this apartment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Where is it,&quot; Maruzzi said and punched John in the stomach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John doubled over and fell to the floor. &quot;Its...&quot; John coughed and&#xA;  couldn't speak.  He felt like he was suffocating.  Terror filled his&#xA;  mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hurry up, you idiot,&quot; Maruzzi yelled. He pulled the trigger back on&#xA;  the gun and pressed the gun barrel into John's temple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's on the fire escape, but it's hidden.  I'll show you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Diego didn't know what John was talking about.   The money wasn't&#xA;  here.   He thought John had gone crazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will probably confuse your readers and possibly annoy them as you switch around inside different characters heads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2014-10-28T19:17:51.180" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T19:17:51.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14237" CreationDate="2014-10-28T15:54:46.257" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies so much that an entire book can be written on the subject. As a self-published author who has tried the traditional publication route, I will give you some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, remember that it's always easier to say no than to say yes. To say no to a manuscript takes a second. To say yes requires reading it, thinking about it, contacting the author, and on and on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An acquiring editor (or literary agent) is going to start with opening an email or envelope. If they see they you don't know how to follow the submission rules (e.g. what's in your packet, how you attached files), then they will reject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then they'll read the cover letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they don't see requested information (e.g. title, genre, length), then they'll reject.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the submission isn't a match for what they publish or represent, then they'll reject.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the author doesn't have a platform, they might reject. It depends.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now they're ready to read the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the manuscript formatted correctly? If not, reject.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any obvious errors? Reject.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the first paragraph or page. Does it capture their imagination? Do they have some sense of setting, character, or conflict right from the start? If so, keep reading. Otherwise, reject.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the first few pages. Does it keep their interest? Are they involved in the characters? Is it written well? Do they want to read more? If so, keep reading. Otherwise, reject.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I say written well, these are usually the things an editor is thinking about in a fiction work:&#xA;* Setting&#xA;* Character&#xA;* Plot&#xA;* Written craft / language / voice&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editors and agents read a ton, so they are often somewhat jaded readers. Therefore, they usually want a manuscript to shine in all of those aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's somewhat different than in the indie publishing world, where you can know your audience well, and write specifically what that audience wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and one more thing: an agent or publisher is also looking for someone who knows the conventions of the genre they are writing if, even if they choose to break them. If you claim something is science fiction, but it's written like a romance, they're going to reject. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've written something and it's exactly like another novel or tv show or movie, they're going to reject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let's say the agent or publisher has gotten all the way through and they love the book. They still need to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they have a slot in the publication schedule for a book like this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they have another book coming out that's too much like this one?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they think it will do well commercially?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will the author be able to promote the book?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they have budget left to acquire anything?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will they be able to promote it to book sellers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, if you've ever wondered why you're asked to pitch your novel in a single sentence, that's because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your agent has about a sentence worth of time to pitch it to the publisher&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the publisher has about a sentence to pitch it to book distributors who will decide whether to stock it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the publisher has about a sentence worth of description they can put on the back cover to pitch it to the reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10432" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T15:54:46.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14251" CreationDate="2014-10-28T19:27:16.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll bet you can learn a lot from what you've already done...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write down the plots of the very short stories that you've already written.&#xA;Notice how &quot;long&quot; they are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compare your short stories' plots&#xA;to the plots you're planning&#xA;for your longer stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do the longer plots differ from the shorter ones?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sketch a few plots that seem more like the shorter ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the common variables that affect the length of a plot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The number of characters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The number of settings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The number of subplots or plot threads.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The number of problems the main character is juggling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The number of try/fail cycles before the main character finally puts &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; on the line.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2014-10-28T21:25:45.957" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T21:25:45.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14254" CreationDate="2014-10-28T19:49:23.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, you should keep the point of view to one character per scene or section in order to avoid confusion. This can be done in first-person (I) or third-person limited (he/she). In both cases, you are adopting a character's voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you want to do third-person omniscient, in which you adopt an author's voice and act as an observer of all the action. One of most top-of-mind example I have is Charles Dickens - whose novels feature perspectives from multiple characters. However, you should note that even though the author can delve into the minds of multiple characters, it's usually still limited to one character per section or one character per scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a fairly straightforward overview on points of view: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-point-of-view-in-literature.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-point-of-view-in-literature.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are few options you can consider. You can either write this scene from one of the character's points-of-view (let's say the guy), and have them observe what happens to other character (the girl). In this case, you'll have to choose which character is more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd like to do third-person omniscient, then I would make two scenes: one from the guy's point of view where the leader is speaking to him, and another one from the girl's point of view where she waits to see or hear what the guy's next action is going to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T19:49:23.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14250" CreationDate="2014-10-28T20:21:18.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How you structure your article will largely depend on who your readers are and what you would like them to learn from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your readers are people from the scientific community, then you would structure your article based on what new findings, discoveries or trends that your research has led you to. A title for this kind of article would be, &quot;Bullying at School is Linked to Bullying at Home.&quot; This was actually taken from a list of articles at Science Daily: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/b/bullying.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/b/bullying.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your readers are people who experienced the topic, then you would structure your article based on what actions you would like your readers to take after reading. A sample title could be, &quot;10 ways you can help your child deal with bullying&quot; or &quot;Is your child a bully? Here's what you can do.&quot; The research you conduct would then be interwoven as supporting points that give your main idea more credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T20:21:18.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14249" CreationDate="2014-10-28T22:26:24.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might consider Medium.com. Or Wattpad.com. HTH. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5925" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T22:26:24.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14266" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14268" CreationDate="2014-10-28T11:51:27.340" Score="1" ViewCount="707" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that many scientific papers are expected to be written in passive voice according to APA style. However, I don't know if this applies to literary papers too? Or should they be written in active voice?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this paper, we have selected Mahmoud Dolatabadi’s works to consider&#xA;  this story phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this paper, Mahmoud Dolatabadi's works are selected to consider this story phenomenon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;? Which fits literary article writing better? I did some googling only to find out the hits were related to scientific writing in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11028" OwnerDisplayName="misaq" LastEditorUserId="3857" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T09:11:24.900" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T09:11:24.900" Title="What voice (active/passive) is most suitable for literary academic papers (literary journals)?" Tags="|academic-writing|voice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14266" CreationDate="2014-10-29T10:21:58.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The passive voice is more professional when referring to 'self', but in the long run it gets tiring to the reader. If you need to use 'we', use passive voice instead, but whenever you can, activate other subjects and use active voice when referring to them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this paper a selection of Mahmoud Dolatabadi's works shows the phenomenon of this story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T10:21:58.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14266" CreationDate="2014-10-29T10:33:37.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conventions have changed. Fifty or a hundread years ago much of scientific literature, especially in the humanities, was written in an impersonal (often passive) or generalizing (&amp;quot;one&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;we&amp;quot;) style, implying professional detachment and an objective view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, both the relativity of knowledge (that &amp;quot;things might be different for different people or at different times&amp;quot;) and the role of the scholar (effects of unavoidable preconceptions on results) have been painstakingly studied and led to the necessity that scientists not ignore or smooth over these effects that are always there, but clearly explain how they dealt with them. This more honest and self-reflective scientific approach is reflected in a writing style that echos the responsibility of the scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practically this means, that at least in the natural sciences &lt;strong&gt;the agent(s) of the study and their exact procedures are clearly named&lt;/strong&gt;, which leads to unambiguous self-reference – &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10364/thesis-writing-how-to-address-self&quot;&gt;discussed in this related question&lt;/a&gt; – and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;active voice:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We invited participants and asked them to do this or that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that so and so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But conventions being what they are, you should always ask your teachers for the conventions in your field, and adhere to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The APA &lt;em&gt;Publication Manual&lt;/em&gt; (2009, p. 77) recommends using the &lt;em&gt;active voice&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;3.18 Verbs&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Verbs are vigorous, direct communicators. Use the active rather than the passive voice, and select tense and mood carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Prefer the active voice.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Preferred:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     We conducted the survey in a controlled setting.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Nonpreferred:&lt;br&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;     The survey was conducted in a controlled setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The passive voice is acceptable in expository writing and when you want to focus on the object or recipient of the action rather than on the actor. For example, &amp;quot;The speakers were attached to either side of the chair&amp;quot; emphasizes the placement of the speakers, not who placed them—the more appropriate focus in the Method section. &amp;quot;The president was shot&amp;quot; emphasized the importance of the person shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MLA &lt;em&gt;Handbook&lt;/em&gt; (in chapter 3) also recommends the use of the active voice, because it is usually briefer, clearer, and more emphatic than the passive voice. But if the actor is unknown or unimportant or the recipient of the action should receive the emphasis, a passive construction is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T12:10:52.977" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14249" CreationDate="2014-10-29T18:49:54.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go to smashwords. It is a complete platform where you can publish ebooks. It is even possible to ask money for buying your ebooks, if i am not mistaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11036" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T18:49:54.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14270" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14271" CreationDate="2014-10-29T19:38:15.087" Score="4" ViewCount="34732" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm curious about what the expected age for a YA young adult novel is, because it seems to have a huge range.  I think most people believe these books are targeted at roughly 12-16 year olds, but to me young adult really means something more like 18-25.  (An adult -- in US -- is 18, so a young adult would be in the range of 18-25.)  In light of all this, what ages are normally targeted for YA? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T03:00:45.523" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T13:43:17.497" Title="What is the expected target age for a YA (Young Adult) novel?" Tags="|novel|audience|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14270" CreationDate="2014-10-30T09:08:43.780" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In psychology, &amp;quot;young adult&amp;quot; means people between around 18 to around 25.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adolescence, which is the time from the onset of sexual maturation until full adulthood, is subdivided into two parts. The first half of adolescence is called puberty and is defined by the development of the capability for sexual reproduction. Puberty today typically begins around ages 10 (girls) to 12 (boys) and is completed around ages 18 (girls) to 20 (boys). From a biological (brain development) and psychological (personality development) standpoint, full adulthood is reached around age 25. The phase from the end of puberty (18 to 20) until full adulthood (around 25) is called &amp;quot;yound adult&amp;quot; in science. The exact ages of course vary between individuals, scientific discipline, culture, and scholar, and these divisions are highly debatable, but the above is a common view held by many scholars today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In book publishing, on the other hand, we have the &lt;em&gt;marketing categories&lt;/em&gt; of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;children's books (0-8)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;middle grade (9-11)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;young adult (12+), and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;adult fiction (18+).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term &amp;quot;Young Adult&amp;quot; in publishing is not a scientific description but a marketing term. It takes up the feeling of many adolescents that they are no longer children but mature and capable of personal responsibility. Since Young Adult fiction is sold to young adolescents, the positive term &amp;quot;young adult&amp;quot; sells better than more realistic monikers like &amp;quot;dazed and confused&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;drunk and violent&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;Young Adult&amp;quot; is an euphemism chosen to flatter your customers, a common strategy in persuasive communication (&amp;quot;You are worthy of this wonderful product.&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the age range for Young Adult fiction as it is given by many publishers, you will note that they do not give a maximum age. This is no conincidence, as young adult fiction is not a category limited to pubescent readers and often read by adults (who apparently make up around 40% of YA readers). The age range of Young Adult means nothing but that Young Adult fiction must be &lt;strong&gt;interesting to and &amp;quot;appropriate&amp;quot; for persons 12 and up&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that Young Adult is not a reader age category as much as it is a content category. Ignoring the hot debate that rages on many internet forums, I think it is appropriate to say that Young Adult fiction features protagonists that are typically between 14 and 19 years old (that is, a bit older than the core target audience) and deals with the &lt;em&gt;typical&lt;/em&gt; experiences and problems of persons during the last years of school and up until the summer after the last year of high school and before college starts. Also, young adult fiction is stylistically still somewhat more simple than literary adult fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New Adult is a very recent category. It was introduced to label books that could very briefly be described as &amp;quot;Young Adult + hot sex&amp;quot;. Young Adult fiction, although it may deal with the problems of teenage sexuality, is usually very cautious and low-key when it comes to depictions of having fun with sex. YA may deal with rape or sexual guilt, but usually the actual sex in YA is only hinted at and not described in an arousing manner, to make those books palatable to the parents who often buy those books or (want to) control what their kids are reading. New Adult books have the same level of stylistical simplicity and feature similar topics and settings as Young Adult, but they provide the sex that has been left out of YA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors, readers, agents, and publishers, have spoken up about a missing marketing category for college age readers, featuring college age protagonists having typical college age problems. They attempt to call this category &amp;quot;New Adult&amp;quot;, too, so that in effect there are currently two somewhat overlapping (college age protagonists), somewhat differing definitions (erotic fiction versus main stream fiction), but if you look at what is currently published under that label, it is mostly erotic fiction by self-publishing authors and small presses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Target age for YA is 14 to 19.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not 12 to 17? Because &lt;em&gt;kids read up&lt;/em&gt;. 16 year olds want to read about 18 year olds. So if you write YA, write about kids at the end of high school. (Protagonists in MG fiction, with readers aged 9 to 11, can be as old as 14.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most often used setting in YA fiction is the last summer before college. If you go beyond that, you are no longer in Young Adult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T10:56:35.237" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14272" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14288" CreationDate="2014-10-30T12:38:57.363" Score="1" ViewCount="1273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have completed my book. But I'm stuck writing the prologue. I've written the story with narration by the writer (not from the point of view of any of the characters). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't feel like that works for the prologue. I thought I could have one of the characters narrate the prologue, as though telling the story to somebody else, but I don't want to go and change the entire book to that character's point-of-view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I write the prologue so that it works with my main story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11040" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T02:28:55.357" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T02:28:55.357" Title="Can prologues and epilogues change POV from the main text?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|novel|viewpoint|prologues|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14232" CreationDate="2014-10-30T17:36:46.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, they don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to, a one-to-one correspondence is not mandatory.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, they are two different narrative styles, the former simpler and faster to scan, the latter much superior literally, reflecting a creative twist added in. Occasional use of the latter can be enriching. (Also tests the reviewer's acuity.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2868" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T17:36:46.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12785" CreationDate="2014-10-30T17:45:29.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two of the best Character-building books for me are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2p9mss3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Write Great Fiction - Characters, Emotion &amp;amp; Viewpoint, by Nancy Kress - amazon link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read this book for free on Amazon if you are a Kindle Unlimited (Kindle Online Library) member.&#xA;Its a very readable book and explains character creation very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pIhHZB&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Creating Characters: The Complete Guide to Populating Your Fiction - amazon link&lt;/a&gt;, (compilation) by various authors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T17:53:59.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14275" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14276" CreationDate="2014-10-30T20:20:22.017" Score="0" ViewCount="839" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I can't find a reference now, but many times I'll read an article either in print or online, and I'll see a certain word or phrase in brackets &lt;code&gt;[]&lt;/code&gt;. Here's a bad ex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;The man walked up the [hill] at night.&lt;/code&gt; My guess would be that these brackets are used to emphasize something but what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also a side question, I'm reading a book and I've seen it appear a couples times. &#xA;Seemingly for no reason &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll see &lt;code&gt;* * *&lt;/code&gt; in between paragraphs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone shed light on these matters. Thanks! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11052" LastEditorUserId="99" LastEditDate="2014-10-31T23:25:20.700" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T23:25:20.700" Title="[Words in brackets in print and online]" Tags="|style|novel|technique|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14275" CreationDate="2014-10-30T20:40:37.773" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bracketed statements are typically found inside quotes. The words are bracketed to indicate that they were not the exact words from the quotes, but are either paraphrased or included to give clarity to the words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To use your example a little bit, suppose that the actual quote you want to refer to was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;See that hill over there? The man walked up that thing last night.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if all you care about is that second sentence, you can't just quote it by itself, because there's no indication of what &quot;that thing&quot; is. So you compromise by inserting the brackets to clarify what the quote is referring to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to witnesses, the man &quot;walked up [the hill] last night.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second part of your question, what you're seeing are just scene breaks. They are placed between paragraphs to indicate to the reader that the paragraph above and the one below are not connected. They either take place in different areas, or at different times, or are in some other way unconnected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6851" LastEditorUserId="6851" LastEditDate="2014-10-31T19:07:51.590" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T19:07:51.590" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12785" CreationDate="2014-10-31T01:32:15.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0805011714&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Creating Unforgettable Characters&lt;/a&gt; by Linda Seger. This is actually listed as recommended reading for applicants to ABC network's writing fellowship.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1599635348&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;45 Master Characters&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1599635577&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Writer's Guide to Characterization&lt;/a&gt; by Victoria Schmidt. Reviews for these can come off mixed, but I like how Schmidt uses the hero's journey and mythological character archetypes as templates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Last, but not least, there's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1582973199&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dynamic Characters&lt;/a&gt; by Nancy Kress. I would dive into this for when you really want to push that envelope. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you'd like a good primer on thrillers or mysteries, read &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0312575076&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Write a Damn Good Thriller&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0312304463&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Write a Damn Good Mystery&lt;/a&gt; by James N. Frey. I found his books helpful, but opinions on his work are pretty polarizing. You can play it safe by borrowing these from your library. For something more modern, check out Jodie Renner's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1490389946&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Write a Killer Thriller&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For further inspiration, I would also read major works by Raymond Chandler (&quot;Farewell, My Lovely), Dashiell Hammett (&quot;The Maltese Falcon&quot;), and John Le Carre (&quot;Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T01:32:15.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14279" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-31T05:14:44.543" Score="6" ViewCount="18991" Body="&lt;p&gt;So two days before my character is thinking about something and she is in her room. How do I show that two days later her friend is talking to her?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are my rough sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She relaxed when she heard him walk away.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  That was it, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then two days or one day later I want to open with her friend talking to her:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I heard it’s the best thing to do,” Julian said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do i say like &quot;julian said two days later&quot;? or &quot;Julian said at lunch the next day&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to transition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10911" LastEditorUserId="4343" LastEditDate="2016-12-23T16:34:56.147" LastActivityDate="2020-11-28T16:24:38.160" Title="How do I show that two days have passed in a short story?" Tags="|short-story|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14279" CreationDate="2014-10-31T06:05:26.110" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you start a new scene, the reader will know that something has changed. In a manuscript, you indicate a change of scene by putting a pound sign (#) or three asterisks (* * *) on a line by themselves (and optionally centered on the line). That's called a &lt;em&gt;scene break.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers know that a new scene generally indicates a change of time, place, viewpoint, or some combination of those. So if the new scene has the same viewpoint character, the reader will know that some time has passed. They may not know, at first, how much time has passed. So you'll want to indicate that fairly soon in the new scene. You can do it with dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I want to believe that, Julian,&quot; she said, &quot;but it's only been two days. He could come skulking back tomorrow. Or next week. Or at the wedding. How will I ever know that he's really gone for good?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or with the viewpoint character's thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Julian was right. Two days and not a word from Biff. Maybe this time he was really gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T06:05:26.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14279" CreationDate="2014-10-31T07:45:16.897" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dale Emery gives great examples for how you can indicate the passing time by letting the characters state or think about it. (+1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To broaden the perspective a bit, in my opinion the question must be answered based on &lt;strong&gt;who your narrator is&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have a narrator that is separate from the story? Then letting the narrator comment on the passing time is perfectly fine and quite common in fiction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two days later ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is one of the protagonists the narrator and the story is told from his or her perspective? Then you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; use this person's thoughts and perceptions to narrate everything, because the outside perspective is no longer available to you. With this narrative style, everything you write is said or thought or remembered by one of the characters, and you should write it in a way that is in harmony with this perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[see Dale's examples]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T07:45:16.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10595" CreationDate="2014-10-31T12:04:02.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the dictionary.com definition of poem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a composition in verse, especially one that is characterized by a&#xA;  highly developed artistic form and by the use of heightened language&#xA;  and rhythm to express an intensely imaginative interpretation of the&#xA;  subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem, which everyone is indicating with their answers is the portion that states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;highly developed artistic form&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's so open to interpretation that poem is hardly defined any more.  &lt;strong&gt;Instead of being a specific form it seems to be defined only by consensus&lt;/strong&gt;.  The difficulty with consensus is that if you are not on the inside then your work simply will not be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the definition helps to put some boundaries on what a poem might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particularly this part of the definition shows you what to aim for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;use of heightened language&#xA;  and rhythm to express an intensely imaginative interpretation of the&#xA;  subject&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that, I do not know how a single letter or word could really achieve that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T12:04:02.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3796" CreationDate="2014-10-31T16:49:15.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, some of them use POD for their back-catalogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bloomsbury Publishing has launched a digital global publisher, called Bloomsbury Reader, that will sell a back-catalogue of titles in e-book and print-on-demand format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bloomsbury Reader will sell books that have either never been printed before or haven't been available in print for many years. The range incorporates every genre including romance, children's stories, science fiction, politics, travel writing, biographies and poetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-09/28/bloomsbury-reader&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-09/28/bloomsbury-reader&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Print-on-demand as it affects conventional publishing agreements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developments in cheap print-on-demand (POD) should make it easier to keep slow-selling titles available. This is good news; but it is prudent to consider safeguards. Works still available via POD might never go out of print, but the publisher might be sitting on a title which a new publisher would be happy to relaunch and promote along with its publication of your latest book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.societyofauthors.org/print-demand&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.societyofauthors.org/print-demand&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10985" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T16:49:15.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17523" CreationDate="2014-11-01T04:38:31.687" Score="7" ViewCount="12351" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was comparing between the formats of scripts from both Hollywood and Bollywood. Following is the first page of the script of Pulp Fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cFH9Z.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And following is the first page of a Bollywood film, Jab We Met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Aj5EV.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, I have read chapter 13, Screenplay Form, from Screenplay by Syd Field. Apparently, the script of Pulp Fiction is more aligned with Syd Field's format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone help me to figure out why the format of a Bollywood film is so different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11002" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2019-02-19T20:22:40.730" LastActivityDate="2024-01-11T12:23:57.140" Title="Why is the format of a Bollywood film script so different from that of a Hollywood movie?" Tags="|formatting|screenwriting|script|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14272" CreationDate="2014-11-02T13:12:51.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are allowed to have the prologue narrated by a different character as long as it is &lt;em&gt;absolutely clear&lt;/em&gt; who the narrator is. You do not have to change the whole book. In fact, every chapter can be a different viewpoint narrator; George R.R. Martin does this throughout his &lt;em&gt;Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also have the prologue written in third person omniscent even if the rest of the book isn't. Prologues and epilogues, being set off from the main text, have a little more leeway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-11-02T13:12:51.347" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14289" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-02T21:28:58.347" Score="0" ViewCount="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;I never read a book written by Stephen King, &#xA;but i heard on many occasions about his style of writing being very unique with regard to his stylometric featurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you bring some examples for this features? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11069" LastActivityDate="2014-11-02T21:42:20.953" Title="What stylometric pecularities are considered to be typical for stephen kings writing?" Tags="|style|language|horror|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-11-03T07:49:36.953" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14290" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-02T21:40:16.050" Score="1" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;My language skills in general are very low, i have problems to form sentences, each sentence is a frustrating fight not won at the end of the point. Nethertheless, i would like to prove myself being able to write a whole fiction. &#xA;But, in stark contrast to many writers, i do not have a good memory and i am loosing threads constantly.&#xA;Therefore i ask, if there are graphical scheemes or flowchart or sth. similar that helps to plot the keep the wordless semantics in one big chart, so that once this graphic representation is made, i just need to fill it out with words in analogy to a sketch artists use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11069" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T10:50:13.187" Title="Does a proposed graphical scheme exist to organize the whole story?" Tags="|technique|tools|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14289" CreationDate="2014-11-02T21:42:20.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main one I'm aware of is that King often uses &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; to introduce a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictiveness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;restrictive clause&lt;/a&gt;. Grammatical purists reserve &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; for nonrestrictive ones, and introduce restrictive clauses with &lt;em&gt;that.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-11-02T21:42:20.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14290" CreationDate="2014-11-03T08:28:19.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want to avoid software for this. Creative people swear by analogue tools. They seem to facilitate both creativity and understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I see a graphical representation of a plot made by a well-known published author, it looks something like what J. K. Rowling did for &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; – a table, drawn by hand on paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vBmmi.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many examples like this on the web, all of them handwritten (and hard to decipher). If you are one of the few people who work better digitally, here is a an example created by a fan for the movie &lt;em&gt;Return of the Jedi&lt;/em&gt;. Since this is more clearly readable, it will also make it clear what this kind of table is about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ocIws.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, the rows represent important aspects of the story, the so-called &quot;throughlines&quot;. This can be characters, relationships, or any kind of thread running through the story. In a detective story, one throughline might be the riddle that the protagonist has to solve; in a love story it will be the development of the relationship between the two main characters. Usually the throughline will be the development of something: a character, a relationship, understanding of a problem. In Kim Stanley Robinson's &lt;em&gt;Mars&lt;/em&gt; trilogy, one throughline would be the terraforming of the planet Mars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The columns then are the different turning points and other events. Rowling had these as rows (and the throughlines as columns) and labelled them with dates. The Jedi example gives them names from screen writing theory (&quot;inciting incident&quot;, &quot;crisis&quot; and so forth). How you label them will depend on your story writing theory and on the narrative structuring of your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also draw relations, influences, and effects, from one table cell to another in colored arrows, or shift persons from one throughline to another (for example, when a couple split up and one of them starts a new relationship, or if in the Lord of the Rings the Ring is given to another bearer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write something that has multiple threads that develop through mulitple events, this tabular representation feels quite natural to me. I had independently developed this system for myself when I was writing my first long narratives thirty years ago, and I strongly suspect that the others who use it have not all learned it from one single teacher but mostly have also found it by themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is one by Normal Mailer for &lt;em&gt;Harlot's Ghost&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/F7rQo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is another one by Joseph Heller for &lt;em&gt;Catch-22&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gfuHF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-11-03T10:50:13.187" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T10:50:13.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12505" CreationDate="2014-11-03T17:11:13.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at Power Thesaurus - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.powerthesaurus.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.powerthesaurus.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's very extensive!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The site has simple, easy-to-use layout with low ad-count. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The synonyms are sorted by rating and you can vote as well (and add you own terms as well).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The lists can be filtered by topics (the filters are on the right).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And there are antonyms and other word relations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that it doesn't have definitions of the words, but rather focuses on related words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result - you become very efficient in your writing when you use it ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;. Our team is working on this website, so feel free to contact me for any questions related to Power Thesaurus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11072" LastEditorUserId="11072" LastEditDate="2015-02-13T10:49:44.963" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T10:49:44.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14297" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-03T18:34:59.337" Score="1" ViewCount="1379" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have two facts that I mention in the same paragraph.  These two facts come from the same source, and are located on the same page of the source. Let's say, for example, that in this paragraph I'm talking about Ferguson and got each fact from the same news article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11075" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T03:47:33.973" Title="MLA: Citing Multiple Facts from Same Source &amp; Page in Same Paragraph" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3796" CreationDate="2014-11-03T19:49:19.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, small-press publishers use print-on-demand. It's hard to do a print run of less than 500 books more economically than print-on-demand, and many new books sell less than that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, by the time you factor in printing, shipping from printer to distributor, cost of  warehousing, and shipping to retailer, it's sometimes really hard to do better than Amazon's Createspace. I was involved with one book project where doing a print run of 5,000 books only yielded an extra dollar of profit compared to having Createspace print the book, and the amount of work and hassle to get that extra dollar of profit wasn't worth it in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10432" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T19:49:19.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1483" CreationDate="2014-11-03T19:56:13.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, as a general rule-of-thumb, if you look at the number of reviews a book has on Amazon and multiply by 100, you'll be in the ballpark of their sales on Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some books might be double or quadruple this, and others might be half or less, but it gives you a general idea of whether you're talking about a book that sold 1,000 copies, 10,000 copies or 100,000 copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indie-published genre novels on Amazon might account for 90% of that title's total sales (in other words Amazon sales divided by Amazon and non-Amazon sales), whereas a traditionally published book's sales on Amazon might account for 30-50% of that title's total sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10432" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T19:56:13.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14301" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-04T07:41:29.010" Score="6" ViewCount="1566" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm familiar with word clouds (or tag clouds) as used on blogs or on sites like Delicious. It seems to me that a tool similar to that could be of use to writers like me, who don't have an editor, when trying to identify typical or overused phrases. So here is my question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does there exist an online tool which analyzes text samples for repeating phrases? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What tools or techniques can a writer use to avoid recurring phrases or idioms too often? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T08:41:39.643" Title="Word Clouds and Phrase Clouds" Tags="|technique|editing|tools|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14301" CreationDate="2014-11-04T08:33:53.927" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Word clouds just list the most common words. Any simple word counting tool can spit out a list of words ordered by frequency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A nice tool on the Mac is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.supermagnus.com/mac/Word_Counter/download.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Word Counter&lt;/a&gt;. Using your question as a sample, it outputs a list that you can order by frequency:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6nwVh.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Word Counter also creates readability statistics and other stuff, not related to your question. Word Counter is not very stable on my Mac, so I cannot wholeheartedly recommend it, but there are other tools around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you search for something like &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.de/search?q=word%20frequency%20tool&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;word frequency tool&lt;/a&gt;&quot; or &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=word%20frequency%20statistic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;word frequency statistic&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, Google gives you many free online tools that can count words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One free online &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.online-utility.org/text/analyzer.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Text Analyzer&lt;/a&gt; can count recurring phrases, too. It does not recognize grammatical structure, but simply finds multiple occurences of the same words in the same order. Here is a section from a sample analysis of the Wikipedia article on StackExchange:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J6HJz.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see from entries such as &quot;stack overflow a&quot; you need to postprocess the results manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also many code samples online that show you how to count words using different programming languages. &lt;a href=&quot;http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Word_frequency_statistics_for_a_file&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a nice code sample for the text editor Vim&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text_mining_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of text mining software&lt;/a&gt;, maybe you can find something else there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text_mining_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text_mining_software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-11-04T08:41:39.643" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T08:41:39.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14303" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-04T12:04:08.737" Score="5" ViewCount="967" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m writing a short story. I am using the past tense, but I have sections where I describe people and places that are supposed to still be in existence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I continue to refer to them in the past tense e.g., “She &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; green eyes”, or should I switch to present tense e.g., “She &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; green eyes”? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that switching tense on readers is not very good form. What would be the effect of switching tenses like this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Roland Govender" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-11-04T15:02:57.527" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T22:28:02.740" Title="Past tense vs present tense" Tags="|tenses|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14303" CreationDate="2014-11-04T12:52:10.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;She had green eyes is fine.  Readers will undersand that her eye color is still the same since, in real life most people's eyes don't change color. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe another example will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He drove a blue Ford Explorer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, now he drives a red Volkswagen Beetle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, in that case you could say, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That was when he drove the blue Ford Explorer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days he's driving a red Volkswagen Beetle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's only necessary to make more specific notes when it is signficant and since eye color doesn't change unless it is significant to the story* then just keep the language as it is in the past tense.&#xA;Otherwise the switching may confuse your reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2014-11-04T13:09:11.573" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T13:09:11.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14305" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-04T14:41:27.603" Score="4" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one tries to describe sth. very concrete, like a house, for instance, one could try it with different approaches: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;describing the very physical attributes:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;the house is 5m wide, 5m deep and 5m high. It is divided into two equal levels, each bearing a round window on each side. It has a plane roof with a short chimney in the middle. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;describing the very physical attributes by using metaphors:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;the house is a suggercube the size of an elephant, it has mouseholes covered with glass on each side, the smoking-pipe is coughing dark matter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;describing the very physical attributes by their emotional impact on a person:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Its walls embraced me, i felt love coming out of the chimey while the breeze invited breeze through the windows to make me comfortable, i did not want to leave it cause this was the house - my home and family made out of bricks. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;those are only three approaches, that i randomly tried without any categorical system underlying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you provide such systems of description ? Maybe there is a theoretical framework that introduces the many different approaches and gives advice when to use which. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11069" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T16:28:20.960" Title="Is there a systematic overview over the approaches of describing a physical object?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14303" CreationDate="2014-11-04T14:46:53.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In narration, stay in one tense. &quot;She had green eyes&quot; is fine, because your entire story is in the past tense &amp;mdash; the &quot;present-past,&quot; if that makes sense. If she had green eyes as a child but has brown eyes in the present of your story, you might say &quot;She used to have green eyes, but now she had brown.&quot; Still past tense, but &lt;em&gt;used to have&lt;/em&gt; indicates it's a state of being in the past which is not currently true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T14:46:53.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14307" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-04T14:52:58.033" Score="1" ViewCount="398" Body="&lt;p&gt;By linguistic features i think of the structure of a sentence, the usage of subclauses, passive or active and such alike. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you suggest someone who has no clue of what are considered conventions that ease the understanding of the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11069" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T10:39:58.703" Title="What linguistic features increase the degree of readability?" Tags="|fiction|language|conventions|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14303" CreationDate="2014-11-04T18:14:36.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In English we normally relate stories entirely in the past tense. &quot;She had green eyes.&quot; If she's still alive presumably she still has green eyes, but that isn't the point. You're talking about what someone did or saw or thought or felt at the time of the incidents in the story. Those are all in the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider, &quot;The house was painted green.&quot; At the time you write the story, maybe it still is painted green. But if you write, &quot;The house is painted green&quot;, what happens if  the day after you publish someone repaints the house? Are you going to recall all the copies of the book and change the tense of the sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, in any physical description, there are likely some things that have changed since the story was written and some that have not. Trying to keep all that straight would result in a constant change of tenses and irrelevant explanations. &quot;She has green eyes. She was standing at the door wearing a heavy winter coat. Of course as I write this it's summer so even though she happens to be standing at the door again now, today she is wearing a short-sleeved shirt. But on that day she was wearing a heavy coat ...&quot; Of course I'm being ridiculous, but that's the point. If you start saying, &quot;Her eyes are still the same color&quot;, why not consider whether she is the same height, or is wearing the same color dress today as then, etc. We don't because it would interrupt the flow of the narrative for no discernible purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, just tell what was happening or what things looked like at the time of the story. What is happening now is usually irrelevant, and &quot;now&quot; to you as a writer could still be the distant past to a reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception to this is if you want to make a point of the difference or similarity between how things were then and how they are now. Like, &quot;... and that house still stands there to this day&quot;, or &quot;She often wore bright colors then, but since the death of her children she now wears only somber grays and blacks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T18:14:36.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14310" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-04T19:38:02.790" Score="1" ViewCount="501" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ve heard randomly of remarks used to explain why a writing style is bad. for instance by the argument that a writing style is bad because of the usage of adjectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you provide further examples of those frequentively used arguments for bad style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11069" LastEditorUserId="11069" LastEditDate="2014-11-04T20:21:18.763" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:33:27.650" Title="What are frequently used arguments for recognizing bad writing styles in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14310" CreationDate="2014-11-04T21:51:48.290" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, of course this is a bit subjective, because there is always someone who likes a particular style.  Although, it may only be the author's mother.  :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are interested in common expectations in the publication world, then you most likely want to check out a book like the wonderful &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qFd13R&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The First 5 Pages, by Noah Lukeman -- amazon.com link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gives you a great idea in a short package about what makes fiction writing very good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few other tips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show Don't Tell&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;bad&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He felt sad that he had been rejected by the beautiful woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;better&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stanley looked up at the beautiful red-head standing in front of him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Would...would...would you like to go out for a drink, Margaret?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Margaret wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something bad. &amp;quot;Uh,&#xA;you're just not my type, Stanley.&amp;quot;  She scurried over to the office&#xA;printer and made herself look busy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stanley let his shoulders fall and he slouched over as he scuffled back to his desk.  He sat down in his&#xA;chair and dropped his head to his desk and sniffed as a tear formed in&#xA;his eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use more &lt;strong&gt;exposition&lt;/strong&gt; -- describing things as they happen in front of the reader&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;than you use &lt;strong&gt;narrative&lt;/strong&gt; -- telling the reader what happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more details, you can also check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYkmiE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fiction Writing Gems at amazon.com&lt;/a&gt; I've taken numerous published books, broken them down and explained why they do and do not work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:33:27.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14312" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-04T23:31:29.083" Score="1" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;While randomly browsing, i noticed fiction writings contain much more comas in their sentences as lets say sentences in chats or instruction leaflets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;just for contrast&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;simple sentence: &#xA;i live in mülheim. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;complex sentence: &#xA;I live, if it is not a misleading expression, in a town, known as mülheim to the outsiders,  a world of its own, freed from the logic of the known reality found on paper and within sane mens wiring, where fountains paint stars at night, and drunk women become reborn virgins in the morning&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11069" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T16:03:44.683" Title="How much information should a narrative sentence contain ,from experience on average, for good readability?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14312" CreationDate="2014-11-05T05:35:19.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;How much information&quot; does not lend itself to quantification.  That aside, readability is not a function only of the amount of information compressed into a given sentence.  Factors include the writing style, the particular scene, the pace of the story at the time the sentence is written, the surrounding text, the nature of the event (brief or elongated), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of your sentences with some grammatical corrections are appropriate for different scenarios -- and even, perhaps, within the same story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9914" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T05:35:19.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14316" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14319" CreationDate="2014-11-05T07:10:34.193" Score="2" ViewCount="874" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She didn’t reply; just &lt;strong&gt;stared&lt;/strong&gt; at us vacantly.&#xA;  She might as well have been &lt;strong&gt;observing&lt;/strong&gt; two squirrels that had invaded&#xA;  her yard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the action &lt;strong&gt;stare/observe&lt;/strong&gt; has so be repeated for the metaphor to work. Is that a sign of a bad metaphor? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I write this instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She didn’t reply; just &lt;strong&gt;stared&lt;/strong&gt; at us vacantly.&#xA;  I suddenly felt as if we were two squirrels that had invaded&#xA;  her yard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-11-05T07:53:11.900" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T10:08:12.730" Title="Is repeating the action/verb in a metaphor a sign that is a bad one?" Tags="|creative-writing|metaphor|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14312" CreationDate="2014-11-05T07:20:33.107" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Determining how much, and what information you pass through your sentences is a very important subliminal channel of information about the speaker, their character, current situation and mood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you merely use it to optimize readability, you will crop a lot of flavour of the text just in order to pass verbatim data. It's like you took a painting and tried to determine which contrast settings make it most readable. Of course pulling the contrast way up, making all detail stand out sharply will make the painting very readable. It will also murder any dreamy atmosphere, tricks of light or moods it conveys. You optimize for information and kill all the feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think from perspective of the speaker, how would they convey their impressions. A battle-hardened, disciplined soldier will use terse, precise report-style sentences conveying facts, but not impressions. A romantic lady will use florid metaphors and concentrate on impressions. A person suffering from depression will focus on dreary aspects. A child will express awe and sometimes use similes that seem outright bizarre. A person tired will use short, succint sequences. A bore with big ego will extend bare scraps of actual information with endless pleonasms. A person with passion will express that passion, delving into fascinating, little known details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not aim at optimizing readability. Aim at expressing the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2014-11-06T08:52:39.173" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T08:52:39.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14307" CreationDate="2014-11-05T07:25:44.917" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good primer on stylistic conventions is Strunk and White's &lt;em&gt;Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt;, at least for writing in US English. It follows a prescriptive convention, which may be helpful to beginning writers. It can apply to many different types of writing, including essays, stories and letters. At its base, it helps to develop a clear and concise style, which I believe is what you mean by readability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most writers, however, will advise you to study the conventions of literary style by consuming more contemporary literature. In short, it is not possible to be a good writer without also being a reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T07:25:44.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14316" CreationDate="2014-11-05T10:08:12.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is that a sign of a bad metaphor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. It's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course you're the author - it's up to you what you write. From this point of view there are no 'bad' metaphors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I know what you mean and no, your example would not usually be considered poor English usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be thinking of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegant_variation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(in-)elegant variation&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleonasm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pleonasm&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10985" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T10:08:12.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14305" CreationDate="2014-11-05T10:46:25.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Too long for a comment, so an answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all of your recent questions you ask about objective rules that you can blindly apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you'd like to learn &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/14307/what-linguistic-features-increase-the-degree-of-readability&quot;&gt;which grammatical structure is most readable&lt;/a&gt;, and then plan to use that structure, believing your final text will be a readable text. But language is not mathematics, and readable is not the same as enjoyable or meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Language has rhythm and a melody, and a text is composed to please the ear (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sprachgef%C3%BChl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprachgefühl&lt;/a&gt;) of the reader. Language is used to express thoughts and emotions, and the best linguistic structure will vary with what thought or emotion you want to express. In one situation a simple (&quot;readable&quot;) sentence will be appropriate, in another a complex (&quot;difficult&quot;) sentence will better convey your meaning, or &quot;sound&quot; better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You only learn language by doing language. If, as you say, you haven't read anything in your life, you lack an inuitive understanding of language, and you need to train your &quot;language muscle&quot; – by reading and writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T10:46:25.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2598" CreationDate="2014-11-05T13:48:02.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously you cannot give the whole impression of the object you want to describe all at once, but have to start somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you start and how you proceed from there will depend on what you want to convey to your reader and might be influenced by the following aspects, among others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the character of the narrator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the atmosphere of the place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the events that take place there&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your narrator is a confused person, his perception of the park will be confused, while a clear minded person will have a clear and simple perception of the park.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or if the park is very orderly and structured, you will want to describe it in an orderly and structured manner, while an overgrown chaos of plants, playground, people, and trash might be decribed in a chaotic manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or if your protagonist approaches the park and moves through it, he will first see it from afar and have a more general impression and see more and more details as he approaches and finally enters and moves through it. If, on the other hand, he is sitting on a bench daydreaming, his first perception, when he returns to reality, might be a bird picking at some crumbs or the light filtering down through the leaves and turn outward and to a more holistic image from these details. Or, if he is walking the park with his loved one, talking to her, his perception will be a sequence of highlights unrelated to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, first of all, think about the place in your narrative that the decription has and try to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;deduce the order of the description from its narrative function.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T13:48:02.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14286" CreationDate="2014-11-05T19:55:59.330" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why should the format of movie scripts from different movie making traditions be the same?!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a typical Italian two column movie script:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EHVXF.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EHVXF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cinetecadibologna.it/imageserver/lightboxenlarge/files/biblioteca/sceneggiature/donati/photogallery/la%20grande%20caccia.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cinetecadibologna.it/imageserver/lightboxenlarge/files/biblioteca/sceneggiature/donati/photogallery/la%20grande%20caccia.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="60280" LastEditDate="2024-01-11T12:23:57.140" LastActivityDate="2024-01-11T12:23:57.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14272" CreationDate="2014-11-05T22:26:40.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, of course you can, and you don't even have to make it clear who the narrator is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're the author: decisions like this are yours to make. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10985" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T22:26:40.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14307" CreationDate="2014-11-05T22:36:12.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some criteria for assessing the readability of texts, which give you a result corresponding to the school grade at which a child could easily comprehend the text - I.e. the most 'readable' text is the one which can be understood by the youngest children (limited vocabulary, simple structure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want your text to be maximally readable then go for:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- restricted vocabulary &lt;br&gt;&#xA;- simple grammar &lt;br&gt;&#xA;- short sentences &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For simplified English word lists etc, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For interest, here's the readability results for this page as of now (excluding text below this point):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Grade Levels&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A grade level (based on the USA education system) is equivalent to the number of years of education a person has had. Scores over 22 should generally be taken to mean graduate level text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Readability Formula   Grade &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level    5.8 &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Gunning-Fog Score 7.5 &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Coleman-Liau Index    12.5 &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  SMOG Index    5.7 &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Automated Readability Index   4.1 &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Average Grade Level   7.1 &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://readability-score.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Readability-score.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This page has an average grade level of about 7.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It should be easily understood by 12 to 13 year olds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Readability Indices&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease   65  &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Flesch Kincaid Grade Level    5.7 &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Gunning Fog Score 7.2 &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  SMOG Index    5.7 &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Coleman Liau Index    12.2    &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Automated Readability Index   3.9 &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on a 0-100 scale. A high score means the text is easier to read. Low scores suggest the text is complicated to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;206.835 - 1.015 x (words/sentences) - 84.6 x (syllables/words) &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A value between 60 and 80 should be easy for a 12 to 15 year old to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Grade Level indicators&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These equate the readability of the text to the US schools grade level system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Flesch Kincaid Grade Level&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;0.39 x (words/sentences) + 11.8 x (syllables/words) - 15.59&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gunning Fog Score&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;0.4 x ( (words/sentences) + 100 x (complexWords/words) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SMOG Index&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.0430 x sqrt( 30 x complexWords/sentences ) + 3.1291&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Coleman Liau Index&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5.89 x (characters/words) - 0.3 x (sentences/words) - 15.8&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Automated Readability Index (ARI)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4.71 x (characters/words) + 0.5 x (words/sentences) - 21.43&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coleman Liau and ARI rely on counting characters, words and sentence. The other indices consider number of syllables and complex words (polysyllabics - with 3 or more syllables) too. Opinions vary on which type are the most accurate. It is more difficult to automate the counting of syllable as the English language does not comply to strict standards!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://read-able.com/check.php?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwriters.stackexchange.com%2Fquestions%2F14307%2Fwhat-linguistic-features-increase-the-degree-of-readability%2F14325&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;read-able.com: Test results for http://writers.stackexchange.com/posts/14325&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10985" LastEditorUserId="10985" LastEditDate="2014-11-06T10:39:58.703" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T10:39:58.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14327" CreationDate="2014-11-06T03:19:42.847" Score="2" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cottage looked completely different inside. It had none of the&#xA;  coldness and rigidity of &lt;strong&gt;its&lt;/strong&gt; exterior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cottage looked completely different inside. It had none of the&#xA;  coldness and rigidity of &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; exterior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Without slowing my pace, I gazed at the river. &lt;strong&gt;Its&lt;/strong&gt; waters were&#xA;  calm, and stretched into the distance until it reached the city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Without slowing my pace, I gazed at the river. &lt;strong&gt;The&lt;/strong&gt; waters were&#xA;  calm, and stretched into the distance until it reached the city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are grammatical. What's the best choice? (e.g. sounds/flows better).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2014-11-06T06:26:40.867" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T06:36:43.767" Title="&quot;Its vs &quot;the&quot; when referring to an element belonging to the previous sentence" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14326" CreationDate="2014-11-06T04:09:01.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would lean towards showing ownership through the use of its. They are both attributes of the river and cottage mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you might use &amp;quot;the&amp;quot; is in the same sentence, like these examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The waters of the river were calm as I gazed at them, stretching into the distance until they reached the city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interior of the cottage showed none of the coldness and rigidity of the exterior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I admit, this is my gut instinct and not an academic reasoning. Someone else may have such an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T06:36:43.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14328" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-06T06:43:44.433" Score="1" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know the title of this question is too broad. But I think this is the apt title for my doubts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a non-native speaker of English language. Even then I love to write in English whenever I get time. I have been given a task to write screenplay for a 30 minute English short film. Yes..it's not a big deal to write a story. But it is definitely a big deal to write a good story. I don't have a vast vocabulary. Whenever I write, I keep on using the same words again &amp;amp; again. I hate doing that. How can I improve my English &amp;amp; avoid using same words again &amp;amp; again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep a journal everyday. I have a dictionary in my pocket every time. I learn new words whenever I get time. But the problem is I have a short memory. So I am not able to memorize every new word I learn. I don't get time to read books because of my hectic work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be great if I get a few tips from a stranger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Down voters can down vote as much as they want. Gracias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11098" LastEditorUserId="11098" LastEditDate="2014-11-06T08:37:55.733" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T08:37:55.733" Title="How to improve my English writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|screenwriting|vocabulary|preparation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-11-06T08:43:36.530" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14329" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-06T19:47:31.637" Score="10" ViewCount="2027" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt; describes purple prose as &quot;hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating.&quot; In short, it's ornate, contrived and breaks the narrative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's plenty of advice on how to avoid it, but my question is geared towards how one can identify it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since writing is so subjective, what can seem like purple prose to one person can be seen as something vivid and beautiful to someone else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where is the line between the two? Can it even be determined? And if how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T07:35:22.297" Title="What's the difference between purple prose and vividly descriptive writing?" Tags="|style|description|language|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14310" CreationDate="2014-11-06T20:39:47.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My rule of thumb comes from Elmore Leonard: &quot;If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.&quot; To me, this means that, as a reader, I'm experiencing the story, and not the writing. This might seem vague, but it helps me avoid writerly cliches and too much incidental blah-blah that distracts from the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T20:39:47.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14331" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14335" CreationDate="2014-11-06T21:07:24.703" Score="2" ViewCount="396" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some of my writing, nearly every paragraph is pure dialogue, with very little exposition or description.  On one hand, I feel like it flows smoothly, with little distraction, but on the other, I'm concerned that I'm failing to exploit my medium (the written word) properly.  OTOOH, most of the dialogue does advance the story in one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is an excess of dialogue, by itself, necessarily a bad thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11108" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T15:46:11.760" Title="Am I using too much dialogue?" Tags="|dialogue|narrative|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14310" CreationDate="2014-11-06T21:25:36.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Written dialogue is a good indicator of the overall quality of the story. Each character should have their own unique voice. For example, a poorly educated laborer is going to have a much different speaking style than a college educated banker. A child is going to also be much more naïve than an adult. It is more difficult to have believable dialogue coming from a child, than an adult because their way of thinking is much different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you read a fictional story, you should be able to imagine what is going on. You should have a clear understanding of the setting, and the events going on. The character's dialogue and actions should be clear, etc. Some of the best writing uses subtle hints about things rather than just revealing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Poorly written:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;It was hot out in the field, the temperature was over 100 degrees. The farmers were sweaty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A little better:&lt;/strong&gt; Sweat poured off of the men as they labored in the field. Their straw hats did little to block the rays of the scorching sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best writers can make you feel like you are there, and can do much better than my little sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastEditorUserId="11107" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T12:17:28.143" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T12:17:28.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14333" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-07T00:46:23.120" Score="12" ViewCount="2452" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that a lot of authors want their heroes to be marked in a special way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not enough that these protagonists are going to be heroes, no; they seem to require having a mark that makes them special be it golden eyes, a red streak of hair, a lightning shaped scar...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean it is quite silly and one would expect it only from mediocre or lazy writters, but some major authors do it regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really understand why, is there realy a need for the heroes to be pre-ordained to their destiny as manifested by the mark that identifies them as unique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance Frodo is one of the most heroic heroes, yet he is a common sort of chap, he doesn't have a bunion shaped glowing birthmark shouting &quot;I am the one!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What need is there to mark them as special?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it simply there for foreshadowing? Since the character is “marked” for great things, he is not only the main character but the protagonist? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the mark planted early on to make the reader doubly aware of the character’s importance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-27T15:22:13.567" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T19:30:42.647" Title="Why do heroes need to have a physical mark?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|science-fiction|cliches|foreshadowing|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14334" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14442" CreationDate="2014-11-07T01:55:09.837" Score="3" ViewCount="436" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am developing a story about a spiritual journey.  The book could be marketed under several guises such as magic realism, fantasy, religious, adventure... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking that the best approach might be to target the most marketable and publishable sector. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know where to find genre rankings, or in my case which sector would give me the most chance to be published and read?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EXTRA DETAILS:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a multi-part story about a person being thrown into a spiritual awakening. I thought about doing it from a kid’s perspective like several “children” spiritual metaphorical stories. However the content might be too complex and it is a series of a least 5 books. The hero could be young but 25 to 45 years old, at the start of his adventures, may be more realistic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the genre there are similarities to Richard Bach “Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah “or Paulo Coelho‘s “The Alchemist”. I guess it is magic realism in tone, but I am not wholly certain as the main focus is on the progression of the spiritual journey resulting from a series of situations. Also, while it is spiritual in content, it is more like a series of evolutive adventures (no it is not a Harry Potter imitation), and is hopefully very visual, action oriented, and tentatively somewhat humorous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, I have absolutely no pretensions of literature; it would be, at best, stylistically like a genre story. The main reason is that as a non-native English user, I might be able to pull a genre story but definitely not a literary one, and no I don’t want to write it in another language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the main reason I would tentatively classify it as magic realism is that it is in part autobiographical and there are some fantasy elements, but I am a bit uncomfortable with this classification and am not sure it is so, from a publisher point of view. As I asked, if there is a way to improve the likelihood of being published by marketing it under a more desirable format, I am all up for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In answer to the “why don't you write it first and worry about the marketing category later?” &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have outlined and developed various inter-weaving secondary subplots to the main stories in each book. The book is mostly written in my head and each scene, or chapter is pretty well developed. However, I can shift some focus one way or another to more closely fit into a genre. I am writing it mostly to communicate with readers not for my own vanity, nor self-satisfaction. If I don’t think that there is not even a slight chance to be traditionally published, I would not spend months fleshing out the first book, or years for the whole series. I kind of need a genre as I am a genre reader, and it does seem essential too to find an agent and traditional publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2014-11-09T16:49:10.403" LastActivityDate="2014-11-16T17:35:17.693" Title="Under which genre to publish?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|fantasy|marketing|genre|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14331" CreationDate="2014-11-07T02:08:27.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without an example it's hard to tell, but if you &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; like you are writing too much dialogue in proportion to the rest, then perhaps your gut is telling you to dial it down a little. As always, if you read a lot of well written stories, you'll have a good idea of where your story lies in terms of style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again, if you're writing a scene like one of the dialogue scenes in Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds or similar, then fire away. I suspect, however, that he would be describing the intimate details of the tension within the dialogue as well, as there are many details besides speech that make those scenes so exciting to watch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T02:08:27.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14331" CreationDate="2014-11-07T02:21:16.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am no expert, but I believe that dialogue should be kept to a bare minimum. You are not writing an audio book. Your characters may want to yap away, but you need to restrain them. Less is more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch a movie; cut the sound, if it is any good you will understand most of it. Yes, we write words, but they are a medium to create a sensory illusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This “special-effect” need to evocate and stimulate all the senses, with maybe a bit more of the visual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, for instance smells are important too and they certainly can not be imagined through dialogue. However, if they can, do transform that incessant chatter with descriptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure that with some efforts you could get rid of 80% of your dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T02:21:16.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10913" CreationDate="2014-11-07T02:28:40.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publish it into one of the open access journals for research papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do some search, there are some alternatives. try to get into a peer-reviewed scholarly journal if possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be important in your future if you want to go to graduate school and could greatly help your chances to get in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T02:28:40.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14329" CreationDate="2014-11-07T02:48:14.193" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the characteristics of the kind of prose you are referring to is a very dull and dry approach, there is often quite unnecessary pompous savant words and an obtuse language, there is also a general miasma of boredomness and triteness, a sure way to spot the culprits in an entirely wholesome and objective way is the length of the sentences used which are so long as to preclude any easy understanding or even remembrance of the start of the sentence, there is no tail or heads to the beast anymore, if you want an actual illustrative example go read the works of Immanuel Kant the German philosopher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other type of prose is clear and visual, it ensnares you into its fold until the language used disappears and you are living in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T02:48:14.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14312" CreationDate="2014-11-07T02:54:17.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A world building genre like fantasy and science fiction will often benefit from generally longer, more descriptive sentences (up to a few lines long), whereas more &quot;down to Earth&quot; genres like drama might benefit from less. That being said, it greatly depends on the expectations and style of the narrative being told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might write sentences no longer than 1-2 lines and still convey a great deal of information by simply separating them out. If we take your example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I live, if it is not a misleading expression, in a town known as Mülheim to the outsiders. It is a world of its own, free from the logic of the known reality found on paper and within sane mens wiring. Fountains paint stars at night and drunk women become reborn virgins in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the same information but written in 3 sentences and perhaps more digestible to certain readers and writers. I prefer shorter sentences to the long, ongoing sentences myself but others may prefer the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of my preference goes as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rays of golden sunlight filtered through the translucent, dry surface of a leaf, held aloft by the hand of a small girl. With eyes focused on the veins of the leaf, she spun it in her fingers as she lay on the soft, green grass under the oak tree in the backyard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are two quite descriptive sentences, but two, not one. They are two different parts to the introductory paragraph, though both contribute to the setting up of the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, you give the reader a chance to reflect on what they've just read before moving onto the next part of the description (or in this case, the action).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T02:54:17.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14341" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14347" CreationDate="2014-11-07T03:47:35.150" Score="4" ViewCount="1645" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is somewhat linked with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2156/should-you-read-your-own-genre&quot;&gt;Should you read your own genre?&lt;/a&gt;, but I believe it is distinct or at least approached in a different way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a sucker for sci-fi/fantasy and read nearly exclusively within these genres. I would love to write in these genres, but do not seem to be able to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By now I am an “expert”. I have read thousands of them, so writing within the genre should be easy and second nature, yet I can’t. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every creative idea I have seems to go toward realism, autobiographical, spiritual, poetry, techninal and academic writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really would love to write what I read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess this block could be because I know plots and stories so well that I can smell the stench of an overused idea, or even a seldom-used concept. It seems like my mind goes blank because I know it all. Or I might be afraid to be measured against giants I admire, I do not know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure of the solution, or how to overcome this block, do you have any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="14925" LastEditDate="2015-08-15T11:44:17.367" LastActivityDate="2022-06-16T23:19:35.420" Title="Why write in a different genre than what you read?" Tags="|creative-writing|genre|writers-block|inspiration|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14331" CreationDate="2014-11-07T06:21:59.763" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Drama or novel is full of dialogs. It should not be described by too many dialogs if your earnesr thinking is not like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11089" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T06:21:59.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14341" CreationDate="2014-11-07T11:02:47.603" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the most interesting and groundbreaking genre writing was written by authors who have come from literary fiction or another genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Tolkien was not a Fantasy reader or writer before he wrote the Hobbit and the LotR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with fans writing what they love is that it too often turns into a bad rip off of the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just write whatever flows from you naturally and don't try to force you to write what you &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; you should write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this does not neccessarily mean that you cannot write what you love. Let me explain with an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love to read High Fantasy and Space Opera. Yet when I write, I can't bring myself to care about all the interstellar politics or complex battle coreography that is part of both genres. What I want to write about is how persons and their relationships develop - a topic for realistic fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what do I write? I write realistic character and relationship studies before a Fantasy or SF backdrop. My teeneagers with teenage problems live in a Fantasy world, and deal with first love or developing their identity in the middle of courtly intrigue and magic elves. My adults dealing with the problems of rekindling love in a relationship after the kids have grown up live on a space station and work at terraforming a planet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do is write everything into the genres I love that I miss when I read them. And in my writing I rely on the familiarity of my readers with the genres, so I need only hint at the stuff I find boring and let my readers fill in the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't yet sold any book, so I cannot vouch for the commercial success of my approach, but maybe it will give you an idea how you can bring together what you love to read and what you love to write. Maybe, like Tolkien did for Fantasy, you can bring something to realistic fiction from SF that you find missing there. Or vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-11-08T09:22:38.850" LastActivityDate="2014-11-08T09:22:38.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14349" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14351" CreationDate="2014-11-07T13:38:25.797" Score="0" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am searching for a good comprehensive (up-to-date) reference that covers not only English grammar and syntax (from an &lt;strong&gt;advanced&lt;/strong&gt; standpoint) but also (actually &lt;em&gt;mainly&lt;/em&gt;) matters of intrinsically stylistic nature that are relevant to writers. Which such volume would you recommend? Recommendations might be divided as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;general writing;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;literary artwork&quot;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sciences and mathematics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, support your claims with solid background. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: this question is ment as a [big-list]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10974" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T14:40:36.430" Title="Comprehensive reference book for syntax and style" Tags="|style|resources|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-11-07T15:39:26.127" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14333" CreationDate="2014-11-07T14:31:47.427" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're right that it's a cliche and they don't &quot;need to&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it is quite silly and one would expect it only from mediocre or lazy writters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BirthmarkOfDestiny&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TV Tropes: Birthmark of Destiny&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoodScarsEvilScars&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;scars&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoodHairEvilHair&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;beards&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExpositoryHairstyleChange&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hairstyles&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yCEXj.png&quot; alt=&quot;Legend of Zelda: Triangle birthmark&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Villains also sometimes come with convenient labels, e.g. The Omen's Damien:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DA1r1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;666 birthmark&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarkOfTheBeast&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TV Tropes: Mark of the Beast&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Frodo is one of the most heroic heroes, yet he is a common sort of chap&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Frodo is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everyman&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Everyman&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The everyman character is constructed so that the audience can imagine itself in the same situation without having to possess knowledge, skills, or abilities that transcend human potential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10985" LastEditorUserId="10985" LastEditDate="2014-11-08T20:03:18.857" LastActivityDate="2014-11-08T20:03:18.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14349" CreationDate="2014-11-07T14:40:36.430" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For American English, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Strunk &amp;amp; White&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garner&amp;#39;s_Modern_American_Usage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Garner's MAU&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For British English, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_Modern_English_Usage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fowler&lt;/a&gt; (updated edition) or style guides from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guardian&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/styleguide/introduction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Economist&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/news-style-guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qkZ2a.png&quot; alt=&quot;xkcd: Strunk and White&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/923/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://xkcd.com/923/&lt;/a&gt; (image licensed CC BY-NC 2.5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Style_guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Style guide' @ Wikipedia (scroll down for a big list)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10985" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T14:40:36.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14333" CreationDate="2014-11-07T15:26:41.600" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writers love their heroes&lt;/strong&gt;. Look, my first male hero in my first story was actually me, myself. And I obviously wanted my hero to be my &lt;em&gt;better self&lt;/em&gt;, more muscles, more manly, more outgoing... So, I obviously gave such treats to my hero&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lots of people like to pimp their ride&lt;/strong&gt; You already bought &lt;em&gt;the best phone on the market&lt;/em&gt;. And after few days you realized, that some people around you have the same phone, same car, same whatever. How do you make your phone even better? You buy case! You paint your car, you stick a funny stick on your notebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of writers do the same with the heroes. If my hero is solider, he &lt;em&gt;has to have scars&lt;/em&gt; so I can hint, that such person went through a loads of battles. If I am having shy girl on the other hand, she will definitely wear big ugly glasses. And so on and so on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can easier become a hero if you are marked&lt;/strong&gt; I have little homework for you: Next morning, draw big black dot on your forehead. And wear it the whole day. That day will be one of the craziest days of your life so far. Now imagine you are wearing it the whole life. If there is car accident &lt;em&gt;you will be the one expected to help, because you are already different&lt;/em&gt;. The marks are material of heroes. And marked people become heroes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try it out yourselves&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T15:26:41.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14331" CreationDate="2014-11-07T15:46:11.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, you are the author so it is really your call. If you feel that there is too much dialogue, then odds are that there is. Perhaps there needs to be more of a narrative voice to pull it all together and then you can eliminate some of the dialogue that is used to advance the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T15:46:11.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14312" CreationDate="2014-11-07T16:03:44.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends purely on the writing style you are going for. In general, it is usually a good idea to avoid superfluous descriptions of things which have no bearing on the actual story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should give the reader just enough information to understand what is going on. For example, if you are in someone's home, you wouldn't describe each and every object in the room if it didn't have any real significance. It would be better to describe the room more generally to give the reader the impression about the kind of person that lives there. You could pick on key points like if the objects appeared old and dusty and the pictures on the wall were crooked. You could also pull in points such as odors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The carpet was old and stained and there was a strong odor of cat urine emanating from the couch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That description gives a clear understanding to the reader that the owner doesn't maintain their home very well. This is a much better device than calling someone a slob.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T16:03:44.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14341" CreationDate="2014-11-07T16:22:14.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first response is to say, &quot;so what?&quot; If you like to read science fiction, but you are really good at writing cookbooks, then ... write cookbooks. I can easily imagine someone who is very good at, say, auto mechanics, and very bad at gardening, who reads gardening books trying to learn how to do it right, but who writes auto repair books because that's what he knows how to do. Or someone could love to read murder mysteries because he can never figure out who did it and he loves the surprise at the end when the villain is revealed, and for that very reason he can't write a murder mystery, because he just can't figure out how to present clues in a way that the reader could reasonably hope to figure out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the issue is that you really want to write science fiction but just can't, that's a different story. Why can't you? What's stopping you? Can you be more specific?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T16:22:14.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14305" CreationDate="2014-11-07T16:28:20.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also have an anthropomorphic approach to description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes the thing you are describing have a life of its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The walls sighed. The door groaned. The chimney belched smoke. The floors shrieked. etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T16:28:20.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14333" CreationDate="2014-11-07T16:40:50.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's often struck me that there are two very different kinds of heroes in fiction in this sense. Some are heroes because they trained and practiced and studied or did some sort of hard work to get where they are. Others are heroes because they were born with some special status or destiny. Superman is a hero because he was born with &quot;powers and abilities far beyond those of normal men&quot;. But the Green Hornet is a hero because he worked and trained. And yes he's rich, which helps, but he worked for his money, he didn't just inherit it. In many stories a character is a hero because she was born a princess or he was born a prince. But Frodo is a hero because, when faced with an extraordinary challenge, he rose to the occasion. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This really struck me once when, at the time, I had just finished reading several books by women authors, in all of which the hero or heroine was born with some special ability, like a magical ability to talk to dragons telepathically. And a theory formed in my mind which some day I would like to investigate: Female writers tend to create characters who are heroes because of a natural ability or destiny, while male writers tend to create characters who are heroes because they worked hard. I'm not saying it's 100%, I'm sure there are exceptions, but I wonder if there's a bias each way. Anyway, detour ...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a different direction ... Writers often try to make a character distinctive in some easy way. &quot;She had a streak of blue through her hair&quot;, &quot;The man with the scar on his neck&quot;, etc. Done poorly, this can indeed just be lame. When done well, it can help the reader to distinguish the characters in his mind. I often find that when I read a book with many characters, I can get confused about who is who. Was Sally the airplane pilot or the doctor? Flip back a few pages ... oh no, the doctor was Shelley. If the characters have vague physical descriptions and similar or undistinctive names, it can be easy to mix them up. But if you say that Sally has blue hair and Monica always wears a formal business suit, now the reader has a handle on the characters to keep them separate. If you can then reference these distinctive characteristics casually throughout the story, it can help the reader keep them straight. Like if early in the story you say, &quot;He always felt a tingling in the scar on his neck when danger was near&quot;, and then every now and then, &quot;His scar was tingling again ...&quot; Done poorly, it would be a lame gimmick. Done well, it can help make a distinctive character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T16:40:50.003" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14333" CreationDate="2014-11-07T18:09:34.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Heroes are different because readers are different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some readers are lonely people that feel excluded from the social life of their peers. They feel ugly, abominable, as if they carry a &lt;strong&gt;stigma&lt;/strong&gt; that repulses everyone. They feel &lt;strong&gt;marked&lt;/strong&gt; by a cruel god.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These readers can identify with a hero who is an outsider in his society because of a mark he carries. And they are satisfied when the mark, that was seen as something pitiful and laughable by their peers, turns out to be a mark of special and wonderful talents and powers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T18:09:34.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7212" CreationDate="2014-11-07T19:57:56.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this a sign of bad writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't even have to have a 'main' plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/plotsummary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;these plot summaries of Pulp Fiction&lt;/a&gt; for a good example - different viewers have different ideas as to which is the most important plot line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10985" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T19:57:56.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14341" CreationDate="2014-11-07T20:08:00.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bit of a writing exercise to suggest. I used it myself when tying to &quot;find my voice&quot;, and probably absorbed the idea from someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, pick a simple setting that is fairly open-ended and adaptable to many styles and genres. Then (without any specific characters, plot, or ending in mind) begin to write a scene in that setting in each style that interests you. When you lose interest or get stuck, simply start fresh with the same setting but a new style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I chose the setting of &lt;em&gt;discovering an abandoned ship&lt;/em&gt;. This lent itself well to dozens of genres, atmospheres and narration types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few things this does. By removing the the burden of a preset goal, you're free to follow any whim that strikes you. Also, by focusing on style over structure you identify and meditate the elements of a style that you respond to personally. While reading, you probably get so engrossed in the structure and momentum of the story that the style just kind of 'happens' around you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may discover that you have creative interests and talents in areas that you didn't realize. Or perhaps (like me) you'll try writing about 3 styles before getting obsessed about what it is you really like in a particular style, and suddenly get inspiration for a new project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case this exercise will help you to identify genres and writing styles that fit your interests and talents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11101" LastEditorUserId="11101" LastEditDate="2014-11-11T02:04:04.327" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T02:04:04.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14329" CreationDate="2014-11-07T21:05:47.750" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes purple prose is an attempt to impress the reader with how smart the author is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in the software business and I have to do a fair amount of technical writing. And I've very routinely found that if I write something that is simple, clear, and direct, someone else in the company will edit it to make it less easy to read. I recall one time that I wrote the first draft of a user manual for a software product, and the editor at corporate headquarters apparently did a search-and-replace in MS Word to change every occurrence of &quot;use&quot; to &quot;utilize&quot; and dozens of other such changes. Editors regularly tell me that they need to make such changes to my writing to make it &quot;sound more professional&quot;. Because heaven forbid if someone could understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's lead me to conclude that there are two kinds of writers in the world: (a) Those who want to convey an idea or a story to the reader; and (b) Those who want to impress the reader with how smart the author must be to understand this complicated subject or to know all these big hard words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other times, purple prose is an attempt to be profound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think trying to be profound is inherently risky. If you try to write a story that is action-packed and fail, you could still end up with a story that is somewhat action-packed. Or if you try to write a story that is romantic and fail, you may still end up with a story that is somewhat romantic. But if you try to write a story that is profound and fail, you rarely end up with a story that is &quot;somewhat profound&quot;. You usually end up with something that is pretentious and lame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T21:05:47.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14303" CreationDate="2014-11-07T22:21:48.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's some very good answers here. Basically supporting the idea that a change in tense just to satisfy the potential pedantry of a reader is not worth doing. { There's some people just looking for an excuse. &quot;She &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt; eyes? What does she &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; now?&quot;}&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'd like to focus on the question of &quot;What would be the effect of switching tenses?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A judicious change in tense can have a strong narrative effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a present tense narration suddenly begins referring to a person or event in the past tense it has the effect of highlighting a distance. That distance may be either cold and disapproving, or nostalgic and full of longing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His foot touches the brick, and he knows where he is. He walks this&#xA;  street every day. Seeing these people, hearing these sounds. This is&#xA;  Karen's street.  She had green eyes. She had a smile that taunted men.&#xA;  Sometimes he sat on that bench and wasted a few minutes, just in case&#xA;  she had been late for the 8:05 bus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without any exposition the change in tense has set up a complicated relationship between two people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing from past to present heightens the intensity of events. I think of Bram Stoker and Herman Melville using this deftly to bring the reader to the same experiential state as a character. (But I'm referencing them without fact-checking.)&#xA;A change to the present might also signify the vividness of a memory to a narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Together we stepped into the room. It had been a long day, far too&#xA;  long. She leaned gently against the wall to take some strain off her&#xA;  tired legs. She has green eyes. They flutter and hide behind dark&#xA;  lashes as I kiss her cheek. She sighs gently, wanting this feeling to&#xA;  last forever.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11101" LastEditorUserId="11101" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T22:28:02.740" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T22:28:02.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14329" CreationDate="2014-11-07T23:16:53.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that there is  only way you can create &quot;purple prose&quot;. The term itself seems less like an actual definition then words a pundit invented to describe something he recommends for or against. In this case, he is simply recommending that you avoid a certain type of prose that reads as &lt;em&gt;boring&lt;/em&gt;. Is my interpretation at least. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit: to answer your question, I would define purple prose as word that are superfluous without actually being informative in any capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many,many ways to bore a reader when you are typing. As you were quick to point out, it can be pretty subjective. Thus its best to always read you own work aloud when your done, and measure the levels of these elements that are certain to degrade the engagement of your work...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Technicality. If you are not writing an academic paper or instructions for a technical guide, try to avoid trite technicalities altogether. Act more like your taking to a friend or telling a story to a child then reading a file from your office desk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Expository. The great thing about writing is that the reader's imagination is doing half of the work for us. Thus, you should only concern yourself with explaining a few of the most important details rather then everything there is to know. This is especially true for writing fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Repetition. Make damn sure you don't repeat the use of words over and over again. Be sure to always double check your work and have a Thesaurus handy if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Stagnation. Don't be afraid to spice things up; a single sentence with a beautiful metaphor or simile will tell more to your audience then ten paragraphs of technical exposition. Remember that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Pretention. On the other side of the rainbow, keep in mind that the whole point of writing anything is to inform the reader. The creativity is in how you inform them, not in the number of superfluous sayings you can cram into a single sentence. Do not sacrifice substance for style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always remember; when in doubt, read it out loud to yourself or to someone else. That's the best way to spot potential flaws. Thank you, and I hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11118" LastEditorUserId="11118" LastEditDate="2014-11-12T18:29:14.160" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T18:29:14.160" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14365" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14369" CreationDate="2014-11-08T00:24:34.857" Score="2" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a literary analysis essay in which the author, Tim O'Brien, uses a fictional version of himself to tell the stories in the book.  How would you suggest I help keep the reader from being confused as to whether, when I say &quot;Tim O'Brien&quot; or &quot;O'Brien,&quot; I am referring to the fictional version or the real version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking about inserting a sentence in my essay that says something like &quot;When I say 'O'Brien' or 'Tim O'Brien,' I am referring to the fictional character, unless otherwise indicated.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11119" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-22T14:41:36.330" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T14:41:36.330" Title="Referring to fictional version of an author in essay" Tags="|academic-writing|naming|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14366" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14371" CreationDate="2014-11-08T00:27:03.040" Score="5" ViewCount="10069" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Note that I use OpenOffice but this question should apply to MS Word as well)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's common knowledge that the average word count for a page is around 250. I understand that this is heavily dependent on the final formatting of the work, and doesn't necessarily apply to a manuscript. But I've noticed that I get around &lt;em&gt;700&lt;/em&gt; words/page, which seems like an awful lot to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't an unbearable problem by any definition. I get that word count is far more important. But I would like to at least have a rough feel for the number of pages, and that's hard to do when you get so many words per page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All my settings are default: Times New Roman size 12, 8.5&quot; * 11.0&quot; page, margins 0.79&quot; on all sides. Just raw text. Does anyone else have this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T15:44:28.043" Title="Why am I getting so many words per page?" Tags="|software|wordcount|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14366" CreationDate="2014-11-08T04:43:25.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be that you are using a lot of small words when you could be using long ones. There is some times when the use of short words is a must and gives short punches and bursts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, in selective instances lengthier word combinations might possibly generate a necessary and consequently beneficiary alternative regarding the rhythmical arrangement of the paragraph configurational structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Times is rather small too, Arial might be better and is often required by publishing houses. still, what works for you, works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also how about the vertical spacing between sentences, are you using single or double, or maybe a personal setting&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2014-11-08T05:16:59.120" LastActivityDate="2014-11-08T05:16:59.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14333" CreationDate="2014-11-08T05:10:59.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Marks can indicate that the hero is &quot;special&quot; - chosen, if you will - and because the reader identifies with the hero, they too can feel like they're special. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a necessary device? That depends on the discretion of the author. Sure, there are &quot;everyman&quot; heroes who happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and are brought along for the ride by pure circumstance (Frodo and Bilbo definitely fit within this category). But different strokes, and all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the device has the potential to be cliche, but then so do many others. As most folks have noted, it's all in the execution and the intent. American novelist Toni Morrison (who won both a Pulitzer and the Nobel Prize) had a character named Sula who had a birthmark over one eye. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mark was described by other characters as a snake, a tadpole and a stemmed rose (which was a clever technique on Morrison's part, because it showed how other characters viewed Sula). The intent of the mark was to symbolize Sula's flaws, ambition and self-destructiveness. The fact that the mark was over one eye also illustrated that Sula's perception of herself and others was twisted and warped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-11-08T05:10:59.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14365" CreationDate="2014-11-08T05:18:33.787" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest referring to the author as &quot;O'Brien&quot; and his fictional self as &quot;the narrator.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, you can speak to his fictional self with sentences like &quot;When the narrator describes Rat Kiley...&quot; or &quot;When the narrator returns home from the border of Canada*&quot;, you can avoid confusion. Additionally, you can have a setup in your intro paragraph that says something along the lines of &quot;The narrator in &lt;em&gt;The Things They Carried&lt;/em&gt; acts as Tim O'Brien's fictionalized self...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-11-08T05:18:33.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14341" CreationDate="2014-11-08T05:44:39.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that your could be caused by &quot;knowing it all&quot; and are hesitant to try your hand at something overused because it has the potential to be cliche. But as Kurt Vonnegut once said, &quot;Write with the door closed.&quot; In other words, tune out your doubts- especially during the first draft, when the most important thing is to get it down on paper (or on screen). Also, don't think about measuring up or competing with others. It's much more productive to measure up and compete against yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend reading Anne Lammott's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0385480016&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; I can give you a 95% guarantee that you will be itching to write your opus afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, I think it's important for writers to experiment with other genres even, perhaps especially, if it makes them uncomfortable. This is so you can get a cross-pollination that may yield something worthwhile. What if you love reading dark fantasy but tried your hand at westerns? Can you mix them together? That's where Stephen King's &lt;em&gt;Dark Tower&lt;/em&gt; series comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Love high fantasy and adventure, but enjoy brushing up on your Renaissance history? Now, you've got &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Horror and Victorian lit? &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if you mixed biography techniques with Arthurian legend? Can you get an autobiography of Merlin? What would that even look like? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The possibilities are endless when horizons are expanded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-11-08T05:44:39.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14366" CreationDate="2014-11-08T07:29:13.713" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;standard manuscript page&lt;/em&gt; has about 250 words on average. Standard manuscript format is this (or a minor variation):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;8.5&quot; x 11&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1&quot; margins top and bottom, left and right.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;12 point Courier font.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Double spaced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have significantly more or fewer than that on average, your document is likely not formatted in the standard manuscript form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few descriptions of standard manuscript form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html&quot;&gt;William Shunn (short story format)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shunn.net/format/novel.html&quot;&gt;William Shunn (novel format example)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vondanmcintyre.com/mssprep.pdf&quot;&gt;Vonda N. MckIntyre's (short story format)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-11-08T07:29:13.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14372" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-08T13:46:50.083" Score="0" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are looking to write a scientific paper in the topic of measurement physics, that includes experimental data and dimensional analysis. How do we begin the process of writing a paper for a journal, maybe Physical Review Letters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11124" LastEditorUserId="11124" LastEditDate="2014-11-14T10:42:12.317" LastActivityDate="2014-11-14T10:42:12.317" Title="What are the appropriate first steps to writing a scientific paper concerning a physical constant?" Tags="|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-11-14T06:15:43.060" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14378" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-09T16:30:31.917" Score="2" ViewCount="1757" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where to find genre sales and publications numbers. &#xA;Is there a way to find which genres are more successful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I apologize if this has been asked a hundred times but I didn't find it in the existing questions. The question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1483/where-can-i-find-sales-numbers-for-books&quot;&gt;Where can I find sales numbers for books?&lt;/a&gt;, is not up-to date and the stats link doesn’t work and a visit to the main site only held the paying for stats version. This question is somewhat linked to my specific question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/14334/under-which-genre-to-publish&quot;&gt;Under which genre to publish?&lt;/a&gt; but is broader in nature and may be more useful to other writers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that publishing houses do not publish their sales numbers. I know that one can find some partial information on internet or E-books sales. I know that there is a bit of fashion involved and that a very successful book or series might turn the tables. I also understand that genre is a publishing house gimmick for categorizing ease and that many books are multi-sectional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I wonder is if there is way to roughly know what sells, or what publishing houses want? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even better would the &quot;backlist&quot; figures that exclude books by well-known authors. Else, is there is a way to guestimate the relative strength of various genres?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT SOME FACTS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, didn’ get much done yet. I will Update the answer several times as I gather some research. &#xA;For now, the Romance writers of America link from the page you recomanded&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rwa.org/p/cm/ld/fid=582&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.rwa.org/p/cm/ld/fid=582&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;on romance subgenres by format read primarily:&#xA;Print: romantic suspense (53%); contemporary romance (41%); historical romance (34%); erotic romance (33%); New Adult (26%); paranormal romance (19%); Young Adult romance (18%); and Christian romance (17%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E-book: romantic suspense (48%); contemporary romance (44%); erotic romance (42%); historical romance (33%); paranormal romance (30%); New Adult (26%); Young Adult romance (18%); and Christian romance (14%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Top genres for e-books: erotica, romance, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical, and adult fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FROM &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/2013/06/digital-publishing-genre-fiction/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.wired.com/2013/06/digital-publishing-genre-fiction/&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;“ publishers have focused much of their attention on genres like sci-fi, fantasy, mystery and romance fiction “…“In the case of some genre titles, as much as 60 to 70 percent of the sales are digital.” ….“According to a recent survey, more than a fifth of all genre e-books sold in the United Kingdom are self-published”…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FROM &#xA;Self-Publishing’s Share of the Kindle Market by Genre &lt;a href=&quot;http://edwardwrobertson.com/self-publishings-share-of-the-kindle-market-by-genre/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://edwardwrobertson.com/self-publishings-share-of-the-kindle-market-by-genre/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Market share: Romance: 40% - Mysteries/Thrillers: 20% - Fantasy: 6.33% - Sci-Fi: 5%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ROMANCE - Self-published: 49%, Small/medium: 11%, Amazon: 9%, Big 5/Harlequin: 30%&#xA;MYSTERY/THRILLER/SUSPENSE - Self-published: 11%, Small/medium: 5%, Amazon: 16%, Big 5: 68%,&#xA;SCIENCE FICTION - Self-published: 56%, Small/medium: 9%, Amazon: 5%, Big 5 (plus Baen): 30%,&#xA;FANTASY -  Self-published: 49%, Small/medium: 7%, Amazon: 7%, Big 5: 37%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T02:09:33.333" Title="which genres are more successful, publication figures?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14372" CreationDate="2014-11-09T16:58:31.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In answer to the question you need to find books about academic publishing. also, many scholarly journals have their own guideline for publications. Best if you read all you can about the academic publishing process to improve your chances to be published. try also to look at answers in the Academia StackExchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not speaking about research papers but textbooks you need to familiarize yourself with non-fiction publishing, there are many books on this subject too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In answer to the comment many people who have done only a master, or even a bachelor can later, and often do, contribute to the body of scientific literature. Even in PhD programs, some get more advice than others and a PhD holder may not know how to publish. This is even more true for international degrees whose study-contents may not include papers or research publications at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, like it may be the case here, he is asking about writing a paper for his professor. many people involved in reseach may have to write the paper for their &quot;elders&quot;, specialty lab or research assistants, even if they are just students. From the tone of the question, i would guess that the asker is starting his PhD program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2014-11-09T21:51:46.340" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T21:51:46.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14380" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-09T17:45:39.120" Score="5" ViewCount="2166" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I write a chat dialogue in a novel, how should I format it? Since it is not direct speech, it obviously needs no quotation marks, but should I use italics, repeat the names, or how else is chat dialogue conventionally marked up in fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quotation marks look too much like face-to-face or telephone communication:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then she flipped back over to the Facebook page and sent him a friend request from Facebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judith: &amp;quot;Okay Terrance, I have you all dialed in now. You seem legit. What kind of photo shoots you want to do? Bikini or business suit?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terrance: &amp;quot;Nah, strictly professional. Kind of like stock photo shooting. I just want to get some head shots of you, and talk about some other things that we can do in the local market. I don't want to come off as a player.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No markup looks like a typesetting mistake:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then she flipped back over to the Facebook page and sent him a friend request from Facebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judith: Okay Terrance, I have you all dialed in now. You seem legit. What kind of photo shoots you want to do? Bikini or business suit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terrance: Nah, strictly professional. Kind of like stock photo shooting. I just want to get some head shots of you, and talk about some other things that we can do in the local market. I don't want to come off as a player.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Italics look awkward somehow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then she flipped back over to the Facebook page and sent him a friend request from Facebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judith: &lt;em&gt;Okay Terrance, I have you all dialed in now. You seem legit. What kind of photo shoots you want to do? Bikini or business suit?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terrance: &lt;em&gt;Nah, strictly professional. Kind of like stock photo shooting. I just want to get some head shots of you, and talk about some other things that we can do in the local market. I don't want to come off as a player.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how is this done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11133" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-11-14T09:46:48.973" Title="How to format Facebook chat in a novel?" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14378" CreationDate="2014-11-09T19:46:31.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/1tuIrDi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;google search for 'fiction genre sales'&lt;/a&gt; includes these results on the first page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/which-5-book-genres-make-the-most-money/?view=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/which-5-book-genres-make-the-most-money/?view=all&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thegeekgirlproject.com/2012/06/06/the-basic-facts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thegeekgirlproject.com/2012/06/06/the-basic-facts/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/19321b10-2a20-11de-9d01-00144feabdc0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/19321b10-2a20-11de-9d01-00144feabdc0.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which answer your question for the USA, and go some way towards answering it for the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US: Romance/porn, crime, religion, SciFi, horror (in descending order)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10985" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T19:46:31.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12397" CreationDate="2014-11-10T01:44:13.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen many times a sticker ISBN added over the original one for different countries a bit like the replica stick-on some chain bookstores use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also often seen it in US prints sold in the UK and Europe with the local denomination. I gather that's what you meant, two different currencies needing two ISBNs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case the U.S. publisher will have an ISBN print as part of the cover, and the other country England, or India for instance will have a sticker covering it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T01:44:13.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14383" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-10T12:51:26.447" Score="10" ViewCount="7097" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the following sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Huego becomes fuego by discarding its &quot;h&quot; in favor of &quot;f&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not omit the trailing &quot;s&quot;, which is key to the overall meaning here.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nueve comes from the Latin word &quot;nueve&quot;, which also gives us the English word, nine.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know American English mandates punctuation marks going within the quotes. I want to know how it treats contexts where the quotes contain a single letter or word such as the above examples? I am only talking about formal American English style guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I know I can get rid of the quotes by using italics or some other technique to delimit the quoted text here. But I don't want to do that. I am just curious to know how AP (Associated Press Manual of Style) or CMS (Chicago Manual of Style) would treat punctuation in this context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11140" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T15:33:00.640" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T15:33:00.640" Title="Use of punctuation within quotes with single words or letters" Tags="|style|punctuation|chicago-manual-of-style|ap-style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14383" CreationDate="2014-11-10T14:43:07.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see no reason why you'd treat the punctuation/quote convention any differently for a single letter than for a paragraph. The interaction of punctuation and quote has to do with white space and clarity of content, not the volume of what comes before those two characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T14:43:07.893" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14366" CreationDate="2014-11-10T15:08:15.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the old days of typewriters with fixed-size fonts, a page was 8.5 x 11 inches, we set 1.25 inch margins left and right and 1 inch margins top and bottom. Most typewriters gave 10 characters per inch horizontally, so 6 inches between the margins gave a 60 space line. They had 6 lines per inch, so 9 inches between the margins gave 54 lines.  A &quot;standard word&quot; was considered 6 characters, so 60 characters per line equals 10 words, times 54 lines per page single-spaced is 540 words. Double-spaced would be 270 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You really got a little less than that because you typically had a ragged right margin, and you often had short lines, such as at the end of a paragraph. So I guess 250 words for a double-spaced page is about right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern word processors are much more variable. There are many different font sizes and possible line spacings. So the number of words per page varies widely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, if you set your font to something with fixed spacing, like Courier, at 12 point font size, and set paragraph spacing to 24 points, you should get about 250 words per page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But why do you care?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T15:08:15.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14383" CreationDate="2014-11-10T15:35:19.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, I finally seem to have found a concrete mandate on this issue after digging a little deeper. Not sure if I should reference my source as a valid one since it's definitely not official but I'll let the readers be the judge. Here's the link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammartips.homestead.com/inside.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quotation Marks: Where Do the Commas and Periods Go--and Why?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote the article, universal American usage places commas and periods inside the quotation marks, regardless of logic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;~&quot;Diane,&quot; she said, &quot;put the book down and go outside for a little&#xA;  while.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;~&quot;I will in a minute,&quot; she replied, &quot;as soon as I finish this&#xA;  chapter.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This rule applies even when the unit enclosed at the end of the sentence is just a single word rather than an actual quotation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;~To get to the next page, just press the little button marked &quot;Enter.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception is when that last little item enclosed in quotation marks is just a letter or a number, in which case the period or comma will go outside the closing quotation marks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;~The buried treasure was marked on the map with a large &quot;X&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;~The only grade that will satisfy her is an &quot;A&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;~On this scale, the highest ranking is a &quot;1&quot;, not a &quot;10&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11140" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T15:35:19.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14341" CreationDate="2014-11-11T02:12:04.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading outside of the genre that you wish to write in is important in cultivating a broader perspective. Artists of all mediums (music and painting, especially) study and consume creative works outside of their preferred genre or area of expertise. The works they consume, though not part of their genre, each have a small bit that the consumer takes with them. They then draw upon these influences, bringing them back to their own genre to create an original work that is (ideally) free of cliche or at least a bit fresher than the rehashed stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By reading the genres you &lt;em&gt;exclusively&lt;/em&gt; want to write in, you’re robbing yourself of these easy influences. Narrowing down your possible influences puts you at greater risk of creating derivative work. You may find that a trope in one genre could be twisted into something very interesting in science fiction or fantasy or that an atypical narrative style used in fantasy’s polar opposite genres inspire you to write something in the genres you desire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestions for getting past your block are to: 1) read outside your comfort zone and 2) experiment. For instance, you can try translating new stories you read into a different genre or you can imitate an interesting technique and apply it to your genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8197" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T02:12:04.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2014-11-11T06:06:28.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will somewhat disagree with the other answers by agreeing with &quot;what&quot; 's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Do you need to watch a lot of sports to be a good sportsman? &quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, writing is about writing and reading is about reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One activity is doing the other is being, it is acting versus contemplating. From everything I read; :) one becomes a better writer by writing, not reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask this to the countless foreigners who read a lot, understand every movie, and yet who can’t really write, nor speak, fluently or correctly. &#xA;And yes, I do speak from experience, as i was one of them. Even now, inspite of having read thousands of book, having lived in the US for 10 years, and writing hundreds of pages, i still do struggle with words and have to wrestle with my writings. I also  know a lot of native speakers who may be great readers, but who would stare at a blank page until it tarnished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, reading books will improve your vocabulary, yes it will expose you to plots and structure. Yet, that will not make you into a writer, it will make you into a READER, a critic who will spot problems with a story and its flow. Like the saying: &quot;those who can’t do, teach&quot;; here it can be used as &quot;those who can’t write, read&quot;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A writer is not only a composer but a word smith, a storyteller, a communicator. Yes, a writer can get better at sensing what works or not by reading more, but it doesn’t work the other way around and a reader does not a writer make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I think your main problem might be about ideas or concepts. As you seem to have mainly been exposed to movies and video games, you may not realize how cliche they are. A seemingly hot, creative, original, exiting, daring, and novel movie concept has probably been over-used to death in fiction. Sorry to break it to you, but video game's developers and movie's screenwriters are the laziest conceptual creators i know of and the ones that are not do seem to considerably dumb down their ideas to fitto the level of a brain damaged general audiance. So, even if most concepts, in Sci-Fi/Fantasy for instance, are re-hashed the genre readers expect an exponentially better story than what you may be used to. On the other hand, not knowing what was done before can be liberating creatively, and after all some of the greatest stories are not original at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2014-11-12T22:06:58.227" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T22:06:58.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2014-11-11T14:29:00.180" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can be a good storyteller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm like you. I rarely read for fun, but watched a LOT of movies and played a lot of video games (The first Half-Life game and the first Starcraft game means more to me than any novel I have ever read).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also imagined that I wanted to write books. But what I really wanted to do was to tell stories and to be creative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realized that since I never read fiction (but I do read a LOT for non-fiction), I probably shouldn't try to write it. Why write something I would never bother to read?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try writing scripts instead. If you enjoy movies and games, try to write in the format you enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T14:29:00.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2014-11-11T16:07:04.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll throw in my $0.02. I agree with many of the other answers saying that you don't &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; to necessarily read a lot to be a great author. I can't cite any authors that didn't read very much, but perhaps there are some that didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading definitely will help your process. It doesn't really matter what you read, but you should read and communicate with other people as often as possible in order to hone your skills. If you are in school, try taking some writing intensive courses. It might be very difficult at first, but eventually you would be able to write a 20 or 30 page term paper with ease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also playing video games often may be a detriment to your communication skills. As a former video game addict, I could tell that it had a negative impact on me over time. The skills that make you a good gamer are the same skills that make you a poor writer. Games teach you to be impatient, and to make snap decisions. Writing on the other hand, is a much more patient process. It is better to slow down and think about what you are writing instead of just trying to force a bunch of words on paper. I'm not saying that you should quit gaming altogether, but it would be a good idea to limit the amount of time spent playing games to a few hours a week. Instead, you could be doing more things socially, or reading, or doing something completely different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T16:07:04.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14394" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-11T18:38:11.910" Score="3" ViewCount="2511" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading this book, and a little girl is narrating the story.  It was a new experience for me, since I am seeing the world through the eyes of a 12 year old girl.  Other than the point of view of the narrator, how does the gender and age of a narrator affect the perception of the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11153" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-11-11T22:22:15.893" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T19:59:10.447" Title="What effect does the gender of the narrator have on a story?" Tags="|gender|narrator|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14395" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-11T18:52:49.537" Score="10" ViewCount="866" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write non fiction books about computer science and security (Zzz) but with the security bits in particular, do I really need to put a disclaimer saying &quot;hey don't go hack the government&quot; on my ebooks? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could some reader potentially turn around and say &quot;you didn't warn me stealing credit card information is illegal&quot; and try some frivolous lawsuit? - I constantly find myself reading and writing these little &quot;don't use this in the real world&quot; messages and its becoming cumbersome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11154" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T06:56:30.933" Title="Do I really need disclaimers?" Tags="|legal|ebook|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14395" CreationDate="2014-11-11T19:03:59.680" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you really think someone is going to use your book as a how-to, then write a preface which is a single large, comprehensive disclaimer. Put all the &quot;don't do this at home&quot; copy there, and if it's an e-book, throw in the occasional link back to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, don't publish genuine secrets, and you may want to have the number of a good lawyer on hand as a backup. Because people are sometimes insane.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T19:03:59.680" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14394" CreationDate="2014-11-11T19:25:35.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it is heavily dependent on the story in question. Most of the times I've read books narrated by a female, young or otherwise, they seem to take on the role of a memoir - not so much a way of taking me to a whole new world, but rather allow me to relate to the person telling the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm recalling the book &lt;em&gt;&quot;The Girl Who Owned a City&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. Even though it was perceived through the eyes of a young girl, memory starts to push towards 11 or 12 year old. The book, even though full of action, mostly felt like a rebelling of her experiences. Maybe it's just the relatable manner of a male narrator setting the mood that something will happen to change his outlook, or way of thinking, or who he will become at the end makes me place myself in his shoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, male protagonists undergo some type of change whereas most stories with females as narrators just become a stronger version of themselves, unless a traumatic experience, usually sexual from my encounters, happens. Male protagonist's are almost always expected to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may have veered a bit off topic, but to summarize my first point, it generally feels different, and it may be based on my inability to take on the woman's point of view, or something Freudian to do with my childhood...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11155" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2014-11-12T09:22:39.060" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T09:22:39.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14398" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-11T21:58:32.193" Score="5" ViewCount="1457" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a Scrivener formatting question. Using Scrivener (on Mac), I'm trying to put a poem into a page of a novel. Scrivener keeps capitalizing the first word of the next line even though the previous line has no period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I want:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Line in a page of the novel.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Poem Line one&lt;br&gt;&#xA;poem line 2.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Poem line 3,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;poem line 4.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Line in a page of the novel.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Poem line one&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Poem line 2.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Poem line 3,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;poem line 4.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a novice at Scrivener so I must be missing something obvious about how to change formatting rules. If someone could just point me in the direction of a way to change Scrivener formatting, you'd be my hero for at least the rest of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11157" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-13T00:52:46.930" LastActivityDate="2019-06-13T00:52:46.930" Title="Scrivener capitalization issues" Tags="|novel|formatting|poetry|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14398" CreationDate="2014-11-11T22:12:23.537" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go to Preferences &gt; Corrections, and uncheck this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/K5REq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sentences will no longer automatically capitalize the first letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T22:12:23.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14400" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14401" CreationDate="2014-11-12T06:02:16.320" Score="0" ViewCount="607" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic8ISFqAnt0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Video&lt;/a&gt;, the girl, Seth, at 0:35 transforms and her voice changed along with her transformation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to describe something similar, the physical change i can describe just fine however i also want to describe the sudden change in the voice, this is what i have at the moment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Suzuka?&quot; Fate questioned. she had all reason to suspect, the Suzuka standing there had far paler skin, her yes glowed a deep crimson red and her nails turned a deep purple grew to be like claws. All of this acompanied by the pair of raven like wings sprouting from back which were as large as she was&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;What the hell!&quot; Levi said, shocked that a mere human with no protective gear or magic could survive Seikou's attack&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Fools, you dare enter this town, start trouble and attack my friends without gather information, ON WHAT DENIZENS DWELL HERE&quot; Suzuka responded, her voice __________________&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;how can i describe the change in the voice similar to what was in the video&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: i did not que the video as there is a gap between Seth talking normally and her talking in her Crusnik form&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T09:45:11.957" Title="How do i describe this change in voice?" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14400" CreationDate="2014-11-12T09:45:11.957" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since it will be too long for a comment, I'll put as an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She isn't the same personality, Suzuka.  She's in the role of a Crusnik, a powerful being different from her non-Crusnik personality (which was more timid).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the video, though, you see that &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; we hear her voice, the male character displays shock; he is being overcome with a freezing &amp;quot;spell&amp;quot;; his fear is evident; her body then changes from relaxed and submissive to standing firm and commanding, confident; lights show behind her; and then, after all of that is shown, her voice takes on an ethereal tone which reverberates throughout the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That it was I meant by showing.  Simply saying,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Fools, you dare enter this town, start trouble and attack my friends without gather information, ON WHAT DENIZENS DWELL HERE&amp;quot; Suzuka responded, her voice taking on an ethereal quality, reverberating across the land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;does not carry the same weight.  And, as an aside, whenever a writer switches to typing in all caps (the standard for screaming), I always read into it that they are screaming that they lack the means of showing me what they are trying to convey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, I do not know writing from the genre you are in, but consider the difference in this re-write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her crimson eyes glowed. Fate watched as her hands turned to claws, the nails turning a deep purple.  Raven wings burst from her back, unfolding to be twice her size.  Fate took a step back, &amp;quot;Suzuka?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shock took hold of Levi -- a human; a human with no protective gear, much less magic surviving Seikou's attack?  &amp;quot;What the hell!&amp;quot; he said, breaking free of the shock for a moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suzuka turned her head upward to face them.  The moment she spoke in that voice, that voice from another world, Fate had been answered, Levi had been answered.  Her voice as powerful as her presence, Suzuka said, &amp;quot;You dare enter this town? You bring trouble and attack my friends. What fools you are.  Did you not think to gather information on what denizens dwell here?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure there are many, many others here who could have done that far better than I.  My goal was to show the scene more than to tell it.  Through the responses of others and the description of the transformation, so that mentioning the voice as merely &amp;quot;that voice from another world&amp;quot; provided a sufficient description.  In fact, &amp;quot;her voice as powerful as her presence&amp;quot; is meaningless unless we can already &amp;quot;see&amp;quot; her presence, hopefully even &amp;quot;feel&amp;quot; that presence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, others could do much better, but I hope that conveys the intended point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9914" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T09:45:11.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14402" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-12T12:03:51.750" Score="-5" ViewCount="1769" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people write books about serious things and real things in life. If a book is written like that, how can you tell if it is a novel or a documentary [non-fiction]? .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11166" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2018-08-05T09:44:03.653" LastActivityDate="2018-08-05T09:44:03.653" Title="What is the difference between a novel and a documentary [non-fiction]?" Tags="|non-fiction|genre|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-12-06T17:52:25.953" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14404" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-12T12:32:50.683" Score="6" ViewCount="1475" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many young (and adult) people like the idea of being an author. Many even write short stories, or novels, or movie scripts, in their spare time, sometimes publishing them online or in amateur publications, but when they come to the moment where they could chose to become a professional author, most don't dare to take that step. Some, because they realize that they don't want to put the pressure of having to earn their living on what is a pleasant pastime, thus destroying the fun of it. But most, simply because they don't know if they would succeed. There is not test for the ability to be an author, no assessment center to go through, that will tell you if you have what it takes to be successful at the job of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, without having to waste decades on a lost case, or, conversely, without wasting your life in a job you don't enjoy when you could have become the next John Grisham,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;how can you tell that you have what it takes to be an author?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, sheer luck and the unpredictable trends of the market play a huge role in wether or not a book or author will become bestselling, but probably there is something that all authors share that (a) enables them to do the job of writing every day for half a century, and (b) makes them reasonably successful at it for them to earn their living with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond the basics of knowing how to read and write (well), how can you tell – without having to live to the end of your life and, looking back, think that that wasn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11166" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-10-23T13:55:59.813" Title="How can you tell that you have what it takes to be an author?" Tags="|book|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14404" CreationDate="2014-11-12T12:35:40.647" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. You do not need to be a phylosopher in order to be a novel author. It's not about your childhood or your upbringing. But it is realy about what you want to achieve and that all depends on your phylosophy and how you tell your story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11166" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T12:35:40.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14404" CreationDate="2014-11-12T13:18:36.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the title, you need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pen or pencil&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story to tell&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reader(s) to read your story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To become great author, you also need&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;publisher&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more loads of readers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T13:18:36.697" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14411" CreationDate="2014-11-12T17:50:54.490" Score="12" ViewCount="1938" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Show, don't tell&quot; is a popular ethos amongst writers, and one that is very important to writing engaging stories. However, I'm in a situation whereby my protagonist is recounting an event from a previous chapter, revealing something specific that she noticed whilst the events were occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whilst John was puffing his chest out, getting all hot under the collar, and not doing anything specific to exonerate himself, Lana witnessed Terrence, stood in John's shadow, moving deeper and deeper in to what she perceived as guilt, at least for his part, in the crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part of the sentence I'm having trouble with is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lana witnessed Terrence [...] moving deeper and deeper in to what she perceived as guilt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, of course, telling rather than showing. However, this is a recount of the event; Lana's perspective, what she felt and what she witnessed. More importantly than what she witnessed, this is how she interpreted what she witnessed. Her perception of the event in this case, is perhaps more important to the story than the actual event itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, is 'telling' appropriate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-07T08:53:40.913" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T08:53:40.913" Title="Should you &quot;Show, Don't Tell&quot; when your character is recounting events?" Tags="|technique|showing-telling|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14407" CreationDate="2014-11-12T18:03:17.240" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Describe what she's seeing which makes her perceive Terrence's emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lana looked over at Terrence, who had deliberately put himself into John's shadow. Emotions flickered over Terrence's face like a cascade of sparks. He couldn't quite look at John, but kept stealing glances upward. He bit his lower lip and ducked his head, flinching as John swung his arm to punctuate some point. Terrence hunched his head, his mouth twitching, and worry lines rippled across his forehead. Lana realized he felt &lt;em&gt;guilty&lt;/em&gt; for what he'd done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T18:03:17.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14394" CreationDate="2014-11-12T19:53:54.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the author is good the language used, the syntax, and the way situations are approached should reflect the narrator's background. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The “Voice” is distinctive for every one, and should be directly related  to gender, age, culture and experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Other than the point of view of the narrator, how does the gender and age of a narrator affect the perception of the story?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about how the story is perceived, then yes, those factors could influence the story credibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One wouldn't assume the same level of truthfulness or impartiality from 10 years old or 40 years old. This can be relevant when there is a question of credibility, or when some authors misguide the reader for a big finale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2014-11-12T19:59:10.447" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T19:59:10.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14407" CreationDate="2014-11-12T20:10:29.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don’t like to criticize and style is subjective, so I will delete this post if I get a few DVs… i am not yet sure of the SE etiquette.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn’t understand your sentence at first, it took me several attempts to re-read it as well as the clarification of the answers to SEE what you were trying to describe. You may get some insights at &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/14329/whats-the-difference-between-purple-prose-and-vividly-descriptive-writing&quot;&gt;What&amp;#39;s the difference between purple prose and vividly descriptive writing?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;”Whilst John was puffing his chest out,” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not getting the image, you need to make us imagine the chest expending, bursting out of the seams, saying &#xA;“puffing” is not enough&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;”getting all hot under the collar,” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are telling us, you need to SHOW us the sweat driping, the damp collar,  the redness of his cheeks..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“and not doing anything specific to exonerate himself, Lana witnessed Terrence,” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;not visual and unclear, all mental&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;”stood in John's shadow, moving deeper and deeper”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SHOW us movement, SHOW us shadow and dept, make us yearn or fear the shadow, make it a living entity, give it character, bring life to it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;” in to what she perceived as guilt, at least for his part, in the crime.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Telling, not showing entirely mental&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all use SHORT sentences mixed with some medium ones and only rarely long sentences to create rhythm, else you drown the reader in a sea of words&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This whole excerpt doesn’t seem visual at all to me, it is very much telling and noting shows. If it is representative of your writings, you may want to train yourself to be more visual like by writing movie scripts for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the harsh critique, what works for one reader may not work for another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QUESTION&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To go back to the original question, I believe that showing is ALWAYS better than telling. Telling should be used only when there is not choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you do have ample choice, it is visual, even the guilt can be SHOWN, implied or indirectly situationaly made apparent rather than telling us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T02:38:03.807" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14407" CreationDate="2014-11-12T20:31:14.850" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Telling is most appropriate when the events are not important to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can be transitional and probably use few(er) words.&#xA;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After she fell into the pool, they went inside while she changed her&#xA;  clothes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@DanHanly said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her perception of the event in this case, is perhaps more important to&#xA;  the story than the actual event itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Solid Clue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That should be a clue to yourself that this is what should be shown.  It is what you, the author, are saying is important to the story.  That means you want the reader to experience it as if s/he were living the events.  That means you want to &lt;em&gt;act&lt;/em&gt; this part out in front of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the challenge you have here is that a lot of what Lana is going through is internalization and that is difficult to &lt;em&gt;act out&lt;/em&gt;.  However, it is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deep Imagination Required&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do so, first of all you must put yourself in the place of Lana.  What if you were overwhelmed by something you were thinking? How might you move or act.  Maybe something like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lana looked up from the sink of dishes she was washing.  She stared at&#xA;  a bubble floating free of the sink and her mouth turned up in a slight&#xA;  smile.  As suddenly as the bubble had floated up, it plummeted back to&#xA;  the faucet where it landed and burst.  At the same moment Lana burst&#xA;  into silent tears.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  She shook her head. &quot;It's too much,&quot; she thought.&#xA;  &quot;How much pain must I bear?&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She threw the dish rag she held into the sink and the water splashed&#xA;  out onto the top of her foot, soaking through her sock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T20:31:14.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14402" CreationDate="2014-11-12T21:01:42.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it may be difficult to tell if a book is based on real events, but often the book makes this explicit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Documentary&quot; is a term generally applied to films, not books. But there are books based on true events, and they're generally just called &quot;non-fiction&quot;. There may be references to &quot;novelistic form&quot; or &quot;literary non-fiction&quot; to describe a book in novel form--i.e., with description and dialog, treating the story and people as plot and characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Novel&quot; is generally used to describe a fictional book. Novels may be based on real events to varying degrees. They may even be extremely thinly disguised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to know the difference is how the book is described: It may be shelved as fiction or non-fiction. There may be clue in the introduction. But how closely a novel is based on real events isn't always known. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T21:01:42.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14407" CreationDate="2014-11-12T21:38:41.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I might offer some more to this question in light of the existing answers. Lana needs to notice the actions which leads to her suspicion of guilt. Showing these actions to both her and the reader will accomplish the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the actions that speak loud to her in her realisation. Also, your sentence is a bit long and feels like it has too many stops and starts. The paragraph has a few separable points of interest so here's my take:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John was puffing out his chest, all hot under the collar and not doing anything in particular to exonerate himself, when Lana noticed Terrence move into John's shadow. His face flushed with emotion and he became somewhat nervous, only stealing glances at John and not looking directly at him. She realised he must have felt guilty for what he had done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an example from one of my own short stories which may help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jake turned turn off the ignition, the car engine stopped and he braced for an onslaught from his father, whom he didn’t dare to look back at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much of this action can you extrapolate into understanding of the actual story being written? The actions in this one sentence tell a lot. Jake had probably been driving his dad's car, likely without permission, and felt stupendously guilty about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a social and emotional species, a lot of what we do says much of what we don't want to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2014-11-12T21:48:35.850" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T21:48:35.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14414" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14428" CreationDate="2014-11-13T00:51:25.493" Score="5" ViewCount="7736" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am going through the script of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Battle-of-Algiers,-The.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Battle of Algiers&lt;/a&gt;. On the left margin, there are numbers starting from 1 to 146. It is a 120 minutes long film. What are the significance of these numbers on the left from 1 to 146?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11002" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-11-13T07:36:52.783" LastActivityDate="2014-11-15T09:18:11.263" Title="What's the meaning of the running numbers in left margin of a movie script online?" Tags="|screenwriting|scene|time-depiction|script|scriptwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14414" CreationDate="2014-11-13T02:32:41.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally they are minutes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;roughly 1 page equals about 1 minute of visual time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is not an exact science and here 146 pages translate to 120 minutes..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;most likely this is caused by long descriptions which only take a short time time to show rather than tell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that 1 page= 1 minute is truest for talking and some action scenes, still as they are not the same media there can be no certitudes in transforming the writen word into images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ADD ON&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Could you provide a reference for your claim that &quot;normally they are minutes&quot;? All references I have found say that in a script the scenes are numbered: google.com/search?q=script+numbering –  what 3 hours ago&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a rule of thumbs used in the movie industry; I know because it is what any inspiring screenwriter aims for. The length “standard” is a 130 page script for a 120 movie time minus 30 minutes edited out for a net result of a 90 min movie. I know because I lived in Hollywood, tried my hand at screen-writing, and had friends in the industry but I am pretty sure it is in most screenwriting manuals here is a reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The common rule that many spit out is: &quot;One page of film script equals one minute of screen time.&quot;&quot;&#xA;   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scriptwritingsecrets.com/Size_Matters.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scriptwritingsecrets.com/Size_Matters.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It’s true that a lot of movies clock in at 100 minutes or less, and that the one-minute-per-page rule of thumb really depends on whose thumbs are doing the measuring.&quot;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnaugust.com/2003/script-length&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://johnaugust.com/2003/script-length&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your demand for clarifications was about the numbering, a &quot;Shooting&quot; script is not a regular script; it has been modified by the director for convenience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Shooting scripts are distinct from spec scripts in that they make use of scene numbers (along with certain other formatting conventions described below), and they follow a well defined set of procedures specifying how script revisions should be implemented and circulated.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_script&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_script&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited from COMMENTS, someone can find this helpfull in the future...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;”confusing that each scene corresponds to a number” […] you mean that an answer regarding this specific script by no means is applicable to any other?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That’s probably a shooting script, also remember that there are no real standards, there are preferred versions only, it is a loose industry and I have seen very big exceptions to some commonly held rules. Basically, if you are good, you can do what you want, they will buy it and a hired screenwriter will polish it, also some directors have individual preferences and their scripts may reflect that. What you have to remember is that &lt;strong&gt;a script is not a final version, it is only an intermediary step to a final product&lt;/strong&gt;, so pretty much anything goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;while they are common rules, or rules of thumb, there is no law, and while there can be exceptions a regular script is about 1m=1p, after it is bought it can be transformed in various ways, the scene numbers in working scripts are because scenes are shot out of order in filming. Yes both you and What were right about shooting scripts, but the published version of a script is more often the speculative script and sometimes the post-movie script. Also what I know is movies; things may be different in other Medias&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2014-11-14T20:22:58.090" LastActivityDate="2014-11-14T20:22:58.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14414" CreationDate="2014-11-13T09:21:00.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Number = Scene&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screenplays are usually formatted in such a way that &lt;strong&gt;one page roughly equates to one minute&lt;/strong&gt;, and, in a shooting script, the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenplay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;scenes are numbered&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Notes on the length of The Battle of Algiers:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;A&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Bataille_d%27Alger&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;French Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;, there is a French dubbed version of the movie that is 157 minutes long. Finding out when and why the shorter versions of 117 and 121 minutes were created would require more research and probably the ability to read Italian, but it is clear that &lt;strong&gt;a version of the movie exists that is about as long (in minutes) as the script (in numbers).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;B&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A movie script is not a transcript of a movie.&lt;/strong&gt; A script is a roadmap for the production of the movie. Directors often deviate from scripts during filming as well as in the cutting room. Disregarding the 157 minute French version, the short version might have simply been the best version for the director when he was on the set and later when he viewed the material he had filmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of this specific script, we should hold in mind that we are not seeing the original (Italian) movie script, but a translation of it, and that we do not know if the numbers were part of the original and what kind of script it was (shooting script, spec script, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at this script, it becomes obvious that the numbers &lt;em&gt;correspond&lt;/em&gt; to the scenes, but we do not know if the numbers were in the original script or have been introduced for the online presentation only. We can therefore draw no definite general conclusions from this online presentation of a translated script as to what numbers might mean in other, real scripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-11-15T09:18:11.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14404" CreationDate="2014-11-13T16:00:47.080" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;That depends on your definition of an author. Anyone who writes could be considered an author. But it sounds like your definition is implying that an author is someone who writes and publishes professionally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the case, then yes, having the standard things like pen/paper and an idea are important. But you also have to have dedication, determination, stubbornness, persistence, whatever synonym you want to use. Because publishing your work is a numbers game. If you stick with it long enough, you'll eventually find someone to take your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two examples: Twilight was accepted by the first agent who saw it, yet Harry Potter was rejected nine times. The first Jack Reacher book was accepted by the first agent, but James Rollins's first book was rejected almost fifty times! (Those are all commercial examples; I don't have numbers on literary fiction.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T16:00:47.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14418" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14422" CreationDate="2014-11-13T18:03:10.130" Score="1" ViewCount="367" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a guy whose passion has always been fiction writing but in college I decided to go into software engineering because my parents were in a bind and they needed help financially. Now I am decent engineer but I have always been a better writer. My parents are taken care of and I have a family of my own. I have an idea for a novel that I always wanted to write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is between a demanding job on the weekdays and a demanding 4 year old daughter on the weekends, it is hard to find the time to write (or even the time to read to improve my writing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the past 6 months I have written about 25k words, but even while writing that I often felt rushed and when I reviewed my work I keep finding ways to improve it (if only I had the time). Most weeks I can only squeeze in 2-3 hours for my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is given that I can't quit my job or neglect my daughter, should someone in my situation continue on this journey of writing this novel or put it of for later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for any help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11176" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-12-20T01:41:47.363" LastActivityDate="2017-12-20T01:41:47.363" Title="Should I write my novel?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|time-management|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2014-11-14T06:14:39.627" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14418" CreationDate="2014-11-13T18:59:46.230" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably, the real answer is as simple &lt;em&gt;(complicated?)&lt;/em&gt; as Charles Bukowski's, So You Wanna Be A Writer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://allpoetry.com/So-You-Want-To-Be-A-Writer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://allpoetry.com/So-You-Want-To-Be-A-Writer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So You Want To Be A Writer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;if it doesn't come bursting out of you&#xA;in spite of everything,&#xA;don't do it.&#xA;unless it comes unasked out of your&#xA;heart and your mind and your mouth&#xA;and your gut,&#xA;don't do it.&#xA;if you have to sit for hours&#xA;staring at your computer screen&#xA;or hunched over your&#xA;typewriter&#xA;searching for words,&#xA;don't do it.&#xA;if you're doing it for money or&#xA;fame,&#xA;don't do it.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T18:59:46.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14407" CreationDate="2014-11-13T20:23:22.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My approach would've been different, in that I would actually replay the parts of the event that &quot;what's-her-name&quot; was suspicious about, and have her speak, out loud (whether it's muttering to herself, or bursting out like a &quot;ah-ha! I've got the other culprit!&quot; scenario...). &#xA;I always prefer showing, it's much more visual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11178" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T20:23:22.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14418" CreationDate="2014-11-13T20:46:22.520" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't even have to read your question (but I did). The answer is yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write 25K words in half a year. That's perfectly respectable. I work full-time, and often 2-3 hours a week is optimistic for me. Maybe you'll crawl along, maybe you won't be fully satisfied with your work. Hell, maybe you'll end up tossing everything you've written before your daughter turned [arbitrary age of independence]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter. You still write. As long as you keep writing, you're making progress. It might be frustratingly slow, but that's because &lt;em&gt;writing is hard&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Community-wise, we don't like very short answers. They seem curt and unhelpful. I wrote out a full answer, but at the end of the day, the one-word answer is the one you're gonna get: yes, write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T20:46:22.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14418" CreationDate="2014-11-13T21:44:30.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mercy, yes. If the story is burning to be told, yes. If you enjoy the craft of writing, yes. If you love reading over what you've written, yes. If you like the world you've created and the people you've put in it, yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Later&quot; you'll still have a job and your daughter will be demanding in a different way and life will always, always suck up your available time like chaos and goldfish. There will never be a perfect &quot;later&quot; when you can sit down and just work on this. So do it now. And do it later. And do it in little bits all in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, yes, yes. Write your novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T21:44:30.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14380" CreationDate="2014-11-13T23:54:01.110" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not just use images? Take screen shots of an actual Facebook convo. I don't feel like this should be too terribly difficult. . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10818" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T23:54:01.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14380" CreationDate="2014-11-14T08:10:00.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have several different options here, depending on what effect you're trying to achieve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chat room dialogue is a little tough to work with, because it's pure dialogue, with no emotion or action or simple visibility. Oftentimes, it's enough to say something like, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Roy chatted with Samantha. 'OMG my mom's addicted to FOX news like you wouldn't &lt;em&gt;believe&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; Samantha wrote, and Roy grinned - that was Sam's mom to a T.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- where you aren't recreating an entire conversation; you're just summing up the highlights, and you're focusing on one Point of View - here, Roy's - and showing the experience from his side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do want to recreate chat at any length, what I've seen done a lot is custom formatting. If you choose a special font, and indent the text, it feels like a chat log that's &quot;inserted&quot; into the main text, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/akHDw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Chat excerpts within text&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Full-size image &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/akHDw.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/19970810122530/http://www.randomhouse.com/lurkerfiles/incarnate/printeincarnate5.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Incarnate,&quot; Scott Ciencin&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't have to be this specific font, and style choice. This is rather dated, from when chat rooms were a lot less sophisticated - and monospace courier gave a &quot;computer-y&quot; feel that seemed appropriate to chat rooms; now you'll hardly see Courier New on the web anywhere. But the association is still there, so you could use this same style, or  - just pick a different distinct font, that gives the feeling you're going for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-11-14T09:46:48.973" LastActivityDate="2014-11-14T09:46:48.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14414" CreationDate="2014-11-14T08:22:52.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For this script at least, the numbers correspond to the scenes.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each number in the left margin appears at the beginning of a new location. At a guess, this could simply be to make writing easier for the screenwriter, or perhaps to correspond to clapperboard information. These possible uses are only guesses, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As seen in @Reed's comments, this is by no means an industry standard, but for the purposes of the specific script chosen in the question, the numbers in the left margin are so scene numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8034" LastEditorUserId="8034" LastEditDate="2014-11-14T14:39:32.947" LastActivityDate="2014-11-14T14:39:32.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14429" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-14T11:47:39.863" Score="4" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for software that will permit me to write articles of various sizes, with a title and tags for each article. The program should store the content, and then allow me to browse (whether from a list, or from a table).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Article will have equations, tables, graphics, and things like that; but if these options are not available, I would be okay with text-only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a student, and I often have to write my own reviews about some concepts and notions. Let's take enthalpy for example: I would like to write a small article about enthalpy where I would summarize the info I need about it, then store the texty and mark it with tags so I can find it easily afterwards. Let's say that afterwards I wanted to write a small article about crystal solubility, I would like to do the same thing I needed for the enthalpy article, and store it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, I want to be capable of browsing my articles' titles, one by one, displaying the content if I want to; or searching by either tags or content or title. It could be similar to a blogging system, but for personal use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11182" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-11-16T00:06:40.720" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T13:42:54.497" Title="Writing many entries/articles, storing them, and browsing them" Tags="|software|tools|organization|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14429" CreationDate="2014-11-14T15:40:53.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; might work nicely for you. You write your pieces in text, you can add graphics, you can view your pieces either in a list or as graphics which you can tag, and you can organize your individual pieces in folders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can download a fully-operational demo and use it for 30 days. Search for Scrivener on this site to see other discussions of it (often from me :) ). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-11-14T15:40:53.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14429" CreationDate="2014-11-14T20:09:08.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Google Drive / Google Docs&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google Drive and Google Docs work together perfectly for what you are looking for.&#xA;If you sign up for a Google account you get 15GB of free storage and you can use Drive just like a File Explorer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;15 GB of Space - Free&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, you just create your Google documents, write up your articles and then later when you want to find all of your articles that have the word enthalpy in them, you go to google drive, type in the search term and it finds all your documents that have that word in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Access From Anywhere&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The added benefit, of course, is that you can get to your documents from any Internet-connected device that runs a web browser.&#xA;It's very cool.  I use it and  highly recommend it.&#xA;It's a fantastic research tool, because it is convenient and only a web browser away.&#xA;I use it on my work computer, home laptop and Nexus 7 (7 inch Android pad).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2014-11-14T20:09:08.707" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10134" CreationDate="2014-11-14T20:41:04.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;They do it for know entities, they would NEVER trust an outsider to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;99% of the reject pile, most of it un-read, is from spin-offs of pre-existing movies or shows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are taking a big financial risk with newcomers; they don’t want what their average trusted minions can produce. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words If you ARE IN you can as mediocre as you want, but if you WANT IN your ideas, and execution  better be stellar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2014-11-14T20:41:04.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8132" CreationDate="2014-11-15T06:58:33.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a play the gender role that matters most is the 'characters' because they are conveying or telling the story to the audience to understand. In fact some actors are not too good for a specific character so you get someone who suits that character you want. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11187" LastActivityDate="2014-11-15T06:58:33.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7212" CreationDate="2014-11-15T07:44:32.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you ramble a lot you will be inconsistent in delivering and imagine the kind of comprehensive emotions you will create for the reader. But in all what matters is how well it may go with the plot in context. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11187" LastActivityDate="2014-11-15T07:44:32.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14429" CreationDate="2014-11-15T09:43:55.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a student, you will be faced with not only storing your own writings, but storing other information (articles you read, graphics, web links) as well – and in a meaningful way that allows you to later find what you know that you already know but can't quite remember.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many academics use information management solutions (see also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_base&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Personal Knowledge Base&lt;/a&gt;) such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/devonthink/overview.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DevonThink&lt;/a&gt;. A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=devonthink%20academic%20writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google search&lt;/a&gt; brings up many pages where users explain how they work with this or similar tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage to a tool like DevonThink is that it analyzes the content of the documents that you store in its database (it even &quot;reads&quot; images with text and PDFs), allowing you to find relevant content through a keyword search. DevonThink is extremely powerful and I find it quite useful in an academic writing context, where projects are not closed after completion, as they are with novel writing, but material and knowledge keep collecting and stay relevant for all your writing life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I simply drag and drop everything that I read into DevonThink, from web pages to journal articles to my own essays and blog posts. Sometimes I make the effort to add keywords manually, but most of the time I just drag and drop documents on the DevonThink interface. Later, when I have to write a paper on a specific topic, I first go to DevonThink and see if I have already read something that is relevant to my current project. It is like a machine searchable memory for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you will have to write your texts in another text editor, but the advantage to this is that you can use any text editor you want with the functionality that you find most productive, and don't have to write in a tool that might be good for organizing but has a horrendous writing environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your needs, DevonThink displays a list of all content that you can sort by type, title, date, etc. You can add tags/keywords to entries, group them, etc. You can access the content directly from DevonThink or open it in an external editor or viewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DevonThink is the only such tool I know, which does not mean that it is the only one or the best, just that I use it as an example for the kind of tool I think might be useful to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only recommendation that I would like to force on you is that you think of finding a solution that works for you until you have written your dissertation. At the moment you are a student and think only of getting this semester's work done. But you may decide to get a Ph.D., and you are now already, every day, reviewing lots of material that when you sit down to write your doctoral thesis you will wish you knew where you read what you vaguely remember. So do your future self a favour and start organizing your knowledge right now in a way that will work for you in a few years when you approach the most difficult phase in the life of most academics. This solution does not have to be DevonThink, just decide from the perspective of maybe one day writing a dissertation. (And don't use solutions, like Google Docs, that you cannot be sure will still exist in five years. Google is famous for closing services.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-11-15T09:53:41.247" LastActivityDate="2014-11-15T09:53:41.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14441" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-16T00:14:14.017" Score="2" ViewCount="444" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm getting into non-fiction technical writing (a blog, but potentially ebook or otherwise). Often the best technical advice come from dissecting and synthesising good and bad examples from the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I want to take screenshots of a bunch of websites, then discuss why they're good and how they could be better, and come out the other end with a schema for creating a new website base on those lessons. Fairly straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether copyright could prevent me from selling such a product if the site owners don't give explicit permission? I could ask a lawyer, but I assume this is a common concern for writers doing research. Is reproduction of third-party content for the purpose of analysis &quot;fair use&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11192" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-09-13T13:49:57.770" LastActivityDate="2017-09-13T13:49:57.770" Title="Copyright of examples used in books?" Tags="|technical-writing|copyright|legal|websites|examples|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14334" CreationDate="2014-11-16T17:30:04.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is fine to write the first draft of a book in one genre, and later revise the book to fit in another genre.  Many successful books have been written this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baen.com/AmazonsRightBreast.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Amazon's Right Breast&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is an essay by Tom Kratman about how he drafted a non-fiction book about women serving in the military.  It was the first book he wrote.  &quot;In the end, though, [he] didn't like it.  So [he] set it aside and worked on&quot; another story that eventually got published as science fiction.  &quot;At that point, [he] rewrote the [original] book, then still called &lt;em&gt;The Amazon’s Right Breast&lt;/em&gt;, as a novel, set in the same universe as the others. [He] liked that a lot better, well enough to &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1451638132&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;let [us] all see it&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that every published novelist has to write a first novel sometime.  And most of those first novels are not worth publishing.  If you are lucky, your early drafts will give you practice and material for writing successful stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that (if you let it) a project can take decades to reach fruition.  It is wise to choose projects that let you get feedback much sooner than that.  Many authors start out with short stories.  If some of the short stories are successful, they write more stories with the same characters and/or settings, and work their way up to novels and series.  Kratman is capable of writing lots of material quickly, so he was able to start with novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10378" LastEditorUserId="10378" LastEditDate="2014-11-16T17:35:17.693" LastActivityDate="2014-11-16T17:35:17.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14443" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14444" CreationDate="2014-11-17T04:36:25.077" Score="3" ViewCount="447" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I haven't met Sophia after our 'friendly' meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I haven't met Sophia after our &quot;friendly&quot; meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sight reminded me of a part of the Genesis that Mom used to read&#xA;  to me: 'And God said, Let  there be light, and there was light . . .’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sight reminded me of a part of the Genesis that Mom used to read&#xA;  to me: “And God said, ‘Let  there be light’, and there was light . .&#xA;  .’”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That's when my common sense kicked in. 'Hey what are you doing?' it&#xA;  said . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That's when my common sense kicked in. &quot;Hey what are you doing?&quot; it&#xA;  said . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use double quotes for dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-11-17T05:28:29.587" Title="Non-dialogue sections: single quotes or double quotes?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14443" CreationDate="2014-11-17T05:28:29.587" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Those (and dialogue) are all quotations. The first might be quoting Sophia or an unnamed sarcastic commentator or someone else. The second quotes Genesis. The third quotes the character's anthropomorphized common sense. All quotations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So punctuate them like other quotations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-11-17T05:28:29.587" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14445" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14446" CreationDate="2014-11-18T02:58:54.400" Score="5" ViewCount="829" Body="&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To make sure we had plenty of time to ask questions, we took the first&#xA;  bus to Mrs. Mann's house. By the time we arrived it was &lt;strong&gt;11:00 a.m.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Seven hours before the planet apocalypse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We sat on the lower part of the beach, nestled in the sand, the tide&#xA;  occasionally kissing our feet. It was already &lt;strong&gt;5 p.m&lt;/strong&gt;. and once again I&#xA;  had a bloody ocean before me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some novels include them some don't. So, I'm a bit confused. Should I decide based on the context/available information (e.g. the reader knows is daytime/nighttime)? Or I should always include them to avoid confusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T14:40:20.720" Title="Is it necessary to add a.m./p.m. after the time?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14445" CreationDate="2014-11-18T03:16:03.980" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's important enough to mention the hour then it's important enough to be clear which one you mean, &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; using &quot;AM&quot; and &quot;PM&quot; in fiction may not be the best way.  If the scene already makes it clear which one is being talked about -- on the beach you talk about the sunlight dancing off the waves, for instance -- then you don't need to say anything and &quot;PM&quot; might just get in the way.  If you find yourself reaching for &quot;AM&quot; or &quot;PM&quot;, stop and ask yourself if there is a more-descriptive way to narrate the scene.  The person lounging on the beach &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; isn't thinking &quot;PM&quot;, after all; he's just noticing that it's 5:00.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One exception: if I were writing about a scene where the &lt;em&gt;characters&lt;/em&gt; would be thinking about &quot;AM&quot; or &quot;PM&quot;, rather than afternoons on the beach or late nights at a bar or the like, then I would consider using these designations.  Consider, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The woman gave one final thrust and the baby flew into Dr. Jacobson's arms. As the child let out its first cry (&quot;good lungs&quot;, the midwife thought to herself), Karen reached for a pen and glanced at the clock.  11:58PM -- no, this baby would not be the first baby of 2014.  Karen had once again lost the betting pool&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T03:16:03.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10771" CreationDate="2014-11-18T06:57:52.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common problem, especially with hard-backed notebooks. Using &quot;something to support the wrist&quot;, as you say, can work. Usually I have at least two similar notebooks on the go and use one or more of them for support. You can turn the same trick using printed books, especially paperbacks. Using books allows you to adjust the depth of the supporting wad of pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using a spiral bound &quot;notebook&quot; or pad you can flip the pages round so you have just a thin stack of paper under your hand. For that though, you should write on just one side of the paper: the right hand side if your're right handed. Using just one side of the paper has many advantages e.g. you can later break open the pad and edit your text using the original cut and paste technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11205" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T06:57:52.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14448" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-18T11:35:34.163" Score="1" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a beginner manga plot writer. On the first season of my story I have a protagonist A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I manage the second season if I want as protagonists the protagonist A from the first season and a new character B who appears in the second season? How can I switch between narrating about A's actions and B's actions without these POV changes become tiring for the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11198" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-11-18T14:29:00.177" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T03:52:49.543" Title="How do I manage a plot with two protagonists?" Tags="|fiction|plot|characters|comics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2014-11-20T17:45:29.653" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14445" CreationDate="2014-11-18T14:40:20.720" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this were a question about usage in a technical paper or an essay, I'd suggest referring to a style manual for guidance. However, outside of formatting and punctuation rules, I don't think there are any absolute rules for fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Narrative writing is meant to show people in real world believably, and people don't always use exactly the same terms for the same things. I might mention that it's &quot;ten AM&quot; or &quot;ten in the morning,&quot; depending on the context of what I'm saying, or my mood at the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, is the character speaking referring to a digital clock, a train timetable, or a sundial? Is a scheduled event a rocket launch, which will have a precise time; or a dinner party, where is expected to be fashionably late? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this sort of inconsistency is most pronounced in dialog, remember that the narrator of a book is also a character: The tone of the narration--even when the &quot;narrator&quot; is an omniscient narrator--sets the tone of the story. If the narrator is finicky, you might want to be utterly consistent; if not, you can treat the narrator's words like they're coming out of the mouth of an annoyingly fallible character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T14:40:20.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14429" CreationDate="2014-11-19T00:49:34.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would also suggest that Scrivener is worth a look. It has a good keyword and tagging system, including custom metadata. It also has a flexible search system. I have moved most of my writing from Word into Scrivener over the last year, because of the type of organization (and reorganization) it allows. The downside to Scrivener, in my view, is that while it is certainly capable as a &quot;word processor,&quot; there are things that can be done in Word that Scrivener is simply incapable of, such as the in-text Track Changes functions that Word offers, and macros. Scrivener's UI also leaves something to be desired, especially if you are more of a keyboard than a mouse person. Its dictionary/spell check/auto-correct features are also lacking. Despite all that, it's become my writing environment of choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another suggestion -- and this might seem to be an odd one -- is that you consider using WordPress, which also gives you keywords, tagging, and similar, with automatic timestamping of each &quot;entry&quot; or &quot;post.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to install a fully functional WordPress on your local computer, so that when you &quot;publish&quot; an item/post (i.e., enter it into your database) it is not publicly published, but is only available to you, on your computer. You can get a locally installable version of WordPress at &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitnami.com/stack/wordpress&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://bitnami.com/stack/wordpress&lt;/a&gt;. I am using WordPress like that as a personal database. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would, and personally do, avoid using Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Etc. As a system for creating, organizing, accessing, and even sharing your work, Google's system is (perhaps) better in theory than practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5925" LastEditorUserId="5925" LastEditDate="2014-11-19T07:46:56.090" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T07:46:56.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14453" CreationDate="2014-11-19T10:59:29.410" Score="0" ViewCount="325" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, when I write my stories, I may include a very long sentence but it can be desrcibe eith a short sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e: What I write: &quot; When I went into the room of darkness, the light that surrounded fade away in lighting speed. I laid down like a falling feather into my comfy place, and opened the door of dreams.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it mean: &quot;I was going to sleep.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ok to write like this? Because some of friends think it's boring and some of them can't understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11217" LastEditorUserId="11217" LastEditDate="2014-11-19T11:14:04.690" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T11:14:27.507" Title="Long or short form?" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-11-19T15:21:04.393" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14452" CreationDate="2014-11-19T11:07:16.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with the sentence. It's a little flowery, but if that's your style, as long as the reader understands what you intend, it's fine. Your friends may have different tastes in prose and prefer short, crisp descriptions instead. Nothing wrong with that either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T11:07:16.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14452" CreationDate="2014-11-19T11:14:27.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What language do you write in? Because if you write in English, I must admit that your typing errors and grammar mistakes make it hard for me to understand your sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write in your mother tongue, your use of imagery obfuscates your meaning. For example, what is the &quot;door of dreams&quot;? It could be a door to an alternate universe in a fantasy story. Or a metaphor for taking a psychoactive drug. Or, what is &quot;the room of darkness&quot;? Without your translation given below your example, I wouldn't have thought of a dark room, but of the den of some Lovecraftian horror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is okay to use metaphors and imagery, but you should be aware of how certain phrases are commonly used and the ideas that they commonly evoke, so your readers have an actual chance of understanding you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in prose, too many metaphors tend to become tiresome to the average reader. They are okay in poetry, but in prose narrative they are deviations from standard language and should be used with restraint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T11:14:27.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14455" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14460" CreationDate="2014-11-19T11:51:57.057" Score="3" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have come across examples supporting both spaced as well as non-spaced examples and that's what confuses me. I want to understand what the standard practice is as endorsed by any of the major style guides. For example, consider the following examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A. B. Smith (Why is there a space?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;U.S.A (Why no space? And why no period after the &quot;A&quot;?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;P.S. (Why no space?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand there already exists a similar question but since the answers on that one specifically deal with academic citations and Latin phrases, it doesn't help me. I am comfortable with Latin phrases, such as e.g., i.e., etc. not having spaces (P.S. being an exception because I still somehow see it as a regular abbreviation because it's capitalized, maybe? I don't know). It's the English acronyms that I find confusing... especially cases like U.S.A where even a period (the last one) is sometimes mysteriously omitted!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11140" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-04T21:21:53.200" LastActivityDate="2018-03-05T14:18:38.427" Title="Spaces within abbreviations, acronyms, and initials" Tags="|style|punctuation|acronyms|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14456" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14462" CreationDate="2014-11-19T11:57:31.873" Score="4" ViewCount="815" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those of you who like to just sit down and write what comes out, you all are known as pantsless writers. — &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/168?m=6195663#6195663&quot;&gt;KitFox&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a question on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3822/im-not-a-great-pantser-what-kind-of-preparation-do-i-need-for-nanowrimo&quot;&gt;preparing for NaNoWriMo&lt;/a&gt;, but what if  you start a NaNoWriMo manuscript without much of a plan, how do you determine what happens next?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there processes I can use to keep my plot going for 50,000 words, or are pantless writers doomed to write themselves into a bottomless pit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are processes I can use, I'd like a list of tips on how to concoct a next scene from the bones of the scene I've just finished writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3857" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T18:45:46.390" Title="Is pantsless writing practical for NaNoWriMo?" Tags="|plot|nanowrimo|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14475" CreationDate="2014-11-19T13:24:52.127" Score="0" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two ways of writing dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1st way)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issac said in an angry tone, &amp;quot;I don't care what you want! Just leave me alone!&amp;quot; However, I comforted him and said, &amp;quot;All I care for is you. I can't leave you here alone! Never!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2nd way)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issac: I don't care what you want! Just leave me alone!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Me: All I care for is you. I can't leave you here alone! Never!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually prefer the second one as it's neater. However, my teacher prefers the first one because it's more grammatically correct. So, which way should I choose for my further writing and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11217" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T06:45:52.930" Title="How to structure paragraphs of dialogue properly?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14456" CreationDate="2014-11-19T16:14:54.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what kind of writer you are. NaNoWriMo doesn't have anything to do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people are &quot;pants&quot; or &quot;discovery&quot; writers. Whether they write the whole thing in a month or a year or a decade, they sit and type to see what happens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people are plotters. Again, the amount of time they spend to get a word count is irrelevant; they have to have structure first before creating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discovery writers &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; treat the first round of edits as part of the writing process, because it's dang near impossible to create something perfectly plotted with great character development on the first shot. Beyond that, however you write and finish your book is up to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discovery writing is no more or less practical for NaNoWriMo than plotting. I'm a plotter, and discovery writing is like pulling fingernails for me. I would trash 98% of what I did if I was just spewing logorrhea all month. But I know people who find pre-plotting to be like watching paint dry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T16:14:54.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14455" CreationDate="2014-11-19T16:19:38.190" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Names generally have spaces between the initials because they are representing two names, but that's a matter of personal preference. k.d. lang uses periods but not spaces or capitals. e e cummings used spaces but not periods or capitals. J. K. Rowling uses all three. The company JPMorgan Chase uses capitals but no periods or spaces in the parent company name, but styles the brand name as J.P. Morgan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. and U.S.A. are abbreviations (I have often seen USA with no periods), and always function as a unit, so the spaces aren't necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2018-03-05T14:18:38.427" LastActivityDate="2018-03-05T14:18:38.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14456" CreationDate="2014-11-19T17:02:26.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The writers Margaret Mitchell, John Irving, Graham Greene, Mickey Spillane, Richard Peck, Edgar Allan Poe, J.K. Rowling, and Agatha Christie all famously write/wrote their endings first, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://flavorwire.com/401384/authors-on-the-importance-of-writing-the-final-chapter-first&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt;.  So, you might want to reverse your thinking.  Concoct the &lt;em&gt;previous&lt;/em&gt; scene from the bones of what you've just finished writing.  This ensures that your novel does, in fact, have an ending.  Now you just have to find a beginning.  ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, do what I often do: Write up various scenes, in random order, as your inspiration for them gets fleshed out in your imagination.  Then do some hard work and connect them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2014-11-19T18:45:46.390" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T18:45:46.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14456" CreationDate="2014-11-19T17:23:39.877" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep a second word processing document open where I scribble down ideas and thoughts which don't fit into the current point in the story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This document is a grammar-free, style-free zone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I record the ideas as quick as I can type them, then jump back to the main document and dive back into its tempo and style.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I make no promises to the ideas in this second document, they are not guaranteed to be part of the finished story.  Instead, I ignore them as soon as they are recorded, keeping my mind on the story that is becoming revealed in the main document.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only when that main story stalls... when I have written myself into a dead end... only then do I go back and read through the secondary document.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More often than not, the next scene emerges during that reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T17:23:39.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14448" CreationDate="2014-11-20T03:52:49.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question with no one right answer, but if I were doing this, I might consider starting the second season with Character B and continuing up to the point where he meets Character A, and then backtracking to fill in on Character A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage is that Character B gets a strong solid uninterrupted block of narrative to establish himself.  The disadvantage is that it may turn off readers who are already invested in Character A.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to address the new disadvantage would be to wait until the moment they meet to do Character B's story (as a flashback).  Conversely, you could do Character B's story first, but add some foreshadowing of the importance he will have to Character A (i.e. have them visit the same locations, or pass each other on the street, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T03:52:49.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14464" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14466" CreationDate="2014-11-20T04:36:55.703" Score="0" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone asked on Quora &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/I-want-to-write-my-autobiography-How-do-I-start&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I want to write my autobiography. How do I start?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have given following answer,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You must be remembering lots of things when you were young. Just try&#xA;  to list them as you remember those. Do it for 10-15 days. You will&#xA;  have enough stuff to craft your Childhood journey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Include memories from friend circle, sports ,hobby or passtime. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then move ahead to do same thing with your school/college and&#xA;  profession. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not forgot to mention what you have learned along the way (Life&#xA;  lessons). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mention name of people who made you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;capable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ask your parents or grandparents, they will definitely remember your&#xA;  childhood better than you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not very satisfied with quality of chosen words, and writing style. How should I improve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5081" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T05:40:50.143" Title="How to improve quality of this answer?" Tags="|style|technique|word-choice|reviews|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-11-20T05:59:05.583" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14465" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14468" CreationDate="2014-11-20T05:08:51.787" Score="4" ViewCount="280" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I cite and quote a happening in a game? I am looking for more detail than just game and version number in the citation. How can I cite events and quote the actions of characters in my analysis of the game? As you probably know the story line for games is sometimes not exactly.. linear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have already made several web searches concerning this question, but Google thinks I want to play citation games and find video game quotes; only a tiny amount of results are actually relevant and the few that are fail to answer my questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am using MLA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11224" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-23T09:49:36.367" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T09:49:36.367" Title="Citing and Quoting events in Games" Tags="|style|academic-writing|mla|videogame|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14464" CreationDate="2014-11-20T05:35:18.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just rewrote your answer with more complicated words and combined a few sentences and now it seems to sound better. I also made the prompts look less like dialogue and more like prompts. Additionally, I dissolved the &amp;quot;(life lessons)&amp;quot; into the sentence it is concerning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to recall memories from your youth, and write them down as you remember them for 10-15 days. Be sure to include memories of your friends, sports you played, and hobbies you enjoyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the same for your experiences in school, college, and in your profession. Remember to include important life lessons you have learned and people who capacitated you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now ask your parents or grandparents, and you will find that they remember their childhood better than you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11224" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T05:40:50.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14465" CreationDate="2014-11-20T07:22:20.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cite the game according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/resdoc5e/res5e_ch08_s1-0011.html#RES5e_ch08_p0486&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;your style guide's format&lt;/a&gt;, and provide any more specific context you feel is necessary as part of the lead-in and text surrounding the quote or reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Traveller's sudden incarceration on his first arrival in the 233rd Age parallels the Traveller's arrival in Riven: an automated trap is sprung and the Traveller forced to wait until his jailor notices. In contrast to Cho's earnestly memorised but unintelligible interrogation, however, Ghen's greeting is a civil and insincere apology for using &amp;quot;less civilised methods than I might otherwise have chosen.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cyan Worlds. &lt;em&gt;Riven: The Sequel to Myst.&lt;/em&gt; Red Orb Entertainment, 1997. Mac.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5766" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T07:22:20.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10309" CreationDate="2014-11-20T17:10:59.653" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main difference between usage in the terms &quot;screenplay&quot; and &quot;script&quot; is the function of the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The script that the actors use during filming contains primarily dialogue with minimal stage direction. This is similar to the 'spec scripts' given to agents and producers to generate interest in the work. The primary focus here is on telling the story, the word and actions that convey the message. What sound effects or lighting effects that are important to the actor's performance are noted. But, anything not directly impacting the performance are generally left out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The screenplay is the extra layer with everything that was left out of the script. It may very well be the 'shooting script' in most cases, which is less of an actor's tool and more of a director's tool. The screenplay includes those aspects of filming that are outside the actor's purview, things like camera angles and cut or fade instructions, effects that the audience will see but have no effect on the actor's performance while on set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason the word 'screenplay' is not used much in live theater is because there are no special instructions for producing the work on a screen or in a film medium. The performance on stage is the entire performance. There are no camera angles or editing rooms. There's nothing extra that needs to be added to the script to make the final performance work for the audience. A screenplay is something that practically only has any value in a film medium.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10153" LastEditorDisplayName="user34214" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T22:25:58.243" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T22:25:58.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14458" CreationDate="2014-11-20T21:47:53.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like &quot;what&quot; said, custom dictates separate paragraphs when speakers change while using the first form. It's also been pointed out that the two forms are context sensitive. Is it a script or a dialog in a story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'd like to point out something interesting. In the second form, we know Isaac is angry, and we know you are trying to help. So telling the reader the emotions is redundant. You showed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the classic, &quot;Don't tell 'em, show 'em,&quot; advice. If you really want to point it up, you could simply...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isaac blurted, &quot;...!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sighing, I confided, &quot;...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, dialog is best when uncluttered by explanations. You proved this already by your own evidence!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11230" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T21:47:53.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14441" CreationDate="2014-11-21T06:21:26.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a rule using excerpts for critical or explanatory purposes is fair use. As long as the excerpts are fragmentary and clearly essential to your criticism you should be on solid ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing to avoid would be copying large or complete sections of the web sites or copying things which are irrelevant to your own material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T06:21:26.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14458" CreationDate="2014-11-21T06:45:52.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not use the second form in narrative prose; it reads like a script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first version is fine. You do not need to write &quot;said&quot; repeatedly. For example, in the second sentence of the first version you can write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I comforted him, &quot;All I care for is you. I can't leave you here alone!&#xA;  Never!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of &quot;however&quot; in this sentence is weak and unnecessary. You can leave that out too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as I am doling out advice... I would leave out the &quot;angry tone&quot; also. It is clear from the sentence itself the guy is angry. Avoid descriptive language. Let the action speak for itself. The best way to convey emotions, like anger, is not to use flowery adjectives or talk about how angry somebody is. Just SHOW how angry they are, and you have already done that with the wording of what he says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T06:45:52.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14395" CreationDate="2014-11-21T06:56:30.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A disclaimer will do nothing to legally protect you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be indicted as an accessory to a crime as a writer, the prosecution has to prove the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) You either knew of the planned crime, or had a reasonable expectation that a &lt;strong&gt;particular&lt;/strong&gt; crime would be committed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Your assistance was critical to the commission of the crime&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you will only be indicted if you enable the commission of a specific crime. For example, if you write a chapter, &quot;How to Hack a Router&quot;, you are fine. If you write a chapter on &quot;How to Hack Verizon's Routers Located at 148.165.73.*&quot;, then you could be risking a prosecution (and no amount of disclaimer will make any difference). Do you see the difference between these two examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T06:56:30.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14233" CreationDate="2014-11-21T07:06:31.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmm, without knowing more it is hard to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, writing about illegal stuff is no barrier to publication. If anything, that will increase the chance it will get published, because it is more sensational. Sure, there are a lot of publishers who are ninnies that avoid &quot;controversial&quot; works. Those are the publishers that go out of business. Successful publishers love controversey and danger--it sells books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you confess to a crime in a book, then you could be charged. It all depends on the police in the jurisdiction in question. Whether they find out about it and care about it. The most risky situation would be one in which there is a complaint. For example, if you raped some girl, and she reads the story in your book and files a complaint, that could definitely lead to a warrant for your arrest, if the statute of limitations has not run out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T07:06:31.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2014-11-21T07:14:22.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. About 1% of people who read a lot are commercial-quality writers. That drops to 0% for people that do not read a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Invariably anyone that starts off asking, &quot;Can I be a good writer if...&quot; will never be a writer. Good writers &lt;strong&gt;know&lt;/strong&gt; who they are. For them it is more a question of whether they can drag themselves out of their drunken stupor long enough to get it all down on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T07:14:22.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14329" CreationDate="2014-11-21T07:35:22.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no such thing as &quot;vividly descriptive writing&quot;. There is, of course, &quot;incredibly annoying amateur writing with lots of extraneous adjectives strung together&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read amateur manuscripts it is invariably a face palm. What I need to do is write software that can automatically recognize, target and delete adjectives. That would be very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a tip: go through your dictionary with an El Marko and black out every adjective. It may take a long time to do this, but it will probably quadruple your chances of getting published, so it's worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T07:35:22.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14465" CreationDate="2014-11-21T09:42:17.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm surprised that you chose BESW's answer which only gives you an example for how to cite a video game, but does not actually explain what you asked for, namely citing events in a video game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll try to answer that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To refer to a specific plot element of a video game in a scholarly paper, you need to first identify the structure of the game. Usually games are either structured by &quot;levels&quot; (as in Prince of Persia), location independent narrative or plot (e.g. achieving a certain in-game goal such as acquiring a new party member or gaining a new ability), adventures (that is, complete-in-themselves subplots), or &quot;location&quot; (usually accessible via a map).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when you analyze video games as a scholar (as opposed to a reviewer or fan), you need to do so in a structured manner and refer to the internal structure of the game, either as it is defined through the publisher (e.g. by map area) or as you have found it through your analysis of the plot. In the case that you refer to a structure no readily obvious to any game player, your paper needs to include the complete structure as a table or appendix, and you can then refer to this depiction of the structure when you refer to an element of that structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T09:42:17.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2014-11-21T16:01:42.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with most answers. Passion for both comes hand in hand. Writing is more than just a passion for storytelling; it's a passion for grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure/variety, as well. The only way to truly internalized these concepts is reading books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11237" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T16:01:42.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14483" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14484" CreationDate="2014-11-22T10:31:18.507" Score="-2" ViewCount="523" Body="&lt;p&gt;So for first year students what would they call the initial courses (prerequisites) they have to take to take to courses they want to take the next semester/year. Is is intro to or 101 or both? How does that work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11245" LastActivityDate="2014-11-22T17:05:07.560" Title="What are the initial classes called in university and how do they work?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-11-23T00:52:02.080" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14483" CreationDate="2014-11-22T12:21:10.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any course you have to take in order to take a subsequent course is a &lt;em&gt;prerequisite&lt;/em&gt;. It doesn't make any difference if you take the initial course your first year, third year, or sixth year. The &lt;em&gt;pre&lt;/em&gt; part refers to the requirement of taking it before some subsequent course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An intro course is the first course you take on a topic. This may or may not be numbered 101; that's up to the university. The basic-level composition courses at my university were labeled 050 and 051. And again, the year you take that course is irrelevant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could, if you qualified, take all 300-level courses in your first year at school. Don't confuse the amount of time you've been at a school with the content of the courses you're taking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-11-22T17:05:07.560" LastActivityDate="2014-11-22T17:05:07.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14485" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14486" CreationDate="2014-11-22T14:51:20.300" Score="7" ViewCount="28294" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose a source text says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1 Timothy 2:4 says that God desires all people to be saved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now suppose I want to quote it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is possible for God to &quot;desire all people to be saved.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that I used 'desire' instead of 'desires'. How do I indicate this in the quote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4593" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-03-10T03:36:32.547" LastActivityDate="2023-03-21T01:38:38.013" Title="How to indicate that a single letter was removed from a quotation" Tags="|style|quotes|letter|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14485" CreationDate="2014-11-22T17:08:44.743" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use empty brackets with a space between them. Brackets are generally used to alter a quote inline, such as fixing grammar or to add information like a name so the quoted material will work within the context of the piece quoting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;desire[ ] all people to be saved&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or don't quote that word:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is possible for God to want &quot;all people to be saved.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-11-22T17:08:44.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14485" CreationDate="2014-11-22T22:35:01.563" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go with the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is possible for God to &quot;[desire] all people to be saved.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this suggests that the original quote clearly implied the word &lt;em&gt;desire&lt;/em&gt;; a rephrasing like &lt;em&gt;It is possible for God to desire &quot;all people to be saved.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; leaves more ambiguity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11252" LastActivityDate="2014-11-22T22:35:01.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4961" CreationDate="2014-11-23T07:40:13.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I paid to have my book reviewed by Kirkus Reviews. It was a terrible, expensive mistake on my part. I am almost positive the reviewer did not even read my book, but scanned it quickly, making sure the ending was mentioned, just to make it look like they did read the book. Not one important fact about its contents was mentioned. Not one!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also a reviewer should read a book with an open mind, or that reviewers pick the genres they like the best. This did not happen in my case. Whoever the reviewer was, they either hated the genre or was very closed minded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish I had found and read this article on Kirkus Reviews before I had published with them, otherwise I would never had used them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11253" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2014-11-25T09:42:43.437" LastActivityDate="2014-11-25T09:42:43.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2014-11-23T08:18:15.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tip: Switch off the Internet and pick up a book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was hospitalized I couldn't bring my laptop with me. I read three books in less than one week. OK, I wasn't working either, but if you spend an average of two hours a day surfing or playing video games it means you have the time to read. Practice makes perfect, as the old saying goes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5294" LastActivityDate="2014-11-23T08:18:15.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14492" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14563" CreationDate="2014-11-23T10:43:25.797" Score="4" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a lot of detective or mystery novels, the detective is the POV character and the protagonist, but the initial hook has little to do with him. Some crime has been committed, and the detective is brought in to investigate. Though he may develop high stakes in the case as the story proceeds, he doesn't have any major connection to the case at its start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the book itself, I don't see any problem with Interesting Detective A investigating Interesting Case B, even if there's no immediate connection. But how should I write a query about this type of book? Whichever one I start with, moving on to the other feels like an unrelated jump:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kirk Klondike is a seashore detective; he claims the seashells whisper their secrets right in his ear. &lt;em&gt;MEANWHILE&lt;/em&gt;, a nefarious serial killer is leaving a steady flow of bodies bobbing among the waves, each strung up and stung to death by jellyfish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- the two are bound to collide, but that &quot;&lt;em&gt;MEANWHILE&lt;/em&gt;&quot; really bothers me. It just screams out to me that I've changed the subject within the first few lines. I have the same problem with other re-phrasings I've come up with, like &lt;code&gt;Little does he know he's about to encounter...&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;Until he happens to come across...&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this expected? Is this considered &quot;par for the course&quot;? Or is there some more elegant way to structure queries like this, so that they can flow naturally from a single starting point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T08:29:09.217" Title="Should my query lead with the detective, or with the crime?" Tags="|queries|mystery|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14492" CreationDate="2014-11-23T13:56:06.203" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can vary the structure depending on the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By way of example, mystery writer &lt;a href=&quot;http://jennifermoss.com/&quot;&gt;Jennifer Moss&lt;/a&gt; splits her descriptions: of her three novels and one short story, two start with the detective, Ryan Doherty, and two start with the crime. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the first one starts with the detective, and segues into the case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After his partner is killed and girlfriend takes off, Detective Ryan Doherty has one last chance to save his career with the double murder of ad execs Scott and Carly Redding. Ryan quickly learns that life wasn’t so lush at the Reddings’ agency, Town Red Media, where the list of ex-employees runs fifteen pages long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a later book dives right into the case, and the detective is more incidental to the description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When rapper Terrico James claimed to be “mightier than Jesus,” nobody took him seriously…until someone did. Terrico’s dead body ends up nailed to a cross and Chicago Detective Ryan Doherty is on the case. Was it a fringe religious sect making a statement? Or Terrico’s protégé, Mandy Ross, a petulant pop star who sheds hearts like glitter in her path? With the help of his partner, Matt Di Santo, and the spirit of his dead partner, Jon, Ryan fights his way through cultural divides to find the murderer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My feeling is this: If the crime is personal, or the detective is going through something which is as important as the case, you can start with the detective smoothly. If it's &quot;just a crime,&quot; and the detective happens to get that case, start with the crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-11-23T16:31:06.440" LastActivityDate="2014-11-23T16:31:06.440" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14492" CreationDate="2014-11-24T07:02:33.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this may be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenbug&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Heisenbug&lt;/a&gt;. I've linked to the wiki, but basically this is a problem that appears only when looked at too closely. I just came across this in my programming studies, and like many, I fall in love with new words and want to use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this instance, you &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; have bugged the perception by highlighting &quot;meanwhile.&quot; In the normal flow of reading quickly, this may have been inconsequential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhere (sorry for the completely unscholarly reference) I read an essay by Orson Scott Card explaining why he became, er, &lt;em&gt;less than enamoured&lt;/em&gt; by writing workshops. It was this tendency to look too closely at things. If you have won the reader's attention, and he or she is engaged in the material, things like &quot;his eyes rolled down the front of her blouse&quot; are perfectly grasped. The literal meaning of the words, though hilarious, are not perceived at all. [I got that from Stephen King, er &lt;em&gt;somewhere&lt;/em&gt;].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to do something I learned from Japanese stylists, an essay should always be concluded with &quot;What's wrong with what I said.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one thing that might be wrong with the foregoing thesis. The excerpt does not read like a chunk of story. It reads like a precis, a synopsis, and abstract, or a blurb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if &lt;em&gt;that's&lt;/em&gt; the case, then it should be polished to critical perfection--if such a thing exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a blurb, I don't like the &quot;meanwhile&quot; either. I would favor a harsh, contrasty jump. This way we have the jarring effect of going from the protagonist's to the antagonist's viewpoint. Since this is a story with a definite &quot;good guy&quot; and a definite &quot;bad guy.&quot; It's appropriate to put in a shock &lt;em&gt;bang&lt;/em&gt;! First, we have a detective who gets clues by listening to seashells? OK. I'm in the story. That's a great opener. Now, give me something about the killer, oh, stung to death by jellyfish? Hah. Lead with that. That's the counter to the seashell listening. It's equally weird, and... enticing. The object of the blurb is to make you want to read the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;....in his ear, but/however/suddenly! the seashells are silent/strange/frightened about what appear to be jellyfish marks on the first body.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Edit] What's &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; wrong with this thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Standback points out in the comment below, I have misused the term &quot;Heisenbug.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I reproduce his comment here because I do not wish to misinform people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Heisenbug isn't a problem that wouldn't exist if you weren't looking for it; it's a problem that &lt;em&gt;clearly exists&lt;/em&gt;, but which changes its behavior in reponse to seemingly-trivial attempts to investigate it, making it infuriatingly difficult to track down to a root cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidently, there's a looser definition that rolls around physics departments at the colleges I've been associated with; that is, &quot;a problem that is actually &lt;em&gt;caused&lt;/em&gt; by looking at it.&quot; That was what I meant. Calling that a &quot;Heisenbug&quot; was a new twist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11230" LastEditorUserId="11230" LastEditDate="2014-11-24T20:41:52.463" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T20:41:52.463" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14492" CreationDate="2014-11-24T08:23:42.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that your question looks at the task of writing the logline to a detective novel from the wrong perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A scholar might find that a detective novel has a parallel structure of the detective and his life and job, and the crime or the criminal. But that is not necessarily how detective novels are read. The reader will have a clear, single focus of interest, and that is whatever drives the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To write a logline, literary theory with its focus on the &lt;em&gt;protagonist&lt;/em&gt; is not very helpful. Look at Agatha Christie's &lt;em&gt;Murder on the Orient Express&lt;/em&gt; as an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. One of his fellow passengers must be the murderer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isolated by the storm, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer among a dozen of the dead man's enemies, before the murderer decides to strike again . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, who is the protagonist here? Poirot, of course. But what is driving the plot and grabbing the interest of the reader? &lt;strong&gt;The riddle!&lt;/strong&gt; This detective novel is not about Poirot. He is only the personification of the attempt to solve the riddle. Of course Poirot is equipped with an interesting character, but he is a side character actually. The true &amp;quot;protagonist&amp;quot; is the riddle itself. The riddle is described like a person, with similar complexity, and it is the development of the solution of the riddle that we are interested in. Not Poirot. Therefore the logline must focus on the riddle (as it does).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a Jack Reacher novel, Jack Reacher will be the focus, because those novels are not about riddles being solved, but about Reacher and how he blows through the town like a crime-destroying force of nature. Reacher is revenge personified and the stakes are justice. Which crime Reacher solves is secondary, and the logline does not focus on that, as you can see from the logline to the first Reacher novel, &lt;em&gt;Killing Floor&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher is a drifter. He’s just passing through Margrave, Georgia, and in less than an hour, he’s arrested for murder. Not much of a welcome. All Reacher knows is that he didn’t kill anybody. At least not here. Not lately. But he doesn’t stand a chance of convincing anyone. Not in Margrave, Georgia. Not a chance in hell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All detective novels are different, some will focus on the sleuth, others on the victim, still others on the criminal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you write a logline, you must identify&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what drives the plot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what is at stake&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;strong&gt;focus your logline on this&lt;/strong&gt;. Then add the setting and, if he is not what drives the plot, the detective, the victims, and whatever else emphasizes the main plot elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note how the Christie logline even fools the reader, thus helping build the illusion that the plot is based upon. As we know, the other passengers communally killed Ratchett and no one else is in danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T08:23:42.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14520" CreationDate="2014-11-25T19:53:14.490" Score="5" ViewCount="423" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I know, you can go the Star Wars/Star Trek &quot;hand wave&quot; route and make it seem like everything is a few minutes or hours away, but...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I implement a scenario where space travel is as common and casual as modern travel methods but won't distract me with its often bendy or non-existent rule-set? This type of writing inevitably reveals itself in fiction as writers put themselves and their readers through enough mental acrobatics to convince all of the writing device's rationality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I want to be able to write about spacecraft in space as authors in the golden age of sailing would write on sea ships on the sea. Any of the best narratives of an adventure at sea does not (I hope) drop an esoteric description on the workings of why a sailboat should be able to sail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conditions: &#xA;1) Let's leave time travel alone.&#xA;2) Let's leave &quot;sciencey-magic&quot; alone if we can. Of course, that may be one of the only or best options, but that's what I'm here to inquire about.&#xA;3) If there's a way to approach this without the well established &lt;em&gt;cryosleep&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;relativity&lt;/em&gt; writing devices, that would be nice, although I'm open to thoughts on these things and anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I could be any more clear or specific as to what I'm looking for, feel free to let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;BBB&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11013" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-11-25T20:32:09.073" LastActivityDate="2014-11-29T02:52:25.537" Title="Dealing with Extreme Distances - Space Travel" Tags="|science-fiction|world-building|exposition|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14501" CreationDate="2014-11-25T20:52:41.607" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If space travel is as common and casual as current methods, then treat it the way you would treat current methods. That is: Take it for granted. Ignore the physics and ignore how it is operated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you get in a car to drive, you barely even think about how you operate it, much less the physics of internal combustion engines, or the mechanics of universal joints, or lubrication. And when you're a passenger in a car, you don't think about how it operates at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You think about the operation or the physics or the mechanics only when something goes wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So write space travel the way you would write modern travel in a car. If it's just getting from here to there, you might say nothing more than, &quot;Chas drove to the police station.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, almost everyone in your story will treat space travel the same way. If they don't, that means it's either not common or not casual. Or something has gone wrong with this particular craft or journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need more details if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something goes wrong that matters to the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your viewpoint character is a spacecraft engineer doing spacecrafty engineery things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your viewpoint character operates some key aspect of the travel (pilot, for example) &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; the operation matters to the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The story hinges on a special feature of the physics or the operation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Maybe some other considerations that I haven't thought of.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is in whether your viewpoint characters have a reason &lt;em&gt;in the story&lt;/em&gt; to care about the details. If the physics or operation don't matter to your viewpoint characters, then treat them the way you'd treat a journey in a car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2014-11-25T23:55:05.060" LastActivityDate="2014-11-25T23:55:05.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21916" CreationDate="2014-11-26T03:06:18.410" Score="5" ViewCount="3137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to write a story based in medieval times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my characters are kings and nobles so I'm trying to make their conversations more... &quot;regal&quot;... or &quot;elegant&quot;. But I'm unable to create authentic dialogue, as it's so far from how I usually speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean by regal: instead of saying &quot;That's rubbish!&quot; they'd say &quot;Such tripe!&quot; or use words like banal or trite. They'd use sentences like &quot;bred to fight and conquer&quot; or similar, and convey a finer, upper class breeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any reference resources to do this better? Or perhaps any pointers from anyone who has been through the same process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-09T19:11:53.380" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T14:31:19.103" Title="How to convey breeding through character dialogue" Tags="|planning|world-building|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14507" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14511" CreationDate="2014-11-26T07:24:40.710" Score="2" ViewCount="1540" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can one describe a moment of gameplay inside a script for a video game? Writing down Cut-scenes is like writing down scenes of a movie or a tv show. How can one write the moments in a script in which are purely depended on gameplay and player interaction? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the outcome is predefined the gameplay is defined by the player so how to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11267" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T10:56:24.423" Title="Video game gameplay script" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14512" CreationDate="2014-11-26T07:50:09.603" Score="3" ViewCount="1290" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the difference between Cut and Cut to and where to put each one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know both are put between scenes-sluglines but what is the difference between the usage of the two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11267" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T07:57:44.667" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T16:39:49.263" Title="What's the difference between Cut and Cut to?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14506" CreationDate="2014-11-26T10:27:58.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to write a noble character, you have to first understand what nobility is about. Your comment – &quot;To convey a more finer upper class breeding.&quot; – conveys to me that you don't actually think that nobels are any different from us common folk, but arrogantly believe so themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is that individuals from noble families know their lineage a couple hundred or even a thousand years back, and usually have a host of close relatives that hold important positions in politics, the military, science, the arts, and so on. Psychology has found that socioeconomic status is a strong predictor for intelligence and success in all areas of life. So basically, when you are noble born, you grow up knowing that you are privileged, you are trained to fill that role, and you have resources (psychological, emotional, social, financial, etc.) that others can only dream about. If you are nobel born and not demented, you cannot fail at life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is this background that is expressed in the behavior – including linguistic behavior – of nobles. They act and speak from the self-assurance that comes with being related to kings. They are older than democracy, and will outlast us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a noble character is not mere choice of words, but grasping their difference from us. Others might use words like &quot;trite&quot;, but only a noble can used it without appearing a wannabe. He is the real thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since nobles have spoken in public and written books, it shoud be fairly easy to find sources that documents their language. I'd start maybe with videos of members from the British House of Lords, find interviews with nobles in documentaries on YouTube, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T10:27:58.350" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14507" CreationDate="2014-11-26T16:08:32.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;...Just the same. Just note that this is open play and not the cutscene. Write all events, but note which part is a cutscene, which is a dialogue, which is plain action, which is a quicktime event...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of linear games this is very simple, and doesn't differ from typical script by much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in case of games with more advanced plot, the scripts are &lt;strong&gt;branching.&lt;/strong&gt; There are elements that are optional, may or may not have impact later, depend on prior decision or cause total script split into two or more entirely different realities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, tag your scenes/variants, and whenever the plot branches for longer than a couple paragraphs, present &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;if [condition is met], proceed to scene#. Otherwise, proceed [to next scene]&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, all (except 'decorative', illusory choice) decisions the player makes in game that impact the plot in the long run, can be represented by 'tokens'. Tokens for items possessed, tokens for knowledge gained, tokens for switches toggled etc. So, if the player makes a decision with lasting impact, generate a token to be used when the 'impact point' is met. Whenever you arrive at such a branching point that depends on a prior decision, include respective token in the condition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Player &lt;strong&gt;may&lt;/strong&gt; choose to check under the stump, finding &lt;strong&gt;BAG OF GOLD&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Player arrives at the gates of the mystic tower. A hatch in the gate opens, eyes of an old wizard can be seen.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  PC: I need to learn magic.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  WIZARD: Pray tell me, how do you intend to pay for such lessons?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  If the player has &lt;strong&gt;BAG OF GOLD&lt;/strong&gt;, proceed to scene &lt;strong&gt;#72&lt;/strong&gt;, otherwise:&#xA;  (script about turning the player away follows)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_map&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;concept map&lt;/a&gt; graph is immensely helpful in arranging the scenes and their dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note if your game is of 'open world/sandbox' type, you can manage the script easier by splitting it into multiple plotlines - &quot;quests&quot;, which should be quite independent from each other (or creating few, clear dependencies). In this case sequence of scenes is assured only within the plotline, but different plotlines may progress at different pace independently and simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T16:08:32.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14508" CreationDate="2014-11-26T16:39:49.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never seen CUT on its own in a script before, so I honestly can't imagine where you'd use it... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CUT TO:s are rare in today's scripts. Years ago you'd use them above a new slugline. (Or FADE TO: or DISSOLVE TO: or whatever transition you wanted to use; but these choices are now considered to be the director's prerogative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The transition would always be in the right hand margin, just above the new slug. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Piers walks into a bar. It's an iron bar.&#xA;                                                                   CUT TO:&#xA;INT. ER - DAY&#xA;&#xA;The NURSE swabs his head.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally they're not used any more. So you'd see&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Piers walks into a pub. It's an iron pub.&#xA;&#xA;INT. PUB - DAY&#xA;&#xA;The LANDLORD looks dumbfounded; that joke obviously makes no sense to him.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other place that you might want to use one is within a scene if the cut's not obvious from context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The pub EXPLODES.&#xA;                                                                   CUT TO:&#xA;A hand sticking out from some rubble. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, of course, they can be used when your script is over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                                                             CUT TO BLACK.                       &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="975" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T16:39:49.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-26T19:04:12.863" Score="1" ViewCount="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you are directly quoting a source who also has a cited source in the sentence or sentences you are using what is the best course of action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11286" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T19:04:12.863" Title="Directly quoting a source who also has a cited source" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-12-08T12:07:37.417" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7348" CreationDate="2014-11-26T19:40:49.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cheapest way to generate a barcode image for an ISBN that you have been allocated is entirely for free using a trusted &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/generator/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;online barcode generator&lt;/a&gt;. (Disclaimer: I wrote this tool which has generated millions of barcodes over more than ten years.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Care must be taken when applying a barcode to your design as failure to produce a barcode that can be scanned reliably at point of sale could result in refusal to stock your product or even your product being removed from sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a digest of some of the information from this article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.terryburton.co.uk/how-to-get-a-barcode&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;How do I get a barcode for my product?&quot;&lt;/a&gt; written by my wife which I recommend that anybody reads before finalising their cover design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An ISBN is represented by a special type of EAN-13 barcode symbol which includes the ISBN number printed in human readable form along the top. The ISBN number (without the dashes) is encoded directly within the barcode symbol. There is a recommended five-digit add-on code which encodes the retail price of your book which can be placed next to your barcode. Some retailers require this so you should check this with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISBN numbers used to be ten digits long until 2007 when they changed to thirteen digits. If you were assigned ten-digit numbers it is always possible to convert them to the current thirteen-digit format. My online barcode generator takes care of this automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take care to ensure the correct barcode height and width on your finished work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every barcode must be printed with a light margin (called a quite zone) to the left and right of the symbol so the scanner can differentiate between the barcode and the graphics around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When using the online barcode generator choose the EPS vector format as this does not lose quality when rescaled to an appropriate size and DPI for print. If you must work with bitmap formats such as PNG or JPEG then you must generate an initially very large barcode image (set the scale parameter to 5 or more) and shrink it as inflating a smaller image will make the barcode of obviously poor quality when printed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some print processes drift away from ideal over time and require periodic recalibration of the equipment to maintain the accuracy of the output. Ensure that quality controls and responsibilities are agreed upon to ensure that every instance produced will satisfy the standard required by the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11285" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T19:40:49.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14516" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14517" CreationDate="2014-11-26T22:44:55.817" Score="3" ViewCount="19550" Body="&lt;p&gt;I searched and didn't see an answer to this. I'm writing a research paper using MLA, but I would be interested to know the answer to this for other styles as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether section headers can be questions. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Why is Eating Vegetables Important?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could change that to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Why Eating Vegetables is Important&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for certain sections of my paper the question version seems more appropriate to me (note: my paper has nothing to do with vegetables!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11289" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T08:48:59.507" Title="Can section headings in a paper be questions?" Tags="|academic-writing|mla|titles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14516" CreationDate="2014-11-27T08:48:59.507" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I answer your question for APA. Psychological papers are very rigidly formatted, so possibly you have more leeway when following MLA, but I would suspect that the basics still apply.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, we must first understand what the purpose of the headings is. To understand that, let's take a step back and look at the paper's title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The APA Manual says that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A title should summarize the main idea of the manuscript simply and, if possible, with style. It should be a concise statement of the main topic and should identify the variables and theoretical issues under investigation and the relationship between them. An example of a good title is &amp;quot;Effect of Transformed Letters on Reading Speed.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A title should be fully explanatory when standing alone. Although its principal function is to inform the reader about the study, a title is also used as a statement of article content for abstracting and reference purposes in databases such as APA's PsycINFO. A good title is easily shortened to the running head used within the published article. (APA, 2009, p. 23)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an article in the APA Style Blog explains, &lt;strong&gt;a title should not be a question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A great title gives away the ending.&lt;/strong&gt; If your title is in the form of a yes–no question, try rephrasing it so that the question is answered or the answer at least alluded to. This primes the reader for deeper comprehension. If Philip K. Dick had written for an academic audience, you might be perusing &lt;em&gt;Androids Dream of Electric Sheep: Empathy in Nonhuman Species&lt;/em&gt; before bed tonight. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/07/five-steps-to-a-great-title.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/07/five-steps-to-a-great-title.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does the title of an academic paper have to &amp;quot;give away the ending&amp;quot;? Let's take another step back and look at the purpose of academic writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic writing, while it certainly profits from being entertaining, has the main purpose of transporting information. Throughout the APA Manual the basic requirement for academic writing is emphasized repeatedly, for example in the title of chapter 3: &lt;strong&gt;Writing Clearly and Concisely.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prime objective of scientific reporting is clear communication. You can achieve this by presenting ideas in an orderly manner and by expressing yourself smoothly and precisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if we want to understand what makes a good section heading, we only have to &lt;strong&gt;think of the heading as the title to that section&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;keep in mind the basic purpose of academic writing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most academics have to read several articles each day, besides doing their research, writing their own papers, holding classes, correcting student work, and taking care of administration. For that reason, exerimental papers in the natural sciences all have the same structure, and the main sections usually all have the same headings: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion. For most natural scientists writing up their experimental findings, your question of phrasing a section heading as a question cannot arise, because the headings are predefined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even if you deviate from this dogmatic style, your headings still have the purpose of organizing your communication and identifying structural elements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In scientific writing, sound organizational structure is the key to clear, precise, and logical communication. This includes the use of headings to effectively organzie the ideas within a study as well as seriation to highlight important items within sections. Concise headings help the reader anticipate key points and track the development of your argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking all this together, if you wrote your paper according to APA stlye, your&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;section headings must not be phrased as questions.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &amp;quot;Why Eating Vegetables is Important&amp;quot; is not a good section heading either, because it does not &amp;quot;give away the ending&amp;quot;. A good section heading might be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Vegetables protect the body from oxidant stress&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;a good section heading will be the answer to the question.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T08:48:59.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14501" CreationDate="2014-11-27T20:25:27.547" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree totally with Dale Emery, but would perhaps use a long train/boat ride as the metaphor.  Not only should the average passenger (a.k.a. the reader's point of view) be uninformed of how the vehicles operate, or the physical principles behind their locomotion, such passengers should not even recognize that their ignorance is unusual.  Their attention should be consumed with fighting the tedium and boredom that has challenged travellers across all time.  When they sneak out of the passenger's lounge to find the engine room, it shouldn't be to marvel at the ship's hyperspace-flux-capacitor, it should be to find that cute ensign from last night in the dinner-car, to ask her out for a drink.&#xA;The ship is your stage.  Let your characters play on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2014-11-28T20:55:19.450" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T20:55:19.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14501" CreationDate="2014-11-28T08:12:22.220" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is one fault with the previous answers by Dale Emery and Henry Taylor, and that is that the basic principles of sailing and combustion engines are a part of every school kid's education. And if something new is invented, as for example solar cells, it is extensively described and explained in popular media from newspapers to television.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any educated person today understands that the air molecules press against the surface of the sails, and they also know that in a car some kind of fuel is burned and, burning, expands, thus somehow making parts in the engine move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if we lived in a future where space travel was common, we would all have learned the basics in physics at school, and even if we had not completely understood the finer details or forgotten much of it as adults, we would still always know and understand the very basic principles of space travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, if you want to write space travel SF, you have to be very careful to not make it appear like you are skirting around what would be a normal part of the traveller's experience, observations, and communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A novel taking place on an air plane might not mention any aspects of its propulsion system, but the propulsion system dictates the airport infrastructure (runway, not landing pad), the behavior of the vessel (circle above the air port and providing a view), the price of travelling (who can or cannot travel by plane and how often), and so on, so whatever you write in relation to space travel is in fact informed by your assumptions about the drive technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I dislike and would not personally do is invent &quot;hollow&quot; names that have no concept to fill it. For example, I would not let my passengers &quot;marvel at the ship's hyperspace-flux-capacitor&quot;, because invariably the lack of meaning will become apparent. The reader will not know what a capacitator does or what flux is, and the empty words will not make the reader feel the same involvement and satisfaction as if he read about sails flapping in the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would do is work out a basic concept. It does not have to be technically feasible, because I'm not writing hard SF, but SF adventure. From this core concept I would develop some guiding principles (travel times, cost, availability, density, port placement, etc.) and with these guiding principles adapt current transportation (like air or ground travel) to my future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course these guiding principles are not necessary, but because they limit what is possible in my fictional world, they will make the events that take place there more palpable and believable. And that is what writing is about. If the world and the events appear random, if everything is possible, then the story becomes boring and irrelevant. Obstacles and solutions have to be plausible and comprehensible to drive a story on, and travel is both an obstacle and a solution in a story, not just a backdrop whose exact form does not matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite these objections, I find the &lt;em&gt;basic&lt;/em&gt; idea behind the other answers to be excellent (and have upvoted them both). You don't have to be a physicist to believably write about driving a car, and in fact the details of how fuel burns would distract from the story and bore the reader. Just make sure that if you want to let your protagonist rob the next gas station, the cars of your world actually burn fuel – and are not driven by inexhaustible solar power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-11-28T08:21:41.880" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T08:21:41.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14522" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14523" CreationDate="2014-11-28T12:20:46.893" Score="4" ViewCount="1323" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I flipped open its latch and peered inside. A—gold tooth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I flipped open its latch and peered inside. A ... gold tooth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Was it an elephant? No, elephants didn't frequent beaches. It was—a whale!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Was it an elephant? No, elephants didn't frequent beaches. It was ... a whale!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the right symbol to use in the examples above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T20:17:23.307" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T20:17:23.307" Title="Should I use ellipses or em dashes to denote pauses in speech?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|style|formatting|punctuation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14522" CreationDate="2014-11-28T13:13:05.437" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;em dashes are usually used to denote an interruption or sudden change — whether in dialogue, thought or narrative — ellipses are for pauses, again in all respects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'I just don't see why—&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  'I don't care what you think,' Johan barked, turning from me before I could protest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'She was just...' His face turned pale as his memory returned to that night.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  'Just &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt;?' I asked, eager for more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;here are some resources: &lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/how-and-when-to-use-hyphens-dashes.html&quot;&gt;Jodie Renner Editing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.novelpublicity.com/2012/03/ask-the-editor-when-do-you-use-an-em-dash-when-do-you-use-an-ellipsis/&quot;&gt;Novel Publicity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://writersrelief.com/blog/2008/03/serial-commas-ellipses-and-em-dashes/&quot;&gt;Writer's Relief&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2014-11-28T13:52:11.053" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T13:52:11.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14506" CreationDate="2014-11-28T14:57:32.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're after a medieval/renaissance style, there is of course Shakespeare, Marlowe and Bacon to draw from, but bear in mind these guys were writing for stage &amp;amp; so in a heightened style, often employing poetic devices that a person speaking in real life wouldn't use. Project Gutenberg has a collection of the love letters of King Henry VIII, which gives an indication of the kind of language used by a King to women he wishes to woo &amp;amp; make his wife. You can find those here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32155/32155-h/32155-h.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32155/32155-h/32155-h.htm&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Otherwise, can I suggest British period costume dramas, such as the classic BBC ones of the 70s &amp;amp; 80s, and Downton Abbey? Maggie Smith's character in Downton immediately springs to mind when talking about aristocratic affectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11297" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T14:57:32.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14522" CreationDate="2014-11-28T15:19:24.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; use an M-dash for the whale example, because it's startling. For the gold watch, that's more of a thoughtful pause, so it would take an ellipsis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also related on this site: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6724/using-dashes-in-writing-dialogue/6744&quot;&gt;Using dashes in writing dialogue&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/436/how-not-to-overuse-ellipsis/437&quot;&gt;How not to overuse ellipsis?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T15:19:24.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14530" CreationDate="2014-11-28T21:06:54.527" Score="0" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to make a picture dictionary, and as it is known, pictures are expensive to buy on the internet. So, if anybody knows a less expensive way to buy pictures for a project, like mine, demanding a large number of pictures. Some people may suggest working with an illustrator, but I think this will take as much money as buying ready made illustrations on the internet. These are only guesses, so correct me if I'm wrong. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11299" LastActivityDate="2014-11-29T09:35:22.070" Title="Less expensive way to find pictures for a visual dictionary" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2014-12-01T04:31:37.193" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14501" CreationDate="2014-11-28T22:05:04.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As another example, Asimov's &lt;em&gt;Foundation&lt;/em&gt; series does a good job of this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You say, &quot;I want to be able to write about spacecraft in space as authors in the golden age of sailing would write [about] sea ships on the sea.&quot;  In that case, you cannot ignore the technology of spacefaring.  Those ships in the golden age of sailing were the technological marvels of their era.  They required many highly trained people to run them, from the captain down to the deckhands.  Even common maneuvers like changing tack were quite complicated.  We really don't have a modern transportation equivalent.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't know why you don't like the Star Trek &quot;universe&quot; as an example.  If you ignore the episodes with pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo, it seems to be exactly what you want.  It has massive, complicated starships with 500 people on board: a captain, bridge officers, engineers, and &quot;swabbies&quot; (not to mention red-shirted crewmen and family members).  And Star Trek ALSO has small ships, piloted by fairly ordinary people (mostly for &quot;local&quot; travel).  And ST also has everything in between.  Why is this not what you want?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Again, the Star Wars Extended Universe (SWEU) has many of the attributes you seem to want, with ships ranging from single-person to single-family to &quot;vans&quot; to &quot;buses&quot; to small transport to large transport to ... fighters to ... super star destroyers to death stars.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In all cases of semi-casual interstellar travel, the &quot;science&quot; is explained in a hand-waving fashion for the obvious reason that the real science to enable it doesn't exist yet.  (And even worse, what we DO know seems to tell us it's impossible!)  So it is functionally equivalent, for a writer, to having magic in fantasy stories.  If you want a 21st century reader to take the magic in a story seriously, it needs some &quot;sciency&quot; explanation.  Therefore, I suggest you also read some good modern fantasy writers to get ideas for how to explain the &quot;science&quot; in your sci-fi stories without boring your readers.  You could post variations of your question on stackexchange's sci-fi and fantasy forums to get suggestions of authors who are good at this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T22:05:04.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14501" CreationDate="2014-11-29T02:52:25.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest reading stories by hard science fiction authors, especially ones where they discuss how space-travel (or teleportation) limitations determine what is possible in the world.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Larry Niven's &lt;em&gt;Rammer&lt;/em&gt; series of short stories explores relativity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Larry Niven's &quot;Theory and Practice of Teleportation&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jerry Pournelle's &lt;em&gt;Mote In God's Eye&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lois McMaster Bujold's &lt;em&gt;Komarr&lt;/em&gt; explores how conservation of energy affects wormholes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10378" LastActivityDate="2014-11-29T02:52:25.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14526" CreationDate="2014-11-29T03:12:02.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you looking for pictures (a.k.a. photographs) or illustrations?  Sorry, I am unfamiliar with picture dictionaries, so I don't know what level of art is associated with them.  If you are looking for pictures, the answer is easy...  carry a camera.  I keep a DSLR with a decent zoom lens near me most of the time and carry a cellphone with an 8 megapixel camera with me always.  A day when I don't snap a hundred shots is a day that I didn't get out of bed.  99% are crap.  But I keep everything that is in focus, because someday I might need just that kind of picture.  I take every photo at the highest resolution that the camera will allow, because someday I might need just the lower right corner of a picture, but I still will need it to be usably clear.&#xA;Going to the zoo?  Take two extra simms and an extra battery.&#xA;Baseball game?  Don't forget to photograph the stands, the lights, the scoreboard.&#xA;Digital photography has made massive photo collecting practically free.  Take advantage of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2014-11-29T03:12:02.040" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14526" CreationDate="2014-11-29T09:35:22.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.visualdictionaryonline.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;visual dictionary&lt;/a&gt; has &lt;strong&gt;appealing&lt;/strong&gt; illustrations that &lt;strong&gt;clearly communicate the intended meaning&lt;/strong&gt;. Good illustrations are what sell a visual dictionaly (or attract web site visitors), and quality usually has its price, because most frequently it is caused by a lengthy and expensive education as an illustrator or photographer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are sites such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deviantart.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;deviantART&lt;/a&gt;, where amateur artists exhibit their work, and sometimes talented visual artists who are willing to work for an apple and an egg can be found there. Those attempts at collaboration that I have wittnessed being formed on this or similar platforms often where either small projects quickly completed, or they failed as soon as one of the partners tired of the continuous demands or left the care of their parents and had to earn their living.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to create a professional product, you will need professional partners, and those cost professional money. The real challenge in a project like yours is not finding illustrators, but finding an investor. This can be a publisher, to whom you submit examples of dictionary entries. Or an investor who you can convince that your project will make money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While cheapest way to come by images is taking photographs or drawing illustrations yourself, I don't think you will be able to successfully finish such a large project all on your own. It will take a single person years to create a dictionary's worth of illustrations, expecially if they only do it in their spare time (as your question for &quot;no money&quot; seems to imply).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-11-29T09:35:22.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14522" CreationDate="2014-11-29T10:05:00.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Adding to the answers by Lauren Ipsum and CLockeWork.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll just look at the second example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it an elephant? No, elephants didn't frequent beaches. It was — a whale!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it an elephant? No, elephants didn't frequent beaches. It was ... a whale!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the dash as a sign of a sudden change works well in the narrative, but not in direct speech:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;What happened?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I found something on the beach,&amp;quot; John replied. &amp;quot;I saw something and at first I thought it was an elephant? But elephants don't frequent beaches. It was — a whale!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this sounds strange. John is talking as if he were &lt;em&gt;writing a book!&lt;/em&gt;, which he is not. He is supposed to be speaking with someone. But this works fine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It was ... a whale!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In direct speech, an ellipsis signifies a pause. A dash in direct speech can only signify an interruption, where the speech breaks off and does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only in the narrator's narrative, which follows different stylistic principles, does a dash mean a sudden change. Here it &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; mean a break-off, because the narrative does not break off until the end of the book. Only if the narrative is written &lt;em&gt;as if&lt;/em&gt; it was spoken, can a dash in the narrative means a break:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it an elephant? No, elephants didn't frequent beaches. It was— What? No. Stop interrupting me, and let me tell my tale. It was &lt;em&gt;a whale!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And an ellipsis has no place in the narrative, in my opinion. What does this mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it an elephant? No, elephants didn't frequent beaches. It was ... a whale!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it mean that the narrator pauses? He cannot, because he is not talking. There are no pauses in writing, or rather, they take a different form, e.g. as full stops, paragraph breaks, and so on. In poetry you might do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was. A whale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or more commonly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it was&lt;br&gt;&#xA;a whale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In prose you need to use different constructions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was, as we found, a whale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, the subsidiary clause, serves as a suspenseful pause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To sum this up:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(a) ellipsis:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dialogue: pause&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;narrative: — (do not use in fiction)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(b) dash:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dialogue: break-off&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;narrative: sudden change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-11-29T15:57:13.870" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14532" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14537" CreationDate="2014-11-29T15:50:53.487" Score="1" ViewCount="360" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our higher-profile projects include the delivery and &lt;em&gt;erection&lt;/em&gt; of large exhibition stands for --company name-- at --redacted-- Championship;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;The emphasis is only to highlight the problem word here and is not present in the actual copy.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't help worrying that erection introduces something unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could replace it with &quot;delivering and assembling&quot; instead, but erection is technically correct and a more precise word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need an outside opinion on whether erection introduces any possible effect, even a momentary confusion or lapse of focus, that I wouldn't want for formal commercial copy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if this is a silly question or off topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5714" LastEditorUserId="5714" LastEditDate="2014-11-29T15:55:56.820" LastActivityDate="2023-05-31T10:38:02.873" Title="Does the word erection have a neutral tone with its non-sexual definition?" Tags="|word-choice|copywriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14533" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-30T04:34:00.963" Score="1" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a small story and I have part of the introduction done but I do not know a way to introduce this character&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There I was looking at my future. If I went through that door my whole life could change, but if i didn't i would be here with people who didn't understand me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is what I have for part of the introduction. This is a teen fiction story, so I need something casual. The main character is a girl. &#xA;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11306" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-11-30T08:39:20.717" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T08:39:20.717" Title="I was wondering what a good way to introduce a character" Tags="|young-adult|introduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-11-30T08:33:54.703" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14533" CreationDate="2014-11-30T05:19:29.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When any character is introduced in general, it is important to note his/her significance in the story itself. Is the character simply part of the setting (and thus not meeting the criteria of even a secondary character)? Is the character designed to support the story in some way, whether that be other characters, the conflict, central themes, et cetera? Is the character designed for a more important and individual reason; or, in other words, does the character exist for its own sake? Having a clear understanding of how you want your character to function in your story is integral to understanding how to introduce him/her. Remember, introductions are important for first impressions and are generally important for helping establish a character in any given work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, for me, when I introduce any primary or secondary character, I try not to make the introduction seem too random (unless I am trying to emphasize a theme like the fact that we sometimes meet people spontaneously). I try to have the writing lead to the character's necessity. This can be done in a multiple of ways. You can have the character be known to exist while shielding any details about him/her until the story necessitates that the character be introduced either directly or indirectly. You can substantiate a character by have him/her be an anthropomorphic representation of a plot thread or a conflict. An example of this can be the situation in which the protagonist enters upon some man-versus-man, say a castle siege. When the protagonist goes to analyze the situation, he/she will naturally end up meeting those directly involved in the conflict itself. In general, you want to write the build up for your new character to seem natural. You typically don't want the character to seem sudden, unexpected, or flow-breaking with your narrative. The exception obviously being unless you explicitly want your character to seemingly pop out of nowhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't answered your question though, you want to know how to introduce your character. All I've done is given examples of giving pretext. One important aspect I always want to make sure I express is the character's speech, tone, and attitude. If I introduce the character, I want to differentiate his/her dialogue from the other characters fairly quickly. This may sound a bit too obvious, but characterize your characters. Subtly have the key characteristics of your character observable within his/her's introductory dialogue. Writers don't want their readers to become confused in conversations and they don't want to have to end each line of dialogue with, &quot;X said.&quot; This sort of characterization is what I tend to do. I show the differences and uniqueness of new characters while slowly elaborating on the similarities (which thus give a justification for the protagonist to have any relation with the new character in the first place). Think about why your character is necessary, what does he/she bring to the story, and the different insight/perspective that the character will bring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if I may point out, take advantage of differences not only in personality, but in all realms of being. Differences in gender, cultural background, race, religion, upbringing, class, et cetera. These are great for giving us context into this character. If you share with us that this new character is the son of a governor from Tennessee, your reader can make some generalizations pretty quickly. Generalizations are not necessarily bad for the reader to make, they can be important for initially filling the void of knowledge that your protagonist, as well as your audience, has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically towards your necessity for casualness, flesh your desire out. If you want a casual introduction, then you need to think about what that entails. What is a casual introduction? In what contexts are casual introductions made? Is a casual introduction formal or informal, possibly both? Do you want to emphasize the casual nature of their first meeting or do you want the casualness to be only implicit? Understanding the criteria of exactly what you want is very important to actually getting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, finally, once you have written your introduction, rewrite it. Writers are human beings, we make mistakes, we have skips in train of thought, we make chronological errors, we end up writing what we wanted to avoid. The act of rewriting is necessary because you will almost never translate what you had imagined perfectly onto paper. That is the core nature of thoughts. They are vague, misleading, and not properly reasoned. They are only an idea and not the actual implementation. So once you write your introduction, rewrite it. This will help ensure good prose, brevity, appropriate detail, and, more specifically towards your question, a succinct expression of your new character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11304" LastEditorUserId="11304" LastEditDate="2014-11-30T05:26:39.607" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T05:26:39.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14532" CreationDate="2014-11-30T09:47:21.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the given context the word &quot;erection&quot; does not have any sexual connotations for me. Outside of your question, I would not have thought of erect penises at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel you must avoid this word, use verbs: &quot;We deliver and erect stands.&quot; Or: &quot;The delivery and erecting of stands.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many sexual slang words have non-sexual base meanings and are commonly used in this meaning, despite the fact that sometimes they induces laughter in children of a certain age. You wouldn't avoid telling these people to &quot;grab their balls&quot; either, would you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7ZSDc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image showing a group of young people training with red balls&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Now grab your spheres firmly and bend to the side!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T09:47:21.093" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14536" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-30T20:43:29.037" Score="2" ViewCount="540" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I may have a few fairly high-quality very-adult screenplays lying around and I was just wondering if there was any hope of my profitting off them in some way? Does anyone have any experience with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11311" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2014-12-01T20:02:39.003" LastActivityDate="2019-06-24T14:40:47.710" Title="Can one feasibly sell an adult-content screenplay?" Tags="|screenwriting|erotica|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14532" CreationDate="2014-11-30T22:38:34.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would see the double entendre. As an editor, I would change it to something else. &lt;em&gt;Assemble&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;install&lt;/em&gt;, probably. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Install&quot; to me means &quot;Start with all the pieces, put it together, test to make sure it does what it's supposed to do, and clean up the site afterwards.&quot; Installing an exhibition would involve putting it into place, and if that required tools, that would seem to be understood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T22:38:34.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14532" CreationDate="2014-12-01T06:00:25.860" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are other word choices that avoid the problem, so why not use them? Construct, assemble, build, put up, fabricate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you spot the problem, then at least some others will at well. If you want to avoid that, pick a different word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10432" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T06:00:25.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14507" CreationDate="2014-12-01T10:56:24.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good way to do it is to refer to files outside of the main script, like a map of the area that displays where the player may go, what they may do and what they may find. When you reach the area in the script, simply write something like 'Refer to: '&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will also give a clearer image to anyone else looking at this as to what the map will look like or what they will be able to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11316" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T10:56:24.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14522" CreationDate="2014-12-01T11:04:47.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd use ellipses for pauses, dashes are usually used for interruption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I found this - &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That doesn't matter, look what I found!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As opposed to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;She... She's dead.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11316" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T11:04:47.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10134" CreationDate="2014-12-01T11:11:44.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will be risky, as long as fans know it is the same show. If not, you are essentially just creating a new show under the same name. It will also be difficult and if this show is one that lets writers have one or two chances at scripts before they move on to new talent (As some shows do) then you probably won't have the time to pull it off as you will need to slowly bring in the new era of the show, instead of just forcing it upon fans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11316" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T11:11:44.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14544" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14546" CreationDate="2014-12-01T15:11:39.340" Score="2" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;So the protagonist's boyfriend committed suicide. He left a suicide note. And now the detective is showing it to the protagonist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So &lt;em&gt;I'm&lt;/em&gt; the one who made him do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We read the letter. (Apologies. Standard procedures). Nothing inside&#xA;  suggests that. In fact, Tom didn't leave a reason.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I restructure the dialogue so I doesn't use the parentheses?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T15:31:52.183" Title="How to format the following dialogue without the parenthesis?" Tags="|creative-writing|dialogue|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14545" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-01T15:25:36.693" Score="4" ViewCount="291" Body="&lt;p&gt;To explain how the RPG forum works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somebody proposes a Story setting in which the world, rules, possibilities, and so on are described. Then the interested players gather and create their character (sometimes 2 or more are possible). If the character is accepted, the player can write the story of his character in this world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question: Can I, someone who writes frequently in this forum, adapt that to my writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's in German, so if there is interest I will add a link to the forum, but currently I'm at work so...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry, it seems, like I formulated my question not in the right way. What I actually wanted to ask is if I can adapt the writing style and not the story content from the forum. That I can say: &quot;I know how to narrate my characters in this forum so I can do so in books I want to write.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm also thankful for the answers that were already given. Maybe I can use them in one occasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10886" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-07-14T00:03:55.537" LastActivityDate="2023-02-17T06:36:49.333" Title="Can I adapt writing in a RPG forum to writing in a book?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|planning|roleplaying|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14544" CreationDate="2014-12-01T15:31:52.183" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Add a little stage direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We read the letter.&quot; She had the grace to look a little shamefaced. &quot;Apologies. Standard procedure.&quot; He nodded, even if his heart hurt a little to think the cops had read Tom's note. &quot;Nothing inside suggests you're to blame. In fact, Tom didn't leave a reason.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T15:31:52.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14545" CreationDate="2014-12-01T17:19:13.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ownership of the content of any forum is likely to be addressed, in detailed legalese, within the FAQ, Privacy-Statement, Membership Agreement or some other supporting documentation within the forum's site.  More than likely, if you are already contributing to the forum, then you have already agreed to the site's policies and are therefore bound by them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my answer is...  It depends on the site's policies.  Go read them, and find out for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That having been said, broad ideas are very hard to defend.  Although I have often signed away my rights to a specific piece of writing, I have never signed away my rights to create another, separate and distinct piece of writing on the same subject.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Names have been changed to protect the innocent&quot; can also mean &quot;Names have been changed to protect the writer&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if I were a lawyer, which I am not, you should never take anything you read in a forum as legally valid advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T17:19:13.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14545" CreationDate="2014-12-01T18:12:23.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure you have legal consent from everyone who's writing you are using, as it could lead to some pretty serious legal stuff. But if you have the legal consent of all the writers, you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's an open forum then be careful as a flood of new writers could mean you miss chunks of the story if some parties do not agree to you using their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11316" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T18:12:23.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14536" CreationDate="2014-12-01T21:14:26.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Eh, it's almost impossible to sell screenplays in general.  That you have a screenplay for a movie that would be R or NC-17 moves it from &quot;almost&quot; impossible to &quot;very nearly&quot; impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know how many movies were &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NC-17_rated_films&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;released in 2013 with a NC-17 rating&lt;/a&gt;? Two, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Is_the_Warmest_Colour&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Blue Is The Warmest Color&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and something called &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Bastard_%282013_film%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lucky Bastard&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which might not sound like much, but it's two more than have been released in 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose you could look at the adult industry, but honestly, I don't think they are paying a lot for screenplays.  How much would it cost them to hire something to type up &lt;code&gt;EXT DOORWAY  The deliveryman knocks on the door&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That leaves indie films.  If you really believed in the quality of the screenplays, you could hunt around for a director who wanted to do them, but don't expect a lot of money up front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="1125" LastEditDate="2014-12-02T00:43:46.270" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T00:43:46.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14551" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-01T22:54:28.310" Score="2" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to do research on a &quot;military&quot; character for a novel I am writing. I want him to have a great deal of combat experience, and in and out of many tours and wars.  I am hoping I can have a resource that I can use to put in someones birthday, and get a list of all the wars they could have potentially done duty for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of making him around the age of 43. I definitely know he would have gone on Iraq tours...I have heard of military guys doing two tours in iraq, did the time period make it possible to allow for more?  If someone was say...43, what wars could have they have participated in, and how many tours each?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3543" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-12-02T05:56:02.750" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T05:56:02.750" Title="List of wars someone could be a part of, if they were born a certain date" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-12-02T15:05:35.637" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14556" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14564" CreationDate="2014-12-02T16:27:46.397" Score="2" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many countries have a press code (examples: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ethicnet.uta.fi/germany/german_press_code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Germany&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.presscouncil.org.za/ContentPage?code=PRESSCODE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;South Africa&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It is a kind of ethics guide for journalists. While usually not a law, it is often taken quite seriously by the whole profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Japan have one as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11321" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-07T01:06:12.257" LastActivityDate="2019-05-07T01:06:12.257" Title="Does Japan have a Press Code?" Tags="|legal|resources|journalism|ethics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14506" CreationDate="2014-12-02T23:12:32.140" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to disagree with @what.  While it's true that nobles are born and raised with many advantages ON THE AVERAGE, there is still a large fluctuation about the mean.  And a stupid noble will often &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be more successful and happier than a stupid ditch digger, for the obvious reason that the stupid noble is out of place, forced to attempt to perform at a level he cannot possibly achieve.  His stupidity ruins the lives of all those beneath him, who were counting on him to properly perform his societal duties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar arguments could be made for aristocrats who are evil, lazy, arrogant, sickly, crazy, foolish, profligate, or any one of another dozen human failings I could name.  (Or combination thereof!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of the main reasons that Americans rejected aristocracies.  It is also, by the way, the reason why American voters ought to be highly skeptical of politicians following in their parents' or spouses' footsteps.  (Personally, I would make that unconstitutional.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does this off-topic rant have to do with your question?  :-D  The upper classes in your book(s) should have all the normal problems of the average Joe, but those problems will get addressed differently than those of the average Joe.  Remember the movie, &quot;The King's Speech&quot;?  For an average Joe, being a severe stutterer would have been an annoying handicap.  For the heir to the throne, it was cataclysmic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, upper classes are EXPECTED to use hoity-toity words, whether or not they have the intelligence or wit or vocabulary to pull it off properly.  If they DON'T use hoity-toity words, it is covered up, or chalked up to quirkiness, or made fun of by superiors (to their face) and by inferiors (behind their backs).  Exception: if they are powerful enough, their manner of speaking &lt;em&gt;becomes&lt;/em&gt; the new hoity-toity.  (Case in point: one English king had a lisp.  Soon all the aristocrats were affecting a lisp, and eventually speaking with a lisp became a sign of aristocracy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your upper classes are EXPECTED to converse &quot;intelligently&quot; about &quot;proper&quot; subjects, but &lt;em&gt;they won't necessarily be told&lt;/em&gt; how stupid, trite, and plain wrong their conversation is.  Use this; run with it; have fun with it; be cruel with it; make it a source of pathos.  Have some of your aristocrats be the genuine article, of course, and have them react in different ways to the pathetic aristocrats who can't keep up.  See &quot;The Scarlet Pimpernel&quot;, &quot;Zorro&quot;, P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves novels, Jane Austen's novels, and most of Dickens's novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For ten-dollar words, use a Roget's Thesaurus.  (NOT a &quot;New Roget's Thesaurus&quot;, which is awful.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T23:12:32.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14562" CreationDate="2014-12-03T00:51:33.460" Score="3" ViewCount="366" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in getting acquainted with how to write a good non-fiction book, and thus am asking for credible, high-quality books on what you might call &quot;writing successful non-fiction as a first-time author.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiction writers can read books such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/158297182X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing the Breakout Novel&lt;/a&gt;, which is certainly credible and probably high-quality (I haven't really read the whole thing), but I am wondering if there is any comparable book for non-fiction writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user153" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-12-04T06:15:00.197" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T06:15:00.197" Title="Books on writing successful non-fiction" Tags="|non-fiction|resources|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-02-26T07:15:02.687" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14561" CreationDate="2014-12-03T02:34:23.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are definitely some great resources out there. If you're into creative nonfiction, I would check out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0452287553&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writer's Guide from the Neiman Foundation at Harvard University&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Mark Kramer. It's essentially a collection of essays from various nonfiction contributors that contains a lot of great advice that can help you achieve the right mindset as you gather the threads of your narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0393326659&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;In Fact: the Best of Nonfiction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Lee Gutkind, and an introduction from Annie Dillard (one of the most well-known creative nonfiction writers out there). It's essentially an anthology that you can use as a reference to inspire your own work. You can also check out Lee Gutkind's other book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0738215546&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;You Can't Make This Stuff Up&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for further reading on craft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you want a more broad overview of the nonfiction genre, I would also check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060891548&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;On Writing Well&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by William Zissner. This one touches on the fundamentals, but I recommend checking this out of your local library since opinions on this work tend to be divided (even if it's been considered a classic for almost forty years now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're hankering for more inspiration in the form of a nonfiction novel, I would definitely check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B000FC1IRM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;In Cold Blood&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Truman Capote (considered one of the pioneers in creative nonfiction), &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00338QENI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (a nonfiction book that gave heart and spirit to a deeply disturbing scientific oversight) and finally &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B008LY24II&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Liar's Club&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Mary Karr (which is a memoir that has one of the strongest narrative voices out there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happy writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T02:34:23.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14492" CreationDate="2014-12-03T08:29:09.217" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A query or cover blurb for a murder mystery must contain three elements: &lt;strong&gt;the detective, the crime, and the element connecting them both&lt;/strong&gt;. The weight of each element is variable, and the first and second can easily switch places. For a character-driven psychological study of a 'defective detective' archtype, lead with the protagonist. In almost all other cases, lead with the crime. Tying them together can be very meaningful, or it can just be a short line establishing plot urgency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;em&gt;Detective Alice is a [series of qualifications] who [series of emotional events]. When a serial killer in [location] [incredibly grisly description], can she overcome [obvious emotional issues] in order to catch the killer on time?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second example: &lt;em&gt;A killer is stalking [location], hunting [specific victim profile] and [incredibly grisly description]. Detective Alice, a [series of qualifications], is charged with catching the murderer. Can she overcome [external obstacle] and catch the killer on time?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T08:29:09.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14556" CreationDate="2014-12-03T09:26:15.083" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Japan's press appears to work differently than ours. According to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taz.de/!68799/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; in the German newspaper &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Tageszeitung&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Die Tageszeitung&lt;/a&gt;, in Japan there are 800 press clubs which reside directly in offices in the ministries, industrial companies and so on, about which they report. Only the largest newspapers and tv stations have access to these press clubs. The accredited journalists work full time for these press clubs. As a result, these journalists can publish only those facts that they receive from those institutions inside which they reside, otherwise they will lose membership in those press clubs. In the last 30 years the &quot;insider media&quot; have not uncovered one single scandal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you search for something like &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=press%20club%20system%20japan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;press club system Japan&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, you will find a multitude of results, and among them you will note that the Japanese press clubs indeed publish so-called &quot;guidelines&quot;, e.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pressnet.or.jp/english/about/guideline/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kisha Club Guidelines&lt;/a&gt;. What the actual implications of these guidelines are in the face of the above describe practice, you will have to consider carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this gives you some ideas for your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="11321" LastEditDate="2014-12-03T10:48:27.403" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T10:48:27.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14565" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14566" CreationDate="2014-12-03T16:40:34.013" Score="5" ViewCount="394" Body="&lt;p&gt;An example from my own writing (Mother and daughter are burying their deceased dog):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As planned that Friday,&lt;/strong&gt; Mom and I underwent Choco’s burial at my home&#xA;  in __ (yes, she kept him in a garbage bag for three days). We dug&#xA;  a hole in the backyard, threw the corpse inside, and shoveled&#xA;  the soil back. &lt;strong&gt;Finally,&lt;/strong&gt; my mom knelt down and stuck a handmade wooden cross&#xA;  in the little mountain of dirt. &lt;strong&gt;After that&lt;/strong&gt; we stood there, in&#xA;  solemn silence, looking at the grave being bathed by the evening&#xA;  sunlight. I felt strange. Like I’d come visiting a hometown I’d&#xA;  forgotten about a long time ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could have written the &lt;strong&gt;bolded&lt;/strong&gt; parts like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As planned that Friday&lt;/strong&gt; Mom and I underwent Choco’s burial ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finally&lt;/strong&gt; my mom knelt down and stuck the wooden cross ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After that,&lt;/strong&gt; we stood there, in&#xA;  solemn silence ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I decide whether to put a comma in these cases? Should I follow my hear? Or what English teachers and spelling software tells me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-12-04T01:48:45.060" LastActivityDate="2017-10-21T09:31:08.097" Title="Commas at the beginning of a sentence: should I follow convention or intuition?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|punctuation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14565" CreationDate="2014-12-03T18:18:03.683" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Commas are used to increase clarity. In each of your examples, a speaker would pause while reading the lines, indicating a comma is called for. A sentence with too many commas probably means the sentence is overly complicated. Your writing sample is first person and modern, so I would follow contemporary writing and speaking as a guide. A good reference for questions of punctuation is &quot;The Careful Writer&quot; by Bernstein. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11325" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T18:18:03.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14565" CreationDate="2014-12-03T19:12:20.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think all your original examples sound fine. Go with your inner ear and let your beta/editor add or remove commas for the sake of grammar. As Bobn points out, the commas indicate pauses, and all those pauses sound natural and appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T19:12:20.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14561" CreationDate="2014-12-04T03:31:52.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;William Zinsser’s “&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/OnWritingWell&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;On Writing Well&lt;/a&gt;” is the one I would suggest. (I am not an English native.) It provides sections on how to write about people, places, sports, business, the arts, and yourself.  One can find many tips and instructions on how to turn an average prose – even in the form of email, personal letter, office notes etc - into a tight, clean and neat piece of writing.&#xA;The book titlted &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.washington.edu/heagerty/Courses/b572/public/StrunkWhite.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/a&gt;, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White brought out in 1919, is a short perennial classic. It is a necessary reference book for any writer, including professional ones.&#xA; Stephen King’s &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt;, is a practical book on writing.  It contains some memoir, but answers the question, “How can I be a better writer?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11320" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T03:31:52.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14570" CreationDate="2014-12-04T11:30:13.003" Score="1" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have many moments like this when the protagonist talks about the strangeness of her situation. Am I over-explaining or being condescending to the reader's intelligence? I like saying, &quot;You know what. I'm going to tell you directly how strange this is in case you didn't get it&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should I just leave it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I let out a sigh. So that was it. Back to Prescription 101. I was so unmotivated, though, that even suicide seemed like a tedious and burdensome task. Imagine that. Not even having the motivation to kill yourself. I decided to postpone it for next week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Again, I couldn’t sleep. As soon as I closed my eyes, the image of the planets came to my head; three silent giants moving closer and closer to the Earth. How did this happen? Only a few hours ago Markus and I had been in a trip. Now we were dealing with an oncoming apocalypse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2014-12-05T17:01:43.503" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T17:01:43.503" Title="Am I over-explaining or being condescending to the reader?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14569" CreationDate="2014-12-05T08:45:05.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you are over-explaining. If you want to get into the mind of a first-person protagonist, you have to sometimes write exactly how they feel. Here he feels like he's being sarcastic because he himself realises the absurdity of what he just thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, there's a few tiny tweaks you could make (or I would make):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I let out a sigh. So that was it, hey? Back to &lt;em&gt;Prescription 101&lt;/em&gt; it seems, though I was so unmotivated. Even suicide seemed like a tedious and burdensome task. Imagine that, not even having the motivation to kill yourself. I decided I would postpone that until next week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T08:45:05.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14571" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14572" CreationDate="2014-12-05T19:24:42.583" Score="5" ViewCount="2609" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing the first novel which will be part of a trilogy. For plot reasons, I am considering to change the main character in the other two parts (will be the same in the last two books). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't know if it would be a good idea to change the main character in the trilogy, so I don't know if keep the same protagonist in all the books, or do what I have planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think that would be the best?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11340" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T10:49:35.060" Title="Changing main character within a trilogy, is a good idea?" Tags="|plot|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14571" CreationDate="2014-12-05T19:44:50.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's certainly precedent -- Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles switches main characters in its original trilogy: Louis in the first, Lestat in the next two. In that case, Lestat was a major character in the first book, so it made the transition a bit more smooth since we as the reader already had an idea of who this character was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you say you want to kill off the protagonist of your first book and give the reins to someone else for the second two, there are several ways you can go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let the second person's POV dominate all three books. The main point-of-view character and protagonist don't have to be the same person. (Think John Watson versus Sherlock Holmes.) The current main character can still be the focal point of the story, but his tale can be told through the eyes of this second character.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give the second person a strong presence in the first so that the transition to the second book isn't jarring. Since your reader knows the main character is dead, seeing someone else in the lead won't be a shock, and having it be someone they're already familiar with will help them to be more comfortable and keep you from having to introduce a new character.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these assume that the two characters have some kind of relation to each other and are both present during the events of the first book, of course. Since I don't know for certain that's what you have planned, these may not work for you. If the second main character isn't directly involved in the events of the first, then you may want to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring back supporting characters from the first book as guideposts for the new main character. This is another way to give readers something familiar from the first book to latch onto and relate back to. This gives you as the author a chance to call back to the events of the first book and connect the narratives into a cohesive trilogy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Switching main characters between books certainly can be done (and has been done), but you definitely need to examine why you feel it's necessary and how you are going to keep the books feeling like one complete story instead of separate tales that just happen to share a title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6851" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T19:44:50.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14573" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14576" CreationDate="2014-12-05T21:21:25.100" Score="2" ViewCount="1007" Body="&lt;p&gt;After submitting my manuscript the publisher responded with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Thank you so much for your interest in publishing with XXXXXXXXXXXX. The publishing industry, however, is very competitive and a novel must be head-and-shoulders above other manuscripts to stand out. To accomplish this, a story needs to hook the readers with showing that draws the reader into the action, and this is extremely difficult to do with an omniscient POV, which leans heavily on a telling style. Deep third person POV (or first person) that lets the readers feel as if they are right there with the POV character, is generally the best way to hook the reader into the story and keep them flipping the pages.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is Omniscient POV?&#xA;What is Deep third person POV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How might I change an omniscient POV to a third person POV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T23:29:43.080" Title="Omniscient POV vs deep 3rd person POV" Tags="|perspective|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5" CreationDate="2014-12-05T22:07:14.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try it and see if it works.  Theme-led storytelling might give you direction and conviction.  It's not how most people write but I would suggest that makes it all the more interesting to try.  It's my go to method and I believe it's vaild.  I have made my living writing professionally in film and TV for 25 years. As for the people suggesting you'll be hitting people with a sledgehammer ... Well, that's just bad writing. And that is a whole other problem that has nothing to do with being theme-led. Go for a swim, see how it feels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11341" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T22:07:14.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14571" CreationDate="2014-12-05T23:23:39.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee sort of did this with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Arthur-C-Clarkes-Rama-Series/lm/3T6KD05GJ04I3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Rama&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt; series. The first novel reads startlingly like a history book from the future and focuses on the military and government people who find a spaceship which has reached Earth. Books 2, 3, and 4 are more traditional narratives around human and non-human families and other characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anne McCaffrey did something more like what you're thinking in her Harper Hall trilogy. &lt;em&gt;Dragonsong&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Dragonsinger&lt;/em&gt; are about Menolly, a girl who is abused by her father for her musical ability until she escapes to Harper Hall to become a professional musician, while the third book, &lt;em&gt;Dragondrums,&lt;/em&gt; focuses on Piemur, a different apprentice in the same Hall. Piemur is a secondary character in Menolly's books, while she barely shows up in his. Both are tertiary characters in other books in the overall Dragonriders of Pern series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you establish some manner of continuity between the stories &amp;mdash; in the Dragonrider books the characters overlap; in the Rama series it's about the same ship and species &amp;mdash; I think you're okay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T10:49:35.060" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T10:49:35.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14573" CreationDate="2014-12-05T23:29:43.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Third-person&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;em&gt;he/she&lt;/em&gt;, rather than &lt;em&gt;first-person,&lt;/em&gt; which is &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;) &lt;em&gt;omniscient&lt;/em&gt; (all-knowing) means that the narration has access to everyone's thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever character is the focus of the scene is the person whose POV is presented to the reader. So if you start your book with Detective O'Malley and then in the next scene focus on Doctor Freeman, we get the thoughts and perspective of both those people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Deep third-person&lt;/em&gt; means that while it's not an &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; narrative, the reader gets only the thoughts and perspective of one character. The Harry Potter books are examples of deep third-person. Other than maybe two or three scenes in the entire series, everything is from Harry's POV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To change from omniscient to deep, you'd have to pick your single main character and jettison any scene which doesn't involve him/her in some way. Any information the reader needs must be provided to the main character in some fashion; the reader never gets to see something which the main character doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For the record, the Song of Ice and Fire series, aka &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt;, is third-person omniscient, and is selling just damn fine, thanks.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T23:29:43.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14565" CreationDate="2014-12-06T02:24:28.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;All right, this is an interesting one. If you want to be proper in your use of punctuation, perhaps you ought to check out what the Chicago Manual of Style (or another style guide, for that matter) has to say about commas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grammatically speaking, there should always be a reason to use a comma. In other words, it isn't correct to simply play it by ear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are quite a few occasions where one might need to use a comma. Beware, however, of improper use, as that can change the meaning of the sentence. For instance, in your third example (&quot;After that we stood there, in solemn silence, looking at the grave being bathed by the evening sunlight.&quot;), you should have a comma after &quot;After that,&quot; but you shouldn't have a comma after &quot;there,&quot; because &quot;in solemn silence&quot; does not modify &quot;there&quot;; it modifies &quot;we stood.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11343" LastEditorUserId="11343" LastEditDate="2014-12-06T02:33:49.583" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T02:33:49.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14366" CreationDate="2014-12-06T09:02:34.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the same problem--though 700 words double-spaced seems unlikely, so I assume you mean single spaced (and while 350 words a page is a lot, I'm generally looking at 430 words per page)--but it is NOT because you're using small words.  In fact, the opposite is likely to be true--you're using bigger words in lieu of a bunch of smaller words.  Go ahead and enter it into the Flesch-Kincaid test for readability, and I bet you're likely to get upwards of a 20 grade level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11347" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T09:02:34.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14571" CreationDate="2014-12-06T09:17:02.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've ever read Darren Shan's Demonata series you'd know that switching characters can work effectively, as he uses three different main characters who meet up at the end. So there is definitely grounds for a character switch, it's just about how you go about performing said switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11316" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T09:17:02.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14580" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14583" CreationDate="2014-12-06T21:22:19.667" Score="13" ViewCount="648" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that some fictional work is loosely based on others, consciously or not. For instance, &lt;strong&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/strong&gt; has some common elements with the &lt;strong&gt;Saga of Nibelung&lt;/strong&gt; from the old Norse traditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, I'm writing my own story that has some common elements with a well-known book that is still under copyright. And that is not a coincidence: I really like the original story, and I would like my story to resemble the other one, but without plagiarizing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, just for giving you a concrete example, suppose that my story is based on The Harry Potter books (inspired by this &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10567/how-much-copying-is-okay&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt;). Would you say that my story is a plagiarism if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's about a boy who goes to a hidden wizard school in London, learns that his parents were killed by a villain, gather some friends to fight this villain while attending on the school by learning about mythical creatures, spells and playing a unusual sport.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's about a &lt;strong&gt;girl&lt;/strong&gt; who goes to a hidden wizard school in London, learns that her parents were &lt;strong&gt;captured&lt;/strong&gt; by a villain, gather some friends to fight this villain while attending on the school, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's about a girl who goes to a &lt;strong&gt;well-known&lt;/strong&gt; wizard school in &lt;strong&gt;Japan&lt;/strong&gt;, learns that her parents were captured by a villain, gather some friends to fight this villain while attending on the school by learning about mythical creatures, spells and &lt;strong&gt;practicing how to fight like a samurai.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the Harry Potter series were &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; under copyright anymore, would it be valuable to write the story described on (3) and make a explicit reference to it (like 'What would happen if Hogwarts was on Japan')?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11352" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T11:55:16.157" Title="How much is considered plagiarism?" Tags="|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14580" CreationDate="2014-12-07T00:33:00.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to break down the source into broad mythical elements and rebuild your story from that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harry's tale is both a coming-of-age and a Hero's Journey, and you don't get much more archetypal than those. JKRowling admits she modeled Harry-Ron-Ginny after Luke-Han-Leia, and Lucas was working with Joseph Campbell's &lt;em&gt;Hero With a Thousand Faces.&lt;/em&gt; (An excellent book; I suggest you read that or the easier digest, &lt;em&gt;The Power of Myth.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you start with the absolute basic building blocks (hero/ine, helpers, lack of family, villain, hero/ine must learn tools to defeat villain, guides) and create your unique story from those blocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your #3 is a good stepping stone on the way, but I think you should keep pushing it. Why a school? Why not an individual master? What if it's not friends she gathers but rivals assigned to assist her by an overlord, and they have to &lt;em&gt;learn&lt;/em&gt; to work together? What if the villain turns out to be a long-lost family member? You get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an additional step, when you finish it and hand it off to a beta or editor, make it clear that your story was originally inspired by this other work, and ask that the reader keep watch to make sure no elements are too directly lifted from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And do not use &quot;Hogwarts in Japan&quot; as your elevator pitch if you're worried about copying your source material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T00:33:00.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-07T02:57:31.263" Score="2" ViewCount="1450" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the essay that I'm writing, I claim that women are more likely to be victims of abduction than are men. As evidence, I cite a study on child abduction (the NISMART, if you must know) stating that the majority of kidnapped children were females.  Because abductions rarely happen, any data on abductions in general (child and adult), if it exists, is very difficult to find, even with a search in my college library's databases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11119" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T17:00:30.253" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T17:00:30.253" Title="How do I explain a lack of sufficient data in my essay?" Tags="|citations|essay|research|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14580" CreationDate="2014-12-07T07:50:10.917" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excellent question. The boundaries between different forms of derivative work are constantly being pushed and redefined. &quot;Derivative&quot; has come to be used mostly as an insult, but as you rightly point out, some works of fiction (I would argue '&lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; works') draw inspiration from preexisting sources. In a way, storytelling is an ongoing cultural endeavour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you didn't come here for a spiel about the collective unconscious, right? Let's get to the meat of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your story contains derivative elements, and these elements are deliberate. You've established that much. You admire this story that you've read, something about it has touched you and you want to &lt;strong&gt;replicate&lt;/strong&gt; that experience, but also to &lt;strong&gt;personalize&lt;/strong&gt; it. Stop me if I'm missing the mark. What you struggle with is how to balance which elements to change, and which to keep. You want your story to be &lt;strong&gt;readily recognizable&lt;/strong&gt; as an extension of the literary tradition in which these previous stories have been written, but still to &lt;strong&gt;stand on its own&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two things you absolutely need to do. I'm going to try and make this as generally applicable as possible. Number one, you need to &lt;strong&gt;identify the compelling element&lt;/strong&gt; that draws you to the story. What is the focus of your interest? This can be difficult to identify, and requires a fair bit of practice, at least in my experience. If you're stumped, try writing freeform stream-of-consciousness about why you like your favorite story and why you keep coming back to it. Say, for twenty minutes. Once you've identified &lt;strong&gt;the heart of the story&lt;/strong&gt; -- in your own subjective experience -- you know more about what can be dropped (e.g. 'kid wizard in glasses') vs. what definitely needs to be kept (e.g. 'choice is more important than destiny'). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second thing you need to do is &lt;strong&gt;background reading&lt;/strong&gt;. Lauren touched on that above, but I'd like to generalize it even more. The Hero's Journey is never not useful, but you might like to zoom in more closely on the specific tropes and elements you want. When &lt;strong&gt;transitioning from a reader to a writer&lt;/strong&gt; (or from a consumer to a creator), your best step is to figure out &lt;strong&gt;who inspired the people who inspire you&lt;/strong&gt;. This is where you might start to feel like you're telling just one chapter in a longer story. At least, that's how I usually feel. You don't have to become a scholar, but you need some familiarity with &lt;strong&gt;the timelessness of the ideas&lt;/strong&gt; you're playing with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mythology, folklore and fairy tales&lt;/strong&gt; are invaluable. It's invaluable to recognize that older forms of storytelling -- up until fairly recently -- invariably involve dozens of variations on the same basic story. There is no writer who can't learn something from myth and folklore. You don't need to know every story, and you can't know every story. The point is to grasp the principle behind it. This is why fairy tales are so useful, because they demonstrate far better than modern novels &lt;strong&gt;the myriad forms in which a core idea can be developed&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;There is nothing new under the sun&lt;/em&gt;. That's not a bad thing. Your story is in no way less important or valuable than the ones that came before it. You just need to find what story it is you're trying to tell, and what it is that &lt;em&gt;you, specifically&lt;/em&gt; (and no one but you) can bring to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T07:50:10.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14584" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-07T16:06:51.583" Score="15" ViewCount="3768" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just wrote last week about Sleeping Beauty but a different version of it. (I changed the characters, and the conflict, and mostly everything except the fact that one of the main characters is cursed and must fall asleep, only to be woken by true love's kiss. In this case I made it the guy.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to turn it into a novel, except whenever I try to write novels I get intimidated and I can't seem to do it. But then again, I've never wrote a short story about it beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have to do to turn it into a novel? Obviously, I need to add more detail. But do I add more characters? (There are only 4 in my short story.) Do I make the scenes longer? etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11356" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-12-07T16:35:07.707" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T18:50:50.863" Title="How can I turn my short story into a novel?" Tags="|novel|short-story|fantasy|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14584" CreationDate="2014-12-07T17:31:54.777" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contrary what others will tell you - I know, because the same question has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/search?q=short%20story%20novel&quot;&gt;asked before&lt;/a&gt;  - I think that ideas for short stories and ideas for novels are fundamentally different and one cannot be turned into the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short story is a story that can be told in a handful of pages, while a novel takes a few &lt;em&gt;hundred&lt;/em&gt; pages to be told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of me telling you about my visit to the doctor as compared to me telling you the story of my life. I cannot possibly add enough characters and side stories to the dentist's visit to blow it up to novel length, without turning it into another tale entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T12:39:12.617" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14586" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26652" CreationDate="2014-12-07T18:56:04.463" Score="11" ViewCount="1142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I built and sold a business during my first decade of adulthood. During that period, I read a lot of business books published by the popular press. However, I didn't begin to succeed until I apprehended that the authors didn't write books to teach people how to successfully manage businesses; they wrote books to sell books (go figure). By definition, a person ignorant of a given topic doesn't know about that topic, and so s/he can't judge whether statements about that topic are true. Consequently, the feelings a given business book elicits seem to affect its sales much more than the efficacy of the methods it propounds affects them. If I could re-live my first decade of adulthood, I'd forgo most of the books that I read during that period, and read case-studies instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, it seems that successful fiction authors don't write books about writing fiction. Presumably, if the methods these books propound worked, their authors would be successful fiction writers. Nevertheless, even if some successful fiction authors do write these books, I can't think of anything, other than altruism, that would motivate them to share their fiction writing methods. Especially given that they're protected from accusations of dishonestly by the fact that we don't know whether they actually use the methods they propound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, do we know whether the methods propounded in books about writing fiction actually work; if so how do we know that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5058" LastEditorUserId="5058" LastEditDate="2017-02-10T19:02:31.663" LastActivityDate="2022-06-09T01:39:15.123" Title="Are 'how-to write fiction' books full of it?" Tags="|fiction|non-fiction|book|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14587" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14590" CreationDate="2014-12-07T20:16:59.480" Score="4" ViewCount="487" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel that involves a crime (in the USA) and need to know the proper police procedure and timeline for the events.  Where can I find accurate information to help me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifics--A natural disaster occurs in a slightly bigger mid-western city.  The main character's parents get killed in it.  How long would it take the police to identify all the people who were killed and notify family?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11358" LastEditorUserId="11358" LastEditDate="2017-05-31T19:55:40.493" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T19:55:40.493" Title="Where can one go to find police procedures" Tags="|research|crime|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14584" CreationDate="2014-12-07T21:14:43.203" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; to expand a short story into a novel (c.f. &lt;em&gt;Ender's Game&lt;/em&gt;), what seems more common in my experience (citation needed) is for the short story to become &lt;em&gt;one part&lt;/em&gt; of a larger novel.  Your short story is already a self-contained unit; what else is going on around those characters, in that setting, etc?  Is there a bigger story that you can develop out of that context?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach you might consider for your first novel-length work is to assemble a collection of short stories with a common element -- setting, characters, or theme.  As you get used to making longer-running threads of connection through a few hundred pages (instead of a few dozen), you will be preparing yourself to write a novel from scratch &lt;em&gt;next&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T21:14:43.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14586" CreationDate="2014-12-08T07:55:47.627" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mark Twain did not learn how to write by reading a book about how to write. Neither did Hermann Melville, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Goethe, Proust, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buying and (maybe) reading how-to-write books is a symptom of procrastination. Wannabe writers have shelves of them. And every time they feel afraid of starting to write and making mistakes, they go and buy another one (or post questions on forums such as this one), thinking that &lt;strong&gt;before they can begin their masterwork&lt;/strong&gt;, they need the &lt;em&gt;secret knowledge&lt;/em&gt; that all writers share and that will enlighten them and turn them into a writer. But they are mistaken. There is no secret to writing, just as there is no secret to walking or speaking, only that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;you have to do it until it becomes second nature.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is all the truth there is to it. You learn writing by writing. And by making mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are writing books (and answers to questions on the internet) that tell you this simple truth, and most of those are even written by successful authors (because they have been there). So, obviously, those books (and those questions) do provide the relevant methods for learning how to write. Unfortunately, no wannabe writer ever believes this method, because it does not appear secret and esoteric to them (and also it is a painful method that takes a lot of effort, and most wannabe writers are averse to hard work and don't have the self-esteem to survive failure), or if they believe it, they find themselves unable to implement it, their fear of failure and their perfectionism quickly muddling their thoughts and covering every insight they might have had with doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could give you an endless list of names of professional and accomplished visual artists, musicians, writers and other artists who have said or written (sometimes in how-to books or classes they taught) something like &amp;quot;practice makes perfect&amp;quot;; I could post an overwhelming number of comparisons between early and later works of authors and artist that prove that even the greatest among them began with failures (though, admittedly, some of them began making those mistakes at a quite early age); and yet, those that buy how-to-write books will no believe their eyes and keep waiting for some divine spark to &amp;quot;inspire&amp;quot; them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And most of them will never finish a book in their lives, feeling misunderstood and tortured until they die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T08:11:12.690" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14587" CreationDate="2014-12-08T20:25:01.757" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One source that you may want to check out for general reference is &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1582974551&quot;&gt;Police Procedure &amp;amp; Investigation: A Guide for Writers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. It can shed a lot of light on how a criminal investigation actually works, and was written by an author who had a long career in law enforcement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you check this book out at your local library or bookstore to see if it has information on the specific scenario you listed above. If anything, this book could help you ask the right questions should you decided to interview an actual police officer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T20:25:01.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14591" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14593" CreationDate="2014-12-09T02:18:42.493" Score="3" ViewCount="1533" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that formal writing has many practices that at best seem arbitrary and at worst seem harmful. Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It discourages using contractions, even though they make writing more concise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It discourages using number digits under 11 in favor of writing letters out, even thought using digits makes writing more concise. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It discourages using special characters such as ~, @, %, &amp;amp;, even though using them is more concise than writing out the corresponding words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It forbids the use of emoticons, even though they make writing more clear by showing the tone of voice and feelings of the writer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any explanations on the benefit of these practices would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11373" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-12-10T14:44:24.750" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T01:48:12.193" Title="What is the benefit of writing formally?" Tags="|conventions|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14591" CreationDate="2014-12-09T02:35:31.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without being that educated in the matter, I would think it would have to do with removing personality quirks, specific cultural and social styles, references and shorthand from the writing as much as possible so that anyone can pick up the book and understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialogue can of course contain all of this, such as slang, but the writing trying to describe something should, in my opinion, try to be more universal, and the more &quot;professional&quot; the situation in which the writing will be used, the more this would be required of the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an extreme example, you wouldn't see scientific papers with emoticons and shorthand which may or may not be known to all readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T02:35:31.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14591" CreationDate="2014-12-09T11:15:46.290" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's see, in order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It discourages using contractions, even though they make writing more concise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll confess never understood this one. I do use contractions in formal writing. They're invisible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It discourages using number digits under 11 in favor of writing letters out, even thought using digits makes writing more concise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a style issue. In AP style, for example, numbers under 10 are written out, because single digits can so easily be mistyped, but 10 and above are written out (except at the beginning of a sentence). Mostly for consistency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;It discourages using special characters such as ~, @, %, &amp;amp;, even though using them is more concise than writing out the corresponding words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, symbols take a half-second to translate from visual to verbal. It may &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; more concise, but you're actually making your text &lt;em&gt;longer&lt;/em&gt; to the internal ear of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The percentage symbol has a single specific meaning, and should only&#xA;be used when discussing percentages. (&quot;We found 17% salts.&quot;) Just&#xA;because this symbol exists doesn't mean you'd ever use it in the&#xA;middle of a paragraph of copy. (&quot;The % of salt in the solution&#xA;rose.&quot;) That really takes my brain another flicker of time to render.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The ampersand should be restricted to proper names (&quot;Johnson &amp;amp;&#xA;Johnson&quot;) where it's become part of the visual unit, for the same reason. (&quot;We added the base &amp;amp; then waited for the reaction.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The atmark is now used almost exclusively for the Internet, and would&#xA;severely distract or confuse most readers if it was used outside that&#xA;context. (&quot;We found that @ those levels, salts were not&#xA;discernible.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm not even sure what ~ is meant to mean &amp;mdash; approximately?&#xA;&amp;mdash; so there's another argument against the symbol: it doesn't&#xA;matter if it's concise if it's not clear.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It forbids the use of emoticons, even though they make writing more clear by showing the tone of voice and feelings of the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formal writing shouldn't have excessive emotions anyway, but if you as a writer are incapable of expressing your tone and feelings without little pictograms, then the problem is that you need to work on your vocabulary and your descriptive skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T11:15:46.290" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14580" CreationDate="2014-12-09T11:55:16.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excellent question. It really depends on how you use each similarity. If you make it very obvious that your story has taken elements of the Harry Potter stories (-For example.) then it will be picked up by fans who will start to pick out more and more similarities. However, if you use a few subtle similarities that allow the story to have the same sort of base of &quot;Orphaned Hero finds amazing discovery and learns new skill to beat bad guy.&quot; It's not exactly a premise that is subject to just the one story and so you will more than likely get away with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11316" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T11:55:16.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14591" CreationDate="2014-12-09T14:22:10.017" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Formal writing&quot; is like the use of any type of language. It conveys not just information, but signifies information about you (the speaker / writer), your credibility, and your overall purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &quot;We got 65% hits!&quot; versus &quot;A success rate of sixty-five percent was obtained.&quot; technically conveys the same information, but the impact on your reader changes drastically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once read that when writing, you should focus on three things: content (what are you writing about), audience (who are you writing to), and purpose (why are you writing this). The tone of your writing should be influenced by all three aspects, but primarily the last two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add: Why does this increase credibility? Well, it doesn't, necessarily. A speaker talking to programmers may say, &quot;I grok your pain&quot; and gain credibility. Basically, every discourse community has customs, and language is a large part of those customs. You're referencing &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.about.com/od/c/g/commonpl1term.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;commonplaces&lt;/a&gt;, and the mere fact that you know them gives you credibility. &quot;Formal&quot; language is just a type of commonplace among &quot;those in command&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bartholomae&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;David Bartholomae&lt;/a&gt; wrote an article, &quot;Inventing the University&quot; that talks about this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="862" LastEditorUserId="862" LastEditDate="2014-12-11T01:48:12.193" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T01:48:12.193" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14586" CreationDate="2014-12-09T14:33:06.520" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, successful fiction authors don't write books about writing fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is false. Le Guin, Bradbury, Card, Block, King all wrote books about writing fiction, and they are all successful to one degree or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't think of anything, other than altruism, that would motivate them to publish their methods of writing fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author gets paid to write these books. Money is a good motivator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2022-06-09T01:39:15.123" LastActivityDate="2022-06-09T01:39:15.123" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14591" CreationDate="2014-12-09T14:49:22.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could say the same about all sorts of cultural and social actions. Like consider formal dress: When a man wants to appear more formal, he wears a tie. Why? What purpose does a tie serve? Why is it that putting a tie around your neck is considered formal, but putting a handkerchief around your neck is decidedly informal? We could discuss the history behind such customs, but most people today don't know the history. They just know that it's the custom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some circumstances human beings want to be &quot;casual&quot; and in some circumstances we want to be &quot;formal&quot;, and there are conventions for each so that others know which manner you are trying to present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To most people, we recognize the importance of some events by adding formality in clothes, manner, and yes, speech. If you attended the funeral of a friend and the preacher began by saying, &quot;Yup, old Bob's gonna start smelling pretty bad here soon. 'Bet his wife's glad to be rid of the jerk,&quot; etc, you would probably be offended. You would see such casual and flippant language as inappropriate to the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you got together with a group of friends to watch football on TV, and the host of the party was wearing a tuxedo, and before the game he stood up in front of the TV and in solemn tones announced, &quot;Ladies and gentleman, I welcome all of you to my domicile for this, a viewing of Superbowl Number Twenty-Eight, upon the electronic television visible forthwith behind me. ...&quot; etc, then if you did not take it as a big joke on the host's part, you would surely think him very strange to attach such formality to a casual event. It's not appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T14:49:22.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14587" CreationDate="2014-12-09T14:57:01.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can learn so much about police procedure by watching TV cop shows. For example, I've learned that: (a) If two policemen are assigned to be partners, one must be a straight, by-the-book person and the other a maverick. (b) Every police investigation requires at least one visit to a strip club. (c) The average police officer is involved in at least two shoot-outs per week, but is never injured. (d) Unless, of course, it is the day before he retires from the police force, in which case the most trivial call will likely result in him being shot and killed. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, maybe you're better to go with Quilly's suggestion if you want realism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T14:57:01.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14586" CreationDate="2014-12-09T15:05:42.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, you could say this sort of thing about any how-to book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just yesterday I saw an ad for a video titled, &quot;How to get your message across in 30 seconds!&quot;. In small print it says, &quot;Running time: 45 minutes&quot;. Apparently the people who made the video didn't see the irony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a common joke that people who write &quot;how to get rich books&quot; get rich by selling these books, not by doing any of the things that their books say to do. If I was going to read a get-rich-quick book, I'd want to find one that was written by someone who got rich before he wrote the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I think of it, you could say the same about any book at all. Some are written by people who really know the subject and who are skilled at conveying this information, and some are written by people with little or no knowledge of the subject and/or who are terrible writers. Some of anything is great and some is junk. In real life, you have to sort out the good from the bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T15:05:42.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14586" CreationDate="2014-12-09T15:20:38.330" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Meebo gleeb owt anso gilf?+  Don't you agree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;+I'll explain in a moment.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question Heard Around the Writing World&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a book teach you to write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, of course not.  For no matter how great the book, the pupil herself may be completely obstinate and impenetrable to the lessons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What Would A Book About Writing Teach?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&amp;quot;Furthermore,&amp;quot; the cynic says.  &amp;quot;What would a book about writing teach anyway?  Would it teach me to write a John Grisham best-seller?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer&lt;/strong&gt;: Of course not.  Only John Grisham can write a John Grisham novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Isn't It All Subjective?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the real question that writer's around the world want to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't teaching someone to write fiction just a subjective exercise&#xA;which cannot be measured?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer&lt;/strong&gt;: No, not everything is subjective, but yes, much is.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;If you are writing the fictional equivalent of my first sentence, you are not going to have many readers, because they simply cannot understand you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'm An Artist and An Idiot&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may tell you it is art and you may tell me I am an idiot and we both may be correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've created this exaggerated example to show you that there are certain foundational things that can help your fiction writing and help make you a more successful fiction writer.  You can learn these measurable things and determine if your writing is actually better (more pleasant, easier to read, conveys your message properly, etc) or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reader Expectations&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You see, there are expectations of readers.  Some of these are obvious such as grammar and using a language that is understood by your readers.  There are other less obvious things that a book can teach (and hopefully provide examples of) which can make your writing much easier to read because they fit your audience's expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Obviously something makes writing good or bad, because readers know&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;when writing is good or bad.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I Can Prove This With An Example&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Promises are like babies: easy to make but hard to deliver.&amp;quot;&#xA;~anonymous&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Not so good&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George was nice man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Better&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George looked at his watch and saw it was already 7:45am.  &lt;em&gt;Going to&#xA;be late for the meeting and Mr. Murphy is going to kill me&lt;/em&gt;.  He&#xA;pushed his front door open and ran out toward his car.  As George pulled the&#xA;door open on his Jaguar X45 he heard a faint whimpering sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He dropped his brief case into the car and walked around to the&#xA;passenger side and looked under the car.  Nothing there.  He looked at&#xA;his watch again and felt a pulse of heat travel down his back.  He&#xA;heard the whimpering sound again and walked around to the back of his&#xA;car and looked down at the storm drain.  He held his tie back so it&#xA;wouldn't get dirty and he looked into the drain and saw two eyes&#xA;looking back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The small dog he was now looking at let out a louder whine and he knew&#xA;he'd have to get it out of the drain.  He reached down and was just&#xA;able to grab the dog by the scruff of the neck and hoist him out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He pulled the dog close trying to calm it. &amp;quot;Hey little fella.  How'd&#xA;you get stuck down there?&amp;quot;  He looked at his watch again.  Murphy is&#xA;going to fire me.  He looked back into the puppy's eyes and said,&#xA;&amp;quot;Well, I guess you can comfort me on those lonely days when I'm&#xA;looking for my next job.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see? This is the &lt;em&gt;show don't tell principle&lt;/em&gt; working itself out before your eyes.&#xA;As a writer, which tells the story of George better?  Probably the second one. Again, notice that I even mark these as &amp;quot;Not So Good&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Better&amp;quot;, since in reality it is still subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;100s of Lessons Which Help You Learn More Quickly&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 100s of other lessons that you can learn the fast way (by reading a well written teaching book like my all-time favorite &lt;a href=&quot;https://amzn.to/3M8nsWW&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Make Your Words Work, by Gary Provost -- amazon link&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;Why learn slow when you can learn 100s of &lt;strong&gt;shortcuts to Reader Expectations&lt;/strong&gt; very quickly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is This A Guarantee?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Will any of this guarantee that you are a professional and world-class fiction writer? Of course not.  If you want a guarantee become a trash collector.  You'll always have work in that line of business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;All readers have expectations.  Many of those expectations are formed by cultural influences which generate a large group (your reading audience) that expect certain things from your writing. The faster you learn of those expectations, the quicker you can go about setting them up &lt;strong&gt;so that your writing WORKS THE BEST IT CAN&lt;/strong&gt;. Then you can even bend the expectations with complete knowledge and understanding at the right time.  Which is probably how you transcend and become an Artist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2022-06-01T19:10:25.573" LastActivityDate="2022-06-01T19:10:25.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14601" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14606" CreationDate="2014-12-09T15:43:17.763" Score="2" ViewCount="784" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I don't know which one to use. For instance, what kind should I use when referring to the stamping on a t-shirt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mark wore a t-shirt that said, SAVE WATER, DRINK BEER.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T11:52:02.873" Title="When to use normal caps and small caps in fiction?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|formatting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14366" CreationDate="2014-12-09T15:50:08.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;And what about characters per page? As far as i remember a &quot;standard page&quot; is 1800 characters including spaces, no matter how many words it is (though it should be around 250 words). Have you tried to count characters? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11376" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T15:50:08.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14601" CreationDate="2014-12-09T16:04:26.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All caps is for shouting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small caps could be used as a stylistic device at the beginning of a chapter to look nice, but beyond that I'm struggling to think of where they'd be appropriate. Maybe to quote a poster? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the T-shirt example, if the text on the shirt itself is not in all caps, I'd italicize it (or put it in quotes). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T16:04:26.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14571" CreationDate="2014-12-09T16:41:28.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;George R. R. Martin's &quot;A Song of Ice and Fire&quot; kills off many important characters as the story progresses, and characters you might have thought were the main protagonist or the &quot;hero&quot; are frequently dead by the end of the book. This works because there are lots of characters and so there are at least a few established ones to carry the plot forward in the subsequent volumes. However, readers who are really invested in your main character may find that his or her death is too much for the story to bear, and not bother reading the subsequent volumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T16:41:28.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14584" CreationDate="2014-12-09T17:27:07.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another good way to approach your question is to consider what a short story is in terms of substance (not just length). The definition can certainly be nebulous, since it varies from writer to writer. My favorite analogy comes from author Marilyn Singer who likened the short story to a photograph: a captured moment in time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She also adds that, &quot;But while a photo may or may not suggest consequences, a short story always does.&quot; The structure of a short story is more urgent and immediate: oftentimes, an irrevocable change has occurred and a single character (or two) must confront that change in media res. In comparison, a novel can be likened to a movie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about why you want to turn this short story into a novel. Revisiting your reasons can help you build a foundation for a plan. It could be something as simple as: I really like my main character and I want to show more of her courage by doing X, Y, and maybe Z. So in the end, it's not a question of how much detail to add or how many more characters you need. These things come later and organically as you write. It's a really question of: what is this story truly about and why does it need the space of a novel to explore? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T17:27:07.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14601" CreationDate="2014-12-09T21:56:09.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Small caps can become a temporary convention for something distinct but similar to normal communication.  In the same way that ALL CAPS has become symbolic of shouting, other character formatting can be used to imply meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many alternative fiction works, italics is used consistently to symbolize non-verbal telepathic communication.  In these cases, the author usually establishes the convention during its first few instances, using tags to describe the unusual nature of the associated text.  After that association has been established, all italicized text within the remainder of the novel is assumed to be non-verbal telepathic communication.&#xA;This is helpful to both reader and writer as the collection of speaking tag-friendly verbs (said, shouted, swore, etc.) is much larger than the equivalent verbs for telepathy (thought, pathed, ..?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, and again distinctly for alternative fiction, small caps formatting could be used by the author to symbolize any unusual communication including alien-languages, magical-incantations and even thunderous voices from the heavens.  It is not an established standard anywhere that I know of, but it can become a temporary standard within the domain of any author's current work, or works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T21:56:09.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14607" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-10T00:37:26.210" Score="-1" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who owns All Poetry, and do they make a profit from it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the community basis, but I'm leery of giving rights to my IP to a website if I don't know much about how it's used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8201" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T09:14:24.083" Title="AllPoetry management" Tags="|community|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-12-15T08:00:39.690" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14571" CreationDate="2014-12-10T03:56:14.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that would be just great. I mean changing the protagonist doesn't seem to be a problem at all since after all its your writing and you basically have control over what you write as long as you do it the right way. From a  readers perspective, I find that somewhat interesting and it makes me want to read more and know what happened to make the new protagonist the main character in the other books, so if you have the capabilities to keep the level in intensity and be able to kind like convey why was the protagonist changed indirectly and write convey the new protagonist in the same way you did with the original one then I think that would be great. After all it all depends on your capabilities of keeping the level of strength in your writing throughout your trilogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6798" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T03:56:14.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14591" CreationDate="2014-12-10T04:10:07.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be some confusion about what is being discussed here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Half of the answers are using the conventional definition of &quot;Formal Writing&quot;, which involves the solemn and decorous application of language to convey the writer's authority as well as the meaning of their message.  Formal writing, in this context, is an alternative to the casual or colloquial language of standard prose.  Standard prose, by comparison, excels in blatantly expressing the writer's emotions, in addition to their message.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each method of writing serves a specific purpose.  Both should be familiar tools in the hands of any seasoned author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other half of the answers seem to be addressing, I believe correctly, a new definition for this established term.  Here, &quot;Formal Writing&quot; implies any use of the language, which obeys the communally held standards of grammar, punctuation and spelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative to this definition ignores those standards in favor of minimalistic phonetic renderings.  I fear that the contractions refered to in this question are not the apostrophy-ridden abbreviations of standard colloquial language, but are instead, the attrocious missing-letter mis-spellings championed by Twitter and AIM. &quot;R u w/me?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this question explores the wisdom of maintaining minimal expectations for the competency of professional writers, in a world where the majority of readers no longer know how to recognise or participate in those minimums.  This is a valid question and in an attempt to answer it here, by example, I have endeavored to write in the highest, formal english which my limited vocabulary allows...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have I conveyed anything beyond the specific words of my message?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have I established my authority on the subject of the English language and its evolution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have I, subtly and politely, expressed my anger towards where our culture and our language are heading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twitter-ish, to coin what I believe is a new term, is an attempt to portray the most basic meaning of a message in the minimum number of characters, digits and symbols. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English, by comparison, is the art of communicating that basic message and much, much more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T04:10:07.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14607" CreationDate="2014-12-10T09:14:24.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a quick read of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://allpoetry.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; I can see that members can pay a subscription for additional services, so they do make money. All Poetry is a legal entity, so it's that entity that makes the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their Ts&amp;amp;Cs state that you retain ownership of all content, they gain a non-exclusive license to publish your content on their site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ownership of content&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt; You maintain ownership and copyright to your poetry, poems, or other original works of art you upload to our&#xA;  sites, including the right to publish it elsewhere. By uploading your&#xA;  digital content, you are granting us the nonexclusive right to display&#xA;  that material on the internet. Displaying your material to others on&#xA;  the internet is a form of publication, and as such you grant us the&#xA;  rights to republish it to each visitor's browser[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T09:14:24.083" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14601" CreationDate="2014-12-10T11:52:02.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contrary to what the other answers claim, capitals do not need to mean shouting, but can quite simply mean that what is quoted was written in capital letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wYWXi.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite this and other examples, I still stand by my comment that says to avoid all caps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example would not have changed its meaning if it had read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In one location, Schiavone wrote &quot;Chuck&quot; in large letters with pink chalk on a wall ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just looking at my example will make it clear why you should avoid all caps: they dominate the text, which obviously is not about Chuck or how cool he is, but about wether or not Adams had rightfully discharged his employee Schiavone from his job because of misconduct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T11:52:02.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14612" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14613" CreationDate="2014-12-10T12:02:35.780" Score="1" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;De-Shi was holding something that looked like a price tag. It had the&#xA;  numbers 024 written on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Isn't that what cows wear as earrings?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah,&quot; De-Shi said, still inspecting the object, a thoughtful&#xA;  expression on his face, &quot;an ear tags.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I knelt down next to De-Shi. “024. I think it belonged to the cow&#xA;  number 24. You know, from the 30 that jumped.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It’s possible.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I'm only using digits. Should I change some of them to letters? (I always get confused about this. Is there a general rule that tells you when to use letters and when to use digits?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T14:53:18.760" Title="Should I use letters or digits in the following case?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14612" CreationDate="2014-12-10T12:29:36.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;De-Shi was holding something that looked like a price tag. It had the&#xA;  numbers &quot;024&quot; written on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) quote any text, no matter if it was spoken or found written somewhere&lt;br&gt;(2) if you don't quote the numbers, 024 is one number (not plural), so either 'the numbers &quot;024&quot;' (read: oh-two-four) or 'the number 024' (read: twentyfour)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Isn't that what cows wear as earrings?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah,&quot; De-Shi said, still inspecting the object, a thoughtful&#xA;  expression on his face. &quot;An ear tag.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) &quot;tag&quot;, not &quot;tags&quot;&lt;br&gt;(4) I would also split that sentence: '... face. &quot;An ...'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I knelt down next to De-Shi. “Twentyfor. I think it belonged to cow&#xA;  number twentyfour. You know, from the thirty that jumped.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(5) or: &quot;Zero two four. I think it belonged to cow number twentyfour. ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It’s possible.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-12-10T12:52:44.487" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T12:52:44.487" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14612" CreationDate="2014-12-10T14:53:18.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My general rules, adapted from AP style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In narrative prose, use digits for 10 through 99. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use digits for 100 and above unless the number    can be expressed in&#xA;two words (like &lt;em&gt;two thousand&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;five hundred&lt;/em&gt;    or &lt;em&gt;a hundred&#xA;million&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In dialogue, write out all numbers. You don't say &quot;47,&quot; you say &quot;forty-seven,&quot; as @what points out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write out digits under 10 in prose and dialogue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T14:53:18.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14616" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-10T16:13:45.433" Score="1" ViewCount="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've spent the last few days building a website that I want to use a showcase for my written work, and as a personal blog. What fundamental changes should I make to improve a viewer's experience? &#xA;The site is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acfworks.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AcfWorks.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11384" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T18:54:09.990" Title="How do I build a better blog website?" Tags="|technical-writing|blog|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-12-11T02:34:00.887" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14617" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14626" CreationDate="2014-12-10T16:26:11.610" Score="4" ViewCount="385" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a style that is popular on blogs, and takes the form of a dialogue between the reader and the author, where the author provides both sides of the argument, like a ventriloquist. Often there's a tendency to write the reader's part as being less savvy or intelligent than the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;[Author], my method is better than yours because blah.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually it's not, and here's why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Woah, I never thought about it that way. But what about blah blah?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excellent question. Here's the answer, blah blah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;That's amazing! Thanks for enlightening me! Where can I learn more?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're welcome! You can buy my book at blah blah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a term for this style, especially the self-complimentary aspect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11383" LastEditorUserId="40227" LastEditDate="2019-08-04T07:34:55.673" LastActivityDate="2019-08-04T07:34:55.673" Title="What is this 'pretend dialogue' technique called" Tags="|style|technique|terminology|rhetoric|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14618" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14623" CreationDate="2014-12-10T17:06:08.567" Score="3" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of articles/opinions on Kindle worlds out there. Not that much on actual numbers and facts that I can find. What I want to know is, if I produce some great content, how will my book be promoted and how much benefit will I receive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One assumed benefit to using Kindle Worlds would be in getting a boost early on and getting a few fans by piggybacking on another author's franchise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem 1: I have no idea how Amazon promotes Kindle worlds. If you don't go looking for it specifically, it doesn't seem to be pushed. So if I write a Silo Saga book, it doesn't show up when readers of the original series log in to Amazon and search for Silo stuff, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many people know about Kindle Worlds? I subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, an all you can eat book club that includes quite a few titles. I would probably give any of the books from Worlds a shot if I read the original book and was hungry for more. But books from Worlds aren't included in KU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem 2: No idea about the success rate of Kindle World's stories. I can guess based on the limited number of reviews for many of these stories, and from what I see there, it is making me reconsider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm still interested in working on a branch-off novel for one of my favorite books through Worlds. It would be a shortcut to getting a story done because the author has already created the main world, as well as the rules of the story for me. Just a little hesitant b/c it doesn't look like Amazon is pushing Worlds very hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11386" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2014-12-11T03:00:38.443" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T03:00:38.443" Title="Kindle Worlds Publishing Benefits, Statistics?" Tags="|self-publishing|kindle|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14616" CreationDate="2014-12-10T18:54:09.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choose a definite goal for your site. What do you want users to do? Look around, subscribe to an email list, join you on Facebook?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cut down on extras that take away from your main goal. For example, the large image at the top of each page. Looks nice, doesn't tell the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be more clear about what everything is. Did you write the content for these projects?&#xA;For example: Commercial Writing Examples&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11386" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T18:54:09.990" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14587" CreationDate="2014-12-10T19:13:42.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funny story about this one, but perhaps it will point you towards a previously unmentioned source of police procedural knowledge...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was a writers group meeting a few years ago, reading and critiquing the works of other amateur authors in return for their performing the same service on my latest prose.  This particular night, all of the stories had an unplanned commonality; they all involved drug related crimes.  Inevitably, two of the stories contradicted each other on some miniscule aspect of the responding police officer's behavior and both authors claimed that their depiction was right.  A heated discussion arose.  For a few minutes voices and egos escalated, each participant claiming ever increasing intimacy with the drug world and its denizens.  Then a mild mannered meeting attendee, whose drug related story did not involve any police, finally added his two cents worth.  The argument ended instantly with nobody doubting that he was right.  After all, he was an authority on the subject, literally.  It said so on his badge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is that the best way to learn about police procedure is to ask a police officer.  Just make sure that you explain to them why you are asking, and invite them to not answer, if answering would compromise either their safety, or their trust that you are a law-abiding citizen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T19:13:42.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12701" CreationDate="2014-12-10T19:38:53.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start small. Many small newspapers are hungry for original articles and don't get enough coverage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Report on whatever isn't being covered, even if it doesn't seem interesting to you. Once you become a regular, you're more likely to get better assignments or requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start as a stringer, or remote reporter that can cover stories the paid staff can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do it all- report, take photos, gather quotes and contacts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep consistent and write as much as possible. Most editors I've worked with care little about degrees and want to look at previous pieces before hiring a new reporter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11386" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T19:38:53.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14584" CreationDate="2014-12-11T01:34:40.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how your story is structured and where you might like to expand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story that takes place in a single day would be more difficult to expand, but if the inciting incident takes place a month before it would be simple to add in more detail of how the protagonist gets from point A to point B. You could also show events prior to the inciting incident of the short story and explain in greater detail how the events came to pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you could expect this might lead to the addition of subplots and additional characters. How involved these characters become in the story is up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short stories and novels do have a different pacing and tone, so while it is possible, the novel version will likely be dramatically different than the short story you've already written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11328" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T01:34:40.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14618" CreationDate="2014-12-11T02:56:42.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amazon doesn't really do anything to aggressively promote Kindle Worlds. However, if you go to their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-eBooks/b?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;node=154606011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle eBooks page&lt;/a&gt;, they do have a link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/b?node=6118587011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Worlds&lt;/a&gt; in the Popular Features section near the top of the page in the left navigation menu. Of course, that doesn't show up anywhere in their site map, and you have to actually go looking for the Kindle eBooks page to even find the link for the Kindle Worlds offerings. However, I have heard from some writers in a couple of forums that if your title does get bought by someone, then there is a possibility that Amazon may send out your title as a recommendation e-mail to others who may have bought books set in the same Kindle World. Of course, that all assumes that your book is selling well enough to draw their attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I have seen in different writer's forums, nobody is getting rich off of Kindle Worlds. They are simply writing stories that they probably would have given away for free on fan fiction sites anyway. If you have an interest in telling a story, then do so, just don't go in with the expectation that Amazon will be doing anything extra to boost your chances of selling just because it's set in one of the Kindle Worlds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T02:56:42.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14624" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-11T08:37:52.437" Score="1" ViewCount="7072" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm searching for a tool which finds and lists identical phrases in a long text like a dissertation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to find repeating texts which have been created accidentally by copy/paste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It necessarily has to be an &lt;strong&gt;offline&lt;/strong&gt; tool, as I don't want to use an online tool, where my text is processed and possibly stored on a server under someone else's control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2741" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-17T00:33:02.863" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T00:33:02.863" Title="Offline Tool for finding identical/similar phrases in a text?" Tags="|software|tools|text-analysis|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14625" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-11T09:01:30.957" Score="8" ViewCount="22413" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple book title generators out there (Google will find them for you). Unfortunately, none of them seem to take any &lt;em&gt;input&lt;/em&gt;. That is, they all generate titles by assembling words from a database, and the user cannot influence which words are chosen and how they are assembled. What I want to do is input a word, like &quot;Sword&quot; and be given a bunch of &lt;em&gt;plausible&lt;/em&gt; titles that contain this word or related words (like &quot;knight&quot; or &quot;knife&quot;) and that are not utter nonsense (like &quot;Sword Cake&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does such a title (or phrase) generator exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-23T09:45:44.400" LastActivityDate="2022-04-27T11:22:23.707" Title="Is there a book title generator that takes an input and outputs plausible titles with related words?" Tags="|software|tools|titles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14617" CreationDate="2014-12-11T09:12:55.110" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The method of laying out ideas in the form of a dialogue where both speakers are written by one author is called &lt;strong&gt;dialectic&lt;/strong&gt;. It has its roots in philosophy and has wide application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're describing sounds like a &lt;em&gt;very poor example&lt;/em&gt; of this technique. It uses the &lt;em&gt;form&lt;/em&gt; of the dialectic method, but the content is more akin to the &lt;strong&gt;FAQ&lt;/strong&gt; on a commercial website. It posits only the questions for which it has satisfactory answers, and so creates the apperance of a flawless system with no vulnerabilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a disingenuous form of argument, but quite popular. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9960" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T09:12:55.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14627" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14655" CreationDate="2014-12-11T12:35:10.637" Score="4" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Exploding whales?&quot; My date stared at me as if I had&#xA;  given him some bad news. He'd taken me to &lt;strong&gt;this&lt;/strong&gt; fancy Italian&#xA;  restaurant. &quot;That's what your thesis is about?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure why, but &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; sounds better to me than &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt;. Can I use &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; in this way in fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-12-11T13:12:55.380" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T13:05:01.743" Title="Is replacing &quot;this&quot; with &quot;a&quot; allowed in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14628" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14632" CreationDate="2014-12-11T17:24:26.840" Score="1" ViewCount="525" Body="&lt;p&gt;So the logic goes like this: the protagonist realized life was meaningless, decided to kill herself—but at the last moment her mom calls to tell her that the dog died (it &quot;accidentally&quot; hung itself on a tree), and after that the protagonist decides to postpone her death because she wants to find out whether animals commit suicide or not. (OK, it doesn't make much sense. It's supposed to be dark comedy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the opening (minus the irrelevant text):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2014 was the year I became obsessed with animal suicide. I guess you&#xA;  can say it became my reason to live—the sun in my sky, the very air I&#xA;  breathed. I talked about it all the time: at home, at school, at&#xA;  parties, even at family reunions. So I wasn't surprised when people&#xA;  decided to keep a distance from me. I didn't blame them, though. No&#xA;  one wants to picture a hanging cat while enjoying a meal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So how did this animal suicide thing start? Ironically, it began with&#xA;  my own death wish. But why? I had good health, friends and family who&#xA;  cared about me, plus I had just been admitted into college. Well,&#xA;  basically, I stopped finding meaning in things. Not spiritually or&#xA;  philosophically; things simply ceased to make sense. I'd be riding the&#xA;  subway or walking down the street and ask myself: What's the meaning&#xA;  of all this? You wake up, go to work, eat, poop, crawl back to bed—and&#xA;  that's it. Yes, some will remember you after you die, but those people&#xA;  will die, too. And even if you become famous and make yourself a place&#xA;  in history, all traces of that will disappear once we blow ourselves&#xA;  up with nuclear weapons, or if the universe undergoes a gigantic&#xA;  cosmic explosion. Why bother, then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After much thought, I decided that the most logical thing to do was to end with my life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(More monologue, then the protagonist's mom calls)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, almost forgot to tell you,&quot; Mom said, &quot;Choco is dead.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What? Dead?&quot; Choco was our Chihuahua. He'd been in the family since I can remember. But to tell the truth, I had never liked him. Maybe because he bit me when I was little. I'd just come back home from school and was shaking off my shoes when Choco, probably thinking I wanted to kick him, buried his fangs in my leg. The incident was engraved deeply in my mind. I've been scared of dogs ever since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mom told me she found him hanging on the fallen pine beside his doghouse. I imagined him with his chain wrapped around his neck, his tiny body hovering a few centimeters above the ground. His eyes bloodshot, almost popping out, his tongue hanging on one side like a death worm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(The following scene occurs after the call ends)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As soon as we hung up, I glanced around the room, feeling strange. I felt as if a wave had swept over me, and I was now underwater, with no idea which was up and which was down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Had Choco really committed suicide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But that led to the question of whether animals had suicidal&#xA;  tendencies—whether they possessed that level of consciousness. The&#xA;  thought lingered in my mind for a moment, like a tiny gray cloud.&#xA;  Finally, I went back to my computer and typed in animal suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To my surprise, several results popped up: a duck drowned itself after&#xA;  the death of its companion, a school of dolphins stranded themselves&#xA;  for no apparent reason, a deer threw itself from a cliff escape from&#xA;  hunting dogs. And the list went on and on. By the time I was done, I&#xA;  had read nearly thirty articles. I sank back on my chair, and wondered&#xA;  what had crossed through their minds right before their death. But&#xA;  most important, had they really committed suicide? That's when the&#xA;  thought hit me: I had to find out. I had to solve this mystery. Maybe&#xA;  by doing so I'd understand my own state of mind, my almost-death, and&#xA;  who knew, maybe I would find the meaning of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the conclusion connect with the protagonist's initial statement? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So how did this animal suicide thing start? Ironically, it began with&#xA;  my own death wish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also tried to write it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So how did this animal suicide thing start? Ironically, it began the&#xA;  night I decided to die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this produces another logic problem: How implies a &lt;em&gt;reason&lt;/em&gt;. Night implies &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; (when?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope the question is clear. It was a bit difficult to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But anyway, is there a coherence problem? If so, how can I fix it? Or simplify the whole text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2014-12-11T17:31:49.983" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T14:55:13.397" Title="Is there a coherence problem in my story?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9324" CreationDate="2014-12-11T17:49:06.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can, but it's expensive and not 100% reliable. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nielsenbookscan.co.uk/controller.php?page=48&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nielsenbookscan.co.uk/controller.php?page=48&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There used to be a $85 book research service through a company called The Book Standard, but they are no longer in business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try and extrapolate what current Amazon sales are like. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fonerbooks.com/surfing.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fonerbooks.com/surfing.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, see the calculator that basically does the same thing for Amazon: &lt;a href=&quot;http://kdpcalculator.com/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://kdpcalculator.com/index.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11386" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T17:49:06.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14582" CreationDate="2014-12-11T21:15:52.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't have enough reliable data to support your claims, then you should state that your findings are based on certain assumptions. It would further help your cause if you then give explanations for why you made those assumptions. Before you do this, however, you should probably make more of an effort to locate data to support your position. Relying solely on your college library is going to be very limiting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T21:15:52.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14628" CreationDate="2014-12-12T14:55:13.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Had to look up the meaning of coherence to answer this question and this answer is based on the result I got:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The quality or state of cohering, especially a logical, orderly, and aesthetically consistent relationship of parts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, with that in mind: First off I must say that this sounds like an amazing story, I'd love to read it when it is done. It sounds quite similar to The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night Time but more emotional and interesting. (I also thought that Curious Incident was an amazing book.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, to answer your question: There seems no coherence problem. The only fault I can find with this is not how the character reacts to the dog's death. (Which is justified in the text.) It is the manner of which the mother says it,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, almost forgot to tell you,&quot; Mom said, &quot;Choco is dead.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it creates a spark of interest in the protagonist, he/she doesn't just say: &quot;Oh well my dog's dead and he may have committed suicide so I might as well just postpone my death and investigate this then kill myself.&quot; There's a good purpose to this. The story keeps itself going and there is a purpose for everything. It is also not obvious that the dog has killed itself as a dog hanging from a tree is not a rare occurrence which is great for the story's purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds awesome! Will I be able to find it somewhere when it becomes complete?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11316" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T14:55:13.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14625" CreationDate="2014-12-12T18:21:49.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you know the gist of what your book is, which you should,  try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nameboy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nameboy.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Designed for domain names, it will give a big list of synonyms and all the possible combinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you enter Sword and Warrior, you'll get lots of variations. Knife Fighter, Sword Soldier, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, a lot of it will be nonsense, but it should help get the juices going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11386" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T18:21:49.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12802" CreationDate="2014-12-12T18:44:18.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a little book which explains &lt;strong&gt;all equations that first year students will use&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short remark before going on with the question: your claim in bold is definitely questionable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a law that requires many assumptions and I have referred the student to the page in the textbook that explains the assumptions. Is this safe to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is safe to do it and it is commonly done in all scientific literature. Typically one doesn't cite the page of a textbook, which can change between different printings, but the chapter or the section, which are less likely to change.  So, you may write something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Equation (1) is valid when the following assumptions are verified [1, Sec. 4.6]: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the equation is so common that it can be found in a large number of textbooks, you can stress this fact by writing something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Equation (1) is valid when the following assumptions are verified (see, e.g., [1, Sec. 4.6]): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10679" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T18:44:18.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3928" CreationDate="2014-12-12T20:53:31.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copyright law doesn't protect ideas, it protect specific arrangements of words. (Or pictures or musical notes or any other tangible expression, but that's not the point here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Easy case: If you copied a Harry Potter novel word for word, changed the author name to your own, and tried to print and sell it, you would be guilty of pretty clear and blatant copyright violation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opposite easy case: C. S. Lewis's Narnia books were about English school children who discover a world of magic. So are J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books. But no one supposes for a moment that this is copyright violation, because there is very little similarity beyond &quot;both involve English school children and magic&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also pretty obviously, you can't just change one or two words in a 200-page book and say that this makes it different. The courts wouldn't take 30 seconds to rule against you there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you took a Harry Potter novel and changed all the names to things that don't sound at all like the original names, made it Peter Bronstein and he goes to Lancaster Academy and so on, and then you rewrote every paragraph in your own words so that there were no three words in a row that matched the original book, I don't think you could be prosecuted for copyright violation. You might well be criticized for being unoriginal. You would likely be guilty of plagiarism. But plagiarism is not a crime: it is an academic violation. Copyright violation means copying someone else's WORDS, not his ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't this how most Hollywood scripts are written? Take some other movie that was popular, change the names of the characters, shuffle a few details around, and boom, you have a new movie. Word processing software that lets you do mass search-and-replaces on text must have been a boon to Hollywood writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T20:53:31.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-13T00:58:17.160" Score="3" ViewCount="693" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that sometimes formal terms are superior to informal terms because they're sometimes more specific or succinct, but oftentimes this doesn't seem the case. In those cases, what is the benefit of using formal terms instead of informal ones? Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get is less formal than obtain, even though get is more succinct and they both seem equally specific.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quote is less formal than citation, even though quote is more succinct.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blow up is less formal than explode, even though neither seems more specific of succinct than the other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seems is less formal than appears.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let is less formal than permit, even though let is more succinct. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11373" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T15:43:15.837" Title="What is the benefit of using formal terms instead of informal ones?" Tags="|conventions|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14644" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-13T03:18:31.130" Score="1" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a story that uses the woman masquerading as a sailor trope.  I have read a few and they seem to have similar beats.  But I am having a hard time teasing them out from the story.  I am not sure I am hitting sufficiently on the try/fail cycle.  Here are some beats that I could figure out and have incorporated, but I feel like I am missing some.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Persona Created &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shipboard (Threshold)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learning the ropes (mentors and try fail)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Faking the swagger&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accidental reveal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blackmail identity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Purposeful reveal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Secret romance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reveal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Denouncement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coda&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything else I am missing?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11401" LastActivityDate="2014-12-13T03:18:31.130" Title="Story beats for woman masquerading as a man" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-12-18T05:32:27.820" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14645" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-13T15:03:50.073" Score="1" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scientists and intellectuals are yet to discover the hidden mysteries of human brain. Its power and capacity is yet to be explored. Along the way, many have discovered &quot;hacks&quot; to get what they what their mind to be like at any particular time. We'd like to know some your mental hacks to zone in on your creativity and produce something phenomenal. References from the lives of intellectuals and creative people of past can be given if anything related is found. The findings from neuroscience which can be of help can also be shared. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I believe to give a complete picture I should share the incident which gave rise to this question: I have written two poems on my blog: &lt;a href=&quot;http://abstrusemusings.blogspot.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://abstrusemusings.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt; I write to express myself, to give a channel to my emotions, to say something important. And when I'm asked to just write any poem on any topic, I fail to produce the kind of quality work as I would wish to.&#xA;I am trying to compose a poem for the launch of a national campaign, and I just can't produce a mind-blowing poem that would get the readers motivated about the campaign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you find inspiration? What are some of the rituals you follow to get into the creative mood ? How do you reach that meditative state?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11406" LastEditorUserId="11406" LastEditDate="2014-12-14T09:56:39.567" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T09:56:39.567" Title="How do you find inspiration as a creative person?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|poetry|writers-block|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-12-13T17:19:24.680" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14645" CreationDate="2014-12-13T15:32:12.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;(a) Prolific writers write like other people work on their jobs: unfailingly, regularly. When you make writing a habit, then you will produce outstanding work without fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) Write about what burns on your soul. If you try to write about what you find irrelevant, your work will be irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-12-13T15:32:12.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14645" CreationDate="2014-12-13T17:06:17.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some reason I find this question quite unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can relate to what your trying to say, your trying to find the right state of mind to write the best poem you've ever written. That's simple, you can't do that when your having a lot of thoughts on your mind and you can't do that because when you're trying to write the poem you have the following thought in mind at the same time &quot; This poem has to be the best&quot; . You're simply over-thinking to produce the best poem, I'm a little young to say &quot;from experience&quot; but I think I can say that whenever you want to write something (regardless if your asked to write it or if you have to write it urgently for something) do it as if it's for yourself, this may sound a little weird but for me whenever I feel like writing, the feeling is triggered by my everyday life events. It's like there's this situation or incident every time that makes me want to write something. ( I've decided to keep my writing to that because when I scheduled my writings like keeping in mind that I have to write every week...that didn't work out because it turned to be a task rather than from the inside)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6798" LastActivityDate="2014-12-13T17:06:17.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14648" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-13T17:35:51.567" Score="2" ViewCount="18657" Body="&lt;p&gt;The one major problem I feel that I have as a writer is coming up with a plot that has any substance at all. I can write believable characters (most of the time), build a unique but not far fetched world, but I just can never come up with a plot that couldn't be finished in less that 1,000 words, which doesn't work out very well when trying to write novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any good techniques for coming of with plot that have beef?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10703" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T08:41:24.547" Title="I can't figure out to come up with a good plot!" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2014-12-17T08:41:32.527" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14648" CreationDate="2014-12-13T21:56:49.467" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give the character a problem, no matter how small. When the character tries to solve the problem, make the attempt fail. And make it fail in such a way that things get worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the character has a bigger problem. When the character tries to solve that one...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To continue the story, add another try/fail cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To end the story, have your character put everything on the line in one last big try, which either succeeds or fails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2014-12-13T21:56:49.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14648" CreationDate="2014-12-14T03:47:50.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll answer your question with more questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of world do your characters live in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the kinds of things your characters are likely to do and say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes your audience hate your antagonist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes your audience love your protagonist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What events happen in your world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do these events affect your characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would the world your characters live in change your characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T03:47:50.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14648" CreationDate="2014-12-14T09:23:38.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dale Emery gave a great answer that I want to add to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that my first writings were invariably short. At that time I did not aim at a novel, I just wanted to write, so that was not a problem for me as it seems to be for you, but I found that my first ideas were short by nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking back, I think that I had to grow as a writer. I had to first find out how writing worked for me, and with time my ideas became wider and longer all by themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe what you need to do is let go of that wish to write a novel and &lt;em&gt;just write&lt;/em&gt;. Write whatever comes to you, and don't worry about length. And either you will develop longer stories once you have found your writing self, or you will become one of the great short story writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T09:23:38.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14652" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-14T18:39:53.370" Score="1" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;The slavic languages do not have a Pluperfect tense (except in very archaic use, and some others to, but for example) - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I asked &amp;amp;/or I had asked&#xA;Russian -ya sprosi&#xA;Ukrainian - ya zapytav&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In English depending on context these are translated as &lt;code&gt;I had asked&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;I asked&lt;/code&gt;. This also means that lengthy passages for example of recollections, would with all due technical correctness translate to English as &lt;code&gt;I had asked&lt;/code&gt; &lt;code&gt;I had replied&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;I had walked&lt;/code&gt; and the especially ugly &lt;code&gt;I had had&lt;/code&gt; etc. &#xA;Of course this severely disrupts the flow of language. Could someone support an argument (especially with a strong precedent) for translating what would be a pluperfect in English from a language which does not have a pluperfect into perfect in English. (Or the opposite precedent if the former is generally not considered acceptable). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I don't know if this or the English stackexchange are the proper board, please leave a comment if I'm not in the right place here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11411" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T18:39:53.370" Title="How to correctly translate past-tense from languages without Pluperfect?" Tags="|translation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-12-15T04:58:09.383" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14624" CreationDate="2014-12-14T20:09:23.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends how much you want to get into it and how big the project is. If it's finding only identical phrases or text, most word processors support this, and finally a lot of programming ide's support regular-expression searching (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression&lt;/a&gt;). &#xA;On the other hand if you are looking to find reworded or similar paragraphs and/or excerpts and want to automate this (rather than substringing and searching for variations manually), than I would recommend you look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nltk.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nltk.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;NLTK&lt;/code&gt; is a toolkit that integrates a whole range of language manipulation, sorting and tagging tools - I realize it may be more in depth than you want to go (but it is quite easy to learn and has a very good beginner friendly documentation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nltk.org/book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nltk.org/book/&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll let others comment on more generic and perhaps more 'use out of the box' type tools, as I have no experience with those. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11411" LastEditorUserId="11411" LastEditDate="2014-12-14T20:14:47.950" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T20:14:47.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14627" CreationDate="2014-12-14T20:25:03.413" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think in this case &lt;code&gt;this&lt;/code&gt; serves to emphasize the object in the sentence and connotes a specific kind of consideration or attitude (the narrators?) towards the object . On a natural level I find it quite reasonable - but I don't have a precedent or formal reference to support that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11411" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T20:25:03.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14627" CreationDate="2014-12-14T21:57:48.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As stated the use of &lt;code&gt;this&lt;/code&gt; in place of &lt;code&gt;a&lt;/code&gt; is a Southern colloquialism. It would be okay to use if the story is first person and the protagonist/narrator is native to the appropriate region.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted: it immediately gives the sense of the narrator being a impoverished uneducated Southerner. It pushes more emphasis on her opinion of how fancy the restaurant is, and implies she unused to such places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story was written in third person, the grammar would be expected to conform with traditional grammatical standards since it's an semi-omniscient narrator telling the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11328" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T21:57:48.357" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14660" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-15T14:34:27.883" Score="6" ViewCount="22753" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes multiple publishers and locations are listed in sequence.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PENGUIN CLASSICS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Published by the Penguin Group&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;www.penguin.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann Ltd 1968&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Published in Penguin Classics 2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it correct to assume that the first listed is the correct publisher of the current book, in this case, &quot;Penguin Books Ltd&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it more appropriate to attribute it to &quot;Penguin Group&quot; or even &quot;Penguin Classics&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11416" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T08:04:33.293" Title="How to correctly identify publisher?" Tags="|citations|publisher|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14627" CreationDate="2014-12-15T17:50:33.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. It obfuscates the meaning of your sentence and impedes thought flow; especially in the case given, which I would rewrite completely for clarity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[ironic] Edit for Clarity:&#xA;I say that it confuses and makes understanding your sentence more difficult because I couldn't even tell how I was supposed to read the sentence at first. I actually thought it was a fragment. I had to re-read it a few times before I figured out what you were trying to say. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say that it impedes thought flow because it breaks me out of your story; it totally distracted me from the interesting, relevant, first sentence about the 'thesis'. Granted, it would have been less distracting if I had immediately understood the sentence, but when I say that I would rewrite it for clarity I mean that I personally would probably reorganize the setting information out of the middle of the dialog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10757" LastEditorUserId="10757" LastEditDate="2014-12-17T07:46:39.877" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T07:46:39.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14627" CreationDate="2014-12-15T18:27:56.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It changes the meaning for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of &quot;this&quot; implies to me that you are still at the restaurant in question, whereas the use of &quot;a&quot; would imply that you were no longer there. &quot;a&quot; also implies that you don't care which restaurant it was, only that it was fancy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="705" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T18:27:56.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14642" CreationDate="2014-12-16T00:14:43.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A low-class answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is good to write clearly and to-the-point.  It is smart to use words that people understand. Most people talk &quot;informally&quot;.  Most common words can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings.  Almost all of these words are &quot;vulgar&quot;, and some are rude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people who grew up speaking English know exactly what these words mean.  If you say something in plain English, they can imagine it in their heads.  This makes it easy to catch liars and scammers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people talk in &quot;street slang.&quot;  (For example, in &quot;ebonics&quot;.)  They'll get yer point better if you talk like dem.  But I ain't good with that jive, so I might screw it up.  So I will stick to words I do understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A formal response:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Succinctness has great value.  When discussing science, legal matters, or other technical topics, it is convenient to use specific words with precise denotations and appropriate connotations.  Educated people, lawyers, bureaucrats, and scientists speak &quot;formally&quot; -- especially when they are creating regulations or discussing technical topics.  Many formal terms are derived from Norman French.  Most technical terms were invented by the intelligentsia using Latin and Greek roots.  Latin and Greek vocabulary is the opposite of vulgar.  Formal vocabulary allows even intimate topics to be discussed dispassionately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many &quot;formal&quot; terms are designed for discussing abstractions.  Furthermore, authors and lawmakers can precisely define what &quot;formal&quot; words mean.  This enables discussing things on an abstract level -- people are less likely to fixate on ordinary meanings of words.  Using formal terms lets people speak more subtly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Injecting mundane terms into &quot;formal&quot; discussions can be distracting.  Rude words make educated terminology seem like &quot;gobbledygook&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10378" LastEditorUserId="10378" LastEditDate="2014-12-16T04:40:29.703" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T04:40:29.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14660" CreationDate="2014-12-16T10:42:01.527" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately you don't explain what you need to identify the publisher for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to &lt;strong&gt;quote a source&lt;/strong&gt; in a text that you write, the first place to look for information about the publisher is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;title page&lt;/a&gt;, the top of which lists the author and book title, and the bottom of which usually lists the publisher and place, sometimes the year, of publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the title page (1) of the Penguin Classics paperback edition of Rieu's translation of Homer's &lt;em&gt;Odyssey&lt;/em&gt; which names &amp;quot;Penguin Books&amp;quot; as publisher:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WfO50.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see from the book cover (2), this edition of Homer's &lt;em&gt;Odyssey&lt;/em&gt; was published in Penguin Classics. So why is the publisher not given as &amp;quot;Penguin Classics&amp;quot;? As the hardcover edition of the same book states (3), &amp;quot;Penguin Classics is an imprint of Penguin Books&amp;quot;. Penguin Books is the publisher of that imprint, and consequently of that imprint's books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that in your example, the copyright page reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First published in Great Britain &lt;strong&gt;by&lt;/strong&gt; William Heinemann Ltd 1968&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Published &lt;strong&gt;in&lt;/strong&gt; Penguin Classics 2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Heinemann (&amp;quot;by&amp;quot;) was the publisher of the first edition, while Penguin Classics (&amp;quot;in&amp;quot;) is the &lt;em&gt;imprint&lt;/em&gt; of the present edition. The publisher is, in Penguin books, also given at the very top of the copyright page, in capital letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the copyright page for the Penguin Classics edition of Homer's &lt;em&gt;Odyssey,&lt;/em&gt; and again you can see that the publisher is &amp;quot;Penguin Books&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pBQTY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oops, but doesn't your copyright page read &amp;quot;PENGUIN CLASSICS&amp;quot;? So was my Homer published &lt;em&gt;by&lt;/em&gt; Penguin Books and &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; Penguin Classics, but your book – John Le Carré, &lt;em&gt;A Small Town in Germany&lt;/em&gt;, if I'm not mistaken – both by &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; in Penguin Classics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we know, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_Books&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Penguin Books&lt;/a&gt; was an independent publisher, but later became an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_Group#Imprints&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;imprint&lt;/a&gt; of first Penguin Group and currently &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_Random_House&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Penguin Random House&lt;/a&gt;. Maybe the change of the status of Penguin Books from a publisher to an imprint has something to do with different publishers being associated with different publications in the Penguin Classics imprint? I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are books, the copyright page of which is simple and straightforward; and there are books, the copyright page of which is a subject for advanced &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;library science&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do, in cases like this, is I let expert librarians answer your question for me: I use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://bnb.bl.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;British National Bibliography&lt;/a&gt;. Searching for this book by ISBN turns up the following information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y9lyi.png&quot; alt=&quot;Image of Search Result from the British National Bibliography&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the British National Bibliography gives &amp;quot;Penguin&amp;quot; as the publisher of this book. And if that is what the British Library does, then this is good enough for me. In a bibliography in a paper of mine, I would list this book in the following way (in APA style):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Homer. (2003). &lt;em&gt;The Odyssey&lt;/em&gt; (trans. E. V. Rieu). London: Penguin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other countries have their own national libraries, and if in doubt, I would always consult their records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For older books not listed in the national bibliography, and for books whose country of origin you are unsure of, consult a bibliography of the relevant scholarly discipline (i.e. a database listing publications in the field of history, medicine, or whatever the book is about).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;In short:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;look at the title page, if information is incomplete:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;look at the copyright page, if that is confusing:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;look in a relevant database or bibliography&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I never do is trust the &amp;quot;Cite&amp;quot; feature of &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt;. The information given there is very often incomplete or formatted falsely. But Google Scholar can help you identify other publication quoting your book, and you can get a first idea of how it might be correctly quoted, or what discipline it belongs to, so that you can identify a relevant database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, you need to &lt;strong&gt;contact&lt;/strong&gt; the publisher, any of the addresses given will be fine. Depending on what you want from them, you might speed up turnaround time by identifying the relevant person or office through their web page, but if you send a letter to any of the addresses given on the copyright page, it should, with luck, eventually reach its destination also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T08:04:33.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12883" CreationDate="2014-12-16T12:55:46.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, in demand and interesting is the proper goal, but it has no relationship with popular and trending. Or rather, topics that are &quot;in demand and interesting&quot; usually &lt;strong&gt;become&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;popular and trending&quot; after a delay at which time they will no longer be &quot;in demand and interesting&quot;. Just increasingly popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does &quot;in demand&quot; mean? It means that the gaining new information in the topic would be useful to significant portion of the audience. It must relate to something the readers already do and have use for. At the same time the topic should be something the readers are not already directly familiar with. Basically, find something that readers easily could do but actually do not. If the reason they do not do it is mostly because they don't know they could or do not know how, you have found a topic with &quot;demand&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does &quot;Interesting&quot; mean? It means that seeing the title readers must recognize that it relates to their interests and that they must be able to understand the text and apply at least some of the information in practice. If you can't think of a title for the topic that readers will recognize as relating to them, it is not an interesting topic. If you can't explain the topic in the available length so that readers will understand it, it is not an interesting topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this answer is not &lt;strong&gt;THE TRUTH&lt;/strong&gt;, nor does it try to be. It is simply a suggestion of the direction you could start looking. With writing of this type your personal interests, expertise, and voice are a big part of the value you deliver. And remember that your actual readers will always be just a small part of the potential readers. You do not need to be in demand and interesting for everyone as long as enough people find you both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T12:55:46.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14642" CreationDate="2014-12-16T15:43:15.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, words tend to have a level of formality, and there are often words with the same or very similar meanings that differ only in level of formality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While being succinct is a good goal in writing, it is not the only possible goal. Synonyms often have different connotation or tone, and sometimes we want to set a certain tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, consider these two snippets of text: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The night was black as pitch as Sally crept fearfully across the glen. Ominous noises assailed her, and she cowered in terror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was dark out as Sally walked across the field. She got scared at a bunch of strange sounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both say essentially the same thing, but the tone is totally different. The first sounds like it might come from a horror novel, the second from a casual conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had a post on here about formal language not long ago. I couldn't find it again with a quick search. But basically, human beings consider some events to require formal language because they are very important. Formal language sets a certain tone. Like at a wedding, preachers sometimes say, &quot;That which God has joined together, let no man tear asunder.&quot; It would mean the same thing if he had said, &quot;Hey, these two are married now, it's like a God thing, so please, nobody do anything to break them up.&quot; Why doesn't the preacher say it that way? Because such informal language seems inappropriate to something as important and solemn as a marriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On that other question someone asked, Why do I need formal language? Why can't I just say, Hey, I know this is important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the same reason that in a horror novel you can't just say, Hey, what happened next was really scary. Just SAYING that something is scary or solemn or romantic or funny or whatever does not set the tone. You have to use appropriate words that really DO set the tone. Saying, &quot;This joke is really funny&quot; doesn't make it funny. Saying, &quot;This statement is very profound and moving&quot; doesn't make it profound and moving. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T15:43:15.837" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14677" CreationDate="2014-12-16T19:09:02.487" Score="9" ViewCount="4100" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to use some weapon names to sound familiar to readers, (AK47, M16, C4, Colt...), but as far as I have heard, using real names from weapons one must have the permission of the companies (at least, it happens with videogames). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is: Can I use real names from weapons, and not get sued due to copyright infringement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11340" LastActivityDate="2022-05-16T06:19:15.060" Title="May I use real weapon names in my book without copyright problems?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14671" CreationDate="2014-12-16T19:19:57.813" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is yes, it is a trademark and infringement (not copyright) is specificly exclusive right to provide products or services under said trademark. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're in the US, the bottom of the Wikipedia entry has links to some landmark court decisions in the field. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_infringement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_infringement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11411" LastEditorUserId="11411" LastEditDate="2014-12-16T21:58:37.823" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T21:58:37.823" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12883" CreationDate="2014-12-16T22:03:28.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends upon the topic of your interest. Whatever topic you're writing picking up the right posts is the key to the success of your writings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)Join forums and message boards of your interest.&#xA;2)Engage yourself in discussions, answer question.&#xA;3)Think!!&#xA;4)Convert YouTube videos to articles; improvise and add your own thoughts.&#xA;5)How to's are trending always. People are always looking for howto's so focus mainly on Howto's.&#xA;6)Comparison and reviews will be another trending topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/find-blog-topics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/find-blog-topics/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11429" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T22:03:28.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14648" CreationDate="2014-12-16T22:30:00.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily techniques, but here are some resources you can check out to get you started:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B005NAUKAC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Outlining your Novel&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by K.M. Weiland is a great book for rookies new to the game and veterans in need of a refresher. The process may seem mechanical at first, but at the very least you'll be able to create a guideline (if not a detailed map) to where you want your story to go. It also comes with &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00P72KQI2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a workbook&lt;/a&gt; which you can use as a supplement to the reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would check out Cathy Yardley's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B008CC5L8Y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rock Your Plot&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. This is a very straightforward guide that takes you step-by-step through common plot points. She also includes some very insightful examples with thoughtful exercises, so you can put what you learn into practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10961" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T22:30:00.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14624" CreationDate="2014-12-16T22:41:39.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @user3467349 states, regular expressions (regexes) are your (complicated) friend. There's quite a learning curve involved, but it's worth it if you have to do any significant amount of text searching or modification. Many tools support their use (and some use slightly different dialects for their syntax).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have access to a Linux system (where it will almost always be installed by default - I expect it must also be installed on OS X, but I don't use that OS) or to a package of tools for your OS (such as Cygwin for Windows), then the place to start is with the &lt;code&gt;grep&lt;/code&gt; (global regular expression print) command. It can find almost anything once you know the basics of regexes. There is also a more obscure command, &lt;code&gt;agrep&lt;/code&gt;, which specializes in finding things &quot;like&quot; other things, but I haven't used it yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another alternative is if you have or can install the programming language &lt;code&gt;perl&lt;/code&gt; on your system (should be available for almost all OSs), it supports it's own dialect of regular expressions which I believe is the most powerful version. It's easy to access the regular expressions feature of perl without knowing a lot about the rest of the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do have access to a Linux system, then the command&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;info sed&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;will bring up instructions for using the &lt;code&gt;sed&lt;/code&gt; tool (which you don't need at the moment). But, if you scroll way down in this help file there's a fairly detailed section explaining how to use regular expressions. This will transfer directly to using them with &lt;code&gt;grep&lt;/code&gt; as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T22:41:39.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14648" CreationDate="2014-12-17T01:05:54.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An interesting quote that went around earlier this year in the gaming world, in reference to storylines, was that &quot;plot is overrated&quot;. Basically, a few writers for major game companies were adamant about how characters drive plot, and how they wanted to use that instead of simply having a plot that involves characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is a neat insight into how some plots that can seem basic or even an little cliché can end up being amazing stories, because of how the characters are really what's behind the happenings of the plot. Hope this helps a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11164" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T01:05:54.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14671" CreationDate="2014-12-17T03:27:33.650" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The name of a product cannot be copyrighted it is trademarked. The appearance of the product can be copyrighted, trademarked or patented (trade dress).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Video games need additional license due to the use of the possibly copyrighted visual appearance of the weapon models. Text, which only uses the non-copyrighted names, does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may need to look closer if you have extensive illustrations or are featuring the product on the cover, but the story text is almost certainly not an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-12-17T07:51:52.633" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T07:51:52.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14297" CreationDate="2014-12-17T03:33:19.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what is in between quote x from Ferguson and y quote from Ferguson. If there is no quotes in between x and y then you can just refer the page number and if there is a quote in between you need to refer to the source again. Also, if there is no sentences between x and y you can just refer to the source after y. However, I personally tend to stay from this idea as it can result in confusion. Now for some examples...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case 1: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have sentence that &quot;has a quote in it&quot; (Ferguson,2). Ideally you would have some content here. Then maybe another sentence has a &quot;quote in it&quot; or whatever you are doing (2). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case 2:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have sentence that &quot;has a quote in it&quot; (Ferguson,2). Ideally you would &quot;have some content&quot; here (Buff, 32). Then maybe another sentence has a &quot;quote in it&quot; or whatever you are doing (Ferguson,2). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case 3: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have sentence that &quot;has a quote in it&quot;. Then maybe another sentence has a &quot;quote in it&quot; or whatever you are doing (Ferguson,2). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to avoid confusion you should do the same as Case 1 and just refer to the page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11431" LastEditorUserId="11431" LastEditDate="2014-12-17T03:47:33.973" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T03:47:33.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14671" CreationDate="2014-12-17T21:55:55.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use of copyrighted and/or trademarked concepts and products are allowed under &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20210605143659/https://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fair Use&lt;/a&gt;. It comes down to whether the company considers the use libelous, but that's rare, as challenging your work would give extra publicity to your statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, you can use any major brand in your work as it's simply free publicity to the brand. I've read several books mention Coke, Lucky Charms, Burger King, IHOP and even have an epic battle take place in a Walmart (and don't forget Harry Dresden's Mickey Mouse alarm clock).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11328" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2022-05-16T06:19:15.060" LastActivityDate="2022-05-16T06:19:15.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12614" CreationDate="2014-12-18T06:44:45.527" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Far be it from me to disagree with the Scrivener staff, but I have been doing this very thing with my PDF. Here's the basics of my setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PDF output using &lt;code&gt;Printing&lt;/code&gt; layout&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the &lt;code&gt;Formatting&lt;/code&gt; section, Level 1 folders are configured to always start on a recto page. (Under the &lt;code&gt;Section Layout&lt;/code&gt; button, then &lt;code&gt;First Page&lt;/code&gt; tab.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the &lt;code&gt;Page Settings&lt;/code&gt; section...&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;Header and Footer&lt;/code&gt; tab&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My desired header and footer are typed in the center boxes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;No header on first page and pages following page breaks&lt;/code&gt; is checked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;No header or footer on single pages&lt;/code&gt; is not checked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;First Pages&lt;/code&gt; tab&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I put a single space in the header and footer center text boxes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;Different first page header/footer&lt;/code&gt; is checked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;Page numbers count first pages&lt;/code&gt; is checked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;Start regular header and footer&lt;/code&gt; is set to Page 4.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;Facing Pages&lt;/code&gt; tab&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Same header and footer text from the first tab is in the center text boxes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;Use facing pages&lt;/code&gt; is checked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is how it comes out on mine...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/V5jAW.png&quot; alt=&quot;Chapter Headers&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tq6Ne.png&quot; alt=&quot;No Chapter Headers&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10485" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T06:44:45.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-18T09:12:09.553" Score="0" ViewCount="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that using branded companies names is a no no if shown in a negative light, but what is the &quot;legal&quot; Stance on Buildings that get damaged/blown up/fist fight etc..?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as they are owned by a company does the same rule apply as if you were negatively portraying a company? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance could I say that a disgruntled employee blows up Grand Central Station in NYC&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thank you in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11437" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T09:12:09.553" Title="Use of Building names in Fiction" Tags="|fiction|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-12-18T11:33:23.657" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14682" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-18T12:22:45.967" Score="1" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any compilations of lists of words by domain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, there could be a domain 'Literature' and it would include the words  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;writer, reader, critic, book, essay, novel, publisher, inspiration, exposition, climax, fiction, Nabokov, ...&lt;/em&gt;  etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This particular domain would probably include many of the words or notions discussed on this particular site.  Then there could be a domain 'Japan' which would include the words relevant to Japan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is similar to association lists, but really broad. For instance, a word &lt;em&gt;tea&lt;/em&gt; could be on the 'Japan' list, but I suspect it wouldn't be a first association with Japan for most people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These lists could be used to form metaphors in a given domain, which is why the question is here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11439" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-11T08:31:05.667" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T08:31:05.667" Title="Do word lists indexed by domain exist?" Tags="|tools|resources|metaphor|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14627" CreationDate="2014-12-18T13:05:01.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a first person narrator, you're trying to convey a sense of character, and &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; is commonly used in this way by (some) people in informal speech, so it's perfectly okay and appropriate to use in this situation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the rules for formal and academic writing can be blithely disregarded when you're writing dialog or a first-person narrative, because you're trying for a reasonable approximation of casual conversation, and in real life people break all the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T13:05:01.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14688" CreationDate="2014-12-18T14:49:00.060" Score="4" ViewCount="988" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking to buy some software for technical document authoring with DITA. The tech writing group will have at least 5-10 users, writing 100-pages long documents for several products in various languages, sharing a moderate amount of content between documents, and requiring professional styling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the average pricing of state-of-the-art software for this technology? What cost per user can I expect, and is it better to go for on-site single-payment license or a SaaS solution? We're trying to assess whether moving to this kind of solution is makes sense from a budget point for a department this size, and pragmatic information of the actual costs involved is woefully difficult to get without prior experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11440" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-11-18T19:01:26.420" LastActivityDate="2018-11-18T19:01:26.420" Title="What is the average cost of software for DITA authoring?" Tags="|technical-writing|structure|software|collaboration|dita|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14682" CreationDate="2014-12-18T15:07:47.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That kind reference work is called a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesaurus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;thesaurus&lt;/a&gt;. It's similar to a dictionary of synonyms, but the words grouped together do not mean exactly the same - they just have related meanings by similitude or context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get words only from a specific domain, you can find a thematic thesaurus that is specialized for words relevant to it. Using your example, here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/literature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;online thesaurus on literature&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11440" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T15:07:47.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14684" CreationDate="2014-12-18T18:53:52.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;DITA is an XML format, so any editor or IDE that supports XML will work for you.  Options with good XML support range from Eclipse (free) to Oxygen and Epic (several hundred dollars per seat).  Of course, anybody who's comfortable getting up close and personal with the XML can use Emacs, vim, or Notepad++, too.  (Don't laugh; I write all my XML and HTML in Emacs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside: MadCap Flare has &lt;a href=&quot;http://techwhirl.com/madcap-flare-9-versatility-for-help-projects/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some support&lt;/a&gt; for DITA, but it's not a complete solution.  I use Flare for HTML projects and find it a good tool, but for DITA I would look elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have several writers working on the same document suite, I hope you are already using &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10443/1993&quot;&gt;source control&lt;/a&gt;.  If you aren't, you should factor in those costs.  Source control can be free (git) or not (svn, Perforce).  If source control is already being used in-house, try to leverage that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doc tools and source-control products are frequently offered with both per-seat and enterprise licenses.  The pricing break-even points vary, so you'll need to evaluate those options individually once you've decided on a tool set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you are setting up source control or a build system (to produce published docs from the DITA source) for the first time, you'll need to factor in the cost in someone's time to set that up and administer it.  On the other hand, you'll no longer lose so much time to the costs of &quot;informal&quot; management -- someone has the document on the shared drive open so you can't edit it now, or two different people made conflicting edits to their own copies of a document, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T18:53:52.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14624" CreationDate="2014-12-18T21:10:36.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of the main functions of the program, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cliches.biz/clichecleaner/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ClicheCleaner&lt;/a&gt;, which highlights passages in your text that are either cliches, other overly-used common expressions, or phrases of your own that you have repeatedly used within the same document. ClicheCleaner includes a list of nearly 7000 unique cliches and common expressions that are compared against your text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently it only works on text files; a new release currently in progress will allow editing of text, Word, and PDF files within the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It runs on all versions of Windows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclosure: I am the author of this program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="300" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T21:10:36.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14693" CreationDate="2014-12-19T10:02:40.303" Score="14" ViewCount="82572" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was slightly confused with differentiating Abstract and Introduction writing for a research paper. What is the difference between these sections? They seem to be similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11448" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-04-19T15:28:46.223" LastActivityDate="2018-09-04T18:31:14.747" Title="Difference b/w Abstract and Introduction writing for a research paper" Tags="|academic-writing|research|api-documentation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14692" CreationDate="2014-12-19T10:16:36.320" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;An abstract should cover the whole paper. It reports what the paper is for, what you did and the conclusion. E.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper explores the hypothesis that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. The experiment classifies new tricks as tricks the dog hasn't learned before. Six dogs were used in the trial. Three old, three not old. Two tricks were used. One the dogs knew and one the dogs did not. The results show that old dogs can learn new tricks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The introduction should give the rationale for your paper. It will cite references to back up the reasoning behind your hypotheses, define what you mean, and explain what you hope to find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For centuries philosophers have posited that old dogs can't learn new tricks (Surname, 1788). However, it has been claimed that this stance is not backed up by scientific research (Smith, 1998; Jones, 2001) and is actually based on an old wives tale (Doe, 1967). Two issues arise from trying to accurately tell if old dogs can learn new tricks: what is an old dog and what is a new trick...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3857" LastActivityDate="2014-12-19T10:16:36.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2771" CreationDate="2014-12-19T10:23:24.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not include a post script in the body of an email because &lt;em&gt;post&lt;/em&gt; means afterwards, so if inserted into the body, it's no longer &quot;post&quot;. As one responder previously mentioned, a post script is an added thought, often of some short comment entirely different, or as a brief comment that contributes to what has been said, but gives a short insight or some other contribution to what has been written. I use post scripts in hand-written letters frequently, but since emails are generally shorter and more succinct, I have less need to use them in that format. I find that with emails, I insert additional thoughts in parenthesis or in between dashes just as in letter writing, but because of the shorter nature of my emails, I rarely use post scripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11449" LastActivityDate="2014-12-19T10:23:24.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14684" CreationDate="2014-12-19T11:49:26.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can approach this from two directions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DIY, as outlined in Monica's answer. Use basic XML tools and the DITA Open Toolkit. Up-front cost can be low, but expect to spend a lot of time getting it to work the way you want. Support for content reuse will be minimal. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get an integrated solution. The one I know of is Author-it. This combines an authoring tool with a CMS and a translation support system. It's available as onsite software or as SAAS. You're trading cost for implementation time: it costs a few thousand, but you spend much less time getting it up and running. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2014-12-19T11:49:26.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2771" CreationDate="2014-12-20T14:12:27.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;P.S. is also useful for literary/cultural impact.  It sets off a small sentence from the rest of the epistle, giving it more kick and import.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Using &quot;P.S., I love you&quot; can be particularly effective, as it's become somewhat of a meme due to being featured in song(s) and other media in English.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8201" LastActivityDate="2014-12-20T14:12:27.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14698" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14699" CreationDate="2014-12-21T10:52:59.213" Score="3" ViewCount="321" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am publishing my book soon and I was wondering if I should try and publish it with a publisher before self-publishing. My main sticking point was whether I could keep the copyright with a publisher. So, I was wondering if I could keep the copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note/Edit: I am in the US and would be publishing in the US or Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11460" LastEditorDisplayName="user11460" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T12:35:04.360" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T22:04:42.113" Title="Do true publishers let you keep the copyright?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14698" CreationDate="2014-12-21T22:45:33.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, yes, though it depends on the publisher and the exact details of your contract. It will state exactly what you are giving them, usually something like &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pw.org/content/copyright&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Exclusive Rights&lt;/a&gt;&quot; where they are the only publisher for a certain time or &quot;Electronic Rights&quot; where they have the right to publish it in any electronic form. These deals usually have time limits and after those limits have been reached the publishing right will return to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example though, if you sell your Electronic Rights you cannot publish a ebook of your work without the publisher's consent. As pointed out by some authors, it's borderline for them to even include an excerpt of one of their novels in their blog posts if they have Electronic Rights under contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible you could sell your ownership, but it's very rare and would require them to have a great deal of interest in the property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11328" LastActivityDate="2014-12-21T22:45:33.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14700" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-22T14:00:40.437" Score="1" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working on a new kind of reference book for some years. The book is similar to existing reference books, but uses a unique way to present the information, which I previously had not seen in books, but imagined might be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently found someone else has published a book, just this year which is identical in concept. The marketing of the book even specifically emphasizes the novelty of the new approach to presenting the information. Beyond the small details, such as specific wording of the data, the two books are really similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could I run into copyright or similar problems if I attempt to publish my book, given the similarities in the concept?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastEditorUserId="3375" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T11:58:40.680" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T16:45:25.173" Title="Would there be copyright problems in publishing a book based on a similar concept?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14702" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14706" CreationDate="2014-12-23T04:16:41.690" Score="4" ViewCount="577" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a character with a little back-story I'd like to dribble in here and there as we go.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have something sort of specific in mind, and it makes sense for the character, but it doesn't seem like something that would really happen in the world, and I'd like to find a way to make it make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The back-story is basically this; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My protagonist is currently around age 20 and it's the early 90s.  She has a 5 year-old son.  She and her son live in a dilapidated house in the sticks.  The house is the same one she lived in with her parents, who died while she was pregnant with her son.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can change the ages a little, but don't want to very much.  If anything, I'd like the child to be a bit older which makes her pregnant younger.   So my timeline requires that her pregnancy was around age 14 in the mid 80s.  So I have a 14 year-old who lives in a house by herself for 5 years or so while raising a baby.  No family.  No guardian present.  Perhaps some help from social services or something.  Mostly her working, using the bit of money that was left to her, raising the baby and holding it together as best she can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems pretty unlikely (though I could be wrong), and I'm not sure how to make it happen.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume it will brush up against laws and procedures from social services, and laws on guardianship, employment, education (earliest age you can legally drop out, get a GED, etc.), emancipation, probate, etc. during the 80s.  I believe most of these laws vary from state to state (perhaps county to county), and there's a little flexibility on where they live.  Ideally in the south; Florida, Alabama, around that area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a bit new to research in general and not quite sure where to start.  I'd like to be a little efficient - I can't read every law-book from every county the 80s on social services and child welfare and how much leeway a judge has in deciding what happens to someone in this situation.  I'm having a little trouble deciding which thread to pull first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have something like this, how do you start?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7991" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T19:42:45.007" Title="Where do you start researching something you know nothing about?" Tags="|character-development|research|world-building|historical|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14702" CreationDate="2014-12-23T08:23:40.597" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Unites States it is implausible that a 14 year old &lt;em&gt;legally&lt;/em&gt; lives on her own within society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some expert opinions for Georgia, but it is unlikely that the situation will be different in other states: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-a-mature-14-year-old-live-alone-with-parental--1275608.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-a-mature-14-year-old-live-alone-with-parental--1275608.html&lt;/a&gt; (I searched for &quot;14 year old living alone&quot; in Google, without quotation marks.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a 14 year old to live alone, she would need to do so in secret, because as soon as some neighbor, teacher, or other responsible adult notices, they will call in the police or youth welfare office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, where I would start researching would depend on the area. I would always start with an internet search engine first. Often there is a Wikipedia article, some forum discussion, or news articles related to what I want to know. Often those point me to more in depth sources. This takes a few minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step is news archives, scholarly databases (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt;), and scholarly bibliographies. The next step, if this yields nothing, are introductory text books or expert handbooks of the relevant field. Since I sit and work in a university library, and since I am academically trained to do research, all this takes me no more than an hour or two, at most. I never put more time into it at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I still have nothing, I try to find someone who should know (a lawyer, a phyiscian, a programmer, a baker, etc., or, if those appear unapproachable, a student of law, a baker's apprentice, etc.). Often there are forums where people of a certain profession gather, and you can usually get help there, if you are polite and respectful and explain your purpose. Getting an answer in this way might take a few days (for people to visit their forum and reply to my question, or for me to contact an expert and them making time for me), but it is only time that passes and not time that I actively work on the problem, so I do other things in the meantime and don't lose that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only, if I cannot find anything in this manner, only if the question is important enough for me, and only if I believe an answer exists at all, do I start to study the field on my own. Time for this last step can be indefinite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T09:11:08.153" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T09:11:08.153" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14704" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14708" CreationDate="2014-12-23T14:17:47.590" Score="1" ViewCount="633" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm responsible for documenting a huge ERP - its being changed from an old language to .NET.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm the only one responsible for documenting ( and I'm doing it off-site - the developers' office is an hour's plane journey away).&#xA;I've never worked directly for a software dev company before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So noob questions and lots of them coming ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are just the code changes documented in each sprint in an agile development?&#xA;Is anything else documented? &#xA;The developers seem to think documentation is a waste of time. &#xA;Who is the audience for these docs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8307" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T11:58:24.937" Title="Documenting Agile Sprints" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14702" CreationDate="2014-12-23T19:42:45.007" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not to counter what has already been said by others, but the is a great difference between the letter of the law and the reality of its practice.  A 14-yo can live alone in the United States.  All it takes is a negligent guardian who enjoys collecting benefit checks, but doesn't follow through with any of their custodial duties to the child.  Furthermore, a child might acquire considerable cash assets during the passing of their parents in the form of un-banked &quot;money-in-the-mattress&quot; funds and the benevolence of family friends which would keep them off of the civil radar completely.  The sad truth is that our social services departments are so overworked in some regions of the country that in the absence of a complaint or an application for financial aid, a person could go unnoticed by them for a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, if you change the official ownership of the backwoods home from &quot;her parents&quot; to &quot;unknown&quot;, as in an abandoned property, she could be living there with the same cultural anonymity as a homeless person on the streets of any major city.  All she would need is a source of ongoing income for food and basic supplies which she could earn by discretely doing chores for her neighbors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, with another minor change to your story, separating the parents death and the child's birth by a few years, you could give your characters some early teen years on the street, without the child but also without parental guidance.  Those years could give her the street wisdom and hardening necessary to portray herself as older than she really is.  A 14yo street urchin claiming to be 16 or 17 is much more likely to be believed than a pampered and sheltered child of the same age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your original question concerned research and that is a tricky subject when writing fiction.  As story tellers, we are professional liars, telling tales of events which never occurred.  The biggest question to be applied to any aspect of a telling is not about its factual truth.  It is far more important that a story be believable than that it be true.  So how do you research the lives of single adolescent parents?  You could always find a charity which supports them and volunteer some time.  Or you could climb into your creative side, shed the necessary years of confidence and experience, and imagine what it would be like to be one of them.  Remember that most of the young women who live the life you are interested in, started with no preparation for what they were getting into.  They were just like you were, back some time ago, before you were privileged to walk an easier path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T19:42:45.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="47" CreationDate="2014-12-23T19:44:27.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on all the previous answers, the genre is NOT dead, just overused. I have seen hundreds of zombie novels and novellas and short stories and a few are good but most are boring and stale. The reason they are boring is because the author is writing a very low quality manuscript with many grammar and spelling mistakes. If I had to bet, I would say most aren't even edited. If you use correct grammar and write a good storyline with believable actions(such as those in Deadlocked by A.R. Wise and For Those in Peril on the Sea by Colin Drysdale) you really can't go wrong with a zombie book as there will always be an audience. Just wait until Vampires and Witches die down before you publish it :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11479" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T19:44:27.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14704" CreationDate="2014-12-23T20:14:39.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an agile project with a diversified team, there are two primary purposes for documentation.  Both of them are detrimental to the software development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Benjamin noted, there is documentation targeted at the users (both developer and non-developer level).  These documents will focus on the functionality of the project and the interfaces which it provides to programmers of expansion and interaction with other programs.  Since this project involves the conversion of an existing software to a new code-base, you should be able to find documentation of this type relating to the early version of the system.  Starting with this existing documentation, you can append, adjust and prune the existing content to achieve a new document which thoroughly reflects the functionality and interfaces of the new code-base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to this type of documentation, you may be called on to document the agile programming process.  In this role, you would record the state of the backlog at the beginning of each sprint; then document each programmers progress during the daily scrum meetings.  Reasons behind the reordering of items in the backlog and details about impediments encountered by programmers during the sprint would be the bulk of your content in this kind of documentation, which would be targeted at the funding sponsors, giving them feedback on their return on investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these documentation efforts are actually contrary to the standard practices of agile, as writing documentation before or during development is generally discouraged.  The idea of agile is to write the product that the customer wants, one page at a time, with continual re-evaluation of direction after every page/sprint.  There is no way to write documentation about what the final product will look like as it is growing organically.  Likewise, it is harmful to write documentation about the software development journey, as such documentation ignites the blame game and thus impedes the programming practice of fail-often/fail-fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the documentation specialist should live about a hour's flight from the programmers but should live next door to the testing department.   Only when each sprint closes and the finished code goes to testing, does your opportunity to learn its functionality begin.  And only after that learning is complete, should you finally and hesitantly begin to put some user documentation down on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...as for the documentation for the funding sponsor, they shouldn't need more than their bank statement to make their decisions.  Trying to give non-coders enough insights into the coding process so that they can make intelligent decisions and &quot;manage&quot; coders is exactly the impossible task that agile was designed to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T20:14:39.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14698" CreationDate="2014-12-23T22:04:42.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the creator of the work, you are the owner of the copyright. The publisher will not seek to take ownership of that copyright. Instead, they will basically enter into an agreement with you for certain rights that will give them exclusivity in publishing and/or distributing your work if they become your publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are fortunate enough to be offered a publishing contract, read through it very careful to not only determine what rights you are granting, but also the length of those rights and the conditions under which they can be reverted back to you. All of these factors will have a much greater influence over what you can do with your work in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T22:04:42.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14700" CreationDate="2014-12-24T04:14:08.293" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A concept or an idea cannot be copyrighted, so you wouldn't have to worry about running into any copyright issues unless you use some of the same content. However, there are other ways to protect intellectual property, such as trademarks or patents. You may want to closely examine the other material to ensure that they have not sought out their own protection using one of these types of devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now then, having said all that, you may want to take into consideration the ramifications of being the second to market with a new concept or idea. There are going to be some, perhaps even the publisher of the other book, who may even call you out on that. Without having already filed for protection of your own intellectual property, you may have a pretty hard time convincing anyone in a court of public opinion that you really thought of it first. If you can't find a way to further differentiate your idea, then you may want to reconsider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T04:14:08.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-24T06:45:15.817" Score="3" ViewCount="498" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend and I are writing a book in English in the Electrical Engineering field. At this stage, we need someone to proofread our texts and also to design the layout of the book, so we will need to entrust them with our manuscript. I was wondering, how can we trust that the proofreader and designer of the book will not plagiarize our work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11483" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-13T00:44:56.573" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T00:44:56.573" Title="How can I trust that the proofreader and designer of a book will not plagiarize our work?" Tags="|copyright|book|plagiarism|proofreading|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14712" CreationDate="2014-12-24T11:06:27.733" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Work with reputable proofreaders and designers, who have proven track records with satisfied clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anybody with a reputation to maintain will have no profit from plagiarizing clients' work. First of all, a manuscript on its own isn't worth a whole lot (it takes a lot of work to earn good money off a manuscript), and secondly, they'll stop getting clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T11:06:27.733" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9324" CreationDate="2014-12-24T12:05:55.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some strategies you can try are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contact the publisher and/or author directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While it does not give total sales figures and represents only one retailer (though a large one), the record for each book on Amazon.com includes information on its ranking in sales compared to other books offered by Amazon.&#xA;  In some cases of famous authors, researchers may have already determined this information. Check biographies of the author and bibliographies of works about him or her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Books that identify first editions for the rare/used book trade, such as FIRST PRINTINGS OF AMERICAN AUTHORS (Wilson Quarto PS88 .F57x 1977), may contain this information.&#xA;  For books from 2001 to the current date, approximate sales data may have been gathered by Nielsen Book Scan, a subscription service marketed mostly to publishers and bookstore chains; however, the University of Minnesota does not subscribe to this service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For bestsellers, PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY (Wilson Periodicals Room) includes estimates of total sales in annual bestsellers lists, which are usually printed in March for the previous year; for example, the 2001 lists are in the March 18, 2002 issue. BOWKER ANNUAL: LIBRARY AND BOOK TRADE ALMANAC (Several locations including Wilson Reference Z731 .A47) also includes this data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rarely, you might find an individual news story about the book in PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY that gives such figures, especially if it is an unexpected success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Check the copyright page (usually the reverse of the title page) of the most recent edition of the book you can find to see if it has gone into multiple printings, and if so, how many. While this does not provide real figures (since the size of each printing is rarely specified) you can assume that a title that has gone back to press several times has sold well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lib.umn.edu/faq/108&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;source&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8765" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T12:05:55.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14712" CreationDate="2014-12-24T14:22:50.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to &quot;Work with reputable proofreaders and designers,&quot; as Standback correctly notes, you can also add a non-disclosure agreement to your contract. The language might state that the contents/cover/etc. of the book is to remain strictly confidential until official publication by X publishing house or Y printer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I don't think this is something you need to worry about. Any proofreader or designer who plagiarized clients would be out of business the next day. Nobody is going to work with someone who steals from the client. It's utterly self-defeating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T14:22:50.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14712" CreationDate="2014-12-24T16:06:30.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not clear from your question if you intend to publish your book with an established publisher or in an independent way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In scientific fields, proofreading is typically done, at least partly, by colleagues who know the subject. Here confidentiality is commonly guaranteed by trust. Then there is the publisher's editor. Here confidentiality is guaranteed by the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book design should typically follow the publisher's style, which can depend on the book series. Many scientific publishers distribute style guides and LaTeX classes to their authors. If you want to follow your own design you should probably make an agreement with the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, take into account that the yearly income which can result from selling a scientific book is typically very limited and hiring a professional proofreader and a designer can be onerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10679" LastEditorUserId="10679" LastEditDate="2014-12-24T18:31:01.820" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T18:31:01.820" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14719" CreationDate="2014-12-24T16:43:45.443" Score="2" ViewCount="17425" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories that are told by an &quot;all seeing&quot; narrator are told in the &quot;third person.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories that are told by the main character, based on what s/he sees, are told in the &quot;first person.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose a story is told by a secondary character who is a friend of the main character. Examples are &quot;The Great Gatsby,&quot; told by Nick Carraway, a friend of Jay Gatsby, or &quot;My Friend Flicka,&quot; told by the owner of the horse. What is this persona/perspective called?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2014-12-25T15:57:11.143" LastActivityDate="2018-09-25T19:22:38.920" Title="What is the voice called when the narrator is a secondary character?" Tags="|perspective|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14718" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-24T17:19:39.323" Score="2" ViewCount="934" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend is writing a paper in Chicago style and she is citing multiple interviews. The citations keep switching back and forth between different interviewees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the correct way to cite them? Does she cite every time she quotes one? Use a footnote every time? Only the first time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2490" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T14:58:42.910" Title="What's the proper way to cite multiple interviews across a paper in Chicago Style?" Tags="|citations|chicago-manual-of-style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14717" CreationDate="2014-12-25T02:00:38.393" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're mixing up the terms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the &lt;strong&gt;protagonist&lt;/strong&gt;, and there is the &lt;strong&gt;narrator&lt;/strong&gt;. Narration has &lt;strong&gt;perspective&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The narrator is the voice in which the book is told. If the story is told using &quot;he/she/they&quot; and not &quot;I,&quot; it's third-person. This narrative voice (perspective) can see into everyone's thoughts (omniscient) or only one person's thoughts (limited). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the narrator is using &quot;I&quot; and the story is only about what the &quot;I&quot; narrator sees, knows, and experiences, that's first-person. The story is told from one person's perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist is the main character of the book. A book may have multiple protagonists (see &lt;em&gt;A Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt;), primary and secondary protagonists (the Harry Potter series), or one protagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have to be the narrator. The narrator does not have to be the protagonist. You can have a first-person narrative, like &lt;em&gt;The Great Gatsby&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Song of Achilles,&lt;/em&gt; where the person who is telling the story isn't the most important person in the story. It's still a first-person narrative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T02:00:38.393" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14720" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-25T04:52:55.517" Score="3" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading a book and I’m curious about the referencing style that is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you go to the reference page it is sorted by chapters and then it lists then the references for each particular chapter and the page where the reference can be found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter Eight&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[p. 110] For H.L. Mencken's assessment of the New Testament, see his Treatise on the Gods (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997) p. 179.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it would continue citing all references for chapter eight. Then it would say “Chapter 9” and list all references for chapter nine and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just really like that referencing style. It makes everything really easy to find since it lists both the chapter and page where the references is found. So does anyone know what referencing style this is? I’m not familiar with it. Is it perhaps a modified version of something, and would I be able to use it in my own writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11488" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T22:33:53.550" Title="What referencing style is this?" Tags="|style|formatting|structure|book|citations|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="616" CreationDate="2014-12-25T23:57:20.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A set-piece is a big scene the reader can see coming and look forward to in fear or hope, which contain small moments of climax and temporary resolution. Short-to-long novels typically have 6-to-12 set-pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes on set-pieces (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansen_Dibell&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ansen Dibell&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0898799465&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Plot: Elements of Fiction Writing&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must be a natural outcome and not staged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As scenes build on scenes, set-pieces build on set-pieces - each should be set in motion by what happened in the previous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can be bad (i.e. where protagonist is defeated).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should reveal a central truth of the story (concealed at the beginning and demonstrated in the final crisis).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let the readers know the set-piece is coming.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After the set-piece, the story must change and characters must be affected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arise out of what happened, and affects what will follow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must be emotional.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should be mentioned before it happens and indicated through character words or actions why it is climactic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11493" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2014-12-27T07:06:06.340" LastActivityDate="2014-12-27T07:06:06.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10595" CreationDate="2014-12-26T02:44:26.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A poem is made of words, whether spoken or written. Words are made of sounds that are conventionally accepted by two or more people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while sound/s articulated and conventionally accepted by two or more people can be considered words... whether they are considered poems depends on both the creator and the recipient, speaker and listener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my example poem(?) for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11494" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2014-12-27T06:46:57.903" LastActivityDate="2014-12-27T06:46:57.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12777" CreationDate="2014-12-27T00:28:09.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something you may want to consider is participating in different writer's forums or online groups where writers discuss story ideas and other topics. One that I tend to frequent is the Writer's Café at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kboards.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Boards&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find a group or community where you feel comfortable, you can choose to post a message soliciting feedback or interest from other writers while providing some basic information on your book idea. Be prepared to share at the very least the genre, your anticipated story length, timelines for completion, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will also be helpful if you have an idea of what you have in mind for the working relationship before you go into this. For example, will you be writing the portion of the story that details the protagonist's perspective while the other person writes from the antagonist's perspective? Are you planning to write the bulk of the book yourself and looking for someone to do the rewriting and revisions? Will you collaborate using online tools like Google Docs, or will you send a Word document back and forth, or will you each write your parts independently and then merge them later? Give it some thought and make sure you have a game plan on how you want to approach this project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you need to break this down like you would a technology project. Identify your goals and objectives, develop a project timeline, and assign roles and responsibilities!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2014-12-27T00:28:09.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14233" CreationDate="2014-12-27T20:57:46.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you were talking about publishing &lt;em&gt;stories&lt;/em&gt; - and not affidavit accounts that could be used against you in court. (And if there are real people detailed in these stories, their names should be changed with respect to their personal privacy regardless of whether you were guilty of a crime or not). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, as long as you are publishing stories, there shouldn't be a problem and the boundary between fiction and true auto-biographical accounts has always been very indefinite, so I wouldn't say you are even responsible to point out that they are fiction preemptively (i.e. the literary device of presenting a work of fiction as a true account by said narrator can be found in many works; or vice versa, such that you can always do one of those, I found obtained this manuscript (insert in such and such a way) and find them morally reprehensible and repulsive but choose to make them public (insert such and such reason for the common good) etc.  - which was a common frame for publishing certain autobiographic content that was considered highly immoral in certain culturally prohibitive time-periods). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Responding to the comments you received: There are no jurisdictions (at least in the US) where publishing stories of illegal acts is in itself illegal - but it may be different in other countries (consult your local laws) . This is a first amendment right in the US.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You may also find this of interest: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/nj-supreme-court-strikes-conviction-based-rap-lyrics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/nj-supreme-court-strikes-conviction-based-rap-lyrics/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I will note (though this shouldn't apply to you), that people have been sentenced for inciting people to commit illegal acts (in spite of the first amendment) - usually this would require very direct promotion and it is a burden on the persecution to prove that your artistic expression did in fact incite people to commit illegal acts (i.e. no one has ever actually been sentenced for rap-lyrics about shooting cops). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11411" LastEditorUserId="11411" LastEditDate="2014-12-27T21:21:18.457" LastActivityDate="2014-12-27T21:21:18.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14729" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-28T07:51:13.557" Score="3" ViewCount="936" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a book on English language. Which is bilingual book. So I would need some examples from dictionary. So can I use these examples in my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mind mentioning which dictionary example is from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your advice ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11509" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-06-29T00:07:15.090" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T05:31:30.240" Title="Using dictionary examples in the book - is it fair use?" Tags="|editing|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14731" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-28T18:02:52.427" Score="5" ViewCount="26819" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, on a school test, I was given a poem comprehension. One of the questions was :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the figure of speech in &quot;...the trees start whispering among themselves? &#xA;  (A) Metaphor&#xA;  (B) Simile&#xA;  (C) Personification&#xA;  (D) Onomotopoeia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ruled out Onomotopoeia and Simile but was confused between the other two. I told my teacher that it is Metaphor as the rustling of trees is indirectly compared to whispering but she said that it is Personification as trees are given a human quality.  What should it be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8669" LastEditorUserId="40227" LastEditDate="2019-08-04T07:36:49.617" LastActivityDate="2023-11-28T04:55:05.800" Title="Metaphor or Personification" Tags="|poetry|metaphor|figures-of-speech|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14731" CreationDate="2014-12-28T19:11:24.700" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is personification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simile and metaphor are both comparing X to Y, but in different ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;simile&lt;/em&gt; always uses &quot;like&quot; or &quot;as&quot;: &quot;The rustling of the branches was like trees whispering to each other.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;metaphor&lt;/em&gt; uses symbolism. It's something which can't be literal: &quot;Their hissing gossip was the rustle of tree branches: indistinct, indecipherable, far above my head.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Personification&lt;/em&gt; (sometimes known as &lt;em&gt;anthropomorphism&lt;/em&gt;) is ascribing human actions and/or motivations to non-human actors or objects: &quot;The trees whispered.&quot; (Trees have no mouths or ears, so they can't whisper.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Onomatopoeia&lt;/em&gt; is when a word sounds like the sound it's describing: &lt;em&gt;bark, boing, whoosh, hiss.&lt;/em&gt; [edited to fix ridiculous error]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-12-29T11:38:19.187" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T11:38:19.187" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14733" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-28T20:37:12.590" Score="1" ViewCount="1733" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to start a novel, but it would include Fantasy species such as Dwarves and Elves, etc. I got this idea after reading several of Tolkien's novels. If I write this novel it would have completely different characters, plot, and settings. But the basic concept of the 'time period' and the way they live (Swords, daggers, bow and arrows for weapons, no modern technology included, etc.) would remain the same. Is this considered a copyright infringement? Would it be acceptable if Tolkien was credited for it? Is there even a possibility of publishing a novel that gives credit for ideas to another author? Actually laws and facts to back up answers would be great. All help is appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11513" LastEditorUserId="11513" LastEditDate="2014-12-28T21:02:16.110" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T08:01:18.337" Title="Using species from another novel, in my novel, copyright infringment?" Tags="|copyright|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14733" CreationDate="2014-12-28T23:16:10.693" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Elves and dwarves are &lt;em&gt;all over&lt;/em&gt; fantasy fiction.  Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/list/tag/elves&quot;&gt;one compilation found by Googling &quot;fantasy novels with elves&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.  They are generic mythological creatures.  If anything these tropes are overused; Tolkien used them well so his works are the benchmarks against which others are often measured, but he didn't invent them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question in your title is a little different.  If another author actually &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; invent a species, you would be well-advised to avoid copying it directly.  The Tolkien estate successfully kept the Dungeons and Dragons game from using hobbits; that's why the short-human race there is called &quot;halflings&quot;.  If you want to use hobbits, kzin, Minbari, or any other clear inventions of specific authors, you should either seek permission (probably hard) or genericize them.  Even if you think you could ultimately win a copyright-infringement suit, you're still risking having to spend the time and money defending against it.  Is it really worth it?  Especially when there's a publisher or studio backing the other party, not just an author acting on his own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-12-28T23:16:10.693" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14740" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14760" CreationDate="2014-12-29T15:03:34.040" Score="2" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Sound of Music&quot; comes to mind. The Captain and Maria von Trapp were real people, although names and ages of the seven children were fictionalized in the movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One factor is that the von Trapps were public figures (they actually escaped from Austria so that &lt;a href=&quot;https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/8561/did-the-germans-lose-the-u-boat-war-in-world-war-ii-because-of-a-shortage-of-qua&quot;&gt;Captain von Trapp,&lt;/a&gt; arguably the best Austrian submarine commander in World War I would not have to serve in the Nazi Kriegsmarine). And Maria published a family biography of &quot;The von Trapp Family singers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given these facts, what kind of legal clearances/waivers did &quot;Hollywood&quot; have to get from the von Trapp family in order to produce &quot;The Sound of Music&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T17:15:32.543" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T18:36:31.007" Title="What kinds of legal clearances do you need to produce &quot;fiction&quot; that's &quot;based on a true story?&quot;" Tags="|fiction|legal|historical|realism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5808" CreationDate="2014-12-29T18:26:27.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lawyer and my answer is based on the writing workshops I attended years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At workshop, I was told that celebrities in your story ought to be &quot;minor characters&quot; so that the reader doesn't lose focus on your main characters. For instance, you might your main character see a (celebrity) Jane Doe concert with their boyfriend/girlfriend, and then react to something that she might have said or done at such a concert (as long as it is not clearly out of character). Here, the connection with the celebrity is &quot;incidental,&quot; and it's understood that such a public figure would say or do things that impact the lives of millions of people, (hopefully) in a positive way. As long as these interactions are &quot;random,&quot; your characters can go about their business (and Jane can go about hers) without being &quot;the worse off for the wear.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem may arise if you allege that your fictitious character dated Jane, or was her BFF. Then the statements in your novel could potentially impact Jane's life, and if that's the case, it could be actionable, depending on the circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T18:26:27.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14744" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-30T04:18:46.883" Score="3" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Advertising Undergrad and wish to become a copywriter. My writing skills are above average but I can't seem to regularly create the same quality of writings everyday. What should I do to consistently write and create good content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11523" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-07-25T13:06:02.073" LastActivityDate="2016-03-20T19:08:16.403" Title="How does one become lucid in Copywriting?" Tags="|copywriting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14745" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-30T04:39:15.233" Score="2" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just want to purchase ~200 copies of my anthology containing short stories and sell them to family and friends by myself in order to donate to charity. I don't need an agent. I can format by myself and all content has been edited. I just want copies of my work bound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11525" LastActivityDate="2015-01-02T21:17:30.463" Title="What Self Publishing Company should I contact?" Tags="|creative-writing|publishing|self-publishing|book|printing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14747" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14757" CreationDate="2014-12-30T11:11:30.397" Score="7" ViewCount="2544" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to publish an ebook in open-source format on for example GitHub, and I am stuck with what license should be used for this type of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like many open-source licenses available are for software, while there are very few for works of other kinds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found at least three licenses that seem to be applicable on ebooks (open source):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creative Commons (&lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/&quot;&gt;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Artistic 2.0 &lt;a href=&quot;http://opensource.org/licenses/Artistic-2.0&quot;&gt;http://opensource.org/licenses/Artistic-2.0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No license &lt;a href=&quot;http://choosealicense.com/licenses/no-license/&quot;&gt;http://choosealicense.com/licenses/no-license/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is if books need to have a license at all, or if it's enough to have a sentence stating &quot;Copyright [year] [author]&quot;. What rights do I have when choosing &quot;No license&quot; approach and is there a better license that is suited for open-source ebooks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11530" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T00:34:46.950" Title="Choosing a license for an open-source book" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14748" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-30T15:34:43.670" Score="3" ViewCount="995" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a hypertext document, when the title of a short work (which is enclosed in quotation marks) is a link should the quotation marks be included as part of the link text? Do common style guides generally concur on how this should be handled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;em&gt;seems&lt;/em&gt; that such quotation marks should be included as part of the link text, since italics (and until CSS3 underscore) are naturally included as part of the text and ::before and ::after CSS content&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; is considered by default as part of the element's text (though such content can be independently styled). An argument could also be made that a link references the object itself and not the title text designating the object, and so HTML should use &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;cite&amp;gt;Title&amp;lt;/cite&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, such decorations are not part of the text proper and so might reasonably be treated as external content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very brief search did not find any examples of short titles used as links. One common use, at least for linking to PDF documents, is to include a separate link text (e.g., 'For more detailed coverage of these issues see &quot;Title Decorations in Hypertext Documents&quot; (PDF)'). In fact, in online publication lists, enclosing paper titles in quotation marks seems not to be universal practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more general question would be whether such decorations should be considered part of the element's content with respect to styling. (E.g., if &amp;lt;q&amp;gt; styling used some form of quotation mark enclosure &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; foreground color, should the quotation marks use the foreground color styling of the quoted text.) For CSS, the &lt;strong&gt;default&lt;/strong&gt; styling includes ::before and ::after content as part of the element's content, hinting that the World Wide Web Consortium at least considers such the common use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; which could be used to insert such decorations using rules like: &lt;code&gt;cite[class~=&quot;short_work&quot;]::before {content: '&quot;'} cite[class~=&quot;short_work&quot;]::after {content: '&quot;'}&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T17:31:06.203" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T17:31:06.203" Title="Should quotation marks for titles of short works be included as part of link text?" Tags="|style|citations|punctuation|titles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14745" CreationDate="2014-12-30T16:34:34.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need a publishing house for that (and anyway your intended distribution is too low for such companies to be interested).  You just want to self-publish your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I self-published a book (making, ultimately, about 300 copies), I went to a commercial duplication place that could do production and binding.  I was producing a manual, so 8.5x11 photocopied pages with a comb binding were fine for my needs and I used somebody like Staples or Office Depot.  If I instead wanted printing and bookbinding I'd probably still start there and ask for a referral if they can't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also online options such as Lulu and Cafe Press.  You upload a formatted, edited copy of your work, choose what kind of paper, binding, etc you want, and can then order printed books.  These options tend to be pretty expensive, as they're also selling to people who want 5 or 10 copies, but their options and prices are oft-changing so it's worth checking the currently-available services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T16:34:34.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3670" CreationDate="2014-12-30T17:46:26.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's one that I came up with for like a horror writing piece (keep in mind this is straight from my writing piece so you would have to form it and mold it to fit your story)&#xA; &quot;A shrieking, unnatural sound repeated like a strong pulse in my left ear, sending my nerve ends to send a jolt of energy running through my body as if.....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11532" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T17:46:26.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14751" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-30T20:48:45.360" Score="3" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;In writing a bio in a technical context, like an author blurb in a publication, should I use acronyms or spell them out?  Always?  Depending on the context?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Degrees: BS, MS, PhD, MCC&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Certifications: PMP (Project Management Professional), SM (Scrum Master), ITIL&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical terms: DBA, CRM, SLDC&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11533" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-04T21:22:39.053" LastActivityDate="2018-03-04T21:22:39.053" Title="Is it correct to use acronyms in a bio or should I omit it?" Tags="|style|terminology|biography|acronyms|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5808" CreationDate="2014-12-31T02:14:08.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL. Courts have ruled that you can say a lot of things about &quot;public figures&quot; and they will not have grounds to sue. That said, if a person with a lot of money found what you said about him offensive, he could still sue you. He might not win, but you would have to hire a lawyer to defend yourself, take time off work to go to court, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have noted, I would definitely avoid saying that a real person did something illegal or scandalous unless you want to go to court. If your story has a passing reference to the hero attending a concert by some famous singer or watching a politician give a political speech on television, no big deal. But if you say the politician accepted a bribe from him or he sold cocaine to the singer, I think you're just asking for trouble. If the reference to a celebrity is long, it could still be okay as long as it is innocuous. Like if, say, your hero is in the army, and you say that the president gave him a medal, and you relate some conversation between him and the president where they discuss how he earned the medal without presenting the president in a bad light, I doubt that would get you in trouble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T02:14:08.433" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14748" CreationDate="2014-12-31T12:22:08.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would put the quotes in the link, because the quotes are around the title of the article and are therefore part of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CSS formatting is a question better asked on Graphic Design SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T12:22:08.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14748" CreationDate="2014-12-31T17:48:28.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend keeping quotation marks outside of the link, unless they're part of the title of the work. So you'd have this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was reading the story &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flowers for Algernon&lt;/a&gt;&quot; when the doorbell rang. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was paging through the tale &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;&amp;#8212;All You Zombies&amp;#8212;&quot;&lt;/a&gt; when my arm was bitten off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The latter story's title includes quotation marks.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, pick a method and stick with it within a work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Style guide rulings:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Yahoo Style Guide doesn't address this issue directly, but it specifies that punctuation shouldn't be included in a link. Examples from p.127, July 2010: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welcome to Me-Yow! &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Send us feedback&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A picture of Bigfoot&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where are &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my orders&lt;/a&gt;? Where is &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my shopping cart&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, the Chicago Manual of Style addresses punctuation in general but not quotation marks specifically. From CMOS 14.11, 16th edition: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other punctuation marks that follow a URL or other such identifier will readily be perceived as as belonging to the surrounding text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T17:48:28.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14755" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-01T06:31:28.043" Score="0" ViewCount="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;As part of my self-education in my journey to become a writer / author - I would like to understand in detail - the different pov's - with good and numerous examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you suggest a book - which I can buy and read - to learn these approaches better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks &amp;amp; regards..&#xA;Anil&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11542" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2015-01-01T11:00:49.293" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T02:48:31.477" Title="Any Guide Book - to understand - 1st Person / 2nd Person / All Knowing" Tags="|resources|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14756" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-01T16:51:08.590" Score="1" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that good writers create a passage by weaving different concepts, opinions and by varying the writing style and tone. As much as I can identify that sort of writing, I have a very hard time actually creating it myself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written a short piece on 'independent learning'. I would like to seek help in understanding how I could have used the techniques of master writers to make the passage more engaging - using all the techniques I mentioned above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When people hear the phrase 'independent learning', they often think&#xA;  of a person sitting alone in his room - or the library - reading&#xA;  books, watching lecture videos, practicing exercises and learning in&#xA;  isolation from the world. But this is not it - you could perhaps call&#xA;  it isolated learning - but it's not the same as independent learning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Independent learning does not mean learning alone,  it means taking&#xA;  charge of your learning and learning without the barriers that an&#xA;  institution creates to define your pathway. When you learn&#xA;  independently, you define what you need to learn, how you want to&#xA;  learn it, at what pace you want to learn, and who you want to learn it&#xA;  with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have added three passages below, which I feel weave together variety very well. I am not sure how much I can quote verbatim without stepping on someone else's territory; I am hoping what I have quoted below should not be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you notice, these articles do not employ &lt;em&gt;flowery language&lt;/em&gt;, or too many tangents, or multiple voices. Their primary purpose is to convey information and are not written simply to entertain (not that there is anything wrong in &lt;em&gt;just entertaining&lt;/em&gt;). I have chosen these passages based on the kind of writing I may do in the future (if I ever make it past the barrier where I am stuck right now). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I compare these passages to what I have written, I know intuitively that my writing is flat and boring. I can spot good writing, but I just cannot take that same knowledge to my own work to make it more engaging. It is as if I freeze and become motionless. I tried getting into the mind of these writers - and it feels as if these writers must have a wide range of options in their minds to develop a particular idea, and they are able to pick and choose the best of the lot. In my case it's more like a horse with blinders who can only see the road ahead, which clearly is not the best one. Not sure if that makes sense, but it does feel that way to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming back to the passages, this one's from Maria Popova's blog post - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/22/daniel-goleman-focus-10000-hours-myth/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Debunking the Myth of the 10,000-Hours Rule&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The question of what it takes to excel — to reach genius-level acumen&#xA;  at a chosen endeavor — has occupied psychologists for decades and&#xA;  philosophers for centuries. Groundbreaking research has pointed to&#xA;  “grit” as a better predictor of success than IQ, while psychologists&#xA;  have admonished against the dangers of slipping into autopilot in the&#xA;  quest for skill improvement. In recent years, one of the most&#xA;  persistent pop-psychology claims has been the myth of the “10,000-hour&#xA;  rule” — the idea that this is the amount of time one must invest in&#xA;  practice in order to reach meaningful success in any field. But in&#xA;  Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence (public library), celebrated&#xA;  psychologist and journalist Daniel Goleman, best-known for his&#xA;  influential 1995 book Emotional Intelligence, debunks the 10,000-hour&#xA;  mythology to reveal the more complex truth beneath the popular rule of&#xA;  thumb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The passage below is from an HBR article on &lt;a href=&quot;https://hbr.org/2014/12/how-to-write-a-resume-that-stands-out&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;how to write a resume that stands out&lt;/a&gt; (you will locate it if you scroll down to the part which says Case study #2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several months into her previous job, Claire Smith* realized that she&#xA;  needed a change. “The job, the industry, and the institution were not&#xA;  the right fit for me. It just wasn’t where I wanted to be in my&#xA;  career,” she explains. She started to look at job descriptions, honed&#xA;  in on positions or organizations that were interesting to her, then&#xA;  decided to work with a professional resume writer. “I tried to do a&#xA;  little changing and reshaping on my own at first but it didn’t feel&#xA;  all that different from where I began,” she says. Working with someone&#xA;  else helped her see that the resume was not about explaining what&#xA;  she’d done in her career but why she was the best person for a&#xA;  particular job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one's from an article - &lt;a href=&quot;http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/stumbling_toward_gratitude&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stumbling upon Gratitude&lt;/a&gt; - from U Berkeley's Greater Good website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a confession: when I go to a bookstore, I like hanging out in&#xA;  the self-help section. I don’t know if it’s because I think I’ll find&#xA;  a book that will solve all my problems, or if seeing all the books on&#xA;  problems I don’t have makes me feel better about myself. But whatever&#xA;  it is, I keep going back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On recent visits, I’ve noticed a trend: The market has been glutted by&#xA;  books promising the secrets to happiness. That might not seem new&#xA;  (isn’t happiness the point of the entire section?), but these aren’t&#xA;  touchy-feely self-help titles—they’re books by scientific researchers,&#xA;  who claim to offer prescriptions based on rigorous empirical research.&#xA;  It’s all part of the “positive psychology” movement that has spilled&#xA;  out of academic journals and into best-selling books, popular magazine&#xA;  articles, and even school curricula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11546" LastEditorUserId="11546" LastEditDate="2015-01-02T17:04:35.937" LastActivityDate="2015-01-02T17:04:35.937" Title="How can I weave variety in this passage?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14747" CreationDate="2015-01-01T18:03:32.053" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you need to separate your thinking and focus on this from the perspective of a writer and not a software developer. Licenses as you have identified them here do not really apply to books or e-books the same way that they do to software. If you look at the following examples and then compare them to a Copyright, I think you'll see that all you really need is a Copyright notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Creative Commons&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A user may copy and distribute your work as long as they give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They cannot use your book for any commercial purpose. If they remix, transform, or build upon the material in your book, they cannot distribute the modified material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Artistic License 2.0&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Anyone is permitted to copy and distribute complete copies of your book, but changing it is not allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No License&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You retain all rights and do not allow any distribution or reproduction of your book, and no derivative works can be generated from your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Copyright&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A user may copy and distribute portions of your work as long as they give appropriate credit and indicate if changes were made. They cannot use your book for any commercial purpose. You retain all rights and do not allow any distribution or reproduction of your book, and no derivative works can be generated from your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common thread among all of these is that nobody is allowed to make changes on your original work and then distribute it. If all you really want to do is give everyone free access to your work, then all you need to do is issue it with a Copyright notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-01-01T18:03:32.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14740" CreationDate="2015-01-01T22:15:30.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately it comes down to the type of story that you are writing and how you go about writing it. For example, if you are writing a book based on a historical event, you can usually get by with just classifying it as a historical novel or historical fiction based on real events. Most readers will immediately recognize what this means and will not hold you accountable for a great deal of historical accuracy. The same could be said for stories based on individuals who were/are well know historical figures. By indicating that your story is historical fiction based on a specific individual, then the author is often granted a considerable amount of flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor to take into consideration is the nature of the original story. If it is a pretty well known or well documented event (even if it's just locally), then you can generally get by with just stating that your story is based on actual events. The degree to which you can get away with that will depend on the people that you use in your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story focuses on a general event without detailing any specific individuals, then it's probably pretty fair game. However, if you are writing in detail about any specific individuals, then you will want to consider how those individuals will be portrayed in your story. If you will be painting them in a positive light, they probably won't mind, but if you are going to be portraying them in a negative light, then they may have some reservations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, take into consideration how you will be promoting the finished work. If you are going to be using an individual's name or likeness as part of your promotional materials (i.e. - &quot;Based on the true life events of Joe Somebody.&quot;), then you will definitely need to obtain permission for that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-01-01T22:15:30.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14761" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-01T22:58:25.690" Score="4" ViewCount="2274" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the final chapter of &quot;&lt;em&gt;The Legend of the Sword of the Day and the Sword of the Night&lt;/em&gt;&quot; was translated to English I kept hearing on the chatroom where it was posted that we had best read it now before the author asked the translation to be taken down off the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Author also made &lt;a href=&quot;http://nanofate.us/sword?page=10#comment-38955&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks Crazyla for your work and for finishing the translation, I know it was not easy (the long chapters and some of the words used in it). &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Hehe, I would had posted the epilogue one or two days after the final chapter (as I did with the original in Spanish), it was funny (as a writer) to see peoples reactions to that end ;)&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And, as Crazyla said, read and enjoy it while is up, I don´t know when I going to ask to take it down, but my publisher is actually studying the possibility of publication, so the sign of a publishing contract is not that far away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now from my understanding it's set in the Nanohaverse and uses the same characters while adding new ones so it's not a entirely different story with coincidental characters going by the same names, however I have always been told that Fanfiction could never be published unless the original creators adopted it which to my knowledge the author hasn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how does one get Fanfiction &quot;Published&quot;, does the original creators need to be contacted to get permission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T21:55:08.587" LastActivityDate="2019-02-17T19:13:25.257" Title="How does one get Fanfiction &quot;Published&quot;?" Tags="|publishing|translation|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14761" CreationDate="2015-01-01T23:20:09.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We aren't lawyers, and I don't think there's a single hard and fast rule for this. Rights can vary depending on geography, time, and author preference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are works which are now in the public domain which anyone can&#xA;adapt, so, for example, any Sherlock Holmes story which uses elements&#xA;which Conan Doyle wrote before 1923 can be legitimately published or&#xA;broadcast. (Yes, the BBC &lt;em&gt;Sherlock&lt;/em&gt; is technically fanfic).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some authors invite you to play in their universes (Mercedes Lackey&#xA;oversees anthologies of short stories written about her worlds and&#xA;characters) and some don't want you even to assemble an encyclopedia&#xA;of what's been printed if that encyclopedia is for sale (JK Rowling).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Parody may be acceptable to the author/estate (&lt;em&gt;Bored of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;)&#xA;or not (&lt;em&gt;The Wind Done Gone&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amazon set up a deal with some writers and TV shows which gave people&#xA;permission to sell fanfic &lt;em&gt;in specific universes&lt;/em&gt; as Kindle books.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, the only way this writer can try for publication is to talk to the author of the original 'verse and try to work out permission. And there's no guarantee the fanfic writer will get it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-01-01T23:20:09.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14763" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-01T23:38:20.593" Score="2" ViewCount="685" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am struggling to organize small to medium size chunks of writing into coherent trains of thought. I will first describe my problem and then describe what kind of solution I'm looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MY PROBLEM: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose I want to express an idea. If I can express my idea in a short paragraph or string of paragraphs (say 3000-4000 words), my writing is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But suppose I have many ideas to express. Let's say I have 15 to 20 pages single-spaced worth and they are on related but separate topics. Now my organization starts to deteriorate. I lose the confidence and creativity that I have when I work with smaller quantities of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) I have trouble limiting what I am talking about. I never know where to draw the line between what I have to teach and what I should assume the reader knows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) I rely on logic to give my ideas organization and, if there aren't definite logical relations between ideas, I don't know how to structure my writing. Just simply writing without thinking usually creates mess. I'll still have sentences that flow and structure within paragraphs, but overall between paragraphs becomes a mess&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) A resource that can help me learn to take many ideas (ie sequences of paragraphs) and organize them in a clear way so that the work as a whole feels organized &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) a resource that can help me within chapters create fluid transitions between explanations and arguments on different subtopics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11549" LastEditorUserId="11549" LastEditDate="2015-01-02T05:04:26.623" LastActivityDate="2015-01-03T23:07:57.290" Title="How to build a train of thought across multiple paragraphs and pages?" Tags="|academic-writing|organization|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14761" CreationDate="2015-01-02T00:15:43.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the original work is still protected by an existing copyright, then the only way any form of fan fiction could be published would be with the permission of the original author or copyright owner. The reason for this is that fan fiction by its very nature is considered a derivative of the original, and a copyright protects the owner against any derivative works being created. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some authors who willingly accept the existence of fan fiction web sites where people can contribute their own stories told in the same setting or with the same characters, but even those authors would draw the line at having those stories &quot;published&quot; in the form of a book or an e-book. There are also certain fan fiction sites that exist without the knowledge or approval of the original author, and once they are discovered, they are often shut down. Quite simply, no author wants to end up competing with themselves!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Lauren pointed out in her response, there are certain exceptions or situations where writing fan fiction would be considered perfectly acceptable (public domain, Kindle Worlds). The responsibility lies with the author of the new content to ensure that their works don't violate any existing copyrights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2015-01-02T00:28:26.833" LastActivityDate="2015-01-02T00:28:26.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14766" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-02T03:25:59.737" Score="7" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm writing a new edition of an old textbook, and I need some way of keeping track of what needs to be done, and what I have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could use paper - but I tend to lose that. Or even a plain text file, but that would get confusing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any software which is helpful for something like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, I'm using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latex-project.org/&quot;&gt;LaTeX&lt;/a&gt; under Linux - so any software I use will have to be either cloud-based, or linux-based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11553" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-03-02T16:11:46.607" LastActivityDate="2018-03-02T17:19:27.187" Title="Software for keeping track of book edits?" Tags="|technical-writing|editing|software|organization|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14766" CreationDate="2015-01-02T14:24:03.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use several methods depending on the situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when a client reviews my work, I supply them with a PDF and ask them to use the Acrobat commenting tools to insert the comments and changes. Then I can go through the list and add checkmarks to the comments I've processed. Acrobat can filter these, giving me a list of comments I haven't done yet. You can also combine the comments from different people in a single PDF. I'm not familiar with PDF options in Linux, but a brief search found at least one Linux PDF reader that can handle commenting: Okular.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if this is not available or the comments are more general, I use a text file. One comment per paragraph, and I'll postfix the comments with '-ok' when I've processed a comment. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A revision control system can help you track differences (by allowing you to compare before and after versions of the book), but AFAIK it's not an easy way of maintaining a comments list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastEditorUserId="6022" LastEditDate="2015-01-04T12:01:50.130" LastActivityDate="2015-01-04T12:01:50.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14756" CreationDate="2015-01-02T14:46:19.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have identified good writers who can &quot;create a passage by weaving different concepts, opinions and by varying the writing style and tone&quot; then I think you need to go back and take a more critical look at what they've done. If you can't identify any, I'd suggest you find some. Good writing starts with good reading—lots of it. Read generally at first, then reread analytically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that what engages readers first is voice: the sense that someone is talking directly to them. You have to be a storyteller, even if the story you're telling consists of a lot of dry facts. &lt;em&gt;Especially&lt;/em&gt; then. Do anything you can to bring the material to the reader. Relate specific scenes, not general concepts. Don't just grind out a lot of information. You can't bore people into seeing your point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take your first sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When people hear the phrase 'independent learning', they often think of a person sitting alone in his room - or the library - reading books, watching lecture videos, practicing exercises and learning in isolation from the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could you make that more engaging? For one thing, you could try bringing the reader directly into it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You're alone in your room, reading a book. Or you're in the library, watching a lecture video. Or you're locked away somewhere practicing exercises. You're isolated, removed from distractions, but is that enough for real learning to take place? Does isolation equal independence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addressing the reader is just one strategy available. Creating a proxy for the reader is another:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sharon was alone in her room, reading a book. Michael was in the library, watching a lecture video. . . . [etc.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many strategies that accomplish the same goal. Read a lot of good writers and at first try to copy their techniques, just for practice. Do this enough and eventually your own style will emerge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2015-01-02T14:46:19.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14745" CreationDate="2015-01-02T21:17:30.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think CreateSpace is a good candidate for this. The cost per copy is better than photocopying, and it will be nice perfect bound paperbacks. This route will also allow you, if you choose, to make the book available for sale online through Amazon and other outlets, with you getting the net proceeds to donate as you would personal sales. There are no setup fees, you just pay the cost per book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9935" LastActivityDate="2015-01-02T21:17:30.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14763" CreationDate="2015-01-02T22:43:34.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started writing various bits of fiction and non-fiction a while ago and really struggled to stick to some kind of planned structure. After doing some research on plotting etc, I couldn't find anything suitable for me so I decided to build a Word Add-In (in VBA) to provide background notes on the key structural sections such as chapters, zones and scenes. These sections are nested on the popup form so one can instantly see where you are in the plot; read and update the background notes on the arc; list who is mentioned in each scene and quickly navigate to all the places they appear (in colour). It does lots of other clever things that would otherwise seriously slow down my train of thought. All the data is hidden from view in the document's internal storage space. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of finding where any particular index card or sticky note fits into the working document would give me nightmares. I have just started using the Add-In in earnest and I cannot envisage ever needing a manual system. Above all, in trying to answer your question, I can now create all the scaffolding without having to type anything into the blank document. I play around with Zones and insert and shuffle the Scenes, adding status flags and notes as I go. Then I simply navigate to a scene and start writing; much easier but less fun than programming the Add-In!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11561" LastActivityDate="2015-01-02T22:43:34.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14773" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14774" CreationDate="2015-01-03T05:26:55.917" Score="1" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I happened by this essay a couple of years ago, now. I've been trying to find things written in a similar &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt; since. However, I'm not terribly familiar with writing analysis, terminology, categorizing, et cetera. So I haven't really been able to to describe the attributes that I like about the essay well enough to find similar writings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, clearly this is non-fiction. That's not what I'm asking. Also, it's clear to me that the subject of the essay is primarily epistemology. What I mean by style is more like cadence, I guess, seemingly unusual use of many comas for expressing nested thoughts, tone, maybe, and how he talks to the reader. I'm also not entirely sure if it would be considered academic writing. Is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full text: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fixation of Belief&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11564" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-01-03T09:11:14.347" LastActivityDate="2015-01-03T09:14:49.073" Title="What &quot;kind&quot; of writing is The Fixation of Belief essay by Charles Sanders Pierce?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14773" CreationDate="2015-01-03T09:06:31.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As.the title of the original publishing journal, &lt;em&gt;Popular Science Monthly&lt;/em&gt; [1], shows &quot;The Fixation of Knowledge&quot; is an article &quot;interpreting science for a broad audience&quot;. That is, it is popular science [2], in this case philosophy, or to be more precise, pragmatism [3].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are countless pop science journals and monographs in all disciplines. You should be easily able to find more than you can ever read in any library or bookstore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writing style is that of the nineteenth century. If you read science from around that time it will be written in a similar ductus [4].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Science&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_science&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;[4] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ductus_(linguistics)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ductus_(linguistics)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-01-03T09:14:49.073" LastActivityDate="2015-01-03T09:14:49.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14776" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14777" CreationDate="2015-01-03T16:18:05.397" Score="0" ViewCount="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it's clear to me. But other times I get kind of confused. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After returning the materials back to their shelves, I turned—as were&#xA;the others—the chair upside down on the table and followed the girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After returning the materials back to their shelves, I turned the chair—as were&#xA;the others—upside down on the table and followed the girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;As were the others&lt;/em&gt; refers to the other chairs. They're already stacked on the other tables.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases like this, I'm not very sure where to place the parenthetical em dash phrase. Is there any technique or tip I can use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T18:21:50.693" Title="How to tell where to place a parenthetical em dash phrase?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14776" CreationDate="2015-01-03T18:30:49.323" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key is in what &quot;as were the others&quot; refers back to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not just &quot;the chairs.&quot; It's not even that &quot;the chairs were upside-down.&quot; It's that &quot;the other chairs&quot; are in a specific state of being that you are matching: upside-down AND &lt;em&gt;on the table&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After returning the materials back to their shelves, I turned the chair upside down on the table &amp;mdash; as were the others &amp;mdash; and followed the girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, when doing that kind of parenthetical, with a sentence fragment, make sure your grammar is parallel. &quot;Were&quot; is the verb &quot;to be,&quot; and you don't have that earlier in your sentence. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After returning the materials back to their shelves, I turned the chair upside down on the table &amp;mdash; like the others &amp;mdash; and followed the girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all honesty, I don't think this interrupter is important enough to merit M-dashes. I wouldn't even use commas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After returning the materials back to their shelves, I turned the chair upside down on the table like the others and followed the girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-01-03T18:30:49.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14763" CreationDate="2015-01-03T23:07:57.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I am answering my question in the hopes of sparking more answers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often times people write books for particular audiences. So one way to improve your writing might be to look at the books written by existing authors in your area and mimic their style.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a historian may be interested in a certain collection of history topics. So his or her book would focus primarily on those topics and be designed to teach them effectively. If it is a book respected by the field at large, you can assume then that most people prefer his way of organizing the material in the book. That is, they like it. It works. So this may give you a starting point for seeing how to organize your own book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this principle won't work all the time. For example, if you are presenting a large amount of new research, there may be no example book for you to mimic since your is the first of its kind. Another example where this principle won't apply is when you are expanding to a more general audience or explaining ideas to people without knowledge of your discipline. In such cases, a writing structure suitable for one audience may not apply to a different one or more general one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11549" LastActivityDate="2015-01-03T23:07:57.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15911" CreationDate="2015-01-04T00:03:34.303" Score="3" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to understand the verdict in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/archives/26196/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Red Hat Club case.&lt;/a&gt; Vicki Stewart sued author Haywood Smith, claiming that a character in Smith's books was defamatory - that the character was clearly based on Stewart, and portrayed as a sexually promiscuous alcoholic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The jury found in favor of the plaintiff, on the grounds that the supposedly fictitious character, SuSu, was too much like &quot;the real thing.&quot; Did the writer lose the &quot;Red Hat Club&quot; suit because her character was not &quot;random&quot; enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm not above casting a &quot;generic&quot; rural poor Southern white female character modeled after a real person. I might have my character attend barbecues and eat pulled pork, just like her real life counterpart. On a slightly derogatory note, I might even have such a character carry a shotgun in the back of a pickup truck (if that's what such people do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it seems to me that Smith went far beyond casting a generic character as her protagonist. Instead, the &quot;back stories&quot; of Stewart and SuSu are eerily similar. That is both Stewart and SuSu were widows of men who died in car crashes and left her the insurance, both women remarried men who had other love interests and commitments, identical business interests, and ran off with the heroine's money. Stewart had a daughter named Mindum, and &quot;Susu, a daughter named &quot;Mignon.&quot; Heck, even Stewart and &quot;SuSu&quot; sound somewhat alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's probably true that there are many poor southern white females that attend barbecues and drive pickup trucks (in my characterization above), is it fair to say that Stewart was &quot;unique&quot; (or nearly so) in having the other kinds of experiences discussed in the previous paragraph? And could it be this uniqueness (or specificity) that made her &quot;too easy&quot; to identify, and therefore likely to prevail in a lawsuit? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where's the line here, of what's considered OK (or at least, defensible) and what isn't?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T04:45:19.870" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T04:22:10.817" Title="Where's the line between coincidental similarity between a character and a person, vs. being uniquely identifiable?" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14780" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-04T03:21:40.370" Score="6" ViewCount="22948" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I just discovered a person I knew in college has written a book. This book is titled as fiction. But after buying and reading this book, I am in this book. No name change. The place where I work, with geographical references to where this job is located. Along with friends, and a terrible experience in which happened, and was in newspapers, but not something I would ever want written about. Nor am I happy that I am in this book. My parents are in this book. What are my legal rights? It's a self published book. and I don't think it will ever be a best seller. but I definitely feel violated, and exposed. and I feel like my permission should have been used. But I was never contacted about this. Can I file a cease and desist? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11570" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T01:26:47.597" LastActivityDate="2019-09-03T11:54:41.703" Title="What are my legal rights if somebody writes a book about me without my consent?" Tags="|fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14780" CreationDate="2015-01-04T21:25:54.730" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lawyer, so the views expressed here are those of a layman, and writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your situation appears to resemble the one in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/archives/26196/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;The Red Hat Club&quot;&lt;/a&gt; litigation, which the plaintiff won.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not appear to be a situation where the author created a &quot;generic&quot; character that somewhat resembles you: female, college-educated, from a certain geography, etc. It seems more like a real character that is being used &quot;fictitiously.&quot; If so, the author is treading on thin ice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the tests I use is, are there 100, or better yet, 1000 people who could be the inspiration for the fictitious character? Or is she described so exactly that there could only be one person (or a handful of people) in the world who fit the description? The latter appears to be the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only a lawyer can tell you what your rights and remedies are, but as a potential juror (i.e. finder of fact), my sense is that certain lines have been crossed. That is to say that the book is really (and unfortunately) &quot;about you&quot; and not just a &quot;take-off&quot; on a small part of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-01-04T21:25:54.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14783" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-05T00:31:14.903" Score="1" ViewCount="594" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ask about something coming from my personality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have imagination for overall story plots. I don't have a writers' abilities (nor do I have time to write).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope there are much more people like me, and that they'd like to see some of their thought up plots to be actually taken by a skillful writer and &quot;converted&quot; to a real book or novel (if the writer considers the plot worth a try).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've searched a bit on the internet if there is a platform for sharing such ideas and connecting people like me with writers. Haven't found anything. Do you know of such a service?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for replies / comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11576" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T19:10:41.510" Title="Is there a database of plots that have not been &quot;processed&quot;/used yet?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14784" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15819" CreationDate="2015-01-05T12:00:23.860" Score="0" ViewCount="522" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We kept going until we reached a door. Finally! The corridor was&#xA;  deeper than I thought, like a tunnel. Or the bottom of the sea—the&#xA;  shelves and scrolls &lt;strong&gt;becoming&lt;/strong&gt; the reef and algae that keeps the light&#xA;  from flooding in. A little unsettling. Good thing we were about to&#xA;  leave the place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure whether &lt;em&gt;becoming&lt;/em&gt; is the correct choice here. I also thought of &lt;em&gt;turning into&lt;/em&gt; but I'm not sure. Maybe I have to rephrase the whole sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T19:03:37.053" Title="Is the word &quot;becoming&quot; being used correctly in the following metaphor?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14783" CreationDate="2015-01-05T13:42:37.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been done in at least a few books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newtonsaber.com/AmazonBooks/BookLink.aspx?author=tobias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;20 Master Plots: And How To Build Them by Tobias&lt;/a&gt; - amazon link&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newtonsaber.com/AmazonBooks/BookLink.aspx?author=sawyer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Plots Unlimited&lt;/a&gt; (A Creative Source for Generating a Virtually Limitless Number and Variety of Story Plots and Outlines)  by Sawyer &amp;amp; Weingarten - amazon link&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newtonsaber.com/AmazonBooks/BookLink.aspx?author=white&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Writer's Idea Thesaurus by White&lt;/a&gt; - amazon link&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and finally, one of the most terrible implementations of the idea is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newtonsaber.com/AmazonBooks/BookLink.aspx?author=sacher&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Amazing Story Generator by Sacher&lt;/a&gt; - amazon link&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those will give you a good idea of how this concept has been done numerous times before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2015-01-06T19:10:41.510" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T19:10:41.510" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10309" CreationDate="2015-01-05T21:48:48.167" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A screenplay is a script written for a screen, whether television or feature, but it's only used when the specifics of what's being worked on might be in question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formatting is very similar for both types of projects, the difference has to do more with pacing, the number of locations, acts and scenes than actual formatting differences. Also a stageplay has only one edition of the script (unless it's a musical, in which case there's a second book for lyrics) where as a screenplay has editions for each technical role. Originally, the screenwriter prepares a 'writer's draft', but the director and/or cinematographer then produces a 'shooting script' which has more information that pertains to their jobs (such as what locations they're filming at, how often, how long, what's needed at those locations, etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the complexities of the script, there may be several versions created for different departments and even cast members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is a screenplay is a script and the most readable one, the one a screenwriter produces, is the writer's draft (though that term is rarely used).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11328" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T21:48:48.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14799" CreationDate="2015-01-06T00:57:54.263" Score="2" ViewCount="191" Body="&lt;p&gt;First question I've asked on here so hopefully it isn't a silly one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a little confused about a certain paragraph/dialogue convention I am using in something I am writing. Occasionally I have a situation where I include the actions of more than one character after a piece of dialogue in the same paragraph. An example would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Please, John, do not let our urgent matters get in the way of your leisure,&quot; the man's voice echoed in the chamber as he scolded him for resting his feet on the table. John, slightly embarrassed, swung his legs to the floor and sat forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would this be an acceptable format? I tend to find that it brings a good flow to the story (at least in my situation!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any help :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11582" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T13:30:22.253" Title="A question about dialogue and paragraphs?" Tags="|style|novel|dialogue|fantasy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14789" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-06T01:07:44.160" Score="0" ViewCount="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;Need some help on how to have updated changes show up in a different color scheme for my screenwriting partner. I have the script saved each day under a different date.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11583" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T22:27:53.933" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T23:26:35.437" Title="Any way for revisions to show up in a different color from an older saved .fdr to a newer saved .fdr in version 7 of FinalDraft?" Tags="|software|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14790" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14798" CreationDate="2015-01-06T01:29:13.800" Score="2" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not finding anything useful, I went to check the maple. Four times my size, it was the biggest&#xA;tree in the yard. I mean, it &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt;. A typhoon &lt;strong&gt;tore it down&lt;/strong&gt; three years&#xA;ago, and it had &lt;strong&gt;stayed like that&lt;/strong&gt; ever since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not finding anything useful, I went to check the maple. Four times my size, it was the biggest&#xA;tree in the yard. I mean, it &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt;. Three years ago a typhoon &lt;strong&gt;tore it down&lt;/strong&gt;, and it had &lt;strong&gt;stayed like that&lt;/strong&gt; ever since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the related elements are closer to each other in the second example. Does this make it read better than the first one? Is it good practice to always keep related elements as close as possible to each other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T11:09:55.063" Title="Is it a good writing practice to keep related elements as close as possible to each other?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14788" CreationDate="2015-01-06T06:02:48.020" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good question. Typically it's fine, but it may bring up problems to deal with in the paragraph, and now you have a few: &quot;...he scolded him...&quot; This leads to the silly predicament, grammatically, of which is which. Since we know he was talking to john, that it is he scolded john, but the reader has to think of that, and grammatically you've made the reader assume your meaning. Generally a no-no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise it's acceptable but cognitively costly. As a reader I have to re-read this first sentence twice to really grasp what's happening, not because there are two things, but because of the underlying structure. Dialog, then who the dialog came from, then an emotion from another character, finally ending with an action from the 2nd character. That's a lot for a single sentence, and the fact that it's two characters doing two different things can cause confusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend just leaving simple actions for two characters in a single sentence for easier understanding. Right now I have trouble picturing the scene you are spelling out without reading it multiple times and thinking about it. If you can read it and just &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; it, then voila. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11586" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T06:02:48.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14784" CreationDate="2015-01-06T07:04:59.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;becoming&quot; implies an actual change in the form or appearance of the shelves and scrolls.  Perhaps you would be better served with...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;serving as&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;embodying&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T07:04:59.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14795" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14797" CreationDate="2015-01-06T08:44:13.603" Score="9" ViewCount="11584" Body="&lt;p&gt;I self-published some books on Amazon. I find it frustrating that I cannot contact my customers to ask for feedback on the books / ask them if they are interested in further products and use the book as a way to build a community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to track who buys your book on Amazon or to reach out to people buying my books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastEditorUserId="4660" LastEditDate="2015-01-08T08:40:00.883" LastActivityDate="2021-01-28T14:58:55.047" Title="Is there a way to know who bought my books on Amazon?" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14784" CreationDate="2015-01-06T09:08:32.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Becoming works fine here, as a metaphor its valid enough and anything longer would bog down the prose. But I agree with Henry that out of context of other similar metaphors in your writing it could imply actual change, and distract the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I believe that the suggested alternatives are too heavy handed and would only bog down the prose further; they're too formal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Luckily I think you could just as easily remove it entirely, as you're describing how something looks, rather than what it's doing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the bottom of the sea—shelves and scrolls the reef and algae that keeps the light from flooding in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach simplifies the prose and stops the metaphor from implying actual change. (Note I've removed the leading &lt;code&gt;the&lt;/code&gt; as well, to avoid confusion.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2015-01-06T13:45:54.063" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T13:45:54.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14795" CreationDate="2015-01-06T10:17:41.800" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no way to track who buys your books on Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your books, give readers a way to connect with you. Links to your book/author/publisher web site. Link to a mailing list. Links to your social media accounts. An offer that they can sign up for (a free ebook version of the print book they bought, or a discount on another book, or a free short story with the same characters, or ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The readers who want you to contact them will follow those links and connect with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any buyer who does not connect is not interested in hearing from you… right now. Respect that. They will reach out to you when they are ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T10:17:41.800" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14790" CreationDate="2015-01-06T11:09:55.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as the intervening text doesn't confuse any reference to the second element, you're okay. I wouldn't put the two items &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; far apart, but your first example is still perfectly clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T11:09:55.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14788" CreationDate="2015-01-06T11:15:09.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your real problem is that you have dialogue, and then the narration immediately after it tells us what the dialogue just said. Remove that bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we don't know that John's legs are on the &lt;em&gt;table&lt;/em&gt; (as opposed to the chair, a statue, or someone's head), move that to John's action sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Please, John, do not let our urgent matters get in the way of your leisure,&quot; the older man said, his sharp voice echoing in the small chamber. John, slightly embarrassed, swung his legs off the table to the floor and sat forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's fine that those are both in the same paragraph. You could even put them in the same sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Please, John, do not let our urgent matters get in the way of your leisure,&quot; the older man added, and John quickly swung his legs to the floor and sat forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T11:15:09.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14788" CreationDate="2015-01-06T13:30:22.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if it's correct to write it or not but I had no problem with the original sentence the way it is. The description presented both the mood in the situation and also conveyed a bit of what kind of person the other one in the room is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11589" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T13:30:22.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14806" CreationDate="2015-01-07T00:06:13.387" Score="5" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write a regular column (of about 800 words) for an industry publication that specialises in management matters. The columns deal with workplace matters and give insights on operational matters such as wages, annual leave etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now thinking of compiling all my columns (15 in total) in a concise epublication or ebook. The closest comparison I can think of is a collection of short stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I am wondering what is an effective way to create this compilation&lt;/strong&gt; i.e. how do I organised the columns which deal with different matters? (For clarity, I am not asking about the technical aspects of producing an ebook.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; Each column is a &quot;standalone&quot; management article, so complete in itself, hence, there is no &quot;flow&quot; from one to the next, as they have been published in different editions of the industry publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T02:07:34.417" Title="Compiling Articles in an ebook format" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14804" CreationDate="2015-01-07T01:23:44.013" Score="2" ViewCount="13438" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a master thesis for my master in economics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the thesis is not expected to be too much formal (the master itslef is very practical and little theoretical) I want to use good conventions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far this is the formatting I used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;main title &quot;Thesis of ...&quot;: Arial 16pt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abstract subtitle: Times New Roman 12pt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abstract content: Times New Roman 11pt, justified&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Heading 1 (main sections of the paper): Arial 14 bold&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Heading 2 (sections of the paper, corresponding to Headings 1): Arial 12 bold&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Content of each sections (Headings 2):  Times New Roman 12pt justified . The content is starting after a blank line&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I improve the formatting to make the paper looking professional?&#xA;Thanks in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11593" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-01-07T01:41:05.193" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T01:41:05.193" Title="Right font style and size for a master thesis" Tags="|formatting|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14803" CreationDate="2015-01-07T01:40:55.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your academic department may have posted guidelines for this. For example, the Rutgers Graduate school has posted an &lt;a href=&quot;http://gsnb.rutgers.edu/academics/electronic-thesis-and-dissertation-style-guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Style Guide&lt;/a&gt;, complete with sample pages. They suggest an easy-to-read font in 10-12 point type, but other schools may have different requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many schools may require that you use an existing style guide, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA style&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/11/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MLA style&lt;/a&gt;, or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/a&gt;. These will probably be available for use in a local library. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your school may use one of these, or it may have posted its own style guide, or use a hybrid of them. Check with your department website and your department advisor; they will be the final arbiter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T01:40:55.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14802" CreationDate="2015-01-07T01:48:35.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's very little you can do to improve the flow of the articles, short of rewriting the articles themselves. A collection of columns will always be a collection of works written separately. However, there are some devices you can use that will help the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can group the articles by subject. This will keep similar articles together, making the subject matter of the articles slightly more cohesive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any tale to be found in how these pieces were written? You can also write bridging text to go between the articles. This can be a simple matter of you writing a few sentences commenting on the articles: the circumstances they were written under, how one article sparked further thoughts and created another one, etc. I'd keep these brief, as it's a device that can easily become long-winded. (Check out story collections by Isaac Asimov to see this technique used well.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you have the entire manuscript proofread by one person; if the articles were proofread by more than one person, they may have been subjected to different editing conventions. Small things like how ellipses are formatted, whether text after a colon is capitalized or not, consistent use of hyphens and dashes, usage of the serial comma, and so on can detract from the flow of text when not applied consistently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-01-07T01:56:51.510" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T01:56:51.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14802" CreationDate="2015-01-07T02:07:34.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Treat each column as if it were a separate chapter in a book. Try to organize the order of your &quot;chapters&quot; so that they flow in a logical order based on the order in which the reader is likely to encounter each in a real world situation. For example, a series of columns pertaining to the hiring process in a company might use the following order: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accepting Applications  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reviewing Applications &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selecting Applicants for Interviews &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scheduling Interviews &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conducting Interviews &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hiring Candidates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can start off by preparing a Table of Contents using only the titles for the topic of each &quot;chapter&quot;, and then review the list to see if they are in a logical order. Move the titles around until you feel like you've accomplished what you want, and then compile the columns into your finished product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be sure to include your final Table of Contents, because some readers may be more interested in specific topics. Your readers will truly appreciate that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T02:07:34.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15803" CreationDate="2015-01-07T04:40:46.567" Score="0" ViewCount="1277" Body="&lt;p&gt;When should I use the former or the later? Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a bird. It had a black head and wings &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; a golden underbelly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a bird. It had a black head and wings &lt;strong&gt;with&lt;/strong&gt; a golden underbelly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I went inside the building. It had small, windowless rooms &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; shelves of all sizes and shapes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I went inside the building. It had small, windowless rooms &lt;strong&gt;with&lt;/strong&gt; shelves of all sizes and shapes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T08:51:37.823" Title="&quot;And&quot; vs &quot;with&quot; in description lists" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-01-14T19:22:23.843" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15802" CreationDate="2015-01-07T09:12:52.307" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Wings and a golden underbelly&quot; is better because otherwise it seems like the wings have a golden underbelly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second example depends on if you want the rooms or the building to have the shelves. &lt;em&gt;With&lt;/em&gt; if you want to the rooms to have the shelves, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a list of attributes, such as yours, use &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; to demark the last attribute of the main object and &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; to create a sublist of attributes of one of the main list attributes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tree had green leaves with spikes and pronounced veins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaves are an attribute of the tree, spikes and veins are attributes of the leaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The figure had six legs, four arms and three heads with horns&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The legs, arms and head are attributes of the figure, the horns are an attribute of the heads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to use &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; with the main object:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tree was tall, with green leaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the tree has leaves, not the attribute &lt;em&gt;tall&lt;/em&gt;. C.f. &quot;The tree was tall and had green leaves.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3857" LastEditorUserId="3857" LastEditDate="2015-01-19T08:51:37.823" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T08:51:37.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15802" CreationDate="2015-01-07T10:04:11.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first answer by Matt Ellen is good, but excessively rigid imho.&#xA;It is just a direct consequence of the grammatical fact that &lt;code&gt;and&lt;/code&gt; is&#xA;a conjunction while &lt;code&gt;with&lt;/code&gt; is a preposition. So this implies indeed&#xA;that whatever follows &lt;code&gt;with&lt;/code&gt; is related to what precedes it. However,&#xA;being related to does not necessarily mean being part of, as in : &lt;code&gt;he saw his aunt with his mother&lt;/code&gt; (using one of the various meanings of&#xA;&lt;code&gt;with&lt;/code&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the use of &lt;code&gt;with&lt;/code&gt; is quite appropriate to describe an attribute&#xA;of an attribute, and can often suggest that, it can be used&#xA;for other purposes, especially when there is no semantic ambiguity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the conjuction &lt;code&gt;and&lt;/code&gt; is somewhat bland, and creates no&#xA;relation between conjuncts. It just enumerates. Using &lt;code&gt;with&lt;/code&gt; when it&#xA;can be appropriate may reinforce the conjunctive aspect by insisting&#xA;that the conjunction may have more meaning than just coincidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the sentence: &lt;code&gt;She wore a blue hat with a green coat.&lt;/code&gt;, using &lt;code&gt;and&lt;/code&gt; instead of &lt;code&gt;with&lt;/code&gt; would be a sort of objective,&#xA;factual description as in a police report, while the use of &lt;code&gt;with&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;puts the green hat and the blue coat in stronger relation, hence tries&#xA;to suggest something, possibly that the character has no color taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of the bird example above, it could be that the story was&#xA;about finding an animal having a golden underbelly. Then the use of&#xA;&lt;code&gt;with&lt;/code&gt; emphasizes an attribute that has an important role, as opposed&#xA;to other attributes, though it is emphasized softly which gives a&#xA;smoother style than writing &lt;code&gt;... but a golden underbelly&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are cases when the intention is to provide a structureless&#xA;enumeration. Then &lt;code&gt;and&lt;/code&gt; should be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6647" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T10:04:11.160" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10913" CreationDate="2015-01-07T10:18:56.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the statement of your question, it seems that you are only&#xA;supposed to make public a summary of your work, since you can&#xA;hardly be expected to publish a whole paper in a blog, or even less in&#xA;a wikipedia article. Furthermore, you are stating that you are&#xA;required to publish a minimum of one paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus by asking your question as you did, with the text to be&#xA;published, on a public site such as this one, it appears to me that&#xA;you did fulfill your class obligation. Your text is indeed public.  I,&#xA;and other people, may disagree with some of it, but this is&#xA;immaterial. So, as an answer to your question, I suggest that you have&#xA;nothing more to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can only be regretted that you did not ask your question 40 days&#xA;earlier. It is an interesting one in this respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6647" LastEditorUserId="6647" LastEditDate="2015-01-07T10:24:19.903" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T10:24:19.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15807" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15815" CreationDate="2015-01-07T22:05:13.120" Score="3" ViewCount="14376" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the title question asks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should embedded figures/images be placed before or after they are referred to in text?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is more appropriate? Or does it depend on the setting/context?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12597" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T03:58:16.680" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T03:58:16.680" Title="Should embedded figures/images be placed before or after they are referred to in text?" Tags="|style|formatting|artwork|graphics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15807" CreationDate="2015-01-08T08:07:33.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In printed books or journals, figures and tables are placed on the same double page as the first reference. Where exactly they are placed depends on how their placement affects page breaks. Typesetters try to avoid ugly &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;widows&quot; and &quot;orphans&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, that is, one or two lines broken from a paragraph and pushed to the next page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If page layout and logical text structure are not affected, place a table or figure &lt;strong&gt;immediately after the first reference to it&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... as Figure 1 shows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1DaRE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bla bla ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For placement, think about when you would show and point at an illustration when speaking to someone. Usually you show the image &lt;em&gt;while you refer to it&lt;/em&gt;, verbally. So place the image in your text in a way that mimics that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deixis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;deictic&lt;/a&gt; behavior. Colons are an ideal approximation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it cannot be placed immediately after that first reference, place it &lt;strong&gt;after the paragraph containing the first reference&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that, too, is not possible, place it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on the same page, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the same double page, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on the following page or double page, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the preceding page or double page,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in that order of preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you submit an article to a journal, follow their style guide. Usually you must write &quot;Figure 1&quot; in the center of an empty line, sometimes in brackets, spaced with an empty line above and below, and place the figure in an appendix:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... as Figure 1 shows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;[Figure 1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bla bla ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T08:07:33.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15802" CreationDate="2015-01-08T08:32:32.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would avoid the unneccessary enumeration of body parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a bird. It was black with a golden underbelly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would avoid the enumaration, because you are missing body parts that the reader is left wondering about: what about the bird's back, tail, peak, and legs? Are they black, too, or of a third color? If you say that the bird was &quot;black with a golden underbelly, it is clear that everything is black, &lt;em&gt;except&lt;/em&gt; the underbelly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would even drop the &quot;It was&quot; from the second sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It was a bird. Black with a golden underbelly.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to &lt;em&gt;emphasize&lt;/em&gt; the (unexpectedly or sought for) golden underbelly (as @babou descibed), just add punctuation or vary the sentence structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a bird. It was black, with a golden underbelly.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  It was a bird. It was black – with a golden underbelly.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;It was a bird. Black. And with a golden underbelly.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your choice will depend on the rhythm (which should match the surrounding text) and the strength of emphasis you want to achive. I put my preferences in bold face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T08:32:32.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15811" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-08T11:28:41.547" Score="1" ViewCount="274" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing and running my own &lt;a href=&quot;http://screennerds.blogspot.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;film and TV reviewing blog&lt;/a&gt; for about 8 months now, posting frequently (usually at least once a week) and what I would consider good quality content (although obviously I am biased). I share my reviews on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and I get an acceptable number of page views considering the fact that it is difficult to promote my blog any further than I already am.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I rarely get any comments on any of my posts. Being as films are so subjective and there are so many people who enjoy talking about films, this seems odd. How can I encourage current readers to comment more (short of asking people to comment in each post), and how can I expand my audience to include people more likely to comment? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently moved my blogs commenting system to Disqus as a first step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, answers would include methods/styles of writing that help encourage discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10276" LastEditorUserId="10276" LastEditDate="2015-01-08T15:21:20.577" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T05:20:45.407" Title="How can I encourage more comments on my blog?" Tags="|marketing|blog|audience|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15811" CreationDate="2015-01-08T12:14:17.870" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question that will answer your question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What do you expect people to comment about?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, what is there to say to a movie review? That you write well? That you accurately summed up the plot? That you missed the beaver shot at 0:34?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people read movie reviews to decide if they want to see a movie. They read the review, then they see the movie. They don't comment on the review, because they are not actually interested in the review in itself. And once they have seen the movie (and could discuss the movie with you), they don't read a review but talk to their friends, post on Facebook, or on a more popular review site like Rotten Tomatoes, rather than commenting on a lonely site where their comment won't be read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't come up with anything that I would want to write in a comment on a movie blog. So what kind of reply do &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; expect? If you don't know, then how are your visitors supposed to have that insight? And if you know, write in a way that makes people want to give that kind of response. Write controversial, if you want a heated debate about morale. Write about topics that interest your target audience (love, sex, food, clothes, crime, loneliness ...) and use the movie review as a frame to fill with those topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the end, even if you have the greatest content, it all comes down to attracting a critical number of visitors. If there are too few visitors, they will see that no one comments, and they will leave feeling disinclined to comment themselves. It is like an empty dance floor. No one wants to be the first. So, in my opinion, you will have to pay to attract lots of traffic for some time, until the number of visitors and the number of chance comments and backlinks gain a critical mass to drive your blog by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a generic site like a movie review blog (of which there are thousands, if not millions), you will need paid advertising to overcome market inertia. If you want to attract a following without paid ads, you have to create something unique (and not do movie reviews).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just read part of your review on the last Hobbit film. You got a comment there, and it says, very harshly, something very similar to what I find: that your review didn't engage me. I have a hard time pinning down why this is so, but somehow, when I read it, I don't really care about what you have to say. You go on and on about what you dislike about the movie, then add what you like, but that does not really matter to me, because I am not you and I like or dislike movies for different reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; I like some movie reviews that I read? Either because they give me background info that I don't have on the persons or politics behind the movie (e.g. see the &amp;quot;Development&amp;quot; section of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_%28film_series%29#Development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on the Hobbit trilogy&lt;/a&gt; – how is that background reflected in the film?), or because they contrast the movie with general screen writing or movie making methods/theories/technologies/etc. (e.g. does the Hobbit movie have a hero, or a three act structure, or how do advances in computer animation technology set it off against older Hobbit films?), or because they use the movie to look at culture, society and politics in general (e.g. how does Jackson's Hobbiton differ from Tolkien's, and what does that say about our times?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your review is just a description of the movie and a judgment of wether it was good or bad. If I wanted to decide about viewing or not viewing the movie, a Wikipedia plot synopsis is better for that, because it is concise and to the point. If I wanted to read something intellectually stimulating (independent of having or not having seen the movie), that is completely missing from your review (at least the one that I read).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that you need to read some good movie reviews, maybe in some national newspapers, and analyse them, to understand what they actually do. They don't summarise the plot, and they don't (for the most part) judge the film, but they &lt;em&gt;use the film to do something else.&lt;/em&gt; And that is engaging and makes me go &amp;quot;But...!&amp;quot; and want to comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that general critique, lets look more closely at your first sentence as an example of your writing. It reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of people love the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and it isn't hard to see why - you've got an epic, sweeping story of an adventure over an imaginative, richly detailed work with it's own unique back story that boils down to a story between good and evil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your first sentence, you presume too much (e.g. I didn't love the LotR trilogy, although I'm a fan of the books), you raise a false claim (in truth it is quite hard to explain why so many viewers, who did not previously care about fantasy at all, did go see that movie and now buy the books), and you spell out a banal and common phrase (about epic and good and bad) in too many words, making it sound like you repeat something that you have read elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started skipping your text at the first sentence! I may not be your target audience – you need to define who that is and not just write for yourself! –, but maybe this will give you an idea about how your writing is perceived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, do something about spelling and grammar. &amp;quot;they are maybe to long&amp;quot; (too), &amp;quot;3 hours had past&amp;quot; (passed), etc. Maybe get someone to copyedit your writing, it is often too difficult to find your own mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally (as a judment on my part) your writing is okay and a good starting point, but you got a lot to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And please don't let my opinion discourage you. Here is where the wheat is separated from the chaff. Those that will make it as professional movie reviewers ignore the opinion or grow a thicker hide, digest the critique they agree with, and keep working to get better. What you do isn't bad at all, it just isn't brilliant enough to succeed in a highly competitive field such as movie reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-01-09T07:56:15.197" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6941" CreationDate="2015-01-08T12:32:10.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some generally accepted style rules about commas in lists but in terms of overuse, I think it sensible to consider how commas can help you to write in a natural style that sounds more like the ebb and flow of speech. I believe commas were first introduced to show where to take a breath and if you don't use any it sounds like you are just babbling on and on and at some point you might even start to sound like a legal document that has been drafted to have no ambiguity or even worse an 'empty vessel'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think short sentences are always the best answer. Some do. In contrast, sensitive punctuation introduces a human feel to the prose - as if you are hearing a musical conversation, rather than just reporting the facts. You cannot easily indicate pitch and tone, so you have to do the best you can with words and punctuation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the commonest problems are: lack of consistency, poor style, and little empathy for the reader. I find it particularly frustrating to read anything by an author who doesn't quite know what a comma is supposed to be doing in the sentence. It interrupts my train of thought when I spot a superfluous or missing comma; semicolons are another matter entirely. I assume I am not alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I value the comma but a good rule-of-thumb is to cut down on superfluous commas preceding 'and', 'but', and 'or'. However, the effect of an extra pause might be crucial to create the right feel, good timing, and clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need examples of why the humble comma cannot be discarded, do also take a look at the 'Oxford comma' (aka Harvard comma).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11561" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T12:32:10.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="178" CreationDate="2015-01-08T14:40:11.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read this, Daniel Excinsky:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/books/writing-in-english-novelists-find-inventive-new-voices.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/books/writing-in-english-novelists-find-inventive-new-voices.html?_r=0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all, folks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12604" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T14:40:11.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15807" CreationDate="2015-01-08T15:25:53.473" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends in part on the type of writing (technical reference manual? novel with illustrations? etc) and how people will read it (printed book? online?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a reader follows a reasonable path&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; through the document, there should never be a point where he's looking at something incomprehensible.  This applies to text, code samples, diagrams, and screen shots.  Therefore, unless the structure of your document itself provides this (e.g. through section titles and a consistent format, like in a catalogue), you should always have some explanatory text before the screen shot to provide context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this principle applies to text too -- you don't want to have a page of text describing stuff that will only make sense after someone sees the image, either.  So in my experience the norm is: text that sets the stage, then the image, then details that refer to the screen shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is true with or without figure numbers and captions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/15808/1993&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, I do not recommend placing an image in the middle of a sentence (&quot;in this figure: (figure) we see...&quot;).  I've found that for many readers the image functions as its own &quot;paragraph&quot;, and they find the dangling sentence fragments around it distracting.  I'll do this in casual writing like on my blog, but I try to avoid it in formal writing like documentation or books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this is for images where some textual explanation is needed.  If you're writing a novel and are including maps or illustrations purely as supplementary material, then you can put those wherever you want as the text does not depend on them and they do not depend on the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; At minimum (for non-reference doc), starting at the beginning and reading through.  But also consider the case of someone who looks something up in the table of contents and jumps there, and, if applicable, the use of your documentation in online context-sensitive help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T15:25:53.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15817" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-08T18:07:04.180" Score="4" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do updates on our UK Charity's website  ~ Our &quot;Latest News&quot; Posts show the wrong tense for events that are now past. I want to update the tense in those articles butI I'm told (by Ms B) this is not 'accepted practice'. She says that from her long experience in maintaining websites for a well-known News Magazine that you NEVER update a Press Release or News Post. I'm sure she's right - for News Magazines; but not for a Charity website. I don't believe that our readers want to click on a link to an event to find that it is long-gone. I also believe that once an event is over, the tense in the report on that event should reflect the history.&lt;br&gt; &#xA;I'd really welcome some informed opinion on this, please.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12608" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-01-08T19:53:43.890" LastActivityDate="2018-11-04T19:22:40.720" Title="The etiquette of updating News Posts - Help please!" Tags="|blog|journalism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14784" CreationDate="2015-01-08T19:03:37.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a better way is just to go straight for the metaphor without any helper verb. Here it is with a few other modifications to streamline the prose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The corridor was deeper than I thought, as dim and hazy as the bottom of the sea. Whole reefs of shelves and scrolls kept the light from flooding in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This introduces the sea metaphor at the end of the first sentence (first as a simile, to let the readers get their feet wet, so to speak), and extends it wholesale in the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T19:03:37.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15817" CreationDate="2015-01-08T21:28:59.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note: This is from my perspective as a consumer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's okay to leave the present/future tense, especially if the date of the article is clearly visible. Most of the time I don't mind (much) finding an old, somewhat outdated article &lt;em&gt;as long as the date is obvious.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google searches (and perhaps others) allow users to specify a timeframe for their searches. When I know I don't want outdated articles, I can use that to limit the age of the search results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem with changing existing articles: It affects the apparent validity of anyone who quoted the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One solution I've seen used well: Update the original article only to add a link to a more recent article, which describes the event after it occurs. It can be helpful if this link appears early in the original article, in or near the byline. Inclusion in a &quot;related articles&quot; list also works, though those often appear at the end of the article, and may not be readily visible if the text is longer than one screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-01-10T05:31:34.790" LastActivityDate="2015-01-10T05:31:34.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15817" CreationDate="2015-01-08T21:40:32.303" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once an event is over, you should (ideally) always have a NEW article about the event, describing how it went, and what it has led to.  This will push the old article down the page (assuming your web site is set up properly).  Then you should do as Dale Emery suggests: add a link to the new article at the top of the old article.  But also add a &quot;disclaimer&quot; to the top of the old article, pointing out that it is old news.  Otherwise, keep the old article the same, as your co-worker said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would also help if your news page had a clear division between &quot;new news&quot; and &quot;old news&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T21:40:32.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15853" CreationDate="2015-01-09T03:36:27.610" Score="0" ViewCount="2796" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any websites were an amateur writer can post a story or parts of a story and for a fee or for free the writing will be posted for a 'while'? (And maybe the story will be 'noticed' by a publisher.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11527" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T11:55:36.083" Title="About sites for amateur writers" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|websites|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-01-12T12:06:06.370" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15826" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-09T03:59:49.863" Score="10" ViewCount="1113" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any effective writing techniques or exercises that you use to help you focus more on showing the reader what you mean rather than just telling them about? I know I often find myself doing a lot more &quot;telling&quot; in my first drafts, and I'd like to start reducing my rewrites by doing better at &quot;showing&quot; the first time around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll try to add an example from my current WIP later, but I'm not really looking for help in correcting it. What I would really like is some kind of exercise I can use as a form of practice to help keep me from &quot;telling&quot; in the first place. I tend to rush through the first draft and just write out the details, which usually results in a laundry list of steps or actions. I then go back in my second or third draft and improve on this by doing more &quot;showing&quot;. Maybe it's too late for me to change my old habits, but I'd like to try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-06T14:30:41.227" LastActivityDate="2018-03-06T14:30:41.227" Title="Writing techniques or exercises to improve ability to show rather than tell?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|technique|showing-telling|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15826" CreationDate="2015-01-09T04:09:49.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be more detailed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What was the weather like for the scene?&#xA;What is the nature of the relationship between the characters?&#xA;What do they look like?&#xA;Is there anything special about their actions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastActivityDate="2015-01-09T04:09:49.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15826" CreationDate="2015-01-09T08:29:34.143" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, the best exercise yet is Chuck Palahniuk's recommendation to &lt;a href=&quot;http://litreactor.com/essays/chuck-palahniuk/nuts-and-bolts-%E2%80%9Cthought%E2%80%9D-verbs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;avoid &quot;thought verbs&quot; for a couple of months&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He focuses on removing &quot;thought verbs&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These include:  Thinks, Knows, Understands, Realizes, Believes, Wants, Remembers, Imagines, Desires, and a hundred others you love to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And gives several examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...you can’t write:  &quot;Kenny wondered if Monica didn’t like him going out at night…&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thinking is abstract.  Knowing and believing are intangible.  Your story will always be stronger if you just show the physical actions and details of your characters and allow your reader to do the thinking and knowing.  And loving and hating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Instead, you’ll have to Un-pack that to something like:  &quot;The mornings after Kenny had stayed out, beyond the last bus, until he’d had to bum a ride or pay for a cab and got home to find Monica faking sleep, faking because she never slept that quiet, those mornings, she’d only put her own cup of coffee in the microwave.  Never his.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further down in the article he gives an exercise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...pick through your writing and circle every “thought” verb. Then,&#xA;   find some way to eliminate it.  Kill it by Un-packing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then, pick through some published fiction and do the same thing. Be&#xA;   ruthless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="28374" LastEditDate="2018-03-06T13:04:42.950" LastActivityDate="2018-03-06T13:04:42.950" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15830" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15831" CreationDate="2015-01-09T11:08:39.103" Score="0" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exhausted, I continued lying on my back. A cloud drifted lazily&#xA;  in the sky, &lt;strong&gt;heart-shaped&lt;/strong&gt;, its curves flawlessly outlined as if drawn&#xA;  with a compass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should I write this instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exhausted, I continued lying on my back. A cloud drifted lazily&#xA;  in the sky. &lt;strong&gt;Heart-shaped&lt;/strong&gt;, its curves flawlessly outlined as if drawn&#xA;  with a compass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T02:00:51.537" Title="Is the following &quot;...noun, adjective...&quot; structure allowed in fiction?" Tags="|style|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15830" CreationDate="2015-01-09T12:50:21.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first one is correct, because it's a two-word clause modifying &lt;em&gt;cloud&lt;/em&gt;. The second one would need some kind of verb in the last sentence, and the modifier is perilously close to dangling regardless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Separately, isn't a compass a tool for scribing circles? Not sure how you'd create a heart shape that way.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-01-09T12:50:21.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15826" CreationDate="2015-01-09T18:25:39.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Omitting should be an accessible approach, Steven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Show, don't tell is a technique often employed in various kinds of texts to enable the reader to experience the story through &lt;strong&gt;action&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;words&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;thoughts&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;senses&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;feelings&lt;/strong&gt; rather than through the author's exposition, summarization, and description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may &lt;strong&gt;omit&lt;/strong&gt; things that he knows and the reader, &lt;em&gt;if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things&lt;/em&gt; as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You really should read the rest on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show%2C_don%27t_tell&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show%2C_don%27t_tell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you know whatever it is that needs to be shown it's fairly simple, omit whatever is not essential to get the point across through the boldly marked mediums above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also &quot;cut&quot; from a climactic scene before it ends or gets cheesy to the &quot;epilogue&quot; or ending of that particular chapter, eg. the handshake doesn't need to end with a strong, firm, long, (etc. adjective drowning the reader), it can simply end with a pause and reach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12615" LastEditorUserId="12615" LastEditDate="2015-01-09T18:30:54.573" LastActivityDate="2015-01-09T18:30:54.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7986" CreationDate="2015-01-10T16:52:32.357" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing to remember is that our concept of time and specifically splitting much of our experience into units of time (&quot;he held his breath for a second&quot; and &quot;I'll see you in 15 minutes&quot; and &quot;It will take 3 hours to walk to the next village&quot;) is very modern and evolved in the context of timepieces of increasing accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior to accurate time pieces, people made limited reference to units of time. A monk might refer to hours of the night (although these varied in length by season) and a Roman might refer to time by a sun dial (again of variable length by season) but this was not how the common person thought of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is in fact anachronistic to have your farm boy or girl in a setting analogous to Earth earlier than the Renaissance (and probably much later in most places) talk about seconds and minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think you'll find that most references to a specific passage of time are unnecessary. In the examples above, &quot;he held his breath for a moment&quot;, &quot;I'll see you shortly&quot;, &quot;it will take all morning to walk to the next village&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12621" LastActivityDate="2015-01-10T16:52:32.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14766" CreationDate="2015-01-10T21:18:37.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I wouldn't use LaTeX (unless you're required to do so). LaTeX is great if you want a collegiate-looking PDF,  but it's a pain to convert to other formats (I know from experience). I'd recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;markdown&lt;/a&gt; or the more advanced &lt;a href=&quot;http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reStructuredText&lt;/a&gt;. Then all you need is &lt;a href=&quot;http://pandoc.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pandoc&lt;/a&gt; to convert the document (the added plus is that you can convert &lt;code&gt;rst&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;md&lt;/code&gt; docs to LaTeX if needed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to this, @what's suggestion is good. Git is an excellent VCS. If you are syncing your work with a place like GitHub and don't want your work visible, then just encrypt it with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gnupg.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gpg&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10310" LastActivityDate="2015-01-10T21:18:37.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14766" CreationDate="2015-01-11T00:36:06.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;May I recommend an approach I use since I also license my content for reuse:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Source - HTML source format is my preference, but you can use LaTex as well&#xA;Works great for all your distribution formats - PDF, Mobi, Word, etc&#xA;Google Web Designer - Editor for all major OS's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/webdesigner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com/webdesigner&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Love this line from License agreement - You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tracking - GIT &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://git-scm.com/&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;Wether the format is HTML, binary, it will do a great job of tracking changes, branches, revisions and releases, and Github or Bitbucket are great cloud repositories to work with contributors&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tasks - I like Jira &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira&lt;/a&gt; and is also cloud based &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use all three for my works and it has paid off, literally and figuratively - Happy Writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Git can be configured to show the &quot;revision&quot; checkin's in Jira, so it is easy to track and allow others to contribute, monitor progress and provide Project Wiki's, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8062" LastActivityDate="2015-01-11T00:36:06.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15830" CreationDate="2015-01-11T01:31:21.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exhausted, I continued lying on my back. A cloud drifted lazily in the sky, heart-shaped, its curves flawlessly outlined as if drawn with a compass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I continued lying on my back, exhausted; a heart-shaped cloud, its curves flawless as though drawn with a compass, drifted lazily across my vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is obvious clouds are in the sky. I think your version is clumsy and does not flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Philip Clayton&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12625" LastActivityDate="2015-01-11T01:31:21.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14582" CreationDate="2015-01-11T02:23:54.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/14631/1993&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; says, it's important to state your assumptions, whatever they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes there just isn't enough data, though, and I understand your question to be about what to do in that case.  There are two basic approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Only write about things you can back up.  For example, &lt;em&gt;Consumer Reports&lt;/em&gt; publishes ratings, including predicted reliability, of all new cars once a year.  They list everything, but where they have insufficient data they just leave out the predicted reliability.  That doesn't stop them from reporting other things about those cars or making recommendations.  They're saying &quot;we don't know this, but we can say these other things&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be more liberal in what you write but be explicit about what data you're basing it on.  You'll sometimes see news analyses of, say, crime patterns, with a note like &quot;in 2011, the last year for which data is available, ...&quot; -- well, it's 2015 now and 2011 data might not tell us enough, but it's the best they have so they extrapolate from it.  In this approach you leave it to the reader to decide how much that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your essay, if you need to talk about abductions in general and you only have data for child abductions, you can take the latter approach.  Say what you base your conclusions on, and perhaps you can anticipate and pre-emptively address arguments about why that data isn't representative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other approach is to focus your essay on what you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; directly support with data, in this case writing about child abductions rather than all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-01-11T02:23:54.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15849" CreationDate="2015-01-11T20:04:22.270" Score="3" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Canada-based publisher that I work with is currently exploring the possibility of publishing a series of James Bond-themed novellas, now that the original Ian Fleming novels are in the public domain in that country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the editor is doing a lot of legal research (ie. the 'movie Bond' is out of bounds as are all other elements from the films like Q, and the portrayal of certain characters) but I was just wondering if anyone on this site had any other insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to submit, but being a writer not based in Canada, will this affect my chances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would they be able to distribute in countries other than Canada?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will they actually be able to publish their own material?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: I've just learned that the publisher will NOT be producing e-books (just PoD paperbacks) as these fall under a very different set of copyright laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12633" LastEditorUserId="12633" LastEditDate="2015-01-11T21:19:57.727" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T01:55:46.987" Title="Can a Canadian Publisher now legally publish original James Bond fiction?" Tags="|publishing|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15847" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15848" CreationDate="2015-01-12T00:21:58.990" Score="5" ViewCount="184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question regarding comma splices. I'm trying to learn more about comma splices and how to remove them from some work I am doing. I understand the basics regarding them but I have a question regarding a possibly more complex example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard to describe the situation so perhaps an example (based on the plight of the poor Razzies :P) will do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It had been a thousand years since the Razzies had known the horrors&#xA;  of the king's might, a thousand years since he had sailed across&#xA;  the ocean with his vast armies and claimed their lands for himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation would it be better to use a semi-colon instead of the comma? I am struggling because I am not entirely positive that they are two independent clauses. If I separate them with a period they do not seem to make as much sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies if this is a silly question. I am just trying to make sure I learn the rules as best as I can. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11582" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T22:14:06.323" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T22:14:06.323" Title="Editing: Those darn comma splices" Tags="|novel|fantasy|editing|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15847" CreationDate="2015-01-12T02:58:16.713" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's not a comma splice; that's a statement followed by an elaboration.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;  The second does not stand alone, so a semicolon there would be incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be a comma splice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It had been a thousand years since the Razzies had known the horrors of the king's might, &lt;strong&gt;it was&lt;/strong&gt; a thousand years since he had sailed across the ocean with his vast armies and claimed their lands for himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, if you were determined to keep all that in one sentence (which I probably wouldn't do because it's getting long), then a semicolon would be the correct way to join two clauses that can each stand alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Notice my use of the semicolon in that sentence.  A comma there would be a comma splice, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-01-12T14:59:28.723" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T14:59:28.723" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15845" CreationDate="2015-01-12T03:53:34.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Canada, like most major countries, is a participant in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Berne Convention&lt;/a&gt;, which is an international agreement governing the handling of copyrights regardless of the country of origin. The basic agreement is that all works are protected for 50 years after the date of publication or for 50 years after the death of the author. Since &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ian Fleming&lt;/a&gt;, the author of the original James Bond books, died in 1964, the assumption is that his books are now in the public domain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what many people tend to forget is that a copyright is considered tangible property, and as such, it can be passed on to heirs or other designated parties. The copyright for all of Ian Fleming's books fall into this category, and as such, they are still protected. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ianfleming.com/about-ian-fleming-publications/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ian Fleming Publications Ltd&lt;/a&gt; &quot;owns and administers the literary copyright in Ian Fleming's fiction and non-fiction books&quot;. This includes the right to any derivative works, which means that any books featuring James Bond or any other Ian Fleming characters may only be published through a licensing agreement with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T03:53:34.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15850" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-12T08:25:22.790" Score="0" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in need of an idea to advance my fictional crime plot where the protagonists of a larger (~30) group realize that the murderer (of a single murder) must be one of them, someone hiding in the group, playing innocent with everyone else. I am looking mostly for inspiration, short stories, novels that are built along similar lines, so that I can extract and bend the story elements according to my needs. To make it clear: I'm not only looking for direct ideas, but also for similar &lt;strong&gt;sources&lt;/strong&gt;. So you might find it more of an &lt;code&gt;identify-this-plot&lt;/code&gt;-type question than a purely opinion-based one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest motif that is very similar is Asimov's short story &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Lost_Robot&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Little lost robot&lt;/a&gt;&quot; from &quot;I, robot&quot; (not the movie). In this sci-fi novel, a robot gets the offhand instruction to &quot;get lost&quot;, and he takes it seriously: he tries to merge within a larger population of 62 similar robots lying to any direct questioning about it's origin and intentions (thereby effectively defying the 2nd Law of Robotics: obeying humans --&gt; a free-roaming, lying robot poses a serious threat). The protagonist robot psychologist (Susan Calvin), after hours of futile questioning, realizes that out of the 63 robots (62 normal, 1 lying), only one is prepared with a specific piece  of knowlege (the one lying), but he himself does not know that the other 62 is lacking this knowlege. Calvin cleverly uses this discrepancy to force the lier to reveal himself by externalizing the internal difference to appear as a clearly visible difference in behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So abstracting away: I need ideas where the protagonists realize that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is a nontrivial &lt;strong&gt;differentiating piece of information&lt;/strong&gt; available for them (and for the Reader), which ensures that the otherwise undifferentiable murderer differs from the innocents, AND&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this &lt;strong&gt;information must be hidden&lt;/strong&gt; i.e. cannot be trivially available to reveal the murderer, AND&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;murderer does not know&lt;/strong&gt; this difference exists (thus the trivial solution &quot;Are you the murderer?&quot; wouldn't do any good), AND&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the murderer can be trapped by exploiting the differentiating information in a way that if the murderer would react to it, no matter hows casually he would do it, would reveal the difference at an obvious level for the audience and for the Reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, during the confrontation, the murderer still reacts to the trap question according to his best intention to hide himself, assuming that he HAS to know this knowledge (as he believes all the other members of the group is in possession of this knowledge). Since the protagonists know, that no other member of the larger group should know about this information, the murderer is revealed, against his intention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12638" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T11:13:19.783" Title="Plot idea to make the murderer (involuntarily) reveal himself" Tags="|fiction|novel|ideas|crime|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2015-01-12T12:09:18.887" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15850" CreationDate="2015-01-12T11:13:19.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exposure to a chemical (or radiation, or some other toxin).&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the suspects are in a particular area, or do a particular task, but only the murderer gets exposed to the MacGuffinium. The suspects are screened in some manner, and the murderer submits to the screen, thinking all evidence has been cleaned away (using normal methods), but the screen which the protagonist uses is a level or two up, and picks up the contamination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a precise example of this, but close, in &lt;em&gt;House, MD,&lt;/em&gt; in the episode &lt;a href=&quot;http://house.wikia.com/wiki/Clueless&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Clueless&quot;&lt;/a&gt;: The wife was poisoning her husband but didn't know the poison would leave a chemical trace on her hands, and House was able to use something to demonstrate the poison on her hands. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the &lt;em&gt;Agent Carter&lt;/em&gt; episode &quot;Bridges and Tunnels:&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Carter is exposed to radiation from an explosion, and realizes that her watch absorbed more of the radiation than her clothes and skin. When one of the bad guys comes up in the line but doesn't ping, she suggests that his locker, including his street clothes and watch, should be scanned. Bad Guy bolts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T11:13:19.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15852" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-12T11:44:26.403" Score="2" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing an academic paper, one might use different labels for different entities. For example in MS Word, Figure, Table, and Equation might be used for figures, tables, and math equations, respectively. Equation labels are typically placed to the right side of the equation. &#xA;What label should I use for a group of equations? Can I use equations (for example equations (15))?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Here is an example group of equations from a mechanics-related text, where different parameters of a criterion are calculated in a series of equations. what do we call such a group as a label (e.g. [label] 7)?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this study, Mohr-Coulomb criterion has been selected in this study as the fracture criterion. Parameters of this criterion are calculated corresponding to &lt;strong&gt;[label]s&lt;/strong&gt;(?) 7 to 9. &#xA;  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rciiY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11028" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-22T05:20:37.950" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T05:20:37.950" Title="What label to use in an article for a group of equations?" Tags="|academic-writing|formatting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15825" CreationDate="2015-01-12T11:55:36.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a fan of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersbeat.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writersbeat.com&lt;/a&gt; myself. The site itself is a forum, and you'll be able to publish parts or complete stories while getting loads of great feedback. A very helpful and friendly community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if there are actual agents or publishers lurking there, but it's quite large so I would not be surprised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OpenBook.pub as Ivo suggested is also a nice site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11589" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T11:55:36.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15811" CreationDate="2015-01-12T11:55:56.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say always end with some questions &amp;amp; appeals for comments, like &#xA;&quot;What did &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; like or dislike about the movie? Am I being too harsh when I criticised $Actor for the way they portrayed their character in $Scene? How &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; they have done it? What would you like me to review or cover next time?&quot;&#xA;Then when you do get comments, engage them in a friendly, non-defensive way. You appealed for opinions &amp;amp; they gave them. You may not agree, so engage in friendly debate about it. Encourage them to back up their assertions. Draw them out. If you find your answer to a question or comment is overly long, make that a new post &amp;amp; put a reply comment in saying &quot;That's actually a very interesting idea! Thank you for that: I think it's interesting enough to devote a bit more time to it so I'm going to make a new post about that when I have time to give it the level of thought it deserves.&quot; - guaranteed to make them get a little rosy glow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11297" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T11:55:56.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15852" CreationDate="2015-01-12T20:40:38.797" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common way to number a group of equations is to use a single number for the whole group and lower-case letters to identify the different equations (subequations). For example, the above equations can be numbered (7a), (7b), (7c) and (7d). You can then refer to each single equation (e.g. &quot;Equation (7a) yields...&quot;) or to the whole group (e.g. &quot;The set of equations (7) represents...&quot;). The choice depends on your needs. In the example you provided, probably, the author did not need to refer specifically to any of the subequations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using LaTeX to typeset your document, the &lt;code&gt;amsmath&lt;/code&gt; package defines the &lt;code&gt;subequations&lt;/code&gt; environment for this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10679" LastEditorUserId="10679" LastEditDate="2015-01-12T20:51:28.063" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T20:51:28.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15852" CreationDate="2015-01-12T22:32:26.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the equations have a relationship (such as all describing different properties of the same process) they are a set of equations, but the question is are they a named set? If they are a named set, use their name, otherwise you should label them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T22:32:26.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15830" CreationDate="2015-01-13T02:00:51.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer your first -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A cloud drifted lazily in the sky, heart-shaped, its curves flawlessly outlined as if drawn with a compass.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a personal preference, I'd remove adverbs where unnecessary - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;lazy&lt;/strong&gt; cloud drifted in the sky, heart-shaped, its curves &lt;strong&gt;flawless&lt;/strong&gt; as if drawn with a compass.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12648" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T02:00:51.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10754" CreationDate="2015-01-13T02:20:31.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With Kindle Direct Publishing and Createspace, you can create an account to &lt;strong&gt;upload&lt;/strong&gt; your books without providing any tax information, as you have already noted. However, before you can &lt;strong&gt;publish&lt;/strong&gt; anything through either of these channels, you &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; have to provide that information, and you will no doubt have to go through a similarly difficult process there as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you started the process with Amazon's ACX service, what you found was that Amazon changed the order in which they collect information. Even with their e-book and POD services, you will ultimately encounter the same issues because they can't distribute your books without having the payment information first. They just happen to collect that information beforehand with their ACX service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, for anyone who resides outside of the United States, there are different tax considerations than those that a resident of the US would have to deal with. The reason for this is that US tax laws apply differently to non-residents, and in addition to that, I am sure that Amazon is required to provide some level of income reporting for other countries as well. They are simply protecting themselves by ensuring that they collect whatever information is required based on where you reside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the difficulties in making your audiobook available, that comes down to distribution rights. Each country has certain trade regulations that companies must adhere to, and for certain types of goods, those regulations may be more restrictive for foreign companies. Right now, it appears that Amazon has distribution privileges in the US and the UK, but not anywhere else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that as recently as a year ago, Amazon was not even selling &lt;strong&gt;e-books&lt;/strong&gt; in countries like Spain or Japan or Brazil, but now they are. I am sure they are working to negotiate whatever agreements they need to have in place in order to enable them to sell audiobooks in additional countries. So even though they don't sell them in other countries right now, don't be surprised to find that they are selling them in other countries in the near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T02:20:31.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12702" CreationDate="2015-01-13T02:57:53.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a similar experience over thirty years ago, but it didn't result in a publishing contract. My manuscript was being reviewed by five publishing houses, and the first to reply was a rejection. However, they had some very nice things to say about it and suggested that it was just too long and had too many characters. They recommended that I rewrite it and send it back, so I immediately began working on cutting it down even before I heard back from the other publishers. The manuscript was ultimately rejected by the other four publishers as well, but I continued with the rewrite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I was nearly done with the revisions, I sent out new sample chapters and a synopsis to the same publishers as well as a few others, and this time I had seven publishers willing to look at the completed manuscript. The same publisher who had suggested the rewrite was again the first to reply, and once again they recommended that I reduce the length. This time I decided to wait for the others to respond. In time, all the other publishers ended up rejecting it as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point I had to decide whether or not I wanted to go through the anguish of trying to make more cuts without having any clear commitment from the publisher or even a clear understanding of what they were looking for. I decided that I just didn't have the desire to do that, so the manuscript sat in my closet for the next twenty-five years. That's when I decided to make a few changes to it and publish it myself. Since then, I've sold about 5000 copies of that book, which isn't great, but I haven't done a lot to promote it either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realistically, the publisher isn't going to invest much, if any, time or effort in helping you refine your work. I think at this point, you have to decide what is best for you. Are you willing to take a chance and start making those changes, even though there are no guarantees that they will result in a contract? Another option would be to start looking for an agent to help you. Since you already have some publishing houses showing an interest in your work, an agent might be willing to invest some time and effort in helping you refine the work, even though a publisher won't. If neither of those options works out for you, then maybe it's time to start looking at self-publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T02:57:53.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5412" CreationDate="2015-01-13T06:21:47.657" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What would they be called, besides &quot;section&quot; which seems perfectly fine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest deploying modernist systematization, especially if that would be considered egregious for your project. For example, you might model your book as a human body, with each 'part' or 'section', here termed 'organ', with the specific organ HEART or FOOT* correlating in some symbolically mystical fashion with the contents of the chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*(Don't be afraid to cheat at your own weird game!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the body has been done explicitly (as part of the explicit structure) and secretly (on the part of the author) in literary fiction as well as nonfiction extensively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which should encourage any technical writer worried that this might be egregious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12649" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T06:21:47.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15862" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-01-13T07:19:58.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag should be used for questions about organizing yourself, your notes or anything else you need to write. You should mention whether you are searching for example for a &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/technique&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;technique&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;technique&lt;/a&gt;, physical &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tools&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;tools&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/software&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;software&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;software&lt;/a&gt;, as well as what you are working on such as &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/academic-writing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;academic-writing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;academic-writing&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/creative-writing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;creative-writing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;creative-writing&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-14T10:31:14.763" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T10:31:14.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15863" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-01-13T07:19:58.660" Score="0" Body="This tag should be used for questions about organizing yourself, your notes or anything else you need to write. " OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-14T10:31:14.763" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T10:31:14.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15852" CreationDate="2015-01-13T08:29:06.607" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you might want to do is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Decide (by refering to relevant literature) if your formulas are considered (a) one equation with a set of subequations, or (b) a series of equations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If they are one equation with subequations, label &lt;em&gt;each subequation&lt;/em&gt; consecutively with letters: 1a, 1b, 1c, etc. If they are a series of equations, label &lt;em&gt;each equation&lt;/em&gt; consecutively with numbers: 1, 2, 3, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Always label each (sub)equation!&lt;/strong&gt; Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; give one number for a group of equations as you did in your example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your three options are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KpOzy.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these three are common in published articles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In text, refer to a series of equations as &quot;equations 1 to 4&quot;, to an equation with subequations as &quot;equation 1&quot;, and to an individual subequation as &quot;subequation 1b&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-01-13T12:32:47.590" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T12:32:47.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15865" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-13T13:57:34.010" Score="1" ViewCount="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to advertise my book with AdWords.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does using narrow keywords increase conversion rate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that no, because conversion rate depends only on clicks, and clicks happen after keywords were already taken into consideration; so it seems not to depend on keywords. But I am not sure whether this my reasoning is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-01-13T16:46:51.117" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T16:20:21.803" Title="Does using narrow keywords increase conversion rate?" Tags="|marketing|sales|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15866" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-13T14:24:57.787" Score="0" ViewCount="226" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to get an editor and submit my full book to a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had my book notarized. Then I put it in a large orange envelope and mailed it to myself so the UPS could put a date stamp on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this enough? Should I do more?&#xA;What other low-budget copyright methods can I use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-01-13T18:31:48.787" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T23:47:17.697" Title="Poor man's copyright techniques" Tags="|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15866" CreationDate="2015-01-13T14:42:15.153" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neither of those things will really do anything to provide you with any protection in a court of law. As far as a &quot;low-budget&quot; copyright method, the only thing you need to do is add the following line to the bottom of your manuscript:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Copyright 2015, Author Name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's just as simple as that. Make sure that you have a copy for yourself before you send it off to the publisher. I see a lot of people who are worried that a publisher is going to steal their manuscript or take away their copyright. Believe me, they will make their money if they decide they like your book, so they will have no desire to steal away your copyright. If you are truly concerned about protecting your work, then register it with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://copyright.gov/docs/fees.html&quot;&gt;US Copyright Office&lt;/a&gt;. It will only cost you about $35.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T14:42:15.153" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12702" CreationDate="2015-01-13T18:02:24.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is the first book you've sent out, you might be unaware how unusual (and prized!) it is to get any personal feedback from a publisher at all --form rejections and silence are &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; more common.  Given this, any offer to reconsider upon revision should be taken extremely seriously.  No publisher ever requests a second look at a manuscript unless they mean it (there are just too many other manuscripts out there to waste time in this way).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't do damage to your work if you think the changes they requested are negative, but keep in mind that if they are a reputable publisher, they probably know the market better than you, and may be giving you really good advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one time it used to be common for publishers to help an author work through revisions, but it is extremely rare these days, when publishers typically expect fully polished work.&#xA;The one book I was personally able to place with a major publisher went through a number of major revisions with a sympathetic editor (who unfortunately retired soon after).  If you can develop an relationship with one, I would see this as a big plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-01-13T18:16:20.210" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T18:16:20.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15869" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16946" CreationDate="2015-01-13T20:17:52.747" Score="1" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just stumbled upon the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/product/snowflake-pro-software/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Snowflake Pro&lt;/a&gt; software and have been very happy with how it has improved the quality and completeness of my manuscript. At the end of the process, the software uses all the information you've entered to put together a draft proposal to take to editors and agents (after being polished up of course), but being new to the scene I don't know if such people take something seriously if it was composed in part by a piece of software. For example, I know some people interviewing job candidates will throw out resumes if they spot evidence that it was written in part by a consultant or if it uses a typical template, or will in other cases use it as a strike against the candidate even if they call them for an interview. I truly think Snowflake is a great tool and doesn't compromise my work in any way, but I'm wary of others being prejudiced against it for whatever reason. Has anyone encountered this prejudice before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12658" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T17:45:00.043" Title="Do agents/editors take Snoflake Pro-based proposals seriously?" Tags="|fiction|software|tools|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15875" CreationDate="2015-01-13T22:43:33.073" Score="1" ViewCount="1874" Body="&lt;p&gt;My assumption here is that a novel set in the current time and world seems more realistic to a reader than a novel with a fictional setting. The reader has the ability to say, &quot;that could be true.&quot; In a fictional novel, it's understood that what is written could never happen. My assumption is that this &lt;em&gt;detracts&lt;/em&gt; from the novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question is this: Will a plot be able to convey the same amount of realism in a fictional setting as in a current time/place setting?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear: I know details add realism. My question is if a real-world setting has a sense of realism that no amount of detailing can give a fictional one. &lt;strong&gt;No matter how well you describe a fictional setting, the reader can never think, 'that could be real.' I want to know if that will detract from the novel.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fictional Setting: &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;. The setting is pure fiction, the reader knows the place never existed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real-Life Setting: &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt;. Though the reader is fairly certain magic does not exist, there is a slight doubt because it is set in the real world. It could be true - wizards could be really good at hiding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-01-14T03:07:39.580" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T11:03:38.740" Title="Real-Life Setting versus Fictional - Can They Attain the same Realism?" Tags="|fiction|setting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15870" CreationDate="2015-01-13T22:59:20.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends how it's done.  Detail makes realism.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worlds of Tolkien and Garcia Marquez come out as very realistic despite being impossible in reality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_realism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Literary Realism&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;em&gt;Broadly defined as &quot;the faithful representation of reality&quot;, realism in the arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_realism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Magic Realism&lt;/a&gt;, which applies specifically in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12648" LastEditorUserId="12648" LastEditDate="2015-01-14T11:03:38.740" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T11:03:38.740" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15877" CreationDate="2015-01-14T05:39:16.433" Score="0" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know you can write stuff like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Head on pillow,&lt;/strong&gt; I glanced at the clock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My mind made up,&lt;/strong&gt; I went over to the counter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And with that he put on the climbing shoes, the harness, and attached&#xA;  himself to the rope. &lt;strong&gt;Everything set,&lt;/strong&gt; he threw the end of the&#xA;  rope down the cliff, and began his descent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-01-14T07:13:52.703" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T21:02:14.377" Title="Is the following &quot;shortening&quot; allowed in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15870" CreationDate="2015-01-14T07:33:22.743" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The factor in believability is &lt;strong&gt;not setting or genre, but the ability of the writer&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I don't usually watch movies or tv series dealing with love relationships set in the present time &lt;em&gt;because the depicted behavior almost always seems completely unrealistic to me&lt;/em&gt;. No one I know treats their family, friends and co-workers like the characters do in Sex in the City or the latest Barbara Cartland novel. Yes, there is some similarity in detail, but in total, the characters are completely unbelievable to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I always find the fictional &lt;em&gt;worlds&lt;/em&gt; depicted in fantasy and science fiction totally believable. Sure, nothing in them is real, but &lt;em&gt;because they don't set out to claim to be true&lt;/em&gt;, I can easily suspend disbelief and indulge in the what-if.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are contemporary novels and movies that approach topics like relationships in the same, what-if way: what if we were completely honest; what if we lived open relationships; what if I only pretended to be in love; and so on. Novels that are &lt;em&gt;thought experiments&lt;/em&gt; (and on that interpersonal level do what science fiction does on the social or technological level) are easy to &quot;believe&quot;, because they clearly say that they are not true, and this honesty makes it easy for me to ignore those unrealistic parts that are irrelevant to the thought experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is, of course, non-genre, literary, realist fiction, both in movies and novels, that is believable, just as there are fantasy or sf novels that are totally believable and they feel real except for the fact that you know they cannot be. There are also, of course, novels depicting real persons and events that feel completely untrue and made up. Not because they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; untrue, but because they are badly written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are unable to convey the present day real world in your writing, it is only the statement that it is set in the present day that makes it believable to the reader, but not the writing itself. If, on the other hand, you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; able to convey a made up fantasy world, it is only the statement that it is fantasy that makes in untrue, while at the same time it will feel totally &lt;em&gt;believable&lt;/em&gt; to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you need to differentiate between facuality and believability. The first can only apply to existing settings, characters and/or events. The second can be a characteristic of any writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me the Lord of the Rings does not feel realistic, despite its wealth of detail, because the narrative style is not realistic but that of sagas, fairy tales and childrens books, using formulaic narration, stereotiypical characterization and an ironic view on events that comes from the writings that Tolkien loved and intenionally emulated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Lord of the Rings is a &lt;em&gt;legend&lt;/em&gt; (of a fictional world), and not a realistic novel. There are realist fantasy novels that emulate the style of autobiographies (Gene Wolfe, Book of the New Sun), historic novels (Geoge R. R. Martin, The Song of Ice and Fire) or adventure tales (Robin Hobb, Farseer Trilogy). If you subtract the ficional world from these books, they no longer differ from fiction set in the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it is &lt;strong&gt;not the detail&lt;/strong&gt; that causes &quot;realism&quot; or believability. If I write, without any detail at all, that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joan cried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then that is believable. But if I write, with much detail, that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joan wailed very loudly and a lot of tears streamed over her face falling onto her legs and wetting her pants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then that sounds somehow unrealistic because the writing is bad and the details are irrelevant. If on the other hand I write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joan cried, her warm tears falling on my hands, and I smiled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then the added detail adds &lt;strong&gt;intensity&lt;/strong&gt; (and a perverse riddle) that make what I write believable, and if I write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joan cried in rhythmic hiccups that reminded me of the stuttering of an automobile engine running on its last drops of gas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then that sounds realistic again, because I (hopefully) found an engaging simile and &lt;strong&gt;wrote it well&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-01-14T08:09:09.220" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T08:09:09.220" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15873" CreationDate="2015-01-14T11:08:00.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The middle one is fine, and the third one is okay. The first feels a little dodgy because you're veering close to a &lt;em&gt;dangling participle,&lt;/em&gt; where you have a phrase which doesn't have a clear subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first and third sentences, the context clarifies the subject, but I'd rewrite them so you don't get into the habit of sloppy antecedents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My head still on the pillow, I glanced at the clock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And with that he put on the climbing shoes, the harness, and attached himself to the rope. With everything now set, he threw the end of the rope down the cliff, and began his descent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T11:08:00.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15878" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15879" CreationDate="2015-01-14T11:46:48.207" Score="0" ViewCount="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my story, to go to next page I wrote &quot;I completed my sentence and turned the page.&quot;. But now I want to go back to my previous page, I wrote &quot;I realized that I have missed something, so I turned the previous page back.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know if this is correct way of writing, also please help me with other ways to write the same intentions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12654" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T11:55:59.660" Title="Page turnings clarification" Tags="|short-story|clarity|pages|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-01-14T12:48:32.897" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15878" CreationDate="2015-01-14T11:55:59.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In English you &amp;quot;turn the page&amp;quot; to go to the next page in a book, and you &amp;quot;turn back the page&amp;quot; to go to the previous page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your situation, you might write something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I completed the sentence and turned the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realized I had missed something and turned back the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T11:55:59.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15882" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-14T16:12:23.397" Score="1" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I optimize my nonfiction e-book for screen viewing or for printing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make sense to optimize a e-book for printing, do many people really print e-books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T20:09:17.970" Title="Do many people print e-books?" Tags="|ebook|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15873" CreationDate="2015-01-14T20:22:57.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Second one is good.  First sounds weird.  Third one is begging for another sentence: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And with that he put on the climbing shoes, the harness, and attached himself to the rope. At the cliff's edge he rechecked every knot one last time.  Everything set, he threw the end of the rope down the cliff, and began his descent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe put in a mutter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And with that he put on the climbing shoes, the harness, and attached himself to the rope. At the cliff's edge he rechecked every knot one last time.  &quot;All set,&quot; he muttered.  He threw the end of the rope down the cliff, and began his descent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, straight answer to your question is &quot;yes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T20:22:57.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15886" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15888" CreationDate="2015-01-15T04:25:17.253" Score="1" ViewCount="398" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I groaned. Why was I doing this? &lt;strong&gt;I guess&lt;/strong&gt; I was afraid of losing&#xA;  him. Like it or not, he was my only guide right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it sound strange since the tense temporarily changes to the present? (and &lt;em&gt;I guessed&lt;/em&gt; sounds even more weird).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a common usage in fiction? If not, what's the correct alternative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T20:09:23.860" Title="Is it OK to use &quot;I guess&quot; in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15886" CreationDate="2015-01-15T05:23:56.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're right, it does sound a bit weird. That's only because of the tense of course. If you were writing in the present tense, it would be just fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While no professional, my suggestion would be to use a different word. In the above example, substitute &lt;strong&gt;was&lt;/strong&gt; and make it a question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why was I doing this? Was I afraid of losing him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't quite have the same sound as the original, so you could probably play with it to satisfaction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T05:23:56.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15886" CreationDate="2015-01-15T11:55:57.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Word choice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What words and phrases you can use in your narration is determined by the character of the narrator and the stylistic distance you choose to employ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you chose a very distanced narrative style, you must use standard language and a neutral, almost formalised style. If you want to write close to the person of your narrator, you can come as close to how this person would talk in real life as you want, including ungrammatical sentences and wrong words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I guess&amp;quot; is somewhere in the middle distance: it is not impersonal enough to fit a distanced narration, but it is also not slang or dialect, but rather something any English speaker might say, even the Queen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tense&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the tense of &amp;quot;I guess&amp;quot;, it is quite alright. Let's analyze what you are actually saying with your example sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Back in the past, when the events happened:] I groaned. [Back then I wondered:] Why was I doing this? [I did not know back then, but now as I narrate this, and looking back at the events from a temporal distance, I think or, which means the same,] I guess [that back then] I was afraid of losing him. [You the reader may] Like it or not [today, as I tell you about it], [but back then] he was my only guide right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, it is not the &amp;quot;I guess&amp;quot; that makes readers stumble, but the &amp;quot;right now&amp;quot; at the end, because &amp;quot;now&amp;quot;, if spoken by the narrator, refers to the moment of narration, not to the time in the past when &amp;quot;he was my only guide&amp;quot;. So what you need to do is shift the &amp;quot;right now&amp;quot; into the past:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I groaned. Why was I doing this? I guess I was afraid of losing him. Like it or not, &lt;strong&gt;at the time&lt;/strong&gt; he was my only guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Replace &amp;quot;at the time&amp;quot; with any reference &lt;em&gt;to the past&lt;/em&gt; that sounds good to you – or simpley leave it out completely, it will work anyway:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like it or not, he was my only guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with a first person narrator narrating in past tense is that you can easily get confused with temporal references. This is why I either narrate first person present tense, or third person past tense. In the first case, the narration happens as the events happen, and everything is in present tense; in the second case the narrator is not the protagonist, and whatever the protagonist might have guessed or had will be in past tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good example for temporal confusion is the phrase &amp;quot;like it or not&amp;quot;. It is said by the narrator, but can it be said of how someone feels in the past? Let's take an example in third person to check this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She groaned. Why was she doing this? I guess back then she was afraid of losing him. Like it or not, but he was her only guide right now.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, in third person narration &amp;quot;right now&amp;quot; works fine, simply because there is no present moment that it could refer to (because there is no reference to the narrator anywhere nearby). But what about &amp;quot;like it or not&amp;quot;? I feel that it is not how you would describe someone else's thoughts, so it feels incongrous. And because of this incongruity, the reader will attribute it to the narrator in your first person past tense example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want the protagonist to &amp;quot;like it or not&amp;quot;, you need to shift that verb into the past tense also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wether I liked it or not, he was my only guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you must never forget is that everything outside of direct speech is said by the narrator. The narrator is always in the present**. All stylitic markers attribute to the narrator in the present of the narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that everything that happened in the past, including indirect speech or past thoughts reported by the narrator, are in past tense, and everything the narrator thinks or says is in present tense. Don't overlook verbs in figures of speech or formulaic phrases like &amp;quot;I guess&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;like it or not&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Notes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* I use a female protagonist in this example, to avoid the confusion of &amp;quot;he was his only guide&amp;quot;: he himself, or someone else? I'd use a name here, if it was two men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;** Unless you have multiple frames of one narrator narrating [in the present] how another narrator narrated past events in a more recent past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T11:55:57.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15890" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-15T14:31:06.920" Score="1" ViewCount="1909" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a fictional novel. It is set in many fictional places and the book will have it's own set of rules of physics. However, I feel that if I lose the sense of realism too much there will be no relation between the book and the reader and I will lose their attention. Will I still get a sense of relation and if not, can I get it through another method?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11316" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T16:51:49.460" Title="Use of realism in a fictional setting" Tags="|fiction|novel|science|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15890" CreationDate="2015-01-15T15:46:20.840" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Realism has several components.  Different ones dominate in different genres/settings &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; among individual readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Real) setting accuracy: If you're describing a real place or a time in history, people who know something about that will respond based on how closely you match what they know.  If there isn't a lot of noise and traffic on your mid-day NYC streets (and there isn't a plot element that explains that), for example, people aren't going to buy that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Setting plausibility: This is the case you've identified.  Basic errors of credibility -- e.g. routine snowstorms in terran tropical climes -- will be noticed by everybody and bother some.  Others will be less obvious to some -- e.g. giant creatures that disregard the square-cube law -- but will be &lt;em&gt;just as disruptive&lt;/em&gt; as the basic ones &lt;em&gt;to the people who know&lt;/em&gt;.  This also applies to consequences of plot points; people with medical knowledge may know that your pandemic isn't credible, scientists may know that your meteor strike wouldn't produce the effect you describe, and so on.  You need to decide how important this is to your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Behavior plausibility: Unless you do a lot of stage-setting to the contrary, people will generally expect your characters to act like people.  Your readers have expectations about how &quot;Joe Average Person&quot; would behave in a given situation; that expectation may be reasonable or unreasonable, or uninformed because your characters &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; different, but this is what they'll be looking for.  Seemingly-rational characters behaving irrationally, experts who don't seem to know the basics of their fields, and so on disturb some readers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Magic&quot; plausibility: People are generally willing to go along with a fantastical setting if they think it's internally consistent.  The sorcery in your story can be completely unrealistic (from our perspective) but realistic &lt;em&gt;within your story&lt;/em&gt;.  You do that by exposing the important rules of your world (ideally through illustration, not long exposition) and then &lt;em&gt;staying consistent with that&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T15:46:20.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15890" CreationDate="2015-01-15T19:28:21.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you will still have a sense of realism. As long as you explain the physics laws/magic laws/whatever differs &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; they take effect, the reader will know why/how things are happening. As long as your definitions are clear, detailed, and consistent with the effects, you should be fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider: Any novel that deals with magic has an unknown set of rules. Once those rules are explained to the reader, however, and if the magic follows those rules, things seem perfectly realistic &lt;em&gt;within the novel&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T19:28:21.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15873" CreationDate="2015-01-15T21:02:14.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is well within the bounds of individual style.  While not everyone might choose to write in this way, it isn't incorrect and may suit your particular &quot;writer's voice.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T21:02:14.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15890" CreationDate="2015-01-15T22:09:21.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Internal consistency is the key.  Build your world and how it works and play by your own rules.... I remember a book which had two types of magicians whose who worked with magic and those that worked with the rules that magic followed... a little weird but it worked because when the way magic worked changed you knew why and how, and in this case it was all part of the plot.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12667" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T22:09:21.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15899" CreationDate="2015-01-16T01:25:25.940" Score="4" ViewCount="870" Body="&lt;p&gt;My problem is that my first few chapters are decent but the last few chapters of my book are superb writing that is capable of becoming famous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I get publishers and agents to read my full book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T02:37:48.410" Title="How do I get publishers and agents to read my full book?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14751" CreationDate="2015-01-16T01:35:01.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the abbreviation is understood by 95% of your intended audience, and 90% of their bosses, and you would seem pretentious if you spelled out the abbreviation, abbreviate it.  Of your examples, only the following ones might meet this standard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BS, MS, PhD (and similarly, BA, MA, MD, JD).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While DBA often stands for &quot;Database Administrator&quot;, it also stands for &quot;Doing Business As&quot;, so you should spell it out.  The other abbreviations should be spelled out, so that ordinary bosses can understand them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10378" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T01:35:01.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15897" CreationDate="2015-01-16T01:41:47.740" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rewrite the first few chapters and make them superb.  There is no law that says that yesterday's writing has to stay in the story.  If the story's definition has improved, or if you yourself have improved in writing skill and creative voice, then throw away yesterday's inferior work.  Make every page shine!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishers and Agents are like every other potential fan of your work.  The only tool you have for seducing them into reading the next page, is the excellence of all the pages they've already read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T01:41:47.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15890" CreationDate="2015-01-16T03:02:56.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term you want is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude_%28narrative%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;verisimilitude&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you want to avoid breaking the readers suspension of disbelief. This means that what happens must be consistent to the rules of what can happen that the reader has accepted for the setting. If the story is set in the real world, this is close, but not identical, to realism. You'd still be expected to adhere to genre conventions even if the story is set in the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in fictional world the genre matters, for example in science fiction you are expected to warn the readers of the changed parts in advance, in fantasy having the setting consistent with itself is sufficient. In fact, regardless of genre the setting must be self-consistent, but usually it is not necessary to make specific effort because your own experience of how the real world works helps you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T03:02:56.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15901" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15908" CreationDate="2015-01-16T05:30:52.177" Score="3" ViewCount="974" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking into taking a screenwriting course online, either from UCLA or NYU or NYFA...  If anyone has taken any of these, please answer the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are these online course certificates actually recognized by producers, agents, directors, etc., or will having this on your resume make no difference at all?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are they worth the money?  They range in price between 4 and 5 thousand dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do they help you find avenues or contacts to help you sell your work (Assuming that it's very good and you are motivated)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't afford to take the time for full-time on-campus courses so I thought this would be a good option for me.  I'd just hate to spend the time and money if the majority have found less than positive results from taking the course online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12663" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T05:43:44.920" Title="Screenwriting courses online - Worth the money or not?" Tags="|screenwriting|education|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15897" CreationDate="2015-01-16T07:00:43.327" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agents and publishers are irrelevant. The real question here is: How do you get &lt;strong&gt;readers&lt;/strong&gt; to read your full book? And the answer to that is that your book won't leave the book store if the beginning is not  superb. And that is why agents and publishers read only the beginning: because the reader will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, congratulations on a healthy dose of overestimation of your own abilities. Research has shown that it's not ability but bigheadedness that better predict success. Bad writing has consistently made the bestseller lists – in fact most beststelling authors are at best mediocre stylists –, but self-doubt rarely has. So I'm sure you're gonna go far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-01-16T09:20:53.823" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T09:20:53.823" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15901" CreationDate="2015-01-16T07:50:50.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;College education in creative areas is for the most part a way for unsuccessful non-artists – that is: illustrators whom no one hires, writers whose books don't sell to support them, screen writers who don't sell scripts – to earn a living. There are some teachers who are also successful in their field, so check who will be teaching you. (Make sure they actually teach you, and don't just lend their name and &quot;supervision&quot; to a series of courses of which they only teach one, or none.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything you need to know is freely available online or in books that you can lend in a library or bought second hand. Institutionalized education can be a motivator for those that find it difficult or boring to work alone at home, but an online course may not help here, only a campus will offer opportunity to socialize. Even the best online teacher will not be able to provide the same feedback and discussion that a mediocre face-to-face teacher (and co-students in the same classroom) can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A big plus in institutional learning is the opportunity to network. Your co-students will later be your colleagues, and your teachers may be well connected to the industry. Beyond that, the internet provides ample opportunity to network on your own. How well networking in online courses works I don't know, but I think you can better make friends in person, so working alone at home and working alone at home for some online class don't really make a difference in this respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no experience with any of the courses you mention, but there is conflicting testimony about institutional art education in general. Some schools have had as students some of the top talent in the industry today; other successful professionals have never seen a college from the inside and are completely self-taught (or studied a discipline unrelated to their art, such as history); and a third group have been there but dropped out and say that it wasn't what they needed and didn't help them. If you google a bit you will find many pros posting blog posts about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it, there are two factors that you should consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who teaches you and what credits do they have? There is nothing to learn from failed artists.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What kind of leaner are you and do you profit from a sturctured online course more than from self-directed learning?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it at all possible for you to study on campus &lt;em&gt;part time?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know enough about the educational system of your country, but many degree programmes, while designed to be visited full-time, do incorporate some flexibility in their curriculum so that students who fall ill or have children or are in some other way unable to study at full speed can still finish their education. So look at the study and exam regulations of the college that would interest you and talk to current or former students to find out how much you can stretch the curriculum to fit your need to earn a living.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T07:50:50.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3245" CreationDate="2015-01-16T08:18:47.570" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do writers need 10,000 hours of training to become successful writers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us look at some evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people write poems, stories and (parts of) novels at some point in their lives, but very few manage to get a book published. So I will, for the moment, use getting a book published as an indicator for success as a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, here is a graphic taken from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/stats_charts.cgi?Age&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Internet Speculative Fiction Database&lt;/a&gt; that shows how many books authors published at what age. (The curve of first novels is vertically exaggerated in the first graph. In the second graph the curve of first novels has been scaled to fit into the distribution of all novels.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5NXII.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the majority of first novels are being published by authors in their thirties and early fourties, and more first novels are published by authors in their fifties than in their twenties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does that mean? Does that mean that these authors started writing when they were 37 or 56 and then got the first piece of writing they ever wrote published rightaway the next year? Certainly not. If you read biographies of authors, or simply observe the vast number of wannabe writers in their teens and twenties, then you will realize that most of these authors who published their first book in middle age or even late in life, will have written many stories, novels, or other writings, before they found success with what in truth wasn't their &quot;first novel&quot; at all, but only the first novel to get published after many previous failed attempts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not having the exact numbers but only eyeballing the graphic, I would say that the mean of the distribution is somewhere around 40 years. That means that on average a first novel is published when its author is around 40 years old. Now, if you agree with me that this person will very likely have been writing since their late adolescence or early adulthood, they will easily have done &lt;strong&gt;more than 10,000 hours of writing&lt;/strong&gt; before their first publication, that is: before they became successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be a writer, it makes a lot of sense to plan your writing career long term ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-01-16T08:23:57.183" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T08:23:57.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4089" CreationDate="2015-01-16T08:20:13.513" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Study the great copywriters. David Ogilvy. Bill Bernbach. Scott Bywater. Jack Trout. Maria Veloso. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Check Amazon for the list. tinyurl.com/n7tfjjm &#xA;I hope that helps you. BM&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12671" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T08:20:13.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8932" CreationDate="2015-01-16T09:53:47.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;qualifier1 qualifier2 noun&quot; is usually okay. &#xA;&quot;qualifier1 qualifier2 qualifier3 noun&quot; is usually not okay&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it lays emphasis, &quot;the&quot; itself becomes a qualifier. Therefore, &quot;the current policy&quot; is okay, and &quot;the current US policy&quot; (or, worse still, &quot;the current US military policy&quot;) is not. In that vein, &quot;the US domestic market&quot; is better stated as &quot;US domestic market&quot;. Equally debatable but more acceptable from my standpoint is &quot;the Mozilla website&quot; : please note that the noun is not 'website', but simply 'site' : 'web' has been embedded in the noun as a permanent qualifier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12673" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T09:53:47.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12701" CreationDate="2015-01-16T16:08:27.123" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can start with entry level positions and internships that do not require journalistic experience or training; the scope of this work is often more generalized but it provides you the opportunity to gain experience and work your way up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you may submit articles as a freelance writer or citizen journalist to news and magazine sites; articles have a greater chance of being accepted if they're well-written and refer to a timely event or other point of interest for your selected site's readership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also decide to start up a blog where you can showcase your writing skills and attract a reader base, and at some point your reputation may lead to an invitation to join a news or media site. (I know a number of people who went from indie blogger to HuffPo columnist, Buzzfeed writer, and so on.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And provided if you have the time, finances and motivation, you can always take a course in Journalism or get a diploma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8429" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T16:08:27.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15901" CreationDate="2015-01-16T16:12:43.517" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, you actually asked three different questions here, so let's break each one down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Are these online course certificates actually recognized by producers, agents, directors, etc., or will having this on your resume&#xA;  make no difference at all?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be quite honest, when it comes to selling a screenplay, you are probably going to start with either an agent or a producer/publisher. They will not care one way or another what your educational background is or what your resume looks like. The only thing they are going to look at is your screenplay, so the certificate/degree in and of itself will make no difference to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, though, the educational experience may give you the tools that you need to be able to craft a better screen play that will draw their attention in the first place. If the classes help you improve your writing or help you to develop a better product, then that in itself will improve your chances of successs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Are they worth the money? They range in price between 4 and 5 thousand dollars.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is any education &quot;worth the money&quot;? Again, it comes down to whether or not you believe these classes will help you improve your writing or help you to develop a better product. I would argue that anything that helps you improve yourself is definitely worth something, but each individual has to decide for themselelf just how much it is truly worth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the classes that are being offered and try to evaluate where you believe you will benefit the most. If you feel that you already know everything that is being taught, then it probably isn't worth the money. However, if you see that there are topics that you are not familiar with, then you have an opportunity to improve yourself, and that has worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Do they help you find avenues or contacts to help you sell your work (Assuming that it's very good and you are motivated)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would see this as very unlikely, esepcially considering that the other participants in the class will be trying to accomplish the same thing as you, and that is to sell their own screenplays. You will be in a community of participants who are all competing against one another for a common goal, so the chances of anyone helping you to sell your screenplay are going to be very limited. Your interaction with the instructors will be very limited, and their focus will be on conducting the class. If you are an outstanding student with exceptional talent, then they might be able to recommend you to someone, assuming they have connections, but I wouldn't take any of these classes just for that reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T16:12:43.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15865" CreationDate="2015-01-16T16:20:21.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By &quot;narrow keywords&quot; do you mean long tail keywords or highly niche-specific keywords?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long tail keywords are much more descriptive/qualified (think &quot;shoes&quot; versus &quot;red satin dancing shoes for children&quot;) and as such may target leads further along the sales funnel. A study published in Search Engine Watch did find long tail keywords to be associated with &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2214529/head-vs-long-tail-keywords-analyzed-impressions-clicks-conversions-profitability&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;higher conversion rates&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect niche-specific keywords also hold similar benefits (highly targeted, possibly highly motivated leads) but I haven't personally come across any study citing these. In my own experience with PPC campaigns, the advantages of highly niche-specific keywords need to be balanced with the disadvantages of fewer queries, fewer impressions and less traffic in total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8429" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T16:20:21.803" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15882" CreationDate="2015-01-16T20:09:17.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Optimizing an ebook for screen is the more difficult course because you have multiple page sizes. If it works well at any size it will work fine for printing. The reverse is not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T20:09:17.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14779" CreationDate="2015-01-16T21:46:45.653" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are traditionally three active defenses against charges of libel, slander or defamation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is mean and nasty but it is true. (I called her a &lt;em&gt;^bad-word^&lt;/em&gt; and she is, see: here is the proof.) The standards of evidence is lower in this case, it only needs to be compelling, not a preponderance thereof.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Well, it is not true, but it is nice. (As far as I know this has never been used in court because no one objects to nice things being said about them.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was not said about you. This is the one relevant to your question. Normally for works of fiction this can be used to get the case thrown out during motions. And research into de-anonymization has the potential to make this more contentious. Two sub-variants that are still effective are that the character was based on another specific person, and that the character is based on a random model, but you better have the data to back it up. (and if you are basing it off of a real person, pick someone disliked or dead or both.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-05-05T04:22:10.817" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T04:22:10.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15901" CreationDate="2015-01-16T21:52:12.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a good way you could find an answer to your question about whether or not the class would be valuable is by reading a specific book on screenwriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book is called, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2p8Ji2X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How To Write A Movie In 21 Days, by Viki King -- amazon link&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;It's very short at only 208 pages and you may save $4,000 by reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is one of the best writing books, and especially one of the best screenwriting books of all time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read the book and worked through the exercises which are quite simple you'd have a decent first draft of a complete play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Provide You With Way To Evaulate Class Value&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But You do not have to work through the exercises to receive the benefit you are looking for.  You are wondering if the class will be worth $4,000 but if you are a novice screenwriter it is difficult to know how to evaluate if the class would be worth it.&#xA;That's where the book comes in.  Read it and learn what you need to learn and you'll be able to evaulate much better the value of the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Save $4,000...Maybe&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will probably save you $4,000 and all you have to do is read a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing, there is a review at amazon on this book which numerous people believe to be Jeff Bridges and he has a lot of good to say about it.&#xA;You can read it at:&lt;a href=&quot;http://newtonsaber.com/AmazonBooks/BookLink.aspx?author=bridges&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeff Bridges review of Viki King's book at amazon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.  Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T17:51:49.317" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T17:51:49.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15866" CreationDate="2015-01-16T23:47:17.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer. But according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;copyright.gov&lt;/a&gt;, in the US, once you create a work, you have copyright protection. But you can register your copyright for added protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When is my work protected?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I have to register with your office to be protected?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why should I register my work if copyright protection is automatic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Registration is recommended for a number of reasons. Many choose to register their works because they wish to have the facts of their copyright on the public record and have a certificate of registration. Registered works may be eligible for statutory damages and attorney's fees in successful litigation. Finally, if registration occurs within 5 years of publication, it is considered prima facie evidence in a court of law. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration” and Circular 38b, Highlights of Copyright Amendments Contained in the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), on non-U.S. works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12677" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T23:47:17.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15915" CreationDate="2015-01-17T08:20:25.837" Score="11" ViewCount="1152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a piece which features two POV characters.  A conceit of the story is that the POVs are writing their chapters, so each one reflects not just their personality, but how my characters would actually write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my POVs is very sophisticated and cultured, and I have endowed his writing with complex sentences and sesquipedalian words and fancy references.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other character however, is not a native English speaker (though she is fluent), and an average high school student in terms of writing ability.  in addition, I want her writing to have an informal, almost conversational tone.   Her chapters have been difficult to write, because I tend towards complex sentences and fancy references. As a preliminary step, I've tried banning semicolons from her writing, but I often find myself re-reading my own work and thinking, &quot;No 18 year old would write this.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I ensure this character's writing is age and background appropriate, when my own writing is very different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user12678" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2018-06-16T13:33:53.733" LastActivityDate="2018-06-16T13:33:53.733" Title="How can I ensure my POV character's writing isn't too sophisticated?" Tags="|characters|viewpoint|language|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15914" CreationDate="2015-01-17T08:58:58.193" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Boy does this sound familiar!  I struggled for a year trying to coloquialize my YA characters.  Every week, I would bring a new sample to my writing group.  It became a standing joke, guess how old my POV characters is!  The group's conscensus never got within a decade of my targetted age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I received the suggestion which I will share with you now...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buy a digital voice recorder.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write your sophisticated character with a keyboard, carefully refining every sentence, phrase and word.  Write your non-native character using only your own spoken words.  Talk fast!  Don't pause to find the right words.  Instead, pour our thoughts out in words as if someone were fighting with you for the microphone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, when you're transcribing the recording into your story, keep your fingers off of the backspace key and try your best to capture your words without adjustment or replacement.  Yes, you are allowed to drop the &quot;umm's&quot; and extra &quot;and's&quot;, but try to limit any other restructuring to grammar only.  Finally, keep all your contractions!  Dropping apostrophes, increases the formal correctness of any narrative, so for this charcter's words, don't drop them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will not believe how less literate you are when you limit yourself to spoken words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T08:58:58.193" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15914" CreationDate="2015-01-17T12:07:52.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This doesn't answer your question, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have given up on trying to make my characters sound different because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I cannot write it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I dislike reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is literature and can damn well employ literary language.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All viewpoints in &lt;em&gt;The Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; sound the same. They can sound the same in my writing, too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is better to have a text that reads well than one in authentic slang that many readers will find incomprehensible or in laughable fake youth speak.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-01-17T19:03:57.797" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T19:03:57.797" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15914" CreationDate="2015-01-17T15:17:55.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting and thought provoking question: &quot;How do I write as an 18 year-old, non-native speaker would write?&quot; And assume I am not one.&#xA;I found this site looking for tips on my iphone and I am not in a habit of writing on internet threads to people I've never met, so I apologize in advance for etiquette faux-pas. &#xA;2 words: computational linguistics. Since each human's language and vocabulary is unique, to replicate the sound of language or the writing of an &quot;18 year-old, etc,&quot; one must have specific model in mind...or just let that 18 year old write it. However, as I imagine you're involved in some sort of exercise to see if you can stretch your writing ability, I believe that would require an extensive study of the patterns of speech of specific demographic. I imagine in time there will be access to on-line speech pattern analysis that will be applicable to defined percentages of certain demographics. This data-bank may be a by-product of an attempt to categorize speech for the purpose of developing natural language processing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12682" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T15:17:55.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15914" CreationDate="2015-01-17T18:09:46.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, lemme say i like Henry Taylor's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hmm. Obviously, you're going to attribute more-sophisticated words to more-sophisticated people. It's not too difficult to tell when someone drops an &quot;SAT word&quot; on you. Your ear's a good judge. Try occasionally running a choice word of dialogue through a Synonym list. Then it's just a matter of consistently choosing words for that character that're similar in complexity. Grammar counts too of course. Bad grammar can be based in ignorance, but much of the time even well-educated people don't just disregard &quot;proper&quot; grammar, they pick and choose which rules they'll follow. For your more extreme characters, it's just a matter of polish. For more sophisticated/formal characters, analyze your writing and then correct the rules that you realize you've broken (ending sentences in prepositions, doublenegatives, etc.). For more immature/informal characters, think about the rules present that you've followed -and break them. It sounds artificial, but it's a mechanism that'll at least get you headed in the right direction -especially if the character doesn't inspire &quot;naturally&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to TEST/gauge what you're writing is to run it through an analyzer. I'm no MS fan, but there's one included in Word. &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-au/article/Test-your-document-s-readability-0adc0e9a-b3fb-4bde-85f4-c9e88926c6aa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://support.office.com/en-au/article/Test-your-document-s-readability-0adc0e9a-b3fb-4bde-85f4-c9e88926c6aa&lt;/a&gt; . At the end of a spell&amp;amp;grammar check, it gives you &quot;Readbility Statistics&quot; including word count, but also (most importantly for us) &quot;Reading Ease&quot; and &quot;Grade Level&quot;. There're a bunch of online ones too. Top one in a search for me was &lt;a href=&quot;https://readability-score.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://readability-score.com&lt;/a&gt; . They're not going to write for you and they're probably not completely accurate, but they should at least get you Relatively where you need to be. It'd show you, with hard metrics, what dialogue is &quot;smarter&quot; and what dialogue is &quot;dumber&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's my plan anyway. Good luck to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12683" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T18:09:46.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15919" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15920" CreationDate="2015-01-17T19:30:13.650" Score="5" ViewCount="838" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a long time now, I have been writing fan fictions based off of the storyline of a board game. I have posted these fan fictions on a website dedicated to the same board game. I am not the only writer doing so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the time will come when I want to publish a real book, and I am finding that my inspiration is flowing from my fan fictions. This is not a problem, as most of them are very removed from the board game. With a little tweaking, I can separate them entirely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is this: Though I trust my readers, my fan fictions are on the internet, where anyone can walk by and grab them. I have attempted to thwart this by making them PDFs with the copying and printing turned off - but my proofreader can copy and print them just fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I secure my unofficial fan fictions against plagiarism?&lt;/strong&gt; The website they are posted on does claim everything on it as copyrighted, but I would like to be doubly sure. If it comes to it, I will have to simply delete the fan fictions. I may have to do so anyway if I begin publishing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: My problem is NOT with copyright. I am drawing &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; inspiration from these fan fictions, not actual aspects of the game. I want to be sure the &lt;em&gt;plot&lt;/em&gt; of my fan fictions cannot be stolen, as they will be similar (similar, not exact) to the published work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. To be clear: I am not a published author, and these are not fan fictions based off of another author's work. They are based off of a board game storyline. Many others are writing similar fan fictions as well, so it is not a question of getting into trouble with the owners of the game (which is discontinued anyway). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-01-19T04:45:54.873" LastActivityDate="2018-05-17T17:12:38.377" Title="Unofficial Fan Fictions - How can I Secure Them?" Tags="|copyright|plagiarism|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15919" CreationDate="2015-01-17T20:43:09.800" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If they're on the Internet, someone has a copy of them. They are free now, and you will never have full control of them again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't swear to it, but I think when EL James got her book contract for the &lt;em&gt;Fifty Shades&lt;/em&gt; trilogy, she deleted all the posted versions of those stories (which were after all &lt;em&gt;Twilight&lt;/em&gt; fanfic). I seem to recall that older versions were available in various online archives (maybe the Wayback Machine), so deleting them from wherever they were hosted didn't make them go away entirely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The upshot is that once you make something public, there's no way to completely prevent people from accessing it, and once they can access it, they can plagiarize it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T20:43:09.800" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15919" CreationDate="2015-01-17T20:46:10.913" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your work is visible to the public, you cannot prevent plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could reduce the likelihood of plagiarism by posting your work on a site that is protected by a password (and perhaps a user agreement). But this also reduces availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can perhaps increase your chances of detecting plagiarism by setting up a Google alert for one or more likely-unique phrases in your text. I have no idea what remedies you might have if you detect plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: The discontinuation of the game &lt;strong&gt;does not&lt;/strong&gt; terminate the copyright owner's rights. Specifically, it does not give you any right to the material. Unless the copyright owner has explicitly transferred the copyrights to the public, or to some group of people that includes you, you have no right to use the copyrighted material. The only legal way to use the copyrighted material in your fan fiction is to obtain that right from the copyright owner. (I am not a lawyer. I do not know the laws related to fan fiction.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T20:46:10.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15826" CreationDate="2015-01-18T02:51:50.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One approach that I use is to write like a scientist. Rather than draw conclusions, scientists are trained to record their observations--for instance, a list of temperatures measured at 1-minute intervals during an experiment, rather than simply writing &quot;Nuclear fusion was achieved!&quot;&#xA;So in fiction, you might say, &quot;Small droplets of sweat appeared on Sumi's brow, and she propped the window open with a shoe.&quot; (showing) rather than, &quot;The day was a sizzler.&quot; (telling)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12687" LastActivityDate="2015-01-18T02:51:50.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15919" CreationDate="2015-01-18T04:35:59.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The already posted answers concentrate on the technical aspects. Although I am not a lawyer, I would like to dare to try to write an answer about the legal aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most parts of the world (at least those parts which follow the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Berne Convention&lt;/a&gt;), copyright is automatic. The moment you create a creative work, you have exclusive copyright over it. A copyright message is optional. In some countries you can register a copyright for a work at a public institution (usually for money), but this is also optional. Such a registration might help in case of a lawsuit to prove your copyright claim, but when you have another way to prove that you are the author it isn't necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the question is if you have the ability to actually enforce your copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you need to find out that someone violates your copyright. You can't monitor the whole internet, so the chance that you miss a violation isn't small. You can not fight what you don't know exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you learn of a violation, then the question is if you can actually prevent it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the material is hosted by a public platform, they might be cooperative when you contact them, but they might want some kind of proof that you are the actual copyright holder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the platform is uncooperative or the plagiarist is hosting it on their own domain, you might think about publicly shaming them. Don't! It will just call even more attention to the plagiarism and will make you look like a drama queen/king.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So all that is left is to get a lawyer and sue. But copyright lawyers don't work for free and they want their money in advance. When there is a lawsuit (such cases are often settled outside of court) and when you win, there is a chance that your cost must be paid by the defendant, but you shouldn't bet on it. Also hope that the person you want to sue is in the same country you are. International lawsuits can get very complicated. So when your fanfiction is just a non-commercial hobby for you, pressing legal charges might not be worth it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T04:57:59.983" LastActivityDate="2015-01-18T04:57:59.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15927" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-18T21:08:43.543" Score="6" ViewCount="754" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to practice the craft of creative writing in isolation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not directly affiliated with a writing community, at least a community willing to read small practice creative pieces. I do have access to the internet. I work with mostly scientist and engineers. I want to practice the craft of creative writing. I do not mind writing several minutes a day to practice and going back to read and edit, but I do not trust myself to be fully capable of judging my own work against what others might think of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who do authors practice with? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8504" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-09T19:11:32.043" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T19:11:32.043" Title="Is it possible to practice the craft of creative writing in isolation?" Tags="|creative-writing|exercises|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15927" CreationDate="2015-01-18T22:45:22.687" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting question -- kind of the holy grail of &amp;quot;learning to write&amp;quot;.&#xA;The question is : Is it possible to learn to write better on your own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it &lt;em&gt;can be&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn the Basics From Books&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn the basics from writing books.  My all-time, knock-down, marooned-on-a-deserted-island favorite is: &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qEWv3K&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Make Your Words Work by Gary Provost&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Learn the basics from a good book then practice those basics as you write your own stories.&#xA;Another great book is On &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYLEW6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing Well, by Zinsser - amazon link&lt;/a&gt;.  If a person really read these books and practiced what they say a bit his/her writing would get better quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Improbability of a Writing Mentor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The improbability of obtaining a real mentor is large for many reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;most of us will never come in contact with a real &amp;amp; successful published author&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;even if you come in contact with published author, s/he will probably not have time to actually mentor us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if someone has to tell you that you're writing is good then maybe you aren't really cut out to be a writer.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;A. Consider this, if cannot step outside yourself and determine whether or not your writing works then maybe you aren't really cut out for writing.  I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B. If you cannot determine good writing from bad in other samples then you won't know it in your own either and you wouldn't make a good writer either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;do you think Hemingway, John Grisham or Shakespeare had to have someone tell them that they were great writers?  Unlikely.  They knew when they were good and when they were bad.  Yes, they surely wrote poorly also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A writing mentor is really just a pipe dream that many people lazily dream because they aren't interested in actually working on their writing.  I know, because I've done it. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn to Write From Published Examples&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I've wondered about this for a long time and I've put together a book on writing fiction called &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYkmiE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fiction Writing Gems -- amazon link&lt;/a&gt; which takes excerpts from over 25 published books of fiction (great ones and terrible ones) and shows you that you know what great writing and terrible writing is and you can learn from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mastery and Artistry&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you learn mastery of writing and artistry from books?  Not really.  But you can learn the basics and practice your way to mastery and artistry.  The more you get the basics down the faster you get to mastery / artistry.  Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T17:48:44.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15929" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-18T23:03:55.963" Score="6" ViewCount="5709" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tell:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Andy looked angry&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Andy scrunched his eyebrows together, he gritted his teeth and glared. His skin turned a bright red making him look like a raging demon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other ways to 'Show' other than to list bodily actions?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Or without using the word 'Like'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-06T10:57:36.507" LastActivityDate="2018-03-06T12:22:34.157" Title="What are ways to &quot;Show, don't tell&quot; without simply listing bodily actions?" Tags="|creative-writing|showing-telling|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15930" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-19T01:10:33.157" Score="0" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am finishing writing a non-fiction (religious) e-book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like for me that the most effective way to market my writings is to advertise it with AdWords and sell as e-book directly through PayPal (not through a reseller).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can also make a printed book with Lulu or CreateSpace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: Would adding a link to Lulu or CreateSpace discourage readers to buy my e-book, as they may think that a book on Lulu or CreateSpace is &quot;nonprofessional&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also e-book purchases would lead money directly to my PayPal account, while with Lulu or CreateSpace I need to wait for payments to accumulate before they send me money. This (printed book) would be a competitor sakes of the e-book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, should I sell only e-book or e-book and printed one with Lulu or CreateSpace also?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T20:00:15.663" Title="Discouraging link to Lulu or CreateSpace" Tags="|marketing|ebook|sales|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15931" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-19T01:33:27.997" Score="3" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have a document with a list like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;aaaa&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bbbb&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cccc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dddd&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I put nothing, a semicolon, a full stop or what at the end of each line?  This is for an academic paper.  We don't have a specific style guide we're supposed to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found some information on the Internet and apparently: if there is no full stop within an item (as in 2nd and 3rd item in the list above), the item is closed by a semicolon, otherwise by a full stop (as in the 1st item in the list above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this applicable to a mixed (full stop within some item, no full stop within some other time) list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11593" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-01-20T19:11:15.347" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T19:11:15.347" Title="Punctuation in a list" Tags="|academic-writing|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15931" CreationDate="2015-01-19T01:55:51.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a stylistic choice. I would never use a comma or semicolon at the end of a list item. I would use a period/full stop only if the item is a full sentence. To wit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Star Trek&lt;/em&gt; is known for breaking new ground on television in several ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• Kirk and Uhura's kiss in &amp;quot;Plato's Stepchildren&amp;quot; was the first interracial kiss on broadcast TV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• Chekov (a Russian) and Uhura (a black woman) as bridge officers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• An alien as the first officer (and in the pilot, a woman as the first officer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• In later series, black and female captains, and a Klingon bridge officer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• Apocryphally, Lt. Malcolm Reed was intended to be gay, which would have made all the security officers contravene the hulking testosterone-soaked bruiser stereotype (Yar, a wasp-waisted woman; Worf, the oddly subdued Klingon; Odo, the thoughtful shapeshifter; Tuvok, a Vulcan; and Reed, a slender gay man).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T05:20:02.117" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15929" CreationDate="2015-01-19T02:12:30.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Body language and facial expressions work miracles. Using your example, if a person is scrunching their eyebrows, gritting their teeth, and glaring, we can safely assume that they are angry. The other sentence is kind of extraneous, passing into 'tell' territory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speech patterns are another good way to show emotions, for example a person who is angry may swear, repeat words, shout, cut off their sentences, or might be too angry to speak at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12697" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T02:12:30.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15934" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15936" CreationDate="2015-01-19T02:52:38.793" Score="1" ViewCount="6557" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I use the former or the latter in a story written in first-person past tense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My heart started to race, my adrenaline to spike, and &lt;strong&gt;that's when&lt;/strong&gt; the&#xA;  thought hit me: I had to find out. I had to solve this mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My heart started to race, my adrenaline to spike, and &lt;strong&gt;that was when&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  the thought hit me: I had to find out. I had to solve this mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found both ocurrences in fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-01-19T09:42:04.100" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T18:24:49.123" Title="&quot;That's when&quot; vs &quot;That was when.&quot;" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|tenses|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15931" CreationDate="2015-01-19T08:44:30.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, there are two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Your list is a list&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following fruits are healthy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;apples&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;bananas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;cherrys&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I love to eat them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lists don't have punctuation. Even if each list item is a full sentence, you don't need to put a full stop after it (unless it is a quote).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What you need to remember:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sleep well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Eat well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Love your parents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your list lists sentences, list them with the punctuation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Come home.&quot;&#xA;But Joan only shook her head. (from John Jake, The Boring Book)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These are my favourite sentences from John Jake's &lt;em&gt;Boring Book:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;Come home.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;But Joan only shook her head.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both list items are understood to be quotes from a text, that is, the first sentence was written with quotation marks in the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Your list is a sentence styled as a list&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I love to eat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;oranges,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;bananas, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;apples,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;because they are healthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sentences have punctuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-01-19T11:20:47.857" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T11:20:47.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15934" CreationDate="2015-01-19T14:40:24.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would always use &quot;that was,&quot; because to my ear, &quot;that's&quot; &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; implies &quot;that &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; and your sentence is in the past tense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T14:40:24.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15934" CreationDate="2015-01-19T18:24:49.123" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a strictly grammatical point &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/15936/1993&quot;&gt;Lauren's answer&lt;/a&gt; is right -- you're talking about something that happened in the past, so &quot;that was&quot; is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, dialogue is often more colloquial and a first-person narrative can be more like dialogue than strict narrative.  If you're trying to evoke the feel of the narrator actively telling a story to a room-full of listeners, you might find &quot;that's when&quot; to fit the style better.  If, on the other hand, your narrator is dispassionately and remotely retelling past events, the way somebody might write an event chronology in a police report for example, he'd probably say &quot;that was when&quot;.  Whichever you do, be consistent -- if your narrator usually writes more formally, dropping a colloquialism in will stand out.  So unless you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; it to stand out for dramatic effect, I suggest avoiding mixing styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T18:24:49.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15927" CreationDate="2015-01-19T18:58:37.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two possible answers from my own past...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider joining an online writing circle.  I was a part of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fmwriters.com/zoomfm/index.php/home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FMWriters&lt;/a&gt; for several years and got a ton of great feedback from the small samples and short stories which I shared on the site. If you join them, try to get into a private writing circle in your chosen genre.  The open forums are wonderful, providing one-off critiques of any writing which you post, in return for your critiquing the posts of other members.  The private circle's take that a step further, giving you a small group of writers to build a cooperative critiquing relationship with.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start a writing group of your own, in the real world, near where you live.  You can't be the only potential writer who is frustrated with your area's lack of a supporting community.    Running a group is an organizational challenge, not an artistic one.  There is no requirement that you be a great writer before you start the group.  I ran a 400+ member group for about 5 years and even after all that time, many of my members knew more about plotting, grammar and character development than I do now.  If I had had to be a great writer before scheduling the group's first meeting, then it never would have come together.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T18:58:37.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15939" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15989" CreationDate="2015-01-19T20:05:17.890" Score="0" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an aspiring writer/blogger, I'm finding it hard to know where to start. I'd like to be able to get some work of mine, possibly from &lt;a href=&quot;http://pyme.thecodelobby.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my blog&lt;/a&gt;, in a local newspaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What advice is there for aspiring and young writers trying to get pieces of work in a local newspaper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should I go about contacting the right people for this, such as editorials? What manner should I have towards them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is my current writing style appropriate for a newspaper column or highlight?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12701" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T17:21:04.200" Title="What advice is there for aspiring journalists and authors?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15940" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16017" CreationDate="2015-01-19T23:11:35.193" Score="2" ViewCount="1127" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on an essay, and one of my sources is a film. (The Matrix) What would the in-text citation for the film look like, and would it include the time that the quote occured?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12702" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T23:56:46.127" Title="How to cite a film quote using MLA in text citations" Tags="|citations|mla|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15929" CreationDate="2015-01-20T10:47:13.313" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;To see the answer, think in clearer terms. &quot;Show, don't tell&quot; is about evidence vs. inference. This advice matters because readers like to be given evidence and to make inferences themselves. That is worth posting on your wall: GIVE THEM EVIDENCE. LET THEM INFER.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can chase down the evidence by repeatedly asking yourself, &quot;How do you know?&quot; The answers will eventually hit bottom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In normal life, the thoughts, emotions, motivations, and intentions of others are private and can only be inferred from observable behavior or direct report. These are both evidence, but direct report doesn't always (or usually) work in a scene. Having a character report their internal states spoils the fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Andy was angry&quot; is completely inferential. The only way you could conclude that Andy was angry is by inference. You can get a reader to infer that Andy is angry by giving evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Andy looked angry&quot; is partly evidentiary. It tells you Andy's appearance. A reader could also infer that Andy is angry from Andy's saying that he is angry (while looking plain or talking on the phone), from Andy's slamming a door, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Andy looked angry&quot; is bad because it doesn't get to the root evidence. Anger isn't something that you can witness directly. It's something you infer from context and a range of behaviors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you know that Andy looked angry? If there's a new answer to this, you haven't reached bottom. A possible answer is, &quot;Andy scrunched his eyebrows together,&quot; which is bottom/root evidence. How do you know that Andy scrunched his eyebrows together? Well, because you saw him scrunch his eyebrows together. There's no new evidence. You've hit bottom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's still lots of other evidence that someone is angry. Put Andy in a situation that would make most people angry, such as being cheated, openly insulted, or punched in the face. Establish a pattern of behavior that means Andy is angry; perhaps he always gets quiet when angry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to improve upon &quot;Andy looked angry&quot;, you are confining yourself to visual facts about Andy's appearance from the start, so the answer is easy: you must give visual clues. In this case, you might try consulting &quot;The Emotion Thesaurus&quot; by Ackerman and Puglisi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If visual clues don't satisfy you, look to context or the other senses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also prime a reader for a particular inference, especially by making them feel something you want attributed to a character. Introduce anger into the environment or use terms with violent connotations just before the information about Andy. Compare &quot;The subway doors banged shut. Andy crinkled his brow.&quot; to &quot;The subway doors eased shut. Andy crinkled his brow.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;like&quot; simile is just a shortcut; it lets you skip to another description and feeling. One of the best I've read (&quot;as if to shoo away gnats&quot;) is from Tobias Wolff's &quot;This Boy's Life&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sister James had been about to say something. Her mouth was open. She looked at the arrow I was aiming at her, then looked at me. In her presence my thoughtlessness forsook me. I knew exactly what I had been doing. We stood like that for a time. Finally I pointed the arrow at the ground. I unnotched it and started to make some excuse, but she closed her eyes at the sound of my voice and waved her hands as if to shoo away gnats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4026" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T10:47:13.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15942" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15943" CreationDate="2015-01-20T12:53:07.033" Score="11" ViewCount="4076" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://litreactor.com/essays/chuck-palahniuk/nuts-and-bolts-%E2%80%9Cthought%E2%80%9D-verbs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chuck Palahniuk&lt;/a&gt; you should avoid &quot;Thought&quot; verbs as much as you can. These include: knew, thought, realized, believed, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I've seen many of them in books that I read. And I think they somehow simulate real speech (useful with first-person narrative). Here's an example from my own writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lying back down, I thought about what he had just said—and&#xA;  realized I wasn't unhappy anymore; I no longer had this pressure in my chest; I felt&#xA;  released, light, as if I could reach the ceiling above&#xA;  me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are &quot;Thought&quot; Verbs a sign of weak writing? Or just an stylistic choice?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-01-20T15:41:57.227" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T16:53:00.383" Title="&quot;Thought&quot; Verbs: A sign of weak writing or a stylistic choice?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15942" CreationDate="2015-01-20T13:43:33.823" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand him, Palahniuk doesn't actually mean that you must avoid thought verbs, especially not at all cost. Palahniuk does use thought verbs in his own writing. That blog post is a suggestion for a &lt;em&gt;writing exercise&lt;/em&gt;, not a rule for how you should write for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important part in that post, to me, is what Palahniuk calls &quot;unpacking&quot;. As I understand this it means that instead of using abstract concepts like &quot;love&quot;, you should write out the observable behavior that we mean when we say &quot;love&quot; and let the reader come to the conclusion that the charakter is in love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John loves Joan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is an essentially meaningless sentence. It does not tell us anything about what John does or what being in love means for him. Also, it is basically untrue in that it is a claim that, if made about a real person, could never be verified. No one knows if another person is in love, and most people don't understand themselves well enough to know what is going on in them when they say they are in love. So claiming that one character in a book &quot;loves&quot; another reduces the real world complexity to a fake cardboard clichee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand you write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every day John bought Joan a flower and walked to the other side of town to lay it on her door step - then quickly ran away so she wouldn't see him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that will ellicit an emotion in the reader and give him a feeling for the kind of person John is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the &quot;unpacking&quot; does is that &lt;strong&gt;you stop interpreting&lt;/strong&gt; the world for your readers. When you &quot;unpack&quot; thought verbs and other abstractions, you become a better observer, you stop writing &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; the world, from a meta perspective, and instead begin to directly translate the world into words, &lt;strong&gt;allowing the reader to experience that world for themselves&lt;/strong&gt;. And you allow the reader to come to a different conclusion about it than you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-01-21T11:37:43.983" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T11:37:43.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15942" CreationDate="2015-01-20T13:49:51.197" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see where he comes from saying that those words should be avoided, but I would not avoid them at all cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were writing a &quot;classic&quot; detective story, where the rugged detective is telling the story you should be allower the use of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As I came back to my office, the door closing with a soft click behind me, I though about the days events. Some thing seemed off, but I could not put my finger on it. I'd been through it many times before of course, knowing all to well how this night would end. I would probably have my regular date with good old Jack and conteplate all the things I have heard. But as I reached my desk I realized what I had missed. Stopping dead in my tracks I knew what I had to do.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me this feels like a stylistic choice, and a way to personalize the character.&#xA;Although if you are do describe from a third-person perspective, or do some form of &quot;out of character&quot; description I would try to avoid them like he suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I'm no writer by education and I'm in no position to tell someone what is best or the most &quot;correct&quot; way of writing. Only what I am most comfortable both reading and writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11589" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T13:49:51.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15955" CreationDate="2015-01-20T16:38:47.130" Score="1" ViewCount="674" Body="&lt;p&gt;I and a few of my friends are conducting a small research project to determine the prevalence of hypertension, where we live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was hoping I could get an opinion on how to write our literature review. I've read several popular studies that explore the prevalence of hypertension but didn't find any literature review sections in them (presumably because those studies are from trusted researchers??).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if we just compile objectives and results from various studies, would that be enough for a literature review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My apologies if this question is extremely daft, but it's our first research project and our project supervisor is utterly useless...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12705" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-01-20T19:07:09.340" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T12:56:36.980" Title="How much detail is considered enough for literature review of a research paper" Tags="|technical-writing|research|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15927" CreationDate="2015-01-20T19:29:52.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would counter that it is only possible to find your own voice, make your own way if you accept the element of isolation that is essential to the writing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you may take a class, join a group, find a wonderful mentor. In the end, it will be you and the world, and how that intersection expresses itself in words that will vault you into the task. Your class, your group, your mentor will be credible only insofar as they confront you with yourself, and leave the responsibility for evaluating your work to you - in the end, the only judge who counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This requires great courage, and courage is that thing you exercise when you feel the bottom dropping out of your stomach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take your lead from John Keats, the son of a stableman, who never made it to university, who died before his work was widely recognized: &quot;I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In whatever art form, the artist owns the process, but has no claim on the outcome. Fighter pilot time. Jump into the cockpit, and give it a spin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12709" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T19:29:52.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15950" CreationDate="2015-01-21T06:54:57.063" Score="0" ViewCount="2254" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples (first person past tense):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, goodby then.&quot; After saying &lt;strong&gt;this/that&lt;/strong&gt;, he picked up his hat and ran out door. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I let his words sink in my head. &lt;em&gt;To fight alone&lt;/em&gt;. Was &lt;strong&gt;this/that&lt;/strong&gt; true&#xA;  even though we had each other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the meaning change if I pick the former or the later? Which one is more common in fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T18:53:34.127" Title="&quot;This&quot; vs &quot;that&quot; in past tense narrative" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-01-22T00:40:41.157" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15948" CreationDate="2015-01-21T18:53:34.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's any huge detriment story-wise (or even grammar-wise), but I would suggest &quot;this&quot; for the first and &quot;that&quot; for the second. However, I wouldn't phrase the first passage that way since it's a bit stilted and odd to read. You could say…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, goodbye then,&quot; he said as he picked up his hat and ran out the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;…or you could just say…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, goodbye then.&quot; He picked up his hat and ran out the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd have to see the context, but it should help the flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7890" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T18:53:34.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5515" CreationDate="2015-01-21T20:49:43.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One huge effect is that it has made many authors' backlists available again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T20:49:43.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15952" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-22T01:39:20.670" Score="4" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine has spent many years developing several treatment methods for certain psychological disorders. She believes individuals with these disorders would benefit if she could write a nontechnical book that consolidates many of the principles she teaches to her patients. She is striving for a book that sort of summarize what tools are out there and how best to use them for people with those disorders. In other words, she wants to write a layman's book but one that balances being engaging  in terms of writing but that still conveys the core of her theories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any go-to resources on how to accomplish this? Specifically, a book that explains the subtleties of technical versus non-technical writing and how to blend the two together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11549" LastEditorUserId="11549" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T02:59:50.617" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T08:00:48.350" Title="Writing nonfiction for mass audience" Tags="|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15952" CreationDate="2015-01-22T08:00:48.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all very easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Think like your patients. Look at their problem from their perspective. You can already do that, or otherwise your therapies wouldn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Structure the content. That is, create a narrative similar to the underlying plot of a novel: develop a plan of what you want to say in what order. Looking at the problem from the perspective of your patients will guide you in that this gives you a starting point (problem but no idea what the problem is and how to solve it) and a goal (no problem) and how to get there (what you do in your therapy). So you already know the &quot;plot&quot;, too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write the book. Use the same language that you use in your therapy. If your patients understand you then, they will understand you in writing. Again, you already have what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Add interesting case examples or whatever to help your readers better understand the theory and how to apply the methods. You got that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's basically it, and you have all it takes. Everything else is your ingenuity and creativity, and that must come from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot form pleasant sentences, or have no idea how to make your book fun to read, or don't want to invest the time to learn the skill of writing, then hire a ghost writer who brings that kind of creativity and expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T08:00:48.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15945" CreationDate="2015-01-22T08:22:58.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, if you write for publication in a peer reviewed journal, you must make a serious effort to review and discuss &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; publications relevant to your research. You are building on previous research and not attempting to invent the wheel a second time. So to make your research relevant, it must consider what has been done before. How detailed your review will be, depends on what you research, what has previously been found, and so on. There is no general rule except that journal articels are limited in length (which depends on the journal you are submitting to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know how to write a literature review, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; will help you find peer reviewed scientific publications relevant to your research. Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; use &quot;popular science&quot; articles, since these are usually abbreviated and simplified. Use the original research articles (that should be mentioned in the pop publications). These also contain literature reviews of their own that you can use as blueprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read these two articles by Daryl J. Bem about &lt;a href=&quot;http://scientificexploration.org/documents/instructions_for_authors.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;writing the empirical journal article&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jdl.ac.cn/how_to_research/doc/Writing%20a%20Review%20Article.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;writing a review article&lt;/a&gt;. Also visit your or the next college or university library. They will have lots of books teaching their students scientific writing. If you study what you research at a college, you should have some kind of course that teaches you how to write in your field. See that teacher and ask or visit that course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, read the style manuals relevant to your field (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). Most of these contain information way beyond simple formatting but also cover planning your research and preparing the results for publication as well as general writing advice. They are very valuable for your research and should be one of your first and constant references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T08:22:58.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15958" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15969" CreationDate="2015-01-22T13:13:33.380" Score="3" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;For context, I am a forty-something male from the Great Lakes region of the United States.  I work full-time as something other than a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About 25 years ago in high school, I was an almost-straight-A student.  The &quot;almost&quot; was always due to English class.  I hated, nay despised, the writing assignments I was given, believing the forced topics to be inane and worthless.  Whenever I had to write an essay or research paper in another class, I could do just fine, thank you.  I didn't need to compare and contrast the points of view of the boy in the story we had read with that of his father, as an example.  Who cares?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My reason for mentioning this is that any previous answers I've heard to questions like this were along the lines of &quot;your teachers at school&quot; and &quot;your supervisor/ co-workers.&quot;  But I am long out of school and failed to recognize the resources at the time, and my workplace involves no creative writing whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now, I find myself with a couple of neat stories inside my head begging to be let out.  I have also been diverting increasing amounts of my &quot;hobby time&quot; to sitting at this computer and typing out bits and pieces of these stories.  When I review my own work, I know when I've written something bad, and can redo it.  But I'm less confident in when I've written something really good, like maybe-I-could-publish-it-good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got some characters, scenes, and dialogues I think are ok.  But I also have some weak transitions, plot holes, and other minor issues I just can't seem to be able to tweak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where can I go, or who can I speak with, to read bits of my work, give me some friendly advice and constructive criticism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12732" LastEditorUserId="12732" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T16:59:41.240" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T20:06:36.383" Title="Getting help and/or mentoring, later in life" Tags="|planning|getting-started|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8932" CreationDate="2015-01-22T17:12:19.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure I understand. Could you please specify what you mean by &quot;the&quot; used ahead of pronouns/conjunctions/prepositions ? As far as I can readily think of, &quot;the&quot; is only used in situations that match : &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; [adjective] &quot;noun&quot;, [adjective] being optional. In some situations, an adverb can take the place of the adjective, in which case the noun itself is usually silent : &quot;the deeply guilty&quot; implies &quot;the deeply guilty people&quot;, making &quot;deeply guilty&quot; the adjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with you entirely that you might use &quot;the&quot; 5 times in a sentence without breaking any grammatical rule, or the natural sound of the sentence. But then, even a single instance can be avoidable : &quot;we sell the tools for fishing&quot; sounds better to me as &quot;we sell tools for fishing&quot;, unless one is implying an even more specialized subset within &quot;tools for fishing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across a situation where using &quot;the&quot; actually reduces emphasis. Taking Expedia as a group that contains many sister concerns :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expedia website -&gt; www.expedia.com; &#xA;The Expedia website -&gt; www.expedia.com, or website of any sister concern&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But such usage is mostly a matter of personal inclination. For general usage, I think the best way is to simply test for elementary grammatical rules, and then check : does it sound okay without &quot;the&quot; in front ? If yes, drop it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12673" LastEditorUserId="12673" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T22:28:27.373" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T22:28:27.373" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-01-22T17:12:19.160" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15958" CreationDate="2015-01-22T18:29:50.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make Your Story Available&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a google drive account.  It's 100% free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write your story and save it on your google drive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;share the document via URL -- it's easy to do -- then you can give the URL to people you want to read your story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gather Feedback&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Next, you use Google Drive to create a Feedback Form.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You just say, New Form and add questions*.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Share the form so your readers can provide feedback anonymously.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*These questions will be things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Overall, did you enjoy reading the story? rate 1 to 5 (5 being best)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What was your favorite part of the story? [text]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was your least favorite part? [text]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you like the main character? (yes/no)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was the plotting overall interesting? (yes/no)&#xA;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the sample so you can see it.  Yes, it's a strange public URL, but it's real and it works.  It saves all hte user's responses in a spreadsheet on your &lt;strong&gt;Google Drive&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1kXu0p7ed9fTkgzxH9RzBieonfwD3XgIdIKcuAD9iti4/viewform?usp=send_form&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1kXu0p7ed9fTkgzxH9RzBieonfwD3XgIdIKcuAD9iti4/viewform?usp=send_form&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Benefits Are Many&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This helps you get more feedback and allows users to respond anonymously so they don't have to feel like they are hurting your feelings.  You can make the questions far more specific too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T18:29:50.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14789" CreationDate="2015-01-22T20:34:10.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Final Draft 7, if you run the ScriptCompare tool (&lt;code&gt;Tools&lt;/code&gt; &gt; &lt;code&gt;ScriptCompare&lt;/code&gt;) against the previous day's file, it generates a document that shows the changes from that version. You could send the changes file, along with the latest screenplay file, to your writing partner - or your writing partner could generate the changes file him/herself against their previous version of the script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if you are revising an existing script, you can use the production tools to track changes by locking the script (&lt;code&gt;Production&lt;/code&gt; &gt; &lt;code&gt;Lock Pages&lt;/code&gt;) - this locks page numbers and shows changes with asterisks in the margins, which you could eventually 'unlock' again - but for anything more than a few pages worth of revisions, usually during production, this would be quite painful and probably counter-productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12735" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T20:34:10.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15964" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16046" CreationDate="2015-01-22T22:49:19.090" Score="3" ViewCount="333" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: English isn't my native language and I haven't studied writing or poetry at all.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I released my first poetry book called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.autoreseditores.com/libro/2429/mauricio-arias-olave/bella-poesia.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Bella Poesía / Beatiful Poetry&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in February last year, and until recently I have been receiving feedback and reviews. However, I find it difficult to attract more readers and potential buyers due to (according to their comments) the fixed rhyme in the first poems available in the preview at the beginning of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of my book also contains different poems with different rhymes (not available in the preview) and on average, each month I'm updating my book with more and various poems. My book is dedicated to all women, and is &quot;inspired by them&quot; and all people who want to read and share poetry (even if they're infrequent or occasional readers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My main goal is for anyone with or without knowledge of poetry to be able to read and enjoy my book.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this in mind and like the title says: &lt;strong&gt;How do I convince readers to keep reading poems with fixed rhyme?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12737" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2015-01-23T15:51:32.720" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T13:12:26.337" Title="How do I convince readers to keep reading poems with fixed rhyme?" Tags="|publishing|editing|self-publishing|poetry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15965" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-23T02:24:39.447" Score="1" ViewCount="339" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to write a press release (intended for radio) for a fundraiser and I'm not sure on the format it should take. Should a press release be an information sheet or should it be the copy I want read out ? A lot of the sample press releases I've read sound like the latter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I've written thus far, any advice is appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you like vodka? The Rotaract Club of ___ announces it's annual&#xA;  vodka tasting fundraiser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Rotaract Club of ____ is holding it's annual vodka tasting night&#xA;  and popup bar on Friday March 13 at The National Club benefitting the&#xA;  local charity Homes First which provides housing support to the&#xA;  homeless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is not your typical tasting, but a tasting with a twist. We skip&#xA;  the lecture and get straight to the vodka; with interactive tastings&#xA;  throughout the night where you can learn a bit more about you drink.&#xA;  The night has a DJ, silent auction, raffle prizes and vodka! Our popup&#xA;  bar has non vodka options too. A ticket gets you in the door, THREE&#xA;  vodka cocktails or shots and appetizers. Discounted tickets for $40&#xA;  are on sale until January 31, prices go up on February 1.  Tickets can&#xA;  be found on Uniiverse.com, just search for Friday 13th Vodka. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Homes First currently provides a home and support to more than 550&#xA;  seniors, families, and single adults. Their shelters and housing&#xA;  projects are all located throughout the Greater Toronto Area and they&#xA;  remain one of the largest providers of homes for people with the&#xA;  fewest options in Toronto. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rotaract is a volunteer organization made up of young professionals&#xA;  who support local and international charitable causes through&#xA;  volunteer work and fundraising. Rotaract is part of Rotary&#xA;  International, better known to most as they Rotary Club. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For more information please contact the Rotaract Club of Toronto's&#xA;  fundraiser chair, X at x.y@gmail.com or 999-999-9999&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thank you for your assistance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Best Regards, X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8473" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-01-23T10:42:44.333" LastActivityDate="2015-03-29T19:31:43.700" Title="How to write a press release" Tags="|marketing|press-release|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15966" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-23T04:34:31.413" Score="0" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we were in control of our happiness, we &lt;strong&gt;would&lt;/strong&gt; all be happy, since everyone &lt;strong&gt;would&lt;/strong&gt; choose to be so.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I know, Mom.&quot; I &lt;strong&gt;had&lt;/strong&gt; already lost count of the times she &lt;strong&gt;had&lt;/strong&gt; repeated that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How &lt;strong&gt;did&lt;/strong&gt; you become interested in it?&quot; I could’t resist asking the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we were in control of our happiness, &lt;strong&gt;we'd&lt;/strong&gt; all be happy, since everyone &lt;strong&gt;would&lt;/strong&gt; choose to be so.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I know, Mom.&quot; &lt;strong&gt;I'd&lt;/strong&gt; already lost count of the times &lt;strong&gt;she'd&lt;/strong&gt; repeated that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;How'd&lt;/strong&gt; you become interested in it?&quot; I could’t resist asking the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which version sounds better? How do I decided when to use &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt;, and when to use their contracted form (&quot;&lt;em&gt;'d&lt;/em&gt;&quot;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-01-23T04:43:07.117" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T16:17:47.560" Title="How to decide whether contract &quot;had&quot;, &quot;did&quot;, and &quot;would&quot;?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-01-30T03:39:37.060" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15897" CreationDate="2015-01-23T07:49:47.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hook your readers from the first sentence and don't let them go until the very end. You can't tell literary professionals to hang in there till your story gets interesting: you'll be tagged as an amateur straight away. Do your homework. Serious writers know this stuff. I wish you well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11346" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T07:49:47.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15958" CreationDate="2015-01-23T07:57:50.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your age has nothing to do with your problems, and you need the same things any beginning writers needs, at whatever age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the basic answer to your question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Stop viewing yourself as age-handicapped and start looking for solutions to your writing problems.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the problems you have raised in your question have been asked and answered many times on this site. But I'll try and give a very brief answer to most of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't fall in love so much with one particual piece of writing that you feel you need to polish it to perfection. Instead, think of writing as similar to learning to walk: When you learn to walk, you learn to walk, not learn to walk this one specific length of floor from the sofa to your dad. So write one story as well as you can, then &lt;strong&gt;put it away and write the next one&lt;/strong&gt;. You can always come back to your previous writings once you have gained the skill to perfect them, but if you keep focused on the same writing you are essentially disabling yourself by keeping yourself in a place of failure. Again think of learning to walk: You tried to walk those first steps, but fell. Now, instead of getting up again and trying to walk again, you are sitting there, willing yourself to &lt;em&gt;fall up&lt;/em&gt; again, so you can continue that failed walk. That won't work. Your writing is as good as you can presently make it, and no amount of willpower will give you the immediate skill to make it perfect. Sure, you can rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and probably one day your story will be publishable, but that effort will likely exhaust you and stifle your creativity forever. Rather, you should view writing as a skill you want to achieve, and that works best if you derive the most pleasure from the process of writing, not the finished outcome. Think of a sportsperson. If that person only derives pleasure from winning, or breaking their personal record, then they will soon lose all joy in their sport, because they cannot always win or be better than last time. But if they love working out and training, then they will have great fun with their activity and eventually get better at it. So switch your focus from the outcome (publish that one story) to the process (get better at writing) and keep &amp;quot;working out&amp;quot; by writing one story after another – and maybe rewriting older ones after a few months or years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Between stories, read a lot. Do not read the kind of story you write while you write it, or you will create nothing but bad copies. But do read what you love when you are in between writings. What you read does not have to be in the same genre as your writings. My favourite example is Tolkien: he never read the kind of story he wrote, simply because nothing like that existed before he created that genre. But he certainly was immersed in great language all the time, and this immersion endowed him with a superior &amp;quot;feel&amp;quot; for language and the ability to form elegant and pleasing sentences and understand plot. Sure there are writers who have never read anything much beyond train schedules and cereal boxes, and they have developed their own style and influenced many other writers, but the easy way if you want to write not experimental literature but popular fiction is to feed yourself with the knowledge of what &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; genre fiction. So, read a lot, when you are between stories, but read with a writer's eye: see how the story begins and how that beginning relates to the story and its end; observe where the story lags and why; and so on. Let the problems you face in your writings guide your attention while you read and try to see how other authors solved those problems. Read not to be entertained, but analyze what you read. (You can do both at the same time. Sometimes it helps to have fun the first time you read a novel, and then go back and re-read certain parts of it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are many forums where people post (links to their) writing and ask for criticism. There are specialised forums like the ones mentioned in the answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/904/what-are-good-places-to-post-your-work-where-it-will-be-read-by-others&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, and there are more general writer's forums that have criticism subforums, like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://absolutewrite.com/forums/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Absolute Write Water Cooler&lt;/a&gt; and others. Use Google. Which one works best for you, you must find out. There is no one &amp;quot;best&amp;quot; place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T07:57:50.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15958" CreationDate="2015-01-23T08:39:14.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're living in the Internet era. &lt;strong&gt;Take advantage of the Internet.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, go check websites. Writers SE is one of the most helpful sites I've encounter (I won't go into details with it since you're already here). The other one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/dashboard/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scribophile&lt;/a&gt;, which does exactly what you're requesting. And more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a screenshot from my own account (these are feedback from other users):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/URl8Y.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Czd7l.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-01-24T11:28:18.653" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T11:28:18.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-23T11:11:14.513" Score="0" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;Distribution sales make much less profit than regular sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way distribution creates a competition with myself. This is especially important when advertising my book on radio or TV, as the customers get only book name, not URL, and thus are likely to buy on e.g. Amazon what is bad for me. (However it is not harmful if I advertise in Internet as users get my preferred URL.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much this bad effect is really harmful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make the suggestion not to use distribution at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T21:54:46.230" Title="Distribution, a competition with myself" Tags="|marketing|sales|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15976" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-23T13:34:40.433" Score="2" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to get advice for my book and e-book pricing (telling that I am to advertise them with AdWords).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: What is such an adviser called? Maybe &quot;marketolog&quot;, &quot;counselor&quot;, &quot;adviser&quot;, etc.? How do I find one on the internet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And how much does such advice cost?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T18:41:42.240" LastActivityDate="2022-07-13T18:37:58.150" Title="Who to ask questions on prices?" Tags="|self-publishing|book|marketing|research|money|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15973" CreationDate="2015-01-23T14:16:54.620" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most difficult challenges of being a self-published writer is having to do the self-promoting and the self-distributing that comes along with it. There are so many different options to consider and so many different factors to take into consideration, and I can guarantee these questions have been asked at least a thousand times on a thousand forums by thousands of writers. There is no easy answer, and certainly not one that fits every writer. You just have to look at all your options and decide which ones are worth your time and efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I hear you asking about distribution, I assume you really mean advertising. When you mention advertising on radio or TV compared to advertising on the internet, I would agree that there is an advantage with the internet in that you can provide your URL. However, I would first wonder why you are spending money on advertising at all? There are so many other ways to promote your work without spending any money at all, and I would recommend exploring those first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the last three years, I have seen my income from my self-published books double each year, and this year I expect it to be enough for me to be able to take early retirement if I choose to do so. I have never spent a single penny on advertising, and except for the first few months after I wrote my first book,  I have spent very little time promoting. What I have done instead is keep writing more books across multiple genres until I found something that sells, and then I kept giving the readers what they wanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend spending more time in writer's forums asking for advice from other self-published authors to see what has worked for them. (My personal favorite is the Writer's Cafe at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kboards.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Boards&lt;/a&gt; forum. They aren't exclusive to just writers on the kindle platform.) Writers in these types of forums will be able to tell you about blog tours and pricing and promos, they will be able to offer advice on writing a series, and you may even be able to find beta readers to help critique your book before you publish. All of these things will help improve your chances of selling your book and won't cost you anything. Just spend more time doing your research up front rather than spending your money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've seen in this post and some of your others, you seem to have a real aversion to selling through someone like Amazon, and I just don't get it. They pay 70% royalties, which is really pretty darned good. I consider the 30% they take as fair exchange for a sales portal that is always available, not to mention the visibility. You need to look at your total cost of ownership and see if your model is really worth it after you factor in the cost of web hosting, advertising, and the time you spend promoting yourself and/or your book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, keep in mind that even if you do catch someone's attention with a radio or television ad, it is highly unlikely they will stop what they are doing to go to your web site to check out your book. With most advertising, less than 3% of exposures result in sales. With book sales, you'll be fortunate if they remember your name, and doubly so if they remember your book. Then in all likeliness they are going to decide later to go to Amazon to look for you or your book, and now you've alienated them by not being available there. You really can't afford to NOT include them in your business model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a business perspective, you need to cast your net as wide as you can, but start out by exploring the shallows first. Do what you can with as little as you can and then decide where it makes sense to spend your money. I honestly believe you will find that there are MUCH better things to do with your time AND money than to go spending it on advertising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2015-01-23T21:54:46.230" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T21:54:46.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15973" CreationDate="2015-01-23T15:05:48.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're assuming that the choice is between &quot;sell a book through a channel where I make $1 per copy&quot; versus &quot;sell a book through a channel where I make $5 per copy&quot; (or whatever the numbers are). But unless you are a very famous author, the choice is almost ALWAYS between, &quot;sell a book for $1 per copy&quot; versus &quot;not sell a book to that potential customer&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realistically: Say you put an ad on the radio. A customer hears the title of your book and goes to Amazon or a bookstore to find it. You make a sale for a small amount of money. You would have preferred if they had gone to your personal web site where you could make more money. But if you don't put the ad on the radio, will that person hear of your book at all? How many people who hear your radio ad would have found your book in some other advertising?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're JK Rowlings or Stephen King, maybe steering people to channels where you make the most unit profit is important. For 99.9% of the world's authors, getting sales at all is struggle. The thing to worry about is really not, Which sales channel gets me the most royalty per book?, but really, Which sales channel gets me any sales at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T15:05:48.813" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15942" CreationDate="2015-01-23T15:12:48.367" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Advice of that sort should rarely be taken absolutely. If you get advice like that from a reasonable person, they will not say, &quot;Never use ...&quot; but rather &quot;Avoid ...&quot; There are lots of writing techniques that are easy to overuse or mis-use, and so you should be careful about them. But just because something is easy to abuse doesn't mean you should never use it, it just means you should be careful about it. Like just because many people get drunk and act stupid doesn't mean you should never consume alcohol. Just keep it in moderation. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that I pretty much say &quot;ditto&quot; to What's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T15:12:48.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15980" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16035" CreationDate="2015-01-23T17:05:36.553" Score="1" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: English isn't my native language and I haven't studied writing, book editing or poetry at all.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to my &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/958/are-questions-about-sources-or-references-for-help-book-editing-acceptable&quot;&gt;meta question about asking questions about sources or references for help book editing&lt;/a&gt;, this question is focused on asking  external resources (i.e) &lt;strong&gt;references or tips for help in book editing&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(self-published books) specially&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question may be &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/18/self-editing-tips-tricks&quot;&gt;related to this one&lt;/a&gt;, However, I'm looking for answers who contains external links and guidance for book editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Any comment and edit for generates a well-asked question are welcome.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12737" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T16:57:02.327" Title="References or tips for book editing (self-published books)" Tags="|editing|self-publishing|resources|poetry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15981" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-23T20:23:27.083" Score="3" ViewCount="1514" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable to use both name and nickname when referring to my character? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &#xA;Vindici waited for Eustachio to make his way up the hill towards him. &quot;What news?&quot; Vindici asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Well,&quot; Eustachio replied. &quot;The duke is looking for a new servant. What do you say, Vin? Want to be a servant?&quot; He Laughed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vin laughed with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a passage from my work it's just an example for how the names are used. Now that the audience knows both name and nickname can I, the narrator, use both? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user12747" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T19:57:18.550" Title="Name and Nickname" Tags="|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15981" CreationDate="2015-01-23T20:43:14.563" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion it's jarring when the narrator uses different names for the same character. It has to be done for a reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible reasons why you'd want to do it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a particular passage is meant to reflect the internal monologue of it's POV character, and that person strongly prefers the nickname (or strongly rejects)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a character has different personas or roles, and is acting in one of those roles that's different from their main role, or if the characters they're interacting with (and possibly the reader) aren't supposed to know that this person is the same as some other person&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the character has changed their name and want to be anonymous, and are referring to themselves differently now (in passages written from that character's POV)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absent a good reason for the narrator to switch between names, I'd say you should pick one and stick to it. As a child, the multitude of names that practically every character had in The Lord of the Rings confused me, and I read the books at least once thinking that Saruman and Sauron were the same person. As an adult, I was annoyed when reading the Malazan series, where Ganoes Paran is called &quot;Paran&quot; by the narrator, but his sister Tavore Paran is called &quot;Tavore&quot;. Some other characters are incognito or using rarely-used nicknames and that's annoying to keep track of. So be careful. Don't change the names lightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T20:43:14.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15981" CreationDate="2015-01-24T06:18:24.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In so doing your narrator is suddenly thrust into a more personal relationship with the character, akin to the character with whom he is speaking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not necessarily bad, but it shifts your narrator from a purely third person observer to something like a participant in the story. So just make sure that is what you intend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also calling some characters by a nick name and not others could have an editorial effect of favoring or warming to some more than others. Again, be sure that is what you want to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12709" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T06:18:24.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8932" CreationDate="2015-01-24T13:58:23.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overusing I is common in English writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can write in passive voice, or rewrite to vary where 'I' appears in your sentences, so that they don't all start with I.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This cure can be worse than the disease.  Passive voice makes dull (technical) reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can combine multiple such sentences into one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I went to the store.  I bought a cake.  I ate it.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;becomes: &lt;em&gt;I went to the store, bought a cake, and ate it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Telegraph style.  You can omit 'I' and 'the', 'a' in Resume/CV, newspaper headline writing, texting, and informal email:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Went to store.  Bought cake.  Ate it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but not in regular communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can transfer some statements to the background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;At the store, I bought a cake.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I bought a cake at the store.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;since if you are at the store, it's because you went there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When overusing the's, you'll likely need to restructure your sentences to reduce them.  Try out different forms, such as replacing &quot;X of Y&quot; with &quot;Y's X&quot; or &quot;Y X&quot;, or vice versa, using alternate equivalent phrases.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick the most descriptive and precise words to avoid have to add additional clauses (often including &quot;the&quot;) to make your meaning more specific.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Replace common adverbial phrases containing 'the' ('in terms of the semantics' =&gt; 'semantically') with single word adverbs, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take care when reducing &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt;s.  Missing &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; in certain places, even when semantically unnecessary, is a red flag that it wasn't written by a native speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12648" LastEditorUserId="12648" LastEditDate="2015-01-24T14:19:52.853" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T14:19:52.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15986" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-24T15:34:30.287" Score="4" ViewCount="544" Body="&lt;p&gt;My book editor says that we need to professionally reflow the text with Adobe InDesign software (not just in a word processor). She asks $350 for the job, which seems like too much money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I assume correctly, that after me inserting non-breaking spaces where needed I can just allow the software (Scribus) to do the task? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this really need a work of a professional editor? Will it be OK if I do it myself with Scribus instead of using InDesign?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-01-24T18:49:44.953" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T18:49:44.953" Title="On using InDesign or Scribus" Tags="|editing|flow|print-on-demand|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15987" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15993" CreationDate="2015-01-24T16:00:54.727" Score="10" ViewCount="6075" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having some trouble writing dialogue (and emotive responses) for children in the age bracket of roughly 10-13. They end up reading more like adults with limited vocabularies and simple grammar than like actual children. I'm also having trouble characterising them; even when they read like children, they read like Stock Child #3 rather than like actual characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characters don't remain children for the entire book; the first few chapters are something like an extended prologue, and they spend the rest of the book as young adults. They're also somewhat mature by most standards even as children (since they are a war orphan, a street urchin and an escaped slave), but still undoubtedly children. It's important to me that the characters work well and are engaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody have any advice for writing characters this age, especially in their interactions both with other children and with adults?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastActivityDate="2019-10-26T23:00:38.680" Title="Children's Dialogue" Tags="|dialogue|child-characters|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15966" CreationDate="2015-01-24T16:17:47.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a matter of style, and depends very much on what you're writing, as well as on your personal preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In something more formal (most non-recreational non-fiction writing, and anything where you're communicating with someone in a formal context), I'd use the longer form, while in less formal writing (most often fiction or recreational non-fiction) many people would use the contraction. It really doesn't matter much, though; you're unlikely to get your head bitten off for using contractions even in something like a scientific journal article, and many people (myself included) prefer to write with the more formal long form most of the time, even when it's not strictly necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the one time this &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; important is when it is the voice of a character within your writing, in which the approach to contractions can be important in establishing the character. Most comfortable speakers use contractions; people new to a language (especially those with a formal education in it rather than an immersive one) tend not to. Other people who may eschew contractions are older characters and more &quot;formal&quot; ones regardless of age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that this also applies when using a characterised narrator; either an actual character in the story (as with first-person narration) or simply an abstract character who is telling the story (&lt;em&gt;A Series of Unfortunate Events&lt;/em&gt; has a good one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even people who normally use contractions can use the longer form on occasion as a form of emphasis; I do this a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T16:17:47.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15939" CreationDate="2015-01-24T17:21:04.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Provided that you're reasonably polite and that you don't act like you're &lt;em&gt;entitled&lt;/em&gt; to have your work featured in the paper, you're unlikely to make any enemies simply by asking. Most newspapers have email or postal addresses listed somewhere; sending them an email or a letter can't hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phrases like &quot;Are you looking for new content for [newspaper]?&quot; or &quot;Would you be interested in...&quot; spring to mind. I'd also recommend picking one or two of your best pieces of writing, having them proofread by a friend - or anybody whose English you trust, really - and sending them in. Don't count on them researching you by going and reading your blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as style goes, there exist newspapers for every writing style on Earth; it depends on the paper. For a typical newspaper &lt;em&gt;column&lt;/em&gt;, I'd say your writing style is okay, if maybe a little informal. They may disagree, though; it's hard to tell without knowing the newspaper or the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Content, though, may be a problem. This may be a different story for your local newspaper, but I'd imagine the demographic that reads print newspapers and that which has a keen interest in programming don't overlap much. It's not an absolute &quot;it'll never happen&quot;, but I think it's something you should give some consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T17:21:04.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15986" CreationDate="2015-01-24T18:48:21.677" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Book layout is a very specialized field. If I were writing a book of my own, I'd save up the extra money for a layout person, particularly if the book had a lot of tables or illustrations, or if it used a lot of non-standard characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rates for layout are currently anywhere from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-efa.org/res/rates.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;$45 to $85/hr&lt;/a&gt;, so the cost of laying out a book depends on the length and complexity of the manuscript, if there are any non-text objects, and your editor's experience. Book layout is definitely a non-trivial task, and a not a quick one; it's essentially another edit pass, with focus on how the text will appear and flow. Doing some quick calculations, the cost quoted by your editor seems to be quite within the realm of reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still can't afford the layout, tou might consider getting some competing bids for the job; any professional editor will have no problem with that. But consider that this editor is familiar with the text, and can work more quickly than another editor who'd have to start from scratch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do the job yourself: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to consider when choosing a layout program is what kinds of files you'll need to generate. However, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/15930/discouraging-link-to-lulu-or-createspace&quot;&gt;your question about marketing&lt;/a&gt; seems to indicate you're going to use either Lulu or CreateSpace: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lulu &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/create/books/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;currently accepts Microsoft Word files&lt;/a&gt;, which leads me to believe you don't have very much control over the look of your book. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CreateSpace requires that you send them &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/Special/Enterprise/Publisher/submission_guidelines.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a PDF file with the fonts embedded&lt;/a&gt;. This is a much better option for those who will want to control the look of their book. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether Scribus is a viable alternative to InDesign, this question &lt;a href=&quot;https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/840/is-scribus-a-viable-alternative-to-quark-or-indesign&quot;&gt;seems to indicate&lt;/a&gt; that there may be some issues.  For example, it's mentioned that creating high-res output is finicky, and there are problems with styles and tables. Kind of like using an older version of GIMP instead of Photoshop, or maybe more like using Inkscape instead of Illustrator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't surprising, since it's an open source program. But it may be usable for small or simpler projects. If you've been using Scribus, I'd give it a shot and check the output very carefully. (You should do that in any event.) If it doesn't look good, all you've lost is time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if Scribus can directly handle the epub format; &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.scribus.net/index.php?topic=665.0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;as of 2012&lt;/a&gt;, the feature was still lacking. I'll keep digging and update this if I find out more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:19.783" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T18:48:21.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15987" CreationDate="2015-01-24T19:18:26.320" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you spent time with children? If not, and I know it's not the easiest thing to do if you don't have kids of your own, so I'd suggest watching youtube videos of kids speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12697" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T19:18:26.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15987" CreationDate="2015-01-24T20:10:37.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is called &quot;research&quot;. Just go where kids that age hang out and listen to them for a few afternoons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your society makes it impossible for you to be around children, as the comments suggest, and you are really serious about this, you could volunteer to work with children for a few weeks or months. I train a group of kids for two hours once a month in a sport, in the past I have given private lessons to struggling puplis. I'm sure you can find something that fits your talents and interests and involves children of the age you are interested in. An internship, voluntary work, or whatever. If getting in there is difficult, you might even try to simply explain your research goals. Maybe someone will not be paranoid and let you spend some time with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also may have relatives, friends, or friends of friends, who have children. Approach them, explain yourself, and ask if you can spend a few afternoons with their kids. If they are close to you, they might even be happy, if you took their kids out for a few afternoons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, you need creativity, so be creative. Kids are everywhere. You have so many options to meet them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T06:23:24.317" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T06:23:24.317" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15987" CreationDate="2015-01-24T22:44:15.720" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a father of four children.  Two of my daughters are this age.  My son is just out of that range (15) and my straggler, my youngest daughter is under it (7).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kids this age aren't just less-educated adults.  They're different.  Smart kids this age may have vocabularies that outstrips some adults' - but their concerns are different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They want to know how everything works; why the world is how it is.  Distracted and fascinated by things that adults may find mundane or boring or intimidating.  They didn't live the past, so they don't understand it.  The world is new and intense and they're only beginning to understand its nuances.  They live in an eternal now.  They're developing their own passions, making an identity for themselves.  They seek out new things - often music, art, literature, technology, the other sex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their brains are sponges.  They have an deep understanding of technology.  With language roughly adult-like, they can ask both profound and child-like questions.  They make up words.  They use words wrong.  They come to absurd conclusions about the world.  They know emerging trends in pop culture, whether music, movies, video games, the internet - especially YouTube.  They use words that I don't know, they know things I don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt kids this age conceive of life prior to the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They speak and dress to either establish their own identity, or lose it to the crowd, depending on their mood and their personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They live and breathe YouTube.  There's a cultural drive to be a YouTube sensation that resembles what it was like to be a rock/pop star in my generation.  They love Minecraft.  They love Japanese pop culture, like anime, manga, vocaloids and Pokemon.  They love video games more than movies or television.  They love Mario, Luigi and MegaMan.  They know memes and internet culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To write children this age convincingly, spend some time with them, either online or in person.  They can open up new worlds for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDITED: for brevity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12648" LastEditorUserId="12648" LastEditDate="2015-01-25T15:58:28.377" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T15:58:28.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12839" CreationDate="2015-01-24T23:02:09.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite simply, it is impossible to kill off the protagonist before the end of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Killing off your main character is absolutely possible, but the protagonist you can not. The story is ultimately the protagonists struggle. If you kill him at the beginning then the book is flashbacks, you still killed him at the end of the Story. Your only telling the story out of order. I know a lot of people are pointing out George R.R. Martin, i'll argue with you that as an epic fantasy his protagonist is his world as a whole. That's why he can arbitrarily kill off characters. Or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; Bran is the protagonist, and he is present for every scene by his connecting to the trees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, no your protagonist is impossible to kill off before the end of the story. If the story continues then by definition they were not the protagonist just a main/major character. Like killing off Sherlock Holmes without Watson, Watson's the protagonist, Sherlock is the main character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12754" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-01-25T02:23:28.793" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T02:23:28.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15995" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-25T01:21:41.343" Score="4" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a beginner, would like to know if I can start a short story calling my main character &quot;he&quot; and then introduce his name later. If so when is a good time to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12755" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T20:19:01.633" Title="Naming my character" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15964" CreationDate="2015-01-25T02:31:44.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even the most famous and celebrated poets tend to have limited audiences --and you'll never please everyone.  Given that, the most important thing is that you produce a book that you are proud of and happy with.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T02:31:44.000" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15995" CreationDate="2015-01-25T02:33:47.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can do it, but it presents added challenges for she story telling. It is even possible to have a character never be introduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for the hard questions: Should you do this? When should you introduce a character? The answer to these questions is the same, and deceptively simple: It depends on what fits best with the story you are telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T02:33:47.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15897" CreationDate="2015-01-25T02:37:48.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider dropping the first few chapters.  Most books can stand some tough-love editing, and if the first few chapters don't stand out as great, even to you, the author, maybe it means they are dispensable.  It might be that you needed them to get your start on the story, but --like the sketch on the canvas that the artist later paints over --they aren't that important to the final product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also see if they might work better if placed elsewhere in the book.  For instance, if the book is fairly linear, you might experiment with starting in the middle of the action instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T02:37:48.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-25T02:47:25.700" Score="18" ViewCount="796" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back in the late 90's I wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1416961372&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;picture book&lt;/a&gt; which eventually was published in 2002 by a big name publishing house.  The book was critically acclaimed, won an award, and went through a couple of printings, before finally going out of print around 2006.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since then, I've tried a couple of times to get my rights back, with no luck.  The deal is that the book is technically still available --print on demand.  However, they only sell about 1 copy a year.  I'd be glad for them to keep the rights if they would actually put the book back into print, but if it's just going to be POD, I'd like to try my luck elsewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice?  I don't want to burn any bridges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little background:  If your book goes out of print, you have the right to get your publishing rights back so you can place them with a publisher that will publish your book.  Several years ago, however, the major publishers all started doing POD as a way of retaining rights to books that would otherwise revert to the authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My contract was signed prior to this becoming a standard practice --later contracts have this spelled out, but mine is before that became a thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate the advice about the lawyer, but part of what I'm trying to decide is how smart it is to push this issue.  Nowadays I can't get a response to my emails, but at one point I had a good relationship with this publisher, which is one of the best in the business.   Also, as a separate point, I don't even know how likely it is I can resell the rights.  At one point I looked into getting an agent (I sold my book without one) but I couldn't find anyone interested in representing a reissue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-19T08:11:55.117" LastActivityDate="2019-08-18T22:08:12.487" Title="Getting My Rights Back" Tags="|publishing|copyright|legal|contracts|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16000" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-25T05:08:01.320" Score="0" ViewCount="1011" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an Indian and trying to write a novel based on 2 sisters.&#xA;My problem is that i don't feel very comfortable with my english sometimes. How can i improve my english?&#xA;And sometimes i use the same words a lots of times which is not good i guess, for example the use of word &lt;strong&gt;English&lt;/strong&gt; in this question itself. What alternatives can i use?&#xA;By the way i read a lots of english novels, watch movies and listen english songs as it is considered a good solution. I'm fluent in my english but just sometimes i feel i lack writing style a bit.&#xA;What can i do?&#xA;PS:-I'm just 20 so i guess i can't really be very mature but still i aspire to become a writer and that's all i want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12757" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T05:28:16.840" Title="Being a non-native English writer how can i improve my English Writing style?" Tags="|fiction|style|novel|planning|process|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-01-25T07:48:29.810" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16000" CreationDate="2015-01-25T05:28:16.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read and write in English as much as you can.  Use English exclusively in your life, if at all possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the greatest writers in the English language, Joseph Conrad (author of Heart of Darkness), was in his twenties when he learned English, and it was his fourth language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming from another culture, you have an opportunity to bring an uncommon perspective to English language literature.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12648" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T05:28:16.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15995" CreationDate="2015-01-25T08:02:55.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thats why editing your own story is important.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In first draft, just introduce the character when you feel it is important. In second draft, however, do re-read your story and decide when the point is right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in third draft, decide on the &lt;em&gt;actual name&lt;/em&gt; of the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, I finished &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt; by Stephen King and since then, I do follow this advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When he wrote &lt;em&gt;The Green Mile&lt;/em&gt;, the name of main character was changed in late stages, when he decided on significance of the name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T08:02:55.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16003" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16007" CreationDate="2015-01-25T13:45:08.037" Score="0" ViewCount="410" Body="&lt;p&gt;Browsing publishers's sites I sometimes find prices like $8.99 or $8.95.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why some publishers set prices $8.99 or $8.95 instead of $9?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T09:29:36.250" Title="Setting price $8.99 or $8.95 instead of $9" Tags="|marketing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-01-26T13:22:56.077" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16003" CreationDate="2015-01-25T15:41:21.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a practice called &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing&quot;&gt;psychological pricing: .&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a statistically-driven 20th century  marketers realized that customers tended to ignore, or at least underweight the odd cents in calculating the price of products. Once this realization took hold, the practice became widespread. It is a practice to sell more booka, or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are different theories as to how the practice originated.  One theory is that by forcing cashiers to make change (and thereby record the sale) on the newly invented cash register, it acted as a theft control device. Another theory is that a newspaper seller  encouraged his advertisers to price their products at X.99, thereby giving back a penny of change for each purchase that could be used to buy the paper itself for one penny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T15:41:21.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14779" CreationDate="2015-01-25T20:19:00.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &quot;Red Hat Club,&quot; it seems to me that the author was drawing on a SINGLE woman for the inspiration of her main character, rather than a generic &quot;type.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the tests I use is, are there 100, or better yet, 1000 people who could be the inspiration for the fictitious character? Or is she described so exactly that there could only be one person (or a handful of people) in the world who fit the description? I wonder if there are as many as 100 women in the whole United States that broadly fit the background description of &quot;Susu.&quot; If only 3-5 five of them come from Georgia, that narrows things down even further, perhaps too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In writing my own fiction, the first thing I do is to change the names, ages, and often the gender of any &quot;real life&quot; children involved. That's an easy &quot;fix,&quot; one that the author didn't use. Instead, the name of her heroine's daughter, Mignon, was a barely-disguised version of the real life &quot;Mindum.&quot; And giving the fictitious heroine the same marital history, down to some pretty excruciating details, didn't help either. During the trial, the court noted some 30-odd similarities between Susu and Vicki Stewart, with quite a few of these similarities being &quot;unique,&quot; rather than &quot;generic,&quot; e.g., female, poor, rural, works with her hands, comes from the U.S. South, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the issue doesn't seem to be &quot;Could Susu &lt;em&gt;possibly&lt;/em&gt; be Vicki Stewart?&quot; but more like, &quot;how could she be anyone &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; Vicki Stewart?&quot; If the latter is the case, the author hasn't taken sufficient care to disguise the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lawyer, so I'm answering as a writer, and more to the point, a potential juror, i.e. &quot;finder of fact.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T20:19:00.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16006" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16012" CreationDate="2015-01-25T22:43:54.680" Score="0" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;In writing a review about the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://bleacherreport.com/articles/863480-oakland-as-paul-depodesta-the-unsung-hero-of-the-moneyball-movie&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Moneyball&quot;&lt;/a&gt; some years ago, I noted that the name of Billy Beane's assistant had been changed to &quot;Peter Brand.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue was that the movie was &quot;based on a true story,&quot; but a few factual details had been exaggerated or &quot;altered&quot; for dramatic effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This caused Billy Beane's real assistant, Paul dePodesta, to withhold permission for the movie to use his name. Everyone familiar with the facts knows who he was, but changing his name &quot;fictionalized&quot; his role, or at least put people on notice that acts attributed to the &quot;assistant&quot; were at least partly fiction, and not necessarily his.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story had been pure &quot;fiction&quot; these actions probably wouldn't have been enough to stave off a libel suit, but apparently they were enough in this context. Why is that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it because the story was basically &quot;true enough&quot; so that truth was an adequate defense?  Or did the (slight) &quot;alternation&quot; of dePodesta's name and personally correspond closely with the level of alteration of the underlying facts? Or was it because the things that were alleged were not really defamatory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This reminds me of a case of a story where &quot;Don Rather,&quot; a nationally known newscaster, announced the (fictitious) start of World War III. Apparently, the &quot;alteration&quot; of the name Dan Rather sufficed to show that it was the fictitious &quot;newscaster&quot; and not the real man, who made the fictitious announcement.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T17:59:39.920" Title="What was the legal doctrine or standard that made the following acceptable?" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16003" CreationDate="2015-01-26T07:49:31.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Just a long comment.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to note that x.99 is not the only price threshold. Others may lie around x.20 or elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Price thresholds are not determined by the raw numbers alone, but also by the prices of comparable products, the type of product, the monetary system (the smallest coins in some currencies are .05 or even 1.00), and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it is not only important at what price points buyers drop off, but also the overall profit. E.g. (with made up numbers), you might earn more with 8.26 than with 7.99, because while you lose many buyers, the price difference will more than compensate those losses. Since there is another buyer drop off around 8.26 which would cause overall profit to drop below that of sales at 7.99, that is the relevant price threshold for your product, not 7.99.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The optimal price is a function that needs to be found empirically. Here is an example to show you the basic principle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SMwao.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study, buyers were asked how they judged prices for a compact camera: &quot;too cheap&quot;, &quot;cheap&quot;, &quot;expensive&quot;, &quot;too expensive&quot;. The optimal price is where the curves for &quot;too expensive&quot; and &quot;too cheap&quot; intersect (here: 40 Euro). This is the price where you would expect the highest number of sales. You can also calculate the acceptable price range etc., but this would go too far here. I just wanted to give you an idea of the complexity of this question, and that (a) you cannot reduce price thresholds to .99/.95 and (b) price thresholds differ between products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-01-26T09:29:36.250" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T09:29:36.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16009" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16010" CreationDate="2015-01-26T13:46:32.370" Score="2" ViewCount="1744" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question that'd been bothering me for a while. Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My heart racing, I wriggled to the edge of the bed and fumbled for&#xA;  Travis' hand. &lt;em&gt;Just make sure to hold onto it&lt;/em&gt;, he'd said, &lt;em&gt;whenever you&#xA;  get the chance&lt;/em&gt;. I searched for a few minutes until I finally found&#xA;  it—smooth and warm, sprawled on the cold surface of the floor. I gave&#xA;  it a light squeeze, &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; there was no response. Maybe he was asleep&#xA;  after all. Or just pretending to be? The easiest way to find out was&#xA;  to get up and ask him. Yes, that was what I had to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt;, I didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Funny, I had no problems with the idea of killing myself. &lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt; when it&#xA;  came to love, I was a complete coward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time I see repetition like this, I remove it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My heart racing, I wriggled to the edge of the bed and fumbled for&#xA;  Travis' hand. &lt;em&gt;Just make sure to hold onto it&lt;/em&gt;, he'd said, &lt;em&gt;whenever you&#xA;  get the chance&lt;/em&gt;. I searched for a few minutes until I finally found&#xA;  it—smooth and warm, sprawled on the cold surface of the floor. I gave&#xA;  it a light squeeze, &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; there was no response. Maybe he was asleep&#xA;  after all. Or just pretending to be? The easiest way to find out was&#xA;  to get up and ask him. Yes, that was what I had to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, I didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Funny, I had no problems with the idea of killing myself. &lt;strong&gt;Yet&lt;/strong&gt; when it&#xA;  came to love, I was a complete coward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I improving my writing with this? Or just being unnecessarily paranoid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T04:06:37.353" Title="How much repetition is too much repetition?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16009" CreationDate="2015-01-26T14:28:33.277" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's generally a good idea to be on the lookout for words you use too much, and swap in something else. You should look for repetitive sentence structure and repetitive phrasing as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only suggestion for your example is for the second iteration, I would drop the word altogether, and just write &quot;I didn't.&quot; It's more powerful that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T14:28:33.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16009" CreationDate="2015-01-26T16:50:51.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Less repetition is a rule of writing.&#xA;And like all rules they are made to be broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;All day, every day, day after day, from dawn till dusk.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This rule can be overused&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benny johnson said &quot;hey buddy how are you today&quot;.&#xA;Ed peterson cried &quot;My dog died, my wife left me and my house burnt down.&quot;&#xA;Benny gasped &quot;Oh gee thats terrible. How did it happen?&quot;&#xA;Ed confessed &quot;wife found out I was cheating on her, then she burnt down the house and killed the dog.&quot;&#xA;Johnson let out a pained sigh &quot;How did she find out?&quot;&#xA;Perterson said &quot;The bimbo I was screwing told her after she found out I was married.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you see how benny johnson is referred to as benny in the next line, and then johnson in the next one?&#xA;Authors will do this all the time but personally I find that it confuses the reader. Especially in a book with a high character count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T16:50:51.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16006" CreationDate="2015-01-26T17:59:39.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm no legal expert, so this is just my best guess:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of a true story with a fictionalized character, the use of a fake name when everyone else is under their real name is enough to signal the distance between the real and fake person.  In a story where everyone is under a fake name, however, the use of distinctive distinguishing traits might be enough to demonstrate that a real person is being referred to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of a slightly altered name, I'm assuming you would argue that the character was clearly intended as a parody, not an actual depiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T17:59:39.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15995" CreationDate="2015-01-26T18:56:59.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes you can start with &quot;he&quot; or &quot;she&quot; if you want to build tension. If you don't want the readers to know the name or who this person is quite yet, you can use &quot;he.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend using this as an opportunity to describe the character. &quot;The tall man...&quot; instead of &quot;he.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12746" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T18:56:59.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14751" CreationDate="2015-01-26T19:04:58.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the audience you are writing to knows what those acronyms are, then go ahead and use them. So for technical documents, resumes, etc, the audience knows what BS, MS, PhD stand for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I didn't know the technical or certifications acronyms, but if the document you are writing is very technical and meant for technical people you can get away without spelling out the acronyms. My rule of thumb is to spell out everything at least once unless it's something that is universally understood.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12746" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T19:04:58.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16015" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16291" CreationDate="2015-01-26T21:11:29.330" Score="3" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;In writing procedural documentation, I have the choice of writing the complete step-by-step instructions with references to an appendix of illustrations, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Do task 1 (see Fig. 1)&#xA;2. Do task 2 (see Fig. 2)&#xA;&#xA;Illustrations&#xA;-------------&#xA;+-------+&#xA;| Fig 1 |&#xA;+-------+&#xA;+-------+&#xA;| Fig 2 |&#xA;+-------+&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or to accompany each step with an illustration, almost as if the steps were the captions to the illustrations,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;+-------+&#xA;| Fig 1 |&#xA;+-------+&#xA;1. Do Task 1.&#xA;&#xA;+-------+&#xA;| Fig 2 |&#xA;+-------+&#xA;2. Do Task 2.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research to show which method is more effective for the person attempting to learn the material? What are some of the considerations I need to make in choosing one method over the other? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it makes any difference, each document is 10-15 pages long, about 25% of which is text and 75% is illustration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3413" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T15:42:38.547" Title="Is there any research about the efficacy of illustration and example placement in procedure writing?" Tags="|technical-writing|formatting|business-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15999" CreationDate="2015-01-26T21:48:35.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will depend on the terms of your contract. Try consulting a contract lawyer and look it over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12746" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-01-26T22:15:12.607" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T22:15:12.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15940" CreationDate="2015-01-26T21:52:11.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This site helps you write bibliographies on pretty much any medium: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.easybib.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.easybib.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the format: &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;Title. Dir. First M. Last. Perf. First M. Last. Distributor, Year Published. Media Type.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;Little Miss Sunshine. Dir. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Perf. Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, and Alan Arkin. Fox Searchlight, 2006. DVD.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perf is performers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12746" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T21:52:11.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7291" CreationDate="2015-01-26T21:54:50.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try find replace in whatever word processor you are using. Cmd+f or Ctrl+f and replace &lt;code&gt;,'&lt;/code&gt; with &lt;code&gt;',&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12746" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T21:54:50.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16019" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-27T00:56:51.257" Score="9" ViewCount="703" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been writing a book, and often times I feel like a lot of the elements in my story are just Freudian slips. I'm not plagiarizing or anything, but sometimes I will go back and read through my drafts, only to remember another story I read/watched with similar elements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related problem: How can I take things I've written that are a little to cliche / unoriginal and make them original? Also, how can I avoid this in the future? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12765" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-01-27T03:23:34.180" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T08:55:37.407" Title="Originality of Writing" Tags="|originality|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16019" CreationDate="2015-01-27T03:32:45.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you ever read a few words, or heard a description of a plot twist, and thought, &quot;that sounds like something thus-and-so would have come up with&quot;? We all have, and that's because the writers we love have visible hallmarks of their style. Themes recur in their work, and they favor certain kinds of language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://clichesite.com/content.asp?which=tip+2351&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wearing your influences on your sleeve&lt;/a&gt;, both with phrasing and plot points, is a common problem with new writers. The only solution is time and experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you continue to write, you'll develop your own styles of plotting and phrasing. Similarities with stories you've already consumed will, in time, melt away. They'll be replaced by your own voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have several manuscripts under your belt, you'll have the confidence to phrase things in a way that pleases you, not a way you've read before. You'll have the courage to try plot twists that are not established tropes, or at least not as common. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if it turns out that you're not a new writer, that you've been writing for years? Then I'll suggest that you need to develop confidence in your own abilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T03:32:45.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16019" CreationDate="2015-01-27T08:33:56.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In contrast to Neil Fein (in his comment) I understand the question to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How can I be more original?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to originality, there is a continuum, with plagiarism (and fan fiction) on the one end and originality on the other. But why is not all art original? Or why is not all art derivative? In my opinion, the two tendencies of the originality continuum are the result of two different artist personalities, or two different motivations to create art:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One artist loves and is inspired by the art he perceives, and wants to create more of the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another artist is interested in certain personal or social issues and uses art to deal with these issues (e.g. art as self-therapy or art as propaganda for certain political or social ideas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first type of artist, who is inspired to create art by his love for certain individual works, artists, or genres, will always and forever have the problem that his art looks and feels like it was inspired by something else. It cannot ever be original, &lt;strong&gt;because its whole purpose is to recreate&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second type of artist, who is inspired by his experiences or the life around him, will often have the problem that his work falls &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; of genre conventions and audience expectations. It may be so unique as to be incomprehensible or irrelevant to any but a few select audience with similar problems or views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution – and ideal work – to me is art that combines both these inspirations and finds a middle ground:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Art that uses a genre or conventions to deal with social or personal issues.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since, like most authors, you seem to find yourself closer to the end of plagiarism, how can you shift your art more towards originality? The answer is clear, if you agree with my theroy of what causes originality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Put more of yourself into your work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do have a life beyond your love for certain artworks, I suppose, so take the blueprint that you have learned in your reading and use it to tell stories from your own life or about the things that you care for in reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, even the topics that interest you in real life have been the subject of many books, movies, paintings, choreographies and so on, and no life is so dissimilar of all others as to be totally unique. What will make your writing unique lies in the word &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;deal with&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; that I used to describe the original extreme of the originality continuum above. Originality is not that what you write about has never been written about before. But that you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use your writing to deal with what concerns you&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are concerned about the safety of your community, or the state of your marriage, or the drought in California, or whatever, use the blueprint of the writings that you love and emulate to find solutions to those problems. And I mean: Don't take the &lt;em&gt;topic&lt;/em&gt; and find literary examples and emulate those. But take your reality and try to solve the real problem &lt;em&gt;in writing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you love fantasy. And maybe, in real life, you have a small child. Now, you notice how in fantasy the heroes are always single young men unbound by familial responsibility. They can just up and go. But you can't. You can't even party with your friends anymore. So you write the story of a man your age with a child your child's age who hears the call to adventure. He must go (or his world will be destroyed by whatever evil you enjoy), but he must take his child along, because the mother was killed / abducted / is busy with doing the laundry. I don't know if you would want to write or read that story – I have and I would –, but it would certainly be original. And I'm sure you can come up with something that interests &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T08:33:56.240" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16019" CreationDate="2015-01-27T14:20:50.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me answer this in a more practical fashion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you've written a Hero's Journey, which has a standard pattern. And as you read over your work, you realize &quot;this sounds a lot like &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt;!&quot; (Not unreasonable, since Lucas followed Campbell's &lt;em&gt;Hero with a Thousand Faces&lt;/em&gt; pretty closely.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find the first element which strikes you as unoriginal, and change it. Let's say your protagonist is a farm boy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make him a city boy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make him a nobleman's son.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make him a factory worker.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make him an astronaut.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make him a woman.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on. (Choose as many as will fit into your scenario.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then take the next element: Her parents were killed, launching her quest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Her parents are absent, and she was raised in an orphanage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Her parents are present and loving, and she chooses to go.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Society allows for group marriages, so she has three fathers and five&#xA;mothers. Some want her to go and some don't.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Et cetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you change enough of these items, and then carry the changes forward throughout the story, it should deviate you from your visible influences. Your changes can also spark new ideas &amp;mdash; for example, if you go with the group marriage idea, that can significantly change the &quot;hero gets the princess&quot; ending, because now the heroine can get the princess, the prince, and maybe a neighboring duchy, and what does that do to inheritance and alliances? And that creates a new, wholly original set of plot problems you can work with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-01-27T19:04:24.753" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T19:04:24.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16019" CreationDate="2015-01-27T14:33:56.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a couple practical things that can help.  First, try keeping a dream journal --anyone can learn to remember their dreams, and it's a direct connection to your own personal subconscious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, try exposing yourself to a different form of creativity --music or visual art.  At least then if you're influenced, it will be by someone who isn't working in your own field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally --it has often been said that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;  We are all influenced all the time by what we see and read --the question is to what extent are you making something truly your own.  After all, even Shakespeare's plots were far from original.  Worry less about whether something is reminiscent of something else and more about whether it's good enough to justify using it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T14:33:56.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16025" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-27T16:54:18.783" Score="1" ViewCount="513" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing an an article to share knowledge, not novel. Usually, when you change the current topic, at the beginning of the new paragraph you would like to use some &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/135/transw.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;transition words&lt;/a&gt; such as &lt;em&gt;Addition&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Next&lt;/em&gt;, etc. However, if you don't want to use those words, you need a stronger indicator to tell the readers that the topic has been changed. I think drop caps are the best for this, but I'm using a platform which only support trivial characters. You can say that I must stick to Notepad. Is there any efficient ways to not using transition words? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Respond to hildred:&lt;/strong&gt; Thank you for taking time answering my question. To clarify, I'm not rebelling anything. I acknowledge that those rules will help me structuring the article a lot. I just want to be a little different to give the readers a new taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not prefer the horizontal rule, since it's like splitting my article into sections, which I don't intend it to be. Saying the topic will be changed completely after I start a new paragraph is not exactly right. It's like listing the ideas with bullets, but instead one sentence per bullet, you have one paragraph per bullet. Each paragraph starts with a topic sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do aware that I should use white space, I just don't know how to use it properly. When I write a story, I usually use lines with one dot only to sign the readers to take a breath, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or this, if I want to give them more room to breath:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm not writing a story, I'm writing an academic article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Respond to what:&lt;/strong&gt; thank you for taking time answering me. Of courses the sections are related to each other. Let's take my SOP as an example. The purpose of SOP is to tell the professors that you have quality to their research (it's like the cover letters when you apply to a job). Here are three points I want to convey in my SOP:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I believe that I was born for scientific research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think I have been familiar to the scientific activities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to shift the discipline to biology after spending 4 years in physics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I develop each point to a paragraph. Therefore, my whole SOP has this structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe that I was born for scientific research...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think I have been familiar to the scientific activities...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to shift the discipline to biology after spending 4 years in physics...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to use the structure below, since it will fail to put the topic sentence to the beginning of the SOP, which I intend it to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe that I was born for scientific research...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Secondly, I think I have been familiar to the scientific activities...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thirdly, I want to shift the discipline to biology after spending 4 years in physics...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a strong indicator, I think that this structure can confuse the readers a little bit since it change the point so quick. I understand that transition words are very strong, but I would like to find another method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11428" LastEditorUserId="11428" LastEditDate="2015-01-28T14:52:52.730" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T15:19:30.257" Title="How to indicate the topic has been changed without using words?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16025" CreationDate="2015-01-27T17:32:37.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two classical typewriter methods are White-space and the Horizontal Rule. On the other hand, verbal transitions have significant value, in that they are clearer than simple formatting. I get the impression that your main objection is the feeling that they contribute to the cliche of the format (you read one self help book, you know how they all are organized). Firstly there are lots of transition words. The list you referenced included dozens, but is nowhere near exhaustive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, which part of the accepted style are you actually rebelling against? The rules presented in English class are often simpler than the true rule of the language, which are seldom written down, as the true rule is often only understood only intuitively. For example, in college I wrote a paper, and decided to have it proofed before turning it in. one of the things I was told was &quot;We tell people never to use the word conclusion in the conclusion, but leave it in.&quot; The rule in the book was to never use the word conclusion in the conclusion, because it was an indicator of a bad paper. The true rule is actually something closer to talking about the structure of the paper when your paper is not about the structure of a paper does not work well and may sound cliche. Are you fighting a written rule, that feels wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been said that you have to know the rules to be able to break them. I disagree, I believe that when you understand the true rule, not just the one that is written and taught, that you have the freedom to write like the greats. What is the true rule behind the rule you are fighting? When you know this, You will no longer feel the conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T17:32:37.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15995" CreationDate="2015-01-27T18:38:41.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. You can very easily start a story without naming your character. An example off the top of my head would be &lt;em&gt;the Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt;. The name of the main character isn't introduced until page 5, if memory serves. However, that novel is written in the first person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing in the second person, you will need a bit more than simply 'he.' You will need some sort of title, something to associate 'he' with. 'The man' would work just fine. As eladrin201 mentioned, this could be a good place for description (though I would suggest you &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; that he is tall rather than say it. 'His head bumped against the chandelier.') &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now when is a good time to introduce your character's name? Soon. The reader wants to know the name, and if you keep that info from him for an extended amount of time, he will get frustrated and start looking for reasons to leave. Introduce the name within the first chapter for sure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, a name needs to be revealed once there is interaction with another character. At that point, you can't rely on pronouns, or your reader might get mixed up. In &lt;em&gt;The Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt; Katniss's name is only revealed once Gale enters the stage and starts talking to her. Previously, there was no real need for us to know her name (and no really good place to inform us without it seeming unnatural). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thing about pronouns: be sure it is clear who they are referring to. Even if there is no interaction, constant uses of 'he' or 'she' can get redundant. The reader will start to pick them out in the same way he would a word that is used too often. Be sure to intersperse your pronouns with other words: 'the man,' 'the figure,' 'the sleuth,' etc. In my experience, you will need to use a title like this once every 1-2 paragraphs, more or less depending on what you write (Be sure to not use the same one every time). Just be aware of how things are sounding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T18:38:41.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15930" CreationDate="2015-01-27T19:15:47.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you sell through CreateSpace, you can link to the work on Amazon. Since like every book known to man is on Amazon, you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have done is made the eBook separately and put on Amazon and then published the print version and then through the Amazon Author program I linked the two together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you aren't using KDP Select (exclusive) you can sell it in as many venues as you want. I have mine also in Google Play, Nook, and Kobo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10316" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T19:15:47.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16029" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-27T19:25:56.873" Score="-2" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigir.org/sigir2012/tutorials.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;, I see a cancelled publication (there is a horizontal line on its name):&#xA;Methods for Mining and Summarizing Text Conversations. What does it mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to find this article. what should I do? It means that it has been moved to some other page or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12770" LastEditorUserId="10679" LastEditDate="2015-01-28T09:57:27.430" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T09:57:27.430" Title="What is the meaning of a cancelled publication in conference?" Tags="|paper|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-01-29T15:29:14.650" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15987" CreationDate="2015-01-27T19:40:04.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's definitely important to spend time around children if you're going to write for them, but I think it's also imperative to read things aimed at your chosen demographic. Writers for that age bracket do &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; of research in order to appeal to their target audience. The creator of TV show 'Awkward.' did a focus group with some teenagers from her old school and asked them their thoughts on various aspects of life. (You can read the interview with her here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://collider.com/lauren-iungerich-awkward-interview/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://collider.com/lauren-iungerich-awkward-interview/&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing for children is a lot harder than it sounds and can require more research than writing for adults because you have to revert to how you thought ten/twenty/thirty/etc years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, not every children's writer will get it right. Research the most popular ones for not only children's fiction but the genre your piece fits into. I'd recommend The Book Thief if you haven't read it as that's about a girl growing up during WW2. She's very intelligent and also likes to steal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, do you know anyone with children, either your characters' ages or slightly older? You could ask them for anecdotes which will help you get an idea of how children interact with those older than them as well as each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T19:40:04.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16009" CreationDate="2015-01-27T19:53:18.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's good that you're aware of it - repetition in your own writing can be difficult to notice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get away with repetition as a character trait, but if they're the narrator it's risky. In the example you've posted, there's too much repetition of 'but' in the first, but the second sounds forced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that you could replace the 'But I didn't' with - 'I didn't'. It's much more curt and has more of an effect on the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to the other two, 'but' works. 'Yet' &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; works but sounds a little forced, as if you noticed that you used 'but' too much and needed to change it. The rule I've always gone by is that if I've used the same word more than once in the same paragraph (certain words like 'I' and 'and' not included), I replace it. Your other two instances aren't that close, are in separate paragraphs, and are how someone would speak it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also try reading the section aloud either to yourself or someone you trust - it can help to hear how things sound, especially when it comes to dialogue/first person POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T19:53:18.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15981" CreationDate="2015-01-27T19:57:18.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how it's used. It can work, but it can also be confusing. It's important to be consistent. For example, certain characters may call him 'Vin', others may say 'Vindici'. If you have lots of nicknames for lots of characters it becomes difficult to follow. If you're giving nicknames to one or two, it's a good way to demonstrate relationships and can also hint at how the narrator is feeling - or wants you to feel - towards the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T19:57:18.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15958" CreationDate="2015-01-27T20:06:36.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look in your local area for writers groups. Most communities have them and local libraries will usually be able to give you information. Having a network of people that can give you honest, constructive feedback is a resource that every writer should have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you read lots, too. Reading in the genre that you want to write in will help, but so will reading those around it - for instance, if you're writing crime, thrillers can also overlap, or fantasy and scifi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're really not happy with something, put it to the side for a while and work on something else. When you go back to it, be somewhere else (for instance in a coffee shop instead of at home), and maybe even have a print out instead of seeing it on screen. This will allow you to make annotations and see things in a completely different way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look for books and blogs on writing. One of my favourites is David Morley's 'The Cambridge Guide to Creative Writing'. I used this for my MA course (in Creative Writing), and it has advice on all aspects of Creative Writing as well as writing prompts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T20:06:36.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15995" CreationDate="2015-01-27T20:19:01.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Don't put your character's name in until it feels necessary. Someone calling your character's name can be much more impactful than the narrator saying it, and the way that it's said can also inform the reader of their relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Names aren't always necessary, but they help the reader to picture the character in their head. If you want to maintain a distance between the reader and the character, don't name them, or call them 'Mr/Ms Jackson'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The longer the piece, the more difficult it is to get away with not naming your character. However, there's nothing to say that you can't refer to him as 'he' in the first draft and change it later on, once the idea is down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T20:19:01.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15980" CreationDate="2015-01-27T22:19:17.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This site, written from the poet-author's POV is pretty good: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/getting-a-poetry-collection-published-from-submission-to-the-next-project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/getting-a-poetry-collection-published-from-submission-to-the-next-project&lt;/a&gt;  (Note that this page is just the link page to the content.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This site is targeted more at people using their service, but it has some good practical advice: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.authorhouse.com/AuthorHouseTV/Poetry.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.authorhouse.com/AuthorHouseTV/Poetry.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This site has both good advice and good links: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/publishing/self-publishing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/publishing/self-publishing.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, really, all I did was Google &lt;em&gt;edit self-publish poetry&lt;/em&gt;, which you could easily do yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T22:19:17.787" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16019" CreationDate="2015-01-28T02:13:41.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Embrace what you cannot avoid.  All writers are the products of what they read, seasoned with small dashes of what they care about or have experienced in the real world.  None of us can escape it and I would venture that there is little reason to try.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the authors we love are victim to this recipe.  Their writing borrows from the talents of those authors whom they admired and enjoyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not an act of theft.  It is a process of immitation and enhancement.  It cannot be theft, because writing is many-faceted and hard.  What you write while thinking about another's scenes, is not a plagaristic duplication of their work (unless of course, you copy their work word for word).  Your writing will be weaker than theirs in some ways (immitation) and could be stronger than theirs in others (enhancement).  It will never be the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite often, I deliberately steal from the writers I love.  I have a bookcase behind me and the top shelf is full of fictions which I have reread so often that their stories are hollow to me now.  Each of these novels is full of earmarked pages and scribbled margin notes.  They are my pirates booty of stolen treasures, each crafted by a more talented writer than I.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I get stuck in my writing, (for me that's usually fighting scenes, love scenes and scenes that are emotionally dark) I will sacrifice some of my writing time and just read one of these masterworks.  Using my page folds and notes, I can usually find a scene that is similar to what I'm trying to write.  Just by reading through the scene, perhaps including a few pages before and after, I remind myself of my favorite techniques for handling this particular writing challenge.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These stories are so old and warn out for me  that I don't get caught up in their story telling.  Instead, I'm free to pay attention to their word choice, their sentence length and their metre.  By drinking in the structure of another author's hand, I'm usually  able to find my best voice for the scene I need to write.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technique has gotten me through those horrible times when without it, nothing I wrote seemed to work at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it thievery?  probably.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Plagerism? no.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Does it help me write my stories in the manner I want the written?  definitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't spend much time worrying about your originality.  There is very little opportunity for originality left.  Instead, invest that time in reading.  Fill your mind with beautifully written scenes and masterfully crafted characters.  Then steal everything that is worth taking from them, and pour it into your craft.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your readers will thank you for it, and if you are lucky, someday they will steal a few scenes from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T02:13:41.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16029" CreationDate="2015-01-28T05:34:16.973" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This means that the publication was removed completely. This is most likely because of an issue with  its content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12773" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T05:34:16.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16029" CreationDate="2015-01-28T07:39:54.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is clearly explained at the top of the page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tutorials below that have strike-through font have been cancelled due to insufficient enrollment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10679" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T07:39:54.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16025" CreationDate="2015-01-28T08:19:06.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't understand this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you write an article, that article will have one theme or subject. Everything that your write within that article will relate to that theme, and therefore everything that you write will somehow relate to each other. Your writing must make that connection clear, and that is the purpose of what you call &quot;transition words&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the different sections of your article are unrelated to each other, then they should not be part of the same article, or what you write is not an article at all, but a collection of short prose pieces. If they are related, you must make that relation clear to guide your readers, or else your writing will appear random and unstructured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today the weather is grey. I miss the sun, and the constant drizzle is making me sad and irritated. But what does that have to do with the rest of my answer? Nothing, of course. It is unrelated to your question and unrelated to my argument. So why do I put it here? To show you what you should not do in your writing. My ramblings about the weather have no place in this text and should go elsewhere. Or if it where related, I should introduce this paragraph with an explanation how what I write here bears on what I wrote before, so that you can follow my argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T08:19:06.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2015-01-28T09:38:05.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll never learn or grow as a writer if you don't get feedback on it. Editors are critical but caring . A good editor will care about the work as much as you do, but view it objectively and can therefore pick up on character inconsistencies, plot holes, grammatical errors, structural problems and all kinds of other issues that it's much more difficult to pick up on in your own writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, the writer is the chef and the editor is the one who puts it on the plate so that it looks the best that it can be for the consumer/reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T09:38:05.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16042" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-28T12:50:07.250" Score="5" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;Preferring to peddle my Science Fiction manuscript to a Literary agent, may well be an impossible dream. In which case I feel that whilst I’m considering  that option, however remote it may be, I might as well use my Blog site as a potentially useful device to launch the first 5000 words of my novel. Furthermore, blog visitors who have followed a link from Twitter or Facebook to my site, would be offered future chapters as and when they become available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, how would this affect my chances of a book deal with a publisher in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12776" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-01-29T07:46:12.253" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T05:21:54.777" Title="How would my work being available online affect my chances of a book deal?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16043" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16047" CreationDate="2015-01-28T12:50:10.793" Score="9" ViewCount="5088" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: How do you approach to writing? What part of the work do you enjoy the most? And how do you keep the motivation up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often ask myself if I really like to write. I mean, I have a lot of ideas that pop into my mind and often think &quot;mmm, that could be a good story!&quot;, but when it comes to write it down I suddenly feel, don't know, demotivated and lost, or I don't like the idea anymore, so after a few pages (or even rows) I quit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All I could wrote were two short stories, one of twenty and one of three pages, and I had to sometime force me to write to finish them, but in the end I was really satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd really like to know your opinion, and know if this is a common feeling or if it is just me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you approach to writing? What part of it do you enjoy the most? And how do you keep the motivation up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very thanks for your attention and have a nice day!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8661" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T17:01:41.293" LastActivityDate="2021-07-19T18:53:28.477" Title="How to stay motivated while writing a story, after the initial burst of enthusiasm?" Tags="|plot|psychology-of-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7291" CreationDate="2015-01-28T13:02:06.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, what you've posted isn't an example of British punctuation: there's no such thing. The style of punctuation depends on the style guide you're using, and this is often dictated by the area you're writing for (e.g. scientific vs. creative). A friend of mine studied Geography and had to use, Harvard referencing and punctuation inside the quotes. When he did his masters (in Creative Writing) he had to learn to use single quotes, MHLA referencing and punctuation &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; the quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Punctuation should only go outside the quotes if it's a quote - not dialogue. If you're writing an essay in British English and quoting from a book, that's when the punctuation goes outside the quotation marks. However, many people agree that this looks ugly and a few people from my MA course (in Creative Writing) only used this because they had to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Single quotes vs. double quotes varies from person to person. At school I was taught to use double quotes. When I did my MA, we were encouraged to use single (but could use double if we wished). The main reason we were told to use single was because double quotes inside single looks better than single inside double. A lot of the time, punctuation is as much about how it looks on the page as what its function is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Punctuation between British and American English really isn't that different. The main issues are spelling and different words for things (for instance, biscuits, cookies and scones mean different things depending on if you speak to someone English or American). I'd be much more concerned about that than punctuation because it's far more difficult to spot and easier to get confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T13:02:06.733" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16042" CreationDate="2015-01-28T13:06:17.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would depend on the publisher. Some publishers like to publish work that already has an established fan base because it helps them in the long run and they already know how the work will be received. Fifty Shades of Grey is a good example (not of writing but of work being published online first) - it was initially published on a fan fiction website. This didn't deter the publisher. The backing of a major publisher inevitably helped the book to get out there, but with a built-in fan base that increased their likelihood of picking it up, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T13:06:17.100" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15964" CreationDate="2015-01-28T13:12:26.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Poetry is a difficult to find an audience for regardless of what type of poetry it is. There's a lot of stigma regarding it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would put out poetry that you're proud of, and ignore the comments that tell you not to use a certain style: write what you're comfortable and proud of. Every poet has their own voice and style, and that's what should stand out, now which formats they use most prevalently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend doing poetry readings or posting videos of yourself reading your work online. Poetry is as much an audible experience as it is a visual one, and some poems can develop whole new meanings and layers to them when read aloud, &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; when read by their writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T13:12:26.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16043" CreationDate="2015-01-28T16:43:21.080" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very common problem among writers and I personally experience it in two distinct flavors.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, I fall in love with a story idea and just charge into writing it without spending any time on story design, character development or plotting.  When I give in to this temptation, the results pretty much parallel what you are describing above.  I get a dozen or so pages written, then loose direction.  Having firmly captured the idea which originally got me interested in the story, I falter and the writing stops.  This is the easier of the two flavors to deal with because all that's required is a little discipline.  I'll get back to that in a minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other flavor of anti-finishing syndrome springs up from an overly fertile imagination.  Sometimes, I've done all of my prep-work, I know where my story is going and I'm motivated and determined to finish it on time; then another story idea blind sides me and I loose all interest in the work in process.  I have found no good solution to this source of unfinished stories, but I find that jotting down some quick notes about the new idea, with a promise-to-self that I will return to it once the current work is finished, sort of helps.  This technique doesn't revitalize my interest in the original story, but it does lessen the distraction of the new story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to the blight of the un-plotted tale.  Any story longer than a few pages needs structure.  A simple one page outline is often enough, but you, the author, should know the entire scope of your story before committing any permanent words to paper.  This saves you from the motivational black hole called indecision.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories are living things with each scene leading to the next.  When your pen falters because you don't know what your character should do next, the momentum dies and sometimes the story follows it into the grave.  Knowing what scene comes next allows you to always be writing towards something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also grants you two freedoms which are not available to the unstructured writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't have to write your story in the order that your readers will read it.  If during a particular writing session you're feeling adventurous, write the fight scene or the high tension scene.  If you're in a more mellow mood, work on the love scene or some of the character development scenes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can leave candy bar scenes along the path of your story for those nights when you just don't feel like writing.  Candy bar scenes are those wonderful character plays which spring forth complete in every detail.  They are practically self writing and they are a blast to get down on paper.  Whenever I am designing an story's outline, I put a star next to the scenes that I am looking forward to writing.  These become my candy bars and I go to them whenever I loose interest the hard work of writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story design, outlining and plotting are tremendous tools which enhance the quality of any completed work, but they are also valuable tools in managing the author's motivation and in making sure that the work actually gets completed in a timely manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing schedules with deadlines are also useful, but this answer is too long already.  I'll leave you to discover the motivational magic of writing under pressure on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T16:43:21.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16043" CreationDate="2015-01-28T17:03:36.673" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your idea is &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; good, trust me, it'll come back to you. It'll drag you out of bed and say, &quot;Hey, I'm still here! Get out and let's create something beautiful!&quot; So, if you decide to quit, well, maybe the idea wasn't that good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I understand, sometimes inspiration slips away. So here are some motivation boosts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Choose a font that you can't stop staring at.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if anyone have figured out this yet, but having a sexy, nice-looking font can make you write for hours. Here's mine (Gentium Book Basic):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zgLQB.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remember what excited you about your idea&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is similar to a relationship: you have fights, arguments, moments of hatred, but you can always smile again by remembering the first date. Do the same with your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remove the bits that make you bored/unmotivated&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're feeling bored or unmotivated maybe it's because the scene/chapter you're writing is not as exciting as your original idea. Therefore delete it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Think about how your story will change the world&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the greatest joy in life is to help others and contribute to society. Think about how your story will accomplish that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't stick to only one story if you don't feel like it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to develop a story that had been in the back of your mind? Do it. You can always come back to the previous one. I won't run away. (Unless someone steal it, but that's another story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Coffee/tea/booze (optional)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coffee is a stimulant (to become imperative). Alcohol is an uninhibitor (to let unfiltered ideas out). I know what they say: you don't need drugs/chemicals to be creative. But let's be frank. They help. It's no coincidence that Hemingway, Salinger, and Bukowski were drunkards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally remember this: you're the only one who can finish your story. No one else can. So you have the responsibility to bring that story to life, show it to the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(By the way, Henry Taylor is right: deadlines help.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-01-28T17:21:48.310" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T17:21:48.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16025" CreationDate="2015-01-28T17:19:23.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I always use an extra carriage return between paragraphs to mark a new section.  With that said, if you include an introductory paragraph that summarizes your overall structure, it will make it much easier for people to follow your transitions, even without the &quot;listing&quot; words.  Finally, if each section feels like a complete thought, the reader will be more ready to shift to a new topic than if a previous section feels incomplete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T17:19:23.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16043" CreationDate="2015-01-28T17:23:12.397" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Believe it or not, there are many writers out there, real writers, who don’t particularly like writing very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s true! Some find the process tedious, even torturous, and find it difficult to stay focused for the length of time it takes to finish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like many writers out there, I’m someone who finds writing really difficult. I ultimately derive great pleasure from the writing process and feel incredibly fortunate to have the time to devote to it, but that doesn’t mean I find every moment riveting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What burns in the heart of writers varies from person to person, so you’ll have to find what works for you. But here are some ideas that might help keep you in the writer’s chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cultivate Your Fear of Failure. Despite what Yoda might have you believe, fear does not always lead to anger, hate, and suffering. Fear is one of the best motivators you have. Invest in the idea of your novel. Develop the idea that you’re letting yourself down if you don’t finish it. Put pressure on yourself. Be afraid the regret you’ll feel the rest of your life if you don’t accomplish your dream. Fear is a feeling that can keep you going.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set Deadlines With Teeth. Deadlines don’t actually work that well for me personally (they tend to just stress me out), but I know people who swear by them. The trick is setting a deadline with teeth. If you secretly know that the deadline you’re setting for yourself is a soft one, it’s not going to have its hair-raising, stress-inducing maximum effect. So either you have to learn to be scared of yourself and your own punishments or you may need a partner in crime who can help you keep to them. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Daydream a Little. It’s okay to imagine what would happen if your book blew up and you were on the cover of fifty magazines (do those still exist?) and you were the toast of the literati and a gazillionaire. Don’t let those dreams become expectations to the point that not getting those things gets you down, but give yourself the freedom to imagine those best case scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Befriend Writers Who Have Finished a Novel. Before I knew real writers, the idea of writing a novel seemed so impossibly vast it seemed almost magical. But then you get to know the people behind the books, and there’s not as much of a secret to it: They are people who sat in place for as long as it took to write a novel. Get to know them. Lean on them. They may give you a blank, pitying, horrified stare when you start fretting you’re never going to finish, but that blank stare will get you back to the keyboard in no time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write Something You Love. It may be tempting to try and chase the flavor of the moment or what the industry says is selling or the novel you think you should write, but that doesn’t work. You need to love your novel unconditionally if you’re going to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about you? What motivates you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2011/11/five-ways-to-stay-motivated-while.html&quot;&gt;http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2011/11/five-ways-to-stay-motivated-while.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12773" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T17:23:12.397" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16042" CreationDate="2015-01-28T17:30:21.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with any self-publishing project, there are two answers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your self-published version becomes a big success - which will require relentless promotion on your part - it will be easier to get a traditional publishing contract.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In any other scenario, it will make it harder because you'll no longer be able to offer &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20141017171533/http://www.writers.com/feature_rights.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;first publishing rights&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way you don't want to launch an ebook just because you think it will be a bridge to a contract - you should do it if (and only if) you legitimately think you can make it a success on its own terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a pre-existing online fan base and/or access to an active social network, it's quite likely your book would do better as an ebook than if placed with a traditional publisher.  But don't think simply placing something online means people will read it (even if its good).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-05-05T05:21:54.777" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T05:21:54.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15965" CreationDate="2015-01-28T18:09:43.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, press releases should basically sound like the article you would like to see written (or announcement you want to hear read).  The reason is that the person who gets the press release is likely to be busy.  In many cases, your copy might be used exactly as you provided it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only caveat is that you don't want to sound too overly promotional --even though it's a press release, most news organizations will shy away from something that reads like an advertisement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, you might want to dial back some of the promotional details in favor of highlighting the newsworthy aspects of the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-01-28T18:15:01.127" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T18:15:01.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15965" CreationDate="2015-01-28T19:15:32.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a simple press release template:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you follow this image, it is simple but easy to understan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eFX9c.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Business Press Release Template:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Business Name/Contact Info]&#xA;FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE&#xA;[Location] -  Hagens Media, LLC. is pleased to these announce these new products starting on 1/1/2012.&#xA;[Details]&#xA;[More Details]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Possible A Quote From CEO or Expert]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12773" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T19:15:32.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16054" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16055" CreationDate="2015-01-28T20:06:06.630" Score="1" ViewCount="1508" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a novel based in Mexico, and I am wondering if there are any strong opinions on whether or not I should put common phrases of speech in Spanish even though all characters are speaking mostly English (for the sake of the audience).  It feels natural to do, for example &quot;dios mio&quot; or &quot;amigo&quot;, etc., but I am wondering if it's too inconsistent or possibly distracting from the narrative flow. Thanks! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12784" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-15T16:40:06.503" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T17:53:33.587" Title="Should I &quot;spanglish&quot; a Mexican character's dialogue?" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|language|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16054" CreationDate="2015-01-28T20:50:33.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends, and indeed there could argue that your question could only generate opinion based answers, and should be closed, but you are brushing against a core issue, which is how to show the differences between the world where the reader lives and the world in which the story is set while maintaining readability and understandability. This is particularly visible in science fiction and fantasy and translated works. The three most contentious sub-questions revolve around names, units of measure and bilingual characters. If you want to waste an afternoon, ask me about measuring the saturn rocket in cubits, or the ten gentile pateraks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So lets step back and look at practical considerations. To simplify let us assume that you are writing in english and targeting an audience that has a five word spanish vocabulary. (and that three of those words your editor would reject) Now, that limits us to two major scenarios, your narrator's first language is spanish or it is not. If the narrator thinks spanish, look at all your dialog as translated using the rule transcribe names, translate everything else. If your narrator is bilingual or foreign you have the harder challenge but simpler question of what would the narrator's character do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then you ask, what if I am writing from the third person? This only means that you probably are the narrator. How well do you speak Spanish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T20:50:33.520" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16056" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-28T23:50:06.210" Score="1" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;My novel starts with the character believing she is outside, naked, because she is delerious.  After less than a page she realizes where she really is.  She was delerious because she fainted and she is ill--but will it be seen as too much like a dream sequence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12787" LastActivityDate="2015-02-28T06:45:38.807" Title="Delerium too much like a dream?" Tags="|openings|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16056" CreationDate="2015-01-29T00:34:19.023" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a good point, I would try too add more details, trying to make the point that it is not a dream that she is in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12773" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T00:34:19.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16056" CreationDate="2015-01-29T06:20:11.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you ever been drunk or had a high fever? It feels quite different from being in a dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you dream, you feel normal, and only after you woke up may you realize that what you experienced was extraordinary, e.g. flying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are delirious from a drug or illness, your body feels different and your perceptions are changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever causes your character's delirium, all you need to do is research its physiological symptoms - such as nausea, dizziness or coordination problems - and describe how your character is having these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your character took a psychotropic drug, then the only symptoms may be hallucinations, and then there is no way to tell if the character is dreaming or delirious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T06:20:11.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16060" CreationDate="2015-01-29T08:07:34.567" Score="13" ViewCount="1454" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/16043/how-to-stay-motivated-while-writing-a-story-after-the-initial-burst-of-enthusia&quot;&gt;This related question&lt;/a&gt; made me think. I &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; writing. I am never bored. I never have writer's block. I just enjoy exploring my imagination and following the unexpected turns of my creativity. It is one of the best things in life, and I can never get enough of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seriously hate &lt;em&gt;re&lt;/em&gt;-writing. I despise having to go over the raw journal of my inner adventure and rework it into a readable novel. I have several complete first drafts, but I cannot bring myself to rewrite them, or if I try, it is torture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What can I do to help me get through this boring and tedious process?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit after answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you. Each answer has given me valuable and useful ideas. I would like to accept them all, because I think that the solution to my rewriting problem is a combination of them all:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take some time off my novel and return to it with a fresh mind (Kristina Adams)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in the meantime, write the next novel (Dale Emery)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;change my view of rewriting: instead of wanting to continue to explore as I do in writing and feeling frustrated at what rewriting isn't, I should – and I can, because I love language – focus on what rewriting can be: a completely different experience (Chris Sunami &amp;amp; SaberWriter)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;set myself small goals instead of feeling overwhelmed by the mountain before me (Kristina Adams)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been preaching Dale's answer many times on this site, and I believe that the skill to write so well that large scale rewriting becomes unnecessary comes with writing a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T17:56:57.033" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T17:56:57.033" Title="How to stay motivated while rewriting?" Tags="|editing|motivation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16059" CreationDate="2015-01-29T11:14:39.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Skip the rewrite. When you're done with the first draft, fix the spelling errors. Fix any other obvious errors. Then publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it isn't readable, nobody will read it. No problem. But maybe someone will like it more than you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I'm serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Edited to add:] For a more thorough treatment of this crazy idea, see Dean Wesley Smith's long blog post &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/killing-the-sacred-cows-of-publishing-rewriting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the myths of rewriting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Edited to add:] Also see my answers to Lauren Ipsum's interesting questions in the comments below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-02-05T20:00:27.993" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T20:00:27.993" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16059" CreationDate="2015-01-29T13:18:41.397" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the real answer is, fall in love with the nuance of language and how it works in the reader's mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often mention the book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qEWv3K&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Make Your Words Work, by the late Gary Provost -- amazon link&lt;/a&gt;, because it is the book which most helped me fall in love with how words on the paper transform into images in people's minds.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't view the editing process so much as a work to do, but more as a research project where you are attempting to answer the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How do I write this more clearly so that an FTR (First Time Reader)&#xA;  will see it the same way as I do?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't you love reading a book which does something to you so that at some point you are no longer reading, but watching the story play out on the Movie-Screen of Your Mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe great fiction writing like that occurs because of what Jack Bickham talks about in his book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYjXwN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scene &amp;amp; Structure -- amazon.com&lt;/a&gt;, related to stimulus / response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He provides an example which shows the flow something like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Incorrect&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joe threw the ball to Tom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tom said, &quot;Hey, have you ever eaten oysters for breakfast?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is incorrect, because in the reader's mind the ball hangs in the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Correct&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joe threw the ball to Tom.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Tom caught the ball and said, &quot;Hey have you ever eaten escargo for&#xA;  breakfast?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a very subtle thing, but if you really apply this to your writing where one sentence stimulates another you get great transitions which make your reading flow really well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this adds up to concentrating on one sentence at a time as you do your edits and you'll get a lot more done than if you concentrate on the overwhelming large number of pages.  Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;John Grisham: The Partner&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of great writing that definitely came from an author who thought about all these things.  No matter what you think of Grisham and his novels I believe if you read one sentence you will want to read more so it is a great example of this stimulus / response and using the exact right language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They found him in Ponta Pora, a pleasant little town in Brazil, on the&#xA;  border of Paraguay, in a land still known as the Frontier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They found him living in a shaded brick house on Rua Tiradentes, a&#xA;  wide avenue with trees down the center and barefoot boys dribbling&#xA;  soccer balls along the hot pavement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They found him alone, as best they could tell, though a maid came and&#xA;  went at odd hours during the eight days they hid and watched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more of the excerpt at :&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2p65bPG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Grisham - The Partner (amazon link)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T17:46:26.133" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T17:46:26.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16043" CreationDate="2015-01-29T18:32:56.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some very good answers posted here. I have read the one you marked as the answer, and glanced at the others, but none seem to mention the thing I find most obvious. Keep in mind they are great answers, and should definitely not be disregarded. However, I believe this is your problem, as it is with so many others: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you write? What are you trying to do with your story? Are you just writing to get it out there? Or do you actually have something to say, something to prove to your reader? Based on your question, it sounds me like you lack a &lt;strong&gt;theme&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theme is what you are trying to say. It is the thing you know to be true, and feel your readers need to know to be true, also. The urge to write often starts with inspiration, but the flame is kept alive by the need to tell your readers something. If you feel, &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; feel, that your theme is important, and that everyone should know it, you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be passionate about getting it on the page in the best form possible. You &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be fired up about writing, not just for the first few pages, but from beginning of development to publishing and beyond. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do you get bored with your writing once the initial excitement dies down? It is likely due to a lack of theme, or perhaps because your theme is not strong enough. Here's a hint: what issue (political, religious, moral, whatever) gets you fired up? What can you go on for hours about? What really gets you where it matters, makes you feel the need to do something about? Make that the theme of your next story. You can go on for hours about it, right? How can you lose interest in that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would highly recommend Donald Maass's book, &lt;em&gt;Writing the Breakout Novel&lt;/em&gt;. Chapter fourteen is entirely on theme, and the instruction is invaluable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Henry Taylor I would be interested to hear your opinions on this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T18:32:56.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16059" CreationDate="2015-01-29T20:31:01.673" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a great question --writing and editing are definitely two different skills. I think the editing quits being boring and tedious when you start to take pride in it as its own thing, not just the hoop you have to jump through to get your work out there.  Perhaps think of it this way:  When you dig a diamond out of the ground, it just looks like a rock.  It's how you cut it and polish it that makes it into a jewel.  Similarly, when you have finished your rough draft, you have all the raw materials to make something wonderful.  Now, all it needs is to be cut down and polished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a second metaphor for you.  Picture yourself filming a documentary.  You collect hundreds of hours of footage.  Now, even though it's drawn from life, you need to make it express a narrative.  You only have 90 minutes, so you have to be brutal about what stays and what goes.  Does it illuminate the character, provide some context, advance the story?  If not, it probably needs to go.  Remember, the readers don't have the same connection to the material that you do, so if you want them to have that connection you have to build it, consciously and conscientiously.  You might be glad to luxuriate in the world you've created, but you owe it to the reader to make sure every word counts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: One other thing that can help is to remember that the work that doesn't make it onto the final page isn't wasted.  I recently read some writing advice by the great science-fiction grandmaster, Samuel Delany --he quoted Theodore Sturgeon as advising writers to first imagine all the tiny details of the room the characters are in, but to only include in the final writing those details which the characters actually notice themselves.  There's a certain richness writing gains when what is on the page is backed up by a wealth of detail that isn't on the page.  Your long draft builds a world, your final version lives in that world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-02-02T14:49:29.823" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T14:49:29.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15980" CreationDate="2015-01-30T16:57:02.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two parts involved in writing - the creative bit, when you're doing it, and then the editing afterwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the editing part of your brain is around when you're being creative, then you'll never finish anything, because your internal editor will keep telling you that it's not good enough. And if you've ever taught, you'll know that the best way to stop anything interesting happening is to critique too early. Get it down, then improve it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, later, when you're editing it, the last thing you want is the creative bit going &quot;But wouldn't a poem about puppies be better? Why not write that instead?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you'd have a trusted reader or two to help you analyse the work, see where the problems are, and then you can put your work into fixing them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the question's about self-editing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main trick for self-editing is to get some distance between yourself and the work. The standard way of doing this is to leave it for a while, at least a week and ideally a month. This is often referred to as &quot;putting it in the bottom drawer for a while&quot; or for a metaphor to the metaphor (and my personal favourite, being about both writing and whisky) &quot;maturing it in wood&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use a separate area of your house to edit if you can, especially in the later stages. You want to divorce the creative part from the editing part. I'll often do the first couple of edit passes at the computer, just to get rid of the truly shitty bits, but I don't think editing really starts until you get to pen and paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you compose at a computer (as most people do) then you want to look at it in a different format. So print the thing out. Get a pen. Go somewhere else (the kitchen table works for me.) And start marking it up. Because you're using a different medium for editing rather than composing, the corrections you need to make will be easier to spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first corrections will be huge ones. Deleting old scenes. Writing whole new ones. This is the part I love most, because it's the easiest. Just crossing a big line through the scenes which are rubbish takes a few seconds and noticeably improves the whole piece. You'll never have such a big improvement in quality for so little effort again, so enjoy this. Write corrections and new scenes in the margin, or new pieces of paper. Concentrate on the bigger picture. Then take your marked-up papers to the computer and type them in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then do it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then do it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then do it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And keep going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time, you'll find that the corrections you need to make are smaller. Each time you edit, you'll see that there's less to fix. Keep doing it, and eventually you'll get to the point where you're just changing individual words and correcting typos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep going until your changes aren't making it better - just different. You'll know when that is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next few bits of advice are mostly for screenwriting, but should also be useful for novelists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do a character pass - look at each scene from the point of view of each character in it. If I were that character at that point in the scene, what would I know? What would I feel? What would I do and say? And if they're not doing, feeling, saying that thing, correct it, type it up, and move on to the next character in the scene. And when the scene has been done from all points of view, read and mark up from the point of view of the omniscient narrator. And when that's done, move on to the next scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do a dialogue pass - read it aloud. If you're working on a play (radio, screen, or TV) rather than a novel, this is best done with others - actors, if you know some, will usually this for the price of a pint or some wine and a cheap dinner. You can make pasta-and-pesto for 15 people and still have change out of a tenner. In order of preference to do this: trained actors, amateur actors, your friends, the mechanical voice on your computer, yourself. This helps you get a handle on whether the dialogue feels real or not. If it's stumbling on someone's tongue, you'll know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do a spelling pass - don't concentrate on what the words mean, just whether they're spelled correctly. You'll still miss some. I've heard that this can be done more easily by reading backwards, so you can't actually parse the sentences, but I've never actually tried it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've only got one external link for you, but as far as I'm concerned it's the most useful editing link in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lancingpress.co.uk/factsheets/fact_proofmarks.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Proofreading Marks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a list of proofreading marks. Print it out and have it next to you while editing. No more trying to remember what you meant to change, or scribbling all over the sheet - it's a series of standardised marks to help you edit. Which means you can do it faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="975" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T16:57:02.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8335" CreationDate="2015-01-30T18:38:05.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to state at the onset, that it's not always wrong to leave promises unfulfilled and questions unanswered.  I'm a big fan of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami (and so are millions of others around the world), and unfulfilled promises and unanswered questions are practically his stock-in-trade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, there are two main things missing from your list that I look for in terms of finding a story or a book satisfying: &lt;em&gt;Emotional closure&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;moral cause and effect.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;em&gt;Emotional closure:&lt;/em&gt;  People will forgive a lot of details not working out if the story makes emotional sense to them.  For example, in Murakami's &lt;em&gt;Wind Up Bird Chronicles&lt;/em&gt;, the protagonist is not actually reunited with his wife at the end.  You do, however, feel in a real sense that they have been &lt;em&gt;emotionally&lt;/em&gt; reunited, which makes the ending still feel satisfying.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if an ending violates emotional sense, it feels weak no matter how carefully the details have been worked out.  For example, in &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; the romance between the main character and his best friend's sister never feels like it has been given emotional reality, even though it's supported by the details of the text.  It's less important in this case, because the romance is a minor subplot, but unfortunately it's an (emotionally) unbelievable minor subplot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;em&gt;Moral cause and effect:&lt;/em&gt;  Antiheroes and morally ambiguous plots may be in, but most people still like to see good deeds rewarded and bad deeds punished --at least in some fashion.  Even in a story like Woody Allen's &lt;em&gt;Match Point,&lt;/em&gt; where the entire premise is that acts of true evil can go entirely unpunished, there's still a sense in which the film has a moral lesson to teach --the final scenes suggest that (though the world has failed to punish him) the main character has in some sense lost his soul, and given up all chance of a life of real love and authentic happiness.  (The themes and ending in the film version of &lt;em&gt;The Talented Mr Ripley&lt;/em&gt; are much the same.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T18:38:05.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8335" CreationDate="2015-01-30T20:05:26.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between unresolved conflict and unaddressed conflict. Unresolved conflict pushes a story, unaddressed conflict drags the story. Both use energy (both the author's and the reader's). You want the level of total conflict to be high enough to fit the story without dragging the story down. In order to warn you away from the mistake of resolving all the conflicts, here is a suggested end to the story with the guard left in the closest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our heroine has made it to the top floor of the office building, where the madwoman who has ruined her life sits behind an oak desk. &quot;Hello Mother,&quot; she said bringing the rifle to bear, &quot;either you tell me who my father is or I shoot that yappy little dog of yours.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, Hi Lauren. You mean to tell me you didn't see him on the way in? He was guarding the lobby. You should pay attention to the things around you. It is not like you can expect every thing to go your way just because you have good looks an money.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T20:05:26.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-31T00:43:47.280" Score="1" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was posting my story on another site. After a while it sunk to the bottom. Not a big deal. But soon it seemed like everyone began to ignore it. So I cancelled it because I couldn't keep posting back-to-back and I had nowhere else to share. Nobody tried to talk me out of cancelling it. I'll be honest, it kind of hurt. So I erased more than half of the story I wrote (there was an obvious decline in quality, at least to me) but I can't seem to get my inspiration up enough to continue and I really don't want to scrap this project. So my question is, how do you find the steam to keep going when you know your story partially failed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12795" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T17:00:41.563" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T17:00:41.563" Title="How to keep going after a failed project?" Tags="|psychology-of-writing|inspiration|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16070" CreationDate="2015-01-31T01:04:29.903" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a few options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your story didn't fail. It just didn't find its audience on that site. Post it somewhere else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your story didn't fail. It just didn't find its audience right now.&#xA;Post it again in six months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your story didn't fail. It just needs an editor (or at least a beta&#xA;reader). Find someone to read it and help you improve it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your story didn't fail. It just needs some work. Put it away for&#xA;three months and work on something else (which may or may not be&#xA;writing). Come back to it three months from now and re-read it with&#xA;fresh eyes, and  you'll see a whole bunch of things you can fix.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your story didn't fail. You are relying on outside influences to&#xA;encourage you to write, which means the story is not burning a hole&#xA;in your head to be told. Put it away until you itch so badly to work&#xA;on it that you have to pick it up again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T01:04:29.903" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16073" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16185" CreationDate="2015-01-31T06:49:21.280" Score="0" ViewCount="671" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have cited the same source multiple times on one page of my essay. In my footnotes do I have to list the source each time, or is there a technique to list footnote numbers before the source like &quot;1, 2, 3 2004 website about this&quot; (Ignore the complete wrong naming of source).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12798" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T13:29:05.760" Title="Cite Multiple sources Chicago manual style" Tags="|citations|chicago-manual-of-style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16054" CreationDate="2015-01-31T13:30:47.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it can work very well, used judiciously.  It adds color and a sense of place.  I write many stories based in Mexico, and ultimately I took inspiration from Hemingway, who often included local-language (often Italian and Spanish) phrases in his works, such as A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, and many short stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example of this in my own work is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulsenzee.com/2015/01/cuervo.html?m=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my short story Cuervo&lt;/a&gt;, on my blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12648" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T13:30:47.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-31T15:04:49.283" Score="1" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://literarydevices.net/hypophora/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hypophora&lt;/a&gt; is a figure of speech in which a writer raises a question and then immediately provides an answer to that question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am about to write a Statement of Purpose. In the SOP, I need to answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1529/choosing-research-ideas-to-include-in-a-statement-of-purpose/&quot;&gt;some questions&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What have you already done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are you working on now?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What might you want to work on in the future?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does my department fit your research goals?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each paragraph, of course, will be an answer for each question. Instead of writing those paragraphs normally, I would like to start them with the questions they will answer for. In short, I will use hypophoras to start those paragraphs. However, I'm afraid that using them a lot will be counterproductive. Should I use hypophoras at the beginning of every paragraphs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11428" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.207" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T19:29:10.623" Title="Should I use hypophoras at the beginning of every paragraphs?" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16075" CreationDate="2015-01-31T15:45:39.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If these questions are explicitly given to you as worded, I think you can make them into section headers, and organize your responses under them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hypophora as you reference it describes situations where the writer is raising a question in order to discuss it, not answering a question which someone else has posed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T15:45:39.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16077" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="44543" CreationDate="2015-01-31T16:36:52.413" Score="4" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen that each language has its own rules when using the colon. In Spanish, it's not needed to capitalize:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Los elementos incluyen: secado, lavado, etc.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In French is the same, and even they put the colon with an extra space:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Ces éléments comprennent : séchage, lavage, etc.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in English I'm still not sure if one needs to capitalize or not as I've seen both ways and it's not clear to me when we use one and when the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T04:35:24.323" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T15:56:27.997" Title="in English, is it necessary to capitalize after a colon?" Tags="|technical-writing|punctuation|capitalization|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16077" CreationDate="2015-01-31T17:17:03.180" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, is not needed capitalize a word after a colon.&#xA;Same as spanish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I want the following: butter, sugar, and flour.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read here the rules: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/colons.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/colons.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12801" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T17:17:03.180" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16070" CreationDate="2015-01-31T19:15:43.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to get feedback from the people who read/stopped reading if you can bring yourself to speak to them - this will allow you to learn from what happened. Don't see it as a failure, see it as a learning curve, because that's what writing is. You never stop learning as a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put the project aside for a little while and work on something else. Eventually the characters will start to come back to you with new ideas and you'll return to the project with a fresh perspective and renewed enthusiasm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you do return to it (or whilst you're working on something else), get feedback from anyone who will listen. The more feedback you've got, the more you'll be able to learn about what worked, what didn't, and how you can improve your project and ultimately, finish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T19:15:43.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16054" CreationDate="2015-01-31T19:24:58.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently completed my dissertation where the main character was German. The advice I was given was that if it was a common phrase people were likely to know, (for instance, 'Sì'), use it. If it's a less common phrase, put it into italics and translate it or explain in the next sentence. For instance if your character asks, '&lt;em&gt;¿Que estas leyendo?&lt;/em&gt;' ('What are you reading?'), have the person they're asking reply, 'I'm reading &lt;em&gt;Gone Girl&lt;/em&gt;,' and the audience will work out the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the language from where your story is set helps the reader to picture the setting and can say a lot about the characters, too. You could have one character use more Spanish than the others, or one that doesn't speak any Spanish at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say do it, but don't &lt;em&gt;over do&lt;/em&gt;, because that can be distracting. However, it's better to use too much and cut it out than be conservative - follow your instincts on what fits, what doesn't, and what's right for your characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T19:24:58.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16075" CreationDate="2015-01-31T19:29:10.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have a style guide for what you're writing? That should give you advice on using things like headers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise against using headers or hypophoras if you can - writing is much more eloquent if you can answer the questions without labelling them. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'I have written a series of novels about...'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'I am now working on a new novel about...'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'These projects will lead me towards...'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'I feel this course will be of benefit to me because...'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T19:29:10.623" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16059" CreationDate="2015-01-31T19:32:34.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hate rewriting too. I like to separate myself from the project until I feel ready to attack it with a fresh pair of eyes. I'm always thinking about said project - working on ways to improve it, things I'd change, things I don't like - but I don't reopen the document until I feel ready to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have someone to send it to, send it to them and get their feedback before you look at it again. That way you'll have an idea of what works and what doesn't, and some suggestions to get you started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I'd recommend is setting yourself goals - editing one page a night, for example. If you do more than that, it's great. If you don't, catch up the next night. The smaller the goal, the easier it is to achieve. Once you get into a habit of editing on a regular basis, it becomes much easier to achieve and less of an intimidating task. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T19:32:34.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16070" CreationDate="2015-02-01T02:33:26.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, if you can't face rejection of your work, you can't be a writer.  The sad truth is even the most successful writers have all had the experience of being at one time or another critically panned, rejected or otherwise.  As the saying goes, if you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; give up writing, do so, if you can't... you're doomed to be a writer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that can help, even though it is difficult, is to try to gain some emotional distance with your work --not with writing it, but the finished project.  It's hard not to feel like you are being personally rejected when people reject your work, but it actually &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; personal, even when it feels like it is.  And while it may be that the work has some fatal flaw, it might also be that it didn't succeed for reasons entirely unrelated to how good it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do also recommend reading the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060750928&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Mortification&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.  I know it made &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt; feel much better to read about famous and well-respected authors facing empty book signings and worse (like the author who found a used copy of his book in a clearance bin --only to realize it was the copy he had signed for his parents!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T02:33:26.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16070" CreationDate="2015-02-01T04:16:51.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No honest attempt is ever wasted. At worst, you've practiced your skills and learned that this one didn't work at this time in this place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And remember that many good stories were rejected by everyone the first time they were circulated, or were conceptually fine but the author's skills weren't yet up to doing them justice and were more successful later  on after the author was more polished and better known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to be an artist, of any kind, you need to accept that not every attempt is going to succeed, and those which are successful technically may still not find their audience until much later, if ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Competing publishers exist in the paying market (and why publishers compete with themselves, offering magazines which have similar subject matter but different editorial policy) precisely to provide the opportunity for creators and consumers to find each other. It's not at all uncommon for a story to be submitted to 20 different markets before someone picks it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either try to find the right audience for this story, or set it aside and come back to it after you've gotten some distance and can evaluate it more fairly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, remember that they haven't rejected you -- they just didn't pick up on this piece. Keep trying. This happens to &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt;. It's inherent in learning a craft, never mind an art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8125" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T04:16:51.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16085" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-01T09:49:34.110" Score="0" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I ask the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/16075/should-i-use-hypophoras-at-the-beginning-of-every-paragraphs/16076#16076&quot;&gt;Should I use hypophoras at the beginning of every paragraphs?&lt;/a&gt; question, Lauren Ipsum suggests me to organize things with headers while Kristina Adams advises me to avoid headers in order to make my writing more eloquent. I see both opinions can be right at the same time. I think these advices work in different contexts. When should we use headers in writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After Kristina answers, I think that I can use hypophoras as the first sentences of every paragraphs like &quot;soft&quot;-headers. You don't recognize it after reading some of them. Does this method useful? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11428" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T07:24:10.640" Title="When should headers be used in writing?" Tags="|style|headlines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16086" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-01T11:11:29.970" Score="1" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing a story and i wanted someone to proofread my story before i actually send it off for further checking. This person is my teacher and he wants me to categorize all my chapters in parts such as introduction,climax etc the kind of the formula he used to teach us back in class. Unfortunately for me I've lost all his notes and i don't want to sound like a goof and ask him for notes he gave me years ago. So can anyone tell me what are the elements that make a story so i may organize my Chapters so i can get to work and send him the book and work on other things related to the book. Thank You in Advance &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12807" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T01:40:16.123" Title="Critical Elements Of A Story" Tags="|style|technique|editing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-03-13T16:17:42.953" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16087" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-01T11:29:04.277" Score="2" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;A little bit of background: I am trained as a electrical engineer and the more analytical stuff comes very easily to me. I've become way too analytical in my everyday life, always searching for information, facts, etc and I'd really like to have more balance by getting in touch with my aesthetic/emotional side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been planning to start writing fiction for a while now, but before I start I have to undo a lot of my analytical habits. (Seriously, when I write something, it seems like a robot wrote it- there's no ambiguity or humanness about it - it's very much like what you would find in a scientific journal)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is: What are some everyday tips for new writers to sharpen their sensitive side, their powers of observation of the human heart? How does one go from a world of black and white to one of technicolor?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12806" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T15:33:49.343" Title="How do I start using my heart over my head?" Tags="|fiction|preparation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16070" CreationDate="2015-02-01T15:53:33.667" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you were writing fiction, in which case you are an artist producing art. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now others my attach adjectives to both those nouns - good, bad, popular, unpopular, sublime, wretched - but that is none of your business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You own your process. The outcome is not in your hands. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can chase the bubble reputation, even to the cannon's mouth, and you might even hold the delicate globe for a brief moment before it disappears, but that is all effort and energy taken away from your prime task: working out how your relationship to existence expresses itself in words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can even take rejection as an imprimatur of progress. This mania for collective intelligence ignores what I call the Copernicus factor. Imagine if the survival of his ideas depended on their popularity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you take coaching and feedback, but you cannot escape your responsibility of judging its validity for YOU. Including this, of course. Including this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12709" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T15:53:33.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16085" CreationDate="2015-02-01T16:39:32.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on the piece and on what it's for. Most people will highly advise using headers for blog posts, for instance, because search engines LOVE them and they're useful for skim-readers. Generally you wouldn't use headers in a novel, short story or poem, but that's not to say that you can't or that it hasn't been done. When it comes to academic writing, it can also depend on the paper and who you're writing it for. Some markers will find headers useful because it helps them to go back and check things over, but it can interrupt the flow and be jarring also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really depends on the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T16:39:32.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16087" CreationDate="2015-02-01T16:46:37.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Close your eyes, put your fingers to the keyboard (or pen and paper), and just write. Block EVERYTHING out. Don't think about the quality of the writing. It can be total nonsense. The important thing is that you're writing &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're really stuck for a topic, use a writing prompt, but sometimes it's fun to just babble on about your day or whatever's on your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure to time yourself. I'd aim for 3-5 minutes. It doesn't sound like a lot but once you get started it can be harder than it sounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can go back through what you've written if you want, but you don't have to. If you do go back through it, underline interesting words or phrases that you've used. You can then use these in other works or to start your next freewriting exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is to not think. If you feel that you will, close your eyes, listen to some relaxing music for a few minutes, then when you feel ready, start writing. The best time to write is when you're sleepy because in this state of mind we're less likely to overanalyse things - first thing in the morning or just before you go to bed, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you read, too. This will help with the different ways you can construct a sentence and how to get more emotion into your writing. If you have the time, keep a book journal and write down things that you think worked in the book and why. You don't have to, but it allows you to keep a record of what you do and don't like in books, and you can then translate this into your own writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T16:46:37.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9618" CreationDate="2015-02-01T23:13:23.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My legal name is being used as a pen name by a writer who is writing erotic books on Amazon Kindle self-publishing. I have a very unique name and it can be easily confused that I wrote the books, and has been by the public as I am a Notary Public Signing Agent and I have gone and go to many people's homes. I have tried to get information on Amazon Kindle's self-publshing policy,but I keep getting the same answer, &quot;sometimes authors use a pen name when they self-publish on Amazon Kindle.&quot; My legal name is Poppy Romero. It is unlikely anyone would carry the same name. I have verified with Amazon Kindle that this author is not using my account, but only my name as his pen name. To make matters worse there has been a rumor there is a local prostitute who uses the name Poppy Romero as her alias name. Protecting my identity and character as proven to be a challenge. Notaries public aren't rich people, they serve the public with good intention with low pay, so I don't have the resources to obtain legal counsel, but the U.S. Trademark customer service did give me info on free legal help through a program they have. The customer service said you can't trademark a name, but I have found info to the contrary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12811" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T23:13:23.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16093" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16100" CreationDate="2015-02-02T00:54:36.070" Score="2" ViewCount="10989" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you quote music lyrics in a book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stuck in traffic, main character is blasting Rage Against the Machine, Testify&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[insert song lyrics excerpt here]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is that a legal issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if we say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stuck in traffic, main character is blasting &lt;strong&gt;Rage Against the Machine, Testify&lt;/strong&gt;. He strikes his palm against the dashboard in beat with the tune.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now the reader (assumed to be familiar with the song) is playing it in his head and enjoying the scene with the thought we've provoked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or must we be reduced to saying &lt;em&gt;&quot;Stuck in traffic, main character is blasting a popular metal-rap song from the late 90's...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How is this best achieved within legal limits? Get Zack de la Rocha's phone number?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12797" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-05-12T23:38:14.650" LastActivityDate="2022-05-19T05:30:08.630" Title="Quoting Song Lyrics or Naming a Song, Or Possibly Group/Singer" Tags="|copyright|lyrics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16009" CreationDate="2015-02-02T04:06:37.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/16010/&quot;&gt;Lauren Ipsum's answer&lt;/a&gt; states one should be wary of repetitive use of words, phrasings, and sentence structures. Such can easily be seen as poor writing. (Note that this effect might be intentional. For example, repetition in a character's speech or thought could indicate a lack of coherence or clarity, perhaps from distraction, fatigue, idiocy, anxiety, or intoxication.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one must also be careful to avoid replacing an invisible repetition with a discordant alternative. Simple, common words (and sentence structures) often pass unnoticed where a less common form of expression would draw attention to itself. The connotations, tone, or rhythm of a replacement may conflict with the intended mood (e.g., &quot;however&quot; has a more rational connotation drawing the reader away from a sense of emotional conflict in your example text). Such replacements can also give an impression of purple prose (e.g., see &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/3163/&quot;&gt;this answer referencing the &quot;said&quot; bookism&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intentional repetition can also be used to link items, to lull the reader, to provide a structural framework to the text, or to establish an expectation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The brown brick building had seen better days. The rain was letting up, but as a car coughed past, it splashed a casual insult of brown mud onto the stairs to the apartment. A man in a worn trenchcoat pointlessly pressed down his soaked brown hat, his weathered brown boots trudging up the stairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While that might not be great prose, one can see how the repetition of &quot;brown&quot; both adds a sense of weary dullness and links the aged building, the mud (the casual insult), and the man who is doubly &quot;brown&quot;, from top to toe. One could imagine a short story with such a beginning (and further less dense repetitions of &quot;brown&quot;) might end with a twist on the expected meaning of &quot;brown&quot; like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The estate lawyer's assistant looked dubiously at the boy who had been playing in the mud. &quot;I was told that someone in this neighborhood could tell me how to find a Mr. Douglas Brown.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously repetition must be handled carefully, especially when used to lull the reader. A dull paragraph might effectively hide a clue in a mystery novel, but a dull chapter would tend to cause the reader to abandon the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the effect of the repetition of &quot;but&quot; with a few relatively small changes to your example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My heart racing, I wriggled to the edge of the bed and fumbled for Travis' hand. &lt;em&gt;Just make sure to hold onto it&lt;/em&gt;, he'd said, &lt;em&gt;whenever you get the chance&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I searched for a few minutes until I finally found it—smooth and warm, sprawled on the cold surface of the floor. I gave it a light squeeze, but there was no response. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maybe he was asleep after all. Or just pretending to be? The easiest way to find out was to get up and ask him. Yes, that was what I had to do; but I didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Funny, I had no problem at all with the idea of killing myself, but I was a complete coward when it came to love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While using short paragraphs increases the pacing (as appropriate for the character's anxiety), the repetition of &quot;but&quot; for the last clause of three paragraphs intensifies the emotion, almost like a hammer on an anvil: ding, isolation, ding, fear, ding, self-accusation and frustration. The repetition of &quot;but&quot; also intensifies the sense of the character's conflict (&quot;I want, but ... I want, but ... I want, but&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By structuring the paragraphs in this way, there is little ambiguity that the repetition is intentional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Side suggestion: You might consider using &quot;My hand searched for a few minutes until it finally found his, smooth and warm&quot;. Having the character's hand searching intensifies the focus on the physical contact; replacing the dash with a comma softens the contact, expressing comfort rather than shock in the finding and in the tactile pleasure, perhaps also slightly intensifying the &quot;but&quot; clause by avoiding the earlier abruptness of a dash.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T04:06:37.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16163" CreationDate="2015-02-02T05:00:12.167" Score="3" ViewCount="3651" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I do MLA citations for an anniversary edition, e.g. 30th anniversary Selfish Gene. Do I treat it as a normal edition or just ignore that it is a new edition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12813" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-02-07T20:19:18.167" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T16:11:48.330" Title="Citation anniversary editions" Tags="|style|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16087" CreationDate="2015-02-02T08:06:07.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be who and how you are. You can't just say you don't want to love the taste of your favourite food anymore. Changing a basic personality trait requires intense therapy and often has unwanted side effects (think Clockwork Orange and the dishabituation of violence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, you have two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Embrace your self. Accept who you are, and write from that point of view. This could be interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, you are not a recluse suffering from social phobia, so obviously you do interact with people, and that requires that you have some kind of insight into how they &quot;tick&quot;. Try to become aware of how this awareness works for you, and write about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all fiction needs to be the same.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get into personality devolopment. There are trainings for men who can't speak about their emotions to their wives; there is therapy for autists to better understand and deal with the emotions in other people they don't have themselves. I don't know where you fall along this continuum, but certainly you are not the only one and professionals (psychologists, psychiatrists, relationship couselors and so on) have been dealing with it and developed programmes to either help you get in touch with your own emotions or better empathize with the emotions of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is of course outside the area of this site and our expertise, but I'm sure you'll find something through Google.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T08:06:07.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16087" CreationDate="2015-02-02T08:43:27.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading through your question above, I don't find your writing to be overly analytical or unemotional.  You report quite clearly your desire for personal improvement and in your words, I can sense your emotional concern about your ability to write emotively.  Seems to me that you are doing that already.  At least when you are writing in the first person point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing in a 1st person narrative style, is a powerful tool for inserting characterization and emotions into your storytelling.  It frees you from the God like perspective of 3rd person omnipotent, forcing you to describe what your narrator sees and feels rather than what is really going on.&#xA;If your writing is coming off as too factual and sterile, I would guess that you're writing from a God's eye view.  Climb down into the trenches with your characters and tell the story in one of their voices.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then as an added bonus, don't let yourself use the word &quot;I&quot; in more than one sentence in five.    That will allow you to start each paragraph with a statement of what you (the character) is doing, but it will force you then to add four more sentences explaining your motivations and your responses as your actions yeild fruit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to the question you added as a comment on Kristina's answer, I would suggest that both reading and people watching are valuable tools for your quest.  But I would also venture that your understanding of yourself is a solid starting place for understanding others.  When you see someone else behaving in a manner that confuses you, take ownership of their actions and silently ask yourself, &quot;why did I just do that?&quot;    With practice you should become skilled at recognizing exactly which fears and hungers influence specific kinds of actions.  You already have a comprehensive reference for this study in your own behaviors and mannerisms.  All you need is the courage to open it by asking &quot;who would I have to be and what would I have to be feeling to act the way that person (or my fictional character) is acting right now?&quot;  Be creative in looking for answers and you'll be surprised at how accurate the answers you create will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T08:43:27.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16093" CreationDate="2015-02-02T14:41:03.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like an issue of fair use. For example naming the song should be fine especially as you are not saying anything bad about it and as titles are not subject to copyright (trademark might be a different issue if you, say, called your book by the song's title). The tricky part comes when you start citing lyrics. A few is okay sometimes depending on context but all of them is massively unlikely to be considered fair. The cut of point is... somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general advice is that if in doubt ask the copyright holder for permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I found an article on the subject that might be of interest: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and-quandaries/legal-questions/can-i-use-song-lyrics-in-my-manuscript&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and-quandaries/legal-questions/can-i-use-song-lyrics-in-my-manuscript&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It should go without saying that I am not a law expert.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T14:41:03.083" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16093" CreationDate="2015-02-02T14:46:21.527" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. There is a concept in copyright law called &amp;quot;fair use&amp;quot;. This means that you can use short quotes from someone else's copyrighted work without permission. See here from the US Copyright office &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20210605143659/https://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Special deference is given to use for educational or literary purposes. Like one scholar can quote another to offer his own views on the others ideas. Or a critic can quote from someone else's work when giving a review. Neither of those apply to you, so you have to go to the next tier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next thing is how much of the work you quote. If you quote the entire song you are on much more dangerous ground that if you quote one line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-educational use, the key criterion is: do you affect the market for the original work. If, for example, someone else wrote a poem, and you copy his entire poem into your book, then anyone who buys your book has no reason to buy a copy of his poem from him. You've hurt his potential sales. He would almost certainly win a copyright suit. A song is a little different, as someone could read the lyrics and say, Hey, I'd really like to hear the music that goes with this, and it might actually help his sales. But I wouldn't count on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Don't quote the entire lyrics of a song without permission. You can probably get away with a line or two as fair use. Leave it at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title of the song and the name of the group are not and cannot be copyrighted, but they can be trademarked, which is a whole different thing. Basically there the key is that you cannot attempt to confuse potential customers. If you decided to form your own band and called it Rage Again With Machines or Rage Against the Marines, you'd be setting yourself up for a trademark lawsuit. If it's an obvious parody, you can get away with it, but not if you are just trying to trick people into thinking you are the famous group. It's safe to use someone else's trademark in your book as long as you use it correctly and you use it to refer to them. Lots of books mention a character &amp;quot;drinking a Coke&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;driving his Chevy&amp;quot;. You do have to be careful to use a trademark correctly. Like Coca Cola's lawyers used to regularly send letters to writers who wrote &amp;quot;coke&amp;quot; with a small-c, and they threatened restaurants with lawsuits if someone ordered a Coke and they gave him some other brand. (So that now, if you order a Coke in a restaurant in the U.S. and they don't serve Coca Cola products, they are likely to say, &amp;quot;Is Pepsi okay?&amp;quot; or something similar.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just BTW: I don't know the audience for your book. Are you sure that every reader will be familiar with this particular group and this particular song? Personally, I've only vaguely heard of the group and I've never heard of that particular song. Maybe I'm not the audience for your book. I've often seen writers fall into the trap of thinking that everyone thinks and acts just like them. Like &amp;quot;Everybody reads this magazine&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Everybody is in favor of X&amp;quot;, when the reality is more like &amp;quot;I and my close friends do this&amp;quot;. Of course if it doesn't really matter, if you're just trying to set a mood that the character is singing along to a popular song, and exactly what the song is doesn't make much difference, readers who don't know will just say &amp;quot;whatever&amp;quot; and read on, then no problem. But if you're expecting readers to know the lyrics and this is important to the story, then readers who DON'T know the lyrics will be missing out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2022-05-19T05:30:08.630" LastActivityDate="2022-05-19T05:30:08.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16070" CreationDate="2015-02-02T15:03:50.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several thoughts here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is, don't be discouraged by failure. Learn from it and move on. We all fail sometimes. Thomas Edison, when discussing his attempts to invent a practical light bulb, once said, &quot;I haven't failed. I've found 600 ways that don't work.&quot; His point was, trying something and discovering that it doesn't work is a natural part of getting to something that does work. If the very first thing you try works, that might well be more good luck than skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second thought: A few years ago I visited a church where the kids were putting on a program, singing and skits and poetry readings and so on. And one young lady got up and was so nervous trying to perform in front of a group that she literally was on the brink of fainting and had to be helped off the stage. But then ten minutes later she tried again and did a beautiful job. And it occurred to me: It doesn't matter if  you fail ten times in a row ... as long as you try eleven times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe your story is very good and you just need to find the right audience. Maybe your story is very bad and you need to learn from the experience and try again. Either way, don't give up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T15:03:50.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16087" CreationDate="2015-02-02T15:33:49.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Try to be more observant of people in general.  It may sound strange, but see if you can interact with them in a loving and non-judgmental manner --it will affect how you write about people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Read books by authors who write good characters --it's as close as you can get to getting inside the head of another human being.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) At a mechanical level, make your characters less rational and more likely to do the kinds of things we try --as reasonable adults --to not do.  Give them poor judgment, hot tempers, childishness, oversensitivity, unrealistic goals (all the things that probably drive you crazy in real life).  As part of this, when you write dialog, try writing it at two or more levels --in other words, first write what the characters are actually thinking and feeling, the things they would like to say to each other, and only then write the things they actually do say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T15:33:49.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16103" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-02T16:15:38.163" Score="13" ViewCount="12499" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've come across the term &quot;heavy handed&quot; before, and it seems to be one of the more egregious mistakes that one can make while writing - at least that's the impression I get from critics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does this term mean (with examples, if possible), and how does one avoid it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12806" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T15:19:04.700" Title="What does being &quot;heavy handed&quot; mean? And how does one avoid it?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16104" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16109" CreationDate="2015-02-02T16:24:28.190" Score="1" ViewCount="507" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of my novels, I took two &quot;contemporary&quot; real life people, and sent them back to the 18th century to fight the American Revolution. (Yours truly is one of them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current understanding of the &quot;libel in fiction,&quot; as in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/archives/26196/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Red Hat Club case&lt;/a&gt; was that the true &quot;backstory&quot; of the main character was so accurate, believable, and convincing, as to lead people to believe that the supposedly fictitious (and &quot;defamatory&quot;) parts (about the main character's alcoholism and promiscuity), were also true. In other words, there was no &quot;disconnect&quot; between fact and fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does sending your characters back in time create such a &quot;disconnect&quot; (assuming that your characters are reasonably well disguised)? Put another way, is &quot;18th century&quot; a strong enough signal of fiction so that people would not reasonably believe other things you say about your character, whether or not they are true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a lawyer that can answer on legal grounds, great. If not, you can still answer as a prospective juror and &quot;finder of fact.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-02-02T18:06:47.750" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T20:59:10.200" Title="Is sending your characters back to a different century a good way to disguise them?" Tags="|fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16103" CreationDate="2015-02-02T17:31:43.627" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Heavy-handed&lt;/em&gt; means you force your plot, your characters, your prose, your dialog, and any other aspect of your writing, to fit a preconceived concept, regardless of how well or naturally it integrates with the writing.  In other words, you write with no subtlety or realism.  It's a subjective judgment, so it is hard to provide examples, but here's an exaggerated one I just made up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sheila smiled.  She had vanquished the evil, greedy, squirrel-kicking lawyer, and it felt so good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We get it, the lawyer is a bad guy --the writing doesn't need to be so &lt;em&gt;heavy handed&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T17:31:43.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16103" CreationDate="2015-02-02T18:00:06.187" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sports term for &quot;heavy handed&quot; is &quot;piling on.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In American football, if the runner has been &quot;tackled,&quot; there is no need for &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; defensive players to jump on him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chris' example, &quot; She had vanquished the evil, &lt;em&gt;greedy,&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;squirrel-kicking&lt;/em&gt; lawyer,&quot; is a good one, because &quot;She had vanquished the evil lawyer&quot; is plenty, without the &quot;piling on&quot; of the other two adjectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not the worst fault in the world. I'd consider lack of creativity or originality more serious. But most critics find it annoying, and feel that it can easily be fixed or prevented. The way of avoiding it is to NOT &quot;double up.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-02-03T03:34:32.963" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T03:34:32.963" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16107" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-02T18:15:26.113" Score="2" ViewCount="725" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of writing my very first book and I'd like to use the internet for research information. However, I don't want to do anything wrong. I realize I need to list the source of my info but do I also need to pay royalties to that source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12816" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T00:50:43.360" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T00:50:43.360" Title="Do I have to pay royalties when I use research information?" Tags="|self-publishing|research|ebook|plagiarism|originality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16104" CreationDate="2015-02-02T18:19:21.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only as much as bringing a past character forward can disguise him or her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a brilliant, borderline sociopathic crime-solver who uses recreational pharmaceuticals to stave off boredom and has a physician friend/living-space-mate who helps with cases, setting the story in 25th century Starfleet, 21st century New York, or Camelot isn't going to let you off the hook from readers recognizing Holmes and Watson. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just changing setting/time isn't sufficient. You have to change enough of the details that the character is no longer the real person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T18:19:21.653" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16104" CreationDate="2015-02-02T20:05:55.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: Not a legal expert&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you based a character in a historical novel on a real person from the present, it would take a fair amount of concerted effort for anyone to even notice, and even if that character had distinctive traits or speech patterns linked to the real person, one could make a good case that it was usage for satire.  No reasonable person would read an account of a historical figure as representing accurate information about a living person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception I could see is if the entire book was a thinly disguised account of a group of contemporary people, where the actions described were generally true to their present-day counterparts --which would be a tough thing to make historically plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T20:05:55.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16104" CreationDate="2015-02-02T20:59:10.200" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, your characters will be assumed to be fictional, unless you give overwhelming reason for them to be considered otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means that you're asking the wrong question. There's no one twist which will make a borrowed character untouchable in his &quot;disguise&quot;; there are only ways that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, the author, can expose that the character is borrowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A trivial example: You can create a character in a 3rd-century proto-Viking setting and introduce him as the anthropomorphic personification of infertility. But if his name is &quot;Charlie Chaplin,&quot; he has a small mustache and a bowler hat, and you describe him eating leather footwear in the snow, well, people are going to recognize the resemblance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to avoid is unique, identifying features. Moving Barney Stinson to the 18th century doesn't render him unrecognizable if he still bellows &quot;Legendary!&quot; and high-fiving French revolutionaries. Likewise, your friend's life history &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be rendered unrecognizable by transplanting it to a different time and place, but then again, if it's specific enough, it might not. When you're portraying a very specific, real-life person, it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be clear what parts of your portrayal are entirely fictional and don't reflect in any way on the actual person. But then again, if your writing has convinced people that you're trying for a one-to-one correlation, it might not be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question seems to be operating on the assumptions that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll be copying a real-life person so faithfully that the parallels will be fairly clear, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That person might object to your use of his personality and/or history in your book, or to your portrayal of him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is absolutely no reason to reach this kind of scenario in the first place.&lt;/strong&gt; If you are in the position where you are &lt;em&gt;looking for a way&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;disguise&lt;/em&gt; that a character is based directly on somebody real, then you are already doing something wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you need to do is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In general, when creating characters, never base a character entirely on a real person. It can't be &quot;This is Brad, but in the Wild West.&quot; Brad might be your starting point, but you need to develop the character in its own right - and you'll want to develop the character as something &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; than &quot;absolutely identical to Brad.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid unique, personal identifying details. Avoid them like the plague. Heard a marvellous, OMG-I-Can't-Believe-How-Evocative-That-Is personal story? &lt;em&gt;Don't use it.&lt;/em&gt; It can influence you, but it isn't yours to copy wholesale. And if you're copying material wholesale from people's lives, they could be justified in their accusations that your writing can reflect on them directly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you do really want to use something entirely real, and no substitute will do, then &lt;em&gt;ask permission.&lt;/em&gt; Explain what you're planning to do; give context. &quot;Sarah, the story you told me about the last time you saw your dad is really sticking with me. It would be really perfect in a story I'm writing. The characters would be totally different from you guys, but that one scene would be almost exactly the same. How would you feel about that?&quot; Or &quot;Emma, I've got these terrific ideas which are all basically you as a starship captain. I'm totally imagining it as what you'd do if you were there. Are you OK with that?&quot; Listen to them; address their concerns. Perhaps they'll want to go over your work before publication; consider whether or not you're OK with late edits or vetoes. And if you do agree to something concrete, ask for it in writing - &quot;yeah, I know, it's just a formality, but professionally I have to have this.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T20:59:10.200" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16103" CreationDate="2015-02-03T04:42:07.417" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can compare &lt;strong&gt;Ham-handed&lt;/strong&gt;, which emphasizes clumsiness of execution. &lt;strong&gt;Heavy-handed&lt;/strong&gt; instead suggests that you have the skill, but that you belabor each point. But confusingly, &lt;strong&gt;Hammy Acting&lt;/strong&gt; implies a certain heavy-handedness, rather than clumsiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, handling something &quot;&lt;strong&gt;deftly&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; implies that the points are touched upon only briefly and with finesse, while still being sufficiently driven home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related term I've occasionally heard in the UK is &quot;&lt;strong&gt;for the Americans in the audience&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; - where a tale has explained or implied a plot point subtly, so that most viewers have already caught it, but then restates it very clearly indeed for those that didn't catch it the first time around. &quot;Oooh, so this guy is a double agent?&quot; says Captain Obvious, half an hour after most of the audience guessed it. &quot;I know your secret! You are a double agent!&quot; he adds, five minutes later, on meeting the guy. This is heavy handed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A term I prefer (having now moved to the US!) is &quot;&lt;strong&gt;aiming at the lowest common denominator&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; - that is, the author does not assume that the audience is made of up smart people, but instead assumes that there will be viewers who can only understand what's going on if someone explicitly states it at every turn. If people are just stating the obvious like this (&quot;He got away! After him!&quot;) then subtlety is lost, and it becomes heavy handed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well as subtlety of plotting, there're also other subtleties: if everyone is constantly expressing extreme emotions -- if everyone is either angry or head over heels in love or roiling in anguish -- then the acting can have no nuance. They are heavy-handedly &lt;strong&gt;laying it on a bit thick&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the actors are more caricatures than characters, cleaving strongly to stereotype, then again, subtlety has been lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12823" LastEditorUserId="12823" LastEditDate="2015-02-03T05:43:11.130" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T05:43:11.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16107" CreationDate="2015-02-03T05:29:17.650" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost never.  Royalties apply to &lt;em&gt;copyright&lt;/em&gt;, and copyright only applies to the literal text of the material.  Anything you learn, you can use, so long as you don't use word-for-word quotations without attribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you are writing a book about Lincoln and you read &lt;em&gt;Team Of Rivals&lt;/em&gt; (the source material for the recent Daniel Day Lewis movie &lt;em&gt;Lincoln&lt;/em&gt;).  You can use absolutely any fact, idea, or story from that book in your own, and you can even quote little snippets, so long as you put proper cites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, if you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; quote word-for-word, you are not under any legal obligation to cite or acknowledge your sources.  However, it's considered good form, especially with a non-fiction book, to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T05:29:17.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16086" CreationDate="2015-02-03T05:32:49.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your teacher used &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Freytag's pyramid&lt;/a&gt;, which is something of a standard in analyzing Western literature.  If that isn't it, I think you are going to have to 'fess up to your carelessness, as Chris suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T05:32:49.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16093" CreationDate="2015-02-03T05:45:48.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can quote copyrighted material so long as your quotation falls under &quot;fair use&quot;.  I am reasonably sure that if you got three intellectual-property lawyers in a room, you could get four and possibly five opinions on exactly what constitutes fair use, but the legal rule (in the US) is that four factors are to be balanced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the purpose and character of your use&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the nature of the copyrighted work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the amount and substantiality of the portion taken&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the effect of the use upon the potential market.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your use: if you are reviewing a song for a web-site, a substantial quotation would be considered fair.  If you are just writing another song, well, much less o.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nature of the work: if it's a best-selling novel the author spent his life writing, that is one thing.  If it is a accidental exclamation, quite another.  (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Beamer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Todd Beamer&lt;/a&gt;'s widow tried to claim a copyright on &quot;Let's roll&quot;; Donald Trump tried to copyright &quot;You're fired&quot;.  Neither had much luck.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The portion taken: three lines from an encyclopedia can be fair use; three lines from a haiku, probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect: if there is a big commercial market for the original work and your quoting it deprives the author of a significant part of it, that ain't fair use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: IANAL!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T05:45:48.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16103" CreationDate="2015-02-03T08:28:52.987" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Heavy-handed&lt;/strong&gt; is the opposite of &lt;strong&gt;subtle.&lt;/strong&gt; Even by &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/heavy-handed&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;its dictionary definition&lt;/a&gt;, it can take two forms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can mean being &lt;em&gt;clumsy&lt;/em&gt; - imagine trying to do delicate work when your hands are very heavy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can mean &lt;em&gt;using blunt force&lt;/em&gt; - imagine bringing your hands down heavily on somebody else, e.g. &quot;He ruled the kingdom with a heavy hand.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two shades of meaning are not identical, but their result can be quite similar: in the case of writing, it means that the writing is blunt and clumsy. It feels like its elements were forced into place - whether because the author didn't know how to do better, or because he was determined to reach some particular goal and didn't care whether that fit organically with the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Heavy-handedness&quot; can apply to many different elements and at many different resolutions. So if you have three long paragraphs introducing your antagonist and saying how stupid his ideology of gluten-hating is, that might be &lt;strong&gt;a heavy-handed description.&lt;/strong&gt; But if the entire plot takes place in a gluten-free dystopia, and everybody who's opposed to gluten is presented as cruel and malicious, and it just so happens that the heroes wind up saving the day and defeating the dragon by baking the very first loaf of bread in a hundred years - &lt;strong&gt;then it's your &lt;em&gt;plot&lt;/em&gt; and your &lt;em&gt;setting&lt;/em&gt; that are heavy-handed.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, in the first case, you just edit the three paragraphs. &#xA;In the second case, if you want to avoid heavy-handedness, that means you want to introduce &lt;em&gt;subtlety and nuance&lt;/em&gt;. Instead of the bad guys being cookie-cutter evil bastards, you'll want to introduce shades of grey, variety of opinion, justifications (flawed, but compelling) for their beliefs and actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another form of heavy-handedness in plot&lt;/strong&gt; is when it feels very obvious that the writer is forcing some kind of plot or outcome. Gilligan can &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; get off the island; &lt;em&gt;Voyager&lt;/em&gt; can &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; find a shortcut back home. Or when the motivation just seems blunt and vulgar - for example, killing or kidnapping the protagonist's wife or children can often feel heavy-handed, because it's latching on to a generic, cliche target we &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; is supposed to be important (even if the wife/children are hardly established characters), and using that as a way to control the protagonist and force him to get involved in the actual plot. Or, a &quot;prophecy&quot; that gives the author &lt;em&gt;carte blanche&lt;/em&gt; to force the protagonist to do any damn fool thing somebody (i.e.: the author) has written a prophecy about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, a big problem here is that &lt;strong&gt;&quot;heavy-handedness&quot; can be very, very subjective.&lt;/strong&gt; What for one reader might be obvious from page 10 might not be clear to another reader until page 60; in that case, a clear shout-out on page 25 might be &quot;heavy-handed&quot; for the first reader but necessary for the second. Likewise, your pro-gluten friends might &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; your gluten-free dystopia, feeling this is the most accurate, insightful depiction of society in years, what with the anti-glutenites suppressing free speech and all. And the more genre-savvy you are, the more sensitive you are with cliche plots and &quot;cheap&quot; ways to get the story going, while another reader may enjoy these stories with no difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So here's how to avoid heavy-handedness in your own writing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a good pool of readers to rely on for critique and feedback. If they're not bothered by heavy-handedness, you're probably fine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be careful when writing stories with a moral or a specific ideological stance. Such stories can be important and powerful, but with them, you have a specific goal which is distinct and different from organic, natural development of the story. If the goal overrides the story, that's when you're getting heavy-handed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid monolithic elements. &quot;Everybody from [PLACE] has [PERSONALITY TRAIT].&quot; &quot;All [GROUP OF PEOPLE] are evil.&quot; &quot;[PERSON X] is evil and has absolutely no good qualities whatsoever.&quot; &quot;[IDEOLOGY X] is always correct and any divergence from it will end in tears.&quot; Instead, look to add nuance, justification, and variety.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be genre-savvy. Read a lot in your genre; know the tropes and the cliches. Most particularly, know what genre-savvy people are tired of (e.g., we are tired of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Refrigerators&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;women in refrigerators&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be aware of what you expect your reader to know, to suspect, to guess at different points in your writing. When you drop clues and foreshadowing, stop and take a good estimate of what kind of reader is likely to figure out what where. When you have a point of information that the reader must understand, avoid simply stating it baldly in dialogue - &quot;Oh my goodness, you're actually my mother!&quot; Instead, look for a way to make the point absolutely clear, &lt;em&gt;while also doing something else&lt;/em&gt; which will engage the savvier reader. (&quot;Mom, I've figured out it's you, and I think it's time we started taking your dementia seriously.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, &lt;strong&gt;heavy-handedness should &lt;em&gt;mostly&lt;/em&gt; be a secondary concern to actually getting your story written.&lt;/strong&gt; It's &lt;em&gt;absolutely fine&lt;/em&gt; in a first draft, because clumsy, obvious writing is a really good way to get words on the page and to get your story to the point where it's solid. And since heavy-handedness is subjective (and as a writer, you're likely to be more sensitive to it than plenty of readers), anticipating every possible reaction to every paragraph and every plot element is a lousy strategy. Much better to produce an initial story, and then modify it according to criticism and your own editing skill. (And, if you've developed your own sensitivity to heavy-handedness, your initial drafts might be fine even in their own right.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps, and all the best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T08:28:52.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16103" CreationDate="2015-02-03T09:03:37.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being heavy handed is when any subtlety or naunce in your writing is lost by over-explaining a point. It can better be defined as, in general, assuming that your audience is stupid, and doesn't go down well with most people because they aren't. Realistically, your audience is most likely as smart as you are and should be treated as such - readers appreciate a book that doesn't waste their time reiterating points they have already heard. Treat your audiences with respect and act as if they are intelligent, and you'll probably avoid being heavy handed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer is an example of being heavy handed - I could have simply left the definition and the first sentence, which would have properly defined what being heavy handed is. Ironically, by telling you that my answer is heavy handed, I am being even MORE heavy handed because anyone that would have figured out I was deliberately being heavy handed is now reading text that they already knew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10276" LastEditorUserId="10276" LastEditDate="2017-02-27T15:19:04.700" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T15:19:04.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-03T18:13:15.207" Score="4" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a science fiction book that has a strong feel of &quot;fantasy.&quot; Three quarters of the story is in a medieval/primitive kingdom type settings (think &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Wheel of Time&lt;/em&gt;).  There are gods and supernatural gifts that some characters have been given. There are no aliens. All the worlds are are peopled by humans, though the animal life varies. There are also portals that connect the worlds. The gods created the portals and created the universe, and there are lots of spiritual/metaphysical questions raised in the book like, such as, why is there suffering in the world and does it have a purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what makes it sci-fi is that some of the worlds have advanced cultures with starships and such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to upset readers expectations and mis-identify the genre. Readers want to know what they are getting. What sub-genre best fits this type of story? Space Opera? Portal fantasy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts or feedback would help. -Brandon Barr&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12829" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T04:57:09.033" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T04:57:09.033" Title="What science fiction sub-genre is my novel?" Tags="|fantasy|science-fiction|genre|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16118" CreationDate="2015-02-03T22:45:52.767" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Warning: It sounds like Stargate SG-1, with no aliens.  That's OK, as long as you make sure you're not being obviously derivative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To your question: Just say it's &quot;medieval fantasy plus space-opera sci-fi.&quot;  List it under the genres &quot;medieval,&quot; &quot;action adventure,&quot; &quot;fantasy,&quot; &quot;space opera,&quot; and &quot;science fiction.&quot;  Yes, that's right: all of them.  And &quot;fiction,&quot; to boot, plus any other categories you think are applicable.  But then explain it a bit in your blurb.  People understand that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For physical bookstores, you'd have to pick only one genre, where they would shelve it.  Digital bookstores don't usually require that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T22:45:52.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16107" CreationDate="2015-02-04T07:41:29.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to Malvolios answer, the prerequisite for your use of the information is that the information has been published and is publicly available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot use data that was given only to you and for a different purpose. E.g. if you pay a researcher or a research company such as Nielsen to provide data to help you decide a price and marketing strategy for your product, you cannot publish that information in your writing. In that case the owner of the data would need to grant you the right to publish their information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the information is public, you may use it. If it is from a copyrighted publication it is common practice and courteous to credit your source, even in fiction writing (add &quot;acknowledgements&quot; to the end of your novel or the end cedits of your movie).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-02-04T15:01:50.040" LastActivityDate="2015-02-04T15:01:50.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16118" CreationDate="2015-02-04T08:10:37.357" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it has supernatural elements such as gods or magic that are not explained as being technological (e.g. a mobile phone would &lt;em&gt;appear&lt;/em&gt; magical to someone from the middle ages) it is not Science Fiction but Fantasy. If Fantasy contains futuristic elements such as starships, it is &lt;strong&gt;Science Fantasy&lt;/strong&gt;. See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fantasy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fantasy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for readers, just describe the setting on the blurb and they will know what to expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-02-04T12:09:56.307" LastActivityDate="2015-02-04T12:09:56.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="61" CreationDate="2015-02-04T12:34:36.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will just share what I usually do whenever an idea sparks. I hope it works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just imagine they make a movie out of it. Personify your ideas with well known celebrity faces, and yeah you can possibly see a movie unfold. Either do this with celebrities or get yourself into the shoes of your character(s). To me, writing down ideas seems a bit hackneyed and at times- kills the magic in it. Voice recordings can also help, but it all depends on how well the idea flows out of your head in words. The only way to preserve your ideas and keep them fresh with their &quot;wow&quot; effect will be to keep them in your mind, and process them. Nurture them. See them materialize into pen and paper effortlessly once they mature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12830" LastActivityDate="2015-02-04T12:34:36.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="54" CreationDate="2015-02-04T16:42:51.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a mistake I've made in the past:  &quot;Show, don't tell&quot; is actually a dictum of writing &lt;em&gt;for the screen.&lt;/em&gt;  Given that movies are a visual medium, it's generally a mistake to spend a lot of time with the characters (or a voiceover) telling you things that could be dramatized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, great books (and &lt;a href=&quot;http://youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227213/on-seeing-the-100-perfect-girl-one-beautiful&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stories&lt;/a&gt;) can and do often &quot;tell&quot; us things that provide context for the action.  Consider the famous beginning of Dickens' &lt;em&gt;A Tale of Two Cities&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is less common in modern writing, but the chief reason is probably that we've all been influenced so heavily by the movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-04T16:42:51.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16124" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-04T23:11:54.877" Score="5" ViewCount="3136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm desperately trying to get out of my dead end Federal job. I have a BA in English and a love of a lot of different topics, including several science fields. I would have Majored in science if I could have. But i have low vision and never could pass labs. I'm also very tech savvy. I got really excited recently when I realised that the university that I practically live on had a graduate degree for what they call 'science writing'. It sounds right down my alley, but I don't know if it's worth doing if my Bachelors degree was in English as opposed to a science or IT background. I've done a lot of on the fly computer how-to writing for co-workers and family who can't tell a mouse from a CD, but I have no paid working experience doing them.&#xA;Is there a point in trying to get into this field without an obvious paper trail of a technical background?&#xA;And would doing a master's degree program be rhetorical with a BA in English already?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12837" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-04-27T23:41:21.020" LastActivityDate="2018-09-14T02:13:27.783" Title="Technical writer degree with an English BA?" Tags="|technical-writing|education|science|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16125" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-04T23:31:45.700" Score="0" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a phd student in physics/math who has some ideas about how these phenomenon occur. However, I do not have the experiments and mathematical theory done yet to support these ideas, and it may take years to get them done to publish a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I get copyright these ideas (hypothesis?) Can I just make a blog on the internet and put (c) with the date and my name on the bottom of each post, or is that not enough? I would like to have some proof that I had these ideas at this point in time, and since I'm sharing them with others, I'd want proof that they were mine without others not crediting me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12838" LastActivityDate="2018-05-17T14:57:00.310" Title="How to copyright ideas?" Tags="|copyright|blog|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-02-16T00:34:06.083" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16125" CreationDate="2015-02-05T01:01:50.393" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thank gods, ideas are not copyrightable at all (in any country, as far as I know; particularly in the US under &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102&quot;&gt;Section 102&lt;/a&gt; of the Copyright Act, in Russia under &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consultant.ru/popular/gkrf4/79_2.html#p517&quot;&gt;Section 1259&lt;/a&gt; of Civil Code, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12822" LastEditorUserId="12822" LastEditDate="2015-02-05T01:14:59.370" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T01:14:59.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16129" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16224" CreationDate="2015-02-05T02:23:05.603" Score="1" ViewCount="937" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets say we choose a random town off of google maps on which to base a story where the local authorities (we won't say police, or whatnot, but local authorities) perform an investigation that is completely off-protocol and basically corrupt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or something like that...the local authorities of X CITY Y STATE are (in a fictional context) completely corrupt and self serving. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story becomes a hit, and suddenly this previously unknown town has a bad reputation completely based on a random fictional account. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this, in the writer's world, a scenario that already has guidelines? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can a city create a lawsuit against an author for a bad portrayal in fiction?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12797" LastActivityDate="2020-09-26T14:10:28.637" Title="Can a Town/City Sue an Author for a Bad Portrayal in Fiction?" Tags="|fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16133" CreationDate="2015-02-05T08:23:00.017" Score="2" ViewCount="411" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to convey the pause between the &quot;then&quot; and the rest of the sentence. But I'm not sure a comma is the correct punctuation to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then, when the smoke had cleared Jane&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is an ellipsis better? I tend to reserve it for when someone trails off or is interupted in the middle of speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then... when the smoke had cleared Jane&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are either of these correct or is there a better way to express this pause?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8373" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T11:37:11.533" Title="Am I correctly punctuating this pause?" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16132" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16147" CreationDate="2015-02-05T10:04:41.967" Score="1" ViewCount="8478" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written many documents at school, but there is one thing I'm always struggling with: Font types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never know which font to choose for which occasion. At the moment I'm writing a document that is supposed to be very professional. Personally I really like the font &quot;Verdana&quot;, but I don't think it really suits for a professional font.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually just use Times New Roman or Calibri on Microsoft Word 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some sort of 'best practice' for fonts in professional documents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12841" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2015-03-03T22:47:49.863" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T22:47:49.863" Title="How do I choose the most appropriate font for a professional document?" Tags="|style|formatting|business-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16131" CreationDate="2015-02-05T11:37:11.533" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your first comma isn't the problem. It's that you have an interrupter and didn't put the &lt;em&gt;second&lt;/em&gt; comma in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, when the smoke had cleared, Jane rushed over to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;em&gt;interrupter&lt;/em&gt; is a few words or a whole clause which interrupts the flow of the original framing sentence, and can be safely removed from the original sentence without making it grammatically uncorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An interrupter &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; have bracketing punctuation. You can use commas, M-dashes, or parentheses, or in rare instances ellipses if you're careful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take out the interrupter clause here, it just reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then Jane rushed over to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jane flung open the door, and — once the smoke had cleared and she wasn't in danger of choking — rushed over to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jane felt (now that it had been a few years) like she could go back to the city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T11:37:11.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16137" CreationDate="2015-02-05T13:37:08.500" Score="0" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;I almost drowned in the this ocean of tenses. Anyhow, did I make any mistake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was almost two, so I said goodnight to Mom and went back to my&#xA;  room. Once on my bed, I took the gold tooth out of its box and held it&#xA;  up to the ceiling light. My great-great-grandmother had died in her&#xA;  attempt to become immortal, just like many others throughout history.&#xA;  Emperors, dictators, merchants, scientists—they all drowned in the sea&#xA;  of their obsession. But let's say they achieved their goal and became&#xA;  immortal. What good would that have been? Qin Shi Huang would have&#xA;  continued enlisting slaves to build his crazy tomb; Hitler would have&#xA;  continued piling up Jews until making a mountain as tall as Mount&#xA;  Everest; My great-great-grandmother would have—well, I had no idea,&#xA;  but judging from her wackiness, surely nothing good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the question also applied to us: to become immortal? What for? To&#xA;  eat at McDonald's until cows went extinct? To buy clothes and&#xA;  electronics until our houses exploded? To fill the Earth with plastic&#xA;  bags, bottles, and metal junk until they flew to its orbit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I have said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But let's say they &lt;strong&gt;had&lt;/strong&gt; achieved their goal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To eat at McDonald's until cows &lt;strong&gt;go&lt;/strong&gt; extinct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To buy clothes and electronics until our houses &lt;strong&gt;explode&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and finally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To fill the Earth with plastic bags, bottles, and metal junk until they &lt;strong&gt;fly&lt;/strong&gt; to its orbit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T17:50:04.780" Title="Are the tenses of the following piece correct?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-03-04T06:10:39.727" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16125" CreationDate="2015-02-05T14:35:55.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideas can't be copyrighted. One could write a creative text with these, but then using them (in an entirely different text) will be completely viable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these ideas could be used as methods, technologies or devices, you can patent them. The one &quot;beautiful&quot; thing about patents is that they absolutely don't need to work for real, you just need to &lt;em&gt;claim&lt;/em&gt; that they work - so whether the ideas are valid and true is moot. Still, if the ideas merely cover concepts of how things work in the nature, they won't be patentable. On top of that, the process of obtaining patents is lengthy and expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T14:35:55.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16134" CreationDate="2015-02-05T14:40:44.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;had&lt;/strong&gt; achieved their goal and &lt;strong&gt;become&lt;/strong&gt; immortal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;because you're talking about past efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the second paragraph should be in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_subjunctive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;subjunctive&lt;/a&gt;, which is what you put in your suggested corrections. The narrator is positing a hypothetical future, not a real or hypothetical past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T14:40:44.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16134" CreationDate="2015-02-05T15:10:38.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;But, let's say they had achieved their goals, and all become immortal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quin Si Haung, continued enlisting slaves to build his crazy tomb. Hiltler, would have continued to pile up Jews, until making a mountain, as tall as, Mount Everest. My great, great, great grandmother, would have, well, I have no idea, but judging from her wackiness, surely nothing good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the question, also applies to us, to become immortal, for what? Just to eat at McDonald's until cows go extinct? Just to buy clothes or eletronics until our homes expode? All to fill the Earth with plastic bags, bottles, and metal junk, until thy fly into its orbit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if all the 'bolding' I just did in my DoctoGo App transferred over and posted above, but at least I tried. My apologies if that portion is missing. Since I was retyping it, I went ahead and made a few minor changes. The above is just my opinion,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope the above helps, have a good Day!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12844" LastEditorUserId="12844" LastEditDate="2015-02-05T17:50:04.780" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T17:50:04.780" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="61" CreationDate="2015-02-05T23:35:15.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK that's really some cool ideas about this problem. But I would like to say few points on this matter. Today we live in a handy world where without technology we can't live. So in this situation we might find some useful apps on our mobile to write down our points. In this case Evernote, Google keep, trello can help a lot. Then I think to get content thought we can read a bit variety of content and here rss feed can help a lot. For doing this I used to have flipboard app and if I find anything nice to remember later, I put that on pocket app. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12848" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-02-06T16:43:47.630" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T16:43:47.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16140" CreationDate="2015-02-05T23:38:05.840" Score="2" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once wrote a short story that was around ninety pages. It encompassed approximately a month. Since it was a short story, there were necessarily parts of it where days, weeks even, went by without much happening. Aka, passing time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, said passing time would be boring to read through, so I decided to skip it. However, simply saying, &quot;a week later,&quot; or, &quot;not two days afterwards,&quot; (which felt disjointed to me and interrupted the flow of the story) didn't seem to be the way to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I finally gave up trying to whack it into shape and wrote what was happening with someone else at about the same time - a scene which was way more engaging. Surprisingly, this worked. When I came back to the original PoV, I was able to just start him at several days after I had left him, and the gap felt natural, as long as it was explained. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question is this&lt;/strong&gt;: Is this a viable method for ignoring passing time and still not interrupting the flow/pace of the story? Or are there hidden problems with it that I am missing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T00:51:03.143" Title="Avoiding passing time by switching PoV - Viable method?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16139" CreationDate="2015-02-06T00:51:03.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you make it clear to the reader where you are in time in relation to the previous scene, it's perfectly fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(David and Leigh Eddings, writers of the Belgariad/Malloreon series, also recommend weather reports as a way to show time passing: &quot;It rained the rest of the day&quot; or &quot;After three days of snow, we were ready for some sun.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T00:51:03.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16141" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16142" CreationDate="2015-02-06T03:23:16.327" Score="3" ViewCount="2326" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many writing journals say they will not publish previously published poems. But if I revise a previously published poem, can I safely say the &lt;em&gt;edited poem&lt;/em&gt; has not been published? If so, would a one-word change be enough? A two-word change? Three? Four? Twenty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say I've had this poem published in Michigan Review:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;THE FORK LESS USED&#xA;&#xA;Two forks stood in my mashed potatoes,&#xA;And sorry I could not use both&#xA;And be one eater, long I salivated&#xA;And looked down upon one as far as I could&#xA;To where its tines disappeared in white fluffyness&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I've edited / revised this to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;TWO FORKS&#xA;&#xA;Two forks stand in my mashed potatoes,&#xA;And sorry I could not use both&#xA;And be one consumer, long I salivated&#xA;And looked down upon one as far as I could&#xA;To where its tines sunk into light smoothness&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I submitted this edited / revised poem to Indiana Review which doesn't allow previously published poems. Is Indiana Review going to sue me? Are these two poems the &lt;em&gt;same&lt;/em&gt; poem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12677" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T15:48:34.430" Title="At what point in editing / revising does one poem become another poem?" Tags="|publishing|poetry|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16141" CreationDate="2015-02-06T12:03:24.807" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Happily since this is a practical question, one does not need to solve &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Theseus' Paradox&lt;/a&gt; to provide an answer. The intent behind the rule is to provide distinctive work, i.e., no reader will think &quot;I have read this before.&quot; To determine whether a new work is too similar to a previous work, one should consider whether a reader would think the work had been read before from fallible memory of perhaps a year earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to play lawyer with the definitions of &quot;same work&quot; and &quot;previously published&quot; will not endear one to editors. In fact, being upfront about the relationship — while also demonstrating that one is familiar with the submission guidelines and &lt;em&gt;does not expect special treatment&lt;/em&gt; — may slightly increase the chance of publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the practical matter, if I were an editor, I would consider such minor changes to be revisions and quickly reject the submission (if I knew the previous work had been published). The two works are sufficiently similar that a reader who had read one a year after the other could easily think them the same. Both use substantially the same form, both have the same tone, both use the same imagery, and both cover the same subject (in this case made more obvious by the reference to &quot;The Road Not Taken&quot;, which would make those aspects more memorable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the rule about previously published is subject to the editor's discretion. For example, a mediocre work published in a poetry magazine with very low standards (e.g., some college poetry magazines) that was substantially refined such that it would be eagerly accepted for publication if it had not be previously published would typically be considered as if it had not been previously published. A typical reader would not think them the same work from memory (even if all the above mentioned traits were the same); in fact, a reader presented with both would likely think the earlier work a weak imitation of the latter. Furthermore, the obscurity of the earlier publication would make the editor feel that readers would be even more likely to appreciate the work as new. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one has some juvenilia that was &quot;published&quot; in a high school poetry magazine, one might be able to refine such works into what would be accepted as new by a poetry magazine with high standards. Similarly, if one took a well-written and previously published Shakespearean sonnet and revised it into a Petrarchan sonnet of the same or better quality, the modest difference in form and presumed changes in images and tone (a Shakespearean sonnet traditionally has a two line &quot;conclusion&quot;, while a Petrarchan sonnet has a turn after the first eight lines) might be sufficient to be considered new. In that case, an editor might &lt;em&gt;appreciate&lt;/em&gt; being exposed to both version (and &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; even desire to republish the earlier version to highlight the contrast).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, it is not a good idea to submit a revision of work that has been previously published when the publisher requires that submissions not be previously published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T12:03:24.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16149" CreationDate="2015-02-06T12:09:37.090" Score="3" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to host a blog with funny and dark articles. How much do I have to worry about the appearance. Should I focus only on the content or does the visual appearance and graphics matter a lot too? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12850" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T09:56:38.443" Title="Does Visual Appearance matter in blog writing" Tags="|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16150" CreationDate="2015-02-06T12:23:06.690" Score="1" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every now and then, I start writing something, which I at first consider a master piece but after a while I leave it unfinished thinking that it isn't that great. This has started happening quite too often now and I don't remember the last time I actually finished any of my things. The problem is that somewhere during the writing, I re-read the article and think that it isn't that fun to read. I ask for fellows to comment and they all have positive feedback but even one negative comment means that I am not going to continue it. How do I keep myself motivated? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12850" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T16:57:56.873" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T16:57:56.873" Title="How to stay motivated and focused while writing" Tags="|creative-writing|psychology-of-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-02-22T21:48:36.587" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16141" CreationDate="2015-02-06T14:53:24.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt that there is a hard and fast line. I suppose a publication might say, &quot;If the revised poem has at least 50% of the words changed it is acceptable&quot;. But I doubt they do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One could, of course, play games with this sort of thing. You could take a completely original poem and cry, &quot;Look! It includes the phrases 'undying love' and 'made for each other', just like this other poem over here! Obviously a copy.&quot; At the other extreme, I can't imagine that any editor would accept that changing one word in a five-page poem makes it a new poem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any standard is likely to be subjective. Does it &quot;sound like&quot; the other poem? Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to wonder: Why do you ask? Did you write a poem, get it published, and now you want to publish it again? Or are you contemplating taking a book of poems by Shakespeare or Poe, changing a couple of words here and there, and submitting them as your own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose if you wrote some poem that you consider your master work, that you are not confidant that you will ever be able to create something of this quality again, and you had it published in some obscure literary journal that six people read and you are now frustrated because you can't get it out to a wider audience ... well, I'd talk to the editor about that and explain your position. Otherwise, I think you'd be better to just write new poems rather than try to tinker with someone else's. Well, other than to produce a parody, like your example above is obviously a parody on Road Not Taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T14:53:24.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16132" CreationDate="2015-02-06T15:03:09.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: If the font is easily readable, then it's fine. I wouldn't obsess over this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure psychologists and marketing people and psychics are convinced that choice of font has profound implications on the effect your material has on readers. Personally, I doubt it. Unless the font is unusual enough to stand out, unless readers see the font and immediately say to themselves, &quot;Hey, that looks like blood is dripping from the letters&quot; or &quot;Oh, cute, how each letter looks like a different animal&quot; or whatever, most people just won't notice or care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do want your text to be readable. Serif fonts are generally thought to be a little prettier. If the text is small, though, a sans-serif font can be easier to read. Elaborate decorative fonts can be nice for a title, but they get very tedious when used for the main text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd add: Avoid using a large number of different fonts in one document. It can be attractive to have one font for the main text and another font for headings. It can be useful to have one font for the running narrative and a different font for block quotes or examples or some other text that you want to distinguish. But don't go crazy. I've seen people put 15 different fonts in one document for no apparent reason. Rule of thumb: Don't have more than 3 fonts unless there's some truly special case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T15:03:09.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16141" CreationDate="2015-02-06T15:48:34.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assumed you only regard changes of words within a text, f.i.., a poem. And each word should at most be changed once. Then the number of changes you could possibly make is equal to the number of words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say w is the &lt;strong&gt;number of words&lt;/strong&gt; and&#xA;say c is the &lt;strong&gt;number of word changes&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;(so 0&amp;lt;=c&amp;lt;=w)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;change rate&lt;/strong&gt; r shall be equal to c/w&#xA;(so 0&amp;lt;=r&amp;lt;= 1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now intuitively if r is very small (near to 0) you might want to consider the texts being the same and in case r is big (almost 1) you will tend to consider the revised text to be new. When r is neither near to 0 nor near to 1 you could justify both, i.e., to call it a new text or to call it the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10411" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T15:48:34.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16143" CreationDate="2015-02-06T16:32:54.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the audience you're trying to attract, but on my experience, the visuals count a lot for a modern blog in terms of attracting readers. You don't need them to be flashy, but they need to look polished, and to match the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One good way to proceed that isn't too difficult is to go with a very minimal design, but make sure each article includes an interesting image. (You can check the link in my profile for an example of this approach.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, all the visuals in the world won't overcome weak writing (unless the blog is primarily visual focused). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T16:32:54.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16144" CreationDate="2015-02-06T16:59:20.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This happens to me as well.  There are a few things I've found to help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Don't ask for feedback too early --wait until the piece is finished.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2) Write shorter pieces.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3) Try to gain some emotional distance from the writing --treat producing writing like an ongoing job you have to do, not as a way to seek instant gratification.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;4) Start with a solid outline and a good structure that can carry you through.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, part of what motivates me to write is the desire for the instant gratification of having people read me, but that doesn't work for longer work.  So I've divvied up my writing.  I have a long project which I won't show to anyone until it's done -- it might take a year or more --but I post regularly on places like StackExchange and my blog in order to scratch that itch for instant feedback. (If you are conscientious about it, this can also improve at least some aspects of your writing, and if you stick with a blog, you might eventually have the raw material for a longer work created in bite-sized pieces).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T16:59:20.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16144" CreationDate="2015-02-06T20:22:53.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I just came off a 5 day exercise of gathering and organizing all my writing attempts and I realize that in the past 4 years I have started 15 novels, some of 3k words (so one chapter that I gave to one person to read who didn't like it) to grand 200k completed first drafts that never got rewritten. (200k is grand for me)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before this 5 day collecting and dusting and sifting exercise in what I'd considered &quot;computer clean-up&quot; when I started, I was just idling/procrastinating away adding notes and ideas every now and again on Evernote and Onenote and building playlists on Spotify for characters when the mood struck. I'd lost actual writing motivation &lt;strong&gt;BIG&lt;/strong&gt; time and the ONLY thing that changed, the catalyst, was a fanfic-writing friend of mine invited me to join a writers workshop where every meeting you'd present something new to the group, not really for criticism as to if it's good or bad but really and truly, focusing on progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fanfic feedback was great for me because there were emails that would pop up with someone saying &quot;I AM WAITING FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER. WRITE IT NOW! PLEASE AND THANKS&quot; and that would motivate me, but with original novel fiction that just stay dead on my harddrive, or even worse, out on OneDrive unseen unless I look for it... i ended up with zero stimulus, zero momentum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self Motivation is very hard for me wrt writing. But I realize now that I may be shame motivated as well. Not the healthiest way, you'd think, but I had a psychiatry professor actual run through the merits of his &quot;shame therapy&quot; and it's not all bad. (opinion) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't &lt;em&gt;not join&lt;/em&gt; the writing group, and I can't join and then have &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; to put in my progress report. The idea of that, the horror of that, has motivated me, and I wrote like 1.5 k this morning. I'm here on this site even. Don't know how long it'll last, but I'm just sharing what got me to write again after maybe 8 months of stagnation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12739" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T20:22:53.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16152" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-06T20:34:10.847" Score="11" ViewCount="26739" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now, at the get go, I fully acknowledge that I have gone way over the top as far a story plotting goes, but I'm trying for something on the extreme end of epic and I have a legit obsessive compulsive personality problem so at this point it cannot be helped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm potentially dealing with an ASOIAF-style number of characters and POVS, some with synchronous timelines. Plot overlaps, plot loops, plot loopholes and blackholes even. I started it out as a screenwriting project and it has sprawled into and epic fantasy type thing that might take maybe 8-10 books to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started plot outlining chapter by chapter in ms word, then I went over to OneNote to get that kinda whiteboard effect, then it just sorta ballooned out of control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What I'm looking for:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A program that essentially operates functionally like a SmartDraw type flowchart, &#xA;but acts like a fluid Mindmap (iMindMap) in the way that I can pull pieces&#xA;around, having them stay connected by an arrow wherever I drag (a variety of connectors&#xA;would be nice). The ability to drag around and freely visually&#xA;organise it while maintaining the connection would be nice. It&#xA;would be beyond excellent to be able to converge several different POV plots and diverge them again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A way to synchronize multiple timelines for several characters. Some&#xA;of these characters have timelines that run for a thousand years, and&#xA;some of these immortal characters can slide through time and change&#xA;things so this is where there is the Terminator-style time pretzel&#xA;effect. And interspersed with all this, are some characters who have&#xA;very meaningful but very short timelines. I need someway for them all&#xA;to fall together kinda like a gantt chart.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An index card/corkboard display option like in Scrivenir would be&#xA;nice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A way to organise all of this into chapters and books.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this software exist? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12739" LastEditorUserId="12739" LastEditDate="2015-02-07T10:27:59.237" LastActivityDate="2017-10-26T18:28:14.003" Title="Anyone has any super intense software for plot outlining?" Tags="|software|organization|plot|outline|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16152" CreationDate="2015-02-06T21:54:57.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribblecode.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aeon Timeline&lt;/a&gt; to keep track of chronology (it integrates well with Scrivener, which I use for writing), and I do everythong else &lt;strong&gt;on paper&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this is because I did my first writing projects before the advent of the personal computer and had to type my first essays for university on a typewriter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, paper outlining has one gigantic advantage: &lt;strong&gt;that you can see all of your notes at the same time&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a visual person. I memorized vocabulary in school by memorizing where on the page the word was written. When I write, I need to organize my writing visually. What I do is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I outline, I write my ideas in whatever medium I happen to have at hand: by hand in a notebook or on the backside of printed articles or copies I no longer need and have cut up into small snippets and distributed all over my home; when I'm at a computer I may type into some editor and later print it out. I mark these papers in big fat colorful numbers, letters or symbols that denote the characters or scenes or throughlines or whatever represents the structure of my novel. Then I lay them all out on the floor of my room in the order that I want to tell the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I want to rearrange them, I move them wherever I want them. Sometimes I cut a piece off one paper with scissors and lay, glue ot tack it elsewhere. Somwtimes I renumber them. Sometimes I cross out some part, or throw away a paper snippet. Sometimes I take a large paper and draw a graph of the relations between the structural elements (e.g. a genealogy or map).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love this. It is the best part of writing. And it is so clear and transparent, because I know what is written on each little paper, I have the structure in my head, and because I can see all of it at the sane time always and can therefore easily visualize the whole of my worldbuilding or outlining or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written numerous papers and academic theses in this way; I have written short stories and novels – all with papers carefully layed out on my floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even on the best computer, with the best software and two of the largest screens (I have two 30&quot; Apple Cinema Displays on my desk), I can always ever only see part of what I'm working on, the rest is hidden in stacked windows or scrolled outside the viewport, and this confuses me. I forget parts. I misremember their structure and relation. It is such an effort, and I hate how what I create doesn't even exist except as magnetized molecules or electric current – writing on a computer is not palpable, sensual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write on paper, I love the feel and sound of the paper. I love the sensuality of this process. It is an aesthetic process that produces a beautiful side product: a collection of notes in a box that are mysterious and intriguing, a treasury, like the secret maps and mysterious lists I created as a child. As a creative and artistic person, I dislike the cold abstraction of working purely at a computer. I dislike the technological limitations, and I enjoy the freedom and sensual beauty of analogue methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best, most flexible and most powerful software for me is a pen that I enjoy writing with, and any number of papers that happen to fall into my hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computers constrain and limit my creativity, because they prescribe what I can and cannot do, and how I must do what they allow. I use my computer only as an enhanced typewriter – when the creative process of developing my story is done and I actually sit down to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-02-07T09:44:16.060" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T09:44:16.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16152" CreationDate="2015-02-07T00:22:36.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Others on this site have recommended Scrivener, and after looking over the features it might be what you are looking for.  I am certainly going to purchase it for myself... as soon as I can(poor writer is poor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12784" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T00:22:36.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16162" CreationDate="2015-02-07T02:41:04.050" Score="2" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;When is OK to omitting pronouns and possessive adjectives in fiction? Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She called me that weekend &lt;strong&gt;while I was cleaning&lt;/strong&gt; my apartment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She called me that weekend &lt;strong&gt;while cleaning&lt;/strong&gt; my apartment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Once on my bed,&lt;/strong&gt; I took the box and opened it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Once on bed,&lt;/strong&gt; I took the box and opened it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He explained to me&lt;/strong&gt; that a friend &lt;strong&gt;of his&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He explained&lt;/strong&gt; that a friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T12:05:58.520" Title="Omitting pronouns and possessive adjectives in fiction" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16158" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16160" CreationDate="2015-02-07T07:27:39.367" Score="1" ViewCount="3213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading a brilliant piece of &lt;em&gt;Feminist Literature&lt;/em&gt; : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1952/1952-h/1952-h.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Yellow Wallpaper&lt;/a&gt; by  &lt;em&gt;Charlotte Perkins Gilman&lt;/em&gt; and had the following specific doubt :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The author , multiple times , uses the word &lt;strong&gt;Smooch&lt;/strong&gt; with reference to the hideous Yellow Wallpaper &lt;em&gt;(Ctrl+f the word smooch in the link given for the context)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;My Interpretation :&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is just a literary expression , it does not symbolize anything&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;My Question :&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Am I correct ? What does it symbolize , if at all ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12867" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T01:58:32.377" Title="The Yellow Wallpaper - What does *Smooch* imply?" Tags="|short-story|metaphor|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-02-12T03:15:17.757" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16158" CreationDate="2015-02-07T09:14:31.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A look in a dictionary will tell you that &lt;em&gt;smooch&lt;/em&gt; can mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a &quot;smuch&quot; or &quot;smear&quot; (noun); to &quot;sully&quot;, &quot;dirty&quot; (verb)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;kiss&quot; (either as verb or noun). It seems to originate from German &lt;em&gt;schmatzen&lt;/em&gt; (via eng. &lt;em&gt;smouch&lt;/em&gt;), a verb meaning the sound made by eating, kissing or boots moving in mud. &lt;em&gt;Smooch&lt;/em&gt; is an onomatopoeia (a word imitating the sound it denotes).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to &quot;sneak&quot;, &quot;creep&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read the story, but from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Wallpaper&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;summary&lt;/a&gt; on Wikipedia, I would guess that the smooch is a smear on the wall caused by the protagonist crawling along the wall and rubbing against it, thus rubbing skin grease agains the wall and causing a dirty smear at the height of her shoulder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reading of the story should explain what the author means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-02-07T09:21:33.237" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T09:21:33.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16158" CreationDate="2015-02-07T10:42:59.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is in three parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Part 1 - Historical Denotations and Connotations  of &lt;em&gt;Smooch&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  A grounding in the meaning and usage of the word &lt;em&gt;smooch&lt;/em&gt; in that time period is necessary to discuss the concept further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Part 2: Literary Interpretation of &amp;quot;The Smooch&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt; This provides my answer to the question.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;(Hint: Yes, &amp;quot;smooch&amp;quot; has a significant literary and metaphorical role!)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Part 3: Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Part 1 - Historical Denotations and Connotations  of &lt;em&gt;Smooch&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more fundamental question is, &amp;quot;What did &lt;em&gt;smooch&lt;/em&gt; mean at the time of this writing?&amp;quot;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Wallpaper&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Yellow Wallpaper&lt;/a&gt;, which is indeed a complex and brilliant piece by any measure, was published in 1892.  The word &lt;em&gt;smooch&lt;/em&gt;, which now means &amp;quot;to kiss and cuddle&amp;quot; had a different meaning in the 19th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=Iu9OAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA5723&amp;amp;dq=smooch+dictionary&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=w6DVVLudOYaxggTHqYGgCQ&amp;amp;ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=smooch%20dictionary&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Century dictionary and cyclopedia&lt;/a&gt; (1897), it's the same as &amp;quot;smutch&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;smutch: a black spot; a black stain; a smudge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=OEZAAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA334&amp;amp;lpg=PA334&amp;amp;dq=smooch+soot&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=Bnw_XiBkjC&amp;amp;sig=N8r4hSm8r1rRWXzE8v92CA-49p0&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=QqnVVLCmKIS0ggTsk4A4&amp;amp;ved=0CDIQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=smooch%20soot&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Dictionary of the English Language: Designed for Use in Common Schools Abridged from Webster's International Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; (Noah Webster, 1892):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smutch (amuch), v. t. [SMUTCHED (amficht); SMUTCHING.] To smudge ; to blacken with smoke or soot. — n. Stain ; dirty spot. [Written also smooch.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=c_kxAQAAMAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PR65&amp;amp;dq=%22smooch%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=E6DVVO2CMoWigwTLwIDQCQ&amp;amp;ved=0CDYQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22smooch%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Proceedings and Transactions of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science, &lt;/a&gt; (Session of 1894-1895, Volume IX) describes the common range of usage of &lt;em&gt;smooch&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smoochin, hair-oil, or pomade. A young man from abroad, com mencing as clerk in an establishment at one of the outposts, was puzzled by an order for a “pen'orth of smoochin.” The verb smooch is also used as equivalent to smutch, to blacken or defile. We may hear such expressions as, “ His clothes are smooched with soot,” or “ The paper is smooched with ink.” But it is also used to express the application of any substance as by smearing, without any reference to blackening. Thus one might say, “ Her hair was all smooched with oil.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So within this 1892 short story, one can understand &lt;em&gt;smooch&lt;/em&gt; as meaning a &amp;quot;smudge&amp;quot; with connotations of something defiled, stained or dirty.  Also important for a modern interpretation, &lt;em&gt;smooch&lt;/em&gt; did not have any connotation related to kissing or cuddling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Part 2: Literary Interpretation of &amp;quot;The Smooch&amp;quot;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This masterful work was not just about a woman obsessed with a yellow wall.  She had an identity crisis, and the concept of &amp;quot;smooch&amp;quot; is a theme that recurs exactly three times in an escalating pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mention #1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow &lt;strong&gt;smooches&lt;/strong&gt; on all my clothes and John's, and she wished we would be more careful!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this first mention, she is still &amp;quot;supposedly sane&amp;quot; and sees the smooch as simply the standard/normal/sane meaning.  But she is frustrated and lost in the male dominated world.  And her feelings are clearly repressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mention #2:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A streak that runs round the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even &lt;strong&gt;SMOOCH&lt;/strong&gt;, as if it had been rubbed over and over.&#xA;I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for. Round and round and round—round and round and round—it makes me dizzy!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here she has recognized the smooch as something more.  It is everywhere!  Everywhere except the bed, where she was told she needed to stay. The smooch defines her place in the world.  She belong in the bed.  Not to do any type of work, even such as writing, but to rest in the bed.  And, of course, the bed limits her identity to her sexual function.   And this definition has been &amp;quot;Rubbed over and over&amp;quot; by generations of male dominance/oppression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for.&amp;quot; The protagonist sees a process, an intention, and a motive in the smooch, which is the &amp;quot;stain&amp;quot; on her identity as a woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Round and round and round-round and round and round--it makes me dizzy&amp;quot; here the protagonist is not saying something mundane, like &amp;quot;a smudge went all the way around&amp;quot;.  The smooch is something more and this discovery is making her dizzy.  She is also becoming more &amp;quot;insane&amp;quot;. But that's because she's discovering &amp;quot;the truth&amp;quot; of the profound blight of oppression that she lives in.  A truth like this is dizzying.  Recall when Neo takes the red pill in The Matrix, and goes down the rabbit hole.  And when he wakes up in the real world, how jarring it is to discover that one has been oppressed their entire life, didn't know it, and just woke up to the reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mention #3:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long &lt;strong&gt;smooch&lt;/strong&gt; around the wall, so I cannot lose my way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, she is &amp;quot;certifiably insane&amp;quot; and her comments to her husband, taken at a surface meaning, are crazy enough to make her husband faint.  His fainting is presumably because she &amp;quot;talking crazy talk&amp;quot; but it's not just that: yes, she's &amp;quot;out of control&amp;quot;, but more importantly, she's no longer &lt;em&gt;under his control&lt;/em&gt;.  He also lives in a world supported by the male dominated paradigm, and seeing his wife no-longer living in that paradigm is too much for his consciousness.  And as an aside, we are given an insight into insanity-as-sanity because we can also understand how her words do make sense from her perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this third mention of &amp;quot;smooch&amp;quot; she has discovered her identity.  She realizes that she is &lt;em&gt;under the smooch&lt;/em&gt; as she says, &amp;quot;my shoulder just fits in that long &lt;strong&gt;smooch&lt;/strong&gt; around the wall&amp;quot;.  This is metaphorically true since she had always been under the spell of the male dominated world view.  But once recognized for what it is, the smooch guides her.  Keeping it in sight, she is no longer lost as she proclaims, &amp;quot;so I cannot lose my way.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Part 3: Conclusion.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the author intend all of this?  Not by her own commentary. (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Wallpaper#Gilman.27s_interpretation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.) But then again, such a commentary might have been met with severe repercussions at the time.  This very story proof to the point: it's about female autonomy (or the lack thereof) and in particular, the negative attitude towards women taking an identity as a legitimate writer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may never be any definitive proof one way or the other, but I would be inclined to believe that incorporating the smooch like this, and with the character's changing attitudes and relationship with the smooch, that the smooch acted as an intentional metaphor of her awakening to &amp;quot;the smooch on her identity&amp;quot;, which also led to her personal self-discovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6619" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T01:58:32.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16161" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-07T11:06:44.203" Score="0" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it Ok to fade out the commentator’s voice before he’s finished his broadcast…? I’m trying to illustrate to the readers that the broadcast continues, whilst Jack and Richard go on with their conversation. The news content isn’t that important at this juncture, although, it will be later. Also, Should the commentator’s voice be in italics’?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I don’t want to be late; not today buddy.” Said Jack, turning on the radio.&#xA;  “…K.W.L.A. 34 live on 107.9 FM, bringing you L .A.’s, favourite sounds, world news and the best in sports over the waves. Hey, it’s 7.00 a.m. people, I’m Jimmy Delgado and I’ll with you for the next hour playing some great sounds from the 90’s. Today’s going to be a sunny, bright shiny day in the City of Angels, with the temperature climbing into the 80’s… and humid folks. Now, here’s Rachael with the City News…” &#xA;  “The San Francisco public works department announced earlier this morning that five lanes on the south-bound section of the six lane underpass would remain closed until the end of the week, when its hoped the landslip caused by yesterday’s seismic activity …&#xA;  “More benefit cuts on the way as New York’s, food queues degenerate into vicious bloody riots... Last night, in a televised Nationwide interview with, President O’Mara, speaking from the Oval Office, revealed that, thousands of already poverty stricken families would soon be facing…. Racheal Simplon for. K. W. L. A 34.&#xA;  Helium.3., North Korea launched its first Space Mining Company today, Deep Dragon One on New York’s stock exchange, making it the forth Asian company to have drilling rights on the Moon to date. Rachael Simplon for K.W.L.A. 34, coming to you live on 107.9 FM.”&#xA;  ‘Shit. That’s us screwed,’ said Richard.&#xA;  ‘Can’t we go around it?’ Said Jack. Dark brooding thoughts of being late for the mee&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11529" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2015-02-09T09:37:07.623" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T09:37:07.623" Title="Formatting for fading between a radio broadcast and the protagonist" Tags="|dialogue|book|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16156" CreationDate="2015-02-07T12:05:58.520" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think in all three examples you're starting to impede comprehension, and change the meaning of the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Example 1 sounds like the caller is cleaning the apartment of the&#xA;narrator, because the subject hasn't changed from the beginning of&#xA;the sentence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Example 3 leaves the friend in question: whose friend is he talking&#xA;about?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Example 2 you have to have an article of some kind &amp;mdash; if not&#xA;&lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; then &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt;, at the very least.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T12:05:58.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16095" CreationDate="2015-02-07T13:53:52.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is quoted from &lt;a href=&quot;http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&amp;amp;pageid=icb.page363224#a_icb_pagecontent753457_non-first&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harvard Guide to Using Sources&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you are citing an edition of a book other than the first edition, you should indicate the edition. In both MLA and APA styles, you should identify the edition you are citing by year or number (if either is available), or by name (if the edition is listed as &quot;revised&quot; or &quot;abridged&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, when citing an anniversary edition, you would simply mention the name of the edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, (borrowed from &lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-teZIBmOy4cJ:https://www.sautech.edu/docs/studentResources/library_APACitationResource.pps+&amp;amp;cd=3&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ct=clnk&amp;amp;gl=in&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;; The link is of a cached version; search for &quot;anniversary&quot; to find this entry)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hyman, T. S.  (1974).  Snow White. (Silver Anniversary Edition). Boston: Little, Brown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this solves your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T13:53:52.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16164" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-07T17:17:35.340" Score="2" ViewCount="2263" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a fantasy novel and it's my first piece of work. My chapters currently range from 500 to 3,350 words. Is this too much of a dramatic change? Should I go back and pad out some of the shorter chapters? Am I overthinking it, or is chapter length that important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12868" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2022-05-29T16:30:30.273" LastActivityDate="2022-05-30T00:28:03.667" Title="Is it okay to have wildly varying chapter lengths in a fantasy novel?" Tags="|fantasy|structure|chapters|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16164" CreationDate="2015-02-07T19:48:31.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming there are no requirements for chapter length you are supposed to meet, I don't believe it matters. Some books maintain a steady chapter length of twenty or so pages &lt;em&gt;(Harry Potter)&lt;/em&gt;, but I've seen several with a page long chapter, followed by an extremely long one &lt;em&gt;(Inheritance Cycle)&lt;/em&gt;. Still yet others maintain short chapters throughout &lt;em&gt;(Anne of Green Gables)&lt;/em&gt;. In my experience, such ranges don't really mess with the pace/flow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T19:48:31.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16164" CreationDate="2015-02-07T21:41:10.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, everything about a novel or other piece of writing must follow from its whole. If the lengths of your chapters follow narurally from the story.you are telling, then those are the lengths they must have. Word count is the wrong way to evaluate writing (unless you write specifically &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; a certain word count, as in academic or news writing). Let someone read what you wrote and tell you what might be too much or missing. Don't follow the advice of a word counter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T21:41:10.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16164" CreationDate="2015-02-07T22:25:12.627" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chapter length is important. &lt;em&gt;Consistency&lt;/em&gt; of chapter length is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few ways to use chapter length:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Think of chapters as a pacing tool. All other factors being equal--which, of course, they never are--longer chapters tend to slow the pace, shorter chapters to increase the pace.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The length of a chapter can suggest (perhaps subtly) the importance of the events in the chapter. A longer chapter can give more weight to the events, a shorter chapter less weight.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two effects often fight with each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T22:25:12.627" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16170" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16172" CreationDate="2015-02-08T14:35:17.743" Score="2" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a writing style which relies heavily on pauses, specifically commas and periods. I like to put them everywhere but I am quit sure I overdo it significantly. I was wondering if there are known remedies for this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an extreme sample excerpt from a SciFi text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He watched the fire. It danced around the fresh wood, sparks swarming&#xA;  out in perceived random. Quickly consumed, a crackle of heat, a flash,&#xA;  a wave reached his skin. He watched the Vivicaust shed colors of&#xA;  warmth, a radiant beauty. Dying. He freshened the lifespan,&#xA;  scintillations abound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He stared at the embers. Dead. A ruminating mind wandered with them,&#xA;  lost in thoughts of impermanence. He rushed to fan the last glimmer of&#xA;  hope, not yet. It wouldn't die yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am also usually very concise and leave much thinking up to the reader. I am originally a German speaker. Might this be part of the cause? I recognize that it kills flow but I am unsure about my approach to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10779" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T17:44:59.697" Title="Overabundance of punctuation, too many pauses, like this title" Tags="|style|punctuation|flow|rhythm|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16170" CreationDate="2015-02-08T23:05:33.647" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The language in your question is very clear and doesn't seem to use the staccato approach found in your example sci-fi piece.  Why not write your sci-fi piece with your natural language, that you seem to have used for your question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that would solve your problem, because you seem to be a clear concise writer -- from your question's example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for more than that then I suggest you read the fantastic book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qEWv3K&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Make Your Words Work -- amazon link&lt;/a&gt;, by the late Gary Provost.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He teaches very clearly about tone and style and it is quite helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T17:44:59.697" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T17:44:59.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16161" CreationDate="2015-02-08T23:23:42.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's my shot at this since the other one was a script and maybe you're looking for an example of prose which is going to be different.&#xA;Also, as Chekhov said, (paraphrase) &quot;if you show something in the first scene it better be important later.&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have the radio interrupting then it should be significant to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't want to be late today,&quot; Jack said and turned on the radio. &#xA;  &quot;Can't be late today.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The accelaration of the Mitsubishi pushed Richard back into the passenger seat. &#xA;  &quot;Whoa, fella.  I'd like to get there alive.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mick Jagger's voice screamed through the car as an old Stones song&#xA;  blared through the speakers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Richard grasped the volume knob and turned it down.  &quot;I wouldn't mind&#xA;  being able to hear when I get there either.  What's with you this&#xA;  morning, man?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I got this thing at work, okay? I'm trying to get myself in the right&#xA;  mood,&quot; Jack said and cranked the music back up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I didn't know dead and deaf was a mood,&quot; Richard said.  &quot;Turn that&#xA;  thing --&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A high pitched beep came through the speakers and cut Richard off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This is a broadcast from the emergency alert system,&quot; came the voice&#xA;  from the radio. Jack turned it down and frowned.  &quot;Just as I was&#xA;  getting into it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Wait a second,&quot; Richard said and reached for the volume.  &quot;What are&#xA;  they saying?  It sounded like it might be important.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T23:23:42.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16164" CreationDate="2015-02-09T20:47:53.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this too much of a dramatic change?&lt;/strong&gt; Unless your book is to be serialized by chapter, it doesn't look like an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I go back and pad out some of the shorter chapters?&lt;/strong&gt; Not necessarily. If a read-through demonstrates that the flow is not how you want it to be, chapter length &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be changed, although usually indirectly: you may erase some slow parts, or tighten up some other parts, or put in some dialogs, descriptions or previously removed scenes. As a rule of thumb, &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; happens on a given chapter and &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; it is portrayed is the driving force for chapter length. Unless your book is to be serialized, as I said earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Am I over thinking it, or is chapter length that important?&lt;/strong&gt; You may as well use the chance to get some work done. You can make chapter length important if you give it meaning within your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated by @Dale Emery in his answer, chapter length can be used to great effect. I like @what's take on it: &quot;Chapter 10: Paul died.&quot; is a very powerful effect, especially if you take care to make all of the other chapters long by comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1342" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T20:47:53.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16177" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-09T23:13:32.280" Score="11" ViewCount="486" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been playing with the idea of writing a sci-fi story that would resemble those written roughly 50-100 years back: Things we normally would laugh out of court today, like Jules Verne's moon trip, moon people or Asimov's Foundation using microfiche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to understand how and why these stories live up so well, and in the face of new knowledge about the world, they still seem plausible. I'm not sure we're just turning a blind eye for the sake of an entertaining plot or story, as it seems it all fits neatly together (and trying to 'update' them would ruin their internal logic and consistency).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas on how to achieve this type of suspension of disbelief? And is this a legitimate/plausible exercise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11130" LastEditorUserId="10460" LastEditDate="2016-05-31T10:24:22.757" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T10:24:22.757" Title="How do sci-fi stories hold up if their premise or details become discredited?" Tags="|science-fiction|world-building|setting|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16178" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-10T00:19:20.527" Score="2" ViewCount="491" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a paper.  In this paper, I'm talking about how poverty affects African-Americans.  I found this great article in which the author talks about poverty and how it is related to mental illness.  She cites another article in which the author said that African-Americans in poverty are more adversely affected by said illness.  I want to include this research in my essay, but my college library doesn't carry the journal that said article is in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11119" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T12:27:50.313" Title="MLA: citing indirect sources w/o quoting" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16177" CreationDate="2015-02-10T01:48:58.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number one rule in making things believable is detailing. This applies to outlandish theories just as much as world-destruction type stakes. None of it will seem real without the details that lend it credence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is admittedly a bit more difficult with things we know to be false. I think in order to make these &lt;em&gt;particular&lt;/em&gt; things seem realistic, you have to ask yourself the question, &quot;what if we were wrong?&quot; Research how we know something is false. Then ask yourself what small detail you could tweak, what small fact you can call into doubt, and how. The bottom line is that you have to &lt;strong&gt;explain why we were wrong (or why the impossible is now possible), and/or how we missed the truth&lt;/strong&gt; (Via new technology, discoveries that 'disprove' the truth, etc. See comment by dmm below for details.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With things that we know to be false, and indeed just about any kind of stakes, you will have to tweak things a little. Believability starts with the truth, and then uses details to show how the exact right events played out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Though I find it likely, I do not know if the authors of the examples you mentioned used this technique to build credibility, having not read the books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-02-10T22:44:50.203" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T22:44:50.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16177" CreationDate="2015-02-10T08:40:46.790" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are overthinking this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is Fantasy. Magic, fairies, dragons and such do not exist, yet the suspension of disbelief works without a special effort on the author's part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are alternate histories. Utopias. Children's books about impossible creatures and events. Crime stories about crimes that never happened. &lt;em&gt;Fiction with characters that do not exist!&lt;/em&gt; All the author needs to do is &lt;strong&gt;posit his world&lt;/strong&gt;, and the readers will make an honest attempt at following him from there. All any author does is say: &quot;A dragon attacked the knight.&quot;, or: &quot;John loved Joan.&quot;, and – &lt;em&gt;BAM!&lt;/em&gt; – there they are! Does he explain the existence of the dragon (or John)? Most certainly not! Because that would make the reader exclaim: &quot;But that is not true!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Every&lt;/em&gt; fictional story is a lie. Hercule Poirot does not exist and every reader knows it. No murder was commited on the Orient Express and every reader knows it. Yet we follow Poirot solving the murder mystery with interest. How does this work? Very simply. The author just says that Poirot gets on a train and that a corpse was found. That is all. There is no attempt to fool the readers into believing these were real events and persons, because that is completely unnecessary. All the author does is tell the story in the same way that she would tell of real events. Or in other words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the author does is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; explain how dragons did actually exist and why we missed them. Because that explanation would &lt;em&gt;break&lt;/em&gt; the suspension of disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; stories that work this way and explain how a secret reality exists inside our own. But these stories must not only make an effort, they must make an &lt;em&gt;extra&lt;/em&gt; effort, and their explanations must have no holes, because all the while the reader reads the story he will consider, think, and test, that explanation and try to find how it must be impossible. This is a whole different kind of story, and if you want to write it, your execution must be flawless, or it will fail big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just want to tell the story of how a steam-powered rocket reached the moon, you &lt;strong&gt;must not&lt;/strong&gt; explain how and why we were wrong and missed the truth (as Tommy Myron suggested), because that will only be laughable. If you try to make up obvious fake science that will cause the whole suspension of disbelief to fail. If on the other hand you just write it as if it was the most commonplace thing on earth and does not need any explanation of the technical details, because every kid learns about steam-engine space travel in school, then even physicists will enjoy your tale and suspend their disbelief most willingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why Donald Duck works. &lt;em&gt;Because there is no explanation&lt;/em&gt; as to how a community of talking ducks exists but we have not discovered it. It is the &lt;strong&gt;absence of an explanation&lt;/strong&gt; that causes the suspension of disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are different kinds of SF. Hard SF, in which science and technology are the topic, will become obsolete as reality disproves those ideas or overtakes fictional reality. But in much of SF the technology is just the romantic backdrop for action, romance, or social issues. In other words: the plausibility of the technology does not matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But setting can age, too. PVC had an appeal of modernity to people once, but it seems cheap and ugly to us. Or think of the mobile phone. In Star Trek the wrist communicators appeared as a cool thing that everyone thought would be great to have; today the constant noise of incoming messages is so oppressive to some, that leaving the mobile phone at home is a rare luxury. Or think of wilderness. While a medieval forest was a place where outlaws lurked and people got murdered, robbed and raped, for us today wilderness is a romantic ideal that we yearn for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that certain aspects of Star Trek or medieval romances may mean different things to readers or viewers of then and now. How interpretation will change is not something we can predict. But it certainly will change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-05-29T09:27:17.090" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T09:27:17.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16177" CreationDate="2015-02-10T10:19:19.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think up an alternate history and develop it logically - or parodically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take for example a more serious approach - Steampunk: Electricity never passed beyond &quot;mad inventor&quot; sphere, and world developed finding new miraculous fuels to power increasingly advanced steam engines; external combustion engines got more popular than internal combustion ones, chemistry (including biochemistry) took over in place where now electronic exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flying contraptions and &quot;death ray&quot; devices are believable because our world never took that turn and we just don't know what could have been achievable. It has elegance, it has a somewhat believable background, it has some historical roots - people want to believe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or pick the world of Fallout: the transistor never got past experimental stage. Electron lamps could be miniaturized a lot, but never to the point where transistors got; brains of dogs and monkeys were adapted as control systems of robots. Oil shortages widespread adaptation of nuclear power, including cars, trains, even handheld devices running on ubiquitous fission batteries. The Cold War shifted targets and escalated, but it took the sides a long time to &quot;push the button&quot;. The style of 60s in the USA stayed in fashion, and &quot;The American Way&quot; was something the society clung to, fighting external influences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, you suspend the disbelief of &quot;Would people be this callous? With the precarious border between bravery and stupidity would they be capable of erring so far into the side of stupidity?&quot; It's tongue-in-cheek, with consumerism and greedy capitalism drawn in parodistic thick strokes, like purposefully irradiated soft drinks to give them a glow (and kill dozens of &quot;taste testers&quot; before a formula with &amp;lt;1% mortality rate was developed)? It's not as believable, but the sarcastic humor helps to accept the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so, if we take the authors of old, we can see how they believed the world could develop. Only rarely were their scientific theories of what's possible wrong. It's what they didn't foresee - inventions they failed to imagine - that caused our world to diverge and take current shape. Remove these inventions and you have an &quot;alternate reality&quot;. By removing them, force progress in directions which are currently underdeveloped. Car engine has changed over past 100 years less than computers change in two or three years. Reverse that trend and you have a new - and believable world. And if it leads to ridiculous conclusions, lampshade them, embrace them, and let the reader smirk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T10:19:19.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16178" CreationDate="2015-02-10T12:27:50.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the MLA guidelines, it is advisable to refer to primary sources. However, there are situations when one is not able to access direct sources and have to refer to indirect sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you may have to use an indirect source. An indirect source is a source cited in another source. For such indirect quotations, use &amp;quot;qtd. in&amp;quot; to indicate the source you actually consulted. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ravitch argues that high schools are pressured to act as &amp;quot;social&#xA;service centers, and they don't do that well&amp;quot; (qtd. in Weisman 259).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(quoted from &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the other sources where you could find examples are &lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.trumbull.kent.edu/content.php?pid=333150&amp;amp;sid=2844963&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://library.williams.edu/citing/styles/mla.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your college library does not have access to the primary source, you could try looking online to see if you can find a copy. Alternatively, consider writing to the authors to see if they are willing to e-mail a copy to you. Your librarian might also be able to help you secure a copy. If nothing works, you can always cite indirectly like above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this answers your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T12:27:50.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14718" CreationDate="2015-02-10T13:18:07.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never personally cited an interview and am not too familiar with the Chicago style but I would recommend the following (refer to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nwmissouri.edu/library/CITING/chicago.htm#interview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note number. Name of person(s) interviewed (if this is not included in title of interview), &quot;Title of Interview,&quot; interview by name of interviewer, Title of Journal, volume number, issue number (Date of publication): page number(s) listed for pdf files or under a descriptive heading if no page numbers, Persistent/stable URL or name of database if online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is just one of the many different ways of citing an interview when it comes to Chicago style. Refer to the link above to see all the types that are possible and select the one that matches the source).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Please note that an interview that has already been published or broadcast is treated like articles in periodicals or chapters in books.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, when citing multiple interviews, you (or your friend) could introduce the reference the first time it comes up in full. Then, whenever it appears next, cite it in the shortened form. Consider using the Latin abbreviation &quot;Ibid.&quot; when you refer to the same source twice or more in a row.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look &lt;a href=&quot;https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocChicago_Notes_Shortened.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; to see how to use &quot;Ibid.&quot; and on how to use shortened form. As mentioned before, the interview can be treated to be the same as a published article and hence using this link should not be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope the above was relevant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T13:18:07.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16073" CreationDate="2015-02-10T13:29:05.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When using the Chicago style, the following (from &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/717/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) may be considered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first note for each source should include all relevant information&#xA;  about the source: author’s full name, source title, and facts of&#xA;  publication. If you cite the same source again, the note need only&#xA;  include the surname of the author, a shortened form of the title (if&#xA;  more than four words), and page number(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you cite the same source and page number(s) from a single source&#xA;  two or more times consecutively, the corresponding note should use the&#xA;  word “Ibid.,”  an abbreviated form of the Latin ibidem,  which means&#xA;  “in the same place.” If you use the same source but a different page&#xA;  number, the corresponding note should use “Ibid.” followed by a comma&#xA;  and the new page number(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you would cite the sources in brief every time they come after the first full citation. To understand how to shorten the citation, refer &lt;a href=&quot;https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocChicago_Notes_Shortened.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T13:29:05.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16177" CreationDate="2015-02-10T14:52:54.767" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;All fiction is about the suspension of disbelief. Decades ago I read a statement that sticks in my mind to this day. A writer discussing science fiction said that he had an easier time believing that it is possible to travel faster than light than he did believing that Perry Mason only gets big murder cases with innocent clients and always wins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good writer sucks you into the story, so that you almost, sort of, believe that this is real. Did you ever read one of those stories that end, &quot;And then I woke up. It had all been a dream.&quot; 99% of the time I feel cheated. I was trying to pretend that this was real, and now the writer pulls the rug out from under me and says it's not. Or a more extreme case, I saw a movie once that ended with the camera pulling back to show the movie lights and the edges of the set and so forth, and we hear the director say, &quot;That's a wrap!&quot; I found this to be a very annoying ending. The producers broke the contract with the viewers. Yes, I know that this is just a movie, it's not real. But I'm trying to pretend that it's real, and then you shove it in my face that it's not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course sometimes writers fail at sucking us into the story. They put in something that is so glaringly unbelievable that the reader just can't accept it. I'm sure we've all had times when we were reading a book or watching a movie and we say, &quot;Oh, come on! There's no way this ordinary mild-mannered office worker could suddenly single-handed take on three trained, experienced killers.&quot; Or, &quot;How stupid could that woman possibly be that she would agree to meet someone alone in a deserted warehouse that she KNOWS is a serial killer?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science fiction stories set in the future have the built-in problem that it is very unlikely that the author will extrapolate future technology exactly correctly. When I'm reading science fiction written decades ago, I often come across examples of bad predictions like that. Like, just a few months ago I re-read Asimov's &quot;Caves of Steel&quot;, set hundreds of years in the future, and there's a point in the story where the detective gets an important clue by studying the chemical film used to take a picture. Asimov never guessed that long before the time when his story was set, chemical film would be replaced by digital photography. I found it a little jarring, but it was generally a well-written story, so I just glossed over it and moved on. It was like hitting a pot hole when driving. Yes, it's annoying and distracting, but it doesn't normally ruin your trip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a story is generally well-written, you ignore little flaws and move on. If the whole story is filled with absurd technical gaffes, unbelievable characters, and so on, at some point it collapses and you throw the book away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have pointed out here, some fantasy stories are set in an alternate reality where things are different with no pretense of relating them to the real world. When I read a fantasy store where the wizard casts magic spells, I don't say, &quot;Oh come on, how would just waving your hands and saying a few words in Latin make that happen?!&quot; I just accept that as the premise of the story. Sometimes I read a fantasy story and I find it frustrating because the premise is not well developed or explained. Like I'll find myself saying, &quot;How come in chapter 1 the wizard had the power to destroy a city, but now in chapter 3 he's captured by this small squad of soldiers and locked in a cell? Couldn't he have cast some spell to kill all the soldiers? If he could destroy a city why can't he magically knock down the walls of a cell?&quot; Etc. Maybe the author has some idea of how magic works in this world that makes it all logical and consistent but he failed to explain it. Or maybe he's just making things up as he goes along as necessary to make the plot move in the direction he wants. That's where my suspension of disbelief fails in fantasy stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T14:52:54.767" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16177" CreationDate="2015-02-10T16:43:25.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a fun project --I once had a similar idea, that I never followed up on, to write a story, set in the current day, with accurate modern technology, but as if it was written 50 or 100 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem with your idea is that you can't unknow how technology actually developed.  It's hard to deliberately make the mistakes of ignorance.  However, I don't see any reason it might not be a good exercise, to try to inhabit that mindset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to why old science fiction holds up:  The best SF is not about the technology, it's about how people respond to advances in technology.  Human nature remains the same, even when the technology changes.  If the non-technological aspects of the story feel real, we can overlook the glaring technical errors, because the story remains relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T16:43:25.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16188" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16190" CreationDate="2015-02-10T23:07:46.787" Score="7" ViewCount="815" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: This is a new question, not an extension of my other questions concerning twists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I develop fiction, I start with a premise and a theme. I have a general idea of where I'm headed, and the events that get me there. I add in character and stakes, which help flesh out the story until I have a fairly detailed outline of the book. And then I arrive at the plot, and the twists/complications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless I plan on it from the beginning, my plots at this point have no twists in them, and very few complications, none of which are intentional. And of course since the events are already detailed and sorted, inserting a twist - which turns the plot in a different direction - will mean I will have to completely redo most of the events (I generally know what the climax and resolution will be already). And if I want more than one twist, I will have to redo them several times. I would prefer to be able to have twists without rewriting the outline several times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The obvious answer to this problem would seem to be to incorporate twists &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt;, before any other development. The problem is that the other development is what makes most of the story - the thing that gets twisted, in other words. Hence my question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At what point during development do I add in twists/complications? And how can I do so when I already know how I want things to end? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This question is based on my understanding of a twist as something unexpected, which affects the current situation and may change the outcome, possibly of the entire story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T11:33:03.940" Title="How/When to include twists when developing plot." Tags="|fiction|plot|planning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16188" CreationDate="2015-02-11T06:10:07.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you play around with the premise and the theme before mapping out the story, look for twists in the premise and the theme.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you consider endings, look for twist endings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you map out the events that lead to the ending, look for ways to make your chosen ending a twist. That is, think of events that will lead the reader to expect a &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; ending.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look for twists at any time, and be willing to let go of your plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another way, which sounds like it may not fit for you. But it works for me, so I'll offer it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start writing before you know the story. At any interesting moment (starting a new chapter, introducing a new character, ...), look for characters or events or revelations that confound and twist the story you've written so far.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T06:10:07.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16188" CreationDate="2015-02-11T11:33:03.940" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try plotting backwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writers of &lt;em&gt;House, MD&lt;/em&gt; often worked this way. They figured out some esoteric disease or ailment (or perhaps something not so esoteric but easy to confuse with other problems) and then worked backwards to lay red herrings and misdirection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have the ending you want (heroine gets macguffin). Work backwards from there. Each branch point offers you some places to put twists and complications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does she get into the building with the macguffin?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does she reach the building?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does she find which building it's in to begin with?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does she know it's in a building? (As opposed to a ship, a&#xA;temple, a bank, a house, on the road, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who told her about the macguffin?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did the macguffin get lost?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is the macguffin important?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get the idea. You may have to rough out your (non-complicated) plot &lt;em&gt;forwards&lt;/em&gt; first to figure out where the branch parts are &lt;em&gt;backwards,&lt;/em&gt; but it's a lot easier to put in a misdirection when you've already gotten to the ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T11:33:03.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16191" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-11T13:18:29.077" Score="2" ViewCount="1316" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reading a physics textbook now and taking personal notes as I read.  I'd like to put my own personal notes online for free so that other members of my lab group can refer to them easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I avoid legal and moral plagiarism?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The equations - I assume the textbook publisher does not own the math/physics equations in the book. In my notes, should I cite the textbook and other references from the textbook?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The words - I know I cannot just copy the entire text online with one citation. However, the physics will need some explanation. Would it be enough rewrite explanations in my own words? How many citations of a book is too far towards just copying the book?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The diagrams/pictures - I assume the textbook publisher owns or bought the rights to the diagrams and pictures in the book. How can I use diagrams in my notes? Is redrawing diagrams in my own way enough?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12896" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T10:01:03.270" Title="Note taking from a textbook and publishing the notes online" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16132" CreationDate="2015-02-11T14:31:34.260" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different fonts have been created for different purposes, and you should select a font depending on that purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Helvetica and Times, for example, are common fonts that have been created to be easily readable in print. Arial and Verdana, on the other hand, were created specifically to be easily readable on a screen. Both Arial and Verdana look ugly in print, while both Helvetica and Times are more difficult to read on screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another difference is wether a font was designed for body text or for headlines. Headline (or display) fonts are often more ornamental and difficult to read than body text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other kind of font (e.g. fonts to imitate hand lettering in comic books, or OCR fonts meant to be read by machines) and you must first identify your usage, before you start looking for a fitting font.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the purpose, a font has a character, that is, it looks playful, light, earnest, etc., so different fonts with the same purpose – e.g. different fonts to print body text – will fit a different kind of text. Usually academic journals prefer a more sober looking font, while novels sometimes use a font with more character that will support the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All (professionally made) fonts can be used in professional publications. Which font is the appropriate one for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; publication is a question that typographers, typesetters, book and web designers have been trained to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;As a professional writer, the most professional descision would be to let a professional book or web designer pick the font that best represents your writing to the intended audience in the chosen medium.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T14:31:34.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16194" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-11T21:36:56.037" Score="2" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a story that has ten main characters, each chapter is a progression of the story but from the perspective of one of the ten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can imagine, this presents it's own unique challenges, which I'm looking forward to overcoming. To differentiate between each of the ten characters, I obviously need to give each character their own, distinct personality, along with a number of traits that identify each character from another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As each character is explored through their own perspective, would it be advisable to mould the writing style to suit the character's personality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He placed the broom against the back of the door. He liked it there. He felt safe. Calm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John was such a weirdo; sometimes Mary would wish he would just disappear and leave them all alone. His weirdo ways, his weirdo OCD, his weirdo... face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted the above are just hugely trivial examples, but as you can see, I've tried to give each part, from each perspective, it's own 'voice'. John is very formal, set in his ways, and so his perspectives are constructed primarily of short, directed sentences. With Mary, the ditzy blonde, some of her vocabulary even seeps into the narrative - 'weirdo', and her ability - or lack thereof - to quip at John's expense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: is this type of practice advisable, and if so, how deep does the rabbit-hole go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T03:31:15.817" Title="Writing in a character's voice. How deep should I go with immersion?" Tags="|language|narrative|perspective|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16194" CreationDate="2015-02-12T03:31:15.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use this scale:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;all the characters sound like the author&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;nice tight writing, some of the characters sound similar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;nothing needs added, nothing needs taken away&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;rich, full characters; might be a little wordy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;wonderful dialog, where's the plot?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aim for three settle for two or four. Avoid one and five unless you want to prove that you are good enough to break rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T03:31:15.817" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16191" CreationDate="2015-02-12T11:18:45.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're looking at here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fair use&lt;/a&gt; scenario (I'm assuming that you're in the US, other countries have different laws). In short you're covered, assuming that you're using a small portion of the work for non-profit education use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What small means is up to the courts to decide but in general, if it's a couple percent of the total work then you're OK just citing it. Citing the diagrams would work on the same basis, that is if you're posting only a couple then it would be all right but if you take every diagram from the book then you're probably breaking the criteria for fair use (but might not, it depends on the amount available - if it's just a single diagram and you copy it, and that diagram isn't the whole of the book, then you should be in the clear).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12902" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T11:18:45.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16197" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16198" CreationDate="2015-02-12T11:39:15.047" Score="3" ViewCount="802" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example: I'm writing a story where the protagonist is searching for some information. She searches for it at her university, and fails. After that chapter, however, she finally finds someone who leads her into the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was OK, but I thought: &quot;Well, that was too easy and things went too fast. How about I add a second obstacle to the protagonist before she finds the right way?&quot; So that's what I did: I added another chapter before the university chapter where the protagonist tries her luck at the library (note: this is just the beginning of the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm aware that you shouldn't add chapters just for the sake of adding them. But I wonder, is it permissible in cases like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(By &quot;OK&quot; and &quot;permissible&quot; I mean adding value or improving the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-02-12T11:44:32.527" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T16:41:43.647" Title="Is it OK to add chapters to slow down the pace of the story?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16197" CreationDate="2015-02-12T12:15:06.153" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would say &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; failed attempt will only be enjoyable for the reader, if it adds more than a mere slowdown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are hungry and on your way to lunch (= the reader is full of suspense and wants the protagonist to succeed). On your way to lunch your boss wants a word with you (= you insert a chapter into your novel). Will you enjoy talking to your boss while your stomach grumbles (= will the reader enjoy the additional reading)? Only if your boss gives you a raise or tells you that you can have your extra holiday, not if he has another job you need to do before you eat (= only if the added obstacle increases the value of the goal, adds a new twist to the storyline that turns the interpretation of the goal upside down, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience I would say that adding a &lt;em&gt;meaningful&lt;/em&gt; chapter will change everything that comes after it. If it does not change the outcome, it is superfluous and should be cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T12:15:06.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16199" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-12T12:21:06.787" Score="0" ViewCount="1556" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I was made to write a persuasive essay about whether or not this quote by W. H. Auden is true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below is my introductory paragraph, with what I consider the thesis statement in bold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;W. H. Auden (1908 – 1973) is considered one of the greatest English poets of the twentieth century. He wrote over four hundred poems as well as numerous quotes. One such quote is: “Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.” This quote is applicable in a wide range of machinery. &lt;strong&gt;Although Auden might have been thinking of machines that are designed to do manual labor, his quote also holds true for computing devices like desktop computers, mobile devices, and calculators.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can continue to read the full essay &lt;a href=&quot;http://pastebin.com/9R1Dd6pF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I apparently didn't have a good enough thesis statement, I argued both sides of the issue, and I barely stayed on topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tsYXy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have suggestions on how I could formulate a better thesis and stay on topic in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12903" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-20T21:46:00.273" LastActivityDate="2019-02-20T21:46:00.273" Title="How can I write a thesis statement and stay on topic in a persuasive essay?" Tags="|academic-writing|essay|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16200" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-12T12:40:54.227" Score="2" ViewCount="1174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm teaching a  problem solving course for engineering students (most around 19 years old) and want to increase their creativity levels. Any ideas for writing/ thinking exercises that could inspire them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12904" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T10:55:30.313" Title="Creative writing exercises for engineers" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16200" CreationDate="2015-02-12T13:11:24.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your goal is to get your students to think about using standard skills in non-standard ways. Anyone can build a house; not everyone can build &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fallingwater.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fallingwater.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dig up classic engineering conundrums from the past (pyramids,&#xA;aqueducts, dams) and ask your students how they would solve them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find moderately ridiculous but not utterly implausible movie set pieces (Indiana Jones escaping&#xA;from the rolling rock and shooting darts, not Indiana Jones surviving a nuclear test in a lead-lined refrigerator).&#xA;Ask your students to design the traps.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Watch some recent &lt;em&gt;Mythbusters&lt;/em&gt; episodes. Particularly in the last&#xA;five years, they've branched out from busting urban legends to&#xA;testing pop culture myths and viral videos. Look at the kinds of myths they choose to test, and the methods they use, and see what could be adapted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T13:11:24.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16197" CreationDate="2015-02-12T14:48:10.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very important that when you add a chapter to your story, it has a point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this isn't a 'No' to your question; far from it. Instead, I'd suggest that if you do want to slow the pace and add and additional chapter, then it should serve some discernable purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some good advice I received a while back about writing was to never do anything unless it drives the story. The &lt;em&gt;amount&lt;/em&gt; the story is driven, and which plot or subplot is driven by this chapter is up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm reading a Sci-Fi book at the moment, and there's often chapters in there that are of no consequence to the story; the author is brilliant at building the world and these chapters serve to pad the world out phenomenally. However, as I'm ploughing through these chapters, I can't help feeling a little deflated that the exciting plot has been 'stalled' for no reason other than worldbuilding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="590" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T14:48:10.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16197" CreationDate="2015-02-12T15:56:15.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're actually asking 2 different questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it OK to add chapters to slow down the pace of the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you say 'slow' that's not a good sign.  You want to generate excitement and keep the reader engaged.  Anything that slows the pace risks causing your reader to lose interest and stop reading.  Keep in mind that given your characters, plot arc, and themes, the questions you need to ask are does your chapter/passage give the reader new information that enhances the aforementioned and will it be interesting to the reader (funny, enlightening, insightful, entertaining, etc.) so they are compelled to keep reading.  Note that in your case you can most definately add a red herring that goes off on a tangent from the main arc as long as it serves some other purpose like character development, is entertaining, and you're able to transition back smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can you add chapters just for the sake of adding them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't ever add anything just for the sake of making something longer.  It has to serve some purpose such as contribute to your main theme, develop your characters in a way that advances your plot and themes, add suspense (suspense novel), be funny (comedy), etc.  You get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5940" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T15:56:15.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16200" CreationDate="2015-02-12T16:12:13.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First you need to remember that people are different. Some are most creative without rules, some are most creative when breaking rules and some are most creative within rules. The best creative engineers fall in the last category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rules that an engineer are bound by are physical (gravity, physical properties of beams, etc.) regulatory, and customer requirements. The responses should be embrace, accept and understand respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for creative writing, many engineers have difficulty with this. (My Father is a great example, he can build the most unique and wonderful things, write great specifications and documentation, but is completely stymied by dialog.) To showcase their strengths I would start with a two part assignment where you first design something impossible, and then look at its impact on society. As to the impossible thing, you need specific rules on its design, but do not feel constrained in writing the rules to have them all make sense. Some people are less creative when they fully understand what they are trying to do, they just do it, When they are learning something they can play with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T16:12:13.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16200" CreationDate="2015-02-12T16:48:06.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creative writing and engineering overlap in &lt;strong&gt;worldbuilding&lt;/strong&gt;. There's even a &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;SE site&lt;/a&gt; for it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worldbuilding is the art of creating imaginary worlds or settings and describing how they work. This could be anything from a realistic neighborhood to an entire fantasy universe. Depending on the scope and style of the world, creating it may involve elements of science, history, sociology, art, philosophy, and more. Worldbuilding provides a backdrop for speculative fiction, role playing games, and futurology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the engineers, you might want to focus on settings dominated by technology, geography, or other environmental forces, and ask them to derive problems and solutions from it. For example, present a planet with unique geographical features and have them describe how its inhabitants would adapt their infrastructure to it. Or let them speculate on how a near-future world was influenced by a revolutionary technology like a space elevator or cold fusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more inspiration, check out communities like &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Worldbuilding.SE&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;/r/worldbuilding&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="330" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T16:48:06.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16197" CreationDate="2015-02-12T18:27:08.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you set out to write, say, a murder mystery. And your complete first draft was: &quot;Sally Jones was found dead in an alley. A detective came to investigate. He found several important clues and realized that the murderer must be her boyfriend, Albert Fromme. The police arrested Fromme and he was convicted and sent to jail. The End.&quot; Well, that would be a pretty boring story because it goes way to fast and has way too little detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@PublicWireless says that you shouldn't add chapters just to &quot;slow a story down&quot; and that's true in a sense. Of course you don't want the reader to perceive the story as &quot;slow&quot;. You want the reader to perceive the story as &quot;building tension&quot;, &quot;presenting many interesting facts&quot;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, I think, basically three ways to make a story longer other than just adding pointless material to waste time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One: Add additional obstacles for the hero to overcome. In a mystery story, this could be false leads. In an action story, this could be additional opponents that the hero must fight along the way. In a romance, it could be a competing lover. Etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two: Add character development or background. Tell us more about who the characters are and how they got to be this way. Or give additional detail about their environment. Like in a science fiction story, tell us about this planet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three: Add a counter-plot. If you have a plot that you think makes an interesting story but it's just too short and you don't see how to make it longer without sounding like you were just throwing in junk to make it longer, then make another story and intertwine the two. A really common thing done here is to throw in a romance. Like if the basic story is about, say, a man searching for lost treasure, you throw a female character in at some point, and as he's searching for the treasure he falls in love with this woman and you go back and forth between the treasure-hunting story and the romance story. They may have nothing to do with each other per se, other than both stories involving the same characters, though the more you can tie them together the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with many things in writing, if you do this well, you get your story to the desired length, the reader considers it a satisfying experience, and hooray. If you do it poorly, the reader says, &quot;Oh man, this book just keeps throwing in stupid irrelevant events just to waste time!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T18:27:08.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16200" CreationDate="2015-02-12T20:09:05.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a simple and brief exercise: Ask them to write a first person account of a typical day as experienced by some object they would find compelling: a bridge, a computer server, a particle cannon, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Encourage them to avoid too much anthropomorphic thinking. Experience the bridge as a bridge. How does the morning sun affect it? What stresses of weight, temperature, etc. does the bridge experience in the course of a day. What in the everyday changes the bridge undergoes best correlates to human emotion? How is it expressed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And how about placing one of these objects in a crisis with a built-in story line?  An approaching storm, the storm itself, the aftermath. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I envy you this chance to challenge how your students think about themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12709" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T20:09:05.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16200" CreationDate="2015-02-12T21:20:22.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My trick: Look for &lt;em&gt;variables.&lt;/em&gt; That is: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;anything I could vary.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; I use this technique all the time when I need a burst of creativity. And it's a core feature of any workshop I teach that involves creativity in any way (and they all do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the process applied to generating fiction ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write down any character, location, object, situation, action, theme, or other story element.  It may be fascinating or mundane.  It may be one you've thought about and written about extensively, or one that just popped into your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Example: A house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write down every variable you can think of for the story element.  Ask yourself:  What could I vary about this?  What else could I vary?  What &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt;...?  When you run out of ideas, ask yourself:  If I could think of one more thing, what would it be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Location&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Age&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Size&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Shape&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Color&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;State of repair&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Who lives in it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;How many people live in it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;How much land&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What kind of land&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Timeframe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For each variable, write down every value you can think of. Heck, write down values you &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; think of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Example: State of repair&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The outside paint (last applied 30 years ago) is peeling...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Brand new, but warping because it was built over a landfill filled with tree stumps.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Kept in immaculate repair by a swarm of household staff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Clean (no filth anywhere), but untidy. Books, 78rpm records, newspapers, unopened junk mail cover every flat surface.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pick a few variables that seem interesting to you.  Try different combinations of values for those variables.  Randomly pick variables and values, and smash them together whether they fit or not. What story ideas does this give you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Example: Left as an exercise for the reader ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://dalewriting.dale.emery.name/2008/02/variables/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a writeup on my blog&lt;/a&gt;, with an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T21:20:22.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16199" CreationDate="2015-02-12T22:00:02.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's impossible to know exactly why you got the scores you did, but what jumps out at me is that your thesis statement doesn't really match the prompt.  The prompt is NOT to write an essay simply inspired by Auden's quote, but rather to write an essay &lt;em&gt;taking a stance&lt;/em&gt; on whether or not his quote is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To recast Auden's argument in simpler language: &lt;strong&gt;Machines help humanity by reducing the need for labor, but hurt humanity by reducing the need for skill/skilled-labor&lt;/strong&gt;. An on-topic thesis would be &lt;em&gt;Auden is correct to say that humanity is helped by machines reducing the need for labor because of A, B and C, and correct to say that humanity is hurt by reducing the need for skilled labor because of X, Y and Z&lt;/em&gt;.  It would be equally on topic to say &lt;em&gt;Auden is incorrect to say humanity is helped by machines reducing the need for labor because of A, B, and C,&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Auden is incorrect to say humanity is hurt by machines reducing the need for skill because of X, Y and Z&lt;/em&gt;. You could even write a good essay arguing Auden is right on one point and wrong on the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the essay itself, it supports the idea that Auden is right that relying on machines leads to people losing skills, but it doesn't explain why that should be considered a bad thing.  So you're basically agreeing with Auden, but you haven't even touched on the most substantive part of his claim --the value judgment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T22:00:02.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16210" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16219" CreationDate="2015-02-13T00:17:58.633" Score="7" ViewCount="1346" Body="&lt;p&gt;My situation is such that I will be looking for a new job next week as this contract ends. For a tech writer, it is good to have DITA on the ole' resume. So, I just wanted to know if anyone has a site or book or tutorial on how to learn Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA).&#xA;Thanks all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12908" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-10T18:13:09.257" LastActivityDate="2019-04-11T13:51:21.080" Title="Any advice on how to learn DITA for technical writing?" Tags="|technical-writing|education|dita|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16221" CreationDate="2015-02-13T02:11:29.610" Score="0" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not very sure if &quot;weak&quot; and &quot;strong&quot; are the right adjectives. Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Getting&lt;/strong&gt; on my knees, I turned to the right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Crouching&lt;/strong&gt; on my knees, I turned to the right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the &quot;stronger&quot; verb &lt;em&gt;crouching&lt;/em&gt; diminish the strength of &lt;em&gt;turned&lt;/em&gt;? Is the first example a better option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-02-14T14:31:53.617" Title="Placing a &quot;strong&quot; verb before a &quot;weak&quot; verb" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16213" CreationDate="2015-02-13T06:49:53.230" Score="1" ViewCount="4088" Body="&lt;p&gt;newcomer here, and I have a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a story that starts with the sentence, '&lt;strong&gt;the ocean is vast&lt;/strong&gt;'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm actually going to write my story in past tense form but changing that 'is' to 'was' sounds off to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that saying 'the ocean was vast' somehow implies that the ocean was once a vast body of water and it's just doesn't seems very strong and concrete than saying 'the ocean is vast'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[1] Should I use present tense to describe an everlasting/obvious fact even if the whole story is told in past tense?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ocean is vast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Capt. Harris could actually hide his supply ship, the &lt;em&gt;Clement&lt;/em&gt;, in&#xA;  the endless stretch of the ocean and not trouble himself with worry&#xA;  regarding any attacks from prowling raiders. Of course if said raider&#xA;  was equipped with the most sophisticated radar equipment that 1939&#xA;  could offer, then that would pose a problem. But then again, he was&#xA;  currently steaming along the southern parts of the Atlantic, what&#xA;  chances were there for a German surface raider appearing out of nowhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12909" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T14:25:28.200" Title="Using Present Tense to describe a Fact on a story that uses Past Tense" Tags="|fiction|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16212" CreationDate="2015-02-13T07:37:00.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're deeply in the character's viewpoint, it doesn't matter that a sentence is expressing an everlasting fact. What matters is that it is what the character is experiencing at this moment. Of all the things the character &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be thinking about, &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; is what he is thinking at this moment. So you write it in the same manner as the rest of the character's experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge here is that as readers read that first sentence, do not yet know what viewpoint to adopt. They might imagine that this is a character's opinion, even though they don't yet know which character to attribute it to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when the next sentence sort of seems to be in Captain Harris's point of view, in past tense, it becomes even less clear whose opinion that opening sentence expressed. It can't be Captain Harris's, because his viewpoint is in past tense. Maybe it's the author's opinion. Uh, oh. Viewpoint confusion. Popped right out of the story before it even begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If readers were already in Capt. Harris's viewpoint, you could write &lt;em&gt;the ocean was vast,&lt;/em&gt; and readers would get it. They would not take it as suggesting that the ocean is no longer vast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I think the viewpoint confusion continues. Until the last sentence, it is not clear whose viewpoint we're in. Until then, the viewpoint is quite aloof. We could be in the viewpoint of someone telling us about Captain Harris. If this were the opening of a movie, all of it (perhaps including the last sentence) could be a voiceover as we watch Captain Harris gazing over the vast ocean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion: &lt;strong&gt;Leave these opening lines alone for now. Write the story.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Then&lt;/em&gt; revisit the opening, in full knowledge of how the story goes. Then you'll be a better judge of how to open the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T07:37:00.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16212" CreationDate="2015-02-13T08:37:20.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to Dale Emery's answer, and maybe clarifying it a bit, I would say that &lt;strong&gt;the tense depends on the narrator&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story is narrated by an omniscient narrator, then the ocean &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; vast, because that is what the timeless and universal narrator knows about it. If the story is told from the perspective of the protagonist, as he experiences the events, then the ocean &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; vast, because the protagonist perceives it as vast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that most writers do not have a clear understanding of their own narrator and switch back and forth between omniscient and personal narrator, sometimes even between first and third person (like Stephen King in &lt;em&gt;Carrie&lt;/em&gt;). This works for some books and writers (as the success of Stephen King shows), but depending on your writing style you might want to think about who is telling your story and stick to that viewpoint and only deviate from it if you know why you do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T08:37:20.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16143" CreationDate="2015-02-13T09:56:38.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is &quot;a lot&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything you publish - whether it is free or paid-for content - has to compete with an awful lot of other websites, blogs, books and other sources of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When someone clicks through to your site, you have about two tenths of a second to capture and hold their attention long enough for them to want to continue reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not true quite so much if what you are writing is technical because someone will stick with you if they actually &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; the information you are offering but, in the world of entertainment, you only have that two tenths of a second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a test you can do for yourself: start surfing the internet for material of the same sort you intend to write. Look specifically for people you have never heard of before and reflect on your own responses to poorly designed websites. Even better, given that you will have a certain in-built bias now you have posed the question, get some friends and family members to rate a list of websites you give them. Just let them do their own thing without any prompts or direction from you other than &quot;do you want to read this website?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223150&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223150&lt;/a&gt; for more on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T09:56:38.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16191" CreationDate="2015-02-13T10:01:03.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another option, of course, is to write to the publisher / rights holder and ask for their permission. For the sort of project you describe, they may well be happy to give you permission subject to certain caveats like linking to the book, displaying its cover and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they say &quot;no&quot; then you know where you stand - but it will only cost you an email to find out if they would be prepared to give you permission and, who knows, they may see it as a sales opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T10:01:03.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16200" CreationDate="2015-02-13T10:06:29.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A slightly different approach from the ones already posted (some interesting ideas here though!):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days, it is rarely enough for an engineer simply to be an engineer. Maybe, to succeed, they need to innovate. Think of all the technology start-ups there have been over the last 30 years or so. What do they all have in common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer: a dream. A vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What did they &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; have initially? Venture capital. Infrastructure. Customers. Early adopters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the engineering vision is in the head of the engineer, how does he get all those other things? He sketches that vision for other people - salesmen, customers, bankers, businessmen of all types ... most of whom will not even understand the concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could, therefore, link creative writing skills with business skills with visionary ideas. An idea has no value if the only place it exists is inside the head of the inventor - so teach him or her how to be a visionary as well as a damn good engineer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastEditorUserId="12910" LastEditDate="2015-02-13T10:55:30.313" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T10:55:30.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3042" CreationDate="2015-02-13T12:51:15.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writers should be careful when if at all using PS at the end of an email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As previously stated PS was used in pen and ink letters when the writer forgot to include something in the body of the letter - the only option was to try and squeeze it in in between lines or else rewrite the whole thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is so easy to just add anything ommitted to an appropriate part of the main body of the email. Only the sender will know it wasn't included in the first draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware if using PS as the receiving person may not see the PS as the email when open  may only fit up to the signature at the bottom of the screen - the reader may not in this case get any inclination that they need to scroll further down because something (which the sender may feel is crucial) was ommitted from the body of the email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This recently happened to me and the PS was a crucial piece of information which I completely missed casuing the sender to get upset and annoyed as they felt that I deliberately chose to ignore it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively as a part-time cynic I may say that maybe the sender deliberately added it as a PS so that I wouldn't pick it up&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12912" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T12:51:15.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16210" CreationDate="2015-02-13T18:53:17.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how much benefit you'll get on a resume from having read about, as opposed to &lt;em&gt;used&lt;/em&gt;, DITA, but some knowledge is better than none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DITA is both a specific framework and an approach.  My documentation group is currently working through the book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0132480522&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DITA Best Practices: A Roadmap for Writing, Editing, and Architecting in DITA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Laura Bellamy, Michelle Carey, and Jenifer Schlotfeldt and we're finding it a good introduction so far.  We are not planning to migrate to the DITA &lt;em&gt;framework&lt;/em&gt;, but we've been trying to apply a similar &lt;em&gt;approach&lt;/em&gt; on our own and we're finding the book helpful for pointing out issues we haven't necessarily thought enough about.  The book contains a lot of information specific to the framework too, so it should be even more helpful for somebody who's going all-in on DITA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book is under 300 pages and not terribly dense, so you should be able to absorb it in less than a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T18:53:17.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16220" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-14T08:38:11.037" Score="1" ViewCount="894" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does the number under the library of congress control number and above rrd-h?  The number is 31&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12919" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T19:18:29.157" Title="What is the number above rrd-h on copywrite page" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16211" CreationDate="2015-02-14T14:31:53.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without getting into an argument about which exact verb you should use, I would suggest that it is often good practice to use a &quot;strong&quot; verb to support a &quot;weaker&quot; one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think for a moment what you mean by a &quot;strong&quot; verb. Essentially, you mean one that carries drama, action and excitement when compared to its more pedestrian alternatives. As in all things, it is a matter of getting the balance right. If you overuse powerful verbs, they lose all meaning but if you use them sparingly they convey your thoughts much more powerfully than would otherwise be the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at the two sample sentences you offer. My first impression upon reading the first one is that you are describing a small action. In my head, I could see the old lady at church turning to polish the brass work or something equally mundane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second sentence, however, I am now expecting something more dramatic to happen. Why are you crouching rather than just going down on your knees? What has happened? What do you fear? What are you hunting? The second sentence sets an expectation of drama in a way that the first one simply does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: think about what you are trying to achieve with each sentence. If all you need to do is carry the action / plot / scene forward a little, &quot;weak&quot; verbs will do. If you want to hint that the pace is hotting up, to fool the reader into thinking something is about to happen or to set his expectations for the drama which is to follow, use a &quot;strong&quot; verb to support your &quot;weaker&quot; verb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastActivityDate="2015-02-14T14:31:53.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16152" CreationDate="2015-02-14T15:57:52.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might also want to have a look at New Novelist (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newnovelist.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.newnovelist.com/&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The software is set up to help you separate locations, characters etc. and also to pace your story according to the type of story it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastActivityDate="2015-02-14T15:57:52.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16129" CreationDate="2015-02-14T16:02:57.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only people can be libelled or slandered. Places cannot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Provided that you do not write in a way whereby specific public officials could make a case that you are attacking their personal behaviour and reputations, then whatever you think about a place is your own business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most western-type jurisdictions, the dead cannot be libelled (that is certainly the case here in the UK which has some of the strictest libel laws around).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above all assumes you live in a law-abiding country rather than a dictatorship. In those places, all bets are off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally: just because you cannot libel or slander a city doesn't mean that those who operate that city won't get angry. You are not guaranteed a peaceful life if you slag off somewhere that people care about even if they have no direct recourse to the law!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastActivityDate="2015-02-14T16:02:57.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16125" CreationDate="2015-02-14T16:11:41.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, you cannot copyright ideas. However, that is not really what you want to achieve here is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you really want is to be credited with coming up with the ideas in the first place in the event that either you or someone else is able to do the science to prove them right. It's the recognition you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to profit from the &lt;em&gt;exploitation&lt;/em&gt; of your ideas, then you would need to come up with a method of exploiting them and copyrighting, patenting and otherwise protecting the exploitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to publish as widely as you can. Write a self-published book; create a blog; physically print everything off and post (mail) it back to yourself so you have date proofs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A suggestion: read the history of how Charles Darwin came to publish his internationally famous &lt;em&gt;On The Origin of Species&lt;/em&gt; and then ask yourself why you have never heard of Alref Russel Wallace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is not to procrastinate but to publish, publish, publish. If you do not blow your own trumpet, no-one else will and - worse - others may gain the credit for what you have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it is highly unlikely that the ideas you have are unique to you. Others may well be thinking along similar lines. There is never a perfect moment to go public, never a moment when you have everything carefully marshalled together. In the real world, there is intense competition in every aspect of life ... so act now, act fast and work out how to support your ideas later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2018-05-17T14:57:00.310" LastActivityDate="2018-05-17T14:57:00.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16226" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16227" CreationDate="2015-02-14T19:12:03.373" Score="3" ViewCount="2702" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conversation is the thing I have most difficulties with while writing stories. How do I write a conversation so it will be clear who said what, and in a way that's not like a court transcript?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I start a new line with each sentence of dialog? Just one paragraph? Should I use quotation marks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I indicate the speaker's name after every sentence? If not, how do I make it clear who is the speaker? The major problem is when I need a fast pace, like in an argument. It looks like calling the speaker's name every time just slows the scene down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2419" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T00:18:51.223" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T00:23:32.643" Title="How to write a conversation" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16226" CreationDate="2015-02-14T19:27:40.890" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally accepted structures, which are used for clarity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each time the speaker changes, you start a new paragraph. The speaker&#xA;may start and stop, and you can have narration and action tags, but&#xA;as long as that person continues, it can be the same paragraph. You&#xA;&lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; start a new paragraph with the same speaker if it's clear that the person is continuing to speak, like if the person is giving a&#xA;long speech.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dialogue gets some kind of punctuation to set it off from narration.&#xA;This punctuation varies from country to country. Americans use double&#xA;quotes &quot;, Brits use single quotes ', the French use guillemets «, and&#xA;I've seen various dashes and hyphens.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should add some kind of tag, speaker or action, any time it's not&#xA;clear who is speaking. I wouldn't go more than four or five exchanges&#xA;without a tag of some kind, but you might be able to go longer if for&#xA;example, there are two people speaking two different languages. When&#xA;in doubt, use a tag, and then ask your beta reader or editor if any&#xA;can be removed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tags can be &quot;he/she,&quot; a name, or a descriptor (the doctor, the&#xA;detective, the woman, the younger man, the captain, the Vulcan, the&#xA;Southerner).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-14T19:27:40.890" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16228" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-14T21:25:10.430" Score="2" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll be honest here and say that I'm a pretty funny guy. I tend to make my friends and family laugh from time to time but I've got a problem on my hands: I have no humor in my writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a Young Adult fiction and after reading books and watching movies such as Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings I've reached a conclusion I need to humor to my writing or the book will just sink. I mean who hasn't laughed at Fred and George's antics and jokes and Merry and Pippin's craziness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I add humor and how can I make it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12923" LastEditorUserId="14925" LastEditDate="2015-08-15T11:22:41.007" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T11:22:41.007" Title="Humor in Writing" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|humor|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-02-16T00:31:31.493" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16231" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-16T03:54:48.257" Score="14" ViewCount="3944" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel in which characters do bad things to one another.  For example, I have recently been struggling over a scene of domestic violence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, a husband hits his wife, after the wife had provoked him, and intentionally tried to make him angry.  I feel very strongly that verbal provocation  &lt;strong&gt;NEVER&lt;/strong&gt; justifies domestic violence (or any sort of violence, for that matter), and I have been worried that this scene could appear to either make an argument to justify abuse or that I believe that provocation justifies abuse.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to resolve the potentially poor messaging by having a character act as an Author Avatar, and give a long speech about misconceptions about abuse, and strong moral guidance, but this didn't really seem to fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write a lot of characters who do a lot of bad things, in a narrative that can seem morally ambiguous.  How can writers ensure that their characters' bad actions, or their structuring of events that lead to bad actions, do not read as endorsements or arguments for bad behavior?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user12678" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-25T09:34:20.880" LastActivityDate="2018-04-25T09:34:20.880" Title="How can I have my characters do bad things, without sending the wrong message?" Tags="|plot|character-development|theme|morality|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16231" CreationDate="2015-02-16T05:56:17.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two approaches that are historically used in your situation, and some more modern ones that some people are trying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing often done is to only have evil characters misbehave. This makes things simple especially when paired with everyone gets what is coming to them (consequences). These two techniques make for a simple tool to show good and evil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now many people find the basic simple method to basic or restricting in that it is not realistic or not interesting enough, so they play with regret, or hiding the hats, or other new inventions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a first try to avoid the speeches, just draw a line in the sand: let the good guys do good and the bad guys do evil. Then rewrite until your characters are true to themselves and the line in the sand is blurred but still there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T05:56:17.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16231" CreationDate="2015-02-16T09:54:31.617" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reality is complicated. Usually, in the case of domestic violence, many factors lead to it. For example, both partners have specific fears, both show certain behavior, and all this slowly builds up to the moment when one partner hits the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Literature is not law. In law, one party needs to be found guilty. In literature, you can show the complexity of reality, and that there is not clear distinction between good and evil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could show, in your writing, how the culture, personality, and the history of the relationship of the couple in question lead to the &quot;bad thing&quot;. You could show, how the perpetrator feels before, while and after he does it. You could show how the victim feels prior to, during and after the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, no two of these events will be the same. In some cases, the woman will have provoked the man to the point where he lost control. In other cases, the man will have had no reason for violence other than his own wish to dominate the woman or his fear of her independence. And there are many other cases (images of masculinity, childhood abuse of the perpetrator or victim, sadistic impulses, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know your characters and what kind of story you want to tell, but there really is no need that you interpret your story for your readers. If you are not writing a propaganda piece for feminism or antifeminism, you can simply show things as they are (or would be, if they were real). Literature, if it is good, should lead people to question their prejudices, and both the belief that men must be able to control their aggression no matter what a woman throws at them as well as the belief that women &quot;ask for it&quot; are both stereotypes that your story could expose as simplistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T09:54:31.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16231" CreationDate="2015-02-16T13:24:03.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A strikes B. Even if B provoked A, A still gets arrested, processed, tried, convicted, and serves time. A gets grief from family and friends. A feels mixed anger, resentment, and guilt. Et cetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way the reader knows the author approves is if nothing bad happens to the person who does the bad thing, and/or if the bad actor is rewarded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allow consequences to unfold, and you'll make it pretty clear what you as the author consider &quot;good things&quot; and &quot;bad things&quot; to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this seems too easy, read a book by someone you don't agree with, and see how that author punishes characters who commit actions which the author doesn't agree with but you think are okay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T13:24:03.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16231" CreationDate="2015-02-16T14:14:30.060" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a character commits an evil act and you want to frame it as evil, there are different ways to acknowledge it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe it from the perspective of the victim. When the reader is confronted with the emotional results from the evil act, they will sympathize.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the perpetrator condemn the act themselves and have them feel remorse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When that would be out-of-character (they are so evil they wouldn't feel remorse), have them rationalize it in a way which is obviously morally flawed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a 3rd character who learns of the act condemn it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T14:14:30.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16231" CreationDate="2015-02-16T15:18:51.787" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If characters never do bad things, you don't have a plot, and if every bad action is followed by a speech about how bad it is, you end up with a didactic polemic, not a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible to frame even the worst actors within a larger moral framework --consider Nabakov's &lt;em&gt;Lolita&lt;/em&gt; where the main character in a first person narrative is an unrepentant molester.  Nabakov eventually brings the novel to a point of resolution where the main character --in a way true to his personality and characterization --finally comes to at least a dim understanding that what he did was wrong, and why.  This, in my opinion, is far more effective than just bashing the reader's head in with a message that we hopefully all know already anyway. Compare also Woody Allen's &lt;em&gt;Match Point&lt;/em&gt; --superficially, it's about a very bad person who gets everything he wants, and isn't punished for any of it.  However, you don't end the film admiring or envying that character --you come to understand that being that kind of person is a punishment just in itself (which is also the message of Plato's &lt;em&gt;Republic&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'm not ever bothered by bad behavior in fiction unless I feel the author is using it to actively promote moral principles I disagree with --it seems unlikely that what you write would give that impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T15:18:51.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16237" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-16T16:14:48.157" Score="3" ViewCount="3268" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a screenplay I'm writing, I want to use a rapid cut-together sequence of reaction shots from characters in several different locations already established earlier in the script. Is it still necessary to use the full new-scene notation for every different location? This seems a bit clumsy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The three look up as the lights flicker, and the room suddenly goes&#xA;  dark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;INT. GARAGE - DUSK&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We see ANDREA and PIETER, still sifting through the garage's contents,&#xA;  as the lights flicker and go out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;INT. CORRIDOR - DUSK&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We see SAMMY in the middle of using a crowbar to open a door; the&#xA;  lights in the corridor flicker and go out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;INT. SECURITY OFFICE - DUSK&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I don't want to break the normal formatting conventions. What's appropriate in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T16:31:48.240" Title="Rapid Cross-Scene Cuts in Screenplay/Script" Tags="|formatting|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16231" CreationDate="2015-02-16T17:36:44.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to @Philipp 's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Know  your plot and the consequences: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you describe the scene from POV of the victim, who provoked the action, you need a reason why she provoked it. If the reader thinks she did it for no or void reason, the reader might agree with the aggressor. Is the victim suppressed by the aggressor? Why does she stand up to him now, if not earlier?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't have the aggressor &lt;strong&gt;show&lt;/strong&gt; remorse. Yes, that's somewhat contrary to what Philipp's answer says. If you do, readers might sympathize with him instead of the victim. Let him make up stupid excuses, one after another until he gets aggressive again, because he notices the excuses don't do any good. Then you might have him confess, he doesn't believe his own excuses. That's enough to &lt;strong&gt;show he's feeling&lt;/strong&gt; remorse without getting undue sympathy. If you let him break down and vow he won't do it again, that's quite stereotypical. If so, he has to &lt;strong&gt;secretly&lt;/strong&gt; (not to the victim; he's tricking her) confess that he's not sure, if he can hold true to the vow. Otherwise, again he'll get undue sympathy. Reveal that he's indeed unable to control himself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12933" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T17:36:44.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16231" CreationDate="2015-02-16T18:40:19.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: The story should include the violence if it enhances the story, and makes sense, and the consequences should reflect the interaction of the characters and their personalities. Almost any consequence that changes the situation to one where the domestic violence comes to an end could be construed as a condemnation of the violence, but it should fit the story's mood. You shouldn't consider your works as reflections of your morality, at any rate, because the best fiction is often those that stray from societal norms, allowing readers to view and experience things that they wouldn't normally view or experience otherwise, and wouldn't normally do in their own life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bad and good are actually just societal constructs, so you're asking about writing a fictional work about someone that does something outside the societal norm. This is something that happens every day in real life, to various extents. People break laws or morals daily, things that would paint them as &quot;bad&quot; in someone else's eyes. For example, speeding by just a couple miles an hour, only tipping 14% tip instead of 15% tip at a restaurant, or having a burst of anger over something and hitting someone with virtually no provocation; often a matter of that person being the &quot;straw that broke the camel's back&quot;, to borrow a tired expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it doesn't make it right, it does make it real, and realism is often what people look for in a story; as authors, we should be suspending disbelief by using realism. Sometimes people get away with it, and many times they don't. As authors, though, we shouldn't consider our works extensions of what we condone or abhor. It is our privilege to entertain our readers, and that often involves appealing to the societal taboos, since most people consider themselves to be good, even when others may see them as evil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are few that would claim Hitler was a good person, but there are some that would. The fact that we had a war over the matter is proof of this; if everyone had seen him as evil, they would have dropped their weapons and handed him over without a fight. If he knew what he was doing was evil, he probably wouldn't have done it. Humans naturally seek approval, and approval is found by doing good things, so most humans naturally want to try and be good, but often fail do to the negative human emotions of ego, greed, envy, anger, and fear (as well as others I'm failing to mention).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you're writing a documentary or biography, your works are those of fiction and fantasy, and if the motive fits the plot, you should assume that realism and truism should trump your own morality. Anyone reading a story that later goes out to perform an action in the story, using that story as justification for their actions, are morally bankrupt at best, and probably would have done so regardless of reading the story. No story I have ever written, or enjoyed, has ever contained strictly acts that I condone, and I would expect my readership to separate fantasy and reality (not that I am a published author, or any story I've ever written has been seen by more than one other person).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are a few considerations regarding the content of your story. You should consider if the domestic violence even makes sense to include, because some people will automatically shut down and refuse to read the book beyond that very chapter. Perhaps they've been victims themselves, or have seen the results of such behavior, or, like yourself, condemn the behavior as immoral and will refuse to read on, even if the perpetrator is later forgiven or punished. The darker and/or more socially taboo the story, the more likely it is that more people will not read your book. You must consider your audience to determine how graphic the details should be (or if it should be included at all), how severe the consequences should be, and how soon they are realized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like you, I feel that provocation doesn't justify abuse, but the truth is, it does happen. Every human everywhere has a breaking point, many of which are at different thresholds. That threshold hovers somewhere between &quot;an evil look&quot; to &quot;they're killing me,&quot; with the actual level somewhere in between. Very few people have the will to die for what they believe in, which is why we have a special word for them: martyrs. Once the breaking point is reached, one of two things will happen: fight, or flight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the wife provokes her husband daily, he will most likely eventually divorce her, leave with no explanation or note, harm her, or harm himself. This is the basis of our animal instincts, and they can be hard to repress. Justified or not, things do happen when our animal instincts kick in, no matter how civilized we are trained to be. Good people eventually do bad things, and bad things happen to good people. That's not what makes people good or bad. It's their tendencies to do things within societal norms that make them good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ways that you could portray domestic violence in a negative view might include consequences like: the man, horrified by his own behavior, leaves suddenly, and never returns; begs for forgiveness but the wife wants a divorce or has him thrown in jail; has an epiphany, reconciles with his wife, and never lays a hand on her again; pushes her over the edge that she's been on for ages and attacks him back. The outcome of the abuse should reflect how you perceive the characters, with their personalities, would interact with the experience. No two interactions would be the same, so you'll have to draw on the knowledge of your characters and their personalities to determine the outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only unacceptable outcome from domestic violence is that the situation remains unchanged, or where the victim dies or is permanently disabled because of the event, and the aggressor faces no jail time, no physical retribution, no negative &quot;karma&quot;, and no remorse. This one consequence would suggest that there is nothing wrong in such violence, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you condone it. Your works are not reflections of your beliefs, because if they were, you'd write about a perfect relationship with no arguments, perfectly behaved kids, no debt, a nice house, lots of money in the bank for retirement, etc. A story has to have challenges to overcome, and domestic violence is a challenge, and it should be resolved in a satisfactory manner to make for a complete story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12934" LastEditorUserId="12934" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T18:51:30.580" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T18:51:30.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16237" CreationDate="2015-02-16T20:47:38.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your format is correct, although I believe you would typically place &quot;CUT TO&quot; above the new scene.  Screenplays have a very specific, well-established format, so it's best to stick to the conventions.  For people who are used to reading screenplays, it will seem natural, not clumsy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T20:47:38.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16242" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16265" CreationDate="2015-02-16T21:24:21.750" Score="3" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I had a previous question, closed as too opinion-based, about being a better editor than writer.  I wasn't able to rescue that one, but I thought I'd take a try at a related question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an excellent editor, well able to work with someone to bring out the best in another author's writing, and I'm also very good with overall plot and structure.  However, when it comes to writing fiction, I'm weak.  I'm very impatient with the process, and my writing tends to be thin, rushed and elliptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do well writing non-fiction, and I take a lot of enjoyment out of working with other people's writing, but fiction is a passion of mine, and I have some concepts of my own that I think are very strong.  Are there any avenues for finding someone who wants to write to fit someone else's plot outline?  It's not an arrangement I've ever really heard of (except when a famous author tires of working on a series and brings someone else in --usually to very mixed results).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-02-20T05:17:33.497" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T05:17:33.497" Title="Resource for someone better at editing than writing" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|collaboration|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16231" CreationDate="2015-02-16T21:49:15.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had quarrels with some of my friends where they say that some book or movie is bad because it depicts people doing evil things. And I say, But look HOW it depicts them! It clearly depicts them as evil and destructive! There is a huge difference between a story in which a character does evil and it is portrayed as perfectly all right and having no harmful consequences for himself or others, and a story in which a character does evil and we see the awful consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those consequences certainly don't have to come immediately. A story in which every evil dead is instantly punished would probably be boring as there would be no suspense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be very careful about having someone give a speech about how evil it is. That could be good if done well, but I think it would be very tricky. It would more likely sound trite and moralistic. A good one-liner might work well, though. Like, I recall reading once -- and sorry, I remember nothing else about the story, just this one exchange -- a character is pondering whether he will do some bad action, and he says, &quot;Decision making can be very complicated.&quot; And then another character replies &quot;Yes. Especially when you have no morals.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also have the evil character give a speech justifying his actions that is obviously strained. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This reminds me of an article I once read about Milton's Paradise Lost, where the commentator said that Milton's Satan is interesting because he has both good and bad qualities, while Milton's God is boring because he is pure good. I recall at the time thinking that I disagreed. Milton's God is boring because he is continually justifying himself. Everything he does, he gives a speech about why this is a good and right thing to do. When I do something good, I rarely find it necessary to explain why it was good. Good people around me know it was good and evil people don't care. It's when I do something wrong that I need to justify myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T21:49:15.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3829" CreationDate="2015-02-16T21:53:04.070" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I well remember this happening to one of my one-time favorite series, Robert Asprin's &lt;em&gt;Myth Adventures&lt;/em&gt;. The early books, with real villains and consequences, were the strongest. But soon, the resolution to every book was just &quot;let's ask them to join the team!&quot;  With that said, &lt;strong&gt;the overall problem of a book where nothing is ever at stake isn't just found in comedy&lt;/strong&gt;.  Writing is a ruthless art, and if you aren't willing for your characters to suffer, it shows.  This is especially a problem in comedy, since bad things happening to the characters can bring down the happy mood (unless you're writing really bleak comedy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach to avoiding this is to do a loose parody of an original with a strong plot but little humor.  A really well done parody of this type (&lt;em&gt;Airplane!&lt;/em&gt;) can rival or even surpass the original.  Another solution is that the characters can experience minor events as major disasters.  Think of the comic strip &lt;em&gt;Peanuts&lt;/em&gt;.  Plotwise, nothing ever happens in the strip, but from the perspective of the characters, heartbreak, humiliation and catastrophic failures are daily events.  Similarly, in the movie &lt;em&gt;The Devil Wears Prada&lt;/em&gt;, the title character doesn't hurt, kill, or destroy anyone, but she still serves effectively in the role of villain --&lt;strong&gt;it's all psychological&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, don't write a comedy book --&lt;strong&gt;write a substantive book, and make it funny&lt;/strong&gt;.  That's how Terry Pratchett managed to keep it fresh over the course of a very prolific and successful career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2019-09-09T15:52:17.470" LastActivityDate="2019-09-09T15:52:17.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16226" CreationDate="2015-02-16T21:58:58.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've wrestled with this too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Easy part: If you're writing in American English, what the character is saying should be enclosed in double quotes (&quot;). Whenever the speaker changes, start a new paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the hard part is making clear who is speaking. It gets tedious if you constantly write, &quot;Bob said ... Then Mary said ... Then Bob said ...&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers try to vary this up by using words other than &quot;said&quot;. Like &quot;Bob said ... Sally replied ... Bob insisted ...&quot; This can work to an extent, but if overdone it starts to look like a gimmick. Especially if you start running out of ways to say &quot;said&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A technique I like is to mix action in with the dialog. This gives you an excuse to identify the speaker while simultaneously breaking up a long string of quotes. Like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Did you clean the garage?&quot; Mary asked.&#xA;  Bob tried to look busy. &quot;Yes, dear.&quot;&#xA;  &quot;You know it's very important that the garage be clean when the realtor arrives.&quot; Mary looked stern and concerned.&#xA;  &quot;I'll clean it now,&quot; Bob said sheepishly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having different speaking styles can work too. The catch to that is if it's too subtle the reader can miss it, and if it's too pronounced, it can look like a gimmick. I've read stories where one character is always sprinkling his statements with Latin or someone is always quoting Shakespeare, and I think it gets stale pretty quickly. You can give a character a distinctive nationality or occupation and use that to dictate how he talks, like the scientist is always using technical terms or the surfer dude is always using beach slang or whatever. But again, if overdone it can get tedious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T21:58:58.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16246" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-16T23:59:15.777" Score="5" ViewCount="447" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always been puzzled by this, even when reading endless information about it on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why exactly is it called that, and what's the purpose? That's like saying, &quot;No, you're not a writer on the topic of cars; you're a car copywriter.&quot; What is the difference and why can't just &quot;writer&quot; be used? What's the benefit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a copywriter can claim to create web content, but any writer can do that and many do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll just &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copywriting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quote from Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; out of confusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Copywriters (known as continuity writers in broadcasting) are used to help create direct mail pieces&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So they are synonymous with &quot;advertisers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;online ads, e-mail and other Internet content&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Encompassing anything between writing, designing, and advertising; they are like all three of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why use the word &quot;copywriter&quot; then? Doesn't old-fashioned &quot;writer&quot; cover everything and then some?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12938" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2015-02-17T11:19:55.827" LastActivityDate="2021-08-03T06:27:00.247" Title="What exactly is a copywriter?" Tags="|copywriting|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16226" CreationDate="2015-02-17T00:23:32.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When in a continuing, back and forth dialogue, use &lt;strong&gt;boldface&lt;/strong&gt; everytime you reference the speaker in question (additionally you can secure good formatting by always using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-breaking_space&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NBSPs&lt;/a&gt; per speaker reference):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sailor/Pirate&lt;/strong&gt;: Hello, scout! Where are you headin', matey?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ziska&lt;/strong&gt;: Oh! I was just walking along the pier here to look down at the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sailor/Pirate&lt;/strong&gt;: Nothing dere to see in these old waters; dead fish, maybe two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Just ignore the space formatting that is used above, and imagine them pressed together)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people express sentiment of characters this way too (e.g., &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Oh! -surprised- I was just walking along the pier here to look down at the water.&lt;/strong&gt;). Another way you can mix it up and make it less repetitive is by writing it out from a narrative perspective sometimes, and referencing characters as if from a speaker rather than elaborately directed to you (e.g., &lt;strong&gt;&quot;You could never do that,&quot; said Jane&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most books do not have a long, endless string of dialogue between characters, so mixing it up is a must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Jay's answer here expresses a perfect example of conversation dialogue that's easily confusable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12938" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T00:23:32.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16246" CreationDate="2015-02-17T02:11:31.473" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different kinds of writing. Writing for business (formal, industry jargon) is not like writing fiction (establishing a world, creating characters) which is not like writing advertising copy (short, compelling, call to action). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copywriters have to learn how to write something which fits in a specified (usually small) space. It has to be memorable but contain certain important items (name, price, legal disclaimers). It has to encourage people to do something (click, call, buy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a skill. Not everyone can do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T02:11:31.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16249" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16250" CreationDate="2015-02-17T12:38:31.500" Score="1" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;cat&lt;/strong&gt; was lying on a cat bed, barely visible under&#xA;  the blankets, an IV wrapped around one of her front legs. Judging by&#xA;  the triangular shape of her head, her black nose ears and ears, she seemed&#xA;  to be a Siamese. Not that I was an expert at identifying cats; I only&#xA;  recognized this kind because one of them &#xA;   clawed into my neck when I was a child. It hurt like hell. And the cat got stuck so&#xA;  firmly Mom had to call the firefighters so they could come and pull it&#xA;  away with a crowbar. Seems like I wasn't very popular with animals at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We stared at the &lt;strong&gt;Siamese&lt;/strong&gt; in silence for a while. The dogs, cats, and&#xA;  rabbits in the cages also contributed to this silence, making the&#xA;  place feel more like an animal morgue than an animal hospital. The&#xA;  only sound was the steady beeping of the &lt;strong&gt;cat's&lt;/strong&gt; heart monitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So,&quot; I said, stroking the &lt;strong&gt;cat's&lt;/strong&gt; paw, &quot;did you guys find out the&#xA;  problem?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Takeshi sat at the examination table behind him. &quot;We tested for infection,&#xA;  kidney failure, stomach ulcer, intestinal cancer—the common diseases&#xA;  that'd make a cat stop eating. We found nothing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Maybe its an, uh, psychological issue?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Psychological issue?&quot; Takeshi repeated, scratching the back of his&#xA;  hood. &quot;Well, the owner of the &lt;strong&gt;Siamese&lt;/strong&gt; moved into a new apartment recently.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What's that have to do with anything?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did this to have variation. I didn't want to repeat the &lt;em&gt;Siamese&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;cat&lt;/em&gt; too much. Is this alternation annoying? Should I just stick with one of the words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-02-17T12:43:32.950" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T15:37:00.003" Title="Alternating names" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16249" CreationDate="2015-02-17T14:26:18.857" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're talking about are &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/epithet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;epithets&lt;/a&gt;, and depending on who you talk to, they are either a necessary tool of writing or the bane of existence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When overdone, epithets can make a simple conversation between two people feel like an orgy. If Bob, Frank, the blond, the redhead, the plumber, and the lawyer are all referred to in the same scene, it's hard to keep things straight. There's nothing wrong with repeating names when clarity is required. In your case, however, there are places where it's unambiguous who you're discussing, so you don't necessarily need references at all. Consider this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cat was barely visible under the blankets she was wrapped in, an IV line taped to one of her front legs. Judging by the triangular shape of her head and her black nose ears and ears, she seemed to be a Siamese. Not that I was an expert at identifying cats; I only recognized this kind because one of them clawed into my neck when I was a child. It hurt like hell. And it had dug in so firmly that Mom had to call the firefighters so they could come and pull it away with a crowbar. Seems like I wasn't very popular with animals at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We stared at the poor thing in silence for a while. The dogs, cats, and rabbits in the other cages were strangely quiet as well, making the place feel more like an animal morgue than an animal hospital. The only sound was the steady beeping of the heart monitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;So,&amp;quot; I said, stroking the cat's paw, &amp;quot;did you guys find out the problem?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Takeshi sat at the examination table behind him. &amp;quot;We tested for infection, kidney failure, stomach ulcer, intestinal cancer—the common diseases that'd make a cat stop eating. We found nothing.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Maybe it's a, uh, psychological issue?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Psychological issue?&amp;quot; Takeshi repeated, scratching the back of his hood. &amp;quot;Well, her owner moved into a new apartment recently.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;What's that have to do with anything?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6851" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T14:26:18.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16246" CreationDate="2015-02-17T14:57:54.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Robert Bly is a well-known copywriter who has written a great book on copywriting which explains the challenges quite well.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qF4fmz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Copywriting Handbook, by Robert Bly -- amazon link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://bly.com/new/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;his web site&lt;/a&gt; also because it is a very good example of copywriting -- which really does mean, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;writing so people pay attention&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a copywriter but learning the techniques can help you with all of your writing.  Reader's time is limited and getting their attention can be extremely difficult so learning effective ways to do so can be very valuable no matter what type of writing you do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, sometimes Copywriting means schlock,&lt;/strong&gt; and to some people that is all it means.  But if you ignore the marketing techniques which have been heaped on top of this term you may gain a lot of benefit from studying the effective ways that copywriting has been used.&#xA;Robert Bly does a good job of explaining it and staying away from the schlock.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T15:31:21.640" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:31:21.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16249" CreationDate="2015-02-17T15:37:00.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's a good idea to vary your descriptions occasionally for variety, in this instance, &lt;em&gt;Siamese&lt;/em&gt; is not just a way to refer to &lt;em&gt;the cat,&lt;/em&gt; but a way to differentiate this cat from &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; cats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the scene were in someone's living room, then &lt;em&gt;Siamese&lt;/em&gt; would help you identify that cat as opposed to the tabby, tuxedo, and tortie cats also lying on the couch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, you're pretty much talking about one cat, so I would treat &quot;cat&quot; more like &quot;plumber&quot; or &quot;lawyer&quot; in Roger's excellent answer, and use the cat's name as the variable instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only place I would use it in your example is here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So,&quot; I said, stroking &lt;strong&gt;Sheba's&lt;/strong&gt; paw, &quot;did you guys find out the problem?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T15:37:00.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16231" CreationDate="2015-02-17T18:44:53.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The people who justify domestic abuse and the people who condemn it have significantly different views of human psychology and human relationships. By choosing how to place that abusive act in context, you as an author are signaling what your view is, and by implication, your moral judgement of the abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have a story in which a hard-working husband is constantly nagged and berated by his shrewish wife, and while he tries to absorb her tirades with manly self-control, he reaches a point where he just can’t stop himself and smacks her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could have a story in which a terrorized wife tiptoes around a husband with a massive sense of entitlement, trying to anticipate his every need, getting emotional and verbal abuse whenever she—even accidentally—fails to meet his expectations, and then one day she talks back to him because she can’t stand it any more, and he beats her senseless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T18:44:53.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16197" CreationDate="2015-02-17T21:28:27.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If these proposed chapters are slow, boring and have little to do with the actual story, then you should not add them for the sake of making the story longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, fictional writing is all about the journey. In high fantasy novels like Lord of the Rings, the endgame is returning the one ring to Mordor. If Frodo and Sam were just able to walk down the post office and mail the ring to Mount Doom, then there really would not be much of a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing you want to avoid is adding filler for the sake of adding filler. If you, the author of the book is not enthusiastic about the content you will be adding, then chances are that neither will be the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are literally an infinite amount of ways you can extend this without having it seem like it is just dragging. Some examples could be having some kind of a flashback, or a non sequitur. You could also have your character diverge off of the original path. Maybe she slips on the ice and hits her head and goes into a coma. Perhaps she decides to play the lottery and hits the jackpot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T21:28:27.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3042" CreationDate="2015-02-18T07:41:40.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;P.S could be used when you are trying to convey something which is not appropriate to the subject mentioned and still needed to be included to the same mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12947" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T07:41:40.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16258" CreationDate="2015-02-18T12:04:45.993" Score="6" ViewCount="734" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am ending the conclusion of my PhD thesis by saying something like this (not even remotely in these words):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was a lot of work gone in the thesis, yada yada yada, however there is room for more, such as having this and that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling that ending the thesis with &quot;what's missing&quot; leaves a negative impression on the reader, although the thesis addresses an issue that has never been addressed before, so the proposed solutions are novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided to finish with a sentence that reminds the reader that the work is novel and leaves the impression that this is going to pave the way forward. The sentence that immediately came to my mind is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This Thesis is only the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that sounds really cheesy. Like those movies that show &quot;The End&quot; and then suddenly a question mark is added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what alternative sentence can I use to convey what I'm trying to say (in the context of a PhD thesis)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it helps, this is the actual last paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The proposed software architectures have been iteratively improved upon based on past experiences, case studies, and peer reviews.  Nevertheless, no software architecture ever reaches perfection.  Potential future directions include higher reconfigurability of the robot skin, allowing feedback from user applications to the robot skin, or real-time transfer of data between the host PC to other processing units and distributed tactile processing.  Compliance to safety standards is another possible research direction.  This Thesis is only the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3487" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-06-11T19:11:25.377" LastActivityDate="2019-06-11T19:44:36.603" Title="Ending a PhD thesis by saying &quot;there is more to do&quot;" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|ending|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16257" CreationDate="2015-02-18T14:56:05.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that's fine, actually, with a little tweaking. I'd move your &quot;only the beginning&quot; farther back in the paragraph, and clarify that thought a tiny bit: (bold is only for emphasis; you wouldn't bold it in your thesis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;The proposed software architectures have been iteratively improved upon based on past experiences, case studies, and peer reviews. Nevertheless, no software architecture ever reaches perfection. &lt;strong&gt;This thesis is only the beginning of [explain what's beginning: theories? solutions? a new field?].&lt;/strong&gt; Potential future directions include higher reconfigurability of the robot skin, allowing feedback from user applications to the robot skin, or real-time transfer of data between the host PC to other processing units and distributed tactile processing. Compliance to safety standards is another possible research direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I'm not in academia; I'm reading this just from a coherence perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T14:56:05.360" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16257" CreationDate="2015-02-18T15:56:38.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A paragraph or chapter that outlines &quot;possible future research directions&quot; is a common part of many theses, placed near the conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not treat it as &quot;this is missing.&quot; Your thesis is complete over the section it analyses. Your analysis is not &quot;lacking&quot;. Instead, it opens the doors to more research that can be based upon it - things that would be impossible or way more difficult to research without your thesis. Just alongside with &quot;possible practical applications&quot; which are food for thought for engineers, you provide &quot;possible theoretical/research applications&quot; - how your thesis can be useful for other scientists in expanding understanding of the wider domain. Just note to use it to provide suggestions that do make use of what you've provided, build upon it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a separate section, &quot;domain analysis&quot;, which places your research in the greater image. You usually place it somewhere in the introduction, and it describes how your thesis fits and expands upon existing knowledge - what it builds upon, and what are some &quot;neighbour fields&quot; that are closely related. If some of these &quot;neighbour fields&quot; are lacking in research, you may mention so, but you should make sure to delineate them as such - they are not a part of your thesis, they are just other subjects, and the fact they require more research [by someone else] is just a circumstance worth mentioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if some of the &quot;future research directions&quot; would need to build upon both your thesis and these &quot;neighbour fields&quot; which are still lacking, you can still mention them as prerequisites, e.g. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Utilizing the proposed architecture enables research of application of the robot skin in sensing and physical (thermal, chemical, structural) analysis of objects with which the robot comes in contact, pending research and development of mechanically flexible sensors of these properties, embeddable in the robotic skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T15:56:38.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16260" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-18T17:24:49.730" Score="2" ViewCount="2067" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my novel I have many different story lines that are happening at the same time. If I have one scene that takes seven pages and then flips to another scene that actually happened at the same time but in a new location and with different characters, then how do I write the switch without confusing the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12956" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T20:15:57.787" Title="Changing location in a fiction story with two or more story lines happening at same time" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3829" CreationDate="2015-02-18T17:39:11.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key to writing a comedy is in the dialogue. Make sure that the dialogue is real. Read over your character's conversations and if it doesn't sound smooth and like a real conversation then you have a problem. Make sure your characters talk like real people talk. Then have them say funny things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12956" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T17:39:11.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16260" CreationDate="2015-02-18T20:15:57.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At first: Clearly establish the character or location.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The first time you show new location or POV character, clearly establish both. To do that, focus on two things: &lt;strong&gt;sensory details&lt;/strong&gt; (what the character is sensing through the five senses) and &lt;strong&gt;opinions&lt;/strong&gt; (what the character thinks of the things being sensed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character's opinions will help establish the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first time, &lt;strong&gt;use all five senses.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;These will help establish the location--and to some extent the character:&#xA;Of all of the available sensations, &lt;em&gt;these&lt;/em&gt; are the ones the character is noticing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Later: Re-establish the character or location.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The next time you flip to an already established location or POV character, &lt;em&gt;remind&lt;/em&gt; the reader by reusing some of the more telling details and opinions. Include a few new details and opinions, to help the reader see what's changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Later: Quickly recall the character or location.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Later in the story, a quick reminder (recalling one or two evocative details) will be enough, as long as you've clearly established them earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T20:15:57.787" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16242" CreationDate="2015-02-18T23:02:02.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're refering to seems to me like you're talking about ghostwriting? Telling someone your plot/story, and him/her turning it into an actual piece of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12943" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T23:02:02.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16242" CreationDate="2015-02-18T23:35:38.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are looking for a co-writer. There are websites where you can find a partner for your project (e.g. co-writers.com). If you think are good with plot, structure and editing, you could look for somebody to bring in the literary depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, have you tried different ways of writing your fiction yet? If you get impatient, you may want to try writing your story down as you see it in your head without doing any research or perfectly formulated sentences yet (I &quot;watch&quot; my stories as movies in my head and write them down without writing down thoughts or backgrounds that I can't see). Then I go over the draft again and fill in everything that makes a complete story. I find it impossible to drop the project as soon as I have the first draft, so it will hopefully keep you going too. It could be also be the draft that you could pass on to a co-writer if you choose so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12944" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T23:35:38.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16257" CreationDate="2015-02-19T02:45:28.473" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think about the, &quot;This is only the beginning&quot; concept more as &quot;This is the first step&quot;. It is very common in academia to think about your PhD as a stepping stone to your initial body of research over the next few years. I would think the ideas in the &quot;next steps&quot; paragraph need to be fleshed out in more detail. (Use the &quot;If you could wave a wand and have a project funded, what would you work on next?&quot; concept here.)&#xA;Having mentioned these ideas, end your thesis mentioning your own work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12959" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T02:45:28.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16267" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16274" CreationDate="2015-02-19T06:25:24.867" Score="0" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it seems desirable to pack a lot of interrelated information into a single sentence, but such sentences can lack clarity or seem tiring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the following sentence seems to leave no space for breath:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John said it was constructed in 1664 during the Dutch occupation in Taiwan by an admiral that had decided to settle in the island.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can one structure such sentences for greater readability while maintaining the relationships of the parts and avoiding choppy writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2015-02-19T21:48:53.717" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T21:48:53.717" Title="How can clarity and flow of long sentences be improved?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-02-19T19:03:10.557" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16268" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-19T08:35:19.153" Score="1" ViewCount="1047" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a fairly avid songwriter, and although I like writing meaningful lyrics, I am not particularly good at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to use a lot of metaphors in my lyrics, but they're always quite easy to understand -- my lyrics aren't the &quot;figure out a meaning for yourself&quot; kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I am writing about somebody who refuses to speak, and I'm using the following line for that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I see your lips, and they are golden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to stay as concise as possible, I'm using &quot;golden&quot; as a reference to the &quot;silence is golden&quot; proverb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am worried about right now is whether people will catch on to this when reading/hearing this particular line. Are there any techniques to &quot;guide&quot; people into the direction of what I am trying to say, without literally explaining the metaphor? Or am I simply overthinking it, and should I assume that people will understand it this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12961" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T22:12:22.500" Title="How do you make a vague metaphor more easy to understand?" Tags="|poetry|metaphor|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16269" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-19T10:51:06.757" Score="3" ViewCount="2852" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to use 'Dumbledore' as a part of my pen name. But I was told that by doing so I might, I just might subject myself to suing by J.K. Rowling (if she intends to). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true? Can't I use her character's name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know what are the legal limitations for adopting a famous fictional character's name as a part of your pen name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12962" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T00:06:57.507" LastActivityDate="2020-04-12T12:53:18.100" Title="What are the copyright limitations for adopting a fictional character's name as your Pen Name?" Tags="|copyright|legal|naming|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16267" CreationDate="2015-02-19T13:48:58.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;John said it was during the Dutch occupation in 1664, in Taiwan, that an admiral who had decided to settle in the island, constructed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12963" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T13:48:58.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5482" CreationDate="2015-02-19T15:14:11.027" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this is an old article; however, I came across this and wanted to add something. While it may seem illogical or that there isn't a right or wrong answer, you must remember the focus is to make the document grammatically correct. Your question can best be answered by revisiting the basic definition of a proper noun. While we would say &quot;figure(s)&quot; is a common noun, you are speaking of &quot;Figure 3&quot;. Since this is a single occurrence, it would be considered a proper noun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example would be to think of how proper nouns are applied to seasons of the year. If you are speaking of the season generally, you would say something like the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I enjoy going to the beach during the summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you may want to talk about a specific season that had an event worth noting. In this case, there would be only one and it would be used as a proper noun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the Winter of 1988, we had a horrible snow storm that caused the entire city to lose power for an entire month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this provide clarity for those seeking the &lt;strong&gt;correct&lt;/strong&gt; usage, as there is a right or wrong answer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12964" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-07T17:15:27.153" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T17:15:27.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16268" CreationDate="2015-02-19T15:53:23.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's unlikely anyone will make that connection unaided, but, speaking as a big fan of lyrics, it's not necessarily a problem if people don't understand everything in your lyrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more than is the case for ordinary poetry, a large part of successful lyrics is the raw sound of the words.  Many great songs have been written with lyrics that presumably mean something to the writer, yet are obscure to the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would venture you may find yourself happier with your lyrics if you let go of some of the rules and guidelines that surround other types of writing.  When the meaning is too clear and direct, the song often sounds trite.  I wouldn't deliberately be obscure, but if the lyric otherwise works for the song, I would leave it as is.  For me personally, encountering a mysterious reference in a song, although frustrating, can actually increase my sense of engagement with the song --similar to how songs in foreign languages always sound more profound than they actually are.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T15:53:23.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16267" CreationDate="2015-02-19T15:57:12.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Others may disagree, but I'm a big fan of parentheses.  In this case, the Dutch occupation is a side note to give some context to 1664.  It could be omitted without changing the real meaning of the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John said it was constructed in 1664 (during the Dutch occupation in Taiwan) by an admiral who had decided to settle in the island.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note, I would also use &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt;, rather than &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;.  The admiral is a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T15:57:12.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16267" CreationDate="2015-02-19T18:20:14.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will second CLockeWork's comment. I will also add that while parentheses work, I think commas are more readable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John said it was constructed in 1664, during the Dutch occupation in&#xA;  Taiwan, by an admiral that had decided to settle in the island.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T18:20:14.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16268" CreationDate="2015-02-19T21:33:55.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having read lauren Ipsum's comments, I am hesitant to build upon a metaphor you may be abandoning, still confronting obscurity in lyrics seems worthy of some effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with the idea that obscurity should be welcome in lyrics.  All writing, whether literary or lyrical, should strive to clearly communicate ideas.  Anything short of that, sucks all meaning from our words, leaving the effort of writing them wasted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard to judge how well you convey your thoughts through a single line, but I would challenge your adherence to expansive grammar in a medium that doesn't require it.  You wrote...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I see your lips&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...where the words &quot;I see&quot; could easily be implied.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;and they are golden&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...again, the words &quot;and they are&quot; serve the laws of grammar more than they do your message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Removing these unnecessary words, you are left with...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Your lips, golden&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same meaning as before, but now there is room to introduce your metaphor...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Silent, your lips are golden&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Careful listeners should be able to sense the proverb lurking under your prose, when it is presented that way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that I've messed up your original metre, dropping several syllables from the first half of the phrase.  This is a prime example of why I don't write songs.  Getting the words right is about the best that I can do.  The rhythm always escapes me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in your efforts to serve the cadence of the notes, you have to surrender either clarity or perfect grammar, I would strongly suggest that you give grammar the boot and wrestle instead with your words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The right words are infinitely superior to the almost right words.  Find them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T21:33:55.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8473" CreationDate="2015-02-19T22:03:05.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coming from a journalistic background (travel and alternative living), I would strongly suggest focusing on the message you want to deliver. You could start with your initial prejudice, innocence or ignorance and work toward your revelation (message). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is also helpful to keep in mind what audience you are targeting. It will help you to omit details that may not be interesting for your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12944" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T22:03:05.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16268" CreationDate="2015-02-19T22:12:22.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides my comment above about referencing the wrong item, in a more general sense, you can make a metaphor clearer by working backwards from your end result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your end is &amp;quot;silence is golden,&amp;quot; which is the important idea you want to reference, consider what part of a person makes sound. It's not really the &lt;em&gt;lips&lt;/em&gt;, but the &lt;em&gt;mouth&lt;/em&gt;. (I wouldn't use &amp;quot;golden voice&amp;quot; because that already means &amp;quot;having a beautiful voice.&amp;quot;) Possibly you could use &amp;quot;tongue,&amp;quot; which also means &lt;em&gt;language.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pushing it further, why stay with &amp;quot;golden&amp;quot;? Maybe use &lt;em&gt;gilded&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;gilt,&lt;/em&gt;, and then you can pun on &lt;em&gt;guilt&lt;/em&gt; depending on why the &amp;quot;you&amp;quot; is silent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your lyric could be something like (you'll have to work out your own meter):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a mouth of gilt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a mouth, gilt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;your gilded mouth&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;your mouth full of gold&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;your tongue covered in gilt/guilt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T22:12:22.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16242" CreationDate="2015-02-20T03:25:01.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good editor should also be a good writer. An editor might better anticipate the public response to a work, but it's hard to imagine an editor who isn't at least a competent writer. Most editors were once writers and wrote for years. Editors are also avid readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concepts are great but bringing them to life is another thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you know you're A) not a good writer and B) an excellent editor? Were you told this by a credible person? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you enjoy working with another person's writing you should be able to work with your own. If you have no interest in writing, but enjoy editing, then you still have to spend time as a writer and work on the craft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An editor recognizes good writing. I would be terrified if my work was being edited by someone who thought they couldn't write!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12971" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T03:25:01.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4705" CreationDate="2015-02-20T03:32:30.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone has their own method. No method is any better or worse than another. Some find it helps to create a plot outline. Others prefer to create characters and let them do whatever they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers collect snippets on napkins and business cards and notes for years and piece them together into a coherent story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A novel takes a long time. Breaking it into chunks is sometimes better. Outlining the plot also helps you avoid wasting time writing parts that will be thrown out later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spent two years writing a book with a heavily outlined plot. The book was eventually trashed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to write that first novel. Don't worry about how bad it might be. Most people have to get that 'bad' book out of their system before they can really get to the real goods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12971" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T03:32:30.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8587" CreationDate="2015-02-20T03:36:56.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focus on the conflict and changes. People are generally looking for themselves when they read. They want to see people in situations they can understand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summaries don't have to be long. But they do have to sum up what happens in a compelling way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try reading your summary as if it were written by somebody else. What do you think of it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summary is incredibly important because it is the first or second thing an intern or agency runner will read when sorting through the hundreds of daily of submissions. &quot;What should I show my boss?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12971" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T03:36:56.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5894" CreationDate="2015-02-20T03:45:35.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've written at all, you can write long stories. A long story is simply a bunch of short stories about the same subject that are stitched together to form a narrative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your life is a long story. Don't agonize over how to sustain focus or worry about losing interest in a long story. Just start somewhere. Anywhere. The middle is often a great place to start a novel. The best novel I wrote was one I started randomly one day from the middle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Losing interest is totally common for beginners and veteran writers. If you've lost interest, either the story isn't good, or you want to write a different story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't underestimate the power of habit. If you sit down every day and write a page or two on the same subject or idea, you'll eventually hone in on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been writing the same book now for six months. It took two weeks to build it into a habit. I didn't get distracted or bored with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Boredom also means that the writing might not be good. This is not the end of things. It means you must make it more interesting. Beginning writers have a tendency to keep too much of what they write. Try trimming fifty percent of it. Suddenly you have a sharp, focused story that moves along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Envisioning the reward of completion is also a way to stay inspired. If the book is good, it could be published. At the very least, you've WRITTEN A BOOK, or a long story. This is cause for celebration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12971" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T03:45:35.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2015-02-20T03:54:51.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to keep going even when it's not pleasant. Also, consider that you need to be very excited about an idea to write 100 pages about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first book, I was so excited I wrote 120,000 words. It was first time I 'saw' the whole book before it was done. Since I saw it, I knew that it only needed to be written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before that I never had any ideas I felt were worth turning into a book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One mistake beginning authors make: they start with fiction. Fiction is incredibly difficult!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing about your life is a time-tested way to kick out your first novel. Fiction is writing about your life in a different, metaphorical way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next time you finish one of your 3 page stories, don't tell yourself it's done. Tell yourself you finished chapter 1. If you can't think of chapter 2 then maybe it's not meant to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just write. Give up the controls. Write 20 pages of garbage. This is what has to happen. You're excavating, discovering, remembering, building up a repertoire.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also CONFIDENCE is huge. The only reason I wrote my second book was because an acquaintance I hadn't seen or heard from in 5 years sent me a message about it. That message gave me the confidence to flesh out the whole story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one person believes you are outstanding, there are probably others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask friends or acquaintances to read your stuff. Try to blow their socks off. But beware that friends and family have a tendency to tell you everything is just great. Find a hard critic. A tough nut to crack. Win them over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12971" LastEditorUserId="12971" LastEditDate="2015-02-20T04:00:06.690" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T04:00:06.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1845" CreationDate="2015-02-20T04:31:56.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reader is going to supply their own emotion. If you've strung everything together correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But writing with 'feeling' is a slippery idea for the ages. Certainly there must be some emotion driving the writer to write the words. The fact that a thing was written is sometimes enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But sentimentality is the cheap knockoff that often ends up as a substitute. There is where the reader feels boxed out, defrauded from feeling, as you, the writer carry on about your incredibly harrowing near-death experience. Surely it should be exciting but it's not. Why is that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've written things all weepy, and sometimes they came off charged with a certain something, but often upon re-reading, it often turned out to be sappy fluff (to the reader). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I've written other things immediately following some kind of rejection. Rejected by a lover, by society, by friends, by America, by the public, and these were often the stories or poems that had a lasting quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beethoven wrote once that it was his ability to &lt;em&gt;suppress&lt;/em&gt; his sensitivity and compassion that permitted him to compose incredible music. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be truth to this. But remember, the reader is approaching the story from their own perspective. They'll find emotion if the writer has provided the space to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing with emotion and writing with sentiment are two different directions. Being able to identify one from the other is a skill that comes with time. And comes with endless writing and rewriting. I am not hardly any good at it. But I could tell you authors who are. Sherwood Anderson, William Burroughs, Italo Calvino. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't fret over 'am I writing with feeling or not?' If you're writing, you're engaged in the phenomenon. Feelings will inform what you choose to write about. What details you show us, what angle the story takes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Poetry is a better form for experimenting with emotions. But the novel has to have it. You'll know if it bores you. You should be able to read it over and over. A hundred times and never tire of it. There is feeling in the words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12971" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T04:31:56.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14152" CreationDate="2015-02-20T04:49:12.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every writer has certain phrases they repeat &quot;this&quot;, &quot;what I did&quot;, &quot;and then&quot;, &quot;some sort of&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mine is &quot;some sort of&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where and how you employ these phrases have to do with your style. It would be a sin to omit all of them. It would be excellent to keep them where they fit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;something&quot; isn't anything to omit, it lets the reader put whatever they want in its place. You wouldn't want too much of that or they'll lose grip of the story. But it does add mystery. Consider this example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;She wanted me to move to Houston or something. She had ideas about us. A whole future. &#xA;She had been doing some thinking. I had my own ideas of how that would go. It would be &#xA;something that would end in a fiery explosion visible for many miles in the night sky.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first &lt;strong&gt;something&lt;/strong&gt; works because it tells us the reader is hardly paying attention to her. The second &lt;strong&gt;something&lt;/strong&gt; can be omitted. It obfuscates. (also doing away with night sky).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;It would end in a fiery explosion visible for many miles.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If removing the words you use to frame the imagery leads to a better result, cut it out. Otherwise, sometimes they lend a familiarity or extra beat to a sentence, and can be left as they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12971" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T04:49:12.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16286" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-20T18:42:21.580" Score="3" ViewCount="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a script or screenplay, is it necessary (or correct at all) to include time-of-day tags for internal scenes in which exterior lighting does not feature at all (for example, in a maintenance duct or elevator, or down a mineshaft)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, what is the standard in situations where time-of-day are not merely irrelevant but illogical - for example, when in a spaceship orbiting the sun?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T06:43:24.707" Title="Time of Day Notes for Internal Scenes" Tags="|formatting|scriptwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14152" CreationDate="2015-02-20T21:30:08.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your use of &quot;something&quot; is a bit of a literary crutch. Most writers have them in one way shape or form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have have identified this particular issue, now would be a good time to correct it. As others have already noted, the word &quot;something&quot; is just a placeholder. By itself it literally means nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that &quot;something&quot; should be banned as a word. It definitely has its uses. It could be used to create an air of mystery, or to attempt to describe an object, mood, feeling, idea, etc. that doesn't have a name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have suggested, you can replace the word with another phrase which is more descriptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was already too far away to go back, and I figured the dog (if it'd been a real one) had ran back to where it had came from—which meant there was another way into the forest. At least that’s what I hoped for. Not a minute passed, however, when something made me stop again. The rottweiler! I spotted his eerie green eyes right behind a bush. It sprinted away as soon as it saw me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can be changed to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the dog was real, then there must be some other way out! I scanned the area, and I caught a glimpse of his eerie glowing green eyes behind one of the bushes. I tried to approach him, but he must have gotten spooked. He leaped out of the bushes and took off down the path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T21:30:08.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16286" CreationDate="2015-02-21T06:43:24.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the first two Google results explain (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenplay_slug_line&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenplay_slug_line&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.storysense.com/format/headings.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.storysense.com/format/headings.htm&lt;/a&gt;), time of day will only be used where it makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T06:43:24.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16289" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16356" CreationDate="2015-02-21T08:17:45.007" Score="3" ViewCount="186" Body="&lt;p&gt;I overheard a friend say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I was used to writing essays in the American style, where you have to take a position, be really passionate about it, and given arguments with references for and against, show why your position is the right one. I had to change to the British style, where you have to be quite detached, and balance out the for and against arguments, and explain the better position.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assumptions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I get that British and American senses of humour are different because of different historic cultural influences. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k2AbqTBxao&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stephen Fry explains&lt;/a&gt; his theory that the British view of the world is pre-reformation (despite Henry VIII several centuries ago) and focuses on a passive view of the world that is unchangeable.That the American post-reformation and relies more on self-empowerment and individual responsibility. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I know both cultures have different philosophical contexts, the American influence on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Locke's ideas&lt;/a&gt; of natural rights to life, liberty and property as a higher cultural claim. The British have a leaning towards Greek platonic modernism as a higher cultural claim. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(I'm writing as an Australian)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &lt;strong&gt;Is there evidence for a categorical difference between British and American literary argument style?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My apologies for a dramatic oversimplification of the influence of Locke, and the fact that I have left out so many other significant influences. I get that he also had a significant influence on British law and Constitutional theory. My point was to paint a picture of the categories). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12982" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T14:38:13.697" Title="Is there evidence for a categorical difference between British and American literary argument style?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16199" CreationDate="2015-02-21T14:47:13.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were grading this essay I'd be looking to be persuaded to think that your viewpoint is better than one I might have had prior to reading your work. Personally I look for a strong statement to open a persuasive piece, it should be the very first sentence I read. &quot;WH Auden was absolutely, 100% on the money when he said '...'&quot; There's no mistaking which side of the argument you stand on when you open with a statement that cannot be misinterpreted and it sets you up to spend the remainder of your word-count convincing me that you're right. It will also help you to stay on topic if you are constantly re-reading your work as you go because if you have written something tangential it's likely to stand out like dog's balls. By including examples of why arguments alternate to your own will give you the opportunity to convince me further of your wisdom - but you must then go on to effectively tear those antagonistic reasons to shreds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't know if that helps (especially as you posted nearly ten days ago) but good luck regardless, you have a clarity of writing that should be commended. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12985" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T14:47:13.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16015" CreationDate="2015-02-21T15:42:38.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, ask yourself if all the illustrations are necessary (i.e. are these screen captures illustrating a screen with one button on them?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader is going to be very annoyed having to flip back and forth between the procedure and the diagram. I don't have any links to show you for that, but I've done actual testing with users and the overwhelming result is to have the illustration in line with the procedure, even if that same illustration is duplicated in 15 different procedures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about software, however, it's a better practice to have information embedded in the software screen itself (either a tool tip or a pop up tutorial) than making the user look in the documentation for the information (because they won't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Maintaining that kind of documentation becomes a burden for the writer, especially if they have not placed the illustrations by reference and each has to be updated individually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12986" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T15:42:38.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2845" CreationDate="2015-02-21T15:50:15.123" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;FrameMaker, while being the old industry standard, does not support right-to-left languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madcapsoftware.com/products/flare/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Madcap Flare&lt;/a&gt; has been touted for a years on the TECHWR-L forum as an alternative to FrameMaker. I have never used it, so I can't evaluate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adobe InDesign is getting better at working in the same space as FrameMaker, but it's not there yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12986" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T15:50:15.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16293" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-21T19:08:58.033" Score="1" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am being asked to list the publisher location / state as part of an annotated bibliography for a research class. However, this book I feel has two publishers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what the libraries online system shows were it mentions publishers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publisher, Date:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Rockville, MD : U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Office of the Surgeon General ; Washington, DC : For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I have 2 possible options I have thought up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A:&#xA;This post has two publishers - The US Dept. of Health and Human Services which is located in Rockville, MD; Also, the other publisher which is The Office of the Surgeon General which is located in Washington, DC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B:&#xA;I only list Washington DC as the main publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I am confused about is the &quot;&#xA;Public Health Service&quot; they listed. &#xA;I feel that is the first part of &quot;Office of the Surgeon General&quot; causing the second publisher to be &quot;Public Health Service, Office of the Surgeon General&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12988" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T03:28:17.533" Title="Federal Research Book with 2 Publishers?" Tags="|publisher|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16295" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16296" CreationDate="2015-02-23T04:26:32.370" Score="5" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mainly write for academic journals (and creative writing for my own amusement), but from time to time, I publish opinion pieces in various mainstream magazines and newspapers, for which I am modestly compensated.  Recently, some of my pieces have generated a large volume of online comments, some critical, some favorable, and some seeking clarification.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best strategy in this situation? Is a modern writer expected to engage in these online discussions, or as a professional, is it better to &quot;stay above the fray&quot;?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user12678" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-02-23T05:45:21.600" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T03:51:52.170" Title="How to deal with online comments to published pieces?" Tags="|websites|journalism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16295" CreationDate="2015-02-23T05:44:52.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no single standard about this. Whether you engage your readers is up to you, in some cases up to your editor at the publication in question (or perhaps their policies).  Barring that kind of guidance, here are the pros and cons of reading the comments and replying to them: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Joining the discussion can make you part of the community. This can create an image of you as accessible. You can reply quickly and easily, which may be a time-saver if volume is low. However, on larger sites, replying to comments can become a chore. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Refraining from joining in discussions can make you seem aloof, but it has the advantage of letting the participants discuss the issues unencumbered. You can always reply to comments at a later time in another article, if an issue is large enough. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth thinking about whether you're better at conversational writing or considered, careful writing that can be edited and cleaned up. Whether you even read the comments is up to you; there are communities where I'd suggest never even browsing them. But many communities have worthwhile things to say in the comments. You could always join the two approaches, commenting rarely when something can be easily cleared up, saving larger discussions for future articles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T05:44:52.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16298" CreationDate="2015-02-23T10:12:53.790" Score="4" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm planning a novel where the protagonist is an author and regularly writes short stories and shares them with other characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see this as a great opportunity to break out of the narrative and explore his character a little (the stories could be a metaphor different characters or could foreshadow events of the main plot). However I'm unsure about how to structure it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically my chapters are around 5-7 thousand words and I anticipate the &quot;short stories&quot; being around 2-4 thousand. So perhaps I could do a short introduction, the short story then continue with the main plot in the second half of the chapter or would a chapter per short story be better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What steps can I take to make this story within a story approach work? Is the idea of frequently introducing new fictional fictional characters too much to ask of a reader? What steps can I take to make sure the plot isn't too jarring?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8373" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-27T15:11:50.683" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T15:11:50.683" Title="How can I structure a novel to contain short stories?" Tags="|novel|structure|short-story|plot|foreshadowing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16297" CreationDate="2015-02-23T13:01:32.827" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel content outside of the regular narrative flow that is longer than about a page should generally be placed in a separate chapter (or section for shorter fiction), especially when such content is included multiple times within a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_story&quot;&gt;Frame stories&lt;/a&gt; would generally be exceptions to this guideline since the outer story fragments are typically very short. Including a short portion of the outer story at the beginning of an inner story chapter &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The transition to the inner story (at the end of the outer story) may include a small part of the beginning of the included story. This gives the chapter transition more of a dream-blur effect and reduces the separation between the narrative components. If the inner stories are meant to reveal aspects of the protagonist of the outer story, this might be preferred, particularly if the protagonist is specifically sharing his heart. This form of transition would work best if the author of the inner story is reciting the inner story or at least present waiting for the story to be read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the inner story is being read independently, a stronger transition would generally be desired to separate the reader in the outer story from the story itself. (Exceptions would include when the story is meant to be more personal to that reader and when the impression of an immersive narrative is intended.) Giving such strong transition story within a story chapters the titles of the short stories would help clarify that they are not part of the outer story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the inner story is being read by more than one reader, such a strong transition may be especially appropriate, though it could also be effective to use a fragment at the end of multiple chapters to show how different readers are coming to the story from their individual perspectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This introduces the issue of where to place the body of the story. Placing it immediately after the first reader's chapter allows the inner story's content to interact with the context of second reader (e.g., an upbeat inner story might be just what the second reader needs after the stressful experiences preceding the reading). Placing it after the last reader's chapter increases anticipation (which can lead to disappointment if the inner story is weak, though that disappointment might be intentional). Placing the inner story in the middle would bind it more closely to the readers in the adjacent outer story chapters and could be used to reinforce differences in how the inner story affects the different readers; the readers before the story are in some sense coming to the story afresh while the real-world reader's knowledge of the inner story will influence how the later chapters are viewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously an inner story within a shorter work that does not have chapters could use section breaks. Because section breaks are weaker than chapter breaks, a greater sense of relation is implied, potentially requiring more explicit separation in the text itself if the inner story is meant to be more distinct from the reader. On the other hand, using section breaks would facilitate the use of subtle links between the outer and inner stories. In a novel, using section breaks could be effective for infrequent inner stories when the adjacent reader is meant to be particularly close to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T13:01:32.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5392" CreationDate="2015-02-23T13:13:08.017" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is better: I am waiting for your feedback till 02/03/2015&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13000" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T13:13:08.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16295" CreationDate="2015-02-23T13:15:57.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best thing to do with the critism is to not attract yourself. There will be some who like your pieces and there will be those who don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your question, if you are expected to engage in online discussion, I say: make the choice for yourself. If you want to engage in a online discussion then it has to be your own decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12999" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-02-23T19:56:06.053" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T19:56:06.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16303" CreationDate="2015-02-23T14:37:59.630" Score="2" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were fictional, of course, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/16104/is-sending-your-characters-back-to-a-different-century-a-good-way-to-disguise-th&quot;&gt;Lauren Ipsum&lt;/a&gt; has convinced me that if they were real people, a story about a &quot;drug-using detective and his MD sidekick&quot; might expose a writer to a charge of libel. (A story about a detective and sidekick would not be a problem.) Suppose I reversed the order and made it a story about an medical doctor detective and ne'er do well crack-using sidekick. (This is the more expected sequence; Holmes and Dr. Watson are &quot;unusual&quot; to say the least.) Would that differentiate the characters sufficiently from the original?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another theme I've toyed with is that of &quot;Ivan and Donna,&quot; where Ivan is a mogul from East Europe and Donna is his ritzy American wife. Most people would recognize them as Donald and Ivana, of course, but since I've &quot;mixed up&quot; the two characters, would that make it impossible to tell where one character ends and the other begins?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or could that even pass as &quot;parody.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T22:13:20.377" Title="Does &quot;reversing&quot; characters provide enough of a &quot;disconnect &quot;to defend against a libel suit?" Tags="|fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16297" CreationDate="2015-02-23T14:55:10.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is are you writing a novel or a collection of stories? It is possible to use stories as part of a larger work, consider &lt;code&gt;Hyperion&lt;/code&gt;  or &lt;code&gt;Eight Million Gods&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;Canterbury Tales&lt;/code&gt;. The question is what role do the stories play in the larger work? Do they add something? Are they critical to the plot? Are they just a fun aside?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T14:55:10.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16301" CreationDate="2015-02-23T15:12:18.003" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You really should be asking a lawyer rather than a group of writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that for something to be &quot;libel&quot;: (a) It must be written or printed, i.e. not simply spoken (that's &quot;slander&quot;). (b) It must be about a &quot;clearly identifiable person&quot;. (c) It must be false -- truth is an absolute defense against libel. (d) If it is about a public figure, it must be given with &quot;actual malice&quot;, i.e. you must have known that when you said was false and not just have made a mistake. If it is about a private individual, the standard is &quot;negligence&quot;, that is, you failed to take responsible steps to verify that the information was true before printing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess for you the question is about how close your fictional character can be to the actual person before it counts as &quot;clearly identifiable&quot;. I doubt that there's a bright line there. Obviously if you use the person's real name, real occupation, give a physical description, and list his address, that's &quot;clearly identifiable&quot;. If you wrote a story about, say, a corrupt senator, where his name, description, etc did not particularly match any real person, the fact that there are corrupt senators in real life would not be sufficient for one of them to say that you were libeling him. (I have this sudden image of someone arguing in court, &quot;He said that the character in his book was an evil, cheap, lazy, corrupt, philandering, worthless drunk. Obviously he was talking about me!&quot;) If you change the character's name from &quot;Miller&quot; to &quot;Diller&quot;, is that enough? Probably not. But how many letters do you have to change? What if you changed &quot;Miller&quot; to &quot;Deller&quot; or &quot;Delmer&quot; or &quot;Delmar&quot; or &quot;Delman&quot;? At some point I'm sure a court would say that there's no longer any real similarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you trying to push the limits so that you can say nasty things about some real person while avoiding libel charges? Like, you want to accuse some famous person of secretly being a racist or a drug dealer or whatever because you hate him and want to ruin his reputation? If that's the case, I think you're treading on thin ice. If the resemblance is clear enough that a typical reader will understand who you're talking about, then the judge and jury will get it too. If the resemblance is vague enough that it's not obvious to the judge, then it won't be obvious to most readers either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it that there is some real person that you think would make the basis for an interesting character in a story? Like, you read about some political scandal in the news that you think is interesting, and you want to write a fictionalized account? In that case, the easy answer is to just change the characters enough to make them unrecognizable. Don't change &quot;Donald&quot; to &quot;Ronald&quot;. Change &quot;Donald&quot; to &quot;Larry&quot;. If the real person was a tall, thin white man from Massachusetts, make your character a short, fat black woman from Oregon. Etc. Only keep the aspects of the character necessary to make the story work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T15:12:18.003" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16304" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16309" CreationDate="2015-02-23T19:42:01.117" Score="2" ViewCount="1781" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is very similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6834/characters-with-no-names&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. However, I felt it was different enough, and I also did not find an answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the tale I am currently writing, a girl, whose parents have both been long dead, is talking with her adoptive father. I'm having trouble referring to him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally a name is what would be used. However, I don't want to use a name because the girl thinks of the father as her &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; father (She knows he isn't her true father, but loves him as if he were). It's the same relationship. Therefore, referring to him by name would just be weird. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply using 'father' would be the next option, except I don't want to do that. The reader &lt;em&gt;does not yet know&lt;/em&gt; that the father is not the girl's &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; father. Therefore, I don't want to refer to him as the girl's father, because when I reveal the truth, that could get confusing (This question is actually the main bridging conflict, so I can't really remove it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The father has a daughter of his own (referred to here as 'Y'), so I've been referring to him as Y's father. This has worked, but I have nothing else to call him, and the repetition is showing. Removing taglines (the scene is mostly dialogue) and utilizing pronouns has helped some, but I can't use them everywhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I refer to this character, who is too familiar to be referred to by name? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T08:48:42.320" Title="Referring to characters that are too familiar for a name" Tags="|creative-writing|naming|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16304" CreationDate="2015-02-23T19:52:52.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use synomymouses for father, for excemple dad, daddy or father. If you use more languages in your story you can also use the words for father from both languages, language A for one and language B for the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12999" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T19:52:52.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16304" CreationDate="2015-02-23T19:57:23.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, this is a third person narrative, and character X knows that Y is not her real father, but the reader doesn't?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would go with language that matches what the reader knows --&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, refer to him as &quot;X's father&quot; until you're ready for the reveal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's true third person, you could just call him by his first name, but I can understand if you want to stay a little closer to X's perspective than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T19:57:23.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16301" CreationDate="2015-02-23T22:13:20.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your character &quot;Ivan the Eastern European&quot; is a &lt;em&gt;real estate&lt;/em&gt; tycoon, and you give him a hairpiece that everyone jokes about, and have him host a TV show about apprentices, and then have Ivan do despicable and/or humiliating things, then The Donald is for sure going to sue you for libel.  At the least, he'll do it for the publicity, and settle out of court.  At worst, he will quietly seek to destroy you in every way possible to a billionaire.  Even excluding illegal stuff, that still leaves a lot!  So, don't go there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, if your &quot;Ivan and Donna&quot; are better disguised, and if they are flawed but still likeable, then The Donald might actually be amused by your &quot;hero worship.&quot;  (Most billionaires reportedly have big egos, although of course I have no personal knowledge of that.)  But don't make it a kiss-a$$ paean to Donald and Ivana.  That won't sell, and people will laugh at you.  (You never want to fail at boot-licking.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. IANAL&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T22:13:20.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16295" CreationDate="2015-02-24T03:51:52.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's little to gain and much to lose by responding directly to online comments.  For one thing, you have to be extraordinarily disciplined to avoid responding emotionally to criticism.  For another, there are large pools of people who have raised to an artform the skill of drawing people into arguments (and goading them into making unwise responses they can then mock them mercilessly for).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone who has achieved the not-inconsiderable goal of publication in mainstream press, you have a loftier platform than the comments section.  In general, I would stick to your platform, and leave them to theirs --after all, you don't want to risk a reputation that I'm sure took you a lot of time and effort to build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, of course, some people who excel at interacting directly with their fans, and this can be a way for them to build a larger, more loyal audience, but if you want to go this route, make sure you go in with your eyes open.  My best advice would be to put the same level of care, polish and professionalism into your comments as into your articles.  Never be fooled into thinking you're in a private conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T03:51:52.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16304" CreationDate="2015-02-24T07:46:38.353" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the story is told from the perspective of the girl, either in first or third person, she will think of him as her father and that is what you must call him, anything else will feel contrived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only if you are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; writing from the perspective of the girl, but from an omniscient or neutral standpoint, can and should you use terms that she would not use herself or avoid any terms completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-02-25T08:42:27.647" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T08:42:27.647" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16310" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-24T07:49:09.423" Score="0" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a novel. The POV never leaves my main character (third person point of view.) Throughout the story he is given hints at a past life so to say. In reality the man has been alive since the dawn of man kind. Every time his life would end, he forgets his past and starts a new one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in order for the story to conclude and the main plot point to be reached, he needs to remember at least one life and possibly a second. To do that i wanted to have him literally go into the memory so the reader learns everything at the same time as he does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, is that still considered a flashback? (Worried about losing the reader in one that could take up chapters rather then paragraphs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4732" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T08:57:32.173" Title="Question about longer chapter length flashbacks" Tags="|fiction|novel|characters|flashback|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16304" CreationDate="2015-02-24T15:07:02.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are quoting the girl, or writing from her perspective, than you should have her say what she would say if this was real life. The fact that a statement isn't true (in whatever sense) doesn't mean a character in the story shouldn't say it if that is what the character would say in real life. To take an extreme example, if I was writing a story in which the villain is pretending to be a policeman to gain access to a certain place, I'd have him say, &quot;I'm a policeman and I need to get in here.&quot; I certainly wouldn't have him say, &quot;I'm pretending to be a policeman to trick you into letting me in here.&quot; Obviously someone trying to trick people wouldn't just admit it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a reader is confused by characters telling lies or saying things that they think are true but which the reader knows are not, then either you've done it poorly or the reader isn't smart enough to read this book. Or if you are trying to create a mystery, where you lead the reader to believe that X is true and then later reveal that it is not, then the red herring is the whole point. If you give it away before the intended reveal, you've messed up the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where I see a potential problem is if you are writing from the third person. If you write, &quot;Alice brought Bob to meet her boyfriend. 'This is my father', she said.&quot; This just tells the reader that Alice SAID he was her father. If that's what she would say in context, whether true or not, the story is fair. But if you write, &quot;Alice brought her father to meet her boyfriend&quot;, and then later reveal that he is not her father, a reader could object that you lied to him. But of course if you write, &quot;Alice brought the man she thought was her father to meet her boyfriend&quot;, this is a dead give-away that he is not her father. That's the case where you have to find something else to call him. I'd think using a name would be the easy way out. Let the narrator always call him by name even if the character calls him &quot;father&quot; or &quot;daddy&quot; or whatever. I don't think any reader would find it odd that the narrator uses a name while the character uses a title or relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T15:07:02.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16310" CreationDate="2015-02-24T15:12:22.433" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the important question is not whether this qualifies as a &quot;flashback&quot; by some technical definition, but rather whether you make it clear to the reader what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've occasionally read books where there was a flashback and I was well into it before I realized it was a flashback. I started getting confused, saying to myself, &quot;Wait, I thought the hero already knew this, did he forget?&quot; Or, &quot;What happened to his friend Bob? Why isn't he helping?&quot; Or whatever, before I finally figured out, &quot;Oh!!! This is a flashback to BEFORE the last chapter!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you make it clear that the chapter is the hero's previous life or whatever, whether this is technically a flashback or something else doesn't really matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T15:12:22.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16025" CreationDate="2015-02-24T15:19:30.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I am writing a manual, each topic has its own headline, whether the text beneath it is a paragraph, several paragraphs, a procedure, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your subtopics can't support their own headline, then consider that they are really the same topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12986" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T15:19:30.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16316" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-24T15:32:17.600" Score="0" ViewCount="101" Body="&lt;p&gt;An example comes from a cartoon where there is a woman talking to her boyfriend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a &quot;cloud&quot; that comes from her mouth, and the text inside reads: &quot;You're so handsome.&quot; But there is another cloud that comes from the top of her head (brain), and the text reads: &quot;Man, does he have bad breath.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are these &quot;clouds&quot; called? Would &quot;halo&quot; be a suitable term?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what is this technique called that shows what a character is really thinking as opposed to what she is saying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T10:57:17.917" Title="What are the correct terms regarding (this literary) technique?" Tags="|terminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16316" CreationDate="2015-02-24T15:41:12.357" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;They're called &lt;strong&gt;speech bubbles&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;thought bubbles,&lt;/strong&gt; respectively. Speech bubbles usually have clean edges and a kind of triangle pointing to the speaker's mouth; thought bubbles have puffy, cloud-like edges, and the connection to the speaker is a trail of individual round bubbles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might call the technique &quot;disconnect,&quot; but I'm not sure if that's the official term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-02-25T10:57:17.917" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T10:57:17.917" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16319" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16322" CreationDate="2015-02-25T08:42:51.543" Score="1" ViewCount="274" Body="&lt;p&gt;The structure looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 10&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And so Cath began telling me her tale. Which turned out to be grimmer&#xA;  than I'd expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 11&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I've been suffering from migraines ever since high school. I'm not&#xA;  talking about those sissy tickling behind the eyes, but really strong&#xA;  hammerings—so strong, in fact, they sometimes make me want to split my&#xA;  head open and scoop out my brain...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And that's when it came. It began as a tingle in my temples that&#xA;  grew stronger and stronger, until it became a tightening pain. Like&#xA;  the walls of my skull were closing in, squeezing my brain...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 11&lt;/strong&gt; consists mostly on Cath telling her story. The protagonist interrupts only occasionally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I stared at Cath, astounded. &quot;What happened then?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I mulled this over. I'd never thought about nature that way.&#xA;  Imperfection. Was that the reason things like cancer, allergies, and&#xA;  other human afflictions existed? How about death?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure whether I should remove the quotation marks or the parts where the protagonist interrupts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do author usually do in these cases? Which is more pleasant to the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T16:04:20.233" Title="Should I drop the quotation marks in a chapter that consists mostly on a character telling a story?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16310" CreationDate="2015-02-25T08:57:32.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like Jay, I think that it is unimportant what this might be called. I agree with him that the reader should understand what is going on. But to me, much more important is the question wether your readers will want to follow you along that detour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every reader loves a straight story (if it is well told). I have never read a review that complained that there where too few side stories or too few parallel storylines or too few tales told around the campfire. &lt;strong&gt;No one is unhappy about a story that sticks with one protagonist and follows him or her to the end.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I personally dislike parallel storylines. I have written elsewhere in another answer that I get thrown out of the story whenever George R. R. Martin switches to another character in &lt;em&gt;The Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt;, and it feels like I really don't care for the next chapter's character and have a hard time getting back in – only to be thrown out again at the next chapter end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read, I &lt;em&gt;identify&lt;/em&gt; with the protagonist. I care for what he or she cares for. I &lt;em&gt;am&lt;/em&gt; the protagonist, and I want to have things happening and to get to my goal. I don't care about all the tales that my companions tell around the campfire and that some authors make to last chapters, while the enemy is making ready to fall on us. I don't care about what my best friend goes through when the last thing I know is the cliffhanger of some assassin jumping me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you see what I mean? I – for as a reader I am the protagonist – am in the middle of the most exciting or frightening action, and I don't want the author to push the pause button and tell me things that might be interesting at another time but feel completely irrelevant when I'm about to be die, make love, or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I am not the only one. While no one complains of an author sticking with his protagonist, many readers are like me and are thrown out of the story by these crass changes in viewpoint and storyline. You can read it in countless reviews. When you chose to switch, &lt;strong&gt;you will lose some readers&lt;/strong&gt;. How many, will depend on your mastery. I did read GRRM's novels, because they are just so masterfully told, but I did not enjoy it as much as some other books. I was bored by the ents in the &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;, but I did read that chapter, too, eventually (although not the first time around).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I did &lt;em&gt;pay for&lt;/em&gt; those books, and would do so again, but only because those are masterworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you grab me – and the others like me – enough for me to buy another book by you once I was disappointed by your first? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T08:57:32.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16319" CreationDate="2015-02-25T11:01:36.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter if your book is 95% one person speaking. If your character is speaking aloud, and especially if you have a second person who interrupts even once a chapter, you must have punctuation indicating that someone is speaking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I very strongly recommend that you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; just present your story as a wall of 95% one person speaking aloud. If you want Cath to tell her story, make it from Cath's POV, and have her telling the reader instead. Then you can skip the punctuation, because she's &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; to the audience, not speaking aloud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Cath is not your POV narrator, then break up her speech with stage business, action tags, and more interruptions from the other person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T11:01:36.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16324" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-25T13:56:53.567" Score="11" ViewCount="2999" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I've found in most books I've read is that the protagonist is &quot;normal&quot; and/or &quot;average&quot; (at least in the beginning). I believe this is because most readers should be able to relate to the protagonist and if (s)he was superior or simply weird it wouldn't be as relatable. I also read somewhere that your characters can be as weird/crazy/superior etc. as you want them, the only exception is the protagonist who should be more normal/average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine a work of fiction (classic fantasy/scifi) where &lt;strong&gt;the protagonist is the healthy good guy hero&lt;/strong&gt; (and not an 'American Psycho' or anything like that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Would the story work if it was written from the protagonist's&#xA;point of view and (s)he was: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;very weird, like Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;very intelligent, like Sherlock Holmes (In the books, Dr. Watson is the point of view)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;very limited, some say stupid or mentally handicapped, like Hodor from A Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How different from the average can I make my protagonist (if the story is from his/her point of view) without making him/her unrelatable?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12895" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T05:06:08.720" Title="How ordinary must my protagonist be if the book is written from his/her point of view?" Tags="|fiction|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16324" CreationDate="2015-02-25T14:45:45.443" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think your protagonist has to be ordinary to be relatable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While I haven't read the series, isn't the point of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0810993139&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Diary of a&#xA;Wimpy Kid&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; that the protagonist isn't the &quot;healthy good guy hero&quot;&#xA;type?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writer Graham Moore just won an Oscar for his screenplay adapting&#xA;&lt;em&gt;The Imitation Game,&lt;/em&gt; a biography of codebreaker Alan Turing, and said that Turing was one of his heroes precisely because he was a&#xA;weird outcast (who went on to do amazingly heroic things).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greg House, the main character of the TV show &lt;em&gt;House, MD,&lt;/em&gt; is a&#xA;Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and is the smartest guy in the room (and&#xA;often the building). He's obnoxious, arrogant, and occasionally&#xA;cruel, but also brilliant, funny, caring, and occasionally sensitive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The narrator of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0156030306&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Flowers for&#xA;Algernon&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (aka &lt;em&gt;Charly&lt;/em&gt;) starts out as mentally handicapped, becomes brilliant, and&#xA;eventually devolves back to handicapped. The novel is told in the&#xA;first person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your readers aren't all ordinary, for good or ill, so why should all protagonists be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T14:45:45.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16324" CreationDate="2015-02-25T15:56:36.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can certainly write a successful story or novel with a non-traditional POV --I'm thinking of &lt;em&gt;Room&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time&lt;/em&gt; --it will just be a different kind of narrative.  The main thing is that a neutral POV acts like a window onto the wider world of your story --which you can then populate with many strange and interesting things (think Murakami, or Pinkwater).  If the POV is non-traditional, much of what the reader's attention will be drawn to will be the inside of the main character's head.  That may not be what you want if you're doing sf or fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paradoxically, it may also make it more difficult to highlight what is distinctive about your protagonist.  Consider &lt;em&gt;The Great Gatsby&lt;/em&gt; --if it was written from Gatsby's point of view, it would have been hard to give that same golden shimmer to his wealth and ambition.  Nick's fascination with Gatsby is part of what makes Gatsby fascinating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-02-25T16:18:11.437" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T16:18:11.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16324" CreationDate="2015-02-25T15:56:56.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You practically answered your own question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these two cases, you should probably use a third party narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;very intelligent, like Sherlock Holmes (In the books, Dr. Watson is the point of view) &lt;br&gt;&#xA;very limited, some say stupid or mentally handicapped, like Hodor from A Song of Ice and Fire&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first person shouldn't narrate, and the second person can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most other people can narrate for themselves, even &quot;above average&quot; people, as long as they aren't &quot;outliers.&quot; In the above, Holmes is an &quot;outlier&quot; who makes Dr. Watson look &quot;average&quot; by comparison (he's actually well above average).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than the above, you don't need to &quot;limit&quot; your characters, just so they can be (self) narrators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-02-25T16:46:21.717" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T16:46:21.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16324" CreationDate="2015-02-25T16:08:46.070" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It gives the most room to expand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the story progresses, we observe the change of the protagonist, be it growth in strength or fall to corruption, or getting tangled with powers, or struggling to retain virtues against onslaught of temptations. By starting with someone &quot;generic&quot; you give yourself the most room to expand, to make the change more drastic and more meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you start with too many quirks, you run into immediate risk of making your protagonist a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mary sue&lt;/a&gt;. It takes skill and caution to make a &quot;quirky&quot; (be it powerful, or overly unfortunate, or generally &quot;special&quot;) protagonist not become the center of the universe, with the rest of the world revolving around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's one of the &quot;rules that exist to be broken&quot; - if you have a good plot which requires a &quot;special snowflake&quot; at the very beginning, do it - it may be a reversal of the &quot;growth&quot; story, where a tired god seeks escape into a calm life of a common mortal, or it may be a comedy with an arrogant, handsome, rich and famous hero running face first into a situation only fit for a &quot;commoner&quot;, or you may come up with a Machiavellian mind and display its nature through the progress - these are all exceptions, violations of the rule - a rule that says &quot;start with someone very relatable, then put them through a grinder and show what comes out&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2015-02-26T15:30:45.530" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T15:30:45.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16324" CreationDate="2015-02-25T17:26:21.000" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you've gotten some bad advice. Lead characters do not need to be &quot;ordinary&quot;, they need to be &lt;em&gt;realistic&lt;/em&gt;. You could easily write a book from Luna Lovegood's point of view, provided you could make her actions relatable, which is to say, &lt;em&gt;logical&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;reasonable&lt;/em&gt;. That's not the same as &quot;ordinary&quot;, that just means we can understand why she's doing things. If you don't, it will be a frustrating read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same goes for Sherlock Holmes. In fact, he did narrate two stories himself, &quot;The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier&quot; and &quot;The Adventure of the Lion's Mane&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't just true of books, it's also true in other fiction. For example, consider the character of Joey from the sitcom FRIENDS. In that show he's VERY two dimensional: He's astonishly stupid, and fixated on the simple things in life. He's not very realistic at all... which became a big problem when they span him off into his own TV show, JOEY.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your central characters need to be realistic in order to be relatable (and also to generate good stories). Your peripheral characters can be bizarre and two dimensional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much the reader enjoys spending time in their company is a completely different matter. I don't think Hodor is particularly realistic, but either way, he's also very dull. The world through his eyes probably wouldn't be very interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4927" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T17:26:21.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16331" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16335" CreationDate="2015-02-25T17:59:52.840" Score="0" ViewCount="1012" Body="&lt;p&gt;My novel has a lot of fighting scenes. It's natural since its about a war.&#xA;The problem is that people don't read books for fighting scenes. &#xA;Numerous fighting scenes is just bad writing. J.R.R. Tolkien decided to knock Bilbo Baggins unconscious rather than to write a single one (although I did read the abridged version of &lt;em&gt;The Hobbit&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good way to skip over the action scenes? I don't plan to write too many of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have right now is basically this: The monsters attacked Maeken. He slew the primitive beasts with the several tricks up his sleeve that he had learned over the years.&#xA;Blah blah backstory. Maeken beheaded the final monster and surveyed the field of corpses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-24T16:33:46.577" LastActivityDate="2020-11-27T18:19:47.717" Title="Skipping the action scene" Tags="|style|scene|combat|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16332" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16337" CreationDate="2015-02-25T20:12:41.817" Score="2" ViewCount="422" Body="&lt;p&gt;My story is of a fantasy world where the wars of several species have all been fought, lost, and the protagonist is writing his journal from inside a jail cell. The writing he does can't be erased. I want to keep all his thoughts in. Would it be too much if I kept part of the writing in the journal, but just have it crossed out? What I want to do is keep the mistakes in his writing crossed out but legible so readers can read his real thoughts/things he edits out of his journal. Would this be too much? Would people understand what I'm doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13018" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T22:26:23.983" Title="Am I making the writing too complex?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16332" CreationDate="2015-02-25T20:27:19.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Samuel Delany does this effectively near the end of Dhalgren, but only for fairly brief passages.  As with any stylistic innovation, you have to make it worth the reader's effort to adjust to it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, &quot;realism is just another style.&quot;  I would use this sparingly and only for things you actually want to convey to the reader, not just for the sake of verisimilitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T20:27:19.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16332" CreationDate="2015-02-25T21:30:23.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gael Baudino sort of did this in her &lt;em&gt;Water!&lt;/em&gt; trilogy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the three books (&lt;em&gt;O Greenest Branch, The Dove Looked In, Branch and Crown&lt;/em&gt;) she kept switching not merely narrator and POV, but the entire narrative style: parts were standard narration, then parts were being told by a marketing guy as he was getting mugged, then parts were a stone-cutting manual which was increasingly crossed out and being used as a religious text. Everything in the &quot;stone-cutting manual&quot; section was legible, since the words were literally &lt;strike&gt;crossed out&lt;/strike&gt;, but it got confusing after more than a few paragraphs. Later in the third book there might have been entire pages struck out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was also the technique used by Christopher Tolkien in the &quot;slush books&quot; of his father's trilogy, showing how JRR wrote text and then crossed it out to rewrite it as something else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Chris Sunami notes, use strike-out sparingly. Treat it like salt: a little is good, too much is unpalatable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also convey the same idea in other ways: write the text, then in narration say &quot;Dave looked over his words and rolled his eyes. He drew a big X over the entire paragraph, and picked up from &lt;em&gt;when I get out of here&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T21:30:23.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16331" CreationDate="2015-02-25T22:12:54.417" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As to a good way to skip the action scenes - what you have seems fine. It's basically just that - skipping the action scenes. Say 'he slew the monsters,' and you can technically stop there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, I think you're going about this wrong. Fighting scenes can be tedious in a book. Does this mean you should skip them? No, it means you need to know how to write them correctly. A book with no action will not bore the reader if it is written correctly, but it will certainly make the job a lot harder for you. Action is a useful device for maintaining reader interest (note: useful, not necessary to certain types of books). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to relate action scenes, from my own experience, is not to focus on the action. Focus on the emotions. Focus on the inner action, not the outer action. By all means, detail the scene with every move made. But show &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; every move was made, and what they meant. Follow the PoV's thoughts as he performs the action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T22:12:54.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16331" CreationDate="2015-02-26T01:44:09.777" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not convinced of your premise that people don't read books for action scenes, nor that numerous fighting scenes are &quot;just bad writing.&quot; I'd argue that knocking a character out &lt;strong&gt;just&lt;/strong&gt; to skip an action scene is bad writing. &lt;em&gt;The Hobbit&lt;/em&gt; certainly had battle scenes, I remember one where Gandalf was turning pine-cones into fire bombs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tolkein's &lt;em&gt;The Two Towers&lt;/em&gt; contained multiple battle's that spanned multiple chapters. If i remember correctly there was a battle that lasted for two chapters, and another that lasted three. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we have two, apparently conflicting, examples of handling action scenes from the same author. I think this illuminates the fact that that &lt;strong&gt;story&lt;/strong&gt; is whats important. You shouldn't skip action scenes because you have some irrational belief that writing too many is &quot;just bad writing,&quot; you should only skip the scene if it serves your &lt;strong&gt;story&lt;/strong&gt;. If your story is better told with cover-to-cover action scenes, write it that way; if a scene hurts your story, then you should excise it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13022" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T01:44:09.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16332" CreationDate="2015-02-26T07:37:13.077" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was young and started to write, I was so in love with the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; of writing that I thought to publish that process. I made a huge effort of recreating my notebooks into a layout program, with all the crossed out words, the notes in the margins, the sideways and upside down text. I got that book printed, and it looked very fine and interesting. I gave a few copies to reviewers, and the reviews where very scholarly and deep and satisfying to me. But, surprisingly, no one bought even a single copy of my book. Eventually, after having them sit in my basement for a few years, I threw them all away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only later did I realize that I had created a book that I would never have bought or read myself. I like a well-told story. I dislike experimental writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even later, I realized that fiction writing &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; contain all of reality, only in a transformed manner. &lt;strong&gt;Writing works in that the author makes use of what the reader knows.&lt;/strong&gt; For example, a reader knows what a car is, and you don't have to explain it, you can just use the word &quot;car&quot;. A reader knows how it feels to drink hot tea, you don't have to attach a container to your book that the reader can drink from, to evoke that exerpience, all you need to say is &quot;hot tea&quot; and the reader is there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a similar way, readers know how handwriting a text works. They have all done it. They know that you cross out sections and rewrite them. You do not have to literally do it to show the reader that the protagonist does it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The skill of writing is to use words to evoke the reader's knowlege of the world in a way that the reader feels almost as if it was really happening.&lt;/strong&gt; If you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; need to do what you are narrating, then you have not yet mastered the craft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking the rules and conventions of literary writing, as Samuel R. Delany has done, should be attempted only if you know what you are doing. You learn to walk first, before you start to dance. Or you will lose your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Christopher Tolkien did not &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; crossed out text, he published a historical critical edition of his father's works for scholars to study J.R.R.T.'s writing process. Some experimental writers have emulated this (me, for example), some going so far as to publish facsimiles of their notebooks, but that is not an approach that works for most readers, and since, as a writer, you are not writing for yourself but to be read, you might want to avoid what most readers will avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2015-03-03T22:26:23.983" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T22:26:23.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16332" CreationDate="2015-02-26T07:41:14.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two basic applications of this technique: serious and comedic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the serious version, your character changes opinion about given passage while writing it. It tells about character development, how their view of things changes through introspection and reminiscence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My best friends gave their lives for &lt;strike&gt;this country&lt;/strike&gt; the wealth of the oil tycoons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technique is also quite successfully used for comedic effect where the character first expresses true thoughts and then replaces them with euphemisms, for example replacing childish glee of enthusiasm with more serious and moderate approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strike&gt;Yes, yes! I'm yours, let's do it!&lt;/strike&gt; This idea has some merit and is worthy of further consideration.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: strike-through considerably reduces legibility. Don't overuse it. Crossing out single sentences is okay, but if you cross out entire paragraphs, you're abusing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T07:41:14.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16331" CreationDate="2015-02-26T07:51:09.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Approach this the same way you approach everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some books contain eating and cooking to an extent that you could recreate the exact meal, if you wanted, others just let the reader assume that the characters eat, without mentioning it at all. War is no different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make up your mind what your story is about. That is what &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A detective story does not need to show the murder happening. But the protrait of a serial killer must show how that protagonist feels and behaves while he kills. In that case, skipping the murder would be odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is your story about a fighter? Then you must show him fight. Is it about someone with a non-fighting story who &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; has to fight (just like everyone has to go to the toilet, even that is not the premise of their story)? Then show him doing what his story is about and skip the fighting (like you would skip his bowel movements).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T07:51:09.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16324" CreationDate="2015-02-26T08:15:16.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Your protagonist must be like your readers.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in those aspects that are relevant for your story. People cannot relate to characters that are too much unlike them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you need to define your target audience, and then make your protagonist &amp;quot;ordinary&amp;quot; for those readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write for children, you protagonist must be childlike (no matter his age or species). If you write for a military magazine, your protagonist must be militant. If you write for computer geeks, adolescent prison inmates, or retired bankers, you must make your characters relateable to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why Superman has doubts (where a real Superman would be confident), because that story is not about a Superman but about that comic book's readers and how &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; feel, magnified through the superpowers of the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T08:15:16.307" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16324" CreationDate="2015-02-26T08:28:49.497" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Glennkill&quot; is written from a sheep's point of view.  Which is one of its main points of attraction.  I remember a story from the perspective of a cup (Böll maybe?).  &quot;The Remarkable Rocket&quot; from Wilde's &quot;The Happy Prince and Other Stories&quot; has fireworks as protagonists.  Of course, the Happy Prince himself is a statue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many fairy tales have things as protagonists.  &quot;Toy Story&quot; takes up this kind of topos as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13024" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T08:28:49.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16342" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16362" CreationDate="2015-02-26T15:31:42.800" Score="0" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the movie, &quot;The Perez Family,&quot; there was a scene that featured the band playing something like two lines of the song &quot;I Will Survive&quot; before there was a voice-over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my screenplay, I have the hero enter a karaoke contest singing &quot;Girl From Ipahema,&quot; and if it were made into a movie, he'd be shown singing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Tall and tan and young and lovely &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The girl from Ipanema goes walking &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And when she passes &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Each guy she passes goes aaah.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a movie featured &quot;all&quot; of &quot;nearly all&quot; of these songs, the producers would have to pay royalties to the rights holders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what determines how much of an excerpt can they present without paying? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any lawyers on the site that can cite &quot;hard and fast&quot; rules for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it a &quot;softer&quot; process where you write to e.g. the William Morris Agency, and ask them how of much the song one can use without paying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-02-27T00:12:37.650" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T16:24:27.560" Title="How does one determine how much of a song you can use without paying?" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16324" CreationDate="2015-02-26T16:13:10.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relateable Characters&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favorite childhood character growing up was Bilbo Baggins.  He was a single-living half-sized creature with a magical ring who was cowardly but clever, and had a great reluctance to try to go on any sort of adventure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm nothing like Bilbo Baggins, yet I can relate to dreams of adventure and wanting to be a quick-witted hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another of my favorite books was &quot;Catherine Called Birdy&quot;, a book about everyday life growing up in mideival times, told through the diary entries of a teenage girl set in the period, but told with the voice of a more modern teenage girl.  She was clever, a bit mischevious, but had a good heart and was a strong female role model, but stuck in a situation that she could not very well control (betrothed to a loathesome man)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a woman, nor am I in mideival times, but I can relate to being forced into situations that are out of my control and wishing I could change them.  And I can understand what it's like to be a girl because I have a sister and a mother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Growing up, one of the books that struck me most clearly as a complex work of fiction was &quot;One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest&quot;, told from the perspective of a silent, stoic, mentally-scarred indian Chief, and prominently featuring a convicted con-man faking a mental disorder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm nothing like either of those two men (somewhat thankfully) yet I can still enjoy this story and relate to their struggle, and I hope you're seeing the pattern here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Readers do not need to be identical to the main character to relate to them.&lt;/strong&gt;  They can see things in themselves, relate to them through people that they know, or simply relate to their struggle as a fellow human being.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no reason you have to write your character as an &quot;everyman&quot;, in fact I highly recommend you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; do that, as it will instantly make your main character forgettable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give them flaws, give them quirks, give them something that makes them who they are, and readers who have their own quirks flaws and unique characteristics will find things to relate to, if not directly to the character than to someone they know &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; that character, and if not that, then simply to the struggle of being human*.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*To say nothing of being able to relate to the characers of Redwall despite not being a mouse, badger, squirrel, sparrow or any other woodland creature.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5744" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T16:13:10.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16342" CreationDate="2015-02-26T16:48:35.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I think it varies depending the country. I think that in the US and for a US distribute fil is around 20 seconds... I could be wrong&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13029" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T16:48:35.227" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16324" CreationDate="2015-02-26T17:54:08.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key thing is not that they are everyman, it's that people can relate to them. If it's Dr Who or Gandalf, no - they're totally other. But if it's someone like Einstein or Alan Turing, it can work if they're also going through normal human life struggles that your audience can relate to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference with using a non-traditional narrator, is that now you have to write in their voice. &lt;em&gt;Flowers for Algernon&lt;/em&gt; is the perfect example of this as we see his life transform through his eyes. Consider also Huckleberry Finn or numerous other stories where the writer uses the narrator's vernacular. To pull this off is trickier than it might appear (as you will probably find out if you do this). You have to &lt;strong&gt;understand&lt;/strong&gt; how your narrator sees the world through his eyes. Hence, using Einstein is not suitable unless you can understand how one sees the world when one is a persecuted, egomaniacal, super-genius.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if your dealing with a fantasy world, that becomes somewhat easier as you define the world's parameters. But you still have to make the narrator &quot;human&quot;, at least in their perceptions. &lt;em&gt;The Pride of Chanur&lt;/em&gt; comes to mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13032" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T17:54:08.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15930" CreationDate="2015-02-26T20:00:15.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess is that the average reader does not know Lulu and CreateSpace from any other online store. But some people would recognize those as POD companies. And some of those would guess that you are a small publisher. And some of those would assume that your book is less professional than a traditional publisher's book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the reason I don't link to my books on the CreateSpace store: I would like my books to be stocked in bookstores. Bookstores are likely to recognize CreateSpace as a POD company, and be less eager to stock a CreateSpace book on their shelves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But CreateSpace can distribute your books through Amazon (as Aibrean says) and also lots of other retailers. If your cover and description are professional looking, your book will look no different from any other book in those retailers' stores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to be aware of with CreateSpace: If you use their free ISBN, they list themselves as the publisher of your book. So the listing on Amazon and other retailers would show CreateSpace as the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to use your own imprint, you have to buy one of CreateSpace's not-free ISBNs, or (as I do) buy the ISBN from your ISBN registrar and use that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T20:00:15.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16331" CreationDate="2015-02-26T20:26:19.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;my favorite fight scene of all time is when David Webber has Honor cut a guy in half with a sword. The whole fight is one stroke of the sword. On the other hand the whole book is about a fight centered around that single stroke of the sword. Webber's Honor books are a great examples of the fight following and influencing the politics. It is not that the action is in balance with the plot, but that the fight is part of the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T20:26:19.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16342" CreationDate="2015-02-26T20:48:38.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no line in the sand when it comes to fair use. It would be much simpler if there was and you could write rules to allow a computer to check, but is better that there is no hard line. Sometimes it is fair use to copy an entire work. Sometimes it is not fair use to copy a single letter. And just to make things complicated are recommended but unnecessary licences where an otherwise fair use is explicitly paid for, either to limit perceived liability or to just make people happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples of whole work fair use copying: Strongs Concordance, The Annotated Alice, The Google Library Scanning Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T20:48:38.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16324" CreationDate="2015-02-26T21:07:00.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you haven't done so already, get and read &quot;One flew over the cuckoo's nest&quot; from Ken Kesey.  Don't bother with the movie.  It misses the perspective of the book, sacrificing most of its power.  The book is written from the perspective of Chief Bromden, a hallucinating shadow of a giant reduced into submission by drugs and psychological warfare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading the book is very, very worthwhile not just because it should answer your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13037" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T21:07:00.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16350" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16368" CreationDate="2015-02-26T23:12:07.163" Score="3" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a nice sideline as a freelance journalist. Obviously editors consider my work good enough on the whole to be worth commissioning, although I'm sure I could do better in many respects. But it must get readers, else I wouldn't keep getting hired. However, there is one thing I know I'm very bad at: encouraging discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this day and age when so much written work is published to the web, and communities are used to being able to comment, that's a fairly major shortcoming. Sometimes editors have a specific desire to incite discussion. Sometimes it's just nice to engage with the people that read my work. Sometimes I'd actually quite like to be able to write a polemic, without trying to be reasonable. But even that often fails to get comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an amateur blog post I wrote recently which got no traction at all, and inspired this question:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fortressat.com/articles-trash-culture/5188-bolt-thrower-xcom-board-game-dark-souls-starship-troopers-johnny-flynn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://fortressat.com/articles-trash-culture/5188-bolt-thrower-xcom-board-game-dark-souls-starship-troopers-johnny-flynn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here's a professional piece I did which is a rare example of me succeeding in generating discussion:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Android/Neon+Shadow/feature.asp?c=63745&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Android/Neon+Shadow/feature.asp?c=63745&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling to see why one worked and the other didn't: both are just me laying down opinions and backing up with a few examples and a bit of evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the reason, I struggle to present arguments in a way that encourages readers to want to answer. How can I write in a manner that leads to more comments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(A linked post and possible duplicate: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/15811/how-can-i-encourage-more-comments-on-my-blog&quot;&gt;How can I encourage more comments on my blog?&lt;/a&gt; - I guess my question is more personal, more technical, and less about marketing)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6371" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T13:20:26.967" Title="How can I write in a way that encourages discussion?" Tags="|blog|audience|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-26T23:16:50.383" Score="4" ViewCount="25226" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the convention when you want to dedicate a work to someone who is dead?  It is necessary to be explicit about that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I am writing my thesis and would like to dedicate it to my parents. However my father passed away while I was studying. I would like to dedicate it to both him and my mother, any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ok to say &quot;to my loving parents&quot; even though one of them is actually not with us anymore?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13038" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2015-03-03T23:04:30.777" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T00:36:03.780" Title="Including a deceased person in a dedication" Tags="|academic-writing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16353" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16355" CreationDate="2015-02-27T11:36:44.023" Score="5" ViewCount="2276" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since a lot of what they say is by definition irrelevant to the plot should I just skim over it?  I'm worried this might make their manner unclear to the reader and I don't want their impression of this character to rely solely on the opinions of the narrator.  I feel like including longer sections of their dialogue might work for a short story but would get annoying quite quickly in a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For context my POV character is comparatively quiet and private but humors this character because they're working together, they eventually become friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13042" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T22:46:22.343" Title="How to write a character who uses a lot of smalltalk without boring the reader?" Tags="|characters|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16353" CreationDate="2015-02-27T13:36:54.237" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, show the character - the introduction should present them in detail, following the inevitably boring blather. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the reader knows the character and their vice, you can start skimming, letting the narrator replace the actual blather (&quot;after ten minutes of introduction and catching up on recent gossip...&quot;). Keep reminding the reader, exposing them to bits of the small talk now and then, but just not enough to bore them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, whenever it matters, return to the actual blather - where it won't be boring. Say, we're in an urgent situation and the annoying person just can't get to the point. Or we have a moment of downtime right when the sky is in the process of falling, the character fills the silence with blather, and another character just snaps at the incessant babbling. Or contrary, an antagonist is trying to squeeze information from the team, and the 'talker' just drives them crazy by talking everything except of what matters. Or a disaster happens because an important information just got lost in the sea of trivialities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't make a character who uses a lot of smalltalk without reason. It's an annoying trope and stories are better off without it unless it can serve a valid purpose. Maybe the character is secretly an introvert with a dark secret, shielding themselves with a habit they know to be annoying and repulsive, to drive others away. Maybe the character will fall entirely silent at that one crucial moment, creating a deep, ominous impression that &lt;em&gt;it is now&lt;/em&gt;. Maybe they are really clever and can use their blather to manipulate others; the apparently annoying vice being in fact a powerful weapon. Or maybe they keep talking to silence the inner demons, not to let out things that really bother them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it's tricky and difficult to strike balance between showing the character and keeping it interesting. If you don't have a really good reason, just don't do it. But such a character does have a lot of potential, and a proper build-up - even if annoying and boring - can be immensely rewarding, and if you really let that character shine in the end, all the sins of boredom committed earlier will be forgiven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T13:36:54.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16289" CreationDate="2015-02-27T14:38:13.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't answer for the American system of essay writing, if there is one. However, I studied History and Philosophy to University degree level here in the United Kingdom and I was definitely expected to write in what you call the &quot;British&quot; style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, we were expected to report both sides of the argument fairly (to show we actually understood the arguments being made) before exploring the strengths and weaknesses of each side and drawing a conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When coming to a conclusion, we were expected to explain why we were rejecting the arguments with which we disagreed as well as explaining why the arguments we accepted carried the greater force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I graduated in 1985 but, unless matters have changed dramatically since my day, then I would say there is a distinctive difference between American and British styles of essay writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T14:38:13.697" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8114" CreationDate="2015-02-27T14:44:16.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the two other posters and would like to caution you from always using correct grammar for dialogue. When people are talking out loud, they don't use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head, this is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Something I said?&quot; he asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Every time, another complaint,&quot; she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Try living with yourself sometime,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Comm Ave,&quot; she said. &quot;There.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What?&quot; he asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Comm Ave, where I lived with myself and loved it. Absolutely.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're at a restaurant or coffee shop, try recording two people nearby talking to each other.  Just for a brief bit.  Then take dictation - write down exactly what each one says to the other from the recording. It will inform your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13046" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T14:44:16.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16351" CreationDate="2015-02-27T14:49:07.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry to learn of your father's death. To answer your question, I would ask a few questions of my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did your father ever stop loving you before he died?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he were alive today, would he continue to love you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did your father's love for you help you to achieve your educational ambitions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has he love for you helped to shape who you are today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already know from your question what the answers will be. I think, therefore, that your father has every right to the dedication you want to make to him. He has loved you, sponsored you, worried about you and encouraged you to this point and the only reason he cannot physically show his love for you now is because, sadly, he is no longer alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how old you are but your Dad put x years of love and work into you - and it is your thesis and your way of recognising what both your mother and your father have contributed to make you the scholar you are today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the rest of the world, it is an unfortunate fact of life that no-one else will actually care about the wording of your dedication. However, your thesis is the culmination of your studies, is something intensely personal to you and - I imagine - you will keep a copy of it for many, many years to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do dedicate your thesis to your loving parents, no-one but you and your mother will care - but it will mean something important for a long time to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you only dedicate your thesis to your living mother, she will be hurt (assuming she loved your father).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not dedicate your thesis to your father and mother together, no-one else will ever care ... but you will and you will live to regret your decision for many years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be proud of who you are. Be proud of how your parents have helped you. Dedicate your thesis to your loving parents and you will have something to treasure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. And write the very best thesis you possibly can! Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T14:49:07.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16351" CreationDate="2015-02-27T15:00:22.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The phrase &quot;to [name]&quot; is perfectly applicable to persons past, present and future, as it does not contain a finite verb form or any other time reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is no reason why a book could not be dedicated to someone who is no longer alive. Many books that I own are dedicated to persons that were part of the authors life but are no longer with us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some authors expand the dedication, explaining the relationship (&quot;to my son Paul&quot;), the reason for the dedication (&quot;for their help with...&quot;), when they lived (&quot;1907-1983&quot;) or whatever else the author wants to mention. Some dedications are quite mysterious though (&quot;to D.&quot;), and only comprehensible for the person in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T15:00:22.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16350" CreationDate="2015-02-27T15:10:04.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a quick read of both posts and, to my mind, the writing styles were noticeably different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention nothing about traffic in your question but it might be pertinent to your writing. Obviously if one website only attracts 1,000 visitors and another attracts 10,000 visitors then it would be unrealistic to expect the same level of reader engagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a journalist, it seems a reasonable expectation to ask your commissioning editor or whoever to give you some site statistics. What is the traffic to the website? How many visits did you have to the page over the course of - say - a month, two months, three months? I'm surprised you are not asking for these sorts of numbers so you can bang them into a spreadsheet and see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. how much traffic the commissioning website attracts&#xA;b. how much traffic your article attracted&#xA;c. how many comments were posted over different periods of time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then start to analyse your performance much better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, stuff written for the internet hangs around for ever. For example, yesterday, I saw that someone had upvoted some comments I made on a newspaper article using Disqus. Nothing unusual about that - except that I made the comments over three years ago! It is not unusual for people to find articles, read comments and vote accordingly. At least, it seems to happen to me a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to the actual writing. As I said, I read both the sample posts. To my mind, the differences between them were quite marked. The article with fewest comments was much more wishy-washy than the other one. In the more popular article, you made punchy points and your position was clear. In the less popular article, it came across to me as if you had no strong views or did not want to offend anyone or did not want to say anything contentious. It was literary blancmange. As articles go, it was okay but it provoked no strong feelings in me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know nothing about gaming and intend to learn nothing more than I already know. That having been said, I could see immediately that the more popular article struck positions. Where you have a position, you create the opportunity for someone to agree or disagree and to want to say so publicly. Where you say nothing contentious, no-one will comment because there's nothing to support or oppose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I don't know the terms of your commissions. Are you being asked to write a balanced article to inform readers or should you perhaps deliberately throw in something for them to kick against? I often find that articles are the starting point of knowledge because expert &quot;civilians&quot; chip in with their particular areas of expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your commissioning editor wants to have a website where he is the &quot;expert&quot; delivering received wisdom to the readers, your writing style will obviously have to conform. However, if the aim is to attract traffic for other reasons (advertising or whatever), then maybe you should think about writing slightly more controversial opinions. You do not need to be rude about it as the American &quot;shock jocks&quot; so often are - but give people some meat to tear apart with their teeth. You don't have to believe everything you write but perhaps you should write more to provoke debate and less to give a completely balanced opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, before rushing off to change anything, work with your commissioning editor to determine what it is your writing is expected to achieve. I am willing to bet that even some of your commissioning editors haven't fully thought that one through!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T15:10:04.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16353" CreationDate="2015-02-27T15:31:20.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember the law of conservation of detail: When a detail isn't important, don't waste time describing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When literal speech does not contain any information which is relevant for the plot, get rid of it. You can instead describe the conversation in an abstract summary to convey that the conversation did happen, but the content wasn't relevant. Switch back to literal speech when the conversation turns to something plot-important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While waiting in the lobby Bob and Alice killed time by chatting about the weather. Then Bob tried to start a discussion about recent sports events, but Alice didn't seem to be interested. After about half an hour of idle smalltalk, Bob finally got the courage to ask the question he wanted to ask for weeks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Alice, would you like to go out with me?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T15:38:36.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16342" CreationDate="2015-02-27T16:24:27.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Zero seconds. If you can recognize the song - you pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://studentpressblogs.org/nspa/the-non-existent-30-second-rule/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The (non-existent) 30-second rule&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12735" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T16:24:27.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16353" CreationDate="2015-02-27T22:46:22.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to the answers already given: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If your POV allows it, you can add humor or pathos (or both) by continually interrupting the blathering with the main character's thoughts.  Those thoughts can be internal commentary on the inane blather, or juxtaposed seriousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) When people rudely interrupt the blatherer it can be quite humorous.  Think Archie Bunker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) The blathering itself can be quite funny, especially if it keeps veering further and further off-track.  (Think Edith Bunker, and lots of Shakespeare clowns.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Giving only snatches of the (continual) blathering can be very effective.  This would work best with 1st-person POV (where of course the 1st person is NOT the blatherer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just don't overdo it.  You have to keep interrupting the blathering with &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;.  Nobody wants to read 3 paragraphs of non-stop blathering.  In movies/TV, one can have that, because other stuff is going on simultaneously.  The blathering then turns into background noise, either because visual events have captured your main attention or because the volume is reduced below &quot;foreground dialogue&quot;.  In a novel, you must use other techniques to turn the blathering into background noise (which occasionally intrudes into the foreground).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Literary examples that come to mind: The pushy lady in &quot;The Catbird Seat&quot; by James Thurber; Mr. MacCawber in &quot;David Copperfield&quot;; Mr. Collins in &quot;Pride and Prejudice&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T22:46:22.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16350" CreationDate="2015-02-28T03:24:55.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's look at the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First (the failed one) is a mixed bag of... &quot;I did &lt;em&gt;thing&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. It's definitely your personal blog where you just report things you've been doing, and adding a short piece of opinion to each of them. And you've been doing various things. There's no direction, no focus, nothing to bind it into a solid whole. It's like a Facebook timeline, &quot;played X, didn't like it.&quot; It's generic, so it doesn't attract much readership, and the pieces are so separated that even if a reader has an opinion on one, they are discouraged from sharing it, simply because they would nitpick at a tiny piece without touching a much bigger rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other article presents a solid, controversial, focused opinion and then keeps selling it. Every paragraph serves a purpose, to further that opinion, be it through direct points or poking at its weaker sides to show they aren't really that weak (&quot;autoaim is executed well, but autoaim takes fun from FPS&quot;). The readers can express their opinion on the core subject, poke at different weak sides, provide more examples, more arguments, counterarguments - there is something to discuss!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have two articles, one being a random, fragmented info dump, and the other a well structured, controversial argument. There's nothing to do but nod and move forward with the first one, while the other engages the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that specific point, &quot;controversial&quot;. The FPS games for mobiles are being sold, the market proves that. And even if through buyer's remorse, there will be people who will oppose your argument - &quot;fans&quot; of mobile FPS. Or maybe shills of the developers. Or trolls finding fertile ground. No matter, you set a direction, created one solid rift, an argument, and people can start arguing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I was reading the first piece I was somewhat tempted to argue about Dark Souls. Blighttown isn't all that hard if you realize it's blight for your enemies as well. But then why pick out that little piece of a much bigger whole?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I read your second piece. Okay, I agree, no argument here. Then I see the comments and that moron who says mobile FPS is good because the console controller makes the camera move like a robot. Yes, a weelchair is better than crawling. Ever tried walking though? Ever played FPS with a mouse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's where discussion is born - when people have something to argue about. When people with too limited view get corrected, and then they defend their misguided opinions. And if the core article presents a flawed opinion then all hell breaks loose...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-02-28T03:24:55.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16366" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-28T11:25:32.423" Score="5" ViewCount="5382" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I don't know how to make the title less ambiguous, I will explain myself with examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 1: imagine that in a dialogue between two mathematicians, one reads aloud the following sentence from a paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The variable x is greater than the variable y.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you write his dialog line? That is, complete the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey, look at this.&quot; He said.  &quot;According to this paper, the variable ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2: a character spells a word or abbreviation, such as 'TM1'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think all the following look awkward inside a dialogue line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I liked the TM1 better.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I liked the T M one better.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I liked the tee em one better.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13057" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T06:00:01.610" Title="In a dialogue, how do you write that a character says a letter?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16366" CreationDate="2015-02-28T12:07:30.437" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I have no problem with writing single letters or numbers in dialogue, particularly if they are acronyms. All the following look fine to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The variable x is greater than the variable y.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I liked the TM1 better.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I drive a Mazda 2.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;But there is no MI-6!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Captain, the Klingons are at 132 mark 47.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Captain's log, Stardate 8130.3.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen &quot;Stardate eight one three zero point three,&quot; but &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; looks silly to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-02-28T12:07:30.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16350" CreationDate="2015-02-28T12:15:51.307" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Title&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It starts with the title. Let's compare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bolt Thrower: XCOM Board Game, Dark Souls, Starship Troopers, Johnny Flynn&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone talking about their random musings about four seemingly unrelated topics. I doubt that the article will be in any way more coherent that the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Opinion: It's time to give up on first and third person shooters for mobile&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Woow! What a bolt statement! Someone claims a whole business industry must change their focus. They say people should not like what they like. I am already forming my retort in my head before even reading the first paragraph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;First impression&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I am a busy person. I don't have time to read an article more than a page long unless I know it will mention something which interests me. So I scroll down and skim the article. What do I see?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One picture of the box-art of a game, wall of text, the sub-headers &quot;Video Games&quot;, &quot;Films &amp;amp; TV&quot; and &quot;Music&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are really broad topics. I am interested in &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; video games and &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; films and &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; genres of music, but not all. I have no idea if the article talks about those I care about. So better not take the risk that I could be wasting my time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Screenshots of Deus Ex for iPad, Tomb Raider, Bioshock and a fourth game I don't recognize but sure looks interesting. Sub-headers &quot;Performance issues&quot; and &quot;Stop it&quot;. There are also some links which catch my eye through their color. They also mention some games I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know those games and I have strong opinions about some of them. I wonder if the author shares my view or dares to have a different (certainly wrong!) opinion. That fool - he will pay for his insolence when he reads my comment!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Content&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's talk about the article content. The first one&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;tl;dr&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;tl;dr&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, didn't read either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What? Why is your cursor moving to the downvote button? Does that not make my answer useful? My laziness makes me just like the vast majority of your visitors. The usual internet user opens an article, skims it, and decides within seconds whether or not they want to read it. Most of the times they won't. When you don't manage to &lt;em&gt;immediately&lt;/em&gt; catch the attention of your reader, they will close the browser tab and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Just kidding. I did actually read both articles. But really, the content doesn't matter as much as the first two points.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some final tips for blogging&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Appearance is everything on the web. Make your articles appealing with many images, sub-headers and links.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Links&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_a.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;links&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;links&lt;/a&gt;! Links help your users to find more informations and they help search engines to better index the web. But mostly, they are useful eyecatchers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick a title which is already your conclusion. That way the reader already knows where you stand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you write an article, write an article about one topic and one topic only. When you want to talk about multiple topics, create multiple articles. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you would like to talk about multiple unrelated things, you should create multiple unrelated blogs. People who subscribe to a blog do so because it caters to their specific interest. A blog about everything and nothing will not gather a followship as easily as one with a clear focus. So when you like to talk about video games and about movies and about music, you should create three separate blogs, each one focusing on one of these areas of interest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2015-03-04T13:20:26.967" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T13:20:26.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16371" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-28T18:12:19.417" Score="2" ViewCount="992" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am referencing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MySQL documentation&lt;/a&gt; in a paper. Would it be appropriate to reference it in its entirety, or should I create a citation for each page I use since it's very large?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13062" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-03-01T03:51:29.087" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T09:07:57.000" Title="APA Citation on online documentation" Tags="|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16372" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16418" CreationDate="2015-02-28T19:46:38.187" Score="5" ViewCount="4149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have spent a lot of time reading graphic-novels and watching television series, most of which were anime. Now that I have reached the point where I'm ready to begin writing, I feel drawn to the format of the media that I have consumed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which leads me to want write each chapter as it's own short-story, having a distinct beginning, middle, and end. Each chapter would be akin to a single episode of a television series or an issue of a graphic-novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is some general guidance on how this might be done? What are the prominent difficulties of this format for a novel and how can they be handled? What are the potential strengths of the format and how can they be exploited? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of this having been done would also be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12922" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2015-03-06T22:43:07.877" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T18:49:37.833" Title="Structuring a novel like a television or graphic novel series" Tags="|creative-writing|structure|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16332" CreationDate="2015-03-01T00:26:03.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a 16 year old who often writes for fun so I don't know how much my opinion would matter. But I were to be in your situation, I wouldn't edit anything. That way the character's thoughts don't become you're pet peeves. Don't cross out anything, keep the handwriting and everything else. If the journal the that the jailbird is writing was supposed to be read by someone else in the book, than maybe edits should happen and only have the reader in the book see them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13065" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T00:26:03.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16371" CreationDate="2015-03-01T08:54:52.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cite this work as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Axmark, D., &amp;amp; Widenius, M. (2015). &lt;em&gt;MySQL 5.7 reference manual.&lt;/em&gt; Redwood Shores, CA: Oracle. Available online at &lt;a href=&quot;http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there are no page numbers, give web page headings in text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bla bla bla (Axmark &amp;amp; Widenius, 2015, 9.4 User-Defined Variables). Bla bla bla.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-03-01T09:07:57.000" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T09:07:57.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16366" CreationDate="2015-03-01T11:22:08.720" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is easy when the pronunciation of a single letter or acronym is known to your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, we all had maths in school, we know what what a &quot;variable x&quot; means and how to pronounce it. In a case like this you can use the conventions familiar to all of us and write the variable name as it is written in all the school books of the western world as simply &quot;x&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is also easy when an acronym is unpronouncable as a word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English words need a vowel, and they do not contain digits, so it is clear that &quot;TM&quot; must be pronounced &quot;tee em&quot; and &quot;TM1&quot; is read &quot;tee em one&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what if the meaning is not readily apparent or the acronym is pronouncable as a word? Does &quot;i&quot; signify a Roman numeral 1 or the letter i? Is &quot;m&quot; the letter or an abbreviation for meters? Is &quot;cobev&quot; a Swedish word or the abbreviation of a Colorado based beverage company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clear this confusion there are conventions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Roman numerals are not used in English except in places where the context makes their meaning clear as in page numbers (&quot;p. vii&quot;).  Outside scientific texts, units are never abbreviated (&quot;twelve metres&quot;). Acronyms are written in capital letters (&quot;COBEV&quot;), foreign words in italics (&quot;&lt;em&gt;cobev&lt;/em&gt;&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how do you write single letters or strings of characters that are not abbreviations, acronyms, mathematical symbols or units of measure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer this question we need to consider when they would appear in a written text at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a story, a character might see, hear, speak or write a letter. In that case it will be in quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John's t-shirt read &quot;Straight Edge&quot; and he had drawn a big black &quot;X&quot; on the back of his hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only rarely will single letters appear without markup, but then the context will make their &quot;letterhood&quot; clear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Verena pressed a random key: h.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @SF pointed out in his comment below, a &lt;em&gt;series of letters&lt;/em&gt; is often connected by dashes, for example when a character spells a word:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The code is 'cohac', C-O-H-A-C.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last represents something like &quot;see ou eytch ey see&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With great pride Lucy showed her mother what she had written: &quot;br$4Agm&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-03-02T06:00:01.610" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T06:00:01.610" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10524" CreationDate="2015-03-01T23:19:44.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically ideas are not &quot;copyrightable,&quot; on the expression of ideas is. Even if an idea is repeated, you're not guilty of plagiarism if your presentation is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a tender age, I started constructing a &quot;Sound of Music&quot; knockoff set in France, featuring a prominent family, and a governess for the &quot;six&quot; children in the shadow of World War II. (Prominent families, governesses, and children are recurring themes in &lt;a href=&quot;https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/30193/what-was-this-american-movie-with-a-sound-of-music-type-theme&quot;&gt;literature&lt;/a&gt;.) I was afraid of plagiarizing, but needn't have been, because the &quot;dialog&quot; I produced was neither French nor Sound of Music-like but just &quot;American.&quot; In the end, I had the governess marry &quot;Uncle Charles&quot; (not the father), not exactly an original twist, after spending World War II with the Maquis guerrillas (this might actually represent a contribution to literature).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question, you won't get sued for following a cut and dried &quot;pattern&quot; that &quot;everyone&quot; has seen before. Just make sure that you are writing with your own &quot;voice,&quot; (which, like fingerprints, are distinctive). You probably won't even get sued for inadvertent &quot;copying&quot; if it is limited, accidental, and not a pattern. Real plagiarists fall into a certain &quot;mold.&quot; Just make sure that you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:54:05.263" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T23:19:44.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16332" CreationDate="2015-03-02T20:21:39.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you try this technique and find that it's clunky or confusing, you might want to frame the whole story with a narrator who is reading over the main character's diary and explaining it for the benefit of an eventual reader, giving context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of device is often used when the author needs a lot of exposition, but the character would never give it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13079" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T20:21:39.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16383" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16387" CreationDate="2015-03-03T05:16:40.640" Score="9" ViewCount="8345" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hope this question isn't off-topic because it involves programming software (for some reason I think many people in this site has used &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Git&lt;/a&gt;, though). Git is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;revision control&lt;/a&gt; software to keeps track of your changes and revert them in case you messed up something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any experience writing fiction (or non-fiction)  with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, is it useful? Or it's an overkill?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T21:41:17.457" Title="Fiction writing: is using Git overkill?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|software|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-03-03T21:47:53.560" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16383" CreationDate="2015-03-03T08:26:12.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading the question and answer that Joel Bosveld linked to in his comment, I installed Git to do version control of the novel I was writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If find the idea of version control intriguing, because I often rewrite parts of my fiction only to realize that a previous version contained some great phrases that I'd like to reuse but can not remember and have lost by rewriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem for me with Git is that I don't use it. I find the GUI unattractive, finding the relevant sections cumbersome, and the process of creating versions cumbersome. I have installed Git, &quot;commited&quot; (as it is called) the first version, and then never used it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably Git is intuitive and attractive for software developers who are used to that kind of tool. I grew up writing with a pen on paper. I am a visual artist. I want a &quot;natural&quot; GUI and interface. I simply find that I don't use a text editor like Vi(m) or a tool like Git, no matter how &quot;powerful&quot; they might be. I cannot warm for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for me the answer is not that Git is overkill, but rather that it is too technical and abstract. It is not a tool make by and for a sensual person like myself, who loves the feel of paper and the sound of a pencil sharpener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I need is a writing software that automatically creates a verson whenever I save. The text editor TextWrangler (which I use for coding and for writing everything that is not a novel) does this. Every time you save, it automatically creates a copy of the current document in a backup folder of your choosing. The files all bear the same name (making them easy to identify), with a timestamp attached to it (helping you find a document from a certain period). Whenever I want to find some deleted phrase, I type what I remember of it into &quot;Spotlight&quot;, the Mac file system search engine, which indexed the content of files as well as their names. All I have to do is delete the oldest files every now and then, but text files don't use much space, so these can go back years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only drawback with TextWrangler is that it cannot do markup: no italics, no bold text, no different fonts or font sizes. This works well for drafting of shorter texts such as letters, blog posts, StackExchange answers (lol) and so on, but not for text that needs such markup, like a novel or short story. I do often write out complicated paragraphs in TextWrangler and copy them to Scrivener once I'm happy with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may not properly answer your question, but it will give you an idea. Look at screenshots of Git, read the documentation, and see if that is the kind of process that you find yourself attracted to. If you think it all looks quite complicated and not at all like writing, then you might want to avoid wasting time with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T08:26:12.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16383" CreationDate="2015-03-03T11:37:51.953" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use git for fiction. Sometimes I'll save versions at various milestones, such as when I finish a chapter). But more often I forget, and save a version only when I finish a draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other times that I save versions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before and after I apply my editor's edits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When I finish creating a book cover, book interior file, or epub file.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whenever I want to try experiment with the cover or interior. For this, I not only save a version, but create a &quot;branch&quot; that I can use to try lots of ideas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whenever I create a copy of the manuscript in a different format, such as when a magazine wants a .doc file, or .rtf file, or text file.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be overkill. Git shines with text-based files, on projects where you're collaborating with others. I use only a tiny fraction of git's features for fiction. Other version control systems (e.g. subversion) are potentially simpler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm comfortable with git from my software development work, and I really like being able to create new branches to experiment on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think I've ever reverted to an earlier draft. If I don't like a scene or a chapter, I'll just drag it into my &quot;deleted scenes&quot; folder and start again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I often revert when I'm experimenting with covers and interiors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T11:37:51.953" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16383" CreationDate="2015-03-03T15:08:51.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think git is a bit overkill, because you have to remember to commit it all the time it does not just happen like after a save.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Options that I can think of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google Docs it has a Revision History view&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microsoft word has Track Changes (I don't know much but one site I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-office-word-101-use-track-changes-more-efficiently/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-office-word-101-use-track-changes-more-efficiently/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13088" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T15:08:51.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16383" CreationDate="2015-03-03T21:41:17.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I start my documents as &quot;NameOfDocument 000.doc&quot; (or similar, depends on software being used.)  Every time I start a writing/editing session on the document, I do a &quot;Save As&quot; and increment the number, before doing anything else.  I find the Undo/Redo commands to be sufficient within a session.  Exception: If I'm about to perform major surgery, e.g., delete/move large sections, I'll save, then SaveAs with an incremented number.  Then I'll make the major changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method works with any software (and any computer task).  Storage is MUCH cheaper than your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't forget to copy all those backups to another physical location, or a fire/flood could destroy your magnum opus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T21:41:17.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16388" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-04T00:59:43.747" Score="0" ViewCount="1562" Body="&lt;p&gt;How many words may I copy from someone's work before I have to begin paraphrasing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13091" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T19:19:09.077" Title="How much can I copy before it is considered plagiarism?" Tags="|copyright|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-03-06T15:35:13.773" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16388" CreationDate="2015-03-04T08:17:23.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;non-fiction&lt;/strong&gt;, as soon as you take anything from some other text – even your own! – you must enclose it in quotation marks, to show that it is a quotation, and give its source, even if you quote only a single word:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When Stuart (1963) speaks of a &quot;raise&quot;, it is obvious that ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;fiction&lt;/strong&gt;, there are no clear conventions for this. There is the question of copyright infringement, of course, but there are literary genres – the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;essai&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (as practiced by Montaigne and not to be confused with the non-essaistic &quot;essay&quot; that pupils and students have to write), the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastiche&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pastiche&lt;/a&gt;, the collage (the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collage#Literary_collage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; does not properly define literary collage, which is a collage of &lt;em&gt;text&lt;/em&gt;) – whose very essence is the integration of &quot;found&quot; texts into a new work, usually without explicit quotations markers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a quick made up example of a literary collage. None of the words are original to me, and – while I'm making no claims as to this example's literary merit – yet you could argue that the unique and creative combination of the quotations establish a new and original work in its own right:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the beginning God created miles to go before I sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is also common is the use of poems, song lyrics, advertising slogans and other textual artifacts from the environment of the character, similar to the use of existing places or persons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After shaking President Obama's [&quot;quoting&quot; a person] hand, Paul walked out from the Oval Office [&quot;quoting&quot; a place], singing: &quot;Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and fame.&quot; [quoting song lyrics]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fictional literature, from a collage to a novel featuring a character speaking a line from a Walt Witman poem, the effect of the quotation comes from the reader's familiarity with the original. We all know President Obama, the Oval Office and the Rolling Stones' &quot;Sympathy for the Devil&quot;. If we didn't, that writing wouldn't work. And it is this familiarity, that makes marking the quotations unneccessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example is William Faulkner's novel &lt;em&gt;The Sound and the Fury&lt;/em&gt;. Only if you know where the phrase &quot;the sound and the fury&quot; comes from, will it make sense to you. You can certainly enjoy the book without that understanding, but understanding it will add an additional layer of meaning to it, and it is this meaning that is the purpose of that title (which is an unmarked quotation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fiction, from a literary perspective, it is perfectly acceptable to include even lengthy quotes without marking them up as such. Wether or not you will infringe on someone's copyright by doing so, is a legal question outside the scope of your question. And wether or not that quotation enhances or detracts from your work is a different question entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-03-04T08:24:43.350" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T08:24:43.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16086" CreationDate="2015-03-04T11:06:12.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree 'freytag's pyramid' is most likely what he's asking for.  The basic layout for this would be: 1:exposition 2:rising action 3:climax 4:falling action 5:dénouement.  See &lt;em&gt;Writing Drama: A Comprehensive Guide for Playwrights and Scriptwriters&lt;/em&gt; by Yves Lavandier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13093" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-03-05T01:40:16.123" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T01:40:16.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10890" CreationDate="2015-03-04T12:07:17.287" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a tough one to give a foolproof answer to. However, if I had to give my best possible idea of how one might accomplish this I would suggest checking out the options in Excel.  Not sure if that's the answer to your question but it's what I would try. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13093" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T12:07:17.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10890" CreationDate="2015-03-04T13:33:02.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Send your work in the format which is preferred by the publisher. There is no technical method to protect your work against unauthorized copying. When they can read it, they can transcribe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you don't need any protection like that, because your work is automatically protected against unauthorized publication by international copyright laws. When someone publishs your work without your consent, you can sue them. So no publisher will dare to publish something before they have a written contract with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should push come to shoove and you actually do need to sue a copyright violator in court, the main hurdle is that you need to proof that you are indeed the original author. Publishing it somewhere else, like on a personal website, is a good way to do this, but could taint it for some publishers who have a policy not to publish any work which was published somewhere else. In some countries you can officially register a copyright for your works at some kind of official office. This usually isn't free, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2015-03-04T13:47:23.587" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T13:47:23.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10890" CreationDate="2015-03-04T14:36:29.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Truthfully, there's absolutely no incentive for a publisher to steal poems.  Most imprints that do poetry do it as a labor of love, there's very little money in poetry.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For any genre --although many people when first starting out worry about work being stolen, I've never heard of it actually happening.  The only time I would worry is if I was sending to a tiny blog or some other amateur venue that might not have high standards of professionalism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually when work slips into the public domain, it's after publication, from ordinary people liking it and copying it without thinking about proper attribution --not much can be done about that either, given that people were doing that by hand long before electronic text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T14:36:29.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16397" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16398" CreationDate="2015-03-05T09:06:06.757" Score="0" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write articles, poems and essays but usually I tend to make them informal. My question is &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Is it ok to write in a new style or informal style&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. Do I have to follow the normal rules of writing and keep everything in the format every other writer writes in? &lt;br&gt; By informal, I mean, my own writing style where I write in an abstract way.&#xA;&lt;br&gt; This is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://derangedwriterblog.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/a-simple-day-in-my-amazingly-exciting-life/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; of how I write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12850" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T11:44:02.147" Title="How formal should an article be?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16397" CreationDate="2015-03-05T11:44:02.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are writing for an audience. Your audience is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; &quot;everyone&quot; or &quot;general audience&quot; or &quot;teens&quot;. People are different, even teens are different, and there is nothing that every person likes. So your audience is always a subset of all people, and you need to (a) define that audience and (b) research what they like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have done that research, the answer to questions such as &quot;how should I write&quot; are implicitly clear, because they are part of what you researched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A certain target audience will be used to certain writing styles and expect to read those styles. Depending on the target audience, they will be open or not open to larger or smaller deviations from their habits and expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other apporach, of course, is to simply write how &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; like, and let your work find its audience. The difficulty with this is that you won't know where to publish your work (which publisher, which medium), how to market it (format, channel) and who to market it to. To get your work to its implied audience, you will have to analyse it (what did you actually write?) and research possible audiences (who likes that?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no matter wether you write &lt;em&gt;for your audience&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;for yourself&lt;/em&gt;, there is no way around finding out either what your audience likes, or which audience likes what you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T11:44:02.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10890" CreationDate="2015-03-05T12:42:53.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. As others have stated there is no way you can &quot;protect&quot; from copying. But why would anyone bother? I hate to say this but if you're worried about your work being stolen then you are a newbie because only newbies worry about it. And if you're a newbie the chances are your work probably isn't great (sorry but it's true). And as also stated stealing &lt;em&gt;poetry&lt;/em&gt;? Ain't gonna happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try looking at it from the other side. Why would a publisher steal your work? Once it got out they did that sort of thing (apart from any legal issues) no one would use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's come at this from another direction. Let's suppose for one (so unlikely it's ridiculous) moment someone published your work without your name on it. And you found out? How &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; you protect it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, how many people have already seen it? Have you shown your work to other people for evaluation? Beta-reading? Anything like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because if you do that - by letting other people see it - you have independent witnesses who can say &quot;well, yes, it was great, he showed me that three years ago.&quot; Bingo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also registration services though personally I think they're a waste of money - all they prove is that you possessed a copy at a given moment in time. (They like to imply that they prove your copyright, not actually true.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: did you actually work on these poems? I mean, did you write one, print it out, work it over with a pen, change words, &lt;em&gt;develop&lt;/em&gt; it? Do you have earlier versions printed? This is all good stuff if you needed to prove you wrote something (IANAL). Someone who simply stole the work would not have any evidence of development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have. (And if you haven't that's another indicator your poems probably won't be interesting enough to be stolen anyway ... not that anyone is going to.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So bottom line? Have developmental proof. Have people who have seen them and commented on them. And, most important: QUIT WORRYING.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10521" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T12:42:53.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16400" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16408" CreationDate="2015-03-05T17:26:51.493" Score="8" ViewCount="962" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my story I'm writing, some of the characters speak a different language from the protagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I actually create a ConLang (constructed language) for them and use it in dialog OR should mention that they speak a different language and continue as normal and make the reader assume the protagonists understand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13101" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T23:17:39.003" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T23:17:39.003" Title="Should I create my own ConLang for my story?" Tags="|fiction|language|world-building|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2019-05-20T07:37:48.953" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16402" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16506" CreationDate="2015-03-05T20:26:58.303" Score="5" ViewCount="2172" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've looked at a few fictional character quote questions on here but none seem to hit onto my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I attribute a real quote to a fictional character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, can I take a quote that was said by a real person, and attribute it to an original character (who is, if it makes a difference, blatantly not on Earth -- and, for the benefit of this, not have a name that could remotely be Earthly)? My gut says no, and this is all hypothetical, but I'm curious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance: I write a story on a fantasy planet all about, I dunno, hunting [assassins, murderers, vampires, YourBadThingOfChoice]. An epigraph referencing a real person can be quite jarring in such a situation. Would I be wrong if I were to have the epigraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster&quot;&#xA;       - Bel'thaziak of Rikchenwood&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(ridiculous made up name to stress fantasy)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this original character did not say this (it's a Nietzsche quote); hypothetically, would it be permitted to attribute it to an obviously fictional character? I'm sure this would be allowed if Quotes came under the Public Domain but I can't find any evidence that they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify -- this fictional character would be original (my creation), so I'm not taking a quote and giving it to an existing fictional character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8034" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-01-27T23:18:53.150" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T23:21:37.680" Title="Attributing a real quote to a fictional character" Tags="|fiction|legal|copyright|fantasy|quotes|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16403" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-06T01:28:59.453" Score="5" ViewCount="4296" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to properly punctuate one of my characters being stopped in speech, followed by a sentence that explains that the character didn't have time to finish.  It's going to be something like this, but I've probably gotten the punctuation and/or paragraphing a bit wrong (please submit the correct version as an answer):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yes, I th–&quot; he was not allowed to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Shut him up NOW!&quot; the guard growled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13104" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T18:06:40.540" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T18:06:40.540" Title="Proper way to punctuate an abrupt stopping of speech?" Tags="|style|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16403" CreationDate="2015-03-06T02:46:08.533" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have it right. Use an em dash to indicate interruption or other abrupt stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that with the dash and the guard's remarks, you don't need &quot;he was not allowed to finish.&quot; Readers will understand that the guard interrupted him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T02:46:08.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-06T05:23:04.350" Score="0" ViewCount="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;When is Ghostwriting is legal and ethical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used something like a ghostwriter to help quickly publish a research paper. I was called before the chair of my department years ago and called a cheat and a liar. The ghost did appear as lesser co-author as I always intended and had previously agreed. I wanted to explain why it was very ethical given the existence of: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4527/legality-of-academic-ghostwriting&quot;&gt;Legality of academic Ghostwriting&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13105" LastEditorDisplayName="user13105" LastEditDate="2015-03-06T07:50:25.100" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T07:50:25.100" Title="When is Ghostwriting is legal and ethical?" Tags="|academic-writing|research|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-03-06T06:56:51.600" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4527" CreationDate="2015-03-06T05:23:04.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short its about IP. In academia if someone does not contribute enough to the idea itself to be an coauthor then there is no question as to the legitimacy of the grade given to the work. The person who helps you organise your dissertation into a presetable format is not making any intellectual contribution to the work itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used something like a ghostwriter to help quickly publish a research paper. I was called before the chair of my department years ago and called a cheat and a liar. The ghost did appear as lesser co-author as I always intended and had previously agreed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The response by Dr &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.depts.ttu.edu/philosophy/people/Faculty.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Howard Curzer&lt;/a&gt; a distinguished ethics professor: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is indeed a complex case. Let's begin with some terminological points. A ghostwriter doesn't appear as an author. (That is what &quot;ghost&quot; means; the ghost is invisible.) Neither does an editor. So if your original arrangement was that this person would do certain tasks in exchange for authorship, then the original plan was that he/she would be neither a ghostwriter nor an editor, but rather a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If all he/she did was take dictation and change words and syntax, then he/she should not be an author. But the odd thing about your letter is that his/her authorship seems not to be at issue. Rather the dispute seems to be about whether you should be an author. That makes me think that he/she did more than transcription and editing. Or at least he/she thinks so. And since you seem to accept his/her authorship, it seems that you think so too. So one question is: what did he/she do that makes both of you think he/she deserves authorship? Was it like this: You explained the results you got, and he/she wrote it using very different organization, wording, format, etc.? That would be worthy of authorship and much more than editing. But this is just one possibility. Without more information, I am unsure of what to think about his/her authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let's take up the question of your own authorship. Now the amount of work you did (measured in number of hours) is actually not relevant. Instead, the crucial factor is what your intellectual contribution to the research is. If you were just following the detailed instructions of a supervisor, then you were acting as a technician rather than a researcher. But if you were given general instructions and left to figure out how to accomplish the task, then you were a researcher making an intellectual contribution. Or if the project was your idea in the first place you were obviously a researcher. There are many possible scenarios, and there are borderline cases that add an extra level of complication. Overall, I wouldn't want to take a position on your authorship status without knowing more of the facts. But to repeat, the general principle is that the larger your intellectual contribution is, the more deserving of authorship you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Updated comments from Dr. Curzer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think I understand the negativity on the page you mention. It arises from the fact that the CHE article is not really about ghostwriting at all. It is about one person paying someone else to write a paper from scratch. The student then presents the paper as his/her own work, even though he/she contributed absolutely nothing to the paper. That is pretty clearly immoral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You could leave my stuff in the comments, if you like. Or you might take it down since it doesn’t speak to the issue discussed in the CHE. Either way is fine with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13105" LastEditorDisplayName="user13105" LastEditDate="2015-03-16T03:33:49.503" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T03:33:49.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6164" CreationDate="2015-03-06T05:35:50.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot write a script without visualizing what's happening, so I say add what you have in mind.   I've seen it done both ways (especially in animation). If you plan to direct the feature it can't hurt to add every shot, since everything can be modified later, and will be if it's worth a damn.  And personally, I wouldn't want to read a script with some visualization.  It's a visual medium.  Show me what you're thinking. &#xA;And to say that you can't call shots without being on the set is absurd.  You think they only make story boards after being on set?  Call the shots then stage accordingly.&#xA;Bottom line is:  Do what you think is best for that story.   The more information provided the better - you can delete things later...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13106" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T05:35:50.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16400" CreationDate="2015-03-06T08:29:45.730" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's vanishingly rare to &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; a constructed language in written fiction.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Orson Scott Card sums this up in &lt;em&gt;How To Write Science Fiction And Fantasy&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Invented languages are a lot more fun to make up than they are to wade through in a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the thing: very few readers will have the patience for more then brief, occasional snippets of languages they don't understand. And for brief, occasional, you really don't need the depth and authenticity of a constructed language - almost nobody will care enough to check up on your linguistics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There exist very effective ways to convey foreignness while keeping the individual words clear. &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.il/books?id=sV7T1SETQ08C&amp;amp;pg=PA55&amp;amp;lpg=PA55&amp;amp;dq=orson+scott+card+writing+science+fiction+samvoric&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=YVTBaiqA4Z&amp;amp;sig=z36AUkOuSPlhXObIjM0khTiPX5Q&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=Llr5VJHOIsnxasa-gpAB&amp;amp;ved=0CDIQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=orson%20scott%20card%20writing%20science%20fiction%20samvoric&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's the relevant page in Card's book.&lt;/a&gt;. He gives two basic approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use snippets of the foreign/fake language, and then immediately translate into English.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't use any foreign language at all, or very little; automatically translate into English. Make the &lt;em&gt;culture&lt;/em&gt; foreign rather than relying on made-up words. Card gives an example of this:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;God give me strength not to kill you for having seen my ugliness,&quot; he said to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I blinked once, then realized that he was speaking Samvoric and had given me the ritual greeting between equals. I hadn't heard Samvoric in a long time, but it still sounded more natural to me than Common Speech. &quot;God forgive me for not blinding myself at once after having beheld your glory,&quot; I said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then we grinned and licked each other's cheeks. He tasted like sweat. On a cold day like this, that meant he'd either been drinking or working hard. Probably both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So clearly, you can get along pretty well &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; a constructed language. All you really need is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A general, hand-wave-y sense of what the language might sound like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe a few unique words, phrases, and concepts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good writing technique.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get very, very far with these - and you'll generally be more reader-friendly, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sometimes, though, there are good reasons to go ahead and make up a language anyway,&lt;/strong&gt; even if it isn't strictly necessary. In my eyes, the main benefits of a constructed language (vs. faking it) are authenticity, and richness - a fully-constructed language is just more &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; than making stuff up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some circumstances where I'd recommend considering a constructed language:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You care deeply about the authenticity of your setting, and see this as worth the investment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You see developing a constructed language as a tool to developing and fleshing out the culture which speaks the language - a worldbuilding tool. The actual language may rarely (or &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt;) actually appear in your story, but &lt;em&gt;you'll&lt;/em&gt; know how crucial it turned out to be that your culture has five thousands words relating to &quot;survival&quot; and none relating to &quot;food.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your story deals with language or translation as a significant, primary element.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're writing for TV or film, where you can get in lots of foreign-language dialogue because it doesn't bring the action to a halt (as it does in prose).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have, or would like to cultivate, a fanbase interested in this culture, and you think having a language to sink their teeth into would be exciting for them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inventing languages is a hobby of yours, and you enjoy doing it even if the language isn't ultimately necessary or prominent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are other good reasons (and other bad ones); the important thing is that you know what you stand to gain by constructing a language (and how important it is not to lose your readers by swamping the story with it). If you understand the pros and cons, you should be able to make your decision on your own particular case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2015-03-15T08:02:32.693" LastActivityDate="2015-03-15T08:02:32.693" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16409" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-06T12:16:39.793" Score="0" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I use titles e.g. Dr., PhD, MS., BS, etc the beginning of a paper along with author names? Does the rule, if any, differ for different styles e.g. APA, MLA, etc.? Is the following, to make things clearer a bit, correct?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Doe*&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  *MS. Student for physical education, Faculty of Physical Education, Monsters University, X City, X country &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr John Doe**&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  **Assistant professor, Faculty of PE, Monsters University, X City, X Country&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11028" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-21T19:49:29.247" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T19:49:29.247" Title="How to use academic titles in the beginning of a paper" Tags="|style|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16410" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16411" CreationDate="2015-03-06T12:24:28.683" Score="3" ViewCount="431" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently making a picture book, but it has pictures and I don't know where in the manuscript they should go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13110" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-03-11T02:06:05.683" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T17:02:13.920" Title="When you submit a manuscript for a picture book, where do the pictures go?" Tags="|book|children|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16410" CreationDate="2015-03-06T14:58:25.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, most publishers prefer to match the artist and the writer themselves, so they prefer the manuscript to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have pictures included.  The only real exception is for people who do both well, and even then they are likely to have first established themselves as one or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do decided to submit both, the manuscript should be presented as just text, like any other manuscript, and the pictures in a separate portfolio.  (You can include some notations to indicate what goes together.)  Occasionally people will also submit a mockup of the final product, but that isn't a requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are more of an artist than a writer, you can just submit a portfolio of art and see if you can get picked up for a new illustration project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-03-06T15:05:20.887" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T15:05:20.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16409" CreationDate="2015-03-06T16:03:34.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In APA use the name and institution only, no titles, no functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your example would read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Doe*&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  * Faculty of Physical Education, Monsters University, X City, X country&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Doe**&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ** Faculty of PE, Monsters University, X City, X Country&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T16:03:34.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16400" CreationDate="2015-03-07T02:34:02.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hire someone else to do it instead. There are thousands of conlangers looking for work and eager to work on any project, whether it be a motion picture or a short story collection. You can hire conlangers using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobs.conlang.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LCS Jobs Board&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, when it comes to &lt;em&gt;using&lt;/em&gt; the language in the book, Card's advice is pretty good. Even being a professional language creator, I prefer not to have to work for a translation when reading. That's precisely what supplementary material is for. If I'm interested, I'll look that up and actually work through the translations later. For reading, I don't want to have to make reference to extra material, be it a family tree, a map, or a dictionary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13116" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T02:34:02.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16372" CreationDate="2015-03-07T05:55:14.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though I have not read them, I know of examples of a similar episodic series structure: Most of the books written by &lt;em&gt;Self-Publishing Podcast&lt;/em&gt;&quot; hosts Sean Platt, David Wright, and Johnny B. Truant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These guys write novellas that they call &quot;episodes.&quot; They even write the first episode as a &quot;pilot.&quot; As they finish each episode, they release it as a short stand-alone book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As they write, they structure the episodes into six- or nine-episode &quot;seasons,&quot; complete with big season-ending cliffhangers. Then they release each season as a set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of their readers read each episode as it is released. Others wait for the packaged seasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example (kind of) is Isaac Asimov's &lt;em&gt;Foundation&lt;/em&gt; series. The early Foundation stories were written as novellas, and later packaged as novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T05:55:14.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16372" CreationDate="2015-03-07T18:49:37.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I have never &lt;em&gt;published&lt;/em&gt; anything like this, I have plotted and written something based along the same premise of a TV series. Therefore, I'm speaking from the viewpoint of the writer and plot developer only. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is some general guidance on how this might be done? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to do is work out your premise - the main storyline, the tale that will transcend all of your episodes. I will be very nearly like a regular novel, though you do need to leave plenty of room for twists/revelations. You also need to determine if you want to leave it open-ended - that is, if you want a defined 'end,' or if you want to keep going for as long as you can (rather like a TV series). If you want to keep going, you will need a premise that allows you to simply stack more twists on it, rather than wrapping it up at the end of each 'season.' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've developed your main premise, you're ready to start on the plots for the individual episodes or chapters. These develop the same way as a normal novel, except for the fact that they are of necessity shorter. You do not need to include part of your main premise in every episode, but be sure to have it in the background. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the prominent difficulties of this format for a novel and how can they be handled? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most prominent difficulty? Keeping things connected. Since every chapter is its own story, it's very important that you keep everything connected with the main premise (a word of caution - readers will begin to see coincidences if absolutely &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; is connected). Rather than making things connected through the physical (the main character is related to someone), connect them now and then through emotions or the like (this means something to the protagonist, even if it is only in a symbolic way). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the potential strengths of the format and how can they be exploited?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say one of the best strengths is the power to keep readers reading. At first, a chapter that has a beginning, middle, and end, may seem like it ties everything up with every episode, and the reader is satisfied. The reader &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; satisfied, but it's your job to make him keep wanting more. You do this through characterization, plotting, all the writing techniques that make readers want to read your books in the first place (it is my personal opinion that this is why it is important all of your 'episodes' concern the same protagonist - the reader is already invested in him). The readers like your writing, and they know that there are more short stories out there. Even though the protagonist seems 'wrapped up,' they know there's more to the picture, more to the main premise, and they want to read it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for examples, I do not know of any. I would refer to Dale Emery's reply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: Remember, I have never &lt;em&gt;published&lt;/em&gt; anything of this nature, and speak only as a writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T18:49:37.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16420" CreationDate="2015-03-08T07:09:13.337" Score="11" ViewCount="3551" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an article that includes reference to an organization - let's say National Ecological Council of Concerned Citizens - which, instead of NECOCC, uses the acronym  &lt;em&gt;necocc&lt;/em&gt;, i.e. lower-case and italics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks silly (&lt;em&gt;we're different&lt;/em&gt;), but... what are the rules here? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't be using the italics, but maybe NECOCC is saying its name is now a word, not an acronym? But then I'd capitalize the N. Any advice out there?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13119" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-27T09:26:42.517" LastActivityDate="2020-06-30T07:57:46.737" Title="An organization writes its acronym in lower-case - do I have to, too?" Tags="|editing|citations|acronyms|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16419" CreationDate="2015-03-08T09:51:05.810" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to differentiate between the orthographically correct representation and the typographic treatment of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a photographer by the name of Robert Smith might decide to write his name in lowercase letters, as &quot;robert smith&quot;, both in his signature and in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordmark&quot;&gt;wordmark&lt;/a&gt; representing him in letterheads, on his website and in watermarks in his published photos. If you write an article about that photographer, you would still give his name in the orthographically correct form, as &quot;Robert Smith&quot;, with capital letters beginning both the first and last name. You might mention what his workmark looks like (&quot;Robert Smith, who styles his name in lowercase letters,...&quot;), or provide an image of it, but you would certainly not try to represent it in text, except enclosed in quotation marks (&quot;Robert Smith, who styles his name in lowercase letters as 'robert smith', because, as he says, ...&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In English, &quot;when abbreviating a phrase where only the first letter of each word is taken, then all letters should be capitalized&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviation&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;). Only acronyms &quot;that were originally capitalized (with or without periods) but have since entered the vocabulary as generic word are no longer written with capital letters nor with any periods. Examples are sonar, radar, lidar, laser, snafu, and scuba.&quot; (ibd.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The APA &lt;em&gt;Publication Manual&lt;/em&gt; (6th ed., 2009, p. 107) recommends that if you are unsure about wether an acronym is considered an acronym or a word, look it up in Merriam-Webster. If it is an acronym (or other abbreviation), it will be marked as &quot;abbreviation&quot; (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/usa&quot;&gt;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/usa&lt;/a&gt;). If it is not marked as abbreviation, it is considered a word and not capitalized. Exceptions are the beginning of sentences (&quot;Radar is a technology...&quot;) and &quot;spelled&quot; acronyms (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/iq&quot;&gt;IQ&lt;/a&gt;, noun). If an acronym (or other abbreviation) is not in Merriam-Webster, it is not a word but an abbreviation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, you must give the name of the organization as &quot;NECOCC&quot;, and do not forget to explain the abbreviation the first time you introduce it (&quot;The National Ecological Council of Concerned Citizens (NECOCC) have... Yesterday, NECOCC released a press statement that...&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any kind of non-formal writing, you are of course free to do however you wish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-08T09:51:05.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16419" CreationDate="2015-03-08T17:04:00.520" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, two general principles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consistency with other publications is useful. Consistency within a publication is also useful. So write a style guide that documents your house style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your house style does not necessarily have to match the stylization of a wordmark.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An acronym is an abbreviation pronounced as a word. Many publications write acronyms with all capital letters, like other initialisms. But some publications capitalize acronyms as ordinary proper nouns to help distinguish the pronunciation of &amp;quot;Nasa&amp;quot; from that of the spelled-out initialism &amp;quot;FBI&amp;quot;. &lt;em&gt;The Guardian&lt;/em&gt; mentions this in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;its style guide&lt;/a&gt;, and BBC News tends toward this as well. &lt;em&gt;The New York Times&lt;/em&gt; has a compromise: acronyms up to four letters are set in capital letters, while longer ones are set as proper nouns to avoid the &amp;quot;shouting&amp;quot;. For example, &lt;em&gt;N.Y.T.&lt;/em&gt; style contrasts &amp;quot;F.B.I.&amp;quot; (spelled-out with periods), &amp;quot;NATO&amp;quot; (short acronym with all caps), and &amp;quot;Unicef&amp;quot; (long acronym with title case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking of Unicef, I had a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unicef.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;its web site&lt;/a&gt;. Unicef's logo uses all lowercase (&amp;quot;unicef&amp;quot;), while the text uses all capitals (&amp;quot;UNICEF&amp;quot;). This difference in stylization between the wordmark and the appearance in running text is common; the logo of Facebook uses a lowercase ''f'', and Twitter used all lowercase before a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/twitter_gives_you_the_bird.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;June 2012 redesign&lt;/a&gt; dumped the wordmark entirely for the birdmark. AOL is a spelled-out initialism rendered as &amp;quot;AOL&amp;quot; in text, even though its wordmark resembles &amp;quot;Aol.&amp;quot; with the period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Related questions on other Stack Exchange sites:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/51924/proper-capitalization-of-commonly-used-acronyms&quot;&gt;Proper capitalization of commonly used acronyms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10517" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2020-06-30T07:57:46.737" LastActivityDate="2020-06-30T07:57:46.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16423" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17817" CreationDate="2015-03-08T17:24:34.577" Score="4" ViewCount="179" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have reached a point in writing a TV serial where I'm considering looking for an agent to represent me, but I'm not sure how much I should have to show in order to do so. Obviously in order to find representation for a film script you need to present the full product, but for a TV serial that means many times more written product than it does for a film script, even if you only require a single season.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At present I have a pilot and two full &quot;normal&quot; episodes, as well as a comprehensive outline for the hypothetical first season; more than enough to give a good idea of the concept and (hopefully) the promise of the show. Is this sufficient, or should I have a full season of fully-written scripts before I start looking for an agent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T15:19:48.640" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T01:39:20.683" Title="Quantity of Writing Needed to Find Representation For a TV Serial" Tags="|screenwriting|agent|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6700" CreationDate="2015-03-08T19:32:15.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often puns emerge when you create associations in the mind of the readers. These association have to involve things that they would never have thought of, but are remarkably funny if you view them from a certain perspective. I think this requires to be generally well read, especially in popular culture and being update on current news, trends and social media. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13114" LastActivityDate="2015-03-08T19:32:15.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16425" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-08T21:11:22.763" Score="1" ViewCount="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;The aspects I am interested in are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I set up an editorial calendar? What should I track in it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there better options than a spreadsheet? (software/app)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many days/weeks in advance should I plan?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you track anniversaries (that are of your interest)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In case of a blog/online news site, do you track different sections in different calendars (e.g. sports, business, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suppose you have a small niche news site publishing 10 to 12 articles a day, is managing an editorial calendar an overkill?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13114" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-03-08T22:16:59.347" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T21:19:11.350" Title="What are some best practices/dos and don'ts of managing an online editorial calendar?" Tags="|planning|websites|journalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16426" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-09T05:24:03.357" Score="5" ViewCount="437" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am translating an academic work (MLA style) which contains a untranslated section by the author. The original work is in Portuguese and the untranslated section is in Spanish. Do I leave the Spanish section untranslated? If not what is the correct style. Note: it is not a block quote in the original text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13129" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-15T16:42:44.547" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T16:42:44.547" Title="Untranslated text with a work being translated" Tags="|academic-writing|language|translation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16403" CreationDate="2015-03-09T13:32:52.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The dash seems right, but the capitalisation of the following sentence seems awkward to me. I don't have a formal justification for why it shouldn't follow the same rules as, for example, '&quot;Yes,&quot; he said' - except to say that it reads in my head in a similar lilting sort of voice, ruining the &quot;interruption&quot; effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Yes, I thi–&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was not allowed to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Shut him up NOW!&quot; the guard growled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13135" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T13:32:52.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16441" CreationDate="2015-03-06T22:35:50.363" Score="3" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing an essay in MLA format about a short story, and would like to include the title of the short story in my title. We all know that titles of short stories are underlined when hand-written and italicized when typed, but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I apply proper formatting to another work's title when it appears in my title?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13153" OwnerDisplayName="Steven Fontaine" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-03-09T22:20:44.187" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T12:16:36.003" Title="Do I format other works' titles in my title?" Tags="|style|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14485" CreationDate="2015-03-10T13:47:51.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this example, just move the word in question outside the quotation marks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is possible for God to desire &quot;all people to be saved.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's more difficult in the case that the word in question is buried in the quote.  In that case, you would probably just put the entire word itself in brackets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-03-10T13:47:51.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14485" CreationDate="2015-03-10T16:27:36.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with &quot;cut the Gordian knot&quot; answers recommending you change your lead-in to the quote so you don't have to change the quote.  The problem with that solution is that you can't always do it.  So we're back to your original question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is a scholarly essay/paper for a class/journal, then AFAIK you should use [], regardless of how ugly or distracting it is, because [] is the standard notation among scholars.  Bracket the whole word, or bracket where the missing letter(s) would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is non-scholarly, then you have another option.  In many English translations of the Bible, italic font is used for words which were not explicitly in the original Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic, but which the translators felt were clearly implied and necessary for smooth flow in English.  You could use that technique on the changed word.  Italics has the advantage of being less intrusive than [], but the disadvantage that some readers might think the word isn't in the original at all.  However, if you MUST change a quoted holy text, then you MUST indicate that somehow, consequences be darned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you were &lt;strong&gt;adding&lt;/strong&gt; a single letter, you could make that one letter italic.  Sure, it would be hard to notice, but you're not changing the meaning so you're only obligated to obey the LETTER of the law.  yukyukyuk)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-03-10T16:27:36.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16403" CreationDate="2015-03-10T17:03:20.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have it correct EXCEPT for the capitalization, as pointed out by krman. The sentence should read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Yes, I th—&amp;quot; He was not allowed to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Shut him up NOW!&amp;quot; the guard growled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason 'He' is capitalized is because 'He was not allowed to finish,' is a complete sentence. If it had been 'he began,' or something, it would be lowercase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the dash can be difficult to get if you don't know how to do it. There is no key for the EM Dash; however, there is an ascii code. I get the EM Dash by using the code Alt+0151. If you do this, note that Microsoft word will place the wrong quotation mark after the EM Dash automatically. To force it to have the correct quotation mark, I use the ascii code Alt+0148. This results in a quotation mark facing the proper direction: ” (If you don't use smart quotes, there is obviously no need for this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: all ascii codes have to be entered on the numeric keypad.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-10T17:03:20.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16437" CreationDate="2015-03-09T02:22:39.747" Score="1" ViewCount="503" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wish to use a phrase/word after a quote, to indicate that it was me who came up with it (i.e. a phrase to quote myself) This is for a blog post. Is there any way to do so without telling ' &quot;......&quot; - Yours Truly ' ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13147" OwnerDisplayName="Kugelblitz" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-03-10T21:47:10.093" LastActivityDate="2015-03-10T21:47:10.093" Title="What is a good alternative for 'Yours truly' while quoting yourself?" Tags="|blog|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16435" CreationDate="2015-03-09T04:45:05.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use your own name, as if it were somebody else.  Anything else will be too overly informal or else too pretentious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative, if you think it needs more emphasis (or if you think that citing yourself as if a third party is itself too pretentious), would be to write a one or two sentence introduction to the quote and then leave it either unattributed or attributed to yourself in the third person as I've already suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13146" OwnerDisplayName="Adam Katz" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T04:45:05.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16435" CreationDate="2015-03-09T08:50:50.960" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is for a blog post you may like these &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exotic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;exotic&lt;/a&gt; suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There's little one can say, when what is to be said has already been said. The fact remains, that what more can be said, should be said, for that is what can make others say more about what has not been said ,&amp;quot; &lt;strong&gt;quotably yours,&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My quote&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;quot;there's little one can say, when what is to be said has already been said. The fact remains, that what more can be said, should be said, for that is what can make others say more about what has not been said ,&amp;quot; &lt;strong&gt;is yours&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There's little one can say, when what is to be said has already been said. The fact remains, that what more can be said, should be said, for that is what can make others say more about what has not been said ,&amp;quot; &lt;strong&gt;my quote; yours,&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="sojourner" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T08:50:50.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16426" CreationDate="2015-03-11T09:06:42.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That would depend on why the section was untranslated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &quot;quoting author&quot; merely choose not to translate the section, say, out of laziness, assuming &quot;the audience will understand it&quot; or he judged some wording conveys the idea better than a translation would, or the quote was a poem and the translation would break the rhymes - essentially, if the reason is unimportant - just translate it. (in case of poem, that's not a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/7522/4291&quot;&gt;&quot;just...&quot;&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the section was left because the work analyzes the language, wording or the structure of text (e.g. like the Bible Code, seeking vertical and diagonal patterns between the lines, hidden words) you must preserve the original text. And unless the text is really a meaningless Lorem Ipsum, you should &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; include a translation - as a translator's note. This can be done in footnote or included with the text (say, in a box on a different background). The decision how to include it depends largely on size of the quote - a single sentence is good for a footnote, a few large paragraph should probably get a Translator's Note within the main text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T09:06:42.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16426" CreationDate="2015-03-11T11:18:16.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The MLA is an association of scholars of language and literature. It's style manual applies to academic works dealing with language and literature. We can assume that a non-Spanish text citing a Spanish text in the original Spanish is targeted at scholars of Spanish language and/or literature, and that those scholars do read Spanish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we know why the citation was not translated in the Portuguese text you are translating. To decide whether or not you need to translate that citation, you need to either identify your target audience and whether or not they know Spanish – or simply ask your client (e.g. the publisher, editor, scholar, who asked you to translate that text) what they want you to do (assuming they know their audience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do translate that Spanish text snippet, a common practice (in MLA) is to put the untranslated original in a footnote, and the translation in text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T11:18:16.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16428" CreationDate="2015-03-11T12:16:36.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;MLA style guide recommends the following when it comes to &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;referencing other works in your title&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use quotation marks and/or italics when referring to other works in&#xA;  your title, just as you would in your text: &lt;em&gt;Fear and Loathing in Las&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Vegas&lt;/em&gt; as Morality Play; Human Weariness in &quot;After Apple Picking&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T12:16:36.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16442" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16501" CreationDate="2015-03-11T13:58:26.073" Score="3" ViewCount="862" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a novel, in which two characters who are old friends are having an argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing the argument to establish who the characters are and what their values are (the argument is in chapter 1), and also to demonstrate some distance and conflict between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I'm struggling to come up with a convincing argument between them, because their ideals and opinions are fairly similar. They both share roughly the same worldview, but one of them is more moderate and the other is more extreme. Since they're basically on the same side, I'm just not finding any good way to differentiate between them, at least not in any way that gives both of them good points. It's very important to me that the argument be convincing, without either character being a caricature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I develop an argument between two characters if the differences between them are fairly subtle?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can use my particular case as an example, my two characters are both left-wing and anti-war. The more moderate one has recently worked as a third party contractor (as a software developer) for the military to develop an improved training program that allows highly trained operatives to be better at missions such as extracting hostages and assassinating terrorists. He rationalizes his work as non-harmful, and potentially saving the lives of both civilians and soldiers. The other friend disagrees with him working for the military in any capacity, and accuses him of selling out his values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2015-03-12T20:03:30.100" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T13:39:58.043" Title="How do I demonstrate ideological differences between characters who are politically not too different?" Tags="|characters|dialogue|character-development|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16443" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16444" CreationDate="2015-03-11T14:00:32.090" Score="3" ViewCount="1707" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen most personal blogs where the blog author's writing style is undisciplined and mostly inspiration-driven; that is, the author doesn't care too much for grammar and usually writes in a persuasive style, so blog writing isn't academic writing for sure. Is it true that it's a form of creative writing? If not, then what is it called?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13152" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-03-12T01:29:17.057" LastActivityDate="2015-03-12T01:29:17.057" Title="Is Blogging considered a form of creative writing?" Tags="|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16443" CreationDate="2015-03-11T14:48:33.360" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The distinguishing isn't about style but about subjects and blogs can be anything: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creative (a fictional story written in parts as blog entries)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;news reporting (even if it's news about a party at your friend's house), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;academic (a teacher blogging 'classes' for benefit of students)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;technical (tech blog with tips about solving problems, a blog which shows various techniques of some craft)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journalism (review blogs, editorials/opinions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...and even Legal (a corporation publishing statements through the corporate blog). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are quite a few more I missed, but generally the Blog is a very versatile medium, and there are very few types of writing (if any) that wouldn't work as a blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how the style you described is called (undisciplined and mostly inspiration-driven) I guess it would be &lt;em&gt;Informal&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2015-03-11T15:23:46.243" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T15:23:46.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16442" CreationDate="2015-03-11T15:07:16.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's call them Monty the Moderate and Larry the Left-Winger for the sake of discussion...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think both your charaters are less left-wing and anti-war than you think they are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Monty is willing to train soldiers to be better assassins, that's not being &lt;em&gt;anti&lt;/em&gt; war. That's being practical, or perhaps utilitarian: This war is ongoing; let's minimize the damage and finish it as quickly and efficiently as possible. &quot;Finish the war&quot; will sometimes involve &quot;killing the enemy.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That will be the crux of your argument: that Monty thinks of himself as being a left-wing anti-war person, when actually he has strayed over the political center line on a few issues. Not everything; you should probably keep him left-wing on other issues &amp;mdash; maybe he's vegan, tries to buy local, checks his plastics for BPA, donates to Planned Parenthood, etc. But once he got this job, he made certain rationalizations which allowed him to justify his actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Larry might be brainwashed into wanting to kill indiscriminately, or trying to topple a government, smuggle arms to Sandinistas or whatever the equivalent is these days, write a letter to Iran insisting that negotiations with the sitting president are futile, etc. He's gone so far 'round the bend into extremism that he's come out the other side on the far &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt;. Monty needs to talk him back down to sanity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T15:07:16.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16442" CreationDate="2015-03-11T16:30:51.700" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience (in real life), some of the most bitter arguments are between people who whose positions are, objectively speaking, quite close. In this case, you've already outlined a key difference between these characters --whether cooperation with the military is acceptable. I can't foresee any trouble in drawing these two into a huge fight --just make them rigid and ideological about their own respective views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth remembering that there's always a subtext to any conversation, and that the surface disagreements may be actually playing out some interpersonal issues:  Are these characters competitive with each other?  Does one feel betrayed by the other?  Was there a mentorship relationship that was outgrown?  Did their friendship break up over a mutual love interest?  Are there any homoerotic sexual tensions between them?  Is this a longstanding ideological quarrel they battle about every time they see each other? Did one idolize the other, and now feels disillusioned? If any of those conditions hold, it may add fuel to the fire that might not otherwise exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T16:30:51.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10763" CreationDate="2015-03-11T18:15:39.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a little late to the party, but you haven't chosen an answer yet, so I'll give my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On point 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why don't you try thinking of the dream sequence as a prologue? From your question, I'm not sure if you're writing a short story or a novel, so I don't know if a prologue is a viable option, but if not then just think of it as a detachment from the actual story. Try to make a point where you could easily act as if a chapter was ending, and another one was beginning. Starting a chapter with the main character vomiting would be quite interesting, and would immediately hook the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Point 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel as if you are writing a little bit clunky and jarred, which I can understand as you are writing a dream sequence. However the visceral imagery that you are writing about, the complete lack of context and being dropped straight into the action with no explanation should make the reader realize it is a dream, or at least they will know it is not a reality. And if not, there are very few paragraphs before they are taken to an entirely new location, so that should be quite obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Point 4:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you need to establish that Felix is at a bus stop first, before you start to introduce another character, because as Chris said, despite knowing that they were at a bus stop from the question I still read it as if they were in bed together. Also, I doubt Dante would comment on Felix being asleep unless he had been for a significant period of time, and if they were friends I doubt he would have let him fall into a deep sleep. It would make more sense for Felix to have fallen asleep for a few seconds and had a very vivid dream, and upon waking he realizes it for himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, and I only noticed this because I tend to do it myself, it reads more like a screenplay. All of the exposition is coming from the speech of the characters. For example, you can have the internal monologue of Felix establish their ethnicity first, and then still have a conversation about it, but reading it made me feel a little uncomfortable whilst I didn't know what their ethnicity was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T18:15:39.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16448" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-11T22:20:07.610" Score="2" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is, in my opinion, a difficult task to describe certain weather conditions (e.g., an overcast sky, the falling rain, the storm, the rising of the rainbow, the falling of the snow, etc.) effectively. Indeed, I feel that many contemporary writers resort to clichéd expression to handle such situations without fully conveying their emotions as they intended. My question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some good resources (i.e., particularly well-written passages or poetry, scientific accounts, or essays on literary technique, etc.) that could help in mastering these kind of descriptions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10974" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-03-12T00:22:52.973" LastActivityDate="2015-03-15T00:53:07.950" Title="On mastering the art of writing descriptive passages on certain weather conditions" Tags="|style|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16443" CreationDate="2015-03-12T01:29:04.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're being tripped up by some mistaken impressions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you suggest that ungrammatical and/or persuasive writing is &quot;creative&quot;.  Maybe some of it is, but that's hardly the definition of the term.  There is plenty of creative writing that follows the rules and conventions of its language, and plenty that is descriptive or story-telling but not particularly aimed at persuading the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip side, there is academic writing that sets out to persuade, and academic writing that doesn't.  Either way, yes it's generally formal and grammatical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blogging isn't a &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt;; it's a &lt;em&gt;platform&lt;/em&gt;.  Many blogs are casual, with or without following grammatical conventions.  Some focus on creative writing (fiction blogs, poetry blogs).  And some are more formal, publishing essays that wouldn't be out of place in respectable magazines or even Academia.  (Consider Language Log, for instance, a blog by and for linguists.)  Further, there are institutional blogs, often attached to media or academic institutions, and their publishers will have style requirements that are probably different from Joe Random User's personal blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blog writing isn't called anything in particular because it doesn't have a fixed style.  Describe the style based on the &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt;, not on how it's &lt;em&gt;published&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-03-12T01:29:04.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2598" CreationDate="2015-03-12T18:50:38.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I largely agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/2600/1993&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, to which I add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Order of perception by your POV character fits nicely into all the &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; stuff that you're telling through that POV, so it's a good place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On rare, special occasions, you can get extra impact by violating that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cool breeze through the lush trees lining his path carried the scent of lilac from bushes he could not see.  He watched one gray squirrel chase another alongside the path -- wow, he thought, these critters are used to humans; I could have reached out and touched them.  Birdsong blended with the rustling of leaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would have been a perfect place to pause and lose himself in his thoughts, if not for the...&lt;em&gt;thing&lt;/em&gt; climbing out of the fiery pit before him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-12T18:50:38.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16453" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-12T22:39:51.327" Score="0" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first book was published through Xlibris. They have reported no sales from numerous authors, so no one is receiving royalty checks. They are ignoring my calls and emails, to get back my original work. I would like for a new company to publish the book. Can I legally take my book to a new company for printing? Can I just change the cover, since my kids did the artwork for the interior? I do not know what I need in addition to an ISBN for each book. Is a UPC necessary? What else is mandatory? Any help is greatly appreciated, as I have 3 series to get into print and refuse to let Xlibris touch them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13160" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-03-13T15:02:57.813" LastActivityDate="2022-08-25T02:56:54.153" Title="Printing by the Publisher" Tags="|self-publishing|printing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16453" CreationDate="2015-03-13T01:39:11.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically when you self-publish, you retain all rights to your manuscript.  The printer is just performing a service for you, there is no contract, so you should be able to take everything with you, no questions asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception would be if --as you seem to indicate --you used an Xlibris template for your cover art, in which case, that would stay with them.  If they obtained an ISBN for you, you might have to get a new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, please be aware, your situation may not be much different with another printer.  When you self-publish, you are basically responsible for all the marketing and selling of your own book --Xlibris may not have reported sales because there were none to report.  If you do want to self-publish again, I highly recommend buying and reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1568601425&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Self Publisher's Manual&lt;/a&gt; -- it will answer all the detailed questions about things like ISBNs and UPCs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T01:39:11.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16453" CreationDate="2015-03-13T08:34:53.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlibris&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Xlibris&lt;/a&gt; is not a publisher.&lt;/strong&gt; They do not consider themselves publishers, but publishing services providers. They do not select manuscripts, but offer publishing services for any author who pays them, indepenent of the quality of their work. They do not make money through sales (as a publisher would, who selects marketable manuscripts and rejects those they find unsellable), but through the author's payments for printing and distributing the book. &lt;strong&gt;Xlibris considers the author to be the publisher.&lt;/strong&gt; It is the publisher's (and in the case of Xlibris, the author's) task to market the book and generate sales. &lt;strong&gt;If your book did not sell that is because you failed to fulfill the responsibilities of a self-published author, first and foremost among which are marketing your book.&lt;/strong&gt; Xlibris is not at fault, but you are for choosing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_press&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;vanity publisher&lt;/a&gt; instead of (writing well enought to) find a real publisher. Changing from Xlibris to some other vanity publisher won't increase your sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T08:34:53.890" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16448" CreationDate="2015-03-13T12:00:31.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suffer with the same problem, and I hate resorting to using a cliché when I'm writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any examples of resources for you, but I can give you some of my techniques for dealing with the weather.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to avoid weather descriptions as much as possible, because each weather condition falls into around 3 standard descriptions (mild/howling/biting wind etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to have characters experience weather in juxtaposition to how it should make them feel, like listening to raindrops from inside and it soothing them, rather than rain usually being an inconvenience. This instantly moves you away from the generic descriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest simply mentioning what the condition is, and go more into a description of how it makes the character feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can let the reader infer from context what the weather is like from this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the weather description is important, you could always try personifying the weather, and introduce it as you would another character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This opens you up to a different host of possibilities, and thinking outside the box for how to describe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you could talk about how the wind tries to sneak under layers of clothing, giving it a snakelike and predatory feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could speak about the hot relentless sun (a little clichéd) like it's a stalker, following your character through the streets and not allowing them to get a breath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fair weather could be compared to an old acquaintance, taking a stroll together and reminiscing about old times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, think of different ways to approach the description, because it's hard to overcome the clichés. They are clichés for a reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T12:00:31.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3796" CreationDate="2015-03-13T13:38:42.900" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most traditional publishers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/harpercollins-to-go-pod-with-backlist/167872&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;now use POD for their backlists&lt;/a&gt;.  It's a controversial practice, because some authors and publishers disagree about whether a POD title should be considered &quot;in print&quot; for purposes of determining whether rights revert to the author or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T13:38:42.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16459" CreationDate="2015-03-13T15:24:14.837" Score="0" ViewCount="2097" Body="&lt;p&gt;By &lt;em&gt;strong&lt;/em&gt; I mean causing some reaction on the reader (not necessarily goosebumps, maybe just a small &lt;em&gt;wow&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having this problem right now. Example (the &lt;strong&gt;bolded&lt;/strong&gt; part):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He told me about how squirrels collect and store nuts for the winter.&#xA;  Nothing unusual. What's interesting is that sometimes they forget&#xA;  where they bury them. Cute, but odd if you think about it. Like, why&#xA;  did nature give a flawed skill to an animal? Why waste its time? The&#xA;  answer is that nature creates imperfect creatures. And that's&#xA;  because--sorry, do you know how natural selection works?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[The character gives the protagonist a metaphoric explanation about natural selection]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I mulled this over. I'd never thought about nature that way.&#xA;  Imperfection. Was that the reason allergies, cancers, syndromes, and&#xA;  other genetic disorders existed? How about death?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But that's a very depressive thought,&quot; I said. &quot;That means organisms&#xA;  are just broken machines. Including us.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Maybe,&quot; Cath admitted. &quot;De-Shi didn't see it that way, though. On the&#xA;  contrary, he found it incredible how squirrels were planting all these&#xA;  trees, and doing it without even knowing it. How they were rebuilding&#xA;  parks, woodlands, forests, jungles--home of countless plants, insects,&#xA;  and animals. How they were taking part in something immensely big:&#xA;  protecting the Earth, a planet belonging to a solar system, to a galaxy,&#xA;  to a vast and ever-expanding universe. All because of a tiny defect.&#xA;  All because an innocent mistake from nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm not sure why, but after De-Shi finished his monologue, I felt&#xA;  fresh, renewed. I not only saw nature differently, but my own life as&#xA;  well. True, I was imperfect, and I would probably always live in pain.&#xA;  However, that didn't make my existence worthless; there was still&#xA;  space for amazing things to happen. For the sun to shine in. For trees and beautiful forests to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like, in this case, what would make the &lt;strong&gt;bolded&lt;/strong&gt; part stronger? Making it longer? Adding short sentences? Or using a different choice of words, perhaps?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something that I consider to be &lt;em&gt;strong&lt;/em&gt;. And it's very similar to my passage. It's from the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation_%28film%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adaptation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Point is, what's so wonderful is that every one of these flowers has a&#xA;  specific relationship with the insect that pollinates it. There's a&#xA;  certain orchid look exactly like a certain insect so the insect is&#xA;  drawn to this flower, its double, its soul mate, and wants nothing&#xA;  more than to make love to it. And after the insect flies off, spots&#xA;  another soul-mate flower and makes love to it, thus pollinating it.&#xA;  And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the&#xA;  significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that&#xA;  because of their little dance the world lives? But it does. By simply&#xA;  doing what they're designed to do, something large and magnificent&#xA;  happens. In this sense they show us how to live - how the only&#xA;  barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you&#xA;  can't let anything get in your way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-03-14T04:36:06.480" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T15:41:56.947" Title="How to write a &quot;strong&quot; passage?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16458" CreationDate="2015-03-13T17:05:47.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, for a passage create an emotional reaction, the reader has to be able to relate to it.  First, determine the point you want to make.  Next, make your point in a way your intended audience can relate to.  Using metaphors helps, as does using visceral language that really drives home your message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, first determine if the point you want to make is that a) nature produces truly flawed creatures who thrive anyway, b) creatures' perceived 'flaws' are not really flaws at all but essential to their continued existence, or c) something else entirely.  Once you determine that, drive your point home with an interesting example, analogy, or metaphor.  I like your existing passage in bold as-is, because in my mind I picture those cuddly little creates going about their merry way doing what they do, and being completely oblivious to the significance of their actions.  But keep in mind, other readers may not be as familiar with squirrels or may not get the same mental image.  There's only one way to be sure the reader gets the message you're striving for and that's to give it to them.  You could expand your passage by choosing to describe in detail the effort needed to acquire and preserve a nut, only to have it not matter in the end.  Or you could describe how us humans benefit from the actions of these unknowing creatures.  Bottom line, it really depends on what you want to say and saying it in a way your audience can relate to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5940" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T17:05:47.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16460" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-13T17:57:18.417" Score="5" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my style of writing, I often find that I lapse into relating what happens or has happened, usually via short, choppy, dead sentences. As far as I can tell, this is because the scene I am writing cannot be shown - or at least would need to be greatly revised before it could be. My method for fixing this is to simply &lt;em&gt;skip&lt;/em&gt; the scene in question, and fast forward to the point where I can begin showing, rather than telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: This does not mean I believe telling is an inherent no-no. See the first comment to what's answer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example, from what I am currently writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main protagonist is currently a prisoner. After relating the terrible conditions of the dungeon (which was done through showing, not telling), there is a chapter break. In the next chapter, a guard enters the dungeon and starts ordering everyone up. The protagonist gets in the way, and the guard knocks her out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the break. While the protagonist is out, the guard gets everyone out of the cell and lines them up for inspection by an individual. None of that is related. The protagonist wakes up during the inspection, at the first point things can be shown again. How she got there is eventually revealed a paragraph or two later, by the guard simply stating that they are being inspected. That's all the reader really needs to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method generally works just fine. I find that the reader doesn't really need to know everything that would have happened in the 'telling' scene, and I can relate the bare minimums in the 'showing' scene, usually through dialogue or action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my question: Is this a good method, or a bad method? Out of necessity, I can't relate what has transpired right away, and often wait several paragraphs before doing so. Will not knowing what has happened confuse/frustrate a reader? Or will it simply build suspense, and so add to the scene?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2022-07-01T15:39:09.827" Title="Skipping telling to get to the showing - pros and cons" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16460" CreationDate="2015-03-13T19:18:58.357" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that some people have an unhealthy obsession with this show-don't-tell thing. Show don't tell is one possible specific style, it is not a God given commandment or one of the basic laws of physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most current bestsellers are full of telling, and they read (and sell) well nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I for one am completely happy with a writer telling me that her character &quot;feels sad&quot;, and although I've been quoting Chuck Palahniuk's advice to avoid thought verbs to everyone who wanted advice on how to show don't tell, I've never read any of his books because his writing style simply does not appeal to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T19:18:58.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16463" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-14T06:10:22.453" Score="3" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read numerous books on the pros and cons of getting representation with a literary agent. Would any of you care to give advice on whether or not an agent is a good idea? I understand they work off sales percentages, but are there other issues I need to be aware of? Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13161" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T04:25:05.330" Title="using a literary agent" Tags="|marketing|agent|sales|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16448" CreationDate="2015-03-15T00:53:07.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend Melville, particularly his descriptions of various events out at sea. He is a superb describer of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to weather, connecting it to the familiar is one method. Metaphors will be helpful here. You are correct in wanting to avoid clichés.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simplicity is your friend here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this passage from Marquez, &quot;The sky crumbled into a set of destructive thunderstorms.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It tells us all we need to know. More laborious descriptions of weather have to be done carefully because at some point, the reader loses the picture. The more specific your weather becomes, the less likely they are to follow (if wowing the reader is your priority).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, what basic type are we dealing with. Snow, rain? I tend to build weather descriptions by emphasizing throughout. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The snow filled the air like ash. It was so cold, the windows cracked. The rain had the house feeling like a car wash. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course it's difficult because weather is non-human, and it's easy to forget the humanity is most important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12971" LastActivityDate="2015-03-15T00:53:07.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16465" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16466" CreationDate="2015-03-15T07:05:32.027" Score="5" ViewCount="4136" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose that several individuals are speaking. There are two conversations occurring at once in the same place. Both are heard simultaneously by each person that is present. Each person participates in one and only one conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does one write dialogue so that it is obvious without explanation that both explicitly quoted speeches occur at once, but without violating conventional grammar? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;QUESTION&lt;/strong&gt;: Specifically, does (1) or (2) as literally heard by the perspective character (PC) violate modern grammar? Which one if any---and in that case, how can it be rewritten without such a violation, yet without rewriting it into (3)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*COROLLARY**: Are there published modern precedents in novels or short fiction regarding dual but explicit dialogue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1)&lt;/strong&gt; There is the em dashery from &lt;em&gt;Tristram Shandy&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;So I told him---This salad is floating---that he doesn't know how---in its dressing!---to fix cars. I look at it and---He needs to get---it's disgusting!---a professional to look at it.&quot; Tom spits in the salad and goes on complaining. Janice continues speaking to Bob---who nods and smiles periodically. I don't believe that he can hear what she's saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;2)&lt;/em&gt; There is the symbolic indication of simultaneousness via brackets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;So I told him that he doesn't know how to fix cars,&quot; says Janice. (&quot;This salad is floating in its dressing,&quot; Tom complains. &quot;I look at it and---&quot; he spits in the salad.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;He needs to get a professional to look at it.&quot; (&quot;It's disgusting.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob looks at Janice and nods and smiles periodically. I don't believe that he can hear what she's saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;3)&lt;/em&gt; One can summarize who says what and when, or write explicitly the loudest dialogue and summarize what is also said, or separate the speeches and join them with a while clause. For instance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;So I told him that he doesn't know how to fix cars,&quot; says Janice. &quot;He needs to get a professional to look at it,&quot; she tells Bob.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This salad is floating in its dressing!&quot; Tom complains while Janice speaks. &quot;I look at it and---&quot; he spits in the salad. &quot;It's disgusting.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob looks at Janice and nods and smiles periodically. I don't believe that he can hear what she's saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However this cannot achieve the effect which simultaneous dialogues can achieve&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now I agree: following several overlapping conversations at once is typically confusing if not usually impossible. That's also the point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's noisy and she cannot understand anything that is said ...&quot; is unclear and vague; the reader isn't given the information they need to visualize any realistic group interactions that cause the noisiness mentioned---if that's all the writer tells them. (I am aware that some authors have suggested that many scenes do not need to be capable of being visualized ... ) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several conversations at once that are described as they are heard by the PC is a technical device. It allows the author to reveal information where the PC is present and yet the PC is plausibly unaware of this information despite they fact that they are present there in fact. They hear it but they also have a reason in that context to be insufficiently attentive or incapable of parsing it. (That is not true about the readers, who are made aware of it, because those conversations which are difficult to follow in real time are typically more easily parsed and followed if they are read not heard.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to identify the speakers explicitly, so that it is not a cacophony like in the case above where the listener is tired and uninterested, I could follow Vollmann's lead, I suppose. But is this really much better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I told him---says Janice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This salad is floating---Tom observes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That he doesn't know how---Janice continues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In its dressing! Tom raises his voice, attempting to be heard. &quot;It's disgusting.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To fix cars, concludes Janice. &quot;He needs to see a professional for help.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile Tom spits in the salad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This question is migrated from english.SE as suggested there.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13168" LastEditorUserId="13168" LastEditDate="2015-03-15T09:11:22.180" LastActivityDate="2015-03-15T14:14:16.963" Title="simultaneous dialogues in novels and short fiction" Tags="|technique|dialogue|structure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16465" CreationDate="2015-03-15T08:42:08.947" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In real life, a person will always focus on one speaker at a time. This person may get distracted and switch his attention to another speaker while the first is still talking, but he is &lt;em&gt;aware&lt;/em&gt; of this change of focus and it is marked for him by the sound of the voice, and maybe the face of the speaker, so it is &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; as confusing as unmarked written dialogue, where the reader is given no indication as to who is currently speaking. In reality you will always know which voice you are currently listening to, and if your writing aims to depict this experience you must indicate somehow which voice is speaking which sentences. You can do this by stating that the person listening switches their attention, or by indicating a changed speaker. If you just mix the speeches, as &lt;em&gt;Tristram Shandy&lt;/em&gt; does, then that will be an &lt;strong&gt;artificial&lt;/strong&gt; confusion that a real listener would normally not experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how to style this, normal dialogue conventions are sufficient. If you keep the listener as the subject, write it in one paragraph with the dialogue snippets connected by descriptions of attention shift:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;...,&amp;quot; John heard, then another voice caught his attention: &amp;quot;...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the speakers are the subjects, give each speaker his own paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Bla bla--&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;--bla la bla--&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;--bla.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I can't find an em dash on my mobile phone, so I'm using two dashes instead.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only if you have an unfocussed listener, who lets all the different voices wash over him like meaningless sounds, will you have a true parallel cacophony, but then no voice will stand out and everything will be incomprehensible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-15T08:50:49.970" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16469" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-16T05:58:10.017" Score="6" ViewCount="703" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question about copyrighting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was scrolling through tumblr the other day and someone had posted an idea that said something about people seeing in black and white until they meet their soul mate - then they see in color. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really like this idea and would want to use it in my fiction novel, but I was wondering if that is considered copying? I don't want to copy someone's idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can you use any idea posted on social media or is it considered stealing someone's ideas?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13173" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-08T09:30:49.833" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T09:30:49.833" Title="Using ideas posted on social media: is it ok?" Tags="|copyright|ideas|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16470" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-16T07:59:10.773" Score="3" ViewCount="270" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this just happens to be a thing that's common in the books I read as a kid, but there was always that bit, in the beginning of every book in the series, where the main character(s) were described. It was pretty much the same description in every book (the Nancy Drew books and the Sweet Valley Twins books come to mind here). In these books I sort of get it, cause you pretty much always picked the book that looked most interesting in the library and therefor never really read them in the right order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now last night I had to look up a thing in the third Harry Potter book and I realized that the same thing goes on here. Why would you in a book series that is meant to be read in chronological order describe the main character(s) in every book? Wouldn't that just bore the reader? I might be interested in knowing Harry has grown a few inches, but I already know he has dark hair and green eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In what circumstances is it appropriate to describe the character in every book in the series and when should it be avoided?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12895" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T13:59:16.113" Title="Repeating the appearance of the main character in every book" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16469" CreationDate="2015-03-16T08:02:04.273" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideas are not protected by copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#102&quot;&gt;Copyright Law of the United States of America, § 102 (b)&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright only protects &lt;em&gt;works&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone can use any idea, even ideas that have been turned into works. If you chose to write a novel about a postapocalyptic society forcing teens to go through some media event where they had to kill each other, Suzanne Collins couldn't sue you (or she would long since have sued Veronica Roth and her other imitators).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T08:02:04.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16472" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16473" CreationDate="2015-03-16T08:09:26.203" Score="1" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to start writing a full-length novel/story. A love story to be exact. I have been using first person and third person writing styles in my previous articles and short stories.&lt;br&gt; Now, I want more power over the emotions of both the lead characters, girl and boy. I want to be able to convey the feelings and thoughts of both the characters at the same time. &lt;br&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Which writing style should I choose? First or third person.&lt;/strong&gt; I know first person gives me more power over emotions but that would be limited to just one character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12850" LastEditorUserId="12850" LastEditDate="2015-03-16T09:04:09.223" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T09:04:09.223" Title="Which narration style gives more authority over emotions" Tags="|style|creative-writing|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16472" CreationDate="2015-03-16T08:57:45.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I know third person gives me more power over emotions but that would be limited to just one character.&lt;/em&gt; No. With third person omniscient narrator freely switching the followed character, you can easily flip between the two. Such switches are not nearly as freely available with first person, where you must follow one character for a full section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It boils down to &quot;easy to apply&quot; vs &quot;difficult, but strong.&quot; The old mantra of &quot;show, don't tell&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; emotions of both characters with third person omniscient narrator, who can just peek into heads of both. So, it gives you &quot;more authority&quot;, there's no doubt if the frown is suspicion, anger or ache.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With first person, it's easy to &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; emotions of the current narrator (you can still &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; and you should, but you don't have to), but you are forced to &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; all emotions of the other. It's also very personal, very immersive. You need more skill, and it takes more work, but if done right, the effects are stronger. (though it's easier to mess it up, for very poor effects). You may switch perspective between the two, to ease the burden a little, but it's another thing that can be messed up if not done skillfully and weakens immersion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there's third person limited, (or first person which is bound to a third character; the narrator not in the main cast), which will be most difficult, because you have to &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; both, and you don't have the easily available depth of immersion of first person. It can be strongest if done masterfully, and it's also the easiest to mess up, simply because you just can't &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; (or you break the immersion and make it very cheesy) and &lt;em&gt;showing&lt;/em&gt; always takes more text to write out, running at risk of boring the reader with sheer volume of text needed to convey anything longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'd go with first person, as it offers a decent balance between difficulty of writing and power of emotion conveyed, with a nice added bonus of strong immersion. If doing it from a single character's perspective turns out difficult, you can accept switching perspectives between sections/chapters to provide &quot;the opposite point of view&quot;. Though if you are a beginner, you may prefer third person with omniscient narrator - it's &quot;cheaper&quot; but it's harder to mess up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T08:57:45.753" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16463" CreationDate="2015-03-16T11:28:14.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not an expert in the subject, but I've recently done a lot of research into this myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I can gather, nowadays publishers are almost entirely likely to dismiss a piece of writing (whether it's a novel or a children's book) if it is not sent to them from an agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because they get thousands of submissions weekly, so it is their first line to reduce the amount of scripts that they need to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, an agency is more likely to read, give notes and be more invested in your project, as they will make money personally if you do well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They generally already have a good relationship with many publishers, so the publisher will know that the work that they are submitting is at least worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall I would suggest trying to submit to an agent, as you are more likely to be able to get published. And them charging a percentage of your sales seems like a good choice. Better than having 100% of no money if you can't get published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of other issues, but someone else with more experience on literary agents may be able to enlighten you on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T11:28:14.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16475" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-16T12:59:49.470" Score="3" ViewCount="5573" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know which are the main article categories a journalist is expected to know how to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some classic and actual article types are similar. Others were born recently, such as smartphone or video game reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is a very broad question, don't hesitate to redirect me to books or Wikipedia articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12639" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2015-03-16T14:02:42.453" LastActivityDate="2019-04-06T17:33:54.120" Title="Types of articles in journalism" Tags="|journalism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16463" CreationDate="2015-03-16T13:29:58.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, an agent has more functions than just to sell your book.  Having sold a book to a major publisher without an agent, I can certainly attest that it is possible.  However, in hindsight, I would have been better off getting one. Unless you want to become an expert in the business of books, and you have time and opportunity to hobnob with publishers, an agent will probably be well worth the fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, as I mentioned in another post, I'm interested in trying to get my book reissued, or the rights back, and I haven't had much success.  I'm reasonably sure if I had an agent, this wouldn't be an issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(On the downside, it isn't particularly easy to get a good agent --selling your book might actually even be easier!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T13:29:58.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16470" CreationDate="2015-03-16T13:59:16.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not every author follows this, but I'm of the opinion that a series should be written with at least minimal accommodations for a reader who enters it at any point --including some character descriptions and brief contextualization.  People read books out of order all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T13:59:16.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16475" CreationDate="2015-03-16T14:56:21.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if my list is comprehensive, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;news reporting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;columns/editorials (opinion pieces)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;criticism/reviews/commentary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;essays (including investigative journalism, popular science etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;interviews&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and minor forms like headlines or summaries(blurbs) for front page or RSS, live reporting (minute-by-minute newsfeeds), taglines and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just &lt;em&gt;forms&lt;/em&gt; of publication and they branch into hundreds sub-genres by subject. Smartphone or Video Game reviews are just form of Reviews, and while the &lt;em&gt;subject&lt;/em&gt; is different, the &lt;em&gt;structure&lt;/em&gt; is the same as reviews of cars or restaurants from a hundred years ago. Similarly, an essay on Higgs' Boson will probably be of similar structure as one on AC Voltage from times of Tesla (popular science) and one on biography of Diego Maradona will be similar to biography of Winston Churchill (biographical essay). So don't get blinded by the variety of subjects - the number of actual core forms of journalism is much smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, these are for actual publishing, but you will be required to write letters to interviewees, request publications, write reports for your superiors, prepare polls questions and handle many more genres that never show up in print, but are necessary to perform the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(note there are also other forms of journalism but they are usually handled by respective specialists - photojournalism, live TV news reporting, copywriting etc, but these are rarely handled by &lt;em&gt;journalists&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T14:56:21.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16463" CreationDate="2015-03-16T18:01:34.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to negotiate when publishing the cases in which the rights revert to you if the book goes out of print. (I suppose today one would also have to negotiate whether a POD book is considered out of print or how long it remains POD only for it to be considered out of print.) Do you want to make digital editions of your work be free of DRM? Do you want foreign rights. That is another thing to negotiate, and so on. An agent helps with this; they know more about the book trade than you do. It's division of labor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most publishers, except in science fiction (and quite a few in science fiction) simply won't accept manuscripts without agents or without you knowing the editors personally. You're reduced in options without an agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you'll need to get a book accepted without an agent first to later get a capable agent you'd want working for you. It changes your publishing record that you present to potential agents to get them to work for you. (I agree with O.S.C. in this.) Only exception is if you get lucky: a great agent is looking for authors for some reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13168" LastEditorUserId="13168" LastEditDate="2015-03-17T04:25:05.330" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T04:25:05.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16480" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-16T18:18:07.133" Score="2" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working for a company's IT department, and one of my tasks is to write documentation for common procedures that we perform, in order to get new employees acquainted with them more quickly. I was considering using the Microsoft Manual of Style as a style guide for consistency, since I find that most Microsoft support articles are easy to read and informative, but still brief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the reviews I've read, it seems that the book's primary audience is people designing Windows software and writing documentation for it. The files I'm writing deal with processes such as creating new users and setting up new computers. I'm not even sure if this could be considered technical writing in the first place. I'm mostly looking for information about very specific formatting, such as image placement, font usage, and line spacing, but I also would like to read about more general topics such as word choices and overall layout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this book a good choice for me? If not, are there any that would be better-suited to what I'm doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13182" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T21:10:11.103" Title="Is the Microsoft Manual of Style appropriate for writing general IT related instructional documents?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|book-rec|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16481" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16483" CreationDate="2015-03-16T19:01:02.767" Score="4" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write a mathematical research monograph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has a section named &quot;Partially ordered categories&quot;. The first subsection (with the most basic properties of partially ordered categories) of this section has the same name (&quot;Partially ordered categories&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it OK for a section and its subsection to share the same name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, what should I rename the subsection to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T22:00:41.073" Title="Name of a subsection and its parent section clash" Tags="|titles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16480" CreationDate="2015-03-16T20:27:51.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not specifically familiar with that book, but as much as I hate to admit it (I am not fond of microsoft) they tend to do these things well. The two pieces advice I would give you are to supplement with a traditional style guide like Chicago, and document where you draw each standard from; and to feel free to set your own style for things where the style guides are incomplete or do not fit (again documenting your standard). I would also draw from any corporate style guides or document standards as much as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-03-16T21:10:11.103" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T21:10:11.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16481" CreationDate="2015-03-16T21:21:43.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer to your general question is &quot;no.&quot;  If the subsection is titled the same as the section, then either one of them is named incorrectly or else your outline is incorrect.  An outline is supposed to be like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Title: Great Cities of the World&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I. American Cities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Large Cities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  1. New York, NY&#xA;&#xA;  2. Chicago, IL&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B. Historical Cities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  1. Philadelphia, PA&#xA;&#xA;  2. San Diego, CA&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;II. European Cities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc. etc. etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In mathematical terms: Every subsection must be a &lt;em&gt;limited&lt;/em&gt; subset of the section in which it occurs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corollary One: A section must not be divided into subsections unless there are at least two subsections.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corollary Two: A section name is implicitly part of all subsection names beneath it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corollary Three: If explicitly adding the section name to a subsection name would cause the subsection name to not make sense, then the subsection is in the wrong section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific question: The subsection should be named &quot;Basic Properties.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T21:21:43.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16481" CreationDate="2015-03-16T22:00:41.073" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You definitely want to avoid the kind of clash you're describing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intuitively, the section is composed of smaller subsections, which expand on particular areas. So a clash feels like you're saying &quot;And now, within the topic of &lt;code&gt;(Topic X)&lt;/code&gt;, let's talk about &lt;code&gt;(Topic X)&lt;/code&gt;.&quot; Even if there's some kind of sense to it, it's confusing and should be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to solving this is figuring out what the difference is between the larger section, and the subsection. If they're both talking about &lt;code&gt;(Topic X)&lt;/code&gt; - in this case, about Partially Ordered Categories - then the subsection &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be discussing a &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; aspect of &lt;code&gt;(Topic X)&lt;/code&gt; - otherwise, you wouldn't have any other subsections in the same category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most often, if you feel like the names should be the same, it's because you're discussing a large topic, and at some point you want to formally define the topic. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Topic X&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Introduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Motivation for Topic X&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Topic X&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Use #1 of Topic X&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Use #2 of Topic X&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Variations on Topic X&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Topic X in Popular Culture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the role of the subsection might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A formal definition of the topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basic facts about the topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A brief overview of the topic, which will be expanded upon in later subsections&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...or other similar roles. You've got to figure out the particular role your subsection plays, in order to give it an accurate name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest that the easiest way to do this is to try to make the title of the clashing subsection &lt;strong&gt;longer&lt;/strong&gt;. If this subsection is talking &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; Topic X, but isn't &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; about Topic X, then explaining (in as many words as it takes) what the subsection is about will give you a more specific title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in your particular case, the relevant subsection contains only the formal mathematical definition. So if you'd describe the subsections in your own words, you'd say &quot;This subsection has &lt;strong&gt;the definition of Partially ordered categories&lt;/strong&gt;, and then the next subsection introduces another concept that works with this definition.&quot; So you could use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.5 Partially ordered categories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3.5.1 Definition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.5.2 Dagger categories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or even&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.5 Partially ordered categories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3.5.1 Definition of Partially ordered categories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.5.2 Dagger categories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and you'll be entirely clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T22:00:41.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16486" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16555" CreationDate="2015-03-16T23:24:24.853" Score="4" ViewCount="7227" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider a piece writing that makes three points, all prefaced by some type of heading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple paragraphs of introduction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Heading 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Multiple paragraphs explaining Argument 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Heading 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Multiple paragraphs explaining Argument 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Heading 3&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Multiple paragraphs explaining Argument 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple paragraphs of conclusion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there is no heading above the conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you manage that transition?  How do you let the reader know that &amp;quot;we're not continuing to support Argument 3 anymore; this is actually wrapping up the entire work&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The introduction has a clear transition, because the reader hits Heading 1.  But the transition from Argument 3 to the conclusion is vague and ill-defined. By that time, the reader has gotten used to seeing the headings as a transition to a new thought. How do you bring this same clear cognitive break to the transition into the conclusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you avoid the reader getting halfway into the conclusion and thinking, &amp;quot;wait a minute, is the author still talking about Argument 3...I'm confused.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you set it off with some formatting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Heading 3&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Multiple paragraphs explaining Argument 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple paragraphs of conclusion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or do you do some wording like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In conclusion...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;To sum up...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;At the end of the day...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or do you just bite the bullet and stick a heading in there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Heading 3&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Multiple paragraphs explaining Argument 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Multiple paragraphs of conclusion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13188" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T19:21:10.560" Title="How do you effectively denote a non-&quot;heading-ed&quot; transition into a concluding section?" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16493" CreationDate="2015-03-17T00:18:59.870" Score="1" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would it be more effective to the reader to start out a novel explaining the setting and scenery or, introducing the characters? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13187" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:30:07.520" Title="Starting Out a Novel" Tags="|fiction|novel|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-03-18T03:21:03.537" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16402" CreationDate="2015-03-17T00:22:35.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that John Green uses a real life quote in his book, &lt;em&gt;Looking for Alaska&lt;/em&gt; and does not sight the quote in the text so, I'd say it is perfectly fine to have a fictional charter say a real life quote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13187" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T00:22:35.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16489" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-17T01:14:12.603" Score="0" ViewCount="598" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would it be more interesting reading a book that switches between 3 character's points of view chapter to chapter or, staying in the main character's mind the whole time. All of the point of views would be in first person but, I don't know if it would be more intriguing reading many. I want my novel to be grasping, not confusing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13187" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T12:15:59.247" Title="Point of view chapter to chapter" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16520" CreationDate="2015-03-17T02:26:34.433" Score="1" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a scene for my novel. In this scene I will be revealing the primary villain for the entire first book. The villain, named Annihilus, has the power over the domain of life; he has warped this power into the control and manipulation of flesh.He can literally kill you with the flick of a finger or turn your organs into snakes. I wanted to show the sheer depth of his power by having him kill one of his followers, which had previously failed him in killing a main character. I wrote that he 'curled a single finger, and the man's arms began to twist and break. Then the finger curled more, and his back broke with a sickening series of cracks. Still, despite the screams and horrifying sounds echoing from the mans mouth, the God persisted, until he had created a fist, tightened by rage. The man became nothing more than a sphere of blood, smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you guys think? Is that last bit too much? Do you think that it will take the reader from the story? Does it break the immersion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13189" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T16:20:32.780" Title="Does this sentence excessively break the fourth wall?" Tags="|style|flow|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16491" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-17T04:28:29.917" Score="0" ViewCount="971" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry this isn't directly about writing but I don't know where I'd for this kind of question. I'm writing a paper and I'm trying to come up with a comparison that can tell my audience, to give them a better idea of how much 251 million tons of trash is. Does anyone have any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13191" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T22:11:32.293" Title="Comparison for something that's 251 million tons" Tags="|essay|paper|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-03-18T03:10:27.033" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16489" CreationDate="2015-03-17T04:49:48.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion on this is that every reader enjoys a narrative told from a single character's point of view, but there are many readers who find viewpoint switches irritating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually a reader will identify with the protagonist of a first person narrative, and at every viewpoint switch the reader will have to make an effort to let their interest in the current chapter's protagonist go and interest themselves in a new character. I for one find that this diminishes my reading pleasure and often read all chapters of one character before I read those of the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every multy viewpoint narrative will always lose you some readers, while no one will not read a book because it is told from a single point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception to this is a love story told from both lover's view. This works because the focus of each protagonist is on the other, so they are always both present and in focus for the reader, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T04:49:48.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16487" CreationDate="2015-03-17T05:18:06.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Readers are different and enjoy different things. And stories are different and require different beginnings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, most people are more interested in persons than in environments, and character driven plots sell better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is best if you don't perceive this as either-or, but rather try to introduce both the character and the setting at the same time. All great novels begin with (1) the most intimate concerns of (2) one character (3) living in a certain situation. All three -- character, environment, and &quot;problem&quot; -- make up the story, and they can (and in my opinion should be) present right from the first paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick some recent bestsellers and read their first pages to see how these three aspects might be integrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T05:18:06.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16487" CreationDate="2015-03-17T09:07:54.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it's better to start with neither; start with the story. Both setting and character should be introduced bit by bit, as the story begins to unfold. If you start with setting the scene or introducing the characters then the reader has to wait for you to finish before they get to read the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many publishers will only read the first few lines of a piece, and many readers will only read the first page or two, before deciding whether to continue. If your piece doesn't set the stage for the story (better to be left after page one wondering who this is and what that is, than to know but not know that it's important) people will get bored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where prologues are especially useful; if you know you have to set the scene and the character start with a prologue that gives the reader a taste of the action. Get the reader hooked before you start filling bits out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as a final note, it's worth remembering: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you stop to describe the scenery, the story stops to wait for you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T09:07:54.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16489" CreationDate="2015-03-17T10:16:00.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Three &lt;em&gt;first-person&lt;/em&gt; POVs might be too much. It's already a little difficult to switch gears when going from one narrator to another; going entirely from one interior perspective to another, and then another, would probably be overwhelming. I wouldn't mind multiple POV characters if the book was in third person, because you're already at a certain remove from the action, so the &quot;camera&quot; is just being shifted to focus on a different actor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But ultimately it's dependent on the book  &amp;mdash; it's always possible that you could make it work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T10:16:00.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13078" CreationDate="2015-03-17T11:47:00.847" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe there is no &quot;recipe&quot; with which to cook up three-dimensional characters. However, since &quot;good&quot; characters - realistic, believable, full of faults, contradictions, anxieties and passions - are what I value above all in a story and what I put most effort in, here is how I develop my characters: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start with an idea. What kind of story do you want to tell? What is the message that you want to get across (if there is one at all)? Why is it important to you? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which traits does a character have to possess to add tension to the story? Suppose you want to tell a story about a lumber-jack that hunts an evil spirit wolf. What would the lumber-jack need to be like to make a good story out of this idea? Would he be infinitely more clever than the spirit wolf? Would he need to have special abilities to actually carry out the hunt? What are his personal motivations to hunt the wolf? Make a very rough draft of the character that fits your idea. Then, and this is the very heart of my character development: &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write a short biography&lt;/strong&gt;. In my experience, it takes time to get accustomed to a character and develop the right amount of intuition about him or her. I gain this inutition by writing about him outside of the actual story. I do not structure the biography at all, I simply start off with the sentence &quot;So-and-so was born on this-and-that day to a family of three. His mother was ...&quot; and so on. These stories are not meant to do anything useful in your project. They simply help you to get a grasp on your character. In the case of the lumberjack above, he could be an orphan that was raised in a big city by step parents and yearns to establish some connection to his lost parents. And so on. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I know that I am done with preparing my character when I do not have to think about his reactions any more. Pick an arbitrary question or choice and answer it on behalf of your character. Imagine a random scene. How would your character behave? If you are able to answer these questions without hesitating, your character is ready to be deployed in your project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this strategy has a very substantial disadvantages: It makes your characters unbelievably stubborn. I had to abort the work on entire novels because my characters simply refused to play along in the storyline that I had in mind. However, this usually is not that big a problem since I write very character-oriented anyways, i.e.: I tell the stories that my characters &quot;tell me&quot; and stopped pre-developping plots some time ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I also encounter difficulties if I find my characters to be annoying or boring. This, of course, is purely subjective and the only thing you can do about it is to give your characters some traits that you enjoy in others or yourself. For example, I am very impatient with passive characters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I find it very useful to observe the people that I meet on a day-to-day basis. This is not about categorizing and stereotyping. It's about developing your sense about other people and exercise your empathy. Because this is what is at the heart of good novels: Empathy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T11:47:00.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16487" CreationDate="2015-03-17T12:05:58.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is analogous to the painting artist asking, should I use light blue, medium blue or dark blue for the sky I am painting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is: use the color that the sky appears.  You might say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Well, the painter just looks at the sky and paints it the color he&#xA;sees so that is a different thing.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the &lt;strong&gt;best painters do not only paint what is there&lt;/strong&gt;, but &lt;em&gt;instead paint what they &lt;strong&gt;want you to see&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Paint What You Want the Reader to See&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That should also be the way you, the writer, should paint your scenes.  Paint what you want the reader to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If setting is extremely important as it is in, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2px65b2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;All Quiet On The Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque -- amazon link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that setting were changed, since the book is based upon World War I, the entire story would be changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, a book like, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYtIuT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces, (amazon link)&lt;/a&gt; is a character-driven novel with events occurring because of who the main character is and his outlook on life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the beginning of each of those and you'll see how different they are and how fitting the beginnings are for each book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion your answer can be obtained by asking yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I writing a character-driven book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I writing a book that comes from a story concept I have in mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I writing a book which richly describes some setting / historical period?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one you seem to gravitate toward is the answer to your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:30:07.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16489" CreationDate="2015-03-17T12:15:59.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Lauren Ipsum points out, whether it is necessary to employ different POVs depends on the story you want to tell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I try to keep my stories as simple as possible. This includes limitting the number of narrators to the smallest possible amount that is still able to carry the story. The reasons are manifold: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A clear structure allows the reader to follow you easily. This will help people to pick up your book and stay on track. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Equally, telling a story of just one character is easier than juggling three or even more. There is authors who excell at this, Hans Fallada for example was a master of telling multiple stories at once. I, on the other hand, fail when faced with a story that demands more than one narrator, because: &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a characters acts as a narrator, he should contribute something substantial to the story. Plus, he must be a convincing character. Developping convincing characters, however, is time-consuming. Finally fitting these characters into a coherent story, for me, is close to impossible, because there will always be contradictions and passages during which one character does all the narrating and the other is basically silent. This is my problem: If I read a story told by multiple narrators, what I essentially expect is multiple novels that are elegantly braided together to make up one story. This, in my experience, is a tedious amount of work that will generate a lot of frustration and structuring problems. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However: Even limitting your number of narrators to the bare minimum does of course not imply that the other characters have to stay silent. There is a vast amount of &quot;tricks&quot; that allow you to tell their stories as well, if you wish, even without granting them &quot;screen time&quot;. I explored these tricks years ago when I wrote a novella about a teenage boy who shot his best friend. I was very interested in how his relatives dealt with the situation, but couldn't bear to give each of them a narrator, because that would have bloated the text unnecessarily and obscured the story I was mainly interested in, i.e. the story of the boy himself. What I did is I actively looked for ways to incorporate the feelings and anxieties of the boy's relatives in the story. I found ordinary diologue to be immensely useful - not only between my narrator and the character in question, but between other characters as well, eavesdropping be praised! -, but obviously more subtle possibilities exist, too. Unearthing these possibilities takes time and intuition. But it improves your manuscript, since you actively think about what you want to tell and why it is important (or is it?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T12:15:59.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16487" CreationDate="2015-03-17T12:29:53.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In response to SaberWriters comment, I'd like to raise the question what a story is. As a a trained physicist, the answer to me is easy: Change, or, in the pysical setting, d/dt. Anything that is different at the end of the story from what it was at the beginning of the story can possibily maintain a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This element - the aspect that changes - is what you should introduce at the beginning of your story. In my experience, this is essential, because you need to establish a benchmark that allows your reader to judge the wonderful changes happening in your story. If you take away this benchmark, you remove the context of the entire story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming back to SaberWriter and incorporating the change idea means that, as SaberWriter pointed out, you need to know what your story is about. Is it about the transformation of a single character? (This usually is a Hero's Journey.) Introduce the character and stress the character traits that will have changed in the end. Is it about a societal change? Show the society in question. A country? A landscape? Well then, go ahead, and show your reader the status quo, before everything changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T12:29:53.377" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16491" CreationDate="2015-03-17T12:40:38.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://wolframalpha.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wolframalpha.com&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;That is the kind of searches the Computational Knowledge Engine answers.&#xA;Specifically this link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=9.3%C3%9710%5E11%20pounds&amp;amp;lk=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=9.3%C3%9710^11+pounds&amp;amp;lk=1&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(shows the weight of all humans on earth, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I put in &quot;251 million tons&quot; and searched at WolframAlpha and got that answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WolframAlpha Definition (from the site)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a fundamentally new way to get knowledge and answers— not by searching&#xA;  the web, but by doing dynamic computations based on a vast collection&#xA;  of built-in data, algorithms, and methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T12:40:38.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16442" CreationDate="2015-03-17T13:20:30.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It should go without saying that some of these other answers have very valuable advice that is definitely worth reading.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When people &quot;debate&quot; it is rarely calm and cool headed. It rarely stays on topic and quite often comes from the fact that the basic assumptions which each has hitherto assumed the other also held are different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a great time to expose any character flaws (which I assume you have thought about because you strike me as a sensible writer) and have a good opportunity not just to exposition the situation to the readers but also show the characters dealing with their conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I want to turn up the heat in a character debate I try to stay laser focused on what exactly the bone of contention is but allow the characters to throw in unrelated things that the reader might not be fully aware of (or was nto present for) but the characters know as they have a shared history before the story started. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core disagreement should be something that can be expressed in not many words and doing so helps to clarify the positions of the two characters more clearly in my mind. What can really make an argument bitter and drawn out is when the words people are using clearly mean something different to each of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen two very liberal Christians spend hours debating a single issue that from the outside it might seem that they are both agreeing rather aggressively with each other on. This is because they have assigned vastly different meanings tot he same words. As the debate gets heated there is the odd slip to bringing in unrelated barbs. This is where the art of subtext is really important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also allows the debate to go meta (which happens) where the characters have to &quot;side bar&quot; in order to thrash out what some word or phase means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further it can really help to give the emotional reaction too. Remembering that it is not so much the thesis of what they are saying that brings character to the front but their emotional reaction to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No, that's not right at all&quot; said Bob as he struggled to not let his&#xA;  frustration with John boil over into actual shouting. Why can he not&#xA;  see how wrong he is on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't think you are hearing what I am saying,&quot; said John feeling&#xA;  that Bob was not listening to him properly. &quot;This is not the old 'out&#xA;  in the military' debate, this is about saving lives.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How the hot hell do you mean to save lives by ending them?&quot; Snapped&#xA;  Bob more angrily than he intended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the above example, which I invented just now (feel free to use and abuse as you wish), I have tried to say nothing at all about the actual debate and yet the two speakers are getting really irate over the issue all the same. Not all debates are filled with people giving good articulation to point and counter point. People are irrational and can sometimes simply communicate very badly. Make use of this as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this were part of some actual narrative we would have learned that these guys have had debates like this before and do not agree. It says a lot about John and Bob without actually adding anything new to the debate itself which, sadly, is how most people carry on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: let the character's passion show in their dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T13:20:30.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16402" CreationDate="2015-03-17T13:33:17.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could, but it is very disrespectful towards the one you steal the quote from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the person is still alive or not dead for long, it might also be considered plagiarism to use something they said without an attribution. But Friedrich Nietzsche is dead for 115 years now, so in this case it is very unlikely to get you into copyright trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T13:33:17.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16503" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-17T13:23:43.307" Score="1" ViewCount="2413" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know the proper way to cite a private letter printed in an anthology when using MLA? For example, I need to cite the letters from Queen Victoria to her daughter, Princess Fredrick William. I have a basic setup, but I'm unsure if this is correct. This is what I have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Victoria I, Queen of England. “Letter to Princess Fredrick William.” 24 Mar. 1858. The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch and Kevin J. H. Dettmar. 4th ed. New York: Pearson and Longman, 2010. 1548. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13193" OwnerDisplayName="Eleanor" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-03T09:14:29.380" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T09:14:29.380" Title="How to cite a letter in an anthology using MLA?" Tags="|citations|mla|anthologies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13078" CreationDate="2015-03-17T13:47:09.937" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel that I may be simply adding a footnote but here is what I do when the cast on the page grows really quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a &quot;bible&quot; of background information which I tend to print off and carry about with me for when I have ideas. I add a list of characters to this. Now because I am adding a lot very quickly I cheat and use a short hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to add one of each of the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character Flaw:&lt;/strong&gt; Some vice, addiction or mental block that they can't see past. Sometimes this is just an excessive sensitivity based on a past trauma. My favourite character ever was once a walk on part that was utterly messed up from bullying when at school. He was so much fun to write that he got entire stories to himself and I do my best to throw him into the background of every story I write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Quirk:&lt;/strong&gt; For really cheap characterization this can be a beard, a pipe they smoke, the over use of a word or phrase or just something equally mundane (like left handed or picks nose). It sounds cheesy but I have a list of quirks that I maintain and I try and pull one or two out for each character I create. It's not the daftness ofthe idea so much as how well you bring it to life that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Morality indicators:&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes I simply use the DnD lawful to chaotic, evil to good scale but to be honest you should get a lot more exact than that. Supports slavery, is anti-gay, is gay, vegetarian, racist, is an anarchist at heart; etc. etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Loves and hates:&lt;/strong&gt; I try to pick a bunch of random stuff (sometime literally random but sometimes better thought out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A secret:&lt;/strong&gt; This could be something like they are closet gay or they secretly vote right-wing but have lefty friends, they once got away with murder, they have a drug habit (see above lists). Maybe they are cheating on their wife or as someone else suggested they are a jock but they attend a night class in ballet. Are they in debt but too proud to tell anyone, for example (which leads nicely to the big question in a moment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also add other stuff like if their mother and father are still alive and if they have siblings. Are they rich or poor? What job do they have? How do they dress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There comes a point that for more minor characters there is far more information than you are ever going to show the reader and it is not going to make them any more unique to your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that still does not seem enough assign them a famous actor. This will give you an idea of voice and bearing that you are familiar with and some of that will come across in your writing. This also works by using people you know as the &quot;actor&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then we get to the big question that really brings all the fluff to life:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What Do They Want?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the thing that drives the character forward. In fact if the character is only going to hang about for a chapter or two this question alone makes them unique. What are they doing on your stage and why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where those secrets, morality indicators and odd vices help you come up with consequences and motivators that fit. What crazy, foolish or funny situation is the character in and trying to get out of (or away from)? What are they trying to get? Also is it realistic or are they fooling themselves?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they just trying to get the shopping done before the wife gets home or are they trying to save their little sister from a drug habit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: Show me what each character wants by what they say and do and they will very rapidly become unique characters to me as a reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T13:47:09.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13078" CreationDate="2015-03-17T13:50:31.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the other answers have done a great job at addressing the topic of good characters in general, so this focuses specifically on the dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, great dialogue is all about subtext.  When people talk to each other, what's going on in the words is rarely the whole conversation.  Mood, hidden goals and desires, mutual history, personality, sexual tension, competition, aggression and so forth are all part of the subtext.  Even a conversation about the weather can hold a wealth of information about the characters --are they real friends, fake friends, secret enemies, bored with each other, flirting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good exercise can be to write the subtext out explicitly and then write the dialogue second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subtext: I'm depressed ::Text: &quot;So glad it's finally spring, I think&#xA;I would have killed myself if we had one more grey winter day.&quot;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subtext: I need to make some smalltalk so I don't have to talk about anything real:: Text: &quot;Hey, how about this sun, right?&quot;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ST: I hate this guy:: T: &quot;Hot enough for you?  You must be burning up in that heavy suit.&quot;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ST: I wish I was somewhere else::T: &quot;Sunny and sixty.  But it looks like rain...&quot;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ST:  She's beautiful:: &quot;Wow, it's really warm today.  I bet the flowers will be blooming any minute now.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the examples above, you might make very different choices to express the chosen subtext --that's not the point.  The point is that you write the dialogue differently based on what the characters are thinking and feeling, even if the topic is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T13:50:31.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16402" CreationDate="2015-03-17T14:11:48.160" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two issues here: legal and literary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legally, if the quote has fallen into public domain, there's no problem. If not, you're into the whole nebulous area of &quot;fair use&quot;. Someone could conceivably sue you for copyright violation for stealing his quote. As we're presumably talking about quotes that are a sentence or two and not dozens of pages, I think you'd win with a fair-use defense, but I'm not a lawyer, an author might possibly have a case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the more important issue is literary. Let's assume there's no legal problem. Still: You can do it as a joke and it could work. Suppose you have an alien from the planet Rothgar say, &quot;As our famous poet Chwarniak once wrote, 'To be, or not to be, that is the question ...&quot; Any even moderately-educated person will recognize that as a quote from Shakespeare and not Chwarniak of Rothgar, and so, depending on the context, they will either find the mis-attribution humorous and laugh, or they'll find it disconcerting and out of place. (I suppose in the context of the story, it might actually make sense, like Shakespeare was really an alien from Rothgar, or the aliens have been picking up the thoughts of Earthmen and thinking they were their own, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the reader is familiar with the quote, what he WON'T do is just accept the misattributed quote matter-of-factly. If the story is otherwise very serious, this could be jarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T14:11:48.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14174" CreationDate="2015-03-17T16:44:52.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just write the story and don't worry in the beginning about how many pages. The story itself will dictate when you should stop. Also, if you are looking at shopping it around to publishers they will let you know what their criteria are. Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13199" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-03-18T19:51:43.970" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T19:51:43.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15890" CreationDate="2015-03-17T16:51:49.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, whether a relation between the reader and the characters of a story can be established depends not so much on the accurate depiction of physics or any kind of back-ground but on the realistic psychological depiction of the character. Can I identify myself with the character? Can I understand what he is doing? (This is very different from liking the character.) Previous answers pointed out this issue, and I'd merely like to comment on it by listing a few examples that I thoroughly enjoyed and that appeared, in a psychological sense, realistic to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Time Traveller's Wife&lt;/strong&gt; by Audrey Niffenegger: She muddled up both the laws of physics and biology and wrote, in my opinion, the best love story of the past 20 years. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jonathan Strange an Mr Norrell&lt;/strong&gt; by Susanna Clarke&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Age of Miracles&lt;/strong&gt; by Karen Thompson Walker: A coming-of-age story set in a world with severly disturbed boundary conditions. A great book that I couldn't put away, because it was beautifully written and psychologically accurate. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I really have to mention it? &lt;strong&gt;A Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/strong&gt; by George R. R. Martin. Some say Martin revolutionized Fantasy. I tend to agree, because he did the one thing I always missed in Fantasy literature: he gave psychological depth to his characters. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I recently wrote a novel about transsexuality that uses fantasy elements to explain the transsexuality of the main character (body switch theme). Unfortunately, I have some difficulties to explain to the publishers that this approach is valid, because the psychology of the transsexuality problem is not affected by slightly disturbed physical laws. In my opinion, this is exactly what fantasy should do: Take a conflict out of our world and place it in a situation that doesn't allow the reader to ignore it any longer. In this respect, Fantasy can be immensely powerful, so: Go ahead, don't be afraid to lose touch with reality. I think, as long as your characters are credible, lacking realism will not be a problem for stories set in a fantastical world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T16:51:49.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5139" CreationDate="2015-03-17T19:02:16.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://readthedocs.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ReadTheDocs&lt;/a&gt; (a popular system for documenting code-bases) has an interesting feature which may provide an answer to this question: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sphinx.readthedocs.org/en/latest/markup/code.html#includes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;literalinclude&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this directive, one can include code examples from another file within the documentation. The particularly interesting part is that a subset of lines can be extracted from the source file via the &lt;code&gt;:lines:&lt;/code&gt; directive meaning that the source file could be a complete (executable, testable) example while only the snippet that is relevant to the documented section need appear in the docs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this directive, it would theoretically be possible to include all examples in the documentation within the project's test suite. I can't say I've ever gone that far myself - but having run into this precise issue more than once I'm now tempted to give it a try!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13201" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T19:02:16.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16512" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16514" CreationDate="2015-03-17T19:13:53.613" Score="2" ViewCount="946" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the context of a technical manual, I need to write instructions guiding users through several standard manipulations. When providing examples of these manipulations, I have written a short sentence containing &quot;before&quot; and &quot;after&quot; examples which appear in (potentially multi-line) vertical blocks of their own. As a result, I am unsure as to whether the middle of the sentence should be capitalized. Additionally, a suggestion was made on ELU SE that removal of colons leading the code blocks may be preferable. I have presented an example of this below as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;With capitalization&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, the following code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;camera.start_recording('foo.h264', quantization=25)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should be replaced with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;camera.start_recording('foo.h264', quality=25)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Without capitalization&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, the following code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;camera.start_recording('foo.h264', quantization=25)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;should be replaced with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;camera.start_recording('foo.h264', quality=25)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Without capitalization or colons&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, the following code&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;camera.start_recording('foo.h264', quantization=25)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;should be replaced with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;camera.start_recording('foo.h264', quality=25)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My instinct suggests the second or third examples are preferable, but I'd be interested to learn of any style rules addressing this. For that matter, if there is a better way of structuring such examples which avoids these issues altogether, I would be most interested!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/199088/should-i-capitalise-or-between-examples&quot;&gt;Should I capitalise &quot;or&quot; between examples?&lt;/a&gt; was the most relevant question I could find to this one (and indeed was the corner of SE where I first posed this query, before being made aware of Writers), and I tend to agree with its reasoning that the lowercase version is preferable. Unfortunately the best suggestion in its answer (to use a bullet list of examples) doesn't really lend itself to potentially large blocks of code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13201" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-09-12T17:46:39.623" LastActivityDate="2017-09-13T18:54:31.787" Title="How to structure a sentence containing long code examples?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|api-documentation|examples|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16513" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-17T20:15:48.957" Score="1" ViewCount="345" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I am writing my essay on only one novel, and I have made it clear in the previous sentence that the quote is from a character in said novel, do I still have to include the authors name in the parenthesis, or just the page number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13202" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T09:21:09.417" Title="MLA parenthetical citation of a character in a novel" Tags="|novel|characters|mla|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16512" CreationDate="2015-03-17T21:05:41.630" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, any answer looks messy. One &quot;sentence&quot; with capitals halfway through bugs me; so does a line starting without a capital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would restructure the entire thing to avoid the issue entirely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Example 1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently, line 57 of &lt;em&gt;camera.py&lt;/em&gt; looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;camera.start_recording('foo.h264', quantization=25)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this line, the parameter &lt;code&gt;quantization&lt;/code&gt; needs to be replaced with&#xA;  &lt;code&gt;quality&lt;/code&gt;, giving us this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;camera.start_recording('foo.h264', quality=25)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Example 2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Look at Figure 1 below. Our code currently contains line (1); we need&#xA;  to replace it with line (2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(1) camera.start_recording('foo.h264', quantization=25)&#xA;&#xA;(2) camera.start_recording('foo.h264', quality=25)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Figure 1&lt;/strong&gt; - Two versions of line 57 of the code in camera.py&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Obviously I don't know your code file name, line numbers, or programming language. Substitute where necessary. &quot;camera.py&quot; can be replaced with Example 1 if you're taking that route.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T21:05:41.630" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16491" CreationDate="2015-03-17T22:11:32.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Comparing to multiple smaller things is not nearly as evocative. You'd be hard-pressed to find an object of similar size, but we can always imagine one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100 x 100 x 100 meters block of water is a million ton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;800 x 800 x 400 meters of water will be 256mln tons. Trash will occupy more as it's less dense. How much more? You're the expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best if you can use an illustration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open Google Maps and find a location that is familiar to your audience. I picked the center of my city, the &amp;quot;old town&amp;quot; filled with antique buildings and relics of architecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Search area which is 800x800 or somehow a round multilple/divisor of that. I picked an 800x800 square, using Google Maps measure tool:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O0sv0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find an aerial photo of that area, then find landmarks at the corners of your area. Draw the square in the respective perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extend the square by as much as the height would be, 400m is roughly half the side of the square. Make a cube. Adjust transparency and...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vQiFW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It could cover the whole Old Town of Cracow with half a kilometer layer.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's pick a different location. Central Park in New York is about 800m wide, 4km long. So, divide the 400m height by 5. 80 meters layer, a tenth of the width...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O0RUr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It would fill the Central Park area with a layer reaching over the tops of all but the highest of skyscrapers neighboring with it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adjust the volume for density, construct a cube of that volume at a familiar place, describe that cube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T22:11:32.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16512" CreationDate="2015-03-17T23:10:28.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the third version, without colons, because the visual break and the code formatting makes it clear that this is a new &quot;clause,&quot; or thought, and the piece of code is not a grammatically correct full sentence. Since you are continuing one sentence over several breaks, I wouldn't use capitals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think Watercleave has another good solution if you can't settle on any combination of punctuation and capitalization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T23:10:28.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16517" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-17T23:44:37.623" Score="0" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a project for company's upcoming book. We thought it would be cool for me to ccomment on blogs and forums as one of the lead child characters. Do you foresee that as being a problem, especially if the blog targets Tweens? And what if I only commented on adult targeted blogs,but as the child character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13204" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T23:11:07.323" Title="Commenting on blogs and forums" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14174" CreationDate="2015-03-18T00:46:03.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that you should let the story play out. If you are planning on writing a chapter book for children who are just learning to read, I would keep it around 200 hundred pages. It's hard to get a kid to willingly pick up a 500 page book. But, if you find yourself around 200 pages but have more of you story to tell, don't try to wrap it up to get a shorter length and sacrifice part of you amazing story. Have the page number in the back of your mind while writing but don't make it the most important thing, let the story take job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13187" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T00:46:03.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16519" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16521" CreationDate="2015-03-18T00:53:25.683" Score="12" ViewCount="5376" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know the ending of the first book I want to write but, I'm not sure how to start it or what will happen in the middle. I know I am completely working backwards on writing a story but, every time I sit down to brainstorm ideas I either find my mind working out details for the ending I have planned or thinking of ideas from other books. How do I fill the huge space in my book to get to my ending point and how do I make sure my ideas are original rather than taking other people's ideas and twisting them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13187" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-03-18T10:26:27.247" LastActivityDate="2018-10-30T20:38:15.680" Title="How do I create the rest of the story when I only know the ending?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16490" CreationDate="2015-03-18T01:33:28.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the &quot;smaller than the period at the end of this sentence&quot; breaks the formal tone of the sentence. The beginning of it is so grasping and makes me want to dive deeper but I feel like using that may be a bit too young for the overall feel. Maybe try and compare it to something else other than the period like a pebble, a button, a coin, something that would be present in the book and in real life so it doesn't break the fourth wall, it is consistent to the story and it keeps and overall formal tone. This book sounds like it's going to be so riveting and intriguing. Hopefully one day I will get to read it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13187" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T01:33:28.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16519" CreationDate="2015-03-18T08:03:54.687" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, almost every idea - i.e. plot element - has been expressed somewhere before, meaning you shouldn't worry too much about &quot;stealing&quot; ideas. Take love stories, for example. They are always the same: Two people (or more) meet, they take a liking to each other, they go out, they fall apart, and in the end, either one of them is dead or they celebrate a huge wedding. Almost every love story uses these elements. Still, they way these elements are presented varies and this is what makes the respective story individual: Tell a story adapted to a certain problem, and you will create something new. My favourite example of this remains &quot;The Time Traveller's Wife&quot; by Audrey Niffenegger, a classic love story that added an equally classic idea - i.e. that of time travelling - and came up with a mixture that was quite original. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning your doing-it-backwards problem, I don't think there actually is a problem. You say that you know the ending of your story. That means you have something in mind that drastically changed (every story is an account of a change). Good. What you could do now is to ask which background is suitable to contrast this change against. How can you show how drastic and important this change was in the context of your story? Once you have answered this question, all you need to do - and this sounds easier than it might actually be - is to tell the story of how the specific change you have in mind is coming about. Take, for example, the story of &quot;Into the Wild&quot;. The ending is obvious: A young man leaves society and dies alone in the wilderness. That is quite a drastic ending and one that has the potential to make us think. It can be the core of a good story. Now, the ending is clear. But how do we get there? By answering the question: Why did the young man leave society? What was his life like before he made his decision to go &quot;into the wild&quot;? What was it that he couldn't bear any longer? When and how did he realize he was unhappy? You could keep working your way backwards through these questions, or you could reduce it to the one I posed at the beginning of the paragraph: &lt;em&gt;Where does the change come from that you want to depict&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I think your approach is the right one. Having the ending of your story in mind is a warrantor for keeping you on track while penning the story. You have a clear aim and can work towards it. In my experience, it is infinitely more complicated to write a story that revolves around a general topic but does not have a clear aim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in textbooks covering the structure of stories and methods for character development more in-depth, I can recommend the books by James N. Frey, that I enjoyed a lot: How to write a damn good Novel, Parts &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0312010443&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0312104782&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, as well as his account on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B005CW6Q7W&quot;&gt;Hero's Journey&lt;/a&gt;. Also, many authors seem to enjoy &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/193290736X&quot;&gt;Christopher Vogler's account on the monomyth&lt;/a&gt; as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T08:03:54.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16490" CreationDate="2015-03-18T08:57:01.103" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Cameron. Except, I would end the paragraph at &quot;...nothing more than a sphere of blood.&quot; There really is no need to give a size for that sphere, the destruction is drastic enough without the compression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact there where &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; deal breakers for me: the acknowledgment of the story being mere fiction (&quot;period at the end of this sentence&quot;), and the &lt;strong&gt;unexpected and illogical&lt;/strong&gt; compression of the man's body. Because if the bending of a finger bends (and breaks) the man's body, I equalize the finger and the body. If the god then makes a fist, I expect a similar relation and the body to be deformed in a circular manner, which it is. But since the hand is not decreasing its size, I don't understand why and how the body should. That could only happen, if the body was &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; the hand, and the hand compressed it, but then the bending of the finger would not have any effect, only a gesture of holding and bending &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your magic must be consistent. Either &lt;code&gt;hand = body&lt;/code&gt;, and the body is moving and deforming as the hand is (then it cannot be compressed), or &lt;code&gt;somthing held in hand = body&lt;/code&gt;, but then the gesture must be of bending &lt;code&gt;something&lt;/code&gt;, not just a finger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T08:57:01.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16517" CreationDate="2015-03-18T09:14:04.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem I see is what you probably intend: that young readers will believe this person actually exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many adults take everything they find in writing at face value, apparently unable to imagine that people make up stuff and post it on the web. Children around ten years old (&quot;tweens&quot;) have an even weaker ability to keep fact and fiction apart. My son, aged seven, still does not properly understand what an actor does and how a live action movie is not real. A twelve year old will have developed a lot from this naïveté, but they are still very gullible and trusting, and certainly don't understand that persons promoting produts are playing characters from that product and fake-interacting with them on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find this practice extremely offensive, and it is one reason why I try to keep my son from the net for as long as I can. Human interaction and friendship is fundamentally important for our well-being. Our physical and mental health depend on our social life. I think it is unethical to abuse this basic human need and simulate it to sell a product. If I found that my son was interested in the product of a company that did what you describe, I would do everything in my power to make sure he understood how he was being duped and lead him to lose all interest in a company that abuses his feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T09:14:04.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16513" CreationDate="2015-03-18T09:21:09.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a subsequent quotation is from the same work as the previous one, a page number is enough:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Bob Foo's novel &lt;em&gt;Living the Internet Life&lt;/em&gt;, the protagonist is posting comments on websites. His first comment is met with enthusiastic upvoting (34). The protagonist is happy and decides to post more comments (38).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T09:21:09.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16512" CreationDate="2015-03-18T09:37:35.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I approach code in text in the same way I approach dialogue: the code is a quotation from another &quot;speaker&quot;, so I set it off from the surrounding text. Since it is not spoken language, I do not use the conventions for spoken language (same font, quotation marks, etc.), so as to cause no confusion, but the conventions for displaying code (monospaced font, line numbering, blockquote, etc.), but I integrate it syntactically in the same way, for example by using colons and continuing sentences with lowercase letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, in my opinion, your &lt;strong&gt;second example&lt;/strong&gt; is best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When five year old Maude said: &quot;I am not interested in horse riding,&quot; what she actually meant was: &quot;I am afraid of horses&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hence, the following code: &lt;code&gt;camera.start_recording('foo.h264', quantization=25)&lt;/code&gt;, should be replaced with: &lt;code&gt;camera.start_recording('foo.h264', quality=25)&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you must &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; put commas inside the code quote, as English rules require for dialogue ('riding,&quot;'). When you put your code snippets on separate lines for better readability, the syntax, capitalization and punctuation remain the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good practice is to print the whole script in an appendix, and thoughout the text use the same line numbers as in that appended script. You can then refer to code by line numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In line 21, &lt;code&gt;quantization&lt;/code&gt; must be replaced by &lt;code&gt;quality&lt;/code&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;21    camera.start_recording('foo.h264', quality=25)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T09:37:35.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16527" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16528" CreationDate="2015-03-18T09:50:02.133" Score="0" ViewCount="1289" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it considered good practice to include something along the lines of &quot;&lt;em&gt;(a short story)&lt;/em&gt;&quot; as the subtitle of my short story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little more information: my short story is almost 5,000 words long and I am going to publish imminently on Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing).  What I would like to know is this - should my title be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Alice in Wonderland&quot;&#xA;(a short story)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should it simply be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Alice in Wonderland&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I want to know whether or not this is good practice is because I do not want my readers to gain a negative impression of me and/or my work because they were unaware of the length of the book (which is around fifteen pages, since you've asked).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst case would be somebody leaving a negative review based solely o n the fact they they had paid £1.99 for a story which was far shorter than they expected and as such effectively felt short-changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the page count is often (always?) listed on Amazon book listings, but not everybody checks this before purchasing a book (I often neglect to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, is it advisable that I write &quot;&lt;em&gt;(a short story)&lt;/em&gt;&quot; as a subtitle on the main cover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="5328" LastEditDate="2015-03-18T10:01:34.950" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T10:27:05.433" Title="Subtitle for Short Story" Tags="|titles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16527" CreationDate="2015-03-18T10:27:05.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many publishers omit the information altogether when they post standalone short stories to KDP. The figure that Amazon's Product Details will give an estimate of the print length of the book, and that's enough of a hint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to let people know when my book is a short story. I include that information in the last line of my book descriptions. Something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A creepy fantasy short story from Dale Hartley Emery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not use &quot;a short story&quot; as an actual subtitle. That is, don't put &quot;a short story&quot; into any sort of subtitle field either inside the ebook or when you fill out the form to upload it to KDP. The length is just a fact about the story. Elevating it to a subtitle gives it far too much emphasis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you might put the information on the cover as part or all of a &quot;book tag&quot;--a one- or two-line teaser in a smaller font near the book title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use it on the cover, consider not putting it in parentheses. That makes it look like an apology. Also, if it were really parenthetical, it would not belong on the cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T10:27:05.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16519" CreationDate="2015-03-18T11:29:42.857" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will offer a word of caution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst I do like Filip's answer above, and would have said everything the same, I feel like I must provide this footnote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the context of this question being about how to write, I have a method that I will share with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done a the exact same thing before, beginning a story with the ending, and realized that I could not find a beginning that fits, or even makes sense. I have spent many hours/ days trying to shoehorn a mediocre story into a great ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But once I started writing the story, it just didn't feel quite right. It wasn't the story that the ending deserved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would recommend this: &lt;strong&gt;shelve it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know, it's not the answer that you wanted to hear, but if you are really excited about the story ending then it deserves a good story to get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write your ending down, and then file it away somewhere. I have done this with many things: beginnings, middles, endings, themes, interesting characters, and have them all sorted neatly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one day, it might be tomorrow, it might be two years from now, you will think of a story that you want to write, and you won't have an ending, and you'll look through your &lt;em&gt;endings&lt;/em&gt; folder and you will find this ending, and &lt;strong&gt;it will just fit&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story will elevate your ending, a lot of details may even likely change in it, (characters and locations etc.) but you will realize that this is the story that the ending was always supposed to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't try to create a Frankenstein's Monster of a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the first things that I ever wrote that I was really excited about still haven't found a home, and others have changed over time beyond all recognition, but the root of that original good idea that you have still exists within them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T11:29:42.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16517" CreationDate="2015-03-18T11:41:56.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The marketing department for the movie Ex-Machina recently did a similar thing, they made a Tinder profile for their main character and had her 'talking' with real people who were looking for dates, then ended up linking them to the website for the movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This breached Tinder's Terms &amp;amp; Conditions, and I think there's now a massive lawsuit directed at them (but I'm not 100% on that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside of the &lt;strong&gt;MASSIVE&lt;/strong&gt; ethical reasons not to do it that &lt;strong&gt;@what&lt;/strong&gt; has described, it is very possible you will be breaking the law on a lot of sites by marketing the product on these websites, even indirectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion: don't do it. Unless you want to trawl through the site's T's &amp;amp; C's to make sure you're not breaching their rules of use policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T11:41:56.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3560" CreationDate="2015-03-18T12:56:36.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that I do to help with character creation is to have a piece of paper with the character's name on, maybe even a picture (I'm not a fantastic artist so I usually skip this), then write down everything that you know about that character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easier to categorize things (appearance, ideals, background etc.), and then pin it up on a wall. When you're writing a passage with that character in, keep looking back at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to think of the character as a real person. What would that &lt;em&gt;real person&lt;/em&gt; do? Would their reactions to certain situations be realistic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, as your character develops in your own mind and on the page, add to the character sheet. Your character will never stop developing and learning because humans never stop learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your readers need to relate to your characters, and they will never do that if they do not learn from their mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, in order to to make an interesting character, make them a &lt;strong&gt;hypocrite&lt;/strong&gt;. Not necessarily that they say one thing and do another, but establish that they are a particular way, and then have them surprise the readers by leading them into something that would generally be out of character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't even have to be radical, it just needs to be &lt;strong&gt;human&lt;/strong&gt;. Because humans aren't perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T12:56:36.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16519" CreationDate="2015-03-18T13:31:27.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once heard it said that &lt;strong&gt;the ideal ending is both completely expected and completely unexpected at the same time&lt;/strong&gt;.  Your job throughout the story is to build the audience's desire for the ending you will give them, without giving away the details of how it will happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really have the perfect ending, then the beginning will be implicit in it in some way.  &lt;strong&gt;Just ask yourself what conditions will be the same at the beginning of the story, and what conditions will be the opposite&lt;/strong&gt;? What travels in a circle in your plot, and what travels in a straight line? What has to change to transform the conditions of the beginning to the conditions of the end, and how will those changes take place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give the same advice in more concrete terms, consider it in this way:  Every trip that ends needed to begin.  Every adult was once a child.  Every pair of lovers were once strangers.  Everyone who is dead was once alive. Anyone who is wise was once foolish.  Anyone who has learned was once taught. Many who are rich were once poor, and who are poor were once rich.  &lt;strong&gt;Look at the important conditions of your ending, and consider their oppositions or antecedents.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2018-10-30T20:38:15.680" LastActivityDate="2018-10-30T20:38:15.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8733" CreationDate="2015-03-18T13:35:52.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is an approach that many short story authors adopt because they feel it adds an extra element of interest and speeds everything along nicely.  The approach is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a copy of your short story (just in case you change your mind).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remove all &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;unnecessary words&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; from each sentence, leaving only the parts of the sentence which progress the story.  For example, you could change &quot;&lt;em&gt;John walked as quickly as his injured legs would carry him along the zombie-infested corridor.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; to &quot;&lt;em&gt;John hobbled along the zombie-infested corridor&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Following on from above, remove all &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;unnecessary sentences&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  For example, the sentence &quot;&lt;em&gt;Sarah sniffed, noticing that she had unwittingly sustained an injury to her nose as she could taste blood.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; might be best omitted from the final draft as it is most likely not going to progress the story along in any meaningful way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BE BRUTAL!&lt;/strong&gt;  Remember that you are now working on a &lt;em&gt;copy&lt;/em&gt; of your story, so feel free to hack away as merrily as you please.  If you get to a stage where you are happy with how things currently stand, but feel that you want to keep chopping at it, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;then create a copy of the copy&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and hack away once more!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep using this approach and you could easily chop 10% off of your story in no time!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="5328" LastEditDate="2015-03-18T13:51:35.133" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T13:51:35.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16535" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16536" CreationDate="2015-03-18T13:39:45.250" Score="3" ViewCount="435" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am editing a text in which the characters use quotations from the Bible quite often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &#xA;Jeremiah turned toward him, &quot;Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All he says is a quote from Romans:12. How do I show that he is quoting and these are not the character's words? Do I add single quotation marks around the entire quote? It looks weird, to say the least:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;'Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice...'&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope somebody can help. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13207" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T17:53:17.243" Title="How to show that a character is quoting from a book?" Tags="|editing|characters|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16535" CreationDate="2015-03-18T14:06:36.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In real life, you will not know if what someone says is a quote from a book or his own words, if you don't know the text that person is quoting from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you are familiar with the &lt;em&gt;Terminator&lt;/em&gt; movies and someone says &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasta_la_vista,_baby&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hasta la vista, baby&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; you might realize that they are quoting Arnold Schwarzenegger, but if you have never seen those movies you might think they have been taking Spanish classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To complicate things even more, even if you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; seen the movie and recognize the phrase, you cannot be sure that the person is actually quoting it. Unless the person speaking is making a quotation mark gesture or speaking in a Schwarzenegger-like voice, they might have learned the phrase elsewhere or come up with it on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since dialogue in fiction mimics real life verbal behavior, you &lt;em&gt;must not&lt;/em&gt; use quotation marks around quotations within dialogue. Any explanation of the quote must come from within the fictional world, e.g. the character is explaining that they are quoting a text, or the narrator explains that it is a quote. If the character is speaking in a special voice, mark up that voice (e.g. in italics) or let the narrator say that they are now speaking in such-and-such a voice, but do not use quotation marks within quotation marks (that is reserved for non-fiction quotes-within-quotes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T14:06:36.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16537" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16636" CreationDate="2015-03-18T14:29:08.593" Score="0" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As agreed, we met at Shangai Train Station &lt;strong&gt;the next morning&lt;/strong&gt;. Even&#xA;though it was just seven, the place was terribly crowded; people were&#xA;running and lining, jostling and shoving. A sign that the Mid-Autumn Festival was&#xA;approaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As agreed, &lt;strong&gt;we met the next morning&lt;/strong&gt; at Shangai Train Station. Even&#xA;though it was just seven, the place was terribly crowded; people were&#xA;running and lining, jostling and shoving. A sign that the Mid-Autumn Festival was&#xA;approaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there rule to use for these situations? Should short phrases always go on the front, or something like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T17:02:57.790" Title="How to decide the position of short phrases?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16319" CreationDate="2015-03-18T16:04:20.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should keep the quotation marks. If you believe that they will be distracting or disorientating to the reader, then don't take my word for it, try it yourself with an example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the famous 'Heart of Darkness' by Conrad (the copyright has expired, so it is in the public domain and free to read). It consists almost exclusively of somebody on a boat telling a story, and after reading only a few pages the reader gets used to the quotation marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13209" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T16:04:20.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-18T16:25:37.987" Score="2" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading an article and in the article, it cited another author.  How do I cite this?  Do I cite the article I'm reading or the other person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="tricia" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-06-28T05:16:36.107" LastActivityDate="2019-06-28T05:16:36.107" Title="In APA style, how do I cite an indirect source?" Tags="|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16540" CreationDate="2015-03-18T17:10:51.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should depend on what information you are citing.  If someone else cited the information from the other source, you can probably find their source at the end of the article and then use that.  However, if the information that you are providing builds upon the source information, you should cite the second article.  If it's still unclear, consider citing both and be done with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="KevinT" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T17:10:51.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16542" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16546" CreationDate="2015-03-18T17:35:02.277" Score="6" ViewCount="741" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is my understanding that novels should generally start right off with the protagonist. The story is about the &lt;em&gt;protagonist&lt;/em&gt;, after all, not something else (This obviously changes a bit if the PoV is not the protagonist, but that is beside the point). It is also my understanding (through experience as well as being informed) that too much telling will generally bore the reader, while showing will not. This is also beside the point, however. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently started to re-read &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's (Philosopher's) Stone&lt;/em&gt;. Imagine my surprise and confusion, when I discovered that the first chapter barely contained Harry at all. He shows up in the last two pages, but was only a 1-year-old sleeping baby. My confusion deepened as I realized that the first half of the chapter was almost pure telling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; was clearly successful. This means that a book clearly does not &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to open with the protagonist. My question is this: Was J. K. Rowling one of those authors who knew how to write an exception to 'the rules?' Or is my above assumption (that you need to start with the protagonist) wrong? And if it is, why is it, and how can you be successful when you do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; start with the protagonist?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I realize that no writing 'rules' are set in stone, and that there are likely exceptions to many (if not all) of them. Some authors know how to bypass the rules, but most do not. At least such is my understanding.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T19:55:02.490" Title="Prologues with no protagonist - How can they work?" Tags="|creative-writing|openings|prologues|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16543" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16549" CreationDate="2015-03-18T17:39:18.690" Score="3" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a proposal for a book and have been asked to provide examples of similar books and list how my own work is different from them. Unfortunately I don't know how to approach this question because there are possibly many other books that share similar themes/plots/characters/etc that I've never read. How can I go about searching for books that may share such characteristics with mine (or any others I wish to write in the future)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12658" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T07:17:13.743" Title="How to search for similar works" Tags="|style|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16542" CreationDate="2015-03-18T17:42:51.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A prologue without a protagonist can be foreshadowing events using irrelevant characters that interact, speak, or otherwise see events happening that foretell the story ahead, and hint toward the evil of the story or share exposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T17:42:51.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16535" CreationDate="2015-03-18T17:53:17.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry, but a summary of the others' answers is: You don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may cite your source, but it's up to your readers to know you're quoting, although the best way to make them realize he/she is quoting certain literature or media is to develop him/her to seem the kind of person who would quote it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T17:53:17.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16542" CreationDate="2015-03-18T17:56:12.217" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you read any Dan Brown books (Da Vinci Code, Angels &amp;amp; Demons etc.), he generally writes a prologue where the main character (of the prologue) is actually the victim of the murder that the protagonist investigates throughout the rest of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many more authors than just J.K. Rowling who are accomplished and have managed this feat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, some of the prologues to his books are incredibly confusing, but are mercifully short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prologues are generally reserved for being detached from the main narrative, so even having them from a different character's point of view who is never met again is acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can also be used for exposition that could not be worked into chapter 1, or that are needed before the beginning of chapter 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; as an example, the prologue establishes that it is set in a world with wizards, flying motorcycles, and a boy who is fated to do great things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it didn't have the prologue, it would be around chapter 4 (Not 100% on that) that the reader is even aware that wizards &lt;strong&gt;exist&lt;/strong&gt;, never mind that the protagonist is one, and would be incredibly bored before then (this of course is based on the assumption the reader has lived under a rock for the last 15 years and has never heard of &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as for the writing 'rules' that you mentioned, you can probably throw most of them out of the window for the prologue in relation to the rest of the story. You can have different characters, settings, time period, POV, and other things that are entirely different from the main narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as it does its job, which is to &lt;strong&gt;set up the story&lt;/strong&gt;, it can be a good prologue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T17:56:12.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14584" CreationDate="2015-03-18T17:56:14.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made a novel called &quot;I Attempt to Write the Worst Novel Ever&quot; once, and my answer to that is:&#xA;  Make your novel a story, but make them short stories connected by a single&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  continuity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this, I mean write a novel, but write each chapter as a different story, but have a single revolving story around the entire novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T17:56:14.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16542" CreationDate="2015-03-18T19:45:12.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing to do with any writing rule is to consider its functional utility.  One good reason to start with the protagonist is that otherwise the reader may become invested in the the initial characters and narrative and may resist transferring that interest to the main protagonist and storyline.  For me, both Salman Rushdie's &lt;em&gt;Enchantress of Florence&lt;/em&gt; and Samuel Delaney's &lt;em&gt;Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand&lt;/em&gt; committed this mistake by following up a captivating prologue with a much duller main narrative and protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise that if you take this route, you keep it brief, and make sure that what you give the reader serves to prepare them for the introduction of your protagonist.  In the Harry Potter example, the prologue offers a great deal of important context about Harry, and frames him as a significant figure.  If it had just been (for example) a random day in the life of Dumbledore, the effect might have been quite different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-03-18T19:55:02.490" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T19:55:02.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16543" CreationDate="2015-03-18T19:53:44.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point of this is to help the person judging the proposal know how to position and sell your book.  If there are other books in the same general space, it shows that there is a pre-existing market. This may be harder to demonstrate for a book that is well and truly unique --unfortunately in today's marketplace, no one wants to be a pioneer.  On the other hand, however, even the most experimental book typically has &quot;distant cousins&quot; it may resemble.  The thing to remember is that ultimately the question isn't really &lt;em&gt;what books are like yours?&lt;/em&gt;, it's &lt;em&gt;what audience will buy your book?&lt;/em&gt;  A book quite different from yours could be a good comparison if it has the same audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to do this well is research --at a library, bookstore or on the internet.  A mistake I've personally made in the past is to use too many bestsellers as comparisons.  While it might seem that this would position your book as a future hit, it actually makes it seem like you only know the &quot;greatest hits&quot; among your competitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've established that yes, people do in fact buy books like yours, the task shifts to showing why the world needs another entry in that category (in other words, what makes your book special).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-03-18T20:02:09.920" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T20:02:09.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16550" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-18T20:10:29.263" Score="2" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I started writing and first tried to characterize my work, I came across a wonderful word: &lt;strong&gt;psychogram&lt;/strong&gt; - a story that revolves around the psychological evolution of a specific character. The societal background and even geographical location of the story and the character are of secondary importance. I focus on the psychological aspects of the story and end up with a narrative that is told entirely by one narrator. Developping such a story is easy for me, since I am used to it and, in general, have quite a good idea about how the story ends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I want to write about an historical event, more specifically, I want to tell the story of how a firmly established subculture dissolves under the pressure of changing times. The story is anchored to a specific time and geographical setting, the outcome is quite clear: The subculture ceases to exist. One of my favourite authors, Hans Fallada, would have been perfect to write a story like this: Many characters, many viewpoints, a &lt;strong&gt;societal approach to storytelling&lt;/strong&gt; that focuses on an entire body of people rather than singled-out individuals. Since I am new to this kind of story-telling, I want to ask: How do I do this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related questions: Is it possible to use my psychogram-techniques of writing to develop a plot for a story about an entire society? (I.e.: Is it possible to concentrate on a single character, possibly in the form of a hero's journey, and yet tell the story of a societal upheaval?) Have you experience with similar projects, and have you possibly developed methods to handle them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: &lt;strong&gt;As a storyteller used to stories about individuals, how do I handle a story about a societal upheaval?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T14:08:57.000" Title="How do I tell the story of a societal change using a discrete number of narrators?" Tags="|novel|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16551" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16554" CreationDate="2015-03-18T21:01:20.173" Score="8" ViewCount="844" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a book and I'm juggling citation styles.  I haven't put my bibliography together yet, but there are, I would estimate, at least 100 abstracts referenced from the National Library of Medicine, as well of a number of other sources.  It's all written in OneNote (obviously not the final format) and presently I just have hyperlinks to the sources next to the respective paragraphs.  There are few, if any, direct quotes from the sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the book is creative nonfiction and I would prefer it if the citations were not distracting in nature.  I'd like it if the citations were as minimal as possible (perhaps only in end notes or in the bibliography).  In scientific research papers, I would use numbered superscript citations, but in this case I'm wondering if it's avoidable.  Is there a style of citation that keeps the text from appearing like a scientific research paper?  Maybe deferring the reader to the bibliography where page numbers/paragraphs are connected to their respective sources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13211" LastActivityDate="2021-09-20T12:06:52.480" Title="Least distracting method of citing in a book?" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16543" CreationDate="2015-03-19T07:17:13.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike Chris Sunami, I suspect that this task was not given to help the agent or publisher better sell the book. They are professionals and (should) know their field. If they don't, you have chosen the wrong publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I rather believe that these professionals want to see if their prospective new author is a professional, too, and knows the context in which he is writing – or if he is ignorant of the literary tradition and artistic context in which he stands and with which his work is in dialogue with. After all, authors of a certain level of literacy are expected to write (give interviews and theorize) in relation to what goes on around him, and not write from and for himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T07:17:13.743" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16551" CreationDate="2015-03-19T07:38:48.837" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is not an academic publication and you are not bound by the more severe citation styles like APA or MLA, a common way to reduce distraction in popular non-fiction is to &lt;strong&gt;have no in-text references at all&lt;/strong&gt; and append endnotes to the end of the text that are ordered &amp;quot;chronologically&amp;quot; and give page numbers and text snippets to identify what they relate to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. this text on page 216:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been shown that women are smart. So we must allow them to go to university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;can have an endnote something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;216 &lt;strong&gt;women are smart&lt;/strong&gt;   Clever, W. (1753). &lt;em&gt;Experiments on the Cleverness of Women.&lt;/em&gt; Birmingham: Clever Woman Press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many variants of how to denote what text the citation refers to, like paragraph numbers, but the most common one I have seen is simply quoting the phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This citation method assumes that certain &lt;em&gt;textual&lt;/em&gt; markers (such as &amp;quot;it has been shown&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;we found&amp;quot;) will signal to an informed reader that in academic publication such a claim is backed up with sources, so the reader can expect to find a source in the endnotes. This means that just as in an academic publication you have to be careful how you phrase your text and make no claims that you cannot back up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you style these endnotes (bold, intalics, spaces, etc.) is up to you or your book designer. I would mark up the actual sources according to one common – and relevant to your field – academic style (APA for Psychology, MLA for Language and Literature, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also up to you whether you prepend a short note to your text pointing out this citation style, or whether you let your readers leaf through your book and find the endnotes by themselves. I have seen both, and I think that educated readers will expect some notes and look for them without being told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edit&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Regarding your question after a precedent of legitimacy&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, this style is common. I found it in many popular science books by eminent scholars, and actually do not currently remember an example that does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; use this style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following illustrations are an example (the first page of text and the first page of the notes) from the book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willpower:_Rediscovering_the_Greatest_Human_Strength&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Willpower&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by psychologist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Baumeister&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roy F. Baumeister&lt;/a&gt;, one of the most cited scientists alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;These illustrations were downloaded from the publicly available Amazon.com &amp;quot;Look inside!&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0143122231&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;preview of this book&lt;/a&gt; and are provided here in the intent to educate and therefore fall under fair use.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IWMyN.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KVBco.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T09:10:02.390" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16486" CreationDate="2015-03-19T14:43:19.210" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are writing different subjects with headings, stay consequent and give the conclusion a heading, period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing lengthy segments about different topics without headings, or if you absolutely must create your conclusion without a header while giving it to other subject (for some odd reason), you will need a 'glue paragraph':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the end of the last subject, and if you used the headings, then preferably separated visually from it (horizontal line or such), write a paragraph that very briefly summarizes all prior &quot;chapters&quot;. Preferably, less than a sentence per chapter - bundle two or three points per sentence. This is a clear signal to the reader you are no longer on the subject of the last chapter, but collecting them together for a &quot;final touch&quot;. It helps them recall all the points (you just signal them; the reader can recall the finer details from memory and will do so) and shifts the focus from close-up on the last subject into a broad image of the whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, without further ado, you proceed to your conclusion. You don't really &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; any &quot;concluding...&quot; or &quot;To sum up...&quot; if you don't want it. You have shifted the focus back to the broad view, and you can just conclude the whole thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2015-03-19T22:18:25.923" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T22:18:25.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16486" CreationDate="2015-03-19T15:34:14.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is almost never done in my experience (which is mostly with technical documentation and some journal articles), for the reason implicit in your question: it's confusing.  Once you start carving off sub-sections, the expectation is that each such subsection runs until the next division or the end of the chapter/document.  An introduction is special because it can &quot;sit&quot; above the subsections, but there's no standard way to get back to that level and pick up where you left off.  Perhaps an illustration will help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cseYr.png&quot; alt=&quot;document structure&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could try offsetting the conclusion with extra white space and &quot;* * *&quot; or a similar marker, but I recommend using a heading (&quot;Conclusion&quot;) to make it easier on your readers.  Besides, if they're skimming, don't you want to make it easier for them to jump there?  Give them a signpost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your document will have a table of contents, then I think this argument is even stronger.  Introductions are implicit, but people aren't going to know to look at the end of the &quot;Heading 3&quot; section for the conclusion to the &quot;Super-Heading&quot; section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-03-19T15:44:23.180" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T15:44:23.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16469" CreationDate="2015-03-19T19:33:55.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have already stated, there is no copyright or patent in ideas only in the &lt;em&gt;expression&lt;/em&gt; of those ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Romeo and Juliet has probably been written and re-written a thousand times since Shakespeare wrote the original play. Think about West Side Story: that is essentially the updating and retelling of a very old tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So long as &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you tell the story is fresh and original, the fact that you took an idea, thought or concept as your inspiration does not matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T19:33:55.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16486" CreationDate="2015-03-19T19:51:51.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A different bullet to consider biting: Remove &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the headings. That gives the conclusion equal standing with the other parts. Now all that's left (hah!) is to mark the transitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T19:51:51.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16570" CreationDate="2015-03-20T00:09:48.853" Score="1" ViewCount="1670" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's for a story I was writing, and in the story, there's a section of the newspaper in which people can submit stories/poems/essays to, and good ones were chosen to get published on the newspaper. These people could get money for getting their work chosen and published. But I don't know how much they should get (how to calculate it? Like for example, 10 cents per word?), and do they just get paid, or do they need to sign a contract or something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13223" LastActivityDate="2023-11-02T15:48:36.267" Title="How much do you get for publishing an article in the newspaper?" Tags="|publishing|money|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16717" CreationDate="2015-03-20T01:00:11.517" Score="2" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a native English speaker and hired an editor to correct the style of a book that is being published. However, this editor didn't work in the final version of the manuscript I sent but rather on an old draft I had sent for a quotation. Additionally, the returned manuscript had many added typos (at least 20 in one chapter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the editing was done it an old version, it is now completely useless to me. How should I handle this? Should I pay for work that wasn't even what I requested?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it normal for an editor leave typos and expect for a proofreader to fix them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13224" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T22:22:35.120" Title="Problem with hired freelance editor" Tags="|publishing|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16453" CreationDate="2015-03-20T05:35:36.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an author, there are a number of ways to get your work in front of readers, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can submit your manuscript to a reputable publishing firm &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can submit your manuscript to an agent and hope they can place you&#xA;with a reputable publishing firm &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can self-publish (in print) using a service like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CreateSpace&lt;/a&gt; (Amazon) or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nookpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nook Press&lt;/a&gt; (Barnes &amp;amp; Noble) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can self-publish (e-books) using a service like &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Direct Publishing&lt;/a&gt; or Nook Press &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can use a vanity publishing service&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With options 1 and 2, your chances of getting published are extremely low because the &quot;reputable&quot; publishers are very selective in the manuscripts they choose to publish. If you are going this route, you should make sure your manuscript is polished and written to the best of your ability. Even then, your odds of being selected are pretty slim. However, if they do select your manuscript, they will likely pay you an advance on earnings. They will also print, distribute, and market your book. In exchange for this, they will likely have you sign a contract that grants them exclusive rights to publish your book for a certain period of time. You still own the copyright, but you can't print the book yourself or offer it to another publisher while you are under contract. I believe this is what you had hoped for with Xlibris, but unfortunately, you were wrong. (Read on)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose options 3 or 4, you will be able to publish the book yourself, in whichever format you choose. Each of these services will make your book available in their respective catalogs, but they do not do anything to promote your book. That is ultimately your responsibility. However, each of these services is available basically for free. With either of these options, you are under no obligation to remain with the &quot;publisher&quot;, you maintain ownership of your copyright, and you can choose to go to any other company to publish your book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose option 5, then you are expected to pay a service fee in order for the &quot;publisher&quot; to print your book. This service fee can be anywhere from $500 to $3500 (using the prices from the Xlibris web site). In exchange, you will get a certain number of books for yourself, and they will add your title to their catalog. They do NOT do anything to market or promote your book (unless you choose the Platinum package, which costs over $15,000.) Here again, you are ultimately responsible for promoting your book. However, just as with options 3 and 4, you are under no obligation to remain with the &quot;publisher&quot;, you maintain ownership of your copyright, and you can choose to go to any other company to publish your book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's unfortunate, but you appear to have selected the least desirable of the options listed here. The good news is that you don't have to worry about being able to publish your book elsewhere, because you are under no contractual agreement with Xlibris as an exclusive &quot;distributor&quot;, which is really all they are. If you go with option 3 or 4, you won't have to worry about an ISBN or a UPC, because they will provide one for you. (You won't be able to reuse the one that Xlibris provided.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to take some time to do some research on self-publishing and educate yourself on the different options available to you. There is a wealth of information out there, but you'll need to take some time to really understand what it's all about and how to work it to your best advantage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T05:35:36.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16269" CreationDate="2015-03-20T05:55:50.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Character names in a book or story cannot be specifically copyrighted, so that in itself is not an issue. Having said that, though, if a character is &quot;fully delineated&quot; and well-defined, then that in itself is enough to warrant that the character himself IS included under the copyright protection of the author, and his name or likeness could not be used without the authors permission. In this particular case, I believe you would have a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, many notable authors have taken out Trademarks on their characters, and by doing so they have effectively eliminated the ability of anyone to use those character's names or likenesses. I doubt that this one has been Trademarked, so that wouldn't likely be an issue , but it is definitely something you'd want to research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real issue you will face is the fact that the name you are considering using is one that is readily recognizable and belongs to a character that truly is &quot;fully realized&quot;. If you intended to use this name in your own writing, you would definitely have an issue, especially if you were describing a character that in any way resembles the original. However, using it as part of a pen name may be considered acceptable, but you'd be running the risk of future issues if the author decides that you shouldn't be using it. This could especially be a problem if your pen name is used while you are writing a fantasy story with wizards and witches, because it could be argued that you are trying to capitalize on the name to draw more attention to your own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T05:55:50.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16565" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16566" CreationDate="2015-03-20T12:03:33.253" Score="2" ViewCount="461" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my first novel and this the very first confusion I would like to clarify. As I am not a native English speaker, I find it very hard to understand the punctuation scheme in direct speeches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one of the following is correct? Please explain why the other one is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I did what I needed to do.” He lowered his head to look at my face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You should've waited for me,” she replied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I did what I needed to do,” he lowered his head to look at my face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You should've waited for me,” she replied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how well does this punctuation rules apply for action tags like - &lt;code&gt;he shrugged&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;he smile&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;he scoffed&lt;/code&gt; and similar tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13227" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T22:39:53.993" Title="Which one is the correct dialogue punctuation format?" Tags="|style|novel|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16565" CreationDate="2015-03-20T12:16:50.137" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difference is that the first sentence doesn't have a &lt;em&gt;tag&lt;/em&gt;. It's a line of dialogue followed by a complete sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second sentence is dialogue followed by a dialogue tag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first set of examples is punctuated correctly &amp;mdash; when you use a tag, the dialogue ends in a comma, and the tag starts with a lowercase letter. This also applies to action tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T12:16:50.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16269" CreationDate="2015-03-20T12:39:31.307" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL. Technically, it's not a copyright issue, but a trademark issue. You don't have a copyright in one word, like a name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently read a book that has a character named &quot;John&quot;. Does that mean no one else is allowed to use the name &quot;John&quot; for characters in their books, or for the names of real children? Obviously not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can have a trademark in a name. Trademark laws can get complicated, and vary from country to country and state to state. Here in Michigan in the United States, the law says that made-up words have the highest trademark protection, ordinary words used in an unusual context less, and descriptive phrases the least. For example, if you call your company &quot;Anabraxmalis&quot;, and someone else tries to call their company by the same name, you would almost certainly win a trademark lawsuit. But if you call your company &quot;Main Street Grocery Store&quot;, and someone in a nearby town opens a store and uses the same name for a grocery store that is on Main Street in that town, you would almost certainly lose a trademark lawsuit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard a couple of people say that &quot;Dumbledore&quot; is not actually a made-up word but simply a very obscure one. If J K Rowling did just make it up, she would have grounds for a trademark suit against you if you tried to use it, especially if you tried to use it for anything to do with writing or fantasy. If it's an obscure word, her case would be tougher, but if so it must be very obscure, so she'd probably still have a fair case. Note that, in the U.S. anyway, a trademark does not have to be registered. The fact that someone has used a word or phrase in some commercial context consistently over a period of time gives them rights to it. Registering a trademark strengthens your legal protection, but is not required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But all that said, Why do you want to use the name of someone else's character as your pen name? I can only imagine two reactions that readers might have to such a pen name: (a) That you are somehow associated with J K Rowling; or (b) That you are trying to fool people into thinking that you are associated with J K Rowling. The first is not true, and the second is not flattering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you would be far better off to create a distinctive image for yourself, rather than to try to &quot;hijack&quot; someone else's character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T12:39:31.307" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14584" CreationDate="2015-03-20T18:50:50.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neil Gaiman's most recent novel started out as a short story that got longer and longer the more he worked on it. He says he ended up &quot;accidentally writing a novel&quot; (which I think is hilarious, because I can't even write one on purpose). So it's definitely possible for an idea that starts out as a short story to turn into a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've read it, you'll notice a few things. There are only a handful of important characters, there is only one major plot, and the subplots (if you can call them that) mostly exist to provide context and atmosphere. Furthermore, Gaiman's writing style is quite direct. He doesn't use particularly flowery language, and he doesn't draw out scenes for longer than necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your first impulses (add more characters, subplots, make scenes longer) are not necessarily what you need to do. They might help, but they aren't obligatory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you might notice in older novels is the tendency to forgo one cohesive narrative in favor of a more episodic format (it seems to have fallen out of fashion recently). In particular, I'm thinking of several examples from children's fiction (the Alice books, The Wind in the Willows, etc.). This might be something to consider, especially as your story draws inspiration from Sleeping Beauty. It could be a fun exercise to study the structure of folk tales to see if you can use that to motivate a new approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13231" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T18:50:50.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16578" CreationDate="2015-03-20T20:10:01.207" Score="1" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this (IMHO) cool idea for a general storyline I want to write about, and one or two ideas for characters.  However, I'm really struggling to go about fleshing it out.  It's like having a string for a necklace with two big beads at the ends and one or two minor beads along the way.  Are there any techniques for fleshing out a story?  Coming up with new elements that can be used to join the beginning and end together, given that you have this vague overall idea for a storyline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13104" LastActivityDate="2015-03-21T00:18:36.033" Title="Pieces missing from my narrative" Tags="|planning|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16561" CreationDate="2015-03-20T21:34:58.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;AFAIK, people &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; don't get paid for that sort of thing.  It's like a letter to the editor.  The reward is getting your story/poem/essay in the paper.  The small amount of money that somebody would get paid for a one-time short submission isn't worth the newspaper's bother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if it's a weekly &lt;em&gt;contest&lt;/em&gt;, then the newspaper might want to increase interest by having a small monetary reward also.  However, whatever amount you choose could easily sound silly in 10 years, and would probably not translate well to other countries.  So, I'd suggest that your story's newspaper offer something to the winners like a one-month subscription, or a basket of groceries (sponsored by the page's advertiser, a local grocery store).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: This question seems familiar.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T21:34:58.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16569" CreationDate="2015-03-20T22:04:09.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds as though you have two pieces of the story right now: the premise and the conclusion.  In order to come up with a complete plot you will want to come up with one or more &lt;em&gt;developments&lt;/em&gt;, plot points that change the direction of the story (in a mystery they would be called &quot;plot twists&quot;).  If you're using the common three act structure you will want three of these.  So, Act I would begin with the premise and end with the first development, Act II would go from there to the second development, and Act III would go on to the conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the length you want to work at, each act will need to have some internal structure of its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as determining what these developments should be, a good question to ask yourself is where is the conflict?  It could be something as straightforward as saving the world from evil, or as complex as the conflicts inside a family having issues.  Generally there will be smaller conflicts that also play out.  The Fellowship of the Ring sets out to save Middle Earth, but Boromir feels that the Ring should be used to save Gondor etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding an internal conflict can help create tension. The hero has to stop Hitler from getting an atomic bomb but also his father think's of him as a failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, play around with the plot and characters you have like they're LEGO pieces, and assemble them in different configurations.  Then bust 'em up and see what you can put together from the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T22:04:09.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16537" CreationDate="2015-03-20T22:14:40.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a matter of opinion, especially since the meaning is the same.  There is no hard and fast rule, but rhythm is very important in sentence structure.  Ordering the words so that they roll off the tongue in many instances makes them more pleasing to the eye.  In this case I think the first example just sounds better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T22:14:40.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3560" CreationDate="2015-03-20T22:23:49.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something that works for me is to consider their speech patterns. You don't want to get too extreme, but different people do express themselves in different ways, and you can use this to bring out their characters. The contrast between, say, a rather stuffy character and an outrageous one can be shown in this way. But again - the differences can be relatively slight and still be effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T22:23:49.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16565" CreationDate="2015-03-20T22:39:53.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to @LaurenIpsum: Keep in mind that different countries punctuate differently.  From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/british-versus-american-style.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this source&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;American style uses double quotes (“) for initial quotations, then&#xA;  single quotes (‘) for quotations within the initial quotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Economic systems,” according to Professor White, “are an inevitable&#xA;  byproduct of civilization, and are, as John Doe said, ‘with us whether&#xA;  we want them or not.’”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;British style uses single quotes (‘) for initial quotations, then&#xA;  double quotes (“) for quotations within the initial quotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;‘Economic systems’, according to Professor White, ‘are an inevitable&#xA;  byproduct of civilization, and are, as John Doe said, “with us whether&#xA;  we want them or not”’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The above examples also show that the American style places commas and&#xA;  periods inside the quotation marks, even if they are not in the&#xA;  original material. British style (more sensibly) places unquoted&#xA;  periods and commas outside the quotation marks. For all other&#xA;  punctuation, the British and American styles are in agreement: unless&#xA;  the punctuation is part of the quoted material, it goes outside the&#xA;  quotation marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gsbe.co.uk/grammar-quotation-marks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; disagrees with the above site on some details.  But, it agrees with me on the illogic of both systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The question of whether to place other punctuation marks inside or&#xA;  outside quotation marks is a controversial one, [with] both the British and&#xA;  American practices being to some extent at variance with logic. The&#xA;  rule would seem obvious: other punctuation marks appear inside the&#xA;  quotation marks  when they are part of the quotation itself, and&#xA;  outside when they are not. It is one of life’s enduring mysteries,&#xA;  however, why neither British nor  American conventions follows this&#xA;  simple principle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to be logical and consistent.  If an editor insists on an illogical reformat (&quot;because that's the rule&quot;), then threaten to drop quote marks altogether, as some authors have done.  :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T22:39:53.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16517" CreationDate="2015-03-20T23:11:07.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Posting on other people's content may be seen as hijacking their audience to promote your own project. That's the only real ethical problem I see. So if you created your own blog, or commented in very public spaces that don't &quot;belong&quot; to anyone, you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for it being misleading to children... you know what? So is every other form of advertising that has ever existed. Manipulating people into buying something they normally wouldn't have is literally the whole point of advertising. If anything, I would much rather buy a book because I identified with a character, as opposed than buying something because I thought it would make me cool, or because all my friends were doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be interested to know that some people already do this. There are a few webcomics out where the artists involved have set up fake accounts where they answer fan mail in character. I think it's quite cool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13231" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T23:11:07.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16569" CreationDate="2015-03-20T23:20:18.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somebody has said (probably on this site) that a plot goes like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He wanted [goal].  So he [action].  But then [conflict], which caused [tension].  So he [action], and [resolution].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat this a bunch of times, and you've got a plot.  Of course, if you don't disguise it better than that, your story will be awful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, along the way you'll want [characterization], to help explain the [goals], [actions], [conflicts], and [tensions] of your characters.  Plus, you'll need some sort of [setting] for your storyline.  (Remember too, that the [characterization] and [setting] in turn can often shape the storyline.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you fill in the brackets well, you'll have a fine story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T23:20:18.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16519" CreationDate="2015-03-21T00:10:56.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just finished a story which i have been working on for months; i had a beginning and an ending but needed to find the story that connected those two parts. It came through time. I agree in principle with the idea that sometimes we need to shelve stories and have a rest from them, work on something else and return later. it never fails to amaze me how effective this can be in shedding light on the dark areas where you got stuck previously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13222" LastActivityDate="2015-03-21T00:10:56.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16569" CreationDate="2015-03-21T00:18:36.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a firm believer in working hard on your characters, then your plot will follow. On blank paper/screen write all there is to know about each character. Add as much as you can. You will find your character will grow as you write and possible plot lines will jump up at you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13222" LastActivityDate="2015-03-21T00:18:36.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15927" CreationDate="2015-03-21T00:27:41.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible to become and exist as a writer in isolation. If you write primarily for your own enjoyment you need not worry about anyone else. But being curious creatures we want to know what other people are writing or what is good writing. I would recommend that you read as much as possible and read many types of books. A great help to me over the years has been Stephen Kings' excellent book about the craft simply named &quot;On Writing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13222" LastActivityDate="2015-03-21T00:27:41.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2015-03-21T00:42:09.630" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;An instant cure to the blank page...open the newspaper/news site and look for small quirky stories, e.g. &amp;quot;man arrested on unicycle outside Parliament.&amp;quot; No pressure, take that headline and just create your own story of how it might have happened. Another favorite trick of mine is to pick a published novel/story and re-invent the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13222" LastEditorUserId="47470" LastEditDate="2021-01-29T00:49:39.610" LastActivityDate="2021-01-29T00:49:39.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-21T03:05:50.877" Score="9" ViewCount="9396" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that there are 2 ways to get paid:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The writer will get (for example) 3 cents per word. Then, even if the book is a huge hit, the writer wouldn't get any more money.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The writer will get some sort of percentage, like 10% of book sales. So if the book only sold 10 copies, then you would be at a disadvantage; the more books sold the more money the author gets.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book wasn't a good book, you would choose the 1st option, but if it'd be popular, then you'd choose the 2nd method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those were all the payment methods I heard from friend. Are they right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13223" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-03-21T14:55:29.207" LastActivityDate="2016-07-14T04:36:54.597" Title="How do you get paid for getting your book published?" Tags="|publishing|money|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16584" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16586" CreationDate="2015-03-21T20:24:56.093" Score="0" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some dialogue between two people (a clerk and a person called John Doe).  I want the clerk to say to John: &quot;You're John Doe.  Still.&quot;  So I've punctuated it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You're John Doe.  Still,&quot; said the clerk, whom John had talked to a few times before.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Yes, I am.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble is having that comma after the &quot;Still&quot;.  It sort of makes it look like the sentence is going to continue, as in &quot;Still, I don't care who you are&quot; or whatever.  However, his sentence just ends, &quot;Still.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I give that sentence the kind of finality I want with the full stop, rather than using a comma?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13104" LastActivityDate="2015-03-21T21:56:38.780" Title="How to correctly punctuate this dialogue?" Tags="|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16584" CreationDate="2015-03-21T20:34:55.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you revise your current question to reflect a more general nature. Ask how quotes like this can be revised to achieve the effect you desire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You're John Doe. Still.&quot; The clerk raised an eyebrow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to just end the sentence. Find some action (sigh, motion, whatever) for the clerk to do in the next sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-03-21T20:34:55.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16584" CreationDate="2015-03-21T21:56:38.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I too would revise your sentence, but by placing the attribution first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The clerk, with whom John had spoken a few times before, said, &amp;quot;You're John Doe. Still.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Yes, I am.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3432" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-21T21:56:38.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16581" CreationDate="2015-03-22T01:41:28.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What kind of book? I have most experience with novels... I think things are a bit different for non-fiction, but I can't say for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For novels...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors don't get paid per word. That applies to some short story markets, and, I think to non-fiction articles, but not novels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For novels, authors are paid royalties based on sales. This can be either net sales, in which case the percentage is generally higher, or cover price, in which case the percentage is generally lower. So, for example, a publisher might pay 50% of net sales, but that means that for a $5 e-book, the publisher would only receive $3.50, and the author would get $1.75. Or the publisher might pay 15% of cover price, so if the book had a $10 cover price the author would get $1.50 per book sold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also advances that come into play. When a publisher buys a book, they give the author an advance on royalties, which is essentially an advance payment of royalties that will hopefully be received down the line. So the author might get a $10K advance (often divided into 1/3 payments for when the contract is signed, the MS is received, and the book is released), and won't receive any royalties on that title until the advance is paid off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-03-22T01:41:28.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16581" CreationDate="2015-03-22T01:41:54.140" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Those are basically two of the most common options, yes.  Below are the ones that I know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fee&lt;/strong&gt;:  This is typical for articles, short stories and poems submitted to magazines (when there is payment offered).  You get either a one-time flat fee or a per-word fee for first publication rights in that periodical.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contract Writing&lt;/strong&gt;:  This is typical for large franchised series, technical writing, ghostwriting and targeted non-fiction.  You are paid a one-time fee for all publication rights, and you write what you are told to write.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Royalties and advance&lt;/strong&gt;: This is standard for legitimate traditional publishers of fiction and prestige non-fiction.  The author is paid an advance (typically small, unless the author is extremely well-known) based on the publisher's estimate of how many copies they will eventually sell.  The author is also paid a certain amount per book sold (10% is relatively typical, although that must be split in the case of multiple authors or an author/illustrator combo) --this is known as royalties.  However, no royalties are paid until the initial advance has been entirely covered.  In some cases the advance must be paid back if the royalties never cover it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;POD (Print on Demand)&lt;/strong&gt; - This is a new method of publishing made possible by modern technology.  The book is only printed, one copy at a time, in the case that someone wants to purchase it, and the author is paid a percentage of the cover price (usually comparable to a royalty), with the remainder going to the printer.  This is most often used by self-publishing authors (but sometimes used by traditional publishers for their backlists).  Books printed this way will rarely be carried in traditional bookstores, regardless of merit (because there is no margin left for the middleman).  They do not sell themselves, so an author looking to make money through POD must be a relentless self-promoter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;eBook&lt;/strong&gt; - Another new high-tech publishing method, the eBook is delivered digitally to a device, and never printed.  Most people go through a supplier such as Amazon, although it is possible to do this alone.  The author gets a larger percentage of the cover price, but readers are typically willing to pay much less for these.  eBooks are often assumed to be lower quality because the investment in getting them published is so much lower than with other methods.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self-Publishing&lt;/strong&gt; - In legitimate self-publishing, the author takes on all the jobs of the publisher, including typesetting, layout, cover design, proofreading, publicity, marketing and sales.  The author keeps all profits from sales of book, minus the initial printing costs.  This is typically a good route for those who are using the books as a sideline to a business such as motivational speaking, or who are excellent at sales.  Self-published books tend to garner little respect because they haven't been through the vetting process of a traditional publisher, and because the production values are often low.  (A well-done self-published book, however, will not be easily identified as one.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vanity Press&lt;/strong&gt; - Vanity presses exploit naive authors by masquerading as legitimate publishers.  They are a form of self-publishing, but they make their profit from overcharging the author for the services that a legitimate publisher does for free.  A vanity press is one that makes money even if no books are ever sold.  It is extremely difficult to make any money through vanity publishing because of the high up-front fees.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Academic Writing&lt;/strong&gt; - As @what mentioned, academic publications rarely pay directly for writing, but the publishing pays indirectly in terms of helping academics get and secure teaching positions and other benefits.  (Academics &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; make a great deal of money, however, if they edit or contribute to a popular textbook.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cooperative Publishing&lt;/strong&gt; - This is basically a form of self-publishing, where a cooperative collective of authors (&lt;a href=&quot;http://columbuscoop.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;see this example&lt;/a&gt;) publishes an anthology work, and then takes on the task of sales.  This is more a way to get into print than to make money, since the per-author proceeds are quite low.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, even what are considered successful authors rarely make enough just from publishing to survive on.  A &quot;very successful&quot; book might generate $10,000 for its author, which sounds like a lot, but not if the book took 5 years to write.  Even very well-respected authors can often have more prestige than money.  Many authors supplement their income through doing paid speaking engagements. A large number are professors of English (if they have their MFA degree), or teach at writing institutes. Others do contract writing to subsidize the writing they really care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-06-29T14:55:44.537" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T14:55:44.537" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16595" CreationDate="2015-03-22T14:05:20.550" Score="4" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not been able to find an existing question similar to mine, but apologies if I've missed one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write an academic dissertation where I mention a lot of people. The first time someone is mentioned, I present him or her with an apposition, usually a title or affiliation, e.g. the physicist Jessica Ronan and the engineer Patrick Boyd. Now suppose that Ronan is mentioned very frequently, while Boyd is only mentioned now and then. Is it considered good practice to avoid repeating the affiliation for Ronan but occasionally repeat it for Boyd? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My intuition is that readers would never lose track of who Ronan is, and therefore always remember her as the physicist. With Boyd, who is only mentioned at every 20-30 pages or so, perhaps the readers need a little reminder at some point. Or is it a good idea to do that also for Ronan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget these are not the only two persons in the text, there is about 100 all in all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also add that I have a name index at the back of the book. Does this entirely remove the need for repetitions of the form above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of a historian that has done something similar (before this quoted passage, Copernicus has already been presented):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Copernicus’s theory remained incomplete, but the German physicist Johannes&#xA;  Kepler (1571--1630) was able to provide mathematical evidence in its &#xA;  support, while the Pisan astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564--1642) tested &#xA;  the Copernican hypothesis empirically by observing the planets through the &#xA;  telescope, which he had himself perfected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken from page 67 in this book &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=25jHvH33vZgC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;hl=en#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Karen Armstrong &quot;The Battle for God&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that this historian not only mentioned the profession of the persons but also their nationality and birth and death years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6071" LastEditorUserId="6071" LastEditDate="2015-03-23T06:52:31.853" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T06:52:31.853" Title="Should I ever repeat the affiliation of a person?" Tags="|style|titles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15927" CreationDate="2015-03-22T15:38:11.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not trust myself to be fully capable of judging my own work&#xA;  against what others might think of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may have an answer for this. I suggest writing a little every day, as you said, but not editing. Try to keep from editing for several days in a row. Then once or twice a week edit whatever you have. I prefer music when I edit because it blocks the creative side of my brain so I can focus on how adequate the work is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't share what you've written until you're at a good stopping point. Preferably at the end of the entire work. By waiting until the very end, it will be pure to what you were trying to accomplish. Once you have your core interests written, you can have friends read it and advise you how they would change things. It is important to find honest friends who know a little bit about writing. Possibly they read a lot, or write some themselves. But you want them to be honest so you know exactly what is good or bad in the work. If you can't wait to finish the entire manuscript, you should wait until you finish the chapter, or other significant break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's best to get more than a few people's opinions on the piece. Often I will show someone my short story, who has great ideas for what I should have done or what to do next that I completely disagree with. When you ask around and the general consensus is to add a scene, take it with a grain of salt. As the author, you know more about the universe and the characters than anyone else. Try out the changes, but save a backup in case it was ill advise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As author you know best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13210" LastActivityDate="2015-03-22T15:38:11.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16550" CreationDate="2015-03-22T18:47:12.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few approaches that you could use in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is to plot out the most significant events of the unfolding drama and identify as few key players as possible who between them witness the sequence of events. You might then present a semi-fictionalised account of what they saw. If using the historical figures of the culture does not work for you then perhaps place fictional characters in the key moments and tell their story. This would allow you to tell a number of intertwined character stories and show the growth and change in each one in the context of the social change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also consider having had these characters having known each other before the events you wish to show or meeting up after to reminisce. In fact the reminiscing might be the very vehicle for telling the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reminiscing approach gives you two approaches. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 1a: Cover the events in order from each perspective switching view point as need. This is, I imagine, is close to the approach you are considering currently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 1b: Tell each character's experience of the process and the events they witnessed. The same moments might look very different to different people (real or imagined). Effectively playing to what you consider you strengths with slightly shorter story arcs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An complete alternative (Option 2) could be to have a single character (almost definitely fictional), perhaps a relative late comer to the sub culture. This audience surrogate would more than likely experience a deep emotional response to the sub-culture and while having no direct influence on the events that unfold still must react and change as the sub-culture goes through its last days or weeks (or months). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could still bring in third party perspective with conversations with direct participants wherein said person is simply trying to get to grips with what is happening. In this form you are again playing to your single character point of view strengths but the backdrop is also the story you are wanting to tell (or better yet show).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: Whichever approach you use there is no doubt that you are pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone (no bad thing) but it does not hurt to continue to play to established strengths at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2015-03-22T18:47:12.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16231" CreationDate="2015-03-22T19:10:57.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel like I am only going to be adding a footnote to some very well made points and suggestions but I feel you pain and would like to offer some constructive advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the author you clearly disapprove of the actions of one or more of your characters and that is probably a sign of good moral character. However if you drop out of the flow of events to lecture the readers both you and reader are going to loose interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often say to other writers what I am about to say to you - show rather than tell. The character has done a bad thing. We the reader have been witness to the bad thing. This sets some expectations for us as the reader. We may want to see justice, retribution or just understand why they acted as they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However you as author wish to show that what happened was &quot;bad&quot;. So explore why it is bad and wrong. Show the repercussions. I do not mean just that the man is likely to be arrested but the more subtle repercussions too. If he has children how do they react to him - the chances are that he has started down a path of alienating the children. If he has friends how do they react? If he has a sense of guilt how does he deal with what he has done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise the other half of this story is the result for the female in the situation. In your plot her provoking him is deliberate so he has fallen into a trap. This gives a great amount of momentum in terms of him trying to defend his actions and his feeling of entanglement and no one understanding before reaching a point past denial of accepting his flaws and failings as a human being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chances are that this is going to cost him his marriage, perhaps also his children and home (and perhaps mental health and job too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives you a great way to show that not only was what he did bad but that there are better ways to deal with being provoked or getting cross. As part of his character development through the story it might be possible to show him having realised what a dick he has been to undergo change which can be shown by similar situation arising at the end wherein he reacts in  far better way showing that he is no longer that sort of man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story is more about her than him than perhaps she tries the selfsame thing on a different sort of person and is then confused when he defuses the situation and refuses to get angry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise if the story is about the man and him changing that much is beyond the story scope then showing a contrast argument between a friend and his wife where said friend is much better at dealing with what gets thrown at him can lead, at least, to him realising that he is going to have to should a lot of the blame and take responsibility for his own actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or show what a fool he is by having him make excuses despite all of the chances to grow and learn and show him spiralling down into nothingness through his own refusal to become a better man. The readers will start to see through his lies and denial and loose any sympathy they might have had for him. Like any battered spouse that finally wakes up to the abuse and says &quot;no more&quot; they will be glad when he is finally shown the door (whatever form that actually takes for this character).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: Show that what he has done is bad with consequences, growth (or lack thereof) and contrasting scenes with different outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2015-03-22T19:10:57.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16590" CreationDate="2015-03-22T19:22:42.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is a question of accepted style then my first stop would be whoever would be likely to receive or review or grade or publish said work. Some bodies have very clear cut ideas about how things should be presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if the focus here is readers then one need only consider their own expectations, memory skills, etc and the importance of the profession on the quote in question. I would personally have no problem with a writer mentioning the profession of a cited example person once each chapter, section or sub-heading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going further and assuming that the two mentions of the person are in separate sections and given that there might be no guidance notes available I would ask myself &quot;what if this was an entirely new person?&quot; and &quot;what if someone started reading part way through?&quot; From there I would reintroduce anyone who has long been left unmentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On that score I have seen writers approach the need to remind readers by using the profession as part of what they are saying. For example: &quot;Fred, as an engineer, could see that...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: Find out if there is a manual of style for the context within which you are writing, if there is not or it is not applicable then ask yourself which version is easier or more enjoyable to read (or least confusing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-03-23T06:37:23.877" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T06:37:23.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16402" CreationDate="2015-03-23T05:12:40.967" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several good approaches to this problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cite the actual author.  This works if the story is set in a world that is descended from the world of the actual author, and if it is plausible that the provenance of the quote would have been passed down until the time of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cite the actual author, but only give the author's initials.  This can work if it is plausible that some of the provenance of the quote would have been passed down until the time of the story.  For example, Tom Kratman's &lt;em&gt;Carrera&lt;/em&gt; / &lt;em&gt;Amazon Legion&lt;/em&gt; stories take major themes from Robert Heinlein's &lt;em&gt;Starship Troopers&lt;/em&gt;.  The story is set 500 years in the future, and Heinlein's name has been lost.  Thus, the author of &lt;em&gt;Starship Troopers&lt;/em&gt; is &quot;only known by his initials, R.A.H.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mangle or translate the author's name to be recognizable, but consistent with the setting.  This might be appropriate if the setting does not descend from the author's setting.  But a name like Nietzsche already sounds fantastic, so it might not need to be mangled.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not explicitly name the actual author, but blatantly name the character who says the quote after the author (or one of the author's characters).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not name the actual author, but instead use a vague phrase like &quot;a philosopher&quot; or &quot;a great man&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Paraphrase a famous quote (in a way that is appropriate to the specific setting) while calling attention to the quote, without attribution.  This acts like a cameo -- people who recognize the quote will recognize the inside joke.  This works if the target audience is familiar with the quote.  For example, in John Ringo's &quot;We Few&quot;, an alien launches a morning air-cavalry charge with these words:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Arise &lt;em&gt;civan&lt;/em&gt; brothers!&quot; he cried. &quot;Fell deeds await! Now for wrath, now for ruin, and a red dawn!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Roger had taught him that. He didn't know where the prince had picked it up—probably some ancient human history—but it was a great line, and deserved to be repeated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers familiar with Tolkien's &lt;em&gt;Return of the King&lt;/em&gt; will recognize &quot;Arise &lt;em&gt;civan&lt;/em&gt; brothers!&quot; as a translation of &quot;Forth Éorlingas!&quot;, and the remainder of the quote as a paraphrase of Éomer's war cry during the Battle of Pelennor Field:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10378" LastEditorUserId="10378" LastEditDate="2015-03-23T14:36:59.467" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T14:36:59.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16550" CreationDate="2015-03-23T14:08:57.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Arguably, the story of the internal life of an individual, in the context of sweeping social events, is a recipe for great literature. &quot;No man is an island&quot;: if the world is changing, it's inevitably going to play out in an individual's life. Even a Hero's Journey has a social context.  The movie &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; is known to be explicitly written as a Hero's Journey, but it's also the story of a war against a fascist state. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've already mastered writing the internal life of your protagonist, all you really need to do is fill out the scenery behind him or her.  Unless your character is entirely self-absorbed, things like wars, creation or destruction of sub-cultures and so forth are going to to have an impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T14:08:57.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16599" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-23T15:57:30.950" Score="1" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;There will be approximately one dozen images scheduled to appear &#xA;in my upcoming book. These are, in the majority, old ads from &#xA;various clients, industries and campaigns I have worked on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I make no pretension or allusion I had anything to do with &#xA;the artwork, graphics or words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My role was just to buy the advertising space and formally &#xA;book or place the ad(s) in newspaper, outdoor, TV etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I document every item as thoroughly as I can.&#xA;Identifying the client/ the ad agency/ the art director/ &#xA;when the ad ran/where the ad ran.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not trying to trump anyone's thunder- in fact I feel better&#xA;giving full acknowledgement to the original creator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this enough? Do I still need any formal permission from each client&#xA;to have these re-appear? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dennis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13254" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T18:49:12.053" Title="Use of old ads in a book" Tags="|legal|copyright|creative-commons|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10187" CreationDate="2015-03-23T16:27:15.103" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with references is that they are funny only if people understand them, and they can go stale fast.  This isn't necessarily a killer, but it's something to keep in mind.  Ancient Greek comedy is loaded with references to people who have been dead for thousands of years, and whom we only know about because of the funny references (you can take that either as a plus or a minus!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A compromise might be to do more of a parody than a direct reference.  That way it's funny even if you don't get the reference, but even more funny if you do (assuming it's funny in the first place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T16:27:15.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16602" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16603" CreationDate="2015-03-23T17:07:31.550" Score="6" ViewCount="779" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finally sat down and wrote the first chapter of my planned novel. Reading back through it, I realized that there is so much that happens in only 2000 words. People die, the protagonist is captured, dialogue happens, but it all happens so fast, one event after another. How do I write in a more expansive way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13256" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T17:23:30.673" Title="My story moves too fast" Tags="|exposition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16602" CreationDate="2015-03-23T17:23:30.673" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Don't worry about it for this draft.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write your entire book. Get it down on paper. Then put in a drawer for a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Then&lt;/em&gt;, when it's finished and you have a little distance, you can go back and see where there's room to insert other scenes and slow events down. You don't want to kill the momentum of your writing by spending so much time fussing over editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first draft will by definition be rough. That's fine. As you are writing the book, plots and bits of character information will come to you which you didn't have planned. These can be part of what you can use to slow things down in the editing process. But you can't discover those things until your book is written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) When you are editing and you need to insert things:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the time for descriptions. Describe the setting. Make sure there are little character moments to show the reader what your world and your characters are like. Give us a sense of how people speak, of the smell of the air, the composition of the buildings. Show us the technology. Show us affiliations of politics, geography, religion, race, marriage, and family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When an event happens (someone is captured), show us the reactions of the other characters. Let us see how the ripples of this event are starting to spread outward (particularly since that's what's going to move your plot forward). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T17:23:30.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16604" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16606" CreationDate="2015-03-23T23:58:44.747" Score="0" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have short story that is three pages and a paragraph. It's based off a short story by one of my favorite authors in order to learn their prose. Three pages seems a bit short. I think the length of scenes and the amount of detail is adequate, yet the story is only three pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its fine right now at three pages, I suppose. However, I could change the plot or flesh out some bits to make the story more like ten pages. My question then is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there studies on the length of a story and the amount of entertainment received? Would changing it to be longer be more optimal than leaving it be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13210" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T05:19:44.947" Title="Is it more optimal to make a longer story or leave it at three pages?" Tags="|short-story|wordcount|revision|book-length|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16837" CreationDate="2015-03-24T05:08:38.743" Score="0" ViewCount="3512" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do many writers use a lot of description when presenting a character or a scene? Is this a writing tradition? Many characters in a book have been described in minute detail , in some ways preventing a reader from using their own imagination. The same happens with many described scenes. Is this a tradition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11527" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2015-03-25T11:57:44.397" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T06:20:19.160" Title="Why do writers sometimes use so much description?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|description|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16604" CreationDate="2015-03-24T05:19:44.947" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Word Count and Page Count matter nothing when compared to what they contain. If your story is in it's final form, it is in it's final form. It doesn't matter if it's one hundred pages or one. If you feel it can be improved by increasing it's size, by all means do so. If, however, you feel it is fine the way it is, leave it be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said: page count can matter with &lt;em&gt;first impressions.&lt;/em&gt; For example, a person may not want to read a fifty page 'short story.' A three pager, on the other hand, may attract more passing readers (Hmm, only three pages? Well, I have time for that...). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course, if you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; need to pay attention to word count (as with a contest, where there may be limitations), word and page count will matter. The bottom-line, though, is content, not length. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T05:19:44.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16605" CreationDate="2015-03-24T10:20:11.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the flair of the writer's technique, the description will vary, but all writers who wish to expose the characters or scenes they are introducing and developing must use an expanse of description - not only does this picture the image in the reader's mind, it allows adaptations of the reader's imagination to rest this image in their thoughts. Heavy description also prevents an overload later on, to allow the flow of the plot; it also, in my case, provides the author with the solid image of what their character is determined to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13265" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T10:20:11.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16537" CreationDate="2015-03-24T17:07:51.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There aren't rules. As previously mentioned, it's a matter of opinion.&#xA;But, things to remember include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brains like patterns. So, if you use similar phrases several times in a row, you might consider putting them in the same place to add emphasis. That said, if you don't do that carefully, you can sound repetitive or uncreative. I received a pretty good example of using the phrasing to add emphasis and humor in an email once:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There were multiple failures. For the first, a required step in the directions was missing. For the second, we found an error. Additionally, step one is no longer required, per Jeff. Step one is required, per Fred. The whole company might be confused as to what step one requires, per the usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flow counts. Ask yourself, does this sound awkward here?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your opinion counts the most. Regardless what you do, some people will disagree. Do what you think sounds best. But, don't be resistant to advice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some people dislike prepositional phrases at the end of a sentence. I like this guide: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/ending-a-sentence-with-a-preposition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prepositional Phrases&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13267" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T17:07:51.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16611" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16619" CreationDate="2015-03-24T18:25:04.167" Score="13" ViewCount="6669" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently use Google Drive/Docs to pen all of my novels and short stories, but really feel that I could do with a management suite of sorts, such as Scrivener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as Scrivener costs actual money, I was wondering if there is a free alternative available, but with the caveat that it operates online via a cloud server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does such a thing exist that anybody has experience with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2015-03-25T08:30:25.360" LastActivityDate="2019-08-12T18:06:55.343" Title="Is there a free online alternative to Scrivener?" Tags="|software|tools|scrivener|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16605" CreationDate="2015-03-24T18:41:26.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I (sometimes/often) do the total opposite; I barely describe some characters and leave it almost entirely up to the reader to decide what they look like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may give general descriptions, such as &quot;male&quot;, &quot;forties&quot;, etc., but that's about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why?&lt;/strong&gt;  Well, because I am writing &lt;strong&gt;a story&lt;/strong&gt; and the story itself is what matters most - not what colour the protagonist's moustache is (unless, of course, the story is &lt;em&gt;specifically&lt;/em&gt; about the colour of the protagonist's facial hair).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, I should also point out that some characters' descriptions being highly-detailed is often vital.  Take J.R.R. Tolkein's &quot;The Hobbit&quot; - there are a great many wonderful creatures featuring in that classic story, some little, some large, and some stunning plains upon which the action takes place, and it makes sense to describe each thoroughly due to the fantastical nature of the tale that he tells - Tolkein clearly wanted to paint a very specific picture in the reader's mind (although, I'm sure, we all now picture Martin Freeman whenever we hear the name &quot;Bilbo Baggins&quot; but that's the film industry for  you!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned by the user what, I too am unsure of what your &quot;question&quot; might be; it may well be that you yourself are unsure, but I do not condemn you (for lack of a better phrase) for your post at all as it is clear that you have some doubts and are most probably looking to ask something along the lines of &quot;&lt;strong&gt;What relevance do highly-detailed character and/or scene descriptions have in a story?&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="5328" LastEditDate="2015-03-26T16:20:31.567" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T16:20:31.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16617" CreationDate="2015-03-24T18:54:57.847" Score="8" ViewCount="5010" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep on running into this problem. I will have a parenthetical phrase (which is something set off by parentheses, rather like this, for those of you that do not know), but I need to include multiple sentences in it. The normal punctuation for a parenthetical phrase at the end of the sentence is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sentence (parenthetical phrase). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note how the period is outside of the parentheses. But if you add two sentences: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sentence (Phrase1. Phrase2.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The double period doesn't look right. I also feel obligated to capitalize the first word within the phrase, where I normally don't with just one parenthetical sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the correct way to punctuate sentences like this? Or are two sentences within one parenthetical phrase not permitted? Are they supposed to be separate sentences? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2023-07-29T22:28:08.993" Title="Multiple sentences in a parenthetical phrase - How do I punctuate properly?" Tags="|punctuation|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16614" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-03-24T18:56:21.290" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-03-24T18:56:21.290" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T18:56:21.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16615" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-03-24T18:56:21.290" Score="0" Body="Questions about the rules of grammar, and how to properly apply them to writing. Note that questions asking to improve or check grammar of a specific piece are off-topic." OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="24863" LastEditDate="2019-10-22T18:56:08.177" LastActivityDate="2019-10-22T18:56:08.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16486" CreationDate="2015-03-24T19:21:10.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a technical writing standpoint especially, I agree with the other presented answers: if you use headings in one place you should continue their use throughout. How you go about this, I think at least, depends on what you're writing and the format you are pursuing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MLA Format&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Check out: &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/675/1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Purdue Owl's MLA Overview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've captured some of the interesting bits from that page here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why Use MLA?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using MLA Style properly makes it easier for readers to navigate and &amp;gt;comprehend a text by providing familiar cues when referring to sources and &amp;gt;borrowed information. Editors and instructors also encourage everyone to use &amp;gt;the same format so there is consistency of style within a given field. Abiding &amp;gt;by MLA's standards as a writer will allow you to:&#xA;•Provide your readers with cues they can use to follow your ideas more &amp;gt;efficiently and to locate information of interest to them&#xA;•Allow readers to focus more on your ideas by not distracting them with &amp;gt;unfamiliar or complicated formatting&#xA;•Establish your credibility or ethos in the field by demonstrating an &amp;gt;awareness of your audience and their needs as fellow researchers (particularly &amp;gt;concerning the citing of references)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who Should Use MLA?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MLA Style is typically reserved for writers and students preparing manuscripts &amp;gt;in various humanities disciplines such as:&#xA;•English Studies - Language and Literature&#xA;•Foreign Language and Literatures&#xA;•Literary Criticism&#xA;•Comparative Literature&#xA;•Cultural Studies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rFL92.png&quot; alt=&quot;MLA Headings tend to look like this:&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;APA Format&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Check out: &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/664/01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Purdue Owl's APA Overview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And those same interesting bits that you might find helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why Use APA?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from simplifying the work of editors by having everyone use the same &amp;gt;format for a given publication, using APA Style makes it easier for readers to &amp;gt;understand a text by providing a familiar structure they can follow. Abiding by &amp;gt;APA's standards as a writer will allow you to:&#xA;•Provide readers with cues they can use to follow your ideas more efficiently &amp;gt;and to locate information of interest to them&#xA;•Allow readers to focus more on your ideas by not distracting them with &amp;gt;unfamiliar formatting&#xA;•Establish your credibility or ethos in the field by demonstrating an awareness &amp;gt;of your audience and their needs as fellow researchers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who Should Use APA?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;APA Style describes rules for the preparation of manuscripts for writers and &amp;gt;students in:&#xA;•Social Sciences, such as Psychology, Linguistics, Sociology, Economics, and &amp;gt;Criminology&#xA;•Business&#xA;•Nursing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AytUs.png&quot; alt=&quot;APA Headings tend to look like this:&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What If....&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I don't know the nature of what you're writing, what if you aren't going for a technical piece? What if you're writing an essay about your love for toasters and it's a very personal piece for you? Headings don't have to be drab and boring. They can be relevant, fun and fuzz the lines of the &amp;quot;Intro, Main Point 1, Main Point 2, Main Point 3, Conclusion&amp;quot; format. Yes, using that format is the norm and yes if you use part of that format continuing with it helps readers significantly (remember human brains like patterns, parallels and being able to fill in the blanks with context clues). However, your headings don't have to spell out &amp;quot;Okay guys this is my introduction, this is my argument part and this is my conclusion&amp;quot; that can get boring and bland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's go back to toasters (I don't know why I picked it as an example, but I did and I'm rolling with it). You could format the essay with headings like these and be creative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love toasters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know, a nice unlabeled intro like Monica Cellio discussed above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Insert the Bread; push the lever&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Main point one&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Popping&lt;/em&gt; it's Way to my Heart&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So, main point 2 with a unique heading. (Here the headings are the steps to using a toaster)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skipping Main Point 3 as I'm not questioning your creativity, just trying to give a lame example of creative heading format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Reflection in the Toaster&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I look at the finished work. The toast sits on my plate, the toaster is primed for another slice. I smile as a toaster-sized reflection smiles back. This is why I love toasters. The culmination of...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(and then you conclude and recap etc...)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, the heading for the conclusion doesn't always have to be &amp;quot;conclusion.&amp;quot; In some cases, that's helpful, preferred by a professor, and so on, but writing allows for freedom and you can use headings to convey that freedom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here are some sample essays with unique heading/section formats:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(NOTE: I proofed for format, not topics, so if anything is radical, profane, etc... I apologize).&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dissentmagazine.org/wp-content/files_mf/1353950503Mailer_WhiteNegro.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roman Numerals as Section Separators&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/06/24/the-fourth-state-of-matter?currentPage=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Use of Large Capital Letters and Unique Formatting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As previously stated, the option to not use any headers also exits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you're writing for a certain publication, a certain professor, a certain job, etc... someone probably has an idea of the format they are looking for-it helps to appeal to that as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just my thoughts in a lengthy post that talks far too much about toasters :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13267" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T19:21:10.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16613" CreationDate="2015-03-24T21:01:39.870" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a full sentence as a parenthetical, you generally don't capitalize and punctuate it that way. So it normally appears:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dick and Jane watch Spot run (they know Spot likes to chase cars). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when you have more than one sentence in the parenthetical, you have to indicate where each complete sentence stops and starts. To avoid the weird &lt;code&gt;.).&lt;/code&gt; construction, I might write it thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dick and Jane watch Spot run (They know Spot likes to chase cars. He's never caught one, and wouldn't know what to do with one if he did, but he chases them. The cat, being more sensible, doesn't chase anything). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although if you have that much of a thought in the parentheses, I would move the parenthetical &lt;em&gt;out&lt;/em&gt; of the original sentence altogether, and then capitalize and punctuate normally. You would continue with the rest of your prose afterward, and the parenthetical is just between two sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dick and Jane watch Spot run&lt;b&gt;.&lt;/b&gt; (They know Spot likes to chase cars. He's never caught one, and wouldn't know what to do with one if he did, but he chases them. The cat, being more sensible, doesn't chase anything&lt;b&gt;.)&lt;/b&gt; Mom told Dad he had better buy Spot a leash, or be prepared to explain the concept of &quot;roadkill&quot; to Dick and Jane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T21:01:39.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16618" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16629" CreationDate="2015-03-24T21:14:21.577" Score="3" ViewCount="3256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a generic story. I have a setting that is not tied to a specific region on earth, though the story certainly does occur on earth, and there are numerous references in the setting that would allow one to infer where the story might occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unsure of how to name the characters. If I use names that are most familiar to me, this may seem out of place in the handful of locations that the reader may presume the story to be taking place in. If I use names from one of the few regions on earth that the setting infers it may be taking place in, then I am bound to that specific place as the actual setting -- that would require much more research that is necessary for a detail that is otherwise not meaningful to me (the real-life location on earth of the story.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How may I name characters in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13268" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T06:27:13.620" Title="How to name characters of unspecific nationality and race?" Tags="|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16611" CreationDate="2015-03-24T22:23:49.160" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a great free novel writing tool available, it's called yWriter and it can be downloaded from spacejock.com. It's not an online tool but it if you need it on the go it can be run from a usb pen drive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only free and online tools I can think of are litlift which is at litlift.com and Hiveword from hiveword.com and Inklewriter which is at inklestudios.com/inklewriter but I've not used any of them so you have a fun time of discovery to come!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13109" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T22:23:49.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16618" CreationDate="2015-03-25T04:41:07.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on how many characters, it may be possible to avoid naming them explicitly by using identifying characteristics or their role. If that is a suitable option, more ideas on how to implement it effectively can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/6834/13085&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13085" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T04:41:07.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16622" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16623" CreationDate="2015-03-25T08:42:43.910" Score="2" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found the original manuscript of a very celebrated English botanist on the internet (in pdf format of course) Here it is:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sciweb.nybg.org/science2/pdfs/dws/Brownian.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sciweb.nybg.org/science2/pdfs/dws/Brownian.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is that in an introduction to an academic essay/thesis, I would like to talk about him and his findings and I found, at least, curious to copy the fragment when he talks about his findings (about 10 lines)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is it OK to paste the &quot;photocopy&quot; of the original manuscript itself? Or should I retype everything again between quotation marks? (of course, both with a citation under the text)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your opinions or what are the rules to follow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13274" LastEditorUserId="137" LastEditDate="2015-06-04T20:33:54.280" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T20:33:54.280" Title="Citing someone's work, copying and pasting fragment. Is that OK?" Tags="|academic-writing|citations|quotes|copying|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16622" CreationDate="2015-03-25T09:24:45.327" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Retype (or use OCR) if the meaning of text is the important thing. You have your formatting rules, your publication may need to be formatted, maybe made readable for mobile devices or devices for handicapped people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the manuscript is in graphical form, e.g. illustration with descriptions of its parts or some very special formatting, e.g. alchemical formula written in a way that letters &quot;E&quot; form a pentagram, this is your excuse for including a direct scan as an illustration of your article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the text is of the essence but the presentation contains some peculiarities relevant to your subject, write the text, and include an example illustration of the original depicting the mentioned peculiarities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, the first mode - inline text of citation, that can be edited, reformatted, or read out by text-to-voice interfaces is the primary method used in 99% cases. &quot;Graphical citations&quot; are only rare edge cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T09:24:45.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16618" CreationDate="2015-03-25T10:06:27.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I think that whatever you write will have a distinct flavour of your cultural background, no matter how universal your story is or how hard you try to conceal your upbringing. However, this is not necessarily a disadvantage. Think of Shakespeare's Macbeth: The story is firmly rooted in a specific time and place. But does this affect the universality of the story? Certainly not. In fact, it enrichens the story by adding a distinct flavour and atmosphere to it. In this sense, it might not be necessary for you to employ a universal setting for a universal story. If I was in your situation, I would probably just stick to the setting that I am most familiar with, since this strategy ensures that I get the background right. (Plus, I believe that it is every storyteller's duty to document his or her culture. One reason I like Hosseini's books so much is that he allows me to glimpse at Afghan culture, although the stories he tells are not necessarily specifically Afghan.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is to mix up different cultures. Think of - and this is a somewhat poor example following a masterpiece like Macbeth - the late Pixar movie Big Hero 6. I enjoyed the wild mix of San Francisco and Tokyo a lot, which not only affected the setting of the movie but also the names and the behaviour of the main characters. If you are well familiar with foreign cultures - be it Japanese, Chinese, Iranian, whatever -, you might want to give your characters culture-specific names and let them act as agents of their respective culture. This is another way in which &quot;universality&quot; might be achieved, although it is a different kind of universality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T10:06:27.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16618" CreationDate="2015-03-25T13:07:19.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first thought was why not use non-typical/atypical names (or even codenames as another person suggests)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know, names such as &quot;Dasher&quot;, &quot;Dancer&quot; and &quot;Prancer&quot; or &quot;Onedwarf&quot;, &quot;Twodwarf&quot; and/or &quot;Threedwarf&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about descriptive names such as &quot;Oneeye&quot;, &quot;Haircut&quot; (could be great for a bald character) or &quot;Beefchop&quot; (for an especially muscular character)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt;, you could even just use the characters' surnames.  Think about it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Henderson looked over at Rimmer, furious.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Joplin considered Lawson's suggestion, but ultimately dismissed it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or even&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Norton skewered Clayton through the throat with his sword, lifting Clayton's twitching remains high above his head, showering himself and the other spectators with Clayton's life liquid.&quot; (apologies for the slightly gory example there - I got carried away!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this (&lt;em&gt;surname-only&lt;/em&gt;) suggestion is because the surnames could/would have originated from anywhere in the/your world and will not be directly affected by the birthplace of each character because surnames tend to typically carry on throughout generations within each family and are not allocated at birth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't mention any specific detail of your story, so I am unsure as to whether or not this will suffice, but something along those lines may serve you well and I hope that you are able to find a little inspiration in my words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="5328" LastEditDate="2015-03-25T13:25:45.363" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T13:25:45.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16626" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-25T13:15:17.220" Score="1" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your goal is optimal clarity in the least amount of time when communicating complex information, what is the best way to present that information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, tables, lists, and using certain tones, concise wording, etc. can help make complex information easier to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for resources - webpages and/or books, which have people who have given this subject intense thought and came up with some good ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take this sentence for example:&#xA;If you own a dog and/or cat and bird or fish, then you qualify for a prize!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not immediately clear what you need to qualify, does it mean that if you own only a fish then you qualify? Does it mean that if you own a dog and/or cat and bird, or a dog and/or cat and fish, you qualify?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you presented it in list form, it would be clearer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you own a:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dog and fish or;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cat and fish or;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dog and bird or;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cat and bird&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you qualify for a prize!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be even clearer or more concise in a structured table with implied AND operator, or something. I'm just looking for resources on this subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13275" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T16:27:34.297" Title="When is it best to use a bulleted list, a table, a sentence, or something else?" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16537" CreationDate="2015-03-25T14:19:36.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer the first example, the &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt;-and-&lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about it, humans tend to (at least in my experience) ask the question &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;where and when?&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; when asked if they would like to meet; rarely have I heard anybody ask &amp;quot;when and where?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob: &amp;quot;David, would you like to meet for lunch?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David: &amp;quot;Sure, where and when?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now consider the converse:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob: &amp;quot;David, would you like to meet for lunch?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David: &amp;quot;Sure, when and where?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It just rolls off of the tongue nicer and sounds better to me.  Furthermore, ensure that you continue the pattern throughout your entire work and do not interchange them as it can disrupt the flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T15:32:55.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16519" CreationDate="2015-03-25T14:38:31.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Easy - write the ending &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, dude!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will benefit you in two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your ending will be complete (theoretically, one third of your story)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will no longer experience a ton of ideas about your ending the moment you take up a seat to begin writing your story as you will have already written the ending&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally, you will almost certainly encounter &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; ideas about how to &lt;em&gt;modify&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;change&lt;/em&gt; your ending, but the first draft is always about getting ideas down.  If you can manage writing the ending first, then continue reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still here?  Awesome.  Next, write the middle part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which events built up to the awesome ending that you have just written?  Did people die?  Did nobody die?  How many rifle-yielding felines did it involve?  Whatever it may be, just concentrate on &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;HOW&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; it went down!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once this is done, you have your middle section - easy, wasn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, consider how it all came about in the first place.  Consider the following for your beginning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is the main character(s) and why should anyone care about them?  Are they a high-achieving stud-muffin or a lowlife, yeller-bellied scumbag who nobody gives half a hoot about?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Next, what did they do before all of this awesomeness unfolded?  Did they work in the clichéd bookstore for their doddery old aunt/grandmother, or were they a middle-aged person struggling to make ends meet when suddenly something sudden happens and suddenly, the sudden thing changes everything all of a sudden?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, stick these three parts together - consider writing them in different documents - and boom!  A story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chances are that you will despise your first draft - we all do because the time:effort ratio is usually heavily reduced (something like 100:0.1).  But fear not, for you will be somewhat inspired and pleased with yourself for having finally put your book together - the next stages are tweaking what you have to make it even more awesome than ever imaginable!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="5328" LastEditDate="2016-11-01T22:52:53.650" LastActivityDate="2016-11-01T22:52:53.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16618" CreationDate="2015-03-25T14:46:30.817" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I think this would be very difficult to pull off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could give all the characters made-up names that don't come from any nationality. But this has two catches: (a) One or two characters with unusual, made-up names would be plausible. Like if the characters are named Bob and Sally and Mamber and Fred, a reader might think, hmm, Mamber, what an odd name, but there are people all over with odd names, it wouldn't be implausible. But if all the characters have odd, made-up names, the reader will surely find this unlikely and disconcerting. Then the story isn't set &quot;anywhere&quot;, but in a make-believe place. (b) In any case, made-up names are still likely to have the &quot;sound&quot; of some nationality. Like if I say that a character is named &quot;Komomuro&quot;, I just made that name up, but I think most Americans, at least, would say that it &quot;sounds Japanese&quot;. Every now and then I hear of corporations spending millions of dollars trying to come up with a name for a product that will sound &quot;normal&quot; in many different countries. It's not easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have all the characters go by nicknames -- &quot;Baldy&quot; and &quot;Red&quot; and so on. But that tends to sound odd, too. In real life most people DON'T go by descriptive nicknames. And the nicknames are likely to be place-specific. Do people in Zimbabwe call each other &quot;Red&quot;? I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could avoid giving the characters names at all. Just call them &quot;the tall man&quot; and &quot;the red-haired girl&quot; and so on. Possible, but I think that would get tedious and awkward pretty quick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have names from a mix of nationalities. Have one character named &quot;Jones&quot; and another named &quot;Wang&quot; and another named &quot;Lopez&quot; and so on. Possible. It would certainly make it unclear where the story is set. If there are only 3 or 4 characters that could work, but beyond that it starts to sound weird also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly I think the best solution is more along the lines of Filip's: you can discuss universal themes while still setting the story in a specific place. People all over the world can relate to, say, Romeo and Juliet. I'll bet many don't even remember where it's set. (&quot;In fair Verona&quot;, right?, but whatever.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be extremely difficult to write a story that gives absolutely no clues to where it's set. You'd have to carefully purge every conceivable cultural reference. If you say, &quot;Bob wore a blue shirt&quot;, then this must be in a culture where men wear shirts and not, say, togas. &quot;She drove home.&quot; A society where people have cars, and not just any people, but people of the social and economic class that this character is a member of. And women are allowed to drive, so apparently not Saudi Arabia, etc. Trying to write a story where everything that every character does is a plausible thing for someone to do in any society anywhere in the world would be daunting, even if you know the cultural norms of every society in the world. Odds are you don't -- I certainly don't. I'm sure that if I tried to write a story set in some place I've never been to, it would be filled with errors that people there would find jarring or at least amusing. Ranging from big to small, from, &quot;Umm, your whole story is about these two people dating, but people here don't go on dates. Marriages are arranged by parents&quot; to &quot;You say the hero lit a cigarette during the meeting, but smoking is not allowed in any public place in America any more&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T14:46:30.817" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16630" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-25T14:46:39.527" Score="2" ViewCount="1728" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write fantasy humour (fantahumour, if you will) stories but I have recently written a rather different story in the form of a horror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally, I want to associate myself with both genres, but albeit indirectly in that I do not want my readers to be disappointed when they see that I have strayed from the fantahumour genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any guidelines or useful resources/tips/techniques that you use which help choose a suitable pseudonym?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As my new story is a horror, I would like something that has a presence, a name that people will look at and think, &quot;Wow, that's the dude who writes those awesomely-scary horror stories!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="5328" LastEditDate="2015-03-25T15:35:53.890" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T08:51:21.217" Title="How to choose a good/suitable pseudonym" Tags="|genre|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16324" CreationDate="2015-03-25T14:52:16.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The less ordinary the better is what I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would Joe Bloggs want to read a story about Joe Bloggs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joe Bloggs would most probably enjoy the experience more if he/she were reading about Joe Awesomepants.  Or, conversely, Joe Awfulpants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is often the very high-achieving characters (richer than rich, powerful, slightly crazy) or the downright weirdos (people who spend days alone without interacting with other human beings in any way; people who find pleasure in watching news stories involving car crashes, etc.) that grab my attention more than the stereotypical &quot;young-kid-who-works-at-his-grandmother's-bookshop&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T14:52:16.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16618" CreationDate="2015-03-25T15:51:00.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could provide fodder for those doing literary analysis and chose names for deep symbolic reasons from history, literature or for their meaning. This provides the dual benefits of layered meaning and non-regionalism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T15:51:00.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16618" CreationDate="2015-03-25T16:19:21.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With global media, mobility and communication, certain names can be found worldwide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There certainly is a John in most countries around the globe today, there are few countries without a Chen or Wang, and Muhammad is the most common name on Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply find names that are present in all the cultures you care about. If you use several globalized names, each of a different cultural origin, your tale will not feel located.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if everyone has names of English origin, it will feel like it is taking place in an English speaking country, although those names might be popular in other languages, too. But if you have a John, a Muhammad, a Sergey, and a Wang, they could be living in almost any country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also limit the names to first names, because while surnames only travel with people relocating to other areas, first names travel with media alone. Ken Chen is a Chinese with a common-in-China English first name, Sasha Martinez is a Mexican with a common-in-the-whole-world Russian first name, José Rubineaut is a French (or Canadian) with a Spanish mother, and so on. First names are much less culture specific than surnames, so if you can, give your characters first names only – or mix first and last names from different cultures, like I did, to make them more globalized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-03-25T17:01:30.023" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T17:01:30.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16626" CreationDate="2015-03-25T16:27:34.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In advertising and on the internet, visual clarity is of the essence. Here, lists are used to make text comprehensible in the short attention spans that the audience has for this medium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In printed media, especially outside of glossy magazines with a heavy visual focus, lists are for lists, tables are for tabular data, and a sentence is for narration or argumentation. Here, the format has a meaning, and you should not misuse it, because that will confuse your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T16:27:34.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16630" CreationDate="2015-03-25T16:48:39.877" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in the process of finding a pseudonym for myself, so I have thought a lot about this, read a lot of what other writers and knowledgeable people have to say on the subject matter, and even begun to research my pseudonym.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll not collect all of the arguments here, only give a summary of what I have learned and what the most common opinion is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All your writing should be under the same pseudonym. Because (a) handling more than two different personae in your email client or on conventions will be confusing and you will make errors, giving away your real identity and confusing the other party; and (b) it is difficult enough to make one writer successful, and if you have been successful you should not waste the interest of the public and start from zero with another pseudonym. For example, Robert Galbraith's new crime story sold only very slowly, until it became known that &quot;he&quot; was in fact J. K. Rowling, and then the sales soared. Sure, there were a few readers that complained that Rowling shocked those who expected children's fantasy, but in general her popularity boosted here sales and her well written non-fantasy gained her critical respect.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should have a good reason to choose a pseudonym at all. Maybe you must protect yourself because you want to write something that will cause attempts on your life. Or you are a priest and don't want your erotic fiction to interfer with your preaching. Or maybe your real name is difficult to remember, pronounce, spell, or simply obscene (e.g. in German the vulgar terms for the female genitals or for sex are actual last names! writing children's fiction under such a name just won't do). If your real name is good and you have nothing to hide, you might want to stick with that name, because your writing, if it is successful, fills your name with a &quot;good sound&quot;, and even the most marketable name will sound zany on the cover of a bad novel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A good pseudonym, if you have to chose one, should sound like a real name. Musicians and porn stars are the only ones who should chose speaking names. A writer best choses a name that could be a real name, otherwise it will call out &quot;bad book!&quot; to the readers. Or what would you expect from an SF writer calling himself &quot;Steve Lightsabre&quot;? Do you expect his books to be well written? I don't. [Karin Slaughter (don't know if that's her real name) who writes thrillers is a good counter example to this recommendation.]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A good pseudonym, if you have to chose one, should be easy to rember, easy to spell, look and sound good. Just like any brand name.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ideally your pseudonym is available as domain name, twitter and facebook username (and pretty URL). It should not conflict with any trademarks, copyright, or the names of other celebrities (in any field, but especially in politics) or (even unknown) writers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you can make your own first name the first name of your pseudonym, you will get along fine in radio interviews or on conventions, because you will react to being called that. It is not good to say your name is George and then not react when someone calls you that. So just changing the last name (and maybe middle names) is a good strategy if you want to be a writer who interacts with his fans and the media.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all I can remember at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-03-27T08:51:21.217" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T08:51:21.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16537" CreationDate="2015-03-25T17:02:57.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are the things I consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarity.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Moving a phrase can make the sentence more clear or less clear.&#xA;For example,&#xA;moving a modifier further away from the thing it modifies&#xA;sometimes makes makes the relationship&#xA;harder to see.&#xA;But not always.&#xA;I'm not sure how to give rules about that,&#xA;but if you consciously check&#xA;how the ordering affects the clarity of the sentence,&#xA;you'll do okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, clarity trumps all of the following considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Burden.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The order of phrases&#xA;can can affect&#xA;how much information readers have to hold in their heads&#xA;as they read.&#xA;In general,&#xA;I want to make it easier to read my sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Emphasis.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In his brilliant book &lt;em&gt;Style,&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;Joseph M. Williams says that the end of a sentence&#xA;is the &lt;em&gt;stress&lt;/em&gt; position.&#xA;Readers tend to give more emphasis&#xA;to the information they find&#xA;at the ends of sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I try to arrange phrases&#xA;so to take advantage of that.&#xA;Move the most important information,&#xA;or the most interesting information,&#xA;or the most surprising information&#xA;to the end of the sentence.&#xA;(That previous sentence&#xA;is a counter-example.&#xA;Moving the interesting stuff to the end&#xA;made the sentence less clear.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think about emphasis a lot when I write non-fiction,&#xA;and sometimes when I write fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Flow&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Changing the order of phases&#xA;can enhance or hinder&#xA;how well this sentence follows from the one before it,&#xA;or leads the reader into the one that comes after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fiction especially,&#xA;I want to hold the reader deeply in the story.&#xA;So I work hard to make sure that&#xA;when the reader ends one sentence,&#xA;they are perfectly primed&#xA;for the beginning of the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mea Culpa.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I apologize for not providing examples of these things.&#xA;I am pressed for time at the moment.&#xA;I will add examples as I think of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T17:02:57.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16637" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16640" CreationDate="2015-03-25T19:41:24.423" Score="9" ViewCount="1151" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4138/how-do-i-round-out-a-powerful-character&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. However, it is different based on what I am looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know what inner conflict is, and I know why I need it. I have tons of examples, and I can usually generate perfectly fine inner conflicts (hereafter called ICs) for my characters. Until now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some reason, the ICs I've been generating lately seem weak. It might just be that I'm getting used to characters being pulled in two opposite directions; I don't know if that's normal for writers. Then again, it might be that I am genuinely developing weak ICs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficult part is that I don't know how to describe it. I don't see anything wrong with the ICs I am developing. They seem just as potent at first glance as any other IC, even those in well known books. This might mean that the problem lies in my writing: maybe I don't know how to properly incorporate IC into the character in a powerful way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short, I can't identify the problem. And since I can't tell you what the problem is, I can't very well ask for an answer. So I've decided that I must be doing something &lt;em&gt;somewhere&lt;/em&gt; wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On that note, can anyone give me a clear and concise method for developing strong inner conflict? Hopefully studying the methods will shed light on where I am going wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Despite the above, and the below comments, I'm still looking for a clear method for developing powerful inner conflict. If you know of one that works for you, please post it here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I have marked what's reply as the answer; however, the reply by Chris Sunami also contains some great counter examples, and should be read as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Further edit:&lt;/strong&gt; 2 years later, I finally realize the problem: while the inner conflicts I was creating were fine, I wasn't &lt;em&gt;showing&lt;/em&gt; them enough. If the plot doesn't show the inner conflict naturally in all its detail, you need a subplot. I wasn't working with subplots, thus my IC's came across as lacking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-05-05T18:01:26.287" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T17:48:42.073" Title="Clear steps for developing a powerful inner conflict" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|character-development|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16638" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-25T21:23:03.693" Score="0" ViewCount="664" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written short stories before (around 6,000 words), and I know what I have outlined is longer than a short story. But, I cannot decide if it is &quot;novella length&quot; or if it will break into &quot;novel length&quot;. (I'm calling it &quot;novel length&quot; if it is more than 40,000 words. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_count&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_count&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will certainly be the longest thing I've ever written, but I am not sufficiently experienced in longer works like this to know exactly how long it will be. Is there any good way to estimate how many words an outline will translate into when it is actually written? [edited: typo]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13279" LastEditorUserId="13279" LastEditDate="2015-03-25T21:57:08.767" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T01:07:17.543" Title="Any Good Method for Calculating Word Count Based on An Outline?" Tags="|novel|wordcount|outline|novella|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16638" CreationDate="2015-03-26T01:07:17.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Outlines vary in how much text they cover; some people might write a multi-page outline for the same content for which another would write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Boy meets girl.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Boy loses girl.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Boy goes to mad-scientist school and builds a new girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the only way to know how &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; outlines map to word count is to take samples.  Compare your previous outlines to word counts of the resulting stories and see if there's a pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have previous outlines, you're going to need to experiment.  Try outlining one section (say, a few chapters -- whatever forms a logical sub-story for you), writing the story, and then using that to approximate the rest based on a full outline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T01:07:17.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16637" CreationDate="2015-03-26T08:19:22.237" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem to reduce inner conflict to &amp;quot;characters being pulled in two opposite directions&amp;quot;. That is, a person who wants two different things, is &amp;quot;conflicted&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can imagine a person wanting both to lose weight and to eat a creamy cake to be conflicted in that manner. This is of course boring and not worth a novel. We can also imagine stronger, more tortuous conflicts, such as truly loving your wife, but yearning after sex with another partner, after being married for thirty years. A lot of inner and outer conflict can ensue from this want, but it is still not an exciting conflict (except for the person feeling it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first weakness in these kinds of conflicts is that often they can be resolved. After all, the person could eat this particular cake and still lose weight by not eating cake the other six days. Or the husband could talk his wife into a threesome. The character simply gets both things, and there is no more conflict. Many readers will see these easy solutions and feel irritated at the character worrying instead of resolving his issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second, and more fundamental weakness, is that these kinds of conflicts rise from a person &lt;strong&gt;wanting&lt;/strong&gt; two (seemingly opposed) things. But &lt;em&gt;wanting&lt;/em&gt; is a subjective problem, and it suffers from the problem that the readers will ascribe a &lt;strong&gt;weak character&lt;/strong&gt; to the person unable to abstain from cake or from cheating his wife. It is a pseudo-conflict that does not exist for a person with integrity and willpower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is a conflict worthy of a novel, if conflicts of wanting are not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What a great novel is about is a conflict of necessities.&lt;/strong&gt; The protagonists of a great novel &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; do two things that are mutually exclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the protagonist can save his child only by killing his wife (or his wife by letting his child die). It is not what he &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt; to do, but that there is a choice to be made between two lives. The necessity of course is not objective. No one &lt;em&gt;has to&lt;/em&gt; save their child (or their wife). But common values (and love) dictate that if you can, you ought to save them. It is not something that you want while the world frowns upon you (such as stuffing yourself to obesity), but something that most everyone would expect you to do and, more importantly, &lt;em&gt;most everyone would feel conflicted in the same manner&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, a powerful inner conflict arises from an &lt;strong&gt;outside necessity&lt;/strong&gt; to decide for one of two options, &lt;strong&gt;both of which have severely negative consequences&lt;/strong&gt;. Both the necessity and the consequences must be &lt;strong&gt;common values shared by the readers&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inner conflict does not arise from character, but from plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T08:19:22.237" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16637" CreationDate="2015-03-26T11:13:42.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, Imagine you are experiencing the same conflict as your character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, imagine that your mortal enemy (seriously, think of somebody you really dislike) wants to go with Option 1, which would naturally make you want to take up Option 2.  The beauty of this is that you are not your character and thus do not have an opinion or a preference either way; but by bringing somebody who you genuinly despise/hate/dislike/want to kill into the matter with a strong opinion of their own, tends to instantly make you want to take the opposite side and should open your mind to a line of thinking that you may otherwise not have explored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now play out the argument that would take place between yourself and your foe.  Actually write down everything that you think would be said, be it offensive, expletive, sensible or otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then all that remains is for you to tidy it up and apply it to your character and you should have (at least the basis for) a good internal conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, in order to &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; develop the character's desire for Option 1, merely write about Option 1 from your enemy's perspective and there you have it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="5328" LastEditDate="2015-03-26T15:34:14.223" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T15:34:14.223" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16630" CreationDate="2015-03-26T14:05:34.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Lauren Ipsum says, you'd have to build a reputation on the quality of your books, not the cleverness of a pseudonym. I suppose a well-chosen pseudonym could do SOMETHING toward a reputation. If I saw a horror story written by &quot;Melody Sunshine&quot; would I be less likely to buy and read it because of the totally non-horror sounding name? I don't know; it might be a small, semi-conscious factor. As What says, an over-the-top name might well just make you look silly. If I saw a horror novel by &quot;Demon McDark&quot; I think I'd find that more laughable than compelling. Maybe, possibly, just the right name could give the right connotations. But I think the effort you put in to selecting just the right name would be better spent writing a better novel. Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King have sold quite a few horror stories without having names that of themselves have any particular association with horror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T14:05:34.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16637" CreationDate="2015-03-26T14:26:21.250" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I thought @what gave a great answer, which I upvoted, but it also made me want to look for counterexamples.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Remains of the Day&lt;/em&gt; the main character is a repressed butler who devotes his life to providing exemplary service to a family that may not deserve his loyalty.  In the process, he misses a shot at love with the family's housekeeper.  The conflict here is between the character's repression and his need to connect, and while the conflict is entirely internal, not notably momentous, and arguably unrelatable, it still provides compelling tension and drama throughout the course of the movie/book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the decisive factor is not whether the conflict is &quot;strong&quot; or &quot;weak&quot;, or whether it is character or plot-driven or both, it's how real it feels.  If you are creating your characters and situations first, and then adding in inner conflicts as a way to add depth and drama after-the-fact, it may feel forced and cursory.  In the example you gave in the comments, you admit that the vengeance subplot is a non-starter.  &quot;IC&quot; can't just be a checkbox you hit on the way to the finish line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that your character is a key figure in bringing an end to this disastrous war.  Let's see her on the brink of signing the peace treaty --what's the real conflict here, what's true to her character?  Maybe you can convert the weakness of the vengeance plot into a strength.  Maybe her plan all along was to sabotage the peace, out of a misguided sense of family loyalty.  She's told herself that everything she's done was just to maneuver herself into this position, but now that she's here, she realizes she doesn't really want to go through with it.  She doesn't really want the war to go on, she just feels like she &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;.  The point here isn't the specifics, it's that you have to seek conflicts that are inherent to your story, not ones that are tacked on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-03-26T15:48:53.960" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T15:48:53.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16652" CreationDate="2015-03-26T15:21:59.677" Score="2" ViewCount="2805" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a novel and am 25,000 words into it, but only about 10% of the way in total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My intention was to write a single novel, but as I write, it has clearly evolved into what I can only imagine will be a monster (at least 200,000-250,000 words, which is somewhere around 800-1,000(!) pages) of a book.  As I didn't want to release a tome so early in my career as a writer, it naturally led me to consider the option of releasing the story as a series (perhaps a trilogy, without meaning to sound clichéd).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, this will obviously come with its own problems, such as having to think about how to split one large story into three smaller stories which carry on from one another without wanting the readers of the first two stories to feel as if each respective installment has been ended abruptly in an attempt by me as an author to squeeze more money out of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been told by a number of published authors that my story is, and I quote, &quot;really very good indeed&quot; and each had expressed surprise.  One author said, &quot;Actually, this is very good stuff!&quot;  Therefore, I don't want to ruin that effect by releasing it in multiple volumes, but I also don't want to deter (or even bore) my readers with a single, enormous book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally, one the first draft is finished, I will redraft and will chop and change a lot of it, but the finished article will still be immense (hence my earlier estimate of 200,000-250,000 words), but this still leaves me with a 200,000 word book in the best case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice and/or examples of similar cases that you know of would be a wonderful help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="5328" LastEditDate="2015-03-26T15:28:04.750" LastActivityDate="2021-07-07T12:51:38.073" Title="Should I turn my enormous novel into a series?" Tags="|novel|series|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16644" CreationDate="2015-03-26T15:43:35.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This sounds closest to &lt;em&gt;The Lord of the Rings,&lt;/em&gt; which is one enormous&#xA;story split into three physical volumes. Each volume contains two&#xA;parts which Tolkien labelled books, but Tolkien himself thought of it&#xA;as one work, not three (or six).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GRRMartin's fourth book of &lt;em&gt;A Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; (aka &lt;em&gt;Game of&#xA;Thrones&lt;/em&gt;) got so unwieldy that he split it into two, &lt;em&gt;A Feast for&#xA;Crows&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;A Dance with Dragons.&lt;/em&gt; He chose to separate it by&#xA;character and geography rather than time, which is unusual, but since&#xA;he has about eleventy billion POV characters, he can get away with&#xA;it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;David Eddings's first series, the Belgariad, was originally three&#xA;books, but his publisher talked him into splitting it into five. I&#xA;think the Malloreon (the sequel series) was planned as five, but then&#xA;he and his wife released two more series with three books each.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, it can certainly be done. I would only suggest that you try to divide your books at reasonable &quot;act breaks&quot; and not just end abruptly mid-scene (which is what happened to Eddings when he changed the Belgariad from three books to five). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T15:43:35.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16646" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-26T16:28:53.770" Score="2" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of querying agencies over a manuscript I have written.  Some agencies' websites say something along the lines of &quot;Please query agents directly&quot;, while others say &quot;Please do NOT query agents directly.  However, some agencies simply state: Please send queries to [address]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, putting &lt;code&gt;ATTN:&lt;/code&gt; on my query for a specific agent who specializes in my area of writing could let me reach out in a more targeted way.  On the other, it could seem presumptuous to target a single agent, especially if the agency has its own method of distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a best practice in this situation? If the agency doesn't specify, is it always best to query towards a specific agent?  (Obviously one can always ask the agency to clarify, but I'm curious if this is a situation where it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user12678" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2015-03-26T16:48:25.650" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T09:06:03.217" Title="If the agency doesn't state specifically, should I send my query to a specific agent, or to it in general?" Tags="|publishing|agent|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16647" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16651" CreationDate="2015-03-27T06:59:05.097" Score="3" ViewCount="1479" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like when you get irritated and say &quot;tch&quot; for example. I'm looking to do this in a 3rd person narrative context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13286" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T10:59:34.093" Title="How do you convey nonverbal utterances?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16647" CreationDate="2015-03-27T08:17:51.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best way is to treat it as verbal and use what are called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interjection&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;interjections&lt;/a&gt;, words that have no grammatical meaning but convey emotions. So many different words convey these utterances:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tch&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;um&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ugh&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gah&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;eh&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;huh&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;argh&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list can go on and on. Here's just one partial &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vidarholen.net/contents/interjections/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list of interjections&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possible alternative is to convey it through the way the speech is delivered, such as &quot;He snorted&quot;, and &quot;he tutted&quot;, but this strikes me as a poor replacement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T08:17:51.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16646" CreationDate="2015-03-27T08:22:14.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do as the agency says. If they wanted you to target a specific agent, they would say so. If they forgot to state this, they are not an agency you want to work with anyway. Think of an agency's submission guidelines as a writer's version of a university admission test. If you cannot follow simple rules, how can they rely on you being able to work with them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;tl; dr&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do exactly as the agency says.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are unsure, &lt;strong&gt;call their office and ask&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T09:06:03.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16650" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-27T09:34:31.347" Score="6" ViewCount="470" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing scientific thesis for the degree of PhD. It is a mathematical thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is usually very difficult to tell your colleagues and friends what are the things you exactly work on with detail. It is a widely spread opinion that mathematics are dull, boring and whatever you try to say to explain why they are important, nobody will even try to make the effort to understand you, because of its bad reputation :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, then I thought, that is enough, even if a PhD thesis is technical and very often out of reach for non-experts, I would like to devote the first part of the introduction (it is divided into three sections) for all audiences, trying to explain with very simple words, ideas and examples what it is about, what I am doing and why it is important. I gave it to a friend and he could understand it without problem and actually he found it really interesting which made me very glad. I think it is good to take all audience into account since many of the people who helped me during this long and tedious trip are non-experts in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is simple: is this OK? Is it, or can it be accepted that I devote the first pages of the introduction to try to explain advanced mathematics for anyone in a very informal way? (informal I mean, easy, which you usually don't find in scientific papers, but politely of course) or would a scientific committe think I'm idiot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have divided the introduction in three sections: The first part is what I've been saying, the second is the international context of the thesis and lines of research and the third is its structure. (The two last parts are usually what one should include)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your opinions? I find it very nice if someone can pick up a random thesis and at least understand a little bit what it is all about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last and most important question: What title could I give to this &quot;very informal&quot; section? Any nice suggestions? :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot for any advice and ideas! Really!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13287" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T04:11:13.043" Title="Writing a PhD thesis. Question about (an informal) introduction" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|book|research|introduction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16647" CreationDate="2015-03-27T10:59:34.093" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In English, interjections such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ugh&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ugh&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tsk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tsk&lt;/a&gt; are considered words and listed in standard dictionaries such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oxford English Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; or Merriam-Webster (see the linked words).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As they are regular words, you can use them like any other word. You do not have to mark them up in italics or enclose them in quotations marks or anything, just write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Ugh, that's disgusting,&quot; John said. Tsk, what a sissy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The English interjection corresponding to the meaning you want to express with &quot;tch&quot; is &lt;strong&gt;tsk&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A sound expressing commiseration; an exclamation of disapproval or irritation. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/207103&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OED&lt;/a&gt;; paywalled)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T10:59:34.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16644" CreationDate="2015-03-27T11:42:20.883" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, the usual disclaimer first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Everything I say is true only for the most common, average case. In publishing, everything is possible. The more it deviates from the norm, the rarer it will become. But that does not mean it is impossible.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are one volume editions of the &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; or the &lt;em&gt;Bible&lt;/em&gt;. This is proof that big fat books of over a thousand pages are being published, sold and (possibly even) read. But these books are expensive to produce and distribute, and publishers like to minimize possible losses when publishing first novels by unknown authors, when they don't know how the public will react to the book. It might be a total flop, despite being a great book, simply because the hype is elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, generally first authors have a hard time selling anything over 100,000 words. Publisher prefer to test the waters with a standalone book that is within the common range of word count for that genre. For a good overview, see Jennifer Laughran's &lt;a href=&quot;http://literaticat.blogspot.ca/2011/05/wordcount-dracula.html&quot;&gt;Wordcount Dracula&lt;/a&gt; (for YA) and Colleen Lindsay's &lt;a href=&quot;http://theswivet.blogspot.de/2008/03/on-word-counts-and-novel-length.html&quot;&gt;On word counts and novel length&lt;/a&gt; (for adult fiction), and use Google.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A feasible strategy might be to finish this book and then write something else to publish first. But that does not mean that you shouldn't submit this project to agencies and/or publishers. If it is as objectively good as your professional test readers say, you might even convince a publisher. But chances are that they will recognize its valor and then reply to you that they like it but want you to write something else first. It is quite common that publishers read a manuscript and then contract the author for another book, yet to be written. That does not mean that the first book won't get published, only that publishers think it is better to not publish it as a first novel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In genre fiction, you should always expect to be asked to rewrite (part of) your novel. At this point, you won't know if the publisher sees your work as a series, a fat standalone, or would require it to be shortened to a slim one-volume. Of course there are precendents, and what has sold well will probably be easy to sell a second time, but you should always write &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; book and then work with the publisher to make it marketable, later. Agents say they want to read &quot;finished&quot; manuscripts, but in publishing it is a measure of your professionality how well you are able to let go of a version of your work and rewrite it all over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[In writing-as-art (think &lt;em&gt;Ulysses&lt;/em&gt;) the writer can and must write whatever his vision dictates, but you will deal with different kinds of publishers and probably don't expect commercial success, so I won't discuss this option.]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not all series are the same. Some are a series of standalone novels, each of which you can read on their own, but which continue the &quot;lives&quot; of (some) recurring characters. Others tell one long story in multiple volumes, and these come in two flavors: Those that are one book that has been split for publication. An example would be the &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;. And those that have been planned and written as multiple volumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each volume in a series that has been planned as multiple volumes has some kind of introduction that summarizes what has happened in the previous volumes, either as a preface or interwoven in the narration or dialogue of the first chapter. All volumes also have smaller subplot archs that are completed in one volume, in addition to the arch of the master plot, that is cut so each volume ends in a cliff hanger. So they are something like &quot;semi-standalone&quot;: a satisfying read in themselves, but hooking the reader to continue with the next volume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read examples of the first kind, such as the &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;, you will note that these read like a long single volume book cut into parts. It does not have subplots that are begin and complete in one of the volumes only. And it does not have cliff hangers at the end of the volumes, at least not any more than it has at the end of any chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum this up, I, personally, would write this book however it feels right for you. Then submit it, as it is, and be open to work with the editor to make it marketable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T11:42:20.883" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16650" CreationDate="2015-03-27T12:05:00.270" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often there is a difference between a thesis, as it is submitted to the examination board, and the book, as it is published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The version that you submit to the board of examiners must comply with the academic rules of your discipline. It will usually be written for an audience of experts. Ph.D. theses have to be published, but today you can publish it electronically and be done with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you are free to re-write your thesis into a book for whichever audience you choose, and publish that in any way you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many scholars chose this way, because the double publication gives them the freedom from the narrow rules of a Ph.D. thesis and make their book more attractive and marketable to a (more) general audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not a path you want to take, I don't think that your examiners will find fault if you write in a comprehensive way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychologist Daryl J. Bem (2002) holds that at least the introduction of &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; scientific article should be comprehensible to educated non-experts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For Whom Should You Write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientific journals are published for specialized audiences who share a common background of substantive knowledge and methodological expertise. If you wish to write well, you should ignore this fact. Psychology encompasses a broader range of topics and methodologies than do most other disciplines, and its findings are frequently of interest to a wider public. The social psychologist should be able to read a Psychometrika article on logistic analysis; the personality theorist, a biopsychology article on hypothalamic function; and the congressional aide with a BA in history, a Journal of Personality and Social Psychology article on causal attribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Accordingly, good writing is good teaching. Direct your writing to the student in Psychology 101, your colleague in the Art History Department, and your grandmother. No matter how technical or abstruse your article is in its particulars, intelligent nonpsychologists with no expertise in statistics or experimental design should be able to comprehend the broad outlines of what you did and why. They should understand in general terms what was learned. And above all, they should appreciate why someone—anyone—should give a damn. The introduction and discussion sections in particular should be accessible to this wider audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The actual technical materials—those found primarily in the method and results sections—should be aimed at a reader one level of expertise less specialized than the audience for which the journal is primarily published. Assume that the reader of your article in Psychometrika knows about regression, but needs some introduction to logistic analysis. Assume that the reader of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology knows about person perception but needs some introduction to dispositional and situational attributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, a Ph.D. thesis is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a journal article. So if what Bem recommends here is something that can be done in a Ph.D. thesis in your discipline, at your university and with your examination board, is something that &lt;strong&gt;you must ask them&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bem, D. J. (2002). Writing the empirical journal article. In J. M. Darley, M. P. Zanna &amp;amp; H. L. Roediger III (Eds), &lt;em&gt;The Compleat Academic: A Career Guide&lt;/em&gt;. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Available online at &lt;a href=&quot;http://scientificexploration.org/documents/instructions_for_authors.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://scientificexploration.org/documents/instructions_for_authors.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T12:05:00.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16654" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-27T13:43:17.440" Score="3" ViewCount="587" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel, my first ever, and I hope to &lt;em&gt;finally&lt;/em&gt; finish the story and get it published. I live in Mexico, but I am writing in English.  Could I get the book published here, or would I have to approach a publishing company in an English-speaking country? I'm thinking maybe I can do it here because I live in Cancún and everyone here speaks English, but what if it weren't English? What if I wanted to publish a novel in, say, Romanian, or any other &amp;quot;uncommon&amp;quot; language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13289" LastEditorUserId="40124" LastEditDate="2023-03-09T09:50:04.170" LastActivityDate="2023-03-09T09:50:04.170" Title="Can I publish in English in Mexico?" Tags="|publishing|first-time-author|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16663" CreationDate="2015-03-28T00:51:24.367" Score="-1" ViewCount="1470" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recent events have compelled me to study inner conflicts. Having arrived at this decision, I turned to one of my favorite books in an attempt to identify said conflict. However, upon opening &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's (Philosopher's) Stone&lt;/em&gt; I realized that I hadn't the faintest clue what the main inner conflict was. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing that feels remotely like an inner conflict, is Harry's subtle denial that he can't be a wizard, in the face of all that is changing about him. I feel certain this is &lt;em&gt;an&lt;/em&gt; inner conflict, but I doubt it is the main one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the main inner conflict in the first &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-03-28T10:43:20.353" Title="What is the main inner conflict in Harry Potter?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-03-29T06:52:42.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16659" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16661" CreationDate="2015-03-28T01:34:09.000" Score="4" ViewCount="2156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to devise a short story for a 3d horror game. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are my requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There must be no tangible people/creatures for the player to interact with (the player can be any sort of living entity but they can't see themselves unless they look in a mirror).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The player's movement must be restricted enough that they can't run from the situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The story should mainly unfold as the player moves throughout the area, although some limited object interaction (such as picking something up or flipping a switch) can trigger events.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I instill feelings of dread/isolation/fear under these constraints?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The setting can be fictional or realistic. I don't have much writing skill, so any general advice on this would be much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13295" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-11T18:20:58.420" LastActivityDate="2018-04-12T10:43:01.037" Title="Horror story for a game - how to create dread?" Tags="|setting|videogame|horror|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16659" CreationDate="2015-03-28T04:57:05.797" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The greatest human fear is the &lt;strong&gt;fear of the unknown&lt;/strong&gt;. What's more scary? A gremlin chasing people in the streets, or a moan that's heard every summer in the depths of a basement? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exploit this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you to read &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;House of Leaves&lt;/a&gt;. There are no monsters, there's no blood, yet it's one of the scariest novels I've ever read. It's the story about a house that's bigger on the inside than on the outside. It has dark rooms that go on and on indefinitely. They twist, change of shape. They do weird stuff to people's mind. And now and then you hear a &quot;growl&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(By the way, if you decide to make the game based on House of Leaves, let me know. I'll buy it immediately.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-03-28T11:50:58.603" LastActivityDate="2015-03-28T11:50:58.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16659" CreationDate="2015-03-28T09:52:08.970" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's also something to be said for a haunting backstory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exploiting small hints of horrors which may still be lurking in the darkness does wonders. Begin the story without much evidence of anything, then provide your first clue of something terrible within the second room. Slowly bring the horror elements from the past to the present with some kind of environmental stimulus... footsteps (great element, if you hear them, you have to hide somewhere), breathing, screams. Something to let the player know that things are becoming more present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, humans being social creatures, you just have to make a story that will be interesting until the player realizes... &quot;what the hell? there's no one else around...&quot; then you slowly suggest a reason why, and why they may be next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13298" LastActivityDate="2015-03-28T09:52:08.970" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12761" CreationDate="2015-03-28T09:58:28.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speech may not be your best option. Action might be a greater tool. The character could speak completely fine (albeit nonsensically in subject), but begin doing some kind of action that no 'sane' person would do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your character's illness IS important. A person suffering from one extreme mental illness does not behave like another. Some are aggressive. Some are paranoid. Some are self-destructive. Some won't speak at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be best to mull the scene over, from an 'end justifies the means' kind of perspective where you just focus on what needs to happen and where you want it to go. Then you take that and use the most effective behavior to get you there, then research that behavior and try to find out how a person who exhibits THAT behavior would speak. Let the story dictate the character in that instance (kind of like a meta-commentary on insanity itself, if you think about it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13298" LastActivityDate="2015-03-28T09:58:28.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16658" CreationDate="2015-03-28T10:43:20.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Children begin reading books without conflict at all (colors and shapes), and then advance to simple external conflicts (Dr. Seuss), and eventually discover inner conflict around adolescence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harry Potter's story grew with the character, and the audience. The earliest book provided little in the way of internal narrative at all. As the character grew, so did the complexity of both the characters and the readers. The characters developed more extreme emotions as they faced more extreme circumstances, each character slowly developing the typical inner turmoil expected from a teenager, flavored by the events they took part in and the fantasy world around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer, there really isn't any major inner conflict in the first Harry Potter book, most likely because its intended audience was underdeveloped to appreciate such a device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13298" LastActivityDate="2015-03-28T10:43:20.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13050" CreationDate="2015-03-28T11:48:17.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plot... Story... blah blah blah. You're talking about a journey. You're talking about a quest. You're talking about a goal, a conflict, and a resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I don't like is the use of the term &quot;filler content&quot;. You can't go into a story thinking like that. Everything you write has to be important, every sentence should define a character or the world, or be a necessary step in the journey. You can't steamroll into the end and expect the reader to still be with you when you get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Easy formula:&#xA;Define a goal (Find the thing! Save the guy! Stop the evil!), then use a character that is LEAST able to reach that goal, and stick them in the protagonist role. Give them help, then screw up their chances. Make them work for it. Make them either not want to, or believe they can't, or think their real goal is something else. Add layers of elements like that, where you point your characters, and the reader, in what seems to be abstract directions, and then find a way to curve the road around to your end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13298" LastActivityDate="2015-03-28T11:48:17.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16666" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16667" CreationDate="2015-03-28T16:38:28.873" Score="5" ViewCount="1317" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you please advise if there is a preferred way of separating speech and description into paragraphs in English writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I mean a description and/or internal thoughts from the point of view of one character directly followed by a speech coming from that same character. Do you merge them into a single paragraph or split into two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, this excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He thought about her remark. It reminded him of ... [this internal pondering can go for a while] ... But he was not sure. &quot;Tell me more, please.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13300" LastActivityDate="2020-10-20T10:53:43.087" Title="Description and speech in one paragraph?" Tags="|organization|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16666" CreationDate="2015-03-29T07:47:44.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The description can be as long as you like, in one paragraph, so long as it's one idea. If there are two ideas, break into two paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialogue typically gets it's own paragraph, even if it's by the character whose thinking generated the description that precedes it. Same reason. It's another idea, strictly speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Do you see what I mean?&amp;quot; GJ asks GI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who made this piece of junk? I can't ride it, he thinks. It'll fall apart underneath me. It reminded him of an old chair in the office which always fell into two pieces whenever anybody sat on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Tell me more, please. About this ... thing, I mean.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Of course, sir! It's a real treasure -- &amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't tell me that! thinks he. I know what a real treasure this is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one exception is the case where thinking and dialogue, all by one character, are mixed together or alternate, if these sentences form a single idea. You could put it in a single paragraph, as is often done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some difficulty cutting the steak, almost instantly he regretted putting it into he mouth. &amp;quot;It's delicious,&amp;quot; John mumbled to his grinning hosts. This chews like a rubber shoe he thinks. He bit down hard. &amp;quot;So how'd you make this? I mean ... it tastes great!&amp;quot; It tasted like the paper taken out of the office shredder, in fact. &amp;quot;Where did you buy this?&amp;quot; It's spoiled, they fed me rotten meat, thinks he.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John excused himself from the table after a few moments -- to go wash his hands. Actually he went to vomit. He thought he was going to die; he ran the entire way to the sink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13168" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-29T18:05:12.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16666" CreationDate="2015-03-29T07:47:46.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any valid rule that addresses your question. There are some guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;length. If the paragraph is too long, split it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pacing. If the action is fast use shorter paragraphs, longer paragraphs to show thought.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;topic. You seldom want disjoint ideas in the same paragraph except to show contrast.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may notice that the guidelines I listed do not directly address your question. This is because there is no standard, which is a good thing. The method I like to use is to not add paragraphs to dialog on the first pass, just get the words down, then come back and break things up as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-03-29T07:47:46.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13050" CreationDate="2015-03-29T10:54:24.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me it's easy. Pick your characters and start living their lives. Have little nudges of fate guide them towards key points of your story, but don't force it; if the character just doesn't realistically fit in there, change the plot point and keep developing the story. At times it will be entirely different from what you planned, but &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially: If you created a captivating world (as you described you did) and set your characters at the beginning of the journey, just follow them throughout the journey: imagine what they'd feel, what they'd want and have them act upon that - live in that world. And the story just writes itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-03-29T10:54:24.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16671" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-29T18:58:31.337" Score="4" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;A biography of J. D. Salinger describes his eventually successful efforts to publish his short stories in The New Yorker, which is described as a literature Olympus of that time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In today's publishing landscape, is there an equivalent magazine or venue which is generally acknowledged as the &quot;ultimate&quot; in quality and prestige?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13309" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2015-03-30T04:25:32.370" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T05:01:43.460" Title="Is there a &quot;literary Olympus&quot; in the current publishing landscape?" Tags="|short-story|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16672" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-29T22:22:59.220" Score="1" ViewCount="661" Body="&lt;p&gt;I and two other students are writing a proposal to a corporation to donate some equipment to the Electrical Engineering department at my school. When I put our names under the title of the proposal, is there a particular order they should go in, e.g alphabetical or seniority-based?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13311" LastEditorUserId="13311" LastEditDate="2015-03-30T16:21:07.217" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T04:06:34.777" Title="Order of names in title" Tags="|technical-writing|business-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16674" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-30T14:36:07.567" Score="1" ViewCount="4174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm being asked to 'clearly state the novelty' in my thesis.  I suspect my supervisor would love to actually have a section titled 'Novelty' in big, black letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think this is against the spirit of writing a thesis, because a thesis is not a report of what one has done with their time, but a work sample which shows one can write scientifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it should be clear to a reader which parts are novel and which parts aren't.  But that should be apparent from the final and intermediate discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, my supervisor seems to think the 'Novelty' section should be part of the Introduction.  Now, to me this completely breaks the flow because I work hard to introduce one concept at a time throughout the thesis, so every new piece of information rests on something that has already been discussed.  That's really hard to do if I'm to write what will be the end result before I have even defined the words I need to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a structuring point of view (not particularly an Academia point of view), are my qualms justified?  And if yes, is there a graceful way to write what will be the final result of a thesis without using concepts that haven't been introduced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6134" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T18:27:55.567" Title="Gracefully state novelty of a thesis in the introduction" Tags="|structure|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16679" CreationDate="2015-03-30T16:16:49.990" Score="6" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good afternoon all,&#xA;I find myself in a predicament: I'm writing for 8-10 year-olds who, as I understand it, are very dependent upon dialogue to keep the story engaging. Unfortunately the protagonist of my story and his family are proto-humans who have sign language but not yet developed sophisticated speech. Is it possible to keep children interested without intermittent dialogue and are there any good examples of this that you can point me to? My alternative is to anthropomorphise them like Fantastic Mr. Fox but I'd like to go for realism wherever possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13316" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T17:12:25.970" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T17:12:25.970" Title="How to engage a child audience when my characters have no language?" Tags="|creative-writing|dialogue|middle-grade|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16675" CreationDate="2015-03-30T17:31:16.350" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As any deaf person will tell you, sign language &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; speech. How else are you going to tell your story if you don't report the communication that does take place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bearkiller signed: &quot;Walk quiet. There is a mammut ahead.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Darkwalker nodded. &quot;I'll circle to the left,&quot; he gestured. And don't argue about this again, his face said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bearkiller frowned, then nodded. Okay. &quot;But wait until I have the fire going,&quot; he signed, then turned and crept away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Handle sign language and facial expressions in the same way that other authors handle foreign languages. An English language novel that takes place in China does not contain Chinese dialogue. The speech of the Chinese is quietly translated into English by the author, and the reader has to imagine it being in Chinese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-03-30T17:36:52.240" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T17:36:52.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16674" CreationDate="2015-03-30T18:16:36.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your thesis is motivated by some need. Novelty is hiding there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Areas of Novelty&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider at least these areas where your thesis might offer something new:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Phenomena being researched.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Even if the general topic has been researched to death,&#xA;your research explores &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; specific detail&#xA;that has not been studied before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's novelty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your research was motivated by some earlier results,&#xA;likely from earlier scientific research.&#xA;Perhaps the earlier research recommended further study&#xA;in some of the specifics.&#xA;If your research falls within those specifics,&#xA;you can introduce the novelty of your thesis&#xA;by citing those recommendations.&#xA;Their recommendation is a hint that&#xA;(at the time of publication, at least)&#xA;there was something both interesting and unknown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your research fills the gap,&#xA;or offers the potential to fill it,&#xA;that's novelty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Method of research.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Even if your research consists entirely of tried-and-true methods,&#xA;there will be &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; different in how you applied them.&#xA;At very least,&#xA;you will have applied the methods&#xA;to some new specific detail&#xA;where they have been not previously applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's novelty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Your results will not be exactly like anyone else's.&#xA;Even if your research does nothing more than confirm some other research,&#xA;that confirmation is novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Your Motivation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you are not&#xA;following up on some earlier researchers' recommendations,&#xA;there is &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; in earlier research&#xA;that motivated you (or your advisor).&#xA;Some phenomenon that would be interesting to know about,&#xA;yet remained unknown.&#xA;Something that made you say,&#xA;&quot;Ah, &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; is worth exploring.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Worth exploring&lt;/em&gt; almost certainly hints at novelty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Reader's Motivation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to look at this:&#xA;Why would anyone bother to read your thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your thesis had better say something new&#xA;(about phenomena being studied, methods, results, or some other novelty),&#xA;or there is no point reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ask yourself:&#xA;What will the reader gain from reading this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can answer that,&#xA;that's novelty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Introduction&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The job of the introduction&#xA;is to help readers decide&#xA;whether to make the effort&#xA;to read the rest of the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thesis readers&#xA;are almost certainly motivated&#xA;by the desire&#xA;to learn some new thing&#xA;that matters to them&#xA;in an area&#xA;where they have an interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So write your introduction&#xA;to help them figure out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this in my area of interest?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is here for me to learn? What new thing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does this matter to me?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe the motivation for your research. Especially the key details you were trying to explore.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe what's new in your research methods, or in how you applied research methods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summarize what's new in your results and conclusions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-03-30T18:27:55.567" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T18:27:55.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16654" CreationDate="2015-03-30T21:16:02.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I am not in mexico, I will look at this from a slightly more abstract position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First to note In my hometown I only know of one publisher, but my dad retired from that after publishing only one book. Chances are that you will not find a publisher in your home town. Most of the ones I know of are based in New York.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's try another question, what are the most influential publishers where you live? the way to find out this is to just go to a bookstore, or library and find out who published the books that are locally available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about the language issue? Well, in your case I would wander over to the english section of the bookstore/library. It gets harder if you can't buy books in the chosen language locally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T21:16:02.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16675" CreationDate="2015-03-30T21:57:30.817" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speech is simply communication. Your characters communicate and all you need to do as a writer is make clear what is being communicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once read a fantastic children's story to some children. Teddy never actually says anything but communicates on every page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We should get biscuits to make us brave&amp;quot; said Joe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teddy indicated that he agreed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cat looked at them suspiciously&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teddy hugged Joe so that he would not be frightened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teddy pointed to the light switch to show Joe that ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sort of thing happens throughout the whole book. Teddy has a lot to &amp;quot;say&amp;quot; an yet never actually speaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case I know that you are aiming for an older audience but the principle of showing and reporting to give communication even when it is non verbal is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand your aims you can actually go much further than &amp;quot;teddy&amp;quot; and make the readers feel like they are part of the culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wolf howls were getting closer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Big Man waved his hand next to his ear too indicate hearing. His face said that he was worried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tall Man touched his nose to indicated that he understood and pointed towards the cave. He nodded to the other men and made a pushing gesture towards the cave to show that they should enter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you are consistent with the sign language used your readers will be smart enough to only need to have you interpret the first few times the sign is used. If, as per my rough example, touching the nose happens a lot then later you might only need something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Big Man grimaced. He patted his empty stomach sadly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tall Man touched his nose and pointed to the old man's bag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing is being said verbally here and no translation has been offered but given the previous context we know what is being said and what is being suggested in reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As another answer rightly points out sign language is speech. These characters are talking to each other the reader just needs you to translate enough for them to follow along. There are a number of ways you can do that and each one has its own benefits and restrictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T21:57:30.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16680" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-31T08:17:40.147" Score="2" ViewCount="14249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now that he met his lost daughter, his happiness is now complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm not sure how to turn that into narrative past tense, especially the &quot;now&quot; part.&#xA;Is it like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;?? that he had met his lost daughter, his happiness was ?? complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I replace the &quot;??&quot; with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13321" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T20:53:24.410" Title="the use of &quot;now&quot; in past tense" Tags="|tenses|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-04-01T15:23:22.877" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13050" CreationDate="2015-03-31T12:17:24.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his book &lt;em&gt;From Where You Dream&lt;/em&gt;, Robert Olen Butler describes a method for generating a story that he calls &quot;Dreamstorming.&quot; It works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, you enter a dream/trance state and imagine scenes or scene fragments that touch you somehow. Write a brief description (just a few words, not even a sentence) of each scene you've imagined. You can write these on index cards. Continue with this process daily for a few weeks. Then lay your index cards out and sort them into an order that seems right to you for your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's an oversimplification of the method. If it sounds interesting to you, go get his book from your local public library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, you can watch Butler write a short story in real-time in &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/vIcnmiT0Mc8?list=PLTCv6n1whoI23GmdBZienRW0Q0nFCU_ay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this awesome YouTube video&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13323" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T12:17:24.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16680" CreationDate="2015-03-31T12:43:03.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is how I would write it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Since&lt;/strong&gt; meeting his lost daughter, his happiness &lt;strong&gt;was&lt;/strong&gt; complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why?&lt;/strong&gt; Well, since you ask, I'll explain: you are referring to something that has already happened (in the past, thus written in the past tense).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Huh?&lt;/strong&gt;  The words &lt;code&gt;now&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;is&lt;/code&gt; are &lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt; referring to something that is &lt;em&gt;currently&lt;/em&gt; happening, not something that &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; happened, hence why you cannot use them to successfully describe or refer to something that has already happened / occurred in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also write (&lt;em&gt;courtesy of Joel Bosveld&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Having met*&lt;/strong&gt; his lost daughter, his happiness &lt;strong&gt;was&lt;/strong&gt; complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The user &quot;what&quot; is correct - one can indeed use the word &quot;now&quot; in the past tense.  I should point out that I was not stating that this could not be done (perhaps what would like to consider the -1!).  In such an instance, I would use it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now that he had finally met his lost daughter, his happiness was restored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="5328" LastEditDate="2015-03-31T20:53:24.410" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T20:53:24.410" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16671" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:15:56.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my perception, &lt;em&gt;The New Yorker&lt;/em&gt; continues to be the pinnacle of literary prestige, at least for an American audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T14:15:56.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16686" CreationDate="2015-03-31T15:43:24.397" Score="10" ViewCount="10062" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick side by side comparison of two layout styles:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Left: no indent and with white space; right: indented, but no white space&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RjrJq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, I'm seeing more and more academic-like documents which are all written in the same style. One of the characteristics I'm seeing (and really bugging me) is that the first line of each paragraph is indented and has no white space above it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I really want to know: Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask me, I find it ugly and it doesn't improves readability. Perhaps the indent does, but no white space between each paragraph is anything but increasing readability (personal opinion). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So again: Why is the 'default' of academic-looking writing styles/papers having indents and no white space? (Not only doctor-grade papers, but related to all documents that apply indented paragraphs, instead of white space between them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13324" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-03-04T09:37:07.603" LastActivityDate="2020-09-26T15:26:40.320" Title="Why are the paragraphs of a document often indented and not vertically separated?" Tags="|style|formatting|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16684" CreationDate="2015-03-31T16:40:14.287" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Up until recently the &quot;correct&quot; way to indicate the start of a new paragraph. It is what was taught at schools and preached by style guides. Esentially it is the default because it has been the default for a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, either tend to be considered acceptable (although some insitutions or organisation may prefer a particular style) but indents are probably more popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readability might have more to do with what you're used to and, to some extent the medium you're reading (electronic or print) and even the nature of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, for example, don't like whitespace in finction as I find it jarring and clinical and it brings me out of the story. But I grew up with indents as standard, so it might be that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12942" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T16:40:14.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16684" CreationDate="2015-03-31T18:00:51.140" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Print versus web.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;By far the majority of print books format paragraphs by indenting, and not by inserting space between paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other style, with inter-paragraph spacing and no indentation, seems like a far more recent style to me, achieving popularity with the rise of the Worldwide Web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the ebooks I buy (and I buy a lot) use indentation for paragraphing. A few use inter-paragraph spacing. A few of the non-indented ones somehow lose their inter-paragraph spacing in some e-readers, which makes it very difficult to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Readability.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A friend recently published a book with inter-paragraph spacing, no indents, and sans-serif font. I find the thing unreadable. Perhaps much of &quot;readability&quot; is in what style we are used to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I had long accepted the idea that sans serif fonts are less legible than serif fonts for print. But (if I understand correctly), &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;research does not support that conclusion&lt;/a&gt;. At least, not clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be interesting to read controlled studies of these two paragraphing styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Printing costs.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Your example demonstrates one reason not to format paragraphs by indenting instead of inter-paragraph spacing: You can fit more words on a page. The example on the right has 26 lines, compared to 24 on the left. I haven't counted the words, but indenting that text instead of spacing between paragraphs allows 8 percent more words per page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And those are big, blocky paragraphs. A passage with shorter paragraphs would gain even more from indenting instead of adding space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More words per page means fewer pages per book, which saves maybe 10-20 percent of printing costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T18:00:51.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16684" CreationDate="2015-03-31T21:07:13.873" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard this style called &quot;academic&quot;. I don't know if you just made that phrase up or you heard it somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But since I was a wee lad in school 40 years ago, I've always been taught that there were two styles for writing a paragraph: &quot;block style&quot;, where you put a blank line between paragraphs, and &quot;indent style&quot;, where you indent the first line of each paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is better is pretty much a matter of taste. Indent style takes a little less room as it doesn't have all the blank lines, which is good if you want to make what you've written look shorter and bad if you want to make it look longer. I suppose one could argue that indent style eliminates an ambiguity when a paragraph happens to begin on a new a page. Is that a continuation of the paragraph from the preceding page or a new paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T21:07:13.873" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16689" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16692" CreationDate="2015-04-01T10:02:07.033" Score="8" ViewCount="1132" Body="&lt;p&gt;My story features two software developers who discuss computer-based things in the first chapter. It's not a significant part of the story, but it helps to establish who the characters are and what they know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a software developer as my day job, I know how they should talk about things and interact with each other over these issues. I have tried to remove as much technical jargon as possible, whilst still making it realistic dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had someone who is not particularly technological read the chapter, and they understood all of the terms I used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I realized today that someone (for example someone of an older generation)  may not even know what terms like 'hacking' or 'alpha test' mean (they're about as technical as it gets).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the stuff can be inferred from context what they mean, but for someone who doesn't know all the terms it might be quite boring to read the first chapter and not understand a lot of what is being discussed right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I find a balance between realistic conversation that technical people would use, without losing the pace of the story by adding long-winded explanations about every technical term?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the characters present are knowledgeable about these things, so I can't have them explain the terms to someone who isn't technical, and it wouldn't make sense to the story to change one of the characters or add another into the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst most people who are within my target audience would know what it is I am talking about, I don't want to alienate anyone who would also possibly be interested in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To clarify:&lt;/strong&gt; I want to minimize the amount of technical terms that might deter readers, without compromising the experience of readers who would understand the terms used by sacrificing the authenticity of the dialogue. &lt;strong&gt;What would be a good balance between the two?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-07-12T15:39:45.137" LastActivityDate="2019-07-12T15:39:45.137" Title="How to balance for readers who are not technologically literate" Tags="|dialogue|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16689" CreationDate="2015-04-01T10:40:07.970" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the technical terms are important for the rest of the plot, you might be able to explain them in the narration as the acts unfold. (&lt;em&gt;A said to B, &quot;I'm hacking the mainframe.&quot; A entered a command into her laptop, and the specialized software disabled the security system and allowed her to access the protected database.&lt;/em&gt; etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the book is fantasy rather than tech, then your readers don't really &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to know those few terms. Those terms can be blipped over or grokked from context or just ignored once the main plot gets underway. Grandma can either look up &quot;alpha test,&quot; ask her granddaughter to explain what it means, or not worry about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-04-01T10:40:07.970" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16689" CreationDate="2015-04-01T13:45:19.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a qualified Computer Scientist with a specialism in Artificial Intelligence, and I know &lt;em&gt;precisely&lt;/em&gt; what you mean when attempting to discuss technology for the (potentially) non-technological, whilst still making it coherent for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having read many books myself, there is one (fiction novel) which stands out in particular that discusses technology (artificial intelligence, specifically) but does it in such a way so as to &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; make the reader feel like they are being patronised from the onset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That novel is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1812454.Host&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Host by Peter James&lt;/a&gt;.  Even though it was published over twenty years ago (1993), it still handles the task of technological discussion between characters for the layman, if you like, in a very nice way indeed, and I feel that this may be precisely what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastActivityDate="2015-04-01T13:45:19.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16689" CreationDate="2015-04-01T16:32:36.000" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Side note: This problem isn't limited to computer jargon. There are many stories where the characters discuss things that all the characters would know or understand but a reader would not necessarily, like science, historical events, or things about their friends. For example, yes, if a character says, &quot;We should use an Ajax call to the cloud server here and on the backend have it construct a parameterized query to Postgres and then export the results in CSV&quot;, we might well expect the other characters in the scene to understand exactly what he means, but a non-computer person reading the story could be totally lost. But likewise if a character says, &quot;We'll have to take this to Lansing&quot;, the other characters in the scene might be expected to know that this is the capitol of Michigan, so that it would be incongruous for the character to say, &quot;That's our state capitol.&quot; But a reader who does not live in Michigan might not know that and would find the statement puzzling. Or even, &quot;Oh no, if Sally does that, it could turn out just like what happened with Granger&quot;, the other characters might be expected to know exactly who or what &quot;Granger&quot; is and what happened, but the reader does not. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A really lame solution to this problem that you often see is for the characters to tell each other things that they already know, and that the reader surely realizes they already know. Sometimes the writer will even have the character begin the speech with &quot;As you know ...&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better solutions include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One: Leave the dialog unexplained. If the exact meaning is not critical to the plot, if the point is just to create a certain mood or feel, than the exact meaning doesn't matter. I've seen lots of cop shows lately where they have a character throw out some computer jargon to explain how they tracked down the criminal's cell phone or whatever. Often this jargon makes no sense so they couldn't explain it if they wanted to: the writers apparently just took all the &quot;computer words&quot; they ever heard and threw them together into one sentence. The point isn't to really explain how something technical works, but rather to create the impression that some highly technical means were used to solve the problem. So the viewer says, oh, okay, I don't understand exactly how they did that, but apparently some really smart people found a technical solution to this problem. (I sometimes wonder whether chemists or automotive engineers or whatever find the way their fields are presented in TV shows as far from reality as what I find with computer stuff. But I digress.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two: &quot;As you know dialog&quot; can be okay if it's done well. It might not be implausible for a character to say, &quot;Do you know that a temporal synchronicity distortion can cause a time traveler to be stuck in the past?&quot; Then the other character says, &quot;Yes, of course&quot; and they move on. Or a character may say something that everyone knows as a brief exclamation or aside. Like, &quot;Wow, this will be Bob's fourth divorce!&quot; Even if everyone in the room knows that Bob has been divorced three times before, it wouldn't be absurd for someone to point it out like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three: Include a character who WOULDN'T know these things in the scene. I recall a movie I saw years ago about a computer crime -- sorry, can't remember the name -- where the main characters were mostly a bunch of computer experts, but one of the guys brings his girlfriend along so the writer had an excuse to periodically have the characters stop and explain things to the girlfriend. BTW, a variation on this idea that I've never seen pulled off in a way I found effective, but which has potential, is to have a scene where someone is teaching a class. Like, you have the professor explain a lot of background material to a class, then someone rushes into the classroom and says, &quot;Professor, we need your help&quot;, and he rushes off to the main action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Four: Break up the action and/or dialog with explanatory narration. &quot;'It's looks like we've created a temporal synchronicity disruption', George said. Loss of temporal synchronicity is a constant threat to time travelers: it can result in ...&quot; Of course you don't want to have the character say one sentence, then go off on a 20-page explanation of what that means, then the other characters replies, and you go off on a 20-page explanation of what the reply means, etc. But a couple of sentences here and there can tell the reader what's happening without creating unrealistic dialog and without seriously breaking the flow of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Five: Try to word things in a way that makes them self-explanatory, or so the reader can figure out the meaning from context. Like: &quot;Do you raise morphogs on your farm?&quot; &quot;Yes, but mostly we raise cows and goats.&quot; The reader will get the idea that a &quot;morphog&quot; is some sort of farm animal, without the farmers having to tell each other, &quot;As you know, a morphog is a kind of domestic animal that you have on your farm.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably other ways, but that's a sampling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-01T16:32:36.000" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7394" CreationDate="2015-04-01T17:59:00.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there one POV character or multiple?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would always aim to put the calendar according to the POV character. If it's just one character, it's pretty easy. Post through their perspective only. They can always make a comment when talking to other alien characters. &lt;em&gt;&quot;It happened in 3987. Oh, I guess that'd be #$nei9 according to your calendar.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you switch between multiple POV characters, you can try a few things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the calendar aligned with the POV. This may mean characters explaining things to each other a bit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a galaxy standard. You could create an accepted standard year that pretty much every planet knows. Even if they prefer to keep their own calendar, they would reference it off of the galaxy one. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a diagram / reference guide for appendix. Display all relevant calendars beside each other so you can see where events line up on each. Readers can look up most of the dates in there. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How important are the years?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps characters could just work off of major events. Is it important for you to be specific in terms of how many years have passed between events? If there aren't too many events, I think you could avoid it altogether. If there are quite a few, I could see needing a calendar / dates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13329" LastActivityDate="2015-04-01T17:59:00.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16694" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-01T23:46:05.800" Score="1" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on an adaptation of a book into movie format, and I would like to know what experience and guidelines exist for this, so I can improve my way of doing this where possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13332" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T00:13:57.260" Title="What are some common pitfalls when adapting a novel (thematic autobiographic in this case) to a screenplay?" Tags="|novel|book|screenwriting|conventions|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16695" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-01T23:53:47.653" Score="1" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a python script that takes in data analyses them and gives some results. I want to write a blog post analyzing these results. I am not sure if I should include my python script in the blog post and how much should I explain it ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to emphasize the python aspect. Maybe in a separate post ?&#xA;Do you know any examples I should look ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5426" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T03:14:33.327" Title="How should I write a post containing analysis and python code?" Tags="|blog|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="954" CreationDate="2015-04-02T03:09:21.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Glimmer Train offers a few different types of short story contests regularly and one especially for new authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.glimmertrain.com/writguid1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.glimmertrain.com/writguid1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13334" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T03:09:21.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16697" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16709" CreationDate="2015-04-02T03:24:01.017" Score="2" ViewCount="2810" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was located in the East Coast National Scenic Area, also known as&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;China's Last Unspoiled Land&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that how it should be written? Should I put it in quotes? Should I write it in lowercase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-01T20:00:32.253" LastActivityDate="2018-03-01T20:00:32.253" Title="Should I write &quot;also known as&quot; in full or as an acronym (aka)?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|formatting|acronyms|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16700" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-02T04:44:32.327" Score="2" ViewCount="233" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it usual to refer to the reader in a novel? The point of view is first person, and she refers to the reader at times. Can I do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="marcus" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-04-02T19:53:01.807" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T14:57:51.040" Title="Can I Use &quot;You?&quot;" Tags="|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16700" CreationDate="2015-04-02T06:01:45.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, but relatively rare. &#xA;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/glossary/g/secondperson.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;second person point of view&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Definition:&lt;/strong&gt; In second person point of view, the narrator tells the story to another &lt;a href=&quot;http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/glossary/g/Character.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;character&lt;/a&gt; using &quot;you&quot;; the story is being told through the addressee's point of view. Second person is the least commonly used POV in fiction, though there are a few examples. Tom Robbins's &lt;em&gt;Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas&lt;/em&gt; is one example of a novel told in second person. Many of the stories in Lorrie Moore's book &lt;em&gt;Self-Help&lt;/em&gt; are also written in the second person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Marius Hancu" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-02-25T14:57:51.040" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T14:57:51.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16700" CreationDate="2015-04-02T07:38:46.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course you can do it. In the humorous pseudo-autobiography &lt;em&gt;The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman&lt;/em&gt;, Lawrence Sterne even went as far as inviting certain of his readers to skip the remainder of the chapter, and then welcoming them back at the beginning of the next one. Just make sure, like he did, that it's clear who you are adressing. (He often used &lt;em&gt;the reader&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; for that, though occasionally he also used &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;thou&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would anyone go out of their way to be unoriginal in original writing? Are you sure you are writing a novel, not a school assignment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a famous example of addressing the reader (from &lt;em&gt;Tristram Shandy&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I define a nose as follows—intreating only beforehand, and beseeching my readers, both male and female, of what age, complexion, and condition soever, for the love of God and their own souls, to guard against the temptations and suggestions of the devil, and suffer him by no art or wile to put any other ideas into their minds, than what I put into my definition—For by the word Nose, throughout all this long chapter of noses, and in every other part of my work, where the word Nose occurs—I declare, by that word I mean a nose, and nothing more, or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The protagonist lost part of his nose in an accident that occurred while he was peeing out of the window. In the 'chapter of noses', women show particular interest in men's nose sizes.) And another one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelve-month; and having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of my third volume (According to the preceding Editions.)—and no farther than to my first day's life—'tis demonstrative that I have three hundred and sixty-four days more life to write just now, than when I first set out; so that instead of advancing, as a common writer, in my work with what I have been doing at it—on the contrary, I am just thrown so many volumes back—was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this—And why not?—and the transactions and opinions of it to take up as much description—And for what reason should they be cut short? as at this rate I should just live 364 times faster than I should write—It must follow, an' please your worships, that the more I write, the more I shall have to write—and consequently, the more your worships read, the more your worships will have to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I told the Christian reader—I say Christian—hoping he is one—and if he is not, I am sorry for it—and only beg he will consider the matter with himself, and not lay the blame entirely upon this book—&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sterne also keeps making promises to readers, and occasionally even keeping them after great delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously it's a bad idea to be as eccentric as this unless you are really good at it and want to make the eccentricity the focus of your work. But a &lt;em&gt;bit&lt;/em&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;breaking the fourth wall&lt;/a&gt; here and there can often be beneficial in 'normal' writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13338" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T07:38:46.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7394" CreationDate="2015-04-02T08:06:18.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dates and times are internationally standardized in ISO 8601. The ISO 8601 dates use the Gregorian calendar and 24-hour time, i.e. “March 15, 2015 at 23:11:01.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your readers will potentially include the entire population of Earth, and as such, ISO 8601 dates are appropriate. People who use some other kind of date system in their region will know how to convert back and forth from ISO 8601.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the future, people on Pluto may use ISO 8601 or they may use some kind of Pluto time, but in that case they will also know how to convert back and forth from ISO 8601.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, in the future, ISO 8601 may be updated in some way, and you may want to tackle that creatively. But in that case, your readers may not know what you are talking about. In theory, English may not exist in the future you are creating, or may be very different (it’s not that long ago that English and German were the same language) so if you are writing in English, you might also want to just write dates and times in ISO 8601.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, writers and editors and publishers should follow ISO standards these days because your audience is potentially anyone, anywhere in the world, and exchanging data internationally is why these ISO standards exist. Again, your readers will either already follow the ISO standard, or they will know how to convert the ISO standard to their regional standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just Google “ISO 8601” for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T08:06:18.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16684" CreationDate="2015-04-02T08:12:48.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indented paragraphs with no space between them are the easiest to read. Unindented paragraphs with space between them are the easiest to create, especially in legacy Web publishing. Neither style is “correct.” There are no rules in English, only conventions. Both of these styles of paragraph are conventional. Personally, I think readability should be prioritized, and prefer to publish indented paragraphs with little or no space between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T08:12:48.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16700" CreationDate="2015-04-02T08:30:17.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Charles Stross' &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_34_(novel)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rule 34&lt;/a&gt; does this, but the book is fully 2nd person. That means that &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; are the characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some say the Internet is for porn but you know that in truth the&#xA;  Internet is for spam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rule 34 by Charles Stross&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @DanBron Said, it can be done, but it's a huge challenge to pull off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that's worth noting though is that there is a different between a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_narrative&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1st&lt;/a&gt; person that breaks the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4th Wall&lt;/a&gt; (addressing the audience) and a true &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-person_narrative&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2nd person&lt;/a&gt;. If you only address the reader through the medium of the character addressing the reader, and you don't do it often, it will break the flow of the story simply because it is unexpected. To avoid this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use the device often,  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make it clear what you are doing,  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have a very good reason for doing it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and make that reason clear to the reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5250" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2015-04-02T14:37:57.273" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T14:37:57.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6062" CreationDate="2015-04-02T08:39:12.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend you put in 3 or more asterisks on a single line, like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;* * *&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;… because that appears as 3 asterisks in plain text, but appears as a semantically-correct horizontal rule when that plain text is machine-converted to HTML.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, notice what Stack Exchange does to the same 3 asterisks you see above if I do not put them in a code block:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;… they get machine-converted to a horizontal rule for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your manuscript is going to be published on the Web or as an eBook, then accurate machine-conversion to HTML saves time and money and reduces errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A horizontal rule can also be quickly and easily styled via CSS by the designer of your website or book to appear as a Unicode glyph or a custom illustration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the 3 asterisks that you originally type show as asterisks in plain text, horizontal rule in plain HTML, and any kind of custom separator in styled HTML. With no laborious, error-prone editing of the actual manuscript. Your original intent will stay true all the way to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastEditorUserId="13337" LastEditDate="2015-04-02T08:45:50.363" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T08:45:50.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16700" CreationDate="2015-04-02T08:47:45.047" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Directly addressing the reader(s) -- both in singular and plural -- is a device that was very common in seventeenth to nineteenth century literature. It has fallen a bit out of use today, but is by no means uncommon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, if a narrator (who is not the author) addresses the reader, there is some kind of framing narrative that explains who the narrator is -- e.g. a person looking back on his life or a chance witness to the narrated events -- and who the reader is to him  -- e.g. his son or a chance companion in a bar. A recent example is Patrick Rothfuss' &lt;em&gt;Kingkiller Chronicles&lt;/em&gt;, where the first chapters relate in third person how the narrator-protagonist is visited in his exile and then tells his life to his visitor in first person -- occcasionally addressing his listener (&quot;you&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In young adult fiction there are many examples where the first person narrator-protagonist addresses the readers without such a framing narrative, thus drawing the reader into her confidence and into the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If addressing the reader feels right to you, don't worry about it and just do it. It pushes the events clearly into the past (because if you can talk to the reader, who wasn't there, then obviously you are &quot;now&quot; elsewhere, too), creating a more reflective narrative style. But if that style fits you, it can work very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T08:47:45.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16697" CreationDate="2015-04-02T09:56:02.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that this question &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; relates to writing as Alexandro is asking how to write it - he has just simply used the wrong wording and the question does, in fact, refer to &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; to write something (whether or not it mentions formatting does not exclude the fact that Alexandro is asking about how to write it).  I have modified the question to reflect this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, Alexandro is (indirectly/unwittingly) referring to the use of an acronym.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to your question, I would simply write it thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was located in the East Coast National Scenic Area (aka: China's Last Unspoiled Land).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I choose to separate it by use of brackets simply because you are almost certainly not going to write that precise sentence in its entirety again because you have already referred to it, thus making the reader aware of it in the first instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you will almost certainly always refer to the East Coast National Scenic Area as just that from hereon and not burden yourself with having to write &lt;code&gt;East Coast National Scenic Area, also known as China's Last Unspoiled Land&lt;/code&gt; each and every time (even copying and pasting can be a pain).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also down to personal preference and I don't believe that there is a standard way to write AKA/aka/a.k.a./[&lt;em&gt;insert another variation here&lt;/em&gt;].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="5328" LastEditDate="2015-04-03T09:33:20.887" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T09:33:20.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16697" CreationDate="2015-04-02T10:18:42.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your example is part of narration in a story, you have it written exactly right. There's no need for the acronym. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;aka&quot; the acronym originally came from law enforcement when describing someone's alias. It happens to be useful enough that it's migrated out of jargon into non-LEO usage, but you wouldn't use that acronym in running prose any more than you would &lt;em&gt;fka (formerly known as), dba (doing business as), GSW (gunshot wound),&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;c/o (care of)&lt;/em&gt;. Jargon acronyms are necessary within industries because the same phrases are used repeatedly and can take up a lot of space. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; use any of those in dialogue if your speaker is part of an industry which uses that terminology, as long as the reader understands the meaning of the acronym. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T10:18:42.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16684" CreationDate="2015-04-02T11:41:55.517" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not related to academic vs non-academic styles, but a mere matter of proper typography and cost-effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://practicaltypography.com/first-line-indents.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Butterick's Practical Typography&lt;/a&gt; offers the generally accepted rule:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A first-line in­dent is the most com­mon way to sig­nal the start of a new para­graph. The other com­mon way is with space be­tween para­graphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First-line in­dents and space between paragraphs have the same re­la­tion­ship as belts and sus­penders. You only need one to get the job done. Us­ing both is a mis­take. If you use a first-line in­dent on a para­graph, don’t use space be­tween. And vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to cost-effectiveness, space between paragraphs is most common on the web because it's the easy to do using CSS. First-line indent is most common in print because you save paper. Books and journals get printed; that's probably all there is to it IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13339" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T11:41:55.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16695" CreationDate="2015-04-02T15:31:21.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Blogs can have many purposes.  They can be to inform others, they can be to gain an audience, they can even be just a personal journal with the distinction that it's readable by others.  Assuming you yourself are the driving force behind the blog, then just remember that you call the shots and there's really no rules you need to abide by.  Just write it however you feel it should be written.  If you find you're giving it too much thought to the point it's becoming a chore, then why bother?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, here are some pointers for your situation.  If the blog is primarily an online journal of your activities for your future self, then you probably want to include the code in case you find later down the road that you need to reuse it.  If the blog is to inform others, then consider whether your main accomplishment is related to the script, the analysis, or the results, or some combination.  For example, if you feel your script is really clever and does the bulk of the analysis automatically, then include it in the body and explain it (in addition to the code comments inline).  If the script mainly serves to 'massage' the data (narrow down large amounts of data and get it into a format readable by humans for example) and the human is doing the bulk of the analysis, then maybe the script is better off as an appendix near the bottom of your post.  If your blog exists mainly to inform readers of the results of your analysis, then you could even omit the script altogether or put it in a separate blog intended for Python developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5940" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T15:31:21.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16700" CreationDate="2015-04-02T17:47:45.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it usual? No. Can you do this? Of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is not, Is there some rule against it in the Laws of Writing that All Authors Must Obey Under Pain of Death? The question is, Is it effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any time you do something unusual, there is the danger that it will come across as a gimmick. If you do something unusual just to do something unusual, odds are it will sound lame. Sure, you could write a story where every sentence begins with the letter &quot;w&quot;, and it would no doubt be challenging to write a coherent story that way. But would anyone care? Or would your efforts to make the story fit this arbitrary constraint just end up making a weaker story? But if you have a good reason for doing it, and it works in your story, than by all means do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T17:47:45.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16713" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16714" CreationDate="2015-04-02T20:52:08.543" Score="5" ViewCount="5061" Body="&lt;p&gt;My proofreader recently revealed to me the following, which I was wholly unaware of: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...when a number/code/serial or whatever is said in dialogue, you write the whole thing out...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had written the designation of a robot as Unit M55/987.3, and he said I would need to sound it out: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...“Unit Em-fifty-five slash nine hundred eighty-seven-point-three has been terminated.”...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? If it is true, can I still 'ignore' it as one of those grammatical liberties authors sometimes take (in the same class as using fragments)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-04-02T21:09:26.950" LastActivityDate="2015-04-05T03:49:16.147" Title="How do I write numbers in dialogue?" Tags="|fiction|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16713" CreationDate="2015-04-02T21:25:59.127" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fiction, there's no rule for this, only differing styles and opinions. However, some editors seem to like using the Chicago Manual of Style's alternative rule for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;9.3&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;An alternative rule--zero through nine.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Many publications, including those in scientific or journalistic contexts, follow the simple rule of spelling out only single-digit numbers and using numerals for all others [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to reference the exceptions to this. (9.3 is an alternative to the more strict rule 9.2 that requires spelling out all numerals from zero through one hundred.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exceptions to these include spelling out round numbers. For example: &quot;seven hundred&quot;, &quot;one thousand&quot;, &quot;forty-seven thousand&quot;, etc. There are also other rules for money, ordinal numbers, decimals, percentages, etc, but these are overkill for fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number you indicate in your question is more like a serial number. I can't find anything for that, but personally I'd use the abbreviated rule for numerals in general, using numerals and letters and not spelling them out. Unless the character's name were something short like the robots in Star Wars, where (for example) R2-D2 becomes &quot;Artoo&quot; for short. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-04-05T03:49:16.147" LastActivityDate="2015-04-05T03:49:16.147" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16700" CreationDate="2015-04-02T22:21:06.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rule of writing states &amp;quot;Don't break the fourth wall&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means don't remind the reader they are the reader, they read a book, the characters are in a book. Immersion is a volatile thing and worth fighting for - if the reader forgets the world around them and the book they hold in hand, but just lives and feels together with the protagonist, in the world of your story, you're succeeding - it's what puts mediocre stories apart from really good ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as every rule, this one can be broken too. Break it if you want to achieve certain effects. Be it the narrator playing coy with the reader, be it humor, be it sixth sense of a character detecting the reader observing them, be it merging the worlds, the protagonists achieving a new level of consciousness and reaching across dimensions out to the reader, requesting their personal aid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me quote a fragment from my most recent story, to give an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's this horse - a sapient mare - right here with the protagonist (1st person narrator), inside his apartment. A bunch of thugs try to storm the apartment but circumstances (including the landlord with an Airsoft gun on a balcony above) really play against them. And including the mare standing with her back turned right towards the doorway. Two of them met her hind hooves already. Since the protagonist is in the room, without any clear view outside, most of the thug actions are reported through sounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Landlord's voice. “I'll keep shooting until you leave. I've got three hundred BBs in here, and another five thousand in the room.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another series of cracks, and several thug voices cursing in sequence. They ran around the corner of the building. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Through the closed drapes I saw movement outside the window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Look, that's a window to his apartment.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Slab, did you take that molotov?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“On a skirmish? Are you stupid? Someone hits me and I'm all soaked in gasoline.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Frank, go fetch the angle grinder. We'll cut the bars on the window.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You go yourself.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The hell?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You've got hair. You got any clue how much these things hurt on a bald head?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Fine... pussy.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steps running. Another burst from the AUG from above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A moment of silence, sound of a lighter. Window opening. Cracks of BBs being launched at some six hundred FPS right onto heads of the thugs. Curses, steps running back around the corner. “Not inside!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a second Celestia stood only on her front hooves, as her hind legs swung in a graceful arc. A dull thud. Have you ever seen a smug horse? Imagine a smug horse. And now imagine it being twice as smug. That was Celestia at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the narrator being coy with the reader. It's a humorous scene where the serious enemy force met a very ragtag but surprisingly efficient resistance. The narrator is amused. The reader is amused. The mare is very amused. We can afford a small wink towards the reader, and break the fourth wall for a second, instructing them how to imagine the scene just right - just for added comical effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T22:27:00.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16562" CreationDate="2015-04-02T22:22:35.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would talk to them about it. Just be friendly. Let them know that the wrong file was edited. See what they have to say. Were both files sent in the same email / however you sent it? If it wasn't clear which was to be edited, that may be on you. If you were very clear about which was to be edited, they might offer to look at it again. Could just be a simple mistake. Give them the chance to offer a second look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Light editing' usually is for content editing. It looks at a broader picture. e.g. Does the narrative flow? Are there plot inconsistencies? Does each chapter have a purpose? Did you start off with a character and then forget about them halfway through?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proofreading is a separate style of editing and is often charged separately by editors. They will focus on the grammar, spelling, spacing, etc. When you get a contract for this service, they usually won't make notes / corrections to your content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13329" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T22:22:35.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="954" CreationDate="2015-04-02T22:24:51.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick Google search turned up this list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2014/11/27/19-short-story-competitions-2015/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;19 short story competitions&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;Here's another list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/thebusinessofwriting/a/contesthub.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;short story competitions, sorted by deadline&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5599" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T22:24:51.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16694" CreationDate="2015-04-03T01:37:28.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've tried to do this myself, so I'll pass along what I've learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, note that the audience hears a play about one-third as fast (150-200 words per minute) as they read a novel (500-600 words a minute).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of that, a screenplay requires &quot;crisper&quot; writing, with fewer excess words than a novel. A novel might describe a hero's actions as follows: &quot;The hero forced open the door, with rising anger. Then he slammed it shut, hard.&quot; In a screenplay, this might read &quot;The hero slammed the door angrily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nice thing about a screenplay is that you've engaged the viewer using two senses: sight and sound. Which is one reason you can use fewer words. Whereas in a novel, the reader only &quot;reads.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T01:37:28.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16713" CreationDate="2015-04-03T07:19:51.320" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neil's answer does not really deal with dialogue. Style manuals like the Chicago Manual of Style deal with academic and journalistic writing. If you want to apply them to narrative fiction, they only apply to that part of your writing that is explicitly in written language, that is, everything &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; the dialogue. Dialogue is &lt;em&gt;spoken language&lt;/em&gt;, or rather, dialogue in narrative fiction is the written emulation of spoken language, and it follows its own rules and styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialogue is what people say. You do not say &quot;9&quot;, but &quot;nine&quot;. Therefore, in dialogue, you should write &quot;nine&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can become cumbersome to &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt;, if long strings of numbers and/or letters are repeated often in dialogue. In this case the string becomes common and can be treated like common abbreviations (e.g. BMW or UK), which readers perceive as &lt;em&gt;words&lt;/em&gt; and which therefore are represented in written dialogue in their word-form, not in their sound-form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case your proofreader is right if that designation of a robot is said only once. If, like C3PO, it is used as a name-like handle to repeadedly talk about the robot, you should use the number-form instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was writing this story, my chaeacter would read M55/987.3 as: &quot;fifty-five, nine eighty-seven, three&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My character wouldn't speak the slash and dot, in the same way an American saying a price does not say &quot;three comma fifty&quot;. And he would not say the M either, because there is no 55/987.3 in any other series. You migjt say &quot;three dollar fifty&quot;, but you need not, because it is the only currency in Ohio. If he'd have to refer to this robot often, he would call it &quot;the fifty-five&quot;. That would serve as a name-like handle. He would only spell out the whole serial number if he was unfamiliar with the robot -- but then it would not be a name, because a name is a familiar word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My character would say &quot;fifty-five&quot; in the same way that I don't say &quot;Samsung Galaxy S III LTE I9305&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-04-03T21:58:06.580" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T21:58:06.580" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16713" CreationDate="2015-04-03T12:51:06.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Arguably, one could say that the pronunciation of such a string is ambiguous. Would someone say it &quot;em five five slash nine eight seven dot three&quot; or &quot;em fifty-five nine eighty-seven point three&quot; or other possible variations. If the &quot;M&quot; stands for something, do they say the word or just the letter &quot;M&quot;? Etc. If it matters in the story, then you need to spell it out. Like if there's a scene where someone is saying the serial number but doesn't get a chance to finish before the transmission line is cut or whatever, and then the person hearing says &quot;well, it's a nine-hundred series, that at least narrows it down&quot;, but if he said &quot;nine eight ...&quot; rather than &quot;nine hundred eighty ...&quot;, how does the hearer know that the number had three digits and not 2 or 4? Or if the &quot;M&quot; stands for, I don't know, &quot;Mercury&quot;, and you just give it as &quot;M55&quot; and the reader says it in his head as &quot;em five five&quot;, and then later a character who is unfamiliar with these serial numbers asks, &quot;Is that related to the planet Mercury, the element, or the Greek god?&quot; the reader may wonder, Wait, how did he know that &quot;M&quot; stands for &quot;Mercury&quot;. And then maybe he'll say, Oh, I've been reading it wrong, George must have been saying &quot;Mercury five five&quot;, not &quot;em five five&quot;. Etc. That is, you don't want to leave a pronunciation ambiguous, let the reader pick one plausible pronunciation in his head, and then three chapters later say something that indicates that he's been reading it wrong all this time, and now he has to re-interpret scenes he's already read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if none of that matters, if it's just an identifier, and whether the reader says it in his head one way or the other makes no difference at all, then I'd think giving it in a short form is better, because it's more compact. If the reader says it in his head differently than you were thinking when you were writing it, but it doesn't matter, so what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T12:51:06.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="40801" CreationDate="2015-04-03T15:57:20.590" Score="8" ViewCount="35292" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an engineering student in a non-English speaking country and I'm writing my master's thesis in English, as well as all related articles. I can't use the country's language nor my first language (I was raised in another country) because my writing skills are really lacking in those languages, and as my work as an engineer forces me to write in English everyday (it's still not good enough I think) I feel more comfortable using it rather than the other languages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I'm facing a problem with a &quot;state of the art&quot; chapter, where I am supposed to describe the current state of the field I'm working in and I have no idea as to how to begin. To write this chapter I read many articles and translated each article into separate paragraphs without any connection with each other. The result was ... lacking to say the least. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would really help me if anyone could point me in the right direction as how to write a chapter like this, or provide me with good examples (apparently I'm not able to distinguish a good state of the art chapter from a bad or excellent one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13343" OwnerDisplayName="morcillo" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-04-03T21:50:39.027" LastActivityDate="2021-11-11T10:51:26.090" Title="How to write a &quot;state of the art&quot; chapter" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16724" CreationDate="2015-04-03T19:17:52.880" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, any self-respecting paper has a state-of-the-art section right at the beginning. Those are good models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good resource to consult is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/docs/#id=spjf0130&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Darby, R. L., and Veazie, W. H., &amp;quot;Writing a State-of-the-Art Report,&amp;quot; Materials Research &amp;amp; Standards, MTRSA, Vol. 8&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, see&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.ca/books?id=kG0xHT8XIUMC&amp;amp;pg=PA54&amp;amp;dq=%22write%20a%20state%20of%20the%20art%20report%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=0-ceVYSkIITjsAT0hIHoCA&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22write%20a%20state%20of%20the%20art%20report%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Organizing Information: Principles of Data Base and ... &lt;/a&gt;- Page 54 Dagobert Soerge - 1985 - ‎&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To write a state-of-the-art report,&#xA;proceed as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example is &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170409025436/http://www.abatement.com/pdf/apic-soar-construction.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Marius Hancu" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2021-11-11T10:51:26.090" LastActivityDate="2021-11-11T10:51:26.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16672" CreationDate="2015-04-04T04:06:34.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one of you is obviously senior to the other in some relevant way, then put that person’s name first. If you are both reasonably similar in standing, then put your names in alphabetical order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T04:06:34.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16695" CreationDate="2015-04-04T04:16:53.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to put the Python script into a GitHub project, and then link to that project from your blog post. If a reader is not interested in the script, it is easy for them to ignore the link. But if a reader is interested in the script, then they will likely also appreciate GitHub’s high-quality code-viewing features, and easy code-sharing features. They may even send you patches or improvements to your code. And there is a certain cachet to being the maintainer of a GitHub project. Schools and employers are often impressed by that. You can maintain the focus on the results in your blog post and the focus on the code in your GitHub project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T04:16:53.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16732" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-05T10:14:57.023" Score="0" ViewCount="2351" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing an official letter along with my resume to the president of a sports federation so that I can enroll in the federation. When my letter concludes, how can I officially say &lt;em&gt;Please reply to this letter&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Sir&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Respectfully, I am sending you my championship and coaching resume and documents. I would appreciate it if you minded looking into the dispatched documents. &#xA;  It would be my pleasure to contribute, with my attendance, to the qualitative level of your national team in terms of securing various world championships. Your answer is greatly appreciated in advance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11028" LastEditorUserId="11028" LastEditDate="2015-04-05T13:10:35.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T20:39:43.150" Title="How to ask for response in an official letter?" Tags="|letter|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16733" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-05T15:43:27.707" Score="4" ViewCount="2731" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a technical paper I am writing, I am taking a whole page of information and condensing it into a paragraph. I am using a mix of the authors words and my own. My question is can I cite the end of the paragraph and just state in the footnote that all the above is from page 124 of this author and I do not take credit for the information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have rewritten it totally but this author's writing of this information cannot be rewritten given the nature of the info. It also saves having a whole paragraph from having 8 footnotes. This is all in chicago style. Is the following okay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &#xA;Sentence 1&#xA;Sentence 2&#xA;Sentence 3&#xA;..&#xA;..&#xA;..footnote 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Footnote 1: author, title, page, paragraph is a slightly briefer summary of the abstract construction of x given by y. The paragraph is in a large part paraphrasing y and should not be taken as my own developed account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this kosher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13354" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-04-06T10:30:08.743" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T14:11:04.187" Title="Chicago- Paraphrasing a whole page from Author into 1 paragraph- what is the citation?" Tags="|citations|chicago-manual-of-style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16736" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-06T07:44:44.100" Score="1" ViewCount="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing about a real place and the real history of a family. However, there are some things I want to include that aren't the truth. Is this legal to do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks, &#xA;Ciera&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13360" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T16:42:43.467" Title="Writing about a real place" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-06T08:33:06.957" Score="7" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel as if, the novel I am writing will have a great plot and I have some creative ideas on where to go with it. My only concern is my ability to develop description through out my story. Any tips on how to get that description flowing with out losing sight of my plot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13361" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T23:48:32.373" Title="Any helpful tips on how to, better use description in my writing?" Tags="|plot|description|planning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16738" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16739" CreationDate="2015-04-06T10:40:27.567" Score="5" ViewCount="1690" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I use a scientific name (&lt;em&gt;Python regius&lt;/em&gt;) in a phrase that is already in italics, should the scientific name then be written normally or underlined? Does anybody know the rule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13362" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T19:32:51.917" Title="Writing a scientific name in an italized phrase?" Tags="|academic-writing|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16738" CreationDate="2015-04-06T11:09:02.263" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Underlines are only used to indicate hyperlinks; they should not be used for emphasis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have a block of italicized text, and you have a phrase which would normally be italicized in book or roman text, make your italic phrase book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The ball python, also known as&lt;/em&gt; Python regius, &lt;em&gt;is a nonvenomous python species found in Africa. This is the smallest of the African pythons and is popular in the pet trade, largely due to its typically docile temperament.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T19:32:51.917" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T19:32:51.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16733" CreationDate="2015-04-06T13:59:19.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is done all the time. You just write your paragraph, put a superscripted number or whatever reference method you're using at the end, and give the usual information about the source you drew this information from in a footnote or endnote. A citation does not have to be, and very often is not, an exact quote. If you give an exact quote, put it in quotation marks. If you paraphrase, don't put it in quotation marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T13:59:19.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16736" CreationDate="2015-04-06T14:08:52.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you ever watched a &quot;docudrama&quot;? These days, even straight-up documentaries on TV often include &quot;dramatic re-enactments&quot; of key scenes. I often find such docudrama frustrating because, if I don't already know the facts, there's no easy way to tell what actually happened, what's been added or altered to make the story more dramatic or otherwise entertaining, and what's been added or altered to inject the producer's political, social, religious or otherwise philosophical interpretations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books claiming to be non-fiction accounts of historical events rarely do this, but there are plenty of historical novels out there. Some just use some very general historical backdrop and populate it with totally fictional characters. But others are all about real people. In these cases they may take a few actual historical facts -- this man really was king and he really did marry a princess from Bavaria and he really did go on a Crusade, etc -- but then they fill it out with a lot of fictional material to make an entertaining story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the people you're writing about are still alive or are not all that long dead, you may have issues with libel. If they're centuries dead, I doubt their great-great-great-grandchildren are going to sue you, and I doubt they'd get far if they tried. I suppose if you wrote a story portraying some much-loved historical figure in a bad light you could take some heat, like if you portrayed Abraham Lincoln as a rapist or something, but I don't think there'd be much anyone could do legally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T14:08:52.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16736" CreationDate="2015-04-06T17:54:21.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, you would change all the names and present it as fiction (perhaps as &quot;inspired by a true story&quot;).  This is called a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_%C3%A0_clef&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;roman à clef&lt;/a&gt; and it's a widely used technique to allow poetic license with the truth while avoiding legal trouble.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with this approach, however, people have still been sued, so you might want to use caution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T17:54:21.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16737" CreationDate="2015-04-06T18:15:51.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the same problem --plot is my strength and description is my weakness.  I think it corresponds with being a &quot;big picture&quot; person rather than detail-oriented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that helps me is to remember that description isn't just decoration, it can do a lot of substantive work.  It can foreshadow, echo, or recall plot elements.  It can develop a subtext, or illuminate the characters' feelings or relationships.  And of course, most fundamentally, it gives your story a sense of place, and enables the reader see what you see in your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, suppose you're writing a mystery thriller.  Your main character is in the kitchen of a house and he notices a mousetrap in the corner.  The mousetrap can be symbolic of the plot.  The fact of the mousetrap being there can tell a bit about the house and the owners --is the house dirty?  Is the mousetrap shabby? new? lethal?  What's it baited with?  Does the main character empathize with the person who set the trap, or with the mouse, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T18:15:51.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16737" CreationDate="2015-04-06T23:48:32.373" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few guidelines I learned from&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://deanwesleysmith.com&quot;&gt;Dean Wesley Smith&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kriswrites&quot;&gt;Kristine Kathryn Rusch&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Describe whatever the character has an opinion about.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This guideline helps me figure out what to describe.&#xA;If it matters to the character &lt;strong&gt;in the moment,&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;it goes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Describing through the character's &lt;em&gt;five senses&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;makes the descriptions &lt;strong&gt;rich and vivid.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you describe,&#xA;describe it through the character's five senses.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Not a word goes into the story&#xA;except through the senses and opinions of the character.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This guideline helps me figure out how to describe things.&#xA;All description is through the senses and opinions of the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Describing through the character's &lt;em&gt;opinions&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;makes the details do extra work.&#xA;Each description not only &lt;em&gt;describes,&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;but also &lt;strong&gt;characterizes&lt;/strong&gt; the character.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T23:48:32.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16694" CreationDate="2015-04-07T00:13:57.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest different between a novel and a movie is that in a novel, things are described to the reader. The reader can get inside the character's head, be &lt;em&gt;told&lt;/em&gt; what the characters are feeling, what the characters and thinking... This doesn't happen in a movie. A movie can only &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt;, not tell. A screenplay has to be entirely visual (and auditory.) This is difficult of course, because you can't say something like &quot;Today, John is upset because his classmates made fun of him yesterday.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13370" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T00:13:57.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16746" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18154" CreationDate="2015-04-07T00:19:16.050" Score="1" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m trying to understand the concept of an audience. I feel like exposure to modern stories has given me a vague sense about aspects of this concept but I would really like someone with more formal training in literature to help me understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Here are my Guesses:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General/Universal:&lt;/strong&gt; Writing using elements similar to most people’s real life experiences. Example: A pop song about the trials and tribulations of romantic relationships.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Specific/Personal:&lt;/strong&gt; Writing using elements that not many people are thinking about. Example: A post on Stack Exchange with nothing that would show up in a Google search result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Topical:&lt;/strong&gt; Writing with aspects of the real world, possibly with changes to illustrate some point. Example: An American television show involving torture, security and terrorism.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cultural:&lt;/strong&gt; Writing (and other stories) that help viewers have conversations with other members of their culture. Example: A sporting event with semi-random unscripted events and favored outcomes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Distracting/Captivating:&lt;/strong&gt; Writing with particularly complex and engaging elements which provide an alternate world to live in. Example: A soap opera involving comas, long lost twins and dying&#xA;wishes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13369" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T03:27:32.653" Title="What are common academic categories of a story’s relationship to an audience?" Tags="|academic-writing|genre|audience|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16748" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16749" CreationDate="2015-04-07T14:16:44.663" Score="1" ViewCount="230" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I understand, truth is a defense against a charge of libel. More to the point, I've been told that a statement need not be true if it represents a &quot;fair comment&quot; based on the underlying facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, suppose there is a person that frequents parties, bars, etc., goes &quot;one on one&quot; with people of the opposite sex and engages in public displays of affection. Under the circumstances, a statement that this person &quot;gets around&quot;/dates/sleeps a lot would be &quot;fair comment,&quot; reasonably inferable from known facts. My understanding is if this person were somehow actually a virgin, s/he would not be able to prove libel. Whereas a &quot;recluse&quot; who was &quot;never&quot; seen in public with someone of the opposite sex might.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Red Hat Club &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/archives/26196/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;case&lt;/a&gt;, plaintiff Vick Stewart won a libel case because defendant created a character, Susu, whose &quot;backstory&quot; was virtually identical to Stewart's (meaning that she was poorly disguised). The author then created a &quot;front story&quot; of an alcoholic and promiscuous woman very different from Stewart's real &quot;story.&quot; Given these circumstances, I doubt that the purported &quot;fiction&quot; represented &quot;fair comment&quot; on Stewart, given her real back story. Meaning that the writer would also have to fictionalize the backstory to avoid a charge of libel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two questions, one for lawyers and one for writers. For lawyers, is my understanding of &quot;fair comment&quot; correct? For writers, if the author of the Red Hat Club had changed Vicki Stewart's &quot;backstory&quot; to the point where the &quot;novel&quot;  reasonably followed from the backstory, and avoided unnecessary &quot;incriminating&quot; details, could that be a good way of disguising Stewart?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T18:24:00.410" Title="What exactly is &quot;fair comment?&quot;" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16748" CreationDate="2015-04-07T15:41:16.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/41/are-legal-questions-on-topic-here&quot;&gt;After consulting the Meta question&lt;/a&gt; about answering &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/legal&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;legal&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;legal&lt;/a&gt; questions, I've decided to post what I've found regarding libel in fiction. I am not a lawyer. I am summarizing from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copylaw.org/2010/07/libel-in-fiction.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; supposedly written by a lawyer, but the disclaimer at the end is maybe the most important thing to note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Libel law is fact specific.  Further, [there] is no single body of  law [that] applies.  Today, information travels far and wide.  Many countries do not recognize the protections [the United States] gives authors and publishers.  It is important that professional legal advice be obtained before acting upon any of the information contained in this article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, as you mention in the question, fiction can be grounds for libel if enough of the details of a fictional character match a real person, such that the real person can be &quot;easily identified&quot; by those who know them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to avoid this is to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change your character so that it is obviously not the same person. Mix in other traits or history that contradict those of the real person, etc. Be careful that you do this in a way that doesn't attribute these traits to the person you're trying not to libel, but instead &lt;em&gt;differentiates&lt;/em&gt; your character from your potential plaintiff. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make some of the details obviously fictional. Example: a plaintiff sued Penthouse Magazine for libel regarding her supposed ability at oral sex. She lost because the magazine described her talent as &quot;causing levitation&quot; which is clearly untrue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wait for your real-life person to die; they can't sue for libel after they are dead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just leave out the details that make them identifiable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There doesn't appear to be a bright line that you can use as a guide to say just how much real-life characterization is allowed before you step into libelous territory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Libel law is fact specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the key point. It could theoretically be a single thing which links a character to a person, and a single &quot;libelous&quot; statement that causes you trouble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:03.470" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T15:41:16.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16750" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-07T16:34:45.520" Score="2" ViewCount="286" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's one thing in literature that no matter how cliche or over used it might be, I always find very compelling. For example, when a story unfolds as if there is a larger force at work moving all of the events to a single purpose. When even the most distant flashbacks seem to have purpose and effects to the current day events and how the plot unfolds. Honestly, I can't actually think of any pure examples of this off the top of my head but I was wondering if there is a technical term for this or a way that I can look up examples of this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Some better thoughts are things like &quot;The Chosen One&quot; in literature. Where a prophecy is made and one of the main characters seems to be determined to fit that role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13151" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T18:12:08.033" Title="A grand scheme or destiny in literature" Tags="|fiction|style|technique|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16751" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16752" CreationDate="2015-04-07T19:57:01.760" Score="3" ViewCount="660" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize there are lists of words that writers aren't supposed to use, but does the same apply to dialog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of the word lists I'm referring to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160315192144/http://blog.penningtonpublishing.com/grammar_mechanics/how-to-eliminate-to-be-verbs-in-writing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;How to eliminate verbs in writing&lt;/em&gt; by Pennington Publishing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writeitsideways.com/are-these-filter-words-weakening-your-fiction/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Are these filter words weakening your fiction&lt;/em&gt; by Write It Sideways&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13376" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2021-05-17T00:38:15.160" LastActivityDate="2021-05-17T00:38:15.160" Title="Filter Words in Dialog" Tags="|dialogue|word-choice|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16751" CreationDate="2015-04-07T21:34:08.047" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The dialogue should above all be natural and matching the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means there is no list of &quot;wrong words&quot; in general. Only &quot;per character&quot; - meaning you won't have a junkie punk speaking in elaborate formal language, nor, conversely, a scientist using street slang. The language used should be such, as given character would use normally in given situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This applies to all in-world texts, not just dialogue. If your story contains snippets of letters, texts of labels on some containers, samples of terrible prose written by a teenage protagonist, all these &quot;good writing&quot; rules are replaced with &quot;believable, realistic, matching the context.&quot; The &quot;good writing&quot; rules essentially apply only to narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course don't overdo it. If you pictured your first-person protagonist as coming from Russia, &lt;em&gt;it vould be silly to ryeplyace all narryation with russyan accyent.&lt;/em&gt; Keep the core text following rules of good writing and modify it to match &quot;special needs&quot; only as extra flavors. Your Russian protagonist may mention some russian cussword or otherwise express their nationality, but - as the central character of the story - should stick to proper English with rules like &quot;avoiding weak words&quot; observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T21:34:08.047" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16753" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-08T06:42:51.047" Score="0" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;How far is too far?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am aiming for considerable accessibility, and, in my story, I mention Salvador Dali whose name is tier-2, not on the level of Picasso or Van Gogh, should I expect the majority of readers to become confused and / or irritated (frustrated)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about non-name references, like, say, &quot;blue giant&quot; or &quot;brown dwarf&quot;, written in the context of a general discussion of space. Would the meanings be inferred, at least to the extent of the former being a big high-fuel star, and the latter being one small and weak?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sounds and meanings imparted by these references are important and deliver the ideas much better than otherwise, but I worry that even these barely-so obscurities will cause trouble with readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13378" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T14:33:08.630" Title="The extent of obscure references" Tags="|style|creative-writing|research|readers|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16753" CreationDate="2015-04-08T07:09:10.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the references are meaningful to you, keep them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In removing those references in order not to confuse readers,&#xA;you remove &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; from the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess:&#xA;Removing &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; from the story&#xA;will remove the very thing&#xA;that would have attracted readers.&#xA;Net result:&#xA;Fewer readers, rather than more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be yourself, right out loud, right there in your stories.&#xA;The people who show up will be &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; audience.&#xA;Anyone who is puzzled by your references&#xA;would likely never have been your audience anyway.&#xA;And they certainly would never have been the kind of audience you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T07:09:10.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16751" CreationDate="2015-04-08T08:30:32.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most beginning writers forget that their narrator is a person with a character who speaks in a voice and narrates in a style that befits his personality. Whichever words (and grammar and imagery and so on) you use or don't use is determined by the character of your narrator. In literature, no words or expressions are forbidden or unusable in and of themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The resources you list are unreliable in that they dogmatically recommend to avoid certain words, irrelevant of your writing style, audience and story. There are many works of fiction in which the narrative rests on just these words and would no longer work without them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T09:40:29.897" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T09:40:29.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16750" CreationDate="2015-04-08T08:55:10.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good example would for what you're talking about may be found in the Harry Potter series, in which, correspondingly to your EDIT, there is a spotlight on Harry Potter being the chosen one.&#xA;Her literary shortcomings aside, Rowling weaved the most intricate plot i have ever witnessed in a series. In fact, upon finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, i was completely mind-bugled trying to comprehend the scope and cross-book connections of the series.&#xA;She also utilizes plenty of flashbacks containing crucial information on the protagonist and antagonist.&#xA;I haven't heard of a term for what you're describing, but as for an example, i daresay you'd be hard pressed to find one better than Harry Potter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13333" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T08:55:10.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16753" CreationDate="2015-04-08T09:35:38.520" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to help those among your audience who do not know your references, add &quot;the surrealist painter Salvador Dali&quot; or &quot;blue giant star&quot;. Giving not only the &lt;em&gt;name&lt;/em&gt; of the object you refer to but adding its category (painter, star) helps readers understand your argument even if they don't know that particular item. How you describe the category (&quot;the early twentieth century Spanish surrealist painter and filmmaker Salvador Dali&quot;) will depend on which aspects of the object are important for your argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that you are &quot;aiming for considerable accessibility&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm repeating this over and over again, but &lt;strong&gt;you cannot write for everyone&lt;/strong&gt;. It is a misconception that everyone has read &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; was not successful because it appealed to everybody, but because it appealed to a specific audience &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books that target the lowest common denominator are boring and idiotic and &lt;em&gt;no one&lt;/em&gt; will want to read them. Write for &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt; and allow the rest to not be interested. Only then is success possible within that niche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T10:03:01.710" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T10:03:01.710" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16750" CreationDate="2015-04-08T09:52:21.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Life is random. Fiction is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;This is called &amp;quot;plot&amp;quot;.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic rule of (most, regular) fiction is that everything that goes on in the narration must somehow relate to the protagonist and his goals. You do not fill your story will irrelavant details or randomly string together people and events that lead nowhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In life, things might happen that have no relation to what you are on about. For example, a husband might try to save his wife from a kidnapper and get run over by a drunk diver. End of story. In a novel, this would make the readers throw away the book and never buy anything by that author again. In fiction, the husband must battle the kidnapper, not the randomness of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is that we do not experience life as random. We look back on our lives and see how everything appears to have happened to lead us just to this moment. Richard Feynman uses this perception to illustrate the fallacy of &lt;em&gt;a posteriori&lt;/em&gt; conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won’t believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fate is how we feel about our lives, and fiction – which is usually told in the mode of looking back on events and attempting to &lt;em&gt;make sense&lt;/em&gt; of them – does just that: &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; sense of randomness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there is experimental fiction that breaks the basic rule of having a coherent plot and plays with the reader's expectation, but even this fiction only works before the background of that convention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T09:52:21.620" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16759" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-08T14:10:45.280" Score="1" ViewCount="478" Body="&lt;p&gt;When referring to an apartment block?  Should it be: Block D, or block D?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13268" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T22:05:27.793" Title="Is the word block in 'block D' capitalized?" Tags="|grammar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-04-13T22:15:05.543" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16753" CreationDate="2015-04-08T14:33:08.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the purpose of the reference? If it is essential to the reader's understanding of the story that he understands the reference, than I'd be more likely to add some explanation. If it's just a side comment to add a little flavor to the story, then probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As What says, you can often easily toss in a couple of words that give the reader at least a general idea. &quot;We went to an exhibition of the works of the surrealist Spanish painter, Salvador Dali.&quot; Even if the reader has never heard of Dali, he now has at least a general idea of who he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often you can give clues from context that will make a reference at least generally clear. Like, &quot;At the art museum, Sally was impressed by the works of Salvador Dali.&quot; From the fact that we say it was at an art museum, the reader would likely guess that Dali is an artist and not an auto mechanic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reference can add something for the person who recognizes it while not seriously subtracting for the person who doesn't. &quot;'This conversation is getting totally surreal!', John cried. 'It's like a painting by Salvador Dali!'&quot; Someone familiar with Dali's paintings would likely find one or two of them floating to his mind and helping to set the mood of the scene. Someone not familiar with Dali would get the idea that he's a surrealist painter and move on. The reference didn't help him frame the scene any, but it didn't really hurt, except to the extent that his enjoyment of the story is interrupted as he puzzles over the unfamiliar reference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point I think you have to make reasonable assumptions about the background of your readers. If you make a reference to George Washington in a book intended for an American audience, I think you can safely assume that your readers know who he is. If you mention the man who was the deputy mayor of Hartford Connecticut in 1824, chances are that even readers very knowledgeable about history do not know who he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two other stray thoughts: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One: An explanation can ruin an allusion. I saw a movie once with a scene where a man is angry at his wife because he felt she did not dress up attractively enough for a social event that could advance his career, and he says, &quot;You looked like Quasimodo!&quot; Then a couple of other angry sentences go by and then she says, &quot;Well, you've just compared me to the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and ...&quot; So okay, I get it, the writer thought that having the man say his wife looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame would be a good, nasty insult that fit the mood of the scene. But then he was worried that many viewers might not know who Quasimodo was, so he put in the explanation. TO me, it just sounded lame. Obviously the husband knew who he was talking about when he made the reference. Why would his wife have to tell him who he was referring to? It was just so obviously for the benefit of the viewer and not the characters that it was jarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two: An allusion can be an &quot;inside joke&quot; and leave it at that. Like, I once wrote a book in which I made a reference to a variety of religious and philosophical texts, and I wrote &quot;like the Book of Mormon, the Koran, the Communist Manifesto, or the Seldon Plan&quot;. The &quot;Seldon Plan&quot; is a book in the science fiction novel &quot;Foundation&quot; by Isaac Asimov. I gave no further explanation. SF fans will get the reference and, presumably, laugh. Those who don't recognize it will likely say to themselves, &quot;whatever, must be some other religious or philosophical book&quot;. No one has ever asked me about it, and so I just snicker to myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T14:33:08.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3152" CreationDate="2015-04-08T14:33:33.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, like many said, you should indent the first line, especially if you live in USA. In Portugal, for example, we didn't indent the first line of the first paragraph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12932" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T14:33:33.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16750" CreationDate="2015-04-08T18:12:08.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the main techniques that can be used to build a sense of epic destiny is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreshadowing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;foreshadowing&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, where events that will come later in the narrative are hinted at, or alluded to earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T18:12:08.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16751" CreationDate="2015-04-08T20:43:00.317" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the articles you cite look like very bad advice. I see what they're saying, but I wonder if following these rules will really cause a reader to decide that a story touches them more or makes them realize deeper insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, seriously -- and I admit up front, I am about to get highly opinionated here: Yes, there's a point in there about drawing the reader into the action. But to say that using these words makes a bad story and not using them makes a good story is not just mind-numbingly simplistic, it's in an entirely wrong direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;She wondered how she could make it across the busy road&quot; is lame but &quot;How could she make it across the busy road?&quot; is enthralling? Get real. If only good writing could be reduced to such a simple formula. The argument here seems to be that writing in the first person, or a sort of pseudo-first person, is good; but writing in the third person is bad. No. Each has its place. Learn the pros and cons of each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The to-be article is even sillier. For example, it contrasts &quot;That school is great&quot; -- bad sentence, with &quot;That school has wonderful teachers, terrific students, and supportive parents&quot; -- good sentence. I agree that the second is a more interesting sentence. But is the important difference that the first uses &quot;is&quot; and the second doesn't? No. What if we rewrote them as, &quot;That school does great&quot; and &quot;That school is a place with wonderful teachers, terrific students, and supportive parents.&quot; Now I've switched which uses &quot;is&quot; and which doesn't. Did that make the first sentence the better one? No. The difference is that the first has no depth, it gives us no reason for the judgment, while the second gives some explanation. Actually I think the second is still a pretty dull sentence, as it gives no clue why the writer thinks the teachers are wonderful, etc. It's still a statement of unsupported opinion, just a slightly more detailed one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be some simple formulas to better writing, but I don't think these are it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;End of opinionated rant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T20:43:00.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16748" CreationDate="2015-04-08T21:11:26.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's take a step back. What is your goal in writing this story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think that some real person did something that would make an interesting story, and you don't have any desire to praise or condemn the real person, than just change details of the events and the person sufficiently that there is no obvious similarity. Like I said in response to another question on libel, if the real person is a tall thin white man from Kansas, make your character a short fat black woman from Oregon. If the real event was an ingenious robbery of a warehouse where jewels were stolen, make your story an ingenious robbery of an office building where microchips were stolen. Etc. Pick out the parts that you think make the story interesting and change everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your point is that you want to publicly blast some person who you think is deserving of condemnation, then you have an inherent problem. If you make the association obscure enough that a judge and jury will say that there is no evidence you are talking about this particular person, than readers are likely to not realize you are talking about this particular person either. If you make it clear to the reader, it will be clear to the judge. Maybe if you're very skillful at it you can make it just clear enough that readers know who you mean, but then in court you can deny it and the evidence won't be strong enough to prove you're lying. But not only would that seem like a very unethical thing to do, but it would be very tricky to pull off in practice, I'd think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other alternative is to be sure that you have your facts right. If you add any speculation and present it as fact, you are setting yourself up for legal trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T21:11:26.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16129" CreationDate="2015-04-08T21:33:37.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, so this is from a writer's, not legal point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it were, anyone can sue anybody for anything at any time. So the issue is, how have people &lt;em&gt;minimized&lt;/em&gt; the possibility of this happening (and worse, losing)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One form of &quot;protection&quot; that has been used by some authors and publishers is to slightly &quot;misspell&quot; the place in question. For instance, if something supposedly took place on the Brooklyn Bridge, you'd make it the BrookLINE Bridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example was when &quot;Don&quot; (Dan) Rather announced the fictitious start of World War III (as part of the plot). The reason for misspelling his name was to communicate the idea of &quot;nationally known newscaster,&quot; not the actual person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are doing here is creating a &quot;parallel&quot; universe. Perhaps the classic example was &quot;The Wizard of Oz.&quot; (U.S.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By using a slight misspelling, you are alluding to the place of your choice (for fictitious purposes), but disclaiming that the fictitious events in your book actually took place there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the slight misspelling weakens the party's &quot;standing&quot; to sue (unless the similarities are so strong that the name change is effectively overridden). Brookline bridge? Not the same as Brooklyn Bridge. Don Rather? No, your name is Dan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T11:08:40.540" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T11:08:40.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16766" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16770" CreationDate="2015-04-09T00:33:05.493" Score="0" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am more of a fiction writer, so writing essays or nonfiction doesn't come as naturally to me. The need does occasionally arise, however. I normally wouldn't have much trouble with it, except that the topics for my current essays are... different than usual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am supposed to write an essay on a specific discipline (focus, consistency, etc.). This topic doesn't leave much room for deviations or opinions, so I'm having trouble making the essay longer than a few paragraphs. I am using a fairly simple outline (definitions, uses, examples, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; How can I add to the essay with useful information? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T11:40:53.290" Title="How to write an essay on a very narrow field" Tags="|essay|outline|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16767" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-04-09T00:34:52.980" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-04-09T00:34:52.980" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T00:34:52.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16768" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-04-09T00:34:52.980" Score="0" Body="Questions concerning outlines for fiction or nonfiction. " OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-04-11T22:22:38.900" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T22:22:38.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16769" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-09T09:07:34.390" Score="2" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example from my own writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He wouldn't have guessed &lt;strong&gt;(that)&lt;/strong&gt; there&#xA;  would be someone with diarrhea in the toilet. Or &lt;strong&gt;that&lt;/strong&gt; the ferry's rail&#xA;  would be half his size. Or &lt;strong&gt;that&lt;/strong&gt; the night would become dark,&#xA;  windy and rainy, making it impossible for the ferry's crew to find him&#xA;  in the water.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the first &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; is unnecessary. But adding it would make it symmetrical to the other sentences. Is this something that writers usually do? Or I should just omit that first &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T16:38:39.687" Title="Adding the word &quot;that&quot; to maintain symmetry in sentences" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16766" CreationDate="2015-04-09T16:37:57.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two approaches available to you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write everything you know and be happy with the length. There is value in concise accurate summaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn more. the joke is that experts keep learning more and more about less and less until they know absolutely everything about absolutely nothing. There is a core truth here. I could without much effort write a one page summary of flathead screws. If I bothered to do the research I could write a book about the thread pitch of flathead screws. (believe it or not, this was affected by the french revolution. History is fascinating.) If length is an issue you can always learn more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T16:37:57.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16769" CreationDate="2015-04-09T16:38:39.687" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with both your points: if your first sentence stood alone, I'd omit &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;. But in sequence with the other two, it sounds better to leave it in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an actual rule in English linguistics called &lt;em&gt;that-deletion,&lt;/em&gt; which allows you to drop the word &quot;that&quot; before certain independent clauses if you choose to. In this case, I'd keep it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T16:38:39.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16774" CreationDate="2015-04-09T18:28:13.020" Score="3" ViewCount="1575" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to have someone correct themselves mid-sentence, and I remembered some guides I read on the subject.  They only seemed to allow only the most basic of stutters, but I want one where someone starts saying one word, then switches to another as they're saying it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Feitla took a kneeling position. “Lord Kor—”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I’m warden now, don’t be so formal,” Korsin said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Lo-umm-Warden...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if I start a sentence like that, do all three words get capitals or just the first word that was cut-off?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13376" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T19:49:51.863" Title="Stutter that changes words mid sentence" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16773" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16777" CreationDate="2015-04-09T19:12:57.120" Score="0" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I truly hope I am posting in the right place; I had originally posted within the English Language forum but they told me to come here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you go over the questions, I understand that APA states that any quote longer than 40 words must be separated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two related questions:&#xA;1)  In an APA paper, When you quote an example that is longer than 40 words, is it appropriate to indent it and bring it to size 10 font (from your essay's size 12 font)? For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blah blah blah blah blah blah blay; Bob(2008), an astrophysicist from the University of Boston, gives a perfect example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;blah blah blah blah blah blah&quot; [imagine this part is in 10 font]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If the first question is: yes, it is appropriate, then: is it appropriate to do that with your own examples? Examples that you, yourself have made?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for any help you can provide :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13392" LastEditorUserId="13392" LastEditDate="2015-04-09T19:49:24.320" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T06:39:39.663" Title="Examples in APA format" Tags="|essay|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16772" CreationDate="2015-04-09T19:49:51.863" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on whether the character actually stutters or just rewords mid-thought, you might write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Lo— I mean, &lt;em&gt;Warden,&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; he amended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Lor— er, Warden,&amp;quot; he amended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Lo— &lt;em&gt;Warden,&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; he amended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each case, the M-dash indicates an audible but very short pause, maybe accompanied by a quick head shake or wince or some other tiny facial gesture. Italics indicate how firmly the speaker substitutes the new word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have no space between the cut-off syllable and the M-dash, because it's filling the space of the rest of the word, but a space after it, because the speaker is changing to a new word, not stuttering through the same one. (that would be &amp;quot;Lo-Lo-Lord&amp;quot; or something similar)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T19:49:51.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16775" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16781" CreationDate="2015-04-09T19:51:56.953" Score="3" ViewCount="14958" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good day everyone!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a background, I am writing an essay that is formatted with APA styling.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my paper, I have the word &quot;shit&quot; in it; essentially in this part of the essay, I am discussing that human beings must fulfill their lower needs before dabbling into the philosophy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am discussing an enviro NGO's development strategies in Post-2008 Greece. I discuss the Greek economy, the poverty, the humanitarian crisis, etc. I then explain that the environmental NGO's strategies of ad campaigns are not effective because when people are struggling day to day trying to make ends meet, they couldn't care less about the future because they are so distracted by the present, myopic, if you will. I then give a personal story at the dinner table with an elder explaining &quot;You must eat before you shit.&quot; I then explain this quote and relate it to myopia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question to you guys is this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is using expletives appropriate?  Even if I am quoting an individual and the quotation itself fits within the purview of my argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:  I also forgot, my professor read my essay about a week ago and she did not say anything about that expletive.  Maybe that was because my essay was still in the editing phases and she thought I would edit it out, or she did not notice it, or lastly she did not care.   Sorry for forgetting that detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13392" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-03-02T06:45:50.103" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T15:02:56.697" Title="Using expletives in an essay" Tags="|essay|apa|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16775" CreationDate="2015-04-09T20:45:33.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That depends on the context in which you're writing the essay. If it's an essay that will appear in a magazine for left-wing college students, it might be perfectly appropriate. If it's an essay intended for publication in a prestigious academic journal, probably not. To be given as a speech by the pope? I think we could say pretty surely no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever questions of the appropriateness of vulgar language come up, the advice I always give is: If there's the least bit of doubt, don't. I read an article by a film critic once in which he said -- quoting from memory, not an exact quote -- &quot;No one has ever said, That could have been a good movie, but they just didn't use the f-word enough.&quot; There are people who are offended by vulgar language, and who will quit reading when the vulgarity reaches a level that exceeds their tolerance. No one will quit reading because the level of vulgarity is too low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, sometimes vulgar language can be used to make a point more strongly. But you could almost always be just as effective by using strong words that are not vulgar. And if you do you are more likely to be taken seriously, because you sound more educated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, if you are writing dialog in a novel, there are cases where in real life the character would use vulgar language. A novel where the psychopathic drug-dealing murderer gets angry and shouts, &quot;You silly person! I am very unhappy with your actions!&quot; would not be very believable. But that's not the issue here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T20:45:33.683" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16773" CreationDate="2015-04-09T21:57:28.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a widespread ignorance about the intended scope of application of the &lt;em&gt;Publication Manual of the American Psychological Assossiation&lt;/em&gt;, so I want to clarify that the APA Manual is a guide on how to write, structure and format an academic &lt;strong&gt;manuscript&lt;/strong&gt; for submission to a publisher. It is &lt;em&gt;NOT&lt;/em&gt; a guide on how to style publications. Printed journal articles differ hugely in appearance from journal to journal, even if they all adhere to the rules set forth by the APA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manuscripts formatted following the APA Manual have only a bare minimum of styling. Throughout the manuscript, for all of the text – including headings, footnotes, figure captions and blockquotes –, the same typeface (Times New Roman), the same font size (12 pt) and the same line spacing (double) must be used (APA, 2009, p. 228-229).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am irritated and confused that no one employing the APA style seems to have ever held the actual publishesd manual in his hands, because it clearly answers all of the questions that have ever been asked on this site. The Manual even illustrates its principles with many pages of sample papers that show what a manuscript should look like, and if you had ever seen those illustrations you would never in your dreams have thought that a block quote might be styled in a different font size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said this, in the hopes that maybe someone reading this will wake up from his googling stupor, and equip himself with this one indispensable resource for scientific writing, the answer to your question is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;In APA stye block quotes are indented from the left margin about half an inch (in the same position as the first line of a new paragraph), &lt;em&gt;and no more&lt;/em&gt; — no smaller font size, no spacing above or below, no identation on the right (APA, 2009, p. 171).&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your own examples, no, block quotes are reserved for styling long citations. I don't know what you mean with &amp;quot;examples&amp;quot;, but if you need to separate parts of your own writing, use paragraphs, if you want to append materials, use an appendix, or if you want to show a sample, use illustrations (illustrations can also be text), depending on what the status and purpose of those examples is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;American Psychological Association. (2009). &lt;em&gt;Publication Manual of the Americal Psychological Association&lt;/em&gt; (6th ed.). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T06:39:39.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16778" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16780" CreationDate="2015-04-10T03:32:23.887" Score="5" ViewCount="8060" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a character who is going to be using a whip. While the scenario is clear in my mind, whenever I try to describe the character's usage of the whip while fighting, the only thing I can come up with is that &quot;he brought the whip cracking down&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I describe using a whip?  Are there any good examples I can look at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-05-29T16:01:44.823" LastActivityDate="2021-04-15T15:14:53.433" Title="How do I realistically describe using a whip?" Tags="|novel|description|combat|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16778" CreationDate="2015-04-10T07:22:36.537" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very likely your understanding of whips is only theoretical and thus very superficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of riding a bike and imagine that you knew of bikes and that you &quot;sat&quot; on them and &quot;rode&quot; them, but had never actually seen a bike used, much less ridden a bike yourself. If you where this unfamiliar with bikes, the idea that you might want to stand up on the pedals when going up a steep hill, or that you have to lean into a curve, would probably never occur to you, and in your writing you wouldn't know to say more than that a person &quot;sat on his bike and rode it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whips are the same. Since ox carts have gone out of fashion, most of us have never seen a whip, and very few have actually handled one. I grew up in the south of Germany where huge bullwhips (&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=karbatsche&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Karbatsche&lt;/a&gt;&quot;) are traditionally cracked at the expelling-the-winter festivities (&quot;Fasnacht&quot;). Just watching, you will notice the weight of the whip and how you must employ your whole body to swing and crack it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ecHJR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Karbatsche&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a video from YouTube: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1oFlDXB0s8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1oFlDXB0s8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course these people don't fight with their whips, but maybe the endless reservoir of videos on the web &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=whip%20fight#q=whip%20fight&amp;amp;tbm=vid&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;contains examples of that, too&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your writing, it would certainly help you to familiarize yourself with what you are writing about. This question is a prime example for the rule to &lt;em&gt;write what you know&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best option would be to get a bullwhip and try how it works. Try to spank a lamp post (instead of yourself), or make the whip's end coil around it so you can pull the post towards you (one of the things &quot;whippists&quot; continually do in fiction, although with the necks of their opponents). It will give you an idea of how much more complex and varied its handling actually is than just &quot;bringing the whip cracking down&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have handled a whip, you will no longer have any difficulties describing its use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to read how other authors describe the use of whips, go to Google Books and search for something like &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/#q=brought+whip+cracking+down&amp;amp;tbm=bks&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;brought whip cracking down&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and variations thereof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-04-11T19:35:37.440" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T19:35:37.440" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16775" CreationDate="2015-04-10T07:47:12.977" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is not whether or not you may use expletives in academic writing, but whether or not that quote is essential for your argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic writing must not be filled with what that older fellow in your life would have called &quot;shit&quot;. Academic writing must be clear, concise and to the point. Don't meander.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this also means that if you need to express a certain thought, or if illustrating your argument with an example will make it easier to understand, you should not talk around this but say it directly. You are among adults and you don't need to censor your language for the sake of propriety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in an essay on expletives, it would be completely inappropriate &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to give examples. Expletives are a valid field of research and &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=shit%20expletives&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;many academic publications&lt;/a&gt; not only study but quote them extensively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand you must be aware how pushing at the limits of propriety can make you feel edgy and cool and reflect whether you don't actually want to use that quote for its shock value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly vulgar terms should not be part of your own writing, but if they are part of a source you cite, there is nothing you need to worry about. If – and that is what you need to worry about with each source you cite – that source is citable&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; and the citation furthers your argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that the &lt;em&gt;meaning&lt;/em&gt; of the citation is necessary but that its wording is problematic, you can paraphrase that sentence. You might even want to try that just to see if the citation is actually necessary: if a paraphrased version no longer feels informative, then probably the citation itself is only interesting to you because it contains that one vulgar word, and you should drop it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would strongly advise against replacing words in a citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; A word on citability: I do not know what kind of essay you write, and the APA style is applied to all kinds of writing that is not academic in the strictest sense, but nevertheless you must consider the following criteria before you include a citation in your writing (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_as_a_Citable_Source#Criteria_for_Reliability_and_Credibility_of_a_Source&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Credentials / Authority — Is the author(s) qualified? Why can we beleive this source?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Accuracy — How accurate is the information? Can the information be verified in other respected sources?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Currency — Is the information’s publishing date current enough for the topic of the research paper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Point of View / Objectivity — Does the author or publisher express an opinion? Does bias affect the information’s accuracy?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Relevance — Does the information help answer your research question?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Who is the information written for? Is the audience focus appropriate for a research paper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academic writing, only peer reviewed sources are citable. You probably don't have to go that far, but taking a minute to understand how the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;peer review&lt;/a&gt; process works and what purpose it serves will give you an insight that will help you more critically consider your own sources. And if you don't have time to do this before you have to hand in this essay, make sure you educate yourself in time for your next assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck, and let us know what your professor answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2019-03-20T14:02:47.507" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T14:02:47.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16778" CreationDate="2015-04-10T09:15:30.520" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to add a comment to what's answer, but it ended up being too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I entirely agree that you need to have some real experience with someone using it, either using one yourself or watching videos of people extensively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my writing I described someone using an axe, and could only say 'he swung the axe', but after simply chopping some wood with a real axe I have such a better idea about the motion needed to move it with force. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It requires the entire body to work with it, and you need to know what to do with your legs and arms not only to use it, but to make sure you don't cut off a toe or a finger. I'm guessing learning to use a whip would be even more dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest doing the same thing, or if you need to watch videos (I wouldn't have the foggiest idea where to buy a bullwhip) try to watch the motion of the whip on one viewing, and then watch how the person moves in another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only know of the movies 300 and the Indiana Jones movies that use whips, and they aren't used extensively, and I have no idea if they are used particularly realistically. &lt;strong&gt;This might be colouring your idea of how they really work.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't rely on any fictional work to get an idea, try to go straight to the source. This is what I struggled with describing using axes. Actors seem to just flail them around, but as props they likely weigh nothing. Treating a weapon with real weight like that you would likely injure every muscle in your body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T09:15:30.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16775" CreationDate="2015-04-10T12:03:14.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given your quote in context, the obscenity works. It's blunt and to the point, and since you are in fact pointing out that people don't have time or energy for philosophy when they're starving, it's rather apropos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're genuinely worried about the expletive, don't use a halfway substitute. Make it clear what you're censoring by using the correct term, and your readers will understand what you've done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You have to eat before you [defecate].&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T12:03:14.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16784" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16785" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:46:04.763" Score="0" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;If the ANC does to you what the apartheid government did to you, then you must do to the ANC what you did to the apartheid government.&quot; – Nelson Mandela&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote this novel in what was at the time my 3rd language. My motivations are too complex to explain here, but I must address one matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Revolutions have often ended terrible governments. Unfortunately, they have also brought to power the worst of humanity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tsar Nicholas III made way for the Bolshevik terror that nearly consumed the earth. Lon Nol was replaced by Pol Pot. Batista was overthrown by Fidel Castro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What has happened in South Africa is similarly tragic. The world rightly refused to accept the racist apartheid government. No sane person would support them. I grew up hearing about my own father’s disputes with them, which ended in him taking the Minister of Police to court and winning. However, having the ANC as a replacement has been an unmitigated disaster. To understand why, a frank assessment of the ANC is necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Necklacing, a murder method where ANC supporters put tires around the necks of fellow blacks and burned them alive, was common in the townships. It is one of the most painful ways to die, taking up to twenty minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Winnie Mandela said: &quot;With our matches and necklaces we shall liberate this country.&quot; She was also actively involved in the kidnapping and murder of an innocent 14-year-old black child, Stompie Moeketsi. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Winnie is presently a member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee, the highest organ of the ANC. A party truly concerned about black rights would never accept such a monster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the understandable confrontation with the apartheid government, the ANC engaged in senseless terrorism. On May 20, 1983, a car bomb was set off during rush hour in Pretoria. 17 people were killed and 217 seriously injured. Oliver Tambo, president of the ANC, authorized the terrorist attack.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2006, South Africa’s international airport was renamed after Tambo. This is an affront to everyone affected by terrorism. Renaming an airport after a terrorist is especially disrespectful to the victims of 9/11.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nelson Mandela deserves praise for avoiding a racial bloodbath during the transfer of power. He showed us all what a difference the right attitude can make. Still, it is important to see the new government formation in context with what was to come. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ANC installed a corrupt police force, making South Africa one of the most dangerous countries on earth. It has a war zone murder rate. Charles Nqakula, Minister of Safety and Security, told those worried about crime to emigrate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;South Africa has the most people with HIV/AIDS in the entire world. This tragedy has not been helped by the ANC’s abysmal public education, which according to academic Rabelani Dagada is worse than the Bantu education of the apartheid government. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The complete lack of compassion that the ANC government has for its people can be highlighted by the Minister of Health, Manto Msimang, who advocated using beetroot instead of ARV’s to treat HIV. Her policies are estimated to have caused the deaths of over 300,000 South Africans. She served under president Thabo Mbeki, who is an AIDS denialist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other ignorant beliefs are common in parts of South Africa. One is the removal of a child’s ring finger to prevent bed-wetting. Another is the trust that sex with virgins cures HIV. It has contributed to South Africa having one of the highest rape rates in the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even president Jacob Zuma was charged with rape. He was acquitted, but admitted to having unprotected sex with a woman he knew had HIV. When asked why he didn’t use protection, he said he took a shower to ward off the disease. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zuma has many other moral and legal failings. Regarding homosexuality, he said: &quot;When I was growing up, a homosexual would not have stood in front of me. I would knock him out.&quot; He stated that Afrikaners were the only real white South Africans. His solution to teenage pregnancy is to confiscate the children and force the mothers to obtain degrees. He was linked to the Arms Scandal with his friend Schabir Shaik. At ANC rallies, he sings songs calling for whites to be slaughtered. He also brags about having practiced witchcraft against whites during apartheid. In 2012, he built a private mansion with taxpayer money of $20 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On democracy, Zuma said: &quot;You have more rights because you're a majority; you have less rights because you're a minority. That's how democracy works.&quot; This statement is an accurate description of the state of South African politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since 2003, the ANC has implemented institutional racism. They compel companies to hire blacks over whites and give preference to deals with other black businesses. Patrice Motsepe amassed $2.9 billion through his ANC connections. His children must be given employment preference over whites living in squatter camps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Government tenders are also given to black companies regardless if they can produce. If no black candidate can be found for a government job, it is kept open rather than filled by a qualified white candidate. Innocent white children are subject to racist sport quotas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Listing all the other evil policies and actions of the ANC would require a book on its own. South Africa is doomed with them at the helm. Unemployment is 25-30%. AIDS, murder, rape, inflation, rolling blackouts, and corruption are a way of life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apartheid is dead. That’s vital, but means nothing with the ANC in power. It is time that the world sees these red chameleon comrades for what they are and for what they have done. There are brilliant South Africans, of all races, who would thrive under proper leadership. This beautiful country deserves better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13400" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T01:40:02.887" Title="How political can an author's note be, would the following fly?" Tags="|fiction|novel|plot|language|authorship|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-04-15T15:27:39.303" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16784" CreationDate="2015-04-10T18:49:34.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Politics will limit your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your novel is highly political, your author's note will fit right in. The author's note may even be a draw for people who agree with the politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A political author's note up front will annoy many readers. Annoyed readers may close the book and not open it again. They may be annoyed with themselves for having spent money on your book. They will likely not buy your next book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your novel is not itself political, a political afterword will annoy many readers who enjoyed the novel. Their final experience of your book will be annoyance. They will not buy your next book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T18:49:34.057" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16778" CreationDate="2015-04-11T10:13:33.090" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having use a stockwhip (similar to a bull whip) quite a bit when I was younger and having watched people cut cigarettes held in the mouth in half, etc. I really don't think you could fight with one. They are too slow to use, distance between you and the target can't vary greatly, and they don't do that much damage. Yes, you can cut someone with one, but not deeply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If faced by someone who was going to attack me with a whip I would step forward a couple of paces and stick my hand up so that the whip couldn't crack. If it wrapped around my hand I would pull on it, disarming my attacker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whips crack because the end, the thong, breaks the sound barrier. Getting hit when it travels at that speed hurts. Interfere with it reaching that speed and it doesn't hurt. As teenagers, we often engaged in play fights with rolled up wet towels. With the right technique you could crack the end of a towel like a whip. It really hurt if one was cracked on your skin. However, you had to be caught off-guard because if you stepped closer it didn't hurt at all and if you moved back it missed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T10:13:33.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16784" CreationDate="2015-04-11T10:46:40.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What Dale said. And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that your novel should contain a short, biographical author's note including the URL of your webpage. On your webpage you can have either a page dedicated to your political views, or a blog where, besides other writerly blog posts, you voice your political opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would keep the book as the book and not water it down with anything. Add no more than acknowlegements (sources, helpful people) in the back, if necessary, and a one sentence dedication (&quot;To ...&quot;) at the beginning. Add a preface only to explain the circumstances of the books inception and writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep yourself out of your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T10:46:40.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16790" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-12T15:05:52.410" Score="1" ViewCount="18246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking about this question for a while. This is my definition of what makes a sentence lyrical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. The use of metaphors:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking&#xA;  that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane. ― John&#xA;  Green, Looking for Alaska&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. The use of words related to nature:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;When I closed my eyes, the scent of the wind wafted up toward me. A&#xA;  May wind, swelling up like a piece of fruit, with a rough outer skin,&#xA;  slimy flesh, dozens of seeds.&quot; ― Haruki Murakami Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. The use of rhythm (alternating short sentences with long sentences):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it&#xA;  any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make&#xA;  a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years&#xA;  later I would recall it in such detail. I didn't give a damn about the&#xA;  scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about&#xA;  the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of&#xA;  us together, and then about myself again.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to hear other definitions, or to know whether I'm mistaken. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-04-12T15:19:01.437" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T11:55:16.097" Title="What makes a piece &quot;lyrical&quot;?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16791" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-12T15:15:24.793" Score="2" ViewCount="8777" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few examples of romance clichés:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A is in love with B, but doesn't dare to tell him/her.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After some chasing, A finally has sex with B (and the sex is fantastic).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Love triangle: A loves B, B loves C, and C loves A.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The novel ends with A getting married with (nothing worse).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to write romance and at the same time avoid these cliches? Should one think of new formulas? Or slightly modify the existing ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-04-12T15:20:49.253" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T17:01:42.313" Title="How to write romance without falling into cliché?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16792" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-12T17:47:56.263" Score="0" ViewCount="5639" Body="&lt;p&gt;Iranian addresses are given in the order of Country, City, Street, Lane, No., Postal code. Should I change this order to No., Street, Lane, City, Country, postal code, when I am translating a Persian address to English in an official agreement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example a typical Iranian address reads:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tehran, Valiasr Ave., Zartosht St., No. 5555, 1234567891&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the last one is the 10-digit Iranian postal code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11028" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T14:03:37.197" Title="Should postal address formats change when translated?" Tags="|translation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16790" CreationDate="2015-04-12T18:21:38.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lyrical refers to song-like qualities. Songs are inherently emotive and use rhythm and sound to convey a sense beyond the literal. The rhythmic aspect includes not merely higher-level structure but also accentuation, syllabic pacing, repetition of sound patterns, and other mechanisms. Songs generally have a compression and a subtlety of expression that is not typical of ordinary prose. The use of imagery accomplishes both subtlety and compression. Other forms of indirect expression can also provide a lyrical quality, perhaps primarily from subtly which can intensify the emotive effect. (The use of subtly might be similar to telling a joke; the lead up disguises the punchline and the punchline by itself is generally not funny but with the whole there is a powerful reaction.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One might even argue that &quot;show don't tell&quot; is a step in the lyrical direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Natural images are not essential to lyrical expression, though they have the benefit of being broadly appreciated and having nearly an intrinsic emotive quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T18:21:38.473" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16792" CreationDate="2015-04-12T18:44:27.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the Iranian address format&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story takes place in Iran, your characters eat Iranian food, watch Iranian tv, and receive letters with an Iranian address. It is what gives your story a sense of place, it is part of the &lt;em&gt;setting&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only if you want to &lt;em&gt;transfer&lt;/em&gt; the whole story to another country (as sometimes happens, for example when movies get remade for a US audience), would you turn the Iranians in your story into, for example, Americans, who live in Los Angeles instead of Teheran, and of course receive letters with an address in the American format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T18:44:27.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12827" CreationDate="2015-04-12T20:29:52.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a great deal of software which will allow you to scan the text. The usefulness of the scan depends on how complex the layout is, the quality of the scan itself and the complexity of the text. Obviously you need a scanner if you don't have an electronic version of the text (pdfs can sometimes be used).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you need to translate the text to the language you want. Many programs and websites offer this facility. Microsoft Word, for example, has a translate command. However, you need to check that the translation service you are using works reasonably well. Let me illustrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I translated a worksheet I had written into Arabic using the Word translate feature. I then translated it back (slightly complicated) and found it had changed it into something quite different (and useless). I then copied and pasted the text into Google translate, copied it, changed the languages, pasted it and got back something quite similar to what I had originally pasted. It was not perfect, but it was definitely useable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T20:29:52.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16791" CreationDate="2015-04-12T20:33:48.730" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Romance follows the same basic plot structure as any other genre:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We meet the protagonist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An &quot;inciting incident&quot; disrupts the protagonist's life (in romance: (s)he encounters &quot;the right one&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The protagonist now has a goal (a relationship with the right one).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obstacles keep the protanogist from his/her goal (for example, the right one loves another person; or the protagnost has first to become attractive [economicall, phyiscally, socially, or in another way]; the right one is actually the wrong one, and the protagonist has to understand that the wrong one is actually the right one; and so on).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The protagnost (or the right one) finally overcome the obstacles and they kiss or have sex or marry or whatever serves as the summit of fulfillment in the subgenre (Young Adult, erotic romance, ...).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They live happily ever after.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Romance deviates from other genres in that its readers usually expect a happy end, but dislike &quot;insta-love&quot;. That is, the protagonist and the right one cannot just meet, fall in love, and be a couple, they must overcome obstacles first. Love is the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The common clichés follow both from the genre-unspecific basic plot structure, romance reader expectations, and from how love works in the real world. Of course, in the real world, there are relationships that do not happen: protagonists that do not overcome the obstacles and do not find fulfillment with the &quot;right one&quot;. But those stories are not the subject of romance, but of other genres of literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in other genres, you can avoid common stereotypes by following the conventional structure but adding uncommon twists. A hundred years ago it was an uncommon twist if a female protagonist did not marry the wonderful man, but elope with his sister. (If the protagonist is male and the female right one elopes with his sister, so that he essentially fails his goal, it is not romance but socio-critical literature or whatever.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even if you give your readers a common story, you can &lt;em&gt;narrate&lt;/em&gt; that story in a way that makes reading the same old story interesting (e.g. humor or an uncommon perspective, such as a love story told from the protagonist's dog). Sometimes a twist is created by crossing over into other genres (e.g. the right one is a vampire; this was new in YA before &lt;em&gt;Twilight&lt;/em&gt;). Or, and this is my preferred method, you can intensify the realism. Romance is boring, if it is the same story again and again. But if it is &lt;em&gt;different people&lt;/em&gt;, experiencing the same things &lt;em&gt;in a unique and individual way&lt;/em&gt;, then reading about the same basic things becomes interesting again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as in any other genre, to write a good romance, you must not emulate the books that you love (that is, not write the 267th &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; clone), but &lt;strong&gt;bring yourself into your book&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great writing is soul searching. It implies honesty towards yourself. You don't have to write autobiographica, but put yourself in the protagonist's place and imagine how you would feel. Or, if you are one of the rare writers you can understand other people, become that person and feel how love feels for him or her. Do not just use the words you know have to go with the story, but truly feel the fear, the excitement, the sadness, the joy that you felt or saw in others. Observe closely what happens in and with and around you when you experience what your protagonist experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then you will find the small, seemingly insignificant aspects of love stories, that most writers overlook, but that give a story flavour and richness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you write what everyone has read a hundred times before, write that story from &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; heart and soul, with &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; voice, as &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; see it. And do not be afraid that your story will be a cliché. Because love, of course, is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; a cliché, and at the same time, if you allow yourself to open your heart to it, it is at the same time the most wonderful and the most frightening thing on this world. Write from the middle of this contradiction – and then allow your characters the happy end most of us have not found in their own lives, or only fleetingly, only to lose it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, dare to write the cliché.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T20:33:48.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16759" CreationDate="2015-04-12T20:34:03.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would say 'Block D' when referring to a place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T20:34:03.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16732" CreationDate="2015-04-12T20:39:43.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not consider adding any sentence requesting a response. Instead, saying &quot;I would look forward to the opportunity to discuss your team&quot; or something of that nature. That, as an example, highlights that you would look forward to further conversation initiated on their end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13419" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T20:39:43.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16799" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16802" CreationDate="2015-04-12T22:09:29.280" Score="2" ViewCount="610" Body="&lt;p&gt;What would be considered proper capitalization of open form compound words in titles?  Should the second part of the compound word be capitalized?  Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the capitalization for which title would be correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cash &lt;strong&gt;f&lt;/strong&gt;low Analysis Report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--OR--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cash &lt;strong&gt;F&lt;/strong&gt;low Analysis Report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13420" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-04-12T22:24:24.957" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T14:42:26.613" Title="Capitalization of Open form Compound Words in Titles" Tags="|style|titles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16799" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:01:28.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In school the rule of thumb for capitalizing titles was first word, last word and all important words (and almost all words were important excluding only articles prepositions and conjunctions). If we follow that rule the question is cashflow one word or two? If it is one word it gets one capital and no space, if two words it gets two capitals and a space. So either 'Cashflow' or 'Cash Flow'. Interestingly my spell checker objects to 'Cashfolw' and suggests 'Cash Flow' as a correction but has no problem with 'cashflow' or 'cash flow'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T00:01:28.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16801" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16844" CreationDate="2015-04-13T02:40:14.423" Score="5" ViewCount="760" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is APA-certified editor an actual credential?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, is there a universally-accepted proof in the U.S. for that credential?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried a web search on &quot;how to become an APA-certified editor.&quot; I clicked through four pages of the hits where the bulk of the references were about obtaining PhDs or APA licensing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hits I did find were for a few people advertising their services for APA-style editing, and one reference to an APA editing workshop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in (maybe) editing dissertations for doctoral students at small for-profit universities (not editing journals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11559" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T14:21:18.543" Title="What is an APA-certified editor?" Tags="|editing|academic-writing|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16799" CreationDate="2015-04-13T06:30:10.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which style do you follow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;APA&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/03/title-case-and-sentence-case-capitalization-in-apa-style.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;APA Style Blog&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capitalize the first word of the title/heading and of any subtitle/subheading;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capitalize all “major” words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns) in the title/heading, including the second part of hyphenated major words (e.g., Self-Report not Self-report); and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capitalize all words of four letters or more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This boils down to using lowercase only for “minor” words of three letters or fewer, namely, for conjunctions (words like and, or, nor, and but), articles (the words a, an, and the), and prepositions (words like as, at, by, for, in, of, on, per, and to), as long as they aren’t the first word in a title or subtitle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;MLA&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/583/03/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Purdue Online Writing Lab&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... capitalize all words except prepositions (such as &lt;em&gt;of&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;between&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;through&lt;/em&gt;), articles (such as &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;an&lt;/em&gt;), and conjunctions (such as &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt;); however, capitalize them if they begin the title or the subtitle ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Chicago&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, I'm sure you can find this yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T06:30:10.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16806" CreationDate="2015-04-13T10:56:02.043" Score="3" ViewCount="555" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently started translating a book from Turkish into English, but I'm not sure how translations are usually carried out. So, for instance, if I encounter a sentence which sounds good in Turkish but (a little) awkward in English (though still grammatically correct)...am I allowed to change the sentence in a way which preserves the meaning? Or should I translate it (almost) word by word and change it &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; when there is a loss of meaning or some grammatical error? I will give some examples below to clarify my point,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Indeed, if you were to observe that a single man came, drove all the city inhabitants to someplace, and forced them to work on [certain] tasks; you would be certain that the man is not acting in his own name. Perhaps he is a soldier. He acts in the name of the government. He depends on the power of a monarch.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally feel that it would be better if I combined the last two sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Indeed, if you were to observe that a single man came, drove all the city inhabitants to someplace, and forced them to work on [certain] tasks; you would be certain that the man is not acting in his own name. Perhaps he is a soldier. He acts in the name of the government and depends on the power of a monarch.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So am I allowed to combine two sentences which are separate in the original Turkish version. Or should I just translate it as it is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh my proud soul! You are the traveler. This world, on the other hand, is a desert. Your impotence and poverty are boundless. [While] Your enemies and needs are endless. As this is the case, take the name of the Pre-eternal Owner and the Post-Eternal Ruler of this desert, [and thus] be saved from begging the universe and trembling before every event.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought it would sound a little awkward to say &quot;Your impotence and poverty are boundless. Your enemies and needs are endless&quot; So I added the word &quot;[While]&quot; in there. But then it seems like it would be better if I combined those two sentences into one: &quot;Your impotence and poverty are boundless, while your enemies and needs are endless.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: To clarify the audience and the content...this book is the work of a prominent scholar in Islam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13427" OwnerDisplayName="Erciyes" LastEditorUserId="13427" LastEditDate="2015-04-13T17:49:35.983" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T18:02:00.963" Title="How should I translate this?" Tags="|translation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16803" CreationDate="2015-04-13T13:59:27.540" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My instinct is to preserve as much of the original rhythm and flow as possible, but to make it sound readable to a native ear. In both your examples, the original uses short, punchy sentences, which is a particular quirk of the writer's style. Smoothing them out by combining them, to my ear, quite literally loses something in translation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it's not possible to preserve every facet of the original. For example, in John Ciardi's excellent translation of Dante's &lt;em&gt;Divina Commedia&lt;/em&gt;, there's no way to replicate the &lt;em&gt;terza rima&lt;/em&gt; in English. Italian has enough rhymes to allow you to write &lt;code&gt;aba, bcb, cdc, ded&lt;/code&gt; and so on, but English doesn't. Ciardi chose to rhyme each first and third line and not worry about matching up second lines with anything else. This gives the flavor of the original without forcing the English into unreadable contortions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T13:59:27.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16791" CreationDate="2015-04-13T14:05:41.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing about romance is that it is aspirational, just like most fiction. To make a good romance, the reader needs to &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to have the relationship in the book. They want to believe that the person falling in love could easily be them, and they will find the love of their life through similar means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way most romance writers do this is exactly the same: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;boy meets girl/girl meets boy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;boy and girl grow close&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;obstacle keeps boy and girl apart&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;boy and girl eventually overcome obstacle and are finally together&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've essentially written that format yourself in the guise of different clichés, but in fact they are all one (if you count number 3 as a love triangle).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason most romances are similar is that there is a definite idea of the 'perfect relationship' that our society has. Even an obstacle is a key part, it makes the other person in the relationship feel that the person is willing to tackle the obstacle for them. It also makes the relationship more interesting (if you have romance without drama, it's quite boring, in fiction or real life).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, most writers have a slight variation on this, like girl meets vampire, or add a step 5 where boy/girl dies, or even points 1 and 2 are swapped around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with writing romance fiction is that you need to write a relationship that people want, and if most people want to experience the cycle, you have to give the readers what they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I don't think there is a way to break out of the cycle. Otherwise, for example, if you try to expand on number 3 over other numbers, then that's when it becomes a relationship in an adventure novel, for example. Or if you skip number 4, that becomes a tragic novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to change the cycle is to change points, rather than the structure. Some of the best and most engaging romance films I've ever seen (I don't really read romance fiction that often) are ones that are 'boy meets boy' or even 'boy meets computer', and immediately the script is flipped. Even conforming to the most conventional romance plot from thereon out, the story is still entirely unconventional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These wouldn't be particularly accepted in the past, but now that we live in a more accepting society the points are more malleable. Years ago, a story with 'boy meets boy' would have been burned. It likely still would in many countries. But now it inspires some of the most popular fiction, because it is different than other stories that have already been done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would try playing around with the clichés, rather than avoiding them altogether. Clichés are clichés for a reason, after all. They wouldn't become overused if they weren't popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you think about the amount of people in the world that are in love, there is going to be a lot more individual stories than are written into books or put onto film. They will probably fit the script too, but have their own unique twist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T14:05:41.053" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16803" CreationDate="2015-04-13T14:57:19.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Translation is an art, not a science, and some translations strive more for word-for-word accuracy, others for better capturing the overall experience of the original.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the approach you take should be matched to your intended audience.  When the translation is aimed more at an academic or a scholarly audience, they tend to demand word-for-word accuracy.  When you are targeting a general audience, your goal should be readability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note, it is &lt;em&gt;the audience for the translation&lt;/em&gt; that is important.  A scholarly work can be translated for a general audience, and a work of literature can be translated for scholars.  In this particular case, knowing that the author is a scholar does not necessarily tell us the goal of the translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-04-13T18:02:00.963" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T18:02:00.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16736" CreationDate="2015-04-13T16:42:43.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you want to say will partly determine what you can do. If you want to say that someone is a baby-killing paedophile, and that person is easily identified from what you write, expect trouble. If you just change the names and embroider a story, you shouldn't have to worry. Many people add to what is actually known. I recently watched a film about Anne Frank. Of course all the dialogue was made up and many of the events. Problem? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T16:42:43.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16689" CreationDate="2015-04-13T18:31:47.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently had this problem, and I accidentally found a way around it.&#xA;Have one character use the layman's version of the word, or perhaps an incorrect word, and then have another character correct them. My example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In a town that small -&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Municipality.” interrupted Andrew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“&lt;em&gt;Municipality&lt;/em&gt; that small, it would be impossible to...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For 'alpha test' you could do something similar to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We've begun the first stage of testing.&quot; said A&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The alpha testing,&quot; replied B, nodding. &quot;and once that's complete...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13428" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T18:31:47.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16759" CreationDate="2015-04-13T22:05:27.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Block D&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You capitalize proper &lt;em&gt;names&lt;/em&gt;. The reason 'Block' is capitalized is because you are referring to a specific block. 'The block' would not be capitalized, because - while you are referring to a particular block - you are not naming it. Similarly, if you were to say 'the D blocks,' that too would not be capitalized. While referring to specific blocks, you are not specifying which D block you are referring to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T22:05:27.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16810" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29490" CreationDate="2015-04-14T12:14:08.980" Score="3" ViewCount="587" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always particularly liked poems with very fixed structure (e.g. a Villanelle or Sestina), both to read and to write. However nowadays, I've noticed a remarkable number of poems I come across appear be simply passages of prose with a linebreak inserted every few inches, often without even any metrical consistency. This has set me wondering, there's a pretty clear distinction between structured/unstructured poems, but which format is preferred?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of precision, I'll clarify the question down to something specific: Given a poem X which has structure, and a poem Y that is &quot;free verse&quot;, and assuming both are of equal quality (however that may be judged), is there a bias towards one form over another? Do critics commonly prefer a specific form? Do publishers prefer to publish books of form X or Y? To what degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13433" LastActivityDate="2017-08-02T13:39:06.097" Title="Do publishers prefer a particular type of poem?" Tags="|publishing|structure|poetry|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16810" CreationDate="2015-04-14T14:04:57.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general trend in poetry over the last hundred years has clearly been towards the increasing dominance of free verse.  However, I don't see any point in trend-chasing when it comes to poetry.  Most poems that make it into print are either in self-published chapbooks, or from tiny boutique presses that publish for the love of poetry, not for profit.  Given that commercially successful poetry is almost a contradiction in terms, there's absolutely no reason not to write what you like, and what you're good at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, you shouldn't be contemptuous of free verse, some of it is quite good.  I'm also puzzled by the fact that you seem surprised to encounter it, given that it's the dominant format for contemporary poetry (and has been for quite a while --it began its rise to popularity &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_verse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in the early 1900's&lt;/a&gt;).  Although it typically doesn't have set meter or rhyme, good free verse does have other types of structure --perhaps in the assonances and alliterations, or maybe just in the pattern of metaphors.  Consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176048&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Billy Collins&lt;/a&gt;, one of my favorite living poets --his poems rarely have an identifiable meter or rhyme scheme, but if you read them out loud, it's clear that they aren't without structure of some other, harder-to-identify type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to why the older forms have been losing out to free verse --it's probably for the same reason that modernism took over in the world of art.  The old styles had been thoroughly explored, and people felt like they weren't saying anything new anymore.  With that said, the best free verse poets are typically well-steeped in the old forms, just as the best modernist artists were trained as realists.  And just as with art, there will always be an audience for anyone whose work is extraordinary good, no matter what style they choose to work in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-04-16T13:21:34.847" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T13:21:34.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16822" CreationDate="2015-04-14T14:12:52.910" Score="2" ViewCount="6089" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are working on a technical documentation project which includes the rewriting, modernization, restructuring, enrichment of the content. I'm doing the content rewriting and translation parts of the job and my voice preference has always been on &quot;passive&quot; but sometimes the urge to switch to the active voice becomes hard to resist. I'm finding it hard to explain to the project leaders, too, because they do interfere from time to time to the content and they always tend to switch to active voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would using both active and passive voice in different sections of technical manuals, training documentation, service manuals etc be a bad choice? Are there any styling guides on technical documentation which cover this topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10460" LastEditorUserId="10460" LastEditDate="2016-05-27T10:56:18.850" LastActivityDate="2019-04-04T01:39:47.337" Title="Technical Documentation Voice Preference : &quot;Active Voice&quot; - &quot;Passive Voice&quot; - A Mixture of both" Tags="|technical-writing|voice|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16791" CreationDate="2015-04-14T14:35:02.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Romances are far more clichéd then you say. As Mike Ford points out, almost all romances can be sketched as: 1. Boy meets girl. 2. They fall in love. 3. Something keeps them apart. 4. They overcome and are together forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't read romance novels, but I see them on TV now and then. I've noticed that these days the obstacle that keeps them apart is almost always an argument over something that turns out to be a misunderstanding. I've often thought, wouldn't it be more interesting if they had a real argument and then came to some compromise. Or one of them does something truly wrong that harms the relationship but that apologizes and the other forgives. But I guess the nature of the romance genre is that both people must be completely likable. If they had a real argument, then the reader is likely to side with one or the other, and whatever resolution the author comes up with, the reader may think that one character is accepting something that he or she should not accept, they'd be better not to commit to this other person, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, the other obstacle you see is that one of the people meets someone else who seems more desirable in some way, but whom the audience knows is not a good person for some reason, and so the audience is cheering for the hero or heroine to match up with the good person rather than the bad person, and of course by the end of the story the hero/heroine realizes that they really should be with the good person. I read something by a movie producer once in which he said that he set out to make a romance where both the men vying for the woman's affections were good, decent guys so that she faced a real choice, rather than the good guy / bad guy stereotype. That's probably as far from clichés as most romance movies manage to get these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, what makes a good romance story is not a brilliant new plot idea, but doing it with style. There are some genres that are all about plot, about presenting the characters with some problem and then the author presenting an interesting solution to that problem. A lot of science fiction falls in that category. Romance stories are not about a clever plot. They are about creating interesting characters and making those characters appealing. Anyone who reads a romance thinking, &quot;I wonder if these two will end up together&quot; ... well, such a person must find the world a place full of wonder and mystery. OF COURSE the hero and heroine will end up together. The question is how they get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read once -- I don't know if this is true, but I don't doubt it for a moment -- that publishers of romance novels demand that their writers follow this formula. If anyone submits a story that goes in a different direction -- the heroine's boyfriend turns out to be a thoughtless jerk and the story ends with her dumping him and becoming a nun or something -- are automatically rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T14:35:02.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16791" CreationDate="2015-04-14T17:01:42.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a novel of any manner (but particularly a romance) there is a danger of falling into a cliche.  In fact I can boil every romance i've ever read into 1 of 2 stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main Character (mc) meets Romantic Interest (ri).  There is some plot reason or another that keeps them apart.  Together (or separately) they over said reason and execute the author's final plan for them. (A mild plot variation is if they can't overcome plot reason and sadness ensues.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mc meets multiple romantic interests, he or she must choose which one they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going for a love focused plot, even if it falls into a cliche, make your niche of the genre unique.  If you have something that makes it different from the hoardes of other romance novels out there (for example mc is a necromancer or something wierd like that) even if the overarching story is cliche, your book will have many unique moments, lines, and characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13434" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T17:01:42.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16985" CreationDate="2015-04-14T21:50:23.097" Score="2" ViewCount="44357" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MLA, how do I write in-text citations that have no author, as well as a same title with another source in my bibliography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I have these 2 sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Alternative Energy.&quot; Discover 28.1 (2007): 20. Middle Search Plus. Web. 29 Mar. 2015.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Alternative Energy.&quot; - Wind, Solar, Hydro and Other Alt Energy Sources for Home Power. Web. 30 Mar. 2015. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.altenergy.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.altenergy.org/&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that you would first try the author's last name like (Stewart), but there isn't any, and then you try the title (&quot;Alternative Energy&quot;), but in this case they are both the same. How can I in-text cite this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13435" OwnerDisplayName="Timothy Nguyen" LastActivityDate="2019-05-27T02:45:43.963" Title="MLA in-text Citations with no author, as well as same title?" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16817" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16818" CreationDate="2015-04-15T01:01:49.867" Score="4" ViewCount="1873" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to incorporate a different language that uses another alphabet into a fiction manuscript? I am trying to use Russian in an English manuscript, but I don't know if I should use the pronunciation or the actual Russian alphabetic letters. Are there rules for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I would give my examples, but they're swear words, and I don't know the rules on this site for putting that content out.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T18:08:31.343" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T18:08:31.343" Title="Using a foreign language that uses a different written alphabet" Tags="|fiction|translation|language|multilingual|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16817" CreationDate="2015-04-15T01:14:59.037" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rules?  No, not beyond any that your publisher or editor might have.  But one factor to consider is that, assuming you're not publishing in a specialized or foreign market, your readers probably won't know how to pronounce the words in a different alphabet -- you can't sound things out if you don't know the pronunciation rules.  This means that the words you use are just glyphs, not words they can subvocalize and remember.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw this used to good effect once (can't remember where) in a story where the characters encountered a sign they couldn't read.  It seemed perfectly reasonable that the reader couldn't read it either.  But some people might be thrown a bit if they can't &quot;hear&quot; something that's &lt;em&gt;spoken&lt;/em&gt; in the story.  If you instead transliterate (and change the formatting; italics is common for this), you convey that it's a foreign word while still giving them something they can pronounce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are readers who don't care (I know people who can't tell me the names of Russian characters in books, but they know them when they see them), but using the original alphabet will get in the way of people who &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; care without helping most of your readers.  So, assuming you don't have a higher-than-normal proportion of Russian readers in your audience, you will be more accessible by transliterating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, a few isolated words in a novel won't make a difference either way.  But if you have a character who tends to use these words more frequently, you might want to fall back on the transliteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T01:14:59.037" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16784" CreationDate="2015-04-15T01:40:02.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Echoing what Dale said, politics will alienate your readers. However, if your political statement (that you wish to address in the author's note) is central to the book, then the book description should do enough to deter readers who would be put off by the note. You mentioned that it will be at the back of the book (which is where I've seen most author's notes); do be sure it is at the back. A lot of front matter will also deter readers. If it's in fact at the end of the book, you may not alienate readers from that book, but you could potentially lose future readers. It's up to you how in-depth you want to be about politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A note about author's notes: all of the ones I've seen have been primarily fact-based, not opinion-based. They serve the purpose of providing explanations and insights into research, so that's another option you have: write it so that it's research, not your opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if you are looking to publish with an established publishing firm, you may want to consult with them on what their requirements are. If you're self-publishing, you can do what you want (with consideration to your readers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T01:40:02.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16812" CreationDate="2015-04-15T02:06:23.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My preference is for passive voice for reference material, some active for tutorials/howtos and whatever is easiest to understand for instructional or theoretical overviews. For example a mechanic changing a tire will check the manual for inflation pressure and lug torques (reference), a teenager will want a youtube video (howto), but an engineer will want to know why (theoretical overview, then reference)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T02:06:23.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16817" CreationDate="2015-04-15T02:33:33.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Outside of scholarly of scholarly work the norm would be to transliterate. Now I am all for violating norms, but it is riskier, more work and you have to know what you are doing. if you can pull it off It would be praiseworthy, but it is not appropriate to all situations, particularly in that violating norms draws attention so one question is do you want to draw attention here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T02:33:33.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16812" CreationDate="2015-04-15T07:35:02.337" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever results in the less convoluted and easier to understand syntax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually people find it easier to understand active voice. Even research articles are today usually written in active voice and avoid confusing self-reference-avoidance (do: &amp;quot;We conducted a study...&amp;quot;, don't: &amp;quot;A study was conducted ...&amp;quot; [by whom?]). Machines are operated by persons, they are not &amp;quot;being operated&amp;quot; by a mysterious force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The APA Manual – which, admittedly, aims at scientific manuscripts, but is often more widely applicable – has this to say about passive voice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... the passive voice suggests individuals are &lt;em&gt;acted on&lt;/em&gt; instead of being actors (&amp;quot;the students &lt;em&gt;completed&lt;/em&gt; the survey&amp;quot; is preferable to &amp;quot;the students &lt;em&gt;were given&lt;/em&gt; the survey or &amp;quot;the survey was &lt;em&gt;administered&lt;/em&gt; to the students&amp;quot;). (p. 73)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dangling modifiers have no referent in the sentence. Many of these result from the use of the passive voice. By writing in the active voice, you can avoid many dangling modifiers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Correct:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Using this procedure, I tested the participants. [I, not the participants, used the procedure.] (p. 81)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Incorrect:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The participants were tested using this procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the passive voice is a valid mode and has its uses, too, of course:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The passive voice is acceptable in expository writing and when you want to focus on the object or recipient of the action rather than on the actor. For example, &amp;quot;The speakers were attached to either side of the chair&amp;quot; emphasizes the placement of speakers, not who placed them—the more appropriate focus in the Method section. &amp;quot;The President was shot&amp;quot; emphasizes the importance of the person shot. (p. 77)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T07:35:02.337" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16824" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-15T13:56:15.973" Score="3" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My heart &lt;strong&gt;started&lt;/strong&gt; to&#xA;  race.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the heart actually race or not yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Later that night, I &lt;strong&gt;realized&lt;/strong&gt; I couldn't sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the person try to sleep? Or knew that before even trying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We &lt;strong&gt;decided&lt;/strong&gt; to go to the balcony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did they only decide? Or actually do the action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, I'm not sure. Maybe they are necessary at times? If so, when?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The reason I add those words is to make the action sound less &quot;abrupt.&quot; But again, I'm not sure whether I'm making things worse.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T16:31:32.500" Title="Do words like &quot;start&quot;, &quot;realize&quot;, and &quot;decide&quot; add ambiguity to actions?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16792" CreationDate="2015-04-15T14:03:37.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand What's reasoning, but I would say the opposite: I'd say that if you're translating the language, you should follow the conventions of the target language. To take a similar example: in the U.S. we use a period to separate whole numbers from fractions and commas to separate groups of digits, like &quot;1,234.56&quot;. But in many countries they do the reverse, and would write the same number &quot;1.234,56&quot;. If I was translating to English I would use the English convention of writing numbers, regardless of the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Need I say that I'm not saying to change meaning or content? If the original said that the hero ate dolma I wouldn't change that to hamburgers to &quot;translate&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I certainly would change little conventions like you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one big exception I can see to that is if it matters in the story. Like if there's a crucial scene where a character is telling someone his address over the phone, and is suddenly cut off, then the fact that addresses are conventionally given in a different order becomes crucially important. In the U.S., if someone was cut off trying to give an address, the hearer might know the street and number but not the city. In Iran, apparently, the hearer would know the city but not the street. In fact as I type this, I recall reading a mystery story years ago where just that happens (in the U.S.), and the hearer starts searching for cities that have streets with that name, and fortunately the name is uncommon enough that he is able to narrow it down and find the place. That whole episode just wouldn't work in an Iranian novel. (Which suddenly makes me think: what would you do if asked to translate that novel while transplanting it to Iran? You'd have to rework the scene somehow for it to make sense.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I say, I understand What's point about preserving the &quot;flavor&quot; of the original culture. So I think a translator has to make a judgment call: how much confusion does something add versus how much flavor does it preserve? I certainly would not change descriptions of how people dressed or what buildings look like. I would generally change conventions like this. I'm sure there are lots of gray areas. Like, sometimes translations transliterate titles, other times they translate to an English equivalent. Like Americans are used to hearing the former ruler of Iran called the &quot;shah&quot; rather than the &quot;king&quot;, but English-language stories about France routinely call the ruler the &quot;king&quot; and not the &quot;roi&quot;. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, long answer to a short question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T14:03:37.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16824" CreationDate="2015-04-15T14:41:41.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using these kinds of phrases makes me feel like you are telling more than showing. For instance, I don't care that your heart started to race, I care about why that's happening. I think it's because using start/realize/decide makes the action &lt;em&gt;intentional&lt;/em&gt; instead of simply describing the action. It gives too much focus to something that should be peripheral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, in context, it might be fine. Here's an example of when it's probably suitable: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Is this your cat?&quot; the man asked me. My heart started to race. &quot;Uh, no,&quot; I stuttered, backing slowly away. &quot;I think it's ... &quot; I pointed to the house down the street. &quot;Jenkins.&quot; Then I turned and fled, not looking back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context, the sentence helps illustrate that I am suddenly nervous or frightened. Here it is less appropriate (in my opinion):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I stretched for a few minutes then I decided to start running. My heart started to race. I realized that I had not brought my water bottle, so I decided to stop at a fountain that I knew was down the path a little farther.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context, this whole paragraph is giving me a step-by-step thought process. It is exceptionally boring and tedious to listen to someone's internal monologue like this. This is the essence of telling-not-showing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are concerned about the abruptness of the action (sometimes abrupt may be what you want though), so there are two suggestions that I would make. One is to use gerund phrases to smooth the action out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I tossed and turned for several hours, thinking of her face. Realizing I couldn't sleep, I got up and put the kettle on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, you are smoothly connecting the consequence of the realization with the action that the character took, which is what moves the plot forward. The other suggestion is to take more time to describe the important bits of the setting and movements of your characters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We had been talking for hours. The sunlight turned golden, then narrowed through the windows on the mezzanine. She smiled at me in the dim light and took my hand. I followed her out on to the balcony as the first stars began to shine in the darkening sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T14:41:41.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16824" CreationDate="2015-04-15T19:11:35.647" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're trying to hard to find a formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think &quot;my heart started to race&quot; is pretty clear. It wasn't racing before; it is racing now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other two, yes, as isolated sentences, they are ambiguous. But you could say that about a lot of perfectly good sentences. To take a silly example, suppose I told you that a story includes the sentence, &quot;She wasn't there.&quot; By itself, that's horribly ambiguous. Who wasn't there? Where are we talking about? Wasn't there when? Should the reader have expected her to be there so this is a surprise, or is this what we would expect? Etc. But that could be a perfectly clear statement in the right context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for example. &quot;I knew I needed to get some rest before the contest tomorrow, but I was too nervous and jumpy. I realized I couldn't sleep. Rather than go to bed when I knew I would just lie awake worrying, I decided to ...&quot; In that context, clearly I mean that I came to this realization before going to bed. But, &quot;I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. I realized I couldn't sleep.&quot; Clearly I'm in bed trying to sleep but can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem isn't that words like &quot;decided&quot; and &quot;realized&quot; are evil words that lead to ambiguous sentences. There can be a problem if the sentence is poorly worded in context. You certainly should be careful that, taken in full context, it is clear what is happening. (Or that any ambiguity is deliberate.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am suddenly reminded of some writing advice I came across years ago: A good story should keep the reader wondering what happens next. This is not the same as having the reader wondering what's happening now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T19:11:35.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16829" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16838" CreationDate="2015-04-15T19:39:47.933" Score="6" ViewCount="453" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see basically three possible responses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) Write a rebuttal ranting that this person is a jerk and his criticisms are totally unfair and that he isn't worthy to be spit upon by a great author like yourself, etc. Let's say we rule that out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) Do nothing. Take your lumps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(c) Write a rebuttal pointing out factual errors, but keep it as reasoned and non-argumentative as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I should say that in my case, I wrote a non-fiction book on a somewhat controversial subject, and someone with different beliefs posted a review on Amazon attacking my book that included assertions I consider inaccurate. (I'm thinking that I don't want to be more specific than that to avoid biasing answers by whether or not you agree with me. I'm trying to keep it general.) Perhaps I should add that the book has only gotten 3 reviews -- I'm far from a best-selling author -- and Amazon deleted a very positive review for some reason, so now I've got one positive review and one negative review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts on the above responses, or do you have other ideas? Does the fact that the book is on a controversial subject lead you to give a different answer than if it was, say, a light adventure novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Addendum *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I posted this question over a year ago but someone just posted a new answer, so let me take this opportunity to offer a clarifying comment. (Not saying the new answer indicates a misunderstanding, just that it brought my attention back to this question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that I'm talking here about non-fiction books. This is not the same as what I would say about fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone posts a review saying that the writing style is poor, like &quot;the logic isn't clear&quot; or &quot;the explanations were difficult to understand&quot;, I don't think there's much point to a rebuttal. You can say, &quot;My text is perfectly clear and if you don't understand that's because you're stupid&quot;, but that's unlikely to be productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But suppose a reviewer says, &quot;Dr Jones 1953 book, 'About Stuff', completely refuted the writer's conclusions.&quot; The author might well want to reply that he discussed Dr Jones arguments extensively in chapter 6 and that Dr Smith presented compelling evidence in 1982 that Dr Jones was wrong, and that the reviewer is simply ignoring this. That's the kind of claim made in a negative review that I'm talking about: Not, the writing style is poor, which is largely a matter of opinion and not objectively debatable. But, the writer said X, when in fact I didn't say X. Or, the writer said X which is not true, when in fact I can make a good argument that X is true in a couple of sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've gotten other negative reviews since and I haven't replied to any of them because, frankly, I don't want to sound like I'm whining about a bad review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2016-04-29T05:00:18.607" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T05:00:18.607" Title="What is a productive response to a negative review?" Tags="|non-fiction|marketing|reviews|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16829" CreationDate="2015-04-15T20:29:39.980" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly suggest you do nothing. A) is a very bad idea - it will tarnish your reputation as argumentative and rude. C) could easily be construed as doing A) -- even with the best intentions, someone could take it out of context -- so it's also best to avoid that. As for if my answer would change for a different type of novel, definitely no. This is good advice for anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best guidelines I've seen about this come from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/author/guidelines&quot;&gt;Goodreads&lt;/a&gt; on author reviews:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please do not comment on negative reviews of your book, even if it's just to correct an inaccuracy in the review. Previous experience has shown repeatedly that the only positive reaction to a negative review is to ignore it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many studies have show that a few negative reviews are actually helpful, as they lend validity to the positive reviews on the book's page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a different place on their site: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don’t engage with people who give you negative reviews. We cannot stress this enough. The number one mistake new authors make is to respond to negative reviews. Engaging with people who don’t like your book is not likely to win you any new readers and could lead to members deciding not to read your book. [...] other readers will see a reaction from the author and interpret it as hostile regardless of how carefully the response was crafted. A single negative interaction is often enough to turn a reader off an author permanently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's best to just move on and focus on the positive reviews. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T20:29:39.980" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16842" CreationDate="2015-04-15T23:30:12.550" Score="3" ViewCount="454" Body="&lt;p&gt;A novel that has a theme - that is, something to say, a message - has a weight to it that a novel without a theme cannot achieve. I'm sure there are those that might disagree with this, but I believe it is generally accepted as true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the above in mind therefore, where does this weight, or power, come from? Here's what I mean: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is widely known that you should not preach to your reader, or come right out and express the theme (save in certain circumstances). This, unsurprisingly, leads to an amount of camouflage where the theme is concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every now and then, I will come across a novel that has overused this camouflage. The theme is so well hidden that I do not see it, sometimes until the novel is well over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my question: In books like this which over-hide the theme, is the power of the theme still present, even though the reader doesn't see it? Or does the reader have to see the theme in order for it to have an effect on the reading experience? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask because it can sometimes be difficult to keep the level of 'theme camouflage' in the comfort zone - that is, not staring the reader in the face, but still apparent enough to be seen. If, however, I can bury the theme as far as I want with no risk of losing the power it conveys, this job is made infinitely easier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T15:13:16.933" Title="Where does the power granted by a theme come from?" Tags="|planning|theme|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16831" CreationDate="2015-04-16T01:04:00.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the case of a story I am toying with, the theme (or more accurately, the idea) I am trying to bring across has a bearing on the structure of the story, the plot and the different details I bring out or emphasise in different parts of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since these elements are determined in part by the theme, they should, in theory, cohere well together. Since all the elements of the story are driving at the same goal, they fit together as a whole while adding an additional layer on top. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my mind, it is this coherence and layering that adds weight to a novel with a theme. I'm no writer but my wife is an artist and she has also said as much. To take a lesson from art, the message will have the most effect when it is implicit rather than explicit. How does the lighting and shading, the emotion in the brush strokes and the relationships between the different elements make us feel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same way, the theme shouldn't come out in the writing but in the underlying structures. I suppose it is the same as the &quot;show don't tell&quot; motif; show the theme to the reader as it bubbles up out of your story, coming from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. Don't give them blunt force trauma by making it too explicit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13085" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T01:04:00.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12827" CreationDate="2015-04-16T03:32:27.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best free online translate service:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://translate.google.com/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;It works quite well from English to Chinese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13455" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T03:32:27.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16751" CreationDate="2015-04-16T04:52:12.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Filter words in dialogue don't matter. You can do what you want in dialogue. Would it be cliche to write in a narration that it was raining cats and dogs outside? Yes it would because this is creative writing. Surely you can come up with a better way to describe it raining hard. But if your character runs inside, dripping wet, and exclaims,&quot;Damn. It's raining cats and dogs out there!&quot; Maybe that's how the character talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I &lt;em&gt;watched&lt;/em&gt; her run into the burning building.&quot;&#xA;vs&#xA;&quot;She ran into the burning building.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two will say the same thing to the casual reader. The first is supposedly wrong because of the filter word, but what if the character feels guilty about watching and doing nothing. So there very well can be a time when filter words are just fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13457" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T04:52:12.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16831" CreationDate="2015-04-16T06:05:33.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a cool question. I think in the case you speak of, the author may not have been writing with a specific theme in mind. The author could have just been telling a story, throwing characters into hell and seeing how the characters react so to speak. Some authors don't write with a theme in mind, but let the readers interpret the work how they see fit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the only thing that gives a theme weight is how the theme effects the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13457" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T06:05:33.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16605" CreationDate="2015-04-16T06:20:19.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know why your question got voted down; it's a perfectly legitimate question. Most works I read nowadays (I don't know how we can discuss writing without discussing existing works) don't have that much description. It seems most writers nowadays adhere to the school of minimalism or follow the style of the modernists (Ezra Pound, Hemingway, etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read a lot of Hemingway's short stories, he didn't use a lot of character descriptions. In fact, he doesn't describe the characters at all in &quot;Hills Like White Elephants.&quot; You can get away with not describing the characters. Stein said &quot;I like to see what the characters look like and what they're wearing from the way they talk.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand if you're good with descriptions then why not use them. You have to write to your strengths. If you're bad with descriptions then don't use them; if you're bad at spelling then don't use big words. It worked with Hemingway!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13457" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T06:20:19.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16829" CreationDate="2015-04-16T06:37:34.613" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to write what Nicole wrote, but she already did (+1), so I'm going to write something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;productive&lt;/em&gt; – as in facilitating – response to a negative review is to try your best and forget for a moment that you are in love with your own work (because it is the materialization of what a beautiful and wonderful person you are), and instead take your reader's perspective and look at your work and try to evaluate if maybe there is even the slightest bit of truth about what that reviewer wrote and whether that critique can help you to make your next book even better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all are blind to our own faults, and having them pointed out to us is painful, but facing them is the only way to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean to imply that you must take every review serious. But that you might profit from taking a day once a year to collectively sample them all and consider what they mean. As a writer, you are a business, and your business is trying to sell something to your customers. Ignoring the complaints of your customers will surely lose you some of those customers. Which is why good companies don't get stressed when customers rant at the help desk, but rather try to understand how they can make similar customers happy in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What that means in a non-fiction book and how you can implement that is up to you. Of course, if you are the catholic church and preaching the gospel, you cannot simply include other beliefs in your preaching just to make all the non-catholics happy. But maybe that critique can help you evaluate the manner and style of your writing. Are you discussing facts, or preaching a belief? If your book is &quot;scientific&quot; in the broadest sense, and readers feel offended by your stance, then maybe your writing is not scientific (because scientific writing always allows for a different interpretation of the data). Even the most controversion subjects can be presented cool-headedly. But if your reviewer is a fanatic who is incapable of cool-headed discussions themselves, then certainly ignore them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, both my and Nicole's advice is to remain calm and unaffected. The professional approach is not to confuse yourself with your work, or your readers with your friends. This is difficult in something as emotional as writing, but try to switch between writing mode (where you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; what you write) and sales-person mode (where you sell a product). Once your book is published, you should no longer be in writing mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T06:37:34.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16831" CreationDate="2015-04-16T06:51:22.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The power comes from the fact that the &lt;em&gt;premise&lt;/em&gt; (as it is called) is a commonly accepted truth, something that everyone wants to be true (e.g. in the end, evil gets punished), or something that you manage to show to be true. The latter is the most difficult, but the most powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Search for the book &quot;The Moral Premise&quot; by Stanley D. Williams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T06:51:22.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16840" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16845" CreationDate="2015-04-16T07:50:42.833" Score="3" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a technical manual project for industrial machines and the original documents have some warranty warnings and statements at the beginning. We decided to keep them on the new documents but there were some objections from the team members. They've suggested to separate the warranty chapters from the main manual and handle them as individual documents. Their argument was that the warranty topic is something different from the user's manual and that it should be presented to the customer in a different format. The final decision was to keep them in the main manuals because most of their competitors do include these chapters in their manuals, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is if there are some general rules or common practices on warranty statements in product documentation? How do technical writers handle this subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10460" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T15:05:59.333" Title="What's the common practice for warranty chapters in technical manuals?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16840" CreationDate="2015-04-16T09:43:18.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would put them at the end as appendices. That way they're part of the documentation but not in the way when someone goes to look up a feature. But I actually like the idea of having them as &lt;em&gt;part&lt;/em&gt; of the documentation, because individual documents mean more moving parts, and a smaller physical document (like a warranty) can be easier to misplace than a thick instruction manual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T09:43:18.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16831" CreationDate="2015-04-16T10:49:51.297" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why are people willing to die in a revolution? Why do they sacrifice their lives to charitable work? Why do they protest against injustice even if it's not their own cause?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the inner desire, our inner will to make a change for the better, to cause a memorable impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a book is immersive and the cause presented synergizes with beliefs of the reader, it wakes the same emotions that give a revolutionary the bravery and willpower to charge with a club on armed forces of the dictator. It's a thrill like none other, a true rage, love, hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are prerequisites. The first is excellent writing, because a sloppily written story will not captivate. Next comes immersion. The story must become more for the reader than just a referred tale - it must become a gate to that world, must make them live and feel what the protagonist feels, form a personal, emotional bond instead of just following the facts. And finally, the idea must speak to the beliefs of the reader, to take root in their hearts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why readers will disagree about specific books - some consider given book merely decent, while others will call it brilliant. It's whether the idea was jarring or agreeing with given reader - even if the story itself was good, the &quot;bonus effect&quot; may not be available to all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then we arrive at your last point, the 'camouflage' as you call it. It's nothing else than the basic, most fundamental tenet of a writer: &quot;Show, don't tell.&quot; Instead of shoving that idea down the reader's throat through lectures and rants, it is shown in action. Its effects work their magic on the fictional world, it changes the people, it makes empires crumble. You may not even be able to name the idea, but you can perceive the primal cause of the change and support it, believe in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course if the idea is just a background theme, a side dish to a meaningless action, it won't &quot;catch&quot;, it will remain an unimportant side theme. Too well hidden, as you'd call it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is simple: keep the idea in foreground, make it very important to the characters and events, but hardly ever name it and don't preach about it - instead, show its might through the events, and the impact will be there. If you start preaching, you're badly violating the first rule of writing, &quot;show, don't tell&quot;, and as result the very first prerequisite for the idea to &quot;catch&quot;: &quot;excellent writing&quot;. And if the idea takes a farther place, out of main focus - it gets lost of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T10:49:51.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16831" CreationDate="2015-04-16T14:15:06.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think the power or weight of a message, if well-written, is lost or changed by being camouflaged or not.  Some premises are made very obvious early on (think His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman), but that explicit theme doesn't detract from the book; unless you do not like the message.  If someone is not aligned with your message, it will be rejected regardless of the level of camouflage - it's an innate sense that most people have, and a lack of open-mindedness that causes a well-written message to fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T14:15:06.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16801" CreationDate="2015-04-16T14:21:18.543" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am almost entirely certain that no such thing exists as an actual credential from the APA directly.  However, I would imagine that some programs, maybe at the community college level or other certifying bodies, may offer a certificate as an APA-style editor (or any other style).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a four-year degree in writing and rhetoric, and the track I was in was Writing as a Discipline which would most closely align with something like this, and still no...  no certification (granted my school was primarily an MLA shop, but there was no MLA-certified editor option, either).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that, given the desire and options, you can become &quot;certified&quot; in almost anything.  Johnny's Certification Shack could offer you a cert in APA-style editing.  That doesn't mean that anyone, especially the APA, would be impressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T14:21:18.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16840" CreationDate="2015-04-16T15:05:59.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a decision you need to make in consultation with your company's legal advisors.  The ability to defend against claims is affected by both &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; the warranty says and &lt;em&gt;how prominent&lt;/em&gt; it is.  A separate document or appendix that people are less likely to read might cause problems in this area.  (Never mind that users are trained to skip past all that stuff at the front of manuals in consumer products...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my position I don't have to deal with warranties but I do have to deal with licensing terms, a similar case.  We have restrictions on what you can do with our product based on what license you bought; that text is owned by product management and we technical writers don't alter even one word without discussion.  The placement of that documentation in the doc set (ours is part of the bundle too) was worked out with product management.  I would personally prefer that this be in a separate document (that product management can then maintain), but it's not my decision to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you consult with your product manager if you have one or your team lead otherwise, to make sure you know all the requirements before you act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T15:05:59.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16831" CreationDate="2015-04-16T15:13:16.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least part of why we read is to learn something --that doesn't mean the characters in the story need to learn something, and it doesn't necessarily mean a moral lesson.  You might simply learn what it feels like to be put in an extreme situation, for instance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a theme enhances this sense of learning, and without it, one may feel somehow cheated.  On the other hand if the lesson is too explicit, clumsy, or at odds with the plot, that also feels like being cheated (out of an entertaining and believable narrative with its own sense of integrity).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case that the theme is subtle, the reader could a) miss it entirely, in which case the reader would probably have the same reaction as to a themeless book, b) perceive the theme subconsciously, which may lead the book to feel unexpectedly satisfying or c) discover it belatedly, which, for many readers would be a happy surprise, and a suggestion that the book is worth close study and/or repeated readings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T15:13:16.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16829" CreationDate="2015-04-16T15:21:04.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, a response always legitimizes a critique, so unless a) you have a policy of responding to all reviews, b) you yourself actually think the criticisms are legitimate, or c) the reviewer already has a position of legitimacy &lt;em&gt;higher&lt;/em&gt; than yours (i.e. &quot;Top Reviewer&quot; status), responding is intrinsically counterproductive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T15:21:04.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16848" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-16T15:47:23.160" Score="4" ViewCount="8674" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it correct to use an ampersand and colon in a the title of a newsletter article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Something &amp;amp; Something Else: A Subtitle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it more correct to use the word &quot;and&quot; and a dash:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Something and Something Else - A Subtitle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or a similar combination of either one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13464" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T04:55:39.590" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T04:55:39.590" Title="Use of ampersand, colon and dash in the title of a newsletter article" Tags="|punctuation|titles|journalism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16848" CreationDate="2015-04-16T16:11:29.207" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use a colon rather than a dash and I would write the word 'and' instead of using a symbol. Although colons and dashes are often interchangeable, in this case the extra piece could be considered a 'title' or 'definition' of what went before. Dashes are usually used for extra information. Also, if you look at article titles (in anything I read), they use a colon.&#xA;My comment about 'and' is really just personal preference. I always use the full word unless I am writing notes or space is really precious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T16:11:29.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16654" CreationDate="2015-04-16T16:44:19.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, it's difficult to publish in one country using the language of another.  Even in the U.S., where there is an ever-growing increase in Spanish-speaking persons, it's difficult to find a publisher for Spanish language books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you live in Mexico, reach out to U.S. (or even Canadian) publishing houses with your manuscript.  You're more likely to get a bite.  Then find an agent that can get it translated and published in Mexico in Spanish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T16:44:19.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13050" CreationDate="2015-04-16T18:20:36.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once tried to write a (ten scene) screenplay with only a backstory and an ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started with Scene 1 (basically a &quot;continuation&quot; of the back story). Then I jumped to Scene 10, the ending, followed by Scene 9. I continued writing the story &quot;backwards,&quot; jumping back to scenes 5 and 6 in the middle, finally adding scenes 7 and 8 to connect them to scenes 9 and 10. Then I write scenes 2 and 4, &quot;finishing&quot; with scene 3. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you &quot;start&quot; at the end, and work &quot;backward&quot; until you reach your &quot;backstory.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-04-18T00:23:26.880" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T00:23:26.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16816" CreationDate="2015-04-16T23:27:17.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hate to just answer with links, but this resource is invaluable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T23:27:17.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16854" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-17T00:01:00.847" Score="-2" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am part of a group starting an online, submissions-based journal of critical writing specific to my field. As the writing will be academic, we will need a formal citation process. We have decided to go with Chicago.  However, I am having a tough time finding specific information about using Chicago citations in an online format. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, I am not sure how to adapt Chicago style to an online format. This style was created with the typed and printed page in mind, so I was wondering if there are any guidelines or commonly accepted tweaks to traditional Chicago style that make it more successful in an online format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any resources that can help me with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13469" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-07T00:50:27.147" LastActivityDate="2019-05-07T00:56:34.183" Title="How do I implement a scholarly citation style in an online format?" Tags="|academic-writing|citations|resources|chicago-manual-of-style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3152" CreationDate="2015-04-17T01:24:52.023" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a thesis report, different academic citation systems have different styles. I am more familiar with MLA style rather than Chicago, which someone has already discussed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MLA asks that &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;every paragraph is indented&lt;/a&gt; and that there are no extra lines separating paragraphs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception I know of to this rule is if you have a multi-line paragraph quote from a source and resume your current paragraph after the quote. A good example is on page 7 of &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/16/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this sample essay&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, like people have said, this is usually the typesetter's job if you are submitting something to be published. Usually consistency is the best way to go and can make the typesetter's job easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13470" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T01:24:52.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6941" CreationDate="2015-04-17T03:04:07.837" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You use commas to be grammatically correct or for cadence purposes. The only time there are too many commas is when there are commas where there shouldn't be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get away with not using a comma when you should; it's not going to bother the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: Tyson called Jill and Tyler went to the store. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;^^^That's grammatically incorrect, but your readers won't care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using commas out of place &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; cause a problem. A misplaced comma can make an otherwise normal sentence awkward to read. Your reader &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; care about that. Awkward sentences throw readers out of the story. And most of the time, if not 100% of the time, the comma is misplaced because it's used incorrectly (grammatical error).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13457" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T03:04:07.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16766" CreationDate="2015-04-17T03:13:21.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you are a student. If you are a college student, you should use your school's library. Get in contact with the reference librarian. Ask him or her to help you find materials on the topic you're writing. Hopefully your school has an online database. Ask the reference librarian about that, too. An online database usually will have a myriad of peer review journals on different subjects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find articles on your subject. Jot down notes of what you will like to include in your essay from the sources you read. Make your notes structured from your thesis statement to conclusion, so your entire essay will be well structured; you can transitions through the different facts you use to back your thesis statement more efficiently this way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13457" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T03:13:21.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16848" CreationDate="2015-04-17T03:22:56.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use colon too. Never used a dash in a title before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About &amp;amp; or and, to me, if it's a web article, then I'll use &amp;amp;. But if the article is gonna publish in newspaper or any kind of traditional media, &quot;and&quot; is used a lot; &quot;&amp;amp;&quot; not quite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13440" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T03:22:56.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16848" CreationDate="2015-04-17T14:08:33.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would stick with the colon rather than a dash.  Generally, a colon indicates that what follows is critical information, while a dash tends to imply that the following information is simply an addition and further explains what has already been stated.  It's a matter of perception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the ampersand, I would say it depends on a few things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the publication have or follow a style guide that dictates this&#xA;usage? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the medium?  I tend to disagree with one of the&#xA;comments on an answer above, that it should only be used in&#xA;Web-based media.  In fact, I would say the exact opposite, because&#xA;space is rarely an issue in a fluid medium like a blog or e-zine. &#xA;In print, however, titles/headlines need to be short because space&#xA;is at a premium.  Web media give you more freedom, and at that point&#xA;the question becomes stylistic more so than convention.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12762" LastEditorUserId="12762" LastEditDate="2015-04-17T15:01:17.617" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T15:01:17.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16812" CreationDate="2015-04-17T14:49:19.123" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Active voice is the appropriate choice for all types and sections of technical documentation, and for training and service manuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Microsoft Manual of Style is used by professional technical writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 4th edition (2012) says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, use active voice. Active voice emphasizes the person or thing performing the action. It's more direct than passive voice, which can be confusing or sound formal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use passive voice sparingly. It is all right to use passive voice in the following situations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To avoid a wordy or awkward construction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the action, not the doer, is the focus of the sentence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the subject is unknown.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In error messages, to avoid giving the impression that the user is to blame.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13467" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T14:49:19.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16695" CreationDate="2015-04-17T14:49:30.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will have to decide what is important. If you look at the DZone website, it has links to a large number of blogs. Sometimes these blogs include code and sometimes they don't depending on the purpose and focus of the blog. I would recommend you visit the site and see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T14:49:30.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16865" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16866" CreationDate="2015-04-17T15:14:30.730" Score="2" ViewCount="605" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering about female pet names, like &lt;em&gt;darling&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;sweetie&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;pet&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;babe&lt;/em&gt;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my characters refers to his other half as &quot;pet&quot; but I've been told that this is common to the North East (UK). As my character is from London, I was wondering what pet names are used by Londoners?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried Googling this, but it may be that I have the wrong terminology! I keep getting results for what to call your female animal pet!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All help appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;---EDIT---&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this after I Googled &quot;terms of endearment&quot; - I found it really useful so hopefully someone else will as well! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shesnotfromyorkshire.com/2009/04/29/england-pet-names-and-you/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.shesnotfromyorkshire.com/2009/04/29/england-pet-names-and-you/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13475" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-18T13:07:55.423" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T13:07:55.423" Title="Female Pet Names that a Londoner might use?" Tags="|fiction|novel|characters|word-choice|naming|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16865" CreationDate="2015-04-17T15:49:56.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try looking up &quot;British terms of endearment&quot; instead.  You should find several links. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.englishtown.com/blog/sweetheart-love-darling-typical-british-terms-endearment/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This one looks good&lt;/a&gt; in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12762" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T15:49:56.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16865" CreationDate="2015-04-17T16:59:55.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Terms of endearment are, by their very nature, quite individual. You may want one that is common and doesn't draw attention to itself. In that case go for something like 'darling'. However, if you want to give your character uniqueness, have them use individual terms, such as 'lotus blossom'. Pick something that will reveal something about him or her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also have your character do what some people do: use a set of themed terms, for example, 'possum', 'platypus', 'emu', 'kookaburra'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T16:59:55.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16695" CreationDate="2015-04-17T17:44:26.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often put snippets of code right into bodies of text.  When I do, I typically format it in courier or another fixed-space font, and indent the entire code one or two tabs.  It makes it more obvious that it's code so that uninterested parties can skim past it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T17:44:26.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12399" CreationDate="2015-04-17T17:46:15.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with others who point out that there isn't that much similarity between &quot;Hilfinger&quot; and &quot;Helmin&quot;. They both start with &quot;h&quot; and include an &quot;n&quot;, that's about it. I don't think they're likely to be confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to your basic question, if you had a character named &quot;Hilfinger&quot; and a planet named &quot;Halfamger&quot;, I could see that being confusing to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are many context where it would be obvious which you were talking about. &quot;_____ is wearing a blue shirt today&quot; presumably refers to the person. &quot;_____ has a large ice cap near its north pole&quot; probably refers to the planet. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even sentences that might seem obvious to you when you're writing might confuse a reader. &quot;_____ loves Sally.&quot; My first thought would be that that means the person loves Sally. But maybe the planet loves Sally, in the sense that you might say, &quot;America fell in love with the Beatles.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if all context are crystal clear, a reader might still find himself routinely confused. &quot;Wait, was Hilfinger the name of the person or the planet? Oh yeah ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it may be that you WANT to create an association between a person and an object. You may want to name a character &quot;Robert Stone&quot; because you think the name &quot;stone&quot; creates an image of reliability and ruggedness. Maybe if literal stones play an important part in the story that would cause confusion, but generally not. The difference there would usually be obvious from context. (Like when used as a name it will be capitalized, but presumably not when used to refer to a rock. But what if it happens to be the first word in a sentence?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of which leads me to say: Make all names, whether people, places, ships, animals, whatever, as distinct-sounding as possible, unless you want to create an association between them. Of course I wouldn't get obsessive about it, no need to create formulas to measure how different-sounding two words are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T17:46:15.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16810" CreationDate="2015-04-17T18:31:28.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To find out what publishers are looking for it is best to visit the Submission Guidelines on their website, or visit &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersmarket.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.writersmarket.com&lt;/a&gt;. There is a list of magazines, book publishers, literary agents, ect. and all state what they are looking for. For those that are looking for poetry, they will tell you what form of poetry they are looking for. You can also get this information in book form such as 2015 Writers Market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7878" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T18:31:28.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16871" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-17T20:51:38.627" Score="1" ViewCount="2941" Body="&lt;p&gt;In urban fantasy style fiction with multiple supernatural characters, is it understandable to the reader if race names of each group are a combination of stereotypical species names (such as 'vampire' or 'fairy') with made-up names or regular names that have been altered somehow? A quick example for the sake of my question could be spelling fairy as 'fayree' or using latin/ancient language terms in the name such as 'necro' being part of the created name for zombies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want my story to contain some of the usual creatures of fantasy but I also want to avoid cliches with the trope-y boring names and connotations associated with such. I am worried that creating my own titles alongside normal ones could create too much confusion for the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to assume my reader already relates/has some knowledge of my alternate reality similarly to the way the Sookie Stackhouse books are set. Like, in our relatively current time period, with mostly the same history that the reader is familiar with, except to highlight my created alternate history/difference to explain the fantasy elements existence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice on how to structure narrative to explain any created names/traits etc without info-dumping yet making it easily understandable to the reader that if for instance they read the word 'fayree' without too much background info that they would immediately associate it with the common ideal of fairy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13477" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T21:03:06.587" Title="Creating species/race names for supernatural/fantasy fiction" Tags="|creative-writing|fantasy|naming|world-building|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16872" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-17T21:20:02.993" Score="8" ViewCount="1485" Body="&lt;p&gt;I originally started planning/writing a short story that was more or less based on a few popular trends in YA/Sci-Fi writing (interstellar travel, superpowers, etc) just as an exercise to force myself out of a particularly nasty bout of writer's block - I was very much okay with it having common cliches or tropes. After working on it for a while though, I decided I wanted to try fleshing it out into a longer, more complex work for young adults, so I went back to the original outlines to do a bit of editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I had spent some time developing was a system of superpowers exhibited by a portion of the populace within the text. On the lower end of the spectrum, things like telepathy were present and on the higher end there were more complex, dramatic powers, such as electrokinesis or something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although they do serve a narrative purpose, I &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; eliminate the high spectrum abilities and the plot would still be relatively intact, save for some details that would need to be rewritten; the only real value they have is being showy, or cool, abilities. If anything, big dramatic powers like that can remove some of the work's believability. Keeping them in would simply be for the sake of 'coolness,' and to appeal to the reader - which isn't an inherently bad thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, if an aspect of the narrative is easily replaceable/removable, should I do so?&lt;/strong&gt; Or is the value those details add, though somewhat superficial, worth retaining?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13399" LastEditorUserId="43118" LastEditDate="2021-01-06T22:36:36.710" LastActivityDate="2021-01-06T22:36:36.710" Title="Superpowers in Writing - Cool for the sake of cool" Tags="|plot|editing|science-fiction|world-building|magic-system|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16872" CreationDate="2015-04-17T21:35:21.677" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the strongest writing, everything that's been included by the author has a reason to be there -- adds something relevant to the theme, moves the plot forward, develops a character, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're already suspecting that an item is superficial, then you should probably remove it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wouldn't want an unnecessary element to accidentally remove the reader from his or her immersion in the story. The reading experience should be seamless and smooth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13467" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T21:35:21.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16875" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-18T01:16:28.200" Score="4" ViewCount="1596" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am Australian and have just finished writing a novel. The publisher I will be using is in the USA and uses the Chicago Manual of Style. Because I use UK English, I would prefer to leave my manuscript in the UK style, especially with regard to punctuation, and I would also like to preserve UK English spelling of words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering whether to insist on a UK style guide for editing and publishing, or go with the flow and allow her to use the Chicago Manual of Style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many English speaking authors who are not American use the&#xA;Chicago Manual of Style?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What percentage of British authors, or authors the Commonwealth countries,&#xA;prefer to stay with UK conventions when it comes to punctuation and&#xA;spelling?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be very grateful to receive advice from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind regards, James&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13481" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T18:03:50.683" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T18:03:50.683" Title="Use of the Chicago Manual of Style by UK-English writers" Tags="|style|novel|publishing|punctuation|chicago-manual-of-style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16875" CreationDate="2015-04-18T01:33:19.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, congratulations on landing a publisher! That's one of the hardest steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if this is your first novel (even if not), it's probably best to go with what your publisher wants. If your novel will be published in the US, then it's general practice to have a version with the US standard of style. You can keep the UK style for the UK publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, I have not seen a novel published for the US that was in UK style. It's very jarring for the reader to see a different style. I unknowingly picked up a UK version of a book (I'm in the US), and the single quotes and extra &quot;u&quot;s everywhere almost made me lose my mind before I realized what I was looking at. I'm sure the same goes for UK readers picking up US versions as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could ask your publisher if it's okay for you to stick with UK style, but if they say no, personally, I would just go with the US style for now and use the UK style for when you publish in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T01:33:19.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16872" CreationDate="2015-04-18T04:57:56.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ensuring relevance/believability are key to stories/characters and magic/superpowers. When reading, I become fully immersed in the fictional world that if a power/ability appears 'just for show', the book's credibility weakens to me and I am cautious/fearful any new aspect that is introduced will also end up being a pointless trait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, I do enjoy when powers and their purpose are witheld, not discovered by the hero until the end, are the cause of the conflict to start with or not explicitly described as monumental to the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mix it up a bit, present the abilities as so amazing that the reader believes it's vital to save the day. However, give that power an unusual use by those who possess it, like breathing fire to grill toast! The cool power has a 'reason' to be there, it's unexpected and could add intrigue/humor/character insight etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps, re-purposing the lower/higher spectrum powers like that, could provide a quirky twist to your novel and maintain appeal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also struggle with this in my own writing. I mentally justify those replaceable aspects because of the coolness factor and I loved writing and showing it off... Impressed by my creative pizzazz like, far out! My world and creatures are super duper awesome because they have 17 different powers, shoot fireballs from their eyes while reading minds as they fly around the streets with glowing skin!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, a silly example but adding the superficial drama without reason leads me off track and dilutes my initial plotline. I just step back and re-trace my progress. My personal methods include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Copy and paste! Re-Draft, move sections into different chapters/timelines or write a few versions-eliminate/alter/combine aspects. Replace the ability for another to see where it could go. Or just delete the lot as if it was never there!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Backstory check. In my own writing, I like the powers to be:&#xA;-Consistent with my created story/world history.&#xA;-Believable, not too absurd in comparison to other elements.&#xA;-Memorable, are characters and powers easily distinguishable by the reader or will it be confusing  to follow who does what?&#xA;-Relevant, serving purpose to plot/conflict/character/theme etc that is clearly understood by the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Good old pen and paper. Brainstorming! Word association techniques especially help me when cutting/changing/keeping the superficial studd. I challenge my use of language/words/phrases, weed out stereotypes/connotations or realise opportunties to incorporate the aspects with relevance I couldn't see before! E.g. Shooting eye fire-flame-heat-hot-warmth-snug-love... A potentially destructive power becomes a healing power of warmth and nuturing! &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seek feedback. Find someone (who can be relatively objective) to provide constructive critiscm. They could read your draft and comment. I like informal sessions, explaining a brief rundown plot etc like, &quot;in X world, X exists and can do X magic...&quot; and so forth. I have had good breakthroughs with friends, particularly when they aren't a fan of the genre, a writer or creatively-minded. Our opposite tastes and opinions have come together to help shape/recreate my story. I find this so valuable and a great creative outlet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, these are my personal steps to help shape believable plots where fantasy/magic etc is involved. It can be tricky to seamlessly concoct a believable fantasy tale with flashy superpowers to engage the YA reader. Relevance is still key though, avoiding cliches and bulking up prose with useless aspects can be at the expense of important plot devices/storytelling/character-building etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the above are basic techniques that can be applied any time. But whenever I get carried away in my world-building etc, instead of complicating it further by trying to create meaning/add information to justify aspects, it's a great to take a little bit of time and just simplify the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13477" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T04:57:56.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16875" CreationDate="2015-04-18T05:54:41.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;(a) You certainly don't want to aggravate your publisher. It is perfectly fine to ask them if you can keep the UK style, but if they decline I would not &quot;insist&quot;, as you plan to do, but defer to their greater experience. I would ask them to explain their reasons, because I want to learn something, but I certainly wouldn't argue about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) It's only punctuation and spelling. Who cares. Unlike Nicole I hardly ever notice whether the novel I'm reading is formatted according to US or UK English. Single or double quotes? I'm reading novels with French quotes, no quotes at all around dialoge or em dashes at the beginning of dialoge lines without blinking. &quot;Color&quot; or &quot;colour&quot;? With the internet everyone is used to both spellings. What I really find jarring are feet and inches! I have to do calculations to know how tall a person is! Or pounds, shilling and pence and other ancient currencies. Be glad they don't insist on changing the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-04-18T05:59:47.207" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T05:59:47.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16879" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-18T05:55:47.673" Score="8" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I gasped. Tom swallowed. He &lt;strong&gt;was&lt;/strong&gt; also surprised by the maid's sudden appearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case the narrator is &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; talking about Tom's feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I gasped. Tom swallowed. He also &lt;strong&gt;seemed&lt;/strong&gt; surprised by the maid's sudden appearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is more indirect; the narrator is just assuming what the other character feels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one is better for fiction? Is the first case common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2020-02-13T19:02:20.133" Title="Is it OK for a first person narrator to directly state the other character's emotions?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16879" CreationDate="2015-04-18T07:57:45.377" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First person narrators can't know what's going on inside someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they can &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; they know.&#xA;And can narrate as if they know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a key advantage of first person narrators. They can be unreliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mindreading.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I like your first example better... with some caveats.&#xA;The narrator presumes to know what is going on inside Tom.&#xA;That kind of &quot;mind-reading&quot; fantasy is common in us humans.&#xA;And it's a potentially interesting character flaw.&#xA;If you want us to think the character is flawed in that way,&#xA;this is fine way to illustrate the flaw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summarizing.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The second narrator uses the word &quot;seemed.&quot;&#xA;This makes me think the narrator is observing something.&#xA;But the narrator isn't telling us the observations, the sensory details that lead to &quot;seemed.&quot;&#xA;Instead, the narrator summarizes the details, so that we can't share them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of summarizing is a potentially interesting character trait.&#xA;That is,&#xA;perhaps the narrator isn't aware of the sensory details,&#xA;but instead leaps to a guess about the feelings.&#xA;Being aware of guessing is a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it will make it hard for the narrator to tell the story well.&#xA;If the narrator can't give us readers the sensory details,&#xA;it will be harder for us to share in the experience.&#xA;That's a problem for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sensory details.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If you don't mean to illustrate those character flaws&#xA;(mindreading, summarizing, or other form of unreliability),&#xA;it's probably better to have the narrator give us the sensory details.&#xA;What did the narrator &lt;em&gt;see or hear&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;that led to those guesses about the other person's feelings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the narrator tells us the sensory details,&#xA;the narrator &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; then conclude&#xA;something about the other person's feelings.&#xA;We readers,&#xA;having seen both the details and the conclusion,&#xA;can then judge for ourselves&#xA;whether the narrator's conclusions seem reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or the narrator might tell us the sensory details&#xA;and let &lt;em&gt;us&lt;/em&gt; form conclusions&#xA;about the other person's feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T07:57:45.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16879" CreationDate="2015-04-18T13:33:37.983" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best strategy would be to let the reader come to the conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tom swallowed at the maid's sudden appearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T13:33:37.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16197" CreationDate="2015-04-18T16:41:43.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have &amp;quot;too few chapters,&amp;quot; it's probably a sign that your story doesn't have enough complexity. Here's an example of how to re-work it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Act I, Scene I: The heroine needs some information to solve a problem. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Act I, Scene II: The heroine looks for, and fails to find the information. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Act I, Scene III: The heroine finds the information &lt;strong&gt;but it fails to solve her problem.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Act II, Scene I: The heroine redefines her problem.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Act II, Scene II: The heroine begins a new information search.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Act III, Scene III: The heroine still fails to solve the problem, but meets the hero as a &amp;quot;consolation prize.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Act III, Scene I: The hero takes over the problem-solving exercise.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Act III, Scene II: Heroine finally solves the problem with help of hero.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Act III, Scene III: Heroine gets hero as added bonus (if that's what she wants), or else the chance to &amp;quot;dump&amp;quot; him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note how I took your basic story (Act I) and &lt;strong&gt;tripled&lt;/strong&gt; it in length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T16:41:43.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16442" CreationDate="2015-04-18T18:02:48.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even between two people of similar ideologies, they can vary in the degree of &quot;hardness&quot; or &quot;softness.&quot; Take two Reagan Republicans that I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is right wing, and &quot;tea party&quot; down the line. The other has a way of occasionally &quot;running left,&quot; e.g. by going on a radio show in 1988 as a &quot;Republican for Dukakis.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One will accuse the other of &quot;leaving the reservation.&quot; The other will respond by citing allegiance to &quot;cloth coat&quot; Republicans like Nixon and Reagan, and being uncomfortable with the aristocratic Bush. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another dynamic: The &quot;true blue&quot; Republican is a WASP. The Dukakis person is an &quot;ethnic&quot; and was swayed in part of by Dukakis' ethnicity (and reassured by the presence of Lloyd Bentsen on the ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T18:02:48.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6568" CreationDate="2015-04-18T19:00:52.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my own fiction, I'm &quot;autobiographical&quot; with ONE of the main characters. That's the best way for me to keep track of everything that's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, my character is the protagonist, and he speaks for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes my character is the antagonist, with the protagonist being my &quot;date.&quot; (Trying to see yourself  through the eyes of your dates is quite an exercise in and of itself.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in one case, I'm the heroine's grandfather, not exactly a &quot;main&quot; character, but close enough to &quot;know&quot; (and shape) my character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T19:00:52.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16425" CreationDate="2015-04-18T20:27:52.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Planning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decide where your editorial calendar will live. Possible options include Google Calendar, Podio, Trello, and Asana. Each of these systems is great for multi-user management, and all of them have free versions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Start building&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with a calendar that marks important dates. For instance, if I'm a romance writer, I'll be sure to include Valentine's Day. National holidays are a great start, but don't forget about silly &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.holidayinsights.com/moreholidays/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;national day of ____&lt;/a&gt;&quot; ones. Also include any publication dates you're aware of for articles coming up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, figure out your goals for publication. Whether you publish 5 articles a day or 12 per year, enter those slots into your calendar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you have the skeleton of a plan. Fill in each slot with proposed author and topic, and work backwards to fill in deadlines. If you know you need a week of writing time per article, set deadlines for content a week prior to each slot. Set reminders for yourself to make it easy to remember.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How far in advance you plan is completely up to you, but I'd recommend at least a few months into the future. Many publications have an idea of their ed schedule a year or more in advance. Examples &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smithpublicity.com/2014/01/tips-use-editorial-calendars-get-media-coverage-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you manage more than one section, I'd suggest separating them into multiple systems. Most of the suggested systems above make that easy (ex: different Trello boards, separate Google calendars).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13441" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T20:27:52.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6568" CreationDate="2015-04-18T22:34:52.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The author of &quot;Kick Ass&quot; said that every major character in the story was partially autobiographical, including the hero and villain, in that either at some point in his life he wanted to be that character or felt that he had a lot in common with that character. Every major character in his story is distinct. None are Mary Sue. Why not? he took a ridiculous premise to it's logical conclusion: incompetent kid decides he is going to be a superhero, so he gets beat almost to death. The true problem is not being fantasy-autobiographical but the tendency towards unmitigated wish fulfillment. You need conflict, consequences and catastrophe. If you write a happy ending your character has to work for it. This is why writing romance is hard, because in romance you always have a happy ending. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T22:34:52.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16889" CreationDate="2015-04-19T00:56:41.127" Score="-4" ViewCount="1642" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reading a book in lit class, called &lt;em&gt;Cry, the Beloved Country&lt;/em&gt; and I'm not sure what exactly that title is supposed to mean, so: &quot;What does the phrase &quot;Cry, The Beloved Country&quot; mean when used in the novel? (Pg 105)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HELP!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13491" LastActivityDate="2015-04-19T01:39:13.663" Title="Cry, the beloved country title meaning" Tags="|book|titles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-04-19T17:34:27.043" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16888" CreationDate="2015-04-19T01:39:13.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often, I've found that, if the title doesn't make sense right away, it won't make sense until you read the entire book. The frame of the book's context should help you to figure out the meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did a brief search for the title meaning and found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shmoop.com/cry-the-beloved-country/title.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this.&lt;/a&gt; Here's a few excerpts to help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, there is the &amp;quot;Cry,&amp;quot; which is an order to someone. It's basically saying, hey you! Cry!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part of the title tells us who the &amp;quot;Cry!&amp;quot; is addressing: &amp;quot;the Beloved Country.&amp;quot; The beloved country is, of course, South Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in Paton's own words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, Paton writes, in his note on the 1987 edition of the book, that the phrase Cry, the Beloved Country, &amp;quot;was written by one who indeed had loved the earth deeply, by one who had been moved when the birds of his land were singing&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-19T01:39:13.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16872" CreationDate="2015-04-19T02:17:27.930" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answering more from a reader's perspective than a writer's, I'd prefer the version without the &quot;cool for cool&quot; powers --whenever I read something like that, it just seems like the writer being self-indulgent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also run the risk of introducing plotholes.  For instance, in the Harry Potter series, there are a number of over-powered magical devices (the &quot;time turners&quot; which allow a limited form of time travel being the best example) which seem as though they could have been used to easily solve many of the series' main problems.  Obviously it wasn't a fatal problem for HP, and might not be for you either, but it is an avoidable risk.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final argument for dropping the SUPER-super powers --you don't want them to lower the cool factor of the normal superpowers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-04-19T02:17:27.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16599" CreationDate="2015-04-19T04:22:11.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As well as being a writer, I am a graphic designer and sign maker.  I photograph the signs I make and include those photos and also images of logos I have designed, in my advertising materials:  Web site, pamphlets, catalogue, and signs.  In that regard, if I have read your question properly, I am doing much the same as you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unless you have assigned the copyright to the company you designed&#xA;the ad for, then the copyright for the design remains with you;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in any case, it is highly unlikely that a business is going to take&#xA;legal action against you for advertising their goods or services at&#xA;no cost to themselves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless I have misunderstood your question, if it were me, I wouldn't worry about it - you are doing them a favour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind regards,  James&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13481" LastActivityDate="2015-04-19T04:22:11.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16894" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-19T14:57:18.400" Score="2" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to use the same initial small cap rule of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.tw/search?q=%22The%20bone%20clock%22%20wikipedia&amp;amp;oq=%22The%20bone%20clock%22%20wikipedia&amp;amp;gs_l=serp.3..33i21.4059.5805.0.5887.10.10.0.0.0.0.212.901.0j4j2.6.0.msedr...0...1c.1.64.serp..5.5.699.xlTwXw61kHs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Bone Clocks&lt;/a&gt; by David Mitchell. But I still can't figure it out. Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TALKING HEADS’ Fear of Music is on my record player, so I lower the&#xA;  stylus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OUTSIDE NATWEST BANK on Milton Road, I run into Brendan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ON MONDAY, I’LL get a key cut for Vinny’s front door, but today I go&#xA;  the usual secret way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;THE BACK DOOR’S never locked ’cause Vinny’s lost the key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HOLLY SYKES AND the Weird Shit, Part 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BY THREE O’CLOCK, my whole head’s parched, not just my mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AROUND FOUR O’CLOCK I get to a strip of shingly beach by a wooden&#xA;  groyne thing sloping into the river.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I FILL MY lungs with one of Brubeck’s Dunhills. That’s better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first phrases of the scene? But then how come the &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; in HOLLY SYKES AND is also being included? I'm confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T13:08:39.547" Title="What's the initial small caps rule of this book?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16894" CreationDate="2015-04-19T19:06:03.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at a sample of the book it seems obvious to me that the use of capital letters is rather arbitrary. It doesn't enhance the text, in my opinion. Actually, it looks like rather lazy editing to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-04-19T19:06:03.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16897" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-19T21:09:06.937" Score="7" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should footnotes be attached to a text that doesn't form pages? Say, a lengthy text, over 10,000 words as a single webpage but with formatting limited to static text; I have no options to make them a hyperlink or tooltip, there's no margin to put them on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw approaches like placing them at the end of the text, at the end of a section, after the paragraph they describe - and all seemed to come with their own disadvantages, like need to find the footnote, need to return to the place where the footnote was referred from, or disrupting the flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the best way to attach footnotes to such text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-25T09:14:19.037" LastActivityDate="2018-04-25T09:14:19.037" Title="How should footnotes be used in non-paginated media?" Tags="|formatting|footnotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16654" CreationDate="2015-04-20T01:53:28.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you might be able to do locally, and this might be really fun -- would be to serialize your work in a local English newspaper or magazine.  Think of Dickens!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T01:53:28.410" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16695" CreationDate="2015-04-20T03:14:33.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pages.github.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GitHub pages&lt;/a&gt;, which allows you to keep your script and to post the analyses in the blog, may fill the bill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow the README in &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/barryclark/jekyll-now&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this project&lt;/a&gt;, you'll dig it out within less than one hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13492" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T03:14:33.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16897" CreationDate="2015-04-20T06:42:33.183" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Four options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look at Wikipedia. All the footnotes are at the bottom of the page but linked to from the footnote number (and in turn linking back up to the referring anchor). Familiarize yourself with HTML to understand how in-page links work, if you need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Link to footnote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rujpe.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Link from footnote back to the refering footnote number:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FF03T.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have clicking the footnote link &quot;open&quot; a small CSS popup (not a separate window but a DIV that changes the CSS &lt;code&gt;display&lt;/code&gt; value from &lt;code&gt;none&lt;/code&gt; to &lt;code&gt;block&lt;/code&gt;) on top of the text. Clicking anywere again &quot;closes&quot; the popup (i.e. returns the value to &lt;code&gt;none&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NhyCG.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can combine option 1. and 2., as it is done on Wikipedia and some scientific online journal sites.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Put the footnotes in a side margin beside the text. This can look very beautiful, if layouted well, and looks something like the side notes or short paragraph summaries in early modern texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5LB4l.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some text editors or formatting languages like (La)TeX offer specific functions for this. Google &quot;margin notes&quot; and the name of your text editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q1tvb.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example with figures in the margin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/05IBX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As insets, similar to in-text images. Again, most text software offers functions for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sAWb7.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following thoughts might guide you in your choice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Footnotes at the end intrude on the reader the least and are therefore best used for information not necessary to the understanding, such as sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the notes contain relevant information such as explanations of terms or examples to abstract explanations in text, they are better placed closer to the text they refer to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are style guides such as APA that discourage the use of footnotes and prefer inline citations instead, e.g. &quot;(Scholes, 1983, p. 43)&quot;. In online journals these nevertheless often link to the respective entry in the bibliography which, in a one-page online article, appears at the foot of the page, effectively forming footnotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-04-20T11:34:13.767" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T11:34:13.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16894" CreationDate="2015-04-20T13:08:39.547" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not able to find a sample of the book, but, from what you've posted above, it looks like the author decided to capitalize the first three words of each section, as noted in the comments above. That first one is different because &quot;Fear of Music&quot; needs to be set apart from the artist. I've seen many big authors use this capitalization technique; it's just used to further introduce a new scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T13:08:39.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-20T15:18:21.900" Score="0" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I've always been interested in marine biology, &lt;strong&gt;as far as I can&#xA;remember&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;As far as I can&#xA;remember&lt;/strong&gt;, I've always been interested in marine biology,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Of course&lt;/strong&gt;, we can't just set all criminals free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can't just set all criminals free, &lt;strong&gt;of course&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe a good rule is to put them at the beginning if the main sentence is long, and at the end if the main sentence is short?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T17:15:15.957" Title="How do you decide where to place a filler?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16904" CreationDate="2015-04-20T15:38:44.410" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about what fillers are used for. They can be habitual. For example, some people start every utterance with 'well'. Mostly, they are used to give the person a little bit more time to think. Work out when your character most needs that time (at the beginning because they don't know what to say or half way through because they don't know what to say next) and then place them there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to be careful of: Don't overuse them. Remember you are trying to represent real life, not copy it exactly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T15:38:44.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16904" CreationDate="2015-04-20T16:53:35.960" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You (usually) should put the thing first that you want to emphasize.  But speech can be different, since it is also characterization.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hesitant or unsure character might habitually tack qualifiers to the ends of his statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A dog is a mammal, I think.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;People should be nice to children, I suppose.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If you take one step closer I'll shoot you -- and don't think I won't, because I will.  I'll shoot you; I'm not kidding.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very logical person might habitually preface his statements with qualifiers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;According to folklore, Santa lives at the North Pole.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Most societies would say your mother is worthy of respect.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Considering your past betrayals, I'll slit your throat if you even&#xA;  twitch.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, of course, a muddle-headed (or brilliant) person will habitually have qualifiers all over his statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been said, perhaps with some overstatement, that love -- that&#xA;  is, &quot;romantic love&quot; -- conquers all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I know he's lying, because he said he petted a penguin at the North&#xA;  Pole, and penguins live only at the South Pole -- or, more properly,&#xA;  in the southern reaches of the southern hemisphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm sure everyone would agree that Aunt Betty, God rest her soul, was&#xA;  the best seamstress in the northwest suburbs of Dubuque, or at least&#xA;  one of the top five still living as of three days ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T16:53:35.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16904" CreationDate="2015-04-20T17:15:15.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Filler is just like metadiscourse. Don't use them, just get straight to your point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13485" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T17:15:15.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16910" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16919" CreationDate="2015-04-20T18:07:00.373" Score="0" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you have multiple sources for information like a quote, which source do you use in your book or essay. The one you may have gotten from an authors work about what a particular individual said or do you cite this persons original work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example I have this passage in a book I'm reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) believed that intercourse with a pregnant woman was a mortal sin only when there was a danger of miscarriage (Commentary on the Sentences 4, 31, 2, 3)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in my essay or book I wanted to say that Aquinas believed intercourse with a pregnant woman was sinful, do I cite the author's work above for my source or find exactly what Aquinas said in &lt;em&gt;Commentary on the Sentences&lt;/em&gt; and cite that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13485" LastEditorUserId="13485" LastEditDate="2015-04-20T21:01:22.200" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T14:14:58.727" Title="Who do I cite as my source?" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16910" CreationDate="2015-04-20T19:33:01.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cite the (or &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt;) source that &lt;em&gt;you used&lt;/em&gt;.  If you read it in Book A and that book says it came from Book B, you cite Book A because that's your source.  If you choose to follow the reference and see it in Book B yourself, then you could cite either A or B (you used both).  In that kind of situation, it's generally best to cite the source that's closest to &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; source -- why cite A who cites B if you can cite B directly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why shouldn't you cite B if you read it in A and you think A is reliable?  Well, partly because sometimes sources get it wrong -- B might not really say what A says it does.  But, more broadly, any author who's found to do this sort of thing -- citing a source that he didn't actually verify directly -- calls into question &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of his citations.  If you think A is reliable then either (a) your readers probably do too, so citing A means something, or (b) you can explain why A is reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T19:33:01.750" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16910" CreationDate="2015-04-20T19:38:09.573" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Always cite the original work, even if you have to spend time finding the details like the publisher and the year. You must give the original source the credit. Only use a secondary source if you need to criticise the use of the quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using secondary sources can lead to tralatitious activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastEditorUserId="13409" LastEditDate="2015-04-20T19:43:14.233" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T19:43:14.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16910" CreationDate="2015-04-20T19:44:09.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both the MLA Handbook and the APA Manual state that in academic writing you must have read what you cite. Since you cannot have read a source of which you know only a short passage quoted in another text, you must get the original, read it, and cite that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is that any citation might misrepresent the original or withhold relevant information or that you might come to completely different conclusions than the secondary author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may cite from a secondary source only if it was not possible for you to get hold of the original source, which, in this time of online publications, interlibrary loan and digitized texts, is a rare occurrence and needs to be explained in text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not having enough time to read all the relevant literature is no excuse. When you do research you must read everything, otherwise your research will be irrelevant. If you are not doing research and cannot read everything, then you must not quote what you haven't read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2015-04-21T13:04:00.133" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T13:04:00.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16872" CreationDate="2015-04-20T21:43:38.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;YMMV as to how relevant this is, but basically superpowers = magic. And there is no one who has more clearly thought through the necessity and workings of magic in the context of a novel than author brandon sanderson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not really sure what role your magic/superpowers are going to play in your story, you should take a look at this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13501" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T21:43:38.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16915" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-20T21:47:38.480" Score="1" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written out an APA citation page. I will attach a link to the page below. I have been told that there is an issue with the way my journal names have been presented and also one issue with one of the issue numbers. I can't see a single problem with any of these things. Can someone please help me out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vOmUnuoNToaycWkoUTD6YLbcLpi7xtlHJ5Nf01E7tHE/edit?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vOmUnuoNToaycWkoUTD6YLbcLpi7xtlHJ5Nf01E7tHE/edit?usp=sharing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13502" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-16T08:59:46.557" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T15:08:51.430" Title="APA Citation Page - problems with issue number and journal names" Tags="|style|academic-writing|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2015-04-21T11:11:05.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on your location, you may be best off finding a local print shop, preferably one near some campus; these have very low prices on printing in bulk, and offer binding services in very reasonable prices - services like thermal binding cost very little and scale well with size of the book. You save up on the shipping costs (which, in case of ~200 books may contribute quite a bit). You are not getting entirely &quot;publisher quality&quot; product, but still something you can show or gift without shame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That solution doesn't really scale well - 200 is possibly already above the &quot;break even&quot; margin of other suggested solutions; for 400 you're sure to get a better deal on a dedicated printers' service. But if you're in a market for 25 or 50 copies, you'll most likely come out ahead of these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, the referred &quot;thermal binding&quot; is fine for novels, books you read up to a dozen times or open three times a year. It's not good for references, textbooks and other &quot;heavy use&quot; applications - after being open 30 times on the same page the book starts coming apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T11:11:05.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16910" CreationDate="2015-04-21T11:39:16.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reference the quotes AND associated conclusions to respective authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have two options in this case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;silently agree with the author of &quot;Commentary...&quot; and express their &lt;em&gt;opinion&lt;/em&gt; as your own, supporting it with quote &lt;em&gt;from Thomas Aquinas&lt;/em&gt;, and restrict your credit to relevant parts in the original &quot;Sentences&quot; - likely as sourced in the &quot;Commentary&quot;. This way you used &quot;Commentary&quot; only as a learning resource that aided you in finding the respective source and aided you in forming your own opinion. You don't quote it, you quote Thomas Aquinus and express your own conclusions which happen to be similar to &quot;Commentary&quot; ones - you state &quot;Aquinas believed intercourse with a pregnant woman was sinful&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;refer opinion stated in the Commentary and present your own position in regard of that. Provide a quote &lt;em&gt;from &quot;Commentary...&quot;&lt;/em&gt; and credit it with relevant references *to the &quot;Commentary...&quot;. Include the full framing of the quote including opinion of the &quot;Commentary&quot; author and then express your opinion on that: &quot;The author of 'Commentary on the Sentences' believes Aquinas believed intercourse with a pregnant woman was sinful. Considering the quotes presented from the original &lt;em&gt;Sentences&lt;/em&gt; I'm inclined to agree with that conclusion.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's up to you to choose the right option. If the quoted &lt;em&gt;Sentences&lt;/em&gt; unambiguously support your thesis, go with (1) for clear, strong impact. If the quote is not so obvious, paraphrased, explained in finer details, referred etc, go with (2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the specific case you presented I don't see a single word directly quoted from Aquinas; this would mean you aren't referencing or quoting the source material - you are following the analysis, so (2) is the correct choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T11:39:16.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16910" CreationDate="2015-04-21T14:14:58.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have noted, you cite the source that you actually used. If A quotes or describes B, and you have read A but have not read B (whether because it's not available, you just didn't bother, or whatever), then you cite A. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is generally considered better to go to original sources. If some later writer says that Aquinas said sex with a pregnant woman is a sin -- and let me interject here that I have no idea what Aquinas said on the subject, I've read pieces of the Summa but I've skipped many pieces too -- the later writer may be misquoting Aquinas or applying his own interpretation to something ambiguous. If you were to say, &quot;Aquinas said X&quot; because some other writer claims he said X, that would simply be wrong. Especially if the writer did not give the exact quote, but even with an exact quote, you could be missing the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your point is to say, &quot;this is what Aquinas&quot; said, you should go to the source and read and quote (and cite) Aquinas. It's easy enough to get copies of Aquinas on the web these days. If your point is to say, &quot;this is how so-and-so interprets Aquinas&quot;, than you should quote (and cite) so-and-so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers will give a citation like, &quot;Aquinas, as quoted in ...&quot;. This is a reasonable thing to do if the original source is difficult to obtain. Like if he's quoting a book that is no longer in print and you can't find a copy. It's most clearly valid if the original book no longer exists, like if you're quoting a book written in AD 300 that quotes an earlier book and that earlier book has been lost to history. But for something easily available like Aquinas, for a scholarly paper I'd just get the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T14:14:58.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16654" CreationDate="2015-04-21T20:43:10.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is possible to get an English language book published in Mexico or any non-native language book published in foreign countries. I've listed two ways you could go below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find yourself a literary agent. A literary agent will handle all the work for you in reaching out to publishers and negotiating international rights. I did some googling and found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/literary-fiction-agents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/literary-fiction-agents&lt;/a&gt; but I'd suggest reaching out to some local writers groups in your area and see if you can find any connections through them or reading up on industry news through sources like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publishersweekly.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.publishersweekly.com/&lt;/a&gt; and see if you can find new agents that are accepting submissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Submit your work directly to publishing houses, specifically ones that have Spanish language divisions. This is probably not going to be as successful as going through an agent as editors tend to prefer to deal with authors who have agents.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13509" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T20:43:10.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16924" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-21T23:43:13.793" Score="0" ViewCount="3043" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am participating in a skit in school about superstition and science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much will the presence of emotion attract the attention of the audience? What are other important things to attract attention of audience or to give them a message?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13513" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T18:01:04.400" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T18:01:04.400" Title="What is the most important element of a drama, beside its message?" Tags="|technique|screenwriting|playwriting|dramatic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-04-27T03:53:40.423" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16924" CreationDate="2015-04-22T00:23:24.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I've been told, there are two important parts to a drama: 1) story (or &quot;message&quot; in your words), and 2) characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's because the characters are the medium by which your message is conveyed, and the interaction of the characters produces the plot, or &quot;storyline.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T00:23:24.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-22T12:44:11.007" Score="6" ViewCount="528" Body="&lt;p&gt;When critiquing another's writing I find myself making suggestions that are clearly biased toward how I would write the work. This effect seems particularly prevent for poetry, where suggestions are clearly biased by my preference for regularity (especially in meter), certain emotional expressions, and imagery and oblique references. (Poetry also tends to have a density of expression that justifies detailed analysis and a personal character that makes preferences easier to feel and more dangerous to express.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the problem is disentangling my own preferences from a more general perception of quality. My suggestions usually &lt;em&gt;seem&lt;/em&gt; to provide general improvement even when I can clearly see that they are strongly biased by my own leanings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While declaring my bias would help avoid imposing my preferences on a less confident writer, I think it would be helpful indicate in what ways suggestions lean toward more general quality improvements. However, I may not easily discern &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; I prefer a particular rephrasing beyond my own biases. Sometimes providing more than one rephrasing suggestion would help, allowing some variation in style or tone, but such does not seem practical for verse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some disciplines and techniques to help avoid imposing my biases while still giving effective criticism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I also have significant biases in non-fiction in terms of organization, tone, and other aspects, it at least seems that I can more readily disentangle these preferences from more general quality concerns and to some degree accept different tones than I would prefer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect broader reading would help, but my motivation for specifically reading things I do not like is low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T21:52:53.757" Title="How does one avoid imposing one's own voice and preferences in critiques?" Tags="|creative-writing|poetry|criticism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16926" CreationDate="2015-04-22T13:12:45.663" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in a few writers' groups over the last five or so years (am in one now as well), so I'm speaking from experience, not hard facts, so take what you will from it. Also, I critique mostly prose, not poetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing I've learned from these groups is to &lt;strong&gt;value your own opinion&lt;/strong&gt;. If you don't like something, even for reasons you can't pin down, it's likely that someone else that person shares their work with (be it another critiquer or a future reader) will share that same view. Even if it's your personal bias, you aren't the only one who thinks that way. Share your concerns with that person: &lt;strong&gt;they aren't obligated to take your advice&lt;/strong&gt;, but if you don't point it out, they'll never know there was even a concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are asking for your advice, which they will realize comes with your own personal biases. You said &lt;em&gt;&quot;they are strongly biased by my own leanings.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; That's okay. We learn, and by imparting  our knowledge to someone else, you're helping them grow as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for imposing yourself on less confident writers, be honest with them, but don't hold back your opinion (for the same reasons above). While they may be a little more sensitive, if they are truly serious about writing, they will need to learn to take critiques with a grain of salt. That was a very hard lesson for me when I was first starting out, but it was a valuable one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I would share your opinion, no matter how biased, because they are asking for your help. Be honest with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastEditorUserId="11151" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T21:52:53.757" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T21:52:53.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16926" CreationDate="2015-04-22T13:39:35.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Paul, thank you for asking this question. I have the same concerns, and thinking about them helped me clarify some things for myself. Maybe my thoughts can be of help to you, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that you are widely read. You have read both a lot and quite a few different authors, genres and styles. Your bias, while it may be personal, is therfore by no means arbitrary or the result of some lack. On the contrary, what you perceive as a bias is &lt;strong&gt;an insight&lt;/strong&gt;. It may be one truth among many, but it is nevertheless &lt;em&gt;not wrong&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, critique, from the perspective of the author, should always involve &lt;strong&gt;multiple sources&lt;/strong&gt;. On the whole, these sources, no matter how biased they may be individually, will complement or contradict or support each other. No author should ever follow the advice of one single reviewer (unless it is the publisher, maybe), but instead form some kind of &lt;strong&gt;average&lt;/strong&gt; from all the feedback given him or her – and then run it through the filter of their own personal bias and on the basis of that feedback &lt;strong&gt;do whatever feels right to them&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of these two aspects, I believe the best you can do is &lt;em&gt;not falsify your opinion&lt;/em&gt; (out of a well-meaning but mislead concern for an objectivity you can never achieve anyway), but rather attempt to &lt;strong&gt;communicate yourself honestly&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes without saying that you will best meet your goal of not imposing yourself on the recipient of your critique if you make that communication in a friendly manner and without the gesture of being in possession of the only truth. I assume you do that anyway. I usually explicitly encourage the recipient of my critique to get other feedback to verify or falsify what I say, especially if I am not part of the work's target audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for beginning writers, I think the best feedback is not to point out everything that may be wrong (or deviating from your idea of good writing), because if there is much wrong the sheer amount of negative feedback will only be overwhelming and discouraging. What I find helpful is to find the one to three things that can most easily be corrected and keep silent about the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My son is in second grade now and he is in the middle of the process of learning to read and write. He makes &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; mistakes, but his teachers, when I see his corrected homework or exams, don't mark every single mistake. His papers would be red all over, and he would certainly feel ashamed for failing so extremely and never want to read or write again. Instead, the teacher marks up only those errors that are relevant to what they are currently learning. That way, there are only one or two errors, my son feels proud, and, motivated by doing to well, he memorizes what he did wrong and will do it correctly from now on. In the next test, the next problem can be tackled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Handle beginning writers in the way you would young pupils – gentle and kind –, and you will make it possible for them to accept your critique, to learn, and to make progress. Which is what your critique (of a beginner) shoud be aiming for. Only professionals need a concise list of everything they need to work on so they can sit down and take care of it all in an efficient manner. Every non-professional needs at least a bit of praise and goals that are not too high. With beginners, the goal that you have as a reviewer is not a perfect text, but that they are motivated to write the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T14:20:20.057" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T14:20:20.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5773" CreationDate="2015-04-22T14:02:57.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's probably a bit late, but there is a brand new web that could be interesting for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If what you want is something similar to IMDB, I am using since some weeks a site called abookado: &lt;a href=&quot;http://abookado.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://abookado.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13516" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T14:02:57.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16926" CreationDate="2015-04-22T14:33:30.180" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @what sensibly points out, just because you have an opinion doesn't mean it's wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mention your biases up front. &quot;I really enjoy rhyming poetry, and free verse doesn't work for me on an aesthetic level. That being said, if you do X and Y, you'll improve the tone of the line.&quot; If you don't want to feel like you're imposing, emphasize that your preference is one solution among many, and explain that you are making this suggestion &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; it's your preference/bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an editor, I often like to ask &quot;What's your goal here? If you want to do A, this is fine. If you're trying to do B, on the other hand, this doesn't accomplish that, and you should try XYZ instead.&quot; So you're asking the writer to examine what s/he wants to do with the work, and making broad suggestions of paths to take. How the author executes that suggestion is up to him/her, but you've at least made the person think about the end result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T18:37:24.477" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T18:37:24.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5773" CreationDate="2015-04-22T14:54:34.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Goodreads is my choice for searching books, when you add your friends, it is very useful to share recommendations and your reading history, I'm sure that you would love it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sometimes read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NY Times&lt;/a&gt; book reviews too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13517" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T14:54:34.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4988" CreationDate="2015-04-22T17:29:02.730" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Two authors divide duties, not content&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One very successful technique was the one used by Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp in their wonderful fantasy romps such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Unreason&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Land of Unreason&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incomplete_Enchanter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Incomplete Enchanter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pratt, at the time the much more experienced and accomplished of the two, would rough out a plot. They would bounce it back and forth until it was ready; de Camp would write the first draft; Pratt would rewrite it; then deCamp would do the final edit for submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this method accomplished was to avoid carving the work up into separate chunks. Instead, both authors had their fingers in all of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quality of the result suggests that this might be a good way to do a collaborative work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T17:29:02.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16936" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16937" CreationDate="2015-04-22T17:41:23.553" Score="6" ViewCount="440" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a name for my fictional, European, mysterious old man who lived roughly in the 1600's to 1800's. I want the name to have plenty of character to it, but easy to read.  How should I go about doing this?  (I'm not asking for specific name suggestions but a method for finding names.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13520" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-04-23T13:08:35.510" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T18:45:04.713" Title="How do I choose a name for my character?" Tags="|short-story|naming|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16936" CreationDate="2015-04-22T18:43:34.163" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finding the name for you is not what this site is about. Instead I'll tell you how I would find that name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, based on the person's character and other traits, as well as his role in the story, I would chose a nationality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having limited my choices to names from a certain language, I would then go through lists of names of historical persons: politicians, writers, and so on. These kinds of lists can be found or created (use the &quot;category&quot; function) on Wikipedia. I would then note down every name I found interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making sure the character's name is dissimilar enough to the names of other characters in my novel, I would then create my character's name from the names I have found and noted down by mixing them to my pleasure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Et voilà.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T18:43:34.163" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4238" CreationDate="2015-04-23T00:42:36.447" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;75,000 word to 100,000 for most novels. Fantasy is about 85,000 to 125,000 words. I would say aim towards the 125,000 for your first daft. Then on your second edit try to cut 5,000 word from each part if you have 3 parts to your story. So example first edit I have over 40,000 words or 160 pages. Then I would try to cut 20 pages from that. So by the second edit you would have 420 pages or 105,000 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13524" LastEditorUserId="10099" LastEditDate="2016-11-18T20:00:45.543" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T20:00:45.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14233" CreationDate="2015-04-23T02:54:40.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In response to Question 2:&#xA;Likelihood implies a question of probability; rather than probability, you may wish to consider the &lt;em&gt;possibility&lt;/em&gt; of legal ramifications.&#xA;One possible legal ramification is your written statements being entered into evidence under one of the exceptions to the Rule Against Hearsay (Admission by Party Opponent, or Prior Consistent/Inconsistent Statement, e.g.).&#xA;Under these exceptions, your hearsay statements may be used for impeachment purposes or as substantive evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13527" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T02:54:40.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16941" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16942" CreationDate="2015-04-23T04:56:17.170" Score="3" ViewCount="1581" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to indicate a dramatic pause in the narration of my fiction, but the rules I've read say that ellipses are reserved for &quot;&quot; quoted dialog.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be the example I'm looking at:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Normally he could tolerate it by spending his day in the far reaches of the forest or hiding in his office that he’d built in the mountains to the south, but now he had to... talk to people. People he loathed talking to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13376" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-04-27T05:03:00.930" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T05:03:00.930" Title="Should I use ellipses in narration?" Tags="|fiction|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16941" CreationDate="2015-04-23T10:11:02.223" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ellipses are used differently in academic or non-fiction writing and narrative fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academic non-fiction, ellipses indicate that the author has omitted part of the citation. In narrative fiction an ellipsis indicates a pause in &lt;em&gt;spoken&lt;/em&gt; language. (I'll come back to that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other options for indicating pauses or breaks in spoken language in narrative fiction are the em-dash (&amp;quot;—&amp;quot;), but also colons and full stops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A speaker hesitates briefly, maybe because he is trying to think of the best word:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was...unfortunate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is very similar to a &amp;quot;voiced pause&amp;quot; filled with &amp;quot;err&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;hmm&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;um&amp;quot;: &lt;code&gt;That was, um, unfortunate.&lt;/code&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A speaker is interrupted and does not finish his sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was—&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A speaker pronounces each word separately (imagine him beating his fist on the table with every word):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That. Was. Unacceptable!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A speaker pronounces each syllable separately:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word is un-for-tu-nate, not unfornutate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A speaker makes a brief pause, emphasizing the first word:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That, was unfortunate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I said – and you read – that pauses are made in spoken language. Pauses in written language take the form of a line of whitespace between paragraphs or a chapter break, both of which often indicate that some time has passed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and went to bed.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In the morning ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But spoken language must not necessarily be limited to dialoge enclosed in quotation marks. Some narrative fiction, for example, is written in a style mimicking spoken language, giving the impression that the narrator is not &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; the tale, but verbally relating it to an audience. Often there is a framing narrative that explains who is telling the story to whom and under which circumstances, but often this is only implied within the narrative itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of first person narration is of this type, where the narrator is not telling a tale with a detached, unemotional voice, but rather he or she is emotionally involved and sometimes even exclaims in surprise or – hesitates to continue (as I just did, with the en-dash, for effect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a quick made up example, with two pauses in the narration (signified by an ellipsis and an en-dash, respectively):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hey, Betty.&amp;quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Oh my God! &lt;em&gt;Ben!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;quot;H-hey, B-Ben,&amp;quot; I stammered. I felt...excited, I realized in surprise. Since when was I excited about – Ben?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is certainly not the best writing, but I am sure you have encountered similar pauses and breaks in your reading. They are especially common in first person Young Adult fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ellipses can appear in the narration outside of dialoge, if the narration is supposed to represent spoken language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example you give in your question, the ellipsis is perfectly fine, in my opinion, and gives the (short) text an appearance of being thought or said by a person (of whom we will learn more in the course of the book), instead of neutrally reporting events in the manner of a recording machine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not follow your link to check if you criticism would still stand with this information, because that was not part of your question and did not appear relevant to answering it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T16:42:31.713" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16948" CreationDate="2015-04-23T16:48:41.907" Score="1" ViewCount="816" Body="&lt;p&gt;I watched a clip that was made a long time ago in the 1950s by Sid Davis Productions, Inc. The clip was published on YouTube, where I saw it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11119" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T07:28:04.587" Title="MLA: How do I cite a movie that was republished on YouTube?" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16816" CreationDate="2015-04-23T16:52:03.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Purdue OWL is a great resource for MLA formatting and citations. Here's a link to the page on the basics of in-text citations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Purdue OWL&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11119" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T16:52:03.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15869" CreationDate="2015-04-23T17:45:00.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be hard to answer this question without being an agent or an editor. I'm sure each individual agent, editor, and publisher has his or her own criteria in evaluating a manuscript and considering either taking on the writer as a client or publishing the manuscript. Regardless of the individual's personal criteria or preferences, the one common thread that you can expect from each of them is the desire to have a good, solid story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I don't think anyone would care whether or not you used this software to help develop your story any more than they would care whether you used Microsoft Word or Google Docs to type it up and prepare it. For them, the ultimate deciding factor is the quality of the story and the writing. I don't see any reason to even tell them that you used any particular software product to help you develop and create your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, however, the burden of responsibility falls on you to ensure that the finished product is of a sufficent quality before you attempt to present it to anyone for consideration. That means making sure that any residual comments, instructions, or other incidental content that is created by the software has been removed. The bottom line is to make sure that your work is the best you can make it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T17:45:00.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16936" CreationDate="2015-04-23T22:00:36.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One: As What says, I would look for names of people of the appropriate sex, nationality, and historical era. For contemporary people, there are plenty of baby name books and the like, both in print and on the web. For an historical novel, I'd look for names of people from that era in discussions of the history of that place and time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two: Next, you have to wrestle with the &quot;tone&quot; of a name. Names often give us an immediate image of the person. If you tell me that a character is named Brunhilda, I just don't picture a beauty contest winner. If you tell me her name is Bambi, I don't expect the next sentence to be that she just won the Nobel prize for physics. That's probably unfair stereotyping, but I think we all do it to one extent or another. Unless the point of your story is to challenge that sort of fast assumption about people, you can take advantage of it to help create the image of the character that you want in the reader's mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this sort of thing can certainly be taken too far. I've read stories where the rich man is named Rich Miser and the thief is named Dirk Blackguard and the pretty girl is named Daffodil Sunshine and so on, and after a while it starts to sound more like an allegory or a morality play than a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T22:00:36.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16943" CreationDate="2015-04-24T07:28:04.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You (probably) don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unlikely that a film made in the 1950s saw its first release on YouTube. You wouldn't cite an ebook as published on some torrent site, you wouldn't cite music as published on some file sharing site, and similarly you would not (usually) cite a film as being published on a video sharing site such as YouTube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would give YouTube as a source only if that film was actually &lt;strong&gt;first published&lt;/strong&gt; on YouTube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not give any details about the film you want to cite, so I cannot be more specific. Films are usually cited in MLA in the following format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&amp;quot;Episode Title.&amp;quot;] &lt;em&gt;Movie or Series Title.&lt;/em&gt; Dir. Firstname Lastname. [Perf. Firstname Lastname, Firstname Lastname, ... .] Studio, [Day-as-Number Abbreviated-Month-Name.] Year. Medium of Publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The date is the first public viewing of a movie in a cinema or the first air date of a tv show or adverstising spot or the first publication date of a DVD and so on. It is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a re-release date, unless that version differs from the original and you want to cite that second edition specifically (as in the second edition of books).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/09/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Purdue Online Writing Lab&lt;/a&gt;, which gives more information on citing films of different kinds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Usual Suspects.&lt;/em&gt; Dir. Bryan Singer. Perf. Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne, Chazz Palminteri, Stephen Baldwin, and Benecio del Toro. Polygram, 1995. Film.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The Blessing Way.&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;The X-Files.&lt;/em&gt; Fox. WXIA, Atlanta. 19 Jul. 1998. Television.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To find the relevant information for your citation, Wikipedia or IMDB may be of help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;not appropriate&lt;/em&gt; to append (possibly copyright infringing) internet &amp;quot;releases&amp;quot; of media (such as YouTube) to a citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a movie is available, besides the official non-online release, online also, e.g. through an official or otherwise legitimate secondary release, such as an archive, museum or the director's website, then adding &amp;quot;Available online at http://...&amp;quot; is a nice gesture, but still not necessary. You don't append links to libraries that hold books you cite, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would (and should) append the link to an online resource only &lt;strong&gt;if that was the channel of the first release&lt;/strong&gt; (as e.g. in the case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.postpanic.net/pp/ppictures-projects/sundays.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mischa Rozema's movie &lt;em&gt;Sundays&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T07:28:04.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16865" CreationDate="2015-04-24T09:25:25.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I grew up in London and live within commuting distance. These are just my impressions - I haven't done a survey!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between spouses or couples I would say the most common pet names used in London and the surrounding area are &quot;Darling&quot; and &quot;Love&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Love&quot; is more working class, &quot;Darling&quot; more middle class. However there is a lot of overlap. Both terms could be used either by men or women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of any pet name between the partners would suggest to me that it is a long established relationship - people who have just started going out tend to simply use each other's first names. It would also suggest to me that the people are middle aged or older.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd guess that &quot;darling&quot; and &quot;love&quot; are also the most common pet names used by people who don't know the person spoken to - e.g. a market trader addressing a customer. In this context use of pet names is very much a working class thing. Middle class Londoners are more formal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My impression is that any sort of pet names are used less often in London and SE England than in other parts of the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T09:25:25.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16442" CreationDate="2015-04-24T13:39:58.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suggested strategies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) As indicated by other responders, make the argument &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; about something else more personal. You can get great drama from repressed and/or unadmitted emotions leaking out into ostensibly polite debate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Foreshadow that this argument may be mild now but is going to have dramatic &lt;em&gt;consequences.&lt;/em&gt; E.g. one of the characters makes an ominous parting shot, leaving the other to wonder if she has pushed him too far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) If your main problem is literally what to have the characters say, then you should look at genuine debates (e.g. on political forums, newspaper comment sites etc.) on this issue from people with similar opinions. Write it up, then edit it down ruthlessly. Personally I'm a lot more tolerant of political discussion in novels than most readers, but even my eyes glaze over if it extends beyond half a page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) if one side represents your own opinion, seek the input of someone from the other side to avoid caricature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T13:39:58.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16871" CreationDate="2015-04-24T17:47:06.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sure that unusually-spelt variations on words like &quot;vampire&quot; and &quot;fairy&quot; would be comprehensible to most readers, but, unfortunately that is partly because &quot;vampyre&quot; and &quot;faerie&quot; are a bit of a clich&amp;eacute; themselves. &quot;Faerie&quot; has more than 15 million hits on Google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolving yourself some names from Latin source words seems a more promising strategy. Lesser known languages would be even better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how to explain without info-dumping, my advice is show, don't tell. Introduce the word for vampire by having a bloody great [Whatever] sink its teeth into the main character's neck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T17:47:06.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8903" CreationDate="2015-04-24T18:33:58.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another technique used by CJ Cherryh to indicate that her viewpoint character only understands the odd word is to indicate the incomprehensible parts by the hash character. For example, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;# # ship,&quot; the translator rendered the transmission from the newcomer. &quot;# # ship # # you.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cherryh uses this format specifically to mean the output of an automatic translating machine which is only partly programmed for the foreign (i.e. human) language but it could be used in other contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2015-04-25T07:06:01.050" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T07:06:01.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16955" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-24T18:52:17.767" Score="2" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a website that has a collection of clever or poetic phrases or expressions that one can search or browse through.  What about a book?  I used to have a book like this but I lost it.  It had entries like...&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;Rooted in prejudice&#xA;Pursued in Leisure&#xA;Ending in smoke&#xA;etc...&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;Iv'e been searching google without any luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13536" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T19:08:04.593" Title="online database of clever phrases" Tags="|tools|word-choice|poetry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16871" CreationDate="2015-04-25T02:02:40.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I think you have to give your readers enough credit to understand what you are talking about when you use the term &quot;fayree&quot; instead of &quot;fairy&quot;. As long as your spelling of the word doesn't get so obscure as to be unrecognizable, then you shouldn't have anything to worry about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, the burden of responsibility falls on you to write a character that is not only recognizable but also adheres to certain expectations that your reader might have for that type of character or creature or race. If you try to write a story about a creature that goes around sucking blood from people's necks and you call that creature a &quot;fayree&quot;, then you are more than likely going to lose some credibility with your readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember that a rose by any other name is still a rose, just like a vampire by any other name is still a blood-sucking ghoul. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T02:02:40.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16961" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-25T17:25:48.623" Score="4" ViewCount="326" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a book of film criticism, in which I refer to lyrics from the soundtrack as a way to empathise the narrative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I required to obtain permission for use of these lyrics? Or, because this is a work of critical nonfiction, am I just required to cite the songs authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13542" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-12-23T14:06:10.363" LastActivityDate="2016-12-23T14:06:10.363" Title="Quoting lyrics in a book of film criticism" Tags="|copyright|quotes|criticism|lyrics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16961" CreationDate="2015-04-25T21:07:12.627" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't even have to cite the song (although there is nothing wrong with doing so) as long as you cite the movie. This is handy as sometimes identifying the song can be a challenge. The true difficulty is (as in all fair use cases) being clear that it is a fair use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case since you may wish to quote the entire song to illustrate your point, I would emphasize that this is a transformative use and that it is a critical use. The specific method I would use is to intersperse commentary on the lyric and film dialog (if applicable) throughout the song.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T21:07:12.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16963" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16971" CreationDate="2015-04-26T02:12:47.743" Score="5" ViewCount="400" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used &quot;and/or&quot; in my writings in the past, but not for fiction manuscripts. Is it acceptable to use this? It's internal narration in a character's head and intended to have a bit of morbid humor to it, but I don't know if I should avoid it all together or if it's okay to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Though the second guard complicated things, Fields was now out in the same room with Paul. And Fields was far more qualified for an escape attempt than Paul was. He planned to let Fields take the lead and try not to slow him down &lt;strong&gt;and/or&lt;/strong&gt; get killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastEditorUserId="11151" LastEditDate="2015-04-26T02:22:45.300" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T10:09:59.787" Title="Using &quot;and/or&quot; in a manuscript" Tags="|fiction|word-choice|humor|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16963" CreationDate="2015-04-26T04:10:02.350" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't generally see anything wrong with using &quot;and/or&quot; in fiction, but you need to make sure that it is used in an appropriate way. You need to look at your writing as two separate sentences and make sure that they each come across the way you intended. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He planned to let Fields take the lead and try not to slow him down&#xA;  and get killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He planned to let Fields take the lead and try not to slow him down or&#xA;  get killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option would be to consider rewriting it all together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He planned to let Fields take the lead and try not to slow him down,&#xA;  or worse, get him killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T04:10:02.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16963" CreationDate="2015-04-26T08:40:54.910" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike Steven Drennon, I feel that in general &quot;and/or&quot; is not good writing, both in fiction and non-fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While writing is not spoken language, it is generally intended to be &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; – by a &quot;silent&quot; reader, who, as studies have shown, will nevertheless usually subvocalize and stumble over &quot;unspeakable&quot;, purely written constructs; by the author in a public reading; by a professional voice actor for an audio book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &quot;and/or&quot; is common in the convoluted styles of technical and business writing -- writing that many users of this site are probably intimately familiar with and which has distorted their natural feel for language --, it is not something that most people usually say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The construct &quot;and/or&quot; hinders understanding in that the reader (or listener) has to think back on the previous passage and deconstruct the whole sentence and attempt to understand what the two parts being connected actually are, what the two versions of their connection are, and what it means that the author finds himself unable to decide wether the conjunction is additive (&quot;and&quot;) or disjunctive (&quot;or&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take your example, the two versions of your sentence are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... and try not to slow him down and get killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, getting killed is a &lt;em&gt;consequence&lt;/em&gt; of being slowed down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... and try not to slow him down or get killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, &quot;or&quot; lists a series of &lt;em&gt;increasing alternatives&lt;/em&gt; (&quot;you may win / have to pay one, two or [even] three hundred dollars&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, in your sentence the &quot;and/or&quot; does not mean &quot;either A, or B, or (both A and B)&quot;, but &quot;either (A leading to B), or (A or even A++)&quot;, which, in my opinion, isn't a very meaningful statement and a sure sign that you don't really know what you want to say here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, in general, it is better to think about what the idea is that you want to express, and write it out in full sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, of course there is experimental fiction writing or fiction writing that emulates non-fiction writing modes (such as internet slang) which utilizes glyphs (&quot;&lt;code&gt;#brokkoli&lt;/code&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;code&gt;Doing it Wrong™&lt;/code&gt;&quot;) spelling (&quot;&lt;code&gt;n00b&lt;/code&gt;&quot;), non-narrative text (&quot;&lt;code&gt;imsorry.jpg&lt;/code&gt;&quot;), or layout (such as tables or lists) that are not usually found in narrative fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;and/or&quot; might certainly be appropriate in such writing, especially if it is humorous and/or fits the character of the story's narrator, but even then you need to be sure that you use it where it makes sense and actually says what you think it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-04-27T04:21:49.247" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T04:21:49.247" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16966" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-26T09:38:46.207" Score="2" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;A company, M, buys components from company, S, to build into their product. Company S has technical documentation regarding safety and maintenance available in many languages and publicly available in the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ethical for company M to incorporate this documentation into it's own product documentation without first getting permission from the supplier or, at least, indicating the source? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13546" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-11-24T18:16:18.900" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T23:29:03.063" Title="Ethics of incorporating a supplier's technical documentation into one's own documentation?" Tags="|technical-writing|copyright|legal|ethics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16967" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17007" CreationDate="2015-04-26T15:14:03.613" Score="3" ViewCount="905" Body="&lt;p&gt;I attended a speech that was open to the general public and took my own very detailed notes of everything that the speaker said. I would like to publish my notes as a report of the speech. &lt;strong&gt;Does copyright law let me do this without requesting permission from the speaker?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will fully attribute the speaker as the source--that is, I will clearly mention that these are my personal notes of the speaker's original speech; there is no question of plagiarism here. My notes are very detailed, so they capture almost every idea in the original speech, but they are not a verbatim recording (though some phrases here and there are probably verbatim).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that I can eliminate any concern by requesting permission from the speaker, but I want to know my rights even if I do not request permission. So, if the speaker doesn't want to give me permission, would copyright law still let me publish my notes anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in Canada, but I would appreciate the answer for any copyright jurisdiction, since the core principles of the international Berne Convention are quite similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13547" LastEditorUserId="13547" LastEditDate="2015-04-29T11:58:16.477" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T11:58:16.477" Title="Does copyright law let me publish my detailed notes of someone else's speech?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16967" CreationDate="2015-04-26T15:54:43.857" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I am not familiar with Canadian copyright law at all, I will answer from a US-specific basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, copyright may not apply to his speech at all as it was a public performance and not a fixed expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you assume that copyright does apply to his speech, this may have no bearing on your notes since ideas are not copyrightable, just their fixed expression, and his words (his expression of the ideas) do not match your words (your expression of the ideas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, fair use may apply as well if you provide either commentary or criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2015-04-26T18:03:56.663" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T18:03:56.663" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16966" CreationDate="2015-04-26T17:57:21.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a legal issue. Specifically, a copyright issue. Assuming we are talking about the United States, company S owns the copyright to their documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is illegal for company M or anyone else to incorporate company S's documentation into their own without obtaining the right to do so from company S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consult an attorney. Also, take a look at The Copyright Handbook, which explains the basics of copyright in a very clear way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T17:57:21.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16966" CreationDate="2015-04-26T17:57:34.327" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, check any license terms that accompany Company S's documentation.  They might have published it with the &lt;em&gt;intention&lt;/em&gt; that other vendors will incorporate it (e.g. some Apache platforms), or they might not intend that but allow it under their license (e.g. Stack Exchange, or anything else that uses the CC-BY-SA license).  Be sure to check whether any license you find permits &lt;em&gt;commercial&lt;/em&gt; use; some don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the absence of any explicit permission or license, incorporating their documentation into your own would be making a derivative work that might violate their copyright.  (Wholesale incorporation would very likely be a copyright violation; being selective would come down to a question of how much and what you selected, and the limits there probably vary by jurisdiction.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Company S's license permits incorporating their documentation into other products, check the license to see if attribution is also required.  Even if it is not, in my experience (technical writer in the software field) it's best to attribute anyway.  Not only is it more honest, but it's also &lt;em&gt;visibly&lt;/em&gt; honest -- important if you're concerned that people who don't know that you had permission notice the copying.  You don't want to get a reputation as an unscrupulous business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T17:57:34.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16963" CreationDate="2015-04-26T19:29:28.607" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not recommend using and/or. There are a number of style guides and English references that severely criticize it. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chicago Manual of Style (&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/100376/where-can-you-use-and-or&quot;&gt;Avoid this Janus-faced term. It can often be replaced by &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; with no loss in meaning.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strunk and White (&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://orwell.ru/library/others/style/english/estyle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;damages a sentence and often leads to confusion or ambiguity&lt;/a&gt;&quot;) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fowler's English Usage (an &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.grammarbook.com/blog/effective-writing/what-about-andor/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;ugly device&quot;&lt;/a&gt; that may be &quot;common and convenient in some kinds of official, legal, and business documents, but should not be allowed outside them&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rewording it is almost always simple, clear and easy to do. I would only use it if a character uses it regularly as part of their speech, otherwise, I would avoid it for the simple reason that, for me, it provides nothing of substantial benefit, but carries a number of negatives, particularly because I think readers may find it a little jarring and possibly confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T19:29:28.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15845" CreationDate="2015-04-27T01:55:46.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://io9.com/what-does-it-mean-now-that-james-bonds-in-canadas-publi-1678191830&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;detailed article by io9 treats this topic&lt;/a&gt;. The key points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, Ian Fleming's James Bond is in the public domain in Canada. Copyright law in Canada is life plus 50 years, and that applies to Ian Fleming's own works.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Derivative works, such as the James Bond movies, are not public domain. Their copyright rules start counting from their date of production, based on who had copyright on them (and it often was not Ian Fleming himself). This means that you are only safe working off Ian Fleming's original works, not any derivative work; you have to check each derivative work's status individually. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whatever you produce in Canada had better stay in Canada. If your Canada-produced work leaves Canada (e.g., goes to Europe or the United States), then their copyright laws apply, and you could be sued for infringement for illegal distribution in those countries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The prior rule might or might not apply to distributions on the web (as long as you're certain that the web server is in Canada); a law professor cited in the article above thinks that you would be safe on this one, but hey, that's what law courts are there to decide.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13547" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T01:55:46.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-27T03:03:32.387" Score="3" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am non-native English speaker, living in US for 25 years. I have a long professional career, and, therefore, I am pretty comfortable with my business writing skills. However, about a year ago, I started writing a short fiction stories. Being a part of the writers group, I have been always received a good feedback but, for certain reason, it didn’t sound too convincing to me. I need to find an outlet to get more exposure, to get more opportunities to improve my writing. It would be great to find a reputable writing critique site that would include some open minded people, i.e. people who would understand writing from different perspective, people who would appreciate different writing style due to cultural differences. Do you have any recommendations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13552" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T23:58:46.827" Title="Recommendations for reputable writing critique site for non-native English speaker?" Tags="|short-story|reviews|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16974" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-27T04:57:03.567" Score="1" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a problem.&#xA;I want to name a character (the main character's romantic interest) Tobias, but I feel like people would associate him with Tobias Eaton from Divergent, knowing how much I love that series.&#xA;Even before Divergent came out, I adored that name, along with Miles and Christopher.&#xA;I don't want to use the other two, because they don't fit the character.&#xA;I'm so confused on what to do...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13553" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-04-27T19:16:07.027" LastActivityDate="2019-03-05T16:41:31.573" Title="I want to name a character something but j feel like people would say I'm copying Veronica Roth, my favorite author. What should I do?" Tags="|copyright|naming|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16974" CreationDate="2015-04-27T06:18:21.943" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your book is dissimilar enough from Roth's that it does not remind readers of her series, there is no problem if you use the same name. Her's wasn't the first time that name has been used in fiction, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand you are writing a Young Adult dystopia where teens have to undergo life or death trials and fight the rulers, you might want to make the name as dissimilar as possible so as not to appear as too much of a rip off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I wouldn't worry about the name too much, you can always change it after you finished the manuscript. In fact publishers sometimes ask for a name change. So just use whatever name you like during writing and then approach that question after you have received alpha reader feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-04-27T07:00:21.197" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T07:00:21.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16976" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16982" CreationDate="2015-04-27T08:52:42.210" Score="2" ViewCount="1953" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is my first time writing tech manuals and I don't know what to use. Some people recommend me LATEX but I think it's too complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I basically need a text editor that let me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Type latin characters (I will write it in Spanish)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Type code (with some style and in a textbox)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insert some images (not many and w/b only)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to print it in a copy shop&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13516" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T07:48:37.177" Title="What's the best text editor for a technical reference manual?" Tags="|technical-writing|editing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14586" CreationDate="2015-04-27T11:10:27.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not my mother tongue, so bear with me :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my eyes, 'writing' consists of (at least) three areas of abilities and knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The creative (what does happen in my, for instance, novel?)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The structural (When/ in what order should it happen for the most&#xA;    effect and to satisfy readers expectations?)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The craft (how do I physically act to transfer the image from my head into the head of the  reader?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get better in these areas (from my [limited] experience) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read other books (not how-to-books), observe etc.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here How-To-Books can help a lot in my opinion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mostly practice, but some advice can help (adjectives etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So (good) how-to-books wont hurt, and I do not agree, that writing alone  will make you better at writing. It can work, but some good books, deconstruction of novels and so on can speed up the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion however, knowledge is not the main hurdle (the interwebz are full of tutorials and good and bad advice) for aspiring writers, but motivation and persistence. This is something only few (or no) books can help you with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13402" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T11:10:27.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16979" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16980" CreationDate="2015-04-27T12:50:41.940" Score="4" ViewCount="835" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I've written a haiku as 3 consecutive lines with standard punctuation as if it was normal free text, which means I don't use special punctuation at the end of a line just because it's the end of a line but only if normal language rules demand/allow punctuation. Now haikus in their concise nature seem well-suited to be published over Twitter (or your favourite alternative short message format), yet Twitter doesn't seem to support newlines very well while I think much of the beauty of a haiku might as well come from its 3-line structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being rather unexperienced with Twitter and writing poetry, though, I wonder if there is some commonly accepted way to at least &lt;em&gt;convey&lt;/em&gt; the notion of &quot;virtual&quot; newlines in a continuous text in some other way, e.g. through the use of punctuation, say a hyphen or slash or whatever. Or maybe this is rather bad advice in general? Even if this is likely not an entirely strict rule there might be commonly accepted approaches to this or at least insights from more experienced writers in how to tackle this problem, if at all. Maybe this problem should just be ignored in favour of a better text-flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13558" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-13T03:06:41.543" LastActivityDate="2019-04-13T03:06:41.543" Title="How to convey newlines in tweeted poetry, if at all?" Tags="|publishing|formatting|punctuation|poetry|social-media|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16979" CreationDate="2015-04-27T13:28:49.940" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, to convey poetic line breaks in &quot;continuous text&quot;, replace the line break with a slash. &quot;I've never seen a purple cow./I never hope to see one./But I can tell you anyhow,/I'd rather see than be one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't use Twitter so I can't say if this convention is commonly used there, but it's the normal convention in other contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T13:28:49.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16976" CreationDate="2015-04-27T13:39:52.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Mac, take a look at BBEdit. In particular, it has fully supported GREP search-and-replace functionality. There's an e-book that can be bought with the BBEdit product, which is highly recommended because it provides usage examples for the GREP functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Windows, try Notepad+. In addition to the base product, there are any number of plug-ins that can be installed to support your workflows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On further thought, consider using Adobe InDesign. It has the layout tools that (it sounds like) you need, and it gives you greater control for managing large documents. This will also open the door for more advanced writing with other Adobe products, such as (structured) FrameMaker and RoboHelp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't really suggest MSWord, unless you knew that you were going to constrain your work to smaller documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastEditorUserId="13535" LastEditDate="2015-04-28T15:05:44.490" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T15:05:44.490" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16976" CreationDate="2015-04-27T13:40:50.003" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think MS Word and Open Office would be the obvious candidates. MS Word pretty much dominates the market. Open Office is there for people who just want to rebel against Microsoft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd need a very good reason to use anything else, as to function in a Western business, government, or academic environment these days you pretty much have to use MS Word at some point. Why bother learning something else in addition unless it offers specific advantages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS Word allows you to create &quot;styles&quot; that you can use to distinguish your main text from special types of text, like block quotes or examples or, as in your case, code snippets. People do this all the time: I did it myself for my database book. I think your time would be far better spent learning how to do this in MS Word than searching for some alternative word processing software that might possibly make it easier to do it. If you're smart enough to write a technical reference manual, you should be able to learn how to do this in MS Word in, what, half an hour? An hour? :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I think Word's handling of embedded images is rather awkward and clumsy. But it works, and the idea of learning a whole new word processor, and having to convert files back and forth any time I want to share them with others, doesn't seem worth the effort to me. Maybe if I was creating a document with many images that had to be laid out in complex ways, I'd start searching for something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T13:40:50.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16974" CreationDate="2015-04-27T13:50:19.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ditto What: I have never read anything by Veronica Roth, but if you're writing a story that is similar to her books, AND the characters have the same names, then yes, that looks like you're copying. If the story is nothing at all the same, if her books are &quot;young adult dystopia&quot; (as What indicates) and yours are historical romances for senior citizens, the fact that a character has the same first name would probably not even be noticed. I'm sure there are lots of books with characters named &quot;John&quot; or &quot;Sally&quot;. :-) At least, as long as the name isn't made up or extremely rare. If you wrote a book with a character named &quot;Darth Vader&quot; or &quot;Dumbledore&quot;, people would notice. But &quot;Tobias&quot; is a real name that real people have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you talk as if the only possible names for your character are Tobias, Miles, and Christopher. There are thousands, maybe millions, of names out there. Get a baby name book, or look up a list of common names on the web. If you think there's even a small chance that this name will cause you trouble, there are plenty of other possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T13:50:19.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16967" CreationDate="2015-04-27T14:07:06.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer 1: I am not a lawyer, but I've done enough writing that I've had to research copyright law. Disclaimer 2: My research has been of U.S. law, and not Canadian. The legal systems of the two countries are similar, and copyright is mostly governed by international treaties so they should be similar, but I cannot assure you that they're the same here. That said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright protects the exact words or pictures used, not ideas. U.S. courts have repeatedly ruled that if you take something written by someone else, and then re-write it in your own words, you are not violating their copyright. I don't have the court citations but there was a big case many years ago where a news organization was taking another news organizations stories and rewriting them. The court ruled this did not violate copyright: You can't copyright a fact, only the words you use to discuss that fact. Like if the New York Times was the first to report that Senator Jones had won re-election, they could not then sue every other newspaper that also reported that Senator Jones had won, not unless that other newspaper copied the New York Times story word-for-word. (Or copied parts of it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a limited right to quote from what another person has said or written. This is called &quot;fair use&quot;. There is no hard and fast rule here. Like there's no law that says you can quote 50 words but not 51 words. The legal principle is, Are you quoting enough of another person's work that someone might buy your book (or article or whatever) rather than the original? The law also gives more leeway if you are quoting someone for purposes of &quot;education&quot; or &quot;literary criticism&quot; than for commercial purposes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that copyright is all about PROPERTY rights: you can't steal my work in a way that costs me money. It has nothing to do with originality of ideas or intellectual honesty. If you claim that some idea is original to you but you really got it from someone else, that may violate the academic principle of plagiarism. But plagiarism is not a crime: it's an academic violation. You can be kicked out of school or black-balled from academic publications for plagiarism, but you can't be sued or jailed. Anyway, you can pretty much 100% prevent accusations of plagiarism by giving proper credit. Giving credit does zero for charges of copyright violation. If you copied somebody else's entire book word for word, and then added a line that said, &quot;This book is a copy of ...&quot;, that wouldn't help you in court at all. It would just be a confession of the crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T14:07:06.593" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16816" CreationDate="2015-04-27T14:18:16.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I remember, the standard way to separate two citations like this would be to include the year in the citation. EG: &quot;This is quote one&quot; (&quot;Alternative Energy&quot; 2007), and &quot;this is quote two&quot; (&quot;Alternative Energy&quot; 2015). I cannot cite a source for this, though, as I have not used MLA in years and do not have a copy of the handbook available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13559" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T14:18:16.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16979" CreationDate="2015-04-27T14:59:08.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Jay already said, the common convention to signify newlines inline are slashes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you use Twitter as a publishing medium, it is my opinion that you should develop a poetic form that is native to that channel. There are narrative formats in books (novels), film, comics, radio plays and so on, and there are lyrical forms in books (poetry), film, comics and so on. The &quot;poetic&quot; films, comics, radio plays etc. don't have newlines, because they use the specific &quot;language&quot; of their medium to achieve what poetry achieves with printed words and whitespace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you plan to use Twitter as a regular publication channel and not only this once, instead of how to represent poetry &lt;em&gt;on&lt;/em&gt; Twitter, your question should ask how to write poetry &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; Twitter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T14:59:08.207" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16987" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-27T15:45:56.857" Score="1" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write an urban book that isn't ghetto, how would you suggest I go about this? It's a love story about two young females from a urban inner-city neighborhood. I want it to sound sophisticated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13560" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T18:00:29.913" Title="Urban Writing Question" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-04-27T23:58:15.363" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16979" CreationDate="2015-04-27T16:20:10.590" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you hold down the Shift key and press Enter it adds a line break. Apparently it won't work in some clients, but I just tried it on a tweet and it seems to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T16:20:10.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16976" CreationDate="2015-04-27T16:37:19.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having taken the considerable amount of time that it takes to learn how to use DTP software (most recently when I had the job of laying out a magazine) and knowing what results you can achieve, I would definitely recommend you just use a word processor such as Word or Open Office. What you are doing doesn't need extremely precise control over layout, including things like letter spacing. In fact, you want each page to look the same. If you use styles in a word processor, you can achieve consistency of look with little effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you want to take your work to a print shop, export it as a pdf. Most printers will work with common word processing formats, but with a pdf you can be sure of exactly what it will look like. Things like type of printer won't change how it looks on the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T16:37:19.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16987" CreationDate="2015-04-27T17:36:57.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some pieces of advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you know your setting well?  If you don't have personal experience with an urban setting, your story is likely to be unrealistic and stereotypical.  If this is the case, you might want to either change the setting or do some intensive research, preferably directly with people who resemble your characters (if possible).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Recognize that there are all kinds of people in all settings.  There are people deep in poverty who are very refined and sophisticated, and people with lots of money who are very crude.  If you are true to who your characters are, they don't have to be &quot;ghetto&quot; even if they live in a ghetto. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I think of a quote &quot;ghetto&quot; story, I think of a flashy and melodramatic plotline: People being shot, going to jail, dealing drugs, being unfaithful, &lt;em&gt;etc.&lt;/em&gt; --basically a soap opera with an inner-city setting.  Your characters might still have to encounter some of those things (it's a statistical fact, for example, that if you are poor, black and live in an inner city neighborhood, your chances of dying violently are dramatically higher), but your story doesn't have to center around them.  It can still be a quiet love story, even with occasional random gunfire in the background.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remember, you as the author can use sophisticated language and writing style, no matter what the setting.  Consider Zora Neale Hurston's classic, &lt;em&gt;Their Eyes Were Watching God.&lt;/em&gt;  The characters are uneducated, and speak exclusively in a poor black southern dialect, but the narrator's voice is richly poetic and sophisticated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -Hurston, writing as the narrator  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the characters often express sophisticated thoughts, even though they don't have the same breadth of language as the author:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -Hurston, writing dialog in character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-04-27T18:00:29.913" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T18:00:29.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16976" CreationDate="2015-04-27T18:44:23.650" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;LATEX isn't a text editor, it is (broadly defined) a markup language. The alternatives would be things like markdown, asciidoc, docbook, or simply using HTML directly, in tandem with your favorite plain text editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Docbook and HTML are &quot;heavyweight&quot; markup languages (you need a tag for every paragraph, etc), whereas markdown and asciidoc are lighter and paragraph breaks can be entered just by pressing return twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question then becomes whether and how you intend to publish in print format. If your copy shop can accept any PDF then you can use whatever you want so long as it can convert to a PDF or to HTML (which you can then convert to PDF using a web browser and PDF print driver). Some publishers or print shops may have specific preferences for how you provide your document to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13563" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T18:44:23.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16124" CreationDate="2015-04-27T19:04:50.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost every technical writer I've ever worked with has an undergraduate degree in English or Literature or something related to writing, and no Masters degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to have a technical or science degree, or even a Technical Communications degree to get into tech writing. And you definitely don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to have a Masters of any kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Masters you're looking at would probably help you get a job interview, and would likely give another candidate a leg up over you when it comes to who to bring in for an interview, but given the enormous cost, you might be better off turning all the experience you have (even unpaid) into a bullet point or two on your resume. You could also accept a short or part-time contract job or two just for the experience (again, to add to your resume). Look at flexjobs.com for starters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hiring managers care more about what you have done and what you can do for them than they do about the title of your degree. And you're already covered with your degree anyway, as most tech writing job postings list for degree requirements something along the lines of &quot;degree in English, Writing, Journalism, Literature, Communications, or related field required.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to sum up: based on my own background and the backgrounds of almost every tech writer I've worked with, and based on the cost of an additional degree that you don't have to have, I'd advise against getting that Masters. To get in the door, though, you might need to beef up your resume with past experience (even unpaid) or with current experience, even temporary contract work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13467" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T19:04:50.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16955" CreationDate="2015-04-27T19:08:04.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure. There's a very famous book: Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0316017590&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Bartletts-Familiar-Quotations-Geoffrey-OBrien/dp/0316017590/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1430161531&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=bartlets+familiar+quotations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen quite a few websites of clever quips and quotes. For example, brainyquote.com, quotationspage.com, etc. Just google for &quot;quotes&quot; and you should get a ton of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T19:08:04.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16995" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-27T19:09:06.273" Score="3" ViewCount="2236" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this may come off as weird or strange but i want to know how do i finish my novel. The thing is that i already know how to end it and i have a impeccable beginning but that isn't how a novel works. I need to know how should fill up novel by connecting the dots in orderly fashion without rushing or dragging the novel. &#xA;Thank You In Advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13564" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T14:39:37.490" Title="How Do I Fill In The Gaps Between The Chapters" Tags="|novel|technique|structure|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-05-01T18:19:55.390" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16995" CreationDate="2015-04-27T19:37:27.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Elements of Fiction Writing series, published by Writers Digest Books, has some great books to help with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those that would apply here are:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Plot&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Beginnings, Middles, &amp;amp; Ends&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Scene &amp;amp; Structure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13467" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T19:37:27.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16124" CreationDate="2015-04-27T19:48:32.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not test the hypothesis, starting with the negative test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are unhappy in your current career.  You have some background but nothing official.  A BA in English might or might not be a meaningful credential (in my experience it depends on the school and the program's focus -- literature is probably a &quot;no&quot; but actual writing is more significant).  So what happens if you apply for entry-level technical-writing positions &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;?  Unless you're facing a deadline on deciding about the master's (it doesn't sound like you are), you have time to try finding a position without it.  So why not do that first, before you spend money and commit to a year or two of study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to find a position you will need to organize some of your past work and maybe even do some new work (contract, open-source, personal projects that you actually finish and publish).  Prospective employers are going to want to see writing samples.  So, I suspect, will the admissions committee for that master's program.  So either way you need to move from &quot;I can write&quot; to &quot;I can &lt;em&gt;demonstrate&lt;/em&gt; that I can write&quot;, so you may as well get started on that.  Once you've made a start there you can try to answer the question &quot;can I get a tech-writing job with my current background?&quot;.  If you can, then you'll need to decide if the master's degree would help you get &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; jobs; if you can't get a job now, that suggests considering the degree program more seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't get jobs with your current skills that doesn't automatically mean that the degree will help, of course; you don't have enough evidence to support that theory yet.  When investigating the master's program be sure to ask not just about coursework but about their success rate -- how have their past students done?  Don't let them cherry-pick -- &quot;so-and-so successful tech writer is one of our graduates&quot;.  You want all the data you can get -- how many students from each recent year got suitable positions within what period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some employers care more about the degree than others, but &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of them care about whether you can &lt;em&gt;understand the technical domain&lt;/em&gt; that they're in and whether you can &lt;em&gt;write clearly&lt;/em&gt;.  If you can demonstrate the skills, then at least for many employers the degree won't matter all that much.  On the other hand, a master's program might help you gain skills that strengthen your position, so you need a clear understanding of what they offer and what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T19:48:32.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16995" CreationDate="2015-04-27T20:36:06.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is time for the dreaded lists. Lists are a valuable tool in building a complicated project. Specifically I would make lists of unresolved plot points already in the narrative, plot points to be put in the narrative, order of events, and minor characters. The minor characters does not directly help your situation, but I find it very helpful (assuming you don't also have a list of major characters). After you have prepared your lists (in pencil, not ink, as these will change as you work) start with the order of events, and look at what happens next. Is it interesting? Can it be skipped? Would it help resolve an unresolved plot point? can it be used to introduce another plot point? If you decide not to skip it pick one to three plot points that may work well with that event and write the scene. Update your lists by marking off events that are documented, plot points that have been introduced, and unresolved plot points that are now resolved. Add any unresolved plot points that are new and new minor characters to the respective lists. Lather, rinse, repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T20:36:06.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6868" CreationDate="2015-04-27T22:06:30.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like names with meanings, so I always choose the names of major characters for their meanings. In the case of aliens this gives me an excuse to have a language they speak. One fellow who was rebelling against censorship wrote a story where all the alien names wire mispronunciations of english swear words. You can do almost anything you want if you have a reason and a methodology. If you can't remember your character's name and spell it your readers certainly won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T22:06:30.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10945" CreationDate="2015-04-27T23:08:17.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I enjoy dystopian stories on occasion, and the ones I enjoy the most are where your lead does everything right and it either makes everything worse or has no effect, often this is coupled with him finding out that that something deeper is happening. For your scenario play with the idea that after killing the twenty that they were working to accomplish what the hero wanted to happen and now it wont because he killed them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T23:08:17.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17003" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-28T17:51:53.580" Score="1" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a first draft of a non-fiction, and an established professional writer and editor in my subject area gave me a good review, but said I should edit for structure and flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this great response, I've tried very hard to develop a better understanding of writing good non-fiction, but I have some major stumbling blocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling that the following is the main problem and cause of the others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really don't know what audience I should be approaching. The ideal would be that I could write a non-fiction that's accessible by most readers. The reality though is I find myself having to be concious beyond any reasonable degree to all the potential questions these millions of readers could ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing that I'm simply trying to achieve the wrong thing, but I'm not sure what I should do instead. Maybe I should focus on my best-bet audience first, and then rewrite for others if it's popular for that audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm really baffled, and would greatly appreciate any help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just spoke to my brother, and he suggests that I go with the audience I can help best. Which to me sounds like a very good idea. Though I'd appreciate any thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to an answer, the book is about government, decision-making, and related things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13574" LastEditorUserId="13574" LastEditDate="2015-04-28T18:20:12.997" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T06:52:31.253" Title="Structuring and audience in non-fiction" Tags="|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17003" CreationDate="2015-04-28T18:09:51.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Folks here might be able to give you more helpful advice if you can be more specific than &quot;non-fiction&quot;. Is it a history book? Astronomy? How to fix plumbing? Etc. That said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you always have to consider your audience. What level background do your readers bring to the subject? A book on astronomy intended for 10 year olds would surely be very different from a book intended for professional astronomers. What perspective do your readers have? A biography of Karl Marx intended for devoted communists would probably be rather different from one intended for libertarians. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &quot;structure and flow&quot;, at least one important thing to keep in mind is: You should organize your material so the reader can go from front to back. That is, don't put material in chapter 2 that assumes the reader already knows the information that you don't present until chapter 9. This can be very tricky because in many fields, there isn't an obvious straight line from start to finish. Lots of things are interrelated. But you have to figure out a way to untangle it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2015-04-28T18:24:25.077" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T18:24:25.077" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17005" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-29T06:04:14.110" Score="3" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the only technical writer in my company with 2 years of experience. I have been assigned with a task of creating a functional document for a web-based (FMCG) product which has been around a long time at least 7 years with no proper documentation.  This is a challenging task for me as I have been only creating GUI based user manuals (with not much technical information). I really want to use this opportunity to create a complete document that is really helpful for the team. The document would only serve as an internal reference document for the product team. How should I gather information and structure the document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13576" LastEditorUserId="13576" LastEditDate="2015-05-04T11:02:28.553" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T11:02:28.553" Title="How to create a functional document for in-house reference?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17003" CreationDate="2015-04-29T06:40:17.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;1. You cannot write for everyone.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't even attempt it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2. It is very likely that your book is not the first on your subject.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is it different? Who would be interested in that difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your target audience is defined by (a) who you are and (b) the market situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Who are you?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What interests you?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your level of expertise? (Can you dumb down your knowledge?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your writing style? (How flexible can you be?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of people do you want to interact with (face to face, social media, ...)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What is the market situation?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What other books are there on your topic? What do they cover? What is missing from them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are current trends in your field? The social and political situation? Urgent questions waiting for answers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which part of the public is interested in which aspect of your field? Which part needs information on what?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the buying behavior of different reader groups? Are other interests they have somehow related or relatable to your field?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;3. How to&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a huge sheet of paper, or a big pile of little sheets, and start writing down everything that you can think of that defines both (a) you and your work and (b) the market as it relates to you and your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't hurry this. Take a few days. Take walks. Visit book stores. Browse relevant blogs. Try to find resources on market analysis – not how to do it, but actual research on &amp;quot;what teens do on the web today&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;how elder people spend their retirement&amp;quot; or whatever. A lot of these studies are not publicly available for free, but some have been summarized in the media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get lost on the web or confused by the ocean of opinion. Use the information you can find not to tell you what you should do, but to understand who you are not or what resonates with you. Always come back to taking lonely walks and thinking without outside interference. Do not attempt to bend yourself to where you think an audience might be, but stay true to yourself and your vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to see trends in your note taking. Define a core focus that is narrow and clear. Try to phrase that focus in one sentence (that's your &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_selling_proposition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;unique selling point&lt;/a&gt;). Define a target audience for that focus. Make this definition narrow and clear, e.g. &amp;quot;24 year old male sports enthusiasts working in the media and living in big cities&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for this target audience and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;about your core focus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This narrow focus gives your book a clear profile or &amp;quot;character&amp;quot; and makes it attractive for readers &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; your target audience, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; You can always write another book on another aspect of your topic for another audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book about government and decision-making? How utterly boring! I don't even vote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;em&gt;The Drug Taking Wastrel's Book About Government and Decision Making&lt;/em&gt;? Or &lt;em&gt;International Politics for Busy House Wives&lt;/em&gt;? Ha. Sounds funny. Let's google that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T06:52:31.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16967" CreationDate="2015-04-29T07:52:17.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;h3&gt;1 Copyright&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A speech, if delivered to a limited audience such as an auditorium, may fall under copyright law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, famous speech &amp;quot;I have a dream&amp;quot;, which he delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_of_Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.,_Inc._v._CBS,_Inc.&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;was not considered a &amp;quot;general publication&amp;quot; by a US court&lt;/a&gt;, and King therefore did not forfeit his copyright in its text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would therefore assume that the speech you heard is probably copyrighted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2 Copyright infringement&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt that a mere retelling of any work in your own words would be considered an independent creation in its own right. Copyright requires a certain &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;threshold of originality&lt;/a&gt;. Otherwise it is plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/content/help/rights/permissions/permissions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times permissions&lt;/a&gt; page says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may also be considered infringement if a large percentage of the publication consists of quotes from New York Times articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since a praraphrase is considered a quotation, and your notes probably mostly consist of paraphrases, I would think that your notes would infringe on the speaker's copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T07:52:17.940" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17008" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17010" CreationDate="2015-04-29T11:15:35.520" Score="1" ViewCount="510" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an urban fantasy story that is told from multiple view points. I'm wondering on the best way to introduce the rules of magic within this piece of work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have about 10 points of view total throughout the whole work, however I don't want to just splurge in the first few chapters and have everything explained all at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering what everyone thought was best&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Outline the rules of magic in the first two points of view and then move on from there only re-establishing rules from time to time throughout the novel. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Slowly drip feed the rules to the reader throughout the whole novel, mentioning them as and when that point of view uses/witnesses magic? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Something else entirely! &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All suggestions are very welcome!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13475" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T15:10:27.133" Title="Multiple POV novel - introducing rules of magic" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|narrative|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17005" CreationDate="2015-04-29T13:40:25.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that you want to use (structured) FrameMaker, perhaps integrated with RoboHelp if you need a variety of output types. Both products are part of Adobe's Tech Comm Suite product (and you actually need the suite for FM-to-RH integration).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a ton of material about how to use FrameMaker. To help you, here's the link for a long list of previously recorded &lt;a href=&quot;http://adobe.ly/Pbdp0J&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Online seminars for FrameMaker&quot;&gt;online seminars for FrameMaker&lt;/a&gt; (Adobe login required).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific concepts that you're interested in are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-structured FrameMaker (as opposed to unstructured)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-DITA strategies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-ExtendScript&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-XSLT and XPath&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Localization strategies (if you're thinking ahead)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a lot there, but that's what you want if you're thinking long term. Plus, you'll learn transferable skills that will serve you well in future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T13:40:25.823" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17008" CreationDate="2015-04-29T13:50:27.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what multiple points of view would have to do with how you introduce the laws of magic in your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I think a narrative flows better if you can introduce the rules spread out through early sections of the book. Otherwise, you have a long dry intro. If you can summarize your rules fairly quickly, like a page or so, you could simply start the book with a page labeled, &quot;The Rules of Magic&quot; or whatever and list them. Or have an excuse early in the story to present them, like have a character be introduced to these rules in the school for wizards, etc. I'd avoid having ten or twenty pages describing the rules before the story gets started. Readers would be likely to get bored. Unless you can make the presentation of the rules entertaining in some way, like if the nature of the rules is that some of them are funny (if this is a light story) or particularly chilling (if this is a horror story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding multiple points of view: Be sure it's clear when you transition from one point of view to another. And avoid making the shifts abrupt. I was just recently reading a book where the writer regularly shifts point of view with no warning in the middle of a chapter. I don't think I was ever confused about whose POV it now was, but I found the sudden switches distracting and disconcerting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T13:50:27.710" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16995" CreationDate="2015-04-29T15:56:16.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the middle of a book, the best considered method is small rises of tension followed by a slight drop (to allow your reader to recover).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To use a driving analogy, the beginning of your book is getting in the car and starting the engine, the end is arriving at your destination but it's the middle part that's actually the journey.  It could be a simple journey with no dramas but it could be filled with problems that need to be overcome (a flat tyre that needs changing, running out of fuel, narrowly missing an animal that runs in front of the car).  Each could be considered a potential end to the journey but the hero must and will overcome each problem and continue to the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each problem must be realistic and usually, the hero should solve them his/herself though with help when it is available.  A kind stranger could stop to help change the tyre or give a lift to the nearest garage for fuel for example.  Or perhaps your hero is very untrustworthy and doesn't want to the help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't post pictures but if you Google 3 act story arc, you'll see examples of the rise up, small fall method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13583" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T15:56:16.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17012" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-29T16:04:44.227" Score="1" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, I'm not sure if they are &quot;rules&quot; or &quot;grammatical&quot;, but here they go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After a while our necks began to ache, so we sat on the rest chairs&#xA;  behind &lt;strong&gt;(us)&lt;/strong&gt;. I liked it here. The air was fresh and there was a low hip&#xA;  roof to shelter us from the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To give myself something to do, I searched for constellations. I&#xA;  wasn't an expert &lt;strong&gt;(on it)&lt;/strong&gt;; my knowledge was limited to horoscope columns and&#xA;  astronomy documentaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an author, would you omit the &lt;strong&gt;bolded&lt;/strong&gt; parts? Why or why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-04-29T18:26:32.120" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T18:26:32.120" Title="Is it OK to omit the following &quot;grammatical rules&quot; in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|grammar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-04-29T18:27:59.493" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17008" CreationDate="2015-04-29T16:07:10.627" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine you are travelling to a foreign country with different laws, customs, traditions and so on. You (the reader) travel in the company of someone who is familiar with that country (the narrator). That companion will warn you of the most deadly pitfalls (such as the death sentence for drug trafficking or that you get your hand hacked off for shop lifting), but beyond that he will give you more details at the time they become relevant, so as not to overwhelm you. So when you go eating at someone's home, your companion and your host will explain to you what they do and what you should do, and everyone will be quite friendly if you don't get it right the first time. But sometimes you will be on your own and you won't understand everything and make mistakes and people will get angry, and only if you get home will your friend explain to you what it was all about and what you should have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good story about a foreign country, that takes the reader by the hand and lets him or her encounter that culture, works much the same way, and a fantasy or science fiction story is basically nothing else but a sort of adventurous travel tale and follows the same basic rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, give the details of magic as they become relevant. Let the characters discuss them, or the narrator explain them, or simply describe what is done and what happens and let the reader come to their own conclusions. Sometimes the most intriguing books are those that &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; explain it all and retain some level of mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T16:07:10.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17012" CreationDate="2015-04-29T17:29:07.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are purely my opinion, but I would say (1) no, I wouldn't omit; and (2) yes, that's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) &quot;...we sat on the rest chairs behind.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Behind what? Behind your necks? That's what &quot;behind&quot; is referring to right now, and it doesn't make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) &quot;I wasn't an expert.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds natural to me. &quot;Expert&quot; right now is referring to &quot;constellations&quot;, which is exactly what you're wanting to refer to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T17:29:07.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17012" CreationDate="2015-04-29T17:59:10.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are both prepositional phrases. &lt;strong&gt;Number 1 should be included. Number 2 does not have to be.&lt;/strong&gt; Below I explain why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A prepositional phrase &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; consist of a preposition (behind, on, in, under, around, etc.) &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; an object (i.e. what the object of the sentence is behind, on, in, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sentence number 1 omits the prepositional object 'us.' You need that object. If you read the sentence by itself, you'll see why. What are the chairs behind? Us? The house? The sunset? What? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sentence number 2 omits the whole phrase, not just the object. &quot;On it&quot; certainly adds explanation, but you can get away without it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; You can omit an entire prepositional phrase. You cannot omit just the object of a prepositional phrase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, authors can and do take grammatical liberties sometimes. If you feel the sentence would sound better a different way, write it that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-04-29T18:10:27.393" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T18:10:27.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17005" CreationDate="2015-04-29T21:14:42.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many ways you approach this the same way you would approach any other new project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Review any available high-level descriptions (like functional specifications) and user stories: what is this thing and how are people meant to use it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Identify your key contact (if you don't have one, ask your manager how to get one) and schedule an overview discussion.  This is a &quot;give Ashvita the lay of the land&quot; discussion, not a &quot;tell Ashvita all the gory details&quot; discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sit down with your contact and the software and get some hands-on exposure.  Don't try to cover everything; ask the expert to point out the &lt;em&gt;most important&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;most common&lt;/em&gt; paths through the tool.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start to compile questions (which will surely arise as you work with the product).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in addition, this product has been around for years and people have been using it, even without documentation.  Either everything is completely obvious (in which case they probably wouldn't have asked you to document it) or there's a lot of &quot;oral tradition&quot;, maybe even informal notes, wiki pages, and so on.  You want to tap into that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should ask your key contact for pointers to any such artifacts and, also, who the main in-house users are.  (They might be your own QA department, if you don't have people in-house relying on the product.)  Gather the information you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all about the &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt; part.  To &lt;em&gt;organize&lt;/em&gt; everything you need to have some sense of who your users are and how they'll use the product.  The same techniques that you use for other technical-writing tasks apply here.  A full treatment of user-needs analysis and organizing content would be too much for one Stack Exchange answer, but feel free to ask narrower followup questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T21:14:42.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-29T23:15:28.493" Score="0" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;My topic is a causal argument. I choose what causes criminal behavior and am going to touch on the points of environment, personality disorders, education, genetics, and family controversy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13585" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T23:15:28.493" Title="how do i differ my abstract from my introduction?" Tags="|introduction|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-04-30T00:59:48.367" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16963" CreationDate="2015-04-30T10:09:59.787" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In scientific writing, usage of and/or is not preferred. Consider the following example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The equation uses A and/or B. (not preferred) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The equation uses A, B, or both. (preferred)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13591" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T10:09:59.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17019" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17020" CreationDate="2015-04-30T17:23:27.993" Score="1" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to cite the following lecture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltDZWQKNrCA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltDZWQKNrCA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a name for the lecturer, but not a name for the lecture. Not even a location (except somewhere in the Miami, FL area) What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11119" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T00:02:39.417" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T00:02:39.417" Title="How do I cite an unnamed lecture that took place somewhere in Dade County and was published on YouTube?" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17019" CreationDate="2015-04-30T17:42:31.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your source of information was the YouTube video, then you cite the YouTube video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using some specific style guide -- MLA or APA or whatever -- follow their format for citing a web site. If not, make up something consistent with what you're using for paper sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T17:42:31.370" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17021" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17048" CreationDate="2015-04-30T21:55:19.127" Score="2" ViewCount="555" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm specifically trying to cite two documents under &lt;em&gt;United States v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Massachusetts&lt;/em&gt;. Namely, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCOURTS-mad-1_09-cv-11635/pdf/USCOURTS-mad-1_09-cv-11635-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCOURTS-mad-1_09-cv-11635/pdf/USCOURTS-mad-1_09-cv-11635-3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. The second is the actual ruling, but the first is a pertinent rebuttal by the judge of the claimant's argument that the law was not constitutional. How would I go about citing the second in the APA format? APA provides me citations for general legal cases, but I can't find anything for specific legal documents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be greatly appreciate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13594" LastEditorUserId="13594" LastEditDate="2015-05-03T01:53:15.540" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T23:32:20.473" Title="Issue in citing legal cases, APA" Tags="|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17028" CreationDate="2015-05-01T09:54:54.923" Score="3" ViewCount="441" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what i understand, an author is supposed to conform to proper grammatical convention both when writing in third-person and first-person narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a sentence like this considered &quot;acceptable&quot; in a first-person narrative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And I was gonna make them pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that the slang usage adds an element of character to the narrative, as the character doesn't think with perfect grammar. On the other hand, i don't feel like i see this too often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13598" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T08:30:43.090" Title="Is using &quot;gonna&quot; in first-person narrative acceptable?" Tags="|style|word-choice|grammatical-person|grammar|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17025" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17026" CreationDate="2015-05-01T12:59:12.720" Score="12" ViewCount="22970" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I copyright my Facebook status updates? In the terms and agreements I didn't see a clear statement stating that Facebook owns my material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, if I can't copyright the material I post on Facebook, should I use Facebook at all outside of recreational and personal use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13601" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T16:07:57.317" LastActivityDate="2018-09-17T05:42:17.577" Title="Can I Copyright My FaceBook Status Post?" Tags="|copyright|legal|marketing|electronic-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17025" CreationDate="2015-05-01T14:08:41.943" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, you own all of the content you post on Facebook; therefore, you can copyright it. &lt;strong&gt;HOWEVER&lt;/strong&gt;, by posting something on Facebook you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...grant [Facebook] a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on... Facebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and while this license ends when you delete the content from Facebook or delete your account, this does not apply if &quot;your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For practical purposes, this could reasonably be interpreted as meaning that if somebody saves content you shared on FB to their computer, then while you still own the copyright to that content, Facebook has full rights to use that content, as does anyone they choose to sub-license or transfer that right to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short: You own everything you post to Facebook, but Facebook can do pretty much whatever they want with it, including allowing other people to do pretty much whatever they want with it. Don't post something to Facebook if you want to keep control over who uses it and how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms&quot;&gt;Facebook Terms of Service&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8758" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T14:08:41.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16995" CreationDate="2015-05-01T14:39:37.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The start and the end are mere bookends to the body of the story. The body of the story is where characters develop and plot and events unfold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said a good start can hook a read and a good end can leave them satisfied and wanting more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So assuming that you find the opening and the close where your creativity is strongest go with that. Plan the journey (be that plot, character or otherwise) into episodes. Then write the opener and the close of an episode. Then tell the pertinent story that relates to the growth of the character and the key events of that episode. Include any details that will matter in future episodes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you know it you will have a series of chapters with each one resulting from the events of the one before. Characters reacting to what happened and then reacting to the results of their reaction and before you know it you will have a well paced story of things that start and things that end and things that continue from one episode to the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chances are that your chapters will be well paced and keep the reader hooked. Your endings need only make them want to read the next chapter and the opening of that chapter need only make them want to read the whole chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chances are that your first draft will not be perfect. that's okay, don't worry about it. You can fix that later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite likely that there will be sense that are uninteresting, slow and not needed for the story - you can always remove them later just write them for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell the story and then fix the other issues later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T14:39:37.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17024" CreationDate="2015-05-01T14:46:54.033" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing in first person limited view you are basically writing in the voice of the character. So you should make what they say authentic. Therefore in the right circumstances this is perfectly acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to leave it in and write the story that way. Then when it is done you can get a feel for if it &quot;works&quot; in that context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen this and far more &quot;gritty&quot; language used in what are known as &quot;stream of consciousness&quot; narratives. It can be a very effective tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only advice on slang and &quot;flavour language&quot; is that it is like salt - a little really improves a dish but too much spoils it. Add enough to bring the narrative to life and give the character an authentic voice but not so much that it is hard to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T14:46:54.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17079" CreationDate="2015-05-01T15:14:31.910" Score="3" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel which I imagine will have an adult or older readership (or at least teen) wherein the main protagonist is a ten year old boy. It is definitely not written for a younger audience as it deals with issues such as the loss of a parent and finding ones place in the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have received the ultimate accolade with one of my scenes as a few of my proof readers have surreptitiously wiped away a small tear (it is supposed to be an emotional moment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the story is seen through this boy's eyes (not exclusively but 90%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What advice can you offer to help me ensure that the story is authentically ten years old and yet not too immature for the audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T15:18:38.697" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T19:14:02.703" Title="Seeking advice for maintaining child like authenticity without being too immature for the audience" Tags="|creative-writing|audience|child-characters|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9215" CreationDate="2015-05-01T15:32:21.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the question of companies (ex-leaders of countries are open season) it comes down to if you are suggesting that the company itself is bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Max Barry has John Nike (who works for Nike) commit a number of acts of terrorism for the benefit of Nike in his book &quot;Jennifer Government&quot;. Despite all the bad things (and morally dubious actions) of the employees of the companies mentioned Max never says that these are bad companies and not one organization or company has, to my knowledge, made the least bit of fuss at being acknowledged in his book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are only going to be in the danger zone if you cast the company itself as the maker of poor products or as inherently evil. In other words talking about them in such a way that the legal department might be able to ague that you have damaged their reputation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leave the company reputation intact and you are (probably) going to be able to name drop freely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not lawyer but this is my experience on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T15:32:21.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17029" CreationDate="2015-05-01T16:48:07.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many children's books deal with difficult topics. For example, 'Two Weeks with the Queen' is about someone coping with a sibling dying (it is very sad and very funny). 'Bad Alice', a novel I have just been using with twelve years olds, is about the effects of sexual assault. A recent children's book award winner was about someone trapped in a totalitarian state and featured scenes such as one where a teacher very graphically beats a student to death. You may be surprised what young people read and enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having read many books written from the perspective of a young person, I would suggest trying to see the world through a young person's eyes and trying to think like they do. Of course this is difficult, and you can't just rely on how you thought and felt at that time, but it about understanding what they could know and what they are interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing you need to consider is the language that they use. You don't want to burden your text with too much slang, but it has to sound authentic. For example, when reading through I play I had written, a colleague said that teens just don't use the passive form of the request I had inserted (I can't quite remember what it was). When I thought about I realised it was true. It had to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T16:48:07.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17029" CreationDate="2015-05-01T17:04:30.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Narrate the story  in third person. The narrator can both tell of the boy's perspective and reflect it from an adult (or teen)  viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or let the adult look back and narrate his own childhood (in first person).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, some famous children's or middle grade books (such as Astrid Lindgren's &lt;em&gt;Brothers Lionheart&lt;/em&gt;, in which the ten year old protagonist dies) deal with serious matters such as death, abuse, or poverty. In the bookstores I frequent, many childrens books are devoted to grandparents dying, avoiding child molesters, or overcoming the trauma of divorce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real life of children often isn't all that happy, and children's literature does not need to avoid the less pleasant aspects of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T17:04:30.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17034" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-01T18:20:55.430" Score="1" ViewCount="782" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently wrote an essay for a history class and the teaching assistant commented that he found my switch between formal and informal style &quot;jarring.&quot; I think he was specifically referring to for instance switching between phrases like &quot;this essay will show&quot; and &quot;I am going to demonstrate.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone explain why this might be &quot;jarring&quot;? What is wrong with switching between these two styles? How do I avoid doing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11549" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T16:51:28.380" Title="How to avoid switching between formal and informal in an essay?" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7304" CreationDate="2015-05-01T18:35:08.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're backing up your git repo by simply using remote repositories, then no, you don't &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; further backups.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you make a commit, you're making a backup copy and putting it in the .git folder.  If you push your git repo up to github or anywhere else, you are essentially making a backup copy of your repo.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I do backup all of my remote repositories (just like github.com probably does behind the scenes) so that if my git server goes down, restoring it takes only a moment and I don't have to go searching for repository clones everywhere.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13606" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T18:35:08.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17034" CreationDate="2015-05-01T19:48:18.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is traditional to write essays in the third person. I can remember teaching students to avoid the first person. That said, particularly if the assessment criteria asks for personal response, institutions/examining bodies may be quite happy with the first person. You have to look at sample answers, etc. and work out what they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the point of switching between the two: I can't imagine a circumstance where it would be acceptable. Stick to your first person pronouns ('I', 'me', 'we', 'us') or your third person pronouns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T19:48:18.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17034" CreationDate="2015-05-01T19:50:17.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, when you write, you want to pick a single register, appropriate to the audience and your goals, and stick to it.  When you do that, your voice recedes appropriately into the background, and the reader can focus on your content.  An informal phrase in a formal essay is like showing up to a corporate workplace in Bermuda shorts and a t-shirt.  The reverse situation is like going to a neighborhood cookout in a suit and tie.  People will get caught up in the inappropriateness of your presentation, and lose track of your message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as avoiding this, it's really just a matter of reading enough formal writing to get used to the conventions.  Usually, as @tave mentioned, you avoid first person statements (&quot;I&quot;).  You'll also want to avoid second person (&quot;you&quot;), as well as contractions (&quot;can't&quot;) and folksy idioms (&quot;happy as a pig in mud!&quot;).  These conventions can vary, however --some academic settings actually expect writing to flout such standard conventions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T20:00:56.570" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T20:00:56.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="291" CreationDate="2015-05-02T05:56:05.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would only think that the trademark rule would apply if the character's name was imperative to the plot of the story.  For example, if someone were to write a novel about the comic book character &quot;The Flash.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13609" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T05:56:05.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17034" CreationDate="2015-05-02T08:17:33.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a university doing research and many of my personal friends are regularly publishing academic authors. From my observation I can say that those writing in a highly formal style talk like they write in private, too. It is their language. They read almost exclusively formal writing, they converse in it about sophisticated topics, and they use it when they speak with their children (thereby adding to the advantage that children from an academic background have over students from non-academic families), and when they write they don't have to switch styles or make an effort to maintain it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to master formal writing, you must make formal language a habit, both in input and output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, much of academic writing today is written in a more informal style, which in my opinion often eases comprehension and increases my reading pleasure. The demands of your tutors and professors aside, you should not worry too much about the formality of your language, but rather about its understandability and clarity and, beyond that, feel free to develop your own style. This may take some time, a lot of reading, and much writing and trying out what works best (for you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for first or third person in academic writing, there are a few questions and useful answers on this site. Use the site search to find them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past it was the norm to write in an impersonal style to give an impression of objectivity. Today objectivity must be proven in the description of your methodology, and every action must clearly be attributed to its agent by the use of personal pronouns. Because of that, academic texts today are generally written in the first person singular or plural, depending on the number of authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The APA Manual explains this in much detail and with many examples, and I recommend you to read it even if you format your text following another style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you really shouldn't guess what your teaching assistant meant, but ask him or her to explain their critique and give an example in your text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T08:17:33.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17040" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17043" CreationDate="2015-05-02T17:31:12.657" Score="5" ViewCount="16428" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether there should be a dot after a figure title (in a scientific book)? Note that I have figures numbered like &quot;Figure 1. ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-05-02T18:52:55.227" LastActivityDate="2022-05-26T09:40:07.893" Title="Dot after figure title?" Tags="|style|punctuation|grammar|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17040" CreationDate="2015-05-02T18:11:00.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually figure numbers are given consecutive numbers without the dot, or they are given chapter numbers with a dot to indicate which illustration it was in the chapter. For example, 2.3 would be the third figure in chapter two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the chapter is broken down into sections, the number becomes a three figure one e.g. 2.3.4 is chapter two, section three, figure four.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T18:11:00.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17040" CreationDate="2015-05-02T18:25:30.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The figure number is an identifier or name if you will, so just as you don't automatically put a period after Bob every time it occurs the placing of punctuation after figure identifiers depends on where it is used in the sentence and ordinary rules of punctuation are used. The only exception is if the figure identifier directly precedes another numeral (which should be avoided at all costs) you may use additional punctuation to differentiate the two numbers, but it is better to reword.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T18:25:30.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17040" CreationDate="2015-05-02T21:14:36.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're talking about only the caption of a figure/table/picture, all of the documentation I've worked with does have a dot, but only after the number:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Figure 1. References&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do technical writing frequently for my job, and this is the most common way I've seen captions noted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastEditorUserId="11151" LastEditDate="2015-05-03T03:12:16.107" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T03:12:16.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17045" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-03T02:16:19.563" Score="2" ViewCount="172" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on this outline, I'm not sure how to to best re-tell this story. In particular, I'm not sure if I should tell the story as a first person &amp;quot;narrator,&amp;quot; or in the third person? What are the advantages and differences between the two formats?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's 1942. There's a young girl, about seventeen. Her brown curly hair bounces as she walks the long path home from school. Her bright blue eyes sparkle with life, juxtaposing the cold grey cement of the Ukraine city around her. She smiles to herself, remembering that her mother was making her favourite stew for dinner tonight. She couldn't wait!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's still 1942. Amidst the cold grey cement lurk a group of shadows. Slinking, sleuthing shadows. They're sitting and they're waiting. Their keen eyes spot miss baby blue from a mile away. They make a few hand signals and she is swarmed. Large, rough German men have taken her away from everything she knows. She screams wishfully for her mom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's 1945. Her blue eyes no longer seemed as blue. Her hands were worn, and her face blistered from the hot sun. After being enslaved by the Nazi's for three years, hope was hard to hold on to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's still 1945. Stripes of red, white, and blue proudly march the streets of Germany. Relief has come, and the slaves gathered in anticipation. Although there were thousands of people there, baby blue's eyes shone brighter than them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's 2015. Baby blue is still sparkling with life. At the ripe old age of 90, this woman has more spunk than you could shake a stick at. Looking at her, you would never know what she has been through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's still 2015. I get the privilege of hearing baby blue's story first hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13617" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T13:18:03.003" Title="How do I tell my short story?" Tags="|short-story|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17024" CreationDate="2015-05-03T04:45:26.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the most part an author should try to conform to grammatical conventions as that makes it easier for people to read. However, this isn't a set in stone rule. You are free to violate &quot;proper&quot; grammatical conventions in both first-person and third-person narratives. It is best if you have a decent grasp of the conventions you violate&amp;mdash;that knowledge will help you know when you can get away with breaking a certain rule and when you can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your sentence, it is perfectly acceptable if it fits the character who is saying or thinking it. Consider the examples below to see how two famous writers handled this sort of speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;James Joyce's &lt;em&gt;A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man&lt;/em&gt; opens with &quot;Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...&quot; That novel is a third-person narrative and the diction changes as the main character grows up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;William Faulkner's &lt;em&gt;As I Lay Dying&lt;/em&gt; is an excellent example of multiple first-person narratives where the diction changes to match the character speaking. Some of the characters talk more &quot;proper&quot; than others. For instance, take a section from Darl's point of view: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pa leans above the bed in the twilight, his humped silhouette&#xA;  partaking of that owl-like quality of awry-feathered, disgruntled&#xA;  outrage within which lurks a wisdom too profound or too inert for even&#xA;  thought. (Faulkner, &lt;em&gt;As I Lay Dying&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now compare it with a section from Anse's point of view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Durn that road. And it fixing to rain, too. I can stand here and same&#xA;  as see it with second-sight, a-shutting down behind them like a wall,&#xA;  shutting down betwixt them and my given promise. I do the best I can,&#xA;  much as I can get my mind on anything, but durn them boys. (Faulkner, &lt;em&gt;As I Lay Dying&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13618" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T04:45:26.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17040" CreationDate="2015-05-03T05:07:25.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The example figure caption in section 5.23 (Figure Legends and Captions) of the 6th edition of the &lt;em&gt;Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association&lt;/em&gt; is formatted as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Figure 3.&lt;/em&gt; Fixation duration as a function of the delay&#xA;  between the duration of eye fixation and the onset of the&#xA;  stimulus in Experiment 1. (American Psychological Association, 2010)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this we can see that there is a period in the figure caption both after the number and after the descriptive phrase. I suggest you check the style manual of whatever style you are following to make sure my example matches with that particular format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13618" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T05:07:25.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17021" CreationDate="2015-05-03T06:30:18.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a law librarian, so take my answer with a heap of salt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at appendix 7.1 of the APA style manual it appears that you could go with example 3. Sample reference to an unreported decision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gilliard v. Oswald, No. 76-2109 (2d Cir. Mar. 16, 1977). &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Explanation:&lt;/em&gt; The docket number and the court are provided. The opinion was announced on March 16, 1977. To cite to a particular page of a &lt;em&gt;slip opinion&lt;/em&gt; (opinion that is not published in a case reporter but is separately printed), use the form &lt;em&gt;slip op.&lt;/em&gt; at [page number]. (American Psychological Association, 2010, p. 218)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not certain on this, however. The APA style manual suggests two sources to consult when making legal citations: &lt;em&gt;The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation&lt;/em&gt; and law librarians. If you aren't familiar with the &lt;em&gt;Bluebook&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://lib.law.washington.edu/content/guides/bluebook-101&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here is a guide&lt;/a&gt; that looks like it should be useful. I can also check with a professor I know in a law school, though you'll have to wait until Tuesday for me to be able to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I managed to talk for a few minutes to the law professor. She was busy, which means I didn't get every question answered, but I did learn some from her. She confirmed that the APA style rule quoted above would be the one to use if the cases aren't printed in a reporter. That led to a digression about how very few cases from lower courts actually get published. She also recommended the guide to the &lt;em&gt;Bluebook&lt;/em&gt; I linked above as well as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this guide&lt;/a&gt; by Cornell University's Law School.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between what the law professor said and what the APA Style manual had to say, it looks like you should probably include the electronic database you found the documents in. This would go in parentheses at the end of the citation. I'm not entirely sure on abbreviations, but this is how the database I found the documents in &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be cited: (FDsys, US Courts Opinions, Dist file).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also took a look at the &lt;em&gt;Bluebook&lt;/em&gt;, though the edition I managed to find was the 17th edition and not the current 19th edition (sometime this spring/summer the 20th edition will be published). So the information I found may or may not be current depending on what was updated between editions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 10.8.3 on Briefs, Records, Motions, and Memoranda of the &lt;em&gt;Bluebook&lt;/em&gt; seemed relevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use the designation given on the document itself, followed by a full citation to the case to which it relates. Indicate the docket number parenthetically:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Appellant's Opening Brief at 5, Rosenthal v. Carr, 614 F.2d 1219 (9th Cir. 1980) (No. 76-1917).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Brief of Amici Curiae Alabama Law Foundation, Inc. et. al. at 5-6, Phillips v. Wash. Legal Found., 524 U.S. 156 (1998) (No. 96-1578).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (Harvard Law Review Association, 2000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 10.7 on Prior and Subsequent History of the &lt;em&gt;Bluebook&lt;/em&gt; also seemed like it might be relevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Give &lt;em&gt;prior&lt;/em&gt; history only if significant to the point for which the case is cited or if the disposition cited does not intelligibly describe the issues in the case, as in a Supreme Court &quot;mem.&quot; Give separate decisions of other issues in the case with their prior and subsequent history only if relevant.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  10.7.1 Explanatory Phrases and Weight of Authority&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (a) Prior or Subsequent History.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Append the prior or subsequent history of a case to the primary citation. Introduce and explain each decision with italicized words between each citation.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Cooper v. Dupnik, 924 F.2d 1520, 1530 &amp;amp; n.20 (9th Cir. 1991), &lt;em&gt;rev'd en banc&lt;/em&gt;, 963 F.2d 1220 (9th Cir. 1992).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (b) Significance of disposition.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  give the reason for a disposition if the disposition does not carry the normal substantive significance.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;vacated as moot,&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (d) Multiple Dispositions.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Multiple dispositions following a primary case citation should be connected with the word &quot;and&quot; in italics:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  United States v. Baxter, 492 F.2d 150 (9th Cir.) &lt;em&gt;cert dismissed&lt;/em&gt;, 414 U.S. 801 (1973), &lt;em&gt;and Cert. denied&lt;/em&gt;, 416 U.S. 940 (1974).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (Harvard Law Review Association, 2000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this is enough for you to cite the documents in question. I would still recommend you double check with a law librarian to make sure you are citing correctly. If you don't have a law librarian easily accessible, you can try asking the reference librarians &lt;a href=&quot;https://lib.law.washington.edu/questions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;at the University of Washington&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://law.library.cornell.edu/research/referencecontact&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;at Cornell University&lt;/a&gt;, or at the law library of your choosing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13618" LastEditorUserId="13618" LastEditDate="2015-05-06T19:45:37.403" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T19:45:37.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17034" CreationDate="2015-05-03T06:58:54.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, pick one and stick to it. I think the Bermuda shorts analogy posted by Chris Sunami is pretty on point. My undergraduate degree is a double major in Philosophy and Communication Studies: Philosophy-style essays are more commonly written in the first person, whereas the Communication Studies expects the more traditional third person perspective. I have a few thoughts that are informed by bits of wisdom I have gathered from various professors and TAs over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I believe that writing in the first person is a great way to be direct, concise and assertive about your opinions. This is why Philosophy professors will allow and even encourage writing in the first person, as you are often given very short word limits. You can be eloquent and academic while writing in the first person, so don't let stuffy old essay rules dissuade you from using it (unless your Professor is adamant that you do not). Many, many peer-reviewed journal articles successfully use the first person. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently reading an article entitled &quot;Amnesia, Nostalgia and the Politics of Place Memory&quot; by Margaret Farrar, who frequently uses &quot;I&quot; statements. Something she does which is interesting, and totally contradicts both me and your teaching assistant, is refer to the article she is writing, i.e. &quot;This article is motivated by the question...&quot; I think the reason she is successful and you were not so successful is because the way she phrases it, it is not the article doing the work or the thinking, but the author. I hope that makes sense. Saying something like &quot;this essay will show&quot; makes it sound like the essay is a living, breathing entity that is doing the thinking for you, whereas &quot;In this essay, I will show&quot; makes it sound like YOU are doing the thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try removing &quot;I&quot; statements or &quot;this essay will show x&quot; statements altogether. For example, instead of saying &quot;I am going to demonstrate that Moleskines are not the best notebooks on the market by comparing price, sustainability and paper quality,&quot; try something like &quot;A thorough analysis of price, sustainability and paper quality reveals that Moleskines are not the best notebooks on the market.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Edit! Need I say more? Now that you know this is a problem, it should be something you look for when you are reading your essays over. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13470" LastEditorUserId="13470" LastEditDate="2015-05-03T07:05:30.810" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T07:05:30.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17024" CreationDate="2015-05-03T08:30:43.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Not only is it acceptable, if you don't do it your character will not reflect what you are trying to portray and the reader will not understand the character as intended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way: everyone is different, talks different, and behaves different. If you are writing about people, should they all behave like you? Or should they be different too? Draw inspiration from the world and make all of your characters different. Don't worry about going too strong with slang or overusing words. That can all be corrected in editing. Write, then read it over and see what you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11586" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T08:30:43.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17029" CreationDate="2015-05-03T08:35:02.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've all been 10, so decide on these two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write from the child's POV exclusively, giving readers the inside look at the character, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write from a 3rd person POV on the child&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest #1 because if done right, it's much stronger emotionally. However, it also depends on the story type and the content. Ultimately you'll know what's best, and there are also other perspectives to show from (and you can switch between them too). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR - Whatever provides the best emotional connection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11586" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T08:35:02.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17052" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-05-03T10:24:32.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No universally adopted definition of academic plagiarism exists, making it quite hard to pin down. However, plagiarism is the use of the ideas and words of another passed off as one's own. Issues here include similarity of work, theme, and characters. Plagiarism is not always a crime, but in academia and industry it is seen as a serious ethical offence. Cases of plagiarism can also constitute copyright infringement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within academia, plagiarism (by students, by professors, or by researchers) is considered &quot;academic dishonesty&quot; (or in some cases &quot;academic fraud&quot;). Offenders are usually subject to academic censure, which may include expulsion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism is not the same as copyright infringement. While both terms may apply to a particular act, they are different concepts, and false claims of authorship may constitute plagiarism regardless of whether the material is protected by copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to U.S. law, the expression of original ideas is considered intellectual property and is protected by copyright laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Bela Gipp, academic plagiarism encompasses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The use of ideas, concepts, words, or structures &#xA;     without appropriately acknowledging the source &#xA;     to benefit in a setting where originality is expected.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; Citation-based Plagiarism Detection: Detecting Disguised and Cross-language Plagiarism using Citation Pattern Analysis.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/springer+vieweg/it+%26+informatik/k%C3%BCnstliche+intelligenz/book/978-3-658-06393-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikiepdia, Teddi Fishman's definition of plagiarism abridges Gipp's and defines five elements characteristic of plagiarism. By this definition, plagiarism occurs when someone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uses words, ideas, or work products &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attributable to another identifiable person or source &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Without attributing the work to the source from which it was obtained &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a situation in which there is a legitimate expectation of original authorship &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In order to obtain some benefit, credit, or gain which need not be monetary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Further reading&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism-101/what-is-plagiarism/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism-101/what-is-plagiarism/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plagiarism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plagiarism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-05-04T15:58:47.387" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T15:58:47.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17053" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-05-03T10:24:32.727" Score="0" Body="Plagiarism is the use of the ideas and words of another passed off as one's own. Issues here include similarity of work, theme, and characters. Plagiarism is not always a crime, but in academia and industry it is seen as a serious ethical offence. Cases of plagiarism can also constitute copyright infringement." OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-05-04T15:57:05.573" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T15:57:05.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17054" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17055" CreationDate="2015-05-03T15:58:32.657" Score="4" ViewCount="1052" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing a lot of writing lately. Novels, short stories, and so forth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have one person that tells me,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Immense improvement from the first version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A great deal of your description is dull... too many words to say&#xA;  something. The trouble is, some of these things need to be said.. but&#xA;  more forcefully and punchier. Drive the story don't let it amble&#xA;  along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if you're trying to create natural speech... problem can&#xA;  be to use with care... too many unnecessary words take away the impact&#xA;  of what you're trying to say to he reader. You're telling a story and&#xA;  entertaining the reader at the same time. Imagine this on a movie&#xA;  screen. The movie would be more animated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then another person, whom I consider a mentor, and get advice from all the time, say's the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You asked,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is that true, the less words the better, or are sometimes more words better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. I am 100% against the whole&#xA;  condensing sentences rule. It affects the voice of the narrator.&#xA;  Character is by far the most important thing because that's what&#xA;  readers connect with the most. Sometimes voice doesn't work out, but&#xA;  that's not because &quot;unnecessary&quot; words are used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Understand, though, that I am very much a literary writer, so I focus&#xA;  a great deal on word choice and the rhythm of a sentence. It's not a&#xA;  style everyone enjoys, so I always have people telling me to cut back&#xA;  on my wordiness (just check out my latest critter for #######).&#xA;  And, they are right... I could condense a lot of my sentences, but&#xA;  then Sophia wouldn't sound the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My suggestion to you on this is to find a style that you enjoy and&#xA;  stick with it despite what other critters say (including me). If you&#xA;  like condensing sentences, go right ahead and do so. I've found that I&#xA;  can enjoy any number of writing styles (and this is why I really don't&#xA;  focus on sentence structures unless they cause an issue in reading).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After doing a lot of reading online, I find mixed opinions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even DR. Seuss said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore&#xA;  for the reader who reads.&quot; — Dr. Seuss&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I aspire to be a great writer, and I want to learn and do what is best for my readers. However, I just want to know what people's thoughts are on condensing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3543" LastEditorUserId="3543" LastEditDate="2015-05-03T16:03:42.947" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T20:42:44.610" Title="Condensing words, to condense or not?" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17054" CreationDate="2015-05-03T20:13:08.150" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some writers don't know which word to use and so they use a dozen. some writers are convinced that typewriter ribbons are too expensive and agonize over each word. Both of these methods can produce enjoyable reading, but my favorite is  when the pace of the words just seem to fit. Not too much, not too few. And the appropriate number of words is not a constant. I can not even say that when things are moving fast you want to target five words per action, and thirty words per action when things are slow, although using fewer words to show speed or urgency is often helpful. My recommendations are to never use less words than the minimum needed to express yourself, or enough words to bore your reader; don't condense sentences, condense thoughts; don't expand sentences, expand understanding. If you think my advice sounds easy, you aren't a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T20:13:08.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17054" CreationDate="2015-05-03T20:13:50.450" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Words lead the reader to emotion. Have enough words so the reader feels, but not so many that they stop feeling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11586" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T20:13:50.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17054" CreationDate="2015-05-03T20:43:22.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of it has to do with context. What type of story is it? What is the genre?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hildred has a point in regard to number of words affecting urgency. If you've got a fast-paced action sequence, for example, you don't want to be detailing every single movement of a character as this can easily slow the reader's imagination of the scene. Instead, dropping some detail, and using very short sentences, can serve as a cue to the reader's brain which then makes them 'feel' the speed of the action and therefore get more engrossed in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jamezrp also has a point with emotion. Establish emotion, then worry about economy of words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as description is concerned, a lot of the time you may want to detail everything about a place, whether that is to give a reader a true sense of the place or include some physical aspects of a character's surroundings which a reader should keep in mind in order for them to properly understand something. Either way, condensing words might not be an option.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The best option in the event there is such a need and you feel as though there might be too many words, try focusing on the flow. Ask yourself: Does this take too long to read? Might someone be taken away from the feel you just created of the scene?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try to spread out lengthy sentences, even in dialogue, by sprinkling some here and there, or adding something to break it all up into smaller paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, try to imagine it from the reader's perspective, which might require getting a few beta readers or the like so you can get their opinions of your approaches to condensing/not condensing and keep what works. Eventually you should build up a solid portfolio of ideal situations for  host of options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13454" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T20:43:22.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17058" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17061" CreationDate="2015-05-04T02:51:13.020" Score="2" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a book which was initially intended to be a duology and I had a fixed storyline with the path completely clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this story, I introduce 2 characters - one major, introduced at the beginning of the book and one supporting (not exactly minor), about 1\4 into the book. In the course of the story, it is absolutely imperative that they both die together (not &quot;together&quot; together but &quot;same time&quot; together) and earlier that was where book 1 ended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on carefully reexamining the story path, I felt that, in that length of the story (book 1), the readers would not be able to connect with both the characters, understand their importance, their motivations... And am thinking of changing it to a trilogy. I would be extending the story of the 1st book and dividing it into 2, and the earlier 2nd would become 3rd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this feels like I'm stretching the story and run the risk of putting off the reader as the resolution of the novel would be delayed and also, I would have to make major changes to the timeline to accommodate these changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do I decide which path to take ? Follow the story as is and run the risk of my characters(some of them) falling a bit short or extending the story and running the risk of my story feeling stretched...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T17:22:04.433" Title="How to decide where to break a novel" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17058" CreationDate="2015-05-04T04:25:18.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write two outlines. Give them to a few people to read. Get their feedback. Decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The outlines need to be detailed enough and contain all the important plot points, I'd guess maybe about three to five pages each. Think of the tv series episode synopses on Wikipedia (e.g. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Under_the_Dome_episodes) and each episode corresponding to one of your chapters, to give you an idea of detail and length. Add in character information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can, chose test readers from your target audience. Maybe go on Absolute Write to draft them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-05-04T10:12:16.090" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T10:12:16.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17060" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-04T06:43:06.640" Score="1" ViewCount="4787" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question regards using the forgotten realms setting for writing a novel. I'll explain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My original intention was to request permission to write a novel using WotC's Forgotten Realms setting, but as they're page says they are not accepting unsolicited submissions for novels, I'm trying to find an alternative method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, in the book itself I wouldn't be referencing any specific characters used by other authors and or the game manuals. All characters would be 100% my own manufacturing. What I do desire to use is the history of the world, the rules and mechanics that govern it, the geographical fixtures of the world, and if possible, although I could remove this, the names of various organizations in the forgotten realms universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a good idea for a book, and a very strong desire to pen and distribute said book, and I suppose my question is this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What would be the best method of doing so? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If WotC is completely unwilling to even read/consider my book (its one thing for them to read my submission and say its not something they can see being marketable or such, that I could atleast understand) is there a loophole or another avenue I might be able to take to be able to publish my book? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And finally, would it even be absolutely necessary to receive permission from WotC for this sort of idea?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(P.s. I am not a lawyer and I do not know much about patent law or the like, but I am willing to do whatever research is necessary if such is suggested as a &quot;work-around.&quot; Just looking for a &quot;no&quot; or &quot;Yes its possible&quot; and if yes, a starting point.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any replies!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13621" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T09:47:30.560" Title="Novel set in Forgotten Realms universe" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17058" CreationDate="2015-05-04T11:27:39.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most important things for you to consider is the quantity and quality of key moments in each section of the entire story. If there aren't enough and/or those which are there don't feel potent enough, then you're story could very well seem stretched in places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few risks to remember:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can your supporting cast be fleshed out substantially without overcomplicating the main plot?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you do introduce new minor characters or expand on existing ones, does it seem like they might pick up too much attention from a reader?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you find yourself having to review your main characters and their pivotal events to adjust, then readjust, and readjust some more (i.e. making major changes to the story as you mentioned)? If so, you could easily change the story fundamentally from what you originally envisioned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you have all your risks under control, you can then focus on trying to expand where you can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As it is crucial for the reader to connect, just try to add more to what exists now until you're satisfied that is likely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you then feel as though what you have is too big for 2, then try to look for holes in both your primary characters' and minor characters' story for places where you can slip in some extra drama/backstory which can serve to pull the reader into the world (this is especially effective for fantasy), give the reader more to consider when they're trying to guess who's good/evil/will become important etc. or to set up or improve good plot twists.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might pick a character, who originally would not have been much more than an extra in a movie, and have them seek revenge on the main character because of some complicated or misunderstood event in the past. This would serve to break up the main character's scenes and allow the viewer to explore more people in the world, and perhaps even establish perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, you can either go with upping the tempo of the story so you can slice and dice what isn't necessary, or you can go for more in-depth tale, in which case you'll definitely want to add more serious tones, obstacles and tangents to enhance the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only go on what you've given so... if you're going to kill off that main character and his 'friend' in the first book, then you'll need to give them, or the people who talk about/whose actions define those primary characters, a lot of time and situations which reveal their nature. Try to ensure a person who isn't familiar with your characters can say back to you something at least close to the character bios you may have made for them. If they can, then you obviously got what you needed into the first book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for delaying the resolution of the novel, that's fine, as long as you indeed get the reader to connect to the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13454" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T11:27:39.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9215" CreationDate="2015-05-04T15:26:13.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Live &quot;Presidents&quot; should be &quot;minor characters&quot; (in your fiction), performing a &quot;public&quot; act. For instance, in one screenplay, I featured a film clip of President George H.W. Bush (father) declaring war on Iraq in order to set a &quot;backdrop&quot; for early 1991.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you should not feature a real President e.g. seducing the heroine (and thus playing a major role in your fiction). That goes beyond &quot;public figure&quot; into the &quot;private&quot; realm and may expose you to a charge of libel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the President is a major character, you should change the name. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_Colors_%28film%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Primary Colors&quot;&lt;/a&gt; was about a Presidential candidate who could have been Bill Clinton, so they renamed him &quot;Jack Stanton.&quot; They also changed the Presidential election year to 1998, thereby creating a &quot;parallel universe&quot; with a timeline that could not have been real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-05-04T23:48:23.823" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T23:48:23.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17058" CreationDate="2015-05-04T17:22:04.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A novel idea (pun WAY intended) would be to release 2 books at the same time. One being his story and one being her story (assuming there is a her). Each book then would be completely from their point of view until the point where they both die together. There would be no specific order they could be read in. You would simply just be reading the story from a particular point of view to the point where the two character's story becomes intertwined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to release the books as different volumes, you might be able to publish both stories in the same book, but keep them separate. You could also interleave each story chapter by chapter if that would make sense (the number of chapters for each character would need to be the same).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T17:22:04.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17054" CreationDate="2015-05-04T17:55:39.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of the editing process is determining where to cut the fat. Often, first drafts are just there to get ideas out on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a happy medium with deciding what should be edited out. If you leave too much in, your reader may think you are rambling. However, you don't want to make your writing too terse, and start omitting important details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you may want to be conscious of is the usage of superfluous/redundant words and/or phrases. You also want to avoid repeating yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself writing details about a subject that has little or nothing to do with the character or story arc, it is best to avoid it unless it is a point that has something to do with the overarching theme of the story. If that is the case then some occasional vignettes or asides may work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to pay attention to is the pace. Good writing has a fairly steady pace. It can be sped up to denote action, or slowed down to add suspense. If you feel like certain parts of the story are being bogged down by too many details, then consider condensing to keep the pace consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T17:55:39.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11057" CreationDate="2015-05-04T18:40:09.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is decent advice everyone is giving. However, not knowing how to use active vs. passive is the mark of an amateur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone who over uses passive is new to the writing game. Why use passive voice when you can get straight to the action? Passive voice can be confusing, and dull. Active voice gets it over with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use active when the scene is fast paced, if it's a slow scene then passive may be okay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also matters if you are using first person, or third. If someone is using first person, and the narrator's desire is to make the main character seem passive then it can be okay to use passive voice. However, it is almost always better to use active voice; so the story moves along in a more direct fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum it all up, it is important to take time to consider why a scene should have passive or active. A good balance will slow the story down when it needs to, and speed it up when the action is moving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13627" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T18:40:09.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17068" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17076" CreationDate="2015-05-04T19:39:30.867" Score="3" ViewCount="3484" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently experimenting with a story and its setting for a comic. The overall setting is simple: it is set in the real world, though slightly different (towards science-fiction), and primarily in the US at this point. Now I'm wondering in what city I would like to place it. It has to be a fairly large city, much like New York and such. There are a few fictional places, like a small (man-made) island and an office building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I have is that I don't live in the United States, nor am I able to visit it yet. I have done research and know a lot about it, but since I've never visited any city, that knowledge is only superficial. This makes using a real city difficult (finding maps and specific locations is not difficult with today's technology like Google Maps and Wikipedia, but sensory stuff like what you really see, hear and smell is impossible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what I planned to do was creating a fictional city inspired by cities like Metropolis and Gotham in the DC universe. The thing is, I want this city to &quot;interact&quot; with the world, unlike what GTA did (islands in the middle of nowhere), and place it in the real world (like the aforementioned DC cities), so characters can interact with the country around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all comes down to this: is there a way to properly research real cities without actually visiting, or spending a whole lot of money (since I don't earn much yet)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, if it's easier and cheaper, how I can believably place a fictional city in the real United States (like replacing smaller towns, or just finding an empty stretch of coast or riverside without angering people that I've &quot;erased&quot; their hometown from the map)? As far as I can find it, all the fictional DC cities are located in relatively empty regions of the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13628" LastActivityDate="2022-04-01T22:13:56.807" Title="Real cities &amp; placing fictional cities" Tags="|setting|comics|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17068" CreationDate="2015-05-04T19:55:14.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider setting your story in a place that doesn't exist now, but exists in your mind. Do what DC and other comics do, and create a 'bit like reality but not exactly like reality now' setting that works for your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can create whatever place you want. If you want to have an American influence, do so. But be prepared to create your own world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T19:55:14.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17068" CreationDate="2015-05-04T20:25:45.530" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two approaches to researching existing cities without travelling there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read about that city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; has been written about New York, from travel journals to biographies to history books to fiction to science fiction to politics to newspaper articles. Everything about New York has been written down somewhere, including the smells. While New York is certainly exceptional, many other cities and towns have been written about and documented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have specific questions, ask a persom who lives there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the social media, writer's forums, and local online communities, you'll certainly find someone who can tell you what New York or any other city smells like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a recommendation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do mot create a fictional city based on the model of a fictional city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gotham is the cliché of a city, and a derivative Gotham will be the cliché of a cliché. If you want your fictional city to feel real, it is better to create it from the cities you know. Many aspects of large cities are the same worldwide. For example, traffic is crazy in New York, London, Rome and Shanghai. Probably a different kind of crazy, but the important part is how big city traffic differs from small town traffic, not how traffic in Rome differs from traffic in Paris. Just complement and &amp;quot;correct&amp;quot; your local home city with what you know to be different in a U.S. American city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T11:00:40.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17068" CreationDate="2015-05-05T09:07:48.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;...how I can believably place a fictional city in the real United States (like replacing smaller towns, or just finding an empty stretch of coast or riverside without angering people that I've &quot;erased&quot; their hometown from the map)?&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you have answered your own question. Just get out the map and look for a good site for a city, and if there isn't one alter the geography to make a good site. I honestly don't think anyone is going to be offended by the erasure of their home town - 99.99% of people don't study a fictional world closely enough to notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a virtue of necessity. &lt;em&gt;Revel&lt;/em&gt; in the fact that your city does not feel, sound or smell like NYC. Of course it doesn't, it has a quite different history. Perhaps German immigrants had a stronger influence, visible on shop signs and in the names of your characters? Perhaps the local Indian tribe continued to have a strong presence nearby, again affecting character names and place names. Whatever changes you make to history should show up a little in your character's personal histories too, as bitterness or happy nostalgia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T09:07:48.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17068" CreationDate="2015-05-05T12:59:16.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do web searches on &lt;em&gt;movies cities&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;books cities&lt;/em&gt; (and similar searches), you get lots of hits that you'll probably find helpful.  Stuff like &quot;Top 10 cities on film&quot;, &quot;Cities as characters in film&quot;, &quot;50 Coolest Fictional Cities&quot;.  Also, searching for videos using &lt;em&gt;travelogue CityName&lt;/em&gt; (e.g., &lt;em&gt;travelogue &quot;New York City&quot;&lt;/em&gt;) gives useful hits.  The web is your best friend when you're researching for a comic (or book, or whatever).  Just don't let it trap you so you never write the comic!  ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as what American city to choose: Unless you're going for realism, I would recommend creating a fictional city that is co-located with a real city.  Then take the elements you admire about various cities and combine them.  For example, I personally think that Seattle's geographical location is amazing.  You can't beat Puget Sound.  But Seattle's downtown is underwhelming.  OTOH, NYC is too much for my taste.  I prefer the skyscraper-filled but compact downtowns of Philadelphia or Chicago.  Then again, the open malls of monument-filled Washington, DC are also impressive.  Islands and bridges are great for stories, as are hills.  Harbors just beg for international intrigue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you set your comic in the future, or in an alternate reality, you can make your comic's city any way you like it, but still have it seem real because you've based it on real cities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T12:59:16.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17060" CreationDate="2015-05-05T14:30:16.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: This is the opinion of someone with no legal expertise.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a central part why you expect people to seek out your book is the enjoyment of the history and setting of a well-known universe, then you actually ARE seeking to profit off someone else's creative work and marketing, and you shouldn't do it unless they give you permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the setting inspires you, but isn't the most important part of your book, then you should write the first draft in their world, and then change the setting to a similar but original universe.  A huge portion of modern fantasy is set in Tolkien-inspired settings, but good authors bring their own perspective to the foundations that Tolkien laid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could always go with a Plan A and Plan B: Plan A, write the book in their world, and submit to them.  If it comes back, switch to Plan B and rewrite it to remove the WotC references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T14:30:16.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-05T15:02:05.223" Score="1" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, is the flow disrupted or does it sound weird if only one of the items has an adjective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My understanding of zoology was poor, but I knew animals&#xA;  would do everything to survive; birds would use their wings&#xA;  to fly away from snakes, buffaloes their &lt;strong&gt;powerful&lt;/strong&gt; legs to escape from&#xA;  lions, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T15:19:49.333" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T01:05:57.943" Title="Degree of symmetry in lists" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17068" CreationDate="2015-05-05T15:21:24.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;With Google maps and Google street view, you can get a lot of detail about the layout of a city and just what it looks like at any given point that would have been very difficult ten or twenty years ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, sure, if you set a story in a place that you have never been to, it is very likely that you will make mistakes about things that you didn't even think to question. This could range from small things that would have a minor impact on the story, like, &quot;You say the hero ordered apple pie in the restaurant, but in our culture apples are considered bad luck and it would be a VERY unusual restaurant that would serve apple pie&quot;, to something that would undermine your whole plot, like &quot;Your hero is black -- that's been very clear throughout the series -- and now you say he is a spy in this city? But there are no black people in our country, so any black person coming here would stand out from 100 miles away and it would be almost impossible for him to function as a spy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use a real city, I wouldn't worry about getting tiny details wrong. Like if you say, &quot;He walked past the coffee shop on Third Street&quot;, and there is no coffee shop on Third Street, very few readers would notice or care. Even if someone said to himself, &quot;Wait, Third Street? There's the men's clothing store, the Thai restaurant, the auto parts store ... there's no coffee shop on Third Street!&quot;, he'd probably just assume that you put one there to make the story work and brush it off. People will accept fictional details of that sort just like they accept your fictional characters: No one is going to say, &quot;What? The writer says that hero lives in this city and he is named Fred Stover? But I just checked the phone book and there's no one in this city by that name!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But fundamental things about the nature of the city you need to get right. Like if you set the story in New York and say that most of the people work in the oil fields surrounding the city, or you set it in Chicago and talk about the harsh winds blowing in from the desert, that would be really jarring and unbelievable. (Unless the story is set in the future and you explain how such a radical change came about.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you make up a fictional city, you free yourself from a lot of that trouble. You can make the city almost anything you like, and no one can say it's wrong, because you just made it up. If possible I'd make the exact location vague. Like don't say, &quot;Twelve and a half miles south of New York along the coast&quot;, just say &quot;in New Jersey&quot; or even &quot;along the Atlantic coast&quot; and somewhere else mention &quot;in the north&quot;, etc. That way you don't have to worry about a reader saying, &quot;Hey, there's no island off the coast there&quot; or &quot;but why didn't the hero go to Smithtown for that, that would be right across Highway 90, wouldn't it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course a fictional city in the U.S. would have to have a culture at least generally consistent with the rest of the U.S., or you would have to explain why not. Like if you set a story in a fictional U.S. city and then mention that the hero is marrying a certain woman because this was arranged by their parents, or that the hero rides a rickshaw to work every day, you couldn't just toss that in casually, you'd have to provide some explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Afterthought&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seemingly small errors CAN be jarring. An example that occurs to me: I once saw a movie where a character casually mentions that she grew up in Lima, Ohio. It wasn't a big part of the movie, they were just trying to toss in that she grew up in this small town before moving to the big city. But at the time I lived in Ohio, not far from Lima. And the character in the movie pronounced it &quot;Lee-ma&quot;, like the city in Peru. People who live there pronounce it &quot;Lie-ma&quot;, like the bean. It sounded very weird to me. Like doesn't she know how to pronounce the name of her own home town?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a more significant point, consider the movie &quot;Raiders of the Lost Ark&quot;. They depict the Germans as apparently being in control of Egypt. German soldiers freely travel around the country, German officials are dictating to people, etc. But at the time this movie was set, Egypt was controlled by the British. I'm not sure if the writers thought that Germany controlled Egypt, or if we are supposed to think that the Germans could do all this right under the noses of British authorities somehow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T15:50:12.030" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T15:50:12.030" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17075" CreationDate="2015-05-05T16:48:22.583" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Symmetry is not important, but rhythm is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering rhythm I would change your example to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My understanding of zoology was poor, but I knew animals would do anything to survive: birds would use their wings to fly from snakes, buffaloes their legs to run from lions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I alwasy read my texts aloud. They must have rhythm like a poem. Try it with your example and mine and you'll hear why I made the changes I made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides reading more rhythmical, your text gets more focussed and intense from the deletions. That the legs are powerful is not important for the argument you make, so deleting that actually makes it more concise. &quot;Run&quot; is more forceful than &quot;escape&quot;. &quot;Fly&quot; (= flee) is more visceral than (leisurely) &quot;fly away&quot;. &quot;And so on&quot; feels vague and confused, while giving two examples gives your narrator a more decisive and clearheaded character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, maybe, &quot;do &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt;thing&quot;, instead of &quot;everything&quot;?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T16:54:35.860" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T16:54:35.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16599" CreationDate="2015-05-05T17:47:07.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be safe on legal footing, assuming that the copyrights were not assigned to your clients or that you don't have contractual obligations to request permission from the clients to use these works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T17:47:07.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17029" CreationDate="2015-05-05T19:14:02.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The paragon example, I'd say, when writing from a child's perspective in first person, in a book that is NOT for a child audience, is found in Jack Womack's &lt;em&gt;Random Acts of Senseless Violence&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd call these stylistic points Condillacian statues effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Slang and language use that is not quite formal English is necessary if the perspective character is a child and not an adult, because they lack experience or possibility of wide reading or writing. Whatever experience they do have has a disproportional effect on their speaking and writing. And this is magnified by the fact that they imitate what language objects (words, phrases, etc) they newly experience based on analogy with the language objects they know.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an unintentional sampling and selection bias which results in this slang, not necessarily any desire to speak in slang where a choice to speak in slang or nonslang exists. They can't parse what is nonslang (from our perspective) nor can they, at that point, output nonslang.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all learn by imitation and analogy. But adults have learned much more by definition than children. And it's not just the slang that's important to be authentic and provide emotional connection (because almost any reader shall remember how they were and were not when children themselves) when writing from a child's perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Children have limited perspective, and generally do not know immediately the point of what is happening around them, for they lack experience. So the perspective character, if they are really a child, must come to conclusions if and only if their personal experience at that point in the novel justifies the inference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adults in contrast may simply make an observation or hypothesis or make an inference at once. (It may be true or false in the context, but the key thing is that it's made at once. There is not necessarily any lead up to it.) It depends on knowledge or experience besides that which they have through experience of the events of the story. They presumably had much experience and reading or discussion outside the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the perspective character is a child and novel discusses their life, this is not the case. The story must provide all the inputs leading to any inference or assertion of the character if the character is a child in order for it to be plausible. If the character is not plausible, although they story may be interesting, there would be little emotional connection and not much emotional impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13168" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T19:14:02.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17083" CreationDate="2015-05-05T19:31:30.397" Score="2" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the environment of my short story: the adaptation of film noir into literature. The characters in the story are David Lynch's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxKPBLjHAEA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rabbits&lt;/a&gt; and I can't find how to introduce them. In the David Lynch series, the fact that they are rabbits is not said to the spectator, they are just shown. We don't care if they are rabbits, it's just an unusal odd detail used to shake off the spectator. It would be too obvious if I just describe their face, their ears, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd like to ask: When writing a short story, how to «show» an irrelevant detail, as in movies, without expressively «tell»?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13632" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T13:16:06.460" Title="How to «show» an irrelevant detail without expressively «tell»?" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17080" CreationDate="2015-05-05T22:50:34.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was aroused from my alcoholic slumber by a knock at the door. As my vision cleared I looked across my desk at the door to my office. Silhouetted there was one hot bunny. Her ears hung all the way down to her paws. I might be in love. I gave my ear a quick scratch with my hind foot And invited her in, &quot;Yo, Toots, whatcha need found?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously a cover illustration is handy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T22:50:34.857" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14244" CreationDate="2015-05-06T00:40:08.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some authors do their best to worm some semicolons and colons into a character's dialogue; however, since you can't see how someone talks in reality, it is more common to use the predictable punctuation like periods, commas, question marks and exclamation marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See what I did there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13633" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T00:40:08.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17080" CreationDate="2015-05-06T10:05:39.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not irrelevant that the characters are rabbits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;You would simply state that clearly.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about a movie featuring a female lead. It is usually not said in the movie what gender that person has, because (in most cases) this is apparent, yet in a novel you would certainly not hesitate to clearly indicate that the protagonist is female, either by name (if that name is gender specific) or pronouns or, if necessary, by stating the fact. Age and gender of a character are of prime importance to the readers, and keeping them ambiguous is always done intentionally and to a purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Lynch does not leave any doubt about wether or not his characters are rabbits, and so you shouldn't either. Since we have no pronouns or names that indicate rabbitness, you must, in my opinion, use the word &amp;quot;rabbit&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hildred's example may work, because the sheer quantitiy of hints (bunny, ears, paws, hind foot) points in the right direction, but since &amp;quot;bunny&amp;quot; is not exclusively used to allude to rabbits, nor are rabbits the only animals with ears, paws and hind feet, I'm not sure if I wouldn't rather have thought of another animal (or thought this strangly bad writing) a long way into the novel, before the true nature of the characters would finally have dawned on me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as hildred also noted, the clear indication need not be in text. It could be in the cover illustration, the blurb (&amp;quot;A tale of two rabbits ...&amp;quot;) or the title (&amp;quot;The Maltese Rabbit&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must not confuse showing things to the viewer in a movie with &amp;quot;showing (not telling)&amp;quot; in written fiction. If something is clearly seen on a movie screen, that corresponds to &amp;quot;telling&amp;quot; in fiction: the movie &lt;em&gt;shows&lt;/em&gt; a car parked in front of a house; the novel &amp;quot;tells&amp;quot; us that a car is parked in front of a house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Showing&amp;quot; in a novel is done in the same way as in a movie: by implying facts through the actions of the characters. You &amp;quot;show&amp;quot; that a person is in love by letting them blush when they encounter their crush, both in a novel and in a movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, movies cannot easily &amp;quot;tell&amp;quot; us certain things. You would need a voice over narration to tell us that a character is in love. Since voice over narration is unpopular in certain movie genres, &amp;quot;showing&amp;quot; is necessary in those movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technique has invaded certain genres of fiction writing with the use of other cinematic techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T10:05:39.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17080" CreationDate="2015-05-06T13:16:06.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a written text, by definition the only mode of communication is words. Whether you are &quot;showing&quot; or &quot;telling&quot;, you are using words. If you want to convey the idea that a character is a rabbit, I don't see any reason to go through some round-about, indirect means of implying this. Just say, &quot;Then a rabbit walked into the room.&quot; (Or hopped in, I suppose.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of &quot;don't tell, show&quot; is that it is often more effective to convey information through action scenes rather than long narrations. To take a simple example, instead of writing, &quot;Bob was very mad at Sally,&quot; describe how he turned red and yelled. But the &quot;don't tell, show&quot; advice doesn't mean that you can't directly say that it was Sally that he was yelling at and have to make the reader figure this out through some roundabout clues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T13:16:06.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17075" CreationDate="2015-05-06T13:34:40.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends how different they are. &quot;Wings&quot; versus &quot;powerful legs&quot;? Having an adjective in one but not the other doesn't break the pattern for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this example: &quot;I knew animals would do everything to survive; birds would use their wings to fly away from snakes, buffaloes their powerful legs to escape from lions; and the ability to change their skin color is very useful to chameleons.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the third entry I've added doesn't match the pattern of the first two at all: I've put the &quot;escape mechanism&quot; first and the name of the creature second and I haven't followed the pattern of naming the predator they are escaping. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More jarring still is when a writer completely shifts gears. Like, &quot;I knew animals would do everything to survive; birds would use their wings to fly away from snakes, buffaloes their powerful legs to escape from lions; and fish have gills to breathe underwater.&quot; All three things fit under the category of &quot;things that help a creature to survive&quot;, but clearly the third is a very different nature from the first two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T13:34:40.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5348" CreationDate="2015-05-06T14:13:16.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer. But ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how police and courts treat an autobiography. I've never heard of someone being convicted of a crime because he confessed to it in an autobiography. But a very common method for police to catch a criminal is that he tells someone else about the crime and that person reports it to the police. Many criminals seem to get caught because they foolishly brag about how they got away with it to their buddies at the bar. And I've seen several stories in the news lately about people being arrested after making posts on Facebook and the like describing a crime they just committed. So I wouldn't just assume that something you put in a book &quot;doesn't count&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have noted, a lot depends on the seriousness of the crime. If you write that 20 years ago you exceeded the speed limit by 2 miles per hour, I can't imagine that the police or courts would care enough to track you down on this. On the other hand, if you write that you were the person who committed an unsolved murder, then I think the authorities will be interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention committing various (minor) illegal acts while travelling. That means we are talking about the laws of not just one country, but many. Even if a lawyer assured you 100% that mentioning in your book that you smoked marijuana in the United States won't get you into trouble, maybe it will get you in trouble if you say you did it in Saudi Arabia or Singapore and then return to that country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't be too encouraged by the fact that some celebrity confessed to drug use in a book and nothing came of it. I don't want to get off into politics, but I think reality is that the rich and famous get away with things that ordinary people do not. When a famous Hollywood actor is caught using drugs, they get sent to a luxury rehab clinic. When some poor man living in a trailer park is caught using drugs, he goes to prison. When Timothy Geitner, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, was found not to have paid his taxes for several years, he was forced to promise not to do it again. If you or I did that, we'd be in jail. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My take: I'd talk to a lawyer and generally be very careful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T14:13:16.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5348" CreationDate="2015-05-06T18:55:37.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For what you're deciding to write, you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; create an outline and ask a lawyer to consider the possible ramifications if the authorities decided to act upon it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you'd probably be better off introducing a secondary character that performed the various actions that you're concerned about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Farley Mowat's &lt;em&gt;And No Birds Sang&lt;/em&gt;, his autobiographical account of his WWII experienced made note of an event where &quot;someone else,&quot; mowed down some German soldiers with a machine gun, though from the context you can realize that he was actually describing something that he had done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even fictional writing can get you in trouble. An absurd case involved &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sjgames.com/SS/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;SJ Games vs. the Secret Service&quot;&gt;Steve Jackson games&lt;/a&gt; back in the early 1990's, where their offices were stormed by the Secret Service, resulting in the seizure of their computers and related equipment. As it turns out, one of their games, GURPS Cyberpunk, &lt;em&gt;sounded&lt;/em&gt; too realistic, which brought down the authorities. Keep in mind that this was six years after the cyberpunk novel &lt;em&gt;Neuromancer&lt;/em&gt; by William Gibson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T18:55:37.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16423" CreationDate="2015-05-06T19:42:15.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as the writing portion goes, you've got enough. However, in this day and age, at least to my understanding, you need a trailer.  This means taking ~20 minutes of footage and editing it down to ~3 minutes of something that is consumable (gives the gist of the story).  Unfortunately, trailers cost money.  Expect to spend $20K to shoot and edit a trailer that someone is going to watch and say, &quot;yeah, we want to buy this.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13096" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T19:42:15.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16124" CreationDate="2015-05-06T19:50:36.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do some volunteer work for non profits that need technical writing, then list that work on your resume.  It won't take much to get someone interested in you.  Then take a contract doing documentation.  Companies who create in-house software are notoriously deficient when it comes to technical documentation, and they know it.  Anyone who &lt;strong&gt;wants&lt;/strong&gt; to do that job is welcome, with virtually no experience.  After a year contracting, launch your career with earnest.  That is, unless you've gotten used to the golden handcuffs by then...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, check the &lt;a href=&quot;http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?searchTerm=technical%20writer&quot;&gt;StackOverflow career site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13096" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T19:50:36.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17090" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17099" CreationDate="2015-05-06T20:36:37.940" Score="1" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say that you are writing a novel whose narrative is non-linear. That means that when Chapter One refers to the present time, e.g. the 2010s, Chapter Two, instead of telling what happened right after Chapter One, refers to the past, e.g. the 1950s. And this structure goes on and on through the chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is what to write first. Let's assume that it's about a novel with three different stories, but somehow related to one another, more or less. Chapters One, Five, and Eighteen describe the first story, the same thing happens to the other stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your opinion, what is the most effective way to write a well-balanced/structured novel yet nonlinear: to write the first story in its whole, and then break it up in small chapters, or to write a section of the first story in the first chapter, and in the second (chapter) to write a section of the second story, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question may be opinion-based, but I think it will help me understand how writers work, and be influenced by them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13630" LastEditorUserId="13630" LastEditDate="2016-04-03T19:28:42.433" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T21:45:27.813" Title="Nonlinear novels" Tags="|novel|narrative|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16689" CreationDate="2015-05-06T20:42:09.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use &quot;soft core&quot; tech terms that most people know. In one of my works, one character describes his friend to a third character: &quot;He's a real computer man. Thinks in terms of &lt;em&gt;links and flow charts.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T20:42:09.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5131" CreationDate="2015-05-06T20:53:03.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO, you have good material but too many details that don't help your story. The first two sentences in the first pargraph about darkness are an example. I would omit them and begin: &quot;There were two people &lt;em&gt;sitting there in the darkness&lt;/em&gt;... The reason is that the &quot;type&quot; of darkness that you described is not essential to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the dialog, they take too long to get to the point. I'd start with &quot;Can I talk to you about something that terrifies me?&quot; he said after awhile. The &quot;rest&quot; is &quot;normal&quot; conversation but not good storytelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T20:53:03.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17101" CreationDate="2015-05-07T03:00:49.733" Score="1" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always preferred creating short stories, and novels naturally. I don't normally create plot summaries, chapter summaries, and so forth. Is it best to always create a plot summary and chapter summary with at least key plot points before digging into actual writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3543" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T09:49:50.297" Title="Writing free-form versus creating a plot online?" Tags="|outline|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17096" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17100" CreationDate="2015-05-07T03:08:56.247" Score="2" ViewCount="3635" Body="&lt;p&gt;In writing a novel, I've noticed that there are different scenes. It's a compilation of different scenes. What truly signifies the start, and end of a scene. If they are in a room, is that one scene? What happens if they walk out of that room, into another room and it's all one flow. Is that all still the same scene? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a hard definition for when one scene ends, and one scene begins?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3543" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T06:00:58.213" Title="What defines a &quot;scene&quot;?" Tags="|scene|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17060" CreationDate="2015-05-07T03:29:19.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The best method of going about this would be to first &lt;a href=&quot;http://officeedgreenwood.com/contact/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;contact Ed Greenwood&lt;/a&gt;, as he is the one who created the &lt;em&gt;Forgotten Realms&lt;/em&gt; in the first place. I would ask him if you need to talk with him or Wizards of the Coast (WotC) to write in the &lt;em&gt;Forgotten Realms&lt;/em&gt;. If Ed Greenwood, then find out from him what you have to do to get permission. If WotC, then read through the support answers on &lt;a href=&quot;http://wizards.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2236/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Idea Submissions&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://wizards.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/88/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Use of Wizards' Intellectual Property&lt;/a&gt; if you have not already done so. It's important to remember that the &lt;em&gt;Forgotten Realms&lt;/em&gt; setting is copyrighted content. Even if you don't use the characters, the geography, history, and so forth of the &lt;em&gt;Forgotten Realms&lt;/em&gt; was created by Ed Greenwood.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For publishing for profit, no, there isn't a loophole that would allow you to get around not being given permission. However, if WotC puts on a writing contest (not sure how likely that is) or opens up a short story anthology to submissions, then it is possible you could get something smaller published that might open the door for a longer piece being accepted. Also, getting an agent might help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to publish your story, then, yes, it is absolutely necessary to receive permission from the copyright holder (be it WotC or Ed Greenwood). If you go the fan-fiction site route, then it is highly recommended that you get permission or at least research how lenient WotC/Ed Greenwood is concerning such works. If you decide just to print a single copy at a local print shop to share with just your family and friends, then you probably could get away without getting permission, but you wouldn't be able to distribute it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And while creating a world of your own might be doing what so many others are doing, if you do end up having to go that route there is nothing stopping you from focusing on character development and plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I hope that you are able to get permission to use the &lt;em&gt;Forgotten Realms&lt;/em&gt; as a setting for your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13618" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T03:29:19.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17098" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-07T05:25:16.350" Score="0" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to hone an archaic writing style. Does what I have written here have itself entrenched in some bygone era of time or other and in which era would this be? Please do refrain from posting ill-witted obscenities abounded with shrill and strident witticisms, as instead you should provide me with some trenchant criticism that will further have my knowledge of what is required of my writing understood by my rather constrained self. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had myself without much gold, which then had me, with much disappointment had, have known to me the ways by which more gold can be had by this here pocket of mine, which does begin to show itself as having fewer coins than the pocket of a peasant would have were he have himself in great luck found. Though this be a common plight had by many a man of our village, do bestow unto me your wisdom; that I may have, with great pleasure to all exemplified, the ways of those with gold coin plentiful known to me. There are arcane spoils to be had by my peasant hand, and a heavy pocket of mine is to certainly have me dabble in their brilliance, as the dabbling of my brother in such spoils of his own does have him an afire place and purpose in our village known to those coin copious coterie. It has been by my brother that such a coin is worshiped by us peasants as having the ability to have us in and of itself a fine amount of gold richer. Were I to have you know of the particular rumours that have had me enlightened to the existence of such a coin, I ask of you that a deal to which you betroth your secrecy be had with our forever trusting friendship then enshrined, that both of our place and purpose in our village be propelled to no end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13640" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-05-07T15:31:55.983" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T16:22:26.043" Title="Does this read as archaic?" Tags="|grammar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-05-12T19:44:53.700" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17090" CreationDate="2015-05-07T05:29:43.963" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't really matter. You will be rewriting to close plot holes, provide foreshadowing, clean up continuity, either way. What matters is that you don't set up artificial obstacles to your writing and write whichever way gives you the most flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'm an exploring writer and any kind of planning stops me dead in my track. I write my novels as the reader reads them -- in the same sequence. Try what works best for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T05:29:43.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17096" CreationDate="2015-05-07T05:44:42.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A scene is defined by the meaning we ascribe to the events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of real life and how you tell your friend of something that happened. You usually have a clear idea of which of your lifelong, second-by-second experiences belong to that event (and in the narration), and which don't. If you tell of a visit to the dentist, you wont usually start with how you went to bed the evening before, or describe all the cars you saw on your way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is the same. Whenever an event has been completed and there is a sense of closure, the scene ends. This usually falls together with people meeting at the beginning and separating at the end of a scene, or with arriving at a location and leaving it, but is does not have to. It can also be the emotions or thoughts of the protagonist or narrator that structure the novel. In extreme stream of consciousness novels the text might not even have separate scenes (and chapters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T05:44:42.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17095" CreationDate="2015-05-07T06:00:46.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is best to do what works best for you (and you will have to try). People (and writers) are different, and what works for one need not work for another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that what you write without plan is reasonably well structured and without disabling plot holes that make rewriting and cleaning up a nightmare there is no reason why you should insert an unnecessary additional step into your process just to satisfy the authors of how to write books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand you find that the result of you happily writing along falls below your expectations you might profit from however much planning helps you avoid whatever went wrong. You'll need to analyse your works, maybe get feedback from readers, and then find appropriate strategies. These might include defining the end, setting up certain key events, writing a premise or logline, drawing charts, or whatever. I once wrote a novel guided by a series of photographs as landmarks. There is no generally applicable advice, and you'll have to experiment to find your own ideal procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T06:00:46.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17096" CreationDate="2015-05-07T06:00:58.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One helpful guideline is to think of a scene as being &lt;em&gt;continuous&lt;/em&gt; in time and place (and perhaps in POV). So if your characters are in one place and they go to another, and your narrative &lt;em&gt;continues with them,&lt;/em&gt; that can be a single scene. But if your characters are in one place, and then you jump (discontinuously) to another time or place, the jump would start a new scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, this is just a guideline. Some writers make leaps of time or place within a paragraph. Others sometimes begin a new scene even when the time, place, and POV are continuous. Stephen King has been known to begin a new scene in the middle of a sentence (e.g. in a scene in &lt;em&gt;Dreamcatcher&lt;/em&gt; as a character awakes from a dream).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I find it a mostly helpful guide. When time, place, or POV jumps, start a new scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T06:00:58.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17095" CreationDate="2015-05-07T09:49:50.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An outline or summary is planning. As is character profiles, event lists, setting notes, language notes, maps, roleplaying, and anything else you do understand the story before you write it. How much planning is needed varies from none at all to months of planning for hours of writing. Some factors that affect how much planning is needed are length, complexity, abnormality, number of authors, memory and writing speed. The longer the story the more details to be confused, and the same with complicated plots esoteric theories and other complications. If you can't remember the whole story for long enough to write it down, you need notes. If you are working with someone else, you need to plan to make sure everyone has the same plan. Abnormality? The more different a story is from what you know, the more you need to plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T09:49:50.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17104" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-07T12:00:14.783" Score="1" ViewCount="754" Body="&lt;p&gt;For question, see title.  For example of supposedly &quot;stilted and cluttered&quot; writing, see below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Constitutional prohibition against political dynasties cannot be&#xA;  made clearer, but no implementing law exists to concretize its&#xA;  substantive rhetoric. Although such provision is ideally&#xA;  self-executing, its vagueness creates loopholes in favor of the&#xA;  well-entrenched political families. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conscientious legislation can objectify the mandate against political&#xA;  dynasty, but the presence of dynastic clans in congress trumps this&#xA;  possibility. It is, therefore, incumbent upon the electorates to&#xA;  initiate political reforms by being more critical in evaluating the&#xA;  platforms of the candidates. Looking past the popularity of any&#xA;  candidate allows for an objective assessment of their credibility and&#xA;  fitness to serve. Unfortunately, the lack of access to decent&#xA;  education, aggravated by poverty, makes the masses gullible and&#xA;  unwilling to prioritize their long-term collective needs over their&#xA;  immediate necessities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you very much for all your answers. I forgot to mention that I was talking about the Philippine Constitution, but your criticisms are duly noted. I've edited the paragraph, and I wonder if this one reads better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Political dynasty in the Philippines breeds a nepotistic system. Hence, an individual can be appointed in office because of his influential connections, not his credentials. This system shows the weak development of democracy, which will remain so until the government rids itself of corruption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Philippine Constitution explicitly prohibits political dynasties, but its provisions remain silent as to what a political dynasty really is. The congress may opt to define it, but the presence dynastic clans in both the upper and lower house makes this impossible. Even the electorates cannot be counted on to reform the legislature, because poverty forces them to sell their votes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13643" LastEditorUserId="13643" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T03:50:34.830" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T22:37:19.450" Title="Is there an objective way to determine that writing is &quot;stilted and cluttered&quot;?" Tags="|style|grammar|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-05-13T05:56:21.187" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17098" CreationDate="2015-05-07T13:37:37.513" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This doesn't read as archaic, just as convoluted and unnatural.  There are some long words, one or two archaic words, and a whole lot of sentence structures that were never used by anyone at any time in history.  It has the feel of a very young person attempting to sound older.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to emulate the writing of a particular time, I'd suggest you do more research on the writing of that particular time.  If you're just trying to convey a sense of oldness, I'd dial it way way back, especially with the sentence structure.  People did used to write in a more ornate, circumlocutious style, but it was for the sake of elegance, not for the sake of confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Hope that was sufficiently trenchant!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-05-07T13:46:05.573" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T13:46:05.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17106" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-07T13:42:20.927" Score="3" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm part of a technical documentation team where I'm suggesting the document designers different methods for graphical presentation. Each time I need to talk about a method I have to look around and dig into the search engines to find out the terms used for them. We have a UX designer who mostly can shed some light on some of them but when he's not around, the job falls onto myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there some guides which define different ways of graphical presentation methods in documentation or do I have to dig all of them up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last one I was trying to find was &quot;popup zoom in&quot; for which I'm still not convinced that it's the correct term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10460" LastEditorUserId="29719" LastEditDate="2018-07-27T13:09:18.943" LastActivityDate="2018-07-27T13:09:18.943" Title="Graphical presentation method nomenclature" Tags="|technical-writing|terminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17110" CreationDate="2015-05-07T13:49:14.500" Score="4" ViewCount="752" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most works of fiction are influenced by back stories. Can that also be true for envisioned sequels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was working on a screenplay in which a female suit rises to the top of the company and is nominated for figurehead Chairman on her charm and sociability. Her personality type is &quot;cheerleader.&quot; She is not the CEO, her role is ambassador rather than decision maker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was until I tried to envision the sequel, which has her launching a &quot;coup d'etat&quot; and turning Andover Corporation (named after its founder) into a female-dominated &quot;Amazon Corporation.&quot; Do I need to change the woman's character arc in the first story? Or is ambassador a good place to launch a stealth coup d'etat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-03-22T11:19:28.960" LastActivityDate="2019-03-22T11:19:28.960" Title="Can your current work of fiction be influenced by a sequel?" Tags="|fiction|screenwriting|sequel|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17107" CreationDate="2015-05-07T15:01:15.983" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most people work with the thought in mind that their piece of writing will go on to be well received, and more success will come based around that, so will leave doors open for sequels. However, nobody wants to read an incomplete book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore you will usually find that most things will wrap up quite well at the end, and most plot points will be handled nicely, and the audience can be happy and content at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, however, doesn't mean the writer can't leave 1 or 2 loose ends that could possibly go on to evolve into further pieces. These could generally develop naturally from the first piece, referencing whatever loose end didn't tie up previously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that a first piece of writing can always leave clues that might appear in the next, but that wouldn't detract from the story if the second piece is never written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a mysterious character that your main character notices in a bar talking to her boss, but you then find out nothing else about him, would leave the reader thinking he's just a shady guy, and that her boss is possibly cavorting with shady types, thus developing the character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can then be developed in the second piece when she spots the same man in a train station, and decides to follow him to see what he's up to. This can then lead to her changing her opinion about the current CEO and wanting to overthrow him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wouldn't fully describe this character in the first piece, and notice many things about him, without him ever showing up in again until the sequel, which might not ever even happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that you don't have to compromise the character for the first piece in order for her to make sense in the second. When the sequel comes around, make the situation fit the character, rather the character into a situation that they wouldn't make sense in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If absolutely necessary, you can have the character experience something that does actually change her personality, such as a near-death experience, or a close family member dying. This could cause her to change, whether the sequel starts off this way or it happens between when the first piece ends and the second one begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my suggestion would be to have the full character arc within the first piece, but with the thought in mind that it can develop further. Perhaps drop clues in the first piece as to how it might tie into the second, but don't start setting up a full story that finishes abruptly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make the character that fits in within the first story, and then change the situation so that her reasoning would change within the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T15:01:15.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17098" CreationDate="2015-05-07T16:22:26.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Chris' answer this is not archaic at all. It just appears that you are trying to write with a bunch of old timey words. Nobody has ever really spoken that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For you to be successful at this, you basically would need to be a trained linguist, and really be able to understand the dialect of the time period you are trying to emulate. If you get it wrong, people won't take you seriously; even worse, people may actually get offended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is to write a story using modern English, and then consult with an expert such as a professor which will be able to help you make your writing appear more archaic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T16:22:26.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17107" CreationDate="2015-05-07T19:56:14.757" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I’m understanding you  correctly, you have a female character – who is not an MC right now, but a strong secondary character. This character in current WIP is of the Ambassador personality type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Typically this type is described as:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ambassadors will be positive about any change and will be highly&#xA;  aligned, however they will not proactively try to change people’s&#xA;  points of view. Moving an Ambassador to a Champion will require an&#xA;  organization to work closely with them, perhaps giving them a part of&#xA;  the project to lead, which will require them to engage more&#xA;  proactively. ~ from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hrzone.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hrzone.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head I don’t see any problem with this at all – and there are plenty of historical examples of Ambassadors, who are happy in their position becoming Champions within short time frames, and not only doing well, but thriving. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Truman stepped up from Vice President to President  on April 12, 1945, when Roosevelt died. We were still at war with both Germany and Japan at that time. As VP, the role of Ambassador fit Truman perfectly. He was engaged, active, did his job, enjoyed his job and position, and had no designs on becoming president. He rarely discussed world affairs or domestic politics with Roosevelt; he was uninformed about major initiatives relating to the war and the top-secret Manhattan Project, which was about to test the world's first atomic bomb. In fact Stalin knew about the atomic bomb months before Truman did. Truman met with FDR only twice during the 88 days of his VP office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know if you fellas&#xA;  ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what&#xA;  happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the&#xA;  planets had fallen on me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Senator, Truman was fair. He did his job, didn't back down from things he believe were important, such as government spending waste, but it was only after he became president that his background was glorified. At the time though, he was seen as a pure Ambassador type -- both as senator and VP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within a week of rise into the White House, he was suddenly an Alpha, and it was only then that people began to see that he had been an Alpha all along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world.&#xA;  It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era,&#xA;  after Noah and his fabulous Ark&quot;. ~ Harry Truman, writing about the&#xA;  atomic bomb in his diary on July 25, 1945&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He demonstrated no sign of insecurity with his new office and massive change of responsibility. For example he asked the current cabinet to remain in place. They understood the situation better than he did, and what the country required was results, not high public impression of him being his own man. He did emphasize a central principle of his administration: he would be the one making decisions, and they were to support him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He went to FDR's funeral. When the papers tried to make a big deal about this, he told them flatly &quot;He's my friend.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;V-E Day on May 8, 1945, his 61st birthday&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hiroshima was bombed on August 6   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nagasaki three days later   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With Japan still slow to surrender, he ordered a massive conventional&#xA;air raid on Tokyo for August 13   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;August 14th, Japan surrendered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post war was a mess, and there was havoc every direction you looked. No matter what you thought of his decisions however, you could not say he wasn't a fighter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that is one of 100s of historic examples we could look as a demonstration of this change being well within the scope of the &lt;em&gt;&quot;human experience.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would suggest, is that in this book, to give your character an arc which suggests a change – create an event which emotionally drives her into the Champion role. Perhaps something that the current CEO does, or authorizes, results in a catastrophe of some type, which she finds unacceptable (oil spill, gas leak making water flammable, research the Koch Brothers, they have plenty of examples) -- OR -- Perhaps because of an &lt;em&gt;inaction&lt;/em&gt; one of her relatives is killed or maimed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will be the temptation to do too much with that suggestion -- to get into her head and show details of what is going on. But the way I would play it would be showing the &quot;event&quot; and only mention her in passing. Have her leave the room when the news arrives, taking her cell phone out as she rushes for the elevator -- and that is it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest this because right now, she is a secondary character. Keep her that way. Then, in the next book, show what happened in her world as a result of that event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final comment on this -- the event and her decision to take over, doesn't require her to be a Hero as well as a Champion. Nor do her actions need to be less dangerous or more &quot;good&quot; than the one she has named &quot;atrocity.&quot; There are plenty of news stories every day about someone feeling that something is unjust or against God, and then responding to that event with ballistics, explosives, rape, slavery and guns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13645" LastEditorUserId="13645" LastEditDate="2015-05-07T20:05:21.987" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T20:05:21.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17104" CreationDate="2015-05-07T20:41:20.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most word processing programs have a way to measure &quot;readability&quot; of your document.  There are also free online sites that do the same thing, which you can easily find by searching for &lt;em&gt;document readability&lt;/em&gt;.  These measures combine average word length, average sentence length, average paragraph length, active vs. passive voice, etc.  The numbers obtained are somewhat arbitrary (hence there are numerous measures).  Nevertheless, they serve as pretty good guidelines.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, when I copy your sample text into Word and run spell/grammar check on it, Word tells me that this text has a Flesch Reading Ease score of 6.3.  According to Wikipedia's article, 6.3 is at the far end of &quot;university level&quot; (0 to 30, with 0 being virtually impossible to read).  The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 17.5 corresponds to 4.5 years past a high school diploma, i.e., graduate school.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a counter-example, my latest journal paper has a Reading Ease of 45.3 and a Grade Level of 11.6. Another counter-example is MLK Jr.'s &quot;I Have a Dream&quot; speech, with RE=65.1 and GL=8.8. And, Lincoln's &quot;Gettysburg Address&quot; has RE=65.0 and GL=10.9. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd have to agree that your sample text is hard to read.  I don't know if that makes it &quot;stilted and cluttered.&quot; (BTW, good points!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T20:41:20.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17104" CreationDate="2015-05-07T20:49:31.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1DUH8.png&quot; alt=&quot;from Google Define&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a word? Yes. A perfect example of the species. More than this it is also, in several areas inaccurate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Constitutional prohibition against political dynasties cannot be&#xA;  made clearer, but no implementing law exists to concretize its&#xA;  substantive rhetoric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eSqy7.png&quot; alt=&quot;from Google define&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Constitution is the law. There is little more &quot;law&quot; than the Constitution, and if you are referring to the US Constitution, it is the  &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;supreme law&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of the United States. So, if the Constitution in fact does have a prohibition against political dynasties, then there is no implementation required. to concertize this further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communication is what is Heard, not what is Said. As this statement is highly questionable as well as stilted, any number of meanings can be derived -- many of them contradictory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although such provision is ideally self-executing, its vagueness creates &gt;loopholes in favor of the well-entrenched political families.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a statement is going to lay judgement, it should at least give reference to the vague ineffectual provision. The US Constitution doesn't have provisions, it has laws. &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KkR8f.png&quot; alt=&quot;from Google define&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Law&lt;/strong&gt; is a system of rules that are enforced &lt;strong&gt;through social institutions&lt;/strong&gt; to govern behavior. No law is &lt;em&gt;self-executing&lt;/em&gt; nor would it be ideal for them to have this trait. The law of the land is base on the principle of Innocent until proven Guilty, thus it is on the State to execute the law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conscientious legislation can objectify the mandate against political&#xA;  dynasty, but the presence of dynastic clans in congress trumps this&#xA;  possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a major assumption, and I guarantee you that it is far from factual. As a propaganda analyst I would label this statement as ARTIFICIAL DICHOTOMY without a second thought. In simple language, what this statement says is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A congress who feels that their job is important and worth all of their &#xA;  efforts to hold true, could make the mandate against political dynasties &gt;valueless and a merely words on a page. But since the dynasty is already in &gt;place, congress is off the hook.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it appears to say something, but really says nothing at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that is enough to illustrate that this passage is truly a great example of stilted, if not obfuscated or bewildering. If that was your goals -- well done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13645" LastEditorUserId="13645" LastEditDate="2015-05-07T20:54:56.010" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T20:54:56.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17113" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17117" CreationDate="2015-05-07T20:56:24.267" Score="2" ViewCount="368" Body="&lt;p&gt;After considering the style and setting for my first book, I've decided on writing a comedy treasure hunt set in a not too distant alternate future. I still have some final things to figure out before I start writing the book itself (like how much of Earth the main empire has taken over), but I'm reaching the point where I'm running out of excuses and should start writing the damn thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things I'm wondering about is how much I can abuse the fourth wall, and whether that's even appropriate for a comedy book. Stuff like mentioning the author, arguing with him (like arguing about how you deserve a better opening than &quot;a dark and stormy night&quot;), medium awareness, lampshade hanging on implausible things,... Basically, acting like there is no fourth wall. It's something that sounds interesting to me, but I don't want to overdo it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6845" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T13:26:16.910" Title="Is breaking the fourth wall to the point of nonexistence appropriate for a comedy book?" Tags="|style|flow|comedy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17107" CreationDate="2015-05-07T23:37:26.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would actually keep her character intact as a cheerleader.  Then in the second, as you reveal more about her character and motivations for overthrowing the current CEO, you can show that her appearance in the original work was a carefully crafted facade, designed to get her to the top as quickly and effortlessly as possible.  The exact reasoning, of course, depends on her final motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, if she is upset by the demeaning attitude the current CEO (and society) has towards women, her motivation would be to show him (and society) what women can really do - but initially she plays into the whole &quot;cutesy ditsy&quot; stereotype she is upset with.  She goes this route, knowing that if she shows just how capable she really is she would never get up more than a few rungs of the ladder.  Once at the top she begins subtly manipulating circumstances to topple the CEO, all without dropping the facade until the final &quot;coup d'etat&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13648" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T23:37:26.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17104" CreationDate="2015-05-08T03:15:43.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strictly speaking, there is no &lt;em&gt;objective&lt;/em&gt; way to determine if a bit of discourse is stilted and/or cluttered.   However, this fact does not make the use of such terms arbitrary.  In many communities and social groups, people share subjective judgments about a great many things.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it is not, strictly speaking, objective to criticize the poor taste of attending a funeral while wearing neon plaid trousers and a black t-shirt whose chest logo depicts an animate turd saying &quot;Your mother sucks!&quot;  However, this subjective judgment is shared by most people, so the criticism is not arbitrary, but fair.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By any fair assessment, the sample of prose you gave is stilted and cluttered.  It does not follow the maxim of avoiding long words when shorter ones can convey the same meaning.  It expresses comparatively simple ideas with needlessly complex syntax.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an exercise, please read this re-working of your paragraph, and identify the ideas expressed in your original that are not expressed in my re-working.  Your original phrases are italicized.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;REWORKING:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though the Constitution clearly prohibits political dynasties, there is no body of laws concerning the enforcement of this prohibition.   Ideally, this principle should enforce itself, but &lt;em&gt;its vagueness creates loopholes&lt;/em&gt; that &lt;em&gt;favor&lt;/em&gt; [snip] &lt;em&gt;well-entrenched political families&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Conscientious legislation could&lt;/em&gt; prevent political dynasties.  However, since these clans are already represented in Congress, such legislation will never be written.   Therefore the voters who want political reform should evaluate candidates by carefully studying their platforms.  These are more objective indicators of the candidates' &lt;em&gt;credibility and fitness to serve&lt;/em&gt; than popularity.  &lt;em&gt;Unfortunately&lt;/em&gt;, the poor education that comes with widespread poverty makes &lt;em&gt;the masses gullible and unwilling to prioritize their long-term collective needs over their immediate necessities.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13597" LastEditorUserId="13597" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T03:21:19.597" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T03:21:19.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17113" CreationDate="2015-05-08T04:33:20.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen a number of silly works break the fourth wall to good effect. For example Earlier today I was reading some User Friendly archives where the artist was trying to get his characters to tell jokes bashing Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, and failing. The whole sequence was completely ridiculous, and very funny. But the reason it worked was that it worked was everything in the strip is overdone. Another example is in Sluggy Freelance there was a need for some narration, so one of the characters faced camera, and narrated for a bit before another character walks in and asks what is going on, the first explains that he is breaking the fourth wall and the second questions his sanity. Again completely over the top, which fits with the alien, mad scientist, hero, insane ferret and time traveling switchblade wielding rabbit that are some of the mainstays of the cast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not worry about letting things get too silly. The main concern is that the silly does not interfere with the plot or the characters. The plot can be incredibly silly. Your characters can be completely unhinged. but if you don't have a story to tell and characters that are true to themselves, you are wasting your time, but with a plot and some decent characters you can have a fun story even if the plot is the quest for the missing belly button lint and your main character is a bearded lumberjack named Francine and has a chip on his shoulder about pore character sketches and really wants to be a beautician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to keep in mind with characters that break the fourth wall, Is that it is easy for them to ask for help solving their problems. This should never work. They can ask all they want, but if you give the characters what they ask for it should not be helpful. This corresponds to Brandon Sanderson's advice about using magic to solve problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T04:33:20.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17113" CreationDate="2015-05-08T07:20:28.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other media don't have such qualms to break the forth wall. It's quite common in contemporary theatre, much of which is based on heavy audience involvement, and in plays such as Peter Handke's 1966 &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offending_the_Audience&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Offending the Audience&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; there is no fourth wall at all. Many contemporary movies love to play with the fourth wall (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTaN6wyMwCY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;compilation on Youtube&lt;/a&gt;), especially parodies (Mel Brooks). Comic books have been experimenting with the fourth wall since George Herriman's &lt;em&gt;Krazy Kat&lt;/em&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=579539&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is a forum thread&lt;/a&gt; collecting more recent examples, such as She-Hulk arguing with her writers, when they have put her in a situation that she thinks unrealistic. Google will find you a sheer endless series of examples from all over genres and media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certain genres of written fiction are somewhat obsessed with maintaining the illusion of not being fictitious, especially those, like Science Fiction and Fantasy, that rely very heavily on a suspension of disbelief, so they painstakingly avoid any reference to the fourth wall. Having a character in a medieval setting love to read to escape from their unappy fictional reality was a no-go for a long time in escapist fiction. But a bit back in history, it was quite common that the narrator addressed his &quot;Dear Reader!&quot;, as Dickens did, and certain contemporary genres are much influenced by post-modern theory and writing and are written more with tongue in cheek and involving the reader in the metadiscourse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &quot;abused&quot;, as you say, the fourth wall in your writing, that would not be exceptional in fiction today at all, and you would stand in a long and eminent tradition. On the contrary, I rather see a danger of &quot;breaking the fourth wall&quot; becoming overused and cliché. So be careful and don't oversalt your meal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/efTi1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T07:20:28.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17113" CreationDate="2015-05-08T13:26:16.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong in principle with &quot;breaking the fourth wall&quot;. It's a matter of whether it adds to your particular story or subtracts from it, and how well you do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like asking, &quot;Can I add a romance sub-plot to my adventure story?&quot; Of course you can. But will it make the story better or will it be an annoying distraction? It depends on the nature of the story and how well you do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you break a conventional rule just for the sake of breaking the rule, it can make your story sound bold and innovative. But it can also quickly become a lame gimmick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T13:26:16.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17121" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17124" CreationDate="2015-05-08T18:18:26.347" Score="2" ViewCount="1159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm making a computer game. In one of the dialogs, one of the characters observes some factory workers who have been brainwashed by some alien species and drive forklifts up and down the factory yard without any sense. The character does not know what is the cause, but he's trying to describe what he sees to his friend over the phone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a native English speaker, so I have problem getting this into a single sentence. The best I got so far is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The workers just drive back and forth, like they're hypnotized.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10313" LastActivityDate="2018-01-13T21:36:30.103" Title="How to describe a hypnotized state?" Tags="|word-choice|videogame|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-05-12T19:45:56.900" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17104" CreationDate="2015-05-08T18:22:44.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some reasonably objective features that tend to make a passage feel more stilted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract or inanimate subjects.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;That is, subjects that are non-human, non-animal, or otherwise&#xA;unable to take action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your passage, every subject is an abstraction:&#xA;prohibition, law, provision, vagueness, legislation, presence,&#xA;it (to initiate), looking, and lack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a single subject is a thing that can take action.&#xA;(No specific noun exists to concretize&#xA;this passage's substantive rhetoric.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract or inactive verbs.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Verbs where the reader will have trouble conjuring an image&#xA;of someone (or something) doing it.&#xA;Or verbs that do not denote some sort of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your passage includes these inactive verbs:&#xA;cannot be, exists, is, is, allows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and these vague ones:&#xA;creates, can objectify, trumps, makes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and not a single active, specific verb.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nominalizations.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A word (typically a verb) converted to noun form.&#xA;An example of a nominalization: Nominalization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your passage includes these nominalizations:&#xA;prohibition (prohibit), provision (provide),&#xA;legislation (legislate), mandate (mandate)&#xA;presence (present), reform (reform),&#xA;assessment (assess), education (educate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a single one of these is uncommon,&#xA;but increasing the number of nominalizations&#xA;tends to package dynamic ideas (actions)&#xA;into seemingly static forms (nouns).&#xA;That is: It hides the action.&#xA;This can make a passage feel more stilted.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Passive voice.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spotted only one instance of passive voice in your passage:&#xA;cannot be made.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Presupposed abstractions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The passage &lt;em&gt;presupposes&lt;/em&gt; many of the abstractions it mentions.&#xA;That is: it tacitly posits abstract claims&#xA;without stating the claims directly.&#xA;For example, &quot;its vagueness&quot;&#xA;presupposes that it is vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other examples of presuppositions:&#xA;the Constitutional prohibition,&#xA;the well-entrenched political families, the mandate,&#xA;the presence of dynastic clans, the electorates,&#xA;the platforms of the candidates,&#xA;the lack of access, the masses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether presuppositions seem stilted or not depends&#xA;greatly on your audience.&#xA;If readers are familiar with the presuppositions you make,&#xA;or at least if they are willing to accept them&#xA;(&quot;Yep, it's vague, all right.&quot;),&#xA;presuppositions like this convey your ideas concisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, presuppositions work if your readers will&#xA;generally presuppose them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If readers are not likely to accept your presuppositions,&#xA;especially if the presuppositions are about abstractions,&#xA;they come off as stilted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If readers are not likely to even understand your presuppositions,&#xA;especially if the presuppositions are about abstractions,&#xA;they come off as jargon.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T18:22:44.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17121" CreationDate="2015-05-09T00:17:38.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try &quot;in a trance&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/trance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;trance:&lt;/a&gt; a half-conscious state, seemingly between sleeping and waking, in which ability to function voluntarily may be suspended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T00:17:38.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17121" CreationDate="2015-05-09T04:05:35.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Do research.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. Find someone to hypnotize you, and then describe what you have experienced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. If you are afraid or don't want to go to all that trouble, find accounts of hypnotized persons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. If you don't know how to find those, you need to learn how to do research (which is beyond the scope of this questoon).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T04:05:35.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17128" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17136" CreationDate="2015-05-09T05:16:15.123" Score="12" ViewCount="1295" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2100/help-ive-got-writers-block&quot;&gt;Help! I&amp;#39;ve got Writer&amp;#39;s Block&lt;/a&gt; which explains solutions to the problem. I was wondering &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; someone gets writer's block?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it anxiety? Is it due to the fact that the mind is tired? What is it?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I guess there are many different type of situations which lead to this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13659" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2020-05-29T01:15:22.983" Title="What are the reasons behind Writer's block?" Tags="|writers-block|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17128" CreationDate="2015-05-09T07:45:58.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writer's block is the result of writing infrequently instead of making writing a habit, as I explain in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/16895/5645&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and many other answers on this site. Other members have given useful advice as well. Use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/search?q=writer%27s%20block&quot;&gt;site search&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T07:45:58.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17128" CreationDate="2015-05-09T11:49:16.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Professionals would say &quot;writer's block&quot; doesn't exist. They have contracts with publishers and deadlines to meet and they have to get on with the &quot;day job&quot; same as everyone else, but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It's just that it's so hard...&quot; (Prince Arthur character in Shrek 3). And it is. Really. Really hard. And sometimes you just want to give up, and your enthusiasm and ideas evaporate, and that's when the ole block of concrete falls out of the sky and drops on your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, writing is a subjective and emotional activity, as are all creative arts, so a good dose of inspiration is vital. However, in the real world, successful writers will tell you the inspiration is only the 1% and the remaining heavy digging, I'm afraid, is 99% (Thomas Edison, if you want to check it out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, the first thing is not to beat yourself up. Writers are notoriously over-sensitive souls. They have to be, to tackle those life and death issues that inspire them in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Top Tips to beat the writer's block:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a regular writing time and always sit at the blank sheet of paper for at least half an hour. Learn not to be scared of it, and write anything - notes, a character description, keywords for an outline, post some tweets, compose a kick-ass Facebook post. Always do this, every day. Serious writers write something every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a break. Get up from the desk. Walk the dog. Go for a swim. Have a coffee, scoff some carbs, give yourself a sugar rush. Do deep breathing. Do the vacuuming. Give your brain a treat. Turn the music up. Anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recognise that a piece of written work is an organic, evolved product of your brain. Sometimes you can't rush it and your subconscious is working on an issue that you can't solve immediately. Read Stephen King's &lt;em&gt;On Writing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work on something else. This is often the most effective solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't beat yourself up. To produce top quality written work is difficult, very difficult (otherwise everybody would be doing it. lol) It takes talent, creativity, skill learned over decades, focus and faith in yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get some feedback. I have a small group of writer friends (serious writers) and from time to time we critique each other's work. It really helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Join a class or writing group. You'd be amazed how much collective inspiration there is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as I said, don't beat yourself up. Be patient with yourself, but at the same time develop the discipline of a daily habit, interact with other writers, read writers who inspire you, and keep going. Don't worry about the writer's block, but look for ways round it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13660" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T11:49:16.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17131" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-09T14:38:12.383" Score="4" ViewCount="658" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three months had passed since she started &lt;strong&gt;to avoid&lt;/strong&gt; me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three months had passed since she started &lt;strong&gt;avoiding&lt;/strong&gt; me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, what I do is to search for the phrase with the most results in Google Books (e.g. &lt;em&gt;she started to avoid me&lt;/em&gt; vs &lt;em&gt;she started avoiding me&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, I wonder: is there any way to decide whether to use the former or the latter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-05-09T23:00:18.360" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T08:30:37.863" Title="How do you decide whether to use the infinitive or -ing version of a verb?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|grammar|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17131" CreationDate="2015-05-09T15:04:00.663" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's subjective. To my ear, &lt;em&gt;to avoid&lt;/em&gt; is a series of individual events, while &lt;em&gt;avoiding&lt;/em&gt; implies something continuous and ongoing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;She started to avoid me&quot; sounds like &quot;I called her and she didn't return my call. The next day I texted her but she didn't text back. Two days later I sent her an email which she never opened.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;She started avoiding me&quot; sounds like &quot;I walked in the room and she immediately left, and when I followed her she left the building.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's just my opinion; others may hear them as interchangeable. They're both right, and I think the nuance of difference is so subtle that you could use either purely depending on which one you liked the sound of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T15:04:00.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17133" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-09T15:56:43.270" Score="2" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my fiction writing, how do I create individual speaking styles for my characters? It is more than giving one or two of them an accent or dialect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques do you use to vary the structure, rhythm, vocabulary and phrasing of each of your characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it really hard to do, because all my characters speak like me (of course they do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13660" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T15:56:43.270" Title="How do I create different speaking styles for my characters?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-05-10T03:29:03.223" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17131" CreationDate="2015-05-09T17:34:56.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to Lauren's excellent clarification, you could look at it from another perspective by referring to, let's say, money... and seeing where the latter could beg the question &quot;why?&quot; or &quot;how?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three months had passed since she started &lt;strong&gt;to save money&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sounds like a statement. OK, so she saved money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three months had passed since she started &lt;strong&gt;saving money&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a very subtle way, depending on the person, the latter may seem fuzzy -- saving money how? Less shopping, more investments, less expenses, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just an alternative way of looking at it, although this can be quite subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13663" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T17:34:56.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17131" CreationDate="2015-05-09T18:38:24.437" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would agree with Lauren that both constructs are equally valid from a grammatical point of view, but there are a number of other factors to bias the decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character voice. People who studied latin prefer infinitives, people who work with their hands prefer gerunds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tense. infinitives work very well with future tense, gerunds work well with present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondary connotations. Some words or phrases may acquire additional meaning. you may want to avoid or exploit that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Poetry. Match or break rhythm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Puns and forced puns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T18:38:24.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17128" CreationDate="2015-05-09T18:57:55.317" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three main psychological reasons for writer's block: indecision, the blank page syndrome and burnout. Procrastination just looks like writer's block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indecision comes from having too many choices. Enumerating your choices often helps with this. In extreme cases Enumerating the impossibilities help (the pixar method).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blank page syndrome is an extreme form of indecision due to infinite choice and a large number of tools at your disposal that can not be seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;burnout is where you have exhausted your mental reserves. the only solutions are sleep, food, exercise and trivial conversation. It can be prevented by the same things or by increasing your mental stamina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T18:57:55.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17131" CreationDate="2015-05-09T19:13:15.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; I am not a native&lt;/em&gt; speaker &lt;em&gt;and know English mainly through&lt;/em&gt; reading &lt;em&gt;the language. My feel for language is therefore more influenced by written than by spoken English, a confoundation that might confuse some of the native speakers here, or a lack which might lead to Germanisms influencing me. You be the judge :-)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me the proper use is reflected in the following example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three months have passed since she has started to avoid me, and she has been avoiding me ever since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that you use the past or present continuous for events that are ongoing in the present or had been ongoing until a specified end point or for a specified duration, and the infinitive for activities that you plan, think, want, start to do, that is that lie in the future of the thinking, starting and so on, but have not yet begun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Viz.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three months have passed since she had started to avoid me -- and given up and returned into my arms after that first attempt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-05-10T08:30:37.863" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T08:30:37.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17128" CreationDate="2015-05-09T19:29:58.953" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For causes of writer's block, I point you to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://quitwork.club/The-Writers-Brain-Rosanne-Bane41-50_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Writer's Brain: What Neurology Tells Us About Teaching Creative Writing&lt;/a&gt;&quot; as one potential explanation, which focuses primarily on stress, feeling under pressure, or feeling threatened, which causes the brain to &quot;shift control from the cerebral cortex to the limbic system&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;When the limbic system is in the ascendant, behavior is instinctual, based on the fight-or-flight response, or the result of deeply engrained training. Without significant input from the cerebral cortex, the individual is temporarily deprived of the ability to perform nuanced analysis and creative thought. Moreover, the individual is rarely aware of this shift and often attributes the resulting inability to perform her or his usual creative thinking as a lack of willpower, character or ability.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is true, one should probably focus on the causes of stress that could trigger this type of reaction. For example, lack of inspiration, getting distracted, or procrastination can all contribute to a stead build up of worry and stress resulting in writer's block. Fear of failure can be equally paralysing. There may also be an issue with worrying too much about &quot;the rules&quot; of writing, rather than just learning by writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also the problem of self doubt: writing is an inherently lonely, solitary activity, and it's not difficult to fall into the never-ending cycle of self-criticism and loathing of what you create, believing it to not be good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T19:29:58.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17128" CreationDate="2015-05-09T21:25:17.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As can be gathered from the other answers, there are many causes of writer's block. It will be impossible to deal with them all at once, meaning you will, at some point, experience it. Don't worry. We all have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen (and agree with) several answers mentioning fatigue and stress. Hildred also mentioned various forms of indecision, which is, in my experience, the most common form of writer's block. I believe there is a very large cause however, which everyone else has overlooked: lack of a theme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd like to look into themes in detail, check out chapter fourteen of &lt;em&gt;Writing the Breakout Novel&lt;/em&gt; by Donald Maass. It is an invaluable resource. In a nutshell though, a theme is the point you are trying to convey with your novel. A lot of novels (and more so movies) do not have a theme. They consist purely of twisty plots, complex characters, or a combination of the two. Those things drive the novels forwards. In these novels, there is no theme, no message. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: In such novels as character studies, the theme is the character. The author feels it is important for you to meet this person, or occasionally, place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A theme is important because it is the message you feel passionate about. You feel your readers need to know about it, and it is for &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; reason that you write the whole novel in the first place. Your passion gives you drive to keep writing. Being the opposite of boredom, this passion also &lt;em&gt;keeps&lt;/em&gt; you writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build your novel from your theme, not the other way around. Do this, and no matter what writer's block hits you, you will always be able to overcome it in the end and keep writing, because you &lt;em&gt;believe in what you are writing about&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cause: A lack of theme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solution: Build your story from a theme you are passionate about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T21:25:17.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17131" CreationDate="2015-05-10T06:02:20.650" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Michael Swan's &lt;em&gt;Practical English Usage&lt;/em&gt; (2nd ed., p. 285):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;296 -ing forms used like nouns (5):&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;       -ing form or infinitive?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;10 &lt;em&gt;begin&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Begin&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; can be followed by infinitives or &lt;em&gt;-ing&lt;/em&gt; forms. Usually there is no important difference. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;     &lt;em&gt;She &lt;strong&gt;began playing / to play&lt;/strong&gt; the guitar when she was six.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;... &lt;br&gt;&#xA;After progressive forms of &lt;em&gt;begin&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt;, infinitives are preferred.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'm beginning to learn&lt;/strong&gt; karate&lt;/em&gt;. (NOT &lt;s&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'm &lt;strong&gt;beginning learning&lt;/strong&gt; karate.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/s&gt;)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Infinitives are also preferred with stative verbs like &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;realise&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     &lt;em&gt;I slowly &lt;strong&gt;began to understand&lt;/strong&gt; how she felt.&lt;/em&gt;  (NOT ...&lt;s&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;began understanding&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/s&gt;...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's about 50 or so pages on first infinitives and then -ing forms in that book, and I would think that &lt;em&gt;other uses&lt;/em&gt; of those forms &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt; how we perceive both options even in cases where both are grammatically equivalent. I have described my feel for semantics in my other answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T08:22:41.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17141" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17153" CreationDate="2015-05-10T06:41:30.517" Score="3" ViewCount="852" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most commonly given advice for using direct thoughts seems to be to format them in italics. I am not really satisfied with that, however. I haven't seen this used anywhere (granted, I do not read contemporary fiction) and it feels strange to use italics for two purposes (the second one being putting stress on a word ). Even on stack exchange the italics are frowned upon in several answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My preference would be to just leave them unformatted, inserted into a paragraph of indirect thoughts/feelings of the same character. My question is, would this confuse you? eg. in the below (the last sentence is the direct thought of the heroine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It wasn't his look that unsettled her, however. It was the realization&#xA;  that her anger had vanished, and that what was slowly taking over its&#xA;  place within her mind  was fear. What have I done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13300" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T09:24:30.620" Title="Direct thoughts" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17141" CreationDate="2015-05-10T09:09:26.073" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually I have gone through the contemporary English language fiction I own to research this a while ago in relation to another similar question here on Writers.SE. I cannot find that question at the moment, and do not know if I actually answered there, so I'll give what I found for the use of italics below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use italics for:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;words in a foreign language&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The seeds of &lt;em&gt;Taxus baccata&lt;/em&gt; are poisonous.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The seeds of the European yew &lt;em&gt;(Taxus baccata)&lt;/em&gt; is poisonous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;direct speech in a foreign language&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;»¡A la puñeta!«&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (Gene Wolfe, &lt;em&gt;Home Fires&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;names of objects (e.g. space ships)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the sails did their work in silence, urging the immense square-rigger &lt;em&gt;Rani&lt;/em&gt; south.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (Gene Wolfe, &lt;em&gt;Home Fires&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;utterances that are not verbal (e.g. telepathy, communication implant)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;»Right now, that's all I know, but we'll keep you informed as we can. That is all.«&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Weapons status?&lt;/em&gt; Van snapped across the shipnet to Lieutenant Michael.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Tenty-one torps left, ser.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Thanks Weapons.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (L. E. Modesitt, Jr., &lt;em&gt;The Ethos Effect&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;voices heard from the distance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Someone was shouting in the infirmary, his hoarse voice audible far down the corridor: &lt;em&gt;»Hey! Hey! Anybody! Come here!«&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (Gene Wolfe, &lt;em&gt;Home Fires&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;voices from devices (e.g. telephone, computer or movie cinema screens)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Skips mobile phone was vibrating. He took it out and flipped it open.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Susan appeared in its small screen. &lt;em&gt;»›Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.‹ Do you remember saying that, Mr. Grison?«&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (Gene Wolfe, &lt;em&gt;Home Fires&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;text written on objects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The note said: &lt;em&gt;Come quickly!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;ACAB,&lt;/em&gt; was written on the wall.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Opening the book, John read: &lt;em&gt;Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression&lt;/em&gt;, and suddenly he knew what he wanted to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note how the quotation from a book is here not made from a &lt;em&gt;source&lt;/em&gt; (as in academic writing) but read from the &lt;em&gt;physical object&lt;/em&gt; that the protagonist encounters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;not use&lt;/em&gt; italics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;when a character is thinking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;»We'd be able to [...] do what we pleased.«&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And not what your father tells you to, I thought to myself.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (Kim Stanley Robinson, &lt;em&gt;The Wild Shore&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are counter examples to this last rule, but they are rare (in my selection of books). The only example of italic thoughts I found was in Stephenie Meyer's &lt;em&gt;Twilight&lt;/em&gt;, and only one instance – the other instances of thoughts in the same book are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; in italics!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;A note on punctuation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Italicise parentheses, quotation marks or parenthetical dashes only if all text enclosed by them is in italics. Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; italicise only one quotation mark or bracket, even if it is immediately preceded by an italic word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a (wrong &lt;em&gt;exemplum)&lt;/em&gt; and should be avoided!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In English, non-paired punctuation such as commas, colons, semicolons, question and quotation marks are italicised if they follow an italic word:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this a correct &lt;em&gt;exemplum?&lt;/em&gt; You bet!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T04:46:46.810" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T04:46:46.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17143" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-10T10:37:54.357" Score="2" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I punctuate a statement that a character is ordered to say in a future scenario?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to use speech marks because its not a quote or a dialogue. My thinking may be wrong though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an instruction to say something in a future scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were told by the headmaster never to engage with bullies. If you are ever abused by them, say: Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the statement in question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5924" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T14:56:03.150" Title="How do I punctuate a statement that a character is ordered to say in a future scenario?" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17141" CreationDate="2015-05-10T10:54:32.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen direct speech enclosed in single inverted commas so that it looks like speech. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bill walked quickly down the street. 'I'm going to kill him,' he thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T10:54:32.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17143" CreationDate="2015-05-10T13:55:01.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would just place inverted commas around the statement. The fact that it is speech is given away by the word 'say'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T13:55:01.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17143" CreationDate="2015-05-10T14:56:03.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;But those words &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; a quote, so they should be quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your text is in first person &amp;mdash; so that your narration is actually the thoughts of the narrator speaking to the reader &amp;mdash; then you'd use speech quotes. (In the U.S. it's double quotes; in the U.K. and other places it's single. I'm using U.S. punctuation as the example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We were told by the headmaster never to engage with bullies. If you are ever abused by them, say, &quot;Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.&quot; I'm not sure where the headmaster got his ideas from, but the tactic never worked for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your text is Person A speaking to Person B, then the relevant statement is a quote inside dialogue, and punctuate it appropriately with nested quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John said, &quot;We were told by the headmaster never to engage with bullies. If you are ever abused by them, say, 'Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.' Personally, I found a good right hook to be more effective than a weak clich&amp;eacute;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T14:56:03.150" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17141" CreationDate="2015-05-10T15:06:57.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find thoughts inside speech quotes to be incredibly distracting, because I have to spend time figuring out if the person is thinking or talking. So don't do that, whatever punctuation you use for speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving thoughts inline is okay if they're kind of passim narration of a sort:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She ducked around the corner, but the man had disappeared. Where could he have gone? He didn't have wings. She sighed, holstered her gun, and pulled out her phone to call it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the character's thoughts are really dialogue, or a monologue, you do have to set it off. I personally prefer italics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She ducked around the corner, but the man had disappeared. &lt;em&gt;Dammit, where did he go? I just saw him! How could I have lost him in two seconds?&lt;/em&gt; She sighed, holstered her gun, and pulled out her phone to call it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, &lt;em&gt;What have I done?&lt;/em&gt; is her direct thought, so this needs to be set off somehow. If you didn't want to do that, you'd reword it as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It wasn't his look that unsettled her, however. It was the realization that her anger had vanished, and that what was slowly taking over its place within her mind was fear. What had she done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-vocal communication, I have seen italics with additional non-standard punctuation, like double colons. Mercedes Lackey uses this for telepathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He reached out to his Companion. &lt;em&gt;::Where are you, Hayburner?::&lt;/em&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;::Right here,::&lt;/em&gt; Tantris answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Voices from a distances are still voices speaking, so I would put those in regular speech quotes. Voices from radio/TV can be either regular speech quotes or italics at your discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're worried about overdoing italics because you're using them for telepathy and for thoughts, for example, then rework your passages with thoughts so they're more narration and less direct monologues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, using italics for emphasis is entirely fine, no matter what else you use italics for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T09:24:30.620" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T09:24:30.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17128" CreationDate="2015-05-10T18:15:21.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason writers get a writer's block, the &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; in it's core, in my honest opinion, is because they're good writers. Good writers get the block. They're sensitive, self-critical. So self critical, they'd rather prefer not to type anything rather than type something which is shit. They don't want shit. They want their words glimmering like gold when they get down to write. And that happens rarely. That's why we have things called drafts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T18:15:21.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17149" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-10T18:47:56.293" Score="11" ViewCount="6982" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a book. However, I can't quite wrap my head around making my character do bad things, while still making their actions and/or motivations for their actions believable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of what I'm tying to achieve, from Season 2, Episode 24 of &lt;em&gt;House&lt;/em&gt;: A former patient walks into House's office and shoots him. However, its revealed that the patient's wife committed suicide after House made him confess to cheating. The fact that he was cheating didn't turn out to be medically relevant, so the former patient decided to get revenge and put House into pain (to make House feel the pain he felt when his wife died).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm really trying to avoid in my story is the whole &quot;evil for the sake of being evil&quot; thing. I'm not trying to make the antagonist look like a good guy, but to make the reader question themselves for just a second and wonder, &quot;Is the protagonist &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; doing the right thing?&quot; or &quot;Is the antagonist &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; doing the wrong thing?&quot; Because I can't make my antagonist, I haven't really been able to determine what the plot or conflict will be, though I am pretty sure thre will probably be a group / organization of antagonists, not just one or two, and that the genre is fantasy. Thanks for any advice or examples!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12765" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-05-10T22:32:00.060" LastActivityDate="2017-10-08T17:30:40.263" Title="How can I make believable motivations for antagonists?" Tags="|fiction|novel|characters|motivation|antagonist|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17149" CreationDate="2015-05-10T19:27:08.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually have the same problem you do. I'm writing a story with more than one antagonist. For the first antagonist I created a motivation for him to act as a &quot;bad guy&quot;. The context is about two company owners competing to get a client's account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Protagonist makes an offer to the antagonist as if the protagonist is going to win the contract, even though the antagonist is pretty sure of that mainly because he has a very strong contact acting as an informant inside the client's company. The offer is about both working together even though the biggest share is going to be the protagonist's.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Antagonist refuses the offer. &quot;Absurd offer&quot; from his perspective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The insider was actually bought by the protagonist, arranging the contract to be his.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the insider providing privileged information is not ethical to start with , so the protagonist also acted unethically to get the deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to tell precisely what you want for your story since I don't the overall context, but hopefully that can give you an insight. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I am still strugling, however, to give a better motivation to the other antagonist)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3985" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T19:27:08.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17149" CreationDate="2015-05-11T00:21:07.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three man ways to deal with antagonist motivation. They can sometimes be combined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No explanation of motive. The book is about the protagonist, the antagonist is just another problem. related variants are mystery and insanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pure evil. &quot;Why?&quot; &quot;Because I can, because I want to, because it feels good&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone is a hero it their own eyes. True story: There are a number of Americans wanted in Italy for kidnaping a cleric. They have been tried in absentia and convicted. Why? They were trying to save the world. It was their job, bin laden was on the loose and they were working for the cia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T00:21:07.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17121" CreationDate="2015-05-11T05:13:00.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In these kind of situations I use thesauruses to look for synonyms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/hypnotized&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/hypnotized&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8838" LastEditorUserId="8838" LastEditDate="2018-01-13T21:36:30.103" LastActivityDate="2018-01-13T21:36:30.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17141" CreationDate="2015-05-11T05:57:05.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quoted passage is completely comprehensible; it's clear that the question is being asked by the character. The alternative would be absurd - the narrator making some kind of parenthetical commentary on her own narrative! Adult readers of serious fiction will not be even momentarily confused by your example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technique you're using is called 'free indirect style', and has been around for a long time, although it came to occur much more frequently in the heyday of the great realist novelists: Austen, Eliot, Tolstoy, Flaubert. It is not at all old-fashioned, however. It's very commonly used today by contemporary fiction writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The habit of italicising characters' thoughts should be left where it belongs, in the pre-New Wave history of science fiction, and cheap pulp fiction thrillers. Unless you are writing 'young adult' or juvenile fiction, I would strongly advise you to continue to avoid italics, punctuation or any other clunky markers to separate chracters' thoughts from the enclosing narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T05:57:05.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17149" CreationDate="2015-05-11T14:08:09.947" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may seem a bit unorthodox, but if you'd like to see a very good example of an antagonist with believable motivations, the character Jack/Handsome Jack from the &lt;em&gt;Borderlands&lt;/em&gt; video game series is an excellent place to start. This example may be a bit more outlandish/extreme than what you're going for (at least from what I can extrapolate from your &lt;em&gt;House&lt;/em&gt; example) and is admittedly quite long, but it gets the point across pretty clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The games weren't released in chronological order, so Handsome Jack is presented to the player in &lt;em&gt;Borderlands 2&lt;/em&gt; first as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSociopath&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sociopathic&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CorruptCorporateExecutive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;corporate dictator&lt;/a&gt; - he repeatedly tries to have the player and their allies (who have a history with him that isn't explicitly expounded upon) killed, exhibits extreme megalomania and paranoia, and displays a severe disregard for the lives of others, often finding delight or amusement in killing innocent civilians, children and even his own family members. He, however, believes he is a 'hero,' &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GloryHound&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;and seems to have a complex about it.&lt;/a&gt; It is originally not clear why he believes this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackAndWhiteInsanity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Anyone who opposes him he considers a 'bandit,'&lt;/a&gt; and therefore deserving of extermination, and although he &lt;em&gt;claims&lt;/em&gt; the mass murders are &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WellIntentionedExtremist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;all in an effort to bring peace to planet&lt;/a&gt;, no concrete reasoning is ever given for his malicious obsession with the player and their allies, and he is very much presented as the 'evil just to be evil' antagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainousBreakdown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tipping point&lt;/a&gt; is when the player frees his daughter which results in her death after he had imprisoned and tortured her for a significant period of her life. Even though it was technically suicide and also &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; fault, the fear, loss, grief and rage he displays as the event plays out are genuine, showing &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NeverMyFault&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;he is literally incapable of comprehending that he has done bad things.&lt;/a&gt; Eventually, the player does succeed in defeating him, but not before he kills and tortures several main protagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this is expanded upon in &lt;em&gt;Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!&lt;/em&gt;, released after &lt;em&gt;Borderlands 2&lt;/em&gt;, where the player is actually allied with Handsome Jack and aids in his rise to power before the events of &lt;em&gt;Borderlands 2.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just &quot;Jack&quot; at this time, he's a programmer within the company he eventually becomes CEO of in &lt;em&gt;2&lt;/em&gt; and is more or less &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheFettered&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a stand-up guy&lt;/a&gt;; in a turn around from his &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DirtyCoward&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rather manipulative manner of &quot;winning&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;em&gt;2&lt;/em&gt;, he plays a more hands-on role in his plans, &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroBall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;willingly risks his life&lt;/a&gt; to save the player's and is only concerned with saving the crew on a company owned space station under attack. He frequently voices his disgust and repulsion over the loss of life occurring and focuses all of his resources &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BigGood&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in an effort to retake the station.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as the game progresses, he is forced to make more and more morally ambiguous/questionable choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After confronting the man who betrayed him by selling the security information, Jack actually lets him go free - &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;he then attempts to shoot Jack in the back as he leaves,&lt;/a&gt; resulting in Jack killing him and noting that it felt &quot;exhilarating.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The player retrieves a sentient military AI for Jack so he can control a robot army and take the space station back. After realizing that she &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; want to kill people, the AI pleads to not be forced to integrate with the machinery and offers to duplicate herself instead, which will take several days. Jack concludes they don't have the time, forcibly installing her into the system and subsequently erasing her personality.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After taking part of the station back (for which the crew heralds him &lt;em&gt;as a hero&lt;/em&gt;), Jack &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;locks a group of scientists in an airlock and opens the door,&lt;/a&gt; killing them because he fears they will betray him, despite having no valid reason to believe this. Notably, this is witnessed by the two protagonists in &lt;em&gt;2&lt;/em&gt; that Jack kills and tortures, who at this time were hired to help retake the station as well. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He is then betrayed &lt;em&gt;by those same protagonists,&lt;/em&gt; who sabotage the weapon of mass destruction Jack had constructed in an attempt to kill him and the crew, because they believe he is a deep-seated psychopath with too much power. He survives &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProperlyParanoid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;only because he decided to activate the weapon remotely&lt;/a&gt; instead of manually as they had anticipated, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ItsPersonal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this becomes the catalyst for his hatred of those characters,&lt;/a&gt; as he vows to kill them alongside the bandits that roam the planet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, after obtaining an alien relic that gives him visions on how to become powerful on the galactic scale, one of the protagonists who had just tried to kill him arrives and destroys it. Jack's proximity to the relic in the ensuing blast results in him losing an eye and his face being permanently scarred, forcing him to wear the iconic mask seen in &lt;em&gt;2&lt;/em&gt;. He swears vengeance on the characters, &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThatManIsDead&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;finally shifting&lt;/a&gt; from the well-intentioned Jack to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FallenHero&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;violently obsessed Handsome Jack.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this a good example? A noted part of any type of storytelling is that it features &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProtagonistCenteredMorality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;protagonist-centered morality&lt;/a&gt;; you're observing the world from the protagonists point of view, and it is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; easy for their own morality and the morality of those that they encounter to be warped, e.g. the protagonist losing their love interest to someone else - even if that person is an objectively good person otherwise, through the eyes of the protagonist, they are an enemy and will be presented as such throughout the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When playing through &lt;em&gt;2&lt;/em&gt; it's easy to sum Jack up as your run-of-the-mill villain taking on the scrappy underdog protagonists - and many people did. But after playing &lt;em&gt;The Pre-Sequel&lt;/em&gt;, it was hard to look at those same protagonists and still feel like they were faultless heroes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Jack's story, it's difficult to walk away saying he got what he deserved and that the protagonists were completely in the right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; difficult to say Jack wouldn't have still descended into psychopathy at some later point (seeing as he had already imprisoned his daughter prior to the events of &lt;em&gt;The Pre-Sequel!&lt;/em&gt; and had already constructed a weapon of mass destruction), and that the protagonists were completely wrong in trying to kill him before he took the plunge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;But that's the point;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; the reality is people are morally gray, and seldom are events as clean cut as narratives make them out to be. Your reader &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; feel conflicted when walking away from your work, because that shows you have portrayed a reality in which they themselves would have probably made or at least empathized with a number of the decisions made by either side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13399" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T14:08:09.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17158" CreationDate="2015-05-11T15:22:56.783" Score="6" ViewCount="20835" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the difference between the two? I've seen both in the same book. For example in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bone_Clocks&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Bone Clocks&lt;/a&gt; by David Mitchell:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Space breaks:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He’s clever, I realize. First he makes you grateful. Right. Of course.&#xA;  I do believe it’s time I was off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DANDELIONS AND THISTLES grow along the cracked track and the hedges&#xA;  are taller than me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And look what a fool she made of me, when my turn came to be Amanda&#xA;  Kidd–ed. Doesn’t Stella need friends? Or for Stella, are friends just&#xA;  a way to get what you want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ON MY LEFT’S a steep embankment, with a dual carriageway running along&#xA;  the top, and on my right a field’s been cleared for a massive housing&#xA;  estate by the look of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Three-dot breaks:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“What’s that s’posed to bloody mean?” Brubeck lets it drop. So I let&#xA;  it drop too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;•  •  •&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;THE CHURCH IS quiet as the grave. Brubeck’s asleep in a nest of dusty&#xA;  cushions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Not calling me ‘sweetheart’ would be a good start.” I don’t hide my&#xA;  laugh. The guy stares daggers at me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;•  •  •&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LESS THAN A hundred yards later this knackered Ford Escort van pulls&#xA;  over. It might’ve been orange once, or perhaps that’s just rust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the  &lt;code&gt;•  •  •&lt;/code&gt; a bigger scene break than then spaced one? When to use the former and when to use the later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T15:57:02.490" LastActivityDate="2016-08-21T00:44:41.120" Title="&quot;Empty-space&quot; vs &quot;three-dot&quot; scene break" Tags="|style|creative-writing|formatting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17155" CreationDate="2015-05-11T15:29:28.403" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no universal standard for this, or at least not in fiction. Books generally pick one style and stick with it. Larger narrative breaks than a section break can be indicated by starting a new chapter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception is in printed books that use extra space between paragraphs to designate the end of a section, and when this happens &lt;em&gt;at the end of a page&lt;/em&gt;: In this circumstance, the book will often use a row of asterisks or other symbols instead of empty space, for clarity's sake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T15:29:28.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17155" CreationDate="2015-05-11T16:05:09.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Author's preference is, of course, the deciding factor, but one has to take into account readability as well. Using extra space to determine a scene change is not very common and it is possible that the reader could misinterpret it as a formatting error, or perhaps just be confused by it, whereas the three dots send a clear message that this is an intentional and distinct change of scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted, by the way, that three dots are not the only accepted scene-change marker: some books, especially fantasy ones, will make up their own seal or symbol to act in this role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important factor in readability is consistency---no matter what you do, if you do the same thing every time, the reader will probably pick up on it---which makes me question David Mitchell's choice to use two different kinds of markers. Perhaps there is a compelling story reason for him to do so, but in general maximum readability is the best choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13678" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T16:05:09.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17155" CreationDate="2015-05-11T17:25:40.937" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Dinkus ( * * * )&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Signifies a temporary break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time has passed between the preceding and following paragraphs, and the narrative picks up at the same place and with the same protagonist. During the break the protaginist may have been asleep, gone to work, or done any other thing that the reader needs to know is being done but whose details are irrelevant or uninteresting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Space between paragraphs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Signifies a change of location and/or to another protagonist's viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In comic books such a change of location is signified with &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MeanwhileBackAtThe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a stereotypical formula&lt;/a&gt;, and you can think of the paragraph following the blank line as beginning with it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/12kHa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Meanwhile...&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice how in both of Alexandro's examples for a space between paragraphs the paragraph following the blank line opens with the &amp;quot;establishing shot&amp;quot; (mentioned in the tv tropes link) that tells the reader where we are: &amp;quot;Meanwhile, back at the Ranch,...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The corresponding comic book formula for the dinkus is &amp;quot;Later...&amp;quot;. Note how one of Alexandro's examples for a dinkus explicitly states that it is now &amp;quot;later&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T21:14:06.150" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17045" CreationDate="2015-05-11T21:16:58.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;More detail about why you have this dilemma would help, but I can answer this question in a general sense. I'm assuming you're writing fiction based on the historical setting of World War II Europe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When deciding between first and third person, you need to consider the needs of your story, and decide what information needs to be conveyed to the reader; that - combined with the mood you want to create - will help you make this decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Point of view is the place from which a writer listens in and watches. Choosing one place or another determines what can and can't be seen, what minds can and can't be entered. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd. &lt;em&gt;Good Prose.&lt;/em&gt; 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First-person narration - &quot;I did this, I saw that&quot; - has the advantage of letting the reader live in the skin of a character. The reader experiences the story intimately. The main problems with first-person viewpoints are that it makes it hard to convey any information from any other viewpoint. You have to have other characters tell the viewpoint character things. Any exposition or background information the reader needs is harder to get across, as these can seem clumsy and forced when filtered through a viewpoint character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third-person narration - &quot;Baby blue did this, she saw that&quot; - can seem detached, but is more flexible than living exclusively in one character's head. It's easier to change viewpoints and convey information outside the flow of the story. Characterization and mood can be harder to get across, depending on the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are hybrids of both approaches, however, particularly well-suited for historical fiction and memoirs: &lt;a href=&quot;http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/glossary/g/limited.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Limited third-person&lt;/a&gt;, for example, can be helpful in giving the writer a bit more freedom while following the thoughts and dreams of a single character. You can also use the format of another person telling the story - a translator, perhaps, or an ancestor making sense of family stories or interviews. This can be clumsy at short-story length, as it takes up more space, and can introduce shifting viewpoints, which can be confusing if not handled carefully.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T21:16:58.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17160" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17163" CreationDate="2015-05-11T21:43:03.673" Score="1" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a style guide that indicates the proper order to list people in a sentence (given age, rank, etc). In particular, I'm sort of curious as to whether this was really appropriate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Gary Slok, 15; Petra van Langeveld&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;listed here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/19/world/europe/malaysia-airlines-plane-victims.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/19/world/europe/malaysia-airlines-plane-victims.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me it seems strange to list a mother after her 15 year old son. Is there any objective way to assess this? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13679" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T07:42:56.730" Title="Good style guide on order to list people for non-fiction writing?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17160" CreationDate="2015-05-12T07:42:56.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;There's another question here where this is answered, but as usual I can't find it without sifting through a hundred results. (The site search really isn't very useful at all.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we found (in the other answer) was that different disciplines have different conventions. In Psychology, for example, the order of authors is that of the amount of contribution, with the last author often being the most eminent scholar who usually has not written or researched anything (for the present study) but provided labs, financing, and thus provided the basis to undertake the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In physics or maths on the other hand, and escpecially if the number of contributors is large, authors are conventionally listed in alphabetical order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be other conventions in other academic fields, so you need to specify which field you want to publish in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In jouralistic writing the order is dictated by the conscience of the author, who might be following what is currently seen as polictically correct (women first) or respectful (older person's first) or, as in your example, whoever the author wants to emphasize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The APA Manual (2009, p. 19) has the following to say about order of authorship in the field of psychology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authors are responsible for determining authorship and for specifying the order in which two or morhe authors' names appear in the byline. The general rule is that the name of the principal contributor should appear first, with subsequent names in order of decreasing contribution, but this convention can vary from field to field. If authors played equal roles in the research and publication of their study, they may wish to note this in the author note ... .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Principal authorship and the order of authorship credit should accurately reflect the relative contributions of the persons invovled (APA Ethics Code Standard 8.12b, Pubication Credit). Relative status (i.e., department chair, junior faculty member, student) should not determine the order of authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the MLA Handbooks says, I don't know. But Google is your friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T07:42:56.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17149" CreationDate="2015-05-12T07:45:18.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The antagonist can have any motivation as long as they feel justified.  It sounds simple but it really is true.  In your House example, the antagonist feels fully justified in his actions because his wife killed herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a more amusing example, wrestler Mick Foley (Mankind / Cactus Jack) once turned on a tag team partner because he'd left Doritos on the floor of his car yelling &quot;don't you know I have an eating disorder?!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory hates Wil Wheaton (at least in the early series) simply beacuse Wil never showed up to a show that Sheldon had travelled several hours on a bus to see him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Captain Barbosa in the first Pirates of the Caribbean film plunders, pillages and kills but all he wants is to find the last piece of Aztec gold so he can become human again and eat an apple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To us outside looking in, these are crazy people but, in their own minds they are fully justified in their actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The days of the crazy evil for the sake of evil villains are a bit behind us (though they do still have their place on occasion) but if you can give them good reasons and motivation for their actions then they'll seem more real to your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-05-16T22:33:51.987" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T22:33:51.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17149" CreationDate="2015-05-12T10:27:20.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will tell you the single most helpful thing that helped me in constructing characters for a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.easydamus.com/alignment.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alignment System&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is often used in role-playing games to construct broad characters, but I've found it is a great jumping off point for creating a more detailed, well balanced character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constructing a 2d grid and plotting good-evil and lawful-chaotic against the axes, and placing characters somewhere on it, it is a lot easier to get a clearer picture about who a character is, and thus what would motivate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the main 9 denominations is helpful, because it allows you to start constructing a character around the values that each of the denominations holds. However, most characters do not fit perfectly into a single one of the categories, and even fewer stay where they are on a grid as their character develops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, everyone fits somewhere on it. A good story will tend to have people across the entire area of the grid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can then be expanded to create finer details within the personality of the character, because it's easier to think of how that character would act in a situation based on their values, which is what most people use to make tough decisions. You'll find particular personality traits go with particular alignments as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have difficulty creating characters who are lawful-good or chaotic-evil, because I struggle to find motivations for people who are so virtuous or so immoral, but sometimes it is good to throw a character like that in to advance or halt the story, as they tend to be the most stubborn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this will hopefully allow you to get around the &quot;evil for the sake of evil&quot; problem. Some people have no regard for others, but do not break the rules. Others are rule-breakers, but only in order to help others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of Robin Hood vs the Sheriff of Nottingham. Depending on where you stand personally, either one of these people can be seen as the good guy or bad guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the difference between protagonist and antagonist, it is very easy using this chart to see which people would naturally oppose and support each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lawful evil and lawful good character will, despite being on other sides of the morality scale, find common ground in respecting the rules. A lawful good and chaotic good would, despite both wanting to help others, disagree strongly on the method of helping people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People directly opposite on the grid will invariably be the most at odds with each other. Whilst conflicts do not always have to be from entirely opposite ends of the spectrum, like with characters it is a great jumping off point. This can then be adapted to what fits into your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're still struggling to identify your characters with certain alignments, try looking at some alignment grids of other stories. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.themarysue.com/best-alignment-charts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is a list of some good ones, including Nintendo characters, The Big Lebowski characters and even the various forms of The Doctor from Doctor Who. But there are a million more if you search for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst I have found this as a great help, don't rely solely on this. Characters can become caricatures if they are created &lt;em&gt;in order&lt;/em&gt; to fit into this grid pattern, just use it as a guide. And remember, characters can fit into more than one. &lt;a href=&quot;http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YMlCVMyCzxw/UtQ9s9AaNSI/AAAAAAAABRo/T-nGSq73r38/s1600/Alignment_chart.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Batman&lt;/a&gt; fits into them all, but then again, it is Batman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T10:27:20.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17104" CreationDate="2015-05-12T10:39:32.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We'll call stilt here any disorder in a text making it difficult to read. Clutter would be unnecessary redundancy. There is a long history in mathematics of analysing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is one way to measure the stilt in some writing. Also we easily find how much stilt there is. We do not merely ask whether it's present or absent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Call the text &lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt;. Now consider each sentence. How many simpler sentences can it be broken into without a loss of meaning? Call this number &lt;em&gt;S&lt;/em&gt;. If it cannot be broken further, &lt;em&gt;S&lt;/em&gt; is simply one: that sentence. You take the logarithm of that. (By the way, the logarithm of one is zero.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do this for all sentences in the paragraph. You add these results. This sum you divide by the number of sentences. The end of this process is &lt;em&gt;s(t)&lt;/em&gt;. This is a measure of stilt in your text. A greater &lt;em&gt;s&lt;/em&gt; corresponds to more stilt present in your writing. Null &lt;em&gt;s(t)&lt;/em&gt; means there is no stilt in &lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt;. It's as you would imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is that? We merely calculated the entropy in your text. This was done in the accepted way. That is, we measured the disorder we found there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, this answer has no stilt. Your paragraphs have approximately 1.38 stilt in contrast with it. Your stilt would only be around 0.35 if half of your text was half as ordered as it could be without communicating less information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do notice that stilt does not covary with the length of the text. Measure this in words or number of sentences, as you like. This is as it should be, because meaning does not depend on word count in sentences. Nor does it depend on &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This greater clarity has been historically an acknowledged measure of literary quality. Such is the case with French, Chinese, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/488744&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Japanese&lt;/a&gt;, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this measures disorder within each sentence. It does not measure disorder within paragraphs or pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A whole is not merely the sum of its parts. It is these parts plus their organization. So it's more than the sum of its parts if they are organized nontrivially. A system is a whole whose organization is not trivial. Texts are systems. The order of words in texts is meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the paragraphs of the text instead of the sentences in it. You compute the disorder in the same way. We do this also for sections if the text has them. And we do this for whole texts, for example, the chapters in a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The smallest number we get is the lower bound of the stilt. Of course, the largest number we get is the ... upper bound. This is if the text is considered nonlocally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, for example, this whole essay has null stilt. Its lower and upper bound are the same: zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is quite intentional. It's for the purpose of illustration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is assumed. The order of the words in the text corresponds to a common syntactical convention. The words themselves are selected from a common language that realizes this convention. If this is true the analysis is valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_tests&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flesch-Kincaid measurement (FK) in contrast does not measure clarity&lt;/a&gt;. It arbitrarily negatively weighs syllables and the number of words. Then it weighs these weights and subtracts an arbitrary constant. These parameters are chosen to give a hundred to the recent writings of ... schoolchildren ... This because there are many of them apparently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about the content of prose, its meaning? You need as many words as you need communicate what it is that you mean. Meaning of a text does not depend on the number of words in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FK ignores the meaning one intends to communicate. It measures the distance of prose from something like this: &lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;I eat bread at home. Do you know what? It tastes good I think. I like John Adams too. He too ate some bread once. He said it was not bad.&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt; This measures at only 111. Adams you see has two syllables. The score increases to 114 if we lose Adams and keep John. If we also specify what kind of bread it was and what we liked about it, the score decreases to 100. Yet it's not clearer or better to write &lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;Abe Lincoln speaks&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt; (FK 91) instead of &lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;Abraham Lincoln speaks&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt; (FK 35) or &lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;Abraham Lincoln speaks tomorrow&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt; (FK 13). FK scores don't measure clarity. Greater FK scores do not correspond to clearer prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time FK scores are tedious, more complicated to compute. Textual entropy you can approximately compute with ease in your mind. You can do it during writing. But that is by the way. We have computers. All the same this is the reply to anyone who says the more rigorous method is true but too complicated and not practical. It's more practical in fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More significant is why are schoolchildren considered paragons of clear writing? For it isn't true. Most of them don't write much and read less. They have not much experience doing anything. In the average they are not taught to clearly communicate ideas. And they typically have few ideas to communicate. Most of them write superficially and this they do inaccurately, inexactly, vaguely, not clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We write presumably to communicate meaning. This is the content of our writing. So why ought we write prose with less content to increase an arbitrary statistic which has only historical relevance? Why should writing that accurately and exactly delivers more content be &lt;em&gt;defined&lt;/em&gt; per se as stilted and cluttered for these same reasons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A perfectly ordered text, one with no stilt, can be unclear all the same. It is unclear if parts of it are meaningless. Perfect clarity requires their removal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this possible? Some redundancy is required to eliminate uncertainty. This means it's informative. (This in the usage of Boltzmann, Shannon, Weaver, and Hinchin.) It has meaning. We fail to communicate it if we remove this redundancy. We cannot gain clarity doing this. And we have less meaning to communicate if lack this in our original text. Yet all redundancy other than this fails to communicate meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leibnitz said it first. Counting a coin twice does not mean you have any more money than if you counted it once. Zermelo put it another way. A set is defined by its elements. Same elements in the same organization mean the same thing. Repeating them does not communicate any distinguishable meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can consider each sentence. Then you count how many fewer words a sentence that communicates the same meaning can have. You take the logarithm of that. Do you see where I am going with this? So you compute the clutter. It measures the meaninglessness present in the text. Consider paragraphs and words, sections and words, and chapters and words analogously. You rewrite to reduce clutter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somerset Maugham advocated doing some of this, in the &lt;em&gt;Summing Up&lt;/em&gt;. But removing all clutter is usually not worth the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An analysis and reduction of clutter increases clarity. But it costs ( 2 ^ ( # words affected ) - # words affected ) times more labor than an analysis and reduction of stilt which equally increases clarity. The labor you need to analyze and reduce stilt covaries less than proportionally with the number of words in your text. This isn't true regarding clutter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few if any texts have strictly null clutter, for this reason. This text does not have null clutter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;ddm&lt;/code&gt; replies to the above. He says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;This type of thing is exactly why I dropped my minor in mathematics. Flesch-Kincaid is NOT &amp;quot;arbitrary.&amp;quot; It was developed based upon a very large data set... In contrast, your method is mathematically beautiful and precise, but entirely unworkable in practice, except for very short passages. Plus, it basically boils down to &amp;quot;use short sentences,&amp;quot; which is EXACTLY what Flesch-Kincaid measures (in addition to short words).&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I answer that the question asked for an objective theory. There is one. It is not FK. Is he seriously suggesting that &amp;quot;Abe Lincoln speaks in New York&amp;quot; (FK 102) is a clearer, preferable, somehow clearer writing than &amp;quot;Abraham Lincoln speaks in Alabama tomorrow&amp;quot; (FK 3)? That is a false assertion. It's also an absurdity to assert that average people cannot understand &amp;quot;Abraham Lincoln speaks in Alabama tomorrow&amp;quot; without studying at a university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He tacitly says that consistency and truth does not matter, yet historical coincidence does. The large data set was historical data. That is contingent on the circumstances at a particular times and places. It's not what is true in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Equally &amp;quot;clear&amp;quot; can objectively refer only to similar syntax and semantics. Is he saying on a forum about writing that syntax and semantics does not matter in style, and that we best consult the children instead? That we should consider what they can do in a particular period of history? How is this objective and not arbitrary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Lincoln examples are equally clear. That they are not is a nonsensical result. A theory with some false predictions and some true ones is a false theory, no better than arbitrary guessing. What data set suggested the false prediction doesn't matter at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what about &amp;quot;my&amp;quot; method (I am Hinchin?) unworkable? Since log 1 = 0, log 2 ~ 0.7, log 3 ~ 1.1, log 4 ~ 1.4, you can add these things mentally with ease. Unlike FK. Also unlike FK it's consistent. It corresponds to meaningful communication. The Lincoln examples are not spuriously distinguished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's invariant to the number of word and the number of syllable. These have nothing to do with meaning. It does not say shorter is better. FK does that. It rather asks, how can we reduce overall disorder while communicating the same ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FK says we ditch the ideas and shorten the text. Which is easily done when the ideas are allowed to be thrown away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also most writing is not for children anyway. It's by adults writing to communicate with adults. Why must adults write as if they are children so that other adults can more fully understand them? That they must do this is his thesis. I say: Offer proof. Don't just refer to a &amp;quot;large data set&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The coordinates of the cattle in a field are a large data set too. Yes, the cattle are all composed of fundamental particles. But no fact about the fundamental particles follows from this data set. It's utterly irrelevant however large it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If somebody replies I don't appreciate just &amp;quot;how very large&amp;quot; it is, the reply is that they don't understand how very irrelevant it is also. No theory of the properties of particles whose argument is location of cattle can avoid false predictions. So it isn't true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13168" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T22:37:19.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17184" CreationDate="2015-05-12T11:52:00.603" Score="3" ViewCount="483" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have built a world in which to write my fantasy book, and I'm currently writing my first book about it. I have it all planned out and am in the process of writing it. I have plans for a further book that develops naturally from this one, and will end with most things wrapped up quite nicely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I originally wanted it all as one, until I realized the book would be far too long. So book 2 is essentially the second half of the story that begins in book 1 (neither would be complete without the other).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second book, however, is not yet fully planned out. I have a lot of ideas, the main direction of the plot, character development and themes, but there are still big chunks of the story missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having spent a lot of time building this fantasy world, I have lots of ideas about what is in it, and have (hopefully) constructed quite an in-depth world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some of the ideas that I have wanted to put into the second book could potentially be expanded upon in much more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no plans for writing any further books after the second, but I have had a couple of ideas for what one might be about, whether it is a sequel with the current characters or a spin-off with new characters in this fantasy world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I use up good ideas within a book that I'm already planning on writing that wouldn't be utilized to their full effectiveness, or save those ideas to use them fully in a book I may never write?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that I am probably getting &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; ahead of myself in planning book 3 when I haven't even finished book 1, but depending on how book 2 will develop might affect what occurs in book 1 to potentially set up what will happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are any techniques for reusing ideas/places/scenarios without it becoming boring for the reader they would also be welcomed, but are not necessary. My main question is about best practice for utilizing ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T02:11:00.383" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T02:11:00.383" Title="Should I use ideas for my story now, or in a sequel?" Tags="|fiction|planning|ideas|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17168" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17169" CreationDate="2015-05-12T14:24:59.620" Score="15" ViewCount="1409" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a book, and would eventually hope to be a writer as a career. However, at the moment I'm struggling to find the time and the discipline to actually sit down and write consistently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that writing (and most other professions where one is working alone) is all about the self-motivation and discipline to sit down and do work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as I have a full-time 40 hours a week job, I'm really struggling to find the time to do it. I know that the time is &lt;em&gt;there&lt;/em&gt;, people do more with less free time, but when I have free time I generally want to relax rather than begin writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to want to write at the &lt;em&gt;least&lt;/em&gt; opportune time (commuting or lunch break or when I'm about to go to sleep). I have the motivation to write, but I need to manage my time better in order to fit writing into my schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not looking to quit my job, I actually enjoy it (plus I need the money) but I would like to be able to get serious about my writing and devote some time to it every week, and start prioritizing it above other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do simply need to sit down for a number of hours a week and write, even if I'm stuck and I do some inane writing that has nothing to do with anything in order to get my creativity going. I understand this, and once I'm in a routine I'm hoping it will become a habit, I just need to break &lt;em&gt;into&lt;/em&gt; the habit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately I have most of my story written in my head, I know where the plot and everything is going, so the 'having nothing to write' problem is not too bad. I occasionally get caught up on minor details and progressing to the next plot point, but the problem is at the moment by the time I get back to my writing I've usually forgotten where I was going with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know consistency would help with this. It's the biggest, if not only, problem that I face at the moment. Once I allot certain times for writing I will probably end up with more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does anyone have any effective tips to how I can balance a full-time job, spending time with loved ones, personal time and then also writing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T05:53:52.510" LastActivityDate="2019-01-05T16:22:28.783" Title="Time management for part-time writing" Tags="|organization|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17168" CreationDate="2015-05-12T14:51:13.760" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a full time job and small children, so I feel your pain.  There are a combination of things that keep me writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Break the seal:  Commit to some very minimal amount of daily writing (for example 15 minutes or half a page).  It's easier to force yourself to do something that small.  Once you are doing that consistently, it will be easier to work your way up to more time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stop in the middle:  It may be counter-intuitive, but if you stop in the middle of a hot writing streak it will be easier to get re-started than if you reach a natural point of completion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seek instant gratification:  For me, posting on forums, or in a blog, helps give me the kind of instant feedback that is missing from my more long-term projects, and helps keep me energized for them.  A blog can also be a good way to write a long term project piece by piece.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use those little blocks of time: Take a notebook with you, and jot down your ideas during those lunch breaks or commutes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take breaks:  I don't write at all on Sundays.  Having an enforced day off makes me more eager to get back to writing the next day.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's funny, but it wasn't until I had both the job and the children that I really started writing consistently.  I think it's because I'm very conscious of how limited my time is.  If I ever miss that daily window to write, I'm super aware that it will be another 23 hours of sleep, work and child care before I get another chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT:  I recently read a book which recommended doing creative activities in the early morning&lt;/em&gt; especially if you are a night owl.  &lt;em&gt;The reason is that your internal editor isn't awake yet, and you pump out more creativity without censoring it (early birds get the same effect from staying up late). So I've been trying it for the last few weeks, and I've never written more in my life!  But on the other hand, everything else has been suffering.  So it's definitely a trade-off --but it&lt;/em&gt; does *work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT 2: I've now been writing in the mornings for a year and a half, and it's really caused a huge jump in my writing productivity --even though I still hate mornings.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2019-01-05T16:22:28.783" LastActivityDate="2019-01-05T16:22:28.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17168" CreationDate="2015-05-12T15:16:37.947" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;For established writers, consistency is important.  For new writers, just writing is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem, as you say is prioritising the time in order to actually write rather than do other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, myself often say that I'll write in my lunch hours but by the time I've had my food, checked Twitter and done a bit of browsing, I only leave myself 20 minutes to write and I curse myself for not giving myself longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To overcome this, I use/d 3 methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write all the time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Joined a writing group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reward myself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write all the time&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I have a notepad on me pretty much all the time (they don't do well in showers).  It's not for writing another chapter, just scribbling down ideas when they hit.  Whether it's in the middle of writing an email, watching TV or taking a walk.  Any idea can be a great one and if they're not written down, they're usually gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you what to write when you commute.  I presume from this you drive so why not get yourself a dictaphone and just record your thoughts / story on that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Joined a writing group&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;We meet for 2 hours every fortnight but it gives me motivation to get writing both to do the assignments and to show off that extra chapter I've written between meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reward myself&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I use this one less but in the beginning, I found it very useful.  Write 1000 words for an hour on the Playstation or finish that chapter to allow myself a small token present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T15:16:37.947" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3759" CreationDate="2015-05-12T16:59:56.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Narrative writing involves the writer's personal experience and he tells it in the form of story.. e.g my first day at college&#xA;descriptive writing involves the characters observed by five senses and does not contain a plot &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13688" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T16:59:56.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17155" CreationDate="2015-05-12T17:46:27.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To the best of my knowledge, there is no widely-accepted rule of when asterisks are appropriate versus when extra white space is appropriate versus other possible conventions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my mind, and for what it's worth, a row of asterisks indicates a bigger break than a blank line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One catch to white space: It can get lost when a document is reformatted. Like, I just finished converting a book I wrote from print format to Kindle. It's non-fiction, but I used white space to indicate a break in the chain of thought at a number of points. Except ... on some Kindle devices, the blank space is displayed as I wrote it. On other Kindle devices, they put blank space between ALL paragraphs, and no extra space where I had these breaks, so the distinction is lost. It wasn't a real big deal so I just didn't worry about it, but in other contexts I can see it becoming confusing. A reader might think this is a continuation of the previous scene when it's really a new scene, and be several paragraphs in before realizing, &quot;Wait, they're not still at Bob's house, and how did Sally get here? And, oh, wait, somewhere in there the scene moved to Sally's office. Where was that?&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T17:46:27.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17167" CreationDate="2015-05-12T18:42:05.330" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I realize that I am probably getting way ahead of myself in planning book 3 when I haven't even finished book 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily. I would actually recommend that you know &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; how things will turn out before you begin. As to your question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I use up good ideas within a book that I'm already planning on writing that wouldn't be utilized to their full effectiveness, or save those ideas to use them fully in a book I may never write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of this depends on the ideas you have. Are they worldbuilding details that are 'cool,' but don't really add anything to the novel? Make absolutely sure you need them in the first place. If you do, and they would be squashed down in the first book, by all means put them in the second or third book. If your writing requires something, let it expand to its full power. Don't let your writing suffer just to save on size. (Also, don't let your writing suffer through lack of cutting down on size through editing. But that's another topic.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it comes down to this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Know what you are going to write.&lt;/strong&gt; Get it all planned out now. I know from personal experience, that you don't want to be doing this when you're in the middle of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Determine exactly what you need.&lt;/strong&gt; If the ideas actually contribute something to the novel, or can be made to contribute something, yes, you can use them. If not, mention them as brief worldbuilding details, and leave it at that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Let your writing dictate the size/number of your novels.&lt;/strong&gt; The writing is what's powerful here. If your writing would be more powerful in one novel, write one. If you feel it would be more powerful in two or three novels, write two or three. It may be a good idea to get opinions from your friends too - as an author, you will naturally be biased towards including everything, even if you don't need it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T18:42:05.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16469" CreationDate="2015-05-12T19:51:27.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This idea was used in a TV show called &quot;John Doe&quot;, but I don't remember in which episode it was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Doe_%28TV_series%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T19:51:27.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17054" CreationDate="2015-05-12T20:42:44.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone works differently, but here's me: I put in details only when they're necessary. That is, if they contribute to the story or reveal something about a character. I rarely describe people or settings. It's usually not important that she's blonde or that he's fat or that the trees are maples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then in action scenes details can slow things down so we can see how much that slap hurt and how the car missed the baby carriage but hit the stop sign. Using both low-description and high-description provides rhythm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, some scenes deserve expansion, but I tend to condense by default.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T20:42:44.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17168" CreationDate="2015-05-12T21:53:14.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being at home was my worst enemy - getting out of the house helped tremendously.  I'd go to Starbucks, drive to the beach or just go across the street and eat at Panera Bread.  Since I had most of my story in my head I didn't need WiFi (which could be a distraction) and just needed a full charge on my laptop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13692" LastEditorUserId="13692" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T22:28:13.967" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T22:28:13.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17178" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T22:49:03.620" Score="1" ViewCount="1732" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is pretty straightforward. Can a male writer write a first person story of a female protagonist? What limitations might he face in writing about the other gender? Should he just stick to male protagonists? Is there a book written about the scenario mentioned? If so please advise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13693" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T08:42:12.813" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T08:42:12.813" Title="Can a male writer write from a female perspective?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-05-13T08:43:06.310" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17149" CreationDate="2015-05-12T22:53:00.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, I applaud your goal. I read so many stories where the villain is evil for no apparent reason. Most evil people in the real world don't cackle insanely and shout &quot;I will destroy all that is good and true!!&quot; Rather, they have very plausible-sounding reasons for their evil. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples of plausible motivations that come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Carrying what could be a good thing to an extreme. Consider the Unabomber: He was concerned about pollution damaging the environment. So his solution was to murder people responsible for pollution. Is it wrong to want to protect the environment? Of course not. Is appointing yourself judge and jury and handing out death sentences a good solution to the problem? Personally, I'd say no.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Paranoia. The villain is convinced that someone is out to do him or people he cares about harm, and he must protect himself and others. The biggest villains in history come to mind here: The Nazis couldn't comprehend how Germany had lost World War 1. They concluded that it must be because the Jews had betrayed the country and sabotaged the war effort. Therefore, to protect the country from further betrayal, they had to kill all the Jews. The villain could be over-reacting to a real threat, or the threat could be totally imaginary. The more plausible-sounding you can make the threat, the better. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Revenge, for real or imagined offenses. You mentioned this one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For their own good. People would be better off if they did X. I can't understand why they refuse to do X; they must just not understand. Therefore, I will trick them or force them to do X for their own good. Example: Plato. He believed that people should marry and reproduce based on genetics rather than love. He knew people wouldn't accept this idea. So he proposed that the government should decide who should be mated to whom and then trick people into these pairings.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think some of the best stories are those where the villain's motivation sounds totally plausible. That is, that you have heard real people who were not obviously insane say similar things. Like, &quot;I realized that my neighbor Bob was really an alien from Mars disguised as a human and here as part of the advance guard of their invasion. I had to kill him to save the world.&quot; Could make a good story if done right, but in general the reader will just think the guy is nuts, which is less interesting. But, &quot;I realized that my neighbor Bob was running for mayor because he was paid off by that big corporation to change the zoning laws so they could build a factory here. That factory would destroy this town. So I had to spread those rumors about him being a child molester to make sure he lost the election.&quot; Now that's pretty plausible, I'd think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course depending on the nature of the story, the villainy could range from breaking up a friendship to destroying the world, but the same KINDS of motivation would still largely apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T22:53:00.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17178" CreationDate="2015-05-12T23:06:44.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no problem. &lt;em&gt;Random Acts of Senseless Violence&lt;/em&gt; by Jack Womack, &lt;em&gt;Friday&lt;/em&gt; by Robert Heinlein and many of his short stories, &lt;em&gt;Contact&lt;/em&gt; by Carl Sagan, &lt;em&gt;Big U&lt;/em&gt; by Neal Stephenson, &lt;em&gt;Cybernetic Samurai&lt;/em&gt; by Victor Milan. It's quite common in speculative fiction and fantasy anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The observant writer shall have no problem. The unobservant one will pointlessly limit the possible scope of their narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like female authors often write a story with a first person male protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors who socialize and are well informed about the world lose any wrong ideas fast. For instance, out of three engineers today I spoke with, two were female. If a male author presumes that his perspective character is very unlikely to be an engineer because she is female, he'll end up unnecessarily restricting himself in terms of what can occur in the story. It may end up worse than unrealistic: boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Cordelia Fine writes in &lt;em&gt;Delusions of Gender&lt;/em&gt;, well controlled experiments show that there are no gender based differences in &lt;em&gt;thinking&lt;/em&gt; that are not conditioned, or which are not due to mistaken beliefs and stereotype fear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are only slightly different preferences, not abilities, in childhood, due to slight sex differences in the brain. These turn out not to be sex differences that affect abilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So nothing prevents an author whatever their gender from writing in the perspective of the other gender, if they are well informed about a wide variety of life histories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13168" LastEditorUserId="13168" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T23:20:16.713" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T23:20:16.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17128" CreationDate="2015-05-12T23:27:40.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a few short stories but I really wanted to write a novel. Much more happens in more places with more people in a novel. It got too complicated. Writer's block, for me, was a paralysis of confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case I was over-ambitious, not yet ready to undertake the writing of a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13690" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T23:27:40.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17178" CreationDate="2015-05-13T04:22:20.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no inherent reason why an author can't write from a perspective that does not exactly match every characteristic of him- or herself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, trying to write from the point of view of a member of the opposite sex creates challenges. But so does writing from the POV of someone of a different nationality, or religion, or political persuasion, or occupation, or age, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably almost all fiction stories include characters who are not exactly like the author, so a decent writer has to have some ability to depict people different from himself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some ways I think it would be easier to write from the POV of the opposite sex than some of the other things that make people different. Personally, I know plenty of women. I talk to women every day. I have lots of opportunities to hear things from a female perspective. I know a lot more women than, say, black people. (I'm white.) I very rarely talk to people from other countries. I've only known one Hindu in my life that I recall. Etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I'd have a much harder time writing a believable male atheist farmer than I would a female Christian software developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T04:22:20.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17168" CreationDate="2015-05-13T04:36:26.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;John Grisham went to work half an hour earlier to have half hour lunch breaks during which he wrote his first novel. Toni Morrison got up early and wrote before her children woke up. Another writer, I forget who, wrote their first novels in the breaks between classes while being a teacher. I write on the train while I commute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get The Clockwork Muse by Eviatar Zerubavel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its 6:35 and I have to catch my train. Be productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T04:36:26.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17167" CreationDate="2015-05-13T09:30:15.037" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I totally agree with the answer given by Tommy Myron, but I think there is one thing to add about the way you look at this question. I think whether you decide to use your &lt;em&gt;ideas&lt;/em&gt; now depends on whether the ideas concerned are or are not naturally &lt;strong&gt;part of your current &lt;em&gt;plot.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are, i.e. if they fit harmoniously into the series of events that you consider will wrap up quite nicely at the end of Book 2, then put them in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry that you will use up all your good ideas - your supply of good ideas is not a fixed quantity, your subconscious will send you more as you need them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the good ideas you mention are &quot;worldbuilding&quot; ideas, or are ideas about side-plots or side-characters to your current story, then however excellent they are in themselves, putting them in would just bloat your current story. Make just enough mention of them to ensure consistency with your future books if ever you write them, and leave it at that. It's true that you may end up never writing any future books in that world and never using those ideas. But fear of future waste isn't a good reason to make your present work less good than it can be. Putting it bluntly, all of us could be wiped out by a mutant star goat eating the planet tomorrow. Or less dramatically, any one of us could die by some prosaic cause, or suffer some non fatal but life-changing event that stops us writing before we ever finish whatever we are working on. Then all our good ideas would be wasted. I say &quot;we&quot; because I am currently struggling with exactly the same issue of a fictional universe whose growth has outstripped my original story idea as you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(A general question: Would it be possible, and would it be considered good etiquette, to duplicate this post in the Worldbuilding stack exchange?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T10:06:48.120" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T10:06:48.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17168" CreationDate="2015-05-13T11:28:59.750" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do the same as you: I balance working a full time job, family and professional writing. Except I write freelance journalism rather than books. I imagine that does make my life a bit simpler because it's easier to dip in and out of short-form writing, plus I get a stead stream of commission payments as motivation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do the majority of my writing in lunch breaks and other &quot;dead time&quot; like waiting to pick up from children's parties. Here's how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I made an account at Simplenote.com - any site that allows you to collate documents online using a very lightweight text editor will do.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I've got a lightweight note-keeper on my mobile phone. Whenever I have an idea or do a quick bit of research, I make a note of it there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I got a cheap, basic spec netbook. Not much else will do: you need something that's very portable but has a keyboard. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I either buy or prepare my lunch the night before.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At lunch I take my lunch, my netbook and my mobile to the social area. Or outside if it's a nice day. I enable my phone as a WiFi hotspot, connect, log on to Simplenote and start writing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's amazing how much you can get done with that extra five hours a week, especially given that at work you're already in a &quot;work&quot; mindset. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do also work at home, but it's harder to get motivated. I would encourage you to try, however. There's a surprising amount of dead time you can still fill using the same system. I find I have enough time to spend relaxing, and with my family, and so do they.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So learn to self-motivate when don't feel like it. But getting a set-up to make the most of a productive lunch-hour is a great way to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6371" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T11:28:59.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17045" CreationDate="2015-05-13T13:18:03.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once heard from a trusted teacher that first person should only be used when either (a) the main character is someone other than the narrator or (b) the narrator has a unique voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of (a) is &lt;em&gt;A Prayer for Owen Meany,&lt;/em&gt; where the narrator, Johnny, is telling us about Owen. For (b), see Mark Twain's &lt;em&gt;Huckleberry Finn.&lt;/em&gt; (&quot;You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T13:18:03.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17240" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17269" CreationDate="2015-05-13T16:47:30.813" Score="5" ViewCount="502" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my screenplay, I have my female protagonist wear Prada, and perhaps drop other hints of her character, but &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; act like Miranda Priestly for the first two acts, until she gets a promotion at the end of Act II. In Act III, having arrived, she lets loose her inner Miranda, perhaps surprising the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A female critic of my script said, in effect, that the late character development is interesting, but did I have to wait so long? Does the plot (as I have outlined it) justify or support such a format?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most movies I've watched, or screenplays I've read there is a strong burst of character development as early as the first Scene of Act I. Is there a &quot;conventional wisdom&quot; for writers as to when, or how early, character development should take place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="13210" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T22:21:03.457" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T10:20:32.887" Title="Are there times when delayed character development is acceptable in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|plot|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17240" CreationDate="2015-05-13T20:04:14.097" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there's a difference between character &lt;em&gt;development&lt;/em&gt; and character &lt;em&gt;depth&lt;/em&gt;. Development means change. You can have an interesting villain who is only ever a villain, but still has backstory, motivation, relationships, and hobbies. That's a deep character who doesn't change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if your character acts like a boring, shallow buffoon for two acts and then suddenly gets hit with a Plot Ball and turns into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/julie-daubigny&quot;&gt;La Maupin&lt;/a&gt;, she's not going to be believable, and your readers will wonder where this fascinating spitfire was for the first two-thirds of the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless there's some compelling, in-character reason that &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt; deliberately wants to hide her candle under a bushel, try to dole out hints of who she really is from reasonably early on. You don't have to give away the whole game, or reveal her to the other characters, but the readers should realize there's more to her than what the other characters think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T20:04:14.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17240" CreationDate="2015-05-14T07:24:48.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you may need to look at the traditional three act structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Act one is setting up the every day life of your character(s) and ends with the inciting event which leads into act two.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Act two is the main bulk of the story, leading up to a large peak and ends with that moment where it looks like your hero(ine) cannot possibly succeed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Act three is where your hero(ine) does succeed then descends to tidy up the loose ends for a good emotional closure of your story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, you'd be best to re-think your ideas of the three acts.  Have your character get her promotion at the end of act one as that's your inciting event.  Act two becomes the new her when she has her promotion but you need to think about what the journey is for the character and how you'll lead into act three and tie up the emotional journey.  Does she become a better character?  Does she get outwitted by the girl who actually is as nice as she seems?  Does she get everything she thought she wanted but actually ends up alone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T07:24:48.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17248" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17268" CreationDate="2015-05-14T11:38:21.090" Score="5" ViewCount="568" Body="&lt;p&gt;By &lt;strong&gt;strong&lt;/strong&gt; I mean &lt;em&gt;causing intense feelings in the reader&lt;/em&gt;. I thought about this while I was editing my novel (I consider the &lt;strong&gt;second cases&lt;/strong&gt; to be stronger words):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;turned&lt;/strong&gt; to the left&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;twisted&lt;/strong&gt; to the left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We &lt;strong&gt;remained&lt;/strong&gt; silent for a moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We &lt;strong&gt;fell&lt;/strong&gt; silent for a moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He &lt;strong&gt;continued&lt;/strong&gt; with his story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He &lt;strong&gt;carried on&lt;/strong&gt; with his story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I kept &lt;strong&gt;walking&lt;/strong&gt; along until, without mishaps and misadventures, I&#xA;  reached the cliff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I kept &lt;strong&gt;treading&lt;/strong&gt; along until, without mishaps and misadventures, I&#xA;  reached the cliff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I know, their meaning differ a little, but let's not focus on that for now.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is true, what characterize the &quot;strong&quot; words and the &quot;weak&quot; words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T13:28:54.857" Title="Are there words that are &quot;stronger&quot; than others? If so, why?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17248" CreationDate="2015-05-14T11:47:55.070" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are stronger words and while when writing (especially fiction) it is perfectly acceptable to use less strong words but it's better to avoid them if you can.  As you say, you're trying to invoke your readers senses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I landed on the floor with a bump&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I thumped onto the floor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using stronger words can also allow you say the same but using less words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I walked along the floor on my tiptoes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I crept along the floor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember when you're writing that your reader has 5 senses and different words can produce different feelings in your readers.  Go strong whenever you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastEditorUserId="13684" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T12:34:39.037" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T12:34:39.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6642" CreationDate="2015-05-14T13:14:51.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Particularly in action scenes, it can be tough to weed out which sentences need to start with the MC's name or pronoun.  If the sentence has a modifying phrase, it may be worthwhile to place the phrase in the front of the sentence.  I also avoid starting sentences with verbs.  This is a technique that can introduce a dynamic feel, but when used too often or incorrectly, logic can suffer.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Introspection is needed, but I would try to separate it a little more from the action.  Start the paragraph with the action, then use the inner dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where was everyone?  A safe place?  Maybe everyone knew about this and she was the one that didn't.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;She stared at her hands and her mind began to wander. If there were certain things in this world that had actually belonged to her, she certainly would have known about them.  Although material possessions seemed a rare luxury, everything she clung to seemed to turn to dust. Boys had possessed her, but they had never been hers. Her friends, on the other hand, simply accompanied on her journey.&#xA;Adele sat down and looked at the moon. Here she was abandoned in the world, as if waiting for the moon to fall from the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this revision Adds some strength and urgency to your message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13783" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T13:14:51.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17256" CreationDate="2015-05-14T13:15:01.510" Score="2" ViewCount="391" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes catch myself writing excessively clichéd descriptions - not in the words, but in what the characters do. For example, they always seems to end up pacing up and down the room while waiting for some key event to unfurl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use various Python scripts to automatically check my writing in other ways, and wondered if there was a list of these sorts of hackneyed actions I could build into that, in the hope of alerting myself that I'd just written yet more nonsense.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13782" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T08:14:05.943" Title="Clichéd Actions" Tags="|fiction|cliches|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17252" CreationDate="2015-05-14T13:20:57.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an immense collection of common tropes and clichés, with plentiful usage examples, at &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;tvtropes.org&quot;&gt;tvtropes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T13:20:57.997" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17248" CreationDate="2015-05-14T15:25:21.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Words have connotations. Using these overtones and implied meanings to create the effect you want makes them strong words. For example, compare these two versions of essentially the same thing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man killed the boy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The monster slaughtered the innocent child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second version is more emotive, and some words do stir the emotions more, but there may be occasions when you don't want that and instead you want bland simplicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T15:25:21.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17252" CreationDate="2015-05-14T15:46:10.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;People do pace up and down when tense. It's hardly more of a clich&amp;eacute; than depicting them as crying when sad. Make them say or think surprising and non-clich&amp;eacute;d things while they pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T15:46:10.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17252" CreationDate="2015-05-14T15:52:24.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clichéd descriptions and hackneyed actions exist in writing because they are such common occurrences in real life.  For example, when people are waiting anxiously for something, they often really do pace up and down the room.  I've done it; you've done it.  And people often use clichés in real life, e.g., &quot;it's raining cats and dogs out there&quot; or &quot;she was mad as hell.&quot;  So, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with having clichés and hackneyed actions as a &lt;strong&gt;part&lt;/strong&gt; of your writing.  They become bad when they either appear too often, or appear out of the blue with no prior (or even post) explanation.  The worst is when they occur simply to rescue your protagonist from a corner you've painted him into.  Then you're using a cliché to bring about the dreaded &lt;em&gt;deus ex machine&lt;/em&gt; (already a major cliché).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for a list: The problem with providing a list of clichés and hackneyed actions is that it would basically consist of a list of things that are so commonly said and done in real life that they speak for themselves.  They are a shorthand for something more.  You wind up inadvertently breaking the &quot;show, don't tell&quot; rule, because when an action (the &quot;show&quot;) is clichéd or hackneyed, it is really a &quot;tell&quot; in disguise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John paced about the room = John was nervous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John wolfed his food down = John was very hungry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you can use this to your advantage, &lt;em&gt;provided the main point of the paragraph is something else&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John wolfed his food down while he told about the soldiers in the forest.  &quot;They had all the roads covered -- even the deer trails.  I had to climb Spine Rocks and crawl along the ridge at night.&quot;  He gulped a swig of mead.  &quot;Took me three days.  Thought I was a dead man.&quot;  He got up and paced around the room.  &quot;What I want to know is, how did they know I'd be going through the forest?  Do we have a traitor, or does Queen Hecate have the Seer Stone?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T15:52:24.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17257" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-14T16:24:48.277" Score="2" ViewCount="6630" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is Content Testing? Are there content testing tools available, or is content simply tested manually for quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13786" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2015-06-10T19:58:29.550" LastActivityDate="2019-07-26T18:03:16.897" Title="What is Content Testing?" Tags="|creative-writing|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17248" CreationDate="2015-05-14T18:02:46.957" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course. As Tave says, some words have stronger emotional connotations, or convey the idea of more extreme action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George was exhausted after toiling for untold hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George was tired after working for a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John was overcome with passion for Sarah, whose beauty filled his dreams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John liked Sarah and thought she was pretty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One could have endless fun playing this game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your writing consists entirely of milder phrasing, it is likely to be boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if your writing consists entirely of stronger phrasing, it will be tiring and lose its effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you want is to mild phrasing for the conventional material and stronger, more colorful phrasing for the high points of the story. Create a contrast. I think it was G. S. Gilbert who said that if everyone was a king or an archbishop, then those titles would mean nothing, and you would find kings and archbishops sweeping floors and waiting tables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember when I was in elementary school and a teacher told me not to end EVERY sentence with an exclamation point. Save it for a few select sentences that really call for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T18:02:46.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17248" CreationDate="2015-05-14T18:24:36.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the &quot;stronger&quot; words in your examples are more specific. Twisting is a kind of turning. Treading is a kind of walking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes them &quot;stronger&quot; is that they give you more control of what the reader experiences. If you say, &quot;turn,&quot; the reader can conjure many, many images of someone turning. If you say &quot;twist,&quot; that eliminates all kinds of possibilities, and the reader conjures an image that is (likely) closer to the one you have in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that more specific words are always better. But in your examples, the key difference that makes the second examples stronger is that they are more specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T18:24:36.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17262" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-15T02:09:51.277" Score="2" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend and I are writing a fly fishing book about the renowned and unknown rivers in Oregon.  There is a decent audience from this book and we have had two publishers say they might be interested in publishing this book. This is the first time we have written a book and we don't know much about this process, so the question is this: For a first-time writer writing a fly fishing book (good audience though), how much should I expect for my advance?  $500? $5,000?  I have no idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13793" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T02:47:04.877" Title="How Much $ For Advances?" Tags="|money|publisher|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17262" CreationDate="2015-05-15T02:47:04.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there isn't an exact answer. It depends on so many things: your agent, your publisher, your book, etc. Some people are getting $500 advances. Others get seven digit advances. It depends a lot of factors and there is no one answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, just so you know, for non-fiction, you don't sell your book. You sell your book proposal. You'll approach agents/publishers with a proposal for what your book will be, and usually, if they give you an advance, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; you write the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For good suggestions on book proposals and anything/everything related to publishing, check out writersdigest.com and writersmarket.com or go to a bookstore with a non-fiction section. Barnes &amp;amp; Noble has tons of books on these topics (most published by Writers Digest).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T02:47:04.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17248" CreationDate="2015-05-15T06:09:08.790" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the answers are very detailed and helpful. With that said, I think you're also asking about the general difference between active and passive writing. If that's the case, here's a blog post that you might find useful. &lt;a href=&quot;http://sirragirl.blogspot.com/2011/12/passive-voice-in-creative-writing.html?m=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sirragirl.blogspot.com/2011/12/passive-voice-in-creative-writing.html?m=0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13796" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T06:09:08.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17266" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17282" CreationDate="2015-05-15T08:04:02.900" Score="4" ViewCount="394" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course there are many answers to the question of how fast major publishers move their books after publication, but I am looking for something like the truism I once heard on the radio and cannot fully remember.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was something like: Books capture 80% of their ultimate sales within the first six weeks after publication.  Does anyone know of industry data on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly e-books and print-on-demand don't have the same sales-vs-time curve, but I am looking for the experience of the major publishers and the books that are displayed most prominently on bookstore shelves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13805" LastActivityDate="2018-03-04T14:52:30.357" Title="How fast do traditionally-published books sell after they have been published?" Tags="|publishing|sales|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17252" CreationDate="2015-05-15T08:14:05.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While some computer programs are helpful in simple tasks, they can't pick out things like clichés, redundancies, and word salad (unnecessary filler words). That requires the fresh perspective, which can only come from others such as fellow writers, beta readers, editors, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice for any writer is to read your manuscript aloud, rewrite, get it critiqued by others, and get it edited. By editing, I mean by someone else. Doing it yourself is called revising...though working with an editor includes back-and-forth revisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice isn't influenced by the fact that I'm an editor. I'm also a writer who can't edit her own work. We all need help (Even Stephen King or J.K. Rowling need editors). So, don't feel bad. Keep your eyes wide open. Good luck with your writing! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13796" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T08:14:05.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17248" CreationDate="2015-05-15T09:51:11.267" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are stronger and weaker words, but using weaker words isn't always bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using strong words all the time would be as bad as using weaker words all the time, as it wouldn't distinguish when something is less severe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, contrasting strong/weak words shows what the reader should focus on more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the two sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John stared at the body on the ground, his body numb of all feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John watched the body laying on the ground, not feeling anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those sentences both mean the exact same thing, John was looking at a body, and he didn't have any feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the first sentence would make the reader think that John is pretty horrified by the body, and he doesn't know how to react, whereas the second sentence would make the reader more inclined to believe that John is simply remorseless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first sentence shows John having a visceral reaction, his body has gone numb because of what he has found. You can imagine the following sentence is that he goes round the corner and vomits in disgust. Try putting that idea after the second sentence, and it doesn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously I'm reading a lot into these short sentences, but without context you can read each one differently. If you expanded on them more, neither one would be &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt;, but in order to make the reader understand what you're trying to say, subtle differences in the language can say a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's one of the things that I love about writing. Lots of things can be said with very little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I just realized I never actually answered the question properly, so let me bring it back to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that strong words elicit strong feelings in the &lt;em&gt;reader&lt;/em&gt;. Whilst generally true, I would say they portray strong feelings in the &lt;em&gt;character&lt;/em&gt;. As the story unfolds from the point of view of the character, the reader generally has stronger reactions through the character having stronger reactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my examples, the first would focus on the character having a &lt;em&gt;strong&lt;/em&gt; reaction to the body, using stronger words to describe the scenario (&lt;em&gt;numb&lt;/em&gt; I would say is a strong word, as it implies an entire lack of feeling, as opposed to John feeling something/anything. Stare is also more intense than watch).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second would focus on the character having a &lt;em&gt;weak&lt;/em&gt; reaction to the body. With some expanding, this could cause the reader to have a &lt;em&gt;strong&lt;/em&gt; reaction, for example if the reader discovers at this point that the character they are reading about is remorseless about death, and leads to the conclusion that John is a psychopath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Descriptions using weaker words can cause stronger reactions in the reader. It is all about the reader understanding how the character sees things. So &lt;em&gt;stronger&lt;/em&gt; descriptions do not necessarily always mean better descriptions, &lt;em&gt;accurate&lt;/em&gt; descriptions are the better descriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T13:28:54.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17240" CreationDate="2015-05-15T10:20:32.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That sounds more like a twist ending, the big reveal with &quot;haha! I was acting this entire time!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the protagonist act one way the entire time and then pulling the rug out from the audience will leave them feeling a little bit confused and annoyed. If they've rooted for a genuine person all along and then they turn out to be a bitch, they won't feel satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your question: in order to do a delayed character development, you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; need strong supporting roles that the audience can identify with. They are the ones that can be developed instead of your protagonist, and the audience can follow their progress instead &lt;em&gt;through the eyes&lt;/em&gt; of your protagonist. That can then affect your lead role later in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is someone that your protagonist has worked with all through the crisis, and then at the last minute steps on to them to get to the top, the audience can at least sympathize with the support character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about The Sixth Sense. The character played by Bruce Willis is the protagonist, yet you follow the story of the little boy through his eyes. You understand very little about anything of Bruce Willis' character until the end. The mystery about him allows the shock reveal at the end, whilst still following the story of the boy. If the kid wasn't as primary a role, either the reveal wouldn't work, or the film would be about nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way you can have a character change, even if it is the main character, is to reveal nothing about them. However, you can always show who that person is behind closed doors, and allow her to reveal herself to other characters rather than the audience. It's OK to have an unlikable protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about Carrie from Sex and the City. She is intensely unlikable, and just a horrible person, yet the story is told through her eyes. But she has a &lt;em&gt;very strong&lt;/em&gt; supporting cast that make up for her failings that the audience can identify with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would to put a secondary character in a more prominent role. They don't need to be the main character, but an audience needs at least someone to engage with throughout the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T10:20:32.887" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17270" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17327" CreationDate="2015-05-15T14:10:16.377" Score="15" ViewCount="5812" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in creating slang or a vernacular for a particular group in my story. I want it to be distinctive and a definite marker for in-group/out-group, but not incomprehensible. I'm not looking for industry jargon, and it's not extensive enough to be a dialect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Cockney rhyming slang: You start with a word like &quot;phone,&quot; rhyme it with a phrase like &quot;dog and bone,&quot; and then drop the word which actually rhymes, so the slang for &quot;phone&quot; is &quot;dog.&quot; (I find this insanely complicated and I have no idea how it functions in real life other than to memorize a laundry list of slang terms.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what would be some techniques for me as the author to use to develop a slang vocabulary for my in-group? I may or may not have the method explained to a cabbagehead character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Slang of this type is also known as &lt;em&gt;argot, patois,&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;cant&lt;/em&gt;, as in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cant_%28language%29&quot;&gt;theives' cant.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2021-01-27T04:26:50.980" Title="Methods for creating slang" Tags="|language|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17271" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-15T14:30:34.903" Score="2" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's still early yet, but I'm working on fantasy novel. To cut a long story short, it features characters from Earth in a fresh fantasy setting, and one of the cast is a bit of nerdy and inclined to make little side comments and compare stuff in the world to fantasy cliches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thing is, I'm planning to get this work published and sold for profit and the references to other works are likely to be minor and many. How far can I go before I have to worry about getting sued?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My major inspiration would be the comic book 'Scot Pilgrim Vs the World' with things like its '+2 vs blonds' bats Dungeons and Dragons reference, and other nods to gaming and nerdy things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13808" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-05-15T14:54:37.460" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T23:23:03.907" Title="I want to reference TV shows and other media in my story. how do I avoid copyright issues?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17270" CreationDate="2015-05-15T14:30:40.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;verlan&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;Words of this slang are made up by switching syllables of a word. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not be the best method, but it can be a start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T14:30:40.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17270" CreationDate="2015-05-15T15:58:34.437" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say simply pick a really specific way to change the language, and then change it that way consistently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like with your example, it uses words that rhyme with the word they mean in English, in order to essentially create a new language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pig Latin takes the first part of a word in English, puts it at the end and adds &quot;-ay&quot; as a suffix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would take a language, which could be English, and modify it in order to create a new one. As long is it's consistent, it should be decipherable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's essentially a form of verbal encryption when you think about it. With Pig Latin, you have the the word (for example &quot;amscray&quot;), and then the key to decode it (take the &quot;-ay&quot; off the end, then put the last part as the first part), and you have the word &quot;scram&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So think of a specific &quot;key&quot; in order for the characters to be able to decipher each others language, let's say taking the important words and adding the word &quot;in&quot; in the middle, and swapping the beginning and end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then your characters can say &quot;Is the pon-in-wea den-in-hi inside the uck-in-tru?&quot; Which would translate to &quot;Is the weapon hidden inside the truck?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To expand my answer, it could be a good jumping off point for having an 'in' language. Eventually, common words will just be changed for some reason or other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, using the rule for changing words that I said, eventually someone might create a new weapon and call it a 'ponin', a shortened version of 'pon-in-wea'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People will only ever create their own language to serve a purpose. Whether that purpose is to befuddle outsiders, to distinguish members of their group or simply to make things easier, such as getting rid of superfluous words in sentences (think of words like 'don't' as a shortened version of 'do not'), the equation is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Purpose + time = new dialect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People come up with new words all the time for some reason or other, whether or not they catch on is part of the time portion of the equation. Like you say you want people to identify the in-crowd by the language they use, every single generation of teenagers goes through this exact same ritual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kids now apparently (in the UK) describe someone old and creepy as 'a bit UKIP', which is taken directly from the current cultural background, and possibly a misunderstanding of adult things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So whichever rule you use, you need to think about the time element, and whether the words would realistically catch on. As for where they come from, take anything that people are aware of at the time of its creation and use it for your own ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a footnote, another good example I like is '&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_advocate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Devil's Advocate&lt;/a&gt;', which originated from the Catholic Church as a person who argued against the side of God, and took a skeptical view of someone when discussions were ongoing about appointing them as a saint. This has now pervaded into popular culture and is a term commonly used by most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="13149" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T09:50:02.013" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T09:50:02.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17270" CreationDate="2015-05-15T16:20:32.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I can remember as a teenager spending ages learning to say words backwards to fit in with a particular group, for example 'good' becomes 'doog', I am not sure I would use that method in writing. It really annoyed outsiders at the time and I think it would annoy readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would focus on just coming up with one or two words that mean 'good' and 'bad'. For example, when at university, we would often say about something we really liked: 'That's salad.' When I was younger it was: 'That's tops.' The number of variations for just these two categories is huge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other category of word you might like to think about is words to describe a member of the opposite sex who is thought to be attractive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T16:20:32.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14270" CreationDate="2015-05-15T16:48:43.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, a &quot;young adult&quot; is someone aged 18 (just having reached majority), to about 25.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for books, a &quot;young adult&quot; &lt;em&gt;audience&lt;/em&gt; starts at a somewhat younger age range, 12-14. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's because an audience for a genre is larger than a genre itself. Or put another way, young adult &lt;em&gt;readers&lt;/em&gt; include not only actual young adults, but people who will soon be (and are looking forward to being) young adults. That's why the target age range is lowered somewhat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T16:48:43.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17271" CreationDate="2015-05-15T23:23:03.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a copyright point of view to take advantage of fair use to the maximum you could have every line that the character speaks include a quote from his favorite show and probably be fine. Annoying, but fine. This would be transformative use, namely that the quotes are changed by their context to the extent that they no longer serve their original function. A great example of this is the classic Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, in which Steve Martin has a conversation with characters that are dead pieced together from quotes (clips) of old movies. You could even take this to a more ridiculous extreme by composing your entire book from quotes from other books taken out of context and juxtaposed for humorous effect. Say you took Jane Eyre and replaced all the dialog with Simpsons quotes, lines from Alice in Wonderland and other famous quotes. You would have an entirely new work that would probably not appeal to either fans of Jane Eyre or The Simpsons. (I would read it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this may change: There are people who are working to eliminate fair use by use of treaties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T23:23:03.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17270" CreationDate="2015-05-15T23:41:50.703" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just look how real life slangs form, there are some common patterns.&#xA;To name a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Portmanteaus and clipping: fan fiction -&gt; fanfic -&gt; fic, software -&gt; warez.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abbreviations and acronyms made into words: Product End of Life -&gt; &quot;they EOLed the product, we have to upgrade now&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complex concepts replaced with references: &quot;if you get caught, they will 94 you&quot; (where 94 is the number of a paragraph in e.g. a legal act).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as a reader, I would like the invented slang to fit the characters who use it. People like spaceship pilots or magicians are unlikely to develop a slang just to look distinct and detect outsiders, since it's skill (or ability) that defines whether one is a member of the group or not, but they are likely to have slang words for common objects and concepts they encounter in their daily life, especially if &quot;correct&quot; names for those concepts are lenghty.&#xA;To the contrary, school kids are more likely to invent just a few words for common concepts and some words to hide the meaning of their conversations from adults (cigarette -&gt; cancer etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13812" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T23:41:50.703" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14270" CreationDate="2015-05-16T03:03:28.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;@TomAu Young Adult fiction is generally made interesting to and appropriate for teenagers (people aged from 13 to 19 years). I think it is appropriate to say that Young Adult fiction generally features protagonists that are typically between 13 and 19 years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13813" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-12T13:43:17.497" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T13:43:17.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7217" CreationDate="2015-05-16T12:39:43.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't cut it if you can make it better. You are wasting some conflicts here and your inputs to the scenes are a bit simplistic. In the first example you have him tired and her sympathetic. Both of those are quite weak. We've all been there and said the same things so you're telling us nothing about the characters. Tiny tweaks to those inputs could inspire better dialogue. You just need an extra dimension to each state of mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first example you could have her masking anger at his lack of energy. Maybe she wants some intimacy (verbal or physical) and he's 'too tired'... again! Have her openly angry at whoever is doing this to her man. But have us wonder who is she more angry with. Have him know exactly what solution she's going to propose, and cut her off beforehand. What does that say about his forward-thinking about their relationship? In short, she's sympathetic &lt;em&gt;and frustrated&lt;/em&gt;, he's tired &lt;em&gt;and defensive&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second example, she's jealous, and he's not really responding. What extra element could make this scene not quite so 'on the nose'? About her, maybe she &lt;em&gt;hates&lt;/em&gt; jealous people so overcompensates. Or you could try blending in some other feelings almost at random, e.g. trust, boredom, regrets, loneliness. How would they change her dialogue? About him, is he hyper-alert to her jealousy or &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; oblivious? How does he feel about jealousy and trust. Set up some questions for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have fun with these, you might find at the very end, her reaction to being 'different' may be much more complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T12:39:43.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16973" CreationDate="2015-05-16T15:56:41.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should look for local writers' groups in your area -- at the library, community college, church, coffee shop, etc. -- because some of them focus mainly on fiction and/or short stories; groups may be listed in the local/regional newspaper, a newsletter or a poster on a bulletin board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be a lot easier discussing with a group of writers (in person instead of online) any character development issues or dialogue questions that you have. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13663" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T15:56:41.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17266" CreationDate="2015-05-16T16:07:20.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your point about the first weeks of sales are right, especially due to the promotional blitz, TV/radio/blog interviews, early-release reviews, New York Times bestseller list (a big thing in some public libraries), etc. It's similar to some blockbuster films that make a ton of cash the first weekend and then more reviews come out or the hype just settles down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an insightful quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;First-week sales typically account for about 30 percent of the total, thanks to the publicity blitzes that accompany publishers’ biggest releases.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/us/politics/sales-of-hillary-clintons-new-memoir-drop-sharply-in-2nd-week.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sales of Hillary Clinton’s New Memoir Drop Sharply in 2nd Week&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; (4th paragraph)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13663" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-03-04T10:42:26.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17149" CreationDate="2015-05-16T16:28:14.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't forget good old misinformation. Perhaps the antagonist believes the protagonist is a nasty piece of work and needs to be brought to justice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly feel free to use stress, misconceptions and being emotionally unstable to make the antagonist consider the protagonist to be the 'bad guy'. Treating the first person you meet with a connection to one who's done you wrong as a target is very human (sadly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another useful way of setting things up is to make your antagonist goals conflict with your protagonist's goals, and make those goals easy to understand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13808" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T16:28:14.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12780" CreationDate="2015-05-16T18:54:49.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If do you want to liven up the dialogue you perhaps need to add some conflict into the mother's state of mind. Her input to the scene is sadness and worry, which is a little predictable and one dimensional, and that makes it difficult to conjure interesting expression. The mother could carry other traits or motivations. She may be hiding guilt, regret, a dark secret, or even indigestion, all of which could colour her dialogue either darkly or comically. Imagine the last time you were at a funeral, what &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; were you thinking about aside from how sad it all was?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a perfect opportunity for subtext - she can talk about the dog, while really referring to how protective she feels about her daughter. 'I should never have let Choco off the leash' etc. You have a woman who you might think ought to be grieving, but is actually more fearful for the loved-ones still alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter how you go about it, having one person refuse to be honest or direct with the other adds immediate conflict which you can use for drama or comedy, and it prevents your characters from stating the obvious. The reader knows the obvious (mothers worry) but is forced to consider the turmoil which prevents the characters saying it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T18:54:49.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17008" CreationDate="2015-05-16T19:18:30.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you must set up all the rules of magic, and the story world as a whole in the first act. Even if you're not doing 'acts' as such, you should set up the rules before your protagonist begins his/her problem solving. You can hide them like a whodunnit hides clues, but they must be there from the start otherwise the readers will feel you're making things up whenever you get stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I assume that you don't have a narrator to relate the rules, you can only do it via action or dialogue. A very direct route would be to have an exciting scene which is almost entirely about what magic &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; do in your world. You may have two characters trying to rob a bank, and they just can't do it because of rules A, B and C. In explaining what you &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; do you get to quickly imply what you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do without all the plodding exposition, or showing stuff your readers will have read a hundred times before. e.g. 'But we can't get inside there because dislocation spells don't work through solid walls'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T19:18:30.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12780" CreationDate="2015-05-16T22:31:39.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, there's a social rule of thumb here, that may apply in fiction. That is, to treat serious matters lightly, and light matters gravely. As another answerer pointed out, you're mother's comments seemed &quot;too light,&quot; until you drop the &#xA;bomb&quot; about animal self destruction. Here, the mother ought to get concerned, but she doesn't, a perfect foil to your serious situation. But you've left open the possibility that maybe she is &quot;catching on,&quot; and is concerned enough not to show it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest is up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T22:31:39.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16778" CreationDate="2015-05-16T22:40:38.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are only a few places nowadays where whips are used. One is with horses. So if there is a place with horse-drawn carriages (like there used to be in NYC), some of the drivers might show you how a whip is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another, more obvious place is the S&amp;amp;M (sadio-masochism) scene. There are S&amp;amp;M shops in NYC that sell whips and movies of people using whips on others. You might visit one of those outlets either physically or online. There are also underground sites where S&amp;amp;M is actually practiced (it's &quot;legal&quot; but highly monitored). You'll have to pay to get in, and may be asked to join (respectfully decline unless you're interested), but that may show you what you need to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T22:40:38.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17149" CreationDate="2015-05-16T22:46:46.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is actually an interesting construct, where the protagonist wants to punish the antagonist for doing the &quot;right&quot; thing, the reverse of the usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realize that the protagonist (patient) feels that the doctor did absolutely the WRONG thing. Then have him run down the the doctor like a revengeful &quot;lawman,&quot; while the doctor almost gets away. The best example I can think of is Mattie Ross and Rooster Cogburn in True Grit&quot; against Tom Chaney and his gang.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;punchline&quot; of your story is that &quot;good is evil,&quot; and &quot;evil is good.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T22:46:46.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17289" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17332" CreationDate="2015-05-16T23:08:01.030" Score="2" ViewCount="629" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some stories begin with a rather full description of say, the main character. Here is a clip from &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/55821874&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hello Dolly&lt;/a&gt; that describes in (for me) excruciating detail not only about what she does (matchmaking) but how she does it. And I can see why character  description would be important in say, &quot;Thelma and Louise,&quot; because &quot;character&quot; forces them to make choices that most people would not make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my story is a plot-driven one that begins with a &quot;crisis.&quot; (Think, earthquake or tsunami, or Dorothy Gale's tornado.) In such a situation, I need to know that Dorothy is from Kansas, and is a &quot;hick from the sticks,&quot; but not about how she lives her everyday life on a farm that she's about to leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was once taught that in a plot driven story, you should know your characters at the level of a good newspaper article about them. Because that's the level of description that the underlying crisis is reported. Naturally, the heroine should be portrayed as vulnerable but not helpless, and the hero as brave but not foolhardy, so they are equal to the crisis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an accepted standard? Or do readers and writers demand more character description than that in most stories? And if so, &quot;how much&quot; more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-05-16T23:17:30.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-23T08:50:24.160" Title="How much character description is considered necessary in a &quot;plot driven&quot; story?&quot;" Tags="|fiction|plot|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17290" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17291" CreationDate="2015-05-16T23:34:19.583" Score="2" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a super hero short story in which a hockey player (the protagonist) suffers a brain injury in the first scene which leaves him in eternal pain. In the quickest explanation possible of his powers: this injury becomes his super power when he realizes he cant feel it when people punch him since he is already in pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the psychological ramifications, for both the protagonist and audience, if the injury inflicted is an accident versus a malicious attack by another character?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big thing I can see for the character would be in one example he has a specific person(s) to blame, in the other example he has no one to blame and might be angry at a god or something similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'd like to hear the pros and cons relating to plot and character development for these two scenarios as it would apply to his condition and which is the more likely scenario that would lead him to becoming a vigilante?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extra info that I am not sure will affect answers: &#xA;a) I am shooting for a &quot;PG-13&quot; rating. The person who inspired this story is only 14 and I want it to be an appropriate story for that age group. &#xA;b) It will be a graphic novel and not a traditional prose piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8351" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-05-17T01:10:01.797" LastActivityDate="2017-09-03T17:15:55.210" Title="What are the psychological ramifications if my protagonist is injured by accident or via an attack?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17290" CreationDate="2015-05-16T23:57:14.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two main themes that you might want to consider. The first is &quot;man against nature.&quot; If you believe that the hero's main future struggles will be with &quot;nature,&quot; e.g. pain, I would have &quot;nature&quot; inflict the injury by &quot;accident.&quot; If the story is about a struggle with another man, then it would make better sense to have the antagonist inflict the injury, as the root cause of the conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third theme is &quot;man against himself,&quot; and maybe the wound should be self-inflicted if that's the theme and conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, there's no right or wrong answer, only one that fits your story in terms of the conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T23:57:14.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17292" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17328" CreationDate="2015-05-17T00:26:55.820" Score="6" ViewCount="593" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard from some English teachers that word choice should be varied because consistent word choice is boring, but I've heard from a different English teacher that word choice should be consistent. So, should word choice be varied or consistent? Does it matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11373" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T15:38:47.603" Title="Should word choice be varied or consistent?" Tags="|style|word-choice|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17292" CreationDate="2015-05-17T00:35:54.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you're writing for English teachers who require variation in word choice, vary your word choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For every other audience, prefer consistency, but don't be a slave to it. Vary the word choice when you have a specific reason to, such as the way the sound of a word fits with the sounds of the words around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T00:35:54.267" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17299" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-17T03:42:11.443" Score="0" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;The Things They Carried&lt;/em&gt;, the soldiers “carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing - these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, their own weight.” (57)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'd like to do is explain what the author meant when he said &quot;the intangibles had their own...specific gravity&quot;. I was thinking I could start by explaining the physical concept of &quot;specific gravity&quot;. Specific gravity, put simply, is the ratio of one object's density to that of another. If I put an object in water and that object's specific gravity, relative to the water, is greater than 1, the object might sink.  So, maybe O'Brien is saying these intangibles are sinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11119" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T15:44:42.357" Title="How do I best help the reader understand the contextual meaning meaning of a particular phrase?" Tags="|essay|text-analysis|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-06-04T13:02:10.340" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3670" CreationDate="2015-05-17T07:34:29.750" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The great thing about 'suddenly' is that it appears at the start of the sentence, so itself appears suddenly to the reader, but you can replace it easily with something stronger...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start a sentence with a jarring word or image instead of a 'suddenly'. Like one, or even all of the below examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blood splattered his hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glass shattered around him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screams pierced the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gunfire...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flames...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foul language...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interrupt predictable dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He lay back on the grass, gazing at the open, blue sky. 'Such a beautiful da—'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The crack of alien thunder silenced him and terrified us all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thwart an expectation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She took a deep, deep breath. Twelve candles seemed like so many. She pursed her lips, steadied her aim, but the blow never came. The dog had the cake in one wild-eyed attack and Cassie's lungs let loose with a startled and indignant raspberry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interrupt a description: (very naughty unless your narrator has a strong voice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The city had open spaces, but nothing like this. Delightful, warm sunshine bathed an idyllic landscape of lush greens and dapples of floral colour. Birds danced and sang in the clear air, and nearby the soothing, liquid sound of a babbling broo—&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Is there a pub?' said Eddie. 'We're not staying here if there's no pub.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Demonstrate the reaction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Wonderful soup, Vicar,' croaked Gladys Pryce, to a murmur of agreement from the length of the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'It's just a simple broth,' said the vicar, waving it away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'You must share the recipe,' said Mrs Doorbell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'I'll add it to the parish newsletter,' he said, eliciting smiles, and gasps of excitement. 'But I may have to exclude mention of my secret ingredient.' He made a broad performance of tapping the side of his nose, and winking at his most eager guests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Oh, you tease us,' giggled Gladys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Womens' knickers!' said old Tom Belch in an outburst so overwhelming and disturbing that nobody spoke another word or took another sip for ten whole minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make the characters jump, not the reader. Withhold the sudden event:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amy could no more tear her eyes from the Ouija board, than she could pull her fingers from the glass. The A and the M could have been coincidence, but a Y would scare her to death. Her name. How could it know her name? The glass seemed to tremble. She hoped for some random nonsense choice of letter, but it began to move, wavering at first but then with purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The unnatural sliding of the glass ended short when Lucy screamed with such genuine terror that Amy leapt from her seat, upending the table and scattering the the board and candles. Her heart beat hard and fast in her ears as he looked to her friend for explanation and saw the frozen wide eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'The door,' squealed Lucy. 'Look at the door!'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bullet Time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Don't get me wrong he said, she's a great girl, but would you marry her, with all that &lt;em&gt;business&lt;/em&gt;?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next thing out of his mouth was a small spray of spittle, followed by a web of blood, and a left lower incisor. The fist following through was attached to the angriest bridegroom I ever saw. And as a travelling DJ with own equipment, I can tell you I'd seen quite a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final thought: you cannot make the reader jump. Forget all those moments in movies, you cannot emulate that no matter how hard you try. Work around the problem, play to the strengths of the medium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T19:41:16.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17289" CreationDate="2015-05-17T08:25:47.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your readers will substitute either themselves or a standard archetype for the hero unless you tell them otherwise. They only will need to know enough to know &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the hero is doing the things he/she does, &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; he/she is upset or angry at the actions of the antagonist or &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the hero doesn't just take the obvious route to the story solution. Even then you only need to give that information if it isn't obvious. You don't need backstory to explain why someone would want to survive an earthquake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's rare that the colour of their hair will be an important factor in these things, but race, weight, upbringing, demeanour, hairstyle can all affect plot. If you tell the readers the heroine looks an absolute mess you give them a shortcut to understanding that perhaps self-esteem is an issue, and that disguising herself as a contestant in a beauty pageant isn't going to be an easy choice of terrorist thwarting tactic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get similar shortcuts from how they order a coffee, or their choice of car. Read some thrillers to see how authors can sketch out their hero in a short paragraph, or even a single sentence: what he's doing, what he's wearing, the time of day, and how he addresses people getting in his way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give the readers only what they need, and give it to them when they least expect it will be relevant to plot points later. Because the reader won't know at that point that it's plot, you need to keep it brief and punchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T19:26:57.710" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T19:26:57.710" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16304" CreationDate="2015-05-17T13:45:22.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's 3rd person limited perspective then your narrator knows the truth but is deliberately withholding it from the reader. You will have to tread very carefully with that. The reveal would have justify the deception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your alternative is to hide it in plain sight. Have the girl call her father by name (it does happen in real life), but have a scene where her father complains about this so you can misdirect the reader into thinking the issue between them isn't genetics, but increasing separation or some such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Thanks, Joe.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'I miss the days you called me Dad.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Sorry, I just grew out of it.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Is this a modern thing? Most daughters never grow out if it.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'In what ways am I like &quot;most daughters&quot;?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2015-05-17T16:36:12.620" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T16:36:12.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7217" CreationDate="2015-05-17T14:33:59.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would note one thing: The &quot;dull&quot; first passage has eight lines. The medium middle passage has four lines. And the interesting last passage has two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anything, it should be the other way. Cut down the dull first passage to no more than four lines, and &quot;beef up&quot; the interesting passage to four (or more) lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T14:33:59.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17304" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-17T15:34:31.360" Score="2" ViewCount="366" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a pretty simple question: Are there any studies/surveys that show the appropriate time to kill a main character earliest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am talking about studies among readers/viewers of books/movies/series in which at least one of the main characters die. So for example A Song of Ice and Fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Killing main characters makes a story a lot darker but killing one too early lessens the effect. For example the death of Eren's mother in Attack on Titan was way too early, I didn't feel anything. So first episode is too early, but when is the right moment that the audience has a emotional relationship with the character so that they are really sad (or happy depends of protagonist or antagonist) when the person dies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13830" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T15:50:21.910" Title="Studies of when to kill a character" Tags="|characters|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17034" CreationDate="2015-05-17T16:51:28.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key in writing is consistency. If you use an Oxford Comma, use it every time. If you use &quot;one,&quot; instead of &quot;he/she,&quot; use it throughout the entire essay (I.e. &quot;One may not feel...&quot; As opposed to &quot;He may not feel...&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What your grader is probably saying is &quot;jarring&quot; (which I agree, inconsistency is jarring and pulls you out), is that your writing isn't necessarily &lt;em&gt;incorrect&lt;/em&gt;, but it is &lt;em&gt;inconsistent&lt;/em&gt;, and that's a problem for academic writing. Anytime a piece is &lt;em&gt;inconsistent&lt;/em&gt;, it pulls the reader out of the piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'd recommend is ignoring the grader's comment about &quot;formal/informal&quot; and seek to make the paper's usage of phrases (like the examples you've provided) consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, academic papers should not use the first person (I, me, my) unless it is instructed that it is okay. Don't assume it's okay unless you ask or it is in the prompt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11237" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T16:51:28.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17306" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17311" CreationDate="2015-05-17T18:21:36.650" Score="9" ViewCount="722" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a character with a grim past (forced to watch torture). I need him to have that grim past in order to explain his behaviour in the story I am writing now: characters who did not know his past are taken by surprise by how nasty he is willing to be if it will help bring down the regime that did the torture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble is that I'm beginning to feel the whole current story, which isn't nearly so grim or black-and-white as the backstory, looks trivial in comparison. I fear that anyone reading it is going to diagnose a case of what TV Tropes calls &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot/&quot;&gt;&quot;They Wasted A Perfectly Good Plot&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have zero desire to ever write the grim stuff as a separate story. It's too depressing and also too monotonous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nor do I want to simply delete his backstory, or scale it back drastically. It would mess up my whole picture of what he's like. The way that the backstory is overwhelming the main story isn't really a matter of how many words are devoted to each; it's more a matter of how much more emotionally charged the earlier events are in comparison to the events of the main plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice on how I can square the circle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T15:17:04.450" Title="The backstory's overwhelming the actual story" Tags="|fiction|plot|characters|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16152" CreationDate="2015-05-17T19:40:24.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By no means is it super intense, but Scapple is a very streamlined graphing/charting/mind mapping application. IMO faster to use than anything similar. As a bonus it's by the developers of Scrivener so there's some compatibility there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T19:40:24.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17306" CreationDate="2015-05-17T20:07:21.557" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing your plot its hard to say, but I think you might have already mentioned the word at the heart of a possible solution. &lt;em&gt;Circle&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't just have his past haunt him, and explain his actions. Make him confront it again in the main plot. Bring him full circle. What you currently think is your main plot, is just the excuse to see him in action. Turn a sudden corner and we find that somebody is making history repeat. Your hero has to get neck deep into his past and his problems in order to resolve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This guarantees equal grim-factor for the start and end, the middle ought to work itself out after that. If you can't stomach that, then maybe you really ought to lose the backstory and redefine your hero. It sounds like you want to make him a monster but if that's the case he must visit some very dark places in the final chapters otherwise what was the point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T20:07:21.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17306" CreationDate="2015-05-17T23:24:09.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to look at it dispassionately; it sounds like maybe the problem is just that it's had enough of an emotional impact on &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; that you feel like you need to give it the treatment it deserves, rather than paring it back to what is appropriate for your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the audience &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; need to know about the character? You could write as little as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Grim storms off, irritated with the others' soft attitudes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Person 1: What's his problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Person 2: Don't mind him. The villains tortured him as a kid; he's been looking for a chance for payback ever since, by any means possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... much later ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Grim spots main villain&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Grim: You! You're the one behind the torture&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Climatic confrontation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enough stories get by with little more than this, and &lt;em&gt;so could yours&lt;/em&gt;, if it really needed to. It's enough to &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; he has a dark past; the audience isn't required to truly &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt; the dark past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely, though, you can find ways to work in some more details here and there that won't darken your current story, or drop hints for people looking for it, and maybe &lt;em&gt;imply&lt;/em&gt; the darker stuff for people to figure out if they really think about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13832" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T23:24:09.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17306" CreationDate="2015-05-17T23:40:09.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Increase the emotional charge of the main plot.&#xA;Some possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increase the &lt;strong&gt;intensity&lt;/strong&gt; of the main story.&#xA;Make the conflict more conflicty.&#xA;For example:&#xA;Maybe some of his allies,&#xA;horrified at having witnessed what he is capable of,&#xA;begin to see him as just as evil&#xA;as the regime they are struggling to destroy.&#xA;Maybe some of them abandon him,&#xA;or even turn against him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Raise the &lt;strong&gt;stakes&lt;/strong&gt; of the main story.&#xA;Maybe the evil regime becomes even more evil,&#xA;or stronger,&#xA;or more widespread.&#xA;Maybe formerly good people&#xA;begin to accept the evil,&#xA;or even participate.&#xA;Maybe the stakes become more personal for the hero,&#xA;as the evil regime specifically targets the hero's loved ones.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increase the &lt;strong&gt;difficulty&lt;/strong&gt; of the main story.&#xA;Introduce obstacles,&#xA;especially obstacles designed specifically to trouble the hero.&#xA;(Maybe he has to torture a former ally.)&#xA;Remove the resources and support that the hero was most counting on,&#xA;especially the support of his most important allies and loved ones.&#xA;Bring the hero to the point of despair.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T23:40:09.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17314" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-18T04:22:30.150" Score="2" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does there exist example of non native English writer who learned the language late in life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13843" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T07:30:23.480" Title="Non native writers who learned English late" Tags="|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17315" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-18T06:49:23.187" Score="2" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;p&gt;How would one differentiate between two different sources (websites) that both:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the same title&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have an unknown author&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not list a publishing date/year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13845" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T10:00:47.117" Title="APA style in-text citations" Tags="|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17316" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17324" CreationDate="2015-05-18T07:17:26.060" Score="2" ViewCount="738" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote this piece, but have had quite a lot of problems with showing, not telling. I am wondering how I can add More SHOW and less TELL in this piece of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The morning was warm. Just like Williams’s feelings. He got up out of bed and put on his tattered, familiar dressing gown. Breakfast was next, and only a short walk down the claustrophobic corridor. William sat down on one of the carved, wooden chairs and took a spoonful of cereal to his mouth. He sat silently, thinking about his upcoming speech. He was very nervous, but very happy, at the same. After all, this was his inaugural speech at a press conference following his election as Prime Minister.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;*&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cameras and microphones were shoved in his face as William pushed forward through the humungous crowd, desperately trying to make an escape. &quot;Is the Economy not important to you, Mr. William?&quot; one reporter asked him. &quot;Do you not care about people struggling to make ends meet?” He didn’t answer. Just kept pushing on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside, the public was angry. They held up large signs protesting against some of the items proposed in his speech. They chanted a rehearsed song and wore tee-shirts promoting their cause. William’s shoulders slumped as the scene met his eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After what seemed like forever, William made it through the crowd and retreated to the safety and comfort of his jet-black limousine. He sat deep into the soft, white leather seats and sighed, his shoulders and ego slumping. “So I take it the speech didn’t go so well?” Monique, his personal assistant, took a short break from scribbling down notes and looked up. William rested his head in his hands. “Yeah.” His reply came out woeful and muffled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A loud buzzing noise filled the car. It was the phone. “Hi, you’re speaking with the office of Mr. William. How may I help you?” Monique answered. There was a short pause. “Mmm. . .” And then another. Click. “William, I have some bad news. It’s about Natalie.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;William nervously hammered the elevator button, despite knowing that doing so wouldn’t help the situation at all. He hoped that none of this was real. That it had all been a dream. That Natalie was safe. And his press conference had gone well. But as the elevators opened, he knew this certainly wasn’t a dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first bed in front of William was Natalie’s. He rushed over and slowly lowered onto one knee beside the dull, white hospital bed. Gently, he reached out and ran his hands through Natalie’s soft, silky hair. Her eyelids gradually opened and the forced a painful smile. William took hold of her head and brought it to his. Their lips touched. He waited for a moment before resting Natalie’s head back down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Who did this to you?” William was filled with fury. “Five foot six.” Natalie whispered as she described her murderer. “Thin build. Dark glasses. Black hair.”&#xA;A single, sorrowful tear crept down his face as he watched Natalie’s life slip away. Each of her breaths came out dry and rasped. Her pale face was lighter than the white sheet she clutched tightly in her hand, but this was almost unnoticeable under the crimson-red blood from the stab wound on her chest. If you were silent, you might have heard her quiet groans of pain as she clung intensely to what was left of her life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the dreaded moment arrived. Natalie took her last breath. All was silent. It took a few moments for the reality to set in: she was dead. William took a deep breath, waiting for the tears to come, but none came. Just a deep feeling of emptiness from deep within his heart. Natalie was now gone. William slowly rose to his feet and made his way back over to the elevator doors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;William shivered as he waited for the limousine to arrive. The black sky above him was now darker than ever. The wind argued with the shrubs and trees behind him. They swayed this way and that, narrowly avoiding each punch the howling gust threw at them. Thunder rolled menacingly and lightning slapped its hands hard into the ground, leaving a blinding white streak of light in its path. The once quiet pitter-pattering of rain hitting the streets had increased to a deafening roar. The rain fell like an ocean thrown from the sky. It crashed down to Earth, splattered off the sidewalks, and formed instant rivers that raced along the gutters and overwhelmed the drains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, despite the violent weather and loud cacophony, William did not move out of his place on the side of the road. He stood still and lonely: the way he was going to be for the rest of his life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sound of snapping twigs and crunching leaves caught William’s attention. He turned around, expecting to find the press. No-one was there. He went back to thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a moment later, William felt an icy hand grip onto is shoulder, and then the round, hard barrel of a gun press into the side of his head. “You’re coming with me.” a familiar voice whispered in a threatening tone. William turned around. He a woman, about five foot six, standing behind him. She was of a thin build, wore dark glasses and had black hair. But the face: William would be able to recognize that anywhere. His stomach churned as one word echoed through his head: Monique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13846" LastEditorUserId="13846" LastEditDate="2015-05-20T06:07:46.103" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T06:07:46.103" Title="How can I implement more show less tell in my writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-05-18T23:04:08.170" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17314" CreationDate="2015-05-18T07:30:23.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joseph Conrad learned English in his twenties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enotes.com/topics/joseph-conrad&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;e-notes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T07:30:23.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16976" CreationDate="2015-05-18T07:48:37.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Word is acceptable for short documents. Make sure to set up paragraph styles and always use them (no manual formatting). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When your manual exceeds 50 pages or you have layout requirements beyond the basics, Word becomes increasingly troublesome: instability and document corruption are common in large documents.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You'll also run into trouble with the way Word handles images: you have to use linked images to keep your file size reasonable, but then you have to repair all the links when you move the Word file to a different directory.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For large documents, use e.g. FrameMaker, which is designed for technical documentation and much better at it than Word.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever solution you choose: for printing at a print shop, always create a PDF on your workstation, check if the layout is correct and then take the PDF to the printshop. Never assume the printshop can handle your source document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T07:48:37.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16304" CreationDate="2015-05-18T08:48:42.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having your character calling the man raising her father isn't a problem.  She knows he's not her biological dad but as far as she is concerned, he is her father and will call him as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you seem to be having trouble is the reveal that he is in fact not who you have said he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various ways this can be done depending on the type of story you're trying to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's the obvious flashpoint.  &quot;You're not my dad!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's the more subtle method (using someone elses example of meeting the boyfriend) of &quot;You don't look like your dad.&quot;  &quot;He's not my real dad.  My parents died when I was young.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the different methods will have different outcomes and speaking from what I've observed hearing &quot;you're not my dad&quot; is one of the worst thing any man can hear from a child he has done his best to raise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever method you choose, you can have hints to lead up to it if you don't want it to be a complete surprise.  The girl could have a picture of her birth mum and dad on their wedding day but her dad's description is totally different to that of her father.  If the parents died together she could have newspaper clippings of that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot can be done but most of it will depend on what the plot of your story is and where you want to take it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T08:48:42.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17304" CreationDate="2015-05-18T09:05:45.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no studies that I'm aware so I'll give you my opinion which is, kill off the character when the time is right.  As you've said, too early and your reader won't feel any emotion but too late and you won't have time to deal with the repurcussions of the death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself have killed off someone I portrayed as a main character in the first chapter of a book as it saved me a lot of time later explaining why the real main character is like he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The late author James Herbert was an expert at making a character, giving them a back story then killing them all in the space of a single chapter.  I distinctly remember in his book &quot;The Fog&quot; where a girl was sitting on the beach reflecting on the summer of love she'd had which had just ended.  The whole thing was very detailed and led to her deciding she wanted to live but at that point, a whole load of infected had filled the beach and pushed her into the sea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On TV, Star Trek: The Next Generation created Tasha Yar, the security chief, made her a central figure in several story lines then killed her half way through series one. This gave the viewer the belief that any main character could be killed because Tasha was a &quot;main&quot; character for so long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T09:05:45.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17290" CreationDate="2015-05-18T09:24:41.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there is simple realism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things happen in real life that are (or appear to us) unrelated to our current plight and random. You might be running to save your loved ones and get run over by a car because you didn't look. That will cut the &quot;plot&quot; short without resolution. Or you might catch a cold and have to lie in bed, instead of saving the world. That's real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In genre fiction, life is not real. Protagonists don't catch a cold or get run over by old ladies. But in literary fiction, protagonists don't fight antagonists so much as attempt to be successful at life in general. So they &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; have to deal with stuff unrelated to them or arbitrary. Because it is a measure of psychological functioning how you deal with the bus being late or your kids coming in when you try to make love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question you have to ask yourself is: Are to telling a genre story that is more symbolic that realistic? Then nothing should happen in your story that is not caused by the antagoinistic forces that your protagonist is up against. Or are you telling a story about a person in this world and that your readers may learn something from? Then it will depend on the character of the protagonist and the message you want to make, how (s)he reacts to unplanned disruptions. And, in the latter case, it is not something that we can tell you how to do, but you'll have to make an artistic choice in accord with your vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T09:24:41.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17292" CreationDate="2015-05-18T09:28:06.080" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you write a literary text, vary your words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write an academic text, stick to the terminology and repeat it consistently (because very likely a word perceived by the lay public to be synonymous has a fundamentally different meaning to an expert).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T09:28:06.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17315" CreationDate="2015-05-18T10:00:47.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The APA Manual says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there is no author, you put the title in place of the author name. (Use &quot;Anonymous&quot; only, if the author is given as &quot;Anonymous&quot; in the publication! Use the nickname, if a pseudonymous nickname is given.) Alphabetize by the first significant word in the title (not by &quot;The ...&quot; or &quot;A ...&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there is no publication date, write &lt;em&gt;n.d.&lt;/em&gt; (in italics).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If several works by the same author are published on the same date, add &quot;a&quot;, &quot;b&quot; and so on to the publication date.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken together, I would say that your two sources could probably be listed as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Title of blog post. (&lt;i&gt;n.d.&lt;/i&gt;a) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.url&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.url&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Title of blog post. (&lt;i&gt;n.d.&lt;/i&gt;b) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.otherurl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.otherurl&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Unfortunately this website does not italicize text if there is no whitespace. &quot;*&quot; signifies the beginning and end of italicized text.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In text you would cite these as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;bla bla bla (Title of blog post, *n.d.*a) bla bla bla&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In effect &quot;a&quot; will point to one URL, &quot;b&quot; to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that in most cases you would not give the title of a website, but that of an individual article on a website. E.g. you would cite your question here not as &lt;code&gt;asfgas. (2015). Writers beta. http://writers.stackexchange.com&lt;/code&gt;, but as &lt;code&gt;asfgas. (2015, May 18). APA style in-text citations. http://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17315/apa-style-in-text-citations&lt;/code&gt;.  (Note that blog posts are cited with day and month, not only year.) Only if a website contains only one coherent work (e.g. a webcomic) would you cite this by the title of the whole website instead of by an individual post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T10:00:47.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17316" CreationDate="2015-05-18T10:17:50.353" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my view, this piece of writing exhibits two things you should avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, consider the opening paragraph. It is a good example of &quot;purple prose&quot;; as you suspect, it appears to be far too descriptive and flowery. Let's break it down: &quot;The sun peeked out&quot;, &quot;he watched the first rays of sunlight grace the Earth&quot;, &quot;the clouds become lit with a fabulous, warm light&quot;, &quot;the lush mountain vegetation&quot;, &quot;lit up brighter than a fiery inferno&quot;, &quot;His nostrils filled with the sweet smell of fresh dew&quot;, &quot;his ears with the sound of happy twittering&quot;, &quot;autumn leaves in the street dancing around in the air like wild butterflies&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a lot more to pick out elsewhere, but hopefully you can get the gist: too many adjectives, too much flowery description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's contrast it with what I consider to be one of the best opening sentences in relation to environment/weather I can recall: &quot;The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.&quot; This is from William Gibson's Neuromancer. He doesn't proceed to write sentence after sentence elaborating on the sky, the sun, or what the main character observed in relation to that. A single sentence that conveys everything you really need to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, avoid purple prose. Less really is more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second element that really stands out is show me, don't tell me. You keep telling me things instead of showing it to me. Example, first part of the second section: &quot;The speech had gone horribly. He had forgotten some of his lines and made a complete fool of himself in front of the whole nation. Now he had an angry crowd chasing after him, and an impatient press wanting answers. It was all just too much.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't tell me it went horribly, show me. Don't tell me he forgot some lines and made a fool of himself. Show me. Don't tell me there's an angry crowd chasing him. Show me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say, like Ed Milliband (former Labour Party leader here in the UK), your character forgot a major part of his speech related to the economy. Here in the UK some journalists saw a draft of Milliband's speech that had the economy in it, but he didn't say it during the speech. (They found this later after the speech, but that's immaterial right now.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forgetting something like that is a huge deal. Reporters will be throwing questions at him like, &quot;Is the Economy not important to you, Mr. William?&quot;, or &quot;Do you not care about people struggling to make ends meet, Mr. William?&quot; Maybe there's protesters shouting out pithy slogans. If you focus on showing these things, the reader gets a better understanding of what's happening: they'll see it went wrong, they'll see there's a huge angry crowd. The way you've written it, I know nothing of the speech, and nothing as to why the crowd were angry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, what I suspect you're doing is really showing me what the character knows (this is demonstrated specifically when you say, later on &quot;he knew&quot; and &quot;despite knowing&quot;, but from what I can tell most of the paragraph is really a description of what your character knows about the situation). I highly recommend reading Chuck Palahniuk's warning &lt;a href=&quot;https://litreactor.com/essays/chuck-palahniuk/nuts-and-bolts-%E2%80%9Cthought%E2%80%9D-verbs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;against using thought verbs&lt;/a&gt;, and rather unpack your prose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;Instead of characters knowing anything, you must now present the details that allow the reader to know them.  Instead of a character wanting something, you must now describe the thing so that the reader wants it. ... In short, no more short-cuts.  Only specific sensory detail: action, smell, taste, sound, and feeling.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first part, you mention &quot;He sat silently, thinking about his upcoming speech&quot;, something else that Palahniuk picks on, namely don't leave your characters alone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;One of the most-common mistakes that beginning writers make is leaving their characters alone.  Writing, you may be alone.  Reading, your audience may be alone.  But your character should spend very, very little time alone.  Because a solitary character starts thinking or worrying or wondering.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some good examples in the article to help you overcome these issues. As Palahniuk notes, you'll hate him for a while, but you'll become a better writer if you try follow this advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T10:23:07.710" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T10:23:07.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17316" CreationDate="2015-05-18T12:17:35.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, too many words obscuring the action, rather than driving it on. In your first section, only one phrase connected with me: He was nervous. The rest was filler without any emotional or story impact at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter what the morning looked like if some character was not looking at it and having a personal, emotional reaction to it. How does a pretty sunrise affect one's nervousness? I didn't even consider that question because I didn't know at the time that the observer was nervous. Try rewriting the scene beginning with 'He was nervous' and lead the reader through the sunrise and breakfast using every moment to illustrate his state of mind, or using his state of mind to taint the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if a character approaches a hospital bed. I do not want to know what colour it is. I want to know who's in it. If the bed was surrounded by fallen children's toys and deflated ballons, then my heart is in my mouth, and I need to know who's in it. If you tell me it's white and dull it's not suspense, it's just time-wasting. Likewise sorrowful tears, and round gun barrels. You can afford to lose some words there. Only use adjectives if they are surprising or illuminating. As well as 'round', gun barrels can be wet, hot, greasy or perfumed. Each of those tells a story, round does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all of it is bad, but lots of that text either needs to go, or be rewritten so that it connects emotionally. I like the imagery of the weather turning bad, but it needed to be tied into William's state of mind. Does he just stand there in the rain when it turns into a deluge, or does he seek cover? Does the lightning bother him, or is he deaf to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T12:17:35.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="807" CreationDate="2015-05-18T12:21:43.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There a couple of ways to deal with the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe he knows a bit of everything, but not a lot. Have issues in the plot where his lack of specialist knowledge causes him issues.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Great at learning in some areas, but terribly inept in others. A lot of Anime with powerful heroes balance them out by having them completely inept at things like notice a girl hitting on them or balancing household budgets. Go with something that matches the tone of the story, but terrible people skills is typically a safe one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They're good.. and they know it. Have their ego be a issue for them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have them figuring out how to solve problems with their varied skill half the charm. It's tricky, but if you can charm the readers with his improvising, last minute thinking and ability to take knowledge from one field and use it another creatively, you should avoid the Gary Sue tag by everything hard, but overcome, rather than easy and overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13808" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T20:33:06.240" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T20:33:06.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17270" CreationDate="2015-05-18T13:23:22.593" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer has to come from who your characters are, and why they are using slang.  Essentially slang is an in-group word-game.  It's a way of distinguishing insiders from outsiders.  It can also be a low-key form of resistance to authority.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it depends on your group.  Techie slang is filled with acronyms and shortenings.  It's a way of showing off your familiarity with arcane knowledge. On the other hand, teen slang is designed to annoy adults, has an anti-authority slant, and is often filled with arbitrary words that need to be memorized rather than figured out.  Many years ago, in Kenya, I learned a version of the local slang that was filled with a playfully corrupt mix of English and Swahili.  It was the anti-traditionalist language of young global citizens, and it was equally an affront to both formal, school-learned English and to the native languages of the villages (and their older inhabitants).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slang can be crude or elegant, witty or offensive, rule based or arbitrary. It's all about the group that uses it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T13:23:22.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17292" CreationDate="2015-05-18T14:05:40.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/17322/&quot;&gt;what's answer&lt;/a&gt; notes, academic writing generally values precision (using the most specific words appropriate) and accuracy (using words that most closely match the facts, even avoiding excessive specificity). Effort may be spent avoiding connotations and tone that would emotionally bias the presentation of truth, even avoiding favorable bias. Similarly, musicality of sound may be muted or avoided. Academic writing makes an intellectual appeal and seeks to focus the mind rather than entertain the reader. In addition, academic writing tends to be concise, direct, and didactic; the intent is to express specific facts in a limited time. Academic writing also places greater emphasis on enduring value, which favors staid word choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic writing can be as boring (or as interesting) to read as a dictionary. Academic writing might be analogous to the stereotype of military rations: nutritious, compact, convenient, and durable but not pretty or delicious.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Variation in word choice can decrease precision, accuracy, neutrality, and concision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journalistic writing may favor much of the tone of academic writing, seeking to appear truthful and objective and valuing the reader's time, but places much greater emphasis on entertainment and accessibility, competing with other content for the reader's attention. Journalists also tend to condescend to the reader's level rather than adopt the role of instructor, presenting news &lt;em&gt;stories&lt;/em&gt; as an unfolding of information as if the journalist and the reader are discovering such together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analogies for journalistic writing might range from nutrition bars (nutritious — at least by implication —, compact, and convenient, but tasty) to snack food (convenient, tasty, and preferably addictive). Variation in word choice works well with the sense of progressive co-discovery (whether increasing precision, detail, or accuracy) and avoids a dry, academic tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiction places a much greater emphasis on entertainment and tone, generally works by progressive discovery, and often presents variation in pacing, tone, and perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiction might be analogous to an ordinary restaurant meal. Variation in word choice supports a pleasant experience and a growing attachment to the work, the characters and setting, and the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The compaction of poetry and its emphasis on form, musicality, and emotion leads to a greater use of variation in word choice. Imprecision or inaccuracy may be not merely acceptable but preferred to move the reader rather than promote a rational conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Poetry might be analogous to a gourmet dish; attractive, delicious, often small, expensive, and clearly crafted but not necessarily nutritious. For poetry, variation of word choice is particularly important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rhetorical writing seeks to evoke an emotional and reasonable response. This leads to some of the qualities of poetry, but repetition is more commonly employed to drive a point home and rational content is used both to provide a more enduring effect and to assist in the communication of the drive to others by the audience. Variation can work against simplistic, forceful presentation but can enhance the musicality and the weight of argument. A synonym can repeat the same fact while appearing as an additional fact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rhetorical writing might be somewhat analogous to a box of chocolates, presented in an orderly and appealing manner, delicious, somewhat repetitive, and intended as remembrance (&quot;enduring effect&quot;) and gift (&quot;communication ... to others&quot;). Variation in word choice may be used to introduce a taste for the argument in a less committed audience or repeat a common theme without seeming repetitive. Precision, accuracy, and conciseness may be sacrificed for an affective and effective presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As usual with writing (and as hinted by &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/17293/&quot;&gt;Dale Emery's answer&lt;/a&gt;), the target audience and the intention of the writer should guide such choices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Note that academics could learn from the military which is recognizing the importance of the appearance and taste of rations to morale. Just as military success depends on morale, so educational success depends on the interest of the student. Even a conscription army benefits from enthusiastic soldiers and voluntary re-enlistment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T14:05:40.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17008" CreationDate="2015-05-18T15:10:27.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it be best if you &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; the rules and the consequences of breaking them in easily digestible chunks. Don't overload the reader with too much at once. A easy mistake to make would be forgetting that you know the rules like the back of your hand, while your reader will be encountering them for the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heck I be tempted to not explain the rules in the first few chapters and let the narrators be clueless to what going off in front of them, before slowly introducing the 'how' over the early half of the tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of how you do it, it be a good idea to have someone read it with fresh eyes, to see if its confusing for a first time reader or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13808" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T15:10:27.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17292" CreationDate="2015-05-18T15:38:47.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general writing, it is good to vary wording to avoid sounding repetitious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I drove my car to the car lot where the car salesman sold me a new car.&quot; That sounds very awkward, almost silly, because of the repeated use of the same word. If I wanted to express that idea, I'd be much more likely to write, perhaps, &quot;I drove my car to the auto dealer where the salesman sold me a new vehicle.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in some contexts, using synonyms like this may create an ambiguity. Are you talking about the same thing or something different? This is especially true in technical writing. &quot;Technical&quot; here means not just science and technology but could include history, politics, whatever. For example, suppose you were describing how to repair an electronic device, and you said, &quot;To remove the memory chip from the circuit board, grasp the part on the left and pull the component to the right.&quot; Someone might well ask, &quot;by 'the part' do you mean the memory chip, or the circuit board?&quot; Or if in a discussion of space travel you switched between the words &quot;rocket&quot;, &quot;space craft&quot;, and &quot;space ship&quot;, a reader might not be clear if you are using these words as synonyms or are making a technical distinction. Etc. In such cases, it is better to use the same word repeatedly for clarify, even if it doesn't &quot;sound nice&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T15:38:47.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17304" CreationDate="2015-05-18T15:50:21.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how you'd really do a study on this. It's far too subjective. One reader might say that he found the death of a certain character very emotional and he was crying so hard he couldn't continue reading, while another might read the same book, shrug and say, &quot;Glad they got rid of that character. He just slowed down the story.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, in general a writer should be careful not to spring dramatic moments too early, as the reader has not yet had a chance to get invested in the characters. I recall a book I read years ago, &quot;The Ship Who Sang&quot;, which I think was generally an excellent book but I considered it flawed because the writer kept introducing characters, and then within a few pages that character would have some tragedy and the reader was clearly supposed to feel for him or her, but I didn't, because I'd only &quot;known&quot; this character for a couple of pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd worry less about killing a character (or introducing some other dramatic event) too late. Other than in the sense that any development in a story might come too early or too late: it doesn't fit the flow of the plot. If something happens too quickly, it can be abrupt, happening without adequate build-up to justify it. But if something takes too long, then the reader can be bored. Like, &quot;Oh come on, obviously John is going to try to steal the money and disappear, get to it already.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if someone could actually &quot;study&quot; this and come up with a formula, like &quot;the ideal time to kill a main character is one-third of the way down page 183&quot;, well, at that point we wouldn't need human authors, we'd just program computers to write novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T15:50:21.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17289" CreationDate="2015-05-18T18:37:31.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me a plot driven story is like real life: you have no idea what goes on in another person's mind and all you know about them you &lt;strong&gt;deduce from their actions&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a person sees some event and reacts to this in a particular way, it is completely unnecessary to explain that person's motivation, because it is apparent. That is the basis of &quot;show, don't tell&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an action driven story, you &lt;strong&gt;characterize your characters by their actions&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not contradicted by the advice that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, the author, should know more about your characters than what can be deduced from one particular scene. You need to know your characters to decide how they will act. But you need not &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; more than what the character does. (And don't forget that &quot;behavior&quot; includes mimics and gestures and tone of voice. A tear is something your character does.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T18:37:31.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7749" CreationDate="2015-05-18T21:38:38.220" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Patterson is just padding his books, making them thicker, a more respectable size by using short chapters, large type, big margins, etc.  The whole point seems to be, not to make great books, just to make lots of them and therefore lots of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13854" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T21:38:38.220" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7749" CreationDate="2015-05-19T05:16:21.500" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short chapters are a gift to readers who may not have the time or stamina to handle 70 pages at a sitting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a young reader, reaching goals is important.  As their eyelids get heavy and their mind starts to wander into the dreamlands, they struggle to read just a little bit further.  If only they can make it to the end of the current chapter, then they will have accomplished something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By keeping the end of each chapter within reach of even the most tired juvenille reader, an author facilitates little victories in the lives of those same young readers.  Those victories, as much as marvelous characters and unexpected plot twists, can fertilize a budding love of reading...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that love of reading, in time, can lead to increased revenues for the author, when subsequent sequels and new series are released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T05:16:21.500" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17336" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-19T06:05:38.340" Score="1" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/203/9888&quot;&gt;This answer&lt;/a&gt; and came across this section in it (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition to selling via the big eBook outlets, &lt;strong&gt;offer sale of DRM-free (but watermarked, if you like) ebooks in multiple formats on your web site and/or through outlets specializing in DRM-free ebooks.&lt;/strong&gt; There are a growing number of ebook consumers who are tired of DRM, and their desired rate of consumption, at least in the fiction market, is far higher than the supply serving them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I get DRM-free, I'm a gamer and DRM is a huge pain in the ass, but I don't understand what formats of DRM-free eBooks there are? Are these just different file types (e.g .pdf, .docx, .txt), or is it something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T21:50:05.827" Title="What &quot;formats&quot; are there for eBooks?" Tags="|ebook|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14429" CreationDate="2015-05-19T13:42:54.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When looking for tools like these, future-compatibility is a very big issue. First off, try to avoid any tools that have their own proprietary format and can't be edited using any other tool (look what happened to many 80s document files which were written using their own editors and the editors suddenly just vanished). Microsoft Office is also one such example which can not be relied upon. Their format might change 10 years from now, making your documents incomprehensible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this consideration in mind, I started storing my content in plain text files with markdown formatting. But then I met &lt;a href=&quot;http://zim-wiki.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zim Wiki&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a personal wiki for managing information which stores its data in plain files. It uses its own syntax but the syntax is very reasonable and quite close to markdown. I keep various notebooks inside it -- one for my research notes, one for general notes, one for my diary entries etc. It indexes all of the text and you can easily search across all your notebook. The good part in it is that you don't have to raise your hand above keyboard for any task. There are shortcuts for all sorts of things. You can easily search or go to any page without touching your mouse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It supports adding Latex equations, code syntax highlighting, diagrams etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would consider it to be equivalent to Evernote, albeit it has no Android client and all the data resides in your hard-disk in pure future-proof text files. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, though it is quite old and mature now, the development is still active. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11086" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T13:42:54.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17340" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-19T14:01:30.970" Score="2" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;After the death of my cousin I have stopped writing for quite some time. However the stories ideas would persist in my mind. So I decided to try and write again, but whatever ideas I have. Turn into tangents or worse, become depressing. &#xA;I have been trying to rewrite a story (the original, was deleted) but whenever I try to, it's like... I used to describe my desire to write with, &quot;I write because I cannot breathe&quot; but now my writing seems stunted. The words don't flow, they muddle and any ideas I have seem fine for one sentence, but when written or combined together with another. They become fake or seem too eager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I write again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13860" LastEditorUserId="13864" LastEditDate="2015-05-20T11:28:01.570" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T12:11:01.990" Title="Writing Style Changed" Tags="|style|creative-writing|writers-block|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-05-20T11:26:45.277" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17336" CreationDate="2015-05-19T14:04:47.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are different file types, but they are file types understood by ebook readers. Specifically the three most popular are epub, mobi, and pdf; although there are others. By the way Calibre is capable of converting between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T14:04:47.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17342" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-05-19T14:10:34.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Originality refers to created or invented works that can be characterized as being new or novel, and thus can be distinguished from existing works. An original work is one created with a unique style and substance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term &quot;originality&quot; is often applied as a compliment to the creativity of writers. The approximate opposite being a wholly derivative work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept of originality is largely culturally contingent. Originality started to become the ideal for Western culture around the 18th century. When Shakespeare was creating his works it was common to appreciate not the differences so much as the similarity with an admired classical works. Shakespeare himself avoided &quot;unnecessary invention&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="7926" LastEditDate="2015-06-03T13:27:36.443" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T13:27:36.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17343" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-05-19T14:10:34.300" Score="0" Body="Originality refers to created or invented works that can be characterized as being new or novel, and thus can be distinguished from existing works. An original work is one created with a unique style and substance. " OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="7926" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T18:57:35.390" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T18:57:35.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17344" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-05-19T14:24:15.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag should be used for questions that deal with the management of ideas in the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/process&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;process&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;process&lt;/a&gt; of writing your work. For example you could ask about &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tools&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;tools&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/software&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;software&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;software&lt;/a&gt; to keep track of your ideas, how you could utilize random ideas in &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/creative-writing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;creative-writing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;creative-writing&lt;/a&gt;, how to publish your ideas, for example in a &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/blog&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;blog&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;, or how to get the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/motivation&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;motivation&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;motivation&lt;/a&gt; to transform your ideas into literary works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-16T13:43:39.767" LastActivityDate="2018-04-16T13:43:39.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17345" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-05-19T14:24:15.280" Score="0" Body="This tag should be used for questions that deal with the management of ideas in the process of writing your work. Please note that idea-generation questions are off-topic here." OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2024-03-10T15:04:31.897" LastActivityDate="2024-03-10T15:04:31.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17346" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17349" CreationDate="2015-05-19T15:12:33.083" Score="4" ViewCount="532" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a freelance journalist, I spend a lot of time reading the media. Often I'll come across an article that I admire, and feel is leaps and bounds above my own work. Naturally, I want to learn from such pieces: but often I struggle to understand exactly &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; I find them inspirational. Without that, they're not very helpful as learning tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the oft-given advice that to improve as a writer, one must read a lot and read with a critical mind. However, I frequently feel that I'm not doing the latter bit as well as I should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I studied Literature to A-level (age 16-18 - no idea what the US equivalent was), and did well. However as the years have passed and I've no longer needed to exercise those critical skills, they've atrophied. I've become more used to reading and interpreting things on their surface level, and not looking so hard to see what's underneath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is of particular importance to me because much of what I write is criticism. A lot of the material I cover doesn't offer layers of allegory or metaphor. But when it's there, I'm sure I often miss it. So I need to learn to be critical not just of writing but other media, and to learn the language of critical theory that goes with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also an element of self-discipline here. Why look harder when you don't need to? Especially when it comes to fast-paced media where it's easy to get caught up in the ride. When a moment rises that invites reflection, it's too late: you're swept on to the next scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - what can I do to learn more about how to think critically, and to encourage myself to use those skills? I'm aware that a lot of Universities offer free videos of lecture courses nowadays, which on the surface would seem an ideal resource - but almost everything I've found in that vein is STEM focussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6371" LastEditorUserId="6371" LastEditDate="2015-05-19T20:22:28.200" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T14:15:55.393" Title="How can I learn to think and interpret things more critically?" Tags="|criticism|metaphor|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17340" CreationDate="2015-05-19T17:29:58.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that whatever problem you have with writing is not about writing but about how you feel about yourself and your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to take a break from writing and try to come to terms with the death of your cousin first. Or you can try to take the pressure out of your writing and write without any concerns for quality and just to relax and have fun with the storytelling. With time your comfort with writing will grow, and you'll find your voice again (or a new voice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, accept that you have had an experience that is changing you, and that you'll need time to complete that change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-05-23T12:11:01.990" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T12:11:01.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17348" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17353" CreationDate="2015-05-19T18:18:45.403" Score="1" ViewCount="2310" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is a good clever title for a persuasive essay against affirmative action? In general, how do you come up with clever titles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12612" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T20:23:19.307" Title="What's a nice title for a persuasive essay arguing that affirmative action is not helpful?" Tags="|essay|titles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-05-20T01:59:54.333" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17346" CreationDate="2015-05-19T18:42:48.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could read a text (literary or media) and then look at what other people have said about it. This can make you more aware of what to look for so that you can look for it in future and make you think about the text in a deeper way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could look into literary theory as a way to make you more aware of different ways of looking at texts. Personally, when I was taught about semiotics it changed how I looked at Shakespeare. If you want a start on literary theory I would recommend downloading the audio versions of the Open Yale course available &lt;a href=&quot;http://oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-300&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a simpler level, try using the frameworks that you were given for analysing literature at A-Level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T18:42:48.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17350" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17362" CreationDate="2015-05-19T19:23:42.080" Score="4" ViewCount="3506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find myself seeking a lot of ideas for my alternate universes, novels, short stories, and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly what can be considered copyrighted, and what isn't?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give you some examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Star Trek: I know the name &quot;Star Trek&quot; is copyrighted. I am guessing that things like &quot;Enterprise&quot; is as well, and perhaps other ship names. I am also guessing the names of the different races are also copywrighted? But what about things like... &quot;Warp Drive&quot;, &quot;Slipstream mode&quot;, planet names, technology names, and so forth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same with any other fiction. I know that from fantasy: Elves, Necromancer, Dwarves... all of these fantasy terms. They are all open copyright. I can use them in stories, novels, short stories, world creation and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, is I am trying to find out a good way to tell what exactly is copyrighted, and what exactly isn't. What I can use freely, and what requires permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3543" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T17:41:52.107" Title="General copyright - How much is actually copyrighted?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17350" CreationDate="2015-05-19T20:12:07.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may have to research your specific term to see how far back it goes and if you can find the first or earliest instance(s). Depending on what you're looking for, you may have to go to physical libraries rather than just the Internet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Star Trek is obviously a TV show, so the origin can be easily pinpointed. Most of the proper names on the show you can also consider copyrighted. Planet names may or may not; you'd have to look them up. Elves, dwarves, et al. are mythology, but Tolkien's specific interpretation and history of his Middle-Earth elves are copyrighted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as published works in general, in the U.S. the rule of thumb is 75 years after first publication, but some authors/estates renew this copyright, so it's not an ironclad rule. As an example, any Sherlock Holmes stories written before 1923 are public domain (not copyrighted) but those after 1923 are not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T20:12:07.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17348" CreationDate="2015-05-19T20:23:19.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Affirmative action as a detriment/hindrance&quot; &quot;Affirmative Action: Doing more harm than good.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go over your essay and see if there are any good &quot;tag lines&quot; think of how a movie comes up with the trailer. The title should reflect the overall point of the essay, or be a short version &quot;elevator pitch&quot; of your first paragraph, the one thats usually all, &quot;over the course of this essay i intend to change your opinion about ZYX, to XYZ, as i feel XYZ to be better, and this is why&quot; kind of stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe do a cover letter rather than just a title. teachers usually like it when you go the extra mile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Persuasion of truth: The facts they don't want you to know about Affirmative Action.&quot;&#xA;&quot;Affirmative Actions harmful and unforeseen consequences&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you see, it should just reflect the main view of your essay. try to boil down your essay into the lowest common denominator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Affirmative Action, Racist Institution?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13864" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T20:23:19.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17346" CreationDate="2015-05-19T20:55:48.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately there is no easy answer. As changing ones modality of thought and interpretation, is no easy task. @Tave has a great idea, that learning about the different frameworks, the skeletal structure of writing/differing types of media. As that is a good and basic way to critique certain works. &#xA;But other than that, there is no real surefire way of changing the way you view pieces/works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue here is that criticism, other than an objective assessment. ((Spelled wrong, formatted poorly.) With a slight portion of comparison between it and works of its ilk) Is only your own personal emotional response. Which is dependent upon your own life experiences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way you expand on that should be self evident. If you need to learn how to be a better critic of food articles or shows. Try enrolling in a basic culinary course. To immerse yourself in that world, in the hopes that you may have a better vantage point to criticize. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a painter, thus my criticism of fine works will be at a disadvantage, however, if i can find a way to illustrate what i am getting at. In a palatable and understandable way. Furthermore that point resonates with enough other people. Then even my amateur status, can yield constructive and helpful criticisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, my suggestion would be to try to &quot;walk a mile in the shoes&quot; of what ever topic or what have you... uhhh, i think you see what i am getting at. Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13864" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T20:55:48.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17358" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-19T05:23:00.520" Score="4" ViewCount="456" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every teacher at school seems to have a different way that they like to set up an introduction for an essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a persuasive essay, what exactly should be included in the introduction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques are helpful in making the introduction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything to avoid, such as a bullet beginning (one to two sentence introduction)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="James" LastEditorUserId="13210" LastEditDate="2015-05-20T22:17:57.490" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T15:48:13.863" Title="Essay Structure - Introduction" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17358" CreationDate="2015-05-19T05:24:26.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an essay one should most importantly introduce the topic and have a clear contention. Quotes from novels and such can be a good lead-in sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An effective introduction should interest the reader of the essay and make them want to continue reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13869" OwnerDisplayName="Dog Lover" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T05:24:26.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17340" CreationDate="2015-05-20T06:48:51.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking a break is a good idea, looking out for signs of depression is another, but if you want to write, try writing in a genre for which you normally have no interest, or for which you even have disdain. The purpose of this would be to remove the pressure of your own expectations. You can practice and noodle around knee-deep in tropes and adverbs and nobody will care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if this is a bit flippant or pop-psych but you say you're trying to rewrite an old story. If you were a character in somebody else's, it would be obvious to the reader that you're trying to turn back the clock and relive happier times. I'm sure the truth is more complicated, but for certain you are a different person now, so try something different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't normally like the horror genre but I've dabbled with writing it just when those Lovecraftian adverbs kept rising to the fore. Try writing something depressing. See how dark you can go. One of my favourite authors, Michael Marshall, writes thrillers that turn so bleak I want to find his phone number and ask if he's okay. But black humour breaks through in his text so maybe he gets some release through that process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2015-05-20T08:14:17.820" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T08:14:17.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17346" CreationDate="2015-05-20T07:50:32.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to (re)learn how to analyse and criticise literature, it would certainly help you to read analyses and criticisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you studied literature, you probably know all the resources you can turn to (bibliographies, libraries, databases, ...), so use them to locate and read literary theory, analytical methodology and examples of literature analysis and criticsm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to find scholars that use the books you like to read privately as objects of their studies. If what you like is not or only rarely studied by scholars of literature, try to find whatever comes closest. There is of course more on Shakespeare and Hawthorne than contemporary fantasy, but there are scholars that look at contemporary popular media, too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whenever you have read a study or theory or methodology that resonates with you, try to apply what you read to a book you want to analyse. At first you might not want to spend too much time on writing this out, but just take some quick, shorthand notes, similar to what would serve as the basis for your actual writing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read a lot, and, more important, apply what you read as much and as often as you can. Don't worry about wether or not your analysis is &quot;correct&quot;, but rather do as many of them as you can. Revisit your older ones and see if you want to rethink them. You could get feedback from likeminded peers, but more important than checking the opinion of others is that you practice what you want to be good at. With time, with reading a lot of scholarly texts, and with analysing and criticizing different or the same texts again and again, you will finally find your own methods, style and approach.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T07:50:32.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17350" CreationDate="2015-05-20T08:00:24.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of wasting your time trying to understand how much you can take from other works and get away with it, you might want to rather invest that time into coming up with your own ideas and fleshing them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every idea anyone has ever had on this Earth is influences by everything that the person having that idea has read, seen and experienced. So, in essence, there are no completely new ideas, and trying to be totally original is a waste of energy and would result in uninteresing, because unrelated to anyting, stuff anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So just relax and allow those influences to feed your imagination, but then turn away from them and look into yourself and create something from the core of your being, instead of constantly turning back to your sources and copying them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most beginners feel that they want to write another Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, because they can so clearly see the shortcomings of their own creations. But that should not hinder you, instead you need to understand that writing a masterwork needs the writing of many failed works to come before it. You don't learn to walk without falling countless times, and you would never learn to walk if you tried to emulate a dancer instead of trying to crawl first. Writing is like any other ability, it needs a modest beginning, a lot of training, and patience and perseverance. If you approach writing like you have approached walking (and speaking and whatever else you have mastered in your life), you'll find that you'll outgrow the direct and visible influences of your favourite works and begin to create something original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So forget this question, and write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-05-20T13:27:16.867" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T13:27:16.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17346" CreationDate="2015-05-20T14:15:55.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend studying philosophy.  Within philosophy, I would focus in on logic, which can help you perceive the underlying structure and/or structural flaws of any persuasive writing, as well as help you build stronger arguments of your own.  You can also read the Socratic dialogues of Plato, which are the classic example of how to approach all topics critically (as opposed to taking things at their face value).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T14:15:55.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17358" CreationDate="2015-05-20T14:35:32.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An introduction needs to do two jobs --it should give an overall global context for your writing, and it should offer readers a preview of what you are going to tell them.  There are many possible ways to do that. One structure I learned in high school that I have personally found valuable is called the funnel paragraph.  The idea is that you begin your opening paragraph with a broad general statement on your chosen topic, you narrow in on your specific thesis with each successive sentence, and then you make that thesis explicit in the last sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All living things crave companionship [very general].  For human beings, pets can often be the chosen companion [more specific].  Dogs and cats are the most popular pets [more specific].  A dog is the best kind of pet because [X], [Y] and [Z].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, when you actually write the essay, the three sections are &quot;A dog is the best kind of pet because of [X],&quot; &quot;A dog is the best kind of pet because of [Y],&quot; and &quot;A dog is the best kind of pet because of [Z].&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T14:35:32.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17366" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17370" CreationDate="2015-05-20T15:23:14.587" Score="6" ViewCount="326" Body="&lt;p&gt;In writing a screenplay, I created a bunch of scenes, with about twice as much material in total as I needed. So the job was to cut things down to size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In so doing, I found that a number of scenes (and not all the ones I expected initially) seemed to fit together, while others didn't. Then the trick was to identify and kick out (in the terms put forth on &quot;Sesame Street,&quot;) &quot;One of these scenes is not like the others, one of these just doesn't belong, tell me which scene is not like the others before I finish my song.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In so doing, I cut out scenes that I found interesting (on a standalone basis), but didn't fit the plot well, while upsizing other scenes that I initially found &quot;annoying,&quot; because they did support the plot.For instance, there was initially a &quot;throwaway&quot; scene involving the company receptionist, until I made her the confidante of the heroine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a good thing to do, or should I try harder to find a way to retain interesting scenes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-05-20T22:18:55.193" LastActivityDate="2017-09-06T13:28:35.937" Title="Should &quot;plot&quot; or storyline be the main determinant of what goes into a story?" Tags="|fiction|plot|structure|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17350" CreationDate="2015-05-20T17:41:52.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, the name &quot;Star Trek&quot; is not and cannot be copyrighted. It is &quot;trademarked&quot;, which legally is an entirely different thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;copyright&quot; protects the exact words or images used in a published work. You cannot take a copy of, say, &quot;Lord of the Rings&quot;, put your own name on as the author, and publish it. But you certainly can write your own fantasy novel that others might think resembles Lord of the Rings. You can also include quotes from &quot;Lord of the Rings&quot; in your own work under the &quot;fair use doctrine&quot;, but that's getting off in a different direction from your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;trademark&quot; protects a name or title. It's completely different from a copyright. Copyright law specifically says that you can't claim a copyright to a name, phrase, or slogan, etc. But you can claim a trademark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usual disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. But in general, if you make up a word that never existed before, you have a very strong claim of trademark. If you use existing words, your claim is weak. If those words are purely descriptive -- an example I recall reading in a legal discussion was &quot;Main Street Grocery Store&quot; -- your claim is VERY weak. If they're used in a different context from the literal meaning, your claim is stronger. Like &quot;Apple Computers&quot; has a decent claim because their computers are not particularly related to literal apples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example, if you wrote a story where the characters use a &quot;frambar drive&quot; to travel between planets -- &quot;frambar&quot; being a word that I just made up -- and someone else wrote a story where he said they used a frambar drive, you'd have a strong trademark claim. But if you said they used a &quot;star drive&quot;, your claim would be pitifully weak, because the words &quot;star&quot; and &quot;drive&quot; have been around for hundreds of years. You could make a claim to trademark if you were the first to using those two particular words together, but it would still be a weak claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A trademark can be registered with the government, but it doesn't have to be. You can take someone to court for stealing your unregistered trademark. The value of registering is that it is evidence that you really were the first to use the mark. Without a registration, you have to get into arguments in court about who used it first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So specifically: I haven't checked, but I would be surprised if the people who produce Star Trek have not registered that name as a trademark. When they first made the show their claim would have been weak because &quot;star&quot; and &quot;trek&quot; were existing words being used with their common meanings, but they've built up such a brand association over the years that I'm sure a court would respect that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terms like &quot;hyperdrive&quot; and &quot;warp drive&quot; are used so commonly in science fiction that anyone pressing a trademark claim would have a tough battle. I wouldn't hesitate a moment to use those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A word like &quot;Vulcan&quot; might be tricky. The word &quot;Vulcan&quot; is the name of a Roman god, certainly not invented by Gene Roddenberry. The name was used in astronomy for a planet that was speculated to be inside the orbit of Mercury, so the Star Trek people can't even claim first use for name of a planet. I think they'd have a hard time winning a lawsuit over someone else using that for the name of a planet. But if they brought such a suit, I'm guessing they have a lot more money to spend on lawyers than you do, so is it worth fighting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I wouldn't use someone else's made-up names. I wouldn't write a story with Klingons or Mimbari, etc. Common phrases like &quot;star ship&quot;, &quot;hyperdrive&quot;, etc, you can use freely. I've never heard of someone successfully suing over use of words like &quot;transporter&quot;, that would be a hard fight to win but maybe in context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And all of THAT said, I heartily agree with What that you are far better off to write an original story than to devote a lot of effort to seeing how much you can get away with stealing from someone else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T17:41:52.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17366" CreationDate="2015-05-20T19:21:42.217" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been told that the sentence you should cut out is the one you love the most. I have found this true of my own writing: a really interesting section just has to go because it doesn't fit within the whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I have be able to re-cast an idea. Sometimes I have been able to use it in another story or play. Sometimes I have to just throw it away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T19:21:42.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17358" CreationDate="2015-05-20T19:38:10.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of debate about essay structure, but the way I teach it (and use myself)is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introduction: 1) re-state the topic positively e.g. 'Solar power is better than wind power.' if the topic was 'Which is better, solar or wind power?' 2) outline your argument briefly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Body: take each point from your outline and write about it, using the point as your topic sentence for each paragraph and then providing analysis, examples, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: re-state your position and then re-state your argument (this is very similar to the introduction but try to use different words).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This structure works particularly well in exams. Once your have a plan for your essay, which then becomes your outline in the introduction, you can just get on and write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The extent to use persuasive writing features such as emotive language, will depend on the subject your are writing for. English literature classes expect them far more than say psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that a discursive essay (something that is still sometimes expected in certain circumstances) may use a different structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T19:38:10.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17366" CreationDate="2015-05-20T21:09:20.837" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're something of a discovery writer (aka pantser). You wrote lots and lots of material, and now you have to carve away everything which doesn't fit your plot. If you are a discovery writer rather than a planner, then removing all the parts which don't belong there is part of the process of writing your first draft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep all the cool bits in a slush file. Maybe you can extract dialogue or ideas to reinsert later, either in this piece or a later one. Maybe you can just reread the individual scenes for your own enjoyment. Ultimately, every word in your finished product should serve your finished product &amp;mdash; not be your entertainment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making the receptionist the confidante is an excellent example of making a boring-but-necessary character/scene into something important and plot-serving. (good job!) See if there's anything you can pull out of your cut scenes which can be similarly used to improve other boring-but-necessary bits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T21:09:20.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17371" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-21T03:03:49.380" Score="8" ViewCount="1580" Body="&lt;p&gt;For instance, &quot;A Rasin in the Sun&quot; starts with the poem &quot;Harlem.&quot; I've noticed many (mostly contemporary) novels will start chapters with pieces of Poetry or quotes that are completely separate from the chapter itself, but that somehow compliment it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13876" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-14T01:26:40.120" LastActivityDate="2019-06-14T01:26:40.120" Title="What are the poetry/quotes at the start of a chapter/book called?" Tags="|fiction|novel|formatting|poetry|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17371" CreationDate="2015-05-21T04:25:03.737" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is called an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigraph_(literature)&quot;&gt;epigraph&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motto&quot;&gt;motto&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-05-21T05:44:30.773" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T05:44:30.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17373" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17374" CreationDate="2015-05-21T06:41:17.090" Score="7" ViewCount="778" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often struggle with details in a scene, and thought maybe I could just skip some of them while trying to keep the scene seamless, but I'm not sure how. This is an example from the scene I'm writing (it's the only scene I've written so far in this story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Copy Flight,&quot; confirmed Tom, flicking some switches on the main&#xA;  panel. Several of the instrument lights turned blue in response to the&#xA;  remote control handover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sit back and enjoy the flight, Demeter. We'll take it from here,&quot;&#xA;  finished Flight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Thank you Flight, contact soon,&quot; responded Mel with a smile. She&#xA;  looked over to Tom who looked back and smiled, then checked the rest&#xA;  of the crew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Breakfast not sitting too well, hey Jayden?&quot; Tom called&#xA;  out. Jay just smiled rigidly and stayed quiet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tom looked over to one of the displays on his left. &quot;Throttle up and&#xA;  roll in 5... 4... 3... 2...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He braced as the shuttle accelerated to beyond Mach 3 and like a slow&#xA;  choreographed dance, began to smoothly roll around until it was on top&#xA;  of the main fuel tank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been quite detailed in the experience of the launch, and so it probably wouldn't seem right to just skip ahead. My gut says to stick it out, since I've been writing at a certain level of detail already but I'm struggling to fill the gaps in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Update: (for those interested in what I've changed about the writing)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually began rewriting the scene using your answers as guidance, and it feels much better. This is not meant to be a &quot;review my story&quot;, rather just to show how I did change my perspective on the writing style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Main Engines Start&quot;, said the Flight Director, then continued to count down.&#xA;  Tom looked over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I can't believe you got me in this chair, Mel,&quot; he said while shaking his head with a grin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, you're stuck with me now,&quot; she replied without looking at him. She flushed a little, though Tom couldn't see it through the reflection of her helmet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Everything's good from here, crew is go for launch,&quot; Tom confirmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few seconds later, the countdown ended and with a deafening rumble, the shuttle rose into the air as plumes of water vapour billowed out violently into the surrounding fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No more than 30 seconds into the flight, the cabin shook violently and the entire crew grabbed onto their seats. Tom over looked to Mel uneasily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Some roughness through second phase, Houston,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Radar is clear,&quot; replied the flight director a few moments later. &quot;All green as far as we can tell.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Roger that,&quot; confirmed Tom, unsure of what to think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Their nerves calmed as the sky grew darker and darker until they were able to see the faint shimmering of stars littered endlessly across the blackness of space. Mel peered out the window, captivated by the beauty of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I never get used to this,&quot; she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You can get lost in it if you stare too long,&quot; said Jayden, the mission's electrical engineer and secondary pilot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hocus pocus,&quot; said Tom in jest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Space is bigger than anything we can ever imagine, cap,&quot; he replied. &quot;Can do strange things to the mind if you let it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah, well here in the real world, we have a shuttle to dock,&quot; said Tom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Houston, we are coming up on the ISS. Preparing to dock, over,&quot; said Mel over comms. &quot;You have the stick, Jay.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2015-05-22T03:33:24.067" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T03:33:24.067" Title="Skipping details in a scene" Tags="|science-fiction|ideas|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17373" CreationDate="2015-05-21T06:56:19.683" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my own writing, I skip everything that I'm not interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't care if it is usually part of other novels, because if I read those, I usually skip reading those parts as well or only scan them quickly to have an idea of what is going on. I totally rely on my readers to have seen so many movies and read so many books in my genre, that they are familiar with spaceships or whatever I'm writing about and will complete my very bare bones description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the same with launch sequences as it is with people: you would normally not describe any character in a novel with more than very general terms. You give their gender, age, sometimes you add height (&quot;tall&quot;) or eye color (&quot;piercing blue eyes&quot;), and that's about it. More would bore the reader and hinder their identification (by putting whoever they want in place of that character). The same is true for everything else. You don't decribe cars, rooms or anything with more than general terms, if the detail is not centrally important for your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Handle the launch sequence the same way you would handle starting a car, and leave out everything that is not relevant to your storyline. The sample text in your question is actually boring me out of wanting to read your novel!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T06:56:19.683" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17373" CreationDate="2015-05-21T07:15:13.357" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should find a way to skip ahead. If you don't want to write it the reader won't want to read it either. And your references to 'some switches' and 'several lights' suggest you aren't really invested in this scene at all. If you want to jump ahead though, you need to jump &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; something so concoct a little bit of drama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things to try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on the main character's perception of time. It may race past, punctuated only by the things that aren't routine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to the above, focus on some other internal concern of the main character, again, punctuated by choice moments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have the launch entirely automated, and focus on character development instead. Movies do it all the time: picture two characters bickering in the middle of a car chase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make out like you're going to wrap up the chapter at the moment of launch, then surprise the reader by a sudden jump forward. Eg have Tom run through the next 10 minutes in his head, conclude that it's entirely routine and mentally switch off. Then have someone yelling in his ear. It's five minutes later and there's a dangerous gas escape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short version of the above. Project the reader ahead in time.' In ten minutes we'll be safe in orbit,' he said. Five minutes later, warning sirens blared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch through the eyes of someone unfamiliar and nervous. Make it a confusion of buttons, noise, radio chatter, all out of order with jarring jump cuts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T07:15:13.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-21T09:37:30.813" Score="4" ViewCount="371" Body="&lt;p&gt;One author considers this mathematical statement by LeRoy Gorman entitled “The Birth of Tragedy” as a form of minimalist poetry:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                                           (!+?)^2&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this mathematical statement really a poem? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creative writing highlights the value of human subjectivity. Mathematics, on the other hand, puts emphasis on rigor, logical validity, and precision. Wouldn't poetry be constricted by the rigid rules of mathematics if they were combined?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13880" LastActivityDate="2015-05-24T08:05:04.500" Title="Is mathematical poetry a form of poetry?" Tags="|creative-writing|poetry|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17376" CreationDate="2015-05-21T10:37:35.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Poetry doesn't have to be as free-flowing and messy as you're implying. &lt;em&gt;Some&lt;/em&gt; poetry throws out rules of form and function, but some adheres to them strictly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of the meter and rhyme demands of a sonnet, or the syllable rules of a haiku. If you don't follow those very rigid, precise requirements, you haven't written the poem correctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I think that's a pretty funny poem that you've quoted. It takes a bit of work on the part of the reader to understand it, but the thoughts expressed reflect the title well. Why couldn't you use mathematics to express subjective thoughts? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T10:37:35.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17373" CreationDate="2015-05-21T10:39:55.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this exact same problem, I'm glad you asked the question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other answers have been very helpful, and I'll take be using their suggestions in my own work. I've been looking at cutting down some portions of my story, and this will help immensely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you absolutely need the 'intermediate' scenes, I will offer suggestions to what I've been doing with them so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally use the scenes between the action packed scenes to progress the character development. Describing characters wandering through a marketplace, whilst on its own can be boring, can also be used to have a conversation between the characters, and advance the plot that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address this specific scenario, if it is the first thing you're writing, your reader getting a first impression of the characters is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than just describing 'some switches' and 'instrument lights', you could describe them in a way that one of your characters is incredibly nervous, possibly about to be sick, and he is obsessively checking the switches and lights. This is then already establishing that particular character as a nervous person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it seems like an action-packed scene (they are, after all, about to launch in a space shuttle). You don't want to keep halting the pace of the action to describe things in detail, or start talking about a character whilst things are happening around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore I would choose 1 of 2 options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to start in the action, then don't bother with specific descriptions. Focus on the big stuff that is happening, and have the readers immersed in the action until it is over. When things slow down in the story, that's when more thorough descriptions are useful. Most people will have an idea of what a space shuttle will look like inside, and unless yours is different in a way that is important to the story, you don't need a full description.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start the story &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the action begins. I'm not entirely sure, but when a shuttle is launching, I feel like there might be a reasonably long period of time where the astronauts are sat in the shuttle not doing much whilst the rocket is being fueled or something. You could start your story at this point, and have the characters develop &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the action starts, with a simple conversation to establish who they are. This could then include an in-depth description of &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; they are, whilst serving a secondary purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing here is the pacing. You need things to run quickly at parts, and slowly at others. You can't have  the entire story at one pace, or the reader will either be overwhelmed or bored. So describing things in detail isn't always bad, but do it at the appropriate time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T10:39:55.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17376" CreationDate="2015-05-21T10:55:34.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A number of philosophers and mathematicians do see a deep connection between poetry and mathematics. Betrand Russell put it thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Franz Kafka says that &quot;poetry is always a search for truth&quot;. Likewise, mathematics can be described as searching for truth, albeit with numbers. The same beauty and elegance one strives for in mathematics is no different to that which a poet seeks with words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question about whether poetry would be constricted by the rigid rules of mathematics, it's worth keeping in mind that a lot of poetry is about rules and rigidity: meter, rhyme, form. Poetry strives for the same level of truth in beautiful, elegant, simple and minimal ways, very much like mathematics. It may seem counter-intuitive, but such rigidity in poetry frees oneself to be creative, forcing you to choose your words carefully, to say what you mean in the best, most succinct way possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a deeper look at the connection, I recommend the book &quot;Mathematics, poetry and beauty&quot; by Ron Aharoni, which attempts to connect the two domains. It notes that &quot;poets, like mathematicians, are hunters, engaged in the search for hidden patterns in the world&quot;. Despite poetry being &quot;invented&quot;, there are underlying truths that exist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;A metaphor that is on target reveals a similarity that is concealed, but that is out there. After all, &quot;on target&quot; implies that the target was already present. When the poet Yehuda Amichai writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Careful angels passed fate within fate, &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Their hands shook not, nothing dropped or fell. &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;(Yehuda Amichai, &quot;Twenty New Squares,&quot; Poems)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;he expresses an existing truth: our fate is no more in our hands than the thread is master of its fate; there are forces that direct it, as the seamstress directs the thread. This is beautiful, not because it is an invention, but, mainly, because it is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2015-05-21T11:00:52.297" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T11:00:52.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17373" CreationDate="2015-05-21T17:12:00.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Relevant thought on the subject &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The reader wants to work. ...the reader wants to fill in the details. He wants to be invested in the novel and to make his own decisions and reach his own conclusions . You don’t need to write everything. You can leave pieces (of plot, description, dialogue) out. The reader will get in the game. His imagination matters as much as yours.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://unashamedwriting.com/how-detailed-should-your-writing-be-not-too-detailed-let-the-reader-have-some-fun/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my general advice is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If it isn't intrinsic to the story, cut it ruthlessly.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the blue lights on the panel don't figure into the narrative later, or aren't an insight into the mood or future of the characters featured, they don't need to be mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to write more detail, don't do it just for the sake of filler.  Figure out a way to make it relevant, or to understand the story better in your head so that you can write it in a relevant way.  In the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/few/685&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Support and Elaboration&lt;/a&gt; the point is made that you aren't adding words for length - you're adding words for understanding and immersion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10952" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T17:12:00.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17376" CreationDate="2015-05-21T21:20:42.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possibly not being writer enough to answer this question, I consider myself mathematician enough to try to give an answer from the mathematical viewpoint. (If this is not a great answer by itself, I hope it is a useful addition to the others given.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you say about mathematics, of rigor, validity, precision and rigid rules, holds true, to a certain extent. The elementary mathematics is boring to sit through at school and often not even relevant to anything encountered in real life, while the more advanced mathematics scares people with its unusual notations and complexity.&#xA;But if you learn to read it (like advanced literature and poetry), it can be beautiful. A well-written proof can read like a story, with characters making appearances, a surprising plot and a satisfying conclusion. Some proofs can even be considered poetry for their elegance (there's a book written about the most elegant proofs, &quot;Proofs from THE BOOK&quot;, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_from_THE_BOOK&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_from_THE_BOOK&lt;/a&gt; ). &#xA;Admittedly, some proofs can be like abstract paintings for the uninitiated - unless you've read the title and had someone explain both the painting and the title to you (twice), you've got no idea what it's trying to tell you - but they are merely an annoying anomaly to an otherwise beautiful and terribly underrated science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the 'rigid rules' thing works only one way; a mathematical expression has just one well-defined value, but there are often dozens and sometimes infinite other ways to express that same value. Most of these ways will not often be used, because they are unnecessarily complex or simply require more writing, but I don't think poetry is about the most straightforward way to tell the reader something. It is about the emotional content as well, and, if applied properly (as in your example), mathematics can do the trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13888" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T21:20:42.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17383" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17384" CreationDate="2015-05-21T21:25:15.740" Score="4" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have close to no experience of writing, but I have an idea that I would like to make into a short story (if for nothing else, for the sake of the exercise). It is a fantasy story seen from one of the character POV. I haven't yet decided if I should use first- or third-person narration, but from what I surmised from this very website, third might be just easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I want to try to stay really close to that character POV. But should I describe her? I am considering to provide her name and age, but is anything else relevant? Or is it better for the reader appropriation of the character to provide some guide-line as to the physics of the character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, how many details should be considered a bare minimum for the main narrator's character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13879" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T22:58:48.370" Title="How detailed should the description of the POV character be?" Tags="|short-story|character-development|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17383" CreationDate="2015-05-21T22:58:48.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no minimum. When I look in the mirror, I recognise myself. Good enough. Does it matter if I have more hair above my nose or below it? Only when I get soup in my mustache. Does it matter to your character? If your character is vain or insecure, you can use their description of themselves as a way to show that. The descriptions you should include are those that are important to the plot, to the character or to the scene. In a novel you want more description to set the stage and the mood. In a short story although you still need to set the stage and the mood more emphasis is given to the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most detailed you would want to be is usually everything consciously noticed. In most cases you want less detail than this. The exception is what should have been noticed but was not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T22:58:48.370" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17385" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17388" CreationDate="2015-05-22T00:32:15.260" Score="2" ViewCount="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under which of the following goal structures are writers more prolific (prolific in terms of &lt;em&gt;quality content&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;words-per-day&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;minutes-per-day&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Presuming agony is not quantifiable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt there's a scientific study on this, but there might be.  Is there at least anecdotal evidence based on what we know from history's most prolific writers?  Or even personal experience (although I know that's frowned upon on StackExchange)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if not that, do we have reason to believe one should be better than the other at producing more quality content per day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3146" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T07:14:01.503" Title="Words vs minutes goals" Tags="|process|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3983" CreationDate="2015-05-22T03:33:24.537" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just popped into my office and pulled a few books off the shelf. It's easy to estimate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Count up the total number of words on 10 random (full) lines from different places and divide by 10 to get the average &lt;strong&gt;words-per-line&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Count the number of lines on each page to get the &lt;strong&gt;lines-per-page&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check that the book actually starts on page 1 - sometimes the stuff before it starts is counted - then go to the last page (before any bibliography, acknowledgements, appendices, etc.) and the page number (minus where the book starts) is the &lt;strong&gt;number-of-pages&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optional: Flick through to see if there are lots of short chapters (creating lots of half-pages) and if there are big empty pages for PART 1, PART 2, or lots of sub-headings within chapters that use up 2-3 lines. Estimate a small reduction for the &lt;strong&gt;lines-per-page&lt;/strong&gt; and the &lt;strong&gt;number-of-pages&lt;/strong&gt; values. This reduction will be very small, like maybe 1-2 lines less per page, and 5-10 pages less for the book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiply the three values together: &lt;strong&gt;words-per-line&lt;/strong&gt; x &lt;strong&gt;lines-per-page&lt;/strong&gt; x &lt;strong&gt;number-of-pages&lt;/strong&gt; to get a pretty good estimate of the total word count.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;River out of Eden&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Richard Dawkins&lt;/em&gt;. I consider this to be very short, in fact it's just a dumbed down version of his previous works, it annoyed me but might be good as a starter for a 12-15 year-old. 50k words.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Extended Phenotype&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Richard Dawkins&lt;/em&gt;. This is quite long and comprehensive. Probably too long for a first book, only go this long if you've got a best-seller under your belt already. 125k words.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Emotional Intelligence&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Daniel Goleman&lt;/em&gt;. Very comprehensive epic! The bible for this field. Daunting to start, but easy to keep reading. 130k words.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to Win Friends and Influence People&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Dale Carnegie&lt;/em&gt;. Easy-going, fairly light, user-friendly, non-fiction book for the masses. 100k words.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eden&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Tim Smit&lt;/em&gt;. Personal reflections and memoirs of a big project. 90k words.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do this for some books in your field, find one that matches the same depth and detail that you want to attain for your book, and give yourself an estimate based on that. If you're well-known, or have achieved something lots of people are interested in, or have a previous well-selling book, go for 90-120k. If however it's your first and the content alone will be the draw for your readers, keep it lighter and more approachable, 70-90k.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13891" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T03:33:24.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5871" CreationDate="2015-05-22T03:37:37.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a limited third person novel with a few flashbacks (stories being told aloud). The novel follows character K. She asks character S about something in his past. I reveal that story through flashback instead of conversation or storytelling, and keep it third person for a couple of reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned, first person feels like a quotation from the storyteller. But this doesn't seem natural. People don't tend to talk in storyteller mode - especially my character S. I wanted to give a proper narration of the past event, instead of only the details S would give. (However, depending on your character it could work.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;K also has some flashbacks. There are several details she wouldn't tell the other characters, but I want the reader to know those details. I narrate it centering around Y (K's previous/secret identity) and tell the reader: this is her story, she just leaves out names, etc. when she tells it aloud. For these flashbacks, it made sense just to stick with third person. So for the sake of continuity, I used that for S's flashback too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, having a different style for a particular element works better if it's a recurring element. E.g. if there are multiple flashbacks, the shift in style immediately clues the reader in that it's another flashback. Whereas if it happens only once, the style change could seem out of place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My shift in style is in POV character (literally for the S flashback, more figuratively for the Y flashbacks since technically she's the same person as K.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In The Host by Stephenie Meyer, the shift is in tense - past for main story, present for the memory flashbacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your shift in style could be a shift between third and first person. If it works, then it works. I chose my particular shift because it just felt right. Find what feels right to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13892" LastEditorUserId="13892" LastEditDate="2015-05-22T03:44:21.453" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T03:44:21.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17385" CreationDate="2015-05-22T06:52:30.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience and the collected anecdotal wisdom of all writing coaches whose books I have read is that it takes you some time to get into the flow (so there is a minimum time you must write each session), you get easier into the writing if you write each day, and – this is your question – that &lt;strong&gt;the quality of your writing will deteriorate after some time&lt;/strong&gt; (so there is a maximum you should not exceed in a writing session).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken together, the common recommendation is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write every day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do some warm up writing of 15 to 30 minutes or use them to polish last day's work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stop writing before you are out of ideas and before the writing no longer flows smoothly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long your maximum quality writing time is, you'll have to find out. For a majority of professional writers it seems to be four or five hours at the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are professionals who report that they set themselves word or page limits they must meet every day, but the common recommendation is not by word or page count but by observing your personal creative time limit. Probably you will find that you write about the same number of words in the same time span, but there might be days when some thinking, planning, research or rewriting is called for, and trying to meet your word count will only leave you frustrated. Time can be well spent without a single word written, while writing words that you need to rewrite the next day because they are so bad is counterproductive. From the examples I remember, those that set themselves page count minimums are all older, experienced writers who are long past having to think about the right word or plot problems. There are also a few among these who, I think, don't actually write very well. I don't think it is a good approach for a beginner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-05-22T07:14:01.503" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T07:14:01.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17412" CreationDate="2015-05-22T16:15:31.723" Score="3" ViewCount="637" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a blurb. To do so, I'm using my favorite novels as examples. Here's one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1400079276&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kafka on the Shore&lt;/a&gt; by Haruki Murakami.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kafka on the Shore follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters.&#xA;Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his&#xA;father's dark prophesy. The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who&#xA;never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his&#xA;pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned upside down. Their parallel&#xA;odysseys are enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerising&#xA;dramas. Cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky; a&#xA;ghostlike pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night; a forest&#xA;harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since WWII. There is a savage&#xA;killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A once a classic quest, Kafka on the Shore is also a bold&#xA;exploration of mythic and contemporary taboos, of patricide, of&#xA;mother-love, of sister-love. Above all it is a bewitching and wildly&#xA;inventive novel from a master stylist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed some elements. They ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;introduce the main character/s:&lt;/strong&gt; Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;introduce the secondary characters/events:&lt;/strong&gt; Cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky; a ghostlike pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night; a forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since WWII.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;summarize the style/main themes:&lt;/strong&gt; ... a bold exploration of mythic and contemporary taboos, of patricide, of mother-love, of sister-love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Li-Mei is a typical university student, with a typical family, a&#xA;typical dating life---and a typical suicidal wish. Yes, she wants to&#xA;end it all. But after learning about a bizarre event, she decides&#xA;to postpone her death to dive in into the world of animal suicide. In&#xA;it she meets peculiar animals: starving cats, stranding whales,&#xA;cliff-jumping cows, bridge-leaping dogs. Peculiar humans: an&#xA;alcoholic &lt;em&gt;visual kei&lt;/em&gt;, the founder of a controversial university&#xA;club, and a conservationist with a unnatural childhood obsession. And&#xA;finally a peculiar kind of love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Driven by romance and dark humor, Animal Suicide is an exploration&#xA;into relationships, passion, death, suicide, and the final meaning of&#xA;our lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote it by based of these elements. Are they the essential for a good blurb? If not, why? Are there others elements that I'm missing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T17:54:26.587" Title="What are the elements of a good blurb?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17392" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17410" CreationDate="2015-05-22T18:55:53.917" Score="1" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an idea, and it seemed like I had a somewhat clear understanding of the story, it's theme and most of the major plot points, but no matter how long I sit there and how drastically I tweak the initial idea, I can't construct an outline.&#xA;I tried to do it as formuliac as possible, working based on beat sheets, filling in major plot points and then trying to get smaller ones, but it gets me nowhere.&#xA;I also tried to just go with the flow and written couple of free plot summaries without thinking about structure, but the result is too terrible. &#xA;I have a deadline in two days and I don't know what else to try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13900" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T07:39:07.333" Title="Stuck at outlining a script" Tags="|writers-block|outline|scriptwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17393" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17394" CreationDate="2015-05-22T22:50:02.210" Score="9" ViewCount="2563" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note, this might be off-topic and belong on World Building SE?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always been far more interested in building the world my stories take place in than the stories themselves. I will spend large amounts of planning the geography so small pockets of interesting species can live secluded, how the trade between countries work, what the impact of mushroom forests could have on wildlife, how airships can be used in warfare, and so on. After writing a chapter or two, I get bored and abandon the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there manuscripts people have written that are simply an encyclopedia or history book of a fictional world, and are there some kind of guidelines that would help me write one? I always thought this is how Lord of the Rings was written; an interest in language and how races would interact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another question, would writing a fictional world's history book and maps even be practical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13210" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2020-07-21T18:03:49.427" LastActivityDate="2020-07-24T14:40:59.543" Title="World Building vs Story Writing" Tags="|fiction|planning|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17393" CreationDate="2015-05-22T23:04:39.280" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;LotR does in fact have such a book (I believe it is the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Silmarillion&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;). However, that book could only be published because the Hobbit/LotR books came first. In short, there would be no interest in it without LotR in the first place. This is why an encyclopedia or history book of a fictional land will not work on its own. It may get published, but the interest simply won't be there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LotR was indeed &lt;em&gt;backed&lt;/em&gt; by massive worldbuilding. It helped that the author was a linguist, enabling him to make authentic-sounding languages. In its most basic form, however, LotR was a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to write a story in your world, you may look into getting over writer's block, some of which deals with getting bored. There is an excellent question about that &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17128/what-are-the-reasons-behind-writers-block&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. My answer on that question, which I would also recommend for you, can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17128/what-are-the-reasons-behind-writers-block/17139#17139&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes down to it, you need to &lt;strong&gt;design a theme first&lt;/strong&gt;. A theme is the idea or thing you are writing about - what it is that you are trying to show the reader. Once you have that theme, you can &lt;strong&gt;build a world&lt;/strong&gt; designed to show it, and then &lt;strong&gt;build a story&lt;/strong&gt; designed to use your world to show your theme. If your theme is truly something you are greatly interested in, you won't get bored of writing about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T17:08:11.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17395" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17398" CreationDate="2015-05-23T00:23:18.643" Score="0" ViewCount="1855" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this prompt for a creative essay as part of my application into a summer program:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Participants in the Summer Programs for High School Students come from approximately 75 different countries and 45 U.S. states. Imagine one of the new friends you will make and tell us about him or her in an essay of no more than 600 words. You might want to address some of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where is she/he from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is her/his life back home like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What class is she/he taking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do the two of you have in common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you learn from her/him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does she/he learn from you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen one of these questions before. I was wondering how I should start at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I begin literally, something alogn the liens of &amp;quot;An imagined friend of mine might be someone who is ...&amp;quot;, or should it be creative, such as a story that introduces and develops that imaginary friend? I feel that that might be too abstract, though, and it wouldn't turn up as well, but it will be more captivating and creative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any recommendations? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13906" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T02:43:59.613" Title="How to approach an &quot;Imagine and Describe&quot; creative essay prompt?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17393" CreationDate="2015-05-23T00:43:31.480" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suspect that you may be having a specific problem with &lt;em&gt;storytelling&lt;/em&gt; (which is not quite the same thing as writing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself do a lot of worldbuilding for fictional purposes, and your description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I will spend large amounts of planning the geography so small pockets of interesting species can live secluded, how the trade between countries work, what the impact of mushroom forests could have on wildlife, how airships can be used in warfare, and so on&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;feels very familiar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, I think that &lt;strong&gt;worldbuilding&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;storytelling&lt;/strong&gt; are very different headspaces. They use &lt;strong&gt;different facets of the creative mind,&lt;/strong&gt; and my suspicion is that not too many of us are good at doing both at the same time. (In college, when I was simultaneously majoring in Physics and Art, I ended up having to trade semesters off rather than do a blended curriculum. I experienced strong mutual interference: my art sucked and my math/physics were way harder when I was trying to do that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;After writing a chapter or two I get bored and abandon the project&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it makes me think that you have a hard time telling stories when you're still in your worldbuilding mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't know if it will work, but you might want to consider this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Build your world.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Solemnly pinky swear to yourself that &lt;strong&gt;the world is no longer subject to edits,&lt;/strong&gt; at least for the time being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tell stories set in that world.&lt;/strong&gt; If necessary, pretend you're writing fanfic about someone else's world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Don't bail out too soon.&lt;/em&gt; It's likely going to suck for a while until you get good enough at storytelling to make your stories about your built worlds good enough to fit your worldbuilding. (My experience: I'm still a marginal storyteller and a very good worldbuilder. I keep telling stories...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, after long earnest shrewd effort, you can't get your storytelling up to scratch, maybe you should find a collaborator who's a damn good storyteller but who doesn't do worldbuilding very well. :-)  Hey - it could happen, and it might work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2020-07-21T18:05:04.587" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T18:05:04.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17395" CreationDate="2015-05-23T01:42:36.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The prompt specifies &quot;an essay&quot; so it would probably be a mistake to turn in a story instead.  However, it does also demand some creative writing skills. If it were my essay, I'd style it after a non-fiction profile (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369#education&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;such as this one&lt;/a&gt;), but with invented details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joseph is a High School student from Ghana.  He was born in a small village outside Accra &lt;em&gt;and so forth...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd probably want to start with some intensive research about the actual place.  Then, when it comes to questions like &quot;what do you learn from him,&quot; you can bring your imagination into play, and picture what your interactions would be like if he was a real person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T01:42:36.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17376" CreationDate="2015-05-23T01:48:42.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to note this isn't actually a well-formed mathematical statement, it's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_poetry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;typographical poem&lt;/a&gt; that uses mathematical symbols for effect.  It exploits the dual meaning of a symbol like &quot;!&quot; as punctuation indicating excitement, intensity or surprise with the fact that it also has mathematical usages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An actual well-formed mathematical statement could be beautiful, to a mathematician, but it probably wouldn't be considered poetry.  Here, however, the mathematical definitions are just being used as a way to extend the expressiveness of the typography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T01:48:42.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17393" CreationDate="2015-05-23T02:04:40.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of great fictional encyclopedias and fictional history books and if you want to write one you should!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember lots of great books that I read as a kid that had but a whisp of narrative and instead mostly consisted of a fantastically realized &lt;em&gt;world&lt;/em&gt;. One of my favorites was &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0448165759&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Need A House? Call Ms. Mouse!&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Illustrated books would probably be more common than otherwise in this category. I'm thinking of books like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0395329205&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Castle&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Lots of people would enjoy a book like that, even a much bigger one, even if it described and illustrated a fictional world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0307346617&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;World War Z&lt;/a&gt; to be very similar to what you're outlining in your question. It's subtitle after all is &quot;An Oral History of the Zombie War&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think writing new fictional encyclopedias and fictional history books are great ideas. Like &quot;Rise and Fall of The Third Reich&quot; but in your fictional universe!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13908" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T02:04:40.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17402" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17445" CreationDate="2015-05-23T03:10:05.443" Score="2" ViewCount="3838" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading a prompt to one of essays, and then looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.about.com/od/qaaboutrhetoric/f/faqwhatisessay.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;, I realized how little I know about the actual meaning of an essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is how my definition of &quot;essay&quot; has become muddied over the years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In elementary school, we learned about the simple five-paragraph essay: an introduction (lead, summary, thesis); three body paragraphs (topic sentence, examples and support); and a conclusion (restatement of main ideas). This held on until mid-middle school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, our teachers told us to be a little more loose about our essays: to change the format (but not too much) from the systematic way we were taught earlier. As we started to incorporate meaningful analysis rather than monotonous and boring babbling into our essays, this became more essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in high school, &quot;essay&quot; has been totally confused. It can mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;in English:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For an book analysis: still mostly a four to six paragraph introduction, body-paragraph, conclusion format&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For personal essays: a looser narrative or impersonal narration of an event&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;in most other classes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;on tests: a response, anywhere from a third of a page to a whole page (depending on the question and the number of lines provided)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;for homework assignments: a page to five page response to an essential question&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now, I have to write a personal essay for an application for a summer program (the prompt is &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17395&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), and I don't know how to write it. I'm not sure if it should be a creative essay or not (it only mentions &quot;essay&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now, looking at the link at top, I noticed that there can be multiple meanings to the word &quot;essay.&quot; According to it, there are two major forms of essays:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the essay split into two distinct modalities: one remained informal, personal, intimate, relaxed, conversational, and often humorous; the other, dogmatic, impersonal, systematic, and expository.&#xA;  (Foreword to The Barthes Effect, by Reda Bensmaia, 1987)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first case is the one I saw in elementary school and early middle school. The second form is the one that began to be advocated at the end of middle school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now I'm wondering which would be acceptable when I have to write an &quot;essay&quot;. It would be best if you could look at the prompt and tell me which would be best. (I know that the link points to another of my questions, but I said that it should be a &quot;creative essay&quot; when it didn't really say so- and now I'm doubting that it should be.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On later searching and consideration, I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://education.seattlepi.com/difference-between-personal-essay-narrative-essay-2984.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;, about the difference between a personal essay (which I have to write) and a narrative. They both focus on story, but a personal narrative more on reflection than the plot like a narrative would. Therefore, this would highlight that it is more informal, like a story. Do you agree with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13906" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T00:14:36.463" Title="Are essays supposed to be formal?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|academic-writing|essay|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17403" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-23T03:12:55.263" Score="6" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;Three years ago I published a novel on Kindle. 10K free copies went out before I realized the text was vertical! It is still quite painful to recall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I unpublished it, got a new cover, waited 6 months, and republished.  Sales were slow.  The point is I am trying to build a career on Kindle.  I now have three books there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm about to publish a new novel and wonder if it would be wise to distance myself from the blunder by using a pen name. Are there any reasons I want to retain the same name? Is this a serious enough problem that I should start fresh with a new name? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13899" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-04-20T16:41:20.520" LastActivityDate="2022-04-21T23:31:22.960" Title="Use Pen Name after Blunder?" Tags="|ebook|pseudonym|sales|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17404" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17407" CreationDate="2015-05-23T03:18:52.953" Score="0" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a formal piece, is it appropriate to write a list, especially one of descriptions? It's the easiest way to get information across sometimes, especially on a tight word limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I had to describe a person, could I say these (would it be too non-creative and boring or is it okay?):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was a sophomore, a student from the Bagong school in Fujian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His parents were a successful, rich couple, which led to his great education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was tall, skinny, with near-black eyes and rectangular glasses- very much like me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13906" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T06:55:20.497" Title="Lists of description appropriate for formal writing?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17405" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17411" CreationDate="2015-05-23T03:22:41.950" Score="1" ViewCount="11538" Body="&lt;p&gt;Deputy is not capitalized when referred to as a position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“The sheriff had many deputies.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“A deputy, a sheriff, and a judge walked into a bar...”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John is capitalized because it is a name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“The criminal shot John.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“Thank you, John.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deputy John is capitalized because it is a title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“The criminal shot Deputy John.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“Thank you, Deputy John.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Is deputy capitalized when it is being used as a title and the subject (the noun) is dropped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“The criminal shot the deputy.” &lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt; “The criminal shot the Deputy.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“Thank you, deputy.” &lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt; “Thank you, Deputy.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“Put your hands in the air!&quot; The &lt;em&gt;d&lt;/em&gt;eputy shouted. &lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;Put your hands in the air!&quot; The &lt;em&gt;D&lt;/em&gt;eputy shouted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a writer but I wrote a fantasy novel as a way to relax.  I am currently editing right now and I have learned a lot about grammar but I still have many questions.  Sometimes I can find the answers via web searches on English/grammar sites, but this is one question for which I was unable to find an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the use cases would be along the lines of conversation where a persons title is used instead of their name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some excerpts for references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“I would be most grateful for your assistance on the matter, [C/c]onstable.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The [C/c]onstable nodded and sat down.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13909" LastEditorUserId="13909" LastEditDate="2015-05-23T04:28:29.350" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T11:08:19.543" Title="Are position titles capitalized when the subject is dropped" Tags="|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17168" CreationDate="2015-05-23T05:16:06.643" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone needs time to relax.  Sometimes life is so busy that we don't take the time to relax and we get burned out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most people don't live their entire lives in that manner.  Many people claim that they don't have time to do X, Y, or Z but when you sit down with them you find that they watch 1-2 hours of TV every night, play golf every Saturday morning, and play video games on Saturday night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, everyone needs time to relax so I am not criticizing those people.  All I am saying is that if you can use writing as a way to relax then you can probably just substitute writing for something already in your daily routine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is how I have tried to go about writing.  I also have a day job that pays the bills.  I started writing because I came to the conclusion that video games and movies are akin to throwing away your time.  I still watch movies with my wife and play video games with by brothers[-in-laws] but rarely by myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally have between 9:30 and when I go to bed to pay the bills and try and to relax.  I can usually spend an hour writing every night because I am doing so in lieu of tv or games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13909" LastEditorUserId="13909" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T21:51:12.520" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T21:51:12.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17404" CreationDate="2015-05-23T06:55:20.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a list like that only makes sense if after presenting the list you then pick up each of the list items and discuss them or compare them to another list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formating must be meaningful, and a list serves a specific purpose. You don't just present sentences in a list for no reason, that woud confuse your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T06:55:20.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17403" CreationDate="2015-05-23T07:14:20.027" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is my opinion and not based on research.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you made is a mistake. We all make mistakes and I can forgive them, especially if I did not lose any money over it. (If the book had not been free and you had refunded your customers it would not have been a big deal either.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see any reason why I should not give your next book a chance to entertain me. &lt;strong&gt;The only thing that would keep me from buying your next book is bad writing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see a need for you to choose a different pen name. Act as if it had never happened. I have seen many books from major publishers printed or bound the wrong way, and all I did was just not buy them. No problem, no bad feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only if someone comments on it to you directly should you reply to it (with wry, self-deprecating humor), but do not (ever) reply to reviews; they are not addressed to you. (Reviews are not an invitation to the author for discussion and you must graciously accept them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you register at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kboards.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;kboards&lt;/a&gt; and ask there, too. Members of that Kindle publishing forum have lots of experience with ebook publishing and will have a better idea of the effects of your blunder and a good strategy to deal with it. I'd not be surprised if someone there has had a similar experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do ask there, please link to that thread in your question, or summarize the advice you get in your own answer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2022-04-20T16:43:06.827" LastActivityDate="2022-04-20T16:43:06.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17393" CreationDate="2015-05-23T07:25:19.227" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you might be happy in game development or some other industry where different artists focus on different aspects of the whole. If I where you, I would try to search for something like &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=worldbuilding%20jobs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;worldbuilding jobs&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; and whatever other search phrase you can come up with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a blog that covers game writing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.ubi.com/tag/the-write-stuff/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blog.ubi.com/tag/the-write-stuff/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-07-21T18:06:03.907" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T18:06:03.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17392" CreationDate="2015-05-23T07:39:07.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd guess the deadline pressure is blanking your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would do is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have everything in your mind. So stop thinking on it. It's time to live the story. Pick any scene or character or phrase that you feel anything about and take a day to write down the whole story from there. Allow yourself to daydream your tale and explore what it means for you and where it takes you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the second day, take what you have written and distill this into an outline. Add what you think is missing in a few brief words, but otherwise just extract the structure of your &quot;daydream&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, drink enough water (about a small glass each hour), get enough sleep (sleep deprivation makes stupid), move your body regularly (walk some stairs for five minutes or run around the block, its been shown to increase mental performance drastically) and stop procrastinating by surfing the web or reading how to books (you know all that already).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck and tell us how it went.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T07:39:07.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17405" CreationDate="2015-05-23T11:08:19.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a title precedes a name, it becomes part of the name, and is capitalized: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I spoke to Constable Fraser this morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You don't use the title and the person's &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; name. Not in American English, anyway.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a title comes after a name or stands alone, it's descriptive. It's not a proper adjective or adjective phrase, and therefore is lowercase:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I spoke to the constable this morning. I spoke to Fraser, who is the constable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In your examples:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is being used as a form of address. I would capitalize it. The name is implied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I would be most grateful for your assistance on the matter, Constable.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When referring to the same person in the next sentence more broadly, not as a direct adress, lowercase the title:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The constable nodded and sat down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T11:08:19.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17391" CreationDate="2015-05-23T17:13:23.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like what's list of ingredients. I would add two more to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Struggle.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;What keeps the character from achieving the goal?&#xA;This might be antagonist or some other obstacle.&#xA;What must the character do to achieve the goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stakes.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If the character fails, so what?&#xA;What are the consequences to the character, the community, the world?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to a blurb is to let the reader know&#xA;what kind of story this is,&#xA;and what kind of experience they will have if they read it.&#xA;Often the last line of the blurb&#xA;(as in both yours and Murakami's)&#xA;describes this directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think you have to summarize the themes,&#xA;necessarily,&#xA;but do let readers know what kind of experience they will have.&#xA;That last line is a sales pitch,&#xA;not a literary analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for secondary characters and events,&#xA;I would say &lt;em&gt;do not describe anything secondary.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;You don't have much space in a blurb.&#xA;Focus on the essence of the story:&#xA;The main character,&#xA;the character's goal,&#xA;the setting (if it's essential),&#xA;and any other &lt;em&gt;essential&lt;/em&gt; ingredients&#xA;that keep this story going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both your blurb and Murakami's,&#xA;the middle is a list of fascinating things&#xA;the character (and the reader) will encounter.&#xA;This promises a series of magical, wondrous scenes.&#xA;That does not appeal to me,&#xA;but will be very attractive&#xA;to readers who want a series of magical, wondrous scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ingredients of struggle and stakes&#xA;might not fit a book about magic and wonder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you absolutely &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; want to do&#xA;(and you've nicely avoided this common problem)&#xA;is to summarize the plot.&#xA;This happened, and then this happened,&#xA;and then this happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would drop &quot;however&quot; and &quot;the subjects of.&quot;&#xA;The latter makes the book sound like a philosophy text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T17:13:23.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7460" CreationDate="2015-05-23T19:49:06.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't use boring things like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She was so sad, she had felt like she was going to die and fall asleep forever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;instead use,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She was too depressed for her body to handle. She felt like there was a weight on her shoulders and it got heavier, and heavier every single day until she snapped like a twig. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;make it interesting, make it so the reader/writer can understand and relate to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13915" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-05-24T00:50:38.747" LastActivityDate="2015-05-24T00:50:38.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17393" CreationDate="2015-05-23T20:05:23.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My best suggestion would be to rough the world-building as you write your story. This way, the world can form around your story and not the story around the world. This, of course, is not how reality would have it. All of our stories adapt around the world as life's struggles form our civilizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not saying to preclude changes to the story to fit a properly developed world but think of it as a series of slide bars that you slide back and forth until you have discovered a happy medium between storytelling and world-building. I, too, find it difficult to create a happy medium, and thus I subscribe to the idea that if I spend too long developing a specific part of the world, I likely do not need that story element, or it can be done another way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case in point, in a story I am writing, the Earth's ecosystem was being changed by an invasive species of plants. This was done by a species that conquered the human race but were pushed off. As my characters are too young to have an effect on the inter-planetary events early in the novel, I have them deal with the changes he world is going through and use the way they handle the changes to demonstrate the underlining anger everyone has toward the changes that no one seems to have the means to stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are other storytelling elements the uncontrolled changes reflect, and thus become a repeated theme of change throughout the story. Thus the world changes my characters, and to me, that is world-building done right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13898" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2020-07-21T18:08:52.127" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T18:08:52.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17376" CreationDate="2015-05-24T07:46:15.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Lauren Ipsum's final sentence constitutes the most apt answer for this. Poetry is very subjective but, like mathematics, is up for the reader to scan and interpret on their own. There is economy or precision of language (down to letters and symbols) in both poetry and mathematics. This poem is conceptual. The poem's value lies in the scantion experience and the cognitive work done; the audience must scan and dissect the poem, and then parse it for meaning (synonymous with 'truth'). Users of mathematic formulas must also use the same task process to attempt to interpret formulas. The confusion brought on by attempting to posit the validity of the poem may be the &quot;tragedy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13919" LastEditorUserId="13919" LastEditDate="2015-05-24T08:05:04.500" LastActivityDate="2015-05-24T08:05:04.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17416" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-24T10:14:02.040" Score="0" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a screenplay for a short film.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to sell this to someone who is interested to produce and direct it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best strategy to sell a screenplay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13920" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-05-27T06:26:30.570" LastActivityDate="2015-07-26T00:24:21.330" Title="How to sell a screenplay?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17421" CreationDate="2015-05-24T20:37:46.713" Score="3" ViewCount="332" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I'm trying my own attempt at writing and I keep having trouble with developing my characters. &lt;strong&gt;Are there any effective methods of developing fictional characters?&lt;/strong&gt; It can just be a small idea or even a computer program as long as it helps. &lt;strong&gt;Lastly, it would also be helpful if someone could give me some tips on describing my characters in the 3rd person after I develop them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13926" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T09:39:18.573" Title="How Can I Effectively Develop Fictional Characters" Tags="|fiction|character-development|description|third-person|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17393" CreationDate="2015-05-24T20:46:06.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem to be interested in creating a &quot;parallel universe&quot; for your story. That is, a world slightly different from the &quot;real one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your shoes, I wouldn't sweat the &quot;worldbuilding&quot; part. You want to tell just enough about the alternate world to make your story work, but you don't need to discuss your world in excruciating detail (unless your &quot;world&quot; is, in essence, your story). People will assume that except for relevant details, the parallel world is much like the actual one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most successful example of building an alternate world was &quot;The Wizward of Oz&quot; (U.S.). Dorothy found herself in a &quot;world&quot; similar to her own with slightly different parameters, but in a recognizably worldlike environment. Finally, the secret of the golden slippers allowed her to return to the &quot;real&quot; world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-05-24T20:46:06.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17419" CreationDate="2015-05-24T22:18:39.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are great books and many online resources about character development. They all rely on something like creating lists of characteristics (e.g. personality traits, moral values and so on) or writing your characters' curriculum vitae, but I take a somewhat different and much simpler approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read, I am usually deeply irritated by characters that act in a way that I wouldn't act. I understand that people are different and that not everyone feels, thinks and behaves like me, but when I read I don't want to read about characters that act stupid, selfish or cruel or in any other way that I ifind reprehensible. I want to read of the utopia where every person is trying their best to be a good person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since my motivation to write is to create the books that I would have liked to read, all my characters are like myself: broken by life, but compassionate, self-reflecting and fighting hard to grow and change and become better men and women. That way I don't need to invent more about my characters than some basic characteristics such as age, gender and role in story, because beyond that I know them as intimately as myself and don't have to invent anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I find that the people who read my stories find my characters and their behaviour very realistic and life-like -- probably because the people in my life and my target audience &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; in fact quite similar to myself and not at all so different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether my practice can serve as a useful recommendation to anyone else, I cannot say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-05-24T22:23:47.300" LastActivityDate="2015-05-24T22:23:47.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17422" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17425" CreationDate="2015-05-25T01:26:31.743" Score="0" ViewCount="56" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cass’s body arched violently off of the bed, his mouth open and&#xA;  shrieking, arms flailing outward to protect from unseen invaders. The&#xA;  doctors, still dressed in pajamas, are stunned, jaws loose. An orderly&#xA;  is the first to react, rushing to Michael and heaving the frightened&#xA;  boy off of his bed and away from the spasming teen across the room.&#xA;  Children are out of bed, crowding around the glass plates in their&#xA;  doors to watch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doctors kick into action, scuttling forward like a pack of robe-strewn&#xA;  mice. A petite female rushes from the room in search of anesthesia and&#xA;  larger men and women attempt to flatten the boy’s limbs to the&#xA;  mattress, pressing his back down before Cassie can break something.&#xA;  Break himself.   And then the floor &lt;em&gt;glows&lt;/em&gt;. A dark violet-pink that&#xA;  had everyone scurrying back away. The boy may be important, but not&#xA;  more so than their own lives, after all, he’s practically unfixable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically, should I be making sure all words like is/are, was/were and has/had are all the same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like: &quot;And then the floor &lt;em&gt;glows&lt;/em&gt;. A dark violet-pink that &lt;strong&gt;had&lt;/strong&gt; everyone scurrying back away. The boy may &lt;strong&gt;have been&lt;/strong&gt; important, but not more so than their own lives, after all, &lt;strong&gt;he was&lt;/strong&gt; practically unfixable.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13927" LastEditorUserId="5250" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T09:37:49.557" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T09:37:49.557" Title="Would the Following be Correctly Formated?" Tags="|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-06-08T23:08:44.797" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17402" CreationDate="2015-05-25T06:39:43.070" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Essays do not need to be formal, ever. Since it looks like you're working on a school assignment, the best way to get a good grade is to follow the style of the person grading, typically the teacher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, having gone through college and writing professionally for almost 9 years, the purpose of an essay is to express a point, often one with emotional value. Formality does little to nothing to support that. The best essays I've ever written have been completely informal. Doing so is more of a challenge than writing a formal piece because it must be done with intent. Otherwise, it's clearly a ploy to write poorly out of laziness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11586" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T06:39:43.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14744" CreationDate="2015-05-25T06:46:50.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Practice. Consistency comes with practice and keeping conditions relatively the same daily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my writing experience, I started out extremely inconsistent. So I made a pattern to follow, where I wrote on paper daily whenever I could and one day a week rewrote everything for as long as it took, often past sunrise the next day. Those were some of my best times writing. Following that pattern helped lead me to writing more consistently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days I continue writing consistently by following specific patterns. Listen to the same kind of music whenever writing. Pick specific times of the day to write. Make a cup of coffee or tea before you start. If you set yourself up for writing, the consistency will follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then just keep practicing and the level of consistency will get closer to what you'd expect day to day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11586" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T06:46:50.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17422" CreationDate="2015-05-25T07:46:16.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it is not correct. Yes, all the verbs should be the same tense. That means not just 'is'/'are' but 'arches', 'glows', 'kick', 'rushes' etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Present tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cass’s body arches violently off of the bed, his mouth open and shrieking, arms flailing outward to protect from unseen invaders. The doctors, still dressed in pajamas, are stunned, jaws loose. An orderly is the first to react, rushing to Michael and heaving the frightened boy off of his bed and away from the spasming teen across the room. Children are out of bed, crowding around the glass plates in their doors to watch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Past Tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cass’s body arched violently off of the bed, his mouth open and shrieking, arms flailing outward to protect from unseen invaders. The doctors, still dressed in pajamas, were stunned, jaws loose. An orderly was the first to react, rushing to Michael and heaving the frightened boy off of his bed and away from the spasming teen across the room. Children were out of bed, crowding around the glass plates in their doors to watch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's common in some forms of colloquial speech to mix tenses when storytelling, especially to emphasise certain actions, but this is definitely wrong when writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So he said 'blah,' and then I said, 'whatever,' then he punches me in the face!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T08:04:27.547" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T08:04:27.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17426" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-10T05:32:26.967" Score="1" ViewCount="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some book  use lower case titles while others use upper and lower case. Should I stick to  authors choice or customise upper and lower case (as per correct usage of caps in titles).&#xA;When re checking library sources I am not confident that the case they use is correct (sometimes I find it isn't). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Katie" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T17:38:10.983" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T17:38:10.983" Title="Customising book titles in references/sources" Tags="|style|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17426" CreationDate="2015-05-10T06:19:52.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should generally always use the work's original capitalization whenever possible. It is seen as a kind of courtesy to leave the title untouched when citing it in something. Some authors capitalize words such as &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt;, and this can understandably be frustrating, but since it's contained in a proper noun, you should leave it as it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Adam" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T06:19:52.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17533" CreationDate="2015-05-25T10:19:34.783" Score="3" ViewCount="799" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest me the best resource to learn comedy screenwriting for movies? I have read sydfield's screenwriting book and learnt a lot from it. But I know that comedy genre follows entirely different structure. I have seen some of the books. But not sure which one to take on! Can anybody help me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13931" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T21:09:29.837" Title="Which are the Best resource to learn comedy screenwriting?" Tags="|book|screenwriting|comedy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17429" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-25T12:17:49.403" Score="3" ViewCount="975" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm busy writing a book that I've been putting off for years. In this book the main character starts off as an 18 year old but grows up to be a young adult, sometimes she will think about when she was around 6/7. My audience for this book is young adults, how should I make this book work without making young adults feel like they are reading a book intended for teenagers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13932" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T05:46:42.960" Title="How to write for a certain audience?" Tags="|creative-writing|audience|young-adult|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17434" CreationDate="2015-05-26T01:48:25.843" Score="1" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my screenplay, there is a the so-called &quot;receptionist scene&quot; where the (female) receptionist warns the heroine that the company she just joined at a high level isn't very woman friendly. The receptionist leaves, while the heroine stays and makes it to the top against all odds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking of creating a sequel in which the heroine turns &quot;Andover Corporation&quot; into &quot;Amazon Corporation&quot; and hires back the former receptionist. Would it be possible/allowed to reprise the critical scene in the first paragraph in the sequel for those who hadn't seen the first play or movie?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if the &quot;sequel&quot; refers the to the follow-up work, is there a word for the original, or what I call the &quot;prequel&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T06:00:14.620" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T06:00:14.620" Title="Is it ok to &quot;reprise&quot; a scene from an earlier screenplay in a sequel?" Tags="|fiction|screenwriting|sequel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17429" CreationDate="2015-05-26T05:02:43.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found that writing to the age group for anyone that isn't a child (under 6) is extremely limiting. I just don't do it. Instead, i separate the content types for different demographics. For example, I won't use graphic violence, sexuality, or language for a story that is geared towards young (10-17) boys. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only changes I make to anything for younger audiences outside of plot changes are the way some things are worded and satire. That's not to say I stay away from big words...but sound too educated and some audiences will feel stupid for not understanding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And satire only works for an audience that'll understand it. Satire is already very difficult; if you have a young audience, I recommend avoiding it altogether, as well as certain types of narrative speech like sarcasm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11586" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T05:02:43.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17429" CreationDate="2015-05-26T05:46:42.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all you might want to familiarize yourself with book publishing marketing categories. As I explained in my comment above, the book publishing marketing category Young Adult (YA) is not written about young adult protagonists or targeted at a young adult readership, but at teenagers. It is better if you avoid the phrase &quot;young adult&quot; if you talk about fiction for college age readers, because that will cause confusion. Also it will help you avoid getting irrelevant search results and confusing yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your question, adult writing isn't about the age of the characters. &lt;em&gt;The Lord of the Flies&lt;/em&gt; is a book about middle grade kids, but it certainly isn't a Middle Grade book. What makes it or any other book adult is the narrative perspective: it is told by an adult and to adults, with the background of a life time of experiences implied in its view on things. It deals with questions that children the age of its protagonists don't commonly have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Childrens' or YA books on the other hand usually attempt to write about the experiences of their protagonists from their age perspective. Children don't yet understand the true nature of their own problems because their ability at self-reflection and theorizing is limited. This immaturity is also reflected in the language of the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, all you need to do to write an adult book is to write from your own perspective (implying that you are an adult yourself, of course), instead of trying to take on the perspective of your  non-adult characters. Or, if you are older than 25 and want to write for college age kids, to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; write from your older perspective but from theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T05:46:42.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17430" CreationDate="2015-05-26T06:42:16.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have to ask then its probably not okay. It rarely happens in movies because there are better ways to handle it. (The obvious exception would be time-travel movies, like Back to the Future, where scene reprises from different POVs are used to &lt;em&gt;expand&lt;/em&gt; the plot.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty much any sequel movie these days is written so that it appears to a newcomer to be a completely standalone film. What happened in the previous movie is handled as you would normally handle any backstory. Your challenge is to introduce the receptionist character in a way that reveals the backstory to newcomers, but doesn't bore those who already know how she got there. That shouldn't actually be as difficult as it sounds because you should already be writing backstory in a way which is fresh, entertaining, and sneaks in the exposition as painlessly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, you could show the former receptionist has an unusual job. At some point she has to explain why she's doing that job, either to a colleague or the heroine. You need to make that logic interesting for viewers already up to speed, but in the process one or two phrases would catch everyone else up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'I tried other receptionist work after leaving but...'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'Beats working&#xA;the bottom rung of the worlds biggest corporation.' &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'I got out just&#xA;at the wrong time.'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind also, that some of your audience will view the films out of order. If this scene was so critical to the first, you may not want to wreck it by just replaying it out of context in the sequel. Let the original film become an interesting prequel for these viewers. Leave a little mystery about how or why the receptionist ended up out of the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T06:42:16.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17435" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-26T08:44:50.960" Score="3" ViewCount="965" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will be my pleasure to cite the author of the letter. I'm looking at perhaps ten sentences out of a four page letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the actual letter, so the quotes will be accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The letter is from one doctor to another; I am the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got the letter by snooping through my medical records. The author of the letter probably has no idea that I have seen it. As a matter of fact, I doubt that she remembers me. The letter is ten years old. It's a small part of a book-in-progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6411" LastEditorUserId="6411" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T09:43:48.577" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T15:19:09.423" Title="Can I publish excerpts from a letter without permission?" Tags="|copyright|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17435" CreationDate="2015-05-26T09:10:32.680" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer will depend on the laws of your country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the rights of the sender for privacy etc. have to be weighed against the public's need to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Private communication is private and in most cases must not be published, because otherwise the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights&quot;&gt;personality rights&lt;/a&gt; of the sender are being violated. But if that letter contains information that would help solve or prevent a crime, the need of the public to know of that crime outweighs the rights of the sender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, commercial letters are to be kept confidential if they contain information that the sender has a right to keep confidential, but if the letter contains information that is of importance to the public (e.g. unlawful business practices), that information might outweigh the right for confidentiality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commonly, only a court of law can decide if publishing (parts of) a letter was lawful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to avoid breaking the law, you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_anonymization&quot;&gt;anonymize&lt;/a&gt; the information in the letter, so that there is no possibility for anyone to identify the sender (and in this case, receiver) of the letter. That is, even your family who know of your visit to that doctor must be unable to conclude that it was this or that doctor who wrote (and who read and reacted or failed to react appropriately) to the letter! If you cannot completely anonymize the quote, and the quote would throw an unfavourable light on any of the persons involved, I would consult a laywer before publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the quote is harmless and would not be considered slander by anyone, even the doctors themselves, an anonymized publication seems unproblematic to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T09:10:32.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17437" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17438" CreationDate="2015-05-26T12:16:17.013" Score="5" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to cite this page in MLA: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obscenity&quot;&gt;https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obscenity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it lists no authors, what should I put as the in-text citation. Should I use the Legal Information Institute or should I omit an author and just use Obscenity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this is what my works cited citation looks like. Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Obscenity.&quot; Obscenity. Legal Information Institute, n.d. Web. Apr. 2015.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13937" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T16:26:58.133" Title="How do I cite this page?" Tags="|mla|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17437" CreationDate="2015-05-26T16:26:58.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MLA citation, the author is put before the website. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Lastname, Firstname. &quot;Title.&quot; Website Title (Italics). Publisher, Date Month Year of publication. Web. Date month year of access. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no author, just omit the author and begin the citation with &lt;code&gt;&quot;Title.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13938" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T16:26:58.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17402" CreationDate="2015-05-26T21:15:26.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with any piece of writing, the register you write in depends on the audience and the goal.  Essays certainly don't have to be formal, but in some situations, formal is the right way to go.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the confusion, of course, is defining &quot;formality&quot;:  In general, formal writing is associated with objectivity, well-defined structure, and the avoidance of contractions, &quot;I&quot; statements, and any folksy or humorous idioms or slang.  Informal writing is associated with subjectivity and a strong, distinctive authorial voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the prompt from your earlier question, it specifically focuses on subjective, personal and speculative topics, so you can be fairly confident that they are looking for something more towards the informal end of the spectrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T21:15:26.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17442" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-26T21:39:11.533" Score="1" ViewCount="83" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a math major who hasn't written a research paper in 6 years, and I need some help.  I have to write two thesis statements, and have both written, but I'm not sure they're right. I also must state what the independent variables and dependent variable are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Black feminist movement was created because racial and sexual oppression. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*dependent variable: Black feminist movement &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*independent variable: sexual and racial oppression&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.Black women for years have been the silent group in are society. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*dependent variable: Black women&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*independent variable: silent group &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;General advice would be appreciated as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13944" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-05-27T00:54:20.297" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T00:58:05.063" Title="Advice on writing a research paper" Tags="|style|technique|research|paper|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-05-27T13:02:48.617" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17443" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-26T23:45:34.223" Score="1" ViewCount="2309" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder what the proper way of writing this question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do the data show?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does the data show?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13945" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-05-27T00:20:35.087" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T00:20:35.087" Title="Should I write &quot;what do the data show&quot; or &quot;what does the data show&quot;?" Tags="|technical-writing|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-05-27T00:46:15.833" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17443" CreationDate="2015-05-26T23:56:18.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What does the data show? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe &lt;code&gt;data&lt;/code&gt; is a collective noun (though I am not 100% sure on that). Collective nouns are plural only when the context is speaking of their individual parts, or members. Otherwise they are singular. Therefore, you would use &lt;code&gt;does&lt;/code&gt;, which is the singular form of the verb &lt;code&gt;do&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if you were to say: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do the data &lt;strong&gt;records&lt;/strong&gt; show?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things would be different, because you are referring to the members of the data (records). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T23:56:18.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17402" CreationDate="2015-05-27T00:14:36.463" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I endorse Chris Sunami's answer, as far as it goes, and gave it a +1 on the strength of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'd like to take it further. To address the original question, I have a very different perspective on this: &lt;strong&gt;@jlam55555, you are applying for a position.&lt;/strong&gt; This trumps any abstract question about the nature of essays. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It trumps it because when you are answering this kind of question, you have only one meaningful audience: &lt;em&gt;the person evaluating your application.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;To this person, &quot;essay&quot; simply means &quot;Free-form statement that helps me figure out what kind of prospect you'd be.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you're writing a sales document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this isn't intended to suggest that you write a pack of lies. :-) &quot;Sales document&quot; doesn't mean that. Often, truth is far more persuasive than false claims or shaded implications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Properly speaking, &lt;strong&gt;you are writing a persuasive piece of rhetoric.&lt;/strong&gt; You have to be the judge of what to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no guarantee of success, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make it bold; make it buttoned-down. Make it gonzo; make it timid. Try to game the reviewer's expectation; or make a defiant statement, indifferent to consequences. You really don't know for sure what's going to catch the reader's attention, and it's tough to guess what the effect will be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also tough to guess how much you can compromise yourself without suffering internal consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But really, &quot;how to write a self-promotional essay&quot; is a separate topic, and merits a separate question...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T00:14:36.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17442" CreationDate="2015-05-27T00:51:57.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For your first statement, you're just missing &quot;of&quot; after because.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second statement, &quot;for years&quot; should be placed between commas, and &quot;are&quot; should be &quot;our.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks to me like the variables are correctly identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You clearly are well-educated, and given that, the kinds of mistakes you are making are simple ones that you should be able to identify yourself.  You should slow down and proofread more carefully. Errors like this make it look as if you rushed through your writing, and only did one draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In math and science caliber of content is the most important thing, but in the humanities, you also need to show care in the way things are expressed.  Details matter, and so does using the right word (not the almost right one!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-05-27T00:58:05.063" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T00:58:05.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17447" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-27T00:55:36.510" Score="14" ViewCount="2756" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to writing and I'm still young (preteen young). I want some advice on writing and help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How am I gonna start my book? What is the best way to begin writing a book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13946" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-05-27T03:16:08.043" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T08:17:16.023" Title="How to start writing a book?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17447" CreationDate="2015-05-27T01:26:17.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to begin a book will differ from person to person. Some people, once they have a vague idea of what happens, jump right in and start writing. Some have to spend months developing character, stakes, and plot. Some (like me) are somewhere in between. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this, the only way to answer your question is through practice. Practice writing short stories, and see if they turn out better when you develop first, or when you just write first. I have found that writing fan fiction is perfect for this. Find a site that supports fan fiction, or short fiction contests, in something you are interested in, and start writing (or developing, as the case may be). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of which way you write, the first thing you write will be the rough draft. The rough draft, for those that write first, is where you get your ideas down and see how they unfold. It's where you see the connections and details you had overlooked. Once you feel ready, work in some development, and start writing again. You may have to go through several drafts before writing the final one. Don't worry, this is normal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you develop more first, the rough draft is the place where you see how things unfold, and why or why not certain scenes and/or ideas work. I know from experience, that something can seem perfectly logical in development, and completely ludicrous in writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found that the more development you do, the fewer drafts you will have to write. This does not mean you should do more development right away though, since I've also found that my writing suffers when I do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practice, and find out which method yields your best fiction. That is how you will begin writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T01:26:17.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17447" CreationDate="2015-05-27T01:44:31.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For advice on the more creative aspect of writing, see Tommy's answer. As for how to start from a structural standpoint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plot diagram of most stories is well defined, and a version of it can be viewed here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://mrkamermanenglish9.weebly.com/uploads/3/8/6/9/38695419/plot-diagram-2.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Plot Diagram&lt;/a&gt;. As you can see, it begins with the &lt;strong&gt;Exposition&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the exposition, three things are introduced: &lt;em&gt;Setting&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Characters&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;Conflict&lt;/em&gt;. Obviously, the length of the exposition and amount of detail will be defined by the length of the story as a whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common type of story is the &lt;strong&gt;Hero's Journey&lt;/strong&gt;, which also has a diagram: &lt;a href=&quot;http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m1wsKocxLow/VHMiskmGIMI/AAAAAAAAAQQ/qwNlhsAyzdM/s1600/500px-Heroesjourney.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hero's Journey&lt;/a&gt;. This follows the &lt;strong&gt;Initiate&lt;/strong&gt;, who starts his journey in the &lt;em&gt;Known World&lt;/em&gt;. In this case, the exposition mainly consists of introducing the Initiate, his or her &quot;known world&quot; (village/town, friends/acquaintances, goals, interests, etc) and then the event which pulls them into the unknown world (which is the conflict/inciting incident from the plot diagram). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for style and creativity, that all has to come from you. Structure will only take you so far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped, and keep writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13938" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T01:44:31.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17447" CreationDate="2015-05-27T06:06:14.667" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest a different approach than the other answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you are completely new to writing, just write.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about other areas of learning. If you just had your first physics class, the next step won't be building a car. The first thing will probably be something like a battery, two wires, and a lightbulb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is the same. Like anything it will need time and many failed attempts to learn it. So don't start by studying the handbook for automobile engineers, but try wiring an on/off switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of a theoretical approach, I suggest to you a practical approach. Do not study how-to-write books. That theoretical overhead will only cause writer's block. It's like reading about gravity when you want to learn to ride a bike. Not helpful. Many aspiring writers have found themselves bogged down in character creation or three-act-structure and unable to write a single word. Instead, just write a book, or try to. From the gut. And if afterwards or while you are working on it you have a question, find the answer to that and implement it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those questions will be very specific to your current problem and level of ability, and the answers will be helpful and provide intense learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How-to-write books are a great resource of answers, but only if you apply them to what you already do. An answer to a question you don't have is confusing and distracting and will cause a problem instead of solving one. Also, people are different, and not everything that a writing coach says will work for you. That's why, if you have not yet had any writing experience of your own, it is better to not read how-tos and only find answers to what actually ails you. Later, when you have written a few books and know your writing self, get those manuals and study them. But not yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when you are done with that first book, or have given up on it, get feedback, and then write the next book. Because it takes many unpublished failures to write a book that gets published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't believe in the principle of &lt;em&gt;training&lt;/em&gt; – because that is what all those unpublished &quot;failures&quot; are – you don't have the professional attitude that leads to success. Wanting your book to be turned into a movie is a great goal, but it never happens to most published writers, and expecting it for the very first thing that you write is just unrealistic and naive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not unique but one among a million kids with the same dream. The only things that can raise you above them in the long run are diligence and perseverance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe in the advice to write short stories first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't read short stories. I don't like that form. And even if I did, short stories are not short novels and don't prepare you for writing long fiction. They have a different structure, different topics, use different narrative devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing short fiction will certainly train your language proficiency. But you can train that by directly writing a novel as well. Writing short fiction will give you your first finished work faster, but writing &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; short fiction is just as difficult as writing good long fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; short stories, by all means, write them. Write poems, write blog posts, even draw and make music and do sports. It will &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; make you a better writer, because writing is creativity and life experience and many things more. So exercising your whole being will make you a better writer. But don't believe that you have to do something &lt;em&gt;before you are ready&lt;/em&gt; to write your book, be it reading how-to books or writing other literary forms. Because that is not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you want to do, do what you want to do, and learn it by doing it, and not by reading about it or by doing something else, that is the advice I give.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is one kernel of truth (for me) in the advice to write short stories that I want to point out because it is important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finish your first novel in a reasonable time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many aspiring authors get lost in endless cycles of revision, expansion, deletion, replotting and so on. I know quite a few people who have been writing &quot;their novel&quot; for the past ten years or more. Do not take that road, it is the road to becoming a failed artist and losing your self-respect. However you feel about your writing, do not attempt to make it perfect. Finish it, and move on to the next work. You can pick it up again in a few years and rewrite it, but the most important thing, no matter what you write or whatever art you create, is to finish one work, take a break (if you need it) and then begin the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the difference between a writer and a wannabe writer: the ability to move on to the next work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can take part in NaNoWriMo and write a novel in a month, or give yourself three years. The exact period does not matter (although half a year to a year are probably the most productive length and more than enough for a first attempt), but the important part is that you finish (or give up) when you feel that that was it. And you will note it. There will be a moment when you feel that there is nothing more to be written. It may happen when your novel is complete, or it may happen while it is still incomplete, but it will come, and it is important that you heed that feeling and let go and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-05-27T17:12:34.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T17:12:34.183" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17419" CreationDate="2015-05-27T09:39:18.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what's answer, I'd like to share some of my experiences with character development. what is right: There is an abundcance of books and practical guides to character development. However, none of them have worked very well for me. Now and then I picked up a technique that made sense to me, and more or less forged it into a reliable algorithm of how to develop characters. The goal is to end up with a character that you have a very distinct feeling about. For me, having achieved this is similar to being able to sense the &quot;aura&quot; of the character. He or she is decidedly distinct from other characters that I have worked with and has a personality that can not be simply bend by my personal wishes. Only when the character starts to resist ideas that I want to impose on it, I feel ready to place it into the story. Here's how I go about developping such characters: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the essence of your story? What is the one central thing that the character needs to do? Can you identify broad characteristics that are necessary for the character to have? Make a very &lt;strong&gt;rough draft of the character&lt;/strong&gt; you are interested in: Sex, sexual orientation, age, relationship status, etc. Put some thought into what the character is supposed to do in your story. Develop the character with that idea in mind. In the terminology of James N. Frey, &lt;strong&gt;formulate the premise of your character&lt;/strong&gt;. You will find that there is very little conditions imposed by formulating a premise. However, it will give you a tool with which to direct your efforts. (And developping a character is a lot of effort. Don't underestimate this.)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The last thing on this (very short) agenda: &lt;strong&gt;Listen to your character&lt;/strong&gt;. Work with it. It will feel strange and generic in the beginning, but the more you work with the character, the more its personality will emerge. As a rule of thumb, I write about 100 pages about a main character before I put him/her into action. I need this time to get to know the character, to get used to his quirks, discover his likings and dislikings, possible neuroses, etc. It's a lot like striking up a relationship: It takes time to get to know the other. - &lt;strong&gt;How to work with a character you don't know&lt;/strong&gt;? Do whatever feels right to you. I write biographies. Another possibility is to let the character write letters to someone else (maybe yourself). Either way, you need to develop a feeling of how your character acts. The only way to achieve this is to really push it into action. A last method I find appealing is to slip into the character's skin: Grab a friend or someone else who won't hospitalize you on the grounds of suspected schizophrenia. Don the role of your character. Have a conversation &lt;em&gt;as your character&lt;/em&gt;. If you are comfortable with having such a conversation and you don't have to actively &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; about what your character would do in this situation, the character is ready. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr: Listen&lt;/strong&gt; to your characters. Try to perceive them as independent personalities, do not try to actively shape them or push them into a specific direction. To achieve this: &lt;strong&gt;Be honest.&lt;/strong&gt; Developping characters, for me at least, operates on the boundary between the conscious and the subconscious. It's essential that you look at what your subconscious is giving you: Tiny details you picked up on during your day, character traits you had burried deep inside yourself or noticed in other people. Do not avert your gaze, even - &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; - if it is nasty, unusual, surprising. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T09:39:18.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17447" CreationDate="2015-05-27T10:28:14.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with what: Actual writing and making your own mistakes is essential when attempting to become a novelist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are interested in textbooks: Here's the first textbooks I've read when I was about 15 years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0312010443&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Frey's &quot;How to write a damn good novel&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0312104782&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;... and part 2 of the same&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0312241976&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Frey's Introduction to the concept of the Hero's Journey (advanced)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also great: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/193290736X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vogler's Introduction to the concept of the Hero's Journey (advanced)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read it, but maybe the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470530707&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;... for dummies&quot;&lt;/a&gt; series would be interesting for you as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, one thing that I can't stress enough: Figure out what you like about stories. Then write exactly this kind of story. How to do this? Exercise your writing. &lt;strong&gt;And read&lt;/strong&gt;. A lot. No textbook is going to be of any use for you if you haven't read any (in your personal opinion: good) books that you can dissect with the means of the textbooks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T10:28:14.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17457" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17475" CreationDate="2015-05-27T16:19:35.387" Score="1" ViewCount="582" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never seriously written a diary before(not even tried casually). I am required to write a diary for my work as Intern and later report it. I think they would prefer a soft version but I can also write a Hard version and later scan it to report it(maybe).&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, If I want to start seriously writing a diary, which mode(Hard or Soft) should I consider?(both? maybe...) What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is soft/hard preferable over other for technical purposes contrary to writing diary about life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am kinda skeptical because of the rapid ongoing technology revolution and if you are aware the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Internet of Things&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; revolution in its infancy for which Google, Amazon, Facebook are preparing heavily. The point is, in coming years remaining soft is gonna be the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;thing&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13954" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T17:46:20.003" Title="Should I prefer writing a Hard diary or Soft diary?" Tags="|creative-writing|daily|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17459" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17464" CreationDate="2015-05-27T17:20:11.587" Score="7" ViewCount="1494" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: This may be more suited to Worldbuilding SE. I believe it belongs here, because it is about how to write a conlang, but if not, please feel free to move it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am constructing Elvish. In my Elvish, there is no letter 'K'. Instead, the elves use 'C' to form the &lt;code&gt;K&lt;/code&gt; sound. Additionally, the letter 'C' cannot form the &lt;code&gt;S&lt;/code&gt; sound, as it can in English. It can only be pronounced as &lt;code&gt;K&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This presents a problem. In English, we can usually tell whether a 'C' should be pronounced &lt;code&gt;S&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;K&lt;/code&gt; by the letters about it. This means that in some Elvish words, readers will assume the letter 'C' is pronounced &lt;code&gt;S&lt;/code&gt;, when it is in fact supposed to be pronounced &lt;code&gt;K&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the word &lt;code&gt;Acir&lt;/code&gt;, you would pronounce it &lt;code&gt;ah-SEER&lt;/code&gt;. It is supposed to be pronounced &lt;code&gt;ah-KEER&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have thought of a way around this problem, but I am not sure if I should use it. My method is to write the Elvish words the way they sound, and not the way they would be spelled in Elvish. To take the above example, &lt;code&gt;Acir&lt;/code&gt; would be spelled &lt;code&gt;Akir&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I am hesitant to do this is because there are no 'K's in Elvish for a reason. The letter 'K' looks (and sounds) too harsh to be an Elvish letter. Elvish should be soft and flowing, all S's and L's. If I write Elvish the way it sounds, it won't look soft and flowing, which could throw off the feel of the entire language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I write my language as it sounds anyway?&lt;/strong&gt; Will the reader still see it as 'soft and flowing'? Or should I stick with the Elvish lettering and trust to a glossary to correct the reader's pronunciation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Further Note&lt;/strong&gt;: Just removing the &lt;code&gt;K&lt;/code&gt; sound from the words that have it would be the obvious answer. However, I've already built a lot of roots, and I would prefer to not have to rewrite those that have it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-05-27T18:39:24.967" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T14:50:41.823" Title="Constructed Language - spelled like it sounds?" Tags="|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17459" CreationDate="2015-05-27T18:05:59.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel like it's not really the look of the letter &lt;code&gt;k&lt;/code&gt; so much as it is the sound. I feel like a good workaround here would be to use the sound produced by K as little as possible. To use your example, I feel that &lt;code&gt;Acir&lt;/code&gt; (&lt;code&gt;ah-SEER&lt;/code&gt;) is more of a soft and &quot;Elvish&quot;-sounding name. I think that instead of there being no letter &lt;code&gt;k&lt;/code&gt;, the sound &lt;code&gt;'kh'&lt;/code&gt; should be essentially removed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a reason to leave the letter in the language, and that is for words foreign to the Elvish language. For example, in Spanish, the letters &lt;code&gt;W&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;K&lt;/code&gt; are not native to the language and not used in any native words, but are kept for two reasons: because Spanish uses the Latin alphabet, and because they are used in foreign words such as &lt;code&gt;el wat&lt;/code&gt; which refers to the unit of electrical measure (&lt;code&gt;the watt&lt;/code&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: it has been brought to my attention that my solution above would require a lot of rewriting. In response to this, I say the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that using &lt;code&gt;c&lt;/code&gt; instead of &lt;code&gt;k&lt;/code&gt; makes the language look much smoother. However, using &lt;code&gt;c&lt;/code&gt; to produce only the &lt;code&gt;k&lt;/code&gt; sound is rather deceptive. It would be helpful, then, to use a glossary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I feel that the letter &lt;code&gt;c&lt;/code&gt; looks much &quot;smoother&quot; than the letter &lt;code&gt;s&lt;/code&gt;, especially in the construction &lt;code&gt;ce&lt;/code&gt; as in &lt;code&gt;ice&lt;/code&gt;. Possibly you could use some sort of symbol (accent, umlaut, caret etc) to symbolize the pronunciation differences if you decide to allow &lt;code&gt;c&lt;/code&gt; to use both pronunciations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, I suggest a glossary. This will allow you to include words in the elven vernacular and define them so readers are not confused (see also: Eragon/Inheritance series). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13938" LastEditorUserId="13938" LastEditDate="2015-05-27T18:44:36.540" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T18:44:36.540" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17459" CreationDate="2015-05-27T18:44:53.917" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Elvish is not written in Latin letters. There is no reason why the / k / sound must be represented by the letter &amp;lt; c &amp;gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of Russian or Chinese or any other human language not written in Latin letters. When what sounds like a / k / in those languages is transliterated or transcribed into English, usually the letter &amp;lt; k &amp;gt; is used, because that is the letter that most commonly and unambiguously represents that sound for a speaker of English. The letter &amp;lt; c &amp;gt;, if used at all, usually represents a sound like / ts /.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do not think of the Latin letters as how the elves write, but as how you &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transliteration&quot;&gt;transliterate&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_%28linguistics%29&quot;&gt;transcribe&lt;/a&gt; their language. When you make up a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization&quot;&gt;system of romanization&lt;/a&gt;, use the Latin letters in the way they are most commonly pronounced, that is like they are spoken when you &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_alphabet#Letter_names&quot;&gt;say the alphabet&lt;/a&gt; and – in ambiguious cases like &amp;lt; g &amp;gt; – like they are used in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English&quot;&gt;International Phonetic Alphabet&lt;/a&gt; (e.g. sounding like in &quot;bag&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T18:44:53.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17462" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-27T19:04:36.440" Score="4" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently discovered that a bookstore is offering my book for rental. Is it legal for the store to rent out my book? Is the store infringing on my copyright? What the store is charging people who might want to rent out my book is well above my book's retail price. I am not sure how to handle this issue and I am not sure if I have any rights in this type of use of my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13957" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T19:51:53.447" Title="Renting my book?" Tags="|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17462" CreationDate="2015-05-27T19:51:53.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that, in the US, for books, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;First-Sale doctrine&lt;/a&gt; allows the legitimate owner of a legitimate copy of a book to re-sell, lend, or rent that book. It is under this doctrine that libraries operate, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are exceptions to this doctrine, for example, it appears to be illegal to rent audio recordings, but as far as I can tell there is no such limitation for books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T19:51:53.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17459" CreationDate="2015-05-27T20:07:37.220" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is based on a faulty connection between &quot;English&quot; letters and Elvish letters and between English sounds and English letters. We use the Latin alphabet to write English words, by a series of approximations where one, two, or more letters represent a single sound. Think of the list of vowels: A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. Except vowels aren't letters, they're sounds. Those are the letters we use to represent the sounds. But, for example, the most common vowel in English is shwa, and we don't have a letter for that (instead, almost any 'vowel' letter will be used).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elvish will be its own language with its own rules. The notion that it doesn't have a &quot;K&quot; but has a k sound is a little odd. Of course it doesn't have a letter K, because it doesn't have any letters from the Latin alphabet. Similarly it doesn't have a C or an S. Make up whatever glyphs you want for whatever kind of writing system you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes down to writing it in English, what you are doing is, essentially, transliterating or Romanizing it. In this case you use our alphabet's letters to represent the &lt;em&gt;sounds&lt;/em&gt; of the Elvish alphabet. as @what said, it's very similar to how we write Chinese words in English. The word 错 (meaning &quot;wrong, bad&quot;) is not spelled with any Latin letters in Chinese, but in Pinyin (a sort of romanization) it's spelled &lt;em&gt;cuò&lt;/em&gt; and pronounced like (roughly) &lt;em&gt;tswo&lt;/em&gt;. (Pinyin uses &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt; to represent a ts sound). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When devising a romanization, it's common that you'll run out of letters to represent sounds. English certainly has more sounds than it has letters.  Consider &lt;em&gt;bath&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;bathe&lt;/em&gt;; there the &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; represents two different vowels, the &lt;em&gt;th&lt;/em&gt; represents one sound, but a different one in each word, and the &lt;em&gt;e&lt;/em&gt; serves to silently convert the short A to long A AND to indicate the pronunciation of the &lt;em&gt;th&lt;/em&gt;. Tolkien himself struggled with this and decided to use &lt;em&gt;th&lt;/em&gt; always for the soft sound (as in bath) and &lt;em&gt;dh&lt;/em&gt; for the voiced sound (as in bathe). Since &lt;em&gt;dh&lt;/em&gt; doesn't appear in English, normally, the only way a reader can tell how to pronounce that is through a glossary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T20:07:37.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17459" CreationDate="2015-05-27T20:57:45.047" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think @jm13fire has the right idea: use accents, and give readers a quick pronunciation guide at the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would go for a &lt;em&gt;caron&lt;/em&gt; over a C, which looks like &lt;strong&gt;č&lt;/strong&gt;, as &lt;strong&gt;ç&lt;/strong&gt; (with a &lt;em&gt;cedilla&lt;/em&gt;) is used for a soft C. I would definitely read Ačir as &quot;Akir.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T20:57:45.047" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17477" CreationDate="2015-05-27T22:44:06.670" Score="1" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;One reading &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; (and I'm sure they are in other books as well) will notice that J. K. Rowling utilizes several custom fonts, most commonly in letters and handwriting. There is the Hagrid font. There is the Harry Potter font. There's even a font in the fourth book made to look like it is pieces of paper pasted together (Hermione's hate mail). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where can I generate/order custom fonts like these? Is there a program that can do it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For my specific purposes, I am attempting to make a font consisting of Elvish letters.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T15:09:13.560" Title="Where can I get/generate a custom font?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-06-03T13:28:29.123" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-28T01:19:07.313" Score="3" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this great question on wikipedia that I thought deserved an answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I understand this correctly, this could be used to circumvent the non-commercial clause in certain Creative Common licenses. If person A makes copies and gives them to person B for free, B can sell them for any price he wants, because person B is not a licensee, and he has legally obtained the copies legally made by person A. Is that right?&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:First-sale_doctrine#CC-NC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;— Sloyment (talk) 05:48, 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2015-05-28T12:52:38.170" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T12:52:38.170" Title="Does the first sale doctrine invalidate non commercial licences?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17467" CreationDate="2015-05-28T01:19:07.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does open a slight loophole, but it is a small one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say Alice writes an article and puts it on a website and explicitly licences it under a licence that allows copying but not sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob finds the article and thinks everyone should read it so he prints out a bunch of copies and goes down to the corner and starts handing them out. This is legal per licence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Charly gets a copy from Bob, and decides to sell it to Diane. He can sell it for any price that he is able to negotiate with Diane. This is legal Per the first sale doctrine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Charly cannot make any copies of the article as he is not licenced to do so having violated the terms. Bob cannot sell copies as he is bound by contract (the licence) not to do so. Diane can either make copies or sell the one she has but not both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T01:19:07.313" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12228" CreationDate="2015-05-28T01:40:29.793" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason your method works is that most people who make legally questionable threats are trying to scare you with their own fears. When you shine a light on something that scares them, they back off. This does not make your counter threat any more valid than theirs. It also does not work on people who are knowledgeable or not afraid of suit, except when the only way to counter your threat are with facts that also counter theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T01:40:29.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17457" CreationDate="2015-05-28T09:02:36.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer a hard diary, you can easily maintain it. And if you want to make it soft, just take xerox of each page and bind it :p. So soft :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But technically I don't really think these matters :) Just keep writing wherever you want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13931" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T09:02:36.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12228" CreationDate="2015-05-28T13:02:19.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to the answer by @laurenipsum: Her answer applies also to an original that is out of copyright.  For example, anybody can make any story they want using the original characters and setting from Les Miserables, since that is out of copyright.  The writers of Les Miz can't sue you for that (well, not successfully).  But, if you use characters original to Les Miz, that's a different story.  &lt;em&gt;(See what I did there?)&lt;/em&gt;  The new characters in Les Miz belong to the writers of Les Miz, even though Les Miz is a total knock-off of Victor Hugo's book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T13:02:19.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17457" CreationDate="2015-05-28T13:23:39.653" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coming from a science background: People prefer hardcopy lab notebooks (which are a kind of diary) because they don't trust softcopy.  It is too easy to retcon with softcopy.  There is software specifically written for making lab notebooks that prevents that kind of thing, but nobody trusts it because people are generally pretty stupid about change.  (Yeah, even scientists.  Go figure.)  However, the digital age is upon us, and change is being forced on people whether they want it or not.  Many large labs that want to be able to search their records are changing to software-based lab notebooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a long-winded way of saying that you should do what your boss wants, regardless of which way makes more sense.  If he/she is an old fogey who wants hardcopy, then use hardcopy.  If your boss is a &quot;latest thing&quot; type of person, then use softcopy.  If neither applies, use whatever you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advantages of hardcopy: 1) Instant on, no boot-up; 2) Easy to add hand-drawn diagrams, pictures, etc.; 3) Anyone can access it, long after you're gone; 4) Can be used silently in a meeting; 5) Nobody thinks you're surfing the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disadvantages of hardcopy: 1) Easy to lose taped-in stuff; 2) Your writing may be hard/impossible to read; 3) No access security; 4) Making copies is a pain in the neck; 5) Space-limited; 6) Hard to incorporate stuff you've plagiarized from the internet; 7) Old-fashioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T13:23:39.653" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17476" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-28T14:25:38.580" Score="3" ViewCount="3797" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I'm writing a paragraph that discusses a topic and the entire paragraph is based on the same source (assume the same page too).  Do I need to footnote every sentence or would the first sentence be sufficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13970" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T15:36:10.007" Title="How often do I need to footnote a paragraph based on the same source" Tags="|footnotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17466" CreationDate="2015-05-28T15:09:13.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are various online searches that you can perform to learn more information. Here are a couple of general concepts that will help you to determine what you need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Typeface Libraries, or Font Foundries&lt;/strong&gt;: These are in the form of either original designers of a family of typefaces, and/or an online store that sells such typefaces (though sometimes free).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Typeface design tools&lt;/strong&gt;: These are graphic design applications that you can use to either modify an existing typeface, or create a typeface from scratch, and then save the result in a system font file that can then be used by your computer applications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being works that involve a creative process, be aware that there are copyright issues with respect to typefaces, with which you must be particularly careful as regards modifying an existing typeface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to different types of system fonts, there are a handful of systems available, though the more common would be TrueType / OpenType, and Adobe Type 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T15:09:13.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17459" CreationDate="2015-05-28T16:13:41.620" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are producing a &lt;em&gt;written work&lt;/em&gt;. The look of it matters, as a written document. And a &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt; looks different to a &lt;em&gt;k&lt;/em&gt;, and sets off different associations in the mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notably, Latin has no &lt;em&gt;k&lt;/em&gt; (it has a hard &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt;, as you are proposing), and very few high-register words in English have a &lt;em&gt;k&lt;/em&gt;. It is for this reason that Tolkien, master philologist, chose to represent the &lt;em&gt;k&lt;/em&gt; sound in Adûnaic and Khuzdul with a &lt;em&gt;k&lt;/em&gt;, but the same sound in Quenya and Sindarin with a &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I think your idea is a good one. You are writing for the eye as much as, or more than, the ear. &lt;em&gt;K&lt;/em&gt; is harsh to the English eye; &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt; is refined. &lt;em&gt;K&lt;/em&gt; is Germanic and low register; &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt; is Latinate and high register.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short and simple pronunciation note will do the trick: these are hardly unusual in fantasy novels. Some readers will skip it, but this is not a problem: if some readers’ internal voice pronounce some names incorrectly, so be it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="537" LastEditorUserId="537" LastEditDate="2016-08-12T14:50:41.823" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T14:50:41.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17403" CreationDate="2015-05-28T20:45:20.090" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your writing career. I wouldn't worry about the blunder. Often, that sort of thing can make you sound more human and you can even use it as a marketing trick later in your career. Everyone loves a back story and to learn how authors &quot;made it&quot;. It's something you could use on an author's website when the time is right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, most people have incredibly short memories. We live in an era of information overload. You mention 10k downloads of the wrongly formatted book: 10,000 people is less than a small town's population - which means most of the people even in your own country have not even heard of you as yet. They simply don't know you cocked up. Use your own name, make a success of your writing and use this story at an appropriate juncture in your life to inspire the next generation of aspiring writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T20:45:20.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12228" CreationDate="2015-05-28T21:17:50.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm also not a lawyer, and neither am I in the U.S. but I'll try a swing at this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of a derivative work (fanfic) certainly can register their copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office. The author is expected to only claim copyright on their original contributions; any other claim would be void. Only the separable, original parts can be copyrighted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the &lt;a href=&quot;http://copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Copyright Office Compendium&lt;/a&gt; section 313.6[B] (&lt;em&gt;Unlawful Use of Preexisting Material in a Derivative Work, a Compilation, or a Collective Work&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Office may register a derivative work, a compilation, or a collective work that contains preexisting copyrightable material, provided that the author’s contribution to that work can be separated from the preexisting material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means (at least for the U.S.) what you're telling your victims isn't correct. They can register at least parts of their stories which give them right to sue you if you infringe, and you can't bring BigCorp into the fight at all. You could threaten to tittle-tattle, but BigCorp may look at the situation and sue you first, since yours is a more aggravated infringement of the original work. Even your Fair Use defence could crumble if your work falls short of parody, which it sounds like it might.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[parody] &quot;is the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, &lt;strong&gt;at least in part, comments on that author's works&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. That commentary function provides some justification for use of the older work. See Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your later description it doesn't sound like you are offering much commentary, just taking the parts you like and replacing the parts you don't. Your opponent's lawyer could argue that's just plagiarism and vandalism, not parody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it sounds like your 'parody' is aimed at the Fanfic authors, but you may be infringing the copyright of BigCorp in order to do it. If that's the case, you have no Fair Use defence at all should Big Corp chose to sue you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2015-05-28T21:30:29.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T21:30:29.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17483" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-29T07:26:06.727" Score="3" ViewCount="2038" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a tendency in textbooks to leave ample margins for marginal notes and figures, as well as to leave readers space to include their own annotations. At the same time, some textbooks combine marginal notes and footnotes, sometimes within the same page (see, for example, page 2 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/fintel/fintel-heim-intensional.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this set of lecture notes&lt;/a&gt;). This looks funny to me, mostly because in many of the textbooks I've seen there is no clear criterion of what should go as a margin note instead of a footnote, or vice versa (with some exceptions: the &lt;em&gt;Feynman Lectures on Physics&lt;/em&gt; uses the margins exclusively for figures and small tables, and the very few footnotes are minor text-only digressions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 1:&lt;/strong&gt; is it advisable to combine footnotes and margin notes in the same text? For example, Edward Tufte's books dispense with footnotes entirely. I think this is a very elegant solution, but do you guys have any idea how hard it is to write a whole textbook without text footnotes at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 2:&lt;/strong&gt; If one wants to include both footnotes and margin notes, what should go where?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13976" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T13:06:01.290" Title="Usage of margin notes vs. footnotes" Tags="|footnotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17484" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17485" CreationDate="2015-05-29T13:55:14.533" Score="0" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, Heading 1 is automatically typeset as &lt;code&gt;Chapter 1: Chapter 1 Title.&lt;/code&gt; I would like to change this to &lt;code&gt;Chapter 1 - Chapter 1 Title&lt;/code&gt; however. How can I achieve this? I'm using Word 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13982" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T14:52:23.593" Title="How to change Microsoft Word Heading style" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-05-29T17:07:46.260" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17484" CreationDate="2015-05-29T14:52:23.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the &quot;Chapter 1 - ...&quot; portion, you'd want to right-click the Heading style, then click &lt;strong&gt;Format&lt;/strong&gt; &gt;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Numbering&lt;/strong&gt; &gt;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Define New Number Format&lt;/strong&gt;, and then set the &lt;strong&gt;Number format&lt;/strong&gt; as &quot;Number 1 - &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the &quot;chapter title&quot; portion, you'd want to define a &quot;SUBJECT&quot; field code (say) in the header, and then refer to that field code in the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So in the header, go &lt;strong&gt;Header &amp;amp; Footer Tools&lt;/strong&gt; &gt;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Quick Parts&lt;/strong&gt; &gt;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Field&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Under &lt;strong&gt;Field Names&lt;/strong&gt;, choose &lt;strong&gt;Subject&lt;/strong&gt;, then type the &lt;strong&gt;New subject&lt;/strong&gt; text that should appear (i.e., the chapter title).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At this point, you can use &lt;strong&gt;[Alt + F9]&lt;/strong&gt; to toggle the field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exit out of the header, and on a line in your document, go &lt;strong&gt;Insert&lt;/strong&gt; &gt;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Quick Parts&lt;/strong&gt; &gt;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Document Property&lt;/strong&gt; &gt;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Subject&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This will place an instance of the resulting field, which (when selected) will have a &lt;strong&gt;Subject&lt;/strong&gt; tag.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the &lt;strong&gt;Subject&lt;/strong&gt; tag that you just placed, assign the Header style, such that the result is &quot;Chapter 1 - Chapter 1 Title&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, Word doesn't let you simply paste that &lt;strong&gt;Subject&lt;/strong&gt; tag into the &lt;strong&gt;Number format&lt;/strong&gt; field (it turns into plain text, stipping off the field code). However, if you create a blank document with the basic fields that you need, then you can use that as a template for each new chapter you create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When working with fields, if a field isn't updating, then you can typically right-click and choose &lt;strong&gt;Update Field&lt;/strong&gt; to force the update.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative to clicking through the &lt;strong&gt;Quick Parts&lt;/strong&gt; menu, the keyboard shortcut is &lt;strong&gt;[Alt + i + f]&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e., Alt insert field, which is the old school menu shortcut that still works).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T14:52:23.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17457" CreationDate="2015-05-29T15:32:08.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question will depend on the purpose of your diary writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to process the text for further use, a soft diary will make that much easier. If the purpose is to order your thoughts, many people find that the analog experience makes that easier (but it will certainly depend on your life style).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing digitally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;deteriorates the quality of my writing: I undo, instead of thinking carefully, and with time have lost all feel for language; I'm currently relearning the stylistic elegance I once had before the advent of personal computers in my work and private life&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;confuses my thinking: organizing myself spacially helps organizing my thoughts; files on a computer do not have an organization that is in any way related to my physical experience, so on a gut level for me they all exist in an unorganized mess, with only the top most file (the active window) visible at any time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is sensually unpleasant: famous Apple design notwithstanding, a computer is still an ugly piece of plastic with an overcomplex interior; a paper notebook even smells and sounds nice to write in, it is a pleasurable thing to carry around, the handwriting looks beautiful and warm (unlike the anonymous, cold typeface), and a nice pen is a tool as beautiful and simple as a hammer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is unhealthy: I have tired, dry, bloodshot eyes every evening, unable to focus on anything closer than an outstreched arm, and I have tennis elbow from too much typing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Digital is like living enclosed in a prothesis; analog is like holding a sunwarmed stone in your hand. Creativity will flourish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other people say the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T15:32:08.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17863" CreationDate="2015-05-29T19:21:47.667" Score="1" ViewCount="1992" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an aspiring screenwriter, but have never been much of a printwriter nor do I aim to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate the value of literary devices in screenwriting but am not trained to identify them while watching TV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to use the right literary devices to enhance the story my video script is trying to tell, but I'm not sure which are the ones I should make more use of than others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are some literary devices significantly more common than others in screenwriting? Or are there no such best practices that have been established over the years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(to take an example, I know a soliloquoy is one literary device but if it were to be used on a sitcom it would make the character look demented so might be ill-advised for television)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13987" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T16:27:32.437" Title="Are some literary devices better suited to screenwriting than others?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17489" CreationDate="2015-05-29T20:55:07.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One example of a good literary device for television is an &lt;strong&gt;aside&lt;/strong&gt;. This is when a character speaks to the audience, telling them a secret that the characters on stage (or in the movie) are not supposed to know. An example of a movie using asides is &lt;em&gt;Ferris Bueller's Day Off&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another would be a &lt;strong&gt;monologue&lt;/strong&gt;. Monologues can be delivered with great effect on television or onstage because the viewers can see the emotions of the speaker, rather than just reading and assuming. An example of a good monologue is the one delivered by Jack Nicholson in &lt;em&gt;A Few Good Men&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13938" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T20:55:07.103" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17491" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17510" CreationDate="2015-05-29T22:57:04.323" Score="3" ViewCount="647" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing for four years without knowledge of the three act structure. When I discovered it about a year ago, I therefore had no room for it in my writing process, mainly because I had different methods woven in to take care of development. I wasn't too concerned about this, as I could tell my novels were incorporating the structure by themselves (roughly speaking). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My latest endeavor, a very short story, has run into a small problem: I seem to be lacking act 2. Maybe not that small. Things literally jump from character/stakes development to the climax. As far as I can tell, all of the development I need is there. There's just no middle of the story. It would therefore appear that I need to look into the three act structure a bit more closely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does one go about incorporating the three act structure?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarification, based on the answers received&lt;/strong&gt;: My problem here is that I am missing the middle of a story. I am aware some short stories are fine with one or two acts. This is not one of them. What I need is to &lt;em&gt;learn how the 3-act structure incorporates three acts.&lt;/em&gt; This isn't necessarily so that I can use the structure. I simply need to see how it works, so that I can identify if my current methods are missing anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Please do NOT provide an answer explaining why I should not use the 3-act structure, or why it does not apply to short stories. That is not the question.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-26T11:29:02.817" LastActivityDate="2018-03-26T11:29:02.817" Title="Three Act Structure - How do I include it?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|planning|3-acts|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17491" CreationDate="2015-05-29T23:25:02.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trust your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short stories in general--and very short stories in particular--often have no middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treat the three-act structure (or any of the zillions of other popular structures) as tools for diagnosing story problem. If the story has a problems, a story structure can help you figure out where the problem is. If the story doesn't have a problem, there's no need to fit any given structure, no matter how popular or &quot;universal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-05-29T23:47:13.023" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T23:47:13.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17447" CreationDate="2015-05-30T00:27:53.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with much of what is said above and would add that you have to read. You have to read &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt;. You will not be able to write unless you read huge amounts, both in and our of your chosen genre, and you read about writing. Another important point is that you must make effort in all your writing, everywhere, if you are to make it your craft, meaning grammar, punctuation, and style must become your lifelong passion and your best friends ... and just an observation that, from the way you asked you question, it seems they haven't yet entered the circles of your nearest and dearest. Being honest is another trademark; you have to write what you know for you writing to be authentic and feel personal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13991" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T00:27:53.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17498" CreationDate="2015-05-30T00:28:26.003" Score="4" ViewCount="12523" Body="&lt;p&gt;For instance, in &quot;Silence of the Lambs,&quot; the &quot;hero is Clarice Starling, the FBI agent, and the protagonist is the villain, Hannibal Lecter. What is this kind of story format called?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens if the protagonist is the &quot;bad guy&quot; or anti-hero? Can that make the antagonist the hero?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-05-31T00:53:31.803" LastActivityDate="2018-08-26T00:56:38.023" Title="What is the story or format called when the protagonist is not the &quot;hero?&quot;" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17491" CreationDate="2015-05-30T00:29:41.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are exceptions to the rule of a three act structure, and a short story is often one of them. In your case, your story may be a &quot;two act&quot; rather than &quot;three act&quot; play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the appropriate format for your plot, from opening to climax, leave it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'm coming back to this answer two years later, but &quot;better late than never.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a three act play, there is a crisis at the beginning, a resolution at the end, and a long middle period of post-crisis/pre-resolution, as the characters pick up the pieces of the crisis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a short story, you can have a two act structure if the crisis and the resolution are the key events, and how you get from one to the other almost doesn't matter. In O. Henry's &quot;Gift of the Magii,&quot; the crisis is that the husband and wife are too poor to buy each other the Christmas gifts they want to. The resolution is that each sells their prized asset to raise the money. (The husband sells his watch to buy his wife combs for her hair; the wife sells her hair to buy a watchchain for her husband. The actual buying and selling can be unimportant.) So this story lends itself well to a two-act structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a three act structure, you have to &quot;fill out&quot; the middle. Then you show the respective bargaining of husband and wife for the selling of the watch and hair respectively, and the bargaining of their purchases of the watch chain and combs. Perhaps one or both will have a &quot;near-miss&quot; with &quot;not enough money&quot; even after selling their prized possessions. That creates the middle (third) act of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-28T22:33:01.243" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T22:33:01.243" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17494" CreationDate="2015-05-30T01:23:54.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A protagonist is the character that the audience is meant to most identify with, in Silence of the Lambs that would be Clarice Starling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jamie Gumm (Buffalo Bill) is the primary antagonist, the catalyst and opposing force that Starling deals with, and develops from. Lecter would be a split between antagonist and protagonist. While Lecter is by far the most powerful and interesting character, Clarice is protagonist / hero of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T01:23:54.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17494" CreationDate="2015-05-30T02:37:30.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no special name for this format of story. All stories have the same basic elements, (exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, resolution) and they pertain to the protagonist, who is the main character and who the audience is supposed to identify with the most. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist is the &quot;hero&quot; of their story, but they do not have to be the &quot;good guy&quot; per se. When in this role, they are often called the &lt;strong&gt;antihero&lt;/strong&gt;. Examples are &lt;em&gt;Now You See Me&lt;/em&gt;, the &lt;em&gt;Fast and Furious&lt;/em&gt; series, and others where the protagonist is the &quot;bad guy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13938" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T02:37:30.173" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17499" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-30T04:35:57.763" Score="4" ViewCount="186" Body="&lt;p&gt;What would be the correct way to format the following exchange in narrative prose? Is it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Alice sits on the bench, silent. Eventually, I speak.&#xA;&quot;What are we going to do?&quot;&#xA;After a long pause, she responds.&#xA;&quot;I don't think we can do anything.&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Alice sits on the bench, silent. Eventually, I speak.&#xA;&quot;What are we going to do?&quot;&#xA;After a long pause, she responds, &quot;I don't think we can do anything.&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it something else entirely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13993" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T13:16:08.580" Title="What is the correct formatting for actions taken before dialogue?" Tags="|formatting|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17491" CreationDate="2015-05-30T06:53:28.423" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To some extent it's not really possible to write a story without three acts. Unless it's only two sentences long it will always be possible for a reader to post-rationalise a beginning-middle-end structure onto your tale. But when writing, don't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need any acts in a short story. You are free to pick even the smallest atom of structure and explore your idea there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The expectation is that a short story will be short, and readers will be happy, even grateful, for a story which gets to the heart of its idea quickly, and wraps up when the point has been made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you were to have a really interesting idea for how to escape from handcuffs, you could construct a short story which starts with a villain embarking on a prematurely triumphant monologue, and end with that same villain's reaction when the hero appears at his neck with a hot poker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a story spans just a small fraction of a traditional third act, but it would still be satisfying, and readers could still, if they wanted to, perceive it as a three act story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following clarification of the question, here's some thoughts on adding a whole extra act to a completed story. I'm going to talk about movie scripts here, because I find structure to be far more visible in those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel your story lacks a middle act, it's probably because it lacks the story elements traditionally found in the middle act. If you're struggling to figure out what those elements are, you can try analysing other stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try thinking of a familiar movie in the following way: strip out the middle act and try to make the plot make sense without that act. Here's an example using a story everyone's familiar with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A young space farmer longs to leave his dull planet and join the Rebellion against the evil Empire. He meets two robots who happen to be on a mission on behalf of the rebellion. The robots lead the boy to a mentor who takes them all to a rebel base where the hero joins an attack on the Imperial space station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now try to imagine that movie got made, and the producers watched it and realised that, although it made perfect sense, it was dull, and empty: the hero just discovers a problem and goes directly to the source and solves it. It just doesn't feel like a full story. And suppose, to fix this, they went away and filmed a second act to fill the gap. What processes would they have had to go through to concoct that second act?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Instead of the boy going straight to the rebel base, his mentor takes him to a bar where they get in a fight, meet a ruthless space smuggler and get in another fight. They go where the mentor suggests but they find that place had been destroyed and many people killed. Then they get captured by some bad guys, and they meet an idealist princess and sneak around trying to avoid more fights. Doing all of this raises the stakes (the mentor dies), introduces different approaches to consider (selfish / idealistic) but it also &lt;em&gt;teaches the hero the skills and confidence for his later battle&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For yourself, pick a familiar story in your genre. Strip out the second act, smooth over the join and see what the story would look like. Note how relatively easy it can be to make that shortened story make sense, but note also how it loses its heart, soul or purpose. If your story has the same shortcomings, then yes, you are missing an act. Now you already have the answer for what that writer would have had to do to add a second act. Take inspiration from that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll probably find, in many stories that you analyse, the second act is about punishing the hero's (and reader's) naivety or misconceptions, and teaching him/her a more effective response to the story's main problem, but also giving him/her alternative choices to consider. You may find it quite easy, since without a second act your hero may be walking into 'battle' fully equipped and prepared, which is boring. For your new second act you would take that preparedness, analyse it, strip to down to nothing, show the wrong-headedness of it, and build it up again into &lt;em&gt;the potential&lt;/em&gt; for something better or something worse. (It's only a &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt;, because the third act is where we finally discover if the hero can realise that potential.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's only a taster. You can read up on it all over the place, but the above is a technique I've used in your situation to help me clearly grasp what the second act is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2015-05-30T21:19:17.677" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T21:19:17.677" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17494" CreationDate="2015-05-30T07:47:36.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are mixing up different literary theories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept of the &lt;em&gt;hero&lt;/em&gt; comes from a view on literature that is derived from ancient epics. The concept of the &lt;em&gt;protagonist&lt;/em&gt; is derived from Greek drama theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is importatnt here is that the hero and the protagonist have nothing to do with each other. They are different approaches at trying to understand how literature works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hero is a figure undertaking a quest (Odysseus). Not every narrative has one. The hero's journey is about self-discovery and self-development. He is not necessarily up against anything (Hydra is not Hercules' opponent but a task he has to complete). A hero acts in the context of fate and divine forces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist is the primary actor. By default, the hero is the protagonist of his narrative. But a protagonist is not always a hero. He may be fighting an antagonist that is on the same level as he and, unlike fate or the Greek gods, can be overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T07:47:36.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17499" CreationDate="2015-05-30T07:50:52.217" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to give each character their own paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alice sits on the bench, silent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, I speak. &amp;quot;What are we going to do?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a long pause, she responds. &amp;quot;I don't think we can do anything.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, I chose the period after 'responds'. 'Responds' isn't interchangeble with 'says'. For example, all these are valid...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;she says, &amp;quot;I don't think we can do anything.&amp;quot;&#xA;she whispers, &amp;quot;I don't think we can do anything.&amp;quot;&#xA;she screams, &amp;quot;I don't think we can do anything.&amp;quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;these are awkward...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;she speaks, &amp;quot;I don't think we can do anything.&amp;quot;&#xA;she responds, &amp;quot;I don't think we can do anything.&amp;quot;&#xA;she talks, &amp;quot;I don't think we can do anything.&amp;quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's better to stick to 'says' and 'asks' if you are unsure of the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T08:33:28.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17491" CreationDate="2015-05-30T09:27:49.037" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is just a lengthy comment as an addition to Dale Emery's answer. Dale recommends to &quot;[t]reat the three-act structure (or any of the zillions of other popular structures) as tools for diagnosing story problem&quot;. I wholeheartedly agree. (And I especially agree with the quotation marks around &quot;universal&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People have been telling stories forever. Other people have been studying those tales. Different of these people thought they found differing internal structures in narratives. Yet other people thought that it might be helpful to use these structures when creating tales. Again other people made a business out of teaching these structures. The effect is that today almost everyone believes that stories must be constructed along these structures and that a story that lacks a structural element is not a good story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you analyse stories you will find that they invariantly deviate from those structures. If you read analyses you will find that no two scholars agree on what kind of structure can be found in a particular story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do as Dale and mwo suggest and do not attempt to mechanically recreate some literary theory in your writing. A bird doesn't learn how to sing from reading books about birdsong. A good story is one that &lt;em&gt;feels true&lt;/em&gt;. So trust your feelings or, as Dale has put it, &quot;trust your story&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-05-30T09:34:59.167" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T09:34:59.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17491" CreationDate="2015-05-30T12:39:23.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;George Lucas describes a basic three act structure as introduce your characters, put them in the worst situation possible, and then get them out of trouble. This works well. it is not the only way to do it, but it is a good one to start with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T12:39:23.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17499" CreationDate="2015-05-30T13:16:08.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is the old adage that you should never use anything other than (she/he) said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think it is more a case of being consistent, by having a consistent way of marking speech you produce a couple of benefits to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, they can unconsciously ignore the 'who said' part, unless they need to clarify who said. If you know it is there, your brain skips over it and you can simply take in the flow of conversation. This makes for a much less jagged reading experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, if your character suddenly 'shouts' a line, it will add a huge amount of emphasis amongst a sea of 'said' dialogue. Considerably more than if you have liberally scattered the contents of thesaurus's said page amongst your dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to actually answer the question! choose a simple style that the reader can learn and then ignore. I don't think it matters greatly what it is, just be consistent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T13:16:08.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17435" CreationDate="2015-05-30T15:19:09.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is certainly a question best answered by a lawyer (ideally one with knowledge of the area) However... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The critical question you need an answer to is who owns your medical records. Medical record ownership varies from state to state, according to healthinfolaw.org&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthinfolaw.org/comparative-analysis/who-owns-medical-records-50-state-comparison&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;healthinfolaw.org&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; Alaska (guessed from your name!) has no laws governing ownership of medical records &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the owner of your medical records, then you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; also own the copyright, and be perfectly entitled to publish any part of them. If a medical institute owns the records you would likely need permission before you would be legally entitled to publish. (although it would be difficult to imagine a court upholding a case against someone publishing their own medical record - but don't quote me on that) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real answer though, talk to a lawyer before you do anything, understand the risks before you pursue a course of action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It may be worth asking that question on the law site of stackexchange) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T15:19:09.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17299" CreationDate="2015-05-30T15:44:42.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems you are attempting to describe metaphor literally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;All the world's a stage,&#xA;And all the men and women merely players;&#xA;They have their exits and their entrances[...]&#xA;—William Shakespeare, As You Like It&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shakespeare is not trying to say that the world is actually a stage, but that it bears some resemblance to one, he then goes on embellish the description&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems you are attempting to describe the colour of the curtains, the size and shape of the men and women, and the location of the exits and entrances. (which could be appropriate if your audience are stage builders) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to explain what the author meant, you should be concentrating on why (s)he is making that comparison, what essence does a stage have that makes it comparable to a world&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What essence does Grief, terror, love, longing have to give them a property comparable to a weight to be carried. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T15:44:42.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17457" CreationDate="2015-05-30T17:46:20.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take the one that most easily fits in your back pocket. That way you can have access to your journal at all times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13997" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T17:46:20.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17491" CreationDate="2015-05-30T18:08:58.817" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key to building a second act is to focus on the &lt;em&gt;function&lt;/em&gt; of a second act: &lt;strong&gt;To increase the emotional payoff of the ending&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Raise the stakes.&lt;/strong&gt; This forces the character to keep going, and makes the reader more worried about failure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eliminate options.&lt;/strong&gt; None of the easy options work. None of the merely difficult or painful options work. No, in order to solve the problem, the character must sacrifice something precious. Bring the character to the point of despair. Readers care when characters despair.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deepen the dilemma&lt;/strong&gt;. Show why the stakes matter to this character in particular, so that the character cannot walk away from the problem. Show how much the character values the very thing that (in the end) must be sacrificed, so that character struggles desperately to find any other solution. The dilemma makes us care about the character, so that the sacrifice feels more deeply satisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to develop a second act: &lt;strong&gt;Try/fail cycles.&lt;/strong&gt; In each cycle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character tries some plausible way to solve the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a result, things get worse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each cycle eliminates options, raises the stakes, and deepens the dilemma. This increases the emotional payoff of the third act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-05-30T18:14:57.047" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T18:14:57.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17428" CreationDate="2015-05-30T20:13:39.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an opening disclaimer, I don't have any actual experience in this area, but I have an opinion that may - or may not - help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It always bothers me when I read a question asking 'how do I write x/y/z genre / style / etc &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is if you go off and find an exceptionally good resource to help you write comedy screenwriting, you won't be the only person reading it, and so you'll end up being one of a whole group of people who read what you read and turned out a write-by-numbers piece. Whoever reads it will quickly spot it and it will head towards the bin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will also be unlikely to be funny, because we've all seen them before, the endless stream of hollywood romcom series is horribly similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So instead, sit down and start writing, get feedback on what you've written, improve your style, rinse/repeat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way you will write something in your style, that hasn't been seen before, and will have a hugely better chance of being taken on by someone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technical details are something that can get cleaned up in the edits once the overall thing has been accepted. I can't imagine any studio would expect a perfectly formatted and stylised piece, if only because I would suspect they all have their own styles and formats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T20:13:39.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17513" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17517" CreationDate="2015-05-30T22:27:06.853" Score="6" ViewCount="408" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most plays I've studied, e.g. Erin Brockovich, the end of the second Act II is the &quot;darkest moment&quot; for the protagonist. It's the time when one (at least yours truly) asks, &quot;Why did the hero come in for this? Wouldn't life have been better off without the situation?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my favorite plays from childhood, the hero has a &quot;bird in hand&quot; at the end of Act II, and the question is whether or not s/he will get the &quot;big prize.&quot; In &quot;My Fair Lady,&quot; Eliza Doolittle has learned to be a lady at the end of Act II, and the remaining question is whether she will find happiness with Professor Higgins, or Freddy Eynsford-Hill. In &quot;the Sound of Music,&quot; the von Trapp family has gotten Maria as a (step) &quot;mother&quot; by the end of Act II, and the question is whether they can escape the Nazis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a special name for this kind of plot structure (or the kinds of plays that use it), and is it viewed differently than the other kind of plot structure outlined in the first paragraph? For instance, is romantic comedy more likely to have the second, rather than the first Second Act Structure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2019-07-04T05:46:15.267" Title="is there a &quot;standard&quot; plot structure where the protagonist has a &quot;bird in hand&quot; at the end of Act II?" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-30T22:39:51.337" Score="4" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just starting out with writing fiction seriously. I feel like this might be my &quot;thing.&quot; Strangely enough, at the moment I find myself with a number of ideas, most in very early stages of development. As in notes, bare-bones plot outlines, rough character concepts, etc. A part of me is tempted to have them all active simultaneously, so that on any given day, depending on my mood and mindset, I have stuff to work on. Granted, with this approach I might not finish anything for centuries. Alternately, perhaps there's some method of prioritizing them, finishing them in an order of some sort. This way I might complete a project quickly, but in the meantime the other ideas might have floundered in my mind. &#xA;I could really use some guidance on this. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12862" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T12:32:34.710" Title="How to prioritize projects" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17514" CreationDate="2015-05-30T23:00:17.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe the solution would be to schedule time for writing your main project, and for a couple of those sessions to allow yourself to be diverted onto other projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly though it is understanding what your best method of working is, this will probably take some trial and error, you might find that distracting yourself on multiple projects helps you stay objective about the story lines. Or you might realise that you simply can't juggle the multiple plots all at once. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decide which one is your priority, and experiment with different ways of approaching it until you find the most productive &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T23:00:17.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17513" CreationDate="2015-05-31T08:22:09.470" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are plenty story theorists who would want you to see that you are looking at two sides of the same structure. Whether you are thinking of Eliza Doolittle or Top Gun, the structure is the same: the hero's second act is about mentorship, and in the third act they face their challenges alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether that character at the end of Act 2 faces their deepest darkest moment, or whether they are filled with chipper optimism is really more about the lightness of touch in your story. Both characters are ready to face their challenges (with new knowledge or skills), but both have also had their crutches taken away. There is always determination &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; doubt, but your story's tone will determine which of those you need to emphasise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your hero is tough in a gritty thriller, you'll need to take them to dark depths to evoke any kind of anxiety about the third act, but if your hero is extremely delicate in a gentle social satire, their darkest depths may merely be discovering that their hat doesn't fit properly and threatens to cause embarrassment at the garden party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen comedy movies where the writers have taken the deepest-depths thing too literally, and put slapstick characters into jarringly serious scenes with comic actors who couldn't pull it off. The character doesn't need to go to the darkest place &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; can imagine, they just need to face a bigger test than anything so far. They can be perfectly thrilled about facing the challenge if that is what suits the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2015-06-01T08:51:20.627" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T08:51:20.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17514" CreationDate="2015-05-31T11:04:38.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I would do in your situation is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write them all in parallel for a fixed time, say a month, month and a half.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When that time is up, see which ones you're most excited about, and put the rest on hold. Write and develop your select few for another set time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat till you know which ONE is your focus for now, and go at that one 100%, until its done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way you get to explore all your stories and discover which one pulls you most right now, and then focus on that ONE story until its complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why one? Because the only way to really do your best, is to focus. But for someone bursting with new-found creative energy, the only way to focus is to know that this is simply the one you're writing &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;, and that it &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; mean that you won't get to the other ones later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13979" LastActivityDate="2015-05-31T11:04:38.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17519" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17526" CreationDate="2015-05-31T11:15:27.347" Score="11" ViewCount="1479" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back in the mists of time, I would put a lot of time into reading, and would read pretty much anything I could lay my hands on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I started writing, and it is very very rare that I read any fiction now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet whenever I look at any forum, writing advice etc, it always suggests that you read lots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem, for me, is that if I read a piece of writing that I particularly like, I will unconsciously allow the style, grammar, flow of that piece to seep into whatever I'm writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being well read makes me more likely to write in facsimiles of other's and I'd rather create my own style&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something that other's tend to experience also?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how important is being well read, for a writer... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit to clarify&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all aspects of life I enjoy figuring problems out, without relying too much on what has gone before. Often I find I have reinvented the wheel, I enjoy exploring the reasoning behind a problem, and the nuances of why it is a problem in the first place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my mind, if I am struggling with some mechanism in a story, I could read other authors' work, and use their methods to solve the problem I've got, or I can explore the problem for myself and build my own mechanism to achieve the goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am reasonably content in my approach to my own writing, and can't imagine that changing any time soon, but I saw another question and thought this would make an interesting question for anyone else who might have a similar approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastEditorUserId="13990" LastEditDate="2015-05-31T14:46:11.477" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T04:16:05.900" Title="How important is being well read for a writer" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17519" CreationDate="2015-05-31T11:38:28.483" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever you write about, it must be interesting to you. Thus it depends on what you are writing about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing about fiction, then reading fictional books can give you a greater understanding of how an author sets the scene, or motivates the reader to carry on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you describe you don't seem to read many fictional books, so therefore you show little interest. The author of a book must put good time and effort into writing, but more importantly it must be something they can stick too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever genre of book shows you interest, why don't you write about that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14002" LastActivityDate="2015-05-31T11:38:28.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17519" CreationDate="2015-05-31T15:52:34.680" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have already read a lot. Now is the time to write. Don't  worry about forums full of virgins explaining sex to married men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-05-31T15:52:34.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1621" CreationDate="2015-05-31T16:35:10.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that if you're a coder by trade, then creative writing is very similar to creating a complex piece of code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you woke up tomorrow morning and decided to write a word processor in go (or some other random language you didn't know) It is unlikely that you're first few iterations would be anything to do with the word processor you want to write. It would be small test pieces to help you understand how the language worked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then once you had a decent grasp of how the language fitted together, you'd probably start planning the structure of the program, perhaps using the various source control and methodologies that are available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when you start writing a story use the same methodology you would use to write code. Pull out your favourite agile management tool (etc) and start creating a plan just as you would a piece of software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So decide what the overall purpose (plan) of the story is, what does it need to convey from beginning to end. Then break that down into smaller pieces, maybe using a beginning / middle / end layout. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is as much about understanding your approach and process as it is about sitting down and writing. If you're a coder you already have a very strong set of methodologies that you should be extremely familiar with. This is head and shoulders above what most writers can bring to their first pieces. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly though, take your time, get to know yourself, and your own style, use the tools you have available (I actually store most of my writing in Github - it is a fantastic resource for managing creative writing) In time your confidence with this new language will develop and it will all compile a little more frequently! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-05-31T16:35:10.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14286" CreationDate="2015-05-31T17:33:07.567" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not always so different. There are just a set of rules in hollywood, there isn't really in bollywood. So in bollywood you write as you please and so sometimes it looks more like the hollywood-style, one minute per page format, and other times like a stage-play-script. Sometimes in bollywood there is no dialogue but just a treatment and then someone else is brought in to write the dialogue, sometimes on the spot. But if you for example read the script of &quot;ek main aur ekk tu&quot; you'll see it's quite alike. In bollywood there is also a tradition of narrating the script to producers and actors so as long as the writer/director understands it it's often enough. While in hollywood sometimes a lot of writers work on the same script, due to the studio-system, so there is a greater need for every script to be formated the same. In hollywood it is also more common to have a writer and a separate director, who don't work together at all.&#xA;Hope it answered your question :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14005" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-05-31T19:20:46.017" LastActivityDate="2015-05-31T19:20:46.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3186" CreationDate="2015-05-31T17:51:24.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As in anything,if you truly have a passion for story telling or creative truth, this is the main ingredient for &quot;going for it&quot; because even if you aren't able to make a living,your doing what makes you happy and that in itself is enjoying the journey! And that is never a failure!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14006" LastActivityDate="2015-05-31T17:51:24.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17519" CreationDate="2015-05-31T18:36:47.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be well read &lt;em&gt;in the genre in which you wish to write.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every genre has its clich&amp;eacute;s. A writer could produce the best-written story imaginable and still have it rejected by editors and readers if they say, &quot;oh, not that old chestnut again.&quot; Conversely, there is nothing wrong with building on the work of the greatest past authors in your chosen genre. Obviously by &quot;building on&quot; I do not mean plagiarism; I mean letting the virtues of the fiction that you have most liked reading be filtered and transformed by your own imagination into the fiction that you write. You say you are happy to reinvent the wheel - so why not invent a better wheel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, many, many authors have done &quot;locked room&quot; mysteries in detective fiction. If you haven't read much detective fiction then your locked room mystery is likely to be rejected as just another one in the same old style. But if you are familiar with the past of this sub-genre and manage to pull off a new twist on an old idea, then people will love it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, too, suffer from the style of what I have just read infecting what I write so that it can come across as a parody of the other author. The solution is not to stop reading but to put the &quot;infected&quot; piece of writing away for a while, then come back to it later when the passage of time lets you view it more objectively and re-write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-05-31T18:36:47.807" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17519" CreationDate="2015-06-01T05:29:14.360" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I may have a very unpopular view on the subject but would say that I find myself more able to write in my preferred style by not reading a bunch of other people's work. I'd say that it's more important to be a good researcher, planner, and editor. The most important skills I practice to write at a level that I enjoy are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self Editing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automatic Writing - this one is hard because it means I have to turn off the internal censor when I write but this is a practice in doing just that. This helps my words flow directly from thought to keyboard though, with little if any intervention.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, writing is about doing. The best way to get better is to keep doing it, and then reflect on your work at intervals while you create it, and after you've finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT - I can't reasonably answer the part of your question about how important is it to be well read for an author because I'm not a known or paid author. I do write and other people enjoy what I write but I am not an author by vocation. &#xA;2nd - I prefer to write instead of read because, and in addition to the reasons stated above, reading takes time, and I don't always like what another author writes. So, I choose to spend the time writing - or researching for writing - instead of reading. &#xA;   -- my thanks to commenters noting that I had not specifically answered OPs question. I hope this does do with satisfaction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for asking this question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13997" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-06-01T23:19:02.217" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T23:19:02.217" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17519" CreationDate="2015-06-01T05:37:12.467" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on being a natural mimic!  That is a marvelous skill to have as a fiction writer.  Now all you have to do is learn how to leverage it.  I'll give you a few clues here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unconscious mimicry is incredibly useful when your plot demands a dramatic diversion from your comfort zone.  For example, you may be very skilled at high-speed, high-action fight scenes.  You might have a gift for keeping your reader's heartrate accelerated and making the pages flash by.  This is your natural style that you are trying so hard to defend.  ...and you are absolutely right, it deserves to be defended because it makes your writing your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But stories aren't all action and adreneline.  Eventually your characters need to do something else; maybe some dialog or an lurid love scene.  Eventually, in your quest to write a complete story, you'll have to write some scenes that aren't in your comfort zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is when being a mimic is a blessing.  There are a lot of great writers out there, but each and every one of them is BEST at only one or two types of scenes.  Start cataloging your favorite authors' strong points then use their writing to inject those skills into your writing at the moment when you need that kind of help.  Eventually, you will have a library of earmarked books waiting to help you write every kind of scene imaginable.  And because of your skill at mimicry, you can use that library to enrich everything that you write.  Reading the right 5-10 pages from an expert in a particular type of scene, can elevate you into a master of that scene type as well.  Mimicry!  Embrace it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That leaves you with one issue, the original issue from your question.  Outside of the scenarios described above, how do you keep what you read from effecting what you write?  The answer should come naturally to a mimic...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right before you start writing, read 5-10 pages of what you have recently written.  This will reset your mimicry, making you into a mimic of yourself.  It will also serve to get you back into the mood and flow of your current writing, and remind you of plot elements which you might have forgotten since the last time you wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="11221" LastEditDate="2015-06-02T04:16:05.900" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T04:16:05.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17491" CreationDate="2015-06-01T07:40:37.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A note of caution: As stressed (many times) before, I do not think it is wise to &quot;construct&quot; a story according to any structure, however popular it might be. These structures are a great tool to diagnose problems of an existing story. They are useless, if you do not have a story that you can apply them to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you say that you very strongly feel that your story lacks an Act II, i.e.: You are unhappy with your story. Time to dig out the Three-Act-Structure and unleash it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Previous answers have focused on the story elements of Act II. Let me complement this view with an interpretation of the psychological significance of Act II. Hopefully, I will be able to convince you that Act II is indeed the centrepiece of any story and that it is pretty much impossible to write a story entirely missing an Act II. It is there, however short or insignificant or under-developed it might be. It is your job to identify it and modify it according to your needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Psychological significance&lt;/strong&gt; of the Three-Act-Structure: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act I&lt;/strong&gt;: The protagonist realizes he is in (more or less desperate) need of change. In one way or the other, he commits to the change and sets out to achieve it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act II&lt;/strong&gt;: The change is achieved. This usually incorporates some dramatic experience that helps to transform the protagonist. In the terminology of the Hero's Journey, the hero faces death and is reborn -- he sheds off some aspect of his old personality and acquires new personality traits. This sounds very dramatic, but not every Act II needs to be loud and scream: Look what a marvelous change is achieved here!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act III&lt;/strong&gt;: The change is consolidated. While Act II provided the change itself, the protagonist now proves that he incorporated the change into his personality and will be able to live his life according to it. Hero's Journey: He is &quot;resurrected&quot;. (&lt;em&gt;Note that, personally, I find Campbell's terminology confusing: The death theme is present in both Acts II and III, but the distinction between the &quot;reborn&quot; and &quot;resurrection&quot; parts of the story is not entirely intuitive when considering the pure terminology. But then, I never was religious and might simply lack a thorough understanding of what ressurection means in a religious context.&lt;/em&gt;)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is: When interpreting the Hero's Journey in a psychological sense, what it boils down to is an elobarote description of &lt;strong&gt;how something changes&lt;/strong&gt;. In my opinion, this is the very essence of storytelling: We do not tell stories about things that stay the same. We tell stories about change - about how the protagonist finds the power to rise up to an unsatisfactory or threatening situtaion &lt;em&gt;and change it&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To &lt;strong&gt;answer your question&lt;/strong&gt;: I do not think you are in any sense able to incorporate the Three-Act-Structure into a story -- because it is there, always. What you can do is this: Identify the element of your story that brings about the central change. Once you have done so, you can give it the emphasis it deserves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A description of the Hero's Journey and a tentative psychological interpretation that I found very useful is provided by Vogler in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/193290736X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Writer's Journey&lt;/a&gt;. However, as mentioned above, the rigid terminology of the Hero's Journey -- starting right there with the term &quot;Hero&quot; that I feel decidedly uncomfortable with -- sometimes obscures the actual significance of the stage.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T07:40:37.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17530" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-01T20:58:17.023" Score="2" ViewCount="13704" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an idea for a book where several characters acquire elemental powers after dying and being resurrected; their powers all reflect the manner in which they died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the characters acquires water-based powers, and eventually his younger brother acquires ice-based powers. Now, I know there have to be plenty of Caucasian, male fictional characters that possess iced-based powers (e.g. Iceman from the X-Men). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do this, will that be considered copyright infringement? I'm just constantly trying to make my characters as original as possible, but I have no idea where these copyright boundaries lie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14012" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2015-06-04T11:26:01.560" LastActivityDate="2021-06-03T02:01:26.323" Title="Is it copyright infringement to have a character too similiar to an already existing character?" Tags="|copyright|character-development|fantasy|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17530" CreationDate="2015-06-01T21:07:10.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because your character has similar powers doesn't make him or her the same as another fictional character. In fact, you should try to make your character unique. If you do that you don't have to worry about copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I understand, and I am not a lawyer, if you use a different name and alter the powers, you should just get on with writing and not worry about copying someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T21:07:10.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17530" CreationDate="2015-06-01T21:12:56.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not. &quot;Caucasian male with ice powers&quot; is a very loose description, and you can flesh out your character more to make him unique. Just because he shares some similarities does not constitute copyright infringement. Take Deadpool, who obviously shares some glaring similarities with the comic book character Deathstroke, but he has his own personality and to some extent abilities and thus is his own unique character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, your origin story sounds quite unique. That's a step towards your character's uniqueness for sure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13938" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T21:12:56.270" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17428" CreationDate="2015-06-01T22:03:11.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest Blake Snyder's &quot;Save the Cat&quot; and &quot;Save the Cat Goes to the Movies&quot; as some good starting material. I found them to be very useful for understanding story structures in general, particularly those most common in Hollywood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along these lines, I would suggest not just limiting yourself to comedy-specific advice. The best comedy (IMO) takes the rules we are familiar with and shows the ridiculousness of those rules. So it's important to know and understand those rules inside and out, so that you're either making use of them or making fun of them intentionally. Sadly, there's no book to teach you how to have a sense of humor. (Otherwise I know a few people I'd recommend read it!) :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14014" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T22:03:11.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5863" CreationDate="2015-06-02T04:10:32.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Figures and Figure should normally be abbreviated as Fig. even if you are quoating Fig. 1 to 3 i.e. to say Figure 1, Figure 2 and Figure 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14015" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T04:10:32.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17530" CreationDate="2015-06-02T04:27:22.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend reading this blog post by Larry Correia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://monsterhunternation.com/2013/04/29/ask-correia-13-ripping-off-ideas/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://monsterhunternation.com/2013/04/29/ask-correia-13-ripping-off-ideas/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your copyright question, if you're not blatantly taking characters from copyrighted works and using them in your own (as in fan fiction, or by copying them exactly except changing their names) don't worry about it. You've come up with characters that may be superficially similar to copyrighted characters in some respects, but that is not plagiarism and it's more or less inevitable in a world where millions of stories have been written and told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is another article, outlining what copyright law covers in the first half:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marklitwak.com/protecting-your-stories.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.marklitwak.com/protecting-your-stories.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it boils down to is story concepts and ideas are not covered by copyright law. Excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A copyright does not protect story ideas, concepts or themes. Such elements are not protected whether they are in a writer’s head, written down on paper, or published. Ideas are as free as the air. Ten authors can write a story about a doomed romance between lovers from different backgrounds. This could be Romeo and Juliet, or West Side Story, or another variation on the theme.  Likewise, multiple authors can write biographies about George Washington. Each is free to tell the story of George Washington’s life in the writer’s own words. Each can borrow facts and historical incidents mentioned by prior authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What copyright law protects is the “expression of the author.” This is the particular manner in which the writer tells the story, his approach to the material, his voice. In other words, what is protected is the embellishment on the idea, not the idea itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of a character being able to control water is too generic to be copyright-able. And, it's been used in probably thousands of stories. So don't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story ideas you've mentioned so far sound pretty cool, by the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13978" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T04:27:22.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17530" CreationDate="2015-06-02T08:01:24.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe the problem is, that as soon as you need to seriously ask whether your character is too similar to another, then in your head it probably already is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other people can give reasons why it isn't similar, but if you are asking the question then you already believe it to be true, and as a result of that the other characters are going to unconsciously seep into yours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of a way to make the character yours, maybe think about if you had that power how would you wield it. You don't need to change the character per se, you just need to adjust your understanding of who the character is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T08:01:24.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17538" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17542" CreationDate="2015-06-02T09:50:26.530" Score="3" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;About a year ago I started developing something like an alternative world. About two months a go I finally found some time for more work on this theme and now I am collecting information from few science disciplines to develop proper background for my story. Now I have information from history, security studies, demography, psychology, personalities and a bit of biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which subjects do I need to learn more for my world to be complete and thus begin the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastEditorUserId="13210" LastEditDate="2015-06-02T22:20:02.753" LastActivityDate="2020-07-15T13:04:37.997" Title="Basics in the world building of a novel" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17538" CreationDate="2015-06-02T10:56:01.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems you have a lot of information that you've gathered, you have a strong idea of how your world works and the &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt; it contains. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it is time to start compiling some stories around the data that you've got. It doesn't need to be your primary novel, just some short stories to help you get the feel for who your characters are and how they react to their environment, and each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have that, and to some degree parallel to that, start thinking about the overarching plot of your primary story, break it down into smaller story arcs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;most aspiring writers get bogged down in the writing, without the research, I wonder if you're getting yourself bogged down in research without the writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start writing, get feedback, and use that to understand what you need to learn next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T10:56:01.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-02T12:35:55.150" Score="0" ViewCount="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;So here is the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got a character who is a trained modern gunsmith and he finds himself thrown into a setting where the most advance firearm is the flintlock. I know some of the most advance guns are going to be out of reach because of the lack of machine tools and such, but I assume he be able to make something like a revolver or pistol with a bit of hard work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want the scene and steps to ring true, what do I need to keep it real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13808" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T16:14:15.953" Title="Trying to make a gun making scene realistic" Tags="|scene|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-06-02T18:12:29.537" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17538" CreationDate="2015-06-02T13:00:26.560" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some specific ideas to help you get started.  First of all and most importantly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must understand the core challenge you are facing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are facing the overwhelming challenge at the start of writing a story that many writers face and run from.  You have all of this information compiled and in some ways you feel as if it is too much.  It overwhelms the mind about how you would organize it.  (This is an emotional challenge -- for more read my article &lt;a href=&quot;http://fictionwriter.raddev.us/post/2018/01/18/great-debate-can-you-learn-to-write-from-a-book&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Great Debate: Can You Learn To Write From a Book?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, there are some specific things to focus on to distract your mind from the overwhelming nature of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on Specifics to Distract the Mind&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think In Scenes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write Extremely fast draft&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's go over each of those and see how they might help you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Think In Scenes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand that readers want to see your story played out on the &amp;quot;movie-screen&amp;quot; of their minds.  This is when the words transform from words into images that the readers &amp;quot;see&amp;quot;.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Now, instead of thinking about all of your research, go ahead and imagine a scene that would show your character in some type of trouble that s/he needs to work out of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character's Self-Concept Can Create Tension&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, if you understand your character's self-concept, you may even provide tension as the character has to do something that goes against what she believes of herself.  You can read more about the power of self-concept in my article : &lt;a href=&quot;http://fictionwriter.raddev.us/post/2020/07/15/self-concept-against-the-world-easy-idea-generator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Easiest Way To Get Fiction Ideas: Self-concept Against the World&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But allow me to show you how you might do that here.&#xA;Suppose your character is kidnapped and taken to a hotel in the desert.  Later he escapes into the desert and the kidnapper is following him.  He's trapped and the only way out is through a very small opening at the base of the mountain.  However, your character is extremely claustrophobic (afraid of small places).  Now, there is some tension which will grab your reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write Extremely Fast Draft&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Instead of focusing on all of that overwhelming research,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;focus on writing the shortest possible version of your story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagaine if you were going to write a flash-fiction version of your story.  How might you do that?&#xA;Tell only the shortest snippet of what would communicate your story to a FTR (First-time Reader).  How might you do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 1&lt;/strong&gt; Early Monday morning Henry is eating his egg &amp;amp; cheese breakfast sandwich when he steps into the lobby of his bank.  Someone&#xA;pushes in behind him and he drops his sandwich.  Before looking at the&#xA;rude person Henry blurts out, &amp;quot;You idiot.  What's the rush, fella?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man, in a long black coat and a hat pulled down over his brow,&#xA;turns, pulls a gun out of from the coat and points it at Henry.  &amp;quot;I&#xA;need to make a quick withdrawal. And you'll do just fine.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 2&lt;/strong&gt; The bank robber shoved Henry into the back of the green sedan, looked at the guy behind the wheel and said, &amp;quot;Drive.  We've got&#xA;about 1 minute head start.&amp;quot; The driver gunned the engine and Henry&#xA;slammed into the back seat then rolled into the floor before he could&#xA;brace himself.  The sound of sirens blared through the air and the&#xA;chase was on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 3&lt;/strong&gt; Back at the hideout, the driver asked the robber, &amp;quot;what we going to do with the dead-weight&amp;quot; and he jerked his thumb toward&#xA;Henry. &amp;quot;We'll drive out to the desert, kill him and dump him.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get Something Done&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really do this, you'll get something done.  You're brain will relax from all the overwhelming information.  Plus, you'll get the benefit to see where things work or dont' work very quickly in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&#xA;Good luck and get started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep on learning, keep on writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2020-07-15T13:04:37.997" LastActivityDate="2020-07-15T13:04:37.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17543" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-02T13:31:34.523" Score="5" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know if using &quot;It&quot; repetitively (for emphasis) in this context is okay grammatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TV has become the modern day baby sitter.  It is raising our children.  It is dictating the cultural narrative and shaping future society.  It is raising the bored inattentive child.  It is raising the consumer child. It is raising the aggressive child. It is raising the obese child. It is raising the misinformed and complacent child. It is raising the disenchanted child.  And what’s more, it is doing all this with our smiling acquiescence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13849" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T17:24:08.380" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T17:24:08.380" Title="Using Pronoun 'It' repetitvely for emphasis?" Tags="|style|grammar|emphasis|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10568" CreationDate="2015-06-02T13:46:21.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends how believable you want your story to be to someone who knows a little about science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many things in science where it is very difficult to say what is possible or what might exist elsewhere in the universe. If you said that there is another planet out there somewhere with creatures who have blue skin and breath ammonia, who is to say that this is not possible? We have a lot to learn yet about the biology of creatures here on Earth, to say what the biology of creatures on another planet might be like is pure speculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are other things, at least a few, where we can pretty conclusively say that we have categorized all possibilities. The list of elements is one of these. Elements are defined by their atomic number. Elements with all possible atomic numbers up to 116 (last I heard) have been discovered in nature or synthesized in the laboratory. So if you're going to propose a new element, it would have to have an atomic number higher than 116. Anything less than that and it's not a &quot;new element&quot;, it's a known element. But that's a problem as heavier elements do not occur in nature and are unstable. I recall reading years ago a theory that there might be heavier elements that are stable, I don't know enough physics to discuss the plausibility of such a theory, but you might be able to make something of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you told me, &quot;I have discovered a new element that comes between Copper and Zinc on the periodic table&quot; ... that's just not possible. Copper has atomic number 29 and Zinc is 30, and atomic numbers must be integers, and there just are no integers between 29 and 30.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could, I suppose, write a story in which the hero discovers that the periodic table is completely wrong, that that's not how elements work at all. How plausible you can make that depends on your creativity and skill as a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T13:46:21.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17545" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17550" CreationDate="2015-06-02T14:34:03.527" Score="1" ViewCount="168" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm referring to quotes like, &quot;Go ahead and make my day,&quot; or &quot;You want the truth? You can't handle the truth.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read that actors like them, because they are more likely to win prizes, and that they are good for box office sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the conventional wisdom regarding the assertion in the last paragraph? And is there an &quot;objective&quot; (scientific) way to determine how memorable a line is likely to be, or is this determined &quot;after the fact,&quot; somewhat at random? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T21:48:10.947" Title="What is the role of memorable lines in movies?" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17540" CreationDate="2015-06-02T14:43:42.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use the natural evolution of the firearm as the starting point. As a gunsmith he might be tempted to try to engineer a modern rifle. But in an army of flintlocks a springfield rifle would be devastating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So his first area might be to find some brass type material, that could be used to construct a percussion cap. So that a modern esque breech loading system could be developed. Each of the steps in developing that could be a part of the story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way for the steps to ring true, is to use the steps that actually took place in bringing gun technology to where it is now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it could be interesting to follow the path of him discovering that, so maybe initially he does attempt to construct something modern, but realises it is just impossible (after a few abortive attempts - that could result in a few dangerous explosions) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T14:43:42.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17543" CreationDate="2015-06-02T14:51:37.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see any problem with the grammar of this. It is simply a collection of short sentences. However (personally) I would try to shorten it, to make the a little more quick fire. keep the syllable count similar for each sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(though I'm not entirely sure the question falls under the Q&amp;amp;A style of stackexchange - but that's a different issue!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T14:51:37.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17545" CreationDate="2015-06-02T14:56:52.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't imagine there being a 'scientific' method of determining a memorable line. I would have thought it is much more of a marketing thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Equally it is about the writing, I'm sure a large percentage of quotable lines in films where thought to be good lines by the writers (and equally sure that a similar number of lines the writers thought were great were completely ignored by everyone else) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say it is very much an after the fact situation, depending on a lot of things. From the quality of the line, to who says it, how they deliver it, and how it is marketed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T14:56:52.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17540" CreationDate="2015-06-02T15:00:59.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's ignore the details and and focus on the methods of research and proofreading. You need three gun nuts, and two of them should be antique gun nuts. In the general case you need experts, and you need at least two or better three or four, specifically during the research phase you need someone who knows the subject well enough to answer all your questions, and even better if you have two experts with different backgrounds so you can get multiple views. you may find such folk at worldbuilding.se, the 1632 forum at baen's bar (or reading the grantville gazette), or the local shooting ranges and gun shops (maybe a texas antique store). Then for the second group you need some early readers (before you show it to your editor) who are knowledgeable enough in the field to be able to tell you when you put your foot in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T15:00:59.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17545" CreationDate="2015-06-02T15:04:14.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The motivation for a quotable line typically has a variety of origins, such as the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A thoughtful line that the screenwriter created, or a line by the original author that carried over into the screenplay.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An improvised line that the director or actor used at the time of shooting, perhaps under a tight shooting schedule that precluded &quot;fixing&quot; the line.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A planted line, usually by the producers, where they were seeking to introduce a phrase into the popular culture (there's a Futurama episode where the producers openly admitted their attempt to do this).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An actor's catch phrase that is introduced into the screenplay by the actor's personal scriptwriter, as part of the actor's contract. In this case, the catch phrase is part of the actor's personal marketing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the various ways in which a quote can originate, they can be said to vary from intentional attempts to introduce some manner of poignancy to a scene, to being utterly unintentional. Of course, unless the actor is completely candid, they might not be willing to admit that their quote, having entered the popular mainstream, was completely unintentional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as far as determining in advance the popularity of a quote, like anything in business, it is a crap shoot. One can attempt to play to their audience, but one cannot be certain that what they say, and how they say it, will resonate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T15:04:14.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17551" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17555" CreationDate="2015-06-02T15:59:19.567" Score="1" ViewCount="676" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm asking this because I wrote a novel with 40K words, but somehow I feel it would sell more, or at least be more like a &quot;novel&quot; if I add stuff until it's 50K (I checked on Amazon and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-Literature-Fiction/zgbs/books/17/ref=zg_bs_nav_b_1_b/185-2822791-3901357&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;most best-sellers&lt;/a&gt; are 60K+). Now, the stuff I'm adding isn't entirely unnecessary: they fix some plot holes and add some  background to the characters. Still, the novel reads just fine with the 40K.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is my novel more likely to sell/become popular if it has 50K words? Or it won't make any difference? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-06-02T16:07:03.200" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T15:43:28.660" Title="Is a novel with 50K words more likely to sell than one with 40K?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|novel|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17540" CreationDate="2015-06-02T16:14:15.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem that I can see is making the bullets. These have to be very precisely made for them to work effectively. Also, I would imagine that making the primer would not be a trivial task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have every tried reloading bullets, you would know that you have to be very precise and use accurate instruments, and that is when you are using already manufactured casings, projectiles, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was in your gunsmith's position, I would first look at ways of speeding up loading by doing what was actually done -- pre-packaging the gunpowder so it could be loaded more quickly and accurately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T16:14:15.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17551" CreationDate="2015-06-02T16:33:07.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't see that padding it out will make it sell better. It would put me off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A novel doesn't have to be long to sell well. Look at 'Of Mice and Men', 'A Christmas Carol', 'Animal Farm', etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T16:33:07.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17554" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17562" CreationDate="2015-06-02T17:46:57.057" Score="2" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a fictional story (could be considered science-fiction) about slightly primitive people. It is set in cold environment where a day cycle takes a whole year. Inspired by Antarctica, with the weather being more of Canada. The story also includes a cave network with groundwater heated by volcanic activity, and natural crystals that glow a soft blue light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of it (other than glowing crystal) could happen in a natural environment such as Earth. Although perhaps would be more understandable in an environment such as a make believe world. My only concern in setting the story in a make believe world is that it seems to me, unless done very well, the story would &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; unrealistic and be harder to get absorbed in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would this be more believable set on Earth or in another world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14025" LastEditorDisplayName="user14025" LastEditDate="2015-06-02T18:27:12.340" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T14:11:35.400" Title="Is a fictional story set in another world harder to get into?" Tags="|fiction|science-fiction|world-building|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17551" CreationDate="2015-06-02T18:31:28.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;40k is a good volume for a MG novel. YA is more like 60k. There are some questions here that give more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If two books are equal in everything else, a publisher will buy the book with the &quot;best length&quot;. But, as is more likely, if two books are different in everything including length, a publisher will buy the better book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if your book is good enough that a publisher will buy it, length won't decide them against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T18:31:28.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17545" CreationDate="2015-06-02T20:16:07.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back in the day, all the sitcoms had these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sandford &amp;amp; Son&lt;/strong&gt; : When Fred got into trouble he would clutch his heart and say, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm coming Elizabeth. This is the big one.&quot; (indicating a heart attack)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chico and the Man&lt;/strong&gt;: Chico, any time a person looked good or the situation was right, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Loooooookinnggggg Gooooddd!!!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good Times&lt;/strong&gt;:  Any time something would go his way, Jimmy JJ would slap his hands and say, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Kid dyn-oh-mite!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Differ't Strokes&lt;/strong&gt; : Little boy (Arnold) any time something would be going odd, would say, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Whatchoo talkin' 'bout Willis?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very few shows use these now.  Probably an indication of how effective they are now.&#xA;I think maybe these catch-phrases have burned out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T20:16:07.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17554" CreationDate="2015-06-02T20:16:59.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;ultimately it depends how how good your writing is! Some are able to very fluently create alternative worlds and places and have a natural ability to describe the nuances that matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So really it comes down to your skill as a writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then why do you need to specifically state where it is? Describe your world as a place that will have an earth feel to it, but with occasional details thrown in that will make the reader wonder... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that the first task is understanding your own ability to create that world, so maybe write some short pieces and develop your skill in that area. Get some feedback and go from there... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T20:16:59.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17428" CreationDate="2015-06-02T21:09:29.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend this book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16056974-the-hidden-tools-of-comedy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Hidden Tools of Comedy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T21:09:29.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17545" CreationDate="2015-06-02T21:48:10.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there was an objective way to determine how memorable a line is going to be, presumably all writers would run every line in their books through this formula to be sure they had some memorable lines. And writers would study the tinker with lines they are hoping to make memorable to optimize the formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there was a computer program you could run that would tell you the quality of a piece of writing in some truly objective sense ... I'm not sure if that would be good or bad, but if it existed presumably the general quality of writing would be much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T21:48:10.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17543" CreationDate="2015-06-02T23:31:21.490" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grammatically, this is correct. Stylistically, I think it would have better effect if you replaced &quot;it&quot; with &quot;TV&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;TV has become the modern day babysitter. TV is raising our children. TV is dictating the cultural narrative and shaping future society. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would make the &quot;it&quot; more clear and would hammer the point into your readers' heads: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;What's the modern day babysitter? TV! &#xA;What's raising our children? TV!&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is what you want readers to remember, not &quot;what is raising our children? It! But...what's 'it' again?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13938" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T23:31:21.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17554" CreationDate="2015-06-02T23:39:34.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm no professional writer but it depends on your target group for a young adult audience I would think to set it on earth despite some of the unrealistic parts&#xA;I don't know much of other audiences but I think the main thing is the target audience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14029" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T23:39:34.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17554" CreationDate="2015-06-03T00:26:55.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story set in another world is harder to get into as the differences between what we (the readers) experience compared to what happens to people on the other world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other answers are incorrect that it has to do with how good of a writer you are. What matters is how well the story you are writing connects to the reader. Plenty of fiction (mostly sci-fi) occur off earth, and plenty of those don't talk about or even mention earth. But the people, the emotions, the experiences are similar in fashion, though the environment is different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it like this: if you're writing about the Amazon river but have never been to it (like most people), it'll be a foreign environment. That doesn't mean that now it's harder to connect to...unless everything remains foreign. Because we can't connect to what we don't understand, and we don't understand what we don't know or see. So deliver something for the reader to experience, with familiarity in some fashion, and slowly expand from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11586" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T00:26:55.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17564" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17566" CreationDate="2015-06-03T06:42:41.033" Score="2" ViewCount="12929" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I am writing an event invite for a [Company Name] Christmas Beach Party, should the Beach Party be capitalized?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14037" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T10:16:54.597" Title="Do you capitalize common nouns (e.g. beach party) if they're part of an event name?" Tags="|grammar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17564" CreationDate="2015-06-03T09:55:42.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'd capitalize &quot;beach party&quot; if the entire phrase is a proper name, because it's an official event:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are invited to the WidgetCo Christmas Beach Party! This is being held across the street from the restaurant where we had last year's WidgetCo Christmas Karaoke Night and down the block from the inaugural WidgetCo Christmas Weenie Roast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're just talking about a general event which doesn't have a formal name, keep it lowercase:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are invited to the WidgetCo Christmas beach party! This is being held at the same place as last year's WidgetCo Halloween beach party, two sandbars over from the inaugural WidgetCo Arbor Day beach party. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T09:55:42.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17564" CreationDate="2015-06-03T10:16:54.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the title of an event there is certainly scope for using title case! i.e. capitalising the first letter of each word, since you're free from  articles, prepositions and conjunctions there isn't too much grey area to draw in confusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where there are conflicting or vague rules regarding such issues, my general approach is to go with how the end result looks and &lt;em&gt;feels&lt;/em&gt; Personally I would lean towards capitalising everything simply because it looks more pleasing. (and there is certainly leeway in the rules to allow for that) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T10:16:54.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17543" CreationDate="2015-06-03T12:21:58.827" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The name of this construction is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaphora_%28rhetoric%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;anaphora&lt;/a&gt; There are many examples on this wiki page to give you an idea. I agree with other answerers that the &amp;quot;It&amp;quot; can probably be replaced with something with a bit more punch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— Winston Churchill&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to look into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeugma&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;zeugma&lt;/a&gt; which may give the sentence a different effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Vicit pudorem libido timorem audacia rationem amentia.&lt;/em&gt; (Cicero, Pro Cluentio, VI.15)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Lust conquered shame; audacity, fear; madness, reason.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14042" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T12:21:58.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17514" CreationDate="2015-06-03T12:32:34.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different take: Personally I've always had grand 'ideas' floating around in my head for stories (and still do), but could never muster the motivation to see them to the end. I have begun writing my first novel but it turned out that a different strategy altogether seemed to work. One day and idea popped into my head and before trying to plan it all out I just started writing. Since then it has changed a lot, and I have found opportunities to incorporate my other ideas as I have progressed. Maybe instead of worrying about how to fit your ideas together, you can just start writing and see which ideas fall into the work naturally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14042" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T12:32:34.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17554" CreationDate="2015-06-03T14:11:35.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is no, having a slightly fantastic setting won't make your story harder to fall into, unless you do things that break your readers' willing suspension of disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than write a bunch of stuff about suspension of disbelief, I'll just direct you to this question from a few years back:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2730/what-breaks-suspension-of-disbelief&quot;&gt;What breaks suspension of disbelief?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is explain what you need to about your setting so readers understand what's going on, but leave your setting as the &lt;em&gt;backdrop&lt;/em&gt;. Don't spend too many words on it. People who choose to read science fiction stories know what they're getting into; they just need to know the rules of the fictional world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13978" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T14:11:35.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16095" CreationDate="2015-06-03T16:11:48.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would need to cite the fact that it's a new edition, purely because the page numbers might be different to the old edition. So that your reader can find the exact citation using your reference, you should always be as specific about which edition you're using as you can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the OWL at Purdue (my go-to site for MLA): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Subsequent Edition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cite the book as you normally would, but add the number of the edition after the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. &lt;em&gt;Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students.&lt;/em&gt; 3rd ed. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2004. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entire 'Works Cited: Books' guide is here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in your case, the reference would look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dawkins, Richard. &lt;em&gt;The Selfish Gene.&lt;/em&gt; 30th Anniversary ed. Oxford: OUP, 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13233" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T16:11:48.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17530" CreationDate="2015-06-04T15:00:28.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, an idea can't be copyrighted, only the expression of an idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several &quot;knockoffs&quot; of the game Monopoly. The basic idea is the same, except that they have different street names, rental amounts, color codes, and &quot;rulebooks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can have characters that are &quot;similar&quot; to others; just don't describe them in the same way as other people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-06-04T15:08:51.417" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T15:08:51.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17580" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-04T17:51:28.740" Score="3" ViewCount="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a friend &quot;publisher&quot; help with organizing and publishing my children's book through a self publishing company. We have no written contract. He was to help me for gratis as he learned the process of publishing a children's book. During the process he registered the copyright for my book with his name as the author and my name as a Pseudonym. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does this mean for me and my book and how do I fix it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was my concept, my text, my idea concepts for the illustrations, my money.  He basically negotiated and sent my book through the process of printing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14056" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T18:07:12.650" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T18:07:12.650" Title="Copywriting question, error by publisher" Tags="|copyright|self-publishing|legal|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-04T19:17:58.250" Score="8" ViewCount="601" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's one thing I always find impressive and moving when I see it in accounts of historical events or depicted well in fiction: gallows humour, when a person who is facing likely or certain death cracks a joke. I'd like to put a little of this in a story I'm writing, partly to give a (possibly last) glimpse of the more likeable side of a character who has not been acting admirably earlier in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't want the reader to laugh. At least not for more than a moment. Sorry, this is not a happy scene. I don't want to lose either the tension or the sadness of the characters' situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do people have any tips on how to pull this off, and/or examples of stories where it is done well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T10:55:14.873" Title="How to handle characters being funny in a dire situation without ruining the mood" Tags="|technique|characters|book-rec|humor|suspense|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17581" CreationDate="2015-06-04T19:42:41.257" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gallows humor, in my experience, can be greatly assisted by the word &lt;code&gt;wry&lt;/code&gt;. This can be used to indicate that the character is aware of the gravity of the situation but is still making a joke. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The executioner asked, &quot;Any last words?&quot; Alex smiled wryly and replied, [some joke]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else you can do is just not make the joke too silly or off topic, keeping the reader immersed in the situation. This can be accomplished by adding elements that show the suspense/gravity of the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Billy held his friend's cold hand. &quot;You were a good buddy,&quot; he said sadly. [more laments possibly]. He patted his friend's head and stood up. &quot;You know, you still owe me those fifty dollars.&quot; Billy walked away from the body with a last sorrowful glance over his shoulder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13938" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T19:42:41.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17580" CreationDate="2015-06-04T20:48:23.520" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three legal options that I can think of off the top of my head, they are to contest the copyright, sue for breach of contract, and report an Identity theft. There is a time limit on contesting the copyright, and breach of contract gets more muddled the longer you take; so I would recommend getting a good lawyer right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that he meant no harm, but if this is the case you still have a royal mess and a good lawyer will be invaluable in cleaning it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T20:48:23.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3669" CreationDate="2015-06-05T02:02:12.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frustrating. Im editing a friends 400+ Page dissertation, and it requires 6, perhaps 7 levels. Older versions of APA style defined more than 5 levels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I will revert to chapter headings using the old ALL CAPS, BOLD, CENTERED, for level 1.... If I have to force another, then the old Upper and Lower Case, Centered, Underlined might be pressed into service for level 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I'm not asserting this is approved practice, but rather contemplate forcing the issue, and banking on the hope that this won't be a problem. This is for submission of final revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14058" LastEditorUserId="14058" LastEditDate="2015-06-05T02:09:47.027" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T02:09:47.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17585" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-05T03:13:21.093" Score="6" ViewCount="1609" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that a problem that I run into quite often is the fact that I can't create names that sound real, but also have a nice ring so that they fit the character. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to come up with names that fit the setting and everything else? I've already attempted using the internet to no avail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14060" LastEditorUserId="40124" LastEditDate="2023-12-22T08:16:25.477" LastActivityDate="2023-12-22T08:16:25.477" Title="How can I create good character names?" Tags="|fiction|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-07-12T15:56:49.847" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17585" CreationDate="2015-06-05T05:27:46.573" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I start with either a last name or a first name. Which one I start from depends on which one the narrator uses to identify the character, because that is what the reader will read most often. Katniss Everdeen is Katniss first; Dr. Henry Jekyll is Dr. Jekyll first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this starting point, and the knowledge of the character's cultural background, I go through a list of first or last names from that culture. There are books and websites that list these. I have collected extensive lists from the web using a self-coded crawler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also educated myself on how sounds of names are perceived. The meaning of names, that some writers go by, is usually meaningless to a reader. Unless the meaning is obvious, as in Brewer or Shoemaker, the meaning is unknown to the reader and does not influence their perception of the character. What does, are the sounds of the name, and there is a small volume of literature on that, some by linguists, some by marketers specializing in brand name creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, with this knowledge of my character, of the &amp;quot;meaning&amp;quot; of the sounds of names and with whatever gut feel for language I have, I go through my list of names and weed out all the names that don't fit. I do this in a good text editor that allows grep search and replace. Usually there are certain first letters and name endings that I can exclude right from the start. Often there are also letters or letter combinations that I don't want in the name, so I delete all those names from my file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the names I go over one by one until I have either one clear winner left or a handful of contestants. This process takes a couple of days, because after some time I lose all feeling for names and have to do other things before I can come back to my list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I have a (few) first (or last) name(s), I do the same for the last (or first) name. The only difference is that I use search and replace to add the first name I found to every last name in my list and then go over and weed out the combinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the name of my protagonist first, then the love interest, then the antagonist and then the other characters in descending order of importance. I make sure that every character's name begins with a different letter from the alphabet and that the names sound and look clearly different. Sometimes one or more names are known to me for some reason, then I start with these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My fantasy names are usually real world names or real words from a foreign language or variations thereof, so I use the same process only with a different corpus. For place names I use lists of placenames from all over the world. Sometimes I translate these. I chose place names by meaning. My favourite place name is &amp;quot;Lost Boy River&amp;quot; (in the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="60280" LastEditDate="2023-12-21T20:10:02.080" LastActivityDate="2023-12-21T20:10:02.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17601" CreationDate="2015-06-05T07:21:19.217" Score="24" ViewCount="17347" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a project (for a game) that needs to have a strongly 1950s feel.  I, however, was born in the 1980s, so my writing has plenty of things that would sound out of place in the 1950s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I used the work &quot;backpack&quot; in a piece set in the 1940s, and people older than me thought it sounded odd.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=knapsack%2Cbackpack&amp;amp;year_start=1900&amp;amp;year_end=2008&quot;&gt;Google Ngrams agrees wholeheartedly.&lt;/a&gt;  I couldn't even think of an alternative word!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What can I do to make sure my writing wouldn't seem out of place in the 1950s?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I'm &lt;em&gt;not looking for slang&lt;/em&gt;.  Lists of era-specific slang are all over the internet, but peppering my writing with a bunch of slangy phrases won't do anything to get rid of my modern habits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14062" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T16:13:41.817" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T16:13:41.817" Title="What can I do to make my writing fit the 1950s?" Tags="|style|research|language|historical|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17589" CreationDate="2015-06-05T09:01:41.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My immediate thought is that this isn't a question about 1950's style, it is a question about our interpretation of 1950's style. (a background process in my brain is trying to remember the style of Fallout 3, which was of a similar period) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously a lot of it would depend on who it is that you're depicting. A group of gangsters are going to be considerably different than a group of politicians - in their speech, that is (or insert your own joke) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in saying that, formal conversation will feel a lot more 'old fashioned' so I would use slang very sparingly, maybe giving each character a few words that they can slip into conversations (or however it will work) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One source you could use, to get an idea of the language would be to look through letters to newspapers. It is mostly direct from the public so should be relatively informal, and you can choose your demographic by what paper you research from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastEditorUserId="13990" LastEditDate="2015-06-05T09:21:18.040" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T09:21:18.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17589" CreationDate="2015-06-05T13:07:16.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could find books written in the 1950s. Fiction books written during that time could help, to give an idea of how people spoke, how language was used, etc. Newspapers (as Michael B suggests) are a very good suggestion, but may be a bit dry. Letters would be much better, I think, and diaries could be very useful as well. You can also benefit from the research of others, and look at recent films and books set during that period, but any mistakes they made could be carried across into your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I suspect you've already answered your own question: &lt;code&gt;I used the word &quot;backpack&quot; in a piece set in the 1940s, and people older than me thought it sounded odd.&lt;/code&gt; Speak to people who lived through that period. Speak to members of your family, go to retirement home and ask if anyone would be willing to chat, ask your friends if they know someone who could talk with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better yet, just write, and get people from that era to review it later. Writing is the most important part; you can always edit it later to sound correct. Try not to get too bogged down in making it sound right until after the story's written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T13:07:16.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17589" CreationDate="2015-06-05T13:13:03.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I generally agree with the comments from Michael B, though I understand that the OP wants to describe details that would be real to someone that had lived in that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a starting point, research classic films that were both set and created within the 1950's, perhaps something by Hitchcock. You want to find directors that, being motivated to keep costs down, would focus upon depicting a simple, yet typical, backdrop for the actors. Watch for the little details that the actors perform without being scripted, such as how they handle equipment or address one another informally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To supplement the film depiction of 1950's life, newspapers and news reels would be useful for getting a sense of the topical issues that were important to people living in that era.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T13:13:03.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17585" CreationDate="2015-06-05T13:27:53.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would begin by looking at what the character does, either for a living, or in their spare time. Many modern surnames (and some first names) are based on occupation. For instance (black)Smith or tailor (Taylor). The second thing to look at is attributes describing the person long (tall), short, swift, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the time you have written a complete description of the person, several adjective-names should jump out at you. Choose the ones that create the best name while describing the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T13:27:53.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17589" CreationDate="2015-06-05T13:49:06.643" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that this is for a game and not for an original story or novel, I would pick a specific author from that actual time period --one with the feel I was looking for --and try to immerse myself in his or her work.  I find whenever I do that, I unconsciously (and fortunately temporarily) pick up speech patterns and phrases, whether I want to or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not always a good thing if you're trying to produce original work, but in the setting of a game, it should function more as a tribute than as a theft (and obviously you wouldn't be copying actual passages, just the overall feel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T13:49:06.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17581" CreationDate="2015-06-05T14:11:21.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like anything else, it won't work if you try to graft it on at the last moment.  It has to be true to the character and situation to not break your reader's suspension of disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making jokes in serious or tragic situations happens in real life all the time, so it can read as real if it's really something your character would do.  But if not, it's going to be jarring --it will feel like the author making a joke of the situation, not the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T14:11:21.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17597" CreationDate="2015-06-05T14:36:32.663" Score="9" ViewCount="5331" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does one collect and compile recipes for publication in an ethical way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some cohorts want me to help build a website of culinary recipes, and their plan for content is to rely entirely (initially at least) on data scraped from a competitor (whose web application is not particularly good). Putting SEO concerns completely aside, I can't go forward with such a plagiarist action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what alternative can I suggest to them? How does anyone collect and claim the right to print/upload recipes, whether for a cookbook or web application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Crowdsourcing is something to use, to be sure, but that suggestion was already shot down because it would mean a launch with no material, which presents no attraction for contributors in the first place.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14068" LastActivityDate="2022-12-15T18:45:14.053" Title="How to assemble recipes without plagiarism?" Tags="|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17596" CreationDate="2015-06-05T14:53:13.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a competitor with a poor web interface is not justification for plagiarism. However, it's clear that you understand this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To build your own library of recipes, seek used cookbooks that are so old that copyright no longer applies. Used book stores and thrift shops are a good source for this, as are online bidding sites like eBay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge with older recipes is that the cooking times and temperatures are not precise, having been written in mind of cooking atop a cast iron stovetop fueled with wood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, once you know the ingredients for a given recipe, then it's simply a matter of looking up the recommended cooking time and temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T14:53:13.753" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17589" CreationDate="2015-06-05T14:56:52.260" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an instructive comparison, look at Stephen King's description of the 1950s in his book &lt;em&gt;11/22/63&lt;/em&gt;, about a man who goes back from modern times to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination, but has to enter the era in 1958 and wait five years. King goes to great pains to describe differences between the present times and that era: it's about the way a root beer tastes, the stiff feel of new blue jeans, the smell of cars without catalytic converters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The differences may seem small, but they are striking, and they will be striking to modern readers. That said, nobody who was alive during the 1950s (or any other historical period) would be likely to remark on what to them would seem commonplace. Root beer tastes like root beer. New jeans feel like new jeans. Characters in your tale will not have the benefit of your own hindsight. Still, you're writing for modern readers, and unless you are talking about the unlikely situation King writes about, you're going to have to do something different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of what makes great historical fiction is not the attention to detail, but in the writer's ability to identify and illuminate the characters' attitudes &lt;em&gt;towards&lt;/em&gt; the details of their existence. You can't really have a character think, for example, how odd it is to sit in the front seat of a car going 70 miles an hour while not wearing a seat belt, but you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; tell how such an activity might make a character nervous. (I myself am old enough to remember feeling very vulnerable in such situations.) Or you might not want to describe a DA haircut or a poodle skirt out of the blue, but you could definitely describe a character's reaction to those (which would give you an organic entrée into describing them). Even unremarkable things can play to someone's world view: who did this character think he was, to wear a hoodlum haircut like that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, read items from the period. Novels, sure, but get hold of some newspapers and read them cover to cover. Look at the ads. See what people in the pictures seem to be thinking. A picture can tell you a lot about someone's attitudes, while displaying artifacts that might be usable in your fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T14:56:52.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17596" CreationDate="2015-06-05T15:07:55.890" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer. But it's my understanding that &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170713202851/https://paleomagazine.com/recipe-copyright/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recipes, in their barest form, cannot be copyrighted&lt;/a&gt;, as they are a description of a method of accomplishing something. What IS copyrightable is the specific text that expresses those instructions, as well as any accompanying images, etc. There may be other aspects of the way the recipe is organized that is copyrightable. Scraping a website, yielding identical text and images, will surely fall afoul of copyright law, if nothing else for the images alone. The directions of the recipes may be purely descriptive of a process or may be more creatively expressed; the creative ones will also trigger copyright protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, as I understand the laws, I can publish on my blog or in a cookbook any recipe I want, as long as I express it in my own words and use my own images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should consult with a lawyer regarding recent decisions on the copyright of data. For example, the Yellow Pages company often tried to copyright the contents of phone books to prevent competitors from producing similar listings. They've had mixed success. See, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/guides/database-rights-the-basics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; which addresses UK law and which suggests that databases, that is, collections of electronically-accessed data, are offered at least some copyright protections. This means that scraping a competitor's site might be illegal even if none of their content is individually copyrightable. I'm not up to date on the US laws or the laws in other jurisdictions on this matter. You could be on shaky grounds. The laws might be contradictory: it might be the case that simply making a database of public-domain works makes it difficult or impossible for others to do the same. Such is copyright law in this age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to build a collection of recipes is to curate the initial collection manually. No matter where you get the recipes, review each one, rewrite all the copy, test them to see that they work, adjust the language to account for regional differences (i.e. I hate it when a recipe calls for, eg, a &lt;em&gt;stick&lt;/em&gt; of butter... I have never seen butter sold in sticks.) Once you have a collection of recipes you've actually worked on, I am pretty sure all legal and ethical concerns would be alleviated.  As usual, the easy path is not the best path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-12-15T18:45:14.053" LastActivityDate="2022-12-15T18:45:14.053" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17596" CreationDate="2015-06-05T16:37:41.407" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I own quite a few cook books full of mouthwatering images that contain recipes that do not work. So as a father who has to  create tasty meals for a bunch of otherwise grumpy kids, I can only beg you to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Collect recipes from whereever you want. &lt;strong&gt;Cook them yourself&lt;/strong&gt;, and then publish the instructions as you have found them to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because that is what I expect from the &lt;em&gt;author&lt;/em&gt; of a cook book: that they don't just copy/paste recipes that they have never tried themselves, but that they &lt;em&gt;know how to cook&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;share their knowledge&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-05T16:44:50.587" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T16:44:50.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17589" CreationDate="2015-06-05T17:15:37.550" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since concern is not &lt;em&gt;adding&lt;/em&gt; fifties-relevant details (which can be found by research) but rather &lt;em&gt;omitting&lt;/em&gt; things that you take for granted and don't notice, but that wouldn't have been present in the 50's: Find two or three people who are old enough to remember the fifties, and have them proof-read your draft. Ask them to point out anything that feels anachronistic, or that breaks the illusion of your piece having been written in that era.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14072" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T17:15:37.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17596" CreationDate="2015-06-05T17:18:44.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume, because you have a direct competitor, that your recipes would be quite specialised, for example, focused on using peanuts or Indian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having bought a large number of cookbooks over time, I tend now to focus on particular series or 'brands'. One series we have about ten of is the 'Australian Woman's Weekly' because the instructions are clear, the pictures are good, the food tastes great and, most importantly, the recipes work. They have been tried out extensively. Even a cook like me can produce delicious food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copying someone else's site just isn't going to work. Following their recipes so that you can take appropriate photos and then re-writing the text might.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conducting a competition to get recipes can not only give you material for publication but can attract a committed audience. (Think about 'charity' recipe books where the people that contribute to them will buy multiple copies to give to others and spread the word.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T17:18:44.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17589" CreationDate="2015-06-05T19:27:15.423" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your reader's intuition about the word &quot;backpack&quot; seems right on; that word appears to have &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=backpack%2Crucksack%2Cknapsack%2Cbookbag&amp;amp;year_start=1800&amp;amp;year_end=2000&amp;amp;corpus=15&amp;amp;smoothing=3&amp;amp;share=&amp;amp;direct_url=t1%3B%2Cbackpack%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Crucksack%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cknapsack%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cbookbag%3B%2Cc0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;skyrocketed in popularity after the 1960s:&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AkCyf.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use ngrams and a thesaurus to identify words that didn't seem popular, or to verify which of several words were more popular during a certain period. Note, however, that ngrams is difficult to interpret at times, because of textual errors, the inability to distinguish between certain kinds of usage (e.g. a noun may have been around for a long time, but the verb form of that noun may be new).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main drawback, obviously, is that you have to check words manually. I don't know of a tool that can check a word list for anachronisms automatically. I suspect such a tool wouldn't be hard to make, given the number of corpuses available now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T19:27:15.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17604" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17605" CreationDate="2015-06-05T19:31:10.307" Score="5" ViewCount="7610" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I realised I needed a ghost story for a class I found out that I don't know what the conventions of this genre are. Conversation with a colleague led to agreement that there needs to be a ghost or a supernatural event, but we weren't sure about other common features. For example, although the ending is usually bad (for someone) does it always end in a death? Are they usually third person narratives? Are most ghost stories Gothic i.e. medieval setting, lots of blood, death, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not asking for examples of ghost stories -- I have read a few, though they are not my favourite genre -- but instead for ideas about what you think makes a good ghost story. (Can we take it that suspense and an element of fear are givens?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2019-06-07T09:23:25.670" LastActivityDate="2019-09-29T17:24:24.300" Title="What are conventions of ghost stories?" Tags="|genre|paranormal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17604" CreationDate="2015-06-05T20:26:43.907" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mystery.  Ghost stories saturate themselve in the unknown.  Your lead characters may believe in a factual world, but that belief will be challenged as the story progresses.  From the first unexplainable event, their beliefs will be attacked by ever increasing, ever more obvious and undeniable, events which serve to beat down their confidence in their own understanding of how the world works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lucky ones will leave your story shattered; still alive be struggling to recapture their faith in a harmless reality.  Nightmares and doubt will plague them for the rest of their days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ghost stories must involve the afterlife (or at least appear to involve the afterlife).  They usually have something unsettling to say about what is waiting for us on the other side of the grave.  Happy endings are very rare in ghost stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they are fertile ground for character growth and transformation.  Seeing a person when they are scared is more revealing than almost any other emotion.  So as you write your characters through their terror, take liberties to illuminate every dark secret and anxiety out of their past.  Use their histories to justify who lives and who dies, and try to leave your reader with a shiver in their spine and no hope for restful slumber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T20:26:43.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17589" CreationDate="2015-06-05T22:19:02.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you already have some sense for which words seem iffy, another good source for checking this type of stuff is the online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. The main downside is the paywall if you're not affiliated with a subscribing institution. For every word the OED gives you a list of example usage throughout various time periods, generally starting with earliest known written usage. Combine it with ngram for more precision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example entry for the word &quot;backpack&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;back-pack, n.&#xA;  Etymology:  back- comb. form 1a(c), pack n.1 1.&#xA;  Chiefly U.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A pack carried on the back; spec. one consisting of a folded parachute. Also attrib.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1914   Outing June 312/1   By folding a blanket..it is convenient as a back-pack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1921   Outing Mar. 254/1   How about that little back-pack tent you are going to have for your trip?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1930   C. Dixon Parachuting 160 (caption)    The Back Pack is usually used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1946   W. F. Burbidge From Balloon to Bomber iii. 45   One type [of parachute] is carried on the airman's lap..a ‘back pack’ fastens below the shoulders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1966   Economist 23 July 353/1   The back-pack manoeuvering unit that was to have been tried out by Gemini 9.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1969   Times 22 July (Moon Rep.) p. i/3   The mass of the back-pack does have some effect on inertia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Derivatives&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;back-pack v. intr., to carry a pack on the back: used esp. of hiking, camping, etc. Also trans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1956   D. Leechman Native Tribes Canada 37   Whatever was not carried on the toboggans had to be backpacked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;back-packer   n.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1946   Trail &amp;amp; Timberline June 88/1 (D.A.),   The deplorable housing situation could never really affect a certain group of enthusiasts known as back-packers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;back-packing n.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1916   H. Kephart Camping &amp;amp; Woodcraft I. 143   Back-packing is the cheapest possible way to spend one's vacation in the wilderness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1940   W. S. Gilkison Peaks, Packs xiii. 102   Swagging—or, if you prefer it, back-packing—is more or less an essential part of every climbing trip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1961   Times 18 July 11/6   Back-packing is the only means of transport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the word isn't actually that anachronistic, rather it looks like wide-spread usage hadn't yet caught on by the 50s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14079" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T22:19:02.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17589" CreationDate="2015-06-06T00:12:09.930" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you really want to make something feel right for the era, you need to also capture the real morality and values of the era.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's fatal to feel of the era, especially if your test is for people who lived in the era, to depict characters from historical eras somehow magically have the ethical and moral sensibilities of present. My grandmother is 103 years old and very often when we discuss something in the past some moral matter will come up and she will say, &quot;People thought differently about that back then,&quot; or &quot;most people didn't know any better.&quot; My grandmother could instantly peg a character as out of place anytime in America from the early 1920s to the early 1990s based on their moral stances alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is extremely difficult to create relatable characters, especially protagonist who hold the mainstream or even advance moral views of their era, when we have today have evolved past that morality.  But the failure to do so will never create a highly believable character, especially if your target audience is people who lived in the time or have even studied it in any detail. I spot moral anachronism constantly, and they often yank me out of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As an aside, I think the best example I have seen of modern writers working very hard to capture the true feel of an era can be seen in the Cohen's Brother's remake of &quot;True Grit&quot;. They pretty much nailed the manners, language and even the cadence of speech of the 1870s. But a lot of people complain that can't follow the dialog.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have to deal with modern taboos such as the &quot;N&quot;-word. It's one of our strongest contemporary taboos, one of the few remaining that will get you ejected from polite society in an instant for using it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that wasn't always the case and that causes problems for writing dialog for a historically accurate story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the the 19th century, it wasn't considered an insult, unless applied to a white person in which case it had the same connotation as calling someone in Europe a &quot;peasant.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see this writings in the Civil War. . Fredrick Douglas seems to have been the person who first fixed it as a pejorative but most people regardless of their views on slavery or civil rights didn't see it as such. Even some abolitionist used the word, apparently unconsciously and those who weren't ardent abolitionist gave its use no thought at all. Reading their unedited writings is wince inducing even if they were people literally fighting and dying specifically to end slavery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even well up until the 1950s, many people white and black did think much of it. It was not until the 1960s that it became universally regarded as a pejorative and not till the 1970s taboo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, accurately depicting the historical frequency of the use of &quot;N&quot;-word in a story set in any era prior to the late 1960s, such that it would meet the test of someone from the era would, likely destroy the ability of the contemporary readers to enjoy or remain immersed in the story because every violation of the taboo would yank them out of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be one of those people. I can't even tolerate the new &quot;soft-R&quot; version much liked by Rap artist. I literally flinch when I hear even the(largely) socially acceptable version because such a deep moral revulsion was drilled into me against the &quot;hard R&quot; version in the 70s when the taboo was being consciously setup in the culture. I can't comfortably watch or listen to any media that contains either version, it at all but the most minimal frequency and every use of it yanks me out of the story or drive me from the room. Can't even watch documentaries sometimes and even original historical sources are unpleasant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I probably miss some good stories out their sometimes, but a taboo is an emotional safe guard, and I will never lose that one. No author, no matter how skilled, could write a story with an historically accurate frequency of the N-word, that I could possibly read without constantly controlling my since of revulsion. I would never enjoy the story or seek it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All artist eventual encounter limitations to their arts, either in themselves, or their audience. But if you really want to nail the feel of an era, to the extent it will pass the test of someone like my grandmother, you'd have to go that extreme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14078" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T00:12:09.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12777" CreationDate="2015-06-06T18:56:59.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overcoming fear IS a very crucial ability in any global business. Co-Authors can be spoilers, so one should make a competent choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started to look for co-authors on those works which benefit from different perspectives. Especially, when the personalities I successfully supply are starting to become predictable or one-dimensional. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that it is smart to co-author / collaborate on secondary projects. So write your own main sci-fi book, just as you like it to be. But consider writing some short stories in the same world along with fellow authors to produce an anthology (short-story collection) which MAY give readers a much more atmospheric and much more versatile view of your world and protagonists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My last goal was to find a female author of a younger generation who writes a variant to my 'Shadowrun - Family Affairs' from the perspective of the daughter whom my own protagonist had saved with his suicide-mission. So far I failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among Germans it should be superfluous, as our laws supersede it anyway, the legal part must be proper, this may include payment. But as real authors separate themselves from the frauds and criminals anyway, mentioning such SHOULD not be necessary among anybody worth placing the own name besides a copyright symbol! He He the rune of our ilk! The magick-sigil of our profession? Sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14096" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T18:56:59.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17614" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-06T20:19:18.450" Score="11" ViewCount="881" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, 'breaking into the business' is expensive in terms of time.  If I have a decent product should I put in the effort, or is self-publishing (e.g. with Amazon) enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13268" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T15:26:34.583" Title="I am an unestablished author with a decent book. Should I publish online, or try to find a 'real' publisher?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17615" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-06T21:51:57.307" Score="14" ViewCount="6690" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have already typed at least 6-7 chapters of this book I've been focused on, but what I want to ask is, is it wise to post what I have so far online for feedback? Or am I just setting myself up for someone to potentially come across my work and steal it for themselves, and if/when my book is complete and published, would you or others already be too familiar with how the book will turn out and not bother with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, my book, which I have two sequels in mind for (those are for another time), will have supernatural beings in it, but no vampiric creatures of any kind (they will be non-existent in my book/series' universe, but will include three species of werewolves in the overall series I have in mind (two separate, the former called Rougarou or Roug for short, and Dire Hounds for the latter and one hybrid of the two which I plan on naming &quot;Lybrid&quot;). The first book will be mostly &quot;grounded&quot; but will be &quot;peppered&quot; with &quot;unexplained occurrences&quot; (how much I'm not sure yet) throughout. Oh! And my main character will be mute and communicate primarily in American Sign Language (though to be honest I have no idea how to portray it in the book, as I am writing using Third Person Multiple POV), while also suffering from a degree of amnesia (for how long I have not decided just yet, but probably until the end of this sequel idea).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never posted any of my work online before, let alone for advice/feedback, so should I do it? Or am I just being overly cautious?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking about not including a prologue. Is that a good idea? Bad idea? Or is it down to personal preference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14012" LastEditorUserId="19804" LastEditDate="2018-04-19T18:48:55.403" LastActivityDate="2020-03-27T00:08:16.510" Title="Is it a bad idea to publish individual chapters of my book idea online for feedback?" Tags="|publishing|novel|feedback|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17614" CreationDate="2015-06-06T22:54:45.107" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you good at marketing? A publisher has professionals that will do everything in their power to make your book a success. Can you do that as well as them? And a publisher doesn't only market your book, they also find a great cover artist (and instruct him to create a good cover), deal with the printer, manage the logistics of getting paper and electronic copies in stores, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You might not be able to look at your own book from the distance necessary to evaluate it truthfully. Maybe you are not yet ready to publish and need to write a few more  books to learn the craft or an able editor to work with you to perfect the current one. Contrary to popular belief, the editorial process leads to good books, while most self-published novels are [vulgar word for &quot;not good&quot;].&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if you could do 1 and 2, they would eat up your writing time. Maybe you'd rather write your next book instead of wasting your creative energy on what an industry was created to do for you. Even the rare self-publishing successes such as Amanda Hocking pay others to do the non-writing for them. Elle Casey can &quot;self-publish&quot; because her husband does the managing for her.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Self-published success is rare. It can work for established authors but newcomers that succeed in self-publishing are the exception.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-03-07T09:22:28.303" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T09:22:28.303" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17614" CreationDate="2015-06-07T00:26:59.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;KB Spangler self published as did Lee and Miller. Let's look at what they did and why it worked. KB Spangler had a web comic This was her primary source of advertising for her books. Her books are a little odd (although not as odd as her comic), but very good. She scared mainline publishers. She had a source of fans. I believe she has published her fourth book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lee and Miller have their own publishing company (SRM). They started it because their regular publisher wasn't very good and or did not want to publish some of the stuff they wrote. Now they are with Baen and from what I can tell sales are up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are probably better off following What's advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T00:26:59.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17614" CreationDate="2015-06-07T02:07:34.627" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the various posts and articles on this hot debate, the general advice is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First try to traditionally publish, they take care of everything and put the book though the wringer to make it a more salable product, distribute through channels you can't access and reach a great lot more readers than you ever could. Plus, there is a stronger validation and status symbol as a traditionally published author. In exchange of their expertise, however, they grant the author very low royalties' rates. It also may take a couple of years before you see the book in print, and longer before they deem fit to release any royalties to you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If after up to a year you receive only negative, or non existent, replies, re-take a good critical look at your book, the problem may be there. If you are still convinced that the ms is fine as is and should have been picked for publication, then self-publish.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a backlist of 5 books or more and an established readership, the choice becomes harder and that 70% self-publishing royalty rate has never been so alluring. Some authors choose an exclusive side, but most use both resources and may use self-publishing for out of print books, un-commercial novellas, novel's companions, or books from the rejected pile.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, although some sources argue that there are bridges between the 2 camps, it is rarely true. If you self-publish you have used-up your First Publications Rights, so the book may only be taken up by a traditional publisher if sales are stellar. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your second question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As I understand it, 'breaking into the business' is expensive in terms of time. If I have a decent product should I put in the effort, or is self-publishing (e.g. with Amazon) enough?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some self-important authors clamor, rant, argue, campaign and generally foam-at-the-mouth with marketing pro-activity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are so convinced that their book is a marvel that they flog that poor horse until it is nothing but bones. Marketing  is not a cure-all; if your project doesn't sell well, fold and repeat. As a writer your job is to write and marketing is a very far fourth or fifth priority. Steven King says it takes about 1 million edited words, or about 10 books to start to master writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, instead of being a quixotic character fighting giants to be heard over the general silence their mediocrity engenders, burn that pile of dung and write us a fresh one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some non-fiction books can gain great exposure with an aggressive marketing campaign, but less so for novels. If you are a fiction writer, your job is to write.  So, don't go losing time shoving your product down unto reticent throats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, some effort on your part is warranted for self-published works. A self-published author is a jack-of-all-trades entrepreneur. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes quite some timer to self-edit, to format the manuscript in different e-formats, to design the cover art….&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to Marketing, without going over board you need at least some. So, use social networks like Facebook, create an author web-page, blog from time to time…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this was helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT 1, the cover...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking of book covers, I can’t emphasize its importance enough. Many authors who put great time into writing, editing and marketing their books literally shoot themselves in the foot with a substandard amateurish book cover. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People do judge books by their covers. It is one of the great difference between self-published and traditional publishing.  That  is also why traditional Houses normally do not allow the author to have any creative control over the cover design. It is just too damn important, much more important than the book content as far as the publisher is concerned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cover is what sells, not the content! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or as  David Aldridge rephrases: &quot;The cover gets it off the shelf, the first part of the content makes the sale.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The content is there to generate a satisfied reader, a fan base, repeat business and recommendations. But the decision to buy is mostly based on looks, i.e. the first impression: the book cover, jacket hook, synopsis, and sometimes a couple of paragraphs. Even an established writer and famous publishing house only marginally help make the decision to buy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, either buy a professionally made cover art, or learn to use Photoshop or Illustrator like a pro. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N.B. obviously, since most kindle book covers are black and white, this doesn't apply as much in that case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT 2, from comments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any backing for the &quot;Some trad. houses even tend to reject new manuscripts by previously self-published authors,(...)&quot; part? It feels like a rumour more than a fact, to me&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I edited it out since some feel that unsourced material is worthless. also some other books say the reverse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;my original post was &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Some traditional houses even tend to reject new manuscripts by previously self-published begining or early carrer authors, so you may have to send the manuscript through an alias to start with a clean slate with those traditional publishers.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read it somewhere and it also makes sense given my understanding of human nature. Since i can't find the source and some posters disagree, i deleted that though i beleive it applies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You rolled back the &quot;over 90% of the profits&quot; edit - do you have a source for THAT number? Because again, from personal experience, 90% isn't a good number&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I beleive that Over 90% of sales is a good approximation that illustrates that the publishers take most of the money. Yet, given that several people disagree with that approximation and perfer a vague statement, i edited it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you prefer vagueness over approximation, then the publishers take an arm and a leg, demand a pirate’s ransom, get the lion’s share and ride the gravy train while the author gets pin money, chicken feed, or a gnat's eyelash worth of royalties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My personal experience is that there's no trouble going from self-pubbed to trade pubbed, so in the absence of any authority to the contrary, I feel like we should delete that line. Thoughts? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the traditional publishers versus self-published rivalry, or lack of thereof, I feel that it depends. Human beings are subjective and very judgy. It is like dating, and judging someone using internet dating over the real thing, some will think there is something wrong with that person, else why would he/she use online services. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the present manuscript is judged only on its own merit, then yes it is a product and there is no issue as to its provenance. However, if it is the author who is evaluated by an agent, a publishing editor, or the likes, who is aiming to establish a long term relationship, or building up name recognition, then yes I believe it greatly matters. The Q may arise, if they chose self-publishing before, that there is something wrong with their writings, or something else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes that attitude may be slowly changing, but we are biased and the image of that horrendous vanity-press book that an emaciated nervous wreck of a peddling author is trying to shame us into buying is still haunting our collective minds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if the majority of opinions say that there is no problem going back and forth between the two, I am glad to offer a different perspective that could potentially be of use to some. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I tried to be relatively objective in this A. I personally wouldn’t use traditional publishers, not only because of the meager royalties but because of time. None of us is getting younger and I am not going to wait 2-3 years after finishing a book to see it published, by then I would have written other books and moved on to other projects. &lt;strong&gt;That industry is a dinosaur scheduled for extinction.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T19:33:23.867" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T19:33:23.867" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17620" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-07T03:12:44.453" Score="2" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you self-publish a version of a book, and then edit it, can you still traditionally publish it offering First Publishing Rights? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially I am asking if a partly re-writen draft is it considered a new book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(practically i am asking if you can e-publish your book to test the waters, while continuing editing and improving it, awaiting responses from the &quot;ice-age slow&quot; traditional publishers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the version sent to the publisher is similar, the additional re-writing that is often required by the editor should still further change the “new” book from its original self-published “draft” to the final print version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is a re-written or strongly edited work an original one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2015-06-09T02:28:31.537" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T11:46:27.493" Title="manuscript new versions and First Publishing Rights?" Tags="|publishing|editing|copyright|self-publishing|originality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17615" CreationDate="2015-06-07T03:18:39.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a sci-fi, fantasy writer you are lucky to be in the minority of writers that are supported by other aficionados and even sometimes by published authors mentorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think the potential gain far outweighs the risks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is an automatic copyright , you can always prove ownership with your original computer files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2015-06-07T04:44:02.353" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T04:44:02.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17615" CreationDate="2015-06-07T09:52:42.383" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been posting &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/authors/alexandro-chen/works/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;my stuff&lt;/a&gt; online for years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things I've noticed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your idea isn't as awesome as you think, so people aren't likely to steal it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe your idea is awesome, but people can't see it (someone once told me that some people can't recognize a good story even if it bites them in the butt).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, your idea is awesome, but people know that it's yours and they rather come up with something original themselves (or else they will be afraid to get caught).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantages on the other hand are way more. You get to improve not only the grammar of your novel but the plot, pacing, characterization, descriptions, and things that you would have never spotted yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice is. Go on. Post it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T09:52:42.383" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17623" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17628" CreationDate="2015-06-07T13:46:00.277" Score="5" ViewCount="655" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most stories have a protagonist that undergoes a change of at least one character trait from Type A to Type B. For instance, a character might go from being timid in the beginning to assertive or aggressive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But are there stories where a character goes from being timid in the beginning to overly aggressive in the middle, to &quot;responsibly&quot; (and less) aggressive in the end? (For instance, Thelma and Louise would have ended differently if the women had reined in their newly found aggressiveness.) What is an example of such a story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:28:02.520" Title="Can a character arc &quot;overshoot&quot; and then revert?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17623" CreationDate="2015-06-07T16:58:08.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may not be quite what you're looking for but there is a Marvel comic book story similar to this. In the comic, Spider-man and Storm meet Rogue, the girl who steals people's abilities by touching them. At first, Rogue is scared of her powers, but she then steals Storm's powers and becomes extremely power-hungry and destructive, before finally realizing what she did and giving back the powers, presumable becoming more reserved in the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13938" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T16:58:08.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10309" CreationDate="2015-06-07T17:52:37.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO: A script is verbal language only. It's WHAT is said. The screenplay is HOW the script is said. It's all the things that lend to how a script plays out on screen, from location to mood to staging and lighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14105" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T17:52:37.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17623" CreationDate="2015-06-07T17:53:55.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The classic &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYnsDs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flowers For Algernon - amazon link&lt;/a&gt; by Daniel Keyes is a great example of this type of thing.&#xA;The main character is mentally challenged, becomes extremely smart and then reverts to his old self again.  Along the way there is a lot of learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that book the transformation of the character draws a lot of questions out about how other people are affected by a person who becomes succesful and much more&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T15:28:02.520" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:28:02.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17623" CreationDate="2015-06-07T19:16:52.203" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible, as the other answerers have given examples.  However, it requires more care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are exploring a balance between two character traits, the method the character uses to about their journey becomes more important than the journey itself.  If your character goes from one extreme archetype to another, the story is a clearcut one of &quot;this archetype is better than the other, as found out by the character.&quot;  Instead, if the character backs off from one extreme to settle in a balance between them, the message is &quot;neither extreme is ideal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter message is tricky.  It's trivial to argue that there is a balance to be struck between timidness and aggressiveness, but it is hard for such a story to resound with readers because the correct balance between the extremes for the reader is, by necessity, very different from that of the character.  &lt;strong&gt;It is not the balance of extremes that is important, but an exploration of how that balance is achieved.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader will need to be shown how the character perceives the world and how it perceives the balance that needs to be struck.  The reader will need to be shown how the character acts to reach that balance.  The story of two timid women turning lawless, before eventually blunting their sharp edges against the long arm of the law and returning to simplicity is a very different story than the story of two timid women turning lawless, before developing self awareness and questioning their actions.  Likewise, these are also very different stories from two timid women turning lawless before doing a statistical cost/benefit ratio and deciding that opening a bakery provided a better ROI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, essential to these books will be giving the reader a sense that the character will remain balanced long after the last page of the book.  That way the reader can continue learning from the character long after the dust cover is closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14106" LastEditorUserId="14106" LastEditDate="2015-06-07T19:25:55.757" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T19:25:55.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17623" CreationDate="2015-06-08T01:05:39.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you don't mean the character returns to their original timidity, rather to an &quot;older and wiser&quot; state. As such the structure seems something like a Hegelian dialectic (thesis/antithesis/synthesis or abstract/negative/concrete) played out by a single character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read Chuck Palahniuk's novel, but the film &lt;em&gt;Fight Club&lt;/em&gt; runs along these general lines. The extreme aggression, shall we say, outlives its productive usefulness and eventually is tamed by a kind of assimilation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hamlet is by nature passive. He kills Polonius and drives Ophelia to suicide with his wild aggression, then reins it in a bit (albeit not a lot) in order to focus on his real target. Of course he's not &quot;responsibly&quot; anything at the very end, he's dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michael Moorcock's various &quot;eternal champion&quot; characters often follow a pattern of being spurred by events from passivity or naivety into an act of excessive aggression, leading to a lengthy period of regret. Of these, both Elric of Melniboné and John Daker / Erekosë receive a classic external &quot;push to action&quot; early on, and destroy entire civilisations before reaching more serene states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could perhaps say that Bathsheba Everdene follows a path of this sort in &lt;em&gt;Far From The Madding Crowd&lt;/em&gt; by Thomas Hardy. She's not quite &lt;em&gt;timid&lt;/em&gt; initially, but she's less directly assertive until her circumstances change. Then she does become more headstrong and rash until disasters result and she finds a more even keel. I suppose her final state isn't really a reversion, more of a transcendence of her previous progression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an example where the protagonist ends up more passive than they started, consider &lt;em&gt;Nineteen Eighty-Four&lt;/em&gt; by George Orwell. Here there's no synthesis, Winston Smith's recently-found passion and activity are simply beaten out of him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The various authors here haven't necessarily set out &lt;em&gt;explicitly&lt;/em&gt; to write a character overshooting and then reverting, although where they learn lessons this is no accident. The characters follow something like the pattern you're looking for, but the importance of this fact to the structures of the stories varies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8477" LastEditorUserId="8477" LastEditDate="2015-06-08T01:37:44.180" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T01:37:44.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17630" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-08T05:44:07.967" Score="4" ViewCount="1743" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to cite some information from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.genome.gov/11006943&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Human Genome Project FAQ&lt;/a&gt; regarding the cost of the project (see the &quot;How much did the Human Genome Project cost U.S. taxpayers?&quot; header), however I'm unsure of how to find the various details required for citation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is the author?&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Human Genome Project is large and had many cooperate. Even if you just look at the top of the linked page, you see many names: National Human Genome Research Institute; National Institutes of Health; Department of Health and Human Services; Office of Science; and U.S. Department of Energy. Are these the authors?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should the title of the citation be?&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it customary to use the title of the webpage: &quot;Human Genome Project Completion: Frequently Asked Questions&quot;? I would rather use something with more context, like the heading beneath which the information was found (see the next bullet point).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I indicate where on the page the information was located?&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As mentioned in the question, the information was under &quot;How much did the Human Genome Project cost U.S. taxpayers?&quot; header. Traditional citations let you use page numbers for direction but that's not an option here. Could that header be included in the title of the citation somehow? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What year should it be based?&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The last updated date at the bottom of the page reads October 2010. The Human Genome Project itself completed in 2003.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose a simple form of answering this question would be to provide an example of how you'd cite this. The more complicated would be to explain the conventions behind each of these questions and their associated decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd appreciate any help you can give, thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14112" LastEditorUserId="14112" LastEditDate="2015-06-08T13:12:13.313" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T22:54:03.287" Title="How to cite information from the Human Genome Project (website)?" Tags="|citations|websites|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17614" CreationDate="2015-06-08T07:28:20.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a business like any other and obviously the more contacts you have and publicity and financial backing the further you will go regardless of self published or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go into a few bookstores and look at the sheer volume of works pumped out every month and then look online, there are just so many thousands of titles being marketed constantly so in the scheme of things your book no matter how good it is will only have its 5 minutes of fame, if that. Even then it very easily may not because you are not special, there are just too many books out there. If you are someone famous or already well read you may do alright or you could be an unknown and get lucky. Overall like in the movie industry, there are millions of out of work actors, thousands of working poor actors and a select few good or bad actors monopolizing the profit in an industry that has many middlemen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publisher compensation is different depending on POD or offset printing and then type of distribution. If you set yourself up as your own publisher and go down the route of POD expect no more than 2.00 per title unit. If you go offset expect to buy in bulk and be able to offload those books to stores with big discounts and returns. Once you understand the business side coupled with the volume turn over in industry the rose coloured glasses will soon be replaced by the hard nosed adopted principles of a working publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I had a highly respected publisher offer to publish my book only if I paid for layout and printing, so times are tough. They had closed their books to any new authors because of lack of money and yet they are a well established independent publisher. The owner told me it makes no difference whether you are your own publisher or not regarding getting reviews or sales. Distribution and marketing is the main thing and from my limited but now quite reasonable introduction to the industry, I'd have to agree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14113" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T07:28:20.480" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17581" CreationDate="2015-06-08T10:19:26.793" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When Socrates was about to drink hemlock, he asked, &quot;May I pour out a libation to the gods?&quot; And they told him &quot;no&quot;, which is dark on another level. He had no respect for them or their pantheon, but they still took everything so seriously. After all, Socrates was dying because of their faith and their unwillingness to tolerate skepticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be wrong for not wanting your joke to cause laughter. That will differ, depending on the individual reader. I laughed out loud when I first heard about Socrates' joke, but it didn't lessen the impact of his death. In fact, it created a contrast, which made the impact greater. His death was so tragic because he was the only one who realized how absurd it was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no formula for a perfect dying joke, but I might suggest a few elements: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deadpan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defiance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Darkness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14115" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T10:19:26.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17614" CreationDate="2015-06-08T14:18:08.323" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a very simple answer to this question:  &lt;strong&gt;Self-publish if-and-only-if you excel at sales and marketing&lt;/strong&gt;, and are willing to relentlessly promote your book (including book tours, interviews, author talks and so forth) and/or if your book would be a natural add-on to your pre-existing business (as a motivational speaker, for example).  Self-publishing success stories result more often from exceptional salesmanship than exceptional writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Self-promotion skills would also dramatically increase your success as traditionally published author, but your margins per book will be several magnitudes larger if you self-publish --assuming you don't go through a vanity press and/or do POD.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you expect the primary reason that people will buy your book will be the sheer quality of the writing, and not the force of your personality (or your skill at networking), then DO NOT self-publish.  You should be aware, however, that your book will probably need to be beyond excellent to even make it out of a publisher's slush pile (&quot;decent&quot; will not make the cut).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-06-09T03:38:49.147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T03:38:49.147" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-08T17:27:26.313" Score="2" ViewCount="1134" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it considered fair use to have screenshots, or character likenesses, in a book as a descriptor or reference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, when describing time-travelers, can I use a few screenshots from Doctor Who? Or, when describing a vampire, can I used Bela Lugosi or some other actor in character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that law varies from country to country (I'm in Brazil BTW), but I couldn't find anything regarding this for my country, so answers regarding US or UK law (since they are the copyright owner on those examples) would suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14117" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T03:56:51.583" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T10:54:27.130" Title="Copyright of a TV series when used as reference?" Tags="|copyright|legal|artwork|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17620" CreationDate="2015-06-08T20:50:04.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One you publish it you cant &quot;update&quot; the book per say. But you can make an updated edition. For example a v2 if you will. Republishing something technically means its a new book .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12773" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T20:50:04.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17638" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17654" CreationDate="2015-06-08T23:33:23.260" Score="-1" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;So looking at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bendigo.vic.gov.au/About_the_City/The_Organisation/Employment/Current_vacancies/Web_Development_Officer#.VXYkOc-qpBc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This Job&lt;/a&gt; and under &quot;Your Checklist&quot; it has 3 different uploads, &lt;em&gt;Cover Letter&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Resume&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Statements addressing the Key Selection Criteria&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;now to my understanding the &lt;em&gt;Statements addressing the Key Selection Criteria&lt;/em&gt; is the &lt;em&gt;Cover Letter&lt;/em&gt; and a well written Cover Letter explains how you fit with what the employer is looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the difference? and how do i write &lt;em&gt;Statements addressing the Key Selection Criteria&lt;/em&gt; in general (using the link above as an example)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: i am not applying for the job linked above as it is too far away however i figured i should get this cleared up in case if i veer come across it again&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T17:11:23.000" Title="How do you write a &quot;Statements addressing the Key Selection Criteria&quot;?" Tags="|business-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17640" CreationDate="2015-06-09T01:49:06.583" Score="4" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a character that, by design, quickly jumps between emotions. To put it into human terms, I have pictured scenes where he will, literally, within the span of a sentence, go from hysterically laughing to bored/work-mode. It's meant to capture his mental instability but I am having problems conveying that in a way that is satisfying to the reader, yet also conveys the fact that he hops around on the emotional spectrum a lot. A simple example would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;C1 doubled over cackling maniacally at the scene in front of him. The&#xA;  fires of hell had nothing on the carnage unfolding around him. &quot;I&#xA;  thought you said you were going to bail them out,&quot; C2 muttered in&#xA;  exasperation. C1 straightened up. &quot;I get it. Business before&#xA;  pleasure.&quot; His exasperation matched C2's as he stepped into the fray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For whatever reason, that doesn't seem like enough. It's like I can either capture his quick shifts in emotion or explain it out to the reader and it feels like neither accomplish the goal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13430" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-05-24T14:37:50.810" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T14:37:50.810" Title="Dealing with quick shifts in emotion" Tags="|style|technique|emotions|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17639" CreationDate="2015-06-09T02:28:23.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because a shift in expression or body language happens quickly doesn't mean you have to &lt;em&gt;describe&lt;/em&gt; it quickly. You could expand the above to something more descriptive. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C1 doubled over cackling maniacally at the scene in front of him. The fires of hell had nothing on the carnage unfolding around him. His stance was relaxed, one knee on a cracked cornerstone. The light flickered around him, illuminating the broken stone church and the satisfied expression on C1's face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I thought you said you were going to bail them out,&amp;quot; C2 muttered in exasperation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C1 straightened up, surprised to hear the remark. He turned to regard C2, planting both feet square on the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I get it. Business before pleasure.&amp;quot; His expression a match for C1's look of grim determination, C2 stepped into the fray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the reader, it's clear that this all takes place in a few seconds, but examining the scene more closely gives a better picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course, I've invented details that likely have nothing to do with your story to make a point, but this is just an example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T04:52:57.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17635" CreationDate="2015-06-09T02:47:23.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In The US this would be obvious fair use (even for commercial use), but this does not matter as you are in Brazil. There is a long history in international law that the copyright law of where you are not the copyright law that the original was produced under applies. Fair Use and Fair Dealing do not apply everywhere, and if I remember correctly Brazil has no equivalent (I could be wrong, I know for sure several South American countries were on the list, and I think Brazil was one, but I don't remember).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T02:47:23.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-09T04:00:15.727" Score="5" ViewCount="5171" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the occasional use of inner voice, &lt;em&gt;Italics&lt;/em&gt; are usually recommended. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I have a protagonist who is speaking with himself all the time, and &lt;em&gt;Italics&lt;/em&gt; use quickly becomes tiring and distracting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw that in that case, like in Donaldson’s chronicles of Thomas Covenant, no &lt;em&gt;italics&lt;/em&gt; are used, there is only a space, and no quote marks, to indicate the inner thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, my protagonist’s inner voice also comments during regular dialogue, and if the inner voice is not tagged it could become very confusing, and if it is it would be different from the rest of the scenes where an untagged inner voice is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, another complication is that an external supernatural character also speaks to him in his head and that needs tagging too. Using CAPS or &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt; is not a practical solution and &lt;em&gt;italics&lt;/em&gt; may already be used for the dialogues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any recommendations for this dilema?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This question may already have an answer here:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17141/direct-thoughts&quot;&gt;Direct thoughts&lt;/a&gt; 4 answers&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the link, but not they do not really offer a solution the gist is to use italics or some sort of tag followed by some «he said” or “I thought to myself”. That is dumb, cumbersome, and clunky, of course it is “he thought” since it is inner dialogue. as i reader i hate that, specially if it is often used, as in my case it would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With no specific Tag it would get confusing during dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;C1 said ”It is a beautiful day isn’t it?” while vaguely indicating the sky. Pompous ass!&#xA;  “Yes, it is a fine day for early spring” C2 amicably replied while debating the merits of stuffing him with his own umbrella.&#xA;  He smiled at him, pretending to watch the sky. I hope you drown in a sudden outpour, you dimwit. they stood on the entrance of…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only viable recommendation is the first-person POV, but that is not good for sales as most novels are in the 3d person. The goal is to write for a broad audience and not for some literati minority. I don’t think that that original question was answered either, it may be that there are no solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the Q &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8832/punctuating-thoughts&quot;&gt;Punctuating Thoughts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is in favor of marking inner voice the same as dialogue, but that would become impossibly confusing in a dialogue with a voice over inner dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2d EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17141/direct-thoughts&quot;&gt;Direct thoughts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;@micapam answered  &quot;The habit of italicising characters' thoughts should be left where it belongs, in the pre-New Wave history of science fiction, and cheap pulp fiction thrillers. Unless you are writing 'young adult' or juvenile fiction, I would strongly advise you to continue to avoid italics, punctuation or any other clunky markers to separate chracters' thoughts from the enclosing narrative.”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  @ Lauren Ipsum  If the character's thoughts are really dialogue, or a monologue, you do have to set it off. I personally prefer italics […]If you're worried about overdoing italics because you're using them for telepathy and for thoughts, for example, then rework your passages with thoughts so they're more narration and less direct monologues. In any case, using italics for emphasis is entirely fine, no matter what else you use italics for.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  @ what Do not use italics when a character is thinking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very sorry if I am wasting time, splitting hairs, but I am not really satisfied with the answers, my main problem is one of &lt;strong&gt;volume&lt;/strong&gt;. Low frequency inner thoughts can be set in many different ways without detracting from the reading. This particular story is full of inner toughts, including during dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that no marking is very confusing during dialogue, obvious marks like italics or quotes used too frequently detract from the narrative dream, and reworking the passages to make them narration misses the whole point of the inner dialogue and critical commentary on the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For telepathy, since it is less frequent, yes I can use different options, but the problem is for the main character. I am aware that there may not be any ideal solutions, and that it is based on author’s preference, but is there any solution to the dilemma?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I hate “he thought”, or worse “i thought to myself” tags, are they really necessary? in the 1th person they are redundant, and in the 3d they seem unnecessary since it is a direct voice in the present set in a 3d voice past. So my question is also dependent on avoiding using “he silently thought” type of tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see that in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10686/how-do-you-write-a-characters-internal-monologue&quot;&gt;How do you write a character&amp;#39;s internal monologue?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;@what “Overall, marking up thoughts with italics feels like an amateurish device to me (…) the distinction between thought and non-thought is unmistakeable without italics, just by the grammar of the sentences and the explicit statement of &quot;I think/tought&quot;. Without italics (as markup for thoughts – or shouting) the text appears more elegant and of higher literary quality.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;AND&lt;/strong&gt;  As you can see, Collins uses italics for some few thoughts, but not for others. In fact the whole novel, told in the first person, consists of the interior monologue of the protagonist, Katniss. The italic parts within this interior monologue appear to be more outward directed (what Katniss imagines she might have said), while the non-italic parts are everything else that goes on in Katniss' brain: what she thinks to herself.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Here is a third quote from Collins, where this distinction becomes more apparent: again the unspoken words are directed from a speaker to a listener, but here it is not Katniss who &quot;speaks&quot; them in her mind, instead she imagines hearing them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the only potential solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2018-03-29T09:19:11.757" Title="How to format multiple inner voices, differentiating the text from dialogue? and omnipresent inner voice" Tags="|style|formatting|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17642" CreationDate="2015-06-09T05:05:04.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using first person might work best for a situation like this. You'd be able to easily convey inner thoughts, use quotation marks for strictly dialog, and have the option to format intruding other &quot;inner&quot; voices differently...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I approached the burnt-out shell of the stone building, I thought it looked like the fires of hell had consumed it. &lt;em&gt;You don't know what hell is like,&lt;/em&gt; a voice in my head thought. I shook my head to clear it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...or as vague thoughts: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I approached the burnt-out shell of the stone building, I thought it looked like the fires of hell had consumed it. As if I had any idea what hell was like! &lt;em&gt;Why did I think that?&lt;/em&gt; I wondered, confused. I shook my head to clear it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T05:05:04.227" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17663" CreationDate="2015-06-08T15:23:44.617" Score="8" ViewCount="1762" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a writer, it is difficult to help your readers hold two dissonant ideas in their heads. This can occur when the situation you are describing does not match well with the lived experience of your readers. For example, it is the common experience of most people that they identify strongly with their biological sex. Males usually identify as men and females usually identify as women. And yet, when writing about transgendered persons, it may be necessary to refer to events that meet two criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The event occurred when the transgendered person presented the&#xA;opposite gender identity from that which they currently identify&#xA;with, and    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this switch of genders is not relevant to the event being described or the goals the writer has for relating that event.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this poses an important question: How can we write in a way that is both sensitive to the transgendered person, and yet clear to our readers so as not to bring about dissonance when none is necessary? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of the sensitive approach is that of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.glaad.org/about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GLAAD&lt;/a&gt;. They have published a tip sheet / brief style guide for journalists reporting on Caitlyn Jenner's recent transition. For example, GLAAD suggests:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DO avoid male pronouns and Caitlyn's prior name, even when referring to events in her past. For example, &quot;Prior to her transition, Caitlyn Jenner won the gold medal in the men's decathlon at the Summer Olympics held in Montreal in 1976.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this projection of a female pronoun into the past to describe events occurring when the transgendered person's public identity was that of a man, is a sensitive usage of pronouns. It respects the identity that Jenner has now chosen for herself. I believe that I understand the motivation for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This usage, however, is, at least to me, confusing. For example, an essay that seems to follow this style guide closely is &lt;a href=&quot;http://wapo.st/1FyQHbM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;I went to church with Bruce Jenner. Here’s what Caitlyn Jenner taught me about Jesus.&quot; from The Washington Post.&lt;/a&gt; In the essay, the author refers to an event that happened when Jenner's public presentation of gender identity was as a man, i.e. at that time Jenner was Bruce Jenner, and the author chose to use Jenner's current presentation of gender identity, i.e. Jenner is Caitlyn Jenner, for selecting a pronoun, even though the lack of gender continuity seems non-germane to the goals of the author: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here, on the set of a reality-TV show and a family home, I began to have conversations with the celebrity we now know as Caitlyn Jenner before the youth group gathering. We would make small talk as she microwaved a giant plate of spaghetti. Students dropped cupcakes in her pool, and she was stellar enough to tell me not to worry about it. I would later watch her scoop it out of the pool herself. It was a great experience and a formative time for me. I even met my wife here as she volunteered for the youth group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this usage seems to unnecessarily highlight the gender transition and draw to mind cognitive dissonance when it does not seem necessary to do so. (Perhaps, I am wrong and dissonance is part of the point as it will ask the reader to evaluate their stance on gender issues.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so, to repeat the question: How can we write in a way that is both sensitive to the transgendered person, and yet clear to our readers so as not to bring about dissonance when none is necessary? Any guidance is appreciated. (And, hopefully, this is an appropriate forum to ask for it!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14121" OwnerDisplayName="Nathan VanHoudnos" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-06-09T16:10:16.417" LastActivityDate="2020-10-09T20:32:15.970" Title="How to write about transgender issues while avoiding cognitive dissonance?" Tags="|style|grammar|gender|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17642" CreationDate="2015-06-09T06:48:01.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an excerpt from my answer at &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17141/direct-thoughts&quot;&gt;Direct thoughts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have gone through the contemporary English language fiction I own and have found that in the vast majority of novels the thoughts of the protagonist are printed in roman type (not italicized), while outside voices the protagonist hears in his head are printed in italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use italics for:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;utterances that are not verbal (e.g. telepathy, communication implant)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;»Right now, that's all I know, but we'll keep you informed as we can. That is all.«&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Weapons status?&lt;/em&gt; Van snapped across the shipnet to Lieutenant Michael.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Tenty-one torps left, ser.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Thanks Weapons.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (L. E. Modesitt, Jr., &lt;em&gt;The Ethos Effect&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;not use&lt;/em&gt; italics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;when a character is thinking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;»We'd be able to [...] do what we pleased.«&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And not what your father tells you to, I thought to myself.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (Kim Stanley Robinson, &lt;em&gt;The Wild Shore&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T19:57:33.280" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17646" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17651" CreationDate="2015-06-09T07:42:36.433" Score="4" ViewCount="597" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be a silly question but I'm always a little nervous of doing my research. I'm toying with the idea of writing a crime story, several members of my family love detective stories and the idea appeals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This raises a concern, obviously in order to write decent fiction the author must do a reasonable amount of research. But what are the best methods to research into some less than savory topics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't imagine that simply opening my search engine of choice and looking for ways to murder people without leaving DNA evidence is an ideal life decision...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can amateur writers get the information they need to create a well rounded story without going into academic papers (which are often very complex) or veering off into darker parts of the internet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8373" LastActivityDate="2015-10-24T10:44:39.047" Title="How to google the ungoogleable?" Tags="|research|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17646" CreationDate="2015-06-09T08:11:34.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you commit the perfect crime? By finding the solution in a book or on the net? Maybe. More likely you are a creative genius and think up what no police officer has thought of before. Writing the perfect crime novel is the same: you need some basic information about the evidence your criminal wants to avoid, but beyond that you certainly don't want to copy anything from anywhere. You want to be original, and to be original you have to invent it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding the basic information is easy. You don't even have to go to any &quot;dark places&quot; or a research library. Google explained to me in a matter of minutes,  that you are basically dripping DNA and leaving it behind cannot be avoided. That's all you need to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, the solution is obvious. If you cannot avoid leaving your DNA, you have two options: either you hide your DNA in a lot of other DNA (by murdering in a well-frequented place); or you never are where the murder happens (by murdering from a distance). How you do one or the other, you'll have to &lt;strong&gt;make up&lt;/strong&gt; by using the creativity that makes you a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are worried about the NSA informing the FBI when they analyse the data they got from Google, just use Qwant or another non-US search engine that does not store your search behavior and does not set any cookies. No one will know what you searched for, unless you are already on their list and they tap your internet connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-09T12:10:14.087" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T12:10:14.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17642" CreationDate="2015-06-09T09:20:54.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important thing you need to establish is a consistency of approach. Decide on a way to introduce a voice, reinforce it a couple of times and then get on with writing. The important part here is showing the reader what you're conveying, rather than blindly sticking to prescribed style. (if every writer always stuck to the prescribed style, there would be considerably less great literature)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logically, you need to have some way to convey to the reader that the voice has started and stopped (and you need to do that in a way that doesn't stand out, and offend the eyes!) The reader needs to be able to instantly recognise who is saying what, at which point it will become an unconscious task and the reader will hear a different voice as they read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for each voice you wish to convey have a different way to contain it, and maybe a different style to what is said. So the internal voice could be a more timid questioning language, while the supernatural character could be much more forceful and direct in the language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.&gt; So maybe for the supernatural character you could put them on a new line. Perhaps start that line with a space (or some other character '&gt;' for instance) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For mid-dialogue thoughts, 'a single quote would sufficiently distinguish the thought from the rest of the sentence' you could even introduce multiple inner thoughts with different characters  ...ellipsis would work too, for instance... all on the same line. @@though you probably want to keep it subtle, so as not to offend the readers eyes@@ &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important part to remember is that good writers know how, and when, to bend - and occasionally break - the rules of grammar in order to convey the story they want to tell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make language work for the story you're telling, rather than allowing yourself to be held hostage by it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T09:20:54.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17620" CreationDate="2015-06-09T11:46:27.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, is a re-written or strongly edited work an original one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost certainly not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason publishers care about first rights is that very few people are going to buy a book they've already read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By putting something on the Internet, you're effectively exercising your worldwide first rights -- anyone anywhere can read it, after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be a lot of differences and improvements between the first draft of a novel and the final version that goes to print (or e-print), but most of the time they're clearly the same basic book. Unless you make &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; extensive changes, I doubt that publishers will be very happy with you. If the two versions of the story were written by different authors, could one of them plausibly sue the other for copyright infringement? If a reader read both, would they go 'hang on, I've seen this before...'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want critique, you should be fine posting your stuff on closed writing forums (I'm pretty sure we've got a list of some of those on this site somewhere), or you could find a writing group in your meatspace location (I would 100% recommend this). If you want to 'test the waters', you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be safe putting the first few chapters of your novel online and maybe starting a blog discussing worldbuilding type stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you post your whole manuscript online, expect to be rejected out of hand by publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(There are exceptions, of course, but you probably &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; the writer of the next &lt;em&gt;Fifty Shades of Grey&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5765" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T11:46:27.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17646" CreationDate="2015-06-09T12:49:33.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I agree with @what sometimes I'm not sure it is so clear cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are deeper, darker areas of research than the good old fashioned murder, I'm reasonably sure I wouldn't have any issue googling around for that sort of thing. However I have had occasion when I've thought 'I really don't want this showing up on my browser / google history!' At that point it largely becomes a technical exercise that relies heavily on your level of paranoia! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're concerned about something showing up in your browser history, there's always private browsing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your concern is about your ISP / government agencies / google et al know what you're searching for, then you should spend a little time researching &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.torproject.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tor&lt;/a&gt;. Which will give you the ability to search for the things you need anonymously (the basic is that you download a special browser, and use that) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T12:49:33.253" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17644" CreationDate="2015-06-09T13:33:05.617" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My immediate thought is that you don't need to shepherd the reader, people are aware of the concept of transgender, we live in a society that is open enough to be able to have conversations about that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal approach would be to simply respect the gender that the person attached to themselves at those times. If you're talking about a scene in the time of Bruce Jenner then the pronouns are masculine, if the scene is Caitlyn then they are feminine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is more insensitive when we twist ourselves in knots trying to be sensitive. Be pragmatic and open about the context. People are aware enough of how gender works to be able to follow the story you're telling. try not to distract them from that by being awkwardly sensitive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T13:33:05.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17646" CreationDate="2015-06-09T16:28:32.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;About twenty years ago I was looking for a poison for a play. In the university library was a book listing dangerous chemicals and their properties. I searched through the list until I found a common (found in just about any university laboratory and any plastics factory) chemical that disolves invisibly in hot water (mixed with instant coffee) and attacks the central nervous system. The one thing I 'fudged' was whether it was tasteless or not -- it appears nobody had tried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I share some of your concerns about telling the reader things they may not have thought of. Firstly, I know how to make a number of explosives from common chemicals. For example, making the mixture the IRA used for so many years in car bombs is cheap and easy. Should I share this knowledge in a book? I'm not sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, one day I had an idea for a simple, inexpensive way for a terrorist organisation to disable the entire railway system in the UK. The result would not only be economic chaos, but the death toll would be high because of all the people scrambling to use cars. Should I publish that in a story? I think not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T16:28:32.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17638" CreationDate="2015-06-09T17:11:23.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your cover letter is a brief, less than one A4 page, summary of why you should get the job. The statements addressing criteria need to cover, in detail, exactly what they set out. The CV sets out, in list form, relevant information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T17:11:23.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17665" CreationDate="2015-06-09T22:49:04.790" Score="2" ViewCount="519" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I improve my creative writing skills? I have many ideas for short stories but I feel as if my writing is very slow paced and not sophisticated enough. How can I integrate literary techniques into my writing smoothly without them appearing to be just &quot;placed&quot; there? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14130" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-28T08:15:02.510" LastActivityDate="2018-04-28T08:15:02.510" Title="How can I improve my writing's pacing and sophistication?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|short-story|pacing|learning|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17656" CreationDate="2015-06-09T23:29:12.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intuitivejournal.com/practice-automatic-writing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;automatic writing&lt;/a&gt; and journaling, specifically with &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1585421464&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Artist's Way&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;I find that both of these techniques allow me to open up my creativity and get directly to the root of what I'm trying to write. &#xA;Additionally, when stuck, I will visualize what I want to write, and then write descriptions of what I'm looking (seeing in my imagination). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13997" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T23:29:12.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17646" CreationDate="2015-06-10T10:56:03.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;i might not answer your question, but i think i understand you. I had a similar problem. How to do it? How to write it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I done these things to support my research:&#xA;1) My good friend is police officer and love good foot and drink. I told him what i want to do and asked him tell me what things i need to have in my pocket when i am going to search a body as an detective.&#xA;I even played Role Play game in real time as a detective character to try it.&#xA;I asked him what things police do first when they are catching someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Information from source to inderstand the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there is the other side:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Think like master villan. I literraly commited crime, but only on paper. Watched films about catching murderers, dark movies, not horors, like Zodiac, Silence of Lambs, i read Millenimu triology to understand how to think on a paper. Sherlock Holmes was my personal favorite material to read and look at. It is commercional, but those plots i good. Movies and books where author need you to think it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Make alter ego. This is not simple. But in book, i am working on now i need to use some alter egos. So i created them. In my mind, real one. And trying situations where they will be functional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope, it will help a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for my english.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T10:56:03.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17551" CreationDate="2015-06-10T15:28:45.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since @what's answer and your comment clarified that it is neither MG nor YA, 40k is way closer to a novella than a novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A manuscript standard length is about 100k; the general range is 80k-120k. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes some best-sellers may be short, but the author name can help sell a thin book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it does depend on genre too, in some genres 60K may be the norm, while in others 150k-200k may be more common. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally if I am hesitating to buy a few similar books, I’ll decide based on width to get the most “bangs for my bucks”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, size matters :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NB:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Some great novels are created when 2 smilingly different ideas are merged. So maybe you could develop another concept to novella length and intertwine it with this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2015-06-10T15:43:28.660" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T15:43:28.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17656" CreationDate="2015-06-10T16:37:43.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, slow-paced and unsophisticated aren't necessarily bad qualities for a story.  You need to value your own writer's voice --otherwise you're likely to end up sounding like a poor imitation of someone else.  There are many technically proficient writers whose work is derivative, trendy and forgettable.  If the underlying story is strong, having a idiosyncratic personal style becomes a positive rather than a negative --it distinguishes you from the crowd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pace:&lt;/strong&gt; If your work is overly slow-paced, it probably just needs to be edited more rigorously.  Wait until you're done with all the writing, and then go back through and remove anything that's boring or that doesn't serve the overall narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sophistication:&lt;/strong&gt; If you have a specific technique you'd like to pick up, you'll need to practice it until it is enough a part of you that you can deploy it naturally, and as needed (versus sticking it in where it doesn't belong).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T16:37:43.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17656" CreationDate="2015-06-10T17:39:22.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Pace&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go thru your text, preferably while writing it (to avoid extra work), remove everything and anything that does not make the story work better. Rewrite anything that is longer and wordier than is useful. Once you have done that, the story should have reached the optimal pacing for it. Only real way to be too slow is to have useless text, look for that and remove it, and you do not need to worry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, reality is more complex and what is useful and useless will vary on a case by case basis, but the general idea is simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sophistication&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not worth worrying (separately). The best level of sophistication is the one needed to tell the story with the fewest words. If a method allows to tell the story more efficiently, use it. If it doesn't, it is useless and you should ignore it. Being sophisticated is kind of cool, gets nice comments from critics and so on, but critics do not really buy that many books. Ordinary readers are interested about the story. There is no real value adding sophistication to it, &lt;strong&gt;unless&lt;/strong&gt; it actually makes the story better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is actually something that is best learned with experience. Once you gain experience as a writer, your stories become more sophisticated and the level of sophistication in your writing will rise organically to match. That is the correct order. Trying to learn cool techniques and then making the stories match will result in losing your natural voice and generally waste time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your mileage does vary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is really no one true answer for matters of personal writing style. And, to be perfectly honest, I even exaggerated my own position on this. I did this because I figured what you really needed was a different perspective on the matter, so you can find your own solution, not a ready answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So take with a bucket of salt!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T17:39:22.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17644" CreationDate="2015-06-10T18:50:54.550" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without getting into social commentary, it seems to me that it's practically impossible to talk about the life of a transgender person without getting into the sort of paradoxical or at least confusing statements that you describe. If you say &amp;quot;Caitlyn Jenner ... she won a gold medal in the men's decathlon ...&amp;quot;, this creates the pretty obvious anomaly of how a &amp;quot;she&amp;quot; could win the &amp;quot;men's&amp;quot; decathlon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose you could say that the same sort of paradox could come up with many life changes, and we typically resolve them by referring to the person by the &amp;quot;status&amp;quot; they held at the time the event occurred, with explanations of how and when that changed if necessary. To take a trivial example: If I am talking about the life of a gray-haired old man, and I tell you about something that happened when he went to elementary school 70 years ago, I don't say, &amp;quot;The gray-haired old man entered the school room ...&amp;quot; I say &amp;quot;The little boy entered the school room ...&amp;quot;, because that's what he was then. Or likewise, if I was discussing the life of someone who immigrated to the U.S. from another country, I surely would not write, &amp;quot;So-and-so, a citizen of Austria, ran for governor of California&amp;quot;, if he was not a citizen of Austria at the time that he ran. That would just create confusion, and arguably be simply false. I might say &amp;quot;a former citizen of Austria&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What name to use for someone who has changed their name can be problematic. Note this is not just an issue for transgender persons. Many non-transgender people have changed their names. I don't know of any good general rule there. If I was talking about someone who had changed his name, and the old name was relevant to the point, of course I'd have to use the old name. Like if I said, &amp;quot;Eric Jones found that anti-Semitism was so bad that many companies refused to hire him the instant they saw his name on a job application&amp;quot;, such a statement would be baffling unless you knew that at the time he went by the name &amp;quot;Isaac Cohen&amp;quot;. Or if I was quoting news stories or letters about a person, I might have to use the old name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if you're talking about the person's sex-change operations, it's not like any of this is going to slip by unnoticed. If a reader really said, &amp;quot;Wait, you say that Bruce Jenner had a sex-change operation and is now a woman, but now all of a sudden you're referring to him as 'she'? How did he become a 'she'? And who is this Caitlyn person who has suddenly appeared? Where did she come from? Is that his sister? I'm confused&amp;quot;, well, obviously such a reader has completely missed the point of the narrative. I think you have to give the reader some credit for ability to comprehend what you're saying, or why are you even bothering to write this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I'm not sure that &amp;quot;cognitive dissonance&amp;quot; is really the right term here. I understand that to mean the psychological stress caused by trying to hold contradictory beliefs simultaneously, like someone on the one hand being a committed racist but at the same time believing that his black neighbor Joe is a pleasant and intelligent person. The only potential I see for cognitive dissonance here is if someone on the one hand believes that Jenner is a man because he still has XY chromosomes, but on the other hand simultaneously believes that Jenner is a woman because she has been surgically altered to look like a woman. (Note how I subtly shifted the pronouns there to match the two cases ...) If someone believes that Jenner is now unquestionably a woman, or if someone believes that Jenner is still a man, than that person has no CG on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="47087" LastEditDate="2020-10-09T20:32:15.970" LastActivityDate="2020-10-09T20:32:15.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17639" CreationDate="2015-06-10T18:51:12.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is tricky, and it depends on your genre as well as how you want this character to be perceived by the reader. You could, for example, just describe the emotion: C1 was happy, a bird flew across the sky and C1 became indescribably sad. Weeping he spotted his shoelace and his tears became those of rage. Etc. This would work if you were in the comedy genre or trying to be funny. I think a character like this would be quite good for a farcical piece of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer given by Neil Fein is inescapable, in the sense that you will have to take up more time describing things that aren't adequately described yet. It is true that the reader will know that the emotion changed quickly, but if you take a long time describing this, you will lose some of the psychological effect in the reader. The less time it takes to get an idea of the rapid shift, the more rapid it will seem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a quick and easy answer, which is relatively genre-neutral, is to explicitly negate the previous emotion and replace it. So: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;C1 doubled over cackling maniacally at the scene in front of him. The fires of hell had nothing on the carnage unfolding around him. &quot;I thought you said you were going to bail them out,&quot; C2 muttered in exasperation. C1's cackling suddenly died. He straightened up. His brows lowered in grim determination and he nodded. &quot;I get it. Business before pleasure.&quot; As he marched into the fray a bird flew across the sky and his determination melted into indescribable sorrow. He began crying.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the word 'cackling' is repeated, as is the word 'determination'.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8367" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T18:51:12.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17656" CreationDate="2015-06-10T19:02:19.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have lots of ideas for short stories. The way you get better is to WRITE THEM. Absolutely do NOT think about 'literary techniques'. Really good writers use literary techniques (the theory of which gets very fancy, using words like paraklausithyron, hysteron proteron, etc.) unconsciously. Really bad writers go out to write something 'literary' using 'techniques'. Just write your stories down in the most direct way you can. If you think one scene should come next but find yourself thinking about a different scene instead, write the one you are thinking about (you can change the order later). It is definitely true that the quality of your work could be improved, it is true for everyone. The way you improve your work is this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write. The best material comes from experience. That doesn't invalidate genre fiction. If you have ideas for fantasy or sci fi, write them. If you are not sure which idea to pick out of many, pick the one that comes from experience. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take a break (a week give or take) then come back to the work and decide for yourself what works and what doesn't work. Ask WHY in both cases. Learn as much as you can. Try to rewrite it, make it better. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read other writers you admire who write like you wish you could, about things you are interested in. Learn from them. Copy, steal. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat forever. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Finally -- you explicitly mentioned a problem with slow pacing. The way to fix this is to watch very well plotted films --- The Last Unicorn, The Matrix (only the first one), The Incredibles, Citizen Kane --- and notice very carefully how little time the films waste on transitions. The VERY MOMENT something new can happen, it does.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8367" LastEditorUserId="8367" LastEditDate="2015-06-11T23:08:47.653" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T23:08:47.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17635" CreationDate="2015-06-10T19:29:12.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is tangential because it is about U.S. law and not Brazilian law, but maybe it will be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get an exhaustive list of court cases on U.S. &quot;fair use&quot; law here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://copyright.gov/fair-use/fair-index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://copyright.gov/fair-use/fair-index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I browsed through them trying to find something directly relevant, but I was rather surprised to find that I couldn't find quite the case you're talking about. Maybe this is considered so obviously settled law that it hasn't come to court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, criteria for qualifying for &quot;fair use&quot; are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did your copying hurt the market for the original work? That is, is your copying such that people are likely to buy your copy rather than the original? (Remember, copyright is all about PROPERTY rights, your right to make money from your property. People often have the mistaken idea that it is about protecting your reputation as the author of the work and that sort of thing. No.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much of the work was copied? If you copy one sentence from a 300-page novel, you're on much firmer footing than if you copy 299 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Was the use &quot;transformative&quot;? That is, did you just copy what somebody else did, or have you &quot;transformed&quot; it in some way, such as using it for a purpose different from the original purpose, modifying it, parodying it, criticizing it, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Was the use for purpose of education, research, or criticism? Quoting someone else as part of a literary review or a movie review is given wider latitude than simply incorporating someone else's work into your own.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, but I'd think that including a screen grab as part of a review would be about as safe as it gets on a fair use defense. The cases I read through included several where someone made a documentary about the history of film and included scenes from movies that they wanted to comment on, and these were consistently ruled fair use. Another was someone using footage of a boxing match in a biography about the boxer, again ruled fair use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T19:29:12.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17257" CreationDate="2015-06-10T19:57:13.960" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Content testing&quot; typically refers to the practice of testing whether or not your content is suitable for the audience in question, and whether or not they can understand and comprehend it. I believe it is more geared to internet-based content, but content testing is applicable to marketing, advertising, non-fiction, and probably even fiction - just about any discipline that relies on writing for a particular audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For good content testing, you need to know who your audience is, for example, literacy level, and any interests you may feel are relevant in relation to the content you've written. You're not really interested in whether or not the reader is going to like what you've written, but more whether or not they're going to actually understand what you've written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding can be greatly influenced by word choice, length of sentences, grammar, and sentence structure, so content testing would pay close attention to the way the author is trying to express him or herself, and whether it's done concisely and simply. There are some automated tools out there that  attempt to give you an idea as to the &quot;readability&quot; of your content (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://readability-score.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Readability Score&lt;/a&gt;), but they are not as good as relying on readers to give feedback by means of a test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For webpage content, you would refer to this as a usability test; you could instruct an individual to &quot;Buy the cheapest jersey that you like&quot;, for example, and see if they can successfully use the site's content to carry out the instruction. There are other techniques like Cloze tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were testing a non-fiction book, you could carry out similar sorts of tests, asking questions related to the content of what they just read in order to gauge their comprehension of the subject matter, or plot if it's a fictional book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T19:57:13.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6769" CreationDate="2015-06-10T22:42:43.150" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I went ahead and broke it down: Give or take, the average paperback has 250-350 words per page. Thats 35 lines at 10 words per line. Of course some of those lines may only have 3 or 4 words (for dialogue). So again we're at, say, 300 words. take your total word count and divide it by 300. that'll give you an idea, not accurate down to the letter but still a pretty good idea. I used James Pattersons &quot;3rd degree&quot; and Dean Koontz's &quot;Odd Hours&quot; for reference as they were closest to me atm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14142" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-06-11T04:22:57.253" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T04:22:57.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17671" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-11T03:14:37.490" Score="6" ViewCount="747" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few examples of what I refer to as ridiculous scenes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A psychic gives the protagonist a business letter with only her name -&#xA;no phone, no address - saying that there's no need to call her.&#xA;&lt;em&gt;She's&lt;/em&gt; the one who make the calls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Wind-up Bird Chronicles, Haruki Murakami&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist finds a passage in a building that takes you right&#xA;into John Malkovich's head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Being John Malkovich, Charlie Kaufman&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An old man goes to the protagonist's audition, saying that he has&#xA;being following the protagonist his whole life. Then he says to him,&#xA;&amp;quot;Hire me, if you want to know who you truly are.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Synecdoche New York - Charlie Kaufman&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as you can see these are ridiculous situations (I think the term is Kafkaesque?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried that myself. In my story, my protagonist is researching about the subject of animal suicide. She goes to her university's Animal Behavior Class but is told by her teacher that animal suicide in an &lt;em&gt;inappropriate&lt;/em&gt; subject, not suitable for a classroom. A subject like war, terrorism, and genocide. A teacher won't say this in real life of course (this is an exaggeration of the follow-the-rules atmosphere of educational institutions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, my readers complained that the teacher sounded &lt;em&gt;unrealistic&lt;/em&gt;, that no teacher would say stuff like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm confused. Maybe it's because the scene is too short? Or because I didn't &lt;em&gt;prepare&lt;/em&gt; the reader in the previous chapters? Get used to this absurdity? Or maybe it just depends on the audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the scene is case you want to read it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Well.” I gulped air again. “I’m doing a research about animal suicide—and,&#xA;uh, I thought animal behavior had a lot to do with it.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professor nodded, though his expression said, Now what do I do&#xA;with this misfit? “Yes, animal suicide has indeed a lot to do with&#xA;animal behavior. You’re very smart, Mrs. Lin. And I believe me, I’m&#xA;very moved by your curiosity and enthusiasm. In fact, these are the&#xA;qualities we value most in our students.” He rubbed the balding spot&#xA;on the top his head. “However, suicide—even if it only involves&#xA;animals—is a very delicate subject, like war, racism, terrorism,&#xA;genocide. And therefore, not very suitable for a classroom. I hope you&#xA;can understand that.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I nodded, no longer sure what the conversation was about. Genocide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T16:51:05.137" Title="How to make the reader &quot;accept&quot; absurdity?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17671" CreationDate="2015-06-11T04:44:49.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're worried about being realistic, then maybe you're writing in the wrong genre. Both Murakami and Kaufman are far from realists, and Kafka (although I don't believe you've used &quot;Kafkaesque&quot; appropriately) is best known for a story wherein a man wakes up as something like a dung beetle. Most people think, &quot;Well, that's unrealistic.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have to accept that some readers &lt;em&gt;don't get it&lt;/em&gt;; however, you may have to accept that you &lt;em&gt;don't get it.&lt;/em&gt; It's not a matter of making the reader accept things because you should not have to &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; the reader do anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing anything of the context, I think your excerpt is just fine. Otherwise, this question is too subjective and the answer is that you should do one of three things: 1) find a new audience, 2) find a new style, or 3) find a new hobby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14145" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T04:44:49.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17671" CreationDate="2015-06-11T07:57:35.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few tricks to make the implausible seem plausible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let readers know early in the story that implausible things will happen, and they will enjoy every one. A friend of mine once began a story with a scene in which people have been stuck in a traffic jam for five years. After a scene like that, readers are prepared for nearly anything.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a character comment on the implausibility. This weird little authorial sleight of hand tells readers (perhaps subconsciously) that you are well aware of the implausibility, that it's not an oversight. You put it in the story deliberately, so they can relax and trust you. Like this famous bit from The Princess Bride:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Westley: A few more steps and we'll be safe in the fire swamp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Buttercup the Princess Bride: We'll never survive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Westley: Nonsense, you're only saying that because nobody ever has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide an explanation (which may itself be plausible or not). For example, when Mrs. Lin tells some other character about her disappointment with the professor's response, the other character might relate a little known incident from the professor's past, an incident that left the professor unable to cope with serious explorations of suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T07:57:35.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17671" CreationDate="2015-06-11T13:56:56.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem you're facing is that you're comparing the wrong things. Your quoted passage does not deal with the fantastic or the absurd, whereas some of the examples you've given clearly are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean is, your subject of &quot;animal suicide&quot; is something people have probably heard about. Certainly, studying animal behaviour is something people have heard about. People can relate to the concept of teachers, classrooms, and so on. At this point, the reader's brain is establishing conventions with regards to what they're reading, and unless you've established reasons for this aversion to discussing suicide, the automatic reaction is to discount it as unrealistic because they think the rules of this world apply to your world. For such subtle differences between your fictitious world and the real world, the reader needs conventions established very early on that justify what they read!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast this with &lt;em&gt;Being John Malcovich&lt;/em&gt;: who ever heard of such a scenario? It's nothing anyone watching the film can relate to as a concept, so the viewer tends to &quot;go with it&quot;. The fantastic is made normal, and there is no attempt by the reader to discount what they're seeing. It just is, for whatever reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Incidentally, what you outline for &lt;em&gt;Synecdoche New York&lt;/em&gt; is, in my view, unlikely, but not impossible, which is very different to absurd, or fantastic.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2015-06-11T14:10:23.493" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T14:10:23.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17676" CreationDate="2015-06-11T15:54:22.310" Score="1" ViewCount="439" Body="&lt;p&gt;This pertains to the potential salability of electing to choose between POVs, here specifically between first or third person limited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several threads, like &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2079/what-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-writing-in-first-person&quot;&gt;What are the advantages and disadvantages of writing in first person?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  which addresses the benefits/disadvantages of using either 1sth person vs. 3d limited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is for when a story could be told equally effectively from 3d limited, or 1sth person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This issue streams from the side discussion in the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17642/how-to-format-multiple-inner-voices-differentiating-the-text-from-dialogue&quot;&gt;How to format multiple inner voices, differentiating the text from dialogue? and omnipresent inner voice&lt;/a&gt;&#xA; where I wrote &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only viable recommendation is the first-person POV, but that is not good for sales as most novels are in the 3d person. The goal is to write for a broad audience and not for some &lt;strong&gt;literati minority&lt;/strong&gt;. […]                                                                                                             No i read that in several &quot;how to&quot; writing books. First person is also said to be mostly used, or rather &lt;strong&gt;misused, by beginners&lt;/strong&gt; who feel the need to stay close to their characters and it is only the rare master who can pull the first voice. In every writing book I read, the author strongly recommended in a way or another to favor the 3d person over the first… that is when it is not used by some pretentious &quot;literary&quot; style trial. […]                                            Sorry for the “artsy fartsy” literati, I do love evocative colored language. Yes some great novels were written in the first person. Yet in the writing books, like the ones by James Frey, Donald Mass, Sol Stein, Bob Mayer, Peter Selgin, Holly Lisle….while acknowledging the first voice existence generally advise to stick to the third.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To which several members responded &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;@ Lauren Ipsum &quot;However derivative and badly-written they are, the Fifty Shades of Gray books are written in the first person, and have sold over 60 million copies. I wouldn't call that a minority. […] Additionally, if you're going to contemptuously dismiss part of your potential audience as &quot;artsy-fartsy,&quot; that will leak through to your writing. Their money is as good as hoi polloi's, and you won't be earning any of it.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  @  Neil Fein &quot;I'm not sure where you've heard this. First person is very common in genre fiction. Do you have statistics on this, or a source? […]Sounds like you found a &quot;how-to&quot; writer with an axe to grind. That seems like an overly broad generalization to me. First person can be accessible and effective, and third-person can easily become arty and pretentious. &quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  @ Tave  &quot;'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens uses the first person.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gist of the issue is that while no how to books says directly to avoid the 1sth person, most seems to encourage beginners to avoid the 1sth for commercial reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recall several instances where I read about an author who got a contract, or an agent conditionally on switching the ms from first to 3d person. &#xA;(there is one on StackExchange too &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7167/how-do-i-change-a-novel-from-first-person-to-limited-third-person&quot;&gt;How do I change a novel from first person to limited third person?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there any kind of data, or evidence (even if only non-factual, or subjective ) illustrating Sales/POV correlation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T06:09:23.900" Title="Commercial novels, a prefered POV?" Tags="|technique|marketing|viewpoint|sales|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17675" CreationDate="2015-06-11T17:58:28.807" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You really should not go by Dickens. There are trends and fashions in writing, and what was &lt;em&gt;en vogue&lt;/em&gt; two hundred years ago is not necessarily the best model for commercially successful writing today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I look at contemporary writing, the predominant viewpoint changes with the category. More &quot;high browed&quot;, literary fiction is often written in third person as is much of narrative non-fiction (with the exception of autobiographies and travel journals). Young Adult and much genre fiction are written in the first person to achieve a faster pace and more immediacy. (A number I saw said something like two thirds of YA are in first person, but I might misremember.) Middle Grade fiction is mostly in third person, children's books are almost exclusively third person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally it seems to me that the more emotional and action oriented a genre is, the more it will employ first person narration. The more &quot;level headed&quot; and reflective a genre is, the more you will find third person narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without having counted, subjectively over all fiction, third person seems to be dominant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is like saying most cars are black. You'll still want to use red for a fire truck. The best viewpoint is always the one that works best for your story and writing style. There is no genre where there is not a significant number of books written in either person. So don't let statistics dictate how you should write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-12T06:09:23.900" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T06:09:23.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17589" CreationDate="2015-06-11T19:26:41.130" Score="9" Body="&lt;h1&gt;General Observations&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have observed, preserving the illusion is not so much a matter&#xA;of inserting expressions and details as keeping jarring anachronistic&#xA;expressions and details out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important not to use words and expression which were invented&#xA;later or were so little known in the 1950's that your readers would&#xA;think they were invented later. Also watch out for words which have&#xA;changed meaning or part of speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can also be jarring if characters violate rules of behavior and&#xA;nobody notices. If someone calls his boss &quot;John&quot; other characters&#xA;should react to the offense perhaps by saying &quot;That's Mr. Smith to&#xA;you!&quot; or using the word &quot;insubordination&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Too-modern Expressions&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The words and expressions in this section have become widely used&#xA;in ordinary speech only recently. Before that they were considered errors, very rarely used, or used only by a particular community such as doctors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not say &quot;injected him with [something]&quot; unless you are writing a medical paper. Say &quot;gave him a shot of [something]&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not say &quot;embedded with&quot;. Better to say &quot;a piece of wood with shrapnel embedded in it&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not say &quot;he was a threat&quot; or &quot;he posed a threat&quot;. You can say &quot;He threatened.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not attribute failure to &quot;a perfect storm&quot; since this is a reference to a 2000 movie of the same name. The phrase was used earlier, but it  meant something else. An example would be &quot;The baby let forth a   perfect storm of shrieks.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not say &quot;out of an abundance of caution&quot;. (This term has been   popularized in the last five years by public officials explaining their seeming overreactions to perceived dangers.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not say &quot;held on $1000 bond&quot;. Say &quot;held in lieu of $1000 bond&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Saying &quot;5000 troops&quot; makes no sense because troop still means a body of soldiers as in &quot;a second troop set out led by Jones&quot;. Say &quot;5000&quot; men or &quot;5000 soldiers&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not say &quot;even as we speak&quot; since it started becoming popular only&#xA;after 1980. (Confirmed using Google Ngram viewer.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid using transitive verbs reflexively. The ship did not &quot;launch&quot;, it &quot;was launched&quot;. The portcullis did not &quot;lower&quot;, it &quot;was lowered&quot;. The lotion did not &quot;absorb&quot;, it &quot;was absorbed&quot;. The package did not &quot;ship&quot;, it &quot;was shipped&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not call problems &quot;issues&quot; since this is a modern euphemism. At this time &quot;issue&quot; means &quot;a topic for discussion or argument&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you know the difference between &quot;lay&quot; and &quot;lie&quot;. Mixing them up was not as common as it is now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not use the word &quot;terrorist&quot;. It was not widely used in the 1950's and probably meant something different than it does today.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not use &quot;gender&quot; as a euphemism for &quot;sex&quot;. Say &quot;her sex&quot;, &quot;the female sex&quot;, &quot;on the basis of sex&quot;. Do not use the word &quot;gender&quot; at all unless you are talking about grammar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The phrase &quot;as such&quot; does not yet mean &quot;since this is so&quot;. Its approximate meaning is &quot;in such a role&quot;. For example, &quot;A dealer shall not act as such unless he is licensed.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not use &quot;impacted&quot; unless you are talking about teeth since it means &quot;crammed into a tight space&quot;. Do not use &quot;impact&quot; as a verb. Do say &quot;had an impact&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not use verbs as nouns without adding the necessary endings. Say &quot;the invitation&quot; rather than &quot;the invite&quot;, &quot;a consultation&quot; rather than &quot;a consult&quot;, &quot;the construction&quot; rather than &quot;the build&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not use &quot;upgrade&quot; in the sense of &quot;to install something better&quot; since such usage is still very very rare. You can use it to say things like &quot;It is difficult to start a car on an upgrade.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not &quot;generate interest&quot; or &quot;generate a letter&quot;. Do &quot;generate electricity&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not use &quot;access&quot; as a verb as in &quot;we were able to access the inner room&quot;. Say &quot;We gained access to the inner room.&quot; or &quot;We got into the inner room.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use &quot;author&quot; only as a noun. Say &quot;The author of Tom Sawyer is Mark Twain.&quot; Do not say &quot;Mark Twain authored Tom Sawyer.&quot; or &quot;Tom Sawyer was authored by Mark Twain.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Say &quot;place of business&quot; rather than just &quot;business&quot; in phrases such as &quot;I visited him at his place of business.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Addressing People&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The titles &quot;Mr.&quot;, &quot;Mrs.&quot;, and &quot;Miss&quot; are used routinely. &quot;Ms.&quot; would not be. Ladies are often introduced or introduce themselves using the title so that the new acquaintance will know which to use. For example, a mature woman who had never been married might say &quot;Hello, I am Miss Smith.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A younger person could address an older person by first name in&#xA;social settings only if the older person had said &quot;please call me&#xA;[first name]&quot;. Even then the younger person would frequently not be&#xA;comfortable doing so and ignore the request. Customers would&#xA;never be addressed by first name unless they were children.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Babies are frequently referred to as &quot;it&quot; as in &quot;I changed&#xA;its diaper.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A waitress is addressed simple as &quot;Miss&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Middle aged men frequently address women as &quot;my dear&quot; which is short&#xA;for &quot;my dear madam&quot;. This is considered polite.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Self Service&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gas stations are full service. When cars enter they run over&#xA;a black rubber hose which causes a bell to ring. An attendant&#xA;(often a young man working at his first job) comes out. The driver&#xA;says either &quot;Fill `er up!&quot; or says how many gallons or dollar's&#xA;worth he wants. While the tank fills, the attendant may wash the&#xA;windshield or even check the oil level.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A person may serve himself in a department store, but a few minutes after he enters a clerk will approach him and say something like &quot;Can I help you find anything?&quot; Unless the customer sends him away he will help the customer to make his selections and will receive a commission. Some goods which nowadays customers take themselves are sold from behind counters much like the jewelry or perfume counters in some present-day stores. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In restaurants, coffee shops, and lunch counters the customers&#xA;are seated or seat themselves and wait to be served.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, there is a chain of cafeterias called Automats. The food is&#xA;displayed behind little glass doors in the wall. Customers insert&#xA;coins to open the doors and take the food to eat at tables.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you telephone an office your call will be answered by a switchboard operator who will connect it to the correct internal phone by inserting plugs into the switchboard. The operator is frequently a girl sitting in the lobby. Outgoing calls likely have to go through her too. Desk telephone generally do not have direct access to outside lines, so the user picks up the phone and says &quot;Get me ________.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Indelicate Subjects&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not use the word &quot;pregnant&quot;. You can refer vaguely to a lady's&#xA;&quot;condition&quot;. If you have to be more explicit, say that she &quot;is going&#xA;to have a baby&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make no reference to bodily excretions (excrement, urine, sweat,&#xA;saliva). You may refer to blood. You may say &quot;drooling&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not make any reference direct or indirect to primary sex organs.&#xA;During previous decades some authors made one dignified&#xA;reference to the general shape and size of the heroin's breasts.&#xA;They did not of course make any reference to nipples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not use the word &quot;sex&quot; to mean the sex act as in &quot;have sex&quot;.&#xA;Such usage was just beginning in the 1950's and did not become&#xA;mainstream until the 1960's (and even then was considered slang).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Freely use the word &quot;sex&quot; to mean maleness or femaleness as in&#xA;&quot;a characteristic of her sex&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use &quot;sex&quot; to mean the full range of mating behaviors, but getting this right is tricky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use &quot;sex&quot; to mean the influence pretty girls have over men. To say that a girl &quot;is using sex to get what she wants&quot; would mean that she is flirting, not prostituting herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though the word &quot;gay&quot; had been used to mean homosexual in a movie (Bringing up Baby) in 1938, the meaning of &quot;bright, happy&quot; is still the accepted one. Homosexuality would not be discussed in public, though men might occasionally imply that others were gay perhaps by describing them as &quot;effeminate&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that &quot;making love&quot; is still understood to mean courting behavior such as visiting a girl and talking to her in a way calculated to win her affection. For example, in the 1949 film &quot;The Inspector General&quot; the line &quot;He made love to my wife.&quot; means &quot;He has been stealing my wife's affections.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid modern self-consciously gender-neutral language. (And see the above caution about the word &quot;gender&quot;.) Do not say things like &quot;everyone can take as much as he or she wants&quot;. Just say &quot;he&quot;, it will not even occur to anyone that you might be referring to males only. Nor will anyone think&#xA;that expressions such as &quot;a man must choose his own path&quot; exclude females. Change the ending of words such as &quot;chairperson&quot; or &quot;congressperson&quot; back to &quot;-man&quot;. Have women say things like &quot;I am the chairman of the committee.&quot; (Though saying &quot;chairwoman&quot; is OK too.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also watch out for new words which have been coined or popularized&#xA;to avoid works ending in -men. Examples are &quot;letter carrier&quot;&#xA;(for mailman), &quot;fire fighter&quot; (for fireman), &quot;police officer&quot; (for policeman), &quot;trash collector&quot; (for trash man), and &quot;fisher&quot; for &quot;fisherman&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Role of Women and Girls&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the Second World War women performed many jobs previously done by&#xA;men. So much change so quickly gave rise to a lot of questions, &#xA;anxiety, and tension about whether women would return to female roles,&#xA;whether they would deprive men of jobs, and whether they would continue to&#xA;work primarily at home. Judging from movies of the time, men were concerned that increased female independence might mean that their wives would not need them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the 1950's female characters ceased to take an active role in&#xA;adventure stories. In the 1910's, 1920's and 1930's there were helpless &#xA;heroins, but many girls and young women in books and movies were&#xA;resourceful and took initiative. They drove cars, lept into raging rivers&#xA;to save their boyfriends, would sometimes kill bad guys with knives or&#xA;guns when attacked. They also constantly turned detective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These activities were seen as complementary to what the male characters&#xA;were doing, not competitive. They did not act like men while doing these&#xA;things. Generally they did not dress like men. They did not try to&#xA;best men in feats of physical strength such a dueling with swords. But&#xA;they frequently excelled men in fortitude and courage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the 1950's they became helpless and passive. No longer did they&#xA;try to rescue the hero or free him from false accusation. If he were&#xA;attacked and down they would stand and scream rather than looking for&#xA;a weapon. In the most poorly written plots they did little more than&#xA;keep him company, ride as a passenger in his car, say supportive words,&#xA;and get kidnapped and threatened by his enemies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are not actually writing for a 1950's audience, you can make&#xA;your female characters more courageous and resourceful. You can use&#xA;Princess Leia from Star Wars as a model since she is one of the few &#xA;believable adventure heroins we have today. But you should keep in mind&#xA;that what they can do will be restricted by an anxious society and &#xA;anxious men. Your heroins will likely have to let men drive the car&#xA;most of the time and will have to choose between marriage and career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Manners&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A younger person rises from his chair when introduced to an older person. If he is male he will remove his hat, at least momentarily, as a sign of respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The younger person will say &quot;sir&quot; and &quot;ma’am&quot; and address the older person&#xA;as &quot;Mr.&quot;, &quot;Mrs.&quot;, or &quot;Miss&quot; followed by the last name. The older woman will say something such as &quot;I am Mrs. Smith.&quot; so that the younger person will use which honorific to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a lady comes to a dinner table, perhaps in a restaurant, and men are already seated they will all rise until she is seated. One of them will help her with her chair. If she excuses herself, the men will rise and stand until she has left the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men are not permitted to enter formal dining rooms without jackets. Frequently ladies are not permitted to enter alone. It is politely suggested that she wait in a waiting area until the man with whom she is dining has arrived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Swear words and off-color humor are not used &quot;in mixed company&quot; which means when females are present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women's rest rooms are actually rest rooms, that is a lounge area with couches. The toilet facilities are reached by passing through this room. There is often a female attendant in the outer room to help with makeup, hair, clothes, etc. It is proper to give her tips. A lady who needs to use the toilet will say that she is going to the &quot;powder room&quot; or that she needs to powder her nose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a man and a woman dine together in a restaurant she is considered to be his guest. Naturally he covers all expenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When an engagement to be married is announced it is appropriate to congratulate the man. It is not considered polite to congratulate the lady, since this might imply she was desperate. Instead one should say, &quot;I am sure you will be very happy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lady can unilaterally break off an engagement for any reason at all or for no reason at all. As they say, &quot;a girl can change her mind&quot;. A man cannot, barring some truly shocking revelation about his intended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Clothing&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeans are still considered work clothes. One would not go out in public&#xA;in them. Men who work in offices wear business suits and buy them with&#xA;two pair of pants. They would also wear hats to the office. The hats would&#xA;be removed when they got to work. At home they might remove the jackets&#xA;before dinner and loosen their neckties after dinner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women wear skirts and dresses when they go out in public. Some women&#xA;occasionally wore pants or shorts while at home, camping, or at the beach,&#xA;but they would definitely change before going anywhere else.&#xA;Skirts tend to be full and all of about the same length (dictated by the&#xA;year's fashion). Stockings are absolutely required. Women likely also wear&#xA;girdles, slips (petticoats), and hats. When going to dinner or a play they would frequently wear white gloves. While men would remove their hats indoors, women generally would not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adults would dress rather formally when attending sporting events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very few facilities have air conditioning. Indoor movie theaters and department stores may. Offices, schools, and churches generally do not. In summer men may work &quot;in their shirtsleeves&quot; and women often wear sundresses. A sundress is a light-weight dress which generally has no sleeves, leaves the shoulders bare, and is supported by narrow straps. They were worn by conservative women who today might consider them daring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Sex&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attitudes about sex are changing, but the sexual revolution is still a decade or more away. Standards of sexual conduct are much stricter, especially for females. This is seen mainly as a question of character and of the welfare of unmarried girls rather than a religious issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is common knowledge that some young men seek sexual experience before&#xA;marriage. This is more acceptable if they do it away from home and with women who are already sexually experienced. Some landlords do not want their properties associated with such activity and will come and knock and say the girl has to leave. In a hotel the person who does this is called the house detective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unmarried females are divided into two social groups. Their are &quot;good girls&quot; who do not &quot;have sex&quot; (as we say nowadays) until they are married and &quot;that kind of girl&quot; who does. Men marry the first kind, some choose to have fun first with the second kind. But they would still expect their bride to be a virgin on their wedding night. Suggesting that a man is sleeping with his fiancee is a good way to start a fistfight. Some do sleep together, but no decent man would compromise the reputation of the girl he loved by talking about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a great deal of concern that young men seeking sexual adventures&#xA;may take unfair advantage of &quot;good girls&quot; who are too young and inexperienced to recognize what the young man's &quot;intentions&quot; are. He might try to get her alone in an apartment or in a parked car. A girl who is wise to such a young may tell him &quot;I am not that kind of girl.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody would want such a young man to ruin the life of his daughter or sister or any girl he cared about. Young men generally know which of their peers are &quot;not very nice young men&quot; and tend to run interference for girls they care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easy to find exceptions to what I described above. There were parts of the culture where different standards prevailed. I have not attempted to describe the attitudes of sailors, free thinkers, the very poor, the very rich, gangsters, or motion picture actors. I am describing mainstream attitudes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also point out that though Hollywood had been known for sexual freedom for more than three decades already, Hollywood films of the 1940's and 1950's still largely reflect the attitudes described above. I am not talking about censorship and the Hayes office. I mean that Hollywood made these ideas pivotal to numerous film plots because they resonated strongly with mainstream audiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some plots which contain these ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tammy and the Bachelor (1957): hero goes out looking for girl who as a&#xA;guest in his house has gone off on a date with a young man of bad&#xA;reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Guys and Dolls (1955): professional gambler bets he can take a specific&#xA;good girl on a jaunt to Cuba with him. Once he has her there and has &#xA;her drunk he realizes he loves her and want to marry her but knows the&#xA;only way he can do that is if he takes her home without bedding her. He&#xA;tells the friend with whom he made that bet that he did not take&#xA;her to Cuba and pays up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Operation Petticoat (1959): story of army nurses and sailors living at close quarters in a submarine provides numerous examples of how questions of sex were handled and discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Communications Technology&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Televisions are black and white. They receive few channels. Because long distance  video link-ups are difficult, much of the programming is local. Because video tape is not yet available most of the entertainment programs are done live with no possibility of reruns.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In many areas local calls can be direct dialed, but the operator will still put it through for you if you dial zero. The operator will probably say &quot;Number please.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you need the police, you don't dial 911. You pick of the phone, dial zero and when the operator asks you for the number say &quot;Get me the police.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Direct dialing of long distance calling was only possible between a few specific cities. Most of the time you would have to call the operator. You might have to wait several minutes for your call to be put through. You would hang up and the operator would call you back when she had your party on the line.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Long distance calls are very expensive. If you used someone else's phone, you would leave him money to pay for the call. One would call long distance only with good reason and would keep the call very short, well under five minutes. If you were calling a friend or relative, you would almost certainly wait until the end of business hours when the rates were lower. If you called a place of business, you would announce immediately that you were calling long distance. Your call would be handled as quickly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because people did not have cell phones, they spent a lot of time looking for one another.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14151" LastEditorUserId="14151" LastEditDate="2016-09-15T19:20:54.930" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T19:20:54.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17679" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-12T07:16:27.013" Score="1" ViewCount="5295" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been spending time online since yesterday trying to understand the difference between analytical summary writing and critical writing. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;I intend to write an analytical summary essay on the topic of gender bias in academia after going through multiple sources (e.g: two academic research papers, a magazine article and a statistical report).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am getting confused on certain points of analytical writing. Other than a lot of websites that I referred to understand the approach (e.g: &lt;a href=&quot;http://condor.depaul.edu/jbryan/food/paper-sum.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;), I also read some examples of analytical writing, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://dianahacker.com/pdfs/Hacker-Lopez-MLA-Ana-Txt.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. It seems that the most of the websites/examples suggest adding a thesis in the introduction -- the topic/statement that will be supported in the following paragraphs. However, as in the example above, the thesis seems to stem out of author's own opinions and judgment of the analysed work and doesn't seem to be objective. Isn't it the same in the case of critical writing as well where the writer needs to form opinions and provide evidences to prove their point. What difference then does it leave between analytical and a critical essay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I correct to think that the writer should not form their own opinion, rather extract the hidden meaning from the readings to come up with a thesis? On the other hand, in case of an academic article where the author provides general-specific-general flow and accurate methodology of experiments, if I am not to critique, what shall I specify in the analytical essay that is not evident to the readers of the original academic articles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14154" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-22T17:15:44.797" LastActivityDate="2020-10-25T17:55:27.803" Title="Difference between Analytical Writing and Critical Writing" Tags="|academic-writing|essay|criticism|text-analysis|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17679" CreationDate="2015-06-12T08:19:29.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not worry about the difference. Every teacher will have a different definition of what analytical writing is and therefore different expectations of what their students should hand in. For an exercise, I would simply take any of the instructions you found and follow that one. If you want you can do different ones and see how the different instructions work for you and how they lead to different outcomes, all of them valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;professional&quot; academic writing, analytical writing is usually a part of a larger work. For example, a doctoral dissertation starts out with a review of the relevant literature that summarizes the findings of other researchers in the same area and explains how they lay the groundwork for your own research or how your research can improve upon them. A meta analysis does the same, except that it restricts itself to the review and does not continue to describe your own theories or research. Finally, any research article begins with a selective review of the relevant literature (this is part of the &quot;introduction&quot;) and deduces hypotheses for your own research from this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you want to see how analytic writing is done beyond homework exercises, any scholarly literature in your field should provide examples. You will soon realize, that there are conventions that everyone follows, but that there are also a wide spectrum of how these conventions are followed or deviations from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take this exercise not as something you learn once and then know forever, but as a first step in building a habit of reading critically, taking concise notes, and writing down what you found in differing formats and for different purposes. There is no one correct format for analytical writing, but there is a correct way to approach this task. Learn this approach. There are a host of books that explain how to write for science. Pick up a few from your local library (don't buy any, you'll soon grow beyond them) and try to apply their recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your more specific question, their answer will depend on the circumstances of your writing, such as allowed maximum length, amount of sources found, is it a single article review or a meta analysis of everything relevant, and so on. Try different things and see how they work out for you. Studying is not about being perfect (althought that's easy to forget when you get marks for every comma you forget), but about trying out things and learning in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T08:19:29.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17681" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17684" CreationDate="2015-06-12T14:07:39.397" Score="3" ViewCount="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have invented a setting I think is kinda cool, but I have no story for it. Now the question is - should I develop a story for this setting or is it bound to be a bad story, because not developed for the reason of the story but to throw light on a setting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those interested, it's an Science Fiction setting with aliens arriving in the solar system but first contact is not about war or something but a simple we are here and we don't care much about you and how it would change human society. That in itself doesn't present a story easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-20T04:33:31.610" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T04:33:31.610" Title="Should I force-developing a story to a setting I have?" Tags="|plot|setting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17681" CreationDate="2015-06-12T14:19:50.087" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a story to tell, it should be possible to tell that story in your setting. If all you have is a setting, you need to find your story first. What you should avoid doing is setting your story in your setting and then not really using that setting to inform the story. If you're telling a story about, say, the politics of the international chess-playing federation, and their upcoming tournament, it would be odd if that was, for no real reason, and with no real connection, happening amidst massive social upheaval. If, however, your story is about a person, who happens to be a chess player, dealing with massive social upheaval, then it would be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T14:19:50.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17681" CreationDate="2015-06-12T15:06:42.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this setting, maybe a collection of short stories, each exploring a different facet of these changes, could be an interesting format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of something like &quot;After the quake&quot; by Haruki Murakami, or &quot;I robot&quot; by Isaac Asimov.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T15:06:42.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17681" CreationDate="2015-06-12T15:46:10.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, actually you &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; have it kind of backwards, but not really in a bad way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic progress for scifi in idealized case is to first come up with the concept. Then come up with the theme, which aspect of your basic concept you want to explore and how. Then think of a story that does that. And develop the setting as normal for the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;in theory&lt;/strong&gt; you kind of did part of it backwards. In practice, you are extremely unlikely to have developed the setting to a degree where it actually is an issue. And even if you have, it is &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; setting, you can make adjustments as you wish. So don't worry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that as per comment it does not &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt; matter where you start developing the story, in the real world the development a story is always an iterative process and there is no requirement you do &quot;all steps&quot; every iteration. So the actual starting point and the order you do things do not really matter. The idealized case comes from the fact that a science fiction story is as per genre defined by its differences from familiar. Putting concerns related to that first is simply a way to ensure you do not forget and write a otherwise perfectly good story that  confuses readers because the differences from the familiar are badly exposed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, it is absolutely normal to reuse settings for multiple stories, sometimes even by multiple authors. And usually it works just fine because of the sheer improbability of the setting having been so strictly defined it is a real issue. The extreme example of this would be the real world which has been used as a setting by literally countless authors without the fact that the setting was defined before making up the stories really being an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fundamentally this is because &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; setting is always much larger than either the part of it visible in the story or the part the reader might have any knowledge of. There should always be enough unknown territory for the needs of any story you wish to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now just think about the really cool thing about your setting that you'd like to explore or share. Then try to think of circumstances where characters in the setting would explore that aspect. If it really was something cool, there should be a story there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I probably should mention the one thing you &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; need to watch for. Sometimes when people have a setting with a concept they like and they have spent lots of effort in developing it, the author gets tempted to show it off to the readers. Since the setting is shown in the context of the story, this naturally results in the story meandering about so that it can show more of the setting.This in turn results in issues with the pacing and internal logic of the story,and in general makes the story weaker and less immersive. This is a real issue with modern scifi and a major reason why I read much less scifi than I used to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So once you come up with the story make sure you resist the temptation to show off one iota more of your setting than the story actually &lt;strong&gt;needs&lt;/strong&gt;. (Success is optional, just remember to make the effort. It will keep you away from trouble.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastEditorUserId="11425" LastEditDate="2015-06-14T13:22:31.647" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T13:22:31.647" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17685" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17686" CreationDate="2015-06-12T16:49:49.600" Score="4" ViewCount="1515" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a novel I plan on writing soon, the main protagonist (and indeed nearly everyone else in the story as well) is an elf. Humans are present, but they are far in the mountains, living in disorganized tribes, and barely ever mentioned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will my reader have trouble identifying with an elf at first, as opposed to a human?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that in a lot of fantasy fiction containing humans and elves, the hero is always a human. As I see it, the reason is to help the reader identify with the hero. Even Frodo, who is technically a Hobbit, is not portrayed too differently from a human. He is short, but that is rarely mentioned as I recall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My elf, on the other hand, can wield magic, looks different than a human, is skilled with the sword and bow, and is a lot more agile than a normal human. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will having an elf-hero distance the reader? Or is how the reader sees my hero entirely up to my writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I believe who the hero is doesn't determine how the reader sees him. I believe the writing decides that. I want to be sure though.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T05:48:37.397" Title="Non-human protagonist - Good, bad, or up to the writing?" Tags="|characters|planning|readers|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17685" CreationDate="2015-06-12T17:22:41.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Up to the writing. If you create characters with whom your audience can identify in some fashion, someone to root for, then their species doesn't matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Diane Duane has many non-human protagonists and hero characters in her various books: sentient fish and trees in her Young Wizards series, Romulans and Vulcans in her Star Trek books, a series about sentient magic-wielding cats &amp;mdash; it's all possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T17:22:41.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17685" CreationDate="2015-06-12T17:26:48.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elric_of_Melnibon%C3%A9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elric of Melniboné&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Michael Moorcock involved an elvish emperor who sacrificed his own people, and was frequently in conflict with human warriors. Elric's motivations and observations were described well by the author, such that the reader could relate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Reach&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Heaven's Reach&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by David Brin involved two non-human protagonists, one being a chimpanzee, the other being a member of the Jophur species. With both protagonists, the author used internal monologue to help the reader understand their unique impressions and motivations, and both were quite relatable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T17:26:48.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17671" CreationDate="2015-06-12T18:40:52.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very incomplete answer, but some random thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One: Readers tend to accept wild things about physics, but not about human behavior. Like, I've often noticed when reading science fiction that I'll easily accept faster than light travel, teleportation machines, time travel, pocket fusion generators, etc etc. But if the captain of the star ship gives a lame excuse for why he violated orders, I'm saying, &quot;Oh, come on, the Star Admiral just accepted that? Wouldn't they have demanded some explanation?&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two: Readers accept something wildly improbable that is the starting point, the premise, of the story, but not something that looks like it was introduced just to give the hero a way out at the last minute, or that appears to be included for no apparent reason. Like if you write a story that starts out with the hero inventing a time machine and going back to meet Shakespeare, readers will likely just accept this, no matter how improbable they think time machines are. But if you've never mentioned a time machine before in the story, and then at the last minute, when the hero is totally trapped and the reader is wondering how in the world he is going to get out of this mess, you say, &quot;... and then he pulled a time machine out of his pocket and went back in time to ten years before the prison cell was built, and walked away. The end&quot;, readers will strangle you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three: Readers accept things that fit the general tone of the story, but not things that are jarringly out of place. If you write a story set in a magical fantasy land with elves and hobbits, and then the hero finds a magic sword, readers will accept it. If you write a detective story set in New York City that is grittingly realistic, and then the hero finds a magic sword, this will likely be a problem. I'm sure that a skilled enough writer could pull it off, but it would be very hard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T18:40:52.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17690" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-13T03:40:04.077" Score="5" ViewCount="1217" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm beginning to write a novel on a person in the military, and this is set in the future so the technology would be different, but I want a basic overview of every branch of the military. This would include weapons, ranks, strategies, jobs, everything. Does anyone have any recommended books or movies or even google searches? Please and thank you for your help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14165" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:27:19.057" Title="What to Research for Military Fiction?" Tags="|research|ideas|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17685" CreationDate="2015-06-13T05:48:37.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Originally, in folk belief, elves where dangerous and mysterious beings, whose motifs where unfathomable to man and like forces of nature beyond the categories of good or evil: if you put your hand in the fire it will burn you, without any evil intent on the fire's part; if you dealt with elves they were just as likely to help as to hurt you as the wind or the rain, and equally free of morality. Elves, in folklore, are completely alien to humans, and therefore both frightening and fascinating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In twentieth century fantasy fiction, the elves have been styled as a variant of Native Amerucans, as woodland rangers, as angels, the dead, or simply as a different &quot;race&quot; of quasi-humans. In most fantasy fiction they are just lije humans except for their pointed ears. This makes them both boring and interchangeable. Consequently, in fantasy fiction based computer games, the player can choose to play a human, an elf, a dwarf, or any other &quot;race&quot;, and beyond some specific abilities &lt;em&gt;it makes no difference at all&lt;/em&gt;. This is illustrated in the mixed groups of heroes that normally go on quests much like groups of mixed ethnicities have to get along and work together in real life (without one ethnicity being evil and the other good, but all human and all capable of both good and evil behavior).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fantasy fiction today, elves -- or unicorns or extraterrestrials -- are nothing more than weird looking foreigners. An elf protagonist is much like a gay protagonist: a bit of an outsider, but a normal human being nonetheless. Like LGBT protagonists elf protagonists are not as frequent as straight human protagonists, and they can be a turn off for straight human readers (because it destroys the last remnant of the romance of the folk tale alienness and makes the elves completely banal and unexciting), but they are by no means rare and a significant number of readers will have no trouble identifying with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I dislike this portrayal of elves, but I don't think my qualms are very representative. The &quot;other&quot; is maybe even one typical protagonist today, from superheroes to bad guys and teen wolf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T05:48:37.397" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17681" CreationDate="2015-06-13T06:10:40.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see any problem with that approach. Much of sci fi and fantasy is setting first. What you need, though, is an &lt;em&gt;engaging&lt;/em&gt; story to take place in that setting. Something that is interesting independent of where it takes place. Something like love, war, political intrigue, or the problems of teens growing up. What it is is irrelevant and will depend on your personal interests, but it will define your target audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find such a storyline much in the same way as you find a story to tell that takes place on present day earth: take whatever intrigues you in the area of human interaction -- something that happened to you, some event you witnessed, a terrible fate you read about, a fantasy you have, anything that has the power to stick in your mind and make you chew on it like a dog works a bone -- and build characters and a story from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only difference to a story first approach will be that you need to shape your story so that it facilitates showing the setting. But that is easily done. Asimov told us about robots by having a robot work as a criminal investigator. Meyer tells us about vampires by letting a human fall in love with one. You be creative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few stories, like Skinner's &lt;em&gt;Walden Two&lt;/em&gt; or many of Lem's futurologic short stories, where setting is the protagonist and no relevant story takes place, but these exist on the fringes of the mainstream and sell slow though they might attract a cult following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-13T06:18:56.837" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T06:18:56.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17671" CreationDate="2015-06-13T17:50:42.860" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason your scene comes across as unrealistic is because it's set in an absolutely realistic setting. You have a teacher, a classroom, a student, a research paper, and then you break all of this with an explanation that &lt;strong&gt;tries&lt;/strong&gt; to sound plausible but in fact isn't. By doing so, you yank your reader out of your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the examples you cited, the authors don't &lt;strong&gt;try&lt;/strong&gt; to sound plausible. They embrace the absurdity of their universe and build upon it. The reader has already accepted that the book is a little wonky, so that other absurd elements fit right in. There is no anchor in the real world for someone walking through a tunnel into someone's mind, so it's easy to accept as part of a fictional universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story doesn't have to make sense for the audience to accept it. What it does need is &lt;strong&gt;self-coherence&lt;/strong&gt;. If you're telling the story of a girl who has secret magical powers, then it's okay for her to occasionally control objects at a distance. It's not okay to tell a story set in our modern world, and when your protagonist needs to enter a locked house 300 pages in, he conveniently wills the door to open, never to do it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your audience is going to have certain expectations, some of which are set in stone. These may include specific human behaviors. You'll have to work within those constraints. Your job as a writer is to find the things that your audience is willing to be more flexible about; in other words, find the boundaries of your &lt;strong&gt;audience's imagination&lt;/strong&gt; and convince them that those things work differently in your universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific situation, either the professor should react differently, because currently his behavior is unbelievable to a reasonable person; or you should make your protagonist into a reasonable person who also questions that behavior; or, establish in advance that your protagonist is a little slow or gullible (but that will be difficult, given that she's supposed to be &quot;very smart&quot;). Then your reader isn't confronted with the choice, &quot;Am I crazy/stupid?&quot; vs. &quot;Is the author crazy/stupid?&quot; but rather starts wondering, &quot;There's something else at play here.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of any old joke: is it funny if you just deliver the punchline? No, the setup is even more important. Same here. Your setup will make or break your absurd event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2686" LastEditorDisplayName="user2686" LastEditDate="2015-06-14T16:51:05.137" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T16:51:05.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17695" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17697" CreationDate="2015-06-13T18:46:38.510" Score="2" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering using the first person for a story I am developing. One of the main benefits of using the first person is the closeness with the reader it generates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am not sure that this closeness is desired in my particular case.&#xA;My protagonist thinks he is going crazy, at the end he realizes he is not, but most of the book relates the downward spiral of madness.  I am systematically robbing my character of any familiar ground, material wealth, social status, companionship and finally rational mind. There is a gradual slide toward the mental asylum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In stories dealing with madness, it seems there is often a &quot;healthy&quot; distance either by using the 3d person or by using a different narrator than the protagonist like in a “streetcar named desire”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am concerned that the reader may have trouble with the stronger identification of the first person, due to the mental degradation of the character. Yet, obviously it is the reader that I am trying to reach, particularly as this is the first novel of a trilogy, so I do want him/her to strongly identify with the hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are alienation and  insanity ok in the 1sth person, or is it better to give the reader some distance by using the 3d limited?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T19:11:30.810" Title="First person, when is close, too close?" Tags="|viewpoint|readers|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17831" CreationDate="2015-06-13T18:56:05.653" Score="7" ViewCount="2012" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am used to stories which have one premise which through sequential events is proven by the character.   A few stories like war stories can have several premises each linked to a specific character, and no general premise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my issue, one of the stories I am developing has multiple main characters, each sequential scene is told from the POV of a different character who is a passenger on the same train.   I start before the train boards and use a new character to sequentially narrate the journey leading to a train crash, which is told from a new POV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The main point of the story is how each person sees the world differently and interprets the objective reality through subjective lenses)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the train crash, I am kind of stuck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could finish each character’s premise through the character’s arcs, but that seems unsatisfying.  I feel that I need something bigger, a main story premise, yet it eludes me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure this is a proper SE question, but I thought to ask anyways. &#xA;Do you have any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Just writing to see where it leads it not an option for me; I am a heavy plotter and need most of the story to be well defined and structured before I write the first word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, it is more a character driven story in the sense that all the initial characters till the train crash are already fully formed in my mind and have a vividly unique take on the world. But, as I said, although I know what happens till the train crash, It is a blank afterwards. i need to know where it goes afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N.B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also while I understand the need for character arcs, in this particular story I am not certain it is right. the general advice for multiple POVs stories is to limit the number of characters to less than ½ a dozen, in which case returning to a character in scenes throughout the novel is needed and developing the character arc is essential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I see the scenes as each told from a different perspective. The reader having been in the head of the people surrounding the present POV character can follow what happens to them through the present POV external observation. Yet, I am afraid to confuse the reader with as many characters as there are scenes, and lack of a unified premise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT &#xA;see @what answer's comments for premise-less stories discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT 2 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I added a bounty for story suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe if I am more specific it will help: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I start with a jihadist suicide-bomber who is ready to sacrifice his life for a &quot;greater cause”, I explore how he came to be here, his reasons, and inner struggle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I switch to an elder person who comments on the persons surrounding him, most notably a young teenager who evokes paternal feelings in him and nostalgia for an earlier time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I switch to the teenager, who is trying to figure how to scam the other passengers, most notably she thinks she can get good money from the elder person by manipulating him and blackmailing him with a pedophilia accusation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other characters, but these are the main key story-line ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The teen may also call on an adult conspirator to play the role of the mother to make the pedophilia accusation more profitable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The bomb explodes, with a possibility of first going back to the suicide bomber to see his doubts resolved and purpose reaffirmed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The crash is described from the conductor perspective; or may be omitted going directly to the aftermath. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The teen is busy scavenging wallets from corpses and unconscious victims, the other characters seeing her think she is helping, or trying to resuscitating them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That’s about where I am stuck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(my main goal is exploring the suicide bomber POV and social anomie with the teen)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with character arcs is that I want to fully explore the predatory teen and the bomber... with an arc, the teen would have to mellow, be transformed by the tragedy and maybe help the others…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T19:48:22.357" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T19:48:22.357" Title="Story development: Multiple characters premises" Tags="|characters|planning|plot|pov|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17695" CreationDate="2015-06-13T19:11:30.810" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would have thought that alienation and insanity are much better done using the first person than the third: you see what the character is thinking and feeling. The reader can be the judge of what is rational and what isn't, given the same information the character has. It doesn't mean the character is right. It doesn't mean the reader is right. Tension can be created between what the reader thinks is happening and what the character says is happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T19:11:30.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17690" CreationDate="2015-06-13T19:25:37.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are downloadable bundles of books full of this type of information. Many of them are public domain books. Military type manuals are also sometimes bundled with self-survival, bush life type of bundles, all of that info makes great source materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don’t forget to read from the masters of the genre like David Weber, John Ringo, or Jack Campbell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2015-06-14T00:05:55.773" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T00:05:55.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17690" CreationDate="2015-06-13T19:49:28.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you do not try to read too much because you may overwhelm yourself where you never begin to write.&#xA;Instead read a couple of the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One Book Will Help&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you read a great book like &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYrPhs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tom Clancy's Every Man a Tiger (non-fiction) amazon link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading that book will allow you to simmer inside the military lingo and honestly you could probably get everything you need from that book alone if you read it extremely carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second Book For &lt;em&gt;Fun&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then also read a rip-roaring military fiction piece like &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pIdOUm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Ringo's Live Free or Die&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you read those two -- or maybe even before you complete them -- &lt;strong&gt;START WRITING&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of your story won't be any different than any other story and won't require you to know every detail of military anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T15:27:19.057" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:27:19.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15976" CreationDate="2015-06-13T22:09:55.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A professional that prices books is called&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– &lt;em&gt;big drum roll&lt;/em&gt;-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since, here, it is an e-book, you are the publisher, so do some basic research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many sites that deal with this issue, plus forums, a simple Google search will show sites like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20151006115514/http://bubblecow.com/the-shocking-secret-about-ebook-prices-that-will-help-you-price-your-ebook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The shocking secret about ebook prices that will help you price your ebook&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150331235710/https://www.millcitypress.net/how-to-price-your-ebook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to price your ebook&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/15/ten-things-you-may-not-know-about-ebook-prices/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ten things you may not know about ebook prices&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2022-07-03T22:45:38.470" LastActivityDate="2022-07-03T22:45:38.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17696" CreationDate="2015-06-13T22:12:23.797" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;An interesting option I have noticed used, in mostly older movies, is the late introduction of, ultimately, the most important character. For instance, there might be a multi-character story set on a moving train in which various characters act out their specific issues (one's nervous about seeing family, another's heading to a new job, etc.) and they each react to universal events on the train (someone's murdered, there's a shortage of food, etc.), until the final scene(s) in which that important character makes a dramatic (or mysterious) introduction. They can either tie everyone's arcs together neatly, or expose (to the reader) something poignant about their behaviour. As for your specific scenario, the train crash can lead to one character taking over perspective because the other's are caught up in the chaos, or they could provide a higher level understanding of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going another way entirely, you could have the arcs gradually gravitate toward themselves until all the characters realise something or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It entirely depends on the genre and flow of the story itself, with mystery and heavily flawed characters favouring my first suggestion and more drama and complex characters favouring the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your last point, I think a distinct tone of voice, even in the writing, could help make the prose as much a mark of a character as the dialogue. However, in that situation, compelling suspense might be necessary to carry the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13454" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T22:12:23.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17681" CreationDate="2015-06-14T00:12:03.927" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a story, you need &lt;strong&gt;a character in a setting with a problem.&lt;/strong&gt; You can start from any of those elements and develop the others. If you have an interesting character in an interesting setting with an interesting problem, &lt;strong&gt;it makes absolutely no difference in what order you developed them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a setting, find a character with a problem in that setting, and you have the beginning of a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might take a character that you developed for some other story, or a character that you think is interesting, but don't have a story for yet. Or make up a random character on the spot. Then plop the character into the middle of your setting and see what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a character, the setting might suggest some:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who would &lt;em&gt;necessarily&lt;/em&gt; be there?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be there?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt; to be there? Who does not?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who would be the most interesting person in your setting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the specific things that are different between your setting and the real world. For each specific change, ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who would be most affected by that change?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who would benefit the most from that change?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who would be most hurt by that change?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How would that one change affect the most privileged people in that setting? The least privileged?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For whom would that change create problems?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a big list of possible answers. Then pick out one or two interesting characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a (candidate) character, develop some kind of relationship between the character and the setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plop the character down on an interesting street corner, and ask&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does the character see, hear, smell, feel, and taste?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the character's opinion of each of those things?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What problems might this particular character have in this setting?&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a list of ten or so possible problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick out one or two interesting problems, and write them as possible openings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an interesting character in an interesting setting with an interesting problem, &lt;strong&gt;it makes absolutely no difference in what order you developed them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T00:12:03.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17703" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-14T02:12:28.377" Score="3" ViewCount="539" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems that in the last decade there is more and more stories with a BDSM arc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Fifty Shades series &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sword of Truth series &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Black Dagger Brotherhood series&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember when I first read the Wizard’s First Rule and follow-ups; I was mildly shocked that it was a great success in spite of the sexual content.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    (Since then I have been thinking that it may be because of the sexual content that the novels were so well received.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is this a trend? Is exploring BDSM mores becoming more conventional? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it just that in the aforementioned cases it is a direct result of cross-genre writing ( i.e. romance+erotica;  fantasy+erotica;  dark fantasy+detective+romance+erotica and other +s for the rather messy J.R. Ward stories)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T22:20:45.917" Title="Is BDSM becoming mainstream?" Tags="|plot|theme|trends|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17690" CreationDate="2015-06-14T05:37:18.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A book I would recommend is &lt;em&gt;I Am A SEAL Team Six Warrior&lt;/em&gt; by Howard Wasdin (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1250016436&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amazon link&lt;/a&gt;). Wasdin was, as the title states, a member of SEAL Team Six and served in the Middle East. Assuming you are researching the modern military, this would be a good primary source. It may not be the best if you are researching other aspects of the military such as command or medical fields, but from a special forces and combat perspective, this should help you out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the Call Of Duty games may be a source of some realism. One of the studios (Treyarch I think) has an ex-military member who helped with realism in speech patterns, call signs, slang, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13938" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T05:37:18.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17696" CreationDate="2015-06-14T10:15:32.787" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A book has a moral premise. A character has a goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have as many protagonists and parallel storylines as you want, but your book (or series) still only illustrates one single moral premise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moral premise is what bundles a bunch of otherwise unrelated narrative strands that would better have been presented as separate publications into a meaningful whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want you can view the premise as a proposition and the novel or short story or movie as an argument for its truth. As in any other kind of communication you do not argue for two different things at the same time. (It is not quite correct to consider the premise as a &quot;message&quot; by the author as the author does not necessarily have to believe in his premise and may only use it because it attracts the reader and lends purpose and structure to his writing. The premise is a literary device.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-14T14:47:40.213" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T14:47:40.213" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17706" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-14T11:23:52.433" Score="1" ViewCount="755" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an editor for an academic press, my pet peeve is when authors write sentences like &quot;attempt to conceive of a possible approach to resolve X&quot; instead of &quot;try to resolve X&quot;. Obviously one big difference is just in the number of unnecessary words - but another difference is in how the author distances himself from the action. Is there a word for this tendency? Sure, sometimes it has a purpose -- but most times the author is just hedging responsibility. Is there a word in the writing world to describe this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10506" LastEditorUserId="10506" LastEditDate="2015-06-14T15:15:23.137" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T15:13:15.670" Title="What is it called when an author uses vague words for concrete concepts, &quot;hedging&quot;?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17707" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-14T13:31:06.783" Score="1" ViewCount="381" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some novels start with a bang, with a ingeniously crafted opening paragraph or sentence that instantly catches the interest of the reader and starts the concept of the novel. How important is it to have such a start?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-15T06:13:10.070" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T14:14:24.797" Title="How important is a catchy first paragraph?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17707" CreationDate="2015-06-14T15:14:33.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I won't buy a book without one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I browse a bookstore, I look at all the titles on the spine. Only if the title intrigues me or implies a story that might interest me, do I pull the book out far enough to view the cover. I don't judge the cover image, but I use it and any text on it to get a first rough idea of what the book is about. If this interests me, I pull the book out completely and read the blurb. If this contains things that I enjoy and nothing I dislike (e.g. angels), I open the book to the first page and read it. If this incites my curiosity, I leaf through the book to read some dialog. If the author handles dialog convincingly (it is always the weakest spot in any narrative writing and the most irritating turn off), I sit down and read the beginning few pages and turn on my smartphone to read Amazon reviews. If everything is still kosher, I buy the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, there are too many awful books on the market and every reader has wasted too much of their scarce time on bad reading experiences, so your book has to overcome a series of filters before it gets bought. Because time and attention are scarce commodities for anyone with money to buy a book, they don't give an individual book much opportunity to hook them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you fail at the first paragraph, you fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't mean though that your first paragraph must deliver the Big Bang. Although many how-to-write books recommend this, a death in the first sentence or the fate of the whole universe at stake are usually a sure sign of a boring, generic book. You don't have to outdo all the other books ever written, just create an image that stimulates the imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes a great beginning will depend on your genre and reader age. Here is what I think is a good example for a Middle Grade fantasy (from Ursula K. Le Guin, &lt;em&gt;A Wizard of Earthsea&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-14T16:01:07.320" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T16:01:07.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17709" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-14T17:44:03.670" Score="1" ViewCount="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the idea to propose a world and some initial stories and offer other authors online to add their stories to this world. Could that work and yield interesting stuff? How should it organized to keep quality high?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T19:37:24.083" Title="How could collaborative writing in one world work?" Tags="|collaboration|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17709" CreationDate="2015-06-14T18:17:32.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Partly it depends on whose idea of quality you want to enforce. If you want to enforce your own personal idea of quality, you will have to involve yourself personally in selecting writers and stories, or in editing the stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invite only writers that you trust to write high quality stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select and publish only the high quality stories. If you pay professional rates for the stories, that will attract professional writers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Edit the stories yourself. If you're a skilled editor, you can improve some pretty good stories to be even better, though it's unlikely that anyone can edit a bad story into a good one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frame it as a contest, where you select the top few stories each week or month or quarter or whatever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to use your readers' ideas of quality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow readers to rate the stories. Though this doesn't ensure the quality of any given story, it does give readers a general indication of each story's quality (or at least popularity).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T18:17:32.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17709" CreationDate="2015-06-14T19:37:24.083" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A supplement to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/17710/1993&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the shared-world anthologies I've read had &quot;framing&quot; stories written by the primary author, the one who came up with most of the setting and is driving the process.  For example, Eric Flint wrote or co-wrote several of the &lt;em&gt;1632&lt;/em&gt; novels, including the first one, and Robert Asprin was heavily involved in the &lt;em&gt;Thieves' World&lt;/em&gt; books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming up with an interesting setting is useful, and if well-done is a lot of work.  But it's still &quot;just ideas&quot; until somebody creates something from it.  That should be you, both to demonstrate investment and to show people what you had in mind.  There are lots of &lt;em&gt;ideas&lt;/em&gt; out there; most authors have many that will never come to fruition.  So your idea is &quot;just another idea&quot; until you give it real shape by writing something based on it that invites others in.  You need a story that's engaging enough to capture people's imagination and that has &quot;holes&quot; that can be filled in -- opportunities to develop interesting plots and major characters that fit into the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, do make sure you do the necessarily legal/licensing stuff so that people know they can safely write in your world -- you're not going to come back and sue them later for creating derivative works, etc.  Since most authors have ideas of their own already, they're unlikely to see the benefit of taking such risks to write in yours.  So make it clear that there's not a risk there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T19:37:24.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17615" CreationDate="2015-06-14T21:06:08.663" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think posting a work in progress online for feedback is enormously dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not because people will steal it. They almost certainly won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not because those readers will refrain from buying the book when it's published. Those readers &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; refrain from buying it, but the number of people would would have bought your book otherwise is a vanishingly small fraction of your potential audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Posting a work in progress online for feedback is dangerous because the feedback will influence you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some things that are generally true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The people who give feedback online have no better idea than you do about what makes a good book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The people who give feedback online have no idea how to give useful feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will get feedback from people who would not have bought your book if they saw it at some retailer. They are not your audience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most of the feedback you can get online is from writers. And not only writers, but unsuccessful writers spouting fallacious rules about stories and how to write them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find some people for whom those things are not true. But most of the feedback you get will be worthless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; chance that you will take the feedback of anonymous strangers to heart, you are setting yourself up for trouble. And if there is no chance that you will take it to heart, there's no point seeking it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation: Finish the novel. The worst that can happen is that you get lots of practice writing the middle and end of a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then get feedback from a few readers who typically enjoy the kind of book you wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T21:06:08.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17703" CreationDate="2015-06-14T22:20:45.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Mainstream&quot; may not be the right word. But it is clear that BDSM is becoming &quot;acceptable.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a time when &quot;romance,&quot; like &quot;marriage,&quot; was between one man and one woman. And more to the point, in a conventional sense of the word, with no &quot;unusual&quot; sex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BDSM used to be seen as a &quot;perversion.&quot; The (&quot;S&quot; stands for Sadism, perpetrated by the Marquis de Sade.) But now, all sorts of lifestyles are considered acceptable, including homosexuality, transgender (Bruce Jenner is the latest one), and &quot;kinky&quot; sex. BDSM has gained acceptance along with other lifestyles that have now gained acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T22:20:45.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17615" CreationDate="2015-06-14T22:38:33.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe before posting it online where you have limited control over who accesses and/or shares it, give it to individuals or contained groups - [maybe a book reading group] for comment. At an individual level these people are more likely to provide considered comment/opinion because you have engaged with them directly and there is potential of ongoing consultation. A meaningful discourse that can be acknowledged when publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14173" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T22:38:33.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3560" CreationDate="2015-06-14T22:46:58.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Flat&quot; characters are often stereotyped, cookie cutter characters that do everything that is expected of them. You want characters with contradictions, or at least with a ability to a surprise people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;dumb blonde&quot; is a stereotype. A ditsy cheerleader is someone who makes most readers put the book down. A good looking blonde who has no interest in guys, aces calculus, and finally marries a top scientist is a much more interesting character. A nerdy, unpersonable &quot;geek&quot; is another boring character. A computer science major who is can hold his own socially (maybe is not top notch) will command more attention. A person from a rich family who is staunchly pro business isn't so interesting; a person from the same family who is a crusader for social justice is more eyecatching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T22:46:58.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17719" CreationDate="2015-06-15T02:44:16.763" Score="15" ViewCount="2158" Body="&lt;p&gt;When is enough, enough? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers argue that you don’t need how-to books, just practicing writing. Yet, many writers write beautifully but are incapable of producing a publishable novel, while mediocre writers sometimes sprout best-sellers . Some great lirerary writers seem to lack knowledge of essential story craft techniques. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;while writing is an art, the dramatic form is a technical art. A technical art implies learning the techniques first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@ what argues in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/14586/are-how-to-write-fiction-books-full-of-it&quot;&gt;Are &amp;#39;how-to write fiction&amp;#39; books full of it?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Buying and (maybe) reading how-to-write books is a symptom of procrastination. Wannabe writers have shelves of them. And every time they feel afraid of starting to write and making mistakes, they go and buy another one (or post questions on forums such as this one), thinking that &lt;strong&gt;before they can begin their masterwork&lt;/strong&gt;, they need the secret knowledge that all writers share and that will enlighten them and turn them into a writer. But they are mistaken. There is no secret to writing, just as there is no secret to walking or speaking, only that&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;you have to do it until it becomes second nature.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  And that is all the truth there is to it. You learn writing by writing. And by making mistakes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1034/pirating-books-taboo&quot;&gt;Pirating books, taboo?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;reading how-to books can be a sign of procrastination and an obstacle to actually writing your book. Recommending a download (and possible reading) of hundreds of books seems counterproductive to me.                                                                                                                                                                                               &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@John Smithers makes a similar point in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/what-are-some-online-guides-for-starting-writers&quot;&gt;What are some online guides for starting writers?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you read about starting writing, you are reading, not writing. Because you are still not writing, you'll decide you should read more about it, and well, you are still reading. There is interesting stuff out there to improve your writing, but that means you have to start. Grab your pen/keyboard and start. Just write. If you have filled your first three pages with &quot;I do not know what to write&quot; it will become boring and you will write something meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do to some extent agree with @what that procrastination and going overboard are real dangers, yet some learning seems required. Some writers seem clueless about structure, tension, plot, dynamics, or climax. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a “pantser” who writes junk and rewrites, rewrites, rewrites, and reformat it later into a coherent story whose final draft bears no resemblance whatsoever with the initial draft, writing as a technical occupation may seem anathema. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, for “plotters” lacking even one tool or technical advice before finishing the story can be counterproductive and greatly damaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one hand, yes most writing books say the same things in different ways; on the other there is often a snippet of information that is original and enlightening in each book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another arguments for reading as many how-to books is also that while the same info may be paraphrased, a different version can bring sudden clarity to a nebulously vague concept and click everything into place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, being a writer is a profession, for most specialized profession going to college to get a degree is needed. Sure most classes are useless and redundant, but there is some need of formal education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe writing can not be taught, but techniques and style certainly can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I am a believer in reading as many how to books as you can get your hands on. Yet, to validate @what point, I am also a procrastinator who much prefer developing stories ideas, structured outlines, and detailed scenes in sumary form rather than writing books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there a good balance between learning and doing, dreamer and writer, procrastinator and author? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand this may be subjective, but is there evidence of an optimal length of time or volume of books, as in no more than 6 months or less than 30 writing books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for book choices, i just &quot;found&quot; this SE Q/A &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/148/what-are-good-reads-about-writing&quot;&gt;What are good reads about writing?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the debate continues In &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1039/answers-that-are-off-topic&quot;&gt;Answers that are off-topic&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;@what resates a succinct version off his answer here about writing books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I used to believe in how-to books, but have found that they don't work for beginners. That is both my personal experience and what I gleaned from reading what other, professional writers wrote or said about their career.&#xA;  I am absolutely convinced that you can only learn writing by writing a lot, and that trying to learn writing from books is in fact detrimental to your goal of mastering writing. You have read many fiction books (I guess), so you know what a book must be like, and all you need to do is try to write such a book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;here is a longish comment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you say about writing books is full of wisdom, yet i don’t feel it is the whole of it. Drawing books are mostly for people who don’t know how to draw; they are stylized, proportionated, ideal versions of human beings. They are there to be a crutch supplemented by live drawings and observation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writings books are not the same, mostly they are not a bunch of do it like that, &quot;paint by number&quot;, formulaic types. They give suggestions, concepts, methods, and then your own writing style and preferences determines what you write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you are right that many people trying to make a quick buck try to copy, or fill in structures, i saw that a lot with movie scripts, but i don’t think it is the case for genuine wanabe authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About just learning by writing, i can’t agree. When i was a teen i wrote a lot of prose and poetry and started several novels. I was an avid reader, and had already read hundreds of books. These writings never became anything because i had no clue on how to dramatize, how to build tension, how to build characters, how to work on dialogues…..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later in college i meet a lot of literary types and their writings never amounted to anything either, because they were clueless about craft and though you could sprout a novel from the sheer brilliance of your writings. Worse, some tried to emulate classical styles that they loved and read about, with disastrous effects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that i am more mature, i am humble enough to admit i don’t know what makes a book tick, so i believe in learning all you can about technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;here the issue is not about learning how to write but about crafting a good novel. To craft an entrancing narrative dream you need to meticulously plan, tap here and there,  chisel this facet,  polish that, to make a good novel emerge from your imagination. Yes, some great writers can do without, but that’s because they have an intuitive grasp of the same techniques. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:51:24.150" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:51:24.150" Title="How much time should you devote to learning the craft?" Tags="|creative-writing|learning|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17717" CreationDate="2015-06-15T04:00:28.757" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Spend 100 percent of your time learning the craft. Spend at least half of that learning by writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If this sounds overly pithy to you, please understand that my pithiness is an attempt to break through the thick skull of someone who desperately needs this advice: Me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T04:00:28.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17717" CreationDate="2015-06-15T06:43:23.867" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been drawing for thirty years and published a few comic books. I draw reasonably well. When I was beginning to learn to draw – you can always get better, so you are never &quot;accomplished&quot; – I bought a whole lot of how-to-draw books. Strangely enough, following their advice to construct human figures by following their schemas of proportion never worked. The figures I drew looked like they were drawn by someone who had never seen a human being: stiff, disproportionate, and lifeless. Then I started drawing from life. I visited a nude figure drawing class and drew the people I saw on the bus. My drawings were awful scribbles at first, but even those scribbles looked powerful and vigorous. And with time my lines began to resemble my models more and more. Until I was able to draw so well that people began to accuse me of tracing photographs (which I didn't). At that time I began to go over my how-to-draw books again, and at that time I was able to profit from them and implement some of their advice into my process. With the help of the how-to-draw books, I began to detach myself from my models and learned to draw from my imagination by abstracting the implicit knowledge about human anatomy I had gained during the years of life drawing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the experience I have gained through my own writing, and from what I have read and heard from published professional writers, writing works the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen King did not study how-to-write books. You might contest that he is not such a technically brilliant writer. But I will counter that he developed his own style, and that his style works for his readers, and that is all that counts. A technically brilliant writers who is not read is no proof of anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any art, if you try to learn by following how-to-books, the result will be something flat and lifeless. Some of the most intense stories I read where badly written amateur writings. Why is that so? Because these amateurs wrote. They did not try to construct a plot by following the three act structure or the hero's journey or any other advice expounded in how-to-write books. They wrote from the center of their own being, completely ignorant of any craft, simply using what they had learned about stories by reading stories and by being experiencing the &quot;stories&quot; of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, those amateur writings had plot holes and bad grammar, just as my scribbles did not look beautiful at all. But they had a story that was true and that touched me (and, as you can see from all those amateur writing sites, that touches others). All they needed to get good was to train their writing, and you only get better at doing something by doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How-to-write books are bought and used almost exclusively by people who are afraid of failure. When I was beginning to draw, I wanted my drawings to be perfect. I did not want to learn, I wanted to skip that step, and I bought and read those books searching for the secret knowledge that would magically transform me into a master draughtsman. But there is no such secret, neither in drawing, nor in writing, nor in music or sports or any other ability. The secret, if there is one, are diligence and perseverance. You have to turn out a lot of bad writing or bad drawings or awful sounding tones before your writing or drawing or making music gets good. Sure, how-to-write books do contain useful advice. But it is about as useful as telling someone who learns riding a bike to keep their balance. That is, it is useful to discuss the craft among advanced learners, but not useful if you have no feeling at all for what balance is. You must first make some writing experiences that help you understand and apply the advice, and those experiences can only be gained by writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning to write does not mean that you have to go to school before you are ready to go out into the real world and take up a job. In writing, you learn on the job. Everything you write is meant for publication. You do not do exercises for your professor, you always write to submit to an agent or publisher. Of course you should get feedback from peers so evaluate your writing and not actually submit anything that is not ready for submission. But you should write for submission nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting published is not a decision you make when you feel ready. It is something that happens when an agent or publisher notices that you are ready. This readiness will likely take time (see the notes below), but there is no curriculum of core knowledge that you objectively know when you have learned it, no exam in writing that will get you hired as a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You are ready to write now. You will get better as you keep writing. If you keep at it, eventually you will get published.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Notes.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also read &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/15904/5645&quot;&gt;my answer&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3245/how-does-the-10-000-hour-rule-apply-to-writing&quot;&gt;How does the 10,000 hour rule apply to writing?&lt;/a&gt;, where I interpret statistical data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jim C. Hines went a bit further and actually asked authors how much they had written before their first professional publication. The following is taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jimchines.com/2010/03/survey-results/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;his summary of his findings&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On average, professionally published authors had been writing for more than eleven years, before they made their first professional novel sale. Before their first professional sale, they had written an average of three to four unpublished novels. 58 of 246 authors sold the first novel they wrote (but the survey does not ask wether these authors had experience writing non-fiction, e.g. academic papers or newspaper journalism, so we don't know what this number means).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all, while there are overnight successes, the majority of professionally published writers need to learn their craft, and the better approach is to assume you are one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T09:23:38.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17723" CreationDate="2015-06-15T09:33:36.713" Score="5" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;Me and a couple of friends are thinking of creating a comic magazine that contains a couple of different original comics. This is what we want the magazine to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All the images inside will be in black &amp;amp; white&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We want it to be printed on a 5 x 7.5(this is preferred) or 6 x 9 inch paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The paper has to be in a white or cream color paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It has to be printed on normal paper like the ones used in novels or something similar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each magazine will be around 100 pages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We will release one magazine a week or maybe one every two weeks. We need a website that prints them and ships them to us since we will be distributing them through a monthly subscription on our site. We don't want the printing website to distribute it themselves through ebooks, amazon, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only website that we found that might do everything we want is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diggypod.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;diggypod&lt;/a&gt;. Is there any other sites that will do everything we want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14176" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-23T08:35:05.867" LastActivityDate="2018-04-23T08:35:05.867" Title="Where to print a weekly black &amp; white comic magazine" Tags="|self-publishing|printing|magazines|comics|print-on-demand|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17721" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-15T12:17:57.277" Score="1" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been trying to go through Mayfield Book on Technical Writing to find out how to do an in-text and parenthetical citation of a source that I found online. The source looks like a report with statistics, facts and bar-charts with figures in education -- but nowhere is it mentioned that this a report. The source at the end of it mentions the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;How to cite this product:&#xA;Turbo. Turbo Quick Take: Bridging the gender gap. New York: Turbo, 2012.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the following citations correct?&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Parenthetical&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Key indicators such as segregation and suggest that the situation might be improving (Turbo, 2012).&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In-text&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As stated in the Turbo (2012) report, ...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, what would be the correct way to cite this source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14154" LastEditorUserId="14154" LastEditDate="2015-06-15T12:33:22.067" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T18:17:57.470" Title="How to cite a report in APA style" Tags="|style|technical-writing|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17722" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-15T12:33:23.770" Score="5" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been trying to go through Mayfield Book on Technical Writing to find out how to do an in-text and parenthetical citation of a source that I found online. The source is an article from a popular magazine (similar to Nature, PopSci etc.) mentioning analysis of some researchers on Pollution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Air Pollution: Salvaging the Destruction&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just below the article the source where usually the names of all the authors are found, it mentions the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Changragupta Ren and colleagues present a bibliometric analysis confirming that ...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd earlier presumed that there is only author but looking at the end, it mentions names of five people as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Vincent Van is chaired assistant professor of ... at the University of .., US.&#xA;Chu Ma is in the School of ... at University ...&#xA;Yves Raj is chaired professor of ... at the University of ... at .., US. &#xA;Blaise Faulkner is chaired professor of ... at .... &#xA;C Ren is assistant professor in the ...&#xA;e-mail: cren@...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would I cite the above source? Would I use the name of only one researcher that figures in the title or should I use the information at the end of the article? There's no particular order in the end references as observed above.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;For eg. The author mentioned in the title comes last in the references even if they are not arranged alphabetically. How would I do a parenthetical and in-text APA citation for these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In-text (consider 1st citation)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As C Ren et al. (2012) suggest ...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Parenthetical (consider 1st citation)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Key indicators such as partciulate matter suggest that the situation might be improving (C Ren et al., 2012).&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, what would be the correct way to cite this source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14154" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T23:17:41.800" Title="Citing an article with multiple authors in APA style" Tags="|style|technical-writing|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17720" CreationDate="2015-06-15T12:36:58.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://createspace.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.createspace.com&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;That is Amazon's selfpublishing hardcopy arm. &#xA;They have the sizes you are looking for and you can get your printed items done very inexpensively.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can calculate your cost before you ever try the service if you go to:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/?sitesearch_query=calculate%20cost&amp;amp;sitesearch_type=SITE#content7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/?sitesearch_query=calculate%20cost&amp;amp;sitesearch_type=SITE#content7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tAzP4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only $2.15 per copy even at low quantities.  You can't beat it.&#xA;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T12:36:58.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17722" CreationDate="2015-06-15T13:25:00.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a work by two authors, you either name both authors in the single phrase, or in the parentheses each time you make reference to the work. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foo and Bar (1994) note that the world did not end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world did not end (Foo &amp;amp; Bar, 1994).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a work by three to five authors (which is what applies to your example), list all five names the first time you cite the work in either a single phrase or in parenthesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foo, Bar and Nom (1994) note that the world did not end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world did not end (Foo, Bar &amp;amp; Nom, 1994).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, for each subsequent citation use the first author's last name followed by &amp;quot;et al.&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Foo et al., 1994)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For six or more authors, you always use the first author's last name, followed by &amp;quot;et al.&amp;quot;, either within the phrase or in parenthesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foo et al. (1994) note that the world did not end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world did not end (Foo et al., 1994).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/03/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/03/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-11-13T19:54:41.787" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17707" CreationDate="2015-06-15T13:45:11.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Books today no longer begin &amp;quot;once upon a time...&amp;quot; there was such and such a hero, and such and such a heroine. So you do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; want mostly &amp;quot;background&amp;quot; in your opening paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I was taught to &amp;quot;begin the story in the middle of the action.&amp;quot; An example is the opening of my Revolutionary War novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Outside a log cabin on the banks of the Pee Dee River, Charlotte Mouton saw a group of horseman riding in the distance toward her. They weren't wearing uniforms so they had to be American Patriots, not British Redcoats, or Tories, pro-British Americans who wore green. She wondered why they were headed north. The enemy was not here, but further south. And according to the rumors that had been spreading through the countryside like wildfire, these men had been winning their battles. That was saying a lot for a bunch of farmers whose patriotism and enthusiasm for war far exceeded their training and experience.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The year was 1780, and the American Revolution had been raging for four years. But the fighting had only recently come to South Carolina...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the &amp;quot;once upon  a time&amp;quot; format, the most recent paragraph would have been the opening paragraph. But you can see how my &amp;quot;action&amp;quot; paragraph is more compelling. This becomes even more so, shortly, when we meet Charlotte's older brother and her future husband among these American soldiers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T13:45:11.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8788" CreationDate="2015-06-15T14:03:27.153" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with trying to define what a Light Novel is has to do with a whole lot of cultural baggage that is hard to transmit over to a Western idea of Literature. So it seems to be a medium that is focused on word-count, like a novella, but that isn't a proper definition. Likewise it also seems to be attached to a certain light, popular, and easy-to-read style, but that also may not necessarily be the case. It seems to encompass genres such as slice-of-life, fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, or even a mix of all the above, but you can't exactly say that it sticks closely to any of these attributes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's definitely linked to popularity and the otaku fandom though, since within multiple series you can see a reliance of cliche and comedy tropes or action/fantasy tropes that you usually see in anime. Usually this means novella-length, genre-focused, cliche-focused, low-description, high action, high dialogue Literature, serialized over several volumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the above attributes makes it 'different' from serious Literature or heavy Literature though. I can't exactly tell you what makes a Light Novel a Light Novel but I can point out counterexamples to what is definitely not the definition of a Light Novel, and perhaps we can get a general sense of what it is from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A Light Novel cannot be so easily distinguished from Literary Fiction. Yasutaka Tsuisui, who is probably one of the biggest and most postmodern literature authors in Japan, has written a Light Novel. A Western equivalent would be like getting the news that Franz Kafka or Thomas Pynchon was writing Young Adult fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A Light Novel is not necessarily light in its concepts. Murasaki-iro no Qualia, a sci-fi light novel, deals with heavy quantum hard-SF stuff like the collapse of the wave-form, the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics versus the many-worlds interpretation, Schrodinger's Cat etc... It has been considered equivalent to some Greg Egan novels. Likewise the LN series Kara no Kyoukai can be effectively called a Buddhist Urban Fantasy Noir, dealing with concepts like Sunyata, Arayashiki and the Buddhist notion of the non-self. Spice and Wolf deals with heavy economics topics. Legend of the Galactic Heroes deals with heavy political military space opera.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A light novel series, when taken as a whole, isn't necessarily shorter or less viable for a literary award than serious fiction either, nor less packed in content. Jinrui wa Suitai Sumashita is a 9 volume light novel series that deals with a fantasy world involving fairies. A highly satirical comedy probably akin to the Discworld series; its been placed on Japanese prize for readers at a University level (大学読書人大賞). The writer, Tanaka Romeo, has been called the Shakespeare of Japanese Light Novels and Visual Novels, and some have lauded his prose very highly, even saying its better than what you'd think of as highly literary classic or modern English writers like Nabokov or Hemingway.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So all these outliers merely make the proper definition of an LN hard for people not within the culture. The fact that many consider it a generic pop-medium and underrate the people within it indicates something. Its more like some kind of sub-cultural movement, like Alt-Lit, or New Weird, that encompasses everything that has been made in Japan so far. All of the above works, although completely divergent, have an awareness of things like otaku subcultural tropes, pop-tropes and genre-tropes, but the best writers will synthesize it into new forms. It can be a very post-modern, medium-defying genre. A new pop-art style of Literature? You can probably see reflections in people like Pynchon, for example, who took hardboiled and noir plotlines as well as plots from old adventure stories and the popular fiction of other eras and turned it into new matter for his books like Against the Day and Inherent Vice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14179" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T14:03:27.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17707" CreationDate="2015-06-15T14:14:24.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quote from Chekhov: “It seems to me that when you write a short story, you have to cut off both the beginning and the end. We writers do most of our lying in those spaces. You must write shorter, to make it as short as possible.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read most of Chekhov's stories, you'll probably find this is true. There's an essay that can answer all your questions called 'Overtures', written by Simon Leys, if you can find his book called the Halls of Uselessness. He writes how some authors, like Anthony Burgess in Earthly Powers, can write the most interesting things at first but completely fail to deliver. On the other hand some writers validate their first paragraphs like Melville in Moby Dick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;William Gass said that a better idea of finding out whether a book is good is flipping to pg 99. So I don't like the idea that it has to be the first paragraph that grips because some writers write in such a way where the foundations they stack very early on are almost imperceptible but when you reach the end it hits you like a trainwreck. I don't think people consider the opening of Madame Bovary to be very interesting, but Flaubert poured his whole self and years into perfecting that novel. Likewise some people won't be gripped by the opening of Proust's massive monster book, but its still a great classic of Literature, Time, Memory and Sensation. Somehow it works the same for endings. A story can end quietly but it can leave a sting that grows over time. Chekhov's The Lady and the Dog is sort of like this, and Kafka's famous The Castle doesn't even have an ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14179" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T14:14:24.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17720" CreationDate="2015-06-15T15:57:50.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have only found one company you seem to be searching in the wrong way. I would start with broad terms like 'printing services' and narrow it down by location (to reduce shipping) or something similar. I've done this is the past when I wanted books and magazines printed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've just tried it now and found a place two hundred metres away that would do the job and it was the second place listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use standard sizes (in this country A4 or A5) just about anywhere will do the job. If you use unusual sizes you might have to look a little further and it will cost you more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T15:57:50.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17717" CreationDate="2015-06-15T16:36:01.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a minute to think about this: If someone knows so much about writing that they can write a brilliant book about it, why aren't they writing best selling novels or literary classics? Occasionally a brilliant writer will take the time to write about writing (I have a list of rules for short stories by Edgar Alan Poe), but mostly the books appear to written by people who can't make a living out of writing the type of texts they are telling you how to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, you have to learn how to write and you keep learning, but if you've read enough books to know they are repeating each other, in my opinion you have read too many and just need to get on with writing. Of course each one will contain a gem, but why not discover a diamond mine for yourself by actually writing. Instead of digging over other people's dirt hoping to find something they have missed, start your own mine in unexplored territory. Be prepared to look in how-to manuals when you find you're getting too many cave ins, but look for an answer and then get back to digging your shaft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T16:36:01.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2015-06-15T17:09:28.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Bibliography:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Turbo. (2012). &lt;em&gt;Turbo quick take: Bridging the gender gap.&lt;/em&gt; New York: Turbo. Available online at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whereveryoufoundit.com/path/to/document.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.whereveryoufoundit.com/path/to/document.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Turbo, 2012, p. 7)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google for the Purdue Online Writing Lab, or pick up a copy of the APA Manual at your local public library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T17:09:28.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17731" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17734" CreationDate="2015-06-15T17:48:48.217" Score="22" ViewCount="1348" Body="&lt;p&gt;I posted my &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/authors/alexandro-chen/works/animal-suicide/75766/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;novel&lt;/a&gt; online for critique. And stumbled with the obvious question: when should I consider a feedback and when should I ignore it? This is what I'm doing so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If more than two people point out an error, I think of fixing it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If more than three people point out an error, I immediately fix it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a person points out an error that I previously saw, I immediately fix it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't include grammatical errors. Those are easy. The difficult part is plot, pacing, characterization, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I also use logic. If a mistake was very obvious but I didn't see it, I don't hesitate in correcting it. The problem arises when I'm unsure whether it's a real mistake or just the reader's opinion. (For example, some readers don't like my parenthesis, but others don't seem to mind.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What guidelines should I use for determining what reader feedback to implement and what to dismiss?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-06T08:32:42.663" LastActivityDate="2018-03-06T08:32:42.663" Title="Feedback: What to use and what to ignore?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|feedback|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16973" CreationDate="2015-06-15T18:11:46.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/authors/alexandro-chen/works/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scribophile&lt;/a&gt; for some time (a website where you can post your work and receive feedback). Like you, I'm non-native English speaker, and the people there don't seem to care. They also give very good suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you should give it a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-06-15T18:18:02.423" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T18:18:02.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17733" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-15T19:13:03.633" Score="2" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find really hard to express myself I mean it's pretty difficult write clearly what I mean. Any time I try to write something even for my job I am stuck, I look at the page and no words come to my mind and I feel lost I really don't know how to tell what I need to say. &#xA;To be honest now this problem is becoming a real obstacle because I have to write email to customer of suppliers. My manager constantly corrects my email saying that they don't make sense and some times are too rude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14182" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T13:10:56.460" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T15:14:23.653" Title="How to express myself in a sensible way" Tags="|style|word-choice|resources|business-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17731" CreationDate="2015-06-15T20:30:39.433" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Feedback is an enormously complex topic, for everyone, everywhere, in every role in life. Some people understand that it's complex. Others do not. Avoid feedback from people who think feedback is simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some (perhaps too many) of my thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Briefcase Method&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Charlie Seashore offers this technique: When someone gives feedback, put it in a mental briefcase. Then thank the person, close the briefcase, and leave. Later, if you want to, open the briefcase and take a closer look at the feedback. If you want to, do something with the feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At all times, you get to decide what to do with feedback, or whether to do anything at all with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tasting and Swallowing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Family therapist Virginia Satir said, &quot;Taste everything. Swallow only what nourishes.&quot; I think this lovely guideline works well for receiving feedback about writing. If someone's feedback fits for you, apply it. If not, don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this means you have to have some way of deciding whether a given bit of feedback nourishes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is difficult to do when you are unsure of yourself. And if you're seeking feedback, you are to some extent unsure of something. So receiving feedback &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; poses that challenge. If you knew for sure how to evaluate the feedback, you wouldn't have needed the feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here's the thing. The more your default reaction to feedback is to change your stories, the less of &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; there is in your stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only you can decide what nourishes you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first rule: When in doubt, trust yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second rule: Doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Responsibility to Respond to Feedback&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What responsibility do you have to respond to feedback?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are under no obligation to respond in any way to feedback, much less to apply it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taste everything. Swallow only what nourishes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Giver's Rule&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Giver's Rule says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ninety percent of feedback is about the giver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feedback you get from online writing communities comes from other writers. Writers in those communities mostly know no more than you do about writing. Feedback from writers is heavily distorted toward &quot;rules&quot; that they have picked up from somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to detect such rule-bound feedback is phrases like &quot;you can't&quot; and &quot;you must.&quot; Another way: Any &quot;feedback&quot; about how to &quot;fix&quot; your story. Readers don't tell you how to fix your story. They tell you how they reacted to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That isn't to say that feedback from readers is unbiased. Of course it is. Reader feedback is biased by each reader's tastes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter where you get feedback, you will have to sort out for yourself which parts of the feedback are about your story, and which parts are about the giver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more about The Giver's Rule, see my favorite book about feedback: &lt;em&gt;What Did You Say? The Art of Giving and Receiving Feedback,&lt;/em&gt; by Charlie and Edie Seashore and Jerry Weinberg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Judgment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look for feedback that focuses on how the reader reacted to the story, and less on feedback that purports to be the truth your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two statements, each feedback about the same movie:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Chappie&lt;/em&gt; was an awful movie.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I hated &lt;em&gt;Chappie.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both statements express judgments. The first statement is phrased as a judgment of the movie. The second is phrased as the viewer's &lt;em&gt;reaction&lt;/em&gt; to the movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prefer feedback that is more clearly about the reader's reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Distrust feedback phrased as the truth about your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Brutal Honesty&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone gives even the slightest indication that their feedback is brutally honest, run. Honesty is not brutal. Brutality is not honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Fix Your Story&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never accept feedback about how to fix your story. Fixing the story (if you think it needs fixing) is your job, not theirs. Anyone who tells you how to fix a story is telling you their story, not yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers tend to evaluate using writing myths, not reader sensibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reader Reactions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prefer feedback about how the reader reacted. Especially look feedback about clarity, significance, and believability. Prime yoursel to look for the answers to three questions: Huh? So what? Oh, really?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Huh? &quot;I didn't understand what was happening...&quot; This is about clarity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So what? &quot;I didn't care.&quot; Or, &quot;I was bored.&quot; This is about significance. What makes this matter to the characters, or to the reader?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oh, really? &quot;I didn't believe...&quot; This is about believability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course, look for (and ask for) feedback about what the reader loved. This helps to make sure you don't damage the good stuff while you fix the stuff that needs fixing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Focused Feedback&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feedback can sometimes be more useful if you focus on a specific aspect of your work, rather than general &quot;whatever feedback you can give me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick a single, specific aspect of craft to work on. Maybe dialogue, or scene openings, or pacing, or viewpoint, or description. For your next story or two or five, focus on practicing that aspect of your writing. Then ask for feedback about that specific aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Feedback About Your Work In Progress&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never, ever seek or accept feedback about a story you are writing. &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17615/is-it-a-bad-idea-to-publish-individual-chapters-of-my-book-idea-online-for-feed/17713#17713&quot;&gt;See my answer elsewhere&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Next Story&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not use feedback to fix this story, unless the feedback points out a clear error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use feedback about this story to write better stories in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T00:56:21.707" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17733" CreationDate="2015-06-15T20:48:04.070" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can try to &quot;rubber duck&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explain what you need to convey out loud to someone not in the know or even to a rubber ducky from the bathtub. Then write it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When still unsure, wait a day and read it back to see if the text still makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep at it, talk about it, it is a learn-able skill!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T20:48:04.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17731" CreationDate="2015-06-15T22:22:38.837" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that we are talking about feedback that you are not obligated to follow, or that does not have consequences beyond &quot;will this make the story better&quot;. I mean like, you show the story to your lawyer and he says, &quot;If you publish these statements about Mr So-and-so, you could be sued for libel&quot;. Or you have a publisher lined up, and the publisher says they require changes before they will accept the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you have two conflicting considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One: This is YOUR story, not theirs. You are not in any way obligated to accept someone else's suggestion. If they're at all reasonable, they know that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two: You are not the best judge of your own work, in many ways. You know what you INTENDED to say, but others can see what you DID say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're posting on a forum where you're getting feedback from random people, the odds are that some of those people are idiots. If you read some comment or suggestion and it's obviously absurd, you don't need to argue about it or agonize over it. Just ignore it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But be careful not to fall into the ego trap. Don't take comments as personal attacks and get defensive. If someone points out a real flaw in your story, don't try to justify it. Fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if readers say that some point in your story is unclear, I'd take that very seriously. You may have had a very clear idea in your head what was happening, but it may not be so obvious to a reader. At the simplest level, if someone says, &quot;I don't understand. Is this scene supposed to be happening at Fred's house or are they back at the police station now?&quot;, don't argue why it should be obvious that they are at Fred's house. Add a few words to make it clear, like, &quot;While they were at Fred's house, Mary said ...&quot; Of course the issue could be more complicated than that. If readers say it's not clear why the hero did such-and-such, fixing that could take more than one extra sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If readers say that a section is boring or irrelevant, examine why you included it. Is it necessary to advance the story? If it is but it's boring, is there some way you could liven it up? What happens here and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T22:22:38.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-16T01:30:19.883" Score="4" ViewCount="347" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a poem exploring my conflicting emotions of anger and the joy that the anger keeps supressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to publish a literary work based on such intense negative emotions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14186" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-16T05:49:12.830" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T13:40:42.923" Title="Should you publish or share poetry that was written simply in an angry or sad rant?" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-16T02:38:56.530" Score="0" ViewCount="284" Body="&lt;p&gt;I notice in some of the books I read that the author sometimes leaves explanatory notes that refer the reader to a book but the note is not written in a citation style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do footnotes and endnotes have to be written in citation styles such as MLA or Chicago? Or are citations only for bibliographies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13485" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T16:22:35.300" Title="How to properly cite a source in your footnotes?" Tags="|citations|footnotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17731" CreationDate="2015-06-16T03:30:00.947" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to emphasize two points that both Dale and Jay make:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You are writing for the reader to enjoy your story enough to want to pay money for your book. The reader is your customer. This means that &lt;strong&gt;the reader is always right&lt;/strong&gt;. If the reader is unhappy with your story it is not your job to convince them that they are wrong. Your book is not an intelligence test but a product that you want to sell to earn a living. If I don't like the taste of your pizza, I'll buy my pizza elsewhere, and no amount of arguing is going to make me enjoy the taste of yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, every feedback has the same value and every feedback is equally true (if the feedback is given from a reader perspective and not just recounting what other amateur writers have read in how-to books about how a story should be written).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is your book and your story and only you know what it should be.&lt;/strong&gt; So check each feedback against your gut feeling (and not against the advice given in how-to books) and accept only that feedback that clarifies your vision for you. If fixing your story no longer resonates with you, that reader is not part of your target audience and, no matter how true, accepting that feedback would destroy your art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot write for everyone, so don't attempt it. Have the courage not to make everyone happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you won't have thousands of test readers, &lt;strong&gt;don't do statistics on the answers&lt;/strong&gt;. Just because a certain critique is given only once, does not mean that it is less valid. Maybe this reader is the only from your target audience and her critique could be the one thing that'll make all your buyers regret their purchase and give you one star reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to make sure the feedback you get is valid...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Make sure your test readers are representative of your target audience.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T12:23:15.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17738" CreationDate="2015-06-16T09:25:25.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The various citation styles such as MLA and Chicago, often have a footnote style, or a defacto one -- often the same as the bibliography style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some citation styles are by normally written as an endnote -- within the bibliography -- Eg IEEE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It very much depends on the context as to what is appropriate.&#xA;In formal academic writing, eg a journal article there will be a definite and concrete answer. Almost certainly you can look it up on the journals website.  Similarly for writing a textbook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is in an academic context, for a field that uses LaTeX, you might be interested in the bibLaTeX &lt;code&gt;\footcite&lt;/code&gt; macro. There is some explanation of it in &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/69716/how-to-embed-citations-into-footnotes&quot;&gt;this TEX.SE question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In less formal situation, eg an expository nonfiction book, there will likely be guidelines, you should speak to the editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a novel, I would be surprised if there were guidelines, beyond perhaps the normal referring to media works. Its mostly something to be handled in late stage when working though with an Editor/Copy Editor. Just leave enough information to handle it then. Eg Author, Book, Chapter, Edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3827" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:29.717" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T09:25:25.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17741" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17749" CreationDate="2015-06-16T10:51:11.623" Score="5" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing, scenes come to my mind in different languages mixed together.&#xA;For example in a single scene a description will be in French, some dialogues in English, with a few words of Spanish and Occitan appearing here and there. Sometimes a single sentence contains three different languages.&#xA;The result can be an incomprehensible mess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I proceed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I write everything as it comes and have an editing phase later? Or should I try to translate my thought during the writing process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there exercises or rules I could follow to help me control/focus my thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T16:13:39.730" Title="How to write when thinking in multiple languages?" Tags="|creative-writing|editing|planning|translation|multilingual|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17696" CreationDate="2015-06-16T13:43:56.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider that there may be no central character premise, and that the story does not conclude by delivering a moral.  (Typo'd as &quot;amoral&quot;.)  Perhaps the central premise &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the train crash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within that context, how are the characters changed, individually?  If they interact, is their world-view challenged?  Is their sense of certainty and self worth strengthened or ruined when they rise or fail to meet the challenge?  Did they lose a limb or a loved-one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, step back.  Do these threads weave together in harmony with each other, or is there discord?  (My personal preference is to hear discord before resolution.)  The story can be a meditation on how a calamity sends similar people onto vastly different personal trajectories without pandering to the (imagined) need to deliver a &quot;message&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.  Try imagining the train crash as a character, and write from &lt;em&gt;its&lt;/em&gt; perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10746" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T13:43:56.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17737" CreationDate="2015-06-16T13:44:37.343" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two reasons to write: because your writing earns you money (or status or power or affection); or because you feel strongly about something. Almost all literary writing is motivated by the latter, and especially poetry is composed to express emotions and read for the feelings it contains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadness, loneliness, anger and other non-happy feelings feature prominently in literature. If you search for &quot;anger poetry&quot; you will find a wealth of examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of publication, there is no difference between a poem expressing anger and one expressing love or a third one on poverty in Angola.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T13:44:37.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17737" CreationDate="2015-06-16T14:00:07.157" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it matters what your state of mind was when writing; if anger motivates you to write, then why not use that as a muse? What matters is whether the finished work is any good or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest rereading and possibly editing the work later on, when you have a clear head and can be objective about its quality. If it's a good poem, then go ahead and submit it for publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T14:00:07.157" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17741" CreationDate="2015-06-16T14:30:30.313" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's your first draft, just write it as it comes. You can't edit a blank page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After your first draft, go back through and clean up the polyglossolalia. If you're writing in third person, pick one language and make it all that. (Obviously if your characters speak multiple languages, you can decide what to keep and what to translate.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing in the first person, you may choose to have a multilingual narrator. You then have to pick one &quot;main&quot; language (the language of whatever you think your audience will be) and figure out from there how much of the other language(s) you want to translate for them. For example, if the first-person narrator's main language is French, you can leave in a few swear words in Spanish, but if she's going to have a lengthy conversation in English, you need to translate that for your French readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a certain charm in code-switching (when a character changes languages for a few key words because the main language just doesn't have the term or phrase), so I wouldn't edit out your other languages entirely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T14:30:30.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16872" CreationDate="2015-06-16T14:30:43.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't introduce powers if you won't explore their consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The presence of &lt;em&gt;super&lt;/em&gt; super-powers would affect every interpersonal, social and political action.  Do you want your characters wondering and worrying if the shy nerdy guy is just socially maladapted or has chosen to isolate himself because he will literally explode with the force of an atomic bomb if he talks to a girl?  What forms of bigotry and racism will be fomented by the disparity between &quot;normal&quot; and &quot;powered&quot; people?  Are people with powers automatically registered at birth and conscripted into policing or soldiering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grand powers would not just be &quot;showy&quot;.  They might send your teenage protagonists into a perpetual state of existential angst, fearing that everything that they know and love might suddenly cease to be under a barrage of comet-sized punches (cf. &lt;em&gt;Man of Steel&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given all the precedents from comics, books, TV and movies your audience may expect something quite gritty.  Don't raise (lower?) their expectations unless you &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; to follow through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.:  Have a look at the &lt;em&gt;Wild Cards&lt;/em&gt; anthologies edited by George RR Martin (especially the first three!), &lt;em&gt;Firestarter&lt;/em&gt; by Stephan King, and the whole &lt;em&gt;Civil War&lt;/em&gt; storyline in the Marvel comics as extreme examples of how society can react and become fractured by a spectrum of abilities manifesting.  (The other comic book and graphic novel exploring these themes being far too numerous to mention.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10746" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T14:30:43.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14251" CreationDate="2015-06-16T15:31:21.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If complex novel-length plots come naturally, then try writing a single (or pair of) scene(s) from the longer story -- an episode in the larger arc.  The challenge will then be to produce distinct and authentic voices for the characters without the back-story and world-building that the longer format would afford.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10746" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T15:31:21.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17737" CreationDate="2015-06-16T15:33:41.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe in your case writing was the medium to express those strong emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case the emotions felt were towards a known person in your life, its better to share it with a few or the intended one only. Publishing such a literary work to the common is not advisable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in case the emotions are generic that is felt by many, I would really advise you to publish it. This will add voice to many silences. Also in this case the emotion does not matter to that extent as all emotions express something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14196" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T15:33:41.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17741" CreationDate="2015-06-16T15:54:44.670" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way of approaching this may be to commit to the linguistic styles of your characters and let the story develop a &quot;slang&quot; that you introduce to your readers through annotation provided by the narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exact, literal translation is not as important as conveying meaning.  Consider providing frequent, explicit crutches early in the text before settling on a minimal, but constant, scaffolding through to the end.  The reader will not need to know what &quot;merde&quot; is, as a material, if they understand that characters only utter when really angry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the common roots of French and Spanish, and the number of borrowed words that appear in English, the gap between where you are writing and where your audience may be reading might be smaller than you fear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10746" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T15:54:44.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17741" CreationDate="2015-06-16T16:13:39.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt that there's a definitive answer to this. Different writers have different styles and different things that work for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, my approach is that for the first draft, I just throw words on paper. Whatever comes to my mind I type into the computer. Once I have a whole bunch of words down, then I go back and clean it up. I rewrite sentences that are poorly worded, re-arrange sentences or paragraphs so that the flow of the thought makes sense, drop text that doesn't really advance the thought, and add text when there are gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was young and the idea of owning your own computer was in the same league as owning your own jet airplane, I wrote with a typewriter. Then, once you typed a word, if you changed your mind you had to throw away the whole page and retype it. If on page 10 you decided that you needed to add a paragraph to page 4, you would have to retype page 4, which would push some text from that page onto page 5, so you had to retype page 5, etc. So back then I would type a first draft, make notes on it and scribble all over it, and then type a second draft, and declare myself done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, with word processing software, I go back and forth through my work constantly. It's easy to add or subtract a word or a sentence and let the computer adjust all the following pages. Do it. Hack and chop and go forward and backward and move things around. It's easy today. I don't really make &quot;drafts&quot; anymore, like first draft, second draft, third draft. Rather, it's an ongoing process, change a little here, change a little there, until I'm satisfied that it's the best that I can produce. (Or until I'm sick of reading and re-reading my own work.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T16:13:39.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17738" CreationDate="2015-06-16T16:22:35.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Oxinabox says, if you are writing for a journal, they will almost always, if not literally always, have standards for footnotes and endnotes. Usually they'll say to follow MLA or APA or whatever style guide. Some may have their own rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing a scholarly book, the publisher may have a specific style guide. If not, or if you are self-publishing, you should still at least follow the spirit of the popular style guides if you want your work to be taken seriously. A scholarly book with no footnotes, or with footnotes that don't enable a reader to find the original source, is likely to be dismissed as &quot;not a scholarly book&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a non-fiction book for general readers, i.e. not for professionals in the field but for ordinary people, you have a lot more leeway. If the authority of the sources you are quoting is important, than you should have decent footnotes or endnotes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many non-fiction books rely primarily on &quot;common knowledge&quot;, well-documented facts that don't particularly require foot notes. Books that are intended to be summarizes of generally accepted information, like introductory books, often don't have footnotes. If a book is primarily analysis, commentary, or opinion, it may not need footnotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Works of fiction rarely have footnotes at all. Normally you don't want to interrupt the flow of a story with a footnote. Fiction translated from another language may have footnotes to explain difficulties in the translation. Books written in another culture may have footnotes to explain cultural things that the author assumed but that may not be clear to readers in another culture. Etc. But these are relatively rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T16:22:35.300" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16872" CreationDate="2015-06-16T17:05:04.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should use supernatural powers for the sake of the plot, not for the sake of &quot;power&quot; or for &quot;cool.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of my screenplays, I gave the heroine &quot;supernatural&quot; powers to fix a problem inherent in the plot. It's all very matter of fact (and treated as such), but when she's done, she is finally &quot;appropriate&quot; for the hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T17:05:04.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14174" CreationDate="2015-06-16T19:26:46.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really doesn't matter. Focus on what you think is right for the story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14199" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T19:26:46.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17737" CreationDate="2015-06-16T22:52:32.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general it is good to write when ranting.  You get to capture your thoughts and ideas. This makes for a great way to get them out of yourself and into a form that allows you to process them better.  Generally it is not good to share or publish these directly.  They should be contemplated, refined, and finally delivered from a place that is not one of anger or malice.  Especially when sharing them with the person who caused the anger in the first place.  The words should be able to convey the meaning and purpose behind the anger, not just the blind fury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14201" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T22:52:32.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16854" CreationDate="2015-06-16T23:36:54.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at the way in which citations are implemented over on Living Reviews in Relativity&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.springer.com/physics/theoretical%2C+mathematical+%26+computational+physics/journal/41114&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; [link]&lt;/a&gt;.  For a specific example see the article &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.emis.de/journals/LRG/Articles/lrr-2014-7/articlese1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Massive Gravity&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second paragraph on that page, click on the citation numbered 287.  You'll get a little pop-up that follows the usual citation style, but annotated with hyperlinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10746" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2019-05-07T00:56:34.183" LastActivityDate="2019-05-07T00:56:34.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10890" CreationDate="2015-06-17T06:31:03.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Worrying that a publishing company is going to steal your poems is like worrying that the dry cleaner is going to steal your clothes, or that the shoe repair shop is going to steal your shoes. Could it happen? I suppose. But on the list of things that are worth worrying about, this is very, very low. As others have pointed out, if any publishing company was caught doing this, their reputation would be ruined and they would lose far more than the small amount they would gain by cheating you out of your royalties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a new author, the thing to worry about is writing something good enough and attention-getting enough that publishers and readers will be interested in it. Every hour you spend trying to devise some scheme to protect your work from being stolen is an hour that COULD have been spent editing or marketing your work. Don't waste time worrying about the one in a million chance that your work will be stolen. Worry about the 99 in a 100 chance that no publisher will be interested in your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, the other paranoid fear I hear a lot from new writers is that a publisher will lie about how many copies they sold to short change you on your royalties. Same as above: If a publisher was doing this, sooner or later it would come out. A disgruntled employee would reveal it or an IRS auditor would discover it or something. IT's not worth the risk. Has it ever happened? Maybe. But it's not worth worrying about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T06:31:03.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14174" CreationDate="2015-06-17T07:34:14.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contrary to what the other answers recommend, when you write for children, you &lt;strong&gt;must not&lt;/strong&gt; let the story dictate the length of the book!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you write for accomplished readers, you can let your story unfold as it will (although there are apparently &lt;a href=&quot;http://theswivet.blogspot.de/2008/03/on-word-counts-and-novel-length.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;expected lengths&lt;/a&gt; that unpublished authors should not deviate from in their first novel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;When you write for children, the length of your book must be appropriate for their developmental phase.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Children can only focus on one thing for a certain amount of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They can only graps stories of a certain complexity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And, if they read the book themselves, their reading ability is still weak, reading is a strenuous effort, and they tire easily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books for beginning readers are usually not classified by age group, but by how well a child reads (because different children will reach different levels of accomplishment at different ages). There is a gradual progress, from books for first readers that look very much like picture books, to books for more advanced readers that except for their shorter length look a lot like adult novels, with word count increasing and size and number of images decreasing. Agent Jennifer Laughran gives the word count for books for beginning readers as &lt;a href=&quot;http://literaticat.blogspot.ca/2011/05/wordcount-dracula.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;100 and 2,000 words&lt;/a&gt;, depending on reading level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books for absolute beginners have large images and only a sentence or two on each page. The text is printed very large and often the lines are broken shorter than page width to make finding the correct next line easier for the children. As books grow longer with reading ability, they are often broken into chapters or contain several shorter stories, to provide (meaningful) breaks. A book for a child that has been reading for about half a year – that is the second level of reading ability or usually the second half year of first form (age 5 to 8) – is about 30 pages long and takes the child about &lt;strong&gt;half an hour to read&lt;/strong&gt;. (This is my experience from a score of books my seven year old son has been reading to me as a homework exercise.) If books are longer, each story in the book or each chapter should take a child about half an hour to read. That is the amount of time that a child that age is willing to focus on reading, so you need to break your book into appropriate chunks, even if it aims at more advanced readers and is longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter books – that is, books for children who have mastered the basics and are comfortable with reading – are &lt;a href=&quot;http://literaticat.blogspot.ca/2011/05/wordcount-dracula.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;between 4,000 and 13,000 words&lt;/a&gt; long. Your book length (29 pages) and the low minimum of your age range (7-10) suggests to me that you might not be writing a chapter book but a book for advanced beginners. If you want to write a chapter book, look at other examples in the category (some are listed on Jennifer's page, others you will find in your local book store or library) and roughly calculate their length (count one page and multiply). Also, read some of them and see how their stories differ from yours and what you might incorporate or expand on to increase length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing for children is much more difficult than writing for adults, because you have to understand children and be familiar with their interests and their abilities. If you don't have children yourself, observe the reading habits of the children of your friends or extended family. If you can, let them read to you and see how they manage. Print out your manuscript in large type and give it to some children to read. If you don't have personal contact to any children, ask some parents to have their children read it and get the feedback from the adults. (Don't try to approach children, the parents will misunderstand this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T07:34:14.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16423" CreationDate="2015-06-17T07:37:20.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you just need to add a few things to go ahead. You should have a flow of events for at least an entire season written. This will not only give the agent a better idea of your story but also give you a baseline to follow. An entire script for the season may not be necessary. Also an outline for another season. Just few possibilities will get more trust in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linking of events in different seasons is generally applauded by the audience. So a preview of the same in your mind and putting the same in the agents mind will surely help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rest you do have a good amount of material ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14196" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T07:37:20.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17733" CreationDate="2015-06-17T08:58:02.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel a very good and simple way to start is a scratch pad. Hard to express is generally associated with difficulty in forming sentences which convey the intended thought. We always have the basic words ready, but the sentences is what the problem is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just write whatever comes in your mind. Words or sentences or pictures whatever it may be. First put all of it down somewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let these just be random dots for now. The next task is to join the dots. Just repeat this iteratively and form sentences. Finally you will get the intended. Initially you may have to do this if you are really having a hard time expressing but once you get a hang of the procedure. You will do away will at the putting down part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14196" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T08:58:02.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17737" CreationDate="2015-06-17T13:40:42.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally poetry in most cases transport emotions, that doesn't mean necessarily positive emotions. It could be happen, that what you wrote in anger is not in a condition that you like to publish it, but if you think it work that way, then you shouldn't be stopped by the emotional state you were in writing this. If you're unsure, give it someone else who you trust to read, if she/he says it is OK then publish. And remember, many negative emotions like depression, sadness, anger or the like have influenced writers over the centuries, and sometimes their work is even better then written in such emotional states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T13:40:42.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14174" CreationDate="2015-06-17T14:01:38.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Early reader &quot;chapter books&quot; range widely in length.  Some have very little, simple text, and some have a quite a lot of complex text. You should spend some research time in a library or bookstore and compare your manuscript to what is out there to get a better picture of what is publishable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T14:01:38.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17763" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-06-17T14:48:22.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creative commons licences are a set of licences designed for the purpose of sharing ones work with the world. All creative commons licences allow to copy the work without fees and further restrictions as long as the work is unchanged, the original creators are credited and it is uncommercial. Some of the licences lift these restrictions even more, allowing to change the content or allow for commercial distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastEditorUserId="72" LastEditDate="2015-06-22T03:28:41.720" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T03:28:41.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17764" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-06-17T14:48:22.803" Score="0" Body="a set of licences for sharing creative work with the world by permitting non-commercial copying." OwnerUserId="72" LastEditorUserId="72" LastEditDate="2015-06-22T03:28:28.360" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T03:28:28.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8694" CreationDate="2015-06-17T14:57:23.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The set of licences that are creative commons allow for copying and distribution of the works, as long as some restrictions are met. These restrictions are represented by two-letter abbreviations, that are added to CC, for example CC-BY-SA (the license Wikipedia uses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meaning of the abbreviations are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BY: Attribution - Credit the creator(s)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NC: Non commercial - it isn't permitted to use the work commercially&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ND: Non derivate - it isn't permitted to change the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SA: Share alike - it is permitted to change the work as long as the derivate is distributed under the same license&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read more about it on their &lt;a href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the CC-BY-SA of Wikipedia means you can print a book of articles, as long as you credit the authors and distribute the contents of the books under the same license CC-BY-SA. As some books containing content of the Wikipedia already do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NC-clause would disallow you to ask for money for distribution the book (luckily not the case for Wikipedia). The ND-clause would disallow to change the content, obviously not the right choice for Wikipedia, as an article wouldn't be allowed to be changed from someone different than the original author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every CC-license allows to copy, if it is non-commercial, unchanged and credits the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastEditorUserId="72" LastEditDate="2017-01-20T12:28:23.227" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T12:28:23.227" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6851" CreationDate="2015-06-17T15:03:13.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know you can find free books here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Gutenberg&lt;/a&gt; - mostly books with expired exclusive copyright, but a few CC-books too (look for Cory Doctorow)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mobileread.com/forums/ebooks.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mobileread&lt;/a&gt; - again, mostly books with expired exclusive copyright&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From both sources you can use and distribute the books without any fees legally in practically all jurisdictions (as copyright is expired based on international treaties).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T15:03:13.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17769" CreationDate="2015-06-17T15:08:20.640" Score="7" ViewCount="588" Body="&lt;p&gt;The protagonist in my story decides to research a topic. Naturally, I wanted her to encounter some obstacles first, so I arranged the starting chapters like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First frustration &gt; Second frustration &gt; Third frustration &gt; Success&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(She researches on the Internet and fails, researches in the library and fails, tries at her university's department and fails. And finally, just as she's about to give up, she finds someone who helps her.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did this because I wanted to 1) show her frustration 2) show that no one was taking her seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the majority of my readers are saying that they are &lt;em&gt;dead-end&lt;/em&gt; chapters, that maybe I should delete them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I? Or maybe they think this because they haven't reached the fourth chapter yet? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT (based on Monica's answer):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not about the research all the time. For instance, in one of the chapters she encounters an &quot;ex-lover&quot;, in another she gets fooled by a librarian, and in the last she is laughed at in class. And I reveal some stuff about her and her thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if this is enough to keep the reader interested, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-06-18T08:06:57.190" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T14:25:59.010" Title="I have three dead-end chapters. Should I keep them or remove them?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17733" CreationDate="2015-06-17T15:14:23.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a three part solution to your problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Format -- there are some standard forms for business&#xA;communication.  A lot of what makes any communication seem more&#xA;polite is just the inclusion of some standard niceties (please,&#xA;thank you, etc) that can basically be cut and pasted from one email&#xA;to the next.  You should easily be able to find some books or online&#xA;tutorials for business communication.  If you follow the pattern, all you need to do is adapt it to your situation --it doesn't need to be creative or inspired.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rewrite -- never send an email until you have read it through a couple of times.  It may help to read it out loud.  It might also help you get started on your writing if you tell yourself that the first version doesn't need to be perfect, since you'll be rewriting later. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Practice -- no one is good at writing until they do a lot of it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T15:14:23.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17767" CreationDate="2015-06-17T15:16:01.127" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While there might be a payoff coming in the fourth chapter, if readers get frustrated enough on the way there, some of them will bail and never finish your book.  So while you can ask your reviewers to forge ahead and read the rest, you can't assume readers will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider one of the following two approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Condense the material.  Do you really need three chapters to convey &quot;tried and tried and tried again, getting more and more frustrated&quot;?  It sounds like you're getting pretty detailed; I'm imagining specific Google queries, the details of the library crawl, and so on.  It sounds like that's too much detail for the weight this element has in your overall story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Intersperse it with other developments.  Instead of having chapters that are &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; about this search for information, integrate that search into the other things that are going on in the plot at the same time.  This character is probably doing other things -- or, if not and if it's not first-person, &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; characters are surely doing other things that you can talk about.  Let the search become a long-running &lt;em&gt;theme&lt;/em&gt; but not the entirety of the &lt;em&gt;text&lt;/em&gt; for that part of your book.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T15:16:01.127" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17767" CreationDate="2015-06-17T17:09:45.307" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep them, but make them better. Your readers say that they are dead ends. So that is what you must change. Each of the chapters should &lt;em&gt;open&lt;/em&gt; a new development in some way. Exactly what depends on your story, but it could be to introduce a possible enemy or ally, or to raise the stakes in some way - such as her realising that what seemed to be a purely academic puzzle actually puts her own life in danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep the parts showing the frustration and the humiliation that your protagonist suffers. Intensify them if possible. These painful experiences give her a strong motive to succeed in the end and prove her detractors wrong. They also make the reader sympathise and long to see the tables turned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T17:09:45.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17771" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-18T01:31:21.607" Score="3" ViewCount="484" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had a falling out with my publisher. She has published many of my works and is telling me I am not legally able to resell my work anywhere. I have no contract to refer to. There is no verbal agreement other than she would publish and I would get royalties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we had a falling out I would like to take my work and sell it elsewhere. I would be revamping my work with my own things. Title, clipart, adding and subtracting from the work itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is why, when we have no legal agreement (and there is nothing implied anywhere), could I not take my work, change it, and sell it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I missing something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue I am now running into after reading, talking and reading some more is that I would like to do my own publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The items in questions are a preschool line, the whole alphabet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I relinquish my rights and sign those over to her and she removes my name from them, would I then be free to create my own, ORIGINAL and completely different from what she has alphabet line. Yes, originally I was going to revamp what was there. I am no longer looking for that, it is to complicated. I am now looking just to do something original... from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see how I can be in any violation of any agreement or copyright whether verbal or otherwise, but after all the reading I have done nothing would surprise me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14213" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-30T10:31:39.073" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T10:31:39.073" Title="Can I change my work and seel it if I am published with no contract?" Tags="|publishing|legal|publisher|contracts|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17771" CreationDate="2015-06-18T03:12:17.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two issues, the copyright registration, and the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First Make sure the copyright is registered to you. Right away, before you finish reading the answer. Now!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is the contract, if verbal is still there. In writing notify your publisher that you are terminating all rights to future publication of your works and that you are requiring a final accounting. A lawyer can help you write it. A good copyright attorney should be able to do this in less than fifteen minutes (templates are wonderful) and any lawyer should be able to do it in a couple hours. at this point you should (as long as you have not signed any licencing agreements or copyright assignments) be able to do what you wish with your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-18T06:00:29.470" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T06:00:29.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17771" CreationDate="2015-06-18T04:19:37.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You do have a verbal contract.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have an agreement that your publisher would publish your work and that you would get royalties. That is a contract. The fact that there are no further details is irrelevant to the question wether or not you have a contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many jurisdictions, a verbal contract is as good as a written one. In fact, historically the verbal contract precedes the written one, and (verbal agreements) were only fixed in writing to preserve them beyond the life and memory of the original contractual partners and witnesses. Written contracts also replace witnesses if a dispute goes to court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you have a verbal agreement (and witnesses) or any kind of communication (email, SMS) relating to your cooperation, that is (in many jurisdictions) as good as a written contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no contract, or if your (verbal or written) contract lacks details, in many jurisdictions the most common form of contract is thought to exist. For example, if you buy a car and in your country such a car usually comes with a warranty, but it is legally possible to sign a contract that sells the car without warranty, in the absence of a contract (or in the absence of any mention of a warranty in your contract) a warranty is assumed because it is the common and expected case. This is so because basically the written law is only the written down version of social conventions and common morality and, mostly, cannot run counter to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in most jurisdictions, even if you don't have a contract, you in fact have one and are bound by what your contractual partner can reasonably expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, the publisher can reasonably expect by convention that your cooperation does not simply end because you have been insulting each other and are no longer friends. Business contracts are not touched by how friendly or unfriendly the parties deal with and how they feel about each other. As you describe your case, I would assume that you are still bound to this publisher by convention, and that you have the usual options to cancel that cooperation but no right to cancel it one-sided or prematurely, if the publisher still does his part of the job of publishing your work correctly and appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But talk to a lawyer. I ain't one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-18T06:06:32.973" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T06:06:32.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17767" CreationDate="2015-06-18T07:25:19.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep them, adapt the storyline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How often does research succeed in one go? Life is not like that. If at any time the current attempt is shown as the way to go, and only at the end the impossibility is revealed, and in such a way it could not be known before, I say that is discovery, learning experience, and a nice way to show protagonist perseverance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If those failures up the ante by introducing time pressure it becomes even more functional for your story. Especially if one attempt leads to the next. Just avoid your protagonist being in a drag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T07:25:19.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4744" CreationDate="2015-06-18T11:03:47.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Releasing books under CC-license can be useful for different reasons. Cory Doctorow claims it is useful to the sales of his books (fiction in his case). That may differ for different persons/books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the business model for creative commons books?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where can be a lot of business models around CC-books. You can give away the eBook as CC but sell the printed copy for money (I think that is the model Cory Doctorow uses). You can have a standard-version licensed under a CC-license, and a premium-version that sells for money, including more content, maybe nice pictures or stuff like that. You can release the first book of a series or the first chapter of a book under a CC-license, to get more interest for the whole series (think if Donald Knuth's Art of Computer Programming has the first book released as CC). You could use your book to advertise something else (a service maybe). You could use the free free books, to get famous and make money maybe by speaking at conferences. You sell the printed copy with CC-license, but no eBook. So people may copy that, but someone has to scan it first. And probably there are a lot more possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you simply don't have a business model. You have created a book to help people and want to distribute it as far as possible and not thinking about money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does it hurt sales? Does it help sales by creating more buzz around a book?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is directed towards the business model of CC-ebooks and selling the printed copy. Cory Doctorow claims it increases the sales of his books, because people start reading his stuff, who would never had started in the first place if it wasn't free. But in reality it is really hard to really measure the impact. Also, if it works for Doctorow, it may not work for you. There could be identified two groups of people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some people may have bought the book or ebook, but as the ebook is free they take it and are content with that. These people are a loss to your sales.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some people may have never noticed your book but get in contact with the CC-ebook as it gets circulated freely. They read it and find it useful and buy the printed copy for more convenience or simply because they want to support the author. They may also tell others about the book, and as the entry-hurdle is low as they can download it for free many actually will read it. These are a win for your sales.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you win if Group 2 is bigger than Group 1. That may actually be the case, if you not very well known in the start. For someone like Donald Knuth the Group 1 might be bigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has the wide availability of pirated copies (and pirated PDFs) of traditionally copyrighted books affected the book publishing world, and does this help or hinder the creative commons licensing process?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how this affected the publishing world. But does it help CC? Yes, as there is no longer a need for pirating if it is CC-licensed. Also the difference is smaller, as many people pirate anyway you may give it away in the first place and you may earn more readers who are grateful and purchase later on something to help you or because you earned their trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does the advent of ebooks factor in?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Printing a book costs money. Copying an ebook cost nothing. So making a classic printed book CC may mean people can copy it, but that involves effort and cost. Making a book CC today means an ebook can be created and at that point it is easy and cost nothing to distribute it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T11:03:47.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17776" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17778" CreationDate="2015-06-18T11:28:09.213" Score="6" ViewCount="2994" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current work is in first person. Well, it's a début so I didn't compare the benefits of first vs. third when I started writing it. I just picked the first because it was easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the plot line has become layered, and there's multiple storylines running along and there were a lot of scenes which absolutely demanded a switch in pov. That's when I started cussing. I couldn't switch the pov so I hacked my way around those. I think the tweaks came along just fine. And now I'm working on the climax and I don't want to go back and change everything from first to third. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's just this one scene which cannot be shown from the protagonist's pov. Just stretching a limb out. I'm planning to put it in the epilogue. It &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; to be in third person. can I do that? Can I write just that in third person while the rest of the script remains in first person? How about I keep the prologue and epilogue both in third person (just to even out things) and the rest remains in first person? Doable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-03-25T23:25:37.170" LastActivityDate="2019-03-25T23:25:37.170" Title="Prologue and Epilogue in third person and chapters in first person doable?" Tags="|plot|grammatical-person|third-person|epilogues|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17776" CreationDate="2015-06-18T12:33:08.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think everything is doable, if the reader gets the feeling it is fitting. I see no problem in the approach to have the book in first person and switch to third for the finale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T12:33:08.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17776" CreationDate="2015-06-18T13:28:56.177" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds fine to me. The prologue and epilogue are literally before and after the story, so it's fine for them to be formatted differently or have a different POV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T13:28:56.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17776" CreationDate="2015-06-18T14:05:31.920" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a sense, this is the whole point to an epilogue --if it had the same feel as the main narrative, it would just be the last chapter. Epilogues exist solely to solve the problem of authors wanting to tell the readers things that don't --for whatever reason --fit into the main framework of the novel (and the same is true for prologues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't necessarily mean it's always a good idea.  The beloved classic &lt;em&gt;The Secret Garden&lt;/em&gt; has an epilogue so universally hated that it's actually omitted in most modern editions of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NOTE: According to the comments below, it's possible that the &quot;epilogue&quot; I remember might actually have been a late addition by another author.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-06-19T15:35:21.687" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T15:35:21.687" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17780" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17792" CreationDate="2015-06-18T14:43:20.173" Score="2" ViewCount="863" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a novel called &lt;em&gt;Animal Suicide&lt;/em&gt;. It's a mix of romance and dark humor. It's about a girl who, after a weird incident, postpones a pill overdose and starts researching about the topic of animal suicide (sorry for repeating this on the site, but it's to make the question clearer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;universe&quot; of this novel is set in real life, but, like in many humorous stories, it has its own crazy phenomena. For instance, Li-Mei, the protagonist, encounters two kinds of people: those who think that animal suicide is a crazy/taboo topic and those who are actively researching it. So, she eventually stumbles into an Animal Suicide Club and a lady who has been obsessed with animal suicide since childhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything is OK. But here's the problem: readers think that having Li-Mei find people who are interested in animal suicide is too convenient, kind of like deus-ex-machina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I don't know what to do. Should I just remove all these deus-ex-machina? Or find a way to make them more &quot;agreeable&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT (based on Lauren's answer):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detailed example: At the animal behavior class, Li-Mei is laughed at for asking about animal suicide. That's how the founder of the Animal Suicide Club (who's in the class) finds her. Is this still deus-ex-machina?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2018-03-12T20:32:38.440" LastActivityDate="2018-03-12T20:32:38.440" Title="Is the following deus-ex-machina? If so, should I remove it?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|deus-ex-machina|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17780" CreationDate="2015-06-18T17:23:57.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Ville Niemi comments above, the simplest way to make this not a coincidence is to have your protagonist do some work to find these people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I can't imagine how she &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; casually stumble over something called an Animal Suicide Club. It's the &quot;Club&quot; part which requires the work. Animal suicide researchers, yes, you'd probably find those without an enormous amount of Googling. But a club? People who make investigating animal suicides a &lt;em&gt;hobby&lt;/em&gt;? You aren't going to see that posted on a flier at the local coffee shop. Other than at a veeeeeeery outré small liberal arts college, this is a group of people who will be weird even to the animal psychologists studying this behavior for a living. She's going to have to go looking for them &amp;mdash; hear rumors, get slapped down by researchers who think the club is full of dangerous idiots and don't want her involved, warned off by ex-members, that sort of thing. Finding the club should be a significant obstacle in itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T17:23:57.953" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17771" CreationDate="2015-06-18T18:38:39.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing as a published author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;standard&quot; contract term is the so-called &quot;next work&quot; right. That is, the author needs to offer the publisher the rights to the &quot;next work&quot; s/he produces. If the two parties, bargaining under good faith, can come to an accord on the work, the &quot;next work&quot; clause applies to the following product. If there is no agreement on the &quot;current&quot; work, the relationship is broken. Absent written evidence to the contrary, this is the interpretation that the courts may take based on the industry practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This practice would protect both parties' rights. The publisher gets the &quot;right of first refusal&quot; on the first subsequent work. The author would have the right to leave after one failed deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T18:38:39.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17767" CreationDate="2015-06-18T19:03:36.280" Score="7" Body="&lt;h1&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some general reasons why readers would see a chapter as a dead end:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don't care about what is happening in the chapter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don't see how the chapter contributes to the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll expand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible reason: Readers don't yet care enough about the character, and so don't know why they should care about the events of the chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible reason: Readers don't understand what problem the character is trying to solve. Sometimes the fix for this is as simple as stating the problem explicitly. (Stating it through the character, of course.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible reason: Readers don't understand what makes this problem so important to the character. If the character were to solve the problem, what would that do for him? What is at stake if the character fails? Sometimes the fix for this is as simple as stating the stakes or motivation explicitly. (Again, through the character.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible reason: Readers don't see how the character's actions are an attempt to solve the problem. I like the idea that a story is always the story a struggle. So one (somewhat fuzzy) test of a chapter: How does this chapter contribute to the struggle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible reason: Readers don't see how each chapter moves the story forward. In genre fiction, moving the story forward often means making things worse. The character tries something. It fails. And it fails in a way that makes things even worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible reason: Readers don't see how the outcome of each chapter influences the character, or influences what happens in later chapters. Do things get worse? Does it raise the stakes? Does it reveal to the character that things were worse than he feared? Does it destroy an important resource or relationship that the character was counting on? Does it distrupt a skill or ability that the character was counting on? Does it eat up precious time, and make the ticking clock tick faster?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just scratching the surface here. But if I think that if readers care about the character, and they care about the problem the character is trying to solve, and they see how each chapter is an important part of the character's struggle to solve the problem, you won't get that kind of &amp;quot;dead end&amp;quot; feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: I realize that I haven't answered the bottom line question of whether to remove the chapters or keep them. Instead, I've given ideas about how to figure out what people might be responding to in your story when they say &amp;quot;dead end.&amp;quot; My hope is that, if you can pinpoint the problems (if indeed there are problems), that will give you a better idea of whether to keep them, throw them out, or improve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T19:46:44.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17780" CreationDate="2015-06-18T19:47:08.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In real life people interested in the same thing &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; eventually find each other. This is especially true in the age of the internet, as is demonstrated by this very forum, but was true even before then. It's a standing joke among scientists, academics,  and students writing dissertations that &lt;em&gt;however&lt;/em&gt; obscure the subject of your research, you will find some other person has taken out the most relevant book from the library! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone deeply interested in animal suicide would be likely to go to where they could learn more about it. That place is an animal behaviour course. If you think that's still too unlikely given the presumably low proportion of people who are interested in animal suicide as a subset of people interested in general animal behaviour, say that the club founder has been going to relevant courses for years precisely because she is always searching for other people who share her obsession. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T19:47:08.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8788" CreationDate="2015-06-19T01:06:49.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who cares? No realy, book and story categorization is an effort doomed to failure (even though it does have uses). The main reason That categorization will fail is that stories are about people and people do not fit well in well defined boxes, and besides once you have a story that defines a category every other story in the category won't fit quite right even when an author is not trying to break categories. You are much better off with story description as adjectives are nonexclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's give an example that I am very familiar with. These are the stories that used to be known as 'novel fantastic' before the categories split into science fiction and fantasy and then further split into space opera, cyberpunk, steampunk, high fantasy, epic fantasy, and so on and so forth ad-ridiculum. The splits are fuzzily identified by such rules as if it has spaceships or time travel it is sci-fi and if it has elves or dragons it is fantasy. Larry Niven Would beg to differ. He is a famous Science fiction author who made a serious effort to get the science right in every book he wrote but 'Rainbow Mars' Which Was written as a fantasy and included spaceships, NASA, a unicorn, and a time machine. So would Anne McCaffrey whose dragonriders of pern books which feature in addition to the aforementioned dragons features spaceships, computers, genetic engineering, orbital mechanics and time travel. We can also add Wen Spencer to the list Who in her Elfhome books has not only elves and spaceships, but she has magic and social networking, and she tops it off with dragons that teach quantum mechanics. Even Joss Whedon got into the act. His most famous category buster is Firefly which is a cross between a space opera and a western with cyberpunk and thriller influences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two and only two questions that really matter: Is it a good book? Will it sell? Unfortunately the answers may differ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Believe it or not, but this answer was inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&amp;amp;story=The_Apple_Spirit.txt&amp;amp;sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this account&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T01:06:49.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17780" CreationDate="2015-06-19T08:08:47.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering the club Li-Mei &quot;stumbles into&quot; consists of only two people, one of them absent half the time, and the club's founder is in the animal behavior class for the same reason as her - because it's the most likely place to learn about the topic - I'd say it's perfectly reasonable to have them meet that way. In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when he first approaches her, none of that is obvious to the reader. In fact, the way he introduces the club comes across as not exactly humble, probably causing readers to assume it's a lot bigger and more organized than it actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt;, however, already point out Li-Mei's doubts, so my recommendation would be to just expand on that a bit. Let her make up an alternate explanation (e.g. Could this be a prank, targeted at her specifically?), perhaps let her mull it over for a while before she decides to take a look.&#xA;When she finds out there's only two other members, make it clear how she feels about that - is she disappointed? Does her suspicion flare up again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14223" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-19T08:14:54.537" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T08:14:54.537" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17780" CreationDate="2015-06-19T08:56:38.610" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If Li-Mei gets laughed at the Animal Behaviour class and gets attention of the founder and if all of this happens right before the first act ends or the first 20-22% of the novel which sets her story goal and the story question, it's not a Deus ex Machina. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it doesn't happen in the first act and happens elsewhere and entering the club is crucial for the story to move forward, it is a Deus ex Machina and you should remove coincidences and make her work for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why it's not deus ex machina if it happens on the first 20-22% and not if it happens after?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it sets the story goal when in 1st act. That scene (and other scenes in the 1st act) will aid her or give motivation to solve the story question too. Elsewhere, it becomes a coincidence to move the story forward for which she will have to work for the course of the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A deus ex machina happens when the writer has gone to deep and generated so many conflicts that even he doesn't know how the protagonist will find a way out. So, the writer comes up with a sudden coincidence which fixes things and moves the story forward keeping the protagonist's motivation intact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scene in the first act will lead her towards finding motivation. That's why it's not a deus ex machina in the first act. (It's more in the lines of being an inciting incident. Inciting incidents usually sets the protagonist towards the end of the first act where he/she must make a decision which again leads to having motivation and sets story goal and all. Coincidences are fine when it comes to inciting incidents. More about inciting incident &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6618/how-applicable-are-screenwriting-ideas-to-novels/6622#6622&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.karenwoodward.org/2014/02/the-inciting-incident-vs-call-to-adventure.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the scene is in the second act or elsewhere, she already has the motivation and her goals set - she's running after something. Maybe the plot requires her to meet with the club founder. Which means it's a link making her move closer to completing the story goal. And if that link is 'given' to her by a coincidence, it becomes a deus ex machina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T10:06:29.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-19T15:31:16.183" Score="2" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you are referencing information in the footnote, is it customary to put the footnote number inside the quote or outside?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance is it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The pink pig.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The pink pig.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14228" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-23T13:49:40.133" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T13:49:40.133" Title="Footnote placement -- inside or outside terminal quote?" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|ap-style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17780" CreationDate="2015-06-19T15:45:04.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This doubles as an answer to your other question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17671/how-to-make-the-reader-accept-absurdity&quot;&gt;How to make the reader &amp;quot;accept&amp;quot; absurdity?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some books strive for the appearance of realism, others don't.  In either case, what is most important is a) that the book follows its own rules and b) that it has a sense of emotional reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, some books are built entirely on frameworks of improbable coincidence: Douglas Adams' books, for example, as well as Murakami's.  That's part of the fabric of the work.  Once the reader accepts that, it becomes just a part of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, all the coincidences in Adams and Murakami rarely work to solve problems for the characters --or if they do, they just as often create new ones.  This matches the emotional reality that we have to work for the things we get.  If your character has worked hard enough for his or her reward, the reader is more likely to accept it, even if the actual mechanism is improbable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T15:45:04.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17793" CreationDate="2015-06-19T16:57:42.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're referring to APA style and you want to cite a quote you're using, then you don't use numbered lists, instead you use authors and page numbers to reference the specific quote.&#xA;If you want to reference specific content, without a quote, that adds to the material you've described, then I'd say that the footnote ID, &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, would follow your text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA Citations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/04/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA Footnotes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13997" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T16:57:42.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17780" CreationDate="2015-06-19T18:42:38.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A rule of thumb: A good coincidence gets the character into trouble. A bad coincidence gets the character out of trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T18:42:38.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17604" CreationDate="2015-06-19T19:45:09.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Henry is entirely correct, but I would add a couple of things that seem to be common in ghost stories. First is that there is a sense of escalation, so that at first things just seem odd or mysterious but not supernaturally terrifying.  There may be some possible non-ghostly alternative, i.e. &quot;My brother is trying to drive me insane!&quot;.  Many characters in ghost stories refuse to believe they're dealing with ghosts until they are confronted with iron-clad evidence.  This refusal, coupled with some mystery about what's really going on, can lead the reader down the garden path so that the final revelation of the ghost is much more effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T19:45:09.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17780" CreationDate="2015-06-19T21:29:01.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, people tend to notice others with common interests, and they tend to go to places where people with common interests are likely to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you are really interested in, say, Amish furniture. You are driving down the street and you see an Amish furniture store. Is that a bizarre coincidence. Probably not. In your drive you passed dozens, maybe hundreds of stores selling many different products. You noticed the one that interested you. If someone asked me if there are stores in my home town that sell golf clubs I'd have no idea, because I've never played golf and have no interest in golf. I might pass such a store every day and I wouldn't notice, because I don't care. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you said that a character loves cherry pie, and so he regularly goes to a bakery called &quot;Fruit Pie Palace&quot;, and there he meets someone else who loves cherry pie. That wouldn't be strange or a bizarre coincidence. That would be exactly the sort of place you'd expect to go to meet such a person, and exactly the sort of person you'd expect to meet at such a place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, I'd expect someone interested in animal suicide might show up at a class in animal psychology. That doesn't seem strange or a coincidence at all. If you said that she took a class in French poetry or auto mechanics and met someone there interested in animal suicide, that would be more of a stretch. But I'd think that just saying that this is a class in animal psychology makes it not a surprising meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T21:29:01.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17771" CreationDate="2015-06-19T21:41:52.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL, but ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you have no written contract. Do you have any correspondence? Letters, emails, etc? Anything in writing to say who agreed to what? If not, if all you have is a verbal agreement, then legally that is still a binding contract. But the problem with verbal contracts is that there's no way to prove what was agreed to, and the parties may well not remember exactly what was said. If there are no witnesses, I'd guess a court is just going to make assumptions based on what people typically do in such an agreement. I'm frankly not sure exactly what the &quot;typical&quot; publishing contract says. Most writers do not sign away all rights to their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did anyone involved register the copyright? If so, is it registered under your name, or as a &quot;work done for hire&quot; for the publisher? If it's registered under your name, and there is no contract saying you sold the writes to the publisher, than you still own the copyright. If the copyright was never registered and never sold, than by default the author owns it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would have to have a VERY restrictive agreement to say that you cannot write a totally new book and publish it elsewhere. The law does not generally assume that because you sold something to person X that this means that you have given up all right for the rest of your life to ever sell something to anyone other than X. Like if my boss fired me from my current job, I can't imagine that any court in the world would say that I'm not allowed to ever work for any other company ever. Unless you have a contract saying that you give this publisher exclusive rights to anything you write for some period of time, I'd think you could take new material anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always on legal questions, it would be smart to check with a lawyer. I don't know how lawyers work wherever you live, but lawyers I've worked with will generally give you an &quot;initial consultation&quot; for somewhere between free and $100.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T21:41:52.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17336" CreationDate="2015-06-19T21:50:05.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There exist multiple file formats. More or less usual for e-Books are epub, mobi/azw (Kindle), pdf, txt, html and djvu. You can add DRM to pdf, epub and azw, but you can also create files of these formats without DRM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T21:50:05.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17801" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-19T22:53:54.770" Score="1" ViewCount="1349" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am making this question with the assumption in mind that specific genres attract certain types of people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I determine the target audience based off of genre alone? I'm looking for the reasoning behind determining target audiences, though a list of who reads what would obviously work as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I've heard that (speaking in generality) lawyers read legal thrillers, women read romances, and so on. Those make sense. But I've also heard that graphic designers read fantasy. Why? That is my question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T19:22:25.030" Title="How can I determine a genre's target audience?" Tags="|genre|audience|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17690" CreationDate="2015-06-19T23:36:04.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A History of Warfare&lt;/em&gt; by John Keegan (1993) is a very good staring point.  Beginning with his book branch from there using the extensive bibliography.  Then track down autobiographies written by military personnel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an overview of military structure visit &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defense.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.defense.gov/&lt;/a&gt;, and click on &quot;Organization&quot; under the &quot;About DOD&quot; menu.  For an overview of military equipment visit &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.janes.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.janes.com/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any of the earlier books by Tom Clancy are pure gold.  &lt;em&gt;The Hunt for Red October&lt;/em&gt; gained notoriety for discerning (what were at the time) military secrets&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/30/weekinreview/tom-clancy-s-books-put-bits-pieces-together-for-patient-reader-military-secrets.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt; [NY Times article]&lt;/a&gt;.  I refer you to that as an example of how -- with sufficient research -- &quot;military fiction&quot; can push through into fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS:  A nice essay on the topic of the Future of War appeared recently on Quora &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-future-of-war&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt; [link]&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10746" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T23:36:04.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17806" CreationDate="2015-06-19T23:47:42.470" Score="3" ViewCount="869" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a dystopia and find it hard to convey that things aren't at all right. I had planned to convey this in subtle reading clues, but I am worried that certain types of readers - or perhaps most readers - won't get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my writing circles there are readers who admit they are completely oblivious to body language, social cues, and other subtle things in real life as well as reading on paper. When I speed-read, I am also equally oblivious, so I imagine the circle of people who are oblivious to subtle writing clues is quite large. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I would want to write something like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;John Smith stuck his credit card into the machine, waited, and walked&#xA;  away.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I fear that my readers won't get it. (This is a strange thing to do - John didn't get his card or anything else back, seemed to serve no purpose but to waste time.) I realize that this is a poor example, but I'm trying to have my example convey that something here is not at all right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://thestarryeye.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341cdd0d53ef0133f3de3635970b-320wi&quot; alt=&quot;One of these things is not like the other&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The crux of my question is that I am worried people will miss subtle clues that explains what is going on. As an author, should I be giving the clues and then expound so the reader gets it? If I decide not to, am I a terrible person for disregarding readers who may have a disability/disadvantage/clinical issue - or should I write differently to make my work accessible to them? I also wonder if I should be catering to as many &quot;reader types&quot; as possible so my work will be read and enjoyed as much as possible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Bonus: and did you notice what is wrong in the picture? I put it there to try to demonstrate subtleness and how we sometimes don't notice). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14232" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:45.400" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T17:57:46.660" Title="Subtle writing and speed readers" Tags="|technique|accessibility|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17803" CreationDate="2015-06-20T05:48:56.980" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In that example there aren't any clues to anything. It is uncommon for someone to walk away without retrieving his credit card, but there are no clues as to what this might mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very likely that you make a mistake common to beginning writers: you &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; what you want to say, and therefore you know what your text is supposed to say, and you mistakenly assume that this information is in the text, while in reality it is not there at all and you are in fact supplementing it from your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to writing, the reader is always right. This is not an intelligence test, but a product you are trying to sell. If your customers don't &quot;get it&quot; -- that is, if they don't understand your meaning -- then they did not get what they paid for and they'll never buy a book of yours again. And that is the end of your career as a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So have your text read by test readers and &lt;strong&gt;believe every word they say&lt;/strong&gt;. Listen graciously and do not argue. &lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; are the one who must understand what is wrong with his text and correct that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to go farther beyond the scope of the current question. There is another recent question about how to deal with feedback where I and others wrote more on that: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17731/feedback-what-to-use-and-what-to-ignore/17739#17739&quot;&gt;Feedback: What to use and what to ignore?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for this question, &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; didn't get your example. I'm an unattentive reader and you will lose me with such subleties. If  John leaves the card on purpose, say so. If John forgets it, say so. If there is no explanation at all, I will interpret it as either random and meaningless (e.g. he's turned into a zombie and does random stuff) or as bad writing. I'll repeat myself: genre writing is not a test of the reader's attentiveness, perceptiveness or ability to solve riddles. &lt;strong&gt;Not disclosing information to the reader that the protagonist has is a cheap device.&lt;/strong&gt; It annoys the hell out of me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T12:20:52.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17803" CreationDate="2015-06-20T09:42:29.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you want to be such a writer that spells out everything? Or do you want to write stories that make people think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you know the answer already. Please do not dumb down but write to the best of your ability!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a difficult balance to find, and proof-readers will help you get there. Bear in mind that never ever you can serve everyone at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW Thanks for the nice cat picture. Just a little out of place among the meerkat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2015-06-20T17:39:10.930" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T17:39:10.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17801" CreationDate="2015-06-20T09:56:34.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The published research is usually the other way around, that is &quot;who reads what?&quot;, not &quot;what is read by whom?&quot;. The best researched group of readers is children and adolescents. Results are usually broken down by age and sex, sometimes by socio-economic status. The next best reseached group are women. You can find studies for both groups by using Google Scholar. If you are lucky, some journalist has condensed the findings for you in an article that you can find through Google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some genres that have been researched for their readership (e.g. pulp novels about doctors [I'm not making this up]) or certain occupational groups (e.g. nurses [I'm not making that up either]) but by and large there is no research that is as specific as what you expect, listing genres by the occupations of their readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are companies like Nielsen who collect detailed readership analyses, and you can access their data if you are willing to pay a couple of hundred dollars. There are also publisher's interest groups that conduct that kind of research and make it accessible to their member companies. Sometimes some of these findings get reported in the media, so you might find something through Google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your options as a writer are to go to forums relevant to your genre and find who is interested in it. You could open a thread and ask for background info. Or you can create an app on Facebook and target it to people &quot;liking&quot; a specific genre and then collect info on the users that interact with your app. I did that once for teens who read fantasy. I wanted to find out what else they &quot;like&quot;. Or, if the complementary perspective interests you, you can approach people of a certain occupation, eithet online or in person, and ask them what they read. And so on, you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally don't believe that graphic designers read fantasy. I know a few and they all do not read books at all. If you find information on the net, make sure you understand how that information was uncovered and who publishes it for what reason. Stuff on the web is often made up or anecdotal. You'd do well to distrust it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-20T10:02:10.567" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T10:02:10.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17803" CreationDate="2015-06-20T10:59:32.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it very largely depends on what it is you are trying to convey. If John Smith not retrieving his card is a point that is an essential plot point, then you probably need to amplify it somewhere. If missing that fact alters the general flow of your story then it needs to be explained less subtly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;John Smith stuck his credit card into the machine, waits, thinks, and walks away.&quot; (slightly modified!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If later you have a shop scene, where he realises he hasn't got his card, so abandon's his purchases, and goes home. He explains to his wife that he didn't get courgettes because he seems to have lost his card. So they can't have ratatouille, so they go out and eat instead, at the restaurant something happens and everyone dies! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the reader who picked up on the fact that John didn't retrieve his card, they will pick up on the potential malevolence of him intentionally leaving his card behind. For those who didn't pick up on it, The story hasn't significantly altered by that subtlety. Such things can be used as a hint towards character traits or to provide early warnings for those who are paying attention, but safely ignored by those who don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(edited to make example vaguely more understandable) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastEditorUserId="13990" LastEditDate="2015-06-20T16:24:01.507" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T16:24:01.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17810" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-20T17:53:19.823" Score="0" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title is a little vague, so allow me to explain my question in depth here. If someone can think of a better way to phrase the title, feel free to edit it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, my definition of Bridging Conflict: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bridging Conflict is a minor conflict - usually a question the reader asks himself - that tides the reader over until the novel has introduced what is necessary for the main conflict to arrive (be that setting, characters, stakes, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how I understand Bridging Conflict. My question is: can it still serve its purpose (to act as a substitute main conflict) if the answer to the question it asks is already known? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, suppose I'm writing a novel about a zombie apocalypse (don't worry, this just an example). The Bridging Conflict could easily be why everyone is frightened, why there are extra security measures, why all the cities are surrounded by gates, so on and so forth. So far so good. The Bridging Conflict is the question the reader is asking himself: why are these things happening? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens if the title of the book makes it plain that it is about zombies? Then the reader can easily answer the question of the Bridging Conflict. &quot;Why are these things happening? Zombies.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, if you do not actually &lt;em&gt;mention&lt;/em&gt; zombies within the book itself, at least until the main conflict arrives, there is still an element of suspense and fear of the unknown, because the characters within the novel don't know the answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these elements enough to override what the reader can infer from the title? Will the Bridging Conflict still work, or will the reader ultimately become frustrated that the characters don't know what's going on, while he does (assuming the Bridging Conflict lasted that long)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T18:02:29.323" Title="Can Bridging Conflict Work When the Answer is Known?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17801" CreationDate="2015-06-20T19:22:25.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it will be more better if you first identify personality characteristics or user nature leading him/her to like a certain genre. Identifying this will help you as you can then find the best suited class of people or profession of people who will have those traits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can not only result in finding all the sets of people having the genre as their liking but also help you link that certain user traits can be affiliated to a certain list of genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding these particular traits will give you a better picture as to why certain people like certain genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practically though getting this data of personality traits will be more hard than simply getting professions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also no conclusion can be a complete one as at the end a persons choices can vary from time to time depending on the current stage her/his life is in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14196" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T19:22:25.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17810" CreationDate="2015-06-20T20:34:55.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Bridging conflict&quot; is nonsense. You only need it if your characters are uninteresting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good book has a protagonist with a problem. Apparently, on the surface, the book is about this person saving the world, but the real story is how he or she grows up and solves their personal problem. The adventure (or whatever you want to call it) that begins with the inciting incident is nothing more than what forces and facilitates this maturing. Therefore, what must come before the inciting incident is not some fake secondary conflict that you drop as soon as the real conflict arrives -- sort of like withdrawing your attention from your ugly boring geek coworker as soon as the hot stud junior boss walks in -- but the personal problem of your protagonist. A book about beating back an alien invasion starts with a drunkard losing custody of his child. The aliens force him to get his shit together or see his child die. It ends with the ex wife giving him another chance. The story you tell is the story of your protagonist and the book starts with it right on the first page. The big adventure is just a tool to get your character to change (or show how and why he fails).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-21T06:41:02.890" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T06:41:02.890" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17803" CreationDate="2015-06-20T21:25:54.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your readers don't have to understand everything, They just have to understand enough that they are not unduly confused. It is alright to confuse your readers as long as they do not feel the story was confusing. If they think they know what is going on, but don't agree with each other, you may have written a masterpiece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a good example let's look at Toy Story (Pixar does this alot). My nieces and nephews loved it as did my aunts. My uncles never did say if they liked it because they were not enjoying the flak they got for modifying toys as kids. The kids never picked up on the subtleties and the things they enjoyed weren't significant to the adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your readers are missing details related to subtexts this is fine. If your readers are missing plot related details, you may have a problem. Redundant hints can help mitigate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T21:25:54.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17810" CreationDate="2015-06-20T22:36:07.680" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because the reader knows the &lt;em&gt;reason&lt;/em&gt; for the Bridging Conflict doesn't mean the characters will be able to overcome it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, even if the reader knows all the extra security measures are because of the Zombie Apocalypse, that doesn't mean that the zombies won't break through the security measures. In fact, it lends some extra tension. The reader may not wonder why the city is gated, but may now wonder if the zombies will break through the gate before the heroine has a chance to create the cure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T22:36:07.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7814" CreationDate="2015-06-21T00:58:58.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a screenplay it is standard to use present tense, and to use simple present in most cases. It makes the action more immediate. So, instead of &quot;are watching&quot; you'd just say that they &quot;watch&quot;. Or they gawk, or scan or consider or stare at -- whatever makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use very specific nouns and verbs. Every word counts. You don't have many to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for your example I might make it more succinct:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hundreds of people in old clothes, their sweating faces encrusted with dust, watch the oncoming train.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could go longer, but more specific (I'm making guesses here about what's actually happening and who these people are):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hundreds of townspeople, their clothes ragged, their sweating faces encrusted with dust, watch the train as it rolls into the station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read as many screenplays as you can. You'll start to hear the particular rhythm, and begin to notice how language is used differently in screenplays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14241" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T00:58:58.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16423" CreationDate="2015-06-21T02:30:46.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing one or two examples of the &quot;average&quot; script won't hurt, and it's good practice. I wouldn't do any more, though, because it could all change if and when it goes into development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you should have in order to pitch this project is a simple bible. If they like the pitch they may ask to read the pilot. If they like the pilot they may ask for a bible. It gives prospective readers a sense of the show as a whole. But also, it gives you the knowledge you need in order to pitch. You need to know well beyond the pilot and a few sample shows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a guide, you could include something like the following - and keep the whole thing to about 5 pages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Logline for the series&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Genre&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overview of the pilot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overview of the series with some sense of where it would go over the first 5 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Characters - a paragraph on each of the main characters - who they are, what the conflicts are, character arcs over the course of the first season&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any themes that the series will explore&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A logline for 5 - 7 episodes of the first season&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14241" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T02:30:46.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13060" CreationDate="2015-06-21T02:44:20.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you do not have to keep calling the character by his or her full name. It would make it very awkward to have to read &quot;Ted Dibar does this&quot;, &quot;Ted Dibar does that&quot;, all the way through the script. Go ahead and call him Ted in the action lines. Or TED when it's formatted above dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And read scripts. They're all over the web (e.g., the mother-lode of tv pilot scripts here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/tvwriting/us-drama/pilot-scripts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://sites.google.com/site/tvwriting/us-drama/pilot-scripts&lt;/a&gt;). You'll see how it's done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14241" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T02:44:20.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17819" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17846" CreationDate="2015-06-21T15:28:35.010" Score="2" ViewCount="1028" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a character in my novel, De-Shi, who's the mentor and love interest of the protagonist, Li-Mei (nicknamed Hanging Pup). He listens to her feelings, gives her advice, jokes with her, shares philosophical thoughts with her. Anyway, here's a taste of their dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 8&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;De-Shi sighed. &quot;How does your boyfriend stand going on vacation with&#xA;  you?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't have a boyfriend,&quot; I said. &quot;And I don't go on vacations.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That explains your good temper ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No one forced you to bring me along.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Did you know that anger is the direct product of fear?&quot; De-Shi said.&#xA;  &quot;Animals developed this response to get rid or stay away from possible&#xA;  treats. Same for humans. Imagine what'd happen if we didn't feel rage&#xA;  toward a killer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 10&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You okay, Hanging Pup?” De-Shi’s voice came muffled from behind the&#xA;  sheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Yeah, I ... think so,” I answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I know how you feel. It was the same for me the first time.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I sat up and turned towards him. “Really?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A short silence. I imagined De-Shi nodding his head in the dark. “You&#xA;  feel as if something has crept inside you. Something dark and murky,&#xA;  like crude oil. It travels gradually, silently, polluting every cell,&#xA;  every nerve, every organ in your body. You can feel it. You can feel&#xA;  it eating you inside. And the worst part is, you’re the only one who’s&#xA;  aware of this. Yes, you can explain it to people, but just skin-deep.&#xA;  They can’t help you. So you have no choice but to fight alone. Fight&#xA;  this darkness alone.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But some readers say that they felt a &quot;lack of connection&quot; with De-Shi (which also affected their interest between Li-Mei's and De-Shi's romance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here I quote one of the readers (he just read Chapter 10):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't know anything about him other than he started this club. I&#xA;  assume since he was in that class where Li-Mei asked her question he&#xA;  is a veterinarian science major or something like that. But&#xA;  regardless, I never felt the chemistry between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They have a similar interest, but it seems when De-Shi is talking,&#xA;  it's more like reading from an encyclopedia then a person sharing&#xA;  something. We need to flush out his personality. Why does he know what&#xA;  he knows? What is his major?...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Have him tell a story that will endear him to the reader...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something that I did intentionally. I wanted De-Shi to be funny, scientific, philosophical. And make him talk about his past only in the last chapters. (Guess I wanted to do that to make him a bit mysterious.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, how can I make this character who doesn't speak about himself relatable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT (based on ShastriH's answer):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other characters do talk about De-Shi:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Don't worry, kiddo. I'm a tomb.&quot; She patted my arm. &quot;I suggest you&#xA;  take the initiative, though. The guy might be an animal expert, but&#xA;  when it comes to human courtship, he's totally clueless.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't happen too much, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-06-21T16:09:04.843" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T21:45:46.610" Title="How to make a character that doesn't speak about himself relatable?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17819" CreationDate="2015-06-21T16:01:17.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're insistent upon keeping his past and emotions a secret early on, one option might be to have the environment around De-Shi fill that void. Let the people around him give the reader clues as to his other side or true nature (depending on whether De-Shi always was like he is). This is of course assuming either exists, and if not there is little that can be done to relate a robot to anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the reader you quoted said, De-Shi comes off a little too stiff, even from just those two passages you provided. More details, maybe not even personal, might help. Sure, there are some people out there who really are as limited emotionally and fixated upon facts, but they tend to not have romantic relationships, at least not one solid enough for a book. Therefore, I'm going to assume there's much more to this character, and this side is what you have to hint at in the way his friends/family/acquaintances behave around him, what they say about him, what he does when no one is looking, the little things Li-Mei notices when he lets his guard down etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be able to take advantage of facial expressions, various cues or just a break every now and then from the thesis quoting. Of course, I don't think I know enough to say whether any of that is appropriate, so just take the suggestions under consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13454" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T16:01:17.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17696" CreationDate="2015-06-21T16:33:47.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Either I'm misunderstanding what you have said or I think you need something to tie various people together. I was just thinking of the disaster movie 'Towering Inferno' and obviously what tied really diverse people together was a fire. However, all the individual reactions to it, including the many deaths, were eventually subsumed by the putting out of fire and the focus on a relatively small number of people. Not all of the people develop: some of them just die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare this to 'The Poseiden Adventure'. A very similar thing happens: a large number of people are affected by the ship turning over. Then it narrows to the few who try to escape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply presenting a number of different views on a train journey is really more like a series of short stories with a common motif, rather than a novel. I would suggest that your crash needs to be a focal point from which some people can develop and others disappear: dead or just unimportant. It is a structure that draws the reader/viewer in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for specific plots, that will depend on where and when you are setting the story. If it was set now in England a crash in the Chanel Tunnel with some opting to go towards France and others towards England, would be a possibily. If you had the train travelling through a remote snow covered part of Europe and the crash happened just before (or during) a blizzard that ruled out rescue efforts, you have room for characters to develop. If you have a steam train being robbed in the Wild West (the thieves remove a rail on a bend to make the train crash so they can rob it and leave the surviving passengers to die) you can show how different characters react to the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T16:33:47.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-21T17:52:18.917" Score="3" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a journalist who writes stories about niche topics. When I publish my stories, I always get great comments and news tips from people around the internet, which would have added a lot to the original story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way that people with helpful news tips about a certain subject can find journalists writing stories about that subject, BEFORE the stories are actually published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14248" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T18:42:15.017" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T18:42:15.017" Title="As a journalist, how can tipsters contact me about the story I'm writing before it's published?" Tags="|resources|research|journalism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17822" CreationDate="2015-06-21T18:07:31.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know of a central place to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can make your interest known. In a blog post and other social media, tell your fans what subject you are researching and solicit their tips. Perhaps make your &quot;tip line&quot; posts a featured part of your blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this reaches only your current fans, who may or may not have tips about your next subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T18:07:31.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17822" CreationDate="2015-06-21T18:49:57.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journalists don't sit at home and wait for information to come to them. They talk to people. Finding the right people to talk to, and making them talk, is the specific skill of the journalist. Anyone can condense Google results into an article. There is even software that does that automatically. If you haven't yet learned the skill of &lt;em&gt;reporting&lt;/em&gt; (that is, the information-gathering part of a journalist's job) you can study journalism at a university or at a journalist school. Teaching it to you in an answer is a bit beyond the scope of this site (and outside my expertise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T18:49:57.987" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17825" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-21T19:44:33.427" Score="2" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few lifestyle subjects where I feel I need to write non-fiction books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that in these fields, most of what is published is 101 intro manuals, while my takes to the field are mostly for advanced practitioners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do write them as non-fiction, I probably would have to include 101 basics, before delving into the specialized notions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I am not sure that an explanatory text, perorating a theoretical lecture, is the best medium for convey my contribution on these subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I though that maybe it would be better to show instead of telling by having a character who is a practitioner of these subjects. The protagonist would reach these “advanced” notions, or realizations, through the dramatization of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is of course to reach the most people, so specialized non-fiction or dramatized novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2015-06-21T20:07:27.037" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T22:40:29.717" Title="Novelizing non-fiction, is it worth it?" Tags="|fiction|non-fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17826" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17827" CreationDate="2015-06-21T20:29:54.127" Score="-1" ViewCount="101" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my lead characters has to do community service at a grocery store. She has magical powers that will allow her to escape easily, but they are suppressed by a high-tech wrist brace. The plot requires that she come up with a clever way to smash the brace and deactivate it, allowing her to use her powers again. The thing is, I can't think of anything within a grocery store powerful enough to do any real smashing. I need help! Should I come up with another way to deactivate it, or is there just something I missed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14250" LastEditorUserId="14250" LastEditDate="2015-06-22T03:37:47.953" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T03:37:47.953" Title="I need to smash a wrist in a grocery store" Tags="|plot|world-building|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-06-22T04:53:46.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17826" CreationDate="2015-06-21T21:18:44.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the device that deactivates the tags they put on clothing/bottles/etc to stop them being shoplifted. She has to struggle to get her device/tag to fit into the machine/it doesn't work at first/it is urgent that it works immediately/whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, have her make a chemical concoction that disrupts the mechanism. Think about the cleaning aisle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't shelf-stackers open boxes quickly? They don't use their hands, at least when the boxes are sealed with tape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T21:18:44.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17826" CreationDate="2015-06-21T22:16:50.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite tools is a bucket tool, and it is found in the bakery where they use it for opening and closing 5-gallon buckets of frosting. It is a wicked cross between a hammer and a pry-bar. There are also cleavers, meet hooks and bone saws in the butcher section (in addition to the meat grinder that ate about 1/3 of a friend's hand) and of course the deli slicer offers all sorts of possibilities (set it to maximum cut and sparks start flying on the second or third pass).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T22:16:50.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17825" CreationDate="2015-06-21T22:40:29.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My favorite example of presenting a very technical subject in an informal manner is &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/dialogue.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Designing an Authentication System:&#xA;a Dialogue in Four Scenes&lt;/a&gt;. When you read it you will be able to see that there is no limit on how technical a subject you can cover in light prose, and that in some cases it is better than formal styles. So we know it can be done, the question remains, which is the better way? Would a formal style convey the information better? Which would be more likely to be read? You are assuming that a novelization would be easier to read and therefore more popular, and I would tend to agree with you, but I have no evidence to support that point of view. On the other hand it appears that you are also assuming that the novelization would not be as effective at conveying information. I would strongly disagree with that position. There however would be three drawbacks to what you are proposing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must know your subject matter backwards and forwards. If there are more than fifteen people in the world that know the subject better than you there is a good chance you are going to flop.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must be an excellent writer. I cannot think of three published fiction writers that I know to be able to do it. There is only one that I know to be capable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You Will have to increase your writing time estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can do it, It will be worth doing, but not easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T22:40:29.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17696" CreationDate="2015-06-22T05:46:11.003" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focusing on the theme can help immensely. You described it as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(The main point of the story is how each person sees the world differently and interprets the objective reality through subjective lenses)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All prior stories I am familiar with that explore this theme use overlapping timelines, e.g. the same event told from 4 different characters' POVs.&#xA;You have the impressive goal of conveying this theme with no overlapping timelines (if I understood your description accurately). So, in addition to character jumping, it would help to develop the theme through other means. This includes asking tough questions like: why a train crash? Why not some other major event? Does a train have associations that support your theme? Maybe not, but those sorts of questions can lead to other things that do flesh out the theme. A couple possible images that point at subjectivity, as examples: fractured windows (not a mirror, that usually lends itself to a theme about Identity/Self); the &quot;telephone&quot; game - as in, perhaps in the crash aftermath a series of miscommunications occur due to characters' subjectivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not coincidentally, this should also lead to further plot and character development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the limited description, I would suggest that the crash is not the climax; instead, it would be the first turning point in the plot. There could still be a series of increasingly dramatic turns, before the climax. The climactic scene would reveal the theme's effects, which means that you may need to expand the theme one step further: is the main point that subjectivity merely exists, or that it is good, bad, necessary, humorous, etc? I have a suggestion that I'll describe after one more point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree that the teenager's character arc would require her to mellow and help the other passengers; it is entirely plausible that the character's reaction to a major traumatic event could be apathy, or even a further inclination toward harming others. As you think through the thematic elements and use that as a creative source for plot and character development, it's also crucial to fully &quot;know&quot; your characters separately. I'm guessing you've done this, but I find it helps to write out much more of their backstory than will ever find it's way into the story. Understand their personality type. Understand the way they think and process things, from simple mundane activities (what type of driver are they?), to how they'd react in a train crash. When pondering a character's personality, I like to purposely create a contradiction, for example an extrovert who loves to code software. Then I think of how that contradiction could resolve (maybe they bring their laptop to bars and code while chatting with strangers). Every real person I know has contradictions like this. You seem reticent to let the characters have arcs, but perhaps instead you just need them to have the &quot;right&quot; arcs at the right times. (&quot;right&quot; to you). Understanding them more deeply will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, one suggestion: perhaps the predatory teenager with &quot;social anomie&quot; learns that the crash was caused by a suicide bomber, and she becomes intrigued enough to join a terrorist cell. Unlike her fellow terrorists, she is there not because of an intensely passionate, deeply held belief system; instead, she is attracted to the idea of causing destruction to others and herself in a dramatic fashion. Meanwhile, perhaps the &quot;adult conspirator&quot; you mentioned could be the teenager's aunt or similar mother-like role. This character might at first be cautiously supportive thinking it was some sort of long con, but then becomes justifiably concerned. The climax could be the teenager successfully bombing a major population center like a mall or something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thematically, when describing the climax, the teenager's experience leading up to the event is euphoric, seeing the objective event in a positive way. Immediately afterward, the aunt character could experience the event in a highly negative way. By so doing, you wouldn't violate your non-overlapping timelines rule, but would still illustrate the same event in two diametrically opposed subjective POVs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just one suggestion, but hopefully it illustrates a method of using your theme to weave together a large number of characters' perspectives in a cohesive manner without trying to resolve every unique premise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last note: you mentioned two things that compete in my mind: on the one hand you seem to have set up a story rule for yourself that every scene is told from a new character's POV. On the other hand, you would like to fully develop the jihadist and teenager POVs. I ran with the latter concept (and chose the teenager since the jihadist dies). Using my suggested plotline as the example, one possible resolution would be to tell the teenager-joins-the-terrorists story via all the surrounding characters: a friend, then one of the terrorists, then a mall-shopper, etc. That way, you focus on the teenager story without violating the &quot;every scene shown through a new character&quot; rule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14255" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T05:46:11.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2015-06-22T09:29:44.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I'm a programmer I do, as I'm used to it and version control is made for tracking revisions of text, so it is working pretty good with writings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros using version control:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;backup is easier, as I once created backup for my repositories I simply put everything that I want to keep under version control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can see and go back to older versions of my writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a log of my writing activity and can use that for planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can test different paths to go through the story and which one pans out best&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally use bazaar, but which modern version-control you use is more a matter of taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T09:29:44.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17483" CreationDate="2015-06-22T09:44:19.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actually to pose the question is to answer it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all the varied and interesting examples you refer to Form Follows Function 1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means the the characteristics of the material dictate the form in which they end up. Of course under the guidance of author and publisher. Please note that experienced authors tend to produce more effective results: Textual, layout wise, etcetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you encounter the opportunity to decide actual usage, play around, look around, make it the best you can and enjoy the ride. Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_follows_function&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Form Follows Function&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Form Follows Function is a principle associated with modernist architecture and industrial design in the 20th century. The principle is that the shape of a building or object should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T09:44:19.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17483" CreationDate="2015-06-22T12:08:22.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In relation to the Feynman Lectures on Physics and his own works, Edward Tuft notes in response to &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000ld&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sidenotes v Footnotes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;[T]here needs to be worthwhile material that naturally belongs in the margin. If the marginal materials are simply references, then the standard footnotes (at the bottom of each page, not ganged together at the end of the document) are fine. Maybe the empty space in the margin can be left for marginal notes written by the readers, if any. &#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earlier on, he also points out that the page width dictated the use of the two-column format, simply because 8.5 inch page width &quot;is too wide for a single column of type; thus 2 columns of text are often used in books with an 8.5 inch page width. In general, a line of text should not be more than 2 or 3 alphabets long, unless there is spacious leading.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it would appear that the use of margins had more to do with the size of the page and making sure lines of text were not too long than any sort of requirement to leave space for readers to make notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, in relation to your first question, I would defer to Tuft's reasoning: default to footnotes if your materials are simply references. If they're not, then I would suggest usage of side-notes would make sense instead of footnotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using both together may be necessary if you have a large number of notes, or limited margin space, or even if the places where the notes exist mean that placing them in the margin would cause potential issues. Your example lecture notes has a good illustration of this on page 6, where points 4 and 5 are located on the same line. Note that side notes are (for the most part) not numbered, because they are parallel to the text in question. Placing them in the margin would have caused issues since they refer to the same line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also try make a distinction between footnote material and side note material, and this leads into your second question. I would suggest the following: side notes are exceptionally useful to provide some information that helps explain extra information without the reader having to scroll to the bottom of the page and then back again. It only makes sense if you've got the space for it, and it improves legibility, rather than hinders it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example is something like a very specific technical word definition, or symbol definition (both of which your example of lecture notes does). Your lecture notes example seems to adhere to this for the most part, but it's not a hard and fast rule. If anything, what to put where seems to be dictated by expedience: length of the note, size of the printed page, placement of the note, the type of note etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal preference would be to choose side notes (print format permitting) for those cases where there is very useful, extra information to elaborate on what's being read that the reader should know, while footnotes are left for those cases where there's a reference, the sidenote would have been too long, there were too many side notes which hindered legibility, or  the information itself is something that the reader may need, but is not necessary for overall understanding of the subject. However, like I say, the underlying criteria seems to be more related to the print format, and experience, than anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T12:08:22.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17836" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-22T14:36:41.093" Score="2" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2348/where-can-i-find-paying-markets-for-flash-fiction&quot;&gt;This question has been asked about &lt;em&gt;paying&lt;/em&gt; markets&lt;/a&gt;, but does anyone know good places for putting up flash fiction just to build readership?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10909" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T14:01:01.323" Title="Where are some good places to publish free flash fiction?" Tags="|flash-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17696" CreationDate="2015-06-22T15:04:50.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the complexity increases &lt;em&gt;exponentially&lt;/em&gt; with additional points of view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you'd have only one point of view, the teen. At most, you should have two, the teen and his mentor, who increases the complexity by two &lt;em&gt;squared&lt;/em&gt; or four.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people on the train should not be &quot;point of view&quot; characters, but rather minor characters. To use multiple points of view is a big job that requires a seasoned writer. Wait until you are &quot;world famous&quot; before attempting such a task. The last time it was done successfully was in the &quot;Big Chill,&quot; which came out in 1983.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T15:04:50.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17836" CreationDate="2015-06-22T17:27:25.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create a web site and publish them there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a Facebook page and post them there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publish them in collections in ebook form. And in paperback, if you want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need all that many to make a publishable collection. I've published standalone short stories as short as 3000 words. That makes for a pretty darned thin paperback, but I do sell a few copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't tried &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wattpad.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wattpad&lt;/a&gt; myself, but a few writer friends of mine (whose stories sell way better than mine) swear by that for building readership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T17:27:25.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17803" CreationDate="2015-06-22T17:57:46.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any time you drop a subtle hint, most readers will initially miss it.  That's not necessarily a bad thing.  It can be fun/gratifying for a reader to initially be blindsided by a development, only to realize that the clues were all there all along.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, just as in life, we process a lot of information subconsciously.  If you want a general sense of &quot;something wrong,&quot; you don't want to beat people over the head with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, at some point the pieces have to fall into place.  You can't go on being subtle for the whole book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T17:57:46.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17810" CreationDate="2015-06-22T18:02:29.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there's a danger in writing anything to tide the reader over. Especially in the opening, where readers don't yet know whether the story is worth their time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean you have to start the story with the main conflict. But &lt;strong&gt;you have to get us caring about the characters,&lt;/strong&gt; and you have to do that right away. A great way to do that is to give the character a problem, and let us see the character dealing with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has to be a character we care about. And it has to be a problem that makes us care about the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you meant 'tides the reader over' the way I interpreted it, I think you're creating a problem for yourself. Instead, figure out a problem or conflict that will &lt;strong&gt;compel us to care about the character&lt;/strong&gt; (or at least &lt;em&gt;invite&lt;/em&gt; us to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for this particular bridge: If you put zombies in the title, or on the cover art, or in the back cover copy, you have to assume that readers know there are zombies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reader already knows things, whether from the title or the back cover copy or a friend's raving about how awesome your zombie book is, you won't be able to distract readers from that in your opening. &lt;strong&gt;You told them that your book is a zombie thrill ride.&lt;/strong&gt; Readers got on your zombie thrill ride because that's the kind of thrill they want right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of trying to build a bridge to the zombie thing, &lt;strong&gt;consider featuring the zombies right from the start.&lt;/strong&gt; Feature the thing that readers already know even before they open the book. &lt;em&gt;Tell the readers about the zombies, but don't tell the characters.&lt;/em&gt; There's a term for when readers know things that the characters don't: &lt;em&gt;Dramatic irony.&lt;/em&gt; (I wouldn't have called it that, but nobody asked me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the awesome things about dramatic irony is that can create suspense. You tell the readers about some nasty thing that the characters are walking into, and you don't tell the characters. Readers fear for the characters, who have no idea what they're walking into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T18:02:29.323" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17819" CreationDate="2015-06-22T18:25:35.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're misreading your feedback.  The problem isn't De-Shi not talking about himself, it's that he doesn't come off as a fully realized character, but rather as a plot device.   He's just there to serve a function in Li-Mei's story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might try spending some time writing De-Shi's own story from his perspective --not to go in the finished book, but just for your own purposes.  Once you know more about him and his motivations, you may be able to write him more believably, even if he's still mysterious and not inclined to talk about himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T18:25:35.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17819" CreationDate="2015-06-22T19:22:46.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem I see with De Shi is that he doesn't have a &quot;background&quot; in the story on which to base his responses. Or for others to base their reactions toward him. You don't need a lot of background for him, but it has to be more than zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best idea would be to have him disclose a small window into his past. The second best would be to have another character &quot;narrate his past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T19:22:46.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17819" CreationDate="2015-06-22T21:45:46.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with what some of the others are saying. The hardest part of writing (for many people) is making side characters who are just as interesting, round, and believable as the main character. Readers aren't as likely to be in the side character's head, so they aren't privy to the constant inner monologue that must be happening there as much as in anyone else's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I think the best way to remedy the situation is through the age old adage &quot;Show, don't tell.&quot; De-Shi's actions should speak for him, as well as the things other characters say about him, the way they react to him/his presence/mentions of him, and the things Li-Mei thinks and feels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Chris said above, you might want to write something from De-Shi's perspective to get a feel for what's going on in his head. It can be really eye opening. Does he have any habits -- smoking, nervous ticks like hand gestures, does he wear something specific that might seem odd to others (even something small and hidden, like a necklace or a pin). What does he do for fun/to relax and unwind? Where does he like to go? These are things you may already know. If so, find other things you don't already know about him and write about those. Or anything else that will help you understand your character better. And of course, this is just for you, so don't worry about including it in your main story. No one will judge what you've written, and you can rewrite and explore to your heart's desire. You may even discover new facets to his personality that you never noticed before (this happens to me all the time!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you understand De-Shi better, it will start to bleed over into your writing and the readers will also start to understand him better. He'll feel like a real person to them and to you. Flat characters tend to trigger unease in readers because they subconsciously know something isn't quite right, but not being able to put their fingers on it puts them off. Filling in his character for you and the readers should remedy this a bit. Your readers obviously want to know more about him or they wouldn't have brought it up. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, your writing overall flows really well! Good luck on your novel!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14262" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T21:45:46.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17848" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-23T16:30:10.310" Score="1" ViewCount="2386" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been researching this on my own for weeks without finding anything useable. I need a list of American-style (not Japanese, anime, etc.) character archetypes in American fiction of any type and the psychology of each archetype. At this point genre doesn't matter. A character archetype example: The villain who secretly yearns to be killed, and &quot;finally&quot; released from being alive. My goal is original character creation and I need lists to show me new things. No anime/manga, absolutely no TV Tropes. No IRL psychology like Jung, absolutely no Greek myths. And I'll buy books if I have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14276" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T19:52:42.630" Title="Rare list of character archetypes and psychology?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17848" CreationDate="2015-06-23T17:44:31.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost all literary tropes have made it to tv/film except for the small number that don't work visually. On top of that the main characteristic of the english language is theft of which Japanese influence is only the latest (although to be fair a dominant influence for anime/manga and other post ww2 japanese culture is american popular culture). If we also exclude greek, we then also have to exclude latin as the myths only really differ in the names of the gods. And if we ignore Jung we should also ignore yoga (which is a interesting blend of indian religion and traditions, british military tradition including calisthenics and good old American con-arts and cultish thinking) and German (thank god that we don't have to list Nazi influences like Jewish, Socialist, Fascist, and other minor influences). If we follow along that line of thinking we should also probably also exclude Russian and Scandinavian myth. So I have compiled a list of all archetypes that meets this stringent list of restrictions and present it here for your approval:&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-23T19:52:42.630" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T19:52:42.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17848" CreationDate="2015-06-23T18:12:37.853" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;it is an interesting question, but I can't imagine it being one that has an actual answer. It is claimed that there are &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Seven Basic Plots&lt;/a&gt; (That number does change depending on who is talking about it) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are a finite number of plots to tell, there are also a finite number of personality types to fit into those plots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't think how you could get away from real life psychology, since stories are written by people for consumption by people. Invariably all stories are about people to some degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story telling has been central to human civilisation for as long as we've been able to go back. In that time all of those possible mixes have been discovered and written many many times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;when you consider that the Iliad is circa 3000 years, and that those stories still resonate in modern literature it is difficult to think that any modern countries have added anything to the concepts of story telling characters. It would be even harder to consider that any particular country has managed to create and maintain its own niche. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T18:12:37.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17851" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17853" CreationDate="2015-06-23T19:13:23.553" Score="1" ViewCount="608" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this is the correct place to put this but here goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just curious if scripting a cartoon is like scripting a movie or not. I've tried consulting google but I've really gotten nowhere.  I've tried scripting as a wikihow article showed but I can't help but feel I'm doing something wrong. &#xA;(EPISODE:&#xA;SCENE:&#xA;DESCRIPTION:&#xA;DIALOGUE: )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd just like some tips if possible.&#xA;Also, please don't suggest any books, I can't afford any right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks everyone :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14278" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T08:13:23.500" Title="Is scripting a cartoon tv show the same as scripting a movie?" Tags="|script|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17848" CreationDate="2015-06-23T19:15:07.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you seem to need are &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stock Characters&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. A nice list from &quot;Absent-minded professor&quot; to &quot;Zombie&quot; can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_characters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. It has a nice reference list as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more background, including the categories you reject is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_character&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T19:15:07.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17851" CreationDate="2015-06-23T19:41:42.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cartoons tend to rely more heavily on visual gags which makes storyboarding more important. Also as you don't rely on the actor for visuals (although they are increasingly being used for this) storyboarding is more important. These are the only differences. In either media you can script then storyboard, storyboard then script, script and storyboard at the same time, or storyboard as script. Which method you use depends solely on what story you are trying to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T19:41:42.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17855" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17859" CreationDate="2015-06-23T21:15:13.163" Score="0" ViewCount="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the following sentence (I am not native):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the context relies on a single anchor (Self, Parent, Following), the nodes within the &lt;strong&gt;corresponding&lt;/strong&gt; scope are treated with regard to this context and a &lt;strong&gt;corresponding&lt;/strong&gt; node is created in the output XML file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I avoid repeating the adjective &quot;corresponding&quot; in the sentence above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, many times I need the word &quot;corresponding&quot; and don't know much synonyms or equivalent structures for the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14282" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T22:22:00.973" Title="How to avoid repeating the adjective “corresponding”?" Tags="|style|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-06-23T23:54:33.040" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17855" CreationDate="2015-06-23T21:20:57.560" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &quot;related&quot;, &quot;similar&quot; or &quot;same&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the context relies on a single anchor (Self, Parent, Following),&#xA;  the nodes within the &lt;strong&gt;related&lt;/strong&gt; scope are treated with regard to&#xA;  this context and a corresponding node is created in the output XML&#xA;  file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit: also, what do you mean by &quot;the nodes ... are treated with regard to this context&quot;? Do you mean the nodes are treated in some special way? Or do you mean the nodes are treated as if they were related to the context, and thus a corresponding node is created in the output?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14283" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T21:20:57.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17858" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17860" CreationDate="2015-06-23T21:40:12.527" Score="9" ViewCount="529" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question may seem rather broad based on the title, so allow me to elaborate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a self-taught author. I learned how to write, what works and what doesn't, all that good stuff. What I did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; learn is anything at all about what happens once I've written my book. Publishers, agents, editors, distributors - all these terms are more or less foreign to me. The main thing is the process. I haven't a clue about how a book gets published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a vague idea that you let the publisher look over your work. If he agrees to publish it, you sign a contract allowing him to do so. Who the agent is and where he comes in, I do not know. I also don't know how you get paid for your book (though there was a question about that, so I have a general idea). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that publishing is a complex operation with lots of different methods involved, so all I'm looking for is a simple run-down of how it works, without all the technical terms and long sentences supplied by Wikipedia. A step-by-step process would be great. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: Yes, I could likely learn how the publishing process works simply by looking at Wikipedia. My main problem is that because I am new, I don't want to take the risk of being confused by Wikipedia, and then try to publish with a wrong idea of how it works. If I do that, there is always the chance I could make a really bad mistake, like signing away my power over the book or something. If I have a basic understanding of how it works&lt;/em&gt; first, &lt;em&gt;then I can read Wikipedia and build off of that.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T18:54:30.350" Title="How Does the Publishing Process Work?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17855" CreationDate="2015-06-23T22:22:00.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some cases, &quot;corresponding&quot; could be replaced by noun or adjective which helps identify the context. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the context relies on a single anchor (Self, Parent, Following), the nodes within that scope are treated according to this context and an anchoring node is created in the output XML file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, &quot;that scope&quot; refers back to &quot;the context&quot; (assuming the scope is determined by the context) as a shorter and clearer alternative to &quot;the scope associated with the context&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Whether &quot;anchoring&quot; or &quot;anchor&quot; would be more appropriate depends on the context. If &quot;anchor&quot; is used as a distinct formal term in the context of nodes with a different meaning, then using &quot;anchoring&quot; would be less confusing. It is possible that &quot;anchoring&quot; is not correct or clear for this writing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another phrasing would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the context relies on a single anchor (Self, Parent, Following), the nodes within that scope are treated according to this context and a node is created in the output XML file to identify this scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giving the purpose of the node, may not only make clear to which node one is referring but also why the node is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5232" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T22:22:00.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17858" CreationDate="2015-06-24T01:41:45.210" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a very general sense, the publishing process for new writers works something like this. This is not comprehensive: there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; alternate routes, and there are always exceptions! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1. Author writes a novel.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A writer will writer their first novel; this is self-explanatory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2. Author edits the novel.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can include self-editing, using beta readers, hiring a freelance editor - some of these or all of these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;3. Author finds an agent.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's generally easier for a writer to sell a book when they have an agent - someone who will improve the book, hone it to fit the current market, and know how to find a home for it. Agents take a cut of book sales; they are not paid by the author. It is possible to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/business-legal-matters/how-to-sell-your-manuscript-without-an-agent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sell a manuscript directly to a publisher&lt;/a&gt;, bit it's a lot harder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One finds an agent by writing a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1173/how-do-you-write-a-fiction-or-non-fiction-query-letter-to-an-editor&quot;&gt;query letter&lt;/a&gt;, that sells you as a writer and the book itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;4. Agent edits the book.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agents work closely with publishers, and they have a good idea what will sell and what will do well. So they edit their writers' manuscripts to fit their vision. They usually have editors in-house (or a stable of freelancers they trust) who will do this work, working with the author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;5. Book is sold to a publisher.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An agent brokers a deal with a publisher. This is their goal and their reason to exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;6. Publisher makes the manuscript ready for publication.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting a final manuscript in shape can involve proofreading, typesetting, and even further editing over what the agent and the author did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;7. Publisher markets the book.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Social media, print/radio/trade ads, getting cover blurbs, reviews in major publications, placement with major bookselling chains - marketing muscle is the best reason to go with a traditional publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;8. Publisher prints and distributes the book.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making physical/electronic copies, getting them warehouses and sent to the correct places. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T18:54:30.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17851" CreationDate="2015-06-24T08:06:08.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, you cannot spend any money on books and there is no library nearby. So how can you learn as much as possible about writing for animated movies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's start with books, nevertheless. You'll see why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the Amazon page for a book about writing for Animation: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1585672408&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Animation-Jeffrey-Scott/dp/1585672408&lt;/a&gt; If you look at that page, you'll see a description of the book and a bunch of similar books. Follow all the links and create a list of books you would like to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now use your favourite search engine to find websites, interviews and blogs of the authors of those books. If you are lucky, one or more of these authors have a blog where they post writing tips. Or you might find an interview with one of them on a website that is dedicated to writing for animated movies. Or similar stuff. The idea behind creating the list of books is that you now know some of the people who are probably experts and won't get lost in the endless idiocy of the internet. Try to &quot;visit&quot; those writers, follow the links that they post to other professionals, extend your list of names, and so find the websites that publish quality content on writing for animation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also go through Wikipedia categories and look at the articles to find the homepages of animators. For example, on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Canadian_animators&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Canadian_animators&lt;/a&gt; I found John Kricfalusi (creator of the Ren &amp;amp; Stimpy show), and here's two of the many blogs of John K., which contain lots on writing for animation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quote for you from the book by Jeff Scott I linked to above, as it was posted on John K.'s blog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The biggest difference between animation writing and other forms of TV and film writing is that in animation the writer has to practically direct the show. In live action you can say &quot;the Indians take the town&quot; and the director will spend five days shooting dozens of pieces of action. But animation, if you say &quot;the Indians take the town,&quot; you'll see two Indians enter shot, pick up the town, and carry it away. It's very literal. So instead you call out every shot and describe everything you want to see on the final show. The reason for this is because there is no director, as in live action, who is working on the show from its start (script) to finsh. So it's up to the writer to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This I understand to mean that even if you write a script and don't draw a storyboard, you write &lt;em&gt;as if&lt;/em&gt; you were drawing a storyboard, essentially describing every shot (one shot = one storyboard panel) in detail. But I don't know, and you should learn from the pros.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, if you find a writer whose book you would really like to have, I'm sure you have a birthday or christmas ahead of you, and if becoming an animation writer is really your aspiration, those books aren't so expensive and probably someone will make a present of that one book to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T08:13:23.500" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T08:13:23.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17489" CreationDate="2015-06-24T14:09:06.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many literary devices used in movies and television. Here are a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Subtext&lt;/strong&gt;, or the meaning behind the words, is vital to screenwriting. If someone tells you your dialogue is &quot;on the nose&quot; then it's time to bring on the subtext. People rarely say exactly what they feel so it comes across as jarring in movies if a character does. It can be difficult to get right but, when you do, it's extremely engaging for the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good examples here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-great-examples-of-subtext-in-screenplays&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-great-examples-of-subtext-in-screenplays&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Themes/Symbols&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Recurring idea which may be represented through a symbol. As an example, in one scene in the King's Speech, King George idly puts together his therapist's son's model airplane as he talks about his childhood. The airplane represents the childhood he never had and, in this scene, he finally opens up about his past. In another scene his brother is shown landing an airplane, demonstrating his sense of freedom, whereas &quot;Bertie&quot; couldn't even build models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dramatic irony&lt;/strong&gt; is very important in screenwriting. This is where the audience is aware of something important but the characters remain unaware. Or sometimes one or more characters may be in the know. Without this device, thrillers wouldn't be very thrilling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good description here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DramaticIrony&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DramaticIrony&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see &lt;strong&gt;Pathetic Fallacy&lt;/strong&gt; a lot. That's when the mood (of the character, of the scene) is reflected in the weather. Lovers at sunset, killers in the rain etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deus ex machina&lt;/strong&gt; is where the problem is solved out of nowhere. For example, towards the end of the original Jurassic Park the remaining heroes are surrounded by velociraptors (efficient killing machines) in the main hall, and we're thinking: how are they going to get out of this one? Then (cue the John Williams score!) out of nowhere comes T-Rex to save the day! She attacks and kills both velociraptors, allowing the heroes to escape. I don't know if you want to use deus ex machina, because it could be considered lazy writing, but I think it works here because it's the ally is unexpected. Suddenly we're rooting for T-Rex? What?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Foreshadowing&lt;/strong&gt; is very common. It's when a future event is suggested before it happens. Also in Jurassic Park, several characters describe how the velociraptors attack (not from the front, from the side) so later, when they're confronted with one dead ahead we might remember there will also be one coming from the side. If we do remember, that's also pathetic fallacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14241" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T14:09:06.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1046" CreationDate="2015-06-24T14:19:00.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is if you are going to write a book (intended to be read as a book on some book-style device, eg. e-book reader or tablet), or a transmedia story for the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In first case it would be better to limit multimedia to minimum (make them rather illustrations than content itself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand if you are writing for readers who are in a mood for browsing internet, switching tabs etc., rather than to read your work from beginning to the end without distractions, it would be better to split the book into smaller parts (lexias) to be read on its own, which could be multimedia but do not require one attention span for both paragraph text and videos or audios. This way the model reader reads one or two lexias, leaves for distractors (Facebook, other websites, lol-cats etc.), and then returns to reads next one, and the distractions should not degrade the reading process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest two main factors to be taken in account when writing such texts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read should be able to pause reading. Pausing videos is obvious. On the other hand paragraph text (with long paragraphs) does not allow user/reader to pause it. When (s)he loses focus the place where (s)he stopped reading is lost. To solve it I split my works into smaller parts (one screen) to be read at once, and instead of writing scrollable block of text I add hyperlinks or buttons (Next/Back or intertextual links depending on layout of website I designed for publishing the story). It is step toward hyperfiction but it does not stop you from making the story itself still linear.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distractions should not break text comprehension. Parts requiring reading them at once should be one lexia (one screen, one part, whatchamacallit), and if part bigger than several paragraphs / one screen requires to be read at once to remain comprehensible, it should be rewritten to allow distractions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For above reasons in my (hyper)texts lexias containing multimedia do not contain more than one (or two short) paragraphs of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14293" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T18:25:07.140" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T18:25:07.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17489" CreationDate="2015-06-24T16:27:32.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure you really want literary devices. You want moving image specific devices. These vary between genres. For example, a love story is more likely to use soft focus shots than a sit com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend finding an introduction to film/television analysis. It will tell you what the techniques are and when to use them. Then you can see how other writers have used them and use them in your own writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T16:27:32.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17866" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-24T16:45:46.200" Score="0" ViewCount="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;So i want to write a book. It would probably be in the romance section (well, obviously). A short summary I guess would be a pan girl moves into a bi girl's town. They do a bunch of stuff together (and their parents just think they're really good friends) and i guess the bi girl would end up confessing? I sort of need a conflict, and I think it would probably be character vs self with the bi girl (she's the main protagonist) and about something like anxiety. Is this good? Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14294" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2019-04-25T19:09:29.093" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T19:09:29.093" Title="Questions about book" Tags="|romance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-06-25T17:22:44.630" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17867" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-24T17:02:06.193" Score="3" ViewCount="2163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a scene in my story where the main character (the story is told from his POV) opens a door and there is a monster in the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want a sudden introduction, to show how shocked the character is, but I also want to give a description of the monster, or at least give an idea of what it looks like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I achieve both in the same paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character was not expecting the monster, because monsters should not exist in his world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13428" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-05-27T10:19:30.193" LastActivityDate="2019-05-27T10:19:30.193" Title="How to suddenly introduce a scary character, but include description?" Tags="|technique|monsters|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17581" CreationDate="2015-06-24T17:18:20.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make the joke relevant to the situation — this will stop the reader from being distracted by the humour of the joke, and keep the serious atmosphere. Even bad or very funny jokes can be used if the character delivers them correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now some examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Time Riders series by Alex Scarrow, when two pirates are about to hanged, one says to the other &quot;why are pirates called pirates? Because they aarrr!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and from the Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dienekes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dienekes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Plutarch, when one of the soldiers complained to Leonidas&#xA;  that &quot;Because of the arrows of the barbarians it is impossible to see&#xA;  the sun,&quot; Leonidas replied, &quot;Won't it be nice, then, if we shall have&#xA;  shade in which to fight them?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13428" LastEditorDisplayName="user5232" LastEditDate="2015-06-25T10:55:14.873" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T10:55:14.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17581" CreationDate="2015-06-24T18:42:12.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Immediately&lt;/em&gt; after the humorous moment, do something that amplifies the emotion you want to emphasize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T18:42:12.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17866" CreationDate="2015-06-24T18:51:35.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a typical romance, the usual conflict is that something is keeping the lovers apart. It could be family, competing obligations, character flaws in the lovers, initial distaste for each other, cultural views of who is allowed to love whom, natural disasters, or any other conditions or events that keep them apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is usually about how the lovers struggle with the things that keep them apart, and how they come together in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether pan/bi romance stories follow a similar pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T18:51:35.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17867" CreationDate="2015-06-24T19:20:02.553" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering that a paragraph is intended to convey a single self contained concept, trying to convey a description of the monster and his reaction is going to make it unwieldy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine your reaction to entering that room, you're not going to pause your terror while you make a complete mental note of what it is and what it looks like. You're going to be terrified at this &lt;em&gt;thing&lt;/em&gt; coming at you (or whatever its doing) once that terror has subsided you would then start paying attention to what it is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So tell the reader that something scary happened, explain how he reacted to that, then explain a little more of what he is seeing, and explain his reaction to that... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be too eager to spoil the suspense for the reader, let them wait to find out what's going on! Make them wonder for a while... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T19:20:02.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17874" CreationDate="2015-06-24T20:22:25.553" Score="7" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;http://theglossophile.com/index.php/2015/06/20/deep-fried-memory/&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; (original &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hrkIQnJSvCKsIux-SWH-oGOb7NV-TV1Bc413HkKcFEw/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) about a scientific study.  At the end, I included some &quot;fine print&quot; which states, among other things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Correlation does not mean causation. It’s theoretically possible that trans fat isn’t the culprit here, but that some other, as-of-yet undiscovered factor is the true cause of the poor memory test performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading the post, my wife asked me &quot;Why did you write a blog post where you explain the dangers of trans fat, then at the end you say the study is wrong?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;sigh&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I find a balance between unfounded, sensationalist reporting (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/10/27/worst-science-article-of-the-week-drinking-coffee-shrinks-your-breasts/&quot;&gt;&quot;Drinking coffee makes your breasts smaller&quot;&lt;/a&gt;), and confusing everyone who doesn't know how to read scientific literature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eliminate the &quot;fine print&quot; section entirely, and address accusations of false reporting if/when they arise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the fine print &lt;em&gt;truly&lt;/em&gt; fine, so that it doesn't appear as part of the article, but is still present for sticklers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fully explain how science works, so that people like my wife won't think I'm saying the science was bogus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3620" LastEditorUserId="3620" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T21:56:57.870" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T21:29:29.327" Title="The fine line between accurate science, and confusing my reader" Tags="|technical-writing|science|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17875" CreationDate="2015-06-24T20:44:04.457" Score="2" ViewCount="329" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read that a lot of passive voice deadens the story to 2 dimensional even if you are just trying to show something that takes time when you use the passive voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I quite often use passive voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few examples from the Rubiks World novel I am working on are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 17x17 was most likely to be electrocuted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the 17x17 was electrocuted.(This and the sentence above both refer to the thunderstorm that happened on the very first day before they even built shelter)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the 15x15 was pregnant, many new things were done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now most of my passive voice sentences have &quot;was&quot; in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example though of one without was is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He could be attacked without dying.(this is referring to the collection of big cats for meat, bone, and domestication(mainly cheetahs for domestication and bigger cats for meat and bone)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you are wondering why I have numbers as characters, these numbers are representing the rubiks cubes and the rubiks cubes are the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So should I completely eliminate passive voice from this novel I am working on or do some sentences need to be in passive voice(like the ones referring to the thunderstorm)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8607" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T04:33:37.397" Title="Should I completely eliminate passive voice" Tags="|novel|voice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17872" CreationDate="2015-06-24T20:45:10.097" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider incorporating your fine print into the body of the article. Nothing in your &lt;em&gt;Fine Print&lt;/em&gt; section requires any special understanding of the science involved, or even a good understanding of how science proceeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bonus: If you do that, you can drop the opening part of that section, which is about you, and not about the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the authors' report describes any of the same limitations and caveats that you do in your &lt;em&gt;Fine Print&lt;/em&gt; section, make sure to attribute the caveats to them. If not, well, hang 'em.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bigger problem, I think, is your own speculation about how this study might apply in situations not covered by the authors' research. If you reel in your own speculation, you will have far less need to qualify your article and your own viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T20:45:10.097" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17873" CreationDate="2015-06-24T21:02:42.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;X was most likely to be electrocuted&quot; doesn't have an actor, so that's fine as is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you have &quot;many new things were done,&quot; tell us by whom, and what they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While the 15x15 was pregnant, the three-bys were busy building houses, the 9x9s dug latrines, and the lone &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twistypuzzles.com/cgi-bin/puzzle.cgi?pkey=807&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Whip-It&lt;/a&gt; sat in the makeshift cage, wondering when his sentence would be carried out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say make the effort to remove passive voice whenever you can, and add detail, action, and movement in those spots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T21:02:42.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17867" CreationDate="2015-06-24T21:07:18.777" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first time the character sees the monster, he's only going to get a few basic details. &lt;em&gt;Christ, that thing is huge! It's green! and the teeth!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After he's ducked out of the way and looked back over his shoulder, then he's going to notice the matted fur, the slitted yellow eyes, the cracked horns, the sulphurous breath, et cetera. So you describe it through the POV of the character and his terror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T21:07:18.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17873" CreationDate="2015-06-24T21:12:27.113" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Completely eliminate? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, prefer active voice unless you have a specific reason to use passive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some reasons to use passive voice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't know who did the action. &lt;em&gt;I was carjacked on February 19, 1999.&lt;/em&gt; (True story.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You wish to hide or deemphasize responsibility the action.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The person who did it is not important to the sentence at hand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You wish to focus the reader on the &lt;em&gt;effects&lt;/em&gt; of the action. &lt;em&gt;After Hiroshima was bombed in August, 1945...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Passive voice creates a better rhythm or pace for your sentence. (Be careful with this one. Often a better solution is to recast the sentence or the context in which it appears.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T21:18:11.743" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T21:18:11.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9075" CreationDate="2015-06-24T22:51:37.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it is wrong to write multiple novels at the same time. I myself do it. Even though I might be concentrating on 1 novel(like right now I am concentrating on Rubiks World) I might still be writing or even just thinking about other novels(Like the fourth volume of my New Earth series where Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean islands are built and a small group of people in each country learn its native language and then teach other people that language(like guepardo for cheetah in spanish) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8607" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T22:51:37.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17879" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-25T01:11:20.827" Score="4" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I wanted to pay homage to a sci-fi author, could I use his or her species in my story? (For example, Andalites from Animorphs; Formics from Ender's Game; describing a species that looks like Yoda or E.T.) Could I mention that species by name in passing? Could I hint by description that I'm alluding to a particular species? Could I get an author's permission to feature a character who is a member of that species? At what point would I be crossing a line?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13871" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T08:03:56.330" Title="Can I use an alien species name from another work of literature in my story?" Tags="|creative-writing|trademark|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-06-26T20:56:15.057" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17872" CreationDate="2015-06-25T01:13:03.223" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't Minimize the uncertainty, celebrate it! Sensational science reporting does not worry about details just bold headlines: 'Cell Phones Cause Breast Cancer!' Responsible reporting hedges their bets: 'Link between Cell phone usage and Breast Cancer Found.' Great reporting shows what the details mean: 'Developed nations have more cell phones and breast cancer.' Now that we have the headline, lead with the uncertainty. Why is it important? Uncertainty is knowing the limits of knowledge not ignorance. You have heard it said the more you know the more you realise you don't know. Children learn one thing and being excited think they know everything, Scientists find a limit of knowledge to be a place to start. Take the next step in true learning and embrace ignorance (as that is the only way to put it in a half-nelson).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok I'll get off my soap box now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T01:13:03.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17879" CreationDate="2015-06-25T05:47:37.427" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes you can as long as it isn't the main focus. If in doubt, you may want try to contact the author ask for permission.  That's what I did. Never got a response but at least I tried. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14303" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T05:47:37.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17873" CreationDate="2015-06-25T05:54:51.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;h1&gt;The use of active or passive voice is dictated by where your &lt;em&gt;focus&lt;/em&gt; is: on the subject or object of the actiin.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is your sentence/paragraph/chapter about? John or Bob?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is about John and what he does, use the active voice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John killed Bob.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is about Bob and what he experiences, use the passive voice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob had been killed by John.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you build a car without a reverse gear just because driving backwards from New York to Baltimore would get you arrested or killed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abuse of passive voice by mediocre writers does not make it useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T04:33:37.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17581" CreationDate="2015-06-25T09:36:55.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Dexter(tv series) is a good example. Like in season 1 when he is about to kill a couple he asks them questions about their married life, so that he can use their suggestions for his life also. He is about to kill them but still is able to make the situation filled with some sense of dark humor without degrading the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14270" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T09:36:55.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17581" CreationDate="2015-06-25T10:14:30.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Same old worn joke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The humorous character did keep some running gag. A kind of jab at a younger partner, or some silly &quot;ritual&quot;, or a funny one-liner reply. The reader is used to this joke, it was done at least twice in the story before, probably to a good humorous effect too (first time, sheer surprising humor, the other - a contextual humor that adds a second layer, say, the thing suddenly being &lt;em&gt;surprisingly&lt;/em&gt; adequate for the situation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then used in the context of despair, it's poignant, not cheerful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T10:14:30.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17696" CreationDate="2015-06-25T10:17:53.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the characters and I think it would make a really engaging story. What you have running there is a pretty good style and if done right, the readers won't put down the book. But then again, having just a style is usually not sufficient if you want the novel to be commercially hit. Most commercial novels have a generic structure - those three acts- the beginning, the middle and the end. More about the 3-act structure &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.karenwoodward.org/2015/01/a-story-structure-in-three-acts.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.janicehardy.com/2013/10/how-to-plot-with-three-act-structure.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you may want to do is introduce the teen, the elder and the jihadist as the key characters and come up with their individual story goals and their individual conflict. For example, why would the teen frame the other guy? Why does she need his wallet? Can you come up with anything that happened to her in the childhood that she never talks about? Perhaps &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; made her the teen she is today, framing and stealing from people. What does she want to do with that money? Introduce the jihadist and come up with his problems and the way he thinks that it will be fixed should he sacrifice his life in the way of his god. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then make the elder talk to the jihadist. And you can start the novel with the jihadist having second thoughts. And those second thoughts can increase page by page. Do it right and you have a little of suspense going on here. You can make the teen thinking that this may be her last theft. That perhaps she is going to quit. Do it right and you have another slight suspense situation going on here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you begin writing (or plotting your novel) after taking all these into consideration, you will know where to go. Place the blast in the end of the novel (and show how the jhadist gave way to his inner battle) or do it in the middle of the novel (and then explore what the teen does after survival) or don't crash the train at all (and show how the jihadist overcame his inner battle because he heard the teen and the elder talking about something and that made the domino tick). Play around with your characters. The kind of situation you have, I'm pretty sure it would turn out to be good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2015-06-28T02:44:11.767" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T02:44:11.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17872" CreationDate="2015-06-25T13:04:48.917" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing confusing about the paragraph you have at the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the replication rates for correlation-based studies, there no reason for the reader to believe that the study established a new insight into the effects of trans fats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A layperson shouldn't base his idea of the effect of trans fats on a single correlational study based on self reported food questionnaires. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand you are misleading the reading when you omit issues with people being bad at self reporting food choices.&#xA;You are also misleading when you make it seem like the study demonstrated that eating fat one day has a direct effect on the scores on the next day. If such an effect would exist they could run a proper controlled study to document the effect and wouldn't need self reported food questionnaires. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14306" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T13:04:48.917" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9075" CreationDate="2015-06-25T13:45:33.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might make sense to write two (or more) &quot;companion&quot; novels simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some decades ago, I wrote two novels, simultaneously, one set in the twentieth century and one set in the eighteenth century, based on the same (twentieth century) real life people as inspiration for my characters. At some level, they were &quot;one novel&quot; because they used the same people, albeit in different contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example is that if I were writing a novel and a sequel, I might want to go &quot;back and forth&quot; between the original and the sequel to make sure that they fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T13:45:33.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17890" CreationDate="2015-06-25T17:12:15.060" Score="4" ViewCount="3060" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing (or at least trying to write) a novel, and using standard manuscript format: 12-point Courier, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, etc.  I'm using Google Docs, which automatically converts straight quotation marks (i.e. &lt;code&gt;'&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;&quot;&lt;/code&gt;) to curly ones (i.e. &lt;code&gt;‘&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;’&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;“&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;”&lt;/code&gt;). Personally, I like the way this looks, but I know a lot of proper manuscript format is about avoiding fancy typographical stuff (e.g. using two hyphens instead of an em-dash). Is it acceptable to use these curly quotes, or should I switch to straight ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14307" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T20:15:30.553" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T20:15:30.553" Title="Manuscript format: Straight or curly quotation marks?" Tags="|formatting|punctuation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17888" CreationDate="2015-06-25T18:16:00.983" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished the design handbook &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thinkingwithtype.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;http://www.thinkingwithtype.com/&quot;&gt;Thinking With Type&lt;/a&gt; by Ellen Lupton. In it she says that prime or hatch marks (straight quotes) should only be used to indicate inches and feet (e.g., 5'7&quot;). Always use curly quotes (aka typographer's quotes, or smart quotes) for quotation marks and apostrophes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, she says the use of straight quotes, for anything other than feet and inches, is a type crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The book also says writer's needn't spend hours worrying about design, they should leave it to the designers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14241" LastEditorUserId="14241" LastEditDate="2015-06-25T23:40:21.050" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T23:40:21.050" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17888" CreationDate="2015-06-25T18:16:50.633" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Check the manuscript guidelines of where you're submitting.&lt;/strong&gt; Anything else is a personal style preference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some manuscript guidelines require straight quotes, some ask for curly quotes throughout. In general, short fiction tends to require straight quotes (particularly when submitted in the body of an email, or pasted into a web form) and novels tend to need curly quotes. (The same issues usually apply to apostrophes and em dashes.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest way to handle this is probably to write with curly quotes turned on. It's a simple matter to use a text editor to turn them into straight quotes; doing it the other way around can be a little more complicated and prone to error. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T18:16:50.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17888" CreationDate="2015-06-25T18:16:50.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of two widely cited descriptions of standard manuscript format, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one from William Shunn&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vondanmcintyre.com/mssprep.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the other from Vonda M. McIntyre&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither description explicitly mentions the style of quotation marks. But each description is itself an example of the manuscript format it describes. Shunn's uses straight quotes. I think McIntyre's uses curly quotes (the opening and closing quotation marks differ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-06-25T18:27:25.037" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T18:27:25.037" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17892" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-25T19:18:37.493" Score="3" ViewCount="1252" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written dozens of technical and requirement specifications, and edited dozens more in 8+ years of engineering.  The largest I have drafted was perhaps 100 pages, but maybe 30-50% of it was diagrams and tables.  Most were anywhere from 5-25 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current position has documents that, if removed from the database and printed out, would be twice as long as War and Peace (I did the math).  That is one supplementary document for one particular feature in one particular system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if there is a standard length that is considered 'usable' for a technical document.  I would prefer to have documents broken down into smaller chunks, but I don't know that I could convince my current employer that this is something they should pursue unless there is some data to back it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14309" LastActivityDate="2016-03-11T00:41:47.923" Title="What is considered an acceptable length for a technical document?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17892" CreationDate="2015-06-25T19:58:05.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends. Size doesn't matter so much as what you do with it. ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, what's been important is that the technical document serves the need of people in the organization to communicate, so that rather than asking a person to explain something, one can just look at the document. If that process is not happening as needed, or not happening well, then something needs fixed (but the issue might not be length, it could be searchability) because the document isn't communicating. Otherwise, I'd suggest letting them be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12677" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T19:58:05.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17416" CreationDate="2015-06-25T21:20:20.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is probably no &quot;best&quot; strategy. There many ways to sell scripts but here are some things you can do to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to put yourself into an agent's or producer's shoes. There are tens of thousands of new scripts floating around each year and the vast majority (let's say, conservatively, 80%) are not nearly good enough to produce. People looking for scripts have to focus their efforts since there's a very high chance a random script written by someone they don't know will be terrible. They're looking for writers who have some kind of credible reputation. How do you get a reputation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gain some credibility&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;There are a few of ways for unknown writers to let people know that their work is above a certain standard. One is to get coverage. It costs money but if it's from a reputable coverage service (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scriptshark.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;http://www.scriptshark.com/&quot;&gt;ScriptShark&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://blcklst.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;https://blcklst.com/&quot;&gt;The Black List&lt;/a&gt;) AND your script receives a &quot;recommend&quot; or a &quot;strongly consider&quot; then you can state that in your pitch or inquiry or response to a job post. There's some debate about whether coverage services are useful but, at the very least, it's another set of eyes on your script which could help you make it better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to earn some credibility is to enter, and do well in, contests. One of the great thing about doing well in (reputable) contests is that you can also use that information in your pitch. And if you do well in some (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://pageawards.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;http://pageawards.com/&quot;&gt;PAGE&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oscars.org/nicholl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;http://www.oscars.org/nicholl&quot;&gt;Nicholl&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.austinfilmfestival.com/submit/screenplayandteleplay/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;http://www.austinfilmfestival.com/submit/screenplayandteleplay/&quot;&gt;Austin Film Festival&lt;/a&gt; and others), producers may actually come looking for you. Some contests are specifically for shorts. Doing well means your script was read by multiple people and made it through the ranks. Someone looking for a script at least knows it won't be terrible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With positive coverage and/or a contest win (or high placing) you're telling interested people that you have something worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write a Pitch&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;For a feature, write a pitch and make it the best it can be. I won't go into pitching here because there are loads of places online to learn about pitching (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://goodinaroom.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;http://goodinaroom.com/&quot;&gt;Good in a Room&lt;/a&gt;). Pitch to friends, film yourself pitching. Make it shine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a short, write a killer logline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pitch&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Now you have some credibility and a good pitch. You can send query letters to production companies (low rate of return). You can pitch online. For example, with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.stage32.com/home/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;https://www.stage32.com/home/&quot;&gt;Stage32/Happy Writers&lt;/a&gt; you can pay to pitch to executives from a wide variety of production companies, as well as to managers. Stage32 also includes job postings. In the job postings, young directors and producers are often looking for short scripts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To pitch a feature you can attend a pitchfest, which is kind of like speed dating for pitches. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If people aren't responding to your pitch/logline, rewrite it, get some feedback and try again. It still might not be what they're looking for but it's a numbers game. With so many scripts out there your efforts have to start with making your script and pitch the absolute best they can be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post your script on &lt;a href=&quot;http://inktip.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;http://inktip.com/&quot;&gt;Inktip&lt;/a&gt; (again, for a price) where producers are always looking for good scripts. Though many are smaller producers looking for something on the lower budget end of things. Also, inktip will post the logline for your short script for FREE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The International Screenwriters' Association also has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.networkisa.org/writing-gigs.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;http://www.networkisa.org/writing-gigs.php&quot;&gt;Writing Gigs&lt;/a&gt; page. &quot;Here you can find all the latest screenwriting Writing Gigs worldwide.&quot; There are often young directors looking for short scripts and it's FREE to become a basic member and respond to gigs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finally&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In my experience, people are not able or willing to pay for a short script. Sometimes you can get a little money but often the interest will come from young directors or producers making movies on a shoestring and trying to get into festivals. A writer may choose to accept this in exchange for the all-important credit. If it does well, a writing credit, even on a short, can add to your credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14241" LastEditorUserId="14241" LastEditDate="2015-06-26T00:05:11.903" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T00:05:11.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17872" CreationDate="2015-06-25T21:29:29.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to target your writing to the background of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Correlation does not prove causation&quot; is a well-known slogan in scientific and statistical circles, so if you were writing for such technical people, just quoting the phrase should be sufficient to make the point. But if your writing for the ordinary layman, the odds are that they are NOT familiar with the catch-phrase. They may or may not be familiar with the concept, and they may or may not grasp it quickly. So if you want your writing to be clear to the layman, you have to spell it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, I didn't read your article, but if this is an important element of your point, then I think you should spell it out in detail. If it's a side issue, if in this case you think that the correlation DOES indicate causation or whatever, then a sentence or two of fine print disclaimer might be sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a software developer by profession. When I'm talking to other software geeks, I may say something with bunches of technical terms and acronyms with no explanation, because I expect them to know what I mean. But if I'm talking to non-computer people, I use simpler language, metaphors, and explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T21:29:29.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17867" CreationDate="2015-06-25T21:35:16.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ditto MichaelB and LaurenIpsum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other alternative: Find a way to introduce the monster first in a bland context. Like have the characters discuss the legends about this monster, describe it, etc. Then when the characters sees it, you just have to say &quot;There was a frambar in the room!&quot; Depending on how it's done, this may telegraph to the reader that the characters will meet one of these later. That may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you're trying to achieve. If you don't want to foreshadow it, you can give the description in a way that gives the impression that something ELSE about this scene is what's important and the mention of the monster is just a side note.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T21:35:16.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17899" CreationDate="2015-06-25T21:38:20.900" Score="1" ViewCount="6524" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.storymastery.com/movie-analysis/friends-kings-speech/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;reflection character&quot;&lt;/a&gt; is someone who acts as a &quot;foil&quot; for the hero(ine). This is someone the main character fights with, or at least interacts with, a lot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this person different from an antagonist given that this person fights the hero a lot? Is it because the two peoples' interests are basically aligned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put another way, is the reflection character always, sometimes, or never the antagonist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-06-26T13:40:49.097" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T14:53:54.017" Title="What is a &quot;reflection character?&quot; How is s/he different from an antagonist?" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17892" CreationDate="2015-06-25T22:24:25.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really don't think there is an answer. Working in a technical field myself, I have been frustrated by documentation that is too short, and doesn't provide answers to the questions I'm looking for but also seen documentation that is simply too long and makes it impossible to find the quick answers you usually need as a reference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd expect the documentation for a lightswitch to be reasonably short. Whereas the documentation for a nuclear submarine should be considerable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documentation should simply be functional when used by someone with the appropriate skill level. After that the length is irrelevant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T22:24:25.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17897" CreationDate="2015-06-26T00:59:18.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reflection character, as I understand it, is literally someone who &lt;em&gt;reflects&lt;/em&gt; the protagonist: someone who echoes parts of the protagonist's character or situation to expose the subtext and make it more visible. The reflector could be an antagonist or an ally, or neither. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the BBC's &lt;em&gt;Sherlock&lt;/em&gt;, S3E1, &quot;The Empty Hearse,&quot; Sherlock's parents (cleverly played by actor Benedict Cumberbatch's actual parents, Wanda Ventham and Timothy Carlton) are visiting him. Mrs. Holmes is dressed in a white shirt, dark pants, and a black trenchcoat with an upturned collar; Mr. Holmes is wearing an Army-type jacket and a plaid shirt. They are reflections of Sherlock and John respectively (both in choice of clothing and as the fierce intellectual/laid-back anchor). Sherlock may bicker with or dismiss his parents, but they aren't antagonists &amp;mdash; they aren't trying to prevent him from doing anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &quot;the reflector&quot; and &quot;the antagonist&quot; may or may not be the same character; they are two different roles, which one or more characters can hold. You can have many different reflectors &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; multiple antagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T00:59:18.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17902" CreationDate="2015-06-26T05:03:21.830" Score="2" ViewCount="901" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding was that it's fairly normal for a present-tense novel to switch into past tense in a backstory sequence. But I was having a conversation with a friend and he insists any tense switching is distracting. I'm confused, is this true? What would be the alternative device in switching to a backstory narrative other than switching into a past tense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also a follow-up question. I sometimes mix &quot;right-now&quot; scenes with a flashback, in that a scene cuts in the middle, space break, flashback, space break, and back to the scene. Is this too distracting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14312" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T07:26:57.500" Title="Is there a problem in switching from present to past for a backstory sequence?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|structure|tenses|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17901" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-26T05:23:08.480" Score="0" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;So say the novel is written in first-person tense.&#xA;a chapter ends, and the next chapter starts 10 days later. Here I start narrating something that happened 5 days ago in past tense as a flashback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So instead of day1(present) &gt; day5(present) &gt; day10(present)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I go day1(present) &gt; day10(present) &gt; day5(past. Flashback/backstory)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think this would add variety to the writing? Or just be too distracting of an excuse to break from the present-tense writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14312" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T21:04:54.280" Title="Narrating something that happened between chapters as a flashback in a present-tense novel" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17900" CreationDate="2015-06-26T06:50:25.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is uncommon and feels unnatural to narrate anything in one tense only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of believing your friend (what makes him an expert?) you might want to pick some contemporary fiction and confirm for yourself what writers (and editors) do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like this is fairly commonplace:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I barely manage to drag myself from sleep when the alarm goes off. The night has been much too short, and the sun feels blindingly bright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the tense switch feel wrong? No. People &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; of the past and future all the time, so if you write from the perspective of your protagonist, of course that person will remember things that have led up to the present moment and consider the future consequences. A person who lives completely in the present is either mentally disabled or a buddhist monk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What might feel wrong and what you need to do well is &lt;strong&gt;how you integrate your backstory into the present events&lt;/strong&gt;. When do you narrate it? Does it break the pace of the main plot? Is the backstory so long that it feels like you have switched to telling another story? Stuff like that. Only include as much of the backstory as you need for your main story. And include it in a way that feels natural to the narrative viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third person narrator can deviate farther and more completely from the main narrative, while a first person narrator will always be where he is and perceive and process his surroundings. He will usually not &quot;drop out&quot; of the here and now and relive the past as if in a trance, instead he will think of bits and pieces of the past while dealing with the present. So a full chapter backstory in a first person present tense narrative might indeed feel out of place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-26T06:56:27.723" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T06:56:27.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17892" CreationDate="2015-06-26T07:22:04.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Short) length of technical documentation is a must if that documentation is printed to accompany a product sold to an end user. You cannot sell a pocked digital camera with a five volume textbook on how to handle it. But I'm sure you have also experienced situations where the documentation was brief to the point of becoming confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the documentation is purely digital, there is no reason at all to limit &quot;length&quot;. The only consideration is usefulness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike Michael B I don't think that volume decreases &quot;findability&quot;. That solely depends on proper indexing and an &quot;intelligent&quot; search algorithm – both digital and in print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the example of the pocket camera, there really is no reason not to go beyond the mere technical explanations and include some basic information on how shutter and sharpness of an image relate to each other, or what the numbers on the shutter mean. I always forget those things, and having them handy with the manual of my camera would be a nice feature. This will bloat the documentation, but make it more useful for the target audience of amateur photographers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Good) illustrations, detailed examples and other non-basic information also helps understanding, while it drastically increases the size of the documentation. But in a digital (hypertext) manual you can easily &quot;switch&quot; those features on or off with a simple button, essentially creating a short-and-long document in one document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you might want to print out your documentation for the purpose of backing it up or getting an overview, but that is one special use that should not dictate what the end user gets. Only if the end user gets a printed copy should length be a factor. Otherwise, as I said, the only relevant question is wether the information is useful or not. If it is useful, put it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T07:22:04.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17900" CreationDate="2015-06-26T07:26:57.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;What would be the alternative device in switching to a backstory narrative other than switching into a past tense?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative device I have often seen work well is doing the opposite tense switch - that is, having the main narrative in the past tense and the back story in the present tense as a flashback. (In fact I don't see any significant difference between a backstory narrative and a flashback.) I perceive the past tense as the default tense for a story, so when I read a main narrative in the past tense I scarcely think about &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; the action is happening and concentrate on the action itself. In desirable contrast, when the flashback/backstory switches to the &lt;em&gt;present&lt;/em&gt; tense the fact that the characters &lt;em&gt;do not know what the future will bring&lt;/em&gt; is brought vividly to life. If the writer knows his or her job, that unknown future depicted in the main story is going to be dramatic. Thus the switch of tense can generate strong emotions of foreboding or pity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not wish to suggest that this is the only &quot;correct&quot; way to handle time-switches, but it is quite common in commercially successful novels, particularly thrillers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T07:26:57.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17879" CreationDate="2015-06-26T08:03:56.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using another author's created species is something fanfic authors do all the time. It is legally something of a grey area in Anglosphere legal systems (I don't know anything about the situation elsewhere) - but in the last ten years the amount of fanfic has exploded beyond the ability of anyone to police it, even if they wanted to. It's when and if you start to make any money out of your story that your legal problems may start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T08:03:56.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-26T09:36:28.923" Score="1" ViewCount="534" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a romance novel and the story starts in present in a very tense environment. But after two chapters it goes into the protaganist flashback. The love story is all in the flashback. Is this an acceptable way of writing or flashbacks don't work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14314" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T20:29:26.960" Title="Writing a Romance novel, starts in present but after two chapters the flashback starts" Tags="|fiction|novel|plot|structure|romance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17907" CreationDate="2015-06-26T10:52:50.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing for flashbacks is perfectly fine, as is the case in movies referenced by Lauren Ipsum's comment. Sometimes setting the scene is effective by setting a tone or expectation in the present or perhaps even just as a hook for the reader/viewer. An important point to consider might be, given the entire romance is in the past, is to make it seem as a story in and of itself, and the present, whether it comes before and after or just before the flashback, at least does not ruin, if it doesn't enhance, the flashback, as is the case with &lt;em&gt;The Titanic&lt;/em&gt; for example, where the return to the present at the end changes the tone of that end from one of mostly sadness to a more uplifting and sentimental one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13454" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T10:52:50.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17897" CreationDate="2015-06-26T14:53:54.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand him, Michael Hauge mixes up the &quot;mentor&quot; from the Hero's Journey approach to storytelling and the function that secondary characters have for film.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your other questions I believe that you are writing novels, not film scripts, Tom. To answer your question you need to consider one of the fundamental differences between novels and films (as they are made in Hollywood). In Hollywood movies, there is usually no &lt;em&gt;self-reflection&lt;/em&gt;, because the movie is filmed from the third person perspective and we don't have a voice-over with the protagonist's thoughts. The effect of this is that characters in Hollywood movies are usually black boxes (in the behaviorist meaning of the word) about whom we know nothing but their observable behavior. For these characters to have depth, their thoughts and other cognitive and emotional processes have to be externalized in the form of interpersonal behavior: they tell another character how they feel, they discuss their ideas, and so on. That is one of the most central functions that the characters that surround the protagonist have in a movie: they reflect his or her mind both to the viewer and to the protagonist him- or herself, so that the viewer can witness how the protagonist achieves understanding and development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a novel on the other hand you can convey anything you want in the narrator's words. The narrator can directly tell the reader what the protagonist thinks. So the author can show the protagonist &quot;doing self-reflection&quot; and growing by the power of his or her own understanding. He doesn't need someone to do mental ping pong for the reader to see how and why the protagonist grows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a novel, you don't need the reflective function of the secondary characters, at least not necessarily, but if you write in a &quot;cinematic&quot; style – avoiding internal monologue and focussing on what a camera might see (often called &quot;show, don't tell&quot;) – you can of course employ this filmic device in writing, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The function of the mentor is to teach the hero something about him- or herself. That is &quot;reflective&quot;, in a way, but his function goes further than just being a more or less random conversational partner. The randomness is made visible when in some movies the protagonist talks to the mirror or an animal as reflectors. The mentor on the other hand does not just provide an opportunity to self-reflect, but has understanding and conveys it, though usually in an indirect manner, similar to a psychotherapist who puts obstacles in the patient's path until the patient finally understands what he does wrong and how he can change. The mentor and the friend are extremes on a continuum, with the friend providing an opportunity to &quot;talk things through&quot; and self-reflect, and the mentor providing a learning experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my understanding, the mentor (or other &quot;reflective characters&quot;) do not fight &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; the hero, but they might (verbally) fight &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the hero in their struggle to get the hero to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some stories the hero might confuse the mentor with his antagonist, but as he understands what the mentor teaches him, he also understands that the mentor only put him through whatever he put him through so that he might learn. (And yes, to complicate things further, of course the mentor can be the antagonist, or the friend can turn out to be the enemy, or whatever you want. Stories can be a lot less schematic than writing teachers make them out to be, so, as final advice, don't worry about who or what the reflection character is but write your story.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T14:53:54.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17907" CreationDate="2015-06-26T19:34:00.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Present tense narrative can work powerfully with flashbacks. What I consider to be one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century is Robert Cormier's 'Heroes'. It continually swaps between the present tense narrative and flashbacks to the past. The climax of the novel is the meeting of the two. To tell his story he needed the past and he needed the present. The effect is stunning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T19:34:00.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17912" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17917" CreationDate="2015-06-27T05:52:20.010" Score="5" ViewCount="1360" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my biggest weakness is logic/plot holes. And it's not only about inconsistency in my stories, but my character often have contradictory thoughts and do stuff that come up as unbelievable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if is because I'm a pantser: I don't outline, I just write as I go, like I'm watching a movie and just writing down the transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some tips to improve the logic of a story and reduce the plot holes (before showing it to beta-readers and an editor)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T19:43:22.310" Title="How to improve logic/reduce plot holes?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17912" CreationDate="2015-06-27T06:27:14.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep reading back your story and smooth out the holes you find. Redact your own writing until you believe it is perfect. Then redact again. Make notes on stuff that comes back later if you need to ensure consistency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extremely hard work? Yes. Comes with the package I'm afraid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T06:27:14.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17912" CreationDate="2015-06-27T07:16:54.017" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about your story. All the time. I once found an enormous plot hole in the bath. (Er, I was in the bath and the plot hole was in my story, but you know what I mean.) By the time I was drying my toes I had converted the plot hole into a plot point, namely the logical discrepancy by which the main character deduced that another character was lying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is with you while you commute to work, walk the dog, and do the washing up, then you will get to know its flaws and virtues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think through the whole story from the point of view of characters &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; than the viewpoint ones. Mentally re-write it as a first person narrative as told by the villain for instance. If you can bear to put your pants aside (it's my day for &lt;em&gt;double entendres&lt;/em&gt;), make that mental re-write physical, at least in note form. Although this process might as a bonus provide insights into the villain's  motivations, the main point is to check the plot, so make the re-telling strictly chronological. Most plot holes are to do with timing or with people knowing things they could not have known. You will find these holes when you tell yourself how those tumultuous five days seemed from the villain's point of view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T07:16:54.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14733" CreationDate="2015-06-27T08:01:18.337" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could first ask the Author so that he doesn't has any problem or if a book is an old one from Shakespeare or something you use it. Before taking that character as any comparison check the popularity of the book you are taking the character from or if you want to simply copy the ideas you have do as I said in the beginning&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14318" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T08:01:18.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9075" CreationDate="2015-06-27T08:04:43.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try this if you think that you won't have any problem writing them simultaneously but focusing on one at a time would let do a better job than working on many of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14318" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T08:04:43.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17912" CreationDate="2015-06-27T11:23:39.940" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;An author, whose name I forget, explained his procedure in the following way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write your story down. Leave this version as it is, that is, do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; attempt to close plot holes or correct continuity. Instead:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put that first version away, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write the whole story again from scratch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat until you are happy with your result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this does is that plot holes happen because you are still exploring your story. After you have written the first draft, you now know the story. If you try to correct the first draft, you will be caught in incompatibilities that cannot be overcome. But if you write the story a second time, your mind will create a consistent version of your story (if you don't force it to keep the inconsistencies), because that is how the human mind works: we misremember facts or misinterpret them to achieve consistency, and this method makes use of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-06-27T12:28:48.003" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T12:28:48.003" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17918" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-06-27T14:29:49.817" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-06-27T14:29:49.817" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T14:29:49.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17919" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-06-27T14:29:49.817" Score="0" Body="He said, she said, or what your characters are saying." OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-07-12T23:32:01.140" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T23:32:01.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17920" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-06-27T14:34:20.473" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-06-27T14:34:20.473" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T14:34:20.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17921" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-06-27T14:34:20.473" Score="0" Body="Is paper going out of style? Questions about creating electronic books. " OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-07-12T23:32:28.813" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T23:32:28.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17922" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-06-27T14:42:00.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about the different ways the elements of a piece of writing can be put together and how they affect the reader, including transitions from one section to another, time-line presentation and flashback usage, viewpoints, and writing approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For questions about the structure of sentences, use &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/sentence-structure&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;sentence-structure&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;sentence-structure&lt;/a&gt; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related tags: &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/plot&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;plot&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;plot&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/planning&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;planning&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;planning&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/style&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;style&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;style&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/technique&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;technique&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;technique&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-12T09:55:08.543" LastActivityDate="2019-06-12T09:55:08.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17923" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-06-27T14:42:00.663" Score="0" Body="For questions about the connections between and ordering of elements within a written work." OwnerUserId="14077" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-12T09:54:48.593" LastActivityDate="2019-06-12T09:54:48.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17924" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-06-27T14:45:37.177" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-06-27T14:45:37.177" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T14:45:37.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17925" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-06-27T14:45:37.177" Score="0" Body="One dark and stormy knight, no scratch that, we can do better." OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-07-12T23:33:45.963" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T23:33:45.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17926" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-06-27T14:56:03.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag should be used for questions that deal with different aspects of a writers' vocabulary, such as asking for &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/technique&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;technique&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;technique&lt;/a&gt;s to expand one's own vocabulary, how to present the vocabulary of characters to the reader as part of the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/character-development&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;character-development&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;character-development&lt;/a&gt; or how to check your own word usage so that you don't repeat yourself too often as part of &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/breaking-bad-writing-habits&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;breaking-bad-writing-habits&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;breaking-bad-writing-habits&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-19T08:45:50.220" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T08:45:50.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17927" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-06-27T14:56:03.320" Score="0" Body="This tag should be used for questions that deal with different aspects of a writers' vocabulary, such as asking for techniques to expand one's own vocabulary, how to present the vocabulary of characters to the reader or how to check your own word usage so that you don't repeat yourself too often. " OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-19T08:45:50.220" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T08:45:50.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17912" CreationDate="2015-06-27T20:24:15.277" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder whether &lt;strong&gt;what you're calling a plot hole might really be a character hole.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Go deeper into the character.&lt;/strong&gt; Does your character think contradictory thoughts because you don't understand the character very well? If so, that's a character hole. Solve that by going deeper into the character. Find out &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; of the character's thoughts, especially the character's reactions to the people, places, and events of the story. You can find those thoughts by writing them. You don't have to keep them all in the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use contradictions to cause trouble.&lt;/strong&gt; Contradictory thoughts can be awesome for fiction. They create dilemmas for the character. They create conflicts with other characters, who see the character as capricious, or hypocritical, or unfair. One way to handle contradictory thoughts is to &lt;em&gt;feature&lt;/em&gt; them. Make the contradictions cause trouble for the character. At very least, have other characters comment on the contradictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Resolve the &quot;contradictions.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Another possibility is to demonstrate that the &quot;contradictions&quot; are not contradictions at all--find some way that the seemingly opposing thoughts are compatible. Again, the trick is not to eliminate the contradiction, but to &lt;em&gt;feature&lt;/em&gt; it, this time by resolving it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Force the character to do something contradictory.&lt;/strong&gt; Another way to create a character hole is to plan the character's reactions around the plot. If you're pantsing, perhaps you're not doing that... but check. If you need the character to do something for plot purposes, instead of making the character do something out of character, change the situation to eliminate the other things that the character would rather do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Motivate &quot;unbelievable&quot; actions.&lt;/strong&gt; Another way to create a character hole is to leave a surprising action or reaction unmotivated. If the character does something that surprises you, you can cycle back to an earlier point in the manuscript and plant a little seed in the reader's mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T20:24:15.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17912" CreationDate="2015-06-27T21:10:01.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also try to use the snowflake method. It's a simple and iterative process that will help you gradually build your story, and have a clear vision of what your story is going to be about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 10 steps, and you sometimes have to update what you produced in the previous steps. But this is the interesting side of this technique, you have a vision of your work from a 'macroscopic' level (one sentence) to a 'microscopic' level (your draft). Plot holes will appear more clearly and you will find it easier to solve them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know some people find this technique boring because your have some work to do before starting to write. But never forget this is only a tool and you can adapt it so suit your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14319" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T21:10:01.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17930" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17932" CreationDate="2015-06-28T02:31:24.910" Score="1" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question I tried to ask in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17825/novelizing-non-fiction-is-it-worth-it&quot;&gt;Novelizing non-fiction, is it worth it?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;But was un-clear and maybe too generic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let’s say I am a scuba diving expert and I could write a non-fiction book about advanced diving techniques, some of them are unique and stem from my personal experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it better to write that as a non-fiction book or develop a novel on the subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A non-fiction book on the subject may not interest many readers. However, If it is a novel, i am afraid that the tech info which is shown rather than told would be lost on the reader. It would seem just like the writer did some basic research on the subject, and my own personal contributions to the field would be lost in a general novel rather than a specialized book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NON-FICTION &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smaller but dedicated audience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most bought manuals are 101 introductory types&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even an advanced book would usually need to include 101 background&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theorethical dry explanatory text&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FICTION&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential  broad audience, but low interest in the subject&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical secondary to the story needs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advanced notions may be lost in the background&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Empirical rather than theoretical&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please don’t comment on successful diving books/movies like The Big Blue. Although I do hold proffessional  diver qualifications, I mean this question to be broad and applicable to various lifestyle non-fiction subjects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any opinion or fact showing the way to go? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T14:25:17.507" Title="technical subjects - non-fiction vs fiction" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|technical-writing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9075" CreationDate="2015-06-28T02:59:08.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;i do the same and have several books at different stages of completion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i think it is healthy, and when working on one novel you get ideas for others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, when you are bored with the slow pace of writing, you can be refreshed and motivated by working on another project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to work on what currently &quot;burns&quot; you, what you feel you need to write, then when it gets tepid, instead on plodding on and writing boring prose, switch to another project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T02:59:08.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17930" CreationDate="2015-06-28T06:01:18.723" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of &quot;fiction&quot; (made up) and &quot;non-fiction&quot; (facts) I'll use the terms &quot;novel&quot; and &quot;textbook&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We expect a novel, both fiction and non-fiction, to be about &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt; and possibly &lt;em&gt;ideas&lt;/em&gt;, and textbooks to be about detailed &lt;em&gt;information&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are countless counter examples. For example the scholarly field of ethnology often employs first person narration to report observations and reflect and theorize. Many ethnological reports read like autobiographical novels or travel journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also examples of narrative works that attempt to teach methods and techniques, most notably in the area of spirituality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question to me would be how detailed you want to go, and how big your ideas are. If you basically have one or a handful of world shattering ideas, a narrative approach is better, because a novel can become a cult classic. But if you have a lot of detail and no interesting story to tell, a good handbook can become a standard in a field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are mixed forms, where a novel has a technical appendix, or a textbook is spiced up with short stretches of narrative. Wether you perceive these as neither fish nor fowl, or possibilities along a continuum of types, is a question of taste. The extremes are certainly most striking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T06:01:18.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17930" CreationDate="2015-06-28T08:02:46.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is it better to write that as a non-fiction book or develop a novel on the subject?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With one huge exception, my general answer would be that you should write a straightforward instructional book. Most novels I have read that simply wrapped a story round a lesson read like books for children. That annoys me. I'm a grown up. I don't need the pill sugared. Now I think about it, unless done very well, books of the &quot;children's problem&quot; genre even annoyed me when I was a child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the huge exception, then? If you have a diving story you itch to tell then &lt;em&gt;please&lt;/em&gt; write the novel! A compelling human story springing from and integrated with deep knowledge of a technical subject is a joy to read. And highly saleable. Think Tom Clancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking of sales, though, in general I believe you are mistaken to think that a non fiction book would have a &quot;smaller but dedicated audience&quot; compared to a novel. Depressingly, the audience for &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; types of book, fiction and non-fiction alike, is small. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bj-gallagher/book-publishing_b_1394159.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this sobering article by B J Gallagher.&lt;/a&gt; However I know from personal experience as a published non-fiction author that if you can write a decent non-fiction book clearly explaining something that some group of people need to understand, then you can get published far more easily than can the aspiring novelist. Publishers know that people regularly seek out books by qualified authors to teach them about diving (or other technical subjects) or, better yet, to get them past a particular diving qualification. No one ever born rushed to a bookshop thinking, &quot;I want a first novel by an unknown author, and I want it right now.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T08:02:46.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17934" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17942" CreationDate="2015-06-28T11:42:47.087" Score="0" ViewCount="1860" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing about Waugh. Nanny Hawkins is first described thus:&#xA;'her hands lay open in her lap and, loosely between then, a rosary; she was fast asleep'.&#xA;I find the rosary reference to be TOO blatant, superfluous, redundant... what can I call it other than 'overly-obvious'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14324" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T08:20:35.860" Title="Synonym for 'overly obvious'?" Tags="|academic-writing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-06-29T18:15:37.837" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17934" CreationDate="2015-06-28T16:50:57.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;On the nose&quot; might work, though the phrase isn't all that well known outside of Hollywood. Unsubtle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T16:50:57.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17930" CreationDate="2015-06-28T17:09:58.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say write what you are capable of. If your talents are non-fiction, straight to the point works then definitely write it that way. But if you are very skilled at writing fiction stories detailing adventures or thought-provoking ideas, then do that. Personally, I would write a fiction novel detailing all the technical experience of advanced diving techniques through an engaging story. I believe that this is more likely to stick with a reader than it would if it were a dry &quot;here's how to do this&quot; type thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a plus, anyone who is serious about diving is going to be able to connect with your story on a personal level, increasing the level of engagement and likely retention as well. But, again, stick with what you do best. If you write good stories, tell a good story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14325" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T17:09:58.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17930" CreationDate="2015-06-28T18:06:57.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no need to choose. Write both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T18:06:57.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-28T18:42:25.230" Score="3" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, here's the thing. I'll keep it simple. I use double quotes for general dialogues. Single quotes for flashback dialogues and italicized letters for monologues and emphasis words only. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The doubt comes when I want to show a computer error in the scene. The novel's written in Times New Roman. I thought I could just use a different font like Courier New to show the computer error. Doable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1768" LastEditorUserId="1768" LastEditDate="2015-06-28T18:59:03.817" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T18:19:13.843" Title="Formatting to show system errors in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|formatting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17938" CreationDate="2015-06-28T20:32:18.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you asking if you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do it (from a publishing standpoint), or if you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; do it (from a stylistic standpoint)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the former, sure, there's all sorts of books published with atypical formatting in whole or in parts. &lt;em&gt;House of Leaves&lt;/em&gt; would be the obvious example of doing that extensively; then there's also something like &lt;em&gt;The Neverending Story&lt;/em&gt; which makes limited but effective use of it (with one storyline in green ink, the other in red). The only publishing concern is that it might not work on some e-reading platforms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the latter, one drawback is that some readers might see it as somewhat tacky.  Just like excessive italicization or all-caps writing can come off as unrefined, so can using a different font.  I guess the question to ask yourself is, how much does using the different font help you tell your story? If it's integral, I'd say definitely do it. If it's just a flourish, I'd say definitely don't. Anywhere between... Well, I'm not sure if that can be answered without better knowing the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14307" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T20:32:18.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17938" CreationDate="2015-06-28T23:42:59.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a printed book, consider a fixed-width font like Courier. Or you can get fancier and use a font designed to look like 1990s computer text. I know that computer text doesn't look like that any more, but readers will make allowances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For e-books, you may not have any control over the font that the reader sees. But you can try all caps, adding left and right indents, font size. Maybe font color, though that can be problematic, given that current devices and apps allow readers to select from a variety of background colors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're asking about how to format it in the manuscript, just set it off in some way to alert the editor that it is not normal body text. Try all caps, indented left and right. Maybe centered. The context will make it clear that it is computer output. Your publisher will figure out how to format it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-06-29T17:27:59.213" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T17:27:59.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17934" CreationDate="2015-06-29T08:20:35.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The word 'obvious' doesn't really have degrees; something is generally obvious or it's not. What you might be looking for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;flagrant: shockingly noticeable or evident&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ostentatious: intended to attract notice&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;glaring: very conspicuous or obvious&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14329" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T08:20:35.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17930" CreationDate="2015-06-29T14:25:17.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're talking about two very different kinds of book. In a way this is like asking, &quot;I'm going to college. Should I major in chemistry or poetry?&quot; That all depends on what you like, what you're good at, and what you expect to do with the degree. Someone could list the pros and cons of each, but without knowing your wants and needs and aptitudes, there's no way they could answer the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to teach people how to dive? Or do you want to tell an entertaining story? People who aren't interested in learning how to dive aren't going to buy a how-to book. People who want to learn how to dive aren't going to look for a novel on the subject. It's unlikely that a novel about diving is going to teach people how to dive. Not effectively, anyway. (And I don't know anything about diving, but if you apply for your scuba certification and the examiner asks what classes you've taken, I'll go out on a limb and guess that a response of, &quot;Oh, I've never taken any classes, but I read a really great novel about a diver!&quot; won't count for much.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to teach people how to dive, if you want to spell out detailed techniques, etc, then write a non-fiction &quot;how to&quot; book. If you've had interesting experiences while diving that you think people would like to read about, you could write a non-fiction &quot;true adventures&quot; book. If you have ideas for an entertaining story about diving, or if you want to tell people who aren't interested in diving how much fun it is, then write a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure what else someone could say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T14:25:17.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17947" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-29T21:00:50.113" Score="1" ViewCount="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where can an absolute newcomer to the discipline of writing begin to learn about the various types and genres of writing so as to become able to identify them simply by reading them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have taken composition classes at my university in an attempt to learn about writing in general and develop this ability, but became disappointed when, after completing the classes, I still did not possess the ability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I of course, did glean a little general knowledge about academic writing, but found that each academic discipline has its own writing styles and conventions which take time to master, but not much more guidance beyond that as to how to become proficient in those writing styles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would therefore like to deepen my knowledge of academic writing. But I would also like to explore other types of writing such as both fiction and nonfiction story writing, journalistic writing, business writing, and so on, as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not necessarily seeking to become a professional in all of those types of writing. I will probably choose one type of writing, such as ad writing, to master and pursue professionally. But nevertheless, I want &lt;em&gt;to learn about&lt;/em&gt; all types of writing in order to gain a broad general perspective of writing as a craft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, are there any resources (for example, books, courses, etc.) that might provide such a broad introduction to the craft of writing, that might for example, provide comparisons among various types of writing such as academic writing and technical trade journal writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already read this post (@ &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/what-are-some-online-guides-for-starting-writers&quot;&gt;What are some online guides for starting writers?&lt;/a&gt;), but the advice provided in that post seems to be more helpful to a person who has a specific type of writing in mind that he or she would like to pursue, and who is simply seeking resources that might help him or her get started writing in that specific area. I appreciate any responses in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10589" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T17:09:54.720" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T17:09:54.720" Title="So, where do I begin?" Tags="|academic-writing|resources|genre|education|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17949" CreationDate="2015-06-29T22:33:48.910" Score="3" ViewCount="602" Body="&lt;p&gt;Similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10875/what-can-i-do-to-make-my-writing-less-choppy&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, I am slowly coming to realize that my writing is getting choppy. Unlike that question however, my problem does not lie within sentences, or even paragraphs. It lies within whole scenes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, I've found that my stories are starting to sound more like a narration of events than anything else. This happens. Then something else happens. Then the hero goes here and learns this. Then he does this. The scenes seem to fall one after the other like soldiers in a line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst part is that I'm not entirely sure where the problem is. Part of me feels it lies in jumping from one plot point to the next with nothing bridging between the two (for example, once I'm done with a plot point I'll end the scene, say with a  cliff-hanger, and open the next chapter with &quot;the next morning...&quot;). Part of me feels like it's something completely different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, I can't help but notice that the openings of my novels seem fine. This may be because they are generally only one scene long. But it may also be because I develop them differently than the rest of the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To generate plot, I use a version of the method described by Lauren Ipsum in the answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/16188/how-when-to-include-twists-when-developing-plot/16190#16190&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;. I will start with a general feel for how the plot progresses, and work backwards from the climax. Useful as this method is, it could be the reason my writing seems to be devolving into a line of scenes, as all I'm doing is coming up for reasons for each scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know what my problem is, and better yet, how to fix it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T04:18:14.723" Title="My story passes in choppy blocks - how can I fix it?" Tags="|style|plot|scene|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17948" CreationDate="2015-06-29T23:50:27.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds as if your story progresses in a series of &quot;this happens and then that happens&quot; scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the key is to focus on &lt;strong&gt;cause and effect.&lt;/strong&gt; This happens, and &lt;em&gt;therefore&lt;/em&gt; that happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a closer look at Lauren's awesome &quot;plotting backwards&quot; answer that you cite. Every single one of her prompt questions is about cause and effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited to add:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sometimes find it useful to think in terms of what Dwight Swain called &lt;strong&gt;scene&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;sequel.&lt;/strong&gt; His definitions are somewhat common in writing circles, but may differ from how you normally use the words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;scene&lt;/strong&gt; is a unit of conflict, of struggle, lived through by character and reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;sequel&lt;/strong&gt; is a unit of transition that links two scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--Dwight V. Swain, &lt;em&gt;Techniques of the Selling Writer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structure of a scene:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Goal.&lt;/strong&gt; What the character wants to accomplish in this scene.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conflict.&lt;/strong&gt; Something keeps the character from achieving the goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disaster.&lt;/strong&gt; A logical yet unanticipated development that throws your focal character for a loss.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character wants something, tries to get it, runs into obstacles, and ends up worse than at the start of the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structure of a sequel:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reaction.&lt;/strong&gt; The character's immediate reaction to the disaster.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dilemma.&lt;/strong&gt; The character must choose between equally unsatisfactory alternatives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decision.&lt;/strong&gt; The character decides what to do, which becomes the goal for the character's next scene.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character reacts to the disaster, sorts through alternatives for what to do next (usually all bad), and chooses one of the alternatives, which becomes the next goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often sequels are very short, especially in fast-paced stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this all quite formulaic, but when I'm stuck, the formula very handily helps me get unstuck. Some people claim to plot their novels using nothing more than this scene and sequel formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can learn more about Scene and Sequel from Swain's book (mentioned above) or Jack M. Bickham's book &lt;em&gt;Scene and Structure.&lt;/em&gt; Or by searching the internet for &lt;em&gt;scene and sequel&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-07-01T00:19:03.707" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T00:19:03.707" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17948" CreationDate="2015-06-30T01:07:07.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have all your parts; you've sort of discovered your story backwards. Now you need to reverse&amp;ndash;reverse-engineer an &lt;em&gt;outline&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; rough skeleton for an outline is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intro:&lt;/strong&gt; set up the story world&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act I:&lt;/strong&gt; Plot is set in motion. Ends with a disaster or reversal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act II:&lt;/strong&gt; Reversal is overcome. Plot moves forward. Ends with another disaster or reversal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act III&lt;/strong&gt; can be the same structure as Act II if you want to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act IV:&lt;/strong&gt; Plot is resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion or Epilogue:&lt;/strong&gt; wrap up loose ends or leave them untied for the sequel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take my examples from the other answer and put them in chronological order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is the macguffin important?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did the macguffin get lost?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who told the heroine about the macguffin?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does she know it's in a building? (As opposed to a ship, at emple, a bank, a house, on the road, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does she find which building it's in?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does she reach the building?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does she get into the building with the macguffin?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now take those questions and put them into the outline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intro:&lt;/strong&gt; Why is the macguffin important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act I:&lt;/strong&gt; The macguffin gets lost/stolen. Someone tells the heroine about the macguffin and why it has to be retrieved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Here you can see you need some bridging material to get to the next question. This is the part you're lacking right now.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(Act I cont'd)&lt;/strong&gt; The heroine sets out to get the macguffin. Obstacles thwart her. &lt;em&gt;The &quot;obstacles&quot; are more bridging material.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act II:&lt;/strong&gt; She overcomes obstacles. She finds out the macguffin is in a building. How? She finds the building. How? She tries to reach the building. This is a good spot for another reversal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act III/IV:&lt;/strong&gt; She gets into the building with the macguffin. &lt;em&gt;More obstacles and bridging material.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She gets the macguffin and returns it to wherever it needs to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epilogue.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T01:07:07.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17947" CreationDate="2015-06-30T01:55:59.390" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To learn how to start writing, the best advice I've ever read or heard is just to start writing, followed closely by take in as much content as you put out. Here's why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The best way to learn is to do it. So go do it. Practice. Try things. Experiment. You will do poorly and you will grow, and if it hurts all the better because that means you're going to learn more. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The next best thing you can do is read great content. Read the kind of stuff you want to write. Read the kind of material that you can emulate, then emulate it. Find the stories that connect with you and study them, then go back to the pen and paper and use that inspiration to come up with your own story. Then go write it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11586" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T01:55:59.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17948" CreationDate="2015-06-30T02:00:45.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sequence is all and well, but don't forget your character development. And while we are at it remember that in the real world, everyone in the star of their own story. So you have the order of events, but if the story is that simple, it is just a tale. Remember Eddie will put rabbit ears on anybody whenever there is a camera pointed at them, and Bob used to do it but he grew up, and Ralf wants no part of your plan, so if he knows what you have planned he won't cooperate. Give your characters some room to be themselves. This will loosen up your writing some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next you want to put a tablecloth on your sequence. When you see a cloth laying on a table you, you don't need to see the table to know it is there. Likewise with sequence, the events show the shape of the sequence without exposing it to view. Also as many a tablecloth has a wrinkle in it, events that fight the sequence also belong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T02:00:45.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17717" CreationDate="2015-06-30T02:36:06.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, people look for a writer who can integrate craft, creativity and depth in his or her writing.  Out of the three, craft is the only one that can be gained in a systematic and predictable manner through hard work, practice and dedication.  It is the one that is easiest to teach, most visible on the surface, and most universally admired.  However, it is far from the only thing important in writing.  How much time you should spend on it depends on the extent to which it is the main thing missing in your writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, there are many people who have put the time in to polish their writing craft to an exemplary level, so the bar is set very high for anyone who wants to excel in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T02:36:06.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17947" CreationDate="2015-06-30T04:09:24.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So your experience so far has been that you have learned some theory but still find yourself unable to &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; it. And the solution you see is more of what you didn't find helpfull, that is, more theory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you learn anything? Do you learn walking by being told how to walk? Do you learn riding a bike by reading books about how to ride bikes? Do you learn maths by memorizing rules and formulas? No! You learn walking, biking and calculating by walking, biking and calculating. You start easy, with only one step into the arms of your mother, with just rolling without pedaling, with one plus one, but whatever you want to learn, the first thing you do after having observed the behaviour you want to emulate is to emulate that behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have read books. You know what books are. So write a book. Or an article, poem, essay, reportage, and so on. Then get feedback on what you wrote (that is, fall from your bike). Learn from that feedback and try to do better next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supplement that learning with theory, if the feedback alone is not enough to help you understand what went wrong. But keep the theory limited to the current question and don't drift off into theoryzing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Don't talk about it, do it.&quot; ~ Henry Rollins&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T04:09:24.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14729" CreationDate="2015-06-30T05:01:00.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dictionary examples will take the form of either quotations from sources that have previously used that word. Or it will be a sentence that was constructed by the dictionary writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you look for the word 'Example' in the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the example phrases is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1803   Pic Nic No. 4. 5   They must be made an example of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a quote from the Charles Dickens (et. al.) collection called Pic Nic, written in 1803, hence out of copyright and free to be used wherever you wish it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the Google definition of Example you get &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it is important that parents should set an example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there is no attribution to this, then you are subject to the copyright of the owner. In this case Google, however there isn't an easily findable statement of their copyright policy. Which in your case would mean you would need to seek permission to use it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative is to create your own usage. Simply think of a short sentence that would put that word into context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is an example of a sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether it is fair use... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folsom_v._Marsh&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Folsom v. Marsh&lt;/a&gt; Judge Story said (in an opinion that ultimately became the fair use law)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A] reviewer may fairly cite largely from the original work, if his design be really and truly to use the passages for the purposes of fair and reasonable criticism. On the other hand, it is as clear, that if he thus cites the most important parts of the work, with a view, not to criticize, but to supersede the use of the original work, and substitute the review for it, such a use will be deemed in law a piracy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your aim was to criticise or otherwise comment on the examples, then your usage would fall under fair use. However, from what you say I can't imagine how it wouldn't be considered simply superseding the original work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence you are saying 'I like that example, I'm going to use that too' without adding anything to the public knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That you are looking to publish a book using those quotes, and hence create commercial benefit would certainly not help your case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, fair use is a concept that only applies in the US. Meaning you could quite easily be taken to court for copyright infringement in another country (that your book was sold in) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastEditorUserId="13990" LastEditDate="2015-06-30T05:31:30.240" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T05:31:30.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17948" CreationDate="2015-06-30T05:50:03.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use Lauren's method to &lt;em&gt;develop&lt;/em&gt; your plot, but I wouldn't advise you to &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; backwards. In my opinion you should always write every text in the order that it will be read. As you progress from one part to the next you will automatically create transitions from one part to the next, because that is how the mind works. If you work backwards, you'll create transitions from the following part to the preceding, but not the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to separate plotting from writing. Read my other answer here, which addresses this problem more extensively: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17912/how-to-improve-logic-reduce-plot-holes/17917#17917&quot;&gt;How to improve logic/reduce plot holes?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T05:50:03.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17958" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17961" CreationDate="2015-06-30T12:14:11.630" Score="2" ViewCount="6105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often second-guess myself in one particular scenario when writing dialogue. Convention says I should break different characters' lines in different lines or paragraphs (I've seen both), but what if one particular line of dialogue is longer than usual? Should I break that line in different paragraphs, even though it's said by the same person and therefore risking making it look like another person is speaking? Or is it expected that the line, along with some actions in between, are all in one big block of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking mainly because the resulting block of text doesn't visually look, as a whole, as part of the dialogue, because it breaks the usual visual pattern of smaller lines going back-and-forth between different characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14338" LastActivityDate="2017-07-03T19:31:49.520" Title="Should I ever break up a long line of dialogue in different paragraphs?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17958" CreationDate="2015-06-30T13:38:12.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Long pieces of dialogue should be broken into paragraphs. This may happen, for example, when someone is giving a detailed account of an event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is traditional to leave the inverted commas off the end if the same speaker continues (but still have them at the start to show it is speech).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastEditorUserId="13409" LastEditDate="2017-07-03T19:31:49.520" LastActivityDate="2017-07-03T19:31:49.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17958" CreationDate="2015-06-30T14:26:50.473" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The risk of misidentifying the speaker of subsequent paragraph parts is avoided by omiting the closing quotation mark from preceding parts to signify continuation, as demonstrated by the following answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/a/96613&quot;&gt;https://english.stackexchange.com/a/96613&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11285" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T15:12:51.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17958" CreationDate="2015-06-30T14:59:20.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In English, a new paragraph begins, when the topic changes. The turn of each speaker in a dialog is perceived to be one topic, even if that turn is broken by pauses (and the description of the speaker's behavior during these pauses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paragraph can have any length and span many pages. For better readability, long paragraphs can be broken into smaller paragraphs, but this may break arguments, description or actions and confuse the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a speaker's turn spans many topics, it is broken into paragraphs like any other part of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T14:59:20.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17972" CreationDate="2015-06-30T17:44:44.843" Score="2" ViewCount="1644" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should a self published book on a biblical topic, use MLA or Chicago citation styles?  It'll be a persuasive writing on a biblical subject. I want to persuade the reader to my point of view but I know citations will be necessary. I just want to use the correct style. I bought a book called &quot;Cite Rite&quot;, and it appears I should use Chicago style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13485" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-07-01T13:00:17.807" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T13:23:33.567" Title="Which citation style do I use if I'm writing a religious book?" Tags="|style|citations|mla|chicago-manual-of-style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17938" CreationDate="2015-06-30T18:19:13.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short Answer.... &#xA;Yes. Doable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, there are a few other things programmers do...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Formatting the Text with Decorators...&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often times, computer errors will be presented with some type of inline decoration. It is generally safe to assume that putting the '&gt;' character in front of every new line of text will help make your error text look like computer generated text. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&gt;kernel error: line segmentation fault in address 0x83af3a&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some programmers will add additional decorations for bringing the viewers eye to the fact that a warning is present:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&gt;::SYSTEM ERROR - FAULT CRASH:: line segmentation dump on daemon 0x002201&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Proper Font Selection is your Best Friend...&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard computer code font is some variation of 'Courier.' So, your original hunch is solid on font selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also investigate other fonts, especially if two computers are communicating. To do so, you'd probably want to incorporate multiple computer type fonts which need to look hard-core, no-frills. These fonts will be &lt;code&gt;monospaced&lt;/code&gt;. There are many examples of it on the web. Here's another link that lists other programming fonts:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hivelogic.com/articles/top-10-programming-fonts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://hivelogic.com/articles/top-10-programming-fonts&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Most of these are good choices, but I'd stay away from any that have rounded corners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Using Good Jargon....&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the OP hasn't asked about this specifically, but I'd recommend getting to know some cool and useful computer jargon. Some catchy and ultra techy computer terms that could add authenticity are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;kernel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dump&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;address&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0x000000 &amp;lt;--- the hexadecimal representation of numbers where each digit is 0-9 and a-f. So this is a perfect example: &lt;code&gt;0xaa983d&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stack&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;heap&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;compiler&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;interpreter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;command list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;argv*&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;varargs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;instruction set&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Programmer syntax...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything that a programmer writes for a human to read will be short, to the point, and nearly devoid of emotion. So, the errors and reports in your story, would be more authentic if the text was extremely abbreviated with shortened sentences that border on sentence fragments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13997" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T18:19:13.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17964" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-30T18:26:43.673" Score="9" ViewCount="1673" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started writing a book. I wanted to write fiction books for a long time, but never really got around doing it. I decided to write in English rather than in my own language for many reasons, one of them being that the subjects I write about aren't really popular in my country. Another motive is that I believe English language has become very rich and I really enjoy expressing myself in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the work progressed, it became apparent to me that my level of command of English language will always be below that of a native speaker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not intend to sell my book once completed, but I know it will be a good one. What I want to ask is what are my options in eliminating at least the glaring language mistakes that a native speaker would never make? Where should I look for people to help me with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14340" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-06-20T11:59:19.957" LastActivityDate="2022-06-20T11:59:19.957" Title="Writing and proofreading a book in English as a non-native speaker" Tags="|creative-writing|language|proofreading|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17947" CreationDate="2015-06-30T20:00:16.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you're not a computer, if you learned to speak, it was through imitation. Chances are, you learned to do a great many things through imitation. As Jamezrp said, find what you want to emulate, and do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry too hard about what it is you're learning, or else you'll waste your mind on jargon and rhetoric, and never really get around to the art. Or, if you find the rhetoric and the jargon more fun, feel free to read the body of current criticism and begin writing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And (I promise I'll shut up in a minute), try not to be too results-oriented. If you immediately demand of yourself a polished piece of prose, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Robert Olen Butler has a useful video series on Youtube meant, in part, to illustrate how tedious writing can be. It's a seventeen-part series, each about 2 hour long. The first is linked for your amusement: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIcnmiT0Mc8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIcnmiT0Mc8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on and probably write my own rant-style book on how to write, but I think I've said my mind on the matter. Happy writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14342" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T20:00:16.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17947" CreationDate="2015-06-30T21:16:53.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would suggest to start reading. That's what I found actually to be the best way to learn about different styles of writing, is to read samples of a particular writing style and see how they compare to other forms of writing. Like if you want to take up fantasy, head down to your local library and pick up a fantasy novel. Choosing the super hyped ones might serve your purpose the best because there is a reason they are as hyped as they are. But seriously though, when I was taking my first writing class the first thing we did for each genre was read a pick of that genre. That's how I got introduced to the Inheritance Cycle, because we read Eragon as our high fantasy pick and analyzed it to see what elements it used to make itself a high fantasy book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10703" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T21:16:53.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17962" CreationDate="2015-06-30T22:34:30.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most Modern Christian works use footnotes except for scripture which is always cited inline. Early works which predate modern citation styles use the author's name or the common identifier for a work when an author was known for more than one work, as many works had no titles, page numbers or publishers in a narrative citation style (the citation, what there is of it, is part of the text). Modern reprints often add footnotes. The narrative style, with and without footnotes remains popular for major citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T22:34:30.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17964" CreationDate="2015-06-30T23:16:45.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is fiction? Where is it set? If you write what you know and set it where the native language is not english or the major characters don't speak english, you can emphasize your cultural background to give either a British Colonial or non British, non American feel to the work, your mistakes will appear to be part of the nature of the setting giving a foreign feel to the work. This is something authors work hard to create. To further emphasize this use the wrong spelling for your market (use British spelling if you are targeting America and vice versa).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I give this advice as your English is excellent. I would not necessarily give this advise to someone with weaker english.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T23:16:45.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17948" CreationDate="2015-07-01T00:49:05.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The openings of my novels seem fine. This may be because they are generally only one scene long. But it may also be because I develop them differently than the rest of the plot.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, treat each scene as the &quot;opening&quot; of the &lt;strong&gt;rest&lt;/strong&gt; of the novel. Develop it as you would develop the real opening, rather than the &quot;rest of the plot.&quot; That way, your development of each scene is fresh. Then &quot;wash, rinse, and repeat.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In computer science, this process is known as &quot;recursion.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T00:49:05.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17958" CreationDate="2015-07-01T00:50:25.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you can make the dialogues flow smoothly, I don't see any problem with dividing it into paragraphs. With that said, I would like to point out that it isn't always the best way to build up suspense, tension or drama in a piece of fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it easy to the eye and a lot less intimidating for the reader, make sure that the change in paragraphs only comes when the narrative sees a major change in subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a lot of contemporary writers use this in their work. However, if used sparingly, this can definitely make for a tight yarn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used an awful lot of this tack in his works. You can find the complete Sherlock Holmes collection &lt;a href=&quot;https://sherlock-holm.es/pdf/a4/1-sided/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. This should suffice in giving you a fair idea of the intricacies of this technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helped!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14344" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T00:50:25.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17964" CreationDate="2015-07-01T09:17:57.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can pay an editor. Google is your friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can use books on grammar to try and copy-edit your book yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For grammar I recommend Michael Swan, &lt;a href=&quot;https://elt.oup.com/catalogue/items/global/grammar_vocabulary/practical_english_usage/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Practical English Usage&lt;/a&gt;. It's the best book out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For word choice, use a bunch of dictionaries and thesauruses. You can never have too many of these. I have access to the OED online version through my university and shelves full of specialized dictionaries, thesauri and whatnot in my university library. There are also many online resources that list word usage or synonyms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware of using Google results! Much of what Google lists as examples when you search for a word or phrase was written by non-native speakers making mistakes, or by native speakers with a weak grasp of their own language. Much of what Google returns is simply false, and the fact that one phrase returns more hits than another does not mean anything for a writer looking for advice on how to properly use a word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion you don't need Strunk &amp;amp; White's &lt;em&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt;. I'm a non-native speaker myself and never found it helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T09:17:57.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17962" CreationDate="2015-07-01T09:33:23.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://guides.theology.library.emory.edu/citation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pitts Theology Library Research Guide&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The two styles most commonly used in theology are SBL and Chicago style.  It is important to note that SBL style suggests that users check the Chicago Manual if a question is not specifically answered in the SBL Handbook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sbl-site.org/publications/SBLHandbookofStyle.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SBL Handbook of Style: For Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/pubs/SBLHSsupp2015-02.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Student Supplement for the SBL Handbook of Style&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T09:33:23.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17962" CreationDate="2015-07-01T13:23:33.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider how your reader will use the book.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an academic work (which this is not), readers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;are likely to already be familiar with the cited works (they're also researchers in this field, after all)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;will rely on the works you cite to evaluate your work (they &lt;em&gt;care&lt;/em&gt; about those citations)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;read lots of such articles and welcome a consistent style (whichever one the publisher or university calls for)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But your goal is different.  You are writing a persuasive book, presumably aimed at people who haven't studied the topic as much as you have.  Your readers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;cannot be assumed to be immediately familiar with the source, beyond a few oft-used verses (which they may misremember or misunderstand or have seen misused)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;want to see that you've done your research (you're building on a firm foundation), but probably aren't going to check every reference, or may only glance at it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; going to check &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of them, when your argument veers into territory they feel strongly about (hence the need for citations)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;cannot be assumed to be familiar with the norms of academic publishing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a further consideration with your particular topic.  Citations of other publications tend to be more wordy -- &quot;Smith, John, &lt;em&gt;A Study of Ancient Near East Agriculture&lt;/em&gt;, 1972, Oxford University Press&quot; or some such.  But many of your citations will be of the form &quot;Genesis 12:1&quot; or perhaps &quot;Genesis 12:1 (JPS 1917)&quot; to indicate the translation if you're not using the same one throughout your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main difference between MLA and Chicago is that of inline citations (&quot;[Smith, 1972]&quot;) versus notes.  Long citations, particularly if used in several places in your book, are invasive and repetitive if done inline; that's why MLA uses a short token that is a pointer into a bibliography at the end.  In Chicago style, that citation would a footnote or endnote; each note stands on its own (aside from uses of &lt;em&gt;ibid&lt;/em&gt; for repeated uses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short citations like biblical verses, on the other hand, are, well, &lt;em&gt;short&lt;/em&gt;.  They don't get in the way if used inline unless you're really piling them up.  They're also easy to present in footnotes; the reader can take a quick glance at the bottom of the page, see the note, and continue on.  (I would discourage endnotes in this case; they have all the downsides of making the reader do extra work with none of the upsides of moving long citations out of the way.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started this answer by saying to consider your reader; I'll end it by saying, after considering your reader, consider your own set of citations.  If you're writing a book where there'll be a few citations of biblical verses per page, I'd recommend just doing them inline.  (In your introduction you should say which translation you're using.)  If there are going to be a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of citations, or if more than a very few will be to something other than biblical verses, then I'd recommend Chicago-style footnotes -- that way the information is readily available for the reader who wants it but it doesn't get in the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T13:23:33.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17947" CreationDate="2015-07-01T17:14:39.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find what you like to read.  If you're not inspired by anything then stick to plumbing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write something.  Get all excited. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read a book of writing dos and donts.  Revisit 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to a live writers group.  Even if you start by just listening you'll soon pick up lots of what does and doesn't work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep writing.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14353" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T17:14:39.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17977" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17983" CreationDate="2015-07-01T18:17:55.420" Score="19" ViewCount="4230" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a long time I would edit chapters as I wrote them, to make them as complete as possible. Unfortunately this often resulted in me running out of steam and never actually finishing them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've recently started trying to allow myself to write rougher first drafts in the thought of cleaning, editing etc on the next pass. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I'm not sure how much effort / time I should be putting into writing that rough draft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, I have a chapter that contains a new couple discussing a good deed a waiter performs. As a means of the couple getting to know each other. At this stage I don't really know how that conversation will progress, and would need to put time into making it feel right&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I quickly placehold the highlights of that conversation? or try to write it in full? or something else... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T04:24:37.087" Title="How rough should a rough draft be" Tags="|creative-writing|first-draft|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17977" CreationDate="2015-07-01T18:55:35.443" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anne Lamott, in &lt;em&gt;Bird by Bird,&lt;/em&gt; writes about starting with a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%20Drafts.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;shitty first draft&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; That is, use your first draft to simply spew your ideas onto paper. This is the creative part of your writing. Let it all out, regardless of consistency, grammar, coherence. Later drafts are where you form that mass of crap into brilliance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T20:40:27.667" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T20:40:27.667" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17977" CreationDate="2015-07-01T19:11:17.770" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Continually editing what you are writing can mean you never get anything finished. Just churning out stuff that you are never going to use in the end doesn't help particularly either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do personally may help you, but everyone is different. Assuming I have a basic plot outline I try to just get the short story, play, article, ect. down on paper. If, as I am writing, I suddenly think of an idea that would be good later or earlier, or if I think of a problem, I just put an asterix and a note to myself that something needs to change and then get on. When I come back to the writing and I don't feel a great deal of 'inspiration' I deal with the notes I have left myself -- I have something to write and it is a way to make it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well, when I start a writing session I look back at what I wrote last time and edit it if necessary, or if I think it needs major revision leave it and write a note about what needs to be done. Then I get on with writing the next section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T19:11:17.770" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17912" CreationDate="2015-07-01T19:43:22.310" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In regards to your character dilemma, I struggled with the same thing, and here's what I did about it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://elliotcountenance.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/reevaluating-the-headstrong-character/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://elliotcountenance.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/reevaluating-the-headstrong-character/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14357" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T19:43:22.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17977" CreationDate="2015-07-01T20:44:11.013" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Placehold the highlights. Write the notes of what you want to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beth: Wow, that was really nice of the waiter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alanna: Do you think the boss will punish him for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;they discuss if they should give him a big tip to make sure the boss doesn't dock him. Alanna wants to give the biggest tip she can afford; Beth thinks a large but not insane tip is enough. Show how Alanna is generous/impulsive, Beth more cautious. Lay pipe for second fight in Act II. End result is that waiter gets a tip somewhere between big and insane, so neither B nor A is quite satisfied.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: Alanna should mention her sister in Nevada who's a waitress. Beth counters that she waited tables briefly in HS. Alanna will be surprised at this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can go back later and actually write the scene out. As you're working on the rest of the book, if lines of dialogue come to you (I tend to write pages and pages of it... in my head, while I'm on the treadmill), go back and jot them down in the same half-assed fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get to the end of the book, then you can go back and flesh out these holes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T20:44:11.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18006" CreationDate="2015-07-01T21:16:59.277" Score="2" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm embarking on writing my first popular science book on a controversial subject. For sure the writing must be rational, coherent with a clear train of thought and littered with references to be convincing. On the other hand, too much of that and the book will be all but &quot;popular.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I chose to call &lt;em&gt;the obvious&lt;/em&gt; is the narrative, the self-evident and prevalent theories about connections with other fields of science. To me as a reader, this is usually the good parts as long as they're well supported by the research bits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many scientists write very defensively to &quot;cover all the bases,&quot; but to me that style of writing is boring with a pinch of gutlessness and I really want to avoid falling into that trap. Especially as I'll in the coming months will spend countless hours reading books and articles, and I have a strong feeling that the tone of writing is contagious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly I do want to write for people who are not very technical or familiar with scientific literature. So while the subject is controversial and thus requires some number-juggling, the style in many ways needs to be &lt;em&gt;obvious&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how to strike a balance between the two? Can you think of any rule of thumb or perhaps even a successful example of such a book? I realize asking &quot;how much fact is too much&quot; is impossible to answer, but I'm thankful for any guidance I can get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2244" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T10:39:08.293" Title="How to find the balance between research and the obvious" Tags="|style|technical-writing|technique|narrative|science|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2015-07-01T21:59:13.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if speed would be improved since I am still learning. My feeling about DVORAK is that wrist pain is reduced. Trade-off is that you have to spend some time to get accustomed to the new thing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14362" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T21:59:13.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17964" CreationDate="2015-07-02T00:24:19.980" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Living in an English speaking country would be ideal, but you could get great benefits by watching lots of movies and series. &#xA;Although not ideal, and less natural than ordinary people speaking together, you will get a good sense of normal language use and vernacular.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;my level of command of English language will always be below that of a native speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will be always different, though not necessarily lower. What you have to realize is that most native speakers have a bad grasp of grammar and style. So some turn of phrase will always come more natural to them. Reading their text will always seem more natural even if there are grammatical mistakes because the native English speaker reader is used to them. But many native speakers don’t know how to express themselves well or have horrendous styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as long as you do not commit blatant mistakes and weirdly odd turn of phrases you will be fine. The goal of a good novel is to transport you, if it is done well you should not really see the text. The brain translates it immediately into images, sensorial imput, and emotions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2015-07-04T23:38:11.380" LastActivityDate="2015-07-04T23:38:11.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17984" CreationDate="2015-07-02T00:56:52.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me to mostly depend on your target audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scientists of this field will want full throttle facts, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General scientific types will expect to be convinced by strong backable data &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interested non-scientists may relate more to argument that make sense and are logical rather than specific proof,  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The general skeptic reader will not trust any facts and may reject any attempts to convince him by “proofs” &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The general reader will not care either for logic or facts, as long as it is interesting. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you attempt to reach the broadest audience, discard all the boring bits and write a fiction novel on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T00:56:52.530" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17988" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-02T01:39:57.243" Score="1" ViewCount="633" Body="&lt;p&gt;I quite like writing letters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Letters to editor in newspapers. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compliant and compliment letters to companies. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Website feedback. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I plan to write to several successful individuals who I find inspiring this year. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'd quite like to do is publish the responses I get on my blog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that puts me in a little bit of a awkward position re: asking for permission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I see I have a few options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just publish the response without asking permission or telling them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish the response without asking, but blur out the names. (Not very practical for some letters). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask for permission in the original letter. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask for permission after they've responded. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now clearly - for letters the newspapers for example, any responses published the paper are already public record, so publishing them is going to be ok. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly - responses from companies is probably ok. But should I ask anyway as a matter of courtesy? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not really asking about the legality here. If I was wanting to be a really antagonistic content creator (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://dontevenreply.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;emails from an asshole&lt;/a&gt;), I'd probably hide behind hidden anonymous email addresses in order to find my responses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's more about courtesy such that people enjoy their interactions with me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14366" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T15:23:37.683" Title="Asking people permission to publish their letters." Tags="|letter|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2015-07-02T05:38:13.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I learnt Dvorak several years ago, but switched back to QWERTY because of the difficulty of switching back if I was using someone else's computer.  I might try it again if it really does reduce wrist strain.  I have a co-worker who is a bit of a Dvorak evangelist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T05:38:13.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17977" CreationDate="2015-07-02T13:19:46.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;as an addendum to the other answers here, especially Lauren Ipsum's excellent post&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the answer here is a lot to do with that much trod advice of &lt;em&gt;show don't tell&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first draft should simply be about telling the story as succinctly as possible. With rough pointers to the finer details of the characters behaviour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In future drafts you take the story you have told and convert it into something that you show. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I am trying to retrain myself to write quickly, so if I've got a scene in my mind that I can write the show part for, then I'll get that down, otherwise the aim should be (IMO!) to tell the story, ignoring the need to try to convert that into a show. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T13:19:46.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18001" CreationDate="2015-07-02T14:27:19.227" Score="4" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;If my genre lies somewhere in the fantasy-fiction spectrum, is the use of a more &quot;dated&quot; narrative style/vocabulary going to narrow my audience to a harmful extent? I've always been drawn to the poetic, near-lyrical quality of old-fashioned writing (see above examples), and would like to incorporate it into my work(s). I think it adds an element of style, while fantasy works featuring exclusively modern voice and narration can sometimes seem bland or over-accessible. Granted, style/quality should not depend upon vocabulary, and &quot;flowery&quot; writing can become muddled, but working in such a style seems to offer me extra creative liberty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14371" LastEditorUserId="14371" LastEditDate="2015-07-02T15:17:22.460" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T01:12:58.557" Title="In fiction, is the use of old-fashioned verbage or voice (ex. Tolkien, Le Guin) advisable?" Tags="|fiction|style|fantasy|vocabulary|voice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17991" CreationDate="2015-07-02T14:34:31.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that if you enjoy that, and you want to include it into your work then you should do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the 'harmful extent' comes when it is over used, or it interferes with the flow of the story. But that is something that can be fixed in future edits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are having conversations in some alternate language then provide some means of allowing the user to understand what is being said. Either through a direct translation or by allowing the reader to interpret the scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would imagine the interesting aspects of that (for me at least) would be finding ways to convey the meanings of the other languages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people will like how you write, some people won't. Some will think your inclusion of archaic voice is good, other's won't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be creative, write the story you want to write. You will enjoy writing it a lot more, and that will come across in the finished piece. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T14:34:31.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17988" CreationDate="2015-07-02T15:17:06.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Legally, you need permission to publish private communication. There is a lot on this on the web, you'll easily find it through Google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A response by a company to your inquiry is nevertheless addressed to you and private. You must at least anonymize it so that it is impossible to deduce which company you were writing to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the letters have any kind of literary merit at all -- which I assume they might have, if you think they would be interesting to read beyond their informational value -- the letters are also protected by copyright and you are infringing on the copyright of the author if you publish it without permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, no one will ever write to you again once it has become known that you publish letters without permission. In my opinion common courtesy requires that you announce in your first letter that you plan to publish the reply. Keeping that plan hidden means that you expect the recipient not to agree to this and that you are trying to trick them. That is a valid method for investigative journalism that uncovers illegal practices, but simply disrespectful if you actually admire your correspondence partners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-07-02T15:23:37.683" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T15:23:37.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2015-07-02T16:54:37.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider whether you're likely to do a lot of typing on other people's or public computers where you won't be able to switch the layout--if that's a common occurrence, then the hassle of switching back and forth may make it not worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, is your typing speed currently a limiting factor to your writing? Do you compose sentences significantly faster than you can type them? (If you're typing up longhand manuscripts, it might make a big difference!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14374" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T16:54:37.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17995" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-02T17:21:09.797" Score="0" ViewCount="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't the foggiest notion of what is being asked of me here. To elaborate on my question, can you market a collection of essays (some as yet not written) by submitting say five or so, three of which have been published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14375" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T02:04:56.213" Title="Do I need a complete collection of essays with which to approach an agent or a sampling?" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17995" CreationDate="2015-07-02T17:58:39.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why would a publisher want to republish your previously published essays? If you are Barack Obama, this will work, or if your blog has a million readers each day. Otherwise it is quite unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you are famous or your work has acquired a cult following, publishers want original content. And don't try to trick them by deleting the essays from your blog, because if anyone remembers reading the contents of your book elsewhere before and the publisher learns of this, you'll have a huge legal problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agents or publishers commission a book only if the author has proven to sell. Newcomers -- unless famous like the Pope -- always need to submit the beginning of a finished work. How much of the beginning depends on the agent and will be explained in the submission guidelines on their website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books collecting small forms -- a collection of poems, short stories, or essays -- invariably sell fewer copies than novels or monographs. For these, all the above is even more important. Publishers usually only publish collections by authors that are well known. In that case, successful prepublication -- in a &lt;em&gt;print&lt;/em&gt; magazine -- is not uncommon. Web publications are always a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-07-02T18:04:14.000" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T18:04:14.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17977" CreationDate="2015-07-02T19:19:32.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Placeholders.&lt;/strong&gt; (I'm explicitly focusing on my own reaction on this first point, because what I'm saying is very much a matter of personal taste.) I shudder at the idea of leaving placeholders in a manuscript. That impulse means that I've lost contact with the story and with the character. I'm no longer experiencing it. Instead, it's me as writer, from outside the story, trying to control it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when I come back later to fill in the placeholders, I always feel as if I'm more in authorial or editorial mode than in creative voice. I'm not sure whether that affects what I write, but it sure does affect how I feel when I'm writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things go better when I dive right in and write the thing, rather than leaving a placeholder. If it doesn't work out, I can always come back to it later, once I see where the story is going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, I'm almost always pleasantly surprised (either right then or later) by what I wrote. Often, without knowing it at the time, I put in some seemingly throwaway detail that turns out later to be significant. Or I write a line that jumps out at me and tells me what direction the story is going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Practice.&lt;/strong&gt; If you could more quickly get the words to the point where you are satisfied with them, you would spend less time fiddling with them. That was the reason I asked (in my comment) what triggers you to edit. If you notice patterns in the kinds of things that trigger you to fiddle rather than moving on, and if you could get better at those things, you would spend less time fiddling and more time writing the rest of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So identify the most common triggers. Pick one trigger, identify what element of craft it is about, and practice it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do your scene openings not draw readers in? There are books and articles about that. Find a story that you loved, that pulled you in, and analyze how the writer did that. Then practice those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do your scene endings not compel readers to turn the page? There are books and articles about that. Find a story that you couldn't put down, and analyze how the writer did that. Then practice those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then pick another trigger. Study it. Analyze stories that do it well. Practice it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With deliberate practice, you'll get better and faster at the things that are slowing you down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, your critical voice may simply raise the bar, but that's a whole other issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Critical Voice.&lt;/strong&gt; Your critical voice loves you dearly. It wants nothing more than to keep you safe. It has an astounding capacity to imagine dangers. And it has an even more astounding capacity to focus your attention on every possible danger that it can imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that our critical voice appears to have absolutely no capacity to distinguish between its imagined dangers and reality. It is afraid of everything. Deathly afraid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So assess the dangers yourself. If you were to leave this bit of text alone (for now):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is worst thing that could happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the best thing that could happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is most likely to happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can ask these questions about anything your critical voice wants you to fear: What if I were to send this to an editor or agent? What if I were to publish it, with my name right there in huge letters on the cover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, I don't have to go beyond that first question. When I figure out the worst thing that could &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; happen, it comes nowhere near justifying the fear that my critical voice would have me feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your critical voice loves you and wants to keep you safe. But it is afraid of daisies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T19:19:32.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17901" CreationDate="2015-07-02T19:40:09.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend you reading &quot;Six Walks in the Fictional Woods&quot; by Umberto Eco. He explains in the book such narratives (and many other aspects of either ommiting parts of information or stating it in achronological order).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer to you question is: yes, you obviously can do that. Just remember (as Monica Cellio commented) to clearly state that the situation is back in time. It does not mean you need to give time clearly, but the reader should know somehow what is the correct order of events (unless you intentionally want him to be uncertain, which could be a point if it is criminal story and the protagonist is a detective reconstructing events). On the other hand you should not give more clues than necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fine way to introduce such flashback is to use parts of the story world rather than exact time. You could even introduce some object/person into your story just to mark the time. E.g. in first chapter a cat walks around your flat and (at the end) destroys your favourite cup; in second one cat is already dead (and obviously cup is gone); then in third you do not give clues about time, but cat is alive and the cup is broken. This way both the reader knows at which time events occure and the story does not become boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14293" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T19:40:09.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17995" CreationDate="2015-07-03T00:48:55.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You said &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I haven't the foggiest notion of what is being asked of me here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i'll assume that you mean &quot;&lt;em&gt;in order to get an agent&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn’t Hollywood where you need to have a reel, or an art school, or gallery, where you need to present a portfolio, or a university where you need to present sample essays.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to already have sealable product before you approach an agent. He won’t take you in and groom you on the strenght of some sample writings… &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Most likely he won’t groom you to become a better writer even if you have great manuscripts and potential &quot;best-seller&quot; stamped in ink on your forehead)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like @what said, you need a polished finished product before you approach an agent. It is extremely unlikely that the agent will take you on based on some un-commercial essays, or essay collection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either develop these essays into a novel or chuck them away and start to develop a novel lenght book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also do some basic searches like reading Q/A like:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5227/how-can-i-make-a-collection-of-essays-arguments-more-attractive-to-publishers&quot;&gt;How can I make a collection of essays / arguments more attractive to publishers? &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T02:04:56.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17991" CreationDate="2015-07-03T01:06:57.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you describe is mostly what the genre of High Fantasy is about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never found Le Guin or Tolkien to be archaic, or “dated”, it reads natural to me. I have more issues with Zelasny’s Princes of Amber series, or Moorcock's series, though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also some fantasy authors try to inject artificial “old style” and that is glaring and distracting to the narrative. The worse culprits try to mimic Shakespearian or pretend-medial “thou art…” type of diarrheic horse manure in dialogues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise using “poetic, near-lyrical quality” is fine, it is bluring the line between litterature and fantasy and is quite common in the high-fantasy field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2015-07-03T01:12:58.557" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T01:12:58.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18002" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-03T01:57:00.817" Score="4" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this Q will not mimic the fate of the racism Q which was buried in negative votes and caused quite a stir. this Q is somewhat linked to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17703/is-bdsm-becoming-mainstream&quot;&gt;Is BDSM becoming mainstream?&lt;/a&gt; (though i am not equating at all BDSM and rape)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two of my favorite anti-heroes are Stephen R. Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant and Angus Thermopiles, both of which are repentant rapists. I find that the inner turmoil of these characters makes great tension throughout the novels and generates unforgetable characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am also found interesting books on rape victims testimonials and found great heroines like rape survivor Charlaine Harris‘s Lily Bard (Shakespeare) Series. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, I was thinking of developing a story based on a rapist POV and his victim’s. Their arcs at first diametrically opposed would slowly rejoin, and possibly merge into a relationship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that the nature of this Q may be distasteful to some and even suggesting a potential relationship between victim and perpetrator is anathema to some, please bear with me, i am just exploring a potential story idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if such a novel could have a mainstream readership?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I mean apart from wanabe rapists and distraught rape victims)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your input and please try to be polite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-07-04T18:33:42.350" Title="controversial rape subject in mainstream novel?" Tags="|plot|ideas|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18002" CreationDate="2015-07-03T04:50:50.970" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer hinges on where you go with this. If you show the humanity of both victim and perpetrator, their personality, what led to the events and how they deal with it afterwards, in a realistc manner, I don't see a problem with such a book. Due to the nature of the subject and the current heated debate, such a book would certainly trigger some extreme reactions (&quot;victim blaming!&quot;), but the more realistic you are -- and I don't mean in style but in content, ideally backing up your portrayal with research in an appendix -- the less this debate will sully your book and affect your reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not writing a pro rape book, I assume, and not claiming that &quot;she asked for it&quot;, so you should be safe from reporters attempting to drag your private life into this. But beware of attacks below the belt in interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-07-03T10:45:09.560" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T10:45:09.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18002" CreationDate="2015-07-03T05:20:16.630" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's definitely an interesting story in a rapist's repentance. Two things I would caution you against, though, are making it seem as though the victim &quot;ought&quot; to forgive the rapist to the point of starting a relationship (you're going to have trouble explaining why she would want to do something like this, besides Stockholm Syndrome), and making it seem like the rapist's inner turmoil is the most important part, i.e. like his sad feelings about being a rapist warrant more sympathy than her sad feelings about him raping her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14374" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T05:20:16.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18002" CreationDate="2015-07-03T08:35:53.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To gain mainstream readership you need something that people can connect to, that they can understand the emotional journey that you are taking them on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can certainly see the appeal of writing a book based on the rapists' point of view. It would perhaps be interesting to see how he got to the point of becoming a rapist. Taking a generic character through a series of steps that edges ever closer to needing that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for eventually forming a relationship, I think my approach would be of two damaged people coming together through a shared crisis. Maybe as him becoming a little obsessed, and her using it as a means to take control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is certainly an interesting premise, that has a lot of interesting angles... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T08:35:53.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17984" CreationDate="2015-07-03T08:59:51.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the approach to this is to make what you write entertaining. Try to keep the style light, so you're not overwhelming the reader with facts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use a steady build up, make the first few chapters skipable by someone who understands the field, but allows the layman to grasp the basics of where you're going. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep the obvious stuff at the beginning, with clearly labelled chapters, and a paragraph at the top explaining what you're going to cover. Perhaps instructing them to skip it if they are comfortable with those concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you start getting into the heavier topics, maybe have a couple of sentences reminding the reader of the bare outline of the chapter that explored that topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Popular science books are usually popular because they are enjoyable to read, and don't feel like a science lesson. That is usually done by letting the personality of the writer seep out between the facts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T08:59:51.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17984" CreationDate="2015-07-03T10:39:08.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Successful example: Arthur C. Clarke's &lt;em&gt;Rama&lt;/em&gt; series. The first book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553287893&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rendezvous with Rama&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, read to me like a history book written 50 years from now. Very hard sci-fi, technical, a bit dry. The next three in the series, written with Gentry Lee, are more typical fiction, and center on the adventures of one family who are (I think &amp;mdash; it's been a while) mentioned in the first book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T10:39:08.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17964" CreationDate="2015-07-03T17:27:29.427" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about it.  If you feel the need to bare your soul to the reader, go ahead and explain your situation in some section labeled 'preface' or 'about the author' or something.  I mean, there are so many trash authors out there who do ARE native speakers of English and convey their stories with all the voice and passion of an accountant whose sole interaction with the real world excludes all but some basement in Oregon where he calls talk-radio and run his mouth with smack-addled gibberish until the bewildered and frustrated producer simply cuts him off and the MC says ' . . . okay . ..  next caller!'  And have you ever read Hemingway?  A very popular and respected author whose grasp of vernacular included such a repetitive use of 'good' that the sporadic smattering of 'nice' fluttered upon my eyes as the radiant lashings of angelwings taking to flight from the pages.  And Faulkner. . . UH!~ he didn't actual WRITE english as much as recklessly mash english sounding words together in such long tirades it was naught but possible to distinguish any plot or substance.  I might be exaggerating a tad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, even if your story is the sort which is not very popular in your native tongue, you should not let this discourage you.  Your prospective topic could be unpopular simply because of a vacancy of decent material, in which case, writing such a story in your native language could become a hugely rewarding endeavor!  Eitherway, it sounds to me like you're better off writing in your native language and then translating into english.  Don't bother with 'hiring' some 'professional' that's not the proper way.  Befriend a Hip American Intellectual, a rare breed found often at coffee shops or dive-bars, whose loyalty and utter devotion can be easily bartered with cigarettes and the mere promise of being mentioned in the aforementioned preface.  They are probably also unemployed and would be seeking a good reference to put on their resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, just write however you can, so long as you can actually write a story hats off!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14380" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T17:27:29.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14744" CreationDate="2015-07-03T18:40:24.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One good way to answer the question is to cite how I billed for, say, a freelance print ad.  I would quote a blanket fee excluding any hourly rate.  The reason is I may have the headline in five minutes or it may be five days.  Creativity, in short, can't be rushed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would encourage you to adopt a process I got many years ago from a Depression-era (I think) book written by James Webb Young, A Technique for Producing Ideas.  Write down any and all words connected to a product or service.  Go to an extreme in this.  For instance, when I wrote copy for bacon, some of the words went beyond the obvious from &quot;fat&quot; and &quot;from pigs&quot; to &quot;red and white,&quot; &quot;streaky,&quot; &quot;wavy when fried,&quot; etc.  What I was doing was feeding my subconscious.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing I added to Webb's idea was to write in one sentence the unique selling proposition of the product.  This can be tricky as some products are no different from others.  I did a campaign for pickles one time, and basically a pickle is a pickle.  The unique proposition, however, was that children influenced the brand their mother bought.  Hence, an animated tv spot and accompanying print drawing on cartoon characters.  A previous campaign had called a pickle a &quot;dilly,&quot; which, of course, went on my list of words and from that came &quot;have a [brand name] dilly daily&quot; which is a take off on &quot;dilly dally.&quot;  An idea, by the way, are two unrelated things being related as in dilly dally and dilly daily.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14375" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T18:40:24.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18010" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-03T19:19:22.123" Score="7" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;: In reference to this question about &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1742/whats-the-best-way-to-show-a-foreign-language-in-a-manuscript&quot;&gt;how to show a foreign language in a manuscript&lt;/a&gt;, I am wondering: What is the best way to handle a &lt;strong&gt;pidgin language&lt;/strong&gt; in a manuscript? In a wider sense: How would you treat a heavy slang that came up with original words and phrases? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Motivation&lt;/strong&gt;: A pidgin language influenced by English, French, the Lingua Franca, Yiddish and others used in the 50s and 60s is the central symbol of a novel I am working on. It uses &quot;original&quot; words (in the sense that the &quot;parent language&quot; is not obvious) that I intend to highlight by using italics. However, as it was used mainly by English native speakers, some words are real English words but are either part of a phrase of the pidgin language or mean something entirely different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem, refined&lt;/strong&gt;: Since I will not write the novel in English, I wonder whether it makes sense to translate these English pidgin words or simply keep them and treat them to italics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;advantage of keeping the English original&lt;/em&gt; is that it would add some extra &quot;Englishness&quot; to the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The disadvantage&lt;/em&gt;: People not fluent in English might simply miss out on the creativity of some of the pidgin phrases. (Example: &quot;lattie&quot; means flat or house, and &quot;lattie on water&quot; is a ship. The &quot;on water&quot; is obviously easily translatable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think? Thanks for sharing your opinions with me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T16:49:34.447" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T16:49:34.447" Title="How to handle a pidgin language?" Tags="|novel|formatting|translation|language|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14744" CreationDate="2015-07-03T21:41:41.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be Curious&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The longer answer requires :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explaining how being curious matters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explaining how to use your curiosity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Curious Matters Because&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to sell something you must be truly interested in it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to talk about something you should know every aspect of it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to sell something that you know every aspect of you&#xA;should definitely believe it is something great and be able to&lt;br&gt;&#xA;explain why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How Do You Use Your Curiosity?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research find out everything about your subject&#xA;Write Short &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you are selling blogging software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create Blog Entries Fast with editor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write Blog entries from your phone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design blog pages with drag and drop controls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now begin to explain why these are so important with powerful words which are inspired by your belief in the thing you yourself have researched and are interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T21:41:41.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18010" CreationDate="2015-07-03T22:14:53.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A pidgin by its nature could theoretically form from English mixed with the language you are writing in so constructing such artificial pidgin seems to be a good solution. Just abandon grammar of your language and mix it with (commonly known) words from English and roman languages. Translators in such situations sometimes do mix languages close related to target language to show somehow how the language of original text felt to the readers (e.g. translating a dialogue between serbian and croatian speaker into dialogue between polish and silesian speaker). I think the same trick would work for pidgin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But... it also is seen as something controversial or distracting/annoying by people knowing all the languages involved. It is something grammar-nazi like, but some people react this way just because it breaks their cognitive schemas. Similarly writing Яevolution instead of Revolution cmakes russian speakers confused while the others will have no problem reading it. So you should not use the trick I described if you expect your readers to be familiar with the culture (and so language) you are writing about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not want the trick you may write pidgin phrases in italics (as you have mentioned) but then you definitely should add footnotes. It may be better solution as it would not involve such cognitive bias in people expecting rather the original language than translation but it will raise the amount of text (➡footnotes) so you need to choose how you expect your text to be read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14293" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T22:14:53.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18010" CreationDate="2015-07-03T22:27:45.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I don't think you need to make the words italics, if you introduce a word that isn't part of the reader's vocabulary, and give them enough clues to understand what it is, then they will pick it up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for instance, if you had a sentence that said - 'Do you want to come to my lattie for supper' and later maybe said '...its in my lattie' people are going to pick up what it means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If later on you say 'we're catching the lattie-on-water' to cross the river, it won't make a difference whether the reader knows English, the ones that do will understand the subtlety, the ones that don't will simply see it as a bit more of a phrase they need to learn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;drip the words in slowly, guide the reader into understanding the meaning, and don't clog up your story with unneeded explanations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T22:27:45.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18014" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-04T12:56:18.353" Score="2" ViewCount="497" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a paper on the historical background of the Bond movies. I've found a very interesting piece of information that is only mentioned on Wikipedia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the bibliography details:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;Money-Making Films of 1962&quot;. The Times (London). 4 January 1964. p. 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this site cannot be used as a reliable source, I tried to find the article in the Times archive. Even there I couldn't find any information about the author of the original article.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Then, I tried other online archives and libraries but also with no results. &#xA;I want to find this article and analyse it, really bad.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could anybody, please, help me find the author or direct me to some magical web-page where I could check such information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14389" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-21T10:59:34.513" LastActivityDate="2018-03-21T11:58:06.370" Title="Where to find authors of the articles from the Times archive?" Tags="|academic-writing|research|journalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18002" CreationDate="2015-07-04T18:33:42.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a touchy subject so I will approach it from two points of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you happen to be a woman's rights' activist and/or felon-rehabilitation activist, and this is the topic you wish to use to make your point, then by all means go for it, and write the best piece you can to promote your &quot;activism.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If (as I suspect), you are approaching it from a writer's point of view, I would recommend against it. This is one of the harder topics around for a sophisticated, seasoned writer. If you &quot;have many ideas and need to prioritize,&quot; I would prioritize this &lt;em&gt;out,&lt;/em&gt; and choose a simpler, more manageable topic, rather than risking what might be &quot;one shot&quot; effort on this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If and when you become a world class author, then you might revisit this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-07-04T18:33:42.350" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18016" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-05T01:53:08.847" Score="1" ViewCount="356" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently re-read Ernest Hemingway's &lt;em&gt;The Old Man and the Sea&lt;/em&gt;. I think the following line is interesting but am unable to determine what kind of language feature it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But man is not made for defeat,&quot; he said.  &quot;A man can be destroyed but &#xA;  not defeated.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a very profound quote and I would appreciate it if anyone is able to determine what kind of language technique is applied to it or how I could describe it in an essay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14130" LastEditorUserId="13990" LastEditDate="2015-07-05T13:52:49.413" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T13:52:49.413" Title="Is there a language technique for factual, philosophical style writing?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-07-12T23:26:33.807" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18016" CreationDate="2015-07-05T10:26:51.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is Santiago's self reflection after a number of days battle with the Marlin and the sharks that then came to eat it. It is describing how while he could have been killed (destroyed) he wouldn't give up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book as a whole is very strongly about metaphor, I would say this line is simply an extension of the book's idea of continuing to fight against the odds &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T10:26:51.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18018" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-05T11:10:56.917" Score="1" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have difficulties to write more than simple dialogue that still works and is readable. So, I have two options here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try harder, read more books with lots of dialogue and learn from them and apply this to my own writing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid dialogue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which direction should I go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T15:51:25.043" Title="How to handle dialogue?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18018" CreationDate="2015-07-05T12:28:09.427" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I struggled with writing dialogue for a long time, it bothered me that I could never make it sound like real conversation. As I've previously &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17519/how-important-is-being-well-read-for-a-writer&quot;&gt;written&lt;/a&gt; I don't like to solve problems by seeing how other's have resolved them i.e. by reading how other's approach dialogue &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My resolution was to realise that you don't need to make it sound like real conversation, you are using characters speech to convey story concepts. With that thought speech becomes a literary device that you employ in the appropriate situations to move your story along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started off with a desription of what I wanted them to say 'Julie talked to Mark about the train times' and put together a small exchange to convey that information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there are also a number of novels that have relied on reported speech, so if that works for you, and the end product feels more comfortable, then perhaps that is better for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T12:28:09.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18023" CreationDate="2015-07-05T14:01:06.890" Score="2" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering selling work to &quot;Shoreline of Infinity&quot; however they say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We buy first digital and print world rights in English, but your&#xA;  rights are returned to you after 6 months of original publication&#xA;  (digital or print).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not familiar with this specific terminology and am unsure if I would be giving up too much or if I have first sold to regional publications if I am no longer offering what they are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the same as asking for First World English Print Rights? Or am I able to sell First British, First North American etc and then sell them Generic (second) World Rights?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that as I am being asked for digital rights I am unlikely to make any sales after selling to this publication so I need to know exactly what I am being asked for so I know what sales (if any) I can make first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T15:43:56.947" Title="Are &quot;print world rights in English&quot; the same as &quot;First World Print Rights&quot;?" Tags="|publishing|legal|publisher|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18022" CreationDate="2015-07-05T15:43:56.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;They purchase the right to be the first to publish your work in English anywhere in the world in those formats. You would not be able to sell &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; rights in English anywhere in the world after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: I am not a lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T15:43:56.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18018" CreationDate="2015-07-05T17:53:42.583" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pick option three:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When writing, &lt;strong&gt;imagine you are actually saying this&lt;/strong&gt;. If you wouldn't say it, don't write it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T17:53:42.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18028" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18030" CreationDate="2015-07-06T11:24:51.763" Score="4" ViewCount="2532" Body="&lt;p&gt;So one of my main characters uses three different names throughout the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's his nickname Warlock, his name Andreas, and his shorthand name Dre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warlock is probably used the most, enemies use it in combat with him, along with anyone not familiar enough to use his name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dre is used by all of his friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem one is probably Andreas, it's used to refer to him in his POV chapters but very few people call him that. Some workshops have pointed out it does lead to some confusion trying to work out that the multiple names are in fact the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any tips on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Couple of minor solutions I use in places that might help show what I'm going for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Showing his response to dialogue in other names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey Dre!&quot; Andreas turned when he heard his name. &quot;Oh, hey.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Describing Warlock/Dre/Andreas when he enters, drawing attention to distinguishing features or habits so readers can more easily visualise him being the same person walking into a room to save dependency on his name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10621" LastActivityDate="2020-06-24T17:08:18.033" Title="Writing a character that has many names" Tags="|naming|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18028" CreationDate="2015-07-06T11:49:46.933" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to find a consistent way to refer to him in the narration of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to choose the name that the reader is going to know him by, if that is Andreas then your example would work perfectly regardless of what he was being called. If you emphasis those connections early in the story, &lt;em&gt;maybe&lt;/em&gt; pointing it out in an early scene &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But Dre, why do they call you Warlock&quot; Andreas' friend Bob asked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then maybe you could have his mother calling him Andreas (or hopefully something less clunky than these examples!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be consistent, lead the reader through story and they should be smart enough to keep track later on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T11:49:46.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18018" CreationDate="2015-07-06T13:34:25.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep writing dialogue. Not using dialogue is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; an option. In rare cases, the characters might be fully established by their (mute) actions, but I repeat: This is rare. Although we usually rely on our sight much more heavily than on our other senses, it's mainly language through which we establish communication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to improve stiff, unnatural dialogue? My advise would be: &lt;strong&gt;Be honest&lt;/strong&gt;. (This is similar to what @what suggested, just more character-driven. I don't care whether &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; can speak the way the character does, it simply must be true to the character.) To achieve this, I don't plot out the dialogue in advance, I simply have an idea of what the outcome of the conversation should be. Then I sit down, start to write, and just let the characters talk. The dialogue might be short or long, depending on what the character is going through in the scene - joy? sadness? anger? - and what his/her general communication strategies are. If you have a good understanding of your characters and a good idea of the plot - a plot that all characters are comfortable with, i.e. a plot that no character tries to break free from -, it will not be hard for your characters to come up with the topics and ideas that you have in mind for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thought: If you are interested in communication in general, maybe read some literature about that, sender-receiver theory and all. The best dialogue, on the other hand, that I could think of spontanesouly, would be in Oscar Wilde's &quot;The Picture of Dorian Gray&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T13:34:25.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18032" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-06T13:47:24.897" Score="2" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a developer. I'm curious what features other writers look for in writing software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I am, of course, excluding features of typical word processors such as options to change font size, paragraph alignment, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;*Important - this is only in reference to novel writing, not screen writing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14400" LastEditorUserId="14400" LastEditDate="2015-07-07T14:45:35.590" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T14:45:35.590" Title="If you could design writing software, what would be your top 5 required features?" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|software|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-07-06T15:35:09.313" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18032" CreationDate="2015-07-06T14:00:53.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To be able to write nonlinearly&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to be able to write chapter 3 before finishing chapter 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To have a thesaurus built-in&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To have a proof-reading mode&lt;/strong&gt; (like the track changes feature in Word)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Built-in Integration with Dropbox or Google Drive&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Version Control&lt;/strong&gt;, so that one can choose which are major changes, and can be reverted back to if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14402" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T14:00:53.023" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18018" CreationDate="2015-07-06T14:07:32.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find the key to dialog is subtext.  People are generally communicating at more than one level, and if you don't convey that in your dialog, it sounds unnatural.  Sexual tension, power struggles, rivalry, regret --all can be lurking under the surface of even the most innocuous smalltalk.  Even if this isn't always the case in real life, it makes for more interesting conversations in fiction.  Properly handled, your dialog shouldn't just be communication between the characters, it should also illuminate the relationship between the characters for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T14:07:32.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18032" CreationDate="2015-07-06T14:31:09.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A no-distraction fullscreen mode. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seamless integration with cloud based storage but obviously not reliant on the cloud or internet connectivity. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A visual layout / outlining mode that allows you to build a basic graphical outline of your story. Nothing fancy. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Good built-in thesaurus with a solid dictionary. When I'm looking for a synonym I don't want the software to just tell me that two words are interchangeable - I want to make that call on my own. The ideal thesaurus would suggest a list of words and then provide easy access to their definitions so that the writer can easily choose between them. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Version control / easy editing mode. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14404" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T14:31:09.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18037" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18043" CreationDate="2015-07-06T14:45:07.287" Score="1" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that, in writing, repetition is sometimes bad. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You forgot my birthday!&quot; I said.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No, I didn't forget your&#xA;  birthday.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Then why didn't you wish me happy birthday?&quot; I said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Because I didn't want to embarrass you. You know, make you feel special and&#xA;  all that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I just came up with this dialogue. Probably the worst piece I've ever written in my life.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when is repetition good?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are examples from my own writing. (I thought the repetition was good. But I'm not sure anymore.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mike called me that weekend. To be honest, I'd been trying to avoid&#xA;  him. Not because I was &lt;strong&gt;pissed&lt;/strong&gt; at him, but because I was starting to&#xA;  develop feelings for him---which I guess &lt;strong&gt;pissed&lt;/strong&gt; me off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The mind is a part of the body. More specifically the brain. That's&#xA;  why there are cases of head injuries where people had lost their&#xA;  capacity to recognize objects, faces, feel guilt or anger. Which is&#xA;  proof that our consciousness isn't really separated from our body.&#xA;  It's just feels that way. Anyhow, this notion is going away,&#xA;  especially now that we can literally look inside the human &lt;strong&gt;mind&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I wish we could look inside the &lt;em&gt;cat's&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;mind&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot; I said. &quot;We'd know&#xA;  what's wrong with her at once.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T11:00:02.857" Title="When is repetition good?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18037" CreationDate="2015-07-06T15:39:12.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Words or phrases should not be repeated within the space of a couple of lines (except for small common words like 'the') unless you are doing it for effect, for example: &quot;No. No. No. A thousand times no.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficulty is judging when it works and when it doesn't. One way to see is to read it out loud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T15:39:12.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18018" CreationDate="2015-07-06T15:51:25.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try looking into spoken language. Record some actual dialogue and then study it. Look at the differences between spoken and written language. Look at the linguistic areas called pragmatics and speech act theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't want to write completely realistic spoken language -- that is boring, often doesn't make sense, etc. -- but the knowledge you gain can help you write better dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, read it out loud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T15:51:25.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18037" CreationDate="2015-07-06T15:58:00.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't honestly see a problem with the two later examples. You have repeated words (&amp;quot;mind&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;pissed off&amp;quot;) because you're talking about the same things/emotions multiple times. The only problem with the birthday example is that &lt;em&gt;nobody talks like that.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wrote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You forgot my birthday!&amp;quot; I said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;! I would never forget your birthday!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Then why didn't you even tell me 'happy birthday'?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Because I didn't want to embarrass you. You know, make you feel special and all that.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you still have repetition of the word &amp;quot;birthday,&amp;quot; but it sounds more like something people would actually tell say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repetition is NOT in and of itself bad, especially in a case like this where people &lt;em&gt;repeat the name of the thing they're talking about&lt;/em&gt;. That's one of those rules they teach in high school so you can get better grades on standardized tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14374" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T15:58:00.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16599" CreationDate="2015-07-06T16:03:02.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you ask someone at the advertising company you worked for? Surely they know who owns the copyrights, and can give you their contact information. You do not want to get sued by a big company, so you'd better check up to make sure. Anything produced in your lifetime is still under copyright unless it was formally released into the public domain, which seems very unlikely for ads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14374" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T16:03:02.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17901" CreationDate="2015-07-06T17:08:08.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's fine to use flashbacks, but you should make sure you're doing it for a reason, rather than &quot;just to mix things up.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, you could give us&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;day 1 (present, Character 1) -&amp;gt; day 10 (present, Character 1) -&amp;gt; day 5 (past, Character 2)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if you want to reveal Character 2's actions &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you reveal how Character 1 reacted to the results of those actions (i.e. to build suspense), or if C1 and C2 aren't interacting and it's more streamlined to split their actions up. But don't just scramble your timeline to no purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14374" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T17:08:08.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18037" CreationDate="2015-07-06T19:03:37.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Repetition gives emphasis whatever is repeated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repetition calls attention to whatever is repeated, especially if the repeated thing is unusual or interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repetition can create rhythms. Repeated patterns can provoke expectations in the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an extreme, haunting, brilliant example of repetition, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://kirkthughes.com/102/Assignments/Entries/2013/12/12_In-CLASS_Oral_Final_EXAM_files/%22Boys%22%20Rick%20Moody.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rick Moody's story &quot;Boys&quot; (PDF)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T19:03:37.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17901" CreationDate="2015-07-06T21:04:54.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with MissMonicaE's answer.  If you feel you need to change the sequence of events &quot;just to mix things up&quot;, then your story was boring.  Now it is boring and confusing.  All other things being equal, people prefer linear storytelling.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Tolkien skillfully uses nonlinear storytelling in Lord of the Rings, but only because he &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; -- he often has 3 (or 4!) separate groups doing stuff at the same time.  Rather than referring to dates (that the reader won't remember), he refers to events that all his groups experience.  Occasionally the narrator reminds the reader what the other groups are doing.  Or, characters from one group will fill in other characters on what their group was doing.  (So the reader gets both narrative, self-commentary, and interaction, all in one passage.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, other writers do this.  Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare.  It's a classic technique.  Even Homer does it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: Flashbacks are great, but only use them when they serve a distinct purpose, because they DO make it harder on your reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T21:04:54.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5010" CreationDate="2015-07-06T23:30:23.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use rchive.co and manage all comments and feedback on your writing. Advantage is ,it is private and you can revoke the access when ever you feel like. Any one can provide the feedback as notes or comments on the document directly . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14409" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T23:30:23.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5010" CreationDate="2015-07-07T06:32:57.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have that side of the story experience, but I know talking with some creative friends that it is good to have different type of friends available. As pointed out by Steven Drennon, your friends will have different reactions, and I think you can see three categories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;It's great, I wish I could do that.&quot; This is not a feedback at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I like it, waiting to see the next one.&quot; This is the supportive type.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Well, not too bad, but somehow you should consider change this or that because of that reason.&quot; This is the critique part.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of your close friends will fall on the second category. The less close friends will have more of the first category. Some (close or not so close, but confident enough to mark criticism) will fall in the third category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, Steven Drennon, essentially suggest to only keep the latter ones. This is probably the most constructive category, and they help you grow. However, you might at time feel yourself down-hearted. The first ones will boost your ego, and make you feel like you have talent. The second will reassure you that you are supported by good friends. Why they don't necessarily help on your techniques, they are great psychological support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should then dose the friends you ask for feedback, depending on your needs, but a bit for the three is probably a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this is what I learned from friends who, sometimes asked me for feedback (and in their case I was in the third category).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13879" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T06:32:57.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18048" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-07T09:48:05.817" Score="7" ViewCount="1780" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find myself using these words &lt;em&gt;all the time&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now (&amp;lt;-- there's one!), to be clear the context I'm using them is in conversational style writing, on social commentary, or in forum posts like these. It's not formal academic writing, and it's not story telling. (In a fictional story, these words would be perfectly appropriate if used by a character). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example where I've used it recently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Point four, I think it is realistic that people would have this interpretation. &lt;strong&gt;So&lt;/strong&gt; on this point I'll just stress that this blog post is not intended to be malicious or make anyone feel bad. It's more an interesting exploration of social interaction and how best react and navigate it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is - is this actually an effective writing style, in the sense of being easy to read and persuasive, and if not, how do I get around it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14366" LastEditorUserId="14366" LastEditDate="2015-07-07T21:08:05.350" LastActivityDate="2018-09-11T23:42:25.163" Title="Using filler words like 'So', 'Anyway'" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18049" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-07T09:57:10.447" Score="0" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any suggestion or guide for beginner willing to learn creative poem writing or poetry in Hindi and English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13532" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T17:44:51.200" Title="Poetry or Poem Writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|poetry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-07-07T23:37:38.110" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18050" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-07T13:12:39.677" Score="1" ViewCount="2200" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, which is the proper way of a character asking a question? and why is it better one way vs the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.) &quot;Why is it you always show up when you are not wanted?&quot; he asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.) &quot;Why is it you always show up when you are not wanted?&quot; Areon asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.)&quot;Why is it you always show up when you are not wanted?&quot; asked Areon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14416" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T10:08:31.887" Title="When having a character ask a question..." Tags="|dialogue|plot|grammar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18051" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18053" CreationDate="2015-07-07T13:22:01.260" Score="0" ViewCount="562" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a book I am writing, and every time I go into a grammar fixing program, I get a lot of &quot;Fragmented Sentences.&quot; Can some one explain to me how to fix these with out losing any part of the sentence I have? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked this up, but for some reason it is not hitting home on what everyone is explaining. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14416" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T13:30:29.093" Title="Fragmented sentence" Tags="|dialogue|structure|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18051" CreationDate="2015-07-07T13:30:29.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A sentence has a subject and a verb, sometimes an object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He recites. (Subject: he; Verb: recites)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She throws a book. (Subject: She; Verb: throws; Object: a book)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sentence fragment is missing some part of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ran down the street. (Verb: ran; no subject)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His impossibly high cheekbones. (Object: cheekbones; no subject or verb)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full of stars. (Just a descriptive clause; there's neither subject, verb, or object)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally a sentence fragment means you have to &lt;em&gt;add&lt;/em&gt; something, not remove something. You might have to edit your question to include some examples, and we can show you what's missing from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T13:30:29.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18055" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-07T15:20:13.720" Score="1" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I am writing a story. I have book 1 done, half of book 2 and of course the ending in book 3. I am not an English major, and I am not at all great with grammar, or using proper English. Which programs are the best to put my rough draft through to make sure that it is &quot;Proper English&quot; ? Online free apps, or programs would be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not just Grammar, but punctuation, sentence enhancing, story flow, ect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14416" LastEditorUserId="14416" LastEditDate="2015-07-07T15:59:45.020" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T17:41:45.573" Title="Writing a Novel" Tags="|novel|editing|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-07-12T23:25:27.527" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18056" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18057" CreationDate="2015-07-07T11:32:38.070" Score="3" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have wanted for some time now to write and illustrate a children's book. How realistic is it to self publish? I have no business background in this at all, and would expect to make a loss initially. What options are available to the individual in terms of marketing &amp;amp; selling these books (of course, I realise it depends on quality, but that aside).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it advisable to approach prospective publishers, or to build a portfolio first? Is it possible to self-publish and then approach a company that markets these things, or is it at all advisable to attempt the whole thing single handed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first degree (many years ago now) was in sculpture, and I have a good working knowledge of the publishing process, having worked as a graphic designer for a few years (albeit limited to the publishing of pamphlets, posters and the like), so feel quite comfortable with both the hand-drawn illustration part, and the production side of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that a few authors/illustrators have done just this (Lauren Child, Tommie dePaula, etc.), but I don't know what route they took in terms of the business side of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please excuse the naive nature of this question, but I was rather hoping someone could shed some light / offer advice on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8271" OwnerDisplayName="martin" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-22T03:23:28.697" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T17:54:13.323" Title="Self-publishing / marketing children's book" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|marketing|children|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18056" CreationDate="2015-07-07T15:50:35.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To respond to your question &quot;How realistic it is to self-publish&quot;, I will answer &quot;very realistic&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you see some many authors who self- publish it's because publishing is in a major transition, to the same level it was when Gutenberg created the first press. The process of publishing has been liberated from the publishers who were very selective, having huge demands and were even at some point enslaving some authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With self-publishing, you can use print-on-demand services, digital media and since you are a designer yourself, you can do a lot of the layout/web work yourself. You don't even need to have an inventory of book anymore, or you can choose to keep little inventory if you want. That's a major change in the investment required. For your marketing, you can use the same strategies the publishers uses, you can get into libraries and you can use your own ways (eg. social media.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get to know how to start, you can find an agent, you can read online, you can pay for seminars (although I don't recommend this way.) I'd to tell you all the detailed steps and the exact how-to but that's my job actually to get authors started and I can't share everything here as you guess! I can only tell you to find good referrals if you need people to help you and that it's possible for you to accomplish a lot on your own if you want to. I can also warn you about &quot;mini publishers&quot; who charge excessive amount of money for inventories that are useless, and webinars and &quot;coaches&quot; that won't teach you much more than what you can read online. Usually, that's where self-publish authors get caught. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your success will depend  a lot on how much energy and time you're willing to spend yourself in your book's marketing. One big benefit for you as an illustrator is that you will get some kind of protection on your intellectual property once you publish your illustrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14155" OwnerDisplayName="go-me" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T15:50:35.143" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18055" CreationDate="2015-07-07T17:41:45.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For all of this there is nothing better than reading and rereading.  By the time you have fully proofed the story yourself you will know it inside and out, and there will still be errors you can't see.  After you've gone through and checked yourself a couple of times, have a friend read it and help you proof through it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14419" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T17:41:45.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18049" CreationDate="2015-07-07T17:44:51.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to start writing poetry is to read poetry.  You have to understand what poetry is meant to do.  After you are well-versed in poetry then learn meter and the mechanics of poetry.  From there, remember, talent and mechanics only get you so far.  It takes a lot of editing, revising, and retooling to get the poem just right, or, at least as close to just right as the poem will let itself be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14419" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T17:44:51.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18037" CreationDate="2015-07-07T17:59:28.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One problem with repetition in prose is that it's not very interesting.  In a sense it's a wasted opportunity.  When stating that you were pissed and then later that it pissed you off, you aren't giving the reader any new information.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Instead of wasting the reader's time by restating the same thing the opportunity should be taken to engage the reader with a different look at the same situation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not because I was pissed at him, but because I was starting to develop feelings for him---which made me confused and angry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14419" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T17:59:28.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18050" CreationDate="2015-07-07T18:10:07.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is churning like sand in my inner ear is the &quot;wanted comma asked&quot; in all three examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are all fine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Where have you been?&quot; he asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Where have you been?&quot; John asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Where have you been?&quot; asked John.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Why is it you always show up when you are not wanted?&quot; Areon stared at me intently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pause caused by the full stop separates the two -ed-forms enough to break the reduplication of your examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &quot;asked&quot; only repeats what the question mark already tells us and is therefore superfluous and bad style. Tell us something we don't know to add intensity to your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Style is a matter of personal taste. This answer reflects mine. I once read a translation of the Mabinogion, where the discourse between Pwyll, prince of Dyfed, and Arawn, king of Annwn, went something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...,&quot; said Pwyll.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...,&quot; said Arawn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...,&quot; said he.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...,&quot; said he.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...,&quot; said he.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...,&quot; said he.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I very much love this, but if I read it in a contemporary novel, even if it was fantasy, I'd put it in the recycling bin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contemporary fiction is often characterized by sparse descriptions and filmic narration. My &quot;better&quot; example reflects this fashion, which, of course, you need not emulate. There are other, more traditional styles, where &quot;he said&quot; is common and fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T10:08:31.887" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T10:08:31.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18063" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-07T20:42:46.630" Score="1" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently was given an amazing opportunity to interview with some of my favorite idols, but I don't have much experience writing journalism.&#xA;As in, I literally have written one article in the entire existence.&#xA;However, through some contacts, I was able to land an opportunity to write for a magazine which I currently read. They want a writing sample and I honestly don't have any any good journalism articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to get some articles in within 2 days (At the end of Wednesday)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My articles will be about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interviews &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;J-pop music scene  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specific music artists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mobile gaming and specific games/companies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They will be both in print and online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some resources that I can read to get to know the style of writing and vocabulary? I'm coming from a computer science background so this is pretty out of my comfort zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there experienced writers whom I can pay to critique my articles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not any of the above, can you guys recommend some writers from newspapers that you love? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way I can read and learn from them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14421" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T06:55:04.460" Title="Quick-start to journalism?" Tags="|journalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15987" CreationDate="2015-07-08T00:58:32.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm kind of going through the same thing. I&quot;m trying to figure out it myself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things that I do, so dreadfully in my mind, I try to understand what's important to them at that age. I mean I kinda think back to when I was that age. I can still sort of remember, but not really you know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess reading a juniors reading level book where the main character is a kid of the age you are speaking of 10-13. I guess that's something you could try doing to get the feel of &quot;how&quot; exactly they talk. That's something I might do actually. Best of luck!! :) We're both traveling the same road XP All the best!! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14422" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T00:58:32.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16423" CreationDate="2015-07-08T01:39:20.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to be honest here, agents are not looking for baby writers with zero experience on staff for a brand new unproven tv show. That's the bad news. The good news is that you've got the work ethic to pump out a pilot and episodes? That's stellar right there. Mostly people only have ideas. I would work on the second piece of breaking into entertainment, which is network network network like crazy until you meet the right people. It's not gonna matter that you have an agent if no one in town knows who you are. An agent isn't a magician who can open the gates for you...they're just there to help you negotiate the nitty gritty terms. It's business, not Entourage so think about why any agent would get into bed with a new writer not guaranteed to have return in time/money invested? Keep working on your samples, write a few more pilots (they will be better than your first, that just how writing goes) and if you want to make American TV, BE IN LA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14423" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T01:39:20.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18048" CreationDate="2015-07-08T01:41:53.067" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general (and in your question and example) it makes the text feel friendlier and more conversational.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some contexts, a more conversational tone can make your ideas less persuasive. Whether it works depends on who is reading, and why they're reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word &quot;just&quot; in your example has the effect of discounting the thing it modifies. The effect is mild in this case, but I felt it as I read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your last paragraph, &quot;actually&quot; is unnecessary. For some reason I can't articulate, it feels hesitant and uncertain to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T01:41:53.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18050" CreationDate="2015-07-08T02:32:34.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion, I like stating who's speaking before the &quot;asked&quot; &quot;Said&quot; &quot;stated&quot; &quot;declared&quot; &quot;claimed&quot; or whatever else. like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Susan said&#xA;Susan Whined&#xA;Susan complained &#xA;Susan cried&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that's just my taste though. Once you find what works for you then you know, that's your style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14422" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T02:32:34.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18070" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18446" CreationDate="2015-07-08T04:15:18.503" Score="8" ViewCount="5031" Body="&lt;p&gt;For many years I have been trying to find a good text editor for writing fiction. I have used Scrivener, Ulysses and others but they seem slow and you always reach the point where you want things to behave differently and you can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried Vim and Emacs in the past but didn't go too deep into packages or settings to create the perfect environment. I have tried &amp;quot;Writeroom&amp;quot; modes that make the buffer distraction free but this is just one piece of the puzzle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing writers need is to organize structure. I find that Ulysses 3 is the closest to getting it right. You write small chunks of text and then you can arrange them in any order you want on a sidebar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LqCgB.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LqCgB.png&quot; alt=&quot;Ulysses showing list of sections and text of selected section&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that it's Mac only and not very programmable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am surprised there is no open source option for something like this. Is this possible on Emacs? I have seen sidebars but none allow you to read a bunch of text files and then order in any way you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14424" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-04-23T12:19:33.490" LastActivityDate="2023-04-23T12:19:33.490" Title="Make Emacs (or vim etc) like Ulysses" Tags="|creative-writing|tools|ulysses|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18070" CreationDate="2015-07-08T05:21:53.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A modular approach offers the most flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that every book I write I do it differently, and no software is flexible enough to both offer all possible options and be free of clutter. I use a mix of taking notes in paper notebooks, outlining on loose paper and small file cards (with the help of scissors, glue, colored markers and a large floor – a very sensual and fun process), writing in a text editor (TextWrangler) and writing and rewriting in Scrivener. I have also used Aeon Timeline, Excel, HTML files (edited in an editor and viewed in a browser), photographs, and other applications and media to help me alongside my paper/editor/Scrivener core apps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a software that exactly fits your personal writing style, you need to program it yourself – possibly a new one for every new book that you approach differently. The more flexible approach is &lt;strong&gt;modular&lt;/strong&gt;, using different software for the different tasks you need done. This is not a costly approach, since a lot of the software you'll need is either free and open source, or obscenely cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T10:22:23.753" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T10:22:23.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18037" CreationDate="2015-07-08T11:00:02.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe there are two different kinds of repetition, though they can appear as each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, for example, you have an inadvertent use of the same non-trivial word in two consecutive or nearby sentences. It can have a dull repetitive sound to it, which can translate into boring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second case, you have a deliberate use of repetition, for one or more reasons, designed to produce a certain effect. Now you're dealing with the sound and rhythm of the words, the way the individual instances of the repeated word work with the words that surround it. At that point, whether or not it's good or bad depends on how well you can pull it off, and how well it works in context with what comes before and after. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repetition is neither good nor bad, but something you want to be in control of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5925" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T11:00:02.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18074" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-08T12:16:24.073" Score="0" ViewCount="225" Body="&lt;p&gt;What if a chapter is incredibly depressive, dark, with intense language. And the next reads almost like a dialogue from a Seth MacFarlane comedy. Or even better, what if the tone switches occur between scenes.&#xA;I think most books I've read maintained a consistent mood, even if the characters emotions were flipping. So what do you think about breaking this rule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14312" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T16:02:22.593" Title="What do you think about having very different tones in a single story?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|tone|rules|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18074" CreationDate="2015-07-08T12:34:41.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Shakespeare's Othello, Othello's speech often changes tone between scenes. He often sees himself as uncivilized however his tough is quite the contrary. However, in some scenes his language becomes more &quot;brutal&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was just an example, I think that changing the tone of dialogue in a character can both allow the reader to identify the mood of a situation. For example, if a character who is always optimistic suddenly starts contemplating his life and mortality it would allow the reader to see that this character is in a perhaps &quot;grave&quot; circumstance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question allows for a lot of opinion and this is just mine, you may find some people who think that changing a characters tone is &quot;inconsistent&quot; with the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14428" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T12:34:41.070" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18074" CreationDate="2015-07-08T13:30:25.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't want to break the reader's immersion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With your writing, you build the reader's identification with your characters and his expectations about the future progress of the story. If your characters suddenly act out of character, they become unbelievable. If you story progresses in a random fashion, your readers will be confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, life isn't always the same, and in long novels the characters often are granted a respite from their toil, so that they can tell campfire tales or make love, but these interludes have meaning in the overall storyline, they fit the internal logic of the fictional world, and they usually don't completely fall out of the rest of the narrative stylistically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are books that break all the rules and do whatever they want. Apparently there are people who buy and read them. I cannot say much on these, as I cannot bring myself to read them, they annoy me so much. If you like them, you should ignore my advice and probably know much better, what you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T13:30:25.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18074" CreationDate="2015-07-08T14:12:24.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; get away with drastically different tones if you had two different POV narrators. If one is Tina Fey and the other is Sylvia Plath, they will of course see the world differently. The contrast will probably make your book lean more towards humor/dark humor/satire, so as long as you're okay with that, give it a shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not the same as a lighter passage in a bleak book or a dramatic scene in a funny book. We're talking about entirely different tone, vocabulary, and imagery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not have a third-person limited or omniscient narrative voice which changes from Fey to Plath without explanation. The whiplash would be off-putting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T14:12:24.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18079" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18080" CreationDate="2015-07-08T14:42:45.407" Score="5" ViewCount="334" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a story with several characters.  I've decided that I won't give them names, but refer to them as their titles.  For example, the grocer.  The cleaner.  The officer.  Currently I capitalize these names: the Grocer met the Cleaner and they talked about the Officer.  I do this because I think it makes it easy to intuitively determine that the individual is that, instead of just any grocer / cleaner / officer, and also because I think it's an interesting creative device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it wrong to do this?  Would I be better off not capitalizing in this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13268" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T15:33:13.493" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T01:56:39.440" Title="Capitalizing generic names" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18079" CreationDate="2015-07-08T14:55:13.537" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a slight difference, if you capitalize the job titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can easily tell a story about a grocer, a cleaner and an officer without capitalizing their job titles. There won't be any confusion, if you always refer to these persons by the same handle. Readers will think that those are the jobs of these people, but that they have a life and personality beyond that occupation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand you capitalize their job titles, the jobs become their defining characteristic: the Grocer is nothing but a grocer, in all areas of his life. Being a grocer is no longer a job the Grocer has and from which he returns home to be a father and hobby musician, like the grocer, but it is who he is. Depending on your story, the Grocer has either become a depthless persona existing only in the fictional store that is the sole scenery for your tale, or he is a person obsessed with the shelving and selling of food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is about normal people who just happen to have those jobs, do not capitalize their job titles. If your story is about the personification of officerdom interacting with the personification of cleanerdom, capitalize them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T14:55:13.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18079" CreationDate="2015-07-08T15:44:02.350" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are just referring to them by titles instead of names, you don't need to capitalize, but the narrative will seem impersonal. If the titles are being used &lt;em&gt;in place&lt;/em&gt; of names, do capitalize them.  Be aware, however, that this will change the entire feel of the book --it will make it seem more stylized and allegorical.  If that's what you want, then go right ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically (as mentioned by Monica) if you use a title in place of a name, you drop the article --thus &lt;em&gt;Father&lt;/em&gt;, rather than &lt;em&gt;a Father&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;the Father.&lt;/em&gt;  Alternately, however, you can keep the definite article as a part of the title, but in that case, it would also be capitalized, &lt;em&gt;The Grocer&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The Officer.&lt;/em&gt;  The first option reads as more natural, the second has more of the allegorical feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-07-09T01:56:39.440" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T01:56:39.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18082" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18085" CreationDate="2015-07-08T15:53:33.363" Score="5" ViewCount="2418" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example from my own writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Please take care of yourself,&quot; she replied. &quot;Health is the most&#xA;  important thing in life, remember that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I know, Mom.&quot; I had already lost count of the number of times she had&#xA;  repeated that. &quot;But I don't know, let's say you do your best to stay&#xA;  healthy: jog every day, eat veggies, drink lots of water, avoid&#xA;  cigarettes and alcohol. Then one day you die in a car accident.&#xA;  Wouldn't it be a big waste? Like building a sand castle just to watch&#xA;  the waves come along and wash it away?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What's your point?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That maybe there's something more to life than health. Something that&#xA;  has nothing to do with the body.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She said, &quot;Darling, you sure you're all right?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Talking to my mom suddenly made me sad. She had good intentions, I&#xA;  knew that. However, sometimes &lt;strong&gt;it felt as if we spoke different&#xA;  languages.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that's a cliched metaphor. And here's the problem: it's the perfect one for the passage. Still, it bother's me that I'm using a cliche. So I tried the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Using a synonym:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, sometimes it felt as if we spoke different&#xA;  dialects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Using another metaphor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, sometimes it felt as if we were standing in opposite shores, shouting to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't know. I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do with cliched metaphors? Maybe just remove them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T01:21:57.780" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T06:25:36.517" Title="What to do with cliched metaphors?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|cliches|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18074" CreationDate="2015-07-08T16:02:22.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you switch narrative tone, it will distance the reader and make it harder for him or her to achieve suspension of disbelief.  If you are writing a post-modernist novel, or a post-post-modernist novel (say, a fable about life in a you-tube-saturated short-attention-span society), this might be a good thing.  Otherwise, it is probably something to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T16:02:22.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18082" CreationDate="2015-07-08T16:05:07.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the style of what you're writing, sometimes it can be good to highlight the cliché. Maybe pointing out the cliché of what she is saying &quot;Mother that's such a cliché&quot; then ending with &quot;I guess its my turn for clichés then&quot; (that's awful! but you get the point hopefully) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or move the cliché into her speech, and then end with &quot; she sometimes spoke in clichés, but her intentions were good, and maybe we do speak in different languages...&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T16:05:07.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18082" CreationDate="2015-07-08T16:41:16.600" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;See if you can add a twist. One time Harlan Ellison wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She looked like a million bucks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realizing what a horrible cliche that was, he changed it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She looked like a million bucks, tax free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a lame example (that twists the cliche by adding another one):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It sometimes felt as if we spoke different languages. British English and American English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA:&lt;/strong&gt; This idea is useful sometimes. Lauren Ipsum's idea is useful all the time. Y'all should go upvote that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T06:25:36.517" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T06:25:36.517" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18082" CreationDate="2015-07-08T17:37:15.757" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this all depends on how &lt;em&gt;common&lt;/em&gt; the metaphor is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some metaphors are so common that speakers don't recognize them as metaphors any longer, and replacing them is unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very common metaphor is when you say that someone &lt;code&gt;breaches a subject&lt;/code&gt;, meaning that this person gathers all their courage and addresses what everyone has been avoiding to talk about. This metaphor has become a standing phrase, and avoiding it would lead to ridiculously cumbersome paraphrasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other metaphors are so rare that readers find them novel and poetic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are talking about here is the middle ground, those metaphors that everyone knows but that have not yet (or will never) become irreplacable standard expressions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, wether or not your example actually falls in this middle category of cheap clichés.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the phrase may be of middle commonality, the &lt;em&gt;idea&lt;/em&gt; of two groups of people speaking different languages, comming from different planets or belonging to different species, is so common and widespread as to be almost irreplacable by any other view. Men and women, teens and their parents, workers and academics, foreigners and natives – almost all conflicts between members of clearly recognizable groups have been experienced and described in these or similar terms, because &lt;strong&gt;the inablity to understand the other person is a common human experience&lt;/strong&gt; (and a fact that cannot be overcome, in my opinion), and because we seem to be unable to perceive the individuality of these misunderstandings and the persons involved in them but invariable see them as representatives of their respective categories. That is, even if the conflict between this one son and his father is very much unique, and the problem is not that they don't understand each other, we see a son and a father and that they live in different worlds. Their opposition appears natural and God-given to us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And because this is such a universal perspective, any of the common metaphors expressing it are not cliché at all, but the common and normal and unremarkable descriptions of a basic &quot;truth&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you hadn't pointed that metaphor out to me, I wouldn't have noticed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T17:37:15.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18082" CreationDate="2015-07-08T17:50:20.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creating original similes and metaphors is incredibly difficult. When teaching students I find that similes are easier than metaphors. It is possible to write similes and then convert them to metaphors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to write similes is to think of an object. Think of a characteristic it has in common with your original object and then try to write a simile. For example, if the original object is an apple and the object you want to compare it with is a CD you might want to focus on the way it shines. The result: The apple was so shiny it reflected the light like a CD in the sunshine. (I just made this up as I was writing, but the principle holds.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T17:50:20.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18070" CreationDate="2015-07-08T18:28:06.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who also gets frustrated at the layers of complexity that are&#xA;inherent in modern packages and often falls back to notepad as a means of just getting down to a basic editor I did particular enjoy the thought of doing any sort of creative writing in vim. (that would be impressively hardcore!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I've particularly enjoyed this question (I should probably upvote it for that) it occurred to me that maybe a good editor for doing this stuff in would be &lt;a href=&quot;https://atom.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;atom&lt;/a&gt; A text editor created by the creator of github. as stated on their blurb page... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Atom is a text editor that's modern, approachable, yet hackable to the core—a tool you can customize to do anything but also use productively without ever touching a config file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core idea of atom is that it is a desktop editor based on web technologies. So it is all built as HTML / CSS with themes and packages that are (apparently!) easy to build, share, transfer. It also runs on Linux, Windows and Mac. You could actually end up with a piece of software that stored its data on github (etc) and had an identical look and feel no matter what OS you were on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually think it could be made into a fully fledged piece of creative writing software, that would have the power to give any of the mainstream pieces of software a decent challenge. (so if anyone wants to start an open source project, maybe we could get together...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm actually writing this in it now, and it is surprisingly nice to compose in. (or decompose, depending on your mood) In the time I've written this message, I think I may have found my new editor - for the time being anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its worth a look. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T18:28:06.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18082" CreationDate="2015-07-08T20:45:51.620" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a poetry teacher who talked about &quot;tired language,&quot; referring to clichés like this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take your original metaphor apart and break it down to the real, concrete, non-representative ideas. Are Eri and Mom so far apart that not one single thought is shared between them? Are they speaking as though they are watching two different TV shows, or experienced two different days at work? Are they looking at a house from in the sun and in the shade? Is the dress white and gold or blue and black? and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get to the genuine thought, you can construct a new phrase or metaphor to express it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T20:45:51.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18079" CreationDate="2015-07-08T20:48:05.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In old fairy tales, the protagonists were sometimes referred to this way: the king, the princess, the miller's son. But there was only one of each, so it was okay to leave them lowercase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there might be the slightest confusion about &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; grocer, officer, etc. is being discussed, you should capitalize them. If there is only ever one grocer in the story, you're probably okay to leave it lowercase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T20:48:05.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18082" CreationDate="2015-07-08T23:14:20.243" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I struggle with this as well and have two approaches the help get out of the rut of tired language:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take the advice the Lauren Ipsum discussed earlier. It works very well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cut out tired language, describe what's happening without flair and without requirement for catchy phrasing, and let the strength of the story telling come from the directness of your narrative. Solid narrative voices almost necessarily have a unique perspective that draw people in and therefore could be more powerful for the reader than the original tired language.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it doesn't feel right, cut it out or rewrite it. It's your voice that your audience wants to read anyway, not a collection of rehashed phrases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13997" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T23:14:20.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18093" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-09T01:25:25.397" Score="2" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does Game of Thrones get any unpleasant when a whole bunch of characters die every season, for example? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving hooking elements aside, at what point does exploration of uncomfortable aspects from the reader within the story (yes), beloved characters suffering and dying, and unthinkable plots make the reader just put something like that aside?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14437" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T13:28:24.830" Title="At what point disappointment and frustration within the story makes the reader abandon it?" Tags="|plot|characters|planning|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18095" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-09T03:18:08.017" Score="1" ViewCount="1408" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is how it starts.... Is it grammatically correct for MLA? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Religion&quot; (I'm sure you've all heard of this before). Religion has.....&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14439" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T10:03:00.737" Title="Starting my essay with one word (MLA)" Tags="|mla|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-07-09T10:41:21.277" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18095" CreationDate="2015-07-09T04:33:30.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is grammatically correct for anything. Is &lt;code&gt;&quot;Religion&quot;&lt;/code&gt; the title, and &lt;code&gt;(I'm sure you've all heard of this before).&lt;/code&gt; a subtitle? If so, I think it's a weird subtitle, and it's weird to put your subtitle in parentheses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the body of your essay, then you have the serious problem that &lt;code&gt;&quot;Religion&quot; (I'm sure you've all heard of this before).&lt;/code&gt; is not a sentence. &lt;code&gt;I'm sure you've all heard of this before.&lt;/code&gt; is, but you can't have your sentence in parentheses unless you put its punctuation there too, and in that case what is &lt;code&gt;&quot;Religion&quot;&lt;/code&gt; doing here at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you begin by telling me that I've already heard everything you have to say, I'm not going to keep reading. Why not just begin differently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14374" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T04:33:30.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18093" CreationDate="2015-07-09T06:50:39.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When there's no one likeable left alive. Or if there is anyone, you just know they're either faking it or doomed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TV Tropes calls it &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarknessInducedAudienceApathy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I lasted until somewhere in the third &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt; book. Or maybe it was only the second, I can't remember. Then I put the book down because I didn't want to read an account of a rape and murder at that moment, and somehow never got round to picking the book up again. That said, the rest of my family continually urge me to reconsider. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps George R.R. Martin himself is suffering from the same malady!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T06:50:39.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18093" CreationDate="2015-07-09T08:52:13.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess it really depends on the readers. There's a lot of fuss about GRR Martin, and if he does have a tendency to kill off characters unexpectandly, there are less murders in the books than in the series. And there are some author more prone to characters killing, as can be seen in many internet memes. Nevertheless, IMHO, the key isn't the death toll, but the explanation for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you kill your characters by building some pressure, letting some previous signs, or with a plot logic and in-world logic, than a lot of people will go on. If you kill your characters for no reason, by lightning in a middle of a Sunny afternoon, when walking around: people might not understand. If it appears logic, then no problem. If it doesn't then it will bother people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, back to GRRM. Note that he is well read. He does kill a few people, but there are mostly two death that are of importance, namely&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Eddard_Stark&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ned&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Robb_Stark&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Robb Stark&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and those are made for a plot reason&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; To destabilise the readers by removing any (main) hero. The honest-to-God good willing hero, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or as he puts &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/game-thrones-george-rr-martin-1930724&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;himself&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; &quot;I killed Ned because everybody thinks he’s the hero and that, sure, he’s going to get into trouble, but then he’ll somehow get out of it,&quot; said Martin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; &quot;The next predictable thing is to think his eldest son is going to rise up and avenge his father. And everybody is going to expect that. So immediately [killing Robb] became the next thing I had to do.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on the top of that, it is realistic in the given world, and has some logic behind it, like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; folly and vengeance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, gratuitous things are more a problem. I had problems to start the series, as it left most of non-violent, non-sexual content out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At what point does it bother readers? Well if you do kill one important character in the middle, you will loose some readers. This is inevitable. The more the reasons for it are clear, the less you loose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you might consider the &quot;trauma&quot; of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerith_Gainsborough&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aeris' death&lt;/a&gt; (in Final Fantasy) to see that one important character is often enough to mark the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it really depends on who you are writing for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13879" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T08:52:13.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18095" CreationDate="2015-07-09T09:55:44.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Religion. I'm sure you've all heard of this before. Religion has...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Religion – I'm sure you've all heard of this before –[,] Religion has...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Religion, I'm sure you've all heard of this before, [religion] has...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that is, &lt;strong&gt;enclose the inserted sentence in the same punctuation before and after it&lt;/strong&gt;. Which punctuation you use – comma, full stop or dash – does not matter grammatically, but will depend on the intensity of the break you want to make and your writing style. All three of my examples are grammatically correct. Punctuation and words in square brackets are optional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not use a parenthesis, because it does not work well for inserting a sentence between two repetitions of the same word. This would work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Religion (I'm sure you've all heard of this before) has...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;although it is not common to use a parenthesis in this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I left out the quotation marks, because I do not understand what their significance is in your example. Add them as you need them, but maybe like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Religion,&quot; I'm sure you've all heard this before, &quot;religion has...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-07-09T10:03:00.737" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T10:03:00.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18082" CreationDate="2015-07-09T11:52:39.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alexander:&#xA;I think you don't like the phrase because it doesn't really fit the situation.  Your two characters aren't having a problem understanding each other, which is what the mental image of two people speaking different languages conjures; their problem is a stubborn unwillingness to cede to the other opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I draw from my personal experience with my father when I offer you this version:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;I sometimes feel we're stuck in an endless debate, with no arbiter to declare a winner.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14448" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T11:52:39.717" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7741" CreationDate="2015-07-09T11:58:50.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use sequence diagrams to map non-fiction (design) stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update after comment @what:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very simple example of a sequence diagram is:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cKXxf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;example&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps I want to write a story about me and my mapmaking obsession. Then I would start like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/l54qr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the top row are the story's participants (humans, object, places, moments in time etcetera). The arrows visualize the activities between the participants. You read the sequence diagram top-down following the arrows in sequence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14449" LastEditorDisplayName="user14449" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T14:19:52.637" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T14:19:52.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18082" CreationDate="2015-07-09T12:27:39.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you use a canned phrase or a well-known simile, such as &quot;like speaking different languages&quot;, then you're evoking for a reader a situation that they are familiar with, and appealing to their own understanding of such situations that they've described (or seen described) in those terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not always a bad thing, but it's also not putting any novel ideas in the mouth of your narrator. In effect it's routine presentation of information about the scene and his reaction to it. If that's what you want to do, then do it, but if it's not what you want to do then do something different. Don't try to do the same routine thing in unexpected language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tweaking the known phrase by substituting &quot;dialect&quot; for &quot;language&quot; does nothing for you. At best the reader doesn't notice, at worst they wonder why you didn't just say the usual thing. Since there's no good reason, it's just less of an exaggeration if taken literally, they conclude that you're stretching your vocabulary to no purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing the metaphor allows your narrator to express a different, and less familiar, &lt;em&gt;thought&lt;/em&gt;. OK, so shouting from different shores isn't completely original either, but if what you want is to present a different perspective on a well-known situation (in this case one of failure to communicate and by extension failure to connect) then there's no shortcut to it, you have to actually come up with a fresh thought on the subject!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just want to communicate the facts on the ground, but you feel that the usual idiom is clichéed, then go &lt;em&gt;more literal&lt;/em&gt; rather than reaching for a different metaphor: &quot;It felt as if she could never understand me&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8477" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T12:27:39.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18093" CreationDate="2015-07-09T13:28:24.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When hope that the protagonist(s) will win is snuffed out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came very close to this with &lt;em&gt;Person of Interest&lt;/em&gt; in the middle of the most recent season. There are a number of Good Folks and several groups of Bad Folks. About mid-season the Bad Folks had racked up so many successes and the Good Folks were getting boxed into such a corner that I was struggling to see how the writers were going get the Good Folks past the obstacles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story, particularly a long-running serialized TV show, doesn't have to have a happy ending for every episode, or even every season, but the audience needs to have &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; hope that the protagonist(s) for whom we are rooting will have some measure of success at the end. If every protagonist is killed off or removed from play by the antagonist, what the hell are we still watching for? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately the Good Folks were able to score some wins on the Bad Folks, and while they didn't defeat the Bad Folks overall, they are in a better place than they were mid-season. That's all I ask for: some hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones,&lt;/em&gt; it depends on whether you hope that any of the surviving characters will eventually defeat their adversaries, or at least will live long enough to team up against the White Walkers and the wights. Separately, if there are so many rapes and humiliations that you give up hope that the women will ever have agency in their own lives or will ever defeat their personal nemeses, that might be enough to tip the scales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T13:28:24.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7741" CreationDate="2015-07-09T13:32:36.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems like an odd question to me. Instead of asking how you can use graphs and flowcharts, ask yourself what tools you need to organize your story. If a flowchart would help, then fine. But maybe what you actually want is to write each scene on a notecard and keep them in a stack. You should choose your tools to suit the task you have and the style of doing it that suits you best, not the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14374" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T13:32:36.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18108" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18109" CreationDate="2015-07-09T17:25:54.593" Score="20" ViewCount="5994" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I have inspiration for a story. In random pieces of spare time I daydream more and more details until I am satisfied with the concept and then I don't take it any farther. In my head, the story is finished and I am satisfied. If I have the urge to write it down and attempt to share it with others, the thing that stops me is that I do not know if anybody would actually read it. I like it, but that doesn't mean others would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, the stories I imagine do not have a &quot;message&quot; or &quot;explore new possibilities&quot; or attempt to &quot;answer important questions&quot; like the meaning of life - they are often fantasy, just exploring a character's path through life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since writing is not my profession, I do not &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to write, and I find myself thinking that the world doesn't need another amateur story lying around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I decide whether a story is actually worth writing out and sharing with others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14433" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T17:51:13.840" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T17:51:13.840" Title="How to decide whether a story is worth writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|planning|" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18108" CreationDate="2015-07-09T18:00:57.537" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most books I loved did not have any overt message. It was mostly by accident, and not the author's design, that I happened to find something that resonated with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a story that feels relevant enough to yourself that you want to invest the time and effort to write it, do so. If you write it well, others will enjoy it, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T18:00:57.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18108" CreationDate="2015-07-09T18:27:59.267" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write out a few and share them. You may be completely wrong about the market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A tale which &quot;explores a character's path through life&quot; but not much else happens is called a &lt;em&gt;character study,&lt;/em&gt; and those are legitimately literature. (And movies sometimes too, c.f. &lt;em&gt;A Room with a View.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T18:27:59.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18108" CreationDate="2015-07-09T18:31:42.267" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are not in it for the money, just make sure you enjoy telling the story. If it is not fun, don't bother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T18:31:42.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18115" CreationDate="2015-07-09T19:24:48.063" Score="1" ViewCount="659" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wasn't entirely sure how to phrase the title, so if a better way to put it occurs to anyone, please feel free to edit it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the situation: the goal of a novel is to get the main character - called for simplicity Steve - to make a stand for what's right. Right before the climax, someone tells him (with their dying breath) to take a stand. Steve then does so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit for clarity:&lt;/strong&gt; Steve does not &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; stand up. I have not included the character development or internal conflict because they are not central to this question. However, they are there. I am aware that simply &lt;em&gt;standing up&lt;/em&gt; would leave the reader feeling unsatisfied, if that is all that happened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am having trouble with the climax. Everything seems to indicate that the climax is the point at which Steve stands - I mean, that's the goal of the whole novel. The problem is that in this case, standing involves fighting back a small army. Normally this wouldn't be a problem. In fact, it would usually make for a good climax. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The problem&lt;/strong&gt; is that there is no longer anything for Steve to lose. The main question the reader has been asking himself throughout the novel is, 'will Steve make a stand?' Once he does, the conflict is resolved, the questions are answered, and it's all over. The act of symbolically standing up &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the climax. (Steve dying isn't a loss. In fact, it is expected. Even if he dies, he still made a stand.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The act of symbolically standing up does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;, however, leave the reader with a very satisfied feeling. I've been building up to this confrontation (the enemy pounding on the door in the background during the death scene), and simply skipping the battle seems like I'm cheating the reader out of what he's been anticipating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Am I wrong in the assumption that the reader will feel cheated? Or will ending the novel with Steve turning epic-ly to face the hordes, resolve in his heart, be satisfying? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T16:54:53.417" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T18:03:14.740" Title="A climax where the goal is instantly achieved - Is it satisfying?" Tags="|plot|readers|climax|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18113" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-07-09T19:28:27.890" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-07-09T19:28:27.890" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T19:28:27.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18114" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-07-09T19:28:27.890" Score="0" Body="Questions about the point at which the conflict is worst. A climax is the final struggle between your protagonist and the forces arrayed against him or her. " OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-07-12T03:56:06.310" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T03:56:06.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18112" CreationDate="2015-07-09T20:15:10.197" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends largely on how you've lead up to it over the course of the novel, not just in the final scene. The reader won't be disappointed about not knowing the outcome of the battle if Steve's decision is sufficiently important to the reader, and sufficiently unsure up to that moment. We have to be seriously worried that he won't do it, and someone (maybe him, maybe the dead person, maybe someone else) has to work hard and sacrifice to get him to the point where he does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sounds most disappointing in what you've described is that &quot;right before the climax, someone tells him (with their dying breath) to take a stand. Steve then does so.&quot; Is that all it took? Why didn't they tell him this before? Doesn't he have to wrestle with himself at all? What finally propels him? (Maybe Steve's great love for this person compelled him to do whatever he could to defend their now-dead body from enemy mutilation. Whatever--you probably have something in mind that's not in your question.) The point is that the reader will be disappointed if the goal is achieved in one conversation. It's not enough for Steve's conversion to be important to the reader--it also has to be hard-won.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14374" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T20:15:10.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18108" CreationDate="2015-07-09T20:21:25.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try it! If you enjoy writing, write. If you don't, stick with what you're doing, because it seems to work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14374" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T20:21:25.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18108" CreationDate="2015-07-09T22:14:30.920" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story does not have to have a profound message that will change the life of everyone who reads it for it to be worth writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many things that can make a story worthwhile. Sure, if you have some truly profound message that you want to relate, that's great. But really, the purpose of most stories is just to be interesting or entertaining. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, many stories that try to convey a life-changing message are total failures, and simply come across as pretentious and heavy-handed. Not that &quot;message stories&quot; AREN'T worth writing, just that they take a great deal of skill to pull off. But a simple, fun story of action, adventure, romance, etc, can be very satisfying to many people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T22:14:30.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-09T22:29:07.217" Score="1" ViewCount="1308" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first milestone in writing a story is to have a complete, start to finish description of the sequence of events and character actions that comprises the story. However, this isn't enough to get started writing, because a scene is more than a story event: a scene is an event and a point of view. Which character are you following during this event? When do you enter scene and exit scene?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have trouble getting from a sequence of events to a sequence of scenes. There are infinitely many possible sequences of scenes to describe a given sequence of events, and I get overwhelmed trying to figure out which ones are better. What goals do I have to keep in mind to figure out what the sequence of scenes should be? In other words, what &quot;rules&quot;, or approximate rules, can I use to decide whether one scene is better than another?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As examples, &quot;enter late, leave early&quot; or &quot;build every scene around a conflict with a resolution&quot; are examples of rules that can be used to help decide how to turn your events into actual scenes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what concrete processes can I use to work it all out? For instance, do you find it better to start with the opening scene and work from there? Make a chart of where the characters are at different points? Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5163" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T01:11:55.873" Title="How do I get from the plot outline to an scene-for-scene summary?" Tags="|outline|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18108" CreationDate="2015-07-10T00:39:19.077" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be honest, until a story passes a certain threshold of completeness I don't think it can be determined if it is worthwhile or not. Pretty much every awesome plot can be summarized in a way that sounds dumb, and every lame plot can be made to sound interesting; so the storyline alone is not enough to decide. In fact, I think that none of the other elements of a story such as characters, dialog and narration alone are enough to determine the potential. It's the tuning of each of them to the right balance that makes it good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good writer can make a silly idea entertaining and a bad writer can turn a genius idea into a slog that only those I-have-to-finish-this-book-because-I-started-it people will ever complete (you know who you are). So I say start all your ideas and really flesh out the story and characters. Once you've gotten into it a ways, you'll know which ones are keepers and which ones are the stinkers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how do you know which one is the best one to spend time fleshing out? Just go with your gut. You probably already have an idea of which one is your favorite. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14466" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T00:39:19.077" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18108" CreationDate="2015-07-10T05:07:57.483" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't remember who; but someone once compared the urge to write with a tumour. I understand that you'd get along just fine without having to put pen to paper. A couple hours of Mendelssohn’s &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwW4oruwyJU&quot;&gt;Violin Concerto&lt;/a&gt; and you won't feel like delving deep into your soul to reach out for that story anymore. A few minutes of TV is always a better idea, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, I can assure you that one day the story will come to haunt you. For those of us who find solace in writing, nothing except sitting down on our typewriter and slogging away those daylight hours gives us peace of mind (or clarity of mind, for some). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if it's the same with you, but when I get an idea for a story, I let it build inside me. &lt;code&gt;daydream more and more details&lt;/code&gt;, as you define it. I let the story and characters possess me to the point of lunacy. Just like a tumour, you see. Until I realise that I have to rid myself of it. And so I write. Not for others, but because I &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't write for others. Write for yourself. Write not for striking a chord with others. Write to quench your own thirst.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14344" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T05:07:57.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18112" CreationDate="2015-07-10T07:05:15.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why should Steve make a stand? His decision must have some kind of effect for him. If it doesn't, he's not living his own life, and his decision will leave him and the reader feel empty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translate your structure to everyday life. John grows up the son of a carpenter. But he is interested in writing and wants to become a writer. There's lots of conflict and back and forth, and finally John's father tells him to man up and decide to become a carpenter. So John makes that decision and becomes a carpenter. Huh? Not very satsifying. Or only satisfying, if John finds that he was mistaken about his aspirations as a writer and you show how his life as a carpenter is a happy life. So there is something &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the climax, that makes the climax satisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of imagine that finally John's best friend tells him to man up and take a stand against his father and become a writer. Is that the end of the tale? No. You'll continue how he falls out with his family, how he suffers from that, but finds happiness as a writer, and how finally, maybe with the success of his first publication, his father comes back to him and tells him that he is proud of him and loves him and was only trying to force a safe job on him, because he believed that John would not be able to make a living as a writer, but is now glad that John did not listen to him, because in his youth he wanted to be a writer as well and did not dare etc. Again the story does not end with the climax. In fact, the climax is far from the end (temporally; the aftermath might be summarized in a short epilogue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Returning to your tale, what is it that Steve is conflicted about? It is certainly not the taking a stand itself, but what he should take a stand about and who against. And there is a reason why he found this so difficult, and an effect that his decision will have. An effect, that Steve was afraid of or desiring. This – what comes after Steve taking a stand – is Steve's goal. (It can be a double goal: a negative goal, something that Steve wants to avoid, e.g. death, and a positive goal, something that Steve wants, e.g. glory, both of which are inseparable. I don't know your story nor characters, so can only guess.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story ends with Steve taking a stand, then you don't tell it to its end, and that is certainly not satisfactory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T07:05:15.257" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18118" CreationDate="2015-07-10T07:22:21.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, all my &quot;planning&quot; is limited to finding the beginning of my story, the situation that triggers all the following events, and then I just follow my characters, observing and noting down what they do. This exploration is what excites me as a writer and my sole motivation to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written one story, where I knew some of the waypoints that my story would pass. But from one waypoint to the other I have explored the terrain in between, without any maps and prescribed routes, never knowing how I would arrive at the next waystation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing exactly what I have to write, makes me want to flee my desk. Just phrasing, that is, just finding the right words to tell what I already know is so boring to me that I cannot endure it. That's one of the difficulties I have when I must write an essay: I know what I want to say, and that was the part that was interesting to me. Putting it into words is no longer thrilling. I can only bring myself to do this, if I do it while I still come up with what I want to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that other writers are different, but my advice (to a person like myself) would be to plot as little as possible and just define the essential plot points – and explore what lies in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plotting will make you &lt;em&gt;think up&lt;/em&gt; a story. It will be constructed, flat, stereotypical. Not plotting but exploring will make your gut tell the tale. And those tales are much more alive and intense than anything your conscious, rational mind can come up with. Because those tales will be filled to the brim with &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; – instead of what you think other expect of a &quot;good&quot; story or what you read about how stories should be constructed and other similar crap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Hemingway plot? No. He rewrote, that is, when he got lost without a map, he went back and tried another path. Until he got to a place he liked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T07:22:21.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18108" CreationDate="2015-07-10T09:27:02.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A writer never writes to please someone. It is something which is done to share experience and imagination. If writing is something that gives you satisfaction, then go for it. Do not hesitate in writing. Write whatever you like and just publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14471" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T17:08:08.093" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T17:08:08.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18048" CreationDate="2015-07-10T09:32:03.110" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your example, the word may soften up the sentence and paragraph, but it remains spoken English, and does give the impression you're not entirely sure of what you're saying. Consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So on this point I'll just stress that (...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On this point I'll just stress that (..)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular case you can afford to simply remove the word; the sentence becomes more affirmative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These words are usually markers of hesitation. They're slightly less noticeable when you speak, but in written form you should try to avoid them, especially if you're trying to make a point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T09:32:03.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17706" CreationDate="2015-07-10T09:42:45.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Circumlocution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Locution that circles around a specific idea with multiple words rather than directly evoking it with fewer and apter words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumlocution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Check the wiki article here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an author, you'll sometimes want to use those either to avoid repetition (some sentences have the tendency to come out more often than you'd like), or specifically to avoid 'getting straight to the point'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, the circumlocution is used for this exactly; the sentence doesn't simply want say someone is trying to do X, but insisting on the fact that the whole process of 'trying' is not as straightfoward as the word alone might imply. It gives you greater detail to the process, and does have a nicer phrasing as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastEditorUserId="14470" LastEditDate="2015-09-26T15:13:15.670" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T15:13:15.670" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18108" CreationDate="2015-07-10T09:59:28.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write it as a short story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really strip it down and make it short and concise leaving only the essential parts and make it light to read. This will give you a fast result, which you can post to a writing community and which will have good chances to get read and reviewed. And if the story premise and everything is really good and attracts good reviews you can flesh it out and rewrite it as a novella or something like a short book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14472" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T09:59:28.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18048" CreationDate="2015-07-10T10:55:16.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I agree with the technical points that Nathaniel and Dale make, in that it does soften the tone of what is said, I don't think it is something that should immediately be avoided. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me that is akin to telling a carpenter to avoid using a chisel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine a carpenter spends a good deal of time learning how to efficiently use a chisel. I'm sure they understand subtle differences in use in ways that we simply wouldn't notice. But we are capable of seeing the result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer we have a rather different set of tools at our disposal. We have nuance, timing and metaphor, to name a few. A good writer understands the difference between 'So, this is my opinion!' and 'This is my opinion?' Both will be equally persuasive when used for the right point towards the right audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer it is your job to get a feel for those words, to understand which is the most appropriate for the piece you're writing. It takes a good deal of time to learn that skill. But personally, that is what I find so fascinating about writing...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T10:55:16.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18128" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-10T12:01:57.113" Score="1" ViewCount="636" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a writer but unfortunately I don't read nearly enough, I'm looking for some suggestions for novels that feature well made or unique segues and transitions between scenes. My closest comparison is with certain movies such as Fight Club (1999) or Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) which fully utilize the medium of film to a create very smooth transition from one scene to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously you can do things in film you can't do in writing, and vice versa, and I'd like to see some prime examples of the same thing in writing so I can learn how it's done. Any recommendations would be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14473" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:25:26.607" Title="Learning to write transitions and segues" Tags="|fiction|novel|scene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-07-12T23:31:15.437" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18128" CreationDate="2015-07-10T12:56:49.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As writers we often make transitions from one scene to the next much more difficult than they should be.  The reader's mind follows changes much more fluidly than we think they do.  I learned this from the great book &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qEWv3K&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Make Your Words Work (Gary Provost) - amazon link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an entire section on Transitions in there and he explains how simple they can be since often you simply end the scene and then in the next scene explain exactly what has happened.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a simple example I'm making up right now:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... Doug jammed his foot into the accelerator and the car's engine&#xA;  roared and the tires screamed as he slid around the corner.  &quot;They'll&#xA;  never take me alive,&quot; he muttered under his breath.  Doug saw a lady&#xA;  up ahead crossing the street and his reflexes forced him to swerve.&#xA;  The car slid wildly and crashed into a telephone pole.  Doug's head&#xA;  smashed into the steering wheel of the '57 Pontiac -- no airbag -- and&#xA;  he felt cold as the darkness closed in. &quot;Can't stop...&quot; he muttered&#xA;  and passed out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doug blinked and looked up.  He saw a policeman yelling at him but&#xA;  still couldn't make out the words.  &quot;...for a long time, you idiot,&quot;&#xA;  the cop said. Doug tried to reach up to his aching head but his hands&#xA;  wouldn't move.  A knife of pain stabbed through his skull and&#xA;  everything went dark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You've had a terrible spine injury.&quot;  Doug could hear a voice&#xA;  speaking but he couldn't tell if he were awake or dreaming. &quot;Can you&#xA;  hear me?&quot; Doug forced his eyes open and tried to see who was talking.&#xA;  &quot;Urghh...,&quot; Doug said.  &quot;Don't try to talk. You're in a lot of&#xA;  trouble.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also written a book with numerous examples from published works.  It's a free download from amazon right now (07/10/2015) for 24 hours, so go and get it:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYkmiE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fiction Writing Gems - amazon link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T15:25:26.607" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:25:26.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18108" CreationDate="2015-07-10T15:05:42.690" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are my three steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The test of time:&lt;/strong&gt; Keep the story in your head for a couple of weeks. Does it come back to you when you're not thinking about it? Is it becoming more and more appealing over time instead of losing its charm? If the answer is yes, move on to the next step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The test of execution&lt;/strong&gt;. Write the story down. Did it work? Did the idea create a story as beautiful as the idea itself? If the answer is yes, proceed...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The test of people:&lt;/strong&gt; Post your story online. Did people like it? Did they use words like impressive, funny, or awesome? If the answer is yes, publish it. Share your amazing story to the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I agree with the rest. You don't need a &quot;message&quot;. A story doesn't need a message to be meaningful. It just has to connect with the reader's heart (and yours as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-07-11T08:19:11.047" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T08:19:11.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18108" CreationDate="2015-07-10T16:22:23.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the other fine answers, consider: Every story you write is practice. No matter what else happens, you can learn from the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you want to get better at writing stories, and you want to practice, a story can be worth writing just for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T16:22:23.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18112" CreationDate="2015-07-10T16:38:23.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, it all comes down to emotional reality, which can have very little to do with the externals of the scene.  When I watch a big Hollywood blockbuster where the lone hero takes on an enormous CGI army with just his trusty sword, it leaves me completely cold, because nothing makes that big army feel emotionally real to me.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, to use one of my favorite examples, the key moment in Nabakov's &lt;em&gt;Lolita&lt;/em&gt; is when the otherwise unrepentant narrator experiences a brief moment of clarity and unselfish remorse.  It doesn't matter that it's entirely internal, or that his awareness of what he has done wrong is so dim and incomplete, the emotional reality of this character as utterly self-indulgent has been so well established that this little breakthrough comes across as a major event.  Similarly, in &lt;em&gt;Remains of the Day&lt;/em&gt;, the story of a missed love affair between an emotionally repressed butler and a housekeeper, the tiniest expressions of affection feel earthshaking, because of the emotional realism of their context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your story, it doesn't matter what the actual obstacles are to Steve, they must feel real and decisive to him, and possess emotional reality for the reader.  His overcoming of those barriers must involve some price with real emotional weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T16:38:23.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18146" CreationDate="2015-07-10T17:07:04.153" Score="1" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm publishing a short book about a trip to Moscow that I made. Is it OK for me to mention the Moscow Metro and specific stations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I've described walking through it in the following way. Might this be considered defamatory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We must go with the flow into the belly of the beast; down a white&#xA;  relatively featureless tunnel like workers marching in an urban&#xA;  dystopia. We see our platform and squash into the train.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We take a spectacularly noisy Metro ride&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;approaches a man in a booth to ask for help but the man turns&#xA;  away. I look at the man and he continues to look away but now looks a&#xA;  bit awkward about doing it but he still does it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B011J47AOE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Moscow-Ian-Warburton-ebook/dp/B011J47AOE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14479" LastEditorUserId="14479" LastEditDate="2015-07-14T15:12:35.300" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T15:12:35.300" Title="Use Moscow Metro in a book" Tags="|copyright|trademark|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18134" CreationDate="2015-07-10T17:16:32.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T17:16:32.383" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18118" CreationDate="2015-07-10T18:05:51.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just get on and write it. If you have got a plot, churn out a first draft, or series of possible scenes. Over-planning just means you don't actually write it. Of course you need an idea about what to write. If you have got a sequence of events get on and write the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T18:05:51.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18108" CreationDate="2015-07-10T20:23:02.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might help to keep a journal with your writing ideas in it. When you have an idea in your head, write down as much as you can about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you would have the ability to go back to your journal and revisit your ideas. If you see something that &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; would like to write more about, go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T20:23:02.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18118" CreationDate="2015-07-10T23:56:58.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So far this has veered into a plotter/pantser debate, with pantsers expressing their disagreement over plotting instead of trying to answer the Q. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Plotting will make you think up a story. It will be constructed, flat, stereotypical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is just bad writing, plotting is not to blame, the writer is. The other side of that coin is pantsers whose story have no head or tail and go nowhere. It is a lot more likely to get utterly lost without plans. &lt;strong&gt;I am always amazed when a pantser is able to finish a coherent story&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that they are only able to do so because some order emerges from the chaos of their numerous drafts. They stumble in the dark till they start to see a light in the end of the miasmatic abyss they plunged themselves in. They self-mutilate, auto-enucleate, and chain themselves to a rock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, given that some major authors are pantsers, I accept this blindly faltering &quot;method&quot;, or more accurately lack of any method, as a valid alternative approach to plotting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                 ---------------------------&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, for you main Q, it depends. My approach is that the events need to be fleshed out. When you have your sequence of events you need to see it like a dream sequence. You need to live your scenes, feel the emotion, and perceive what yours senses are telling you. When you have that you should have your POV character, if you didn’t have one before. The more you advance, the more the POV character will come to life, that in turn will determine the scenes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possible approach is a hierarchical scene construction. Start with major scenes, the beginning, the act turns, the climax-resolution. Then flesh out the secondary plot points scenes. Then minor points, or scenes that are needed to fill in, or give context, to a plot point or character trait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there can be multiple ways showing the events, you need to find the optimal way. The best scenes need to achieve the most objectives in the least amount of space. They do not follow one method but combine many. So mix up things like scene timing, action/reaction, MRU, rising tension, conflict in dialogue, subtext….&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each scene needs to be critical to the overall structure. I also think that the best scenes are original. Integrate all the needed elements, but surprise the readers. Take them in unexpected paths, show them something unanticipated, and dazzle your reader. This is how you avoid a story that is too linear, take some detour, garnish some sub-plots, and embroider some threads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2015-07-21T01:11:55.873" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T01:11:55.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18118" CreationDate="2015-07-11T03:22:58.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to have sparked the age-old plotting or not debate. Personally, I have to plot. I am not able to take an idea and a beginning and just go. Especially since I write crime thrillers, I have to be leaving clues throughout, and, to me, there's just too much rewriting if I don't include those clues first. There are some people that are great pantsers. More power to them. One writing/planning style doesn't work for everyone. You have to find your own process and work with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My process is: first, I get an idea and write it down. Second, expand as much as I can on the idea and sub-plots in a general notes form (not an outline). Next, I notecard - this is my scene by scene outline. On each index card, I write the main point of the scene, any dialogue I want to remember for when I'm writing, the POV character, the time/date, and the location. Finally, I write the darn story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something to remember when you're writing from an outline/scene cards is that you can deviate from this while you're writing. In fact, you most likely will. I haven't had a book yet that I've written exactly as my notecards are laid out. I usually think of some other trouble my characters can run into along the way and roll with it. But I usually go back and fix any notecards that are ahead of where I am to accommodate the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To actually answer your question, each scene &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; contribute something to the story. Don't have any &quot;filler&quot; scenes. Use those to reveal something, even if it's character revelation. There also should be some kind of conflict in each scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I start at the beginning and work my way through to the end (unless I have one scene that is just burning in my head, then I'll write it ahead), because I visualize my books as if they were movies in my head, so I make sure those transitions would feel right and I have to go in order for that. Again, find out what works for you: some people can jump around; I can't. And if you're writing something like a mystery where you have to leave clues, it might be helpful to keep track of what they are, who knows about them, and when they find them on a separate document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck writing your scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T03:22:58.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18134" CreationDate="2015-07-11T07:17:17.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Moscow Metro is public transport so fair game to use in a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For any unfounded negative remarks, in case you are worried about consequences your can use a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_persons_fictitious_disclaimer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;disclaimer&lt;/a&gt; thought that generally only is done for real live persons (that may take actions otherwise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T07:17:17.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18134" CreationDate="2015-07-11T13:00:29.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no problem in using public places in your books, including the Moscow Metro. In fact the Moscow Metro is already the setting of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe_of_Metro_2033&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Metro-series&lt;/a&gt; of novels by russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. No problem here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="72" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T13:00:29.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18134" CreationDate="2015-07-11T18:30:27.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For something to be &quot;defamatory,&quot; it has to be 1) certifiably &quot;untrue&quot; and 2) &quot;highly offensive&quot; to a reasonable person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you said is more of an opinion than a factual statement, you are entitled to your opinion and said nothing that was certifiably untrue. Moreover, what you said would not be &quot;highly offensive&quot; to a reasonable person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T18:30:27.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18108" CreationDate="2015-07-11T20:53:29.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Why do you write?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For fun? In that case every story is worthwhile as explored by most of the other answers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For readers? In that case read on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To improve yourself? In that case of course every story is worthwhile, &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; you need to act as if you are writing for readers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What do you wish to achieve?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, personally I have always classified two different goals a work can typically have (actually three, but won't get into the third goal, as it's just too much of a hassle and not relevant now):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To share a message? Well, obviously you don't, but in that case it's always worthwhile to write the story if the message is important enough to you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To make readers enjoy themselves/experience emotions they wish to experience and can't normally experience? In that case the question does become whether people will read it. Is the story unique and/or good enough that people will be willing to read it? Achieving this isn't even necessarily a question of skill. For example a lot of people write fanfics where the readership is higher than one would expect given the skill level of the authors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, I disagree with the other answers which in my humble opinion sometimes give a slightly simple answer. Often it might not be worthwhile just writing any story you think of. If you want to become good enough to reach readers it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; necessary to think about whether your story is unique and/or good enough. And yes, that might mean disregarding a lot of stories and changing others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8070" LastEditorUserId="8070" LastEditDate="2015-07-24T00:29:09.240" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T00:29:09.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18149" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-11T21:41:12.550" Score="1" ViewCount="736" Body="&lt;p&gt;So when I'm trying to write backstories for all of my main chars and side chars I can get the general idea on how I want them to act what they have been through ETC. But when I try to write about my main hero/protagonist I draw a blank other then the main power he has... &#xA;So should I just not make this hero/protagonist the main person the story follows or try to think harder? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14488" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:24:40.107" Title="Main character trouble" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18149" CreationDate="2015-07-11T22:07:43.820" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some things you might think about, related to the character's power:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did the character come to have the power?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did the character discover having the power?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did the character learn to control the power?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What mistakes did the character make while learning to use the power? Who was hurt by those mistakes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does the character not yet know about the power?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who else has the power?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who helped the character learn about the power and how to use it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What people mattered most to the character prior to this story?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did people react to the character having or using the power?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What conflicts arose from the character's use of the power?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does the character want in life?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does having the power help with that? How does it hinder?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finish this sentence about the character's attitude: This character is the kind of person who goes through life ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does having the power affect that attitude?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who benefits from the way the character uses the power?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is hurt by the way the character uses the power?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T22:07:43.820" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18149" CreationDate="2015-07-11T23:18:33.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not try to think harder.  It will just hurt.  :)  Instead, think different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consider the Challenge of Describing a Real Person&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever tried to think about a  real person and tried to describe her without thinking about what the person does? Oh, sure you can probably describe what the person looks like but then after that, what happens?  Without explaining what the person does you probably have nothing more to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Root Problem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the difficulty you are coming up against with writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are attempting to explain a character who is not doing anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine describing any real person that way.  It is almost impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most Writing Difficulties Stem From One Thing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is that one thing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A lack of knowing the specifics that you want to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many writers try to tell the story of the story that they want to tell, but have difficulty when they attempt to simply write the story. (Yes, that was meant to be a somewhat circular sentence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does this difficulty occur?&#xA;Most often it occurs because the writer forgets :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main reason to write a story is to show a character in action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show Your Character In Action (Doing Something)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Real Life, when we see a person we cannot hear his thoughts (thank goodness) and &lt;em&gt;so we determine who the person is by what he does.&lt;/em&gt;  We interpret the person's actions and decide who the person is.  Yes, this leads to false impressions and problems, but it is real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors often forget this and attempt to tell a bunch of backstory which the reader couldn't ever know and wouldn't ever know and doesn't really care about.&#xA;Instead, the reader wants to see your character do something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An Exercise Which Will Work If You Really Do It&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, consider your character.  It sounds as if the character has some type of super power.  How about writing an actual scene where the super power is not explained at all, but instead shown.  Your readers are smart enough to read so when they see her leaping a building in a single bound they will understand that she has a super jumping power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Add Heaps of Conflict&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, just showing your character leaping a building won't reveal much about her character so you'll need some kind of conflict to do that.  Decide ahead of time what the conflict will be and write.  If the conflict is only one where super strength is required then it will feel like a melodramatic story.  However, if you add human emotion pushed up against a physical problem, such as the super hero trying to keep an evil robot from killing an office full of people which also has the super hero's love interest, then you'll have something far more going on.  But, &lt;strong&gt;the most important thing is&lt;/strong&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Show a scene full of action going on and don't just have characters&#xA;  sitting around trying to be described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck and if you liked this I have a lot more in my book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYkmiE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fiction Writing Gems - amazon link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T15:24:40.107" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:24:40.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14755" CreationDate="2015-07-12T02:48:31.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I couldn't think of a book, but here is a pretty good web-page: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/PointsofViewinFiction.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/PointsofViewinFiction.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not the most experienced of writers, of course, but from my limited understanding I would say that POVs are a rather simple concept to grasp. The hard part is choosing which one you prefer to use in your writing style or in your current story. In my opinion, I would say that the best way to become familiar with the different points of view when used in the field is to actually READ a book that uses the POV you want to understand better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14487" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T02:48:31.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12942" CreationDate="2015-07-12T02:57:24.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well if you don't have *nix, and you're not familiar with programming, then there is one way to do it, though it might be a little slow. Word does provide a find/replace where you can quickly just replace all words in a document/selection with a word you give it. It's quick to replace, the slow part is that if you are trying to replace a whole variety of words it may take a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you don't mind learning to program, this is a something you could learn to code in probably a few hours if you're committed. Perhaps Java would suit your needs? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tutorialspoint.com/java/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tutorialspoint.com/java/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14487" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T02:57:24.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16746" CreationDate="2015-07-12T03:27:32.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, in in the International Baccalaureate Program's english classes, they tend to teach that when analysing the audience of a text - ('text' is synonymous to story in this case) - you have to ask a few questions to help one determine the audience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the purpose/moral of the story? (If any)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is the author? (Anywhere from where they are from to what they are known for writing if they are known for writing something)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the story's contexts (When/Where/How/etc was it written?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's take Shakespeare's Macbeth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are many morals, but one is that power can corrupt people. Ultimately the purpose of the play as to why it was written was solely for entertainment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shakespeare was an English writer during the late renaissance era. He is known for writing plays (which were the &quot;hip&quot; and &quot;fun&quot; thing of that time). Most of his other stories were written for entertainment as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The story was written to be performed. It is about early Scottish kings, and at the time Shakespeare wrote the play, King James was ruling England - a note to be made. It was written in what was considered to be vernacular at the time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The audience was mainly just common everyday people of his time. The play was written elegantly in English, so it is obvious that when I say everyday people, it means the English common-folk. This can be supported by the fact that the play was written in common vernacular. The story itself supported the notion that the king is god's representative on earth, and so to overthrow him would bring about evil and tragedy upon the kingdom. In addition, the story remade some of King James' ancestors - as well as King James himself - to be thought of as &quot;the chosen ones&quot; - sort of. With that in mind, it can be said that Shakespeare was trying to please King James by making his play a propoganda that would be favorable to him, perhaps he even intended King James to be his audience....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could rant on for this example, but I think you get the point. To understand the audience of a story, you have to analyze all features of both the story and the author. - I'm not sure if that was exactly what you were asking, but there's my input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14487" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T03:27:32.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18157" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-12T15:33:33.177" Score="3" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I published my book &quot;New Testament Commentary by a Mathematician&quot; with Lulu and started an AdWords ad campaign for this book. There were zero sales and I decided to put the ebook online for free download and to stop trying to sell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However my other book &quot;End of Gospel&quot; is now in preparation with a subsidy publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several &quot;agressive&quot; mentiones of &quot;End of Gospel&quot; in &quot;New Testament Commentary by a Mathematician&quot;, so I hope that readers of my free ebook will read the other book also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: Right now I just have put &quot;New Testament Commentary by a Mathematician&quot; online. Should I submit/advertise it now or should I wait when &quot;End of Gospel&quot; is published before advertising my free ebook which refers to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T17:59:14.057" Title="When to start submission campaign for a free ebook referencing another book?" Tags="|marketing|ebook|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18158" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18165" CreationDate="2015-07-13T00:32:25.800" Score="14" ViewCount="384905" Body="&lt;p&gt;Previously, I had no difficulty in showing a scene like that, and as for me, to show a crying scene I'd write something like &quot;then a teardrop rolled by her cheek&quot;. However, I had read an article from a respected writer (I can't remember who) saying how sentimentalism is bad for a story, and used as an example a crying scene, and said that writing something like &quot;then a teardrop rolled by her cheek&quot; is too sentimental, however, this writer didn't tell how it should be written without sentimentalism, which is hard, because the act of crying is itself something sentimental, making it not sentimental I would be telling, not showing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's what I want to know: how to show (not tell) a crying or sad scene without using sentimentalism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-03-05T06:27:10.643" LastActivityDate="2020-03-23T10:24:50.053" Title="How to show a crying/sad scene without using sentimentalism?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18160" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-13T01:40:56.160" Score="2" ViewCount="322" Body="&lt;p&gt;My university recommends &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Freewriting&lt;/a&gt; to all its postgraduate students as a daily exercises to help overcome writer's block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to make terrible typos, possibly related to my &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;disgraphia&lt;/a&gt;. missing keys, all keys offset by one position, just plain being bad at spelling etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally when writing I will fix a lot of these instinctively -- without  even thinking about it I will hit back space a few times and fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I be doing that when freewriting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I just leave a space and write on?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I fully disable the backspace, delete and arrow keys to force myself out of the habit?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3827" LastActivityDate="2019-04-07T03:58:04.670" Title="When using freewriting, should I avoid correcting typos?" Tags="|academic-writing|writers-block|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18160" CreationDate="2015-07-13T01:50:41.247" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I can't concentrate if I leave bad spelling behind me. the solution to that for freewriting is to either go back and fix it (which isn't according to the 'rules' of freewriting) or write about the fact that you can't go back and fix what you've written until something else comes to mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept of freewriting is to limber your mind up, if having bad spelling produces a mental block for you, and you can quickly correct them, then it would be more productive for you to go back and fix what bothers you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, do what works for you! There's no point blindly following other people's ideas of how you should write. Do what works for you, write what you want to write...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T01:50:41.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18108" CreationDate="2015-07-13T02:56:01.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, good stories tend to keep pestering you until you put it down in words. Bad stories seem blessed with inertia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I read a great book by Nanci Atwell about how to teach writing to students. She used the rule of &quot;So What?&quot; for students. Why is this story important or worth reading? New writers tend to write about things without having a clear idea about why this story is important enough to write. Obviously, people may disagree about what's important and what's not, but the writer should have a good idea about why it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal remarks. I'm a midcareer writer and I have a great sense of what stories are worth the time to write (your writing time is always limited, and you don't want to waste this precious resource on stories which ultimately don't matter). On the other hand, I've begun certain stories without really being sure if the story would work. Sometimes I got majorly stuck and spent a lot of brain cells trying to make it work.  Several  of those iffy stories became my most successful -- if only because I was trying things outside my comfort zone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I often think of good premises for stories and characters, but often it's not enough. A good writer recognizes the difference between something which is a great premise  (what if all teachers were 20 feet tall?) and a premise which can actually be fleshed into a plot and development of character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is value in doing a writing exercise, but mostly I try avoid doing gimmicky-like things to maximize my time on stories which really matter to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="7968" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T03:32:56.903" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T03:32:56.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18158" CreationDate="2015-07-13T03:30:23.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on whether it's the protagonist or non-protagonist is crying. I wouldn't think it's effective to have the protagonist crying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't done a lot of crying scene, but the ones I have done I have underplayed so much in order to emphasize the inner pain. Crying works best when the protagonist is observing someone else cry. In my opinion the sad or tragic dimension can be revealed by attitude, not by explicitly saying that a character is crying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about it, every story has its own dose of sadness. You don't need crying to call attention to that fact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the crying is interrupting a dialogue, I would make the dialogue really short, have the cry interrupt things, and then switch to third person limited omniscient to get reactions. The scene with the crying needs to be short and use as little dialogue as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did one particularly effective crying scene. Boyfriend and girlfriend have a serious fight; the girlfriend is incredibly angry, but then they step into a bar with a talented blues player singing. I describe the girl's feeling of isolation during the show and how the boyfriend can see the pain on her face and feels helpless about it.  I never say that she is crying, but the reader must surely realize it.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, a lot of the pitfalls for crying scenes apply to sex scenes. You don't need to show the outbursts. You just need to present the sequence of events and if you do it right, the readers will already be in the same emotional state and you won't need to say much about crying because the reader will already feel it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Offtopic: I'm trying to think about crying scenes which are effective. I'm thinking of the scene in My Antonia where Antonia's father dies a terrible death, and young Antonia is certain to be heartbroken. Willa Cather devotes an entire chapter to telling how the news spread and how funeral arrangements needed to be made. In a way Willa Cather was preparing the reader emotionally for the encounter with Antonia and her distraught family.  In the next chapter &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/files/242/242-h/242-h.htm#link2H_4_0018&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gutenberg.org/files/242/242-h/242-h.htm#link2H_4_0018&lt;/a&gt; Chapter 16 (which just breaks my heart -- and I encourage you to read it because it's short), we have  the protagonist meet Antonia for the first time since the father's death.  Willa Cather mentions crying in just a single sentence! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When grandmother and I went into the Shimerdas' house, we found the womenfolk alone; Ambrosch and Marek were at the barn. Mrs. Shimerda sat crouching by the stove, Antonia was washing dishes. When she saw me, she ran out of her dark corner and threw her arms around me. 'Oh, Jimmy,' she sobbed, 'what you tink for my lovely papa!' It seemed to me that I could feel her heart breaking as she clung to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T03:30:23.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18158" CreationDate="2015-07-13T04:43:55.377" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with sentimentalism is not that it's sentimental. But that it often results in cliche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a sample of non-cliched sentimentalism:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Once that first tear broke free, the rest followed in an unbroken&#xA;  stream. Naoko bent forward where she sat on the floor and pressing her&#xA;  palms to the mat, she began to cry with the force of a person vomiting&#xA;  on all fours.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Wood_(novel)&quot;&gt;Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see there are tears in this passage, but the part that says &quot;she began to cry with the force of a person vomiting on all fours&quot; (not sure about you, but I've never seen crying being described like this before) removes the cliche and instead of sentimentalism, we have a very strong image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, sentimentalism isn't bad. In fact, the main reason we read stories is to feel sentimental, to let our feelings take over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is another example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9t_1sWBywU&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9t_1sWBywU&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I was going to explain what Final Fantasy is but then I saw your profile photo.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a scene from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_Core:_Final_Fantasy_VII&quot;&gt;FFVII: Crisis Core.&lt;/a&gt; Cloud's friend Zack dies and gives him his sword. It's sentimental. And cliched. The part that removes the cliche is Cloud's scream. It's not your typical &quot;Noooooo!&quot; or &quot;Whyyy?!&quot;. He screams like he's being ripped off or murdered (again, this is the first time I see something like this). And that, in my opinion, is what makes it a good scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T09:59:11.103" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T09:59:11.103" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-13T05:20:26.120" Score="0" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;I already wrote the girl's (Ali) chapter and I'm very pleased with it as I've been trying a lot of different things for about two years now and when I start the boy's (Gunner) chapter I can't figure out how to make it interesting. It's a love story, but they haven't met yet. Ali has just gotten into a terrible car accident and her brother drops everything to get her at the hospital when he finds out. Gunner is her brother's best friend, and he knows of Ali but hasn't met her yet because they're in college while she just finished high school and her brother is over-protective of her and doesn't want any of his friends around her. I want Gunner's chapter to start when Matt rushes out to get Ali, but Matt doesn't explain where he's going or why he's so worried, but the reader will know because Ali's chapter comes first. Is there any advice anyone can give me on how to start this? Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14503" LastEditorUserId="13990" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T18:56:30.217" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T18:56:30.217" Title="Beginning to write a novel?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-07-13T11:32:08.983" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18166" CreationDate="2015-07-13T05:43:23.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you don't find the boy's perspective interesting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How did you approach writing the girl's chapter? Approach the boy's chapter the same. There must be something to interest you. If there isn't, maybe it is better if you write the whole book from the girl's perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T05:43:23.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18166" CreationDate="2015-07-13T05:50:40.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give Gunner a problem to deal with. Let him try to solve it. But arrange for him to fail, and for things to get worse instead of better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's called a try/fail cycle. Try/fail cycles are standard elements of much fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T05:50:40.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18158" CreationDate="2015-07-13T06:55:06.883" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The probem with a cliché is not what happens but how you describe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People cry. Even protagonists cry. And tears do roll down people's cheeks when they cry. This is not a cliché, it is a fact, and it is not rare either but a frequent occurence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice that tells you not to write about what happens frequently in real ife is bad advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cliché happens when you use an &lt;em&gt;image&lt;/em&gt; to describe something that has been used so often to describe this that we are tired of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to do, to avoid cliché, is not find uncommon events to describe, but uncommon descriptions to common events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at those aspects of crying that have not been described before. For example, instead of the tear, describe the trace it leaves on the skin: like the trace of a slug on a leaf, or like rain on a dusty pane, etc. (Use an image that tells us more about the character or situation.) Or describe how the person seeing this feels about this or what they think: e.g. how they are surprised that while they are sad they still enjoy the feeling of the tears running down their cheeks and the taste of salt on their lips. Be creative with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T06:55:06.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18160" CreationDate="2015-07-13T10:18:39.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider changing the medium! If you put pen to paper, literally, you eliminate the physical problems keyboarding presents and you should be free to freewrite to your heart's content. As an occupational therapist with an interest in this area, I would be most interested to learn how this approach works for you! (I'm also theorizing on the response if you had to turn your paper-based &quot;homework&quot; in! What was the last decade in which a grad student turned in a paper paper?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14505" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T10:18:39.557" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18160" CreationDate="2015-07-13T10:48:11.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could make an audio recording instead of writing it down. If you have a smart phone you could use that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, plug a microphone into your computer and use speech recognition software. Once you are sure it is working turn off the screen or put a piece of paper in front on it so that you can't be distracted by what you have already done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T10:48:11.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-13T11:02:05.423" Score="4" ViewCount="292" Body="&lt;p&gt;In replying to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/18160/when-using-freewriting-should-i-avoid-correcting-typos&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question I thought this would make a good question... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This entire site is devoted to giving people advice on their writing, there are a near infinite number of books and magazines that intend to do the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I have an approach to writing that seems to go against a lot of the perceived wisdom (I am happy to concede this could be why I've never published anything) But I enjoy the writing and at some point I'll likely chase myself down the publishing route. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for someone sitting at home scribbling / bashing out their first novel, having spent an age digesting pages of advice on how best to write. How much should they pay attention to what they've read. How could they determine when to take heed and when to think they should do something differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do they know what to listen to and what to ignore?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-08-27T00:55:15.953" Title="How much heed should we pay to writing advice" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18172" CreationDate="2015-07-13T11:02:05.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only way you can really know what will work for you is by a process of trial and error. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the best approach is to start off by listening to all advice, but be willing to abandon or change whatever doesn't feel like it is working for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does take a huge amount of courage and confidence to say 'I've read all of this advice on this aspect, and it is wrong' but sometimes when it comes to how you should personally approach writing, the only good advice is what works for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T11:02:05.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18174" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-13T11:13:43.220" Score="7" ViewCount="1089" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a dialogue for characters, say two or more who are speaking back and forth do you have to put who is speaking on every time you switch characters? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it needed to put their name before they speak? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it easier to read that way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14416" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T13:00:19.067" Title="When Dialogue is used for more than one character?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18172" CreationDate="2015-07-13T12:03:34.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like technical advice, which is odd considering I enjoy poetry and poetry is something which often as not transcends technical points of style concerning correct grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's akin to a bit of wisdom musicians seem to naturally favor in that they practice scales, chords; practice rhythms and playing specific notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advice is fine. Advice, however, is passive. What's the old adage ...? Oh yes: Writers write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14494" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-07-14T02:08:11.020" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T02:08:11.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18174" CreationDate="2015-07-13T12:59:59.693" Score="22" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You really don't have to place the character's name first,&quot; Larry&#xA;  said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John scratched his head.  &quot;You mean the reader can probably understand&#xA;  who is saying what without knocking them over the head with it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sure they can.  I mean the writer isn't even telling you who is&#xA;  speaking now and you know who it is.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Right,&quot; John said.  &quot;Each time a different character speaks, the&#xA;  dialogue gets its own paragraph break too, which indicates to the&#xA;  reader that someone else is speaking.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Just make sure if you have more than two people in the scene or&#xA;  interjecting dialogue that you give them a tag so the reader doesn't&#xA;  get confused.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You're a master, Larry.  I would've been lost without your guidance.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Larry slapped him on the back.  &quot;No problem.  Now, about my fee.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T12:59:59.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18174" CreationDate="2015-07-13T13:00:19.067" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  All that is required is that the reader know who is speaking.  The conventions of dialogue do a good job of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob continued, &amp;quot;blah blah blah.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But wait&amp;quot;, Sue asked, &amp;quot;what about blah blah blah?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Blah!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Blah?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He growled, &amp;quot;no, blah!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each change of speaker gets a new paragraph.  If there are only two, you can follow it that way, especially if they're saying very different things (so the quote alone is a hint).  Every now and then it helps to drop in an &amp;quot;anchoring&amp;quot; reference, but it needn't be a name.  Pronouns, references to actions that only one of them could do, and other descriptors will provide the clues the reader needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T13:00:19.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18178" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-13T14:16:42.407" Score="0" ViewCount="307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find writing song lyrics really difficult -- maintaining a regular rhythm, making it rhyme and writing something that makes sense all at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any tips for how to write song lyrics? (This is not about writers block. I have the material I want to include already written. It just isn't in the form of a poem.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2019-03-04T20:44:34.880" Title="Writing song lyrics" Tags="|poetry|lyrics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-03-24T13:07:59.127" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18178" CreationDate="2015-07-13T15:48:57.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;99% of the time professional songwriters write the lyrics based upon the rhythm created by the melody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a famous example of McCartney's Yesterday (from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yesterday_(Beatles_song)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia link to Yesterday by the Beatles&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon being convinced that he had not robbed anyone of their melody,&#xA;McCartney began writing lyrics to suit it. As Lennon and McCartney&#xA;were known to do at the time, a substitute working lyric, titled&#xA;&amp;quot;Scrambled Eggs&amp;quot; (the working opening verse was &amp;quot;Scrambled Eggs/Oh, my&#xA;baby how I love your legs&amp;quot;), was used for the song until something&#xA;more suitable was written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you might first hum the melody and be guided by the rhythm of the melody and then begin to scat the words.  Finally, change the scatted words into sentences which make some sort of sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;be bop rat a dat tat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She got a old red car&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;laaaaa di do ta la la&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;drives it down to L.A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you hip to my poetic lyrics, cat?  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T15:48:57.457" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18180" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-13T16:28:47.683" Score="5" ViewCount="18183" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is pretty much what the title is.&#xA;I do know that all intellectual property is protected by copyright law from the moment of it's creation. I have backed up my work with several methods, some of which are fairly paranoid. On every book there is a copyright page and usually it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Copyright C #### by blah blah blah inc.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I am self-publishing I need to know what I should put on my copyright page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastActivityDate="2017-12-26T18:17:30.073" Title="What do I put on my copyright page when self-publishing?" Tags="|copyright|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18178" CreationDate="2015-07-13T20:43:37.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from SaberWriter's excellent suggestion, I can only offer the old standbys, read lots of lyrics (research), and write lots of lyrics (practice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing good lyrics is notoriously difficult.  There's a reason why even many hit songs have terrible lyrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth noting that even many good songs end up quietly sacrificing at least one of your desired traits (good rhythm, good rhyme, sense).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2019-03-04T20:44:34.880" LastActivityDate="2019-03-04T20:44:34.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18180" CreationDate="2015-07-13T21:49:54.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're self-publishing and not doing it through a company, use your real name: &quot;Copyright (C) 2015 John Doe&quot;.  Under the Berne Convention (which applies in most countries), you own the copyright from the moment of creation until you assign it away.  You have no need to assign it away, so you don't need a company there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; set up a sole-proprietorship corporation if you want something there that looks like a publishing company instead of a person, but that's a lot of work for little gain.  Unless you're setting up such a company &lt;em&gt;anyway&lt;/em&gt; for financial reasons, I suggest you just stick with your name.  That way it's easier to prove that you're the copyright owner if you're ever involved in a dispute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T21:49:54.457" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18180" CreationDate="2015-07-13T22:17:49.033" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: I am not a lawyer.&#xA;Purchase a copy of the indispensable &lt;em&gt;The Copyright Handbook.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;It is very readable and very informative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On my copyright information pages,&#xA;I include four kinds of information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publication info&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Copyright notices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Warning statement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fiction disclaimer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Publication Info&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I list these items, which identify the publication and publisher:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Book title&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publisher name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publisher URL&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ISBN&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Copyright Notices&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I include copyright notices for the text, cover design, cover art, and (for paperbacks) interior design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;© 2014 by Dale Hartley Emery&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cover design © 2014 by Driscoll Brook Press&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cover art © Garuti | Dreamstime.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Warning Statement&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next comes a &lt;em&gt;warning statement:&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;An explanatory statement about the copyrights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All rights reserved.&#xA;  No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner&#xA;  without the express written permission of the publisher&#xA;  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;em&gt;The Copyright Handbook,&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;that first sentence--&lt;em&gt;all rights reserved&lt;/em&gt;--is no longer necessary,&#xA;but it's still common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For ebooks, I insert an additional warning statement above the standard one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.&#xA;  This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.&#xA;  If you would like to share this book with another person,&#xA;  please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.&#xA;  If you're reading this book and did not purchase it,&#xA;  or it was not purchased for your use only,&#xA;  then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy.&#xA;  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Fiction Disclaimer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I end the page with this fiction disclaimer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a work of fiction.&#xA;  Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents&#xA;  are either the products of the author's imagination&#xA;  or used in a fictitious manner.&#xA;  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events&#xA;  is purely coincidental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unclear whether such disclaimers have any useful legal effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Placement of the Copyright Information Page&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For paperbacks,&#xA;I place the copyright information page on the back of the title page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For ebooks,&#xA;I include a few copyright details at the bottom of the title page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Copyright notice for the text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A link to the full copyright information page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I put the full copyright information page at the end of the book.&#xA;The reason I do this is that many book retailers&#xA;automatically create samples.&#xA;The samples are typically a percentage of the book&#xA;(calculated by proprietary algorithms).&#xA;The automatically created samples&#xA;always start at the beginning of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want readers who sample my books to have to wade through&#xA;the copyright details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I don't want the copyright page to take up valuable space&#xA;in the sample.&#xA;Now, for many books,&#xA;the copyright page doesn't take much space.&#xA;But I often publish standalone stories as short as 3000 words.&#xA;The copyright page eats up too much of the sample space for those.&#xA;I'd rather have readers reading my thrilling prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Variations&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at the copyright pages of a few traditionally published books.&#xA;They all include similar kinds of information,&#xA;though the specific statements and wording vary considerably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I don't know the specific legal effects of these variations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T23:43:31.493" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T23:43:31.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18184" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-14T01:28:32.287" Score="4" ViewCount="849" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've given some thought to this, and I decided that I want to either make or find a theme to my fantasy novel before I really get into it (as I have started a couple pages already). I did some research online and found a whole lot of stuff about why stories should have theme and what theme is, but not much about how to make theme (Besides the usual &quot;Oh,  you'll figure it out eventually&quot;).&#xA;From what I can tell, this is kind of an unusual way to start out a book, so thanks for any advice :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12765" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T20:42:43.723" Title="How to Develop a Theme Before Writing a Novel" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|planning|theme|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18185" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-14T01:39:11.447" Score="2" ViewCount="750" Body="&lt;p&gt;I (we) just cannot seem to find one. I promised my real-life friends (located all across the country) that I'd write up our RPG campaign as I have other fictional subjects and put it online it so they can read it, share it, etc. Some long-time internet friends from unsuitable websites want to follow me there as well, and I'd like to gain more in the same manner if I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However every site I go to either starts out fanfic (as I did) or becomes that in fairly short order. My friends are not underage, but they are definitely not into any of that at all! If the site I choose is more than, like, 30% fan-fiction and/or smut I will never hear the end of it. ^_^&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I freaking &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; doing this, and I'm told I'm quite good at it - if that matters. If anyone out there has a partial idea of where to go but you're not sure I'd fit in or qualify, you have only to ask for the details; please do! I've already written and re-re-re-reread the first chapter (I am finicky) and it is EPIC, imho. What do I do with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14514" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T02:56:59.363" Title="What's a good, wholesome, smut-free site where I can 'publish' my fiction writings for my friends to read?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18185" CreationDate="2015-07-14T03:00:23.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried Wattpad? It does have a lot of fanfic and some smut, but the volume of other offerings are much greater and both you and your friends could avoid those if you chose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14515" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T03:00:23.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18180" CreationDate="2015-07-14T04:00:38.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you asking simply about the copyright statement, or about all that stuff that gets put on the copyright page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're just worried about the copyright statement: Put &quot;Copyright 2015 by Fred Smith&quot;, filling in whatever the year is that you first publish your book, and your name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a very good idea to register your copyright. As you said you are in the U.S., you do that with the U.S. copyright office, copyright.gov. For a book it costs $50. You have to fill out a form that's fairly long but not difficult. Mostly it's obvious stuff, like name of the author, title of the book, etc. Unless someone else paid you to write it, it is NOT a &quot;work for hire&quot;. If you included material created by someone else -- like you include a quote from George Washington or the lyrics of a pop song -- then whether you got explicit permission, or whether you are relying on the &quot;fair use doctrine&quot;, you have to specify just what was created by you that your are claiming copyright to, and what was created by others. Like my last book included a bunch of Bible quotes, so I had to specify that I am not claiming that I wrote the Bible. (Presumably the folks at the copyright office know that, but there are plenty of cases where it would not be so obvious.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean the whole copyright page: I think the easiest answer is to say, look at copyright pages in other books, and see what sort of things they include. Typically you'll include your own copyright notice, the ISBN and LCCN if you have one, and disclaimers for material you used that you did not write yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T04:00:38.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18180" CreationDate="2015-07-14T04:20:03.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Legally, in the US that page is unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since April 1 1989 the copyright notice has become obsolete in the US and you no longer need to register your copyright. &lt;strong&gt;You automatically own the copyright in your work upon creation.&lt;/strong&gt; Today, the sole purpose of the copyright notice is to tell anyone interested in using your content who they need to contact to ask for permission. Works without copyright notice are still copyrighted. The only difference is that you don't easily know by whom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the UK and German speaking countries, the publisher of the book must be given (so that that everyone knows whom to sue if the content is illegal). This &quot;imprint&quot; is not necessary in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a legal perspective, that page can be blank or contain whatever you please, without any disadvantage to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is what I learned from reading legal advice on the net. It may be wrong. So ask a lawyer. Doing business without legal advice is not recommended.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="13879" LastEditDate="2015-07-14T08:15:31.813" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T08:15:31.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18160" CreationDate="2015-07-14T04:34:24.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I think the idea of &quot;freewriting&quot; is that you ignore typos and just keep throwing words at the screen. So the textbook answer is probably to ignore your typos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the long run, the question is surely, &quot;What works for you?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When someone with more experience gives me advice about how to do a job, I generally try their advice at least once -- whether that job is writing, auto mechanics, cooking, etc. Even if it doesn't sound like a good idea, maybe if I try it, I will see why, in fact, it IS a good idea. But once I've gained some experience myself, I usually find that there are many times when the textbook approach is a waste of time and I can take short cuts. Sometimes things that work for other people don't work for me. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd say: Try the textbook approach, that is, don't fix your typos, just push ahead. When you feel like you've given this technique a fair try, then decide for yourself whether fixing your typos as you go is productive or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I wouldn't say that I use &quot;freewriting&quot; per se, but I do routinely just type in every idea that comes into my head, throwing text at the screen as fast as I can, and then later go back and clean it up and re-arrange it into a more logical sequence and delete stuff that I now realize is superfluous, etc. If I notice a spelling or grammar error, I'll back up and fix it. But I don't look for such errors. I think if I really got a row off on the keyboard or some such so that everything I was typing was gibberish, I'd back up and fix it immediately, while I still remembered what it was I was trying to type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T04:34:24.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18190" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18194" CreationDate="2015-07-14T08:55:33.627" Score="19" ViewCount="8587" Body="&lt;p&gt;The protagonist is from a certain country, and in some point of the story he moves to another one that speaks another language. The protagonist learns their language and talks with them in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Movies (usually North American ones) set in another country, almost always have one or some characters who speak English, lowering the impact that the foreign language causes. However, the fiction I'm writing is quite long, and I think that only 2 or 3 characters who speak the protagonist's language throughout the whole story is quite inadequate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some parts of these movies have dialogs in the local language, but with subtitles. What about a written story? Provide the translation right after? That would be partially good only if these parts are few if compared to the whole story's dialogs, but that's not my case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, fictions set in another country, but that don't have a change in the local language, are much easier than those that do have, because if, for example, the story is an adaptation from a Chinese story, anyone would know that though every character is speaking English, they would actually be speaking in the local language.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But would this be possibly applicable to the situation when there's a country switch? All dialogs in the other country will be in the same language as the ones in the initial country? Wouldn't it be weird or unrealistic?&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Sorry, I think I didn't explained much clearly. I explain:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The problem is the language in the dialogs, not the narration. This story involves a lot of dialogs, and the protagonist moves to another country and learns their language. The problem with this moving is the change in the language in the dialogs, that, in reality, would be another one. And my question is how to deal with this situation in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastEditorUserId="14490" LastEditDate="2018-08-28T20:00:01.433" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T20:00:01.433" Title="How to deal with a story that 95% of it takes place in a different language country and the protagonist speaks in it?" Tags="|fiction|language|international|multilingual|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18190" CreationDate="2015-07-14T09:34:17.490" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer would seem to be to remember the point of view of the narrator. If you are writing from the protagonists point of view, then write it from the language that the protagonist speaks. if (s)he goes into a shop and doesn't understand anything that is said, then say that they had to point at what they wanted etc &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If later on the protagonist learns the word for banana, then you can include that development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the narrator has a different point of view, then describe / show what the protagonist is doing, there is no need to include language / speech in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TV is a visual / audio experience, they need to have people speaking because it is near impossible to show what a character is thinking. A story can do that very easily though, you don't need to show the reader the conversation, just tell the story &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for changing the language, if I was reading a book where the character went to China and suddenly all dialogue was written in chinese, I'd feel pretty annoyed! Again it comes down to the point of view of the narration. If the narrator speaks that language then the narrator can translate for the reader. If the narrator doesn't understand what is being said, then neither should the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastEditorUserId="13990" LastEditDate="2015-07-14T09:42:18.323" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T09:42:18.323" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18184" CreationDate="2015-07-14T09:47:03.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your theme is the general statement you're making, but you can only make the statement via the plot. The plot should be developed via the organic actions of the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, decide on your theme, figure out a rough plot which will express this theme, and staff the plot with characters who will accomplish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T09:47:03.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18184" CreationDate="2015-07-14T09:56:52.220" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something you need to be aware of when creating a theme before characters etc is that you can end up shoehorning characters into the theme they are telling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not careful with character development they can end up being stiffled by their 'role' in the general theme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of ignoring theme until the story and characters are written is that the characters can 'be themselves' and develop naturally without needing a sudden backflip in order to make some significant thematic point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T09:56:52.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18190" CreationDate="2015-07-14T10:57:08.880" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have four variants of foreign language dialog in fiction and the corresponding solutions how we can handle this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;+----------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------+&#xA;|                      |    foreign language   |    foreign language   |&#xA;|                      |     is limited to     |    makes up a major   |&#xA;|                      |    short phrases or   |   part of all dialog  |&#xA;|                      |   occurs only rarely  |                       |&#xA;+----------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------+&#xA;|      the protagonist | translate the phrase; | translate (2)         |&#xA;|      understands the | use typography (1)    |                       |&#xA;|     foreign language | to signify foreign    |                       |&#xA;|                      | language              |                       |&#xA;+----------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------+&#xA;|      the protagonist | give the original     | describe that people  |&#xA;|  does not understand |                       | speak ('Tik said      |&#xA;| the foreign language |                       | something and pointed |&#xA;|                      |                       | at the sky.')         |&#xA;+----------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------+&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Signifying translation typographically is optional. Usually the context makes it clear enough that if an American goes shopping in France, the clerk will speak French. Readers use their knowledge of the world to supplement the texts they read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it can reasonably be assumed that the foreign person speaks the protagonist's mother tongue, typography can help make the difference clear. Explain the convention the first time you use it. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bob and his wife flew to France. When they arrived in Paris, the customs officer said to them in French: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Please show me your passports.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;What did he say?&quot; Bob's wife asked.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;He wants to see our passports,&quot; Bob answered and handed the passports to the officer.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;&quot;Thank you,&quot;&lt;/em&gt; the officer said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What conventions you use will depend on your book design and your publisher. I have seen the use of italics, as in the previous example, and angle brackets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;〈Please show me your passport,〉 the officer said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not use markup or typography if foreign language dialogue is extensive (as in your book). In that case, just translate it and let the context make it clear which language is spoken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Wether or not you translate foreign language dialog will depend on your readership. If you write for a highly educated audience, it is quite common to leave French or Spanish text untranslated in English fiction. But if you write for a more general audience, you should aim for a monolingual text. The exception is fantasy and SF, where Elvish and other fictional languages are often left in the &quot;original&quot; for effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="22611" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2018-05-18T06:56:31.367" LastActivityDate="2018-05-18T06:56:31.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18198" CreationDate="2015-07-14T11:33:48.053" Score="5" ViewCount="33705" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a script where you have two (or more) people talking at the same time, how is that formatted? Side-by-side columns? Some other vertical grouping? Notes? Does it vary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples would be most helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2020-05-16T08:01:26.160" Title="In a screenplay, how do you show people talking over each other?" Tags="|formatting|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18190" CreationDate="2015-07-14T12:32:19.203" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use angle quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Speaking in English&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;«Speaking in Portuguese»&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also has the advantage of being actual (former) usage according to Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14517" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T12:32:19.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18190" CreationDate="2015-07-14T14:31:48.860" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most books set in a foreign country nevertheless give all dialog in the language of the intended audience. That is, if you are writing for, say, an English-speaking audience, you give all dialog in English, even if the story is set in France or on the planet Vulcan. For the obvious reason: if the reader doesn't understand the dialog, the book won't make any sense to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, you could write the dialog in French, and then translate. But what does this gain? It's a lot of extra text that the non-French-speaking reader is just going to skip anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader knows that people in France generally speak French, and will understand that the dialog is all intended to be a translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read many stories where they say, &quot;Then he answered in French ...&quot; and proceed to give the text in English. The reader understands that he spoke French, but you are giving the translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most stories, the language doesn't matter, i.e. the story would be no different if everyone in France spoke English, so just translating everything doesn't cause any problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If language differences are really important -- like if there are characters in the story who don't know the language -- that's different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the hero doesn't understand the language -- say French to continue my example -- then you could give the dialog in French. But then a reader who DOES speak French will know what was said, while the hero doesn't, which could destroy important elements of the scene. You'd probably be better to just write things like, &quot;The policeman said something in French. George had no idea what he was saying. He tried pointing at ...&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only catch I see is if some important point in the plot hinges on something about the language, like two words sounding the same or a point of grammar. I've occasionally read stories where the text must be assumed to be a translation, but a character makes a statement that's some play on words or a rhyme or some such, and I've said to myself, &quot;Wait, but they all must be speaking in French. Does the French word for the big yellow thing in the sky sound the same as the word for a male child just like in English? If not, then there really wouldn't be any confusion here ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T14:31:48.860" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18195" CreationDate="2015-07-14T15:18:25.867" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of variations that are recommended in various on-line screenwriting guides, including side-by-side or linearly but using a directive like 'during'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.storysense.com/format/dialogue.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Story Sense&lt;/a&gt; they say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing dialogue in two columns to indicate simultaneous speeches, the left margin of the first dialogue column must be inset slightly. It must not start in the same column as the action or description margin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is all the information they give (no examples).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://screenwriting.io/how-do-you-format-two-characters-talking-at-once/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Screenwriting.io&lt;/a&gt; just says that most screenwriting editing software will format it for you as side-by-side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When two characters are talking at the same time, it is referred to as “dual dialogue,” and the two speakers’ text blocks go side-by-side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most screenwriting programs have an option for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again no examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.screenwritinggoldmine.com/forum/threads/how-to-write-simultaneous-action-dialog.2595/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Screenwriting Goldmine&lt;/a&gt;, they suggest using 'during this' as a directive to the following dialog to say that it should be spoken simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lazybeescripts.co.uk/Publishing/StagePub/PlaySpeeches.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lazy Bee Scripts&lt;/a&gt; says to use 'at the same time' and gives an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eric:  (At the same time as Jane.)  Come on, Jane, you've known for weeks that he was coming, there's no point in making a fuss, just relax and let's hear what he has to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jane:   (At the same time as Eric.)  He can't come in.  Not with you here, Fred.  You've got to do something.  Anything!  Get in the cupboard!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these looks like a satisfying explanation to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1809" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T15:18:25.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18199" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-14T18:34:17.077" Score="1" ViewCount="7245" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm writing this story and got stuck on the part where two of my main characters arrived at this house and they hear dragging but the problem is I don't know how to describe the dragging without telling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To anyone who has ever been dragged across the floor or heard dragging before, is it alright if I ask how it felt or the sounds produced from it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just need an idea to practice more showing and not telling. If you know a site that does this, I'll be. Very greatful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14524" LastEditorUserId="14524" LastEditDate="2015-07-15T11:57:17.183" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T11:57:17.183" Title="How do you describe the sound of someone being dragged across the floor?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-07-15T02:57:19.577" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18010" CreationDate="2015-07-14T19:01:36.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an alternative to footnotes, you could just immediately translate the first few statements containing a new pidgin word, perhaps putting the translation in italics.  For (an extremely made-up) example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Jah, got might owie in me gulliver&quot;, said Collins.  &lt;em&gt;God, my head really hurts.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Used sparingly, this might serve as a less intrusive way of expanding the reader's vocabulary bit by bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if all else fails, you can always simply say something like &quot;X means Y&quot; where necessary.  Awkward, but maybe the lesser evil in some cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14525" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T19:01:36.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18190" CreationDate="2015-07-14T20:11:49.547" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Provide dialog in the language of your narration and use distorted spelling to indicate the accent of your character (and other poor speakers). You could also use distorted spelling to indicate the way your character mishears the foreign language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— Huts a dime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— Come again? — I asked, trying to make sense of the fluent speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— What’s the time? — he repeated, enunciating clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also use phrases like “Hearing English was relieving after all this time” to indicate a conversation in English. Normally you’d only have to indicate that a character speaks English a few times before the reader learns it and gets used to the fact that most other characters speak another tongue, but this one speaks the protagonist’s mother tongue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14527" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T20:11:49.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18199" CreationDate="2015-07-14T21:09:58.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about, &quot;the sound of something heavy -- perhaps a person -- being dragged across the floor&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T21:09:58.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18199" CreationDate="2015-07-14T21:30:04.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Flesh scraping across wood, shoes scuffing the floorboards in a last, feeble protest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14526" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T21:30:04.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7741" CreationDate="2015-07-14T21:40:22.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like &quot;The Board&quot; as explained in Blake Snyder's book, Save the Cat. Write a summary of each scene on a flashcard and tape them to your wall in the order they should go. Make a new row when there's a turning point. It helps make sure the story is balanced. Ideally you should have 10 scenes per row, with a critical act turning point at the end of each row. Each card can have key information too, like who is in that scene, what the scene changes, and what the conflict is. Also it's fun to tape flashcards all over your wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14526" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T21:40:22.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18205" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-14T23:26:05.490" Score="1" ViewCount="321" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know there's 3rd person etc... but can a story be told from a secondary character's POV? or does that never happen and would be useless?&#xA;I want the story from the girl's view, but i really want the story to revolve around the guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14529" LastEditorUserId="14529" LastEditDate="2015-07-14T23:32:35.217" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T23:59:33.923" Title="Do I have to write my book in the main character's POV?" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18206" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-14T23:48:58.497" Score="11" ViewCount="34034" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while back I wrote a prologue about the beginning of time and space and all that. One thing I noticed later is that between the prologue and the story itself, the prologue ate out the chapters not leaving much for me to write out for the actual start. I did some backtracking but the point where I want to end the prologue and begin chapter 1 puts me in a bind. I'm pretty sure its at 18k now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Exactly how long can a prologue be and what should I not do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sidetracked: When introducing a story, would a prologue be best for those with historical and adventure genres?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14524" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2017-09-26T21:35:12.773" LastActivityDate="2020-11-12T20:14:57.907" Title="How long can a prologue be, and what should you not do?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|plot|prologues|" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18205" CreationDate="2015-07-14T23:59:33.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the narrator can be a secondary character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beautiful &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0062060627&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Song of Achilles&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/a&gt; by Madeline Miller is about the warrior Achilles and his life, but told by his lover Patroclus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0743273567&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Great Gatsby&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is told by Nick Carraway, almost a tertiary character in the love story between Gatsby and Daisy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553328255&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sherlock Holmes&lt;/a&gt; stories are about Holmes, but almost all are narrated by Dr. Watson. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Although if I might interject... why, why, why are you having a woman as the narrator if the story &quot;revolves around the guy&quot;? Why can't the woman narrate her &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; story? Why isn't her story interesting enough to tell?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T23:59:33.923" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18208" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18216" CreationDate="2015-07-15T01:03:49.180" Score="1" ViewCount="1713" Body="&lt;p&gt;One bad habit I have when writing sentences is that I make them too long and have to use commas. Problem: I get confused on where to put them to maintain the smooth structured balance of the sentence. What I want the readers to see may change if the sentence is read differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question:If commas, based on where I place them, can change a reader's point of view and understanding, how do I ensure they are not misinterpreted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At times, I find myself having to read over a sentence -I'm too stubborn to change- to make sure its structured correctly and in a sense fits along a specific scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just in case you don't get what I mean, here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;He blinked unconsciously, leaning forward intrigued by what was going to happen, and following John's example he waited, the longer hand soon hit twelve.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;See if the way I positioned the commas change how you read with the second version.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;He blinked, unconsciously leaning forward, intrigued by what was going to happen and following John's example he waited, the longer hand soon hit twelve.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14524" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T10:12:29.743" Title="Based on where I put a comma in a long sentence, can it confuse the readers from the way its supposed to be read?" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18195" CreationDate="2015-07-15T03:09:25.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this done either as a directive in the dialog, or as an action description beforehand. It's such a rare case though, that I'd be surprised if there was a clear standard for it. I haven't seen the side by side column thing out in the wild, but I'd wager the meaning would also be pretty clear if I did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I've seen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                        AMY&#xA;                Look, you really can't bring&#xA;                my mom into this, it's not fair.&#xA;                She's never really said anything&#xA;                bad about you, you really have to...&#xA;&#xA;                        JOHN&#xA;                   (simultaneously)&#xA;                And your mom's is better? Let me tell&#xA;                you, this is a hundred year old family &#xA;                recipe and I'll be damned if you're going &#xA;                to feed that crap to Jack...&#xA;&#xA;JACK drops his toy audibly in the doorway.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...or... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;AMY and JOHN begin yelling at each other simultaneously&#xA;&#xA;                        AMY&#xA;                Look, you really can't bring&#xA;                my mom into this, it's not fair&#xA;                she's never really said anything&#xA;                bad about you, you really have to...&#xA;&#xA;                        JOHN&#xA;                And your mom's is better? Let me tell&#xA;                you, this is a hundred year old family &#xA;                recipe and I'll be damned if you're going &#xA;                to feed that crap to Jack...&#xA;&#xA;JACK drops his toy audibly in the doorway.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... both of which were self evident to me when I read them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14530" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T03:09:25.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18208" CreationDate="2015-07-15T03:37:16.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Comma placement is definitely crucial to the meaning of a sentence. In your case, I think sometimes the best choice is to simply break up your sentences into a few shorter ones. Watch out for run-ons and comma splices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: In your example sentence, &quot;unconsciously&quot; should be changed to &quot;subconsciously&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14532" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T03:37:16.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18206" CreationDate="2015-07-15T06:03:37.483" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I never read prologues. They bore the hell out of me. Start with your story. That's what I want to read. Weave in the information I need, and don't bother me with what's irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I dislike the most:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a prologue that makes me identify with and invest emotions in a character that does not appear in the main narrative&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the myths of a fictional world (that is, the fiction of a fiction)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;what went on before&quot; (I just read that in the previous volume, and my memory is fine, thank you)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pseudo-philosphy and pseudo-wisdom (&quot;The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and bla bla.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dreams (please don't narrate a character's dreams anywhere: science doesn't understand dreams, so don't claim that you do)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the history of the fictional world (why would I care about the history of a place that doesn't even exist?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elizabeth Haydon's &lt;em&gt;Rhapsody: Child of Blood&lt;/em&gt; has a wonderful prologue. It is one of the best fantasy short stories I ever read. Unfortunately the book itself was a drag and I didn't finish it. That was unique (I haven't found any other grood prologues), but I take this as a sign that if the prologue is actually good I need not waste time reading the main text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-07-15T08:21:58.670" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T08:21:58.670" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18213" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18214" CreationDate="2015-07-15T06:26:01.377" Score="2" ViewCount="1223" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book is being written in Portuguese, would it be bad if the name is in English? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The name is just &quot;The Awakening&quot;. I prefer the title in English because it sounds better than in Portuguese (&quot;O Despertar&quot;), which sounds a bit like a generic fiction. But would it be good? Because &quot;awakening&quot; is a word of significant size, and have &quot;W&quot; and &quot;K&quot;, and &quot;ening&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T22:51:42.333" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T23:07:24.900" Title="Naming a book in a language different from where it would be published: is it good?" Tags="|book|language|titles|multilingual|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18213" CreationDate="2015-07-15T07:29:25.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot speak for Portugal, but in Germany, &quot;American&quot; (that is, US American) movies, music and books are considered to be great by default. In media, &quot;American&quot; is a label that signals great entertainment to German consumers, and the most popular films, tv series, books and musical recordings are &quot;Made in America&quot;. On top of that, English is considered a &quot;cool&quot; language, everyone learns it in school, it is the language of the music we listen to as teens, and it is the lingua franca of the internet. In Germany, many advertisings for &quot;cool&quot; products feature English slogans, and many products have English or English sounding names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for media, while movies are generally dubbed and books translated, American movies usually retain their original titles, even if those titles invovle puns or other features that are difficult for the average German to understand. Books, on the other hand, often receive a new German title, which may or may not be a translation of the English title. But recently many books from the Young Adult category have been published in a German translations with the original (Americal) English title. An example is James Dashner's &lt;em&gt;Maze Runner&lt;/em&gt; trilogy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/T6mkk.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be a phase only, but it stands in the context of the general appreciation of American media and the English language that I tried to briefly describe above, and in fact there are books outside of YA that are published with their original English title, like Oliver Sacks &lt;em&gt;Awakenings&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/C1Azk.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in Germany, a book with an English title would certainly work, especially if it was aimed at a younger audience, no matter if it was originally written in German or any other language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &quot;the awakening&quot; can be easily translated into German as &quot;das Erwachen&quot;, which has a nice sound and feel to it, and I don't think that any publisher would decide on the English title in that case. They would only use the English title, if it sounded better than the German translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this will give you some ideas about your own language and country, which I am not familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T07:29:25.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18190" CreationDate="2015-07-15T09:42:11.053" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently reading a book where the majority of characters speak one language (Japanese), but two characters additionally speak a different language (Latin).  If a character is speaking in Japanese, it is written in normal English:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are beautiful&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but when one of the characters wants to talk in Latin (so that no-one else can understand), the author uses archaic/flowery language:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thou art beautiful to mine eyes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reader of the book can therefore instantly tell what language is being spoken, but it is easy to read as it is actually all in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14538" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T09:42:11.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18208" CreationDate="2015-07-15T10:12:29.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Break your habit of long sentences. They are mentally exhausting. Try reading your sentences out loud and see how often you have to stop to &lt;em&gt;take a breath,&lt;/em&gt; or if you can remember the beginning of the sentence by the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) You have a &lt;em&gt;comma splice&lt;/em&gt; in your example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He blinked unconsciously, leaning forward intrigued by what was going to happen, and following John's example he waited&lt;b&gt;, the longer hand soon hit twelve.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bold phrase is a complete sentence and has to be either connected with a semi-colon or removed to stand on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Commas are not for decoration. They separate thoughts. They are meaningful. In your example, putting the comma before or after &lt;em&gt;unconsciously&lt;/em&gt; changes which act is unconscious. Is the blinking unconscious or is the leaning forward unconscious?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &quot;Leaning forward&quot; has to be separated from &quot;intrigued&quot; no matter what else you do with the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overall, I suggest you spend some time studying grammar.&lt;/strong&gt; You may want to focus on the ancient art of diagramming sentences. This will teach you where the various marks of punctuation go and what they mean, and you won't be worrying about trying to prop up the broken structure of your sentences with a few helpless commas which aren't up to the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T10:12:29.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18217" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-15T11:56:14.390" Score="0" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;While writing in first person's pov, is it always necessary to describe each and every event sequentially? I mean, is it wrong to skip events to a later time and then describe the previous events? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14540" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T15:52:24.397" Title="Sequence of Events" Tags="|book|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18218" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18219" CreationDate="2015-07-15T13:05:23.723" Score="9" ViewCount="2591" Body="&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Really?” I said, widening my eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What?&quot; My eyes lifted and I raised my brows in shock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this reads strange because the narrator can't see his or her own face (or wasn't able to back then).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I tend to write this instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was taken aback. “Really?” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What?&quot; I said, startled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't know, maybe I'm wrong and authors write stuff like the first examples all the time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-07-15T13:45:03.720" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T07:02:08.393" Title="Is it strange to describe the narrator's facial expressions in a first-person narrative?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18218" CreationDate="2015-07-15T13:16:58.520" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although the narrator can't see his own face, he'd still feel his face moving, so I don't think that's the reason it feels strange. It sounds strange to me because the actions sound intentional. Facial expressions are generally involuntary. I don't raise my eyebrows in surprise -- they rather do it of their own accord. Your writing could reflect this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Really?&amp;quot; I gasped, eyes wide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;What?&amp;quot; My eyebrows flew up in amazement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second examples also make sense, because we have access to the narrator's emotional state in first person POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Really?&amp;quot; I was shocked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;What?&amp;quot; I couldn't believe what I was hearing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on what kind of effect you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T13:16:58.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18218" CreationDate="2015-07-15T13:44:34.367" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @kitzfox says, there are times when you would know what your face must look like, and it would be reasonable for a narrator to say so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stared wide-eyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you would reasonably guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Bob is the smartest man here&amp;quot;, my girlfriend announced to the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could feel myself reddening with embarrassment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But other times it would be distinctly odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a tired look on my face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Umm, probably not. You might say &amp;quot;I was tired&amp;quot;, but you are unlikely to describe yourself as &lt;em&gt;looking&lt;/em&gt; tired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's somehow important to describe how a first-person narrator looks, to make it sound natural you could either have someone else tell him how he looks, or provide some way that he sees himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't realize how tired I must be until Sally said, &amp;quot;Wow, you look exhausted.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Does it really show?&amp;quot; I asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I walked passed the mirror, I glanced at it and saw my own reflection. Wow, I looked tired!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T13:44:34.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18217" CreationDate="2015-07-15T14:00:32.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it wrong? No. Writers do this all the time. Lots of stories have flashbacks, or quick statements like &quot;I suddenly remembered that yesterday Fred had told me that ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But be careful not to confuse the reader. If readers start wondering, &quot;Wait, is he talking about something that is happening now or something that happened yesterday?&quot; or &quot;Umm, did his girlfriend break up with him before or after he was in the accident?&quot;, well, they're going to get frustrated with your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And just the other day I saw a TV show with a totally pointless flashback: It starts out with a scene of a train travelling across the countryside as the credits roll. Then it cuts to a woman who is riding on the train. Then they throw up a subtitle reading &quot;Two months earlier ...&quot;. Umm, two months earlier than what? Than this woman that we know nothing about went we know not where on a train? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point being: I understand starting out with an exciting scene to grab the reader's attention, and then having a flashback to fill in the details. Or having a flashback to reveal information that the characters in the story don't know about when it happens, and only discover later, so that if revealed in sequence it would ruin the mystery or suspense. But flashbacks can be confusing, leaving the reader unsure of what happened when. So the technique should be used cautiously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T14:00:32.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18217" CreationDate="2015-07-15T15:52:24.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In literary fiction, everything is allowed. Read James Joyce, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In more mainstream fiction, novels either follow the chronology of events -- or the narrators train of thoughts. And the latter are usually not chronological, because the szream of consciousness of a fictional character will jump around in time following associations, just like your own thoughts do. But the narration must not appear random, but follow the logic of thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In genre novels, chronology is usually a must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T15:52:24.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18218" CreationDate="2015-07-15T16:15:46.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I think about myself, I only think something like &lt;code&gt;I raise my eyebrow&lt;/code&gt; when I do it consciously, that is, when I &quot;play&quot; some emotion and &quot;make a face&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all other situations, when I face reflects my emotions, I am usually not aware of this, and in fact I have often been surprised when people told me that I look this or that way, because I was quite sure I was hiding that feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when I read a first person narrative, I expect to read about what a person thinks, what they feel, and what they experience, but not how their face moves or what it looks like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a person may think about what they look like from the outside, but this is rare and usually made explicit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T16:15:46.753" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18206" CreationDate="2015-07-15T18:20:53.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prologues are good for the author's purposes (fleshing out your backstory), but consider whether the reader needs to know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many agents and publishers immediately throw a manuscript aside when they see the word &quot;prologue&quot; at the opening. This is because quite often, what we write in a prologue is actually backstory that is more for the author's sake than the readers. I have a friend who wrote nearly 500,000 words of backstory. He could have included a lot of it in a prologue, but he opted not to because it isn't something the readers need to know. Unless the prologue is absolutely, completely critical to the story and nothing would make sense unless it's included, it might be better to cut it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do need a prologue - for instance to show something that happens outside of your protagonist's point of view - it should be written with great care. Make it as short as possible to get your point across. If your prologue is longer than an average chapter in your book, that's a red flag. If your prologue is a couple thousand words of essential information, that's ok. (Just name it something other than 'prologue' so an agent/publisher doesn't skip your manuscript.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14526" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T18:20:53.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18206" CreationDate="2015-07-15T19:17:14.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your last question (and sort of the rest of it):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sidetracked: When introducing a story, would a prologue be best for those with historical and adventure genres?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prologues are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; common in the fantasy genre. It's a good way to introduce different elements of your world to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I read mostly thrillers, here's what I've noticed in that (and mystery/suspense/adventure novels): most do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have a prologue. Those are stories where you need to start with the action almost right away and preferably start with relevant action. However, for historical thrillers, prologues &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; common as well, because they start with something that happened a long time ago to set the stage for the rest of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, prologues shouldn't be more than a few pages (book pages, that is). That's enough time to get some important information down, but not so much as to wear the reader out and think &quot;good grief, when's the darn story going to start?!&quot;. 18K seems like an awful long prologue. That's about a fifth of a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T19:17:14.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18206" CreationDate="2015-07-16T00:49:36.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously, there is no definitive rule on how long a prologue can be. If I were you, I would approach a prologue with caution. Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Usually the first chapter sets the tone, style and themes of the text. If the reader doesn't like the first paragraph/page/chapter etc. they will put down the book.(permanently) A prologue (by definition) is not written in the same way that a chapter is written. So what impression is it giving the reader about the method of storytelling used by the author?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Prologues are not that common and may be misunderstood. Does the reader know that they are supposed to read it before chapter 1? They might confuse it with a 'Forward' and skip it, thinking that it is irrelevant rubbish. (Forwards are more common than prologues and are full of uninteresting trivia about the authors career and associates and stuff)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your going to have a prologue, I think you could make it as long as half a chapter if you wanted. However, just make sure that its length is properly offset by how &quot;Intensely Interesting&quot; it is. Prologues by nature tend to introduce a long list of historic facts without using any dialogue, action, characterisation, or any of the techniques that actually make a story interesting. So you need to develop a writing style explicitly for prologues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I think that it is generally better to skip the prologue, jump into the drama at some point, and then find clever techniques of establishing the backstories later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14545" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T00:49:36.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18206" CreationDate="2015-07-16T02:18:45.527" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I would say that if your prologue is 18k long, it is not a prologue it is your story in chief. Or it is a prequel to your story in chief. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the problem with a lot of prologues is that they are a device of laziness. it is heaping a whole lot of information into the storyline without putting the effort into making it a part of the storyline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A prologue should be something that gives the reader some pertinent information, that is potentially skippable, because some people do. It is the writer's chance to give some information outside of the normal voice of the story. Details and specifics don't belong in a prologue, it isn't the place for telling the reader that when John was five he squashed a bug. That is what the story is for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I would say write the prologue once you have finished the rest of the story. Write it to fill in whatever aspects didn't fit in the story. Make it very short, no more than a few hundred words, and work at it like you would the first paragraph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If at the end of the prologue the reader isn't saying 'wow! I really want to read this book' then you should tear it out and burn it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T02:18:45.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18228" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18229" CreationDate="2015-07-16T05:10:07.703" Score="6" ViewCount="2980" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got challenged to write a book of 100 pages in two weeks. I see this challenge as a game that can be played in many different ways. What are the &lt;strong&gt;most effective strategies&lt;/strong&gt; for writing a lot in a short period of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14548" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-07-16T21:37:51.627" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T18:35:38.053" Title="How to write a book in 2 weeks?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18228" CreationDate="2015-07-16T05:22:55.167" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org/&quot;&gt;NaNoWriMo&lt;/a&gt; challenges everyone to write 50.000 words in one month. I took part in November 2013 and wrote a little over 50.000 words in ten days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I did was just write, whatever came into my head, without caring much for perfect style or story logic. I later went over the whole thing more slowly and rewrote to polish the language and clean up plot holes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I didn't much think or worry about how to do this, because I had some previous writing experience. But there are tips on the NaNoWriMo website and in their forums, as well as in a book published by the founder of the event (which I have but didn't yet read).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T05:22:55.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18233" CreationDate="2015-07-16T06:49:45.207" Score="2" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently my writing tutor told me any word in a foreign language should be italicized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was unsure if MLA was important to answer this question; just in case, I've included it in the title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an essay which will include the word Nazi. I understand the word Nazi is a German word but commonly used by people of all languages, should this word be italicized? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14507" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T05:06:58.917" Title="Is the word Nazi italicized? [MLA]" Tags="|formatting|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18218" CreationDate="2015-07-16T07:02:08.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my PoV, depends on the style of writing, example (sorry if it doesn't sound as great as  in my mind, not english native):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The street lights were flickering. From my seat in Builders Street bus&#xA;  stop i was able to see a shadow move between two piles of boxes. I&#xA;  raised an eyebrow and shouted &quot;Hey, is someone there?&quot;, but i got no&#xA;  response. The lights flickered again, and i felt a cold chill on my&#xA;  spine. There was another shadow besides mine...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21401" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T07:02:08.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18231" CreationDate="2015-07-16T07:18:08.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it shouldn't be. It's a word that a majority of the English speaking population is aware of. It stands for &lt;em&gt;National Socialism&lt;/em&gt; in English, or in German, &lt;em&gt;Nationalsozialismus&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a different usage of &lt;em&gt;Nazism&lt;/em&gt;. In any essay I wrote, I capitalized it as a proper noun but never italicized it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14552" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T07:18:08.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18228" CreationDate="2015-07-16T08:51:10.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all I'd ask myself what kind of book it's supposed to be, and what kind of audience I'd make it for. Then I'd ask myself what this audience expects me to produce (if writing a romance novel for instance there'd be a huge emphasis on describing the bodies; creating actual notes of word-banks that might be used might help).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I'd find a theme I'd write about and make a flowchart what are themes close to it - anything that comes to mind. If the goal is 50k words I'd plan roughly 1k-5k words per theme, and I'd also make a pretty precise plan about the expected wordcount per chapter/theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On day two I'd start writing and adapt the plan according to the output I produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14555" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2015-07-18T03:00:33.323" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T03:00:33.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18237" CreationDate="2015-07-16T09:13:47.187" Score="1" ViewCount="204" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a lot of filtering in my writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I decided&lt;/strong&gt; to start my journey at the library. Why? Well,&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;I figured&lt;/strong&gt; it'd have more reliable information than the Internet...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once I reached there, though, &lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt; realized it wasn't the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some techniques to remove filtering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The library was the best place to start my research. Why? Well,&#xA;  It had more reliable information than the Internet...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, it didn't turn out to be the case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if I improved or worsened the passage, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-07-16T09:23:58.470" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T05:24:31.230" Title="Ways to remove &quot;filtering&quot; in narration?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18236" CreationDate="2015-07-16T09:29:04.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It largely depends on the context and style of the story you're telling. With the filtering the character would feel less confident, and potentially more inclined to be realistic when the character makes mistakes. The edited version has more confidence and is a stronger sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be a reflection of your lack of confidence. A solution might be to write your first draft, allowing whatever filtering makes the writing work for you. Then when you have got a feel for who the character is, go back and make their language sound like them. If the character is someone who would filter a lot, then use it. if not, filter it out! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get the story written, and then decide the tone and style. You're aware enough of the filtering you are applying to the story to start naturally reducing it, so for the time being, don't worry about it too much and just enjoy the writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T09:29:04.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12952" CreationDate="2015-07-16T12:19:51.390" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The original question:&#xA;&quot;If I get a free ISBN through Amazon's CreateSpace now, will that impact any decisions about getting my own ISBN later?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would add to what others have written above. Amazon CreateSpace (not including KindleSelect) does not restrict you from selling your book elsewhere. You just cant use their ISBN to publish the book elsewhere. They say:&#xA;&quot;This ISBN can only be used with the CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.&quot;&#xA;That doesnt restrict you from selling your book anywhere. Its just got to be done through Amazon. Thats why the ISBN is free. If you later want to publish the book yourself through a fake publisher or your name, or through a real publisher, then a new ISBN will have to be assigned. And it can. Amazon cant stop you (unless you signed up for one of their special Kindle packages that might restrict that for a few months).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But personally, I wouldnt use the free Amazon ISBN. The main reason is in the imprint, it still has them listed as publisher. And thats going to not be as accepted into bookstores and libraries, mainly because its a print on demand book (ie lower quality than offset). Also, if you get your own ISBN now, you can not only use it at Amazon (with some distribution channel sales restrictions) but use it to print your own books and sell them. And some online retailers might also be willing to buy your books as the publisher you now are, because you have a real ISBN with a real publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thats my advice.....of course of you cant afford to buy the ISBN's thats another story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14559" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T12:19:51.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18241" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18243" CreationDate="2015-07-16T16:05:40.527" Score="0" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not very sure if it's called &quot;main noun&quot; (sorry, I didn't pay attention in my grammar class). But anyway, here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I decided to start my search at &lt;strong&gt;the library&lt;/strong&gt;. Why? Well, it had more&#xA;  reliable information than the Internet -- than a bunch of blogs,&#xA;  tabloids, and news sites. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The library&lt;/strong&gt;, that's where I decided to start my search. Why? Well, it&#xA;  had more reliable information than the Internet -- than a bunch of&#xA;  blogs, tabloids, and news sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;bolded&lt;/strong&gt; part is what I call the &quot;main noun&quot; (the main focus of the sentence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you decide its position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does the meaning differ in my two examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2015-07-21T02:22:46.307" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T02:22:46.307" Title="Main noun: How do you decide where to place it?" Tags="|style|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18241" CreationDate="2015-07-16T16:45:12.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;English word order can vary (up to a point) and you create emphasis by where you place words. Usually something is seen as more important if it occurs first. For example, placing 'the library' first in the sentence you are giving it prominence. If you started with 'my search' that would be the most salient object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T16:45:12.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18228" CreationDate="2015-07-16T18:37:05.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would poke around Wikipedia and just find some obscure yet interesting event that happened 50 to 500 years ago. Flesh out the story with your own made up stuff. Boom, there you go! Also, do an outline, it will help in fleshing out details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clyde Cussler does this a lot and he is a very successful writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14567" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-07-20T03:31:01.120" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T03:31:01.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18236" CreationDate="2015-07-16T22:05:33.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why lay the blame on the narrator?  Why not lay the blame on the library?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Why does the library have a reputation for being the place to coinduct proper researn?  Instead of stayiong home, I decided to waste my time and visit the library, and what good did it do?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;btw, i found your second sentence more troubling:&#xA;&quot;Once I reached there, though, I realized it wasn't the case&quot;&#xA;If you're writing dialog, even internal dialog, it's permissable to be a little less formal, so you could have used &quot;Once I got there&quot;  or even &quot;Once there...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14448" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T22:05:33.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18236" CreationDate="2015-07-16T22:30:55.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do the same thing when I write. Your second passage does sound better. It puts the reader deeper inside the character's mind -- because rather than reading what the character &lt;em&gt;tells us&lt;/em&gt; he's thinking, we're reading &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; what he's thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about these during the first draft, but in the next draft you can go through and simply remove all the &quot;I felt&quot;, &quot;I saw&quot;, &quot;I realized&quot;, &quot;I noticed&quot;, etc. You'll end up with stronger prose for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14526" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T22:30:55.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18213" CreationDate="2015-07-16T23:12:27.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the target audience understand the meaning of the tittle, then its fine. I'm an English only speaker, but if a book was titled 'El Diablo' that would be fine because I am familiar with those two specific spanish words. Also I would probably assume that the book was set in a Spanish speaking country or has something to do with spanish speaking people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would an English tittle imply that the story had something to do with an English speaking culture? Is that good or bad for your specific book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When seen in book shops, would the customer falsely assume that the book was in English and not look at if if they can't read English? Maybe you could have a Portuguese quoat on the cover as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14545" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T23:12:27.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18184" CreationDate="2015-07-16T23:24:01.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just draw a map of the area and then write a description of each of the locations on the map. Write some little backstories of how each of the worlds factions came to be. Write descriptions of each of the cultures in your world and their history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit to doing this up front is that when you write the novel you can have characters casually drop references to historic events in an interesting way, rather than having to include big chunks of exposition whenever it becomes relevant. You can create the sense that the plot is just a side note in a world that is much bigger than the novels characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try not to make your plot too big. ie: the plot should not be some epic jourmy to change the whole world. It should be more of a struggle just to change on small part of the world in one small way. And the charactor should start off as the opposite of what he needs to be in order to make that difference, so that he can go through changes himself. What ever these changes are that are necessary, that is the &quot;Theme&quot; as I understand the word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14545" LastEditorUserId="14545" LastEditDate="2015-07-16T23:31:07.537" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T23:31:07.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18262" CreationDate="2015-07-16T23:29:31.980" Score="6" ViewCount="813" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I define 'setting' as where and when a novel takes place, as well as what the genre entails. It is the background to the picture of the story.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize there are a lot of factors that contribute to making bestsellers become bestsellers, and that the list is by no means limited to writing and setting. My concern is with writing &lt;em&gt;versus&lt;/em&gt; setting. I've seen some books (which I will not name, to avoid the inevitable debate), that to me at least, seem to have become bestsellers simply through their setting. They are written well, certainly, but they are often full of mistakes, and the writing in general is not the stuff of greatness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This raises the question: can a novel become a bestseller (mostly) because of its setting? Can you get away with mediocre writing and still sell because your setting is popular? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I don't want to give the impression that I am trying to get away with mediocre writing. :) I'm actually hoping that the answer to the question above is 'no'; that there is some other reason these novels have become bestsellers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2018-10-17T20:43:02.843" Title="What makes a bestseller - Writing or Setting?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|setting|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18252" CreationDate="2015-07-17T04:24:18.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neither of those. They can certainly make a novel enjoyable. But make it a best-seller...I'm not sure. For instance, I've never heard people say that they want to read a novel because it's set in New York or Paris or Narnia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the writing...okay maybe this one is more important. However, the term is a little ambiguous. What do you mean by writing? The quality of the prose? Whether it's funny? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the key element to write a best-seller is to make it a page-turner. I've never read or heard of a page-turner that wasn't a best-seller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-07-17T09:34:19.397" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T09:34:19.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18252" CreationDate="2015-07-17T06:29:21.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with your first statement. There really are many, many factors in creating a bestseller, some of which vary depending on your target age range. The story's setting, if well written, can contribute a lot to a piece of writing. Without other factors, though, even a stunningly-written setting cannot make it to the top alone. An interesting plot and well-developed characters probably do more for your book than a good setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14532" LastEditorUserId="14532" LastEditDate="2015-07-19T18:18:07.670" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T18:18:07.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18228" CreationDate="2015-07-17T06:42:55.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &quot;what&quot; mentioned above, NaNoWriMo is definitely a great resource to use to motivate you to produce a lot of writing in a limited amount of time. For your current project, these are my suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pace yourself.&lt;/strong&gt; Plan out how much you plan to write each day to meet your goal of 100 pages in 2 weeks. (That's approximately 7 pages a day, but you'll probably want some time to revise, so go for 8-10 pages a day.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jot down your ideas when you're not writing.&lt;/strong&gt; If sudden inspiration strikes and you can't write at the moment, record them so you don't forget later. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't worry too much about logistics at first.&lt;/strong&gt; First &quot;dump&quot; and just write all your ideas. Keep going and don't dwell too much on the perfect word or way to phrase something. You can polish all of that during the editing period. Stopping too often to change details will make you lose your train of thought.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Beat writer's block.&lt;/strong&gt; It's bound to happen. Find out what works for you (e.g. reading, taking a quick jog, etc. Every writer has their own preferences.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! I hope you find this project enjoyable and very rewarding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14532" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T06:42:55.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7142" CreationDate="2015-07-17T06:52:11.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's good to change up the structure for every few articles, so they don't bore the reader with all the same format. Other than that, I think it would have to do quite a bit with your target audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14532" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T06:52:11.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18252" CreationDate="2015-07-17T08:39:49.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Alexandro said: Neither of those. Many bestsellers are amazingly badly written, and bestsellers come from all genres and settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes a bestseller is marketability and the marketing that are based on this. Every current bestseller has a clearly defined target audience and contains what that audience craves most. (For example, &lt;em&gt;Fifty Shades of Grey&lt;/em&gt; is a condensation of the sex column in current women's magazines.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bestsellers are turned into movies. Therefore a bestseller must be written with the movie in mind. Current bestsellers are almost all novellizations of movie scripts that don't exist. To get your book turned into a movie, you or your agent must have connections to the filmmaking undustry, or you must be a filmmaker yourself (director, producer, actor etc.). (For example, Roth's badly written and badly reader-reviewed &lt;em&gt;Divergent&lt;/em&gt; series was sold to become a movie before the first volume was published.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bestselling authors are good looking. If they are, the media will love to report on them and their work frequently and with lots of photos, and fanboys and fangirls will spend all their allowance on their books. Attractiveness sells. I've personally bought and read and written fan letters to authors simply because they were pretty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Socially competent authors also know how to use current social media to build a community around themselves and their work. (Best example is the YouTube channel of John Green.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T08:39:49.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18259" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-17T11:04:00.447" Score="1" ViewCount="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way/resource whereby I can see reviews left for all of my books across various outlets without having to check them all individually?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I have three books available on Smashwords, Barnes &amp;amp; Noble and Amazon and rather than going through each retailer and subsequently each book, is there a resource that can pull all of the information in from each outlet for each book and show it to me via a dashboard-type interface?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-19T08:34:03.750" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T08:34:03.750" Title="How to view all book reviews in one place?" Tags="|reviews|amazon|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18252" CreationDate="2015-07-17T14:38:02.707" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I had a formula for what makes a book a bestseller, then I'd have a bunch of bestselling books to my name instead of the lame few hundred copies my books sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the biggest factor in making a best-selling book is that the author is already famous. If a big-time Hollywood actor or a well-known politician or a champion athlete writes a book, it will almost automatically sell many copies. (In many cases they don't even write the book. They get someone else to write it and they put their name on it. But that's another story.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Number two is that the author has previously written best-selling books. Now that Tom Clancy and J K Rowling and so on have written best-selling books, anything they write will sell well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Number three is having a broad potential readership. Romance novels tend to sell relatively well because a large percentage of women are interested in romance (and several dozen men). A how-to book about re-inking antique typewriter ribbons will not sell very well because the number of people interested in the subject is tiny to begin with. (Though niche books like this have the advantage that there's not much competition.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, I think there's a lot of luck involved. It is not at all clear to me that best-selling books in general are better written than many books that go nowhere. A really bad book that doesn't meet number 1 or number 2 above will probably not sell well. But there are lots of good books that don't sell. Some books just capture people's attention and create a &quot;buzz&quot;. Others, for whatever reason, don't. Quality of the book is certainly a factor, but it's not simply a matter of &quot;the best books make it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you could say the same about marketing anything. There are restaurants that have really good food that go bankrupt while a restaurant across town with mediocre food does well. There are brilliant gadgets people have invented that never take off while less clever gadgets make millions. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases this is marketing: a bad product with good marketing beats a good product with bad marketing almost every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the book world, there isn't very much real marketing. You get a book on the shelves at the bookstore and/or listed on Amazon and you hope people will buy it. You rarely see TV commercials or newspaper ads for specific books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean to sound negative. I'd just say, &quot;Write the best book you can, do the best you can to promote it, and hope and pray for the best.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T14:38:02.707" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18252" CreationDate="2015-07-17T16:07:43.857" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems you're using the term &lt;em&gt;setting&lt;/em&gt; in a non-standard way to mean genre conventions.  Given that, I would say that a mastery of genre, including the fulfillment of the expectations of the core audience, can bring short-term popularity, but that only good writing will endure over the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth noting that the most popular works typically draw on a given genre, but subvert it or transcend it by taking it in unexpected-but-satisfying new directions (that way they not only pick up the core audience, they expand upon it) --and it takes excellent writing to manage that task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @what noted, however, the impact of &lt;em&gt;selling&lt;/em&gt; can outweigh both quality and genre appeal, at least in the short term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-07-17T16:12:54.997" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T16:12:54.997" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18263" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-17T18:01:42.567" Score="2" ViewCount="1057" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lifetime ago I learned about Rudyard Kipling's 5W1H framework: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have six honest serving men&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  They taught me all I knew &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I call them What and Where and When &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And How and Why and Who &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(from &lt;a href=&quot;http://creatingminds.org/tools/kipling.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Kipling Method&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't hear about them anymore. Is this still in use in writing non-fiction? How is it used? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: I use the servants for my sequence diagrams which I use to visualize non-fiction stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us assume that I want to write a story about me and my mapmaking obsession. Then I would start like:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/l54qr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;My mapmaking story&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(if the diagram is not readable you can download the diagram and open it with a picture viewer)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the top and bottom row are the story's actors and participants (humans, object, places, moments in time etcetera, or the &lt;strong&gt;who&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; and the &lt;strong&gt;where&lt;/strong&gt;). The arrows visualize the activities (the &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt;) between the participants. You read the sequence diagram top-down following the arrows in sequence (the &lt;strong&gt;when&lt;/strong&gt;).&#xA;You can put notes in the diagram to explain the &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; or for other things which need attention or to give more detail on the who, what, were, when or how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14449" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-07-19T12:58:16.227" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T05:09:01.260" Title="Where are the six honest serving men?" Tags="|structure|non-fiction|planning|first-draft|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10855" CreationDate="2015-07-18T00:21:25.413" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One common way to do this is to &lt;strong&gt;have one character that is as new to the environment and knows as little about it as the reader&lt;/strong&gt;. (I think this is what &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/8412/meer2kat&quot;&gt;meer2kat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10857/22633&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; was talking about.) Then as the character learns when s/he needs to know, the readers learn it, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you've read DUNE, consider the part where Paul and mother run away to live among the Fremen. They're a foreign people in an exotic and dangerous place, so at first they ask a lot of questions about how Fremen live and why, but as they learn to understand the Fremen, so do we the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And consider how many movies and first episodes of TV shows begin with the arrival of a new character. They have to get to know the other people, their interrelationships, and the &quot;local rules.&quot; As learn them, the audience does, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling with this exact situation myself, and it's not easy. It's like a tug-of-war between &quot;explain too much and be boring&quot; and &quot;explain too little and be confusing.&quot; Usually I err toward less explanation, then I have someone I trust read a passage. If they're confused or have questions, I reconsider what I've written. Good luck to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14584" LastEditorUserId="22633" LastEditDate="2017-10-07T10:57:33.337" LastActivityDate="2017-10-07T10:57:33.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18265" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-18T02:08:59.000" Score="0" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay so say is my story scene order is in this order in the book. Future scene (insight) --&gt; past scene (flashback) --&gt; present day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think? Will this order be confusing for my readers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14585" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T21:34:28.723" Title="Scene order: is this order of scenes confusing?" Tags="|planning|scene|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18231" CreationDate="2015-07-18T05:06:58.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it were &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; a word in a foreign language, then yes, italicize it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the word has been well known and used in English for about 70 years, and English is very flexible when it comes to stealing words from other languages. I'd say that &amp;mdash; though it have begun life as a Deutsche abkurtzung (German abbreviation) &amp;mdash; by now it can be considered an English word stolen from German, like sauerkraut, Volkswagen, and hamburger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14584" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T05:06:58.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2015-07-18T05:15:48.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember the guideline about every &quot;scene&quot; has to contribute to the overall story you're trying to tell. Any chapter that doesn't further the overall story in some way should be cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that every chapter has a little part of the story to tell. And as soon as the chapter has told its part of the story, it should end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree about keeping them all a standard length. Just like every scene in a movie can be a different length, every chapter in a book can be a different length. Short chapters can just add a detail or two, but important scenes will have more to say and may take longer to say it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14584" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T05:15:48.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-18T19:59:27.320" Score="1" ViewCount="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to locate agents in my area of writing, so as to better target the limited amount of queries I'm sending.  There are several other writers writing in similar genres/niches, and I would be interested in contacting their agents, who clearly have an affinity for this area of writing.  Short of directly tweeting/emailing these authors to ask for their agents (which strikes me as discourteous/unprofessional), is there a database of authors and their agents I could consult?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user12678" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T18:34:21.197" Title="Is it possible to find authors' agents?" Tags="|agent|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18265" CreationDate="2015-07-18T19:59:39.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IT will be confusing for some people. But are you going to use indicators to set them apart or just let them figure it out? Also, is that scene order going to be same throughout the entire story or are you just going to keep it that way for a few chapters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, if the readers really want to understand the book, they'll read rest of it and wouldn't be confused after the first 5 or so chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read a couple of stories that used your order before and it is usually confusing and frustrating at first when I'm trying to understand who the characters are, when a certain event happen and if it makes sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, if your story is interesting, it'll grasp your reader's attention and prone them to want to know what transpires in your story even if the order goes from future to present. It will be like a challenge to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14524" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T19:59:39.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18265" CreationDate="2015-07-18T21:34:28.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put time-stamps at the beginning of each chapter, or time switch, and you should be okay. I'm not sure how you would indicate &quot;present day&quot; if your book starts &quot;in the future,&quot; but that's up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T21:34:28.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18275" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-19T01:00:01.047" Score="3" ViewCount="1831" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anybody know anything about the current market or demand for novellas or novelettes? I'm in the beginning stages of my writing career and it looks like, so far, I struggle with being concise enough for short stories but, also, I have yet to put down enough words for a full-on book. I'm curious if pieces in the 25,000 to 45,000 word count range have any place in modern literature. Please say yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12862" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-04-12T17:45:12.843" LastActivityDate="2023-09-02T10:05:14.587" Title="Market for novellas and/or novelettes" Tags="|fiction|wordcount|book-length|novella|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18275" CreationDate="2015-07-19T03:18:15.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Novellas don't seem to attract as large of an audience as novels, but they definitely have a place in the market. But if novellas are what you're interested in, definitely go for it! There are several well-known novellas out there, including (but not limited to) &lt;em&gt;The Little Prince, Animal Farm, Three Blind Mice&lt;/em&gt;, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14532" LastEditorUserId="14532" LastEditDate="2015-07-19T18:12:40.170" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T18:12:40.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18270" CreationDate="2015-07-19T07:30:03.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at &lt;em&gt;The Complete Idiot's Guide to Finding a Literary Agent&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.penguin.com/static/pages/cig/quickguides/literary-agent.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.penguin.com/static/pages/cig/quickguides/literary-agent.php&lt;/a&gt;), it lists lists of agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T07:30:03.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11007" CreationDate="2015-07-19T07:39:41.927" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I've answered &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/l54qr.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;elsewhere&lt;/a&gt; I use sequence diagrams to map non-fiction (design) stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us assume that I want to write a story about me and my mapmaking obsession. Then I would start like:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/l54qr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;My mapmaking story&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(if the diagram is not readable you can download the diagram and open it with a picture viewer)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the top and bottom row are the story's actors and participants (humans, object, places, moments in time etcetera, or the &lt;strong&gt;who&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; and the &lt;strong&gt;where&lt;/strong&gt;). The arrows visualize the activities (the &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt;) between the participants. You read the sequence diagram top-down following the arrows in sequence (the &lt;strong&gt;when&lt;/strong&gt;).&#xA;You can put notes in the diagram to explain the &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; or for other things which need attention or to give more detail on the who, what, were, when or how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plantuml.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PlantUML&lt;/a&gt; as a tool because it allows me to write my diagram. That way I can combine the diagram with other story ideas or even the first story draft in one simple text file&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14449" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T07:39:41.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18280" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-19T17:44:12.027" Score="7" ViewCount="2245" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the song is already written, sure, easy question. But say you're sitting down to write &lt;em&gt;The Lion King&lt;/em&gt; before any composers have even been brought aboard, before pre-production has even been dreamt of. What do you write? &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;Insert song here about a life philosophy precluding worry or anxiety and focusing on happy times, preferably revolving around a made-up word like 'haboona-tratata'...characters will romp around the jungle while main lion grows older in montage sequence&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this situation handled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3421" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T21:29:05.223" Title="How do screenwriters incorporate song scenes into a screenplay for a musical?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18281" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-19T18:05:49.043" Score="3" ViewCount="3269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know you can add dialogue to the same paragraph as an action to show who's talking, but what happens when a character is making a speech and it's broken up by actions (hand movements, looking at other characters, etc)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I start a new paragraph for each action he does, even though he just continues talking? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I start a new paragraph when he resumes talking? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I have two paragraphs of text, and between them is a sentence of an action, where precisely do I use paragraph breaks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I get rid of all the paragraph breaks, it just turns into a wall of text, but without them, I'm worried it will look needlessly broken up and chaotic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14593" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2015-07-21T07:19:20.227" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T18:45:14.257" Title="Mixing dialogue and action in the same paragraph?" Tags="|style|formatting|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18280" CreationDate="2015-07-19T23:09:51.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I've done for myself is to insert &quot;dummy songs&quot; in my screenplay, that is, existing songs similar to the one that I might want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the screenplay is finished, you have two options (with each song). One is to write a new song to replace the dummy song that you put somewhere. Two is to allow the &quot;dummy&quot; song to continue to fill the space (and get permission to do so).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole idea of these&quot;dummy&quot; songs is to maintain the flow of thought. Once they've served the original purpose, they can be removed as &quot;placebos,&quot; unless they are so central that it's worth retaining them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T23:09:51.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18281" CreationDate="2015-07-20T02:54:27.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could interrupt the dialogue with dashes wherever the action is performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14599" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T02:54:27.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18285" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18293" CreationDate="2015-07-20T06:16:03.867" Score="3" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;Months after starting my first novel (which hasn't made any progress and is still in its first draft) I feel I can only react to a given situation rather than create one. The same seems to apply to my characters. The conversations feel very forced and nothing seems to be helping me make them better. &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Even though I want the novel to be a third person narrative, would it help if I wrote from each character's POV to think like that character and understand how that particular character would react to the situation?&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;What other methods would make the conversations feel more natural?&lt;br/&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wattpad.com/62445868-in-love-twice-1-for-the-last-time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; to what I have written so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10551" LastActivityDate="2020-01-09T04:56:41.783" Title="Thinking as a character" Tags="|fiction|plot|planning|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4624" CreationDate="2015-07-20T14:03:12.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't read romance novels, but I've seen a few romance movies. It seems to me that finding some odd way to get the characters together is pretty typical of such movies. Having two people meet through a dating service is fairly boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So neither of your characters is outgoing enough to initiate a romance, maybe not even outgoing enough to initiate a conversation. So great. Kick around ideas for how two such people could be forced by circumstances to talk to each other and do something together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is actually pretty common in romance stories. Two people are trapped together in a malfunctioning elevator or locked in a room; two people have to work together on a project for their jobs; two people are forced together by some emergency, big or small, like both being victims of a crime, or both having their dogs get loose in a park. Come up with a reason why they would just have to talk to each other about something totally non-romantic, something very matter of fact, some common problem that they have to work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T14:03:12.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18289" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-20T14:51:43.737" Score="1" ViewCount="10819" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the text, I have, e.g. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...a major role to play in role-playing (Smith &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;, 1990).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But can I use the same abbreviation in the bibliography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smith, K. &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 1990. Playing major roles in role plays.&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Psych. Econ.&lt;/em&gt; 44(1): 103–113.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask because the bibliopgraphy is now 12,000+ words and the only way I can think to shorten it is to remove those thousands of co-authors. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aresearchguide.com/12biblio.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here it says you can&lt;/a&gt;, but it's for books.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14607" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T18:19:06.053" Title="Can you use et al. in a Bibliography?" Tags="|technical-writing|editing|citations|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18289" CreationDate="2015-07-20T15:00:51.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is yes! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of a reference is so that you can find a document where you got the source from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So unless Smith, K did two pieces with the same name, with different co-authors (on the same pages in the same journal!) then anyone interested is going to be able to find that document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T15:00:51.007" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18285" CreationDate="2015-07-20T15:40:55.283" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem with dialogue is often that people try to make it sound like real conversation when that isn't the purpose at all. The purpose of dialogue in a novel is to convey a point, but using a character to do so, instead of just telling the fact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry too much about what the character is saying, initially just get their point across, even if it is without dialogue. So maybe in your first draft simply have &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bob told everyone he was going to the shop for a turnip. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then as you learn more about your character you will get a better feel for how he would say that line. So your second draft might replace it with &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey everyone, I'm all out of turnips here! I gotta go shop...&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get too hung up with stuff that is to do with getting to know your characters, you will get to know them as the story progresses. At the end of your first draft you will be able to go back and get a much better feel for what they are going to say. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't aim for perfect on the first draft. (Or the second, third, forth or fifth for that matter) Just know the second (third, forth,fifth) will be a vast improvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T15:40:55.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18292" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-20T16:45:31.393" Score="5" ViewCount="972" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a non-native speaker trying to write in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to my reading of chiefly dated English literature, my vocabulary consists of many terms that are regarded as being archaic nowadays. In the majority of cases I don't know about their archaic condition until I look them up in a dictionary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, however, I conceive a great affection towards suchlike and would like to use them in my own writings. &#xA;I don't know how this may be perceived by native speakers, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I decide whether or not it is appropriate to use a term that is classed as archaic in modern works of literature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13384" LastEditorUserId="13384" LastEditDate="2015-07-20T17:27:00.960" LastActivityDate="2019-12-20T17:00:52.287" Title="Usage of archaic words" Tags="|word-choice|language|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18285" CreationDate="2015-07-20T17:14:05.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the characters are only reacting, give each character something to want. A desire strong enough that the character will struggle to achieve it. Then make the character struggle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For dialogue, give each character an agenda. Things they want from the conversation. Things they do not want to happen. Things they do not want to reveal. And make sure their agendas conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agendas may show up directly in the dialogue. Or they may show up indirectly, in the way the characters say things, or in what they don't say, or in what they pay attention to, or in the way they react to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T17:14:05.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18292" CreationDate="2015-07-20T17:23:13.443" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is very difficult to answer with any finality so I'll present a few thoughts that come to mind and hope they help you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your use of such words creates a style to your writing. Every author has a style and readers usually enjoy styles that are not common. So, having a style that integrates the use of outmoded, though perfectly correct, words would bring a unique style to your writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The hurdle of using such words though is that if you use too many, you may alienate your readers. This is a very ambiguous line and there is no perfect ratio of modern to archaic words that can be prescribed. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other side of this is the possibility that you could get readers interested in expanding their own vocabulary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ultimate success of your writing be will your ability, or lack thereof, to draw the reader in and create a compelling narrative, which is its own challenge regardless of the era of your vocabulary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck! &#xA;Do you have any samples of writing to post here so that we can better gauge the efficacy of your word choice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13997" LastEditorUserId="13997" LastEditDate="2019-12-16T23:22:44.920" LastActivityDate="2019-12-16T23:22:44.920" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18289" CreationDate="2015-07-20T18:19:06.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In APA you can use &lt;em&gt;et al&lt;/em&gt; for in-text citations IF the cited work has &lt;strong&gt;6 or more authors&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, don't take my word for it. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/11/the-proper-use-of-et-al-in-apa-style.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Read this article from the APA.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13997" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T18:19:06.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18228" CreationDate="2015-07-20T18:35:38.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has been mentioned earlier, the method for NaNoWriMo is very effective. It's how I got through my first manuscript in 2 and a half months. I suggest a few things to help with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start with an outline/basic idea of what you want.&lt;/strong&gt; This will help prevent writers block and major rewrites later on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't stop to consider word choice, sentence structure, etc.&lt;/strong&gt; Just write and keep writing until you've blasted through your word count for the day. You can always edit later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are goal-driven, like I am, &lt;strong&gt;give yourself daily/weekly goals to achieve.&lt;/strong&gt; This will help keep you motivated and focused on the goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you're not writing, &lt;strong&gt;keep something with you to take notes on.&lt;/strong&gt; You may get inspiration randomly sitting in a meeting at work or at the doctor's office. If I'm going somewhere where it's acceptable, I usually carry my bluetooth keyboard and my phone, so I can write straight into the document when I'm away from my computer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T18:35:38.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7142" CreationDate="2015-07-21T02:46:30.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen quite effective layouts where articles are thrown in with mixed “media” like recipes, lists, maps, things to do, drawings, opinions…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T02:46:30.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18270" CreationDate="2015-07-21T03:06:03.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;find a copy of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2015 Guide to Literary Agents - Sambuchino, Chuck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2015 Writer's Market - Robert Lee Brewer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T03:06:03.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18275" CreationDate="2015-07-21T03:41:01.173" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is, unfortunately, no real market for that size. You should either expand it to novel length, or discard it as a writing learning experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your writing career, you’ll probably have to “throw away” many writing pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2022-05-22T07:55:59.210" LastActivityDate="2022-05-22T07:55:59.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18275" CreationDate="2015-07-21T06:30:37.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.duotrope.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Duotrope.com&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ralan.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ralan.com&lt;/a&gt; for novella or novelette markets. There are about four to eight market buyers per genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14612" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-07-21T12:10:25.530" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T12:10:25.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="473" CreationDate="2015-07-21T06:37:32.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is related to both touch typing and the Dvorak keyboard. This is not an attempt at an answer, but a testimony of my experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is linked to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/473/is-touch-typing-skill-important-for-being-a-good-writer&quot;&gt;Is touch typing skill important for being a good writer?&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1511/how-important-is-typing-speed-to-a-successful-writing-career&quot;&gt;How important is typing speed to a successful writing career?&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4382/is-it-worth-learning-to-touch-type&quot;&gt;Is it worth learning to touch type&lt;/a&gt;, and also &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1093/is-it-worth-switching-to-dvorak&quot;&gt;Is it worth switching to Dvorak?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided to both learn Touch Typing and switch to the Dvorak keyboard layout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before that I used to type watching the keyboard and almost never the screen. My Qwerty and Azerty (French) keyboards typing speed was about 40 WPM at 98% accuracy. I expect this switch to greatly increase my speed and accuracy up to a professional typist level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dvorak:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started to get familiar with the Dvorak layout; it does seem much more efficient. One of the biggest adventage is the placement of ‘ , . and ; - . I also un-mounted and re-arranged the keys on two of my keyboards which I think was a mistake retrospectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Touch Typing - Week 1 - Week 2:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The start was easy. I only had to learn a few keys. Within hours I was typing 25 WPM, but as I learned more and more keys, it dropped to 20, then 18, then 15, then 12, then 10 WPM and under.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good thing is that i can use any keyboard,just with selecting Dvorak layout. Right now i am typing this on an Azerty (French) keyboard  without looking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Touch Typing - Week 3 – Week 4 :&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had read that around week 3 was the worst, I can confirm. At this stage writing is torturously slow and painstaking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel alienated. I keep wanting to look at the keyboard, yet if I do I get terribly confused. Yet, I don’t know what to do with my head, looking at the screen doesn’t seem natural; I keep wanting to look around to force myself not to look at the keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am also slower than ever. There seem to be a battle between my finger’s muscle memory and my brain key’s location memory. I frequently need to pause and wait a while for my brain to remember and then tell my finger which key to push for that letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will try to keep this updated as I go on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T06:37:32.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18306" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18307" CreationDate="2015-07-21T08:57:37.537" Score="1" ViewCount="855" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my latest project i developed new species not far different from humanoids. I am making whole history, gender interaction, abilities, their psychology and trying to discribe their life and development from birth to adult person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I even made patology report and developed special character, who made experiments from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &quot;How far is good to go to discribe species its abilities and complexity for reader to be still interested in it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T04:04:50.243" Title="Building new species. How deep and how complex?" Tags="|character-development|science-fiction|planning|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18306" CreationDate="2015-07-21T10:04:49.150" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Treat fantastic, made-up facts the same as you would treat facts about our own world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you describe the physiology of human beings when you write a book about people like you and me? No. Neither should you go into medical detail when you write about aliens – unless your protagonist is a scientist studying them. In that case, give us the same amount of detail as you would if you were writing an episode of &lt;em&gt;Medical Detectives&lt;/em&gt;, that is, do go into detail, but keep it limited to what is relevant to your plot. Do not stifle the dynamic of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you write about normal people habitually interacting with the normal aliens they live with, mention their physical characteristics only when they become relevant to the story, in the same way you would describe the color of the eyes of a person your protagonist is in love with, but won't usually report the whole spectrum of possible eye colors that men and women might have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By treating fantasy the same as facts are conventionally treated in fiction, you make the fantasy more believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume you are writing &lt;em&gt;narrative&lt;/em&gt; fiction. If, on the other hand, you are writing a &lt;em&gt;Bestiarium Imaginarium&lt;/em&gt;, don't hesitate to give us the full &lt;em&gt;Atlas of Alien Anatomy&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above answers your question about how far your in-text descriptions should go. For yourself, as a writer, you should of course be clear even about details that don't make it into the text. If you don't know that humans have differing eye colors, you will miss the importance of eye color for a person staring into the eyes of their loved one. But this does not mean that you have to define all possible details of your alien anatomy before you start writing. Just invent the most important aspects, and make up some of the minor details as you go along. You will have to rewrite anyway, and will have ample opportunity to correct small mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-07-22T06:57:34.253" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T06:57:34.253" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18306" CreationDate="2015-07-21T10:05:42.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever point you choose on that spectrum you will have some readers who won't like the place that you have chosen. You will never get the balance exactly right for everyone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure some people would enjoy a purely anthropological study of another species, if it was well written and contained interesting insights - myself included. Equally, that would bore others to death. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would aim to keep the details subtlety conveyed. I prefer to infer characteristics than to be told them directly. I like to have some gaps that make me wonder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on the type of story you are telling, for example it would be difficult to naturally talk about the gender interactions of humans as a human. Whereas you could make a more naturally flowing story if you were talking about human gender interactions as seen from a non-human perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It ultimately depends on what your goal for the story is, if you want a vehicle to convey the complexities you have created in this species then choose a story that helps to exhibit that. If you want the species characteristics to be incidental to the story you want to tell then work out how best to tell that story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decide on the story that &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; want to tell. The story that you would want to read. Write the story that you are passionate about, that you are excited to tell. Help the reader to understand what is so special about this species and they will enjoy the journey you take them on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T10:05:42.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18309" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-21T14:33:11.337" Score="6" ViewCount="1977" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking of a few ideas for characters and concepts, and I am aiming to create a massive world: a world with its own deep history and rich lore. However, I feel like this is difficult to do, because of the fact that if I based this world in sort of a fantasy realm, it would be too similar to things like &lt;em&gt;Lord Of The Rings&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Game Of Thrones&lt;/em&gt;, and if I base it in a science fiction realm, it would be too similar to things like &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt;.&#xA;   So my question is, how do I go about creating a completely original world or even concept? I know it can't really be explained that easily, but maybe I could get some ideas about ways to get something original and stay away from overused concepts. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;---Thank you guys for responding, but I would like to add: yes, I feel that I do have original concepts and characters to add to this world, and no, I'm not looking for commercial success. I'm doing this for the fun of it, and I'm really trying to set it in a place that's pretty original and free of cheap clichés. I feel like there's too many fantasy/medieval and space/futuristic concepts and stories, and I want to make something free of those, something original. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14615" LastEditorUserId="14532" LastEditDate="2015-07-22T12:48:55.107" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T04:26:06.737" Title="Creating An Original World" Tags="|world-building|originality|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18309" CreationDate="2015-07-21T16:27:57.037" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Complete originality is a bit of a wild goose chase.  Neither Lord of the Rings, nor Game of Thrones nor Star Wars takes place in a &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; original setting.  They've all borrowed extensively from various sources.  LOTR is based in large part on old myths, GOT is a fairly typical medieval-themed fantasy world and Star Wars is quite consciously a fairy tale in outer space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes a story or setting original is not ultimately about whether elements of it are familiar, but whether or not you're bringing something new and interesting to the table.  Once piece of writing might be different in every important particular, but still feel derivative of another, because the details have all changed, but the overall concept is nothing new.  Another one might be all-but-plagiarized, yet still feel new and fresh because of a new perspective on the old idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T16:27:57.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18270" CreationDate="2015-07-21T16:37:07.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agentquery.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AgentQuery.com&lt;/a&gt; has a searchable directory of agents that can be filtered by genre and/or keyword.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T16:37:07.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18312" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-21T17:43:14.110" Score="2" ViewCount="1291" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone told me that if I use my own ISBN on books I publish through Createspace that I would not be allowed to purchase copies of my own book. Though I think this is ludicrous, I would like to know, with absolute certainty, whether or not it is true. (I always use the free ISBN; it just makes my life a lot easier and I can't afford to purchase them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14618" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T20:15:24.027" Title="Purchasing copies of my own book with my own ISBN from Amazon prohibited?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|isbn|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18309" CreationDate="2015-07-21T18:11:33.840" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To build on Chris Sunami's answer, you don't want a universe or setting that is entirely foreign, lest your potential readers not find a way to identify with it even subconsciously.  But given your examples, I definitely understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say the most important aspect of a new setting is immersion; the more you can develop the world and characters, the more likely people are going to be to enjoy the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, taking on the task of a new setting is daunting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T18:11:33.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18312" CreationDate="2015-07-21T18:29:18.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can definitely buy your own books from CreateSpace, even when you choose the free ISBN. Here's a gratuitous self promo of my book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://newtonsaber.com/AmazonBooks/BookLink.aspx?author=saberDoNothing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do Nothing, Get Rich : You're Never Too Lazy To Be Rich&lt;/strong&gt; (amazon link)&lt;/a&gt;, which has a CreateSpace provided ISBN and I have ordered author's copies which I can give away, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copies which you order from your own createspace account are quite a bit cheaper also.&#xA;The one issue you will notice is that he CreateSpace ISBN is registered to CreateSpace so your books show up as published by CreateSpace on amazon.com but not a big deal.&#xA;My book shows this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (July 31, 2013)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, getting the CreateSpace provided, free ISBN doesn't cause any problems at all.&#xA;I really like the CreateSpace platform and it is linked directly to amazon's kindle (digital) books offering too.  My book is available as a kindle book also.&#xA;And when your readers buy your hard copy you can provide the kindle book for free as I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T18:29:18.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18270" CreationDate="2015-07-21T18:34:21.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most books, the author will have an acknowledgements page or two, and they almost always include the name of their agent. A few other helpful places to look: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acknowledgements page in the back of the author's book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://aaronline.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;aaronline.org&lt;/a&gt; (AAR is an association of agents that requires a certain level of ethics, e.g. no reading fees)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Writers Digest's Guide to Literary Agents&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersmarket.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writers Market&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look for big conferences in your genre - they usually have visiting agents. (For example, I write thrillers, so I looked at the International Thriller Writers conference page where they listed agents coming to the conference.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BIG ONE&lt;/strong&gt; Look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://publishersmarketplace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Publishers Marketplace&lt;/a&gt;. They have a listing of all agents, authors, book deals, etc. that are going on right now in the industry. It does cost a little, but it is definitely worth it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T18:34:21.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18309" CreationDate="2015-07-21T18:57:23.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to take my own advice, and answer your question from a writing perspective, which (I think) boils down to: How original must my setting be, in order for my story to be worthy of readers' time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To start, try looking at &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10855/how-to-introduce-a-world-thats-alien-to-the-reader/10856#10856&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; and answers.  One of the drawbacks of an original setting is that you've got a lot of explaining to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, consider that many of the most successful books (commercially and/or artistically) do NOT have especially original settings.  For example, you could certainly write a book about a world where the speed of light was comparable to the speed of sound, but then you'd have to explain special relativity, and possibly also the grand unified theory.  It would be a very strange world.  Personally, I'd love a well-done book like that, but I expect your readership would be small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are hoping for commercial success, then what you want (ideally) is a world that seems original (at first glance) but which is easily comprehensible to a modern reader (with some explaining), so that your world is, in fact, not really that original.  Examples are LOTR, GOT, Harry Potter, and Star Wars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, you could develop a totally unique world for your book, but if you then merely plunk a copy of Romeo and Juliet into it, people will just say, &quot;Meh.  Romeo and Juliet.  How unoriginal.&quot;  The originality for which you should strive is to combine many well-known aspects (world, setting, characters, plot, style, etc.) in such a manner, and with such twists from the expected, that the TOTALITY is original.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T18:57:23.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18312" CreationDate="2015-07-21T20:15:24.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have ordered many copies of my own books through Create Space, some of which have my own ISBN and others have a CS ISBN. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean ordering books from Amazon per se  rather than Create Space, I don't think I've ever done that, but why would you want to? If you order through Create Space, you get author pricing, which is much lower than the list price, even after subtracting the royalty you would get back. I'd be quite surprised if they stopped you from giving them money, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if the person who told you this was simply confused or if they didn't mean what you thought they meant or what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the only differences between using a CS ISBN and your own ISBN on CS are: (a) if you use your own ISBN you have to buy it from Bowkers (or if you live outside the U.S., from your country's authorized source); (b) with your own ISBN you can't sell through CS's &quot;library&quot; channel&quot;; (c) with your own ISBN your name shows up as the publisher, with CS's they show up as the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T20:15:24.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18309" CreationDate="2015-07-22T09:33:10.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my mind, creating an original world that still makes sense to the reader is best done by coming up with one central idea about this world and then &lt;em&gt;deriving&lt;/em&gt; most of the other details from this idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Science Fiction this is often a technological development that may or may not be already starting in our days. For example in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Altered Carbon&lt;/a&gt; one such idea is the &lt;em&gt;stack&lt;/em&gt; that records the wearers consciousness from birth and allows to upload this consciousness into another body. This has a host of social consequences: Immortality for the super rich, massive overpopulation leading to most stacks being stored most of the time, elite soldiers whose consciousness can be transmitted with the speed of light to any conflict, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Fantasy this is usually connected to the magic system and/or some ancient conflict. Best both. For example the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wheel of Time&lt;/a&gt; is driven by the one power which is divided into a male and a female component, unfortunately in the ancient conflict the male half was tainted, leading to madness among all male &quot;wizards&quot;. Fast forward three thousand years … male magic users are hunted down, the most powerful force is a bunch of female sorceresses, the ancient symbol for the one power (the yin-yang symbol) is now divided into the flame and the dragon's fang, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the more original you are with your central idea the more likely you will leave these genres behind. Just take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_Grey_1:_The_Road_to_High_Saffron&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Shades of Grey&lt;/a&gt; (no not 50…), which describes a society &quot;wherein social class is determined by one's ability to perceive colour.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to create an original world you don't have to be creative for every little detail. You just have to come up with the one defining characteristic and then be very consistent about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14628" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T09:33:10.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2162" CreationDate="2015-07-22T09:36:05.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had same problem. My main character is affected of sort of DID (dissociative identity disorder). I made my way in a different path than other answerers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Will be all of them dominate or you will have one main personality and other will be something like voices in your head?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Will your other personalities take control of a &quot;body&quot; and its actions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These questions must be answered first, i think, because it is pin point task for you to write about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally tried to make other personalities by myself. It is akward, different. Imagine yourself that you have in head two other people and everything you do, every decission you make you consult with other people and their vote is same weighted as yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consulted this with psychologist and read books about DID to have enough information about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now i have main character with about 5 different personalities of him and in writing it looks like he is speaking not about him, but about them in himself. It is fun, but you need to be sure, when different personality will affect your characters actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this will help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T09:36:05.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18309" CreationDate="2015-07-22T10:05:09.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;i am new to this so treat me kindly-&#xA;the things that you need to worry about, are three factors to gain originality according to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;magic/tech/maybe both: have something new and interesting- something that people are willing and eager to read more about and understand this new system that you are bringing alive. in case of tech, just because the tech is the same(because you cannot bring something new just because you want it to be new- if we dont have a machine that makes your waste edible, it is because doing so is not feacible and because it is disgusting!) you can still make it interesting by giving it new names and different history about how it comes about(the best example i can think about is wheel of time- where they bring in cannons and and are called dragons- and mentions are made to something called shock lance- which i think is a gun.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;history- most stories have conflict in it. and having a history behind the conflict that the readers can sympathize with and understand is always good. getting the reader invested in the quest of the protagonist because he/she wants that side to win and not because they want the hero to win is also good.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;social structure and the power structure. and reason for conflict. we have too many discrimination based on such and such or heir of important family wrongfully overthrown coming back to claim his &quot;rightful&quot; whatever. something original in both the social structure and a reason for the conflict/drama/whatever taking place in the story would be good&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that said,characters that react logically, more than originally is more important though. And dont be too worried about cliches. while throwing in too many is bad(and some cliches are bad. full stop.), you have to remember, a cliche is something that many people use/find. and that is because people like it and it is more logical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and i would like to reiterate something mentioned by someone else here:&#xA;in-depth information is the best way to bring massive originality into the book- but beware of overdoing it- dropping a big lump into the readers lump will bore them too much. slowly unraveling the information will keep the readers hanging wanting to understand more about the world that they are reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14630" LastEditorUserId="14630" LastEditDate="2015-07-23T04:26:06.737" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T04:26:06.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17690" CreationDate="2015-07-22T12:57:32.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You ought really read everything Liddell Hart wrote.&#xA;They are no nonsense literature, which is also very well written and easy to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the technology will be different (seeing how you said your fictional story takes place in the future) real strategy is what you'd be best off studying. For the equipment, anyone can go and read the latest scientific american and guess what kind of gear shall be around. (And most of it had been anticipated by Smith, Vogt, and Heinlein long ago ... ) Whatever anyone can do doesn't really pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creative use of strategy will allow you to build in great plot twists, which are understated and unexpected. Yet they have large impact as the story develops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13168" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T12:57:32.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18309" CreationDate="2015-07-22T16:05:28.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Developing your world around a central concept or thought experiment that you want to explore is a tried and tested method, as is basing it on the needs of your plot and extrapolating from there. Both might, however, fail to provide you with inspiration for the details that are not directly connected to that central theme, in which case you might end up with a setting that has little to offer besides said theme. Since you're aiming for &quot;deep history and rich lore&quot;, that is probably something you want to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genre mashups, or setting your story in a less well-explored place and period in human history, can work very well if you're interested in adding &quot;weirdness&quot; or unfamiliar elements, while keeping it easily accessible. Bonus: Agents and editors nowadays seem to love that, and it's easy to pitch.&#xA;It might, however, require a lot of research (especially the latter option). Depending on your requirements, this might also still feel too derivative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a few RPG-esque games out there that focus on creating a world rather than playing &quot;in&quot; it, usable on your own or with other players. If you think a more structured approach might help you, that might be worth checking out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I practice a very simple form of this, starting with a basic impression (a song, a painting, a period in history, something that piques my interest), then defining a small set of &quot;powers&quot; that represent concepts I'd like to explore: natural laws that differ from our own, magic systems, gods or important technologies, plot demands. These &quot;powers&quot; then take turns introducing elements into the world or interacting with them. That usually allows me to build a deeper and more complex world. Randomized elements (Tarot cards, lists of famous quotes, I've even used an online poetry generator once) can help provide inspiration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14223" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T16:05:28.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18309" CreationDate="2015-07-22T16:31:15.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, writing boils down to resonating with myself and my audience which means both good news and bad news for anyone looking to avoid cliches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Bad news: Cliches are the typical way to resonate with your audience&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes cliches so common is that they work well and things that work well tend to be foundational. Stray too far from the accepted foundation and you tend to get either &quot;new and brilliant&quot; or &quot;weird and ugh!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Good news: The audience is constantly reevaluating what is ugh&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whoever said it's all been done was mistaken. Our culture is constantly churning over how we feel about stuff and &lt;em&gt;unacceptable&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;acceptable&lt;/em&gt; start getting swapped around over time. The result is there is &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; something new. For example, sparkly, romantic vampires probably wouldn't have worked in the 50's, but it did in our era. What may not work today may very well work tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, though, I think a cliche is like a cookie. I'd much rather have an expertly baked cookie made with the boring ol' classic ingredients than taste test a bunch of cookies made with new and fancy ingredients, so don't worry too much about having &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; cliches around -- just make sure to make them solid. But try something new and if you can feel the audience isn't going to resonate, then fall back to the tried and true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14466" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T16:31:15.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16778" CreationDate="2015-07-23T02:46:24.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an Australian combat sport called &quot;WhipBoxing&quot;. Competitors clad in Drizabone trenchcoats and fencing masks compete for points by striking each other with bullwhips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It'd be worth checking out videos of the Chinese Nine-Section Chain Whip. Similar techniques would be possible with a more standard leather whip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In film, there's a vamp character in &quot;Underworld&quot; who dual-wields silver whips, but it's not all that inspiring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14637" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T02:46:24.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18335" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-23T06:53:06.760" Score="3" ViewCount="719" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a relatively new writer and sometimes I feel like my writing is too bland and that I'm struggling to develop my writer's voice. Does anyone have any good tips?&#xA;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14640" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T20:12:41.260" Title="Developing your writer's voice" Tags="|style|creative-writing|writers-block|voice|learning|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18335" CreationDate="2015-07-23T07:25:06.257" Score="6" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just keep writing. Writing is something you have to (and can) learn. So allow yourself the time (and many failures) to do so. Think of writing as being similar to learning a language or learning a craft. Practise makes perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write what you care about. If you are not emotionally involved in what you write about, it will not touch your readers either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I do not know you, and people care about different things, I cannot recommend what that might be for you. But generally it helps if you put something of yourself into your characters, and something of your own experiences into your story. The despair you have felt when your first boy-friend dumped you can inform your portraial of a mother losing her first child; you love of Japanese manga can serve as a basis for the dedication of a scientist for his research. While the individual experiences differ, the basic emotions are the same across all people and allow us to feel compassion and understand each other. So use this to transfer what you know to what you haven't yet experienced yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have fun. If writing is torture, reading will be torture. Be honest with yourself and write only if you actually enjoy writing. Some people enjoy the idea of being a writer, but don't actually enjoy writing itself. You won't be successful if you do not enjoy the process, and would have both more joy in life and more success with whatever you do if you found out what you really want to do and did that. If you experience a lack of joy in writing, have the courage to explore your interests and do something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T07:25:06.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18337" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18339" CreationDate="2015-07-23T08:16:40.190" Score="5" ViewCount="2772" Body="&lt;p&gt;Situation: You have an imaginary world, fantasy, sci-fi, whatever, and you are at a point where, as an author, you know a suitable quote for the situation a character is dealing with. Is it inappropriate to quote from something that might not even happen in that universe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character is in trouble situation on a planet and danger is closing in. He is in a good mood and he is speaking over a com with his mates, quoting: &quot;Houston, we got a problem.&quot; But in this universe for example Earth does not exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can i have your opinion on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastEditorDisplayName="user14838" LastEditDate="2015-08-10T13:41:56.763" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T13:41:56.763" Title="Is it appropriate to use real-life quotes in fantasy/sci-fi novels set in alternate worlds?" Tags="|characters|fantasy|science-fiction|quotes|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18337" CreationDate="2015-07-23T09:12:57.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It very largely would depend on the quote you are using, and how you are using it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using 'Houston we've got a problem' on a planet that has no Houston is going to leave the reader a little confused. Using 'Foobar we've got a problem' would fit better, and the reader would understand the context you're likely aiming for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing to be careful of is to avoid making your writing sound clichéd, unless very carefully used reusing quotes can make your writing feel tired. It also robs the story of your involvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd imagine that if Arnie had used somebody else's quote instead of 'I'll be back' the story would have suffered, and &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; have been much less successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T09:12:57.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18337" CreationDate="2015-07-23T09:23:37.943" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please, don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have often encountered this in Fantasy and Science Fiction, and it breaks my make-believe. I am immediately thrown out of my beautiful escapist reverie and back on my sofa. I hate when authors do that. I expect a fiction to be consistent, and the narrator has to be part of the fiction if this is to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only setup where a quote like yours is acceptable is if the narrator/protagonist is transported to the fantasy world and experiences and evaluates it before the background of our own world. Then you can imagine something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Houston, we got a problem.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;What is a you-stone, John?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-07-23T22:58:20.487" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T22:58:20.487" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18337" CreationDate="2015-07-23T09:24:51.950" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;For your &quot;Houston&quot; example, definitely not if Apollo 13 is not culturally relevant to the person saying it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use some sayings from this universe in your universe, for example &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because this could come about without someone having seen The Godfather Part II. It's just advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But any quote or saying that relies on the speaker having access to a cultural facet that they do not have access to would not make any sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3857" LastEditorUserId="3857" LastEditDate="2015-07-24T07:25:23.280" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T07:25:23.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18337" CreationDate="2015-07-23T10:48:52.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion it's ok to use such quotes, if an &quot;explanation&quot; is following, like: &quot;He didn't really know, why those words appeared in his mind. They made no sense, but jsut sounded right in this situation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you use this too often, it surely will break the idea of your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14442" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T10:48:52.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18335" CreationDate="2015-07-23T11:33:52.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two tips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Read.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This probably sounds strange at first. But I find some similarities between writing and speaking. You learned your speaking habits from those around you--your parents and caretakers when you were younger, your teachers (hopefully, at least as far as grammar and vocabulary goes), and nowadays more likely your friends and acquaintances. You have the option to form your writing voice more consciously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You find your own voice bland? Well, try to find some writers whose voices you think have qualities you admire. Maybe it's a sort of tongue-in-cheek humor, or understatements. Maybe it's a lot of detail, or maybe you admire how they simply hint at things and simultaneously make things very clear.&#xA;Read them a lot. Expose yourself to it as much as possible. Analyze if you feel like it, though I wouldn't say analysis is absolutely necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Write.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; voice, and you can only develop it by exercising it. If you find a few authors you like, according to tip #1, try imitating their style. Heck, if there's a radio talk show host you like, or you think your English professor is witty, try imitating their way of expressing themselves in writing.&#xA;Developing a voice takes time, and practice, but I'm a firm believer in effort and practice, not talent, being the key to success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; You may also find &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5414/how-do-you-find-your-unique-style&quot;&gt;How do you find your unique style?&lt;/a&gt; helpful, and my advice is essentially the same as the first answer there. Heh. Only saw that afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9951" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T14:12:56.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18337" CreationDate="2015-07-23T14:01:59.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the quote is in reference to something that would not exist at all in the world you've created, it is completely inappropriate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if it happens to be a quote that would make contextual sense (no references to anything in our world), I would &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; avoid it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References to things that happen in our world, in a world that is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; ours, only serve to pull the reader out of the narrative flow - whether they reference something that is in our world, or are just a quote from an historic figure or novel.  There is no reason for those characters to know about that quote, and using it cheapens the value of the fictional world, while robbing you of the opportunity to write your own memorable quote for the situation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: By using a real-world quote as a literary shorthand, you sacrifice the quality of your work and the originality of your world.  Unless you've crafted a world where the quoting character specifically &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; from Earth, don't do this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5744" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T14:01:59.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18337" CreationDate="2015-07-23T14:39:53.100" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is certainly valid in some contexts, e.g., in a parody, or while &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LeaningOnTheFourthWall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;leaning on the fourth wall&lt;/a&gt;, for example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And using this device you can communicate if there are any issues.&quot; explained Houston.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, great, but what if I have to fix it first, «Houston, we've had a problem?»&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would advise you against using it if you are not 120% sure it will be received well by the readers, in particular if it breaks the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;willing suspension of disbelief&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4619" LastEditorUserId="4619" LastEditDate="2015-07-23T14:49:07.670" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T14:49:07.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18337" CreationDate="2015-07-23T14:46:53.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Character is in trouble situation on a planet and danger is closing in. He is in a good mood and he is speaking over a com with his mates, quoting: &quot;Houston, we got a problem.&quot; But in this universe for example Earth does not exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to edge away from the opinion part and try to focus on the when and why it may be appropriate.  As with so many things in writing, this is from personal observation more than it is a decree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who is your target audience?&lt;/strong&gt;  Is your story intended to be light reading?  Use out-of-universe colloquialisms as you see fit, if you feel they help make a point.  Are you writing something more involved, where the expectation is that your audience memorize or visualize your setting?  Stick to your setting; it might be disingenuous to your audience otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the focus of your story?&lt;/strong&gt;  Is it a period piece, a walk-of-life in a specific setting?  Out-of-universe is not your friend: a slip-up may be forgiven, or it may ruin the experience for your readers.  Is the actual setting a story aid, a backdrop more than it is the point of the story, then a brief out-of-universe reference might do the trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out-of-universe references can be a useful tool because they may connect more directly with your audience &lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt;.  Used sparingly, they can bring a point across succinctly or effectively.  But use them too often, and you're telling the audience that, yeah, this story might have been better in a different setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Emphasis on &lt;strong&gt;&quot;may&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; because cultural references, by their nature, require knowledge of the culture in question.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Shall we play a game?&quot;&lt;/a&gt; may instill a sense of foreboding in some, and be non-sensical to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14646" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T14:46:53.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18335" CreationDate="2015-07-23T15:04:37.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always considered &quot;finding your voice&quot; something vague and meaningless, like &quot;finding your inner you&quot; or &quot;finding your true self&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens in reality is this: you copy your favorite writers, and then, gradually, their style starts merging with yours (that is to say, your own feelings, your own thoughts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal example: I started by writing like &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Haruki Murakami&lt;/a&gt;, but I don't like jazz so I don't include it in my writing. Neither cats, wells, or Japan (since I don't live in that country). I did keep his lyrical prose, surrealism, and use of metaphors, though--then mixed all that with my love for science, rationality, and philosophy. Also, I don't agree with writing a story that doesn't have a clear theme/meaning, so I decided not to pick that from him (he's still my favorite writer, though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, don't think too much about it. Just write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And be careful, many writers use this finding-my-voice thing to procrastinate, to have an excuse to not to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-07-23T15:57:20.393" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T15:57:20.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18335" CreationDate="2015-07-23T18:24:18.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you already have a voice. It is difficult for writers to judge their own voices. You live with your voice all day long, in your head, so it seems normal to you, and boring. Other people (most of whom exist outside your head to some extent) don't live with your voice all day long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do other people say about your voice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think there are things you can do to explore and refine your own voice. I like playing with writing exercises. Two kinds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Goldilocks&lt;/strong&gt; exercises. Pick something that you can vary about your writing. Sentence length, say. Take something you've written and rewrite it using sentences no longer than 10 words (or 7 if 10 is too easy). Notice the effects. Then rewrite it again using sentences no shorter than 25 words (or 35). Notice the effects. Given everything you learned from those two rewrites, rewrite one more time, focusing on how you can use sentence length to get the effects you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use goldilocks exercises for anything that you can use more of or less of. Like description. Describe a setting using no more than seven words. Describe the same setting using no more than 100 words. Notice the effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tie one habit behind your back&lt;/strong&gt; exercises. Pick any feature of writing. Rewrite a scene with &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; uses of that feature. None. Zero. No form of the verb &quot;to be.&quot; No adjectives. No dialogue. No exposition. Notice what challenges that poses for you. Notice what you have to do to overcome those challenges. Now you know more ways to do whatever you normally do with &quot;to be&quot; or adjectives or exposition. Given what you've learned, rewrite your scene focusing on the effects of thing you just experimented with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more that doesn't fit into either of those categories: &lt;strong&gt;The Horrible Awful Brutal Word Count Massacre.&lt;/strong&gt; Take a scene you've written. Remove ten percent of the paragraphs. Then remove ten percent of the remaining sentences. Then remove ten percent of the remaining words. Try to cut the least important paragraphs, sentences, and words, but you will have to cut things that matter. Count the words. That's your word count limit. Rewrite the scene to say everything the original scene said, but without exceeding your word count limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Choices.&lt;/strong&gt; None of these exercises is about what it seems to be about on the surface. Eliminating &quot;to be&quot; is not (really) about eliminating &quot;to be.&quot; It's about discovering the effects of &quot;to be,&quot; and alternative ways to achieve those effects. That gives you &lt;em&gt;choices.&lt;/em&gt; Same for sentence length. Same for word count. When you play with one variable, you learn unexpected things about other variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each is about noticing the &lt;em&gt;choices&lt;/em&gt; at your disposal, and the &lt;em&gt;effects&lt;/em&gt; of those choices. Once you are aware of the possibilities, you can make the choices consciously for a while. Then they will fade into the background and become incorporated into the voice you are developing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your choices are your voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-07-23T18:44:04.593" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T18:44:04.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18337" CreationDate="2015-07-23T18:42:33.160" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've actually seen this used deliberately, to help establish the character of the... err... character in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paultwister.com/lpt01/&quot;&gt;In the first chapter of The Tales of Paul Twister&lt;/a&gt;, we're introduced to Paul, a thief-for-hire in a magical world who's got a bit of a sour, snarky attitude about the world around him in general and his line of work in particular.  He's been hired for a job that looks like it'll be easy, and then things go sideways and he decides to turn on his employer.  And then we get this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[The employer] gasped and wheezed. “What are you doing? This is treachery! We had a deal!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I growled at him in my most menacing tone of voice. “I am &lt;em&gt;altering&lt;/em&gt; our&#xA;  deal. Pray that &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt; does not alter it any further.” Yeah, I know. No&#xA;  one in this wretched kingdom is gonna get a reference like that. But&#xA;  it made me sound all badass, which is what I was going for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then the reader realizes that a handful of things that seem a bit unusual about Paul so far suddenly make sense: he's &quot;not from around here;&quot; somehow the protagonist in this high-fantasy story is from modern-day Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may or may not be at all relevant to the story you're working on; simply including it as an example to show that doing something like this can have a valid use in some stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1933" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T18:42:33.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18281" CreationDate="2015-07-23T18:43:54.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a judgement call. You can certainly combine dialogue and actions in the same paragraph, and it's generally a good idea to do so when writing about someone giving a speech. But as you said, the &quot;wall of text&quot; is also a potential problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speech your character is giving will probably have separate ideas in it, times when you would make a paragraph break if you were transcribing the speech. That's likely a good place to make the break in your action/dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The family was all staring at me, all waiting for me to start making&#xA;  sense. I did my best. &quot;I know it's been a long time. I know it's been&#xA;  hard to figure out what I've been up to, and I'm sorry if that's been&#xA;  frustrating.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I took a deep breath. It was hard to argue with an introduction that&#xA;  general, but I was about to get into the meat of it all, and that's&#xA;  where the trouble would come. &quot;The thing is, I've been doing some&#xA;  digging. Some research, and what I've found has changed my mind about&#xA;  so much. First of all,&quot; I said, fixing my gaze on Charlie, &quot;I found&#xA;  out about that night. The night you and Alexandra made the deal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alexandra and Charlie exchanged shocked looks and Charlie started to&#xA;  sputter out a denial, but I held up my hand and, miraculously, he&#xA;  complied with my request for silence. I guess I must have really&#xA;  caught him by surprise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And I know about everything you did after that, all the ways the deal&#xA;  played out...&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Might not make sense without the context, but I think it shows the general idea? Mixing dialogue and actions in the same paragraph is good, but it's also good to avoid walls of text by using logical paragraph breaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T18:43:54.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18259" CreationDate="2015-07-23T18:50:22.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of any way to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, it's kind of a lame answer, but I think it's the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T18:50:22.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18365" CreationDate="2015-07-23T23:48:18.237" Score="2" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;leading&lt;/a&gt; (i.e., &lt;em&gt;line spacing&lt;/em&gt;) commonly considered appropriate for most types of blogs? I'm referring, specifically, to &quot;regular&quot; blog posts, i.e. not asides, snippets, galleries, etc.¹&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my purposes, you could define this as a minimum of 500 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I'm not talking about a &quot;standard&quot; leading (although if, by some miracle, it exists, please do tell), but merely one that is &lt;em&gt;commonly agreed upon&lt;/em&gt; or, at the &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; least, commonly &lt;em&gt;used&lt;/em&gt;. (Basically, I'll take whatever you can give me; I just want to get &lt;em&gt;as close as possible&lt;/em&gt; to a standard as one can observe in blog writing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;¹ On WordPress.com, these would be labeled &lt;em&gt;Text&lt;/em&gt; posts, the others often being &lt;em&gt;Photo&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Video&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Quote&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Link&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Aside&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Gallery&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Status&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Audio&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;Chat&lt;/em&gt; posts. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/post-formats/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;See here.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T19:00:23.087" Title="Appropriate leading for blogs?" Tags="|formatting|blog|conventions|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18355" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18363" CreationDate="2015-07-24T00:36:06.873" Score="3" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was in primary school, I was told to use 1.0-line leading for papers; in secondary school, this jumped to 2.0 lines; in early tertiary school (i.e. college/university), I was told to use 1.5 line; and then, after my 3&lt;sup&gt;rd&lt;/sup&gt;/4&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; year began, more and more I was expected to do 1.15-line leading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Primary School&lt;/strong&gt;: 1.0 line&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Secondary School&lt;/strong&gt;: 2.0 lines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Early Tertiary&lt;/strong&gt;: 1.5 line&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mid-to-Late Tertiary&lt;/strong&gt;: 1.15 line&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have expectations actually changed for academic papers, or is it that expectations have not changed but vary depending on the skill level? Or is it just combination?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="14651" LastEditDate="2015-07-27T21:01:50.150" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T13:41:44.670" Title="Has leading changed over the last 15 years?" Tags="|formatting|academic-writing|trends|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12839" CreationDate="2015-07-24T01:47:04.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm also an aspiring writer, and am working on a TV series. I want to kill my main character too, the protagonist. I want to do this because I want my style to be more realistic and believable, not all planned out and outlined like most fiction. In real life does the protagonist live forever, let alone win? No. In reality heroes die. All the time. Every day, in fact. Reality doesn't follow a certain set of rules and formulas. Things out of our control and that we don't expect happen. Things don't always happen the way we want them to. But in fiction they have to! I say screw that. Make it modeled after reality, not a plot or structure someone came up with that rarely or never happens in the real world. That's just my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14653" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T01:47:04.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18306" CreationDate="2015-07-24T04:04:50.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I try to write about new species, and they're part of the ordinary world of the novel - but obviously completely unknown to the reader, then I actually have to know all of their peculiarities much better than I would have had to know if they had been new, unknown species to the world of the novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the things about people we all know well on a subconscious level, so we don't have to worry about having to describe certain objects, motivations or even physical reactions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same thing should apply with new species you create. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that with the new species only you know about, it's easy to forego millions of years of &quot;their&quot; evolution (and potentially even miss the lessons from the evolution of humans as something the reader will likely reference in their mind) to arrive at a completely implausible and flat concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, I strongly believe it still pays to do this kind of work, but not for the story itself, but as part of research for it. &#xA;Write it well and thoroughly, maybe take whatever is already part of the story and connects to the species, and write it down elsewhere in your &quot;research&quot; materials, expanding more on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, if you are serious about it, you will build a guidebook on the species, from history, to physical features, emotional composition, etc. etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you could always totally wing it too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14654" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T04:04:50.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18354" CreationDate="2015-07-24T05:46:48.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;appropriate&quot; leading on websites is that defined by the user agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately a large number of web designers appear to be unaware of the fact that users use a wide variety of operating systems, screen sizes and web browsers. The best usability experience is that provided by user agent standard settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you are very sure what you do (and how to do it correctly), do not change font size, line height and other font metrics on a website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T05:46:48.300" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11093" CreationDate="2015-07-24T07:48:22.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a self-indulgent passage that needs ruthless editing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I made my way uphill, I understood why An-Mei chose this place for healing. Conifers were pillars connecting earth and sky. Their leaves were as green as their trunks were grey, and the air was pure. Each breath was a cleansing. I heard sparrows trilling, and a chorus of cicadas. My breathing fell into steady rhythms, as if in counterpoint. There was nothing else but earth and sky. My head, once so full of noise, quieted. Each thing flowed into the next, indistinguishable, as water within water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14657" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-07-24T12:26:11.037" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T12:26:11.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18360" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-24T15:30:03.973" Score="0" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I want to do professionally is tell stories. I consider myself a storyteller, but I don't know if I should be a novelist or if I should write a manga, graphic novel, screenplay or something else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am mostly inspired by movies, animes and mangas, but I assume that books are easier to publish, so that's why I had decided to write books. But is it really easier to publish books? Would it be better if I chose manga? (I would have to write only the story because I can't draw.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14662" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-07-24T17:04:35.187" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T22:41:20.023" Title="What type of writing is suited to an aspiring professional storyteller?" Tags="|publishing|screenwriting|book|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18360" CreationDate="2015-07-24T16:42:16.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can one chose any job? By making oneself familiar with that job and the alternatives. A good way for that is an internship. The second best thing is reading how professionals describe their job, watch documentaries, and talk to the pros.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you are love preparing food and like to bake, cook and such, then it would be a good idea to spend one summer in a restaurant kitchen, another in a bakery, a third in a factory that mass-produces foods, and so on, and then choose wether you want to be a cook or baker or study food technology or something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course many kids don't do that, and, as we know, as a result many adults are more or less frustrated by their jobs. So its a good thing you try not to be one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be, as you can guess, to start by making a list all the possible jobs a writer can have. From ghost writing pulp magazines, to scripting tv shows, to writing computer game storylines, to writing comics, and so on. Also consider the topics you are interested in. Are you interested in writing political stories set in the real world and actually influencing how people vote? Or are you more interested in zombies eating children? Not all genres fit into all kinds of writing, so this might give you a first limitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then start do look into how the daily life of the people writing all that stuff looks like. There are blogs by writers, books on writing and writers, magazines for writing professionals, documentary movies and so on. Grab as much as you can and get a first idea of how these people live (and wether or not they actually earn enough money to have only that writing job, of if they have to dive a taxi at night or be a teacher during the day). Not all lifestyles will fit you, so this might give you another sub-selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now try to contact people in the areas you are interested in. Seriously, just write an email, go to a reading, or whatever you can do, and ask everything you have not yet understood. Be polite and don't bother them when they signal they have no time, but some writers are readily available in forums, on facebook, or even in person on a convention. Don't be shy, writing is a lonely business, and many writers love to socialize. Others don't, so don't take it amiss if they are no time for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on what areas you find most interesting, see if you can find a company doing that stuff. For example, if you are interested in computer game writing, find a computer game company in your area and ask them if you can spend a few days with them. Or if you are interested in writing for mangas, find manga writers in your area and ask them if they would allow you to visit them for a day or two. Networking is a necessary skill as a writer, so you can start learning to be sociable and make contacts. Go to conventions, workshops, etc., and meet people. Don't be a basement dweller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: All writers hate it when amateurs ask them to read their writing, so do not ask any writer to read your stuff. They won't, and it will show them that you are not yet mature enough to work in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, try to write what you think you want to write. Get books and stuff that teach you how to do it. Writing books may be obvious, because you know what a book looks like, but what does a script for a manga look like? What is the process from the idea to the finished product? Inform yourself. And then try to do it. You may find that you don't actually like to write what you like to read, or that you like to write what you don't actually read much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take your time with all of this. I don't know where you stand in life, but I would advise you to take a year and do all of this as a kind of hobby besides school or university or your job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Know yourself and know the diverse field of writing, and then decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have fun and good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T16:42:16.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18360" CreationDate="2015-07-24T16:58:33.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing professionally (particularly fiction) is very difficult  --it's not a particularly &quot;practical&quot; career choice, so I wouldn't necessarily advise making it into a &quot;practical&quot; decision.  In other words, &lt;strong&gt;if you want to write manga, don't write a book just because you think it will be easier&lt;/strong&gt; --it won't be.  If you're going to take a chance on a writing career, it might as well be the type of writing you love best.  You're also unlikely to be good at creating a type of artwork you don't enjoy consuming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of what the differences in writing are:  A novel is a self-contained work, it is complete when you finish writing it.  A screenplay, on the other hand, isn't a movie until someone makes it into a movie, which takes time, money, actors, and a wide variety of other resources.  As far as a manga (or graphic novel), it's a collaboration where you'd have to locate and work closely with a visual artist.  For scripting, whether for a movie or a manga, you'll want to be strong on plot and dialog.  For a novel, add the ability to write richly detailed prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal advice for you, given your self-description as a &quot;storyteller,&quot; is to &lt;strong&gt;start by writing short stories and to see if you can get those published&lt;/strong&gt;.  At that point you'll have some writing credits (to give you credibility), some experience (so you'll know what you like and don't like), and a place to start from (if you want to adapt one of your stories for a screenplay, novel, or manga).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-07-24T17:14:33.197" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T17:14:33.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18355" CreationDate="2015-07-24T18:49:06.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you in the United States or elsewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The United States colleges and universities favor a writing style called MLA or Modern Language Association -- they publish their own style guide which give &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; detailed instructions on how to format a paper for academic purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After undergraduate work, most people involved in writing default to their field's standard format, or professional body's agreed conventions. Look up APA, Chicago etc. for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14666" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T18:49:06.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2015-07-24T18:58:09.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to disagree with most the other answers here and say that this is not fantasy at all. If the time frame was set in the past it would be considered historical fiction, but given that you say it's contemporary this isn't the case, so it is simply &lt;em&gt;Fiction&lt;/em&gt;. You know, the genre that comprises about 50% of the novels at any given book store? Generic maybe but sorry, substituting names is not fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14665" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T18:58:09.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18354" CreationDate="2015-07-24T19:00:23.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although with respect to the post by &quot;what&quot;, I must disagree that leading is defined by the user. Most users have very little knowledge of adjusting their browsers anything beyond default.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leaves the decision of leading to the blog writer, who may or may not be skilled in CSS to be able to alter it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, standard typography conventions for leading usually default to 120% of the point size of the type. Thus a 10 point font usually gets 12 point leading. However, the most finely typeset documents, are ones that have been manually leaded and kerned (another discussion). Meaning, depending on the specific font, the leading is adjusted manually for optimum reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also a consideration from the print world, is the length of the line of text. In print, a line of text should average 9 - 15 words, much like how the lines are being displayed here.Lines with much longer text will require more leading, whereas shorter lines will require reduced leading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: dependent on font. Investigate CSS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14666" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T19:00:23.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18285" CreationDate="2015-07-24T20:39:17.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The trick is to identify what is driving your story forward. Is it event driven (the volcano is about to erupt and everyone is reacting to that) or is people driven (a group of people decide to rob the local museum while everyone else is distracted by a volcano).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some reason, it's easier to write when events drive the narrative. Everyone just reacts to something external that's going on. But that's exactly the problem you're describing. Your characters aren't people, they're passengers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes events happen. Eventually the volcano will erupt and your characters will need to deal with it. Before that, however, they need to drive the story, which means they need to control events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be easier if you identify those goals in advance. Instead of writing from the point of view of the character, write a very short biography instead. Identify what each character wants, what they are afraid of, who they care about, and (most importantly) why they want that, fear that, care about that person. A story should be about an individual's pursuit of happiness and all the flawed ways we go about obtaining it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T20:39:17.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18368" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18369" CreationDate="2015-07-24T20:52:45.223" Score="2" ViewCount="1881" Body="&lt;p&gt;What kind of problems (if any) might I have with copyright laws when keeping story notes and some or all of my writing on cloud based storage such as Google drive? How might this affect future publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14466" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T21:14:43.467" Title="Legal or copyright problems using Google drive or other cloud storage for story notes?" Tags="|copyright|notes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18368" CreationDate="2015-07-24T21:27:44.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any writing that you make available to the general public (whether anyone reads it or not) is published. That will prevent you from selling various &quot;first&quot; rights, which is what publishers typically want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't made it public, don't worry about it. Google Drive is just storage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the notes... You own the copyright to those, too, but those are not the thing you'll be licensing to publishers. If you make the notes public, and they include substantial chunks of the text of the manuscript, that might cause a problem when you shop the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your notes are mostly ideas for the story, and not the text of the story, that's fine. You can't copyright ideas. Only a particular expression of those ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-07-24T22:09:56.583" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T22:09:56.583" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18355" CreationDate="2015-07-25T07:47:36.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that 2.0 is the standard - at least for Humanities PhD production and academic writing. It is assumed then that a piece of work can be printed and commented upon 'in the space' surrounding the text. Gutters and margins likewise are typically specified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14324" LastActivityDate="2015-07-25T07:47:36.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14744" CreationDate="2015-07-25T07:52:24.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you mean 'articulate', no?&#xA;The previous answer is the best - curious and critical reading - continuous reading - of all types of material. Try to work with as great a variety of sentence and phrasal constructions as possible, so the unusual and effective in any given required situation is always at your fingertips.&#xA;Good luck! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14324" LastActivityDate="2015-07-25T07:52:24.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18374" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-25T16:00:51.997" Score="-1" ViewCount="196" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a cover letter (for a job application) and after a long 'struggle' with the opening paragraph, I've decided to start it by briefly presenting myself and then continuing with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The reason for which I am writing /&lt;em&gt;to you&lt;/em&gt; ???/ is to express my interest in...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've already gone through so many other variants that I'm no more able to assess the suitablity/acceptablity of a given phrase, thus I will be very thankful if someone shares their opinion of the above one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a supplementary inquiry, I'd also like to ask about the expression &quot;writing &lt;em&gt;to you&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. I wonder - is it actually neccesary to add &quot;... &lt;em&gt;to you&lt;/em&gt;&quot; or that's self-explanatory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14679" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-05T18:55:48.080" LastActivityDate="2018-05-05T18:55:48.080" Title="Opening of a cover letter" Tags="|letter|openings|introduction|phrasing|cover-letter|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-07-25T21:29:11.180" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18374" CreationDate="2015-07-25T18:32:16.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In business communication, as in most other communication, you want to be as concise as possible while still being effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your sentence &quot;The reason for which I am writing...&quot; with or without the &quot;to you&quot; is unnecessarily convoluted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try &quot;I am writing to express my interest...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or even &quot;I am interested in...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get to the point. I read a lot of cover letters at work, and I'm not looking for high word count, I'm looking for basic information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-07-25T18:32:16.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-26T00:19:03.970" Score="0" ViewCount="856" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a short essay assignment (650 word limit), I'm writing about how my experiences with learning Norwegian shaped me as an individual with the underlying idea centered around how sharing a common language can break barriers between two people. In order to adequately describe how my Norwegian language learning odyssey affected my life, I've had to repeat the word &quot;Norwegian&quot; and &quot;Norway&quot; way too many times because I had trouble finding a suitable synonym for these words. In my short essay of 618 words, I counted 13 instances of the word Norwegian and 6 instances of the word Norway in contexts such as these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Norwegian (referring to a person): I was talking to a Norwegian girl (there are Swedes and Danes, but nothing unique for Norwegians)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Norwegian (language, both adjective and noun): the Norwegian textbook / Why are you learning Norwegian?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've considered writing something such as &quot;The intricacies of &lt;em&gt;the language of the Vikings&lt;/em&gt; never failed to confuse me...&quot;, but that sounds kind of cheesy (I'm not sure though). I briefly touched on my interest for Norwegian history and culture (and how that was my main motivation when I chose which language to learn), so that could fit in, but it's also not the main focus of my essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, sometimes I write &quot;the language&quot; instead of &quot;Norwegian&quot;; for example: &quot;My interest in Norwegian culture drew me to learn &lt;em&gt;the language&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, but I already use the word &quot;language&quot; to talk about how it breaks barriers and unites people, so that word has been overused too. There aren't many synonyms for &quot;language&quot; that I can find; I did write &quot;obscure &lt;em&gt;tongue&lt;/em&gt;&quot; at one point, but the writing doesn't feel natural to me when I use that word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are the two solutions I've come up with, but they both aren't very great. Can someone suggest any other way I could avoid repeating these words in my writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14681" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T22:33:20.677" Title="Avoid repeating specific words with no synonyms" Tags="|style|word-choice|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-26T07:25:50.830" Score="0" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exaggeration is a device in humor. On the other hand, you need to care about believably in writing, especially in fiction writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I'm writing a story where the main character goes to her university to find out about a weird topic. She is laughed at in class. And later in a lab. After this, she becomes a source of gossip--her schoolmates start calling her a nickname and many people she meets later on recognizes her:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah,&quot; De-Shi said. &quot;She's very enthusiastic about animal suicide.&#xA;  You should've seen the little commotion she caused in the department.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh,&quot; Cath covered her mouth, &quot;she's Hanging Pup.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yup, the very one,&quot; I blurted back. I had no idea my fame had spread&#xA;  so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, obviously, is unlikely to happen in real life; I just wrote it for comedic purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing that worries me is that some of my readers pointed out that believability issue--so I'm confused. Can you sacrifice believability for the sake of humor at times? If so, what are the limits? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T00:52:12.897" Title="Exaggeration vs believability in humor writing" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18379" CreationDate="2015-07-26T12:38:21.430" Score="1" ViewCount="803" Body="&lt;p&gt;I never noticed this in my writing until one of my readers pointed it out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We were driving down the highway in Tom's Toyota 4Runner, dim&#xA;  streetlights passing by, the night city scene fading behind us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Awkward way to begin the chapter from a grammatical perspective. Is&#xA;  there a reason you chose to start in past progressive? I'm left unsure&#xA;  of where I am entirely.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote in the past progressive because I wanted to show that they were &lt;em&gt;already&lt;/em&gt; in the highway. If I'd written &quot;We drove down the highway...&quot;, it would have looked as if they were &lt;em&gt;just arriving&lt;/em&gt; to the highway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe it's not the case? And I should stay away from the past progressive in situations like this as a rule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T22:06:42.947" Title="Is it a good idea to stay away from past progressive in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18378" CreationDate="2015-07-26T21:08:11.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Past progressive is great for relating the context in which some event occurred:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We were driving down the highway in Tom's Toyota 4Runner when the earthquake hit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are probably other uses, too. But readers (like your reviewer) likely expect ongoing conditions expressed in past progressive to relate to something in simple past tense. (Similar for present progressive and simple present tense.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-07-26T21:08:11.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18172" CreationDate="2015-07-27T00:28:45.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on how much you like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the huge number of writing styles, perspectives, tones, genres, and dialects, I don't think there is any one correct way of writing. That said, you should judge any advice you see in terms of what you're trying to accomplish yourself. Does the advice resonate with you or your perspective audience? Ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is giving this advice? Is what they write similar to what I am writing (or, do they have similar audiences)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where is this advice coming from? What does it seek to accomplish?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this advice relevant to what I want to accomplish?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not hard to find cases of two well-known, if not classic, writers giving directly contradictory advice. Nor is such a situation relegated only to writing - in fact, pretty much every field has a similar phenomena, and I can attest to it in programming. That doesn't make either or both sets of advice bad, it just means they're coming from different people, and used to accomplish different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting too caught up in advice can lead people to suppressing their own creativity and hampering their growth. Considering you've spent an &quot;age&quot; reading advice, I think it's safe to say you're stuck in this. No amount of advice will make you a good writer, and in my opinion, enough advice can make the best writer mediocre. It's much better to find the tone and style that suits what you're attempting to convey than try to find the &quot;one true way,&quot; since there flatly isn't one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should look at it no different than you would feedback on your own work: as helpful suggestions, but possibly not that much so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10515" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T00:28:45.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5272" CreationDate="2015-07-27T00:31:55.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hello I can be petty at times but not in an intentionally spiteful way. More like I am not going to do something (normally of value) if I don't personally feel that the person asking has or will do the same favor requested for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14694" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T00:31:55.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18172" CreationDate="2015-07-27T04:40:41.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question: How do they know what to listen to and what to ignore?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should try to find great writers; although, they would technically have to be exceptional teachers too. There are people that can teach you the methods to become a great writer. I would have them teach you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if you want to become a more intelligent writer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It takes significant time and commitment. Make sure to read a lot everyday.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on the writing process. Have others give you constructive criticism.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Respond to criticism in an open way and focus on improving your writing abilities. Revise, rewrite, and edit your work constantly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep your eyes open for excellent writers. They are the ones to learn from.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14698" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T04:40:41.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18376" CreationDate="2015-07-27T13:31:21.667" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there's a general rule against repeating a word, but like many rules, it must be applied reasonably. If you're writing about Norway and the Norwegian language, it's likely you'll have to repeat &quot;Norway&quot; and &quot;Norwegian&quot; a fair number of times. While common words can often be replaced with synonyms, proper nouns usually cannot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would definitely NOT look for poetic phrases to replace &quot;Norway&quot;. I've read things where the writer comes up with alternate phrases like &quot;that snowy land&quot;, &quot;the far-northern nation&quot;, and so on, and usually that is more distracting than repeating &quot;Norway&quot;. As @what notes, referring to Norway as Viking this or that is likely to introduce technical inaccuracies that would be distracting to the more knowledgeable reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the only country you're talking about is Norway, then you could often replace &quot;Norway&quot; with simple words like &quot;it&quot;, &quot;there&quot;, &quot;that country&quot;, and so on. In some cases any reference to the place might be left out as assumed. Similarly for references to the people and the language. Like to take a deliberately extreme example, if my first draft of a sentence said, &quot;When I arrived in Norway I found that Norway is a beautiful country and that Norway has many forests and a long coastline&quot;, I'd probably rewrite that to something like, &quot;When I arrived in Norway I fount that it is a beautiful country with many forests and a long coastline.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without seeing your text it's hard to say how awkward or natural it sounds. 19 uses of &quot;Norway&quot; or &quot;Norwegian&quot; in 618 words means about once per 30 words, or maybe once every 2 sentences or so? That seems high, but not ridiculous. It's not like you're writing &quot;Norway&quot; 3 times per sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T13:31:21.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18378" CreationDate="2015-07-27T17:15:00.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Boy, I hate the making of rules for fiction writing.  The previous poster has given a good explanation of why you might use the past progressive; I just want to add that I don't agree with your sense that &quot;We drove down the highway&quot; would suggest that they were just starting to drive down the highway.  Both choices give the sense that you're already on the highway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14696" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T17:15:00.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18158" CreationDate="2015-07-27T21:48:12.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;in an embarrassing situation, for example a bully at school, you could say &quot;I had to blink back tears&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14703" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T21:48:12.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18388" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18394" CreationDate="2015-07-27T21:53:58.140" Score="4" ViewCount="2525" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of us probably encountered it before on a social media like Facebook or Twitter, or in the comments section of a major website. You've decided what you want to say, but you want to stress a specific word or couple of words in your message. However, the medium does not allow you to do what you normally do with the font, like put it in bold, or in italics, or underlined, or in a slightly larger font, or in a different font. The only things you can do is use printable characters you can make with your keyboard. One of the most common solutions people thing of is using letter casing, but that can quickly devolve into &quot;why are you shouting at me?&quot; and isn't always suited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When in such a situation, what method can bring across the best impression of a stressed syllable/word/word group without offending people? And does this method depend on the type of stressing you want to give the word (pitch vs tone vs volume)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6845" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T01:27:08.820" LastActivityDate="2022-02-15T23:36:28.697" Title="How can I stress a certain word in a medium that doesn't allow for font embellishments?" Tags="|style|formatting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18389" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32167" CreationDate="2015-07-27T22:34:30.307" Score="7" ViewCount="1565" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a novel I'm writing, I have a minor character who is either autistic, or has an intellectual disability. (I know they're different. But like I said, he's a minor character, so I haven't really decided yet.) Either way, my setting is fantasy, mostly inspired by 9th century middle east, so both conditions would be bundled up as &quot;Simple&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character never gets a POV, but we see his actions, he is a part of his family, we see others interacting with him. The story demands that he be far from being able to function normally (otherwise, he would have been next in line to the throne). While the character is a very minor one, it is important to me to avoid clichés, and to write him as a character rather than an object that other characters relate to. I don't want a &quot;noble savage&quot;, and I don't want someone very disruptive. I do want someone who feels real, neither exaggerated, nor underplayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I do this? I've tried to look for information on the web, but most of what I find is either very general (&quot;all autistic people are different&quot;), focuses on the family without giving any information about the child and his abilities, or is followed by vast amounts of criticism for being imprecise. So I don't even know what's true and what's not, what's common among people with autism and what is rare-but-photogenic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional detail: the plot spans about 50 years, so while this character would not appear often, he would make appearances as a child, a teen and an adult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be reasonable to make him have autism, and use a letter board for communication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would a person with autism respond to a situation with a crowd, colours and noise, such as a royal wedding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I avoid by all means if I don't want to offend, but to give a positive representation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14704" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T01:26:38.267" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T19:31:12.427" Title="How to write about Autism and Intellectual Disability?" Tags="|characters|research|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17585" CreationDate="2015-07-27T23:04:46.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I too am having problems with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My way of solving the problem is to start with the setting. Is your plot set in a real place? If so, you can look for names from that region. If you like, you can do some research about the origins and meanings of those names, so you can be sure they fit your character. I usually use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.behindthename.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.behindthename.com/&lt;/a&gt; for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing fantasy, you can still use real names. Diana Wynne Jones did this all the time. &quot;Harry Potter&quot; is also a regular name. G.R.R. Martin horribly misspells names (Eddard, Jaime) but you can still recognise them. Those methods work particularly well if your fantasy novel is set somewhere that is inspired by a particular RL place and period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing science fiction, there's no reason for earth characters not to use the same names we do. Names like &quot;John&quot; and &quot;Michael&quot; have been around for several thousand years, they aren't going to disappear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For somebody who is non-human, or deliberately not any of our cultures, it might work best to device some naming convention, and then follow it. It might be, for instance that male names always start with 'S, end with 'k', and have five letters, while female names follow the pattern of 'T'-consonant-something'. (That used to be Vulcans in Star Trek: Spock, Sarek, T'Pau, T'Pring.) At the very least, you can pick some phonemes that would be more common, so it would sound like all the names are from the same language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use Latin to create names that don't sound too foreign, and have a hidden meaning as a genius bonus. Plant names and flower names are also great (Katniss being a famous example), and you can use them for hidden meanings as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can just take a Scrabble set, put it all in a bag, and pull out letters at random until you find a combination that you like. That has worked for me too, when all else failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should remember that you don't have to enforce a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OneSteveLimit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;One Steve Limit&lt;/a&gt;&quot; - several characters can have the same name. It's realistic, if you think about it.&#xA;And you can forget everything about meaningful names if you like - names are given by the parents, to a baby who has no defining characteristics yet, and half the time they don't know what a name means. At least, that's how it works in RL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most important, don't let the lack of character names stop you from writing. You can always use temporary names, and run Ctrl+r when you come up with something better. Frodo used to be 'Bingo' in Tolkien's early drafts, and Aragorn started out as a hobbit named 'Trotter'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14704" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T23:04:46.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18158" CreationDate="2015-07-28T01:33:26.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find a non-cliche way of showing that she was crying.  I always think back to Updike's comment about Salinger:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In an ardently admiring piece on Salinger years back, Updike confessed a misgiving about the Glass family that is difficult to gainsay. He quoted Seymour quoting R. H. Blyth's definition of sentimentality: 'We are being sentimental when we give to a thing more tenderness than God gives to it.' There is Salinger's error, said Updike: he gives to the Glasses more love than God does.&quot;  [New York Times 09/13/98]  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crying doesn't have to be sentimental.  You just need to find a new way of describing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14696" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T01:33:26.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18389" CreationDate="2015-07-28T04:54:39.340" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different kinds of autism, and people have them in different degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to learn what autism looks and feels like is to read books by autists and the people that live ot work with them. Don't read scientific articles, but narrative accounts. There are a few books in which autists describe their own experiences. There is also fiction like the movie Rainman and the book it is based on, but I would be careful with movies, because you are seeing an actor's interpretation of autism and not the real thing. YouTube may be a source for original footage. I know there are documentaries about autism and interviews with autists. There are also web forums for autists and their family where you can ask people directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure with these pointers you can find something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T04:54:39.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18389" CreationDate="2015-07-28T08:32:17.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many autistic people I know would hate a royal wedding because of the crowds, the noise, etc. Many, but not all, are hyper sensitive to noise, colour and confusion. Also, it is different from the normal routine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T08:32:17.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18388" CreationDate="2015-07-28T10:09:34.890" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing a word in ALL CAPS might be frowned upon because it is considered a visual equivalent of shouting, but shouting is a spoken form of emphasis, so ALL CAPS might be just what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Internet tradition (dating back to list serves, etc.) has used the underbar as a signal for italics: I will &lt;code&gt;_never_&lt;/code&gt; eat another steak. The underbar harkens back to typing and handwriting (remember that?), when underlined text indicated what in print would be rendered in &lt;em&gt;italics&lt;/em&gt;. Some social sites, like Google+, will automatically render &lt;code&gt;_text bounded by underbars_&lt;/code&gt; in &lt;em&gt;italics&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, the star or asterisk ( * ) has traditionally been used to bound text that should be considered &lt;strong&gt;boldface&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you might tweet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;*George R.R. Martin* is executive producer of HBO's _Game of Thrones_ because he wrote the books, but *George Martin* produced _Abbey Road_ and many other Beatle albums.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the best way to emphasize words lies within the words themselves, but that's a topic for another day (or an exercise left for the reader).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14708" LastEditorUserId="14708" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T22:13:24.920" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T22:13:24.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18388" CreationDate="2015-07-28T12:03:07.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Winnie-the-Pooh (or something of a similar genre) there was a Habit of capitalising important words to emphasis its importance to the narrator. e.g. After all he really was A Very Important Bear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this works a lot more subtlety than all caps, which tend to jolt you out of the flow of reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Capitalised words can be absorbed as part of the reading process, we are accustomed to seeing important places, names etc being capitalised. Lending that to words that wouldn't normally be capitalised can make a subtle yet powerful impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas writing in all caps breaks the reader from the flow of words, you tend to have to consciously read what is said rather than it being an automatic process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T12:03:07.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18396" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18427" CreationDate="2015-07-28T12:06:26.420" Score="1" ViewCount="191" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone who reviewed my novel said that he &quot;wanted to see more facial features/expressions and body language&quot;. So I figured I wasn't using enough action/dialogue tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the passage before adding the action/dialogue tags (the original piece):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you okay, Mom?&quot; I asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mom blew into her handkerchief. &quot;Yes, darling. Just a little sad for Chico. But I think he must be&#xA;  happy now---receiving more attention than when he was alive.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Everyone becomes a celebrity once they die.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is after adding them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you okay, Mom?&quot; I asked. Her eyes were red and her mascara had&#xA;  turned into dripping ink. I never knew why she applied it; her&#xA;  eyelashes were already long, thick, and curly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also had tears in my eyes. Not because of sadness, but because of&#xA;  the smell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mom blew into her handkerchief and slipped it in her coat pocket.&#xA;  &quot;Yes, darling. Just a little sad for Chico. But I think he must be&#xA;  happy now---receiving more attention than when he was alive.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I nodded. &quot;Everyone becomes a celebrity once they die.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many action/dialogue tags should I add in a scene? Or it's just a matter of style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T01:46:09.140" Title="Action/dialogue tags: What's the right amount?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18388" CreationDate="2015-07-28T12:55:29.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the short answer is, Put the word in all caps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The criticism of all caps is when you write your entire text in all caps. Indicating that one WORD should be emphasized is perfectly reasonable. TRYING TO EMPHASIZE EVERYTHING YOU WRITE BY PUTTING WHOLE SENTENCES IN ALL CAPS IS USUALLY DISTRACTING AND COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE. Well, if you are writing a ten-page article and put one or two sentences that are particularly important in all caps, that could be fine and good. But where it gets annoying is when you put the whole text -- the whole post or letter or whatever -- in caps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, the &lt;em&gt;same&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;em&gt;true&lt;/em&gt; for excessive punctuation!!! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes we need to emphasize a word to clarify the meaning of a sentence, and that's fine. But if people don't believe what you're saying or they don't think it's true, saying it louder or writing it in bigger letters rarely helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T12:55:29.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18378" CreationDate="2015-07-28T13:27:01.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Starting with past progressive feels very conversational, and I expect the sentence to end with a phrase that gives some kind of context about why you are doing that or what happened when you did that. Dale mentions a 'when' statement above, which illustrates the 'what happened'. Here's an example of the 'why':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We were driving down the highway in Tom's Toyota 4Runner, radio blasting to drown out the sounds of our own fear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your existing sentence feels awkward because you're setting the scene rather than contextualizing the story. The additional pieces are not related to the driving part, not really, but the progressive tense makes them feel like they should be, so when I read it, I try to connect them and it doesn't immediately make sense. They are more like stand-alone sentences. This is more comfortable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We were driving down the highway in Tom's Toyota 4Runner. Dim streetlights passed by and the night city scene faded behind us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could start with &quot;We drove...&quot;. It's less conversational feeling, more subdued, and makes the whole beginning into setting the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We drove down the highway in Tom's Toyota 4Runner, dim streetlights passing by, the night city scene fading behind us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T13:27:01.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18389" CreationDate="2015-07-28T13:28:41.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't claim to know anything about autism, but speaking of mental handicaps in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;All autistic people are different.&quot; Well, sure. But I presume there is some definition of &quot;autistic&quot;, some set of symptoms, that all autistic people would share to some extent, or the word doesn't have any meaning. I'm sure that all people with broken legs are different in the sense that they have different occupations, different hobbies, different religions, different political beliefs, etc. But they are all the same in that they have broken legs. And there are some things that naturally follow from having broken legs, like they have difficulty walking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose there's a balance between writing a character who is described as being a member of a certain group as a stereotype, and writing that character in a way that makes him indistinguishable from people who are not members of the group. To take a more familiar example: If you say that a certain character is black, but then he behaves exactly like all the white characters and all the white characters treat him exactly the same as they treat black characters, why did you even mention that he was black? (I suppose such a story might be intended as a subtle statement about racism -- see, we're all just people, right?.) But at the other extreme, if he's always eating fried chicken and watermelon and talking in Ebonics and talking about black pride and using drugs and seducing white women and every other stereotype about black people, whether good or bad, the character would quickly become ludicrous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is, that my advice would be: Get a list of symptoms of autism. As others have said, get some first-person accounts of autism, things written by autistic people or by the families of autistic people. A narrative would surely be better than a chapter from a psychiatry textbook, as the narrative would give more of a feel of day to day life, and you are presumably writing a narrative and not a textbook. Then pick some symptoms to highlight. It is not only not necessary to have the character display EVERY textbook symptom of autism, but probably counter-productive. As I admitted up front, I don't know anything specifically about autism, but I'd guess that most real autistic people don't display every symptom in the textbook. If there are 10 symptoms, some will display numbers 1, 2, and 5, others 2, 3, and 7, etc. Pick a few that will further your story and use those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, you need a balance between making his symptoms exaggerated and over the top, and making them so muted that they don't make any difference. I suppose there's a tendency in fiction to exaggerate characters for dramatic effect. The hero is not just strong, but he can fight 20 men simultaneously and beat them all up. The villain is not just greedy and violent, but he will kill someone for a dollar. Etc. To a certain extent it creates drama, but when you go over the top it becomes unbelievable and silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T13:28:41.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18368" CreationDate="2015-07-28T13:36:57.450" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google Drive's terms state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.google.com/docs/answer/2733115&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://support.google.com/docs/answer/2733115&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14709" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T13:36:57.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17306" CreationDate="2015-07-28T15:17:04.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There could be a simple answer to &quot;rebalancing&quot; the roles of the backstory and main story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, pull part of your backstory into your main story, and leaving only a &quot;remainder&quot; as &quot;backstory.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some facts of your backstory are so compelling, maybe they don't begin there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T15:17:04.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18396" CreationDate="2015-07-28T15:20:06.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think anyone can tell you what the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; amount is -- though they will surely turn around and tell you when you have too much.  I think the second sentence about Mom's mascara is extraneous -- it doesn't add anything that furthers our understanding of the situation.  Do you mean the scene to be funny?  As the commenter points out, it is funny with the new description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14696" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T15:20:06.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7212" CreationDate="2015-07-28T15:24:35.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may have an interesting story there, but the graph shows one that is &quot;disconnected.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not bad to have &quot;substories&quot; relating to the friend, boyfriend, and father, but most, if not all of them should also have a second &quot;circle&quot; (link) to the main plot. That way, interesting substories will have a function, rather than just be random events in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T15:24:35.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18389" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:34:35.930" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Autism is... complicated. Before I start explaining, a few words about my background: I've been diagnosed with (a mild form of) autism, and work for a company that primarily employs autistic people, mostly from the &quot;high-functioning&quot; end of the spectrum (who would not fit your requirements).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make of that what you will, I just wanted to clarify where I come from, since it informs my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, there is no generally accepted list of symptoms. Well, I've seen lists, but they tend to vary wildly and contain a lot of contradictions. Unlike, say, a broken leg, which has a clearly visible, measurable, effect and well known causes, there is very little &lt;em&gt;physical&lt;/em&gt; evidence of autism. It's rather a very broad category of &quot;abnormal&quot; behavioural characteristics, ranging in &quot;impact&quot; from negligible to crippling (which is great news for your character, because you can basically pick whatever fits the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with all broad categories, it's hard to say anything definitive. You might as well ask how to write left handed people or people with a certain shoe size. Yes, they have something in common, but, contrary perhaps to popular belief, it's not necessarily a defining characteristic. In its extreme forms, it can be, of course. But there's a reason a lot of sources are &quot;very general&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to just write a character that fits your story. There's no check list you have to follow, not even a partial one, to make that character &quot;believably autistic&quot;. And if you're unsure about the diagnosis, don't fixate on it. In reality, it can be &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; hard to differentiate between, say, a specific learning disability, (low-functioning) autism, or just a low IQ score which might just stem from a poor general education. Perhaps it could be enough to make the character &quot;simple&quot; and giving them a few interesting traits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you specifically want an autistic character, here's a (short) list of characteristics you could use that, in the worst case, at least won't contradict the idea that they're autistic and at best nudge your readers towards that diagnosis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-A poor ability to filter external stimuli, which can result in sensory overload. Such a character would want to avoid crowds and&#xA;   festivities, perhaps to an extreme extent if the sensation manifests&#xA;   as physical pain. It could also just cause mild discomfort,&#xA;   irritatbility, dizziness or an inability to focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-One or two hobbies that they tend to concentrate on to drown out the rest of the world. In an extreme case, they might forego food or&#xA;   sleep without even noticing. In a milder form, they might just be&#xA;   really interested or talented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Social anxiety or awkwardness, shyness; Could even lead to panic attacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-The inability to read facial expressions or body language. Rather stereotypical, but true for some people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Anything ranging from extreme devotion to a daily routine to the inability to make even short-term appointments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14223" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T17:34:35.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18368" CreationDate="2015-07-28T21:14:43.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the form or medium or location in which you keep your writing has nothing to do with your copyright. Whether you write documents with a pencil and keep them in a drawer or save them electronically on your personal computer or on the Internet or chisel them into stone tablets and hide them in a cave, your copyright rights are the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you send your writing to someone with the understanding that they will publish it, of course that's a different category. Then they're not just storing it, they're publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose if you are using any sort of service where someone else has access to your writing in any manner, it makes sense to check any agreements before you sign them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T21:14:43.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18396" CreationDate="2015-07-28T21:44:35.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry but &quot;wanted to see more facial features/expressions and body language&quot; seems more like an exercise in pedantry than actually constructive criticism intended to help you. Having run the gauntlet of MFA workshops, I can't help reading the comment as &quot;I know about body language and you ... don't.&quot; I grew up with modernist minimalism: you know, you've heard the old Hemingway quote from &lt;em&gt;Death in the Afternoon&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may&#xA;  omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing&#xA;  truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as&#xA;  though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an&#xA;  ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer&#xA;  who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow&#xA;  places in his writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I'm surprised to find that Wikipedia actually has an entry on this, which it calls the &lt;em&gt;Iceberg Theory&lt;/em&gt;, q.v., or the &lt;em&gt;Theory of Omission&lt;/em&gt;. Hemingway and, quite independently, T.S. Eliot referred to it as the &lt;em&gt;Objective Corelative&lt;/em&gt;.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, I was trained to do everything possible to get the reader into the moment, and sometimes that means providing a great deal of details, but ultimately we want to reach the point where much of the literary experience is provided by the reader's imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to return to your question, &lt;em&gt;How many action/dialogue tags should I add in a scene?&lt;/em&gt; I'd say, As few as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14708" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T21:44:35.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18378" CreationDate="2015-07-28T22:01:38.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back in writing school, an author advised his students to &lt;strong&gt;write in the first-person present&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The objective is to place as few intermediaries as possible between the reader and the action of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even writing in the simple past tense adds a degree of separation between reader and action because it amplifies the presence of an intermediary, namely the storyteller or narrator that all fiction has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The maximum degree of remove happens in epistolary fiction where someone gets a letter from someone else who describes in the letter what happened to yet another person. That unnecessarily complicated chain of storytelling makes novels like &lt;em&gt;Les Liaisons Dangereuses&lt;/em&gt; terribly tedious to read. A young writer ambitious enough to rewrite the whole thing in first-person present, and maybe recast it into a promiscuous 21st century, could possibly make a fortune.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tom drives his Toyota 4Runnerdown the highway. Dim streetlights strobe&#xA;  by, and the night city scene fades behind us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems more immediate to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14708" LastEditorUserId="14708" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T22:06:42.947" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T22:06:42.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18376" CreationDate="2015-07-28T22:33:20.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A word repeated too many times in close confines can sound trite, but look at the would-be repetition as an opportunity to exercise your creativity. Instead of looking for a synonym, consider the places where you would repeat &lt;em&gt;Norwegian&lt;/em&gt; as opportunities to provide more information about the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To learn more about Norwegian, I meet with Dr Bångun Ølufsėn, a&#xA;  professor of &lt;strong&gt;his country's&lt;/strong&gt; language at the &lt;strong&gt;national&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  university. &quot;Ya, sure,&quot; the &lt;strong&gt;Oslo&lt;/strong&gt; native says, &quot;sure looks like&#xA;  snow. But you gonna be ready if you have &lt;strong&gt;the blood of our people&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  in your veins. &lt;strong&gt;This country's&lt;/strong&gt; landscape is blanketed in snow more&#xA;  often than it is not. You have to be ready, and &lt;strong&gt;our&lt;/strong&gt; traditions&#xA;  make virtues of preparedness for &lt;strong&gt;this part of the world's&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  weather.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this short example I've marked in &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt; several instances that I might have used the word &lt;em&gt;Norwegian&lt;/em&gt; but used &lt;strong&gt;some other construct&lt;/strong&gt; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14708" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T22:33:20.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18360" CreationDate="2015-07-28T22:41:20.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The pre-production stages of many films use what's called a &lt;em&gt;storyboard&lt;/em&gt; in the evolution from treatment, which is a short story-like rendering of the film's story, to shooting script. A storyboard is a comic book-like rendering of the movie, with each shot in the film corresponding to one square in the storyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use the evolution of a film from treatment to shooting script to render your work as short fiction, manga, or even movie script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14708" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T22:41:20.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18335" CreationDate="2015-07-28T22:43:35.130" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few scraps of advice I heard along the way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All great writers are great readers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write every day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Burn the midnight oil.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14708" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T22:43:35.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17690" CreationDate="2015-07-28T23:37:46.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a big fan of Sun Tzu. His &quot;Art of War&quot; is still relevant, so I suppose it would remain relevant in the future as well. He writes about general concepts like supply lines, instead of specifics like cavalry or drones. The concepts do not change, I guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another book I would recommend is &quot;Catch 22&quot;. It's absurdity and horror give a very good show of how military service actually feels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two things separating the military from civilian life are the lingo and the discipline. That's the two things I remember best from my bootcamp, anyway. You can assume your average reader would be a civilian, so his introduction to the military environment would be similar to the introduction of a rookie to bootcamp. The lingo you can make up, since you're in the future. The discipline - it's up to you just how uptight your military is (there's wide variety between modern armies, and different divisions in the same armed force), but there would be &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;. You can look &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MildlyMilitary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for more discussion of military discipline in fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14704" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T23:37:46.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18377" CreationDate="2015-07-29T00:37:09.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most simple test of a comedic technique is, &quot;Do they laugh?&quot; Robert McKee mentions this in his book Story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If readers are voicing concerns about believability, &lt;em&gt;but they found it funny&lt;/em&gt;, it may not be so bad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your comedy is funny, a big part of the war is already won. Thus believability would only be a concern if the moment earned laughs, yet damaged audience investment in the world going forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion/experience is that a slightly &quot;off&quot; or unexpected action by characters is more likely to be fresh and original than halting to the audience's investment in the story world. If one slightly unusual action/reaction by characters pulls readers right out of a story, they may not have been invested to begin with. Thus the true issue is with the story BEFORE that moment, not necessarily that moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Sometimes Chuck Palanhiuk's characters do/say things I find bizarre and incongruent, at least at the first pass. But over time his characters and their eccentricity still adhere to an internal logic that allows the story world to remain believable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a two part test might be: &#xA;ONE: Did they laugh? &#xA;TWO: Did they keep reading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If those two tests are passed, chances are you're looking at a small issue, rather than a major flaw in the story. If only a few readers complain, yet those readers finished the book and enjoyed it, I wouldn't do a damn thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14267" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T00:37:09.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17690" CreationDate="2015-07-29T00:42:36.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Similar to SaberWriter, I warn you not to let research become a barrier to writing. While a convincing military setting is necessary, it's the story events and the characters in that setting that ultimately make it worth reading. If you make a great story, and get the audience to invest in the characters, adding more accurate details or jargon is work you can do later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider Steven Pressfield's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevenpressfield.com/2009/08/on-research-or-what-i-learned-from-a-single-sheet-of-fools-cap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;post on research&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14267" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T00:42:36.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18172" CreationDate="2015-07-29T00:59:55.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can learn a lot from an expert. You can learn a lot by doing. More likely, however, you can have your time wasted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found that when my writing actually improves it's &lt;em&gt;when I get in front of readers and they react&lt;/em&gt;. If an expert tells you to use technique A or always have Writing Ethic B in mind, it might guide your writing to the better. Or it might not. How do you get a sense of reality and test the assertions of the experts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robert McKee recommends reducing any story, early in its development, into the oral tradition and telling it to a person as if you were around a campfire. If a simple version of your story doesn't work in that setting, it's a huge red flag that the story structure isn't there (I have actually followed this advice and realized my story was garbage). Writing goes up and away from there, but all the writing books in the world are just kindling if no one can muster mere attention for your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Workshopping is another way to get audience feedback, but in my experience they are skewed by a set of expectations that do not represent an &quot;everyman&quot; audience. Workshop participants sometimes give you feedback that makes the speaker sound smart, instead of insight into the story's problems (I include myself as guilty of this time wasting posturing). What, specifically, do you do with &quot;your characters could use more dimension?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I hear workshop feedback, I always ask the speaker &quot;despite that, would you keep reading? Do you want to know what happens?&quot; I find that question focuses the discussion back onto what I can fix in re-writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I combine both campfire tellings and workshops to vet my stories. Audiences are the true &quot;expert.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14267" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T00:59:55.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18429" CreationDate="2015-07-29T01:21:13.973" Score="3" ViewCount="446" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an amateur writer. Whenever I write, I tend to put in too much dialogue and not enough story. What are some techniques I can use to space out my dialogue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14714" LastEditorUserId="13002" LastEditDate="2017-03-06T14:02:22.960" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T14:02:22.960" Title="Spacing out dialogue?" Tags="|technique|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4705" CreationDate="2015-07-29T01:57:01.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nothing can prepare you to write. It is a freefall. Allow yourself ONLY ONE outline, then start. Or just start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this question as you start:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What does my protagonist want?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;monomyth&lt;/a&gt;, the hero is called. The only reason this is relevant/interesting is because the hero &lt;em&gt;wants to answer&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist's desire, at every point in the story, is like a compass pointing north (or more accurately, to the climax). You have to figure out all the rest through toil. Watch in terror as your protagonist's desire knocks down all your splendid prior plans for the story. Follow their desire and rebuild.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are really stuck, ask one more question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;How is my protagonist's desire being DENIED right now?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the desire isn't being denied the story is effectively over (up to you to decide if that has happened as the right time or not). If the character isn't doing something to get around the denying obstacle, the story has almost certainly stalled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there is more to writing, but the first step is finishing a draft. If your story's heart is beating (protagonist is chasing a desire against resistance), you'll complete something you can show for feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14267" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T01:57:01.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18172" CreationDate="2015-07-29T02:31:10.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two degrees in Creative Writing (that and $4.50 will get you a latte at Starbucks).  For many years, I was in a writing group with several excellent writers, and we had different approaches to &quot;advice&quot; in the sense of working with different teachers.  One of my fellow writers fought tooth and nail against every teacher, insisting on doing things her own way, no matter what they advised.  I took a different route -- in each course, I essentially surrendered myself to that particular teacher, doing it their way, and then when the course was over, seeing what I got out of it that was useful to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My best advice is to read advice and then forget it -- just go write.  Don't worry about advice or feedback or criticism until you've written what you want to write -- in some cases, your work will be too fragile to expose to the criticism of others.  When you've written something that you're satisfied with, share it with someone you trust, a teacher, a fellow writer, a friend.  D. Elliot Lamb makes an excellent point about workshop feedback -- it may be serving the responder much more than it is serving you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.  Stay focused on writing what pleases &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; and you will be likely to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14696" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T02:31:10.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18417" CreationDate="2015-07-29T02:31:13.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First develop your plot from start to finish. Divide the story into scenes. Then develop your characters and give them the appropriate dialog at the appropriate moments. This way, no matter how much dialog you write, it won't hinder you from the plot, which you will have already done. Then as you begin to edit your story, delete everything that doesn't advance the plot in some way. If you suffer from logorrhea of dialog, that test will trim it down to size. Remember this fundamental rule of writing: a reader can stop reading at any point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14708" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T02:31:13.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18417" CreationDate="2015-07-29T03:08:05.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there's &quot;not enough story,&quot; that's your primary problem. If the story is solid, how much dialogue to include is a simpler choice. Where did you get the idea that there is not enough story? Reader feedback?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to think of dialogue is that it is an action (forget about Tarantino style banter for now). If you are letting the reader know about verbal actions the characters are taking, there should be a reason. If the dialogue isn't part of a dramatic event, it can probably go. If a scene (section of writing) doesn't involve something happening, that scene can probably go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14267" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T03:08:05.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10062" CreationDate="2015-07-29T04:00:28.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing to note is that people don't (or shouldn't) talk this way on the radio. Each person should have a name, number, or other identifier. You start each message (or at least the first few in each exchange) with the name of the person you're addressing, followed by your own. For instance, when I'm on first aid duty (my tag: Stadium 111), I hear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Control: Stadium 111, Control. (I.e. Hey, Stadium 111, this is Control.)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Me: Go ahead, Control.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Control: Stadium 111, there's a patient with difficulty breathing in section 111 A [properly &quot;alpha&quot;], go check it out.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Me: I'm going now.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Me: Control, Stadium 111. [no answer] Control, Stadium 111, do you copy?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Control: Stadium 111, I copy.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Someone else: Control, Stadium 15, I have a patient unconscious in 15B, requesting paramedics.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Control: Stadium 15, medics are en route.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;15: Thank you, Control.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Me: Control, 111. I'm taking the patient to First Aid East. Can I have an incident number?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Control: 111, your incident number is 13.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. How strictly people keep to these rules depends on (a) how formal the situation is (militaries are fussier than first aid services) and (b) how much cross-chatter there is. (When 15 breaks in, Control and I both start addressing our messages more carefully, so things don't get messed up.) This should be a quick way to indicate radio chatter. Since the tags are there, you can break it up into separate lines of dialogue or keep it together, as you choose. (I'd recommend keeping it all together if the main character isn't following it closely.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14374" LastEditorUserId="14374" LastEditDate="2017-08-15T14:34:17.507" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T14:34:17.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18010" CreationDate="2015-07-29T05:17:36.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was taught to handle foreign languages (and this would include pidgins) as grace notes in the prose and dialog: there's enough there to remind the reader that characters are speaking a language other than English, but not so much to hinder the reader's progress. So once you've made it clear that the characters are speaking the pidgin, most of the dialog would actually be in English but with important pidgin words thrown in. By important pidgin words I mean an untranslatable term, a word characteristic of the culture (and perhaps ironically contradicting the inevitable prejudices against them), or a word of pride. Including the &lt;em&gt;lattie on water&lt;/em&gt; story is an ideal grace note because it not only reminds the reader of the pidgin but it's an interesting story: I'll come away feeling like I've learned something good about a culture I never otherwise would have learned. This sounds like a fun story to write and a great novel to read. Good luck with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14708" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T05:17:36.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18396" CreationDate="2015-07-29T11:22:31.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like was said above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are the one who must know when to join more action/dialogue;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not every comment of beta readers must be implemented in your book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, the comment was quite interesting. And your change quite better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are showing, not telling how mom is;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You add more voice to the character.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here it is another but: You can't use this in every piece of dialogue, otherwise makes the reading too heavy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try use it in moments of tension and climax;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't write &quot;boring&quot; dialogue like: &quot;How are you doing?&quot; &quot;Well, and you?&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in this piece of dialogue you show that you don't do that, what is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14716" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-07-31T01:46:09.140" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T01:46:09.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18417" CreationDate="2015-07-29T13:00:36.180" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone has their own writing style. If you tend to write more dialogues, put story into dialogues. Or write out suspicious dialogue which creates doubts in readers mind (if you are writing out a thriller). But yes story is always important, never matter if its with or without dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14717" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T13:00:36.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18417" CreationDate="2015-07-29T14:22:02.927" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you believe you have too much dialogue? To take the question to an extreme, have you ever read a play? It's &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; dialogue, and yet plot happens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I understand you're not trying to write a play. But if your strong point is good dialogues, why not work with it? You can write the dialogue, then add descriptions of how your characters said something, what they did while they were talking, actions, interactions, gestures. What characters were thinking, holding back, not saying. Things might be happening while your characters are talking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a brilliant example of what I'm trying to say, read the first chapter of The Master and Margarita. All of it is dialogue between three characters, with very little actually happening. And yet, we are treated to so much...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, your dialogue has to have a reason to be there. If it doesn't serve the plot in any way, it can go. But that is true of any text, not only of dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14704" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T14:22:02.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18335" CreationDate="2015-07-29T21:34:59.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please read this interview with the writer Joan Didion:&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3439/the-art-of-fiction-no-71-joan-didion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;  [Paris Review, Fall/Winter 1978]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3439/the-art-of-fiction-no-71-joan-didion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;  She is one of the greatest prose stylists in the 20th and 21st centuries, and here's one thing she said when asked about her greatest influence: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I always say Hemingway, because he taught me how sentences worked. When I was fifteen or sixteen I would type out his stories to learn how the sentences worked. I taught myself to type at the same time. A few years ago when I was teaching a course at Berkeley I reread A Farewell to Arms and fell right back into those sentences. I mean they're perfect sentences. Very direct sentences, smooth rivers, clear water over granite, no sinkholes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She literally wrote out Hemingway's sentences.  In the end, her voice and Hemingway's could not be more different, but she studied what she loved and it contributed greatly to her own development as a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read a lot.  Study the writers you love.  Write from the heart.  Your writing will grow into its voice over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14696" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T21:34:59.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18432" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-29T22:19:33.810" Score="0" ViewCount="495" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really need to know how to make the page numbers in Google Docs look like a real book. I know how to do the page numbers, but how do you do them half on the right side and half on the left (like an actual book has them so that the pages on the don't have a page number in the crease of the book)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14721" LastEditorUserId="47470" LastEditDate="2021-03-31T00:15:12.907" LastActivityDate="2021-03-31T00:15:12.907" Title="How do you make page numbers in Google Docs?" Tags="|creative-writing|formatting|book|google-docs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-08-01T20:00:23.553" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18172" CreationDate="2015-07-30T00:46:09.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By what speaks to them. The best writing advice is not vague or inspiring. That's for the sides of coffee cups. The best advice is specific to you and zeroes in on exactly what's holding you back. If one person tells you to write in the mornings when you're fresh, another tells you to write what you know, and the third tells you your story slows down in the middle and your characters all sound the same, which one is more useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously it depends on the one seeking help and what that helps needs to be. The best advice is often uncomfortable to hear, challenging to accept, and nails your weak spots the same way a masseuse goes straight for the sore spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14723" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T00:46:09.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18377" CreationDate="2015-07-30T00:52:12.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The bit doesn't have to be believable. It does have to be relatable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your character suddenly finds herself having to deal with people's incorrect assumptions about her, the fact that this sort of thing wouldn't happen is besides the point. Everyone's had to deal with misconceptions and they can relate to this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, just the fact that it's in a work of fiction gives you a little leeway. No one reads about ordinary lives, they read about extraordinary moments in ordinary lives. If something unusual wasn't happening to the protagonist, you wouldn't have a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key thing is to be consistent with it. Don't use a throwaway exaggeration and then not have it pay off down the line. Do it for a reason besides being funny and go with it, see where it leads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14723" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T00:52:12.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18280" CreationDate="2015-07-30T01:11:57.703" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's not a single answer. Mostly you would do whatever the studio, the lyricist and the other people working on the musical need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll want to establish the points in your script where songs are needed; emotional moments, or revelatory ones, or even just where it needs to be broken up. Then indicate in the script that a song is happening, explain briefly what the song is telling, and describe what will be seen onscreen during as it happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We see Sarah spin around and start to SING. Tiny ANIMATED BIRDS fly in and help her as she prepares a pie and sings brightly about making do with what you have. The pie crust is nearly done, we build to a crescendo, and she GRABS THE BIRDS, throws them in the pie one two three, pops it in the oven and finishes her song with a cheery flourish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the lyricist completes the song, add the lyrics in and change the action to suit the words. But as long as everyone who will be reading the script can tell what's happening, there's not a hard and fast rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14723" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T01:11:57.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18432" CreationDate="2015-07-30T03:17:13.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've attempted to address this problem before, and I double-checked both Google help files and Google Add-Ons in hope of finding a solution for you (and me), but I've had no luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google Docs does not distinguish between odd and even pages that, in a book, would become the recto and verso pages. Without recto and verso, one cannot place a gutter margin on the page (as usually required by printers) or position the page number on the upper outside corner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hoped that some add-on might retrofit the odd/even distinction onto a document, but I found nothing that would help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if you might find some sort of PDF file editor that would do this for you: you'd download your Google Doc as a PDF then feed it to the converter which would add a gutter margin and the page numbers in the appropriate places. It isn't uncommon to see physical books represented electronically as PDF files before they go to press, so this seems to be the next best place to look. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry I don't have better news for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14708" LastEditorUserId="14708" LastEditDate="2015-07-30T15:09:07.540" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T15:09:07.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18396" CreationDate="2015-07-30T03:45:48.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every line needs to service the plot, set an image in the reader's mind, or reveal something about the characters. If it doesn't, you don't need it, whatever beta readers think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But actions and descriptions can add weight to a conversation because they can help us visualize what's going on. And they can help set the pace; faster dialogue means less description, because you want the reader moving along as fast as they're talking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Me, I'd keep the first section you expanded (mom's face) but leave the rest as you had it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14723" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T03:45:48.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18063" CreationDate="2015-07-30T03:58:35.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Really, the samples you want to read are from the magazine you're about to write for. Those are the readers you need to satisfy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which articles catch your eye? Which articles get you to read all the way through?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basics of journalism writing are pretty easy. Start right out with the conclusion of your article and then add specifics. It's the upside-down pyramid style and it's worked forever, designed to let someone read an article, get the important information immediately and then read as far as they remain interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also can start with an anecdotal lead, a quote from someone, or a few lines to set the tone before diving into the article. Or write it in a list form. Interviews start with a description of the interviewee and then follow a pretty standard q&amp;amp;a format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you're practiced enough, start breaking some of those rules and see what sort of style you can develop for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick guide: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mediahelpingmedia.org/training-resources/journalism-basics/464-assembling-a-news-story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;News writing tips for beginners&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14723" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T03:58:35.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18335" CreationDate="2015-07-30T08:27:19.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not the best at writing, but I do know a couple of things for you to remember if you still can't find your &amp;quot;voice&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important. - Gary Provost&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and remember, don't count words, count moments, and the detail that you put in to them needs to reflect the pace of what's happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14727" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T08:27:19.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18440" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18441" CreationDate="2015-07-30T13:11:29.147" Score="1" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just noticed that I do this a lot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We continued marching and marching.&lt;/strong&gt; The forest seemed endless. Either&#xA;  that or we were going in circles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Up and up I went,&lt;/strong&gt; biting back the growing pain in my knees, blinded by&#xA;  sunlight that flashed through the twisted branches. &lt;strong&gt;Up and up and up&#xA;  until&lt;/strong&gt; I was high enough to feel vertigo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a sign of bad writing? Maybe the repetition doesn't say much about how far the character have gone and where he/she's currently located?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T07:51:05.127" Title="Is showing motion by repeating words a sign of bad writing?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18440" CreationDate="2015-07-30T13:44:02.747" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like most stylistic choices, I don't think this is a problem unless you're doing it a lot. The repetition in your second example seems find because it's a deliberate echo, not an accidental one, but if you're using repetition over and over (see what I did there?), you may want to tone it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In the first example, I'd say the &quot;continued&quot; is redundant, if you use the repetition. &quot;We marched and marched,&quot; seems like it would work more smoothly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T13:44:02.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18440" CreationDate="2015-07-30T19:24:02.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not bad writing, but it is a common technique and has only light impact. So, writing with a current weakness. Consider your above examples: &quot;The forest seemed endless.&quot; This has roughly the same effect as the previous line with the repetition but is more effective. You only need one of those lines, really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second example, take out the 'up and up' sentences/clauses and you're left with much more vivid and effective prose. Delete the repetitions and it's an instant improvement. Just because you haven't stated the idea you have in mind - he climbed for a long time - doesn't mean you haven't suggested it strongly (because you have). Really, what is more interesting? Feeling the character's exhaustion with them, or registering the subjective idea that he is exerting significant effort? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a poetry class I was told that nouns are the key to description. Nouns are the most direct way to an image or sensation. Another way to interpret that observation is that specificity comes from something to focus upon. Nouns are subjects, adjectives are mere modifiers. So for example: if the characters are marching through a forest, a very specific, moss-covered trunk growing over a large stone is a sight the characters can encounter a second time in their marching. When perceived along with their throbbing backs and strained knees, they realize their lack of progress and can only help but stop for a despair-soaked break. Sensory details and characters reacting to a specific stimulus tell as much or more then describing the intended impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way, by repeating words you are focusing too much on 'telling' the idea you want to confer to the reader, instead of focusing on an image of stimulus that suggests that idea, aka 'showing.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14267" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T19:24:02.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18417" CreationDate="2015-07-30T20:16:28.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself a basic question: why are my two characters speaking to each other? Chances are, it is for one of the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;to prove how witty they are (and, by extension, how witty you are as author)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;to ask about something&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;to confirm or deny something &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;to avert suspicion&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;to blame or praise someone&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;to promise or threaten something&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;to explain something&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;to deny something&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;to help someone or frustrate / hinder them&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reasons 2 to 9, you can ask one or more of the following questions of yourself as author:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Why are they saying what they are saying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B. When are they saying it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C. To whom are they saying it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D. In what circumstances are they saying it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E. What are they trying to achieve by saying it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;F. What are they trying to avoid by saying it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you start to ask these questions about your characters and their dialogue, you will see how you can add plot elements. If I'm blaming someone, something happened. What was it? If I am threatening someone, they have done something or might do something or have stumbled upon something ... tell me what it was. Set the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking yourself who these people are and why they are saying what they do will help you to understand who they are and give them things to do as well as things to say. It will help you to put them into situations. Characters need to be put into situations and then taken out of them again to advance the plot of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, make sure you &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; a story! In the real world, people rarely talk without a context and the context in this case is what should inform and drive your plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your dialogue primarily falls into the first category (to show off), then you really need to rethink what you are writing and why. Nothing wrong with showing off: celebrities are forever writing books which show them as intelligent, witty or erudite human beings. However, such books do not fall into the category of fiction as the term is popularly understood although they may be fictional nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T20:16:28.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14404" CreationDate="2015-07-30T20:23:33.020" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You know how John Grisham found out if he had what it took to be an author? He wrote a book and tried to get it published. That's how everyone finds out if they have what it takes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few caveats - Grisham, like most aspiring writers, had a day job. In his case he was able to use his day job as a direct contribution to his writing - he was a lawyer and wrote books about the law. Handy. But even if you're working in a 7-11, you can still take things from your job (people you see, thoughts you have, etc.) and use them for your writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you don't have to make the choice between making a living and trying to make it as an author. You can do both, as most authors have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the idea of &quot;what it takes&quot; makes it sound like a static condition. That is, people either have what it takes or they don't, and if they don't there's nothing to be done. Most people who start writing produce crap, often for quite a while. But if they stick with it, they get better. There's debate about whether innate, unchangeable talent for writing exists, but even if it does, the vast majority of writers also have to put a lot of work into their craft. I'd say it takes a mix of raw talent, positive attitude toward critiques, and practice in order to be a successfully published author. Someone could probably be a good writer with only two of them, but will probably need all three in order to be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the only way to know whether your &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; work is good enough to publish is to submit it for publication and see what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T20:23:33.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18070" CreationDate="2015-07-31T02:30:56.183" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently &lt;a href=&quot;https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/2171/what-options-are-there-for-writing-better-non-programming-text-in-emacs/14238#14238&quot;&gt;addressed this question&lt;/a&gt; over at the Stackexchange Emacs site, but that post is more geared toward Emacs users. I'll say a couple of things here about general advantages/challenges of this platform for people who might be less familiar with it. As a sidenote, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hmhco.com/shop/books/The-Trap/9780547824086&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;my most recent novel&lt;/a&gt; was written using Emacs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DOWNSIDES&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learning Curve&lt;/strong&gt; : Emacs has a steep learning curve, and most users do a lot of customization of the basic features over time. I'm not a programmer, but a literary person. I started with an unmodified &quot;vanilla Emacs,&quot; and struggled. Emacs did not by default even wrap lines--each line just went straight on, right off the screen. If I was starting over today, I'd seriously consider installing one of the amped-up versions that community members create, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://batsov.com/prelude/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Emacs Prelude&lt;/a&gt;, that comes bundled with many commonly used packages. (Perhaps one day I'll make one of these for creative writers, but I'm not there yet.) Even so, Emacs will take time to learn. I didn't feel comfortable with it until I'd been using it heavily every day for about six months (and my general level of computer literacy was improved as a contingent benefit).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Text Editing vs. Word Processing&lt;/strong&gt; : &#xA;Emacs is a text editor, not a word processor, so it's missing some functionality writers might expect, such as pagination and headers and footers. When I have to communicate with a publisher about what I'm doing, I'll often export my work to &lt;code&gt;.odt&lt;/code&gt; (Libreoffice) and then to &lt;code&gt;.doc&lt;/code&gt; (Word), which is a little inconvenient, but I put up with it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPSIDES&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;code&gt;org-mode&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; : This is an Emacs mode for organizing lists, and it's the reason I tried Emacs out in the first place. It works beautifully    for large, complex manuscripts because it allows you to create heirarchies, all in plain text. Here's a screenshot of my environment:&#xA;   &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WFbrP.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WFbrP.png&quot; alt=&quot;Emacs Screenshot&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These sections can be 'folded' and unfolded at will, and they can be    shuffled around at will, too, all with keyboard shortcuts.    Want to    switch chapter 2 and chapter 10? Easy. Want to see the    chapter titles    only, and not the content? Scenes? Only some    chapters and not others?    You can do that, too. &lt;code&gt;org-mode&lt;/code&gt; also    supports the use of a keyword    called TODO, for things you're    working on. I use this to organize    things I need to remember. You    can also create COMMENT sections,    which won't be exported, when    you export.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Text editing&lt;/strong&gt; Though it's somewhat of a disadvantage to miss out on the more design-oriented features of a word processor, I will say&#xA;that a text editor is amazing at editing text. Every control is on&#xA;the keyboard. I never touch a mouse or trackpad when I'm in Emacs,&#xA;and there are also often multiple ways to achieve the same goal,&#xA;which has been good for my arthritis. There's great search&#xA;functionality, and abilities I'd never seen in a word processor, such&#xA;as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;ALT-t&lt;/code&gt; will transpose words. Put the cursor between the words &quot;cats&#xA;bats&quot;, hit &lt;code&gt;ALT-t&lt;/code&gt; and you will have &quot;bats cats&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;ALT-k&lt;/code&gt; will delete from your cursor to the end of a sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can capitalize words with &lt;code&gt;ALT-c&lt;/code&gt; or uppercase them with &lt;code&gt;ALT-u&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emacs keeps track of everything you ever cut and paste during a&#xA;session, and holds it in its &lt;code&gt;kill ring&lt;/code&gt;. If you cut text1, and then&#xA;text2, and then text3, and now want to paste text1, or text2, or text3, you can do it&#xA;easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many, many more conveniences along these lines.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Git with Magit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd wanted to learn version control, specifically with &lt;a href=&quot;https://git-scm.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Git&lt;/a&gt;. Git,&#xA;like Emacs, is an amazing system that is used by programmers more&#xA;than other kinds of writers. It also has a learning curve, but&#xA;Emacs interfaces with it using a utility called &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/magit/magit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Magit&lt;/a&gt;, which is&#xA;very convenient. I can log into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitbucket.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bitbucket&lt;/a&gt; (where I keep my&#xA;files), upload versions, look at file histories, etc, all from within&#xA;Emacs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To Sum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've enjoyed using Emacs so far, but I still have a long way to go. I&#xA;frequently hear about other ways of doing things, and    suspect that&#xA;in five years I'll have different ideas about what    works and&#xA;what doesn't. Nonetheless, I've been remarkably productive    with&#xA;this software. Oh, and if you've ever been angered because    MSWord&#xA;crashed on you, well, I have never seen Emacs crash yet    (YMMV...).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14724" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:46.140" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T02:30:56.183" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18447" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-31T18:52:20.110" Score="0" ViewCount="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;My Dad is writing a book about racism I am trying to find info for him on how to publish and who would publish he is almost done with the book however he is writing 5 books one of them on inside of banking the theft side of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14743" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T21:58:28.207" Title="self publishing" Tags="|self-preservation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-08-04T17:37:56.233" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18448" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-31T20:02:18.020" Score="0" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a simple question regarding scientific quotes. Which of the following alternatives is correct? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alt. 1:&#xA;The literature has made substantial strides towards identifying causal effects of X on Y and in [2010] J. Miller has concluded &quot;...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alt. 2:&#xA;The literature has made substantial strides towards identifying causal effects of X on Y  and J. Miller has concluded in [2010] &quot;...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alt. 3 (no parentheses):&#xA;The literature has made substantial strides towards identifying causal effects of X on Y and in 2010 J. Miller has concluded &quot;...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14744" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T00:40:45.060" Title="academic writing: direct quote" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|quotes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18447" CreationDate="2015-07-31T21:58:28.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are basically two kinds of self-publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is the heavy do-it-yourself route. You write the book, you format it for publication, you design the cover, you do any marketing, etc. What they do for you is physically print the book and make it available to on-line and brick-and-mortar bookstores. In practice, your book will be listed on the web sites of dozens of on-line bookstores, most notably Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Getting into brick-and-mortar bookstores is very difficult. Don't count on your book being on the shelves ANYWHERE, not unless you work very hard on marketing or have a friend who owns a bookstore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is what you want to do, I think you have three major choices: Create Space, Lulu, and Lightning Source. I have worked with both Create Space and Lulu and can vouch that both live up to their promises and are reasonably easy to work with. I haven't worked with Lightning Source. Unlike CS and Lulu, LS is not primarily geared to working with independent writers, they exist to serve big publishers and just work with self-publishers as a sideline. So I understand they're more cumbersome to work with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these involve only modest investment on your part up front. Depending on many details, you will probably have to put up a few hundred dollars. Not including any marketing costs, which could range from zero to ... well, to millions if you want to advertise your book on TV during the Super Bowl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other self-publishing route is if you just want to write the book, and then have someone else worry about laying it out, marketing, etc. There are many companies out there that do this. I cannot recommend any because I have not worked with any. This route usually requires you to pay them at least several thousand dollars for their efforts. Warning: Many people who have worked with them tell me that many of them are scams. They charge you many thousands of dollars to market your book, and then their &quot;marketing&quot; turns out to be that they got you listed in a catalog that you could have done yourself for twenty bucks. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone else on here has had a good experience with one of these companies, please post about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T21:58:28.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2015-07-31T22:27:12.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Virginia Woolf : &quot;A Room of One's Own&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;George Orwell : &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Politics and The English Language&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; and &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why I&#xA;Write.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14724" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T22:27:12.280" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-07-31T22:27:12.280" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18448" CreationDate="2015-08-01T03:31:16.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't like the literature making strides.  How about&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers have made substantial strides toward identifying causal effects of X on y.  J Miller (2010) has concluded . . . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's always better to have human beings occupying the subject slot -- much more powerful construction -- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14696" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T03:31:16.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18462" CreationDate="2015-08-01T04:13:43.510" Score="6" ViewCount="317" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a high school student, and am concerned with my recent compositional tendencies. This past year, I took AP English Language and Composition. It was a rather difficult class, as writing is not my strong suite yet I was still expected to get all A's. Timed writing is especially emphasized, and after a while I found that writing with &quot;sophisticated syntax and diction&quot;, as my teacher called it, earned me high grades on essays (Whether this discovery was conscious or not I can't say). Now whenever I write something it comes out excessively ornamented and often times convoluted. Although it always earns me a high grade, as a quite meek and unassuming person I feel a kind of repulsion at how artificial it sounds. &lt;strong&gt;How can I attain a more concise and unaffected writing style?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14745" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-08-05T07:00:24.067" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T07:00:24.067" Title="How To Write Concisely" Tags="|style|essay|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18448" CreationDate="2015-08-01T05:28:30.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the author's name is already used in the sentence (as in your example), the correct styling following APA (American Psychological Association) for in-text citations would be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;The literature has made substantial strides towards identifying causal effects of X on Y and J. Miller (2010) has concluded &quot;...&quot; (p. 23).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming from the way you've composed your sentence ('has concluded') that APA style is most appropriate. APA requires a page number from the source containing the direct quote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this link from Purdue University's Online Writing Lab for source of my information on APA style and more information: &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/2/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site is a good reference for research and citation covering APA, MLA, and Chicago Manual of Style. Your publication/university will dictate which particular style it expects writers to follow. Always check the most up-to-date authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14746" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T05:28:30.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18452" CreationDate="2015-08-01T07:28:40.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excessive concission always seems affected. Feel free to increase the words to idea ratio. Ignore the unimportant ideas as a way to cut verbosity. If you want your words to have a greater impact, say less and only say what matters. My greatest asset in limiting my vocabulary choice is to remember which words my little sister uses. If you are an only child eat lunch with the stoners (but don't use their ten most favorite words or share their habits). Choose words they would understand. A large vocabulary is a joy but if you want to be read by a wider audience, writing with a smaller vocabulary aids in understanding. Good luck and have fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T07:28:40.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18440" CreationDate="2015-08-01T07:51:05.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's really very few unequivocal 'signs' of bad writing when it comes to word choice. It's simply not that easy. Depending on the character, age, education, temper, exhaustion, voice etc of the narrator, 'we marched and marched' may be a great choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key word is &lt;em&gt;choice&lt;/em&gt;. If you're just noticing you do this a lot, then it probably is a sign that you need to treat examples of it in your writing as a flag. The fact that you noticed it is commendable. It's a good catch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading books on the subject of careful writing helps me tune into my own opportunities for improvement. I recommend &lt;em&gt;The Careful Writer&lt;/em&gt; by Bernstein, &lt;em&gt;Making Shapely Fiction&lt;/em&gt; by Stern, and &lt;em&gt;On Writing Well&lt;/em&gt; by Zinsser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14746" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T07:51:05.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18452" CreationDate="2015-08-01T08:36:51.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For class, write whatever gives you a good grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, write for yourself. You already know what gives you that feeling of repulsion. Trust that feeling. Write for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T08:36:51.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3829" CreationDate="2015-08-01T09:11:44.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the goal is to write a comedy novel then a strong plotline is a must, as it would be for any novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are bent upon using humour as a genre out of the framework of a novel then you could consider writing memoirs or travel stories. But even these  dogs would not hunt without a series of big and small conflicts and a dash of drama and irony. Think along the lines of Thurber or Jerome K Jerome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14749" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2015-08-01T10:59:12.463" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T10:59:12.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18452" CreationDate="2015-08-01T10:18:52.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, &lt;em&gt;you must enjoy these high grades&lt;/em&gt;, even if you don't like that much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High grades in school? Awesome;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not always you will like your writing, specially in school when you are forced to write certain themes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What to do to attain a more concise and unaffected writing style?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you really like to write, do it in your free time and write freely, with no concerns about the ornamented  writing;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But If you are really repulsed about that, stop with the hard words and expressions when you write. You know, those words that we need a dictionary to know what they mean.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to write more coloquial and add expressions that you and your friends speak. (but not barbarian expressions ;) )&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Do you thought that it is your style, your writer's voice? Don't close the voice inside you :)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14716" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T10:18:52.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18157" CreationDate="2015-08-01T10:36:58.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What &lt;strong&gt;@what&lt;/strong&gt; said above is useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to know your audience and where to find it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to spread the word in social media, website, blogs...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other possible ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What if, when you published &lt;em&gt;End of Gospel&lt;/em&gt;, you offered &lt;em&gt;New Testament Commentary by a Mathematician&lt;/em&gt; for free with every purchase? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spread the word &lt;strong&gt;right now&lt;/strong&gt; with your &lt;em&gt;New Testament Commentary by a Mathematician&lt;/em&gt; readers and put that news in places that people who like the theme of your book frequent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14716" LastEditorUserId="18289" LastEditDate="2016-03-30T11:20:16.500" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T11:20:16.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18010" CreationDate="2015-08-01T10:43:16.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alright, here I go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't put &quot;englishness&quot; in every sentence &lt;code&gt;(i know you won't)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe you could put it in italic. &lt;code&gt;(I personally would put because is foreign)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are worried about the non-speakers of english, put a note with the meaning, but just if is a difficult word or expression. &lt;code&gt;(A lot of notes distract the readers)&lt;/code&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14716" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T10:43:16.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18452" CreationDate="2015-08-01T10:55:27.487" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will probably come to find that different writing styles suit different purposes. This is taught in most writing classes, usually with discussion of &quot;audience&quot; or &quot;target&quot; or &quot;purpose&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you've already found one style (formal academic writing) that works for one audience and purpose. That doesn't mean it's the only way you can write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your post here seems slightly formal, but that's not completely inappropriate  for the audience, so it seems you've found another way to match your words to your purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of exploring different styles? Most writing needs rewriting. When you produce something you think is repulsive, &lt;em&gt;edit it&lt;/em&gt;. Figure out which words you dislike, and change them. I know this seems obvious, but I really think it's the answer. It may seem like a strange situation, as if you're artificially changing your natural voice to make it &lt;em&gt;seem&lt;/em&gt; natural, but it sounds like your natural voice has already been overly influenced in a direction you don't like, so you're just trying to work it back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can explore other styles of writing as well in order to make yourself truly versatile. Try some poetry, something in dialect, song lyrics, news reports, scientific lab reports, sales copy for a product you love, texts to friends, emails to prospective employers. And for all of them, don't forget the editing stage, because that's where you'll refine your style and develop the techniques that are best for that particular audience and purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T10:17:23.853" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T10:17:23.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18463" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-01T17:58:55.673" Score="0" ViewCount="447" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to paraphrase a sentence (as opposed to quoting), but I can not seem get any words in my mind for this part. What methods can I use to find ideas and methods for rephrasing well written sentences and include my voice without lowering the quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14753" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T06:24:33.613" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T19:01:20.017" Title="Paraphrasing this part" Tags="|academic-writing|writers-block|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18463" CreationDate="2015-08-01T18:38:16.157" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this your own sentence, or someone else's sentence that you want to paraphrase rather than quote?  First, there's a predication problem in that the driverless cars (the subject) cannot be claiming anything (the verb).  So I would say, &quot;The International companies designing and testing driverless cars claim that they can navigate roadways, change lanes, observe traffic signals, and avoid pedestrians without human input.&quot;  Do you want it paraphrased more than that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;International companies developing driverless cars say that such cars will be able to duplicate the actions of human drivers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14696" LastEditorUserId="14696" LastEditDate="2015-08-01T20:15:30.893" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T20:15:30.893" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18463" CreationDate="2015-08-01T20:24:48.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A method I use when I get stuck Is to take a clean sheet of paper and copy the problem passage onto the top of the sheet word for word backwards. I then read it, and rewrite it multiple times until it makes sense. often it becomes a different number of sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other methods I use include expansion and contraction where you add words and ideas or remove words and ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And sometimes I just make tea. And come back later when I am fresh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T20:24:48.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18468" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18470" CreationDate="2015-08-02T02:12:19.293" Score="3" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel, but due to lack of time because these years for me are very important for my academic future, it hasn't progressed that much. However, I like it very much and would like to finish it, plus I have invested a lot of time into editing and the like. The entire plot is ready with the exception of a few minor conflict kinks, and I have a trilogy planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm the type of writer that gets struck with other inspirations, and currently I just got hit with one I'm itching to write--an 8 book series in which the entire plot for the first book is also planned out; yep, I got reaaally into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I stick it out and work harder on the original project? That's what I lean to; I ought to finish the trilogy first. But at the same time, I find myself sketching the character designs for my other inspiration...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14720" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-08-03T21:21:31.300" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T21:21:31.300" Title="Continue working it through or start over?" Tags="|planning|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18468" CreationDate="2015-08-02T03:05:59.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found that the best time to write is when the inspiration is active and flowing on its own.  If you've got thoughts and images pressing to the front of your brain and the words and outlines are presenting themselves - write them down!  Don't put it off.  Then, when the urgency to work on your 8 book series begins to wane, switch gears back to the novel you're currently writing and push to finish it up.  Also, the break might allow your subconscious some breathing room to work out the &quot;kinks&quot; on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14739" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T03:05:59.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18468" CreationDate="2015-08-02T08:38:29.317" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you writing for fun and to relax after your job? Then follow your inspiration as David Roberts suggests. But do not expext to ever finish a book, because very likely what you perceive as inspiration is the joy in dreaming up stories coupled with an unwillingness to do the less pleasant parts of a writer's job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or are you writing to publish? Then finish one book -- not one trilogy; one book! -- before you start on the next. Note down ideas you have for the next book, so you won't forget them (and can free your mind), but don't explore them. As explained elsewhere (in other answers on this site), a good time to start the next book is when the first is being reviewed by beta readers, but that is the most overlap that is not detrimental to finishing a project. Discipline, I believe, is the key to success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as I never tire of emphasizing, people are different. Maybe you can work on – and actually make progress in – multiple parallel projects. Maybe you know the kind of person you are, or you'll have to try and find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-08-03T07:04:04.033" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T07:04:04.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18471" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-02T12:58:16.380" Score="0" ViewCount="1573" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might seem worthy of scorn for some of the seasoned screenwriters around here. Google wasn't helping me a lot with this question, so I thought of putting it here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering how good a practice it is to put the description of the sky and the light that it casts in the &lt;strong&gt;ACTION&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any screenwriters use it and more importantly, is it recommended? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14344" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T17:11:33.447" Title="Describing The Sky In A Screenplay" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18472" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-02T13:26:01.640" Score="4" ViewCount="1394" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a running dialogue between two of my characters. However, I am not using &lt;strong&gt;INTERCUT&lt;/strong&gt; and only one of the two characters will be in frame. The other will be heard through &lt;strong&gt;V.O.&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, here's my question. At the end of the phone call, just as the person on the opposite end (the one off screen) is about to cut the call, another person beside him says something, which can be heard by the person in frame. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I go about writing this particular piece of dialogue? Would I need to use &lt;strong&gt;b.g&lt;/strong&gt;? Can any of you cite good examples of how a screenwriter tackled this rather daunting problem? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the person in frame clearly hears what was said; so I reckon it has to be put as a separate DIALOGUE at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14344" LastEditorUserId="13558" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T20:41:30.470" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T17:02:43.850" Title="A Background Voice Heard Over A Phone" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18473" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18479" CreationDate="2015-08-02T13:47:08.990" Score="0" ViewCount="1121" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it okay to use &lt;strong&gt;!?&lt;/strong&gt; for emphasis in dialogues in a screenplay? I understand that it cannot be used in the &lt;strong&gt;ACTION&lt;/strong&gt; or the &lt;strong&gt;PARENTHETIC&lt;/strong&gt;, but I assume that the rules are a lot less stringent when it comes to &lt;strong&gt;DIALOGUE&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14344" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T06:28:58.277" Title="Use Of '!?' In Screenplays" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18471" CreationDate="2015-08-02T13:47:35.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like a director/cinematographer's choice more than yours. The screenwriter's role is to build the story, right? So unless that sky has an absolutely irreplaceable effect on the scene (unlikely) or it has strong thematic resonance that truly elevates the work (unlikely) you're getting too focused on details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even a third-person novelist, who has license to describe anything anywhere, still has to have a reason for describing. In Old Man And The Sea, Hemingway spends a lot of time describing the ocean, the sky, ocean birds, but the descriptions function as more than just that. They communicate the passage of time, and accent the almost insane solitude the protagonist endures on his adventure of absurd persistence. In any other book those descriptions would probably hurt, not add.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an amazing, just brilliant vision of the scene and how the light makes it unique, then suggest with a minimum of description. Be prepared for it to be ignored. No reader or agent gives a s*** as I understand it. They are bloodhounds for story structure alone, and the script will be re-written by someone somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14267" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T13:47:35.387" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18475" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18477" CreationDate="2015-08-02T16:00:10.837" Score="5" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She looked tough: pieced nose, broad eyebrows, tousled hair,&#xA;  almost spiky. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I tried picturing him: his tiny body swinging above the ground, his&#xA;  eyes bloodshot, almost popping out, his tongue hanging to the side&#xA;  like a dead worm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are lists like these confusing? If so, how can I improve their clarity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T03:07:58.523" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T03:07:58.523" Title="What's the best way to punctuate a list with an comma-containing item?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|style|punctuation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18475" CreationDate="2015-08-02T16:31:28.000" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your sentences are exactly right, Alexandro.  In each case what follows the comma is a list of sentence elements in apposition to each other, one that is appropriately punctuated with commas.  In the first example, you have noun phrase appositives, and in the second, absolute phrases in apposition. One item in each list has a comma within it : hair, almost spiky, and bloodshot eyes, almost popping out. To me, these are not sufficiently complex to trigger the use of semicolons -- the lists are not confusing.  If the items in your lists were more complex, with commas within each element, then you might want to avoid confusion by using semicolons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14696" LastEditorUserId="14696" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T16:37:22.463" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T16:37:22.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18475" CreationDate="2015-08-02T16:52:41.130" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use semi-colons when you want to use commas as well. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He had three ties: a red one, which he hated; a striped one, which he&#xA;  loved; and a green one that had been given to him by his aunt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you can enclose extra information in parentheses. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I like several different dishes: lasagne (only if it is made with&#xA;  beef); pizza (has to have cheddar on it); and, chops (pork, of&#xA;  course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Punctuation isn't always an exact science. People disagree over how to do it 'correctly'. Yes, there are some places the majority of people would say you need a full stop, etc. but in other places different people would insist that their method of doing it is correct while others disagree. In these situations make sure that your meaning is clear to the reader, be consistent in what you do and just get on with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T16:52:41.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18471" CreationDate="2015-08-02T17:11:33.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know much about screenwriting, but I do know about stage plays.  In many cases, the stage directions fill in the writer's vision and set up the atmosphere.  For example, from &quot;A Streetcar Named Desire&quot;:  [The sky is] &quot;...a peculiarly tender blue, almost a turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay. […] In this part of New Orleans, you are practically always just around the corner […] from a tinny piano being played with the infatuated fluency of brown fingers. […] New Orleans is a cosmopolitan city where there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of races.&quot;  (Act I, scene i)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the feeling that a screenwriter is not at the same level as a playwright, and where a stage director might feel compelled to hold to the flavor of the stage directions, perhaps a film director feels no such compulsion?  I'd put them in anyway, where necessary, where they add to the vision and impact of the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14696" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T17:11:33.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18473" CreationDate="2015-08-02T22:39:57.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The use of an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Interrobang&lt;/a&gt; is perfectly acceptable language usage, and there is no technical reason why it can't be used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be difficult to assume that all of the readers of the screenplay would understand what the intended meaning is, so you may be better conveying that in a more explicit way. (which is a shame, because I do rather love the interrobang!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T22:39:57.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18473" CreationDate="2015-08-03T06:28:58.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using  !? is ok, when your reader knows what that mean in &quot;words and expressions&quot;. If you are making a comics, it will be understand well, because you can catch somebody's face and its expression during the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be a good storyteller, you need to explain the situation as well as face expression to your reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using ? and ! separately on its own its common knowledge, !? is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is personal opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T06:28:58.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18482" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-03T08:38:10.960" Score="1" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is good Idea to start by example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main hero is given briefcase and informed, that such briefcase contains very powerful bomb. The goal is to assassinate Prime Minister of given country. Main hero goes undetected through security checks, disguised as press worker, having one to one interview with the Prime Minister.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The briefcase goes boom earlier as expected, but luckily main hero's gut feeling saves him at the very last second, while the bomb not only kills Prime Minister, but also demolishes half of the building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the story itself it is very clear that briefcase bomb is plot device. It has to go through security check and it has to go boom in order for story to progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much effort should I spend explaining contents of such briefcase? In story above (which I did read in one book) it is just handwoven with one sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reader, I got really curious of what might be in such briefcase so it passes security checks. But as a writer, I do not know if a story should actually explain it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T17:33:03.883" Title="How much effort should I spend explaining plot device?" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18482" CreationDate="2015-08-03T09:03:14.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it would depend on whether specifics of the device has any bearing on the plot. In your example the bomb specifications themselves don't seem to be relevant to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14762" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T09:03:14.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18484" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-03T12:10:10.960" Score="1" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I have no formal training as a writer and I want to translate someone else's book in my home language, what is the best way to get into contact with the author to discuss/recommend this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14764" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-08-03T21:20:19.970" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T12:35:42.993" Title="First time translator" Tags="|translation|email|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18482" CreationDate="2015-08-03T12:24:13.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I think your question is a bit shallow for proper answer, but i will try to discribe:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) What kind of story are you telling?&lt;/strong&gt; Is is criminal story about your hero going in pathway of the briefcase bomb maker? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is, your hero will need some information about that briefcase. Color, weight, maybe small details as locks, material of the briefcase or such things like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your hero will need them to have some clues to work on as he will be searching for answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Different story only about hero not researching crime?&lt;/strong&gt; I think in this case is your briefcase irrelevant. It is only &quot;thing&quot; that made situation your hero is in. So details of it is not relevant, only thing mentioned is that bomb was in briefcase and it done terrible things. That's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will recommend you to think about, what story you want tell, and after that you will find what details about briefcase you need for a proper story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T12:24:13.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18486" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-03T12:49:03.810" Score="3" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any tools/programs that I can use when I translate a book into another language?  I.e. I do not want to turn &quot;wrathful grapes&quot;&quot;into &quot;angry raisins&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14764" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T09:22:12.123" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T09:22:12.123" Title="Are there any translation check tools?" Tags="|editing|software|tools|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18499" CreationDate="2015-08-03T13:20:26.580" Score="1" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest me the best resource to learn comedy screenwriting for Sitcoms? I have read Melvin Helitzer's &quot;Comedy writing secrets&quot; book and learnt a lot from it. But I want to know in depth about writing sitcoms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13931" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T18:24:39.380" Title="Which is the best resource to learn how to write a sitcom?" Tags="|creative-writing|screenwriting|book|comedy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18484" CreationDate="2015-08-03T13:48:01.700" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Through the author's agent or, if you cannot find them, the book's publisher. If the author has a Facebook profile or webpage and explicitly states that anyone may contact them, you can use that channel as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think it is unlikely that any professional author will commission someone without any experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T07:00:34.330" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T07:00:34.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18486" CreationDate="2015-08-03T13:53:39.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. All a translator has is their proficiency in both source and target language. If you don't have that, don't translate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T13:53:39.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18482" CreationDate="2015-08-03T17:33:03.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My approach: Focus on the main hero's viewpoint. If the main hero thinks about the contents, write that. If the main hero has an opinion about the contents, write that. If the main hero feels some emotion about the contents write that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to deciding what to put in is not what he knows, but what he thinks and feels in the course of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: I imagine that the main hero would be quite concerned about how the bomb will go through security. If the bomb is made of materials that might set off detectors, he would think about that as he goes through security. If the explosive is some material that escapes detection, he might think about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T17:33:03.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18472" CreationDate="2015-08-03T17:54:37.130" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been a while since I worked on a screenplay, but I believe the proper format is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;JANE (V.O.)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (filtered)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Fine, I'll see you on Thursday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MICHAEL (V.O.)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (filtered, muffled)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Who the hell are you talking to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you just describe what the difference in the sound quality would be.  I've also seen it where terms like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.storysense.com/format/telephone.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;over phone&quot;&lt;/a&gt; and &quot;in the background&quot; are added in the parentheses (next to &quot;filtered&quot; and &quot;muffled&quot;), but I think those are considered an optional convenience to make it easier to understand what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never actually sold a screenplay, so take this advice with a grain of salt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T17:54:37.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18468" CreationDate="2015-08-03T18:25:27.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, personally, the most exciting point of any project is the initial burst of inspiration, and my interest always wanes near the end.  So when I start any project, I always need to make a personal commitment to finish it, or else I end up with all starts, and no finished projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T18:25:27.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17614" CreationDate="2015-08-03T18:52:07.977" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with most of the points made in other answers here.  But I would add this, having come from a conference where numerous, published authors shared their thoughts on this question.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you need to examine one big assumption: &quot;If I have a decent product...&quot;  I won't say you don't, however, it was pointed out, human nature being what it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1) For the vast majority of aspiring authors, the first novel (and second, and third) aren't really that good.  It takes a lot of writing to be able to write well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;2) Human beings are very bad at judging their own recent work (and your friends and relatives are not likely to give you the frank opinions as you might need).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the risk for new authors who self-publish is that their first novel is mediocre (or worse) and now their name is attached to that.  Even if they vastly improve with later books, it is too late, &lt;strong&gt;their name is tainted&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if you go through the traditional publishing route, numerous sets of eyes will review &amp;amp; edit your stuff.  If you can get past that gauntlet, you can be assured you have probably not given birth to a giant turd.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you go the traditional publisher route, you have to be prepared for a LOT of rejection (Harry Potter books were rejected by numerous publishers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full disclosure: I am not a published author, I am just repeating what several published authors said in a large conference (and some of them self-publish too).&#xA;Just more stuff to think about.  If I self-published, I'd probably still consider engaging an editor, to get that non-biased feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14765" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2015-08-05T06:43:46.950" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T06:43:46.950" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18448" CreationDate="2015-08-04T00:40:45.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doreen, in response to your comment that you simply want to emphasize the year in your prose because it's important to whatever point you're making, then this is a matter of style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your example sentence, you can strengthen the saliency of the year the conclusion was made by giving it it's own sentence if you're going to follow with other years in which strides were made (2011, 2012, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The literature has made substantial strides towards identifying causal effects of X on Y. In 2010, J. Miller concluded...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or if not you can replace the 'and' with a semicolon, making the year/quote less of an afterthought:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The literature has made substantial strides towards identifying causal effects of X on Y; in 2010, J. Miller concluded...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make the date 'more salient (to what I do not know as we have only this sentence to work with) with &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;As early as 2010 | Most notably in 2010 | etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that helps achieve your goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what's gained by putting the year in parenthesis when it's not parenthetical and not a citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14746" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T00:40:45.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18484" CreationDate="2015-08-04T11:32:28.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Own experience answer:&lt;/em&gt; It is relatively easy to become a translator. Many of my friends did this &quot;job&quot; while studying at school. But it has a drawback: If you have no (or little) experience, you can assume getting &quot;B class&quot; book to translate (or niche type of a book)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First step is obvious: Make a publisher (or publishing house) know that you are willing to translate a book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T11:32:28.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18484" CreationDate="2015-08-04T12:35:42.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can try traditional authors (contact them through their agents or publishers), but most of them will likely chose a translator with experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be best for you to try to work your way up through the ranks. You can contact self-published authors, many of whom are more open to non-traditional business plans, and see if they're interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also translate some excerpts of work in the public domain as a way to demonstrate your skills, and have these available as samples when you contact potential clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T12:35:42.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18497" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-04T14:38:13.540" Score="3" ViewCount="555" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Seek best solutions for information collection, compilation, aggregation&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a newer technical writer working for an industrial fabrication company. We make an awesome B2B product that sells well. I really love what I do, and I believe I've found my life's work. I also really enjoy my work environment and the people. Furthermore, even though I'm older (staring at 40), I've decided to return to university to finish a double BA in Professional Writing and Visual Communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;My Work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been tasked with creating various infographics of our products, creating user manuals of the jigs used to create our products, process instructions for the welders, product assembly instructions for our project managers, and business writing such as policy memos, safety guides, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Issue&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently struggling with collecting the data and information I need to create these documents, keeping it organized, and then compiling it all in one location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used or am using&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evernote&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Noteshelf&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pen &amp;amp; Paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Audio Notes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Video Notes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Photographs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The audio and video notes are more for my reference. However, the photographs, pen &amp;amp; paper notes, and Noteshelf notes are critical to have compiled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for those of you so inclined, let me know how you handle such an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Clarification&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not merely gathering quantitative data. It is a combination of processes, adjust-ability settings, dimensions, visual information (photographs), etc. Think large user manual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I told @what, I've been using the phrase &amp;quot;gather data&amp;quot; when more accurately this would be &amp;quot;gathering content&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14666" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T06:18:32.887" Title="Technical writing -- best solutions for gathering and compiling data/information" Tags="|technical-writing|notes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18497" CreationDate="2015-08-04T15:08:48.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;DevonThink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.organizingcreativity.com/2015/02/digital-information-infrastructure-with-devonthink/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.organizingcreativity.com/2015/02/digital-information-infrastructure-with-devonthink/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also google stuff like &quot;academic writing workflow&quot; or &quot;science writing workflow&quot; or a combination of &quot;workflow&quot; with a specific software, either for writing (Scrivener) or citations (Zotero) -- there are quite a few blog posts where scholars describe their writing workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also look for &quot;knowledge management&quot; + &quot;software&quot; or &quot;workflow&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The classical, old-fashioned approach that always works is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;read, look at or otherwise mentally process each file&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take notes of author, main arguments, keywords, short summary etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;store the files in folders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use a database to store the information you extracted and the file location&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you then work with the database and only retrieve the files when info in database is not sufficient to trigger your memory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what scholars have been doing for millennia, and it is superior to any knowledge management software, because the pre-processing that it requires (instead of just drawing files on DevonThink and letting it extract information according to its algorithms) guarantees that you have that information in your mind (instead of in some software) and can build your theory or text or whatever from that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried DevonThink but soon abandoned it again, because I realized that it does not help me if my software knows my texts but I don't, and searching DevonThink doesn't always work the way I would wish, because authors don't always use the words that I'm thinking with to describe the same concepts so that their files don't turn up at my searches although they would be relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking and processing yourself requires an initial effoet, but is much more efficient in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-08-05T06:18:32.887" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T06:18:32.887" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18487" CreationDate="2015-08-04T18:24:39.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Comedy Bible From Stand-up to Sitcom&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The Comedy Writer's Ultimate &quot;How To&quot; Guide&lt;br&gt;&#xA;by Judy Carter&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specific, less popular are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Eight Characters of Comedy: Guide to Sitcom Acting And Writing 2nd Edition&#xA;by Scott Sedita&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Elephant Bucks: An Inside Guide to Writing for TV Sitcoms&#xA;by Sheldon Bull&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing Television Sitcoms (revised)&#xA;by Evan S. Smith&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T18:24:39.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18475" CreationDate="2015-08-04T19:13:12.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another option (although I can't speak for its grammatical propriety) that might help guide the reader through different pauses that help distinguish items on the list from the side descriptions of them would be to use dashes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She looked tough: pierced nose, broad eyebrows, tousled hair - almost spiky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried picturing him: his tiny body swinging above the ground, his eyes bloodshot - almost popping out - and his tongue hanging to the side like a dead worm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14773" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T19:13:12.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18452" CreationDate="2015-08-04T22:13:42.120" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What a great question!  Your instincts are good.  &quot;Excessively ornamented and often times convoluted&quot; writing may earn you high marks in a class, or even in academia.  But in the real world setting, simple and direct gets the job done. I have 3 pieces of advice that I've learned from others (or learned the hard way) over the years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary.  Never use jargon or a 50 cent word when a simpler word does just as well.  BUT, it is good to use jargon or a 50 cent word &lt;em&gt;in place of a longer, more elaborate phrase&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, as a medical student, I would use the phrase &quot;Painful to palpation&quot; in many of my notes: &quot;The Patient's abdomen was painful to palpation.&quot;  Finally, the resident told me one day, &quot;Look: the word is &lt;em&gt;tender&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; So my notes became more concise, easier to read, and more expressive when I just wrote &quot;The patient's abdomen is tender.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a good vocabulary is crucial.  But don't use a fancy word just for the sake of using a fancy word.  Make your statements as simple as possible.  Use fancy words &lt;em&gt;when they make sentences more concise&lt;/em&gt;.  Don't use fancy words when they make sentences longer than the plain English version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Get the lard out.&quot;  This is a phrase one of my teachers used to use. It means &quot;be direct.&quot;  When writing for an academic audience, we can't help but add a bunch of useless (often introductory) phrases that add nothing but bulk to the paper. We all include them out of habit, because we hear or read them so much.    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I'm editing a document now that starts with: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This document provides descriptions of the requirements necessary to implement changes in the program.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm recommending it be changed to: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This document describes required changes to the program.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to come up with good examples on the spot.  And it's hard to be succinct about what to watch out for.  But once you get in the habit of watching for &quot;lard,&quot; you'll see it everywhere.  In this example, the red flags are redundancy such as &quot;requirements necessary&quot; (if the &quot;requirements&quot; aren't necessary, they're not requirements, are they?) or &quot;implementing changes&quot; (&quot;implementing&quot; already implies a change of some kind).  Using non-specific verbs (&quot;provides&quot;) also requires you to tack on extra verbiage to make the meaning less ambiguous (&quot;provide descriptions&quot;).  Why not just start with a more precise verb to begin with (&quot;Describes...&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revisions and editing.  If you're being asked to do a lot of on-the-spot timed writing, you won't be able to revise much.  So this tip won't help much with that. But &quot;getting the lard out&quot; really does require numerous drafts, sleeping on something overnight so you can look at it with a fresh eye the next day, and a dedicated effort to, say, &quot;shorten a section by 50%.&quot;  This is where practice comes in, too.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a high-school student, take heart.  If you take writing classes in college, you'll get plenty of additional practice. And the instruction gets more sophisticated, too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14774" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T22:13:42.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18502" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-05T11:52:59.710" Score="10" ViewCount="1410" Body="&lt;p&gt;My previous workflow was &quot;write in LaTeX, using emacs&quot;, with research and character notes kept in plain-text files, using symlinks between multiple works set in the same fictional world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allowed me trivial flexibility in sharing character notes between multiple works, while only having a single, authoritative source of data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way of accomplishing this in a Scrivener world? The only solution I've managed to discover of my own is to keep multiple &quot;Story&quot; objects, in a single project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T00:51:40.423" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T00:51:40.423" Title="How to share research and character notes between multiple works in Scrivener?" Tags="|research|organization|scrivener|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18503" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-05T12:55:56.393" Score="1" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have created a picture book and already have it designed and have a local printer who is going to handle the print-on-demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can not find a self publishing website that does not dictate the layout/design, and printing of the book.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone tell me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a site out there where I can register the book and myself as the self publisher without having to give up what I have already created? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do I have to &quot;publish&quot; the book?  I have an ISBN and bar-code.  I have my own website where the book will be sold as well as local shops. Of course I would be thrilled if it is on amazon.com.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14778" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2015-08-05T17:36:51.047" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T01:54:32.913" Title="I am looking to self publish a book but I don't need everything the sites offer" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|websites|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18503" CreationDate="2015-08-05T13:14:10.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've already got a printer for the book, and a distribution plan, what else are you looking for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know how to format an e-book? It's a bit finicky, but not that difficult - I really like Guido Henkels' guide (&lt;a href=&quot;http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/&lt;/a&gt;) but it gives you way more information than you need, really. You can also usually pay someone $50-75 to do the formatting for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, some of the sites for uploading ebooks will do the formatting for you, as long as you put a reasonably clean version of the MS in at the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of getting the book on Amazon? You can do that yourself, just create an account at kdp.amazon.com. If you want a print book sold at Amazon, I think you'll have to go through Createspace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for a way to hit other e-book retailers, be aware that this would disqualify you for the Kindle Select program, which may or may not be a big deal for you - worth looking into. But if you don't want to use Kindle Select, you can go to Smashwords and put your e-book up there, and they will distribute it to other e-retailers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: There's no secret button to push to &quot;publish&quot; your book. As soon as you have a copy available to the public, it's published. Good luck with it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T13:14:10.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18503" CreationDate="2015-08-05T15:16:23.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a printer who is handling print-on-demand, what would you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; an additional service for? Lay out the book yourself, or hire a designer to do it, and send the end files to your POD printer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To declare yourself the publisher you just put it in your colophon information: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Published by&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  Final Frontier Enterprises&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  Excelsior, CO 74656&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You already have your ISBN and barcode. You don't need CreateSpace/XLibris etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T15:16:23.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18507" CreationDate="2015-08-05T15:25:23.890" Score="8" ViewCount="951" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my novel, there's something that the characters refer to as &quot;darkness&quot;. It symbolizes the bad thoughts of depressed/suicidal people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A short silence. I imagined Joel nodding his head in the dark.&#xA;  &quot;After an outing, you feel as if something has crept inside you.&#xA;  Something dark and murky, like crude oil. It travels gradually,&#xA;  silently, polluting every cell in your body. You can feel it.&#xA;  Eating you alive. And the worst part is, you're the only one who's&#xA;  aware of it. Yes, you can explain it to people, but just skin-deep.&#xA;  They can't help you. So you have no choice but to fight alone. Fight&#xA;  this &lt;strong&gt;darkness&lt;/strong&gt; alone.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perhaps this &lt;strong&gt;darkness&lt;/strong&gt;, despite coming from the same source, varied&#xA;  depending on the person. Like when you press a drop of ink between two&#xA;  sheets of paper. Sometimes you get a butterfly. Sometimes a face. And&#xA;  other times a shape so amorphous it doesn't resemble anything at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Was this the &lt;strong&gt;darkness&lt;/strong&gt; Joel had talked about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I format this word? Italics? Capital? Should it be formatted differently when it is first mentioned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T07:21:33.517" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T09:29:21.370" Title="How to format common words that are made &quot;special&quot;?" Tags="|style|formatting|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18506" CreationDate="2015-08-05T15:57:12.560" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Capitalize it: the Darkness. I believe Tolkien did this with the Ring. It's the common way in fantasy (and christian religion: some god versus God).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-08-05T18:07:58.250" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T18:07:58.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18506" CreationDate="2015-08-05T16:28:09.267" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Capitalizing it is good, but coming up with another name for it is better. Churchill famously called it the Black Dog. Yours could be the Black Oil, or Dark Oil, or Devil's Touch, et cetera. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T16:28:09.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18506" CreationDate="2015-08-05T16:30:24.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, italics indicate when a word is being used in a non-standard manner.  This seems to me the best choice for the examples given.  I could see capitalizing if it was being anthropomorphized or used as a title (&amp;quot;The Darkness&amp;quot;), but that doesn't seem to be the case here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have no choice but to fight alone. Fight this &lt;em&gt;darkness&lt;/em&gt; alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps this &lt;em&gt;darkness&lt;/em&gt;, despite coming from the same source, varied for person to person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was this the &lt;em&gt;darkness&lt;/em&gt; Joel had talked about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It's also worth noting that capitalizing nouns that are not proper nouns can feel old fashioned --this was once quite common in English, but does not match the modern style.  If you are deliberately seeking a old-fashioned feel, it might be the right choice.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T16:37:09.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18506" CreationDate="2015-08-05T21:00:58.130" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For this specific case, I don't see a reason to set it off. In fact, I would likely find emphasis-by-formatting distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's why I don't think you need to do anything special:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've already mentioned the darkness. You've described it in a vivid, visceral way. Then you immediately refer to it as &quot;this darkness.&quot; Readers will know that you're referring to the special meaning that you've just described. The vivid expression, followed immediately by using that term, give it a great deal of weight in the reader's mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, when you repeat the word, that recalls the visceral description. The repetition gives the word all of the emphasis you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you don't format it specially, any non-special use of &quot;darkness&quot; may convey a meaning you do not intend. My advice for that: Find any non-special uses and reword those passages, either to use a different word, or to make clear from the context that the word is used in its normal sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T21:00:58.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18506" CreationDate="2015-08-06T01:17:47.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would probably use italics for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option you might want to consider is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_caps&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;small caps&lt;/a&gt;. It makes words stand out as different, but not painfully so (like all-caps-plus-bold might).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10027" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T01:17:47.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18515" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-06T02:38:04.607" Score="-1" ViewCount="474" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a beginning writer, I need to have a broad view of the financial side of writing. How much to expect and how different types of publishing affect benefits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no threads I am aware of that deal exclusively with the revenues one can expect from their writings. &#xA;Yes, we are most likely not going to get rich writing, but some of us dream of making a living at it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to know &lt;strong&gt;from where your next meal is coming, you better have a pretty specific idea&lt;/strong&gt; and not some tentative nebulously vague noncommittal platitude about earnings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously these numbers vary enormously, here the focus if &lt;strong&gt;beginning writers&lt;/strong&gt; (first time writers, or early career writers (under 5 books published)), &lt;strong&gt;non-fiction&lt;/strong&gt; books, genre and mainstream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How much can you expect from writing a novel?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:51:07.413" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:51:07.413" Title="Traditional vs. Self Publishing... Show me the Money?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|money|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2015-08-06T20:00:49.097" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18515" CreationDate="2015-08-06T02:41:14.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This Anwer was originally part of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17614/i-am-an-unestablished-author-with-a-decent-book-should-i-publish-online-or-try&quot;&gt;I am an unestablished author with a decent book. Should I publish online, or try to find a &amp;#39;real&amp;#39; publisher?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, then was asked as a Q and was shut down till re- editing it as a Q and A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These following numbers are broadly inaccurate; they are here to get a general idea. Some SE members strongly disagree of mentioning numbers without sources, others disagree with the numbers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Please tell me if in your research, or as a published author, my estimates are not consistent with your experience&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To the first, I say that I am not going to chew your food for you. Do some research, you will find some numbers, also you will find much more detail than what is presented here, this is just a basic introduction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To the second, please give us your numbers, there are not enough quantitative data especially from personal experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cold Coins for your Soul...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The crux of the matter is money vs. fame, here we speak dough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1) &lt;em&gt;You have a problem manuscript&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is badly written, plots go nowhere, it is boring, not commercial…&#xA;Trad. publishers won’t be interested; you won’t make much, if any, by self-publishing anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2) &lt;em&gt;You have an average manuscript&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It shows potential; there are some issues with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the grey area where traditional vs. self publishing comes into play the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A publisher will improve it and you get the recognition of a mid list “professional” author, but you don’t make much, and would need many more books like that to contemplate going really going full-time professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is much harder to self edit to improve the book; the end product may be inferior. However, with self publishing, you will most likely make much more money, but won’t get the recognition. With a fan base, you can become professional much sooner. in this case, trad. vs. self is a decision that can be a trade between some fame or some cash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3) &lt;em&gt;You have a great manuscript&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trad. houses will distribute it to markets you can’t reach on your own; this way reaches the most readers. You will make money even from puny royalties. This could be the beginning of a “partnership” with that publisher. it will give you a &quot;name&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will reach fewer people by self-publishing , but have some “fame” from the number of sales; you will make lots more money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ka-Ching!…&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is broadly inaccurate, full of estimates and suppositions and is here to get a general idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;KindleDirect at 70% royalties book sold at 3 or 4 (£, $, or €). vs. let’s say 6%-8% royalties from a publisher, book sold at 7 (£, $, or €). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, Stephen King may get 15% or more, but we are talking about beginning writers, and ignoring advance payments which will be deducted from the royalties anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes it is a subjective judgment call and some sell books the same price, however I believe this is the average, 7 for paperbacks novels and 3 or 4 for e-books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Although there are differences between  £, $, or €, having bough books in all the countries concerned most paperbacks are about 7 (£,$, or €), so i'll use no currency as in this case £,$, or € are interchangable, for sales, if not for ultimate profits.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, with a printed book price ot 7, trad. royalties of 6% are 7*.06=.42  and royalties of 8% are 7*.08=.56, and per book sold, let’s average this to &lt;strong&gt;50 cents per book sold&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With e-books sold at 3-4, KDP are 3*.7=2.1,  or 4*.7=2.8 per book sold, lets average that to &lt;strong&gt;2.5 per books sold&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the numbers to match traditional publishers need to be able to sell &lt;strong&gt;5 times more books&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Though some other estimations i did resulted in closer to 4 times more sales for the same revenue.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though they sell more, the data between printed and e-book sales in Amazon suggest that it is more like twice, though that includes e-books sales from trad. publishers. &#xA;(It would be great if someone could find relevent numbers for the industy, even if aproximative estimated numbers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, for illustrative purposes, the nuts and bolts of making money from writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;@ 500 books sold, trade=250, KDP=1250&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;@ 2500 books sold, trade=1250, KDP=6250 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;@ 5000 books sold, trade=2500, KDP=12500 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;@ 25000 books sold, trade=12500, KDP=62500 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;@ 50000 books sold, trade=25000, KDP=125000&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, let’s not dream bigger. The conclusion is that the difference in profits becomes more and more important, mentally if not mathematically, as there are more books sold.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, let’s keep in mind some generalities…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First time authors who self publish have typical runs in the low hundreds, if that. So, a few of hundred bucks for all that work is the financial result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most trad. published first time authors never get any royalties because the royalties are less than the typical 2500 or 5000 advance they are given.(Well, at least according to the creative accounting traditional publishers seem to excel at...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many midlist authors sell no more than about 20000 books, so they only do marginally well and need multiple book deals and a backlist of published books to earn a living from writings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure when the term bestseller starts to be applicable, but I would consider 50k book sales to be it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Kate Sherwood commented in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17614/i-am-an-unestablished-author-with-a-decent-book-should-i-publish-online-or-try&quot;&gt;I am an unestablished author with a decent book. Should I publish online, or try to find a &amp;#39;real&amp;#39; publisher?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And with the edits, you're adding more numbers that don't really jibe with my experience. Your estimate for an advance, even for a new author, is really low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know mid career authors often get 20-25k advances and that some talented prospects, well represented by an agent, may get 10K. However, I read, in writing books, that in the US first timers used to get a standard  5000 advance, but that it is now more often 2500 due to market pressure. In Europe, I personally know first time authors who where given 5000 euros advances, and where not paid royalties for a couple of years after that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I arrived to these numbers by various researches, as a beginner I needed to get a concrete idea of the financial realities of publishing. Some of my numbers may be wrong but I believe that they will be helpful to aspiring writers trying to figure the money side of things&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This text is a base, a platform from which interested readers can then hunt down the specific numbers. I didn’t pull the numbers out from my hat, they can be found. Yet, my numbers may be obsolete for today’s market; they are here to give a general idea to those who are clueless. I wrote what I would like to have read early on. Specifics, even if inaccurate, can give a broad sense of the financial realities behind writings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T04:08:18.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18515" CreationDate="2015-08-06T03:10:26.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very difficult to have hard answers for questions like this because there are way too many variables. &quot;Traditional&quot; publishing is not a monolith - there's a lot of difference between publishing with the Big 5 and publishing with a small e-publisher, and a lot of difference between publishing with a reputable, established e-publisher and a fly-by-night startup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also confidentiality issues - many publisher contracts include terms about neither side sharing details of the contracts. And of course there are personal privacy issues - talking about money is socially questionable in many circles - frustrating for those trying to find hard numbers, but true nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are challenges related to comparing apples to oranges. How do we ever know if a manuscript that was self-published was as good as, the same as, or better than a manuscript from an established publisher? And is there value in comparing the profits from a weak MS to the profits from a strong MS? What about different genres? Most self-publishing sales come from e-books, and some genres do much better than others in e-book format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are probably other variables I'm not thinking of, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I'll share what numbers I can. (These numbers are for the life of the books thus far, so they range from about 5 years down to 1 year. The bulk of the sales is generally in the first year, for me). I think the relevant figures I have come from self-publishing in a genre where I had no name, publishing with small-but-reputable publishers, self-publishing in a genre where I'd built a name (via the small publishers) and Big 5 publishing in a genre where I had no name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... self-publishing in a genre where I had no name - probably cost me about $1K, for editing, formatting, cover art, and advertising. I made about $100 in sales, if that. Net loss $900.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing with small but reputable publishers - costs me nothing but time, royalties are usually in the $5K - $10K range, for novel-length books. Net profit $5K - $10K (some outliers on either side, and all numbers still growing with backlist sales, but... this is a good range).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-publishing in the same genre - cost me about $1K for editing, formatting, cover art, advertising. Royalties are about $5K (fewer overall sales, but higher % per sale), for a net profit of about $4K.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Big-5 Publishing - I've just started doing this, so I don't have sales numbers yet. Cost me nothing but time. Advances (for what they consider a first time author, in a genre not known for generous advances) were about the average for what I'd expect for total sales from my small-publisher books. Remains to be seen if advance earns out or if I see royalties on top of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other people will have different numbers, obviously. But if you're looking for accuracy, try to get as close to the source as possible. There's a lot of misinformation out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T11:02:12.740" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T11:02:12.740" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18506" CreationDate="2015-08-06T03:45:42.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I think you're good with whatever style you choose, &lt;em&gt;as long as you're consistent&lt;/em&gt;. As far as your options go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Italics. Do not use if you need it for other things that are typically typeset in italics such as biological proper species names.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capitalization. Only disadvantage can be that it comes with a certain level of personification. As in, the expectation that the 'Darkness' has a certain identity. To take the example of the Ring from Tolkien, the Ring is clearly shown with it's own will. By no means is this a solid rule, but it's definitely a trend that has developed in modern usages of capitalized terms. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small caps (or technically petite caps). I like them, but they are pretty rare nowadays and might feel out of place (can't remember seeing them in a modern novel for ages).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Different font. Especially with a word like 'darkness' you can use a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=dark%20font&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;source=lnms&amp;amp;tbm=isch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dark font&lt;/a&gt; to stylize that single word each time. Depending on the genre of the work it actually can give a pretty neat feel, although this is more commonly used to signify an entire class of things or the speech of a specific character. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I think I would go with italics or petite caps if it's just a platonic concept, capitalization if it has it's own will or a different font if it's more than that (super natural for example), but I don't think there are any really wrong choices here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8070" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T03:45:42.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6078" CreationDate="2015-08-06T06:16:31.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://atstp.github.io/wasabi/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wasabi&lt;/a&gt; offers two approaches to it (you can find them both &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/atstp/wasabi/tree/master/examples&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;either &lt;strong&gt;indented&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;root/ # entry comments can be inline after a '#'&#xA;      # or on their own line, also after a '#'&#xA;&#xA;  readme.md # a child of, 'root/', it's indented&#xA;            # under its parent. &#xA;&#xA;  usage.md  # indented syntax is nice for small projects&#xA;            # and short comments.&#xA;&#xA;  src/          # directories MUST be identified with a '/'&#xA;    fileOne.txt # files don't need any notation&#xA;    fileTwo*    # '*' can identify executables&#xA;    fileThree@  # '@' can identify symlinks&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;strong&gt;detailed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;root/&#xA;  this is a comment on 'root'&#xA;&#xA;root/readme.md&#xA;  comments are indented under their entry this&#xA;  comment is for 'readme.md', a child of 'root/'&#xA;  it's specified by the full path&#xA;&#xA;root/usage.md&#xA;  the detailed syntax is good for large projects&#xA;  and comprehensive commenting&#xA;&#xA;root/src/&#xA;  directories MUST be identified with a trailing '/'&#xA;&#xA;root/src/file.txt # some file&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14789" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T06:16:31.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18506" CreationDate="2015-08-06T06:55:05.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see a case for leaving the word alone entirely, or for capitalizing it, depending upon your intent/vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the darkness serves primarily as an abstract perception throughout your story (possibly not even serving as a key focal point - just another background element of the setting), then I'd forgo any special formatting. The descriptions and the reactions from your characters (great snippets, by the way) will continue to convey its special qualities on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, the Darkness effectively takes on a role as a primary character in your tale, then you should consider capitalizing it. This would be further justified if the Darkness starts exhibiting disease-like, or life-like qualities. These could run the gamut from actively targeting/spreading to those without apparent cause to feel such a depression, to interacting with characters and beginning to assume a tangible presence or malevolence. In these cases, you essentially have a proper noun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There could even be a singular transitional event which takes place to signify the recognition of this character by the actual people (or primary character and/or narrator) in your story. After this point, the Darkness could be capitalized, reinforcing this recognition. This could be a bit messy if you are presenting multiple viewpoints or have to juggle preserving the mystery versus dealing with quotes from other people who may have already recognized it for what it is, but it's another potential tool in your toolbox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, while they have their places, I'd recommend staying away from special formatting (bold, especially) simply because they are eye-magnets. They can be quite distracting and can unintentionally lead readers to jump straight to them, potentially missing crucial details in the surrounding context (or at least causing them to re-read passages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14787" LastEditorUserId="14787" LastEditDate="2015-09-17T04:13:06.237" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T04:13:06.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18521" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18523" CreationDate="2015-08-06T12:12:42.503" Score="7" ViewCount="3712" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a Third-Person POV Fantasy, and I want to publish online, but I can't give a cover or a summary, or anything else to help introduce the story...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, my title that doesn't explain much, if anything... its something like &quot;Water&quot;, or &quot;Stream&quot; or &quot;Mirror&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to start the story off like: &quot;[Main Character] does [Stuff]...&quot; or &quot;[Main Character's Group] does [Stuff]...&quot;, but I'm having trouble creating descriptions that don't break the pace of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So...:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How far into a story can I go until not physically describing main characters becomes really weird?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some answers from the comments from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1054/has-this-been-asked-yet-creative-writing-how-quickly-should-i-physically-de?noredirect=1#comment2858_1054&quot;&gt;meta post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've written three novels without describing the physical characteristics of my characters, so the answer is as long as you want. –  Kit Z. Fox&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think there was something about it, but it is a good Q. from what I read, do a little asap…just enough for us to get a general impression, that it is not just a disembodied body. Later more may be peppered in sparingly, but not necessarily... keeping things vague is good for the imagination. –  Reed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13407" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:03.470" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T09:24:03.560" Title="How far into a story can I go until not physically describing main characters becomes really weird?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18521" CreationDate="2015-08-06T12:33:25.683" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think readers need some general idea about the physical characters. It's generally a good idea if we know gender, for example. But other than that, I'd say most of your description can (and should) come as needed. Show what your characters look like by having them do things. A strong man can be called on to lift something, an old person can hobble, or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of more detailed descriptions? A lot of rookie writers want to have a paragraph letting the readers know details of the character, and it leads to those painful look-in-the-mirror-and-describe-yourself passages, especially in first person. I don't need to know the character's eye colour and hair style, I don't need to know what the character is wearing unless it ties into characterization or plot, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as a writer, I try to describe physical features when they're important. If my MC sees another character and forms an instant impression based on appearance, I need to give enough description to explain that impression. If other people are judging by MC based on appearance, I need to make sure readers understand what that appearance is. Other than that? Leave it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if a feature of appearance is going to become important later in the book, I'd say it's a good idea to introduce that feature as soon as possible, before the reader has formed their own picture of the character in their head. This can generally be done organically, as described above, but if, for example, your character has a big birthmark on her face but spends the first half of the book hanging out with people who know her and don't notice the mark anymore, and then is shunned during the second half when she starts hanging out with strangers? I'd mention the birth mark as soon as possible, just so it doesn't come out of nowhere later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - descriptions only as needed, worked in organically whenever at all possible, and if somehow remarkable, they should be mentioned before the readers have a chance to form their own picture of the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T12:33:25.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18521" CreationDate="2015-08-06T13:35:00.853" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to remember that the characters live in your head, but they only are present in the reader's consciousness to the extent you place them there through your words.  As a writer, I also dislike writing physical descriptions, but as a reader, they are very helpful in helping visualize a character.  When a physical description comes in a book after you've already formed a mental image of a character, it can be jarring if it doesn't match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you don't include a physical description, you're also dependent on your reader's own cultural context to fill in the blanks.  Right now, in America, I'd guess (unscientifically) that the typical &quot;generic&quot; narrator would be a white male in his twenties or thirties, probably dark-haired.  If your character doesn't match that description, or if you're expecting to be read outside that cultural context, you might want to make sure you call that out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth looking at a few recent controversies around this: When the character &quot;Rue&quot; was played by a black actress in the first &lt;em&gt;Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt; movie, there was an outcry, despite the fact that the author of the original book had always envisioned the character as black.  She is actually described that way in the book, but subtly enough that many readers missed it.  Similarly, Ursula LeGuin's &lt;em&gt;A Wizard of Earthsea&lt;/em&gt; was adapted for the screen twice, and both times the dark-skinned main character of the book was re-envisioned as white-skinned, much to the author's displeasure.  Again, the descriptive cues are there in the book, but subtle enough that readers missed them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T14:46:38.610" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T14:46:38.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18521" CreationDate="2015-08-06T14:09:22.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently reading the &lt;em&gt;Diving Universe&lt;/em&gt; books by K. K. Rusch. They are told in first person, and all we ever learn about the protagonist is that she is a woman (from the blurb and by inference). We are not told anything else. The other characters refer to her as their &quot;boss&quot; or not at all. We don't know her age, looks or anything. What we do learn, though, is how this character 'ticks' -- how she thinks and feels, about what, and what drives her. Despite the total lack of exterior information, this character is very much alive and relatable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many other books that do not tell much -- or even nothing -- about their protagonists. I like that, because it facilitates their use as a &lt;strong&gt;projection surface&lt;/strong&gt; for myself. If the protagonist is a cypher, this allows me to easily put myself in his or her place and become the protagonist of the story myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that only a book aiming to &lt;em&gt;portray&lt;/em&gt; a certain person (biography) or 'type' should describe its protagonist at any length. Otherwise I prefer them to be left relatively blank. Only describe the proragonist as far as their appearance or personality are relevant to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="13407" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T17:09:39.613" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T17:09:39.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18521" CreationDate="2015-08-06T18:12:18.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't describe a character the moment they first appear, the reader will form an image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're happy to let readers form whatever image they want, don't describe the character, ever. Many stories do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to describe a character, do it as soon as you can when they first walk onstage. Never wait until after the reader has formed an image of the character. Violating an image that the reader has formed will throw the reader right out of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T18:12:18.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18515" CreationDate="2015-08-06T18:19:56.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://authorearnings.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Author Earnings&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of debates about the collection, meaning, and significance of the data, but there's plenty of data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T18:19:56.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18502" CreationDate="2015-08-06T18:42:23.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Mac version of Scrivener (dunno about the Windows or Linux versions) has a  feature that may help: Synchronised Folders. Strictly speaking, this feature does not share documents between multiple projects—in fact, the manual specifically warns against attempting this—but it does make selected files available for viewing and simple text editing outside of your Scrivener project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Synchronised Folders will not do exactly what you are asking, but it may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T18:42:23.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16599" CreationDate="2015-08-06T18:49:12.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unauthorized use of copyrighted material is (in the United States) a violation of federal law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get a lawyer. Get permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T18:49:12.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18388" CreationDate="2015-08-06T18:55:47.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An alternative to using _underscores_ to stress a word in a case where you'd normally use italics is to wrap the content in /slashes/. If nothing else, it's less likely to cause a miscommunication of its meaning than &quot;quoting&quot; and less likely to cause an unintentional emotional effect on the reader than USING ALL CAPS. It may be preferable if the other content you are writing contains underscores already, like website usernames:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jeff87, pretty_pretty_princess, and Buffalos_Rule /all/ logged out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're writing something with a lot of slashes in it anyway, maybe _underscore_ or *asterisk* would cause less confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've never been there/seen it/done *anything* like that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose if you were going to include any asterisked disclaimers* you'd have to similarly choose what characters you want to use for emphasis carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me (and understanding that this is totally subjective), slashes have a similar effect as I read to italics -- causing emphasis, but somewhat gentler than underscores (my brain makes an extra pause around the word when I see those), asterisks (which I associate with a word being bolded), or all caps (which, depending on the context and how many words are capitalized, is like a more intense bolding or outright yelling). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* such as this one&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14773" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T18:55:47.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18530" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-06T20:35:48.430" Score="1" ViewCount="1133" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I write an introduction paragraph when it comes to writing a simple essay for those who have no idea what to write about and I don't have a creative mind? Please explain to me step by step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14800" OwnerDisplayName="Milagros Barrios" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-22T14:36:47.727" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T14:36:47.727" Title="Essay Writing Introduction Paragraph" Tags="|style|essay|introduction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18532" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-06T21:42:46.390" Score="1" ViewCount="3048" Body="&lt;p&gt;Right now, Scrivener only includes folders at &lt;code&gt;Level 1+&lt;/code&gt; in the generated ePub table of contents. How do I also tell it to include text at &lt;code&gt;Level 3+&lt;/code&gt; as part of the table of contents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not seeing an option to edit the documents included in the table of contents. I would expect one in the &lt;code&gt;Formatting&lt;/code&gt; tab of the Compile options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14801" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T13:13:13.077" Title="How to Choose What is Included in Table of Contents for ePub Book" Tags="|scrivener|table-of-contents|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18530" CreationDate="2015-08-06T21:46:47.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different kinds of essays - are you looking at an expository essay (an academic essay designed to set forth an argument about a specific idea)? If so, there's really not much creativity required...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standard format is to start with a hook - something that connects the topic of your essay to the larger world or than shows why readers should be interested in what you have to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;eg. The way we treat our forests can be seen as a microcosm of the way&#xA;  we treat our planet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You then generally give a very concise summary of the way you're going to structure your arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;eg. In the last forty years, our forests have faced increasingly dire&#xA;  threats  from urbanization, disease, and irresponsible logging&#xA;  practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If your arguments are more complex, you will need to take a bit more time to make them clear).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you state your thesis (the main point you're trying to make).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;eg. Protection of our forests must be the immediate priority of this&#xA;  administration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then you go on with the rest of the essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a really basic format for an expository essay. Is that what you're looking for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T21:46:47.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18532" CreationDate="2015-08-06T22:09:31.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't see a way to adjust that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of using the compiler-generated HTML TOC, you can create your own HTML TOC. Two steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the Layout section of the compiler, deselect &quot;Generate HTML table of contents.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a Contents document to your project, with the titles of each item you want to include. Format each title as you like, and make each title link to the appropriate folder or text document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This will affect only the HTML table of contents in the body of your epub file. It will not affect the NCX file that many readers use to build their own navigation links. I cannot see a way to influence what goes into the NCX file other than using folders to indicate titles. (Or editing it by hand afterward.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I cannot see a way to convince the compiler to generate a hierarchical TOC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of the reasons I don't use Scrivener to create my epubs. :-( Scrivener is very good at producing nice, clean epub files, but, alas, it does not give me quite enough control over the output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T22:09:31.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18521" CreationDate="2015-08-07T00:11:36.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that Kit Z. Fox's answer, which you quoted in the question itself, is a good answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; avoid ever describing your characters. Whether it seems weird depends on the expectations of your readers, the genre you're writing in, and your own style and narrative voices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, it seems like you are writing (conventional?) fantasy, and are simply having trouble wondering how you can start out with events without description of the players. I'd tend to suggest that you just need enough references to common genres so that the readers can fill in with conventional expectations, and only include the needed details. Names and terms for things can be used which will conjure familiar images and settings as long as nothing contradicts expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the first line is &quot;Rutherford's machete hacked through the last of the fronds to reveal his companions surrounded by dancing pygmy headhunters...&quot; I'm imagining Rutherford's a 19th-Century British explorer in Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14802" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T00:11:36.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1182" CreationDate="2015-08-07T00:24:23.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the other answers here show, to each their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people enjoy combat scenes, and some don't. But also, different people (in both categories) enjoy different kinds of combat scenes, and there are many different ways to handle them, depending on purpose as well as audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For readers who aren't really into combat, the best combat scenes will be brief yet somehow interesting, probably focusing on the effects of the combat on the characters after the combat is over. Or thematic effects, or any number of other purposes. In some stories, the conflict involves combat situations, or power struggles, or relationships between people who lead different units in combat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For readers who are interested in combat, there are many different tastes. Some are interested in tactics or techniques. Some are historians interested in realistic details. Some are interested in how conflicts between different types of forces might play out. Some are interested in sensational imagination. Some are interested in psychology. Some are interested in the shocking sudden horror of violence as opposed to how it was anticipated before the event. Some are in it for the revenge. And on and on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14802" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T00:24:23.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18537" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-07T03:09:21.580" Score="6" ViewCount="3691" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a problem. I have 2 main characters, A and B, who have pretty much the exact same personality traits. The trouble is, &lt;strong&gt;this is historical fiction and I can't change who they are&lt;/strong&gt;. The 2 characters are real-world people who lived and died and have biographies, and I don't want to take &quot;artistic liberties&quot; with their character traits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I distinguish these 2 characters in my writing, so they don't come off as clones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's more info that may help you help me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is science fiction, involving an alternate history of Earth from the early 1960's onwards.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Person A is the leader of his nation. Person B, also a man, is the leader of a major design/engineering firm working on critical new technology. They regularly meet and deliberate on all sorts of things from logistical planning to funding to what to do about the enemy nations (they have a lot of scenes together; they are the main characters after all).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A and B share the following traits: Sharp, Charismatic/Passionate, Strong-Willed, Busy, Crafty, Paranoid, Persistent, Patriotic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I selected those traits from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiction-writers-mentor.com/list-of-character-traits/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this list&lt;/a&gt; based on their biographies. And judging from those bios, I honestly could not find any trait that is unique to one and not the other.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are other characters. There may be 7 to 10 main characters (who recur regularly throughout the whole story). A trivial &quot;solution&quot; I thought of was to increase the share time of the other characters, but I don't think this will really work because A and B would still appear to be clones.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what can I do? Will I be forced to just apply them to different roles? Give them different friends or different kinds of jokes they like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask for more details if you need them. I'm really in a pickle about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: &lt;strong&gt;I forgot about their physical characteristics.&lt;/strong&gt; Both are somewhat fat, but A is significantly shorter than B. And one of them is bald.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT 2: This is actually partly &lt;strong&gt;alternate history&lt;/strong&gt;, and maybe historical fiction too. Their definitions confuse me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14803" LastEditorUserId="14803" LastEditDate="2015-08-08T16:53:10.353" LastActivityDate="2020-06-15T15:27:52.337" Title="How to make distinguishing characters who have almost the exact same traits?" Tags="|technique|characters|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18537" CreationDate="2015-08-07T04:17:48.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give them a physical difference. Something to visualize the contrast binds the concept of the character to the visual part of the brain. I personally am a fan of facial hair for this particular case as it is visual memorable, capable of great variation and in most cases insignificant to the plot or the character. if one has a mustache and the other does not this may be enough, although I am pretty sure that if you keep looking you can find other physical differences. You can also highlight other minor differences such as minor preferences, such as what they find attractive in the opposite sex. (If you can find pictures of their wives this can give you ideas for this, also look at the biographies of the wives to see if they had notable personality characteristics. 'Yes, she is attractive but she has the personality of a sponge. My nelly may have the face of a horse, but I can actually talk with her.') You can also draw on other minor distinguishing marks that are picked up from jobs or hobbies, such as the ink stained pocket of an engineer. Bottom line you don't need a large difference, you just need to notice that there is one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T04:17:48.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18539" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-07T04:45:32.660" Score="1" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I hint at something traumatic (like rape) without ever actually writing the actual scene of it happening? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14805" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T07:14:10.877" Title="Difficult scenes help please!" Tags="|scene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18521" CreationDate="2015-08-07T05:57:59.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joe Abercrombie does this a lot with his later books, allowing the reader to build up a picture of the character, then throughout he will add the description piece by piece. It works great and I always feel satisfied that I understand the character well enough to live without that predefined picture in my head so early on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14806" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T05:57:59.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18539" CreationDate="2015-08-07T06:44:00.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this handled in a movie, (It has been a while, so I can't remember which one) but you can just skip it. You have what went before and what happened afterwards, and the shock of the transition to jar the reader. In the movie the script called for the wife to be killed in a car wreck, but the director just filmed her and her husband chatting in the car and then her being pushed down the hall to the OR. This is basically a tell don't show (not the usual recommendation of show don't tell) and to pull it off it must be a traumatic event, you have to use show don't tell everywhere else to make the brief tell standout and shock, and you have to actually tell what happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the party wound down I made a point to say goodbye to Alice, &amp;quot;I enjoyed seeing you. You have my number, call me. If I can't see your face at least let me hear your voice.&amp;quot; She left with a brief chuckle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I was policing up the last of the trash, the phone rang. it was Alice. &amp;quot;I'm downstairs. I need a ride to the hospital. I was raped.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. . . skip . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we pulled out of the parking lot, I asked, &amp;quot; Do you want to talk about it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T07:14:10.877" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18542" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18543" CreationDate="2015-08-07T06:52:35.760" Score="4" ViewCount="1045" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of questions about how to write about dream, how will it be in a book etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a bit different question. Imagine this situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was walking down the street to the entrance of the ZOO. Hand in hand&#xA;  with my grandma and baloon on a rope in a second hand. Lightly jumping&#xA;  in between single steps because how i was excited. Road was nearer&#xA;  than normal, but I get over this little detail. I will be in a ZOO for&#xA;  the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I blinked once and twice. Weird. No road. No ZOO entrance. No grandma.&#xA;  In a next second I realized, she is long time dead and I must go to&#xA;  work. Those dreams makes me sad. I really wanted to go to ZOO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, how to differentiate the dream part from the normal text part in sequences like this. Will you go Italic text or you just let it be? Is it necessary to differentiate dreams from normal text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T15:29:24.110" Title="Effective differentiation of dream sequence from &quot;normal text&quot;" Tags="|style|text-analysis|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18542" CreationDate="2015-08-07T07:19:05.607" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; differentiate the dream text from the surrounding text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you want is that readers follow the experience of the protagonist. The protagonist does not know that he dreams until he wakes up. The reader should not know that the protagonist dreams before he reads that the protagonist awakens, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want the reader to know that the protagonist is dreaming before he reads of the protagonist waking up, let the narrator tell them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I dreamed I was walking down the street...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that it is necessary to point out that the protagonist doesn't know what the reader knows, you can add something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I didn't realize I was only dreaming, so was surprised when I suddenly woke up in my bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But usually you can expect people to know how dreams work and don't need to explain it to them. If you write for kids though, you might want to explain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-08-10T09:40:11.530" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T09:40:11.530" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18537" CreationDate="2015-08-07T07:39:17.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make their similarity a theme in your narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These people are friends and work together &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; they are so similar. It is enough that you clearly identify them by name, profession and life circumstances (live at different place, have different family, etc.), but don't destroy the driving factor of that relationship. Rather, have the narrator, or even the characters themselves, mention or discuss this, and explore its effects on the two persons and how they relate to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T07:39:17.480" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18521" CreationDate="2015-08-07T09:24:03.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First a disclaimer: There are always exceptions to every rule, especially when it comes to writing - some people can do completely opposite things to each other, and still produce good works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I would suggest as a good rule of thumb, that you &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; explicitly describe physical characteristics, &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; they are related to something else in the story. It's like how you don't take the time to list the species of every tree your characters pass - because it doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a rough example, think of the Belgariad series. I know that Polgara has dark hair with a white streak, because it's relevant to the story. I know that Garion has sandy hair, for the same reason. But I have no idea what color Belgarath's hair is, despite him being a main character of equal importance to the others. It might have been mentioned, it might not, but it's not related to story which means it doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13433" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T09:24:03.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8332" CreationDate="2015-08-07T12:22:29.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My eyes flickered into darkness due to exhaustion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14816" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-08-09T03:57:46.047" LastActivityDate="2015-08-09T03:57:46.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18548" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-07T14:04:04.307" Score="0" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;Examples from my own writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She smiled kindly. “Maybe I can help you. What are you trying to&#xA;  find?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Probably,&quot; he said apologetically, as if he were personally responsible for this. &quot;It's the&#xA;  same for everyone, though. And it makes sense: if people could choose&#xA;  to be happy then everybody would be happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, what are their &quot;superior&quot; alternatives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-08-09T20:51:54.003" Title="Are using adverbs in dialogue/action tags a sign of bad writing?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18549" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-07T14:19:16.013" Score="1" ViewCount="1326" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing a story for almost half a year. I worked on it almost every day because I really like doing it, but now that I have been away for a month on a vacation I can't seem to write a &lt;strong&gt;single sentence&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what happened but it's so hard for me to continue writing. Either I can't concentrate or I just stare at the screen. I hate this so much because I want to finish my story, but I just cant. &lt;em&gt;Could anyone please help me?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14818" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-08-10T20:43:32.473" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T20:07:33.787" Title="Writers block: Lost momentum, can't write even a sentence" Tags="|writers-block|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18549" CreationDate="2015-08-07T15:29:28.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stuff that works for me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have a beer. Alcohol is an disinhibitor, and disinhibition is the exact opposite of a block. (If you don't drink alcohol maybe you can try coffee. Not sure why, but it works too.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I write thinking, &quot;Okay, I'll write the idea first and I'll come back to fix the wording later.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I write while listening to music. (For some reason, listening to words + rhythm, stimulates those that are tramped inside me.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try these out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T15:29:28.953" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18551" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18554" CreationDate="2015-08-07T16:16:07.307" Score="1" ViewCount="186" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might be a strange question but if I took a character who is an adult male with tattoos and have him transform somehow into a child would he still have his tattoos as a child or would his skin be clean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He would still have his memories from recent events, so he would know about any job he had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14820" LastEditorUserId="14820" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T16:56:08.003" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T18:06:01.593" Title="Could children get tattoos?" Tags="|fiction|characters|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-08-13T08:44:18.917" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18548" CreationDate="2015-08-07T16:46:37.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;OVER-using adverbs is a sign of bad writing, just like OVER-using anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your first example, I think it's fine. There are different kinds of smiles, it's hard to describe the differences between them using &quot;showing&quot; words, and it's important that people know what kind of smile this is. So I don't have a problem with &quot;kindly&quot;. Technically, I guess you could let people assume she's being kind since her words are kind, but there are different ways to say those words, too. The &quot;kindly&quot; makes it clear she's not be sarcastic or superior with the words... I'd leave it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one is a bit dodgy, just because it's redundant. &quot;Apologetically&quot; and &quot;as if he were personally responsible&quot; give pretty much the same information. I'd pick one or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while some writing &quot;experts&quot; promote a near-complete ban on adverbs, a lot of these experts judiciously use adverbs themselves. (I'm looking at you, Stephen King). Like everything else, they can be over-done. But that doesn't mean they aren't useful in their place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T16:46:37.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18549" CreationDate="2015-08-07T16:52:44.140" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Relax. You just wrote a bunch of sentences in this post. You're fine, you're just a little stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know what happens next in your story? If not, your issue isn't with writing, it's with planning. Try to brainstorm and figure out where you're going. There are a lot of different outlining worksheets on the internet and you could try one of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know what happens next, do you know what happens after that? Why don't you jump ahead and try to write &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; scene, and come back to this stuck one later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other ideas - try writing something else. Try a poem, a short story, a descriptive paragraph, or free writing. Just make yourself put words on the page, even if it's &quot;I don't know what to write&quot; fifty times. Let your brain get used to writing again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Switch up your tools. Do you normally type? Try handwriting, or writing in crayon with pictograms every paragraph, or whatever else will pull you out of your brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try a different location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to someone about your story and get excited again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to someone about your characters and remember why you care about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leave this story behind. Just because the story isn't finished doesn't mean you aren't finished with it. Maybe it's time for you to start another story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall? RELAX. The story isn't going anywhere, and it'll be waiting for you when you're ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T16:52:44.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18551" CreationDate="2015-08-07T18:00:51.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the nature of the transformation, this is clearly magical. As Kate said, you get to decide how the magic affects tattoos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the most interesting for your story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story takes place in the otherwise real world, tattoos on a child would certainly draw attention, and perhaps lead to all sorts of delicious conflict (what sort of lowlife artist would tattoo a child, what sort of parent would allow that, etc.). And the attention and conflict might be greatly amplified by the nature and location of the tattoos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want that sort of attention and conflict in your story? If so, make the tattoos survive the transformation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What might make the loss of the tattoos interesting? What is the story behind each tattoo? What meaning does each tattoo have for the character? How strongly does the character identify with each tattoo (&quot;this is part of who I am&quot;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would the loss of the tattoos be troubling for the character? Do you want that kind of trouble in your story? If so, lose the tattoos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tattoos are useful for identification. Do you want to make it easier or harder for the character to convince people who he really is? Do you want to make it easier or harder for the character to hide his true identity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally: Perhaps the tattoos could be transformed in some interesting way. Maybe they shrink, or stay grownup size, or change form or color, or have an aura, or only certain people can see them, or they itch or burn as if they don't belong, or they confer some magical ability (which perhaps consumes the tattoos), or...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T18:06:01.593" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T18:06:01.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18463" CreationDate="2015-08-07T19:01:20.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some methods for finding your own words for others' ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summarize the important ideas.&lt;/strong&gt; Here are a few questions that can help summarize a passage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the &lt;strong&gt;net effect&lt;/strong&gt; of the actions or events in the passage?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What &lt;strong&gt;category&lt;/strong&gt; or categories fit the items mentioned in the passage?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What &lt;strong&gt;conclusion&lt;/strong&gt; can you draw from the facts laid out in the passage?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Follow the references.&lt;/strong&gt; If the author cites where the ideas in the passage come from, read the reference material. This may give you additional ideas for how to phrase what you want to say. At very least, it will give you an example of how the author did what you are trying to do (incorporate someone else's ideas in their own words).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Switch viewpoints.&lt;/strong&gt; Think of people who would be affected differently by the ideas in the passage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think of at least one person who would benefit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think of at least one person who might be harmed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How would each express the ideas in the passage?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What opinions would each person have of those ideas?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Explore your own reactions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which ideas in the passage do you most strongly react to?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your reaction?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is it about you that contributes to your reactions? What do you care most deeply about that is most affected by these ideas?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Test for stickiness.&lt;/strong&gt; Set passage aside for an hour or a day. Try to rewrite it from memory. What you write may end up too close or to far from what you're trying to paraphrase, but it will jiggle your brain a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on your intentions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What makes you want to write the thing you are writing? What are you trying to say?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does the author's passage relate to your intentions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which ideas from the passage most strongly relate to your intentions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T19:01:20.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18549" CreationDate="2015-08-07T21:51:48.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll have to get to the root of what is bothering you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it related to attaining perfection?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No one ever became perfect by doing nothing. ~anonymous&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you afraid that you'll get the words down and they won't be perfect or as good as you hope and it'll mean something about you? Are you worried that you'll prove you are not a writer?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an article I wrote on that:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newtonsaber.com/blog?articleId=27&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why Have You Stopped Writing?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are your self-limiting thoughts &amp;amp; beliefs helping you?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an article I wrote about that.  Maybe it'll encourage you:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newtonsaber.com/blog?articleId=9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Self-limiting thoughts?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you &lt;strong&gt;feel like maybe you are wasting&lt;/strong&gt; your time and not getting any better?&#xA;Here's an article I wrote about on that:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newtonsaber.com/blog?articleId=26&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wasting Time Or Learning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe you feel like you are failing in your writing?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Here's an article I wrote about :&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newtonsaber.com/blog?articleId=20&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why Failing Fast Is Succes : Write More&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you'll find some encouragement in these.  I've written them at times to keep myself writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T21:51:48.550" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18537" CreationDate="2015-08-08T12:40:16.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, it's not purely historical fiction, if it's also science fiction. And even in historical fiction, the word &quot;fiction&quot; has a role to play in the final result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say you probably want to focus on the role these characters are playing not in history, but in your book. If they are truly indistinguishable - they have the same opinions, same knowledge, same resources, etc - then I think you might want to look for ways to combine them into one character and simplify things. But likely they aren't quite that identical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in your book, maybe there's a back and forth between them - the political leader expresses a need, the engineer finds a way to address the need through technology, the leader critiques, the engineer refines - whatever. The point is that they're distinguished through their actions, not their character sketches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not every single character in a book has to be a completely distinct personality at the planning stages. They'll become distinct as you give them things to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-08T12:40:16.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18560" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18657" CreationDate="2015-08-08T15:20:10.770" Score="2" ViewCount="343" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to write without description, only narrating the perceptions of my protagonist, both external (what happens) and internal (what she thinks). I want to avoid all those explanations that are obviously only added for the benefit of the reader but wouldn't be part of the protagonist's actual experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I feel as if my characters and events are &quot;floating in space&quot;; as if they are appearing unrelated and meaningless to a reader, who has yet to read far enough to understand the underlying plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am uncertain whether or not I should add in some description to connect the &quot;free-floating&quot; bits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example from my own writing to illustrate what I'm talking about. The original, without description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So how did this animal suicide thing start? Ironically, it began the night I decided to die. But why? I had good health, friends and family who cared about me, plus I'd just been admitted into university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing we know is that it's nighttime and the main character is in her apartment, searching stuff on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I felt this was not enough to provide context and meaning for the reader, so I added some description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So how did this animal suicide thing start? Ironically, it began the night I decided to die. That's right: I locked myself in my apartment, closed the blinds, and, veiled in the darkness, planned how to end with my life. But why? I had good health, friends and family who cared about me, plus I'd just been admitted into university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is doing this justifiable? Did I improve the passage with the extra description or just added unnecessary clutter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="33717" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2019-03-08T10:22:50.737" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T10:22:50.737" Title="Is it OK to add description just because a chapter has none?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18561" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-08T16:11:19.733" Score="1" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am want to write scenes in a story which include one character providing instruction to other characters on how to perform complicated tasks that require a lot of technical detail and applied step-by-step examples. I refer to these scenes as instructional. Please correct me on a better name for these types of scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote my first instructional scene and gave to a friend to read, of whom said it was crap, and I agreed. I want to write multiple instructional scenes in a novel, but I do not know how to write them in such away that they are engaging, and not overwhelming to the reader with too much technical detail, overuse of descriptive words, and repetitive narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I write these instructional scenes in such away that readers are gracefully tugged along without jerking or overbearing them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8504" LastActivityDate="2015-08-08T18:15:53.960" Title="How to write an instructor instructing others about complicated tasks?" Tags="|novel|characters|dialogue|word-choice|readers|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18561" CreationDate="2015-08-08T18:15:53.960" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have any techniques to offer, but I can point you to some examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirty-five years ago, I was reading Robert Silverberg's Lord Valentine's Castle. Partway into the story, someone teaches the main character how to juggle. I put the book down and started following the instructions. It worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think I ever picked up the book again. But now I can juggle a little bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't remember anything else about the story. I don't remember how Silverberg doled out the instructions about how to juggle. But I do remember that it was very effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a whole category of books called Business Novels. Reading a few of those may offer some guidance. Probably the most influential one is The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. (Most of his books are business novels.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Business novels tend to follow a very strict pattern. A character is struggling to do good things in some community (usually a large corporation). The character somehow gains a mentor, who is very wise and offers a radical new way to do things. The mentor offers an idea. The struggling character tries it, and it works. It doesn't solve the whole problem, but it doesn't create any new ones either. So the mentor offers an idea to help with the remaining problem, the character tries it, and it helps. This pattern repeats until the organization is wildly successful and everyone love the viewpoint character. (I call that the &quot;Sam-I-Am Fantasy.&quot;) Finally, the viewpoint character and the mentor each vigorously attribute all of the success to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As fiction, even the most popular business novels are just plain awful. They generally lack any of the conflict that drives fiction. And they generally don't involve any serious setbacks for the viewpoint character. And there is no serious pushback from other characters as the organization applies the radical new ideas. Lots of questions, but no real pushback. Instead, under the mentor's guidance, the viewpoint character makes steady progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As business books, they are quite popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are a few keys to business novels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The instruction occurs in not in a classroom, but the context of a real problem, in a &quot;real&quot; (see below) business or social setting. And the problem is one that readers are also struggling with. The more deeply readers are stuck, the more strongly they yearn for the magic exemplified in the book. The early focus of the story is on the intractability of the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They story illustrate what is (theoretically) possible. Very little attention to what might go wrong or how to adapt to local circumstances.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They dole out the instruction little by little, as the main character needs it and becomes ready for it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They in no way try to be great fiction. No attempt at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many business novels (and other &quot;instructional&quot; novels) use a clearly fantastical setting and characters. Richard Bach wrote a series of philosophical books where the characters were badgers. Steve Denning wrote a very popular business novel where the characters were squirrels. Then there was the enormously popular (and IMO thoroughly evil) Who Moved My Cheese?, in which mice learn to shut the hell up and absorb whatever pain managers care to inflict on them. (Uh, the sales copy on the book describes this somewhat differently than I do.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-08T18:15:53.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18564" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18565" CreationDate="2015-08-08T23:57:31.637" Score="5" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;We organized an ISBN for a book last year, while it was still in the planning stage. As the book develops, it looks like the title we gave with the ISBN isn't quite right, and another title would be better. Is it too late?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14619" LastActivityDate="2015-08-09T01:00:17.463" Title="Is it possible to tweak a book title after it's got an ISBN?" Tags="|book|titles|isbn|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18564" CreationDate="2015-08-09T01:00:17.463" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, the ISBN registrar Bowker allows changing the title. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.myidentifiers.com/help/isbn&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Their FAQ&lt;/a&gt; does not say anything about the ramifications of doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you got the ISBN from someone else, ask whoever assigned the ISBN to your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you assign an ISBN, your registrar will distribute the information, e.g. to Books In Print. So there my be catalogs with the old title, at least until the registrar distributes the update.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-09T01:00:17.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18568" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-09T19:27:23.410" Score="1" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been suffering a lot of problems with my writings recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started off a great story, where a girl is accepted in a prestigious school in a far off city. The story I've written in my head is that she eventually fits in the school, but starts to suspect illicit activities happening there when she sees someone entering a Corridor that is restricted. She gets caught by her teacher, who, eager to test her limits, challenges her to bring the culprit to her and she would reward her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the thing is that although I've decided on what clues she may find, I can't decide on what to do with them. How do I make her stumble upon them and make her eventually find out where the corridor leads, while taking the readers along with her?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14837" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-08-10T08:17:02.267" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T08:17:02.267" Title="Setting Up The Climax &amp; Eventual End of The Story" Tags="|style|creative-writing|plot|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18568" CreationDate="2015-08-09T19:51:54.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have got to try writing these clues/ideas down and then see which ones work. Of course you've got lots of ideas in your head but you won't be able to judge which ones really have legs until you put them on paper so they can run. Some of them might trip over and fall, others will spring to the line, but you can't see which ones will break the tape until you have put them in the race.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think we can tell you how she will stumble upon them. You can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-08-09T19:51:54.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18568" CreationDate="2015-08-09T20:05:29.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to know what clues she will find. If she finds for example a paper, it's most likely to be in the trash or stolen from a student's bag. There is always the conversation in the bathroom while she is also in there but they don't know. A lot of teens use the web and smartphones today. A message can be wrongly sent to her, she might find a site or some sort of thing the students made. There are a lot of options to find clues.&#xA;There are also the changing things, for example if you go to use the bathroom, you turn on the light in the corridor, you enter the bathroom, do what you do, get out, turn on the light and get back to your bed. Someone turned the lights off while you were in the bathroom.&#xA;Clues can be placed in a lot of ways. It really depend on the type of clue.&#xA;Further resources:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.absolutewrite.com/novels/red_herrings.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.absolutewrite.com/novels/red_herrings.htm&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing-world.com/mystery/clues.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writing-world.com/mystery/clues.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14838" LastActivityDate="2015-08-09T20:05:29.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18571" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-09T20:34:18.340" Score="1" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where are good places to publish everything from flash-fiction to novels or how can I find them?&#xA;And also, if someone knows about a place which buys fiction or where I can try to sell for a large market it would be splendid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14838" LastEditorDisplayName="user14838" LastEditDate="2015-08-09T21:14:01.437" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T20:45:53.277" Title="How can I find and research places to publish fiction?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-08-11T22:03:35.047" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18548" CreationDate="2015-08-09T20:51:54.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Kate said, over-using adverbs is never good, but they do tend to serve some strong sense when needed.&#xA;Some writers follow the no-adverbs attitude but it is OK to use one occasionally.&#xA;Usually there is a word describing the action and the adverb together for example &quot;Said quietly&quot; is quite similar to &quot;whispered&quot;. And it's especially noticed the trivial actions of the characters such as &quot;see&quot;, &quot;walk&quot;, &quot;say&quot; and so on. &#xA;On your first example it was well written but about the second one I back Kate's opinion. There are a lot of places where the adverb could be replaced with some sort of explanation as you did on the second example.&#xA;They can be useful when placed in the right spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14838" LastActivityDate="2015-08-09T20:51:54.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5477" CreationDate="2015-08-09T21:09:23.150" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This site is fantastic, and I think it'll give you the answers you are looking for. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caroclarke.com/transitions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.caroclarke.com/transitions.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14839" LastActivityDate="2015-08-09T21:09:23.150" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18571" CreationDate="2015-08-10T00:27:58.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some resources for finding publishers, magazines, and other fiction markets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writer's Market &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1599639378&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersmarket.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;web site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://duotrope.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Duotrope.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ralan.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ralan.com&lt;/a&gt; (see the &quot;markets&quot; links near the top of the page)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T00:27:58.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18571" CreationDate="2015-08-10T11:29:08.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fiction you buy yourself is probably the most reliable way to discover who's publishing fiction. All that fine print on the first couple pages of most books? It's actually pretty useful information! And by going on to actually read the story, you'll get a good idea of at least one type of story they've bought in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For digital versions, you may need to hunt a little harder as your e-reader may automatically open on the first page of the story rather than the first page of the whole document, but you can use the T of C or page back to find the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can take a similar approach to short stories, etc. - look at who's publishing the ones you read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a larger overview of the market, I agree with Dale that Writer's Market and Duotrope are good sources. I'm not personally familiar with Ralan.com - it's apparently limited to speculative and humorous fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also look at the bestsellers lists for your particular genre. Amazon breaks things down into pretty small sub-niches, so you can zero in pretty specifically on books that are like yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of where you find the publisher, you should check them out before submitting to them - you can go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://pred-ed.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Preditors and Editors&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?22-Bewares-Recommendations-amp-Background-Check&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bewares, Recommendations and Background Checks&lt;/a&gt; at Absolute Write, or just google the publisher's name plus &quot;author complaints&quot; and see what you get. (One or two disgruntled authors is pretty standard, but if there are loads and loads of complaints, beware).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also be aware that for novel-length fiction, the biggest publishers aren't set up to accept submissions directly from authors - you need to get an agent, first. Finding an agent is probably worth its own question and answers, so I won't get into it here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T11:29:08.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18542" CreationDate="2015-08-10T14:05:43.190" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's quite common to see dreams or memories placed in italics.  I personally find this a beneficial technique since it effectively conveys a sense of altered consciousness.  However, it depends, as always, on the effect you want to create --whether you want to emphasize or de-emphasize a discontinuity with the waking state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers also place the dream or memory in the present tense, which is a bit counterintuitive, but also conveys an altered state of consciousness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am walking down the street to the entrance of the ZOO. Hand in hand with my grandma and a balloon on a rope in a second hand. Lightly jumping in between single steps because of how excited I am. Road is nearer than normal, but I get over this little detail. I will be in a ZOO for the first time.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I blinked once and twice. Weird. No road. No ZOO entrance. No grandma. In a next second I realized, she is long time dead and I must go to work. Those dreams makes me sad. I really wanted to go to ZOO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T15:29:24.110" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18549" CreationDate="2015-08-10T14:24:51.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An author once told me just to write 10 minutes every day, without any thinking about what sense it makes. That'll produce a lot of garbage, but sooner or later you'll find some great sentences and passages you might use to break through your blocking thoughts, because you have a new perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's like loose the focus to get focused again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe that helps you too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14442" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T14:24:51.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18578" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18585" CreationDate="2015-08-10T19:26:36.233" Score="7" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;What would be the best/most fluid/easiest way to revise your manuscript? I've read A LOT up on this and have 2 pages of stuff to revise and check for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fixing the following things:&#xA;Main Plot Holes,&#xA;POV checks,&#xA;passive voice corrections,&#xA;filter words for 3rd person,&#xA;transition scenes and paragraphs,&#xA;ensure good conflict/tension,&#xA;minimize adverb usage,&#xA;character distinction-ensuring each is unique-ensure unique dialog,&#xA;foreshadowing,&#xA;read and correct dialog aloud,&#xA;incorporate beta reader feedback ( i know this one is later in the process),&#xA;ensure there isn't too much description of setting and characters in early chapters,&#xA;develop micro tension,&#xA;pacing,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And on and on. I have tried to group many of these together but as it stand it looks like I'm going to have about 5 revisions, maybe more. It seems so overwhelming. Which topics would be best to group together to minimize revisions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Its a completed first draft where i just blasted through getting all my thoughts done. I have done extensive world building. There is no time contraint. I want it done right, not fast. I am a &quot;architect&quot; writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14850" LastEditorUserId="14850" LastEditDate="2015-08-10T19:47:39.670" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T12:24:58.743" Title="Revision Process Order" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|editing|process|revision|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18578" CreationDate="2015-08-10T19:36:54.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to revise a manuscript depends on at least three things: firstly, what state the text is in e.g. first draft, rough notes, near publication. Secondly, what type of writer you are e.g. first on paper and then type, only type, organise completely in head before commiting a word to paper. Thirdly, how long do you have e.g. it is due tomorrow, it is my life's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Five or more revisions is not unusual for a decent text. Just start doing it. Worrying about the best method is worrying, not doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T19:36:54.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18549" CreationDate="2015-08-10T19:50:07.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's pretty common to get to the point where your inner critic is pretty much paralyzing you.  When I went through a period of not being able to write, I finally made a deal with myself that in the first draft I could do no revisions, just &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt;, but I allowed myself to make marginal notes on the order of &quot;fix this,&quot; &quot;this is crap,&quot; and so on.  I could say to that critic, yeah, I'll get there, and just keep writing.  It worked for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14696" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T19:50:07.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18537" CreationDate="2015-08-10T22:12:40.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reminded of the story of twin brothers, who &quot;had entirely different tastes in women.&quot; They may do many of the same things, but go about them differently. One may be &quot;spiritual, the other non-religious. They may have different intellectual gifts, one may be better with words, the other with numbers. One may be nicer, or at least more sincere than the other. One may be &quot;big picture,&quot; the other, detail- oriented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of &quot;opposite&quot; traits you may find even within the parameters you've outlined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T22:12:40.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18578" CreationDate="2015-08-11T10:48:42.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where you want to get to is the text to be consistent with itself. Then you want to have a story that works, at least in terms of gripping the reader and creating enough suspension of disbelieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the rest is detail, for later rewrites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You had your blast. Main thing done, getting your thoughts on paper end-to-end. Lotta work left. Have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T10:48:42.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18578" CreationDate="2015-08-11T12:24:58.743" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related question at: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3320/2nd-draft-fix-spelling-grammar-or-plot-first/3329#3329&quot;&gt;2nd Draft- Fix spelling/grammar or plot first?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say you should definitely start with the macro-issues, the plot/characterization/structure issues that may lead to you re-writing entire chunks of the story. There's no point polishing writing that you're going to end up deleting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that? I've never gone through an entire manuscript looking for just one or two types of problems at a time - I tend to do one re-read and catch all the style/spelling/grammar issues at once. And some of the things on your list seem a bit arbitrary, like minimizing description in the first chapters. Is this an issue you've found yourself having trouble with in the past? Otherwise it seems like a bit of a strange goal, to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, every writer is going to have to experiment and find their own revision process. That said, what works for me is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Taking notes of necessary revisions as I write. If I decide in chapter 16 that I want to tweak the characterization of a certain character in a different direction, I won't go back and make the changes right then. I'll just write a note at the bottom of the MS saying something like: Character X made more sympathetic ch. 16. Tweak ch. 1 - 15. And then these notes are the first things I address when I finish the first draft.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After that, I write a synopsis of the story. Most publishers want these anyway, so it's not really a waste of time, and it gives me a chance to do a quick re-read and also to take note of how the story's structure has worked out. If I find issues at this stage (like I realize I spent 3 chapters on a relatively minor point, or realize I never tied up a subplot) I fix them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then I try to put the MS away for at least a few months. (Usually I write another book in the interim, then go back and do edits on the first). This gives me fresh eyes when I re-read.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At this point I re-read the manuscript fairly closely and slowly. (It can help to print out the MS for this stage, or else put it in a totally different font, layout, etc. to catch things your eyes might have glossed over in the first version. If you have time, it's a really good idea to read the story out loud, making sure you're reading what's actually there rather than what you THINK is there. This will help you catch rhythm issues, typos, and sentences that don't really make sense. When you stumble while reading? That's where you should suspect issues). This is the stage where I catch the little items you mentioned in your post - passive voice, adverbs, etc. I may also think of cool ways to improve the more macro items (Oooh, I could add a little foreshadowing here!).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;then to betas, and hopefully another couple months of rest before I look at the beta comments, decide if I want to do anything about them, and then give a final read-through before sending it off.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, though, you'll have to figure out what method works for you. If you decide you want to do individual passes for each of the items mentioned, I would definitely recommend that you order them from macro down to micro, based, again, on the idea that there's no point polishing writing you may not keep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have fun with it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T12:24:58.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-11T13:25:20.300" Score="4" ViewCount="617" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question isn't about a case that I have a problem with; it's just a purely hypothetical thing that I've been thinking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you are writing a book or maybe an article for a journal. At the bottom of a page - the last line - you have a sentence that you want to put a footnote on. However, because you're on the very final line, if you put in place the space for a footnote (even a one line footnote), then the original line would move to the start of the next page. As such, the footnote should then be on the next page... freeing up the space for the line to return to its original space!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, my question is just 'what do you do here'? I would imagine you put the footnote marker on the sentence in the original place (bottom of page), and then the footnote goes at the bottom of the next page. This is just my guess though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry about the lack of tags: if you can think of any others that I should have tagged it with, then feel free to add them in! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I've migrated this from 'english.SE'. Hopefully this site is better for it. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14860" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-10-22T20:49:17.340" LastActivityDate="2018-10-22T20:49:17.340" Title="Position of Footnote on Page" Tags="|formatting|footnotes|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6468" CreationDate="2015-08-11T13:44:14.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You HAVE to get an ISBN before you publish. The ISBN is printed on the cover of the book. The printer has to know what it is before they can print copies. The only question is HOW LONG before you publish. In practice, you probably will spend at least a few weeks, and maybe months, getting the layout and cover design nailed down, reviewing proof copies and maybe making minor touch-up changes, etc. I guess it's possible to get an ISBN the day before you publish, then you slap it on to your cover design and go to print. More often it will be weeks or months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You COULD get an ISBN years in advance, but as @MichaelKone says, the reason you give, worrying that someone else will use your title, probably just isn't worth worrying about. If your title is so generic that someone else might just happen to use the same words, &quot;Introduction to Chemistry&quot; or &quot;The Soldier&quot; or something like that, it's probably not a good title. If you're creative enough to write a book, you should be creative enough to come up with a distinctive title. (I don't think J K Rowling was worried that someone else might call their own book &quot;Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban&quot; just by shear chance.) I don't think there's anything in &quot;the system&quot; to prevent duplicate titles, so even if you get yours in first, someone else could still duplicate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to where you get an ISBN: Each country has one organization that is the designated registrar for ISBNs in that country. In the U.S., for example, it's Bowkers. You have to find out who the registrar is in your country. If you are self-publishing, you can get your own ISBN, though most if not all companies that print your book will give you a free ISBN. If you are publishing through a mainstream publisher, they will certainly assign their own ISBN, and any that you buy will just be a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW There are services out there that advertise that they will get an ISBN for you for a small fee. I cannot imagine how this is a useful service worth paying for. Instead of filling out the form from the real registrar, you fill out a form from somebody else that they than copy to the registrar's form, and they charge you to do this. It has to have all the same information or how could it be processed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T13:44:14.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18586" CreationDate="2015-08-11T13:50:29.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Choice 1: Move the last line and the footnote to the next page. This will leave a little blank space on the original page. If you want an even bottom margin, increase the line spacing, or move some text from the previous page to the current page, which means moving text from the page before that, etc, and reformatting the entire chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choice 2: Put the footnote on the facing page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd vote against any solution that puts the footnote marker -- the asterisk or superscript or whatever -- on a right-hand (recto) page and the footnote text on the following page. That would be confusing to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T13:50:29.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18586" CreationDate="2015-08-11T13:52:24.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cheat and edit your text. Or keep combing backwards through your layout, either pushing a few lines forward or bringing a few lines back, until your footnote and the referent are on the same page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T13:52:24.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18586" CreationDate="2015-08-11T14:36:53.243" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually you should avoid orphaned footnotes. I do not remember ever having seen a professionally published book where the footnote started on another page as the text it referred to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is something the publisher and their typesetter or book designer take care of. It shouldn't concern any writer, who has to hand in a plain, often even markup-free manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you self publish, you have several options, all of which have disadvantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;change image size&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book has images, graphics, tables, or inset text boxes that your main text flows around, an easy solution is changing the size of one of these objects preceding the problematic passage. If your book does not have these, you must change aspects of the text itself:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;increase or decrease letter spacing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes this makes a lonely word slip up one line. If you change letter spacing by between 0.1 to 0.5 point, most readers won't notice, but if you look at your book with squinted eyes, that paragraph might look a bit darker and the text more &quot;hurried&quot;. Other options certainly don't make typographers frown so much.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;increase or decrease word spacing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Word spacing is variable in justified text, because otherwise a ragged right margin would be unavoidable. Changing this value slightly will be equally (un)recognizable, but has the advantage of not changing the legibility and kerning of the words. If you do that for a whole paragraph, you can save a line or make it a line longer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;change line spacing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can only do this if the paper is thick enough so the text on the other page does not shine through, and you must do it for both facing pages, otherwise this will look strange. Also, it works better on pages with lots of lines. If your book is small and the text large, don't do this, because it will be recognizable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;change size of the type area (or &quot;page margins&quot;, if you think Word) in the whole book&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will of course change text flow in the whole book, too, but with some luck there is a setting where there are no orphans. Again, a typographer with a trained eye will cry if you do that, but most published books aren't well layed out anyway, and especially trade paperbacks often have text that runs within a few millimeters of the margins, so readers usually are used to this look and won't mind it as much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can of course play with all the text settings mentioned above – word spacing, letter spacing, and line height – in all of the book. This will make the change unnoticeable (because everything looks the same), but if the change is large it will make all of the book unappealing. It might be better to:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;use a different font&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some fonts come with different letter widths (ultra condensed, extra condensed, condensed, semicondensed, regular, semiexpanded, expanded, extra expanded, ultra expanded), so this will allow you to have a very similar &quot;look&quot; but different amount of text in one line. If your font doesn't come in different letter widths, often there are clones of that font that don't have the exact same font metrics, or you can try a completely different font altogether. As with all book-wide changes, this may or may not lead to a good layout, depending on your luck.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;change the text&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you self publish anyway, you are not limited by the sanctity of the text that a typesetter has to respect. This is regularly done in newspaper and magazine publishing, where tests are written to be cropped, but a no-no in literature. But if it's your own text and you are more concerne with orphans than composition, simply change a few words, and your text will flow as you want it. This might be the easiest, quickest, and least frustrating solution, except for the last:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;don't give a wet fart&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would you worry about one footnote? Invest your time and energy into writing your next book. Content is what satisfies your readers and makes them buy your books. We are in it for the money, and 80-20 is good enough for becoming rich, as all those best-selling books will show you. (Meaning: get 80% of the money by delivering a 20% book, of course. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T04:55:53.780" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T04:55:53.780" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18591" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-11T16:39:25.890" Score="36" ViewCount="35200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel that is called 'Murder' It's about a girl who almost gets murdered but then has to live with the murderers with almost no knowledge that they are the ones that killed her. (Amnesia) The only &lt;em&gt;big&lt;/em&gt; problem I have is that I am 12. I want to know if I am to young to write a novel, or get it published. My family (most of them, anyway) support me, but I don't think they know that I am very serious about this. My story went from Androids to this. Is it possible to be young and get it published? &#xA;(I will probably be done by the time I am 13)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14862" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2018-06-06T16:27:10.560" LastActivityDate="2021-03-12T18:05:13.173" Title="Is it okay to publish a book at a young age?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|publishing|young-author|" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18591" CreationDate="2015-08-11T16:47:43.840" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no age restrictions on publishing - you may need to get someone else to sign contracts for you, but that's a minor detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it's pretty hard to get a book published, even for adults who've been working at writing for a long time. It's probably best if you focus on writing because it's fun, and give yourself a chance to explore without putting any pressure on to get anything published. I mean, if you get something finished and you're proud of it, sure, you might as well submit it to agents/publishers if you want, but try to remember that the important part about it was the fun you had writing, not the chance that somebody might want to publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T16:47:43.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18537" CreationDate="2015-08-11T16:53:34.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are nearly an infinite amount of ways to differentiate these characters. What you have described are easily observable traits such as physical looks, and their basic beliefs. What you are missing is what makes these people appear real, and not just two dimensional characters that are born on X date and died on Y date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find out more about their home life, and background. If they are well known historical figures, then it would be fairly simple to do that. Ask questions such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where were they born?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did they grow up with money?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did they go to college?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What college did they attend?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did they get married and have children?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the children's ages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the name of the wife and kids?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are hundreds of other questions you could ask. Once you have that information, it should not be hard to make them seem different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T16:53:34.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18591" CreationDate="2015-08-11T17:50:56.970" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't discount yourself because you're young. That's great that you're starting off so early. Keep at it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though I don't believe anyone will have a problem with it, there are different scenarios depending on how you want to be published (self-pub vs traditional pub).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For traditional, no one is going to ask your age when you're submitting queries, so if your story grabs a literary agent, I very highly doubt that they will change their minds because you are so young. In fact, they may even snatch the chance to have an author that has so many years ahead of them and can publish tons of books (which will in turn make them money, too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-pubbing, you'll have to do all of the marketing yourself, which means you won't have to sell yourself to an agent, you'll have to sell yourself to your audience. They're going to know you're 12/13 (or at least very young), and without a traditional publisher behind it saying &quot;yeah this is good&quot;, it may be a more work on your part to convince them you're worth it. But &lt;i&gt;definitely&lt;/i&gt; not impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My advice&lt;/strong&gt;: finish your story first. Edit it. Edit it again. Join a writers/critique group and guild. Have it critiqued or edited. Edit it again. And again. And then once more for good measure. Then send it to agents or self-pub. But make sure it's &lt;b&gt;ready&lt;/b&gt; before putting it out there. Nothing will destroy your credibility more than poorly edited work, regardless of how old you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck. I hope to see you on the best-sellers list!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T17:50:56.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18591" CreationDate="2015-08-11T18:35:11.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many books out there that have become best-sellers &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; their authors were young! Early genius as well as an &quot;authentic voice&quot; (instead of having adults speak for the young) are two of the strongest selling arguments in the media today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book is as well written as that of an adult author, yours will be the one the publisher buys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it has to be equally good. Age alone doesn't sell a book, either, so do what all the adults do and put the same amount of effort into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T18:35:11.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18598" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-11T19:59:03.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (e.g. Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism and An Essay on Man). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Thomas Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population are counterexamples. In some countries (e.g., the United States and Canada), essays have become a major part of formal education. Secondary students are taught structured essay formats to improve their writing skills; admission essays are often used by universities in selecting applicants, and in the humanities and social sciences essays are often used as a way of assessing the performance of students during final exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essay&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2015-09-07T04:10:11.443" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T04:10:11.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18599" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-11T19:59:03.633" Score="0" Body="Essays are generally scholarly pieces of writing giving the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of an article, a pamphlet and a short story." OwnerUserId="14077" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2015-09-07T04:10:43.767" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T04:10:43.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18604" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-12T04:00:32.073" Score="2" ViewCount="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got this sense that everything on earth and the universe will eventually decay or end. It may take seconds, hours, years or even billion of years. Let us say for example the life span of fridges and washing machines, the decay of plutonium, and the ultimate end of the universe (the Big Rip).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a concept, idea, or theory that states or tells us that this is indeed the case? And what are those?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've already got the Second Law of Thermodynamics to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14877" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T09:28:43.690" Title="Empires Rise and Fall, People Come and Go" Tags="|ideas|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-08-12T12:33:29.800" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18604" CreationDate="2015-08-12T04:28:04.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the Bard said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Golden lads and girls all must,&#xA;As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cymbeline&lt;/em&gt; Act IV, Scene 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole passage is very relevant -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/fear-no-more/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/fear-no-more/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14696" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T04:28:04.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18604" CreationDate="2015-08-12T09:28:43.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The feeling you are describing here is associated to the term &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;weltschmerz&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW How does this question relate to writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T09:28:43.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18607" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18656" CreationDate="2015-08-12T10:04:05.903" Score="2" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to include some material which will need clearance. Is this something that needs doing before finding a publisher? Or is it just that one publisher talks to another, and authors have no business being involved in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13782" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T13:59:43.683" Title="Should an author seek copyright clearance before finding a publisher?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18608" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18609" CreationDate="2015-08-12T10:08:12.957" Score="2" ViewCount="1162" Body="&lt;p&gt;By education I do not mean to ask how important a degree in English is for an author. A literate person, without any formal education, could pen an amazing story. On the other hand, a PhD might not guarantee professional success. I want to know how education, in any field, influences the writing ability of an author. Does maturity in the writing technique and the story itself, come with being better educated? Do people having been educated in different countries than their homeland have better stories to tell due to the different life experiences they get?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10551" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T06:50:51.700" LastActivityDate="2024-03-16T16:21:34.493" Title="How important is education for an author?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18608" CreationDate="2015-08-12T11:46:55.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you can only write convincingly and engagingly about &lt;strong&gt;things that you know&lt;/strong&gt;, experience and knowledge are invaluable for any author. You an make up a lot, of course, but only if you understand the principles behind what you are making up. For example, you can make up how a certain person behaves, but only if you understand how people behave in general (not: on average!). If you have no experience with people, you'll invent behavior that will seem false to your readers. The same goes with everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course no author can know everything, which is why often writing is preceded by research, which can include doing yourself what you want to describe your characters as doing, visting the places you write about, or learning the basics in a certain scholarly discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write fiction, what you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; need to become is an expert. Most books don't go so far into the matter as to need that kind of expertise. But if you write a biography, you certainly need to be an expert for the portayed individual. Or if you write a political novel, you better understand politics better than the average person, else they will ridicule your ignorance in their reviews on Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what all authors must understand is themselves. Critical self-reflection is a prerequisite for understanding other people, and understanding people is a prerequisite for portraying convincing characters. But I don't think that intelligence is a prerequisite for successful self-reflection. I have met many thoughful persons who didn't score high in IQ tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for formal education, that's in my answer already. Going through formal education is an experience that shapes the lives of people. If you haven't gone through school, how can you understand the vast majority of people that have gone through it? On the other hand, not having gone through formal education will give you a unique perspective that the majority lack, so you can show them something they don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your life will determine what you can or cannot write about. I'm a man, and no matter how much I try, I cannot truly understand (and write about) what it means to be female in our culture. I can write female characters who go on an adventure and fall in love (because I understand adventure and love), but I cannot write a book about what it acutally means to be female.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;knowledge&lt;/em&gt; you gain through formal education doesn't matter. You can learn that elsewhere. School is not just about knowledge, it is about training your mind and forming your personality in a specific way. Homeschooling, or growing up on the street or as a bushman and learning from your father, the hunter, will train your mind in different ways and form a different kind of personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But since every child and adolescent goes through some kind of &quot;schooling&quot;, no matter if they go through formal education or not, all have some kind of experience that will inform their writing, so which kind of &quot;schooling&quot; you experience does not really matter. Where people differ is wether they go through higher (formal) education, or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do people who go through college or university differ from people who don't, from the perspective of being a writer? Yes and no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Higher education, like school, is not only a way to acquire knowledge, but also an experience. It is an experience that, among other things, involves conscious thought. Compared to someone who graduates from high school and then sits down to start writing their first book, a college or university graduate has had a few more years to &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what you study, higher education has the side effect that you apply the traing of your mental muscle that you recieve there to other areas of your life. What you do with it, will depend on your personality. Some people put all their mental power into learning everything they can about comic books, others invest it in political activism, and some think about themselves and their families and their relationships to the people around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A person who works, does not usually have that cognitive stimulation and leisure for experimenting with it. And a person who starts writing right out of high school, does not have any adult experience at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Higher formal education is a valuable way to train and expand your mind – your ability to think, your power of observation and reflection –, and your writing will profit from that. It certainly is not the only way to gain that or a similar growth, but (in our culture) it is an easy and straightforward way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise you against studying literature, though. Studying literature is belly button gazing, if you want to become a writer. It will lead to literature about literature, writers writing about writing, and formal experimentation that is boring and does not sell. Physicists, lawyers, physicians, historians, and scholars from every other field that is not literature, write the best fiction, because they have a life and thoughts beyond literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can have experiences without studying. There are many examples of people leading exciting lives and later becoming writers. If you are the kind of person who does not plan to be a writer but to live an adventurous life, then do not study. Live, and later, maybe, turn to writing books. But if you are the average kind of person, who does not thrive on danger and hard times, then study, find a job, and somewhere along the way begin to write (or continue, if you are already writing). I can't think of a hairdresser or bricklayer writing novels, so studying seems the natural way anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe in taking up a career as a writer, as you can see, at least in the realm of printed fiction. Screen writing and writing for games and such seems to work differently, but I have no insight into those fields. All that I wrote above is limited to writing novels or short stories. I think a screen or game writer is someone who has to be inside the field to progress; a novelist on the other hand usually is someone who grows outside the field and only becomes an insider with his or her first publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T07:28:39.570" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T07:28:39.570" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18608" CreationDate="2015-08-12T12:59:59.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Formal education beyond the basic education you would get in school in a developed country is not particularly useful, in my opinion, unless you want to write in a very literary style. In that case, a English Literature degree or something similar may be modestly useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond basic literacy at the level you can get in a good school, you're really better off accumulating direct life experience. That is not to say that having degrees is not important and useful - they are critical if you want to get a half-way decent job in a modern economy. But they are not very useful for a writer, per se. To be clear, any writer will probably need some job besides writing, and he will probably need a degree (or degrees) for that job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two of my favorite writers, Eric Blair (aka George Orwell), and H. G. Wells, had little formal education. Blair went to school at Eton and got a school leaving certificate, but had no formal education beyond that. He then did a variety of things, including spending time in the British Imperial police in Burma, which he used as background in his novel &quot;Burmese Days&quot;. Wells came from a poor background, and had some sort of patchy school education, but it was not even the equivalent of a good modern school education as one might find in a developed country these days. Neither seem to have been too concerned about their lack of formal education, with regards to their writing, anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By way of counterpoint, another favorite writer of mine, the English novelist and literary critic David Lodge, has extensive formal education and an academic background, including a PhD in English (in 1967) from Birmingham University, and a professorship also at Birmingham, which he has made much use of in his novels. And certainly his prose style and themes owes much to his formal literary background. So certainly an academic background can be useful for a novelist, but it isn't critical. Other kinds of background are useful too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2422" LastEditorUserId="2422" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T13:05:38.270" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T13:05:38.270" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18591" CreationDate="2015-08-12T14:20:29.990" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought I would throw my two cents into the mix. I wrote my first book(non-fiction) when I was about 16-17 (I am 20 now.) and decided to self-publish it with the help of a few friends and family members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer&lt;/strong&gt;: Yes. You can publish your book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer&lt;/strong&gt;: Take your first book as the biggest experience of your writing career. It's unlikely that you have written anything of novel length (say 55k words?) before so you don't have experience structuring and planning; understanding &lt;em&gt;how to&lt;/em&gt; actually write a novel, at this stage, is more important than actually writing one. Take keen notes on your process or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axhywHUXZVs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;adopt the process&lt;/a&gt; of a famous writer like I did with Walter Mosley. He wrote 1000 words everyday and at the end of the day he would revise the previous days 1000 words and so on and then he would read the book multiple times over. Plan &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; out literally everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that's the process aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to self-publish your book (something I recommend at this stage) then you need to understand distribution, cover design, marketing, editing etc. This may sound a little daunting but understanding how all these things work together is important to understanding how you can get people to read your stuff; consider having a small book launch with family and friends. Ask your school if you can talk about your book by going into classrooms etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Find a solid editor.&lt;/em&gt; Sometimes, we downplay the importance of a good reader  but don't. The editor will tell you where your story is losing interest in the reader, they will also talk to you about your grammar etc. Avoid family members unless they are honest. At the end of the day, you want your book to be the best and if you family or friends can't tell you that something is wrong with the book or you don't want your writing to affect your relationships then hire someone - they will most likely to do a better job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have all of this figured out and you have your novel published and it's a hit (fingers crossed) - don't wait, start writing the next one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps! Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14883" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T14:20:29.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18608" CreationDate="2015-08-12T14:26:06.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Importance for what? For success? If so how is that measure? Are you referring to becoming a NY time best seller? I'll assume you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at authors like George RR Martin or JK Rowling or Stephanie Meyer or EL James or christopher Paolini . Some of them write great, others, not so much. Yet they all have sold massive amounts of books.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JK Rowling has a Bachelors of Arts degree; Martin has a MS in Journalism, Meyer has a bachelors as well, and James has some college but not an actual degree. &#xA;All have a some degree of higher education and I think it can be seen in their writing ability yet all are fairly successful. Christohper Paolini is a rare exception with only a home schooled education, though he has taken other courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short it doesn't seem to matter from a sales perspective. However from a literary perspective I think it does matter to some degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14850" LastEditorUserId="14850" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T15:56:55.593" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T15:56:55.593" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18616" CreationDate="2015-08-12T14:49:38.860" Score="1" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need help finding some style rules to address an issue with a client. I'm working with an organization whose logo uses caps and italics with no spacing, like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VANDELAY&lt;em&gt;industries&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind of '90s, but whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, every time they write out their company name on the web or printed media, they do it with caps and italics. So it looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VANDELAY&lt;em&gt;industries&lt;/em&gt; consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed mollis lorem nisl, ac egestas odio tincidunt sed. Mauris ligula VANDELAY&lt;em&gt;industries&lt;/em&gt; nisi, fermentum ut libero eget, eleifend tincidunt metus. Donec fermentum, quam non maximus dictum, felis magna scelerisque lorem, sit amet mollis turpis mauris quis erat. Phasellus sapien nunc, eleifend vitae ex ut, porttitor imperdiet eros.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suspendisse tempus semper hendrerit. Mauris vestibulum tincidunt rutrum. Aenean cursus quis metus in porta. Praesent in massa hendrerit, pulvinar nisl non, tempor ligula. Vivamus eget nibh in ante luctus congue consequat tempus libero VANDELAY&lt;em&gt;industries&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also keep the caps when using the shortened version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need widgets, call VANDELAY today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for some concrete, authoritative rules to cite when I bring this up to them. Can anyone help? The more specific, the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14884" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T18:39:34.893" Title="Addressing &quot;logo-ification&quot; of an organization's name in their literature" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18112" CreationDate="2015-08-12T17:56:51.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing te specifics of the plot and the character development I have to say I'd find that climax personally disappointing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole concept of character development is for them to get wherever they're going by themselves. The fact that the main character is being told what to do, in effect, negates the whole journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I don't disagree with death being the trigger but with the dying character stating the action. I'd much rather have the character die in the way you've imagined and the protagonist decision of standing up being a result of his own internal dialog. In that way, death of a friend triggers the last step to happen as opposed to &lt;em&gt;telling&lt;/em&gt; the protagonist what it should do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;For a short moment he seemed to possess the strength of old times and then the illusion broke and he was gone. And finally he understood. Finally, when it was to late, when nothing could bring him back he saw it all clear... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, that kind of realisation is much more powerful than actually telling the character what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note from my point of view the final battle is NOT the climax and whether you chose to describe it in depth or not is secondary. The climax is Steve deciding to actually take a stand and fight and, specifically, how he takes that final step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view the battle is not important. What happens after, though, is. You've made the point of evolving the character to &quot;take a stand&quot; (climax), you then have described the internal thoughts and processes that produce that change. For me, from a reader perspective, what I want is an epilogue. What is his life after? What path is he going to take after that? Even if the story doesn't continue it feeds the reader need for closure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just my thoughts (Note English is not my mother tongue so the text above is just an example I hope illustrates what I mean).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14885" LastEditorUserId="14885" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T18:03:14.740" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T18:03:14.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10140" CreationDate="2015-08-12T18:29:14.763" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's perhaps borderline possible to publish, but keep in mind that your market will become tangible if it includes people who are intrigued by foreign cultures and interaction between them, but not specifically multilingual, or perhaps multilingual but not necessarily in your specific languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are rarely as multilingual as their region. Although for example Switzerland has German, French and Italian as official languages, you will have a hard time finding people who speak more than 2 of those plus English. Of any of those, the portion of people interested in a novel of any particular genre will be tiny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some grasp of perhaps half a dozen languages, but reading a novel which mixes them too liberally would be extremely tedious to me. I get severely confused when the language abruptly switches even just between the 3 languages I'm fluent in, it makes my head hurt, so even if you manage to rely on only the languages that I can read well, and though I have a deep interest in cultures and languages, I still probably wouldn't read your novel. If it's just showing off that you are good at multiple languages, it would come off as arrogant. I don't think I'm anyhow unique, I saw that happen at a hotel on Ibiza where the receptionist was fluent in 5 languages, but she had to talk to a guest who was switching between 4 of those every few words. When I walked up to her, she was staring into the distance, then at her papers, and into the distance again, and was thoroughly confused, and when I asked her, she uttered a disjointed bunch of words in all or none of those languages, asking for a few moments of silence to gather her spirits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2010, &quot;Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America&quot; was published and contains some untranslated foreign language and even does interesting things with the languages and the language barrier. Granted, it's written by Robert Wilson, an established science fiction author, and you will probably have a much harder time finding a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must put yourself in the shoes of the publisher. Will the work still be enjoyable without in depth understanding of multiple languages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multilingual, or rather cosmopolitan literature has tradition. Countless classic Russian novels contain large swaths of French, because that day's reader was assumed to be fluent in French. Today however, they are printed with half page long footnotes in a terrible tiny font, making them extremely tedious to read for people who don't know French.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you should reconsider whether novel is the right genre. Perhaps it should be a visual novel, allowing the reader to follow the story and infer the meaning even if they are not fluent in the language, by inserting visual clues, instead of increasing the verbosity of the text and making it feel superfluous to people who do understand the language. And it has to be compelling on a basic merit and not just because of multilingual puns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14886" LastEditorUserId="14886" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T18:58:15.757" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T18:58:15.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18613" CreationDate="2015-08-12T18:34:29.020" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you work for a client, especially if you write advertising, brochures, operating manuals and other publications that they authorize or even publish, they dictate the style. (The same is true in fiction or news or science or any other kind of writing, too, by the way. All publishing houses have their own style manuals, and if it bothers you to put a company name in italics, then writing for that company is not the right job for you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write for scholarly or news publications, their rules generally dictate to write company names and other trademarks as normal words, all in lowercase letters, unless they are acronyms (e.g. IBM). Adding &amp;quot;TM&amp;quot; to a trademark in science or news is zany, don't do it. And no one cares if companies dislike that (except for those scientists that are being paid by the companies for their favourable results). But these style rules only apply to the publications of those publishing houses or scientific disciplines, and are irrelevant for a company website. If you do so, you misunderstand the principle of style guides and their limited applicability. There is no universally corect style, and only self-publishing authors are free to write however they like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is your job to write the company name however the company likes it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T18:39:34.893" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18537" CreationDate="2015-08-12T19:01:52.673" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Character difference is relative. Two spies are almost certainly more like one another than a spy and a nun, but that doesn't mean you can't write a book about two spies. They entered the service for the same reason, and they feel the same way about their job. Just take all the similarities as your baseline, and figure out how they differ when you take the similarities as a given. Zoom in on the small differences and blow them up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is almost certainly how their relationship feels to them: we tend to forget how similar we are to our friends and family, and focus exclusively on the differences. I might vote the same as my friend, deal with people the same way, have the exact same education and like the same movies, but when I think about him, I'll forget those things and focus on his job being better or my girlfriend being prettier. We may live in the same city, but I'll focus on the fact that his house is closer to the center, while mine is in a better neighborhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, B may feel inferior to A, since A has more power. How does he deal with this? And does A feel superior? Or is A the kind of leader who watches his ego, and feels he needs B's expertise. Perhaps A feels he's not up to the job and is glad to have B to help him out. It's a small start, but they have a highly asymmetrical relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also think about their development. Do they stay the same throughout the story, or to they eventually grow apart? It's unlikely that they develop in exactly the same way. It would be interesting to start with two very similar friends, and to show how their different settings cause them to grow apart and become different people. A might become corrupted by his power, while B is kept level by his good relationship with his family. Perhaps B is jealous of A's power, and decides to subtly undermine him. Plenty of options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14887" LastEditorUserId="14887" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T21:22:23.870" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T21:22:23.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5705" CreationDate="2015-08-12T21:32:38.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To take off on Lauren Ipsum's short, but excellent answer, you have three choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Re-write your current story so that your &quot;cool&quot; character is a key, perhaps main, character whose importance in the overall story matches his importance in individual scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Remove the character from this story and give him a separate story,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) A hybrid of the two: give him a &quot;limited&quot; part in the current story, in order to set up a &quot;sequel&quot; for him, and make sure your current story connects well to the sequel. His importance then is not for the current story, but for the sequel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T21:32:38.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18591" CreationDate="2015-08-12T21:55:15.633" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can write a book even though you're young. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, there is no guarantee that it will become widely read, or that it will sell a lot of copies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to learn something:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Learn from someone who has done it before &lt;strong&gt;(and achieved the result you want to have).&lt;/strong&gt;  Usually you end of with similar results to your mentor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Do it (Practice again and again and again until you get really good at it).  No amount of listening to anyone will make you good at anything.  You learn by doing, not merely by hearing or seeing someone else do it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider as a writer you have two objectives: writing well, and marketing your books well.  You need both skills to be a successful writer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can accomplish these two things no matter how young or old you are, if you learn from someone who has the results you want to have, and if you consistently keep writing and learning to effectively market your books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your family doesn't take you seriously, just keep moving forward until you can show them what you've accomplished and you need their help to move forward.  &quot;Mom, Dad, look.  You guys know I love writing, and I've been working on a book.  Here's my first manuscript.  I know there's no guarantees that anyone will like my book, but can you help me try to send my manuscript to a publisher (or an editor, or some other book writing / marketing professional). Could you help me with that?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14891" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T21:55:15.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5705" CreationDate="2015-08-12T22:11:28.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider whether this is possible: Merge this character with another one who is integral to the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T22:11:28.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18628" CreationDate="2015-08-13T12:06:30.330" Score="15" ViewCount="4316" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The story:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Centuries ago, humanity have been incorporated into an alien hive mind, spread by a bacterial-like infection. The &quot;bacteria&quot; infects the blood and brain and allows the infected to join their minds together, there is no alien overlord, just an interplanetary community of spirit. Everyone is &lt;em&gt;happy&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that our immune system starts to fight back. More and more babies are born with little to no space-bacteria in their brain, and need daily injections to stay &quot;normal&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even worse, the space-bacteria signal strength is globally diminishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can barely feel the presence of the other infected species outside the solar system, soon we'll only be able to share our thoughs with the people in our immediate vicinity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams of space-travelers are sent to other planetary systems in the hope of finding new strains of the bacteria to re-infect everyone. They are humanity's last hope to be happy again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My story explores two facets of this terrible, terrible situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One part is about people who stayed on earth. They are trying to find a cure against our immune system, struggling to maintain social order and trying to cope with the loss of happiness.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The other is about a team sent to space: they travel around, meet infected and non-infected civilizations, ask for information on the bacteria in space-taverns, learn the concept of money and hire a few space-mercenaries to help them in their noble quest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Additional information:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our bacterial hive-mind is kind of like a single mind controlling numerous bodies at the same time. Each of the bodies have different perceptions, since their senses perceive the world differently and their basic instincts are still there (young ones enjoy playing a lot, most of them enjoy hugging and kissing, some prefer to hide under a blanket during storms, etc.). The collective can feel different emotions and needs at the same time, but it's still one mind. Like most creatures, it tries to live its life in the most agreeable way possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On earth, the connection is deteriorating, so as the story progresses some parts of the hive mind degenerate into partially connected individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One part of the story is told from the earth collective mind POV, another from a smaller collective mind POV, formed by the ship crew, and from the POV of other hive minds they'll meet on their journey (I haven't decided yet on how these other collectives will be structured).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking about writing in a first view perspective, while using &quot;we&quot; and &quot;us&quot;. But the first scenes I have written are super-annoying to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;My Questions:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I write a story from a collective mind perspective without being confusing or obnoxious? Should I use a first or third person narrative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there well-written stories told from a hive mind POV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks everyone for your advice, I'll write a few scenes to try different styles and see what works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full disclosure: I write in French and my worst enemy seems to be not the fundamental difference between human and alien-hive-mind perception of reality, but the third person plural past tense, which sounds unnatural and wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastEditorUserId="14925" LastEditDate="2015-08-15T10:17:21.643" LastActivityDate="2017-12-14T16:58:47.083" Title="Writing from a hive mind POV" Tags="|creative-writing|science-fiction|viewpoint|perspective|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18621" CreationDate="2015-08-13T13:26:48.063" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(This might get good answers on WorldBuilding SE also.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you have to decide, from a storytelling viewpoint, &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; these people communicate. Does each individual have his/her own thoughts but others pop in and out like everyone is always in the same room and thinking out loud? Do you only hear the thoughts of people within X geographical distance? Or is it more like the Borg, where there's the constant white noise of a billion minds in the background? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How has this affected society? Is there an Internet? Are there phones, email, texts, mail? Do people travel as much? Can they link to the point of looking through someone else's eyes, so to speak? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you work through these structural details, it should become clearer how to tell the story — if you have individuals who think but are always hearing other individuals, that could be first-person or third-person limited, but if everyone is a Borg drone with free will, then third-person will make more sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T13:26:48.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18621" CreationDate="2015-08-13T13:29:20.233" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A different slant on things, but Ayn Rand's &lt;em&gt;Anthem&lt;/em&gt; has a non-supernatural hive mind (collectivism gone mad, I guess) and she shows it by using collective pronouns even for individuals. So instead of &quot;I&quot; she uses &quot;we&quot;, even when there's only one character involved. I hate the book, but the pronouns were interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to check out &lt;em&gt;Ancillary Justice&lt;/em&gt; by Ann Leckie. It has a super-powerful AI using human bodies to do its bidding, and they function as a sort of collective. It gets a bit confusing sometimes, but it's pretty well done, I'd say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than the pronouns, I think you'll probably have to decide just how entwined these humans are with each other. If their connection is totally voluntary and can be turned off, it would just sort of be like people having hardwired internet, and you wouldn't need to do much beyond acknowledging it. But if you're going for a deeper connection, one that can't be controlled and that would remove all traces of privacy, you'll have to really think about every aspect of your society and take it from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T13:29:20.233" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5761" CreationDate="2015-08-13T14:10:06.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few things I notice are your change of tense and POV. It is not consistent. You switch at the end from &quot;I&quot; to &quot;you&quot; and feels like your preaching to your reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a lot of Filter Words. Saw, felt,feel, realized, watch, etc... These words naturally put up another layer between the character and the reader. Try rewriting without these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Passive voice was mentioned before. Look at MRU (motivation reaction units) as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to expand the scene is to have the POV character reflecting on specific moments they had together rather than telling us about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I cried in her arms, cried over all the things we could never do nor fix, all the people - who by simple virtue of existence deserve unrelenting love - whom we couldn’t save. People whom we’d never meet, whom we could never help. We grieved together for the people who are too blind to know that they can’t see, who will live forever in self-created misery - people we will never be able to help. We grieved for the people they hurt out of ignorance.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expand upon this. Have the POV character recall an actual specific situation the led to such grief. Perhaps a story about why he cried in her arms and who we couldn't save. Was it a random person, parents, ex lover, etc...? Did they die tragically? Was it the POV fault for their death and by extension they feel they fail to protect their lover. This allows us to emphasize. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EX Idea: Maybe the POV was driving and crashed a car (maybe he was drunk). The accident killed his parents and he blames himself for it. During the crash he tried to pull his parents from the burning car and his mom bleeds to death in his arms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14850" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T14:10:06.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18549" CreationDate="2015-08-13T15:20:30.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just use Gemmell's rule, which is actually quite old. Have a character ask a question, any question. You'll never again get stuck with writers block. For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;So where are we going?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other man mumbled. &quot;Gonna go buy steaks --&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What steaks? And who're you, by the way? I thought that we were ... &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your last chapter of course has nothing about any steaks. And really, who is this other guy? Well it doesn't matter. You don't know, you'll have to decide. Oh! and now you're not stuck anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's just a device to break through writers block. You never intended to get stuck, so the plot has no such scenario. However you did, in fact, get stuck. Now it really doesn't matter what you wrote prior these three sentences, I repeat. They force the story to move on. You can always edit and improve the `unblocking' device later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Works for academic writing too. It's how most mathematics books are organized, why they're so all over the place in structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even Byron did it. Why else is a question about the sinking of Venice in the same text as a story about the Ukraine? Anyway, nobody will complain. Presumably you can make it interesting and worth reading. Although it was an arbitrary event in the plot, it doesn't look arbitrary to the reader if you do it right. And you simply cannot get stuck in that case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13168" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T15:20:30.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18621" CreationDate="2015-08-13T15:41:53.187" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;David Brin's &lt;em&gt;Uplift&lt;/em&gt; series has the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_Universe#The_Jophur&quot;&gt;traeki/Jophur&lt;/a&gt;, which are physically connected hive minds of stacked rings. Each ring is nominally a separate entity; the distinction between traeki and Jophur is the presence of a so-called 'master ring', basically an overriding personality which controls the other parts of the hive mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the species is only one of the viewpoints in the books, use of the third person is very effective as a reminder to the reader that a stack of rings is a hive mind, not a single personality. Use of the first person indicates an overriding (single) personality. In your case I believe the distinction between first and third person could even be(come) a central theme, or way of expressing the difference between a thought from a hive mind and a thought from an individual. To me it seems that your choice of narrative should be based on 'where' the source is for a given thought or feeling at any given time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also true for a given point of view - if a single person is walking through a room, the first or second person view is definitely not irrelevant; even though the control and sentience remains with the hive, you have made it clear that basic instincts still contribute to what defines individuals. Separate enjoyment by separate entities is an interesting angle in your introduction; bear in mind that this will also affect things like fashion, status, sex, careers, experience...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14901" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T15:41:53.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5705" CreationDate="2015-08-13T16:08:50.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Platonov suggested compressing all episodes, especially boring episodes. You have a story with a great character who is not a significant one. (They're neither the perspective character nor the hero, who are two or one and the same.) Frequently present and visible they* behave intelligently and wittily, contribute humor, and is a person fun to write about and perhaps to read about in small doses. Yet they are also boring. Nothing they do matters. They don't move thing, they don't contribute to the plot, not even supporting the significant characters in the story. They are simply there, being themselves, like the atmosphere. Why they're there nobody can say. Not even you the author knows that. The story becomes stretched and loses tension and liveliness. Readers won't find sufficient novelty per text block to bother reading it.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that there's only one end with this character. (You don't let them die here by the way. That'll offend the readers if they're really so likable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He bravely sides with the perspective character, shows solidarity. Then he leaves to find himself, saying there is something he must do. The details are suggested to be significant; also they're naturally vague. The perspective character simply lacks the relevant information here. The boring character is secretive at this point you see. This done you immediately write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;That was the last time I saw him. Maybe things would've been different if I'd know this before, then and there. I don't know.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the only real way to deal with him without rewriting your entire work. It gets rid of him,-- and provides a &amp;quot;hint of deeper meaning&amp;quot;. (Suggestion courtesy of Dostoyevsky.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It's better to rewrite and remove this character from most places, if you have the time. It doesn't matter if they're likable, for reason * dominates.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13168" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T16:08:50.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18621" CreationDate="2015-08-13T16:44:13.810" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a thought: would the infected members of the population even be aware that there is a hive mind of which they are a part?  Sure, they experience extreme empathy and are subconsciously driven to act in ways that benefit the whole, but perhaps there is an individual experience that is largely oblivious to the organizing structure in which it is embedded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try an experiment where you write the hive mind as its own distinct character (perhaps using the first person), with its perspective distanced from the people that make it up.  I might talk about my heart, lungs, stomach and arms, but mostly I just use them and ignore them, at least until they start malfunctioning.  The hive mind probably doesn't even think of the individuals with their names, but rather in terms of their functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can continue to write the individuals as relatable characters, allowing you to space out your transitions to the more foreign hive mindset to more manageable chunks of the story.  The character perspectives are of course still impacted by their infection (notably, having markedly less selfish motivation), though I imagine the crisis underlying the story brings about conflict in part by forcing people to deal with their previously suppressed selfish impulses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14902" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T16:44:13.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5761" CreationDate="2015-08-13T16:50:49.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember, the goal is not to feel emotion, and not to write emotion.  The goal is to write so &lt;em&gt;the reader&lt;/em&gt; feels emotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the risk of being terminally cheesy, consider these lyrics from 90's pop group Roxette (reformatted as prose):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What's the time? Seems it's already morning. I see the sky, it's so beautiful and blue. The TV's on, but the only thing showing is a picture of you. I get up, and make myself some coffee.  I try to read a bit, but the story's too thin. I thank the Lord above that you're not there to see me in this shape I'm in. Spending my time, watching the days go by. Feeling so small, I stare at the wall, hoping that you think of me too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this paints an effective picture of a post-breakup depression, built almost entirely through mundane details.  Essentially we see a portrait of someone trying to get on with life and failing.  This makes it easy to emphasize with, especially if you've ever lived that experience, because it's very relatable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a very similar example, from Wilco:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I try to stay busy. I do the dishes, I mow the lawn. I try to keep myself occupied, even though I know you're not coming home. I try to keep the house nice and neat. I make my bed, I change the sheets. I even learned how to use the washing machine. Keeping things clean doesn't change anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with your example is that even though the character is very emotional, there's no real avenue in for the reader.  There needs to be some point of identification before we start to care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T16:50:49.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18630" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18637" CreationDate="2015-08-13T17:32:51.293" Score="7" ViewCount="631" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently been having trouble with developing plots. The plots I created seemed heavily sequential. No matter how many twists or complications I put in, they always seemed dry, proceeding from one problem to the next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe I have discovered a way to fix this: by making &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt;, from the beginning, that my conflict is linked to the theme, or message, of my novel. In addition, I link the main character to the theme. This seems to be working, and has the added benefit of acting as a safeguard against accidental preaching of said theme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HOWEVER, it appears that this method is prone to making the hero's inner conflict (what I think of as conflicting sides within the protagonist) be the MAIN conflict (the main problem in the story). The main conflict &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the inner conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this okay?&lt;/strong&gt; This doesn't strike me as much of a problem, but being an aspiring author, I want to be sure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T15:20:32.077" Title="Can the main conflict be the inner conflict?" Tags="|plot|conflict|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18631" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-13T17:36:33.167" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T17:36:33.167" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T17:36:33.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18632" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-13T17:36:33.167" Score="0" Body="Conflict is a concept from narrative fiction. It refers to either the ambivalent emotions of the hero (&quot;inner conflict&quot;) or the opposition by antagonistic forces that the hero encounters. In a group of heroes, the &quot;inner conflict&quot; may be disagreement between group members. An example for &quot;inner conflict&quot; is Gandalf being torn over whether he should use or destroy the ring. Group inner conflict happens when Boromir attacks Frodo. The Nazgul are antagonists." OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T07:49:26.280" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T07:49:26.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18630" CreationDate="2015-08-13T18:00:05.707" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the genre and what you're trying to achieve, but it's certainly an accepted literary tool. The good ol' Man vs Self conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It'll almost certainly result in a character-driven novel, but there's nothing wrong with character-driven novels!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T18:00:05.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18621" CreationDate="2015-08-13T18:11:39.410" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The very first story I ever wrote was written from the perspective of a collective mind. So, as they say on /b/, this question is very relevant to my interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would approach the concept of an intergalactic hive mind from the perspective of sociology, neuropsychology, and biology. A hive of bees can be considered as a single organism: only the queen can reproduce, the drones have the status of ejaculate (of which only one sperm will fertilize the egg and the rest die) and the workers are the limbs of the hive that have no individual goal, only strive to provide for the hive. At the same time an individual bee does in fact provide for itself (it would be useless for the hive, if it didn't eat or rest and died), and clearly shows individual behavior independent of the hive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The human brain, too, while apparently a unified organ creating a single consciousness, contains a not insignificant number of correlated but independent processes. For example, you can walk and talk at the same time. In fact, you can walk without having to consciously take care of that, so &quot;something&quot; inside you is regulating that behavior while your mind is otherwise occupied. There are distinct parts in your brain that have different functions much like the individual bees in a hive: one part takes care of your inner organs, another processes visual information, one regulates emotions, and so on. This is a simplified view, of course, and in truth many functions are spread out over many parts of the brain (just like many worker bees collect food, and many take care of the eggs), but no function involves the whole brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find analogies in sociology and other sciences yourself, and I'm sure you're already able to see what I'm getting at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hive mind, while interconnected, does not necessitate that all parts are directly connected to all others (that would be dysfunctional), that all parts are always &quot;on&quot;, that all parts are the same and have the same functions, or that individual parts have no other functions besides those related to the hive. On the contrary, it would be highly functional if individual hive members could think and take care of themselves if they ever got disconnected from the hive (e.g. due to transmission failure or disease). In fact, if all of the hive but one member died, it would be good if that member had the potential to &quot;turn into a queen&quot; and start a new hive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very unlikely that a hive mind would have unified thinking. If it had, all members all across the universe would have to eat and sleep at the same time and walk in lockstep. Obviously that won't work. Individual members will encounter individual problems that they have to individually take care of, and a myriad of these problems will happen at the same time. Therfore it is highly likely that individuality will remain in existence in the individual members of a hive mind, to a not inconsiderate degree. They will have individual consciousness, individual emotions, and individual goals that will interact with the hive's goals not unlike the inner conflict that normal humans today often experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people believe that meditation and other spiritual practices connect you to the universe and all living beings inside of it. Yet spiritual masters aren't mindless ants, remote controlled by the universe. They are very much individuals, despite feeling themselves in tune with what the univerae &quot;wants&quot;. Of course those masters aren't part of any hive mind and cannot show us what a hive mind would be like, but they show how the concept of &quot;becoming one with the universe&quot; does not contradict individuality for those that have spent a lot of time thinking about those concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From all this follows that you can write a story about a hive mind both from the perspective of an individual member (in first or third person singular), from the perspective of a temporary or permanent functional subcollective (in first or third person plural), or – though that will be difficult to conceive of, because it lies so far outside our experience – from the perspective of the total mind itself. I imagine that latter perspective to be a cacophony of a myriad synchronous thoughts – and unreadable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T12:33:47.653" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T12:33:47.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5761" CreationDate="2015-08-13T19:41:58.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't overreach. Phrases such as &quot;I did. Not. Move.&quot; come off as a bit much, a bit dramatic. And I agree w/ the top answer, it does get a bit didactic towards the end. Illustrate inner conflict with outer actions; as a general rule, tend away from explicitly indicating the character's mindset. Of course there are cases where you must, but don't unless you've thought about both options, and know you must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want an emotional response, but that comes from building empathetic characters, not from dramatic language. We don't know the characters very well at this point, so we don't have much emotional connection to them. Build interesting, whole characters—make us familiar with them, friends with them—and Then deliver the blow. Is my 2¢.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14905" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T19:41:58.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18636" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18662" CreationDate="2015-08-13T19:43:17.023" Score="0" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any proper ways of using/implementing e.g. in a &quot;Research Narrative&quot;? I am working on a &quot;Research Narrative&quot; (I must write in both ALA and MLA format). I am curious about this e.g. but I rarely see it being used in &quot;research reports&quot; or something like that. Are there any examples to implement e.g.?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8649" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T04:27:11.207" LastActivityDate="2018-04-23T09:29:17.490" Title="Are there any proper ways of using/implementing &quot;e.g.&quot; in a &quot;Research Narrative&quot;?" Tags="|technical-writing|word-choice|software|business-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18630" CreationDate="2015-08-13T19:56:06.763" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's totally okay, and makes for a nice vehicle of the theme (the plot itself is the deepest, subtlest and thus most effective means of making argument, as opposed to say the dialogue/opinions of your characters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you shouldn't worry about whether or not it's arbitrarily &quot;okay&quot;. Hesitation holds new writers back, and one of the quickest ways to develop as a writer (and maybe even innovate your form) is to discard your fear of &quot;breaking the rules&quot;. Could Joyce have written &lt;em&gt;Ulysses&lt;/em&gt; if he were afraid of doing something &quot;wrong&quot; like this? Could Cortázar have written &lt;em&gt;Rayuela&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice (and this is advice given to scientists and mathematicians, too): trust yourself. You are a human; you have experiences that others can empathize with, and you have messages you wish to send. If you have a new idea for how to tell a story that hasn't been done before, you should be all the more excited to try it out first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Popular example of a novel driven by a character's inner conflict: &lt;em&gt;Moby Dick&lt;/em&gt;. If it worked for Melville, it can work for you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14905" LastEditorUserId="14905" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T15:20:32.077" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T15:20:32.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18621" CreationDate="2015-08-13T19:58:16.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also check out &lt;em&gt;And Then We Came to the End&lt;/em&gt;, by Joshua Ferris. It's second-person, and it works. Where you seek an effective hive-mind, Ferris sought an effective Office — the collective murmurings of a bunch of coworkers. The use of second-person enables an omniscient narration — all of the events are well-known gossip, water-cooler talk — while still allowing personal perspectives (it is, in a sense, each character's individual narrative; just all of them together). And Ferris tapers off from a more comprehensive second-person, containing and expressing the thoughts of a whole office, down to a dialogue between just two characters: the narrator, and the reader. If you don't have time to give it a thorough read, honestly, I would recommend reading the first few pages, snippets &lt;em&gt;in medias&lt;/em&gt;, and the very end. That should offer Some helpful sense of what he does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14905" LastEditorUserId="14905" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T22:02:51.633" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T22:02:51.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18591" CreationDate="2015-08-13T20:02:39.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the novel is good enough to get published, it won't matter how old you are. You'll just be that much cooler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been trying to get published since 12, like you—well actually 11—and I'm 17 now, still sans dice, as they say. I hope you have more luck. Don't ever give up. And maybe brush up on your homonyms (&quot;too&quot; vs &quot;to&quot;—though that's minutiae).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14905" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T20:02:39.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18549" CreationDate="2015-08-13T20:07:33.787" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;READ. Read read read. I've been in your situation before, and reading helped. But make sure it's someone good: someone who gets you &quot;pumped&quot; to write. Might I recommend David Foster Wallace?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other stuff that worked for me: listening to emotional music before/slightly during; writing really really late at night (slash early in the morning—that middle-space); and, honestly, sometimes, just letting it lie. Try some other sort of brain-stretching activity. Do some math (fun stuff, not algebra—check AoPS or project Euler). Exercise. Disrupt all of your routines and resume them. And don't worry. It will work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14905" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T20:07:33.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18388" CreationDate="2015-08-13T20:10:13.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I want to emphasize, I cap the first letter of the emphasizes word. Italics seem a bit cheesy to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: You ate the Red biscuit?!&#xA;             You Ate the red biscuit?!&#xA;             You ate The red biscuit?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are issues when the word would be capped for other reasons (name, start of sentence). But that's what I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14905" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T20:10:13.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18335" CreationDate="2015-08-13T20:12:41.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;your voice is to some extent a composite of the voices you read. Read lots of different authors of all different heritages, occupations, styles, and subjects. It's like eating a variety of healthy foods, or solving a bunch of different types of problems: you pick up a lot of handy tricks for your repurposing/improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14905" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T20:12:41.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18643" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-13T21:08:46.390" Score="2" ViewCount="3262" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to know if I'm safe publishing a book(s) with no copyright/trademarks/etc. and avoiding any kind of business moniker (like a D.B.A. or registration) in order to just get right to the publishing part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since anyone who makes money independently is basically a freelancer/self-employed person, and a self-employed person can use a pen name without a D.B.A. or the related such, I am assuming that publishing is as simple as writing, formatting, and completing -- then making it available to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I shouldn't have to file taxes as long as I'm not making tons of money, as nobody will care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14907" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T19:15:28.797" Title="Is it legal to self-publish books independently (in any form) with no LTD, L.L.C., D.B.A., etc.?" Tags="|legal|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18644" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-13T21:16:21.093" Score="3" ViewCount="866" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a book about an idea/story I've had for many years that I find many will truly enjoy when furnished out; however, I don't want this to be &quot;open-source&quot;; I don't want anyone to be able to re-use it as their own and profit like it's their work (as a Creative Commons kind of license).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way I can &quot;protect&quot; ideas/characters without a copyright? Any simpler, easier, freer way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14908" LastActivityDate="2018-11-22T17:24:55.733" Title="Write a book with &quot;protected&quot; characters/ideas without copyright?" Tags="|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18644" CreationDate="2015-08-13T21:28:10.423" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copyright is free. Assuming you're living in a country that's a signatory to the Berne Convention, which you almost certainly are, your work is copyrighted as soon as you record your ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Registering copyright may cost something, depending on where you live, but it's of dubious value, really. In the US, for example, registering copyright allows you to sue for punitive as well as compensatory damages, but it's really pretty rare for a copyright case to go that far anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T21:28:10.423" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18643" CreationDate="2015-08-13T21:34:00.873" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll need to check with the tax laws of the jurisdiction you're living in to be sure, but in general, you don't need to have any extra legal designations in order to publish, but you DO need to declare the income for tax purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amazon sends out 1099-MISC forms to their author/publishers detailing the money earned in each tax year.One copy of that form goes to the citizen, another copy goes to the tax authority. So if you're American, the IRS will know how much you made and I imagine they'll expect you to declare it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not American, you'll have to look at local tax rules, but also be aware that Amazon will keep 30% of your sales as a withholding tax unless you jump through a lot of hoops, IRS-wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T00:15:48.710" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T00:15:48.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18647" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-13T21:57:01.000" Score="3" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing in 3rd person limited POV.  I have noticed I have a section of text that seems to shift to omniscient. A lot of this happens when I'm forced to tell bits of information to the reader. By telling this information during this POV isn't it implied that particular person knows this? Sometimes to me it seems like I'm shifting POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any obvious cues and clues, words, phrases, etc. that are an obvious giveaway that I am now writing in 3rd omniscient rather than 3rd limited?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14850" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-01-13T13:28:57.307" LastActivityDate="2022-01-13T13:33:15.687" Title="What are some cues and clues on 3rd person POV shift?" Tags="|editing|word-choice|pov|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18647" CreationDate="2015-08-13T22:15:07.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing in 3rd limited, then you should only be sharing information that the POV character knows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there are any specific words to watch out for - it's more the content than the style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are parts of your story that absolutely MUST be shared that your POV character can't know about, you may want to look at what Rowling did in several &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; books - she wrote mostly in limited third, but had a few sections (maybe even entire chapters?) written in omniscient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T22:15:07.627" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18647" CreationDate="2015-08-13T23:48:04.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Explaining the thoughts of a character other than the protagonist&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Depicting events from which the protagonist is absent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Depicting the protagonist in non-conscious states (e.g., sleeping, dead)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are just a few. You can think of it this way: could your protagonist narrate this prose to themselves in the third-person? (Maybe that's a bit convoluted.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do wish to switch, you can delineate the change at least subtly by starting a new chapter (and perhaps the reader will pick up on the pattern of omniscient- vs non- chapters). I've read books where the non-omniscient chapters feature, after their chapter-number, the name of the character to whose PoV the chapter is constricted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're aware of what you're doing, it shouldn't be too big of a deal. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14905" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-01-13T13:33:15.687" LastActivityDate="2022-01-13T13:33:15.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="180" CreationDate="2015-08-13T23:53:59.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Junot Diaz's &quot;The Cheater's Guide to Love&quot; is a nice short-story and a brilliant contemporary example of the second person's use in fiction. Second-person is obviously not implicating the reader herself—it's always clearly about the protagonist—the PoV just serves to further, maybe more intimately, familiarize the reader with the protagonist. Bring her even closer into the protagonist's mind, thoughts, feelings. If mishandled it can be awkward and an instant turn-off, but it has its unique benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14905" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T23:53:59.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18643" CreationDate="2015-08-14T00:07:37.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are correct in your assumption that you do not need to have any type of company designation regarding a publisher, whether it be as a sole proprietorship or &quot;doing business as&quot;. You simply operate as an individual publishing his own works, end of story. Some writers do choose to pursue some form of incorporation, but most don't need to bother with it. You should talk to a tax adviser to determine whether or not there is any benefit for you individually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are incorrect, however, in your assumption that you shouldn't have to file taxes. If you publish through a company such as Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon), they will send you a Form-1099 at the end of the year which identifies the full amount you earned from them in the previous year. It doesn't matter whether it is $20 or $20,000. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IRS will receive a copy of that same form, so you will be expected to declare that income, and it will need to be reported as self-employment income. Whether or not you actually &lt;em&gt;owe&lt;/em&gt; any taxes will depend on how much you earn as a total between your self-employment (writing) income and all other forms of income.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T00:07:37.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18643" CreationDate="2015-08-14T00:16:20.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You own the copyright on your book. It's a good idea to include a copyright notice when you publish. In the copyright notice, you can claim the copyright in your own name. You do not need to invent a company or alias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not need to register the copyright (though that may be a good idea).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing is more complex than you might imagine if you want to avoid looking like an amateur. Formatting (whether paperback or ebook) is not trivial. Book covers are not trivial. It's all learnable, but it is by no means simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T19:15:28.797" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T19:15:28.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18644" CreationDate="2015-08-14T00:24:49.793" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once you write something, you officially own the copyright to it. That basically means that nobody else can use your story, characters, or setting to create their own story, because it would be considered a derivative work. Basic copyright laws protect the owner from such acts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help ensure that other people do not assume that your work is &quot;open source&quot;, simply add the following tag: &quot;Copyright 2015 by Author Name&quot;. By doing this, you make a public declaration that your work is under copyright protection and warns others that they cannot freely reuse your content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of your question also mentions the word &quot;ideas&quot;. You should be aware that ideas themselves cannot be protected under copyright. If you come up with an idea to write a story about a wife shooting her cheating husband, there is nothing that will prevent somebody else using that idea to write a story about different people in a different setting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T00:24:49.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18560" CreationDate="2015-08-14T00:29:10.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a balance. When I read the first version, it just barely verges on being &quot;too sensational&quot;, but it works. The second version offers an improvement of sorts, but phrases like  &quot;That's right&quot; which acknowledge how sensational/confusingly disparate the events are, instead of just letting the reader realize that for herself, are deleterious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.e.: know how disparate is too disparate, and don't write anything that comments on how disparate it is. Know your reader and her limits—to give you an idea, the first version you posted seems fine—and then trust her to follow you through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you seen Tarantino's movies? Resivoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are both fairly broken-up—they depend on it—but it works. Knowing that limit is probably something you get from reading your story and having others read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minor editing suggestion: &quot;plus&quot; results in a kind of pseudo run-on. Using &quot;and&quot; would be better, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14905" LastEditorUserId="14905" LastEditDate="2019-03-08T00:40:53.263" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T00:40:53.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18607" CreationDate="2015-08-14T00:37:46.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using content that is protected under copyright, then you should make sure that you have permission to use it and/or have attributed the original source appropriately &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; trying to find a publisher. The act of trying to sell your own work which contains somebody else's copyrighted content could be construed as a violation of that copyright. It is highly unlikely that any publisher will even consider your work, let alone attempt to pursue the permission or release from the original source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I say &quot;and/or&quot; have it attributed, I mean to say that you may be able to use the copyrighted material with only an attribution to the creator of the material, and not explicit permission. This would ultimately depend on how you are using the content and how much of it you are using. If it falls within the guidelines of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fair Use&lt;/a&gt;, then all you need to do is give credit to the original source. (The link will provide some detailed examples.) If your usage of the copyrighted material goes beyond this, then you will need to seek permission &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; give credit to the original source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T13:59:43.683" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T13:59:43.683" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18560" CreationDate="2015-08-14T00:45:35.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing you should ask yourself is whether or not the additional description helps to further the story. If it helps the reader get a better sense of the setting or mood of the scene, then you should consider adding it. However, if you are only adding it to increase the amount of content, then definitely don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second example does do a slightly better job of establishing the narrator's mood, as well as the general setting. I'm not sure I'd go with those exact words, but I think that this scene would benefit from the information. It does a better job of &lt;em&gt;showing&lt;/em&gt; how the narrator is feeling than just &lt;em&gt;telling&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T00:45:35.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6468" CreationDate="2015-08-14T01:17:18.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, you shouldn't need to purchase an ISBN at all, unless you are planning to publish the book yourself, including the printing. If the only reason you are even considering it is in the hopes of protecting your title, then an ISBN won't even do that for you. In that instance, the only benefit of an ISBN would be in helping libraries or other sources differentiate between two books with the same title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to self-publish your book as a Kindle or Nook e-book, then you won't even need an ISBN, because each of those sources will assign their own unique identifiers for your book. You can still obtain an ISBN through them without having to pay for it, if you decide you really want one. Also, if you use a source such as CreateSpace to publish a print version of your book, they can provide you with an ISBN without you having to pay for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any of these instances you can certainly buy your own ISBN, but unless you have a number of titles or want to represent yourself as a publisher, there really isn't any benefit in doing so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T01:17:18.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18503" CreationDate="2015-08-14T01:54:32.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the first things you should consider is whether or not you are going to have to pay anything to this local printer in order to get your book &quot;published&quot;. If so, then you may want to consider a different approach. Just being able to get your book printed doesn't guarantee that it is going to get sold to anyone, especially book stores or libraries, unless you put a lot of effort into promoting the book and drawing attention to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use a publishing service such as CreateSpace, you can make your book available in print, you can use the ISBN you have already purchased, and you can have your book immediately available through Amazon. Whether or not it gets bought or ordered by book stores or libraries isn't going to be any easier or more assured, but it won't cost you anything. (This is assuming you already have an appropriate book cover and have the book formatted. If not, then you may have to pay for those services, but you'd have to do that either way.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you take any action, you may want to do some more research into the different options you have available to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T01:54:32.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6975" CreationDate="2015-08-14T02:42:18.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;By default, my writing style idiosyncratically entails long sentences. It feels natural to write as I think and speak. It's more a matter of rhythm for me than anything else. Though I can't substantiate this, I sense that it allows me to permeate the reader's or listener's subconscious mind more effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, I was once asked by a member of another Stack Exchange community to reduce my sentence length. I obliged despite not being in concurrence with his request (refer to the edit version history and comments of the question): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/q/266769/96647&quot;&gt;https://english.stackexchange.com/q/266769/96647&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As illustrated at the preceding link, some reader's may find such sentences to be mentally exasperating though I don't believe that that you should construe this as a sufficient justification for curtailing or adapting one's writing style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only advice, based on subjective experience, is to be mindful of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammarist.com/grammar/danglers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dangling modifiers&lt;/a&gt; that contrived sentences are prone to paving to the way to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14909" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:09.590" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T02:48:28.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18643" CreationDate="2015-08-14T05:03:31.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have noted, no, you do not have to create a business of any sort in order to write and publish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyrights are usually registered in the name of an individual, not a company. Look at the copyright notice in the books on your shelf. Almost all will be a person's name, not a business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a self-published author, the easiest way to get your books out there is to sell through on-line sites like Amazon and Barnes &amp;amp; Noble. They then take care of all the &quot;businessy&quot; stuff. As others have said, you'll get a 1099 reporting your income. As a copy of this goes to the IRS, it is a really really good idea to report it on your income taxes. To the government, the only crime worse than torturing and murdering innocent children is failing to pay your taxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing that is going to be an issue is if you intend to personally sell your books retail, that is, sell books directly to customers rather than selling through Amazon or bookstores. In that case, you have to collect sales tax, which means you have to register with the state to collect the sales tax and forward the money to the state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I set up a business to handle the sales of my books. It's just a sole proprietorship, not a corporation or an LLC or anything complicated. I had to file a form with the county and pay a registration fee, I think it's $100 for five years or something like that. All that really does is give me the right to use the company name rather than my own name on &quot;official&quot; documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T05:03:31.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18636" CreationDate="2015-08-14T07:41:27.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are two examples of how &quot;e.g.&quot; has been used in scientific articles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first passage the authors explain who they excluded from their study. &quot;e.g.&quot; is used to give examples of medication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exclusion criteria included psychiatric or neurological conditions that could be associated with secondary bruxism, use of medications that may have an effect on bruxism (e.g., muscle relaxants, neuroleptics, and SSRIs), alcohol consumption on a daily basis ... (Shochat et al., 2007).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second passage the authors give examples of publications validating the same claim. It is unnecessary to cite all the existing literature here, since it all says the same. A selection of examples is sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This model comprised brain regions known as the “fear circuit” (e.g. Etkin, 2010; LeDoux, 2000; Marek et al., 2013), namely the amygdalar region, insula and the adjacent inferior frontal gyrus, in addition to the fusiform gyrus and superior temporal gyrus. (Brühla, Delsignorec, Komossac &amp;amp; Weidt, 2014)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for writing in both MLA and APA format, I don't see how that is possible, since some of the style rules contradict and exlude each other. You can create two versions of the manuscript following each of the style guides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brühla, A. B., Delsignorec, A., Komossac, K., &amp;amp; Weidt, S. (2014). Neuroimaging in social anxiety disorder – A meta-analytic review resulting in a new neurofunctional model. &lt;em&gt;Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;47&lt;/em&gt;, 260–280.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shochat, T., Gavish, A., Arons, E., Hadas, N., Molotsky, A., Lavie, P., &amp;amp; Oksenberg, A. (2007). Validation of the BiteStrip screener for sleep bruxism. &lt;em&gt;Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology, Oral Radiology, and Endodontology&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;104&lt;/em&gt;(3), e32-e39.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-23T09:29:17.490" LastActivityDate="2018-04-23T09:29:17.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18275" CreationDate="2015-08-14T20:25:46.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're planning to self-publish, then you would probably have a much better chance of selling your work. Having said that, whether or not you truly find success will depend on how well you write, how ell you promote yourself, and what genre you choose to write in. Some genres, such as romance or erotica, tend to sell a lot of novellas. Some writers have even found success with genres such as mystery/suspense or paranormal. Regardless of your genre, if you write enough of them, and they are written well, then you could find your own level of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the strategies that I have seen work well for some authors is to write novellas in a series. They will then offer the first book in the series as a freebie or drastically reduced to get readers. If they can get the reader hooked, then the follow-on sales from the other stories in the series can generate some income. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another strategy is to make one book free or cheap, and then make your profits off of collections. This may be more beneficial if you have more than a couple of stories that are not necessarily part of a series, but at least follow the same specific genre and might appeal to the same readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you aren't trying to sell your short work at too high a price then you shouldn't have any problems. I would strongly recommend that your book description include the word count and that you point out that it is a novella or short novel. It is not uncommon for some people to give bad reviews if they were expecting an epic novel but only got a novella.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T20:25:46.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6975" CreationDate="2015-08-14T22:07:41.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;not at all a problem. At least w/in the contxt of these examples. Just make sure your story has a variety of paces and rhythms (one metric of which is sentence length) so you don't get boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14905" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T22:07:41.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18666" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-14T23:49:10.360" Score="-2" ViewCount="10545" Body="&lt;p&gt;In  my latest novel, I have created a fantasy world and would like to create a custom map of said world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I do not know how realms, kingdoms, cities, towns and villages all fit into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Countries contain realms;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Realms contain kingdoms;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kingdoms contain cities;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cities contain towns; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Villages are independent of towns&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct?  Can I refer to those five bullet points above as my set-in-stone guide from here on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not - or even just to learn more on the topic - are there any articles or examples that can guide me here as I would really like to learn this in order for me to progress with my novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="5328" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T23:54:43.577" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T00:05:25.317" Title="Map of my fantasy world - how do realms, kingdoms, cities, towns and villages fit into it?" Tags="|world-building|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-08-17T19:48:36.883" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18666" CreationDate="2015-08-15T00:05:25.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Tolkien-influenced high fantasy, &lt;em&gt;realm&lt;/em&gt; is generally used in place of &lt;em&gt;country&lt;/em&gt;, and means the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;kingdom&lt;/em&gt; is a country which is specifically ruled by a monarchy. An &lt;em&gt;empire&lt;/em&gt; can be one country or a collection of countries and territories, ruled by an emperor/empress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have one king or queen (or prince/princess) who rules a group of kingdoms; this will be reasonably referred to as The Five Kingdoms (if there's only one such related set) or The Three Kingdoms of Gazornenplatz (as opposed to The Three Kingdoms of Katzenjammer). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cities, towns,&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;villages&lt;/em&gt; are all collections of people living and working, and the main difference is the size. They are independent of one another; you don't have a town &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; a city. You can have neighborhoods or boroughs, which are smaller divisions of cities (Park Slope is a neighborhood in Brooklyn; Brooklyn is a borough of New York City), but those are societal and geographical sections of one larger political municipality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've missed &lt;em&gt;state&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;province&lt;/em&gt; in your list, which are both medium-sized political divisions of countries. (They can technically be any percentage of a country.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also have &lt;em&gt;territory, principality,&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;colony,&lt;/em&gt; which can be anywhere from village-sized to country-sized, and can be attached to or independent of any other political entity. A city with a big enough army and enough resources can be a &lt;em&gt;city-state&lt;/em&gt; (which is literally a country which is just the bounds of one city; think of the Vatican or Monaco). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T00:05:25.317" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6975" CreationDate="2015-08-15T00:40:05.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Young narrators often think, and string their sentences together, &lt;a href=&quot;http://literarydevices.net/parataxis/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paratactically&lt;/a&gt; -- short independent clauses joined by conjunctions:  We went to the zoo and we saw a lion and then we saw a monkey and the monkey threw some bananas at the people and we thought it was funny but then he ran at the bars and screamed and I was scared . . . &quot;  That's a pretty young narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The older the narrator is, the more they will tend toward &lt;a href=&quot;http://literarydevices.net/hypotaxis/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hypotaxis&lt;/a&gt; -- embedding one idea within another, using independent and subordinate clauses, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there will be something in between, depending on the age of the narrator.  I think the notion of following the stream of consciousness works here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14696" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T00:40:05.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18644" CreationDate="2015-08-15T05:51:33.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to prevent anyone from stealing your idea, is to have a rubbish idea, and write it badly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything more than that and what you write will become part of the canon and people will build from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're protected from someone stealing the details of your story, but that isn't generally how work is copied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember when I first saw Iron man, thinking that I'd really like to see a story that was based on Pepper Potts. with all of the other mayhem going on in the background. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that context I may have an issue calling her Pepper Potts, and the superhero couldn't be Iron man, but I could write something that built on that story by changing the names to protect the guilty (i.e. me) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Romeo and Juliet, is probably one of the most known stories in the world, it has been copied, rehashed, built on, stolen from. Imagine what we would have lost from the world if Shakespeare had been worried about someone stealing his ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop worrying, get writing. If its good, people will steal ideas from it, take it as a compliment, and move on to the next thing they can steal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're here to be creative, we take ideas from the canon, build on them, and give something new back for others to build from. If you don't like that thought, go be a bricklayer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T05:51:33.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18732" CreationDate="2015-08-15T10:27:19.250" Score="3" ViewCount="204" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a name for the technique where a writer introduces several separate characters, develops each character's plot line separately - perhaps in separate chapters - and gradually weaves them together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I first became aware of this thirty years ago in Iain Banks's &quot;Walking On Glass&quot; - which is so extreme it's almost a parody - and he used it many times subsequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14925" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T02:06:58.683" Title="Is there a name for stories which weave initially separate viewpoints into a single plot?" Tags="|plot|structure|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18673" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-15T13:37:51.873" Score="2" ViewCount="596" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I put two pen names under the same KDP account, is there any way for the public to find out that they are written by the same person? KDP says 'no', but sometimes the official version isn't the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14927" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T15:17:28.567" Title="Amazon question: Can different pen names under the same KDP account be publicly connected?" Tags="|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18673" CreationDate="2015-08-15T14:28:18.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess nothing's completely secure once it's online, but I think barring hackers or a catastrophic data leak you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got more than one pen name on the same KDP account, and I can't see any links between them. You can check out &quot;Kate Sherwood&quot; and &quot;Catherine Dale&quot; if you want to poke around yourself and look for connections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T14:28:18.783" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7702" CreationDate="2015-08-15T15:38:38.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's better to use D2D as they won't charge you anything, so in case you just want to distribute your books and/or won't to upload them for free - D2D it's much, much better than Smashwords.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14928" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T15:38:38.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9511" CreationDate="2015-08-16T02:28:54.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;They could each join the same social group, on accident (one character is already a member; the other then joins, not knowing). This would force them into proximity, which would generate conflict and tension dependant upon their initial split. You could ride this tension for a full two years, or introduce it later on -- a year in, or six months -- so that it could catalyze their eventual reunion, with a resolution or &quot;snapping&quot; of that tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not: there's always pining, nostalgic longing, looking melancholically at pictures. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14905" LastActivityDate="2015-08-16T02:28:54.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18677" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18678" CreationDate="2015-08-16T04:42:46.620" Score="2" ViewCount="1098" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm taking Junior AP Eng Lit, and my assignment is to write some detailed questions about the beginning chapters of Catcher in the Rye and answer them. These questions are supposed to be in depth and sophisticated, and so are our answers. I've never done this before in my classes, and literary analysis is not my strongest point, so I'm in a complete panic right now. I'm not sure how to go about doing this. Do you guys have any advice on how to do this type of assignment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14934" LastActivityDate="2015-08-16T05:43:36.553" Title="How to ask detailed questions about a novel?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18677" CreationDate="2015-08-16T05:43:36.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ahh, AP English. Good times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't pretend I'm the best English student. I hated analyzing literature in high school. But I'll try to help you with your assignment in a way that hopefully you'll feel comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been a long time since I've read Catcher in the Rye, so I don't remember specifics. You can fill in those blanks yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Literature always has certain aspects. Characters, setting, events, language. I'd start with those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What characters have been introduced? What can you tell about their personalities so far? Why would the author have picked those characters?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Where is the story taking place? Why would it take place there? How does that impact the characters or events?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When is the story taking place? What else is happening in the characters' world? How is that affecting the characters/story? It's also good to think about the culture the characters are living in and how that influences them, affects the story, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What's happened in the story so far? How did the characters handle/react to those events? What does that tell you about the characters?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Language is often the hardest part to analyze, but it's really fun when you start to get to the deep levels. (Don't overdo it though. If you're new to literary analysis it's easy to stretch the metaphors and references a little too far.) In Catcher in the Rye, if I remember correctly, the main character (narrator?) uses very informal language with quite a lot of swearing. Why would the author write it this way? What point is the author trying to make?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to get overwhelmed by trying to sound smart and understand the story quickly. That definitely contributed to a lot of crying sessions when I was in 11th grade. Just remember that you're a student and you're supposed to not know things. As long as you put effort into learning and improving you'll be a great success in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck on your assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extra advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My 11th grade English teacher taught us to start our essays with this sentence: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In ____ by ____, the author argues that...&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then discuss three points in three paragraphs each with examples from the text. It's an effective formula for passing essay exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the AP exam, it's not how well you write literary analysis, it's how fast you can put down the points in a way that AP graders can easily read and see that you've correctly analyzed the text. Worry about good analysis outside of the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastActivityDate="2015-08-16T05:43:36.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18679" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18681" CreationDate="2015-08-16T13:39:41.173" Score="2" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;Character A is quoting characters B and C.  Since character A is talking their words are enclosed in double quotes.  Their rendition of characters B and C's speech is enclosed in single quotes.  Should there be spacing as well for character B/C's?  Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Then he said 'I like apples,' said character B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'I prefer oranges,' said C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'But what about plums?' asked B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and that's all they talked about&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13268" LastActivityDate="2015-08-16T16:57:36.627" Title="Spacing for quotes within quotes" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18679" CreationDate="2015-08-16T16:47:39.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll assume the first three words (then he said) introduce A's speech. If so, move them outside the quotation marks and follow with a comma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then he said, &amp;quot;…&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If A's speech continues over multiple paragraphs, start each paragraph with double quotes to indicate the continuation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then he said, &amp;quot;'I like apples,' said character B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;'I prefer oranges,' said C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;'But what about plums?' asked B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;And that's all they talked about.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could write the whole passage as one paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then he said, &amp;quot;'I like apples,' said character B. 'I prefer oranges,' said C.' But what about plums?' asked B. And that's all they talked about.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-16T16:47:39.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18679" CreationDate="2015-08-16T16:57:36.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I definitely wouldn't write it the way you have in the question - that was really hard to figure out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, I'd chose different words to make it clearer what's dialogue and what's narration. Then I think I'd break the section up with more narration. Something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;X frowned at Y, clearly tired of the conversation already. &quot;Fine. I'll&#xA;  say it once more. We were standing there on the sidewalk outside the&#xA;  grocery store, and B said, 'I like apples.' But you know C couldn't&#xA;  agree about the sky being blue, so he was all, 'I prefer oranges.'&quot; X&#xA;  had made his voice deep and manly when repeating B's words, high and&#xA;  prissy for C's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But B's always got to try to make peace, right?&quot; X waited for Y's nod&#xA;  of understanding, then continued. &quot;So B said, 'Well, what about&#xA;  plums?' and I swear, they talked about fruit for another five minutes,&#xA;  at least.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you were just using a simplified version of the dialogue in order to ask the spacing question, in which case - no, I wouldn't use that spacing. But the larger answer I'd give would be to use more words to make it all more clear. Punctuation and spacing are important, but they can't work miracles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-16T16:57:36.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9122" CreationDate="2015-08-17T06:21:48.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I store everything as plaintext as a rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has to be a good reason to use more sophisticated software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also keep my journal as one long text file, by year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Linux, I could keep them as daily files and use the immensely powerful 'grep' or 'cat' functions to search or assemble all the files into one but I choose to keep the journal as one file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it allows me to scan what I did yesterday and follow on a few of the key points to make the writing and thought process flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14944" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T06:21:48.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18688" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18691" CreationDate="2015-08-17T07:17:47.090" Score="6" ViewCount="1237" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Situation:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main character is born and raised in a foreign, non-English speaking country. After his 18th birthday he moves due to some circumstances in Great Britain, learns the language and lives there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My book is written in the language of that non-English speaking country, but after I move him to Britain I need to use some English names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the character moves to Britain I continue writing in the non-English language, quotes, dialogues, everything, but when I need to translate English names to that language they sound weird.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So should I leave it and use English names instead of translating?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character is from the Czech Republic, has moved to Great Britain and is living there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Crown wants to speak with you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Crown&quot; is an English name, and will be OK in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Czech translation is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Koruna s tebou chce mluvit.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this sounds weird, because &quot;Koruna&quot; means &quot;crown of a king&quot; for example, or more generally is used for the smallest piece of currency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Crown s tebou chce mluvit.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where it is OK, because it is a name and it looks like a name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T00:09:35.610" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T00:09:35.610" Title="Can a foreign language novel have English character names?" Tags="|word-choice|naming|translation|language|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18688" CreationDate="2015-08-17T10:09:56.797" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the English form. It will increase the sense of dislocation your character is experiencing (if this is what you're going for). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could draw attention to names using an English salutation (Mr, Miss, Mrs, Dr, and so on) which helps convey a sense of being in another place. If your characters don't speak this way, the narrator or voice of your novel could use these forms instead, in contrast with the speech of your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write this as an English speaker. My observations are based on writing set in other countries using, for instance, Spanish salutations which are familiar to me, although I don't speak that language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14925" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T10:09:56.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18688" CreationDate="2015-08-17T10:12:51.577" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What happens in real life in England may be instructive: Sometimes people anglicise their names and sometimes they don't. Additionally, sometimes they just anglicise the pronunciation, leaving the spelling the same. For example, a student I know is called Piotr. He tells everyone to just call him 'Peter'. Usually, if people can make a fair attempt at pronouncing it without changing it, it is left. So, for example, French names are not changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T10:12:51.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18688" CreationDate="2015-08-17T19:09:27.440" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In English, proper names are generally not translated, because usually the meaning is not important --what is important is that it is the name of the character.  Many common English names have no definition (at least not one that would be known to the average English speaker) and even when a name has a meaning, the meaning is usually irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally, however, the author of a translated work will give the character a name where the meaning is significant. Even in this case, however, the translator often opts to stick with the untranslated name.  For instance, in Murakami's &lt;em&gt;Colorless Tsukuru...&lt;/em&gt;, several important characters have names that incorporate colors.  The English translator opted to translate each name only once, and then stick with the untranslated name throughout the rest of the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, occasionally a book is translated from a language or culture where names typically have meanings that are significant.  In that case, the names probably &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be used in translation, since the meaning is important.  In any case, you'll probably want to stick to whatever the convention is in your home language, since that might differ from the English convention.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T19:09:27.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18688" CreationDate="2015-08-17T22:06:26.720" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer here would depend on the convention in Czech, and not about English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In English, names do not normally have obvious meanings. When a name is also a common word, we usually have a certain amount of mental dissonance to keep the two meanings separate. Like if you told me, &quot;I saw an old-fashioned black smith at the fair&quot;, I'd understand &quot;smith&quot; to mean &quot;a person who makes things out of metal&quot;. But if you said, &quot;I saw your old friend Bill Smith at the fair&quot;, the idea of a smith as a metal-worker probably wouldn't even occur to me. I'd just think of it as a name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how names work in Czech, if they tend to be abstract sounds with no particular meaning as in English, or if they have specific meanings. Your example would indicate that you don't expect names to have inherent meaning. In that case, I wouldn't try to translate the meaning of English names. I'd just transliterate the sound. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW &quot;Crown wants to speak to you&quot; sounded weird to me right off, because I've never heard of someone named &quot;Crown&quot;. If you had said, &quot;Mr King wants to speak to you&quot;, I would have thought nothing of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T22:06:26.720" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18693" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-17T22:19:19.490" Score="1" ViewCount="349" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a script / screen play would you write it as 'Vin Diesel says:...' or as the character i.e. 'John Smith says:...' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14949" LastEditorUserId="13990" LastEditDate="2015-08-18T16:10:48.640" LastActivityDate="2017-08-02T07:44:22.410" Title="Writing the role of the actor in a movie/play" Tags="|formatting|screenwriting|playwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18693" CreationDate="2015-08-17T23:14:54.333" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'd use the character name. Most screenplays are written well before they're cast, so it would be impossible to use the actor name. And even if you knew the actor (like, it was part of a series) you'd use the character name because it's the character saying the line, not the actor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: You can see this, for example, in the screenplay for &lt;em&gt;Empire Strikes Back&lt;/em&gt;, at &lt;a href=&quot;http://screenplayexplorer.com/wp-content/scripts/Star-Wars-Episode-V-The-Empire-Strikes-Back.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://screenplayexplorer.com/wp-content/scripts/Star-Wars-Episode-V-The-Empire-Strikes-Back.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;This draft was dated 1979 and the first Star Wars movie came out in 1977, so they would have known who was playing all the parts, but still used the character names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2015-08-17T23:20:29.400" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T23:20:29.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18695" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-18T08:26:38.907" Score="4" ViewCount="10669" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a thesis written using the Author's &quot;We&quot;, how do you mark a translation of a quotation as your own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;My translation&quot; violates the pluralis auctoris.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Our translation&quot; also doesn't fit with the spirit of the Author's &quot;We&quot; which is meant to include the reader: it's really the author, not the reader who did the translating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;author's translation&quot; is ambiguous because it could mean that this is the original author's translation (though that wouldn't make much sense).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;this author's translation&quot; is clearer but still not completely unambiguous.  Also, it is a switch from pluralis auctoris to an impersonal style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6134" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T09:19:17.287" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T09:19:17.287" Title="How to mark own translation?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|translation|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18695" CreationDate="2015-08-18T09:25:51.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What about forfeiting pointing out it's &quot;own translation&quot; and going with generic &quot;Translation by [your name]&quot; same as for all other translations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T09:25:51.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18697" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18698" CreationDate="2015-08-18T11:27:40.793" Score="5" ViewCount="766" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want your opinion on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For about half a year now I've researched my novel. Because of situating the story to the part of an original Earth's history, I made my research about history, demography, major figures, weather, technologies of that time, and security issues, as well as the migration of whole hearth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Materials piled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have my own changed history course of the entire species, its own culture, problems, migration, new state course like theology and more, pathology results for research across the world and everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my original planned book I have about one chapter and that chapter itself is a bit small. Just a few pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main character doesn't have the whole history of his life, but about a half.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here is a problem:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have so much information about my &lt;em&gt;&quot;remade world&quot;&lt;/em&gt; that I can write its whole history like a book itself. And I like it so much. What would you do in my situation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you write the history itself first, or just finish the life and story of the main character and some other characters needed for an original project and write it and after that will you write that history of your world itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastEditorUserId="14020" LastEditDate="2019-05-17T12:39:13.713" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T22:29:49.637" Title="Research overgrown main novel plan and writing" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|planning|research|world-building|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18697" CreationDate="2015-08-18T12:43:31.210" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many (maybe most) cases over-research is a distraction our minds create to make us believe we are working on a project that we really don't want to write for some reason.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be that we are afraid to write it because we have this beautiful idea of what we want and we are unsure if we could ever write it that well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Best Advice&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing you can do is &lt;strong&gt;write the part of the story that excites you the most&lt;/strong&gt;.  If you are most interested in the characters, then start writing what the characters are doing.  If it is story then write the action of the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must write what you are 100% interested in so you can keep up the writing work over the course of the novel.  Otherwise you will be bored and your readers will be more bored.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use Exposition, Not Narrative&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means, show don't tell.&#xA;As you write the parts you really like, make sure you don't tell us, but you show us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John woke up to the alarm clock and was feeling sad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John woke up, looked at the clock and rubbed his eyes.  It was already&#xA;  12:17pm. He sat up and scratched the hair over his ear.  No reason to&#xA;  get up.  No one cares.  He stumbled to the living room, turned on the&#xA;  TV and fell onto the couch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just Go Write It&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, just go write it.  It'll come out great because you have all that information behind you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T12:43:31.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18697" CreationDate="2015-08-18T13:34:12.467" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you write a history, it will likely be of interest only to yourself (or as preparation for your book).  &lt;strong&gt;That's not necessarily a reason not to write it&lt;/strong&gt;.  JRR Tolkien put years of effort into world-building for his books, which is a key reason for their continued popularity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do go ahead and write your narrative now, &lt;strong&gt;don't make the mistake of trying to cram all your research into the plot&lt;/strong&gt;.  To paraphrase advice from the great SF author, Theodore Sturgeon (via Delany), your narrative will be richest when it is located in a fully imagined setting, but the only things that should make it onto the page are the thing that the characters actually notice and interact with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2019-04-22T15:59:33.117" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T15:59:33.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18697" CreationDate="2015-08-18T13:35:03.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the same problem and still do. Readers are normally drawn to characters of setting and unique history...at least at first.  Its better to develop the character in the early part of the book and then start incorporating all the new cool world building. Brandon Sanderson calls this World Builders Disease, you have it bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mention write a really cool scene you want to write first. My first scene of my book was 2/3 the way through. It was bad, I have since greatly revised it, but that chapter was 8k words. That will get you into the writing mood so to speak. Write the stuff you like writing and put place holders where you know you need to write something but not sure what. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try and incorporate the main character doing something while simultaneously showing off your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Example would be Sanderson again and his Stormlight Archives book- The Way of Kings.&#xA;One of the main characters early on is caught in a violent storm which is a unique part of his world, but the way Sanderson shows it we empathize with the character and experience this unique aspect of his world THROUGH the character. This allow him to connect to the reader and showcase a piece of his world simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14850" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T13:35:03.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18697" CreationDate="2015-08-18T14:39:36.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are your goals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you writing for entertainment, for yourself? If so, write what you want. Write the history, write a series of vignettes from the perspective of a prehistoric ghost of your world, write a new alphabet and language for each creature - write whatever makes you happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is publication, ask yourself what &lt;em&gt;kind&lt;/em&gt; of publication you're looking for. You want to publish a novel through a Big 5 publisher? You need to work on that novel, find ways to shape the story around the backstory, and be prepared for a lot of your history to never be known by anyone but yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are other ways to publish. Even with a big publisher, you could arrange to have your extra materials used as promotion, and put them up on a website or something. But if you're interested in going with a small, flexible publisher or self-publishing, you could publish your history, publish your ghost-vignettes, publish a bunch of short stories set in the same world, and, yes, eventually publish the novel or novels. A lot more flexibility, but also a lot more work, and less chance of your work being seen by a large audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to base your choice on your goals. What do you want from your writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T14:39:36.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18702" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18703" CreationDate="2015-08-18T19:47:48.810" Score="1" ViewCount="310" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say you have a story about a fictional war on a futuristic world and you already have five chapters going on and you want to keep writing to get to the end but then, you're stuck because you don't really know how to kill the enemies without taking off the credibility of the story(adding something that can happen in real life) and then you ask for help on a forum or on worldbuilding stackexchange, or talking to other people about it. You get answers, and that give you some pretty good ideas, so you continue to write three more chapters, but then you're stuck again and ask for help again, and you get another answers, ideas from other people that fit perfectly with your story so you finish your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when you reach that point, can you really say it was your original work, or truly yours? and so if there are any legal repercussions about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10774" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T12:12:05.473" Title="Original writing is lost when using other people's ideas?" Tags="|creative-writing|collaboration|originality|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18702" CreationDate="2015-08-18T20:16:52.917" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only works that are truly original are by people who've never had any contact with other people. Every work has inspiration from other works, or ideas that are present in other places. Many excellent works don't even have novel plots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for legal repercussions, &quot;ideas&quot; are not protected by law. Only the expression of the idea is protected by copyright. &quot;Inventions&quot; that do useful things can be patented, but unless they ARE patented, they are not protected either. So you're probably safe, legally, if you are writing your own work. IANAL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T20:16:52.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18709" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18713" CreationDate="2015-08-19T05:46:25.517" Score="5" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a fantasy novel and have built my world leading up to the 'main story'.  Much of the context of the story has to do with religions created by past civilizations and references to &quot;the Kings of Old&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have started from the beginning and am currently developing the history of the world.  My original plan was only include the 'main story' as my piece and reference the history throughout to give a type of mythical feel.  Now I am not so sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am debating on keeping the history but I'm afraid jumping through generations will seem unorganized and may not flow as the reader would like.  Is there much benefit in telling the history explicitly or is keeping it 'mythical' in the best interest of the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14967" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T07:29:11.120" Title="Is history best left untold?" Tags="|fantasy|flow|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18712" CreationDate="2015-08-19T06:35:16.777" Score="2" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I write a story, or even a book in chapters on a forum, in the form of a Choose Your Own Adventure, is my story or book protected by copyright there or can anyone copy paste it and publish it under their own names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14966" LastEditorUserId="14966" LastEditDate="2015-08-19T07:31:36.610" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T07:31:36.610" Title="Is copyright available if you put your story on the internet?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18711" CreationDate="2015-08-19T07:14:16.173" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on where you live, you own the copyright to your work the minute you write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply posting your work online does not give readers the right to copy it. Alas, it does give people the &lt;em&gt;ability&lt;/em&gt; to copy it. But not the legal right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carefully check the details of the forum where you post the work. Your user agreement will almost certainly give the forum certain rights. At very least, it will give them the right to display your work to other forum users. After all, that's necessary to the function of a forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually online forums need only the right to store your work and display it to forum readers. But read the user agreement very carefully, double-checking what rights they require.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-08-19T07:20:31.727" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T07:20:31.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18709" CreationDate="2015-08-19T07:29:11.120" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tell the reader only those parts of the history that affect this story. The parts that the characters think about or talk about during the course of the story. The parts that the characters have opinions and attitudes about during the course of the story. The parts that affect and constrain and compel the characters' decisions and actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leave the other stuff out of this story. Maybe include it as an appendix. Or offer it as a separate document, a bonus for your readers who want to know about the background of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If something in the history is interesting enough, make it its own story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T07:29:11.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18714" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18715" CreationDate="2015-08-19T08:23:08.673" Score="2" ViewCount="13230" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Roses and a dead body?&quot; Anna wrinkled her fine nose. &quot;I don't see the&#xA;  connection.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And they came from Paris,&quot; I said. &quot;How did it end up here?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah. It's a six-hour drive. What kind of nut&#xA;  would travel that long to deliver flowers to a corpse?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Maybe the person was already here?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Carl held up his palms. &quot;Ladies, ladies, slow down. Let's look at the&#xA;  questions one by one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three people in this scene: the narrator, Anna, and Carl. I wrote something like this a while back, but some readers complained that they couldn't tell who was talking in paragraph three (Anna) and four (narrator).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I format (e.g. by adding dialogue/action tags) those paragraphs to remove ambiguity and still keep them fast paced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2018-06-13T17:10:18.180" Title="What's the best way to format dialogue that goes back and forth (with three characters in the scene)?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18714" CreationDate="2015-08-19T10:55:54.700" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no hard-and-fast rule for how often to attribute dialogue, but the general goal is clarity. If readers are finding a section unclear, it should be reworked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, I'd just add a few more tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Roses and a dead body?&quot; Anna wrinkled her fine nose. &quot;I don't see the&#xA;  connection.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And they came from Paris,&quot; I said. &quot;How did it end up here?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;She frowned.&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;Yeah. It's a six-hour drive. What kind of nut would travel that long&#xA;  to deliver flowers to a corpse?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Maybe the person was already here?&quot; &lt;strong&gt;I suggested.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Carl held up his palms. &quot;Ladies, ladies, slow down. Let's look at the&#xA;  questions one by one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It feels awkward, I know. I think it's one of the reasons multi-person conversations are much rarer in fiction than in reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T10:55:54.700" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18714" CreationDate="2015-08-19T11:01:21.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a script this is easy as all dialogue is simply tagged. But that comes across rather artificial in a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this example I'd make it a bit more narrator-centric. Looking back and forth between Anna and Carl, observing and interpreting both gestures, facial expressions and spoken words. Reacting both to the conversation at hand and from the history, likes and dislikes this central person has with both participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making all that explicit in small, casual bits should both make the whole conversation and the character's relations fall into place without hampering speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T11:01:21.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18717" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-11T12:52:05.083" Score="0" ViewCount="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question isn't about a case that I have a problem with; it's just a purely hypothetical thing that I've been thinking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you are writing a book or maybe an article for a journal. At the bottom of a page - the last line - you have a sentence that you want to put a footnote on. However, because you're on the very final line, if you put in place the space for a footnote (even a one line footnote), then the original line would move to the start of the next page. As such, the footnote should then be on the next page... freeing up the space for the line to return to its original space!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, my question is just 'what do you do here'? I would imagine you put the footnote marker on the sentence in the original place (bottom of page), and then the footnote goes at the bottom of the next page. This is just my guess though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry about the lack of tags: if you can think of any others that I should have tagged it with, then feel free to add them in! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14860" OwnerDisplayName="Smiley Sam" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T11:13:47.757" Title="Position of Footnote on Page" Tags="|footnotes|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2018-10-18T09:53:16.240" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18586" CreationDate="2015-08-11T13:15:46.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this situation in Bibles handled by 'forcing' the annotated text to the following page, leaving a blank space at the bottom of the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this looks 'off', you may want to distribute this blank space between the lines of text or halve it, top and bottom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="SoSaysSunny" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T13:15:46.037" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18719" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18723" CreationDate="2015-08-19T13:49:47.183" Score="2" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the past few weeks, I have started to write about random things in an attempt to improve my language skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I figured maybe writing on forums(all types) about my own problems would help me to improve my English as well as getting solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two days back, when I was writing on a forum meant for people seeking emotional support, and I was writing something related to a dear one, I found that even though I know exactly what to write and the things I need to mention, I found it so immensely distressful to write a lengthy post that I decided to omit a few points and submit whatever I had written so far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was not able to jot down my thoughts because I was not able to come up with proper and suitable words for it. I feel like I understand every word I read but when I want to use them in my own context, my mind goes blank. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have the habit of writing this much ever, except when I was back in secondary school, I used to mug up essays which I knew, beforehand, would be asked in the exams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was surprised that I had written a three page article of around 1000 words (I checked it in MS-Word) on my own in one go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that whatever I had written makes me sound pretty restless and as if I am trying really hard to express myself and it might even be irritating to the readers, I am not sure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this feeling of uneasiness prevalent in the beginners?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whenever I feel this way, should I continue and ignore my inner voice which keeps on insisting to take a break? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have read that increasing the physical load gradually on a daily basis improve your muscle strength and tolerance.  Is this true for our mind too? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does stressing the brain and pushing it to the limits in any way help me to improve my vocabulary and writing power? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14920" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:50:59.547" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:50:59.547" Title="Finding it difficult and stress provoking to write a long post" Tags="|creative-writing|narrative|inspiration|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18719" CreationDate="2015-08-19T14:23:56.900" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I can say is, do not stress yourself out. That would be rule number one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, the medium does matter. Writing directly on a forum may put on the pressure for you. Best to dose it correctly, neither too high nor too low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different subject matter will require different levels of effort. Writing a light-hearted message about an average vacation day for the home front will (should) be more easy than unburdening your heartache in order to ask for emotional support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end in order to get into the habit, acquiring skill and speed through doing indeed works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like if you pace yourself, pushing a little bit at a time and giving yourself room to improve day by day you will get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A small anecdote may help.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Agatha Christie, having written a pile of books already one day started to work with a professional typist, dictating her text. When she read back the material she was horrified to see that expansive drivel was the result. She concluded that painstakingly typing by hand ensured that each word counted, making for a good read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T14:23:56.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18719" CreationDate="2015-08-19T22:38:30.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Autobiographical writing is difficult, because you know exactly what happened.  You can't fudge it.  Plus, you're writing about emotions and psychological issues, which are notoriously difficult to get right, even in fiction.  Combining the two, it isn't surprising that you are having trouble.  So, don't stress.  Keep at it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an exercise you can try.  Pretend you're a talented 10-year-old, and write something quite dorky and stupid and childish, just for laughs.  Write whatever comes into your head, almost stream-of-consciousness, the way you would if you were an older kid telling a bedtime story to a younger kid.  Then go back and edit it: fix the spelling and grammar, and the sentence structure, and the word choices.  Then analyze it, as if it were a real attempt at a story.  Probably it is mostly plot.  Find the places where you tell instead of show.  Find the places (if any) where you put in characterization, and find the places where you could have put in characterization.  Do the same for setting.  If you think the story is any good at all, put in some of that characterization and setting.  Fix the plot holes, and fix the ending (which was probably stupid and/or trite).  All of this should take you about two days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your last step is crucial, and the hardest: delete the whole thing.  Why delete it?  Because you will never be a good writer if you fall in love with every trashy thing you write in two days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then do this exercise all over again, but with a totally different story.  After doing this exercise a few (3 to 5) times, try your hand at writing some things for real, for keeps, but not commercial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideas: a thank-you letter to a loved one; an angry tirade about injustice; an impassioned but reasoned opinion piece suitable for a newspaper; a how-to article about something you like to do; a meditation on a natural scene; a funny story about your family/friends; a chapter for a fiction book (starting in the middle, or wherever you want).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these you will find easier to do.  Ta-da!  You just discovered your niche.  Write some more stuff like that.  Edit, edit, edit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T22:38:30.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18695" CreationDate="2015-08-20T13:07:57.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you format your manuscript according to the APA Manual, you &lt;strong&gt;must not&lt;/strong&gt; use the &lt;em&gt;pluralis auctoris&lt;/em&gt;. Use a plural pronoun only if the manuscript has two or more authors. If it is written by one single author, use the first person singular pronoun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2014/11/lost-in-translation-citing-your-own-translations-in-apa-style.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA Style Blog&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;a translation is considered a paraphrase&lt;/strong&gt;. It is therefore presented without quotation marks and does not need to be marked as being a translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you follow another style guide (MLA, Chicago), please update your question accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T13:07:57.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18726" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-20T13:43:21.640" Score="4" ViewCount="1116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel, and in one part, a boy falls off the building. I feel like it would be very gory. Most people said to write in great detail, but then some people say to write what I know. I feel that if I write a gory scene it would turn out plain.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, should I describe what happens to her when she falls to the bottom, or should I just leave it saying what went through her, and her friend's, mind? If you could, I would like some examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; And should I let him die? He is a character close to the main character, but I feel it is unrealistic to write a story where &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; turns out perfectly fine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14961" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-01-26T18:06:05.133" LastActivityDate="2023-01-26T18:06:05.133" Title="Should I write the actual death scene?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|planning|death|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18726" CreationDate="2015-08-20T14:00:10.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We can't tell you what should happen in your story. (In fact, questions asking what to write are off-topic here.) But perhaps you can ask yourself a few questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the scene is described graphically, in gory detail, what effect will that have on the reader? Will it help to further the story, or will it cause the reader to put the book down in disgust? (&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17429/how-to-write-for-a-certain-audience&quot;&gt;Identifying your audience&lt;/a&gt; will help you puzzle out that last point.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the boy dies, what effect will that have on the other characters, and the rest of the book? (If you don't know what's going to happen, you could always spend a little time &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/134/26&quot;&gt;planning the story&lt;/a&gt;. If that's not your style, perhaps you're a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/4027/26&quot;&gt;seat-of-the-pants writer&lt;/a&gt; and need to embrace that.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, I suggest you just write. Write it all now, and fix the problems later. Your questions will also become easier to answer when they're attached to a finished draft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T14:00:10.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18671" CreationDate="2015-08-20T14:12:30.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems as if you are describing a story like &lt;strong&gt;Les Miserables&lt;/strong&gt; which has various subplots, but it main thread is the story of Jean Valjean, which is like a story within a story Is this the type of story you are going for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14961" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T14:12:30.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18726" CreationDate="2015-08-20T14:14:12.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It'll depend on what impression you wish to convey;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's the horror of the boy's death, don't. It'll have more impact, and you won't distract the reader with details he might not want to know, or can perfectly imagine himself. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand, if you're writing on the boy's point of view, you might want to convey his last moments to the reader. In that case, the fear and pain are important to the narration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for killing the boy or not, if it's a dark story but everyone is perfectly okay at the end, it might seem like you got too attached to your characters to let anything happen to them. He doesn't necessarily have to die; but you might want to leave some kind of trace, as a reminder of what they went through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T14:14:12.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18730" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18731" CreationDate="2015-08-20T19:14:19.010" Score="0" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;After finding out that adverbs were, to use hyperbole, about equivalent to a death wish for the quality of a piece, I was wondering about other bits and pieces of writing convention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are hyphenated verbs generally frowned upon? I feel as if I use them far too often, saying things like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Learning the intricacies of bike-riding...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He had absolutely no skill in dog-walking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it almost always better to use &quot;of riding a bike&quot; and &quot;in walking dogs&quot;? Or are they generally allowed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14977" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T18:19:08.867" Title="Are compound verbs frowned upon?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18730" CreationDate="2015-08-20T19:25:45.317" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with adverbs, the key is &quot;far too often&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with using a gerund (riding) with a modifier (bike), although I wouldn't use the hyphen to connect them. Everything's &quot;allowed&quot;, if it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you yourself feel you're using them too often, you probably are, so you should give them a careful look. You may find they're less obtrusive when you remove the hyphen, but if you don't, you should probably take some out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T19:25:45.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18671" CreationDate="2015-08-20T22:06:23.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's called a &quot;braided novel&quot; or &quot;braided narrative&quot;, because you have several points of view, or storylines, merging into a whole later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones books are like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14978" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T22:06:23.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18671" CreationDate="2015-08-21T02:06:58.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read a book called &quot;Mrs. Queen Takes the Train,&quot; a little &quot;what if&quot; about Queen Elizabeth.  Before the story comes together, we get the stories of six different household retainers and other people, and it only becomes a united story about halfway through the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a delightful little fantasy, by the way -- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14696" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T02:06:58.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18735" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19368" CreationDate="2015-08-21T06:21:18.637" Score="5" ViewCount="298" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently went to the market to buy books for my 2 year old kid and found many expensive books printed on expensive paper had poor drawings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realized that I can draw far better. I have decided that I will not write books, I will draw them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean I will draw the story of ant and the grasshopper. The story is already there, I will present it in the form of drawings.&#xA;I will draw expressive sketches for every statement of that story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is that for such a kind of book what do I need to know before approaching a publisher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to print the book myself before showing to the publisher? Will he decide the size of pages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I tell him the story in the email when the story is already there, I have just illustrated it in a very proper way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I won't be using photoshop for illustrations. I will draw them and colour them myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3638" LastEditorUserId="3638" LastEditDate="2015-10-17T05:00:15.267" LastActivityDate="2015-10-17T05:00:15.267" Title="What do I need to know about publishing a book which I have illustrated, not written?" Tags="|publishing|children|artwork|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8938" CreationDate="2015-08-21T09:25:11.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for similar software and i'd be interested to know if you've found anything since you asked this question. The only thing i've found in my search is a piece of software called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ravensheadservices.com/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WriteItNow&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards what you were seeking, this is what i've learned about WriteItNow from their Demo (which, by the way, does not allow you to save... so i didn't get &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; deep into the software):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;something like a filesystem, with a file for each character&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears to be project-based, somewhat like Scrivener... so each character has their own page, but it's all contained in one project file. However, unlike Scrivener where the .scriv file is really a folder, the WriteItNow .wnwx file is just a single file... so it wouold probably be good practice to export the data from the file on a regular basis... just in case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it should have or allow me to create categories like name, gender,&#xA;  age, backstory, and so on&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  once created, these categories should automatically be available for&#xA;  each character&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It generates a blank form for every new character, with tabs for Personality Traits, a Picture, Relationships, and written details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;adding images, text files, movies and stuff, or linking to these&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the &quot;Details&quot; tab for a specific character, clicking &quot;Links&quot; in the menu will allow for linking to files, websites, and other information within the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it would be nice if it somehow interacted with my writing and timeline&#xA;  software (Scrivener and Aeon Timeline)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not directly, but it allows for exporting to basic formats (doc, pdf, txt, rtf, html, epub). It also allows you to print the charts it can generate (such as the relationship chart).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;creating relations between characters (married to, boss of, lives next&#xA;  door to, etc.)&#xA;  these relations should not be limited in number&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allows for unlimited relationships and relationship types as far as i can tell. Also allows for the creation of custom relationships. And it generates a relationship chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a screenshot of the Characters Tab:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oU4ih.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oU4ih.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14990" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T09:25:11.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8938" CreationDate="2015-08-21T16:01:42.780" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect people will object to me saying this, but still, wanted to give some food for thought:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not just keep plain text files, or documents made in whatever word processor you prefer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm 32, and I've been writing on a computer since I was 18, so I have about 14 years of character and worldbuilding documents built up, for several different universes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble with deciding to put your character or world information in some flavor of software-of-the-month is that it tends to store data in a custom database or flat file schema. As you write more and more, and years pass, you are putting yourself in a position where, if the data format the software you use isn't easily transferable to a newer program, you can abruptly find yourself in a position where your old data is difficult to access because your operating system changed, doesn't support your old program, and nobody bothered to program an easy data migration path for YOUR software to whatever the new thing ends up being, because it was so niche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll be more insulated against this sort of issue if you decide on a naming scheme and just keep text files, or word processor files, on your hard drive or cloud drive in some sort of order. Since word processors in general are so widely used, you KNOW there'll always be a way to convert text files or word processor documents to another format, and it probably won't be all that painful. But if you start using really custom software, you might be in a frustrating position later with your worldbuilding and characer data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or...you might not--maybe you're technical and you don't mind doing data migrations.  I'm technical and not afraid of software and honestly I still think they're a PITA and time-consuming. I'd rather spend my time writing than sorting out my data and putting it into a new format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just wanted to give some food for thought before you or anyone tries to pick software thinking it'll work wonders for the writing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing really comes down to words on a page...fancy databases are often good timewasters but can distract you from actually writing, and in the long term can make your old data difficult to access if you want it  later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14978" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T16:01:42.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18621" CreationDate="2015-08-21T16:05:24.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a small suggestion: I appreciated how the Hive Mind was treated in the Ender's Game sequels. The main character is an individual, but he interacts with an Hive Queen, showing efficiently how such a thing would think.&#xA;My memory is not what it used to be, but I think we mostly read about the Queen in Xenocide, the third book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14994" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T16:05:24.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18726" CreationDate="2015-08-21T16:41:31.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing with novels is that they're really squishy in form/shape until you decide what you want to do with yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as for &quot;should I show the death&quot;...what do you like to read? Are you turned off by explicit scenes? Or do you feel that without showing the scene, something important to your story is lost? As others have said, often the shape your book should have--including questions like &quot;should I include this scene or not?--become clearer once you have a draft. Then you can go back and realize, &quot;this scene screws up the entire tone of the book&quot; or &quot;I was too squeamish about this scene, but now I realize not showing it made it really hard to care about the dead kid, I might need to go back and add it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always write it out explicitly in the first draft, then remove or tone it down in a later draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I saw you mentioned &quot;write what you know&quot;. And that &quot;rule&quot; makes me sad so I'm going to talk about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't take &quot;write what you know&quot; super-literally. I write sci-fi and fantasy, and I've never been in space, nor seen a real live dragon. The idea of &quot;write what you know&quot; more means that you should draw from experiences you have to enhance the ones you're writing about. It's not meant to imprison you so that you ONLY write what you know (which would be boring in my case since I'm an office-dwelling white suburbanite!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I've never been divorced, but I have had a hard breakup with a boyfriend. I can draw details of how I felt when grieving for a dead relationship and apply them to other situations where someone might feel grief. I have never been a chef, but I like sharp knives in the kitchen, so I bet a harvester on a farm probably needs to be sharpened from time to time. There's little details like that that you can apply even to the strangest, most made-up situation that you never hope to actually be in yourself. That's what &quot;write what you know&quot; means.  It's not a prison to prevent you from writing about situations you have never actually experienced. It's a tool to help you add veracity to those fictional situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14978" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T16:41:31.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18742" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-21T18:00:36.897" Score="0" ViewCount="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Dr. Sharon’s book, Survival of the Sickest, a hemochromatosis patient, Aran Gordon, experienced joint pain, heart flutters, and depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a run-on sentence? If so, how can I correct it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14997" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T14:18:18.433" Title="English, Commas" Tags="|punctuation|grammar|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-08-24T18:55:52.603" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18742" CreationDate="2015-08-21T19:35:30.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could put inverted commas around the title of the book (or use italics). I don't consider it to be a run-on sentence. (Some people would not put a comma after 'fultters'.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T19:35:30.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18742" CreationDate="2015-08-21T20:12:22.223" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not a run-on sentence, but it is a bit awkward, comma-wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's clear that Dr. Sharon writes books, I think I'd eliminate the word book and then get rid of that comma. And unless the patient's name is important I'd eliminate it as well. If the name is vital, maybe it could go in a second sentence? And I'd drop the Oxford comma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Dr. Sharon’s &lt;em&gt;Survival of the Sickest&lt;/em&gt;, a&#xA;  hemochromatosis patient experienced joint pain, heart flutters and&#xA;  depression. The patient, Alan Gordon, got better after eating lots of&#xA;  chocolate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: Oxford comma optional, I guess. Kinda. A bit. Sort of optional. Maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2015-08-22T00:42:06.173" LastActivityDate="2015-08-22T00:42:06.173" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18745" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-21T23:47:28.310" Score="2" ViewCount="1183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for an (online) tool to convert a long list of DOI's (1000+) into citation information. There are several tools that let you enter one DOI at a time, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doi2bib.org/#/doi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;doi2bib&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crossref.org/guestquery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Crossref&lt;/a&gt; but those would take too much time. I found one batch converting tool from the NCBI, but unfortunately it only works for medical publications (which these aren't). I would be fine with any type of citation style (I can process it to my needs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14999" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T21:17:16.000" Title="Tool to batch convert DOI to citations?" Tags="|citations|tools|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18742" CreationDate="2015-08-22T02:57:14.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Dr. Sharon’s book, &lt;em&gt;Survival of the Sickest&lt;/em&gt;, hemochromatosis patient Aran Gordon experienced joint pain, heart flutters, and depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have to include the patient's name?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not a &quot;run-on&quot; -- I wish teachers wouldn't use that term, which makes students wary of writing long sentences.  A &quot;run-together&quot; sentence is two independent clauses joined by a comma (sometimes called a comma splice).  You're not in that territory with this sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14696" LastActivityDate="2015-08-22T02:57:14.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18747" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18749" CreationDate="2015-08-22T05:28:09.283" Score="-1" ViewCount="356" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working on a screenplay for a while now. But I seem to have reached quite the dead end. My question is, what do you guys do, to get past a sticking point. Especially when you don't want to abandon the story as a whole, because it still has a ton of potential?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story I am writing goes like this: The last member of an ancient race is forced to work alongside a human being. A race that she was raised to hate. But with the fate of the tree of life, and therefore life as a whole, hinging on whether or not the two can work together. These two very different people must learn to put aside their differences and work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem occurs at the end of the very first scene to feature interaction between the two main characters. I've managed to have the actual interaction occur, but I can't seem to find a way to the next plot point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I don't know if this help but the scene I'm talking about occurs about 5-6 minutes in. With the interaction being the ancient being saving the human from a hideous wolf-like monster. The story as a whole also features a great deal of elements from Celtic, and Norse mythology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15002" LastEditorUserId="15002" LastEditDate="2015-08-22T05:41:04.230" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:18:24.463" Title="Getting past a dead end" Tags="|fiction|plot|fantasy|screenwriting|writers-block|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18747" CreationDate="2015-08-22T06:29:28.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have some other parts of the story worked out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would just jump ahead for now and write the next scene that you &quot;know&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, before you know it, you can fill the gap. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15003" LastActivityDate="2015-08-22T06:29:28.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18747" CreationDate="2015-08-22T06:41:50.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just skip to the next plot point and write that. Chances are that later on you'll think of a way to bridge the two, and then you can come back and fill in the details when that happens. I would guess that very few writers proceed sequentially through an entire work. It's good to jump around when you're finding yourself stuck; there's no point in stagnating on one tiny part of the plot when you've still got almost an entire play to write!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5414" LastActivityDate="2015-08-22T06:41:50.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18742" CreationDate="2015-08-22T13:30:00.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not a run-on sentence, but there are many commas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could get rid of four commas like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Dr. Sharon's &quot;Survival of the Sickest&quot;, a hemochromatosis patient named Aran Gordon experienced joint pain, heart flutters and depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15003" LastActivityDate="2015-08-22T13:30:00.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18726" CreationDate="2015-08-22T13:42:39.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not knowing what your &quot;purpose&quot; of the story is, it's hard to give any solid advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could ask yourself: How can I best describe the death such that it supports my purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always scratch it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be a chance to discuss something seemingly unrelated. For example, when you fall, your entire life flashes by. This is an opportunity to insert something from the boy's past experience that can be used to provide detail that is useful or necessary later. Two flies in one swat: death with information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15003" LastActivityDate="2015-08-22T13:42:39.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18714" CreationDate="2015-08-22T14:09:52.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that usually annoys me greatly in film is when there is a group dialogue and everybody is practically finishing each other's sentences without any pause.&#xA;It's like one brain and 3 mouths rattling. The dialogue becomes unreal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about having two people talk interactively, until there is a transition to a third person (the camera pans).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anna and I looked at each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Roses and a dead body?&quot; She wrinkled her fine nose. &quot;I don't see the&#xA;  connection.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And they came from Paris. How did they end up here?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah. It's a six-hour drive. What kind of nut would travel that long&#xA;  to deliver flowers to a corpse?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I agreed. &quot;Maybe the person was already here?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Carl held up his palms. &quot;Ladies, ladies, slow down. Let's look at the&#xA;  questions one by one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15003" LastEditorUserId="15003" LastEditDate="2015-08-22T16:01:23.497" LastActivityDate="2015-08-22T16:01:23.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8938" CreationDate="2015-08-22T15:40:30.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Scrivener answers your needs almost completly if not to all of them. It has a very good system to understand and keep up with your characters. Furthermore in my opinion, it is a great software to develop and write your stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14838" LastActivityDate="2015-08-22T15:40:30.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18755" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18758" CreationDate="2015-08-23T02:32:43.380" Score="2" ViewCount="316" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mean, how to make so that an undefined information in the plot be considered a mystery, i.e. an intentional unanswered question, instead of: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ー　So, then what?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ー　Well, this is an unknown fact in the story.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ー　Sorry but this story is incomplete..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T14:25:35.737" Title="How to turn an unknown detail in the story into a mystery instead of a lacking detail?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18756" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18761" CreationDate="2015-08-23T04:38:05.557" Score="3" ViewCount="5142" Body="&lt;p&gt;So. I'm currently working on a novel. (It's my first ever.) I need all the help I can get. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had an idea where I start with a scene which is close to the climax, where the main character is to be punished (for inciting a rebellion) and she ponders over her mistakes and how different her life has turned out to be from what she thought it would be as a child, etc. And then the book skips to the very beginning of her story, her childhood, where we see the reasons that incite her to rebel, and then we see the rebellion itself, and ultimately we reach the plot point depicted in the first scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the plot progresses normally-- it is not an extended flashback, except we get a glimpse of the scene just before the climax just before the story proper begins, as a sort of hook. Is this really an acceptable way of beginning a novel? Are there any objections to it? Will it work out well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15011" LastEditorUserId="15011" LastEditDate="2015-08-23T06:16:44.813" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T15:01:18.427" Title="Starting a book with a scene from the middle" Tags="|plot|structure|narrative|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18756" CreationDate="2015-08-23T05:55:12.837" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Steve Martini's thriller &lt;em&gt;The List&lt;/em&gt; starts that way. It's a terrific book. I think the technique is fairly common in thrillers. Not sure about other genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-23T05:55:12.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18755" CreationDate="2015-08-23T07:17:36.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Near the end of the book, have a character comment on it, and perhaps express some kind of emotion about the mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I remember right, Stephen King did that in &lt;em&gt;The Colorado Kid.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This trick—&lt;em&gt;have a character comment on it&lt;/em&gt;—is useful whenever you want to make it clear that you are aware of something that may bother the reader. Not only unresolved story questions, but also improbable successes (have a character say something like, &quot;it's a million to one...&quot;). Some readers will be unsatisfied by that, and you can't patch every &quot;hole&quot; this way, but at least readers are aware that you left the hole there on purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-23T07:17:36.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18756" CreationDate="2015-08-23T07:53:30.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're referring to &lt;code&gt;[nonlinear narrative][1]&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pivotal moment for me was seeing &lt;em&gt;Pulp Fiction&lt;/em&gt; by Quentin Tarantino.&#xA;I almost got whiplash being thrown around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When done effectively, like in Pulp Fiction, you keep wondering: How? You are constantly looking forward, even though you are often looking back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't tell you how to do it, but this may be a starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15003" LastActivityDate="2015-08-23T07:53:30.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3715" CreationDate="2015-08-23T08:22:29.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're recommending her, it must be that you are certain that she's a good fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means you need to understand &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; she's going to fit, and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using buzzwords and superlatives is too easy. It only makes a promise. Why would they believe a person who has a thesaurus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What specific experiences that you had with her make you so confident that you're willing to vouch for her?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, could you describe, &lt;em&gt;concretely&lt;/em&gt;, how you know that this person has &lt;strong&gt;grit&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;technical-&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;social&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;skills&lt;/strong&gt; and what makes her &quot;rich blend of creativity, temperament and discipline&quot; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;unique&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And rather than closing off with how she can benefit from the assistantship, (and what it will cost them), you could say that you believe this is a unique opportunity for their institution, a chance not to be missed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, make yourself available for followup and say you will take away any remaining doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15003" LastActivityDate="2015-08-23T08:22:29.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18756" CreationDate="2015-08-23T14:04:52.747" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Power of Tension In Our Stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all understand that the thing that keeps readers reading is tension.  So, we writers always want to include as much tension as possible in our stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What Kind of Tension?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to consider if you're writing the story this way in an effort to create tension because the story itself has so little tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why Do People Read Books?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about some of the greatest stories you've ever read and consider whether or not they were exciting and kept you reading simply because of some interesting viewpoint switching or if they were interesting simply for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;great writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;great story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if the author is a great writer and the story is a great (interesting) story then viewpoint switching on top of that would simply be a gimmick.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gimmicks Work: But New Writers Are Advised To Steer Clear&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find that the examples where gimmicks work (like Pulp Fiction) are actually few and far between.  And, even when they do work, it is &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; because the writing is great and the story is interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SIDEBAR: Interesting Viewpoints?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Have you ever read one of those stories where the main character is in prison and he goes on to tell you about his captors and how they treat him.  You get the idea he is on an alien planet, then it all ends something like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But today something different happened. After he fed me, he walked&#xA;  away without closing the door.  I flew out of my prison and up, up, up&#xA;  into a tree.  I was free again with all the other birds.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't that terrible?!  Lot's of new writers write that story and think it is beautiful and meaningful.  &quot;But,&quot; they whine, &quot;it is such a cool viewpoint. I've tricked the reader into listening to me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, just like those stories where everything is a dream.  Terrible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Easily Determine Which Is Correct&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You can easily determine which is correct.  Write the story the normal way and then read it.  Does the story have enough conflict to keep the reader reading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get Feedback&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write your story as fast as you can and gather feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-08-23T14:04:52.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18747" CreationDate="2015-08-23T14:24:31.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are usually deeper reasons about why you get stuck writing a story.&#xA;It could be that there just isn't enough tension (conflict) in the story to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, can you imagine someone telling you a story that goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My friend George was free climbing a cliff the other day. It's a&#xA;  terrible story that ended tragically. At one point, he was holding on&#xA;  at a place over a straight drop of over 700 feet and he froze up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;~ The End ~&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, your friend walks away. What?  He can't just stop the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What Happens Next?  What Happened To George?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You can't just let your friend stop the story there.  There is tension left and you want to know.  Did George tragically die?  Is George alive and tragically wounded?  &lt;strong&gt;The natural tension is there.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Screen Plays Are Special Animals&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screen plays have specific things happen in specific places -- they are time-bound after all.  Learning those special requirements can help you target your story toward your outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Best Screen Play Book of All.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2p8Ji2X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Viki King's book, How To Write A Screen Play in 21 Days - amazon link&lt;/a&gt; is fantastic and even provides a bit of insight related to your issue -- see image-quote below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Im7UT.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Im7UT.png&quot; alt=&quot;Viki King quote&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll also find a fantastic section named:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Inner Obstacles:  Why You've Stopped.  How To Keep Going&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T15:18:24.463" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:18:24.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18763" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-24T00:09:50.137" Score="3" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be more appropriately called a &quot;Literature&quot; or &quot;History&quot; question but as it's about a writer, I thought I'd try here first.    I'm seeking more information about the origin of the following quote, which appears on the flyleaf of the book &quot;The Camp of the Saints&quot; and is attributed to a (nominally) British author named Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;My spirit turns more and more toward the West, toward the old heritage.   There are, perhaps, some treasures to retrieve among its ruins ... I don't know.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Durrell produced large numbers of works, including novels, poetry, plays and collections of correspondence with, among others, Henry Miller.   This quote could have come from any of them.   I've tried searching online but found only references back to the secondary source (authored by Jean Raspail in 1973).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know where this quote by Durrell is originally from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15015" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-18T21:12:50.947" LastActivityDate="2018-02-18T21:12:50.947" Title="What is the original source of the Lawrence Durrell quote starting with &quot;My spirit turns more and more [...]&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2018-02-19T02:49:25.310" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8938" CreationDate="2015-08-24T05:11:49.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend giving &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;yWriter&lt;/a&gt; a try. yWriter is a full novel writing tool, similar to Scrivener. It allows you to create character summaries and it can track a characters progress through the story, IE what scenes and chapters he appears in. It is also FREE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15017" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T05:11:49.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18767" CreationDate="2015-08-24T05:36:05.753" Score="4" ViewCount="443" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an aspiring writer and I'm finding it hard to not get swept up &quot;in the moment&quot; of the characters. What are some techniques to avoid superlatives and hyperbole in scenes that are meant to increase excitement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I'm writing a scene in which my character is explaining his past. The character's past is heavy, and the point at which he explains his past to other characters draws excitement. I'm finding myself getting caught in the trap of hyperbole from the excitement. This cheapens the plot. How do people combat this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15018" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-05-29T15:46:35.747" LastActivityDate="2019-05-29T15:46:35.747" Title="Techniques to avoid superlatives in intense fiction scenes" Tags="|fiction|style|technique|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18726" CreationDate="2015-08-24T05:39:18.963" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;So first of all, don't know what your story is about, writing style, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said: I dunno if you've read Lord of the Flies, but there is an excellently handled scene there where someone falls to their death. It does describe the outcome - brains on a rock - but it's a quick, short description. However, because we have grown to know the character, the brevity of the description makes the moment that much more impactful. It happened, it's done. Really stuck with me, that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15019" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T05:39:18.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18765" CreationDate="2015-08-24T06:53:37.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends of the emotions you are trying to evoke when the character explains his past. Do you want the others to pity him, to admire him? Is he proud or ashamed of himself? The style and techniques used can vary depending on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phraseology and sentence length come into this. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I say something. Something short. But meaningful. It may have a bigger impact on the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if I suddenly and without warning assault him with longer, more complex sentences not only will I grab his attention but also create dynamism for my scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, we don't use one one or the other, but combine them in various ways for maximum effect and to convey the right feeling to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your scene, I'd say it would be better to use mostly short sentences, to emphasize on the dramatic (which I think is what you're aiming at) and to create suspense. And, at the right moments in the story, switch to long sentences to change the rhythm (as to not bore your audience with monotony) and create an impression. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also go low on the words, don't overuse metaphors or hyperboles, but rather hold them for important moments in your narrative to create an impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a difficult technique to master. I, for one, am very mediocre at it. However, if you get good at it, you'll be able to create a larger palette of scenes, convey more emotions and grab the reader's interest more often. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to get to the point, instead of bombarding your reader with hyperboles to evoke emotions on his side, use this technique to create suspense or excitement or whatever you're aiming for, and keep hyperboles and other figures of speech for key moments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14966" LastEditorUserId="14966" LastEditDate="2015-08-25T10:06:19.747" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T10:06:19.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18726" CreationDate="2015-08-24T09:53:37.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The moment after the boy begins to fall, he might realize the inevitability of his imminent death. That point, while he is still in mid-air and has only begun to fall, might be a logical place to break off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most modernist novels, as well as in contemporary commercial fiction, nothing is included that does not somehow &lt;strong&gt;advance the story&lt;/strong&gt;. Corollaries include Chekhov's rule that if there is a gun in the first act of a play, it must go off by the final act. In other words, the gun advances the story in the first act by establishing its existence so that it can get used in the final act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In post-modern literary fiction, all sorts of things can get thrown into a novel that don't have obvious purposes in the telling of the story. David Foster Wallace's novels spend pages describing the contents of rooms, and perhaps they represent a broader post-modern concept of &lt;strong&gt;creating a scrapbook of the era&lt;/strong&gt;, usually revealing the absurd, dystopic nature of our society. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps long quasi-gratuitous descriptive passages serve to &lt;strong&gt;enrich the ambiance of the novel&lt;/strong&gt;: magical realism pulls off its miracles by tightly weaving myriad details into a narrative fabric then slipping in that one mystical thread that makes the one otherwise implausible magical event seem so real. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reaching back to the Romantic period, &lt;em&gt;Moby Dick&lt;/em&gt; includes lengthy chapters on the technical details of whaling. Abridged editions of the book tend to omit these chapters. Yet they serve multiple purposes. The &lt;strong&gt;technical details heighten the credibility&lt;/strong&gt; of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second purpose served the the technical chapters in &lt;em&gt;Moby Dick&lt;/em&gt; lies in the &lt;strong&gt;voice of the narrator purveying themes&lt;/strong&gt;. My high school English teacher told us that Ishmael (&quot;...whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul...&quot;) disappears after the first few chapters of the book and doesn't reappear until the final chapters describing the encounter with the Great White Whale and the aftermath (&quot;And I only am escaped alone to tell thee,&quot; the narrative quotes not Jonah but Job as Ishmael floats on Queequeg's empty coffin). Now that I am a mature reader, I have discerned that Ishmael does not disappear at all: he stops talking about his own adventure, certainly, but his voice continues and focuses on the principals of the crew. His bright spark of curiosity and his bemusement at the folly of the human race, which are themes of the novel, are constants throughout the book, including the technical chapters on whaling. So those passages on the stripping down of a whale carcass and the boiling down of the oil are subtly nuanced with the voice of Ishmael to shade the technical details with bonhomie and bemusement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If and only if your narrative voice is charged with an attitude that rests with your book's central theme, then any passage of description might be an opportunity to exercise that voice, even as it speaks of the messy carcass of a boy who has just plummeted to his death. (I saw people jumping from the towers on the International Version of CNN on 9/11, and it's extremely disturbing, and your book, if you go that far, should be no less disturbing, which is probably a strong reason for not going there at all.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if it's sufficient to say that the boy fell in such a way that his death was inevitable, so be it. But if you include descriptions of the body after the fall, there must be some reason:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advance the story &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a scrapbook of the era&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enrich the ambiance of the novel &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Heighten credibility by providing technical details&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Voice of the narrator purveying themes  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or some other motive that furthers your novel's purpose&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14708" LastEditorUserId="14708" LastEditDate="2015-08-24T10:12:12.850" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T10:12:12.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18769" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-24T10:38:43.370" Score="4" ViewCount="3317" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a homework task which is to write an interior monologue on the character of Syme. For those that have read 1984, I was just wondering if it would be plausible to make his character as someone who was actually against the party. I am setting the monologue about three years before the story begins and want to foreshadow how he dies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A theory that i had was that he was pretending to be loyal but was actually plotting to overthrow the government. Would this be a plausible storyline considering what happens in the book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that he is described as someone who is &lt;em&gt;extremely orthodox&lt;/em&gt; but want to somehow make it out as if he was putting on a false show of love towards the party. From reading, he seems as if he is conniving and calculating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;G.K.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15020" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T09:59:29.260" Title="George Orwell (1984) - Monologue" Tags="|creative-writing|book|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-09-01T20:47:26.493" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18769" CreationDate="2015-08-24T13:45:54.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A theory that i had was that he was pretending to be loyal but was&#xA;  actually plotting to overthrow the government. Would this be a&#xA;  plausible storyline considering what happens in the book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose anything is possible, but that is not really at all how he is written. I think we are supposed to take the character at face value. In any case, he only appears in one scene (in the cafeteria, as I recall), so I don't know if one can read too much into it. Also, the kind of things that he says during that scene don't exactly suggest a secret conspirator.&#xA;Then again, maybe he is the best actor in Airstrip One.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scene starts with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Just the man I was looking for,' said a voice at Winston's back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And includes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In an intellectual way, Syme was venomously orthodox. He would talk&#xA;  with a disagreeable gloating satisfaction of helicopter raids on enemy&#xA;  villages, and trials and confessions of thought-criminals, the&#xA;  executions in the cellars of the Ministry of Love. Talking to him was&#xA;  largely a matter of getting him away from such subjects and entangling&#xA;  him, if possible, in the technicalities of Newspeak, on which he was&#xA;  authoritative and interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'It was a good hanging,' said Syme reminiscently. 'I think it spoils&#xA;  it when they tie their feet together. I like to see them kicking. And&#xA;  above all, at the end, the tongue sticking right out, and blue--a&#xA;  quite bright blue. That's the detail that appeals to me.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From reading, he seems as if he is conniving and calculating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must say, that is not how he comes across at all to me. Conniving with what aim in mind? I think Orwell put him in there as an example of an intellectual who was owned by the party. This is a fairly common phenomenon in real life, and Chomsky for example has some good things to say about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, he &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; disappear in the course of the book, so I suppose you could read something into that if you so chose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A handy reference is the AU Gutenberg version: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2422" LastEditorUserId="2422" LastEditDate="2015-08-24T13:53:09.863" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T13:53:09.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18765" CreationDate="2015-08-24T14:03:06.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common trap for novice writers is to try to build emotion by using lots of superlatives and exclamation marks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a case where the classic advice, &quot;show, don't tell&quot;, should be considered. Don't just tell the reader that something is the biggest or the best or the ugliest. Describe it or show it in action so that the reader sees why or how it is the best, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example I came across on writing that has always stuck with me is this. Consider these two sentences: (a) &quot;She is very lovable.&quot; (b) &quot;She is like a cuddly kitten.&quot; Which is more effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to just get a point across quickly and move on, a simple sentence like, &quot;Bob is the strongest person I know&quot; makes the point. But it would be far more interesting if you actually described some feats of strength. Talk about how the child was trapped under the car in the accident, and Bob lifted the car up with one hand and pulled him out with the other, saving his life. Or some such. If the story is effective, you don't need lots of superlatives or exclamation marks to make the point. (Not that you should never use them, of course. But that you shouldn't use them as a substitute for good descriptive writing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T14:03:06.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18755" CreationDate="2015-08-24T14:10:34.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might need to clarify your question: I'm not sure exactly what you mean. But maybe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) As Dale Emery says, have the character's comment on it. If, for example, you never mention what Fred does for a living, the reader may not even notice that you don't bring it up. Or if it's obviously relevant, the reader may wonder if the author made a mistake by failing to clarify. But if a character says, &quot;It's funny that nobody knows what Fred does for a living&quot;, then you make it explicit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) Have the characters do, or attempt to do, something about it. I often get maddeningly frustrated when the characters in a story never do what would seem the obvious thing to solve their problem. Sometimes I find myself just wanting to shout at the book or the TV screen, &quot;Why don't you just call the police?&quot; or &quot;Why don't you just tell her you love her?&quot; or whatever. And I know that the real reason is because if the characters did do the obvious thing, that the story would be over in five pages. But this is easily solved by having the characters attempt the obvious thing and it not working for some reason. Like they call the police and the policeman shows up and turns out to be part of the conspiracy and calls that station and says, &quot;Nothing going on here. Just some nutcase making up crazy stories.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T14:10:34.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18742" CreationDate="2015-08-24T14:18:18.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a run-on sentence. A run-on sentence is when you combine several independent clauses with conjunctions or commas and just keep going and stringing thought after thought together without a break and you don't stop to put in a period but keep putting additional things that really should be separate sentences into the same sentence and so you have one big long sentence that really should be five or ten separate sentences and they're all just rammed together and the reader never gets to take a breath but the sentence just goes on and on and never seems to stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not every long sentence is a run-on sentence. Perhaps more importantly, not every long sentence is bad. The problem is when a sentence becomes difficult to understand or digest. A list of three or four things doesn't make a sentence hard to understand. A list of a hundred things could get tedious, but even then, it's probably not hard to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T14:18:18.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18777" CreationDate="2015-08-24T16:10:57.127" Score="1" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a few examples of mysteries (I just came up with them now):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A. A woman finds out that a lost ancient city still exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;B. A man finds out that her death wife is actually alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;C. The TV of a guy keeps turning on at night even though it's not&#xA;  connected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would readers care about all of them? If so, what would make them care more about, say, A than B, or B than C?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="14966" LastEditDate="2015-08-26T08:03:03.923" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T11:50:38.993" Title="Do readers care about any kind of mystery? What makes them prefer one from another?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18730" CreationDate="2015-08-24T18:19:08.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything is permissible, not everything is beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no one to say if writing a certain way not forbidden by rules of grammar books is right or wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wish to see if words feel &quot;natural&quot; (I suppose this is what you want), then I recommend stopping. Wait a day, not thinking of what you have written. Look at your manuscript. Don't think about what it says, actually read it. I guarantee, anything that made you feel like a master wordsmith while writing will make you feel like a blasted fool when reading. If anything looks off, remove it, let another take its place. Repeat until you are sick of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for verbs, if it is not in your dictionary, hyphenate it. If it looks &quot;wrong&quot; when re-reading, change it to what you feel is &quot;right&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15024" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T18:19:08.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18776" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18778" CreationDate="2015-08-24T18:45:18.827" Score="1" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my world, there all sorts of places that I'd like to include in my book but I have yet to find sound reasons to include more a handful of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I connect several distinct locations to my plot?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What type of constraints should I keep in mind while doing so?&lt;/strong&gt; (I'm shooting for ~100k word count)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: I have been intentionally vague about the details of my plot, characters and world because I'm looking for over-arching, reusable mechanics rather than specific fixes for my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14466" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T07:26:59.360" Title="Connecting my plot to different locations in my world" Tags="|plot|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18774" CreationDate="2015-08-24T19:22:42.780" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what makes anything matter to readers is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it matters to a &lt;em&gt;character&lt;/em&gt; that readers care about&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it matters to the character for &lt;em&gt;reasons&lt;/em&gt; readers can identify with&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T19:22:42.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18776" CreationDate="2015-08-24T19:32:23.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to include a place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give characters a &lt;strong&gt;reason&lt;/strong&gt; to go there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the characters &lt;strong&gt;interact&lt;/strong&gt; with the things that make the place interesting to you (or to the characters, or to readers).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show the characters' &lt;strong&gt;sensory experience&lt;/strong&gt; of the place, and their &lt;strong&gt;opinions&lt;/strong&gt; of what they experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T19:32:23.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18776" CreationDate="2015-08-24T21:01:05.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, I see this being done three different ways in the books I've read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) The narrative is a journey:  This is the simplest reason to visit many different places --the narrative is a trip, and each place is a natural stop along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) There are &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/devices/plot_coupon.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Important Things&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; located in each place.  This can feel a bit cliche, but it's an old standard in adventure plots because it's effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C) The main character is being chased, and needs to hide out in a variety of places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all that said, don't feel that your characters have to actually visit every single interesting place you've thought up for your world --that wouldn't be a book most people would want to read.  It might be better for your main characters to just hear about some of those places --or to meet people from them (or just save those places for the sequel!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-08-25T01:40:27.393" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T01:40:27.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18591" CreationDate="2015-08-25T02:31:21.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a young writer too! :) I've been creating a series with my best friend we are both young and I we found an author that have invested in us and has taken the time to really get to know us &amp;lt;3 What I've learned so far is to not fall down when people think your too young ;) one of my favorite Bible verses is: &quot;Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.&quot; 1 Timothy 4:12 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you go on with your writing, I bet your great at it! &amp;lt;3 Shine and let God shine through you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And know you will shine brighter then the others if you start now 'cause you started running before you will on the team ;) Good luck! And God bless you on your journey of writing! &amp;lt;3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15027" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T02:31:21.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18781" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-25T05:55:05.243" Score="0" ViewCount="2405" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anyone please help me about creating a reminder letter, I sent a payment email 15 days ago. Now how can I write a polite reminder letter to the related organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15029" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2015-08-25T11:40:15.370" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T11:40:15.370" Title="How can I write a polite reminder letter?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-08-28T01:44:10.427" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18774" CreationDate="2015-08-25T06:23:54.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All people have a natural curiosity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mystery genre usually preys on that curiosity, giving people a hypothesis and asking them one or several questions based on that hypothesis. This is the 'mystery'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then they try to solve the said mystery in their minds and this involves them in the story a great deal. Because it makes the story personal for them. They want to see if they got it right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they did, and if it was not too easy (because then it's boring), then they have a sense of satisfaction, feeling smart about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't (and they usually don't because most stories withhold information from the reader or, better, cover it very good as to not raise a hint) then they are left in a sense of awe at the right answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can't go wrong with the mystery genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when creating a mystery, you can go wrong with writing it. Make it too easy and the story can become cliche or uninteresting. If I can spot the real killer from the beginning, I'll dismiss it as a dumb story. Making it too hard, usually doesn't go wrong, but in my experience you can never make it hard enough without outright withholding information from the reader (which is a bad idea, since they'll feel cheated) or employing techniques like the 'Deus ex machina', that readers usually hate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to find a balance, and have the character in charge of solving the mystery keep pace with the reader's own judgements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must add the &quot;solving the mystery in one's mind&quot; must not necessarily be a conscious act (you don't have to make notes of events and characters and deliberately try to solve it). It often happens subconsciously and it's the reason we gain interest in the mystery. Your brain is subconsciously trying to find an answer, given the hypothesis, and it is this very thing that makes you react with interest toward the said plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as for what mystery pique's a reader's interest, well, it depends on the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the three choices you enumerated, I'd definitely go with &lt;strong&gt;C&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt; doesn't interest me because I don't have a fascination with lost cities and the plot itself does not raise interesting questions for me (question's like what might we found there). Also if you plan to make a plot out of it, I advise you to build up the legend of the lost city as to make it interesting to the reader. Make them wonder about it. Make them want to go there to explore. And only then reveal it's continued existence. If you don't build it beforehand, the reveal will fall flat and won't pique the reader's interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same with &lt;strong&gt;B&lt;/strong&gt;. Make the dead wife known to us. Either through flashbacks or her being a character before hand. Have her disappearance or death be somewhat of a mystery for us. If readers don't know who she is, they won't care that she's still alive. Make most of the reveal to hook the readers further with your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With &lt;strong&gt;C&lt;/strong&gt;, the mystery index is rather high. First it's something we can all relate to (at least we who have a TV). Then it has a dose of unexplained, pointing toward supernatural phenomena, which has always piqued the human mind's interest, because we seek to make sense of the unknown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two are circumstantial mysteries, which depend on further elaborating the mystery around them to make them good. The third is a mystery in itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14966" LastEditorUserId="14966" LastEditDate="2015-08-25T06:34:58.877" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T06:34:58.877" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18776" CreationDate="2015-08-25T07:26:59.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let there be important actions and / or information at those places, that are needed for the story. Otherwise the reader may always think you just try to &quot;make pages&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the worst books I ever read was that way. Hundreds of pages because the protagonist just wanted to watch animals ... That had nothing to do with the story and was just annoying, because nothing important happened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14442" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T07:26:59.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18769" CreationDate="2015-08-25T07:30:50.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I would hesitate to say you can't do this or that, the character of Syme doesn't come across as a potential subversive, and find the idea he was plotting to overthrow the government to be fairly far fetched. While it's possible he was a subversive pretending to be loyal, his intelligence suggests that he would have been more successful in acting this out, and wouldn't have drawn as much attention to himself as he did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Mitha notes, he is portrayed as a party intellectual, not unlike modern day intellectuals who internalize the values of the state they serve, and invariably become defenders and apologists for its worst crimes. (I'll definitely second the  suggestion on Chomsky's ample writings on such individuals.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Winston notes about Syme: &quot;He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly ... the Party does not like such people ... one day he will disappear&quot;, and this is likely the reason he disappears and becomes an unperson. While he may be in line with the party's ideals, talking openly about some matters would be frowned upon, particularly if it draws attention to some things that are not meant to be remembered. People are meant to know their place in this society, and speaking openly about everything is not a trait valued by the party. I would also suggest that he could have been viewed as a threat to those in power above him, who may have concluded that he wished to rise in ranks and take their place, and hence something else that worked against him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: It occurs to me that if you want to pursue the subversive element, you could use Syme's intelligence against him. Perhaps his arrogance over his own intelligence let him believe that he could fool everyone, and this arrogance led to him being a bit too overzealous in his portrayal of the loyal party member. I still think it a bit of a long shot, but that's one possibility you could consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2015-08-25T10:00:44.990" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T10:00:44.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18781" CreationDate="2015-08-25T08:25:39.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Here you have touched on a very sensitive part of doing business: Making sure you get your due while at the same time keeping the business relation healthy and nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please be aware that there are early payers, late payers and non-payers out there. The last category is dangerous for any business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick search via google using &quot;&lt;em&gt;creditor reminder sample letter&lt;/em&gt;&quot; got me 263,000 results. You are not the first person dealing with this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Good luck!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sample:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.letters.org/collection-letter/collection-letter.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.letters.org/collection-letter/collection-letter.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DOS AND DON’T’S OF COLLECTION LETTER&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A Collection Letter should be written well before the payment due date so that it gives enough time to the debtor to arrange for the funds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It should be short and brief&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The letter should only talk about the current payment due or about any pending payments only&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Even though the creditor writes this letter, the tone of the letter should not be rude or insulting or humiliating or threatening. The creditor must not forget that the debtor has taken money under some compulsions&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;etc.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SAMPLE COLLECTION LETTER&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;_________________ (Name and address of debtor)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;________________ (Date)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subject: Reminder for collection against first installment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Ms/Mr ___________&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is with reference to the loan that you have taken from our institution vide docket number _____________ dated ____________.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We would like to inform you that your first installment is due on _________ (date) as per the loan agreement. This is a payment collection reminder for the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please let us know how and by when will the payment be made to us. Alternatively we can also send our representative to collect the payment from you at a time convenient to you.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;etc.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T08:25:39.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18787" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-25T12:44:10.617" Score="1" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a book about my math discoveries. The book is available as a PDF file and as LaTeX files published in a Git hosting under Creative Commons license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will it increase readership of my book if I rewrite it using &lt;a href=&quot;http://stacks.math.columbia.edu/about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the same software as Stacks Project book&lt;/a&gt; to make it available as interactive HTML on the Web in addition to currently available PDF?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it difficult to use this software? (I think no, because I am a professional programmer and professional grade Linux specialist.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason I think &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to use Stacks software is that because my book contains research it should be read by the order, while Stacks Project facilitates reading the book from the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-26T19:11:27.697" LastActivityDate="2018-04-25T07:20:45.547" Title="Would publishing my book like the &quot;Stacks Project&quot; increase the readership of my book?" Tags="|academic-writing|self-publishing|research|websites|science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18789" CreationDate="2015-08-25T13:04:45.573" Score="1" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I'm from the USA and I write a book and don't publish it yet. Then I send it to a friend in Russia for proof reading, but instead he publishes my book over there under his own name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I legally covered? Can I sue him for breaking copyright? Can he sue me if I publish the book afterwards in the USA? What about if he's from a third world country that doesn't have copyright laws?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And how about if I want to publish my book in Germany instead of the USA (since I believe there is a wider audience there for my book and I know German) but am not a citizen there. Do I have to register my copyright there or is it enough to register it in the USA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Sorry if this question is of a more legal nature and should be asked somewhere else. Just point me where to and I'm gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14966" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T13:27:14.463" Title="Use of copyright across nations" Tags="|copyright|international|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18788" CreationDate="2015-08-25T13:27:14.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this is the right place for this question. But broadly speaking, in any country that is part of the Berne Convention on copyright, your book is automatically copyright as soon as you write it. Registering the copyright in the US, and possibly other countries, grants you further protection. Your copyright extends to all the other countries, I think (IANAL), but in countries where your copyright isn't recognized you would have no recourse if someone else published it. However, your copyright claim in the US would still prevent your Russian &quot;friend&quot; from publishing in the US, and possibly elsewhere, but you'd have to sue in each country, probably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T13:27:14.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18790" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-25T17:06:56.593" Score="1" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm stuck for an expression that describes this example, which is similar to a &quot;self-fulfilling prophecy&quot; but is more complicated: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Someone claims, falsely, to be a dentist. Someone who likes&#xA;  that person, but doesn't realize he's not really a dentist, claims,&#xA;  falsely, that the guy did a fantastic job on his implants. He's sure&#xA;  his friend &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; do a fantastic job, he just needs a &quot;helping hand&quot; to&#xA;  get started. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's not &quot;a prediction that causes itself to become true&quot;, it's &quot;a little white lie that unwittingly advances a deception&quot;. &quot;Self-serving&quot; (one's own interests, often in disregard of the truth) is close but in this case there's no &quot;self&quot; in the action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if my question is off-topic, but it's like &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3843/how-can-i-express-this-more-clearly-or-concisely&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this one&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14619" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T17:06:56.593" Title="Can someone help invent an expression for this situation?" Tags="|creative-writing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-08-26T03:06:43.573" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18794" CreationDate="2015-08-26T09:20:31.293" Score="-1" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;My dear XYZ,&#xA;I am highly pleased your telephonic invitation that the marriage ceremony of you is going to take place on this (day). Accept my heartiest congratulation on your occasion of enjoyment.&#xA;I couldn't certainly attend to your wedding party, as my new job hiring I can't attending to your eve of the marriage ceremony.&#xA;Convey my heartfelt congratulation and compliments to you and to all the member of your family. &#xA;with best wishes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15030" LastActivityDate="2015-08-26T09:43:08.320" Title="Can anyone please help me, Is my letter write?" Tags="|editing|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-08-26T12:32:33.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18793" CreationDate="2015-08-26T09:43:08.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you really going to write him a letter after he invited you over phone? Well, not my place to judge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writing is just awful. It would be better to write in your native language than in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, have a template:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear {Name},&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I received your invitation and am so honored to be included among the&#xA;  people you want to celebrate your nuptials. Unfortunately, I will be&#xA;  unable to attend the wedding due to {reason}.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm so sorry to miss your joyful day. I know that your wedding will be&#xA;  perfect and I'm so happy for you. Congratulations, and I wish you all&#xA;  the best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sincerely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;{Sender}&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;{Name} - your friend's name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;{Sender} - your name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;{reason} - the reason you can't attend (a job opportunity you simply cannot miss)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14966" LastActivityDate="2015-08-26T09:43:08.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18795" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18799" CreationDate="2015-08-26T13:40:52.093" Score="2" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a paper I am doing, I am relying on information from &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/apl/97/2/469/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;. I can't access without paying, but I found this &lt;a href=&quot;https://prezi.com/i8db1q9ljcy2/an-empirical-investigation-of-dispositional-antecedents-and/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; containing a summary in the form of a fancy GUI slideshow and gives more details than the abstract posted by someone named Kyle Alcock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7768/how-should-i-cite-something-learned-second-hand-eg-from-wikipedia-when-i-have&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, I should use 'qtd', making no reference to the indirect source parenthetically but include it in my 'works cited' (or bibliography, appendix, whatever).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reader of my paper might notice the 'qtd' and want to know about the indirect source. How would said reader do such?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevant &lt;a href=&quot;http://library.williams.edu/citing/styles/mla.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; provided in the answer gave an example but didn't include citation of an indirect source (assuming I am understanding it right):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;parenthetical reference&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a May 1800 letter to Watt, Creighton wrote, &quot;The excellent Satanism&#xA;  reflects immortal honour on the Club&quot; (qtd. in Hunt and Jacob 493).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;works cited list&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hunt, Lynn, and Margaret Jacob. &quot;The Affective Revolution in 1790s&#xA;  Britain.&quot; Eighteenth-Century Studies 34.4 (2001): 491-521. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cross posted : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14791" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.207" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T19:06:52.513" Title="Should I do anything else with this indirect source?" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18796" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-26T14:09:40.727" Score="1" ViewCount="6326" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a screenplay, would it be okay to introduce a character through a dialogue? The character in question isn't given a background (in the ACTION) in the start since his first appearance is one where he appears all of a sudden.&#xA;A couple of lines later, he gets a description of his physical features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even though he has a sizeable role (read '3 minutes of screen time') in the film, I have referenced him simply as &lt;code&gt;MAN&lt;/code&gt; in all of the dialogues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it common practice to first have a character speak something and then introduce him to the reader, purely out of narrative demands?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish for the answer to hold for the introduction of the protagonist as well. He is introduced with a voice-over and it's only after a minute of VO that you actually get to see him. Should I describe his voice or just get going with it? Also, is it okay to reference him with his own name (in the VO dialogue that he speaks), since he will be introduced later in the very first page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14344" LastEditorUserId="14344" LastEditDate="2015-08-29T07:58:31.710" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T16:31:23.707" Title="Possible To Introduce A Character Through A Dialogue?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18796" CreationDate="2015-08-26T15:03:24.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is perfectly possible to do this.  A classic example would be Moby Dick.  Okay, it's a whale but it's a character that gets spoken about in great length before finally appearing.  Likewise, Keyser Soze gets spoken about in The Usual Suspects without ever appearing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the time in films, a character in teen films especially is usually talked about for some embarassing event before they appear and are laughed at so we know why they're being laughed at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2015-08-26T15:03:24.547" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18798" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-26T15:16:35.720" Score="1" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose you want to show that two characters have some animosity towards one another. In some scene you set up a meeting between the characters in the elevator and an exchange of lines occurs. This develops as some kind of important factor that sets up the story in &quot;Act 1: The Beginning&quot;. The exchange itself plays a significant role in Act 1 as do other scenes similar to it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a name for this exchange of dialogue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. You can imagine this another way. In stand up comedy, sometimes, the comedian may chose to act out some funny situation between two or more characters that he plays out himself, taking turns to impersonate each character. This play is usually short, and has to have a very defined &quot;conclusion&quot; or gag. Is there a name for this exchange once it has made its point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8244" LastEditorUserId="8244" LastEditDate="2015-08-26T15:33:55.780" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T02:59:27.430" Title="In play writing, script writing or theatre is there a name for some exchange of dialogue between characters that is supposed to make a point?" Tags="|character-development|screenwriting|playwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18795" CreationDate="2015-08-26T17:47:27.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Various style guides have recommendations for citing indirect sources. However it's important to keep in mind that your works cited page is a list of sources &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; personally have used during your research. Since that's the case, it's recommended (generally) that you don't use indirect sources, but that if you do chose to use indirect sources, you let the audience know where you're gathering your information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't cite the main paper, as you are not quoting material, nor gathering information directly from the source. You &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; quote the source where you directly culled your information from, as it provides the most accurate information to your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are how various style guides recommend dealing with indirect sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chicago recommends the following when quoting an indirect source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because authors are generally expected to be intimately familiar with the     sources they are citing, Chicago discourages the use of a source that was cited within another (secondary) source. In the case that an original source is utterly unavailable, however, Chicago recommends the use of &amp;quot;quoted in&amp;quot; for the note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;7&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 103, quoted in Manuel DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society (New York: Continuum, 2006), 2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have access, at all, to the other source, you should, according to CMS, quote the source you're referencing. In this case, you should quote the slideshow, to let outside readers know that you have not accessed the primary document and are relying on someone else's information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MLA style asks for much of the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you may have to use an indirect source. An indirect source is a source cited in another source. For such indirect quotations, use &amp;quot;qtd. in&amp;quot; to indicate the source you actually consulted. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ravitch argues that high schools are pressured to act as &amp;quot;social service centers, and they don't do that well&amp;quot; (qtd. in Weisman 259).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that, in most cases, a responsible researcher will attempt to find the original source, rather than citing an indirect source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For good measure, here's what APA asks for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use a source that was cited in another source, name the original source in your signal phrase. List the secondary source in your reference list and include the secondary source in the parentheses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Johnson argued that...(as cited in Smith, 2003, p. 102).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: When citing material in parentheses, set off the citation with a comma, as above. Also, try to locate the original material and cite the original source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases, the writers are citing where they found the information, not where that information originally appeared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15043" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-26T17:47:27.880" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18800" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-26T21:24:28.923" Score="8" ViewCount="3926" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an aspiring writer who has been writing stories since Kindergarten (None released). Obviously I have a lot of experience, but I'm still unsure with extremely important things. As all of my Novels have never been released and all my short stories have either been scrapped or again, not released. I feel I'm finally ready to release my first Novel, which I have been working on for 3 months or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been planning ahead for awhile or so, but I'm pondering whether at the end of the story I should kill my main character. FYI: I don't plan on creating a series. In my experience most novels' sequels are never as good as the original, and I don't want to be known as the guy who ruined a good book by making it a series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a rundown of my character, hes a 34 year old man who grew up under abusive parents. He was moved to a foster home when he was six, and this plus the parents inflicted some serious mental issues. When he was 15 he ran from the foster home and started a petty crime business, stealing from houses and pick pocketing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When he was 19 he committed his first murder, and loved it so much he became a vicious serial killer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When he's finally arrested he becomes the subject of a work in progress government project: They take evil criminals, plant a special data chip inside their brain, and then send them into the world making them think they're someone else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a few years of thinking he's a different person, he gets into an accident which damages the data chip in his head. Over the next week the chip keeps shutting down slowly, until it's on the brink of a complete shut down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main character suddenly has a urge to kill again, though he still thinks he's someone else. He gives into the urge and becomes a serial killer once again Throughout the last bits of the story the reader notices his mental decline into complete insanity. In the last chapter, when the police are closing in on his position, his chip completely shuts down. All of the memories come flooding to him, and just as he remembers who he is.........&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ANNDDD that's where I'm stuck. I want to kill him off, thought I don't know if I should. My goal is to make the reader hate him, even though he's the main character. I've researched several things and read a lot of books to try and find a solution, but I can't decide if killing him would be a good idea. I'm afraid if I kill him the reader will feel the story was a waist of time, but I also think if I killed this vicious killer the reader will get what they may want: the character's death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(NOTE: I know there is already an answer, but that's for good main characters. This is for bad.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15047" LastEditorUserId="15047" LastEditDate="2015-08-27T00:52:47.670" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T04:58:13.303" Title="Should I Kill My Main Character?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18800" CreationDate="2015-08-27T07:07:27.043" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything that happens in a story should happen for a reason. And the main reason is to impress the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, yes, you can kill your character, but only if you make it meaningful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character deaths in stories have two reasons: to drive the plot forward and to evoke emotions in your readers. See George R. R. Martin's &lt;em&gt;A Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; series, for a masterful way of making the reader go through an emotional roller coaster mainly by use of character deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get to the point, a character's death must have meaning. Either the readers should want his death as to release him from his suffering or he should become more humane toward the end as to make the reader hope for his survival. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also his death should come with a certain finality. It should conclude something. Don't just off him in an inglorious way like falling down the stairs. There should be a moral to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think you should make the readers hate the main character, especially if he's a POV character, because then they'll just drop the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can, however, write an evil serial killer who is slowly losing their sanity and commits heinous murders and still have the readers like him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally we look at criminal psychopaths and see only their actions. We empathize with their victims instead of them and see them as horrible inhuman beings completely different from us. We forget however that they are still human beings, guided by thoughts and emotions not unlike us. And those thoughts and emotions need not be so different from our very own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you can make your readers identify to some degree with the main character, be them thoughts, emotions or actions, then you can make them like him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing a serial killer or psychopath I recommend you the following book first: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quantumfuture.net/store/sanity_1.PdF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.quantumfuture.net/store/sanity_1.PdF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has an insane amount of information on psychopathy, sanity, mental disorders and various other related stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. If the link ever gets taken down or ends up broken, the book is called &lt;em&gt;The Mask of Sanity&lt;/em&gt;, by  Hervey M. Cleckley. Just search for it on google, I'm sure it's easy to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14966" LastEditorUserId="14966" LastEditDate="2015-08-28T10:33:42.633" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T10:33:42.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18774" CreationDate="2015-08-27T11:50:38.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That absolutely depends on your story. &#xA;If it's important for the story, readers will be curious. &#xA;But then, don't disappoint them ;-) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14442" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T11:50:38.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18796" CreationDate="2015-08-27T16:28:19.633" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A screenplay is an odd hybrid because you have two audiences, the reader of the screenplay, and the viewer of the film.  Because of this, screenplays have a lot of strict conventions which you should never break (or only for EXTREMELY good reasons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, anything that will appear &lt;em&gt;on screen&lt;/em&gt; needs to be described the first time in appears, not in the dialog, but directly in the stage directions, so the reader can see the movie in her mind as she reads it. &lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt;, as you indicated, the character first appears in voice over, describe the auditory qualities of his voice, rather than his physical qualities, because that's what the final audience would experience at that point.  When he appears on screen, however, the physical details must be provided right at the point that he appears, not a few lines later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't tell from your question if you're generally following screenplay format, aside from this, but if not, you should take the time to research it --there are many good resources online (here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.storysense.com/format.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;decent one&lt;/a&gt;).  No one in the industry will be willing to read an incorrectly formatted screenplay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-08-27T16:33:38.440" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T16:33:38.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18800" CreationDate="2015-08-28T07:36:09.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh goody, in this context you can do &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it not be absolutely horrendous for your protagonist to be first cured, then be eligible for trial and be sentenced to be chipped yet again&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nice scene where he is dragged screaming towards the end, his body to continue but all of his personality to disappear into the void? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T07:36:09.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18808" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18809" CreationDate="2015-08-28T08:55:05.713" Score="0" ViewCount="651" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before the book starts, my main character worked in a bad place where she was attacked by a boy who was detained and gets his memories taken. When the book starts, she's had an accident so she has no memory of where she used to work and is sent to live with her brother. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her brother is part of the wrong group and decides to move to a new town to follow an old friend. The brother was told by someone who worked in the same place as the main character that the old friend was a fighter and could be coerced back. The boy who he's following happens to be the one who attacked her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this sound too coincidental? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user15058" LastEditorUserId="15059" LastEditorDisplayName="user15058" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T10:13:29.770" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T10:13:29.770" Title="Is this too much of a coincidence?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18808" CreationDate="2015-08-28T09:36:53.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a nice irony, that's all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to give it depth you have to elaborate on the memory wipe. Are the memories gone forever? In which case the whole ordeal has much less importance to the plot than if they could regain their memories back, possibly generating further conflict. Sure they can find out about their past from other people, but since they can't remember it themselves I guess it won't have the same meaning for them. It certainly wouldn't have for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of correlating one's memories with their very identities is a nice theme which you could use to your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a man's identity defined by his memories? If we lose our memories, are we still the same person we were before or are we someone else entirely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much one's nature comes into defining who they are? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are we just the sum of our memories and experiences or are we something more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nice themes to consider when writing the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14966" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T09:36:53.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18810" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-28T12:33:06.677" Score="6" ViewCount="479" Body="&lt;p&gt;In technical writing, I have a tic of writing in pairs. Some examples from a recent piece:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;When you speak, be sure to be &lt;strong&gt;clear and concise&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Face to face conversation is &lt;strong&gt;personal and private&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Great communicators know how to provide the right degree of &lt;strong&gt;guidance and structure.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to get better at editing out these tics (or at least making them less prevalent), but I struggle because I want to use the pair to draw out shades of meaning. For instance, in the last example, great communicators provide guidance to the recipients about what the audience should think, but they also provide structure in how the audience will get there, organizing the thinking process along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any suggestions for how to work on this tic? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15060" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T19:48:08.027" Title="How do I get rid of the tic of paired adjectives, predicates, etc.?" Tags="|technical-writing|editing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18810" CreationDate="2015-08-28T12:45:05.633" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to focus on writing in the active tense more often. This forces you to change your entire sentence structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15062" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T12:45:05.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18755" CreationDate="2015-08-28T12:47:59.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In combination with &quot;lampshading&quot; the unsolved mystery in dialogue, as mentioned in the answers by Jay and Dale Hartley Emery, you can demonstrate that your unanswered question is intentional by putting it right at the beginning or right at the end of the story, i.e. at the parts of the story where readers know that the writer is most likely to have carefully planned every detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't think of an example, but I know my interest has often been piqued by a story starting with something like, &quot;We never did find out how the Duchess disposed of the severed head...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting the unsolved mystery at the end works well in both the book and the film of &lt;em&gt;The Day of the Jackal&lt;/em&gt;. From memory, almost the last scene of the film ends with someone asking, after discovering that  the eponymous Jackal could not have been the man they were tracking, &quot;Then who the hell &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; he?&quot; Somehow it adds to the memorability of the Jackal's character that we never do find out his true identity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2015-08-28T14:25:35.737" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T14:25:35.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18810" CreationDate="2015-08-28T14:07:55.687" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm editing technical documentation (and, ideally, when I'm writing it in the first place), I try to make every word earn its place.  If both words in your phrases need to be there to make your point, then don't worry about it -- that's not a tic but the writing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of pairs (or larger groups) of descriptive adjectives or nouns, sometimes you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; need more than one.  When you see yourself doing this, stop and ask if there is a &lt;em&gt;single&lt;/em&gt; word that conveys what you mean, either one of these or a different, encompassing word.  I know you said you want the nuance in your last example, but let's look at it again:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Great communicators know how to provide the right degree of guidance and structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Guidance includes structure, so I think you could safely remove &quot;and structure&quot; there.  (It's hard to say without seeing this in context.)  If you want to call out some nuance of providing structure, you could do that separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you do need both but they don't need to be in the same sentence.  For example, you write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Face to face conversation is personal and private.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's true, but why are you telling the reader this?  Are you going to follow that sentence with something about personal interaction and something about privacy?  If so, do you need this sentence &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt;?  Sometimes the answer is yes, you want the sentence as an introduction -- but ask yourself the question because sometimes the answer is no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step in changing any unwanted writing pattern is noticing that you're doing that.  You've done that.  The next step is attacking them on a case-by-case basis as I've suggested here.  In time you should find yourself adapting your writing style, so instead of editing them out you'll write fewer of them in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T14:07:55.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18810" CreationDate="2015-08-28T14:43:45.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try expanding the adjectives into more fleshed-out clauses. That will keep them from being right next to each other and creating that &quot;X and Y&quot; structure that you're noticing, as well as allowing you the chance to more fully explore the shades of meaning that you say is your intent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;When you speak, be sure to be clear and concise.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When speaking, take care to explain your points fully while not sacrificing brevity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Face to face conversation is personal and private.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Face to face conversations not only increase privacy, when that is a concern, but also create a personal connection that is lost through electronic communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Great communicators know how to provide the right degree of guidance and structure.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While a good communicator can guide their audience to a particular conclusion, a great communicator will also provide a structured framework of thinking to allow the audience to reach that same conclusion on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6851" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T14:43:45.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6754" CreationDate="2015-08-28T14:45:04.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a technique that can be helpful for someone imprisoned by perfectionism, but it does require a certain amount of willingness to try it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that you commit to producing a certain amount of writing daily --say 1 page --and that the writing should be deliberately bad: nonsense, stream of consciousness, even just keyboard mashing.  It doesn't need to be on topic in any way, and no editing, or fixing of errors is allowed. The writing should not be graded or judged in any way.  In fact, it doesn't even need to be read, as long as you can confirm it's actually being produced.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that it opens the gates, and gets past the tyranny of the blank page.  However, it may take a while of doing this exercise before purposeful writing can be reintroduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T14:45:04.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18810" CreationDate="2015-08-28T14:48:46.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This doesn't seem to me like a serious problem, it's just a part of your own personal writing style.  Even in technical writing, you don't necessarily want to edit all individuality out of what you produce.  My advice would be only to resist the impulse to add this in places where it isn't really necessary or helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I like your parallelism.  It has a certain elegance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T14:48:46.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18820" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18823" CreationDate="2015-08-28T17:33:09.090" Score="4" ViewCount="1001" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wasn't sure how to phrase the title, so it may be a bit confusing. Feel free to edit it if you can phrase it better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question may be better suited for Worldbuilding SE. However, it is about how to specifically write a constructed language in &lt;em&gt;English&lt;/em&gt;, so I put it here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; I have constructed a language. Being a new language however, it is pronounced differently than English. This means I have to take a few liberties with the spelling when translating it, so that readers will pronounce it correctly when they see it. This has given rise to a few problems with certain words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the letter &lt;code&gt;Y&lt;/code&gt;, which we can pronounce as a vowel, is used only as a consonant in my language. This means that the word &lt;code&gt;Syan&lt;/code&gt;, when seen, will likely be pronounced &lt;code&gt;See-ahn&lt;/code&gt; when in reality it should be pronounced &lt;code&gt;S yahn&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I get my reader to pronounce the word the proper way?&lt;/strong&gt; One obvious method would be to spell the word in question as &lt;code&gt;S'yan&lt;/code&gt;. I am hesitant to do this, however, because apostrophes are disturbingly over-used in constructed languages, and I am trying to stay as far away from cliches as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas? Has this problem perhaps been encountered before by someone here? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Further examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word &lt;code&gt;Seic&lt;/code&gt;. Likely pronounced &lt;code&gt;Sayk&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;seyek&lt;/code&gt;. Should be pronounced &lt;code&gt;Say-ik&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word &lt;code&gt;Ashe&lt;/code&gt;. Likely pronounced &lt;code&gt;Aysh&lt;/code&gt;. Should be pronounced &lt;code&gt;Ahs-hay&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T18:10:13.323" LastActivityDate="2020-08-09T14:34:22.167" Title="Constructed Language - how to spell words that will be mispronounced in English" Tags="|fiction|translation|language|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18820" CreationDate="2015-08-28T17:56:51.930" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to use an apostrophe, then consider a diaeresis. It used to be common in English to mark vowels that come after vowels, but need to be pronounced separately, with a diaeresis for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;noöne&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;coördinate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zoë &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this format is used in Lord of The Rings, e.g. in &lt;em&gt;Fëanor&lt;/em&gt;, to make sure the &lt;em&gt;e&lt;/em&gt; is pronounced separately. (You can &lt;a href=&quot;http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Languages&quot;&gt;read this&lt;/a&gt; for more details.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your examples would be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sÿan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seïc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't work for &lt;em&gt;Ashe&lt;/em&gt;. I'm not sure what you'd do other than an apostrophe there. Since it's a transliteration, maybe spell it differently in English, e.g. &lt;em&gt;Asshay&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3857" LastEditorUserId="3857" LastEditDate="2015-08-28T18:15:10.837" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T18:15:10.837" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5972" CreationDate="2015-08-28T18:18:21.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several good answers and I don't want to repeat what they said, but let me add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you can almost always get away with ONE coincidence that gets the story rolling. Like suppose the story begins with two people who are fierce business rivals just happening to meet in a social setting and becoming romantically involved, only discovering their identity as business rivals later. (The Shop Around the Corner, You've Got Mail) Is this an unlikely coincidence? Yes. But few readers will question it, because we accept that this is what gets the story started. It's unlikely, but if it didn't happen, if the two never met, there would be no story at all. When we are relating true stories, we don't talk about the 1000 times that someone went to the grocery store or the office or the park and nothing interesting happened and he went home; we talk about the one time that something interesting DID happen that changed his life. Same in fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ditto Lauren's comments about turning coincidences into probabilities. If you tell us that one day Bob is walking down the street and he just happens to see a gun lying on the sidewalk and he picks it up and sticks it in his pocket, and then he walks into a bank just as it is being robbed and he heroically saves the day, the reader will likely find the coincidence implausible. But if you tell us that Bob has been carrying a gun constantly every day for the last 20 years, it doesn't sound so implausible. Or if you say that Sally has long dreamed of opening her own restaurant but never had the resources to do it, and one day she attends a class on French literature where she meets someone with a similar dream who is looking for a partner, it sounds like an implausible co-incidence. But change it to a class on how to start a business, and it doesn't sound unlikely at all. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2015-08-28T18:30:05.530" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T18:30:05.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18820" CreationDate="2015-08-28T20:20:44.283" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You could have a character who doesn't speak that language ask how the name is pronounced, or mispronounce it and receive a correction. Obviously it would look contrived for this to keep happening, but doing it once or twice would be enough to introduce the general rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use Matt Ellen's idea of a diaeresis / umlaut for the first two names mentioned  (Sÿan and Seïc) and use an acute accent on the final 'e' for the last, giving Ashé.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a macron: Seīc, Ashē. Unfortunately that does not work for Syan. HTML codes for writing macrons can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/psu/gotunicode/macron.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Double the i for &amp;quot;Seiic&amp;quot; to get the desired pronunciation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, whatever you do, I regret to say that 95% of your readers will read the unfamiliar combinations of letters as 'Something like that colour cyan' or 'Ash'. Please don't take this amiss; personally I think that a well-made conlang is a thing of beauty in itself and a great aid to the willing suspension of disbelief, but studies have shown that most people read exotic words in an almost purely visual way, rather as one would read Chinese characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at it positively, the fact that most readers won't try very hard to pronounce names does in a way free the author to choose between the various possible renderings of names on their aesthetic appeal, or even on the basis of subconscious criteria which the author cannot explain but just seem to suggest one particular spelling as the 'right' one. Which of Sayik, Seic, Seīc, Seiic, or Seïc seems to best fit the character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Proving my own point about readers' carelessness, I've only just realised that I've been misreading your desired pronunciation of Ashe and quite missed that you want the &amp;quot;sh&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to be read as a digraph. That's a difficult one. I can't really improve on Matt Ellen's suggestion of a phonetic spelling, or just decide you will spell it by your own rules and let the readers do as they will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2020-08-09T14:34:22.167" LastActivityDate="2020-08-09T14:34:22.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18808" CreationDate="2015-08-28T20:44:15.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that whether these events are too coincidental depend on how many other such coincidences occur in your story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A chain of such coincidences is contrivance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One or a very small number of such coincidences is merely a fictional version of the &quot;small world&quot; in which real people live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13597" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T20:44:15.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18820" CreationDate="2015-08-29T00:43:16.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your suggested writing system is very confusing. I think what you need to do is come up with a list of the language's phonemes, and then use whatever is the most common way of writing that phoneme in English (if English indeed does have that phoneme.) Or why don't you just spell words the ways you wrote in the question to explain how they're pronounced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Syan&lt;/strong&gt;: you say it should be pronounced &quot;S yahn&quot;. Is there a glottal stop between the s and the y? If so it really would be appropriate to use a ', as it is widely used for glottal stops in real languages. Otherwise you could consider using a 'j' instead of a 'y'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seic&lt;/strong&gt;: it should probably be spelt seiik.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ashe&lt;/strong&gt;: if the second vowel is [ei] then spell it consistently. And you probably are actually putting a glottal stop between the syllables: as'hei or ahs'hei&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From these examples I am guessing you have these phonemes, and I'd recommend spelling them exactly that way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vowels: a (or ah, depending on whether there's a second 'a' sound), ei, i&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consonants: k, s, y (or maybe j), h&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15072" LastEditorUserId="15072" LastEditDate="2015-08-29T00:49:03.713" LastActivityDate="2015-08-29T00:49:03.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18820" CreationDate="2015-08-29T04:10:06.487" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do people using the constructed language use a Latin-based alphabet similar to English, or do they have an entirely different writing system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spelling it &quot;oddly&quot; would make sense if the people literally use the symbols A-s-h-e or S-y-a-n to write their name. For example, they could be descendants of Portuguese-speaking people from Brazil whose language has evolved over several hundred years, in which case they would use similar letters as English, but with different pronunciations (in this case though, you'd probably want the spelling to at least resemble modern Brazilian Portuguese).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if they're aliens from Zeta-Beta-Seven who write their name using something like Cuneiform, we would normally spell the English transliteration of their name using normal English pronunciation rules. Of course, English pronunciation is far from normalized, but that's another topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15073" LastActivityDate="2015-08-29T04:10:06.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2015-08-29T12:44:55.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jonathanhayward.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I'm a developer&lt;/a&gt;... &lt;a href=&quot;http://jsh.name/works&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;and a prolific writer, including novelist&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are precious few writers who can pay the bills by writing alone. I sure can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to remain a developer, and expand into writing, where the rule is, as another answer would have it, read an awful lot, and write an awful lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tinyurl.com/nrjbm47&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The &quot;Writer's Digest&quot; series of books&lt;/a&gt; is worth its weight in gold, by the way&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8761" LastActivityDate="2015-08-29T12:44:55.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18820" CreationDate="2015-08-29T16:40:11.403" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could have an appendix (such as appears in the best-selling &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wheel of Time&lt;/a&gt; series by Robert Jordan) that explains pronunciations. However even that is subject to pismronunciation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there already is a way to write these things. It is called IPA, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Phonetic Alphabet&lt;/a&gt;. The problem is that most of us don't learn it at school. However, if you did use it then all your writing problems would go away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't render your names in IPA because I still don't know how you really want to pronounce them despite your explanation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am guessing that, given that you are writing from an English speaking perspective, your names sound like unusual English words when spoken. If that is the case you don't need the full gamut of IPA. You could use just the English subset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_chart_for_English_dialects&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were really adventurous and wanted to get distracted from actual writing, you could invent your own script and then explain it with an appendix that references IPA.  However that requires a commitment from readers that most authors don't get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that this will only become an issue when the movie gets released and disappointed readers discover that they have been saying the names wrongly all along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively use Tolkien's clever strategy of making names almost like English ones, e.g. Samwise which conveniently contracts to Sam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14623" LastActivityDate="2015-08-29T16:40:11.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18820" CreationDate="2015-08-29T17:50:39.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it means that much to you, have a pronunciation guide up front — not an appendix, but &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the main text. And then just sigh and accept that half your readers aren't going to get it right anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2020-06-01T08:39:47.883" LastActivityDate="2020-06-01T08:39:47.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18833" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-29T19:02:08.407" Score="3" ViewCount="2550" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a passion for setting. I've heard you should write about what you're passionate about. Now when I say passion I mean I like to visualize the fantastic place the author is describing to form a movie. Now I know characters and feelings are supposed to be focused on since people relate to that, but how does one also add settings into the mix to evoke feelings in a reader? Can one use motivation reaction units? How much should the actual description of the eating be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex: take the scene in the movie Avatar when nightfall comes and the forest comes to &quot;life.&quot; A truly unique and beautiful setting to me that was just awe inspiring, this moment was when I fell in love with this world. How do you create that sort of attachment to setting? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14850" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-06-05T01:36:17.393" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T01:36:17.393" Title="How to create feeling with setting" Tags="|narrative|setting|emotions|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18834" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-29T19:06:12.337" Score="31" ViewCount="7599" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've played with the idea of a multi-book fantasy story for years, where a female and male protagonists' lives intertwine with one another, the series running from 12-22 years old for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will probably be a time for them where they will consider each other as a romantic possibility, as with a lot of boy-girl relationships, implied moments where they're thinking about it, but I haven't decided yet whether to pair them together in the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not the focus of the story, but their relationship (in a non-romantic sense) is one of the, if not, the most important relationship in the series and I would really like to do their relationship (their friendship, their professional relationship with one another) justice. It's a challenge I want to pursue, to write them without romance taking over the relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any tips or examples of fiction where this is shown well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15078" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-05T19:18:04.487" LastActivityDate="2019-09-12T19:33:10.907" Title="How do you write boy &amp; girl protagonists without turning them into a love story?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|character-development|romance|tropes|" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18835" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18867" CreationDate="2015-08-29T20:49:47.937" Score="3" ViewCount="1754" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can it just pop out of nowhere, or does it have to be something that was slightly mentioned before that only expert readers would catch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14529" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-27T12:44:47.050" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T12:44:47.050" Title="When having a plot twist, does there have to be foreshadowing of it?" Tags="|plot|twist|foreshadowing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18835" CreationDate="2015-08-29T21:36:04.340" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good twist fits into the story organically, at least in hindsight. So it doesn't have to be foreshadowed, necessarily, but there should be elements of the former plot that take a new shape after the twist, for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good twist doesn't just &lt;em&gt;change&lt;/em&gt; the story, it actually &lt;em&gt;improves&lt;/em&gt; it. So &lt;em&gt;Sixth Sense&lt;/em&gt;, as the obvious example, was an okay ghost story before the twist, and then turned into a really good ghost story after the twist. And while it was a bit clumsy to have the film maker go back and show us all the scenes from the newly understood perspective, it was also satisfying to see how they fit into the new framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A twist that doesn't fit organically into the story may feel like a &lt;em&gt;deus ex machina&lt;/em&gt; or a random WTF moment. I don't think either of those is a satisfying storytelling element.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So deliberate foreshadowing? Great if you can do it subtly enough for it to work, but not strictly necessary as long as the twist can be seen, in hindsight, to have affected the story all the way through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-08-29T21:36:04.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18834" CreationDate="2015-08-30T00:01:55.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;Off the top of my head, CJ Cherryh's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0886778778&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Morgaine saga&lt;/a&gt; (female mage, male assistant), three or four books, no romance.&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;(removing this per @what's comment below)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA so wow, it turned out to be a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; harder than I thought it was to find examples. Almost every story I can think of at the moment has either two people of the same gender, one gay protagonist, or two straights who eventually end up together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Harry Potter series, Harry is the main protagonist of the Big Three, and while Ron and Hermione end up together, and Harry ends up with Ginny, Harry and Hermione remain just friends throughout. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Mercedes Lackey's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0886776856&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Silver Gryphon,&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; the third in the Mage Wars trilogy, the two working partners are Tad (a male gryphon) and Blade (a female human); they are friends but there's no romance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-09-01T09:47:58.097" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T09:47:58.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18798" CreationDate="2015-08-30T01:09:10.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your use of the phrase &quot;to make a point&quot; throws me off a little, but it sounds like you're describing exposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15080" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T01:09:10.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18834" CreationDate="2015-08-30T02:23:27.390" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Close male-female relationships that aren't romantic are challenging&lt;/strong&gt; even in real life, let alone fiction, but they do exist.  Assuming the pair isn't related, neither of them is gay or otherwise attached, and they're relatively the same age, your readers will begin to long to see them together, just like their friends in real life would be likely to do. One way of dealing with it would be to have them take a stab at romance early, and have it not work out for some reason.  That's often how close platonic heterosocial relationships actually form. A beloved subplot from &lt;em&gt;Star Trek: The Next Generation&lt;/em&gt; was Captain Picard's close relationship with chief medical officer Dr. Crusher.  The backstory was that Picard had once been in love with her, but had suppressed those feelings out of his loyalty to Crusher's (now deceased) husband.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another realistic possibility is for one person to be interested in the other, but the feelings not be requited. Along those lines, &lt;strong&gt;you can also develop outside romances (or romantic interests) for one or both characters&lt;/strong&gt;. Allan Gurganus' &lt;em&gt;Plays Well With Others&lt;/em&gt; is an interesting variation, in which the most important relationship of the book is between a gay man and his female best friend, but this reality is disguised/complicated by the fact that they both share an unrequited crush on a beautiful bisexual friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final possibility, if you're primarily interested in their professional relationship, is that &lt;strong&gt;both of them are &quot;married to their work&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; --that is, their relationship with each other relates primarily to their work together and only occasionally extends beyond that.  It's quite common for people to have close friendships that only exist 9 to 5 (that is to say, in the context of the workplace).  &lt;em&gt;Remains of the Day&lt;/em&gt; features a close Platonic male-female friendship that exists between coworkers.  However, there's a strong suggestion that there does exist suppressed sexual tension between them, and that their rejection of romance is a significant missed opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2019-09-12T19:33:10.907" LastActivityDate="2019-09-12T19:33:10.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18835" CreationDate="2015-08-30T02:33:41.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;plot twist&lt;/em&gt; is the opposite of &lt;em&gt;foreshadowing&lt;/em&gt;. A close reader of a book and whatever you call a person who watches a movie with similar attention and astuteness should catch foreshadowing, especially since foreshadowing is done with a limited set of common devices. A plot twist, however, is calculated to surprise us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A plot twist&lt;/strong&gt; is a sudden and surprising quantum leap forward in the audience's understanding of the narrative's truth. It leaves the audience surprised, shocked, or nonplussed. That truth must be there from the beginning. You cannot surprise the audience with a change of truth but only with a realization of the truth. So to create the truth that surprises, the truth must lie there innocuously among red herrings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, foreshadowing tends to be writ large:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He who coughs, dies.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A gun in the first act must go off by the last&#xA;act (Chekhov's rule).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thunder underscores foreshadowing. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Memorable&#xA;lines of dialog foreshadow prophetically. Consider Gerald O'Hara's&#xA;speech in the first half of &lt;em&gt;Gone with the Wind&lt;/em&gt; (1939, Victor Fleming, George Cukor):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;GERALD:&lt;/strong&gt;   “Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O’Hara, that Tara, that land, doesn’t mean anything to you? Why, land is the only&#xA;  thing in the world worth workin’ for, worth fightin’ for, worth dyin’&#xA;  for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that moment, Scarlett is still essentially a girl, and she could care less about land. But land lies at the center of the grownup Scarlett's heart throughout the second half of the movie, and that's what Gerald's brief oration on land foreshadows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the &lt;em&gt;plot twist&lt;/em&gt; must be set up but it isn't foreshadowed. The setting up is done subtly so that the surprise isn't given away too soon. Occasional clashes might occur between the truth the audience naturally assumes and the truth that will later surprise them, but these clashes are glossed over, toned down, or passed over quickly so as not to spoil the impending surprise. In &lt;em&gt;The Others&lt;/em&gt; (2001; dir. Alejandro Amenábar) Nicole Kidman's husband shows up for a short while and says enough strange things to heighten the impending sense of doom without giving away the truth about not just himself but everyone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;The Sixth Sense&lt;/em&gt; (1999; M. Night Shyamalan) we see Bruce Willis get shot by a deranged former patient, but without explicitly being told, we assume he recovers from his wound since we soon see him back practicing child psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oftentimes the surprise centers upon identity because we live in an age saturated with and permeated by electronic media such that the doublethink of the corporate state bleeds into the &lt;em&gt;faux&lt;/em&gt; sovereignty of the individual. We think we are self-propelled individuals when in reality we live in a panopticon and wear off-the-rack personalities. A new, post-dystopic genre of literature and film called &lt;strong&gt;Paranoid Fiction&lt;/strong&gt; has emerged to imitate this corporate controlled life. The most sensationalistic example of &lt;em&gt;paranoid fiction&lt;/em&gt; is of course &lt;em&gt;The Matrix&lt;/em&gt; (1999; The Wachowski Brothers), which portrays a world entirely generated by computer, and all the characters in it exist in a symbolic/imaginary dream. The real is something quite horrific. The terms &lt;em&gt;symbolic&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;imaginary&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; come from the model of the psyche proposed by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, whose ideas work quite well to analyze Paranoid Fiction films and books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Bourne Identity&lt;/em&gt; (2002, dir. Doug Liman) deals with Jason Bourne's (Matt Damon) loss of identity as a result of a Faustian bargain with government forces in which Bourne has lost his soul and become a killing machine for the government. Love, at least in the interstices between sequels, allows Bourne to momentarily reclaim his humanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet ironically the biggest plot twist in paranoid fiction concerning identity is left as an exercise for the viewer: the surprise is not brought home to the audience sitting in the theater. &lt;em&gt;Blade Runner&lt;/em&gt; (1982, Ridley Scott) brushes up against the question of Deckard's (Harrison Ford) humanity several times, but never answers it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rachel:&lt;/strong&gt; You know that Voigt-Kampff test of yours? Did you ever take&#xA;  that test yourself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet there is a reason why this plot twist is not consummated in the movie: if we leave the theater thinking about whether Deckard is human or replicant, we fail to apply the question to ourselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I've digressed, but then again I have now strongly illustrated the subtlety with which plot twists are set up, and that's what you must do to surprise your audience, and surprise is what it's all about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14708" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T02:33:41.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18834" CreationDate="2015-08-30T13:35:58.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the story and setting. Have them advise each other on romantic problems. Make her older or more mature than he is, which creates a gap that can close during the series. (You could try it the other way around, but sweet young thing and worldy wise older guy is still a trope, albeit an out of date one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15083" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T13:35:58.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18846" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23668" CreationDate="2015-08-30T20:59:40.893" Score="1" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several settings I've run across, and a web search turned out why you want an ISBN from Bowker rather than one owned by someone else, and you probably want 10 ISBN's at US$295 rather than 1 ISBN at $125. I'm not particularly interested in repeating that discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do notice on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ingramspark.com/Portal/Calculators/ShippingCalculator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;shipping cost calculator&lt;/a&gt; that there is a configurable &quot;wholesale discount&quot;, and I believe I've heard that there is an option to have unsold books returned which is a bit of a deal-breaker outside of Amazon. I recall hearing one quote crossing the threshold of &quot;Amazon will do business with you,&quot; and another, lower threshold of &quot;regular bookstores will feel comfortable doing business with you, if for some reason they want to do so.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is an optimal setting for a 1200 page book, 8 1/2 x 11&quot;, around $50 list price, so that ideally Amazon and small bookstores will feel comfortable dealing with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8761" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T12:36:13.560" Title="What settings are appropriate for IngramSpark?" Tags="|self-publishing|print-on-demand|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18252" CreationDate="2015-08-30T21:57:27.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't want to be too cynical, but... being politically correct in &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; the right way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is old news in U.S. politics that, as is said in some of the many constellations of African national cultures, &quot;It takes a village to raise a child.&quot; (Or, if you aren't reading this in history books, &quot;It takes a village.&quot;) I don't know which of the many constellations of cultures this quote is attributed to, but there is something similar in spirit in one of Kenya many languages having a saying, &quot;When you're pregnant with a child, he belongs to you. Once he's born, he's belongs to everybody.&quot; (And yes, I'm saying &quot;he,&quot; out of respect to a culture that also says, &quot;he.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &quot;It takes a village to maintain a child&quot; would ordinarily mean in any traditional African culture would probably be that every adult owes some participation in responsibility for every child: every adult stands, to some degree, in parentis loco. This is almost a diametric opposite to the contemporary U.S. understanding of &quot;It takes a village&quot;, meaning more specifically that it takes a full complement of bureaucratic initiatives to raise a child, and adults of the village, and if you are cynical enough, parents too, know their place and do not encroach on state territory by standing in parentis loco.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it may be murky territory to say that the four words &quot;It takes a village&quot; is a bestseller. I submit that if you take the number of times that phrase has been broadcast to what number of people, we're giving your favorite bestselling author a run for its money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see no serious way to suggest that all you have to do is be politically correct in just the right way, maybe a several steps ahead in the Zeitgeist, as presumably there are three or four factors at minimum, and I furthermore do not see political correctness as the #1 contestant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it would seem silly to try to write a bestseller while ignoring the true depths and layers of political correctness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8761" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T21:57:27.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-31T09:27:15.467" Score="1" ViewCount="847" Body="&lt;p&gt;What sort of a literary technique is it when writers narrating their story in the present time (in first person) talk of an incident that happens to them in the future? I recently read a non-fiction book where the author was talking about her sister and said her sister met a man XYZ whom she would marry in three years.&lt;br/&gt;Such a narrative feels very unnatural to me. How often do authors write like that in fiction or is it limited to non-fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10551" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T20:25:47.533" Title="Writing about a future hapenning with a present time narrative" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18849" CreationDate="2015-08-31T13:30:37.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's called &lt;em&gt;foreshadowing&lt;/em&gt; and it's common in fiction.  Sometimes the future events are just hinted at or suggested (for example, the gun described in the first chapter later becomes the murder weapon), other times they are explicitly spelled out (as in your example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the book has a first person narrator, you would usually only see explicit foreshadowing if it is written memoir style (with the implication that the person is narrating from a vantage point after all the events of the book has taken place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If done well, it's an effective way to shape audience expectations.  However, it can definitely be done badly.  I once read a book that I found compelling largely because it was a cozy family drama, but the writer foreshadowed major tragedies on the first page.  The addictive part of the book was wondering how things would go wrong.  But the book ended without anything bad actually happening.  It felt like a cheat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T13:30:37.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18852" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-31T13:47:15.863" Score="1" ViewCount="1435" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it okay to write a bit of camera movement in the ACTION? I don't mean the camera movements such as &lt;code&gt;PUSH IN&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;ANGLE ON&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean is something like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Through an **aerial view**, we see the man following the criminal.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be okay to write 'aerial view' here, without specifying any technical camera movements? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14344" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T21:04:06.897" Title="Describing camera movement in the ACTION?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18852" CreationDate="2015-08-31T17:42:01.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would stray away from saying aerial view. Maybe something more like, from above the man could be seen following the criminal, or, from the eyes of a crow one could see the man tailing the criminal, etc. While I cant tell you it is wrong to say aerial view, for writing is individual to the person, I feel as if something like this would be more appropriate, unless you were trying to mimic actual camera movements in your story, such as a screenplay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15099" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T17:42:01.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18795" CreationDate="2015-08-31T19:06:52.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most State Colleges and Universities will allow you to access their libraries, where you could then copy the paper you need. Worked for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5982" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T19:06:52.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18834" CreationDate="2015-08-31T21:26:06.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possibility is: Just Do It. Write the story where they always relate to each other as friends or co-workers, and the issue of romance just never comes up. I've had many female co-workers over the years whom I have never thought of as potential romantic partners, and to the best of my knowledge none of them were pining away for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two: Give a specific reason why one or both don't want to get attached. They are already involved with someone else. They are too devoted to their work to have time for a romantic partner. They were previously married and the spouse died and they vowed never to get involved with anyone else. Etc. Depending on how it's presented, any of these could be a setup for a romance: one person starts out totally uninterested in romance but then the other overwhelms them. But if done right, if you just say, hey, here's why Bob will never get involved with a  woman, and then leave it at that, it should work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three: Make the woman physically unattractive. No one is surprised if a man is not romantically interested in an unattractive woman, no matter how wonderful she may be in other ways. This one isn't particularly symmetrical: women care a lot less about how a man looks than men care about how a woman looks. The sort of things that make a man undesirable to women as a romantic partner are likely to also make him unappealing to readers, though maybe you could come up with something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Addendum in response to comments&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me clarify my last point. You could certainly make any character, male or female, unappealing as a romantic prospect by making them rude, selfish, stupid, etc. But that would make the character unappealing to the reader, also, and in general you want your heroes and heroines to be likable. (Not necessarily, but usually.) But if you make a female character physically unattractive, she could still be a totally likable character, but a less likely romantic prospect for the hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a little puzzled at the posters who say this idea is offensive or that it isn't true. Are you saying that men DON'T care about a woman's physical beauty when looking for a romantic partner? According to the Economist, cosmetics is a $160 BILLION per year industry (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/1795852&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.economist.com/node/1795852&lt;/a&gt;). Women's magazines are routinely filled with beauty tips. Apparently a lot of women think that men care how they look. OF COURSE it's not the only factor. I didn't say it was. I said &quot;no one is surprised if&quot; etc, i.e. it's an important factor. Maybe you think men are being shallow or unfair when they look for a pretty girl. But as best as I can make it out, you are saying that it isn't true because you don't like it. But of course those are very different ideas. I don't like the fact that people start wars and kill each other. But if someone suggested that a way to make a proposed story plot work would be to set it during a war, I wouldn't flag that answer as offensive on the grounds that I don't like war, or see any relevance in pointing out that countries often resolve their differences without going to war. Maybe I'm missing what you're trying to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2015-09-02T14:14:05.487" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T14:14:05.487" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18820" CreationDate="2015-08-31T21:56:46.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, why do you care? You say that you want the language to have a certain sound. Why? Does it matter to the plot? Or are you getting yourself distracted with creating this language rather than writing an interesting story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, suppose that when you are writing the story you write the word &quot;Ashe&quot; and in your mind you pronounce it &quot;ahs-hay&quot; but most of your readers pronounce it &quot;ash&quot;. So what? Does this matter to the story? Is there any incident in the story that depends on how the word is pronounced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really think it's important ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many foreign words whose pronunciation is difficult to represent with conventional English. Look at how many Americans pronounce Al Qaeda as if the &quot;ae&quot; made a single vowel sound. The hardest part, I think, is making clear when two or more letters combine to make a single sound versus having separate sounds, like your &quot;Ashe&quot; example. (My first thought is that it should be pronounced &quot;ash&quot;, just like if the &quot;e&quot; wasn't there.) I don't see how to beat this without using some punctuation to separate syllables, like apostrophes or hyphens. If you want readers to pronounce it Ahs-hay, then write &quot;Ahs-hay&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have a pronunciation guide. I suspect readers would have a mixed reaction to this. Probably most will skim it, say &quot;yeah whatever&quot;, and make up their own pronunciation as they go along. A few will get fanatical about learning all the details of your language that you care to share. Like the Star Trek folks went to great effort to invent a complete Klingon language. A few extreme fans download Klingon dictionaries and learn the language. But the vast majority couldn't care less, and listen to the Klingon dialogue exactly the same as they would if it was just a bunch of random noises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use accent marks or the International Phonetic Alphabet. 99% of readers will have no idea how to pronounce these. You could explain it, in which case you're back to having a pronunciation guide, albeit one that someone else invented instead of you inventing just for this book. If you don't explain it, very few will research it. They'll just muddle through and be annoyed with you for using these unfamiliar symbols.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2020-06-02T15:21:53.270" LastActivityDate="2020-06-02T15:21:53.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18859" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18860" CreationDate="2015-08-31T23:30:11.873" Score="6" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was browsing around for different writing tools and one of the sites mentioned tools for front and back matter in addition to tools for chapter planning. What is front / back matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14466" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T02:07:29.310" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T02:07:29.310" Title="What is front/back matter?" Tags="|structure|tools|chapters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18859" CreationDate="2015-09-01T00:02:41.683" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something &lt;em&gt;around&lt;/em&gt; the chapters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Front matter is usually all the stuff that comes in a book before the start of the story/main body of the book. Title page, copyright page, acknowledgements, table of contents, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back matter would be citations or index for non-fiction. For fiction, I'd say back matter is fairly optional, but it might include an &quot;about the author&quot; or list of other books available, sometimes the first chapter of the next book, or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty much anything that isn't in the original manuscript would be front or back matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T00:02:41.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18861" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-01T02:28:46.493" Score="1" ViewCount="349" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really want to publish my work somewhere online. That being said, recently, I've had quite of an interest in webcomics--however, I can't draw, and I prefer full on writing. Is there a possible way to just start a writing blog with a similar concept, or are there other ways to publish my writing and make the platform completely my own? (Sorry if I'm not making any sense. :p) Thank you so much!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15108" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T17:50:46.093" Title="Publishing Through Blogs/Story Equivalent of Webcomic?" Tags="|publishing|blog|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18726" CreationDate="2015-09-01T08:25:55.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to all the other excellent advice that was already given, I would like to point out that in our society (Western culture) violence towards children is a very strong taboo, so much so that in some countries it is even forbidden by law for parents to physically punish their children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While children do become the victims of all kinds of violence in real life, from child abuse to accidents, and of course that part of reality is a valid topic for fiction, the actual depiction of that violence leaves readers or viewers usually with a strong sense of unease or even outrage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is considered acceptable to show the results of violence on the adult human body in all its gory detail, the majority of the population probably are offended by depictions of the mutilated bodies of children. There was an example a few years ago, where an author wrote a short story about a pervert who ate children, which caused quite a stir in the media. The author is almost completely forgotten today, I would say in part due to his breaking a taboo for no reason except to shock. My impression is that people avoided that author afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the advice to add only those details that are actually necessary for your story should get you on the right track by themselves, I would, for the reasons mentioned above, strongly advise you to consider the social norms that regulate the relationship between adults and children. &lt;strong&gt;While your characters are fictional, as an author you are (considered) an adult and most readers expect you to treat the fictional children in your novels as well as you would treat real children. If you don't you need to have a good reason not to do so.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Children die, and you can write about that, but do so with the same sensitivity that you would handle the subject of a real child's death.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T08:25:55.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18735" CreationDate="2015-09-01T08:34:15.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually an illustrator approaches a publisher with his plans for a project and shows the publisher his previous work and/or sketches for the planned work. If the publisher is interested, he will pay an advance and the illustrator starts to work on the book, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This procedure gives the publisher an opportunity to suggest changes or get an editor or art director to work with the illustrator. It also gives the illustrator to abandon a project that won't sell (remember, an illustrator makes a living selling his illustrations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a hobbyist you are of course free to draw whatever you like and send your finished work to publishers. The procedure would be to send in copies of (some of) your illustrations. Look on the website of the publisher (or agent) for their submission guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T08:34:15.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18833" CreationDate="2015-09-01T09:10:07.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two question here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to create feeling with setting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer: By using those aspects of our surrounding that cause feeling in us, like light, temperature, weather, architecture, etc. For example, most people get in a better mood when the sun is shining, while most people feel less happy when the sky is grey. There is some variation in how we react to our surroundings (some people like rain or moonlight, others are afraid of the dark or quickly feel cold), but there are general tendencies in your reactions to our surroundings that you can use. (You don't need to research this, just observe your own reactions to different surroundings.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to create attachment to setting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer: By imagining and describing a place that creates a feeling of well-being in your readers, that is, a place that your readers would like to be in, because it is a place where they would feel well. These places are usually safe and secure, well-lit, visually open, have benign weather, look park-like (that is, &quot;cleaned up&quot; nature), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-12-03T15:14:26.507" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T15:14:26.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18834" CreationDate="2015-09-01T09:31:58.567" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have and have always had many close female friends. I don't see what's so special or &quot;difficult&quot; about these relationships, they function just like any friendship I have with a man or boy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to write about a male-female friendship, then just write a male-female friendship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, I don't constantly wonder whether or not I would like to have sex with my female friends. There are some, where that thought would never cross my mind, not because I find them unattractive, but because they are the kind of person that I don't feel sexual about. There are some that I would want as a sexual partner, but either they already have a partner or they don't feel that way about me, so that matter is settled for me and I no longer need to wonder. It's like deciding to spend the holiday in Italy instead of France: while in Italy, you don't constantly think about France, that would be dysfunctional. Instead you enjoy being where you are. So not lusting after someone you cannot have is simply the healthy way of being, and not difficult at all, unless you are the difficult kind of person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course some of the things my female friends and me discuss pertain to our mutual genders, like asking for feedback on hair styles or getting a &quot;male&quot; or &quot;female&quot; perspective on a topic, but generally gender or sex don't enter into these friendships at all. We even sleep side-by-side chastely sometimes, and we hug a lot (like I do with my male friends).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write about a boy and a girl who are not romantically inclined towards each other, then write just that. It is not a relationship where a topic has to be avoided, but a relationship where a topic simply does not arise. Would you have to explain why two boys are friends instead of lovers? No. So why do you have to explain that about a boy and a girl?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lauren suggested this edit to my answer: &quot;Would you have to explain why two &lt;em&gt;gay&lt;/em&gt; boys are friends instead of lovers? No. So why do you have to explain that about a &lt;em&gt;straight&lt;/em&gt; boy and a &lt;em&gt;straight&lt;/em&gt; girl?&quot; (Italics are mine, to indicated the edits.) I rejected that suggestion, because I mean something different: When we read about two boys (or two girls) being friends, we expect them to have no sexual or romantic interest in each other, because that is how these relationships were portrayed for centuries and how the heterosexual majority of the population live their friendships. These kinds of friendships are the norm, and we see nothing strange or problematic in them. What we do find strange, abnormal and expect to cause problems are mixed gender friendships, because we cannot imagine them to be non-sexual. For some reason we feel that a boy and a girl &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be about sex. But if you observe yourself, I am sure you will realize that you do not feel sexual about all people with the sex or gender you are oriented towards. Sex is not something that a heterosexual man &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; feel for all women (or a gay man for all men or a hetero woman for all men etc.). Sexuality is something that you feel for &lt;strong&gt;individuals&lt;/strong&gt;, not for a category – or, if you want, the category is more complexly defined that by gender alone. So just because sex would be possible for a heterosexual by with a girl does not mean that it is possible for him with &lt;em&gt;this specific individual&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As writers, we don't need to fall into the trap of thinking in categories. There is no such thing as &quot;all men&quot; or &quot;all women&quot; or &quot;all English&quot; or &quot;all dark skinned persons&quot; etc. People within these categories are as varied as between categories, so sex between one specific boy and one specific girl is as optional and likely as them having the same size of shoes or the same taste in music: they may or may not have it, and if they do have different shoe sizes or musical tastes you don't need to mention it in your story, unless your story is about that difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="13407" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2018-05-05T19:15:57.100" LastActivityDate="2018-05-05T19:15:57.100" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18835" CreationDate="2015-09-01T09:34:51.873" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read a book or watch a movie, I never seem to get the foreshadowing. No matter how strongly the reviews complain about forseeable plot twists or endings, I never know what will happen next. Maybe I'm too stupid, or maybe those reviewers just accidentally expected what the book delivered, but however that may be, for a reader like myself you don't need to do any foreshadowing at all, because it is a wasted effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do need is that whatever happens in a book &lt;strong&gt;makes sense&lt;/strong&gt;. It can be unexpected or expected, sudden or slowly building up, it really doesn't matter. But it must be motivated by the setting and the characters and the story you tell and fit the logic of your fictional universe, and it must not be random.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2015-09-01T09:39:53.560" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T09:39:53.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18769" CreationDate="2015-09-01T09:59:29.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I largely agree with the interpretations in the other answers in regards to Syme's character in the novel, I think you may be able to tie it together with your plan for the internal monologue by portraying Syme as both a subversive &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; a genuine party supporter.  Essentially, he would just be Winston, as seen from the outside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting your portion of the story three years before the events of 1984, you could show that Syme is an intelligent and creative individual who has a genuine love of language and loathes the work that he does for the Party: he has frequent access to poems and plays which he knows can never be re-created in NewSpeak.  In your monologue, you could foreshadow that he's about to meet with someone who he feels shares his hatred of the Party, similar to Winston's meeting with O'Brien, which the reader will know is a setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, he would be captured, tortured, and indoctrinated just as Winston was in the novel, before being returned to his job.  Then, by the time Winston meets him, he's already a dogmatic supporter of the Party, just as Winston was at the end of the novel.  When he vanishes, it's because the Party finally executed him, just as O'Brien said they'd do to Winston.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been a while since I read the novel, so you may need to tweak the timeline to make it work, but I hope this can give you some ideas on how to make your planned monologue work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11109" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T09:59:29.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18861" CreationDate="2015-09-01T10:05:23.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure exactly what you want to do. If you want to make comics but can't draw there are various comic creation sites, such as bitstrips, and software packages that help you by providing the graphics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T10:05:23.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18870" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-01T11:40:56.000" Score="3" ViewCount="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hello there.&#xA;I hope this is not a completely basic question, but I could not find the answer anywhere else.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written content that a company wants to publish. We have signed a contract that grants them exclusive publishing/distribution rights for a certain amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So does the &lt;strong&gt;copyright notice&lt;/strong&gt; in the book then state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright 2015 (my name)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright 2015 (the company's name)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15113" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T15:10:40.520" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T15:10:40.520" Title="Licensed out content for book, whose name in copyright notice?" Tags="|copyright|authorship|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18878" CreationDate="2015-09-01T13:12:01.537" Score="0" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;My female protagonist wears Prada, and after receiving a big promotion at work, she plots to take over the CEO-ship of her company. One (female) reviewer said something like, &quot;That's one tough cookie you've got there.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The woman is a taking a well earned vacation on a cruise with her (future) fiance, and there are a number of scenes where she takes out her various jealousies. For instance, she playfully &quot;grounds&quot; him for looking at the legs of Argentine tango dancers (and then lifts up her skirt to expose her own legs), and pouts when he chooses a song on karaoke night without consulting her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But she goes ballistic (and creates the decisive conflict) when her date befriends a young man, and fellow New Yorker, from the &quot;wrong side of the tracks&quot; (Harlem) while they are onboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My reviewer then asked me if this isn't going too far, and making the protagonist seem petty and mean. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't this within character? Or is this somehow out of bounds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T15:49:00.887" Title="Is it ok for a tough character to be &quot;petty&quot;?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18870" CreationDate="2015-09-01T13:16:10.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer will depend on your contract and the laws of your country. If you live in a civilized country*, you will own the copyright to your work as long as you live and it cannot be transferred except by death to you heirs; you can only transfer usage rights. If you live in Great Britain or the USA, your company owns the copyright if you transfer the copyright to them by contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&amp;nbsp;Sorry for the jibe, dear Americans, but the exploitative copyright laws of your country have spawned so many &lt;a href=&quot;http://comicsalliance.com/superman-check-jerry-siegel-joe-shuster-dc-comics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;famous copyright court cases&lt;/a&gt; that I feel that in this respect &quot;uncivilized&quot; is a fitting description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T13:16:10.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18872" CreationDate="2015-09-01T13:57:06.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem isn't necessarily that the character is too mean, it's more likely that she doesn't have enough positive traits for that particular reader to enjoy a story with her as the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different readers will have different tolerances.  I'm guessing you enjoy mean characters, and some of your readers will probably feel the same way.  But you might want to consider providing some balance as well.  Is your character secretly insecure?  Does she have a heart of gold?  Is she compensating for past trauma or exacting secret revenge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all that said, I've occasionally seen stories that are so compelling that you don't care that the main character is thoroughly unlikeable, you just want to go along for the ride (I'm thinking of &lt;em&gt;Youth in Revolt&lt;/em&gt; here).  But you really have to &quot;go for broke&quot; to make that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T13:57:06.283" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18877" CreationDate="2015-09-01T14:48:39.663" Score="0" ViewCount="2447" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this is the right place to ask these kind of questions. I am not a native English speaker but I am not at the beginner level in terms grammar and vocabulary either. I make mistakes in my writings as ELS student. I said that because this question is not simply an ELL question but more like using a word in a literary /lyrical way which will likely not be acceptable in ELL stack exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask a question about the word persevere. Imagine I am writing a romantic novel or poem and in my imagination, there is a scenery that is too beautiful and it is somewhere I want to be now so much but unfortunately this is almost impossible. So I know that beauty but I know that also I cannot be there so this beauty gives me misery more than happiness, kind of it hurts even when I don't look at it but I have to be patient and endure/persevere this situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in this scenario would it be sensible in a broad and figurative meaning :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is too much beauty in this picture I can persevere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12900" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2015-09-10T13:58:16.833" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T03:12:45.723" Title="There is too much beauty in this picture I can persevere" Tags="|lyrics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-09-18T03:12:54.013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18876" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-01T15:28:20.433" Score="3" ViewCount="1288" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current writing, I've been having some trouble with the plot, specifically with going from an outline detailing what I need, to an outline detailing how I get there. I think the problem (or at least part of it) might be that I don't have a clear chapter-by-chapter summary for the book. My problem is that I'm having trouble designing this chapter-by-chapter outline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working with the following structure: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Character has a motivation/goal. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Character faces building conflicts in the way of that goal. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something big goes wrong for the character, inducing a possible cliffhanger. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chapter ends. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Next chapter: Character reacts to big disaster. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Character adjusts to deal with the problem. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Character makes decision and takes action (or doesn't). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem lies in step 1. In my very first chapter, my character is entirely passive. He is in fact part of a large crowd that is being evacuated. I cannot seem to find a goal he is actively striving for at this time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I realize passive characters is not something readers greatly want, which is why I will also be scanning my outline for other instances of it, and fixing them. Regardless, there will be instances where the main character is passive.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; How can I determine the goal of a scene/chapter when the main character is entirely passive? Can I even do it? Do I &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to make him active somehow? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I realize that there is a certain level of disapproval on this site towards structures (from some people). Please keep in mind the question is not about the structure. It's about finding a goal for a passive character.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T09:53:01.583" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T09:55:30.703" Title="Creating the goal of a scene when the main character is passive?" Tags="|fiction|plot|scene|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18875" CreationDate="2015-09-01T15:33:34.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand what you're asking, but in this particular sentence it doesn't quiet capture what you're attempting to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now you have two independent clauses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is too much beauty in this picture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can persevere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each one expresses an individual thought and is a grammatically complete sentence on its own. However, when you combine those sentences you're creating a compound sentence, and in such you need something to link those two clauses together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;strong&gt;many&lt;/strong&gt; different ways to do create compound sentences in formal writing, and even more ways to create compound sentences in informal/creative writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, if you're writing something like poetry, the rules of grammar can become even more disjointed and confusing (in many cases you don't even have to follow them!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, grammatically, that sentence doesn't make a lot of sense to the reader just because of how it is presently formed. However, that doesn't mean you can't use the word persevere in the manner you're attempting to. In fact, the way you are attempting to use it (as a figurative crisis/struggle) is almost certainly possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some ways you might form the sentence to make it more understandable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is too much beauty in this picture; I can persevere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use a semi-colon to connect the two clauses, denoting that they are independent clauses but closely linked, also allowing the reader to pause between the two statements and create some dramatic tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treat it like a work of poetry and use a line break to separate the clauses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is too much beauty in this picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can persevere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treat it like a regular sentence with a comma to combine the two clauses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is too much beauty in this picture, I can persevere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one essentially says &amp;quot;there is too much beauty in this picture, and I can persevere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, your metaphorical/figurative use of persevere is just fine. You might just consider how you want to convey this to your audience/in which medium you will convey it, as that will drastically affect how you'll structure the sentence/line/clause, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this gives you some help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15043" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T15:33:34.130" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18872" CreationDate="2015-09-01T15:49:00.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to give a completely accurate answer without the complete context of the character (her dialogue, her descriptions, how she views the world, and how specifically this situation unfolds) but the assumption of pettiness might not be wholly a symptom of likability, and more to do with how round, or fleshed out your character is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself is this action seems justified for your character to do? While Chris' comments are absolutely important to consider (the importance of likability is a huge conversation within the literary world that there simply is no real answer to) what's equally important is making sure your characters always have a motive or a clear reason for the actions they are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider whether or not the actions she take are counter to her original design. Do the readers have any reason to believe that she &lt;strong&gt;wouldn't&lt;/strong&gt; do something like this? Have you previously presented her as open-minded, tolerant, and fair, and perhaps her sudden hatred of people from &quot;the wrong side of the tracks&quot; (a phrase which is has its racist connotations) might be throwing readers off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pettiness largely stems from being narrow minded, after all. Do you consider your character as someone who would be largely narrow minded? If so, it's perfectly fine for her to be petty, in fact, even if you &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; consider her to be narrow minded, it's perfectly reasonable for anyone to make a petty comment once in a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's critical however is making sure your character is not just one thing. Make sure she is not just &quot;tough&quot; or not just &quot;petty&quot; but a combination of things. Let the audience know why she's doing things, what is causing these emotions (perhaps she's jealous or had a bad experience), and so on, and you'll be fine. That is, after all, what makes for strong likable and non-likable protagonists!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15043" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T15:49:00.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18876" CreationDate="2015-09-01T16:03:40.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself who this novel is really about. If it's about the main character, presented in chapter one as part of a crowd, you for sure want to make him more of an active agent in the story. If it's about a whole bunch of people and you change from chapter to chapter, it's fine to make him a little more passive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, you're thinking of this in the wrong way. Your character &lt;strong&gt;already has a goal&lt;/strong&gt; and is already part of an active plot. Right now, as you present it, your character is in the middle of a mass evacuation, and so, the &lt;em&gt;central conflict for your character is how is he going to be evacuated.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your main character doesn't have to lead the evacuation, or be the only one being evacuated, to be active during this event. Turning him from active to passive is actually rather easy. Simply shift the focus of the chapter from the crowd to the individual person (something you should be doing already if he is your main character).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We should feel, when reading your story, close to your main protagonist. Let us know how he feels in regards to the evacuation, let us see the world through his eyes. This doesn't mean you have to write it in first person, you can try free-indirect discourse as a method of establishing a close relationship between the protagonist and the reader, or you can simply have the third person narrator stick closer to the protagonist than any other person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever way you chose, you want to make sure that you're following the protagonist as they attempt to evacuate. Your protagonist should be our window into this world, we should feel as if we're following him as he's attempting to evacuate. Consider letting us know his thoughts, emotions, feelings, actions, senses, anxieties, backstory, or anything else. Doing all of these things will likely turn the story from passive to active. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15043" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T16:03:40.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18880" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18903" CreationDate="2015-09-01T17:23:32.953" Score="1" ViewCount="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;Years ago I encountered a term to describe the way verbs are used taxonomically in college syllabi to suggest different levels of comprehension. The hierarchy, in order of increasing sophistication of understanding, was something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;identify&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;describe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;demonstrate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were other terms, which I've forgotten. This hierarchy was named, if I remember, after the person who established it, but I can't remember the name. I've tried searching, to no avail. Does anyone know the name of this system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14724" LastActivityDate="2015-09-04T19:09:44.670" Title="Taxonomy of understanding: term" Tags="|terminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-09-05T14:04:59.453" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18876" CreationDate="2015-09-01T19:15:26.917" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The motivation doesn't have to be massive or book-spanning. As Cole correctly notes, it could simply be &quot;getting to the door.&quot; Or &quot;not getting an elbow in the eye.&quot; Or &quot;not choking from the smoke&quot; (or whatever the problem is that's causing the evacuation). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or conversely, maybe your character's goal has nothing to do with the situation he's in. Maybe he's passively accepting being herded because he's desperately trying to get his husband on the phone and frankly doesn't care where he's walking or who hears him, and the real goal is to reach his husband, who is on the other side of the city and also affected by the evacuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the goal of the &lt;em&gt;scene&lt;/em&gt; may be to set up the larger conflict of the &lt;em&gt;book&lt;/em&gt;, which is &quot;Hero and Love Interest are separated and have to get to each other by the end of the story,&quot; even if the actual events of the scene are moving macguffins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T19:15:26.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18810" CreationDate="2015-09-01T19:48:08.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you are trying to say. For example, concise writing is not always clear and clear language is not always concise. Saying both is in that border area between tic and idiom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the  record, you're not alone in this habit. If you read any legal writing, this repetitive style of writing is all over the place. 'Will and Testament.' 'Crimes and Misdemeanors.' 'Cease and desist.' It dates back to the days when most law was still conducted in Latin (or French, heaven help us). Lawyers would use both the English and Latin terms for &quot;clarity.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't help your problem, but an interesting fact, nonetheless. If it helps, just pretend you're speaking French.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T19:48:08.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18876" CreationDate="2015-09-01T20:29:45.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't want your character to be passive throughout your novel, but I don't see any issues with him being passive in the first chapter if that sets the scene.  A consistently passive or reactive character is hard to make compelling, but even the most proactive person sometimes finds herself in situations beyond her control.  I just wouldn't extend it for too long if you decide to go that route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T20:29:45.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18861" CreationDate="2015-09-01T20:33:47.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although there are some talented people who do both art and writing, it's quite common in comics for one person to write and one person to do the art.  I'm not personally tapped into that community, but I'd imagine you could locate someone interested in collaborating if you looked hard enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not necessarily interested in a comic, but just want to write your own stories as a serialized blog format, there are people who have done that very successfully.  I believe the award-winning &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairyland_%28series%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fairyland&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; series began that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key for success in any serialized writing is sustained, consistent, regular updates and high writing quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T20:33:47.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18876" CreationDate="2015-09-01T21:54:29.567" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think maybe you need to look at the difference between being &quot;passive&quot; in the sense of not making decisions or &quot;passive&quot; in the case of not caring. The situation you've described seems like your character is the first kind of passive. If he's also the second kind of passive, things will be trickier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if it's just the first kind of passive... if it's an evacuation, presumably it's an emergency situation, so his goal is survival. Or if he's not that worried about himself, maybe his goal is the safe and efficient evacuation of others. Or maybe it's the preservation of his fragile dignity while going through this process. Or maybe the evacuation has thwarted whatever his original goal was in being in the place, and his new goal is figuring out a way to get things back on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's the second kind of passive, where he just doesn't care, you may need to look at your determination to use this structural approach. I know, you said you didn't want to get answers like that, but, really, if your structure is based on characters caring and you have a character who doesn't care, then you need to change either the structure or the character, right? Which would you rather change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T21:54:29.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18876" CreationDate="2015-09-01T22:37:54.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Characters need to separate themselves from the crowd at the right time. For instance, if there is a tsunami, or something like Hurricane Katrina, most people will behave more or less alike. And in most cases, it's perfectly ok for characters to be &quot;passive,&quot; in the sense of not standing out from the crowd. At such times, everyone's goal is just to survive, and your characters need not be different from anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's what happens &quot;afterward&quot; that distinguishes one character from another. For instance, how does one deal with the wreckage brought about by Hurricane Katrina after it has gone away? One character will act with resentment, another with resolution, etc. It's when things have &quot;settled down,&quot; that characters get to show themselves by starting to set (and pursue) goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T09:55:30.703" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T09:55:30.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18887" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-02T02:37:27.260" Score="3" ViewCount="8216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will soon start with writing reviews and guides for games and I am divided between simple raging of a game or in-depth rating, like considering few different elements in game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple rating would be just to gather the overall experience and enjoyment of a game and just rate it from 1 to 10. This would be good on one hand because the regular visitors of the site have only one option for rating and it's from 1 to 10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as I am a person who usually doesn't go for short reviews and writings, it would be against my judgment to rate a game just with one rating. A good rating would be to get an experience with with each of elements in the game and sum up of everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: The storyline is important in every game, and than there is a gameplay how enjoyable it feels to play the game, the dificulty, multiplayer, graphics, special effects, optimization, etc... but while some elements would be interesting to one person, it would be bad to another, and also some things like multiplayer are not in all the games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what would be the most important 4-5 elements you would consider when rating a game?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15118" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-19T08:31:41.817" LastActivityDate="2020-01-07T20:51:21.350" Title="What are elements to consider when writing a review for a videogame?" Tags="|reviews|videogame|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18888" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-02T11:41:48.753" Score="0" ViewCount="1220" Body="&lt;p&gt;I translated a book, and was thinking on writing a foreword to it. Not so much introducing the book (as there is a editor foreword from the original that does that), but as an introduction to the project and my motivations for it. It was independently translated, edited and published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate? If so, what would be a correct title for such foreword?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14117" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T13:45:09.910" Title="Foreword/introduction to the translation" Tags="|translation|introduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18888" CreationDate="2015-09-02T13:45:09.910" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with writing a foreword to a book; ones written by the translator are sometimes called something like &quot;Translator's Foreword&quot; or &quot;About this Translation&quot;, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you should write this foreword is a question that can be answered simply: Is what you want to say of interest to the reader? Will reading this foreword be time well spent? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have very little to say but think it's important, , perhaps you can write a few sentences and call them a &quot;Translator's Note&quot; or something similar. However, perhaps there's an interesting story behind the translation; in that case, go ahead and write that foreword. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T13:45:09.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18887" CreationDate="2015-09-02T14:24:09.687" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Dutch game society &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ducosim.nl&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ducosim&lt;/a&gt; (Site's in Dutch!) rates games on the following aspects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeatability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Luck-Tactic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Value for money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All ratings are 0-5 stars. Many types of games are reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another method to enrich a single 0-10 rate is to list the most significant positives and negatives. (Like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ign.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IGN&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gamespot.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gamespot&lt;/a&gt; does.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A useful link may be the Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Video_game_reviews&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Video Game Reviews template&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2015-09-02T14:38:47.067" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T14:38:47.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18891" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-03T11:42:50.700" Score="2" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Exactly.&amp;quot; John scratched the nape of his neck. It had a faint,&#xA;purple blotch I hadn't noticed before. Probably sunburn. &amp;quot;Our lives&#xA;began in the sea, and will probably end on land.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Exactly.&amp;quot; John scratched the nape of his neck. It had a faint,&#xA;purple blotch I hadn't noticed before. Probably sunburn. &amp;quot;Our lives&#xA;began in the sea, and will probably end on land.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Exactly. Our lives began in the sea, and will probably end on land.&amp;quot;&#xA;John scratched the nape of his neck. It had a faint, purple blotch I&#xA;hadn't noticed before. Probably sunburn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John scratched the nape of his neck. It had a faint, purple blotch I&#xA;hadn't noticed before. Probably sunburn. &amp;quot;Exactly. Our lives began in the sea, and will probably end on land.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the three examples give a different message to the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are my conclusions so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shorter action tags gives more focus to the dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Longer action tags distract attention from the dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Action tags that are placed before the dialogue affect the dialogue in a stronger way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Action tags that are placed after the dialogue affect the dialogue in a lesser way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm probably wrong, that's why I decided to write this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-09-03T18:27:03.360" Title="How does the length/position of action tags affect the dialogue?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18891" CreationDate="2015-09-03T12:02:24.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's very difficult to answer, as everyone reads things differently. For me, from your three examples, I got:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This seems like the most natural to me, which doesn't overly bring more attention to the dialogue or the description.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Brings more attention to the dialogue, as that is the first focus, then with description on the end, tailing off toward the end of the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Brings more attention to the description, for the same reason as above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though more import than the order you write things in, is the content of the sentence. Your content naturally draws more attention to the description as it is 3 short sentences, pointing out something strange to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion though would be to just write whichever way feels most natural to you and not worry too much about that sort of thing, unless its really relevant to the story and you really want something to be taken on board by the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15052" LastActivityDate="2015-09-03T12:02:24.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18834" CreationDate="2015-09-03T12:04:36.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually you'll be in your characters heads, telling the reader what they are thinking and feeling about someone as relationships grow, so the easiest thing to do if you want to ignore any romantic possibility between them, is just to never have either of them even consider it in their thoughts, or maybe just briefly and then dismiss it for whatever reason. That way there is no romantic undercurrent to any of the interactions between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15052" LastActivityDate="2015-09-03T12:04:36.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18834" CreationDate="2015-09-03T16:48:08.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I always knew I was ... unattractive. Say the word, my girl, say the word.&lt;/em&gt; Ugly. &lt;em&gt;I thought I'd accepted it, almost relished it. It protected me from so much folly; allowed me to have so many friendships that I wouldn't otherwise have had. I didn't anticipate the burst of utter fury that ran through me when he let slip that remark. Poor sod, always in trouble for blurting out whatever came into his head. Maybe that's one reason I liked him. I didn't take him seriously. Sweetie, cutie, but, oh dear me, not sexy. I was allowed not to want him but he wasn't allowed not to want me, is that it, if I'm honest? Where now? Can't we just be friends?&lt;/em&gt; Can &lt;em&gt;we just be friends?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sketch of one way of tackling B.M. Corwen's scenario of a friendship that isn't a love story was inspired by a possibility raised in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/18857/13531&quot;&gt;Jay's answer above&lt;/a&gt;, one that several readers seem to have found offensive but I found poignant and believable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of this subject treated well in fiction (drama in this case), as requested by the OP, with the genders reversed. When I was a kid in the 70's there was an American comedy show called &lt;em&gt;Rhoda&lt;/em&gt;. I remember almost nothing about it except one scene. A man and a woman are having dinner. The man has obviously been courting the woman for a while and is building up to asking the big question. He asks it. And, cringing with embarrassment, she says no, and stammers out an explanation. He's kind. He's intelligent. He's witty. But she just - doesn't - fancy - him. And looking at him you can see why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That everyday tragedy of the friendship that never became a love story because of the brute fact of involuntary sexual rejection is one, sadly realistic, way of explaining the absence of a romance. An exploration of how their friendship fares after that moment could be very moving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-09-03T16:48:08.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18895" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-03T17:13:28.147" Score="1" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In our approach, we rely mainly on the page's content to detect a data region, &lt;strong&gt;which in our definition is comprised&lt;/strong&gt; of a node or a range of nodes in the DOM tree, constituting a contiguous portion of the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could write it as two sentences like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In our approach, we rely mainly on the page's content to detect data regions. A data region in our definition is comprised of a node or a range of nodes in the DOM tree, constituting a contiguous portion of the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know both sentences are grammatical and correct (and if not, that's not my question). However, I feel that for introductory sentences, I'd better follow the second style and not combine the second sentence with a relative clause. What is your advice or guidelines for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14282" LastEditorUserId="14282" LastEditDate="2015-10-10T20:26:59.490" LastActivityDate="2015-10-10T20:26:59.490" Title="Relative clause or a new sentence. Which is better in an introductory paragraph?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18891" CreationDate="2015-09-03T18:27:03.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from issues of attention that Conn Warwicker brought up, you should also consider the aspects of time when composing these sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you are separating dialogue specifically, readers are likely to infer a different passage of time with each composition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first two examples, which correct me if I'm wrong, are the same. Imply a pause in between what the character is saying, slowing the dialogue and allowing for more time to pass between his comments. This can build tension adding weight/drama to his words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second example speeds things up for readers. The dialogue is not slowed by an observation, but rather, the observation is an after effect of the dialogue. In cases like this, readers tend to attach less weight to the line of dialogue, as the character seems to be simply saying it, rather than drawing it out, as is the case in example 1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Without further context, this one could be misleading. But, in the third example, we assume some amount of time is passing &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the comment is directly made, which might give more weight to the observation, and less to the dialogue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's important to keep in mind is that, while it's possible in real life to simultaneously observe and listen to something, stories rely heavily on a narrative progression of events. So, you can make your characters observe something and listen to something at the same time, but readers are still likely to assume one came before the other--even if this ordering is slight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15043" LastActivityDate="2015-09-03T18:27:03.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18902" CreationDate="2015-09-03T20:07:13.133" Score="3" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nobody in my story knows the actual name of one of the characters. She calls herself 'tina. She always writes it 'tina and gets irritated if people write it Tina - it's short for something, but nobody knows what. To her, the apostrophe and the lower case &quot;t&quot; are important - she likes the air of mystery that it creates for herself, allowing herself to hide away part of her life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: When I'm talking about her, should I always write her name as 'tina?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to, but it's a name, so an inner voice is telling me i should drop the apostrophe and capitalise the T when I'm saying &quot;Tina did this&quot; or &quot;Tina said that&quot;. But if I start doing that then how do I decide when it should be 'tina and when it should be Tina. If I'm not careful then her name, an important part of her character, will be relegated to a throw away comment when I first introduce her and will likely make her sound much more pretensious than she actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15136" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T23:59:32.953" Title="Character name and its capitalisation" Tags="|fiction|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18897" CreationDate="2015-09-03T20:24:46.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In David and Leigh Eddings's Malloreon series, one of the characters, a ruler, styles himself &lt;strong&gt;&amp;rsquo;Zakath&lt;/strong&gt;, with the apostrophe. The characters under his rule use the apostrophe; those who oppose him don't, if I recall correctly. So those who do and don't use it say as much about the character as the apostrophe does: do you respect (or fear) the person enough to spell his name as he wants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's later revealed that the apostrophe is meant to stand for &quot;Kal,&quot; which means &quot;King and God&quot; (so the ruler is using an epithet attached to the country's actual god, Kal Torak). When the meaning of the apostrophe is revealed, it's done with great glee at Zakath's pretentiousness, because in this case he &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; pretentious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By all means, reference your character as &lt;em&gt;'tina&lt;/em&gt; if it means something to her, and she can absolutely insist on it. You have a reason for it and character development behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-09-03T20:24:46.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18897" CreationDate="2015-09-03T20:25:17.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For this particullar example, the name is only expression, how to name yourself. If i will call myself LittleOgre, it will be my name or nickname too. So because of it i will use 'tina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the second, I will rather use 'tina instead of Tina and 'tina. It can be rather confusing, because when you will tell about here you will use Tina, and when somebody from your other characters will call on her, he/she will call 'tina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastActivityDate="2015-09-03T20:25:17.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14625" CreationDate="2015-09-04T05:16:37.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just now looking for the same thing and came across this tool that worked for me: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adazing.com/book-title-generator/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.adazing.com/book-title-generator/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15138" LastActivityDate="2015-09-04T05:16:37.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2015-09-04T07:39:45.413" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Develop.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are excited in what about you are writing, you have a good chance that your reader will be excited too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Develop the beginning.&#xA;Develop the story.&#xA;Develop the ending.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything you write is in other words what your feel. If you feel bored, your words and writing will be the same, if you feel yourself in the story you can make impossible things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Develop by mass writing.&lt;/em&gt; The more you write, the more you can be better at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-09-04T07:39:45.413" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-09-04T07:39:45.413" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18897" CreationDate="2015-09-04T14:35:16.643" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of names are short for longer names. Beth is short for Elizabeth. Nobody writes it 'beth. In English, when shortening a word by lopping off the beginning of the word, the tradition is to treat the shortened word as a full word in its own right, and to capitalize it as such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, lots of people have insisted on defying orthographic conventions in the spelling of their names. Prince even changed his name to &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9OLn2.png&quot; height=&quot;20&quot;&gt;. Needless to say, people tend to find that sort of thing quite pretentious. So Tina's name is short for something: why should anyone care? The fact that she angrily shoves that in people's faces whenever they try to spell a normal name with normal rules &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; pretentious. Especially given that this is a spelling-only issue: orally, 'tina is equivalent to Tina and only people who have reason to write her name will even be aware of the distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could, of course, use the &quot;correct&quot; capitalization in the text to flag the speaker as one who is sympathetic to 'tina or not, as in the Eddings example in Lauren Ipsum's answer. But I suspect a person who insists on such an unorthodox spelling of her name is going to be unhappy a lot of the time, when she tries to enter her name into a computer, or fill out a government form, or apply for a job, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to have an alternate way of indicating that the name contains something else. For example, some people use their middle name, so &lt;em&gt;John Harold Smith&lt;/em&gt; becomes &lt;em&gt;J. Harold Smith&lt;/em&gt; and everyone refers to them as &lt;em&gt;Harold&lt;/em&gt;. But anyone who writes down the full name should include the J in it, even if they don't know what it means, and Harold could routinely sign his emails, letters, etc, as J Harold Smith. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Language is primarily spoken for most people most of the time. And thus the token that identifies you typically is a sound, which then gets transcribed according to the local spelling rules. Violating those rules makes your character stick out a lot, and maybe not in a good way. And doing it so that your character can effectively constantly tell people &quot;I know something you don't&quot; seems incredibly annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastEditorUserId="14727" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T23:59:32.953" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T23:59:32.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18880" CreationDate="2015-09-04T19:09:44.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want Bloom's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be considered on-topic as a writing framework, a method for organizing a paper. For example, if OP was tasked with critiquing a learning program where s/he is consulting, s/he would use Bloom's Taxonomy to argue whether lessons presented are sequenced correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same example, but focusing on learner assessment. If OP needs to evaluate and report against an assessment, their response may be the questions are not sequenced correctly, meaning difficult questions are asked too early. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sequencing questions in order of easier to most difficult allows us to see at what point the student's knowledge stops. We have identified a gap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without Bloom's, OP could not write a credible report. It would be only their opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15144" LastActivityDate="2015-09-04T19:09:44.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18897" CreationDate="2015-09-04T21:08:14.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I kind of like 'tina. Her name could be Justina. Perhaps someone gave her the nick name, Just Tina.. could be the explanation of 'tina. Going to throw a hail mary here and say maybe the person that gave the nickname has passed... the ' suggests they will always be apart of 'tina. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15146" LastActivityDate="2015-09-04T21:08:14.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18820" CreationDate="2015-09-05T10:17:48.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've decided to add a second, separate answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/18823/13531&quot;&gt;my earlier one&lt;/a&gt; in order to flag up a specific suggestion made by another SE user on the English Language &amp;amp; Usage Stack Exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading the part in your original question that focussed on how to indicate that the &quot;sh&quot; in &quot;Ashe&quot; was two separate sounds rather than a digraph, I became interested in whether there was an existing means of showing this in English orthography for transcribing real-life foreign languages. So I asked the following question on the English Language &amp;amp; Usage SE, &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/q/270534/118314&quot;&gt;&quot;Is there an equivalent for diaeresis, but for consonants?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, citing your question here as being what prompted me to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to existing usage, the answer appears to be no, there isn't. However SE user &quot;chasly from UK&quot; suggested &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/a/270537/118314&quot;&gt;in this answer&lt;/a&gt; that you could simply add a diaeresis to the letter h, like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As&amp;#7719;e&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and gave &lt;a href=&quot;http://graphemica.com/%E1%B8%A7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a link&lt;/a&gt; to a site giving unicode and HTML codes for doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility that I think I remember seeing someone do once might be to add a full stop between characters without a following space, thus: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As.he&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'm going to have two of my characters have an argument about how the hell &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; you transcribe Alienese s-followed-by-separate-h into English anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-09-05T10:17:48.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18907" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18908" CreationDate="2015-09-05T16:37:25.683" Score="3" ViewCount="1601" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a newbie...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've some material I want to submit to an editor&lt;br&gt;&#xA;for evaluation feedback about content relevance and quality&lt;br&gt;&#xA;and the possibility of publishing a book...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;What is the best way to face this challenge...&#xA;What options do I have...&#xA;(...)&#xA;What challenges will I face..&#xA;What mountain should i climb...&#xA;What god shall I praise...&#xA;How many monsters should I slay...&#xA;(Ooopppsss... getting to literary... CUT!!!)&#xA;(CMD:RESET-BRAIN DATA:BOOK-INFO)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice are welcome...&#xA;Any experience share are welcome too...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Field]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This will be a book about computing,&#xA;Focus on how to get more productive using interfaces...&#xA;Uncovering so often re-pushed practices hidding better approaches.&#xA;Delineating strategies to approach OS interfaces...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[Audience]&#xA;1.  Computer novices (usually desktop users)&#xA;    who feel overwellmed by quantity&#xA;&#xA;2.  Novices evolving to medium&#xA;    Usually passing from GUI to CLI (+power)&#xA;&#xA;3.  System administrators&#xA;    What to better/quicker access their tasks&#xA;&#xA;4.  Programmers&#xA;    Quick access filesystem, documentation, etc.&#xA;&#xA;*   and many other,&#xA;    The condition is: be a computing device user...&#xA;_&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15151" LastEditorUserId="15151" LastEditDate="2015-09-08T14:38:05.207" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T14:38:05.207" Title="What is the best publisher for a computer science book" Tags="|book|publisher|science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18907" CreationDate="2015-09-05T17:05:28.350" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First, Some Points to Consider&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editors are very busy, of course, so you only have a sentence or two to get their attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Attention Getting Concept&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to get the attention of an editor you need to be sure you are writing on a concept that is current, valuable and a large number of people are interested in, but is focused enough that it is a book and not the Internet rewritten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Readers Buy Structure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure your book is structured well and &amp;quot;tells the story of the technology&amp;quot; you are writing about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine a person looking for information on spider monkeys.  She goes to Google and does a search: Okay I just did that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=spider%20monkey&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=spider+monkey&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About 5,590,000 results&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reader I cannot read all of that in my lifetime.  Plus a lot of it probably isn't relative and much of it is probably repeated.&#xA;As a reader, what I want is a structured volume of information that is related to what I'm interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can you, the writer, know what the reader wants?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must be interested in the technology you are writing about.  You must want to read the book that you are writing and the reason you are writing it is that the book doesn't really exist yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written&#xA;yet, then you must write it.”  ~Toni Morrison&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More On Structure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acquistions editor will surely ask for an outline of your non-fiction book so make sure you create an outline which displays that you are (again) &amp;quot;telling the story of the technology&amp;quot; that you are writing about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Let Your Own Reading Guide You&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are a reader and you know that if you wanted to read a book about spider monkeys you would want it to progress logically through the items of interest that would allow you to read as little as possible but learn as much as possible about the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No Starch Press&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;No Starch seems to be a decent publishing company who is growing and publishing quite a few books.&#xA;They have some nice guidelines that you can use to target them specifically but will also be instructive as to what you need to do for any technology publisher.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nostarch.com/writeforus.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.nostarch.com/writeforus.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck on your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-09-05T17:05:28.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18911" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-06T17:21:23.293" Score="0" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;So since 2007 I've been using a raccoon character in my stories and I want to know if he's too similar to rocket raccoon. My character is 12 years old, michievous, sneaky, intelligent, sarcastic, sort of Bart Simpson-Ish. He has two friends, a falcon and a tuxedo cat, and lives with his 29 year old brother. The story is also set in somewhat of a retro futuristic setting (sort of like blade runner). He may be the protagonist and get into crazy sci fi situations, but I wouldn't really call him super hero like. What do you think? Too similar? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15158" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T09:50:04.357" Title="Does this sound too similar to Guardians of the galaxy?" Tags="|creative-writing|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18911" CreationDate="2015-09-06T17:32:18.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What will make him similar or dissimilar is not things like age. It is his attitude and his speech. Rocket is defined not by who his friends are particularly, but by how he behaves towards them. So, put simply, if you can hear Rocket talking or imagine him doing exactly what your character would do, he is too similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T17:32:18.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18911" CreationDate="2015-09-06T17:33:54.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the raccoon's brother also a raccoon? Like, are these just anthropomorphic animals? Because there's a pretty long tradition of that in children's books, so if you're writing a children's book, I don't think it's a problem at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing an adult book? I have trouble seeing how the anthropomorphism would feel real, but I certainly don't think the Guardians link is a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T17:33:54.120" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18911" CreationDate="2015-09-07T03:15:29.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why Does It Matter If They Are Similar?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am honestly interested in why it would matter if it were like Guardians of the Galaxy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing the story for yourself and a few friends, then they surely are not going to care as long as the story is really good. Since your character is named something different and none of the other characters or story situations from Guardians of the Galaxy will show up in your story, the &lt;strong&gt;only similarity&lt;/strong&gt; is that you have a &lt;strong&gt;snarky talking raccoon.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Over the Hedge : (Comic Strip &amp;amp; Movie)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that were a problem, then I guess Guardians of the Galaxy would've been in trouble from Over The Hedge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge&lt;/a&gt;  comic strip&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327084/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327084/&lt;/a&gt; movie&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What If You Changed Your Character To a Fox?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it matter that your character is a raccoon?  Or why not just change your character into a fox?   What if yours was a fox? Would that then be different enough that you wouldn't worry about the comparison to Guardians of the Galaxy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or would you then think there were too much similarity to &lt;strong&gt;The Fantastic Mr. Fox&lt;/strong&gt;?&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/l3Ltg.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/l3Ltg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mr. Fox&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Have you seen the movie?  It is fantastic.  He is a &lt;strong&gt;snarky talking fox&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432283/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432283/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are You Afraid Guardians Creators Might Sue?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Write the entire story.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2) Get at least 100 people to read it.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3) Get feedback from at least 50 of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Get it published by a large publisher&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you even complete the first one it will be amazing.  However, it still won't matter even if you have entirely copied the raccoon from Guardians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Completing #2 will probably take at least 1 year. Unfortunately, few people will read the writing of an unpublished author.  You'd have to find a writing community and even then, often, they're not that helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Number 3 will probably be completely impossible.  But if you do succeed you are well on your way to #4. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What Will A Publisher Think?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you submit your writing to the publisher they will tell you if the character too closely resembles the one from Guardians.  But they won't care.&#xA;They will only care if your writing is good enough that they believe they can make money from it and decide to publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they do, they will handle the problem, most likely by insuring your character is another type of snarky talking animal such as a hedge hog or a guinea pig.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Short Answer  (TOO LATE)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;So, really, in conclusion, the final answer is :&#xA;No, it does not matter at all that you've independently created a snarky talking raccoon.  You're snarky talking raccoon's success will be directly proportional to the amount of work you put into it + luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2015-09-07T03:20:35.457" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T03:20:35.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18917" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18926" CreationDate="2015-09-07T04:53:06.903" Score="2" ViewCount="2446" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the title says: Can someone give me an example of a figure of speech, that the hearer might realistically be confused and think was intended literally? Or someone makes a literal statement that sounds like a figure of speech?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, something like, person A says, &quot;Well, I guess I let the cat out of the bag,&quot; and person B says, &quot;Oh, you gave away someone's secret?&quot;, and person A says, &quot;No, I mean, I had the cat in a bag but it escaped.&quot; But something that wouldn't just be a joke, that might actually come up in a real conversation. It can be funny, but it has to be plausible as a genuine misunderstanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a book where I'm trying to make the point that we all use both literal and figurative statements all the time and normally have no trouble understanding whether a statement someone else makes is intended literally or figuratively. I thought it would be good to give an example where someone might actually be confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure I've heard such statements, that I've had times where I said, &quot;Oh!! I thought he meant that literally!&quot; but for the life of me I can't think of a realistic example now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-01-30T15:15:52.623" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T15:15:52.623" Title="Can someone give me an example of a figure of speech that could realistically be confused for a literal statement?" Tags="|word-choice|figures-of-speech|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18918" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18923" CreationDate="2015-09-07T08:35:23.683" Score="2" ViewCount="2541" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context :&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm starting a story with supernatural creatures and trying to make it both gory and funny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some creatures I use are really gross. For example, one of my characters is an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akaname&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;akaname&lt;/a&gt;, a toilet-licking spirit, and an other is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wendigo&lt;/a&gt;, a forest cannibal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no problem with &quot;regular&quot; blood and violence but have difficulties with  this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The problem :&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid too much gore and gross stuff might pass as some kind of fetish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I write this sort of story without sounding like a creep? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for advice on how to decide if I should include a scene or make it told/remembered by a character and how much detailed the descriptions should be, to keep funny and disgusting balanced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T00:43:58.427" Title="How to write about disgusting subjects?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|horror|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18918" CreationDate="2015-09-07T08:45:33.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm afraid too much gore and gross stuff might pass as some kind of&#xA;  fetish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a fetish, you shouldn't be ashamed of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, just kidding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I experienced a similar problem while writing a novel called Animal Suicide, a romance/comedy about human/animal suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the good news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very easy and effective to turn gory and serious subjects into humor. In fact, that's the reason &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_comedy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;black comedy&lt;/a&gt; exists. Apparently, humans find these stuff funnier because it helps them to channel out the fear/embarrassment they have tramped inside (think sex jokes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I say, go with it. Make it funny. And with this rule in mind: what makes you laugh is likely to make your audience laugh (as long as the scene isn't offensive or excessive). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, some practical advice: watch George Carlin, Bill Hicks, or Louis CK's clips on YouTube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-09-07T08:57:34.193" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T08:57:34.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18911" CreationDate="2015-09-07T09:20:31.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess is that if you have a sci-fi setting that involves a talking raccoon, then anyone familiar with Guardians of the Galaxy will think of Rocket Raccoon. Your raccoon could be a polite botanist who speaks Esperanto, they'll still think of him. There just aren't that many talking raccoons in sci-fi. Your job is to figure out a way to be at peace with it, and to write a good story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15019" LastEditorUserId="15019" LastEditDate="2015-09-07T09:50:04.357" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T09:50:04.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18921" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27883" CreationDate="2015-09-07T11:51:35.770" Score="2" ViewCount="12442" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finally, my phd thesis in natural science is coming to an end and I am facing the problem of structuring the concluding chapters. Since my faculty/university does not dictate anything, I have to decide this on my own. Now, I am realizing a slight chaos in my thoughts which I would appreciate to reduce with your help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How would you conclude the thesis? What are the differences and overlaps between summary, discussion, outlook, conclusion, etc.?&lt;/strong&gt; May I, for example, leave out a &quot;Summary&quot; chapter if I write a &quot;Discussion&quot; chapter which in particular summarizes my work? Could the outlook be part of the discussion, or shouldn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that this is a matter of taste, and lots of things can be said here. Nevertheless, I am hoping for some advices and opinions on that topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Unfortunately, neither talking to my professor or other phds, nor searching in the internet really clarified this question for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15163" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:11:08.600" Title="Thesis: Discussion, Conclusion, Summary, Outlook," Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18921" CreationDate="2015-09-07T13:08:33.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep In Mind What Writing Is&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very bottom, writing is simply thinking onto paper in an attempt to show others what you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Best Writing Is Structured&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the best writing is structured so that others are drawn into your explanation in steps.  It is focused thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reveals the Challenge of Writing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking about everything is impossible and yet that is what they tell you to do as they tell you to consider the subject from every angle and consider all data.  Unfortunately, that type of thinking can never be written down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What You've Said May Indicate That You Feel Overwhelmed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that you feel overwhelmed by the outside direction that forces you to think in a certain way.  You are thinking about the thinking more than you are thinking about the subject itself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wasting What You Are Writing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We often feel like we are wasting our writing by simply writing things out which do not directly relate to the thesis, but sometimes it's a good idea to free write (free think onto paper) to learn where you really go with the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I know what I think until I see what I say. ~E. M. Forster&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Possible Way In&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forget about structure of the thesis and all of that.  Instead, for a little while, concentrate entirely on your subject and ask some questions like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What exactly is it that I am writing about?&#xA;What conclusion am I driving toward?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write A Mini-Dissertation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now take that information and write an extremely short version of your dissertation as fast as you can.  Call it Draft Zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply write one line for each paragraph which should be in your dissertation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write the introduction, body, summary and conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind the reason they do not exactly describe what should be in each part of the dissertation is because it is expected to be different from different authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There Are Books To Help Too&#xA;There's even a &quot;Dummies&quot; book&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYAwZx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing A Dissertation for Dummies - amazon link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T14:51:24.407" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:51:24.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18918" CreationDate="2015-09-07T17:24:48.167" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you a creep for writing about a toilet-licking monster? I doubt it. I don’t think Nabokov was a creep for writing &lt;em&gt;Lolita&lt;/em&gt;, nor was Thomas Pynchon a creep for writing the extremely detailed scene in &lt;em&gt;Gravity’s Rainbow&lt;/em&gt; in which a man eats excrement. True, people have had visceral reactions to both the authors &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; their subject matter, but that’s to be expected. As a fiction writer, you do your job primarily by telling compelling stories using images, characters, and motivations that give your readers something new and delicious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long run, your reputation as a writer will likely hinge on several things: quality prose, excellent storytelling, memorable characters, unforgettable scenes, and consistency. You might consider approaching your concern from the consumer's point of view: readers desire a “certain something” from a genre work, and they gravitate towards the writers most likely to provide that certain something. They are looking for something general, rather than something specific, i.e. they want to be terrified or grossed out, but they aren’t specifically looking for toilet-licking monsters. You’re pretty safe on that count. If you can add humor into the mix, even better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, and more specific to your question, certain aspects of your writing can become “trademarks”, so to speak. David Cronenberg (director) writes/directs films “about&quot; body horror; Shirley Jackson writes psychological horror (and I doubt either of them would appreciate being labeled this way). However, I suspect that “trademarks&quot; of writing only become trademarks over time. Perhaps a counter-arguement is Bret Easton Ellis, whose &lt;em&gt;American Psycho&lt;/em&gt; was so shocking that he himself came under scrutiny (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/06/books/bret-easton-ellis-answers-critics-of-american-psycho.html&quot;&gt;this NYTImes article&lt;/a&gt; from 1991 is a fun place to start). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, I suspect that many readers have a maturity level that can handle the gross out details. On the other hand, if your primary readers are presently friends and family, be prepared to get some questioning glances at Thanksgiving.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T17:24:48.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18895" CreationDate="2015-09-07T19:02:46.117" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think the trouble lies in either choice, since neither is inherently better than the other (though some could argue that the two-sentences version has more clarity). Rather, you may want to be begin with a simple context-setting sentence. Since this is a technical document, consider first mentioning that there are several ways to approach data regions, and then direct the reader's attention to what your approach is and why it has been chosen. Your argument would essentially move as follows: a) acknowledge the options, b) define/demonstrate the chosen method, and c) argue for its effectiveness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other stylistic note: beginning with &quot;In our approach...&quot; immediately puts the emphasis on the agent of the action, rather than on the method chosen. The reader may be more concerned with the details than with the doers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T19:02:46.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18502" CreationDate="2015-09-07T20:37:11.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;External links&lt;/strong&gt; may solve your problem. Here is a step-by-step that may get you started:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a new document in the References folder of the Binder.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gWYb1.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gWYb1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now choose the &quot;Document References&quot; button from the bottom of the right hand column.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nrVVx.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nrVVx.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click the &lt;strong&gt;+ button&lt;/strong&gt; at top right of this pane. From the drop-down list, choose &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Look up and Add External Reference&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MNFbK.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MNFbK.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the dialogue box to find your character source documents and choose Okay.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The external document is now in your project as a link and can be referenced at any time. On a Mac, you can get a quick view of this document by choosing it and hitting your spacebar for a quick view. You'll want to edit this document using whatever word processor you were using before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To get this information quickly into a different project,&lt;/strong&gt; you can drag and drop the &quot;Character docs&quot; document from the binder of one project into the binder of another. This will allow you to update your original character documents whenever you like and they will always be up-to-date no matter which Scrivener project you open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T20:37:11.467" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18917" CreationDate="2015-09-07T20:42:46.453" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;synecdoche&lt;/a&gt; like &quot;I bought a new set of wheels&quot; where a car is actually meant can be taken literally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understatement&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;understatement&lt;/a&gt; like &quot;It's just a scratch&quot; when someone is injured who habitually downplays things like that can slip by when the habit isn't known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;oxymoron&lt;/a&gt; like &quot;jumbo shrimp&quot; is so established few will notice it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understatement&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understatement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Samples:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://literarydevices.net/understatement&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://literarydevices.net/understatement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enkivillage.com/figure-of-speech.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.enkivillage.com/figure-of-speech.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T20:42:46.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18927" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18930" CreationDate="2015-09-08T00:19:50.843" Score="1" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a screenplay where the opening scene is that a woman has lost 20 years of relative age because of a &quot;time machine&quot; dynamic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the play &quot;flashes back&quot; to a different time, where a 50-year old woman is flirting with a 30 year old man. And then one or more people comment that &quot;if they were the same age...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is supposed to foreshadow the fact that the time machine dynamic will eventually make the two &quot;age appropriate.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been told by any number of women that a romance in which the woman is 20 years older is implausible. But that the subsequent &quot;equalization&quot; of ages makes the story work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do I need to foreshadow the &quot;convergence&quot; of the two peoples' ages as described above? Or are readers/viewers smart enough to make the connection between the time machine, and the apparent age discrepancy without such help, meaning that I'm going too far? Is there any authoritative view on what is an appropriate amount of foreshadowing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-27T12:42:58.463" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T12:42:58.463" Title="How does an author determine how much foreshadowing is needed?" Tags="|fiction|planning|readers|foreshadowing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18928" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18929" CreationDate="2015-09-08T05:36:32.747" Score="1" ViewCount="1062" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my action/adventure story, the two main protagonists are rescuing the injured victim and escaping the dungeon. (Or jail cell. Or whatever.) Once the protagonists have rescued the victim, I want to surprise the readers with a betrayal—the victim was working for the bad guys all along, and leaves the protagonists trapped. (Think Elsa Schneider betraying Indy in The Last Crusade.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only problem is I'm pretty sure readers would see it coming from a mile away. How can I set it up so that the readers are surprised, and only in retrospect does it look obvious? Do I have to distract the readers? Can I make them come to the conclusion that the character is a good guy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3666" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-04-26T13:19:19.170" LastActivityDate="2022-04-26T13:19:19.170" Title="How can I surprise my readers with an unexpected betrayal?" Tags="|fiction|characters|plot|twist|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18928" CreationDate="2015-09-08T09:51:33.747" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give the victim a &lt;em&gt;reason&lt;/em&gt; to betray the good guys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make the victim a rounded character. Give him or her motivation, backstory, and personality. The reader may not see all the backstory you've created, but you as the author should know what it is, and write the person accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the victim is being blackmailed by the bad guy and is genuinely sorry to trap the good guys. Maybe the victim is the bad guy's secret sibling/spouse/servant/child. Maybe the victim owes the bad guy something, and trapping the good guys is just business, nothing personal &amp;mdash; it's a favor to the bad guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the victim's reason, remember: Each of us is the hero of our own story. Consider from the victim's perspective why s/he would do such a thing, and why s/he would want to hide his/her motivations from the good guys. That's how you can set up the surprise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T09:51:33.747" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18927" CreationDate="2015-09-08T13:49:18.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first thought is that if you want a romance between a 50 year old woman and a 30 year old man, you can do it. You are writing about a time machine, that's far more unlikely than your romance! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They might have to deal with people saying she's a cougar probably paying for the younger man's attention. You can use it to enforce their love, both of them against the rest of the world, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you really want to foreshadow the fact their ages are going to be the same? If it's already clear in your story that there will be a time machine, the reader will understand where all of this is going far in advance. Do not push it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no evidence of a time machine before the travel, keep it a surprise solving all their age issues. This sounds like a happy end, don't spoil it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the reader will understand, even if you have the play with the time machine travel before the flirt. And even if the reader doesn't understand, he will enjoy the discovery of the plot twist better than any announcement long before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15149" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2015-09-10T10:27:06.900" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T10:27:06.900" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18927" CreationDate="2015-09-08T18:27:40.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the intelligence of viewers, you’ve stumbled upon the great mystery of art. In short, &lt;em&gt;no, they are not smart enough&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;yes, they are&lt;/em&gt;. Both answers are correct because there is no such thing as a “viewer.” There are only people who watch movies/read books, and each one brings unique levels of engagement, commitment, and interest to a story (not to mention other factors such as environment, multitasking, etc). As writers, we all hope for the Ideal Reader (see Nabokov’s opening essay at the beginning of &lt;em&gt;Strong Opinions&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding foreshadowing specifically, it's helpful to think about it in several different ways. Doing so will help you strategize as you build and edit your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As obvious clues to an outcome.&lt;/strong&gt; Think of Chekhov’s rifle over the mantelpiece. If there is a rifle on a mantelpiece, it will go off by the end of the play. This is foreshadowing for the observant/expectant viewer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a pattern visible to a few people either during or after viewing.&lt;/strong&gt; Think of Scorcese’s use of Xs behind characters who were slated to die by the end of his film &lt;em&gt;The Departed&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As easter eggs for the repeat viewers.&lt;/strong&gt; Think of some of the details in Fincher’s &lt;em&gt;Fight Club&lt;/em&gt;: the spliced-in bits of Tyler Durden into some scenes (implying Jack’s madness), and the payphone near the beginning that does not accept incoming calls. These are details that a viewer can decide have meaning or not (the former is open to interpretation, the latter is a specific clue).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As strategic details that add texture and depth to a piece.&lt;/strong&gt; Think of the Christopher Nolan’s &lt;em&gt;The Prestige&lt;/em&gt; and the drowning death of Angier’s love as foreshadowing the death of his own copies. The foreshadowing adds emotional depth to the revelation at the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, foreshadowing as a technique or strategy depends a lot on the audience’s attention to detail and their commitment to active thought during a viewing. I suspect that many people miss foreshadowing that isn’t obvious, so it isn’t necessarily a good clarification strategy. Rather than looking for ways to simply foreshadow something to assist the audience, think about how editing or color grading styles can affect perception and create a pattern that is easily interpreted (a good example is &lt;em&gt;The English Patient&lt;/em&gt;; a complex example is Lynch's &lt;em&gt;Lost Highway&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, you can add foreshadowing after completion of the script/story or as you go. Ultimately, though, foreshadowing relies a lot on consistent use of symbols as well as an observant, committed audience. That being said, it can create a lot of satisfaction for viewers who recognize the foreshadowing as it occurs or on a second viewing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T18:27:40.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2079" CreationDate="2015-09-08T18:53:41.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Immediacy and Connection with the Protagonist. Because the audience is given the experience of being “inside” the protagonist’s head, there is a direct link between protagonist and the audience. Emotions don’t become filtered through the distance of a third person narrator, instead the emotions happen in the moment, as the protagonist feels them. As the protagonist reveals his/her thoughts and fears to the reader an intimacy and connection is created. It is as if the protagonist is confiding in the reader, telling them their innermost secrets like they would a best friend.  A lot of young adult novels use first person for this exact reason, it creates an immediate connection with the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15171" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T18:53:41.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18918" CreationDate="2015-09-08T20:05:11.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the fact that you are concerned about overdoing it is a good sign. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are my thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't include grossness and gore for the sake of being gross and gory – make sure your characters have more depth than that. If your story offers little more than akanames licking commodes and wendigos eating each other in the forest, you probably won't get rave reviews. But if you can somehow weave the unique traits of these characters into the story somehow, most readers will appreciate your efforts. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When in doubt, lean toward the subtle and the humorous rather than the obscene and the profane. Try to make the most memorable parts of your story your clever ones, not your graphic ones. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Imagine a broad readership when you're polishing your story. Imagine your daughter reading it when she's in ninth grade. Imagine your wife's grandmother picking it for her summer read. This doesn't mean you need to strike the edgy characters from your plot and write something you think would get past the prudes, the censors, and the book-burners, but it might help you achieve that degree of balanced moderation that you're striving for.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T20:05:11.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18849" CreationDate="2015-09-08T20:25:47.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once ended a story with a &lt;em&gt;flash-forward&lt;/em&gt;, where the character imagined what would happen in her future. I used that as the ending of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not foreshadowing since it doesn't predict an event that happens later in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T20:25:47.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-08T20:27:18.253" Score="2" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an ebook published on Amazon and that was free. How can I advertise it without spending money? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15173" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-26T11:16:36.423" LastActivityDate="2018-04-26T11:37:29.110" Title="How do I get my ebook advertised for free?" Tags="|marketing|ebook|kindle|amazon|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18937" CreationDate="2015-09-09T00:07:20.790" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Social media.&lt;/strong&gt; Get your friends to share it on Facebook. Link to it on Twitter. Make an Instagram post. Write a little review on Tumblr. Use enough hashtags that people will be able to find it and post during a time of day when more people are online. Get people to review it on Amazon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15175" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T00:07:20.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18939" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-09T02:49:17.487" Score="6" ViewCount="1139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently have bad handwriting and even though I have been writing every day for years I still have very poor handwriting, it is sometimes un-legible. So I thought I should improve my handwriting with practice and then get up to speed so I can write neatly but fast. So I would like to make my handwriting in a different style if I am putting effort into it. Can anyone suggest what style to go for and how to learn it? I am only using a ballpoint pen but i am willing to learn any style if it is different and interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15176" LastActivityDate="2020-07-09T04:18:14.617" Title="Handwriting change" Tags="|handwriting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18939" CreationDate="2015-09-09T12:44:27.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With a little help of a school teacher of my friends :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What can cause your bad handwriting ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly the fact that you are used to writing letters in a certain way and it's hard to change that way. For example some kids write with the hand over the writing line instead of under the line, which does not further a beautiful handwriting, but once it becomes a habit, trying to change the way the hand is placed will make, for a moment, an even worst result. Then it becomes easier and more precise. You have to be prepared that with this kind of effort your handwriting does not improve immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are frequent eye issues that can make bad handwriting, when your eyes do not focus well. You do not feel tired, and you do not have a feeling of bad vision, but if your hand doesn't want to draw the perfect line you have in mind, you might check your vision. (It can be solved with a light reeducation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ball pens are the easiest way to write. You don't have to focus on the letters to write something readable. Try a feather pen or even that kind of glass pens (I'm not sure about the English name). You have to use an inker, but they are easier to use than metalic ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EwOni.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EwOni.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can you change your handwriting ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing with cursive, try to write with stick letters (not beautiful, but far more readable, and if your handwriting is very bad, it will make it more pleasant). &#xA;If you're writing with stick letters, try cursive. Changing the way you form letters will force you to focus on each of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to change your pen, for the same reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take your time to make beautiful letters, you will speed up later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can become a teacher, too, little kids saying they can't read every time ONE of your letters is not perfect is a pretty good exercise to focus on your handwriting!&#xA;That's a joke, of  course, but without any joke, writing very big letters on a board can help you too. Defects are more visible on a big scale. Try to figure out which ones of your letters are ugly and which ones are not. Change the worst first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15149" LastEditorUserId="3857" LastEditDate="2015-09-09T19:23:26.457" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T19:23:26.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18941" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-09T14:58:49.490" Score="4" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best program (or programs) for layout, typesetting, and then printing (at home, or taking files to a printing shop) a book? It would need to be one which takes into account the way pages would be ordered and folded so that I could sew and bind the book myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15180" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T23:05:37.797" Title="Current best program for self-publishing?" Tags="|publishing|printing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18939" CreationDate="2015-09-09T16:17:12.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Handwriting relies a lot on muscle-memory, and so concentration will be required to modify it. I was in a similar situation to you, and needed to change my handwriting style from lumpy, awful cursive to something more legible and, frankly, good looking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great resource for helping you focus on your handwriting and develop a specific style is &quot;How To Architect&quot;, specifically the playlist “&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL689E9F6B3CCEFB30&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to write like an architect.&lt;/a&gt;” You may not want to write like an architect, but it will at least give you some tips as well as the hope that you can succeed at whatever style you choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Handwriting is a personal thing. I took the following actions to improve my own handwriting, and succeeded. You can look at this like a step-by-step or you can pick and choose what to work on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decide on printing vs cursive.&lt;/strong&gt; This depends on you. I hated my cursive and so developed a print style that I could write with speed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Practice drawing vertical lines, horizontal lines, and circles.&lt;/strong&gt; You need to retrain your hand. I spent five minutes a day for about a week drawing kindergarten-level shapes. Think of it as a warm-up exercise. It also helps you clear your mind, in much the same way that Sumi-e artists use the time spent preparing the ink and the paper to clear their mind.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decide on your letterforms.&lt;/strong&gt; Here is where you get to play around. Draw several different A’s, B’s, and so on. Pick the ones you like and make a cheat sheet for easy reference. I particularly hated my uppercase B’s and all my S’s. I picked their appearance and then…&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fill sheets and sheets of paper with the new letterforms.&lt;/strong&gt; This goes faster than you think, but involves commitment. You’re essentially re-training your hand with feedback from your eye. I literally spent six hours on a Saturday working on this. Sound grueling? Yes it was, but I also have very fond memories of time well-spent (and this was fifteen years ago). Since you’re posting this in the Writing site, you should have no problem playing with words.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Give yourself feedback, and address persistent problems.&lt;/strong&gt; My uppercase B’s took a very long time to change. I had to simplify the process and work first on writing a 3 rapidly and then adding the vertical later. Feedback is always about honest course correction. Don’t get angry or frustrated and give yourself credit for the work you’ve accomplished. Writing well is a lovely experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding writing utensils, consider both the pen and the paper as partners in the process. Think about the pleasure that comes from a smooth glide on a fine sheet of paper. If that’s too abstract, think about how easily the ink flows, the quality of the line, and how quickly it dries. With paper, consider its grain, its tooth, its weight, and its brightness. Your choice of pen/paper will affect the speed at which you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, handwriting can be an art-form or a utility. Both have their pleasures and both require effort to succeed.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T16:17:12.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18939" CreationDate="2015-09-09T18:08:51.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I never had legible handwriting until the year I spent teaching.  I didn't feel I could help my students until I helped myself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this is the book I used --it was a huge and immediate help.  It's oriented towards adults retraining themselves --just like you --not kids learning for the first time, and it has a step-by-step approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0071636382&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Yourself-Better-Handwriting-Edition/dp/0071636382&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T18:08:51.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18941" CreationDate="2015-09-09T18:20:59.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need a desktop layout program, such as Adobe InDesign or Quark XPress. &lt;em&gt;Don't&lt;/em&gt; use Word; it's a word processing program and not meant for layout. You could possibly use LaTex, but I don't know much about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T18:20:59.290" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18949" CreationDate="2015-09-09T19:00:55.640" Score="18" ViewCount="4225" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife and I were watching a movie where one of the main characters died shortly after being reunited with his long lost love. His death was not meaningless -- he died defending his only son, but it was completely unsatisfying. I wasn't happy that he died. I felt torn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there have been movies and stories where a key character dies and, although it is sad, I am good with it. It works. The sorrow and death are satisfying and add to the depth of the story rather than make me question why such a bad thing happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes the death of a main character satisfying or unsatisfying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14466" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-24T01:14:03.863" LastActivityDate="2019-06-28T12:05:39.723" Title="What makes the death of a character satisfying?" Tags="|characters|plot|death|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18941" CreationDate="2015-09-09T19:38:59.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is something as simple as a novel you can actually use a word processing program. (I know of people who produce relatively complex magazines using Word. My wife has written several books using Word.) Open Office and Libra Office are both free and will produce pdfs if you want someone else to print it. You need to check the layout on the pdf that is produced, but otherwise it is pretty straight forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Desktop publishing programs can produce better results if you are prepared to take the time to learn them. I have used Serif's PagePlus to produce several editions of a community magazine as well as tri-fold leaflets, birthday cards and screen presentations. You can download the starter version for free. I am not sure what restrictions it has, other than being an earlier version of the program. Normally, you are then offered an upgrade to the full program for a minimal price with no restrictions (I paid £10).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 1990's high end programs (such as PageMaker) offered features that were deemed necessary. Now-a-days cheap or free programs will do just about everything you could ever want. Unless you have very complex needs, I wouldn't pay for a premium product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I never use Microsoft Publisher for three reasons. Firstly, it is very restrictive and doesn't allow you to do many things I want to do. Secondly, it is expensive. Thirdly, and this is perhaps the most important point, any document produced using the program is immediately identifiable as being produced using Publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T19:38:59.193" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18945" CreationDate="2015-09-09T21:16:31.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, you are just going to bum the audience out with the death of a character, unless s/he is a complete villain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A perfect example of this is the recent Spider-Man 2 movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went into that movie knowing the outcome since I read the comic books a long time ago.  However, after paying $12 a piece for myself and a couple of other family members the character's death was completely unsatisfying and made you wish you hadn't seen the movie and wasted the money on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, the director knew it too, because after the scene of death (trying not to spoil here) the movie switches to a beginning of Spider-man 3 vignette and it is as if another movie is starting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is lame to the Nth degree.&#xA;I want my $12 back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe just have the character who is going to die walk off into the sunset or something instead.  Keeep it open.  We want stories to help us get through something, but death in a movie or book is mostly just depressing and makes you want to stop watching or reading as soon as it happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update / Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came back to add this part.  Usually if you are reading fiction or watching a movie or show you are doing so for entertainment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing a character die is generally not great entertainment.&#xA;The other reason humans tend to watch stories is to learn about -- live vicariously as another character -- other lifes, adventures, etc.  So, when a character dies we rebel against it since we tend to think, &quot;Yeah, crap like that happens in real life too and there's nothing you can do about it.  Why would I want that in my fiction?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T21:16:31.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18937" CreationDate="2015-09-09T21:27:57.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One Missed Opportunity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could even put a link to your book on your StackExchange profile.&#xA;It is very free and I just checked yours for the book. Unfortunately it was not there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Create a Blog&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a blog, start writing free articles and give them away and then give away the book there too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Create Web Site With Short Link&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a web site like readmybook.com or something very memorable (register it at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.1and1.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.1and1.com/&lt;/a&gt; for $0.99.  Make your amazon link available on there and then create sticky notes that you hand out to people with your easy link on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Print Your Book, Give It To People Who Pass By&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could even print hardcopies of your book and hand them to people as they pass by at your work, on the street, at your school, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T21:27:57.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18945" CreationDate="2015-09-10T03:13:32.453" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to dream logic, which often underlies work that is psychologically satisfying, death symbolizes rebirth.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the movie &lt;em&gt;American Beauty&lt;/em&gt;, the death of the main character comes at a moment of spiritual and moral renewal.  We mourn the character, but we paradoxically and simultaneously experience the character's death as a liberation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the death is not accompanied by this hidden sense of rebirth, we merely experience it as senseless and depressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T03:13:32.453" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18950" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-10T08:31:29.260" Score="10" ViewCount="3032" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I'm French and I'd like to write a Korean character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I build their personality traits, values, etc. in a realist way?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid to end up with a character only superficially Korean : eating kimchi and listening to k-pop but without any depth or realism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm especially interested on how to do &lt;strong&gt;research&lt;/strong&gt; in this situation, and then how to &lt;strong&gt;organize&lt;/strong&gt; and use the results. Researching a culture's cooking/music/clothing is easy but psychology/values/feelings are complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't move to Korea or enroll in a Korean history class in my area.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I watch/read Korean things to form a first impression of how Korean directors/writers see the world? Should I write something and then find a Korean to proof-read it?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to find good books/documentaries on a country's culture? (And be certain it's not a collection of stereotypes even if you don't know anything about it beforehand) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastEditorUserId="13689" LastEditDate="2015-09-11T08:01:17.410" LastActivityDate="2023-09-06T19:11:44.927" Title="How to do research to write characters from a different culture?" Tags="|character-development|research|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-10T08:58:11.633" Score="0" ViewCount="431" Body="&lt;p&gt;I originally posted this question on the main English forum, but someone suggested it might be better posted here. Apologies if I have broken any forum rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I home in on the end of my first novel, I find myself vexing over punctuation and the correct use of the em dash. Having failed to find definitive answers elsewhere, I’ll get straight to the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I’m aware that the em dash can be used for interruption, I sometimes use them to indicate motion or action. Three examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;‘Here—’ she said, holding out a small parcel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;‘Come—’ and he beckoned me closer with a finger.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;‘Look—’ I lifted my hand and held up the empty bottle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering about possible lack of commas or capitalisation in some of these cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am also perturbed about the following em dash, speech mark, comma combination:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘Well, I—,’ and before I could finish, he’d gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All advice greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15184" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T15:34:00.580" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T15:34:00.580" Title="Punctuation before / after em dash and speech mark" Tags="|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18952" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18956" CreationDate="2015-09-10T09:21:12.943" Score="9" ViewCount="1197" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for a writer to describe realistically a never felt emotion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example I have never experienced faith, or being truly in love. I've never physically hurt anyone and have no idea of how someone feels when attacking/maiming/killing someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases it is possible to use a somewhat close experience (like building on how I feel when I have no access to cigarettes or coffee for a few days to write about drugs withdrawal) ; but sometimes it's not an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For now, my solution is to rely heavily on the &quot;Show, don't tell&quot; rule and describe how a character looks and acts, but not their exact emotions. I don't know if it's enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastActivityDate="2020-12-18T19:00:46.603" Title="How to write about an emotion you never experienced?" Tags="|creative-writing|character-development|research|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18951" CreationDate="2015-09-10T09:55:09.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Examples 1 and 3 are fine. You can have a sharp break at the end of a line of dialogue. I'd slightly change 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Come &amp;mdash; ' He beckoned me closer with a finger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't use a comma after an M-dash, because the M-dash already indicates a pause, so the double pause doesn't quite work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question might also be useful:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1794/how-should-dialog-be-formatted&quot;&gt;How should dialog be formatted?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T09:55:09.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18951" CreationDate="2015-09-10T10:17:40.223" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say these are mostly non-standard (not wrong, necessarily, just not the way people usually use this punctuation) so you'll have to make up your own rules for the usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, alternatively, you could make them standard. To my eye, these could be punctuated with the usual comma/period ending punctuation without losing meaning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;‘Here,’ she said, holding out a small parcel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;‘Come.’ And he beckoned me closer with a finger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;‘Look.’ I lifted my hand and held up the empty bottle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final one is the only one that seems to be using the em-dash in the standard way, to indicate an interruption, but in that case, I agree with Lauren that the comma shouldn't be there. I'd also say the second part should be it's own sentence (and I'd change &quot;and&quot; to &quot;but&quot;, just... because it makes more sense to me!):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;‘Well, I—’ But before I could finish, he’d gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T10:17:40.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18952" CreationDate="2015-09-10T13:38:29.670" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No writer can experience everything. Most of us haven't died, and yet we write about death all the time. Likewise, when we write about grief, we may draw on our own personal experiences, but oftentimes, we let our imagination take control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you can boil down the specific emotions you want to describe into more general emotions: you may not have ever been angry enough to kill anyone, but there may have been times when your anger caused you to behave in an irrational fashion. Likewise, you may never have had an addiction to drugs, but you have probably felt the desperation of needing something so badly that you obsess about it, that can feel your brain twitching from thought to thought, always back to thing it needs. The physiological details can be added through careful study (although in the instance of drugs, avoid just watching &lt;em&gt;Trainspotting&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Requiem for a Dream&lt;/em&gt;: these films have spawned dozens, if not hundreds, of copycat representations of addiction and they're pretty easy to spot). Do real research into the scenario you want to portray: the more you read, the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Show, don't tell&quot; is a good rule of thumb regardless of how much research or imaginative exploration you do. Readers are very good at filling in the blanks and can empathize with a situation described plainly as much as one portrayed in lush, agonizing detail. This is where your artistry comes into play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T13:38:29.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19029" CreationDate="2015-09-10T13:49:04.753" Score="0" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing about main character, which have multiple personalities. I know how i want to write them, but for reader it can be really disturbing and hard to for orientation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time i will have those personalities named by their own names, but in case of handling them for reader I don't like to use their names to much to differentiate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can i help reader to differentiate those personalities from each other?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T02:27:27.603" Title="Multiple personalities character's speach in text" Tags="|style|characters|dialogue|naming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18958" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18966" CreationDate="2015-09-10T14:34:14.513" Score="0" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recall reading somewhere (I believe it was Orson Scott Card's &lt;em&gt;How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy&lt;/em&gt;) that you should either stick with one genre or the other. The reason he gave is that if you're popular in one genre, readers of the other genre won't know who you are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer to this would be to make your every book a bestseller and not rely on your reputation to sell your writing. But that's another matter. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite this, he does have a point. The fantasy crowd is different from the sci/fi crowd, and I expect publishers are more or less the same; they generally prefer to publish one or the other (if this assumption is wrong, please let me know). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's my question: If you intend to write both fantasy and sci/fi (or any two largely different genres), should you publish with the same publisher you've been using for your first genre (or try to), or should you use a different publisher that publishes in the new genre? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T04:58:05.320" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T04:58:05.320" Title="Fantasy and Science Fiction - should I choose a separate publisher?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|science-fiction|publisher|audience|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18959" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-10T15:32:29.000" Score="1" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone knows that a writer should read, but the question is &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question I would like to ask here is: &lt;em&gt;what books should a literary writer have read&lt;/em&gt;? What are the critical reference points that anyone in the game needs to have exposure to? What are perhaps lesser known works that are nevertheless important? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an open-ended question and clearly will entail a great deal of subjectivity, but writing is like that anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8367" LastEditorUserId="8367" LastEditDate="2015-09-12T18:12:48.687" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T20:17:50.877" Title="What should a literary writer read?" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18959" CreationDate="2015-09-10T17:22:06.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inferring that reading the right books can save someone from being a bad writer is ludicrous. Only repeatedly writing, and finishing, story after story can save someone from being a bad writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, all writers (all humans, really) should read equal parts fiction and non-fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiction shows you &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to write. As for specific titles, read whatever piques your interest, or is recommended based on your favorites. Setup a Goodreads account, add and rate the books you've read, and check out the recommendations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-fiction shows you &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; to write. Read philosophies, histories, biographies, essays, and anything else of interest that exposes you to what individuals and communities think about their setting. This is food for original story ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which novels/stories you read is arguably less important than how you read. That's a topic for another thread. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15187" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T17:22:06.713" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18959" CreationDate="2015-09-10T17:24:29.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It isn't what you read, but what you write that makes you great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you mean by 'literary writer'? Do you mean James Joyce? Also, although we can identify loads of popular fiction that is bad writing, surely agreeing what is good writing and therefore choosing a list of novels is extremely subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T17:24:29.700" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18917" CreationDate="2015-09-10T22:57:48.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;EXAMPLE ONE:&#xA;• &quot;Shut up!&quot; &#xA;Indicating surprise, and not that you wish for the other speaker to shut up and stop speaking.&#xA;For Example:&#xA;&quot;Amanda leaned over and kissed Ken, right there in Church!&quot;, said Rebecca.&#xA;&quot;Shut Up!&quot;, screeched Jill, upon hearing of the shocking behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe a more recent version of the same is, &quot;Shut the front door!&quot; Again, intending to indicate surprise, and is not a literal request for someone to walk over and shut the front door of a dwelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EXAMPLE TWO:&#xA;• &quot;He/She needs to get his/her thumb out his/her a**!&quot; &#xA;For Example: &quot;She needs to get her thumb out of her a**, and get in the right lane if she is going to drive so slow!&quot;&#xA;Meaning that the person needs to hurry up, and not that they literally have their digit inside their rectum, so it needs removing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EXAMPLE THREE:&#xA;Another version is, &quot;He/She needs to get his/her head out his/her a**!&quot; &#xA;In example: &#xA;&quot;He needs to get his head out of his a**, and start to manage his staff properly!&quot;&#xA;In this case, the phrase refers to someone that needs to stop being or acting stupid, and their need to act/be more intellugent. It does not literally mean that he/she has their cranium lodged in their rectum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EXAMPLE FOUR:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• &quot;I was totally blown away!&quot;, used to indicate a high level of emotional surprise.&#xA;For Example:&#xA;&quot;For my 21st Birthday, my friends surprised me with a trip to Maui! I was totally blown away by their generosity!&quot;&#xA;The birthday person did not get physically blown up by anyone, instead, he/she was deeply touch emotionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps you. The Southern U.S. is a patch work of local slang, and colloquialisms. One would be very ill advised to take the context of most verbal conversations, as literally fact versus it beinb simply a colorful expression, while here, unless one  knows both the speaker and the subject matter very well. Otherwise, the results could prove exceedingly humorous for others to witness, and rather embarrassing for the person that makes the literal assumptions during casual conversations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12844" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T22:57:48.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18958" CreationDate="2015-09-10T23:02:15.120" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there are many genres as closely connected as Fantasy and SciFi, and many of the top publishers produce both. That said, there are pros and cons of working with different publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working with the same publisher, you have a better chance of them wanting your career to succeed - if you're lucky, they may start promoting YOU as an author as opposed to your individual book, and that can be a benefit to your overall sales. The publisher is more likely to be understanding about your scheduling conflicts - they wouldn't likely push for a  book in the same month as another book is due if they know the other book is for a different department of their company. You also have a better chance of developing meaningful relationships within their organization, since you can concentrate your efforts there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it can be nice to have your eggs in a variety of baskets. This is especially important if you end up working with smaller publishers, as they may not be as stable as the larger ones; if you have books with just one publisher and they go under, you've taken a serious hit, but it's greatly reduced if you have books with multiple publishers. You also have the chance to learn from a wider variety of experts and to tap into the strengths of different companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal preference has been to go with multiple publishers. But I think there are arguments to be made for both sides of the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T23:02:15.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18967" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-11T00:57:37.697" Score="3" ViewCount="919" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a rookie writer, working on short stories thus far, mostly for practice and exposure. I need to get them out there somewhere. They're probably going to mostly fit into Sci-fi, fantasy, horror, weird fiction, etc. Genre stuff, in other words.&#xA;So my question is this: &lt;strong&gt;at this stage should I enter writing contests or submit to magazines and journals?&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;I want to get going on this but I'm stuck on issues such as these. &#xA;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12862" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T04:44:23.760" Title="For a new writer, is it better to enter contests or submit to magazines/journals?" Tags="|submitting-work|contests|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18967" CreationDate="2015-09-11T02:09:30.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to get started as a writer is to develop a portfolio of professional work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can start by doing jobs for free or on sites like hire writers. I wrote an article about how to use the site to get content created and how to use it to make money. Check out the article hopefully it will be useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://learninternetgrow.com/content-creation-hire-writers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Make Money as a Writer on Hire Writers Marketplace&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also there are articles about getting started as a freelancer on the same domain. They were written by a freelancer so it is sage advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To learn about creating a &lt;a href=&quot;http://learninternetgrow.com/building-freelance-writing-portfolio-scratch/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;professional content portfolio&lt;/a&gt; check out the link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you create your portfolio with a professional looking website featuring links to your work, you can develop relationships with editors and pitch them ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I fully support the idea of entering contests and submitting work to magazines, it might be more difficult to get paid this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15190" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T02:09:30.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18967" CreationDate="2015-09-11T03:45:20.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was in graduate school, one of my creative writing instructors suggested we students name awards after one another, win them, and then tell magazine editors about it in our cover letters. The advice was flip, but served to point out that contests are often expensive to enter, whereas magazines don't typically charge reading fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the interest of frugality, I usually steer writers away from awards and encourage them instead to focus on developing their skills in a writing group. Once developed by the group, a piece could be placed in a magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish there were a more clear &quot;ladder to success&quot; for writing. Once upon a time, perhaps it was &quot;Start with magazines, then move up to books,&quot; but these days I'm less sure. Time spent studying writing in college and graduate school can also be a path, which will improve writing and increase connections in the community of writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In more recent years, another mode seems to be developing in which writers gain an audience online with a blog, and then bring that blog to publishers with metrics describing how many unique visitors, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you the best of luck with your endeavors!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14724" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T03:45:20.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18918" CreationDate="2015-09-11T09:58:05.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, there's no such thing as &quot;too much gore and gross stuff&quot; when you are writing about gore and gross stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only problem that you are facing is in the details. For example -&gt; &quot;bloody Mary&quot; and &quot;bloody virgin Mary&quot; are two different sets of data and when you write about gore, you just need to figure out (while writing) which way does it sound best for current situation you imagined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user15193" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T09:58:05.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18945" CreationDate="2015-09-11T10:49:36.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Chris Sunamis' answer, I think it's worthwhile to point out that death can not only serve as a metaphor for rebirth, but also as avery neat ending. I remember two particular death scenes from love stories that I liked a lot (namely, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife and Karin Slaughter's first five or six books, and by the way: Spoiler coming up): The male partner of the relationship dies, I cried my eyes out, but it was still, in a sense, a satisfying death scene. Why? Because there was no other way the story could have continued. The male characters were fully developed and had finished their transition from imperfect little boys to men that I could fall in love with. How else should the story have continued? Of course, there was a &quot;Happily ever after&quot; looming heavily over these books. But I'm pretty sure the overall effect of the books would have been much less intense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note also that this interpretation of a satisfying death is in accord with Chris Sunamis' answer: The deaths in these two books marked the ultimate transition of the characters. Sad, but inevitable.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T10:49:36.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18945" CreationDate="2015-09-11T14:32:57.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember throwing Charles Frazer’s Cold Mountain across the room when, after Inman killed the Home Guard except Birch, Teague's vicious protégé. If you’ve read the story, you know the ending. It took me a few days to pick it up and finish. I realized later that Frazer showed how lives of soldiers and civilians develop and transform as a consequence of the tragedies of war. It is a book I will not forget. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with that lengthy run up, consider what the death of the character means to what you are trying to say. I am struggling with issue myself and in my draft, the scene is vague. I am editing now and may still leave the scene vague if I want to continue the series-another consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15131" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T14:32:57.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18967" CreationDate="2015-09-11T15:14:36.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It depends on two things.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What your skill level is. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What you feel comfortable doing. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I began writing with fan fiction and fan fiction contests. (&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; these contests were loose and open. They were not professional, and were simply somewhere to practice and receive criticism.) That's how I learned to write. If you're a beginner, still honing and perfecting your writing process, I believe open community contests may be for you. I would also look into fan fiction on something you're interested in. It's very open, and a great place to test methods out. It also has the added bonus of giving you free criticism, in the form of your readers' comments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you feel like you know what you're doing, and are just looking to solidify your processes, I would say magazines and journals could be a good way to go. They will give you a good taste of what actually writing a book is like, including the publishing process. You will probably get professional feedback/editing on what you write, and all feedback is invaluable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summing up&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it comes down to where you're at, and what you feel comfortable doing. If you're just a beginner, I would recommend contests, and especially fan fiction. If you have a solid process that you use to write and are looking to solidify it, I would recommend magazines or journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/em&gt; I have dabbled extensively in fan fiction and fan fiction contests. I have never gone near magazines or journals, simply because I never felt the need. I honed my processes entirely through fan fiction (and this site). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T15:14:36.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18974" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18980" CreationDate="2015-09-11T15:22:50.477" Score="1" ViewCount="2568" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hear this pretty often when I say/write something, be it in text messages or emails or on any social media/forums. What does this mean actually? I am thankfully able to convey my thoughts but I do not want to hear this anymore. Are there any thumb-rules to follow when I say/write something to make it &quot;sound natural&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14920" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T17:50:58.280" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T17:50:58.280" Title="What does it mean when someone says &quot;it doesn't sound very natural&quot;?" Tags="|criticism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18974" CreationDate="2015-09-11T15:48:39.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Natural&lt;/em&gt; refers to language that native speakers say or write. It is possible to write sentences which are not natural, by using words that wouldn't normally be used, or using word order that makes sense but is unusual, or by speaking/writing in a way that is unsuited to the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example would be if a person always spoke as if they were dictating a legal contract, using only a small number of precise terms. Or if every phrase they said was a Billboard top 100 song lyric. Or if unusual word order like Yoda they use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make your writing seem more natural, you need to read more and practice writing sentences that match the patterns you see in real life. You need to develop a sense of which words to use and where, and which kinds of sentences to use and which to avoid. You need to have appropriate grammar and choose the appropriate dialect and register.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, what you've written in your question sounds perfectly natural to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T15:48:39.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18967" CreationDate="2015-09-11T16:28:24.950" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is tough to get published in a magazine or journal, but if you want to be a professional writer, I think that's the route to go.  Most writing contests are not terribly high visibility, and quite a lot of them are expensive to enter.  A single solid publishing credit in a reputable magazine is worth more than a hundred awards from contests no one has ever heard from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sci-fi and fantasy are fortunate in that there are a number of genre publications devoted to them, some more general, some more targeted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One caveat:  Publications get so many unsolicited submissions that receiving any feedback at all is unlikely.  If you're still at a beginning stage, you might want to join a writing group, or find some other source of criticism first.  Otherwise, you might just be shouting into the void.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T16:28:24.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18977" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18979" CreationDate="2015-09-11T19:07:20.533" Score="0" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Zinsser's &quot;On Writing Well,&quot; he says to avoid the exclamation point altogether.  I agree it's juvenile and robs the reader of their chance to feel the impact of something for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I've run into a use case that relies on exclamation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In writing about cognitive science, I'm often citing studies whose conclusions counter common sense.  I'll explain the study and then write the counter-intuitive outcome:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If, however, they're told xyz, they're less motivated!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In this case, for instance, you'd expect that the subject, when told xyz, would be more motivated.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other way I can see to accomplish this is to say, &quot;they're less motivated, not more&quot;––but this seems dull.  If I don't explicitly point out that this is a counter-intuitive conclusion, I feel the reader could easily miss it.  That's why I've fallen back on the exclamation as an aid for the reader to easily spot counter-intuitive findings from the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other ways to mark the unexpected or counter-intuitive, other than the two I mentioned?  Is the exclamation forgivable in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3146" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T22:02:07.123" Title="Use of exclamation for the counter-intuitive" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18977" CreationDate="2015-09-11T20:26:32.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with using the exclamation mark in this situation is that readers may not realise the point(or even notice it). Therefore, I would err on the side of caution and make it very explicit. Surely this is the real point you are trying to make. Boring is better than ignored or misunderstood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said the above, you need to be very aware of your audience. How will they react? An English student/researcher is going to feel differently about the use of the exclamation mark than a scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T20:26:32.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18977" CreationDate="2015-09-11T22:02:07.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd certainly avoid exclamation points in academic writing, if that's what you're working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would be more effective to elaborate on the point you want to emphasize. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If, however, they're told xyz, they're actually less motivated. This may&#xA;  seem counter-intuitive, but the results have been confirmed in&#xA;  several studies, and are usually ascribed to a combination of&#xA;  alcoholism and natural-born cussedness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T22:02:07.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18974" CreationDate="2015-09-11T22:07:16.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An important part of writing well is understanding your audience and using the words that will have the desired effect on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing text messages to a sixteen year old, 'natural' language is going to be a lot more casual and text-speak-ish than if you were writing them to someone unused to the medium and more practised at long-form writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, the level of diction on a writers' forum is probably higher than the level on, say, a forum dedicated to a pop group or celebrity popular with uneducated people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Natural&quot; essentially means saying things in the way people expect to hear them. It's not necessarily a positive, but if you want to draw attention to your content rather than your manner of speaking, try to read how others post/write in that forum and imitate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T22:07:16.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18981" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-11T22:29:03.080" Score="3" ViewCount="92228" Body="&lt;p&gt;In school, I was taught that the in-text MLA citations should always be at the end of the sentence, even  when the quote itself is located in the middle of a sentence. I was looking at the Purdue OWL website and noticed that it says to put the author and page number right after a quote, even if the quote is in the middle of the sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They say this is correct:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to some, dreams express &quot;profound aspects of personality&quot; (Foulkes 184), though others disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was always taught the citation should look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to some, dreams express &quot;profound aspects of personality,&quot; though others disagree (Foulkes 184).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was there a change within the past few years that makes the former acceptable? Are both citations still considered valid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15202" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T23:02:26.627" Title="MLA citation in the middle of a sentence?" Tags="|mla|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18974" CreationDate="2015-09-12T00:02:35.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Natural&quot; is based on what most people would say. A sentence could be perfect grammatically, and not sound &quot;natural.&quot; This could occur in a situation where most people would use abbreviations or slang to say what you are saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/strong&gt; A &quot;hypothecation&quot; is a mortgage. A Spanish speaker might say, &quot;I have a hypothecation (hipoteca) on my house. But most English speakers would use the French term, &quot;mortgage,&quot; and say &quot;I have a mortgage on my house.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-09-14T13:47:06.607" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T13:47:06.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18984" CreationDate="2015-09-12T15:54:49.060" Score="5" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;p&gt;Until now I have written just 2 poems. I was looking around to have my poems published. From past few days, I am looking for magazines/journals that pay and accept online submissions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After having spent a lot of time submitting, I am wondering if it is worth it? Should I just post it online in my own website of something like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My condition is that I have a full time well paying job and currently have no plans to make a living out of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your views on this issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user15207" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T19:50:58.763" Title="Having poems published in magazines/journals Vs. Posting them online for free?" Tags="|publishing|poetry|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18983" CreationDate="2015-09-12T16:46:47.007" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I kicked a soccer ball around in the park yesterday and now I'm trying to decide if I should go pro or get a college scholarship. Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, slightly more directly... if you've only written two poems until now, probably your two poems aren't much good. I guess it's not impossible that they are, but for most people, writing is a skill that needs to be developed and refined. So, with that in mind, you're probably pretty early in your writing life to be looking for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There certainly are journals that accept and pay for poetry (although I don't think there are many poets making much real money at it, so it's good you've got a day job!) but they tend to look for... well, they tend to look for really good poems. Which, again, your two poems probably aren't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It certainly isn't impossible that you'll get your poems published - but do look out for the 'publishers' who want YOU to pay, rather than the other way around. There are contests and such like this, mostly aiming at teenagers but some at older writers. They're a scam, more or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But more realistically, I think it would make sense to post your poems, get some feedback, refine your craft, and eventually submit for publication when you've got a better idea of what's required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T16:46:47.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18959" CreationDate="2015-09-12T17:05:20.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I don't actually think anyone could provide you with a useful list of books here, because individuality, different approaches, style, subjectivity, blah blah all that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But an approach that works is this: read what you like, be it sci fi, fantasy, whatever.  Harry Potter.  Then sift through interviews and wikis of the authors you admire, and find their influences and teachers.  Then read the stuff written by those.  And enjoy it, but also, once you're done, ruminate on how they connect to the writing that brought you to them in the first place. Read them more than once if you have to.  Good books generally need to be read more than once anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach lets you get more directly at what you want to do, and leave out all the classic junk you don't really need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it does take a little bit of effort - but hopefully you read enough for fun to have a list of authors you can siphon information from, even if one of them doesn't have a lot available.  I mean reading a lot for fun is how you get to be a good writer.  The best writers tend to read &lt;em&gt;a lot.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15019" LastEditorUserId="15019" LastEditDate="2015-09-12T17:27:57.040" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T17:27:57.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18959" CreationDate="2015-09-12T20:17:50.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It feels like you're asking for a literary canon, but really, I don't think there is one any more. Things are a lot more wide-open, with a lot less dead-white-male worship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of books that were really important to me (not that I'm a literary writer, but I tend to be a literary reader)... they've changed as time goes on. When I first read &lt;em&gt;The Color Purple&lt;/em&gt; I was blown away by the dialect and the honesty, but it's not a book I've gone back to very often. I love re-reading Austen (&lt;em&gt;Persuasion&lt;/em&gt; is my favourite) but I'm reading for the characters, not for the writing style, so I'm really not sure they'd help someone trying to read as a writer, rather than as a reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with the other poster who suggested you try to narrow things down a little. Literary Fiction is a really broad category, but it can be broken down into sub-categories that might make more sense for you. Different cultural groups have different prominent writers - if you're African American, you should probably read Walker, Angelou, Morrison, Hughes, Wright, Du Bois, etc.. And it certainly wouldn't hurt for anyone else to read them, but if you're writing magical realism you might focus on just Morrison from that list and come to the others later, after you've read Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Haruki Murakami.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing some other sub-genre, I'd say you want to focus on other authors. So, really, it's pretty hard to pick one list that's going to be useful to everyone. Never hurts to read some Shakespeare, though!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T20:17:50.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18987" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-12T21:43:57.837" Score="1" ViewCount="435" Body="&lt;p&gt;I constantly find in translations of classic works untranslated passages. In English translations of Russian novels I find dialogue or narrative in French - as if the English-reading public, who clearly need the Russian translated, are expected to read French. Latin phrases are almost never translated. Do you people think we're all Latin scholars, do you think we don't care to know what's being said, do you just like leaving us in the dark, or are you too lazy to convey those passages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15212" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-09-13T03:06:41.467" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T17:59:24.523" Title="Untranslated passages in translated works" Tags="|translation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18983" CreationDate="2015-09-13T00:26:42.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I say submit your poems. Give editors a chance to buy them. If the chances are slim, so what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, the only harm in submitting is the time it takes to research the markets, and whatever anguish you might feel when an editor chooses not to buy. If those things aren't bothering you, go ahead and submit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big advantage of submitting is that if a magazine publishes one of your poems, your work gets free advertising. Depending on the magazine's circulation, that might be worth the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So send your poems to editors. When you don't feel like sending a given poem out again, post it on your own website. But first give a few editors a chance to buy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T00:26:42.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18945" CreationDate="2015-09-13T02:14:22.037" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the answers so far treat the death of a character as either a technical exercise in plot or thematic principle, or a blemish on the reader's entertainment experience. Even @ChrisSunami's intriguing and intelligent response concludes with the overly narrow&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;When the death is not accompanied by this hidden sense of rebirth, we merely experience it as senseless and depressing.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These responses do not suitably address @user2859458's question.&lt;/strong&gt; It's framed very specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes the death of a main character &lt;strong&gt;satisfying&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;unsatisfying&lt;/strong&gt;? (Emphasis mine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways in which a character's death can be &amp;quot;satisfying&amp;quot;. The character's death can complete the plot. The character may be so unsympathetic that it's pleasant to see him/her die. And yes, there's merit in @ChrisSunami's &amp;quot;hidden sense of rebirth&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But these are minor compared to the great concept of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathos&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pathos&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; Pathos is when the writer or composer stirs the audience's emotions. It's a peculiarly modern notion that the meaningful emotions are the simple ones such as  happiness or relief. Some of the greatest emotions are the painful ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Satisfaction, for the reader, can involve the exercise of sorrow and grief. A sense of the tragic. A sense of loss. A glimpse of the character's courage in the face of death. Pride; departure; perhaps even transcendence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shakespeare understood this very well. E. R. Eddison, whose thundering novel &lt;a href=&quot;http://manybooks.net/titles/eddisoneother060602051.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Worm Ouroboros&lt;/a&gt; chronicles - in Jacobean prose and Shakespearean dialogue - a long and bitter struggle between two kingdoms, certainly did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an edited excerpt from the end, when the Lords of Demonland stand among their dead enemies in the great banquet hall. Their triumph in this war is made bitter by the manner of its end in poison and treachery; and especially this end of the great love story of their magnificent enemies Prezmyra and Corund.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And while they gazed, there walked into the shifting light of the flamboys over that threshold the Lady Prezmyra, crowned and arrayed in her rich robes and ornaments of state. Her countenance was bleak as the winter moon flying high amid light clouds on a windy midnight settling towards rain, and those lords, under the spell of her sad cold beauty, stood without speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a while Juss, speaking as one who needeth to command his voice, and making grave obeisance to her, said, &amp;quot;O Queen, we give you peace. Command our service in all things whatsoever. And first in this, which shall be our earliest task ere we sail homeward, to stablish you in your rightful realm of Pixyland. But this hour is overcharged with fate and desperate deeds to suffer counsel. Counsel is for the morning. The night calleth to rest. I pray you give us leave.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prezmyra looked upon Juss, and there was eye-bite in her eyes, that glinted with green metallic lustre like those of a she-lion brought to battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Thou dost offer me Pixyland, my Lord Juss,&amp;quot; said she, &amp;quot;that am Queen of Impland. And this night, thou thinkest, can bring me rest. These that were dear to me have rest indeed: my lord and lover Corund; the Prince my brother; Gro, that was my friend. Deadly enow they found you, whether as friends or foes.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Juss, whose sword was bare in his hand, smote it home in the scabbard and stepped towards her. But the table was betwixt them, and she drew back to the dais where Corund lay in state. There, like some triumphant goddess, she stood above them, the cup of venom in her hand. &amp;quot;Come not beyond the table, my lords,&amp;quot; she said, &amp;quot;or I drain this cup to your damnation.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brandoch Daha said, &amp;quot;The dice are thrown, O Juss. And the Queen hath won the hazard.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Madam,&amp;quot; said Juss, &amp;quot;I swear to you there shall no force nor restraint be put upon you, but honour only and worship shown you, and friendship if you will. That surely mightest thou take of us for thy brother's sake.&amp;quot; Thereat she looked terribly upon him, and he said, &amp;quot;Only on this wild night lay not hands upon yourself. For their sake, that even now haply behold us out of the undiscovered barren lands, beyond the dismal lake, do not this.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still facing them, the cup still aloft in her right hand, Prezmyra laid her left hand lightly on the brazen plates of Corund's byrny that cased the mighty muscles of his breast. Her hand touched his beard, and drew back suddenly; but in an instant she laid it gently again on his breast. Somewhat her orient loveliness seemed to soften for a passing minute in the altering light, and she said, &amp;quot;I was given to Corund young. This night I will sleep with him, or reign with him, among the mighty nations of the dead.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Juss moved as one about to speak, but she stayed him with a look, and the lines of her body hardened again and the lioness looked forth anew in her peerless eyes. &amp;quot;...Shall the blackening frost, when it hath blasted and starved all the sweet garden flowers, say to the rose, Abide with us; and shall she harken to such a wolfish suit?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So speaking she drank the cup; and turning from those lords of Demonland as a queen turneth her from the unregarded multitude, kneeled gently down by Corund's bier, her white arms clasped about his head, her face pillowed on his breast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps overly long for an answer rooted in contemporary American sensibilities. May you all forgive me the length of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if you want to be a writer, you should really study the nature, and meaning, and &lt;em&gt;feeling&lt;/em&gt; of tragedy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T02:14:22.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10071" CreationDate="2015-09-13T12:49:29.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a legit way to write romance, and Judith McNaught uses it in her stories, particularly &lt;em&gt;A Kingdom of Dreams&lt;/em&gt;. She artfully mixes POV's of Jenny (the heroine) and Royce (the hero) in a single scene where they're both present, but without repetition. One character begins the scene, the other ends it, for example. I think it's very useful to describe sexual encounters if you have any. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is a difficult technique, so you may want to read this article by K.M. Weiland, especially to avoid head-hopping:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;when the narrative breaks “out of POV” and jumps without warning from the perspective of one character into the perspective of another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/omniscient-pov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What Every Writer Ought to Know About the Omniscient POV&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15206" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T12:49:29.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18992" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19017" CreationDate="2015-09-13T13:41:22.073" Score="3" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a screenplay in which the protagonist has to surmount a crisis in each of the three acts. That is, a physical crisis in Act I, a social crisis in Act II, and a psychological crisis in Act III. Or, in storytelling language, Woman against nature in Act I, woman against men in Act II, and woman against herself in Act III.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the three crises be regarded as having &quot;equal&quot; value? Does the fact that the psychological crisis occurs in Act III make it the greatest crisis? Or is a psychological crisis, in fact the greatest of the three crises, and therefore appropriately placed in Act III?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-03-22T11:16:16.410" LastActivityDate="2019-03-22T11:16:16.410" Title="What is the meaning of the dictum that the third act should contain the greatest crisis?" Tags="|fiction|screenwriting|3-acts|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18992" CreationDate="2015-09-13T14:34:51.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because the story you are telling will be finished in two-hours, you need to be economical in your dramatic decisions. Every scene must count, and therefore every scene must build from the previous one. If each of the three crises is of equal weight, nothing is really advanced, and you create a pattern similar to the Labors of Hercules: nobody really remembers all 12 because they were all pretty much the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If each of the three crises has equal weight &lt;em&gt;to you the author&lt;/em&gt;, you may want to consider writing three separate films. The first establishes the character and she overcomes a physical threat. That's great for pulling people in. Pitting her against society in the second film ups the stakes dramatically and can easily set up the self-doubt or whatever psychological crisis she will face in the third film. The third film by its very nature will then reframe the first two since the inner danger is far greater than the two previous, external dangers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If three separate films is not an option, you could first write each act as its own detailed synopsis. As you write them out, figure out ways that they relate (other than in terms of narrative). Make each crisis its own self-contained thing and then write the all-important transitions from one to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Act III&quot; is certainly where people &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; the biggest crisis to occur (in most studio films). Are psychological crises more important or intrinsically better than the other types? That depends on your audience and on your own dramatic value system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T14:34:51.110" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3296" CreationDate="2015-09-13T17:40:44.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing as someone writing a story, and who decided to make it a &quot;script&quot; instead of a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A novel is primarily concerned about a character's feelings. One or more characters goes into long &quot;soliloquies,&quot; or least a narrator does it for them. IMHO, &quot;Hamlet, a play, would have done better as a novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A movie, on other hand, is action oriented. There are a lot of dramatic scenes (in my case, a science fiction &quot;mechanic,&quot; plus people &quot;passing out&quot; at critical times, making you wonder whether they are sick or well). There is only a limited amount of narration, and what feelings exist are expressed through dialog. This format lends itself better to a movei.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T17:40:44.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18995" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-13T19:01:24.143" Score="8" ViewCount="6513" Body="&lt;h3&gt;A Quick Note&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked if this was an okay topic &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1072/question-about-file-format-differences-on-topic/1073#1073&quot;&gt;over on Meta&lt;/a&gt;, and they said it should be okay, as long as I &quot;describe the writing-related context -- what you're writing, who (if anybody) you're collaborating with or submitting it to, etc. -- how you use those files. And you already know to steer clear of opinion surveys.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of these points, I did try my best to fulfill all those criteria below, and I also made sure to check out the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/875/writers-se-on-topic-summary&quot;&gt;On-Topic Summary&lt;/a&gt; over on Meta. And, as I stated on my Meta post, &quot;I chose Writers.SE over other sites because I would be using this primarily for writing; go figure.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a huge supporter of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FOSS&lt;/a&gt; (Free and Open-Source Software), and so I would love to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ODF&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;code&gt;.odt&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;.ods&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;.odp&lt;/code&gt;, etc.) as opposed to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OOXML&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;code&gt;.docx&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;.xlsx&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;pptx&lt;/code&gt;, etc.), but I'm not sure if it's got the features I need. I'm not a hugely complex user, but I'm not exactly inexperienced, either. I guess I'd be more of an intermediate user?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I did a fair share of research on my own, I assure you. Most of that stuff I looked at are listed at the bottom under Sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is this: given the information listed here, would it be okay for me to switch to OpenDocument Format, or would it be better for me to just stick with Office Open XML? Or, if an answer to that question isn't possible, then which is the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; option of these two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Some Info About Myself &amp;amp; How I'd Use the Stuff *&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I write a lot, typically nonfiction but occasionally fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I need endnote and footnote support.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would prefer, though I do not need, Android support. Does &lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cn.wps.moffice_eng&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WPS Office&lt;/a&gt; support it? Fully or partially? I've already contacted them, but I don't know how much info they may &quot;conveniently&quot; forget to leave out, you know, so I'm asking all of you in case you know something I should know. :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What's the compatibility like with Word? What about Excel? PowerPoint? Access?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can ODS files support formulæ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;SmartArt and graphs (in both Word and Excel)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't really collaborate, so it's cool if the feature-set's not that great with that, but I do need to be able to reliably send the file to someone. This is almost &lt;strong&gt;certainly&lt;/strong&gt; a &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt;. I read in one of those Reddit threads cited below that an option could be to send a PDF, but that's a problem because you can't easily edit a PDF. So although it's a way I could work around compatibility shortcomings, it's not perfect and, thus, not exactly preferred. Doesn't have to be perfect. Just perfect &lt;em&gt;enough&lt;/em&gt;. Lol.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Compatibility with popular extensions, such as those for LibreOffice, MS Office, and Google Docs/Sheets/Slides?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Compatibility with Google Docs? Sheets? Slides?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are PowerPoint animations possible? If so, how compatible are they with LibreOffice Impress, MS PowerPoint, or Google Slides?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;LibreOffice has compatibility with MediaWiki. If I wanted to back up a draft or whatever, could I? (Note: I've never used that feature before, so for all I know, backing up a draft or post or whatever may not even involve ODF filetypes, but just in case they did, and I ever decided one day I wanted to try it out, I'd like to know.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any other pros you can think of?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any other cons you can think of?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any other neutral points I should know of?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Chrome OS compatibility? (I don't use Google Drive, but I have a Chromebook so it'd be nice to be able to edit, or at the very least &lt;em&gt;view&lt;/em&gt;, ODF files on it.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can you view ODF files on Dropbox?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;OneDrive compatibility?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Linux compatibility? (Specifically Ubuntu.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mac OS X compatibility?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you like Jell-O? :3&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*This list is not exhaustive, but it is the best I could do at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sources&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reddit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidQuestions/comments/tuxe1/office_suites_with_opendocument_support_odt_ods/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Office Suites with OpenDocument Support (ODT, ODS, ODT). They Exist?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, via &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/androidquestions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;/r/AndroidQuestions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/82xa5/support_opendocument_format_odf/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Support OpenDocument Format (ODF)&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (comments section only), via &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/technology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;/r/Technology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/LinuxActionShow/comments/1f9w8s/can_someone_please_kill_docx/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Can Someone Please Kill .Docx&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, via &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxactionshow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;/r/LinuxActionShow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/5yqqz/opendocument_foundation_drops_support_for_odf/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;OpenDocument Foundation Drops Support for ODF, Looks for Alternative Format&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This one gave me a freaking heart attack, until I realised it was 7 years ago. x.x ), via &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;/r/Programming&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;OpenDocument&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Office Open XML&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Office_Open_XML_and_OpenDocument&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Comparison of Office Open XML and OpenDocument&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_adoption#United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;OpenDocument Adoption&quot; &gt; &quot;United States&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_software#Text_documents_.28.odt.29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;OpenDocument Software&quot; &gt; &quot;Text Documents (.ODT)&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenFormula&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;OpenFormula&quot;&lt;/a&gt; ¹&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathML&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;MathML&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between-the-OpenDocument-Text-odt-format-and-the-Word-docx-format-d9d51a92-56d1-4794-8b68-5efb57aebfdc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Differences Between the OpenDocument Text (.ODT) Format and the Word (.Docx) Format&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, via Microsoft Office Support [official page]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoworld.com/article/2639468/techology-business/odf-vs--openxml.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;InfoWorld Reality Check: ODF vs. OpenXML&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, via InfoWorld&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/S6IkdnuH91E&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Whatever Happened to Open Document File Format Support?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, via Google Docs Help Forum&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;¹ It's not a huge consideration, but as OpenFormula is apparently related to MathML, and MathML is related to LaTeX, and I'm hoping to get started learning LaTeX in my free time soon, I thought maybe I should read it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:03.470" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T20:10:24.840" Title="Would Office Open XML or OpenDocument Format be better for my needs?" Tags="|software|tools|freelance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18928" CreationDate="2015-09-13T19:58:01.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you have to approach this from a slightly meta point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're all familiar with Chekhov's gun - that 'every element in a narrative is to be irreplacable'. So assuming you're following this principle, and doing it well, by the time your readers reach the stage where the victim is being rescued from the dungeon they're quite likely to be thinking 'so, what makes this character irreplacable?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the character does nothing that couldn't be cut prior to the betrayal, then the reader is not going to be surprised. If the character does very little that couldn't be cut prior to the betrayal, then the reader is going to be wondering why this dead weight is being dragged around and still not be very surprised. You need to think of a reason why the character is being rescued that is both plausible to the in-universe protagonists, to maintain suspension of disbelief, but is also plausible to the reader based on the literary conventions of whatever genre you're writing in, to lead said reader down a blind alley. To that end I'd suggest looking few a few books from authors you want to emulate and seeing how they introduce supporting characters, and what kind of roles they have them fill. Then take this and subvert it - the character fills this role, the reader thinks they know what's going on, and then pow, betrayal!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, if you do this really well, then I can imagine it may end up working against you. A truely surprising betrayal will by definition mess with readers' expectations. And if everything else so far has been lampshaded, that can be jarring. Depending on how the rest of the story is playing out and what kind of conventions you're following there can be nothing more satifying than introducing a character who is trusted by the protagonists, but the reader can tell is shady. The tension then builds from how and when the betrayal happens  - the reader get a 'I knew it!' payoff, and you can still surprise them by revealing the betrayer's motives are not quite what they expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4710" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T19:58:01.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18918" CreationDate="2015-09-14T00:43:58.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you won't come across as creepy if there are reasons the gross characters are in the story. The reasons don't even need to be deep. For example, I think it could be quite funny for someone to wonder who has been cleaning his toilet, making a minor mystery out of it that is answered by revealing the existence of the creature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12987" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T00:43:58.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18945" CreationDate="2015-09-14T02:06:34.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coincidentally, I recently wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;http://frankluke.com/2015/09/07/living-with-purpose-dying-with-same/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog entry&lt;/a&gt; on character death and the best one I remember. A good death scene for a character, one that satisfies us, is one where the character has fulfilled his purpose to the story (and to the fictional life). Likewise, an unsatisfying death is one where the purpose of the character remains unfulfilled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example I use is that of Sturm Brightblade from the DragonLance Saga. He dies at the end of the second novel, but his death hits all the right notes. He is one of the last faithful knights, but his death not only buys the defenders' needed time but rallies them to victory. The unification doesn't stop with that victory. The knights' factions put aside their differences for the rest of the war and beyond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sturm's death satisfied because the authors portrayed him as a tragic character from the beginning. He lived by a code that most found obsolete and too rigid. You knew from reading that Sturm was not going to have what we called a happy ending. For him, it was. He died as he lived. His death accomplished what he wanted to and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read deaths that didn't satisfy either. Most of those were inconsequential to the plot (though they were presented as major points). For example, if the entire story has followed said character's POV, his death 80% of the way through forces us to switch to another POV character for the remainder of the tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also unsatisfying would be if the death were too easy. If the villain has been setup as the ultimate badness to ever walk the earth and the heroes have spent the whole book questing for him, the final battle needs to be more than a half-hearted speech and one stray ice spell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The death has to stir the reader's emotions. It must impact the reader. If the main character's girlfriend dies, make that death as important to us as it is to him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you know the death is coming, it can still be meaningful. Look at the death of Uncle Ben in Spiderman. I certainly knew it was coming, but the sudden death and then Peter catching the gunman only to realize that HE (Peter) could have stopped him earlier and saved Uncle Ben's life... It was presented as a pivotal moment, and the audience felt it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, character death is meaningful if the audience has come to care for the character and it fulfills a purpose to the story and character's life. If the audience doesn't care for the character's life, their death won't matter no matter how much of a plot point it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5085" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T02:06:34.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18987" CreationDate="2015-09-14T04:12:18.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't claim that all untranslated passages are this, but one reason certain Latin passages were left untranslated in the 19th century was because their English translations would have been considered obscene. If you look at a Victorian translation of the first century BCE Roman poet Catullus, you will see many examples of this. It was the privilege of erudite Latinists to understand clever and funny if bawdy poetry that could not, say, be discussed in mixed company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhat later, TS Eliot, an American/British poet, unapologetically published several poems in untranslated French. My French ends at &lt;em&gt;bon jour&lt;/em&gt;, but from what &lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/m/translate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Translate&lt;/a&gt; tells me, those poems are quite randy as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be other reasons passages of both prose and poetry are left untranslated, but prurience has certainly been one reason. Though in America, TV and film continue to be censored by someone who pretends to know better than I what I should and should not see, printed material these days seems fairly liberal in content, so if you look for a more recent translation of a text not fully translated in an older edition, you might find all the missing parts on full display and in full bloom. Happy reading! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14708" LastEditorUserId="14708" LastEditDate="2015-09-14T14:58:00.273" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T14:58:00.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18756" CreationDate="2015-09-14T05:03:30.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's called a &lt;em&gt;hook&lt;/em&gt;, and it's a legitimate way of grabbing the reader's interest before settling down into the more mundane elements of setting up the story. Many episodes of &lt;em&gt;Breaking Bad&lt;/em&gt; start, before the credits, with a hook that shows something from near the end of the episode or, in the case of season two, which culminates with the mid-air plane collision (&quot;ABQ,&quot; season 2, episode 13), a few episodes begin with scenes from the aftermath of that crash. So by all means, seize your reader by starting &lt;em&gt;in media res&lt;/em&gt; (in the middle of things).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14708" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T05:03:30.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19002" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-14T11:12:51.763" Score="1" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a non-fiction ghostwriter wanting to ghostwrite fiction for others, what are some of the places I can find such work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15224" LastActivityDate="2015-10-24T19:54:47.620" Title="How to begin Ghostwriting Fiction?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19003" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19005" CreationDate="2015-09-14T12:22:00.240" Score="7" ViewCount="4213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been recently writing a lot of graduate school papers and I've noticed that I consistently use the word which to explain concepts. I have a feeling that there is a better way to express my ideas and I'd like to change my writing style up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some suggestions to do so? Alternatively, is this a non-issue and totally fine writing style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the past seven years or so I’ve been working as some form of&#xA;  interface designer which makes me a practitioner in the field of&#xA;  usability studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a practitioner in the field it’s my responsibility to take a&#xA;  user-centered approach to my work which makes this paper an&#xA;  interesting topic to write about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15226" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T13:47:11.960" Title="How do I stop using 'which' to explain things" Tags="|style|academic-writing|structure|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19003" CreationDate="2015-09-14T12:33:54.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Semicolons are your best friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a practitioner in the field it’s my responsibility to take a&#xA;  user-centered approach to my work; &lt;strong&gt;making&lt;/strong&gt; this paper an&#xA;  interesting topic to write about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15228" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T12:33:54.063" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19003" CreationDate="2015-09-14T13:26:37.047" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your problem were only with the single word &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt;, it would be routine to solve it by simply using a different word:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;I have been working for the past seven years as some form of interface designer, making me  a practitioner in the field of usability studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are other ways to avoid the problem you have identified. I do not think that lies with the word &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt;, however, but in the way you construct your statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic architecture I see at work here is &lt;strong&gt;statement of fact&lt;/strong&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;explanation of statement&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;That&lt;/em&gt; is what gets to be tiring. So I suggest you try to vary your delivery of information. Some examples follow, which I will model on your first example (note necessary insertion of comma):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the past seven years or so I’ve been working as some form of interface designer[,] which makes me a practitioner in the field of usability studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other constructions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lead with the result as an independent sentence&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am a practitioner in the field of usability studies. For the past seven years I've been working as some form of interface designer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lead with the result as a subordinate clause&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A practitioner in the field of usability studies, I have been working for the past seven years as some form of interface designer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Blend the two statements into one&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am a practitioner in the field of usability studies who has spent the past seven years working as an interface designer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that in the last case I have removed &quot;some form of&quot; as a modifier for &quot;interface designer,&quot; because it weakens the statement.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are just three examples, and all are based on the statement you yourself made. But it is not the only statement possible. You can talk about other things, you can lead into something obliquely, then quicken the pace to make a bolder statement, and so on. The important thought that I would leave you with is that varying your prose is always a good idea. You can't bore people into reading what you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastEditorUserId="633" LastEditDate="2015-09-14T13:47:11.960" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T13:47:11.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18987" CreationDate="2015-09-14T17:40:32.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cynical side of me thinks sometimes it is that the writer wants to appear well-educated. However, this is obviously not always the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a phrase has a clearer meaning, sounds better or is far more succint in the original language e.g. veni vidi vici.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a character will use foreign expressions because it is what he or she would do in real life (more common is Victorian and slightly later novels).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally it is a quick way to create atmosphere or setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T17:40:32.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18987" CreationDate="2015-09-14T17:59:24.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a translator, but as I understand that craft the primary goal is to render a text from one language into another while keeping the author's intentions and stylistic choices as intact as possible. In the case of a Russian novel with French phrases -- well, French would be equally foreign to a Russian readership as it would to an English one (i.e. in the 19th century -- when most of 'classic' Russian literature was written -- the wealthy &amp;amp; educated classes who made up a majority of readers in either country would be expected to know French, as it was the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lingua_francas#French&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;lingua franca&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; of Europe; in the modern world this is not the case, but such are the perils of reading classic literature), so it would make sense to leave those phrases untranslated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5765" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T17:59:24.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19008" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-14T18:55:45.677" Score="0" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am deciding between First Person and Third Person (and inclined towards First Person)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the limitations of the protagonist is that he is a poor communicator and this impacts his relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is - how can the protagonist, who is a poor communicator tell the story that will be a fine narrative? how can I the author who is actually writing on behalf of the protagonist distance myself from the protagonist. Author is a great story teller, but protagonist is not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15230" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2018-09-24T10:49:22.633" LastActivityDate="2018-09-24T10:49:22.633" Title="How can a poor communicator protagonist (but great story teller author) tell a fine narrative in first person POV?" Tags="|fiction|technique|narrative|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-09-15T13:13:34.233" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19009" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-14T19:03:32.553" Score="2" ViewCount="388" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am deciding between first and third person narration for a book (and am inclined to write in the first person).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the limitations of the protagonist is that he is not a great communicator, and this impacts his relationships in a significant way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: can he then write a fine narrative in the first person? How do I create the differentiation between me the author, who is actually writing the book, and the voice of the protagonist who is supposed to be narrating the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15231" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2015-09-14T19:53:17.840" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T23:23:34.850" Title="Can a character with poor communication skills be used to create an excellent first-person narrative?" Tags="|fiction|technique|narrative|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19009" CreationDate="2015-09-14T19:33:29.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't have a problem. People can be very good at expressing themselves in writing, while being terrible at saying the right thing in social situations. Your protagonist has the benefit of distance when communicating to the reader. He can take his time, get his thoughts in order and not only relay what happened, but also reflect on, or rationalise the bad communication choices he made. Think about how many times in film or TV a perfectly eloquent character has made a nervous, confused mess out of talking to someone (usually of the opposite sex). The audience gets it, sometimes it's difficult to talk, sometimes it's easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T19:33:29.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19009" CreationDate="2015-09-14T19:52:33.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on why your character is &quot;bad at speaking&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written a short first-person story in which the main character does not say a single word, but he's thinking a lot. He is even nearly speaking at himself in his head, he criticizes the other characters, he's thinking about what he should/could have said and then realises it was not worth the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very easy with a cynical character which criticizes quite everything he see, but you can do it with a shy one, or any character with a lot of things in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to make your character speak all the time to have a first person narrative, you only have to write down his thoughts. And he can have a lot of thoughts even if he is quiet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm even quite sure that quiet people thinks more than the noisy ones, but that's an opinion)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15149" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T19:52:33.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18995" CreationDate="2015-09-14T20:36:46.580" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm also a big FOSS supporter, and I detest using Microsoft products for many reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, here's a fairly hardnosed take on the subject, from Charles Stross, a very successful author and sound thinker - who is also a FOSS advocate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/10/why-microsoft-word-must-die.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Microsoft Word Must Die&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;MS made what seems like an intensely stupid engineering decision about visual formatting: to simultaneously support two totally separate formatting schemes. These two do NOT work together very well. This creates intense complexity within the file format. It also creates low-level logic problems that are so bad that &lt;em&gt;not even Microsoft can guarantee that the visual formatting of their own files is going to be consistent in all cases.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This weakness doesn't matter much to the home and office customers that make up the huge majority of Word users. But it's a real problem for extremely format-sensitive work. &lt;strong&gt;Like publishing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;MS, through market manipulation, managed to force almost everyone to use Windows, Office, and Word. The publishing industry was not exempt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then, MS decided to double down on their awful file format by &lt;em&gt;breaking backwards compatibility with each new release of their own product.&lt;/em&gt; Making sure that everybody had to buy a copy of the new version of Word, or else be left behind. Charlie: &amp;quot;Each new version of Word defaulted to writing a new format of file which could not be parsed by older copies of the program.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As the file formats changed over time, they didn't get better. From Microsoft's point of view, the bad file format was a feature, not a bug: Word, having achieved near-monopoly status, is pretty thoroughly sheltered from competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/11/cmap-why-do-you-use-microsoft-.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why I still have to use Microsoft Word (even though I hate it)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You already know I hate Microsoft Word. But it takes actual exposure to generate such a volume of bile, and you probably won't be surprised to learn that there's a copy of Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac on this laptop. Even though I don't use it for writing books, or even business correspondence (I've got Scrivener for the former task and Pages or LibreOffice for the latter) I can't get away from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all because of the workflow of the trade fiction publishing business.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The cryptic and impenetrable nature of the MS Word file format - especially its very hard-to-reproduce versioning system - means that writers and editors and typesetters and so on are all &lt;em&gt;at great risk of introducing publisher's errors if they attempt to use anything &lt;strong&gt;except&lt;/strong&gt; MS Word&lt;/em&gt; for communication between the various stages of the publishing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This has knock-on effects: yes, you can use what you wish (Charlie likes &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrivener_%28software%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;) for composing a novel, assuming it can emit MS Word files; but you can't use that tool for exchanging edits. You have to use MS Word for editing. Even though it's not the tool that most people would use for writing a nontrivial work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Charlie's commenters are (mainly) smart and helpful. Reading the comments is a good thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a happy read, but if you want to work with the publication pipeline, you need to know this stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13203" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T20:10:24.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19009" CreationDate="2015-09-14T23:23:34.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of examples of first person narratives by a character whose speaking level isn't easily comprehensible by the reader. The character Benjy Compson in Faulkner's &lt;em&gt;The Sound and the Fury&lt;/em&gt; is notoriously difficult to understand, as every sentence is somewhat disconnected from those that come before and after, in both time and space. His brothers, though able to form a consistent narrative, are likewise difficult to understand. Faulkner's &lt;em&gt;As I Lay Dying&lt;/em&gt; uses both dialect and intelligence levels in portraying over a dozen first person narrators, and while these do pose a difficulty for the reader, a texture and pattern begins to develop that helps guide the way. Stephen Dedalus, a very careful and articulate thinker in James Joyce's &lt;em&gt;The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Ulysses&lt;/em&gt; may also be considered a poor communicator, largely because his obsessions are far beyond those of the average reader, and these inform much of what he is saying. Going much further back in English literature, we have Tristram Shandy, whose communication skills are so poor that, while he can write very well, his autobiography doesn't make it much past his own birth (and for all that, it's a very funny and worthwhile book). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the voice is consistently used, and you the author are aware of what is being left out by the speaker, a compelling story can be told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, we have a whole category of narrative technique wrapped up in the &quot;unreliable narrator&quot;, someone who tells a story, but is either willfully lying or doesn't know as much as he or she thinks they know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regarding differentiating the author and the protagonist.&lt;/strong&gt; A third person narrator (the author) can insert himself into the text via commentary and asides. Readers often need cues if both the narrator and the protagonist are guiding the text. This is a huge challenge, but if you want to portray the thoughts of the protagonist as separate from the narrator's storytelling, the convention is to italicize the thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T23:23:34.850" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19008" CreationDate="2015-09-15T00:31:13.327" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How is his communication poor? Like, he has trouble sharing his emotions, or he actually has trouble with words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, you can probably make it work. If the guy has trouble sharing his emotions, you may be looking at someone like Holden Caulfield (&lt;em&gt;Catcher in the Rye&lt;/em&gt;) who tells the reader what's going on but doesn't seem to have a lot of self-knowledge about exactly why it's going on. He's also telling the story from a time in the future, so he's got slightly more perspective on it all and that might help a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the character has trouble with words, you're going to have a bit more of a challenge, but it's still not impossible. You can write in dialect (like &lt;em&gt;Trainspotting&lt;/em&gt; and others) if the character is verbose but not in conventional English, or you could try to really simplify your writing, like Charlie at the end of &lt;em&gt;Flowers for Algernon&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, totally do-able, but will require some thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T00:31:13.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19008" CreationDate="2015-09-15T07:00:19.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;do this: make it apparent that though the protagonist may be a poor communicator, but isn't a poor thinker, only has trouble getting his thoughts across. then, using narrative cast subtle shadows of distinction between what s/he is thinking and the actual dialogue. your readers will be riveted!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15224" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T07:00:19.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18992" CreationDate="2015-09-15T08:11:05.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding of the Three Act Structure is the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act I&lt;/strong&gt;: The Status Quo is shown. For some reason the protagonist realizes that the status quo is not stable anymore and needs revision. Note that it is crucial to define the &quot;initial conditions&quot; of a story. Only then will the reader be able to fully grasp the importance and the significance of the change that you describe in Acts II and III. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act II&lt;/strong&gt;: A change occurs. It might be wrought by the protagonist or by some other incident. The scene in which the change actually occurs is commonly called &lt;strong&gt;The Crisis&lt;/strong&gt;. Note that the word &lt;em&gt;crisis&lt;/em&gt; originates from Greek and can be translated into &quot;separation&quot;, &quot;judgement&quot;, &quot;dispute&quot; (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/crisis#Etymology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiktionary&lt;/a&gt;). That is: The crisis brings about a substantial change that will impact the unstable Status Quo identified in Act I in one way or the other.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act III&lt;/strong&gt;: The change induced by the crisis is incorporated into the daily life of the protagonist. Act III thus answers the important question: Will the protagonist be able to consolidate the change? Or was the change of Act II just a fling that fades away in the first light of dawn? The scene that usually answers this question is &lt;strong&gt;The Climax&lt;/strong&gt;. (&lt;em&gt;climax&lt;/em&gt;, Latin derived from Greek, literally &quot;ladder&quot;, more generally the culmination of an evolution, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/climax#Etymology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiktionary&lt;/a&gt;.) Note that, in my opinion, it is crucial that the protagonist is active in Act III. He may be passive in Act I, he can be passive in Act II, but Act III is the time for him to show what he's made of. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this structure is very general and needs to be adapted to your specific needs. The crisis and the climax, for example, do not need to be widely separated from each other. What I find very helpful, though, is the notion that the Three Act Structure is the most general description of a change. And that is what any one story should deal with: A change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advise for you would thus be: Identify the change that you want to tell your story about. What is the one crucial transformation that fascinates you and that needs to be shown to an audience? Is it a physical change, a social one, or a psychological one? Is it necessary to separate these three changes from each other? Can you weave a story about this change that allows you to bring about the three climaxes - heroine defeats a physical threat, resolves her issue with society and consolidates a fundamental psychological evolution in her personality - in one scene or at least in scenes that are close to each other? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, when it comes to the Three Act Structure, I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/193290736X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chris Vogler's &quot;The Writer's Journey&quot;&lt;/a&gt; very helpful. You need to get used to his rather mystic language and do a lot of interpretation for yourself, but if you do, it pays off. A recent great example of the Hero's Journey well used in entertaining fiction (no literary ambitions here) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.de/Lockwood-Co-Screaming-Staircase-Book/dp/0857532022&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jonathan Stroud's &quot;Lockwood &amp;amp; Co: The Screaming Staircase&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. The structure of this book and the way it creates suspense is simply marvelous. On the other hand, if you are familiar with the other works of Stroud, you will find that he uses the same structure over and over again. He does that very well, but since his stories usually lack a pronounced psychological component, they repeat themselves. Hence, to answer your question in a purely subjective way: For me, the psychological evolution of a character is what makes me read a book and creates suspense most efficiently. I would always try to focus on this change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T08:11:05.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19019" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-15T10:45:19.413" Score="2" ViewCount="509" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've just picked up a second hand Psion 5MX with the intention of using it to fit in the gap between when not at a desk/laptop and when in need of  more than just a phone for jotting notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found the keyboard a little 'viscose' at first, but am slowly getting used to it. It's registering the spacebar hits that seems to be the most problematic so far. While I would be more comfortable at a laptop, the 25-40 hour battery life of the Psion and its complete lack of distractions might still win out in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard people claim to have written books and articles for publication on them. It is the distraction-free and long-life aspect I find interesting and am wondering whether to pursue writing on the device for those aspects in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do people write substantial[0] works on electronic devices[1] like these that are not laptops?  If so, what factors are most important (either in the device or in how you use it), and what are the pitfalls to watch out for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had time in the intervening days to type up some web content and book outlines on the device and so far it is fitting into the gap between phone notes (almost useless in comparison) and at-desk laptop sessions (with all the other distractions that entails) very well. I'd be keen to hear impressions of others who are straying away from their PCs to write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[0] i.e. of personal or professional importance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Important in my case to avoid time spent typing up from paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15238" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-09-18T18:20:27.397" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T06:04:50.470" Title="Mobile writing: can you write substantial works on a Psion palmtop or similar?" Tags="|mobile|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18756" CreationDate="2015-09-15T16:56:59.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should most definitely use that technique. It's called the hook, because it &quot;hooks&quot; the reader's attention and envelops them into the story. This technique doesn't always have to be about the climax of the ending of the actual story; the beginning can be a hook without being related to the rest of the story at all. For example, a book could start out with a man skydiving into an island, and then the rest of the book discusses the plot that happens on the island that he skydived into. So whether if the hook is related to the story's other parts or not, you can use the technique to grab the reader's attention. &#xA;This technique is notably used in many popular books and movies, and it definitely is successful in grabbing people's attention. One example that I can think of is the 2010 movie Megamind (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megamind&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megamind&lt;/a&gt;), which starts the story with the climax, the part where the main character that has to fight with the primary antagonists. After a brief dialogue, the scene abruptly switched to the protagonist's childhood. &#xA;Another example is the start of the famous Ray Bradbury novel Fahrenheit 451, where the main character discusses how burning pleasures him. It wasn't specifically state where he's at or what and how he is burning, but the sudden action of burning and the vague explanation is used to incite the reader's curiosity and successfully makes the reader want to continue reading. &#xA;These two examples are the ones I know well, and there are countless other prices of works that use this technique.&#xA;Hooks aren't really hard to do nor are they time consuming, so feel free to use it wisely and wittingly to create that hooking effect in the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15245" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T16:56:59.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19019" CreationDate="2015-09-15T20:24:15.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Surely this is purely a matter of personal opinion and habit. I have written very long pieces on Palm PDAs using handwriting recognition (of a sort). It wasn't ideal. I have also written in exercise books with pens. Although I say that some types of devices, such as ipads, are very difficult to compose on, others disagree strongly. You have to find what works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T20:24:15.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18917" CreationDate="2015-09-15T21:19:19.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is in the question: literally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days 'literally' also means literally the exact opposite, when used figuratively to mean 'figuratively.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'When he told me what he earned, I literally fell off my chair.' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If somebody told me that, I would have no idea whether he fell off the chair or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2015-09-16T19:52:57.820" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T19:52:57.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18756" CreationDate="2015-09-15T21:44:55.127" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This technique is very widely used. It is known as &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InMediasRes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in media res&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (in the middle of things), and as TV Tropes notes, it's a technique used in the Iliad by Homer, &quot;and Aristotle diagnosed it in Poetics, making it one of the first identified tropes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head, I can think of a number of films that have used this technique. For example, Walk The Line (about Johnny Cash), starts off with him about to go on stage, and he's looking at a saw, at which point we go back in time to him as a child and the memories he had of an incident with just such a saw. Pulp Fiction uses this to great effect (as do some of Tarrantino's other films). The Usual Suspects, Batman Begins ... there is a long list!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're writing a book and not a film, then this technique is also widely adopted in written form: Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein used this method, as does Margaret Atwood in some of her novels, and ... the list goes on!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How it works out is entirely up to you, but this is perfectly acceptable as a technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T21:44:55.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18941" CreationDate="2015-09-15T23:05:37.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some publishers have their own layout applications. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amazon&lt;/a&gt; has their own applications for design and layout for books of a graphical nature or that have specialized layout (they support many platforms as well). They also work with a print business that can make moving your work to a print version a little bit easier and allow you to reuse your existing files. As for working in fiction with low graphical content you're still best using a word processor or there's also &lt;a href=&quot;https://nimble.tools/writer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nimble Writer&lt;/a&gt;. Its more for organizing your work in chapters and keeping side notes and metadata like pictures related to what you're writing. It's got a few hiccups with the exporters but other than that its a very solid writing tool and worth the meagre price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15248" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T23:05:37.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19025" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19037" CreationDate="2015-09-16T01:14:43.787" Score="4" ViewCount="410" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write novels, I'm not a big name publisher or anything else but I have ideas that I think should have a chance to be seen by others. Most of my work is for private use, like sharing with friends because I'm kind of scared of what kind of reception my books may get. I suppose that's another question entirely though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;main&lt;/strong&gt; question is, am I able to have something sold on Amazon (just for example) for say, $5 USD but on the other hand, have a private blog or personal website, or even an open source art site like DeviantArt for free, probably in .pdf form or likewise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be a lot like having something that everyone could enjoy in my opinion, something I still have rights to and all of that but people could actually go buy the book if they liked it to show appreciation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I imagine there would be ISBN issues between selling and having something free, though.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing as a lot of people, artists inparticular, like to use things &lt;strong&gt;like Patreon&lt;/strong&gt; for every little thing they do, would my best bet be just publishing my stories openly, but having something like Patreon be an option? Thanks for your time, have a nice day or night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15249" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T00:24:20.520" Title="Can you sell a book for money while having it published online for free?" Tags="|novel|self-publishing|marketing|money|isbn|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19025" CreationDate="2015-09-16T02:15:59.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good thought for you may be what would be appropriate were I a major published writer and wanted to give away copies that the contract publisher will receive no commission from. &#xA;There is a single yet albeit unconfusing answer that will be answered in a publishing contract. Yet while selling at your personal expense while giving out free copies you are a bold and generous writer unafraid of loss while gleaning personal gain  in form of charity or whatever tag you feel comfortable with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15247" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T02:15:59.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19028" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-16T02:27:11.783" Score="1" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without the ability to use proper grammar and no knowledge of punctuation and the convoluted intricacies of writing techniques will a book reviewer reject a story written in person of no education writing their story&#xA;I have written many times in this unorthodox fashion without submitting final versions .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15247" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T04:50:39.993" Title="Story teller dilemma" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18957" CreationDate="2015-09-16T02:27:27.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, this goes along the line of someone with tulpas, or basically sentient personalities that are all individual. The text might come across as third-person if written in this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've spent some time with people with said personalities, and their way of differentiating each personality is by saying each line of text differently, sometimes with a different pronoun (as not all personalities have to be the same gender.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides making each name be at the beginning of the dialogue, depending on how the story is written, and whether the person is communicating by text or actually speaking can all effect how clear it is to the reader, because the tone could vary. In general, it &lt;strong&gt;might be best&lt;/strong&gt; to avoid making personality changes too often, unless you are intentionally trying to disorient the reader. But, let me show a little bit of a demonstration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoiding Gender Pronouns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Michael was cold, but so was Jake, the temperature letting there be no peace  no rest between the two in Michael's mind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amber could never find the right shoes, but another silent opinion said otherwise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Gender Pronouns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jake loved the smell of fresh-baked cookies in his house, but she also thought it never smelled fresh. It seemed like nothing was perfect for her, even if it was for himself. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Michael took a good look at himself in the mirror, but who was he really? One one hand, there was Amber, and she was nice at least. On another hand, there was Jason, and hearing that voice tell him how awful he looks today just makes Michael want to snap.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Dialogue, Including Another Character:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jon looks to his friend in front of him and asks politely, &quot;Why is it you seem so down today?&quot; There is a small silence between the two. &quot;Oh, it's just about what happened last night.&quot; This time, Jack decides to reply openly, &quot;Well, you need to get over it already.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;His friend was lingering on the response from Michael, thinking how rude this is. &quot;Why did you have to say it that way?&quot; However, this time, Kerry comes to the front of Michael's tongue, speaking in a different tone. &quot;Oh, I didn't mean that at all.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experiment with yourself a little, see which way you like the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I hope by some means this was a helpful insight, I wish you luck with your writing!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15249" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T02:27:27.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19028" CreationDate="2015-09-16T02:40:03.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had trouble just following this post. Generally, if the book is good and able to hold it's own, if can succeed even without an orthadox style of writing. Otherwise, it won't do well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15250" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T02:40:03.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19031" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-16T03:08:23.013" Score="0" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a third person story, the opening contains a short tram ride which the main character is on, how can I write such a scene without just writing;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tram moved forward another 100 metres and $main_character saw something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15016" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T07:28:14.333" Title="How to write about simple locomotion?" Tags="|third-person|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19056" CreationDate="2015-09-16T05:22:48.130" Score="0" ViewCount="1795" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would feel like an introduction would be the first impressions and knowledge someone has of a book, along with the cover, just like a good movie. However, you can just skip a book intro. I've heard that a good number of people and some publishers &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;won't&lt;/strong&gt; even read the introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often get a point in writing where I feel like the beginning or the end will be the hardest things, because there's no perfect way to do it without doing the same exact &quot;info dump&quot; that some writers make the mistake of doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But does it really matter or is it just going to be skipped?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15249" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T07:56:55.757" Title="How important is a story's introduction?" Tags="|style|self-publishing|plot|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19403" CreationDate="2015-09-16T06:18:27.750" Score="0" ViewCount="601" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found that I've not been able to continue writing a diary on a regular basis. What tips and tricks are there to help improve and foster the habit of regular diary writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15253" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2015-09-16T07:19:03.873" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T06:59:35.503" Title="How to write in a diary regularly?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19031" CreationDate="2015-09-16T07:28:14.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go ride a tram. you'll answer your own question within 10 mins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, use the moment to give the reader something useful. Otherwise you're just wasting everyone's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set location:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He watched as they slid past an open-air market, with eager, healthy-looking traders boasting tables of blah blah blah...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set mood:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tram wheels ground against old steel, dragging Sven yard by yard to his fate...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Define character:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those kids spoke again. Their shrill, excited voices annoying every passenger except Agnes. She could listen to that sound for hours...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advance plot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tram rolled past a scene of sudden urgency, with police officers unloading from three black cars...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if none of those fit, get it over with quickly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A moment later...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T07:28:14.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="237" CreationDate="2015-09-16T07:54:23.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stephen King does this well in The Dark Tower Book 2. He has four POVs, two of them in the same head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's helped by extremely well-defined individual voices but also does not shy away from short chapters. If I remember correctly, he has more than one chapter of just a single word. Perhaps not everyone could get away with that, but chapters of just a few paragraphs shouldn't be a problem and would likely help if the work is complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T07:54:23.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19032" CreationDate="2015-09-16T08:17:12.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to hook the reader as quickly as possible, so the &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; is important but a formal introduction may be detrimental in that regard. Personally I don't read them unless I am particularly interested in the author or the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's common for movies these days to drop the audience directly into the action for the first ten minutes and I see books going in the same way. It doesn't have to be the actual plot, but some scene-setting or backstory which isn't info-dumped but actually told as a compelling story in its own right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T08:17:12.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19025" CreationDate="2015-09-16T08:50:29.620" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Kindle Direct Publishing contract says that you will not make your book available elsewhere for a lower price. So if your book is available on a web site for free, you can't sell it for more than $0.00 on Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they find your book available at a lower price, they will drop the Kindle price to match it. And they will scold you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether Amazon would consider a PDF edition (sold elsewhere) to be the same book as the Kindle edition that you sell through them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many other retailers are the same. The contract forbids you to make your book available elsewhere at a lower price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T08:50:29.620" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19028" CreationDate="2015-09-16T10:21:46.863" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give me a break - this isn't a &quot;knowledge&quot; issue - if you can write about &quot;the convoluted intricacies of writing techniques,&quot; you can at least put a question mark at the end of your sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you chose to use a non-standard style, you'd better be damn sure you use it WELL. In this case, I don't see how your style added anything to your post, so, no, I wouldn't think a novel written in this style would be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T10:21:46.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19039" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19041" CreationDate="2015-09-16T10:42:14.973" Score="1" ViewCount="1069" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often find myself writing multiple copies of everything I write, which is very inefficient, because I'm unsure how which tense or tone-of-voice I want to commit to. I've only taken one creative writing class in the past, so I've never had a clear explanation of why some writers choose specific tenses and how they benefit their storytelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would anyone be able to provide a little insight into this important decision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15254" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T19:14:58.500" Title="What are the stylistic advantages/disadvantages of each narrative tense?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1361" CreationDate="2015-09-16T14:04:39.360" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try Aldaily (Arts And Letters Daily), Economist, Atlantic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15257" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T14:04:39.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19039" CreationDate="2015-09-16T16:02:10.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're talking about choosing between past and present tense, it's a deeply subjective and personal decision. Most YA novels are known for present tense narration that arguably gives more immediacy to the action. Past tense is always the safest bet, can do no wrong there. This choice greatly depends on the audience you're writing for and your genre.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to check out this blog for useful articles on just about any struggle a writer has in his everyday life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Helping Writers Become Authors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15206" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T16:02:10.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18506" CreationDate="2015-09-16T17:03:41.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Italicize it. Boldface makes it look like a title or graphic point. As suggested before, rename it with an adjective/noun combo. These suggestions entirely depend on how great a role this element will play in your story. If the entire story is all about &quot;the darkness&quot;, don't draw emphasis to the words, try to reframe them i.e. &quot;The darkness is looking over my shoulder&quot;  &quot;going into the darkness&quot;. Use language rather than text design elements to make your statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15258" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T17:03:41.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19028" CreationDate="2015-09-16T19:05:39.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; Write in the character's voice and develop your own writing style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer:&lt;/strong&gt; If poor grammar and technique are intrinsic to the character/narrator, editors will tolerate it to a point (to what point exactly, though, is a risk you take as a writer). If poor grammar and technique are intrinsic to the writer's abilities, they will most likely reject the story within a few sentences. If they read your cover letter, you could get rejected even quicker. While &quot;outsider art&quot; is welcomed in the visual art world, outsider art in text is very difficult to get accepted unless an editor decides to champion it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastEditorUserId="15165" LastEditDate="2015-09-16T21:18:04.577" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T21:18:04.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19039" CreationDate="2015-09-16T19:14:58.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're talking about past/present, then I agree with Lisa - it's an important decision based on the genre of your work and how you want it to feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you're talking about first and third person, it's another important decision that revolves around what kind of story you're trying to tell and how you want it to feel. While first person allows you to develop a character strongly and tell a deeply personal story that lets the reader connect to the main character, it limits you in the way that you can only tell that one person's thoughts, and are limited to telling the story through their eyes only - meaning they need to be present for all important events. Third person allows you to tell a more complex story and show the emotions and thoughts of multiple characters, as well as have scenes with some characters and not others. This allows for a good amount of freedom when writing and is useful for developing characters that the main character isn't close with. At the same time, it does keep the reader in a position where they're on the sidelines watching, as opposed to being right in the action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision is up to you for both, but I hope this helps in case you meant POV instead of tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15261" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T19:14:58.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18876" CreationDate="2015-09-16T20:22:26.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I determine the goal of a scene/chapter when the main character is entirely passive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;em&gt;hugely&lt;/em&gt; depends on what kind of a book you're writing: genre, audience, message. And the kind of a character you're trying to create. If becoming active and bold is part of his character arc, his goal in the first scene can just be for the evacuation to go okay and to get home as soon as possible. If he has a dog, he might have a goal of returning in time to feed or walk it. Or if he has family, maybe he's missing some important event and evacuation becomes a conflict for his goal of not missing that event. Or he may be late for work, date, what have you. Possibilities are quite endless, since his goal doesn't have to be tied to the evacuation. Rather make it an obstacle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I even do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, by turning the evacuation in an obstacle and giving him a goal that has nothing to do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to make him active somehow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Even if he's stuck doing nothing, waiting for things to happen. He can be active in his head - frantically worrying that he's late wherever, imagining worst-case scenarios if he misses whatever. Finally, he can be texting or making calls, which will also give you opportunity to start introducing him to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15206" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T20:22:26.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19046" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19061" CreationDate="2015-09-16T22:54:12.413" Score="3" ViewCount="3374" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I be a Novel Writer or a Screenwriter?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is intended for the beginning writer, who is unsure if he should start with writing physical books, or with writing scripts for movie directors/producers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this question will inspire a lot of debate, which I know is not something we want on this site. So instead, I was wondering if someone could provide me with a comprehensible list of the pros and cons of fictional novel writing versus screenwriting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-09-17T22:43:41.500" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T03:16:32.813" Title="Should I be a Novel Writer or a Screenwriter?" Tags="|fiction|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19047" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-16T23:09:03.267" Score="1" ViewCount="337" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why did Grammarly suggest capitalizing the word 'dragon' in this sentence? It says it does not fit the context so needs to be capitalized:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;Small birds chattered and scooted about in the undergrowth but vanished as the dragon approached.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15262" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2015-09-23T07:54:56.543" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T07:54:56.543" Title="Why does this software suggest capitalizing the word 'dragon'?" Tags="|style|editing|tools|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19032" CreationDate="2015-09-16T23:09:03.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Introductions are extremely important and &quot;Info Dumps&quot; as you put it are some of the worst things in writing. They can be alright if the situation calls for or allows it, but you should try to avoid starting a work off with a giant one, if any. I have a friend who started a story with a two-page italicized introduction of every single character and their relationships with one another. It's important to avoid things like this because the readers haven't read the story yet. They have no reason to care about all this information they're getting. A personal stylistic choice I make to rid myself of this is that each of my stories start off with something dramatic. However, not all genres call for big dramatic setups, especially at the very beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice on getting rid of (or slimming down) info dumps is to start it off either really slow, or really fast. Fast would be to launch the story straight into some action or a dramatic scene like a fight or something like that. A slower story calls for an intro like a usual day, for example. The key is to not start it off with things like &quot;My name is Jane and I am 14 and today is a school day. I don't like school.&quot; Not only is this horrible writing, it also throws information at the reader before the reader has any desire to know it. Slower starts are hard for different reasons than fast ones, but just focus on only painting the amount of the picture that you need, rather than showing it all at once. This not only avoids information dumps, but also helps keep the reader interested by always having new content up your sleeve. For both the fast and slow methods, only tell the readers what they need to know for now. In example, a person wakes up, pulls on a coat, and leaves an envelope on the desk before heading out for the day. What's in the envelope? Where is the person going? Paint in the details as they happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, it's also useful (especially in a first person story) to paint in the details &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; something happens, because it makes the reader as confused and desperate to know what just happened as the character. Do avoid doing this too much, though, as after a while it can start to draw from your story rather than add to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15261" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T23:09:03.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19049" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-16T23:58:19.557" Score="9" ViewCount="19836" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I write fiction, or even technical reports, I have a very difficult time catching myself unintentionally switching verb tenses. Does software exist that highlights verb tense (either by colour-coding them or something) to identify verb tense mistakes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-01-31T06:01:47.937" LastActivityDate="2020-09-21T14:43:14.007" Title="Software for determining verb tense" Tags="|software|grammar|tenses|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19047" CreationDate="2015-09-17T00:08:54.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grammar software is a crude tool. In this case, the grammar software is just wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the software you've loaded into your brain - way more efficient, at least for this task!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T00:08:54.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18917" CreationDate="2015-09-17T00:11:49.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best example I can think of is &quot;Flip a car.&quot;  It can be taken as it was fixed up and sold for profit or wrecked, but either way the car is gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What happened to your old Camry?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;I flipped it&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;Oh, how much did you get from it?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;Enough to buy this Mustang&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14967" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T00:11:49.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19047" CreationDate="2015-09-17T01:09:30.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would only capitalize &lt;em&gt;dragon&lt;/em&gt; in this instance if it meant something other than &quot;generic name for fire-breathing reptile of fantasy.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in Gregory Maguire's alternate history of Oz (the book series which starts with &lt;em&gt;Wicked&lt;/em&gt;), animals which can't talk and aren't sentient are written in lowercase (dog, lion, tiger). However, those who can talk and are sentient, like the timid fellow Dorothy meets in the forest, are called Animals, and get capital letters: Lions, Tigers, Bears (oh my). Dr. Dillamond, who is a professor, is a Goat, not a goat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your story, if there's a difference between &lt;em&gt;dragon&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Dragon,&lt;/em&gt; you might capitalize it. Otherwise, Grammarly is just plain wrong, and you may cheerfully tell it to go stuff itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T01:09:30.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19047" CreationDate="2015-09-17T04:35:49.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grammarly is simply wrong. &quot;Dragon&quot; here appears to be used as an ordinary noun. There is no reason to capitalize it. The only reason to capitalize &quot;dragon&quot; would be if it was a proper name or part of a proper name. Like if you were talking about the &quot;Dragon and Unicorn Tavern&quot;. Well, or if it happened to be the first word of a sentence. Maybe some special cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't take grammar software too seriously. Take it as a HINT that you MAY have an error, not as a definitive statement. Once just for fun I took a grammar test that my daughter had been given in school, typed it into the computer, and ran a grammar check. Between missing actual errors and incorrectly labeling valid text as containing errors, it got a score of a little over 50% on the test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T04:35:49.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19028" CreationDate="2015-09-17T04:50:39.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you capable of writing with proper grammar and punctuation and you think this &quot;unorthodox fashion&quot; is more appealing for some reason? Or do you not know how to use proper grammar and punctuation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know how, I'd say, &quot;learn&quot;. There are times when it is effective to break the rules. But if you don't know what the rules are or what the purpose of the rules is, you are not in a position to say whether breaking them is a good idea or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not that hard to learn proper grammar. When I graduated high school I had very little knowledge of grammar. My first year of college they made me take a remedial English class. In one semester I learned about 90% of what you need to know. Buy a grammar book and study it. If you made a serious effort you could learn the most important rules in a couple of weeks, I would think. If you said you had a very limited vocabulary or problems with spelling, correcting that would require memorizing a lot of words, something that could take a long time. But something like proper punctuation ... it's not like there are thousands of punctuation marks to learn. There are, what? -- period, question mark, exclamation, comma, apostrophe, quote, colon, semi-colon, hyphen -- nine that are used routinely. Some of those have several uses, but it's not like there are hundreds of rules to learn, more like maybe 20 or so. (Depending on how you count, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T04:50:39.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19019" CreationDate="2015-09-17T04:53:54.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it works for you, who cares whether it works for someone else or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find writing without a full-size keyboard awkward and tedious. But if you have no problem with it, well, good for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T04:53:54.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19032" CreationDate="2015-09-17T07:49:11.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I would try to avoid prologues or introductions. As was pointed out very nicely by user15261, the reader's interest in the information you give him has not been stirred yet. For another discussion of prologues, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/18206/prologues-basely-speak-about-the-past-but-how-long-can-one-be-in-general/18225#18225&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; about the length of a prologue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal theory&lt;/strong&gt;: Concerning &quot;information dumps&quot;, my personal experience is that the story gets so much more interesting when you do not introduce your set-up from the point of view of an external observer. Take, for example, a fantasy set-up. Obviously, the reader does not know the rules of the world he's being thrown into. Is that a flaw that needs to be remedied? Or can it create suspense? Personally, I like to be treated like a normal citizen of the world I am supposed to experience. Ask yourself: If you read a story about the US, would you like to know how a car works? Probably not. In that sense, I am more than happy to accept some axxioms of the set-up without questioning them to much. Additionally, doing a bit of detective's work can be fun for the reader, because it asks him to comit himself to the story. If the world is well developped and internally consistent, I think it is legit to give the reader the most crucial clues and leave the rest of the figuring-out to him. That way, he can decide himself how much he wants to know about the world and how much time he invests into thinking about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples&lt;/strong&gt;: Two neat ways which I enjoyed a lot in this sense can be found in the works of Jonathan Stroud (for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;amp;field-keywords=lockwood%20%26%20co&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lockwood &amp;amp; Co&lt;/a&gt; series or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_10?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;amp;field-keywords=bartimaeus%20trilogy&amp;amp;sprefix=bartimaeus%20trilogy%2Caps%2C267&amp;amp;rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Abartimaeus%20trilogy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bartimaeus&lt;/a&gt; trilogy) and Susanna Clarke's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0765356155&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jonathan Strange &amp;amp; Mr Norrell&lt;/a&gt;. Bartimaeus and Jonathan Strange &amp;amp; Mr Norrell use &lt;strong&gt;footnotes&lt;/strong&gt; to explain their world on the go. The footnotes are usually irrelevant to the story itself, but they flesh out the worlds of the stories and are fun to read. Bartimaeus simply comments on everything and anything that stirs his attention or (more commonly) annoys him, while Clarke provides her readers with fairytales and other elements of the mythology of her world. Nobody forces you, the reader, to read these footnotes. However, if you are interested in the background of the story, the information is there. In Lockwood &amp;amp; Co, on the other hand, a &lt;strong&gt;glossary&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;at the end&lt;/em&gt; of the book provides you with the information that is taken for granted by the characters of the story but might puzzle the reader. The glossary headline sits in the table of contents of the book, so you definitely note it when you first open the book. It is then, again, your decision whether you read it or jump straight into the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, however, the story itself is independent from this optional information. (In the case of Lockwood &amp;amp; Co, I was actually a bit annoyed by how often the narrator of the story repeated information that is self-evident for herself. Why talk about it then?) If you opt to provide your reader with supplementary material, make sure the story works, even if the reader choses not to read the extra information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Implementation&lt;/strong&gt;: Lastly, my personal opinion on the first few scenes of a novel is that they are absolutely crucial. Whether you chose the &quot;slow&quot; or the &quot;fast&quot; beginning user15261 talked about is your decision, but in any case these scenes should set the mood for the story and give the reader some questions that keep him reading. I enjoy the personal approach, that is, when a character stays true to himself and tells you about the things that are one his mind. (My feeling is that this is independent of the type of narrator you choose.) Do not make him say things that are self-evident for him. If you need to provide information: Make it part of the story. Send your character off to school. Introduce a visiting character that doesn't know the rules. (But don't do this too bluntly.) Introduce an event that actually shakes the rules of your world. You're the storyteller. After all, this is what you do all the time: You have a piece of information in mind that you want to convey and craft it into a story. Why not doing the same for the information about your set-up?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;footnote&lt;/strong&gt; on &lt;em&gt;Introductions&lt;/em&gt;: Being a scientist, the word &quot;introduction&quot; has a very well-defined meaning for me. In storytelling, it corresponds to Act I of the Three-Act Structure in the framework of the Hero's Journey. The introduction is not an undirected &quot;info dump&quot;, on the contrary: It provides you with the information that you need to understand both the question at the heart of the scientific publication and the significance of the results. It &quot;sets the stage&quot; for the scientific work that is being presented and puts into perspective every single finding. The same is true for a work of fiction. Act I, here, defines what your story will be about and how the reader judges everything that happens in. Take home message: Take good care of your introduction. It's nothing that you would want to mess up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T07:49:11.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19032" CreationDate="2015-09-17T07:56:55.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is, it depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that &quot;some books have the prologue labelled as &quot;introduction&quot; and have an external chunk of the plot given to help clarify things that will appear in the actual plot later on&quot;, and you also note that you are referring to &quot;the part in some books that either have a footnote about the author's life or provide some glimpse of the plot before the first words come into play&quot;. These are very different purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the prologue is about the author's life, then generally it risks being skipped; it likely has no bearing on the actual story at all, and I didn't buy the book to read about some brief blurb about the author. For a manuscript being submitted to a publisher, unless they've asked for it, I wouldn't bother. I tend to view such prologues as more of a marketing piece than anything, or something that appears in later additions after the book is so wildly successful that people are interested in the author. Worry about the book, not the prologue!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, the prologue is to act as some sort of explanatory piece to make something clearer about the book itself (I'm thinking of fantasy or science fiction here, where some strange concepts need to be clarified first in order for the reader to fully understand the story), then yes, some authors do use this technique (not that often from what I can recall), and the purpose of the prologue here is entirely different. This has less chance of being skipped, but the obvious question arises as to why the novel itself doesn't make these things clear during reading (and if you find yourself doing an info dump, then look at reworking the story so the info dump is unneeded).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T07:56:55.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19046" CreationDate="2015-09-17T16:15:54.813" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest difference is that a novel is (typically) a solo production.  A screenplay is inevitably a collaboration (towards the final movie).  Everything in a novel needs to be on the page.  Everything in a screenplay is going to be realized and reinterpreted by actors, director, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As part of this, if you write a novel, who have a novel, it's still a novel, even if it is never published.  But a screenplay is only a movie if someone makes it into a movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a technical standpoint, I'd say that for a screenplay, you need to excel at plot and dialog, but for a novel you need to also be great at description.  A screenplay is also much shorter, so you need to be able to compress your storytelling for a screenplay, expand it for a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T16:15:54.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19046" CreationDate="2015-09-17T16:44:08.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are great differences in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The set of potential buyers.&lt;/strong&gt; Millions of people buy novels. Very, very few buy screenplays.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gatekeepers between you and the story's audience.&lt;/strong&gt; You can publish a novel yourself at relatively low investment of time and money, and there are distributors eager to make it available to practically everyone on the planet. Making a film yourself requires a much larger investment. And distributing it? I have no idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2018-03-06T08:42:00.610" LastActivityDate="2018-03-06T08:42:00.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18945" CreationDate="2015-09-17T21:55:31.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to all the great answers, I might say that the answer to this question is deeply personal. What is satisfying to me is not satisfying to somebody else. However, the character's death &lt;em&gt;must be&lt;/em&gt; demanded by the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best example I can think of is Anna Karenina's suicide. There just was no other way for her personal story to end. Everything led her to that demise from the beginning. The eternal optimist in me might have been happier if she stayed alive, but it would have felt fake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since, the inner understanding of the story mechanics is rooted in all of us, regardless of our occupation, we feel when the character's death is justified by the story and when it isn't. That's where, in my opinion, the satisfaction or dissatisfaction comes from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15206" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T21:55:31.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19046" CreationDate="2015-09-18T08:00:46.777" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Financial concerns aside, the differences in the day to day job of writing include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Structure:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a screenplay structure is everything. You have two hours to tell the story. Your forebearers have refined the the structure of those two hours, through trial and error to the extent that we know, to the minute, the ideal timings for all the major plot points. You can set your watch by some Hollywood movies, and I mean that literally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a novel, you do not know the pace at which your reader reads so you are relatively free to adopt your own structure (unless you are hoping to get a movie deal later). Structure is useful, but it is not everything. A beginning, middle &amp;amp; end is enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Prose:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you like describing the dewdrops on the flowers in the morning then screenwriting isn't for you. Descriptions in screenplays should be extremely succinct. A loving description of a sunset is wasted if it's overcast on the shoot day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In novels, elaborate prose is not always appropriate, but if you must do it, there'll be an audience for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Dialogue:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a screenplay, the dialogue must &lt;em&gt;crackle&lt;/em&gt;. You have to get your audience inside your characters heads using only the words coming out of their mouths. And they will generally be the minimum amount of words. You have one sentence to tell us JANE is angry at BILL but really she's more angry at herself. Go!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In novels, if you can't make the dialogue powerful, you have other options for getting inside the characters' heads. You can tell us their feelings, relay their inner dialogue, hop ahead or backwards to see their fears or memories without needing to indulge in flashback/forward scenes. Characters are an art and not everyone can pull them off in quite the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Speed:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can write a full length screenplay in a week. Whether you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; is a different matter. But it can be done if your attention span is short, or you have a story that is bursting to get out. Completing something quickly, even if it's garbage, can be wonderful motivation and reward. Once you're done, if you want to asses its structure or form a plan for redrafting it, you can read it in a little over an hour. It's easy to see the structure, hold it in your head, and fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can write a novel in a month, and thousands do every November, but it will only be around half the length of a standard novel. Similarly, re-reading, redrafting will all be slower and the intricacies will be more difficult to hold in your head the entire time. It could take a year to write a book and if the plot is complex you'll need tools to help you manage that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Collaboration:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An editor or publisher will want to meddle with your novel to make it read better or sell better. Aside from that, anything you want to happen in the book, can happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studios, producers etc. will meddle with your screenplay, but reality will also get in the way. I've been on set when there has been some malfunction with a set, prop, location or cast member. In such circumstances the writer may get a call to redraft a scene within a couple of hours. That's not a rare occurrence in my experience (TV mainly) and that kind of compromise and collaboration is a continuous process from first hire until the shoot wraps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Doing both:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some authors do both, e.g. Michael Marshall (Smith) or Douglas Adams. If you are good at screenwriting then I would suggest you could likely pull off great novels too if you can handle the extra workload and complexity. I suspect the reverse is less true owing to the wider range of novel styles and the more flexible attitudes to structure, dialogue etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-10-09T13:28:22.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18950" CreationDate="2015-09-18T18:24:31.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I think the first question to ask yourself is:&lt;/strong&gt; Do I need this character to be from a drastically different culture from my own? As the comments to your question have pointed out, there are a lot of risks attendant upon the task. &quot;Write what you know&quot; is a helpful cliché in this instance: if you know people intimately who are from the culture you're interested in, you can casually interview them at length. Your status as an outsider is a potentially valuable one for the reader, who may well be an outsider as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One specific approach is an observational one.&lt;/strong&gt; David Foster Wallace's essays are a great example of not only observational technique, but also of the pitfalls accompanying any attempt &quot;to know.&quot; For example, he pretty much admits to the reader his outsider status to a lot of his subjects, and this is part of what makes his essays compelling. As you read his essays, you can sense the ordering of thoughts as he goes along. You can also pinpoint where assumptions are being made, and they gain authority by experience. The number of footnotes he includes in his essays are also indicative of a thought process: they say, &quot;here is something that requires either additional knowledge or further insight that I do not have.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are two ways you can organize your work, then:&lt;/strong&gt; personal observations (which are as devoid of prejudice and assumptions as possible, or acknowledging of them) and factual research (which is as devoid of prejudice and assumptions on the part of the original author as possible). As a writer, the most valuable of the two categories is your personal observations. These are what give you your voice and let readers into your brain (the essays/books by A. J. Jacobs are good examples of this). The factual research is your due diligence, and can often help to correct or add to your personal observations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T18:24:31.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18945" CreationDate="2015-09-18T20:00:31.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the answer may have a subjective side to it. However, in the general schema of the plot if a death is an impetus it may be relevant and that in itself can be satisfying. See, there is a death that could be pertinent to the character arc or to make the character have some weight in the overall narrative. Like in Hamlet Ophelia's death is a crucial scene because it shows to many levels that Hamlet's actions have led to much harm. We also know that there was no reason for Hamlet to be cruel to Ophelia so we now can feel ambiguous about Hamlet (not that Hamlet's prior actions have been A grade). Ophelia's death is not satisfying in the usual sense but it does satisfy a certain part of the play. So, satisfaction can have various wavelengths and junctures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, an individual death being subjective would be probably the death of Gregor Samsa from the novella &quot;Metamorphosis&quot; because there is no other way for poor Gregor to do anything but die as his transformation has made him weak and this has been, as I read somewhere, the reverse of enlightenment. So, there is that side to this question too. I do think that death as a satisfying medium in literature works in many complex levels. Sometimes, death is a way the story's point is giving some meaning other times it's a tyrant being killed in battle so we know it's the trial of the hero completed so in both cases we are satisfied in two various different ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, as Ophelia's death, we are not happy individually at her death but it helped shed light on the disturbing plot and personality elements in Hamlet so we would be satisfied via that. I guess there is also the other meaningful thing as death for natural causes and I think Jose Saramago even wrote a novel &quot;Death at Intervals&quot; to highlight the importance of death on cultural, religious, biological, philosphical and many other levels. Sometimes, death of a character is natural and that can be in itself satisfying as we know that as we live we will also die. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15275" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T20:00:31.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18992" CreationDate="2015-09-18T20:04:37.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I notice that no one has tried to explain what &quot;biggest&quot; means as far as the crisis in the 3rd act being the &quot;biggest crisis.&quot; I'm sure there are other metrics, but one of them is how high the stakes are. Do the stakes, that is, the scope of what is in jeopardy, increase through your acts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to understand stakes is as the cost of the crisis not being resolved favorably. Ask yourself what are the potential costs for each of your crises. Do the costs escalate as you go from crisis to crisis? If not, I suggest you rethink your crises because they won't be fulfilling to the viewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12987" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T20:04:37.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18876" CreationDate="2015-09-18T20:19:49.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the information you have given above it is completely understandable to have a character like that in the first scene. Passiveness can be state of mind given a period of time. Now as you mentioned evacuation you can describe the scene and other people's reactions and how your protagonist is immersed in these things and so decides to have no personal goal on his or her own. You could describe his or her panic and the sense of alienation or anything you feel relevant that you can flesh out in the plot later on. There is no need for the character to always be active as in deciding an activity and they can be pretty passive. However, passivity as in complete inertia is pretty traumatic or well not believable and somewhat denies the character a basic human trait so I would avoid that entirely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15275" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T20:19:49.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5352" CreationDate="2015-09-19T23:59:06.833" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not overkill at all. However, the &lt;em&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt; is not really ideal for technical writing (and is intended as a look-it-up reference, not a cover-to-cover read). It is a good guide to general, formal writing for Americans. For a more international audience, the equivalent is &lt;em&gt;The Oxford Guide to Style&lt;/em&gt; (a.k.a. &lt;em&gt;New Hart's Rules&lt;/em&gt;, also published as half of &lt;em&gt;Oxford Style Manual&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The principal problem with &lt;em&gt;Chicago&lt;/em&gt; is that its editors are strongly opposed to the use of logical quotation (i.e., including within the quotation marks nothing that was not present in the original quotation) except for &amp;quot;textual criticism&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;computer code and commands&amp;quot;. They otherwise recommend nothing but American journalism- and fiction-style quotation punctuation, in which periods (stops, dots) and commas are always placed inside the quotation mark even if they don't logically belong there.  This is a terrible idea in any technical, or other precise, form of writing, though it remains favored by the &lt;em&gt;AP Stylebook&lt;/em&gt; and other American journalistic style manuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If technical writing is your job, I'd advise owning the &lt;em&gt;Chicago&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Oxford&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;AP&lt;/em&gt; manuals (as well as any other style guides you may need, e.g the legal &lt;em&gt;Bluebook&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Redbook&lt;/em&gt;, and Oxford equivalent, &lt;em&gt;OSCOLA&lt;/em&gt;, which is a free PDF; and/or the &lt;em&gt;CSE&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;AMA&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;APA&lt;/em&gt; science/medical style guides). Adapt your style as necessary. For business communication to Americans, use &lt;em&gt;Chicago&lt;/em&gt;; for PR materials intended for Americans, use &lt;em&gt;AP&lt;/em&gt;; for an international audience, rely on &lt;em&gt;Oxford&lt;/em&gt; (also when quoting with high precision, e.g. typed commands or the labels on device controls). Turn to &lt;em&gt;CSE&lt;/em&gt;, etc., as needed for scientific writing.  You might also be called upon sometimes to comply with &lt;em&gt;MLA Style Manual&lt;/em&gt; for some purposes. These books are all a good investment for any professional writer of non-fiction. So is updating them to new editions as they are released; sometimes the changes are significant (though take a few years to propagate). Effective use of language is a moving target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15281" LastEditorUserId="15281" LastEditDate="2020-10-04T19:35:32.807" LastActivityDate="2020-10-04T19:35:32.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19068" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-19T23:59:26.857" Score="0" ViewCount="936" Body="&lt;p&gt;The phrase &quot;The question sought to determine whether or not ...&quot; is (to me) like fingernails on a chalkboard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &quot;get&quot; that the question is asked so that research can be conducted to determine X. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some shorter-form alternative phrases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11559" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T11:27:39.700" Title="Alternatives to &quot;The question sought to determine whether or not ...&quot;" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-09-23T04:13:55.020" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19069" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19080" CreationDate="2015-09-21T02:00:21.480" Score="3" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I'm thinking to write a generic financial guide based on my own experiences. Personal finance, I think, is quite a sensitive topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm kind of anxious if people might view me as being a braggart for being &quot;good&quot; at my finances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any tips for writing personal experience guides to not look like I'm bragging? Am I just overthinking? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11041" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T15:52:54.443" Title="How to write a guide based on personal experiences without sounding as if I'm bragging?" Tags="|blog|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18206" CreationDate="2015-09-21T03:56:49.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'd say keep a prologue under 5 or 6 pages; also, instead of using the prologue to introduce the main story, use it as an interesting way to introduce the setting and set the tone for the rest of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me use one of my personal stories as an example. I'm writing an adventure fantasy story, that I want to read similar to a fairy tale. So I've written the prologue like this &quot;Many people say, that Fairy tales are nothing more then stories for small children. Some meant to teach, other to scare. But those people are &lt;em&gt;wrong.&lt;/em&gt; Magic exists; and most fairy tales happen right under your nose.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to keep a prologue simple. Use as few words as possible. Like one of the commentators already said, they, want to get right to the main story. So make the path to that story as short, and easy as possible. As to whether or not you should do a prologue in the first place, it all depends on the story. You might get halfway through writing something, only to realize that the information in the prologue is better explained through elements of the main story and vise versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15002" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T03:56:49.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19068" CreationDate="2015-09-21T11:21:25.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a poorly written phrase and sounds awkward out loud. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sentence is wrought with implicit and implied redundancies, giving it poor structure. That the '&lt;em&gt;final&lt;/em&gt;' word rhymes with the &lt;em&gt;second&lt;/em&gt; word could account for the &quot;chalkboard effect.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;The question sought...&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;This opening subject tells me the writer wasn't confident in the clarity of the initial question and felt the need to rehash or re-explain a question from earlier. From the example the original question seems to be simple and clear. If this is true the answer is to re-write the initial question so there is no need to explain it a second time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Or ... delete the entire sentence. Back up and rewrite stronger prose in preceding text.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume we are discussing a complicated question in a complicated subject. Possibly it was first asked in another language and doesn't translate well. In this case, we can replace all that redundant phrasing with,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;He's asking if...&quot; or &quot;He asked if...&quot;&#xA;or &lt;strong&gt;&quot;He asks if...&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Note -- &quot;sought&quot; is past-tense and &quot;to determine&quot; is an infinitive. I find this passive and unclear as to which verb-tense the writer is expressing. Same for the verb-stem, also unclear. In the above examples I assumed third-person male and rewrote it in the present-perfect, past and present-tense.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly let's assume the task is to edit the question by itself into something more clear and concise (Based on nothing but the phrase itself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Questions&lt;/em&gt; can be said to ALWAYS &lt;em&gt;seek&lt;/em&gt; (an answer). &lt;em&gt;To determine&lt;/em&gt; (an answer) is an implied consequence in context.. That's a double-redundancy. We know what kind of answer it is too: &quot;whether or not,&quot; --&gt; yes or no? true or false? It's Boolean!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eliminating redundancies I'd rewrite it as such:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Is X true?&quot; Or ... &quot;Did X happen?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternately, if we've defined X clearly and with matching verb-tenses as the answer to a yes or no question, we might rewrite it as a conditional logic statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;If X, then ...&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, simply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;X?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastEditorUserId="15292" LastEditDate="2015-09-21T11:27:39.700" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T11:27:39.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1722" CreationDate="2015-09-21T11:50:03.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, a professional document should never be self-edited. The theory is that it is impossible to edit your own work. At minimum two sets of (human) eyes must edit a document before it is published. This is standard in publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most of what we write is not for a mass-produced ad-campaign, a label going onto 100 million widgits or a New York Times editorial. Most of it is email, how important the editing is depends on the audience. Who is it for? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer, I'll assume the audience is &quot;an important person we must be clear and error-free with.&quot; An executive or an A+ client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best-practice in editing theory is to ALWAYS PRINT OUT THE MATERIAL OUT IN HARD COPY.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The human-eye has only been reading B&amp;amp;W text off an electrically-charged projection (the movie-screen, the cathode-ray tubes, LCD, etc...) for 100 years, even less if we confine ourselves to the common format - a laptop screen. LED and LCD displays project artificial light AT our eyes. We are far more prone to error when attempting to edit this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The human eye is most comfortable reading black serif text, at least 12pt. on white parchment in natural and ambient light. So copy-editing, proofreading or self-editing....if it HAS to be as right as you can possibly make it without an editor, print it, take it under a skylight or open-spaced awning (during the day, obviously) and check your work there. If it is impossible to obtain a hard-copy, or time-sensitive, the best you can do is edit on-screen, accept the fact that you are vastly handicapped, try not to waste the day re-reading and editing. Then hit send. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T11:50:03.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8005" CreationDate="2015-09-21T13:39:03.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main pitfall is libel, in case your story clearly maps to an individual. If I wrote a story in first-person, used the real name of my college, then cast the a supporting character as &quot;my closest friend,&quot; who &quot;was an electrical-engineering major,&quot; then went on to describe something &quot;we did&quot; that could potentially harm his career... I can be sued. Even if the story is presumed to be fiction. If the story is in fact true to the letter, then by labeling it &quot;fiction&quot; we've violated a fundamental media ethic, which is to label all content truthfully and accurately and to keep different types of content visually separate. The worse violations I see are ads posing as reviews and opinion posing as news, but I digress....(ever clicked on a link or a download mirror that was a trick to peel an ad-click out of you? Did you trust the site afterward?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my favorite writers based nearly ALL of their work on personal experience. Hemingway simply tapped out as many words as he could about his adventures, some exaggerated, some not. Since he was THE ERNEST HEMINGWAY, most of his &quot;typing&quot; ended up in periodicals, collected into volumes and published as books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a less abstract side, F. Scott Fitzgerald used an extremely popular technique that (for me) is the only way I can write &quot;honest, authentic&quot; fiction. The main character in his stories is HIM - albeit a fictionalized version of him. The other characters are based on people he KNEW. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Woody Allen is another example, in nearly all his plays and scripts, the main character is a lightly fictionalized version of himself, in his movies he plays the main character for this exact reason to great effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find more pitfalls in writing 100 percent fictional characters. How can there be any authentic dialogue or action with someone who isn't even BASED on ANYONE or ANYTHING KNOWN to the writer? Perhaps some have better imaginations than me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is that if the character IS essentially your best-friend from college, then change the college, the character's name, the location...as much as you need so if/when you tell a libelous anecdote within the story, it's essentially untraceable. Minimization of harm is the key concept &amp;amp; ethic. A good college story isn't going to be about going to class on time, getting good grades, studying and staying sober. Ideally, we'd like our friend's boss and his wife to think that is all he did in school. The 18 year old version of a character is going to be vastly different from his 40 year old self. That goes triple for self-based characters. Ask the teenage me, the mid-20s me and ME (the real me) the same question and you are likely to get vastly different answers. Consider their differences, strengths and foibles when you set a fictional character's age that is based in reality (on some level).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Art (naturally) reflects life,&quot; I think most fiction writers base characters and relationships on real ones whether they know it or not. The important thing is re-name, re-stage and change the time period or ages of the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carrying the &quot;This piece is a work of fiction. Any resemblance ...&quot; statement is always good, especially if a character is CLEARLY an ex, or an old boss or ... you get the idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastEditorUserId="15292" LastEditDate="2015-09-21T14:47:22.843" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T14:47:22.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6190" CreationDate="2015-09-21T15:27:45.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You cannot be sued for slander, that is another category of tort and doesn't involve the written word.&lt;/strong&gt; If you intend to use a real location, (a specific location as the question suggests, one that can be pinpointed down to an address), you CAN be sued for libel, but again, libel is also intended to protect people, their business and reputation; less so &lt;em&gt;places&lt;/em&gt;. If you keep specific, identifiable information out of the novel it is unlikely that a libel suit would follow, even if the owner and neighbors can tell which property is being discussed in the story; the problem and liability comes in when the PUBLIC can ID the property based on your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the book is clearly labeled as &quot;FICTION,&quot; then the answer, &lt;strong&gt;though still yes,&lt;/strong&gt; carries two caveats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A judge will most likely toss it if the complainant is suing based on printed prose regarding a place as opposed to a person or business. Especially if there is no way for a jurist to logically connect a specific address with the story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even using the name of a small town, street or community is not specific enough for libel. Would be best to create a fake address (if needed) and modify the description of the property. If you are compelled to be SO specific about a location and description that it could potentially ID the address and the resident/owner--yes they can sue -- a competent judge would look it over (you don't want that)...whether or not they can win is an open question for a jury. If you do in fact plan to publish a real address, you are probably violating the privacy of whomever lives there --&gt; THAT is a civil tort you can easily be sued for libel AND more you'd be more likely to lose.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: In the US, the 1st amendment gives us WIDE latitude to say anything we want, but the Supreme Court ruled that we have a right to privacy. &quot;My rights end where yours begin,&quot; so If I violate YOUR privacy, I've over-extended my right to print whatever I want. In this instance, not a crime, but certainly a good civil-action attorney could prove physical, emotional or financial damage&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T15:27:45.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16961" CreationDate="2015-09-21T16:01:47.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how significant the use is. For just a line or two, attribution of who sang and/or wrote it in context would suffice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Crossroads...seem to come and go....&quot;&#xA;--Greg Allman&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To publish the full lyrical text, I would contact the copyright holder and obtain permission--there may be a small licensing fee, equivalent to if you'd purchased the sheet music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this &quot;excerpt&quot; case, the above qualifies as fair use because the quote is &lt;em&gt;insignificant in comparison to the body of the complete work&lt;/em&gt; (a variable definition) and if your lyric-quotes are &lt;em&gt;relevant to the original ideas being expressed.&lt;/em&gt; then you are sitting on pretty firm ground legally. (also variable, but if your criticism is ~95 percent original content and ~5 percent &quot;lyrical quotations,&quot; I'd say you are well within the boundaries of US copyright law. along with a full citation in the appendices: I'm not sure of the exact form (it depends on your chosen style)--I normally use, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Composer(s), track name, album name, &amp;amp;c year Record label name&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of this post, I used the first line of Greg Allman's first song to illustrate the answer (and provide an example) to a specific question about using a quotation from popular music in the body of a larger critique regarding film--intended to publicly inform readers about one particular instance of US Media Law. Even the post itself meets the aforementioned criteria of being &quot;mostly original content created by the author,&quot; (me) and the lyric-quote is insignificant when compared to the rest of the post AND my use of it is relevant to the information I provided. This meets the definition of fair use and doesn't violate copyright. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T16:01:47.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19069" CreationDate="2015-09-21T16:51:09.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read a number of such books recently, and I think there are two things that make the difference for me as a reader:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1: Focus on the material, not on yourself.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2: Make sure the advice is good.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I read a book where the author focuses on him or herself and personal experiences, but doesn't offer much generalizable guidance, I experience it as a vanity project.  On the other hand, if the book has a lot of practical, usable advice, and mentions the author's own experiences exclusively when they are of direct value to the reader, then I don't experience it as bragging at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt; If you have to constantly remind the reader of your qualifications, you're probably doing it wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T16:51:09.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2555" CreationDate="2015-09-21T16:56:00.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a publisher and editor, I'd place no restrictions on the DRAFT content of an ostensibly true autobio. It would be best to have you get everything you want to say down onto the page, which I could then cull and structure. That is, if I thought the end result would be a great read and &lt;em&gt;that it would sell.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly you wish to elaborate about negative events and how you feel about them. A subcategory of Nonfiction is Editorial, so you'll need a clear, easy to find, up-front statement that the book contains historical facts as well as your personal interpretation and opinion of those facts. A statement like this needs to be included in the &quot;Approved to Print&quot; FINAL. Also that the &quot;opinions expressed are YOURS, not mine or any third parties used to publish.&quot; (if you go strictly with facts, it would make for a dry autobio-- any writer can collect facts and spill them back out in order -- &lt;em&gt;your commentary makes up the heart and soul of a good life-story).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the possibility of libel because Person X, whom you intend to &lt;em&gt;name&lt;/em&gt;, did Y and Z awful things to you during your time at Company A...especially the part about how Company A &lt;em&gt;still exists&lt;/em&gt;. I'd be concerned about a libel suit against you from Person X, violating person X's privacy, a libel suit from Company A, so I'd simply change the names and add a note that I did so as in my capacity as editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Unless you can prove that Person X did Y and Z.&lt;/em&gt; Truth is bullet-proof against libel. In court, we'd need some sort of corroborating evidence (like an&#xA;incident report from company A, a police report or a witness &lt;em&gt;other than yourself and person X&lt;/em&gt; willing to be sworn in and corroborate &quot;X did Y and Z to the author.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for incriminating yourself,&#xA;a) US citizens have a right NOT TO; you'd be giving up this right and I'd need you to sign a release form stating that I advised you of your rights and that you knowingly and willingly gave them up AND that myself and any 3rd party used to publish, distribute, market or sell your story is also released from any civil action from you.&#xA;b) I cannot speak for the entire US (My familiarity in criminal and media law resides mainly with the California Penal Code, but other western locales are likely to be about the same): The only two crimes I can think of for which there is no statute of limitations are PC 187 and 188 - 1st and 2nd degree murder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more brutally honest and graphic you are, the better the read and the MORE I'd want to publish all of it. If I couldn't persuade you to use pseudonyms for the chapter in question, I would have to route the copy to &quot;Legal.&quot; (A lawyer specializing in US Media Law).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastEditorUserId="15292" LastEditDate="2015-09-23T22:57:04.567" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T22:57:04.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19069" CreationDate="2015-09-21T21:28:39.900" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure to humanize yourself. You're on the right track by worrying about bragging: in addition to being unpalatable to most people, braggarts tend to reduce their own authority by the expression of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can humanize yourself in several ways: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't just talk about what you learned, talk about the mistakes you&#xA;made in getting there (this was my own mistake early on, when trying&#xA;to keep my own mistakes hidden from my students). Then talk with&#xA;other people and use their experiences to back up your own, lifting&#xA;it out of mere anecdote and into the realm of common human&#xA;experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can also state an opinion and back it up with other&#xA;authorities. In fact, mentioning other authorities, even those who&#xA;may be in direct competition with you, can show that you play fair,&#xA;and this is always admirable. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lastly, leave your hard and fast financial rules for later in the chapters. If you start with rules, you risk early doubters abandoning your chapters early. On the other hand, building up to your rules can gradually build confidence in what you say.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One last way to humanize yourself is to write with frequency on your own website. By becoming someone whom others turn to for advice, you build authority via the voice of the crowd. And if there is one thing a crowd likes, it's the sound of its own voice. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T21:28:39.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18950" CreationDate="2015-09-22T11:20:40.803" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem to have the right idea of how to do research: Read/watch as widely as possible, concentrating on works created by people from Korea, and including material from outside your comfort zone. Even soap operas may be useful, if you want an exaggerated sample of everyday life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;How familiar is the character with your own culture?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose your home city is Paris. Writing a Korean who has lived in Paris for the last 20 years will be easier than one who lives in Seoul. A young, urban Korean will be easier than an elderly Korean who has always lived in the same remote village. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;How prominent is the character in your story?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the Korean character only appear for a few scenes? Is she the major antagonist, love interest, or sidekick for the main character? Or is she a main character herself? Again, these scenarios are of increasing difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing from the point of view of a &quot;foreign&quot; character is particularly hard. Depicting her inner thoughts in a realistic way will be much more difficult than having her interact plausibly with a character from your own culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Nationality is not a personality type&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wish to avoid stereotype, you should put as much work into developing the foreigner's distinct personality as you would for any other character. As you do so, you will have to keep the foreign character's background and experiences in mind at all times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose your character is an extremely devout Christian. In the USA, this makes him or her part of mainstream society; in the UK or France, a bit of an oddball; in Iran or China, part of a persecuted minority; in Syria, in fear for his life. His attitude towards his religion and other people will be shaped accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally (and without getting too deeply into psychology), any character's thoughts and actions will be determined by the interaction of experience with inherent personal traits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;You won't get everything right&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find it very difficult to write from the POV of a character from another culture, unless you yourself have lived there for a very long time. I am a Canadian who has lived in the UK for the last 24 years, but I still occasionally run up against aspects of British culture I didn't know about. There is no magic solution; you just need to do your research, and if at all possible get help from a native of the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;It's worth making an effort&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't do enough research, your character will be at best annoying, and at worst grossly offensive, to anyone familiar with the culture in question. This can kill the reader's interest in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example appears in &quot;The System of the World,&quot; an epic historical novel by Neal Stephenson. It includes a Scottish character made up entirely of national stereotypes. Everything this character says and does makes it clear he was made up by an American writer, who probably was trying to be funny and apparently has never met anyone from Scotland. I ended up putting the book down to find something more enjoyable to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14879" LastActivityDate="2015-09-22T11:20:40.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19082" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-22T20:02:15.810" Score="6" ViewCount="635" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been pondering this a lot just now. After reading and learning about tropes online, rhetoric devices, and all relative things, it's come to my attention that writing seems less of a creative, artistic approach, and more of a rehashing of &quot;standards&quot; or &quot;rules&quot; to which no originality is actually involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like there're databases of &quot;known rhetorics&quot; of writing (TVTropes.com, etc.) that is presumed to be used &quot;&lt;strong&gt;by everyone&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; and explains all the &quot;tricks and trades&quot; of writing and deduces writing to nothing more than mere rehashing of ideas and &quot;techniques&quot; that have been already known and used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given such a thing, I felt immediately disinterested in writing altogether, seeing as I actually never knew of these things and thought good writing was mostly creative and didn't follow already known techniques or anything. I've actually even written stuff before and had absolutely no idea about what tropes were, and I've even done so professionally without knowing this (with good feedback though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like there are these sort of &quot;rules&quot; of fiction or creative writing that I had never known of despite having written stuff. Also, it seems like tropes are used as a means to &quot;reverse engineer&quot; or &quot;decode&quot; written work and deduce work to categorized sequences or ideas and label them for their value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can writing truly be creative then? If every single &quot;known&quot; method of writing already exists and is labeled and categorized and named, and nobody can write anything that can fall outside of these lablels, what part of writing is created if it's all driven by already used ideas, rhetoric, and tropes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like writing has been decoded and categorized and there's no way anything can be original or new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, isn't every &quot;new&quot; thing just something that changed a pinch but is still derived from the &quot;standard&quot; of writing, such as tropes, ideas, cliches, etc.? How can I continue to be a writer, especially &quot;creatively,&quot; if I now know that anything I write is subjected to the same scrutiny as everyone else because my writing is simply deduced to the list of existing standards or techniques I'd never known?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes me wonder if I'm supposed to judge by what is written or by written works of deterministic outlook and measure on how the ideas &amp;amp; techniques of its writing were done instead of just the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15300" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T13:58:35.777" Title="Can writing actually be creative?" Tags="|creative-writing|ideas|philosophy|tropes|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19082" CreationDate="2015-09-22T20:36:32.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creative writing isn't inventing something new. It is writing in such a way as to keep your reader's attention.Writers aren't re-inventing the wheel. They are painting it a different color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this isn't what you want it's because you aren't a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15301" LastActivityDate="2015-09-22T20:36:32.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19082" CreationDate="2015-09-22T21:09:52.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;trope&quot; is a made-up buzzword that seeks to only explain the meta-process of writing, put simply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put in more details, the &quot;trope&quot; can be viewed as the meta-meta of the work -- the idea of the ideas of how the ideas are made. Trope -&gt; Writer-&gt; Work; Meta-&gt; Meta-&gt; Work. They exist to attempt to &quot;define&quot; a principle of writing when, of course, like anything, such principles are not always true, correct, or useful; instead, it's a tool of the information age -- to have information about information ... about information ... and so on. The trope isn't necessarily the cliche because it's believed to be the &quot;start&quot; of writing; the ground principles; the &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's supposed to be a tool, but the writing process doesn't need tools; it just needs something written, and if, however that thing may be written, it is not to be judged solely by a forthright, underlying method alone; it should be judged by the written work and how it's perceived ... not stripped by certain believed principles and factionalized as it's some sort of disseminated quantification of a larger puzzle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being specifically centered around ideas and storylines, it's just a way for people to categorize things; it's also for know-it-alls to like to feel they have control over what's dished on them on the TV or internet or game or book or whatever it may be. In other words, it's like the cloud computing fad where people believe that &quot;the cloud&quot; organizes and stores data conveniently for people to access it from anywhere, when data has been done so always and people have been accessing it the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it this way: If I can &quot;know&quot; what the writer is supposedly trying to get me to &quot;know&quot; or see, it's like meta-opinions; an opinion formed about the opinion formed of the person using the so-called &quot;trope&quot; that is based on the rhetoric or &quot;capture method&quot; used to engage or surprise an audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I can guess what someone is attempting to get more to know, I am knowing about what's intended to be known -- a meta viewpoint -- which is seeking to see information about the information of a topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reality? Don't always believe everything and everything isn't the same -- and categorizing data and making everything you see capable of being disseminated by limited rules  makes life ... boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15302" LastActivityDate="2015-09-22T21:09:52.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19047" CreationDate="2015-09-22T23:08:06.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The above answers describe why it's a good idea to ignore the Grammarly software.  And I agree with them completely. But they don't answer the question: &lt;em&gt;Why&lt;/em&gt; did Grammarly suggest it be capitalized?  Turns out &quot;dragon&quot; has multiple meanings, one of which is the proper noun &quot;Dragon&quot; (a.k.a.Draco), a faint constellation twisting around the north celestial pole and lying between Ursa Major and Cepheus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14775" LastActivityDate="2015-09-22T23:08:06.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19086" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-23T02:51:16.360" Score="0" ViewCount="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Masque of the Red Death&quot; by Edgar Allen Poe greatly touches upon the conflict between the wealthy and the poor, with one of Poe's purposes of writing being to arise sympathy and possibly guilt within the wealthy of the time. Could the economic divide present be considered a motif, or is there a better and more accurate term to describe such an idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15303" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T14:43:29.590" Title="Motif, or something else?" Tags="|theme|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-09-30T01:39:40.900" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19089" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-23T07:59:06.100" Score="1" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a first-time novelist and have finished my first novel that I hope to self-publish at the end of the year. My book is finished apart from teh punctuation questions I have. I have used guides to figure it out, but if anyone is willing to help with one or more answers, then it would be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Those things I said; I didn’t mean a word of it.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that semi-colons are not common in dialogue, so what else would work here? A colon? Em-dash? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;You’re just making excuses—rationalizing your behavior.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I use an EM dash here? Or just a comma?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I mean, was it really that awful?&quot;&#xA;Should there be a comma here or nothing?&#xA;&quot;I mean was it really that awful?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does I MEAN work like I THINK or is it more of a little filler expression so needs a comma?&#xA;What about if it was this sentence:&#xA;&quot;I didn’t tell you about John because I want to be with him. I mean, not really.&quot; &#xA;Is the comma here ok?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am this close to calling the whole &lt;em&gt;second chance&lt;/em&gt; thing off. &#xA;I have put second chance in italics. Would that be right? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;“It’s been . . . it’s not been too bad.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, the character starts a sentence, then pauses, and says something slightly different. Is the above ok or does it have to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“It’s been . . . . It’s not been too bad.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When there are pauses, do you need to start a new sentence for something like this with a full stop after the ellipses? How about if there were several changes of direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this ok:&#xA;“You...I...You’re...not disturbing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or does it have to be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You— I— You’re . . . not disturbing.&quot; using em dashes to show the sentence has been interrupted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;6&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After years of unnecessary injections of God knows what. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does God knows what have to be in italics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;7&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe I’m not the only one who knows the truth about John; maybe other people do. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a semi-colon needed here? Or em dash? Full stop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;8&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;John said it last time: most marriages don't survive such a loss.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the colon here ok in dialogue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;9&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;You’ll feel much better and you won’t feel like to &lt;em&gt;throw up&lt;/em&gt; every time you see him—your words.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a character is quoting the exact words another character spoke previously, are italics ok or do you have to add inverted commas? E.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You’ll feel much better and you won’t feel like to 'throw up' every time you see him—your words.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;10&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;. that whore, Joanna, has been -- sorry, I hate that word -- but Jake told me about two other married men shes's...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the em dashes above ok? Or should it be ellipses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you so much to anyone willing to give me some advice about any or all of these questions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monique&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastEditorUserId="15309" LastEditDate="2015-09-23T08:09:51.050" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T22:08:18.467" Title="Punctuation help needed -- first-time novelist" Tags="|fiction|novel|punctuation|grammar|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2015-09-24T02:35:49.783" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19082" CreationDate="2015-09-23T08:18:04.220" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you misunderstand the point of tropes, conventions, and &quot;rules&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The central point is to be aware of them in order to either try and come up with something original (difficult), to know when you can break those rules, or to at least be aware of what has gone before in order to avoid being clichéd in your approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a previous answer noted, you're like a painter, sitting with a blank canvas and a whole array of colours and brushes before you to choose from. There's a massive range of techniques and styles for you to rely on. All other painters have the same colours to choose from. So many painters have done portraits, or landscapes. Does this mean that painting is not creative? Well, if all you want to do is create replicas of other paintings, then yes, that's just formulaic and dull. But if you're aware of what's gone before, this frees you immensely to play with these conventions and rules and techniques to create unique combinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So many times, I think I've come up with a great twist or idea, only to discover it's been done before, and better, by someone else. Coming up with an original take on an old idea is exceptionally hard. In fact, most of the time, the story you want to write has already been written. This doesn't mean you shouldn't use this idea, it just means you need to think more carefully about how to convey it. The central difference is how you decide to tell that story, how you stand on the shoulders of giants and play with their techniques and ideas in unusual ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This spurs creativity, not hinders it, because it forces you to rethink your ideas, to dig deeper in trying to come up with a different way of telling the same story, to play tricks on readers by not always doing what is expected. That is where true creativity lies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T08:18:04.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19082" CreationDate="2015-09-23T08:29:29.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Strange and Norrell&lt;/strong&gt;: Have you ever read Susanna Clarke's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0765356155&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jonathan Strange &amp;amp; Mr Norrell&lt;/a&gt;? In the book, Strange and Norrell are magicians that seek to restore magic to England. Norrell believes in books and well-defined algorithms that can be put to work to solve every imaginable problem. He believes that magic is complete and all a magician should do is to look up the right &quot;recipe&quot; for his specific problem. Strange believes in intuition. He is not content with Norrell's rules and regularly breaks them to uncover new ways. Turns out, though, that these new ways are not necessarily new - magicians of older ages used to travel them regularly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Art and science&lt;/strong&gt;: Why do I tell you this? Because for me, this conflict between the Strangite and the Norrelite approach to magic is at the heart of how we perceive both art and science. As a scientist who happens to write fiction, I know both sides of the medal: the scrutinising, thorough side of the scientist that measures and categorizes and puts into order and melds into formulas. Science needs to be transparent and reproducable. It is crucial that a scientist tells you exactly how he conducted his work. We need names for everything, and if something doesn't have a name yet, we think very long and very hard and come up with a one. The other side: Intuitive, much less conscious - art that simply seeks to express something, stir emotions, touch its audience. Art is not about conveying information. It is about feelings. In that sense, it seems to be the opposite of the scientific approach. Nevertheless, I am convinced that it is foolish to completely discard one of these two approaches. Creativeness needs order to be put into good use. Science depends on creativeness to come up with the right questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your question, my feeling is that you worry too much. As a storyteller, you are an adventurer. So what, if other people have wandered the paths you are exploring right now? Thousands and thousands of people have been to the Hagia Sophia, or to Cape Hoorn. Does it take away from the experience? Does it diminish &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; experience? I would be very surprised, if you were not touched or impressed by Cape Hoorn, just because you are not the first one to go there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here's to changes&lt;/strong&gt;: Apart from this, as you tagged this under &quot;philosophy&quot;, I am convinced that language - and thus the art of it, be it rhetorics in general or creative writing - is never complete. Language changes, and so does the way we perceive written and oral art. Obviously, if you stick to all the rules, you will never contribute to these changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And why being put off by the mere &lt;em&gt;possibility&lt;/em&gt; that your audience &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; judge your work by standards that you are not even familiar with? This, after all, is what happens to art all the time. Take Goethe and Shakespeare. These two would probably be lost in today's world, and yet we measure their work by &lt;em&gt;our&lt;/em&gt; standards. Still, Macbeth and Faust are great works of literature, almost everybody agrees on that, and I honestly can't imagine Goethe being worried about some future readers of his not getting the genius of his work. After all, what can happen, if your audience is not familiar with the rules you applied to your work, be they social, formal, or of any other kind? Possibility 1: They turn away from your work, because they believe that they can not, under any circumstances, understand it. Bad luck there. Or, possibility 2, and that's what happens in pretty much every fantasy novel: They accept your rules and agree to be educated about them by you, the writer. And who knows - maybe, if your rules are good and make sense to them, they will incorporate them in their own lives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, people are not stupid, and &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are not the only rebel. There's always conservatives on the one hand and the curious on the other - Norrellites and Strangites. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;: So: Bend the rules. Break them, if you wish to. If your concept is solid and your work self-consistent, people will notice and accept it. Mind, this might not be the majority. But let's be honest: The majority is the audience of main stream art, and main stream these days seems to translate into entertainment. Entertainment doesn't usually seek to challenge, entertainment doesn't want to be unexpected. Entertainment abides by the rules, and that's perfectly fine. It is, however, your decision whether you want to be an entertainer or an explorer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, it can't hurt to know the rules. Only a very careless - no, let's face it: a very stupid - explorer would set out without accumulating all the existing knowledge about his expedition beforehand: Maps, knowledge about indigenous tribes, about the climate, flora, fauna, diseases. But if something unexpected occurs, something that fall outside of the jurisdiction of the existing rules - and that's bound to happen, it's an expedition, after all -, he is ready to come up with solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T08:29:29.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19092" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19110" CreationDate="2015-09-23T12:26:43.707" Score="4" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're working on a software manual with several chapters and topics and, so far, these are mostly self-contained. This means we have a dedicated chapter for &quot;connectivity&quot; and do not mention connectivity elsewhere, a dedicated chapter for &quot;software upgrades&quot; and do not mention upgrades elsewhere, etc. You get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we have now a new software functionality that affects different topics in the manual (say, topics A, C, and G). Each one of these topics is self-contained and isolated from the others but affected in a different way by this new functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, what would be the best approach to read about this new functionality?:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create &lt;strong&gt;a new topic H&lt;/strong&gt; and discuss in detail how this new feature affects A, C, and G. Add references in A, C, and G to the new H topic (&lt;strong&gt;central approach&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Add information&lt;/strong&gt; about the new feature to the &lt;strong&gt;to&#xA;the existing topics A, C, and G&lt;/strong&gt;, without the need of a new H&#xA;topic. (&lt;strong&gt;disperse approach&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We see advantages and disadvantages in both. In (&lt;strong&gt;1&lt;/strong&gt;) we have everything in one place, which makes things easier in the long term, but H would be a topic of disparate things. In (&lt;strong&gt;2&lt;/strong&gt;) we provide the information in the topic itself, where is most needed, but this is difficult to maintain the in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;Jorge&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user9995" LastEditorDisplayName="user9995" LastEditDate="2015-09-23T13:06:02.163" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T02:31:23.300" Title="How to work on a new software feature that affects different topics" Tags="|technical-writing|structure|software|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19092" CreationDate="2015-09-23T13:29:51.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you already have your answer really.&#xA;Explain each topic in it's own chapter as you have them, then create a new chapter which explains this additional feature which alters the behavior of these other items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use Layers of Explanation Create Layers of Understanding&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking it up this way and explaining the foundational points you want your reader to understand first, will create layers of understanding which then make later materials more easy to grasp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Let's use HTML, CSS and JavaScript as an example.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 1: What Is HTML?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language...&#xA;  ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HTML is the structure of your document.  It allows us to create&#xA;  the structure of the DOM (Document Object Model) The  tag is a&#xA;  block type of HTML element. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 2: What Is CSS?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CSS is an acronym meaning Cascading Style&#xA;  Sheets... &#xA;  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To style all of the &amp;lt;DIV&amp;gt; tags with a class=&quot;book&quot;  &amp;lt;DIV&amp;gt;&#xA;  class=&quot;book&quot;) we can do something like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;#book {color:red; padding: 2px 2px 2px 2px;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 3: What Is JavaScript&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;JavaScript can be used to manipulate the DOM -- the structure of the HTML :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;div id='extra'&amp;gt;test&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&#xA;&#xA;document.getElementById(&quot;extra&quot;).appendChild(node);&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;JavaScript can also be used to alter the style of particular DOM&#xA;  element.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;document.getElementById(&quot;p2&quot;).style.color = &quot;blue&quot;;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Foundation Is Solid&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the time your readers get to the JavaScript (more advanced topic which requires the understanding of the previous information) they will be able to add this new layer of understanding because you've built a foundation for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.  Good luck with your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T13:29:51.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19089" CreationDate="2015-09-23T13:42:33.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll provide an answer to your very first example which I believe will provide guidance to all of your punctuation questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consider what punctuation is&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a way to indicate to the reader that there are pauses in the spoken language.  Originally all text was slammed together like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;thisisasentencewhichisverydifficulttoread&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Orators had difficulty remembering where to pause and thus punctuation was born.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A comma means halfstop and a period means fullstop.  &lt;strong&gt;Whatever that means.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Whatever Is Easiest To Read&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the point is, do whatever helps your reader to read your story, article, etc in such a way that they do not stumble over your sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Common Usage&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally that means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adhere to common usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Whatever that means.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Plight of the Semicolon&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most readers do not understand semicolons and it just makes them pause and think:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What did the writer mean here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When readers pause when reading our text they may stop reading forever.  That's why you should make it as simple as possible, but no simpler. (invoking Einstein here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your First Example&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Those things I said; I didn’t mean a word of it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers understand periods far better than semicolons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, keep it simple and just make it two sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What If Someone Spoke Those Sentences In Real Life?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd probably think they spoke two sentences, because you wouldn't differnetiate a halfstop of semicolon from a fullstop of a period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, since that is the sound you want to create in the user's head without her having to stop and think about what you meant, go ahead and just make it two sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary of Keeping It Simple&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let this type of sound guide you in all of your punctuation and I think you will find it far easier and you will use less punctuation symbols and your readers will read more of your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T13:42:33.007" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19095" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-23T13:44:07.177" Score="3" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;First out, my question pertains strictly to &lt;strong&gt;screenplays&lt;/strong&gt;. Secondly, it deals with a &lt;strong&gt;spec script&lt;/strong&gt;. Now, there seems to be surprisingly scant information on the internet in regard to how far you should go in &lt;em&gt;describing a locale&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll throw you an example. If I intend on describing a building from the &lt;strong&gt;'EXT'&lt;/strong&gt;, should I specify the colour of the walls and the number of storeys? Can I go even further to describe its skeleton and the shape it cuts? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much is &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; much? Further, would it be superfluous to mention stuff like the &lt;em&gt;frame of the windows&lt;/em&gt; and other things of the like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your answer will be all the more appreciated if you could cite examples and/or sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14344" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:12:38.887" Title="How Much Descriptive Information Is Enough For a Locale In A Screenplay?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19092" CreationDate="2015-09-23T13:45:43.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do your users read and use the manual?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they use it as a &lt;strong&gt;textbook&lt;/strong&gt;, where 95% of the readers start at the beginning and progress through to the end in linear fashion, then put all the new information into one chapter at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they use it as a &lt;strong&gt;reference book&lt;/strong&gt;, so chapters are read out of order, individually, or not even in total because the person is looking up a feature, then you need the disparate method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To use SaberWriter's example, if all I need to do is look up how to create menus in HTML, it would be useful to have at the very least a note saying that I could do the same thing with CSS or even more easily with JavaScript, a quick summary of the process, and then a reference to a longer explanation in the CSS and JavaScript chapters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T13:45:43.397" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19095" CreationDate="2015-09-23T14:35:26.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Power of Common Knowledge&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply base the amount of description upon how easily you can apply common knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your main setting is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Downtown Chicago&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, your script reader will understand when you say the character is standing outside of a building.  Your reader will assume it is a skyscraper and not additional info is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SmallTown USA&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your setting is Smalltown USA outside of a building that is necessary and specific to your plot -- old barn or horse stable or something, you can probably just add the bit about the barn or horse stable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sci-Fi Setting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, the setting is another planet in the future where the aliens have 16 eyes and 4 arms, then the buildings may look a bit different and need to be described specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Main Reason To Make It Short&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Directors do not like to be told too many specifics because it :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;wastes their time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;limits their creative outlet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;may offend their intelligence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this is extremely well explained in the very short and fantastically instructive book : &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2p8Ji2X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How To Write A Movie In 21 Days by Viki King - amazon link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T15:12:38.887" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:12:38.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19086" CreationDate="2015-09-23T14:43:29.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That would be a &lt;strong&gt;theme&lt;/strong&gt; rather than a motif. A theme is an idea or message that's key to the story, and a motif is an element that recurs throughout the story--an object, symbol, etc.--that contributes to building a theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8558" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T14:43:29.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19089" CreationDate="2015-09-23T15:22:58.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Punctuation is a fluid thing in dialogue. There are rules you have to abide by just so readers have a basic understanding, but it can also be used in a variety of ways to communicate the &lt;em&gt;sound&lt;/em&gt; of the dialogue that you want to get across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A semi-colon combines two related but effectively separate sentences. In dialogue, people don't do this--they either turn it into one sentence or naturally break it into two. (A colon there works to flow the two sentences together. You could even use an ellipsis or an em-dash.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An em-dash is a longer pause, with more emphasis; a comma is a shorter pause. Either one works. (In this situation: I'd go with an em-dash, since the sentence obviously has some weight to it--in an argument--and the dash helps with that.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I mean&quot; is a filler thing that people say to balance out the rhythm of their speech, and almost never part of the actual sentence's meaning. So you need a comma after it. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Italics or quotation marks can indicate a phrase that is used as a term with special meaning. It's your choice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The ellipsis takes the place of a period when it's used at the end of an incomplete sentence (&quot;It's been...&quot;) to indicate a flow into another sentence. No full stop after the ellipsis. Em-dashes are also an option, or mixing em-dashes and ellipses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Semi-colons are a little more formal and it's up to you whether you want to use them here or use something else. See point 1. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Quotations go in quotation marks. It should be &quot;...to 'throw up' every time...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Em-dashes. Em-dashes are used, like parentheses, to enclose phrases that aren't necessary but are related to the sentence. Ellipses aren't used for that purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps, but if you have many more questions about punctuation throughout your book, I &lt;strong&gt;strongly suggest&lt;/strong&gt; investing in a copy-editor. If you really plan on self-publishing it, and want it to be successful, an editor will help give your work more polish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-publishing companies often offer editing packages, and there are freelance editors (but be careful, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8558" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T15:22:58.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19095" CreationDate="2015-09-23T15:35:38.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: only as much as you need. Which Usually means &quot;not a whole lot.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screenwriting is a collaborative effort. The author needs to write enough for the locale to be &quot;suggestive,&quot; but not so much as to take away freedom from the producer. The more &quot;generic&quot; the place (New York, Chicago, Paris, etc.) the less you need to write. Only if the place is very specific, e.g. a faraway island on earth, or in space, do you need a detailed description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T15:35:38.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19069" CreationDate="2015-09-23T15:52:54.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am answering as the author of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0471584150&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;A Modern Approach to Graham and Dodd Investing.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote about my own investing experiences, but linked it to a body of established theory the (&quot;Graham and Dodd&quot; approach of the 1930s). I then discussed how I updated the approach between its original (1934) version and my (2004) version, discussing trends and developments in the investment world in those 70 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're probably talented, but if your ideas are sound, they are probably linked to some academic or practical theory. So discuss the original version of some established theory, your version of it, and explain why your version represents an improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T15:52:54.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19089" CreationDate="2015-09-23T22:08:18.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Those things I said; I didn't mean any of it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Off-topic, maybe, but I'd go w/ &quot;...didn't mean any of THEM.&quot; since THINGS is plural.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As has been mentioned, a semi-colon divides two independent clauses. That means that you COULD use a period in the same position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a semicolon is not correct for what(I think) you mean here. &quot;Those things I said,&quot; is only a complete sentence if you intend to say &quot;I said those things,&quot; just as you COULD put the object(THINGS) first in a sentence such as &quot;To market we go.&quot; Yoda does it all the time, so it must be right.;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you intend for your entire sentence to MEAN &quot;I didn't mean those things I said.&quot;(subject is &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;, THINGS is the object, &amp;amp; the phrase I SAID modifies THINGS) then you should go w/ comma or ellipses or possibly em-dash...OR just reword the sentence to say &quot;I didn't mean those things I said.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15317" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T22:08:18.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19082" CreationDate="2015-09-23T22:11:38.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it interesting that Don Roble's answer above is the least insightful, yet has the most upvotes. I also find it a bit insulting to state that someone isn't a writer because they don't believe what you think makes them a writer; after all, the &quot;outliers&quot; can be and often are the ones who challenge &quot;rules.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is, all writing doesn't have to be creative; there are plenty of writers that don't even need to worry about these so-called &quot;rules&quot; because they could be technical writers, blog writers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aforementioned writers don't really need to follow any &quot;hardcoded&quot; rules, and, subsequently, you don't have to either. Interestingly, as a writer, one of the best things (and possibly the worst things) is that writing is something you can't really become much better at, in my view. I believe people can improve grammar, wording, etc., but the immeasurable brilliance and uniqueness of a great story is something not fabricated solely from pre-defined &quot;rules&quot; or anything overviewed beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like an artist paints a picture, surely we can see there is only an infinite amount of colors or patterns of anything, etc. Does that make something uncreative? Definitely &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Creativity is not measurable -- is not necessarily taught -- cannot necessarily be taught -- and isn't something everybody has well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people can read all those &quot;rules&quot; or tropes or whatever, write for years, and they still may never write something very good (however defined) -- that's just how it is. Maybe fiction writing is something you can do marvelously well because you just are naturally good at putting words and symbolisms, ideas, and expressions together that captivate a good deal of people, but you do so without knowing, caring, or accepting the &quot;rules.&quot; There's literally nothing wrong with that, after all. Would anyone shun someone who can do something exceptionally well if they claimed they never started from &quot;rules?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think not many would. The point is, if you did it and you got good feedback, keep doing it and ignore the rules, because even without knowing the supposed &quot;tricks of the trade&quot; you still did well, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, keep doing it and try not to worry much. Creativity cannot be learned, so forcing yourself to learn a rule or set of formulated ideas will not assure you to be a good writer -- writing well as you do will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15318" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T22:11:38.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19105" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19107" CreationDate="2015-09-23T23:18:31.373" Score="4" ViewCount="274" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, I think it goes without saying that vampire stories are really overdone. But I have a novel idea I would really like to write that has a vampire theme. I think I can pull it off if I do it in a way it hasn't been done before, but my worry is that the clear vampire theme will ward people off. If you see a good-looking book, but it's about something you see too often, do you still pick it up and read the back? Or do you just gloss over it on the shelf?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15319" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T16:33:02.613" Title="Can an overdone theme still work?" Tags="|cliches|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19106" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-23T23:58:30.720" Score="6" ViewCount="727" Body="&lt;p&gt;In studying writing, I've learned that you need to give your protagonist something - usually a quality - that makes the reader want him to win. Without this quality, the reader doesn't care what happens to the protagonist, or simply doesn't care for him, period. I call this quality the protagonist's strength. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the situation: I'm currently writing a book about a hero who starts out full of perseverance. He believes that they can fight against the enemies arrayed against them, and giving up is furthest from his mind. Throughout the course of the novel, the hero receives a series of emotional and psycological blows designed to make him doubt whether this is true. These blows culminate in one final blow, which proves to be too much. The hero gives up and essentially decides that the situation is hopeless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do note that after that point, the hero then goes through a series of events that bolster his perseverance, until the climax arrives, and his doubts are shoved aside, his resolve emerging stronger than ever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; The hero's strength in this book is his perseverance: the fact that he doesn't give up. How can I essentially have him lose his strength, the thing that makes the reader want him to win, half way through the book, and still keep the reader? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Notes:&lt;/em&gt; Obviously having the hero lose his strength isn't terribly advisable, so I have duly altered the way things happened in the book. I thought this question was likely to help other writers though, so I posted it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-09-24T21:45:31.990" LastActivityDate="2018-04-14T11:21:21.140" Title="Can the protagonist lose his strength without losing the reader?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|character-development|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19105" CreationDate="2015-09-24T00:17:45.723" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can an overdone theme still work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Absolutely&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have the right idea. You generally want to stay away from overdone themes, because they are, well, overdone. But if you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; write a novel with an overdone theme, you should approach it from an unexplored angle. Make sure your novel is a fresh look at a familiar topic, and you will be just fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T00:17:45.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19106" CreationDate="2015-09-24T01:54:43.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh, I think it's quite common in fiction, actually; a hero you root for giving up before finding their passion again. I think that it's usually expected that the hero will pull through, so I personally assume that the hero will regain their strength and in fact it makes me keep reading, eagerly awaiting them to overcome their struggle. If you worry some readers might not assume that, perhaps you can foreshadow that things will get better. Or, even better, make sure you go a good ways into the story beforehand, so that they will grow attached enough to the characters and story to see them through to the end. Anyways, I think struggles make heroes more relatable and human and the bigger the struggle the more relatable they are, so I think it actually sounds like a great idea to me, as long as it isn't done in the same way as the last Batman movie where it got boring for quite awhile. They dragged it on too long and didn't have much happen while the hero was on hiatus. That really bugged me, so I'd avoid that in particular; if the hero has a long hiatus from their journey or whatever, make sure something interesting is still happening. Anyways, I think this struggle is going to be a great and relatable way to build your character, and when they emerge again the reader will root for them even more. Good luck on writing them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15319" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T01:54:43.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19109" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19113" CreationDate="2015-09-24T02:01:10.770" Score="8" ViewCount="1261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working on a visual novel project with the help of my friends. There are actually five protagonists, however, instead of one. They each have their own chapter, which then culminates in a group chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In developing plotlines and such, I've noticed it can be pretty hard to write a story with multiple protagonists! It's going to take a lot of planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I effectively plan this novel so that I'm focusing equally on all the protagonists and developing them all well? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15319" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-09-24T16:04:50.413" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T16:04:50.413" Title="Writing Multiple Protagonists" Tags="|creative-writing|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19092" CreationDate="2015-09-24T02:31:23.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends, but probably you want the distributed approach where the chapter on X tells you everything you need to know about X, even if some of that is only relevant if you're using feature Y.  However, if Y is a corner case or involves a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of changes to several other features, you might be better off collecting everything about Y in one place &lt;em&gt;and linking to it from every other chapter it touches&lt;/em&gt;.  Don't just put it in its own chapter and say nothing in the others, though; that can lead to surprises when users who jumped straight to X later find out that they should have done X' because they're using Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of this, one approach my team uses is to have a section of the doc set (an HTML bundle of all the individual docs) that describes new features in this release.  Each new feature gets a high-level description of what it is and when you might use it, ending with links to the relevant places in the &quot;main&quot; docs.  People interested in &quot;new feature Y&quot; can go there for easy access to the information (via links), but the main content is in the other docs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T02:31:23.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14780" CreationDate="2015-09-24T05:45:51.560" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;It was in newspapers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the circumstances applicable to you were printed as &quot;News&quot;&#xA;AND these newpapers complied with my professional association's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spj.org/ethicscode-other.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Code of Ethics&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;then whatever the author writes and publishes IS actionable as libel,&#xA;but save your $, you won't win. It probably won't even get on the docket.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a &quot;work of fiction&quot; is irrelevant in this case, there are countless&#xA;fictional works that reference real people and events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mention the SPJ Ethical Code and whether or not the newspapers in question&#xA;adequately reported the initial and any follow ups on whatever &quot;It&quot; was.&#xA;Clearly &quot;It&quot; is something you'd prefer everyone forget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the rare case that ALL of these newspapers are scandal sheets that have no&#xA;ethics or professional reporting standards, you could sue for libel&#xA;and have a chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More likely they &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; report the story correctly. In which case the same facts &#xA;from the newspapers' original stories are being re-hashed by the author.&#xA;This is protected speech under the 1st ammendment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You did not sue then, because everything was true?&#xA;Sounds like what you'd rather not get re-hashed is verifiable truth, which &#xA;can't be sued for libel, (not in the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your parents, yourself and your current employer, all of you have rights.&#xA;The main thing the author MAY violate is your privacy. From your Question&#xA;An interested party could find you because the author gives your real name and location of your current employer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is relevant information to &quot;It&quot; and the information hasn't changed, there's nothing to be accomplished for you legally. Even if you have a new employer and lose your job after the author goes to press, you won't be able to &#xA;make a case for libel because &quot;It&quot; was already publicly-available information they could've located about you easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your current employer experiences some sort of loss of income due to the &#xA;new publication, THEY CAN sue for libel, but their case would be only marginally more actionable under libel than yours would. Some companies are happy to sue and lose just for the sake of causing anguish and extracting legal costs from the publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your parents were involved in the initial story, same &quot;n/a&quot; applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if they were NOT mentioned and later your privacy is violated, or theirs is, you CAN SUE for &lt;em&gt;violation of privacy,&lt;/em&gt; especially if readers DO&#xA;in fact connect your name, place of work, then follow you home or find out &#xA;where your parents live and harm you or them in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1965 The US Supreme Court Ruled that all US Citizens have a &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/381/479/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Right to privacy.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You still need to file a civil tort action and prove DAMAGE (which can be&#xA;financial, physical or emotional) to a jury. The opposition would argue&#xA;you knowingly gave up this right by NOT taking legal action in the past against&#xA;&quot;the newspapers&quot; that reported &quot;It.&quot; initially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd be the one &lt;em&gt;Taking the Action, so the burden of proof lies with YOU.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;Unless there is significant fallout after publication harming you, your employer or your family&#xA;following publication of this. It won't be worth your while to take action,&#xA;you'll most likely rack up huge legal fees and still lose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can take a litmus test of &quot;the newspapers&quot; in question by comparing&#xA;their handling of &quot;It&quot; with citation 1. Mainly, did these newspapers, in general, &quot;seek the truth an report it&quot;? If a source said something bad about you to a newspaper, did that paper give you adequate opportunity to respond to &#xA;allegations or anything that could LATER become actionable? Likely they did, &#xA;it's pretty much &quot;Running a newspaper and not getting sued 101.&quot;&#xA;You can read the Court's ruling and opinion re: Griswold v. Connecticut &#xA;in citation 2 to better understand your right to privacy.&#xA;On a positive note, don't forget you ALSO have freedom of speech, which&#xA;reflexively is limited by the author's right to privacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastEditorUserId="15292" LastEditDate="2015-09-24T06:00:32.100" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T06:00:32.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19109" CreationDate="2015-09-24T13:51:18.393" Score="7" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each character needs to be easily distinguishable. If the narrative is in first-person, make it so each character's monologue is different in noticeable ways (vocabulary, punctuation, sentence style, frequency of metaphors and other literary techniques, etc). Even if it's in third-person, slightly alter the narrator so that, again, each chapter is distinguishable. In other words, make them stylistically different.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example. In Beloved, by Toni Morrison, there is a sequence of 4 chapter that focus on the protagonists. The entire novel is narrated on the third person by an omniscient narrator, so these chapters are so jarring that they serve as a landmark in the book. And each character has peculiarities. One is psychologically undeveloped, so her chapter has no punctuation and is written as if by someone whose mind is a complete mess, random ideas everywhere. This makes her so easily distinguishable that the author doesn't even need to label each chapter as &quot;Bob's Chapter&quot; or &quot;Mary's Chapter&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does each character perceive the world, and how does the world perceive each one of them? Let's say Character A is very friendly towards a certain faction, and in return is welcomed by them and treated very well. But, maybe, this same faction is hostile towards all the other characters. So, here, you would be establishing each character in how they relate to the world. This tells a lot about them, and since you are working in a visual novel this actually gives you many interesting &quot;gameplay&quot; opportunities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example. Let's return to Beloved. In this book there is this mother and daughter. The mother is openly hostile towards pretty much &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; in the town, and is very hated. She raised her daughter without socializing her, so when the girl's an adult she's terribly afraid of going out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, one day the mother get's &quot;sick&quot;, and the daughter is the one who asks for outside help. She has to brave her fears and communicate with the community, and in that she discovers that &lt;em&gt;she isn't hated.&lt;/em&gt; The community takes a week or two time to warm up to her, but once they understand her situation they promptly support her in many ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The community &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; dislikes her mother, but now they have some sympathy &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; actively like the daughter. So, you see, this is an interesting way to differentiate each character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;So, you said you are working on a visual novel. So, why don't you try to incorporate what I said in the decisions each character has to take? Maybe John's storyline is somewhat focused in solving a family issue, and, accordingly, his decisions revolve around his family and how they improve or worsen his condition. Maybe Mary wants to save the world and doesn't really care about the impact of her decisions in John's family, and that should reflect in her choices. Maybe Thomas is torn between saving the world and staying with his family, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Map each character. Describe them, then compare them to each other character. Maybe they are complimentary to each other, maybe they are similar... Maybe they are friends, or enemies. Map everything, so that you always have in mind their possible interactions. Try to make each bond between them as unique as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How is the structure of your plot? Does your visual novel have a linear narrative (the player necessarily goes through all storylines in a single playthrough?) Or does it have a fragmented one (you have a chapter select menu?) If it's the latter, are all chapters available from the start or do you unlock each one?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about this. The order you present each character can have a great impact in the story. Often, the first character the player gets to spend a lot of time with will become the &quot;standard&quot; protagonist. You can use that to great effect. Maybe you play first as the villain without knowing that person is the bad guy. Maybe you play as someone who thinks Bob is the worst person ever, but Bob might be actually a pretty nice guy. Toy with the player's expectations and impressions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14757" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T13:51:18.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19106" CreationDate="2015-09-24T14:59:46.823" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Show the character's Strength (perseverance) being driven by his Weakness (ego, for example). Over time, our vices erode our strengths. When your character gives up (forfeiting his Strength), it is because his Weakness (again, ego, for example) has taken blows that it cannot withstand. While admiring his perseverance (as well as his other fantastic characteristics), the reader knows that his Weakness will be his downfall and expects it. If written well, the reader will also know that this guy could be truly heroic if he would just acknowledge and deal with his Weakness, and we root for this breaking of people we admire, because we know they will be even better for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the story proceeds, show glimpses of him starting to get it. Of course, he doesn't until it's almost too late. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should be a single scene, when he gives up, in which he reflects on who he truly is and what he truly values. (Avoid whole scenes of self-loathing. Nobody likes to read that.) At his core, he is a hero, and he knows that people depend on him. He can know longer fight for a victory simply to add to his scorecard. He will fight with all of his grit for the lives of the people around him, regardless of victory. He becomes the Hero that the crisis needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now go write it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15187" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T14:59:46.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19106" CreationDate="2015-09-24T16:12:36.147" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of why we read fiction is to learn something by going through an experience with the character --that's what makes identifying with the character important. For someone to lose what they and others have always felt is their core strength is a real experience, and one that could be compelling to go through in fiction --if it resolves in a way that feels real, not fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that reason, I disagree with your comment that it is &lt;em&gt;not advisable.&lt;/em&gt;  If the overall message of your book is &quot;just give up,&quot; I'd personally find that off-putting.  But if the lesson is &quot;sometimes we try so hard that we get in our own ways,&quot; that's something I could find valuable as realized in a fictional context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Possible other lessons: &lt;em&gt;we all need help sometimes&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;no one makes it entirely on his/her own,&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;even when you're at your personal lowest, all hope is not gone&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-09-24T16:32:32.263" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T16:32:32.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19082" CreationDate="2015-09-24T16:19:27.587" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every art form --not just writing --has a body of theory that has developed around it in order to identify patterns.  However, no art form can be wholly reduced to a set of rules, or otherwise machines could successfully create creative art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write in a &lt;em&gt;state of nature&lt;/em&gt;, unaware of the theories, you may create some things that are entirely original and new, but you might just as likely create things that are tired and cliched because you aren't aware of how many others have done the same thing before you.  You may also reach a point where you can't achieve your goals because you haven't developed your technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, your relationship with theory is that you have mastered it to the point where you can create new and original work at the cutting edge of your discipline.  However, to get to that point, you may spend a long time traveling in the footsteps of those who came before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T16:19:27.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19082" CreationDate="2015-09-24T18:51:58.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, your comment reads as if every author has gone to use these tropes found on TVTropes, and that is a lie. Tropes are found similarities among stories, not some writer's guide to writing stories.&#xA;Stop over-thinking it and enjoy writing. Nobody is caring, people love the book, movie, comic book, and many other fictional pieces of work for what the author did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Rick Riordan first published his Percy Jackson series, were people upset over the fact Percy Jackson and Harry Potter were basically the same characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Divergent first got published, was the readers upset with glaring parallels to the Hunger Games? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop over thinking it, use TVTropes to piece together a character, but your character isn't well-defined yet. Use TVTropes to your advantage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15327" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T18:51:58.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19002" CreationDate="2015-09-24T19:18:31.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;have not&lt;/em&gt; ghostwritten before, but I have received offers. All of them, without exception, were from old men with a high social standing who sought to establish themselves in a way or another. Some of them were judges and lawyers, good ones, and wanted to get a reputation as fiction writers. Some of them were academics who stopped writing a long time ago and had been hiring ghost writers for decades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I became a &lt;em&gt;protegé&lt;/em&gt; of an established writer and that's how I met most of these men. He vouched for my trustworthiness and skill, and that's how I received some of these offers. So, if you are looking for ghost writing offers, I recommend that you try to get inside the circles of writers where you live. Try to make friends with them, sometimes share your writing. Try and discover where the old rich men spend their time, normally there's a coffeehouse or library where they chat. Participate in your local university's academic life, go to the events from the Languages Department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know Bloomsday? Some of my potential clients took part in it once or twice. If your university has one, go to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let me offer some words of advice for you. People looking for a ghost writer seek trustworthy, discreet writers. You've got to know how to keep a secret, or at least make it look like you know how to. Also, &lt;em&gt;if you do get into ghost writing&lt;/em&gt;, remember that your clients are not necessarily trustworthy or nice people. Keep your distance, be ethical and professional, obey deadlines and don't mix work with personal life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14757" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T19:18:31.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7460" CreationDate="2015-09-25T03:14:15.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excruciating pain shot through me, setting me on fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15333" LastActivityDate="2015-09-25T03:14:15.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19105" CreationDate="2015-09-25T12:49:50.703" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some authors have their vampires looking beautiful like in Twilight, or their true form is gruesome like Angel in Buffy. (Vampires are commonly said to be lustful creatures, so making them more monstrous looking discourages that and makes it more memorable) If you want to change it up, maybe you can give them a unique, possibly supernatural quality. The perceptions of vampires aren't set rules!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15336" LastEditorUserId="15336" LastEditDate="2015-09-26T16:33:02.613" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T16:33:02.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19105" CreationDate="2015-09-25T16:50:59.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;World War Z:&lt;/strong&gt; Zombies, apocalypse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Hunger Games:&lt;/strong&gt; Teenagers, survival.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Book Thief:&lt;/strong&gt; Teenagers, Nazism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see, you shouldn't worry about overdone themes. You should worry about underdone themes no one cares about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, you can always turn an overdone theme into something original. For example, World War Z is an overdone theme: zombies, apocalypse. But it's still original (and a best-seller) because ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) It's written as a series of interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) It's a social commentary--featuring zombies!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-09-25T16:50:59.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19082" CreationDate="2015-09-25T17:44:44.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will add my eight cents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is an art. It is. Regardless of what you write, or how it's written, creative writing is always creative. A trope is merely a buzzword used by people who want to feel smarter and better than others and superior; that want to act like they know something before it's possible to know it; to be conceited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind the trope is that one can believe to accurately guess what is going to happen before it; a preconceived opinion; a meta-opinion; a desire to feel smart and involved. It is pathetic at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real writers know that writing itself is the art, and nothing but passion and interest drives that writing ... not money ... not rules ... not standards ... not others ... just passion. That is truly what art is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, however, agree most with Second Mind and Tired Gonza's answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15337" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-09-25T17:56:09.440" LastActivityDate="2015-09-25T17:56:09.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19126" CreationDate="2015-09-25T19:11:16.853" Score="2" ViewCount="1040" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a story about friendly lions. It all starts with this 1 friendly lion searching for nomadic lionesses. His name is Anapumua Moto. He has a cheetah friend named Duma and a leopard friend named Bella. It then goes into that 1 pride splitting again and again until the friendly lions took over lion territory. The next chapter goes more into the changes in lion society that result and a coalition of 2 lions searching for a pride. Their names are Tau and Banda. When they come across a lioness named Simba that already has cubs, she is still afraid of the cubs being killed even though she knows that all the lions are friendly now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So naturally in an angry tone of voice she asks &quot;Why are you here? And what is that leopard doing?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tau and Banda say in a nice tone of voice &quot;We didn’t mean to anger you. We were just searching for lionesses. Anapumua Moto did that years ago and his friendliness genes passed on to us. Bella is our leopard friend and she hunts for us as we search for lionesses. We roar whenever she wonders where we are.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That conversation then goes into things like what will happen when they have a large pride and ends with Simba saying &quot;Okay. Lets do this.&quot; when she is confident that Tau and Banda won't kill the cubs and that having leopards and cheetahs as friends in case the lionesses are tired is great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to let readers know that Simba is angry before Tau and Banda apologize for angering her. So what should I do if I want to add anger to a question that a character is asking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8607" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T21:05:24.333" Title="Angry tone of voice in a question" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19125" CreationDate="2015-09-25T19:29:35.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple way is to add an action tag before the dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like the following might work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simba frowned and let out a growl.  &quot;&quot;Why are you here? And..&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-09-25T19:29:35.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19127" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19129" CreationDate="2015-09-25T19:53:36.677" Score="1" ViewCount="3417" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to quote a nursery rhyme at the beginning of my chapter, but I'm not sure the proper formatting for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen a lot of authors quote passages from books, songs, and various other locations. At the end, they put the author (if known) to give credit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, the nursery rhyme I am referring to is &quot;What Are Little Boys Made Of?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                 PART 1&#xA;&#xA;    &quot;What are little boys made of?&#xA;    Snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails,&#xA;    That's what little boys are made of.&#xA;&#xA;    What are little girls made of? &#xA;    Sugar and spice and all things nice,&#xA;    That's what little girls are made of.&quot;&#xA;    - Author?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10325" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T01:58:05.067" Title="Quoting a Nursery Rhyme" Tags="|formatting|citations|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19125" CreationDate="2015-09-25T22:22:12.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Saberwriter. You could write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;.......&quot;, she growled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or something like:&#xA;&quot;..........,&quot; she said, her face darkening. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or add something like: The irritation in her tone/face/voice was palpable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastActivityDate="2015-09-25T22:22:12.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19127" CreationDate="2015-09-25T22:51:38.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nursery rhymes should be formatted the same as any other poems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a block quote, each line of poem is set on its own line, matching the formatting of the original as much as possible. (This includes indents at the start of each line, as in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/Altar.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;George Herbert's &quot;The Altar&quot;.&lt;/a&gt;) No quotation marks are used. Except for the quotation marks, the example in the question is formatted correctly for setting the poem as a block quote. Since you're quoting a large portion (and apparently as an epigraph), a block quote would be appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For quoting in the text body, you would use quotation marks, with a slash between the lines: e.g.,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The poem begins &quot;What are little boys made of?/ &#xA;  Snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails,/&#xA;  That's what little boys are made of.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For the citation, you'll need to do some research. If the poem is anonymous, you can just list &quot;Anonymous&quot; as the &quot;author&quot;. An anonymous poem old enough to be traditional can be credited as in this way, but it's more common to either credit &quot;Traditional&quot; as the &quot;author&quot; or simply include no credit (presuming your readers will recognize the poem). Whether an anonymous work is traditional work is a matter for authorial discretion, but most Mother Goose rhymes would probably qualify (not all are anonymous). If this rhyme is anonymous, I'd recommend crediting &quot;Traditional&quot; or giving no credit line.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: In &lt;em&gt;The Annotated Mother Goose,&lt;/em&gt; William S. Baring-Gould and Cecil Baring-Gould list a similar rhyme that dates back to at least the mid 1800's; it is of unknown authorship but attributed (probably incorrectly) to the English Romantic poet Robert Southey (1774&amp;ndash;1843). No guarantees, but I think it's safe to call this one traditional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15276" LastEditorUserId="15276" LastEditDate="2015-09-26T01:58:05.067" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T01:58:05.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8150" CreationDate="2015-09-26T11:56:21.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While a title cannot be copyrighted, an author might choose a title for her work that infringes on a registered trademark.  Different rules apply to trademarks, but that doesn't make their use as a title legal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15342" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T11:56:21.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19132" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-26T16:46:46.417" Score="1" ViewCount="347" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an online PDF document. It is issued by the Central Department of Statistics &amp;amp; Information (Saudi Arabia). The title of the document (42 pages long) is: Hajj Statistics. Year of publication is 2014. Pages referenced are 18-23. Since there is no individual author, can I consider the Department to be the Author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be your APA citation for this entry? I'm not referring to the in-text citation, but to the one that would be listed in the list of references. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this was an offline document, what would the citation be? What further info would be needed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15345" LastActivityDate="2016-06-11T01:00:41.837" Title="How to cite this document in APA style of citation" Tags="|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19133" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-26T20:55:24.683" Score="2" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to self publish my 2nd book. I promote heavily to my small niche market and often buyers find it on Amazon. If I simply use CreateSpace as my printer, a few hundred at at time, do I HAVE to let them have the Amazon sales? Can I set up my own Amazon page and do FBA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15348" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T22:24:35.930" Title="CreateSpace and Amazon Sales" Tags="|self-publishing|sales|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19133" CreationDate="2015-09-26T22:24:35.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you choose to use CreateSpace, you have a couple of different options available to you. The first is to do as you asked and buy the copies yourself and then sell them through your own site or in person for events such as book signings. According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their guidelines&lt;/a&gt;, you can buy copies through your own account at cost plus shipping and handling. The &quot;Buying Copies&quot; tab includes a calculator that will help you guess at the costs. One of the issues you may want to consider before doing this is the matter of then shipping the book to the eventual buyer. This will be an additional cost to you which will eat into your royalties. Also, you will have to handle the accounting for sales and the reporting of income yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to use the CreateSpace eStore (see the &quot;Distribution&quot; tab on the same page). This will allow you to set up your own web page for the sale of your book, and Amazon handles all the details like credit card processing and shipping the book to the buyer. It doesn't mention it on this page, but Amazon will also track your sales for the purpose of reporting income, which can be a big help come tax time. With this option, your readers are not &quot;officially&quot; going to Amazon, but Amazon is handling everything on the back end for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way you do it, Amazon is going to be getting their share. With the second option, however, you save yourself the additional costs of shipping and handling, both from Amazon to you, and then from you to your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T22:24:35.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19135" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-27T00:03:04.863" Score="4" ViewCount="814" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always wanted to write poetry, and I tried my hand at a ballad today. However, I know very little about the technicalities of poetry, and the explanations of iambic meter and structure of the ballad were confusing to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here it is, in full (only five stanzas). I'm not requesting feedback on the quality of the poetry (I already know it to be godawful), I only want to know if it is technically a correct ballad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even better would be if someone could explain, in plain language, what a ballad is and how to construct it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The room had but one resident,&#xA;a young boy only known&#xA;for never doing what he meant,&#xA;he sat there all alone.&#xA;&#xA;One day he stood up to admit,&#xA;his memories were old.&#xA;No story to submit, he must&#xA;go make some of his own.&#xA;&#xA;Then many mountains did he climb,&#xA;he traveled every plain.&#xA;He ate new food (it was sublime)&#xA;he saw the pure humane.&#xA;&#xA;And when he went back to his room,&#xA;he thought he should record&#xA;the memories he had consumed,&#xA;the places he'd explored.&#xA;&#xA;Before he got to writing, he&#xA;had fallen on his bed.&#xA;Adventure was exciting, but&#xA;he rest now in it's stead. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15349" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-09-30T01:47:40.417" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T07:16:39.527" Title="What is a ballad?" Tags="|creative-writing|structure|poetry|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19273" CreationDate="2015-09-27T02:41:39.633" Score="2" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;The kind of story I would be thinking of is a version of &quot;Cinderella,&quot; in which the newly crowned princess is asked by the prince to act as the &quot;fairy godmother&quot; to some other downtrodden young lady. Or Dorothy, after having been given the ability to move between the land of Oz and Kansas (and other powers), is asked to return to the land of Oz to take over for the old and dying (good) witch of the North.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest thing I can think of is the &quot;Princess Diaries,&quot; where the 16-year old daughter of an American mother (Anne Hathaway) is asked to take over her deceased father's Monaco-like country of Genovia, and step into the shoes of the old queen mother (Julie Andrews).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a &quot;standard&quot; story line of this kind, and if so, what would it be called?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T12:22:42.713" Title="Are there stories where characters are supposed to &quot;grow&quot; into another character?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19137" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-24T02:42:23.343" Score="5" ViewCount="7011" Body="&lt;p&gt;What marks do professional editors and proofreaders use to indicate that a word is misspelled? There are many different sets of editing, proofreading, and typesetting marks and symbols, but the indication I am most used to, circling the word and writing SP in the margin, appears to be most often used to indicate that an abbreviation should be typed out fully. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="eatshaw" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-09-27T15:41:30.100" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T18:09:00.583" Title="Editing/Proofreading marks" Tags="|editing|proofreading|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19137" CreationDate="2015-09-24T04:34:36.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't a mark that means &quot;misspelling&quot; by itself in &quot;standard&quot; proofreading marking. &quot;sp&quot; with a circle is short for to &quot;spell out&quot;, which, like you said, means to expand an abbreviation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Misspellings should be struck out with the deletion mark and the correct spelling should be written above it. Or if it's just a small error, like a single missing letter, it can be inserted with the insertion mark. A single unnecessary letter can be struck out with the deletion mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A list of marks with usages for reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.door24.org/images/textImages/editorsProofreadingMarks.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.door24.org/images/textImages/editorsProofreadingMarks.png&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the &quot;sp&quot; with circle notation to mean &quot;check your spelling&quot; is really common in school settings. This is probably because teachers don't want to proofread their students' work (that is, give them the correct answer immediately) and instead just want them to be aware of the error and go look it up thenselves. As a commenter noted below, proofreading marks can be a matter of style or appropriateness for a certain situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8558" OwnerDisplayName="Yee-Lum" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T04:51:06.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19137" CreationDate="2015-09-24T04:55:40.883" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A mark consisting of the letters &lt;strong&gt;sp&lt;/strong&gt; enclosed in an oval is commonly used by teachers (and some professors) in the United States to call a misspelling to the student's attention. But as you note, the standard meaning of that mark under U.S. proofreading conventions is &quot;spell out&quot;, and it appears in the margin of the same line where the proofreader or copy editor has circled a symbol, an abbreviation, or some other short-form word to be spelled out at full length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peggy Smith, &lt;em&gt;Proofreading Manual &amp;amp; Reference Guide&lt;/em&gt; (1981) gives three examples of this &quot;instruction to spell out&quot;—in which the circled inline element is (1) the entire expression &quot;3 in.&quot; (to be corrected to read &quot;three inches&quot;), (2) the ¢ symbol in &quot;5¢&quot; (to be corrected to read &quot;5 cents&quot;), and (3) the abbreviation &quot;N.J.&quot; (to be corrected to read &quot;New Jersey&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But proofreaders, copy editors, and typesetters don't have a widely recognized mark to indicate &quot;misspelling&quot;—and the reason they don't is that in a professional setting, markup is not done to point out mistakes in the work to its author for later correction by that person. Instead, the point is to correct the errors as quickly as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if a proofreader (using common U.S. style conventions) comes across the spelling &lt;em&gt;millenium&lt;/em&gt;, rather than taking time to label it a typo, he or she will simply add a caret mark (&lt;sub&gt;^&lt;/sub&gt;) beneath the line between the &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; and the second &lt;em&gt;i&lt;/em&gt; and mark an &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; above the line for insertion there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the proofreader encounters the spelling &lt;em&gt;senetence&lt;/em&gt; for &lt;em&gt;sentence&lt;/em&gt;, he or she will draw a delete line through the extra &lt;em&gt;e&lt;/em&gt;. For the typo &lt;em&gt;recieve&lt;/em&gt;, he or she will draw a transposition line indicating that the order of the &lt;em&gt;i&lt;/em&gt; and the second &lt;em&gt;e&lt;/em&gt; should be reversed. And if the spelling is truly mangled, such as &lt;em&gt;numoanya&lt;/em&gt; for &lt;em&gt;pneumonia&lt;/em&gt;, he or she will draw a line through the entire word and write the correct spelling above it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia provides a rather brief list of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proofreader&amp;#39;s_marks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;proofreader's marks&lt;/a&gt; on its page devoted to that subject. EspressoGraphics.com has a somewhat &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.espressographics.com/text/proofreader.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;more detailed list of marks&lt;/a&gt; on its site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15355" OwnerDisplayName="Sven Yargs" LastEditorUserId="15355" LastEditDate="2017-01-27T18:09:00.583" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T18:09:00.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19137" CreationDate="2015-09-27T11:06:48.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure there are many (any?) professional editors or proofreaders still working on paper copy. Every publisher I've worked with has expected a digital file from me, and the edits have been done digitally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the principle is the same - if a word is mis-spelled, the editor just changes it. That would be with &quot;track changes&quot; on, so I can see that the correction was made, but they don't mark it and expect me to make the changes myself. I just approve the change they made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-27T11:06:48.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19082" CreationDate="2015-09-27T16:17:36.750" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few quotes from Charlie Kaufman:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't know what the hell a third act is.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From an interview about his film Synecdoche, New York. &quot;I don't know what's&#xA;  going on there.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see, the tropes and rules are there. But you don't have to know about them or use them. And if you learn them, you can break their structure, to create something completely original. In fact, that's the whole point of learning the rules: to break them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-09-27T16:17:36.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19135" CreationDate="2015-09-27T16:54:07.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ballads, as far as I am concerned usually do the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They tell a story -- yours does.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have the same number of lines in each stanza (there can be verse and chorus with different lengths) -- yours does.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have lines with the same number of syllables in each pair (first and third can be different in length to second and fourth) -- without counting them all, yours appear to do this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is usually a rhyme scheme where the second and fourth lines rhyme -- except for 'old' and 'own' yours does.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This pretty much fits my definition. I'd call is a ballad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-09-27T16:54:07.967" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19144" CreationDate="2015-09-27T17:38:13.063" Score="2" ViewCount="674" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current novel, the protagonist is driven forward throughout the plot by events that happened to him in the past. The reader needs to know these events, so I'd like to include them in a prologue. The prologue would take place nearly a year before the events of the rest of the novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my &lt;strong&gt;question&lt;/strong&gt;: How can I show how much time has passed between the prologue and chapter one? Is there some technique I can use that will seem natural? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Methods that won't work:&lt;/em&gt; Previously, I've included a bold header above the chapter, maybe with a date, maybe with a number of days later. I'm trying to veer away from this method though, because it doesn't lend itself to every kind of writing (this is just my personal opinion). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T04:13:17.490" Title="What's the most natural way to show a passage of time between the prologue and chapter one?" Tags="|time-depiction|prologues|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19143" CreationDate="2015-09-27T19:15:14.050" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll refrain from standard cautions about the advisability of prologues vs. weaving the back story into the main story and assume that you've definitely decided a prologue is the way to go. With that in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think just having the first chunk labelled &quot;Prologue&quot; cues most readers that there's a time separation between Chapter One.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, I think your technique will depend on the content of your prologue. If you have Joe getting blown up in the Prologue, in Chapter One you can have Joe testing his scars and musing about how they don't seem to be fading any more a year after the injuries. If Joe watches his true love walk away from him in the Prologue, have him still trying not to think about her in Chapter One, or have a friend mention that it's been a year since Jane left and it's time for Joe to start dating again. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Textual cues, I'd say. But I can't give you more details about what they might be without knowing what happens in your prologue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-27T19:15:14.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19146" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19154" CreationDate="2015-09-27T21:33:30.193" Score="2" ViewCount="1119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the majority of the story for my first novel worked out. My only problem is that I feel like I'm trying to find a way to force magic into it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is only one point where magic is essential to the story line: A (secret) government group has been kidnaping people from the lower sector (a really poor side of town). They keep the ones who test above a certain range of power and kill the ones who don't. I'm not positive what they will be doing with the ones who test above, but I'm thinking they fix them up and turn them into soldiers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I continue adding magic into into the novel or should I take it out completely? How can removing magic affect the feel of the book? If I do remove magic, do I need to compensate in some way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15354" LastEditorUserId="43118" LastEditDate="2021-01-06T22:26:59.530" LastActivityDate="2021-01-06T22:26:59.530" Title="Magic or No Magic?" Tags="|plot|fantasy|magic-system|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19147" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-28T00:49:47.623" Score="1" ViewCount="204" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a book that's encouraging, and I have the first chapter, which is a little encouragement on just being alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's 800 words, and I'd like to upload/post it on some web, blog, or forum to see what people think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15357" LastEditorUserId="6268" LastEditDate="2015-09-30T18:19:15.140" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T03:25:55.650" Title="Where is a good place to post an 800 word essay on encouragement" Tags="|publishing|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19148" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-28T00:55:25.843" Score="1" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've started uploading the books I've written to Kindle Direct Publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I promote them, on a shoe-string budget?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15357" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T06:43:42.737" Title="how can I promote my Kindle Direct book?" Tags="|publishing|marketing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19149" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-28T07:51:54.697" Score="3" ViewCount="2176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a hard time with the ellipsis. When I enter &lt;em&gt;dot dot dot&lt;/em&gt; in Microsoft Word, it automatically makes the spaces between each dot a little longer than they would normally be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in so many books I have read or am reading, the length of the spaces goes beyond what Word automatically creates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like in many novels, the punctuation is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Space DOT Space DOT Space DOT Space&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Space DOT DOT DOT Space&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some books I see things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: &quot;Don't think I don't want you...or don't care.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In others I see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B: &quot;Don't think I don't want you... or don't care.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In yet others I see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C: &quot;Don't think I don't want you . . . or don't care.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any thoughts on whether option A or B or C is better for a novel that will be self-published on Kindle for example? I see so many different versions that I'm not sure which is best at this point!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T11:10:23.147" Title="Spaces in the ellipsis in novels" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19149" CreationDate="2015-09-28T08:50:23.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of the three options, C is the only one I wouldn't use; A and B differ to me in the following way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To indicate a pause within the sentence, use A&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In your example, this is what I would do; the sentence is not finished, there's simply a stretch of silence between the two words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To indicate a pause between two sentences, use B&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;As you would add a space after a single period. In this case, you're ending your sentence as you would with any other form of punctuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, though, there's no definite rule, which is why you get all those variations. Choose what you want, just make sure you stick to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T08:50:23.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19149" CreationDate="2015-09-28T09:51:06.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been a while since I formatted a book for Kindle, but back when I did, I remember using the html code for an ellipsis in order to make sure it displayed properly. If you just use three periods (at least a few years ago) there was the chance it would be displayed with one period on one line, the other two on the next line, or something similarly sloppy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, assuming this is still a risk (and I assume it would be, since I don't think things have changed THAT much in the last few years) I'd use the html code and not worry about making up my own format for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I formatted using the guide at &lt;a href=&quot;http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/&lt;/a&gt; which gives you about a million times more information than you need, but does seem to catch all these little issues. If you're using a different formatting system, I'd follow the advice of that system, rather than trying to decide for myself.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T09:51:06.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19143" CreationDate="2015-09-28T13:38:19.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What's the most natural way to show a passage of time between the&#xA;  prologue and chapter one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is not the answer you want, but the truth is that &lt;em&gt;there is no most natural way&lt;/em&gt;. There are techniques that'll be adequate to the story you are telling, there are ones that'll be inadequate. Your judgement as to which techniques you'll choose and how you'll employ them is what can distinguish you and your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it happens that, in your original post, you made a second, different question. Let's take a closer look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here's my question: How can I show how much time has passed between&#xA;  the prologue and chapter one? Is there some technique I can use that&#xA;  will seem natural?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kate S. already gave you a great answer, but I'll expand a bit with some examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jorge Luis Borges' stories were often described as microscopic romances. They were often gigantic ideas that were quickly condensed into their most important aspects and summarized in one ow two pages. Borges accomplished that by ommiting detail, by writing in &quot;broad strokes.&quot; He, often, did not give much time to describing what was accessory to the story, such as physical appearance of certain characters, climate, geographical location, etc. He gave only what was necessary and spared no words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can this show passage of time? Well, by this technique the reader is forced into filling the gaps on his/her own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you apply this technique? You could drop the Prologue and mention it's important aspects in a vague way in the first or second paragraph of Chapter 1. Now, let me propose a short thought exercise. Take a look at the first paragraph of Kafka's The Metamorphosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself&#xA;  transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his&#xA;  hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a&#xA;  little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into stiff&#xA;  arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in&#xA;  position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs,&#xA;  which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved&#xA;  helplessly before his eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kafka could have written a Prologue detailing the character's transformation from man to insect. But would that be &lt;em&gt;good?&lt;/em&gt; We would have lost one of the most iconic first lines in all history of literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A technique I have employed often is showing the reader an element that has changed, and then the passage of time can be inferred. You can describe the natural scenario where the story happens, and tell how winter turned to summer, how the rose buds showed their intense blood-red and fell when their time came, you can tell of the yound trees planted during childhood and felled by the same hands, now adult and rough and cruel. You can tell about time by describing the eyes of the elders, how they became cloudy and milky with blindness, by the teeth collected and cherished by a mother whose children have moved to faraway lands.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be creative. (I planned this to be longer, but unfortunately this has extended beyong what I originally planned. I might update at a later date.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14757" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T13:38:19.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19153" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-28T14:43:30.430" Score="3" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working professionally as a part-time freelancer journalist for the past couple of years. Over that time I feel I've got a good grasp of how, technically, to construct an engaging piece of writing and how to shape a story. I'd now like to try my hand at some short-form fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I sit down and try to plan something out, however, I hit a snag. I find myself able to see vignettes - characters, scenes, briefs bursts of plot - but I cannot seem to string them together into anything resembling an overarching plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write journalism I am lucky enough to be able to start with an idea and, once I have an opening paragraph, I find myself able to flesh out the piece as its written. Then I just go back and re-edit it until I'm happy. I suspect this happy knack has left me clueless in how best to go about pre-planning things in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any techniques I can try to flesh out my vignettes into something with enough body to pass as a short story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6371" LastActivityDate="2017-08-22T10:42:07.767" Title="How to move from writing scenes to a short plot?" Tags="|plot|short-story|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19146" CreationDate="2015-09-28T16:12:56.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being the author, you have the ultimate decision of whether or not to include magic into your novel. In your question, you said that the element of magic feels forced. Normally that would be a good indication that you should either change your approach, or remove it completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The central theme of your story sounds like it revolves around these government agents and their interactions with &quot;special people&quot;. You would need to figure out what kinds of abilities these people have, and how the government can leverage them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would also need to answer the question why these people developed magical powers. What makes these specific people of millions, or billions of other people different than the rest? Is there some kind of special circumstance that occurs when people live in this specific area? You don't have to go into great detail explaining the process, but as the author, you should at least have an idea why. In fact, the less technical you can get with it, the better off you are because people who are very technical will have a tough time suspending their disbelief if you describe a process that would not be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magic seems to work quite well in small doses. If too many people have the power, or their power is too great, then these people may appear too much like a super hero, than a regular person. The best example of this is Superman. Sure he is super strong, fast, can fly, see through walls, etc. But, he is nearly impervious to all physical danger except for a rare element that is really no more than a MacGuffin. Most people really do not feel worried about Superman because he basically never loses. To balance this out, the characters with powers should remain mortal, and only have slight advantages over the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do choose to include a magic element in your story, try to balance it out as best as you can. Magic cannot be the answer to everything, and if it is, then it becomes very cheap feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T16:12:56.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19146" CreationDate="2015-09-28T19:07:04.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, your story does not depend on the existence of magic, it depends on the existence of secret and powerful organization that &lt;strong&gt;believes&lt;/strong&gt; magic exists. There is a fundamental difference, as proven by the countless people who have spent all their money on devices and training improving their spiritual abilities. When talking about actions and motivations of people, it is usually the beliefs that count, very rarely the reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such the simplest method of fixing the story would be simply that the characters and by extension the reader simply never find out if the magic that is tested is real or just exists in the minds of some powerful people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually realistic, presidents and senators &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; consult astrologers and diviners, intelligence organizations &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; funded clairvoyance programs, government money &lt;strong&gt;has&lt;/strong&gt; been spent on occult research... Real world examples have stopped short of kidnappings and murders, but all it takes is oversight of the agency in question breaking and such breaking of control is pretty much assumed by default in lots of modern fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of is it real or not is actually fairly common in fiction. I guess many writers have stumbled on the same issue as you have? Such &quot;is it real&quot; issues also play well with hints of horror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this might be better asked in world building SE?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general &lt;strong&gt;writing&lt;/strong&gt; answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See what amount of magic (or other fantasy) existing your story actually requires and &lt;strong&gt;do not&lt;/strong&gt; write more in than that. Writing surplus elements generally makes the story less coherent and weaker. In this case no actual magic seems to be required, just a belief in it existing among some people. Implication is that you should not write in any actual magic, just people who act based on belief in magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is about as binding as all those other &quot;rules&quot; of writing anyone else tells you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastEditorUserId="11425" LastEditDate="2015-09-28T19:15:04.720" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T19:15:04.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19147" CreationDate="2015-09-28T19:41:37.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hubpages.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://hubpages.com/&lt;/a&gt; -- previously squidoo.com &#xA;Pick the proper category and publish your article there for free and maybe generate a lot of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a good article which will provide you with more places where you may be able to publish articles like this:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifehack.org/articles/work/20-websites-you-cant-miss-you-want-make-money-freelancer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.lifehack.org/articles/work/20-websites-you-cant-miss-you-want-make-money-freelancer.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T19:41:37.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19146" CreationDate="2015-09-28T19:46:18.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main trade-off for the reader is between the pleasurable escapism of a fantasy novel and the compelling believability of a realistic novel.  In some sense, you can get the best of both worlds by exploiting a bit of ambiguity --which is to say, to leave the reader guessing as to whether the magic actually exists or not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this was done effectively in &lt;em&gt;Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore&lt;/em&gt; where there was doubt right up until the end whether the events in the book would have supernatural or realist explanations (with some characters within the book believing one way, and some the other).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ambiguity can be a problem, however, if the audience believes through a major portion of the book that they are reading one kind of book and it turns out to be the other &lt;em&gt;--unless that is the entire point.&lt;/em&gt;  That can be extremely effective if done well, but if done poorly, the audience will just feel cheated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-09-28T19:54:11.343" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T19:54:11.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2015-09-28T20:39:04.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best proofreader I ever worked with always read everything twice -- once forward and once backwards.  The first reading caught punctuation mistakes as well as obvious errors; the backwards reading made every spelling error or unplanned repetition stand out very clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15360" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T20:39:04.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19159" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-28T20:42:05.043" Score="1" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many zombie series start with the overly used hunting trip or coma to explain why the protagonist has no idea whats happening. This usually so the writer can dump the reader with what happened, saving time. What other explanations could I use to explain the protagonists lack of knowledge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14853" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T17:50:35.810" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T17:50:35.810" Title="Unique ways to do an infodump for an isolated protagonist" Tags="|showing-telling|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19148" CreationDate="2015-09-28T20:43:13.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might find &lt;a href=&quot;http://kindlepreneur.com/list-sites-promote-free-amazon-books/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;In this article, you will gain:&#xA;&#xA;An understanding of how these book promotion websites work&#xA;A list of the best book promotion websites, free and premium&#xA;A couple of options in order to not have to do this yourself&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck! Promotion is exciting and challenging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastEditorUserId="14291" LastEditDate="2015-09-30T14:51:12.740" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T14:51:12.740" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19159" CreationDate="2015-09-28T21:00:41.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about a sailing trip? A small crew or even a single man sailing across a wide body of water, like the Pacific? That might provide sufficient time away from land, and sufficient isolation from communications, to provide what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those seem to be the biggest problems - overcoming the invasive presence of communication, and the speed of modern communication, along with allowing time for whatever's causing the apocalypse to spread to a pandemic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative might be a more rural setting, at a time in the past when communications were more difficult and mass media didn't yet exist. If mass communication is less available, and focused in one location - some small towns only had a single operator to connect them to the outside world - losing touch is far easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brainstorming with a whiteboard or a pad of paper can really be beneficial in coming up with ideas, though. You might want to give that a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T21:00:41.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19125" CreationDate="2015-09-28T21:05:24.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simba's face darkened, his brow wrinkling, a lip drawing back in a snarl. &quot;You!&quot; he spat through gritted teeth. &quot;What are you doing here?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can better show the emotion and set the emotional tone for the reader. My example might be a bit windy, but I hope you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T21:05:24.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19082" CreationDate="2015-09-28T21:16:13.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tropes exist ... the same way internet memes exist; UFOs exist; paranormal activity exists; and the boogeyman exists too. The fact is, ground rules are usually established under some sort of pretense that they'll help in the making or recording of a trade or category. The real issue is, some things are really hard to have &quot;rules&quot; because they can be very hard to be brought back to some sort of &quot;initiation phase&quot; or starting point. Writing is one thing that's very hard to &quot;rule&quot; because anybody could come up with something creative and it doesn't have to be deduced to any principal or standard for people to just &quot;like it.&quot; You can take examples in those &quot;dumb&quot; parody films that the majority seem to hate, but an established amount of people still seem to take interest in and profit the low-end quality for more films.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, take examples at laws in many countries and how vague some things actually can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real problem is, the more complicated and unspecific something can be, the harder it is to carry it back to some sort of starting point. Try reverse engineering quantum mechanics with string theory, or convert a Hanzi script sentence to Latin scripture by hand without reference. Writing, being an art, is also much harder to take back to an established principal since art is not necessarily built from anything which can be taken apart easily, much like, say, a tower of blocks or a deck of cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15362" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T21:16:13.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19149" CreationDate="2015-09-28T21:57:16.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_presentation_and_content&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Separate &lt;strong&gt;presentation&lt;/strong&gt; from &lt;strong&gt;content&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, or in other words, aesthetics from semantics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a writer, your job is to produce the &lt;strong&gt;content&lt;/strong&gt; — the actual text and any special characters/markers conveying additional semantics (e.g. an ellipsis character).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's the typesetter's / e-book formatter's job to form the &lt;strong&gt;presentation&lt;/strong&gt; of that content. Of course, you might participate in presentational decisions as well at that point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The spacing between the dots in an ellipsis character is purely a presentational concern. As such, it's completely irrevelant when writing the actual content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you want an ellipsis, &lt;em&gt;write an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ellipsis character&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. No, don't write three full stops. Three full stops don't have the same semantic meaning as an ellipsis character. How is an e-book reader supposed to know how it should pronounce three  consequent full stops, &quot;dot dot dot&quot; or leave a small break before continuing? When you write an ellipsis character, the e-book reader will unambiguously know what you meant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example: What if the formatter of your content decides to leave some space between the dots of all ellipses in your book? They will definitely not want to go through each occurrence of three consequent dots, and replace them with the same thing with spaces in between. That'd be cumbersome, and against the basic principle that &lt;strong&gt;presentational changes should not require any changes in the content&lt;/strong&gt;. Optimally, they would simply change the way the ellipsis character is rendered, and all ellipses in your text would automatically be rendered according to that change — no going through the text needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13446" LastEditorUserId="13446" LastEditDate="2015-09-28T22:03:05.793" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T22:03:05.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19165" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-29T05:59:01.610" Score="0" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some style guides, I see this mention of putting a full-stop after an ellipsis when you are stopping the paused sentence and going onto another new sentence, but when reading several very well-known novels, I have just seen either the ellipsis alone or ellipis followed by a SPACE between two sentences so am confused as to whether I should be putting the extra full-stop in and when.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. &quot;I was ashamed...and afraid.&quot; Normal pause, so just ellipsis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I was ashamed...You couldn't understand.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the above ok or should it be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I was ashamed... You couldn't understand.&quot; SPACE AFTER ELLIPSIS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I am not sure if I will every be able to forgive him­....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the end of the character's thought, are we supposed to add the extra full-stop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, when do we use it and do authors really use it? I rarely see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks so much to anyone who has an idea!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I see some authors use small letters after the ellipsis even when they are starting a new clause or sentence, rather than capitals to start a new sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. &quot;I was ashamed...you couldn't understand.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the above also acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastEditorUserId="15309" LastEditDate="2015-09-29T06:04:30.530" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T10:15:55.080" Title="In what situation do you put a full-stop after an ellipsis?" Tags="|style|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19165" CreationDate="2015-09-29T10:15:55.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Please note I am describing American English punctuation convention, where the quotes go outside the final punctuation mark. I am aware that British English punctuation is handlded differently.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ellipsis is used to indicate a trailing pause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's in the middle of a sentence, and you're &lt;em&gt;continuing&lt;/em&gt; a thought, usually there's no space after the ellipsis, and the next word remains lowercase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I was ashamed...to tell you.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's at the end of a sentence — indicating that the speaker trails off but then resumes speaking, although the next words are a &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; sentence — you use an ellipsis, a period (closing your quotes wherever necessary), and a space. A new sentence starts with a capital letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I was ashamed.... You don't know what it's like.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I am not sure I will ever be able to forgive him....&amp;quot; He swallowed hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally like to use a space after an ellipsis because I think it's easier to read, but I don't think this typographical convention is widespread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I was ashamed... to tell you.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T10:15:55.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19149" CreationDate="2015-09-29T11:10:23.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not an answer to your question, but the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.legalbluebook.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bluebook&lt;/a&gt;, the legal writing and citation manual, calls for Space DOT Space DOT Space DOT Space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an editor of lawyers, this is one of the many annoying habits I have to try to stop my writers from doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8620" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T11:10:23.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19082" CreationDate="2015-09-29T13:58:35.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;there are a finite number of plots.&lt;/a&gt; One of my instructors claimed that there were two: (a) the character goes on a journey and (b) a stranger comes to town. It occurs to me that these are the same plot, from different points of view. So we might say that there's just one plot. (The journey/visit can be actual or metaphorical.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether we believe that or not, the point is that creativity is not in coming up with a a new plot or story. Creativity, in my opinion, occurs in the telling. Create a unique voice. Tell a story we've all heard before in the way that only your unique narrator can tell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T13:58:35.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2015-09-29T14:04:10.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought the obvious answer was this: Have someone else proof your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter how many times I go over my story, a reader will still find stuff I've missed. They'll also find sentences that I read as perfectly sensible, but that they can't parse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T14:04:10.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19170" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-29T14:26:48.733" Score="4" ViewCount="1536" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read Leaf by Niggle, and I've ever since been recommending it to just about anyone who will listen to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I want to know how The Magician did it. I read over his essay On Faerie Stories, and while it was a difficult read, there is a key part where he says that when done correctly, faerie stories have the &quot;inner consistency of reality&quot;. What does he mean by this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also like to know what authors he read, to get his ideas in the first place. To sum up, I'd like to learn to create worlds like the one inhabited by the painter, Niggle. Any knowledge toward that end would be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12806" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-09-29T19:29:26.817" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T20:28:05.937" Title="What is the &quot;inner consistency of reality&quot; that Tolkein refers to in his essay On Faerie Stories?" Tags="|technique|fantasy|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19171" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19201" CreationDate="2015-09-29T14:50:10.373" Score="1" ViewCount="566" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there is a term for the non-linear narrative technique used by the TV series &lt;em&gt;Arrow&lt;/em&gt;. That is, flashbacks from the past feed into the story line going on in the present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking about using this technique and would like to make a study of other stories that have succeeded using this technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2019-09-14T23:43:38.720" LastActivityDate="2019-09-14T23:43:38.720" Title="Non-linear style used by *Arrow*" Tags="|narrative|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19170" CreationDate="2015-09-29T14:57:22.407" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Essentially it means that they obey their own internal rules and logic. If it's established that dwarves live 200 years, there can't be one who is &lt;em&gt;arbitrarily&lt;/em&gt; 500 years old. There has to be an explanation: he carried the One Ring, Aul&amp;euml; gave him extra years, etc. A mage can't just endlessly cast spell after spell without having a source of magical energy (just as a person can't run endlessly or regenerate a limb). Starships need inertial dampeners so that when a ship comes out of warp, everyone isn't flung against the forward viewscreen and reduced to chunky salsa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader is suspending a certain disbelief by accepting that there are such things as fairies, dwarves, elves, wizards, FTL travel, aliens who can reproduce with beings from another planet, and so on. The writer must make sure to establish consistent, logical rules about how the universe works, and then obey those rules. That gives the fantasy the strength of reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T14:57:22.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19153" CreationDate="2015-09-29T18:32:58.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you already have a process that works for you in journalism, why not adapt it for fiction?  Just divide your writing into two phases:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, write all the scenes and vignettes that you can think of.  Then go back, and craft a story out of them, as if you were building a non-fiction story from your raw notes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main disadvantage is that you'll produce a lot of work that doesn't end up in the final version, but that's actually the case for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T18:32:58.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19171" CreationDate="2015-09-29T19:14:14.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a name for the technique aside from nonlinear storytelling or nonlinear narrative. A story is &quot;nonlinear&quot; when it's not told in the order in which events occur, but the for a story to be truly nonlinear, we should be talking about a structure more complex than just a flashback or a framing story set in a different time. (&quot;So,&quot; she said, putting her drink down, &quot;this is what happened that day last week...&quot;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technique of presenting a story to the reader out of order can be difficult and it can be confusing. Used well, it can enhance a story significantly; the reader is shown events in the order that the author decides will enhance them. It allows the story to be constructed without the straightjacket of linear cause-and-effect, but the cost of that is increased complexity in plotting and keeping track of story elements. Character development can also be tricker: A character could be seasoned in one scene, naive and untried in the next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good uses of the technique: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind&lt;/strong&gt; uses a non-linear technique to simulate the confusion of one of the characters, who literally knows no more than the audience despite her having lived through events; the other protagonist is reasserting his love for her at the same time. This gives the audience an opportunity to sympathize with both of them (although there are creepy, disturbing undertones to the process). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;8 1/2&lt;/strong&gt; can also be seen as an example of a related technique: &lt;em&gt;in medias res&lt;/em&gt;, where the story starts in the middle of the action, often in the middle of an exciting scene. The film is a series of flashbacks, some real and some not; all from the viewpoint of an &lt;em&gt;auteur&lt;/em&gt; working on his next film. We get a glimpse into a brilliantly creative but disturbed and unsettled mind. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Slaughterhouse Five&lt;/strong&gt; has a character literally living his life out of order. Kurt Vonnegut once said: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/04/03/kurt-vonnegut-on-writing-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Start as close to the end as possible&lt;/a&gt;, and this book is a good demonstration of the technique. The technique here gives us a sense of helpless inevitability, partially due to the author tying scenes to actual, historical events in World War II. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to not allow a nonlinear story become simply a chaotic one. Note that all of the examples above are by creators with a strong personal style. A tale that's not told in order can be unified by strong characters, strong themes, or both. The reader has to trust the writer for a nonlinear technique to work, so it's important to foster a sense of immediate gratification in the audience. For example, the prologue in &quot;Pulp Fiction&quot; is a small, fun self-contained story with interesting characters, serving as an example of the entire film in microcosm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-09-29T20:24:00.083" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T20:24:00.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19153" CreationDate="2015-09-29T19:37:19.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think plot is overrated. My focus is on the characters. I put them into situations and write the scene, waiting for them to do something interesting. Sometimes they do. I keep doing this until the characters develop and a storyline starts to emerge. (See? I can't even call it a plot.) Only then do I start writing the story. Some of my vignettes make it in, but most don't. I treat the vignette writing as exploration, as getting to know my characters, as tweaking them into their more-interesting forms. It's necessary, and &lt;strong&gt;it's not a waste of time&lt;/strong&gt;. That's how you discover your story. That's the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, keep writing vignettes until your characters and the storyline emerge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T19:37:19.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19170" CreationDate="2015-09-29T22:50:33.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While a story does not need to be consistent with reality, it should have the same consistency with itself as reality has. &quot;Inner consistency&quot; simply refers to being consistent &lt;strong&gt;within&lt;/strong&gt; itself. &quot;Of reality&quot; means of same quality as the self-consistency of everyday reality we know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice this more or less means what Lauren Ipsum said. Everything happens for a reason, everything has consequences. And the rules of causality linking the reasons and consequences stay the same unless something specifically changes them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T22:50:33.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2015-09-30T04:14:39.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is theoretically impossible to proof your own prose. To achieve professional quality copy, &lt;em&gt;no less than two sets of eyes&lt;/em&gt; must be applied. Writers can't self-proof with 100 percent fidelity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The presence of the &lt;em&gt;&quot;second set of eyes&quot;&lt;/em&gt; may not be available or practical. If my prose &lt;strong&gt;MUST&lt;/strong&gt; be self-proofed, then &lt;strong&gt;while&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;COPY&lt;/strong&gt; is a &lt;strong&gt;DRAFT&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Create&lt;/strong&gt; (print) a HARD COPY using black ink on white paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use&lt;/strong&gt; a serif font (ex: Times New Roman)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;12pt or bigger&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Double-space&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maximize&lt;/strong&gt; natural/ambient light, minimize projected/artificial light&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Markup&lt;/strong&gt; (by hand - use a red pen)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt; to Version&lt;sub&gt;n+1&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stamp&lt;/strong&gt; (Tag) - &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Change &amp;amp; Resubmit.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm going to resubmit Version&lt;sub&gt;n+1&lt;/sub&gt; to &lt;em&gt;myself&lt;/em&gt;. Within the confines of on-time delivery I will--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Place as much time in-between &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;proofing&lt;/em&gt; as possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the first rule of style -- &lt;em&gt;Have one.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not &lt;em&gt;rely on&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;trust&lt;/em&gt; a spell check system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continue to re-read/re-edit &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expand time-intervals between reads/edits &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once satisfied; DRAFT VER&lt;sub&gt;n&lt;/sub&gt; of &lt;strong&gt;COPY&lt;/strong&gt; becomes &lt;strong&gt;FINAL&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T04:14:39.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7168" CreationDate="2015-09-30T06:35:17.413" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think writing a story as a journal, or diary, can be somewhat liberating and fun actually.  I wrote my first book (my only book) as a journal.  I loved it.  I actually had a great deal of fun, as I had to become the journalist; I was writing the journal as my main character.  I became and experienced everything he did and wrote it to, and for my, fictional self.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually felt the emotional pain, and the loneliness, as well as falling in love.  I 'felt' the cold breeze at the beach as I thought of what a jerk I was.  It was great.  In preparation I read other diariess: &lt;em&gt;The Diary of Anne Frank, Flowers for Algernon, The Diary Of A Superfluous Man,&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Dracula&lt;/em&gt;.  I read them once then came back to them for ideas and counsel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only difficulty was that this story was a period piece — mid 1980s.  So I had to verify that this Saturday was actually August 10th, and was this VHS tape actually out at that time, were those types of clothes in fashion then?  A lot to juggle.  It took a lot of time but I had fun nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I don't think there are any real upsides or downsides to writing anything.  Just write your heart out.  Love what you're doing, what you're crafting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're the main character, chronicling your thoughts and feelings.  Expressing how you felt when you said something to somebody and what you thought about when they replied, and what you plan to do about it - or whatever.  I do encourage you to read some or all of &lt;em&gt;The Diary of Anne Frank&lt;/em&gt;; she writes to an imaginary friend.  If you'd like a could send you my eBook, or download it for a buck on Amazon, and see how I handled it.  It's called &quot;Endings&quot; by me, Roger Maxwell.  Or again let me know what format you'd like and I'll email a free copy :0) rajgitaa@gmail.com.  I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15372" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T12:38:40.113" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T12:38:40.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19185" CreationDate="2015-09-30T13:46:13.723" Score="2" ViewCount="748" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always hear people say, &quot;Write in the active voice,&quot; so I decided to eliminate passive voice from my writing (as much as possible). It made my writing stronger, but I wonder: Does writing too much in the active voice have drawbacks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" OwnerDisplayName="Alexandro Chen" LastEditorUserId="15378" LastEditDate="2015-09-30T18:11:01.897" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T18:11:01.897" Title="What are the drawbacks of writing too much in the active voice?" Tags="|style|technique|voice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19184" CreationDate="2015-09-30T15:22:26.090" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The passive voice is a grammatical tool, and like any tool it can be overused. However, passive voice does have legitimate uses; there are times it makes sense to use it. This is particularly the case in fiction and personal essays, where mood is important and economy of phrasing can contribute to pacing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Casting absolutely everything into the active voice can make writing more action-oriented, since it clarifies who the subject of a sentence is. But there are some sentences that are easier and simpler when cast with the passive voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeking out egregious uses of passive voice - &quot;the door was opened&quot; becomes &quot;he opened the door&quot; - can make writing much stronger. It can also prompt the writer to be more specific in their prose. However, there are times when a mysterious, detached air to a sentence is just what the moment demands, so I'd use good judgment when editing passive voice out of a draft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T15:22:26.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19184" CreationDate="2015-09-30T16:09:45.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Active and passive voice are tools, like a hammer and a drill. It's less a question of using one &quot;too much&quot; and more a matter of when each tool is appropriate for the rhetorical situation (ie, your audience, your topic, your purpose).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you can carpenter your writing together with nails or with screws, but the results will be different, as will the effect on the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing action scenes in a thriller novel, it's hard to imagine when active voice would be less effective. If you're writing documentation for the government, it's hard to imagine when active voice would be allowed. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15378" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T16:09:45.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19171" CreationDate="2015-09-30T16:23:18.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are planning on moving linearly through 2 points on the timeline, I'd call it &quot;parallel plotting&quot; or similar. But I don't recall anyone in grad school officially naming this kind of approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15378" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T16:23:18.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19170" CreationDate="2015-09-30T16:28:49.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For speculative fiction (fantasy and sci-fi), the &quot;inner consistency of reality&quot; usually has to be even more rigorous than with mainstream fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story doesn't set up reality-rules of some kind, it's basically a dream-sequence-retelling or else a 5-year old's storytime. If the story has rules, but violates them, it's &lt;em&gt;deus ex machina&lt;/em&gt;, at best, or at worst, a joke on the reader. None of these genres have a very long lasting audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15378" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T16:28:49.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16220" CreationDate="2015-09-30T18:36:02.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;After looking at the copyright pages of several books, there is no standard for placement of library of congress numbers that is broadly applied. In several cases books by the same publisher did not use the same layout. Therefore with confidence I can not only say 'I don't know,' but I can also say 'No one other than god and the publisher can know.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T18:36:02.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18852" CreationDate="2015-09-30T21:04:06.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you are also directing the film, &lt;strong&gt;DO NOT&lt;/strong&gt; put camera directions in!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to handle this is to write the scene in a way that evokes the image and movements into the readers mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, the first rule of screenwriting is &quot;show don't tell!&quot; &lt;em&gt;Aerial view&lt;/em&gt; is on the line of acceptability for a screenplay; if used in a &lt;em&gt;showing&lt;/em&gt; way it could be fine, but if one is trying to use it as pseudo-camera direction that is &lt;em&gt;telling&lt;/em&gt; and not &lt;em&gt;showing&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful with sneaky camera directions a professional reader might consider it as bad or worse than an explicit camera direction, and might reject your screenplay as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13022" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T21:04:06.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19191" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-01T06:47:41.140" Score="2" ViewCount="1334" Body="&lt;p&gt;where should we use contracted forms while writing dialogues? how do we chose which is better (say 'do not' or 'don't') in a particular situation while we are writing dialogues in our fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15382" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T19:53:03.657" Title="writing dialogues using contracted forms of auxiliary verbs" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|dialogue|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19191" CreationDate="2015-10-01T09:46:45.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with any dialogue choices, you would use the word that the character would be most likely to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to hear them in your mind, or chose an actor to portray them (in your imagination!) and hear how that actor says the words, or write a character diary until you get the character's voice figured out, or do whatever else you need to do until you understand that character and know what words s/he would use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, of course, keep in mind that the same character will speak differently in different situations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it all comes down to knowing your characters, and using that knowledge to have them behave in character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T09:46:45.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19193" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19206" CreationDate="2015-10-01T12:47:58.150" Score="4" ViewCount="13723" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are my techniques:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Changing the order of the sentence:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was happy because of what she did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What she did made me happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using &quot;in&quot; and &quot;on&quot;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1999 was the year I devoted myself fully to marine biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1999, I devoted myself fully to marine biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Inverting the order of the sentence:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it was my mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mistake, maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Applying repetition:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I checked the newspapers on the wall. They were all about the crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I checked the newspapers on the wall. Newspapers about the crime. All of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Replacing &quot;was&quot; with a more &quot;interesting&quot; verb:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hotel we booked was next to the river.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hotel we booked sat next to the river.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Replacing &quot;there wasn't/it wasn't&quot; with &quot;not&quot;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There wasn't a single dress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a single dress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It wasn't that we didn't care about the house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not that we didn't care about the house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Removing &quot;it/he/she was&quot;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We reached the hotel. It was a cozy place. I liked it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We reached the hotel. A cozy place. I liked it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A man approached my table. He was handsome, maybe in his thirties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A man approached my table. Handsome, maybe in his thirties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you think of these techniques? What are yours?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-10-02T03:08:26.713" LastActivityDate="2023-04-25T15:30:48.427" Title="Techniques to get rid of &quot;was&quot; and make one's writing more engaging" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19194" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-01T15:12:53.280" Score="5" ViewCount="2122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm 16 years old and I've wrote about 4 to 5 different books. I have two that I think would be good enough for the public to read. I've been writing stories since I was 10. I want to be published but can I this young? What publisher would publish my book? Please help me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15386" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-12-09T20:23:21.193" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T20:23:21.193" Title="I am a 16 year old who wants to be a writer, but can I?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2019-01-27T18:54:06.807" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19194" CreationDate="2015-10-01T15:47:27.657" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your age isn't a barrier, but it's &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; difficult for any author of any age to be published by a conventional publisher.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically there are two methods:  Either you send query letters to publishers, and those who are interested request to read your manuscript, or you find an agent, and the agent finds the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you do either, your book would not only need to be excellent, but also formatted and edited impeccably (no spelling or grammar mistakes, &lt;em&gt;etcetera&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T15:47:27.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19196" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-01T18:01:13.017" Score="5" ViewCount="7115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been on the search (passively, that is) for some sort of database type tool to put characters in. I would want/need the basic stuff (height, birthdate, skin color, hair color, etc.) but I would also want to have customizable fields for things. For example Hogwarts house, husband/wife, skills, scars, etc. I'd also want to connect characters to one another and preferably ad a specific description to that connection, but not necessarily. Also, I would like to upload text files or write in text boxes for personalized descriptions so I can describe more than a basic bio and go into detail on things like finances and relationships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The end product would hopefully allow me to pull up lists like &quot;Allen Family&quot; or possibly characters born in a specific time period. Having tags for character would work for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly I am hoping that it will be free, which I know is asking a lot. I'm not worried about privacy, so something on the internet is fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've just found '&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.typingchimp.com/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Typing Chimp&lt;/a&gt;' but there's no logins or any way to upload photo files, and since I've just started with it I know there will be more problems. I've been using Google Sheets but it's hard to keep track of the web that is characters without the ability to search by something other than file name and without the ability to show lists of minimized information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15388" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-14T10:34:06.933" LastActivityDate="2020-06-30T02:59:45.477" Title="Database for Characters?" Tags="|characters|software|tools|organization|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19197" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-01T18:06:57.330" Score="1" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does a writer have any rights to a work that has been completely rewritten by another writer? The rewriter used the original work as a blueprint, but ended up changing most of the details and developing the work significantly. Not a single line was untouched from the original work and though the general story of the rewritten work bears some similarities to the original, they mostly bare little resemblance. There is no written agreement, and it was initially intended that the original writer would be the sole writer and the rewriter would simply do a quick pass and make a few small changes. But, the writer decided to stop working as writer when he/she passed the work to the rewriter, making no effort or requests to write more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15389" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T15:15:46.180" Title="Does a writer have any rights to a work that has been completely rewritten by another writer?" Tags="|copyright|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19193" CreationDate="2015-10-01T18:33:03.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What most people mean when they're talking about passive voice is really lazy, static verbs. Passive voice can be a useful tool, but lazy verbs put your text to sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I'm hardly an expert, but here's my opinion about your techniques:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Changing the order of the sentence: Looks good&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using &amp;quot;in&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;on&amp;quot;: Looks good&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Inverting the order of the sentence: Looks good&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Applying repetition: I don't think so. I think the other sentences are far worse than the passive voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Replacing &amp;quot;was&amp;quot; with a more &amp;quot;interesting&amp;quot; verb: This is the one I had in mind when talking about lazy verbs. You have replaced the link verb, but the verb is still pretty lazy. Possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The old Victorian haunted the corner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The thick stone walls of the Bastille like dwelling guarded the corner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Replacing &amp;quot;there wasn't/it wasn't&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;not&amp;quot;: Interesting. Your changes here twist the entire mood of the sentence. Will think about this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Removing &amp;quot;it/he/she was&amp;quot;: The problem is that you're using a whole sentence as an adjective. Possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We reached the cozy lodging house. I liked it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We reached the cozy inn. I immediately felt at home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, you asked, so my $.02 worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-04-25T13:23:00.963" LastActivityDate="2023-04-25T13:23:00.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19194" CreationDate="2015-10-01T18:34:21.503" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you be a writer? You bet you can. Do I know what publisher would publish your book? Not a chance. Buy a &lt;em&gt;Writer's Market&lt;/em&gt; and comb through it to find publishers who publish work similar to yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of a life of publishing (or trying to publish), there are a couple things you can do to prepare yourself. Publishing is exciting and frustrating, so don't be hard on yourself if it doesn't happen right away (or ever). It sounds like you're doing it for the pleasure of writing, which is a great place to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tips on the road to publishing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Join a writing critique group.&lt;/strong&gt; Jump into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.meetup.com&quot;&gt;Meetup.com&lt;/a&gt; and find a local critique group. You'll have a chance to hear your work read&#xA;aloud and get feedback from other writers. Remember, feedback is&#xA;different from an evaluation. People won't tell you they like your&#xA;work (or dislike it), but will give considered responses to your&#xA;work, all with the aim of steadily improving your output.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Submit, Submit, Submit.&lt;/strong&gt; The more you submit, the less painful it will (or should) become. And when you get that first publishing&#xA;credit, it feels really good. Many book publishers and agents want&#xA;to see that you've published before, since in some ways other&#xA;editors are vouching for you and your work. Your age should never be&#xA;an issue, and in fact might even work in your favor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make a plan.&lt;/strong&gt; This can be as generic as &quot;Write 1000 words a day, submit twice a week&quot; to as specific as &quot;Contact an agent, develop a&#xA;relationship, prepare synopses, and complete editing 3 books by the&#xA;time I'm 18.&quot; With a plan in place, you can set milestones for&#xA;yourself and have some good personal data regarding time,&#xA;productivity, and levels of success.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Also, try to stay positive.&lt;/strong&gt; You're doing this for love, and probably also money and fame, but mostly for love. It can be frustrating and exhilarating, with many ups and downs, but I've personally found few things as rewarding as writing itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T18:34:21.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19196" CreationDate="2015-10-01T18:41:46.967" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try a relational database (like FileMaker, although that's not free), a mind map (I've never used one, so I don't know what features they have), or some kind of wiki. I use Scrivener with a lot of cross-linking and plain ol' Excel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T18:41:46.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19171" CreationDate="2015-10-01T18:46:49.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since none of us were able to come up with a name for this, I'm going to coin one: Paralinear narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will at least give us a place to hang other examples we find on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T18:46:49.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18981" CreationDate="2015-10-01T19:38:09.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both ARE considered valid, although using the citation after the quote is considered more professional. Out of the range of the question, the most commonly accepted form of notation is the superscript, along with the citation on the bottom of the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T19:38:09.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19194" CreationDate="2015-10-01T19:45:30.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alyssa,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a plan. If you don't know where you are going, you won't know how to get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identify the problems you need to solve - then solve them one by one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure your writing is as tight as it can be. Anything which does not add to your story and make it move along needs to be taken out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check your spellings, tenses, grammar and syntax. Where you are at all unsure, check that what you have written is correct. No excuses for not doing this. Simple example of something which will turn off your potential readers? I'm 16 years old and I've &lt;em&gt;wrote&lt;/em&gt; about 4 to 5 different books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who says you have to have an agent or a traditional publisher? Many successful writers are going down the self-published route. The two main secrets to their success? Lots of books, free content and an excellent mailing list. There are tons of resources on the internet to help you develop all three key components. A good starting point is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecreativepenn.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thecreativepenn.com/&lt;/a&gt; but there are many more. Read, learn, plan. When you have done that, try, fail, reflect and do it all over again!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T19:45:30.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19191" CreationDate="2015-10-01T19:53:03.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine you're a child and your Dad is giving you some friendly advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Don't get too close to the cliff edge.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now imagine your Dad is giving your teenage self the world's coldest and most deliberate telling off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Do not EVER backchat me like that again!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same man, different context. A work mate is asking a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I've no idea. I haven't a clue. I wouldn't even know where to start looking for answers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same man, different context. He's a lawyer in Court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Do not think, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that the accused is as innocent as he seems. He may look as if he would not hurt a fly but I intend to demonstrate that he has not got an alibi for the night in question and that he killed more than forty innocent people before dawn.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the first answer states, it all depends on context, the status and education of the speaker and the effect they are trying to achieve. Generally speaking, very formal contexts or contexts where we are deliberately trying to impress are when we use the expanded form of words, more informal occasions are when we tend to use the contracted forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12910" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T19:53:03.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19193" CreationDate="2015-10-01T20:45:53.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some really nice techniques listed. I think a couple of them jump through more hoops than necessary. The hotel examples, for instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hotel we booked was next to the river.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hotel we booked sat next to the river.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We booked a hotel beside the river.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We booked a riverside hotel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We booked a hotel spread over the banks of the lazy river.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... etc. You get it. The prose, simplified, can sometimes present the best solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I liked the suggestions Thom offered in his answer about the cozy lodging house. Those are cool too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the replacement technique has to be used with extreme caution. It will depend on the type of narrative you've established. But it can be a nice, punchy technique when it's applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over all, you've got some nice things on this list. Very cool ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-04-25T13:21:46.077" LastActivityDate="2023-04-25T13:21:46.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19197" CreationDate="2015-10-01T21:06:32.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I take it you are the 'rewriter'. What you have to work out is: have you 'completely rewritten' a text. If you have, there is no problem. If 'not a single was untouched' is true then it is essentially an original work. However, if you have, by whatever method, someone else deserves the credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T21:06:32.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19197" CreationDate="2015-10-01T22:27:03.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two related issues here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;derivative works&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGA_screenwriting_credit_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;writing credits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The script could be consider a derivative work since the second writer started with the the first writers script. If the second script is changed substantially it could be considered a new work; but if enough of the original story remains it could still be considered a derivative work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With screenplays, however, the first writer will usually either get a story by, a based on a story by or an original story by credit, and at minimum a shared story credit. This is especially true when the second writer is hired to do the rewrite. In fact the WGA garuntees that for screenplays the original writer (a team is consider one writer) will get at minimum a shared story by credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the second writer doesn't change enough, the first writer may get a shared writing credit. N.b. writing teams are separated with an '&amp;amp;' writers who worked separately on the same script are separated by an 'and' in the writing credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright doesn't protect the idea, just the expression of the idea. Copyright attaches as soon as it is affixed to a medium, paper, electronic, or otherwise. No formal/written agreement needs to be made for this to occur. So without an agreement that the first writer abandoned their interest in the work, or ceded interest to the second it is possible that the first writer could claim the work as derivative of their own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13022" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T22:27:03.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19196" CreationDate="2015-10-01T23:34:19.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I learned about an iphone app called 'A Novel Idea' from a friend which might be useful. &#xA;It allows you to write quite a bit of information on characters, as well as novels, places, chapters and ideas. The app gives you lots of different slots to write information such as like height, age, species, race, fears, abilities, education, current and previous residence etc. But it doesn't restrict how much you write, allowing you to write brief notes or extensive notes.&#xA;You can also group characters, so that you can see everyone in a certain family or from a certain novel. It also allows you to state the relationship of various characters, as well as link them to novels, places, chapters and ideas.&#xA;I can't remember if the app is free, but I don't think it was very expensive. It can be a little confusing at times but it is very useful. I don't know if you can upload info into the app, though I haven't tried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15390" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T23:34:19.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19193" CreationDate="2015-10-01T23:55:25.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with &quot;was&quot;. Not every sentence that uses &quot;was&quot; is passive voice, and even if the sentence were passive voice, that wouldn't necessarily be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The passive voice is when the sentence has no subject. A common test for passive voice is to add &quot;by zombies&quot; at the end of the sentence and see if it, at least grammatically, makes sense. For example, &quot;The girl was hit&quot; is passive voice, and the test of adding &quot;by zombies&quot; turns the sentence into &quot;The girl was hit by zombies&quot; which makes grammatical sense. &quot;The girl was beautiful&quot; is NOT passive voice, despite the use of the word &quot;was&quot;, and if you try the test of adding &quot;by zombies&quot;, you get &quot;The girls was beautiful by zombies&quot;, which makes no sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... your examples are not passive voice. And even if they were, there are good times to use passive voice. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2325/when-should-i-use-passive-voice?lq=1&quot;&gt;When *should* I use passive voice?&lt;/a&gt; for discussion/examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The verb &quot;to be&quot; is a good verb, in all its conjugations. Overusing it will lead to boring writing, just as overusing any verb will lead to boring writing. But using it sometimes? Not a problem. Check your favourite books - you'll probably see lots of &quot;was&quot; and other forms of &quot;to be&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T23:55:25.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19147" CreationDate="2015-10-02T00:30:55.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love &lt;a href=&quot;http://medium.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medium&lt;/a&gt;. It's a great site to read short and long essays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15391" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T00:30:55.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19197" CreationDate="2015-10-02T15:15:46.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about legal copyright rights, then it would depend on the extent of the revisions. If, as you say, &quot;not a single line was untouched&quot;, then I think the rewriter would own all rights. But if a lot of the original text is still there, then you have a joint work and you share ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New writers routinely are confused about copyright. Copyright protects the actual words (or sounds or pictures) used to express an idea. It does not protect ideas. Writers are always saying, &quot;Hey, I really loved Harry Potter and I want to write my own story about a boy with magic powers who goes to a wizard school. Do I have to get permission to use those ideas?&quot; Answer: No. Copyright does not protect general ideas like &quot;a story about wizards&quot;. It protects specific words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: If the original text said, for example, &quot;To be, or not to be, that is the question&quot;, and you rewrote that to, &quot;Existence, or non-existence, that's the point under debate&quot;, then even though the idea is the same, you have not borrowed any actual words (besides trivial ones like &quot;or&quot; and &quot;the&quot;), and so legally the sentence is 100% yours. If you dropped pages worth of material and substituted entirely different pages, that would make your case even more solid. On the other hand if you edited it to, &quot;To be, or not to be, that's the point under debate&quot;, and if that's the case throughout the story -- a sentence here, a paragraph there, half a sentence over there -- than you'd be on shaky ground. If the other person sued for copyright infringement, a court would have to compare the two texts and make a subjective judgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Morally, if you borrowed heavily from the other person (or he borrowed from you, I'm not sure which player you are in this game), then I think you owe him something. It's pretty common to include credits in a creative work like, &quot;based on a short story by ...&quot; or &quot;based on characters created by ...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's cash involved, I'd see if I could come to an agreement with the other person, preferably in writing, and so prevent problems before they happen. Say, Hey, I think the final story is 80% mine and 20% yours, so how about we split any profits 80/20? Or whatever details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T15:15:46.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19213" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-02T16:12:47.340" Score="0" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am creating a table of contents for a book, and there are 4 ways of splitting information up. The biggest zones are 'Chapters', those can span several pages; these are bold, underlined and in large font.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly are 'Modules', these are in bold and are color coded, and break only larger chapters up; else, they're not used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly there are 'Sections', these are what group tasks together and either split up chapters or modules (if used); these are underlined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And lastly there are 'Tasks' themselves, these sometimes don't exist if the section is fairly straight forward; they have no formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: A chapter could be 'Windows Setup'. Modules could be 'Textmode', 'graphical', and 'OOBE'. Sections could be 'New Installation' and 'Repair/Upgrade'. Tasks could be 'format the drive', 'set the date &amp;amp; time' and 'choose a password'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Question 1. Is this a good way to lay everything out? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Question 2. Does anybody know of a word to use instead of 'tasks/task'?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15397" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-10-03T01:38:20.837" LastActivityDate="2015-10-03T01:38:20.837" Title="How should I break down a huge table of contents?" Tags="|style|book|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19213" CreationDate="2015-10-02T17:25:08.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of the technical books I read have two tables of contents: a short, broad list, and a detailed list. I find this format useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Synonyms for 'task' include 'job', 'project' and 'labour'. However, for technicial books repeating words can be helpful for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T17:25:08.150" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18861" CreationDate="2015-10-02T17:50:46.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of things you can do for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start your own personal blog. There are lots of free services like &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogger.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Blogger&lt;/a&gt; (you'll need a Google account to use this), &lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wordpress&lt;/a&gt;.com (careful, NOT .org), &lt;a href=&quot;http://tumblr.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tumblr&lt;/a&gt;, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish with a free fiction-posting service, like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wattpad.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wattpad&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with an artist to create a web comic in which you are the writer, and the artist does the artwork. Which leads me to...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://deviantart.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DeviantART&lt;/a&gt; is a good place for both writers and artists, and for them to collaborate and get their work seen. Lots of working pros out there in all fields of creative arts. It's a wonderful resource.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps some, and good luck. Most of all, have fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T17:50:46.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19170" CreationDate="2015-10-02T20:28:05.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that Tolkien in that quote is intentionally using both meanings of &quot;consistency&quot;.  The story's reality must have an internal consistency; it must agree with itself.  Other answers have covered that, so I won't belabor it.  But also &quot;consistency&quot; means &quot;texture.&quot;  Tolkien labored greatly to give his stories the &quot;texture&quot; of reality.  They are full of the same kind of details that reality is filled with.  There are different languages, there are flora and fauna, there is geography, there is history.  There are seasons, and climates, and microclimates.  Not only do men differ from elves, dwarves, hobbits, ents, orcs, and trolls (not to mention sentient spiders and eagles), but the men differ greatly from each other.  And I don't mean only that the good men and the bad men are different.  Nor do I only mean that there are distinguishable varieties of good men and bad men.  No, enough details are given so that the reader can easily distinguish Beregond from Denethor.  Think of the characterizations of Bilbo, Frodo, Merry, Pippin, Sam, the Gaffer, Fatty Bolger, etc.  They're all male hobbits, all good-guy male hobbits, and yet are all distinguishable.  They have the &quot;consistency of reality.&quot;  Even the various hobbit places are different.  Hobbiton, Bywater, Bree, Buckland, the Took Smials, Farmer Maggot's farm, Michael Delving -- these are all identifiably &quot;hobbitish&quot; and yet all different, just like they would be in reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T20:28:05.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19217" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-03T13:57:42.097" Score="0" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a book about lions and other African predators. The main focus in the one I am working on is lions, but I do quite often refer to 2 big cats that aren't lions. Those are cheetahs and leopards. I'm worried about the reader confusing these big cats with each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Duma (who is a cheetah) gets scared by a leopard, Anapumua Moto (my main lion character) tells him that it is one of his friends, I want the reader to know that Bella (Anapumua Moto's leopard friend if you haven't guessed) is climbing down as Anapumua Moto is telling Duma not to worry about the leopard. How should I go about telling this story while keeping the points of view clear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the part that refers to the leopard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He followed Duma towards a nomadic lioness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Duma said &amp;quot;Look out! A Leopard!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anapumua Moto said &amp;quot;Oh, it's Bella, one of my friends.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bella asked &amp;quot;Why are you following Duma? Aren't you supposed to be roaring and listening for lionesses?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anapumua Moto said &amp;quot;Duma knows of a friendly nomadic lioness. He met her when he was a cub. So I have been following him to this lioness. He will even hunt for me if I get hungry.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bella said &amp;quot;He will get tired so easily. Why don't you let me hunt for you? I am after all the princess of stealth.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anapumua Moto said &amp;quot;Okay. So Duma will navigate me, you will hunt for me, and then when I find her I will know whether she will be friendly to me or not.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bella said &amp;quot;Exactly.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Bella and Anapumua Moto traveled side by side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8607" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-10-03T18:12:04.207" Title="2 points of view at the same time" Tags="|dialogue|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19217" CreationDate="2015-10-03T14:33:44.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't really have any clear points of view in that excerpt, probably because it's almost all dialogue. Point of view mostly comes out in narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, in general, you can write in omniscient third, in which you can see everything and tell the reader anything you want, often with a clear external narrator telling the story, or you can chose to follow one of the characters, either in first or close third (or, rarely, second) person POV. But just because you're following one of the characters at one point of the story doesn't mean you can't follow a different character at different points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for examples, I need to add some narration, which probably won't match the characterization you had in mind, but hopefully it will be enough for you to get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For omniscient third, I'd say you're more or less already there. For omniscient with a clear external narrator, try something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Duma, cowardly as always, said, &quot;Look out! A leopard!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But for every coward there must be a hero, and in this story, that&#xA;  hero is Anapumua Moto. &quot;Oh, it's Bella. One of my friends.&quot; Perhaps&#xA;  you will think it is not brave to have a friend, but perhaps that is&#xA;  because you have never faced a leopard yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For first person, pick whichever of the characters is the biggest part of the story and tell the story as if you are that character:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I followed Duma toward a nomadic lioness. She was beautiful, tawny&#xA;  warmth in the sunlight, and I was just about to roar a greeting to her&#xA;  when Duma stopped walking so suddenly I almost ran into his furry&#xA;  butt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Look out,&quot; Duma hissed. &quot;A leopard!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I took one look and then my back hair relaxed. &quot;That's Bella. She's&#xA;  one of my friends.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Close third person is really almost like first, but with different pronouns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anapumua Moto followed Duma toward a nomadic lioness. She was beautiful, tawny&#xA;  warmth in the sunlight, and Anapumua Moto was just about to roar a greeting to her when Duma stopped walking so suddenly the young lion almost ran into his furry butt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Look out,&quot; Duma hissed. &quot;A leopard!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anapumua Moto took one look and then his back hair relaxed. &quot;That's Bella. She's one of my friends.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then in a different scene you could write from Duma's POV, or anyone else's, as long as you make it clear you've switched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this what you were asking about? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-10-03T14:33:44.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19219" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-03T18:48:13.400" Score="4" ViewCount="578" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a grant in psychology/cognitive neuroscience. I am considering including a fragment of a book at the beginning, to illustrate the question. Regardless of whether this is a good idea, is there any special way to reference fragments of a novel in an otherwise scientific journal? My memory from reading this in journals is that the name of the autor is explicitly written next to the passage, even if the citation style includes only numbers within the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find this in the APA manual, though I might have easily missed it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15404" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T19:59:19.710" Title="How to cite literary (fiction) fragments in a naturals sciences journal?" Tags="|fiction|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19220" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-04T04:02:50.740" Score="3" ViewCount="1337" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a series of short stories and am having trouble bringing out the characteristics of one of my characters in descriptions and in his dialogue. My story is set in South Korea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One character is a Korean single dad struggling to take care of his five kids on his own.  He's a smart guy and dedicates most of his time to his kids, neglecting himself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My other main character is a Japanese man living in Korea.  This character grew up in a strict household where no mistakes were tolerated, and as a result he is very serious himself.  He owns his own modeling company, a family business, and works under the watchful eye of his father.  He has an attractive girlfriend but feels his life is missing something.  He's not strict &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the time, and he knows how to have fun. He respects his elders and is a caring person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the single parent down but I'm having trouble with the Japanese businessman.  I don't want to &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; my readers about his character; I want to &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; them.  Here is what I have so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking out the window. The sky was tar black with large clouds moving slowly. They looked just about ready to burst. It looks like I was right because a few seconds later I heard tapping on the windows and then it became a pitter patter. People ran for cover outside umbrellas were opened as the clouds spat out their beads of water. The pitter patter of the rain came down harder against the car. Ultimately fogging the windows and blurring my sight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Mr. Park are you alright?&amp;quot; The light voice of my secretary Areum pulled my attention towards her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before answering I studied her appearance. Areum had waist length black hair and the fairest skin you'll ever see. Her eyes were the lightest milk brown. Hm... No wonder she was getting married if so soon. &amp;quot;I'm fine,&amp;quot; I answered, my attention back outside...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having troubling speaking his language, in a sense talking like him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see him being strict as a strength because some way down the road in the story he is going to help the single dad with his kids and in return the single dad will help his company flourish. Yes, I write scenes with him, but I'm never satisfied with what I write. I can never get his character down. I know what I want to write but it's just that I'm having trouble fitting him in a scene or a proper setting to start him out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I'm not from south Korea or anywhere in any part of Asia or Europe. I'm half way around the world, so I guess it's the cultural differences too that I'm having trouble with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15408" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T18:51:52.280" Title="How do I write in the language of a strict, serious character without using too much exposition?" Tags="|dialogue|character-development|description|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19221" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-04T09:20:02.690" Score="1" ViewCount="4649" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, if a guard enters a room and watches someone but does not speak, is this character introduced in all caps as GUARD? What if the character's role is even more limited: a little girl hands flowers to someone? Also, how does this apply to large groups, such as spectators, protesters, or crowds? If the character(s) requires casting, should all caps be used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15410" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T11:00:49.280" Title="Are non-speaking characters in a screenplay introduced in all caps?" Tags="|characters|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19225" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19226" CreationDate="2015-10-05T07:25:55.597" Score="1" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using &quot;could&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I looked at the flyer again, and then back at Mark. Very&#xA;  strange---meeting someone who didn't see me as a weirdo. &lt;strong&gt;But could it&#xA;  be true? Could there be a club dedicated to black magic?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;using &quot;could have&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I looked down at the glass table, an onset of tears stinging my eyes.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Could Tom's mother have been right? Could I have been the one&#xA;  responsible for his death?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Could&quot; is the past of &quot;can&quot;, but a the same time it can be used to indicate possibility (in the present tense). So, should I use &quot;could be&quot; or &quot;could have been&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T09:52:06.947" Title="Should I use &quot;could be&quot; or &quot;could have been&quot; in past-tense narration?" Tags="|tenses|narrative|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19225" CreationDate="2015-10-05T09:52:06.947" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Could&quot; in the first one is just the past tense of &quot;can,&quot; as you correctly note.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second example, you are referring to a possibility in the &quot;farther back&quot; past. &quot;Could Tom's mother have been right?&quot; means that you have &lt;em&gt;the present&lt;/em&gt; when the story is taking place (even though it's in the past tense) and some incident &lt;em&gt;in the past&lt;/em&gt; (Tom's mother accused the narrator of being responsible for Tom's death). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Tom's mother is standing in front of the narrator right now, then it would be &quot;Could Tom's mother be right? Could I be the one responsible?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So both your examples are correct, if the incident with Tom's mother happened at a previous point from the existing scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T09:52:06.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19221" CreationDate="2015-10-05T11:00:49.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes - if the character is going to be featured (ie obviously doing something) then the director and casting director are going to need to know who they are, so they should be called out in caps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're merely background colour, then they stay lower case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;INT. MUSEUM. DAY.&#xA;&#xA;Smith enters the museum, pushing her way through the crowd of parents and   &#xA;children. A GUARD spots her, and draws his gun, firing into the crowd.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we wanted to call out someone who gets shot, or is otherwise important to the action in the crowd, then they would be capped. So the little girl handing out flowers in your example would be too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers like to say upfront that a character won't be speaking later. This is usually done via N/S (for non-speaking) or ND (no dialogue). Pick whichever you prefer and use it consistently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;INT. OPERATING THEATRE - DAY&#xA;&#xA;DOCTOR BOB is elbow deep in a patient. An N/S NURSE wipes the sweat from his &#xA;brow.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="975" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T11:00:49.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19228" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19229" CreationDate="2015-10-05T13:11:17.567" Score="7" ViewCount="1870" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my story, the character has to learn a certain skill, with a mentor guiding him. I wrote the introduction and explained some principles regarding the discipline, but I don't want to bore the reader with the practice. And it is necessary that the character improves, in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to avoid to do something too abrupt, like &quot;three month later, I was able to...&quot;. If it was a movie, it would be a montage!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I make that training chapter(s?) more interesting for the reader? Or how can I shorten that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14994" LastActivityDate="2022-07-21T15:06:58.710" Title="How to write a character's progression" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19228" CreationDate="2015-10-05T14:58:23.907" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once you've explained the process, you don't need to walk through the process again. You can have a few scenes which are set in whatever the setting is where the skill is practiced (computer lab, forge, bottom of a lake) and summarize with something like &quot;Antonio realized it had only taken him 10 minutes to write the script which he'd struggled with for an hour before&quot; or &quot;This was Gobber's tenth sword, and it was already vastly better than the first&quot; or &quot;Now that Murgatroyd had gills, he could concentrate on his basket-weaving rather than trying to hold his breath underwater.&quot; The &lt;em&gt;point&lt;/em&gt; of the scene for plot purposes will be something else, but you can mention in passing that he's improving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do the same thing later, but this time note how the person's skills have matured even more, and &lt;em&gt;summarize&lt;/em&gt; more: He set up an entire database before lunch, he restocked the armory in a week, he wove an entire cauldron before the witch returned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T14:58:23.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19228" CreationDate="2015-10-05T18:00:39.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could focus the chapter around the character's evolving relationship with his mentor (and/or internal journey of self-improvement), with the training as the backdrop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T18:00:39.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19196" CreationDate="2015-10-05T18:22:57.600" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you like the way Wikipedia is organized with respect to the information of the real world and you'd like something akin to that for your world (even if you choose to restrict it to characters only), you'll be happy to know that you can use their software, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MediaWiki&lt;/a&gt;. To use it, you only need to set up a local HTTP server that supports PHP (with programs like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;XAMPP&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wampserver.com/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WampServer&lt;/a&gt;, this is a matter of minutes) and you can access it through a browser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MediaWiki allows you to create parameterized templates that you can then place on your page and pass them specific parameters. For example, infoboxes in Wikipedia (the things that appear on the right side of the page for every &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Wood&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;person&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frodo_Baggins&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fictional character&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_Fellowship_of_the_Ring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;movie&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Line_Cinema&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;company&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;country&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenya&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;language&lt;/a&gt;, etc) are parameterized templates. Regrettably, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Templates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the markup language used to define these templates&lt;/a&gt; is cumbersome, but at least you won't have to do it too often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as you probably know from Wikipedia, MediaWiki will also allow you to write descriptions for your pages, link to other pages, create searchable categories, upload media, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4689" LastEditorUserId="9888" LastEditDate="2015-10-22T21:42:22.190" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T21:42:22.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19194" CreationDate="2015-10-06T05:26:36.143" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: gosh that's gorgeous, well done!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: join a critique group. I use Reddit and ACFW. There are others. They will critique your work, help you improve, and crucially, help you deal with rejection. Your friends and family cannot effectively critique your work because they want to be nice to you, you need random internet strangers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third: practice practice practice. I sometimes use Reddit writing prompts for this. There are online writing courses you can take which will teach you about POV and how to drive a story. I carry a tiny cheap Chromebook with me and write any chance I get. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth: once you are ready, read the submission guidelines for several publishers carefully, format your work exactly as they ask, then send it in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember most writers will not get rich. This is something you do because you love it, because not doing it would be sad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question, what publisher would publish your book: probably none unless it's amazing and you get lucky. Most books will never be published by traditional publishing houses, just like most songs will never be played on the radio. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to go down the self publishing route though this can be rewarding. Amazon, Kobo, iBooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside of this is that you won't receive the services of a professional publishing house, cover art, connections with bookstores, editing, proofreading, etc, and you won't have a gatekeeper telling you if your book is OK or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting involved in a critique group, online or otherwise would be your first step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15426" LastEditorUserId="15426" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T06:25:52.170" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T06:25:52.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19194" CreationDate="2015-10-06T14:04:52.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider self-publishing as an option to jump-start a potential writing career. An exemplary example of both the practice of self-publishing and the craft of writing itself is found in &lt;strong&gt;Dave Sim&lt;/strong&gt; and his life's work, &lt;em&gt;&quot;Cerebus.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His 300-issue epic is serialized in &quot;phone books,&quot; ~25-issue compendiums wherein the likes of Oscar Wilde, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Woody Allen are researched, fictionalized, depicted, annotated and discussed AT LENGTH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research on ANY of the above authors will give you an idea of &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; they got started, &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they chose to write and how their lives (&amp;amp; careers) unfolded. These five guys cover a wide gamut of personality-types and writing styles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sim started self-publishing in the 70s, back then it was a monumental task. It still is if you want to create &amp;amp; distribute 1000s of &lt;em&gt;printed&lt;/em&gt; editions. Self-publishing today (via the 'net) keeps getting cheaper and easier. Now is a great time to get started via content-management-systems and Web-hosting-services. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not wanting to sound like an advert for any particular CMS or host so I won't recommend one. Better to suggest &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; look up &quot;CMS&quot; and &quot;web hosting.&quot; and decide &lt;em&gt;which one is right for you - should you decide to go that route.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You could begin by serializing one of your books into blog posts.&lt;/strong&gt; If the content is interesting and original...it &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; get noticed. That's what will ultimately get you &lt;em&gt;third-party&lt;/em&gt; published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use your age to advantage&lt;/strong&gt; - your school probably has some form of newspaper or newsletter - write for it. If they offer AP English or College-Prep Creative Writing - take those classes. &lt;strong&gt;Write casually&lt;/strong&gt; in a journal. &lt;strong&gt;Write with a purpose&lt;/strong&gt; - create something informative, entertaining or humorous and &quot;pass it around,&quot; &lt;strong&gt;Write for its own sake&lt;/strong&gt; -- &lt;em&gt;if you get in trouble passing notes in class then you are probably on the right track.&lt;/em&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastEditorUserId="15292" LastEditDate="2015-10-06T21:59:50.987" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T21:59:50.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19196" CreationDate="2015-10-06T14:34:54.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some really great ideas here already, and I would offer that software specifically for writers like Scrivener, which allows cross-linking and relating functions, might be ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But also, along the lines of Microsoft Access, which is designed for small desktop tasks like this, I would forward &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kingsoftstore.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WPS Office by Kingsoft&lt;/a&gt;, which offers a free version, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.libreoffice.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LibreOffice&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://openoffice.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OpenOffice&lt;/a&gt;, which are both free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then experiment, free of cost, with using both a database and a spreadsheet, as suggested by Lauren Ispum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also investigate using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;yWriter&lt;/a&gt; or similar. From yWriter's web page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Feature list:&#xA;Organise your novel using a project.&#xA;Add chapters to the project.&#xA;Add scenes, characters, items and locations.&#xA;Display the word count for every file in the project, along with a total.&#xA;Saves a log file every day, showing words per file and the total. (Tracks your progress)&#xA;Saves automatic backups at user-specified intervals.&#xA;Allows multiple scenes within chapters&#xA;Viewpoint character, goal, conflict and outcome fields for each scene.&#xA;Multiple characters per scene.&#xA;Storyboard view, a visual layout of your work.&#xA;Re-order scenes within chapters.&#xA;Drag and drop of chapters, scenes, characters, items and locations.&#xA;Automatic chapter renumbering.&#xA;... And many more&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, these answers provide enough information for you to choose the tool which works best for you. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastEditorUserId="14291" LastEditDate="2015-10-22T20:23:09.577" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T20:23:09.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19238" CreationDate="2015-10-06T23:20:34.510" Score="0" ViewCount="3112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be meeting someone soon for a multi-session interview where I will be gathering information for the book i am writing about that person's life. I am not a journalist or a novelist nor have I conducted an interview before. The subject I will be asking her about spans most of her life. The topic I am very well educated in but the interviewee I am not. I have read every article I can find about interviewing for articles or novels. I have even started to practice interviewing people I know. I will be recording the interviewee at their house. I have developed long list of questions and have been practicing ways to interject follow up questions such as &quot;You mentioned '(interviewee quote)' can you tell me more about that?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem lies in the questions I formulated. I went from basic questions hoping that the person would provide great detail to more specific open-ended questions. I don't know if I'm heading in the right direction? Now I feel that if she is someone that provides great detail by answering one question she may answer 3 or 4. I want to obtain great details of her life and experiences. Is having many open ended questions good or should I cut back on my questions? Should I ask how that made her feel or to describe what she saw, smelled, and heard after she  has answered the question so that I can accumulate more detail of events? How do I ask a question about a traumatic experience? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some question I am asking is &quot;Tell me about your childhood?&quot;, &quot;Can you describe your house?&quot; And &quot;Tell me about your father at the time?&quot; Are these good questions? Can someone provide me with good sample interview questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15432" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T01:32:18.487" LastActivityDate="2020-04-20T14:42:13.133" Title="I'm writng a biography; what questions should I ask when interviewing the subject?" Tags="|technique|research|biography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19236" CreationDate="2015-10-07T11:08:39.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not an expert at all in these types of matters, but thought I'd put in my $.02.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that the open ended questions are definitely the way to start. Get them talking. Then, when you move to the more specific questions, think about if that question has already been answered before asking it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if the question's something like, &quot;Did the subject have any hobbies&quot; you can change it to show that your listening. For example, &quot;You said they liked basketball, did the subject have any other hobbies?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me that you've done your due diligence and prepared as well as you can. &quot;For all things, there comes a first time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust yourself and your preparation. You are clearly interested in the subject, let that lead. The questions you want answered are going to be the questions the reader wants answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blessings!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T11:08:39.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19239" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-10-07T12:12:01.120" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-30T19:36:07.180" LastActivityDate="2019-04-30T19:36:07.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19240" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-10-07T12:12:01.120" Score="0" Body="Questions to do with fiction or nonfiction tomes, print or digital, either professionally or self-published. " OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-30T19:36:07.180" LastActivityDate="2019-04-30T19:36:07.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19241" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-10-07T12:14:11.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about how to publicize and promote your work. Can cover what makes something marketable, distribution, price, agents, genre, popularity, publishing, and content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T12:14:11.087" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T12:14:11.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19242" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-10-07T12:14:11.087" Score="0" Body="Questions about how to publicize and promote your work." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T12:14:11.087" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T12:14:11.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19243" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-10-07T12:16:44.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about planning your work: how much, how far, or whether to. Some people must plan everything out in detail before writing; others are &quot;discovery writers&quot; who prefer not to plan anything. Can cover logistics, methodology, plot, characterization, software and other tools, internal structure, world-building, and background information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T12:16:44.720" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T12:16:44.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19244" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-10-07T12:16:44.720" Score="0" Body="Questions about planning your work: how much, how far, or whether to." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T12:16:44.720" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T12:16:44.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19245" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-10-07T12:19:16.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about how to describe a thing, person, or event. Can cover technique, methodology, detail, characterization, &quot;show, don't tell,&quot; amount of detail, stale vs. fresh writing, and how to use respectful terminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T12:19:16.770" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T12:19:16.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19246" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-10-07T12:19:16.770" Score="0" Body="Painting a picture with a thousand words." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T12:19:16.770" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T12:19:16.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19247" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-10-07T12:21:22.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about the correct and appropriate usage of punctuation. These usages may vary according to culture and geography. Covers not just &quot;what do I use here?&quot; but &quot;how do I punctuate this so it's clear?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T12:21:22.283" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T12:21:22.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19248" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-10-07T12:21:22.283" Score="0" Body="The correct and appropriate usage of punctuation." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T12:21:22.283" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T12:21:22.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2368" CreationDate="2015-10-07T15:14:36.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have some good answers already, so I'm tossing this out as an alternative method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to figure out the number of pages is to use something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://createspace.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CreateSpace&lt;/a&gt;, or perhaps &lt;a href=&quot;http://lulu.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lulu.com&lt;/a&gt;, which offer tools for formatting a Word document into a print-ready PDF file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is CreateSpace's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/InteriorPDF.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Word template page&lt;/a&gt;. You can download them and then copy and paste your text onto it. This will give you properly formatted Word documents which can be converted to PDF, rendering the correct page count. You might find something similar at Lulu or other POD services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's going to give you the page count you're looking for. But, any other web site or service - and some can be tried for free - will be able to translate your manuscript from Word to PDF. The problem is generally getting the line spacing and trim size (the dimensions of the book) right. To do that, you have to know the trim size, the interior margins, the gutter (or space between pages for binding), etc. It's easier, IMO, just to use a pre-designed template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've got a Word document and have converted it to a PDF, the page count you get (when using the CreateSpace templates, for example), will provide you the page count for the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps some!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastEditorUserId="14291" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T15:31:57.670" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T15:31:57.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19250" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-07T15:56:37.160" Score="6" ViewCount="880" Body="&lt;p&gt;My mom says that my books are really good and that people will enjoy them. I know parents say things to their kids to keep their hopes and dreams alive, but I want to know: How do you know if your book will really be enjoyable for everyone? How do you tell if your book is ready for the world? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15386" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T16:50:40.663" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T20:22:22.777" Title="How do you know if a book is ready?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19194" CreationDate="2015-10-07T16:47:04.157" Score="6" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publishers focus on marketable content. The rules of this game are same - only the intensity of it varies based on your target readers, geographical location, publishing mode and of course your content language&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But that does not lower the quality requirements. Unless you have content quality that meets general expectations of the target audience, publishers will have no interest&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify target publishers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write on lot of topics online and get noticed by key people in your&#xA;target publishers. Talk to local nearby publishers and see if they can help with networking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trust your skills. There are way too many people in world to discourage others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15155" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T16:47:04.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19250" CreationDate="2015-10-07T18:24:47.170" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to run your book past readers who are capable of assessing it objectively. That may or may not include your mother, but it should certainly include more people than just your mother. Look among your friends and friends-of-friends for people who read a lot of books in the same genre/style as yours. Ask them to give a critique. You are not obliged to follow what they say, but be open minded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not let this process delay too long the real test. Submit it to a publisher. When it is rejected, as most books by unknown authors are, submit it to another publisher. And again, and again. Or, if you can afford to, self-publish. It is much easier and cheaper to do this using electronic publishing than it used to be. To self publish is to submit your work to the ultimate test: the reading public. I am afraid that there is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; real way of being sure that your book is ready for the world except actually showing it to the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Criticism is inevitable. As The Thom says above, you can be certain that your book won't be enjoyable for &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt;. To be honest most writers struggle to find much of an audience and would even welcome a bad review on the grounds that at least someone is paying attention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This advice isn't intended to crush your dreams but to give you a better chance of making them reality. Rejection always hurts. But if you really want to be a writer you will take the risk. I've read that hardly anyone who has written a book regrets doing so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking personally, despite having a publications list as long as your arm in a non-fiction field, I really struggle with a tendency to delay and delay until I am sure my fiction is &quot;ready&quot; by which I mean &quot;perfect&quot;, a thing that will never happen. So I'm talking to me as well as to you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T18:24:47.170" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19220" CreationDate="2015-10-07T18:51:52.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to make the strict, critical, perfectionist character come alive? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Conflict.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's usually a good answer to make any character come alive, but it is particularly apposite for someone who will be deeply irritated by the sloppiness he sees all around him. Perhaps he sees workers in his company doing work that is not up to his high standards and criticises them for it. He sees his criticism as useful and constructive and cannot understand why they react with resentment. Perhaps he is shocked by his girlfriend's messy habits, and quarrels with her as a consequence, almost forgetting in the heat of the moment that he loves her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have already mentioned another source of conflict, namely cross-cultural tensions. Such tensions are a very common reason why two good people can end up angry with each other despite both having benign intentions. That is a sad situation in real life, but in a book it helps to keep the reader hooked. The often bitter relations between Japan and Korea provide many potential flashpoints, as do the differences in manners and customs between those two countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will be all the more satisfying to see your characters eventually come together to help each other if they have successfully overcome painful conflict between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T18:51:52.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19250" CreationDate="2015-10-07T19:42:35.890" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In general, I think @lostinfrance's answer is excellent, this is just a supplement to that:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't necessarily ever know if your book is ready or not in terms of content, but you &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; need to make sure it is ready from a technical point of view.  If it has any spelling, grammar or formatting issues, it will never be given a fair read by most people (particularly professionals in the industry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of good books out there (you should be able to find some at your local library) that cover all the basics of formatting a manuscript correctly for submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as content, it's good to get an outside opinion (not a family member or best friend) but ultimately you need to make the determination for yourself --any given person is just giving you his or her own reaction, another reader might respond differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T19:42:35.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19250" CreationDate="2015-10-07T19:54:06.363" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have noted, at &lt;em&gt;absolute minimum&lt;/em&gt; you must have someone look over your work for technical mistakes (spelling, grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary). You must do this even if you self-publish. No one is going to read a book so badly structured that it's incomprehensible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is also imperative to have an editor, someone who is at least moderately objective and who will be honest with you about plot and character. It helps to have someone familiar with your book's genre, but for me it's not a requirement, because you also want readers who are outside your niche to find your story appealing and understandable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, remember that even the most loved books have detractors (and conversely, the most hated books have fans). Your goal should not be to please all of the people all of the time, because that will never happen, but to please some people enough that they recommend your book to others because they think it's worth sharing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T19:54:06.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20623" CreationDate="2015-10-07T21:13:26.633" Score="2" ViewCount="7965" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a script that has a news broadcast sequence to establish the background of the story, and then we see the main character is watching this news broadcast to transition from worldbuilding to POV.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a director i'd want the news story to play fullscreen then the camera pulls back from the screen to show the room with the character and... story go.  Nothing new here, but i'm stuck on how to write this :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be best to break it into 2 scenes :&#xA;1. INT, STUDIO. NIGHT - Newsreader and dialogue of the newsreader verbatim.&#xA;2. INT, LIVINGROOM. DAY - TV is visible playing the end of the news broadcast, while MC does something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it one scene - INT, LIVINGROOM. DAY - and tv is mentioned upfront playing with all the details of the news broadcast?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how to break it up correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7980" LastActivityDate="2020-07-10T17:36:57.523" Title="Film script - writing scene transition from TV Broadcast to story reality" Tags="|screenwriting|scene|script|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19258" CreationDate="2015-10-08T00:33:01.780" Score="3" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;My boss cites email to him as &quot;Private communication&quot;.  I want to cite email from a subject matter expert to a number of individuals (of which I was not one in the original message).  It is not private nor personal because it involved 3-4 recipients.  And it is wasn't initially sent to me.  How does one cite this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15441" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T01:58:24.157" Title="How to cite nonpersonal email" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19257" CreationDate="2015-10-08T01:58:24.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Private&quot; doesn't mean just one recipient; it just means &quot;not public&quot;.  When you throw a by-invitation party in your home it's a private affair even if there are 50 people there.  Email is the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bigger problem here is that the person you're citing didn't write directly to you.  So if you cite &quot;Harry Q. Bovik, private communication&quot; and somebody asks him about it, he's likely to say &quot;huh?  I've never heard of user36800&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's feasible, your best course of action would be to write to the expert and ask if you can cite him.  If so, then you now have your private communication and can proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's not practical, the most honest way to do it would be something like &quot;Harry Q. Bovik as reported by Joe Shmoe, private communication&quot;.  I've seen that sort of citation in less-formal writing; I don't think I've ever seen it in a journal article or book, though I rarely see private communication there to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T01:58:24.157" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19250" CreationDate="2015-10-08T11:43:56.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do agree with some of the previous highlights but my opinion is different, similar, but different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write your book and your story for &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt;. Yes, ensure that it is technically ready (Lauren Ipsum expressed this subject perfectly). But do not change your story for &lt;strong&gt;anyone&lt;/strong&gt; just because it will fit the masses. That's the first step to hating your work, because you're no longer writing it for you and because you have a great story brewing in your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write your story for you and for you alone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't listen to the sad people that says your story needs to apply to the masses. While this might seem reasonable because you want it to sell, money will not make you happy. (Writing will because you, like the rest of us, love it. Can I get an Amen?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do your writing for the pleasure you get from writing. To feed the creative side of you and all it's passion. Put YOUR heart, feelings, creativeness into it. (Like you already have, I'm sure.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish the book if you want and consider only one persons opinion if it's ready or not. You. Do you feel that it's ready?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly! (This concerns point 4.) Don't let a fear of not being accepted stand in the way of you sharing your story with the world. And do not overly obsess about how your sentences are structured and what would work better than what you had previously. This can be done for years and years and you'll never get anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this said, Proof-readers are a good thing. Let people you trust read your story and only rarely let them affect the outcome of your characters and &lt;em&gt;the plot&lt;/em&gt; if something really doesn't make sense with YOUR vision of YOUR story. Maybe someone goes out of character and does something the reader will feel that character would never do? Then you need to consider if that has to be changed or not. Maybe the character is just going down a bad path? You catch my drift. In essence it's up to you as the writer and creator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As my rant is coming to an end I will finish off with a summary:&#xA;Write your story and share it with the world if you want. You can never please everyone and don't try, because if you do it's no longer your story. You will rarely be happy with the outcome if you allow other people to define your story with their views and assumptions about what your story should be. This is as true in writing as it is in life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write your own story.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15446" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T11:43:56.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19262" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-08T14:33:59.490" Score="2" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new here and a new writer in general. I'm trying to get a handle on action tags and punctuation and I'm wondering about these two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Claire huffs out a heavy breath, then speaks. ”I think you’re really good for her, you know.” She nods at Helen in the rain. &quot;Maybe the best thing that’s happened to her since,&quot; she angles her eyes down and shrugs, &quot;me.” Her hands swing round to clasp loosely behind her back as she looks up at Mary, mouth forming a smug grin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also should there be ellipses after the &quot;but&quot; in this sentence? Or is a comma ok?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I'd understand if it's too soon, but,” Helen twists her head toward Claire, then back to Mary, “if Claire agrees to mind Chrissy on Tuesday, would you join me for dinner?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, now that I'm looking at it, should the &quot;but&quot; be somewhere else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for any help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15447" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T15:30:43.930" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T15:30:43.930" Title="Question about punctuation and action tags" Tags="|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19262" CreationDate="2015-10-08T15:20:11.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strictly from a punctuation standpoint, better grammarians may have better insights for you on this, but here's what I see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, the problem seems to be where and what type you've used. In the first case, the sentence that ends with &quot;since&quot; might be better on its own, apart from the first part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sort of like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claire huffs out a heavy breath, then speaks. &quot;I think you're really good for her, you know.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She nods at Helen in the rain, then dropped her eyes and shrugged. &quot;Maybe the best thing since...me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not necessary, but maybe something to think about. I think the use of an ellipsis will show a hesitation better than a comma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the second sentence, I'd either move the &quot;but&quot; to after the tag, or use an ellipsis after it to demonstrate a trailing off, a hesitation in the flow. It really depends on what you're after, and is somewhat subjective, naturally, but I think you'd be better served doing one of the two things I've suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a third option (still for that second sentence), you might have the &quot;camera&quot; pan around to show other character responses to the &quot;hanging&quot; sentence, or the pause in the speech (if you decide there is one). Then deliver the part after the &quot;but&quot; to give it a bit more punch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps you a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastEditorUserId="14291" LastEditDate="2015-10-08T21:03:41.600" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T21:03:41.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19264" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-08T15:39:14.797" Score="1" ViewCount="321" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Donald Maass's book &lt;em&gt;Writing the Breakout Novel&lt;/em&gt;, he talks about stakes. He goes over how a breakout novel needs two kinds: personal stakes - what the hero could lose - and public stakes - what the world of the novel could lose. Together, they make a powerful combination. I've found this to be true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, not all novels lend themselves well to public stakes. A prime example is character-driven fiction. Take for example Jane Austen's &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice&lt;/em&gt;. The novel is about the main character's inner journey. There's nothing bad that's going to happen to the surrounding countryside if the goal of the novel doesn't work out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This brings me to my question. &lt;strong&gt;Where are the public stakes in character-driven novels?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lack of public stakes in such novels as &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice&lt;/em&gt; leads me to wonder if the main character essentially &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the world of the novel, meaning you only need personal stakes. Once the main character becomes invested in the world, the stakes should too. I have nothing to back this up though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T13:01:08.623" Title="How Can You Include Public Stakes in a Character Novel?" Tags="|fiction|planning|stakes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19265" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-10-08T15:43:45.757" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-10-08T15:43:45.757" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T15:43:45.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19266" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-10-08T15:43:45.757" Score="0" Body="The term 'stakes' refers to what could be lost if the hero of a novel does not succeed in whatever his endeavors are. They provide the impetus for the hero to attain his goal; because if he doesn't, whatever is at stake will be lost. Questions using this tag should be about how to incorporate, develop, or generate stakes. " OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-10-08T18:22:29.863" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T18:22:29.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19267" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-08T16:00:33.017" Score="1" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find anything to do with self-publishing. Could someone explain this to me and how I could do it? I know that I should know about this but I sadly don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15386" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-10-08T17:01:32.427" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T06:31:53.303" Title="How to self-publish?" Tags="|fiction|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19267" CreationDate="2015-10-08T18:27:43.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A general piece of advice, from experience:  &lt;em&gt;Don't&lt;/em&gt; self-publish unless you are willing and able to do all the publicity and sales for your book yourself.  If you are a wonderful self-promoter, you can do well self-publishing.  Otherwise it's a recipe for disappointment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several routes to self-publishing, each with advantages and disadvantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Electronic:&lt;/strong&gt; Advantages - low cost, more of a level playing field, large potential audience.  Disadvantages - overcrowded field, easy to get lost among the competition, less prestigious (reputation as the refuge of amateurs), no physical object.  Amazon is a top player in this market, they have resources to get beginners started.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;POD&lt;/strong&gt; (print on demand): Advantages - produces physical books, you pay only per copy (very low up front costs).  Disadvantages - Very high cost per book as compared to traditional printing, making it almost impossible to place the book in bookstores. Also shares many of the disadvantages (low prestige, too much competition) of electronic publishing.  Amazon and Lulu are two of the big names in POD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Traditional Self Publishing&lt;/strong&gt;: Advantages - Low cost per book, resulting in very high profits if you sell out your run of books.  Cost per book low enough to be able to make a profit off bookstore sales. Disadvantages - High up-front costs, impractical for print runs of less than about 3000.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vanity Publishing&lt;/strong&gt;: Advantages - none.  Disadvantages - High up-front costs with little hope of eventual profits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic issue with self-publishing is that you have to do everything yourself --write the book, edit it, format it for publishing, arrange cover art (and illustrations if any), print it, distribute it and market it.  This is a lot of work, and very few people can do all these different jobs well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of services that can help with those tasks, but the vast majority of them are over-priced rip-offs that take advantage of people who want to be authors.  Accordingly, most self-published books are either amateurishly produced by do-it-yourselfers, or professionally produced at a nightmarishly high cost by a vanity service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're determined to self-publish, I'd recommend starting with a combination of electronic and POD.  A correctly formatted PDF will work for both formats, and neither has up-front costs if you are working through a reputable distributor/printer.  If you become a success that way, you can always upgrade to traditional self-publishing once you have an established audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My single best piece of advice for you?&lt;/strong&gt;  Start a blog, and serialize the books you've already completed (publish a little bit each week online).  Once you build up a fan base, you can use that as a way to convince a publisher to take a chance on your next book  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-10-08T18:34:47.363" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T18:34:47.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19196" CreationDate="2015-10-08T20:17:15.983" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I created a personal wiki with &lt;a href=&quot;http://tiddlywiki.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tiddlywiki&lt;/a&gt; to keep track of my characters. It works for me and it relatively easy to use. I think a wiki is a useful tool because it is very easy to connect characters, events and places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15017" LastEditorUserId="15017" LastEditDate="2015-10-22T18:49:11.223" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T18:49:11.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19264" CreationDate="2015-10-09T01:42:46.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create public stakes by having your main character(s) be the focus of topics that have public stakes in the outside world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, I've written the better part of a novel in which the main characters fight in the American Revolution, while conducting their private courtship during the war. Since the hero is marching with a &quot;rescuing&quot; force, he might not see the heroine again if General Greene's army is destroyed, and never makes it back to the heroine's home in South Carolina. So the progress of the war impacts the progress of the romance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another work, a screenplay, was about how hard it is for a woman to make it to the top of her profession, until she finds two men to take her under their wing, one of whom dates her, and the other of whom is the first man's BFF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T01:42:46.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19264" CreationDate="2015-10-09T08:59:01.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure your example demonstrates the lack of public stakes. The world of the novel is the immediate world the character inhabits, a social world that encompasses all the characters whose lives are affected by what happens in the novel. In your Jane Austin example, this would then suggest that the public stakes would be the social standing of, not just her (as in Elizabeth's) family, but also the families of those around her that are affected by decisions made, which in turn has implications for that society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are public stakes if Elizabeth does or does not marry Darcy. It would affect her family's standing, and it certainly has implications for Darcy and his family: Darcy initially showed he thought Elizabeth and her family were inferior, and Lady Catherine de Bourgh was dead set against the marriage of Darcy and Elizabeth because she wanted Darcy to marry a cousin instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a more subtle level, choosing to marry someone based on love rather than accepting an arranged marriage and going against what could be seen as normal for the upper classes has wider implications for this sort of society. Perhaps others could be inspired by this and marry for the same reasons, thus changing what was a normal practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most novels are character driven (perhaps a controversial statement, I don't know), it's just that sometimes the &quot;public stakes&quot; are more obvious and literal (for example, in Armageddon, if they don't succeed, the world is going to die), but in others, &quot;public stakes&quot; refers to very specific social and cultural consequences that could just encompass a few groups of people (and perhaps have very subtle effects on society as a whole).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2015-10-09T13:01:08.623" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T13:01:08.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19136" CreationDate="2015-10-09T12:22:42.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I got your question correctly, you're talking about a &lt;strong&gt;Circular Story structure&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's common and very &quot;effective&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4018" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T12:22:42.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19274" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-09T15:57:31.833" Score="3" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am busy writing a report for university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this, I did some programming in MATLAB and simulations in Aspen Plus and HYSYS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When referring to these software in the report, should I symbols such as  ® /© next to their names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15458" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T12:31:49.090" Title="Report writing: should I use ® © symbols?" Tags="|technical-writing|citations|academic-writing|software|research|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19275" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-09T16:09:06.070" Score="5" ViewCount="293" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some good writing analyzing software programs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm on a trial right now of something called &lt;a href=&quot;http://effectcheck.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EffectCheck&lt;/a&gt; which seems to give you the overall tone of your work and provide charts and bar graphs of how heavy that is. For example, happiness vs anxiety. It also has suggestive words to replace certain tones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other good programs out there? I'm curious to see how others may use these and what they find helpful (or lack thereof).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for software that can pick up POV errors, passive voice, filters, overall tone of the work, odd wording. Not just a simple grammar checker and spell checker, but things that editors might look for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14850" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-11T10:58:55.110" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T15:18:54.853" Title="What are some good writing analyzing software programs?" Tags="|editing|software|tools|text-analysis|tone|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19276" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-09T16:49:58.893" Score="0" ViewCount="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to write a marketing slogan to draw people's interest.  Because it's a slogan I only have a few words to do this in.  How do I use just a few words to make the reader want to know more?  Should I focus on action verbs, use colorful adjectives, or what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently my slogan is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Making deliveries more convenient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is true but does not feel exciting.  The idea is that we provide package pickup boxes in your neighborhood, where your mailbox is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I make a slogan more clear and also &quot;catchy&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15452" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-10-09T19:48:43.567" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T19:48:43.567" Title="What's the best way to make a catchy slogan?" Tags="|technique|marketing|business-writing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-10-09T19:39:21.487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19277" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-09T18:40:57.040" Score="1" ViewCount="292" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been writing my master's thesis. My supervisor is helping me a lot to format and correct the spelling and grammar. But I think he has been using some Microsoft word addons  which looks like the following image:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://s6.postimg.org/hjcd3ltqp/Screen_Shot_2015_10_09_at_20_30_05.png&quot; alt=&quot;Image&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It shows that it has been formatted in English UK format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody know what the tool is? or I will appreciate any tool suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:45.413" LastActivityDate="2016-12-24T16:53:00.850" Title="Writing thesis paper: Grammar correction tool" Tags="|tools|grammar|microsoft-word|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2021-12-29T20:01:03.070" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19277" CreationDate="2015-10-09T22:36:43.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on your screenshot, your supervisor is using Word's builtin functions (not an addon). The following short answer pertains to Word 2010 for Windows, and should still be relevant if you are using a different version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Click your Review tab and you will a number of editing groups (see screenshot).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HtdIQ.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HtdIQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Word&amp;#39;s &amp;quot;Review&amp;quot; tab for setting language and tracking changes&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a longer answer about Word and UK English, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://word.tips.net/T001678_Changing_to_UK_English.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://word.tips.net/T001678_Changing_to_UK_English.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11559" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T22:36:43.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19275" CreationDate="2015-10-10T04:19:22.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://prowritingaid.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://prowritingaid.com&lt;/a&gt; is the best editing software I know of - artificial intelligence can't replace a human eye, but this does wonders to prepare your work before you show it to a human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15465" LastActivityDate="2015-10-10T04:19:22.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19282" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-10T10:24:05.307" Score="2" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I authored a bicycle traveloque in regional language Malayalam, which is well accepted by readers and three editions of the book have come out yet. I want to translate book into English, German &amp;amp; Russian and publish ? who can help me for this ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15468" LastActivityDate="2015-12-11T13:20:43.083" Title="Translate and publish in English" Tags="|publishing|translation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19282" CreationDate="2015-10-10T13:45:33.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are probably going to have to find someone (or probably more than one) person in India that can translate the work into English, German and Russian. The cost of translators is probably going to be much lower there than it is in say England and America. Also, it will be much easier to find someone who can do it, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-10-10T13:45:33.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12942" CreationDate="2015-10-10T15:57:30.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the best answer for what I imagine is your use-case would be for someone to write a Word or LibreOffice macro, but I wouldn't even know where to begin with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you could use Vim for this -- specifically gVim, which has a Windows version. This takes a little bit of setting up, but I think the results are worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; While it's nowhere near as mind-bending as its critics would have you think, learning Vim &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; non-trivial, and beyond the scope of this answer. If you want, once you've installed gVim, you can use the Start menu to search for 'Vim Tutor' (without the quotes) to get an interactive tutorial of the basics. It's well worth learning, if you can get your head around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Setting up&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, download &amp;amp; install gVim from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vim.org/download.php/#pc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll also need the &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/tpope/vim-abolish&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;abolish.vim plugin&lt;/a&gt; for its &lt;code&gt;:Subvert&lt;/code&gt; command. Quick installation instructions for this (once you've already got gVim installed):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create the directory &lt;code&gt;C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\vimfiles&lt;/code&gt;, and then the directories &lt;code&gt;C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\vimfiles\autoload&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\vimfiles\bundle&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Download &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pathogen&lt;/a&gt;, which is a plugin manager for Vim -- it's easiest to just grab the &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen/archive/master.zip&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;zip file&lt;/a&gt; and unpack it in &lt;code&gt;C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\vimfiles\autoload&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Download the &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/tpope/vim-abolish/archive/master.zip&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;abolish zip&lt;/a&gt; and extract it to the bundle directory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a text file called &lt;code&gt;_vimrc&lt;/code&gt; in &lt;code&gt;C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME&lt;/code&gt;, and put the following lines within it:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;execute pathogen#infect()&#xA;set encoding=utf-8&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you need to create your cypher file. This will actually be a plain text file with commands for Vim. It should look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;paste from the clipboard into vim:&#xA;0put * &#xA;&#xA;&amp;quot;The substitute commands&#xA;&amp;quot;Make sure you use %S rather than %s&#xA;&amp;quot;The 'silent!' prevents error messages&#xA;silent! %S/quick/varryn/g&#xA;silent! %S/fox/drugar/g&#xA;silent! %S/dog/foob/g&#xA;&#xA;&amp;quot;delete the blank line which vim will have added:&#xA;$delete&#xA;&amp;quot;cut the text into the clipboard:&#xA;%delete *&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Magic&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you have the following paragraphs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quick, brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick, brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Quick!' shouted the dog, uncharacteristically, to the fox: 'Jump over me!'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and you want to run your cypher over it, so that every instance of 'quick' will be replaced with 'varryn' and so on. First, copy the text from your word document (or whatever). Then, open gVim and type the following (pressing enter at the end):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;:source C:\path\to\cypher.txt&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this, you can just paste the paragraph back into your word document, &lt;em&gt;et voilà&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The varryn, brown drugar jumps over the lazy foob. The varryn, brown drugar jumps over the lazy foob.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Varryn!' shouted the foob, uncharacteristically, to the drugar: 'Jump over me!'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might not want to have to type out the full path to your cypher file; you could put the following line at the bottom of your &lt;code&gt;_vimrc&lt;/code&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;command Cypher :source C:\path\to\cypher.txt&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this, you can simply type &lt;code&gt;:Cypher&lt;/code&gt; (and press enter) without having to remember where the file is each time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, if you type &lt;code&gt;@:&lt;/code&gt; within Vim, the previous command-line mode command (those starting with a &lt;code&gt;:&lt;/code&gt;) will be repeated; so if you were translating multiple paragraphs, you would only need to type &lt;code&gt;:Cypher&lt;/code&gt; the first time, and for all additional occasions (for as long as you leave Vim open) you could just use &lt;code&gt;@:&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Note on the Cypher File&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You stated in one of the comments that you already have a cypher set up. You can use gVim to transform this into the syntax needed here, rather than typing it all up again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming your cypher is set up in a way similar to this -- if it's not, you can drop a comment &amp;amp; I'll modify this accordingly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;quick varryn &#xA;fox drugar &#xA;dog foob &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copy the lines from whatever file they're currently stored in, and open gVim. Type the following: &lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;*p&lt;/code&gt; -- this will paste from your system's clipboard (rather than one of Vim's many internal clipboards -- called 'registers' by Vim).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you're using non-English letters, some of them might not show up properly, because the default typeface is not very good. On Windows, you should have access to the excellent Consolas; type &lt;code&gt;:set guifont=Consolas:h10&lt;/code&gt; (you can put this command in your &lt;code&gt;_vimrc&lt;/code&gt;, or alternatively in a &lt;code&gt;_gvimrc&lt;/code&gt; file, if you like).)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then type the following command (and press enter at the end):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;:%s/\([^ ]*\) \(.*\)/silent! %S\/\1\/\2\/g&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite a long one, so if you're afraid of mistyping it, you can copy it from this answer, and then type into Vim &lt;code&gt;q:&lt;/code&gt; (which should bring up a little frame at the bottom of you gVim window), followed by &lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;*p&lt;/code&gt; to paste the command in, and then press enter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should now have lines like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;silent! %S/quick/varryn/g&#xA;silent! %S/fox/drugar/g&#xA;silent! %S/dog/foob/g&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next you need to insert the other commands needed to run the cypher. Type the following commands (pressing enter at the end of each one):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;:0s/^/0put *\r/&#xA;:$s/$\r$delete\r%delete */&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After these, you should have a file that looks something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;0put *&#xA;silent! %S/quick/varryn/g&#xA;silent! %S/fox/drugar/g&#xA;silent! %S/dog/foob/g&#xA;$delete&#xA;%delete *&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you just need to save it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;:w C:\path\to\cypher.txt&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And exit gVim with &lt;code&gt;:q&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Limitations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vim is a plain text editor -- it has no idea what 'italics' or 'bold' mean, so running rich text through it will strip away that stuff. There might be a way around this, if it &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; matters to you, but it will involve installing additional programs. (Or you could write your novel in markdown, like all the cool kids :V )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's no problem with single-quotes (&lt;code&gt;'&lt;/code&gt;), but if you want to include the double-quote anywhere in your cypher text you'll have to precede it with a backslash (because &lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt; is used for comments in Vim command files)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5765" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-10-10T16:11:46.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19285" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-10T20:17:49.640" Score="1" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a children's book illustrator. I am hired to illustrate a series of books by the author. The first book has already been illustrated by some other illustrator and published by a publishing house. Some rights are obtained by the publishing house and some rights are obtained by the author of the first book but I do not know the terms and conditions of the agreement between the author and publishing house. &#xA;Should I take the project or refuse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What all permissions should I obtain in order to take the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15473" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T18:14:19.417" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T18:14:19.417" Title="copyright issues and permissions" Tags="|publishing|copyright|children|artwork|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19286" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-10T21:38:05.873" Score="1" ViewCount="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anyone please tell me a verified marketplace or community  where I can find writers filtered by their experience, work  for technical  and health related topics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15472" LastEditorUserId="6276" LastEditDate="2016-03-02T06:46:01.277" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T06:46:01.277" Title="Require Writers Marketplace" Tags="|business-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2016-03-03T19:13:57.733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19287" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-11T01:40:34.397" Score="0" ViewCount="83" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;--Subtitle - What is the cheapest &amp;amp; most simplistic proof an idea belongs to &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt; that will hold up in court. &lt;em&gt;Is my (explained below) example still good?&lt;/em&gt; Is there a better way?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I come up with ideas I publish them on my site if I find them good enough to showcase my talent, entertain, inform or advise my readers. Sometimes I get consulting-gigs from readers as a side-benefit to this content-- an &lt;em&gt;informational piece&lt;/em&gt;, a &lt;em&gt;multimedia creation&lt;/em&gt; or a &lt;em&gt;how-to.&lt;/em&gt; garner special attention, especially if the content is hard to find, piece-together or outright non-existent on the Web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't give away EVERYTHING --- BIG ideas; (novels, screenplays, business-models, security-systems, applications, marketing-methods, inventions, ....) -- I keep under my hat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I took Media Law courses in college, the professor said the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;easiest and cheapest way to prove and idea belongs to ME is to print it out, sign &amp;amp; date it (in blue pen - &lt;em&gt;'natch&lt;/em&gt;) then mail it to myself and leave it sealed.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the event of &lt;strong&gt;third-party-profit-via-plagiarism,&lt;/strong&gt; --the writer, by producing the env. can prove ownership of intellectual property.&#xA;Mainly because the envelope-&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;is sealed&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;has a Federal postmark w/ date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contains the original content with a signed &amp;amp; dated sig inside AND&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;a court officer can verify these things easily for an adjudicator/jury&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: Short of hiring a &amp;amp;c attorney. Is this still the best way to prove an &lt;em&gt;idea&lt;/em&gt;, is, &lt;em&gt;in fact,&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;originally&lt;/em&gt; from the pen/mind of THIS writer?*&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--Note: please don't hold-back your answer if you are not an &lt;em&gt;officer-of-the-court&lt;/em&gt; or if you feel the need to pad with &lt;em&gt;&quot;I'm not a lawyer so...&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;&quot;Laws may be different in your jurisdiction...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I GET IT.&lt;/strong&gt; What counts is agreement or disagreement with &lt;em&gt;&quot;mailing content to myself,&quot; as an alternative to the &amp;amp;c process.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;WHY&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; you think this is a good way to &lt;em&gt;&quot;cover my a$$,&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;WHY NOT&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; or an &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;alternative suggestion&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; also appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;If you wish to research jurisdiction-specific. I am a publisher in Los Angeles, California.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; in reply, &quot;what's to stop someone from sending an empty, unsealed envelope to themselves through the mail, getting it dated, then stuffing whatever they want into it at a later date?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is a &lt;em&gt;serious&lt;/em&gt; felony and a Federal crime, &lt;em&gt;enough to stop me.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;seals are &lt;em&gt;old technology,&lt;/em&gt; as old as wax and fire, &lt;strong&gt;they are diff to tamper w&lt;/strong&gt;/&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;VOID! it is not possible to get an unsealed envelope postmarked in the US. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastEditorUserId="15292" LastEditDate="2015-10-23T10:01:16.130" LastActivityDate="2019-10-23T13:41:27.803" Title="Best practices for designating prose as intellectual property?" Tags="|legal|copyright|originality|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19288" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-11T02:36:39.910" Score="3" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to publish on Kindle and wish to make it tightly fitted to their process and formats. There seem to be two main choices for eBook format: AZW, the older standard, and KF8, the newer standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My book is black and white with line drawings so color is a non-issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to maximize my compatibility with older readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be better to go with AZW or is AZW just so completely obsolete that it would be a bad idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I use KF8 instead, are there any backwards compatibility problems I can expect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T13:51:00.503" Title="Choice of format for publishing to Kindle" Tags="|formatting|ebook|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19287" CreationDate="2015-10-11T11:44:46.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a bit shocking that someone teaching a media law course recommended &quot;Poor Man's Copyright&quot; - it's been generally discredited by pretty much everyone, including the US Copyright office. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#poorman&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#poorman&lt;/a&gt;) - And, really, if you think about it - what's to stop someone from sending an empty, unsealed envelope to themselves through the mail, getting it dated, then stuffing whatever they want into it at a later date?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you're in the US, and you're genuinely worried about this, you probably want to register your work with the copyright office. That seems to be the clearest proof available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you may want to look more closely at what's able to be copyrighted. It sounds to me like you're trying to claim copyright on ideas or concepts, and those aren't eligible. You can claim copyright on the &lt;em&gt;expression&lt;/em&gt; of an idea, but not the idea itself. (eg. a story about a dragon that poops golden eggs could be copyrighted, but if someone else writes their own story about a dragon that poops golden eggs, using your idea but their words and structure, that's not a copyright violation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that's the factual portion of my answer. The opinion portion? Relax. Ideas get better when they are shared freely, and if someone takes one of your ideas and creates something with it, that doesn't prevent you from using the same idea and creating something else with it. Neither one of your is violating copyright, and you're just being part of the creative community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T11:44:46.393" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19196" CreationDate="2015-10-11T15:35:03.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hiveword.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hiveword&lt;/a&gt; is an application built for creating your story background. You can create characters with it, but I believe it has less fields than you're looking for and no way to connect them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14049" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T15:35:03.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19291" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-11T21:01:30.013" Score="0" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on Cubiks World(I changed it from Rubiks because Rubiks is trademarked and I don't want to go to court just because I write a story about rubiks cubes)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have gotten some critiques related to how I refer to my characters. Some people say that I shouldn't use numbers to refer to my characters. I don't do that all the time though, just for the main characters. And the numbers are related to their size which along with other factors affects the size of the offspring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how can I not use numbers and still let people know that each of my main characters is a different size?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8607" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-10-11T21:32:35.333" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T05:05:10.200" Title="Characters referred to in some way other than numbers" Tags="|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19292" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19293" CreationDate="2015-10-11T22:37:05.290" Score="0" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often when trying to give a reader an approximate size for something that fits in your hand that they can visualize and quickly understand, a writer might describe it as &quot;about the size of a pack of cigarettes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, many people today have a good deal of emotions attached to cigarettes and tobacco products. It is a charged word, so its use in descriptive writing may detract from the work's objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is an alternative for this old colloquialism that would be just as quickly understood? I first thought cell phone, but today's phones are quickly getting flatter and broader, while cigarette packs are closer to the cell phones of 15 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user15479" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T02:52:39.070" Title="What is an alternative for &quot;the size of a pack of cigarettes&quot;?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-10-12T03:11:20.337" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19292" CreationDate="2015-10-11T23:11:49.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pack of Playing Cards?&lt;/strong&gt; Some might associate this with Poker and Casinos, but it would receive a lot less heat than a pack of cigarettes I believe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really though, all you need to do is think of things that fit in your hand. If nothing's coming to you, take a break. Whenever you find yourself holding something in your hand, check to see if it is the proper size. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T23:11:49.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19291" CreationDate="2015-10-12T00:02:15.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When we read about the reality of a constructed universe we very quickly adopt the concepts and ideas that that reality contains. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to explicitly spell out a size by numbers, and unless you are talking about some higher authority type of scenario then it would strike me as being unrealistic that equals would refer to each other by number. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If numbers are simply a label to identify different sizes, then a name for each would be much more natural, and feel less degrading to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like it would be similar to how we see and discuss race, and I would imagine that refering to different races by numbers would be confusing (my mind would constantly be saying 'now, was 5 Chinese or Cherokee' whereas a a name is more likely to stick. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;make what you write easy for your reader to follow and understand, Whether you call them gigantor. asdfa, or bob the reader will quickly understand their place in your world if you explain it to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally though, I'd say write &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; story, if it makes sense in your head to use numbers, then go with that! Listen to critiques when you think its something that you actually want to change. Get it written, then figure out what to do with it from there. Ideas such as that can be good things to tackle in the first rewrite when you've found out whether it works or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T00:02:15.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19295" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-12T00:44:00.883" Score="1" ViewCount="813" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I estimate how many copies of a book are being sold on Amazon? I presume there is some relationship between the rank of a book and its number of copies sold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &quot;The C Programming Language&quot;, a perennial classic for programmers is listing at #1,506 on Amazon Best Sellers. I estimate this book probably sells at least 10,000 to 20,000 copies per year even though it is 30 years old. By making a number of such estimates and fitting it to a logarithmic curve I could probably figure out the function between Amazon rank and total sales, however, I assume someone else has already done this. Am I right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T03:41:02.030" Title="Amazon statistics, who is selling how much" Tags="|publishing|sales|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19292" CreationDate="2015-10-12T02:52:39.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An alternative to comparing: &quot;It fits comfortably in the hand.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T02:52:39.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19295" CreationDate="2015-10-12T03:41:02.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A best selling romance author, Theresa Regan, somehow came up with estimates based on rank:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Amazon Best Seller Rank 50,000 to 100,000 – selling close to 1 book a day.&#xA;&#xA;Amazon Best Seller Rank 10,000 to 50,000 – selling 5 to 15 books a day.&#xA;&#xA;Amazon Best Seller Rank 5,500 to 10,000 – selling 15 to 25 books a day.&#xA;&#xA;Amazon Best Seller Rank 3,000 to 5,500 – selling 25 to 70 books a day.&#xA;&#xA;Amazon Best Seller Rank 1,500 to 3,000 – selling 70 to 100 books a day.&#xA;&#xA;Amazon Best Seller Rank 750 to 1,500 – selling 100 to 120 books a day.&#xA;&#xA;Amazon Best Seller Rank 500 to 750 – selling 120 to 175 books a day.&#xA;&#xA;Amazon Best Seller Rank 350 to 500 – selling 175 to 250 books a day.&#xA;&#xA;Amazon Best Seller Rank 200 to 350 – selling 250 to 500 books a day.&#xA;&#xA;Amazon Best Seller Rank 35 to 200 -selling 500 to 2,000 books a day.&#xA;&#xA;Amazon Best Seller Rank 20 to 35 – selling 2,000 to 3,000 books a day.&#xA;&#xA;Amazon Best Seller Rank of 5 to 20 – selling 3,000 to 4,000 books a day.&#xA;&#xA;Amazon Best Seller Rank of 1 to 5 – selling 4,000+ books a day. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that if we apply this formula to my example, &quot;The C Programming Language&quot; that would 100 books a day, or 36,500 books per year for K&amp;amp;R. My guess is that this is somewhat high, but in the right general ballpark based on my knowledge of that book and its market, so Regan's estimates may be roughly correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T03:41:02.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19095" CreationDate="2015-10-12T04:30:42.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;None. Just write the dialogue and setting. If the director cannot figure out what it looks like from the dialogue, then your dialogue is not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T04:30:42.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18967" CreationDate="2015-10-12T04:44:23.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The days when you needed to publish in a magazine are long over and thank god. If I had to keep fighting with those annoying lesbian, B- student refugees from Swarthmore over my use of the 3rd person singular anymore at my age I would probably kill myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just go to a copy shop and start printing it. Haven't you heard of samizdat? The Xerox machine is your ticket to freedom. Don't forget to put contact info in the book, so people know how to buy more, but whatever you do, don't use your home address. There are some real crazies out there. Once, one of my friends and his buddy showed up unannounced on the doorstep of Kurt Vonnegut and scared the shit out of him; don't let it happen to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T04:44:23.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19033" CreationDate="2015-10-12T11:46:34.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give money to a friend and tell them that they are not to give it back to you unless you can prove you wrote that day. They then give you back a small percentage of the money everyday you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11460" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T11:46:34.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19033" CreationDate="2015-10-12T12:13:59.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to write to my diary regularly for seven years. And then the internet happened! It introduced me to a lot of reading material which robbed me of time where I could stay alone with my thoughts long enough to transfer it onto paper. I started writing a blog, later started writing on my laptop and smartphone. Though I did write, it took away the ease with which I could write on paper, to my diary. So, from experience I can tell you that the best way to keep up the habit of maintaining a diary regularly is to cut yourself off from places where you can express your thoughts in the written form, be it Facebook, WhatsApp or even Stack Exchange :P The best way to write great content is to keep talking to yourself throughout the day. This way, by the end of the day, you will have enough thoughts and your opinion of it all that you will be able to pen it down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10551" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T12:13:59.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19306" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-12T14:21:33.010" Score="15" ViewCount="1449" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a book. I am aware that, being a white guy, I always perceive characters as white men. I want to push myself into building a character that is black.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that most of the people in my world are white. The blacks friends that I have live in white communities and have adapted that culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do have a really good Chinese friend, but don't &quot;feel&quot; a Chinese character in the world I created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that I don't want to write someone with black skin who has a white character. I want to create a character who is black and has worked hard and is accomplished in their career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I find this character's voice? Making black friends just to create this character seems shallow as does searching for a friend based on their color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T19:21:25.517" Title="How to find authenticity in a character of color" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19306" CreationDate="2015-10-12T14:27:11.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe this will help: I, a middle-aged white man, once wrote a story narrated by a 24-yr-old woman. I did that by writing her as just a person. My readers pointed out things that made her sound male, and I tweaked those, but I didn't go to any great effort to make her sound like a young woman, I just wrote her as a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T14:27:11.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19306" CreationDate="2015-10-12T16:58:15.033" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is your black character living in a world like the one your black friends live in, or a more immersively black culture, or...?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's definitely a mistake to assume the character will be different just because of skin colour (unless you're talking about frequency of sunscreen application or something). You can't just write &quot;a black character&quot;, you have to write a black character in a certain culture and context. If you're writing optimistic scifi, the character's race may not have any effect whatsoever on how he sees the world or himself or how others see him. If you're writing a historical, race will probably have even more of an influence than it does most places today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So part of writing the character will definitely be figuring out how that character fits into his setting. If you're writing a contemporary novel with a character whose racial identity is a big part of his life (for better or worse), you'll need to do some research. Don't think of black culture as a monolith - figure out where your character is from, how he was raised, and who he spends time with, and then do some reading (fiction or non-fiction, poetry, lyrics, whatever) produced by people with similar backgrounds. What influenced those people, and how will those same influences affect your character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing from a different POV needs a bit more thought, but I think it's really rewarding and worthwhile when done right. Good luck with it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T16:58:15.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19309" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-12T18:22:25.057" Score="7" ViewCount="1155" Body="&lt;p&gt;So in my latest works I've decided to make my narrator, whom is my main character as well, pretty unreliable. How do I get this across to readers? I read a few short stories online that were pretty convincing but I'm not sure I can milk it for a whole novel. Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15488" LastActivityDate="2017-11-20T23:52:52.650" Title="How To Write An Unreliable Narrator?" Tags="|novel|characters|narrator|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19309" CreationDate="2015-10-12T18:46:59.747" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The readers only know what you tell them. If you want the reader to realize your narrator isn't telling the truth, the truth must get to the reader around your narrator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your narrator can be caught in an outright lie by another character, and has to either&#xA;admit to it or weasel out of it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An event or series of events occur (the narrator gives a note to a&#xA;girl he has a crush on, he spends all day thinking about her) and the&#xA;narrator is confronted about them, and then lies (he says he doesn't&#xA;have a crush). The readers see that he's lying, but the other&#xA;characters don't. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An event or series of events occur and the narrator lies to &lt;em&gt;himself&lt;/em&gt; about them. (&quot;Just because I thought he was handsome didn't mean I was gay. I can admire all the effort he puts into his workout and it doesn't mean I'm into him like that.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An event or series of events occur (the narrator steals her sister's&#xA;shirt, wears it, and ruins it), and the narrator lies &lt;em&gt;to the reader&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;about it. &quot;I deserved that shirt because I lent her my skirt last&#xA;year and she never lent me anything back. I gave her the money to buy&#xA;the shirt and she won't let me wear it.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The narrator perceives reality in a way which is obviously not the&#xA;way the rest of us do. (&quot;The sun's rays pierced my skull and began&#xA;cooking the dendrites between my brain cells. It was all I could do&#xA;to put on my yellow hat, which reflected the UVQ rays back out into&#xA;space.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-10-13T00:40:29.010" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T00:40:29.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19306" CreationDate="2015-10-12T18:47:48.567" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really appreciate this question, because as a black person who reads a lot of writing by white authors, I've found that very few do a good job with their black characters, and many do a very poor job.  Michael Chabon is the only well-known white author who easily comes to mind as creating black characters that read as authentic (to me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure there's a shortcut to writing characters that will read as authentic &lt;em&gt;to someone of that culture&lt;/em&gt; other than to actually take the time to get to know someone of that culture AND to try to see the world from his or her viewpoint.  The key problem is that many people --writers included --are heavily (although usually not consciously) invested in NOT seeing the world from the minority viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, being forced to adapt to majority-white cultural setting is a typical experience for most American and European black people.  I think if you took the time to try to really understand the experience of even your seemingly assimilated black friends, you would find that their world and experience is very different from yours, even though you might expect it to be the same.  For instance, you both might be at the same party, but if he is the only black person there, it is a different party for him than for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-10-19T19:57:28.800" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T19:57:28.800" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19312" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19326" CreationDate="2015-10-12T20:13:11.567" Score="9" ViewCount="408" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading an article the other day on &quot;best practices&quot; for presenting my work to an editor. It was very informative. But the inquisitive side of me started wondering what it was that might make make an editor so terribly upset with me or my work that they would sooner publish witty quotes in bathroom stalls than work with me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do to make an editor hate me or my work? Or in other words, what are common mistakes novice writers fall into that shoot themselves in the foot with an editor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14466" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T08:12:58.047" Title="What is the fastest way to make an editor hate me?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19267" CreationDate="2015-10-12T20:34:09.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I self-published for my senior project and it wasn't too difficult. If you straight up search 'self publishing' in Google, it will give you a gazillion results. I personally used CreateSpace, the amazon self publishing route. It was fairly straightforward with several steps that helped me get to my end goal. There were also a ton of forums with common questions and answers if I really get stuck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, since your first title is free (with CreateSpace anyways), you become limited. There are only certain formats you can choose, paper you can work with, and covers you can create without costing yourself anything. But, if you are willing to take some money out of pocket to make your book better, there are some nice bundles they offer. But still, money is money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion it wasn't hard. It was exciting and fun, a overall good experience. But I also wasn't publishing for money. I simply took on this task so I could graduate with my own self published book. Occasionally a friend or family member will purchase a copy and a few bucks get sent to my back account but its hardly anything to notice. I'm sure many people have made it big with self-publishing, but once again, you put in a lot of money to receive a lot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would go over your options if your looking into self-publishing. Is it worth it? Are there other routes that are more appealing to you? How much money are you willing to spend if any? Also, if you decided to self publish, research it a bit. Having a background knowledge about what you're getting into is really helpful in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15488" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T20:34:09.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19314" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-12T20:56:02.043" Score="2" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am searching for an application (Desktop- or Web-App) to write and create interactive documentation (especially technical documentation).&#xA;I like Madcap Flare for technical writing, but I'm looking for something that can also create dynamic media - fulltext search, slideshows, expandables, and similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be easy to adapt and easy to integrate in other processes. And the important thing is that it needs to have a responsive HTML5 output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are reading this and maybe working in the technical documentation sector, what program/app would you use for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15493" LastEditorUserId="15493" LastEditDate="2015-12-10T19:35:16.163" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T00:42:02.537" Title="Authoring tool for interactive documentations" Tags="|technical-writing|tools|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19316" CreationDate="2015-10-12T22:21:01.007" Score="1" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel, and I am trying to find the right dialogue tags for identifying the character that is currently speaking. Here are some examples of two forms, and I am unable to decide which one is more appropriate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;'The cat is in the bag,' &lt;strong&gt;said James&lt;/strong&gt;, closing the door behind him.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;'The cat is in the bag,' &lt;strong&gt;James said&lt;/strong&gt;, as he closed the door behind him.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it matter which form is used? Is it appropriate to use only one form throughout the entirety of the novel, or can both forms be used? Are there any more forms I can use to identify the character that is currently speaking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15495" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-10-13T10:07:50.323" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T10:07:50.323" Title="Dialogue identifying the character that is currently speaking" Tags="|novel|characters|dialogue|word-choice|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19315" CreationDate="2015-10-12T22:44:07.023" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which form you use is entirely &lt;strong&gt;writer preference&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither 'said James' nor 'James said' is wrong. They are both grammatically correct, along with various other similar &lt;em&gt;dialogue tags&lt;/em&gt;. Which one you use is determined by how you write, and especially what sounds better in the context of what you are writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you may determine that 'James said' sounds more natural at one point, while 'said James' sounds better at another point. It is very common to use both these, and other, forms in the same piece of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another note: some writers will deliberately change tags during conversations, going back and forth between them simply to avoid repetition. If James is speaking with one person, you wouldn't want 'said James' repetitively after every other line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-10-12T22:46:55.760" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T22:46:55.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16611" CreationDate="2015-10-13T00:39:29.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just tried Novlr and it seems to work pretty well. It is very minimalistic and has a basic chapter feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15496" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T00:39:29.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19318" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-13T04:02:38.903" Score="9" ViewCount="15539" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've often heard writers say they don't like using colons and semi-colons in dialogue specifically. I don't often see colons and semi-colons in dialogue, but sometimes it just seems like it's by far the best option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I told you: John doesn't work on Mondays.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any real alternative to the colon here? How about a semi-colon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Don't worry; I only get drunk on Sundays.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the semi-colon ok, or is it awkward in dialogue? Putting a full stop after &quot;Don't worry&quot; seems strange to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or I could expand the sentence: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I’ll do anything it takes: rehab, counseling, therapy, whatever I need to do.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the difference between using a colon or an em-dash?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's an article about all the types of things you hate: the environment, animal rights, veganism, that kind of thing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the colon above okay in dialogue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Trust me; the WASPy stuff is nothing in comparison.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a semi-colon appropriate above? Once again, it seems strange to me to put a full-stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Those things I said--I didn't mean a word of them.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is an em dash appropriate here? I thought you weren't supposed to put a full clause after an em dash if it finishes the sentence? If so, should I use something else like a colon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I know you; that place would haunt you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there another way of doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks so much for any advice! Please note the question is specifically about dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-10-13T04:57:16.927" LastActivityDate="2021-06-01T02:48:22.467" Title="Using colons and semi-colons in dialogue" Tags="|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19318" CreationDate="2015-10-13T05:43:37.050" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is using colons and/or semicolons in dialogue awkward? &lt;strong&gt;No. Using them is fine.&lt;/strong&gt; To me at least, every one of the above quotes looks perfectly natural. I agree that trying to find another way to write them would be difficult, and in some cases, may even harm the flow of writing by using something unnatural. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all comes down to what works best for what you are writing. Even very successful authors will sometimes bypass the rules of grammar (or widely accepted rules of writing) briefly, just because it makes their story more powerful. (I regret I cannot give you any examples off the top of my head. If you read closely, you should find them.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grammar is a great tool for keeping your writing in a format that is easily understood by all. When you're writing though, be sure to put the words on the page before the correct way to put them there. I love grammar, but sometimes making sure you have perfect &lt;em&gt;punctuation&lt;/em&gt; will make your &lt;em&gt;words&lt;/em&gt; lack just that: Perfection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T05:43:37.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19320" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-13T06:44:02.943" Score="4" ViewCount="2124" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some time I have been trying to write a novel.Then I did.Now I want to print it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is being an extremely DIY guy I want to print it from my home and also because there are no options available.I know the task is daunting.Finding materials and preparing and finishing the whole project is tremendous work,but none the less I want to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paper: While searching the web for paper I found this link &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5668/what-binding-and-paper-should-be-used-on-a-self-printed-novel&quot;&gt;What binding and paper should be used on a self-printed novel?&lt;/a&gt; ,and I am here. Now in my country paper standards are in another language,so me not having sufficient knowledge can't convey to dealer the terms 20# 70-80 bright etc. to find the right paper.What I did was took a novel with paper type which I like and showed them and got almost similar papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Print: I know the advise about getting it done from local press is the best,but again in my country, that will be extremely expensive.So I will have to make do with a desktop printer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the advise I need.Which printer to choose? I already have a cheap laser printer.I can make a little budget and look for a specialized printer if it's available here upon your suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bind: I will do all the 40 copies my self.I will figure it out later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for now Advise away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15499" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-12-10T07:20:52.840" Title="How to home print a novel?" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19318" CreationDate="2015-10-13T07:28:36.487" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use colons and semi-colons in dialogue. I have editors at some houses who take them out (house style), usually to replace them with em-dashes. I don't think it really makes much difference so I don't fight to keep the original punctuation, but if I were self-publishing, I'd leave them in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the argument &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; them is based on the idea that people don't &quot;speak&quot; colons or semi-colons, but I think we do - punctuation is meant to represent the way we use our voices as well as to follow grammatical rules. So I'll continue to use all available punctuation, in dialogue or otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if I weren't going to use colons or semi-colons, I'd probably use em-dashes instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T07:28:36.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19318" CreationDate="2015-10-13T10:06:15.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Colons are fine because they represent a stop, the same as an m-dash. I would hesitate to use a semi-colon in dialogue because to me it's a bookish piece of punctuation. It gives the reader a &lt;em&gt;visual&lt;/em&gt; guide that two indepdendent clauses are connected. (I would never, however, use a comma splice instead.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T10:06:15.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19318" CreationDate="2015-10-13T14:02:35.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think colons are used for expanding on a particular word before it while semi colons add additional info relating the sentence before it.&#xA;Example 1 : I bought some vegetables: carrots and spinach.&#xA;Example 2 : I bought some vegetables; I am planning to be a vegetarian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15505" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T14:02:35.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16611" CreationDate="2015-10-13T14:59:28.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt;. A lot of writers swear by that one. It's not exactly like Scrivener, but it does a lot of nice things and can be very versatile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, Microsoft is giving away &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.onenote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OneNote&lt;/a&gt;, which is similar, if you're familiar with the concept of an electronic notebook. It can also output the pages created as Word documents or RTF files (I think).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a +1 for both Hiveword and yWriter, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T14:59:28.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19320" CreationDate="2015-10-13T15:21:42.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a great deal of pleasure hand-making my own books back in the 90s, when print-on-demand meant a rubber stamp and the internet was powered by rubbing two sticks together. It’s a labor of love, so I get where you’re coming from. When done right, the end result is often a far more sensual object (did I just say that?) than a book from Createspace or Lulu [Note: I’m not knocking either service, I’ve used them both quite happily].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Book-making is a craft in and of itself, but it can be done. Here are some things to at least get you started. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(By the way, out of respect to people who make handmade books for a living, I should point out that this is not comprehensive, but should get you well on your way to your goal. Also, I've tried to define technical terms below in brackets.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Think about Double-sided vs Single-sided printing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Double-sided.&lt;/strong&gt; If you’re printing at home on a laser printer (good choice), you’ll make more work for yourself if you print double-sided. Because typically four pages will fit on a single sheet of paper, your layout software will need to have imposition [page re-arrangement] capabilities. A professional printer imposes pages themselves, taking it out of the designer’s hands, but as a home-based bookmaker, you’ll need to carefully figure out what pages go where. Your safest bet is to &lt;strong&gt;create a dummy of the book&lt;/strong&gt;: count how many pages are in your book, divide by four, then fold that many sheets of paper in half, stuff them into signatures [collections of sheets to be bound together], and then &lt;em&gt;hand number each one&lt;/em&gt;; disassemble your dummy and you’ll see what pages go where. In your software, rearrange the pages (for example, pages 1 and 8  will be across from each other, and on the reverse side, pages 2 and 7 will be across from each other). Print accordingly. &lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; work on a copy of your final layout file in case things get messed up and you have to start over.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Single-sided.&lt;/strong&gt; If you print singled-sided, print two-up spreads (with even inside/outside margins, and the page numbers all in the same position on each page) and then cut down the middle. I used to carefully hand tear five sheets at a time. It gave the right edge a nice deckle that was aesthetically pleasing and people who received the book noticed that before they noticed that pages weren’t printed on both sides.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Once you’ve committed to the above, work on your page layout and binding&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Margins, measures and leading.&lt;/strong&gt; I touched on this briefly above, but your decision to print double-sided vs single-sided will affect your page layout. A book that is bound into signatures will likely have uneven margins. This is a design decision and has a large effect on the pleasure people will take in the book. Some books benefit from wide-open outside and bottom margins, others beg for thin outside margins. Ultimately, your margins control the measure [length] of your line and the measure of your line will affect the depth of your leading [line-spacing] and all of these factors will affect how many pages you will be printing. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will almost certainly cost more to print a beautifully designed book, even from home. Then again, this is where a lot the pleasure comes in. Have fun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T15:21:42.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19312" CreationDate="2015-10-13T17:08:04.737" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hatred&quot; probably isn't the right word. But you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; annoy an editor so much that they treat you dismissively. And they don't forget. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here three big ways to quickly get an editor to dismiss all your hard work out of hand and potentially lose the chance to publish a (possibly) amazing piece of writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Forget they are humans.&lt;/strong&gt; I live on both sides of the fence. When I was only a writer, I thought of editors as being 1) unnecessary, 2) numbskull gatekeepers, and 3) failed writers. As an editor, I now realize that editors are 1) human beings, 2) human beings who like writing, and 3) human beings who respond the way all human beings do. On top of that, they work hard as professionals (often unpaid and with a baby crying in the other room) and can tell when you firmly believe unpleasant things about them (remember, their skill set involves unraveling subtleties).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't follow submission guidelines.&lt;/strong&gt; If submission guidelines say &quot;blind submissions only&quot;, they have a very good reason for that. If they ask for 12pt, Times New Roman, double-spaced, they have a good reason for that, too. If they ask for no special fonts, no crazy formatting, and only one submission at a time, they have very good reasons for those, too. Going against submission guidelines implies a) that you think you know better than they do and b) that you aren't professional. A and B may not be true, but gut reactions go a long way when publishing art.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Compare yourself to great writers.&lt;/strong&gt; This happens more often than you think. Sure, I like to think of myself as a proto-Nabokov-Pynchon-Beckett-Sterne hybrid, but telling an editor this invites scorn and, yes, dismissiveness. Pitching your abilities as if they're a Hollywood logline disrespects what you do and removes an opportunity for others to make their own qualified assessments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this list isn't comprehensive (a list of pet peeves could take weeks to write), but it should put you on the right track to achieving an editor's heart-felt disapprobation.&lt;code&gt;*&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;*&lt;/code&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Bonus tip:&lt;/strong&gt; Use big words when they don't need to be used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T17:08:04.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18952" CreationDate="2015-10-14T02:28:18.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be a good observer. Observe the people around you closely. Just don't see their actions ,but try to observe the reason or feeling behind them. Try to think, how would you feel if you are in that state of mind. Observing things make you imaginative. We don't need to experience everything to write about it. What we need is the ability to relate other people emotions with our emotions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15511" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T02:28:18.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19306" CreationDate="2015-10-14T05:55:38.827" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to be more specific about your character.  Simply being black does not give someone a certain personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of focusing on the color of their skin, you should think about their childhood, the environment in which they were raised, and the environment in which they now reside.  Then their ethnicity would play a more important role than just seeming like &quot;I needed a black guy for this story&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developing this background of the character will also allow you to more easily see the world through their eyes.  Then, all you need to do is reveal that world to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do this for all of your characters, I would imagine the authenticity would handle itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15513" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T05:55:38.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19331" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-14T09:39:01.313" Score="0" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;So for example, in the Victorian era, the character Sexton Blake first appeared in a short story, and progressed (in the hands of many different writers) through novels, comic strips, stage plays, radio adaptations, and eventually movies and TV series. (many decades later!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if the same thing could ever happen today. Does anyone know of any contemporary short stories which eventually, through whatever path of adaptations, became the source material of films or TV shows. Doesn't matter if the exact story wasn't adapted - just the character or world or any other recognisable aspect being preserved in the final adaptation will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any genre is fine - historical, detective, horror, fantasy, scifi - perhaps something by Stephen King, or a literary detective such as Morse or Rebus (I don't think either of those started as a short story). Or a 'world' is fine, e.g. something like Terry Pratchett's &lt;em&gt;Discworld&lt;/em&gt; (which started as a novel so doesn't count).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over to you!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Brokeback Mountain&lt;/em&gt; is a great suggestion of a contemporary short-story-to-film journey ... can anyone come up with a short-story-to-TV equivalent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15098" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-09T19:09:29.840" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T19:09:29.840" Title="Can anyone provide any recent examples of characters which first appeared in a short story, eventually becoming major TV or Film properties?" Tags="|short-story|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-10-15T02:37:04.843" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19331" CreationDate="2015-10-14T09:54:26.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Brokeback Mountain&quot; is a short story from Annie Proulx which became a major film.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sherlock Holmes appeared in 56 short stories, and has reportedly been played on TV more than any other single character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen King's book &lt;em&gt;Different Seasons&lt;/em&gt; has four novellas, three of which became movies: &quot;Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption&quot; became &lt;em&gt;The Shawshank Redemption,&lt;/em&gt; &quot;Apt Pupil&quot; became &lt;em&gt;Apt Pupil,&lt;/em&gt; and &quot;The Body&quot; became &lt;em&gt;Stand by Me.&lt;/em&gt; (I'm going to assume you don't count &lt;em&gt;Creepshow&lt;/em&gt; because it adapted several King stories.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA&lt;/strong&gt; Washington Irving's &quot;The Legend of Sleepy Hollow&quot; has spawned both films and the current TV series &lt;em&gt;Sleepy Hollow,&lt;/em&gt; with Tom Mison and Nicole Beharie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T14:28:15.700" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T14:28:15.700" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19333" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19335" CreationDate="2015-10-14T13:36:59.493" Score="1" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I try to write something on paper, no thoughts or dialogues come to my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just go blank and stare at the paper without writing anything. Once I close my eyes, I start to feel the things and I can imagine everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I tackle this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15511" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2015-10-15T04:15:57.017" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T14:03:22.407" Title="How do I write about something which can only be felt with closed eyes?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19334" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-14T15:19:27.327" Score="0" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does this mean? If I have to SHOW more about a particular traumatic event which happened to me, I would probably not be able to recall the chain of events because I was in a panicked state of mind at the time of incident and there were just too many things happening around and all the people experiencing a lot of emotions which is firstly difficult to understand and then remembering them till we note them down in our journal. But keeping in mind, there are so many autobiographies that are published with so much detail and full of show, not tell events. Do authors/writers actually focus on some particular details of their everyday life? If yes, which parts? I have read a question which is similar(&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/15826/writing-techniques-or-exercises-to-improve-ability-to-show-rather-than-tell&quot;&gt;Writing techniques or exercises to improve ability to show rather than tell?&lt;/a&gt;) and it has some great tips but I still feel it doesn't answer my question. This is to ask about the art of observing/perceiving things so they would come naturally to me while I describe an event without forget the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14920" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:50:53.093" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:50:53.093" Title="Show more not tell implementation in writing?" Tags="|biography|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19333" CreationDate="2015-10-14T15:21:33.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like you are trying to go to a first draft of your piece before you are ready. Perhaps you should spend some time capturing the thoughts from &quot;when your eyes are closed&quot; in a notebook, just jotting down scraps of ideas and feelings and so on. Then, with your eyes &quot;open&quot;, start outlining a story from the raw material you have daydreamed. Only once you have an outline, should you think about trying to write a first draft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know how to turn your raw thoughts into an outline, there are many good books on this. I've just read Scarlett Thomas's &lt;em&gt;Monkeys With Typewriters&lt;/em&gt; which is very good on plotting, but I'm sure other posters will have other suggestions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15098" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T15:21:33.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19334" CreationDate="2015-10-14T15:28:58.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the moments of that events are jumbled and chaotic, then write it down that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;crashing sounds oh my god what just is that smoke? people running my heartrate starts to spike the ground is thrumming my legs are jelly I&#xA;  need to get out of here push you idiot get out of my way that is smoke&#xA;  what's burning need to run I need to run&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can remember what led up to that point, and learn about what happened afterwards, and use that new information to impress a more rational timeline on the events. But report what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; felt in that moment, what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; thought, however fragmented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, someone writing an autobiography has had time to research, compare notes, talk to other people, consult diaries, and so on. It's not like the book pours out of the writer's head fully formed and perfect like a transcribed newsreel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the future: carry a notebook with you wherever you go. Practice being observant. Sit on a bench and watch the world go by. Observe the clouds, the sunlight, the traffic. Find a park, take off your shoes, and walk barefoot. Pay attention to the sensations. Write these things down. This will start to teach you the disciplines of observation, memory, and iteration (putting things into words). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T15:28:58.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19333" CreationDate="2015-10-14T16:51:54.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just been reading a short article about 'blind writing'. You either turn off the screen on your computer or close your eyes when you are handwriting. Then you just get on with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T16:51:54.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19333" CreationDate="2015-10-14T20:06:48.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you recite the story out loud with your eyes closed it may become sufficiently fixed in your mind to write down after you open your eyes. You may need a few tries to get the gist of this method, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T20:06:48.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19250" CreationDate="2015-10-14T20:22:22.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A book is ready for the world when the composition is complete and correct (grammar, flow, the story finishes, etc.) and when &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are satisfied with it. Putting it out to other readers as a pilot is &lt;em&gt;part&lt;/em&gt; of putting it out to the world in my opinion. When your book is out in the world, you get feedback on it which both defines and determines if your book is ready. It's an iterative cycle. If the book isn't ready and can still be edited, then make the appropriate changes. If the book can no longer be edited, it's a bummer but not a loss. You can take what you learned and apply it to the next project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The feedback from putting your work out there will range wildly in both usefulness and hurtfulness. Take the positive stuff, whether it is useful or not, and hold tight to it. Let it lift you and encourage you. Let it push you upward and outward. It is one of the sweetest things in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the negative stuff, if it isn't constructive or useful (e.g. &quot;this sucks!&quot; or &quot;why would anyone read this?&quot;) discard it. Forget it. Erase it from your mind. If the criticism is malicious or too generic there is literally nothing you can do to fix it. All it will do is weight you down. Don't allow that to happen. Ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And lastly, we have the critical but useful stuff. For better or worse, this is the biggest area for growth and is a valuable indicator of readiness. This is when people say stuff like &quot;this character behaves  weird to me&quot; or &quot;there was way too much description on that doorknob&quot; or &quot;I have no idea what's going on right now&quot;. It may be hard to not take personally, but this is really the good stuff. It's what people honestly think and feel about what you've written and is great way to become aware of problems you didn't know were there and to get a feel for how your book is being received. Through this mirror you can fix what needs fixing (and not all of it will) and put it back out there for another round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cycle continues until either the world wears you down or you convince the world your work is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14466" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T20:22:22.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19341" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19349" CreationDate="2015-10-14T22:39:44.483" Score="3" ViewCount="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an MLA formatted research paper and want to add the following into my paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Legislature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Legislative branch is Parliament, comprised of the Head of State and the Legislative Assembly.  Laws are enacted when Bills are passed by the Legislative Assembly, assented to by the Head of State and published in the Samoa Gazette (official Government newspaper, now known as the Savali Newspaper).  The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly is the chief presiding officer of Parliament.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Executive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comprised of the Head of State and the Executive Government – of which the Prime Minister is head, supported by Cabinet Ministers.  The Executive Government is responsible for the day-to-day management of the State, including the enforcement of the laws of Samoa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judiciary&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Judiciary interprets the law, ensures that the rule of law prevails and is the guardian of the Constitution as the supreme law of Samoa.  The Chief Justice is the judicial and administrative head of the Judiciary.&amp;quot; [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This whole segment came from - [1] &amp;quot;The Government.&amp;quot; Government of Samoa RSS. Web. 14 Oct. 2015. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samoagovt.ws/about-government/#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.samoagovt.ws/about-government/#&lt;/a&gt;. )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is all important information and can't find a way to shorten it, so I would like to add the entire section into my paper as is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you properly add paragraphs into a research paper? Do they need to be in quotation marks or would you just cite where it came from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this would also help others who may have similar questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15354" OwnerDisplayName="Nina" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T09:51:25.817" Title="How do you properly add paragraphs into a research paper?" Tags="|style|formatting|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19291" CreationDate="2015-10-15T02:56:11.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Explain to your readers the significance of the numbers. Are they all different? Why/why not? If the numbers are specifically there to differentiate size then instead of giving numbers as names give the characters names and categorize their size as numbers (i.e. Susan-4, Carl-8, Randal-4).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you choose to go with names or with numbers, just litter the story with explanations and reasons why size is so important to the Cube people. (Note: litter meaning scatter bits throughout, without becoming grating or redundant, but a large chunk of explanation in one spot could be equally off putting to your reader.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15522" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T02:56:11.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19106" CreationDate="2015-10-15T03:07:09.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In all honesty, I think you'd lose your readers faster if you had you character go through a ringer and not be discouraged broken down in some way. Heroes who never fluctuate on their view or outlook become dull and boring after a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further I would say that you absolutely can have a character lose all hope, it's not uncommon (Vic from Joe Hill's NOS4A2 and Reek/Theon Greyjoy from George RR Matin's Song of Ice and Fire series come to mind). Just make sure than when you reach the point where the main character regains their strength and vigor, your readers are revitalized right along with him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you get the feeling that your character becomes simply to far gone and can no longer move the story along, you could show what effects his complacence has on the world around him, or focus on who's around to witness the downslide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15522" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T03:07:09.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19334" CreationDate="2015-10-15T07:32:51.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common thing if you forgot the details. Its human tendency of mind. You can not recall whole things and feelings until or unless you live them. In your case you lived them but due to your tough situations you are unable to recall them completely. There are many people in everyday life who undergoes situations like you. You can observe them and relate with those incidents which happened to you. As @lauren said about observation, you need to be good observer. Observation is the key to live the moments which even not happened to you. Start observing things. So just close your eyes and observe your breath first :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15511" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T07:32:51.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19345" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19357" CreationDate="2015-10-15T07:44:53.517" Score="2" ViewCount="307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a novel set in the 12th century. I can learn about the platform for the story, like city life and culture of people at that time, by googling on the internet. But I don't know how to write the dialogues of characters at that time. I am unable to get the words to express the feeling of 12th-century people. I know it depends on the place of my novel. Suppose it's Greece. It's all fiction. But I want to show the feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15511" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T18:43:44.550" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T18:43:44.550" Title="How do I write dialogue to evoke a historical setting?" Tags="|creative-writing|dialogue|research|historical-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19346" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19350" CreationDate="2015-10-15T07:53:10.373" Score="1" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a trail guide about mountain bike trails in a little known Eastern European country. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have many maps and trails but I would like some advice about which software to use to write it up, structure the book and take it onto formatting for ebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the essential elements of the text - info and writing style? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got Scrivener and Indesign but Scrivener seems to be better for books with not a lot of design layout and indesign is the opposite- good for design but not for the writing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice welcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastEditorUserId="4660" LastEditDate="2015-10-15T08:03:50.997" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T09:54:13.883" Title="Writing a trail guide for mountain bike trails - advice on the process" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19312" CreationDate="2015-10-15T08:12:58.047" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The top mistake a novice writer can make is, in my opinion, being completely resistant to criticism. Writers may feel like every story they create is their &quot;baby&quot;, and each critique on the story reflects a criticism on their own character. Now, this is a totally natural impulse, but one that you need to curb. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So. Responding to every suggestion of improvement with some variation on &quot;you just don't &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt; my &lt;em&gt;genius&lt;/em&gt;!!&quot; is a very quick way to make editors, critique partners and writing group members dislike you. Give in to impulse, scream out your first gut reaction, share your emotions with the universe without first analyzing whether the criticizer maybe has a point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treat your novel/short story/what have you as your &quot;baby&quot; and you will earn plenty of dislike. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15526" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T08:12:58.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2202" CreationDate="2015-10-15T09:05:38.717" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neil Gaiman writes all of his books with a fountain pen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neal Stephenson last used a word processor for writing with Cryptonomicon. Since then, he has written everything longhand. Yes, that means all twelve billion pages of The Baroque Cycle and Anthem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen King wrote Dreamcatcher in long hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claire Messud wrote The Emperor's Children with a fountain pen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jonathan Carroll writes all of his novels with a fountain pen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shelby Foote wrote his entire Civil War histories with a dip pen!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15527" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T09:05:38.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19341" CreationDate="2015-10-15T09:51:25.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's something that big I would blockquote it (as you've done here for your post) and indent it, and then leave off quotes. It's not dialogue, which has specific practices for multiple paragraphs in a row, and I'd be worried that my reader would forget that I'm quoting someone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T09:51:25.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19346" CreationDate="2015-10-15T09:54:13.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are two different programs for two different tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is for writing your text. InDesign is for laying out the completed text after it's written and edited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written fiction in InDesign, but I'm also a production artist and I spend so much time in InDesign that I'm very comfortable in it, so I don't mind using it as a word processor sometimes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T09:54:13.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19334" CreationDate="2015-10-15T10:41:10.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use your imagination. I mean, your imagination should be informed by experiences you've actually had and remembered, but you expand and explore and combine these experiences using your imagination, not your memories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By 'imagination' I don't mean wild flights of fancy. Don't throw a unicorn into a car crash scene just because your imagination takes you there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But disciplined use of your imagination would allow you to, for example, remember a time when you were afraid but not so petrified that you lost your memories, and then amplify on that memory to fill in the details of your scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More controversially: You should also remember that your readers may not be expecting truth so much as 'truthiness' (to borrow from Stephen Colbert). There are certain expectations in fiction, especially genre fiction, that feel almost more true than reality to many readers. Our fictional heroes are more heroic than real-world heroes, our fictional villains more villainous. You want to be careful that you aren't going &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; far and creating cartoon characters, but you also want to be aware of the conventions of your genre that you will either subvert or support with your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at the extreme: if you have a heroic character in a car crash, even if reality suggests that character would be dazed and disoriented and useless, your genre hero probably won't be, unless you're setting up a deliberate subversion of reader expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a more moderate level: readers expect writing to be more coherent than reality. Writers clean up dialogue all the time (if you don't believe me, read an actual trial transcript and then a fictional version of a trial and see the difference!), we structure narratives in a more satisfying way for fiction (how often do real-world scenarios wrap up with a dramatic climax and satisfying denoument?) and, yes, we describe situations which, in real life, would almost certainly be indescribable by participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And we do that by using our imaginations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T10:41:10.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19345" CreationDate="2015-10-15T13:55:37.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cultural and location has a big impact on language. In Greece in the 12th century they definitely were not speaking English, which is what I assume you are writing in. If you want to capture the English style at this time from 1100 to 1300 is the period of Middle English. This is the period where you see the dropping from the various forms of ‘the’ and Old English word endings such as ‘es’ are tapering off and becoming more condensed and clear. I think if you really want to capture the tone of that century in dialogue you’ll have to put some research into Middle English. The Oxford English dictionary has a very detailed explanation and section on Middle English and explains the cultures that impacted the style at the time if you want to start there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15532" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T13:55:37.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19334" CreationDate="2015-10-15T13:57:45.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Show Don't Tell&quot; is an axiom of fiction writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a short example of why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example of Telling&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bob was feeling sad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example of Showing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bob picked up the newspaper, read the headline and his head dropped&#xA;  beneath his shoulders.  He rubbed at his eyes as tears dropped onto&#xA;  the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Narrative Versus Exposition&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The &lt;em&gt;first one is a narrative voice&lt;/em&gt; where someone tells you what is happening and how a particular character feels.  This is a much easier way to write and generally takes fewer words.  However, your readers will have difficulty seeing what you are writing and it is generally more boring to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exposition - Exposing the Actions of Characters&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one takes more words, because you have to show the character taking actions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the second example also takes more active reading since the reader will decide what he thinks about how the character feels.  Obviously, in this case I mentioned that tears were flowing and the reader is most likely going to get the idea that the character is sad, but this type of writing does allow more subtle cues to how the character feels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Books Versus Movies&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Think about the way you learn who a character is and what she is feeling in a movie.  In 99.9% of the movies there is no internal narration going on telling you that Bob is very sad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead you have to watch and see the actions of Bob on screen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self or Others&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;This leads us to why this is an axiom for fiction writers and not necessarily the best when writing personal essays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we are watching or reading fiction then we should probably just watch the character's actions and determine how the character feels.  It is a better kind of reading experience since it takes more active involvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Essay?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you're writing an essay, you may want to say things out loud, like, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I felt very sad. I was overwhelmed when my girlfriend dumped me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, again, notice that the narrative -- versus exposition of showing your actions -- is kind of boring.  If instead you show your girlfriend dump you and then show yourself picking up a glass vase and hurling it across the room, everyone reading knows you are feeling upset and you haven't had to speak those exact words and it &lt;strong&gt;probably has more dramatic impact.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T13:57:45.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19333" CreationDate="2015-10-15T14:03:22.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard the recommendation that you close your eyes and record yourself speaking out loud what you want to write. College students often record their professors during lectures then go back and write down their notes. You could try recording yourself and just speaking your ideas then listen to it and write out what you say. There are programs like Dragon that will type as you speak to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15532" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T14:03:22.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19274" CreationDate="2015-10-15T14:41:29.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing that says it is bad to include them. It's not really required for more common writing. If you aren't following a specific journal format it's acceptable to use the symbol the first time you introduce the brand then you can drop it off the next time to use it or you can use it every time you mention the brand. It's really your preference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15532" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T14:41:29.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19356" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19359" CreationDate="2015-10-15T15:07:20.450" Score="3" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/25390-i-m-a-modern-man-a-man-for-the-millennium-digital&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I'm a Modern Man&lt;/a&gt; by George Carlin, is a good example. And, after analyzing it, I've come up with some techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Varying sentence length&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A&#xA;  diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is&#xA;  anatomically and ecologically incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using opposing ideas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I&#xA;  know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using alliteration (or repeating the first word/word unit)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...laid-back but fashion-forward...super-sized, long-lasting...I’ve&#xA;  been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved,&#xA;  pre-packaged, post-dated...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using rhymes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal. Lean and mean! Cocked, locked&#xA;  and ready-to-rock. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the&#xA;  tide. I’ve got glide in my stride. Drivin and movin, sailin and&#xA;  spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I in the right path? Do you have other suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2015-10-15T15:12:54.943" LastActivityDate="2015-11-14T19:02:33.333" Title="How to make a list enjoyable to read?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19345" CreationDate="2015-10-15T16:46:35.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally think the best strategy is to &quot;translate&quot; the speech of the past into the speech of the present. As far as I can tell, few readers want to struggle with realistic depictions of languages they have no interest in learning. Instead, they like placeholder words to imply historicity (e.g. &quot;thou&quot; and &quot;thine&quot;), which give the vaguest feel for the time as well as a quick reminder that the narrative is taking place in the past. Another technique (often used in movies) is to apply a common regional dialect/accent to analogous social positions in your historical setting (think of how many times Germans in American war films had British accents). It's not necessarily a fair way to do things (in fact, I don't know if I can even recommend it, I hadn't really thought about it before), but it seems (or seemed) to resonate with people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several decent paragons of English literature did the above with frequency:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shakespeare, who didn't bother much with dialectical veracity (see:&#xA;everything he wrote that wasn't set in Britain) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Virginia Woolf (in &lt;em&gt;Orlando&lt;/em&gt;), who also didn't bother&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Robert Graves (in &lt;em&gt;I, Claudius&lt;/em&gt;), who likewise didn't bother&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, choose a strategy that doesn't involve so much research that you never write that book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T16:46:35.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19345" CreationDate="2015-10-15T18:10:01.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is primarily a stylistic choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is this: accurately reflecting the speech patterns of the time is virtually impossible, would require absurd amounts of research, and would drive away any readers who don't have academic background in the period. Realistically, what you want to do is &lt;em&gt;evoke&lt;/em&gt; the speech patterns of the period, without mimicking them perfectly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct way to do this varies by your writing style, the genre and tone of your story, and the readers you hope to attract. Most importantly, it depends on what you feel comfortable writing. It may seem counter-intuitive to say that the amount of research you should do is determined by what you're comfortable writing, but at the end of the day it's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; story and only you know what level of verisimilitude is right for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line: historical fiction is, by definition, a synthesis of the period it depicts and the period it was written in. This is not a bug, but a feature. How far you diverge from common usage will reflect how '&lt;em&gt;alien&lt;/em&gt;' you want the story to feel for a modern reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15526" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T18:10:01.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19356" CreationDate="2015-10-15T18:53:48.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest checking out '&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skippyslist.com/list/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Skippy's List&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;', a modern classic of satire. One of the themes I see in it that's not on your list is &lt;strong&gt;repetition&lt;/strong&gt;. List items will use a similar sentence structure with small variation, and these will be clustered together or spaced apart for greater effect. Using similar structure on items spaced far apart can act as a callback, and gives the list a greater sense of structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;31&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Not allowed to let sock puppets take responsibility for any of my actions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Not allowed to let sock puppets take command of my post.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;124&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Two drink limit does not mean first and last.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Two drink limit does not mean two kinds of drinks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Two drink limit does not mean the drinks can be as large as I like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The twitter account &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/WorstMuse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WorstMuse&lt;/a&gt; uses the second kind, especially with one or two word tweets. It references repeating, over-used concepts or words, like: &quot;Plucky orphans&quot; or &quot;Tragic lesbians&quot; or &quot;Retrograde amnesia&quot;. The snappy style lets the ideas speak for themselves, and the short format is itself a recognizable rhetoric structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15526" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T18:53:48.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19106" CreationDate="2015-10-15T19:52:32.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can, and it has been done several times! Herman Melville's &lt;em&gt;Pierre&lt;/em&gt; comes to mind as a prime example of a protagonist who loses his edge. Arguably, we could also consider &lt;em&gt;The Picture of Dorian Gray&lt;/em&gt;'s eponymous hero, as well as &lt;em&gt;1984&lt;/em&gt;'s Winston as being protagonists who lost their strengths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wrote the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do note that after that point, the hero then goes through a series of events that bolster his perseverance, until the climax arrives, and his doubts are shoved aside, his resolve emerging stronger than ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is certainly possible. Demetri Karamazov springs immediately to mind as a protagonist who functions in this manner. In fact, this is a general tendency of many a good protagonist; otherwise, you'd have a Mary Sue stomping about your pages, impervious to both life and death, and characters that neither grow nor learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the question at hand - how do you make this an enjoyable read - a good story is carried by not only its main thread, but also by spinning into it other subplots, small gains, large losses, etc., to keep the momentum of the story going forward until the climax. A well-told, convincing story will keep an audience captive better than one whose protagonist never falters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14342" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T19:52:32.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19288" CreationDate="2015-10-15T20:57:48.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there's a misunderstanding that you'll have to convert your manuscript to the appropriate file format yourself. You won't, though. Authors simply feed a clean file in accepted formats into the KDP, and the conversion to the appropriate file format for wide use across their platforms is automatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, having a clean file, without a lot of &quot;crufty code&quot; (a term I learned on someone's blog this very morn), can go a long way to having a well-formatted output file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this isn't a direct answer to your question, but the answer really is, you don't have to do that conversion yourself. The KDP will do it for you. All you have to provide is a clean file in one of the acceptable formats. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A2GF0UFHIYG9VQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for those formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) lets you upload and convert your final draft from several formats. For best results, we recommend that you upload in DOC/DOCX (.doc/.docx) or HTML (.html) format. Be sure to read through the tips below for your preferred format prior to publishing your work with KDP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A328FYMFAE7VNY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this is a helpful guide&lt;/a&gt; on creating an ebook on Kindle, if you've not already read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T20:57:48.783" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19318" CreationDate="2015-10-15T21:48:36.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difference is that em-dashes are parenthetic and a semicolon indicates a continuous thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your first three examples I would have used a comma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the things-you-hate sentence, the colon is OK because it is a list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust me, should be a comma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Those things I said&quot; must be a comma. You can't have an incomplete sentence set off by an em dash like that. Remember, the em dash is essentially an appositive, so the rest of the sentence has to be able to stand alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I know you. That place would haunt you.&quot; should be a period because they are separate thoughts, not a continuation of thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt; (get that book) describes the semicolon this way: &quot;In regular prose, a semicolon is most commonly used between two independent clauses not joined by a conjunction to signal a closer connection between them than a period would.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She spent much of her free time immersed in the ocean; no mere&#xA;  water-resistant watch would do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the semicolon is correct because the second sentence follows from the first. In other words, you could also write it this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She spent much of her free time immersed in the ocean, so no mere&#xA;  water-resistant watch would do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We could crack the safe or pick the safe; you need to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, a conjunction would be awkward, so the semicolon is definitely indicated. Even though each clause is an independent sentence, they cannot be separated by a period, because they are part of the same thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T21:48:36.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19363" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-16T04:00:26.807" Score="2" ViewCount="1020" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interactive stories can do this quite easily- give the audience a choice, reveal choice to be a bad one, everyone is very sad. Simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But can a story the audience has no direct control over manage the same thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we read about a character doing a bad thing, we don't feel guilt, although we can empathize with theirs. Not what I'm looking for. Also not looking for the simple &quot;my-friends-and-family-would-not-approve-of-my-reading-this&quot; guilt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any techniques that make an audience feel as though they have done something wrong &lt;em&gt;themselves&lt;/em&gt; simply through the process of reading? (Examples would also be helpful.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15540" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-10-16T04:16:08.530" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T17:39:04.700" Title="Can non-interactive stories make an audience feel guilt, and if so, how?" Tags="|fiction|technique|narrative|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19363" CreationDate="2015-10-16T10:29:52.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not quite sure what you're looking for, but I'm wondering if some sort of unreliable narrator technique might be useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like, when I first read Gone With the Wind, I was pretty young (my only excuse) and I came out of the book sympathizing with Scarlet and the KKK. Scarlet was a defenseless Southern Belle, the KKK were taking back the streets and protecting her way of life, etc. Obviously when I re-read the book later, I realized I'd been 'tricked' into sympathizing with a group I don't have any real sympathy for. I didn't have any real guilt about it, but possibly if my realization had come within the reading time of the book (like with a gradual realization of what was going on) I might have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, in Lolita, where I ended up feeling a sort of pity for Humbert, did that result in me feeling guilty? Not really, but I think it's the closest I might have ever gotten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - I don't think I'm likely to feel true guilt for having been tricked by an author, without me taking any bad action as a result of my guilt. But these two incidents are the closest I can come to in my memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T10:29:52.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19363" CreationDate="2015-10-16T10:38:46.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can certainly provide the feeling of vicarious guilt, but directly inspiring such a feeling would be quite challenging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The emotional response of guilt requires an element of embarrassment or regret regarding an action taken (Dictionary.com: &quot;a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined&quot;). The only way I can imagine this occurring would be to foreshadow something forbidden or guilt-inducing, leaving the reader with no option but to quit reading or continue at the risk of a guilty emotional response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you know that the next chapter of 50 Shades of Grey will involve deviant sexual acts, but you read on regardless, you might feel personal guilt for doing so. You had the choice to stop reading and went ahead due to intrigue or compulsion at the cost of guilt. This won't be an outright effect of the story so much as an effect of personal decisions made in conjunction with reading it. I think that was a major selling point of that book - it appealed to the voyeuristic tendencies we all suppress to varying degrees, employing guilt as an enticement (rather than a means to inspire anxiety and discourage further reading, as might be seen with a letter that isn't addressed to you marked with &quot;CONFIDENTIAL&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a technique, this is a dangerous gambit - you're not providing the reader an alternative, so if they don't want to experience that feeling of guilt, they will simply stop reading (whereas in other mediums they would generally have an alternative, a la choose-your-own-adventure novels and certain video games like Fable or Skyrim).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also go about it in a more direct manner - e.g. stating something like &quot;it would be a crime to read further&quot; - then your reader has become &quot;guilty&quot; in the definitive sense if they choose to continue. But will they feel emotional guilt in the manner you are hoping to achieve? That would depend on the reader, though it isn't likely. There's too much distance in such a flat statement - the reader isn't really confronted with a dilemma, as you can't assign them guilt; they would have to volunteer that feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15543" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T10:38:46.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19288" CreationDate="2015-10-16T13:51:00.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I did my last Kindle book was this. I'm at a different computer right now so I don't have the files, I don't remember the extensions and all. If I'm misleading you on details, let me know and I'll go back and confirm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I downloaded the Kindle previewer. Then I sent KDP my docx file and got back their conversion, which I used as a first draft. This is a zip file, which includes a file with the HTML, a file for each image, a file for the table of contents, and a control file to tie it all together. I unpacked the zip to a directory and then hand-edited the text files with Notepad++ and replaced the image files with cleaner, correctly-sized conversions produced with Corel Draw (the program I used to create the images in the first place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The previewer will convert the directory to a single file suitable for re-uploading back to KDP. I forget now if that's AZW or P-something-something or whatever, but whatever the previewer creates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's a good idea to start with the KDP conversion because then you get a usable, syntactically correct file as a starting point. It eliminates having to figure out everything from scratch. In my case, anyway, it included a LOT of junk tags that I deleted with mass search-and-replaces. And lots of crudely done stuff that I cleaned up, like link targets are often put in not quite the right place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The folks at KDP seem to assume that you'll upload a docx and just use their rough conversion, because they make the software and documentation really hard to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To directly answer your question, I'd say: Use the newest formats, but keep in mind that some things won't work on older model Kindles and you have to consider the implications. The previewer will show how your book will look on various versions of the Kindle, and you can see when stuff isn't recognized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously color won't work on the e-ink Kindles, so you want to see how things look in b&amp;amp;w. I had some diagrams that used color coding that made them easier to read, but this didn't look good in b&amp;amp;w, so I ended up making two versions of all the diagrams: one in color with the color-coding and another in clean b&amp;amp;w. You can make it pick the right one with CSS media queries. Oh, and you can use CSS to make images size to fill the screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The format of the index has changed, but the old format is still recognized. So I used the old format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The really old Kindles don't recognize tables. If you can avoid using tables, do. But if you want a real table -- a chart with rows and columns -- there's not much choice, and I think you just have to say too bad for the oldest Kindles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Umm, those are the things that come to mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, I'm not at the computer where I have my actual files. If I've messed up or left out an important detail, post a comment and I'll update.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T13:51:00.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19363" CreationDate="2015-10-16T14:21:46.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmm, I'm not quite sure what you're trying to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People will sometimes feel guilty when reading a book because they conclude that they shouldn't be reading something like this. Like, &quot;this book is really obscene&quot; or &quot;this book is really racist&quot; or some such, and the reader concludes that he is only enjoying the book because of his own dark nature that his better side decides he doesn't want to encourage. But I think you're saying that that is not what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other possibility is to present a story in which the reader is lured in to cheering for a character to do something that is immoral or unethical, and then to turn it around and highlight the harm that this character's action does, so the reader is left saying, &quot;Oh, yeah, what was I thinking, why was I hoping the character would do bad thing X? Is it because I would do bad thing X in those circumstances? I really need to examine myself.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like, the hero is married but one day he meets a younger, prettier woman. The story is presented so that the reader will naturally say, Yeah, go for it man! Your wife is boring and mean and ugly. You should just run off with this woman. It would be so fun and exciting and you deserve it. Then at the end suddenly show it from the point of view of the wife, how she has done nothing wrong and yet she is abandoned and betrayed and how all along the supposed hero has been selfish and shallow. If done right, the reader could be left thinking, &quot;Why did I WANT the hero to abandon his loving and devoted wife for cheap sex? Would I betray people I claim to love and care about for such shallow reasons?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar things could be done with a story about stealing, anger and violence, racism, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, unless your point is to write a harsh story about some social issue, I'd be very reluctant to write a story that tries to make the reader feel guilty. People don't generally like to be made to feel guilty, so this is probably not a recipe for a popular book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T14:21:46.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18735" CreationDate="2015-10-16T14:41:21.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's possible --and common --to re-release a story that has passed into the public domain with new illustrations.  However, you would almost certainly need to be an established illustrator first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet --if you want a traditional publisher --is to put together a portfolio of sample illustrations showcasing your style.  Illustrating a well-known story (such as the ant and the grasshopper) is probably a good plan (as long as you don't expect that those illustrations will likely be published --they are just samples).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then send that portfolio out to publishing houses.  If one likes your work, they will hire you to illustrate a book.  Usually publishers like to pair established writers with new illustrators and vice-versa.  If your work becomes popular enough, you will start to gain some control over deciding what projects you work on.  Until that point, you'll just need to take whatever work you are given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T14:41:21.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19363" CreationDate="2015-10-16T14:54:30.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great and challenging question. I think the key to guilt is feeling complicity in an action that goes against either a person's own morality/ethics or against society's morality/ethics. This isn't easy in a narrative situation, since it requires an extreme identification with the protagonist. You could write in a sympathetic 1st person narrative, since 3rd person creates an immediate distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting up a narrative situation in which complicity is the goal probably requires several things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An agent who the reader is identifying with on a visceral level.&lt;/strong&gt; This takes a lot of time to set up, basically mapping common morality/ethics onto the character and doing everything in your power to make the reader feel empathy with his/her situation and, ultimately, their response to the situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An agent who the reader is identifying with on an intellectual level.&lt;/strong&gt; This is going to be harder to control, since there are so many readers with so many different opinions and thoughts about something. That being said, try to create moments where the protagonist's thought patterns align with the average person's.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An act that feels both in the reader's control and is realistically possible.&lt;/strong&gt; The moment of guilt arises either in reflection or in the instant the action occurs. But more importantly, &lt;em&gt;what the action is&lt;/em&gt; that produces the guilt should be something anybody is capable of doing (e.g. pushing the red button that blows up the universe will be less guilt inducing than running over a dog when you're late for work). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A possible example: Ian McEwan.&lt;/strong&gt; McEwan consistently manages to get the reader to relate with seemingly average individuals prior to those individuals doing something awful (his early short stories, the novel &lt;em&gt;The Cement Garden&lt;/em&gt;). Whether or not the reader feels guilt is a very personal thing, but I suspect that if anyone can do it, McEwan comes closest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another possible example: Jim Thompson.&lt;/strong&gt; Thompson's The Killer Inside Me is very effective at putting you directly in the brain of someone who is doing awful things. It's a gritty book and if you really identify with the main character, you're in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; the situations you read about in the examples above are just as likely (or maybe more likely) to produce feelings of revulsion and good old fashioned horror, and can potentially further distance the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T14:54:30.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19370" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19376" CreationDate="2015-10-16T17:52:42.573" Score="2" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who is a freelance editor and I was planning on employing her to look over my novel before shopping it out to publishers. However, I don't know if publishers like this or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they hear freelance editor and cringe? Do they get weird about editing something that has already been edited? Or is it a boon that makes their job easier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I have my work edited by a freelance editor before seeking publication?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14466" LastActivityDate="2015-10-18T15:47:24.197" Title="Should I have my work edited by a freelance editor before seeking publication?" Tags="|publishing|editing|freelance|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19371" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19373" CreationDate="2015-10-16T18:29:00.953" Score="2" ViewCount="1895" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a book I'm writing at the moment I have created a world with a day and night cycle. I have created a veil of mystery over this madman and this machine he's made, however, every event to do with the machine has happened at night. This machine is meant to be utterly horrible, but it's more of a psychological machine than one that physically does something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I create horror events about this machine in the day with increased effectivity? During the morning and afternoon my characters are awake and ready, but at night they get nightmares. Furthermore, at night it is dark and my characters cannot concentrate well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T11:22:34.483" Title="How to make horror events more interesting in daytime" Tags="|creative-writing|book|horror|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19363" CreationDate="2015-10-16T18:54:15.803" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will  not have anything to offer that is as technical and full of advice as the other responses here, but I can tell you this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hideaway by Dean Koontz&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story about two people becoming psychically linked, at first they do not know that what is happening is real or that it is happening to the other person as well.  Enter protagonist, a normal older gentleman sweet as pie suddenly has a vision of killing someone. It is real. It is visceral. He is seeing this from the first person view, lifting hands and seeing them bloody, feeling the pulse of the person being strangled throbbing beneath his fingertips, the anxiety of doing this actually doing this deed and the unraveling of a perfectly sane man virtually living out these experiences.  It was terrifying but here is where your answer comes in.  I had to stop a couple of times just to catch my breath and walk it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point I found myself thinking, &quot;yeah, the way that he arranged that body doesn't fit with the rest, what is missing is that he needs this over here and incorporate something with it like...&quot; and it hit me. The thought of arranging a dead body in a certain way made total sense.  Me.  In my bedroom, before bed. Me, identifying with the insane logic of an insane person doing an insane act... and I am not insane. He did such a good job of pulling you into the though process of the killer that you begin to think like a killer, you understand his twisted idea of logic and then... with hope.. you are horrified that you were just in that place, in that space with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, a writer can make the reader feel guilt, actual guilt for the actions within a book or story.  He brought me closer than I ever want to be to the act of killing someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15547" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T18:54:15.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19371" CreationDate="2015-10-16T19:03:08.953" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your goal with any tale of horror is to inspire just that in your readers: horror. In order for them to feel it though, the people they care about - the protagonist and main characters - must also experience that horror. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are your events frightening to your protagonist, regardless of when they occur? Good. Focus on what makes them frightening, why the protagonist is scared. If you can convey what makes your hero frightened, your reader will be too. Don't rely on the time of day to inspire fear. Rely on your characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Explore why your characters are frightened; convey what they think and feel, and your reader will think and feel the same thing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T19:03:08.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19370" CreationDate="2015-10-16T20:51:17.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know what publishers like and don't like, but when you submit work, it should be as clean as it can be. So absolutely edit it many times yourself, have your readers and your writing group edit it, hire an editor. I can't imagine a publisher would care who edited your manuscript, as long as it's edited well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T20:51:17.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19370" CreationDate="2015-10-16T21:08:38.000" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do hire the editor, I wouldn't mention it to your prospective publishers. There are probably some who don't care, but to some it's seen as a bit of an amateur move - the general theory is that an author should be able to get their work to a high enough level to attract a publisher on their own, and then work with the publisher's editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a financial issue - a good editor will cost thousands of dollars for a standard-length novel, and that could be a significant expenditure with no guarantee of return. If you can afford it, great, but if you can't afford it, don't go into debt with the expectation of a fast return on your money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My impression is that most published writers hire editors for their self-published work, but not for their work that they place with publishers. That's definitely the model that I follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I've learned a lot about writing by working with my publishers' editors, so quite possible you could learn a lot about writing by working with an editor you paid yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no, it's not a requirement, or even a cross-the-board recommendation, but if you can afford it and you think you need some help, it might not be a terrible idea. But I wouldn't mention it when you query. Let them think you did it all on your own!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2015-10-18T15:47:24.197" LastActivityDate="2015-10-18T15:47:24.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19370" CreationDate="2015-10-16T21:25:23.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I'll second @KateS on a lot of what she says. I don't know if hiring an editor for submission or querying is beneficial. And even if your friend wouldn't charge you much, Kate's also right in that you shouldn't put that forward in any of your query submissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative to potentially going into debt on the book before submission, maybe you could find a critique partner or group you could work with. A lot of writers have workshopped manuscripts with groups online or in person and feel they've grown a great deal as writers in so doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can actually check your local library for local writing groups, depending on where you are, or you can Google for the online groups. Many of them have strict membership requirements, though, and I even heard of one with a waiting list for new members. So bear that in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one more alternative, you can check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,195313.0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;KBoards yellow pages&lt;/a&gt; listing for editors. You could save a lot of money that way, though most or all of those people charge for their services. You still pay, just a more reasonable amount, IMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also could look for an editor who will give you a sample edit for free. You get a feel for what the editor will do for you, and it might give you a guide you can follow to self-edit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,220865.0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this thread on KBoards&lt;/a&gt;, in which someone who trained under editor Sol Stein offers to give an overview of your writing and how to improve it. It's not a full edit, but offers insights into where your writing might improve. A large number of indie authors have used, and acclaim, the editor's service, and for the money she's asking, it's worth investigating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, the legendary book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060545690&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Self-Editing for Fiction Writers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Renni Browne and Dave King is highly recommended. It might give you a basis from which you learn to edit your own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this will help you in your choice. Good luck with your manuscript whatever you decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T21:25:23.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19363" CreationDate="2015-10-17T06:23:32.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A reader always try to connect himself with any of the characters in a story(and most of the times that character is the hero of the story).Like if you are reading a story about &lt;strong&gt;Superman&lt;/strong&gt; and you only wants to be Superman ,because he is the hero and he is doing all those good things.If something happens bad with him, you will feel bad also. Some times people also try to connect themselves with villain of the story,If the villain is cool and smart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to say that connection of reader with the story is very important, if you want to make him feel anything. Without connection there is no feel. So, according to me &lt;strong&gt;non-interactive&lt;/strong&gt; stories can not make an audience feel guilt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes,you can make an audience feel guilt through reading but your story should be connected to the reader. &lt;strong&gt;When a reader is connected with a story,he feels like story is not just a story,its happening in their life&lt;/strong&gt;. And to force a reader to feel like this,is the only &lt;strong&gt;aim of a writer&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15511" LastActivityDate="2015-10-17T06:23:32.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19379" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-17T07:32:53.473" Score="5" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know what cues I can use to make a character inspirational. What are some of the traits of characters like Albus Dumbledore, Peeta Melark or Gandalf, that are quoted often in popular culture?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is common of such characters that makes them memorable and allows many people to admire them over other characters? In other words, what can I do to ensure that certain characters are remembered in the eyes of the readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15550" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2015-12-30T10:46:02.703" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T16:18:00.403" Title="Forming The Perfect Inspirational Character" Tags="|technique|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9029" CreationDate="2015-10-17T15:02:21.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting topic. I'm not seeing any set conventions for this either, but with the advent of e-books, the formatting vagaries bring up new issues. Because the book will be read on a variety of e-readers, and users can vary the reading experience, you can't depend on block text or different fonts to render properly in all situations. So, if you're editing for an e-book, perhaps begin the text in a new paragraph and introduce with an em dash or hyphen? Or use italics, unless you're using italics for so many other situations that you might be confusing the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15553" LastActivityDate="2015-10-17T15:02:21.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19379" CreationDate="2015-10-17T16:37:42.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The protagonist should have done something unexpectedly awesome or worse filled with strong/empty emotions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. The king desperately failed to save the queen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15554" LastActivityDate="2015-10-17T16:37:42.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19382" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-18T05:55:02.020" Score="5" ViewCount="477" Body="&lt;p&gt;At university, it was drilled into us to avoid comma splices like the plague, but I keep seeing them in all different types of famous, best-selling novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read things (all in dialogue, in inverted commas) like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-You wouldn't like it, believe me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Trust me, I know what I'm taking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-I'm not going, I don't care what you say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-He's a straight shooter, I'll give him that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-I'm warning you, don't test me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-I told you, he doesn't work on Mondays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Don't worry, I won't tell anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep seeing this type of things in really well-known novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know a lot of editors like to avoid using semi-colons and colons in dialogue, and wonder if this is why so many comma splices are creeping in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are comma splices more acceptable in dialogue than in regular text, in the way that commas can indicate pauses and so mimic more natural sounding speech? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there also an argument that says that commas in dialogue, even if they cause comma splices, are less distracting to the reader than a semi-colon in the middle of a sentence, which they may not fully understand or that may take away from the natural flow of the words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if any writers here would use comma splices in dialogue as above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be appreciated! Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastEditorUserId="15309" LastEditDate="2015-10-18T18:18:05.370" LastActivityDate="2015-12-20T09:00:53.513" Title="Using comma splices in dialogue" Tags="|style|creative-writing|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19379" CreationDate="2015-10-18T07:02:22.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inspirational character is anyone who inspires others... And yes, that &lt;strong&gt;sounds&lt;/strong&gt; like I am messing with you, but actually what I am saying is that you are thinking about it upside down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not think about what makes a character inspirational. Instead create issues and conflicts for other characters that &lt;strong&gt;require&lt;/strong&gt; some inspiration. Then have the &quot;inspirational character&quot; provide that extra cue by his own example. Do that several times along the story so that it becomes a pattern and you have successfully created an inspirational character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes being an inspirational character is somewhat dependent on circumstances. It can be seen as being a bit ahead of your time compared to your peers. Alternately you can be in some way more mature than your peers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally there is also a factor of not being afraid to be different so that others can easily learn from your example. So an inspirational character would generally at least look like being confident. People usually pay more attention to confident people as well. But it is possible to be only confident in silent or partial fashion. You do can be insecure about some things and inspirational about others. And the confidence can be in form of simple understated competence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example would be a mother who tirelessly works to raise her children. No glamour, no prestige, just simple emotional maturity of really &lt;strong&gt;understanding&lt;/strong&gt; she loves her children and putting them first is not really &lt;em&gt;giving up&lt;/em&gt; anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastEditorUserId="11425" LastEditDate="2015-10-18T07:08:34.703" LastActivityDate="2015-10-18T07:08:34.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19382" CreationDate="2015-10-18T18:13:54.603" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't use all of them, but I'd definitely use some, and mostly for the reasons you pointed out. Dialogue doesn't have to be grammatically correct; really, it probably &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt; be grammatically correct, most of the time (since most of the time people don't speak in grammatically correct ways).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in dialogue, instead of using punctuation to follow grammar rules, I think it should be used to indicate the manner of speaking. So if an author is trying to represent the sort of pause that is best represented by a comma, then the author should use the comma, regardless of grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, of the examples you posted, I think I'd change:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm not going&quot; (probably semi-colon, maybe em-dash, maybe even a period);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm warning you&quot; (colon, for added drama).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The others I'd leave as commas splices. But it depends on how the author hears the words being spoken, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2015-10-18T21:14:55.523" LastActivityDate="2015-10-18T21:14:55.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7111" CreationDate="2015-10-18T19:06:56.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good morning 5:00 AM to 12:00 PM.&#xA;Good noon 12:00 PM to 2:30 PM.&#xA;Good afternoon 2:30 PM to 5:00 PM.&#xA;Good evening 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM.&#xA;Good night 8 to whole night till to 5:00 AM.&#xA;Hello,Hi,Hey,How are you every time..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15558" LastActivityDate="2015-10-18T19:06:56.067" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19388" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19393" CreationDate="2015-10-19T00:14:29.703" Score="5" ViewCount="9199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing an essay on &lt;em&gt;Adventures of Huckleberry Finn&lt;/em&gt; and I only have one source. Do I still call it a &quot;Works Cited&quot; page? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read this following website, but it didn't seem to help: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ivcc.edu/stylebooks/stylebook4.aspx?id=14586&quot;&gt;https://www.ivcc.edu/stylebooks/stylebook4.aspx?id=14586&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15563" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T18:18:50.137" Title="&quot;Works&quot; in Works Cited when there is only one source?" Tags="|citations|essay|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19389" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-19T00:26:27.207" Score="-1" ViewCount="1963" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does/can proper character development add to the suspense felt in the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15564" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T20:12:13.263" Title="Character development and suspense" Tags="|character-development|suspense|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-10-25T01:14:17.303" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19390" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19398" CreationDate="2015-10-19T00:35:51.087" Score="7" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm at the very beginning of a blog post for &lt;a href=&quot;http://medium.com/universe-factory&quot;&gt;Worldbuilding Stack Exchange's blog, Universe Factory&lt;/a&gt;, written in conjunction with an answer to a question on Worldbuilding. It's going to about astronomy (mostly orbital mechanics), and I don't plan to shy away from mathematics, albeit hopefully clear and accessible mathematics. My goal is something approaching technical writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've written an outline for the post, in part because it's going to be longer than normal. Most blog posts on Universe Factory are estimated to be about five-minute reads, typically short and to the point. However, my post is most likely going to be something like a thirty-minute read, especially if any enterprising readers choose to fully work out some parts of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of me is worried about this, because while it seems like the audience of the blog is scientifically literate enough to make it through the material we've been writing, thirty minutes is comparatively a lot, and this post is going to be denser (in math and science) than normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For blogs in general - and especially this blog in particular - how long is too long for a blog post? Might I sacrifice details and condense the post in the hope of keeping readers attracted, or can I keep the post as-planned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love to see various comparisons in readership (i.e. how many people finish reading the post) between more condensed blog posts and expanded blog posts, but that's most likely impossible, because you can't tell where an internet reader left off on a post, and hits are accurate to only a certain degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15562" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T16:33:16.590" Title="How long is too long for a blog post?" Tags="|technical-writing|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19390" CreationDate="2015-10-19T01:33:17.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best advice I can give you is to write a post that fits into the blog where you're going to publish it. Universe Factory seems to favor short posts, and I see a couple of multipart posts, so I'd do that if you can.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some blogs regularly run shorter pieces, and some will run multi-thousand-word essays without blinking. Personally, I try to keep blog posts to between 500 and 1000 words where possible. I'll split anything too much longer into multiple parts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T01:33:17.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19389" CreationDate="2015-10-19T03:03:34.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can make the reader relate to the characters more. This will make any suspense feel more personal and thus intense. If character development is actually good it may also increase immersion, which also makes suspense feel more intense. And if characters change, develop, in response to events it will make the events seem more significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this doesn't really add to the suspense, it just makes reader feel any suspense you create &lt;strong&gt;differently&lt;/strong&gt;. So it can't substitute for actually creating suspense and in many genres it doesn't really help to have too much character development. In many thrillers you want the reader to be surprised, awed, or excited, not really immersed or personally attached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't add character development to a suspense story &lt;em&gt;just because&lt;/em&gt;, think about how it adds to the specific story. I guess the same goes for all stories, really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T03:03:34.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19388" CreationDate="2015-10-19T10:29:58.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not knowing much about MLA, in general I highly recommend adding at least two more sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A source about the author, something like:&lt;br&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biography.com/people/mark-twain-9512564&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.biography.com/people/mark-twain-9512564&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At least one source on the story itself, something like:&lt;br&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/literature-and-language-arts/essays/rethinking-huck&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/literature-and-language-arts/essays/rethinking-huck&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will give insight in the creation and cultural context of the work being discussed, providing more depth for your own interpretation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T10:29:58.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19395" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19399" CreationDate="2015-10-19T11:42:35.490" Score="3" ViewCount="26217" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is from &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.tw/books?id=Qk8n0olOX5MC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=the%20fault%20in%20our%20stars&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMIl9Ky3rfOyAIVghuUCh1tkg2j#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=the%20fault%20in%20our%20stars&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Fault in Our Stars&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/inCBe.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/inCBe.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm not mistaken, this is the formatting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The font should be half the size of the normal font.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They should be indented with twice the indent space.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They should have the paragraphs separated by spaces that are half a scene break.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I right? Is this the common way of formatting letters and text messages inside novels? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2020-03-03T12:42:35.590" Title="What's the exact format of letters/text messages inside novels?" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19396" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-19T14:37:45.443" Score="4" ViewCount="4984" Body="&lt;p&gt;When asked for a 15-page summary of the thesis/research paper, should I write it by chapter (Introduction, Methodology, etc) ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only guideline given is to include introduction, research objectives, methodology, etc. But no specific format was given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summary was a requirement for a colloquium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15569" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-01-25T08:33:15.110" LastActivityDate="2018-08-17T09:39:29.677" Title="Structure for a summary of a thesis/research paper" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19371" CreationDate="2015-10-19T15:30:29.667" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a common pattern in storytelling where you get to see the terrifying thing in action before your hero has to face it. For example (in Return of the Jedi), Jabba the Hutt drops a slave into the monster pit - so we can see how horrible and powerful the thing is - before Luke gets thrown in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T15:30:29.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19390" CreationDate="2015-10-19T16:33:16.590" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A longer post can work on a blog that usually tends toward shorter posts &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you take some care in structuring it.  &quot;Here are 20,000 words, plus equations&quot; may send some people to the &quot;back&quot; button right off, but a five-minute introduction followed by an expansion can satisfy both audiences -- those looking for the high-level information and those interested in all the details.  The former will stop reading at the first subheading but will have gotten a regular blog post's worth of content out of it, so they should still feel satisfied.  (It's probably what they expected when they clicked.)  I have no research data to back this up, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If taking this approach, it's important to be using a blog platform that doesn't force readers to scroll through the whole post to get to the next one.  Medium (where the blog you linked is hosted) shows only the first few sentences of a post on the main page and readers have to click through, so that works.  Platforms like LiveJournal and Dreamwidth offer authors the &quot;cut tag&quot; to put content behind a click.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other option is to break it into multiple posts.  This works well if you're covering a topic that has multiple facets or can be treated as a series.  You can't always break a long essay into several shorter ones, though, especially if you'll be spreading them out in time.  If the later parts deeply depend on the former ones, then anybody who didn't read or doesn't remember the earlier ones is going to be lost and probably give up anyway.  If the parts are more independent, though, consider breaking them up to fit the blog's usual format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if the blog is new and doesn't yet &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; a long tradition, there is more room for variation.  Maybe the blog's readers are happy to have longer posts but there just haven't been any yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T16:33:16.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19395" CreationDate="2015-10-19T16:50:24.997" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the publication. For example, in many novels I read half the size of the normal font would make it unreadable. Double indenting is common. Italics or a script font for a letter is common. I have seen a number of different formats. It also depends on whether the whole of a letter or only part of it is being quoted. Sometimes, if a letter or message is very old the font will be more ornate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T16:50:24.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19395" CreationDate="2015-10-19T17:58:34.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question quickly, yes, that is pretty much the standard for letters within a novel. Though, as Tave said, it depends on the publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no universal format, but there are several things to keep in mind. Any long quotation (as in a letter) can be considered a block quotation. These are typically indented, and have either a slightly smaller font, or a monospaced font as found on typewriters. It makes the letter easier to read, and to distinguish from the remainder of the text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for text messages, it makes sense to follow a format similar to a letter, though you could make a case for an in-line quotation due to their brevity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, outside of journal publication, formatting is a highly subjective element to writing. Depending on the type of narrative, it might make more sense to try things another way. &lt;em&gt;House of Leaves&lt;/em&gt; comes to mind, which was meant to be frantic, crazy, and frankly impossible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not trying to create anything Dada, you've hit the nail on the head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14342" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T17:58:34.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19306" CreationDate="2015-10-19T20:03:13.227" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: By complete coincidence, I recently had a chance to attend a Q &amp;amp; A session with author Michael Chabon --who I referenced in my prior answer as a white author who does a good job writing black characters-- and I took the opportunity to ask him this question. I had originally edited this into my original answer, but it's really a separate answer, from a difference source.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chabon said that (in addition to having grown up in an well-integrated community) the biggest prep work he did for writing the black characters in &lt;em&gt;Telegraph Avenue&lt;/em&gt; was to read a lot of work by black authors, and to imitate the way they approached their black characters (in preference to the way white authors typically approach black characters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest &quot;lessons learned&quot; he cited (and I'm really paraphrasing and interpreting here!) is that being black is normalized in black authors' works, problematized in white authors' works.  In other words, the black character in the black author's book is not thinking about being black unless there is some specific reason to do so (because to her it is not an intrinsically exceptional condition of existence).  She is also not thinking about race in general, or about white people in particular, unless there is some valid reason for her to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2018-04-11T19:21:25.517" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T19:21:25.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19306" CreationDate="2015-10-20T03:18:53.437" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find a black person that is similar to the character that you want to create, or alternatively, create a character that's similar to someone you actually know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did the latter, and asked the person what he would say in such-and-such a situation, and the character was quite &quot;authentic.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;African Americans won't necessarily feel differently than other people in a given situation. But they may act or express themselves differently, because they are a part of a different subculture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-10-20T18:08:22.453" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T18:08:22.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19033" CreationDate="2015-10-20T06:59:35.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First :&lt;/strong&gt; Habit is something which you like to do with your whole heart.You can't make habits forcefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second :&lt;/strong&gt; What you want to write everyday? Your thoughts,feelings or your daily routine activities. You can easily write about daily activities.But for thoughts and feelings, you can only write about it when you have these things. Suppose If you have no thought or feeling one day or few days,then you can't force yourself to write on that day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So there is no tip or trick.It all depends on you, your feelings, your heart&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15511" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T06:59:35.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19371" CreationDate="2015-10-20T11:22:34.483" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scariest thing I've ever read occurred in the daytime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Stephen King's The Shining,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; there is a scene where the dad is out in the hotel's garden, and another where the son is out in the playground, and they both get separately stalked by the garden's hedge animals (which only move when the character isn't looking at them). The reason that it is scary is because the characters cannot rely on their sight to help them. They understand what is happening but the fear comes from the unknown, and not being able to see the animals moving. They know the hedge animals are moving behind them, and in their peripheral vision, but when looking directly at them they are stationary again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason most scary things happen at night is not because it is night, but because of the things that happen at night. These include being in places alone as fewer people are awake, and not being able to see things clearly in darkness. The scene from The Shining recreates these conditions (loneliness, sensory deprivation) but in the daytime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put into simple terms, seeing an axe murderer at the end of a hallway is scary, but not seeing them and knowing they're &lt;em&gt;somewhere nearby&lt;/em&gt;, maybe round the corner, or maybe behind you, is much scarier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore if you're wanting to build fear in a reader, you need to recreate these conditions, but in the daytime. There are the obvious cliched scenarios like being alone in a forest in the fog, but you can also be creative, like the protagonist is trying to look outside a window through some shutters in late afternoon, so they have the double obscured vision of having the sun in their eyes, and also only being able to partially see through the shutters. If they can see a figure moving about but can't make out who (or what) it is, you can create tension this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, the previous answer covers that fact that the character should be scared in order for the reader to be scared. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T11:22:34.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19408" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-20T17:00:07.750" Score="43" ViewCount="7747" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing fiction, especially in universes other than our own such as sci-fi/fantasy genres, the reader often has to be given a piece of information about how the world works in order for what's coming up to make sense. However, this piece of information should be common knowledge to the characters in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In narrative voice, such as writing a novel in storytelling style, it's often sufficient to simply drop in a footnote paragraph, allowing the narrator to explain as if the reader were standing next to the narrator watching the scene unfold. It functions, if you can keep it short to avoid taking the audience too far away from the plot; if you need two pages, inlining it into a conversation between your characters probably isn't the way. However, in screenwriting, you often don't have the luxury of this device; one of the characters simply has to say it. There really are only two main ways I know of to give the information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The idiot/noob/relief character asking the audience question. This is a convenient way to exposit facts that may not be completely common knowledge to everyone in the universe, however a character that isn't completely in the know isn't always available in a plausible way. This is probably the primary workaround to the title trope when a narrator isn't available in the storytelling format, and it's probably more common now in part because it can be subtly done without &quot;cue words&quot; that clue in the audience to the use of a common device.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As you know...&quot;. This is basically lampshade-hanging; the characters know that each other should know what they're about to say, but they're going to say it anyway as a lemma to make their next points (and to get the reader up to speed). This is, IMHO, overused to a fault, and few screenwriters can get away with playing this trope straight anymore; they have to either &quot;deconstruct&quot; the lampshade, making an even bigger deal about the fact that they shouldn't have to say what they're saying, or else they play with it, either putting the line at the end of the exposition as an admonishment (&quot;You should have known that&quot;), or having the character being exposited to say &quot;Yeah, I know, but...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other way I can think of to give the user the information is, well, not to give it. Have the characters act the way they would in an everyday situation where everyone knows the thing the audience doesn't, and the audience just has to come along for the ride and pick up the fact by context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conceptually speaking, besides these devices, how do you give your audience information that they shouldn't have to ask for if they lived in the world of the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15580" LastEditorUserId="15580" LastEditDate="2015-10-22T15:37:27.007" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T19:21:57.430" Title="Avoiding the &quot;as you know&quot; trope in exposition" Tags="|technique|tropes|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19363" CreationDate="2015-10-20T17:39:04.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, yes, by making the reader identify with the character and their choice. If you can do that, then when you show the choice to be a bad one, the reader, knowing he'd have made the same choice, will feel the emotion the character feels when that same revelation occurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to make your reader identify with a character and their choices is the topic of entire graduate-level college courses, as it goes deeply into the fundamentals of character design and story development. The basic concepts are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your character must be formed from a general, yet plausible combination of character traits. Ideally, everyone should be able to look at this character and what they do and see a bit of themselves in him/her/it, and that comes from ascribing qualities to the character that a person would ascribe to themselves (or at least, would want to). It doesn't take much; identify the basic traits you need in order for the story to work (i.e. honesty, physical strength, good looks), and the reader will use the &quot;similar to me&quot; bias to fill in the blanks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you, as the writer, ever look at something you've made your character do and ask &quot;why&quot;, your reader will ask the same question, and you either need more background for that choice in the character's development (for instance they may have started out a stereotypical goody-two-shoes and you haven't corrupted their character enough with the events of the plot), or it's the wrong choice for that character to make given their basic design.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This trope of a seemingly good choice ending up being very bad must ideally toe the line between a decision that is too easily foreshadowed by the reader, and a &quot;Deus ex machina&quot; (an event that is so unforeseen it feels artificially pasted in). A decision by the main character to put all the town's kids on a truck heading for some nebulous &quot;better life&quot; is a huge red flag to your reader and a lose-lose for you; the reader will expect, the moment he reads this, that the kids are going to their deaths, so if you play it that way there's no shocked surprise on the reader's part, and if you play it straight with the kids making it to some utopia, it'll be implausible and you'll lose your reader. At the other extreme, you can't have the character plausibly thinking he's sending his kids to Disneyland and then have the van or bus be hit by an RPG on the I-5. It's so random and implausible that it feels like you pasted in a page from &lt;em&gt;Lone Survivor&lt;/em&gt;. There's middle ground, but you have to be careful; the ideal, IMO, is an event that surprises the reader, but when they go back and think about it they'll realize they should have seen it coming. Failing that, go for overt dramatic irony; have the character make a decision that the reader knows is going to go badly, but only because they know something the character can't know, and make the reader realize that if they knew what the character did, they'd make the same choice. Again, it's gotta be plausible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15580" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T17:39:04.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19408" CreationDate="2015-10-20T18:09:05.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As best as I can tell, it boils down to the same rule of show/tell. When writing a science fiction or fantasy on the screen or set, you want to show off the world that you've created as best as you can, and not tell about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as screenwriting is concerned, Stargate Sg-1 was chock-full of exposition, but they made light of it with a scientifically impaired protagonist and a pair of obsessive scientists who always needed to explain things to the protagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a real problem, particularly on television. Star Trek and Star Wars both did a fairly good job of keeping exposition to a minimum. However, Star Trek basically wound up defining &quot;techno-babble,&quot; and Star Wars was more of a visual science fiction than anything else. They are better, albeit cliche, examples of non-exposing sci fi than Stargate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14342" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T18:09:05.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19411" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-10-20T18:31:44.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;trope&quot; in literature was originally defined as simply &quot;a figure of speech&quot;, but in more modern parlance it has the meaning of &quot;a significant or recurrent theme or motif&quot;. Tropes are essentially patterns of storytelling that are identifiable and relatable; their purpose is to make the audience subconsciously assign additional intuitively-known values of the trope to its usage in a specific story, so the writer doesn't need to explain himself any further. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, when a broad-shouldered, athletic man in spotless bright silver armor rides in over a hill on horseback to dramatic uplifting music, the viewer knows this guy is the main hero of the movie who will ultimately defeat the guy in black in a fiery, spectacular duel in the depths of a moldy castle. The audience knows all of this before anyone on-screen opens their mouth, because they've seen it before; it's the eons-old &quot;Knight in Shining Armor&quot; trope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the trope unfolds exactly as described, many viewers will kick themselves for not leaving the theater or putting the book back on the shelf as soon as they saw this; this trope is &quot;discredited&quot;, so old and overused that the audience sees the cliche coming a mile away and has a negative reaction to it. However, writers are cunning, if ultimately unoriginal, and this guy might turn out to be the &quot;Anti-Hero&quot;, a guy with a good guy's name, position, character traits and goals, but who eventually ends up being the bad guy by either abusing his position or by acting on some key mistakes of fact, until he's doing exactly the opposite of saving the day, and someone else has to defeat him in order to actually save the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practically every character, setting, goal, tool or other plot device in modern fiction can be categorized as a trope or known variation of a trope (such variations being known as meta-tropes, such as the &quot;trope inversion&quot; of the Knight in Shining Armor being the Anti-Hero), because it was originally an excellent original idea that has since been ripped off in other works of fiction. The use of a trope by an author, in itself, is neither good nor bad; trying to avoid tropes altogether tends to lead to demonstrably bad fiction writing such as overexposition, unrelatable characters, implausible plotlines etc. It's merely very good, as a writer, to know what tropes are being used, and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15580" LastEditorUserId="15580" LastEditDate="2015-10-20T18:58:01.157" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T18:58:01.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19412" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-10-20T18:31:44.470" Score="0" Body="For questions about commonly-used storytelling devices, such as character stereotypes, plot devices and other tricks of the trade." OwnerUserId="15580" LastEditorUserId="15580" LastEditDate="2015-10-20T18:56:03.727" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T18:56:03.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19413" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-10-20T19:06:30.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For questions about problems you encounter while working on the title of your literary work, such as &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/legal&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;legal&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;legal&lt;/a&gt; questions about the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/copyright&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;copyright&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;copyright&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/style&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;style&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;style&lt;/a&gt; questions about capitalizing words in the title, &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/process&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;process&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;process&lt;/a&gt; questions about finding a title that fits your work or questions about the influence of a &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/publisher&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;publisher&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;publisher&lt;/a&gt; on the title of your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title of a work of literature is the representative label used to reference that work in other literature or in verbal conversation. As such, it is often the first thing a potential reader knows or learns about the work, and can be a major factor in the decision by that person to pick up the work and at least start to read it. In this usage, it is similar to a brand name for other types of goods or services, especially if the book is part of a series of works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15580" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-25T18:14:44.360" LastActivityDate="2018-05-25T18:14:44.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19414" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-10-20T19:06:30.227" Score="0" Body="For questions about problems you encounter while working on the title of your literary work, such as legal questions about the copyright, style questions about capitalizing words in the title, process questions about finding a title that fits your work or questions about the influence of a publisher on the title of your work. " OwnerUserId="15580" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-25T18:14:44.360" LastActivityDate="2018-05-25T18:14:44.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19408" CreationDate="2015-10-20T19:06:44.060" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two additional techniques...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character Reaction.&lt;/strong&gt; A character might react in a way that reveals some of the information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Mother! What the heck are you doing here?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we know that the person who just entered the room is the character's mother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disagreement.&lt;/strong&gt; You can have characters argue about it. They might disagree about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The facts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The meaning of the facts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The significance of the facts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What to do about the facts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Really, Jeff? You invited your mother? On our honeymoon?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we know the the person who just entered the room is Jeff's mother, and that Jeff and the speaker are newly married and on their honeymoon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With both of these techniques, the idea is to give some character a reason to react, perhaps strongly. The reaction reveals information to readers and viewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are likely other kinds of reactions that can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDITED TO ADD&lt;/strong&gt; techniques for everyday, mundane information in response to user568458’s comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I realize my examples below are not screenplay examples. Adjust as necessary to make them observable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the thing is truly everyday and mundane, consider what makes it so. It's precisely this: You don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to interact with it. You don’t have to even notice it. It’s just there. It just works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These essential features of mundanity suggest some additional techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interaction.&lt;/strong&gt; Give a character a story reason to interact with it. If the interaction is mundane, the audience will pick up on the mundanity of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chaz downed the last of his coffee, stuffed the baby into the transporter, kissed his wife goodbye, and headed out the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decision.&lt;/strong&gt; Make the mundane thing a factor in some decision the character must make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chaz downed the last of his coffee and squinted at the baby transporter. He glanced at his watch. Not enough time to drive the baby to the learn-o-vat and still get to the Hair Emporium in time for his Pompadour appointment. So he stuffed the baby in the transporter, kissed his wife goodbye, and headed out the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Break it.&lt;/strong&gt; An everyday thing is mundane only as long as it works. If you break it, the character will at least notice. If it’s important, the character will react to it, and perhaps interact with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chaz downed the last of his coffee, stuffed the baby in the transporter, and kissed his wife goodbye. As he reached for the door, he noticed the baby’s shoe still in the transporter. That was odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Specialist.&lt;/strong&gt; Introduce a character whose vocation is to make sure mundane things remain mundane for everyone else. Plumbing is mundane… unless you’re a plumber. And it's less mundane to the plumber because the plumber must interact with it, must deal with the &lt;em&gt;specific details&lt;/em&gt; of &lt;em&gt;this specific&lt;/em&gt; plumbing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Omit it.&lt;/strong&gt; Finally, an easy, always-available option for avoiding info-dumps: &lt;em&gt;Omit the information.&lt;/em&gt; If nobody has to interact with it, if nobody has to deal with it, if nobody has an opinion about it, if it doesn't affect any characters' decisions, then it doesn’t matter to the story. &lt;strong&gt;If it doesn’t matter to the story, leave it out.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2015-10-25T21:21:44.643" LastActivityDate="2015-10-25T21:21:44.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19408" CreationDate="2015-10-20T19:06:57.593" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conflict and/or high stakes decision making makes anything more interesting. So introduce these factors into your &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InfoDump&quot;&gt;info-dump&lt;/a&gt;. Your characters aren't just lecturing each other about how the hyperdrive works, they are arguing about exactly what's &lt;em&gt;stopping&lt;/em&gt; the damn thing working as they spiral towards a black hole. OK, it doesn't have to be as dramatic as that; you could have a civil but still tense debate between a master spellcaster and her hotheaded apprentice about the ethics of using forbidden necromancy against an evil foe, in the course of which the workings of your world's magic system would be made clear, along with the ominous fact that there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an evil foe massing at their nation's border.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T19:06:57.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19417" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-10-20T19:15:43.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag should be used For questions relating to the sequence of events of a novel, also known as its plot, though the timeline could change if you are writing a story that involves timetravel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast this with the tag &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/branching-narrative&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;branching-narrative&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;branching-narrative&lt;/a&gt;, which should be used for questions that deal with multiple possible storylines that depend on the choices of the person interacting with your work. A &quot;choice&quot; in this context could be a conscious choice, a quest-item in the characters inventory, the amount of interactions with certain other characters, ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any work of fiction, there are three critical elements that must always exist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The setting (the place in which the story happens; the scope of the setting can change but ultimately broadens to a span of time within a &quot;universe&quot; in which certain things are accepted as fact which may or may not differ from the &quot;real&quot; universe),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The characters (fictional or fictionalized people who populate the setting), and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The plot or storyline (the sequence of events that happens to the characters in the setting).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plot of a story constitutes the bulk of most fiction-writing efforts; it is essentially everything that happens, whether known or unknown, internal or external to a character's mind, between the earliest time period documented by the novel and the latest. The structure of a novel or other work of fiction may involve skipping backwards or forwards in place or time for dramatic purposes, but there generally should be a single linear timeline along which all events occur (unless the subject matter itself deals with making changes to the timeline such as time travel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15580" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-23T09:20:49.780" LastActivityDate="2018-05-23T09:20:49.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19418" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-10-20T19:15:43.707" Score="0" Body="This tag should be used for questions relating to the sequence of events of a novel, also known as its plot, though the timeline could change if your writing involves timetravel. Contrast this with the tag [branching-narrative], which should be used for questions that deal with multiple possible storylines that depend on the choices of the person interacting with your work. This could be a turning the page, a quest-item in the characters inventory,... " OwnerUserId="15580" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-23T09:20:49.780" LastActivityDate="2018-05-23T09:20:49.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19419" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-20T19:36:40.547" Score="5" ViewCount="360" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately I've been thinking about trying to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), where the idea (at least I think it is) to write an entire novel in one month. Is this even possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15002" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T12:34:02.143" Title="Is trying to write an entire novel in one month possible?" Tags="|fiction|novel|science-fiction|mystery|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19419" CreationDate="2015-10-20T19:40:40.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some NaNoWriMo success stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tor.com/2014/11/06/nanowrimo-success-stories-published-novels/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tor.com/2014/11/06/nanowrimo-success-stories-published-novels/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit, Additional:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally know someone who's finished the NaNo sprint, and it's tough, but definitely possible. At the very least, NaNoWriMo may not be the novel you want, but it can serve as a first draft that you can later rewrite and expound upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14342" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T19:40:40.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19389" CreationDate="2015-10-20T19:45:46.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Really immersing the reader into the character's backstory and emotions can help make the reader feel as the character does. It's important to keep changing a character as the story progresses too, that helps keep things interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good way to build suspense on a character is to put a veil of mystery over everything they think they know, however, lift the veil slowly. It is a good way to keep the reader interested in the story. Furthermore, when writing events which create events you need to write as if you were writing a diary of that event from the perspective of your character. For example, if your character is scared of spiders you would really exaggerate events to do with spiders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The spider crept up to me like it was a sly fox. It jumped at me with unreal vigor, venom spewing out of it's mouth.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T19:45:46.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19422" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19426" CreationDate="2015-10-20T19:48:46.580" Score="5" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets say you are working on one novel / short story. As you work you suddenly get an inspiration for another piece of fiction. You feel it's a brilliant idea and you should start working on it right away. Your brain tells you to focus and finish your first story, but your heart goads you to go ahead and develop the idea while it is still fresh. How practical and feasible is it? Are you doing justice to your first story? Has anybody been through this? What should I do in such a case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12670" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-20T04:34:51.340" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T04:34:51.340" Title="How practical and feasible is it to work on more than one novel / story at one time?" Tags="|fiction|planning|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9122" CreationDate="2015-10-20T20:09:30.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have experimented with this over the years and have found that a single plaintext markdown file under Git source control is the way to go for a chronological journal. If you store it on GitHub you can even edit the file in a browser if necessary. I tried chronological order and reverse chronological order and settled on chronological.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried one text file per month but would rather search a single file than a set of files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I occasionally want images in my notebook. I put the images in the same directory and link to them using Markdown. I use the MarkView Chrome extension when I want to view the formatted document with the images inline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subject matter that is not chronological can go into separate text files in the same directory as the journal, one file per subject. You can link to them from the journal if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15583" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T20:09:30.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19389" CreationDate="2015-10-20T20:12:13.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A character's personality and background can &lt;em&gt;create&lt;/em&gt; suspense for the reader, if the reader knows them well and expects them to react a certain way to certain events. Plot twists, including suspenseful ones, interact with the characters' flaws and foibles. If you watched &lt;em&gt;Back to the Future&lt;/em&gt;, imagine yourself as a viewer hearing someone say the word 'chicken', and knowing that Marty McFly is about to do something incredibly foolish in response. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Characterization can be the engine behind the plot, in that it drives characters to put themselves in dangerous situations, to create problems for themselves or for others, and it determines the way they approach problem-solving. A dangerous scene is scarier for the reader, if the reader knows that this danger is &lt;em&gt;specifically&lt;/em&gt; of a kind that the protagonist has a bad track record with. Indiana Jones and 'Why did it have to be snakes?' is an operative example here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of ways to make character development impact plot development. It's just a matter of identifying which parts of the characters are most important to the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15526" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T20:12:13.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19408" CreationDate="2015-10-20T20:19:56.327" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hitchhiker's Guide used a narrator with humorous effect to provide needed information.  The narration never seemed to disrupt the flow, but add to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peter Hamilton provides limited info-dumping while describing the action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;For example, the narrator of the Hitchhiker's Guide is describing the Infinite Improbability Drive, which rescues the two main characters after they are ejected into space as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambelweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of course well understood — and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the theory of indeterminacy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for&#xA;  this, partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly&#xA;  because they didn't get invited to those sorts of parties.&lt;strong&gt;Douglas&#xA;  Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hamilton, in his work Fallen Dragon, describes that since alien biology was incompatible with humanity, colonization required, at great expense and difficulty, radiological sterilization of the soil, to eliminate all non-terrain organic material.  The information, woven in naturally as the lead character interacts with the world, never feels like an info dump. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastEditorUserId="2383" LastEditDate="2015-10-29T14:00:44.600" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T14:00:44.600" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19422" CreationDate="2015-10-20T20:29:52.350" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Block and outline it in a writer's diary or even in a new word-processor document, so you have the idea to come back to once you've reached a good stopping point with your existing novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not a bad thing to be inspired to do something new. The danger, in writing at least, is that if you follow your inspirations you could end up never finishing anything, being forever pulled off-task by yet another new idea and eventually losing track of or motivation to finish your original work. This is the reasoning behind the creative diary; anything you're not actively working on or that doesn't fit in your current story can be set down in a scratch-pad format to come back to when you need new ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point; your publisher, if/when you get that far, is unlikely to want to initiate the editing/publishing/distribution process on more than one book at a time, and you're not going to want to try to promote two books at once unless there's some sort of overarching glue like a story arch or a storytelling series (and even then you'll want to get one title out there being read before you follow up so you establish a progression for reading them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15580" LastEditorUserId="15580" LastEditDate="2015-10-20T21:05:31.563" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T21:05:31.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19422" CreationDate="2015-10-20T21:36:13.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think user KeithS has a great point about finishing what you start. That being said, Ray Bradbury used to have 19 (I believe) typewriters, all with different stories going on each one. He'd move from one to another and write whatever story motivated him at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, I'd LOVE to be able to do this. So, is it practical and feasible? Sure is. If Bradbury could do it with typewriters, how much easier is it with software. If you're the right kind of person to do it, you should do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could be a lot of fun. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T21:36:13.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19419" CreationDate="2015-10-20T21:50:17.953" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?s=Pulp%20Speed&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dean Wesley Smith's blog posts on &quot;Pulp Speed&quot;&lt;/a&gt; writing, and the number of words possible for some people. A million words a year? Wow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heck, Michael Moorcock can write a 60K word novel in &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wetasphalt.com/content/how-write-book-three-days-lessons-michael-moorcock&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;three days&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. The use of Lester Dent's Master Plot is blown out from 1500 words per section to 15K words per section, IIRC, and planning is key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NaNoWriMo says to complete an average of 1667 words a day to make it. But that's the average. You can do more when you have a chance, and do what you can when you can on days when...well, you can't. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it's all BIC* time. The more you have, the more you'll do. Is it doable? Yeah, it is. But prep is key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*- BIC = &quot;Butt in Chair&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T21:50:17.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19429" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-20T22:02:55.340" Score="5" ViewCount="680" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hypothetically speaking, of course...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I write a work of fiction. It could be construed as highly disparaging to one or more demographics especially if you stop reading within the first few chapters where it's really bad for that particular demographic. That's not my personal view of the world or the demographic, it's just part of the story I wish to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of thing isn't new; there are plenty of books, some called classics of literature, others topping best-seller lists, that were and/or still are highly controversial for their subject matter. &lt;em&gt;Fifty Shades of Grey&lt;/em&gt; is the obvious example today, especially with its barely-avoiding-an-NC17 movie adaptation. Anne Rice is well-known for her series of vampire novels beginning with &lt;em&gt;Interview With a Vampire&lt;/em&gt;; what's less well-known is that she wrote a trilogy (and then a fourth continuation just this year) of much more explicitly erotic fiction loosely based on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale under the pseudonym &quot;A. N. Roquelaure&quot;, and only a decade after the first three were published did she acknowledge her authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, not trying to get too far ahead here but it has to be considered, given this is my first attempt at a full-length novel, would it be published as such if I were to refuse to allow my real name or image to be associated with it? Anne Rice was a known quantity and adopted the nom de plume primarily to avoid the feminist backlash she knew would result from the work at the time. That same backlash is even louder today and I would prefer to be anonymous as long as I can be, but will that even fly for a first-time author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, assuming it is published with or without any traceability to my real-world identity, how do you deal with the backlash of a book with controversial subject matter? I might head off the worst of it with a preface giving me a bully pulpit to explain myself, but beyond that, how do you answer people who refuse to consider a work of fiction as anything less than the author's personal manifesto of belief? Do you even try?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15587" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-26T11:15:46.063" LastActivityDate="2018-04-26T11:15:46.063" Title="How do writers differentiate personal beliefs from the messages of their writing in public discourse?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|marketing|authorship|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19408" CreationDate="2015-10-21T02:54:06.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can sometimes engineer settings where the exposition is somewhat natural; e.g. high school students could be going over a history lesson that conveniently explains key points about the setting to the viewer, or that mercenary might entertain himself giving the street rats tips about fighting and staying alive before he shows up for his next job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13832" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T02:54:06.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19419" CreationDate="2015-10-21T06:49:10.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once heard an entertaining lecture by the British pulp-SF author Lionel Fanthorpe about how he managed to produce at his peak &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Fanthorpe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an average of a 158 page book every 12 days&lt;/a&gt;. If Badger Books wanted a rush job, he could do a novel over a long weekend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking time off to watch the cricket if there was a Test Match on, obviously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T06:49:10.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19433" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-14T18:49:54.880" Score="3" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose an organization puts out a series of leaflets or pamphlets (in the 4- to 8-page range). Each one is independent, but the series has a strong theme and purpose (such as &quot;best plants to grow indoors&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The series has a name (such as &quot;Best House Plants&quot;). In addition, each leaflet or pamphlet has its own title (&quot;Begonias&quot;, &quot;Figs&quot;, etc.) and each has its own catalog number and the date of the most recent published update.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a convention for the best way to cite such a pamphlet as a source? I'm currently editing the bibliography of one, and it lists several others in the series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't figure out whether these are closest to books in a series (each title italicized, title first and then name of series), articles in a journal (each title in quotes, name of journal italicized) or what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently the habit is to cite the series title first, then the individual item title, but this, IMHO, makes it hard to focus on the individual title, which is the best guide to what that particular pamphlet is about (i.e. &quot;Best House Plants: &lt;em&gt;Begonias&lt;/em&gt;&quot; or &quot;&lt;em&gt;Best House Plants: Begonias&lt;/em&gt;&quot;). Neither of these looks right to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Chris" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-03-01T16:05:35.187" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T17:27:39.697" Title="Following the Chicago Manual of Style, what's the correct format and sequence for a citation of one out of a series of pamphlets?" Tags="|chicago-manual-of-style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6750" CreationDate="2015-10-21T06:55:30.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;With self publishing these days,  errors are inevitable.  I wouldn't mind too much to 3 or 4 errors as long as the flow is there.  Anyway that is me.  I am an author as well but even after reading my books over and over many times,  it was disappointing to find errors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15596" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T06:55:30.797" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19429" CreationDate="2015-10-21T07:33:19.023" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several strands to your question intertwined. Because I can't tell which is the most important aspect for you, my answer may end up focussing on the less important areas from your point of view, but I will give it a go anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;1) How does an author make clear that an unfavourable portrayal of a demographic does not necessarily represent their personal view?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good writing. Keeping any scorn expressed for this demographic solely in the mouths of characters and firmly out of the authorial voice. Showing by dialogue and incident that there are reasons why members of this demographic behave as they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;2) For dramatic reasons a particular demographic is shown in a poor light in the early chapters only for this to be modified or reversed later on. How do you deal with readers who stop reading after the first few chapters being left with only the unfavourable portrayal?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must so engage the readers' interest that nobody &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; stop reading after the first few chapters. Make use of every possible tension-producing device. Foreshadow dreadful events to come. Make your characters so loveable or detestable that the reader simply &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; keep reading to know what happens to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;3) Can an anonymous author get published?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. With self-publishing it is easier than it used to be, but traditional publishers also regularly publish books by pseudonymous or anonymous authors. Someone at the bank will have to know, if you are to be paid. Your country's tax authorities may also require to know the source of your income. But don't worry, for the vast majority of authors their income from writing comes under the heading of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/D/DeMinimisNonCuratLex.aspx&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;de minimis non curat lex&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;4) Can an anonymous author keep their anonymity?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nearly always, for the same depressing reason as above. The one exception is if the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_Colors_(novel)&quot;&gt;is a bestseller&lt;/a&gt;. In that event I would imagine that most authors get over their embarrassment quite fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;5) How do you deal with the backlash of a book with controversial subject matter?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, as above, this is a problem that the vast majority of authors will never have. If your book does garner enough attention to be denounced, the traditional response is to &lt;a href=&quot;http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/cry+all+the+way+to+the+bank&quot;&gt;cry all the way to the bank.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2015-10-21T08:14:05.263" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T08:14:05.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19436" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19444" CreationDate="2015-10-21T08:25:55.627" Score="3" ViewCount="470" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering about how much freedom a writer has to refer to real people and places in a fictional work and in what situations it's best to get permission or avoid it altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do know that the chances of these people/place representatives even reading the reference are very slim, but in theory, let's say you ended up writing a best-seller, what would happen in these situations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Designer Brands. I image that &quot;she wore a Gucci dress&quot; is clearly not an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about if your hero drives a Mercedes that has engine failure. In theory, could Mercedes have an issue with that or is that just highly unlikely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine referring to public national parks is not an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about if the Plaza Hotel in New York is the perfect back-drop for a scene. Nothing negative is written about the hotel. We just know the scene takes place there. Should you get permission to mention them first, or is it not necessary? Is it best to just not give the name of the hotel to play it safe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine your character is a university professor at NYU. He teaches English Lit. and Gender Studies. Let's imagine that NYU wouldn't allow a professor to teach two subjects like that. Could they take issue with the idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine mentioning Google, Google Map, Hotmail and things of that nature is perfectly fine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People: I know you can mention a famous person in a novel, but what about if you added a negative spin to that person:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. You're acting like Oprah Winfrey on crack. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He looks like Bruce Willis without the creepy stare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She looks like a skinny Rosie O'Donnell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these Hamptons housewives are on Ritalin.&#xA;All these Wall Street bankers are on coke. (not famous but about a set group of people)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about if a character has &quot;had way too much Botox and looks like a frozen mannequin&quot;. Could Botox take issue, even though this is a common complaint about how certain people look?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about if a character takes a prescription drug like Ketamine or Oxycodone &quot;which turn him into a lazy, dysfunctional asshole&quot;. Could the pharma company that owns the drug take issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I know that the chances of a book being successful enough for the parties in question to even know about the reference to them are very slim, but any feedback from writers/copy-editors with experience in this area would be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-31T20:39:03.510" LastActivityDate="2021-05-13T18:21:49.683" Title="Can you make (Negative) references to real people and places in a novel?" Tags="|publishing|novel|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19408" CreationDate="2015-10-21T08:47:49.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have the luxury, I would say the best advice is to take your time with it, and find a way to get drama out of it. Here's the best example I can think of, the miniseries &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer_%28miniseries%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oppenheimer&lt;/a&gt;, which is an absolute masterclass in exposition. I can't place video embeds, so you'll have to click links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io3WSJwVk1I&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;start=1419&amp;amp;end=1039&amp;amp;version=3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io3WSJwVk1I&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;start=1419&amp;amp;end=1039&amp;amp;version=3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this video the problem is set up. We find out a lot about the dynamics in the group: the guy at the blackboard is impatient with his colleagues, Seth is shy, and has difficulty expressing his ideas and we see how calm Oppenheimer is, and how he gives the shy people the time to get their thoughts heard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your question, the most important trick they use here, is to &lt;strong&gt;have a character explain things poorly&lt;/strong&gt; and then have another character step in, and simplify the explanation. This makes for a more realistic dynamic, since most people aren't good at explaining things, and it sets up a little tension between your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is returned to at the start of the next episode, where Oppenheimer explains the problem to his superior. Again, a very realistic scenario, and a neat trick, since &lt;strong&gt;the superior is not a scientist and understands little more  about physics than the audience does&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo0jZqxcrWE&amp;amp;start=150&amp;amp;end=255&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo0jZqxcrWE&amp;amp;start=150&amp;amp;end=255&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We get some &lt;strong&gt;visualization of the problem with props&lt;/strong&gt;. You can do this in writing too, just create the image of a dented bar of metal. &lt;strong&gt;Repeating the problem in different terms and in a different setting&lt;/strong&gt; is also important to cement the idea (especially at the start of the next episode).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the solution to the problem lands in their lap, but the scientists are too focused on quick successes to see it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo0jZqxcrWE&amp;amp;start=453&amp;amp;end=739&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo0jZqxcrWE&amp;amp;start=453&amp;amp;end=739&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nice thing is that we as the audience are actually a step ahead of the characters at this point. &lt;strong&gt;We now understand that this solution is valuable, we're rooting for it, hoping that the characters will finally understand it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's how the BBC did it: slow and methodical. By contrast, here's the Hollywood approach, quick and dirty. A few props and a cool scene, with little attention to realism or actual exposition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD_iz4T9rY8&amp;amp;start=899&amp;amp;end=960&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD_iz4T9rY8&amp;amp;start=899&amp;amp;end=960&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seth Neddermeyer is suddenly a lot more expressive and charismatic, and the idea of implosion is treated as a brilliant breakthrough, rather than a relatively simple idea, which would be difficult to execute. But, the audience gets the important elements: there was a problem, and they found a solution, and it's got something to do with oranges. Sometimes, that's all you need: &lt;strong&gt;don't explain the problem, pretend to explain, but show only that there's a problem and why your characters care&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14887" LastEditorUserId="14887" LastEditDate="2015-10-21T10:39:45.607" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T10:39:45.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7111" CreationDate="2015-10-21T09:06:55.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is heavily dependent on language, culture and subculture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, the standardised usage in the Swedish military is to use (this is, alas, translated to English to be somewhat comprehensible) &quot;good morning&quot; from 06:00 to 10:00, &quot;good day&quot; from 10:00 to 18:00, &quot;good evening&quot; from 18:00 to 22:00 and &quot;good night&quot; from 22:00 to 06:00.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for something approaching &quot;modern day english-speaker&quot;, one of &quot;hello&quot;, &quot;hi&quot;, &quot;what's up&quot; or similar would probably work well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T09:06:55.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-21T10:57:22.100" Score="0" ViewCount="513" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/in/ibooks-author/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;iBook Author&lt;/a&gt; for a long time now, and recently, from &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27/2088&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, I came to know about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener2&lt;/a&gt;. Which, from it's webpage and advertisement looks to me like a good tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have anyone use both of these before and can help me to make the decision, whether I should change my tool or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2088" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-12-25T13:03:01.827" Title="A comparative analysis of Scrivener 2 and iBook Author" Tags="|tools|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19440" CreationDate="2015-10-21T13:24:56.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I gather from the website, iBooks Author is a Mac-specific eBook creation tool. It uses drag and drop functionality to help create eBooks for Mac and iPad. Looks cool, actually, but I'm not a Mac user, so I can't say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand (and as KeithS already stated in his comment), Scrivener is a multi-purpose tool, which allows you to organize, write, and print or export your manuscript from scratch. It's capable of many things writers find useful during the creation process, and when that phase is completed, it has the ability to compile the manuscript into many different formats, for many different purposes, ebooks included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would disagree with the &quot;word processor&quot; assessment KeithS gave Scrivener (I'd describe it as a &quot;writer's tool&quot; personally, since it does so much more than the word processing aspect), but his analysis is accurate. They're really not the same type of tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T13:24:56.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19429" CreationDate="2015-10-21T17:30:46.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Lostinfrance's answer above was good, so I'm just going to add a few more things to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The nature of the offense.&lt;/strong&gt; Some offensive material is less sensitive in nature than others. Erotica and pornography aren't as alienating as racism or totalitarianism. If an author cares about this, the author should be prepared.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The motives behind the offending material.&lt;/strong&gt; Stand-up comedians deal with this all the time, and it's not getting any easier (search YouTube for any number of Sarah Silverman interviews where she defends her jokes). She focuses on two things: her motives (which some claim are just excuses) and the medium in which she works. Unfortunately, motives can only be explained once someone has asked for them, and an author may not get the chance to explain herself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The art itself.&lt;/strong&gt; Excellence forgives a multitude of sins. To take some examples: Nabokov was very hesitant to publish &lt;em&gt;Lolita&lt;/em&gt; (to the point where he threw away the manuscript, only to have his wife rescue it), but never apologized for its content after it was published. Mark Twain's &lt;em&gt;Huckleberry Finn&lt;/em&gt; is what it is, and still comes under scrutiny today. What you are describing is a societal roulette wheel: something that is acceptable now may be unacceptable in the future. Sensitivities increase or decrease over time. How this pertains to excellence/art: some argue that excellence is enough of an excuse to tolerate something we wouldn't allow in our closest friends; others argue that excellence is no excuse for promoting bad human behavior. This is a individual decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Human nature.&lt;/strong&gt; Given that only human beings will read your book, every author gambles with their audience. To some extent, an audience in the abstract doesn't exist, only individuals do. Those individuals have their own sensitivities and opinions, sometimes benign, sometimes extreme. An author has to trust his/her own instincts as well as the instincts of their audience. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The author will be called names no matter what.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a fact of 21st century life. Most authors of any race, gender, or creed can expect at least one of the following at some point in their career, depending on what they write: talentless, elitist, old-fashioned, racist, sexist, stupid, insensitive, hyper-sensitive, brilliant, long-winded, windless, a gas bag, an arrogant prick, a humble weakling, a whiner, a pugilist, a conservative, a liberal, a giant, a dwarf, an ex-husband, or a piece of shit. How sensitive does an author need to be? What does the author consider to be insulting and which outcries should be addressed publicly and when? All of that depends on how devoted the author is to the work and how much people actually care.    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be easy to just say, &quot;Be fearless!&quot;, but your question is worth considering. The 21st century may not have rocket packs for every household, but it does offer megaphones to every person with access to the internet. This is an anxiety that hasn't been viscerally experienced &lt;em&gt;en masse&lt;/em&gt; since the days of tribes, when public shaming meant a life destroyed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T17:30:46.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19436" CreationDate="2015-10-21T18:07:26.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am not a lawyer, this is my non-professional opinion on the matter, and while the information is true and correct to the best of my knowledge it should not be relied upon in legal matters.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States (Which I assume you're writing about as the question is in fluent American English and your references are very American), quips like you illustrate are pretty safe, for a combination of several things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In all cases, there must be a &amp;quot;tort&amp;quot; or harm caused for a lawsuit to be valid. If the plaintiff cannot put a dollar value on the damage your actions caused, then there is no damage, legally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This isn't a 100% complete or accurate statement as is; there are situations in which an action is subject to punitive damages by law even if the plaintiff has suffered no calculable monetary harm. Lawsuits can also seek &amp;quot;unspecified damages&amp;quot; and provide evidence of the extent of the harm, and let the jury decide a dollar figure. This is the main reason I'd run your statements and their context past an actual lawyer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hustler Magazine, Inc. et al. v. Jerry Falwell&lt;/em&gt;. The Supreme Court, in reversing a lower court's awarding of damages for emotional distress stemming from a satirical publication, stated that in order for a &amp;quot;public figure&amp;quot; to prevail in a libel or defamation suit, the plaintiff must show that the publication contains a false statement of purported fact made with actual malice, that is, with knowledge of its falsehood or with reckless disregard for the truth or falsehood of the statement. This was established law dating back to 1964 with &lt;em&gt;New York Times v Sullivan&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fiction, by definition, is nonfactual and therefore the inclusion of potentially disparaging information or references are understood by the courts to not be an intentional or reckless attempt to discredit the referenced entity in real life.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;De minimis non curat lex&lt;/em&gt;. Literally &amp;quot;of the smallest, no care from the law&amp;quot;. In more modern parlance, &amp;quot;don't sweat the small stuff&amp;quot;. It's a legal doctrine forming the basis for things like minimum damages required to file a claim in various courts (inflation's made most of these meaningless, but the fastest way to piss off a Federal district judge is to file a $50 claim in his court). A small quip like the examples in the bottom half of your question are unlikely to be seen as causing sufficient damage to the possessions, means or reputation of the person you name to be worth the expense and further negative publicity involved in hauling you in front of a judge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;References to brands by name as a symbol for their product, even in disparaging terms like a Mercedes breaking down, are considered fair use in most forms of literature, and in most situations the business considers it free publicity that you used their brand name, e.g. Gucci, over others like Coach, DKNY, Prada, Louis Vitton, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Parody and satire, or the &lt;em&gt;humorous&lt;/em&gt; use of references to people, places, or things in a potentially disparaging way, is generally protected speech, shielding against both disparaging speech and use of copyrighted or trademarked intellectual property (it's how South Park and The Daily Show get away with, well, practically everything they air).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disparaging comments about weight, physical appearance, personality etc. are subjective and thus opinion-based, which anyone may freely express about anyone else under the First Amendment. You'll get in trouble if you venture toward gender, race, religion or other &amp;quot;protected statuses&amp;quot;, however if the intention is to poke fun, it remains satire.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The truth is not libel (or slander) in the United States. Rosie O'Donnell recently showcased her 50-lb weight loss from bariatric surgery. Before that weight loss, it was published that she weighed 237 pounds, and her height of 5'7&amp;quot; places her, by most BMI charts, firmly in the &amp;quot;extremely obese&amp;quot; category. Even 50 pounds lighter for the same height, she's considered &amp;quot;obese&amp;quot;. Thesaurus.com's second synonym entry for &amp;quot;obese&amp;quot; is &amp;quot;fat&amp;quot;. Say what you want about the BMI system, it's used by the AMA and therefore pretty solid for you to use to imply (or openly state) that Rosie O'Donnell is fat. By the same token, Mercedes-Benz would have to prove the negative (that their cars &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; break down) in order to successfully claim that your fictional account of a Benz breaking down is a representative falsehood causing them damage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be careful relying on this in other jurisdictions. Most U.S. states and the Federal system require the plaintiff to prove the statement is false if the plaintiff is a &amp;quot;public figure&amp;quot; (defined as &amp;quot;anyone who has gained prominence in the community as a result of his or her name or exploits, whether willingly or unwillingly&amp;quot;). However, not all states do, and fewer states require it in lawsuits not involving a public figure; your next door neighbor does not necessarily have to prove your statement was false to prevail in court for defamation. In addition, British legal precedent on defamation is that making a disparaging statement about someone else, &lt;em&gt;even if true&lt;/em&gt;, must have some &amp;quot;higher purpose&amp;quot; than simply to defame the person. If your book contains defaming statements about Kate Middleton made for the sole purpose of poking fun, and is made available in Britain (even electronically), the Royal Family could in theory file suit against you and your publisher in British court, and win. Some U.S. states, but not all and not at the Federal level, have laws shielding you from this kind of &amp;quot;libel tourism&amp;quot;, but you might find yourself unable to visit Britain, hold financial accounts with HSBC or Barclays, or even change planes at Heathrow for some time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15580" LastEditorUserId="15580" LastEditDate="2021-05-13T18:21:49.683" LastActivityDate="2021-05-13T18:21:49.683" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19445" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-21T18:15:00.973" Score="4" ViewCount="252" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main problem for someone moving from non-fiction to fiction is the development of a &lt;em&gt;plot&lt;/em&gt;. It is especially frustrating to someone who already knows how to string words together and &quot;write well&quot;, who can express himself in the medium, to be unable to write a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a book &lt;em&gt;20 Master Plots&lt;/em&gt; by Ronald B. Tobias, that covers very general large-scale structures.  But is there anything like lists of &lt;em&gt;detailed&lt;/em&gt; facets that can be perused? For example, a survey of plots concerning an abduction: what are the different reasons and motivations that have been used in successful stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-07T00:57:48.693" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T17:50:05.307" Title="Resources for learning how to craft plots" Tags="|technique|plot|resources|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7111" CreationDate="2015-10-21T18:25:10.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's not for radio, greetings don't need to be voiced at all.  If it's just two characters, it might very well be non-dialog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bob saw George coming back from the break room, and caught his eye. They moved into a doorway of an unused office, out of the hallway traffic.&#xA;  &quot;I have an idea for the new product line.&quot; Bob said ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find in real life people don't use formal greetings or address each other during conversation, compared to what is seen in fiction and perhaps in the past or in other cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Body language plays a larger role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T18:25:10.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19422" CreationDate="2015-10-21T18:34:59.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Piers Anthony described that in &quot;authors notes&quot;, and how his style changed as technology improved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a long story short, when an idea intrudes &lt;em&gt;log&lt;/em&gt; it in another file for that purpose and then return to the current job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &quot;log&quot; I mean append a note to a log file, as opposed to editing the new information into the body of notes.  A different task will be to go over new logged notes and work them into the organized structure, musing and giving the whole attention to this story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An intrusive idea is like a sneeze.  Get it out, wipe up, and don't get your current work pushed out of your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T18:34:59.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19445" CreationDate="2015-10-21T19:29:43.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If, in the end, it has been detailed in a 'how to' book it will have been done and so therefore you don't want to do it. Except for large scale structures nobody can tell you how to construct a plot: that is the difficult thing to do. Many people can be taught to write well: vary sentence structures; use a variety of vocabulary; etc. Coming up with original ideas for plots is something completely different. Although I spend a lot of time encouraging it, I don't think it can be taught. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T19:29:43.887" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19422" CreationDate="2015-10-22T01:36:50.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To further what KeithS said, I agree. I would continue your first work, but write the idea down somewhere so you have it for later. I keep a notebook dedicated specifically to book ideas, so when I come up with one, I write everything down about that idea in the notebook, then get back to my current WIP knowing that I can come back to the other one. I would be sure to write &lt;strong&gt;everything&lt;/strong&gt; about that idea down - every little speck of an idea - because that will help you get back into the excitement later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think it also depends on what stage you're in with your current WIP. I've been told by several authors that they keep three works going at all times. One in the plotting stage, one in the writing, and one in the editing. I haven't yet been able to master three, but I do have two going pretty much all the time. It's easier to shift focus to another project when you're not having to put the same efforts into it as the other one (i.e. if you're stuck on writing, you can always switch to editing to clear your head).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T01:36:50.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19451" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-22T05:12:20.550" Score="1" ViewCount="556" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing an article which deals with some of the problems of the city. Since I have a word limit, is it necessary that I have to include the solutions of the problems too? Is it advisable? Or can I just tell the problems and leave it there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15616" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2015-10-22T07:37:47.363" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T22:10:19.473" Title="Is it necessary for an article about a problem to address solutions as well?" Tags="|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19451" CreationDate="2015-10-22T06:37:11.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be a good idea to use a structure in your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Topic sentence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Problem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Your opinion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Resoloution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing a newspaper article you should keep things formal and precise. In newspaper's journalists often exaggerate so it doesn't matter if you exaggerate things too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, stories in a newspaper are placed in order of importance. Most important stories at the front and less important stories at the back.Details are given in order of importance, with the least important details at the end of the article, this allows readers to skim over the start of the article to gain the essential facts before deciding to read on. At the end of the article you should summarise the facts and opinions of the events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing a newspaper use quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing a headline consider using the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stereotypes/Archetypes&#xA;Incomplete Sentences&#xA;Figurative langauge&#xA;Exaggeration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The language features of a newspaper article often use clear and concise writing are in 3rd person. You should definitely provide your own opinion on the solution of your cities problems, and maybe get some quotes from other people about their thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T06:37:11.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19451" CreationDate="2015-10-22T07:56:47.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on a lot on what you're trying to say; what structure and focus you give your article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, if your article prompts the question &quot;why isn't anybody fixing this?&quot; or &quot;can't anything be done,&quot; then by omitting solutions you'll be giving an incomplete picture - possibly an actually misleading one, if e.g. the city is actively working on solutions, but your article gives the impression that nothing is being done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if your article is more on a different focus, e.g. &quot;What is life like in a city with problem X?&quot; or &quot;What challenging issues is the city facing?&quot;, then detailed solutions aren't required - to a certain extent, they're beside the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you should be able to give a nutshell-summary of your article - just a couple of sentences. Look at that summary. Is detailing solutions crucial to fleshing that summary out? Or would that be moving away from your core focus? That's your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're having trouble deciding, I'd suggest you try to write a single quick line saying what the status of solutions are. &lt;code&gt;&quot;The city is working hard to solve these problems, but it will take time to have an effect.&quot;&lt;/code&gt; Or &lt;code&gt;&quot;Solutions exist in theory, but nobody is implementing them.&quot;&lt;/code&gt; You can be very vague and general.&#xA;See where you can fit that line into your article. See what effect it has. That'll let you judge whether, in context, it's a line that needs to be expanded on, or one that can be omitted entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T07:56:47.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19455" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19456" CreationDate="2015-10-22T11:05:45.963" Score="8" ViewCount="1553" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a guide to give step-by-step instructions to complete some tasks on the computer. At some points, I need to indicate pressing keys on the keyboard; how may I format the letter/symbol to best indicate them as keys?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15620" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-28T01:35:15.507" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T01:35:15.507" Title="Format keyboard keys in documents" Tags="|style|technical-writing|formatting|software-documentation|user-guides|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19455" CreationDate="2015-10-22T16:01:44.330" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am assuming that your organization does not have an official style guide, or that this is a personal project.  (If you are bound by a style guide, consult it.)  I am also assuming that you aren't using a semantic markup already; if you're using a DTD/schema/tool/markdown that already has a notion of &quot;keyboard input&quot;, you'd use that unless there's a good reason not to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Microsoft Style Guide is a common choice for software companies in my experience.  This guide (4th edition, p 91) calls for capitalizing key names but not otherwise formatting them.  It gives a list of &quot;official&quot; names of special keys.  Keys that are used together are joined with '+'.  Correct example according to this guide: Ctrl+Shift+?.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some companies add bold face to this, e.g. &lt;strong&gt;Ctrl+Shift+?&lt;/strong&gt;.  In my experience this is especially common if the documentation also refers to UI elements like menu names.  I think the reasoning is that &quot;user-entered stuff&quot; should look the same whether it's &lt;strong&gt;Ctrl+Z&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;File-&gt;Open&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have sometimes seen a hyphen used in place of '+': Ctrl-Z, for example.  I don't know the origin of this style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; using a fixed-width font.  In technical writing this style is usually reserved for console output, code, code elements like function names, and sometimes environment variables -- things you would expect to see in a terminal window, error log, or editor window, in other words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-10-22T16:10:34.123" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T16:10:34.123" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19457" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-22T18:50:37.803" Score="4" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, the real title is &quot;Cooking vegetables: Beans, carrots and spinach&quot;.&#xA;But on the cover that would be graphically punchier as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cooking vegetables:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Beans &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Carrots &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Spinach&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No comma and no &quot;and&quot;. I would want the full title - &quot;Cooking vegetables: Beans, carrots and spinach&quot; - on the title page and in everything else that refers to the book, page headings, ISBN title, publicity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14619" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T23:36:03.960" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T23:36:03.960" Title="Can the title of a book be slightly modified on the cover?" Tags="|titles|book-cover|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19458" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-22T21:50:36.943" Score="1" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking about &lt;strong&gt;Henri Nestlé&lt;/strong&gt;, born in 1814 and deceased in 1890. He was the founder of the company with the same name, located in Vevey (Switzerland).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is going to be a not-so-important character in my story. His company would indeed have some role, at least in one chapter when the protagonist is in Switzerland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I get into trouble by having him as a character in my story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11352" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2015-10-23T14:41:52.620" LastActivityDate="2015-11-23T05:46:43.487" Title="Can I write about an old and real person that is strongly related to a company?" Tags="|legal|copyright|biography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19459" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-22T22:08:14.017" Score="3" ViewCount="8788" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a couple of translated Japanese light novels from Seven Seas, and the paper used feels different and is a darker color that that of the white office paper that I am commonly exposed to. I also seem to vaguely remember the paper in these novels being the same in the Harry Potter books I used to read a kid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if this paper is different from the general white office paper I normally see. Why it is used? Is it cheaper or does it have special qualities suited for book printing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bellow are some photos I have taken though I'm not sure if the differences are really as noticeable in digital form compared to real life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sFoWA.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sFoWAm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;light novel&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yILSi.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yILSim.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;office paper&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one of the left is from one of the Japanese light novels who's paper seems to be the same used in the Harry Potter books I used to read. The right one is just a piece of paper that was printed off. As you might be able to see in the left one the paper is darker that the white office paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a grain effect in the paper on the left (which I don't believe is a style thing) that isn't on the white paper; though this might be hard to see because of the fact these are photos. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-12-16T04:21:56.993" LastActivityDate="2019-06-30T18:46:33.427" Title="What kind of paper do novels use and why?" Tags="|printing|paper|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1902" CreationDate="2015-10-22T23:27:01.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just purchased an old Dell computer that is now a dedicated word processor.  A computer guy in our city modified it for me, and I love it.  Can't email, can't get online.  (of course I have other computers.)  But as an author of 7 novels, working on my 8th, I'm thrilled with this new/old tool. All I needed was a flashdrive to transfer my files and it works perfectly.  I highly recommend this route for those who want a truly distraction-free,portable word-processor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15631" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T23:27:01.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19461" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19463" CreationDate="2015-10-23T08:44:22.280" Score="6" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;When quoting the spoken word, and if one particular word is difficult to distinguish, how does one properly indicate the uncertainty if that particular word has been quoted correctly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following quote gave rise to the question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every stuffed shirt who wants to pass for erudite&#xA;  has shelves full of unread books. None of the spines&#xA;  on these has ever been cracked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Except for this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; Sherlock Holmes, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2360490/&quot;&gt;The Rat Race&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where I could not be entirely certain that I heard &quot;stuffed&quot; correctly (but have been able to confirm this with other sources). Nevertheless, the problem may present itself at another time. Would a question mark in brackets been appropriate? I.e.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every stuffed[?] shirt who wants to pass for erudite...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15634" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T09:55:32.313" Title="How does one indicate uncertainty in a quote?" Tags="|dialogue|punctuation|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19461" CreationDate="2015-10-23T09:55:32.313" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, that's exactly the way I'd indicate that you as the writer/transcriber are uncertain if the word you're indicating is correct. As long as you're making it clear that you're quoting something, as a reader I would be very clear on what that mark meant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T09:55:32.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19445" CreationDate="2015-10-23T10:48:50.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Study writers known for being especially good at it or &lt;strong&gt;being at the vanguard of writing style.&lt;/strong&gt; (or...building plotlines) I'm into the new &quot;anti-Disney&quot; style I see more and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stories don't have to have a happy ending&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plot holes can be left dangling&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Purposely angering or frustrating the audience works great!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ALL artists ultimately seek authentic, emotional moments. I don't care HOW my readers react, mainly that they &lt;em&gt;DO.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FOR me, the modern master is David Chase. (spoiler alert). Chase spends most of season 3 of &quot;The Sopranos&quot; building up to final &quot;&lt;em&gt;payoff&lt;/em&gt;&quot; moment. The plot and everything about it points toward Dr. Melfi giving Tony the name of her rapist. Lagging us all the way up to the final minute of the final scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-[loooooong pause]....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tony- &quot;There somethin' you wanna tell me?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[looooooonger pause].................&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Melfi &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;No.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[fade to black]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[roll credits]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chase led us down a comfortable primrose path of &lt;em&gt;revenge, protection and love.&lt;/em&gt; Then he pulled it away ... &quot;&lt;em&gt;no carrot&lt;/em&gt;&quot; I'd never seen this style (I've seen it copied!) so I credit him w/ it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that in season 3's &quot;Pine Barrens,&quot; Paulie &amp;amp; Christopher screw up a collection stop, so they try to kill the guy, bind him and drive south to bury him. &quot;The Russian,&quot; ultimately escapes and is NEVER HEARD FROM AGAIN. That's a DEEP plot-hole to leave dangling; Tony launders &lt;strong&gt;all his $&lt;/strong&gt; through the man's best-friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create feelings; any way you can. Connect with your audience on a human level, even if you intend to frustrate 'em, cause 'em anxiety, anger, who cares? it's boring writtig that evokes &lt;em&gt;zilcho&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;The plot(s) will start to develop organically as you create.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Writers should have no need to be boxed into any plot method or structure. Prose is best when boundless.&lt;/em&gt;     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastEditorUserId="15292" LastEditDate="2015-10-23T10:53:55.607" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T10:53:55.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19458" CreationDate="2015-10-23T12:40:40.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under the laws of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4630243.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UK&lt;/a&gt; and countries whose legal system is derived from English Common Law, which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2011/01/can-you-be-sued-for-libeling-dead-john.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;includes the United States&lt;/a&gt;, the dead cannot be libelled. So in those countries using this man as a character will not get you into legal trouble, whatever you say about him.  I do not know about the laws in non-Anglosphere countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I assume that by &quot;get into trouble&quot; you mean legal trouble. An unflattering portrait of Henri Nestl&amp;eacute; might, of course, upset any living relatives. I don't know anything about this man or what you plan to say about him, but as a  general observation, I think an author ought to strive to be fair - which need not exclude criticism - to the reputation of real people, dead or alive, even if the author is safe legally whatever he or she does.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the Nestl&amp;eacute; company still exists today. To imply that the &lt;em&gt;company&lt;/em&gt; has been acting illegally or immorally in the present day or recent years might well be considered libellous and given certain controversies about infant formula I bet they have a vigilant legal team. However I cannot believe there would be a problem with what the company was doing in 1890 or even further back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that libel can still occur even if the reference to the person or organisation libelled is indirect, coded, or parodic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2015-10-23T19:48:55.930" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T19:48:55.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19445" CreationDate="2015-10-23T16:39:45.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest reading a lot of folk and fairy tales, and classic story collections like &quot;The Arabian Nights&quot; and &quot;The Water Margins.&quot;  The reason is that those stories are almost all plot, they've stood the test of time, and they have emotional/archetypal resonance.  We tend to be most familiar with a few simplified Disney-version fairy tales, but there are thousands of such stories from all around the world, and some of them can be quite elaborate and complex.  Of course, your story probably isn't about a princess, a peasant and a dragon, but maybe in your version the princess is a wealthy heiress, the peasant is a blue collar worker and the dragon is a big corporation.  Or maybe in your modern version, the gender roles are reversed --or both protagonists are the same gender.  But the same underlying plot is at work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also try fictionalizing something from real life.  Even when writing non-fiction, you have to coax a compelling narrative out of the events, and here you have the added advantage of being able to change the facts to suit your narrative needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final suggestion --maybe you should seek a &lt;a href=&quot;http://co-writers.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;co-writer&lt;/a&gt;.  Not everyone is good at all things.  I'm sure I'm not the only person out there overflowing with plots, but weak on the execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T16:39:45.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19469" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-23T21:43:11.377" Score="4" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;Towards the beginning of my story, my character is forced to leave home. I'm hoping this scene will be rather eventful and emotional and specifically don't want it to be meaningless to the reader (as it happens early on in the story). My question is two-fold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea to try and make my readers feel attached to the character's home in order to increase the emotion of the moment?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is spending a little more time describing the character's home and its surroundings a good way to accomplish this?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15647" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-10-26T20:30:55.890" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T21:49:53.103" Title="Is it a good idea to try to make my readers feel attached to the character's home?" Tags="|plot|ideas|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19451" CreationDate="2015-10-23T22:10:19.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what your purpose for writing the article is or the intended outcome. (If you don't have one yet, then consider creating one, so your article is more powerful.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;trying to highlight problems so that people rally around creating solutions, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or are you trying to make someone look bad (e.g. a mud slinging campaign against a politician), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or are you trying to get people to take specific actions,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or pressure people in charge to take specific actions (i.e. adopt the solutions),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or is this part of a series of articles where you cover different aspects of the issue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are focusing on evoking emotion (rallying people or drawing attention to a scapegoat), then you don't really need to give a solution, since the whole point is to get people upset or concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you want people to take specific actions (items 3 &amp;amp; 4 above), then outlining a solution would be most effective, especially if you tie it to what people can do (or what leaders must do) to solve the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is part of a series, you may want to mention that you will cover possible solutions in future articles. (If you have a word limit, suggest to your editor that you create a series of articles.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you include a solution or not in your article really hinges on whether people feel complete when finishing your article, or whether they start looking for the rest of the column on another page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally like mentioning possible solutions in articles I write, but I typically concentrate on problem-solving. But there are many example of articles that simply report what the issues are without proposing a solution. The choice usually comes down to the intended outcome of the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15646" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T22:10:19.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5881" CreationDate="2015-10-23T22:46:09.397" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maintaining three pen names means three different brands, with three different marketing efforts. It takes a lot of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you decide, you would want to consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will any of your audiences react negatively if they find out you also write for the other audiences?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, will some people devalue your business advice if they know you also give dating advice? Will certain people reading your more serious books take you less seriously if they know you write children's books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the genres do not conflict with each other, then there is less need to have different pen names. But if they do, then different pen names may be preferable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will having a separate brand increase sales and make it easier to market?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taco Bell, Long John Silver's, KFC and A&amp;amp;W restaurants are all owned by the same company, yet have different brands, because it makes them easier to market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a specific pen name (which is a brand) for one of your audiences, will that make it easier to sell to that market? Sometimes a more focused brand is easier to market than one that represents everything, or multiple markets/audiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, are you more willing to buy dating advice books and courses from David DeAngelo or Eben Pagan? Both are the same guy, but David DeAngelo is a better pen name for marketing dating advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will you feel more freedom to write if you use a different pen name?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes using a different pen name allows you to use a different voice than you otherwise would, or express certain things you wouldn't normally say under your real name or main pen name. If this is the case, a different pen name may be advantageous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are you willing to maintain multiple brands?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does take a lot of extra work, but in some cases, it may be better to do so.  Before you decide to use multiple pen names, consider the added workload it may create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it is up to you. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15646" LastEditorUserId="15646" LastEditDate="2015-10-23T22:52:08.880" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T22:52:08.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19472" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-24T04:18:52.247" Score="0" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been itching to write a web fiction serial that's also a homage to Naruto since I found out the manga ended and went on a re-reading binge... &#xA;Anyway it'll loosely have similar ideas i.e. clans. &#xA;The main three characters are going to be Kamaboko Datemaki, Sakurano Haru, and Sugihara Risuke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that too similar? Would I be sued? I'm planning to keep the end pairings the same but there'll also be a lot of differences especially about the clans. And there might not be Justus at least not like in Naruto.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be explained as meta-science and they'll be learning it a University? I really need to think about where I want to go with this. Spent way too much time on the names of everyone's counterparts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15649" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2015-10-25T01:13:05.497" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T01:39:33.420" Title="Questions on a plausibility of a Naruto Homage" Tags="|fiction|legal|planning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19473" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-24T04:48:44.073" Score="0" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some reason my writing is really boring. I think its because I write in the character's point of view and I suck at that. How can I fix this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15649" LastActivityDate="2015-10-24T13:49:06.233" Title="How can I make my writing more interesting?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19473" CreationDate="2015-10-24T11:49:37.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you're actually making it difficult for yourself by writing from a single character's point of view. Presumably your perspective character is the same person as your hero. Don't do that I suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some authors do it successfully only if the plot really requires it and the plot has sufficient novelty in other ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a structure that I like. I call it the Spear on Mount Fuji plot, and think it works and is fun to fill out into a story. It is is easy to use to get emotional impact. Focus on behavior. Results are more surprising when they are occur: the reader did not already know who was thinking what leading to action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This structure also works if you get stuck in deciding where the story is to go at a point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introduce another character at whatever point in the story you are at. It doesn't really matter who they are. They can leave or disappear for any other reason. Have them now ask a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you have the perspective (main) character (not necessarily the hero) answer it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Switch to the hero of the story and also have them answer the question casually in dialogue. In a different way. Let the difference work for you converging toward the end. The goal is to make a contrast in outcomes, not necessarily positive, but what is more probable for the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From here the narrative follows him for a bit. It introduces a secondary perspective character who goes along. His reports on behavior is what the reader knows. The hero merely talks or acts. You don't know what he or she is thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have the answer the hero goes anticipate the ending but this does not become clear until later. Let the ending be in significant contrast to most of the narrative, positive or negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure incidental characters that appear early and disappear for most of the story play a large role in the end, and behave contrary to their earlier behavior. Make some up precisely for this to happen. This gives some organization to where your story can go at any place, and makes it easier to write well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Return to the perspective character, making a third perspective character to switch between them and report on what's occurring. Proceed swiftly to the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compress the action and description. This makes sure the action can be anticipated in retrospect but novel when it occurs, disorienting and fast paced. Actions happen quickly in real life, faster than described, while speech usually takes more time in real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13168" LastActivityDate="2015-10-24T11:49:37.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19473" CreationDate="2015-10-24T13:49:06.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you're writing in the first person. (Writing from a single character's point of view can be done in third person too.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A trusted instructor told me that writing in first person should only be done when (a) the character has a unique voice or (b) the narrator is not the main character, but is telling someone else's story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't always followed his advice, but I present it to you as something to try. If you want to continue in first person, then either give your narrator a unique voice (Read &quot;The Prophet from Jupiter,&quot; one of my fave stories) or make a secondary character your narrator (The Great Gatsby might be the most famous example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-10-24T13:49:06.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19477" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19520" CreationDate="2015-10-24T15:33:39.907" Score="1" ViewCount="351" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have an article and you want to get it published in newspapers or magazines, what are the parts you could do that? I know guest column is place like that, but any other idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think my question in broad, please answer it specifically about New York times or Washington post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15627" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T15:37:37.607" Title="In what parts of a newspaper/magazine one could get an article published?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19477" CreationDate="2015-10-24T17:15:36.560" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because you are asking this quesitong I assume you are not a well-known journalist. If you are an unknown freelancer I would have thought that the New York Times and Washington Post are the wrong publications to aim at. Local newspapers, or at least smaller publications, are more likely to take unsolicited articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-10-24T17:15:36.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19495" CreationDate="2015-10-25T09:20:10.463" Score="2" ViewCount="804" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of applying to several graduate school, so I need to write several Statements of Purpose (SOP). English is not my first language and my writing skills are average at best. Are there any tools online that could help me improve my writing either by suggesting alternative words/phrase or correct my grammar? Ones I have found so far that looks good is &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammarly.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grammarly&lt;/a&gt;. Would you recommend the premium version or are there an alternative that works better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15660" LastEditorUserId="15395" LastEditDate="2015-10-26T14:00:30.623" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T14:29:31.203" Title="Tools to help me write SOPs for graduate school" Tags="|tools|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19459" CreationDate="2015-10-25T23:44:09.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every paper is different. Different manufacturers make paper differently. The composition of the paper, how the fibers are macerated and felted or woven, what coating or sizing is used; all of these will affect the quality and feel of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;International paper has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.internationalpaper.com/documents/EN/Paper/SSB.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stock book&lt;/a&gt; that describes their current lines. It may give you a feel for the different papers available commercially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2015-10-25T23:44:09.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19429" CreationDate="2015-10-26T00:07:32.277" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In answer to the second part of the question: writing anonymously. Well, most (99%) writers are effectively anonymous, because noone cares who they are. The remaining 1% have their identities ruthlessly hunted down by indefatigible groupies, who I find to be mostly highly unattractive females with serious mental issues concerning being scorned. I wouldn't really be too worried about this scenario if I were you because you don't seem like groupie material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, if you want to be &quot;anonymous,&quot; it's pretty easy. You pay a lawyer to maintain a forwarding service for you and then list their office for all contacts. There are also specialized commercial forwarding services that do much the same thing, but cannot sign legal contracts and stuff like that. The commercial services are a lot cheaper than a lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T00:07:32.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19422" CreationDate="2015-10-26T00:15:45.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my computer I have a folder called &quot;books&quot;. In that folder are about 30 other folders, each one containing the draft of an unfinished book. In addition, in the main &quot;books&quot; directory, there are about 50 text documents each of which is a treatment or other material which might serve to get a book started. My plan is to direct the executor of my will to print all that crap out and bury it with me when I die. Does that answer your question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T00:15:45.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19469" CreationDate="2015-10-26T17:03:12.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key is how you and the character define home, and how that relates to the average reader's idea of home. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If &quot;home&quot; is simply the house,&lt;/strong&gt; you'll want to create an emotional connection to the place that feels like a severe break. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to describe the color of the paint or the type of moulding. On the other hand, worn carpeting that indicates well-trodden paths from point A to point B can speak volumes about the character and his/her place in the home. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If &quot;home&quot; includes the familial relationships,&lt;/strong&gt; you'll want to show what those mean to the character at the time of the rift. This is more about showing the pain of the break and the trajectories it sends the main character down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, this break from home should influence and affect the character throughout the story, either diminishing in power as a new life is lived or increasing in power as the pain gets too strong to bear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in reading stories containing descriptions of homes that relate directly to the characters, check out Balzac (particularly &lt;em&gt;Eugenie Grandet&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Pere Goriot&lt;/em&gt;) or &lt;em&gt;Bleak House&lt;/em&gt; by Dickens. &lt;em&gt;Gravity's Rainbow&lt;/em&gt; has very interesting descriptions that create a great sense of place and character and Joyce's &lt;em&gt;Ulysses&lt;/em&gt; unites Bloom with his locales very nicely. (These last two don't necessarily have an emotional impact, though.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T17:03:12.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19469" CreationDate="2015-10-26T20:42:12.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea to try and make my readers feel attached to the character's home in order to increase the emotion of the moment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends on the story. Why do you want to increase the emotion of this moment? Are these emotions something important to the story, something that drives the plot forward or deepens the character? If so, then it is absolutely a good idea to include them. Finding out why you want to include something can often tell you if you should. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Upon rereading your first question, I realize you may be asking if making your readers feel attached to the house is a good &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; to increase the emotion of the moment. My answer is that it certainly can be, if done right. See the below to see what I mean. Getting the reader attached to things is the whole idea behind stakes, something every novel needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is spending a little more time describing the character's home and its surroundings a good way to accomplish this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once again, it depends. I think Fell has a great point in his answer, which I will quote here for convenience: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This doesn't necessarily mean you have to describe the color of the paint or the type of moulding. On the other hand, worn carpeting that indicates well-trodden paths from point A to point B can speak volumes about the character and his/her place in the home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is a great example of using the physical house to describe the emotions of the character. Remember, your goal when your character leaves his home is to &lt;em&gt;increase the emotion of the moment&lt;/em&gt;. Simply describing the house isn't going to do that, especially not in a short time. Describing how the character &lt;em&gt;feels about&lt;/em&gt; the house, though, is completely different. You can easily describe specific objects that evoke memories in the character, for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on the emotional, not the physical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-10-26T21:49:53.103" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T21:49:53.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19408" CreationDate="2015-10-27T04:57:49.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use footnotes. If you read stories written by people from foreign cultures, the original author won't explain the assumptions or references that underlie the story, but the translator will. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then he caught sight of the colour of the pack, barely noticing the stag itself. Of all the hunting dogs he had seen in this world, he had never seen dogs the same colour as those. The colouring they had was a dazzling bright white and with red ears[5]. As bright was the dazzling  whiteness as the brightness of the red.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[5] These were the hallmarks of the Otherworldly origins, according to a deeply rooted tradition found throught the British Isles. The Wild Hunt of Gwyn ap Nudd (p. ### above) included dogs of this kind. The Wild Hunt motif, an expression of the turbulent aspect of the animistic faery world, was itself a deeply rooted and perennial feature of North European folklore. An apprehension of this archetype was clearly being evoked at this juncture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://mabinogi.net/pwyll.htm#_ftnref5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Mabinogi of Pwyll&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've noticed that it's unrealistic to have characters saying &amp;quot;as you know&amp;quot; to explain things that to them would be common knowledge. Isn't it also unrealistic to have the characters explain these things at all? Explaining these things would (in a realistic world) be the job of a translator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2007" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T04:57:49.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19429" CreationDate="2015-10-27T05:23:41.247" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I'd challenge the idea that the &quot;message&quot; of your writing is different from your personal beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People write about horrible characters all the time, but they write about them in a way that makes it clear the characters are horrible. The message of their writing is &quot;these characters are horrible&quot;. So there may be times when the &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt; of a text involves something the author disagrees with, but I'm having trouble thinking of times when the message of a well-written text wouldn't match the opinions of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And looking at your examples, I'm still having trouble understanding what you mean. Insofar as &lt;em&gt;50 Shades&lt;/em&gt; or Anne Rice's books have anything I'd call a message, I think the message would be something like &quot;These things are hot!&quot; And I assume the author probably agrees that these things are hot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe you don't mean the message is different from your personal beliefs, you just mean the message is different from your public persona?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the case, there's not much trouble with being published under a pseudonym. If you're going for full anonymity, promotion can be a bit difficult - no author photos, no personal appearances, no activating your army of friends and family to talk up your book. Even something as simple as a Facebook page is technically against their TOS, since they don't allow accounts under false names. But there are lots of other promotional opportunities, and lots of authors successfully writing under one or more pseudonyms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of your second question, I think I'd refer back to my first idea, that author's books usually &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; accurate reflections of their personal beliefs, at least to some extent. Why would you write something you don't believe in? Can you give me an example of an author who's written something with a world view s/he thinks is totally wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to acknowledge this with your &quot;bully pulpit&quot; idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think readers are willing to accept that works of fiction aren't complete manifestos, but fiction with a clear message? I think they're right to assume that this message is probably reflective of at least some aspect of the writer's beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T05:23:41.247" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19493" CreationDate="2015-10-27T08:48:01.340" Score="1" ViewCount="10114" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it okay to use &quot;till now&quot; in a formal letter? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Listing below all the changes done till now...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or is there a better synonym I can use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15677" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-10-27T22:52:28.223" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T22:52:28.223" Title="&quot;Till now&quot; in formal letter" Tags="|word-choice|email|letter|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5317" CreationDate="2015-10-27T10:52:08.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because capital letters writing is meant to signify the introduction of a signtificant physical element into the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15678" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T10:52:08.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19490" CreationDate="2015-10-27T11:04:35.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see any problems. Till now is a very old and proper English phrase from which until derived. Shouldn't be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T11:04:35.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19490" CreationDate="2015-10-27T12:44:47.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;More usual phrases to use in that situation are &quot;until now,&quot; &quot;at this point,&quot; or &quot;at this time&quot;. Using &quot;till&quot; will may the reader think 'til, which is much more conversational.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15395" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T12:44:47.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19499" CreationDate="2015-10-27T13:45:40.467" Score="4" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to apply to a grad school, and I have prepare the SOP for it (think it like a cover letter to apply to a job). I know the rule: show what I've got, not tell how I think I'm cool. I've tried, as best as I can, to stick to this rule. I must emphasize that again: as best as I can. However, the feedback on it is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/gradadmissions/comments/3q9e3u/here_is_my_sop_to_apply_to_berkeley_and_i_would/cwdb01c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;very negative&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The commenter has already disclaimed: that just a single opinion. However, based on the number of votes, I think that maybe my SOP is really presumptuous. I just want to convey an image of confidence. I always think my readers as an audience, waiting to be entertained. I want to impress them with my writing style, but it seems that not everyone will read it as I read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this is the cultural issue. When I write stuff in my own language (I'm an Asian), people tell me that I have a unique style (in positive manner) (of course I have never met someone who criticize my writing style).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the example. What I write is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two linguists have read this work and left positive feedback. I plan to complete this work and publish it in a linguistics journal before going to grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One suggestion is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After incorporating feedback from two linguists, I hope to have this paper published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another one is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on some positive feedback from two linguists who have been kind enough to review my work, I will continue my research and plan to pursue publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When extracting the line, I can feel &quot;something&quot;, but I don't know what exactly it is. When reading my article as the whole, I cannot pick up other bad sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the fine line of &quot;confidence&quot; and &quot;presumption&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11428" LastEditorUserId="11428" LastEditDate="2015-10-30T14:34:55.940" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T14:34:55.940" Title="What is the fine line between &quot;confidence&quot; and &quot;presumption&quot;?" Tags="|style|technique|editing|academic-writing|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-12-21T07:36:18.033" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19480" CreationDate="2015-10-27T13:55:59.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you use Grammarly, take it with a grain of salt. Software can be useful, but it is by no means a replacement for a human eye trained to read a language. &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammarist.com/articles/grammarly-review/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reviews&lt;/a&gt; of Grammarly tend to not be very favorable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must use software, either Grammarly or LanguageTool will work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you're applying to graduate school. Did you go to undergrad in an English-speaking school? If so, see if you have a writing center of some sort available to you. They will be able to go over your statement of purpose, and give it a more thorough critique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14342" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T13:55:59.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19480" CreationDate="2015-10-27T14:29:31.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you to hire the proofread service, or exchanging language with native friend. Human are far better than machines, at least now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11428" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T14:29:31.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19497" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-27T15:14:46.677" Score="-5" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;How joining a writers and a conscript creators (artifical language similar conlang).&#xA;How put my alphabet into writers book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many universums like StarWars, Bionicle ,Star Trek etc. have alphabet, languages etc. How put information to writers abut alphabets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15661" LastEditorUserId="15661" LastEditDate="2015-10-27T16:04:34.840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T17:09:51.387" Title="How add my alphabet to new book?" Tags="|creative-writing|book|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-10-29T00:33:25.913" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19494" CreationDate="2015-10-27T15:57:23.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem is less style itself than the fact that your readers are taking your writing style as indicative of a problematic attitude.  Let's take the sentences you highlighted and the suggested improvements as a guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two linguists have read this work and left positive feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the suggested improvements, I'm guessing this reads as boastful and entitled.  It may seem like a completely neutral statement, but it highlights only the acclaim you've gotten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After incorporating feedback from two linguists...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggested improvement instead makes it sound like you are willing and eager to learn from others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on some positive feedback from two linguists who have been kind enough to review my work...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggested improvement paints you as a person who is grateful for the consideration others show to you, and respectful of those with advanced professional accomplishments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I plan to complete this work and publish it in a linguistics journal before going to grad school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very difficult to get published in a reputable academic journal, and rare for anyone pre-grad-school to get such an honor.  Many may plan such an accomplishment, but few will achieve it.  Your confidence here sounds callow and naive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hope to have this paper published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This revision highlights your understanding of the difficulty of the task.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I will continue my research and plan to pursue publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does the same thing, but I think it is better, because it highlights the hard work you will do to accomplish your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, your readers on reddit want you to not merely showcase your achievements, but also to paint a picture of yourself as humble, hard-working, grateful and realistic --as well as confident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-10-27T19:14:15.743" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T19:14:15.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19500" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19501" CreationDate="2015-10-27T16:03:19.313" Score="1" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several years ago I studied literature in a university. And I remember my lector told us about a book where author claims to describe all immortal themes, on which almost every fiction book, every tale and so on is based. There were from five to seven themes as I remember and themes are pretty generic, but I always wanted to read it. And unfortunately I remember no author nor book's name. &#xA; So I thought maybe someone here knows what I'm talking about and tell me what is that book.&#xA;  I remember only one of those themes. If I'm not mistaken, one of them is called &quot;return of the hero&quot;. The name speaks for itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So please, if you have thoughts what this book could be, share them with me! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15682" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T17:00:32.097" Title="Immortal cultural themes" Tags="|book|categories|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-10-28T18:13:53.860" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19500" CreationDate="2015-10-27T16:19:55.260" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Hero with a Thousand Faces&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, a book by Joseph Campbell, that explains how most of the myths, in various cultures, are based on the same main themes. Those themes are universal, in their symbolic meaning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It explains in details, and with multiple examples, how the monomyth, the journey of the Hero, has to start with a reluctant character, forced to leave his initial situation, meets a mentor, goes through various trials that involves facing his own fears, then he fights the main Evil character (symbol of the father figure), and goes back to the &quot;mortal world&quot;, changed by his journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(my explanation is approximative, Wikipedia may give more details)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14994" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T16:19:55.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19497" CreationDate="2015-10-27T17:09:51.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Design your alphabet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Include the page in the front or end matter of your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T17:09:51.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19490" CreationDate="2015-10-27T19:57:51.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is an ok phrase to be used, although there are many more words that would be preferable to it, such as 'before [date of change]' or 'preceding [date]'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T19:57:51.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17630" CreationDate="2015-10-27T20:06:23.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is the author?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find out who wrote the FAQ. You could always contact the Human Genome Project, and I'm sure they'd love to help. If not, it is not considered bad to cite a company instead of a name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What Should the Title of the Citation Be?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citation formatting requests you use the FAQ as your citation title, though you can put the certain subsection of the article next to your citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Location of Citation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As said in the last section, I severely recommend you place your citation of the subsection after citing the FAQ&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What Year?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The year the FAQ was written, as it is your prime source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of this is my opinion, though I made sure to base most of it from fact. Everyone has a different citation method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T20:06:23.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19457" CreationDate="2015-10-27T20:08:33.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. It is not unheard of for a book to have a shortened title on the cover. The full title should be on the spine of the book though, as this is professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13102" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T20:08:33.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19507" CreationDate="2015-10-27T22:00:58.910" Score="0" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote many stories/books in my past...but I do not have the resources to bind and glue/print pages for a book. Where may I go to do that? or Where can I get the resources to do this on my own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15402" LastEditorUserId="15402" LastEditDate="2015-10-29T14:12:02.333" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T14:12:02.333" Title="Where can one go to get a hard cover book bound?" Tags="|self-publishing|process|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19506" CreationDate="2015-10-27T22:16:07.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lulu.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lulu&lt;/a&gt; gets the most recommendations, I've noticed. I think you can buy individual printed copies or bulk orders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T22:16:07.957" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19509" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19524" CreationDate="2015-10-27T23:07:59.537" Score="1" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to publish an ebook with Amazon and I don't have time/money to keep copyrights with a lawyer. I am in EU, are there any ways to minimally protect my copyright?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I can send the Word file to my email account as basic proof that I wrote the text first?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15508" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2022-05-07T15:12:00.387" LastActivityDate="2022-05-07T16:05:08.083" Title="How to copyright a book without lawyer and outside USA?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19511" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19513" CreationDate="2015-10-28T05:25:12.643" Score="1" ViewCount="718" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing little things here and there on HubPages. I don't intend to get into blogging &quot;seriously&quot;, and even the little articles I write I don't consider amazing. However, I do enjoy writing them, and have many future articles already planned out in my head for whenever I next have time to write again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;FYI, if you want to get a sense of the stuff I write, you can find me on HubPages (for now, at least?) &lt;a href=&quot;http://rickyleo.hubpages.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. I get on average anywhere between 1 to 7 views a day (total, across admittedly only 12 articles), so it's certainly not much. I just thought I'd provide the link in case the type of topics I write about is pertinent to your answer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether I should move over to Google's Blogger (a.k.a. Blogspot), or some other similar free service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I like about Blogspot is that it's just you on there. It's just your stuff. If people start coming to that site of yours, it's always just for you. As opposed to HubPages, where it looks like they're going to get rid of subdomains fairly soon, essentially grouping together hubs by topic instead of author (though I assume &quot;related&quot; links in each hub will operate essentially the same).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, I do also like the prospect of getting 100% of your adsense earnings on Blogspot, as opposed to splitting earnings 60/40 with HubPages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I understand the downsides are largely related to those very upsides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Blogspot, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; just me on there. On HubPages, there are possibly people coming to my articles because of links through other articles also on HubPages. There'll obviously be none of that on Blogspot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And getting 100% of the earnings doesn't mean much if there's no traffic anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I don't actually mind not getting much money (for example, my goal is for years down the track, after having written up to hundreds of articles, the earnings be enough to simply buy a nice lunch every couple months for me and my wife). But I would like to have some visibility on the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On that note, if I move over, what would happen to my articles which consistently get at least a view a day? The articles which manage to get within the first or second page of google searches? I assume the HubPages articles would essentially disappear from the search results. But theoretically, from the new blogspot domain, over time those same articles would get back to where they were?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any answers greatly appreciated - both those targeted at me and my amateur circumstances, and more generalised answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15687" LastEditorUserId="15687" LastEditDate="2015-10-28T05:31:21.397" LastActivityDate="2019-09-16T08:43:36.740" Title="Amateur who's writing own work for HubPages - should I move to Blogger/Blogspot?" Tags="|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19509" CreationDate="2015-10-28T06:23:17.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, but here are some basic thoughts and suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I can send the Word file to my email account as basic proof that I wrote the text first?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could, but I would not rely on this. International copyright protection can be a bit complex, but for most copyright to apply you have to &amp;quot;publish&amp;quot; you work or otherwise make it available to the public. The simplest way to do this is putting it in a physical form. I would suggest printing at least two copies of the final work and/or perhaps putting the work on multiple dated CD/DVD ROMs. Paper is likely a safer bet. Put an offer somewhere on the internet (where you can point to later if need be) to allow people to &amp;quot;buy&amp;quot; them (or maybe print a few dated &amp;quot;order forms&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also would make sure to use a copyright symbol in your final work to help satisfy the Universal Copyright Convention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever Amazon &amp;quot;publishes&amp;quot; your work, this might count for copyright as well, but this may not be as reliable in the United States:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia - Berne Convention&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In the internet age, unrestricted publication online may be considered publication in every sufficiently internet-connected jurisdiction in the world. It is not clear what this may mean for determining &amp;quot;country of origin&amp;quot;. In Kernel v. Mosley, a U.S. court &amp;quot;concluded that a work created outside of the United States, uploaded in Australia and owned by a company registered in Finland was nonetheless a U.S. work by virtue of its being published online&amp;quot;. However other U.S. courts in similar situations have reached different conclusions, e.g. Håkan Moberg v. 33T LLC. The matter of determining the country of origin for digital publication remains a topic of controversy among law academics as well.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that country of origin can affect how international copyright is applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below are some links and excerpts to consider regarding &amp;quot;physical&amp;quot; publication:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180926041452/https://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl100.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Copyright.gov (United States)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There are two principal international copyright conventions, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (Berne Convention) and the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC).&#xA;[...]&#xA;An author who desires copyright protection for his or her work in a particular country should first determine the extent of protection available to works of foreign authors in that country. If possible, this should be done before the work is published anywhere, because protection may depend on the facts existing at the time of first publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From [Wikipedia - Publication] &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In the Universal Copyright Convention [UCC], &amp;quot;publication&amp;quot; is defined in article VI as &amp;quot;the reproduction in tangible form and the general distribution to the public of copies of a work from which it can be read or otherwise visually perceived.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia - Berne Convention&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Under Article 3, the protection of the Convention applies to nationals and residents of signatory countries, and to works first published or simultaneously published (under Article 3(4), &amp;quot;simultaneously&amp;quot; is defined as &amp;quot;within 30 days&amp;quot;) in a signatory country.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://wipolex.wipo.int/en/text/283698#P98_14701&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Berne Convention Article 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;(3) The expression “published works” means works published with the consent of their authors, whatever may be the means of manufacture of the copies, provided that the availability of such copies has been such as to satisfy the reasonable requirements of the public, having regard to the nature of the work. The performance of a dramatic, dramatico-musical, cinematographic or musical work, the public recitation of a literary work, the communication by wire or the broadcasting of literary or artistic works, the exhibition of a work of art and the construction of a work of architecture shall not constitute publication.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10627" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2022-05-07T16:05:08.083" LastActivityDate="2022-05-07T16:05:08.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19511" CreationDate="2015-10-28T10:51:02.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you point out, HubPages helps direct traffic your way. I would probably publish both places until I felt comfortable with the income I was receiving from which ever free provider I chose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially I would publish separate articles on both domains (for overall revenue considerations) until traffic was at desirable levels on your custom domain. Then you might choose to move all your HubPages articles to your new domain, since &lt;a href=&quot;http://hubpages.com/help/user_agreement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HubPages says you own your content:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;6&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;PROPRIETARY RIGHTS; CONTENT OWNERSHIP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] &quot;HubPages does not claim ownership of Your Hub Content or Author Content. Such content will be owned by You or a third party from whom You got permission to post the content.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I assume the HubPages articles would essentially disappear from the search results. But theoretically, from the new blogspot domain, over time those same articles would get back to where they were?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That depends on a number of factors, some of which might be totally out of your control (as Google makes its own decisions on how it ranks sites). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you may have to build up a large amount of traffic to the new site before that kind of switch occurred. Even so, Google might still choose to rank your older HubPages articles higher based on criteria you have no influence over. If you do some basic SEO, you can mitigate some of that, but personally I knew someone whose articles on another domain were still ranking higher than the one she transfered them to many months after re-publishing on a new domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All said, this isn't discouragement -- I personally like publishing on my own domain. But I would say it will likely require some effort to build traffic compared to that of HubPages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10627" LastEditorUserId="10627" LastEditDate="2015-10-29T01:27:09.237" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T01:27:09.237" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-28T10:55:59.140" Score="0" ViewCount="760" Body="&lt;p&gt;How would you use &quot;Show Don't Tell&quot; imagery to portray a person who is watching something (an encounter) that makes him 'freeze' in his spot? All I can think of is: He is frozen in his spot as he watches on in utter shock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15688" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T07:59:50.697" Title="Show Don't Tell" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-08-17T09:57:04.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19511" CreationDate="2015-10-28T11:02:18.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something I see a lot for comics series : The author publish a new page on its own blog/website first ; then, a few days later, publish that page on the community website (so on your case HubPages). A link to the blog/website is always visible just under the page on the community website. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, followers from the community website can more easily discover the series via links and so, and they can still follow your work on the community website if they prefer it that way. (Maybe the community website offers usefull tools : syndication, collection of favourites...) But the early release to your personal blog/website incite people to switch over. Eventually, if enough of your public switches over, you can stop publish to HubPages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this may or may not translate well to blog posts, where you don't have the urge to read the next publication, but it's still the less &quot;risky&quot; way to try to use your own blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15621" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T11:02:18.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19514" CreationDate="2015-10-28T12:18:11.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Describe&lt;/em&gt; what is happening to his body and (since you said this is his POV) his thoughts and feelings about it. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He felt as if an invisible force was turning his body to stone. An ache in his lungs made him realize that he wasn't sure whether or not he was breathing. He willed his limbs to move but they stayed as still as stone. For a fleeting moment he thought he'd become a statue.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if you don't want to grant access to his mind, you can show he is frozen by showing it in his actions. For instance, he strikes a match and is about to light his cigarette when he sees whatever freezes him. He never quite lights it, but instead stares ahead until the match burns down to the fingers holding it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15582" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T12:18:11.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19477" CreationDate="2015-10-28T12:29:38.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you read your target publications to see where your article might fit. In the UK, a lot of copy is produced in-house, but there are slots for freelancers. Again, in the UK, the 'bible' for such information is The Writers and Artists Yearbook. I presume there is a US version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15691" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T12:29:38.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19477" CreationDate="2015-10-28T13:23:43.667" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditionally, the place for a non-journalist who is not hired by a magazine or newspaper to be published in that publication is the &quot;Letters to the Editor&quot; department.  This is an open-to-all-comers features, which runs submissions without payment and expressly without the endorsement of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are usually informal, amateur epistles, but occasionally you'll see a letter published that reads like a brief essay or article, sometimes by a well-known person.  The selection process is entirely at the whim of the editor of the feature, but it's often used as a place to give voice to complaints or to opinions that contradict the official positions of the newspaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If money is no barrier, your other option is an advertorial.  This is an editorial article presented in space that has been purchased at advertising rates (which are typically very very high).  It will be clearly marked as &quot;ADVERTISEMENT&quot; and no endorsement of any sort by the publication will be implied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-10-28T13:45:00.263" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T13:45:00.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19519" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-28T13:39:12.263" Score="0" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently written something about the length of in-between a short story and a novel. I've had a bunch of friends edit it, and all of them say that I should insert chapter breaks. I wrote the story in a one block of regular and then a flashback explaining the history of the characters and shining light on the plot format, so I'm not sure where to put chapters. I tried to end each little section on a cliffhanger. If I have my story written in this format, then where should I put chapter breaks? Every other, or every two, or every three were all suggestions that I've received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15690" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T18:01:51.890" Title="Where to insert chapter breaks" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19477" CreationDate="2015-10-28T13:56:29.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's important to know more about the type of article you're hoping to write. The Washington Post sums it up nicely in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/r/WashingtonPost/Production/Digital/Pages-Web/community-relations/_module-content/What&amp;#39;s%20Your%20Story.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;doc&lt;/a&gt;--even the majority of words written by their full-time staff never make it to print. However, as @Tave pointed out, there are a number of &quot;smaller&quot; publications that are more willing to work with newer freelancers, and are often just as reputable as the NYT or WaPo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I got my start by writing buying guides for a small start-up. It wasn't exactly the kind of writing I wanted to be doing, but a funny thing happened: those guides ended up getting syndicated by Yahoo's Canadian site. The point is, it's great to be shooting for such a high bar, but being published by a lesser-known magazine is also a really, really good thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, before you even approach a smaller mag, you should also be aware that a simple &quot;I'd like to write for you&quot; won't get any editors' attention. Here are a few elements of a really good magazine pitch:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2-3 short paragraphs (2-3 sentences each, tops)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Answer these questions: Why this topic? Why are you the right person to write it? Why is this important now?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your bio (don't worry if you don't have too many credentials, but make sure you give the editor a bit of background)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might have gone overboard here, but hope this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15693" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T13:56:29.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19519" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:13:39.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Placing chapter breaks is very subjective. There's no real rules, except perhaps to make them all approximately the same length in terms of word count. This is a guideline, however, and should be taken that way. It's mostly there to keep any chapter from feeling like it's rushed, or dragging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every scene should push the reader to the next scene, and each chapter to the next. It's often said a writer's goal is to keep the reader up long into the night because they can't find a place to stop reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also heard it's a good idea to end each scene on a minor cliff hanger, to propel the reader to the next scene, and end each chapter with a larger cliff hanger to keep the reader going into the next chapter, which is where most people will want to stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, it's largely subjective. Take a look at your story and see if you can find a similar number of the &quot;little sections&quot; you referred to, and if one of them ends on a more powerful cliff hanger. That would be a natural place for a chapter break. Grouping your sections this way should help you figure this out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps some!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T15:13:39.020" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19522" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:26:39.160" Score="8" ViewCount="1293" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any websites or anything similar where we can get feedback from online readers (without paying for a membership or anything of the sort) for stories and other writings that are not quite finished, but are rather WIPs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand, Writing.StackExchange does not encourage questions asking for (general) feedback on given excerpts, so where can I go to get such feedback? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15011" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-06T08:31:30.743" LastActivityDate="2020-06-12T21:34:25.660" Title="Websites for free feedback on stories?" Tags="|editing|short-story|websites|criticism|feedback|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19477" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:37:37.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What sort of article are you hoping to publish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newspapers rarely print unsolicited articles from freelancers. Other than the editorial pages, they normally print news, i.e. accounts of current events based on the reporters eye-witness experience or interviews with eye-witnesses. Other than the editorial page, newspapers don't normally print essays, and I've never seen a newspaper print a short story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are freelance reporters who travel around looking for news and writing up stories. If that's what you're up to, you could try to submit those kind of stories. You could try to get picked up as a columnist for the editorial page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Rich Moy and Tave point out, if you're just starting out as a writer, the New York Times and the Washington Post are probably not your best bets. These are very big publications that lots of people want to write for. I don't mean this to sound snide or mean, but it's like asking, &quot;I just graduated high school. How do I go about applying for a job as president of General Motors.&quot; Yes, if you're very good and/or have the right connections and/or are very lucky, you might manage it. But it makes way more sense to start with more humble objectives and work your way up. Start with a small local publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magazines are much more likely to accept freelance submissions. The trick here is to read the magazine and find out what sort of articles they publish, then write something that fits. Most magazines accept freelance articles. Though some don't: you'd be wise to check out the magazine and their web site if they have one to see if they give a clue on this. I got my start in writing by publishing in computer magazines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T15:37:37.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19509" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:59:29.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do not need a lawyer to assert a copyright. I've registered copyrights on three books and two web sites and I've never used a lawyer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't say what country you're from and I don't know the procedures to register a copyright in any country other than the U.S. anyway. But here in the U.S., to register a copyright you fill out a form on the copyright office's web site and mail them two copies of your book. For a book, there is a fee of $30. (Fees for other things, songs, films, etc, vary.) That's it. You don't need a lawyer, and I don't know what a lawyer would do besides charge you a bunch of money to read the questions on the form to you and write down your answers. There are no tricky legal questions. It's things like the title of the book, the name of the author, and whether there is material in your book that you are not claiming copyright in, like if you have quotes from Shakespeare, you're presumably not claiming to own the rights to Shakespeare's plays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often hear people talk of mailing a copy of their book to themselves rather than registering the copyright. I don't see the point. The fee to register isn't that big. Is $30 really a huge hurdle? In exchange for that $30 you get the power of the copyright office behind your claim to have written this book, versus trying to argue in court that some alternative proof you have come up with should carry weight. I've never heard of someone keeping a copy with a lawyer. Presumably a lawyer would charge you a lot more than $30, and would have considerably less weight in court than a legal registration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I say, I'm in the U.S. Maybe procedures in your country are different. Tell us what country you're from and maybe someone can give you more specific advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T15:59:29.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19506" CreationDate="2015-10-28T16:09:59.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @yblehS says, Lulu is probably your best bet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a book published with Lulu in hard cover and they do a nice, professional job. They have no minimum size on an order so if you just want a handful of copies -- or 1 copy -- that's no problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could buy the equipment to professionally bind a book at home for like a couple of thousand dollars. Unless you're planning to print hundreds or thousands of copies, that's unlikely to be worth the investment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure you could come up with a craft-shop approach to it, cut the pages yourself and glue them and make a cover out of cardboard and laminate it and all. But that sounds like a lot of work when Lulu will do it for like ten or fifteen bucks and probably do a better job than you could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not hard cover, but: I used to struggle to find an appointment calendar in a format I like every year. Now I make my own. I create a PDF file, send it off to CreateSpace, and order 2 copies. It costs me like $10. CreateSpace doesn't do hardcover, which brings us back to Lulu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T16:09:59.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19519" CreationDate="2015-10-28T18:01:51.890" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given your description of the story, it sounds like your readers could use breaks in the action. Everything @Josh said in his answer applies, so I'll just talk a bit about pacing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a rhythm to every story. It's created by the prose, by the dialogue, and by breaks in the action. You know the pulse of your story better than anyone, so use breaks to give the readers a chance to catch their breath. A chapter break or a typographical divider (like an asterisk) can also give them a chance to pause and think about what just happened. You can have as many &quot;sections&quot; within a chapter as you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, I'm doing much the same thing right now with this answer. When I've suspected that a paragraph has done its work, I move on to the next one. This is more a courtesy to the reader than a rule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Two pitfalls when breaking up a story:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Too few breaks, and the reader won't know if they can pause their reading to use the bathroom or mow the lawn&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Too many breaks, and the story begins to feel frenetic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an curious look at how an author broke up a story in an interesting and highly intentional fashion, check out &lt;em&gt;Zeroville&lt;/em&gt; by Steve Erickson. His &quot;chapters&quot; are numbered from 1–250, then back down from 250–0. And some of them are only one word long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T18:01:51.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19514" CreationDate="2015-10-28T19:45:23.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the complete rule is &quot;Show, don't tell. Except when it's better to tell, don't show.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing inherently wrong with telling. Sometimes you should just say what's going on and move on. How do you decide whether to show or tell? Pivotal moments might want to be shown, not told. Pay attention to pacing and the rhythms of your text and write accordingly. Read a lot, noticing where your favorite authors use exposition and action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T19:45:23.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19514" CreationDate="2015-10-29T07:59:50.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also, try to tell with respect to the surroundings. A factual description comes to mind, just the happenings and the moments, and not the thoughts or feelings. The crowd rose to it's feet, the boy in the red cap still with his soda, and they all shouted in unison - &quot; Go Team Go&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15709" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T07:59:50.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19532" CreationDate="2015-10-29T12:22:19.780" Score="2" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a first person story and the main character will hear a number of odd names said. The odd names will be put into Google and her spelling will be corrected, but I was wondering how to handle the spelling of the original reference to the odd name.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example the place in Scotland &quot;Kilconquhar&quot;. If one character rings the other character and tells them that &quot;Kilconquhar is amazing&quot; and then gets cut off without allowing for further information I wouldn't expect the character to know how to spell it. I'd expect them to Google how it was said to them so - “Kinnuchar” and then have Google correct them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a bit unsure how to handle this though - it's a first person story so the character who is doing the search has heard the place name over the phone. When writing it, should I write the place name with the correct spelling or the misspelling based on what's been heard? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So either: &quot;Kilconquhar is amazing&quot; or &quot;Kinnuchar is amazing&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a general rule of thumb based on this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13475" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T12:53:09.633" Title="Complicated names - spelling question based on a character hearing the name said" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19531" CreationDate="2015-10-29T12:53:09.633" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are going to show the main character googling the names, I'd suggest using the phonetic spelling you describe, and making it very clear that the character knows it's not actually spelled like that. Maybe she's studied a map and hasn't seen anything remotely like &quot;Kilconquhar&quot;, maybe she's run into the issue before, and knows the odds are in her favor if she assumes its not spelled like it sounds. But if she is going to be googling, it's usually a good idea to let the reader know there's a reason for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an example of a similar situation in Susan Cooper's &quot;The Grey King.&quot; One of the main characters is an English boy visiting Wales. Another boy tells him to read the map, then corrects all his pronunciations on the spot. In this case, it's written with the syllables the boys pronounce, alongside the letters being read. Obviously, you've got a slightly different situation (The Grey King is pre-internet), but it's an example of how something like this can be handled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there isn't a hard and fast rule for this sort of thing. It's all about what you want your readers to understand about the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15395" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T12:53:09.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9832" CreationDate="2015-10-29T14:01:15.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a huge difference between a character not having emotion, and a character being perceived as not having emotion. It's a sociopathic killer who has learned to blend perfectly into society despite not sharing any usual emotions vs an autistic kid in constant emotional pain because he can't show what he means and feels the way everyone else does. You can write either of these in such a way that the reader can connect, it's just harder than a more typical person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest finding some writings about autistic people, and figure out what they are doing to connect with the reader. The one that I can think of off the top of my head is &quot;An Anthropologist on Mars&quot; by Oliver Sacks. It's got a couple of stories about autistic people who simply cannot connect with normal human behavior, despite being obviously talented in other ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15395" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T14:01:15.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19534" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-29T19:09:10.767" Score="0" ViewCount="41070" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back in the day, good writing meant it was a goal to make sentences short.  As I have grown older this rule has served me well, especially as it relates to technical writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a humorous example of the opposite -- a full paragraph 5, 6, or more lines long but consisting of only one sentence.  Any referrals or leads to such an animal would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jim T.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15713" LastActivityDate="2021-03-05T20:58:55.540" Title="seeking a humorous example of long winded paragraph one sentence long" Tags="|humor|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2021-03-05T21:07:31.883" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19408" CreationDate="2015-10-29T19:21:57.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many good comments already, but let me toss in a few thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned having the ignorant character that others can explain things to. Sometimes this is implausible. Like if the story is set on a spaceship with three astronauts on board, it seems unlikely that there would be one in the three who knows nothing about space travel or astronomy. How did he get included on this mission if he's completely ignorant? But if it's a star-liner with 100 passengers, the idea that one is someone on his first interstellar trip and knows nothing isn't inherently implausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen a number of SF stories that have one of the characters teaching a history or science class to a group of children. On the surface, this can be a good technique: Presumably children don't know everything that we would expect adults to know. But if you do this, please, have it make sense in the story. I've seen so many where they show the character teaching a class of children, implying that this character is a school teacher ... and then we never again see him or her doing anything to do with teaching. They apparently just quit their teaching job and run off on whatever adventure. Or there's some really transparent introduction, &quot;Dr Jones is an expert on contacting alien races, and so we've asked him to come here today to,&quot; etc. This technique worked with Indiana Jones because it made sense for an archaeologist to be a college professor. Maybe you could work in Captain Kirk being a guest lecturer at Starfleet Academy. But I'd have a hard time believing that Captain Kirk teaches kindergarten in his spare time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real life, people often state facts that everyone present knows to make a point, for emphasis, or to establish a context for something they want to say that everyone present does NOT know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine our own world was a fictional alternate history and you wanted to introduce some historical facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have the president walk into the cabinet room and declare to his top advisors, &quot;As you all know, I am the president of the United States,&quot; and stop there, it would be implausible. But if he said, &quot;I've been president for 3 years. It's time I accomplished something besides attending meetings!&quot; That doesn't sound to me like an implausible thing for someone to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, &quot;If those troops cross the border, this will be the third time Germany has started a world war.&quot; It might well be that everyone present knows about World Wars 1 and 2, but it wouldn't be shocking for someone to say it like this to express his concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As you know, it takes eight weeks to cross the Atlantic by steamship. With this new invention, the airplane, we expect to cut that to only 12 hours.&quot; Yes, everyone present knows the first fact. But someone might well state it to set the stage for the next sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can mention a known fact indirectly. &quot;If we lose this war, it will be America's first defeat since the Vietnam War.&quot; This tells the reader that America fought a war that had something to do with Vietnam and lost, without having to spell it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T19:21:57.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19534" CreationDate="2015-10-29T20:36:02.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not humorous, but look into Immanuel Kant's &lt;em&gt;Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals&lt;/em&gt;. I distinctly remember, in at least one English edit I read for college ethics, a single sentence which went on for a page and a half. Even without that, sentences within paragraphs easily exceed your 5-6 line requirement throughout much of the work. Kant's writing style is so convoluted that German students of ethics commonly read Kant's work in English instead of the original German, because the English translation is easier to comprehend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15580" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T20:36:02.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19534" CreationDate="2015-10-29T21:18:46.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gabriel Garcia Marquez's &lt;em&gt;Autumn of the Patriarch.&lt;/em&gt; I distinctly remember that when we were assigned it as summer reading between 11th and 12th grade, I got to page 40 and counted six periods &amp;mdash; that is, six sentences covered 40 pages. I threw the book across the room and told the teacher I refused to read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(She told me I was the only one in a class of 30 who had even tried.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T21:18:46.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19534" CreationDate="2015-10-29T22:08:10.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Humorous single paragraph sentence? The original Winnie the Pooh provides such a thing &lt;a href=&quot;http://commonplaces.blogspot.com/2008/09/very-long-sentence.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples as well, but this is the only one that presented itself to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T22:08:10.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19571" CreationDate="2015-10-30T12:41:37.703" Score="1" ViewCount="442" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a personal statement to apply to a grad school. At first, I thought that because the role of this statement is to show an image of me as a person, using the tone I usually use when blogging - which uses a lot of idiom and rhetoric - is acceptable (even preferable). However, when I asked about styling to make sure about that, the answer is that it is advisable to keep it professional and formal as if I'm writing to a teacher I respect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So two-thirds of my statement is using an improper tone, not to mention the errors in English. My English native friend has decided to rewrite them, and fix the other third on the fly (this third is not in a bad tone).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q&lt;/strong&gt;: Since the rewritten paragraphs are of course perfect, should I use them without worrying about the conflict in writing styles? I think that in a formal article, there is not much in styles because you don't have much room to use idiom and rhetoric, so my friend's style and my style are not really different, or at least different enough to be noticed. Is that correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/57140/14341&quot;&gt;What tone to use in the personal statement?&lt;/a&gt; in Academia&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11428" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.207" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T06:01:35.120" Title="In a formal writing, does having a paragraph rewritten by another person make the style change noticablely?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|essay|tone|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19548" CreationDate="2015-10-30T14:35:13.017" Score="4" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this problem where I always just can't seem to be satisfied by my choice of words resulting it me never getting far in writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost every sentence I would think &quot;This isn't the kind of thing I would say..&quot;  But the other part of me is thinking &quot;This is how I want to be portrayed&quot;. Which is effectively &quot;I want to be this person that I imagined&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While writing this I just realized I may be posting this question in the wrong place. And that I l'm only referring to writings in regards to self branding. But this is where I see to be most appropriate to ask for help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. i had to force myself to minimize any edits and even submit this question. feeling extremely uncomfortable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15721" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T20:41:24.567" Title="I like to write but I keep stopping myself" Tags="|style|self-publishing|blog|self-preservation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19541" CreationDate="2015-10-30T15:23:27.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Anne Lamott's &lt;em&gt;Bird by Bird,&lt;/em&gt; she talks about &quot;shitty first drafts.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%20Drafts.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Read about it here.&lt;/a&gt;) The point is that your first draft should be nothing more than a dump of creative ideas, disregarding spelling, grammar, consistency, and all other quality measures. Then clean it up to make sense when you revise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Someone who wasn't Hemingway] said, &quot;Write drunk, edit sober,&quot; and it echoes Lamott's advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T15:23:27.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19540" CreationDate="2015-10-30T15:26:37.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the tone you decide on, your statement should be consistent throughout. So (1) figure out what tone you want to use and (2) revise your piece so it uses that tone from beginning to end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T15:26:37.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19541" CreationDate="2015-10-30T15:35:33.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're talking about strategic writing.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Seth Godin&lt;/a&gt; has advice for the mind set this needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15698" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T15:35:33.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19541" CreationDate="2015-10-30T17:20:14.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another approach for you might be to write in sprints - say, 10-15 minutes - and do not permit yourself to edit. Get up for a short break, do something other than writing, then return to the writing for a new session. When you do, go back over the words you wrote in the previous session, and do any editing you'd like to do. Then move forward for another 10-15 minutes (or whatever you can manage). Lather, rinse, repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found this helps me produce more work, with better wording, and satisfies the &quot;internal editor&quot; telling me to fix things. Maybe that method will work for you too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T17:20:14.833" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="297" CreationDate="2015-10-30T18:32:26.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was instructed by multiple Princeton professors that one's native language is the only acceptable target for a self-produced literary translation. (Of course, not everyone obeys these rules--but even the Nabokovs suffered for it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &quot;second language&quot; is your native language, I'd say go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11310" LastEditorUserId="11310" LastEditDate="2015-11-26T06:29:16.623" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T06:29:16.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16816" CreationDate="2015-10-30T20:19:18.750" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you may have to remove the dash before the word &quot;Wind&quot; in your second entry. As for the in-text citation, the first one will be cited as (&quot;Alternative Energy,&quot; &lt;em&gt;Discover&lt;/em&gt;) and the second as (&quot;Alternative Energy,&quot; &lt;em&gt;Wind&lt;/em&gt;). This issue has been addressed in MLA 7th edition, section 6.4.4 (Page number in my edition is 223).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15727" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T20:19:18.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19541" CreationDate="2015-10-30T20:41:24.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's common to have a different persona in your writing than in person.  One of the advantages of writing is that you can appear wittier, quicker-witted, more eloquent and knowledgeable than in life, all through the magic of editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always advise people online to present their public persona, not their private one, and to make it a kinder, calmer, more modest and moderate self, because the online record is visible to all, and never goes away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As they say in the theater, realism is just another style.  Presenting yourself in print exactly as you are in life is arguably not even possible, let alone a moral necessity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T20:41:24.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19552" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19559" CreationDate="2015-10-31T15:52:10.843" Score="5" ViewCount="1180" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always get confused about whether to use past perfect in past tense narrative. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I went back home that weekend to help Mom with our dog's burial. Since&#xA;  we &lt;strong&gt;had&lt;/strong&gt; postponed it, &lt;strong&gt;she'd had&lt;/strong&gt; to find a place to keep him. The house,&#xA;  although spacious, &lt;strong&gt;hadn't been&lt;/strong&gt; an option. Too unsanitary. &lt;strong&gt;She'd&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;then&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  thought about shoving him into &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; house---but no, animals would&#xA;  drag him out and devour him, not to mention the trouble with maggots.&#xA;  The best solution, Mom &lt;strong&gt;had&lt;/strong&gt; decided, was to put him into a stuff sack&#xA;  and hang him on one of the zelkova trees that bordered the yard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The narrator and her Mom postponed the burial of their dog in an earlier chapter (they did it in Chapter 1 and this excerpt is from Chapter 6). I used &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt; since the mother did all these actions &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; this chapter (Chapter 6) and when the MC wasn't at home. This makes sense to me grammatically, but I feel the passage is awkward with all those &lt;em&gt;had's&lt;/em&gt;. And this makes me wonder if I'm using too many or whether I can omit some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to deal with past perfect in past tense narrative? When is it necessary and when it can be omitted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T08:10:31.693" Title="Past perfect in past tense narrative: When to use and when not to?" Tags="|creative-writing|tenses|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-31T18:14:24.880" Score="1" ViewCount="574" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I speak or teach, I often use rhetorical questions to prompt people to think. I find it helps frame my arguments and clarify how I am setting up the points I am making. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently tried this in my writing however and a friend of my indicated this strategy wasn't always appropriate when writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you know when or when not to use rhetorical questions while writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11549" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T20:00:03.547" Title="What are appropriate uses of rhetorical questions?" Tags="|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19554" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-01T01:12:28.720" Score="6" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering writing a novel in which society has fallen into a perverse pit of debauchery. This is necessary to the novel, but it also presents some problems. I want the reader to know just how bad things are, but at the same time, I want to avoid writing about them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to simply say, &quot;things are bad,&quot; and leave it at that. I need to &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; just how bad things are, so that the reader will understand the true state of society. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also do not want to describe how bad things are, because 1) I simply don't want to write about such things, and 2) I don't want my novel to be adult-only. I want everyone to read this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I describe how terrible things are, and yet not actually describe it?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-11-02T00:50:01.320" LastActivityDate="2019-05-22T00:20:49.723" Title="How can I convey something without going into details?" Tags="|fiction|style|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19554" CreationDate="2015-11-01T02:55:20.517" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use your characters. What are their lives like? Working plumbing? Toilet paper? Are the streets safe? You can use dialogue rather than prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What do you mean there was no milk at the store? They said last week it would be here for sure.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The jerk behind the counter said, 'When it comes, it comes.' He wouldn't take my contact info either.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T02:55:20.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19556" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19560" CreationDate="2015-11-01T03:38:14.113" Score="1" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a group called the Mental Health Access and Referral Team. In prose, I can either use M-HART or MHART. In dialogue, I'm a bit stumped. (I use The Chicago Manual of Style.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to express would be M-Hart, but The Chicago Manual of Style suggests that naming single letters should be in italics. This would put the letter &quot;M&quot; in italics. However, acronyms are their own category. For instance, one would not place FBI in italics for Federal Bureau of Investigations in prose or dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other issue is that if I use M-Hart in dialogue, can I use MHART in prose (removing the hyphen)? It's more phenomenologically correct, but it creates an inconsistency (sort of). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-28T10:11:37.537" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T10:11:37.537" Title="Acronym issue transitioning from prose to dialogue" Tags="|style|technique|chicago-manual-of-style|acronyms|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19556" CreationDate="2015-11-01T06:11:18.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;By &quot;prose&quot; I take it you mean &quot;narrative&quot;. But whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RE writing single letters in italics: I agree, that just doesn't apply here. I presume you're referring to their discussion about referring to letters as letters, like a teacher saying, &quot;Now, Billy, write the letter 'M' on the blackboard.&quot; This doesn't apply to acronyms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I'd write a word the same in dialog as in narrative, unless there's some issue about pronunciation. Why would you think it should be written differently? If you were writing dialog and while MHART is usually pronounced &quot;em-heart&quot;, one person pronounces it &quot;muh-art&quot;, and this is relevant and makes a differences, then yes, you need to call it out. (BTW, I don't know if this is a real organization, and if so how it is normally pronounced. I'm just giving an example.) Otherwise, I just wouldn't worry about it. Even if you are recording an actual conversation and one person did pronounce it differently from the others, but it didn't matter, I just wouldn't worry about it. We usually don't worry about an occasional mis-pronounced word, differences in regional accents, etc, when recording conversations, unless they matter for some reason. Like if they caused misunderstanding, or if we want to portray someone as stupid because he continually mispronounces words, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T06:11:18.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19553" CreationDate="2015-11-01T06:19:06.017" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like lots of style questions, I don't think there's an absolute rule. It's not like you can say, Use rhetorical questions when discussing questions of type 147-B subparagraph 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I'd say don't overuse them. I read an editorial not long ago that consisted almost entirely of rhetorical questions, one after the other. &quot;Is it acceptable for a politician to do X? What is the effect on the country if the government does X? Is X a violation of the Constitution?&quot; Etc. I thought it quickly got tedious. It sounded like he didn't have the courage to come out and state his opinions, and so phrased everything as a question. One or two rhetorical questions in an article to make a point can be effective. Fifty gets tedious and annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I'd say be careful if you're trying to use rhetorical questions to sound profound. Being profound is very difficult. If you try to be dramatic and don't quite make it, you might still be somewhat dramatic. If you try to be bold and don't quite make it, you might still be somewhat bold. But if you try to be profound and don't quite make it, you rarely end up being &quot;somewhat profound&quot;. You usually end up being laughable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T06:19:06.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19552" CreationDate="2015-11-01T08:10:31.693" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I find myself typing &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt; too many times I treat it as a symptom of either too much exposition, too much laboured logic, or too much effort invested in justifying the 'now'. At this point I've probably delved (as you have) into negative storytelling, and probably deviated too far from plot or character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First thing I look at is whether I should go back and make the thing happen in the proper timeline. Rather than say 'she had painted her face blue' in chapter 5, can I say 'she painted her face blue' back in chapter 3? Or can I just cut it all and say, 'Sheila showed up with a blue face, and I never found out why.' Or can I use character to explain the state of things. 'Sheila showed up with a painted blue face, and warned me not to discuss the football results until she could get it all off.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case. Does the reader really need to know how the dog ended up hanging from a tree? In this case I suspect they do, so retell it in a more immediate fashion. e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went back home that weekend to help Mom with our dog's burial. I found him in a stuff sack hanging on one of the zelkova trees that bordered the yard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'What the heck, Mom?' I said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'I was worried about flies, and pests, and I don't know what. What am I supposed to do?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T08:10:31.693" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19556" CreationDate="2015-11-01T17:18:10.890" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The style I default to is the AP, whether it's a work of fiction or not I prefer its readability and clarity. &lt;strong&gt;In this case, dispense with the hyphen&lt;/strong&gt;, if you &lt;em&gt;explicity need&lt;/em&gt; your audience to pronounce it &quot;&lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (in their heads), &lt;strong&gt;spell that out on second ref--completely define the acronym on first ref.&lt;/strong&gt; The exception being extremely well-known ac's, such as the IRS. Apparently MHART is not in this class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here is how I'd introduce the organization--&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Matriarchal Harvest Alliance for Research and Tig-welding&lt;/strong&gt; was one of the many political coalitions Bill railed against to anyone who would listen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The MHART (he pronounced it &quot;&lt;em&gt;em&lt;/em&gt;-&lt;em&gt;heart&lt;/em&gt;,&quot;) is a complete sham,&quot; he said. &quot;All they do is share recipes for egg-salad and program auto-dialers to scare low-income parts of South Chicago right before general elections.&quot;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T17:18:10.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19554" CreationDate="2015-11-01T18:39:02.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'll toss out a few improvised lines to answer (the caveat being that I'm &quot;working clean&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using some historical references and varying degrees of awfulness --&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nobody, I mean not a single person, still had the anything that you or I would call &quot;modesty&quot; before the [some seminal event in your plot]. &quot;60 Minutes,&quot; was now &quot;60 minutes of hard-core porn,&quot; Reality TV had been replaced in toto by live-cams inside our prisons, prostitution was not only legal, but state-sponsored, amphetamine replaced wine as a &quot;polite thing to bring to a party,&quot; and The Supreme Court was replaced by &quot;The Supreme Ring,&quot; where complainants and defendants dueled in a Coliseum (which was, naturally, live-streamed on YouTube and brought to you by Fox Sports DC and The SEO Corporation for Public Leering)&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;We'd slipped from bad to worse in terms of morality. This was no 20s-era speakeasy-style &quot;socially-acceptable&quot; moonshine-swilling, this was 60s-era wanton binge-&lt;strong&gt;drugging&lt;/strong&gt; that would make Timothy Leary blush.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;When I say violence is now slipping to unheard-of lows, I mean that it had jumped off our big-screens and landed squarely on the street-corner. It was no longer a spectator sport -- everyone was involved with assault and murder on some level. &lt;strong&gt;Everyone&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the actual (specifics) of the dopings and beatings above are &quot;danced-around.&quot; &lt;strong&gt;How BAD is this fictional society?&lt;/strong&gt; I'll throw out one more to wrap a hypothetical &quot;debauchery-slipped-nonspecific&quot; culture in the key of gallows humor--this line sums it up as severely &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; descriptively as possible. it's offensive as heck yet technically &quot;clean.' -- if nothing it gets the point across...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;When I say we'd reached a new low in terms of debauchery, I can't overstate the cultural plague if I tried. [Fictional Setting#4477b] made Auschwitz seem like a Carnival Cruise.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(plz note--this writer is himself Jewish and does not make the comparison lightly, which is not to say I don't find it absurd enough to make for a good &quot;extreme-answer,&quot; or that I didn't get an ill-advised chuckle at my own neurosis when I wrote it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see, if &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; isn't horrific enough, &lt;em&gt;your setting is beyond my improvised-ability to describe sans adult-language.&lt;/em&gt; At worst, the young reader MAY need to have a discussion with his parent regarding The Holocaust and/or Carnival Cruise Lines...which is a good (&amp;amp; educational) conversation to have, &lt;em&gt;nu?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(substitute &quot;KOA Kampground&quot; for &quot;carnival&quot; if you don't jive with comparing a &quot;city&quot; to a &quot;boat,&quot; I just liked the way line rolled off my tongue) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastEditorUserId="15292" LastEditDate="2015-11-02T23:19:07.503" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T23:19:07.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19570" CreationDate="2015-11-01T21:38:29.767" Score="-4" ViewCount="6876" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand there is some overlap between the two concepts, but I don't understand the distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15082" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T01:29:43.763" Title="What is the difference between yellow journalism and sensationalism?" Tags="|journalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-11-09T21:19:13.787" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19433" CreationDate="2015-11-02T03:41:46.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I read &lt;strong&gt;Chicago&lt;/strong&gt;, it appears that the journal in your example is italicized and the pamphlets are in quotes. However, this proves problematic if: 1) the journal itself is part of some larger series, like an encyclopedia, or 2) the pamphlets have individually named chapters that are referred to. &lt;strong&gt;Chicago&lt;/strong&gt; encourages creative but consistent solutions to such problems. The &lt;strong&gt;AP Style Guide&lt;/strong&gt; is more thorough with specific examples, but I always had that &quot;do it this way or else&quot; feel about it.&#xA;My example:&#xA;In PLANTING ENCYCLOPEDIA, &lt;em&gt;Best House Plants&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;Begonias,&quot; &lt;strong&gt;Fertilizers&lt;/strong&gt;. &#xA;Although, naming a section rather than a page range seems unnecessary in any example I can think of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-03-01T16:07:19.130" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T16:07:19.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19564" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19565" CreationDate="2015-11-02T12:42:53.853" Score="5" ViewCount="3412" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a long form fiction item. In this one of the characters will quote the first stanza from a poem. Normally with speech, one opens quotes, adds the text, and closes quotes. However I do not wish to run the lines of the poem on to each other as I would like the reader to be able to appreciate the poem too. Thus far this has never been a problem as when citing poems; I format them as the author has, as inserts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing that would have every line opening with quotes (but not closing) which I feel would look silly but not having the new paragraph/line quotes would break standard... ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I present the poem being quoted and make it clear that it is the character speaking without making the poem hard to read in  way that a publisher would find acceptable and a reader would not find confusing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR - I want a character to quote a poem in speech and have the poem still read as such, while maintaining standard dialogue formatting.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-13T03:44:59.880" LastActivityDate="2019-04-13T03:44:59.880" Title="Having a character quote an entire stanza of a poem" Tags="|style|formatting|citations|poetry|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19564" CreationDate="2015-11-02T14:12:09.720" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Format it the same way, with blockquote indents, and if you can add a little dialogue before and after, you don't have to worry about weird quote mark placement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bilbo stood and cleared his throat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I have a new poem for you all,&quot; he announced. &quot;It goes thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;All that is gold does not glitter,&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Not all those who wander are lost;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;The old that is strong does not wither,&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Deep roots are not reached by the frost.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;From the ashes a fire shall be woken,&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;A light from the shadows shall spring;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Renewed shall be blade that was broken,&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;The crownless again shall be king.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that, of course, is for our dear Estel.&quot; The hobbit bowed in the direction of the ranger, who lifted his pipe in acknowledgement of the song.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's not &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; long you can also put the poem in italics, but I wouldn't do that for more than a dozen lines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't add extra dialogue, then just open and close the quotes at the beginning and end of the poem (in this example, &quot;All&quot; and &quot;king&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T14:12:09.720" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19554" CreationDate="2015-11-02T17:21:58.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could always elide the worst bits because &lt;em&gt;the characters themselves&lt;/em&gt; find them too horrible to dwell on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Honey... did they?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  She nodded slowly, a tear trickling down her cheek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage here is that it activates the reader's imagination, to produce the worst horrors each individual reader can think of.  The trick is to convince the reader that you're conveying the characters' discomfort, squeamishness, &lt;em&gt;etc.&lt;/em&gt;, not your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember an indelible scene from the original novel &lt;em&gt;The Godfather&lt;/em&gt; --not exactly a book to shy away from graphic depictions-- where Tom Hagen goes to visit a Hollywood producer.  A child actress is also there with her stage mother.  The author manages, with no actual details, to imply that the under-aged actress is being prostituted by her mother to the producer for a shot at fame.  It's all much more horrible than some of the other things that happen in the novel (murders, executions) that are described in full detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2019-05-21T17:56:22.997" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T17:56:22.997" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19540" CreationDate="2015-11-02T17:26:05.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's impossible to know for sure without seeing the paragraphs, but yes, formal writing is generally done in a &quot;neutral voice,&quot; which tends to minimize the impact of individual stylistic differences.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, a gifted writer can still manage to convey a distinctive authorial voice, even in a formal register, but unless you've striven for that, you probably won't have it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore my best guess, sight unseen, is that the difference between your friend's paragraphs and yours won't be noticeable (unless his are much better written than yours).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-11-02T17:56:15.893" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T17:56:15.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19554" CreationDate="2015-11-02T18:45:51.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can imply rather than say things with descriptions.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He picked his way down the garbage-strewn street, stepping aside to yield to an over-sized rat.  The reek of stale beer and body odor assaulted his nostrils.  He averted his eyes as he passed alleys; no good could come of that.  It was only noon, so he was not surprised that all the bars and shops (mostly bars) were still chained shut; both owners and patrons would be sleeping off last night for a few hours yet, same as always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pungent breeze pushed more trash along the pavement.  An empty condom box skipped across his path and disappeared into the litter-strewn gutter.  A fire still burned in a nearby trash can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He wondered when the tipping-point had come.  When had the cheerful days of his youth turned into...this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T18:45:51.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19562" CreationDate="2015-11-03T01:29:43.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two things are probably more similar than you think they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journalism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Yellow journalism&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is a broader term for any kind of journalism that doesn't include any actual facts or research. It can include blatantly false information, and usually relies solely on exaggeration, dramatic images and headlines, and scare tactics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sensationalism&lt;/em&gt; is exaggeration, dramatic images and headlines, and scare tactics, among other things. It's the act of trying to catch the mass public's attention with deliberately shocking, scandalous, etc. stories that may not actually be what would be considered &quot;news&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of overlap. I guess the distinction, if there is one, is that &quot;yellow journalism&quot; is a type of journalism, while &quot;sensationalism&quot; is a journalistic tactic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8558" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T01:29:43.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19540" CreationDate="2015-11-03T01:42:50.077" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chris is right in saying that a formal tone/neutral voice minimizes individual stylistic differences, but I want to caution you that the difference between the writing of a native English speaker and a non-native speaker can sometimes be fairly obvious. It's in part because non-native speakers tend to have learned grammar and style in classes, whereas native speakers pick it up naturally. The result is a difference in fluidity and construction of the sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify, are you saying that your statement combines some sections that are totally rewritten by your friend with some sections that were not rewritten, but were edited for smaller errors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be fine, but it is hard to say without looking at the whole thing. I used to proofread papers for non-native students, and I was careful to never rewrite sections of their papers because a) that's kind of plagiarism depending on how one looks at it but also b) my formal writing usually sounds different from their formal writing. I would recommend that you have a third party look at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8558" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T01:42:50.077" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19572" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19582" CreationDate="2015-11-03T02:19:05.237" Score="2" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a modern fiction drama in an urban setting. I'm trying to be real in terms of conversation threads--music, movies, drugs, etc. Here's my problem: I've never done a realistic modern drama before. By and large, I'm glowingly positive of the references the characters make (and yet trying hard not appearing to be obviously doing so), but I was wondering if anyone has experience with this. Of course, I'm a poor-as-dirt artist, so I'm not so worried about getting sued as I am about a publisher not being interested without massive revisions. If you have experience, do you think there are taboo subjects? For instance, I'm staying away from anything &quot;Star Wars&quot; because I'm sure George Lucas would show up at my house with a collection box. I live in the U.S., and I'm not really looking for legal advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T23:00:59.347" Title="Making modern references" Tags="|fiction|character-development|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-03T05:11:53.590" Score="4" ViewCount="399" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am toying writing a book involving layered stories: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is Manuscript A, written by a character, which is an ostensibly real account/diary of an incident she experienced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the fictional world, the character publishes Manuscript A, which is met with much acclaim, and a second edition of the work is issued, complete with a preface, a praise page, introduction, footnotes, appendices, etc. This edition is the book the reader will have in their hands. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how far the reader can be lead into believing that the trimmings introduced in the second edition are 'real', as in being external to Manuscript A, as in being from 'real' people in our own world. If the trimmings are known to be fiction (such as by an explicit statement on the book sleeve or back cover), then Manuscript A is known to be fictional. However, if there is nothing that indicates that the trimmings are not in fact 'real', then the reader may not know for certain whether the events of Manuscript A are real or not, as this is the subject of debate within the fictional 'real' world, and is mentioned in the introduction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would a publisher handle such a situation?  Is it possible to maintain this extra dimension to the story? What obligation does the writer have to the reader? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15760" LastActivityDate="2021-12-08T18:35:58.207" Title="Presenting Fiction as Non-Fiction" Tags="|fiction|publishing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19572" CreationDate="2015-11-03T05:44:00.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I get it... &lt;em&gt;that's the way people talk!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;&lt;em&gt;especially movie quotes.&lt;/em&gt; &#xA;if someone doesn't 'get' one of my &lt;em&gt;Patrick Bateman quotes&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Silence of the Lambs quotes/references&lt;/em&gt;, they have no business hanging out with me (being close to Halloween ... these examples come to mind)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Do you like Huey Lewis &amp;amp; The News?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;[Fredericka Bimmel] ... &lt;em&gt;oh yeah...was she like ... a big fat chick?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;these sort of quotes are so tightly bound to popular culture; as you've assumed there is no real legal risk in having your characters drop quotes or lines from songs in their dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;they aren't &lt;em&gt;&quot;significant enough in comparison to the body of the original work,&quot;&lt;/em&gt; to be legitimately actionable; ok that's the only phrase in legal-ese in this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if you'll recall, &lt;em&gt;Silvio Dante&lt;/em&gt; aka The Soprano Family Consigliere aka &lt;em&gt;the bass player from The E-Street Band&lt;/em&gt; was constantly dropping quotes from &quot;*The Godfather&quot; trilogy in the script. My assumption is that David Chase wrote in Steven Van Zant's &lt;em&gt;over&lt;/em&gt;-referencing of the film because Van Zant dropped these lines &lt;em&gt;all the time to amuse himself and Chase picked on its organic useful-ness in the writing of this series.&lt;/em&gt; At no time would Chase Films or HBO be under any threat of &#xA;litigation for this... if anything the copyright holders probably saw revenue off the &quot;modern references,&quot; bringing a whole new generation into the fold of people who love (and quote) the films, especially the 1st two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;By definition; nothing should ever be &quot;off-limits&quot; to a writer. Topics are bounded only by the writer&lt;/strong&gt; (and editor/mktg/publisher/legal/proofreader as appl)&#xA;only limits I have for myself is that the idea of kids getting hurt really bothers me, so it's rare that a fictional character in one of my stories would do this; even one designed to be despicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, of course, doesn't stop me in my non-fiction work from attacking what we call &quot;blue-banders&quot; or &quot;cho-mo's&quot; in the LA/OC Metro area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that I define the &quot;progressive, open-minded thinker&quot; that is only an extreme conservative when it comes to The Constitution. &lt;strong&gt;Therefore; taboo subjects do not exist.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the more your characters speak like &lt;strong&gt;real&lt;/strong&gt; people do, &lt;em&gt;on the street, in the present&lt;/em&gt;, the more &lt;em&gt;understandishable&lt;/em&gt; your dialogs be...and the more your audience connect with your characters on a realistic/emotional level. if any of this makes sense you're on the right track, Stu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastEditorUserId="15292" LastEditDate="2015-11-03T05:49:43.550" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T05:49:43.550" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="295" CreationDate="2015-11-03T06:17:42.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Listen to old radio clips of the following--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Opie &amp;amp; Anthony Show&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Phil Hendrie Show&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stern was exceptionally funny too...until somewhere around the turn of the millenia he simply stopped trying (or showing up to work that much...&lt;em&gt;hoo-hoo&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OnA were especially on fire comedically when they added li'l Jimmy Norton and gave him '3rd chair,' (which was also done by Stern in the form of Jackie Martling and later Artie Fine, who are NOT as funny as li'l jimmy...&lt;em&gt;hoo-hoo).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;fill-ins on the 3rd chair (and/or guests) on the OnA show is a who's who of guys that can bring the funny. There were absolutely no constraints on the content and Greg Hughes created an environment where funny-guys could snap out of the usual &quot;plug my next show at this radio station&quot; and create priceless moments - almost always improvised. guys like Louis CK, Bill Burr, Anthony Jeselnik, Bob Levy and Patrice O'Neal. (RIP Patrice!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hendrie is bit more abstract than all of them -- you have to &lt;em&gt;REALLY&lt;/em&gt; be thinking to get (and keep track of) how many levels and &lt;em&gt;in how many ways&lt;/em&gt; his improv is hysterical.  Best if you can get ahold of his KFI/Clear Channel recordings when he was doing syndicated drive-time and took live calls. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T06:17:42.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19577" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-03T12:28:15.847" Score="1" ViewCount="579" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am two thirds through writing my novel and just wondered if any writer out there-wannabe like me or published has ever sent a manuscript from UK to agent based in the States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&#xA;Eleanor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15767" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T20:09:31.263" Title="Do US literary agents accept manuscripts from UK?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19572" CreationDate="2015-11-03T13:02:44.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another way of thinking is that many writers avoid references to pop culture for fear of dating their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were watching a Humphrey Bogart movie and it referred to President Roosevelt, you would go, &quot;Wow! That's a long time ago!&quot; Because their is no such reference in Casablanca, it is a timeless classic, despite being set in word war II.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My $.02 worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T13:02:44.983" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19573" CreationDate="2015-11-03T15:22:09.737" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This technique is called &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;meta-fiction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and there are those, including myself, who really enjoy it when done well.  I think it defeats the purpose, however, if you try to make it too realistic.  Then that's just deception.  You'll also want your &quot;trimmings&quot; to be considerably more entertaining and engaging than the real versions typically are, otherwise you'll just lose your readers.  You'll want to spend some time thinking about the goal and purpose of having those things in there.  They'll really need to have some crucial info hidden in them to make it worth anyone's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as gaining the trust of the reader, I think you'll just need to rely on suspension of disbelief --&lt;strong&gt;you want your reader to accept the reality of what you present &lt;em&gt;even while knowing it to be a fiction&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  I &lt;a href=&quot;http://popculturephilosopher.com/reconstructivist-art/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;remember reading&lt;/a&gt; William Goldman's &lt;em&gt;Princess Bride,&lt;/em&gt;, which is presented as an abridgement of a longer original text.  Although his meta-fictional elements are not particularly realistic, I nonetheless was drawn enough into his world that I lost track of the fact that the &quot;original text&quot; didn't actually exist, and began to be annoyed at the author's choices in his &quot;abridgment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of not losing the reader, or risking them skipping your &quot;trimmings,&quot; &lt;strong&gt;you have to engage them from the first sentence&lt;/strong&gt;. Here are some compelling meta-fictional opening sentences: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.&quot; (&lt;em&gt;The Princess Bride&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. (&lt;em&gt;The Left Hand of Darkness&lt;/em&gt;, Le Guin).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;THE MULE: It was after the fall of the First Foundation that the constructive aspects of the Mule's regime took shape.&quot; (&lt;em&gt;Second Foundation&lt;/em&gt;, Asimov) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.&quot; (&lt;em&gt;The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy&lt;/em&gt;, Adams). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Philip Guedalla informs us that the novel &lt;em&gt;The Approach to al-Mu'tasim&lt;/em&gt; by the Bombay barrister Mir Bahadur Ali 'is a rather uneasy combination of those Islamic allegories which never fail to impress their own translators, and of that brand of detective stories which inevitably outdoes even Dr Watson and heightens the horror of human life...'&quot; (&quot;The Approach to al-Mu'Tasim,&quot; Borges)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2019-02-21T16:23:53.590" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T16:23:53.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="297" CreationDate="2015-11-03T15:57:48.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say yes because the more people can read it, the more feedback you can get that could help you with writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15386" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T15:57:48.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-03T16:02:01.937" Score="5" ViewCount="1442" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the books I have written, I've always been shy to show my friends. I don't want them to think poorly of me with what I write. Any advice that could help me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15386" LastEditorUserId="39219" LastEditDate="2023-01-18T22:54:41.350" LastActivityDate="2023-01-18T22:54:41.350" Title="I'm too shy to let my friends read my books" Tags="|book|feedback|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19572" CreationDate="2015-11-03T16:05:38.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, the more current a reference, the quicker it goes stale.  But that isn't necessarily a reason not to do it.  Plato's work is crammed with pop-culture references, and people still read him 2000 years later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lawyer, but I see no reason you would get in trouble via pop culture references unless you're libeling someone, using someone else's character in your work, or quoting a significant portion of someone's else's writing (&lt;em&gt;i.e&lt;/em&gt; more than one quick phrase).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, lawyers follow the money.  In practice, you most likely wouldn't get sued unless you wrote a best-seller or if you were referencing a property that gets misappropriated so often that it's worth having someone on retainer to seek out unauthorized usages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T16:05:38.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19581" CreationDate="2015-11-03T16:11:40.103" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of this might sound cliche, but it's what I often cling to when I'm feeling insecure about letting anyone look at something I'm working on. That being said, even experienced writers often have trouble letting go of their work. Writers are typically predisposed to keeping everything they've created under lock-and-key until it's absolutely &lt;em&gt;perfect&lt;/em&gt;. The problem for most writers is that it's difficult (and often impossible) to ever feel as if something is good enough to be seen by anyone. Personally nothing has made me feel more vulnerable than sending a Google doc off to someone, knowing that I'm bound to have dozens of comments on every little detail, most of which I hadn't even considered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've alluded to being shy about sending your books to your friends to read, and you're completely justified in feeling that way. However, the reality is that unfortunately, you can't control how people react to your writing. And in a lot of ways, that's really, really good news. Even better, if your friends represent the audience you'd ultimately like your books to reach on a larger scale, their feedback will help you shape future drafts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there isn't really any hard-and-fast advice I can give about how to remedy your anxiety. But, I'd encourage you to be brave and send it off for review, especially if you have a group of friends you trust with giving you constructive feedback (even if it's not what you want to hear). If you have a feeling your &quot;friends&quot; will rip into your work just for the sake of having a bit of fun at your expense, find a different group to get feedback from. Writers groups are fairly easy to find online, and because most of us are of a similarly sensitive mindset, there's a great deal of solidarity to be found when you're asking for help from people who have been (and are still) in your shoes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15693" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T16:11:40.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19584" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-03T17:51:13.310" Score="3" ViewCount="3967" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I use Scrivener I tend to have quite a deep hierarchy of documents. Often, I'll use a child document for notes that I will write up in its parent document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, when I view by project in Group Mode, the word count of every sub-document is included in the &quot;Total Words&quot; column for a given document. How can I change this so that certain sub-documents (e.g., the &quot;notes&quot; documents described above) are excluded from the &quot;Total Words&quot; column?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15770" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-11-05T18:19:17.110" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T08:46:15.857" Title="Can you do a &quot;selective&quot; word count in Scrivener?" Tags="|tools|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19581" CreationDate="2015-11-03T18:55:51.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try finding a local writing group or a writing class. The former can help both your skill and confidence, though they often run the risk of turning into mutual appreciation societies (which still could be useful for overcoming anxiety about showing off your work); the latter can feel really brutal, but it's not so bad when you're mostly dealing with people you don't know outside of the class and who are &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; having their work scrutinised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5765" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T18:55:51.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19577" CreationDate="2015-11-03T20:03:39.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you're writing and where you're hoping to have it sold. Is it more suited for a British or an American audience, and do you want first launch in the UK or the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agents are experts in the rights, laws, and industry in their own country. That's where they know the demands and market trends and have their connections, which is why international rights are often handled by international sub-agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're hoping a US agent can help you get published by a British publisher, that could be tough. It'll be much harder for them to sell your book in a country they're not familiar with, and harder to keep in touch with you. Forget face-to-face meetings, but even phone calls can get a little tricky with a 5-hour time difference. When they're being flooded with equally good submissions from the US, they may choose to go with the more straightforward route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for a North American publisher and your book has a British feel to it, it's possible that there may not be takers. It depends on what publishers feel audiences will respond to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think in general, you'll have better luck with agents in your own country. But I know it can be somewhat easier to research US agents than UK ones. I don't think it really hurts that much to try, and overseas acceptances &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8558" LastEditorUserId="8558" LastEditDate="2015-11-03T20:09:31.263" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T20:09:31.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19581" CreationDate="2015-11-03T22:47:36.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could post it online anonymously or under a pseudonym, on Reddit perhaps, and then if you don't want to, you never have to associate yourself with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15773" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T22:47:36.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19572" CreationDate="2015-11-03T23:00:59.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Legally, short quotes from someone else's work are almost always &quot;fair use&quot; and shouldn't cause you copyright trouble. If you are quoting an entire song, or many pages out of a book, then you can get into trouble. But having a character say &quot;Wow, he looks like Darth Vader&quot; is almost certainly not something you can be sued over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you and others note, having characters make pop culture references can certainly make a story sound more &quot;real&quot;. And it can be a convenient shorthand. A reference to a well-known song or movie can bring all sorts of images to the reader's mind with one sentence or even a couple of words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are at least three drawbacks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One: As others have mentioned, pop culture references get dated very quickly. Ten years ago Britney Spears was a huge sensation. Do kids today know who she is? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two: References that are instantly recognizable to you and your friends will be totally unfamiliar to other people. I'm an old man. I have no idea what singers are popular with teenagers today. Rap fans probably couldn't name top country stars and vice versa. Etc. Maybe your potential readers will all be people with musical, cinematic, whatever tastes the same as yours. But you could be shutting out a lot of people who could have enjoyed your story, but who will give it up in frustration because the culture references make no sense to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three: Personally, I find large numbers of cultural references tedious. I quickly find myself saying, &quot;Yeah, yeah, I get it, you like horror movies. Are you trying to tell a story or just drop a bunch of lines from your favorite movies?&quot; I don't know how many others feel the same way, maybe that's just me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T23:00:59.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19589" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-03T23:24:31.757" Score="2" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to the world of writing, and was initially surprised to read on some publishing advice website (eek) that authors should use social media to interact with readers and promote their books. How does this really play out in practice? Do publishers see more potential in you if you maintain a blog or have an active online presence? Is this essential for success? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15760" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-22T03:53:21.623" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T03:53:21.623" Title="How do publishers expect authors to use social media to promote their books?" Tags="|publishing|marketing|social-media|first-time-author|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19581" CreationDate="2015-11-04T01:00:49.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nobody else has mentioned it, so I'll be the bad guy.  Your grammar is problematic, if this post is any indication.  You may benefit from a patient editor.  Your profile places you as high school aged.  If you have a rapport with any of your teachers, you might ask him or her to do a close read of five or ten pages.  If it comes back heavily marked up, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White is clear and brief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're shy about showing your friends, that's not necessarily a bad thing.  Kids can be horrible.  How mortified would you be if someone in your circle leaked your writing to an unsympathetic audience, such as the school at large?  Find an on-line writers group so that you can solicit insightful critiques without the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feedback helps.  The positive gives you confidence.  The negative thickens your skin and helps you improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15776" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T01:00:49.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19591" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19595" CreationDate="2015-11-04T07:36:29.910" Score="1" ViewCount="5414" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have asked a question like this before &lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/49388/26826&quot;&gt;in Workplace&lt;/a&gt;, but this time is only about diagrams specifically, and on formal work generally. Some answers in there say that I can use the Venn diagram if I make it less childish (drawing by a program, not by hand).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really like to increasing productivity and efficiency. In his book &lt;em&gt;The Back of The Napkin&lt;/em&gt;, Dan Roam argues that to pictures is a power tool to solving problems and selling ideas. I have seen pictures used in solving problem works (e.g. research papers), but never seen them in formal selling idea works (e.g. cover letter, SOP). I want to know if adding them in any formal writing is good or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, when talking in a cover letter about how relevant the field I study and the skills the job require, I think using this Venn diagram is effective (imagine this is drawn by a program):&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mpBaE.png&quot; alt=&quot;image description&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now, in the personal statement I will use to apply to a grad school, when I talking about how I work smart, not work hard, it is best to illustrating the point with this:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wjwjZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;image description&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let alone the space they require, what do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11428" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:50.297" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T17:49:03.067" Title="Should I put diagrams into a formal essay?" Tags="|essay|tone|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19274" CreationDate="2015-11-04T11:41:42.620" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE recommends excluding them except in situations where it is legally required (e g., paid, competitive advertising or if you work for the company).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T11:41:42.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19584" CreationDate="2015-11-04T16:20:25.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simplyscrivener.com/features/project-statistics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; which might offer some insight. There are several things which differ between Scrivener for Mac and Windows (at least, it think there are), though they're very close. It might help you locate the information you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can change what Scrivener is counting to a degree (quote from the post):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you want to modify how your statistics are calculated go to Project-&gt;Project Statistics and click options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps get you going in the right direction at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T16:20:25.460" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19591" CreationDate="2015-11-04T16:33:31.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few relevant factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use diagrams when they add value&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see plenty of formal writing that includes diagrams -- technical flow diagrams, trend graphs, timelines, resource-allocation charts, and more.  The main question you should be asking yourself is: does this diagram add value?  Does it make my point more clearly, compactly, or persuasively than words would?  If so, consider adding the diagram.  (I don't think your proposed diagrams add value, though.  More on this later.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;But follow conventions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing an analysis piece on recent elections for the press (for example), charts showing voter breakdowns in the sectors or demographics you're talking about are probably normal, maybe even expected.  If you're writing a journal article, conventions vary but you can easily find out what the norm is -- look at other published examples and see what kinds and quantities of diagrams are used.  And if you're writing for your own blog, you can of course do whatever you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned cover letters and school applications.  In my experience, diagrams are &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; rare in these contexts.  (I don't see a lot of school applications these days, but I see a lot of cover letters and I've never, ever seen a diagram in one.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Know when you should blaze a new path anyway&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what I've said thus far, you should be very, very reluctant to use diagrams in cover letters and school applications.  But that doesn't mean &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt;; there could be exceptions.  If the diagram &lt;em&gt;really is&lt;/em&gt; the best way to present &lt;em&gt;relevant&lt;/em&gt; information, and doing so &lt;em&gt;demonstrates a quality being sought&lt;/em&gt; (maybe you're applying for a design or marketing position), then you could consider adding diagrams anyway.  Your application will stand out; you want it to stand out for a good reason and not a bad one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Finally: about your diagrams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of the examples you've shown here, I personally wouldn't include them.  Your diagrams don't convey meaningful information; you seem to want to use them as decorations.  The second one supplements what will presumably be text explaining &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you work smart (so the diagram doesn't add anything); the first one is actually a bit of a mystery to me and I can't tell what point you're trying to make, but even if I could, you'd probably be better off making that point in words like other cover letters do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T16:33:31.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19591" CreationDate="2015-11-04T16:53:27.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what Monica Cellio said, whose answer I'd take to heart given that it is rife with solid reasoning, if you decide to include charts or diagrams in school applications and/or cover letters, be very careful how large you make them and the amount of visual prominence you give them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't Let the Graphic Replace Your Writing...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you make the diagrams cover too much of the page, then it will appear as if you're not taking the writing task seriously and are supplanting the necessary task of writing with a gimmick. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't Let the Graphic Distract From your Writing...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same result will easily be created if you give too much visual prominence to the included graphic. If you make the graphic a header element or occupying the full width of the page then the information in the graphic had better be 20x more interesting than the text that would have gone there. Why? When you change the accepted format and force people to review that change, then you are automatically relying on the reviewer to go along with your ideas. But, this is often a very poor assumption and people can be reticent to change or too tired or distracted. So, if you're going to force a change, then what you present has to compensate for the irritation engendered when the reviewer has to now accommodate your new rules of the cover letter or application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consider Your Audience...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, and along the lines of the logic above, your graphic has to undoubtedly prove or forward your goals. It has the be presented in such a way that anyone looking at it will understand why it was included and subsequently agree with your decision. This is a difficult litmus test, but an important one because once you send out your written material you have no control over who looks at it and what mood or state they're in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't considered how your audience will respond to the graphics... don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13997" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T16:53:27.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19598" CreationDate="2015-11-04T17:23:42.627" Score="5" ViewCount="476" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was directed to the writers stackexchange from the English/grammar forums. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel in present-tense. If all the actions are in the present-tense, e.g. as the character is experiencing them, does the phrase, &quot;I spend the next few hours pondering about it&quot; make sense then? Doesn't it seem like a flashback instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know in past-tense this would be no problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15787" LastEditorUserId="15787" LastEditDate="2015-11-05T17:46:23.850" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T17:46:23.850" Title="In present-tense narrative, does &quot;I spend the NEXT few hours...&quot; make sense?" Tags="|style|grammar|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19596" CreationDate="2015-11-04T18:29:46.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems fine, just make sure that you pick up the timeline of events at the end of the 'few hours' spent pondering, or provide detail of relevant events or thoughts inside that window of pondering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flashback version of the sentence would be: &quot;I spent the last few hours pondering about it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13997" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T18:29:46.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19596" CreationDate="2015-11-04T18:30:16.087" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of the problems I have with writing in present tense, and why it can be difficult for authors to do it well. There are just certain narrative constructions that don't really work when trying to put them together in present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you can accomplish what you're trying to do by telling it from the other side, time-wise. Instead of what your original sentence does which is use time A as &quot;now&quot; and states that the character is thinking &lt;em&gt;until&lt;/em&gt; time B, try using time B as &quot;now&quot; and have the character realize they've been thinking &lt;em&gt;since&lt;/em&gt; time A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three hours I've been sitting here, lost in my thoughts, and I'm no closer to figuring out what I should do than when I started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6851" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T18:30:16.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19596" CreationDate="2015-11-04T18:46:31.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only issue I have with it is that it sounds bookish — it's a narrative device. So if your character is &lt;em&gt;telling&lt;/em&gt; this story to the reader, even if it's in the present, you'd be okay. You can particularly get away with more when it's a first-person present-tense POV, because the narration is &quot;spoken&quot; in the character's voice, and you have more flexibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I stare at John, the fall of light on his hair, wonder if it would be okay if I approached him. I spend the next few hours pondering about it, until Molly finds me at the café still staring at the table where he'd been sitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if it's a third-person present-tense POV, I wouldn't use it. It would throw me out of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He stares at John and the fall of light on his hair, wondering if it would be okay if he approached him. He spends the next few hours pondering about it, until Molly finds him at the café still staring at the table where John had been sitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T18:46:31.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19596" CreationDate="2015-11-04T20:56:46.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a simple rewrite of the sentence will solve your problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Over the next few hours, I think about what life might be like living in Hawaii. I could be surfing waves, but instead, I'm cleaning grease traps for Pizza Hut.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you're inherently messing with your timeline with the expression &quot;next few hours.&quot; It will push you into present perfect or future tenses--or just sound awkward and slow down your reader. You can roll with it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I ponder it, and I ponder it some more. In fact, hours slip by thinking about that North Coast surf and the pina colada sunsets.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T20:56:46.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4811" CreationDate="2015-11-04T21:27:14.367" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it would make the most sense to use the primary language in quotations, because as the previous answer stated, using too many italics would end up making the literature seem cluttered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15790" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T21:27:14.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19581" CreationDate="2015-11-05T08:02:11.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's logical to be afraid. You worry of their critique, if they're going to be rude to you… Hell, if they're going to stop being your friends, just because they may feel offended! (Hopefully not.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I think is that you have to trust that they––no matter how they choose to regard your work, because let's face it, to each their own––will stay your friends and keep their professional opinion apart from their friendly recognition of who you are anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll be fine. No worries––keep happy that you have something to show at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-.. .-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10834" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T08:02:11.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19604" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19643" CreationDate="2015-11-05T08:35:02.933" Score="1" ViewCount="5336" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coming from the World of Screenwriting, it proves difficult for me to discern the usage of parentheticals from the usage of stage directions in a play I'm writing. I need to know which is for what and when is it appropriate to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    ACT I&#xA;&#xA;    Scene 1&#xA;&#xA;    We are on the greenery of a park where a brisk, bright, windy       afternoon greets each of the following people sitting at the chairs:&#xA;&#xA;    Enter Stage Left a female jogger, thirty-two, who has her chihuahua wrapped up in matching exercise clothing, tempts the dog into whimpering with some raw salmon.&#xA;&#xA;    Female Jogger&#xA;&#xA;            Who's a cutie pie? Who's a cutie pie? Sit, girl.&#xA;&#xA;                    (The dog sits.)&#xA;&#xA;            Jump.&#xA;&#xA;                    (The dog jumps. The female jogger lifts the dog in her hands.)&#xA;&#xA;            Kick your heels!&#xA;&#xA;                    (She wiggles the dog in a way that allows the dog to clasp her paws.)&#xA;&#xA;            Good girl! Good girl! Here's your treat!&#xA;&#xA;                    (Enter Stage Right a business woman, also in her early 30s, carrying a messenger bag, Starbucks mocha latte and Chanel sunglasses. She seems to be contesting back-and-forth on an important phone call.&#xA;&#xA;    Business Woman&#xA;&#xA;                    (on the phone)&#xA;&#xA;            No, no, no… I told you, Marissa, the realtor is supposed to owe us five grand. You make her… you make him--listen to me!… I know that we're late for that but what can I do, I'm at work. I'll call you later, okay? Yeah, whatever… Alright, alright, &quot;love&quot; you too!… Bye, Mom.&#xA;&#xA;                    (disgruntled, the Business woman sits like a prissy kindergartner and opens her laptop. She starts to sip her coffee but near drops it at how hot it is.)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-.. .-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10834" LastEditorUserId="10834" LastEditDate="2015-11-05T08:40:33.330" LastActivityDate="2018-09-19T15:31:15.763" Title="Playwriting: What is the difference between parentheticals and stage directions?" Tags="|style|screenwriting|playwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19606" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19613" CreationDate="2015-11-05T11:48:12.343" Score="2" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per the title I compared my system against two other systems separately but I'm worried about it coming across as that it was a three way comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of the below titles convey what I want to, what is the best way to word a comparison such as this or would it be better being split into two chapters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Comparison of egocentric camera vs. static camera vs. dense sensor placement.&#xA;&#xA;Comparison of egocentric camera against static camera and dense sensor placement.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15798" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T21:09:31.507" Title="Wording of comparing X vs Y and X vs Z but not X vs Y vs Z" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|titles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7496" CreationDate="2015-11-05T12:38:15.410" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way computer programs count words (and the way we should, also) is that every 4 characters = &quot;1 word&quot;. For a hand-written document, if you don't want to literally count out every 4-character bunch on every page, do one or two pages, and then use that as an 'average' word count per page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15800" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T12:38:15.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19608" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-05T17:44:48.863" Score="2" ViewCount="717" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written four poems and will keep writing more. How many should I put under one collection, and around how many pages should it be? Any ideas on how I should go about the self publication process? I'm totally new to this whole system, it'll be my first publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15806" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T07:45:19.563" Title="Self publishing a collection of poems" Tags="|self-publishing|poetry|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19606" CreationDate="2015-11-05T18:04:38.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Here, we see that the egocentric camera is being compared with either the static camera or the dense sensor placement.&quot; You can also add &quot;Please note that this is not a comparison between the static camera and dense sensor placement. Such a comparison is inappropriate because ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T18:04:38.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19608" CreationDate="2015-11-05T19:14:30.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't really advise you on how many poems you need. This is determined by your purpose, audience and how many you can produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can tell you that if you plan out your publication so that it only has to be printed and bound that will be a lot cheaper than if you just present the text to be printed. For example, my wife and I produced a charity poetry anthology of about sixty pages. We sent the pdf and colour cover to the printer and it only cost about £2 per copy for a pretty small print run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is your audience and are you expecting to sell your copies or give them away? How big do you want the print run to be? These things affect how you publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T19:14:30.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19135" CreationDate="2015-11-05T19:48:35.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A ballad is a very loosely-defined form of poetry. Most rigorously, it is essentially nothing more or less than a narrative set to music (or that is intended to be). Tave's answer runs in a specific direction with this, by enforcing a syllable structure and rhyme scheme that would make the lyrics suitable for setting to a predefined musical style, specifically folk or popular styles that use a fixed repetitive melody for several verses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your song, because it tells a story and is rhythmically inclined due to its structure, is a ballad, but it could still be so if it weren't so rigorously structured, as long as it could adequately serve as the &quot;lyrics&quot; to a piece of music, either a standard tune or a custom-written piece of music. If you wanted to label this poem a ballad in its published form, methinks nobody would argue the point too strongly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15580" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T19:48:35.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19553" CreationDate="2015-11-05T20:00:03.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can often indicate in context that the question is rhetorical, ensuring the reader will accept it as such and not seek an answer to the question in the next sentence. For instance, the words &quot;ask yourself&quot;, prefacing the question, are a common trigger phrase indicating that the asker isn't expecting to receive an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Jay that this shouldn't be overused. You can generally get away with more of it in a narrative, especially when a character is introspecting in the first person:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why am I doing this, she thought. What's the point if it's all going to come crumbling down eventually?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the context of the sentence, the reader can understand that the question isn't meant for them specifically, or for anyone else in or out of the story. The question is meant for the character asking it. The purpose in writing this introspection, however, is to make the reader place themselves in the character's shoes and ask themselves why she would do [whatever the character's doing] even though it would all come crumbling down eventually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer may be helpful to further the story, or in the reader's actual life, or maybe not, but it's an invitation by the author to the reader to get more engaged with the character and the story by thinking about what the character's doing and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, too much, and there really isn't any specific dividing line, you should just know when you've crossed it, will sound preachy, or it will sound like the author doesn't really know why his characters are doing what they're doing and is asking you to fill in the blanks of his story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15580" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T20:00:03.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19606" CreationDate="2015-11-05T21:09:31.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The clarifier you want is &quot;respectively.&quot; It's fine in running copy, or even as a caption, but clunks as a header. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Comparison of egocentric camera against static camera and dense sensor placement, respectively&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a headline, you might try emphasizing the idea that there are two comparisons with some redundancy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Comparisons of Egocentric Camera vs. Static Camera and vs. Dense Sensor Placement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T21:09:31.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19615" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-06T00:11:29.043" Score="0" ViewCount="595" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write a &lt;a href=&quot;https://eyesofablacksheep.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fairly informal, opinionated blog&lt;/a&gt; about a variety of subjects, politics, relationships, mental well being, general life observations etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to make my writing more concise - to convey my ideas in a nice bite sized package. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering about whether one writing trope I use is necessary - 'I would argue...', 'One could argue...', 'One might suggest...', 'One way of looking at this...'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would argue that the best way to genuinely meet people is to join social groups - reading groups, dance groups etc. Online dating should be relegated to a simple pick me in your down time - while relaxing in the evenings, or riding the bus to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is clearly an opinion I hold, rather a backed up fact about the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it were backed by academic research, I would explictly state that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;eg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One study showed that... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is - how necessary is it for me to qualify the statement with the opening 'I would argue'/'One could argue'? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example - could I just say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The best way to genuinely meet people is to join social groups - reading groups, dance groups etc. Online dating should be relegated to a simple pick me in your down time - while relaxing in the evenings, or riding the bus to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess what it comes down to is the tone of your writing and how you want the writing to be perceived by your audience. For example if you're wanting to come across as confident and knowledgeable, for example in a sales pitch, you might drop the qualifier, whereas more approachable and inviting debate you might use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the question is - are there examples where the use of the qualifier is effective - and not effective? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14366" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T18:50:56.810" Title="'I would argue that ABC.' vs 'ABC.'" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19608" CreationDate="2015-11-06T01:13:57.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on whether you want the title of your book, along with your name, on the spine. With anything under 100 pages, it would be difficult: too thin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you want the book to look presentable, you should have at least 30 poems. More is better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15812" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T01:13:57.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19573" CreationDate="2015-11-06T01:57:17.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Michael Crichton also used this method as well - often framing his stories as  reports from government documents or interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15813" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T01:57:17.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19620" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-06T10:44:59.963" Score="0" ViewCount="545" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to know How Much Dialogue Is Too Much Dialogue ? I'm writing chapter and i can't really seem to trim my dialogues since my all 4 of my characters are to talk to each other and interact with their surroundings as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example the current scene i'm writing is that Lord Cutler is&#xA;  meeting with his rival Lord Graham. As they both start a fencing match&#xA;  they repeatedly start to insult and ridicule the other person while&#xA;  their squires cheer them on while insulting their opposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do i mix dialogue and describe the thrilling match between the 2 lords. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15814" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T03:58:06.873" Title="How Much Dialogue Is Too Much Dialogue" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|dialogue|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19620" CreationDate="2015-11-06T11:08:46.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're probably too close to the scene to tell. My suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Write the scene with whatever dialogue you think is necessary. Put it in a drawer and don't look at it for at least a month. Then pick it up and read it cold. Make notes of where you can't tell who's speaking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Hand the scene to one or more friends. Ask them to tell you what they can and can't follow, or where they feel it needs more narration interspersed with dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3a) If you're still struggling, find four friends and cast them as the lords and squires and have them ad-lib the scene. Record it on your phone. Play it back and write down not just what they say, but what the actors are &lt;em&gt;doing&lt;/em&gt;. How often do they stop trash-talking and just whack at each other? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3b) If that's not logistically possible, watch old swashbuckling films like &lt;em&gt;The Adventures of Robin Hood&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Captain Blood&lt;/em&gt; &amp;mdash; early stuff from Errol Flynn is great &amp;mdash; and pay attention to the sword-fighting scenes. Flynn and Basil Rathbone have a great extended sword fight at the end of &lt;em&gt;Robin Hood&lt;/em&gt;. Watch how they dance around while also trading barbs. Spend some time transcribing the entire scene as if you were writing stage directions. Do the same with &lt;em&gt;Pirates of the Caribbean&lt;/em&gt;, particularly when Jack Sparrow and Will are fighting in the smithy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Fun facts about &lt;em&gt;Robin Hood&lt;/em&gt;: Rathbone was such a good sword-fighter that he had to be told to tone it &lt;em&gt;down&lt;/em&gt;, because Flynn was an amateur; and that kind of swishy-swashy-swashbucking flailing around with swords for film purposes is now called &quot;flyinning&quot; in Errol's honor.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T11:08:46.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19608" CreationDate="2015-11-06T14:59:22.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The typical format for small, personal poetry collections is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and-quandaries/what-is-a-poetry-chapbook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;chapbook&lt;/a&gt;.  You can actually &lt;a href=&quot;http://keithswilson.blogspot.com/2009/08/making-your-own-poetry-chapbooks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;put one together yourself&lt;/a&gt;, it's really just several sheets of letter paper folded in half with a cover made of heavier stock.  If you do a poem a page, you can handle somewhere between 12 and 24 poems in this format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's definitely the lowest cost option for self-publishing, and has a long history and good reputation in the poetry community.  Since most publishers don't handle poetry, and the market for poetry is limited, there's less stigma around self-publishing in the poetry community than elsewhere.  There are even legitimate competitions for poetry chapbooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should probably expect all your sales to be from books you sell personally after doing a reading somewhere.  It's very unlikely that people will purchase any poetry book from an unknown writer without a personal connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-11-06T15:14:34.333" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T15:14:34.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19620" CreationDate="2015-11-06T17:04:37.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it entirely depends upon the pacing you require from the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing it with the action in mind, I would have around a single line of dialogue for every action that takes place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if it's comedy, you can be more liberal with the conversation, and intersperse it with summaries of action sequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You, sir, have the posture of a dog that has just learned that it has hind legs!&amp;quot; cried Lord Cutler, leaping forward and thrusting his blade directly at his opponent's face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Aha!&amp;quot; responded Lord Graham, deftly jumping to his left to avoid the blow, &amp;quot;your insults are more likely to cut me than your sword!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He returned with an arcing strike downwards, which was met with a clean riposte from the prepared Lord Cutler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His squire watched the neat block, and joined in with the chorus of barbs over the sound of clashing rapiers, &amp;quot;have at him, m'lord! You shall win this fight with ease!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two fighters danced back and forward, clearly evenly matched in skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this is compared with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You, sir, have the posture of a dog that has just learned that it has hind legs!&amp;quot; cried Lord Cutler viciously at his opponent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Aha!&amp;quot; responded Lord Graham, &amp;quot;your insults are more likely to cut me than your sword!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His squire joined in with the chorus of barbs, &amp;quot;have at him, m'lord! You shall win this fight with ease!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lord Cutler leaped forward and thrust his blade directly at his opponent's face, which Lord Graham avoided by jumping to the left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He returned with an arcing strike downwards, which was met with a clean riposte from the prepared Lord Cutler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two fighters danced back and forward, clearly evenly matched in skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two bits of action + conversation have the exact same things happening and being said, but reading gives them a different impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the action alongside the dialogue draws out the fight sequence, making it feel as if the fight is lasting longer, whereas grouping them separately has more focus on what the two are saying to each other, with some action involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should be as much dialogue as needed, but where you are putting it is the important part. If you want the fight to feel fast-paced, but there are three interactions of dialogue for every movement, then cut down on the quips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for more focus on the talking, then just add in a few actions between every chunk of dialogue to break up the conversation, which will help it to flow instead of just being a wall of speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T17:04:37.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19615" CreationDate="2015-11-06T18:20:55.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I think that in the context of the blog you linked you can drop &quot;I would argue&quot; without losing anything.&lt;/strong&gt; It's already implied that what you're writing about are your own thoughts and opinions. However, if you spend some time in a post citing scientific findings or other hard facts &lt;em&gt;and then&lt;/em&gt; give your own opinion, &quot;I would argue&quot; is useful for transitioning between the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also worth noting is that when you control the medium where your words appear (as you do with a blog), formatting can be just as powerful as word choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, you can offset anything that &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; strictly your opinion in a manner such as this,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which will tell your reader that such text comes from a source other than you. Again, given the context of your blog, I think offsetting what &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; just your opinion is fine, but if you're worried about it, you may develop a more detailed style in which, for example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;external quotes are formatted in one manner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;those opinions which you would normally qualify with &quot;I would argue&quot;&#xA;are formatted in another.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go this route, you might want to add a page to your blog explaining your formatting conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15582" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T18:20:55.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19573" CreationDate="2015-11-06T19:27:31.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco provides a classic example of exactly what you're describing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know that whole thing at the beginning where he discovers the medieval manuscript and all that stuff?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you skip it, you don't lose much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same with Nabokov, who is constantly playing with the nature of fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, what you describe -- in terms of preface, afterwords, index, etc (all being fictionalized trimmings on top of the &quot;text&quot; itself) is all part of Nabokov's classic work PALE FIRE. What's cool about this is the &quot;commentary&quot; IS the story itself, and tells a DIFFERENT story than the main story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brings up all sorts of interesting questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Pale Fire by the poet himself? Is Pale Fire by a critic? By the poet's wife? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really what it says it is about?  That's the nature of fiction, and by playing with this idea in the form, you're exploring one of the key things that makes fiction work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15818" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T19:27:31.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19630" CreationDate="2015-11-06T20:07:44.930" Score="3" ViewCount="8133" Body="&lt;p&gt;It was recently suggested to me that when attributing dialogue after a quote it should always end comma close quote lowercase, as in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's what,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the character speaks in complete sentences is it ever correct to end full stop close quote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...with a pound of grapes and nothing more.&quot; She said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would seem correct to capitalise after a question such as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Where do you think you are going?&quot; Said Mother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an accepted convention here that I am unaware of or is the second example always wrong/right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T02:41:41.657" Title="Correct punctuation for he said, she said" Tags="|punctuation|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19629" CreationDate="2015-11-06T20:38:27.617" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the complete sentence includes the quote and the attribution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;That's what,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;...with a pound of grapes and nothing more,&quot; she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Where do you think you're going?&quot; said Mother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T20:38:27.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19620" CreationDate="2015-11-06T20:45:42.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that your reader wants to read the story, and doesn't care to hear every detail about everything that happens during an event. Therefore, try trimming all of the dialog except the bits that contribute directly to moving the story along. (Read your favorite authors to see examples of this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, there are stories out there that are nothing but dialog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T20:45:42.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19632" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-06T20:56:57.427" Score="2" ViewCount="2375" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you cite when using a reference twice within the body of a composition but not necessarily in the same paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15820" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T14:29:27.943" Title="How do you cite when using a reference twice within the body of a composition but not necessarily in the same paragraph?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19629" CreationDate="2015-11-07T02:41:41.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may end a quote with a question mark or exclamation point (and of course a comma) without completing a sentence. A grammar textbook or style manual will benefit your ongoing pursuits. THE CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE is a widely accepted resource and is what I use. You may end a quote with a period, but then you need a new idea to follow. You may also split a quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Let's see,&quot; Bob began, &quot;you took the dog to the park before going to the store?&quot; He didn't wait for a response before saying, &quot;I can't believe you did that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T02:41:41.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19620" CreationDate="2015-11-07T03:58:06.873" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Mark Twain, dialogue should end the moment the participants have nothing more to say to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this needs to be qualified. Ready? Here goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're really talented, there's no limit. The entire book can consist of nothing but dialogue. If you're really talented, that is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not really talented, you shouldn't be writing fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15812" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T03:58:06.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-07T04:00:45.450" Score="0" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm stumped. I can't come up with anything beyond &quot;You're hurting my feelings&quot; and &quot;I'm not in a good place right now.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15812" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T04:16:11.800" Title="A self-absorbed female character: key words and pet phrases needed" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-01-03T01:03:54.230" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2015-11-07T05:43:06.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is she meant to be someone the reader/ audience sympathizes with? If no, then try, &quot;You wouldn't understand&quot;, and passive aggressive phrases like, &quot;Do whatever/ what you want&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15806" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T05:43:06.167" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19388" CreationDate="2015-11-07T07:24:22.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Blakesley &amp;amp; Hoogeveen's W&lt;em&gt;riting: A Manual for the Digital Age&lt;/em&gt;, you should write &quot;Work Cited&quot; if there's only one source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15822" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T07:24:22.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19638" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-07T12:26:09.917" Score="2" ViewCount="3502" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling with when to omit the comma before dialogue (as well as when to use capitals) in fiction writing. My understanding is that you would omit the comma before/after something like &quot;he says&quot; when quoting single words or very short sentences, rather than long clauses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, is it OK to omit the commas in all of the following examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I cover the receiver and whisper “sorry” to my friend.&#xA;Should sorry have a small letter or capital?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He leans forward and whispers, “I’m ready, baby” into my ear.&#xA;I think a comma is necessary here because the dialogue consists of a subject-verb clause. Is that right?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I resist the urge to shout &quot;screw you, asshole&quot; right to his face.&#xA;Is it better to have a comma here? Should screw have a capital letter? If so, why?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I turn and mouth &quot;bye&quot; to him.&#xA;Do I need a comma here or a capital?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I try to shout &quot;stop&quot; again but the words won't come out.&#xA;Is this okay or do I need a comma and capitals?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I say &quot;stop&quot; but she keeps going.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I feel extremely tempted to say “Just drive” and hope for the best.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like there should be a capital here on Just but am not sure why or if that's even correct. I don't need a comma here, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T23:32:54.910" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T23:32:54.910" Title="When not to use commas before dialogue (and capitals)" Tags="|style|dialogue|punctuation|grammar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19638" CreationDate="2015-11-07T21:02:30.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Difficult concept and varies with style guide. In general,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) It Is appropriate to capitalize the first word of a full sentence within a quote (motto s have different rules).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) All versions of TO SAY should be followed by a conma&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Exclamations such as &quot;Stop!&quot; should be capitalized with an exclamation point at the end. It does not need to finish a sentence and may be followed by narrative with lower case.  &lt;strong&gt;He screamed, &quot;Stop!&quot; before racing down the street.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Internal thoughts do not need quotation marks (and this looks weird)&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;I was thinking to myself, Just drive, right before she started down the street.&lt;/strong&gt; However, I like to put thoughts in italics (despite my go-to style guide, THE CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE, doesn't advocate this approach).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Questions within running commentary do not have to end a sentence and may be followed by commas. &lt;strong&gt;&quot;I have three questions for you: Who are you?, what are you?, and what am I doing here?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; The question marks are not necessary in this case, but may be used depending on inflection that you intend. However, __&quot;My favorite book,  [italics] Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is available at the bookstore down the street.&quot;__this example requires a comma after the question mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T21:02:30.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19314" CreationDate="2015-11-07T21:06:57.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out relayto.com. Pulls in any kind of content in one place files/docs, links, images, videos and about 250 web services and then gives you ability to publish as a web page, PDF or microsite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15826" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T21:06:57.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19638" CreationDate="2015-11-07T21:14:52.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I see what your problem is. According to my handy grammar handbook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exact words of a speaker should be &lt;em&gt;set off&lt;/em&gt; from the rest of the sentence by using a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; If the quotation is a grammatical part of the writer's sentence, the quotation should not be set off by commas, nor should it begin with a capital letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;~Abeka God's Gift of Language B&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what does this mean? If your quotation is actually the character speaking, it is a direct quotation. You use commas to separate it, and it starts with a  capital letter (do note that if the quotation is &lt;em&gt;interrupted&lt;/em&gt; and then continued, the continuation does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; start with a capital letter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your quotation is is not a direct quotation - that is, you are describing what was said rather than the character actually saying it - then you do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; use commas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below I'll correct your examples and explain each one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cover the receiver and whisper, “Sorry,” to my friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a direct quotation, because someone is saying it. Therefore, you use a comma, and it starts with a capital letter. There should also be a comma at the end of the quotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He leans forward and whispers, “I’m ready, baby,” into my ear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is correct. It is what he is saying, making it a direct quotation. However, you should have a comma &lt;strong&gt;after&lt;/strong&gt; baby, as I added. Because it is the &lt;em&gt;beginning&lt;/em&gt; of a direct quotation, it would also begin with a capital (which it does anyway because it starts with 'I')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I resist the urge to shout &amp;quot;screw you, asshole&amp;quot; right to his face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quotation is not actually said, meaning it is not a direct quotation. Therefore, commas are not used, and your example is correct. A comma is not needed after the quotation either, because it is not direct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I turn to him and mouth &amp;quot;bye.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a tricky one. I am actually not 100% sure on this, but I believe because nothing was actually &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt;, it is not a direct quotation, and therefore would be correct the way you have it. Do note that all punctuation goes &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; the quotation marks, even if it isn't part of the quotation. Observe the period I've added above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to shout &amp;quot;stop&amp;quot; again but the words won't come out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel extremely tempted to say “just drive” and hope for the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once again, nothing was actually said, meaning that both of these sentences are perfectly correct. Note that I made 'just' with a lowercase 'J,' because it is not the beginning of a direct quotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a good rule of thumb to follow would be to determine if something is a direct quotation or not. If the quotation is what someone actually said, then it is, and you use commas and a capital. If it is what someone wanted to say, but didn't, or anything similar, it is not a direct quotation, and quotation marks alone will suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T22:09:54.337" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-07T21:39:39.733" Score="3" ViewCount="2326" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering whether I can use acronyms without the period between each letter in fiction writing. Adding the period seems kind of clunky and stops the flow of the sentence a little but I don't want to remove it if it's a mistake to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. would the following be acceptable in fiction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'll be there ASAP.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this ok or does it have to be &quot;A.S.A.P.&quot;? I'm guessing doing it lower case, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;asap&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, is not an option.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Similarly to the example above, I guess the answer will also apply to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to meet my mother-in-law, AKA the witch of Orange County.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You need to get an STD test before I go near you again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How about &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;WASP-y?/WASPY?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; I have an urge to reference &quot;WASP-y&quot; wives.&#xA;Is it ok to write it &quot;WASP-y&quot;? Is there a better way such as &quot;WASPY&quot;? I can't find it in the dictionary and am debating whether to use it but it fits my sentence perfectly. I'm guessing &quot;waspy&quot; is a no-no.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe some of these things are preferences rather than hard rules?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-28T10:15:17.187" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T10:15:17.187" Title="How can I write acronyms in fiction?" Tags="|style|punctuation|acronyms|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19604" CreationDate="2015-11-07T21:54:35.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Parenthetical remarks are used to describe the attitude, tone, or action for the actor who is speaking. Stage direction describe whatever's going on on the stage in general. There's a bunch of different &quot;standard&quot; or &quot;accepted&quot; formats used to accomplish it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The name of a character who is speaking should be capitalized and centered, just like in a screenplay. A parenthetical remark should follow it immediately (single space). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stage directions should be indented more these days, 4.25&quot;, and double-spaced before and after. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like in a screenplay, should the same character continue speaking after a block of stage direction, it's a good idea to type their name again and put      &quot;(Continued)&quot; next to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &quot;on the phone&quot; is the only true parenthetical remark in your text. The rest are stage directions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialogue is the only element that is not indented and runs all the way from the left margin to the right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Musicals are formatted differently, but the differences are subtle and not immediately apparent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15812" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T21:54:35.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19642" CreationDate="2015-11-07T22:00:22.763" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fiction, you can do anything you like, so long as you do it consistently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, though, ASAP is written without any periods, as is STD. ASAP is trite, don't use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to abbreviate &quot;also known as&quot; is &quot;a.k.a.&quot; Anything that's NOT capitalized should have periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;WASPy&quot; is correct, although why you'd use it is beyond me. It's been overdone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, as I may have mentioned earlier, in fiction you can do anything you like, just be consistent. If you write &quot;wAsPy,&quot; make sure you don't change it to &quot;WASpY&quot; three pages later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15812" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T22:00:22.763" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2015-11-08T02:33:27.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A female character can show that she is self absorbed by her &lt;strong&gt;actions.&lt;/strong&gt; For instance, in my screen play, she takes a cruise with the hero, then decides what the two of them should do and what they should see. She does this while pretending to play &quot;tour guide,&quot; but is actually monopolizing the &quot;conversation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-11-08T02:33:27.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19642" CreationDate="2015-11-08T05:25:34.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many acronyms can be found in Webster's or Oxford dictionaries. Start with your dictionary. If the acronym is a company or organization, it is typically capitals without punctuation. Lower case &lt;strong&gt;s&lt;/strong&gt; after capitals or numbers don't require apostrophes. AP style guide recommends not using hyphens with acronyms in narrative or dialogue. &lt;strong&gt;Chicago&lt;/strong&gt; has nothing to say on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-08T05:25:34.360" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19647" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-08T16:08:17.543" Score="2" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently joined a writers group, and one person has asked to read my entire book.  She is lovely, but I am concerned about letting my &quot;baby&quot; go and possibly losing it.  Am I being too paranoid?  How do other writers share their work and are they fearful of being stolen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15832" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:50:38.427" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:50:38.427" Title="Confidentiality Concerns" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19648" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19679" CreationDate="2015-11-08T17:07:17.087" Score="0" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently have three stageplays, a comic strip, one screenplay and posts on writing blogs (not to mention NaNoWriMo) that I have to stay on top of, and yet my mind gets scattered, although I find reading these links help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://goodinaroom.com/blog/poking-a-dead-frog-career-advice-from-top-tv-comedy-writers/?omhide=true&amp;amp;inf_contact_key=dd94ed359982b8856932076f05b23f7f1c265860fed8a5110e858bbcbf7280bb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://goodinaroom.com/blog/poking-a-dead-frog-career-advice-from-top-tv-comedy-writers/?omhide=true&amp;amp;inf_contact_key=dd94ed359982b8856932076f05b23f7f1c265860fed8a5110e858bbcbf7280bb&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://screencraft.org/2015/09/27/17-must-read-screenwriting-lessons-from-stephen-king/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://screencraft.org/2015/09/27/17-must-read-screenwriting-lessons-from-stephen-king/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10834" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T18:19:31.573" Title="How can one establish a discipline of sticking to a writing schedule?" Tags="|creative-writing|screenwriting|discipline|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19647" CreationDate="2015-11-08T17:37:30.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is always a risk of copy being made (some outright, some &quot;mashed up&quot;). But you'll need proofreaders. You'll need some peer reviews to be able to attract good quality readers / publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some basic measures must be taken though - like distributing protected electronic versions, delivering parts of book rather than whole book, etc. All said, a bit of intuition helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15155" LastActivityDate="2015-11-08T17:37:30.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19647" CreationDate="2015-11-08T17:43:47.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why don't you offer her a few chapters saying that you want to see if she likes it? Then, if she comes back with useful comments, let her see more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making a pdf and sending it to yourself by email can't hurt, just in case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-11-08T17:43:47.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19589" CreationDate="2015-11-08T17:46:40.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies. Some publishers really require you to be &quot;social&quot;. Some don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But having social presence helps. It attracts a specific audience that may or may not be reachable through traditional means. It also garners feedback that usually is absent in traditional one-way communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for certain categories, not being &quot;social&quot; kills sales. It doesn't take too much energy and time to be &quot;social&quot; unless you have thousands of views and if you reach those numbers - you could probably contract someone to handle the social presence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that writers create a Facebook page (or a Linked In article, depending on the published material), and share it with friends and family. If you have an accessible marketing team with a publisher, they might share some of the book's graphics to be used on the Facebook page (else get ahold of some local graphics designer). Either build a story line in the posts or parallel-plot. Engage the visitors with comments or online events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes a bit of time. Alternately, outsourcing it to a local social media expert saves time. (P.S. Facebook is just an example here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15155" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-11-28T19:07:29.060" LastActivityDate="2015-11-28T19:07:29.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19647" CreationDate="2015-11-08T20:09:23.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't &lt;em&gt;personally&lt;/em&gt; feel comfortable with that, especially if you don't know her well, which I'm gathering is the case since you said you'd only joined the group recently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think Tave's suggestion is good. If you do allow her to read parts of your book, you could always get her to sign a NDA or some contract specifying copyright etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to think about what you will get out of it. Is she a published writer? If so, have you read any of her work? Do you like it? Does she intend to give you feedback or is she just curious?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think being slightly paranoid is appropriate in this case, especially if you don't know the person that well. Don't ever feel obliged to do what you don't want to out of fear of offending. You have to trust your gut. I think that the fact that you are asking the questions suggests you're not 100% comfortable with the idea. Your instinct is really important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that CKmum is right that getting other people's feedback can be useful and can push your work along, so taking basic security measures can give you peace of mind with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently finishing my first novel and unless I knew the person very well, I wouldn't give my whole book over to read--perhaps a chapter or two at the most. If I hired a proofreader, I'd prepare a contract for them to sign first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastActivityDate="2015-11-08T20:09:23.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19653" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19656" CreationDate="2015-11-08T22:47:31.780" Score="1" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would you rather have the bulk of your play's action staged in the atrium or in the peristylium? That's not the question, actually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between a movie and a stage play is entrances and exits. In a screenplay, you don't have to bother with any of it: you simply introduce a new shot and go on with the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the stage, you have two exits: stage-left and stage-right. Three, if you want to push it and make your play difficult to produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now. There's a room (the living room of a house) with two exits: one on the left, the other on the right. The house is huge. The left-hand exit leads to the garden. The right-hand exit leads to a whole bunch of passageways, stairs, rooms, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a character exits stage-right, and another one comes in twenty seconds later, the audience MUST NOT get the impression that they just ran into each other. How would you accomplish that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15812" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T18:27:52.620" Title="Speaking of Living Rooms" Tags="|dramatic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2015-11-09T05:44:02.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;You listen to MY words first; then I'll listen to your words.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, ...&quot; [trailing off]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;But, but, but ...&quot; [until I get my way, I'm just going to stand here muttering]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Would you prefer to sleep alone?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blank stare when being asked a question followed by &quot;Did you say something?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T05:44:02.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19655" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-09T14:42:54.620" Score="2" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a school report about a company, and the report must be 10 pages or less. My instructors want me to include who wrote which sections in the report, when we started the work, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the 10-page maximum, I think I can include these formal requirements in the introduction; however, I have seen others write these information in a separate section called either &lt;em&gt;Foreword&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Preface&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's redundant to have both a Foreword and an Introduction in such a small report, but is it acceptable to use a Foreword in small school reports?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15840" LastEditorUserId="18289" LastEditDate="2016-04-20T01:48:06.213" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T01:48:06.213" Title="Include both foreword and introduction in small report" Tags="|academic-writing|structure|introduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19653" CreationDate="2015-11-09T18:27:52.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The obvious and explicit way would be to have another character ask, &quot;Did you pass Bob on the way in?&quot; and for the second character to say, &quot;No&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or the character coming in could say something that indicates that he has not seen the other person. This could be as simple as, &quot;Hey, has anybody seen Bob today? I can't find him.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;20 seconds is a pretty short period of time. Even if there were many alternative routes on the other side of the door, it would be plausible for someone going out to meet someone coming in in that time. If it was 20 minutes, we probably wouldn't even think of the possibility. Unless, I suppose, we were explicitly told that on the other side of the door there is one room with no other exits or some such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So other than having someone actually say that they didn't meet, I don't know how you could make it clear. I suppose if the nature of the story is that if they had met, the person coming in would have said something, then the fact that he doesn't say something could make the point. Like if the point of the story is that Sally has been searching for Bob for the last ten years without success, then Bob walks out of the room and a few seconds later Sally walks in the room, and she says nothing about meeting Bob, we'd likely assume she didn't see him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T18:27:52.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19647" CreationDate="2015-11-09T18:37:05.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose the easiest thing would be to give her just part of the book, without going into any big deal about not trusting her. Like just way, &quot;Well, I really need to do some rework on the second half of the book before I want anyone else to see it. But I'm happy to show you the first four chapters. I'd love to hear any comments you may have.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But really, I think the bigger issue is: Beginning writers often get really paranoid about someone stealing their work. I'd say: quit worrying that much about it. Yes, it's possible that if you gave this woman a copy of your book to proofread, she would promptly change the title and the author name and submit it to a publisher as her own. Possible, but not very likely. As a beginning writer myself, I worry a lot more about writing something good enough that anybody would want to steal it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With friends and professional publishing companies, I would worry pretty much not at all. With someone who is practically a random stranger like this, maybe some concern and precautions are justified, but I wouldn't go crazy about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T18:37:05.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19615" CreationDate="2015-11-09T18:50:56.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some statements are obviously opinion, and any identification of them as opinion is superfluous. To take an extreme, &quot;Strawberries taste better than bananas&quot; or &quot;Red is a prettier color than blue&quot;. Any reader would take it for granted that you are expressing an opinion and not some scientifically-proven fact unless you clearly said otherwise. And if you're thinking, How in the world could you possibly prove scientifically that one color is prettier than another?, that's exactly my point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, other statements sound like statements of fact and would be interpreted thus unless you said otherwise. Like, &quot;The population of Britain is larger than the population of France&quot; or &quot;The surface temperature of Venus is over 400 degrees.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are statements that are at least theoretically provable but which are subject to debate. Like, &quot;President Roosevelt's economic policies backfired and lengthened the Depression by several years.&quot; A reader would expect you to either say that that was your opinion based on very general theories or ideological considerations, or to provide some hard evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think statements about &quot;the best way to meet people&quot; would normally be understood to be opinion, and so don't require qualification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, if you make a statement about a controversial or debatable subject without offering any evidence beyond &quot;sounds plausible to me&quot;, rational readers would take everything you say with a grain of salt. I've read plenty of articles that, for example, state as fact that if such-and-such a politician is elected that his policies will destroy the country without offering any evidence, and I don't conclude, Oh, well, if some guy I never heard of before says so in his blog, it must be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T18:50:56.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19659" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19660" CreationDate="2015-11-09T20:13:24.567" Score="-1" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a name for this writing tic/technique (which I find very annoying, by the way):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Please note: these examples are in the form of dialogue which belies the context in which my question was meant to be placed. I've therefore added additional examples at the bottom of this post that are actual writing samples (slightly modified to protect the author's identity) that contain this tic/technique.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“I ate an omelette that was, well, made of eggs.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“The sun rose and, well, I woke up.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“These sentences are, well, quite frankly annoying.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit: as it says in the question, I'm asking about writing, not speaking. Not sure why multiple people are confusing that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of what I mean, not in dialogue form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&#xA;Rather than fire back sarcastically at what I find to be unsuccessfully pedantic comments, I choose to, well, accept the input and try to clarify my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&#xA;I was writing an article yesterday that was, well, about something I wished to discuss!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&#xA;This essay which I am writing is, well, a statement of my personal opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15841" LastEditorUserId="15841" LastEditDate="2015-11-12T23:23:48.813" LastActivityDate="2015-11-12T23:23:48.813" Title="Is there a name for the **writing** tic/technique in which the **writer** inserts an aside beginning with &quot;well&quot;?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19659" CreationDate="2015-11-09T20:37:36.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The technical term is 'filler'. A filler is used to give the speaker time to think. Other fillers include 'er', 'um', 'okay', 'ah' and 'like'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T20:37:36.930" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-09T21:11:03.580" Score="0" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I had a terrific interview with a company based in L. A. that promotes events and recommends fun things to do. I don't know if they will offer me an internship, but if they do, what would my responsibilities be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10834" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-03T02:35:52.060" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T03:32:22.253" Title="What does an internship for freelance writing entail?" Tags="|freelance|jobs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19662" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19663" CreationDate="2015-11-09T21:46:21.780" Score="3" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story with androids and cybernetically enhanced humans who have access to neural interfaces. Essentially, they open up some kind of computer terminal, but it's via internal sensors connected directly to their brains, rather than eyes and fingers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the characters are viewing the terminal, I can just describe what they're seeing like they're viewing it with their real eyes rather than their mind's eye. But when they interact with the terminal, I want it to be clear the action is neural, not externally physical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For thoughts, I've been using a combination of narrative thought without special formatting, and italics for quoted thoughts. It's clear and simple and I've seen a number of writers doing the same. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/formatting-internal-dialogue-quotation-marks-or-italics?page=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grammar Girl&lt;/a&gt; seems to agree it's acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She wondered if there had been a vote... &lt;em&gt;Not like the mechanicals to name something on a whim&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is a paraphrase of an abstract thought, while the second is a specific, word-by-word thought in her head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this, my first idea was to format neural actions in italics, like thoughts. But thoughts and neural actions aren't exactly the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few sub-menus later, she &lt;em&gt;pushed&lt;/em&gt; the option to flood her body with a kind of tranquilizer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen this kind of format before, but I'm not sure it has the effect I'm going for. Instead of describing an abstract action, it's almost emphasizing the action. &quot;Typing on a keyboard&quot; is ultimately a short paraphrase for trillions of chemical signals doing their magic inside my brain, so I could just consider neural actions the same way. Alternately, I could explicitly specify it as a neural action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few sub-menus later, she activated the neural command to flood...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A few sub-menus later, she activated the option to flood...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first works, but is needlessly wordy. The second one seems ok, but it's also kind of generic. If I wrote that some guy &quot;activated the door knob&quot; and &quot;activated the steering wheel&quot; it would seem weird and get boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare &quot;his fingers danced across the backlit keys&quot; to &quot;a slow, steady rhythm echoed through the room as his fingers poked and prodded at the keyboard&quot;. I'd rather have the liberty to utilize different verbs depending on the context to make the neural link seem like a real object, but make it clear the verbs are metaphors for physical behavior, not literal physical actions. For example, &quot;she &lt;em&gt;nudged&lt;/em&gt; the option&quot; would have a very different contextual implication than &quot;she &lt;em&gt;pushed&lt;/em&gt; the option&quot; or &quot;she &lt;em&gt;slammed&lt;/em&gt; the link closed with the full force of her fury&quot; even if the underlying circuitry would have the same behavior in all three cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternate method would be to invent technical jargon, like how we &quot;click&quot; the mouse or &quot;scroll&quot; down the page. In a real scenario, such jargon would undoubtedly form. But I think taking the time to describe a dozen jargon terms in a short story would be counter-productive when I can just use words people already understand. Also, I find that such jargon in TV shows and so forth often seems fake or quaint rather than immersive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any kind of consensus or precedence for this type of formatting? Or is it more of a &quot;pick something and stick with it&quot; kind of thing? Or is it uncommon enough that nobody cares?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15073" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T23:15:25.507" Title="How to format neural actions in a story" Tags="|fiction|style|technique|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19662" CreationDate="2015-11-09T23:15:25.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of any particular consensus, so I think you should pick what works for you. I like the idea that you can nudge, push, or slam an option and each one means something different (even though the electronic action is the same). If the personality performing the action has sentience and intelligence, and particularly emotion, then those differences of expression will exist in whatever medium they act in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Star Trek TOS novel &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B000FC0RNI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Memory Prime&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; has several lengthy passages which take place in computer memory describing the interactions of artificial and natural intelligences (including Spock at one point). You might want to take a look at how the Reeves-Stevenses handled the issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T23:15:25.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19642" CreationDate="2015-11-10T20:59:26.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a distinction between an Acronym and an Initialism.  Acronyms tend to have no periods and be pronounced as a single word (SCUBA, LASER). Initialisms may or may not have periods, but each letter is pronounced separately (I.R.S., I.B.M., AT &amp;amp; T).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So WASP and ASAP are acronyns.  AKA and STD are initialisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you know which is which?  Consult a dictionary to see what the pronunciation is and to see if it includes periods or not.  Consult more than one dictionary to see if the usage is firmly established, or if it varies by source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/05/the-difference-between-an-acronym-and-an-initialism/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/05/the-difference-between-an-acronym-and-an-initialism/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, keep in mind that some company names that started out as abbreviations (AT &amp;amp; T for American Telegraph and Telephone) were later incorporated as the formal name of the company.  For example, AT &amp;amp; T is no longer the &lt;em&gt;abbreviation&lt;/em&gt; for American Telegraph and Telephone. The formal, legal name of the company is &quot;AT &amp;amp; T.&quot;  So for names of organizations, you'll need to see how the organization itself presents its name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14775" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T20:59:26.253" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19669" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-11T12:06:39.690" Score="0" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is my very first writing, so forgive me if i sound silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to express a thought from my mind where a mocking humor about &quot;the excessive education but no common sense in our society&quot; is required. So how can I improve this statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In a world of knowledge at its heights&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15854" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T04:32:22.037" Title="Expressing mocking humor" Tags="|structure|word-choice|humor|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19282" CreationDate="2015-11-11T12:27:03.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on where you live, you can find one or more language translators. For example, in Delhi / Mumbai you'll easily find translators whereas in Kerala, you &lt;strong&gt;may not&lt;/strong&gt; find Russian translators. No matter what you do, English translation should be relatively easy but quality is inconsistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They'll charge you on per hour basis or fixed cost, depending on individuals. I am not too aware of professional translation services by companies but they might exist as well in Delhi / Mumbai.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need to have a clear agreement with them to maintain your copyright but credit them too for their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider Malayalam-English first. You can always get English-Russian &amp;amp; English-German translation later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15155" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T12:27:03.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19669" CreationDate="2015-11-11T14:44:15.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me try this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In a world with knowledge at its height, we still forget where we put our keys every morning.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2015-12-13T04:32:22.037" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T04:32:22.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19672" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-11T14:47:54.613" Score="6" ViewCount="1716" Body="&lt;p&gt;When creating a world where there are either aliens or fantasy races, you know that they should speak their own language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the truth is that for story purposes, such races will speak their language as little as possible, because you want the reader of a story to understand what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, feeling lazy reinventing the wheel, I would like to use already used languages for such cases — Klingon for the aliens and J.R.R. Tolkien's for the fantasy races&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are legal limitations of using these languages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3415" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-04-04T14:57:33.160" LastActivityDate="2022-04-04T15:10:35.453" Title="Can I use an existing fictional language?" Tags="|legal|language|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19647" CreationDate="2015-11-11T15:35:33.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest asking this person to sign an Non Disclosure Agreement to begin with. This will give you at least some form of legal recourse should you find your work copied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may sound a little paranoid, but I would also suggest that you alter a small amount of the content to make it a unique iteration of the book. If you then send yourself a copy of this, and you find it published elsewhere, it will make finding the perp a little easier. In the same way that some websites have false contacts that exist in order to catch web scrapers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15856" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T15:35:33.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19589" CreationDate="2015-11-11T15:38:27.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say that it's in your best interests to be social. If you're writing for a niche, then find where this niche hang out and observe. If the opportunity arises (or you can encourage it to), hold a Q&amp;amp;A session. Any fan likes a little attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing that, use Twitter to monitor people discussing you or your work. Get involved in conversations. Don't argue, be decent and take feedback on the chin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15856" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T15:38:27.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10787" CreationDate="2015-11-11T16:44:07.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;on guru.com there is always a bunch of people paying (not very much) for ghost writing, this is a way to sharpen your writing skills and make a little money on the side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15859" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T16:44:07.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19672" CreationDate="2015-11-11T16:49:21.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Serious Edit:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The lowdown, as pointed out by Lauren Ipsum, is that it's probably not a good idea. Since the Tolkien languages - among other constructed languages - are within copyrighted works, and are probably subject to copyright law.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There haven't been any serious legal limitations to using a constructed language, but that's mostly because it hasn't come up in any form of lawsuit. It makes copyright a hazy murk in this part of artistic expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are arguments pro and con for the use of someone else's artificial language, so a strong case for &amp;quot;semiotic democracy&amp;quot; would probably win any potential lawsuits against you, &lt;strong&gt;if&lt;/strong&gt; they would ever show up in court. You can see them in this publication by Harvard Law: &lt;a href=&quot;https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/articles/pdf/v27/27HarvJLTech543.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Constructed Languages and Copyright: A Brief History and Proposal for Divorce&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were to write in such a constructed language, you would most likely have to receive explicit permission to use it in your text. Otherwise, you are opening the gateway to litigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14342" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-04-04T15:05:59.920" LastActivityDate="2022-04-04T15:05:59.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19648" CreationDate="2015-11-11T17:06:10.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only real answer here is just doing it.  no excuses no rationalizations, no ill write twice as much tomorrow, for 30 days find the most convenient time during your day that you are not going to get interrupted, then spend the first 5-15 minutes getting into the right mindset, read your last paragraph or your outline, fill your mind with your characters and their plight, be in your writing space, not bed.  and write for 30 minutes &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;without editing&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, it is very important that you DO NOT EDIT, just write, if you say the same thing three times, its fine just keep going. then take a break for a few minutes, grab some coffee or tea, then do it again. no editing, just get your thoughts or your characters thoughts down on the page, tell their story, action, dialogue, movement.  don't get caught up in the details.  Once you have done an hour of just writing, then relax, continue writing, do a little editing of what you've written, rearrange some things, but DON'T delete it all, you can do that the next day if you need to but you should never delete anything without taking a break from it first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15859" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T17:06:10.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19648" CreationDate="2015-11-11T17:20:53.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to help yourself develop a writing schedule is to write down everything you do, what time you start and finish, and then finding the gaps in those times. When you see how much &quot;dead&quot; or unused time you have, you can locate the common places and set up a schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually doing the writing? Well, I agree with Illyena's answer: You just have to do it. Finding butt-in-chair-fingers-on-keys time is half the battle. The other half is getting BICFOK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T17:20:53.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19669" CreationDate="2015-11-11T22:31:53.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reader will understand that it's mocking only from the context. Two primary ways to give context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show events that demonstrate that this world does not exhibit &quot;knowledge at its heights.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the narrator's or viewpoint character's real opinions about the world and its level of knowledge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you give this context first, the reader will realize that the statement is mocking when it appears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you give the mocking statement first, an attentive reader will come to realize only later that the statement was mocking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T22:31:53.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19683" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19685" CreationDate="2015-11-11T22:58:18.390" Score="3" ViewCount="344" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of my characters, main, side, and recurring all have a suite of magic abilities. So will them constantly using magic be annoying? Will it make the magic stale? What tips should I follow and what should I avoid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14971" LastEditorUserId="43118" LastEditDate="2021-01-06T22:28:46.380" LastActivityDate="2021-01-06T22:28:46.380" Title="Gratuitous use of magic: poor writing and/or unenjoyable?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|magic-system|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19683" CreationDate="2015-11-12T01:01:10.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main way to make magic &quot;not annoying&quot; it to make sure it follows the rules of magical physics, if you will. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magical acts require energy (fuel). The energy has to come from somewhere to be expended in an act or a spell. It can be extinguished and replenished. It's not endless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magical acts have consequences beyond the immediate result. Shooting something with a levinbolt will also raise the ambient temperature in the room and temporarily blind onlookers; using sound waves will burst eardrums. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even people born with magical talent have to learn how to use it: how to cast a spell, direct energy, form a shield. It takes time and effort to learn these things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because everyone has magic doesn't mean that they'll use it for everything. There will be times when it's easier, safer, or quieter to do something by hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For homework, read the Harry Potter series, play some D&amp;amp;D or read some of the D&amp;amp;D/Forgotten Realms etc. novels, and watch the BBC show &lt;em&gt;Merlin&lt;/em&gt; for starters. Mercedes Lackey has about two dozen sword-and-sorcery books which show the learning process and consequences of magic in great detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-11-12T01:01:10.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19683" CreationDate="2015-11-12T01:21:15.233" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My largest magic pet peeve is when a character uses a previously unintroduced magic for every sticky situation they find themselves in. So, if a character has to defy death 10 times, and then they have 10 unique ways to get out of the death trap and the reader has never seen that magic before that comes across as a lazy author using magic to keep a character from suffering any actual detriment.&#xA;Magical surprises are okay, but not an array of new ones, especially at just the serendipitous last minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A character shouldn't always be able to rely on magic to solve problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A character should have a predefined list of magical talents, and then stick to those... UNLESS, the story involves learning new ones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sometimes a character has a magical ability to disarm a bad situation in a subtle and elegant way, but many authors will write a lavish and dramatic magical moment to show off the awesome magicalness of magic magickery. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Characters that can use their one trick, but in a variety of ways, are very interesting magical characters because they show cunning and skill instead of always being lucky or being perfect without having to try&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;magic characters necessarily will have a trade off with their magical skill. What regular-joe type of thing does this magical character not know about or had to learn because they're magically gifted? How does the lack of those every day sensibilities hurt the character? How do they make up for it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Magic shouldn't be used to keep your character from harm's way, or to keep them from having to develop as characters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Magic should also allow the character to develop in ways that non-magical beings couldn't&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character's magic has to have limits in strength and endurance. You don't always have to show us the limits, but the reader needs to know that the character could suffer if they're not well matched to the task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, it helps if there's some code to how the magic works... even if it's not clear at first or loosely defined. It's more fun to know that magic has a back story and a root, instead of being an omni-present force with no internal mechanics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'd say create some rules for how magic in your world works, and bend them when you want or need to, but don't break those rules without very good reason. You don't have to tell the reader what you're rules are. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your magic does have rules, it is sometimes more fun if the reader has to slowly learn what the rules are by reading how magicians follow or break the rules. Much better for the story than putting all the rules in a single expository chapter; that would get boring.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all I can think of for now. Good luck!&#xA;Post your finished work if want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13997" LastEditorUserId="13997" LastEditDate="2015-11-12T01:51:03.317" LastActivityDate="2015-11-12T01:51:03.317" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19648" CreationDate="2015-11-12T03:43:46.667" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was struggling /stuck on my first book when I found inspiration - it came from this movie &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterfly_(film)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;The Diving Bell and the Butterfly&quot;&lt;/a&gt; Based on a true story - this is about the editor of Elle magazine who is paralyzed in a car accident. But despite all that, he writes a book. It's amazing / true determination + one of the most inspiring movies I have watched. Now, every time I get stuck, I remember this and it helps me to get back in rhythm. And yes, my book is now published, 400+ pages &amp;amp; even completed my second book and published it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15866" LastActivityDate="2015-11-12T03:43:46.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19683" CreationDate="2015-11-12T10:42:04.767" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to check out Brandon Sanderson's Laws of Magic. His tips were a great thing to consider when I was writing my story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are in summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/&quot;&gt;An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that if magic is used often, the mechanics of it need to be well understood by the reader, and if magic is used rarely then there's no need to go into in-depth explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-second-law/&quot;&gt;Limitations &gt; Powers.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting characters are made by what they &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;won't&lt;/em&gt; do, as opposed to what they can and will. Omnipotent beings rarely make interesting characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-third-law-of-magic/&quot;&gt;Expand, Don’t Add.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's better to have people with a few well-known and understood magical abilities than people who can do anything they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are obviously very much shortened, he goes into a lot of detail on these points, so the links are well worth a read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can obviously choose not to follow these points, and in order to create a work of fiction that is unique to you then it is likely that you will need to break these rules &lt;em&gt;somewhere&lt;/em&gt;, but I'd say that it's a great jumping off point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-11-12T10:42:04.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19659" CreationDate="2015-11-12T12:48:15.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, I'd say it's an interjection. In this case, a verbalized pause while the speaker collects their thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I'd say avoid it unless you're developing a hesitant or insecure character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2015-11-12T12:48:15.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19672" CreationDate="2015-11-12T21:52:33.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, but I doubt the courts would recognize a copyright for an invented language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming you're not actually copying complete sentences and paragraphs, but rather individual words, and applying the rules of an invented grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publishers of an English dictionary certainly couldn't sue you because you wrote a book consisting entirely of words from their dictionary. Yes, Webster did not invent the English words, while the publisher of the Klingon dictionary presumably did. Is that sufficient difference? I don't think so. The U.S. Copyright office explicitly says that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/title37/202/37cfr202-1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;you cannot copyright individual words or phrases.&lt;/a&gt; I think that would rule out copyrighting individual words in a dictionary, even if you used many of them. Likewise you cannot copyright &amp;quot;ideas, plans, or methods&amp;quot;, which I think would prevent copyright an invented grammar. (Maybe, possibly, you could patent it. That's a different thing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as I say, I'm not a lawyer. And judges regularly make rulings that strike me as completely contrary to common sense, so &amp;quot;makes sense to me&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;is what a judge would say if it went to court&amp;quot; are not at all the same thing. I couldn't find anything on the Internet about copyrights suits over an invented language, so I don't know if there's any precedent either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, even assuming you were assured that you were on solid legal ground, why would you want to? If I was reading a book set in a universe that in no way is derived from Star Trek, and the characters are speaking Klingon, I would find that very distracting and disconcerting. It would be like reading a book set in Canada and all the Canadians speaking Swahili. I'd just constantly be saying, What? Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would be much safer to just make up your own language. Unless characteristics of the language itself are an important element of the story, I doubt think there would be any need to actually work out a complete grammar and vocabulary. Just make up some words that have the sound that you want it to have. Beyond making sure that you don't contradict yourself, like in chapter one saying that &amp;quot;nowbarg&amp;quot; means &amp;quot;green&amp;quot; and in chapter two saying that it means &amp;quot;perihelion&amp;quot;, what difference does it make? I suppose if I was going to write a story with a made-up language I might invent a few simple grammar rules, like decide on some verb endings or conventional order of words in a sentence. But I wouldn't write a complete grammar and dictionary. Any more than if I set a story in a fictional city that I would find it necessary to draw a complete map of the city with names of the business or resident at every address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders//2013-1021.12-10-12.1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oracle v Google&lt;/a&gt; decision referenced by @KeithS is fascinating to me as a software developer. I've just spent the morning reading it (instead of doing my job). It's a good and scary read for software developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really getting off-track, but what the case was all about was this:&#xA;The court ruled that API declarations are copyrightable. Google copied 7,000 lines of Java code from Oracle without permission. Google argued in court that this code is not copyrightable because you cannot copyright an idea. The courts have repeatedly ruled that if a particular set of words is the only possible way to express an idea, or one of a small set of possible ways, than those words are not copyrightable. The court agreed that the Java language of itself is not copyrightable, because it is an idea, but that the specific text of the API declarations is copyrightable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here's the kicker: the court said that the principle of &amp;quot;only one way to express an idea&amp;quot; applies at the time the program was written, not at the time it was copied. That is, the court says that Oracle CAN copyright a collection of function names as long as they are not the only possible names that could have been given to those functions AT THE TIME THEY WERE WRITTEN. They give the example that the &amp;quot;max&amp;quot; function, that finds which of two number is larger, could just as well have been called &amp;quot;maximum&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;larger&amp;quot; or many other possible names, and that Google could have used some other name for their implementation of Java. But IMHO, this is absurd. If Google called the function something else, the compiler they wrote wouldn't be Java any more, but a new language. The issue is that, now that Java exists, if you want to make a Java-compatible API, you have to copy the function names. So while the court gives lip service to the principle that a programming language is an idea that cannot be copyrighted, by allowing Oracle to copyright the API they make it practically impossible for anyone to implement an alternative implementation. And, by the way, the court completely contradicts a precedent that they cite: the author of a book on accounting sued other writers for copying his forms, and the courts ruled that, as the layout of the form and the names of columns etc are essential to using his accounting system, and as the system itself is not copyrightable, then the forms and terminology are not copyrightable. Sounds to me like the obvious analogy of their precedent is that an API is not copyrightable. But they somehow came to the opposite conclusion. As a software developer, I find this scary stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But getting back to the case at hand,&lt;/strong&gt; it's not at all clear that this would be a precedent against using someone else's invented language. Oracle's complaint was that Google used their code to create their (Google's) own version of Java. At no point did Oracle say that anyone who USES the Java language is violating their copyrights. That is, they are not claiming that writing a program in the Java language violates their copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fair analogy would be this: If you invented your own fake language for a book and wrote a grammar and dictionary for it, and that language used many of the elements of Star Trek's Klingon, and in your grammar/dictionary you copied thousands of lines of text from a Klingon grammar/dictionary published by the Star Trek people, they could use this as a precedent to sue you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you simply USED Klingon in a book that you wrote, nothing in this decision says that Star Trek would have any case against you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-04-04T14:59:41.390" LastActivityDate="2022-04-04T14:59:41.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19672" CreationDate="2015-11-12T22:24:35.877" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the United States, a language, generally, is described as a &quot;specification&quot;; that is, as a set of facts. For a language, these facts would be a series of statements along the lines of &quot;&lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; is a word having such-and-such a definition&quot;. Facts, in and of themselves, cannot be copyrighted (or patented, for that matter). What is protectable is a specific &quot;implementation&quot;. Works created to describe the language are themselves copyrightable, such as dictionaries and programming guides, as are works created &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; the language, like stories and reference material written for use by those literate in the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That definition holds, without much question, for &quot;natural languages&quot;, developed organically over time by an ethnic or regional group as a part of their identity. Nobody attempting to argue that English itself, or even a modern dialect like Ebonics, is protectable by copyright will be heard in U.S. courts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Klingon and Sindarian are not natural languages. They're invented languages, developed artificially over a short time by a relatively small number of people (as few as one). The argument can therefore be made that these languages aren't subject to the &quot;specification test&quot;, because the facts they assert are fictional and exist to serve a copyrighted work of fiction. Just as, for instance, someone cannot publish an unlicensed Star Trek novel for a profit, using characters and worlds from Paramount's protected fictional universe, use of the language without permission for personal gain is copyright infringement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest legal precedent to date is in software copyright law, &lt;em&gt;Oracle v. Google&lt;/em&gt;, a case concerning a re-implementation (with some literal copying) of the Java API, owned by Oracle who bought the original creator Sun Microsystems, to create the Dalvik runtime used in Google's Android operating system. The trial court found in favor of Google in 2012 on the majority of the charges, including the one on the API itself, deciding that the API was a declarative specification (similar to a natural language) and thus not subject to copyright. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the Federal Appeals Circuit court reversed, holding under an older Third Circuit opinion, &lt;em&gt;Whelan v. Jaslow&lt;/em&gt;, that the &quot;structure, sequence and organization&quot; of a piece of software, including an API such as Java's, was in fact copyrightable intellectual property and thus by copying the SSO of the Java API, even if it rewrote every line of code implementing the funcaionality behind it, Google was using copyrighted material belonging to Oracle. It remains an open question of whether a &quot;re-implementation&quot; of a given specification, as Google did by re-implementing the Java API to create Dalvik and the ADK, constitutes &quot;fair use&quot;; the Federal Circuit in &lt;em&gt;Oracle&lt;/em&gt; remanded the case back to the District Court to hear those arguments and a decision has not been made yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Google is found in violation of copyright for the use of the Java API itself, that means the structural elements of a software language, essentially the set of facts that various words exist in the language and have a particular meaning, are protectable. That could be used to draw parallels to any non-natural language, including Klingon, Sindarian, Dothraki and other fictional ethnic/racial languages. The same parallels can be drawn if Google is found to be protected by fair use, which is predicated on meeting a four-factor test:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The use of copyrighted work favors the advancement of society over personal gain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The use primarily copies the facts and ideas of protected work, not their &quot;fixation&quot; or specific implementation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The amount of the copyrighted property used is a relatively small amount of the full protected property.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The effect on the copyright holder's ability to expolit the value of the protected work is minimally impacted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of an invented language like Klingon within &quot;fandoms&quot; that identify with the original copyrighted work could easily be judged fair use using this test:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the usage usually isn't for personal gain but instead to &quot;advance&quot; the fandom by more closely matching the characters of the universe by speaking the language; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's the language itself (the idea), not anything the writers have written in that language, that's used;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The amount of the language being used in any given situation is small (though to be fluent, you'd need knowledge of the majority of the language); and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The owner of the original property typically isn't economically damaged by the use, such as having sales of his own material using the language reduced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, use of the language in a situation like the OP's, where the universe probably isn't identified or identifiable as being the original universe in which the languages were introduced, might tip the scales, because it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; primarily for personal gain over furthering the existing fandom. Multi-factor &quot;balancing tests&quot; like fair use can be fairly broadly interpreted, and it's possible, even likely, a judge might rule against the OP even if the other three tenets are met if the OP's intention, as he implies, is to lazily rip off a language and paste it in his universe to avoid having to invent his own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the OP to be guaranteed to prevail in a lawsuit, the precedent must be established that there is no meaningful delineation between an organically developed &quot;natural language&quot; and a systematically defined &quot;invented language&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the OP could very likely claim &lt;em&gt;de minimis non curat lex&lt;/em&gt;. Literally, &quot;of the smallest, no care from the law&quot;, a doctrine applied in many ways including discretionally by the judge to spare the court having to hear lawsuits over trivial infractions with little potential harm done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15580" LastActivityDate="2015-11-12T22:24:35.877" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2015-11-13T05:01:21.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;body language (as direction maybe if not outright dialog) would be indicative as well - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;eye rolling&#xA;sighing / huffing impatiently if someone else is speaking to them&#xA;interrupting&#xA;not listening (either poking at phone or knitting without looking up, simply walking away, etc...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;being generally dismissive / demeaning of other opinions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15813" LastEditorUserId="15813" LastEditDate="2015-11-13T05:06:39.217" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T05:06:39.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19694" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-13T08:19:56.083" Score="5" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that most of the time, it is advised to write out figures as words in novels, rather than writing the actual figure.&#xA;E.g. He's twenty years old. He lives on the fourth floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, are there times when writing the actual figure is best?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, telling the time. Is it better to write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4 p.m. or Four p.m.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter just looks weird to me, but I believe it would be better to write it like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about if you wrote something referencing the actual digital numbers you see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I glance at the alarm clock: 3.30 a.m.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would that be acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine heights should be written out? E.g. They're both about six foot two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once again, it feels more natural to me to write &lt;em&gt;They're both about 6'2&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, but I think the former is better in a novel or perhaps I'm mistaken?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about in the following example where you actually reference a number:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We arrive at the door with the number 45 carved into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(should it be forty five or is either okay?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should all the following be written out in words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His 1970's Jaguar (his nineteen-seventies Jaguar)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;80's pop music (eighties pop music)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once again, I feel like the figures look better, but perhaps that is just not the done thing in novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T21:17:19.813" Title="Writing figures in novels" Tags="|fiction|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19694" CreationDate="2015-11-13T09:43:02.047" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The usual convention is that numbers up to twenty are written out - as I just did with the word &quot;twenty&quot;. The same is true for numbers that are said as a single phrase like &quot;fifteen&quot; or &quot;five hundred&quot; or &quot;forty thousand&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, use figures. 1970's, not &quot;Nineteen-seventies&quot;. 3.30pm, not &quot;three-thirty p.m.&quot;. However &quot;I'll see you at three&quot;, not &quot;I'll see you at 3&quot;. Decade names such as &quot;the sixties&quot; or &quot;the 50's&quot; could go either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rule of thumb would be, does it feel natural to say the number in a single breath? If so, write it out. Having the numbers written out means that the continuous flow of text is not disrupted. If, however, the numbers are longer so that you would need a great long string of text to write them out, it's much more convenient to use numerals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are exceptions and borderline cases. Sometimes text that would usually be in numerals can be written out for emphasis. &quot;That number wasn't 549, you twit. It was 594. &lt;em&gt;Five-nine-four&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2015-11-13T09:50:59.600" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T09:50:59.600" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19694" CreationDate="2015-11-13T14:41:33.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend using a style guide and being consistent. I use THE CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE which Is very different from AP on this subject. Also, I would have differences in narrative versus dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There was a 150-ton truck blocking the path&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Did you know that there is a hundred-and-fifty-ton truck in our path?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certain things should be ordinals in either case (brands and whatnot):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The 747 is the largest passenger airplane. It holds 850 passengers.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Dude, that 747 is huge! It holds, like, eight fifty!&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T14:41:33.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19648" CreationDate="2015-11-13T18:19:31.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it is best to make your writing part of your daily routine the same as you would taking out the garbage, doing the dishes, perhaps even going to work. Simply delegate a time of day that you will sit down and shut everything out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15875" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T18:19:31.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19672" CreationDate="2015-11-13T18:31:47.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You could leave all of this to your agent or editor / publisher.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here are the easy steps:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write the book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;convince an agent to take you and your work on / or convince a publisher to publish your book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let them worry about obtaining rights&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your agent or publisher is unable to obtain rights, then, at that point, your book will be done and you can make up your own language.  Voila!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe you are self-publishing&lt;/strong&gt; with no agent or outside publisher?&#xA;In that case, follow these steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write the book &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;publish the book&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get thousands of people to read it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you never get thousands to read it, it won't matter if you're not allowed to have the rights anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do get thousands of people to read it, then if someone complains, you can remove the references to the borrowed language and replace it with your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T18:31:47.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19589" CreationDate="2015-11-13T18:34:33.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Social media is a powerful weapon when yielded correctly. From monitoring trends to creating a network of potential readers, it is truly a necessary evil. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introverts and creatives may find it difficult or nonsensical to utilize social media. It is my belief that it should be utilized whether or not your publisher requires or recommends.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15875" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T18:34:33.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19219" CreationDate="2015-11-13T19:25:46.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wouldn't that be considered a citation just like any other? There shouldn't be a distinction between the 'genre' of work. The basic purpose of citations is to ensure appropriate representation of your own original thoughts and words vs the work of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;APA: Single Author &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/06/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/06/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;APA: Books&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/08/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/08/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15813" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T19:25:46.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19694" CreationDate="2015-11-13T21:17:19.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically agree with Lostinfrance (and upvoted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My copy of MLA Handbook says to write out numbers that can be expressed in one or two words, and use numerals for those that require more. So &quot;fifteen&quot; and &quot;twenty-one&quot; but &quot;102&quot; and &quot;3 1/2&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They further state to always use numerals with a symbol or abbreviation, so &quot;$10&quot; and &quot;4 p.m.&quot; and &quot;8 kg&quot;. Also use numerals in addresses -- &quot;14 Elm Street&quot; -- and dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also heard the &quot;up to twenty&quot; rule frequently cited. It would give similar results, though exceptions would be &quot;twenty-one&quot; and &quot;two thousand&quot;. Personally I'll normally write &quot;a thousand&quot; or &quot;one thousand&quot; rather than &quot;1,000&quot; in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common rule is that if you give several numbers, and some of them are big enough to call for numerals, then you should use numerals for all. That is, it is inconsistent to write something like, &quot;The results of our counts were sixteen, 124, and one hundred.&quot; Once you resort to numerals, make everything related numerals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T21:17:19.813" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19683" CreationDate="2015-11-13T21:29:16.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO, characters who have magic powers are tricky, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) If the character can solve all his problems by just waving his magic wand, the story is boring. Problem comes, the hero waves his magic wand, problem solved, end of story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) If the character doesn't solve his problems with his magic powers for no apparent reason, as a reader I just wonder why not. Like I know Tolkien was wildly popular but I found his stories boring and frustrating. Why couldn't Gandalf just use his magic to destroy the rings? Or magically teleport them all to the place where they could destroy the ring rather than having to make a long and tedious trip? All the problems the characters faced in the stories: why couldn't they just fix them with magic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, you could say, Well, magic doesn't mean the character can do ANYTHING. He's not all-powerful. Well fine then, you have to describe to me just what he can and can't do. Otherwise it sounds like you're just making it all up as you go along, letting his magic powers get him out of situations when that's convenient for the story and not being of help when it isn't. Frankly, I think a lot of authors of such stories DO just make it up as they go along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which leads to (c) You say how amazingly powerful this person is, and then you have to start coming up with limitations of his power. Often this seems very contrived. Like I always found Superman stories rather contorted: first they tell us how he's super strong and can fly and all these amazing powers that make him invincible. But then no enemy is any threat. So they have to come up with &quot;kryptonite&quot; to give him a weakness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not to say that it's not possible to write stories about people with magic powers that are interesting, just that there are pitfalls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T21:29:16.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19132" CreationDate="2015-11-13T22:32:29.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Son of Citation machine is a very handy website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-website&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could try staring with auto-fill mode or do a manual entry and it will generate the appropriate citation for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also - this is useful for reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/files/how-to-cite-something-you-found-on-a-website-in-apa-style---table-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.apastyle.org/files/how-to-cite-something-you-found-on-a-website-in-apa-style---table-1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15813" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T22:32:29.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19705" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19706" CreationDate="2015-11-14T12:33:05.307" Score="0" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Write an elevator speech for prospective employers&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; is an action-item that's dogged me for weeks. Perhaps this is the place to reach out and admit-- &lt;em&gt;I've got a bad case of writer's block on this.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I know how to write an elevator speech&lt;/strong&gt; for a &lt;strong&gt;company&lt;/strong&gt;, a &lt;strong&gt;project&lt;/strong&gt;, a &lt;strong&gt;product&lt;/strong&gt;, a Six Sigma process improvement, a Web site a... &lt;em&gt;you get the idea.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a 30-second pitch to a potential employer, I can't get past the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi my name is Chris and I would like to work for &lt;strong&gt;Company A,&lt;/strong&gt; especially because &lt;strong&gt;Reasons X, Y and Z.&lt;/strong&gt; Here is my card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My counselor wants this parsed into a static phrase. She yells at me every week about this. I feel there are too many variables to box &lt;em&gt;me+my (alleged) career&lt;/em&gt; into a precise phrase. It makes more sense to have a framework (as above) then improvise based on the setting, person, timing...etc. right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still if I could get a simple phrase going? It would be one less thing a government bureaucrat has in her arsenal of things to yell at me about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not asking anyone to &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;write it for me&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; -- suggestions; ideas; guidance much appreciated. A fill-in-the-blank format would be great; like a mad-lib but for a freelancer looking for PT or FT work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2023-02-25T08:58:22.390" LastActivityDate="2023-02-25T08:58:22.390" Title="How to write an elevator speech for MYSELF?" Tags="|business-writing|writers-block|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19705" CreationDate="2015-11-14T14:24:46.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you're looking for a job, you have (a) your skills, which is what you offer the company, and (b) your professional desires, which is what the company offers you. Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A graphic designer who (a) can work in print and on the web wants to&#xA;(b) get more experience in creating responsive websites.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A journalist who (a) has covered sports and local politics wants to&#xA;(b) cover more breaking stories and wider regional events.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A basket-weaver who can (a) crank out handbaskets in four different&#xA;materials wants to (b) get experience working underwater.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So look over your r&amp;eacute;sum&amp;eacute; first. What can you do? What are your skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then figure out what kind of job you want. What do you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to do? Where do you want to go in the next few years professionally? Where do you want to work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the a+b formula and figure out some keywords. Which skills (a) keywords and which goals (b) keywords you use can then be flexible depending on the recipient of your pitch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-11-14T14:24:46.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19707" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-14T15:57:30.803" Score="5" ViewCount="1900" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was finishing my novella when I heard about the terrorist attacks in Paris &lt;em&gt;(I pray for the souls of the victims)&lt;/em&gt;. I was surprised to know that circumstances revolving around the violent attacks were somehow similar to those in my novella. In my story, there were also eight attackers who each had a specific target and killed almost one hundred fifty civilians. The only thing that made my story different was that my terrorists were communist rebels, not Muslims. Should I change the plot line? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15882" LastEditorUserId="15883" LastEditDate="2015-11-15T04:48:36.537" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T21:30:49.777" Title="What should you do if the events in your story happen in real life just when you finish writing it?" Tags="|characters|plot|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19707" CreationDate="2015-11-14T23:56:21.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your story is fiction, don't sweat it. As far as bad taste, I write for a living. Life happens. I don't consider it bad taste. If anything, it is showing concern for the actual events in question and being thoughtful about implications. The typical time frame from manuscript to publication is a year, unless you're REALLY lucky or already established, in which case you can cut in half. May God help all those tragically affected, but don't let it stop you from doing your job. It beats the crap out of working for Target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-14T23:56:21.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19709" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-15T00:01:04.413" Score="1" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a technical report, is it necessary to explain what is written in upcoming chapters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example in my introduction chapter, I may have a sub-chapter called &quot;Forthcoming chapters&quot; which will explain what each forthcoming chapter will discuss. So something like &quot;My methods chapter will explain the methods of my investigations...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen examples where people have done this but to me it all seems &quot;obvious&quot; about what a methods chapter should contain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it improve the technicality, eloquence or the professionalism of the report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15886" LastActivityDate="2015-11-15T02:00:05.263" Title="Is it necessary to explain what is written in upcoming chapters?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19709" CreationDate="2015-11-15T02:00:05.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, if your institution has a style guide, follow its recommendations if there are any.  But assuming it is silent on this point or you don't have one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's helpful to provide an outline of the rest of the report.  If you have a table of contents already that might be good enough (I've seen TRs with and without TOCs).  If you include something at the end of the introduction, though, avoid the &quot;department of redundancy department&quot; problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bad: &quot;Chapter 2, Methods, explains the methods of my investigation.&quot;  You haven't said anything that wasn't already implied by the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better: &quot;Chapter 2, Methods, explains how we used the (something) method to (something).&quot;  The key here is to add something to &quot;methods&quot; -- name the method, say something about important factors for that method if relevant (&quot;ran a trial with 4 groups for a 12-month period&quot;), or otherwise tell people &lt;em&gt;something about your methods&lt;/em&gt; right there in the summary.  This lets the reader who already knows what the (something) method is to go straight to the results if he wants without having to wonder if they're at all valid.  (An interested reader may go back and read your methods later, of course.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, more broadly, the point of a &quot;here's what's in the rest of this document&quot; section is to provide short hints that are meaningful enough to let people skim and jump to the parts they're most interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the size of this short hint can scale somewhat with the size of the document.  If your TR is 5 chapters in 30 pages, one sentence per is probably fine.  But if it's 5 chapters in &lt;em&gt;300&lt;/em&gt; pages, you might find it useful to drill down a bit and write a paragraph or so for each.  Think of them like mini-abstracts for each chapter.  As with an abstract, the reader question you're trying to answer is &quot;do I want to read this?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-11-15T02:00:05.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19713" CreationDate="2015-11-15T03:29:38.963" Score="1" ViewCount="9010" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have a PDF, and I want to cite something on page 2 of the PDF. Would I want to use the actual page number listed (page 724 apparently), or the page number of the PDF?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15888" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-11-15T17:31:34.337" LastActivityDate="2024-03-14T20:18:06.617" Title="Should I use the actual page number, or the PDF's page number in a parenthetical citation?" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-15T07:06:41.863" Score="0" ViewCount="344" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it okay to use the term &quot;proposed method&quot; in academic paper if I already done implementing the method? Or what phrase I can replace to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15569" LastActivityDate="2015-11-15T17:07:00.273" Title="&quot;Proposed Method&quot; in Academic Paper" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19711" CreationDate="2015-11-15T11:56:39.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The actual page number. Your pdf has been made from another publication. Somebody may have access to the original. They want the actual page number. Also, another pdf made from the same publication may have different page numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-11-15T11:56:39.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19714" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19720" CreationDate="2015-11-15T15:04:46.533" Score="6" ViewCount="4748" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of writing a dissertation for my university degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked at examples online where people have used Roman numerals as page numbers for the preliminary pages of the dissertation and then Arabic numbers for the main text pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does this happen? Does it not cause confusion having two different sets of numbers? I've seen this in a couple of books and not just in university dissertations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15886" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-03T15:19:53.773" LastActivityDate="2019-04-03T15:19:53.773" Title="What is the purpose of using Roman numerals as page numbers?" Tags="|academic-writing|pages|numerals|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19712" CreationDate="2015-11-15T16:22:36.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. If the experiment is already completed, you would list what you did under the &lt;strong&gt;Materials and Methods&lt;/strong&gt; part of your paper. You may editorialize at the end of the section, but it is best to propose detailed changes in the &lt;strong&gt;Discussion&lt;/strong&gt; section. If your completed experiment did not offer the conclusion you were hoping for, that's where (&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;) you could add what you would do next time to make it better, in brief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2015-11-15T16:28:56.040" LastActivityDate="2015-11-15T16:28:56.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19712" CreationDate="2015-11-15T17:07:00.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's okay because it's a method that you are &lt;em&gt;proposing&lt;/em&gt; to the readers. So you can write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The method proposed in this paper allows [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have therefore shown that the proposed method yields [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10679" LastActivityDate="2015-11-15T17:07:00.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19742" CreationDate="2015-11-15T17:07:00.690" Score="8" ViewCount="12774" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the block quote below I've added an excerpt from an interview transcript with the author of &quot;The First Norton Anthology of World Religions.&quot; The transcript has different words for God and &quot;(ph)&quot; noted after those words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the meaning of &quot;ph?&quot; I'm guessing it has something to do with pronunciation. Regardless, under what circumstances do authors, transcriptionists, or both use &quot;(ph)?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the proper name of God, Yahweh (ph), as scholars have reconstructed it when&#xA;  written in four letters in Hebrew, was punctuated with vowels - as Hebrew&#xA;  proceeds to do - in a way that invited you to say another word, Adonai (ph),&#xA;  instead of the word Yahweh. ... Or would I say, and so - I mean, one practice&#xA;  is to say Hashem (ph), the name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11559" LastActivityDate="2021-08-29T20:04:56.237" Title="What does &quot;(ph)&quot; mean when written after a transcribed word?" Tags="|proofreading|dictionary|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19714" CreationDate="2015-11-15T21:14:42.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Roman numerals are usually used for the preface, introducion, contents page, etc. Arabic numbers are used for the actual text of the book. One is used for extras and the other is used for the actual text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-11-15T21:14:42.780" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19714" CreationDate="2015-11-16T00:12:19.710" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Translator's notes, prefaces, and introductions are numbered using Roman numerals so those pages can be safely cited without duplication or ambiguity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is customary to number the primary text with Arabic numbers starting at 1. But as the front matter is clearly 'before' page 1, you have to make accommodations for it in your numbering scheme. A new set of independently numbered Roman numerals are used to differentiate the two groups of pages. This allows both sets to 'start' at 1 (or &lt;em&gt;i&lt;/em&gt;) without duplication. Also note that Roman numerals are always &lt;em&gt;italicized&lt;/em&gt;. In contrast, end matter tends to continue the numbering of the primary text. Sometimes end matter is not numbered because it is short, rarely cited, or can be referenced in another way (i.e. 'footnote 31', or 'appendix A', or 'postscript').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some quite old standards for the ordering of front and back matter: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_design&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Book design | Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. This Wikipedia page is the most comprehensive list of these rules that I've found online. However, some of these rules are more rigid than others so you can stray from them if you have a compelling reason specific to your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An excellent guide to print design is Bringhurst's book &lt;em&gt;The Elements of Typographic Style&lt;/em&gt;. It is an authority for designers and commonly recommended as an introduction. It has a fair bit of history and explanation as to why these rules exist, but is mostly for designers and typographers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just want formatting 'rules' beyond the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_design&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;, then see Turabian's &lt;em&gt;A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Eighth Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers&lt;/em&gt;. (Affectionately shortened as 'Turabian'.) The book itself is a greatly condensed version of the monolithic &lt;em&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt; (CMoS). Note that while 'Chicago' style citations are standard for most humanities and social sciences, some disciplines (mostly scientific) use other style guides like APA or MLA. All this is covered in Turabian. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15893" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T00:12:19.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19722" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-16T01:38:53.820" Score="7" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am one of several authors on a fairly new shared blog.  The blog has a mix of serialized and one-shot posts.  Because it's a new blog (2.5 months, ~30 posts so far), there is quite a variety of posts and authors (though all on the broader theme for the blog) and we're not yet at the point where authors or topics can be assigned regular slots (e.g. &quot;Tuesday is Monica's fiction&quot; or whatever).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am posting a serialized work of fiction, one chapter at a time.  I get positive feedback anecdotally, but I can't help noticing in the stats that views are dropping off a bit with each chapter.  (There have been four, thus far.)  It's possible, of course, that people just aren't into my story, but since I'm also getting that positive feedback, I think I might be doing something else wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each post has previous/next links for the adjacent chapters.  The blog platform quotes the first paragraph (or portion of it) on the front page, so I've been leading with the new material rather than repeating the end of the previous chapter (a trick I've seen another author use).  I've just created a &quot;the story so far&quot; post that I'll maintain and start linking with the next chapter on the theory that this might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Serialized fiction is hardly new, so this shouldn't be a new problem.  Given the constraints I've described here, what else can or should I do to maintain an audience as my story unfolds over time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T10:40:07.897" Title="Maintaining readers over time with serialized fiction?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19723" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19725" CreationDate="2015-11-16T01:50:12.080" Score="1" ViewCount="604" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anyone here enlighten me on what simplistic writing means please? &#xA;Is it good or bad in the field of sciences and engineering? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15895" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T04:38:37.733" Title="What is simplistic writing?" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19727" CreationDate="2015-11-16T02:01:41.317" Score="13" ViewCount="938" Body="&lt;p&gt;As provided in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10789/10394&quot;&gt;this excellent answer&lt;/a&gt; by @what, there is a certain 'creative time,' for writing, when you can write the best. I've been aware of this for awhile, though I never really saw it for what it was until recently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately (and I doubt that I'm alone), my creative time is taken up with a job. I have an hour or two at the end of the day, but by then I am tired and merely want to relax. On the few occasions I've tried writing at this time, what I've turned out has been in general weak. The only real time I have to write is on the weekends, and even then I usually feel more like relaxing from the week than writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a way I can &lt;em&gt;move&lt;/em&gt; my creative time to a more convenient time of day?&lt;/strong&gt; Switching jobs isn't really an option in my particular case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-12-20T01:41:20.577" LastActivityDate="2022-10-10T03:54:40.287" Title="How can you write during a full work day?" Tags="|creative-writing|time-management|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19723" CreationDate="2015-11-16T04:38:37.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the context of both the document in question and the feedback you were given. Question may need more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, even in the sciences, the writing itself should be easy to read and comprehend even if the subject matter is complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15813" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T04:38:37.733" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19608" CreationDate="2015-11-16T04:47:12.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the easiest ways to self-publish your poems would be to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Direct Publishing&lt;/a&gt; to sell them as an e-book. You can create an e-book with as few or as many poems as you like, and Amazon provides the platform for selling them. You do whatever you can to promote them and let people know about them to try to garner sales, which isn't going to be all that easy itself, but at least you don't have to worry about how to go about making them available or collecting the money or distributing them to your potential buyers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to provide a print version, then the number of poems will become a factor for you. I personally would recommend using &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CreateSpace&lt;/a&gt; (another Amazon property) because it is very inexpensive and again provides you with an immediate sales platform. One of the things you will need to keep in mind is that CreateSpace will not print a book with less than 24 pages in total. One of those pages can be a title page, another can be a copyright notice page, and you could use yet another for acknowledgements. You could also throw in a blank page or two at the beginning or end if you like, but your total page count will need to be 24 pages. That would mean that you would most likely end up needing at least 16 pages of printed material in order to get them to publish your book, so you should shoot for at least 16 poems as a minimum if you choose to go with them. One disadvantage of printing a smaller book like this is that you won't be able to get your book title or your name on the spine because there just isn't enough room. In fact, each of my books with 100 poems has this same problem. Even with that many poems, there isn't enough space on the spine for them to print anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the great advantages of CreateSpace is that they have a very easy to use cover designer that is free of charge, so you can use it to create your cover. I actually created my print versions first and then used the covers that I created through their tool as the covers for my e-books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have published six volumes of poetry with 100 poems in each, as well as two separate collections with 450 poems in each. I was fortunate to have already developed a very large catalog of poems, so deciding on a number was easy for me. As someone who is just starting to develop a body of work, you will want to take an approach that works best for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T04:47:12.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19724" CreationDate="2015-11-16T05:00:02.357" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, having a full-time job usually means that being able to write during the time period that is most effective or productive for you simply may not be possible. Because of that, you will need to determine what time you have available and then decide on where you can slice out a period of time that you can make available just for writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many years ago when I started writing my first book, I was working 10-12 hours a day, and then coming home to a family with three pre-teen kids who were involved in a variety of activities. Needless to say, my free time was very limited and my ability to write when I really wanted to write was non-existent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I did was look at my daily schedule and try to find a way to squeeze in at least one or two hours of time where I could write with limited distractions and still feel productive. I tried getting up an hour or two earlier each day, but found that it took me too long to get started. I then tried to set aside an hour or two after the kids went to bed as my writing time. My wife at the time went to bed about the same time, so I had an hour or two each evening that was basically free of distractions, so that became my writing time. It took a couple of weeks to get accustomed to this new schedule, but once I did I found that I was getting a lot of writing done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently, I started setting aside an hour each afternoon at work for my lunch break. I would bring my lunch and eat a quick meal, and then I would spend the rest of the time writing on my tablet. I used Dropbox to store a copy of my WIP so that I had easy access to it at work or at home and didn't have to worry about keeping things synchronized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is to just find a time that works for you. It may not be your most productive time at first, but if you stick to it and make it a part of your daily routine, you will soon find that you are writing a lot more than ever imagined possible. I told myself that I was never going to HAVE the time, so it was up to me to MAKE the time!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T05:00:02.357" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19722" CreationDate="2015-11-16T05:07:44.550" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the issues I have had with serialized fiction, as a reader, has been the consistency in the availability of the material. I have found some authors that I follow pretty regularly because I know when to expect the next chapter, and I go to their sites only when I know the ne material is supposed to be there. If an author isn't consistent on when they make the new material available, then I'm not going to waste my time going to their site every day just to see if there's anything new yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that your work may be suffering from this type of situation. If you don't have a consistent window of time in which your new material is available, then you will start losing readers, regardless of how good the material is. Something you might consider doing to get around this would be to make your material available elsewhere, more specifically, through your own site. If you are managing your own content on a consistent schedule, then even if your next slot on the initial blog hasn't been scheduled, your readers will come to know that they can go elsewhere without having to wait or keep checking back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T05:07:44.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19509" CreationDate="2015-11-16T05:41:50.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are going to publish through Amazon, simply include a copyright notice at the beginning of your book. This will usually appear at the bottom of a page by itself in small print just after your title page. It can be something as simple as this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Copyright 2015, Author Name, All rights reserved&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every country has different guidelines regarding copyright, but pretty much every country will accept this format. You do not need a lawyer because virtually all countries agree that once you write something, you own the copyright to it, but you should look into the specific guidelines for your own particular country. Just mailing (or e-mailing) a copy to yourself does not do anything at all to constitute or establish your copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T05:41:50.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19457" CreationDate="2015-11-16T05:51:16.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are self-publishing and have full control over the actual cover, then absolutely! When you have your cover designed, you can determine the layout, font, positioning, or any other factor that you want. Regardless of whether you go through Amazon, Nook, Kobo, or any other, they will generally accept your cover without any input on how it is designed. However, when you list the title, you will need to determine how it should appear in a textual listing. Whether your book is listed in a search result, as part of a catalog,  on a details page, or on the spine of the book, it is going to be displayed as simple text, and you will be much more limited there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T05:51:16.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19267" CreationDate="2015-11-16T06:31:53.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know why you think you should know anything about this if you've never done it. Everybody needs to start somewhere, and you are taking a good first step by asking for help. There isn't any short and simple answer, but there are a few steps that you can take to help get yourself started. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to consider joining a writer's forum where you can get advice from other writers who are self-publishing. One that I recommend is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kboards.com/index.php/board,60.0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Boards Writer's Cafe&lt;/a&gt;. You can find a lot of helpful information, including a Directory of Author's Services at the top of the first page. This is a good place to go to find people who can design your cover, format your book, or provide editing or other services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you have already written your book, the next step would be to get it formatted for the appropriate type of book. You need to decided if you want to create an e-book or use print on demand (POD), or both, but each will use different types of formatting. You can hire someone to do this for you, but it is simple enough to learn how to do it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an e-book, I would recommend using &lt;a href=&quot;http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this guide&lt;/a&gt; by Guido Henkel. He will take you through a step-by-step process that will help you get your book formatted. He provides good examples and recommends free tools that you can download to help you get your book formatted. Even if you have no previous experience in working with html or any of the recommended tools, he does a good job of explaining everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have your book formatted, you will need to upload it to a distributor, such as Amazon. You can create an account with their &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Direct Publishing&lt;/a&gt; service, and it will guide you step-by-step through the process of uploading your book and making it available for sale. There are several other distributors, such as Nook, Kobo, and iTunes, but I would suggest starting with KDP and then branching out as you become more comfortable. Each distributor has their own process, but they are all pretty similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to make your book available in print, then I would suggest using Amazon's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CreateSpace&lt;/a&gt; service. Their site has a lot of information on how to submit your book, but one of the most useful things is their templates. They provide preformatted Word documents in different sizes to match whatever size you want your book to be published in. You can basically copy and paste your book into one of these templates and then do a little tweaking to get it ready for publishing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this sounds pretty simple and straight forward, but there is a lot of work involved. Also, your work doesn't end with getting the book published. If you want it to sell, then you'll need to do whatever you can to promote it and let people know about it. A writer's forum is a good place to get advice and suggestions on how to do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that you will get out of this what you put into it. If you are willing to work for it, then you can eventually make a living out of it, but it won't be easy. Just believe in yourself and take the time to learn the trade, and you'll find it gets easier over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T06:31:53.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19732" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-16T06:41:00.123" Score="1" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hope this is the right forum to be asking a question! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been writing every since I can remember, my stories, writings, letters, poems, lessons and emotions were captured from as young as 14, I wrote as a means of expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I struggle linking emotions to feelings, I struggled to feel the emotions I had inside me, they would continue to haunt me, as they were stuck inside my time capsule within my fragile body. Clawing away at my insides leaving scars, if I had the ability to allow myself to feel, maybe they wouldn't be so lasting. So writing began when I decided to write about how as a confused teenager, I dealt with deceit and lies, as the anger seeped out of my words I began to release, the weight lifted and a calming sensation overcame me, that was how I felt! I used words to feel my emotions, never to relive them again. So I have many writings and little nuggets of raw pen to paper, showing a depth in my soul I never understood as real. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to consolidate my writings, create a story about my journey. About how I made it through, and how I truly felt as I was at each stage. Is this possible? Can spotted and raw words be re captured in a flowing story about life? Can it be rewritten? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worry only because I cannot read my writing, once it's on the page it's no longer mine and reading it makes me uncomfortable, and at times even, makes me dislike my writing because I don't feel that way anymore. Can I use this as a means of doing something I can be proud of calling my own? Showing others for the first time my insides, my brain, my deepest thoughts... So maybe one person may realise, they are not alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any opinions welcome, even the ones who say I may need help! Haha &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15898" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-21T00:47:24.683" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T00:47:24.683" Title="How do you know if your writing can become a story?" Tags="|plot|short-story|emotions|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19148" CreationDate="2015-11-16T06:43:42.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are so many different strategies you could use from social media to blog hops to promotional sites, but there is no quick and simple answer as to which would work best for you. I would suggest joining a writer's forum where other writers discuss the strategies they have used and provide feedback on what has or hasn't worked. One that I use and have recommended frequently is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kboards.com/index.php/board,60.0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Boards Writer's Cafe&lt;/a&gt;. You will find dozens of discussions there on different strategies, and you can decide for yourself which ones to try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T06:43:42.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19135" CreationDate="2015-11-16T07:16:39.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, a ballad is a collection of four-line verses that follow a specific rhyming pattern. These can be any of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;abac - first and third line rhyme&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;aabb - first and second line rhyme, and the third and fourth have a different rhyme&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;abcb - second and fourth line rhyme&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;abab - first and third line rhyme, and the second and fourth have a different rhyme&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you may see a ballad with six or eight-line verses, but the four-line verse is by far the most common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another distinguishing factor of the ballad is the meter that is used in each verse. The easiest way to understand meter is the natural rise and fall of the emphasis placed on each syllable or word. Here is an example I created with the emphasized words or syllables in bold font:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;wrote&lt;/strong&gt; a &lt;strong&gt;po&lt;/strong&gt;em &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;ter&lt;strong&gt;day&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To &lt;strong&gt;show&lt;/strong&gt; how &lt;strong&gt;it&lt;/strong&gt; was &lt;strong&gt;done&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;did&lt;/strong&gt;n't &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; too &lt;strong&gt;much&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;say&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;did&lt;/strong&gt; it &lt;strong&gt;just&lt;/strong&gt; for &lt;strong&gt;fun&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This particular example uses a 4-3-4-3 meter, which means that the first line has four emphasized points, the second has three, the third has four, and the fourth has three. Another form of ballad might have a 4-4-4-4 meter, which means that each line has four points of emphasis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as your poem is structured in this way, with four lines in each section and each section following the same rhyming pattern and the same meter, then you have a properly formed ballad. From a technical perspective, your poem is a properly formed ballad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting a ballad structured properly can be a fun challenge, but the real challenge is getting the words to flow naturally so that the reader doesn't think about the rise and fall within each line. You were doing fine until you got to the third line in the next to last verse: &amp;quot;the memories he had consumed&amp;quot;. A lot of people will read &amp;quot;memories&amp;quot; as two syllables instead of three, so I felt a little tripped up there. When I read it again and forced the three syllables it worked, technically, but it didn't have the natural flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can structure it properly and get it to flow naturally, then you can go from having a properly formed ballad to having a really good ballad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T07:16:39.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19732" CreationDate="2015-11-16T10:08:48.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try blogging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blogs can be about anything (including yourself), and generally don't have to follow a coherent sequence. You can blog every day for a week and then leave it for a month, which could fit when you feel you need to release your feelings into a written format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also means that you don't have to go back and read what you've written, which you would generally have to do in other forms of writing. Once it's done, you submit the blog post and never look back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also may help others: if you're expressing all of these emotions in a written form, and then perhaps it could help them to process their own emotions, especially if they, too, realize that they are not alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the anonymity that comes with online posts. If you're worried about how others may react to your work, then you at least don't have to associate your identity with it (at least not straight away), and see how it is received by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T10:08:48.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19722" CreationDate="2015-11-16T10:27:27.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not so much a reader of serial text publication, but I have some view which might be useful from comics. For comics, it is quite typical to have serialized publications. Consider the following examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;American superheroes comics are published one adventure at the time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mangas are published weekly: a chapter each time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Webcomics are published more or less regularly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read much superheroes comics, but mangas, they have a rather fixed narrative structure. Each chapter is thought as a story on its own: presentation, tension building, climax and relief. All of it is contained in the chapter (sometimes not much more than a few pages). This is to get the interest of the casual reader, which can step in any time. They often end on the climax, to keep people interested to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some webcomics don't have aany long-term evolution (Dilbert, etc.), so they can't compare, but some do. And those face the same problem as you have: keep the readers interested to follow their publications and also bring readers in at any time. Indeed, most people don't start a comics from the start, but from the most recent publication. If they like it, they might go back to the start. If they don't, they won't bother. Two techniques are used to achieve that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regular publication. Most set some publications days, and with that fixed schedule they keep their readers and/or increase their numbers. From the notes published, I gather that when they have no regular schedule, or that they break it too often, they lose &quot;followers&quot; (for want of a better word).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self-sufficient. Each and every publication can be read on its own. Humouristic publications try to add in a joke at each page (see for instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.giantitp.com/Comics.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Order of the Stick&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can, and probably should, consider both options together. But think about it with the following points&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't have an established base of readers, you need to make sure that anyone can jump in, with just the current chapter. And get interested.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't have some kind of climax each time, people get frustrated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't have a regular (frequent) publication schedule, people have to check daily to see whether you published something.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The combination of 1. and 2. means that you'll loose readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I would conclude saying that &lt;strong&gt;a serialized publication has to be thought as several episodes/chapters and not as a single piece of work&lt;/strong&gt;. You can also get some ideas from TV-Shows. No great novel would have had the success it had if it had been published pieces at a time and less so with unregular schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As a side note, you mention that you receive some positive feed back, you should evaluate the type of feedback you get. See, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5010/how-to-get-feedback-about-the-quality-of-ones-fictional-writing-from-friends-un&quot;&gt;that question&lt;/a&gt;. Maybe the feedback you get isn't so reliable, even if it is well meant.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13879" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T10:40:07.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19740" CreationDate="2015-11-16T15:07:06.120" Score="2" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the two phrases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;alphabets and integers sets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;alphabets set and integers set&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are both grammatically correct? If so, which one is a better style and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15895" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T13:36:52.817" Title="Which one and why: (alphabets and integers sets) OR (alphabets set and integers set)?" Tags="|academic-writing|grammar|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19739" CreationDate="2015-11-16T16:51:49.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first impression is that both are wrong and that what you want to say is &quot;&lt;em&gt;alphabet and integer sets&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why &quot;Alphabet and Integer Sets&quot;...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A set of alphabets, aka &quot;&lt;em&gt;alphabet sets&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, is a container of alphabets. It's a grouping, or collection, that holds only alphabets and can contain any number of alphabet sets including zero and approaching infinity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logically, it would look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?%5Clarge&amp;space;alphabetSet&amp;space;=&amp;space;%5Csqsubset&amp;space;German,&amp;space;Cyrillic,&amp;space;English,&amp;space;French&amp;space;%5Csqsupset&quot; title=&quot;\large alphabetSet = \sqsubset German, Cyrillic, English, French \sqsupset&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the integer set would look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?%5Clarge&amp;space;integerSet&amp;space;=&amp;space;%5Csqsubset&amp;space;1,&amp;space;2,&amp;space;3,&amp;space;...,&amp;space;2840238729740027402&amp;space;%5Csqsupset&quot; title=&quot;\large integerSet = \sqsubset 1, 2, 3, ..., 2840238729740027402 \sqsupset&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;However...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean to pluralize the alphabets and integers, then you're probably looking at something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A set of alphabet sets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A set of integer sets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13997" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:45.430" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T16:51:49.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19707" CreationDate="2015-11-16T18:26:25.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard of a few cases of TV shows and movie releases being delayed because the fictional events paralleled unpleasant real life events too closely, and so they felt it would be in bad taste. But they don't throw the story away, they just sit on it for a little while. Because human nature is that when something terrible happens, we are all horrified for a few days or weeks, but then we tend to forget about it and get on with our lives. If you wrote, say, a novel about a country launching a sneak attack on another country that closely paralleled Pearl Harbor today, few would find this offensive or in poor taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers are often praised for being insightful and prophetic when events in their book happen in real life. Of course that doesn't work if the book isn't published until after the event, even if written before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm suddenly reminded of a lecture I heard years ago by a writer who had written a magazine article back in the 1950s explaining why he thought Mount Everest would never be climbed. In between when he wrote the article and when it was scheduled to be published, Sir Edmund Hillary succeeded in climbing Mount Everest. As the author described it, &quot;This presented the magazine with a difficult ethical dilemma: Should they cancel the article and forfeit the $10 they had paid me for it, or should they go ahead and print it and make me look like a complete idiot. It took them about a second and a quarter to decide. And so I became the only person in history to predict that Mount Everest would never be climbed, six months after ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T18:26:25.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19717" CreationDate="2015-11-16T20:25:52.713" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ph simply means phonetic. This means the writer had spelled it how it sounded. It is often used in court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T20:25:52.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19743" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-16T20:33:23.073" Score="4" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;Far too many stories of mine have gone unfinished simply because I lost motivation to keep writing (and it doesn't help that I manage to convince myself each project will be my magnum opus). How can I keep myself with a project or keep myself from dropping it until I see it come to fruition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15908" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T16:56:26.550" LastActivityDate="2019-02-18T21:33:06.033" Title="How to motivate yourself to finish something?" Tags="|ending|psychology-of-writing|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19743" CreationDate="2015-11-16T20:53:11.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a Schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Share your schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build slop time in to your schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be honest with yourself when making your schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set realistic goals, not too crazy or challenging, nor too easy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Save the editing for later, do the writing now&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do it every day, even if it's just 5 minutes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13997" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T20:53:11.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19743" CreationDate="2015-11-16T22:24:55.970" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a while, try writing shorter stories that you can finish before your motivation wanes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, try to distinguish between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;losing motivation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fear of finishing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers often fear finishing a story because finishing means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;now they gotta think up a new story idea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;now they gotta show people their story,&#xA;and that scares the pajamas off of them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It turns out that neither of those things is true. You don't have to think up a new idea. You don't have to show your story to anybody. You might choose to. Or you might choose not to. Whatever you choose is okay. And you can make the choice later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T22:24:55.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19747" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-16T22:45:22.457" Score="3" ViewCount="435" Body="&lt;p&gt;My daughter and I thought it was a good idea to write a book about our experiences throughout her casting for a movie that she did. Her view on the journey and My view as her mother. Not sure how to structure it so that it's clear to the reader. So far we've been writing it entirely as her with her just stating things like my mother thought blah blah blah but I feel it would be better if it was first person from each perspective. Sort of the way the showtime drama 'The Affair' is done. Any suggestions or examples? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15910" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T10:50:57.803" Title="Two perspectives in a non-fiction book" Tags="|non-fiction|perspective|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19747" CreationDate="2015-11-17T00:23:05.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One approach is to write separate chapters (maybe alternating, but maybe in this case more from her?) with the writer identified at the beginning of each.  A similar approach was taken in the &lt;em&gt;Jumper&lt;/em&gt; novels by Stephen Gould; each chapter is &quot;titled&quot; with the name of the point-of-view character for that chapter.  I once read a novel, I think by Spider Robinson but I might be mistaken, where two characters alternated chapters in first person; that would be similar to what you're describing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both of these cases the change in point of view didn't impede the story; that's really important.  What you talk about in one of your chapters should follow naturally from whatever she talked about in the one right before it.  Don't jump around; that'll confuse your readers.  (Consider how confusing it is to read a comment thread where people posted out of order.  You don't want to cause that kind of reaction in your readers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, as the two of you plan this, that not all chapters need to be of equal length and you don't need equal numbers.  If it seems more natural for her to have more of the text, do that.  If it ends up being closer to 50-50, consider alternating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T00:23:05.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19747" CreationDate="2015-11-17T02:14:23.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Intriguing. You could write it as almost like a screenplay with the speaker listed flush left--but then also do paragraphs of prose, probably from your daughter's perspective, outside of the dialogue. No immediate examples come to mind so I'm probably way out on a limb with this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T02:14:23.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19743" CreationDate="2015-11-17T04:42:12.453" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Man up, chief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop looking for excuses. Sit down and finish the damn thing already. Really, that's all there is to it. Turn off the phone, disconnect the Internet, reprogram the TV with a shovel, sit down at the desk, and finish the damn story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15812" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T04:42:12.453" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19747" CreationDate="2015-11-17T10:50:57.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say that splitting it by chapter would be the most logical approach. However I think that only works if you are telling a story in your own right. So the reader reads a chapter from her on one aspect, then gets another chapter on your views on that event. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would need to be quite careful how you choreographed them, you wouldn't want to bore the reader by repeating everything. You'd need to divy out the crucial story points and decide which one's furthered each character's story the best. It would certainly be a challenging thing to write, but I imagine quite fulfilling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are simply providing a commentary on her story, then maybe footnotes, or occasionally interspersed pages might be better (with a big 'mother's thoughts' at the top!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step is probably to sit down and decide what you want to write, what you both want to contribute to it, and what you want the end product to be. Once you've got that, create a story plan between you, with a concrete idea of who is saying what. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, it sounds an interesting idea, I wish you luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T10:50:57.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19743" CreationDate="2015-11-17T13:00:58.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are only two motivations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pleasure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only difference between the two motivations is what your mind makes of circumstances.  In other words, one person thinks writing is pain another thinks it is pleasure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dopamine Release : Science Behind Motivation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern neuroscientists have discovered that basically anything you associate with pleasure releases dopamine into your brain.  When dopamine is released into your brain you like the thing you are doing more.  It is a self-perpetuating system and why people become addicted to odd behaviors which make them &quot;feel happy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Program Yourself&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time, the world has programmed you to believe certain things are pain and certain other things are pleasure.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Consider this, why do some people find escargo a delicacy and others believe them to be disgusting.  It is this same type of thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are placed in a situation  where writing is a chore and considered pain (think secondary school and college where it is a requirement simply to pass a class) then you may have programmed yourself into the belief that writing is pain.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Heavily Used Circuits Fire Faster, Fire More&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If you've gone in numerous loops -- as many writers have -- where you write a little, think it is a pain, get rejected, then stop and start often you've basically programmed yourself to think writing is pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Possible Solution&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set specific times to write, which will only last 5 minutes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the time comes, do nothing but write. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you write for those 5 minutes, write about whatever you want, as if no one will ever see it.  Free yourself entirely. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not judge your writing at all.  Write for the pure exhiliration of writing; examining interesting words and thoughts, enjoying sentence construction that may not even be grammatical, studying the beauty of language itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evaluation of the System&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, evaluate how you feel after these 5 minute writing sprees.&#xA;Ask yourself the following questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Did you write at the scheduled time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you continually miss the scheduled times or simply never write for those 5 minutes, then it is advisable to stop writing.  Why?  Because you really don't want to write.  Go do something that you are actually intereted in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Did you enjoy writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's okay if you still did not enjoy writing.  Maybe it's not your thing.  This way, at least you are honest with yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This simple program of writing for 5 minutes may very well help you create a positive dopamine release in your brain which will transform you into a prolific writer.  Try it and see what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you never try the program for even 5 sessions of 5 minutes?  &lt;strong&gt;Answer&lt;/strong&gt;: You are not a writer.  That's ok.  Move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T13:00:58.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19754" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-17T15:17:41.620" Score="8" ViewCount="484" Body="&lt;p&gt;I illustrated a book 20 years ago. No royalties: one-time use. Did not sign a contract for copyright. It is considered an orphan. Now the author wants a new publisher to print the same illustrations. Do I have any rights? I do not have the contract.  The publisher is out of business and I may not even have the originals any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15916" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T18:01:37.410" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T18:01:37.410" Title="Illustrations for a children's book to be republished" Tags="|publishing|legal|children|artwork|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19754" CreationDate="2015-11-17T15:33:26.530" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to consult with a lawyer. This question overlaps with contract law and copyright law and seeing as you don't have any of the original contracts it will be difficult to establish what happened. Presumably, however, the author of the book has also lost whatever agreements were in place, or they could provide copies for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to assume you're posting from a country that follows the Berne convention on copyright. In those countries, any work you create is automatically copyrighted. The length of the term of copyright varies but it's usually much longer than 20 years. You may have difficulty establishing proof that you are, in fact, the illustrator, but maybe you can get the author to stipulate that? If so, then the works would normally automatically be copyright by you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When dealing with a publisher, it's common for the copyright to be transferred, either as a work-for-hire or outright sold or otherwise locked up. In this case you'd have no remaining interest in the works and would be out of luck. A &quot;one time job with no royalties&quot; sounds like a &quot;work for hire&quot;, but without a formal agreement it's difficult to say. If you can establish that there was no transfer of copyright, then the works are yours and you should be party to the negotiations for the new publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Illustrators are often paid a fraction of the royalties. A common split is 50-50: the author gets half the royalties, the illustrator the other half. A big-selling author or illustrator may be able to get a larger cut. It's all about negotiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were I in your position I'd first try to determine what the author intends with regards to royalties. The fairest option is to split the royalties. Maybe they will do that for you? If not, maybe they can provide evidence that the illustrations were contractually a work-for-hire? If the author is not cooperating with you, you should probably get a copyright lawyer to review your case. Maybe sending the author a single letter from the lawyer will outline your rights and convince them to give you royalties. If the author is shopping the book out to traditional publishers you will probably need to negotiate with the publisher directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally one thing to consider is that the book may not be an orphan after all. If the original publisher held copyright on it, its interests may have been purchased by some other organization. That could pose a problem for you. Again, a lawyer should be able to help you with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T15:33:26.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19743" CreationDate="2015-11-17T20:35:01.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get yourself a deadline. Contests are very good at providing deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of contests for fiction and poetry are listed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pw.org/grants&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Poets &amp;amp; Writers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T20:35:01.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19707" CreationDate="2015-11-17T20:45:37.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the opportunity to write a preface or afterward that describes how you heard about the true event and the impact it had on you.  This has the added benefit that you're implicitly denying that you had taken advantage of the event for your story.  If you decide to change the story in any way based on the event, you could use an afterword to (briefly) describe what you changed and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14775" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T20:45:37.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19707" CreationDate="2015-11-17T21:30:49.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While not exactly the same this sort of thing happens in creative fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tom Clancy's novel Debt of Honor had a terrorist deliberately flying an airplane into the capital. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The film SpaceCamp, in which an accident on the launch pad endangers children by sending them to space was to be released after the launch of Challenger in 1986 - the film was of course delayed after the Challenger explosion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15813" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T21:30:49.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19760" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19761" CreationDate="2015-11-18T04:36:37.697" Score="5" ViewCount="10314" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to add a code viewer in Google Blogger like in image given below.&#xA;How can I add it please help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/S5R17.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/S5R17.png&quot; alt=&quot;Code viewer&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15925" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-25T08:16:37.817" LastActivityDate="2021-12-03T13:39:28.563" Title="Adding coding template in a Google blogger" Tags="|software|blog|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19760" CreationDate="2015-11-18T05:02:00.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no native way to do this in Blogger it appears (ie - no button you can click on the editor toolbar to insert a block of formatted code) - however, there are plugins and css / javascript solutions you could try - some of those programmatic solutions can be found here in StackOverflow that discusses this at length:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3207758/how-to-show-code-snippet-in-blogs&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3207758/how-to-show-code-snippet-in-blogs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another solution:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rusya7.blogspot.com/2015/02/how-to-insert-code-blocks-in-blogger.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://rusya7.blogspot.com/2015/02/how-to-insert-code-blocks-in-blogger.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15813" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:40:35.973" LastActivityDate="2015-11-18T16:05:52.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19049" CreationDate="2015-11-18T14:42:32.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.grammarly.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grammarly&lt;/a&gt; - It is web based, but also has browser and Word plugins. &#xA;It will check all manner of grammar errors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15813" LastActivityDate="2015-11-18T14:42:32.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19764" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23904" CreationDate="2015-11-18T16:22:57.510" Score="0" ViewCount="866" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for an exhaustive writing tracker, either software or a spreadsheet. ideally, the basic things it would need to track are word count per session, projects worked on, submission status, etc. The more things related to writing to track the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's a way to create or it includes graphs that would be amazing. Basically, the more it looks like productivity porn, the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd really like this to be some kind of software or website, so I don't have to have multiple &quot;2014 Writing Year&quot;, &quot;2015 Writing Year&quot;, etc. files in a folder on my computer. But I haven't been able to google up anything that fits what I'm looking for. I do have one giant spreadsheet that I've been using, but I made the mistake of renaming it so I can't just say &quot;Hey, I'm looking for something a little more involved than So-and-so's Spreadsheet of Doom&quot; or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thought behind the ask: I write better when I have something that will visually show me &quot;hey if you don't write something you're going to break your streak, loser&quot;, and I write &lt;strong&gt;more&lt;/strong&gt; if I'm trying to beat someone, including myself. The shinier something is with the more bells and whistles, the more likely I am to consistently use it. Basically, I'm trying to instill good writing habits in myself by tricking myself into having good writing habits, using methods that have worked in the past for other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15928" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T13:39:08.937" Title="Writing productivity trackers" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19764" CreationDate="2015-11-18T18:20:03.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Excel, absolutely.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might not want to consider this, but give it a shot. Here are the things it could do for you: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Word Count.&lt;/strong&gt; It has this one in the bag. Simply write for a session and count the words. If you're using MS Word, just highlight the words. It will tell you the word count down on the bottom of the screen. I know there are also websites/programs that can do this for you. Then just put that number into Excel. The next time you write, put the second number next to the first. Then run a formula to calculate the average. You can keep from having to update the formula by &lt;em&gt;inserting&lt;/em&gt; columns/rows before the formula to add new data. When you do this, Excel automatically changes the formula to include the new column or row. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Projects.&lt;/strong&gt; Simply make a new sheet in the same file. This way, you have one big file with all of your past, present, and future projects in it. In addition, you can see the specs of each project individually. Be sure to back this big file up somewhere. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Submission Status.&lt;/strong&gt; It's up to you how you want to track this. I use Excel to track my writing progress in a similar fashion. I have an in depth development process, followed by the writing process. For each step, I have a cell containing how much I think the step is worth (for example, a particular step may be worth 1, and another may be worth 5 because it takes longer). As I go through the process, I have another column that I fill in with numbers corresponding to the step value, as I complete them. At the top of the sheet, I have a cell with a formula dividing the sums of the two columns by each other and writing the result as a percent, so telling me how far I am through the project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Graphs.&lt;/strong&gt; They're a little hard to work with in Excel (Word is easier to arrange them), but MS Office 2007 and up has a lot of excellent charts and graphs you can use to track practically anything. Want a line graph depicting how often, how much, and when you write? No problem. Want to later change that line graph to a different format (of a line graph) without losing the data? No problem. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else you could consider is MS Access. It's not as easy to work as Excel or Word, and you need to know what you are doing, but it is ultimately far more powerful than either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-11-18T18:20:03.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19764" CreationDate="2015-11-18T18:52:53.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can try my old buddy &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener.&lt;/a&gt; I don't use even a quarter of the bells and whistles I know are there, so hunt around the documentation and see if it's useful. I know it at least has a Goal function so you can set a word count goal to meet, and keeps track in the footer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inexpensive program, you own it rather than rent it (I'm looking at &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, Adobe), and the trial is fully powered for the trial period rather than being crippled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-11-18T18:52:53.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-18T21:28:36.217" Score="6" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;I start to feel that I'm mad. I make stories from everything that I see on the street. A dialogue, an interesting personality, a funny couple, a hard question or a perfect view to write about. Words and sentences are buzzing in my mind all the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only and biggest problem is that I don't have the main storyline. I need something that collects these ideas and what my story is about but I throw all my ideas out of the window because I think they are too mainstream. I think I haven't found yet MY story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15930" LastEditorDisplayName="user12726" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T02:10:59.667" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T02:10:59.667" Title="How to collect my ideas in one story?" Tags="|novel|plot|ideas|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19767" CreationDate="2015-11-18T22:03:02.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have everything you need. Now just start with the beginning. As soon as you begin pushing all your ideas onto the pages, a story will appear. Trust your instincts. Take days that it's just not happening to edit (both scene editing and line editing). Make sure you write every day. Many will tell you to read within your genre for ideas, but I've been doing just fine with only imagination. I do a lot of nonfiction research (say, with a medical drama, I'll spend 100 hours or so trying to figure out the way a good doctor would do something versus a poor one). Scenes will start to just appear in your head. (Some may choose to see a psychiatrist at this point, but to each their own.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2015-11-18T23:36:17.357" LastActivityDate="2015-11-18T23:36:17.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19767" CreationDate="2015-11-18T22:33:54.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep those random thoughts and favorite words / ideas / sentences in a journal or binder, etc...then when you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; a story you can use them as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15813" LastActivityDate="2015-11-18T22:33:54.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19770" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-19T02:47:57.377" Score="1" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a writer, I tend to write and then write my outline. I have done this for many years with papers and stories but it doesn't seem to work with my books. Is that a good strategy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15936" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T15:01:47.777" Title="Writing backwards" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19771" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19782" CreationDate="2015-11-19T05:28:31.187" Score="2" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing a short story and the word 'vampiric' found its way on the screen, describing a medical blood-taking device. Word [of course] pitched a fit and I can... sort of... find some evidence that it is a 'real' word, but I'm not sure if it is indeed legitimate enough to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15813" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T08:19:20.410" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T08:19:20.410" Title="Is &quot;vampiric&quot; a legitimate word?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19772" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-19T08:01:45.790" Score="2" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've asked this on EL&amp;amp;U: some of the answers were close, but no cigar. I'm looking for a term that one of the characters in my play will use to describe her enemy's dirty tactics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a very dirty trick used to slander someone (not necessarily an immediate opponent); the method is well-known and easily recognizable, but is there a term for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me describe it. In its basic form, some public speakers use it to discredit an opponent. &quot;Let me ask you something. When did you stop beating your wife?&quot; - implying that it is an established fact that the opponent is a wife beater - no actual proof necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the trick I'm talking about is a notch more subtle. Instead of using a near-direct accusation, the trickster seeks to engage the audience's subconscious: he's planning ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He constructs a two-part sentence in which the first part's purpose is to plant a slanderous idea in the audience's minds, while the second part will serve as a decoy: it'll get everybody riled up, drawing attention away from the fact that the idea has already taken root in everyone's brain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first part is important. The second part isn't. The actual (quiet) attack and the (loud) decoy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first part will convince the audience (without them knowing it) that the opponent, John Doe, Jr., is a wife beater.&#xA;The second part will get them all worked up over an something the trickster couldn't care less about, such as the Republican stance on the abortion issue (assuming that the audience is mostly Democratic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus constructed, the sentence would sound like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Even such a notorious wife beater as John Doe, Jr., would tell you that the Republicans have made some pretty good points about the abortion issue over the years.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The audience will immediately pounce on the second part of the sentence, and a long heated argument will ensue. In the meantime, the idea that John Doe, Jr. is a wife beater will casually sneak into their memories, and will surface unobtrusively the next time they see Mr. Doe or hear him speak. &quot;Oh, so that's the guy who beats his wife. Who would have thought. He looks pretty normal. Just a regular guy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a very dirty trick that nonetheless is often used in various propaganda campaigns. What's it called? Is there a specific term for it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15812" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T08:01:45.790" Title="Fallacy of relative privation? Propaganda device? Unobtrusive slander? What is it?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2015-12-01T23:48:01.160" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2015-11-19T09:01:20.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's only one way to start being a writer. That is, start to write. Sit down in front of your notebook / laptop when you are entirely to yourself and start writing /typing. Shut yourself off from the entire world. Let the thoughts and creativity flow within you. Of course, you won't become a Jeffery Archer or Wilbur Smith in a single day. But it's the first step. You wont know unless you try. Take criticism in your stride. Compare it with a baby walking. The first steps might be ungainly, but soon you will develop confidence and then, no one will be able to stop you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12670" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T09:01:20.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19770" CreationDate="2015-11-19T09:04:22.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to write a book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Have a definite plot / story in mind with characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) Start with some scene and build up the story as you go along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second method, you might risk losing track of your story's logical continuity link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say it's better you have some plot in mind and develop it fully into a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12670" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T09:04:22.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19770" CreationDate="2015-11-19T11:04:13.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do a somewhat similar thing, and it certainly can work. Hopefully my methods will help you come up with your own system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have many ideas all of the time for interesting scenarios, relationships, scenes, conversations, even philosophical outlooks on life that characters may have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then write them down on some paper, and stick them into a (currently very disorganized) folder. I then usually forget about them for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally I will get a good idea for a story. I file those separately. Currently I have about a dozen story ideas. I have no idea what will happen in these stories, some of them just have a premise, others have just a beginning, or just an ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every now and then I will go through my ideas folder, see what things I wrote down, and some of them will fit perfectly into a story idea, so I take it out and file it with the story it will fit with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story I'm currently writing I have only planned around 95%. I know the majority of what will happen in my story, but there are still chapters that are unfinished. I started writing it when it was around 90% planned out, and as I have gone along some of my previous ideas have fit into the empty spaces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method has some drawbacks. I haven't yet reached a point in writing my current story that I have completely unplanned, as I usually think of something or find an idea for it before I reach that point. However, if I do reach an unplanned point I will either have to stop writing, or skip that chapter and move onto the next one, neither of which I think is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, it requires me to be very flexible, and absolutely ruthless. I have had to edit parts of my earlier chapters multiple times in order to make it fit with later character development etc. There have been parts that I have needed to remove entirely because they no longer fit with my constantly evolving story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be very time consuming, and sometimes I struggle to find the motivation to write some of the weaker parts of my book, as I am worried that I may come up with a better idea later and I will need to rip it all out again and rethink what I've just written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, I have a dozen unfinished stories that I may never find a way to complete, which is no good to anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this method has its advantages too. If I only started my book when it was 100% thought out and planned, I still wouldn't have started it, so it allows me to think up new great ideas whilst still in the process of writing, as my story is not so rigid that I can't put extra things into it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that this makes my story flow better, and have a more natural evolution as I am discovering the next part of my story alongside my characters, so there are no parts that do not fit together neatly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for my other stories; on at least one occasion, I have looked at a single idea, and with this one small addition to a story, I managed to combine two of my story ideas and adapt them into a single idea for a book. Had I tried to wait until I had a full plot in mind before writing a story, I would have a quarter of two future books as opposed to around three quarters of the plot finished for one future book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, in order for this to work you need to be prepared that some of your best ideas may never get used in a finished story, as the last thing you want to do is to shoehorn something into a book where it doesn't fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to be patient. Your story &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; take a long time to complete with this method, but I feel that with mine it is constantly improving, and am willing to spend the time to end up with the best work that I can possibly do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T11:04:13.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19770" CreationDate="2015-11-19T11:14:12.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are describing is being a &lt;em&gt;discovery writer,&lt;/em&gt; also called a &lt;em&gt;pantser&lt;/em&gt; (as in &quot;by the seat of your pants&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of an outline is to establish a coherent linear structure for your story, so all the plotlines work all the way through. If you just write your entire story first, and then reverse-engineer it to fit an outline, you can make it work, but as Mike Ford notes, you must be absolutely ruthless about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, if you are writing a relatively standard, linear narrative, an outline is a good thing. Whether you write the outline first and base the story off that or write the story first and then hang the bits on the outline until it works is entirely a question of what you are comfortable with as a writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I don't think you can expect is to have a coherently, fully-formed novel leap from your fingertips in the first draft without having some kind of outline, structure, or plan set up beforehand (whether you write it down or not). Part of the point of discovery writing is that you, quite literally, don't know what's going to happen next. This is the opposite of an outline, where you have already decided what's going to happen next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question should not be &quot;Is this a good strategy?&quot; but rather &quot;Is this a good workflow for me as a writer?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T11:14:12.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19777" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19780" CreationDate="2015-11-19T12:34:24.760" Score="2" ViewCount="367" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any term to describe stories where the &quot;evil&quot; characters are extremely evil, and the good characters are extremely good?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15937" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T19:56:52.630" Title="Term for stereotype stories" Tags="|character-development|terminology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19777" CreationDate="2015-11-19T13:10:36.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're referring to older, unsophisticated stories, where the author was being quite straightforward, then &quot;clich&amp;eacute;d&quot; is probably what you want. (Plain old &lt;em&gt;unsophisticated&lt;/em&gt; works too, or &lt;em&gt;broad&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;simplistic.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're referring to current stories, or your own, where you're aware of such stereotypes and you're parodying them, you might say you're being &quot;ironic.&quot; That only works if you actually &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; being ironic and you're mocking the stereotypes by overplaying them rather than writing as though it's correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T13:10:36.857" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19767" CreationDate="2015-11-19T14:35:38.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are letting your inner critic get in the way of your inner writer.  It's very important to turn off the inner voice that criticizes your writing until all the writing is finished.  Otherwise you'll never get anything completed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, all writers tend to start out writing things that are cliched --it takes a while to find an original voice.  Also, many great stories and novels have explored &quot;mainstream&quot; ideas.  Most of Shakespeare's plays were based on old stories, and the more original ones were not always the more successful ones.  And Harry Potter is a mass of fantasy tropes, but JK Rowling is rich and famous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of pulling your ideas into a larger plotline --maybe you are more of a short story writer.  There's a market and an audience today for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/writers-digest-competitions/short-short-story-competition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;very brief fiction&lt;/a&gt;, a story of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_fiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;just a few paragraphs&lt;/a&gt; that vividly explores an experience can be a success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T14:35:38.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19777" CreationDate="2015-11-19T14:49:18.093" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on the work's intent.  If the characters are thinly characterized and stereotyped because the work's main attraction is a sensationalist plot crammed with dramatic events, then we call this a &lt;strong&gt;melodrama.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melodrama&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; reports that a Professor Ben Singer has identified &quot;moral polarization&quot; as one of the key elements of melodrama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the characters are presented as contrasting moral opposites because they are intended to illustrate some larger philosophical idea, we call this an &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;allegory&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;  A famous example is John Bunyon's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pilgrim%27s_Progress&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pilgrim's Progress&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, where nearly every character personifies some virtue or sin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Based on your comments to your original post, I would note that &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; is basically a fairy tale, populated with archetypal characters.  This style is sometimes called &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythopoeia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mythopoeic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (sometimes rendered as &quot;mythopoetic&quot;). As far as &lt;em&gt;Indiana Jones&lt;/em&gt;, I'm not sure it matches the request --the bad characters may be extremely villainous, but the good characters aren't exactly saintly...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-11-20T19:56:52.630" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T19:56:52.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19770" CreationDate="2015-11-19T15:01:47.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to write my stories &quot;backward.&quot; In a 12-chapter novel, I once wrote the first three chapters, then Chapter 12, Chapter 11, Chapter 10, Chapter 9, then chapters 4-8 in some random order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know how the stories begin, and how I want them to end. The &quot;middle&quot; chapters are the hardest for me to write, because I'm not sure how to get from A to B. So I let A (the beginning) and B (the end) expand, until there is little enough left in the middle that I can force it to fit both ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My secret is to have solid foundation (beginning). Then when you start at the end, you have something to &quot;back into.&quot; Otherwise, you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T15:01:47.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19771" CreationDate="2015-11-19T15:51:12.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, &quot;vampiric&quot; is a legitimate word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't own a dictionary, you can visit &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vampiric&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dictionary.com&lt;/a&gt; to research words and usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T15:51:12.580" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19783" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19787" CreationDate="2015-11-19T17:24:45.547" Score="1" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble figuring out which form is the past tense for sentences like these. For each example, which would be correct? Or have I completely missed something?&#xA;Thanks.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;John stepped on the teacup, smashing it like an egg.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;or&lt;br&gt;&#xA;John stepped on the teacup and smashed it like an egg.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Will shook the bush and pixies came tumbling out, yelling.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;or&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Will shook the bush and yelling pixies tumbled out.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The second one seems more correct in each case, but both sound fine to my ear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15938" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-11-19T20:16:18.987" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T20:19:40.593" Title="How would I keep using past tense with resulting actions" Tags="|fiction|tenses|grammar|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19777" CreationDate="2015-11-19T18:27:44.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A neutral term: &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackAndWhiteMorality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;black and white morality&lt;/a&gt;. Good and evil are unambiguously defined and, while a character can have faults, we never doubt its moral standing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typical example is The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit. The Silmarillion would be a bit of a stretch, especially when it comes to The Children of Húrin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13969" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T18:27:44.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19777" CreationDate="2015-11-19T19:36:39.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know of a general, well-accepted term for such stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would say that &quot;boring&quot; and &quot;simplistic&quot; may or may not apply. There are many reasons why a story could be boring or simplistic other than having characters who are all good or all evil. And the converse is also true. A story whose emphasis is on plot development or the solving of a mystery may have simple characters because the author does not want to devote time to developing the characters, but rather to presenting and solving the mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you have to say which characters. Many stories have just one or two or three main characters who are complex and well-developed, and many peripheral characters who only appear briefly or sporadically in the story and so are not well developed. To take an extreme example, suppose in our story the hero has some valuable object, and for the story to work it is necessary for this object to be stolen and never be seen again. The thief may well just show up, hit the hero over the head, steal the object, and disappear. We would not be at all surprised if the thief is left as a simple, purely evil character, and his motivations and personal history are not explored at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Extremely good&quot; and &quot;extremely evil&quot; do not necessarily mean &quot;simple&quot;. A character could be all good but still have a complex history and many conflicting motivations. Like, a good person could be torn between doing what is best for his children and doing what is best for society as a whole. Or, a story could discuss how this person came to be so good. How did he overcome temptations to do evil: to take revenge on people who wronged him, to cut corners on the road to success, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: don't be simplistic in what you declare to be simplistic!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T19:36:39.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19783" CreationDate="2015-11-19T19:50:43.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both are correct. There is more than one way to form the past tense in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T19:50:43.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19783" CreationDate="2015-11-19T20:15:33.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writer Preference&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both ways are correct. In your first example, 'smashing it like an egg' is a dependent clause. The second line converts it to a compound verb and an adverb clause. In your second example, both versions use the conjunction 'and' to join two independent clauses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases like these, it is purely a matter of which version you think sounds better and contributes more to what you are writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T20:15:33.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19783" CreationDate="2015-11-19T20:19:40.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The crowd shoved him up against the wall.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The crowd was shoving him up against the wall.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer the first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the definitive answer to the difference between verbs which end in ed versus verbs ending in ing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/verb-tenses-adding-ed-and-ing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/verb-tenses-adding-ed-and-ing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The short of it is:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;verbs ending in ed is the past tense verb&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;verbs ending in the ing is the present participle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe at times a writer may prefer the ing because it makes her (think her) writing sound more like it is happening in the present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T20:19:40.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19789" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19791" CreationDate="2015-11-19T21:04:42.817" Score="0" ViewCount="2973" Body="&lt;p&gt;Help me with the correct sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;IS&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; only three wine glasses left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;ARE&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; only three wine glasses left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15943" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T21:12:44.267" Title="IS vs ARE question" Tags="|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-11-19T22:53:32.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19789" CreationDate="2015-11-19T21:10:58.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To figure out whether to use &lt;strong&gt;IS&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;ARE&lt;/strong&gt; look at the noun.  Since there are &lt;em&gt;three&lt;/em&gt; wine glasses you would use &lt;strong&gt;ARE&lt;/strong&gt;.  If the sentence was about one wine glass it would read: &quot;There &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; only one wine glass left.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15401" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T21:10:58.113" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-19T22:03:30.990" Score="4" ViewCount="943" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an irrational fear of my work being stolen.  I understand that this is, realistically, extremely unlikely to happen.  There are just too many barriers to something being successfully stolen and sold, and I should be able to put my name and copyright on it and be ready to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, that understanding doesn't seem to be sufficient.  Despite any rational arguments I make, I still find myself extremely hesitant to share my work and seek feedback - the slim possibility is enough to paralyze me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is - &lt;strong&gt;how can I go about ensuring proof of ownership to reassure my paranoid self?&lt;/strong&gt;  Is there a series of actions I can take, so that in a worst-case scenario I could approach a lawyer and definitively show that I was the original writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I'm not sure if this question belongs here or on Law.  It is specific to writing (and I am in the US), and I am willing to accept an opinion from someone experienced in copyright/publishing but who is not actually a lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15946" LastEditorUserId="15946" LastEditDate="2015-11-19T22:19:46.077" LastActivityDate="2018-02-24T20:13:18.113" Title="How can I establish ownership over my work?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19794" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-19T23:51:56.440" Score="3" ViewCount="4463" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Made up character) Farrel jumps from his rambler house roof but lands horizontally and on his left arm. His left arms ulna snaps and pierces out of his skin. This is just an example because I'm having trouble with my real story (where the main character gets impaled on rebar) but having trouble explaining it in first person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15947" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T16:39:43.453" Title="How to describe pain in first person?" Tags="|grammatical-person|atmosphere|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-11-23T16:07:29.097" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19794" CreationDate="2015-11-20T00:09:39.867" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to the site, Bruce! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, describing pain in the first is no different than doing it in the third person. The only difference would be that you would use 'I' rather than third person pronouns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, what it looks like you're really after is how to describe pain in general. As far as being impaled on re-bar goes... well, I think we can scratch first-person accounts of how it felt. What you need to do is &lt;em&gt;imagine&lt;/em&gt; how it would feel, and write that down, ignoring how it sounds at first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the idea is there, go back and rewrite it, describing it using adjectives, adverbs, and verbs that compliment the experience. You want your reader to &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; the pain the &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; your character does. For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Farrel's forward momentum came to an abrupt halt as he slammed into the re-bar. He felt the rough metal slice through his body, plunging through organs, ripping through skin, and shattering bones. A second later his face collided with the hard concrete the re-bar was buried in, smashing his nose. He could feel the vibration of it shudder all the way through his body, which only made the pain ten times worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the descriptive verbs I use: &lt;em&gt;slammed, plunging, ripping, shattering, collided, etc.&lt;/em&gt; I wouldn't, for example, use such words as &lt;em&gt;arrive, land, connect, etc.&lt;/em&gt; because they aren't as vivid. The words I used help to convey the feeling of the pain to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this is what you were looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T00:09:39.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19793" CreationDate="2015-11-20T00:47:41.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could copyright it. Here's the link for the U.S. copyright office:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.copyright.gov/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also copy it, mail the copy to yourself, and stash it away without opening it when it arrives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should your work truly get stolen, you could always sue, and gain a reputation in addition to making some money, in the process. When introducing yourself to a publisher, producer, or agent, you'd be able to say &quot;I'm the one they stole that bestseller from&quot; with a straight face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15812" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-12-08T23:21:57.680" LastActivityDate="2016-12-08T23:21:57.680" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19794" CreationDate="2015-11-20T01:18:03.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Tommy in that visualization is key in describing anything from a first person point of view. He was also correct with the words: it's all about the adjectives and adverbs you choose to use. Some other good ones to describe pain are &lt;em&gt;surging, tearing, wracking, burning, smoldering, piercing, unbearable, searing, etc.&lt;/em&gt; If you want to really give depth to the pain, getting pretty graphic with some specifics as to what's going on is also a great idea, as long as it's not so much detail that it becomes tedious. Using first person is also great in situations like this because it allows you to go much deeper into the thought process of that person. A simple way to think of it is &quot;what would be going through my mind if this was happening to me?&quot;&lt;br/&gt; Example for the scene: &lt;code&gt;The bone snapped with a crack so loud it echoed through the silence of the night. My head spun violently, and looking back, I could see white bone gouging out from the bloodied mess that was my arm. For some reason, my brain refused to believe it. Everything was spinning by now, spiraling into a black nothingness, until...&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15912" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T01:18:03.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19049" CreationDate="2015-11-20T08:52:23.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hemingwayapp.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hemingway&lt;/a&gt; - Free web-version, paid download version. Identify clunky sentences, passive voice, unnecessary words. I think tense changes are included in the 'clunky' setting and passive voice is often an indicator of changing tense as well. Exports to HTML, Markdown, and Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15893" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T08:52:23.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4124" CreationDate="2015-11-20T09:00:30.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.celtx.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Celtx&lt;/a&gt; is for scripts but has a robust organizational system and ways to structure parts of a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I use &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; for planning, logistical matters, and to-do lists, &lt;a href=&quot;http://evernote.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt; for snippets of text, quotes, and as a repository for 'cut' paragraphs or future ideas, and write directly into Word. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-fiction writing, whenever I touch a source I add it into &lt;a href=&quot;https://zotero.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zotero&lt;/a&gt; and write the quote and page number in a note attached to that item and use the Zotero Word plug-in to put that citation directly into Word as a field. If I ever have to correct publication information on the source it auto updates. This saves me from having to keep lists and lists of sources and page numbers -- instead, they're tied to the source in Zotero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15893" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T09:00:30.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19724" CreationDate="2015-11-20T10:33:18.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, there are two different sorts of 'creative time'. There are bouts of inspiration, where new plot ideas and insights into character development arise, and there are 'inspired moments', where prose comes out more smoothly and you're just generally more productive. Insight-y creative time can usually be solved by quickly jotting something down onto a notebook or phone. However, you seem to be referring to the second sort of 'creative time'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't condition yourself into feeling truly inspired, but there are times when you feel more productive than others. You should try to analyze when you feel most creative. For example, I write a lot after/while I'm in the process of going to sleep, because I have time to mull over whatever project I'm working on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing (especially when you're starting out) requires discipline. You have to train yourself into following leads and developing them into a story. If you have time during the evenings, use it to write. During your commute home, consider an idea and force yourself to write &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; about it when you get home, even if it's just a paragraph. As long as you're not completely dead on your feet, if you get excited enough about an idea, you can trick yourself into forgetting about fatigue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry if some of your stuff is weak. Writing always improves over time and even then, Sturgeon's Law still applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So. Don't rely on 'true creative time' to do your writing. Create your 'productive time' by thinking about what you're going to write before you actually go ahead and do it. Discipline, practice and consistency should help to increase both the quality and the quantity of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15951" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T10:33:18.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19794" CreationDate="2015-11-20T13:27:15.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The writing of this passage depends on what you intend to underline; is the character under a lot of stress or would he rather describe the scene factually, as though detached from what he's experiencing ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the scene intends to underline the horror of the moment, stick as closely as you can to what the character might be thinking/feeling at the time; at this level of pain, perception dwindles down to the most basic form of sensation :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Searing pain, and my vision goes blind. I can't breathe. I can't move, and my head is spinning, threatening to shut down althogether. (...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you intend to focus on what happens next, a more detached approach might be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I looked down. There was a rebar sticking out of my stomach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then move on directly, as though it were just an offhand comment. On many occasions characters (as well as real people) don't react to trauma the 'natural' way; it's an interesting thing to play on, especially since you're writing in first person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T13:27:15.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19804" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20259" CreationDate="2015-11-20T15:00:57.663" Score="1" ViewCount="859" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot seem to find any information about this question.&#xA;Is it appropriate to include photos of characters in a biographical screenplay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15683" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T08:32:59.013" Title="Photos in Screenplays" Tags="|characters|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19794" CreationDate="2015-11-20T16:39:43.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often describe the reaction to the pain and the action causing the pain more than the pain itself. You can say that it's agony, anguish, a tribulation, but it won't have an impact unless you focus specifically on what causes it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on the sound of the words. &lt;em&gt;Surge, gouge, sear, smolder, snap, plunge, slice, saw, splatter.&lt;/em&gt; I would also use &lt;em&gt;thrust,&lt;/em&gt; but that has a completely different meaning that you probably don't want to touch here. You don't want passive words, you want words with a connotation of destruction. This type of pain won't be silent, either, and immediately extreme pain probably won't register. Describe the wet crunch and then the surge of pain as 'your' bone plunges through flesh. 'You' grapple for the injury (people hold onto broken limbs somewhat instinctively) and blood splatters all over 'you', smearing when 'you' try to stop it. 'You' strangle a cry in 'your' throat when the limb shifts unnaturally under 'your' desperate grip, pain slicing through twitching, torn muscles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, there was an uncanny valley effect. When I broke my arm, I didn't feel pain until I looked down at my two wrists, where there was only supposed to be one. The second 'wrist' contorted unnaturally, bent shards of bone scraping over muscles. When it started to hurt, I couldn't see anything anymore, but the pain wasn't going away after my brain registered the horror of what had happened. I'm just glad it wasn't a compound fracture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on 'your' persona, maybe add a few swear words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't hurt yourself, but the next time you do, write it down, or at least think up some words for it. If you can't think of anything more than $#!%, that's okay, because your character probably won't be able to think much more than $#!% once the pain really starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15953" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T16:39:43.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19806" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-20T18:31:26.910" Score="3" ViewCount="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a nonfiction snippet I'm writing about &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/metrology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;metrology&lt;/a&gt;, specifically the term &lt;em&gt;micron&lt;/em&gt; being used in reference to the unit multiple &lt;em&gt;micrometre&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_American_and_British_English&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AmE&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;micrometer&lt;/em&gt;) I need to cite Resolution 7 of the 13&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; CGPM&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but I'm not sure which year to put it as.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though the Wikipedia page, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrometre&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Micrometre&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, states that the term &lt;em&gt;micron&lt;/em&gt; was &quot;officially revoked ... in 1967&quot;, the source it cites&amp;#x2014;the English version of this Resolution from the the SI Brochure, 8&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; edition&amp;#x2014;does not even say it was solely 1967.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; In fact, neither the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bipm.org/en/CGPM/db/13/7/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;English version&lt;/a&gt; nor the official &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bipm.org/fr/CGPM/db/13/7/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;French version&lt;/a&gt; lists it as such. According to both of these sources, the year it's listed as is &quot;1967/1968&quot;, and I can't find any information that specifically lists either one of these specifically as the most appropriate year with which to cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I cite it as both or just stick with one? And if the latter, then which one should I go by?&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Footnotes&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/acronyms.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;According to NIST&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; the CGPM stands for &lt;em&gt;Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures&lt;/em&gt; (En: &quot;General Conference on Weights and Measures&quot;), and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... The CGPM is the primary intergovernmental treaty organization responsible for the SI, representing nearly 50 countries. It has the responsibility of ensuring that the SI is widely disseminated and modifying it as necessary so that it reflects the latest advances in science and technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then, again, it is listed as merely a &lt;em&gt;Start&lt;/em&gt;-class article, so meh; I wouldn't take it &lt;strong&gt;too&lt;/strong&gt; seriously. Lol.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking it can be done any of the following 3 ways, but obviously which one you choose depends heavily on context, and I'm not sure which one this context would lean toward, if any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Both&lt;/strong&gt;: Sometimes, it's best to just adopt a descriptivist plan &amp;amp; assume that whatever it's labeled as by the original source is the correct &quot;year&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First&lt;/strong&gt;: If, in fact, the time range of the Resolution's publication were to span across multiple years (Ex. Dec 29&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt;&amp;#x2013;Jan 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt;), then if a plural year is not allowed, it might be appropriate then to just choose the earliest year, since choosing the latter might imply that said publication did not occur any earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second&lt;/strong&gt;: If, in fact, the time range of the Resolution's publication were to span across multiple years (Ex. Dec 29&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt;&amp;#x2013;Jan 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt;), then if a plural year is not allowed, it might be appropriate then to just choose the latest year, since choosing the former might imply that said publication did not occur any later.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/nandyou.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Institute of Standards and Technology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="14651" LastEditDate="2015-11-22T19:38:39.737" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T19:38:39.737" Title="Which year to cite reference as?" Tags="|citations|non-fiction|ambiguity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17615" CreationDate="2015-11-21T01:38:16.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether this is considered self-promotion or not: if you try www.YouShelf.com, you can find a place to publish your novels chapter by chapter as you create. Readers will also pay by chapters (or by thousand words) as they are drawn into your story. Author will be able to set from which chapters the story will be paid, and at what price. Usually we encourage authors to set a friendly price of $0.03-0.05 per thousand words, but it is totally up to you. We are at Twitter(twitter.com/youshelf) &amp;amp; Facebook(facebook.com/youshelf) too. I am an author support team member at YouShelf - a San Francisco Bay Area startup. Currently we pay out 100% of the net revenue back to author, mailing out monthly royalty check when exceeding US$100. Sorry for the ad like response, but this might be a good fit for what you ask. Readers not only give your story their feedbacks, but they also vote with their dollars :) If you and others like the idea, please tell your writer friends as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15955" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T01:38:16.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17615" CreationDate="2015-11-21T04:27:11.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Posting online for comments is a great idea, if it's in the right place. Getting feedback from people experienced in writing and editing is almost always helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend posting at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/newmembersinfo.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt;. You can post your ideas and/or chapters and get multiple critiques (at least 3, usually more) back. It helps to give people an idea of what your primary concerns are, but what you get back is usually pretty awesome, ranging from substantive / structural suggestions to full-blown line edits you'd normally pay for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best part, it's basically free. You do have to review other people's work in to earn review credits, but even that isn't bad as you can stick to your genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T04:27:11.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19049" CreationDate="2015-11-21T04:33:17.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://prowritingaid.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pro Writing Aid&lt;/a&gt; is great for checking nearly anything in your writing - just pick your analysis type. It's free to run it on up to 1,000 words at a time, so give a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grammarly may work, but it's analysis isn't nearly as in-depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T04:33:17.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19764" CreationDate="2015-11-21T04:39:24.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While Excel is good at tracking data, and I use Scrivener for all of my writing, you may want to look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://pacemaker.press/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pacemaker&lt;/a&gt;. It's a free web service, and a great way to set goals and enter progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will automatically adjust based on your progress, and creates charts that you can vary several different ways (more on weekends? front-load?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T04:39:24.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19812" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-21T04:52:46.450" Score="1" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to translate a paper and distribute it with my name as translator with a license that permits free redistribution of the work with my copyright notice and welcomes donation support. What type of license should I follow and incorporate into the work?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/15957/kitsune&quot;&gt;Kitsune&lt;/a&gt; pointed out, I should also consider the original document's license agreement, as the document says educational non-profit uses are allowed, I think it should be OK to translate and distribute the translated version, though translation has not been directly addressed in the source paper.  Here is the notice under the paper's first page:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for&#xA;  personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are&#xA;  not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies&#xA;  bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to&#xA;  republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific&#xA;  permission and/or a fee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11028" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T09:51:35.770" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T09:51:35.770" Title="How to license my translation to be published under my copyright?" Tags="|copyright|legal|translation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19793" CreationDate="2015-11-21T04:58:26.073" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copyrighting is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2010/03/how-to-copyright-your-book-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fairly simple process&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;if&lt;/strong&gt; your work is finished. Note the whole &quot;mailing it to yourself&quot; thing doesn't actually work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to note that copyright attaches as soon as something is written, published or not, including the copyright notice or not. If you can prove the age of your files (in google docs, or a file backup system, etc) - you can prove when you wrote it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds as if you're concerned someone will steal your work and sell it as their own. This is highly unlikely. They may steal your plot lines or characters, but actually trying to pass someone else's work off as their own? Not really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To seek feedback in a place that's a bit more secure, you could try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/newmembersinfo.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CritiqueCircle.com&lt;/a&gt;, which requires a login. You'll also get much better editing results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your bigger concern should be whether putting your book online will make it &quot;previously published&quot;. That would be bad. The first chapter is fine, or the whole book if it's hidden behind a signup gate or something to that effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to worry about is the ISBN. You're going to need to pony up serious cash to Bowker for real ISBN's. Otherwise Bookbaby or Amazon will be the &quot;publisher&quot; - which means they control the book even if they don't own it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T04:58:26.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19812" CreationDate="2015-11-21T05:04:59.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry, either I didn't read closely enough, or you've added details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the original author has copyright everywhere. At least in the US, you aren't even allowed to publish a translation without the original copyright holder's permission, because &lt;a href=&quot;http://cjam.info/en/legal-informations/copyright/168-translations-and-copyright&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;only the copyright holder has the right&lt;/a&gt; to decide to publish or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, fair use isn't in play because translation is &lt;strong&gt;derivative&lt;/strong&gt;. If you were writing a parody, or changing the characters and settings around in a novel, that would be &lt;strong&gt;transformative&lt;/strong&gt; and allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translations count as republishing, so your question is answered at the end of the provided copyright statement: &quot;to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You just need to ask nicely, explain why you're doing this (expanding the reach of their work, helping science, whatever), explain you'll keep their copyright clause, and get permission to &quot;publish&quot; the translation (with your translation attribution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My original answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you examine the Creative Commons license and its options. It should address all of your concerns, including attribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/choose/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;handy license selection tool&lt;/a&gt; they provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as donations, you merely have to request it and provide a means, whether a Paypal address or one of several &quot;tipping&quot; services online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastEditorUserId="15957" LastEditDate="2015-11-22T19:07:13.100" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T19:07:13.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19739" CreationDate="2015-11-21T05:13:40.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The use of &quot;alphabets&quot; is a bit odd. You likely mean &quot;letters&quot; [A, B, C...], unless you literally mean sets of alphabets, as in [Latin, Cyrillic...].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you're distinguishing between:&#xA;letter sets and integer sets [a,b,c] and [1,2,3]&#xA;OR&#xA;letter and integer sets [a,1,b,2,c,3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T05:13:40.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19655" CreationDate="2015-11-21T05:44:59.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the Foreword would be a good place for the more technical details you mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That will let you focus on what you're supposed to in the Introduction - a summary of the overall work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T05:44:59.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19632" CreationDate="2015-11-21T05:50:17.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're citing the exact same source, you can use &quot;Ibid.&quot; (Ibid., pp. 20)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But normally, you just cite like normal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Quote One&quot; (Smith, pp. 15).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Quote Two&quot; (Smith, pp. 15).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Quote Three&quot; (Smith, pp. 18).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure you're using the correct style (in-text vs footnotes, APA vs MLA, etc). There are multiple citation generators on the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T05:50:17.077" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19806" CreationDate="2015-11-21T06:04:31.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The actual document's title is:&#xA;COMPTES RENDUS DES SÉANCES&#xA;DE LA&#xA;TREIZIÈME CONFERENCE GENERALE&#xA;DES POIDS ET &#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Officially the 13th Conference took place over both years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual paper's publication date is actually in May 1969.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why they cite it as: Comptes Rendus de la 13e CGPM (1967/68), 1969, p.105&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bipm.org/en/CGPM/db/13/7/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bipm.org/en/CGPM/db/13/7/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T06:04:31.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19819" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-21T21:53:26.193" Score="2" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amazon books frequently feature excerpts available to readers via a &quot;Look Inside!&quot; feature on the Amazon site for books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the author of a book (or publisher) control what parts of the book are made available for preview or does Amazon automatically extract and generate these excerpts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11233" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T00:30:41.693" Title="Can the author control Amazon excerpts or are they automatically generated?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19819" CreationDate="2015-11-21T22:29:49.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may be a way to bypass the system, but the default is for the first pages of the book to be the ones that show up on the Look Inside pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T22:29:49.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4879" CreationDate="2015-11-21T22:56:19.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't throw it away, re-read it.&#xA;If you don't like it that much when you re-read it, stow it away for a couple of years.  During this time you might try taking the concept and re-writing it with a different viewpoint character and a fresh setting.  That will give you another manuscript to work with down the road. It may end up being the novel you want it to be.  Or it may not. Or it may need to be stowed away for a number of years before re-reading.&#xA;Write a couple of novels between your current reading of the first novel you wrote, and the next reading.&#xA;So: say it's now 2017 and you've written another 120,000 words between when you read your first novel and stowed it away.  NOW re-read it.  You'll be a different person and able to see it with new eyes.&#xA;I recently re-read a novel I wrote in 2007.  I'd re-read it a couple of times in the intervening years and I always thought there was something there but I couldn't quite see what was crap and what was worth keeping.And a lot of it felt too confessional.&#xA;I read it again with a friend a few months ago (it's 2015 now), and we workshopped it, and now I'm very clear that there's a LOT in it worth keeping, and I have an idea for an entirely different story I'm writing around it (expanding it from 50,000 to 90,000-100,000 words or so).  The context I'm adding makes the previous writing even more interesting than it was before.&#xA;So keep in mind: lots of writing improves over time, and even if it seems awful to you when you read it at 5 years, another 5 could make all the difference in terms of making it clear whether it's usable or not.&#xA;And in the meantime:  write.  Write, write, write, write, write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15960" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T22:56:19.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-21T23:27:46.487" Score="8" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alright so I am new here so I'm not sure if it's okay to ask this type of question, but I am wondering if it is possible for characters to get stuck in a sort of 'rut' where they react to things with the same basic physical and emotional reactions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, my main character is a twenty something male with anxiety, and every time something doesn't go his way he gets panicky, sweaty, his heart starts racing, he feels nauseous, and his mind begins to spin out endless worst -case scenarios. This makes sense coming from his character, but it is boring to read this sort of a reaction over and over and over again in my writing, whenever someone does or says something to freak out my MC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So TLDR; is there any way to spice up character's reactions without straying from the character profile based reactions that make sense for them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for reading and responding if you do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15959" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T21:33:11.873" Title="Is it possible for characters to get stuck reacting the same way to everything?" Tags="|fiction|style|characters|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19822" CreationDate="2015-11-22T00:18:46.740" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If&lt;/strong&gt; the &lt;em&gt;_story has movement_&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; the &lt;em&gt;_character is somehow forced to change_&lt;/em&gt; within the story, then reading about the character responding the same way can be okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Magic Number: Three Times&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since you the author know it could be boring, then to a reader it will probably be extremely boring.  But, there's even way out of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you limit the number of times that you show the character go through these panic attacks to (at most) three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spice : Possibly Humor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible to make these scenes quite good if you cause the character to suffer hyperbolically as he trips over himself, crashes into doors and slips and slides as he attempts to get out of these situations.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Change: The Ultimate Point&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as long as the character is finally forced to change, most readers will get into seeing your character transform.  Seeing a character transform from a bumbling fearing wimp into some who is truly courageous (taking action even when they are panicking) can be a great story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you plan on keeping your milk-toast character the same throughout, I doubt she is a main character.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T00:18:46.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19819" CreationDate="2015-11-22T00:30:41.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amazon has an algorithm which pulls the first number of pages for display (a percentage of the total).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the real details which show you how to request it to be set up and how to request that Look Inside is turned off for your book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;topicID=200407430&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;topicID=200407430&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all works for printed books (via CreateSpace) and ebooks via Kindle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T00:30:41.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19826" CreationDate="2015-11-22T01:18:04.023" Score="10" ViewCount="926" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though I'm by no means perfect, I generally consider myself a good writer. The issue is that most older writers I know look back on their writing at my age and cringe at the sentences their artless fingers wrought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to avoid these pitfalls as much as possible. I love words and I would prefer not to butcher them while I learn this craft. Additionally, I have a plot, setting, and group of characters with which I have fallen in love, and I fear that if I butcher them my future self will become disinterested. In short, I don't want my presently vivid story to be brutally murdered by inexperience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What, in your opinion, are the most common mistakes (in prose, character, or structure) made by writers in high school? College? Is there a way to avoid these issues, or is experience their only remedy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15953" LastActivityDate="2015-11-23T22:12:49.083" Title="What are potential pitfalls for a young writer?" Tags="|fiction|style|technique|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19825" CreationDate="2015-11-22T03:07:08.023" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only will the potential pitfalls largely vary from person to person (not to mention what different people &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; they are), but they are innumerable, and in a variety of fields. When you are an experienced writer, you will look back at what you write now, and cringe &lt;em&gt;regardless&lt;/em&gt; of what you do. Why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experience.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more you write, the better you get. You can learn a lot about writing and how to write from books, but &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; will ever beat experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how can you avoid pitfalls? Learn first. Six years ago, I didn't know a thing about writing. All I knew was that I found it mildly interesting, and decided to give it a shot. I thank Heaven above that I did not start with an actual book, and that all my attempts at doing so fell flat. I turned instead to a fan site for a game I was interested in, and started writing fan fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I got more into writing, I picked up a book: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/158297182X&quot;&gt;Writing the Breakout Novel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Donald Maass. It taught me the backbone for everything I now know about writing, and it helped me to avoid the pitfalls not only novice, but intermediate authors fall into (mind you, I had to read it over and over for about three years before I finally fully understood every aspect of it). Another book that helped me immensely was &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1582979588&quot;&gt;The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; from Writer's Digest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those two books, plus experience writing floods of fan fiction (and yes, some of it was horrible) have taught me all I know. Now, six or so years later, I am ready to publish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point I'm trying to make here is this: Learn and try. Read all you can about writing. Try methods out. See what works. Get experience writing. If you don't have access to somewhere you can write fan fiction, look into creating a local writing group. Write stories and then compare them. Find some kind of outlet for your writing, and get honest criticism on it. The more honest the reviewer is, the better (which is why online fan fiction is so great). Dishonest critique will only lead you in the wrong direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you learn all you can, and see what works for yourself through trial and error, and are willing to wait until you are ready to publish, you will avoid countless pitfalls. That being said, here are some of the largest and most common that I see: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of Message.&lt;/strong&gt; Have something to say. This might not seem all that important at first, but I've learned it really needs to be the bedrock from which your story springs. Have something you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; believe in, and you will never lose your fire for writing about it. That fire will fuel the greatness of your words. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of Tension.&lt;/strong&gt; A lot of novice writers don't know about the principle of &lt;em&gt;hooking&lt;/em&gt; your reader. This is a fairly basic concept to grasp: you basically get your reader to ask himself questions, and then continue reading to find the answers. 'But why did he say that? What did he see? What does he mean? What is going on? Where are we? Who was that?' The potential one-liners for grabbing interest is infinite. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of Stakes.&lt;/strong&gt; I've heard of some published authors who make this mistake, so mastering it now will really help you. In short, you need two things: something that will be lost if the hero doesn't achieve his goal, and a reason that something matters intensely to the reader. The trick is to get the something (the stake) to matter to the &lt;em&gt;character&lt;/em&gt;, and then make the character matter to the reader. This is where character development comes in. Since the reader cares about the character, he cares about what matters to him, meaning the stake. Therefore, the reader cares whether or not the hero succeeds. Master stakes, and your reader will become invested in your novel. Without stakes, the reader can put the book down any time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Superman.&lt;/strong&gt; This is another great pitfall that a lot of people fall into. Your character needs to have something about him, inherent to who he is, that makes the reader root for him (usually some sort of quality, anywhere from honesty to self-sacrifice). The reader needs to want the character to win (after all, the story is &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; the character). This 'strength' is great, but the hero also needs conflict inside of him, otherwise he won't seem real. We all have doubts and unresolved arguments within us. Giving these to your hero will bring him down to earth. Making these conflicts related to the goal, so that they pull the hero both towards and away from completing it at the same time, will make the inner conflict a central part of the story. (One side of the argument is for completing the goal, the other against it. Make sure there is no easy way to resolve this dilemma.) Just remember to keep the reader invested in your hero with strength, otherwise he has to no reason to read about him. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find all these concepts and more, explained in detail in Donald Maass' book. I strongly encourage you to read it. Best of luck in your endeavors! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T03:07:08.023" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19825" CreationDate="2015-11-22T03:13:40.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You just have to write. An average novel of 80,000 words will probably require 250,000 words (via rewriting). My final manuscript looks very little like &quot;the garbage&quot; my brain conjured at first draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your other question, I've written since grammar school and have some insight. High schoolers lack wisdom and depth, but they can certainly write epic battle scenes, magic, and teen drama. Social commentary and philosophy will look like it was written, well, by a teenager. (This is of course a generalization.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;College students have a greater knowledge base, but the pitfall is in trying to use it too much or in thinking that everyone else has learned what you just took last semester. (At 20, I started writing this sci-fi with magic-wielding dinosaurs, but I forgot what all the dinosaur species were one semester removed from geology and abandoned the project.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of successful writers in their 20s, but by and large, best sellers tend to achieve that in their 40s and beyond. Life brings wisdom and perspective. Appealing to a broad audience has to bring in facets from multiple avenues. Of course there are exceptions. But even HARRY POTTER and 50 SHADES OF GREY appeal to those beyond, respectively, tweens and pervs--obviously lots more. If you're young, I'd try reading best-selling authors to see how they communicate their ideas. Their characters leap off the pages. By the end, they're your friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's true: what I wrote half a lifetime ago looks ridiculous now ... and I thought I was so clever then. That's the way life works. If you think you can do it, then go for it. Keep in mind your target audience. There's nothing wrong with a 30,000 word &quot;tween&quot; fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T03:13:40.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19812" CreationDate="2015-11-22T08:07:41.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the document you are translating copyright protected? Does the current copyright allow you to distribute the document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't acquire any copyright interest in a document simply by translating it unless you have an agreement with the copyright holder that specifically gives you such an interest. Translation is typically done as Work for Hire, and the original copyright owner retains all copyrights to the translation. You would only be allowed to translate and distribute the translated document if the original is published under some type of full or limited &quot;public domain&quot; copyright. If it is not, you are opening yourself to rather significant fines for copyright violation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15962" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T08:07:41.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19771" CreationDate="2015-11-22T08:12:58.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In English, all words are legitimate. The only criteria is acceptance. French is a different matter all together. But, who cares about French?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15962" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T08:12:58.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19834" CreationDate="2015-11-22T10:55:50.423" Score="5" ViewCount="6152" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I let the narrator (third person) describe that my characters are going to the bathroom (for a sense of realism and accuracy) or should I simply omit it as it as it adds no value to the storyline? I can imagine reading about characters going to the bathroom can get annoying for an audience, but at the same time it feels a little unnatural to write nothing about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3903" LastActivityDate="2018-05-18T01:46:57.833" Title="Should I describe my characters going to the toilet?" Tags="|creative-writing|characters|narrative|third-person|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19831" CreationDate="2015-11-22T11:28:16.270" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at the books you've read - do they mention it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's something unique about the situation - if your characters are extremely modest and are in a situation where they can't have privacy, or something - then it would add to characterization and could be included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if it's just a standard toileting situation, as suggested by your verdict that &quot;it adds no value&quot;? Leave it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be a case of taking the &quot;show, don't tell&quot; rule too literally. Writers should only &quot;show&quot; the important things. The rest can be &quot;told&quot; or ignored completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T11:28:16.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19833" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-22T11:51:31.590" Score="2" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always have problems in analyzing texts, as I'm not sure what analyzing actually entails. What does it mean to have a good analysis of an author's work, either fictional or non - fictional? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15964" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:08:10.070" Title="How to be good at analysing texts" Tags="|text-analysis|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19831" CreationDate="2015-11-22T13:37:54.487" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your readers only want to read a scene if it moves the plot forward, adds to a character's experience or inner life, or is just plain entertaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realism doesn't mean a character gets up to use the bathroom just because nature came calling. It means that sometimes in the middle of a 3-hour meeting with no breaks, the anxiety that comes from needing to impress your boss is sometimes outweighed by the need to take a leak. And I imagine a long description of the relief felt at the moment might also be relevant, especially when it's interrupted by the sudden realization that he's not gonna get that promotion now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books aren't necessarily realistic or non-realistic, the moments they describe are. And I don't think an accumulation of details creates realism, I think the suspension of disbelief is what creates it. As soon as you've written something that absorbs your reader, you've created a reality for them. You've done what you set out to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fun fact:&lt;/strong&gt; James Joyce's &lt;em&gt;Ulysses&lt;/em&gt; features a scene in which Leopold Bloom uses the bathroom and reads a newspaper. Very descriptive. The book purports to tell one day in the life but I can't for the life of me remember a second bathroom scene or a third or a fourth. Which means that in one of the most exhaustive and intimate novels of all time—where the 24-hour time frame was kinda the point (or gimmick)—we didn't get all the poops and pees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T13:37:54.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19833" CreationDate="2015-11-22T18:31:00.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many angles to take when analyzing fiction and you should focus on the one that interests you the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Answer: Because then you'll write a more interesting analysis if you&#xA;  do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Are Possible Angles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Character&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Voice / Style&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definitive guide to learning about writing and analyzing them from these various angles is the fantastic book by the late author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qEWv3K&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gary Provost, Make Your Words Work -- Amazon link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep Analysis Excerpts Short&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also tend to like to keep the excerpt I'm analzying short for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can get a very good idea of the author's work in just a few paragraphs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;analyzing an entire book could be quite overwhelming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYkmiE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fiction Writing Gems - Free to read at amazon for Kindle OLL program&lt;/a&gt;, I analyze the beginnings of 26 published novels.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favorites to analzye was the novel, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pwUPvm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TailSpin by Catherine Coulter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's just a snippet of novel to show why it was so much fun to analyze:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Black Rock Lake&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Oranack, Maryland &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Friday night&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She thought she swallowed because her throat burned hot, as if&#xA;  splashed with sharp acid, but she wasn't sure because she couldn't&#xA;  think clearly. Her mind felt dark, heavy and thick as chains, and she&#xA;  knew to her soul there was violence just beyond it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here's an excerpt of my sample analysis:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More About the Mystery Protagonist Technique&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many authors employing the Mystery Protagonist technique are&#xA;  attempting to set up tension as a hook to the reader by enticing the&#xA;  reader to find out who the action is happening to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coulter's attempt fails, because her author's camera falls upon the&#xA;  wrong details. She describes the wrong things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Describing the Wrong Things&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the wrong things and why are they wrong? She thought she&#xA;  swallowed -- generally if you are thinking at all, then you know if&#xA;  you swallowed. The author's attempt to show the character's&#xA;  disorientation fails and jars me from my reading, and I am only four&#xA;  words into the beginning of her story. Plus, remember, as I read I am&#xA;  living vicariously as the viewpoint character which means that I don't&#xA;  know what I am swallowing. That makes me ignorant or somewhat stupid.&#xA;  Why would I want to associate myself with a stupid character and live&#xA;  vicariously as if I am them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Value of Short Analysis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value of this type of analysis on very short excerpts is that it gives you a quick way to learn what type of writing works and what type doesn't and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T15:08:10.070" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:08:10.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19822" CreationDate="2015-11-22T19:43:47.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Saberwriter makes good points, so I'll address another way to address your concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your character has anxiety, but there can be a lot of variety in that. At any one moment it could be a general feeling of unease, twinge of fear, distracting panic, or mind-numbing inability to focus on anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you vary the reactions, their levels, and most importantly the words you use, it will address your concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Emotion Thesaurus (good book) lists a lot of reactions. Some are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;touching the face &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;shaking of various limbs &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;twiddling thumbs, watch, rings, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;swallowing and shifting feeling hot or cold dizziness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;nauseated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tingling in limbs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;chest tightening&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;difficulty breathing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;worrying about worst-case scenarios&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;heart palpitations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hyperventilating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the above can be found in medical descriptions of panic disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as &lt;strong&gt;the reactions you focus on shift each time&lt;/strong&gt; you're fine. It helps if you focus showing the physical rather than mental response (which will always be fear). Dizziness and breathing one time, heart racing and sweating the next, nausea and him noticing his limbs shaking another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've varied the reactions focused on, you can then &lt;strong&gt;vary the exact way to present&lt;/strong&gt; the symptoms you choose. A quick search will turn up a lot of ways to describe the feeling of being nauseated (bad taste in mouth, stomach cramping, saliva in mouth, rapid swallowing, sensitivity to smell, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can put some &quot;pretty&quot; spins on it by varying phrasing. &lt;strong&gt;Similes and metaphors&lt;/strong&gt; will help a ton here - they are usually more &quot;literary&quot; than adjectives. He can feel the acid churning in his stomach, his gut was filled with lava, his insides turned to liquid doubt, his anxiety turned the burrito he had eaten for lunch into molten lead, he had to swallow to not retch all over the table. Fun stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T19:43:47.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19822" CreationDate="2015-11-22T22:05:44.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok (I'm trying hard to ignore &quot;Alright&quot; rather than &quot;All right,&quot; but it's giving me a panic attack, so I just have to say something; please forgive me), you're describing panic attacks, which have a definitive set of signs and symptoms. You may benefit by reviewing those in the DSM-III and beyond (up to V now). You can use different symptom subsets to each attack to decrease redundancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interaction with a therapist or psychiatrist may add a depth to your character and can be humorous in and of itself. It can also give you a platform regarding what interventions may be helpful in your character and express what kind of insight your character has to his discomfort. A medication trial might even be successful but create its own problems so that the character chooses his neurosis. In his 20s, especially, Zoloft might decrease his anxiety but make erection or orgasm impossible. You can take it from there!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T22:05:44.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19831" CreationDate="2015-11-23T05:36:42.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be interesting to write a story, just once, composed entirely of scenes taking place in a bathroom. People do a lot of interesting things while showering or taking a piss or a crap. They certainly think about interesting things while doing it. Make the reader try to deduce from their thoughts and actions what's going on in their lives outside the bathroom. Just a thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15812" LastActivityDate="2015-11-23T05:36:42.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19458" CreationDate="2015-11-23T05:46:43.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lostinfrance is correct, but focuses on if you're going to writing about Henri going on snuff-fueled prostitute-beating binges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he's just an incidental character portrayed in a neutral light and in line with his actual real-life behavior, in general you can write whatever you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that when writing about people, non-public figures (like your neighbors) are a bit touchier. People will get upset over the smallest details, so it's safer to amalgamate several peoples' traits together into a new character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're sticking to historic people that no living person has met, and the portrayal isn't too negative, you're fine either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: France and the UK have very, VERY different libel laws from the USA, and are much stricter, so no promises there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-11-23T05:46:43.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19831" CreationDate="2015-11-23T13:07:45.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some writers have done this before, and unless its satirical, or there's plot coming from the toilet, the book tends to be bad. Authors skip useless scenes like toilet breaks just like they skip buying groceries or even eating. Unless it serves a purpose, it should be left out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15973" LastActivityDate="2015-11-23T13:07:45.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19831" CreationDate="2015-11-23T13:08:28.243" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like anything else, if it's critical to the plot, or if it would be very weird to leave it out, then put it in. If it's unnecessary or there's enough passage of time offscreen to cover it, leave it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's a hostage situation, everyone involved is going&#xA;to be tense and focused for hours. The hostages may get desperate and&#xA;sob that they have to pee, or the negotiator might be telling herself&#xA;to ignore the urge because she has to stay on the line with the&#xA;kidnappers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the character has eaten something foul or been given a poison,&#xA;then the effects on the digestive system are important. There was a&#xA;scene in one of the VC Andrews books, the Heaven series IIRC, where&#xA;the main character is given a severe laxative while at a fancy party&#xA;but the bullies lock all the bathrooms, so figuring out what to do&#xA;and how not to ruin her outfit is a plot point. (She uses a dry&#xA;cleaning bag.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're describing the minutae of your character waking up and&#xA;getting dressed, then using the bathroom is part of the morning&#xA;ablutions. (as is &lt;em&gt;washing hands,&lt;/em&gt; don't forget that part)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On an episode of &lt;em&gt;House, MD,&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0979558/synopsis?ref_=ttpl_pl_syn&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Top Secret,&quot;&lt;/a&gt; there was some weird side&#xA;effect of his Vicodin use which prevented him from urinating, so he&#xA;had to insert a catheter into himself. The viewer saw him on the loo,&#xA;appropriately shot for broadcast TV, and then walking around with the&#xA;catheter bag. A later nighttime accident (he's in bed and you see a&#xA;dark splotch on the sheets) turns out to presage a typical House&#xA;epiphany.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, tailor the description to what's appropriate. &quot;He went to the bathroom.&quot; &quot;He used the toilet.&quot; An old-fashioned phrasing is &quot;She performed her morning toilet,&quot; which covers all the washing and eliminating. But if she's been poisoned, &quot;her innards rolled and cramped. Horrible noises rumbled from her guts. She felt like she'd been stabbed. When at last she was able to push out the noisome mess, it burned and splattered. She felt like she needed two showers to get everything off.&quot; The reader knows &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; is being described without actually, you know, getting the description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-11-23T13:08:28.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19534" CreationDate="2015-11-23T14:55:52.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not literature, but if you get into legal writing, you'll find a lot of insanely long and grammatically convoluted sentences that you'll probably have to read at least five times to understand.  This is especially the case for statutory codes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example from the Model Penal Code, a statutory code compiled by American legal experts that has no legal force at all but that works as a kind of &quot;suggestion&quot; for state penal codes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;(2) Limitations on Justifying Necessity for Use of Force.&#xA;(a) The use of force is not justifiable under this Section:&#xA;(i) to resist an arrest which the actor knows is being made by a peace officer, although the arrest is unlawful;  or&#xA;(ii) to resist force used by the occupier or possessor of property or by another person on his behalf, where the actor knows that the person using the force is doing so under a claim of right to protect the property, except that this limitation shall not apply if:&#xA;(1) the actor is a public officer acting in the performance of his duties or a person lawfully assisting him therein or a person making or assisting in a lawful arrest;  or&#xA;(2) the actor has been unlawfully dispossessed of the property and is making a re-entry or recaption justified by Section 3.06;  or&#xA;(3) the actor believes that such force is necessary to protect himself against death or serious bodily harm.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that this entire mess is one sentence and that it is extraordinarily difficult to follow because it also contains a series of exceptions to the general rule.  The MPC is full of stuff like this.  In fact, some of the sentences in the MPC contain a rule, an exception to the rule, and an exception to the exception.  Statute-writing is pretty difficult because every single word matters, but the MPC is just badly written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15256" LastEditorUserId="15256" LastEditDate="2015-11-23T16:09:51.333" LastActivityDate="2015-11-23T16:09:51.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19825" CreationDate="2015-11-23T15:01:31.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the biggest &quot;young person mistake&quot; is being too obsessed with posterity.  You just need to write the best book you can at any given moment in your life.  Second-guessing your future opinions is a losing game.  You'll likely dislike your early work as an older author, because life will have made you a different person --&lt;em&gt;but the older author's opinion will not necessarily be the right one.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a good example, the young George Lucas wrote a movie called &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; that was massively successful and influential.  The older George Lucas later went back and made changes to his early movies that were almost universally despised by fans.  He thought he was fixing mistakes that now made him cringe, but the fans thought he was tampering with a masterpiece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing that can be guaranteed is that if you try to write a book with no mistakes, that will end up looking like the biggest mistake of all.  Nothing sounds more artless than a person trying too hard to be artful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-11-23T15:01:31.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19825" CreationDate="2015-11-23T21:46:19.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Top Three : Most Often Confusing Items&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not knowing what to show.  Why would a writer pick certain details instead of others?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not knowing why structure is important -- it's for readers -- and considering structure as something to be abhorred by fiction writers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talking about the story versus showing it play out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know these all too well, because I remember the attempts I made at fiction writing when I was much younger and these are what I stumbled upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not Knowing What To Show&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;This one could also be stated as, &quot;Not writing the story as a series of scenes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the&#xA;  following one it should be fired.&quot; ~Anton Chekhov&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inexeperienced writers often think something like, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm writing a story about a hero who saves a girl.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, they sit down and start writing and wonder where to start.  Having no idea about what adds up to the main character being a hero they start out at the beginning and you get something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Tom Johnson's alarm sounded and he rolled over and hit the snooze&#xA;  button.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&#xA;Readers don't care about how he wakes up.  Unless...  Unless he levitates over to the alarm clock and smashes it with telekinetic powers which he will later use to fight the evil villain and save the damsel in distress.  Then, it might make sense to show that alarm clock scene.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which Details?&#xA;So, which details should the new writer (and all writer's) pick?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1. The ones that specifically go into telling the &lt;strong&gt;exact story&lt;/strong&gt; you are telling or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;display the nature of the character who is acting out the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing something else in your story, then you better have a great reason or be the greatest writer on earth to keep your readers reading.  Otherwise, chop it out.  When you become a world-famous author, you may be able to keep those other parts in (but still, maybe not). &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Point&lt;/strong&gt;: Stay focused!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, that leads naturally into our second point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understand How Structure Is Important&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfotunately, many young writers have often been abused by some secondary school English teacher who beat her over the head with blunt outlines.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, when the young writer steals away into the work of &lt;strong&gt;creative writing&lt;/strong&gt; there are other victims cowering in the dark corners who have been abused by secondary school Monster Outlines and they whisper to the newly initiated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Just sit down and start writing.  That's all you do in &lt;strong&gt;creative&#xA;  writing&lt;/strong&gt;.  It's freeing and good and you'll go far.  Outlines are evil!!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the extremes are always* wrong!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Yes, that's an extreme statement.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How To Teach Structure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A young writer should be taught, very gently, that a very simple outline provides a structure which the reader will appreciate and follow and will make the young writer's story far more clear and it will provide a loose way of guiding the writer to the story she is trying to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An Example : Prototype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The young writer could write the entire 80,000 word novel without nary a thought of structure or scenes or anything.  Then come back and notice that the readers cant even tell when something is happening or why the goat which was shown in scene one and talked about for  seven pages even matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Outline As Prototype&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Or the writer could use one or two sentences to imagine each chapter in a novel which would move the main character toward the goal (and away -- creating tension) and would get a quick view of the entire thing with very little detailed writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outlines are good as long as they're not used as weapons to prove someone is incompetent (as they've often been used in the past).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, young writers often write about what they are writing instead of writing the story itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an extreme (and terrible) example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joe was sad.  He sat in his lovely home and cried all day.  He was sad&#xA;  because his girl did not love him.  It was unrequited love and dog&#xA;  gone it he had to do something about it.  He decided to go and get&#xA;  rich then he'd show her.  He'd get rich and buy the entire town and&#xA;  that stupid little drug store where Sally Mae worked and then he'd&#xA;  fire her. He'd fire her and he'd fire that no good for nothing&#xA;  manager, Jim Bob, who had taken Sally Mae from him.  That's it. He'd&#xA;  go and do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's something better because it shows doing something Joe.  It tells a story by showing things happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joe fell down into a seat at Sully's bar and the waitress walked over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What'll you have, honey,&quot; the waitress asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I want three shots of whiskey with beer chaser.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Look, I'm not allowed to serve you that many drinks at once.  I'll&#xA;  get one shot and a beer chaser.&quot;  She turned to walk away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's a load of crap,&quot; Joe said.  &quot;You're all just alike.&#xA;  Manipulating and sour. Can't even think of someone else for once. &#xA;  Just thinking about yourself.  Just like Sally Mae.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The waitress paused.  Shook her head and then continued to the bar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's right,&quot; Joe said.  &quot;Keep on walking. You bring them drinks&#xA;  back and I'l just make you go back for more.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The bartender looked up.  &quot;What're you yappin' about fella?&quot; Joe&#xA;  looked down. &quot;Nothing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, keep it down and don't be treating my help that way.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joe muttered to himself.  &quot;You can't tell me what to do.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not great, but better. It takes a lot more writing and a lot more mental energy to see this stuff and write it out.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the three main things that ought to be taught more fully to beginning writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-11-23T21:46:19.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-23T22:40:14.470" Score="1" ViewCount="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a frequent issue of publishing posts on my blog that contain basic typos, which can be quite embarrassing for an otherwise well written post. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Stack Exchange, other users have the privileges to make edits to posts, and this is quite often use to fix typos and formatting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be quite nice if I could do this for my blog too. My blog is hosted on Wordpress.com. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My blog is usually published via Facebook, so it's my friends who read it first. What would be great is if I could give permission to certain friends to suggest edits to a post, which could then be approved by me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise - how else do I avoid allowing typos through, while at the same time maintaining a fast throughput of posts? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14366" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T19:54:10.220" Title="Allowing people to edit/proofcheck my posts on wordpress.com" Tags="|blog|proofreading|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19534" CreationDate="2015-11-24T00:06:26.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had an English professor who loved these just the other semester. She ruined my writing style with her love of long sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited into a slight run-on from what it was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The culmination of the progressionist speech for which I labored was often criticism, bored expressions, and, sometimes, outright rejection; thus, after unsuccessful revisions and heartfelt considerations, I came to a conclusion: no radical idea, however expertly or clumsily delivered and written, will be unanimously accepted; instead, radical ideas will often encounter criticism without constructive comment, but this fact does not negate our responsibility to write them and take a stand.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not humorous, though. And notice that I say &quot;slight.&quot; Slight because of the monster with which I am about to hammer you. Herman Melville has some egregious ones. This one I find humorous solely in its length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way recognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title ‘Lord of the White Elephants’ above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial colour the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it&#xA;applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe; and though, besides, all this, whiteness has been even made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings &#xA;this same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things—the innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though among the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt of wampum was the deepest pledge of&#xA;honour; though in many climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of&#xA;the most august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of their own fidelity; and though directly from the Latin word for white, all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock; and though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is specially employed in the celebration of the Passion of our Lord; though in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white before the great-white throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there white like wool; yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honourable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you, Moby Dick. (Compensating for something, Melville?) Not to mention the… odd commentary on race throughout that passage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15953" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T00:06:26.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19846" CreationDate="2015-11-24T01:05:17.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a WordPress site, you should be able to create various users who have different levels of permission. Give your two or three trusted friends their own usernames with Admin or Editor permissions, and those people should be able to log in and edit your posts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T01:05:17.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19767" CreationDate="2015-11-24T04:34:38.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe YOU are the main storyline you are looking for.  Perhaps you could write about the thoughts, emotions, feelings of a writer flooded with ideas without a coherent unifying theme.  Kind of sounds like real life.  We could all relate to that.  Be it.  Embrace it.  Write about it.&#xA;Good luck!&#xA;                              JB&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15981" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T04:34:38.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19534" CreationDate="2015-11-24T14:12:38.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2015win.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bulwer-Lytton&lt;/a&gt; contest, an annual event recognizing the worst possible first sentence for a novel.  The contest was organized in tribute to Edward Bulwer-Lytton's infamously long-winded and awkward opening sentence for his book &lt;em&gt;Paul Clifford&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple of finalist from 2015:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Portly, abrupt Bart Simeon plodded through the citadel with a bearing of tension and anger that was like a tinderbox lying by a roadside waiting for a careless motorist to toss his or her cigarette butt out the window, most likely the passenger if the container lay on the right side of the road, or perhaps the driver with a brusque flick to the left, unless of course if they were in England, in which case it would be the opposite. - Anthony Hahn&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I knew that dame was damaged goods when she first sauntered in, and I don't mean lightly scratched and dented goods that a reputable merchant like Home Depot might offer in a clearly marked end display sale; no, she was more like the kind of flashy trashy plastic knockoff that always carries a child-choking hazard that no self-respecting 11-year-old Chinese sweat shop kids would ever call theirs. — Tom Billing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T14:12:38.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19534" CreationDate="2015-11-24T16:13:16.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/u8yJS.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/u8yJS.png&quot; alt=&quot;Check xckd.com&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a webcomic from xkcd.com that might approach what you're looking for...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T16:13:16.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19846" CreationDate="2015-11-24T19:54:10.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could also install the Grammerly browser plugin which will do spell-check for you in browser as you write, or write your posts in Word or similar editor and do spell-check / grammar editing prior to publishing live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15813" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T19:54:10.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19855" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19860" CreationDate="2015-11-25T02:20:51.023" Score="7" ViewCount="1251" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm outlining the plot for a scifi screenplay. I have the main characters, premise, the first half of the story, and the climax thought out. I don't want to bore you with details, but the story involves an enemy who can perfectly anticipate your moves. The main character needs to figure out how to defeat this enemy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I don't know the solution to the logical problem I've created here. I don't know how this enemy might be defeated (I have ideas for the climax, but I'm not sure how to resolve the mini conflicts that lead up to that climax). I'm sure if I keep writing something will come to me; it's happened in the past when continuing to churn out words generates ideas and connections and solutions. But I seem to be at a point where I really do need to resolve this to connect the midpoint of my story and the ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any ideas for how I can keep writing when I don't yet know the logical solution to a problem the main character is facing? Any ideas for what I could focus on writing, till the idea presents itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details if they're useful:&#xA;I'm aiming to write a screenplay. Right now I'm writing the treatment, so I'm trying to have every major scene and event down on paper (based on what I have I think this will come out to 10-15 pages). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15992" LastActivityDate="2018-01-05T09:34:18.100" Title="I'm unable to figure out the logical solution to a problem; how do I keep writing?" Tags="|screenwriting|ideas|writers-block|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19522" CreationDate="2015-11-25T07:33:28.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Critique Circle has been mentioned so I'll try to suggest a few new ideas. First of all, there is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wattpad.com/home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wattpad&lt;/a&gt; and its forum. There are a lot of good editors and writers there, but it requires some work to find them as there are even more users you'll prefer not to meet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Twitter- There are different tags which you can use to find people interested in writing, editing, critiquing, etcetera. Just try to make conversations with them introducing yourself and asking for the help you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And lastly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NaNoWriMo&lt;/a&gt;- a large online meeting of writers. Even if you don't agree with the challenge itself, there are many experienced writers there who can gladly help you. Just try it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your writing :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14838" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T07:33:28.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19857" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-25T09:29:21.757" Score="1" ViewCount="5383" Body="&lt;p&gt;am gifting some one a diary I want to write something meaningful in the first page of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All I could come up with is...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the most ammaaazing journey that you are yet to embark upon, Called Life!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Record all your beautiful memories.. so that one day you'll have something sensational to read&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;what I meant is that the person will have an amazing life(in future)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help me improve this.. I am not even sure if this conveys what I mean. Please suggest if you can think of anything better than this to write on a first page of the Diary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't figured it out already, English is not my first language. Please help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15995" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2015-11-25T19:07:54.117" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T01:33:21.290" Title="First page of the Diary - Quote" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-11-27T01:33:56.783" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19855" CreationDate="2015-11-25T12:35:14.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Worldbuilding SE&lt;/a&gt; can help you with a specific solution to your logic problem, but in terms of writing I'll offer a general solution to how to solve such a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not sure how to move the plot from point A to point C via point B, then don't focus primarily on the plot for the solution. You can try to focus on how you will develop your characters, relationships, or even just the setting through that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your protagonist is cowardly at point A, and brave at point C, then think about what happens at point B to make this character overcome their fears and start to develop their character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a couple is married at point A and divorced at point C, think about what might have happened at point B to cause their marriage to break down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allow the development of the plot to come from the development of the characters, rather than the other way round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't need to happen all of the time, but I find that when I am stuck for something interesting that should happen to move my story along, I think about how my characters will move along, and this helps me to think about what should happen plot-wise in order for the characters to move along in that direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:23.590" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T12:35:14.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19855" CreationDate="2015-11-25T13:14:54.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but the story involves an enemy who can perfectly anticipate your moves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This happened more than once on &lt;em&gt;Leverage&lt;/em&gt; (a totally fun Robin Hood heist-of-the-week show; I highly recommend it). The Leverage crew is made of five bad guys who have gone good and run cons to benefit people. Unfortunately, after a while, each person's reputation becomes known, and others can predict their moves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The episode which might help you is &lt;a href=&quot;http://leverage.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_Dam_Job&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;The Last Dam Job.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; Nate, the mastermind, hires five other people to do the jobs of his crew. The idea is that the crew has a mastermind, a grifter, a hacker, a hitter, and a thief, but the replacement crew has entirely different patterns and methods than the standard crew, and the bad guys can't anticipate what they don't know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your antagonist can predict your protagonist, have your protagonist present as a decoy, while someone &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; is running the actual operation in the background. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a simpler example, in &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings,&lt;/em&gt; Sauron knew who Aragorn was and what he was capable of, and could anticipate and counter the army of Men and allies who battled him at the Black Gate. He &lt;em&gt;didn't&lt;/em&gt; know about hobbits, and nobody suspected that any individual hobbit was capable of such strength and sacrifice. The hobbits were the real key to defeating him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T13:14:54.243" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19855" CreationDate="2015-11-25T13:17:10.633" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the most simple answer to your solution.  Plus, I believe it will make your story better over all.  More interesting and add facets that you will be able to explore that will surely make your story much better.&#xA;The simple answer is: &lt;strong&gt;Give your antagonist a weakness&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design the Perfect Weakness For Antagonist&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about Superman.  A difficult character to write conflict for, since he is almost entirely invulnerable.  However, the people who created him knew he must have a weakness so they created kryptonite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kryptonite Must Be Prevalent&#xA;In early stories of Superman, they didn't focus enough on his weakness and many readers became bored since he would always triumph.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flash forward to the Lois &amp;amp; Clark (TV Series) and you'll see that Kryptonite became a prevalent substance found everywhere and used by numerous enemies. &#xA;It made the Superman story far more compelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Every Character Must Have A Weakness&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to do the same thing with your antagonist.  Create some physics of some type where his powers are disabled.  How can you weaken his powers? Maybe there is some element the protagonist can imploy to weaken the antagonist. Or, maybe there are certain places the protagonist can go so that the antagonist cannot see the plans your protagonist is making.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this is the simplest solution and yet the best one -- if you create a compelling weakness for your antagonist.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T13:17:10.633" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19855" CreationDate="2015-11-25T16:26:05.433" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Do you have any ideas for how I can keep writing when I don't yet know the logical solution to a problem the main character is facing? Any ideas for what I could focus on writing, till the idea presents itself?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your problem has two aspects, a difficulty specific to your plot and what one might call a motivational aspect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the first, I can do more than offer a vague suggestion. If the enemy can perfectly anticipate the hero's choice of what move to make, then the hero must stop choosing what moves to make. Perhaps he could throw a dice or toss a coin or ask random strangers what to do next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding how to keep writing - don't. Take a break. Clean the house, walk the dog, even talk to your friends and family (desperate times require desperate measures) -  but get away from the keyboard. Give your subconscious a chance to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T16:26:05.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19855" CreationDate="2015-11-25T17:00:44.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We could discuss specific solutions to your problem, but I think the general answer is: The ending of a story should be a surprise to the reader ... but not to the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't spend a lot of time on a story where I have no idea how to make it end. If you come up with an interesting problem for the hero to solve, that's great. That can be a good start to a story. But you need to know the solution before you start serious writing. Otherwise, you have no idea where you're going. If you write half the story before you know how it's going to end, then when you finally do think of an ending, it's quite possible that you'll find that much of what you've written doesn't work and has to be thrown out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sufficiently long story can have side plots and character development, but if you don't know where you're going, how do you know what direction to head in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd step back and think of a solution before proceeding. If you can't think of one, throw out the idea and come up with a different problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T17:00:44.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19831" CreationDate="2015-11-25T17:13:44.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, if it doesn't advance the plot, leave it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story doesn't have to mention every little thing the characters do. A story that did would likely be mind-numbingly boring. &quot;Three ninja assassins prepared to burst into the room. The first assassin moved slightly to the left to give the second assassin room to open the door. Then the second assassin inhaled. The third assassin scratched his ear. The first assassin moved his left foot slightly to the left. The second assassin grasped the doorknob and turned it. The first assassin's heart beat four times. The third assassin had a slight itch on his left knee.&quot; Etc. Okay, there could be times when such details would be good and appropriate, like if you're trying to emphasize that someone is bored while waiting, or to emphasize the human frailties of a character while he is performing some dramatic action. But barring that, it would just be boring, tedious detail that would bog down the plot to a ridiculous extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add to that, going into detail about someone using a bathroom would just be unpleasant. Yes, I'm aware that people have to urinate. But I don't want to read detailed descriptions of the process. Again, it could be appropriate if the point is to emphasize the mundane tasks of human life. But usually the readers reaction would just be &quot;yuck, can we get back to the clues to the murder&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T17:13:44.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19855" CreationDate="2015-11-25T19:28:20.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're only doing the treatment right now, then why not spend some time writing a bit of the actual screenplay?  Even if you end up not using it, you might learn more about your characters and/or setting that could solve your problem.  According to legend, the screenwriters of &lt;em&gt;Casablanca&lt;/em&gt; were unsure of how the central love triangle would resolve until right before shooting was scheduled to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T19:28:20.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19767" CreationDate="2015-11-25T20:48:11.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know in my case that the initial draft of anything is very scattered and has an almost episodic feel to it. It's also full of cliches. I think they serve a function almost like connective tissue. They can help me bridge gaps in the story until I can come up with something that fits better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm on my third draft of a novel right now and it's nearly unrecognizable to the story I started out telling. You'll refine and replace as you go but the important thing is that you keep at it. Build up some momentum. Find a common theme in what you have so far and explore it for the rest of this draft while you figure out exactly what story you are telling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15999" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T20:48:11.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19822" CreationDate="2015-11-25T21:33:11.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One big thing you can do is change the circumstances as much as possible whenever he's having one of these events. When you're in the middle of a panic attack you become incredibly reactive to everything. So give him a variety of things to react to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, pair him with different characters and let their reactions be the variable. If it's a common thing, maybe there's a family member who is so experienced with it that they can anticipate what he needs and help bring him down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put him with another high strung person and they can play off each other's panic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe he has an attack near someone who isn't taking it seriously and even screwing with him a little. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe he's with a heavily medicated person and suddenly they give him a handful of tranquilizers to take. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one from personal experience. He's having a panic attack but before he can excuse himself for a breath of air a birthday cake is wheeled out along with a bunch of waiters. Now he's panicking to the tune of happy birthday but doesn't want to show it and is just trying to hold it together while he waits for a five year old to think of her wish so she'll blow out her damn candles and the wait staff will go back to the kitchen and get out of his way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know your story so I'm not sure what will and won't work but something needs to change to keep it from feeling stagnant. Just play around with things and I'm sure you'll figure it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15999" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T21:33:11.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19857" CreationDate="2015-11-26T01:28:39.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May you treasure memories past and look ahead to the bright promise of tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15999" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T01:28:39.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19857" CreationDate="2015-11-26T01:33:21.290" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or you could write some nice sentiments along the bottom of pages in the middle of the  book and not say anything so it's a surprise when they find them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15999" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T01:33:21.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19522" CreationDate="2015-11-26T01:49:32.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an app called Prose that's based around sharing your work and chatting about it with fellow writers. I haven't posted much as of yet but it seems like friendly, pressure free community. And they make it crystal clear that you retain the copyright and ownership of your work. That's important because there are sites where that's not the case and by uploading something you're basically saying &quot;Do whatever you want with it.&quot;&#xA;I'd also second NaNoWriMo. Very supportive and encouraging community, especially in November. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15999" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T01:49:32.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19872" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-26T09:37:20.227" Score="1" ViewCount="781" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a mystery novel in the third person present tense. I chose this to create more suspense as I like the idea that the reader is discovering things at the same time as the protagonist and the outcome is unknown.  The story starts with new information coming to light about an unsolved mystery from the past and deals with the protagonist's present quest to try and solve it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to include some occasional flashback scenes to original events in the third person past tense, but I'm concerned these could disrupt the narrative flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any novels that do this which I could look at as examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14640" LastActivityDate="2015-11-28T15:48:20.467" Title="Present tense novel with past tense flashbacks" Tags="|viewpoint|tenses|third-person|flashback|suspense|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19855" CreationDate="2015-11-26T09:40:49.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I find that it helps to move onto a different project. Once the pressure is off, you may find ideas come more easily and you can return to this story later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14640" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T09:40:49.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19872" CreationDate="2015-11-26T16:01:39.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any novels that do this which I could look at as&#xA;  examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be a reason that it is so difficult to find examples of the style.&#xA;It is probably far too difficult for readers to accept 3rd person present as the point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does 3rd person present help you tell your story any more than the normal and accepted 3rd person past? Let's take a look at an example of 3rd person present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Walter is walking down Groves street and he hears a car come around&#xA;  the corner.  Walter keeps on walking, staring at the lines in the&#xA;  sidewalk.  The sound of squealing tires draws his attention and his&#xA;  head jerks up, just at the car bounces up onto the sidewalk.  Walter&#xA;  sees the front left tire pop on the curb, but the car is racing&#xA;  directly at him.  He jumps to the left and falls to the ground.  The&#xA;  car races by and smashes into the building, narrowly missing him. Walter's mind went back to another time he had to dive for cover.  He was serving in the first war in Iraq.  Tom had been standing next to him showing him a picture of his fiance when the rocket propelled grenade interrupted their conversation.  Walter had pushed Tom to the left and then the terrible explosion.  When Walter woke up two days later two shattered legs he had asked about Tom.  The doctor hadn't replied but just walked away.  The sound of the car door opening pulls Walter back to the present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that even different enough from the following to matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Walter walked down Groves street and he heard a car come around&#xA;  the corner.  Walter kept on walking, staring at the lines in the&#xA;  sidewalk.  The sound of squealing tires drew his attention and his&#xA;  head jerked up, just at the car bounced up onto the sidewalk.  Walter&#xA;  saw the front left tire pop on the curb, but the car continued racing&#xA;  directly at him.  He jumped to the left and fell to the ground.  The&#xA;  car raced by and smashed into the building, narrowly missing him. Walter's mind went back to another time he had to dive for cover.  He was serving in the first war in Iraq.  Tom had been standing next to him showing him a picture of his fiance when the rocket propelled grenade interrupted their conversation.  Walter had pushed Tom to the left and then the terrible explosion.  When Walter woke up two days later two shattered legs he had asked about Tom.  The doctor hadn't replied but just walked away.  The sound of the car door opening pulled Walter back to the present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rules or Guidance&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some rules need to be broken in order to move to something new.  Others rules are simply meant as guidance to commonly accepted practices that work well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just something to consider. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T16:01:39.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19875" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-26T19:57:16.057" Score="6" ViewCount="511" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a short story collection using scrivener. Each story is one text file in the scrivener document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to include the story name in the footer, next to the page number. Is that possible? Any ideas? I've tried googling around, but I can't find anything. I assume it's in the Compile &gt; Page Settings, but I don't see it anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16009" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T14:19:48.367" Title="Including text file name in footer of compiled Scrivener document?" Tags="|formatting|short-story|scrivener|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19872" CreationDate="2015-11-26T20:27:35.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend Damon Runyon's short stories to you. All of them are written in the present tense, and there are plenty of flashbacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tobias the Terrible&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One night I am sitting in Mindy's restaurant on Broadway partaking&#xA;  heartily of some Hungarian goulash which comes very nice in Mindy's,&#xA;  what with the chef being personally somewhat Hungarian himself, when&#xA;  in pops a guy who is a stranger to me and sits down at my table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not pay any attention to the guy at first as I am busy looking&#xA;  over the entries for the next day at Laurel, but I hear him tell the&#xA;  waiter to bring him some goulash, too. By and by I hear the guy making&#xA;  a strange noise and I look at him over my paper and see that he is&#xA;  crying. In fact, large tears are rolling down his face into his&#xA;  goulash and going plop-plop as they fall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks11/1100651h.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks11/1100651h.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15812" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T20:27:35.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19875" CreationDate="2015-11-26T22:26:38.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, text file title isn't a &quot;placeholder tag&quot;. BUT, I think this may work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a &lt;a href=&quot;http://gwenhernandez.com/2010/12/07/tech-tuesday-custom-meta-data-in-scrivener-2-x/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;custom metatag&lt;/a&gt; in the settings. I'll call mine &quot;Blah&quot; for this example. Populate that with the story titles. There may be a better way to do this, but I'm not sure how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then in the Compile settings, under the Page Settings tab, edit the Footer field to add  .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Easy enough, and that should work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be a better way where you can actually get at filenames, but I can't find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T22:26:38.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19522" CreationDate="2015-11-26T22:35:40.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/newmembersinfo.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt; is great. I highly recommend it. It's &quot;free&quot; but requires to critique the work of others to earn the points needed to submit work. The interface is really ugly, but the feedback is great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scribophile&lt;/a&gt; is a similar site, and while its inexpensive premium accounts are nice, the free version is fine. Its looks are a bit more polished. You do have to have picked you pen name first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T22:35:40.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19901" CreationDate="2015-11-28T08:21:42.063" Score="1" ViewCount="562" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been a habitual writer since my childhood but recently planned to move on to the next level and use my skills professionally. From last 7-8 months I am trying for small internships (paid /non paid) for developing my skills. As a background info, I am an undergraduate student of electronics and Instrumentation engineering, so most of the time my articles are inclined towards technology. When I posted my articles I tried to post them explaining every detail which became a drawback of my article, making it essayish. I also have a habit of reading science journalas and papers where informations are directly put with numbers refering to other papers. I found most of them are used intacttly without any sort of change. I have applied the same technique in some parts of my articles which contained very technical information and any change might change the actual meaning. When posting I found people who were screening rejected them refering them as plagarised contents. Though I always write the sources along with the contents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why I would like to know how to avoid such plagiarism? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16017" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T16:09:56.270" Title="What is the best way to avoid plagiarism when importing information from a source?" Tags="|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19872" CreationDate="2015-11-28T15:48:20.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a valid reason to take on a difficult (but perhaps unnecessary) task. If your story is good ... Present tense fiction tends to sound like running commentary or stream of consciousness, which is fine. It dates me, perhaps, but Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson were award-winners in this realm. They work in more traditional tenses, too, but a page or two of perusal should be enough to tell if it's what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-28T15:48:20.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19886" CreationDate="2015-11-28T23:26:53.120" Score="5" ViewCount="641" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a short book. I've neared the end of the plot, but now I'm seeing a problem: my conflict isn't ending at the climax. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The climax should always be the point where &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the problems (inner and outer) come to a head and are then resolved. This is where novels should in theory end. You usually need a chapter or epilogue afterwards to wrap things up (they lived happily ever after), but that's it. Once the climax is done, so is the novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently have the problem that the main conflict is resolved, and then the protagonist spends an additional chapter resolving a side conflict. The side conflict is obvious and needs to be resolved, but it's still a side conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Details:&lt;/strong&gt; In my book, the main conflict is that the protagonist is trying to rescue X from an abandoned building full of... shall we say, 'less than savory characters.' He knows where X is, and finds her. That is the end of the main conflict, as believing that she was still alive was the main problem. The side conflict? They still have to get out of the abandoned building and past the unsavory characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see my problem. I can't very well just end the book when X is found and explain in an epilogue that they got out (Or can I?). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; How can I fix this? Is there some way I can resolve this problem without rewriting the entire last half of my short story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2015-11-29T22:40:34.650" Title="My Conflict Doesn't End at the Climax. What can I do?" Tags="|plot|climax|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19885" CreationDate="2015-11-29T01:59:40.583" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When your givens are a problem, change your givens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your protagonist wants to get Ms. X out of the building &lt;em&gt;alive&lt;/em&gt;. He may find her, but they both still have to get &lt;em&gt;out&lt;/em&gt; alive. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is she wounded? Did the bad guys shoot her or cut her up? Is she having seizures or does she urgently need medication? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the building full of the bad guys who are shooting at them and&#xA;could kill either of them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did the bad guys chase the protagonist into the building and are busy&#xA;trying to kill them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the building rickety, old, or falling apart such that just exiting&#xA;the building is a life-threatening exercise?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the building on fire? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it have to be a building? Could they be on a (sinking) boat, or&#xA;a collapsing cave?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is Ms. X a dedicated cop or other LEO who is insisting on taking down&#xA;the bad guys herself, and will stay in the building shooting the bad&#xA;guys herself rather than escaping?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see my point. Merely &lt;em&gt;finding&lt;/em&gt; Ms. X alive is not, in fact, the end of the conflict. That only ends when the two of them are safe and free of the bad guys. I might even venture that the conflict only ends when the bad guys are arrested or dead, or otherwise stopped from pursuing the protagonist and Ms. X. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-11-29T01:59:40.583" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19887" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19934" CreationDate="2015-11-29T02:09:29.660" Score="6" ViewCount="5553" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing some college work and I'm using ISO/IEC 27000 Information technology — Security techniques — Information security management systems — Overview and vocabulary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Word, I have set up the bibliography to use Chicago formatting, Sixteenth Edition. The data I've put in Word are show in the image below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zrxTz.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zrxTz.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears like that in the document:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/16tcr.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/16tcr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, it's good enough, but is it correct? My only real issue is that when referencing it doesn't show which ISO I'm talking about, just the author and year, just like that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec lectus justo, egestas in cursus quis, convallis eu dolor &lt;strong&gt;(ISO/IEC 2014)&lt;/strong&gt;. Aliquam bibendum ligula arcu, vitae blandit purus iaculis at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, it doesn't show the ISO number, 27000 and I need that. How can I fix it, is there a better reference style for this kind of document other than Chicago?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16025" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-12-02T18:07:04.390" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T00:49:54.017" Title="How to reference an ISO/IEC?" Tags="|technical-writing|citations|tools|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19885" CreationDate="2015-11-29T02:29:40.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought of three things. From least to most appealing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Letting it linger&lt;/strong&gt;  As you say, once person X is found, the story is complete. You can write an epilogue like you mentioned, but you can also just leave it blank-- either stylistically, or with a hint that there is a &quot;part 2&quot; yet forthcoming. This is common in fantasy and sci-fi series, but as a short story? Doesn't seem like your best option&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Multiple orgasms&lt;/strong&gt; Perhaps a two-chapter escape sequence will give you a chance to build a second climax over the first. However, I'd try to keep the melodrama of the first climax to a minimum. And the second better be pretty mind-blowing to make it work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Build it up&lt;/strong&gt;  You can rewrite parts of the beginning to establish a definitive bad guy. Protagonist and person X proceed to eviscerate him after X is found which results in their escape. That way, her discovery also closes out the other subplots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's see what others come up with ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-11-29T02:29:40.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19889" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20958" CreationDate="2015-11-29T03:48:00.690" Score="1" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my first ever thesis these days. In order to describe a feature extraction methodology, I am going to insert a figure to my thesis and that figure is taken from the original paper in which the methodology has been proposed. That paper has already been cited by me in my thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I copy the figure from the paper directly and add to my report?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I can, how should I add the reference to the figure I am going to insert? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since I have already cited the paper, do I need to add the reference to the figure separately?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16026" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T02:40:41.550" Title="Adding figures into a report, How to cite?" Tags="|citations|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19890" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-29T16:03:35.287" Score="2" ViewCount="2879" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some practices to write about paternal, maternal grandparents, especially when their names are not used? In my case, the names are not given.&#xA;One method I am considering is &quot;p-grandfather&quot;, &quot;m-grandmother&quot;... etc, but I don't like it so much. Use sub script? grandfather&lt;sub&gt;p&lt;/sub&gt;? grandfather&lt;sub&gt;m&lt;/sub&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I had a few paragraphs about my paternal family, would it be ok to use &quot;my paternal grandfather&quot; and &quot;my paternal grandmother&quot; when I first talk about them, then afterward use just &quot;grandfather&quot;, &quot;grandmother&quot;? And following those paragraphs, I would introduce my maternal family, and use &quot;my maternal grandfather&quot; and &quot;my maternal grandmother&quot; when I first talk about them, then afterward use just &quot;grandfather&quot;, &quot;grandmother&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about in writings where there are interactions between these grandparents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am translating a memoir from Vietnamese to English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16029" LastEditorUserId="16029" LastEditDate="2015-11-30T00:01:33.480" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T10:11:04.523" Title="How to write about paternal and maternal grandparents?" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19890" CreationDate="2015-11-29T16:33:29.633" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are they all interacting together? In that case you might want to make a naming distinction (for example, dad-sided grandparents are called Gran and Gramps, and mom-side grandparents Grandma and Grandpa).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's just one pair at the time, you might want to introduce them as &quot;My mother's/father's parents&quot;, and then stick to the usual names. Putting indexes would be quite strange in a written work, then again, it depends on what you're working on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider simply using their names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2015-11-29T16:33:29.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2015-11-29T21:21:14.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to avoid plagiarising content is by avoiding plagiarising content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as obvious as that probably sounds when stated like that, bear with me for a second before you hit the downvote arrow. This question really boils down to, &lt;strong&gt;do your texts &lt;em&gt;really need&lt;/em&gt; to include the actual text of the cited work incorporated verbatim into your own text?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that a lot of the time, they don't, and it can even be a distraction from the original point that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are trying to make. &lt;strong&gt;Assuming that the reader is familiar with the subject matter&lt;/strong&gt; further exacerbates this: by incorporating text that describes something the reader is already familiar with, you detract from what you are trying to add on top of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, verbatim incorporation of the referenced text is &lt;strong&gt;at best superfluous, and more likely actively to the detriment&lt;/strong&gt; of the purpose of the text that you are writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who are reading a text on a &quot;very technical&quot; matter often have some level of background knowledge of the subject matter. The major exception to this is if what you are writing is specifically intended as an introduction to the subject, but in that case, the full and verbatim text of the referenced work is likely to do more harm than good in terms of helping the reader understand the subject matter. In neither case is incorporating the text of the reference verbatim to anyone's advantage (unless you are seeking to strictly increase your word count, but in that case, Lorem Ipsum is quicker).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a somewhat contrived and almost certainly exaggerated example, I could incorporate the text of Wikipedia's article on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;plagiarism&lt;/a&gt; into this answer. It probably would probably be relevant, I wouldn't be violating any license terms as long as I give proper attribution (both the &quot;subscriber content&quot; of Stack Exchange, and the content of Wikipedia, is licensed under CC-BY-SA-3.0), but it also almost certainly would not enhance your understanding of the answer. That last would make copying the Wikipedia article into this answer a poor choice. To a first order approximation, the text of the Wikipedia article is about ten printed pages; this answer would likely be completely buried in that mass of text (illustrating how verbatim incorporation of references can be outright detrimental).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel your audience really need to have the text of the reference provided to them, and the license for the referenced article allows verbatim redistribution, consider attaching the referenced article as an appendix, clearly stating where it's from, who it's by, and any other relevant details (check the specific license for details). However, if the reference itself (as opposed to the referenced work) is any good, chances are you won't need to, because those who want to read the referenced work will be able to get to it and others can just go on with what they want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2533" LastActivityDate="2015-11-29T21:21:14.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19885" CreationDate="2015-11-29T22:40:34.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two thoughts: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shift the Magic Flight into the scenes preceding your climax&lt;/strong&gt;. (In any case, this is where the Magic Flight traditionally pops up.) In your specific case, you could make your hero think about a way out before he finds X. He could prepare an escape mechanism that is simply triggered when he actually &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; find X. You would not need to tell how the escape is managed, because you have already told it. This would shorten your &quot;post-climax&quot; text considerably. Plus, it could add an interesting doublet of hope/despair to your story, since your hero &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt; to find X very badly and is blindly following his hope - so much so that he prepares an escape mechanism of which he doesn't even know whether he will need it -, while on the other hand he is never sure he will actually make it to X. The escape mechanism in popcorn entertainment would be to blow up the building. For example.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hang on. What's the Magic Flight?&lt;/strong&gt; Glad you asked. The Magic Flight is the stage of a story that propels the hero out of the situation that allowed him to make a crucial change, back into an environment that could be considered his or her everyday life. It is part of the &lt;strong&gt;Hero's Journey&lt;/strong&gt;. Chris Vogler gives a very nice interpretation of the Hero's Journey in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/193290736X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writer's Journey&lt;/a&gt;. In a nutshell, the Hero's Journey describes how a specific change is achieved. In your case, the change would be to save X from the &quot;less than savory characters&quot;. The story would traditionally enfold like this*: The hero realizes X needs to be saved and sets out to save X. The hero finds out that he indeed is able to save X. (This is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; equal to actually saving X. The term for this point in the story is &lt;em&gt;crisis&lt;/em&gt;.) The hero saves X. (&lt;em&gt;Climax&lt;/em&gt;.) The last two points do not necessary need to be separated. - A different interpretation would be that saving X is the crisis and making it out of the building - delivering X back into the everyday life - is the climax. What is what in your story depends on your focus. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helped.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Mind: The story is not necessarily identical to how you tell your story. You can shuffle the elements of your story around as much as you like, but they will still be there. Otherwise, the story could feel decidedly incomplete, unsatisfying, or, to be traditional here, plain tragic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: So why is it called &lt;em&gt;Magic&lt;/em&gt; Flight? Read Vogler, or any other of the abundant literature on the Hero's Journey out there. Knowing the Hero's Journey, in any case, turned out to be the one advice on creative writing that really stuck with me over the years. For me, it is indispensable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-11-29T22:40:34.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19890" CreationDate="2015-11-30T10:11:04.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few ways you can achieve that, mostly they are the ways that we understand those relationships in the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, it will depend on who is interacting with them. If it is maternal grandparents and the mother is talking, then 'mum' and 'dad' will show who it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is the father interacting then he could call them by their first name, and perhaps have a different relationship than he has elsewhere - so more friendly / formal / whatever fits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is from the grandchild's perspective, then it can be grandpa Bob, grandma Grace etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I wouldn't include an overt introduction to who they are, it should be something that is naturally carried through the story. Grandpa Bob being called dad immediately puts the whole generation into perspective. From there it is very easy to connect bob to grace, and people generally know how grandparents work well enough to be able to figure who the other two are ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, make a choice and stick to it, let the reader see how you reference them and they won't think about the connections, they'll just know they're there. Start interfering with the story and pointing fingers at who's who and it will feel awkward and annoying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T10:11:04.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19898" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-30T18:21:11.743" Score="0" ViewCount="719" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that I have written a few erotic / porn novels now, what are the chances that it will impact my mainstream writing career later? Even if I do write using a pen name, will people be willing to accept it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12670" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2021-02-09T04:36:52.767" LastActivityDate="2021-02-11T22:37:06.563" Title="If I write an erotic / porn novel now, what are the chances that it might impact my mainstream writing career?" Tags="|novel|career|erotica|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9064" CreationDate="2015-11-30T18:45:24.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the answers mentioned here are accurate. I would like to add my 2 cents. If you have financial commitments, then don't risk losing out on your current job. That's your bread and butter. Assuming you have a five day week, focus 100% on your job in the weekdays. On the weekends, put work aside, find a nice quite time of the day and start your word processor, think of a nice story and start typing. It will seem sticky at first. Write for an hour, then write some more before you get the hang of it and become confident. Keep writing part time and make sure it does not affect your current job. Both are two different worlds. Make sure they don't collide. If your current job sucks, just hang in there. It might get better. But if not then find another job with a better pay and hopefully, something you enjoy doing.&#xA;But if you do have the fire in you, don't ever give up on your dream.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12670" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T18:45:24.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9064" CreationDate="2015-11-30T19:00:52.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I quit a job at one point to write full-time, and ended up writing far less when I had more time.  Since then, my general advice to anyone is to establish the new career BEFORE leaving the old one.  Scott Adams (creator of &lt;em&gt;Dilbert&lt;/em&gt;) was already making millions off his strip before he left his former job as a cubicle-dweller (laid off, fwiw).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned here, very few people make a living exclusively off writing.  Quite a number of people use a successful book chiefly as the foundation of a speaking or teaching career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are an excellent and indefatigable salesperson, you can make quite a lot of money on a self-published book, but you'll be spending more time selling than writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T19:00:52.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2015-11-30T19:58:34.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: If you're talking about a scholarly paper, you should always cite your sources. Then, pretty much by definition, it is not plagiarism. You can copy pages of material from somebody else word for word, and if you put in quotation marks and a proper footnote, it's not plagiarism. (It may be copyright violation, but that's a different question.) On the flip side, never ever ever copy someone else's exact words without putting it in quotes and giving a footnote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: Minimize the use of long word-for-word quotes. If this is a scholarly paper and you're copying someone else's research or ideas, you still need to give a footnote. But it's generally considered lazy, bad form, generally not a good thing, to copy long sections from someone else's work word for word. Extract the part that is relevant to your point and put it in your own words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing about a controversial issue it may be necessary to use an exact quote to make clear that you're not putting words in someone else's mouth. &quot;Senator Jones admitted that he is a racist and a Nazi&quot; would lead careful readers to question exactly what he said. &quot;In his speech to the XYZ Society on June 3, 2014, Senator Jones said ...&quot; would be much more persuasive. (You could be lying about the quote, of course, but that's verifiable.) Of course a subject doesn't have to be that inflammatory. A point about the history of the Hittites or about nuclear physics might be controversial enough among experts in the field that an unsupported statement that &quot;Dr So-and-So agrees with me&quot; might be questioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But besides that, you rarely need exact quotes or long quotes. You can easily write, for example, &quot;Newton said that the same force that makes an apple fall to the ground also keep the planets in their orbits&quot; and then go on to make whatever point you want. It isn't necessary to quote Newton's exact words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, I often find that quoting someone else's exact words makes the text more difficult to read. Usually the original source includes the points I want to make mixed in with other points not relevant at the moment, and I have to leave out chunks with ellipses. Or I have to re-state what the original source said in my own words to make the point clear anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T19:58:34.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19898" CreationDate="2015-11-30T20:02:48.383" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anne Rice wrote four erotic novels using pseudonyms -- &lt;em&gt;Exit to Eden&lt;/em&gt; under the pen name Anne Rampling and the &lt;em&gt;Sleeping Beauty&lt;/em&gt; trilogy under the name A.N. Roquelaire -- and they don't seem to have hurt her career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6851" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T20:02:48.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19903" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-30T20:34:15.240" Score="2" ViewCount="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Scrivener to write almost anything and recently got into writing Tex for University submissions and papers. Recently I hit the problem that most Exercise Sheet for my University are numbered like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Exercise 1&#xA;    a&#xA;    b&#xA;Exercise 2&#xA;    a&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the next sheet will start with Exercise 3 and so on. When I now use my typical workflow for Latex it will be exported like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Exercise 1&#xA;    1.1 a&#xA;    1.2 b&#xA;2. Exercise 2&#xA;    2.1 a&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't exactly nice. I know that this is due to the fact that scrivener seems to use &lt;code&gt;\chapter{}&lt;/code&gt;and &lt;code&gt;\section{}&lt;/code&gt;instead of &lt;code&gt;\chapter*{}&lt;/code&gt;and &lt;code&gt;\section*{}&lt;/code&gt;, but is there a nice, not so hacky-way to change this behavior? Maybe some preference I missed? I don't want to change all of the syntax of my tex before every compilation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16041" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T10:58:37.807" Title="Disable Auto-Enumeration on Export to tex in Scrivener" Tags="|scrivener|latex|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19855" CreationDate="2015-11-30T20:58:28.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make your protagonist work hard himself to solve the problem of winning! Readers will love that, better than if the solution is easy. In your particular case, the enemy can predict the protagonist's actions. The protagonist should try hard to discover how the enemy can do that. If the predictions are based on a telepathy ability, then the protagonist could try hard to think of false actions (actions not really intended) in order to fool the enemy with wrong information. Then, the enemy will be misled, and take wrong actions or go to wrong places! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16040" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T20:58:28.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19905" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19908" CreationDate="2015-12-01T00:38:29.200" Score="1" ViewCount="2918" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been looking into Chromebooks for their portability and cost and was wondering what kind of writing tools, if any, exist on the platform that could be used to write larger projects without making one go insane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14466" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T22:55:20.570" Title="Is it possible to do novel-scale writing on a Chromebook?" Tags="|novel|tools|software|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18280" CreationDate="2015-12-01T00:57:55.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The alternative way is to have a bunch of songs, and then write the book and all the business to glue the musical numbers together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one example of many, the musical feature film &quot;Sunshine on Leith&quot;, created from the music of the Proclaimers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16042" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T00:57:55.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19905" CreationDate="2015-12-01T02:13:46.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That very much depends on what you need to write with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; the likes of Scrivener then you are going to have some issues working efficiently on a Chromebook (I'm not sure what Chrome apps there are) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you can adapt your writing style to what you have available you will find that there are many tools available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I have found that google docs to be a perfectly functional word processor for writing in. The ability to create a a metadata file with links etc works well enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I have recently stopped using even those, I have now moved over to using a basic text editor &lt;a href=&quot;https://atom.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;well not too basic&lt;/a&gt; and storing all of my files on a private &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt; repository. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that even in this modern world there are still a large number of authors who use a typewriter, or a pen and paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its all about your approach and how you organise it. Maybe sidestepping the technology will let you focus more on what you're writing (I know it did for me) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course your mileage will vary... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T02:13:46.617" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19916" CreationDate="2015-12-01T06:18:57.243" Score="0" ViewCount="494" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a story where there is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;only one character &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;doesn't talk to anyone &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;don't know where he is &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;and is narrating his story&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16045" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-21T00:49:42.153" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T00:49:42.153" Title="How to help reader visualize the environment in a story?" Tags="|fiction|description|narrator|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19910" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-01T06:54:44.430" Score="1" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing API documentation for a mobile loyalty program and I am not sure which of the following is better wording:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) When the user requests for their visit and order to be registered in their account, a checkin is created at POS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) When the user requests for his/her visit and order to be registered in his/her account, a checkin is created at POS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which sentence is correct and why? If neither is correct, please show me the correct way and explain why. Here, 'user', is any person in general public who goes to a Point Of Sale Terminal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16046" LastEditorUserId="16046" LastEditDate="2015-12-02T06:59:46.697" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T06:59:46.697" Title="How I should handle gender-neutral pronoun in technical writing?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-01-06T02:20:17.213" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2015-12-01T07:19:15.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am facing somewhat similar problem (&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/19910/how-i-should-handle-gender-neutral-pronoun-in-technical-writing&quot;&gt;How I should handle gender-neutral pronoun in technical writing?&lt;/a&gt;) as stated in the title question, below are the links I have gathered which should help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/he-or-she-versus-they&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/he-or-she-versus-they&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T07:19:15.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19909" CreationDate="2015-12-01T10:54:39.273" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the character is narrating his story to the reader, then he's speaking to the reader, so that problem is solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he doesn't know where he is, then he has to figure it out from what he can take in through his senses, which he's going to describe to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I woke up slowly. It was dark, and cold &amp;mdash; a lot colder than the last time I remembered being awake. My bad shoulder burned with strain. I tried to move my arms, but I quickly realized there was a rope or cord tying my hands behind my back. I was going to be in hell come the morning. I took a deep breath to clear my head, and I got freshly-cut pine &amp;mdash; and the incongruous but unmistakable scent of popcorn. &lt;em&gt;Popcorn? Outside? At night? What's going on out there?&lt;/em&gt; I strained my ears, still unable to see, and could faintly make out excited voices, including a few children. &lt;em&gt;Bonfire Night. It's Bonfire Night. They're here to see the Guy burn.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So by the character describing what he can observe, you can start to give your reader details, and the character and reader should figure things out more or less together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T10:54:39.273" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19910" CreationDate="2015-12-01T12:50:42.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your second and third options (&quot;his/her&quot; and &quot;their&quot;) are both fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The choice between them is a matter of taste. Strictly speaking, the use of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;singular they&quot;&lt;/a&gt; is ungrammatical, being a plural pronoun used to describe a single person, but it has a long history as a colloquialism and is becoming widely used as a way to avoid making assumptions about the gender of the person being described. &quot;His/her&quot; is more grammatically acceptable but clumsy and doesn't transfer well to speech. You could also use &quot;his or her&quot;, which is unquestionably correct in grammar but takes a long time to write or say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't use the first option (&quot;its&quot;), as the use of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_(pronoun)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;it&quot;&lt;/a&gt; implies that the user of your loyalty program is not human. Perhaps in the future we will need to find ways to allow for the possibility of users who are robots or genderless beings from other planets, but that time is not yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T12:50:42.283" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19915" CreationDate="2015-12-01T13:52:27.683" Score="6" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm writing a science fantasy WiP and I'm unsure how to introduce the characters and their background, day-to-day life if that's all going to change after the inciting incident. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in question format, &lt;strong&gt;is it good/bad/neutral to introduce a character's day to life if that's going to change&lt;/strong&gt;, and if it's &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;what is the best way to introduce how a character fits into a world?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14971" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T17:16:11.947" Title="Is it good/bad/neutral to introduce a character's day to day life if it's immediately going to be drastically changed?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19914" CreationDate="2015-12-01T14:00:35.633" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Hero's Journey, this is called &lt;em&gt;The Ordinary World&lt;/em&gt;, and it's important to establish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Ordinary World is what the Hero must leave to go on the Journey. This World may be good or bad, whole or broken, the desired status quo or something which needs to be fixed, but it's where the Hero starts. The point of the Journey may be to get back to this World with the Elixir of Knowledge. It may be to restore a former World. It may be that the Journey itself changes the Hero so much that s/he cannot return to this World, and it comes to symbolize innocence or childhood. All these are fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having at least one day of &quot;ordinary day-to-day stuff&quot; is common and very workable. It helps the reader appreciate that the Hero is &lt;em&gt;leaving&lt;/em&gt; all this behind to go on the Journey. If the Hero loves this World, then making the choice to leave it is literally the first step of the Journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T14:00:35.633" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19909" CreationDate="2015-12-01T14:05:17.647" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Everyday scenes&lt;/strong&gt;: I think &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; describing the narrator's environment is a valid option. For example, I never describe environments that are perfectly natural and well-known to my narrator, since my narrator does not have the slightest motivation to talk or even think about them. You do not leave your house in the morning and actively notice what your street looks like. You've seen this street every morning for years - no need to pay special attention to it. (Unless it is covered in toads.) If, on the other hand, your narrator has reasons to take notice of his environment, he will think and talk about it. In this case, the reader is automatically informed about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An aside: &lt;strong&gt;Feelings&lt;/strong&gt;. I disagree with Lauren here. Although description is what ultimately reveals a character, I sincerely believe that it is not necessarily the narrator that describes his or her feelings. On the contrary, I try to avoid these &quot;internal monologues&quot; at all costs, since they are usually tedious to read: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I feel sad. Would a cup of coffee cheer me up? No it wouldn't. Or would&#xA;  it? I can't decide.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have a terribly introvert character, feelings usually manifest themselves in actions. In my opinion it is enough to record these feelings-driven actions. Readers are smart enough to figure out which inner struggles cause the actions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The living room was damp and the heater silent, dawn spat long shadows&#xA;  into the room. Rebecca sat on the couch and stared into the twiglight.&#xA;  In front of her, a cup of coffee sat on the living room table. It had&#xA;  stopped steaming, how long ago? Rebecca couldn't tell. She curled up&#xA;  on the couch and buried her face in the cold cushions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T14:05:17.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9064" CreationDate="2015-12-01T14:52:00.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing books isn't the only way to write professionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is simply to write and earn a living from it rather than to produce a book, business writing can be a lucrative option. You don't have as much freedom to choose what you write, but you are guaranteed a paycheck for what you produce. I know one woman who does this in the financial sector working part time. She isn't getting rich, but she earns a reasonable income at it. I've also worked for businesses who hired freelancers to write annual reports or articles for a newsletter. It's another way to look at the writing market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are drawbacks. You have learn to market yourself and run a business, rather than simply write, but these are also skills that can make the difference between success and failure in writing your own books. When you start out, you will have very little control over what you are hired to write, although if you become successful enough, you can market yourself towards a favorite niche, and turn away unappealing jobs..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15395" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T14:52:00.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19910" CreationDate="2015-12-01T17:19:51.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using &amp;quot;he/his&amp;quot; will annoy some of your readers; using singular &amp;quot;they&amp;quot; will annoy others.  And referring to a user as &amp;quot;it&amp;quot; will seem weird to most people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do is to write around the problem wherever possible.  First off, if you're referring to &lt;em&gt;the user of your API&lt;/em&gt;, it's better to write in second person imperative anyway -- &amp;quot;do this, then do that&amp;quot;.  It's clear, direct, and less convoluted than &amp;quot;descriptive&amp;quot; style (&amp;quot;the user does X and...&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you're not talking about the reader, though -- your reader is building something (using your API) that will in turn have users, and you need to talk about &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt; users.  For example, let's talk about an API that lets your user build an app that somebody else will log into and configure.  Here are some examples of ways to talk about that user without using gendered or wrong-number pronouns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The user creates an account and registers it with your service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After logging in the user can access a configuration menu to (do something).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had to work a little to come up with those examples, not because of the writing style but because most of the time &lt;em&gt;your API documentation&lt;/em&gt; shouldn't be talking about &lt;em&gt;how your reader's users do something&lt;/em&gt;.  After all, your reader is responsible for the user interface.  You're more likely to write things like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the user logs out, remember to call some_function() to also flush the session data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the register() function to tie a user ID to an OpenID credential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T17:19:51.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9064" CreationDate="2015-12-01T20:33:26.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this answers the question best. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ktlzp.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ktlzp.png&quot; alt=&quot;Jame&amp;#39;s Michener quote&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T20:33:26.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19914" CreationDate="2015-12-01T20:40:24.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My favorite performance of this task was &lt;strong&gt;Magic Kingdom For Sale--Sold!&lt;/strong&gt; by Terry Brooks. It spends about a chapter in the Ordinary World and then goes back a couple of times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question: It adds depth to the characters. It is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can it be overdone? Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T20:40:24.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19923" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-02T10:26:04.377" Score="1" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was writing up my story and i wanted to know how much should the Protagonist's Birthday be part of the story. I have seen many stories in books,movies and games in where birthdays play very important part in the story examples include Harry Potter etc. I want to know how much should the Protagonist's Birthday play a part in the story if it needs to be included &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16056" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-21T00:50:02.907" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T00:50:02.907" Title="Influence of The Protagonist's Birthday" Tags="|character-development|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-12-13T05:04:24.407" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3186" CreationDate="2015-12-02T10:30:11.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether you have a degree in writing / journalism or not makes no difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alistair McLean was in the navy(or army) before he started writing thrillers(many of which were made into movies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;J.K. Rowling was living on welfare before Harry Potter&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ian Fleming was in MI6 before James Bond&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amish Tripathi was in the Financial services before he wrote the Shiva Trilogy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hugh Howey, the successful self-published and self made author did not have any degree in writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chetan Bhagat is an Engineering Degree holder from one of the most prestigious Engineering institutions in India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on ...... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12670" LastEditorUserId="13990" LastEditDate="2015-12-04T05:50:26.013" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T05:50:26.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19923" CreationDate="2015-12-02T12:23:57.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything is about the plot. Harry Potter's a little special in that his birthday signaled a new year at Hogwart's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly birthdays play pivotal roles because they're a time for reflection on someone's life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T12:23:57.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19923" CreationDate="2015-12-02T16:18:40.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should be emphasized to the extent that the fact of the character getting older is significant to the story you want to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T16:18:40.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19929" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19988" CreationDate="2015-12-02T17:15:49.320" Score="0" ViewCount="2774" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I'm speaking casually with a friend and quote something I heard, do I need to cite the source of that quote/saying?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Ex.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;After all, we're no strangers to love.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;Well, when in Rome...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this rule apply to comments on videos, images and message boards (like for YouTube, imgur and online games) as well, or does anything written need to be cited no matter where it's written?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I fail to cite my quotes in these situations, is it considered plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16062" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T15:42:00.167" Title="Do I need to cite quotes when conversing casually with friends?" Tags="|citations|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19929" CreationDate="2015-12-02T21:39:38.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you mean when you put quotes in writing (otherwise this is such a waste of my time). The rules are different for fiction and nonfiction. The short answer for fiction is no, you don't need to cite, but with nonfiction you do--whether two words or two thousand. Copyright issues are complicated, but fortunately, that's why publishers have lawyers. The comments above are accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T21:39:38.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19939" CreationDate="2015-12-02T21:57:59.733" Score="26" ViewCount="5657" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a modern fantasy novel, with a female protagonist whose principal romantic interest is another girl. I want to know how I can write her without having her homosexuality being the predominant aspect of her character. The main plot resolves in such way that her sexuality barely affects it. (If anything, because her girlfriend is very plot relevant, and having her on the protagonist's side actually got their situation from &quot;nearly impossible to solve&quot; to &quot;very hard to solve&quot;, but she would have helped anyway. The romance isn't used as a plot coupon to get her to the main character's side.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's what I want to know, but any other tips or examples are very welcome:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When does my protagonist comes out for the reader? Should I do it offhanded, straight at the beginning or somewhere down the road? I planned for her to give off hints over the course of the first book, and come out in the second, right after meeting her love interest, but I'm not sure of how to handle it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I avoid people seeing her homosexuality over the rest of her character traits? I don't want to write a lesbian romance, I wanna write a modern fantasy, that just happens to have a lesbian character.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16065" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-12-03T03:15:11.050" LastActivityDate="2018-02-24T20:02:41.487" Title="How to write a homosexual character, whose homosexuality isn't the point of the story?" Tags="|characters|fantasy|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19887" CreationDate="2015-12-03T00:49:54.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know the mechanics of Word here but I can help with what the results should look like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Referenced standards almost always look something like this in references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISO/IEC 27000:2014, &lt;em&gt;Information technology — Security techniques — Information security management systems — Overview and vocabulary&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if a specific edition is meant (including if specific clauses are referred to). You can leave the year off for normative references (not in your case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cited references look like: ISO/IEC 27000:2014, 5.4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or: ISO/IEC 27000:2014, Clause 5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need the month at all, because standards are never revised more than once a year and months are hardly ever mentioned. You quite possibly don't usually need to add the publisher either. International standards are made available by different national standards bodies but unless you need to refer to a national foreword or something it's all the same text inside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to refer to the standards body, remember it's &quot;International Organization for Standardization&quot; not &quot;International Standardization Organization&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Word might not be very sympathetic to this style. I remember BiBTeX similarly not cooperating with me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5233" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T00:49:54.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19933" CreationDate="2015-12-03T01:27:16.043" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a really good question!&#xA;A great guideline for writing homosexual romance into a story without having it be a plot point or having the sexuality be a big deal is to write it much the same as you would any other romance. There really isn't a need to make it a point to say anything about the gay-ness at all, honestly. Casually mentioning the gender of the person the main character has feelings for can be enough on its own, and the readers can make the connection themselves almost instantly (which is a good use if the characters are already in a relationship when the story begins). In some cases, you may want to write things about how the main character is afraid the girl won't even like girls, let &lt;em&gt;alone&lt;/em&gt; her, or something along those lines. This can also be done very simply, through text that compliments a scene or thought pattern rather than being the focus of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that being said, there isn't necessarily reason to keep it simple if you don't want to. Having a main character question whether actions are friendly or romantic a few times, maybe even including romantic thoughts and having them be pushed away for fear of rejection, things like this can still add to a story without it being the focus. Take note of all the heterosexual romances written pointlessly into so many stories that romance had nothing to do with, and don't be afraid to use it as a guideline for how casually (or not) certain things should be mentioned. Gay crushes and romances face many of the same problems that heterosexual ones do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not the most experienced because the only gay romances I've written into things has been the entire point of the story, but hopefully this still helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15912" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T01:27:16.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19933" CreationDate="2015-12-03T01:44:06.957" Score="20" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wanna write modern fantasy that just happened to have a lesbian character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the love interest enters the scene, your protagonist is interested. That's all. That's what you'd do with a straight character. Don't overthink it, don't have her come out with fireworks or tears, just write her sexuality as one facet of her personality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/031604010X&quot;&gt;Ash,&lt;/a&gt; by Malinda Lo, as an example. It's a recasting of Cinderella which happens to have a lesbian romance along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T01:44:06.957" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-03T05:25:39.413" Score="1" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an APA summary paper on a journal article. I am not using any other sources but that journal article. Would I need to keep citing the article throughout my paper such as putting parenthesis after each sentence? It seems a little redundant if I do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Mr.Rabbit" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-12-03T17:44:58.127" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T05:57:36.310" Title="Citations for summary on a journal article - APA formatting" Tags="|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19933" CreationDate="2015-12-03T07:25:34.280" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read the title of this, my brain converted it to (in lieu of a reply) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to write a female character whose gender isn't the point of the story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine writing a story based in &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; world, where you spend a considerable amount of time explaining the reasons your character is female. (hmm there seems like there might be a parody in that idea!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point being that people are perfectly comfortable and accepting that there are males and females in the world as they are accepting that there are a number of sexual orientations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Beth says she's got a date with Meredith then that is all you need to do to tell the reader that the character is homosexual. If it isn't the point of the story, then don't make it the point of the story, state the facts and move along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA (something that has rattled around in my head since I wrote this bit) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you choose to raise issues with in a story says a lot about the universe that you are creating, equally to what you choose to ignore. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you create a universe where walking around naked is the norm, then within that universe there would be very little said about that fact. If someone in that universe has issues with the idea, or even simply starts to explain why they do it. Then that would reflect on how the universe as a whole has an underlying issue with it and it becomes a discussion point in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give the reader some information in your story, and then decide if it is going to be either a fact or a discussion point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastEditorUserId="13990" LastEditDate="2015-12-03T09:44:54.243" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T09:44:54.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19933" CreationDate="2015-12-03T12:24:02.517" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice here would be: don't think in terms of &quot;right&quot; and &quot;wrong&quot;; think in terms of structural arcs. You need to figure out what options for arcs you have, and which of those you actually want to use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've basically presented three possible arcs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The primary arc&lt;/strong&gt;, where in some meaningful way, the primary plot is &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; the protagonist's homosexuality, or profoundly connected to it. (This is a direction you're not interested in at the moment.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Upfront disclosure; no arc&lt;/strong&gt;, where we know right off the bat that the protagonist is lesbian, and it's largely treated as a minor point for the rest of the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A &quot;gradual reveal&quot; arc&lt;/strong&gt;, where the character's homosexuality is initially unknown, and effectively &quot;secret&quot;; we get hints and clues&#xA;along the way; and at some point we reach the &quot;revelation&quot; that the&#xA;character is lesbian.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of the &quot;upfront disclosure&quot; arc is that &lt;strong&gt;it gets you closest to your goal of your protagonist's sexuality being matter-of-fact,&lt;/strong&gt; rather than making a big deal over &quot;OMG she's a &lt;em&gt;lesbian&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The disadvantage is that &lt;strong&gt;her sexuality can feel like an &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InformedAttribute&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;informed attribute&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/strong&gt; where you declare her to be a lesbian but that doesn't actually seem to come into play in any way, so the declaration feels artificial, or pointless, or like bald tokenism. In general, there's a popular assumption that the &quot;default character&quot; is straight, and that diverging from the default should only be done if the divergence makes some significant impact on the story. (That's a big discussion which I don't have scope to go into here, but it stems both from fiction's tendency towards &quot;conservation of details&quot; - i.e. &quot;significant details will prove to be important; otherwise you wouldn't put them in in the first place&quot; - and from popular social mores, by which most people consider a character being homosexual as a &quot;significant detail,&quot; while considering heterosexuality to be a sort of unremarkable, default expectation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the &quot;gradual reveal&quot; arc, your advantage is that &lt;strong&gt;by turning the attribute into a surprise, you've created an arc around it. It's in focus.&lt;/strong&gt; The shape of the arc will force you to substantiate your protagonist's sexuality, so it won't feel like a minor detail or an aside; placing the revelation as the culmination of an arc makes it &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the disadvantage is that you lose these sense of her being a lesbian as immediate established fact, as &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; exceptional or surprising. In many ways you might be &lt;em&gt;undermining&lt;/em&gt; your protagonist's lesbian identity; if we can follow along with her for chapters or entire books without it ever coming up, then how important or significant can it be? It basically &lt;strong&gt;locks you into bringing in her sexuality in one very specific, fairly limited way.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you understand the advantages and disadvantages of both, then you can choose one, and compensate. If you want to deal with the risk of &quot;informed homosexuality,&quot; you compensate by finding other ways to make her sexuality evident and significant. If you want to deal with the disadvantages of the gradual reveal, you compensate by making the structure work and make sense, giving weight and meaning &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; want to your protagonist's sexuality, not just whatever fits most easily into an arc. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's another alternative for you to consider, which could mesh well with either type of arc, or do the job on its own: consider &lt;strong&gt;a sideplot.&lt;/strong&gt; You're mentioning multiple volumes, so you've got lots of room for secondary characters and sideplots. In that case, what you can do is establish a sideplot, which forms its own, more minor arc. And &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; arc has the same advantages that a &lt;em&gt;primary&lt;/em&gt; arc has - it lets you put some focus on your protagonist's sexuality, it lets you make it important, and it lets you &lt;em&gt;choose&lt;/em&gt; what's important about it, and how you bring it into play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know your character or your setting, but you can come up with &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of ideas. A community of queer friends; a male ex from when your protagonist was coming to terms with herself; an arc about the kind of family your protag would like to have someday; a queer relationship between secondary characters that your protagonist is privy to. Any one of these could be the basis for a solid, secondary plot, which wouldn't overwhelm the main story, but would come up and recur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another big advantage here is that a subplot lets &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; figure out some aspects of homosexual life that &lt;em&gt;you're&lt;/em&gt; interested in spotlighting; being a lesbian affects a person's life far more than just &quot;what gender is my partner&quot;, and it sounds like that one question &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; what you're interested in with this character. So consider: how is your character's life shaped or affected by her sexuality? Romance, relationships, community, worldview, social position, something else? What there interests you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you look at it this way, I think you'll find that the &quot;gradual reveal&quot; arc &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a subplot - it's just a specific one, climaxing with the revelation that the protagonist's sexuality &lt;em&gt;exists&lt;/em&gt;. But if that isn't the subplot that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; want, you just need to choose a different one you like better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. This can be a delicate issue, and you're swimming against some deeply-ingrained biases and expectations. So it makes &lt;em&gt;sense&lt;/em&gt; that it be difficult, and feel unnatural and unbalanced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach is to say &quot;What the heck,&quot; and accept a balance that feels less than perfect - erring on the side of &quot;informed homosexuality,&quot; or using a simple &quot;revelation: lesbian&quot; arc. These can feel unsatisfying, but they're valued by many, not least because they're pushing against that deeply-ingrained default.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're able to put in more effort and find something you feel &lt;em&gt;really works&lt;/em&gt;, I think that's even better :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2018-02-24T20:02:41.487" LastActivityDate="2018-02-24T20:02:41.487" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19940" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19956" CreationDate="2015-12-03T13:01:42.263" Score="3" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a student, and have just completed writing my first book. A few of my friends went through it and said it was a good one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish to publish the book, since I am a student I do not have any source of income, so can you suggest the best economical way to publish a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My book is a romance/religion type book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16071" LastEditorUserId="3857" LastEditDate="2015-12-03T16:27:18.650" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T12:01:33.643" Title="publishing my first book - in an economical way" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19942" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19945" CreationDate="2015-12-03T15:53:51.933" Score="3" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received the following in unsolicited email:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hello,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My name is ___________. I saw that you have written _________. My question for you is: may I promote the book at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in L.A., early April? It costs you nothing. All I'm asking you in return is if we may add you to our book marketing email list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm giving you two LA Times promotion options to choose from: 1: you may forward a copy of your book to our address (see below), and we'll display it in L.A., or 2: we'll include your work in the Hot Indy Author Guide that we're displaying and distributing during the LA Times event. Either option is free. Check out our Facebook page when we report live from L.A. where over 150,000+ are expected to attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At America Star Books we have a book promotion department that does nothing but offering book promotion at the lowest fees in the nation. We attend all of the big fairs and festivals: Book Expo America, London Book Fair, Frankfurt Book Fair, Miami Book Fair International, the American Library Association mid-winter and annual Conferences, Baltimore Book Festival, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All I am asking you at this time is if we may add you to our email list when we issue our next book promotion offers. You may at any time unsubscribe, and we will promptly cease sending you any further emails. America Star Books has been around for more than fifteen years, serving over 60,000 authors. Participating in book promotion is entirely optional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for considering this opportunity. I am looking forward to hearing back from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—________&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;America Star Books Special Services, manager&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;xxx-xxx-xxxx&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How good or bad of a proposition is this? &lt;a href=&quot;http://cjsh.name/works&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;I've written a few different works&lt;/a&gt;; if it is something I should be interested in, should I send other favorites?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8761" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T16:51:51.577" Title="Is this America Star Books Special Services unsolicited email a positive step in publishing and marketing?" Tags="|publishing|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19946" CreationDate="2015-12-03T16:15:16.907" Score="2" ViewCount="768" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the principal antagonist for my modern fantasy alternate world setting. Unlike the typical antagonist, this particular character, whom I named Vritra. He weilds the exaltation of a goddess, which granted him a slow aging, stronger than average magical capabilities and fast healing far beyond what the main characters can access. He used to be a very respected member of the magic association, and once destroyed the incarnation of a chaos god, saving thousands of lives, however he was deeply contaminated by chaos. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short time after that he found out how that particular incident was because the neglect and corruption from the magic association. He also found that the only way available under the circumstances to prevent more incidents like that one would end up cutting the ties that the people had with magic, however the association wasn't particularly happy about it. When he tried to bring the issue to the public, the association labeled him as a traitor, and conspirator and tried to kill him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From then and onward he fought alone, externally against the bounty hunters from the magic association and against the forces that threatened the world (which the mage's guild were neglecting, for fear of loosing their monopoly on the magic and overestimating their ability to solve the issue without giving up on the magic). And internally against the chaos that was corrupting his essence. After several years he has come close to finally cutting the ties to the mana, but has become so corrupted that he's loosing his sanity. He kills not only to defend himself but also for pleasure, and since long ago stoped caring about the consequences of his deeds, no matter how high the price, he will accept it in order to accomplish his objective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My problems comes in his impact to the plot. I fear that he might be bordering on marty stu territories.&lt;/strong&gt; He is not the strongest mage, nor he has a particularly wide array of spells to use, but the few he has are versatile and strong. So far he has meteor swarm (deadly, and can be spammed to some degree); a limited, non spammable flashstep, that he uses to cut distances and blast someone pointblank; a strong chaos emanation (the one that gives me headaches) that easily disrupts mana, breaks spells and deals severe damage to magic casters, but using it propagates his own corruption; strong, telepathically controlled fire chains (but require him to focus on controlling) and a partial dragon transformation that puts him near the level of the stronger physical fighters, but limits his spell to fire and lightning blast. He is also skilled in close combat, posses a great magical resistance, and on his more sane moments is a great tactician (but easily gets carried away when he's exited in a fight) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I use his corruption to limit him, even tho the exaltation grants fast healing and a demigod stamina, the mental straint of containing the chaos limits how long he can fight, also all of his spell requiere huge amounts of mana and can't be cast together lest he risk loosing control of the chaos. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also had him loose one of his dragon wings at the end of book 1 (cutting his sky superiority, for flying here is rare and unique), and during book 2 he sustains severe wounds fighting a demigod while off camera that impair for the remaining of the series, but also gained a manadrain spell that gave him a huge edge on a fight that would have killed him before the climax (and somewhat solved the issue of his spells requiring huge amounts of mana).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What else could I do to limit him? or are the limitations imposed on him fair enough. He's supposed to win in the end, accomplishing his objective of cutting everyone's ties with the magic, causing a global catastrophe, but ultimately saving the planet, but he also has to die just after that, in a post climax fight against the protagonist (that ends just as they are loosing their cuts to the mana).&lt;/strong&gt; I have already planned the climax, but I feel that he needed a bit of deus ex machina to get there alive, and I want his victory to feel real, not just because I, the writer, said so&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.D.: He is the &quot;protagonist&quot; of the global story, my main character is the protagonist of her personal story, and serves to narrate Vritra's story (besides a few, particular chapters, I don't want to have him as the narrator, mainly for the Marty Stu issues, and mainly for I want to make the point that the story resolves around a LOT more characters than just the protagonist)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16065" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2015-12-07T19:35:25.293" LastActivityDate="2018-11-24T08:13:48.507" Title="Writing an overempowered antagonist?" Tags="|fantasy|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19943" CreationDate="2015-12-03T16:28:04.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the story arc you outlined, I would start him out as much less powerful and let him gradually gain strength throughout the series. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would seem like the obvious way to do this would be to emphasize the fact that he's fighting to hold on to his humanity, and that the stronger powers come with a high cost.  It strains credibility to have your protagonist continually prevailing from the beginning against such a strong opponent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T16:28:04.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19942" CreationDate="2015-12-03T16:51:51.577" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you suspect, an unsolicited email is not good news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;America Star Books is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/alerts/#Star&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;well-known scam&lt;/a&gt;. The offer shoddy, overpriced self-publishing and promotion packages. They make their money charging hopeful authors who don't know better, not by getting any of your books sold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may well be saying something is &quot;free&quot; now, but if you read the email, they're trying to interest you in &lt;code&gt;book promotion at the lowest fees in the nation&lt;/code&gt; , and to &lt;code&gt;add you to our email list when we issue our next book promotion offers&lt;/code&gt;. Rest assured, those aren't free, and many, many warnings have gone out about how deceptive and useless those offers are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A small sampling of warnings and horror stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://accrispin.blogspot.co.il/2010/04/publishamerica-strikes-again.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://accrispin.blogspot.co.il/2010/04/publishamerica-strikes-again.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://christianityforthinkers.com/PA-Quick-New.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://christianityforthinkers.com/PA-Quick-New.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiesunlimited.com/2015/03/10/my-bad-experience-with-publishamericaamerica-star-books/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.indiesunlimited.com/2015/03/10/my-bad-experience-with-publishamericaamerica-star-books/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, whenever you hear from somebody you're not already sure of, it's worth Googling them - particularly adding riders like &quot;warning&quot; or &quot;scam,&quot; so you'll find the relevant results, and not just the company's own self-promotion materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writer Beware&lt;/a&gt; is a &lt;strong&gt;fantastic&lt;/strong&gt; resource; I can't recommend it highly enough. Spend some time browsing there, and you'll get an excellent idea of common pitfalls and what signals should be setting off the alarms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T16:51:51.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19943" CreationDate="2015-12-03T17:09:17.347" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with Marty Stu and similar types is not their power or competence, it is that since they are never really tested, they never grow as characters beyond cardboard silhouettes. Which for important characters such as the antagonist in your story pretty much kills the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So just show how he is tested. Show how he sometimes fails those tests. Show how he suffers when tested. Show how he regrets the cost of his failure. Show how he regrets the cost of his success. Show how he resents having to bear this burden. Show how he is ashamed of his weakness and resentment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will make him grow as character. Both in the eyes of the readers and in relation to the main character. I'd recommend using the main character as a mirror for such development, so that she doesn't get sidelined and overshadowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MC should regret killing the the antagonist. She should regret not making it before. She should resent having to make that choice. She should resent the antagonist for dying. For making her kill him. For making the choices he made. She should resent the people who forced him to make those choices. She should miss him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure how concrete I should get with advice on how to actually do this. It is your story and all that. But basically with this set up the focus should be in the internal struggles of the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You really screwed over the antagonist and the story should show that in his actions. He should be conflicted. He should sometimes mess up because he can't really focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the conflict comes out as frustration, arrogance, and overconfidence. So he makes dumb mistakes and has to recover by doing things that don't reflect well on him. He might be ruthless or simply look embarrassingly incompetent while running from opponents he really should have dealt with easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it comes out as kindness, tolerance, and understanding. He might just back off or even help out his enemies in a chivalrous fashion if it doesn't compromise his ultimate goal. He might even occasionally have doubts about his goal being justified and back off until he regains his resolve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T17:09:17.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19947" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19958" CreationDate="2015-12-03T17:28:19.190" Score="1" ViewCount="591" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen 'owl' mentioned many times in the context of writing.  Some libraries have an 'owl's nest', some universities have writing workshops by the same name.  If you google 'owl writing' you will find things like: &lt;code&gt;Welcome to the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL)&lt;/code&gt;, and &lt;code&gt;Oral &amp;amp; Writing Lab (OWL) | Rio Salado College&lt;/code&gt;.  Other searches yield things like &lt;code&gt;Welcome to the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL)&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Owl's Nest - Union County College&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a coincidence, or is there some tradition of relating writers to owls, and thus naming the places they frequent after that bird?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13268" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T10:35:07.113" Title="What is the significance of the owl with respect to writing?" Tags="|terminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19947" CreationDate="2015-12-03T18:57:16.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless I've misunderstood something, &quot;OWL&quot; - is simply an abbreviation for &quot;&lt;strong&gt;O&lt;/strong&gt;nline &lt;strong&gt;W&lt;/strong&gt;riting &lt;strong&gt;L&lt;/strong&gt;ab&quot;. I'd guess the people at Union County College have just made the obvious joke about how O.W.L. can be read as the name of the nocturnal bird of prey, so the Owl's Nest is where the OWL is based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T18:57:16.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19940" CreationDate="2015-12-03T19:06:04.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your question includes the phrase &quot;best economical&quot; way I heartily suggest Amazon KDP (Kindle Desktop Publishers) program.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://kdp.amazon.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not only very economical, but it is also very cheap. :)&#xA;Just kidding, it is also very easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, the most inexpensive way to publish hardcopy is also related to Amazon and it is the CreateSpace site.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.createspace.com/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Check it out, it's fantastic.  I've published books on both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-10-23T12:01:33.643" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T12:01:33.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19950" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19952" CreationDate="2015-12-03T19:26:24.697" Score="3" ViewCount="1396" Body="&lt;p&gt;The oxford comma is the second comma in the sentence &lt;strong&gt;I like the colors red, white, and blue.&lt;/strong&gt; Every grammar textbook I've ever seen, as well as the major style guides, feels that this is &quot;proper&quot; despite the fact that most American periodicals exclude it. In fact, most Americans, even professionally educated ones, are not aware of this and consider it wrong. I do resume work on the side and have had interviewees complain that they were specifically chided for using an oxford comma—and other interviewees for not using one! I now recommend staying away from lists because of this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: How pervasive is the use of the oxford comma in English-speaking, non-American countries? Especially in Canada and Great Britain, is there an expectation in formal writing one way or the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T22:12:32.503" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T22:12:32.503" Title="Use of the Oxford comma" Tags="|technical-writing|punctuation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19950" CreationDate="2015-12-03T19:45:46.047" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two traditions in Britain that I am aware of: use lots of commas; only use them when necessary to indicate pauses. I have not heard of using a comma before 'and' as being an Oxford comma. What I have read is that Cambridge uses commas less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give you an example: Because it was raining, we put up our umbrellas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people would say that the comma could be left out after 'raining' (Cambridge). Others say that it is a subordinate clause at the beginning of sentence and so needs a comma (Oxford).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T19:45:46.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19950" CreationDate="2015-12-03T19:58:12.023" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question title is very general, and your specific question is about the pervasiveness of the Oxford comma, and wanting to give up all lists because no one agrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that &quot;pervasive&quot; depends on the type of writing (book, science, academic, or news) and--rather than give up on lists--you decide on your style guide and then handle exceptions to it as they arise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far I know, there is no commonly accepted style guide for resumes, so I have a  short answer and a long answer on how you could proceed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer&lt;/strong&gt;: Advise your client of the style guide you follow, and ask if they have exceptions they want you to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer&lt;/strong&gt;: Choose a style guide and consistently use a decision process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my decision process on whether to use the oxford comma:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's my authority style guide? (Chicago Manual of Style, APA Publication Manual, The Associate Press Stylebook, or other)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does an in-house style override the authority style?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regardless of in-house style, could the comma (or lack of it) make the list ambiguous?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I still can't decide, then I open &quot;The best punctuation book, period.&quot; by June Casagrande. (I do not know June; I just love her book. Your library might carry it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what her book states for the different types of style guides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Book, Science, and Academic style guides&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the final item in the series of words or phrases is preceded by a coordinating junction, especially &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt;, insert a comma before the conjunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;They play football, basketball, and soccer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;News style guides&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the final item in the series of words or phrases is preceded by a coordinating junction, especially &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt;, do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; insert a comma before the conjunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;They play football, basketball and soccer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All style guides&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the final item in the series of &lt;em&gt;clauses&lt;/em&gt; is preceded by a coordinating junction, especially &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, insert a comma before the conjunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;In the 1980s, music was loud, hair was big, and clubs were hopping along Sunset Boulevard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11559" LastEditorUserId="11559" LastEditDate="2015-12-03T20:13:58.663" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T20:13:58.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19950" CreationDate="2015-12-03T20:22:50.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;How pervasive is the use of the Oxford comma in English-speaking, non-American countries? Especially in Canada and Great Britain, is their an expectation in formal writing one way or the other?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed no strong expectation either way in Britain. Quite honestly, I think most editors reckon they are doing well these days if they get a writer who actually knows enough about punctuation to worry about the presence or absence of the Oxford comma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Posting this because it's funny: &lt;a href=&quot;http://mentalfloss.com/article/33637/best-shots-fired-oxford-comma-wars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Best Shots Fired in the Oxford Comma Wars&lt;/a&gt;. I particularly liked the last example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T20:22:50.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19705" CreationDate="2015-12-03T20:36:40.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could you consider writing up what your dream job would look like? What kinds of activities would you do on your ideal day that could be seen as contributing to an organization? Then you could frame:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hi my name is Chris and I would like to work for Company A,&#xA;  especially because Reasons X, Y and Z. Here is my card.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;into&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hi, I'm Chris and love doing X,Y and Z. I believe I could really&#xA;  bring a lot of value to your company and solving problems A,B, and C.&#xA;  Let's talk sometime, okay?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way it is easier to specify what stuff you want to do, what kinds of challenges a company may have and be the hero! At least this would be my suggestion for a strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1287" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T20:36:40.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19940" CreationDate="2015-12-03T21:58:54.200" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking just of paper books, i.e. not e-books (which others have already discussed):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are basically three ways to publish a book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;traditional&amp;quot; publisher;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;vanity press;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;print on demand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Traditional Publisher&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a traditional publisher, it should cost you nothing. They may pay you an advance if you're lucky. You submit the manuscript, and if they like it they publish it. They keep some (most) of the price of the book and pay you royalties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages:&lt;/strong&gt; Costs you nothing. You get the marketing power of the publisher behind your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disadvantages:&lt;/strong&gt; Unless you are already famous, it's difficult to find a publisher who is interested in a writer's first book. You lose a lot of creative control: the publisher will likely insist on many changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Vanity Press&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a vanity press, you pay a pretty large amount of money up front -- usually several thousand dollars -- for them to print your book. Then it's up to you to sell it. They make their money from this up-front cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages:&lt;/strong&gt; They may provide assistance with editing, cover design, etc. They may do some marketing. (Depends on which vanity press.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disadvantages:&lt;/strong&gt; You have to pay a bunch of money up front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Print on Demand (POD)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With print on demand, you send your book to the POD company, and they print copies in small batches -- often as little as one at a time -- as they are sold. They keep some of the price of the book and give you the rest. You get a much bigger chunk of the sale price than you would with a traditional publisher, but that's because they don't do much for you. They print your book, period. (They may provide additional services, like cover design or editing, but you have to pay for that up front.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages:&lt;/strong&gt; Very low up-front cost, ranges from zero to maybe $100 or so. You retain complete creative control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disadvantages:&lt;/strong&gt; Few POD books are sold in bookstores: almost all are sold on-line at Amazon, Barnes &amp;amp; Noble, and many smaller on-line sellers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'd rule out vanity presses. I don't see that they have any clear advantage over POD, and you have to give them a bunch of money. If someone on this forum can offer reasons to go with vanity presses, I'd be interested in hearing them. But basically I think they're just out of date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the two biggest POD publishers are CreateSpace and Lulu. I used Lulu for my first book and CreateSpace for my next two. Both appear to be solid, honest companies. I worked with a traditional publisher on another project that never made it to print for a variety of reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T01:08:42.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19947" CreationDate="2015-12-04T10:35:07.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most of these contexts, OWL is simply used as an acronym (such as for Online Writing Lab). However, this has nothing to do with owls per se, but rather to do with the fact that people tend to want to use acronym's without being particularly clever about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important constituent parts of the name are Online/ Oral and Writing, and the easiest jump to make from that is to stick a word beginning with L at the end. So Lab seems to be the obvious choice, despite the fact that an actual laboratory is likely one of the worst places to be for writing at length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for using the acronym OWL as opposed to something like WOW (Writing Online Workshop) is that due to the markings on the faces of many owl species, as well as their concave face and large eyes, they sometimes appear to be wearing glasses. As people wearing glasses are often associated with intelligence and academia, thus owls were often perceived to be more intelligent and wise, and associated with book reading and writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the term Owl's Nest in libraries likely extends from the fact that most libraries would have the majority of the floor space on the ground floor occupied by shelves containing books (perhaps with some seating) and an upper level or mezzanine overlooking the lower level that would have more seating and fewer books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence the higher level overlooking a lower level, like looking at the ground from the height of a tree, as well as the tendency for people interested in books to spend many hours sitting stationary whilst reading, similar to a bird sitting in a nest warming their eggs, made the term 'nest' an ideal description to refer to this area. I'm not sure if this is still the case, perhaps this term has since extended to mean any area that is designated for reading books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, owls were chosen as opposed to another species of bird that does the exact same thing is due to their perceived high intelligence levels thanks to the appearance of the faces of certain owl species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fun fact: Owls are &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.birdminds.com/Owls.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;less intelligent&lt;/a&gt; species of bird.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, the two owl references in these seemingly unconnected instances of writing are just that: unconnected. The reasoning behind the two terms stem from separate unrelated locations, and in both cases the least important part of the name is 'owl', which was only chosen because of people assuming owls are clever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T10:35:07.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12246" CreationDate="2015-12-04T11:05:18.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually asked a similar question to this in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/87012/is-there-any-proof-that-jaime-lannister-is-actually-a-good-swordsman&quot;&gt;different SE site&lt;/a&gt;, and I think that GRRM actually provides enough evidence to prove that he is an incredibly accomplished swordsman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you are correct, that he does the majority of building up Jaime's legendary skill with telling rather than showing, but after researching it I realized that this was entirely intentional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, he is an accomplished swordsman, and we see it on several occasions, and others who have seen him fight can vouch for that. However, he underwent a very unique set of circumstances to build up the renown around the world that he is the greatest swordsman alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read the linked question, I've provided all the reasons for how his natural skill, luck, and also politics contributed to his legend. And this legend surrounding him causes him to become one of the most arrogant and cocky characters in the book, assuming that he can do as he pleases and get away with it because no one can stop him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was all to build up to the pivotal moment when he lost his hand. As the author loves to kill off the main characters, this was simply another one of them. He killed the greatest swordsman alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throughout the rest of the story, Jaime goes through a massive transformation in character, as he reevaluates exactly who he is now that he can no longer fight with a sword. He had pinned his entire identity onto his right hand, and now he has to find another identity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this whilst everyone else in the world treats him like the exact same entitled scumbag that he used to be. He gets to see exactly what he had become through the eyes of someone else. This encourages all of the actions he takes later, as he tries to repent for the sins of his former life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, he is required to maintain a balancing act with his former persona, as it is shown that he can no longer fight at all, and manages to get by for a very long time using only the legend of his fighting prowess that had been built up around him for all of those years. He needs everyone to think that he is still the greatest swordsman alive so that no one will challenge him, as he will surely lose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in order to write the redemption story and allow Jaime's character arc to progress the way it did, the author was actually &lt;em&gt;showing&lt;/em&gt; the readers that the character managed to get by on reputation alone, and could continue to do that whilst also attempting to correct all his former mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:43:40.990" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T11:05:18.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3759" CreationDate="2015-12-04T12:44:07.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Narrative&lt;/strong&gt;- is when the author is narrating a story or part of a story. Usually, it has introduction, body and its conclusion. It let readers create their own imagination. It may be exact as what the author wants to express or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Descriptive&lt;/strong&gt;- describing what the author wants to impart. It expresses emotion about its certain topic. It leads the way and not letting you fall out of nowhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16085" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T12:44:07.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19739" CreationDate="2015-12-04T13:36:52.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking as a mathematician, if you mean a set of some, but not all integers, I would say &quot;a subset of the Integers&quot;. If however, you mean the set of all the integers, then say &quot;the set of Integers&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15962" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T13:36:52.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3186" CreationDate="2015-12-04T17:28:49.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, there is no direct correlation between having a degree and getting published. But...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to suggest that an education in writing provides people with the basic principles of good storytelling, gives experience with soliciting and receiving criticism, and helps them form friendships with other writers. These things don't directly get you published, but they can help you be a (better) writer. And programs that require a finished manuscript as a thesis provide a pretty high level of motivation to finish the thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I don't have a writing degree, but I've gotten all those things from other sources.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T17:28:49.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19943" CreationDate="2015-12-04T17:46:18.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider other types of vulnerability. Does he have a loved one? A woman, a kid, a dog? When characters love something it humanizes them for the reader, but also makes them more vulnerable. Their feelings for their kid conflict with their duties as savior of the world. (Then there's the overdone trope where the villain kidnaps their family.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's try an example: He loved his dragon and he mourns it at every opportunity. The loss clouds his judgment. He flies into rage at the wrong times, and tears blind him during fights. He can't sleep, so he's exhausted easily. He's vulnerable, not because of curses and contaminations, but by normal emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T17:46:18.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19965" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-04T21:00:25.057" Score="14" ViewCount="13217" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to edit a short story, written in the first person.  I have used &amp;quot;I&amp;quot; way too many times, it stands out too much at the beginning of a sentence, but I can't seen to change it without losing the meaning/tone of the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16090" LastEditorUserId="40124" LastEditDate="2022-12-30T16:20:16.783" LastActivityDate="2022-12-30T16:20:16.783" Title="How to replace overuse of &quot;I&quot; in a short story, fiction, written in the first person" Tags="|fiction|short-story|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19940" CreationDate="2015-12-05T04:16:04.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good answers. You may also try to hire a literary agent. They work on commission, so they are motivated to get books to publication. Once you have an agent, they will generally stick with you (as long as they are making money off your work). We are past the age where you can go directly to a traditional publisher as an unheralded author, but I imagine there are exceptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-12-05T04:16:04.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19965" CreationDate="2015-12-05T04:33:47.610" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;A technical term for this is &amp;quot;filtering,&amp;quot; meaning you're often reminding the reader what POV (or filter) rather than leveraging the context of the situation to make the filter implied and unwritten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead you want write from &amp;quot;inside the character's head,&amp;quot; tight enough that you're inside his body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex of &lt;em&gt;filtering&lt;/em&gt;: I found the envelope in the supermarket. I reached past the butternut squash and I grasped it, and I pulled. I noticed the envelope smelled like crayons fresh from the box. I twisted the envelope and whatever was inside was stiff and unbending.&#xA;(Lots of &amp;quot;I&amp;quot; filtering, explicitly written at the front of many sentences.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex of &lt;em&gt;less filtering&lt;/em&gt;: The envelope came from the supermarket, hidden among the butternut squash. After pulling it out and examining it, the smell of crayons fresh from the box teased me to discover more. Cautious twisting indicated the contents as stiff and unbending.&#xA;(Who's doing the activities is implied.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14612" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2022-12-30T15:37:12.877" LastActivityDate="2022-12-30T15:37:12.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19965" CreationDate="2015-12-05T18:10:14.253" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lance's example is excellent. It may also help to vary sentence structure (you may already be doing this). I'll give an example that retains the &quot;I&quot; but improves variation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;I ran from the minotaur, and he chased me down the darkened, stone hallway. I grasped for my sword only to remember I had dropped it running from the goblins the day before. If only I had saved my flying potion, I could get out of this dungeon alive!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To &lt;strong&gt;The minotaur ran towards me, so I fled down the darkened, stone hallway. Grasping for my sword, I sadly recalled that it was lost during yesterday's flight from the goblins. The flying potion that I had needlessly consumed was what I really needed, but without it, escape seemed impossible.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2015-12-05T19:24:34.913" LastActivityDate="2015-12-05T19:24:34.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19970" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-05T19:58:00.930" Score="1" ViewCount="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;How often should you use a heading? Are there any guidelines or limitations to using headings too often (i.e., every paragraph, every other paragraph, etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16094" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-12-05T20:05:38.827" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T23:01:09.757" Title="APA Headings- Frequency" Tags="|style|technical-writing|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19977" CreationDate="2015-12-05T22:21:58.633" Score="4" ViewCount="659" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've chosen to write my story in the third person due to the scope of it, but by doing so I have made it harder for the reader to feel 'close' to my characters. The narration seems to be, unintentionally, creating distance. Is there a way to solve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3903" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T21:45:59.167" Title="How do I bring my readers closer to my characters when using the third person?" Tags="|characters|viewpoint|third-person|readers|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19971" CreationDate="2015-12-06T03:30:34.427" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Be aware of how you refer to your main character. The names make a huge difference. Use &quot;he&quot; and &quot;she&quot; as much as possible without causing confusion because the reader can imagine themselves as that more so than a name. Titles create the most distance (Officer, Detective), last names less so, and first names are the closest you can come to &quot;he&quot; and &quot;she&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) This depends on how close your third person is. Is it third limited or third omniscient? Limited allows you to tell the story from one person's (or one person per scene) point of view. The narrator can feel like the person is actually talking to them because the entire section is told through their eyes so, by default, it includes their perceptions, which will bridge a good chunk of a gap between your characters and your reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T03:30:34.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19973" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20096" CreationDate="2015-12-06T06:03:31.507" Score="1" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a computer science student interested in writing for television.  What are the key things that a newcomer needs to know to get started?  For example, I know that a TV show requires a script, but probably even earlier you need some sort of description of your overall story/concept, and you need to be able to submit that somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the first things that a newcomer to the field of TV writing needs to know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12730" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-12-06T20:31:41.283" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T10:31:05.040" Title="Getting started with TV writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|scriptwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19974" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19982" CreationDate="2015-12-06T09:07:39.650" Score="4" ViewCount="1823" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my novel, I have a heroine, who must be hurt at the beginning of the story. I need to find a symbol for a deep trauma for a woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, I'm looking for a symbol of a trauma, which satisfies following criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It must resonate with female readers of my novel, i. e. when they read that this thing happened to my heroine, I want them to burst out in tears and cry, until their home town is flooded.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It must be really hurtful for the character.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This trauma must be perceived as highly painful by women from any culture, with any level of education and of any age.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It must be possible to give the heroine that trauma in the scene described below.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The symbol for a trauma must be something material (object, process or other phenomenon, or combination thereof), which you can see and touch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extra credit: Ideally, that trauma must seem irreversible. That is, if that's happened to you, you are doomed for the rest of your life,  without reasonable hope for a happy life.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Restriction: Rape is not allowed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of symbol can I use for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some &lt;a href=&quot;http://altruix.cc/sv/symbol-for-the-most-painful-trauma-for-a-woman/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ideas&lt;/a&gt;, but none of them seems painful enough to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6696" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T10:55:04.283" Title="What are symbols for a highly painful and irreversible trauma of a woman?" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19971" CreationDate="2015-12-06T09:31:26.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to write in past-tense &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; close 3rd person. It's almost like 1st person mentally, but the action is viewed as if from a camera. There are several ways to increase closeness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Repeatedly using them as a (or THE) POV character. Having two makes it closer than if you have 5 POV's.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Strictly limiting what is perceived to that character, and not going into omniscient style narration. No narrative info-dumps, just what they see, hear, or remember. That helps improve your writing too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Focusing heavily on the character's thoughts. &lt;em&gt;Italics is better than using 'he thought'&lt;/em&gt;. Make them real-time thoughts, not summaries or naming of emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Including not just a lot of sensory information (which helps ground us in the scene), but &lt;strong&gt;perceived&lt;/strong&gt; senses. Muscles burn, bones aching, heart pounding, eyes stinging, fear rips through him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shift the narrative voice when you shift POV. The narration of the scenes with my teenage gutter rat is very different from that of the elderly educator. The narration takes on the style, prejudices, and vocabulary of the thoughts of the POV character.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T09:31:26.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19971" CreationDate="2015-12-06T14:54:10.337" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to use a lot of dialogue. It draws the reader in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Narrative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Joel didn't like riding the school bus. He was the last one on in the morning, and the seats were always filled. Because he wasn't one of the popular kids, no one made an effort to make room for him. Invariably, the bus driver would yell for him to sit down and the other kids would laugh. Occasionally, Megan would scoot over to make space, but Joel was usually too shy to ask.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joel looked at the boy in the third seat and asked, &quot;Can I sit here?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In your dreams, twerp.&quot; Everyone within listening distance laughed. Typical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two seats later, it was &quot;Try using deodorant. Don't your parents love you?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a few more inquiries, the bus driver yelled, &quot;It's like this every day, kid! Now find a seat; we're running late!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, blessedly, he reached Megan, his eyes pleading. She moved her backpack and iPad and patted the seat next to her. &quot;It's OK, Joel. You can sit here.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2015-12-06T18:06:14.690" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T18:06:14.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19970" CreationDate="2015-12-06T23:01:09.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The correct but useless answer is: It depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But one could say: If every paragraph has a new heading, that's almost surely too much. It just becomes distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have only two headings in a 600 page book, that's almost surely too little. It's of little help in breaking up the book or helping the reader find desired information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I avoid having more than one heading per page. If I find that I am putting two or three headings per page, I try to move the headings to a &quot;higher level&quot;. For example, if I started out having separate headings for Brazil and Venezuela and Ecuador and France and Britain and Germany and so on, and I only had a paragraph or two for each country, I'd consider making headings for continents instead of countries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have less than one heading for every ten or twenty pages, I'd do the reverse: make the headings at a lower level so that there are more of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a short document, if I have only one or two headings for the whole document I'd break it up more. In general I try to have at least three or four headings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even these broad guidelines I would not advise anyone to follow slavishly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing a heading does is allow you to concisely introduce a new section. I've had times when I've started out writing, &quot;In the United States ...&quot; and then two paragraphs later, &quot;On the other hand, in Brazil ...&quot;, and then a few paragraphs later, &quot;The situation in France, though, is ...&quot;. And after three or four of these I'm struggling between using the same words to introduce each section, and thus sounding repetitive, or trying to come up with fifty different ways to transition to another country. Putting in headings that say simply, &quot;United States&quot;, &quot;Brazil&quot;, &quot;France&quot;, etc, solves the problem neatly. Even if there were too many of them, this is probably preferably to wrestling with how to say &quot;here's the next country&quot; fifty times. (BTW some writers get around this by not clearly identifying that they are now talking about a different country, or whatever the shift in subject is, which I think is a terrible solution, because now the reader has to figure it out.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to sum it up: If you have more than one or two headings per page, I'd THINK ABOUT ways to reduce the number of headings. But if you can't think of a way to do it without making the document harder to understand, don't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T23:01:09.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19933" CreationDate="2015-12-06T23:53:02.903" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the &quot;homosexuality,&quot; just &lt;em&gt;barely&lt;/em&gt; mention it. Maybe show one kissing scene, one  love scene or one discussion, just to show who the characters are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then have them go about their business in the novel as if the above isn't an issue at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T23:53:02.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19937" CreationDate="2015-12-07T05:57:36.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is a homework assignment, I think your best bet is to find out what your professor/teacher/boss wants and do that, regardless of what any APA style guide tells you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best actual style guide answer I can give is &quot;if you are in doubt about whether to cite a source, cite it&quot; and &quot;if you go more than a paragraph without citing ... make sure you have not left out a citation.&quot; (Mitchell, Jolley, &amp;amp; O'Shea, 2010)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written many APA style papers and, in my experience, nobody has ever complained about having too many in-text citations or having repeated citations. If you really want to cut down on repeated in-text citations my suggestion is to cluster ideas from the same authors into a paragraph and make it clear that the paragraph is discussing their ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mitchell, M., Jolley, J., &amp;amp; O'Shea, R. (2010). Writing for psychology (4th ed., p. 134). Australia ; Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15665" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T05:57:36.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19974" CreationDate="2015-12-07T08:57:10.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off: Since you exclude rape from the possible sources of trauma for your heroine, I don't think any other trauma is exclusively female, unless you go for the death of an unborn child. a.k.a. miscarriage. (Which, in my opinion, is even more of a cliché than rape. I'm a woman, and I get seriously annoyed whenever women in fiction are reduced to the mother role.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when I wrote the comment above I thought: What is rape really about? It's not about sex. Wounds heal, but the reason rape victims are traumatized by their experience is the feeling of utter help- and powerlessness. When being raped, you are deprived of all the power you thought you had over your body and hence your life. You are reduced to a mere object without will, and possibly without a right to feelings. In the last consequence, rape shatters the identity between your will and your personality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you can agree that such an experience would be apt to scar your heroine very effectively and would also win her the sympathies of your readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However: Since you reject rape, let's think of something that is not rape but creates a similiar feeling of powerlessness. What else is there that instills us with help- and hopelessness? War: Feeling like a worthless pawn on a chess bord. Natural disasters: Just think of hurricane Katrina and Linkin Park's &quot;The little Things give you away&quot;. Disease: Alzheimer's for example destroys your personality and there's nothing you can do about it. So if you want to go with the notion of a powerless heroine, you could just pick the situation that fits your story best, or simply is most interesting and engaing tou you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly: The symbol. Once you have identified the experience that scared your heroine, it should be straight forward to find a symbol that can represent this experience. War: A pair of worn boots, the sound of gunfire, a certain smell of dust, a posture in another person that hints at former military service, a phrase uttered in a foreign language. Natural disasters: A certain color of the sky, another shade of smell. Disease: Pretty straight-forward, but: a scar, a limp, a tiny stutter or another kind of speech impair that never quite left your heroine. What I try to point out is: Unless you have &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; good reasons for your symbol to be objective (and why would it be, to throw it away at some point? Nice idea, but then you can't just throw away memories, can you?), consider making it not objective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, for example, there's nothing as much a symbol of Norway but a certain type of weather that brings out the full fresh smell of conifer forests. It's not something I can see or something I can touch, but it's there nevertheless, it's personal, and it's strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T08:57:10.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19974" CreationDate="2015-12-07T10:55:04.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very difficult to find a universal experience that everyone would find traumatic. It entirely depends on ones experiences and values. For example, I wouldn't be massively affected if I lost a leg because everything I enjoy doing I can do sitting down, whereas a professional athlete might have their life crushed by even breaking their leg and having it weakened permanently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't imagine there are very many bad experiences that can occur to a woman that cannot happen to a man, so I will simply suggest what can happen to any human, that would be traumatic to most if not all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first suggestion would be to signify the trauma from watching her family die. Everyone has loved ones, and everyone would be upset if they lost them, so everyone can relate to that pain. So in order to magnify the horror of that happening, the worst thing that can happen to her is &lt;em&gt;nothing at all&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_guilt&quot;&gt;Survivor's Guilt&lt;/a&gt; is a form of PTSD that is very powerful, as one must deal with the fact that they have been spared whilst others have not. It is very difficult to move past emotionally, as whilst the person continues to live, they will continue to suffer because of their very existence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every happy occasion will be tinged with the fact that whilst they are experiencing something wonderful, they may be doing it in the place of someone else who cannot experience these joys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it needs to be someone who is not part of the family, then perhaps it could be someone else who was close (such as one of her father's political aides) that helped to hide her when the attack started, who was then subsequently killed, or perhaps she was hidden and made a noise that caused the attackers to find someone else who was hiding and ended up being killed instead of her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a symbol that represents this, perhaps a locket with a picture of the family (although that is very clichéd), or another item of jewellery (such as a bracelet) containing charms that represents each of the family members that died. If it was another person who she feels guilty about getting killed, then perhaps they gave her a gift such as a bracelet that she wears in their memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My other suggestion would be that her dominant (likely right) hand gets injured during the attack, and rather than it being lost entirely, she simply loses some of her motor function. This could be magnified if her hobby or passion was something that required the use of her hand, such as intricate calligraphy, tinkering with electronic circuits, or playing a sport such as tennis or basketball. Everyone can relate to using their hands, so it would be sad to see someone struggle to do something most people take for granted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be worse than losing her hand entirely, as it would serve as a reminder every time that she tries to use the hand that it she cannot quite use it properly, whilst still retaining some function. This may give her false hope that she may be able to regain the skill that she previously lost, but then when she fails she is reminded that the extent of the injury is permanent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A physical symbol of this could be a single glove that she wears over that hand in order to hide any scars/ injuries that were sustained. This could provide a very good contrast when she looks at her hands together, as she can see her good hand free and exposed, whereas her injured hand is covered and hidden from the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T10:55:04.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19985" CreationDate="2015-12-07T14:22:37.293" Score="3" ViewCount="897" Body="&lt;p&gt;I attend an arts school called ACES Educational Center for Arts, and this is my third year in the Creative Writing department, which has both workshops and taught classes. I have written lots of material and developed both reading and writing skills as a result of this school and its community. It's also my senior year of high school, and I have applied as a Creative Writing Major to all my colleges. However, due to a change in school plans, I won't be able to attend this school soon and will have no obligation to write on a constant basis (writing was homework).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very passionate when it comes to writing, but I don't write much or very often. I'm an introverted person and usually only show my writing when I'm teaching others about writing. When people do read my pieces, they tell me that they enjoy them, and highlight specific aspects of the piece they loved. I've won a couple of modest awards for some of my earlier pieces, but I don't think that has much bearing. I feel comfortable and confident saying that I am a skilled writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write short stories, WiP novels and anti-novels, vignettes and novellas , usually in the alternate history, science fiction, and fantasy genres. I write stage- and screen-plays; I write pieces in all genres of playwriting, but my most well-written plays are absurdist plays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My best friend says I shouldn't question pursuing writing as a career because I'm good at writing and enjoy doing it. So, should the amount of writing I do now (as a senior in high school who has yet to take a college course) be a concern over or influence whether I should pursue writing? If yes, where will I most comfortably fit in the writing scene (like what kind of writer will I be)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I also thought it was worth mentioning that when my best friend and I hang out or chat, most of time and fun is spent collaborating in writing projects, and we have a handful of substantial works in progess that we're both personally and emotionally invested in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14971" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:50:19.567" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:50:19.567" Title="Should the amount of work I write as a high school senior be a concern when choosing a career?" Tags="|creative-writing|career|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19983" CreationDate="2015-12-07T14:53:13.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go for it!!!!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing as a career is tough unless you don't mind being told what to do, in which case there's plenty of work available. Just choose a career. Journalism or English are degree offerings at almost every major college. If you write a best seller in the interim ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that the genre you've chosen is , for lack of a better term, age appropriate. The more experience you get, both in life and in writing, the more you will expand your horizons. I am currently in the midst of writing my first epic battle scene in about 30 years. I love it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2015-12-07T14:55:45.483" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T14:55:45.483" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19983" CreationDate="2015-12-07T15:11:23.257" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Summary: The timing will never be better. Give it a try, and learn from your mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are at the best time of your life to try writing professionally. As a new graduate with few responsibilities, you won't be trying to support a family on a minimal income. If you can stay rent free or low rent with parents or other relative, that's more money saved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most beginning writers work a full time job and write on the side until they've made a name for themselves. Many continue to do work other than writing because their writing doesn't bring in enough money. If you can't minimize your expenses you may run into trouble quickly. Creative writing is a very difficult way to make a living for someone starting out, especially if you will only now be beginning to sell your work. If you can avoid rent, you can write full time, and find a part-time job to cover the bills while you develop a name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that makes me hesitant about your prospects is that you don't have any experience selling your work. Most new writers don't, but most new writers end up not being commercially successful. Depending on how much of an introvert you are, it can be extremely difficult. It will involve a lot of rejection, a lot of people who don't like your writing, and a steep learning curve. If you have a thin skin and take all this failure personally, you'll give up. Assuming you write well, the more you learn about markets and marketing, the easier it will be to develop a name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being successful will mean learning from your mistakes. You have to be able to come right back to the same people who criticized your last work with a new, improved story or novel. It's not easy, especially if you are shy, self conscious, and heavily invested in your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go for it, but be aware that you'll face a lot of new challenges that have nothing to do with your writing itself. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: I misread the question at first, and answered as though the writer was taking a year off between high school and college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an answer to the actual question, about whether the amount of writing done should be a concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of writing should not be a concern. Many writers will come in with less skill or experience, some with more. You say you haven't written much, but you describe multiple plays, as well as a number of prose works. A student who attended a traditional high school and wrote only in their spare time is likely to have even less work produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than looking at the amount of writing you've done in and for school, I'd suggest taking the time between high school and college to write with no motivation other than that you want to. If you write nothing, you might want to rethink the creative writing major. If you find you keep writing even with no school pushing you, it's a point in favor of trying to make writing a career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One point I would make is that Creative Writing is not a major likely to lead to an immediate large income after college. This does not need to be the determining factor, but you should certainly think about it. Will you be content barely scraping by when you see a friend who majored in engineering or accounting making three or four times your income in their first job? I did not mention this in my first version because if you spend a year trying to make a living through creative writing, you'll find out first hand whether it's worth the sacrifice to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15395" LastEditorUserId="15395" LastEditDate="2015-12-07T16:09:49.497" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T16:09:49.497" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19986" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-06T19:12:20.503" Score="5" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have multiple authors writing an article, what is the best use of perspective when recounting experiences from different views?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I am writing an article with a colleague about our experience starting an organization. When recounting individual experiences, it seems best to use third person (Tom felt this way). However, when recounting shared experiences, it seems best to use first person plural (we did this together).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These feel like the best approaches, though there is some friction. The friction is especially apparent when an individual experiences leads into a shared experience (Tom discovered he wasn't the only one; that is when we met and started working on this concept).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there best practices or standard methodologies that address these types of situations?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Reck" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-12-07T20:33:53.050" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T02:00:11.917" Title="What is the best use of perspective for works with multiple authors?" Tags="|academic-writing|collaboration|perspective|third-person|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19987" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20078" CreationDate="2015-12-07T15:33:43.470" Score="6" ViewCount="1160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a woman, and I wrote a book out of the perspective of a guy. His best friend tells him she wants to kill herself. So he writes her a diary (with her in mind as the audience) about everything they do together. He plans to give it to her, in the end, to help her feel better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in one feedback a woman told me that a man would NEVER LIKE EVER think or write like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I know that men tend not to express their feelings very often and much. But just because men don't SHOW their feelings doesn't mean they don't have them; does it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My whole story is based on all these very strong emotional reactions the guy has. That when his best friend tells him she wants to kill herself, he'd have feelings; he'd want to make her feel better; he'd do crazy things just to keep her from dying. And when nothing seems to work, he cries sometimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some guys who wouldn't care. A lot of guys might just run away. But wouldn't &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; guys do everything to stop their best friend from killing herself?! And I understand he might not have written all this as a private diary, but with the whole structure of a diary-letter to his best friend whom he has known for so long and whom he starts to love eventually, wouldn't he talk about his feelings to her?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Help me out guys! Is my problem in understanding the mind of a man? I thought love, sadness and anger are universal feelings that everyone has regardless of their gender, but how do I square that in my writing with the sense that men conceal their feelings entirely, or don't feel that much to begin with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16106" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-29T15:53:14.720" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T15:53:57.110" Title="How should I have my male character express strong feelings?" Tags="|novel|research|letter|perspective|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19929" CreationDate="2015-12-07T15:42:00.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, no one expects you to cite sources in casual conversation. Nor are you expected to give citations in other casual communications, like a text message or a brief email to a friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only time you need to cite sources is in scholarly writing. It may be considered appropriate in other published writing or media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it would be helpful if I point out the difference between plagiarism and copyright violation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you fail to cite your sources in a scholarly paper, that is plagiarism. Plagiarism is an academic violation. If you do it, you can be embarrassed when caught. You might lose your job or find yourself banned from academic publications. But you can't be sued or jailed for it. It's not a crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright violation is copying someone else's material without permission. Legally, it is a violation of property rights, like stealing or trespassing. You can be sued for copyright violation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you could be guilty of plagiarism but not copyright violation, or vice versa. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you copied fifty pages from someone else's book into your own with no indication that it was not your own work or where it came from, that would be both plagiarism and copyright violation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you put it in quotes and gave a proper footnote, it is no longer plagiarism. You have identified your source. But it would still be copyright violation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you took fifty pages from someone else's book, reworded it into your own words, and claimed it as your own, that would not be copyright violation. You have not copied someone else's words. But it might well still be plagiarism, as you have copied their information and ideas without giving credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T15:42:00.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19989" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-07T15:45:45.653" Score="1" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a general name for poetic forms that consist entirely of &lt;em&gt;pairs&lt;/em&gt; of rhymed lines, i.e. where the rhyme scheme goes &lt;em&gt;aabbccdd...&lt;/em&gt;, and the rhyming lines do not necessarily have the same meter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/prisoner-zenda&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/prisoner-zenda&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I vaguely remember once coming across the term I'm looking for, but now I cannot find it again.  All I can find are more specific terms, like &quot;Alexandrine couplets&quot; or &quot;heroic couplets&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose &quot;couplets&quot; may be the best I'll get, but I find it unsatisfactory.  For one thing, &quot;couplet&quot; refers to individual pairs of lines, rather than to a form.  (E.g. a sonnet may end in a couplet, but it does not have the form &lt;em&gt;aabbccdd...&lt;/em&gt;.)  Moreover, I gather that the term &quot;couplet&quot; implies that the paired lines not only rhyme but also have the same meter.  Finally, &quot;couplet&quot; may apply to pairs of &lt;em&gt;non-adjacent&lt;/em&gt; lines that rhyme (e.g. &lt;em&gt;ababcdcd...&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The level of generality I'm after is similar to that of the term &quot;blank verse&quot;.  (I.e. it encompasses many specific forms.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I hope the answer to this question is not &quot;doggerel.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16105" LastEditorUserId="16105" LastEditDate="2015-12-07T15:54:26.807" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T16:03:47.313" Title="What's the name of this poetic form?" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19987" CreationDate="2015-12-07T16:05:08.023" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sure at this point someone will say, &quot;You can't make broad generalizations about what ALL men or ALL women do or think or feel!&quot; Which of course is true if taken literally. But we certainly can say that MOST men do X or MOST women think Y. We're different ... and vive la difference!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men certainly do have feelings and care about other human beings. The difference is what we do about it. When a woman learns that her friend has had some problem, her first impulse is to call her or go visit her and sympathize and cry together and discuss their feelings, right? When a man learns that his friend has had some problem, his first impulse is to seek a practical way to solve the problem. Like -- to be a little snide here -- if I told a friend that I was trying to fix the brakes on my pick-up truck and I just couldn't get them to work, I wouldn't expect him to say, &quot;Yes, Chevy's can be really tough to maintain&quot; and put his arm around me and cry for me. I'd expect him to give specific suggestions, like &quot;that problem might be caused by air bubbles in the brake fluid&quot; or something of that sort. If he doesn't really know he might well give useless advice, but that's another story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men tend to not be interested in discussing feelings, and to be awkward at it if they try. Of course there are exceptions, namely, when he feels very strongly about something. A man who is in love may write love poems to his girlfriend or wife or try to say romantic things. A man may become vocal about other things that he is passionate about, from sports to politics to religion to whatever. But it's relatively rare, and other men tend to look down on a man who is too vocal about his feelings, or at least to be uncomfortable hearing him talk about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for a man to write a diary like you describe ... Maybe. It would be unlikely to be his first thought. If he really loves this woman, if she is his wife or his girlfriend or his mother or a very close sister, it would be unusual but not unbelievable in any way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise -- you said she's his &quot;best friend&quot;, which I take it means not a romantic interest -- I think you'd have to give some explanation for it. You'd have to say how he became convinced that this was the best approach to solve her problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I think it would be far more plausible if it's expressed as, He did this because he thought it would help her, rather than, He did this because he just could not keep his feelings inside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just some rambling thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T16:05:08.023" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19986" CreationDate="2015-12-07T16:49:27.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen both used. It does depend on the topic. Most academic articles I have read use the third person because the researcher isn't actually the topic. More popular texts tend to use first person more often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do use first person, make it clear who is talking. I recently read a book where the authors kept changing, but it wasn't clear who it was until the other person's name was used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T16:49:27.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19992" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20008" CreationDate="2015-12-07T17:00:01.773" Score="2" ViewCount="869" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently taught about the Hero-Journey template&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of the Hero leaving the Ordinary World, can they remain and the Ordinary World changes and/or warps (possibly along with the Hero)? And what if I absolutely do not want an Ordinary World; could I omit the Ordinary World completely or have the character reminisce about it or do flashbacks and have no present Ordinary World? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14971" LastActivityDate="2015-12-08T15:13:14.950" Title="Can I write a Hero's Journey without them leaving an Ordinary World? (Monomyth template)" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19914" CreationDate="2015-12-07T17:16:11.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your hero's life is going to be &quot;drastically changed,&quot; you &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; need to introduce the &quot;day-to-day&quot; life before that change. But do so &quot;briefly.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is as a reference point &lt;em&gt;from which&lt;/em&gt; the hero's life is changed. Otherwise, there's little point to your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T17:16:11.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19992" CreationDate="2015-12-07T18:20:04.780" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Hero's Journey is really just a catalog of elements that are commonly found in epic myths and popular folktales from around the world.  According to the theory, they have profound psychological resonance, but even the original source stories don't include all the elements in every story, or consistently present them in the same order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, the establishment of the &quot;Ordinary World&quot; is one of the core &quot;Hero's Journey&quot; elements, and it's arguably just good storytelling.  However, it absolutely doesn't have to be literal. All it means, in practice, is whatever your character has come to accept as day-to-day normality for his or her own life --leaving it does not need to be a physical journey.  It also doesn't need to resemble what the reader views as ordinary (although if it does, it may help build identification with the character).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you omit it entirely, and just throw the reader into the middle of the action, your story is likely to feel more episodic --it will be more difficult to bring it back around to a place that feels like an appropriate final stopping point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-12-07T18:28:46.127" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T18:28:46.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19992" CreationDate="2015-12-07T19:07:40.467" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Can you&quot;? As in, if you do this, will the Literature Police arrest you, or will mobs of Pro-Hero's Journey fanatics assault you? No, they won't, and therefore, yes, you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you do this and still be following the template? Well, how dogmatically are you taking the template? Few stories follow such a template 100% slavishly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing this story for a class and the assignment is, &quot;write a story following this template&quot;, then I suppose you should adhere very closely to it. But if you're writing a story with no particular constraints, and you simply decided that the Hero's Journey was a good model to follow, then you should feel free to deviate from it all you like. People rarely judge a story by, How closely did the story follow a template written by some professor of literature? The standard is usually more like, How entertaining is this story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T19:07:40.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19996" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-07T19:23:54.737" Score="2" ViewCount="595" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently reading Dr. Alia Al-Saji's paper on Racialized Time titled &quot;Too Late: Racialized Time and the Closure of the Past&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://philpapers.org/archive/ALSTLR.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://philpapers.org/archive/ALSTLR.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throughout the text, she seems to cite in a format that I do not recognize. She writes '(pp. 112/90-1)' for example. Could someone please explain this to me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16107" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T01:28:09.667" Title="Using a slash in citations" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19987" CreationDate="2015-12-07T19:29:07.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could make your male character the kind of character who would do what you want him to. Or you could make him someone who would never do that, then somehow change his mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your premise is a good one. You just need to write it in such a way that it seems natural for this character to do this thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T19:29:07.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19965" CreationDate="2015-12-07T19:58:31.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider switching the narrator to someone other than the primary character. Nick tells Gatsby's story. John tells Owen Meany's story. In effect then, your narrator is not who the story is about, but they tell us the story of the main character, providing an interesting point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastEditorUserId="7986" LastEditDate="2015-12-07T21:32:33.173" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T21:32:33.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19996" CreationDate="2015-12-07T20:26:41.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This doesn't appear to be a standard method of citation, at least not that I can find. The references section is formatted in APA style, and the in text citations are almost APA except the page numbers. In APA the page number is usually in the reference and not in the citation.&#xA;My best guess is that they are indicating (page number/line number) but this does not match any citation standard that I know of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15665" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T20:26:41.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19992" CreationDate="2015-12-07T21:03:33.273" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you have the Ordinary World in flashbacks? Absolutely. It can be a place or a state of being which &lt;em&gt;used&lt;/em&gt; to exist and now doesn't, and the goal of the journey can be to restore it. We do need to get enough feel for the Ordinary World to know why the Hero wants it restored, so that we feel that along with the Hero, but if it doesn't currently exist, that's fine. This is, of course, presuming that the Hero &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt; to get back to the Ordinary World. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the Hero stay put and the world change? Also absolutely. In David and Leigh Eddings's Belgariad and Malloreon series, several characters start as &quot;simple farm boys,&quot; but their actions change the world (and in some cases the universe) around them. The Ordinary World of their innocent childhoods has been changed, or for one character obliterated. They miss the innocence of childhood, but they don't actually want to restore that life, because there were Bad Things happening at the time as well which they had to conquer. Lyra goes on a similar journey in Philip Pullman's &lt;em&gt;His Dark Materials&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Hero's Journey without an Ordinary World to return to is, as Chris Sunami points out, more of an episodic cycle, like &lt;em&gt;Star Trek&lt;/em&gt; or a police procedural. Each single episode may (or may not) return to the status quo; on Trek this is known as Hitting the Reset Button. If your story is too episodic, then the characters don't grow or learn anything. That's more of a comic strip (like &lt;em&gt;Foxtrot&lt;/em&gt;, where nobody ages). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T21:03:33.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19987" CreationDate="2015-12-07T22:07:58.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a good question.  I remember reading a well-written novel with a particularly unsuccessful attempt at writing cross-gender.  The male narrator's actions were believable, but his internal life seemed all too clearly ghostwritten by the female author, which greatly reduced my enjoyment of the book.  His thoughts and preoccupations just didn't fit with how he was otherwise presented in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, you might consider Nick Hornby's &lt;em&gt;About a Boy&lt;/em&gt;, which, to me, reads like a male author's deliberate attempt to explain the male mindframe for a female audience.  His &lt;em&gt;High Fidelity&lt;/em&gt; also explores a male narrator's internal life, but with (I assume) more of a male audience in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's far from true that men &quot;don't have feelings,&quot; but in my experience, you do, as a man, lose touch with your feelings as you age --you view them almost as a third party observer (&quot;Oh, I'm crying, I must be sad.  My fists are clenched, I must be mad&quot;).  I've heard that those who take testosterone as a part of a gender transition have reported definite differences along these lines from how they relate to their own feelings pre- and post-transition.  For this reason, men do tend to be less comfortable and conversant with emotional states.  That makes your plotline a little less plausible, but far from impossible --after all, everyone is an individual, no matter what the &quot;norm&quot; might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T22:07:58.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20002" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-08T04:06:43.517" Score="4" ViewCount="191" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a third year undergraduate student at university (21yrs). I absolutely love writing and I want to publish my pieces at some point. I write poetry, short stories, and novels. I was wondering - how should I create a daily schedule as a writer? And how do I create deadlines myself (eg: finish Y draft of novel by X month) because where you are your own boss, you need some kind of deadline to push you towards the finish line haha. Also, any words of advice? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16111" LastActivityDate="2015-12-08T10:08:17.563" Title="Pacing yourself as a writer." Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20002" CreationDate="2015-12-08T10:01:51.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone works differently. Some people write better at night, some in the morning. Just keep in mind that what you're looking for is a &lt;strong&gt;good weekly average&lt;/strong&gt;. Don't listen to people who say you need to write every day, that's the road to misery. Just make sure you're on track and set a reasonable pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two websites that might help are &lt;a href=&quot;http://750words.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;750 Words&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://4thewords.com/features&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4thewords&lt;/a&gt;. 4thewords has fun gamification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One key is when you're writing, &lt;strong&gt;don't edit&lt;/strong&gt;. Fixing spelling is one thing, but don't keep rewriting sentences for flow or word choice, that's how writer's block and frustration hits. Just get the words on the page. Edit it the next day before you start writing, to get back into the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an overall story map, with the major arcs of your major characters and plot points planned out you can go much quicker. From there, you can &lt;strong&gt;create a list of scenes&lt;/strong&gt; (possibly with beats) or work on whatever scene interests you most. That helps avoid writer's block. This works really well with &lt;strong&gt;Scrivener, which I highly recommend&lt;/strong&gt;. It is pure awesome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most novels are about 90K words, plus or minus 15K depending on the genre. If you write on average 750 words a day, that's 4 months to write. A month to plan and a month to edit means you can write 2 books to first draft per year. If you can write a bit more, three novels per year, or 2 novels and some short stories are easily doable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that's key is to go back and add detail and polish, proof your work, and then have your work reviewed/edited. Join Critique Circle, or Scribophile. A local group or UCLA's extension school are other options for feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-12-08T10:01:51.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20002" CreationDate="2015-12-08T10:08:17.563" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is really no correct answer to this, it all depends on how much you want to do, and how much time you can make for it. The only thing that I can say is that it would benefit you to be as consistent as possible with your writing schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I write the next part of the story for my novel in shorthand in my notebook on the train to and from work, which is approximately 40 minutes each way. When I'm home I put aside an hour every night to write up my notes onto the computer and add anything else that I can, as well as look over what I wrote the previous day. The next day I rinse &amp;amp; repeat, and then take the weekend off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't have to be &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; day, but this works for me, yours will likely be different. What this does is allows me to keep on writing constantly, and that is time that is put aside for my writing, and I don't feel bad if there are other things to do (chores etc.), and I don't feel like I could be doing something else that is more fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if I can't think of anything to write I stay at my computer and don't do anything, which helps to reinforce in my mind that I &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be writing, so that I don't slack off the following day thinking that I'm stuck. Now whenever it gets to that time my mind is in the routine of being prepared for writing, and it's easy to sit down and get at least &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For deadline-making, I would suggest having a long term goal, and then breaking that down into shorter term goals. For example, I want my book to be done in a year, so for approximately 25 chapters that means if I complete a chapter every 2 weeks I remain on track. This can vary sometimes, but as long as I am at around that pace I feel comfortable with my progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it entirely depends on what works for you. For further tips try &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17168/time-management-for-part-time-writing&quot;&gt;this SE question&lt;/a&gt;, the stuff on there really helped me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2015-12-08T10:08:17.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19987" CreationDate="2015-12-08T10:10:18.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Men have emotions. The problem in your story is how he expresses them. Writing a diary to a girl sounds like something an emo guy who plays guitar to pick up girls or cuts himself would do. Girls might think it's sweet, but most guys would say 'You did what?!'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, guys tend to be much more direct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More believable reactions (which can be combined):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yell angrily at how stupid she is for not realizing how much he cares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be sad and/or resentful she didn't realize his feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be confused how she couldn't appreciate herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buy her something to cheer her up, and have a talk with her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get her to a psychiatrist immediately for medical care and therapy (which is the most responsible reaction).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-12-08T10:10:18.160" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19992" CreationDate="2015-12-08T15:13:14.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't take the Hero's Journey literally&lt;/strong&gt;. In my opinion, one of the most important lessons about the Hero's Journey is this: &lt;em&gt;Don't take it literally&lt;/em&gt;. The Hero's Journey is not about classical Greek Heros, it is not about myths, it is not about religion, and it is not about fairytales. The reason the Hero's Journey is such a successful structure is that it can serve as a &lt;strong&gt;universal descriptopn of change&lt;/strong&gt;. Each story is about change. Hence, each story can be interpreted in terms of the Hero's Journey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the Ordinary World&lt;/strong&gt;? In stories such as &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; or Neil Gaiman's &lt;em&gt;Stardust&lt;/em&gt;, the Ordinary World indeed is a world in it's own right that is left behind at some point of the story. It is very easy to write stories that are set within the same world and never leave it. So, if you take the Ordinary World literally: Yes, ignore it as much as you like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Ordinary World and Mathematics&lt;/strong&gt;. However, when thinking about the Hero's Journey as a fundamental description of change, the Ordinary World becomes much more general: It turns into the &lt;strong&gt;Status Quo&lt;/strong&gt; at the beginning of the story that has been changed in some manner at the end of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to omit the Status Quo of a story? Yes, it is. Lisa Genova did so in her recent novel &lt;em&gt;Inside the O'Briens&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it advisable? Hell, no. Each change requires a status quo to be able to judge its significance. Think of it as a mathematical problem: Change in mathematics is described by the differential operator d/dt (or x or whatever you like). When solving a differential problem, the differential operator is inverted, and a differential problem can become an integrational problem. Integration, however, requires at least one initial or boundary condition. If this boundary condition is not specified, it is still possible to find an analytical solution of the problem at hand, but a definite answer to a specific question can not be formulated. Hence, boundary conditions anchor a class of problems to a specific situation and allow a specific answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In storytelling, these boundary conditions can be regared as the Ordinary World. They specify your settings and will determine the absolute value of the change that has been achieved at the end of the story. If you do not provide the Ordinary World, your readers might be able to agree that a change occured - but they will not be able to judge the magnitude of this change or whether it was important or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An example.&lt;/strong&gt; The ultimate change of the story is this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Derek didn't drink for 28 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that important? It could be. If Derek used to be an alcoholic and the story ends 28 days after he threw away all the alcohol that was left in his flat, this ending is a reason to cheer. If, on the other hand, Derek only used to drink a beer with friends once or twice a week, then no: Going without drinking for 28 days is not especially exciting for Derek. It's still a change, because the longest Derek has gone without drinking before has been two weeks. But is this change worth telling an entire story about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;: Don't take the Hero's Journey literally. If you do, it is nothing but a template that will fix your stories into unnatural structures. Think of it more than a universal description of change. If you accept this notion, the answer to you question is: Yes, a story can survive without an Ordinary World. But it would not be the best of stories, since you don't motivate it at all and deny your readers the possibility to attach significance to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-12-08T15:13:14.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20009" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20025" CreationDate="2015-12-08T16:16:04.997" Score="5" ViewCount="2743" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stephen Fry wrote a novel called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0091801516&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;The Stars’ Tennis Balls&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, and claimed that only afterwards did he realize he’d rewritten &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0140449264&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;The Count of Monte Cristo&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fry’s novel is set in modern-day England; Dumas’s is in 1840s France and Italy. I haven’t read either to say what else is similar or different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how close of a parody or satire can you write of a copyrighted work before it becomes plaigiarism? How much do you have to change? Where is the line between &quot;that's funny&quot; and &quot;that's theft&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I’m not talking about obvious, blunt parody like &lt;em&gt;Bored of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Spamalot/Monty Python and the Holy Grail&lt;/em&gt;, or even &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,&lt;/em&gt; but more like &lt;em&gt;Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not the same question as &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/14580/how-much-is-considered-plagiarism&quot;&gt;How much is considered plagiarism?&lt;/a&gt; because I'm not talking about creating an original, straightforward piece inspired by something else, but rather deliberately copying a specific original &lt;em&gt;with the intent of gently mocking it&lt;/em&gt; by updating and changing a few bits. What I'm not sure about is how many bits have to be changed, or to what degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T20:51:03.217" Title="When does satire (parody) become plagiarism?" Tags="|copyright|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19987" CreationDate="2015-12-08T18:23:34.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are asking the wrong question! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't about whether 'men' as a gender would behave like that, it is about whether your character would behave like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choose any emotion that people will feel and You'll find some who exhibits that emotion at all points on that spectrum of that emotion. From someone who doesn't exhibit it at all, to someone who spends their lives ruled by it. Whether that is love, or fear or compassion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now there might be emotions, and emotional responses that would be considered feminine and others that are considered masculine but that just means that the bell curve for that particular gender is skewed towards one particular end of that spectrum, it doesn't mean that those emotions don't exist for those genders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think the question you're asking isn't how does the mind of a man work. Your question should be how can I make my character have these traits and be believable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a scene for a guy to act a particular way. To make that scene believable you need to work out what sort of guy would behave like that. What is the relationship between him and his friend that makes that feel like something that he needs to do in order to protect that relationship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is the man who behaves like that, get to know him, figure out what drives him, figure out what she means to him, make it someone believable, make him someone a reader can empathise with and you'll have a strong character that will make a great story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-12-08T18:23:34.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14174" CreationDate="2015-12-08T19:51:48.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Primary school reading levels are often given a classification letter from A to Z. Your stated age range is approximately F to R. Although commercial fiction doesn't really use these educational categories, you will find plenty of material at bookstores or online that may help you to narrow your focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-12-08T19:51:48.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20012" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20014" CreationDate="2015-12-09T03:45:19.093" Score="3" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started writing a book at the end of my 5th grade year. My 6th grade teacher is totally against teen authors, so I stopped for a while. Then my 7th grade teacher inspired me to start again. I'm 13 and I wrote many short stories (all turned down by my teacher last year) but this is my first chapter book ever. I need a publisher but I don't know where to find one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16125" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T19:46:56.440" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T19:46:56.440" Title="Where can I find a professional publisher who will accept my book?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|young-adult|young-author|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20009" CreationDate="2015-12-09T04:22:07.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is purely my thoughts on this from a literary viewpoint, what I'm saying here could very well be legally wrong, I'm not a lawyer, and not even attempting a legal opinion&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I think this is very strongly a legal question, ultimately you are using somebody else's work in a transformative way. I do think that because of the way that parody law works, you would need to have a solid literary footing. I think the literary merit would be the grounding for any legal or moral response. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If for instance you took The Three Little Pigs, and copied it verbatim and the only change you made was swapping out the Big Bad Wolf for Ernest Hemingway. (so I'd be bad at writing Parody!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone who reads that would very quickly see what you had changed and, hopefully, realise the purpose for the change (or at the very least find it a little funny) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you could explain the purpose of the change, ideally complete with the larger social commentary that it encapsulated, then I don't think that would be an issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually think the question you ask is a little back to front. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the less original material you use the harder it is to say it is a parody. If you write a story containing Hannibal Lecter (complete with facemask) as the only excerpt from those stories, it wouldn't be a parody because you've not used enough material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It needs to contain the story in chief, either as a direct copy or at least a very strong spirit of the story in chief. It needs to be identifiable as the original piece. The reader needs to say &quot;that's 'The Three Little Pigs' with Ernest Hemingway as the wolf&quot; instead of &quot;what's Ernest Hemingway doing blowing down houses, and what's with the pigs&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T04:22:07.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20012" CreationDate="2015-12-09T11:29:19.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in the US you could consult &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1599639378&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Writer's Market 2016&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for names and addresses of publishers and advice to authors. For the UK and Commonwealth countries a similar guide is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Writers-Artists-Yearbook-2016-Yearbooks/dp/1472907078/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1449658960&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=the%20writers%20%26%20artists%20yearbook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2016&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  These two annual guides for authors are the most well known but there are other good books on the same lines as well, and I expect the same is true for other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be warned that it is very difficult for a first time author of fiction to be published. There is intense competition. However the internet has made it far easier than before to find an audience if you don't mind not getting paid. It is also possible to publish your own book electronically, although doing this does cost quite a lot. If you search this site using the tags &quot;self-publishing&quot; and &quot;ebook&quot; you will find more information on that subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you don't mind that I made an edit to your post, correcting a word that was used wrongly. That does bring up an important point: in order to be taken seriously by a publisher it is very important to thoroughly check your work for incorrect use of English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2015-12-09T11:47:39.760" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T11:47:39.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20012" CreationDate="2015-12-09T17:42:36.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest submitting your book to young author competitions, both locally and nationally. And win. Otherwise, don't give up and keep doing it. You have a tiny chance at a commercial publication if you win an award--unless your dad owns Random House--in which case you're  golden. Can I get his number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T17:42:36.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20019" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-10T12:34:11.093" Score="7" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working on a novel, and I've gone around four chapters in. I keep re-reading the first chapters, and I am tempted to edit them. Should I wait until I at least have a finished first draft to start editing, or should I edit as I go? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16141" LastActivityDate="2019-10-09T10:03:59.573" Title="Doubts about editing?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20019" CreationDate="2015-12-10T13:09:32.027" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you keep going. What you're doing right now isn't editing; it's nervous grooming. You want what you have on the page to be &quot;perfect&quot; so much that it's stopping you from writing anything else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write the rest of the book. Put it aside for a few weeks so you can come back to it with fresh eyes. &lt;em&gt;Then&lt;/em&gt; do an editing pass. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to re-read what you wrote in your last session just to get your head back into the space of your story, and you fix a few bitty things along the way, that's fine, but don't hack away wholesale if you only have a few chapters done. Move forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-10T13:09:32.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20021" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-10T17:02:35.917" Score="4" ViewCount="2112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to write a report on the company I am working at during a placement from University (I am on an engineering programme). There was not much guidance given on what the content of the report is supposed to be, this is what I've been told:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First Report – this is informally known as the “Company” report and is submitted in December of your placement year. It is a 3,000 word report that should give an overview of the Company: its place within its industry sector and your place within it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had no trouble writing most of this without using first person, as I don't really need to refer to myself during this, however, when discussing the style of the review, this requirement is added:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reports should incorporate some element of review and self-reflection, indicating what you have learnt from the placement and how it is likely to shape your future career choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am of the opinion that writing a section of self reflection in anything but first person serves absolutely no purpose but to make the whole thing much more confusing and less precise. The only way I can think of is more or less to simply change all instances of &quot;I&quot; to &quot;The authour&quot;. Perhaps I am wrong (please correct me if so) but I feel this won't make a clear piece of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this in mind, I included a short self review at the end of my report in first person. My Tutor has informed me that if I don't change this I shall lose marks, no question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now comes my actual question. Is there any way I can actually write directly about experiences and learned skills without using first person, other than the way I have described above? Does anyone have any tips on how I can tackle this without writing a confusing and frankly odd sounding report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16144" LastActivityDate="2019-10-24T20:27:21.800" Title="How can I avoid using the first person in a report when directly referring to work and experiences I have had?" Tags="|technical-writing|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5863" CreationDate="2015-12-10T18:17:36.770" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the rule is that when an abbreviation ends with the same letter as the word written out in full, a period (full stop) is not used. For example, Prof. Smith, but Profs Dupont and Dupond. However, in the case of Figures, both Fig., Figs., and Figs are acceptable and used. Therefore, you should follow the example used in the journal, i.e., check the formatting guidelines or look at other articles published recently in that journal. If in doubt, choose one style and use it consistently!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Perhaps a more day-to-day example is that (in British English) we write Mr Smith and Mrs Jones as opposed to Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones because both of these words end with the same letter as the abbreviated form; that is, Mister and Mistress. However, in American English, a period is used after both Mr. and Mrs., so perhaps the most important lesson is that consistency and clarity are the most important factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16146" LastEditorUserId="16146" LastEditDate="2015-12-12T00:20:37.103" LastActivityDate="2015-12-12T00:20:37.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20019" CreationDate="2015-12-11T06:30:06.537" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's fine to go back and edit, if you're focusing on arc or major plot points.&lt;/strong&gt; If one of your first key scenes needs to be completely rewritten, have the events change, etc, then going back and doing &lt;strong&gt;substantive editing is totally fine&lt;/strong&gt;. But worrying about flow, word choice, etc is line editing, and you can get stuck in analysis paralysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest using Scrivener, which is an awesome tool. Even if you're stuck with Word, you can still skip all over the book, adding whatever scene is stuck in your head, just not as easily. That assumes you have at least a sense of the overall character arcs in your book. Scrivener has a handy annotation tool, so if there's a small but important detail that's changed or needs to be added, you just type in a reminder for later and get back to new scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you're going to line edit, do it the next day to get yourself back in the flow of the story, and then move on.&lt;/strong&gt; The main goal is to keep your word count increasing steadily every week. Feel free to skip a day or two, as long as you keep a consistent average pace. Just 750 words a day gets you 90K words in 4 months. A month to plan and a month to edit means you can turn out a second draft every six months. Of course critiques and edits will drag on voer time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not a plotter &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt;, and instead just write a bunch of words having no idea what your story is about or what will happen, and later try to corral the 300 or so pages later into a coherent plot with appropriate pacing and arcs, I highly recommend you plunge on ahead. But &lt;strong&gt;if you do even minimal planning, you should be able to go back and make annotations or important changes without interrupting your flow&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make what changes you need to have the story make sense, write short notes for everything else, and then get writing a new scene.&lt;/strong&gt; Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-12-11T06:30:06.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20024" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-11T15:45:44.180" Score="9" ViewCount="2008" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a non-native speaker, learning the English language, and I am already fairly good in reading and writing technical texts. I also enjoy reading fiction books much, but there's one thing that hits me - the language in fiction is of course different than in technical papers, and I can't seem to find an easy way to rearrange myself into writing this kind of quality texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that composition and style are important characteristics of worthy authors and their creations, but now I want to concentrate on the most noticeable thing that I have realized for myself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;fiction texts can use lots of words that you don't ever come across in scientific literature, internet forums, newspapers, English language courses, movies and other sources. However, these words are there, and the authors seem to use them effortlessly, like if they use them every day, but as I said, you don't actually see them much anywhere else, except, probably, for a couple of times per life. And looks like an average English reader is also implied to pass on these without a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I open a dictionary and look them up, they're there, but this still leaves me with no clue as to where from did the authors gather and remember all this vocabulary in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the typical path of an English-writing author who aims for an acceptable level of artistic description so that his texts won't be considered as &amp;quot;too dry&amp;quot; as a technical paper might be? Is school/college education enough for a native English speaker to venture into full-blown writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there any good sources on how can I enrich my vocabulary for writing fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What approach could be recommended for a non-native speaker like me to expand my thinking in a way to make my texts to be less rigid, more descriptive and &amp;quot;alive&amp;quot;? What vocabular characteristics should my text possess (say, a short story), to be accepted by a publisher of fiction for native English readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11169" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T12:28:13.987" Title="Acquiring vocabulary to write fiction" Tags="|fiction|word-choice|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2019-08-15T14:28:50.620" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20009" CreationDate="2015-12-11T16:54:28.273" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, you're mixing two things: copyright violation and plagiarism. They are completely different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of copyright law is to protect the financial interests of the writer. If you copy someone else's work and sell it as your own, then you are costing the original author sales. Court cases on copyright center on whether the copied work would cost the author sales or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism is an academic violation. The point of rules against plagiarism is that you are claiming credit for something that you didn't do. Part of the issue is that it deprives the person who really did it of the honor that he deserves, and part of it is that it makes if difficult for others to study the history and development of an idea because you are breaking the chain of references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoiding plagiarism is easy: Give a proper footnote. Plagiarism is mainly of interest in scholarly pursuits. Parody is unlikely to be scholarly, so it's mostly a non-issue. But if you're worried about it, just give a footnote saying, &quot;This is a parody of ...&quot; and you're covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a special clause in copyright law for parody. The nature of parody is that you have to copy the original work to some extent. If readers can't see an obvious connection between the parody and the original, than it's not a parody, by definition. So the legal lines get blurred. On the one hand the more you copy, the more likely that a court will say you have violated someone's copyright. But if you don't copy enough, it won't be understood to be parody. Courts struggle with this regularly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer so that's about as far as I can go in answering the real question. I would GUESS -- again, speaking as a non-lawyer -- that if, say, you took the script of Star Wars and everywhere it said &quot;Darth Vader&quot; you replaced this with &quot;Barack Obama&quot;, that this might be called parody, but would not be transformative enough to escape a charge of copyright violation. But if you went throughout the story and made numerous changes to insert references to contemporary politics, while keeping enough of the original so that it was still clearly recognizable, that you would win if sued. But there are no fine lines in the law. Nowhere does the law say, &quot;you can copy 60% but not 61%&quot; or any such specific numbers. It's up to the judgement of a court. And remember, the real criterion is: is it likely that you will cost the original writer sales? Will people buy your version INSTEAD OF the original? If so, you are likely to lose. But if you can convince the court that no one would confuse your parody with the original, and that indeed you might even increase sales of the original if people who hadn't seen the original read your parody and say, hey, I have to get a copy of the original to understand this, then you'll win. And the author of the original probably wouldn't sue in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-12-11T16:54:28.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19986" CreationDate="2015-12-11T20:18:09.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many scholarly texts, including scientific papers, the solution I have seen is to use the expression &quot;one of us&quot;, with or without the person's name (it is not always important for the reader to know which one of the authors had a certain experience or did something. Example: One of us (Smith) had a patient who...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16040" LastActivityDate="2015-12-11T20:18:09.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20027" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20426" CreationDate="2015-12-11T22:12:32.337" Score="7" ViewCount="5829" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr. Seuss did it, other authors in the past have done it, but I've heard that publishers like working with specific illustrators and would rather have the words written by the author and then they'll match an illustrator they think will fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it harder to sell a book to an agent/publisher if you're also trying to sell the illustrations along with it?  Would it be better to let the words speak for themselves or go ahead and spend time on my illustrations thinking that maybe they'll pay off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastEditorUserId="16155" LastEditDate="2015-12-11T22:46:10.510" LastActivityDate="2019-12-14T21:29:43.967" Title="Author and illustrator - Do publishers like authors who are also illustrators?" Tags="|publishing|artwork|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20028" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-11T23:27:54.830" Score="5" ViewCount="3424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on my debut story. In my freetime, I write another story that will be the start of a series. The series consists of Steampunk fairytale retellings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lately, I have been worrying that it copies &lt;em&gt;The Lunar Chronicles&lt;/em&gt; by Marissa Meyer. To its credit, it is the reason I even knew what a fairytale was. &#xA;I understand that there are going to be similarities between certain books. A group banding together to overthrow a corrupt leader... that is nothing new in the world of dystopian books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the fact that mine is a Fairytale retelling series along with other details, that is what scares me. I have chosen not to read &lt;em&gt;The Lunar Chronicles&lt;/em&gt; so I can keep my stories as original as possible. However, whenever I hear of a detail, I worry that I will be under legal fire if I publish my story. I am willing to move on to other projects after my debut and write this series to keep my sanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone has advice, please respond as I am anxious with fear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16157" LastEditorUserId="28912" LastEditDate="2019-07-23T19:43:12.350" LastActivityDate="2019-07-23T19:43:12.350" Title="I'm scared that my story is plagiarizing another story" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|legal|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20021" CreationDate="2015-12-12T12:59:27.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way out of this problem is to use the passive voice. It's the bane of fiction but it might be exactly what you need here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Present yourself has the object of the experience, instead of the subject. For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lessons Learned. In order to work efficiently at the company, one has to increase their communication skills to the point where they can communicate across technical domains.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The organisational structure of the company is rigid and generates compartments which makes studying its culture difficult but, conversely, helps the operational analysis of each department.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The production process is made opaque by the lack of a global production schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last example, your own experience is even implied, not stated, but it still remains clear that it's your personal viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16164" LastActivityDate="2015-12-12T12:59:27.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6712" CreationDate="2015-12-12T19:00:55.380" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the thumb rule is 40,000 words totally. The reader who buys your collection will feel he/she has got his/her money's worth if there are at least 40,000 words to read. At an average of 2500 words per story, that makes 16 stories. Less no. of stories if they are longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16167" LastActivityDate="2015-12-12T19:00:55.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20034" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20037" CreationDate="2015-12-12T23:54:01.903" Score="9" ViewCount="982" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt; I've been writing fan fiction for five years now. I began when I didn't have a clue what I was doing, so my methods have evolved during those years. By now I have a solid process that I follow, and I feel I have a good grasp on what I'm doing. There is one small detail that has been bothering me for some time now though: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On this site and off, I've heard writers everywhere refer to first, second, third, and sometimes even fourth or fifth drafts. You write your story out as the first draft, wait a while, start over with the second draft, and so on. It's a solid principle that I try to use. I say 'try' because, to this day, &lt;em&gt;I have never written a second draft.&lt;/em&gt; Everything I have ever written, every piece of fan fiction, I have written only one draft of. I've done editing for sure, but I've never rewritten the whole thing. The most I've done is maybe rewrite half of a chapter a few times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people say that your first draft is usually terrible. Some even go so far as to say that it has little use beyond getting your idea down. Most agree that you largely dispose of your first draft and simply start over. (These observations are based on what I've heard.) Here's the problem though: starting even with my very first fan fiction, my ratings have consistently been high. My readers have &lt;em&gt;liked&lt;/em&gt; what I wrote. Even to me, my writing hasn't looked like the disorganized mess I think a first draft is supposed to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I know what is going on. As I mentioned above, I have a solid process that I follow. That process is more for outlining and development than writing. I go through every aspect of the fiction that I need (character, plot, stakes, etc.) in detail. I work out exactly what I need, how I'll get it, and where it will be. In fact, by the time I get to the plot section, the fiction has already begun to take shape just from all the other parts I know it will need to have. By the time I'm done with my process and ready to begin the first draft, my fiction is detailed down to the individual scenes. Not much editing of the outline takes place; I generally leave that up to when I am writing, as I feel is necessary. Sometimes, during writing, I change, delete, or add a few scenes to make it work, and I often have to detail things better than I have in the outline, but for the most part, my outline remains in the same general shape as when I started. The closest I've ever come to writing a second draft is scraping chapter one several times in quick succession until I come up with the right opening. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think because my outlining and development is so detailed, it is taking the place of the first and possibly even the second draft. Could this be? I'm hesitant to accept this, because multiple drafts seems like one of those universal things that all writers go through, with very little exception. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Is my detailed outlining and development taking the place of first and possibly second drafts?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2018-01-20T00:07:54.360" Title="Can Extensive Outlining Take the Place of the First Draft?" Tags="|fiction|editing|planning|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19472" CreationDate="2015-12-13T01:39:33.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the questions as simply as possible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes it is too similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No you won't be sued, with what you're worried about is a cease &amp;amp; desist and no that won't happen either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I assume even though there's a question mark at the end of University that's not a question but to be thorough my answer is 'Okay.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1808" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T01:39:33.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20034" CreationDate="2015-12-13T02:49:21.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, this is a tough question. You've provided a lot of background and it's still a tough question to answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm tempted to say yes and no, at the same time. In fact, I'm gonna stick my neck out there and just say it: yes and no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, your highly detailed outline is essentially a first draft. But it's also not. Many authors craft extensive, highly-detailed outlines like you've mentioned, though most that I know of would still edit successive drafts (and then call them 2nd draft, 3rd draft, etc). James Ellroy, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5948/the-art-of-fiction-no-201-james-ellroy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this excellent Paris Review interview&lt;/a&gt;, mentions that a 400-page outline took him eight months to write. And the interviewer replies, &quot;Your outlines resemble first drafts. Is that how you think of them?&quot; And Ellroy dodges the question...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there's the No...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, your outline isn't &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; taking the place of a first draft, since the first readable product is by definition a first draft. Just because readers like a work doesn't mean it was necessarily edited to completion. I've read many works-in-progress and even liked some of them: if the author asks for feedback, I give it to them, which leads to revisions and revisions and revisions. If the author just wants to know if I liked the piece, a yes or no answer is all they get, and that does them very little good in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the editing process you described in your background section is essentially 2nd drafting. One of my novels is currently in its 8th draft. However, several chapters are very similar to how they were first written and their relative purity doesn't negate the second draftiness (or eighth in this case) of the book's present state. Those chapters worked back then and they still work now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15165" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T02:49:21.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20034" CreationDate="2015-12-13T06:08:25.273" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;first draft&quot; and extensive &lt;strong&gt;re-writing&lt;/strong&gt; you alluded to is often what &quot;&lt;strong&gt;pantsers&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; - people who write by the seat of their pants, without outlines, produce. Those aren't what I would really call a first draft, since they can be unstructured messes or streams of consciousness (though they can sometimes be good). They then take that material and structure it, producing their &quot;second draft&quot; - which is the first real clean draft. &lt;strong&gt;The important distinction is that the &quot;first draft&quot; of a pantser is designed to produce material which is intended to be restructured and rewritten.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Plotters&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, use outlines, play around with arcs and structure before writing, to whatever level of detail is needed. This is done in a word processor, or with a writing tool like Scrivener. They then write their stories, producing a real &quot;first draft.&quot; &lt;strong&gt;Their first draft is designed to be 80% similar to the final story, with plenty of detail to add and content revisions, but with relatively minimal developmental/structural edits.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's critical to understand the two processes clearly, because people offering writing advice often assume you do it their way. The flow is either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write, restructure, re-write, edit (pantsers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outline, plan scenes, (plan beats,) write, edit (plotters)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plotters must do more work up-front, but save on time at the back, as they restructure outlines and scene lists, not written chapters that must retain continuity. They can spot arcs dragging and unresolved issues at the beginning. They are also much less likely to throw away pages and pages of text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plotting can save a lot of grief, but a lot of people write the pantser way either because their creative process just doesn't work with outlines, it fits the stereotype of a writer, or they haven't been exposed to efficient outlining (there are bad ways out there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So in short, no, your outline isn't taking the place of a first draft. Their &quot;first draft&quot; is taking the place of an outline.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastEditorUserId="10460" LastEditDate="2016-09-25T10:42:26.110" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T10:42:26.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20028" CreationDate="2015-12-13T07:12:22.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're probably fine. In all actuality, they probably won't even be aware of your book. Instead of being afraid of being sued, worry about being called unoriginal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a ton of fairy-tale inspired books, especially around Snow white and Little Red Riding Hood. They're all &lt;em&gt;technically&lt;/em&gt; derivative, but each has characterization, plot, and tone that makes it dramatically different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend finding a plot outline of TLC and comparing it against yours. Read just a random chapter or two. See what reviewers say about it, what they latched onto. That will let you know your novel is different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sure, on the face of it, your concept may seem the same. But your premise will likely read differently.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, like all people giving lazy writing advice, I'll use my own work as an example. I'm certain my novel will be compared to Harry Potter (a guy goes to a magic school - OMG, it's just like Harry Potter!). Even though my story features a nephilim, is New Adult, doesn't make up new magical creatures, and is incredibly violent and dark. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concept: A young man struggles to find his meaning. That is literally thousands of books, including Harry Potter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Premise: Yukki must learn to control his powers to protect himself from what appear to be the good guys. His only help is from a mentor, a few classmates, and his stalker “girlfriend” - all of whom seem to be completely evil. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not at all Harry Potter, from what plot summaries I've read. There is a heavy romance plotline. And the adult content, violence, and dark tone of my book is bad enough I'm putting a warning label on it. But, I've already had my first comparison from a group critique. =)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most main characters follow The Hero's Journey. Just because they do doesn't make them copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, &lt;strong&gt;as long as you don't have an extremely similar plotline (complete with settings and what role does what) or perfectly-matching characters (complete with descriptions, personalities, and flaws), don't worry about the similarities. Worry about writing a good book with a unique premise and tone.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T07:12:22.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20024" CreationDate="2015-12-13T12:33:29.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it is true of all languages that fiction, technical writing, songs, drama, informal speech, and formal speech all have their different &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;registers&lt;/a&gt; and specialised vocabularies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are these specialised vocabularies typically learned? I hesitated to answer this question because my answer seems so simplistic, but since no one else has offered anything better here it is: by reading or hearing a lot of that genre, whatever it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The typical path of a native speaker of English might be to pick up a &quot;fiction vocabulary&quot; in childhood without conscious effort, but for a discipline like technical writing they would have learned the appropriate vocabulary by formal education, as would a non-native speaker. And children in English-speaking countries vary widely as to how much they are exposed to fiction in the home. For many children they will only meet a fiction vocabulary in school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to pick up a good writing style in any genre is both to read a lot of works in that genre and to go ahead and write in that genre, accepting that your early efforts are likely to miss the mark in many ways (as is true for pretty much 100% of beginning writers, whether or not they write in their native language). You could join an online writer's circle where aspiring authors critique each other's work, and specifically ask for tips on how to get a more natural and informal style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility to consider is that your English style not being that of a native speaker may be not a problem but a benefit. After all, the English language is not the sole &quot;property&quot; of people who learned it at their mother's knee. Many readers seek out books that take them in imagination out of the culture familiar to them and allow them to experience another perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T12:33:29.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20040" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-13T13:11:00.567" Score="2" ViewCount="367" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a fiction novel and have had difficulties with the passive voice.  I feel that in this case the sentence is stronger when the passive voice is used.&#xA;     &quot;Born in a land without justice, sodden with the blood and &#xA;tears of earlier generations, he lived........&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16172" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T17:58:40.890" Title="When is passive voice acceptable?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20040" CreationDate="2015-12-13T13:56:09.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;But it's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; passive voice, not really. You've just elided the subject because it's the subject of multiple clauses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say your original sentence is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Born in a land without justice, sodden with the blood and tears of earlier generations, he lived a typical brutal peasant's life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you invert the clauses and spell them out, you have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He lived a typical brutal peasant's life. He was born in a land without justice. The land was sodden with the blood and tears of earlier generations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have is an ambiguously dangling modifier — you have to read carefully to make sure you see that &lt;em&gt;sodden with the blood and tears of earlier generations&lt;/em&gt; is modifying &quot;a land&quot; and not &quot;him.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Passive voice has no actor, no subject. &lt;em&gt;Mistakes were made.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T13:56:09.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20024" CreationDate="2015-12-13T18:06:00.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the above in regards to fiction exposure. However, your vocabulary and grammar seem just fine to me. You don't want to try to impress your readers with fancy vocabulary; it will look forced. Either this site or English Language Learners can help with phraseology on the occasion you need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commercial success requires ingenuity. You need a style of your own, so don't be too concerned over what others are doing specifically. It's more like, &quot;So that's how they accomplished character development!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to make a novel interesting, you will need to work on varying sentence structure and having a good mix of dialogue versus narration. This takes practice, but a huge vocabulary isn't necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are frequent references made on this site to the Hero's Journey. A review of the basics of the makeup of your protagonist seems a good place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And write! The more you write, the better you'll get. I'll just throw out a number which will of course differ from person to person, but 250,000 words of fiction should get you past the &quot;I wouldn't let my mother read it&quot; stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2015-12-13T18:11:47.477" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T18:11:47.477" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20012" CreationDate="2015-12-13T18:36:04.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You really need an agent first, very view publishing houses will even look at unsolicited manuscripts that an agent hasn't recommended to them. Try looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://agentquery.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agentquery.com/&lt;/a&gt;. You can search for agents that handle your genre, then write up a query and send it to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fiction you need to have a finished work before you start shopping for an agent generally. Also make sure you get your work edited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worst comes to worst you can just self-publish through lulu.com or amazon or a dozen other sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16173" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T18:36:04.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20044" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-13T21:51:15.093" Score="4" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked a question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/19875/including-text-file-name-in-footer-of-compiled-scrivener-document&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; that I need some more details for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to compile I bunch of text files, and I want the names of those files in the footer. Like the answerer suggested, I added a custom metatag for each text file named &lt;code&gt;blah&lt;/code&gt; which had the value of the name of the story. &lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt; when I got to compile, and I add &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;$blah&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; as something I want in the header, I just get a document that doesn't interpret that variable at all. It just says &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;$blah&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; brackets and dollar sign and all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any idea what I'm doing wrong? Or another way to accomplish this same thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16174" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.217" LastActivityDate="2017-10-09T13:39:34.040" Title="Including Scrivener custom metatag in footer?" Tags="|formatting|scrivener|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20028" CreationDate="2015-12-14T03:34:41.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Ideas&quot; can't be copyrighted. Only &lt;em&gt;expressions&lt;/em&gt; of &lt;em&gt;ideas.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means that when &quot;West Side Story&quot; substituted warring gangs for warring families in a teen-aged love tragedy, that was not &quot;copying.&quot; Nor would a story about two lovers, one of whom was Union and the other Confederate in the American Civil War.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could get you into trouble is copying e.g. Shakespeare's style and expression. For instance, if you used something like &quot;Roberto, why are you Roberto?&quot; in place of &quot;Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?&quot; that would be copying. And this would be true even if you changed the context from a &quot;dating&quot; to say, a professional situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing to do in your story is to change the names of characters and descriptions, and make sure they don't say the same things as the characters from the original. They can even &lt;em&gt;mean&lt;/em&gt; the same things, but that's a different story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-07-26T05:21:03.307" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T05:21:03.307" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20046" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-14T03:42:40.937" Score="2" ViewCount="503" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could I number my works cited sources and put them in my in-text citations using (1), (2), etc.? Just wondering because I used a lot of sources and my paper would look a lot cleaner in my opinion. I'm using MLA format by the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user151460" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T08:10:14.907" Title="Is it acceptable to use numbers as in-text citations?" Tags="|mla|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20046" CreationDate="2015-12-14T03:47:43.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, if you prefer to use numbers to reference citations, it is best to do them in superscript in the form of footnotes (look at any Wikipedia article).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as numbers in parentheses, I'm not certain, although it shouldn't pose any problems as long as your bibliography is clearly numbered so as to make the association obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="PlasmaStarfish" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T03:47:43.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20046" CreationDate="2015-12-14T04:42:48.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;MLA is essentially a two-part system, with author-page parenthetical citations referring the reader to a bibliography of &amp;ldquo;Works Cited.&amp;rdquo; Discursive notes (with superscript calls in text) are allowed over and above that, but not to replace the basic function of citing sources. There are documentation styles that can and do operate much as you say you want to. These are associated primarily with the hard sciences, and include CSE (Council of Science Editors) style. But if your editor or professor has asked for MLA that really is not an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Brian Donovan" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T04:42:48.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16210" CreationDate="2015-12-14T12:32:28.400" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this will be way too late but still, here's a free tool I found for learning DITA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.learningdita.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.learningdita.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently following the course, although it's dropped down my todos a bit. I'm already familiar with most of the content from my own reading and from that perspective I'll say it's very comprehensive and thorough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I already have the basic ideas I would recommend this for beginners, it definitely starts simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the complete styleguide which explains in detail how to use each element if you're diving in and trying it out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.oxygenxml.com/dita/styleguide/webhelp-feedback/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.oxygenxml.com/dita/styleguide/webhelp-feedback/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16176" LastEditorUserId="16176" LastEditDate="2017-01-05T13:10:45.677" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T13:10:45.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20050" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:04:39.703" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag can be used for questions about fiction or nonfiction, as long as it is aimed for readers in their teens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist is usually also in that age range, and the content frequently touches on problems and challenges which people that age face (first serious romance, first sexual experience, coming-of-age stories). YA novels span all genres.  Exact age ranges may vary publisher to publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For readers ages 8-12 use &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/middle-grade&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;middle-grade&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;middle-grade&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For readers under 8 use &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/children&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;children&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;children&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For questions about characters who are children (especially in adult books), use &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/child-characters&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;child-characters&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;child-characters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For questions about children or teens who are writers, use &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/young-author&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;young-author&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;young-author&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T18:15:58.500" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T18:15:58.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20051" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:04:39.703" Score="0" Body="This tag should be used for questions about writing intended for readers between 12 and 18 years old. (Often abbreviated YA.) For readers ages 8-12 use [middle-grade]. For readers under 8 use [children]. For questions about characters, use [child-characters]. For questions about children or teens who are writers, use [young-author]." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T18:15:58.500" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T18:15:58.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20019" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:07:13.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;There are many different approaches here.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people prefer to write the whole book in one, in order, all the way to completion, then come back and edit it all in one pass. This prevents you from procrastinating, and perhaps gives your book a certain cohesiveness and poetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the other end of the scale, some might prefer to work on multiple parts of the book as they go, depending on what comes to them. If a scene or line of dialog comes clear, go and write it. If it's suddenly obvious how to edit a chapter, and your words are coming freely, edit that chapter. This gives you flexibility and fun, but can lead to logical inconsistencies and procrastination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a plethora of other approaches, you have to pick the one that works for you. Be self-aware. Watch out for perfectionism. See what inspires you. See what makes it fun. If you enjoy your characters and can project this onto the page, it will be enjoyable to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How I write (which is not necessarily how you should write)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally have multiple strands on the go at any one point. Some chapters are just sketches: a few hundred words of dialog and intent. Some are written but not edited. Some are part way edited. Some need to be refactored to take into account a new character trait, tense change or piece of imagery. Some are complete. Nothing is in order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use TODOs all over the place to remind myself to come back. I use Markdown and Git to keep track of the confusion and make sure nothing gets lost on the way. I trade meta-critiques with other authors to help find logical inconsistencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's messy, hacky &amp;amp; slow, but lots of fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15426" LastEditorUserId="15426" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:16:50.150" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:16:50.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20053" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:07:52.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recorded version of a written piece. Can have one or more people doing the voices. There may be sound effects. These files can be on CD or digital (previously they were on cassettes, known as &quot;books on tape&quot;). This allows you to &quot;read&quot; a book while doing an activity which prevents you from reading, like driving or walking. The original piece may be slightly edited for the audio version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:07:52.033" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:07:52.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20054" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:07:52.033" Score="0" Body="A recorded version of a written piece." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:07:52.033" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:07:52.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20055" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:13:23.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first complete version of a work. Almost always very rough and in need of significant edits. The first draft is generally about getting your ideas down on paper so you can see them and have actual building blocks to move around and polish. For discovery writers (aka &quot;pantsers&quot;), the first draft also includes going over the work to retrofit a clear structure, since by definition discovery writers start writing without detailed plan or outline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:13:23.630" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:13:23.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20056" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:13:23.630" Score="0" Body="The first complete version of a work." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:13:23.630" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:13:23.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20057" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:15:13.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An ellipsis is three dots or periods (...) used to indicate a pause, a speaker trailing off, or quoted material which has been cut out. When using an ellipsis at the end of a sentence, write it as four dots. Word processing software may replace three individual dots with a single ellipsis character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:15:13.067" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:15:13.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20058" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:15:13.067" Score="0" Body="Just three little dots..." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:15:13.067" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:15:13.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20059" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:18:01.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about the point of view of the narrator of a work. &lt;strong&gt;First person&lt;/strong&gt; means the narrator is speaking about him-/herself (I made this, we ran away). &lt;strong&gt;Third person&lt;/strong&gt; is speaking about other people (He did this, she went there, they called back). It is possible to write in second person (You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.), but this is rare in fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:18:01.640" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:18:01.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20060" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:18:01.640" Score="0" Body="Questions about the point of view of the narrator of a work." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:18:01.640" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:18:01.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20061" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:20:03.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A piece of a work which is set before the &quot;present.&quot; Even if the work is written in past tense, there is a &quot;present&quot; during which the action is taking place. When the scene shifts so that all the action is occurring at a time earlier than the present of the work, this is &lt;em&gt;flashing back&lt;/em&gt; to the past. (It's &quot;flashing&quot; because it's usually brief, but the flashback could be a significant percentage of the work.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:20:03.853" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:20:03.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20062" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:20:03.853" Score="0" Body="A piece of a work which is set before the &quot;present.&quot;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:20:03.853" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:20:03.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20063" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:21:20.303" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-09-08T18:18:16.920" LastActivityDate="2019-09-08T18:18:16.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20064" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:21:20.303" Score="0" Body="You make me laugh! :)  Questions about using humor in writing. What's appropriate, how to gauge what's appropriate for the audience, balancing humor and drama, and how to make something funny.  Use [comedy] for questions specifically about the genre of comedy." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-09-08T18:18:16.920" LastActivityDate="2019-09-08T18:18:16.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20065" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:23:26.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about using images in a work. How to find an illustrator, how to work with one, how to illustrate one's own work. Also covers graphic novels, comics, and children's picture books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:23:26.133" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:23:26.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20066" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:23:26.133" Score="0" Body="Worth a thousand words" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:23:26.133" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:23:26.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20067" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:26:13.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about using words from a language other than the main language of a work. Also about slang, vernacular, dialect, constructed languages, developing languages over the course of a story, and writing in your second/third etc. language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:26:13.677" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:26:13.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20068" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:26:13.677" Score="0" Body="Incorporating foreign languages, slang, dialect, and so on into a work." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-10-30T15:06:25.273" LastActivityDate="2016-10-30T15:06:25.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20024" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:26:31.373" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a native English speaker, am university educated, have been reading fiction for as long as I can remember, and would consider myself to have a reasonably extensive vocabulary, yet I suffer from the same issue: encountering words in fiction that I have never previously been exposed to. You're always going to come up against it no matter how well prepared you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll offer my tips for both reading and writing new words within the English language, as they generally help me a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reading&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this is an obvious thing that everyone does or if it's more uncommon, so I apologize if it seems patronizing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I come across an unfamiliar word in a book, I will simply read the rest of the sentence or paragraph without knowing what the word means. 9 times out of 10 I find that simply trying to understand the word in context is enough to give me a fairly good idea of what the word means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He made to answer the door, but found the task rather arduous. He was forced to sidle around his colleague's desk of Brobdingnagian proportions in order to reach the far side of the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I didn't know the meaning of the words &lt;em&gt;arduous&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Brobdingnagian&lt;/em&gt;, and had read this passage. The first thing that I would assume is that Brobdingnagian had something to do with size, due to it being an adjective of the word &lt;em&gt;proportions&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the passage, however, it's unlikely to mean &lt;em&gt;small&lt;/em&gt;, because if he had to make his way around a small desk it would not be worthy of it's own sentence, and it would be a pointless description, therefore I can infer that Brobdingnagian means &lt;em&gt;large&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the word arduous makes more sense, and is likely to mean something along the lines of &lt;em&gt;slow&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;difficult&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;painful&lt;/em&gt;. There's no way I can possibly know which from this extract, but they all give a similar idea as to what the task was like and how it was completed, so it doesn't really matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the next time I encounter the word in my reading I will know that it means something along these lines, and further readings of the word in different situations will build my understanding of it over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will develop your own writing style, and as others here have suggested it is best to read things that are similar to the way you want to write. However, the best bit of advice that I can give when trying to write without being &quot;too dry&quot; is to try to write &lt;em&gt;accurately&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When reading books, I've found that the best things I read aren't the passages that are the most colorful, or that use the most creative descriptions, but those are the most accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An author could describe someone as being as warm and affectionate as a box of kittens, yet with the disposition that they wouldn't harm a butterfly, but sometimes the word gentle would suffice. There are good things that are infinitely wonderful, ever so subtly satisfying, or so epic and grandiose as to bring grown adults to tears as they marvel in the shadow of its beauty, but sometimes they're just good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some good points &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17248/are-there-words-that-are-stronger-than-others-if-so-why/17268#17268&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; about using the strength of words to color your descriptions. It's not directly related, but looks at how different words are more emotive than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it all comes back to choosing the most accurate words for the best descriptions. Sometimes they will involve delving into the dictionary for the correct descriptive language, but often the simple things are better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:26:31.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20070" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:30:53.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A memoir is an autobiography. It may cover the person's entire life or focus on a particular aspect or time period. For instance, an actress's memoir may start with her earliest childhood memories, while a sports player may only talk about the years he played. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:30:53.377" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:30:53.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20071" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:30:53.377" Score="0" Body="Speak, memory! Tell me about your madeleines." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:30:53.377" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:30:53.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20072" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:33:43.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A code used to register and keep track of books. It stands for International Standard Book Number. It's a 10- or 13-digit number which is purchased and assigned to your work to keep track of your book in publishing and selling databases. Can be purchased individually or in blocks if you are self-publishing, or is assigned by a publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:33:43.883" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:33:43.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20073" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:33:43.883" Score="0" Body="A code used to register and keep track of books." OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:33:43.883" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:33:43.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20074" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:35:30.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about writing stories which involve a puzzle (often but not always a crime) which the protagonist(s) must solve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:35:30.003" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:35:30.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20075" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:35:30.003" Score="0" Body="Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot!" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T13:35:30.003" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T13:35:30.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20101" CreationDate="2015-12-14T14:51:16.443" Score="1" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the &quot;classic&quot; example is Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Early in her journey through the land of Oz, she acquires the slippers that she needs to take her back to Kansas. But she doesn't realize this until she is told at the very end, which is why she tries &quot;other means&quot; of achieving her goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is this story structure called?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T07:24:51.457" Title="What is the story structure called when someone doesn't know they have the solution to their problem in hand?" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20040" CreationDate="2015-12-14T15:21:41.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Passive voice weakens your writing. So you use passive voice when you want your writing weakened. It is not a thing to be avoided, but utilized correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps after an explosive anger scene where someone threw some books, you could end the scene by saying &quot;The books lay quietly on the floor&quot; as a transition out of the anger without dispelling any of it's energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T15:21:41.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19987" CreationDate="2015-12-14T15:41:38.477" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;We can't standardise, but we can generalise&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As has been mentioned, there is no standard &quot;man&quot; any more than there is a standard &quot;woman&quot;. Some women are into ultimate fighting and woodwork. Some men are into cake decorating and fashion. We are all different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming from your question though that your male protagonist is more of a standard &quot;manly&quot; man. Having spent a little while in couple's counselling with my wife, I noticed a few things that surprised me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A man will look for a fix, a woman will look for empathy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A woman who has an emotion usually doesn't want it fixed. She just wants empathy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A man upon hearing about a negative emotion would treat it as a problem to be worked on, and would look for a way to fix it. If he could see no fix he might find it frustrating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A man might not bother sharing an emotion unless the person he shares it with can help practically, otherwise what would be the point? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men are traditionally taught to be self-reliant. A man might share a problem only if he had exhausted his own resources and needed a fix. To rely on someone else to fix one's problems would be interpreted as a sign of weakness. A man, upon hearing about a problem, may assume that the person with the problem requires help. He will go into problem-solving mode and try to suggest ways to sort it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A woman on the other hand may not have the same pride thing going on. Women seem quite happy to sit and talk about problems with each other. The empathy seems to strengthen them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like writing the diary might fit into the remit of problem-solving, but I would say that he would be unlikely to come up with it by himself. Another woman might suggest it to him as a possible solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Women are emotionally complex&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women appear to be emotionally far more intricate than men (of course this is a generalisation). There is logic there, but it is confounded by layers of history, experience, hormonal state, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A man tries to understand the world in terms of mechanism. If I put this here, this changes over here. It's too difficult to understand female emotion in these terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Male emotion, on the other hand may be simpler. We are, for the most part, happy when things are nice, angry when things are difficult, sad when things are sad, etc. Male emotion is more mechanistic. We are emotional slot machines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A woman cares about being heard&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women really care about being heard. A man likely assumes he is heard. We are used to being heard. Your male character may not realise that your female character really needs empathy and understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Caveat&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are all massive horrible generalisations. I'm being most dreadfully sexist here, I apologise. In fact, disregard all of the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15426" LastEditorUserId="15426" LastEditDate="2016-01-28T13:49:26.280" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T13:49:26.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20040" CreationDate="2015-12-14T15:53:32.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the passive voice when you don't want to implicate anyone directly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A person must always be alert so he doesn't cause problems for&#xA;  others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contrast that to:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bill didn't consider the implications of his actions so he pushed the lever up and the rest of the group plummeted into the&#xA;  abyss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A famous example of passive writing is the cliche:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A fun time was had by all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sentence actually says very little that is specific and the &quot;fun time&quot; seems to fall upon people, instead of them doing anything to cause the fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The ball was caught.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bill caught the ball.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one has no subject who is taking action. This keeps Bill safe, in case catching the ball is an improper thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T15:53:32.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20082" CreationDate="2015-12-14T17:38:09.417" Score="10" ViewCount="840" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was 14, I had an idea for a novel but never wrote anything. I'm now 24 and just finished participating in National Novel Writing Month (&lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org&quot;&gt;nanowrimo.org&lt;/a&gt;) where I wrote a 25k word &quot;long outline&quot; of my novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm now expanding and editing my novel. I'm very pleased with my plot and would like to do a good job with it. However, I lack experience writing and would hate to ruin an idea I've become so fond of by making it the first thing I write (and therefore terrible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I write something I don't care about in order to &quot;train&quot;? Will writing my novel ruin it? I am interested in much advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14560" LastActivityDate="2015-12-20T08:27:03.403" Title="Should I write something I don't care about first?" Tags="|novel|getting-started|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20040" CreationDate="2015-12-14T17:58:40.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Rarely, but this is not really passive voice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Lauren points out, what you have is not really passive voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your sentence is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Born in a land without justice, sodden with the blood and tears of earlier generations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Written in full with the subject in place, this might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dave was Born in a land without justice, sodden with the blood and tears of earlier generations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In passive voice, you would have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A land without justice, sodden with the blood and tears of earlier generations was the place of Dave's birth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your sentence is active voice, but you've omitted the subject to make it more punchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;...but to answer your question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When is passive voice acceptable? If you are writing an academic paper, passive voice is de rigueur. It weakens your statements, enabling counter-argument. If you're writing a novel this is usually not the effect you are going for. It's uncommon to find a case where the passive voice is an improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An exception to this might be dialog if you have a scientific character, or a character who talks in riddles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15426" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T17:58:40.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20080" CreationDate="2015-12-14T18:11:51.390" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Mercedes Lackey famously rewrote her first trilogy &lt;em&gt;seventeen times&lt;/em&gt; before it was published. You will not ruin your idea by writing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Even if you get your &quot;first million terrible words&quot; out of the way first, almost every first draft of every novel needs work. Your novel will still need editing whether your have experience or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Having an idea you love may keep you more motivated than &quot;this crap thing I'm writing just to write.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) You can write other things in the universe of your novel (short stories, backstories, character diaries) to get more experience, which will contribute to your novel before your start it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T18:11:51.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19971" CreationDate="2015-12-14T21:45:59.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, not feeling close to characters often comes from inadequately describing what characters are feeling. Don't label the emotions characters feel, rather describe what they do or physically feel that are consequence of the emotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob was frustrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does not convey emotion as well as a simple&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob sighed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look out though, because it's easy to get lazy and use something like sighing too much. To help, a great reference is &lt;em&gt;The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide To Character Expression&lt;/em&gt; by Ackerman and Puglisi. The book is organized by emotion, one per chapter. For each emotion, it lists things someone feeling that emotion might do (sigh, hold their head) and might feel (pounding in their head, difficulty swallowing). It also lists physical symptoms of particularly acute or chronic feeling of that emotion, and which emotions an emotion might escalate into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12987" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T21:45:59.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20084" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20086" CreationDate="2015-12-14T22:51:27.113" Score="13" ViewCount="1050" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a scene in which two characters, Boy and Girl, meet for the first time.  Girl is the POV character in this section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are about to have lunch, when Girl is called away on an emergency.  She mutters that she's sorry, asks if they could meet later, and dashes off leaving Boy standing there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As currently written, the scene ends&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Boy said to nobody in particular, half astounded and half amused, &quot;Uh, yeah.  I would love to.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel showing Boy's response completes the scene well.  However, the POV character does not actually witness this response (which is intentional... I want to show him standing there alone).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short of making Boy the POV character (which I don't want to do), is there a good way to handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a case where it's OK to violate the POV rules?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I leave that last part out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T23:24:08.097" Title="Handling a small detail the POV character would not notice" Tags="|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20084" CreationDate="2015-12-14T23:07:06.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Girl left him standing there, knowing their relationship was tenuous. She had no choice; she had to get back to the hospital. What she didn't hear, but would've left her with a small sense of comfort, was &quot;Uh yeah, I would love to.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T23:07:06.780" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20084" CreationDate="2015-12-14T23:33:28.687" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The trick here is to &lt;strong&gt;bend the rules without breaking them&lt;/strong&gt;. Including something that the PoV character doesn't know about is technically 'breaking the rules.' But when writing, you have to remember that reader experience trumps all. As long as it doesn't jar the flow, you can get away with something small. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this example, I would simply say what Boy says, and then just say Girl didn't hear it. You could argue that you switched PoV for one line, but if you switch straight back to the girl, and if you remain outside of the boy (that is, don't go into his thoughts or anything), you'll be fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Girl dashed off. Boy said to nobody in particular, half astounded and half amused, &quot;Uh, yeah. I would love to.&quot; But Girl, running towards her car, was too far away to hear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me at least, that doesn't jar the flow of writing in the least. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I should add that this is written assuming your tale is in the third person. If you are writing in the first person, things like this are a lot more jarring to the reader, simply because you are so immersed in the first person character, and therefore notice it faster when PoV switches. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T00:26:06.517" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T00:26:06.517" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20098" CreationDate="2015-12-15T04:42:43.113" Score="4" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote 3 chapters. I can't think of something to write to connect what I have already written to ideas I have for later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16126" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T12:22:26.653" LastActivityDate="2015-12-29T14:27:37.410" Title="How do I work through writer's block?" Tags="|writers-block|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20084" CreationDate="2015-12-15T07:37:30.827" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, it would make no difference to the emotional picture painted to have Girl hear Boy's words from behind her (thus keeping to her POV) but be too distracted to respond to them or think about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Girl suppressed panic as she searched her handbag for her&#xA;  car keys. &quot;Sure, great. Shall we get together here &amp;hellip;&quot; &lt;em&gt;The&#xA;  keys, the keys. Oh, thank God, there they were.&lt;/em&gt; &quot;&amp;hellip; same time&#xA;  Monday?&quot; Grabbing the keys she turned and pushed past other diners to the exit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From behind her she vaguely heard Boy's voice, half astounded and half&#xA;  amused, saying, &quot;Uh, yeah. I would love to.&quot; The car was in sight. She started to run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T21:00:31.137" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T21:00:31.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20089" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20128" CreationDate="2015-12-15T07:40:55.563" Score="1" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;e.g.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bold&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Click &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Setting&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; then click &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Options&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Italic&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Click &lt;em&gt;&quot;Setting&quot;&lt;/em&gt; then click &lt;em&gt;&quot;Options&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or even underline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or none quotation marks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Click &lt;strong&gt;Setting&lt;/strong&gt; then click &lt;strong&gt;Options&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is better/correct/preferred?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16186" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-10T00:54:56.530" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T00:54:56.530" Title="Should you emphasise text within quotation marks?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|formatting|punctuation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20087" CreationDate="2015-12-15T11:06:57.253" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two kinds of writers: plotters and discovery writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discovery writers sit down and just type, literally &quot;discovering&quot; what happens as they go, and then must go back and impose a structure on the text at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plotters outline and come up with the entire structure beforehand, and write along the skeleton of that outline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are stuck for ideas, it may mean that discovery writing doesn't work for you. You may need to find a more traditional structure for your story and assemble an outline first. I have found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/&quot;&gt;The Snowflake Method&lt;/a&gt; to be useful, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1615931708&quot;&gt;The Hero's Journey&lt;/a&gt;, but there are other structures and other tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're stuck because you can't get from A to B. Go back to the beginning, pick a skeleton, and put A and B on it. That should help you fill in the gaps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T11:06:57.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20089" CreationDate="2015-12-15T18:26:40.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen bold and I have seen inverted commas. I haven't seen combinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply say which you are going to use at the beginning. For example, I just found this in 'Beginning Android Application Development': &quot;Code is presented in two different ways: We use a monofont type with no highlighting for most code examples. We use bolding to emphasize code that is of particular importance in the present context.&quot; (I haven't included their formatting.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realise that this code rather than which menu item to choose, but I think there are a lot of similarities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T18:26:40.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20092" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20105" CreationDate="2015-12-15T18:47:49.763" Score="3" ViewCount="12957" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any techniques which writers can use to really touch the character, and make them feel really emotional because of your writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to improve a dystopian piece of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I stood there, in front of it. I could feel my emotions toppling outside of my mind as I began unleashing my hatred upon the ones that did this. I could not hold back my sorrow, and I shed a tear. The creature stretched its great neck forward and my tear fell onto its long cheek. It ran down the beast's face and dropped onto the floor.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During this paragraph I focused on a tear, is this a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-09T19:08:41.070" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T19:08:41.070" Title="Any techniques to make the reader feel sad and very sorrowful?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20093" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20095" CreationDate="2015-12-15T04:17:47.627" Score="2" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somewhere along the way I picked up a bias against using questions in my writing. Recently I've been reading more about persuasive writing and ideas, and came across a suggestion that asking questions creates drama which can be valuable too (in Made to Stick by Chip Heath).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in a paper I'm editing they write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Can we really be satisfied with less than half of our students failing a national standard for such a core subject? The fact that the majority of students across the nation are falling behind must mean that something is wrong. Reading is a core skill essential to every child’s development in both person and professional spheres.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past I would've suggested they delete the question, but I see the value and increased drama in that call-response format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the correct way to do this, if there is one? I'm curious both about writing like the above, and less formal persuasive writing (like sending an email to a potential client or convincing your boss to give you a raise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16194" OwnerDisplayName="Max Caldwell" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T14:06:51.367" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T14:06:51.367" Title="Is it acceptable to ask a question in an argumentative paper?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9226" CreationDate="2015-12-15T20:23:10.267" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use P.S.  in emails fairly often. As others points out, P.S.  stands for postscript (&quot;after signature&quot;) and it means the content was added after the message was signed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, just because technology gives you the choice of re-wording a message to avoid a postscipt, that doesn't mean you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; re-word the message to avoid a postscript.  You may chose to use a post-script (1) as a stylistic choice, to emphasize that the content was added as an afterthought, esp. for humorous effect; (2) if you genuinely don't have time to re-write the letter, or working the afterthought into the original flow would be too disruptive to the original message, perhaps because the afterthought is on a completely different topic. Having it as a postscripts helps draw attention to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's true that emails (or word processing in general) make it easy to avoid postscripts.  But just because postscripts are &lt;em&gt;not required&lt;/em&gt;, doesn't mean that they are &lt;em&gt;prohibited&lt;/em&gt;.  They can be used as a literary device as explained in section 1381 of The Gregg Reference Manual (6th edition):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A postscript can be effectively used to express an idea that has been&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;deliberately withheld&lt;/em&gt; from the body of a letter; stating this idea at the very end gives it strong emphasis.&quot; (emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many times emails are not signed.  In that case I &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; feel strange using a P.S.without a signature. I may use an alternate way of introducing the text such as &quot;By The Way&quot; or BTW or &quot;on a different topic....&quot;  Or I would intentionally add my name to the bottom of the mail just so I can use a P.S.  in a literal rather than metaphorical way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14775" LastEditorUserId="14775" LastEditDate="2016-03-15T13:57:22.980" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T13:57:22.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20093" CreationDate="2015-12-15T20:42:38.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rhetorical question&lt;/a&gt; and, used well, can enhance the essay.  The key to using this device is to first raise a question, issue, or concern that the reader might reasonably have, and then to address it.  You are, essentially, putting a question in the &quot;mouth&quot; of your reader so that you can go on to answer it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because you control both sides of the dialogue, you can &quot;spin&quot; the question.  This is commonly done in persuasive writing.  Your example is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can we really be satisfied with less than half of our students failing a national standard for such a core subject? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could write that more neutrally as: &quot;Are our students doing well enough?&quot;  But since you want to make the point that &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;, we &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt; be satisfied with this state of affairs, you write it more provocatively.  Be careful of going too far, though; if you cross into absurdity or something that reads as ad-hominem, you'll probably lose readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T20:42:38.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19973" CreationDate="2015-12-15T20:51:07.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to sell your idea to a producer, you will have to write a synopsis, a logline and a title before worrying about writing the pilot. Since they receive hundreds of ideas, they can't spend too much time on each one of them. They will likely only spend one or two minutes on your idea, so all of those things have to be appealing and making they want more so they will order a pilot script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Synopsis: less than 500 words to describe your show. After reading your synopsis, the person has to know: the genre, what the story is about, where is the action taking place, what kind of characters are in the story. They will also know if they want to hear more about it or not. It also help the producer to guess the targeted audience and the necessary budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Logline: kind of a very short synopsis, usually one sentence only. This single line you have to identify your main character(s) without using names (e.g. &quot;Five friends&quot;, &quot;An enthusiastic man&quot;), his/her/their goal or problem, his/her/their obstacles. It should also convey the genre of your show. &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/bvlWd2tz4xg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Screenwriting: How to write compelling loglines&lt;/em&gt; - D4Darious&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title: it is the first thing the producer, but also the viewers, will know about your show, so it has to hook your audience. As the logline or the synopsis, it should help people know about the genre of your show (even if some still make the cut only using the name of the main character like &lt;em&gt;Chuck&lt;/em&gt; but even there, with a name like that, you know it is going to be funny, but it doesn't tell you about the spy stuff). Bad-named titles can ruin a show (for instance, &lt;em&gt;Selfie&lt;/em&gt; had a good cast, was funny enough, but even for a comedy the name was ridiculous and didn't appeal, so the show tanked and was rapidly cancelled). Also, try to keep the title short, it will be easier to remember and thus will help people to talk about it (nobody wants to talk about a show named &lt;em&gt;How to live with my parents (for the rest of my life)&lt;/em&gt;, even on the internet, where every title is shorten: &lt;em&gt;HTLWMPFTROML&lt;/em&gt; is even worse). You should try to make your title catchy, so it'll be easy to remember and make people want to watch (&lt;em&gt;Psych&lt;/em&gt; is a good example, it's a comedy about a fake psychic, the pun is nice and since it's a well-known expression, it is simple to recall). You can have a working title at first and chance it later for a more powerful impact on the viewers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are the main things you will need to pitch your idea. Try them on friends and family, even strangers if you want, to ensure that they are good enough. If that is the case, you can pitch them to a producer, and write a pilot depending on his answer. If I were you, I'd still write the pilot even if the producer said no (maybe it wasn't that the idea was bad but that you lack experience to convey it in a short summary), since you could still try to produce it yourself, with some friends at first (a small web-serie), that will help you get some feedbacks.&#xA;I also think that making small description of your lead characters will be a good choice. It could help you to write your synopsis and your logline (maybe even the title) but also your episodes, to be sure not to change their behaviour too much at once. And, if your show is made, you will need it to cast the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not very sure about all of this, but I had done those research a while back and those were the result. But this also depend where you want to submit your show. If it is for a contest, you'll probably need a logline, a title and the pilot whereas for a producer, you have to sell the idea first and then the pilot.&#xA;To write a script, you will need a special format (I recommend that you use a software dedicate to screenwriting (like Celtx, Final Draft, Trelby or Scrinever) so you won't lose time with the format. You have to know that one page equals one minute (so if you want to write a US drama, you'll need around 40 pages per episode and 20 for a comedy).&#xA;Most screenplay look like that:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j9Opv.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j9Opv.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You won't need the &quot;fade in&quot; and the &quot;transition&quot; at first (those are direction for the editor, but they aren't necessary to sell your script). They must be an action line (always written using the present, never past or future) after and before each screen heading. In the action lines, you can capitalised the important words and the first time the name of a protagonist is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16189" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T20:51:07.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20092" CreationDate="2015-12-15T21:16:17.277" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To make the reader sad I would focus more on what event is making the narrator sad rather than on describing their sadness. Not that there is anything wrong with describing emotion, and your excerpt seems pretty well written to me, but reading about how someone else feels sad is not what makes me sad. Describing their tears is certainly part of the story, but what is more likely to bring tears to &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; eyes is reading a vivid description of a good character dying, or suffering pain or bereavement, or being betrayed, or losing their chance of happiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I right in thinking that the &quot;great creature&quot; (I imagined it as a good dragon) mentioned in your quote has been wounded or harmed by the bad guys? &lt;em&gt;That&lt;/em&gt; made me sad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T21:21:55.360" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T21:21:55.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20087" CreationDate="2015-12-15T22:37:41.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lauren Ipsum has some great ideas to start with, and sometimes it just takes thinking more conceptually about the story to kick through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, do you know &lt;em&gt;conceptually&lt;/em&gt; what you want to happen next? That is, let's say your protagonist is in a bank but the next thing you have an idea for is him getting on a plane. Conceptually, you know you need a series of bridging scenes getting the protagonist from the bank to the airport, and along the way there's a zombie outbreak which makes the trip more difficult, or there's a fire raging in the only tunnel from the bank's part of town to the airport feeder bypass, or a there's a bomb on the plane and he has to get there before it goes off somehow...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; know conceptually what you want to happen next, but you do have ideas for later in the book, then you can simply write the ideas that come later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try not to get trapped in the time line of your story. That is, don't worry about getting the story onto the page in the order the reader will experience it; you're the omnipotent writer of the story, and you are not bound by its time line. So, write what comes next - whether that's what the reader will experience next when they read the story is irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens is, writing the next thing can kick things loose in your brain. When you have the next idea down, it might become clear what has to happen to get the story from where you got stuck to the next thing you wrote. But even if it doesn't, you just keep going. You can go back at any time to fill the gaps, to add foreshadowing, to add plants and clues and subtext.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think movies - TONS of movies are filmed out of sequence with how we see them in their final form. Writing can be the same. Just write what comes to you next. &lt;em&gt;That's&lt;/em&gt; the next thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't let yourself get bogged down by the linear progress of the story. You're not bound by that as the writer; write what you see next, what the next thing is, irrespective of the place in the story's time line. It doesn't have to be what the reader sees next, only what you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know, that was a long-winded raving explanation and I'm sorry, but hopefully that will give you some boost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to piggyback on Lauren Ispum's idea, I recommend Algis Budrys's 7-point plot system. You need, in the beginning section of the story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Character&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a context (setting)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With a problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have those three things, then the next step in the story is for the character (and any allies) make a logical but erroneous attempt to solve the problem, which nets failure. That failure is both unexpected and educational - they learn more about the problem. This leads to another attempt to solve the problem which nets failure, costs more, but also exposes more of the true problem. One more attempt/fail, and that leads to the final push, the give-it-all effort of the protagonist(s) which will either net victory, finally, or final failure up to and including death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with that in mind, you can place the ideas you have on the spine Lauren Ipsum spoke of, and discover what's missing. It's the same method LI described, but with a different plotting device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps some!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T22:37:41.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20102" CreationDate="2015-12-15T23:13:26.703" Score="8" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used &lt;a href=&quot;https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Submissions Grinder&lt;/a&gt; when submitting work to publishers, but they don't have any way to track submissions to non standard markets or to agents.  I know I could use a spreadsheet, but I'm hoping there's something out there that is better than that, and is also web based so it's easily accessed by my computer or my phone/tablet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-17T00:34:39.880" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T00:34:39.880" Title="Are there any good tools out there to track your submissions to agents or publishers?" Tags="|tools|agent|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20084" CreationDate="2015-12-15T23:24:08.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cut it. No question. It doesn't belong and it's neatness won't satisfy the reader anywhere near as much as it appears to satisfy you. Ask yourself what's so great about that line that makes it worth damaging the integrity of the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Merciless editing is a required skill for an author. No matter if you're absolutely in love with that line, no matter if it's the funniest thing anybody ever wrote, you know perfectly well it doesn't make any sense. Cut it, and write a better conclusion from the proper PoV. You can do it. Select that paragraph now, delete it, and save your document. You'll see it a bit more clearly after that and a better line will be along soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The various suggestions to help you keep it are smart, and correct, or at the very least, &lt;em&gt;nice&lt;/em&gt;, but really they're just telling you things you want to hear. That's not how good editing works. Be strong, select it, and press delete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T23:24:08.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20076" CreationDate="2015-12-16T00:55:36.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only term I came across (in my brief search) was &lt;strong&gt;self-realization drama&lt;/strong&gt;. It can cross genres but perhaps seems best suited for fantasy. It's the classic &quot;I knew I had the power within me&quot; kind of story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T00:55:36.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20099" CreationDate="2015-12-16T02:04:52.487" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I use a spreadsheet just because it's easier for me to control and manipulate, but I'm also a member of &lt;a href=&quot;https://querytracker.net/&quot;&gt;Query Tracker&lt;/a&gt; and they let you track all your queries and responses. Plus, they give you access to lots of data about agents in addition to comments other users leave which almost always include when they queried, when they got a response, and what type of response they got. It looks very helpful, and if I didn't already have my spreadsheet, I'd definitely use this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T02:04:52.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20080" CreationDate="2015-12-16T02:32:25.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your dilemma reminds me of Bernard Cornwell's tips for success. If you don't know Cornwell, he is an international best selling author, with almost 50 books in print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the genre you want to write. Dissect those books to see how they are crafted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't second-guess yourself.It is natural to lack confidence when you start out, but don't let that defeat you- stay positive and keep&#xA;moving forward.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Trust your own instincts and write for your own satisfaction, not for an audience.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't worry about your final draft when you are writing your first. Get your story right first, then work on the details of&#xA;dialogue and descriptions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be daring - take the plunge. Write. You might fail, but you will never know unless you dare to write.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And finally, the one I like best: Write only what you would love to read.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16172" LastEditorUserId="14560" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T18:49:13.177" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T18:49:13.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20076" CreationDate="2015-12-16T07:24:51.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is less of a story structure and more of a trope. (You can have very different story structures &lt;em&gt;leading up&lt;/em&gt; to that final revelation.) Also, I don't know how many story structures actually have established names :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tropes don't always have established names either, but TV Tropes calls this &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ItWasWithYouAllAlong&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;It Was With You All Along&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T07:24:51.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20092" CreationDate="2015-12-16T11:36:51.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to find ways to invoke sadness in others, it's best to try to understand what makes &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; sad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone has been sad at some point in their lives, so it's easy to know what sadness looks like and feels like. However a lot of people don't really think about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; those things make them sad. This can be said about a lot of emotions, but sadness is one in particular that people don't care to dwell on (for obvious reasons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why it is probably it is one of the most difficult things to portray in pieces of writing. A lot of the times people attempting to create sadness create sad people to try to get others to be sad through empathy. But unless you already massively empathize with the character, it is difficult to pull off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is similar in your excerpt. From that short bit of writing I understand that the creature is sad, but that doesn't make me sad. When I then read some of the comments you had written about the backstory of the character and reread the question, it affected me more, as it was now in more of a context. I understood the creature better and could empathize a little with where its heartache stemmed from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to watch/ read/ experience things that make you sad, and try to think about and analyze &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they make you sad. You need to dig deeper and find out the emotions and reasons for how this sadness has developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many things can evoke sadness: fear, loss, longing, pain (physical or emotional), regret, anger, disappointment, frustration. Even some positive emotions can incite sadness in the correct context. Off the top of my head I can think of 4 things that never fail to set me off into floods of tears, and they couldn't be any more different from each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is all about making the reader become invested in something first, and then changing the thing in which they have become invested in a way that can cause sadness. Ultimately, sadness is the destination, the journey to get there will be accessing other emotions within the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T11:36:51.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20087" CreationDate="2015-12-16T15:09:00.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take your criticism down A LOT of notches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of struggling on that One Great Idea you can't get, and dismissing everything you come by as crap, pick a painfully generic plot, add one simple, standard trick, and just start writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick any of fairy tales, even the most generic one, knight saves a princess from a dragon. Add one simple, trivial modification: &quot;In Space&quot;. Or &quot;On the Internet&quot;. Or &quot;From the Dragon's perspective&quot;. Or &quot;The Princess doesn't like it.&quot; Or &quot;The Dragon is the Princess.&quot; Whatever to move away from the -totally bland- into -trite-.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then start writing. And if ideas come, apply them. Change stuff. Let the plot wander wherever it wills. If they don't, just keep writing that generic stuff. Usually, they will come, sooner or later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recent story went like this. Pick: Spielberg's 'E.T.'. Twist: The alien has a quad-digit IQ (or more), and mastery of mathematics. The beginning is quite generic. Then the alien decides to obtain funds to build the phone to call home. How to build massive funds quickly? Through playing on the stock market. What are some risks associated with it? Getting caught up in the thrill of the gamble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;That escalated quickly&quot; would be an understatement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T15:09:00.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20108" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20127" CreationDate="2015-12-16T15:13:03.690" Score="6" ViewCount="1404" Body="&lt;p&gt;Detailed research is all very well, but quite honestly there are times when it would just be a better use of your time to fire off a quick question and get a quick reply from the bounteous well of &lt;em&gt;Helpful People On The Internet&lt;/em&gt;. To pay the good deed forward you could give a little of your time to answering the questions of others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm primarily talking about things that can be answered in a flash by someone who knows an area (which could be a literal area or an area of knowledge), but which I would have to spend quite a lot of time delving into to even find out which forum, Stack Exchange or otherwise, would be best place to get an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To illustrate, here are two questions of the sort I mean: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/16865/female-pet-names-that-a-londoner-might-use&quot;&gt;Female pet names that a Londoner might use?&lt;/a&gt; - asked on Writing.SE &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/254742/how-to-stay-true-to-a-welsh-setting&quot;&gt;How to stay true to a Welsh setting&lt;/a&gt; - asked in EnglishLanguage.SE&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was very happy to offer answers to both questions, but many people do not approve of this sort of question appearing on StackExchange. One of the questions above was closed, and the other got votes to close. Similar questions on Worldbuilding.StackExchange have had a similar mixed reception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main question is &lt;strong&gt;whether there is a forum where writers are unquestionably welcome to ask and answer questions of this sort.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Lurking in the wings I have a potential second question as to whether Writing.StackExchange should be such a forum. But perhaps that would be better asked in meta - and in any case if somewhere else is already open to such questions, there is no need to start a controversy here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also types of questions that I would like to ask in this &quot;Research Exchange for Writers&quot; forum (if it exists) that would probably be rejected as idea generation here. Things like suggestions for plausible names of characters, places or institutions in foreign countries, requests for little snatches of dialogue in foreign languages, suggestions as to advice on convincing little details to add to the dialogue of characters from backgrounds or places unfamiliar to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the hope of heading off criticism for being slapdash, I would like to emphasize that I'm a great believer in detailed research for the core of your story. However &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/7043/13531&quot;&gt;the level of research suggested in this excellent answer&lt;/a&gt; would be just too time consuming when all you want to do is have a secondary character throw out a few words about his job or her hometown. For me, spending too much time on that is an addictive temptation I must avoid. This is why I'm looking for a place where I can get answers quickly, if anyone knows of one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-18T13:06:57.930" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T13:06:57.930" Title="An online resource where writers can get quick answers to questions about the real world?" Tags="|resources|research|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20108" CreationDate="2015-12-16T15:26:48.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can suggest &lt;strong&gt;reddit.com/r/[country/city name]&lt;/strong&gt; - it will get you answers from any half-civilized moderately populated part of the world. Just take the answers with a grain of salt. You're likely to get some regional inside joke answers and the likes among them. You really shouldn't ask the locals for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/krakow/comments/3ur5wg/what_to_see_in_nowa_huta/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Wpierdol&quot; when visiting Nowa Huta&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T15:26:48.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20092" CreationDate="2015-12-16T21:57:45.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key to making the reader feel sad is to get them emotionally invested in the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I'm reminded of a book I read years ago where a character was introduced, and in the space of just a page or two the writer described some tragedy in her life and then described her crying and screaming. And I thought: That was way too fast. I haven't had time to get invested in this character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, suppose that the person that you love the most in the world, your wife or your mother or the buddy that you went through hell in the war with or whatever, came to you with tears rolling down their face and said, &quot;Oh, I just don't know what to do, please help me.&quot; It is likely that you would be instantly sympathetic and want to know what's wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now suppose you were walking down the street and some total stranger came up and did exactly the same thing. Your reaction would likely be to flippantly say, &quot;Hey, I'm sorry, but I can't help you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if you want the reader to feel sorry for a character, you have to build up a connection between the character and the reader. You have to get the reader to like the character, to get him interested in what he or she is doing and what is happening to them. THEN we may care when they have problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skillful wording of the description of their unhappiness is certainly a plus. But frankly I think it's the lesser element. I've read plenty of stories wherer the writer gets me involved with a character, and then throws in a totally stark description of a tragedy. Like, &quot;And then George turned around and Sally was gone.&quot; If I care about George and Sally, and I understand that they are some place where being separated is a serious problem, this is enough to make me understand George's panic and fear. It doesn't need a lot of flowery words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the converse, though, if a story began, &quot;George and Sally were travelling far from home. They were walking through the streets of a strange city when suddenly George realized that Sally was gone. He was filled with panic and fear. He could feel himself shaking. What, he wailed to himself, will I do?&quot; The writer could go on and on and I probably still won't care, because I don't care about the character yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T21:57:45.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20089" CreationDate="2015-12-17T00:30:09.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Underlines are only for links; don't use them in copy for anything else (outside certain legal contexts). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either use bold/italic or quotes, but not both. It's redundant. Which one you choose will depend on what's easiest to read. If you have many of these steps and commands, I would go with a bold or italic, as too many quotes gets visually exhausting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T00:30:09.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20114" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-17T00:38:04.337" Score="13" ViewCount="755" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a particular character in my story who I feel is great. He's a retired monster hunter who settled down with his wife for his later years. He's all-around friendly, respectful, empathetic, wise, and still extremely strong compared to the average man (albeit pathetic compared to younger fighters). Overall, the typical Obi-Wan, who works as the conscience for my anti-hero and the passion for my reluctant hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what irritates me is that I can find no obvious flaw in his character. He has bad manners (while remaining respectful of people), is extremely nostalgic for his old life and is often overlooked or forgotten by other characters. While those three traits are nice quirks, I don't really feel them to be flaws. How do I continue developing his character so that it has flaws, making him more well-rounded and realistic? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14251" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T04:20:16.690" LastActivityDate="2019-05-10T14:31:01.997" Title="How do I find flaws in a character I'm building?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20114" CreationDate="2015-12-17T00:45:51.130" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overbearing pride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's done a lot. He's seen a lot. He has a lot of experience. He's very accomplished, and he thinks anyone would benefit from learning from him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;nostalgia&quot; and &quot;being overlooked&quot; you mentioned are the keys. He loved being helpful, loved being the strong protector, loved being the one everyone came to, loved the &lt;em&gt;attention.&lt;/em&gt; It was for good reasons, but still. He enjoyed the spotlight, and now he doesn't have it any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe he wants to teach the reluctant hero because he wants the hero's praise and adulation. He may genuinely have a lot to offer, but he's being a jerk about offering it because he's honestly a little desperate for the old days when everyone admired him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is very proud of what he did back in the day, and he wants everyone to remember it. It's not that his accomplishments are petty, because they are significant, but they were a while ago. So he feels like he has to remind everyone of what he did, often, and he's hoping to be asked to teach so he can be useful and admired again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T00:45:51.130" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20087" CreationDate="2015-12-17T01:38:01.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are good answers for the writing portion of overcoming writers' block. Although what really gets me going is when I step away from my story. I go outside, visit my art classroom, read my other stories, play Smash Bros... Pretty much anything that lets me decompress. It's at these times that I can let myself think more easily.&#xA;When you relax or go to a place where you're used to thinking, you can vent out the crap that gets in the way, imagine things more freely and overall rejuvenate yourself for the next time you sit down.&#xA;Focusing on your story and writing non-stop for extended periods of time can cloud your thought process and make you bored. Give yourself some slack. It'll work wonders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14251" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T01:38:01.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19635" CreationDate="2015-12-17T04:16:11.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting subject. I have an idea in my head, but it might come across as sloppy as I try to write it down.&#xA;Selfishness is a single character trait, which plays off of other traits, so of course there's no specific set of phrases you can use.&#xA;As adressed by other answers, dialogue should not be the only thing that proves her selfishness. Body language, decision-making, opinions and thought process are all affected by this trait. If this isn't done, her self-centeredness becomes an informed attribute.&#xA;For dialogue in particular, you should consider what your character is thinking as she speaks. For example, if she thinks her opinion is more important than other people's, she should speak as if her authority is a given. This can result in her being blunt or indignant when people disagree with her. Some of the best things to say are voicing exactly what she's thinking.&#xA;Extending on that last point, she thinks she's always justified. Her thought process should paint her as the victim when things go awry.&#xA;Just a few suggestions. I'm sure there's someone out there who can say it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14251" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T04:16:11.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20108" CreationDate="2015-12-17T05:35:39.983" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's productive to look for one web site that would answer any question you might have as a writer. The expertise required would be too broad. I think it would make more sense to go to web sites specifically targeted to your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A writer might well have questions ranging from &quot;what are common names that people give to pets in London&quot; to &quot;how do women in Afghanistan greet each other&quot; to &quot;how much fuel would be required for a space ship containing ten people to travel to Mars&quot; to ... etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A site geared to writers would presumably attract writers. There is no reason to believe that other writers would be knowledgeable about any conceivable subject that you might be writing about. If you want to know about rice farming in Bangladesh, you're better to go to a site about Bangladesh or about farming than to a site for writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, &lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt; don't mind if you want to post such questions here and see if anyone has a useful answer. But I think the moderators will shoot you down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T05:35:39.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20114" CreationDate="2015-12-17T09:17:21.470" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing about character flaws is that people who have them will often think they are assets. Its possible you are looking at all your character's attributes and imagining them to all be positive assets. Perhaps you could look again, because it's up to you as a storyteller to pontificate on any issue, and not necessarily pass judgment in the most obvious manner. Ask yourself if there is a dark side or a weakness inherent in these attributes, then use your story world to bring that idea to life. In other words, think: my character is &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt;, but the world needs &lt;em&gt;that.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could put a negative spin (via the story) on pretty much everything you stated. He's lazy, naive, cut off from the world's problems (purposely). He thinks everything's going to be fine, everyone's nice deep down, and the world doesn't need his input anymore. He's a physical guy, a gentle giant, when the world needs a cynical manipulator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this may lead to a somewhat dark story. You might prefer to build a world where your hero's niceness, strength etc. are the solutions to the overall issue, and then work backwards to create reasons why he is initially unable to deploy those attributes. Those could be your flaws. Perhaps he has a learned behaviour to hide his niceness from all but his closest friends, or perhaps the world* perceives them as weakness, and he (wrongly) agrees, leading to his isolation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*And when I refer to 'the world' I mean the most influential characters in your story, or the 'problem-space' not necessarily everybody in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T09:17:21.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20114" CreationDate="2015-12-17T12:28:34.710" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's already good answers here, so I'll add in what I think are some of my techniques for constructing rounded characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Making Strengths Into Weaknesses&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ever heard the phrase 'honest-to-a-fault'? Even the most noble and virtuous of attributes can become weaknesses if they are improperly moderated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to stretch a trait such as determination and turn it into ruthlessness, having someone so single minded on achieving a goal that they will climb over others in order to get there. People who have a great work ethic can sometimes also be stubborn when it comes to admitting defeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, having someone who is wise and experienced may also make them stubborn and close minded, unwilling to listen to the opinion of others because he believes that he is correct due to his greater levels of experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Making Them A Hypocrite&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody is perfect, and sometimes even the most idealist of people can fall off of the wagon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having someone following their own rules all the time to the letter doesn't always make the most interesting character. Interesting moments occur when a character has their ideals tested, and then they may break them for 'the greater good', or to help achieve their goals in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Characters don't have to be a &quot;do as I say, not as I do&quot; type of person, sometimes it's just impossible for people to maintain their views all of the time. They may be challenged in such a way as they will change their beliefs in order to fit with new revelations, going entirely against something that they staunchly maintained previously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your example character may train your hero for a long time, building them up to accomplish a certain goal/ quest, only at the last minute to sabotage their chances in order to allow room for the anti-hero to tackle the challenge instead, as he believes they are more experienced/ qualified to handle it despite the training that the hero has received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a pretty radical example, but it can make a character more interesting to realize that they were only being kind in order to use the hero as a means to an end, and switching as soon as a better option presented itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Having Compatible Qualities&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to the &quot;strengths into weaknesses&quot; point, certain qualities fit with certain types of people, whereas others don't. As suggested in another answer, pride would work very well based on the description of your example character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certain things that would be very incompatible, and would be a difficult character to make believable. For example having a character who is helpful and performs kind deeds for others anonymously, but they're also a narcissist, would be a struggle to pull off. Why would someone who is self-absorbed perform these acts in the first place, of they weren't doing it to receive recognition? Or a self-made business tycoon who is lazy; they wouldn't be able to achieve such success if they had that flaw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="13149" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T15:20:12.543" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T15:20:12.543" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20114" CreationDate="2015-12-17T16:02:01.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone who is &quot;extremely nostalgic for his old life and is often overlooked or forgotten by other characters&quot; has trouble fitting into the modern world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not necessarily a &quot;flaw,&quot; but will certainly be seen as such by more &quot;with it &quot; people. More to the point, that is a character trait that will irritate others in a manner that will create the conflict you want. At least when he exerts himself and tries to make himself &quot;relevant&quot; to people who would rather not regard him as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T16:02:01.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20123" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20125" CreationDate="2015-12-17T16:07:18.910" Score="1" ViewCount="1330" Body="&lt;p&gt;My actual passage is a bit involved, but I've had this come up a few times over the years, and I've never resolved the issue. So I'll give a generic passage. I posted this question on ELU but didn't get very far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mars, the Red Planet. But to the Romans, he was the God of War! Herein lies the story [?]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine this as a prologue or at the end of a prologue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A period doesn't seem right. If I use ellipses, three dots or four? If four, &lt;strong&gt;... .&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;....&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;. ...&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T16:25:42.923" Title="Use of ellipses at the end of a passage" Tags="|style|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-12-20T00:14:39.897" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20114" CreationDate="2015-12-17T16:23:41.873" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I do as I'm discovering my characters is to just write them into scene after scene. Don't worry about whether the scene has anything to do with your story. Put him in an argument with his wife. Sit him next to a drunk at the bar. Put a pebble in his shoe. Have the neighbor knock on his door at dinnertime. Just put him in a bunch of scenarios and write them. He'll reveal himself to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, because this is just discovery, we pitch all those scenes and get to work on the real story with a new understanding of the character. (This discovery phase could even change some foundational elements of your story.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T16:23:41.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20123" CreationDate="2015-12-17T16:25:42.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An ellipsis is always three dots. However, when used at the end of a sentence, a period is also used, meaning that the ellipsis appears to have four dots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There appears to be different standard formats for the spacing between the period and the ellipsis depending on what it is being used for, whether you are referencing a quote for example. Unless you wanted to research the different standards, I would say simply choose one standard and be consistent with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for when using an ellipsis is appropriate, in creative writing I tend to use it for when something is supposed to be left unfinished, such as a trailing thought. Your example, I would say, constitutes an appropriate usage, as the sentiment behind the sentence is unfinished, with the story following on from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T16:25:42.923" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20126" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20133" CreationDate="2015-12-17T20:16:21.433" Score="9" ViewCount="1314" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a speech on using symbols, and I've just made the statement that you should generally stick with one, maybe two, symbols that span the story (smaller symbols that arise and fade quickly don't apply to this limit so much). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I now have to back my statement up. I know why you don't want too many symbols in a novel, but I'm having trouble articulating the exact reason. I feel it isn't just that the reader might become confused (though that could be part of it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I say 'symbol,' I'm speaking of a large symbol, something that spans the majority of the novel and plays a large part. Think the One Ring in LotR. It wouldn't be quite so strong if Frodo had to also destroy a jacket and five pebbles, but I can't quite say why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone tell me the main reason you don't want too many symbols in a novel? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2017-07-26T10:05:45.993" Title="Why is having too many symbols a bad idea?" Tags="|fiction|symbolism|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20108" CreationDate="2015-12-17T21:03:41.753" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might have a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://little-details.livejournal.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Little Details&lt;/a&gt; community on LiveJournal. The administrators describe the purpose of the site as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a large, diverse membership that can answer questions such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;If I hit my character on the head like so, what will happen?&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Will this destroy the Earth?&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All types of fiction writers--professional, amateur, fanfiction,&#xA;original--are welcome to post questions. Our focus is on factual&#xA;accuracy rather than general writing advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few rules regarding posting that can be found listed on the community's &lt;a href=&quot;http://little-details.livejournal.com/profile&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;profile page&lt;/a&gt;, the most pertinent of which are listed below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At least attempt to research your question before posting. This means a Google search, at the very least. If your question isn't the&#xA;type that can be googled or you need help coming up with fruitful&#xA;search terms, no worries; just say so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If someone asks for a translation of a word or phrase into another language, don't refer them to Google Translate or another automatic&#xA;translation site. Automatic translation has gotten a lot better since&#xA;this community was founded back in 2004, but it can still give results&#xA;that are nothing like what a native speaker would say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid giving the impression of reliability where there is none. Most of the writers who ask questions here are looking for accurate&#xA;information. If you're only offering speculation or information from&#xA;an unreliable source, then let the poster know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10153" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T21:03:41.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20089" CreationDate="2015-12-17T21:37:36.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/microsoft-manual-of-style-9780735648715&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications&lt;/a&gt;, for commands on menus and buttons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bold in procedures; capitalization follows that of user interface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the convention we use for technical documentation in my company, as well, and correlates to your last example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Click &lt;strong&gt;Setting&lt;/strong&gt; then click &lt;strong&gt;Options&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10153" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T21:37:36.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20108" CreationDate="2015-12-17T21:52:17.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out the forums at &lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Novel Writing Month&lt;/a&gt;'s site. It looks like they've reorganized things since I've participated, but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org/forums/reference-desk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reference Desk&lt;/a&gt; forum is probably where you can ask stuff like that. Of course, it's most populated during NaNoWriMo (November), but the site's up all year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T21:52:17.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20130" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-17T22:50:03.123" Score="1" ViewCount="738" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking at writing a book with code samples, hints, and other stuff, and was wondering what type of word processor would be recommended for writing a book that's 50+ pages (including code samples) when all finished. For a good example see an O'Reilly book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For writing my outline and forward I used open office word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16213" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T04:10:36.660" Title="What word processor is recommended for writing a technical (programming) book?" Tags="|software|process|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20130" CreationDate="2015-12-18T02:09:39.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common text editor/publishing platform within the (academic) computer scoience community is Latex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3762" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T02:09:39.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20130" CreationDate="2015-12-18T04:10:36.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You haven't specified any preferences for format (source or output), and that's going to be relevant.  If it's up to you, for your source I recommend a text (not binary-format) markup language -- HTML, XML, LaTeX, or similar.  A text source &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10443/1993&quot;&gt;works well with source control&lt;/a&gt;, works with grep/find/search, and supports meaningful diff.  All of these (assuming a reasonable XML DTD or schema like DocBook) support all the basic formatting you'll need for a programming book, including code blocks and cross-references.  If you're formatting for the web then your HTML source is also your output (done!); for LaTeX or XML source or if you need to format for print (PDF), you'll need to run some sort of generator to turn your source into output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've decided on the format you can move on to choosing a tool.  While WYSIWYG tools like Word and Open Office allow you to export various formats, choosing a tool that lets you write in your preferred format to begin with will be easier to manage.  There are two basic categories of options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your favorite text editor, if you are fluent in the format to begin with.  It's actually quite reasonable to write HTML directly in emacs, for example.  (You probably only need to learn 10-20 tags.)  Downside: no syntax-checking; you can write invalid markup and the tool won't care.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of LaTeX-aware editors.  For HTML and XML, there are tools that help you with the syntax and make it hard or impossible to use invalid tags.  Options range from inexpensive (Notepad++) to lower-cost (Oxygen) to higher-cost (Flare) to expensive (Arbortext anything).  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_XML_editors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; compares features among a bunch of XML editors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As noted earlier, for LaTeX or XML source you'll need to run a program to turn your source into an output format before you can inspect the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T04:10:36.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20126" CreationDate="2015-12-18T11:15:06.773" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are probably many reasons, but I feel that this is the big one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;With each additional symbol, their individual importance lessens&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everything is based around a single symbol, then it makes the stakes much higher when everything is revolving around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if, as you say in your example of LOTR, all of the items were together, possibilities of Frodo losing The One Ring become less meaningful and would have less impact, as he would still have a handful of items about his person that are also important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read stories where, for example, there are three magical stones that hold a great power. But they are never separated, never even referenced as being separate entities, and the &lt;em&gt;three stones&lt;/em&gt; become &lt;em&gt;one symbol&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand what you mean about the difficulty of articulating this idea, I'm struggling to come up with the words myself without throwing a bunch of examples out and hoping that their significance is understood from the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose we can only be invested in so much within a story. If there are a massive amount of symbols being carried throughout the story, and we need to be just as concerned with each individual symbol, then we can only be focused on them so much before we have to divert our attention to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story would become over-saturated with things that we need to be concerned about, and eventually the reader would realize that they don't mean all that much if there are just others cropping up all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T11:15:06.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20024" CreationDate="2015-12-18T12:31:10.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know how you feel because I am a foreigner myself. As a translator I know many people who can write in English but need someone to review their texts. The problem we foreigners have is not only the insufficient vocabulary, although this is common too, but a problem of choosing the right words and expressions. In technical writing, if the technical words are the right ones, the style does not matter much, but in literary writing the text must convey the right feelings and should have nothing that disturbs the reader's attention to the story. What I suggest is that, after you write your story, you find a native English speaker to review it. It must be someone who is a fan of the kind of story you have written, and who can write well. Instruct the reviewer to find any passages that do not sound natural. He should rewrite all those passages, replace many words with better synonyms, break some long sentences, and often ask you what you mean, instead of risking a wrong interpretation. Usually you would have to spend money to get a good reviewer. Maybe 30 dollars per thousand words. Think of this as an investment in an English writing course for yourself: if you analyze the corrections you will learn a lot. To select a reviewer (you will get many applicants if you are paying well) prepare a test. Let me talk about a similar experience I had. In this case I spent no money, the native speaker analyzed my originals and I (as a science fiction fan) read her book and commented on her science fiction novel, finding the need for (and recommending) some futuristic elements (her text itself seemed very well written). When she was going to start reviewing my book, she was afraid I might resist too much criticism, and offered to do only the minimum changes, but I insisted that I wanted everything she could contribute. As a result, I realized that my original (suggestions of games for children and adults) had been written in a too formal style (an influence from my past technical writing and translating work in Portuguese!) and then I realized I had to rewrite everything to write informal, fun to read game instructions, and submit to the reviewer again for fine tuning!!! Maybe you can be lucky enough to find an arrangement like that! Don't think that to be a good writer you have to work unassisted!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16040" LastEditorUserId="16040" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T12:39:30.463" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T12:39:30.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20126" CreationDate="2015-12-18T13:44:39.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The more symbols you have, the more your story becomes an allegory --a conceptual or abstract argument conveyed through metaphor and narrative --and the less it functions in its own right as a piece of fiction.  Having one or two symbols in an otherwise realistic story can add psychological depth and resonance, but more than that and you run the risk of ruining the reader's suspension of disbelief and ability to enjoy the narrative directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is driven more by demands of the symbology than by the plot or characters, then you've written an allegory, not a story.  That's not always a bad thing, but it's not what most writers are striving for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T13:52:36.013" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T13:52:36.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20137" CreationDate="2015-12-18T16:48:17.500" Score="6" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a common(ish) name, with at least one other writer out there with my exact name, although he writes in a different genre than I'm interested in, and another with a similar name that DOES write in my field of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I like my name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it make more sense to pick a different name so I don't get confused with the other authors, or go ahead an use it and enjoy the accidental popularity that might come from people's confusion? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T17:23:46.523" Title="Should I use a pen name so I don't get confused with other authors with similar names?" Tags="|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20136" CreationDate="2015-12-18T17:23:46.523" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;That would be an excellent question for an agent or publisher. If you're remotely ambivalent, use their suggestion. You can also use a middle initial. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use pseudonyms for personal and professional reasons, but my long-term experience for fiction is about 3:1 in favor of authors using their actual name and more like 10:1 for nonfiction. If you have journal articles or other academic works, you should continue to use your actual name because reputation is such a key. With fiction, class shows, regardless of reputation. Even John Grisham has a few books well below the radar screen only to come back with a bestseller. Of course, one must get on the radar screen ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T17:23:46.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20126" CreationDate="2015-12-18T18:30:24.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I absolutely agree with @Mike.C.Ford. The importance of each individual symbol lessens in your reader’s mind the more you throw into your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is also a more practical aspect from the author’s perspective: it just takes a lot more work to explain why each symbol is critically important in its own right. It is also far more difficult to maintain each symbol’s importance throughout the story, so as to keep your reader from wondering what the big deal would be in losing one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think those are the two sides of the coin that make multiple symbols a challenging proposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Mike.C.Ford underlines, a common solution lies in binding the multiple symbols together, showing how they form a single unit. Think of the Deathly Hallows in Harry Potter: each Hallow is powerful in its own right, but when they are combined, their power is magnified to provide dominion over death itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2686" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T18:30:24.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20140" CreationDate="2015-12-19T04:30:57.593" Score="12" ViewCount="770" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a science fiction novel. The characters are almost uniformly pirates and/or miners in the asteroid belt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having worked in the mining industry, and grown up around mining towns in Western Australia, I am quite well versed in the use of foul language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is, many people in the mining industry use language which would make a soldier blush continuously. I have known people who are able to fit four swearwords in a six word sentence. Swearwords can almost be used like punctuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And pirates, especially those who come from a mining, military or industrial background would likely be comfortable with a level of foul language and general lack of decorum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my book so far, I've maybe used an average of two or three swearwords per chapter. Far, far below the levels I've encountered in real life. And I'm aching to include more of the 'creative' combinations of possibly offensive words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are the benefits of trying to achieve a realistic pattern of speech, and a level of immersion that suits the environment I've chosen to write about outweighed by the possibility of offending my readers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I have no problem with reading books or watching films which include swearwords (numbed to it I guess), but I'm aware that some people might have cause to be offended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16197" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2019-03-07T22:14:13.550" LastActivityDate="2019-03-07T22:14:13.550" Title="Swearing in a book, within a context. Too offensive?" Tags="|style|language|readers|profanity|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2015-12-19T05:43:07.933" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write the story you want to write. Some people will take offense. That's okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read any chapter of Game of Thrones that has an adult viewpoint character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch any episode of Deadwood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people will take offense. That's okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T05:43:07.933" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2015-12-19T05:51:47.317" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Swearing can be tricky and in general it's not a great idea to over use it.  However, I think that if you do it in context and use it sparingly then there isn't a problem with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opening line of the book, &quot;The Martian,&quot; uses the F word, and it's not having any problems with sales and was turned into a movie, but you should be aware that by including swear words in your work, you're going to limit your audience to some degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem you might run into by including cursing is if your over use of it becomes so annoying to the reader that they are pulled mentally out of the story, then they'll be unlikely to recommend your book to friends.  That's not what you want.  A good way to find out if you've gone over the line is by getting a good cross section of people to be your beta readers.  Find out what they think.  Not everyone will like it, but if the majority think there's no problem, then you're probably OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And don't forget, even Tolkien used swear words in &quot;The Lord of the Rings&quot; when he had the orcs say the word, &quot;garn.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T05:51:47.317" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20024" CreationDate="2015-12-19T12:28:13.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to speak Spanish quite well, as a second language. The language I learned was conversational Spanish rather than literary Spanish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was more difficult to read a novel than a newspaper for example, because the vocabulary used in a novel is quite different to the language that people generally use day to day, much more descriptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was still able to write reasonably effectively in Spanish though. Short stories, songs and poetry (mostly stream of consciousness mostly, no sonnets thankfully).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to use the vocabulary you already have. You already know when you have a combination of words that work, that make you feel great when you put them on the page. Maybe the grammar is incorrect, maybe a word doesn't have quite the meaning that you intend it to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this can also be part of your personality as a writer. It can be part of your 'voice'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any big mistakes can be pointed out by a friend, editor or proof reader.  And it is all part of the learning experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practise makes perfect... Except that it doesn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been speaking, reading and writing in English most of my life (I've taken a year or two off), and I'm still learning. I'll continue to mess it up, but hopefully learn by my mistakes until I'm in the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said: Read, read, read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And Write, write, write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16197" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T12:28:13.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20080" CreationDate="2015-12-19T17:03:47.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dibs to Al Xavier and his Bernard Cornwell quotes. I was thinking something similar.&#xA;For one, an inexperienced writer shouldn't be expected to boot out a classic first go. The way your answer is written, though, seems to imply that a beginning writer is only capable of writing crap. This is the opposite extreme and still a lie.&#xA;Many writers do write one or two &quot;throwaway&quot; novels before publishing. I myself am writing a story I'm truly invested in, but don't expect to go too far.&#xA;Give yourself some slack. Enjoy your story, write like you mean it, and keep it as remembrance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14251" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T17:03:47.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2015-12-19T20:37:26.463" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at your characters. If they are people who are likely to swear then to strip them of that is to make your characters less realistic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the scenes you're creating, if you're writing the conversation between a group of mid-twenties guys in a bar, it would be strange if they didn't swear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously your perceived audience comes into that, if you're writing a children's book, then you probably shouldn't! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're putting your audience's reactions before what your gut is telling you about your characters then the end result is going to feel like you have watered down your own emotions for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write the characters you want, with the language they would use. It is the only way to write well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T20:37:26.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20126" CreationDate="2015-12-20T05:23:57.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ring in LOTR is not a symbol. Because of the timing of its publication many took the ring to be a symbol for the bomb, but Tolkien denied this, and the history of composition makes it impossible. (Lewis talks about this a length in one of his essays.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A symbol is simply an idea or image that stands for another idea. What matters in a work is that you have a certain unity of theme. Many symbols that point to the same theme will reinforce it. Many symbols pointing in different directions will muddy it. It is not the number of symbols but the way they are used that matters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ring, on the other hand, is a McGuffin. The is the thing everyone wants that drives the plot. Too many McGuffin's can fragment and fracture a plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LOTR would not be as strong if Frodo had to destroy a jacket and five pebbles because the point of the book is not the objects, but the temptation of power and the capacity of love to resist it (Sam, who acts purely out of his love for Frodo, is the only ringbearer to voluntarily give it back, and the only one able to remain in Middle Earth after carrying it.) The ring is just the object of temptation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional McGuffins would do nothing to add to this theme, and would take the focus away from the central theme and place it in the mechanics of destroying magical objects. And then it would be an ordinary run of the mill fantasy and not one of the great books of the 20th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-07-26T10:05:45.993" LastActivityDate="2017-07-26T10:05:45.993" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2015-12-20T05:50:19.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any reader perverse enough to read &lt;strong&gt;50 Shades of Grey&lt;/strong&gt; can handle more than a few swear words. Apparently, there's about 100 million of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-12-20T05:50:19.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20126" CreationDate="2015-12-20T08:19:22.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When studying a classic author (let's say Shakespeare), it's pretty normal that the teacher/prof needs to explain a lot of the symbolism to us because we don't even understand it. So as writers, we can be prone to imitating this by adding lots of complicated, hard-to-understand symbolism, believing it will make the story &quot;deeper&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the reason the symbolism needs to be explained is not because Shakespeare was trying to add lots of complicated, hard-to-understand symbolism. It's because of the huge cultural and linguistic gap between his era and ours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the reader should be able to readily understand the significance of a symbol without even realizing that it's... cue ominous music... symbolism. Your example of the One Ring in LOTR is perfect - it symbolizes a lot, and yet no one watching it is thinking &quot;that's symbolism&quot; - they simply understand its significance instinctively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping symbolism simple and apparent will maximize its effect, and this is best achieved by sticking with a few simple symbols.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16228" LastActivityDate="2015-12-20T08:19:22.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20080" CreationDate="2015-12-20T08:27:03.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once felt the same way about my ideas, and actually didn't write the ones I liked best, telling myself I would &quot;save them till I am ready.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking back, here's how I feel about them now:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can't really write them the same way now because I am in a different phase of my life - I can't properly write a story about my experiences in high school or university, because they're just fading memories now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am not as interested in those ideas as I once was - new ideas have come in and replaced them, and when I look back, they don't seem as good as they did at the time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice would be that there's no better time to write the story then when you're passionate about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16228" LastActivityDate="2015-12-20T08:27:03.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20087" CreationDate="2015-12-20T08:32:57.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've got a few ideas for stories &quot;on the backburner&quot;, try working on a different one for a bit. Once the words start flowing again, you'll probably find you can go back to the first story and get back at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16228" LastActivityDate="2015-12-20T08:32:57.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19382" CreationDate="2015-12-20T09:00:53.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of your examples could be made grammatically &quot;correct&quot; by adding a word (e.g. &quot;I told you [that] he doesn't work on Mondays&quot;, but would also make the speech sound much less natural. I would say that it's perfectly fine to splice commas in dialogue. (Who knows, maybe someday it will even be considered grammatically acceptable?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm really worried about someone complaining about comma splices, I'll sometimes use a dash instead: &quot;Don't worry -- I won't tell anyone.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16228" LastActivityDate="2015-12-20T09:00:53.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20154" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20170" CreationDate="2015-12-20T21:37:37.083" Score="1" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some good, true travel stories.  Things that involve guns, explosions, and all kinds of other good stuff.  I want to write them down, but I'm having trouble envisioning how to present the stories.  I don't want to embellish, and it would go against my ethics to stray into creative writing in a non-fiction account (eg. &quot;the sun illuminated his eyes as he looked down his gun sight&quot; is stretching into the realm of creative writing to me, instead of staying in non-fiction land.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, simply stating what happened: &quot;Then I did this.  Then that guy did that.  Then we all had a good laugh.&quot; is boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how can I present my true travel stories in a way that is both interesting to someone on the Internet who had no association with the events the stories talk about, and that does not take too much creative license?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13268" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T16:13:48.550" Title="How to make travel stories interesting?" Tags="|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20154" CreationDate="2015-12-20T22:00:59.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to use a lot of dialogue. It allows you to avoid narrative information dumps and will prevent you from being too opinionated compared to simply being selective about presented material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Narrative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ben-Yaden relaxed his grip on the trigger. He couldn't be sure if the man within his sites was Jew or Palestinian. He knew his orders, but he was a human being, after all. Even if there was a shred of doubt ... He didn't complete the thought before an explosion rocked the ground and shrapnel flew in all direction. Ben-Yaden didn't even take cover, awaiting his marks next move.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ben-Yaden yelled in Hebrew, &quot;Show me a Star of David or you're a dead man!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His adversary stood silent. Ben-Yaden tried again in Arabic--he could swear better than speak. &quot;Listen to me, motherf--ker! Show me your fu--ing hands!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BOOM!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ben-Yaden didn't even flinch. He knew what had just happened. He looked his mark square in the eye and demanded in Arabic, &quot;Don't you move. Don't you fu--ing move.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-12-20T22:00:59.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20154" CreationDate="2015-12-20T22:30:41.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Travel stories are about the longing for something with a counterpoint of fear of the unknown and its dangers. To make your story interesting, find the object of longing and find the the source of peril. The longing and the peril may be great or small, but they are always at the heart of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have guns and explosions, the perils are pretty clear. What is the longing that drives the traveller to brave these perils?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2015-12-20T22:30:41.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20154" CreationDate="2015-12-20T22:43:53.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't want to embellish, and it would go against my ethics to stray into creative writing in a non-fiction account &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you're off-base here. &lt;em&gt;Memoirs&lt;/em&gt; (which is what you're writing) are not transcripts of history. Yes, they are recitations of actual facts and events which occurred to the writer, but nobody remembers every detail of first grade with photographic precision (unless you happen to have eidetic memory). The writer is going to add, trim, and edit to make it work as a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with smoothing out the dry facts of your narrative into something readable and interesting. That's not embellishment or what you dismiss as &quot;creative writing.&quot; That's &lt;em&gt;editing.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the dry fact is &quot;I caught two trout,&quot; &lt;em&gt;embellishment&lt;/em&gt; is &quot;I caught four monstrous trout!&quot; and &lt;em&gt;creative writing&lt;/em&gt; is &quot;After two days at sea, with no power, no GPS, and diminishing supplies, I finally sighted the great white shark. He reared out of the water and fixed me with one fathomless black eye. I took aim with my trusty flare gun...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-20T22:43:53.773" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20158" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-21T01:13:31.703" Score="3" ViewCount="451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a book of poetry, and I want to use John Collier's (1892) painting of Lilith as the cover. I won't be selling the book though; giving it away for free. Can I legally use the painting as the cover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16231" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2019-03-26T19:27:45.920" LastActivityDate="2019-03-27T06:00:40.237" Title="Can I use an old painting of Lilith as my book cover?" Tags="|copyright|legal|book-cover|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20159" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-21T03:43:07.917" Score="4" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I include my own words (of an extra information) within the quotation? Can I do it in the following way, with the words in bracket being my own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote the words of the Buddha:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Here, Rahula, some monks [the Buddha has been pointing to himself, according to the commentary] live in forest. …”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if I use the aforementioned method, the problem is that the readers won't know whether the words in bracket are added later. So how to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16232" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2015-12-21T14:05:40.787" LastActivityDate="2015-12-21T14:05:40.787" Title="How can I include my own words within the quotation?" Tags="|technique|citations|academic-writing|research|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20159" CreationDate="2015-12-21T04:10:07.443" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only way to avoid confusion is to put your comment outside the quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the commentary the Buddha was pointing to himself when he said, &quot;Here, Rahula, some monks live in the forest.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16234" LastActivityDate="2015-12-21T04:10:07.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20159" CreationDate="2015-12-21T05:53:07.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Brackets should be used rarely and should be used only when ESSENTIAL extraneous information is necessary for reader understanding or as a necessary grammatical feature at the beginning of a quote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because the reader loses focus. I never finished reading your sentence my first two times through..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would simply remove your brackets in this case. The statement within the brackets could be used at the beginning of the sentence, but it confuses the point in my opinion. If it's possible to delete it without obscuring your thesis, I would consider doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to end the paragraph with the quote and start a new paragraph with &lt;strong&gt;Of note ...&lt;/strong&gt; This would allow you to subsequently  postulate WHY Buddha did what he did. However, that is not your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2015-12-21T13:51:02.983" LastActivityDate="2015-12-21T13:51:02.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20158" CreationDate="2015-12-21T13:39:51.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, his painting would long ago be public domain. Don't know how that works in UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2015-12-21T13:39:51.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20158" CreationDate="2015-12-21T19:58:56.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't answer specifically about this painting held in the Atkinson Art Gallery, but so that this question might be useful to other people I offer the following observations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can go and photograph it yourself, following the rules of the institution in which it is held, you can use the picture, if it is out of copyright. However, many museums and art galleries either prohibit the use of your pictures, insist that you pay a fee to use any image of the artefact, or insist on you paying a fee for the use of their image. This fee varies dramatically. One gallery I know of demanded £5 for use of a picture in an academic book. Others demand hundreds of pounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well, just because you can access an image of the Internet that says it is free to use, doesn't mean that it is: many people do not take account of the fact that images are owned by other people. Photo stock sites offer a way around this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-12-21T19:58:56.227" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20154" CreationDate="2015-12-21T20:12:14.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although the following might seem obvious, some of the things I tell my students include: don't use 'then'. If you have written it well one thing follows from another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, avoid starting sentences in the same way. Particularly avoid starting with 'I' or a similar pronoun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, vary the structure of your sentences for effect. Use simple sentences for pace, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourthly, try to use some similes and metaphors to make your writing more interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fifthly, vary your vocabulary and definitely avoid repeating most words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sixthly, include more details. For example, what did the explosives smell like? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-12-21T20:12:14.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2015-12-21T20:37:26.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;David Williamson wrote a play called 'The Club'. It used swearing. However, a theatre group that came to the school where I was teaching said they could do it without the swearing if we wanted. We wanted. It was just as effective, when acted, without the swearing, as anything we could imagine from the version that used swearing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robert Swindells, in his novel 'Stone Cold' about homelessness, mimics the language of deprived people without using a word that is considered a swear word. He uses other words, I think one is 'frigging', to effectively imitate without offending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I found Roddy Doyle's 'The Commitments' really hard to read out loud because of all the obscenities. Yes, people might speak like that, but art doesn't have to mimic reality. Instead it selects, mediates, edits and enhances reality for the enjoyment, edification, etc. of the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'The White Tiger' (a Booker Prize Winner and so, by definition, by several people considered very well written) uses swearing, of a reasonably extreme type, very rarely and very effectively. The narrator swears and laughs, or one of the characters swears and laughs, and the reader laughs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2015-12-21T20:37:26.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20154" CreationDate="2015-12-22T00:09:43.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have travel stories that sound like they could be interesting, but it doesn't follow that seeing or doing interesting things will make interesting stories unless you tell them as a story, with beginnings, middles, endings, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of this depends on who your audience is.  If you're giving an after action report to an Incident Commander after spending the day fighting a wildfire, the type of writing you'll use is completely different than the type of writing you'd use as you describe to your friends how you were driving through the forest road escaping from a flareup and the stupid bear wouldn't get out of your way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that it's against your ethics to make stuff up, and that would be appropriate in an after action report or other kinds of reporting, where the facts of what happened rule over emotional impact and enjoyment, but in a story you can't use dry factual reporting and keep people's attention.  This isn't making things up, it's being true to the essence of what happened and helping your readers feel as if they're in your shoes experiencing the things you're telling them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is, are you writing a story or a report, and who is your audience?  If your audience is expecting a story and you give them a report, then you'll lose your audience.  If your commanding officer, or your editor is expecting a report and you give them a story, they might enjoy it, but still be unhappy because they had to dig through your writing to find the facts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T00:09:43.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2015-12-22T04:29:13.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That would depend on the audience. If you are writing for a certain age group, consider that. If you are a writing a book hoping that it will reach a lot of different ages, or types of people, consider that too. If you are going to publish a book, I would think the idea is to gain a lot of readers who enjoy your work, but also make enough sales that you can hopefully live off the things you write. So if you are going to write things that are going to be offensive to people, it might have a negative impact on possible sales, or such. I like what Tave says about how a play with cursing is just as affective with-out cursing. It would depend on what you are trying to achieve. You can chose to focus on the story more. If that's what you want. Cause it is your book, in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example : I also read aloud, and just recently read the entire book &quot;Paper Towns&quot; by John Green to a friend. There is cursing &amp;amp; profanity in the book. (I edited those things out the best I could.) It was realist. The book was good. But I feel books can be either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;draining to read : Where it gives you a yucky type of feeling, sort of like a bad after taste.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;uplifting&quot; or more thoughtful, and leaves you with a better feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paper Towns was a good read, but I think it had a Type 1. effect. Nothing is all coming up roses of course, but I feel the message of the story could be just as affective with-out that bad-after taste feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A message of a story can be just as tragic, sorrowful, deep, &amp;amp; powerful with-out cursing. I think one form of mastering writing is being able to write realistically but doesn't mimic reality. I read to escape the world Im in. Which for the most part is negative, in some points of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend being tasteful. You can make the most 'immoral' characters realistic, in a way that is effective, but doesn't take away from the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write in a way that doesn't often offend people, you will have twice the amount of readers. Of course anything you say can be offensive to people. So yes, write despite that, but keep in mind that people might have ('good') reasons that they are offended about something. But there are also petty reasons too. Balance is key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16244" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T04:29:13.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2015-12-22T06:47:46.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing you must consider, is your own vocabulary. In order for the swearing to SEEM natural, you must be totally comfortable with your own use of curse-words!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, it's akin to Mark Twain's observations on a spinster's &quot;cursing&quot;: You'll know the lyrics, but not the tune!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've known women authors who were excellent word-smiths; but only one who had been able to &quot;write cussing&quot; in a believable manner. I later found that she was the big sister of four brothers, and had a father who'd been an Army drill instructor! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If she was in control of her temper, she was a perfect &quot;Lady;&quot; but if Little Brother pushed her buttons just right, she could cuss so savagely and expertly her words could burn the paint off a Patton tank at 100 yards!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's quite often a rhythm and cadence seen in the expert use of swear-words--- they are USUALLY not merely stuffed into a sentence, every so often. I've known some (rare) &quot;Blue Linguists&quot; who could fluently blend expletives into whole and complete &quot;Profane Paragraphs&quot; which had explored the author's views of some wayward miscreant in exquisite, albeit profane, detail . . . often spanning more than two dozen different profane allusions, with no repeats!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The old-timers would say of such monumental &quot;cursings,&quot; something like: &quot;John cussed him 'till a fly wouldn't light on him!&quot; Memories of the exquisite, intricate, detailed array of expletives would be cherished and memorized, and men would gather to relive the events leading up to the &quot;Cursing!&quot; Each &quot;compound expletive&quot; would be recalled in detail, often arguments would arise as to which curse came before, or after, a particularly monumental &quot;Exotic Expletive,&quot; and men would stand the &quot;orator&quot; to drinks; some would even beg him to reprise his triumphal declarative, albeit profane, monologue. On at least half the occasions of such &quot;declarations,&quot; the object of the diatribe had actually left town, rather than be continually reminded of the &quot;cursing!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am actually very hesitant to repeat one of these profane orations, here; even if it's &quot;for educational purposes only!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are competent to &quot;rip off a good Goddamn,&quot; with feelings of gusto and all the attendant ruffles &amp;amp; flourishes, then go ahead! Use profanity! Your story will be the better for your true-to-life language!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However: If your upbringing and demeanor are such that you don't normally use profanity, attempting to camouflage that by having characters declare: &quot;Puck, puck, puck,&quot; in every sentence; it simply won't work. It won't seem to be authentic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15754" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T06:47:46.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20176" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20178" CreationDate="2015-12-22T08:41:29.563" Score="5" ViewCount="878" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am standing before a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my story I largely developed the background and the world for two main characters: the hero of my stories and a villain. I started with the story of my hero, his life and his actions as a first book. But the villain was so persistent that through months of work he can have his own story and maybe his own book and I am seriously considering it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book about my hero will be the storytelling type where the end of the villain will be written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book about the villain will be in a diary form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The problem here is that when you first read the book about the hero, you will know what happened with the villain.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it a correct way here to merge those stories together and tell both of them in one book?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-12-22T17:52:10.630" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T10:59:44.757" Title="Arch Hero and Arch Nemesis in one book" Tags="|characters|character-development|planning|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20176" CreationDate="2015-12-22T10:22:36.050" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could, but having separate stories is a good idea as well. Knowing the outcome can actually make the story more interesting; think of Anakin Skywalker, who everyone knew from the beginning was going to become Darth Vader. The interesting part here is &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; he became evil, rather than the discovery of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also, as you mentioned, fuse the two stories into one; the risk here is to have two distinct story lines that only fuse together at the very end (depending on how early on the Hero and Villain interact with each other). But it is also an interesting way to keep the reader confused as to which character is the real Hero, and which one is the Villain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever idea you feel most comfortable with, I suppose :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-12-23T10:59:44.757" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T10:59:44.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20176" CreationDate="2015-12-22T10:57:29.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the greatest factor you have to consider is the length of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would combining the stories make your book into a 150,000 word epic? Or if they were separate would there not be enough substance that you would have to invent a lot of filler just to get the word count up? There is precedent for having the stories separate &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; combined, so either is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a villain origin story that is chronologically before the hero's story, but told afterwards, has been done many times (see Star Wars or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderlands:_The_Pre-Sequel!&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!&lt;/a&gt;). This story tends to allow the reader insight into a tragic character, who tries to be a hero but is a victim of circumstance that survives through experiences that causes their ideologies to change, causing them to become villainous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've even read stories told from a villain's perspective &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; they were the villain, which tend to be redemption stories about how the villain of a previous tale attempts to right the wrongs they have committed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Telling both stories in unison, you will likely have to focus on how the two characters are two sides of the same coin. They may both be trying to save the world, but have different ideas of how to do it. It may be that the two main characters are siblings/ friends who have a similar background, but veer onto different paths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever story you tell, in order to tell it from the villain's perspective, you need to make that character &lt;strong&gt;relatable&lt;/strong&gt;. The reader must identify with this character on &lt;em&gt;some level&lt;/em&gt; in order to keep them interested in pursuing their story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may be a The End Justifies The Means villain, or a Disillusioned/ Fallen Hero. They may even just be the absolute worst type of person who has a pet kitten that they cherish and adore. In order to get the reader to justify reading about the inner workings of the antagonist, they need to have some reason to invest their emotions into reading about the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can still make the roles of Hero and Villain obvious and distinct to the reader, but there must be at least some shades of grey within the roles of good and evil. There is no use for a reader to commit to reading about a villain who is evil just for the sake of being evil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every hero's tale starts with a set of circumstances that causes them to pursue their journey, the villain must have one also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T10:57:29.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2015-12-22T14:25:14.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Relating to the common adage that persons with inadequate &quot;social vocabularies&quot; will &quot;resort to cursing,&quot; I feel it necessary to point out that &quot;Tourette's syndrome&quot; manifests in uncontrollable cursing . . . ALTHOUGH it is now recognized that victims of strokes affecting portions of the frontal lobes of the brain can also begin &quot;adulterating conversations with cursing.&quot; This can often be acutely unsettling to the victims! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of a Protestant Bishop who felt he had to resign from his church position because of his new-found &quot;potty-mouth;&quot; an English Professor with an IQ in excess of 150 had also felt she had to resign from Academia when a comparatively mild frontal-lobe stroke set her to swearing like a Stevedore; and I am very familiar with several other, similar, cases in addition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has become a very glib, even mean-spirited, put-down; although it definitely not the case that only &quot;very intellectually-challenged persons&quot; indulge in cursing. With the aging of the population proceeding apace, the stroke-related cursing will definitely increase . . . perhaps even becoming somewhat common throughout the population!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15754" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T14:25:14.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20126" CreationDate="2015-12-22T22:20:34.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd just like to add to the other good answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the major factors is &lt;em&gt;complexity&lt;/em&gt;. If there are too many things for the reader to keep track of, it can be annoying and confusing. At some point, most readers will just start to ignore the details or abandon the whole story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fairy early on, I gave up completely on trying to keep everything straight in Orphan Black, but the rest was strong enough to keep me engaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I loved the Dune series when I read it, but I got completely lost and gave up on the SyFy movie version I saw years later when I had almost no idea who was who and how they were all related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Mike.C.Ford notes, sometimes you can combine symbols or other things into one greater whole and that reduces complexity. The reader can delve into all the details or just &quot;say&quot;, &quot;That's just another piece of the puzzle.&quot; and skim over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are the Trinity, Harry Potter needs to find a bunch of horcruxes, but they add up to the life force/power of Voldemort. A hero's quest may have many tasks/phases, but with one goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Fifth Element has a bunch of symbolism (and all sorts of other subcontexts!) in it, but it's all woven into such an organic whole that it never slows things down a bit. They're all there, but you don't &quot;have to&quot; analyse them for the story to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't usually read mysteries, but they need lots of details and interrelated facts, some of which may have symbolic components (like in Angels and Demons). That's one genre where the readers will actually expect or even demand complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastEditorUserId="2821" LastEditDate="2015-12-22T22:30:34.207" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T22:30:34.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="476" CreationDate="2015-12-23T07:15:42.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fantasynamegenerators.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fantasynamegenerators.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a cool tool to help a writer create fantasy names, races, plots worlds etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14914" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T07:15:42.153" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-12-23T07:15:42.153" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20183" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20216" CreationDate="2015-12-23T07:16:33.243" Score="0" ViewCount="1171" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the usual and customary way to write an e-mail to my lead for the telephonic conversation that I had with client or consultant? I need a formal format for the minutes of a conversation that I had over call for purpose of record. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16206" LastEditorUserId="2074" LastEditDate="2016-01-06T02:03:27.383" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T02:03:27.383" Title="How to format the transcript of a telephonic conversation for email?" Tags="|creative-writing|business-writing|email|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2016-01-06T09:26:05.410" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20189" CreationDate="2015-12-23T10:27:33.813" Score="3" ViewCount="798" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written several chapters of a (fiction) story.  I wasn't happy so I spent some time reading about fiction, and trying to figure out what was wrong with it.  I came to the conclusion that, while the main character is in danger, I have not done enough to build up: want, obstacle, and struggle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I need to build up the character's 'want'.  In my story there is a small isolated town, and someone has been killed in it.  The main character is scared, and &quot;wants&quot; to survive, though there is no demonstrated threat to him, yet.  It does not seem like this vague, &quot;he's scared and wants to get out of there but can't&quot; is good enough want, as the story still seems lifeless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do to build up &quot;want&quot; for the character, given this scenario?  Someone elsewhere writes that a character's desire for survival may not be enough, that one may need to increase the reader's empathy with the character (his example was to give the character a wife or daughter.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is now roughly: guy goes to a very small town, guy gets stuck in the town, someone gets killed.  Guy is interested in leaving.  The fact is, the killer is after the guy, but the guy doesn't know it yet, and won't know it for awhile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I can supply any more details, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader doesn't know the killer is directly after him, yet.  The events are: 1) protagonist gets to an isolated, small town.  2) the killer has a reason for not wanting him there.  3) kills someone as part of the process of getting the protagonist himself killed (it's complicated...), 4) the killer finds out that his plan didn't work, so will go after the protagonist in another way.  Right after step 3 is where things get boring, and where I decided to stop and figure out how to make things sound better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13268" LastEditorUserId="13268" LastEditDate="2015-12-23T11:26:51.603" LastActivityDate="2016-04-16T18:08:47.320" Title="Building empathy with a character and interest in a story" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20184" CreationDate="2015-12-23T11:05:49.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The reader knows that the killer is after Pete the Protagonist, right? So the killer is stalking Pete, in increasingly tense scenarios. Each time the killer gets closer but doesn't kill Pete... yet. This leaves the reader screaming &quot;He's in the net aisle!&quot; because we don't know when the killer is going to come around the corner and finally take a shot at Pete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) A third character knows the killer is after Pete, and manages to get off some kind of garbled warning before the killer takes that person out. So Pete is partially warned &amp;mdash; warned to avoid a woman with a limp? a very short man? a tall black woman with light hazel eyes? &amp;mdash; but doesn't know why he should avoid this person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T11:05:49.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20184" CreationDate="2015-12-23T12:06:38.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem is that you don't know your character. Until you know what drives the protagonist, you can't know his obstacles and so you can't establish the tension you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a book recommended on this site called Monkeys and Typewriters that's helping me to understand this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T12:06:38.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20184" CreationDate="2015-12-23T12:26:26.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, I think I have the roles within your story correct, but I'll restate them so that you can correct me if I'm wrong:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Protagonist&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Goes to a small town, and later wants to leave but can't. Knows that someone else in the town has died, thinks that they may or may not be next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Antagonist&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doesn't want the protagonist in the town, so kills someone else in the town for an unspecified reason in order to get rid of the protagonist. This doesn't work, so now wants to kill the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reader&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Knows that there is a killer, but doesn't know that the killer is after the protagonist. Knows that the protagonist wants to survive this ordeal, and knows that the protagonist is stuck there and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could always make your protagonist into someone who is generally anxious/ obsessive/ paranoid. Perhaps when they arrive into the town they visit the pharmacy and because of the strange look they receive off of the pharmacist they believe that they may have swapped the medicine they needed for poison/ placebos/ experimental or untested drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following patterns like this would mean that the reader begins to doubt the internal thought process of the protagonist, so that when they find out that someone has died in town and the protagonist believes that they are next, the reader won't actually believe it, but think it is another obvious delusion. The kicker comes later when it is proven the protagonist was actually &lt;em&gt;correct&lt;/em&gt;, and the assumptions the reader made were wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could provide more empathy for the main character, as the reader will see the character heading down (what they perceive to be) a self-destructive path of paranoia. This could be through fear to leave the house, pushing away friends because they do not trust them etc. Whilst the reader feels sorry for this person as they cannot help the way they feel, seeing it unfold externally will be tragic as the reader will want to dive into the book and tell them that everything will be alright, they don't need to be so scared. That is until they realize the character was right all along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option could be to make it so that the protagonist &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; leave. Rather than them being stuck, have something going on in the town that makes them want to stay. This could be from harboring a love interest, wanting to attend an event that is happening soon, or maybe their car is broken down but they could still get the train out of Dodge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, the protagonist will have to wrestle with the internal struggle of having the &lt;em&gt;option&lt;/em&gt; to leave. As they are not entirely sure that they are in danger, the reader can experience the indecision of the character between how unsafe they believe they are, and how much they want to stay. They could even be sat at the train station ready to go, but then realizes when the train arrives that it would be crazy to leave early on an unfounded suspicion that they may be the next to be killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then later when they are entirely certain that the killer is after them, the opportunity to leave has passed and they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; stuck there, as there are no more trains, or they are snowed in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T12:26:26.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20184" CreationDate="2015-12-23T22:07:12.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, the hero should hate his &quot;small, isolated town,&quot; for being a &quot;backwater.&quot; (Think Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, or the following from &quot;Spoon River Anthology&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I LOATHED you, Spoon River. I tried to rise above you,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I was ashamed of you. I despised you&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As the place of my nativity.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You show the hero's &quot;want&quot; in the opening scene. Which turns into &quot;desperation&quot; when a killing takes place, putting the hero at risk for what little he had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the key is that the hero had a &quot;want&quot; BEFORE the killing. Then the killing only makes it more &quot;urgent.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing: A person isn't &quot;in danger&quot; without a reason. There should be a connection between your protagonist, and the person who was actually killed. They could be related, friends, went to the same school, or even coincidentally look alike. There should be a &quot;rational&quot; reason why the killer who killed the first person would want to kill the second, and the protagonist should have a reasonable fear of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-04-16T18:08:47.320" LastActivityDate="2016-04-16T18:08:47.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20184" CreationDate="2015-12-24T01:23:41.637" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are missing two major parts of story development: &lt;strong&gt;Character&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Stakes&lt;/strong&gt;. These two topics could fill two small books, so I'll try to give you the run-down below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of &lt;strong&gt;Character Development&lt;/strong&gt; is to get the reader to care about the protagonist. If the reader doesn't care about who he's reading, what's stopping him from closing the book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of &lt;strong&gt;Stakes&lt;/strong&gt; is to increase the worth of the main conflict not only to the character, but to the reader. Keep in mind that all the development you do is for the reader. You aren't trying to make a better story, get that out of your head right away. You're trying to make a better story &lt;em&gt;for the reader&lt;/em&gt;, so that he will keep reading. With that in mind: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step in developing your main character is giving him &lt;strong&gt;strength&lt;/strong&gt;. This strength is usually a quality - discard any ideas of increasing his worth by giving him family members, that's preposterous. This quality can be anything, as long as it is something &lt;em&gt;the reader&lt;/em&gt; could hope to attain. Honesty, loyalty, tenacity, kindness... the list is endless. It could also just be a 'little' thing, like loving a daughter or sibling. As long as the reader feels the heart-felt tenderness of that love, it works. Essentially, strength &lt;em&gt;gives the reader a reason to root for the protagonist&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next part of character development is &lt;strong&gt;inner conflict&lt;/strong&gt;. You want your character to be realistic, and in this case that means he needs an element of inner turmoil. Without this, he comes across as too sure of himself. He needs to doubt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to think of inner conflict as something that pulls the protagonist in two opposite directions at the same time, usually surfacing as a battle between what is needed and what is desired. However, it can also surface as a battle between two needs, neither of which are desired. (Having it surface as a battle between two desires, neither of which are needed, generally doesn't work so well.) For example, the protagonist may need to make a choice between two unpleasant choices. Or he may need to make a choice between keeping what he loves and doing what is right. Or a choice between honoring his code or doing what is needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inner Conflict is almost always strongest when one of the choices is linked to the main goal, and the other side is linked to not completing it. In your example, the protagonist could easily want to leave the small town, but something is holding him back (feeling of duty to root out the killer, feeling of protection to someone he loves who won't leave, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two kinds of stakes: public and private. A &lt;strong&gt;stake&lt;/strong&gt; is what could be lost if the protagonist fails in whatever it is he is trying to do. A &lt;strong&gt;private stake&lt;/strong&gt; is what the hero would lose. A &lt;strong&gt;public stake&lt;/strong&gt; is what the world of the novel (in this case, likely your isolated town) would lose. You need a combination of high public stakes and deep personal stakes to make this work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High &lt;strong&gt;public stakes&lt;/strong&gt; are easy to invent. The world will end! We'll all die! What you need to focus on is how those things come about. You need to be detailed just enough so that the reader feels it is real. This doesn't mean you throw a bunch of medical terms at him to explain how a plague works. It means &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; know how the plague works, and then use just a few terms to give your reader the sense that this is real. If you know how something works, you won't need to explain it: it will show in your writing. Details are the key to public stakes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deep &lt;strong&gt;personal/private stakes&lt;/strong&gt; concern your characters, and what they would lose if the protagonist fails. You can determine when your personal stakes are deep enough by asking yourself the question: &lt;em&gt;If my hero doesn't (insert goal here), then what would he lose?&lt;/em&gt; What would be lost? A job? Security? A life? Do NOT fall back on putting your protagonist's life at threat. Once, it was enough, but no longer, not with people on TV running for their life half a million times a day. You have to put something deeper at risk: you have to threaten the protagonist's very being. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember when I talked about strength? Put that at risk. If the hero's strength is an inherent part of who he is, you are no longer simply threatening to destroy his life. You are threatening to destroy &lt;em&gt;him&lt;/em&gt;, and the very reason the reader cares about him. That makes your reader heavily invested in your novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to do this is to give your hero a code or belief that he adheres to. This code doesn't even have to be right or moral. It can be as twisted as you want, but the hero has to believe in and &lt;em&gt;adhere&lt;/em&gt; to it. If this is the case, you can put that at risk. Maybe the killer is after the hero, and to defeat him, the hero will have to do things his code forbids. Boom! Strength, inner conflict, and personal stakes in one line. In this example, the hero's code would take the place of strength (as long as it is a moral code). Not that adding additional strength is a bad idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great example of threatening the hero's essence like this are the Perry Mason novels. With each case, Perry Mason feels that his client is innocent, and sticks to that belief no matter what. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two things: stakes and character development, will, I believe, give your story the life it's been missing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T17:20:48.017" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T17:20:48.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2015-12-24T03:59:04.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;People have brought up this question in several other writer's forums that I've been on. From all the answers posted here, apparently the question interests many writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I hear the question, I always think of a comment I once read from film critic Michael Medved. He said, &quot;I've never heard anyone say, That could have been a good movie, but they just didn't use the F word enough.&quot; (Not necessarily an exact quote -- I'm quoting from memory.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is: What's the downside to using swear words? Some number of potential readers will not want to read your book. You will lose some share of your potential audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the upside? It may add some realism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One could certainly imagine a story that sanitizes language to the point that it is completely unbelievable. Suppose you have a story where the vicious drug dealer discovers that one of the members of his gang has sold him out to the police or a rival gang. And he confronts the man and says, &quot;You silly person! Why are you so mean to me?&quot; Obviously that would not be very believable. In real life he would almost surely use a string of profanity. But still, if in a book or movie such a character said, &quot;You moron! You're gonna die for this!&quot;, it wouldn't sound unbelievable. How many members of the audience would really be thinking to themselves, Whoa, wouldn't he have used the F word at least once in that sentence? Very few, I'd think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't like vulgar language. I hear it from my co-workers every day, and more and more I hear it on television every day, so it's not like when I hear a bad word I turn red and faint. But I don't like it. If I'm reading a book or watching a movie that I find interesting, and every now and then a character uses a vulgar word in contexts where people really would, I put up with it. But when I start reading a book and every third word is a vulgarity, I generally throw the book away and read something else. I consider vulgarity unpleasant and I'm not going to subject myself to it when I am seeking entertainment. I have to put up with it when dealing with people at work, but I don't have to put up with it when reading a novel. So I don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, there are people who are not offended by vulgar language, or who are more willing to tolerate it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this takes us back to Mr Medved's comment: How many people will decide they don't want to read a book because it contains too much vulgar language? Many. How many people will decide they don't want to read a book because it doesn't contain enough vulgar language? Very few. Some might say, &quot;This is just too unrealistic, nobody I know talks like that.&quot; But I think that's a tiny minority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in my humble opinion, you're better off using little or no vulgarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-12-24T03:59:04.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20158" CreationDate="2015-12-24T04:24:51.320" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under U.S. copyright law, copyright on a painting is good for life of the painter plus 70 years. Works created when shorter copyrights were in effect get the shorter term under some circumstances, but we needn't go into the details. John Collier died in 1934, 1934 + 70 = 2004, his copyright has expired in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the painting is in the public domain. You can freely take a picture of it and use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, if the painting is hanging in a museum, and the museum has a policy that visitors are not allowed to take pictures, then if you tried to take a picture without their permission, you could be accused of trespassing and violating the implied contract that you agreed to by entering the museum. I'm not a lawyer, but I think they could prevent you from using the picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone else has taken a picture of the painting -- the museum or whomever -- they could arguably claim copyright to the photograph. Note that claim would be distinct from any copyright to the painting itself, and so the &quot;clock&quot; on the copyright would start when the photograph was published, not when the painting was made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, according to this article -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernard-starr/museum-paintings-copyright_b_1867076.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernard-starr/museum-paintings-copyright_b_1867076.html&lt;/a&gt; -- a U.S. court has ruled that photographs that are simply &quot;slavish copies&quot; of a painting do not enjoy copyright protection separate from the painting. By &quot;slavish copy&quot; they mean a photograph intended to simply show the painting. If the photograph included people standing around the painting or other scenes or objects visible, then the photographer could claim that these additional elements are original, and thus protected by copyright. (Just as, if you printed a quote from Shakespeare, you can't claim that you now own a copyright to that quote. But if you wrote an article where you quoted Shakespeare with commentary about that quote that you wrote yourself, you can claim copyright to the article.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, a given photographer might not be familiar with that court decision, or might try to argue some technical point, so the existence of such a court decision means that if sued, you would probably win, but it doesn't mean that someone couldn't sue you and force you to appear in court. So the truly safe route is to either take a photo yourself or get a photo taken by someone who agrees that his photo his public domain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-12-24T04:24:51.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20184" CreationDate="2015-12-24T14:10:33.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could just make him paranoid, or suspicious, he may not know it yet but he has this gut feeling that he is in danger, his senses are always alert and it seems like danger is lurking in the shadows.&#xA;He thinks he's just being paranoid but as time passes he comes to realize that his sixth sense was actually right, Tom Clancy style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16265" LastActivityDate="2015-12-24T14:10:33.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20028" CreationDate="2015-12-24T16:35:05.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are often similarities in plot.  Some people make it obvious and acknowledge the source of their inspiration.  &quot;West Side Story,&quot; for example, is Romeo and Juliet set in New York City in the 1950s.  Some authors steal unintentionally when they should know better.  The plot in Woody Allen's &quot;Small Time Crooks&quot; (2000) is nearly identical to the plot in the 1942 Edward G. Robinson comedy &quot;Larceny, Inc.,&quot; although Allen has never acknowledged that and no one has sued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let me discuss the law. The U.S. copyright laws are codified at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/chapter-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;vol. 17 of the United States Code (U.S.C.) §§ 101 et seq.&lt;/a&gt; In a copyright infringement case, the plaintiff must show: &quot;(i) ownership of a valid copyright; and (ii) unauthorized copying of the copyrighted work.” &lt;a href=&quot;http://openjurist.org/351/f3d/46/jorgensen-v-epicsony-records-bmg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jorgensen v. Epic/Sony Records, 351 F.3d 46, 51 (2d Cir.2003)&lt;/a&gt;. &quot;To satisfy the second element of an infringement claim—the ‘unauthorized copying’ element—a plaintiff must show both that his work was actually copied and that the portion copied amounts to an improper or unlawful appropriation.&quot; Id. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Direct evidence of copying is seldom available, so the case law allows a plaintiff to establish copying circumstantially by demonstrating that the defendant accused of copying &quot;had access to the copyrighted material, ... and that there are similarities between the two works that are probative of copying.” Id. However, a showing of similarities between the two works, coupled with access, does not necessarily prove copying because there would still be insufficient evidence of unlawful appropriation. &lt;a href=&quot;https://casetext.com/case/a-slice-of-pie-productions-v-wayans-bros-entert&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Slice of Pie Prods., LLC v. Wayans Bros. Entm't&lt;/a&gt;, 487 F. Supp. 2d 41, 47 (D. Conn. 2007).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To prove &quot;unlawful appropriation&quot; the plaintiff must show the existence of a “substantial similarity of protectible material in the two works,” with substantial similarity turning on “whether, in the eyes of the average lay observer, the [allegedly infringing work] [is] substantially similar to the protectible expression in the [allegedly infringed work].” &lt;a href=&quot;http://openjurist.org/84/f3d/581/williams-v-crichton&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Williams v. Crichton&lt;/a&gt;, 84 F.3d 581, 587 (2d Cir.1996).  To determine substantial similarity, the Court or jury “examine[s] the similarities in such aspects as the total concept and feel, theme, characters, plot, sequence, pace, and setting.” Williams, 84 F.3d at 588.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What a copyright owner can't sue you for copying are such things as  “scenes a faire, sequences of events that ‘necessarily result from the choice of a setting or situation,&quot; ‘stock’ themes commonly linked to a particular genre, and ideas, because “a copyright does not protect an idea, but only the expression of an idea,” A Slice of Pie Prods., 487 F. Supp. at 47 (citations omitted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sum:  If you read anything that is like the work you are writing, be careful. You can adopt the idea (e.g. war is hell, power corrupts, etc.) or the stock theme (e.g. lovers who are forbidden to each other by their families) If you get sued, a legitimate defense is that you never heard of the plaintiff's work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, recognize that George Harrison's song &quot;My Sweet Lord&quot; was found to be substantially similar to the 1962 Chiffon's hit, &quot;He's So Fine,&quot; and Harrison &lt;a href=&quot;http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/mysweet.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;admitted&lt;/a&gt; that he was familiar with the song.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Beach Boys' brilliant composer, Brian Wilson, however, now admits that &quot;Surfin' USA&quot; was written as an homage to Chuck Berry.  &quot;I just took 'Sweet Little Sixteen' and rewrote it into something of our own,&quot; he told the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-brian-wilson-talks-blurred-lines-chuck-berry-and-surfin-usa-20150312-story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Los Angeles Times&lt;/a&gt;. Wilson's problem is that his version is substantially similar to &quot;Sweet Little Sixteen,&quot; so much so that Wilson often slips in Berry's lyrics when singing &quot;Surfin' USA&quot; in concert.  Id.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to write something &quot;in the style&quot; of another author, be very very careful.  It is a jury that decides whether your work is substantially similar to the plaintiff's work, and sometimes their decision may not exactly be &quot;substantially similar&quot; to the boundaries drawn in copyright law.  I personally didn't think that &quot;Blurred Lines&quot; was substantially similar to Marvin Gaye's &quot;Got to Give it Up,&quot; aside from the party-type atmosphere, which shouldn't be a protected aspect of the song.  But a jury thought otherwise.  Fortunately, a jury verdict is not precedential or controlling beyond that case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16267" LastActivityDate="2015-12-24T16:35:05.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20194" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20195" CreationDate="2015-12-24T21:24:51.367" Score="5" ViewCount="11961" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing stuff like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's nice,&quot; he said.  We went to the car and got our laptops and logged into Stack Exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He stood up and looked me in the eyes.  I could tell he was angry.  &quot;Did you really forget your SE password?&quot; he asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's cool,&quot; she said, after we rounded the corner.  The laptop was under ice so we had to get our tools out to get at it.  &quot;One more hour should do it,&quot; I said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this alright, or should the dialogue always be on its own line?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13268" LastEditorUserId="13760" LastEditDate="2015-12-25T07:57:42.257" LastActivityDate="2015-12-26T04:15:30.873" Title="Does dialogue always need to have its own line?" Tags="|dialogue|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20194" CreationDate="2015-12-24T21:54:37.513" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;By line, I assume you mean paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paragraph is &quot;a subdivision of a written composition that consists of one or more sentences, deals with one point or gives the words of one speaker, and begins on a new usually indented line.&quot; (Merriam-Webster dictionary) To clarify, a paragraph is to a sentence what a sentence is to a word. A collection of sentences of a similar theme or idea build into a paragraph. Some paragraphs can consist of a single sentence, but are usually between three and six, at least in my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to dialogue, there are a few particular rules to follow, all of which you follow in your examples. Dialogue should be treated as part of its containing sentence, and no more than one person's dialogue should exist in one paragraph. Sentences accompanying a line of dialogue in a paragraph should be dedicated to describing what the character does or how he speaks.&#xA;Here's an example from my own work as it appears:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Roman eyed his cane, leaning mere inches away. He resisted the urge to grab at it and instead focused on his cigar. “Tell me just what was wrong with my proposition that has you so offended.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Everything!” The twins shouted in unison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This was quite unexpected. “Well, I figured you’d like the idea. Since you don’t, just tell me what you’d rather do.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Melanie’s gaze became fierce. She growled through gritted teeth, but Matilda interrupted her. “Give Hei a chance. He can do a lot more for you out of jail in it.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As each character acts, I have a paragraph describing that action, speech included. It keeps things organized and coherent. Each sentence in a paragraph pertains to a particular idea, and in this case, that idea is what Roman, Matilda or Melanie are doing at that particular moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here's how it appears as you suggest, with the dialogue getting its own space (Sorry I couldn't figure how how to get it into one of those nice little blocks like the other one.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Roman eyed his cane, leaning mere inches away. He resisted the urge to grab at it and instead focused on his cigar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Tell me just what was wrong with my proposition that has you so offended.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Everything!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The twins shouted in unison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This was quite unexpected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Well, I figured you’d like the idea. Since you don’t, just tell me what you’d rather do.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Melanie’s gaze became fierce. She growled through gritted teeth, but Matilda interrupted her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Give Hei a chance. He can do a lot more for you out of jail in it.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice how the broken dialogue makes it a little more difficult to understand what's going on, or who's saying what. Isolating the speech from the other actions of each character makes it a kind of odd &quot;disembodied speech&quot; without context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14251" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-12-26T04:15:30.873" LastActivityDate="2015-12-26T04:15:30.873" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20196" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-24T23:42:51.500" Score="8" ViewCount="432" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project that I am working on in which I need to write quite a few fictional informal email correspondences between pairs of characters. I am not using these characters in any other context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am working with a relatively large number of characters (12 ish) and have neither the time nor the need to fully flesh out each in great detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I am doing a good job keeping the characters interesting and unique in terms of the actual content of their conversations, but I am aware that their writing styles are all a very similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to identify some basic variables I can use to determine the character's writing style. So far I mainly have the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tendency to over/under comma&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Typical sentence length&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commonly used phrases/sayings (oh god, yeah-but-no, take the world by its nipples and twist)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expressions of humour (haha, lol, :D)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some other ways I can differentiate my characters' writing styles? Or put another way, what are some things that give away a common writer that I should try and avoid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16269" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T17:27:36.843" Title="What aspects of written dialogue are important when giving characters a unique voice?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|characters|dialogue|character-development|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20197" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-24T23:45:26.443" Score="1" ViewCount="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project that I am working on in which I need to write quite a few fictional informal email correspondences between pairs of characters. I am not using these characters in any other context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am working with a relatively large number of characters (12 ish) and have neither the time nor the need to fully flesh out each in great detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I am doing a good job keeping the characters interesting and unique in terms of the actual content of their conversations, but I am aware that their writing styles are all a very similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to identify some basic variables I can use to determine the character's writing style. So far I mainly have the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tendency to over/under comma&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Typical sentence length&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commonly used phrases/sayings (oh god, yeah-but-no, take the world by its nipples and twist)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expressions of humour (haha, lol, :D)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some other ways I can differentiate my characters' writing styles? Or put another way, what are some things that give away a common writer that I should try and avoid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="VoicingMyConcerns" LastActivityDate="2015-12-25T03:48:22.690" Title="What aspects of written dialogue are important when giving characters a unique voice?" Tags="|style|dialogue|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-12-25T03:57:24.293" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20196" CreationDate="2015-12-25T03:42:55.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think you're overanalyzing. Look at some blog posts, even from this website. The structure tends to be close in all or at least most elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few differences that I have found in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(My stupid, male brain) notices that women use a lot more exclamation points with interjections. &lt;strong&gt;Wow!&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Congratulations!&lt;/strong&gt;, or, &lt;strong&gt;Hi there!&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Foreign speakers will often misuse &lt;strong&gt;for&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;to&lt;/strong&gt; or other prepoositions every once in a while.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Friends will begin to use each other's idioms over time&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine other posters will come up with additional ideas. But I think most people, fictional or otherwise, will talk about common interests, plans, gossip, or conflict. If your concern is with the emotional and psychological nuances of the characters compared to their grammar, the reader will get it. What's more, if your grammatical changes were more than subtle, I would be distracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2017-03-30T01:09:25.077" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T01:09:25.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7111" CreationDate="2015-12-25T05:02:50.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something that can be used to show your character's character. When I was in highschool I almost always used the wrong greeting just to see what people would do. So if your character is obnoxious, this can be used to show that. You can also show confusion, weariness, obsequiousness, obsessive attention to detail and more. Ponder the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lunch appointment was for noon. I hated noon appointments. Salutations were always more complicated at noon. I was of course early. Fifteen minutes, It was a restaurant so extra time for finding a table would not be inappropriate. I greeted the matradee. &quot;Good morning&quot; The reservation was in order for noon. If it had been at his office I would not have been more than five minutes early. Or less than three. Offices were easy that way. Restaurants on the other hand had crowds and waitresses which always played with the schedule. He had a reputation for always being on time. Ordinarily I would approve, but the schedule called for noon. I hate noon appointments. I saw him approach. Well before 12:01. no way that I could use afternoon yet. If he was quick enough, I could still use morning. Alass he got to the table just as my watch beeped the hour. I hate noon appointments. Oh well no help for it, I greeted him as best as I was able, &quot;Hello.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2015-12-25T05:02:50.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20241" CreationDate="2015-12-25T08:01:18.963" Score="7" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Main question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a claim that I heard from a few persons (none of which were native speakers of English), which goes as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In English non-fictional writing, the most important aspects of a sentence should preferably be placed in front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this statement correct, and if yes, to what extent?&lt;/strong&gt; I prefer credible sources to back this up but this may be difficult in the case of refuting the statement, so if you have read bazillions of writing guides and never found something along the lines of this, that would be a helpful answer for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Details on the claim&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Consider the following two sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even with a discombobulator, we failed to transmogrify bananas in a frombolastic environment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a frombolastic environment, we failed to transmogrify bananas even with a discombobulator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim says that if discombobulators are more relevant to your writing, the first order of sentence components is preferrable (and vice versa).&#xA;In particular, this is claimed to hold even if the previous sentence was about frombolastic environments and you could use the second word order to make a bridge between the sentences and improve the text flow, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In such an environment, we failed to transmogrify bananas even with a discombobulator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Consider the following two sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Possible explanations include comtorsognation, palamnesis, and sample impurities due to an uneven opularseny of the Earth’s magnetic field.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Possible explanations include sample impurities due to an uneven opularseny of the Earth’s magnetic field, comtorsognation, and palamnesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Assume that it is clear to every reader that comtorsognation and palamnesis cannot arise from an uneven opularseny of the Earth’s magnetic field.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the impurities are the most plausible explanation, the claim is that the second sentence is preferrable, even if though this sentence is much harder to parse.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is not about obtaining emphasis by deviating from the default grammatical word order (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_(linguistics)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;inversion&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In case it matters, I am primarily concerned with academic writing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14946" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-17T15:25:34.213" LastActivityDate="2016-01-17T15:25:34.213" Title="In English non-fiction, should I try to place the important parts at the beginning of the sentence?" Tags="|academic-writing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20196" CreationDate="2015-12-25T08:31:16.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed that mails from different friends of mine vary mainly in three aspects, two of which are related to structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One: &lt;strong&gt;Length of mails&lt;/strong&gt;. Scientists tend to write mails of about two or three sentences length. They only put the most important information into their mail and don't bother with gossip. The &lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;-principle is their basis for writing mails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two: &lt;strong&gt;Structure&lt;/strong&gt;. Depending on the writer's personal disposition towards structure, paragraphs are used more or less extensively to structure their thoughts. Same goes for lists of bullet points or numbering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three: &lt;strong&gt;Salutation&lt;/strong&gt;. I think everybody has a preferred way to salute their friends: &quot;Dear so-and-so&quot;, &quot;Hiya&quot;,&quot;Hi&quot;, etc. Note that this can change, but it tends to be constant for a certain amount of time. The salutation can also reflect the relationship between the writer and the addressee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A last thought: Try to get your friends to write some of the mails for you. That way, each character's mail will have a distinct voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2015-12-25T08:31:16.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20200" CreationDate="2015-12-25T11:57:42.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it's dependent on context. There are times when you cannot &quot;bury the lede,&quot; to borrow a term from journalism (and that is the correct spelling), and there are times when it's okay to put certain items later in the sentence for the sake of readability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your example 2, you could arrange those items in any order. If item 3 is your most important, it could go first (in a straightforward reading) or at the end (if you were going for humor or silly emphasis). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-25T11:57:42.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20200" CreationDate="2015-12-26T07:12:04.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, that's not a valid rule. Real life is more complicated than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes we deliberately leave the most important element in the sentence until the end to build tension. Like the classic style of line in a mystery novel, &quot;And so, the murderers is the man who had the most to gain by the victim's death, the only man who could have entered the room that night without raising suspicion, the man with the brown shoes, the man with the fake British accent, that man is ... you, Fred Jones!&quot; If we started the sentence with, &quot;The murderer is Fred Jones&quot;, the rest would all be boring side notes rather than building tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it doesn't have to be as dramatic as revealing the name of the killer. Even in a technical paper you might write, &quot;We tried three approaches and only the last one worked: radiometrics, stratigraphy, and seriation&quot;. Even if the final revelation is not surprising in the sense of open-mouthed astonishment, you create a little build up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many sentences, when there is flexibility in the word order in a grammatical sense, i.e. the sentence would still be grammatically correct with several different possible orderings, we still choose the order based on real-world logic. For example, we often express ideas in chronological order. If I said, &quot;Today I had breakfast, got a haircut, went to the grocery store, and took a nap&quot;, listeners would generally assume that I did them in that order, barring some reason to believe otherwise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often we start with the information that provides the background to what follows. Like I might say, &quot;There are three routes to Detroit from here: You can go through Toledo, Chicago, or Montreal. We decided to go via Chicago.&quot; I'd be less likely to say, &quot;We decided to travel via Chicago. It is one of three routes to get where we were going, the others being through Toledo and Montreal. We were headed to Detroit.&quot; The second paragraph is confusing because it's not clear where you're going -- geographically or linguistically -- until you get to the end. The first is more logical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Et cetera. There are lots of considerations. Give the sentence a logical flow rather than worrying about some arbitrary rule like &quot;put the most important thing first&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-12-26T07:12:04.043" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20204" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-26T18:18:18.627" Score="5" ViewCount="511" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure this is the right Stack Exchange Community for this question, but here I go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I bought a book on Machine Learning from a (I believe) popular publisher a few days ago. It's a first edition and it was first published on September 2015 (4 months ago). The point is, in the first 50 pages I found around 5 &lt;em&gt;errata&lt;/em&gt;. Not huge ones, but &lt;em&gt;errata&lt;/em&gt; nonetheless. Even though the book is quite good, finding that many &lt;em&gt;errata&lt;/em&gt; made me a bit uneasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could this be considered normal, as it is a &quot;just born&quot; book? Or should I be concerned in any way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16279" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T10:51:01.370" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T10:51:01.370" Title="How many errata are too many?" Tags="|publishing|errata|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20205" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20208" CreationDate="2015-12-26T21:02:09.930" Score="3" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, I admit to dinosaur-era technology. My first computer was the Radio Shack Color Computer 2 with a tape deck for memory storage (seriously). Websites were in DOS (let's just say you were lucky to get both upper AND lower case letters). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I've been using Word for 20 + years (I don't remember when it split from WordPerfect). I have never found it to be lacking in any tool that I need, and I find it very easy to insert work product as running text into a query letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some annoyances that I guess I just never took the time to dissect. I also have concerns about compatibility as technology moves forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: Am I really missing out on technical advances, am I being stubborn about learning (or failing to learn) Scrivener, and am I holding myself back by continuing to use Word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me add: I only write fiction with occasional scanned documents, and I also do resumes. I also occasionally use PowerPoint and Excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-12-27T23:23:56.363" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T18:25:19.193" Title="Switching to fiction software" Tags="|tools|scrivener|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20204" CreationDate="2015-12-27T07:29:09.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's a lot by almost any standard, and is a sign of inadequate proof-reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But from there, one can only say, So what? Are you going to report the author to the Library Police?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If by errata you mean simply typos -- mis-spellings, punctuation errors, that sort of thing -- and otherwise it's a good book, I'd say &quot;oh well&quot; and ignore them. If by errata you mean errors of fact, and these errors really matter, if they render the book unreliable, then I'd say to give up on this book and find a better source of information. You say the errors aren't &quot;huge&quot; so, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were involved in publishing this book, I'd say this would be evidence that you need better proof-reading. But if you're simply a reader, there's nothing you can do about it, so I wouldn't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2015-12-27T07:29:09.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20204" CreationDate="2015-12-27T13:17:02.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the errors make the book unusable &amp;mdash; for example, switching &quot;row&quot; and &quot;column&quot; makes what you're reading unworkable &amp;mdash; I'd look for a way to contact the publisher and inform it about the errors. Then find another book to use as a backup or cross-reference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're just spelling mistakes or the word switching is really obvious, then you're probably okay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-27T13:17:02.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20205" CreationDate="2015-12-27T18:17:50.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Re compatibility: Scrivener allows you to export in many formats; the company makes a point of not holding you hostage to proprietary software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite features of Scrivener is the organizing. You can have multiple text documents, nested in layers of folders, and you can have a split screen so you can see two documents at once (and copy-paste between them). You can view your documents as literal note cards on a cork board and add tags and keywords. This alone broke through a writer's block of many years for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are additionally many tools to help you with the fine-tuning of the manuscript, like word-count goals, snapshots, searching for multiple instances of a word, a name generator &amp;mdash; I probably don't even use a quarter of them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, however, Scrivener's tools are just about gathering many tasks which you can also do manually if you have Word and putting them into one interface. If you don't need those tools or features, you aren't behind the times by not using that particular program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started writing in MacWrite (yes, I'm dating myself) for as long as the OS would let me, and continued for a few years in &lt;em&gt;Quark&lt;/em&gt; because that was the program I was in most of the day as a typesetter. Whatever makes it easiest for you to write is the correct method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2015-12-27T18:17:50.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20210" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20213" CreationDate="2015-12-28T01:49:06.343" Score="15" ViewCount="3990" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the second book of his &lt;em&gt;Inheritence Cycle&lt;/em&gt;, Christopher Paolini makes the grievous error of landing his main character in the middle of a serene woodland where he must sit and talk with an old elf for many seemingly unending days. It isn't a true info dump - there are emotions and even some action - but it is still mind-numbingly boring from the expected action, especially compared with the adventurous side story that intersperses it every few chapters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, this boring section is very necessary. The main character learns many important things, not to mention that he undergoes a vital transformation at that time. Not least of the things learned is how the magic of the world works. This is referred to for the rest of the series. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I now find myself faced with a similar problem. I am developing a fantasy novel of my own, with my own variation of magic. I have successfully managed to explain its inner workings to the reader without info-dumping; but now I have a real problem: it turns out that the protagonist and the reader weren't told the whole picture. There is an entire side of magic - a very important side - that the protagonist must be informed of by the dreaded 'old veteran.' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, I have fallen back on the assumption that the 'old veteran' (we'll call him Pete) sits the protagonist down and tells him what he's been missing. Pete does his best to avoid info-dumping. He relates the necessary knowledge in the form of a story, telling how he discovered it. The story is full of action. On top of that, the whole story only lasts for roughly four pages. Despite all this, Pete's tale is still in the form of a narration, and as such, is dangerously close to an info-dump. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; In many fantasy novels, there usually comes a point where the magic has to be explained to some extent, so that the rest of the novel can be fully understood. The result of this need is usually an info-dump. How can one relate this necessary information so that the reader does not become bored and fall asleep? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: This question is similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2139/how-do-i-avoid-a-mid-story-info-dump&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. However, I feel it is different. While this question deals with a relentless-if-short narration, that question deals with a chapter of inner realization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T22:54:37.793" Title="How to avoid the 'magic explanation' info dump in Fantasy novels" Tags="|novel|structure|fantasy|exposition|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20210" CreationDate="2015-12-28T02:46:05.137" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good question. I'm tossing and turning over a one-and-a-half page info dump at the end of my first chapter (psychiatric drama). There's no way anybody gets it if it's not explained, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's only so much random dialogue you can propagate before you just have to go for it. You can do it in bits and pieces like The Will and The Word from Eddings' Belgariad, or you can lay it out all at once like Morpheus in &lt;strong&gt;The Matrix&lt;/strong&gt; to Neo. Movies are time limited, so it makes sense to just get it out of the way after a cool, mind-boggling action scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books can flow, and transitions should be smooth. (I have my protagonist do a bit of daydreaming about the wonders of modern medicine before I not-ever-so-briefly describe the draconian past. I guess it's smooth, but still.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finish writing your book. Then decide if there's anything unnecessary from your info dump. Does the reader really need it? All of it? Really? Are you sure? Then include it. If you get to the agent and publisher phase, this is one of the things they will simply tell you: more, less, or just right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm including my info dump with my manuscript, but piling up rejection letters is unnerving--no matter how many times you play the game.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-12-28T02:46:05.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20212" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-28T09:31:16.923" Score="2" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I index an author who published articles with and without middle initial? For example, I cite an author who published as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;J. Bloggs, An important paper, Some Journal, 1993&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;J. Z. Bloggs, Another important paper, Some Journal, 1995.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I create the corresponding entries in the author index, should I refer from one to the other [e.g., Bloggs, J. (see also Bloggs, J. Z.)] or do I create both entries with the middle initial? Are there official rules for this situation? (Yes, I am &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt; that they are the same person.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16291" LastActivityDate="2016-01-02T03:39:15.233" Title="How do I index an author who published with and without middle initial?" Tags="|indexing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20210" CreationDate="2015-12-28T17:44:07.697" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As you may know, Thomas&lt;/strong&gt;, there was a question quite similar to yours put by KeithS a little while ago: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/19416/13531&quot;&gt;Avoiding the &quot;as you know&quot; trope in exposition&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were several answers including mine which boiled down to the desperate need to &lt;em&gt;introduce more drama into the explanation or we're all gonna die!&lt;/em&gt; The drama could be in the form of character conflict (&quot;Why the hell should I believe you about magic, Pete, after what you've just told me you did?&quot;), literal conflict in which correct understanding of how magic works is necessary to fight then and there, or the need to make a difficult decision based on the main character's new understanding of magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stand by all those points in general, but maybe you don't want any more drama or conflict right then. In that case I'd like to put in a word for the sheer pleasure of hearing the solution to an intellectual puzzle that has been built up throughout the story until that point. Detective stories are powered by this. If you take this tack, it's not Pete's explanation that has to change, but the earlier chapters. Have the main character wrack his or her brains earlier on for &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; that curse rebounded so disastrously. Describe step by step his or her earlier failed attempts to find an explanation, or to track down this mysterious &quot;Pete&quot; who some said could explain the mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2018-01-24T22:54:37.793" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T22:54:37.793" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20183" CreationDate="2015-12-29T14:21:23.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to write an email to follow up and phone conversation, here are some points you might want to include: express appreciation for the person's time in talking with you; list key topics discussed; summarize agreements reached; identify next steps to take and dates for completion; include your contact details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16302" LastActivityDate="2015-12-29T14:21:23.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20217" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20230" CreationDate="2015-12-29T14:26:52.717" Score="1" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;A potential client is asking me to quote a per piece rate for a 1000 word SEO topic. According to him, it should look like natural writing to a search engine, but doesn't necessarily have to be great from a human perspective. My guess is that these types of articles can be completed in one straight shot, without research, and with only one revision. He seems willing to pay a fair rate for my work. Not a bottom-feeder looking for junk content. I don't have any more information about the subject material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how many long does it take? Include descriptions of your experience producing this type of SEO content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2015-12-30T03:25:40.150" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T16:03:45.340" Title="How long does it take to write a 1000 word SEO topic?" Tags="|websites|freelance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2016-01-06T02:19:45.797" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20087" CreationDate="2015-12-29T14:27:37.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In her sympathetic (and often hilarious) book for new writers, &lt;em&gt;Bird by Bird&lt;/em&gt;, author Anne Lamott has a chapter on writer's block. She talks about developing the discipline of a daily schedule and pushing through the block to finish a section or chapter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16302" LastActivityDate="2015-12-29T14:27:37.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20204" CreationDate="2015-12-29T15:02:21.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number of errors you describe are a lot for a technical manual. More than needing better proofreading to check spelling, it sounds like this book really needed better copyediting to catch the errors in code and word reversals. I would contact the publisher with a list of the errors found.  While you may not be able to return the book, you will be providing a service to the publisher (and to those who will benefit by corrections in a later edition) by reporting the problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16302" LastActivityDate="2015-12-29T15:02:21.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20217" CreationDate="2015-12-29T16:30:46.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good possible place to start is &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2267471/how-much-should-you-spend-on-seo-services&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article at searchenginewatch.com where they discuss how much a corporation should reasonably spend for search engine optimization.  The general timing there (if you do the math) seems to be somewhere between 7 hours on the low end and 16 hours on the high end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2015-12-29T16:30:46.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19457" CreationDate="2015-12-29T18:59:42.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the title of a book? Since you're free to decide, pick what is most useful to your intended audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, why not look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.editeur.org/93/Release-3.0-Downloads/#Best%20practice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;onix for books specifications&lt;/a&gt; for some widely agreed conventions used in the book trade and more or less universally adopted by online catalogues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer : as already mentioned,every catalog will have its own take even on standards and its own house styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16176" LastEditorUserId="16176" LastEditDate="2016-02-25T16:23:46.097" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T16:23:46.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20222" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-29T17:26:29.293" Score="3" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I repeatedly use the same subject to start several sentences in a paragraph that describes a process? Does it build continuity or become redundant? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A passenger arrived. He entered the station. The passenger was checked by government agents. The passenger left the station. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="GrammarRules" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2015-12-31T05:22:36.003" LastActivityDate="2015-12-31T05:22:36.003" Title="Repeating a subject" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20222" CreationDate="2015-12-29T17:48:21.870" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To a certain degree, the answer is &quot;both.&quot; Repeating the same subject in each of several sentences in a paragraph does have the ability to build continuity, but it can also get rather repetitive (and thus boring to the reader). I wouldn't say that it's &lt;em&gt;redundant&lt;/em&gt;, per se, unless you actually repeat the semantics of one sentence in a following sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the beauty of pronouns, which allow you to use a word other than the same noun phrase over and over. You can also break up your writing with synonyms, introductory prepositional phrases and modifiers, use of compound sentences, and so forth. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A passenger arrived; he entered the train station. Immediately, he was checked by government agents, after which the disgruntled traveler promptly left the station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are valid reasons for specifically repeating words from one sentence in a following sentence; usually this is a deliberate rhetorical device to reinforce the parallels and connection between the sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, it's a stylistic choice on the part of the writer. There is nothing grammatically wrong with what you have written, but you'll want to be conscious of how the reader will accept it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: You mentioned that this is part of a &quot;process.&quot; Documentation that describes processes, including manuals, handbooks, and so forth, are far more likely to eschew narrative flow in favor of clarity and the lack of redundancy. Thus, if the purpose is to capture a specific sequence of unambiguous steps, then the repetition of the noun phrase is usually viewed much more favorably, especially in a numbered list. For example, suppose you were writing the process for travelers going through security:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The passenger takes off his shoes and coat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The passenger places all small items (watch, wallet, etc.) in an available container.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The passenger places all suitcases on the x-ray machine belt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the fact that this is a numbered list (or bullet list) is significant, because it specifically is not attempting to serve as narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may also be a good question for &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;the Writers Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15756" OwnerDisplayName="Nonnal" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2015-12-29T17:53:23.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20196" CreationDate="2015-12-29T22:37:11.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the first things I thought of was temperament. Have you given each of these characters a very basic template for their temperament? This also has the added benefit of providing a tangible lead on which to express their backstory through their actions and dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if one of the characters was a &quot;typically grumpy tough guy who was reluctant but ready to take the lead on things if it came to it&quot;, this would greatly influence how you would write his dialogue now that you have placed a general temperament on his character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He would be loath to express gratitude and humour, for example, and this would be something the other characters wouldn't expect and could joke about in a scene when he did. Some would simply smile and perhaps the reckless, funny guy would throw a line in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, one of the characters might be the &quot;wreckless, funny guy&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastEditorUserId="350" LastEditDate="2015-12-29T23:15:49.443" LastActivityDate="2015-12-29T23:15:49.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19457" CreationDate="2015-12-30T01:07:14.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not unusual for a work to have a variety of titles.  The title may appear differently on the cover, title page, spine and other places.  Resource Discovery and Access (RDA), the standard for Anglo-American library cataloging, provides instructions for dealing with each of these when cataloging a work.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://resourcedescriptionandaccess.blogspot.com/search/label/TITLES-PARALLEL%20TITLE#.VoMtTo-cFMs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://resourcedescriptionandaccess.blogspot.com/search/label/TITLES-PARALLEL%20TITLE#.VoMtTo-cFMs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16302" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T01:07:14.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17977" CreationDate="2015-12-30T02:32:53.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider using &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map%20mindmapping&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mind mapping&lt;/a&gt; to express and organize your creative thoughts before you start writing. On a blank sheet of paper, you write words, short phrases, or drawings to express ideas and use lines to represent relationships between those ideas. You can make it up as you go, or you can adopt one of the standard approaches to mind mapping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One benefit of mind mapping is that you can express ideas quickly and easily, much faster than writing sentences and paragraphs. Another advantage is that you can get an instant overview of your thoughts by running your eyes across the map. This overview makes it easier to form new connections between older content and fresh content. I like to call it &quot;Creation and Synthesis on overdrive&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's harder to explain than it is just to do it. All you need is a pen/pencil and paper. Get comfortable doing it manually before you try any of the free software that's out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2015-12-31T21:54:03.010" LastActivityDate="2015-12-31T21:54:03.010" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18798" CreationDate="2015-12-30T06:35:15.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what you mean by &lt;em&gt;make a point&lt;/em&gt;. Following from the principle of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chekhov's gun&lt;/a&gt; every element in a play should have a dramatic purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to&#xA;  go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.&quot; Chekhov,&#xA;  letter to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev  1 November 1889&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14574" LastEditorUserId="14574" LastEditDate="2016-01-01T02:59:27.430" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T02:59:27.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19379" CreationDate="2015-12-30T16:02:23.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like Ville's answer, but I'll add a few things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The inspirational character takes risks for the benefits of others&lt;/strong&gt;. It can be like Gandalf who turns and tells the demon, &quot;You shall not pass!&quot; C'mon, that was totally bad-ass. It can be a cop that goes undercover or a doctor standing up to hospital hierarchy, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The inspirational character continues to hold true to their values despite great odds (and perhaps even derision amongst others close to the scene).&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The inspirational character always seems to know how to get the best out of their companions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The inspirational character never gives up.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T16:02:23.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20217" CreationDate="2015-12-30T16:03:45.340" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience as a reporter, editor, and technical writer, there is a wide range of time required to produce an article, depending on expertise and the need for research. &#xA;Any good writer can bang out 1,000 words on a topic they are familiar with, such as gardening, a city they live in, a historical event they've studied, or an area of science they've worked in. But if the topics are completely outside their personal experience, then I'd say roughly 6-12 hours for research and writing per article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much you can charge for that depends on how much your time is worth, how urgent the client's need is, and how much competition (offering lower rates) there is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For good, publishable content, freelance writers can get .50 to $1 per word and up. But I have a hard time believing any company will pay thousands of dollars for SEO filler. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8356" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T16:03:45.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10399" CreationDate="2015-12-30T16:10:45.390" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Headlines, except in the New York Times, should be sentence case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See what I did? I gave my opinion, cause there is no right answer, but also alluded to the fact that it's a matter of style and consistency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each site must determine what to use, and stick with it consistently. There might be different styles for main heads and subheads. There might be rules about verb tense, omitted words, abbreviations. There should be a complete, written rationale for how the headlines should look and sound. If you don't know what the style is, then I'd use sentence case anyway, because title case is really only for titles of entire works (books, songs, plays, movies) and technical papers, not most web headlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8356" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T16:10:45.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19379" CreationDate="2015-12-30T16:18:00.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A well-done inspirational character:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;represents a high moral standard&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;at great cost and personal sacrifice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;despite significant flaws and/or challenges&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's why these three things are necessary.  With no moral standard, it isn't admirable.  With no cost and sacrifice, it isn't inspirational.  And with no flaws or challenges, it isn't believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T16:18:00.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20204" CreationDate="2015-12-30T17:36:42.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's not acceptable for a $29-$59 book on an established subject from an established publisher. It indicates that the publisher and author are not performing adequate editorial and technical reviews. However, if this was an inexpensive self-published e-book on Amazon, your expectations for quality should be much lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T17:36:42.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8038" CreationDate="2015-12-30T20:51:12.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sci-fi and fantasy don't NEED to be fundamentally different.  If the people in your fantasy world approach the magic that exists in their world in a &quot;scientific&quot; way, then your fantasy elements become soft sci-fi.  That is, you are proposing a made-up world in which there are laws of magic that operate exactly like laws of science in our world.  Then the only thing to decide is how advanced the magic and technology are in your world.  You just have to keep both of them reasonable.  For example, if teleporting and/or antigravity devices are commodity items, then people aren't going to have the same kind of transportation infrastructure that we have.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, your world's history will influence the levels of magic and technology.  They will tend to stunt one another's growth.  If certain areas of magic were discovered early in history, then nobody would bother developing technologies in areas already covered by that magic (and vice versa for areas of technology discovered early in history).  For all we know, our own real world IS magical, but our technology is so advanced that few people want to bother with magic in its primitive and unreliable state of development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T20:51:12.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18981" CreationDate="2015-12-30T23:52:59.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the MLA Handbook, 7th edition, section 5.2 &quot;MLA Style&quot; states &quot;acknowledge your sources by keying brief parenthetical citations in your text to an alphabetical list of words that appears at the end of the paper.&quot;  There is no mention of a requirement to put the citation at the end of the sentence, although that is the method shown in the example given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your sentence, if the quotation is from Foulkes, it is less confusing to insert the citation immediately after the quotation; if the citation is placed at the end of the sentence, it seems to imply that Foulkes is among those who disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16302" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2015-12-31T10:07:36.370" LastActivityDate="2015-12-31T10:07:36.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20222" CreationDate="2015-12-31T00:49:39.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As described by Nonnal, it is less of a rule than a subjective guideline. Pronouns reduce redundancy and make a paragraph flow more easily. The use of the subject repeatedly will only draw more attention to the &lt;em&gt;subject&lt;/em&gt; and not the actions or dialogue the subject is performing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, this &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be used for that very purpose, but I personally would class it under a writing style to only use very occasionally, at least for narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that using the subject roughly every 1 to 2 paragraphs is enough to keep a reader informed about who the pronouns are referring to, obviously depending on the context of the sentences and the number of characters in a scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this question is about repeating a subject, here's an example of mine of the use of pronouns only after the first use of the subject in the preceding paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I can't believe that Jank,&quot; thought Skye angrily. &quot;When I get back I'm going to kill him.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her grav bike was nearby, realising where she'd stopped after looking at her locator. Relieved, she sat down for a drink and to calm down a little. She couldn't here the strangers any longer and paid more attention to the sounds of the forest. The canopy was thick and only occasional flecks of sunlight shone directly onto the ground. Birds she'd never heard before sung throughout the canopy. She had never been to this area on the planet and always loved the idea of visiting somewhere new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, you're only dealing with one character after others have been removed from the scene, so we really only need a very occasional reference to the character's name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be interested to see an example of your repeated use of the subject in context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2015-12-31T00:49:39.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20196" CreationDate="2015-12-31T00:58:41.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try using different fonts for each character. Serif and sans serif for example. It could indicate a shift of perspective from the writer's voice, to the electronic medium, as well as differentiating between multiple characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wouldn't need to have radical changes, just a slightly different font, maybe a minor shift in point size as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the different written styles of the characters, it could work well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe include an email header, or 'Written on my iPad' style footer if they aren't going to distract too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16197" LastActivityDate="2015-12-31T00:58:41.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20238" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-31T02:17:54.207" Score="2" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the key concepts for writing introductory text more interesting to the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Deutsche Bahn AG is the company with the most energy consumption&#xA;  in Germany. It has therefore a interest in efficient usage of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;compared to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As one of Germany's biggest energy consumers, the Deutsche Bahn AG is&#xA;  interested in efficient energy usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As opening sentence of the Introduction. Both contain the same information, but to me the second sounds much more interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16312" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-21T00:12:04.113" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T00:12:04.113" Title="Concepts for more interesting introductions in papers" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|introduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19705" CreationDate="2015-12-31T09:10:56.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Update. I went to a hiring fair for a large corporation, one that generously bestowed upon me a paid internship in tech (specifically, this was a massive ODBC conversion-move clients OFF the old system and onto our NEW system; one that, 15 years later is still being used. I built the systems, installed them, used any means possible to convert their customer DB to the one WE use (on the server-side it boils down to db2...as for software, this corp is in bed with Microsoft, another reason to keep their anonymity...)so in the late 90s I setup 1000s of Dell &amp;amp; Compaq desktops running windows 95. Norton Ghost was a slow but adequate way to set up 1 CPU and then deploy 100s of copies that vary only in windows key ID.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &quot;job interviews&quot; go - the elevator speech was nearly irrelevant, but since I had about 30 seconds alone with the hiring mgr, I'll share with you a successful pitch. Note that this is how most &quot;interviews&quot; go &lt;strong&gt;when I actually get the job.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Hiring mgr- so...chris I see that you've worked for us before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;me- yes, I really enjoyed it; I would never had left if I didn't have to go finish my degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hiring mgr- well..we are glad you did, when can you start?*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in every job I've ever gotten - it was &lt;em&gt;political&lt;/em&gt;. This company &lt;em&gt;KNOWS ME.&lt;/em&gt; There are countless people &lt;em&gt;still there&lt;/em&gt; after all this time who vouched for me; w/o me asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;rewriting my resume 1000x, interview-seminars (including all the bs &quot;right-answers&quot; to all those questions designed to trick you). Lectures on networking, SM and the new &quot;trying to SEO &lt;em&gt;each&lt;/em&gt; cover-letter &amp;amp; resume for &lt;em&gt;each&lt;/em&gt; job to 'hack' the hr-site that sorts them.&quot; I told the EDD &amp;amp; DOR &amp;amp; Seminar people a million times that these ideas are good, but when a posting goes up for $10/hr for entry-level tech .... they get 1000 a resume's in the 1st hour, of which 10 meet the cut and perhaps 5 get to interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;After all that? 9x out of 10 it's the guy they know they need; available to start right away whose files show he can be trusted.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone who followed the mumbo-jumbo described above did not get the job that day. 1000s of online resumes were never even looked at. I showed up in person and took what I considered to be mine. They are happy to have me and I am humbled they took me back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For all our bluster about tech, code, resume-optimization/customization and building mammoth profiles on SM to garner presumed respect/credibility all in pursuit of alleged &quot;job opportunities.&quot; ...you know who gets jobs in tech? The guy the already know is fully-qualified. The guy they've seen in action. The guy who's associates head over to HR and say, &quot;you gotta hire this guy...we need him.&quot; (whether they are supposed to or not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The point is that getting a gig is a human process.&lt;/strong&gt; With few exceptions (the ones that prove the rule) Human networking, in-person handshakes and ..as always..&lt;em&gt;being in the right gd place at the right gd time is how to land it&lt;/em&gt;.&#xA;Politics - if you hate that word--&gt;call it &lt;strong&gt;Social Engineering.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I told that pestering bureacrat those exact words over and over -- all she ever did was ask if I'd been to the &quot;Resume Hero&quot; workshop at the UE office. F-that, I was never going to attend that, even at gunpoint. I added this answer as a wake-up call -- people give jobs to people they KNOW. This online-web-plastering thing is BS; a scam cooked up by whomever built Monster and all its dehumanizing iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are on this site; you are a smart cookie. Be smart; ditch all the &quot;modern tools&quot; of your [bogus] &quot;job search.&quot; Go to friends, family, associates, former employers, your alumni association, high-school &amp;amp; college friends, the guys you drink coffee in the morning w/ and the guys you drink beer with at night. Get over the shame of being UE and put it to them! Half probably owe you a favor anyway, right? It's almost 2016; from my corner of the world, anyone who wants a job can get one, but not by firing off online applications till you can't see straight everyday. It's zero-sum... &quot;no-value-add&quot; as we say in process-improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forget all these tiny components like &quot;elevator speeches&quot; -- logout of indeed, careerbuilder, linkedin, ihirequalitycontrol, code-whatever, monster, ziprecruiter, craigslist .... I know it's hard to do in tech, I like to talk to people about as much you...actually far less. I work with machines, systems, hardware, software, automation. I design and implement. I run qa/qc on new systems. I deploy 'em and train everyone how to use it. I don't work with people exxcept on the minimally-required level. I'm not a people-person. I'm no salesman - unfortunately when UE...I have to sell myself. I find/found &quot;buyers&quot; among the ranks of people who'd seen me in action. In the interview room (if I even get the interview) I'm uncomfortable, sweaty, panicked, harried, fidgety and bad making eye-contact. &lt;strong&gt;No one will hire &lt;em&gt;that-guy&lt;/em&gt;; but they will if they know (or have a memo on their desk from someone who does) &quot;this is the guy, make him an offer.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do it too in 2016. If I can &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; can. Close the laptop, put your coat on go get the job - check that - go take the job that everyone concerned knows is yours by right. Leave the online-resume-hacking to the hacks. You're legit - now go get it...bring your dreams, your a-game and your balls (don't forget your keys). much love and best wishes for a better 2016. -tap&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastActivityDate="2015-12-31T09:10:56.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20200" CreationDate="2015-12-31T12:42:24.653" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. The &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;familiar&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; information should be placed first, and the important &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; information should be placed last. These two positions are the most prominent places in a sentence. And placing familiar information first creates a connection from one sentence to another that greatly improves the readability of prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/the-science-of-scientific-writing/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The Science of Scientific Writing&lt;/em&gt; by Gopen and Swan, shows how to take impenetrable scientific prose and, using a few guidelines like the one I give above, make it much more readable. I quote from the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is a linguistic commonplace that readers naturally emphasize the material that arrives at the end of a sentence. We refer to that location as a &quot;stress position.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several good reasons that you usually don't want to put the important information in the other prominent position, at the beginning of the sentence. One reason given by the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beginning with the exciting material and ending with a lack of luster often leaves us disappointed and destroys our sense of momentum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors call the start of a sentence the &lt;em&gt;topic position&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The information that begins a sentence establishes for the reader a perspective for viewing the sentence as a unit: Readers expect a unit of discourse to be a story about whoever shows up first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is their advice about what should be in these two positions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Put in the topic position the old information that links backward; put in the stress position the new information you want the reader to emphasize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the new, important information in a sentence should be at the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the sentence ends with a list, the &quot;stress position&quot; would start at the beginning of the list, and my intuition says the start of a list is the most prominent place in it. So your second sentence with &lt;em&gt;&quot;sample impurities due to an uneven opularseny of the Earth’s magnetic field, comtorsognation, and palamnesis&quot;&lt;/em&gt; may be preferable. But the best way to phrase that sentence might be to add words that move the stress position to the end of the list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Possible explanations include comtorsognation, palamnesis and, in the authors' opinions the most plausible, sample impurities due to an uneven opularseny of the Earth’s magnetic field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4994" LastEditorUserId="4994" LastEditDate="2016-01-16T21:10:57.127" LastActivityDate="2016-01-16T21:10:57.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20244" CreationDate="2015-12-31T14:13:56.110" Score="0" ViewCount="582" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently finished writing a children's book about the moon. I was ready to submit it to different publishers when I came across another book with the same idea on the internet. This book is also based on the moon but the setting is in the forest and the characters involved are the forest animals. The only similarity is the theme and the fact that it mixes fantasy and facts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would this be consider a copyright infringement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16317" LastEditorUserId="16317" LastEditDate="2016-01-10T01:08:55.683" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T01:08:55.683" Title="Children's book copyright issues" Tags="|copyright|short-story|children|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20243" CreationDate="2015-12-31T16:17:51.203" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  If you were quoting parts of the other book, or if you were directly copying the pictures of the book, then it would be a problem.  But if you're simply telling a story about a similar subject then there's no problem.  Nobody can copyright the moon, and any story about the phases of the moon is to some degree going to have a similar structure.  It sounds like you're fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2015-12-31T16:17:51.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20245" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-31T18:44:22.457" Score="0" ViewCount="431" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm preparing a letter for my manager to sign. I don't know how to start the letter, I want the letter to say : I'm John Doe manager of John Smith. And the following is the list of job duties for John Smith who works as a full time employee of XYZ, inc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be thankful if you could help me with that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16319" LastActivityDate="2015-12-31T22:57:47.633" Title="Writing confirmation job duties letter" Tags="|letter|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-12-31T22:53:04.163" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20245" CreationDate="2015-12-31T22:36:49.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The text that you've suggested in your question is very similar to what you should write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In US business writing, it's important to get straight to the point. Other than greeting and signing off, you don't have to engage in formalities. If you come from a country, such as France, that uses traditional stock phrases in official correspondence, or cultures that value indirectness, writing this way can feel uncomfortable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also feel uncomfortable about other issues related to the subject material. For example, you might have concerns about the employee's performance. If you can't express those issues easily in writing, ask for a &quot;follow-up meeting to discuss the job description and some related concerns&quot; in person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your work requires a lot of business correspondence, you can use books that provide example letters. These are useful but limited in scope. I prefer &lt;em&gt;The Big Book Of How To Say It (How To Say It And How To Say It At Work)&lt;/em&gt; by Rosalie Maggio. In that book, the author helps you write more authentic correspondence by suggesting some key phrases and providing guidelines to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2015-12-31T22:57:47.633" LastActivityDate="2015-12-31T22:57:47.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20247" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-01T00:34:49.043" Score="4" ViewCount="425" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been brainstorming and working on worldbuilding, structure, characters and overall story development stuff for about 4 years now. Basically spending a lot of time brainstorming strong, well developed self contained ideas, only lightly juxtaposing ideas here and there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I've written my outline, my story involves stuff about a civilization in the sky and an a city below. There was a war that occurred involving the creation of a certain type of species as well as a time machine a scientist created (though at the time writing it, there was no real discernable reason why the time machine was created or what it would have been for... I was thinking or working that out later...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Originally in the island below, there was also a civil conflict, which is part of the main premise of the story, though I never found reason for it to happen so it phased out, and I juxtaposed the war from the sky with the war below, merging them together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now, the war between those two species occurred in the island below, the island above would live the aftermath of it, as they inhabit the island afterwards...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in the stage of outlining, this created plotholes I'm trying to repair...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any &quot;order of operations&quot; or objective rulesets I should take into account when worldbuilding to avoid plotholes or contrivances, and make sure when I write, I can make sure the plot retains a clean and organized structure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I finished the first and second act in the outline, and found the third act won't have enough material and I need to add more ideas to the story (first and second half) to expand on the plot, is this bad, or will it still work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time machine is important to the plot, I'm just thinking about why it was originally created and what it could have been for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16320" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T15:58:46.627" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T15:58:46.627" Title="How to avoid plotholes when writing stories with dense mythologies?" Tags="|plot|world-building|outline|mythology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20238" CreationDate="2016-01-01T02:21:02.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Both of the examples you provide contain phrases that have converted verbs into noun phrases. Revert the phrases back into their verb form. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before: The Deutsche Bahn AG is the company with the most energy consumption in Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After: Deutsche Bahn AG consumes more energy than any other company in Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Illustrate the enormity of the problem. Use a number, a comparison and/or an analogy to make the issue real and tangible to your audience. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quantity: In 2014, its rail, bus, trucking, and airfreight operations consumed the 15 Million Gigajoules, which is equivalent to N tonnes of oil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A comparison: This is more than the next 10 largest consumers of energy in Germany combined, including Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;trying to persuade&lt;/a&gt;, appeal to your audience's logic, emotions, and morality (logos, pathos,  ethos). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T02:21:02.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17977" CreationDate="2016-01-01T04:24:37.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to have a terrible problem with over editing my work. Eventually, I would get frustrated that I was constantly working on beginnings and never got to the &quot;good stuff&quot; in the middle. It eventually led to severe writers block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After several years, I got a story that was so vivid in my head, I had to get it out. I wasn't thinking about writing a book. I just knew that I had to write out what was going on in my head or else I'd never sleep again. I was thinking about it that much! It was almost as if I weren't trying to write a new story. I was just transcribing a movie that I was watching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I just started writing furiously for several hours a day. I was trying to just get the events themselves down before I forgot them or I got bored. Sometimes, I'd write one sentence that represented an entire chapter's worth of story. Instead of my usual style of procrastinating by doing research before I wrote something, I'd write garbage like, &quot;So this big explosion happens and I should do some research to make it realistic. But after all the details, the rest of the story will go like this.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I'd write mini scenes that would never get into the story if I tried to publish it. The protagonist wouldn't witness the event, so it wouldn't be part of the narrative. But writing it helped me figure out exactly what the characters around her were thinking at the time and their actions made more sense to me. The supporting characters got stories of their own. They had real personalities and sometimes, I'd have to change parts of the story to make it believable to me that these characters had good reasons for what they were doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I changed my mind about an event or character, I'd add in my new synopsis, but I'd not erase or edit the old event or character, in case I wanted to change back to an older version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm well past the middle of my &quot;junk draft&quot; and further along writing a story than I've  been before! It's very ugly in this form. I'm not letting anyone read it because it's not at all meant to be read by anyone but me. This is just helping me get the whole story out so I can polish it up and do the real writing later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's so much that can happen when you do it this way. I scoffed when people said that their stories took a mind of their own. But writing like this has shown me that it really happens. I had a minor supporting character age himself 40 years younger and made himself the primary villain. And then he refused to be a real villain, but still fought against the protagonist. Now it's very ambiguous about good vs evil. There's even a chance that my protagonist is a villain herself who went down a too dark path to fight for the good cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was used to writing fairly stock plots. I can't believe that my story turned out this complex! I blame ditching the editing and let everything fly wild and free. I'll never go back to the old way. This is great!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T04:24:37.087" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20210" CreationDate="2016-01-01T04:52:19.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a fan of info dumps. They can get boring and cause the story to drag. Also, I think readers like to make their own speculations and guesses about things. With an info dump, they lose the opportunity to do this.  Also, I don't think characters really want to sit down and be told pages and pages worth of information. They might glaze over and get bored themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if it would be possible in your situation, but I faced a massive info dump in my current story. Instead of laying it all out, I leaked it out very gradually with several different characters having short conversations throughout the entire story at different times for different reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It helps my story because I made mages in my fantasy story chronically immature. They get bored easily if not working on their magic. If they had to be subjected to an info dump, they'd wander off or just stop listening after a few minutes. So I broke things up. Different characters knew different bits of information for different reasons and had different motivations for giving the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example. Part of my info dump had to include the true nature of the divine -- or God in their world. Instead of a wise sage doling out the truth, I have one character making fun of another one because he believes that the God he worships is a real person who sits on a real throne in a real castle in the clouds.  While he tries to explain things, several other characters start asking their own questions and showing their confusion on the subject.  It only takes a few paragraphs. It doesn't nearly go into explaining everything, but it's enough for the characters to get the general idea and the possible future readers could speculate and make their own theories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throughout the story this subject comes up over and over. Sometimes there's just a sentence or two alluding to the subject and giving more information. Many times the discussions happen between two minor characters and the protagonist overhears them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T04:52:19.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20251" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-01T16:00:38.527" Score="3" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm pretty much about to start a new story, which I plan to be a big process. I have several fleshed-out characters in mind, but I'm really not sure how exactly to determine if they're all fit to present their own point of view. They're fully fleshed out and could easily be dueteragonists and supporting characters, but it s  Right now I'm juggling between three and four equally-important protagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some ways to determine if a protagonist character belongs and will aid the piece as a whole? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14971" LastEditorUserId="14971" LastEditDate="2016-01-02T06:12:08.227" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T01:27:46.790" Title="What is a &quot;methodology&quot; I can I use/follow to determine the ideal set of protagonists for my story?" Tags="|creative-writing|characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19522" CreationDate="2016-01-01T17:41:10.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legendfire.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.legendfire.com/&lt;/a&gt; and I like it. It is entirely free and simple in a good way. It is a relatively small community but you don't really need a whole lot of people if the people that are present are helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16326" LastEditorUserId="2074" LastEditDate="2016-01-06T01:59:46.217" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T01:59:46.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20251" CreationDate="2016-01-01T20:13:43.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your question, it sounds like you've fleshed out several characters. However, it's unclear whether you are using the word &quot;protagonist&quot; in its traditional sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most stories usually have one protagonist. Less frequently, a story has two protagonists. And then, their goals must be closely related. The story revolves around the struggle of the protagonist(s) to achieve her aim. I would avoid tackling stories with multiple protagonists until I was confident of my ability to write great stories with only one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other characters in the story should serve only as supporting cast. Their actions help or frustrate the protagonist's progress. Their personalities contrast with that of the protagonist. Their storylines intersect with and sometimes serve as a counterpoint to that of the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &quot;methodology&quot; is to use archetypal characters for your genre. They're archetypal &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; they possess a nearly ideal set of qualities for a given type of story. Readers may also have an easier time &quot;stepping into&quot; a story that relies on archetypal characters. Your job, as the storyteller, is to use those characters interesting and novel ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not sure that a character in one of your stories doing a good job of helping or frustrating the protagonist, consider enhancing the character or removing them from the story. You can reassign their useful qualities/actions/dialog to another character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-02T04:07:51.857" LastActivityDate="2016-01-02T04:07:51.857" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20247" CreationDate="2016-01-02T00:10:00.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you answered your own question: Consider dumping artifacts onto both &quot;continents&quot; in earlier chapters from your time machine. Your third act can pull these artifacts together into some meaningful ... talisman. You will need a singular protagonist in this sort of complex world. There are numerous references on this site to the Hero's Journey to help define your hero (who will solve the clues, build the talisman, win the war ...). Use your protoganist's comrades to talk about &quot;the way of things&quot; to prevent long-winded info dumps (like this post).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-01-02T00:10:00.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20212" CreationDate="2016-01-02T03:39:15.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If an established rule isn't available, one can solve this question using reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Including names in citations helps readers and future researchers accomplish three important goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uniquely identify the author of a work. (Distinguish the author&#xA;from other authors with similar names.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify multiple works by that author. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distinguish between works with similar titles but different authors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Including the author's middle initial in each citation does the best job of meeting all three goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Omitting the author's middle initial in at least one of the citations does a poorer job of satisfying all three goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are certain of the author's identity, adding their middle initial to a citation does no harm. If you are uncertain, doing so risks creating confusion for future researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, provided you are certain of the author's identity, add the middle initial to all citations of that author's works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-01-02T03:39:15.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20344" CreationDate="2016-01-02T04:27:07.063" Score="4" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I volunteer as an editor for the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN), an organization that creates free open source software such as the Firefox browser. MDN has &lt;a href=&quot;https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/needs-review/editorial&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a large number of technical topics awaiting review&lt;/a&gt;, around 625 at this moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most topics are very short and well-written, so they require few if any edits. Other topics are long and written by smart people who aren't great at technical writing. Very few topics are poorly written. The scope, pace, and choice of topics to edit are up to the editor. The style guidelines are not stringent. So far, I haven't come across any interactive examples that need testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I enjoy editing, and I find contributing to open source software gratifying. It also improves my writing/editing skills, and I gain technical knowledge. However, there aren't a lot of extrinsic rewards, such as earning reputation points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who volunteer do this have to be mostly content to work quietly in the background. Do you have any suggestions on how to attract and retain like-minded technical editors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-01-06T02:16:19.650" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T14:31:16.600" Title="Attracting and retaining volunteers to edit technical doc for open source projects" Tags="|technical-writing|editing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20012" CreationDate="2016-01-02T10:09:54.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most publishers only accept manuscripts from agents.. I would expend my energy on trying to get the attention of one of those critters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15962" LastActivityDate="2016-01-02T10:09:54.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20353" CreationDate="2016-01-02T14:20:23.513" Score="4" ViewCount="531" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excuse me if I am on the wrong StackExchange site. I write about &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Physics&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;English&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;typeset&lt;/a&gt; that with &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;LaTeX&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have a variable &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt;, and there are two of them in the same expression. I want to say that the formula looks ill-defined because the same letter represents for two different things. How would I write the plural of the variable &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt;? Those are my ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4PoYv.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4PoYv.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/08/the-grammar-of-mathematics-writing-about-variables.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;APA Style blog&lt;/a&gt; I gather that “&lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt;s” is the way to do it, but I am not sure about this. What is the way to go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16336" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-05T11:09:35.143" LastActivityDate="2020-03-05T18:36:22.277" Title="Plural of single letter variables" Tags="|technical-writing|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19804" CreationDate="2016-01-02T17:48:33.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two screenwriting books I've read warn that professional reviewers with a stack of scripts &quot;to finish by Monday&quot; start by tossing out the ones that don't conform to established conventions. These scripts tend to be written by inexperienced writers and have a lower likelihood of becoming successful films. Including photographs seems unconventional. If your screenplay makes it into production, you can supply the photographs to the researchers assigned to the project. If you're writing for a more personal audience, then including the pictures seems like a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-01-02T17:48:33.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20251" CreationDate="2016-01-02T20:53:10.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question also asks for point of view (POV). It is difficult to tell a story from multiple perspectives--but not impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe a decade ago, there was this neat cop drama on network television that told the same story in spurts from different perspectives. I thought it was brilliant, but very few people agreed with me because it didn't last very long on American TV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, David Eddings, after multiple #1 bestsellers with the Belgariad and Mallorean series, went back and retold the story from the perspective of different protagonists. Awesome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, changing POV will confuse the average reader under most circumstances. James Michener is successful at it because he develops his characters individually and then throws them all together at some point with third person omniscient narrative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just some thoughts. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-01-03T01:27:46.790" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T01:27:46.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19661" CreationDate="2016-01-02T22:43:43.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because you posted this question in the Writers Stack Exchange, and the company promotes/recommends activities, it seems likely that the internship involves writing. &#xA;As an intern, you will shine if you accomplish the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take the initiative to research information, solve problems, and find answers to questions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listen well to instructions, and complete work that supports the team's goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understand and communicate well with others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it is very common for interns to do tedious but necessary tasks. Do not feel put down by this. Take it as an opportunity to learn about the inside workings of an organization. Talk to employees over lunch. Ask questions. If the opportunity to do something exciting or challenging comes up, accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I edited the grammar and style of your original question. The most important thing you can do right now to succeed is to improve your written US English. Take a writing course or workshop where your teacher and peers edit your work. To reduce your inhibitions and increase your learning, opt to take the course without academic credit or grades. Then, in class, take risks by being expressive and prolific. When you get your edits back, study and learn from each one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-03T03:32:22.253" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T03:32:22.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20262" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-02T23:50:15.047" Score="5" ViewCount="544" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is slightly less straightforward than the title implies, and requires a little explanation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I am an entirely self-taught writer. Because of this, my methods are probably a bit different than 'the norm' (if there even is such a standard). For example, I believe that the message of a novel is its most important aspect. I strive to form a novel from a message alone, so that the story naturally conveys what I am trying to say to the reader. &lt;em&gt;Everything else&lt;/em&gt; - characters, stakes, and especially plot - flow from the message. This may or may not be ideal; it's simply what I've found works the best for my writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I write my novels this way, the message is a very important part of my development process. It's where everything begins, and it's something I have to develop correctly the first time, or everything that springs from it will ultimately not work to its full potential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Can I repeat the same message over a series of novels? Because the novel springs from the message, my concern is that the novels will all follow the same plot, and so become boring. If I &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; use the same theme, how can I ensure that the novels are different? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My reason for confusion is that &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; seems to have done this quite successfully. The message of &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt;, as I see it, is the power of love, and how those with love will always triumph over those without. This message remains the same throughout all seven books, and at least the first six books seem to follow the same general pattern. (Dursleys, school, steps to solving main conflict, confrontation with Voldemort, resolution.) This clearly did not detract from the books, hence my confusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; Please be clear: I realize using a message this way is vastly different than the majority of authors. That's not what my question is about. My question is about using the same theme over a series, when the plot springs from the theme directly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-01-03T17:10:17.820" LastActivityDate="2017-08-27T01:33:13.020" Title="Can I use the same message over a series of novels?" Tags="|novel|planning|series|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20263" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-03T02:11:27.223" Score="12" ViewCount="4423" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's really hard for me to write questions here without giving a complete info dump on my story. Every time I start to explain my problem, I find myself writing an entire synopsis.  This is my third attempt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I have someone who starts out as a protagonist. In the first part of the story, she saves the day by force of personality. The villain did something horrible at the end and completely deserves punishment, but he escapes at the last moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second part of the story, the villain comes to terms with his crimes and redeems himself. He changes his ways and starts a new life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the third part of the story, the original protagonist has spent her time obsessed with bringing him to justice. She fears people won't see how evil he is, so she decides that the ends justifies the means. She ends up doing some very questionable and possibly evil things to make sure he's caught, arrested and executed. She eventually ends up doing things worse than he ever did, but feels justified because she needed to do those things to get him caught.  It works exactly as planned. And everyone around her sees her as a hero, but she knows that she's not. Her victory is hollow and she's not happy at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I like the story myself. But I thought it might be off putting for readers to invest love for a character in the beginning who ends up going bad in the end.  I am afraid people want clear lines between good and evil. Would they feel cheated if I slowly turned it all around?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2021-01-21T00:29:47.170" Title="Will changing a protagonist into an antagonist alienate readers?" Tags="|fiction|characters|character-development|fantasy|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20264" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-03T03:07:23.480" Score="3" ViewCount="3771" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm from Brazil and I plan to write my first book. I'm thinking about writing it in English, because then it could be published worldwide (I know, dreams). The problem is that I don't know if it would ever be published this way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How, as a foreign writer, can I proceed to publish my novel in the US market? How difficult is this? Is it a realistic dream, or should I write it in Portuguese and wait (pray) for it have some success here and be translated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16340" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-09T08:04:19.617" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T08:04:19.617" Title="Is it hard for a foreigner to publish in English?" Tags="|publishing|translation|international|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20263" CreationDate="2016-01-03T03:20:25.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your story has only one protagonist, the &quot;she&quot; whose story drives the plot from the beginning of the story to the end. That the protagonist becomes evil means that this story is a tragedy. The antagonist is a character (or characters?) who oppose or frustrate your protagonist from achieving her goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the story structure you describe, the villain's redemption in part II seems like it would eliminate him as the antagonist for the remainder of the story. Without an antagonist, part III might be less engaging. If you address this structural problem by inserting a different antagonist, there's no reason for your readers to dislike the story. Tragedies, such as &quot;Gone Girl&quot;, can do well at the bookstore and the box-office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T03:20:25.913" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20264" CreationDate="2016-01-03T04:07:33.570" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard for anyone to get published anywhere. I recommend writing your book in Brazilian Portuguese, so you have the full range of expression that every author gets from writing in their primary language. Assuming you're in Brazil, you'll also get more support and better feedback from your friends there than from a remote English-speaking audience. Focus on writing a great story. Until you've got that, don't worry about publishing. When you've finished the story, you can rewrite it in English and get a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a trend in the US toward publishing works by Latin-American and foreign authors. Our changing culture and educational curricula are driving this change. Typically, these works address universal themes in a local context. The choice of theme makes the story relevant to a global audience. The local context gives the global audience insights into the local culture and family relations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, avoid placing too many demands on the reader having local knowledge. For example, if your one of your characters is a political activist who suffers from PTSD, you might need to provide some insight into Brazil's recent political history. It's a tricky balance, trying to write something relevant and universal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, becoming an established writer in Brazil should be an advantage. Boa sorte!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-04T17:53:38.727" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T17:53:38.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20267" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20293" CreationDate="2016-01-03T04:47:58.460" Score="2" ViewCount="4640" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always struggled with writing scenes like these. For example, imagine a situation where two characters, Steve and Alice, are walking down the road. Suddenly, somebody shoots Alice, and she dies immediately. There's absolutely no build-up or warning. There's nothing about the scene that would make the reader even suspect that Alice would die. Steve is devastated because Alice was everything to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I write scenes like these without making it sound ridiculously dramatic or corny? I feel like using &quot;all of a sudden&quot; is too stereotypical... Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T05:20:46.267" Title="How to write a scene where something devastating suddenly happens?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-01-09T23:46:39.477" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20196" CreationDate="2016-01-03T06:01:25.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use different spellings and punctuation depending on where the email originates from: favor vs favour; and inclusion, or not, of the oxford comma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people write 'try and' instead of the more technically correct 'try to'. Often Americans use an extraneous preposition 'off of' when 'off' alone does the job. A sloppy writer might write 'would of' instead of 'would've'. Many writers use 'there's' as a plural dummy element: 'There's seven people coming for dinner' when 'There are seven people coming for dinner' would be used by the more careful writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although you don't have the space or need to flesh out these characters, you should use their emails to say as much as you can to show their levels of education and the tone of what they're writing. I'd be using every trick in the book to make each one sound unique. The last thing you want is for all the emails to sound as though they were written by you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11346" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T06:01:25.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20263" CreationDate="2016-01-03T08:40:31.913" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your protagonist will still be the girl. She's the &quot;main character&quot;. A protagonist doesn't have be a hero. They can be a reluctant anti-hero, amoral, or even a villain. You could write a book with Satan as the protagonist if you wanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the readers have built an attachment to the character, and her actions make sense from her point of view, your readers should be okay with her getting dark or making mistakes. Note that's in general. Some people will be turned off (they don't like grey) but there's nothing you can do for them given your storyline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a &quot;puppet&quot; (for long) isn't a great idea, as you're taking away her agency. She isn't driving the plot anymore AND her actions don't really matter. The villain can drive the plot for a while and the story can be fine (think of the Joker in Dark Knight).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that you're worried about turning a &quot;good&quot; character &quot;evil&quot;. But I'm sure she does not so good things at the beginning, and has flaws. And the &quot;evilness&quot; of her actions can be justified by her motivations. Everything turns a bit grey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said before, as long as your character is relatable, and her choices and actions match her characterization and situation, your readers will be fine. Now stop worrying about this and go write! If you're hesitant, put your mental effort into making her relatable and her actions understandable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T08:40:31.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20267" CreationDate="2016-01-03T08:50:39.740" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just have it happen. Action verbs and body hits the ground. That's not the important part. You can have them just drop, or have a sound (bang, tires screech, flash of movement, etc) just before. It's a shock, unless you've built tension by showing the other side (e.g., the hitman) before this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you have to really work. Make the reaction real. Did she trip? What's wrong? Not sure how bad the injury is (unless her head is splattered everywhere, she's unconscious and dying, not dead). Does he even notice a bullet hole? What are her chances? Denial - this isn't happening.  Calling for help.  Was this an accident? Where did it come from? Is he in danger? Then full-out freakout at being powerless and unsure of what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on the confusion, not the drama. Processing the loss will take time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also keep in mind the speed of things as you write:&#xA;1. Senses - feel, see, pain&#xA;2. Thought - figuring things out, internal dialog&#xA;3. Actions - ducking, walking&#xA;4. Speech&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T08:50:39.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20262" CreationDate="2016-01-03T09:08:51.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The theme (I think that's what you're talking about) is something that is often part of a novel, but it's not part of the plot at all, if that makes sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theme is also not the concept (a vague, 7-ish word plot summary) or the premise (which is a one or two sentence description of your novel with specifics). I think that's where you're getting messed up. The concept is plot-related, while your theme (what you call message) has nothing to do with the plot. It's woven into how you tell the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a concept: Two lovers struggle aboard a sinking ship&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a premise: Aboard the powerful Titanic ship, a poor painter and a wealthy young woman fall in love, but struggle to save each other when the ship hits an iceberg&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theme: Love is timeless. Or, kids are stupid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read Harry Potter, but from analyses online, you pulled a &lt;strong&gt;completely&lt;/strong&gt; different theme out than a lot of people. Which is fine. Please be careful not to be too ham-fisted with your theme. People really don't want to be preached at, and if the &quot;moral of the story&quot; is obvious, they will be irritated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to answer your basic question, yes you can repeat the theme for each of your novels. Because the theme is completely separate from the plotline, and because as your characters evolve and their situations change, so will the specifics of how the theme is applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, please check out the extremely helpful K M Weiland writing about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/storys-theme-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Theme vs Message&lt;/a&gt;. You may also want to read about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/your-plot-and-your-theme-are-they-a-team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;plot and theme working together&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T09:08:51.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20272" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-03T10:24:45.853" Score="2" ViewCount="2591" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an essay but I struggle with thesis statements and paragraphs. My teacher wants my thesis to be significant, specific, single, and supportable. I often know what I want to write, but struggle with writing about 3 points with 3 different paragraphs. I often see just one point broad point and try to make an essay based off of that.  How do I fit one broad point into the structure of three specific points and an overall thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of an essay in development that I am trying to fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Remember that…”, a statement when applied to the early years of my  life it commences a flood of nostalgic memories about cartoons no longer on T.V., video games 20 years of date, toys long forgotten. These are the type memories we hold close to our hearts since they are from a time we love to reflect on, our childhood. A time in our lives that is so important to us years later, since it represents a time of freedom you`ll never get back again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Freedom is the air our soul inhales. Our childhood was freedom, it was free from the stress that our teenage and adult years would exert on us. This was a time where my day depended on what I wanted to do not what I had to do, which made each day seem like a different adventure. I possed little knowledge of the world, so each day I would aquire new information, rules, etc which made each day unique from the rest. Yet its this image of the adventure which makes me feel many emotions at once, this image which completely encapsulates this time so different from today. What ever this adventure was; playing Nintendo 64 on rainy Saturday afternoons, watching Pokemon in the basement with my older brother, web-surfing the primitive days of google, or what ever the adventure was I`ll never experience it as pure as I did. Time has passed inevitably and with time comes change, and because of it Ill never play Nintendo 64 the same way again, back then the whole experience would consume me, occasionally interrupted by thoughts which may or may not have been related to it, but what was there, was warmth. This warmth was produced by my little body, this warmth made my eyes glued to the screen, this warmth which I simply defined as it made feel good. Good, a word I would only use back then, but now I have aquired so many other advanced adjectives, that good will always be a thing of the past. With other things learnt one would describe playing Nintendo 64 as unhealthy or a waste of time. This time could be used to pursue what ever you think you want to do like reading a book, drawing, etc. Time for me, now needs to be dedicated to a passion to excel in, in order to find a job related to it, with the closeness of adult years I am told many things I should or need to spend time with, such as an activity I learned from the media, school, friends, but not something I learned from myself, like I did in my childhood. These were the days in which what should be done was decided by my random personal whim, these were the days where time was on my side, the days where I explored the world with my quiet young mind, the days that can only be connected now by a statement such as “remember…”. What ever that memory was keep it close to you, since its from your childhood and never agin will things be the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16345" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T02:57:19.720" Title="How do I structure an essay into a thesis statement and three points in three paragraphs? -this is not a school homework" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-01-18T17:31:25.283" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20272" CreationDate="2016-01-03T16:58:52.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ben. Many of us can relate to your struggle. However, your question will likely be flagged as a &quot;can you do my homework for me&quot; question. If you don't mind, I'll respond by helping you answer your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scanning your first draft, I can see your core idea (the thesis). Pick it out. Then pick out the three &lt;em&gt;most powerful&lt;/em&gt; thoughts that support your core idea, like three legs on a stool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put aside your first draft, don't edit it. Write a second draft of your essay that only contains the core idea and the three supporting thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're a creative big-picture thinker, so you have many interesting and related ideas to sort through. It will be challenging, but be ruthless and make choices. Put aside thoughts that don't fit in the structure. Incorporate thoughts that you realize are facets of the &quot;big three.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put aside your second draft, don't edit it. Write a third draft, fine tune and balance the content. Polish your grammar and style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you share your work here! Keep on writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T16:58:52.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20276" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20285" CreationDate="2016-01-03T19:53:01.423" Score="5" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I have an idea for a novel (consisting, let's say, of a premise and a vague idea of characters), how can I tell if the idea will turn into a series or a stand-alone? I don't want to start development on what I assume will be a stand-alone novel, only to find out half way through that it would actually be better as a series. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Are there indicators I can look for in a story idea &lt;em&gt;alone&lt;/em&gt; to tell me if it should be a series or a novel? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T12:00:58.570" Title="How can I tell if a novel idea is made for a series or a stand-alone?" Tags="|novel|planning|series|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20345" CreationDate="2016-01-03T21:02:12.333" Score="4" ViewCount="632" Body="&lt;p&gt;Originally I asked this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/20251/what-is-a-methodology-i-can-i-use-follow-to-determine-the-ideal-set-of-protago/20260#20260&quot;&gt;What is a &amp;quot;methodology&amp;quot; I can I use/follow to determine the ideal set of protagonists for my story?&lt;/a&gt;, but found that it was too vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I'm trying to decide if my story would benefit from switching between two main characters in first-person or if I should stick with a single first-person narrative or use third-person omniscient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things to consider in addition to the general question: Both characters have extremely different background knowledge(s) and outlooks on things. They each have a unique voice. They will primarily spend their time together, but will have segments apart from each other. At first, they will have the same plotline, but later will have complimenting roles and goals and such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14971" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T00:29:36.720" Title="How to determine if a story would benefit from multiple first-person POVs?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|viewpoint|narrative|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20272" CreationDate="2016-01-03T21:47:36.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people struggle to grasp big ideas. In your case, you need to break one main idea down into three. When I write, I like to think of it as explaining it to a child. You are going to sit down and explain your essay to a seven-year old child who fully grasps the English language, but only has the attention span to last about four or five sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pick out the three &lt;strong&gt;main&lt;/strong&gt; points. If you only had three sentences, what would they be? Then, put each of these ideas into one sentence each, to make a total of three sentences. These are your topic sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To make an thesis statement, combine your topic sentences. I start by stringing them together and making a sort of &quot;list&quot; of what my essay will talk about. This will give you a very boring and dull thesis statement. But it is a thesis nonetheless. Feel free to beef it up and add more interest to it later.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To write the essay, make sure everything you say is important. Be mindful of tangents and off-topic sentences. Think about what you're going to say, say it, and get out as quickly as possible. It's hard, trust me I know, but be brutal when cutting things out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you well in all of your writing endeavors! If you'd like edits on your essay, I'd be happy to provide them, but I'd need to know how you'd like to receive them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16350" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T21:47:36.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20277" CreationDate="2016-01-03T21:59:42.650" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, I enjoyed reading the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson. It has a total of nine books, I believe, and follow the adventures of a group of kids. As the series progresses, we mainly follow one protagonist, but it begins to split off into many different chapters with many different POVs when the characters begin to move apart geographically and emotionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe that your story will benefit from seeing situations from more than one POV, then do it. I would advise against replaying the same scene twice, but allow your characters to speak frankly to one another and express opinions that way. As they split up, I would feel free to explore different POVs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way you could consider if by using different books. If it fits well with the story, you could develop two separate &quot;series&quot; of books, one from each character's POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Divergent series by Veronica Roth did this. Although I didn't read this series, I know it follows one main character's POV through three books. Then, in another series that is separate but connected, she takes another one of her characters and follows him through his past and a few scenarios from the original book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you luck in your writing endeavors, and I hope that I'm able to help. Figuring out POVs is always a hard part of the writing process. If there's anything I can help with, please let me know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16350" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T21:59:42.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1850" CreationDate="2016-01-03T22:31:41.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some writers tend to tell us and not show us what the character feels/ acts like/ thinks/etc. your character should be described and should have insecurities. A bad character doesn’t have something that moves a reader. Your reader should feel and live within the character and the character should be able to be brought to life. If a character isn’t relatable then they are a bad character. They don’t really have a purpose in the story. If you want a purpose/ message/ theme, you should show it through actions, thoughts, secrets, etc. you should also use figurative language to give a symbolic meaning to a character which makes the story alive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16353" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T22:31:41.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1850" CreationDate="2016-01-03T22:50:35.667" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;People are multi-faceted, some more than others. You would arguably assign more of this trait to your main characters, and allow very minor characters to by default adopt more of a single faceted approach given they don't take up many words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, one day I might be really raring to go, but other days, for my own personal reasons be unwilling to act on something or hang out with people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you may want to do is assign a general template for their &lt;em&gt;temperament&lt;/em&gt; and use that to drive how you write their actions and dialogue choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in my story, the protagonist is a female smuggler, but she didn't necessarily choose that herself. She was left alone when her father who was killed when she was young. So what this tells me about her is that she is likely not to trust anyone much at all but also yearns to belong, and to have some semblance of a family deep down. She's also tough from years of struggle and has some necessary defensive and mechanical skills. She depends only on herself, but would desperately like to change her life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a non-trivial character in my view. She has many different motivations and trepidations that can drive her story and interactions with other characters in interesting ways, especially the male supporting character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T22:50:35.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20276" CreationDate="2016-01-03T22:59:50.817" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you would be better off writing some of the story and discovering along the way where this story fits into the grand scheme of things, or even if it does. I also have a vague plot and some momentum going in the first few chapters that I'm very excited about, but while there is likely potential for a number of stories to be extrapolated from the setting and characters, I don't know &lt;em&gt;yet&lt;/em&gt; how quickly my plot will resolve itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I will understand more about that as I go and ultimately realise it's better left as a standalone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as indicators, how expansive is the scope of your story? For example, adventure, science fiction and fantasy lend themselves to being expanded across a series of novels or films. Dramas and other genres may not be so obvious as they tend to complete their stories in one sitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your story might only be one of a series of only loosely related and independent stories in the same setting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="350" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T22:59:50.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20276" CreationDate="2016-01-03T23:15:01.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two kinds of series: (a) What is really one very long story that is broken into pieces for convenience or marketing purposes. That is, if a story takes 1000 pages, rather than try to sell one 1000-page book, we instead make a trilogy and sell three 330-page books. This makes each book more manageable and makes pricing more realistic. Etc. (b) A story that is a series in the sense of distinct episodes that have common characters and/or a common setting, but that are distinct, stand-alone stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a story to work well as a series, each installment has to pretty much end up where it started. That is, a problem was presented, the characters solved it, and now things are returned to &quot;normal&quot;, ready to attack the next problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the detective story. This works very naturally as a series. In each installment, a crime is committed and the brilliant detective solves it. Once he's solved it, it's done, and he's ready to take on the next case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or consider the typical TV family comedy. Members of a family have some problem, they solve it, and now order in the family is restored. They are ready to face the next problem. (Usually the solution turns out that it was all a misunderstanding, because if somebody was truly in the wrong, then one of the main characters is now less likeable, which is a problem for the series.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some stories do not work well as a series, because once the problem is solved, it would be very unlikely for a similar problem to come up. Like take the classic romance story: the heroine meets the hero, they fall in love, they overcome some obstacles to their love, and then they live happily ever after. So once you end with the happy couple getting married (or these days, simply moving in together), where do you go from there? If the next installment the heroine is chasing after some other man, than apparently they didn't live happily ever after after all. To start a new romance we have to say that in fact the first romance was a failure and not the success that it was painted. So okay, you might, you might say that the first husband turned out to be a jerk and now the heroine is divorced and in pursuit of romance again. But there's a limit to how far we can go with this. We might buy that she was unlucky in love two or three times. But after the 15th failed marriage, we're going to think there is something wrong with this woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could, of course, go off in a different direction. You could say that now that they're married, we explore their married life, or they start solving crimes together, or whatever. But in that case it's not a &quot;romance series&quot;, it's a &quot;detective series&quot; where the first episode was a prologue that explains how the two detectives got together. I suppose in principle you could have a series with the same characters and they do totally different things in each installment. In book 1 they have a romance and get married. In book 2 they solve a crime together. In book 3 they become doctors and treat a difficult patient. Etc. But who would want to read such a series? Each book would appeal to fans of a different genre. And after a while it would get ridiculous: Are these people experts at EVERYTHING?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my humble opinion, a major element in making television so uncreative is that it is largely limited to the series format. Only so many ideas work as a series: the detective solves a series of crimes, the lawyer handles a series of cases, the doctor treats a series of patients, the family deals with a series of misunderstandings, the spaceship visits a series of planets. Those five ideas probably make up about 90% of TV series, because they're ideas that work as series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earlier I said that in a series, each installment has to end where it began. It doesn't have to end EXACTLY where it began. The problem can be solved and the characters ready to deal with another problem, but their relationships might change and develop, the characters might learn new things, etc. But then that requires that the installments be read/viewed in order. In TV, for example, episodes are often re-run during the summer, sold to syndication, etc, so the producers don't know what order people will see episodes in. So TV series often make sure they really do end each episode EXACTLY where it started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T23:15:01.193" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20277" CreationDate="2016-01-03T23:29:54.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Both characters have extremely different background knowledge(s) and&#xA;  outlooks on things. They each have a unique voice. They will primarily&#xA;  spend their time together, but will have segments apart from each&#xA;  other. At first, they will have the same plotline, but later will have&#xA;  complimenting roles and goals and such.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The factors you list above suggest to me that you are already inclining towards two points of view, and have good reasons for wanting to take that path. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to decide is to look at how you will deal with those scenes vital to the plot that the &lt;em&gt;main&lt;/em&gt; main character (the one who will be the sole narrator if you decide to take that route) does not personally witness. Does the fact that these scenes remain unseen to the reader unless and until some other character tells the protagonist what happened strengthen the story or weaken it? It could be that their invisibility strengthens the story, adding tension and mystery, as the invisibility of the murderer strengthens a detective story. In that case go for single POV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or it could be that the necessity to have some other character tell a story-within-a-story in order to let the narrator and hence the reader see what went on comes across as remote and contrived. In that case you want two POV characters who can each experience &quot;their&quot; parts of the story in exciting real time, no need for boring retellings later. And the differences between the perceptions of the two main characters can be another generator of interest and drama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware that I've addressed the question of single versus multiple points of view, but not the equally big question of first versus third person. Is there any reason why you can't have two points of view each written in the third person? Not that there haven't been some great stories written in the first person, but it is currently out of fashion, so getting published might be harder&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T23:29:54.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20272" CreationDate="2016-01-03T23:31:46.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmm, who says that an essay must have three main points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is a school assignment, and the teacher says &quot;you must write an essay with three main points&quot;, etc, then if you have an idea for an essay that you just can't hammer into three main points, I'd say use a different idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing an essay because you want to talk about this particular subject, then it doesn't matter how many main points you have, whether it's 3 or 2 or 5. Just make the points you want to make. I've written lots of essays, and I never say, &quot;Oh, blast, I have 4 main points, I've got to figure out which one to leave out.&quot; (I may say, &quot;Oh, blast, I have 20 main points, this is way too much for one essay. I need to leave something out.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to meet an arbitrary standard for a class, I'd say, Just hammer it into the mold. If you are required to have exactly three main points, think through what you're trying to say and see if you cannot extract three main points. Like if you're trying to support a thesis, what are the tree main arguments you can come up with for that thesis? If you have four, then drop one or perhaps combine two into one. If you have only two, then try to think of a third, or break one into two parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was teaching a class, I might give an assignment like this to force the student to think about what his main points are and to enumerate them. I would not give such an assignment to say that in general, every essay must have exactly three points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T23:31:46.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20277" CreationDate="2016-01-04T02:40:20.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you decide to do this, please don't follow in the footsteps of Robert Jordan. He started out with a few characters exchanging points of views, but those characters kept meeting people who became important to the story and they earned a point of view chapter. And then those people met more people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I quit reading his series in the sixth or seventh book. There were over six hundred pages, but due to many different characters with their own story lines that I think the entire book only covered 48 hours worth of time. And I've been told by his biggest fans that the pace of the story just continued to drag down slower because there were just too many characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T02:40:20.417" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20267" CreationDate="2016-01-04T04:05:54.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could either do it in the beginning and wait to 'solve the mystery' at the end of the chapter to keep the reader in it. Or you can put an event in the beginning that gets the readers attention and leads to the event. and en the chapter with the devastating event at the end. Build up to it. Classically, you could also just throw it in the middle some where and use the rest of the chapter to explain how it effected the rest of the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16358" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T04:05:54.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20267" CreationDate="2016-01-04T05:20:46.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My story right now starts out with two characters minding their own business, when a massive explosion erupts and it knocks them back and suddenly they are blind, deaf and completely disoriented for a few seconds before the smoke starts pouring in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to give it that feeling that you get in those two seconds you realize that a car just ran a red light and is about to T-bone your car. Those two seconds seem to last forever and everything is moving slow motion and feels almost like a dream or you're watching a movie about the experience instead of being right in the middle of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very first second it happens , your brain sometimes gets confused and you might have thoughts that seem oddly calm for just a moment. My MC just noticed that it was suddenly daytime, but everything was the wrong color and the shadows looked wrong. She turned her head to say something to the person next to her, but her head was taking forever to turn in the right direction and the light kept getting brighter.  And then there's a snap and suddenly everything starts happening all at once and there's confusion and chaos all around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been in car accidents, some hurricanes and, few earthquakes and got mugged once. Each time there was this eerie twilight between normal and total insanity. I have no idea why it happens. But I've heard many other people tell me that they had the exact same experience when they were in the middle of an awful surprise event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T05:20:46.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19804" CreationDate="2016-01-04T08:32:59.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have to agree with rolfedh.  As a professional reader I always get uneasy when I receive an &quot;unconventional&quot; script.  The main reason for this is that it suggests that the writer couldn't find a way to express what they mean in the script itself, and had to somehow bolster their work with additional material that will never make it to the screen.  If your photo's are actually going to appear, and showing the stills contributes to the story then great.  If not, or if they are meant to improve the script as a document, then don't.  Additional advice available at www.shorescripts.com.  Best wishes with the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16361" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T08:32:59.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20295" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-04T14:23:36.910" Score="2" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friends and I plan to open a publishing house in our country, focusing on the Sci-Fi genre. We intend to get translation rights for foreign Sci-Fi books and publish them in our country. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, none of us have worked/are working in the publishing industry, so we don't know anything about the fees associated with foreign translation right. Since going in blind would only lead to disaster, we decided to ask around here for some info first. Specifically, we want to know what kind of fees there will be (Will there be an advance? Will there be royalties? Will we have to pay advanced royalties?) and what is considered a fair price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16363" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-04T18:04:35.130" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T19:46:45.553" Title="Translation rights acquisition: what fees will there be and how much will they be?" Tags="|publishing|copyright|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20296" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-04T15:15:54.220" Score="2" ViewCount="2160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story about a group of dogs, mongrels mostly. I would like help finding the correct vocabulary to describe their physical appearance. Remember that, been mongrels, I can't say simply &quot;he was a Doberman&quot; or &quot;he was a terrier&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the stories I've written have been about humans.  Even if it's easy for me to describe different types of nose, mouth, etc., it's not the same with animals. We have to take into consideration that we humans are very good at visualizing humans faces, it's not the same with animals, so, in this case, my description MUST be even more accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I want to ask you advice and help in the description of the fights: how the movements are named and that kind of stuff&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="552" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-05T11:09:45.043" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T00:21:29.140" Title="Help describing dogs' physical appearance and movement" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20295" CreationDate="2016-01-04T15:47:54.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is overly broad. Are you going to focus on any geographic regions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structure of payments will depend on current practices in any giving part of the world. Also, because you reside outside the author or publishers country, those practices may not apply to you. For example, they may expect payment in full upfront because a standard contract that offers royalties would be costly and impractical to enforce if you, the foreign entity, fail to make good on the terms of that contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value of a work depends on its current and potential earnings in its published language. For potential earnings, consider the size of the population that speaks the published language; German (~93 million) versus Norwegian Bokmal (&amp;lt;4 million). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many parts of the world, what you're going to pay depends on what the seller thinks you might be willing and able to pay. Lastly, who is your competition? If, from your nighttime campsite on the Kalahari, you spot the distant flash of toy lightsabers, be prepared to adjust your offerings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-04T19:46:45.553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T19:46:45.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20296" CreationDate="2016-01-04T16:04:39.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I call this a &quot;grains of rice&quot; problem. It's from a question over on Graphic Design SE, &lt;a href=&quot;https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/636/how-do-i-draw-rice-grains-in-photoshop&quot;&gt;How do I draw rice grains in Photoshop?&lt;/a&gt;, but the idea is the same. If you want to draw grains of rice, you have to observe grains of rice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In design terms, you can photograph or scan some actual rice and then trace it. In writing terms, if you want to &lt;em&gt;describe&lt;/em&gt; how something or someone looks, moves, or acts, you must &lt;em&gt;observe&lt;/em&gt; how the thing or person looks, moves, or acts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to a dog park. Bring a notebook. Write down what you see. Do it every day for a month. See if the same dogs return. See how they interact with a familiar environment, or other familiar dogs. See how they interact with newcomers. See how they interact with weather (snow, rain, wind).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read books on dog training as well, to make use of others' observations and to learn some of the jargon vocabulary (like &quot;play bow&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, this isn't something you can get from an afternoon on Stack Exchange. If you're writing a book, you must invest a chunk of time into research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:19.783" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T16:04:39.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20264" CreationDate="2016-01-04T16:59:54.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you self-publish, it shouldn't be any harder for you than for a U.S. native.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to sell your book to a &quot;traditional&quot; publisher ... as @rolfedh says, it's hard for anyone who is not an established writer or already famous in some other field to get a publisher interested in his book. I don't know if it would be harder still for a foreigner per se, i.e. if a publisher would say, &quot;Ohhhh, he's from Brazil, we don't want no grubby foreigners writing for us.&quot; :-) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A serious potential problem is if you are not fluent in English. For example, in your post, your English is pretty good, but I see two grammar errors: It should be &quot;could be published worldwide&quot;, not &quot;could be publish&quot;. And the sentence beginning &quot;How, as a foreign writer ...&quot; has no subject: it should be, &quot;How, as a foreign writer, can I proceed ...&quot; I don't know if this is a sign that your English is good but not fluent, or if you just typed the question hastily, etc. If you struggle with your English, this could really slow you down and interfere with concentrating on the story rather than language mechanics. In general, publishers are reluctant to publish books that don't have excellent grammar. There are exceptions and special cases, but it adds to the barriers that you have to overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to consider is: What is the potential market in Brazil? Yes, there are many more people in the world who speak English than there are who speak Portuguese. But there are also many more books printed in English. I just found some stats that say there are 359 million people in the world who speak English and 260 million who speak Portuguese. I couldn't find stats on books published by language in a quick search, but I did find books published by country: US: 304,000, UK: 184,000, BR: 57,000, PT: 8,000. So there are maybe 359 million English speakers for 492,000 books, or 730 potential readers per book; and 260 million Portuguese speakers for 65,000 books, or 4,000 per book. The Portuguese market may be easier! (I have no idea how much Brazilians read versus how much U.S. folks read.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, bear in mind that as a first-time author, the odds are that you will sell several hundred to a few thousand copies of your book. Yes, if your book is fabulous and you have good marketing and you are lucky you could sell millions of copies, but the odds are heavily against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've published three books (in English) and I've only sold a handful of copies outside the U.S. (Including one in Brazil!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T16:59:54.437" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20263" CreationDate="2016-01-04T17:11:05.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hate it when people answer a question with, &quot;Well, it all depends&quot;. But that seems like the right answer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, it really annoys me when Hollywood does a remake of some old and well-loved story, but turns the hero of the original story into a villain or an idiot. An example that comes to mind is &quot;Mission: Impossible&quot;, where the Tom Cruise remake turned Mr Phelps into a villain. As a viewer, I saw that as something of a betrayal: You took everything that was good about the original story and threw it out the window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not to say that you can never turn a hero into an anti-hero. (Not really &quot;antagonist&quot;, as others have pointed out, as this person is still the main character.) If you write it in a way that makes sense and in general if you do it well, it can certainly be an interesting and involving story. The reader may be drawn in to the tragic tale of this formerly good person being overcome by the situation in which she finds herself and gradually turning evil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think it's relatively hard to pull off. In general, readers want to like the main character. I have very often decided that I don't like a story because the main character was so unlikable, and so I ultimately don't care if he succeeds or fails. That is not to say that the hero can't be flawed. A hero who is perfect in every way tends to be boring and unbelievable. But -- again, in general -- you want your hero to be someone that the readers like and want to see succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I certainly would not say to not write the story this way. It can be made to work. But it's relatively difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T17:11:05.727" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10682" CreationDate="2016-01-04T17:16:41.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. There's no equivalent. It is likely that Amazon has exclusive deals with the other dominant players you mention, preventing third parties from doing the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T17:16:41.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20243" CreationDate="2016-01-04T17:20:08.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ditto @DoWhileNot. Let me add: Copyright law very specifically says that you cannot copyright IDEAS, you can only copyright the words used to express an idea. Unless you copy someone else's exact words, you will not be found guilty of copyright violation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hear this question a lot from both sides: people afraid that they can get in trouble because their book is somehow similar to another book, and people asking if they can sue for copyright violation because someone else wrote a book similar to theirs. Often the similarities are so general that if you think about it, if there was really a law against it 90% of the books ever printed would be illegal. Like, &quot;I wrote a book about two people falling in love and now I see that somebody else wrote a book about two people falling in love.&quot; There are thousands, probably millions, of such books. No, it's not a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might justifiably be worried that the existence of a book that is in some ways similar to yours will hurt your sales, because people will buy that one instead of yours. But there's no copyright issue. Not having read either book, I can't say if this is a problem here. And in any case, unless the other book is very well-known, odds are most of your potential readers will never have heard of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T17:20:08.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20303" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-04T19:57:17.743" Score="11" ViewCount="7451" Body="&lt;p&gt;So. This is one of my first projects, so I have to ask this. The story takes place in a dystopian future, where a young man and a young woman meet each other. They then try to overthrow the tyrannical government, but that doesn't really matter, right? Well. I want to include sexual tension between the two, but I don't know how. What guidelines should I follow to write believable sexual tension between two characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-21T00:51:40.943" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T00:51:40.943" Title="How do I write sexual tension between two characters?" Tags="|character-development|romance|sex|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20303" CreationDate="2016-01-04T20:36:01.277" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tough question--especially if you've never experienced that type of thing. You might get quite a few suggestions here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own conclusion is to say that, by the end of the book, the reader wants them to get together: they have earned each other's love, respect, and admiration. There are thousands of literary and cinematic examples to help guide you. Whether they get together or not is up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T20:36:01.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20303" CreationDate="2016-01-04T20:48:05.770" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sexual tension occurs when two characters are attracted to each other, but where becoming a couple is impossible for one reason or another. For that reason, how you depict it depends on what the obstacle to their happiness is: Do they hate each other?  Are they too dedicated to their cause to take time for love?  Are they oblivious to their feelings?  Are they from warring factions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on their personalities, and the nature of the obstacle, some of the typical ways people respond to attraction are:  Flirting (this can come in many flavors, including innocent, playful, aggressive, courtly, hostile, seductive or raunchy), change in mood (becoming inexplicably happy, silly, angry, bashful, nervous, &lt;em&gt;etc.&lt;/em&gt;), increased physical closeness (touch on the shoulder, backrubs, &lt;em&gt;etc.&lt;/em&gt;), or even the opposite extreme of avoidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How it plays out is very individual.  Let's say the obstacle is their all-consuming dedication to fighting the government.  One partner might respond to their newly discovered attraction by getting angry, and avoiding the other.  The other one might become silly and flirtatious.  At that point, their opposing reactions can lead to new misunderstanding and difficulties.  You don't have to overdo it, however. Readers love this sort of thing, and will happily read between the lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-01-05T17:26:12.483" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T17:26:12.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20296" CreationDate="2016-01-04T22:01:09.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest dedicating time to your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going to the dog park like the answer before me suggested is one possible idea, but that will only give you a very, very small demographic. Some other ways could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go visit your local shelter. See if you can volunteer with them, and learn to play/bathe/walk the dogs. Many dogs there are scared or shy, and watching their interactions could help learn how they express these emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to other dog owners. I know that I, for one, can read my dog very well. I know when he sits on your feet, he is nervous and is asking you not to leave him. This isn't something that can be very obvious to an outsider.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;See if there are opportunities to dog-sit or walk a neighbor's dog. This may sound silly, but developing a relationship with any dog will let them open up more around you, and you may see another side to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't limit yourself. Go visit small dogs, big dogs, sick dogs, scary dogs. Explore how they like to interact with different stimuli. If one dog doesn't like fireworks they may cower, but another may jump and bark at them in excitement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dogs aren't too different than people, but you've had to interact with people for the majority of your lifetime. Feel free to look for books, videos or experts on the subject (Fight!: A Practical Guide to the Treatment of Dog-dog Aggression by Jean Donaldson may be a good place to start for fighting and aggression).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you luck in your writing endeavors!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16350" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T22:01:09.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20307" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23569" CreationDate="2016-01-05T02:05:30.883" Score="1" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story using Scrivener. To keep track of the story timeline, I currently write the (fictional) time and date of the happenings of each scene in the Document Notes section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm considering including that time and date as part of the chapter title, to help the reader follow the timeline. Is there a way to do that in Scrivener short of moving the information from Document Notes to the body of the text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked at the available placeholder tags in Appendix D of the manual, but don't see anything suitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T11:15:09.937" Title="Add Document Data to Chapter Title" Tags="|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20296" CreationDate="2016-01-05T04:01:27.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To jump start your observational skills before heading out to the dog park, read up on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_behavior&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dog Behavior&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_communication&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dog Communication&lt;/a&gt;. Studying these two topics will give you the insight to understand what you are seeing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then read descriptions of animal behavior in literature. Read &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Cry_Wolf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Never Cry Wolf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Farley Mowat first. Then consider works by Gerald Durrell and maybe &lt;em&gt;Call of the Wild&lt;/em&gt; by Jack London. Hey folks, can you think of any other good dog stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-06T00:21:29.140" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T00:21:29.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20316" CreationDate="2016-01-05T06:00:20.667" Score="3" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a similar question right now, and I have an issue: How would one write the grade of A in plural? For clarity, my smart device isn't smart enough for italics. I will use bold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I use &lt;strong&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/strong&gt;. There is no problem with &quot;I got three Bs and a C.&quot; (No italics recommended.) However, to say &quot;I got straight As&quot; is a problem. Or maybe it's not a problem, but I just don't remember ever seeing it. To combine roman and italic in the same line is also a problem: &quot;I got two &lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt; s, two Bs, and an F.&quot; I'm tempted to use an apostrophe, but I don't like that option either: &quot;I got two A's and two Bs.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-01-05T06:09:49.907" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T17:09:03.810" Title="Plural of the scholastic grade A" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20311" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-05T07:01:51.247" Score="3" ViewCount="674" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Background&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of an English story takes place in rural South America, where Spanish is the native tongue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Problem&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Spanish character thinks to himself. In English (i.e., in the story's native tongue), thoughts are quite often placed in italics, but never inside of quotation marks. The question he asks is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What’s going on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are only a few places in the text where characters speak Spanish, and even fewer where they think in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Punctuation Permutations&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A handful of ways to write his question include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;¿Qué está pasando?&lt;/em&gt; he wondered, &lt;em&gt;what’s going on?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;¿Qué está pasando?&lt;/em&gt; he wondered. &lt;em&gt;What’s going on?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;¿Qué está pasando?&lt;/em&gt; he wondered: &lt;em&gt;What’s going on?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Qué está pasando?&lt;/em&gt; he wondered. &lt;em&gt;What’s going on?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He wondered, &lt;em&gt;Qué está pasando?&lt;/em&gt;--&lt;em&gt;What’s going on?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm unsure of whether to prefix with the upside-down question mark, whether to use two independent statements, or join them together with punctuation (e.g., a comma or full-colon).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Questions&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;punctuate the foreign language question that the character thinks?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provide a translation for the reader?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Related&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/1742/2847&quot;&gt;What&amp;#39;s the best way to show a foreign language in a manuscript?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2847" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T21:17:56.807" Title="Show the translation of foreign language thoughts in a manuscript?" Tags="|formatting|dialogue|punctuation|translation|multilingual|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20303" CreationDate="2016-01-05T09:00:02.377" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try and include a bit of wit between the characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Provide moments in your story whereby, there is a display of short and concise,  witty one-liners. These are bounced between the characters like a tennis match, back-and-forth between the two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To think of it abstractly - imagine a point scoring system, if one provides a short, succinct and humorous line - they score a point, the other retaliates. This is all in good jest and provides for non-hostile competitiveness. &#xA;This competitiveness is where the sexual tension is derived from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16378" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T09:00:02.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19973" CreationDate="2016-01-05T10:31:05.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if you are still looking for answers and praise to GreenChum for such a comprehensive answer, but I would recommend that you first try writing a &quot;Treatment&quot;.  This is basically the story, in short prose, without dialogue, describing the characters and the action.  Whilst a treatment is more commonly associated with film, it works for TV too, in as much as you can present a short overview of the what the show is all about and it clarifies the main plot points for you.  If you Google &quot;script treatment&quot; I'm sure you will come up with lots of helpful advices.  Or you are welcome to visit the company I work for www.shorescripts.com to access our free resources on script-writing. Best wishes with your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16361" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T10:31:05.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20309" CreationDate="2016-01-05T11:12:06.487" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no difference &amp;mdash; As, Bs, Cs, Ds, Fs. No italic, no bold, no apostrophe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T11:12:06.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20317" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-05T14:19:48.743" Score="1" ViewCount="250" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do we write something to inspire a person which corrects the mistakes they've made until now, but without making them feel like they're getting mocked from the recipient's perspective?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was trying to write a text to a person younger to me in order to inspire him. Something just doesn't feel right in this paragraph. It doesn't evoke any positive feeling such as hope or inspiration from it. It appears kinda over-bearing and in part hurtful albeit being true. How can I improve and convey the same thing in an inspiring way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First and foremost, you should get a life. What I mean is that you&#xA;  should go do something for yourself - Pursue your interest, engage in&#xA;  your hobbies. What I see most of your time is spent chatting with&#xA;  friends. A complete waste of time. Just imagine number of people you&#xA;  talk to, in a single day. How many of them actually care about you?&#xA;  Yes, it feels good to share about your life with friends. I love that&#xA;  too. Everybody does. But I generally do not discuss it with people who&#xA;  don't care about me. You do. Whoever you see in front of you,&#xA;  you'll start sharing all your life information with the guy. I suggest you&#xA;  put effort into studies, extra curriculum and sports. If you have&#xA;  these things, it'd be fun to talk to people instead of just goofing around with them. If you genuinely do not love yourself, you'll never&#xA;  become an interesting person and people would never learn to love or&#xA;  respect you. You still have time. You can still do so much. For&#xA;  starters, you could improve your writing skills. You want to become a&#xA;  writer, right? Start by writing 'Okay' instead of the lousy text&#xA;  'Ohk'. If someone doesn't care about you, remove that person from your&#xA;  life. Till now you're just exhausting yourself by giving and giving&#xA;  and not getting anything in return. Do you really want such a life? I just wish to see you at your best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is not just about this paragraph.  In an attempt to identify and correct my way of writing an inspiring article, I have taken this paragraph as an example which would more or less give you an insight of my writing in general. I suspect I am committing some basic mistakes common in people who have just started writing such articles. In what ways can I improve it? (I do understand the English can be improved, but I'm more interested in having the desired impact on the recipient.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14920" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-01-05T14:37:51.043" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T20:07:50.553" Title="How to give written advice in a way that is encouraging, not overbearing" Tags="|style|technique|narrative|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20311" CreationDate="2016-01-05T14:53:34.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both your second and fourth examples look natural to me. Including the upside-down question mark might be slightly preferable, but sometimes adding a little-used character can add to the expense and trouble of printing a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, styles for punctuation vary across countries, across different publishers, and even between different editors. If you are submitting your manuscript to a publisher, look at other books published by the same company and copy the punctuation they use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, though, I don't see any reason to have the Spanish for &quot;What's going on?&quot; appear in the original language at all when your book is in English. The usual convention is to translate everything into the language in which the story is told, except for a few exclamations&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; or greetings that give a flavour of the story's setting, or for dialogue where the fact that the words spoken are actually in another language is important to the plot. &quot;What's going on?&quot; is a straightforward question that could be asked by anyone anywhere in the world. The only reason I would put it in Spanish would be if I wanted to stealthily give the reader a little language lesson because I had a turn of plot later on for which the reader needs to know those particular Spanish words. Even then, I'd probably just give the words in Spanish and let the reader figure out the meaning from context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;Which would would give rise to a similar question to yours but regarding exclamation marks, or to exactly the same question as yours given that many exclamations are in the form of questions, so I'm far from saying your question is invalid, just that providing &quot;ordinary&quot; words in both languages seems laboured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="2847" LastEditDate="2016-01-06T01:55:34.997" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T01:55:34.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20317" CreationDate="2016-01-05T15:01:37.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sample you've provided comes off as the classic parental/big brother lecture. Unless the young person is docile, they are likely to disengage, stop listening, argue, get up, and walk away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to ratchet down the tension and move toward a meaningful conversation, here are some suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Express your concern for the young person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demonstrate an understanding of their problems. Articulate the problems using neutral, non-judgemental, language. Acknowledge their feelings, using their terms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask them questions to learn more about their condition, thoughts, and feelings. Ask questions that engage &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; problem-solving skills. Ask questions to confirm that you've understood things correctly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a conversation. Give them plenty of time and silence to reflect and respond. Use silence when either of you need time to reflect on new information. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe the different outcomes that can come from their decisions, good and bad, but leave the choice to them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acknowledge that you have no control over them. Express hope that they will make good choices, and offer your support if they do. Make it clear that you cannot act against your own conscience and will not support them if the make bad choices. But again, that you have no control, and the choice is theirs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you speak to them in person, it is important to maintain a relaxed and positive demeanor. Be aware of your tone of voice, facial expression, and body language.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-05T20:07:50.553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T20:07:50.553" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20303" CreationDate="2016-01-05T15:53:58.297" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our real world, couples almost always have sexual tension right before they are both certain that the other one wants to get physical. It's also a struggle when it's inappropriate for the two to have a sexual relationship so each person tries to deny the attraction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember being a teenager and this guy kept &quot;accidentally&quot; bumping his hand next to mine as we were taking a walk. I knew he wanted to hold it, but I was terrified that there might be a very slight chance that he really was just bumping it by accident, and if I took his hand, he'd snatch he'd away and give me the &quot;I'm very flattered, but ewwwww. No way!&quot; speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also remember that there was this boy I hated for over two years because every single time he spoke to me, he would sound like he was going to say something nice, but he'd end up saying something rude, obscene or otherwise personally offensive. One day we ended up taking a really long walk together alone for some reason and he just listened to me talk about my unrequited crush on one of his best friends. He ended up telling me that I was too good for his friend. I was totally confused by him saying this. He finally told me that for the last several years he had such a big crush on me that every time he tried to speak, something horrible came out of his mouth. We ended up making out, having intense sex and dated for four years. It only ended when I moved across the country and he didn't want to leave his family so he stayed home. He's still a great friend. I think we could have gotten married and been OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are awkward moments where a friendly couple might be having a normal conversation or completing some task. He  might accidentally notice she looks extremely attractive at a certain moment and become distracted. He unintentionally says something that could be taken as a sexual innuendo. She notices and tries not to respond or maybe attempts to turn it into a joke. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a fan of the witty one liners tactic for a book. In the movies or television, it works because the audience can't get inside the character's heads. But if you're inside someone's head and hearing their thoughts. They will be thinking about sex or trying very hard not to think about it. People aren't really ever totally blind to their sexual attraction right up until they grab each other and start making out in the middle of a fight. That just doesn't happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost everyone feels vulnerable and gets a little tense right before they begin to kick things up a notch. There's no need to go overboard with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastEditorUserId="16322" LastEditDate="2016-01-05T16:03:05.963" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T16:03:05.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20317" CreationDate="2016-01-05T15:59:37.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;which corrects the mistakes they've made until now&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's your problem. You're viewing this person as a fix-it project, as a series of mistakes to be corrected. You might want to think about this person as &lt;em&gt;making a series of choices based on priorities.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want this person to change his or her actions, find out about his or her priorities. What does s/he value? What does s/he want to accomplish? How is s/he going about those goals? Then you talk about what the goals are and how they can be accomplished, and what might be standing in the way of those goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person's goal is &quot;be a better writer,&quot; talk about how &quot;better writers&quot; have a large vocabulary and use the standard version of the language rather than textspeak. Don't say &quot;you have to &lt;em&gt;stop using&lt;/em&gt; textspeak,&quot; but rather that the person must &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; learn how to write correctly so that s/he can choose when to use textspeak and when not to. Talk about how employers and teachers might view textspeak, and what impression s/he wants to give those future employers and teachers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You aren't being inspiring because you aren't providing anything positive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T15:59:37.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20276" CreationDate="2016-01-05T17:21:10.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started out refusing to write a trilogy. I enjoy reading series, but I sometimes think writers like Christopher Paolini just needs a better editor who was willing to trim his series down into one book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I finally had to admit I was writing a trilogy because I had three very distinct stories. At the end of the first story , the characters succeed in their quest, but they find out that discovering the solution brings several questions into light and they need to find those answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second book, they discover that the people they have been saving the entire time were their real enemies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the third book, they fight to take down their former allies and fix the problems they caused when they solved the first quest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are three very distinctly different stories that all connect to tell one over arching story. They just have to be three separate stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Terry Pratchett's Disc World, there are so many characters and events going on and they all have their own story to tell. He has many stories that share little more than the world. Of course that leads itself to a series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that I wouldn't try for a series unless it turns out to be the best or even the only way you can best tell your story. Don't force it to be a series if it doesn't need to be one. It could make your story thin and weak or cause you to unnecessarily pad your story to stretch it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T17:21:10.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20326" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-05T17:46:49.120" Score="6" ViewCount="2436" Body="&lt;p&gt;I fear that the question sounds vague and confusing, but I can't conjure up the words I need to say exactly what I mean without going into detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought it would be interesting to have two stories going on at the same time. The main story would be the events as they actually happened. It would be fairly straight forward stock fantasy style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second story would be someone several hundreds of years later in a modern time trying to tell someone else the same story. There are several things that were lost, added to or changed in in the telling. The story teller believes that the characters may have been based on real historic people, but it is likely the events were greatly exaggerated or never even happened at all. The story teller also believes that good and evil were very obvious and, simple and complete. In the &quot;real&quot; version, it's much more ambiguous. No one is really good or evil. The second story would be very short. Perhaps it is only a sentence or two long at the beginning of each chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I've read a book or watched a movie set up like this. But I can't think of what it could have been.  I'd like to know if anyone else might be able to think of an example of this situation so that I could find it. I'd like to read or watch it again to see how it was done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T00:29:47.643" Title="Can anyone think of books that contain two separate stories or two very different perspectives on the same story being told together?" Tags="|style|technique|plot|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-01-06T01:14:14.253" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20326" CreationDate="2016-01-05T18:14:03.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of books that are written with two stories interwoven. For example, Cyrptonomicon features the story of Lawrence Waterhouse in WWII and his grandson Randy in present day. These stories end up being connected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example is a mystery novel, &quot;Piece of Her Heart&quot; by Peter Robinson, where there is one story set in 1969 and another in 2009. As with Cryptonomicon, these stories end up being related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in other fiction, especially fantasy, it's fairly common for a story to be told about what happened in the past, but then later information reveals that truth is different from what is believed. For example, in the Wheel of Time books there was a golden age 3000 years ago, but now it's just legends and little remains known for sure. However a magic artifact grants certain people the ability to see the past through the eyes of their ancestors, and so some knowledge is revealed that contradicts the popular wisdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, what you're describing sounds somewhat different, in that you plan to retell the story twice. Once accurately, once as myth. The problem here is that you need to motivate the telling of the mythical version. Why is anyone telling it this way, why does anyone care about this story anymore? Most examples I can recall where this sort of storytelling was used, the myth serves as background for some other story that is being told in the present. It's not usually relevant to reveal how accurate the myth is, or to explain just how it's inaccurate. The original story is a story in its own right, but the myth version is a part of the setting of a different story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastEditorUserId="367" LastEditDate="2016-01-05T19:38:53.033" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T19:38:53.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20317" CreationDate="2016-01-05T18:22:01.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First and foremost, you should get a life. What I mean is that you should go do something for yourself – pursue your interest, engage in your hobbies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand the need for the first sentence. &quot;Get a life&quot; is normally regarded as a negative statement, and &quot;first and foremost&quot; is a redundant cliché. Why kick it off with that, when you can turn it into something positive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Go do something for yourself – pursue an interest, engage in your hobbies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's much less negative, and would make a better start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This pattern – peppering your prose with negative statements – continues as your paragraph goes on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What I see most of your time is spent chatting with friends. &lt;strong&gt;A complete waste of time.&lt;/strong&gt; Just imagine number of people you talk to, in a single day. How many of them actually care about you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;You say you want to inspire, but you're stuck in the rut of a nitpicking rant.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution is simple, and it's the key to any good writing: &lt;em&gt;proofread and revise&lt;/em&gt;. In your case, if you're trying to write in an inspiring tone, begin by getting rid of language that sounds inherently negative or overbearing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;First and foremost, you should get a life&lt;/strike&gt;. What I mean is that you should go do something for yourself - pursue your interest, engage in your hobbies. What I see most of your time is spent chatting with friends. &lt;strike&gt;A complete waste of time&lt;/strike&gt;. Just imagine number of people you talk to, in a single day. How many of them actually care about you? Yes, it feels good to share about your life with friends. I love that too. Everybody does. But I generally do not discuss it with people who don't care about me. &lt;strike&gt;You do&lt;/strike&gt;. Whoever you see in front of you, you'll start sharing all your life information with the guy. I suggest you put effort into studies, extra curriculum and sports. If you have these things, it'd be fun to talk to people &lt;strike&gt;instead of just goofing around with them&lt;/strike&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make further improvements by removing those first person references, which seem more condescending than inspiring:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;First and foremost, you should get a life&lt;/strike&gt;. &lt;strike&gt;What I mean is&lt;/strike&gt; that you should go do something for yourself - pursue your interest, engage in your hobbies. &lt;strike&gt;What I see&lt;/strike&gt; most of your time is spent chatting with friends. &lt;strike&gt;A complete waste of time&lt;/strike&gt;. Just imagine number of people you talk to, in a single day. How many of them actually care about you? Yes, it feels good to share about your life with friends. &lt;strike&gt;I love that too&lt;/strike&gt;. Everybody does. &lt;strike&gt;But I generally do not discuss it with people who don't care about me. You do&lt;/strike&gt;. Whoever you see in front of you, you'll start sharing all your life information with the guy. &lt;strike&gt;I suggest you&lt;/strike&gt; put effort into studies, extra curriculum and sports. If you have these things, it'd be fun to talk to people &lt;strike&gt;instead of just goofing around with them&lt;/strike&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a look at what you're left with, after polishing some rough edges, and removing some of the fluff:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You should go do something for yourself – pursue an interest, engage in your hobbies. Don't spend most of your time idly chatting. Sure, it feels good to share with friends what's happening in your life. But try putting more effort into your studies, extracurricular activities, and sports. If you do more of these things, you'll probably become a more interesting person to talk with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that what we have left will be showing up on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_inspirational.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BrainyQuote&lt;/a&gt; anytime soon. But I think it's more balanced and inspiring than what you originally provided in this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T18:22:01.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20326" CreationDate="2016-01-05T18:53:57.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) A similar but not exact iteration of this is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0451454499&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Water!&lt;/em&gt; trilogy&lt;/a&gt; by Gael Baudino. It's not well-known and I found the experimental format exhausting. Still, Your Mileage May Vary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the three books (&lt;em&gt;O Greenest Branch, The Dove Looked In, Branch and Crown&lt;/em&gt;) there were three alternating narrative styles: parts were standard narration (typical sword-and-sorcery fantasy), then parts were being told by a marketing guy in the present day as his career collapsed and he went from Muckety-Muck to losing his job to getting mugged, and then parts were a stone-cutting manual which was increasingly crossed out and being used as a religious text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story parts didn't really overlap; each subsequent part of the story was told in the next style.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Something closer to what you're describing happened in two &lt;em&gt;Star Trek: Voyager&lt;/em&gt; episodes, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Witness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Living Witness&quot;&lt;/a&gt; and to a lesser extent &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11:59_%28Star_Trek:_Voyager%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;11:59.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; There are &quot;present&quot; events and then how the characters interpret those events from a distant future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T18:53:57.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20330" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-05T19:29:41.650" Score="9" ViewCount="4990" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the story there's a flashback where one of the main protagonists loses his best friend in a battle where he was the only survivor. His best friend is a important character and, because of that, I want him to go out a bit dramatically. But I fear that the scene will become overdramatic, especially when the protagonist has to promise that he'll live to his dying friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are some mistakes I can avoid when writing such a scene?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-01-26T18:06:39.703" LastActivityDate="2023-01-26T18:06:39.703" Title="How to write a death scene without making it overdramatic?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|scene|death|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20331" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20332" CreationDate="2016-01-05T19:54:46.153" Score="4" ViewCount="613" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no experience writing API documentation, but a need has arisen for it at my company. However, the only guides I can find for API Documentation are for APIs that use JSON, XML, Java, etc. What is the best way to dive into API documentation using a C# document as a first project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16384" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-07T05:10:05.597" LastActivityDate="2019-05-07T05:10:05.597" Title="How do I start to document an API that uses C#?" Tags="|resources|api-documentation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20331" CreationDate="2016-01-05T20:10:10.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at API documentation for C#, such as that on the Microsoft site &lt;a href=&quot;https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d11h6832%28v=vs.71%29.aspx?f=255&amp;amp;MSPPError=-2147217396&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(see here)&lt;/a&gt;, or check out one of the multitude of repositories on Github.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, API document the ways users interact with your product. You have to specify fields, classes, methods, constants, etc. Look at the Java API to see a systematic way to do this and then adapt it to your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T20:10:10.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20330" CreationDate="2016-01-05T20:22:00.897" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did the friend die quickly and unexpectedly? Or did your MC have at least a minute or two to realize everything was ending for his friend? That makes a big difference in how it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may sound creepy, but it may help to think of death almost as if it were sex. It's likely the most intense, intimate and personal time anyone ever has. There's an old saying I remember that goes &quot;Everybody dies alone.&quot; Which means that even when you are with some one who is at your side, there's a moment just before you die where your body cannot experience anything at all except for the dying process. The people around you will just watch you breath a few more times and maybe you'll stare off into nothing until it's all over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read a true story written by a med student about watching a geriatric patient die. He compared all of the blood draining from the old man's face as if he were watching the tide going out. I wish I could write a death scene as well as he did. It was profoundly simple but so powerful. I'll never forget it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe up instead of focusing on dramatics, you should focus on the smallest things. Listen to the simply breathing. Maybe he was struggling and fighting for air, but slowly relaxed and stopped trying. Maybe his eyes were darting around in fear just before they stopped in a cold, fixed stare.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the characters tried to act as if one of them wasn't dying. Maybe they made some lame efforts to tell a joke or two. Maybe the MC thought of several things he wanted to say, but they were all pointless and didn't need to be said. So they just watched the guy fade away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T20:22:00.897" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20331" CreationDate="2016-01-05T20:33:45.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the API you're going to document is a REST API, Tom Johnson has this excellent free online course, &lt;a href=&quot;http://idratherbewriting.com/docapis_course_overview/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Documenting REST APIs&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't fit your needs, Stack Overflow has a couple of topics that might also be interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/641364/c-sharp-documentation-generator&quot;&gt;C# Doc Generator&lt;/a&gt; has a list of tools to consider. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2001899/creating-great-api-documentation-tools-and-techniques&quot;&gt;Creating great API doc: Tools and techniques&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important API doc tool that's trending right now is &lt;a href=&quot;http://swagger.io/swagger-editor/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Swagger Editor&lt;/a&gt;, which includes &lt;a href=&quot;http://swagger.io/swagger-2-0-tooling-released/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;support for C#&lt;/a&gt;. For a great example of API doc, check out the Swagger examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:40:35.973" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T20:33:45.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20296" CreationDate="2016-01-05T20:35:04.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read or talk to dog show judges and dog breeders. They can tell you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.westminsterkennelclub.org/dogshows/aboutdogshows.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;all the kinds of things&lt;/a&gt; that distinguish dogs from each other (like coat colors, shagginess, face shape, tail length) as well as the things that are considered beautiful or remarkable about a dog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He had the face of a pug with deep jowls like a Saint Bernard. His fur was mostly deep russet brown and long, except for his short tail, which was surprisingly ratlike and narrow. I admired the way he slathered his drool in his owner's smelly places, so boldly yet casually declaring his alpha status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T20:35:04.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20326" CreationDate="2016-01-05T21:27:00.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The classic example of this type of story is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;period drama film, &lt;em&gt;Rashomon&lt;/em&gt;, directed by Akira Kurosawa&lt;/a&gt;. The film is based on two short stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The film focuses on one significant event, as recounted by a series of characters. Each telling is starkly different, revealing the biases and intentions each character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The film is widely used in academia to teach students about this phenomenon. I've heard it used in discussions of law, philosophy, literature, and the social sciences as a byword for subjectivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Man In the High Castle&lt;/em&gt; series, recently released by Amazon and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/01/man-in-the-high-castle-when-a-nazi-ruled-world-isnt-so-dystopian/384708/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;based on a story by Philip K. Dick&lt;/a&gt;, seems to use the shift in perspective over time that you mention in your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't watched the series yet, but the trailer reveals a discrepancy between two versions of the past. The contrast reveals a lot about what has happened during the intervening period, that &quot;History is written by the victors.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-05T21:46:56.447" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T21:46:56.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20330" CreationDate="2016-01-05T21:43:46.720" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over-dramatizing situations is one of the most common pitfalls I see early-stage writers fall into. My best advice would be to give it to another person and have them read it. If they blush, grimace, or act embarrassed for the characters, it's likely too dramatic. Some points to remember though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remember the five stages of grief. You can incorporate one (or more) that suit your character into the scene. If he is angry, it will seem real. Realism does not often prompt drama, and your reader focuses more on not crying than they are on criticizing the drama.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't be stupid, keep it simple. This saying works well here. Instead of telling the readers about the amount of blood on the ground, tell them of the main character's pounding heart or the chills down his or her spine.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How does your character die? Is it kicking and fighting and never giving up? Or does he accept it and move on. Give plenty of consideration to this question, instead of going with a traditional death scene that we may see from Hollywood.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on the emotion.&lt;/strong&gt; This will likely be one of the most emotional times for your characters (and for your reader). Tug at the heartstrings a little instead of thinking about the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps you. I wish you luck in your writing endeavors! Let me know if I can help you out any further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16350" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T21:43:46.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20326" CreationDate="2016-01-05T23:32:58.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the &lt;em&gt;The Sound and the Fury&lt;/em&gt;, by William Faulkner may be the canonical example here. It has four sections in which many of the same events are related but from different — and unreliable — perspectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1816" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T23:32:58.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20326" CreationDate="2016-01-05T23:52:07.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short story &lt;a href=&quot;http://will.tip.dhappy.org/blog/Compression%20Trees/.../book/by/David%20D.%20Levine/Titanium%20Mike%20Saves%20the%20Day/David%20D.%20Levine%20-%20Titanium%20Mike%20Saves%20the%20Day.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Titanium Mike Saves the Day&lt;/a&gt; is a series of five stories about a man named Titanium Mike, each told at a different time in human history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's free to read at the link above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10640" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T23:52:07.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20272" CreationDate="2016-01-06T02:57:19.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ah, I remember the five paragraph essay days. They are as structured as a sonnet and the point of practicing them is to focus your writing. The &lt;em&gt;thesis statement&lt;/em&gt; is your entire essay summarized in one sentence. I have an easier time writing it last, but you may have a different experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at your essay, I can't tell if you are writing about freedom, nostalgia, or different types of things that trigger memories, or what. There are a lot of themes there that are worth working on. I'm going to pick one of these and show you how I would build your essay from that, but you could choose a different focus and build your essay differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say your essay is about how your perception of your own entertainment has changed over time. Looking at the rest of what you've written, here are three examples relating to freedom that you talk about in your essay:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Childhood is free of the concerns experienced by teens and adults, and full of the wonder of first experiences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once your first experiences were over, you still enjoyed the boundless goodness of simply experiencing the things you chose for yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now that you are grown, social expectations mean that you must now find ways to enjoy experiencing the things other people choose for you instead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will use these three examples to illustrate your point (i.e., your thesis statement). When you have more experience, you can be clever about the examples, using them to highlight different aspects of your thesis or to compare and contrast different views of the same issue. I've chosen three that are basically sequential and show progression because I think it is easier to understand the structure that way, and also because you revisit N64 several times to describe how your perspective has changed and I think these examples could work with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take each example and write it into a paragraph that explains it, possibly using one or two sentences to describe an example of what you mean. You can use the same example, like the N64, or different examples, like Pokemon, N64, and lawn darts. When you go back and revise, the artful part is to make the last sentence of your paragraph act as a transition to the next paragraph. There are bunches of techniques, but probably the easiest is some kind of contrast. Here is an example from your own text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever this adventure was -- playing Nintendo 64 on rainy Saturday afternoons, watching Pokemon in the basement with my older brother, web-surfing the primitive days of google -- I'll never experience it as pure as I did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time has passed inevitably and with time comes change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great. Now you have three paragraphs of examples, so it should be a lot more obvious what your point is. Go back and write your introductory paragraph to tell us what point your examples will illustrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then write the concluding paragraph. Your last paragraph should tell us why the examples should have illuminated your point and invite the reader to reflect on your shared experience. I think this example for your writing is a nice ending for your essay:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever that memory was keep it close to you, since it's from your childhood and never again will things be the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially if you take the time to point out to the reader your expectation that they have similar experiences to your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T02:57:19.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20330" CreationDate="2016-01-06T03:57:43.150" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My most memorable death scene from a book came from R.A. Salvatore's signature character, Drizzt Du'orden (or thereabouts), who simply stated, &quot;And so I die.&quot; Of course he wound up living, but it showed more honor, courage, and intensity than 10,000 words of drivel could ever accomplish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be in the moment.&lt;/strong&gt; There is nothing else happening. Guns go silent; screams are unheard.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People rarely change their personality at death.&lt;/strong&gt; They die as they had lived.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Everybody sees the white light.&lt;/strong&gt; There is a moment of Clarity towards the end.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dudes cry when their dog dies.&lt;/strong&gt; Whether they cry and show emotion in your regard in the moment should be approached as a writer with extreme caution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-01-06T14:33:38.983" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T14:33:38.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20343" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-06T19:09:38.413" Score="7" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;A family member has had a verbal offer of publication for a book (a collection of pieces), though no contract has been signed yet and the printed book is probably quite a ways off. If all goes well, this would be her first published book (after years of trying). She also has another book (a novel) already written, which she also has been shopping out to agents and publishers. All this is occurring in a country in which the publishing industry is much smaller and more difficult to find opportunities than, say, the U.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The question is:&lt;/strong&gt; is it a good idea or not to send out the other book (the novel) to other publishing companies at this point? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern for her was that if the publisher that has offered to publish her collection finds out about this, they will be (understandably) displeased that she has submitted to a competitor, and it may sour her relationship with them for future work. On the other hand, it seems odd for her to tell them, &quot;hey, I &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; have a novel for you guys!&quot; and that would likely &quot;overwhelm&quot; them and also potentially sour their relationship...but if she waits to submit the novel to them until after the collection is out and (let's hope) selling for a while, it may delay the chance to publish the novel for 1-2 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to help advise her in a way that is strategic and ethical, and in keeping with typical publishing industry standards. Also, is there a term for this situation? It's not really &quot;multiple submissions&quot; because we're talking about two different works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2388" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T15:07:29.837" Title="Submitting new work to another publisher while first deal is pending" Tags="|publishing|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20256" CreationDate="2016-01-06T19:58:29.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write voluntarilly on sites like this. But I also write for money. (My full time job is school teacher.) What motivates me to write in different circumstances varies. For example, when writing teaching resources I don't usually accept a job for less than thirty pounds per hour. However, writing here doesn't pay. I do it because I get satisfaction out of helping people and because writing about topics makes my thinking about them clearer. One thing that helps me appreciate how I am helping other people is the voting system on the site. If people like my answers they vote them up. If they don't like them they vote them down. There is a tangible response to what I contribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just asked my son, who contributed a huge amount of material to a Pokemon site, why he did it. He said, 'Because I thought I was helping people.' He received an award, a copy of a new game, because of his contributions, but he didn't do it for the reward. He did it because he thought he &quot;could contribute something worthwhile&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I see Mozilla asking for is money or my time to read about new features, etc. I don't see requests for writers. I don't see benefits for writers. I am the sort of person who is prepared to do this sort of job and yet I wasn't aware that there was a need. You need to make this more visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T19:58:29.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20277" CreationDate="2016-01-07T00:17:42.757" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I put some extra thought into it, Justin. Hope I can help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does each character have their own compelling story?&lt;/strong&gt; It is not enough simply for Robin to have a story outside of Batman. It seems to me that a third-person omniscient choice would be better at least for the Robin side of the story in this scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is each character equivalently important?&lt;/strong&gt; The reader needs a character to latch onto to feel connected with. Many stories have an adventuring party with individual characters being more or less important based on the scene. These stories are told third person precisely so that the narrative can focus on the moment, regardless of which characters are involved. But in order to pull off two first-person accounts, their two stories have to be more important than any other character at any other time and equally important to the mission. Otherwise, one character is subordinate, so why give him an equivalent voice?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can you solve the &quot;I&quot; problem?&lt;/strong&gt; Many clever writers think they can average less than 10 a page (I've been involved in my share of writer's groups; of course, this is an arbitrary number), but it's really hard to do. Do you have a sample chapter or two? Have you shown it to anybody?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good stories don't need gimmicks. What you propose is unusual. Why?&lt;/strong&gt; How does telling your story in simultaneous first-person accounts rather than a first and a third, or two thirds, make it a better story?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can you tell your first-person story in such a way that the reader doesn't get confused and continues to turn pages?&lt;/strong&gt; This is a marketing issue. If you are not trying to publish or sell your book, then it doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an answer to all the above, you're set! Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-01-07T00:29:36.720" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T00:29:36.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2323" CreationDate="2016-01-07T14:43:57.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what really is important is that in the end, the character needs to be useful to the story. Try not to create an anti-hero for the sake of thinking that it would be &lt;em&gt;cool&lt;/em&gt;. Try to create characters that will be a good asset to the story's progression and likability. To summarize what I am trying to say is that you need to make sure that the story and environment of your writing piece compliment the characters. For example, a character who is totally evil and crude wouldn't compliment a story that is presented as full on happy and positive, unless if the story has a hidden agenda. Only try and create a anti hero if you think it will actually advance your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16410" LastEditorUserId="16410" LastEditDate="2016-01-07T20:18:35.593" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T20:18:35.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20343" CreationDate="2016-01-07T15:07:29.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I follow Jane Friedman's blogs and accept her word as Truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This scenario has come up on the blog site. It seems that your situation is a little different than some others in that your family member is not relying on an immediate income source, and she has already held the novel for some time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many authors (myself included) have whole, completed novels that are unpublished and awaiting that breakout book to spawn the rest of one's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blog site recommends written notification to Company 1 that one is peddling additional work to Company 2, et. al. Company 1 may choose to also consider additional said work or ignore it. Publishers generally aren't miffed because everyone appreciates that everyone is trying to make a buck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the decision is based more on the wishes of your family member than on the wishes of Company 1. However, I'll say there is nothing like peddling your work to take a long look and ask, &quot;Does this suck? Where am I at as a writer?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T15:07:29.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20348" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20349" CreationDate="2016-01-07T16:25:02.127" Score="1" ViewCount="2564" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very hard for me to ask this without an overwhelming amount of information on how the plot goes, so this is just a warning of what's ahead...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing a fictional story which begins with an amnesiac waking up by a giant tree, wounded. A nearby lady finds him and takes him in to her residence. It is made known to him that the lady has a stepdaughter. He runs away minutes after getting treatment, feeling he's become a burden for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometime after, the lady goes to another village for an appointment. The village members, expecting her to have come back hours ago, go out to the forest and search for her. They find the amnesiac unconscious by another tree, deep in the forest and bring him back to village. When the stepdaughter arrives back, she finds that her father and other village members found a letter, seemingly written by the lady. The letter, addressed to the stepdaughter and her husband, warns them of a man (named T for this question) that died a few years ago. Of course, that could not be possible. T was an outcast who did not get along with the members of the village, but found a place in the hearts of the lady, stepdaughter and her father. The amnesiac does not know about T's history in this village.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterwards, the stepdaughter waits for the amnesiac to wake up so she can question him about what he saw in the forest before losing conscience. All of a sudden, an agonizing scream overpowers their ears, and it becomes certain that the source of this bewildering sound is just by the window of the room he was resting in. They go outside, only to find the lady's guts and blood, sprawled all over her corpse. Because of that scream, the other residents of the residence gather around the corpse. Some background characters quietly ask each other, whether lady's warning about T was real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amnesiac soon gets a headache, due to hearing a very familiar name. He then gets hallucinations about a snowy terrain which is associated to the man named T. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, is this perhaps too early for an amnesiac? Does this reveal too much about the plot in the first chapter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am mainly worried about the lack of effect this kind of character development will have on whoever will read this fiction. This story also uses two POV's that switch frequently throughout the first chapter etc. One belongs to the amnesiac, other to the stepdaughter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also my first time writing in first person view while being an amnesiac, so I am not entirely strong with this knowledge, other than recurring, cropped visions that are mostly unclear until a certain point in time when the individual regains memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd really like to hear some of your advice on how I can 'sell' the protagonist to others, while he has no background and because I don't want to rush the return of his childhood memories, or any memories at all that help him find out who he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16394" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T11:44:08.563" Title="When should my amnesiac protagonist regain memory?" Tags="|characters|character-development|plot|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20348" CreationDate="2016-01-07T17:17:26.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Switching between the POV of two characters rapidly within a chapter I think would be unwise, it could be very confusing for the reader to try to establish who they are reading from the POV of if it switches so rapidly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is exposition required whilst the amnesiac is unconscious, you could always have it so that he discovers these things whilst awake after the fact. This may add to the suspense of the story, that both the reader and the character are experiencing revelations at the same time, as opposed to the reader learning things via the stepdaughter and the main character learning them later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you would like the stepdaughter to be a short-term POV character, introducing her as one in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/16542/prologues-with-no-protagonist-how-can-they-work/16546#16546&quot;&gt;prologue&lt;/a&gt; would not be unheard of. Her story could even start later than when the main character's story begins (such as her starting off finding the man and nursing him back to health), so long as the overlapping parts when he meets her later are made obvious so that the reader doesn't get confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the main character as an amnesiac is fine. This allows the reader and character to go through the same journey of discovery, as there is no exposition of the main character required from the start (other than the fact that he &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; know anything).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His character can be built as the book progresses, though there will need to be at least another character that is established in order to give the reader someone to empathize with, rather than them only having an unknown person of unknown origins. That is a difficult person to root for without anything tethering them to emotion and humanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the return of memories, having them gradually come back is probably a good way of going. This will increase the tension as both the character and the reader are unsure of when memories will return or what will be learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the first memory return at the beginning of the first chapter will not be too early, however if you set the precedent that at least some partial memories are returned so soon, you will need to continue to allow memories to come back at a similar rate, such as a memory or two every couple of chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will seem a little odd if he gets a memory back so soon after losing it, and then no others return until halfway through the book. The recovery will need to be consistent so that the reader doesn't feel cheated. These can even just be mentioned offhandedly, such as if a week goes by and he mentions that he has remembered snippets of a beach, and a face, and maybe that he likes to ride motorcycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, simply returning memories as and when they are needed will be a little bit Deus Ex Machina. Having unrelated memories and ones that make no sense at first until later revelations connect them would be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T17:17:26.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20348" CreationDate="2016-01-07T17:21:59.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the reader, a person with amnesia caused by a brain injury suddenly regaining full awareness can seem like a deus-ex-machina trope. From what I understand, as the brain recovers, this person can regain partial awareness of the past, in bits and pieces. In fiction, you can use this device to give readers clues about an unknown moment in the past so they can enjoy solving the mystery along with (or a little ahead of) the protagonist. If your reader knows the about the moment, you can create tension about the timing of the awarenesses and how it might change the protagonist's responses to events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-07T17:42:25.310" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T17:42:25.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20348" CreationDate="2016-01-07T17:31:17.750" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amnesiacs usually never regain their memories if memory loss is caused by physical trauma (getting hit in the head by a tree) or drug use (e.g., surgical amnesia). The only way memories are occasionally regained in real life is when painful memories that have been blocked from consciousness as a means of psychological protection are somehow dealt with, usually through intensive therapy. In these cases, a person is blocking specific memories only. They would not remember being held at gunpoint or seeing a woman get run over by a semi, but they would still remember non-painful things like having gone to the grocery store or having knitted a sweater vest, even though the events happened on the same day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a trope to have a story where an amnesiac recovers their memory as a means of revealing plot. I encourage you not to use it. Consider instead turning the &quot;amnesiac&quot; is a liar. That might make your plot more interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T17:31:17.750" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20348" CreationDate="2016-01-07T17:33:09.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;What the protagonist doesn't know&quot; is an obstacle. Each obstacle should be overcome in order to advance the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have to plot out your entire story and work backwards, seeing where each obstacle should be removed for maximum effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3556944/?ref_=nv_sr_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Heroes Reborn&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; just did this in its recent 10-episode run. Noah Bennett appears in the first episode at a summit of powered and non-powered humans, and there's a terrible explosion. Thousands die, including his daughter Claire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A year later, a guy comes to Noah claiming Noah's memory was erased, and that he needs Noah's help. In each episode, Noah finds a different person who tells him a little more of the story as he traces farther back to figure out what happened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each reveal tells Noah and the audience more about what occurred and why it might have been covered up (which, it turned out, was a good thing).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T17:33:09.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20258" CreationDate="2016-01-07T20:16:22.823" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;as the two variables named c are not part of the same field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if technically acceptable, any form of cs is hard to read. Italics applied to only one letter, especially a round one like c are hard to spot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I changed &quot;both&quot; to &quot;the two&quot; because both invites the reader to consider two items as one, whereas here you want the reader to consider them separately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T20:16:22.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20348" CreationDate="2016-01-07T22:59:26.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Retrograde amnesia is the term when one has a neurological insult and can't remember a certain period of time prior to the insult. However, one can remember distant memories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The type of memory loss you describe is either confabulation (non-truths, whether beknownst or not) or psychotic disavowal. In the schizophrenic patient, the past can be altered, suppressed, or recreated to fit into a delusional scheme. The truth can be a moving target with a blind eye. Recovery with medication has an unpredictable effect on prior memories. &quot;Truth&quot; may be experienced or remembered as a dream or as the way it happened to someone else (depersonalization and derealization).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing your protagonist as a psychotic is an interesting proposition but would take a ton of research or a psychiatrist as a friend. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-01-07T23:41:43.437" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T23:41:43.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20355" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-08T01:15:46.650" Score="3" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm planning on writing a short story and I'm just wondering if it'd be possible to add an element of discovery into it. I think it'd be interesting if the reader would be able to learn things about the world in the book without having it handed to them, they would need to pay attention to certain parts of the story to learn things about some characters or places. Is this possible or would it ruin the story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16420" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T17:09:29.883" Title="Is there a way to add discovery into a short story?" Tags="|style|short-story|ideas|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20356" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20358" CreationDate="2016-01-08T02:14:02.137" Score="4" ViewCount="2845" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a young adult fantasy with two main characters. Right now, I'm planning on writing it in 3rd person limited from the point of view of only one of the main characters. (Depending on how it goes, I might also add in the other main character's POV, but that's beside the point.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the conflict that arises in the novel stems from a single villain, who has been masquerading as an ally of the main characters. I plan to keep the readers completely in the dark about the villain's true nature until the time is right and he's outed to the public -- I'm hoping it'll come across as shocking, at the very least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is this. I ran my plot idea to a friend of mine, and she said that my novel would be really confusing and frustrating to read if I only kept to a single character's POV. This is because many of the villain's actions affect the main characters in ways that seem to be unexplainable. For example, one of my main characters is someone who would never, ever try to kill someone. The villain manages (through the use of magic) to make that character kill someone. The main character does not realize that they were being swayed by magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With my current plan, readers will not know why the main character killed someone. I'm expecting them to be in the same position as the main character -- very confused. After all, they just did something totally out of character that even they can't explain. So readers can only suspect the reason behind it (until the villain is outed later in the novel and everything is explained). I will definitely give clues leading up to the villain's discovery, but nothing concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My friend suggests that I switch to my villain's POV from time to time. For example, I could show him setting up the magic that would be used to get my main character to kill the person. However, I'm hesitant to do this because it would mean that my readers would definitely know the villain's true intentions. I wanted to keep his villain status as a surprise until later on. The confusion that emerged as part of the villain's plans was meant to be part of the story, something that would be explained when the time is right, but now I fear that my story will seem &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; confusing if I only stick with my main character's POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here are my questions. When would it be appropriate to switch the POV from my protagonist to my antagonist? Do you think, in this situation, doing so is a good move? Should transparency of plot be prioritized over shock factor/a surprising plot twist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastActivityDate="2016-08-14T01:34:36.580" Title="Switching POV from protagonist to antagonist?" Tags="|viewpoint|perspective|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20357" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-08T08:32:48.430" Score="2" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any proven techniques of influencing the readers on a subconscious level? Preferably techniques involving only words as I'm interested in writing technical books and I don't have the liberty of using fancy images, styles, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking more precisely for ways to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;help readers better memorize technical data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;influence the readers to accept ideas on a subconscious level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;build good memories in a readers subconscious about the book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any good readings/studies on the topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16423" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-01-09T09:41:27.340" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T09:41:27.340" Title="Ways to influence the readers subconscious?" Tags="|technical-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20356" CreationDate="2016-01-08T10:59:04.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would entirely depend on the story you want to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Single POV&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are focusing more on the character development of your MC throughout the story, then definitely keep it from their POV. In order to get the reader to connect and empathize with the character, it would be better for them to experience the same confusion/ shock that is felt by the character as they are coerced into murder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going for the single POV angle, make sure that when the MC does the thing out of character, the reveal is made quite quickly afterwards. This will mean that the reader is confused for a short amount of time, and rather than having to adapt their opinion of the character as someone who is a killer (however hesitant they may be), and then change it back (oh, he was good all along) it will be more of an out of character occurrence that is given a reason as opposed to character development that is then retconned for the purposes of a shock reveal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reader needs to know what the villain is doing and how and why he is doing it, then the only way you can do it when telling the story through the eyes of the MC is through an exposition dump at the time the reveal is made. This can be pretty boring for the reader to endure the entire &quot;haha! You thought this was happening all along but actually it was this instead!&quot; Not to mention they will feel cheated if they have been lied to for the entire story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dropping clues and setting up this reveal will get around this issue, so long as the groundwork has been laid correctly. Then once a single reveal has been made (you're from &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; country? It all makes sense now!), the reader will immediately understand the motivations of the villain without having to explicitly state everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Multiple POV&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is more focused on what occurs from the events that take place, then having the story from multiple POV's might be better. Telling the story from only one perspective means that the reader can only know what that character knows, therefore if there are extra events that the reader should be privy to then they may need to see it externally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going for the multiple POV angle, the villain will need to be a more well-rounded character. The reader needs to &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to know about the villain, and why he is doing the things that he does, rather than just reading about someone for the sole purpose of developing the story for someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the villain parts are just chapters to continue plot points left off from the MC, they will become chapters the reader needs to endure instead of enjoy. It's difficult to read about a character with no redeeming qualities just for the sake of progressing the plot for a character that they want to read about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking the reader out of the MC's experiences and putting them back in will cause them to feel less of a connection to that character, especially if they are seeing that character through the eyes of another (the villain).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, having extra exposition from another point of view will mean that the reader knows more than that character, and they will feel less connected because they will understand what is happening to that character externally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if both characters are developed simultaneously, then the story can work to be more tragic, for example if the villain doubts that they are doing the right thing by fooling this other person. Then rather than having the &quot;shock reveal&quot;, you can have the shock when he inevitably goes through with it rather than succumbing to his doubts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T10:59:04.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20359" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20360" CreationDate="2016-01-08T11:11:55.160" Score="11" ViewCount="3092" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for techniques to write a fantasy story (A song of ice and fire style) but the problem is the duration of the story :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first three years there are lot of plots, and betrayals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After that a good lord rules the kingdom, in his reign nothing special happens, the plots against the king stop and everything is ok.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After his death the plots and betrayals resume &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is how can I skip the twenty years of his reign, mentioning just the important stuff without confusing readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16427" LastEditorUserId="13990" LastEditDate="2016-01-09T10:22:22.647" LastActivityDate="2016-01-16T12:18:13.880" Title="How to write a story that spans decades" Tags="|plot|fantasy|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20359" CreationDate="2016-01-08T11:29:41.763" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Skip the peaceful period.&lt;/strong&gt; If there's no conflict, there's nothing to write about. Go to &quot;Part II&quot; of your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open with the characters having a party to celebrate two decades of peace. In the middle of the celebratory dinner, the bad guy drops a piano on the king, and the war is back on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T11:29:41.763" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3505" CreationDate="2016-01-08T13:58:18.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on your background and language skills, I recommend studying these two books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Manual_of_Style&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Manual of Style&lt;/a&gt;: Your Everyday Guide to Usage, Terminology, and Style for Professional Technical Communications (MSTP)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0132480522&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DITA Best Practices&lt;/a&gt;: A Roadmap for Writing, Editing, and Architecting in DITA (IBM Press)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, learn how to use Git and Github. On &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Github&lt;/a&gt;, find an open source project that's close to your area of interest. Volunteer to write. You'll learn critical skills for working with software development teams. You'll apply the knowledge you acquire from reading those two books and start building a portfolio of technical writing examples. (Be open about your goals. Someone on the team might hire you at some point in your career.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on where you live, you should join &lt;a href=&quot;http://stc.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the STC&lt;/a&gt; and go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writethedocs.org/meetups/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Write the Docs meetups&lt;/a&gt;. Take this opportunity to make more connections, gain more skills, and learn about local employers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, if you internalize the contents of these two books, build a portfolio of relevant examples, and network, you'll be in a great position to work as a technical writer. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-08T14:34:10.030" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T14:34:10.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20356" CreationDate="2016-01-08T14:17:55.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the most important point here is write &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; book, not the book someone who has only heard a plot summary thinks should be written.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that you have given very good reasons to stick to a single POV here.  Personally, I generally dislike books with multiple POV, and while I do think it can be done well, it's unlikely to be done well in a book where the author has only chosen to do that on someone else's say so.  In this case, the sustained mystery of the out-of-character actions seem like a major part of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it might be worthwhile doing this &lt;em&gt;as an exercise.&lt;/em&gt;  Even if you don't include any of those sections in the final book, it might help make your villain more three-dimensional and believable if you (the author) spend some time in his head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T14:17:55.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20256" CreationDate="2016-01-08T14:31:16.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm multi-tasking at my current job where one of my duties is writing technical documents. I was in a team for the last 10 months whose job was creating the user, spare parts, quick-start manuals for 2 of the main product lines. Last week I've started creating the service workflows and how-to articles teaming with one senior field technician. This senior technician is very enthusiastic about the documentation project and willingly contributes his experience but doesn't lay his hand onto the keyboard to write anything. I don't want to lose this opportunity so I don't complain and do the writing, reviewing, editing etc part, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side job I'm acting as the scrummaster of the R&amp;amp;D department and trying to convince them to write everything, anyhow they want to express themselves promising them that I'm going to do the review-edit part. The R&amp;amp;D documentation project doesn't have any pressure or backing from the management so I'm having trouble convincing the R&amp;amp;D team to write down their procedures. None of them is willingly taking part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My case is not exactly what you're dealing with but my experience tells me that writing is not for everyone and people mostly do rely on their memory to do their jobs. I only had success in convincing people to contribute to documentation in cases where the contributing party really needed this content and had someone willing to do the writing part of the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess that in your case, you have to find out practical documentation necessities, be available for content contributers, announce it, and unfortunately do some voluntary writing and share it with the community. My guess is if you insist doing that for some time you'll start building up a little group of like minded writers (hopefully).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10460" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T14:31:16.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20357" CreationDate="2016-01-08T17:05:04.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question 1 - Our brains remember things by association. If you associate the technical data with strong examples or stories, the readers will be more likely to remember the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 2 - Not sure how ethical that is.  Just give them the information.  There are always going to be people that disagree with you... Don't worry about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 3 - You're talking about manipulating people and generally people don't like that.  Just write a good book that you would enjoy yourself and don't worry about the rest.  If you're trying to get people to believe some kind of propaganda, just tell the truth and let them decide for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And some thoughts - Within the past year or so I've gone through a number of training courses from FEMA and also ethics in government purchasing.  These courses were very detailed and full of technical words which were severely overused to the point of becoming meaningless.  I still cringe when I hear the word, &quot;applicable.&quot;  They were dry, boring, mind numbing courses, written by committee and edited by lawyers, and I remember almost nothing from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to present technical data and have an influence on people that goes beyond just reporting the data, then using a natural, conversational style that is pleasant for the reader to read will be of the most use to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastEditorUserId="16155" LastEditDate="2016-01-08T17:35:12.737" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T17:35:12.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20359" CreationDate="2016-01-08T17:12:02.063" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;goto part 2&quot; idea doesn't take much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's use the legend of King Arthur, who as a boy pulled Excalibur from the stone, etc. and have him be maybe 10-11 years old. Hooray Arthur, &quot;end of chapter 8&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have Part II-Ten Years later, etc. but you could also simply say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 9: Title...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ten years had passed, during which time Arthur grew from a boy to a man.  Merlin taught him many wise things about how to rule a kingdom, but the fact of the matter, Arthur was really king in name only, and that just in his castle with the forebearance of older and wiser men who chose not to challenge his claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside the castle walls, however.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and you're off and writing after the peaceful period when Arthur has to go create Camelot, conquer the rest of merry old England or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16435" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T17:12:02.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20366" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-08T18:22:31.337" Score="3" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a fantasy novel and I wanted a few of the characters who speak a secret language. I didn't want to create an entire language from scratch. So I started looking for real secret languages that were no longer in use. I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Polari&lt;/a&gt;, and I really liked it. I not only liked the words, but also the clipped pace, and the sense of humor in it. Since it had smatterings of Yiddish and several different European languages, it sounded more exotic than back or rhyming slang. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, while its no longer fluently spoken, it was in use fairly recently. Even if I took out all of the crossover words that survived and became modern gay slang, I still think it might sound familiar enough that some readers would immediately recognize the brief conversations as Polari. If it were very few, maybe it would be sort of an Easter egg that would make a few people snicker. But if it's still fairly well known, it might make the characters stand out as badly as Jar Jar Binks did when he said, &quot;Exsqueeze me?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have fun being a little bit creative and make up some terms, but I'm no Tolkien. I'd like to just add things that don't exist in the real world and take out phrases and words that are more obvious in origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I'm asking because I'm American, and I'd never even heard of Polari. But in the UK, it might still be &quot;funny, but not not-funny ha ha.&quot; If you catch my meaning. I didn't even know back or rhyming slang existed  and they are still used!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-01-26T20:03:38.327" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T09:28:58.483" Title="Is Polari too familiar and recently used to &quot;steal&quot; for a cant in a fantasy setting?" Tags="|language|multilingual|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4204" CreationDate="2016-01-08T19:36:22.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plan on a series.  If I can recommend the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Honor Harrington&lt;/a&gt; series by David Weber as an example [see wikipedia link below], he's going on 20 books now and they're still relatively good reads. David's known the end of the story for the most part since the early '90's, the rest of us are waiting for the last two novels with cash in hand, so to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway... there's a trick I do whether I am playwriting, script writing, chapter book, or a full length novel, which seems to work well.  I even found a few software tools like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; which make the process much easier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to get the story organized in your head and see how it plays out before you've written a whole lot. You're editing the story in advance the same way as if someone handed you 20 hours of film and said &quot;edit together the best takes, special effects, etc. and deliver &quot;Star Wars&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trouble is it isn't written yet. So, gotta organize the series universe... Let's say that in order to write all 20 books, you're going to need 400-500 major plot points.  That's about twenty five a book which is more than enough or a decent story.  So you start writing down what those plot points are on paper card. then push pin them to a wall size cork board .  Then you rearrange, edit, delete, add, etc. until the overall plot arc makes sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretend you're done and they're good, so you put each set of 20-25 cards in it's own slot in an index card file.  Take out the cards for &quot;book one&quot;, oh crap, time to put in more details. So now I need a few cards for characters, settings and the lot. So those go in that section, etc. Might force some reorganization of the plot cards in the box, come to think about it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat for each set of cards to a smaller extent, some characters will die or be killed, new ones come in, settings change, etc. but the goal is simply to see if the cards can be put in an order where there's an episodic finish per set, and where the sets fit together to make the whole story complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've got a good set of ideas and a start and end point for book one down on paper / in Scrivener / whatever plus the overall big picture, whatever start writing! And then make Book One your best work! (so that it will pay you enough to write book two, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16439" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T19:36:22.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20355" CreationDate="2016-01-08T21:51:26.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The level of inferring readers can get to with a book is infinite. There are actually many books that only in the end you get a new clue that makes the story much different (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/31i7k0/most_amazing_weight_loss_treatment_ever/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;). Sometimes you don't even get a clue, you have to understand it yourself (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/2igaa9/a_story_to_scare_my_son/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt; - although simple one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other examples you can see are the games &quot;Her Story&quot;, &quot;Gone Home&quot; and &quot;Scratches&quot; which have long blog posts about their hidden meanings and story-lines.&#xA;As a reader,  love trying to figure out the hidden meanings of the story. As a writer, it's a fun challenge to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to your question: It is very possible, and as a comment say, it's much better than the infamous info-dump. If you are aiming towards readers with at least basic level of connecting the dots, it would be a pleasant thing to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14838" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T21:51:26.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20355" CreationDate="2016-01-08T22:04:18.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is in fact positive to not overwhelm and bore the readers at the start with a lot of details about characters they feel no connection with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Connection to a character comes through seeing how he acts, in the best case the reader may even &lt;em&gt;impersonate&lt;/em&gt; himself with the character, feel so bound to it to almost feel the story on his skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start with a fast-paced action lasting a chapter or two. Seeing what the protagonist will do when in trouble will be both more relevant to the story and interesting than a random list of qualities and characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this introduction, you may stop and (briefly) explain explicitly what could not be deduced by reading the above introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16442" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-01-09T09:54:52.523" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T09:54:52.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20359" CreationDate="2016-01-08T22:31:13.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the first three years for Part I. Part II begins with the notation: Twenty years later...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then use &quot;flashback&quot; scenes in Part II to catch the odd event of note that might have taken place between the two parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T22:31:13.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20359" CreationDate="2016-01-08T22:35:21.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second the answers that suggest skipping the peaceful years. Work with book parts or sequels.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part I - Before King X&#xA;Part II - After King X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You just have to figure out what works best with your length of story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T22:35:21.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20356" CreationDate="2016-01-08T22:50:44.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember, writing isn't about getting everything right the first try. Write your first draft the way you planned the plot. Keep your friend's advice in the back of your head. After finishing your first draft give your it to one or two trusted alpha readers. If they find the story confusing or boring try to work in a second POV character that might be - or might not be - the antagonist. Or maybe there is another problem with the story structure that is not the lack of a second POV. In this case, work on the problem your alpha readers detected and don't try to force a second POV into the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because multiple POV characters are 'In', since Game of Thrones, not every story needs them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T22:50:44.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20044" CreationDate="2016-01-08T23:10:03.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hm, I think what you are trying to do, is to use a metatag like a Scrivener placeholder tag. I don't think it will work this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the placeholder tag &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;$projecttitle&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; will do the trick?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T23:10:03.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20375" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20393" CreationDate="2016-01-09T03:12:53.170" Score="1" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current project is historical fiction, fifteenth century. The conflict, if you will, principally involves three nations. There's a few others, but one has to stop somewhere in terms of the storytelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've given each of the three nations a representative main character along with a sidekick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've considered some options in which one of the three, Character A, has a limited third-person POV. I like limited third in general because I'm into the whole psychology, motivation thing, and I can get into the character's thoughts, dreams, etc. However, with a sidekick,  this can be accomplished with dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other two characters, let's call them B and C, I'm presenting as more distant third-person omniscient. Still, these other two are equally as compelling at times, and Character C in particular is part of the epic battle scene (which I'm having a blast writing!). I would prefer not to write C in third-person omniscient now that I'm into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plenty of fantasy novels promote a character during battle sequences in terms of POV with apparent ease only to have them drift back. I can do this, but it seems to me that talking about Homeland C with Character C is simply not as interesting without giving Character C an equal (third-person limited) POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, the reader will want A to save face, B to lose, and C to win. Unfortunately, this is not how history played out, so I'm being inventive while trying not to be misinformed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Can anyone help me make sense of my POV mess? My real concerns are in the jumps from Homeland A to Homeland B to Homeland C and the POV when the trio comes together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give 3 third-person limited accounts seems too jerky, but I'm finding it to be the best way to get at the motives.&#xA;I can appreciate the &quot;easiest&quot; thing to do is to write the whole thing as third-person omniscient and call it good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It is not typical for this site to give exact details, and I'm not sure if I want to, but I will if it will help solve my vexing problem!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-01-09T16:28:57.493" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T22:54:44.573" Title="Changing points of view with geographical shifts as well as character changes between scenes" Tags="|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-09T09:01:02.633" Score="3" ViewCount="716" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a story in the form of a journal.  It's about a man who is going through a separation/divorce, living alone in an unfurnished apartment; now lonely and longing for companionship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I've always felt that the beginning (first 40 or so pages) was kinda slow and while interesting and informative about the guys' predicament, but not really compelling enough for the reader to continue on.  A friend of mine who is reading it told me, after reading about a third of it, that it was very realistic and great writing, but then said, &quot;Maybe there should be more action.&quot;  So now I'm going through it and trying to add some &quot;action&quot; in there, and don't see how I can do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of action in the second half of the story, but if I lose my audience before they get there...Any ideas or suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15372" LastActivityDate="2018-10-23T16:05:47.133" Title="Writing Action In A fictional Journal" Tags="|technique|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20377" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20422" CreationDate="2016-01-09T09:15:54.070" Score="1" ViewCount="466" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a blog which sometimes features bad reviews based on my personal research and point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help me know how to say something critical &lt;em&gt;without being too hurtful&lt;/em&gt;. For example, the object is a piece of software, but when I use it and check it, the software contains malware and I tell my readers about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a bad experience, and know about it, what are you supposed to say to your readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16447" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-01-11T16:12:52.330" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T18:44:20.350" Title="Writing a bad review in a tactful way" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20378" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-09T10:14:01.803" Score="2" ViewCount="168" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am occasionally slightly frustrated by how neatly stories wrap up the major storylines. Mostly because life rarely ties things up in a bow for us! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a story I've been considering, where the main character identifies a conspiracy, and spends the majority of the story exploring it / attempting to expose it but is then killed / dies before anything can come of the work he has put into it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will likely be other conflicts occurring, other things will be resolved as the story progresses. But I want the reader at the end to be thinking 'yeah, but what about the conspiracy!' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything I should be particularly cautious of in this story? Are there (m)any examples of that sort of abrupt ending and abandoned conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(as well as any thoughts you might have!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T12:33:30.677" Title="Not resolving the main / significant conflict" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20348" CreationDate="2016-01-09T11:44:08.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good storylines are about overcoming challenges, not exposition. Amnesia as a plot device tends to be trite and overdone, however, that does not mean it can't be used effectively.  The recent US TV show Blind spot uses the idea of a &quot;drug&quot; that washes away all of a person's memories except for flash bits to good effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realistically in a longer story, it is ultra cliche if the person remembers the information &quot;just in time&quot; or &quot;just as clues&quot;, triggers the same panic/pain reaction, or that constantly saves the day, provides a new skill, etc. What we're looking for as readers is a variety of timings, reactions, and effects. For example, if sometimes your &quot;amnesiac&quot; remembers things too late and suffers guilt, but other times gets flashes that help, yay! but even then keep the &quot;remembering&quot; exposition to a minimum.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe every time they try to remember some banished item, they get that migraine, or someone else to use the &quot;edges&quot; that almost trigger a headache, etc. fairly early on, we as readers want our protagonist or story to overcome the blockers.  But if any obtained information has a predictable result, that's boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16439" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T11:44:08.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20276" CreationDate="2016-01-09T12:00:58.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A rule I once read and use in my own writing -- which helped me finish a first book (which is now in the process of being illustrated), and has MOSTLY helped me with a second, [temporarily that bogged down in the middle (main character was going through the motions, not developing, so I need yet another collision of a better story idea to get him moving again...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most good stories result from a collision of two good story ideas. For example, in Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, the two ideas could be stated as &quot;we can find the best genius children to fight the space battles&quot; which ends up in conflict with &quot;the aliens must be genocidally wiped out&quot;. Stephen Donaldson also uses this to good effect the Thomas Covenant, Gap, Mordant's Need series.  He explains it in an author's note at the end of the first gap novel, btw if I remember right, but it's been a decade or more since I read them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16439" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T12:00:58.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20378" CreationDate="2016-01-09T12:04:13.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the tone of your post, I assume that the point is that the character's death is unrelated to the conspiracy. Having him murdered by the conspirators, thus proving the truth of his suspicions, is well within the usual conventions of fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the poor guy just gets run over or something, John Yorke's &lt;em&gt;Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them&lt;/em&gt; might help you. While discussing the random death of &lt;em&gt;(spoiler below)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Omar Bradley in &lt;em&gt;The Wire&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yorke writes, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;hellip; [It] works precisely because it's so narratively wrong; it&#xA;  undercuts the classic hero's journey by employing all its conventions&#xA;  up to the point of sudden, tawdry and unexpected death. Effectively&#xA;  saying this is a world where such codes don't operate &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That last phrase is the key to making this type of ending work. You have to replace the thing the reader thought he was going to experience (triumphant success, tragic failure) with something even more emotionally charged, usually the awful reminder that in real life real death frequently turns up without an appointment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing to avoid is looking like you, the author, got a phone call offering more remunerative work and wrapped up the story in five minutes flat, not caring that you'd left the conspiracy plot line unresolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do this, you could use the conventions of fiction even while planning to subvert the biggest one. Insert into your story foreshadowings  of sudden death and great plans never to be completed. Robert Burn's poem &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_a_Mouse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;To A Mouse&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2012%3A%2016-21&amp;amp;version=KJV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;chapter 12, verses 16-21 of Luke's gospel&lt;/a&gt; might be studied for quotes or metaphors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T12:04:13.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20264" CreationDate="2016-01-09T12:10:46.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two suggestion: team authorship with a native English speaker who has decent Latin American language skills, or &quot;exchange services&quot; with the same.  Key thought for either suggestion: it's better to hammer out the contract details first, even if it's fairly boilerplate language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team authoring can be useful if each person is doing an amount of work.   Meanwhile they're translating your stuff into English. You're translating their story bits into your native language(s), and both are acting as fact checkers, editors, advance readers, etc. for each other.  You can push each other to do better in one area so that the person working on the next area can push forward, go back and fix these things, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second example: I speak Japanese fluently enough, have an English story ready to go, if I found a &quot;team author&quot; who needed their Japanese story translated into English, our work on each other's books should balance out. I don't expect them to not acquire some rights to profit from the Japanese translation of my books, nor should I acquire too many rights to profit from the English translation, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16439" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T12:10:46.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20378" CreationDate="2016-01-09T12:33:30.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Easiest answer I can give you is that the journey to the lack of resolved conflict has to be satisfying.  There needs to be some emotional payoff to the reader. Otherwise, we get pissed that we've wasted our money and time on YOUR book.  In fact, I've read stories which went ker-blooey at the end in terms of any form of satisfaction, and I usually never read that author's works again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if Hamlet simply died without exposing his father's killer, what's the point?  But (not in Shakespeare's version of the story...) what if at the end, we discovered that the uncle was tricked into poisoning the king, but chose to profit from it anyway? It's still satisfying even though Hamlet's dead because the corrupt new king got whacked, but... the conspiracy is still out there.  There's just no one left to figure out who the trickster was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16439" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T12:33:30.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20376" CreationDate="2016-01-09T12:45:27.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rearrange your idea sequence or change the Point Of View (POV).  For example, the friend comes to &quot;the apartment&quot;, finding it empty or disheveled, but discovers the journal but not your protagonist.  You're now set up for a mystery, perhaps a journey type novel, but the POV is that of the investigating friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the friend knows why the separation/divorce took place, so you can kind of gloss over that initially, but as he reads he discovers a dark side to either your protagonist (who deserved his outcome) or a poisonous side to the ex-spouse, or some yet-to-be-revealed event which caused the divorce AND the plot to be set in motion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example.  Let's say friend picks up the journal, flips towards the end (trying to find out why the person is gone) and reads a glum entry about how the protagonist has been alone, yada yada yada or three months now (but as an author you're not dragging me through three months, you're dragging me through about 45 seconds (a half to three quarters of a page). Friend turns the pages, and half way down he/she reads something like. &quot;I guess it's my own damn fault, I didn't mean to kill _________.&quot; and the entry ends right there, and the rest of the journal is empty.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you've got my interest, the POV character can bring the journal with him/her etc. and you're off and running.  Then you can intersperse your original protagonist's journal entries in the middle of the action, and make the &quot;original actions&quot; move the mystery/journey story forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16439" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T12:45:27.163" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12172" CreationDate="2016-01-09T12:51:51.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A short answer: yes.  Consider the original Star Wars, but not in edited sequence.  Imagine yourself as Luke who looks up with a telescope and sees some of the space battle flashes, but has to go to work before Leia's ship is captured. Interesting, but perhaps space battles occur over that planet quite frequently, who knows? We never know -- and it doesn't matter to the setting, characters, or plot.  What matters first is &quot;desert planet&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've got the setting: Tatooine, for the first maybe third of the movie, above which a space battle took place.  Add two Characters... dissatisfied twenty-something and nearby future mentor.  Add conflict. Drop droids into dissatisfied twenty-something's problem bucket.  Off you go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16439" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T12:51:51.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20330" CreationDate="2016-01-09T13:01:42.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not meaning to be trite, but avoid the promise.  Been there, done that in too many stories already.  But if you need an example of how to do it well, go watch Saving Private Ryan, for Tom Hank's character's last few words, or those of Buster Kilrain in the movie version of Gettysburg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretend the death scene is EARLY in a movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe all the dying friend does is move his hand towards a pocket, in which your protagonist discovers a letter he feels obligated to deliver to some one, or something which forces the hero into &quot;I must survive&quot; mode.  If it's a war movie, maybe there's a radio call which announces &quot;more enemy incoming...&quot; etc. or your hero realizes that he has been framed for killing his friend and has to get out of there, etc. etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's reasonally dramatic, but doesn't require much &quot;screen time&quot; even if the screen is my imagination as I'm reading your book.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16439" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T13:01:42.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20027" CreationDate="2016-01-09T13:27:35.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My thoughts as an author needing an illustrator... is that it depends.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that a publisher's goal is to profit on the work, so if you come to them with a great story and tremendous art that only needs minor touch ups, great news!  But if your art is so-so, it might kill getting the story read and published. Let's look at my case though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I privately hire an illustrator and not &quot;for spec&quot;, meaning that they artist is not being payed full rates and won't sell you all rights to their work.  Usually, that means I will end up paying 50% of my royalties for the picture book to the illustrator, in addition to whatever I payed in advance to get the work done to begin with. [don't expect an illustrator to work for free.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A larger publisher, on the other hand, may have &quot;house illustrators&quot; that they can pay once &quot;for spec&quot;, and if your BIG HIT BESTSELLER!! is wildly successful, they get to keep the illustrator's cut for themselves, paying out half as much over the life of the book, and simplifying other accounting practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, about 80% of the current profit in books is e-books.  So there's a lot more room for exploring different art options with friends, etc. before a publisher even steps in to help assemble the final epub document(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16439" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T13:27:35.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20375" CreationDate="2016-01-09T13:47:42.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find your description a bit complicated as well, but am I right that your main fear is, the readers might find your Protagonist C very likeable but he will inevitably lose and you don't want to disappoint your readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To hurt your readers feelings isn't a bad thing per se. For example Game of Thrones. No reader wanted Ned Stark to die. George RR Martin let him die anyway and the readers still loved the series. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T13:47:42.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20389" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20391" CreationDate="2016-01-09T17:19:06.457" Score="1" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working on an essay for an award. I'm on a FIRST Robotics Team, and FIRST gives a Chairman's Award at our competitions. One part of this award includes an essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team's name relates to Star Wars, and we'd like to bring this theme into our essay. Are we allowed to include things like &quot;Jedi Masters&quot; and certain memorable quotes without facing copyright infringement if I gain no monetary value directly from the essay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16350" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T19:23:24.040" Title="Copyright Infringement if I directly gain no money?" Tags="|copyright|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20389" CreationDate="2016-01-09T21:10:08.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most importantly: I am not a lawyer. Get professional legal advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is whether or not your use of the copyrighted material constitutes &quot;fair use.&quot; Fair use can be difficult to determine. Whether you make money is one factor, but there are others. The amount of material you use, for example. You can't copy &quot;a substantial&quot; amount of another work, even if you give it away. Another key factor is whether your use reduces the monetary value of the original work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a tricky subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;em&gt;The Copyright Handbook&lt;/em&gt; from NOLO Press. Read the section about fair use. And consult an intellectual property attorney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the use of names may relate more to trademarks rather than copyright. So check out trademark law while you're at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDITED&lt;/strong&gt;: My original first paragraph was incorrect. My new first paragraph is the most important one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2016-01-10T19:23:24.040" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T19:23:24.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20377" CreationDate="2016-01-09T21:38:48.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Surely, by definition, contradicting someone will cause hurt to that person (even if very small). However, pointing out that something contains malware is an obvious case where causing hurt to one  party (the malware writers) is beneficial to the majority and therefore you should do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T21:38:48.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20375" CreationDate="2016-01-09T22:05:31.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I have this right, then the crux of the problem is that you are uneasy about multiple 3rd person limited POVs in your epic story, and feel it may not be appropriate. Honestly though, I don't know why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can relax. In principle it's probably the right choice, and it's worked just fine for plenty of epic novels and sagas. Any jerkiness you perceive is probably just specific to the way you've written the chapters and can be smoothed out in a later draft. Your readers will have no problem being carried across to different lands to see other stories unfolding in parallel. Take a cue from movies: when we cut to a completely new place give us the wide shot, help us get our bearings, then zoom in, finding our new POV character, and ultimately zooming right into his/her head. Of course it's up to you to make sure each story is compelling, and each has its own flavours, sensations and struggles, so that the later jumps don't leave us disorientated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're worried about it feeling like a textbook, again its probably not the POV issue which is to blame. If anything, a set of limited POVs ought to allow you to strip back the dry facts, and focus more on the experiences and feelings of a smaller set of figures, and let everyone else be painted with rough strokes. For example you might be drawn into describing a specific individual who completes a certain vital mission, just like a textbook would. But actually looking from the POV of character A we might never even need to know this guy's name, or what specifically he did. He might be just some braggard he meets in a tavern beforehand, later learns he's the guy supposed to be doing the Important Thing, then has to sweat for days hoping the loudmouth drunk can pull it off. In other words, you can use the supporting cast, not to tell their own stories, but to help tell the stories of characters A, B or C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an earlier version of the question I think you mentioned being concerned about what happens to the POV when they meet. Of course it would be easy to slip into omniscient, but I think it's best not to. Just give each POV their own chapter. This part is where things get interesting and fun. When your main characters are together some bombshells will drop. In every case you get to decide who we ride with right up to the big moment, and who we're with in the aftermath. For example if A is going to punch B on the nose. We can ride with B, and get hit with the eye-watering surprise, then switch to A to experience the satisfaction/regret. Or we can be with A as he debates whether to give in to his rage, then switch to B as he plots revenge. You can see it gives you interesting choices about tone, tension etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're worried that this may give equal weight to A, B and C, where your story is mainly about A, then again, this is more down to the specifics of the writing than anything else. You can limit the number of visits to B's and C's world to just those moments which illustrate major decisions which would affect A, whereas A's story could involve his personal history, his romantic affairs, his struggles with weight gain, and whatever else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2016-01-09T22:54:44.573" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T22:54:44.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16410" CreationDate="2016-01-10T01:29:45.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree, publishers and agents don't expect to see the illustrations. The manuscript should only include the text. I believe that the easiest way to organize the manuscript is to indicate each page with the page number between parenthesis. Also indicate actions or expressions not specified in the text that need to be reflected in the illustrations between parenthesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16317" LastEditorUserId="16317" LastEditDate="2016-01-10T17:02:13.920" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T17:02:13.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20395" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-10T02:53:50.017" Score="0" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Microsoft Word to write stories then I send it to a publisher. But, I want to know how many pages would the book version would be because I want to make long stories and/or books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16453" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-01-10T19:39:39.167" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T19:39:39.167" Title="Microsoft Book Pages" Tags="|book-length|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-01-10T19:39:23.660" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20396" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20431" CreationDate="2016-01-10T03:17:02.433" Score="4" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize most agents and publishers ask you information about your writer's platform. I looks like having a writer's platform has become an essential part of your introduction to agents or publishers. However, how do you address this issue if you are new in the field and you haven't actually published a book yet?  How can you create a platform without a published book? &#xA;Thank you for your feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16317" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T20:13:19.603" Title="Writer's Platform" Tags="|publishing|marketing|websites|agent|publisher|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20395" CreationDate="2016-01-10T05:19:22.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Set the page size, margins, and font in MS Word to match what the book will be when it is printed. Then see how many pages it takes. This will only be as exact as the information you have available, but it should get you in the ballpark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T05:19:22.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20405" CreationDate="2016-01-10T10:19:55.007" Score="36" ViewCount="4221" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize this question may sound broad or vague, so allow me to explain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never knew much about combat or dealing with injuries until I started gathering research for a fantasy novel I'm planning to write, which will have a lot of action and fighting. Prior to obtaining my research, I thought that you could get hit in the head and fall unconscious for a few hours. I see it all the time in stories. Somebody sneaks up behind Joe while he's in the woods -- &lt;em&gt;WHAM&lt;/em&gt; -- the next scene shows Joe waking up a few hours later tied to a chair in the villain's basement or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After doing some very basic reading on concussions, I learned that this situation is not realistic. In fact, when people are knocked out, they're usually knocked out for less than 30 seconds, a few minutes at most. Any more than that and they're dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not just this specific case. I learned that a lot of other events that are so frequently portrayed in fiction simply would never happen in real life... I never had a problem with it before, but now I am the writer. I am afraid that if I write a scene like the one with Joe above, people might criticize it for being unrealistic, even if I was writing a fantasy. So, in general, where is the line drawn between what's believable and what's too unbelievable (&lt;strong&gt;especially&lt;/strong&gt; if I'm writing a fantasy)? How accurate is too accurate? Should I stray away from writing a flying scene because, realistically, my character would die from increasing in altitude too quickly? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-05-29T15:50:10.213" LastActivityDate="2019-05-29T15:50:10.213" Title="Where to draw the line between fantasy and reality in a story?" Tags="|fantasy|realism|combat|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20400" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-10T12:17:07.387" Score="2" ViewCount="1816" Body="&lt;p&gt;My father passed when I was very young. I hope to know him through individual q&amp;amp;a's I will have with his friends associates, collegues and register it as a bio. What type of questions should I ask. Most of the people I'm to interview are business and political leaders who knew my father in somewhat great detail personally and professionally.&#xA;Thank you in advance for any extended courtesies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16456" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T00:35:16.947" Title="Bio on my father" Tags="|biography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20399" CreationDate="2016-01-10T13:26:22.523" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're doing essentially the same thing as 90% of your genre (flying people achieve great heights immediately, people with superpowers never have issues with getting fuel for those powers, someone can be knocked unconscious for hours but be okay) because the &quot;realistic&quot; details are not the purpose of your story, then I think you're fine. If anything, your readers may be &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; surprised if you present the realistic version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it depends what kind of story you're writing. If your entire point is to explore what it would &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; be like to fly or develop powers etc., then yes, by all means research the effect thoroughly and present the problems in all their gory detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that would be a valuable and fascinating story, because while many people know about getting the bends going underwater, or think about air pressure in a plane, nobody really thinks about the effect of that same air pressure if you could fly under your own (magical) power. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T13:26:22.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20399" CreationDate="2016-01-10T16:44:41.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that it's important to keep in mind that you are writing fiction, therefore you are taking your readers into a fantasy world that you have built around your characters. I would try to keep it as realistic as possible, but most of the time this fantasy world is far from being realistic. The fine line between reality and fantasy should be determined by the needs of your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16317" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T16:44:41.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20399" CreationDate="2016-01-10T19:16:50.080" Score="29" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Be consistent&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is to keep your story consistent. A story which has the same rules throughout can be accepted even if it is not compatible with the real world. However, even a fantasy story will be rejected by the reader if the rules of what is possible in the fantasy world change without justification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even within a given genre, the line is drawn in different places for different stories (even for different stories by the same author). What is essential is that you don't move that line &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; a single story (or within a series if all the stories within it are set in the same world).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;em&gt;Build&lt;/em&gt; consistency&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth bearing in mind that when you first enter a story, the reader has expectations based on the real world, based on the story they read previously, and based on the genre they expect your story to be. An event that would be unrealistic in the real world or unrealistic in a similar story will be hard for them to accept in the first few pages. If you introduce it gradually then it will be much easier to accept later in the story when it has been established as a natural part of how things work in your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the same reason, if you have an event that will be unexpected late in the story, it's important to give reasons for believing that event is possible beforehand. Try to find ways of informing the reader that a particular type of action is possible without giving away what you intend to happen. That way your event can be surprising, without being unbelievable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Examples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention the examples of being knocked out for hours and waking relatively unharmed, and flying to great heights/making rapid ascent without breathing problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of your readers will see a problem with these, others will not. For the benefit of those who may see a problem, you could make sure the first incidence of the event is not essential to your plot. A few events where someone survives being knocked out in a minor subplot make a later event easier to accept. Similarly, a few flights to places that are clearly at great altitude early on mean that the reader will not be jarred by later being expected to accept something brand new that the plot depends on. This is particularly important if the magical flight will involve carrying someone who lacks that magical ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Even realistic can jar&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that it can also be useful to set things up subtly beforehand even if your event is completely realistic. As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20401/13916&quot;&gt;Lauren Ipsum points out&lt;/a&gt;, because of the longstanding acceptance of being knocked out for hours that you describe, it could be hard for the reader to accept someone being knocked out and then waking with permanent brain damage, or remaining in a coma until death. If you can find a way to make it clear that this is a story where impact to the head is not trivial, then the reader will be prepared for an event that is closer to reality than they would otherwise expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13916" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T21:57:22.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20399" CreationDate="2016-01-10T20:39:26.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to use Sanderson's First Law for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An author's ability to resolve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to the reader's ability to understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to that sentence is &quot;resolve conflict.&quot;  You can get away with using &quot;magic&quot; to create conflict far better than you can get away with resolving it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't even have to call it magic.  The rules work for things that are not stated to be magic as well.  There's always the magic of storytelling.  Its what makes little girls in capes &lt;em&gt;happen&lt;/em&gt; to have grandmothers who live all alone in the woods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you will get away with the setup you mentioned where the protagonist gets knocked unconscious for hours far better than you would get away with the protagonist knocking the villain out and having the villain be unconscious for hours, unless the reader has some way of understanding why the villain went out for so long (maybe he had narcolepsy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14106" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T20:39:26.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20303" CreationDate="2016-01-10T22:59:09.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that sexual tension is reflected in scenes where the dialogue and actions have been put together in such a way that the reader can feel it. The actions of your character are an essential part of creating this tension. Don't say it, but make their actions show what they are feeling. Also, short interactions create more tension in a dialogue than long ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16317" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T22:59:09.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20303" CreationDate="2016-01-11T00:31:16.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Accentuate details as to what they do with their bodies more excruciatingly such as what &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; they do with their bodies to the other characters in possible sexual activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10834" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T00:31:16.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20411" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-11T03:29:03.433" Score="1" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;... to further everyones agenda; revenge.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the correct punctuation? Or should the semicolon simply be a comma?&#xA;I know this is an incredibly dumb question and I should know the answer, I'm just second guessing myself a lot here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16465" LastEditorUserId="16466" LastEditDate="2016-01-11T09:34:19.267" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T09:34:19.267" Title="How to punctuate the synonym to a word or phrase?" Tags="|punctuation|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-01-11T05:12:39.240" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20411" CreationDate="2016-01-11T04:14:47.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, don't put yourself down. Everyone has questions like this and sometimes the answers can be hard to find!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to answer your question, what you have isn't correct. Semicolons are used for a few reasons. The most common one is to separate things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two independent clauses (sentences that can stand alone) can be connected with a semicolon if they are closely related. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I walked outside and immediately wished I had worn a coat; it was below freezing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, what appears after the semicolon can't stand as its own sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fixing it is easy. Replace the semicolon with a comma or a colon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out Grammar Girl's website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quickanddirtytips.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quickanddirtytips.com&lt;/a&gt;, for help with anything grammatical. She has some great articles on this exact topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16350" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T04:14:47.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20400" CreationDate="2016-01-11T04:27:07.197" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry about your father. I can tell that you're very devoted to him even now. He would probably be honored to know this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a student journalist; I interview a lot of people. I always walk in with a mental list of questions, so you're already on the right track! Let me help you break down an interview:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Icebreaker questions. Simple questions like &quot;How are you?&quot; Can break in an interview and hopefully make the interviewee more comfortable around you. Don't spend too long on pleasantries though. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Easy, one-word reply questions. Anything that can be answered in a few sentences or less are good here. &quot;How long had you known my father?&quot; or &quot;How close were the two of you?&quot; can be a good starting place. This might be a sensitive topic for many people, so opening up slowly might be important. This also creates a sense of friendliness.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Open-ended questions. This is when you ask for anecdotes or other stories. &quot;How did you two meet?&quot; or &quot;What was his most important quality and how did he show that?&quot; can lead to new stories or opinions that can't be given to you by anyone else. Allow for time to think or to process, especially if your interviewees are becoming emotional. Feel free to converse more with the interviewee and discuss what you think about a particular story, or maybe share a short one of your own if it's an appropriate time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finalizers. End the interview by asking &quot;Is there anyone else you think I should contact?&quot; Always thank them for their time, and maybe mention how you're glad that you were able to learn more about your father with them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's about it! If you care for them, here are some more tips for an interview:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Embrace awkward silences. Sometimes this is when real emotion can come out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Express empathy. You and your interviewee both miss the same person. Show them that you care about how they're feeling and don't let them worry.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let them lead. If they want to talk about something, let them. Don't stay stuck on asking all of your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you luck in your writing endeavors!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16350" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T04:27:07.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6834" CreationDate="2016-01-11T13:59:55.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing i haven't seen on this site, and a main reason that most of the examples posted used this technique, is to add character without having to explain it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you had &quot;the mechanic' as a character, your mind automatically sees him or her as down-to-earth, black stained hands, straightforward thinker or something of the like. Or &quot;the librarian&quot;, plain-clothed quiet woman with glasses. This technique isn't because the character is unimportant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16474" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-01-12T08:36:46.727" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T08:36:46.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20027" CreationDate="2016-01-11T16:05:56.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, &lt;strong&gt;most author/illustrators need to first establish themselves&lt;/strong&gt; as either an author or as an illustrator, and then move towards doing both.  The reason is that publishers like to pair a known quantity with a beginner, a big name with an unknown.  Once they know you can sell, or have developed a following, then you can pitch yourself as being able to handle both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are people who have achieved such a perfect marriage of text and illustration that they can sell them both together, even as a first-timer, but &lt;strong&gt;the common misconception that one &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; provide both words and text in order to sell a picture book is completely wrong&lt;/strong&gt;.  The plain truth is that even many of the big name hyphenates are clearly better at one side of things than the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2019-02-20T18:36:09.570" LastActivityDate="2019-02-20T18:36:09.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20399" CreationDate="2016-01-11T16:46:40.817" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am afraid that if I write a scene like the one with Joe above, people might criticize it for being unrealistic, even if I was writing a fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hang a lampshade on it.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beefy McProtagonist had seen bards who clearly knew nothing of actual combat perform tales in which a blow to the back of the head would render an adversary unconscious for hours, almost as if it somehow put them to sleep, but any experienced warrior knew better.  Such a blow might daze someone, or even knock them out for a minute at most.  Any longer, and they'd either be up on their feet again, or at death's door.  No, to really put someone out that long, you'd need a wizard and a sleeping spell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This helps to establish the ground rules by explicitly letting the audience know that you're aware of this convention and it's not going to be used here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1933" LastEditorUserId="1933" LastEditDate="2016-01-11T20:54:25.093" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T20:54:25.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20399" CreationDate="2016-01-11T17:46:28.333" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a LOT of things you see all the time in fiction that are totally unrealistic. Not only do characters in stories typically get knocked out and remain unconscious for hours, but they then regain consciousness, shake their heads, and they're fine. In real life a concussion is not something that just goes away by shaking your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I develop software for a living, and I regularly gape at the unreality of how computers are depicted in TV and movies. Like when the detective gets a picture from a store security camera and tells the computer guy to zoom in on some tiny object in the distance, then casually says &quot;can you clarify that?&quot;, the techie hits a few keys, and additional detail appears in the image out of nowhere:  suddenly we can read the license number on a car that was half a mile away or whatever. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a writer should strive for as much accuracy as possible. Sure, this means finding out how real life works. And doing research is way more work than just making stuff up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you say this is a fantasy story. This adds a dimension. In real life, people can't fly or throw lightning bolts from their fingertips or read minds or whatever. Then the question becomes plausibility. Will the reader accept the rules of magic that you describe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read an article by a science fiction writer once in which he dismissed criticisms of unreality in SF, saying that he found it easier to believe that people will someday travel to other stars than to believe that Perry Mason only gets big murder cases with innocent clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the key is setting the stage. If you tell me that the wizard magically teleports the beautiful princess to his castle, I'll probably accept that as the premise of the story. But I'll assume human nature is the same. If you tell me that after the hero rescues her and they get married, that when he goes off to rescue another beautiful princess that it never occurs to his wife to be jealous or suspicious of what her husband is doing with this other woman, I'll likely find that totally implausible! If you tell me, &quot;In this magical land there is no such thing as lying: the fairies compel everyone to always tell the truth&quot;, I'll accept that. But if you never give such an explanation, and characters tell the truth in cases where real people would surely lie to get themselves out of trouble, I won't just say, &quot;Oh, they probably tell the truth because this is a fantasy story&quot;. You have to set it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I'll accept almost any premise if you tell me up front that this is how the magic in this land works, or this is the amazing new technology that has been invented. But you have to establish up front. You can't just keep throwing incredible things at me with no explanation. And it has to be consistent. You can't tell me in chapter 1 that the hero gets into this problem because he was forced to tell the truth by the magic fairies, and then in chapter 2 have the villain get away with a lie with no explanation of why the magic fairies don't force him to tell the truth also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T17:46:28.333" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20420" CreationDate="2016-01-11T19:23:57.830" Score="2" ViewCount="234" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while ago, I would casually read and and casually write, and I was satisfied with what I achieved.  But that all changed when people started suggesting that &quot;readers are better writers&quot; and the like. As a result, I started switching between periods of only reading for learning and not enjoying what I read, or writing only to mechanically improve my skill. Unsurprisingly, I lost enjoyment and satisfaction in both hobbies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the best way to go about writing? Should I read a lot because it will help me write well? Should I write almost exclusively to get experience writing? Or should I take a different approach entirely?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes: I write all kinds of creative non-fiction (practically all), but my specialties are stage-plays and short serial novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: In case people are wondering how I've changed my harmful routine, I now partially write while I read and partially read while I write. If reading is learning and writing is doing, then no matter what I'm always learning and accomplishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14971" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:50:08.133" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:50:08.133" Title="What is the best approach to balancing reading and writing for improving my writing skill?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20419" CreationDate="2016-01-11T19:53:52.233" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's your goal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is to write, and reading what you &quot;should&quot; be doing made you stop writing, then &lt;em&gt;stop reading that shit.&lt;/em&gt; Avoid whatever is an obstacle to your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean you can't learn the craft of writing, or study techniques or develop methods or use tools. But if you &quot;let the perfect become the enemy of the good,&quot; then you aren't writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put the &quot;should&quot; books aside and go write. Write for fun. Write knowing it will suck, and that it's perfectly okay to suck. Editing is the round where you polish off the suckage. But you can't edit a blank page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put down the book and go write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA&lt;/strong&gt; There is no One Best Way to go about improving your writing. You improve by identifying your mistakes and fixing them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people do well with doing a lot of research beforehand, which is what you tried to do. Obviously it didn't work for you; you got blocked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people let it all pour out on the page and fix everything afterward, including plot and structure; this is called discovery writing. In this process, you find the mistakes after your entire first draft is written, and it may involve tearing the whole book apart and reassembling it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people are in-between: a little research beforehand, writing the draft according to a loose structure, and then editing afterwards. For this method, you write a rough draft and polish it a few times, and then it's in good enough shape to hand it to an editor for more fine-tuning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think researching is useful, and I also think you get better at the craft the more that you write &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you learn what &quot;good writing&quot; looks and feels like. So I think you need to do both. You're done the research for now. Start writing, get your words on paper, and then work with someone else to hone it into &quot;good writing.&quot; Then you practice writing well, and once you're comfortable with writing well on your own, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; you can go back and do more research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-01-12T01:42:08.447" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T01:42:08.447" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20376" CreationDate="2016-01-11T20:56:15.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be difficult to add 'action' in that format since the journal author would be unlikely to want to write blow by blow accounts of events he has just experienced. For example if he gets into a fight, would he really want to go home and write it up like a thriller?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite this you can certainly add tension, and even action in a roundabout way. You can write his words as he gets himself worked up about something and plans to do something extreme (quitting his job or beating someone up). It's a perfect format to explore rage, desperation or hope, and even run through fantasy versions of what he intends to do. Of course we don't viscerally get to experience the action which actually follows; we'll only read about the aftermath, but that's okay. The build-up, the fantasies and that moment between entries, where we just want to know if he did it or not, should give your readers enough thrills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T20:56:15.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20377" CreationDate="2016-01-11T21:06:28.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your example is a bit extreme but in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Highlight the successes as well as the failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to express understanding and sympathy for how the failures might have occurred. For example perhaps you point out that something is a first effort, or the budget was a little low, or some other factor out of the control of the author/developer/filmmaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid attacking anyone personally, or trying to judge a person or organisation based on what you think are the product's failings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a serious problem, eg a software application doesn't work or contains malware, contact the person or organisation asking for their comments and assistance and and recount that exchange alongside the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T21:06:28.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20376" CreationDate="2016-01-12T00:52:23.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe something you could do is to keep in mind that while you’re writing from the perspective of the person reading it, the journal itself is written from the perspective of the person in-universe writing it. And because it’s a journal, everything in it probably recently happened to him, so it’s not like he needs to remind himself. You can use this to create some mystery as to what actually happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: let’s say his apartment gets broken into, and he comes home and catches the robber red-handed. The journal-writer knows what happened, but not the reader. So maybe you have the writer mentioning things like injuries sustained in the resulting fight, the damage done to his stuff, and the like, but not what actually happened. The lack of information is compelling, and makes the reader want to keep reading. This is just a little example, probably spanning only a few pages, but you can expand upon it with other, bigger events. Also, if it’s something that the writer has negative emotions regarding, if he’s ashamed or afraid of it, then that’s a good reason why he wouldn’t explicitly mention whatever-it-was by name, and just keep alluding to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might not be explicitly action, as of the “biff, bam, pow” sort, but if you’re just looking for a way to keep the reader involved until Act Two, then this should help do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16485" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T00:52:23.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20419" CreationDate="2016-01-12T02:49:14.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, reading helps you write in the same way studying cook books helps you cook better. If you read them a lot, you start to learn which spices are usually used with which different meats. You learn which vegetables take longer to sauté properly and what order you should put the food into the pan when you plan to sauté. You will learn that there are certain specific ways you must mix tomato juice and cream when cooking so the cream doesn't curdle. You study the cook books so you don't have to waste time muddling about making mistakes that other people have already learned not to make.  If you read enough cook books, eventually, you'll not just learn recipes. You'll learn how to improvise in a pinch because you've learned all the cooking rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But until you actually start cooking, you're not a chef. It's not enough just to understand the rules. You have to keep practicing all the techniques so that you can mater them. No matter how many times you read about the best way to mince onions, you're going to need to mince them several times and mess them up while doing it several times before you are any good at mincing. Reading cook books and watching cooking shows help greatly, but they aren't enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, there's no magic formula. You can't just tell someone to read x number of books a month. It's not a prescription. It's not magic. You just read as much as you feel like. You read the kind of books that you want to write, and you eventually learn the usual techniques, themes and cliches. It's not enough to read just the classics. You need to stay on top of the field by seeing the new techniques and trends in your field of publishing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you shouldn't only be reading because you feel that you &quot;have to.&quot; It should be something you do because you enjoy doing it. You should enjoy reading so much that you do it so often that you have to force yourself to stop so that you can get other things done. If you feel like you need to force yourself, then you shouldn't do so. It's not like medicine you take. It should be a treat you enjoy. It just happens to help you write better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T02:49:14.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20425" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-12T13:04:25.787" Score="0" ViewCount="101" Body="&lt;p&gt;My cousin is an inspirational little girl whose overcoming physical handicaps to help others. She was just featured on NBC Nightly News a couple of weeks ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It just occurred to me that a book about her would probably be a best seller, but needs to be written quickly while the news segment is still recent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written non-fiction before, but never a book length story about someone's life. I was wondering how to get started and how to structure the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advice, please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T20:25:10.227" Title="Getting started writing non-fiction" Tags="|structure|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20027" CreationDate="2016-01-12T14:12:57.663" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;But why is it ‘harder’ to sell a book if you submit both text and illustrations? Why isn’t it more of a ‘can’t hurt, might help’ sort of scenario? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a common misconception that editors/agents 'need to see' the pictures to 'get' the story. Actually, good editors can bring a lot of imagination to what's possible based on their years of exposure and professional analysis of audience,themes, trends, and market. Imagining the 'right' illustrator plays a role in this. I believe one of the reasons I was able to sell my first children's book was, in part, that the editor imagined it in the hands of a certain up and coming illustrator, and it 'fit' perfectly. Why should I art block that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want text finalized with the editor before you do much illustration work (another reason editors prefer to see the text first). Sending illustrations with text that may require some work (removing a redundant character, extra verbiage, etc) makes the whole project seem like a huge, unnecessary headache. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sendak had his story submitted before he started illustrating. His original title was &quot;Land of the Wild Horses&quot; until he realized he couldn't draw horses. It was his editor that suggested changing horses to 'wild things'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Speaking of which, If you really want to get into the head of a children's book editor and what it looks like to work with authors, illustrators and author/illustrators, read the delightful and insightful &lt;em&gt;Dear Genius, The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom&lt;/em&gt;.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why experience counts. Geisel (Dr. Seuss) spent 10 years establishing himself as a cartoonist and illustrator before he wrote and illustrated his first book. Maurice Sendak was best known for illustrating Else Minarik's &lt;em&gt;Little Bear&lt;/em&gt; series long before he wrote and illustrated &lt;em&gt;Where the Wild Things Are.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, neither of these fellows breezed into publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, IN GENERAL, you're going to have a greater chance of selling your book with text only, or getting a gig for a different book with illustration samples only, because submitting text and illustrations as an entwined unit greatly increases the chance of imperfections here or there being perceived as &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; wrong.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside: as a writer, I would never, ever, hire an illustrator to illustrate my text and then submit it to a children's book publisher (unless it's a self-publish, in which case you're the publisher and that's a different story). I can't begin to tell you how may things are wrong with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14746" LastEditorUserId="14746" LastEditDate="2016-01-12T14:20:50.070" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T14:20:50.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20419" CreationDate="2016-01-12T16:54:54.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You already have fantastic answers here, and spot on guidance. All I want to offer is, reading can &lt;em&gt;be&lt;/em&gt; learning the craft of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a favorite author, or perhaps a favorite book. You can learn the craft from it by identifying what you like about that book, or what you like most about the way the author writes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re-read your favorite book, by your favorite author if applicable, and instead of just reading to enjoy the story (which is why you're &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;re&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;-reading it), find those passages that really stirred something in you. That really creepy scene, or that amazing description of setting, maybe the way that certain character came to life for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the book and do a chapter-by-chapter, and if necessary a scene-by-scene, reverse outline. Nothing detailed or heavy-duty; just one or two sentences summarizing each scene in the chapter, or the entire chapter if you're doing it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you include things such as whether the scene is a turning scene (things change for the protagonist[s], or their situations), or a reveal scene, etc. Did the scene raise tension? Suspense? Stakes? Did things get harder for the protagonist(s)? Was it a minor win? A loss? You get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then see if a particular structure becomes apparent. Where the author added certain elements of structure - rising tension, a plot point, a cliff hanger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then go through that passage or scene with a highlighter and find the bits that really struck home. How did the author paint that setting, that character? How did s/he generate that sense of dread, of tension? What made that passage special for you? Is there a certain wording, or a way of saying something the author uses consistently that you really like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making notes and dissecting your favorite books can actually be a better learning tool than sitting down with a craft book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you choose to do, best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T16:54:54.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9875" CreationDate="2016-01-12T18:07:48.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use LaTeX to create PDFs for publishers who accept submissions in that file format. Otherwise, don't use LaTeX  --edit--  (unless they instructed you to use a specific LaTeX class for your document, a specialized situation)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--edit-- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe there are a few scientific journals that accept LaTeX code as submittals, but they usually require you to use their specific LaTeX Class (document type) rather than the &quot;standard&quot; LaTeX classes (book, report, article, letter etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than any other file format, LaTeX is used to generate pdf files, which many, if not most, accept.  Publishers won't accept LaTeX code because the code is heavily dependent on the TeX Distribution and additional macro &quot;packages&quot; called for from an uncompiled LaTeX document. For example, if you had an indie publishing company, a writer could submit a LaTeX file to you, that called for a font package that you don't have installed, and the result would be that the LaTeX document wouldn't compile.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since LaTeX is an entire System of Software, more so than a single code recipe, like html, publishers can't expect the LaTeX code they receive will compile.  And, publishers don't want to have to ask you how to compile it, they just want a working fully formatted document, which LaTeX does with pdf as well as any software out there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For self-publishers, knowing LaTeX is fantastic, because Lulu and Createspace both accept pdf, and you only have to generate true to size pdf page sizes, which is easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6001" LastEditorUserId="6001" LastEditDate="2016-01-23T21:13:14.827" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T21:13:14.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20425" CreationDate="2016-01-12T18:40:23.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many types of non-fiction, but for a book like this, you probably want to structure it something like a novel.  Even though you'll be recounting events from real life, you still need the same elements of storytelling as in fiction to keep people interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might, however, want to intersperse the narrative chapters with more informational chapters giving background information on your cousin's specific ailment, others who suffer the same condition, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as a side note: Unless you're an incredibly quick and polished writer with stellar publishing connections and/or prior experience self-publishing, it's highly unlikely that you'll be able to publish a book in time to capitalize on a news segment that already aired.  Also, I assume it goes without saying that you'll want to make sure your cousin and her immediate family are fully on board with this project before proceeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T18:40:23.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20027" CreationDate="2016-01-12T19:47:51.840" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I met unfortunately quite some aspiring authors who tried to make up for the lack of story quality by adding graphics or illustrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, neither the story nor the illustrations achieved a professional standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But: there are some incredibly talented people, for example, Jenny Dolfen, nicknamed &quot;Gold-Seven&quot; on Deviantart who creates watercolor illustrations to die for and who has a great writing talent, too. (While still working as a teacher and not as full-time writer or illustrator.) Or Henry H. Neff a YA writer who created the illustrations for his book series. (I just don't like his drawing style very much. But that is a matter of personal taste.) Or Mercedes Lackey, who wrote some cool songs about characters and events in some of her books. Or Seanan McGuire, who is a published writer and a great (filk) singer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, for the majority of us mere mortal writers, the rule goes as following: Don't try to disguise weaknesses in your story with illustrations. Use every minute you would spend on the illustrations to improve your story instead. Both art forms need a lot of time, practice, and patience. Try to look for a publisher with a really good story or try to be a really good illustrator. Don't try to sell a mediocre story with mediocre illustrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T19:47:51.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20396" CreationDate="2016-01-12T20:13:19.603" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the time I published my first book I already had a number of people willing to buy my book and who weren't related to me or weren't close friends of mine. It was a non-fiction book for a small niche and I was already known in that niche. I participated in forum discussions, used a common IRC channel, I blogged and commented on other blogs from this niche. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first book was, too, self-published but it further helped to build my platform and was thus an important step towards the next book. This time, I published with a publishing house and already having 'a name' was important to be taken seriously by the publisher. (We proposed a book that was kind of crazy for this type of publishing house and we needed every bit of credibility we could muster.) And again I used my connections to find for example reviewers who had their own 'platform' and thus were multiplicators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of platform you need or which methods you will use to build it, depends on what you are writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is just important to get in touch with your future readers. It isn't fair, but books sell more via having a name than via pure quality. There are perfect books out there, but nobody knows about their existence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Connect with other writers. Take part in writing events. Talk about writing. Get known as a writer even though you haven't published yet. (Fake it, till you make it.)  Take part in writing competitions. Get your name out there. Write a blog about your journey. Organise a local writing group. Organise a creative writing afternoon course for schoolkids. Twitter. Read your flash fiction at a coffee house that is willing to have you there (best organised together with a full writing group.) Have a Facebook page. Do anything that might help to get your name out there (but it shouldn't take all the time you need to write).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Writer's Digest article has some more suggestions: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/build-a-platform-start-blogging/building-a-writers-platform&quot;&gt;http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/build-a-platform-start-blogging/building-a-writers-platform&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T20:13:19.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20425" CreationDate="2016-01-12T20:25:10.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no golden rule to structure a non-fiction book. It totally depends on the topic and the focus you will give the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest going into a bookshop or a library and to analyze a number of non-fiction books for their structure. I would focus on books from the life-writing section, either autobiography and biography, or on books from the self-help section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can structure life-writing topics chronological, but this isn't the only way of doing it. Interweaving narrative chapters and informational chapters is a good idea. You'll find this kind of structure more often in books published over the last years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that in the non-fiction segment the publishing house most of the time will have a say how the book is structured. So be open for changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T20:25:10.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20433" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20442" CreationDate="2016-01-12T21:15:11.023" Score="2" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you have a good idea for a book or screenplay, but you do not know how to develop this idea on paper, what do you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16310" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-01-15T07:23:30.957" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T23:18:30.060" Title="A good idea but I do not know how to develop it" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-03-10T19:42:48.937" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20433" CreationDate="2016-01-12T21:36:31.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write down your good idea. Put pen to paper. Get words on the page. When you have actually written something then you can develop it. If you are not sure what to do next ... sit and think about it. I think when driving or gardening -- times when I don't have to concentrate very hard on something else. Plots, twists in plots, character flaws, etc. often occur to me when I doing something else. However, most ideas for stories occur to me when I am actually writing. I start putting pen to paper and the words and ideas flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T21:36:31.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20433" CreationDate="2016-01-13T02:40:09.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start by brainstorming the idea that you have. It is important to develop a complete alignment of your characters outlining their main features and roles in your story. Outline the development of your plot making sure high stakes are set your characters in order to have a strong conflict and resolution pattern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16317" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T02:40:09.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20436" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-13T02:45:34.027" Score="1" ViewCount="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions for blog websites for picture book writers. I am new in the field and I would like to find websites for writers of children's books. &#xA;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16317" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T12:33:00.167" Title="Blog recommendations for children's book writers" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|book|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-01-14T04:39:29.107" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20433" CreationDate="2016-01-13T03:28:01.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The more I write, the more problems I discover in the story. I write two or three possible changes to the characters or plot to fix the problems. Then I pick the one that I like best. Sometimes there's only a minor change in the book, but occasionally things need to be seriously worked on. I've had characters that I needed to add in, delete, or completely change in order to fix a plot hole. I've had to change the sequence of events, add events or leave them out altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But before I started actually writing things down, I had no idea of all of the tiny little kinks and problems that would come up. I didn't know there would be parts of the story I just plain didn't like. I didn't know any of that until I started doing it instead of just thinking about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the answer to your question is that the only way to figure out how to work things out is to do it and work it out as you go along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T03:28:01.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20377" CreationDate="2016-01-13T03:41:42.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even though the details of the question are off the topic of writing, I think that the question itself is sound. Writing reviews is writing. And if you're going to be a well respected writer, you have to be honest. If you're going to be honest, you're going to have to give some bad reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the best you can do is remember this: honesty without tact is brutality. So long as you're not mean spirited and &quot;punch down&quot; on the person who created the thing you're critiquing, you should be fine. If you still show basic respect for someone while you are giving a negative review, they should be better able accept it than if you're just ripping them to shreds for fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must remember, however, that there are some people that take bad reviews very personally and become deeply offended even at he most objective and tactfully written opinion. I can't remember the author who did this, but I was a great fan of hers up until she had a very nasty public temper tantrum on Twitter about one single negative book review. It wasn't even that bad. The reviewer said that it was basically a good read, but it just didn't live up to expectations. Anyway, she got so furious that she posted the personal email and home telephone number of the reviewer and encouraged fans to harass the reviewer and shame them for giving a bad review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That incident was entirely the fault of the author. The reviewer was just doing their job. If you've been fair and honest, attacking the work instead of the creator, you've done the best you can do. If someone spazzes out and acts incredibly immature over it, it's their problem; not yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T03:41:42.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20399" CreationDate="2016-01-13T04:02:41.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Terry Pratchett had a clever excuse for readers if something happened that went against the laws of physics. He'd simply say that the rules were different because the world was shaped like a disc instead of a sphere. But he only used that for the laws of physics. He didn't try to explain away every possible plot hole that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think as long as you are consistent, there shouldn't be much problem. But if in every single chapter the readers are thinking, &quot;Wait, how is this even possible?&quot; The answer better be a little more in depth than, &quot;Because magic! Anything can happen with magic!&quot; You'll get away with that once or twice, but any more than that, then you're going to have serious difficulty holding things together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember working on a MUD with a friend several years back. (basically an online game.). I told my friend that there were some serious flaws in the combat system. For instance, in the game, it was possible to stand in front of a monster who was fully aware of your presence, and backstab them with a hammer.  He said that this was no problem at all, because the game was fantasy, and therefore anything was possible. I told him that may apply to wizards casting fireballs, but you can't backstab someone who knows you're there. If you're going to stab them in the back, you shouldn't be facing them because most people have their backs behind them. And you can't use a hammer to do all this, because you can't do any stabbing at all with a hammer.He disagreed, and then threw several hissy fits when several beta testers complained about the mechanics of backstab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, you don't have to get every single detail on point. In fact, I read somewhere that in fantasy magic, if you get too detailed and try to make it too scientific, there will be readers who will pick your books apart because you didn't follow your own rules exactly. Apparently, Robert Jordan's biggest fans are the worst about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So long as most of the story is honest and has decent explanations that are mostly consistent, your readers will be willing to suspend disbelief over a few minor inaccuracies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T04:02:41.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18591" CreationDate="2016-01-13T04:14:26.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quick answer: Nancy Yi Fan started writing her first book at age seven. At 10, she got it published. It was called, &quot;Sword Bird&quot;. I never read it myself, but it got good reviews and was fairly popular. Now she has two more Sword Books published. Three books published before you're twenty is a pretty sweet accomplishment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes it's quite possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T04:14:26.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20433" CreationDate="2016-01-13T12:14:50.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some good 'from idea to finished book' guides out there. I recommend for example the 10th season of the Writing Excuses podcast, that is built like a master class and leads you through the steps of story-, characters-, and world-creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/category/season/season-10/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.writingexcuses.com/category/season/season-10/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers Write just started an 'A novel in a year' class last week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://writerswrite.co.za/write-your-novel-in-a-year-week-1-start-strong-start-simple&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://writerswrite.co.za/write-your-novel-in-a-year-week-1-start-strong-start-simple&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T12:14:50.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20436" CreationDate="2016-01-13T12:19:35.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For middle-grade picture books, I recommend Inkygirl: &lt;a href=&quot;http://inkygirl.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://inkygirl.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the Kidlidchat chat-event on Twitter, where you can connect to other kidlit-writers and find their blogs: &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/kidlitchat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://twitter.com/kidlitchat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastEditorUserId="16443" LastEditDate="2016-01-13T12:33:00.167" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T12:33:00.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20444" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-13T13:17:03.037" Score="5" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a physics Ph.D. thesis in Chicago style and I'd like to include an &quot;additional resources&quot; section at the end of each chapter. This section would include articles, websites, etc. which I may not necessarily have directly used in a section (and therefore don't need to cite), but which I think an interested reader may find enlightening. An example would be a journal article which includes a long derivation of an equation which I reference, but which is really out of the scope of my thesis itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, I make a &quot;mini bibliography&quot; (called &quot;Additional Resources&quot;) --- formatted exactly like a normal Chicago Bibliography --- at the end of each chapter, and have the &quot;Bibliography&quot; at the end of the whole thesis. Does having this &quot;additional resources&quot; section agree with Chicago style? Are there any clear guidelines on formatting Ph.D. theses in the Chicago handbook? I've tried searching online but all I can find are guidelines on how to &lt;em&gt;cite&lt;/em&gt; Ph.D. theses, not how to actually format them as they're being written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16501" LastActivityDate="2018-03-22T19:48:13.250" Title="Chicago-style &quot;additional resources&quot; at end of chapter" Tags="|formatting|chicago-manual-of-style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20359" CreationDate="2016-01-13T14:34:57.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start the thing &lt;em&gt;in medias res&lt;/em&gt;, in mid-action. Then flash back. At least, that's what Aristotle advised in his &lt;em&gt;Poetics&lt;/em&gt;. Although it is more than 2000 years old, it still has great advice for writers today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16502" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-16T12:18:13.880" LastActivityDate="2016-01-16T12:18:13.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20355" CreationDate="2016-01-13T14:38:01.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends where you want to put it. James Joyce saw shirt stories as building to an epiphany, and unlocked for sudden burst of knowledge. O Henry was good at putting a little twist in the tale at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16502" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T14:38:01.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20419" CreationDate="2016-01-13T14:44:22.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Benedictine rule has an overriding principle that has kept the community going for more than a thousand years. Ora et labora, which means work and pray&#xA; The more you read good books, the more you will know what to do or not do. Then write, write, write, because the muse cracks her whip and wants you to dance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16502" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T14:44:22.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2016-01-13T15:28:22.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One note of encouragement: First drafts suck. This is practically an iron law of writing fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry if, after you sit down and write something out and then re-read it, the thing doesn't hang together. First drafts never do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a writer is about being a re-writer and editor; first just get your ideas down and then go back over and fix them. The real problem of writing is that if you don't complete the first step for fear of sucking, you'll never do the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16504" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-16T12:19:09.207" LastActivityDate="2016-01-16T12:19:09.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20377" CreationDate="2016-01-13T15:35:46.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find something -- anything -- nice to say. Lead with that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present your dislikes subjectively; a lot of &quot;didn't work for me&quot; and &quot;not my type of fiction&quot; etc. (If you want to be nice, that is).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to close with something nice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is known as &quot;sandwich&quot; reviewing, for obvious reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16504" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T15:35:46.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20355" CreationDate="2016-01-13T17:09:29.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I pull off what I hope I can, I'll be very pleased. I'm hoping to put elements in the story that make the reader curious, but not completely sure as to what's going on behind the scenes. I hope readers figure pieces out on their own, and once they finish the book, they immediately want to re-read the book and can better fully understand the significance of the back story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if it goes really well, I hope people on forums start arguments with each other about the specifics, because while you might get a strong gist, you can still argue about the specific details.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I absolutely love the element of discovery!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T17:09:29.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20377" CreationDate="2016-01-13T18:44:20.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funny thing, I wrote software reviews (or rather comparisions) professionally for five years. To ensure a fair review and a round article four different people were involved:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First: Me as the writer&#xA;Second: My editor. She checked my research for errors. Tested the things I had tested and described, to make sure the errors I found weren't just temporary glitches, or errors on my side, and that I didn't have overlooked anything.&#xA;Third: The chief-editor who looked, after the article was finished and edited with a fresh and unbiased eye, if everything was smooth, logical and if we provided a good journalistic quality.&#xA;Fourth: the final editor that just looked after the grammar and spelling to catch any error that might have escaped three persons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My editor usually liked me being very direct about the quality of the software and if a tool was bad I was allowed to write that the tool was bad. Sometimes my frustration about a very rough testing-period showed in my writing and then she softened  my words a bit. But on one ocassion she hated a tool even more than I did and she puts a harsh spotlight on the limits and errors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, we always kept a somewhat professional tone, like writing &quot;the tool isn't able to keep the advertised promises&quot; or &quot;it worked as stable as a direction indicator: on - off - on - off&quot; but not &quot;the programmers are complete  morons&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IF there were serious problems, we said so, without being extremely nice to the feelings of the programmers. In the end we didn't write for the programmers. We wrote for the readers and they should know which tool was worth a look and which tool just would be a waste of their time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case: you found Malware. Why on earth do you want to go easy on programmers who put their users at risk? Maybe with full intent? You write for your readers. Put a big warning label on top of the article, that this tool contains malware. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T18:44:20.350" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2016-01-13T19:13:04.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The fear of being a failure isn't your enemy. It is your friend. It prevents you from sending the first thing you wrote after some glasses of whiskey to agents and to burn your name forever. This feeling won't go away. I'm a published writer and journalist and I still feel like a failure most of the time. Writing is hard. Writing is a learning process and you will constantly evolve. Most writers cringe after reading something they wrote half a year ago - and they thought it was a great piece of writing at that time - because they did grow the last six month and now they are much better than their past self. This usually happens to me. Work through that fear by working on your craft. Get a better writer and this is only accomplished by writing. A lot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find out if you are a plotter or a pantser. A plotter plans a story from start to finish and then fills in the words to let this rough skeleton of a story come alive. A pantser discovers the way the story will take while writing. Most people can only work one way or another. To find out what you are will take some time and a lot of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write daily. Or rather, work daily on being a writer. That means reading (a lot), reading about writing (not too much), connecting with other writers, brainstorming, researching, getting to know your characters, your setting, your plot. Not everything you will write will go into the story. Much of it will be just an exercise or background you need to write the story. For example let your main character write letters to his mom during a summer-camp at 16. This way you will know him or her by heart. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Enter a critique group. Search for a group that will give you honest critique without going to easy on you. And without being mean, either. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://virtualwritersinc.com/current-events/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://virtualwritersinc.com/current-events/&lt;/a&gt;. There are three timeslots every (work)day where you can find writers in Second Life who sit together to write for two half hours with a short break in between. This might help you to start actually writing. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T19:13:04.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2016-01-13T22:19:13.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some great questions! I know right where you are coming from. Writing a full novel can be very daunting. There are a lot of possible answers to your questions because, unfortunately, there is not one right way to start a book. &lt;strong&gt;John Irving&lt;/strong&gt; has been known to skip to the end of his book and write the last sentence before beginning a novel just so that he can keep that end mark permanently in his mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to procrastinate things, so having some structure helps me get started. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make an &lt;strong&gt;outline&lt;/strong&gt; of what you think your story is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interrogate your Characters.&lt;/strong&gt; You have to get into their heads if you want to write their story well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have notes of the setting.&lt;/strong&gt; Whether you have it printed out or minimized, always have your notes of what the setting is close on hand so that you can keep track of the world you're in. That includes places on Earth!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To your concerns about whether you will write as well as your favorite authors or fear of writing something good, don't worry, it'll take time. You might not be the next &lt;strong&gt;Stephen King&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;John Le Carre&lt;/strong&gt;. Your stories are stories they can never write because the experiences that shape you are unique, and that's the art element of writing a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't doubt yourself at the starting gate. If you think it's an interesting idea, try to go through the three steps above. If you can't make it through an outline, you won't finish that book and it's not a compelling enough idea Yet!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find a story that grips you that you are dying to tell and the outline and story will quickly following if you put your pen to paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, don't stress yourself, just start. Don't compare yourself, just start. Don't edit and be critical of your work, just finish!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16510" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-17T23:36:00.540" LastActivityDate="2016-01-17T23:36:00.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20457" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-14T04:43:04.920" Score="2" ViewCount="317" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of writing a novella, but I am not sure whether it is marketable. I have a story in mind, but I'm trying to determine how best to publish a novella, whether it's worth publishing, and if published whether it's worth selling or should be given out as a type of &quot;sample work&quot;. Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16510" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-01-14T12:15:22.360" LastActivityDate="2016-01-14T12:15:22.360" Title="Are Novellas marketable?" Tags="|marketing|novella|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20457" CreationDate="2016-01-14T10:44:35.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A novella may do better as a self-pub or a e-book than a trade paperback. Or you could write a few novellas and combine them into one larger format, like Stephen King did with &lt;em&gt;Different Seasons&lt;/em&gt;. No way to tell until it's written and edited and you start shopping it around to agents, who will give you more market-relevant feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-14T10:44:35.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20457" CreationDate="2016-01-14T11:00:54.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Novellas and short stories don't sell well. Even short story collections with big names don't sell well. That is why publishing houses don't look out for novellas and short stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this novella might be a good exercise and might help you grow as a writer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it might be a perfect marketing instrument. As you said: a sample work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there might be another outlet. Maybe a genre magazine that also publishes novellas. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is always self-publishing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;consider it as a free giveaway to 'get your name out there'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastActivityDate="2016-01-14T11:00:54.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20400" CreationDate="2016-01-15T00:11:19.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your father was a public person. In that case, you have to ask yourself what you're really prepared to find out about him. If all you want is to get boilerplate encomiums, then it doesn't matter much what you ask beyond &quot;What was he like? What did you like about him? What were his strengths?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a picture of the whole man, warts and all, you will have to be braver and more resolute in pursuit of your task. Still ask softball questions like those above, but add negative questions. &quot;What didn't you like about him? What were his weaknesses? What bothered you about him the most?&quot; However dear you hold your father's memory, you have to understand that he was human and unlikely to be perfect. JFK was lauded to the skies and many, many breathless eulogies have been written about him. But he also had extra-marital affairs while in the White House. Again, what are you prepared to find out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean I think you should go muck-raking, or putting too much stress on the negative. But a provocative question is likely to get you a more interesting answer. Ask each person to describe their first meeting with your father, and ask about the impression he made. Work them for striking details, things that stand out. You will have failed if your notebook is filled only with generic comments like &quot;He was a good man. A great guy.&quot; Great how? Good how? Don't take &quot;good&quot; for answer, keep asking what he did that was so good for &lt;em&gt;you personally&lt;/em&gt; (meaning the interviewee). Dig deep and get that story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, I disagree with M Lizz, who says you should try to ask questions that elicit short answers. If you do that, you'll wind up doing the talking. Listen to a master interviewer like &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Gross&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Teri Gross&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Maron&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Marc Maron&lt;/a&gt;, or even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/episode_604_-_terry_gross&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Marc Maron interviewing Teri Gross&lt;/a&gt;. You will find that an interview succeeds when the interviewer gets the subject talking. Have targeted questions, but let the conversation flow once a question turns on the tap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastEditorUserId="633" LastEditDate="2016-01-15T00:35:16.947" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T00:35:16.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20461" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-15T03:31:49.180" Score="5" ViewCount="558" Body="&lt;p&gt;This my most serious writing endeavor ever. I've gotten much farther than I've dreamed of getting. So far, I've been chugging along writing everything in the order that I imagine it being written in the final few drafts. But lately, I've discovered that the more I write, the more my story evolves. It goes both forward and backwards in my story's timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &quot;figured out&quot; that the characters thrown together don't seem to trust each other as much as I originally thought they did. I decided that it wasn't plausible to for these reasonably intelligent people who were justifiably suspicious of outsiders would just team up and follow my MC because she seemed nice. So now, they are suspicious of her and have their own reasons for going along with her plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I want to go back and add I things to what I've already written. Things that seemed like background fluff now are filled with mystery and possibilities. So I've been going back and adding sheets. Thank goodness for Ulysses because otherwise I'd never attempt to do the sort of surgery I'm doing to what I've already written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now things are getting tangled up. As soon as I go back and add something, I think about things that need to happen in the future. Sometimes it's where I left off and that's easy, but sometimes it's something that happens near the end. Then I start worrying that if I keep jumping around back and forth through my first draft that I'll just end up going around in circles. The trust example is only one change. Several other little wrinkles keep popping up. I now refuse to delete or rewrite any sheets, because sometimes I drop an idea and a scene I deemed obsolete is back in business as the &quot;canon&quot; storyline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, should I just plow forward without ever going back and forth? Or is it ok to jump around and change things. I'm not taking about editing. I'm talking about changing the story itself. I'm starting to worry that while I'm writing triple my word count goal on a daily basis, perhaps I'm not making any real progress and I'm just spinning my wheels and thinking too much. But I can't stop myself from playing with the plot because the more I play with it, the more I want to explore possibilities and I end up writing virtual reams of content. If I force myself to plod along with the order the story will be written, I feel resentful and edgy because I'm not writing one of the &quot;good parts&quot; that is currently on my mind. Then writing feels more like cleaning the kitchen floor and I want to put it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So help! Am I dooming my efforts by thinking of allowing myself to go off the leash and write any thing I want in any order I feel like? Or should I discipline myself and write in a straight line as much as possible? Which approach is more likely to lead to a successful story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-01-27T01:51:51.247" LastActivityDate="2021-03-13T23:54:11.933" Title="How linear should I be in writing my story?" Tags="|character-development|plot|discipline|first-draft|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20461" CreationDate="2016-01-15T04:17:30.300" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like many answers in life: it depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how Ulysses works, but I imagine it can splice/paste ideas, keep virtual notecards, and whatnot&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers draw out long outlines and try to roughly stick with them while others rely on stream-of-consciousness storytelling, at least for the first draft. It is also OK to do something in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it is fruitful to get all of your ideas on paper, you don't want to lose sight of the ultimate goal of finishing your book. Thus, you must show some discipline for forward progress. It is far easier to go back and tie up loose ends and worry about plot changes after your first draft is complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you spinning your wheels? Yes. But it's not necessarily a bad thing. Scene management is a necessary part of the editing process; it's just very inefficient the way you're doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For myself, I wind up with an &quot;extra draft&quot; because my first run-through looks psychotic or thereabouts. The sentence structure is awful, many of the ideas are inane, and I dead end characters and sequences. But my imagination pushes me forward and subsequent iterations make my story look more coherent. After a complete draft, you can go through your notecards and see what fits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, subplots come together after a succession of multiple drafts, not multiple scene rewrites. If you write a complete story first before backtracking (too much), your best scenes and ideas will survive leaving the others behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-01-15T04:48:50.787" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T04:48:50.787" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20461" CreationDate="2016-01-15T13:06:34.620" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are a discovery writer, this is part of your process. Just get it all on the page and keep writing; you'll finish when you finish. However, it is then &lt;em&gt;part of the first draft&lt;/em&gt; that you must go back and sort it out from beginning to end and make sure it's a coherent whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing &quot;the good parts&quot; is fun and keeps you motivated. As long as you accept the idea that at some point you have to return and stitch all the good parts together into a workable story &amp;mdash; and that you may have to kill your darlings in order to make your story work &amp;mdash; go ahead and write what you like. I am a big fan of keeping excised good bits in a slush file so they can be added back in at some other point if it's appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are more of a plotter, it may be that you haven't outlined thoroughly enough. Maybe you need to work on a more detailed, scene-by-scene outline or breakdown, which would allow you to explore all your new plot bunnies in prècis form without writing them out in detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T13:06:34.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20461" CreationDate="2016-01-15T14:32:40.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every writer has a different process. Here's what works for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While thinking about the project &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; I start writing, I make notes about what I want to do and where I want to go. Some people work from an outline, but I never do. I simply work from a feeling about the characters and the story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I am writing, I make sure to keep a set of notes about the characters and events in a story, summed up and searchable. I use Scrivener these days, which makes that process very easy. When I want to know where and how a character did this or that, it's easy to find. Usually I mark up such notes in the editing process, so I don't hinder my writing flow. But not always. Sometimes writing collocation notes spurs further plot development.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I write five pages a day when writing a novel, no matter what, and I do that every single day. There are no holidays when I am in the middle of a book. Even if it's crap and I throw it out the next day, I make sure I write those five pages. Often what comes out is overwritten from the standpoint of &lt;em&gt;too many words&lt;/em&gt;. I never worry about that. (A short story can be more flexible, and sometimes a first draft can be finished in a day. If it can't, I apply the same daily process.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Before I start writing for the day, I go back twenty or so pages from the day's starting point and start reading what I've written over the past few days. A lot of editing takes place at this point, usually cutting things, because when I'm in the free-flow-of-words zone I don't edit myself at all. Editing and writing creatively involve two different mindsets, and for me they are antagonists, lawn and lawnmower.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This process is also important because by the time I get to the blank page I am back into the flow of the story. Writer's block is seldom a problem when I work this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;5&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;About the five pages: I have to write the five, but I almost never write more than that. Why? Because it's a marathon, not a sprint. I never want to write myself out on any given day, no matter how hot the flow is coming. Sometimes I will finish a key bit of dialogue if I know exactly what is going to be said, though most of the time I simply make notes about the ideas I have. Because of the daily rereading, I usually don't even need those because I'm back in the frame of mind I was in the day before.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once I have finished spilling out all the words for a book, it's time for the hard work of editing to begin. It's at this point that I find an outline useful. I skim everything in the first draft and make an exterior outline of everything that has happened. Then I post that on my wall, however many pages it takes, above my central monitor. I reference it and make notes as needed, but I resist the urge to change anything at this point. Often I spot structural flaws here, or convolutions that need to be smoothed out, or issues of pacing, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once I have that outline I go back and do a close editing of the entire manuscript. When cutting superfluous dialogue or what have you, it's important at this point to reference the outline and the notes to make sure I'm cutting fat, not bone. If I cut what a character says on page 45, I need to be sure nobody references that statement on page 113.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At this point I get friends to read and comment. Once I get all input I address the issues I think need addressing, then do a final edit of the entire manuscript. (Note: there will still be typos. There will always be typos. Resist the urge, when fixing them, to further edit the prose because it is at this point that you really have no larger context. Just fix and move on.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's my process. Some of it is tangential to your issues, but much of it you may find useful. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T14:32:40.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20433" CreationDate="2016-01-15T15:43:08.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of tools that can help with screenplays, such as WriterDuet.com. You can write screenplays with an editor like Word or Notepad, but this tool is easy because it familiarizes you with the ways real screenwriters do their job. It has fade and change camera position presets that automatically type in what you selected.&#xA;As for books, I use Word 2016 from Microsoft. Just type (or write)! You can always use an outline, but when you skip it, a better story can come out because the imagination works all throughout the book, not just in the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16477" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T15:43:08.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20467" CreationDate="2016-01-15T17:16:52.803" Score="2" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know why; they're cool, and they have a deep yearning to be free and with the air, which'll be a major theme in the story. But... I don't know how to explain their wings. I don't want them to be a supernatural race, so I think they'll have to be a past genetic experiment, as in decades ago so an unstable population has started to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have large bird-like wings like in this&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pre05.deviantart.net/a8fd/th/pre/f/2012/199/b/e/bef027abce839b197a664cc6c30e0554-d57r2br.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://pre05.deviantart.net/a8fd/th/pre/f/2012/199/b/e/bef027abce839b197a664cc6c30e0554-d57r2br.jpg&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://orig07.deviantart.net/2f3a/f/2013/092/b/0/b0bbaff0c7c9d3f212fc371c25191367-d607soj.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://orig07.deviantart.net/2f3a/f/2013/092/b/0/b0bbaff0c7c9d3f212fc371c25191367-d607soj.jpg&lt;/a&gt; (I don't own the art).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also not sure if they would be discriminated against in society, or if they'd be dependent on some kind of drugs to suppress any genetic faults. I do know that they have a short lifespan (usually less than 40 years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's set in a cold northern city on an alternative earth that borders the Arctic ocean. It's a gritty, tough place with people to match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16526" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-23T14:16:53.420" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T14:16:53.420" Title="I have a race of winged characters in my story, but I'm struggling as to how and why?" Tags="|characters|plot|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-01-17T02:17:04.723" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20466" CreationDate="2016-01-15T17:49:35.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his novel &lt;em&gt;The Broken God&lt;/em&gt;, author David Zindell features a race of Neanderthals on a non-Earth planet who were originally Homo Sapiens, but whose forebears genetically engineered themselves into Homo Neanderthalensis bodies (apparently retaining Sapiens brains and their own identities).  &quot;How&quot; was advanced genetic engineering, and &quot;Why&quot; was never as far as I can remember explained in the novel -- but may be because they were seeking a simple life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would probably do just as well to say that their creators genetically engineered them simply as an exercise in esthetics.  One of these days we may be capable of creating new species just because we want to, and someone is bound to create a beautiful species just &quot;because&quot; they can.  Or for that matter, you don't need to explain Why -- the reason might very well be lost in the mists of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let your imagination run wild!  You might actually make the story turn around the possible reason for their creation, which is unknown, but finding out causes a turning point in something or someone.  Perhaps their original purpose has been lost, but once it is found out it leads to the unlocking of an important concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5745" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T17:49:35.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20468" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20469" CreationDate="2016-01-15T18:20:20.437" Score="20" ViewCount="2716" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard a lot of conflicting suggestions in the past regarding dialogue, so I'm hoping I can get a solid answer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people have told me that the best way to go about dialogue is to make it as compact and to-the-point as possible. Good dialogue, they said, should not sound anything like the way real people talk. Dialogue should reflect the &lt;em&gt;meaning&lt;/em&gt; of what's being said—not what's &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; said. There's no &quot;um&quot;s or &quot;uh&quot;s; hesitant pauses and stutters should have no place within the conversation. Slang and dialects should not be reflected in writing, so it's&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's about time we got going, don't you think?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and not&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's 'bout time we got goin', don'tcha think?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a fan of this approach. I've always liked writing dialogue as if the characters involved were two real people having a real conversation (so, between the two quotes above, I'd take the latter over the former). Additionally, &quot;um&quot;s and &quot;uh&quot;s can say a lot about a character, the way I see it, and if that character's characterization is important to the story, I'd want to put those &quot;um&quot;s and &quot;uh&quot;s to good use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now I've come to a point where I'm afraid of being &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; realistic. What if one of my characters has severe anxiety, and I want to reflect that through their speech (since it's relevant to the plot)? This character would stutter and backtrack through their words a lot. It's a lot tougher to read, but that's the point since this character's speech is hard to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what about dialect? I feel like dialect can add a lot of personality to a character's voice. If one of my characters is from the deep American south, I would want to write their dialogue so that it reflects the way that character would actually talk. Charles Chestnutt's &quot;Po' Sandy&quot; was almost completely narrated by a character who spoke in a thick dialect, and though it definitely took a long time to read, I felt like it was worth it in the end. The story wouldn't have been the same if it had been written in standard English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when writing dialogue, which approach is best (or generally accepted by most people)? Should it be precise and only aim to capture the meaning of words rather than the words themselves? Or should it be as accurate as possible, even if that means that the speech will be harder to read?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I write easier dialogue if I'm writing for a younger audience? (Young adult vs. adult fiction?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-05-17T10:34:10.273" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T10:34:10.273" Title="How realistic should dialogue and character voices be?" Tags="|creative-writing|dialogue|language|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20468" CreationDate="2016-01-15T18:27:47.013" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem is, too much of the latter style will be tiring on a reader's eye and &quot;ear&quot; (they &quot;hear&quot; the characters speaking as they read). It's sometime laborious too because they have to figure out how to pronounce weird things characters say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gone with the Wind is a drastic example of this, because Margaret Mitchell did just that when writing the African-American characters in her book. (I've never read it to know.) Modern audiences seem less accepting or patient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to give a flavor for the character, a few examples of how they speak and then lightening the effect over time might be viable. Sprinkling it throughout would be another approach. I know I struggle with this too. Sometimes the way the character speaks is as, or more, important than their physical appearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As authors, though, we have to get out of our own way and let the readers create the fictive dream around what we give them. It can't be too much or too little, so we have to walk the tight rope and find the right balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minor characters with short appearances can be done that way without worry too much, but if its a major character with a lot of dialog, it might become tedious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that offers some help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T18:27:47.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20468" CreationDate="2016-01-15T19:46:50.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps one way to see it is that you are representing reality, not copying it. In the same way that a painting (even those of the photographic realism school) represents or shows reality rather than tries to provide an exact copy of it, so too with writing. I want my characters to sound like real people without actually copying how real people speak -- incomplete sentences, fillers, ect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though I read it nearly thirty years ago, I remember some of the voices from Ernest Hemingway's 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' because they were so authentic, yet so different. However, he didn't just 'photocopy' real speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T19:46:50.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19522" CreationDate="2016-01-15T20:55:06.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youngwriterssociety.com/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YoungWritersSociety&lt;/a&gt; is a great place. It's got a really active community, but it's geared toward younger and less experienced writers - but it still works for the better, elder writers, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16526" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T20:55:06.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20468" CreationDate="2016-01-15T22:25:55.227" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;It's about time we got going, don't you think?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It's 'bout time we got goin', don'tcha think?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both these guys sound the same to me. They both have my voice, they both have my accent, and I suspect that accent is a few thousand miles off where it's supposed to be. The problem is, one took much longer to scan than the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When reading a page we do not read one letter at a time. We recognise entire words and even phrases in one glance using just the familiar shapes of words, and a quick estimate on the letters contained within--especially the first and last letter--and an educated guess at what words are likely to come up next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By breaking up your words into unfamiliar shapes, and omitting key letters you thwart your reader's natural abilities and force a letter-by-letter reading. And at the end of it, we, the readers, don't get much benefit for our invested effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same applies to whole sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm thinking, uh, of, maybe, not going to college, like, uh, this year. So...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is realistic, and seems right when writing it, but is just plain horrible to read when compared to...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of not going to college this year, so...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you think it lacks the performance you had pictured in your head, come up with a different performance which both writes &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; reads easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She said nothing for an hour, just twisting her hair around a finger, watching clouds, watching kids over by the lake. Somehow, the exact moment I had a flutter about where I left the car keys, she said her first words, 'I'm thinking of not going to college this year, so...' and when I turned back, she was distant again as if nobody had said a word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, that's not art either, but you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T22:25:55.227" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20468" CreationDate="2016-01-15T22:51:40.000" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strike a balance. Your character who speaks in dialect uses different vocabulary, word order, grammar than the person who speaks in the Received Standard version of the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-Dialect American English: &quot;Can I come see you tomorrow?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;British English: &quot;Shall I knock you up?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brooklynese: &quot;I'll come call f'you.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only in the third one would I change the spelling, and that's to indicate the contraction of &lt;em&gt;for you&lt;/em&gt; to the reader's ear. Focus more on the content than every slurred syllable or swallowed dipthong. Using &quot;Oi!&quot; instead of &quot;Hey!&quot; immediately indicates &lt;em&gt;British&lt;/em&gt;, which primes your reader at least to assume that the character has some kind of British accent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can drop a few Gs (callin', sayin') because that's not too tiresome to read. A broad Southern accent can be represented with &lt;em&gt;Boy, Ah say, boy, you're about as subtle as a hand grenade in a barrel'a oatmeal.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would only use the &lt;em&gt;um&lt;/em&gt;s and &lt;em&gt;uh&lt;/em&gt;s when it's important to indicate stammering and stuttering, like your anxious character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-06-24T10:10:41.800" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T10:10:41.800" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20461" CreationDate="2016-01-15T23:58:52.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't nearly enough mathematics around here. Let's try some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the extreme case, where every time you write a chapter, or go back and edit a chapter you break the logic of the chapter before it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose your book will be 100 chapters in length and each new chapter or each edit takes up all of your writing time that day. After chapter three, chapter two will be broken. After going back to fix chapter two, chapter one will be broken etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many days would it take to finish the book? 100 plus a few? Nope. 5,050 days. What's that, about fourteen years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The extreme opposite case: Forging on, ignoring all the problems in your wake. 100 days to write the book. A couple of days to read it, getting a complete overview of every single problem, and another 100 days to edit each chapter one by one according to your final overview. Total investment, 202 days or about 7 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So probably best to steer closer to the second one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T23:58:52.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20468" CreationDate="2016-01-16T02:56:02.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, I'll try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Stormy! Oh my gosh, it is so good to see you! ... Stormy?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stormy opened her mouth as if to speak but nothing came out. She half-heartedly smiled in recognition of her friend's greeting only to look down towards her toes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Stormy, is something wrong?&quot; Ginger asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, it's just that, I don't know ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;How about if we just start with hello?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;OK,&quot; Stormy said with an ounce of confidence. &quot;I think I can handle that: Hey, Ginger. It's sort of good to see you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Sort of?! Now you're gonna have to tell me why you're freaked; otherwise I'm gonna be upset.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-01-16T02:56:02.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20468" CreationDate="2016-01-16T04:30:02.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I enjoyed James Whitcomb Riley and Joel Chandler Harris (Uncle Remus) when I was a kid. But as an adult, I find it tiring to read. I think writing in the vernacular should be reserved for characters with VERY strong accents or dialects. And still, it would be better to find a way to write the sentences in plain English, but use grammar and word order instead of changing the way words are spelled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a character that was foreign, but spoke fairly understandable English. I chose to write his voice using proper English, but he worded things awkwardly so you could tell he understood the basics of grammar, but didn't quite understand why native speakers use one word over another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I am thinking of this question now. What is this word..you are saying. I think it is...hamster?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to show that the guy was fishing for words. When he asks what the other character is saying,in used a period instead of a question mark. I'm not sure why, but whenever I hear a non-fluent speaker ask for a definition of a word, it sounds like a statement instead of a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only times I used an accent on him was when he mangled up a word, and the other characters had trouble understanding him. My MC hated how the guy always mispronounced his name. It grated on his nerves so I made a point to always spell it out exactly as he pronounced it. Because it set the MC completely on edge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I'd use it sparingly. Just my opinion though. Edited to add: if you want to read an excellent example of someone writing to show how someone speaks by simply changing the words instead of writing out an accent, try &quot;Me Talk Pretty One Day&quot; by David Sedaris. He's writing about his experience living in France and not learning the language before he moved there. Actually, David Sedaris is a master of giving characters regional accents without slipping into the vernacular. Read anything of his.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastEditorUserId="16322" LastEditDate="2016-01-16T04:35:06.387" LastActivityDate="2016-01-16T04:35:06.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20477" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-16T04:47:32.810" Score="3" ViewCount="439" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm Chetan. I won't say I'm a good writer, but I'm on the journey of becoming one. Okay here's the problem: I have a story in my mind and I really want to write it. But, I'm thinking of starting with some short stories and seeing where they take me. The confusion is, should I write the one in my mind (it's pretty awesome) as a short story or should I keep it safe and wait till I become better at writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the confusion is over what to publish: Should I write a good and important one (which has a lot of content for writing), or a new one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16530" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-23T14:17:41.697" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T19:35:45.427" Title="Lots of confusion over which story to write" Tags="|short-story|planning|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2019-05-24T17:43:00.040" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20477" CreationDate="2016-01-16T11:30:18.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really is up to you which you write. However, I would recommend based off of my experience writing a short story first and then if you are still feeling good about the idea try and expand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11460" LastActivityDate="2016-01-16T11:30:18.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20477" CreationDate="2016-01-16T16:32:29.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even as a beginner, I think you can work on two projects at once in a limited manner. Put almost all of your effort into the short story. But jot down a few notes about your ideas for the big one.  You could do fun things like google search for things or places or people you might like to fit into the longer story. Don't do much more than that or it will overwhelm you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started the opposite way, starting with the novel length story and until last night, I wouldn't have suggested having two projects at once. I was in over my head with just one at first. But now after two months, I have a fairly high stamina for writing. I can put in several thousand words every day without fail. But I don't always want to work on the same story. I go crazy because I feel a strong urge to write, but instead of my story, I start posting like crazy on forums. Yesterday, I realized that I wasn't procrastinating and putting off writing, I was just desperate to write something that wasn't my story. So I made a blog I plan to fill with flash fiction. I don't know if I'll go public with it, but I think it will be much more productive than annoying everyone with my teal deer posts. And who knows? Perhaps I can expand the flashes into short sorties later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-16T16:32:29.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20477" CreationDate="2016-01-16T19:28:20.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get the content out of your mind. That's the most important thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, combination/assimilation of such plots mayn't be a bad idea. Judd Apatow, in his book &quot;Sick In The Head&quot; explains to Garry Shandling that he saw working on &quot;Freaks and Geeks&quot; as a prequel to &quot;The Larry Sanders Show,&quot; if Larry Sanders was in middle school first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10834" LastActivityDate="2016-01-16T19:28:20.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20481" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20483" CreationDate="2016-01-16T20:34:06.833" Score="4" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current project is historical fiction, fifteenth century. There were quite a few bad things happening all over the world, and my book picks up on a few of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With simply laying the information out, even in an interesting and entertaining way, I'm struggling with making disparaging remarks (certainly not in an omniscient way, but still) regarding the Church (this is pre-Reformation), Ottoman Turks (and hence, Muslims), Spaniards; the list goes on. The degree of human rights violations were profound globally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, I'm taking the &lt;strong&gt;South Park&lt;/strong&gt; approach: nobody gets a pass, everybody can be archetyped and turned into a tool, and the fictional aspects are mostly for comic relief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as the story solidifies, I fear it is more entertaining for me to write than for others to read. Readers want heroes and victories, punishment to the villians. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: As the negative events start to unfold, I'm creating villains. Which is fine for a purely fictional story, but I'm not wanting to alienate large segments of society. Are there other approaches beyond &lt;strong&gt;South Park&lt;/strong&gt;? Or perhaps it's &quot;Write a good story, and people won't care whose feet get stepped on&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-01-17T02:13:01.630" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T00:06:53.880" Title="How to write negative events without laying blame in an insulting way" Tags="|plot|historical|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18028" CreationDate="2016-01-16T22:51:49.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm kinda having the same problem. Got myself a protagonist who is called Edvin in my first book, and then in the second one, his past is being revealed, and he had apparently lived a whole life full of conspiracies and lies, one being his name, which he changed from Arthur to Edvin before he returned home. The second book he's going to meet several of his old friends, all of which know him only as Arthur. &#xA;I was planning to change his name at the chapter like: &quot;I'm not Edvin anymore, he was only a ruse, a lie, a character I made to hide my true self; one that was long dead in the government's eyes. I am Arthur again, shit, hearing me say that myself feels so alien now.&quot;&#xA;Maybe do what I did? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16537" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-17T23:36:39.183" LastActivityDate="2016-01-17T23:36:39.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20481" CreationDate="2016-01-16T22:55:55.177" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make the even the people you are blaming, likeable. People are doing bad things out of good reasons and good things out of bad reasons. And even if they do bad things out of bad reasons, the reasons might not be bad because they are bad people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They might have been misinformed. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They might have been tricked. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They might have been stupid. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They might have been blinded by ideology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't make them only the bad people. Make them full people, with hopes and fears, with likes and dislikes, with love and hate, with loyalty and disloyalty, who are acting sometimes stupid and sometimes smart and always in the boundaries of their own experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastActivityDate="2016-01-16T22:55:55.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20481" CreationDate="2016-01-17T09:34:36.543" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the answer by Mela Eckenfels: &lt;strong&gt;Do not lay blame unless it is actually warranted&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is not something you can generally write in a book that gets published. It comes pretty close to moral relativism and that makes some people deeply uncomfortable. It is however something that anyone writing historical fiction should understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What people do is limited by the the resources they have available. The moral codes followed by the society then adapt to those actions. It is fine to believe in absolute morality and reflect that in your writing, but you should remember that the morals societies actually follow are a compromise between that absolute morality and the constraints of the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, torturing suspected criminals until they confess (often despite being innocent) is both morally wrong and inefficient. It would be better to find the actual culprits and forced false confessions do not help. So why did nearly all past societies use torture and why was it considered morally acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of torture modern police use a wide variety of investigative and interrogation techniques that are much more efficient. And yes, more moral too. Most of those techniques were &lt;strong&gt;invented&lt;/strong&gt; after first professional police forces were found. Certainly they were not widely available before that. First really professional detective force was probably &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BBret%C3%A9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sûreté&lt;/a&gt;. It was founded 1812 by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Fran%C3%A7ois_Vidocq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eugène François Vidocq&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key point here is the year: &lt;strong&gt;1812&lt;/strong&gt;. If your story is set before that, effective methods of criminal investigation were not available. There were still good investigators and an organization, parts of the catholic church investigating heresy or the secret agents of a state for example, could be quite competent. They would interrogate people and inspect evidence properly. But that was not the norm and certainly not something that the laws or moral codes could assume. Often &quot;Make them talk&quot; was the best solution available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under such circumstances the moral question becomes &quot;Is it okay to torture possibly innocent prisoners or should I just do nothing while murders and robberies are committed?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an individual that is deep in the grey area. Is there really nothing else I could do? Should I cut slack when I am almost certain this person is innocent? Is my prejudice of his background influencing me? There is really no correct answer that always applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a government making the laws the question is simpler. The state must be seen as effective in dealing with crime or the laws become meaningless. Including the laws that sustain the state. The state &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; have some credible method of enforcing its laws. If the only method that is certain to be available is brutal and by itself amoral then the state must authorize its agents to use brutal methods. And the church must advise the people that the state is morally correct in doing so. The actual explanation of why such compromise of morality is necessary and correct is probably omitted as confusing to laymen. So as far as most people are concerned torture then becomes morally acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And following the morals of your society, does not make the &lt;strong&gt;individual&lt;/strong&gt; evil. The best you can do is the best you can do. Good people try to do their best to follow a stricter moral code. Evil people don't. And the same person can be either depending on the subject. An otherwise good person that fanatically hates Muslims is not that good when dealing with Muslims. Such strong prejudices were common at the period you mention. It is also common for people to be much better when dealing with people they love. Your totally evil villain can be loving husband and father. His funeral might be full of grieving family and friends swapping stories about how good he was. Humans are complicated and can't be reduced to being &quot;good&quot; or &quot;evil&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further not following the moral codes of a future with quite different material constraints does not make the society evil, either. Moral codes actually do evolve over time. Modern understanding of human rights is nearly incomprehensible to people in older periods. For that matter even the Islamic countries of the modern period have reservations of large parts of what we often consider correct. This is not because one or the other is right or wrong. It is because while there may be absolute morality our understanding is incomplete and fragmentary. And thus subject to perspective errors, modern western understanding of the relationship between the people and the state is quite different from other periods or cultures, so interpretations of what it is proper for the state to do &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you should always try to interpret what the people do by the standards of their of time and culture. Not to excuse their actions, that really pisses of the moral absolutists who thanks to Abrahamic religions are very common, but because otherwise it is impossible to understand correctly the reasons they do what they do. And unless the author understands the readers won't either. And it is very difficult to relate to a person doing awful things for reasons you do not understand. Which kind of hurts immersion and all that. Comedy probably &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; a practical workaround.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastActivityDate="2016-01-17T09:34:36.543" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20485" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-17T14:16:09.503" Score="3" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel (well, I have started to), with a fantasy middle ages and magic sort of background and English, Greek and meaningless names. I am from India, but my story feels 'European'. Should I continue as it is? Or make some changes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16544" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-17T19:22:00.107" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T20:15:32.640" Title="Is it fine to write something that has no relation to my local life or language or culture?" Tags="|word-choice|naming|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20485" CreationDate="2016-01-17T14:31:36.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's fine to write whatever you want. Go for it and see where it leads you! At this point, focus on establishing a writing habit and learning what works. If you need a guide, I highly recommend this book by the Gotham Writers' Workshop: &lt;em&gt;Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide from New York's Acclaimed Creative Writing School&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you're a young writer, take a minute to imagine in your mind's eye, putting on a thick skin, the pelt of a courageous animal, like a tiger or a wolf. Parents, schoolteachers, friends, siblings, writers, and other non-writers, despite their best intentions, &lt;em&gt;sometimes&lt;/em&gt; say things that will discourage you. The pelt will soften the blow, allow gentle constructive criticism to enter, and enable you to carry on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many famous writers who work in English come from non-English speaking backgrounds and cultures. They often bring a unique perspective to their subjects and a fresh use of the language. These two articles provide some great examples of that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New York Times: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/books/writing-in-english-novelists-find-inventive-new-voices.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Using the Foreign to Grasp the Familiar&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rawlangs: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rawlangs.com/2012/12/27/multilingualism-and-literature-10-authors-who-write-in-other-languages/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Multilingualism and literature: 10 authors who write in other languages&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone who sets their stories in a fictional culture, or a realistic culture that existed almost one thousand years ago, &lt;em&gt;is writing about a foreign language and culture&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps. Keep on writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-17T18:22:03.690" LastActivityDate="2016-01-17T18:22:03.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20487" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-17T17:01:39.883" Score="0" ViewCount="12347" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need ideas on how to describe a prison. I don't know how to start my story that is about a guy in prison. Also, I must reflect on loneliness. Please help, thanks. I'm talking about a prison in California during the Great Depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16546" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-18T00:46:34.537" LastActivityDate="2024-03-31T02:41:54.357" Title="Describing a prison" Tags="|creative-writing|historical|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20488" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20522" CreationDate="2016-01-17T17:51:47.397" Score="9" ViewCount="4624" Body="&lt;p&gt;How would one express nerdy gobbledygook without sounding like a technical tryhard? For instance, if I were to explain the backstory of something and it perhaps contained the word electromagnetic or chipset; if it does, then readers sometimes don't like the writing style all the time, in my opinion. If you've ever read &lt;em&gt;House of Robots&lt;/em&gt; by James Patterson, you know what I mean by sounding like a tryhard. I know not to be excessive on technical terms, but how could I avoid that writing style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The problem is not that I'm going to write about something I don't know. I'm a rather nerdy programmer already. The problem is that readers may not and I expect won't understand some of the writing. And if they do, they think I sound like a tryhard. I'm a twelve-year-old with no published books, so I have no audience to get opinions from; that's another problem I need to work around to get this answer. It's not a whole series I'm &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;going&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to write about technology, but rather it's a fantasy novel with some tech in it. With that explanation, does anyone know how to actually avoid this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16528" LastEditorUserId="16528" LastEditDate="2016-01-18T23:20:34.667" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T21:39:53.397" Title="How do I write about nerdy concepts without sounding like a tryhard?" Tags="|description|exposition|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20488" CreationDate="2016-01-17T18:31:18.177" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nerdy gobbledygook isn't actually nerdy gobbledygook - they're actually saying things using technical words, acronyms, and abbreviations.  It's very similar to medical speech in that way.  You'll only sound like a tryhard if you're sticking pseudo technical made up words in that don't actually mean or say anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step is to figure out what exactly it is you want to say.  You're only going to talk about a chipset if the chipset matters in context.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If what you're trying to say is that the computer is slow, a geek might complain about the stupid piece of junk chipset.  Or a geek might be impressed by the chipset which would indicate a nice speedy computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things have fractured a bit in Geekdom though - There are lots of geeks out there who don't pay attention to chipsets because they're programming apps for iPhones or Androids or whatever. There are hardware geeks, phone geeks, web programmer geeks, linux geeks, and etc.  Each one of them is going to have a different set of technical words and knowledge depending on what is is they're doing.  A linux geek might talk about what Kernel he's running on his main programming system while a web programmer might complain about problems with browser compatibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gobbledygook is only meaningless to people who are outside the group, and if you're an outsider trying to write like an insider, you'll need to get some help or you're going to inevitably sound like a tryhard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-01-17T18:31:18.177" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20488" CreationDate="2016-01-17T18:52:35.973" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find and emulate a writer you like who uses technology in his stories without resorting to jargon or interrupting the narrative flow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Michael Crichton&lt;/a&gt; does an excellent job of this! He writes compelling stories &lt;em&gt;about people&lt;/em&gt; faced with the effects of technology. He occasionally uses the prolog to establish some background information. But from there on, his stories disclose the tech progressively, through the actions, words, and insights of his characters. It never gets boring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in Jurassic Park, Michael Crighton discloses the biotech through the eyes of  Paleontologist (played by Sam Neil) and his colleague (played by Laura Dern) when they come to the park and see the dinosaurs the dinosaurs for the first time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-18T00:13:06.550" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T00:13:06.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20485" CreationDate="2016-01-17T20:59:19.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's fine to write about something from a language and culture very different from your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you might get warnings not to do it from some quarters because it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; harder to do well than writing a language and culture you know well, especially if your intended readers are people who probably know more about that culture than you do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For you to do well, it helps to read lots of fiction and nonfiction from and about the culture on which your world is based. You want to get an understanding of the people, worldview, language, and values of that culture so that your fictional version will ring true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you mention that your world is a medieval European fantasy world and that your characters have English and Greek names. Be careful with that; England and Greece are culturally rather different. Western readers will probably tolerate a fantasy world with a heroic peasant named Tom and a mystical sorcerer named Euripides. But we might chuckle at a world with a heroic peasant named Euripides and a mystical sorcerer named Tom&amp;mdash; I, for one, wouldn't be able to stop thinking of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZJZK6rzjns&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tim the Enchanter&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading some history books about medieval Europe will let you get a feel for the names that were common in different countries at different times and among different kinds of people. Doing this will also help you if you want to make up names; you'll develop an ear for what sounds and combinations of sounds were used in the languages these cultures spoke, and you won't name the princess of a country rather like Italy something like Klitschko or Liliuokalani. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to become a scholar of medieval European history. J.R.R. Tolkien spent years as a professor of Anglo-Saxon language, history, and culture before he wrote &lt;em&gt;The Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;, but you don't need quite that level of commitment. Just a few books for background is a good start. And you also don't have to imitate actual history slavishly. You just have to develop a feel for what's ridiculous or obviously wrong enough to break the reader's immersion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16549" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-18T01:40:39.213" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T01:40:39.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20492" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-17T21:10:44.420" Score="0" ViewCount="984" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a few scripts for film, but think I need to collaborate with someone. I always run out of ideas. Where would I find a co-writer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16550" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-19T21:47:22.727" LastActivityDate="2019-05-19T22:42:30.100" Title="Feature film and finding a co-writer" Tags="|screenwriting|collaboration|inspiration|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18028" CreationDate="2016-01-18T00:18:22.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should only use his true name and a name used by others who don't know him well. You should make Dre his real name and remove Andreas from the whole story. Unless three names are truly needed, I think it's overdoing it. Just try two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16528" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T00:18:22.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20485" CreationDate="2016-01-18T01:00:48.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because it's in a fantasy world with a European flavor doesn't mean that it's true European and has to be regionally or historically accurate. It's good to study up on medieval Europe so you can include subtle touches to give it a European look  and feel, but you don't have to go overboard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm American, and I'm working on a world that has a medieval Indian style. The characters look and dress like Indians. It's full of bright vivid Indian colors. But there are also elements of Japanese modern dance, Afro-Haitian music, Maori mythology, and medieval European style warfare. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's such a mix of cultures and customs in my world that I don't think anyone will criticize me for not portraying one particular culture accurately. By weaving together several things from several cultures, I've managed to create my own unique world and I am the expert on what is accurate for my culture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a fantasy world, it's more important to make the world your own than to perfectly mimic an existing world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T01:00:48.517" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20488" CreationDate="2016-01-18T05:29:22.230" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way is to either become enough of a &quot;nerd&quot; yourself to speak the lingo, or find someone who can help (keshlam mentioned this in comments)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick with much of the lingo is that subcultures invent such lingo to allow themselves to quickly and succinctly describe things that matter.  As a result, such lingo has a tendency to get quite precise.  This means many linguistic sharp edges that you can get wrong.  It's like mathematics.  If you make a single sign error, anyone will quickly notice the error because they rely on that language to confer very exact information (such as signage).  This happens if you use any precise language, nerdy or not.  If you have a legal action done &quot;ex parte,&quot; that both parties were notified about, you'll get hell for it.  Or perhaps there's the movie Hackers, whose writers really had no idea which device connects to what (I distinctly remember them suggesting the display refreshed faster because the modem was faster...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is my favorite rule ever: Sanderson's First Rule of Magic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The author's ability to resolve conflict using magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to the reader's understanding of said magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magic isn't just for fantasy.  If you're interested in using technojargon to fill a hole in your dialogue that resolves conflict, you are going to have to make sure the readers understand it.  However, by corollary, if you are not using it to resolve conflict, you have a great deal of freedom in your jargon.  However, you still have to worry about the tryhard factor.  In such cases, many technical jargons have some fuzzy words to help you out.  If you are doing a medical drama story, and you have an unimportant line about some &quot;idiopatic complex manifesting several psychosomatic syndromes,&quot; you have used enough fuzzy words that anyone who actually knows the lingo can put together that you're pulling one over on them.  In fact, they might even think it was an Easter egg, just to reward them for knowing the terms (in the case above, that line would translate as &quot;A bunch of things occurred from unknown origin, resulting in several mental issues with no clear cause,&quot; letting them know just what you feel about this particular line).  There's great examples all over, especially in film.  I'm particularly thinking of Avatar getting away with mining &quot;Unobtanium,&quot; and Star Trek's Jeffery's Tubes (identifiable by their prefic, GNDN: &quot;Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing&quot;).  You get away with a lot more when you don't try to insult their intelligence by thinking you're sneaking one past them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14106" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T05:29:22.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20485" CreationDate="2016-01-18T05:57:19.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reminded of an article I read once by Isaac Asimov, a well-known science fiction writer. He said that the first fiction story he wrote was set in a small town. Friends told them that this was a bad idea, because he had lived his whole life in New York City and knew nothing about small towns. But, he said, he never learned that lesson, because he went on to write many stories set on other planets, and he had never been to another planet, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's more difficult to write about things outside your own experience. If you wrote a story set in your home town, presumably you know all sorts of things about your home town off the top of your head, from the climate to the geography to the social customs, etc. But if you write a story set in another country, you would have to do research to learn these things, or you could put in something totally out of place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like, I saw a TV show once about a murder that happened in a town where some of my family live, so I've visited it many times. They had &quot;recreations&quot; of many incidents from the crime and the investigation. One was a scene in the parking lot of the high school. In their recreation, the high school is surrounded by a thick forest. Which is kind of odd, because the town is in the middle of the desert and the high school has only a few scraggly trees around. As someone who has been to the town, this immediately struck me as totally out of place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe in that case you get away with it because the forest wasn't relevant to the story, it was just visible in the background. It would be far worse if someone said that the killer fled into the forest and climbed a tree to hide from the police.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc. Of course this doesn't mean that you can't do it, just that you have to do a little extra work. And pray that you don't casually make a false assumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T05:57:19.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20481" CreationDate="2016-01-18T06:49:10.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it certainly is not true that &quot;if you write a good story, people won't care whose feet get stepped on&quot;. If, say, you paint the Catholic Church as totally evil, I think you're going to offend a lot of Catholics. Etc for any group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is to paint some group as evil, if the purpose of your book is to expose how evil the Masons or the French or the bankers or whomever were, then you have to expect to offend people, and you can hardly claim to be deeply hurt that the people you are attacking are annoyed with you. But you seem to indicate that that's not your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the solution most authors use is to just not bring the subject up. If you want to write a story set in the Balkans in the Middle Ages but you don't want to get into the morality of the Ottoman incursions, then just don't talk about it. Talk about the romance or the adventure story or the mystery or whatever it is you want to write about. If I was writing a murder mystery set in 21st century America and I didn't want to discuss, say, the relative merits of Republican versus Democrat politics, I don't think it would be hard to just not bring it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to get into these subjects, another option is to explain why people did what they did. Like @VilleNeimei's discussion about torture. I read once that courts in the Middle Ages were very concerned about convicting an innocent person, and so they insisted on very high standards of evidence of guilt. But ... they thought the most convincing evidence was a confession, and confessions were often extracted with torture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not the first to say that it's easy to condemn others for prejudice, cruelty, and other evils when you haven't had to live through what they have. Like just recently I heard a tour guide in the Middle East ridicule the Crusaders for having no respect for the word of Muslims, for declaring that a promise made by a Muslim was worthless. But hmm, could that be because there were several incidents were Christians negotiated with Muslims, and the Muslims than broke their promises and took advantage of the agreement to kill the Christians? My point here isn't to attack all Muslims, but simply to say that if just a few months before a Muslim broke a peace agreement and killed all your friends, it is hardly surprising if today you don't trust Muslims, and for someone 1000 years later to say, &quot;how terrible that they didn't trust people just because they had a different religion!&quot; is just ... ignorant. The people at the time had very good reason not to trust these particular people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens when everyone around you says that X is a good thing? If you thought it was wrong, but the government and your teachers and every book you read and your family and friends all say it's good, how many of us would just go along without thinking? Or say, Can it really be that I am right and everyone else in the world is wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some horrible behavior is prompted by ignorance. I mean literal ignorance: not knowing the true facts. For example, when the British arrived in Australia, it was widely believed that the Aborigines were not &quot;fully human&quot;, that they were an earlier stage in evolution. And so many white people saw no more moral problem in taking their land than they would in driving away wild animals that occupied land where they wanted to build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another popular option is to portray individuals or groups as torn between good and bad impulses. I'm not a Catholic, and maybe a lot of Catholics would object to this characterization, but I think the Catholic Church started out as a very good organization. People respected them for their high moral standards, concern for the poor, etc. And so they build prestige and wealth and power. And then people came along who saw all that prestige and wealth and power and wanted in on it, and they infiltrated the organization and at many times and places took control of it. So there were competing forces: those who joined the church to further its original goals of preaching and teaching and helping, and those who joined as a route to wealth and power. You could certainly say similar things about almost any government. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T06:49:10.230" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20210" CreationDate="2016-01-18T15:50:00.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is tricky, because you can't explain the way magic without, you know... &lt;em&gt;explaining the way magic works.&lt;/em&gt;  The trick is to make it interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think one of the best examples I've seen comes from &lt;em&gt;The Final Empire&lt;/em&gt;, the first &lt;em&gt;Mistborn&lt;/em&gt; book by Brandon Sanderson.  It opens on a plantation on a very foggy night, with the arrival of a traveler, Kelsier.  The superstitious slaves are afraid of the mists, but Kelsier isn't, and when something starts to go wrong, the slaves begin to freak out, but Kelsier remains calm and burns tin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Burns tin?  What does that mean?&lt;/em&gt; the reader asks himself.  Then it's explained: he has magic that lets him swallow metallic tin and &quot;burn&quot; it, slowly consuming the metal to fuel enhanced senses that let him see through the mists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a while, Kelsier meets a street urchin, Vin, a girl who has &quot;luck&quot;, where she can sometimes bend people's will and make them do what she wants.  Bad guys find out about her ability, but Kelsier rescues her and explains to her that her &quot;luck&quot; is actually &lt;em&gt;allomancy&lt;/em&gt;, the magical ability to burn metal and use it to produce effects, and that she is a &lt;em&gt;Mistborn&lt;/em&gt;, a person with access to all the metals, just like he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He takes her under his wing and teaches her some basic things about allomancy, then hands her off to various friends of his who are &lt;em&gt;mistings&lt;/em&gt;, people who only have the ability to burn one metal, so she can further refine her training by working with specialists.  Instead of dumping all the info on the reader, the author slowly spreads it out over the first half of the book as a part of Vin's training, with the reader learning how allomancy works along with her, and with the way allomancy is integrated into the society of the Final Empire, (all of Sanderson's work is like this: magic isn't just something that's there alongside normal life; it's a part of life that affects culture and society deeply,) the reader feels like he's discovering it as part of the world.  This avoids the biggest problem with infodumps: the way they bring the action to a screeching halt so characters can talk about infodump stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to know how to explain your magic really well, read &lt;em&gt;Mistborn: The Final Empire&lt;/em&gt; and take notes. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1933" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T15:50:00.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20500" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-18T16:25:05.133" Score="5" ViewCount="11663" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a book and want to set the story in an existing location, such as Manchester, England. Does that mean that I have to use an existing school from Manchester, or can I make the school up? &#xA;Other places, such as restaurants, landmarks, and parks will be real. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16563" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-18T22:51:50.937" LastActivityDate="2017-08-30T21:17:36.650" Title="If I use a real location for the setting of my book - Do I have to use existing schools or can I make them up?" Tags="|fiction|book|setting|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20609" CreationDate="2016-01-18T16:35:32.047" Score="3" ViewCount="2811" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've approached a point in my story wherein one of my characters has just been broken out of a short stretch in prison (around a week).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seconds before being captured, he watched a good friend of his get killed, and spends a significant amount of the week grieving his loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst incarcerated, he was beaten, threatened with torture, and shown that he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he has been.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an originally arrogant and self-assured character, he has been sufficiently broken down that he is suffering emotionally (not entirely broken down, he is still mostly the same, but he has come to doubt himself and his abilities). At this point the villain of the story, who he had never met before, speaks to him to offer him a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The villain presents himself as a reasonable person, and explains to him that their ultimate goals align. He sets out his particular view points and asks the character to think about joining him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this exchange he is later broken out by his friends, and they proceed on with their original journey. He begins to feel different however, and is beginning to doubt himself and his view of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This character will eventually leave his friends and their pursuit of the quest. He will originally head out on his own to rediscover himself and his priorities, but he will end up after some time allying with the villain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My issue is that I can't figure out a way to instrument his departure. His friends understand what he has been through whilst in prison, so they would not be unreasonably antagonistic towards him in order to make him leave them so abruptly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want him to immediately believe the villain is right and go and ally with him, I just want him to come to the conclusion that his friends might be wrong, and refuses to follow them anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I realistically create a reason for this character to eventually snap, abandon his friends and set out on his own?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would preferably come about rather quickly after being busted from jail, but if that is too unreasonable and there is a way for it to be more realistic but would take longer, that's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2017-12-30T19:07:22.907" Title="Ways to make a character snap?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20500" CreationDate="2016-01-18T16:57:14.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put simply: You can make up whatever details you want. You can use what is there when you want to and then make things up. If nothing else, the names of schools change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-01-18T17:24:42.190" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T17:24:42.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2016-01-18T17:13:35.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to write, you should never stop writing altogether, especially through the fear of failure. As J.K Rowling was turned down many times before she published Harry Potter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm new to this site, and I'm also an aspiring author. I also struggle with facing failure too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the advice I have had is that nobody has to see your book ideas or story ideas if you don't want them to. So if you don't show your ideas to people, then nobody can say you failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, about your writing don't write what you think others will want to see and read. Write about what you enjoy. Think to yourself 'If I was going to a bookstore what book do I wish was in there?' And then write that one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more you relax about it, the easier it will come to you as people say when you want it, it never happens. But when you stop thinking about it, or you relax more it comes to you within minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16563" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-20T16:14:56.107" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T16:14:56.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20501" CreationDate="2016-01-18T20:19:00.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming that after getting bust out of jail the authorities will be looking for him? He could have a close call with getting caught amd then tell his friends it's better they split up as he doesn't want them to get caught and go to prison as well. If you don't want the brush with the law he could just tell them that anyway and leave, or leave them a note and sneak off in the night. It doesn't have to be complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13109" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T20:19:00.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20523" CreationDate="2016-01-18T21:13:49.550" Score="7" ViewCount="18265" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing my Masters thesis in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I take some (small) German text snippets from some papers (I'm German-speaking) and just translate them into English, would this be plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, if I have some English text snippet and just change most of the (specific) words, so that I didn't change the meaning, would this be plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, if I reuse math formulas (with the same variables etc.) is this plagiarism? What about just changing the variable names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16570" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-09T08:00:07.433" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T08:00:07.433" Title="Is translating into another language plagiarism?" Tags="|academic-writing|legal|translation|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20501" CreationDate="2016-01-18T21:47:41.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There might be something deeper than the story. Perhaps something has bothered him as a unanswered question for most of his adult life. It's not been life changingly significsnt, but it has bothered him to some extent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the villain knowingly or unknowingly tapped into this frustration and gave him hope for the first time that the question could be answered. Maybe he didn't think that the question was that important, but having the opportunity for an answer becomes more and more tempting. He may be completely unaware how badly he's starting to want what the villain has to offer him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't have to literally be a question. It's just somehow the villain spoke to him about something in a way no one else ever has about something that's always been in the back of his mind, waiting to be resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently on the other end of things. I have a character who is a master manipulator.  She dos it so well that she doesn't even realize that she's doing it. She's very observant and has an uncanny knack at figuring out what motivates people. She uses her knowledge to get people not only do her bidding, but be happy about it, perhaps even beg her to allow them to do what they may have refused to do otherwise. I think persuasive people all do this in some level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T21:47:41.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6864" CreationDate="2016-01-18T22:00:28.937" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been a few years since the above question was posed. Now, there is at least one system, CriticMarkup, designed to give plain text writers functionality that is similar to Microsoft Word's &quot;track changes&quot; feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://criticmarkup.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://criticmarkup.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastEditorUserId="16571" LastEditDate="2016-01-20T16:47:35.580" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T16:47:35.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20509" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-18T22:15:20.627" Score="0" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am conflicted about which one is appropriate for a story, or whether it makes a difference at all. A few years ago, god knows where, I've seen speech that was formatted like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;—Hello. - Tom said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and a more common form which is found in a lot of books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hello,&quot; Tom said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make a difference, whatever one I use? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: &#xA;I don't know how this displays since I am using my phone, but the first speech format was supposed to have a dash at the front in case it is replaced on your screen with a dot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16394" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T18:26:33.643" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T18:26:33.643" Title="The difference between two speech formats" Tags="|style|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20488" CreationDate="2016-01-18T22:57:15.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I would suggest is to know your audience and your characters. For example, if you're writing from the perspective of a particular character (either first-person or third-person limited), then you want the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your readers to identify with that character in some way, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That character's thoughts, words, and actions, to correspond with his or her technical knowledge. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you're writing from a perspective of a character without a professional background in a particular area, then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're not expecting your readers to have that background either.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can use that character's thoughts, words, and actions to help interpret the technical gobbledygook of other characters or objects. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, readers don't feel left out, or if they do, they know that the character with whom they're sharing a perspective feels similarly left out. I think the most problematic situation is when readers feel like they're supposed to know what some technical term means, but they don't. Then they feel alienated and become disinterested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently read The Martian and appreciated how the author Andy Weir handled technical content. For one, the main character Mark has a somewhat technical background, proficient in some areas but not in others. When Mark uses this knowledge, Weir has Mark work through the steps in his head. Doing this helps the reader learn about the thought process of the character, and it also guides the reader through the technical content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other situations, when Mark is less familiar with some technical aspects, then the reader feels like he or she is learning along with Mark.  Again, this helps create a connection between the reader and the character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I appreciated that all the technical details in the book were well thought out and well researched. I stopped reading a couple of times to look up things mentioned in the book (particularly the radioisotope thermoelectric generator) to see if they were real and learned about how they worked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, something set in a fantasy or far-future science fiction world will deal with fictitious technology that readers can't look up on Wikipedia, but I think it's important to keep some sense of realism, at least internally to your world if not outside it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16572" LastEditorUserId="16572" LastEditDate="2016-01-19T15:48:29.397" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T15:48:29.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20509" CreationDate="2016-01-18T23:06:45.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. If you want to be published by a traditional publisher or in a journal/magazine, you'll be expected to format with the quotations, punctuation within the quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wish to self-publish, I'd still suggest that you strongly consider using the format with quotations. Readers are accustomed to seeing dialogue formatted this way and if you stray from it, readers may become confused. Some work does use creative formatting for dialogue, but it's a conscious decision to do so and supported by an editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16573" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T23:06:45.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20509" CreationDate="2016-01-18T23:37:45.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The dash may be European formatting, but it's not standard in English-speaking countries. Some information on the dialogue dash here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6724/using-dashes-in-writing-dialogue&quot;&gt;Using dashes in writing dialogue&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your readers are in America, the U.K., or Australia (at minimum), you should stay with quote marks. Americans use double quotes for dialogue and the British use single quotes; I don't know what Australians use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T23:37:45.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20488" CreationDate="2016-01-19T00:39:19.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try using real words instead of made up nerd substitutes like &quot;tryhard&quot; and &quot;backstory&quot;.  People are granted more credibility when others can tell that they're literate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16574" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T00:39:19.040" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20506" CreationDate="2016-01-19T03:19:25.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem to be asking for permission to plagiarize. Don't. &#xA;Cite all of your sources in your bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems likely that your thesis advisor or chairperson explained this to you at some point. If you have more questions of this type, review the resources he or she gave you. Then, if it isn't covered, ask them in person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T03:19:25.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20506" CreationDate="2016-01-19T03:58:21.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For your &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &quot;translation&quot; would likely be plagiarism. In academics, most researchers have a way to write and express ideas, independently of their writing language. Someone reading your paper, who is knowledgeable in your field (so most colleagues in your field), is likely to find the link between your 'translated ideas' from the original, with a resulting potential backfire on you, which would be a possibility even much later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a case along the lines of your was discussed &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/35354/how-can-i-find-out-if-a-student-s-thesis-is-just-the-translation-from-his-native&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, when you submit your manuscript, some institutions, by default (mine is doing it), use commercial plagiarism detection software. If I created this type of software, I would include features to detect translations and plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Second&lt;/em&gt; question: Please see the previous answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Third&lt;/em&gt; question: In my thesis there is a load of equations. I had some specificity in a context that required changing most variable names. But the meaning of the terms and what the equation does will of course not change the outcome of the equation (it is expected). Further, anyone reading your paper will guess, unless you are widely known to have developed yourself many of those equations, that you are a fraud, this without a software detecting plagiarism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16479" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:49.207" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T18:56:09.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20477" CreationDate="2016-01-19T05:15:27.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Confusion is the loss control over one's mind, and thus one's writing thoughts. Don't be confused with any of your writing pieces. Whether you have a brilliant story in mind or want to start a short story, just pick up your pen without any delay and write down all your thoughts. Then see what magical words you will write :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love writing too. Any time a word comes to mind, I make a note of it and then continue writing. With that, I automatically create a short or long story. &lt;code&gt;This is who a writer is. Simply, an outcome of his thoughts.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16576" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-21T14:15:16.403" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T14:15:16.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20506" CreationDate="2016-01-19T06:22:35.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you use someone else's ideas in an academic paper without giving them credit, that is plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have some hazy case and you're unsure, just give the original writer credit. It's easy to avoid committing plagiarism: just add a footnote. It's not that you can't use someone else's ideas. You just have to give the footnote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to give credit for things that are &quot;common knowledge&quot;. For example, if you say, &quot;France is in Europe&quot;, you don't need to give a source. There are thousands of sources for that. When I was in school, I was taught that if you can find it in three sources, it's &quot;common knowledge&quot;. That seems a little simplistic to me, but it might be a workable rule of thumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A math formula might or might not be common knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that plagiarism is not the same thing as copyright violation. If you're not sure of the difference, that's a different question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T06:22:35.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20500" CreationDate="2016-01-19T08:55:25.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;TeiganJo,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;It is your book and it is your creation&lt;/code&gt;. You can add,create,imagine anything you want to. For your realistic imagination power you can write about real places or persons but also personify them to some other names. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a book/novel, names can be fine but what is more important is the &lt;code&gt;characters&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;roles&lt;/code&gt; every entity has and relate to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16576" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T08:55:25.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20488" CreationDate="2016-01-19T08:55:47.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read a well-known sci-fi author like Arthur C. Clarke. I'll recommend &quot;Rendezvous with Rama&quot;. He'll get away with a lot, by simply stating what stuff is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned by others, it's not a lazerpistol, it's a zapper or a gun. It's not a &quot;GUI that gets the IP using a Visual Basic Script&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU&lt;/a&gt;) it's &quot;something I cooked up, last night&quot; and perhaps &quot;I even had time to add some graphics&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless it's internal operation is an important plot device, don't try to tell us how it works. Just give it a name, and preferably, have a character that handles it for the first time, or needs to explain it to someone, and purposely oversimplifies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16580" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-20T09:18:35.677" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T09:18:35.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20500" CreationDate="2016-01-19T15:38:02.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. You can make up places. Just make sure to indicate in the foreword that everything in your writing is purely a work of fiction, especially when you use the names of famous places. Otherwise, you might confuse readers - especially the young ones - if such a place exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16583" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-20T16:14:04.387" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T16:14:04.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20509" CreationDate="2016-01-19T15:40:17.723" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;About 99+% of books printed in English use quote marks for dialog, not dashes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are you considering using dashes? Is there some advantage to this for your story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like any rules of writing, you can always break the rules if you have a good reason. But like any rules of writing, I would strongly advise you not to break the rules unless you do have a good reason. Breaking the rules just for the sake of breaking the rules -- &quot;I won't be bound by a bunch of silly rules&quot;, &quot;I want my writing to be daring and avant guarde&quot;, etc -- is almost always just distracting and annoying to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T15:40:17.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20488" CreationDate="2016-01-19T16:09:54.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, +1 to all comments that advise &quot;gobbledygook is fine if you use it correctly&quot; and &quot;gobbledygook isn't gobbledygook if given the right audience.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think it's important to strike a proper balance between technical and layman's terms. I often find that the Sci-Fi writers I like the best sprinkle jargon in with enough context to where you can understand what's going on even if you don't know the term's definition. The best fantasy authors do the same thing, but with made up creatures/devices in place of technical terms. If a Jestik is described as a dog, you think of it like a dog, that's all that matters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest writing the story in such a way that, when YOU read it, the flow and descriptions feel right to you. Then, have someone who isn't as educated on the technical aspects you reference read through your work. Ask them to make notes on sections where they felt the tech terms weighed the story down, or where they were confused by the jargon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing isn't a &quot;one draft and done&quot; kind of process. So it's fine to get feedback and revisions on this aspect you're concerned with as you go. You're better off following your own heart when writing and then polishing it to a point where other people can understand it then trying to accommodate others from the start.  That, and it's okay if not everyone &quot;gets&quot; it. Some literature is for a particular intellectual audience, not the masses, and that's nothing to be ashamed of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16584" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-19T19:40:58.160" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T19:40:58.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20506" CreationDate="2016-01-19T18:19:01.700" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well as most of the answers imply here, you should simply &quot;cite&quot; whatever that is not yours. What I mean by this is you should basically include references to snippets that you did not write and ones that you took from other sources. As long as you include proper citations, then you're on the safe side. (This basically refers to the idea of including a reasonable amount of translations to be cited, and by reasonable I'm referring to a paragraph, or two worth of translation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the translation you're asking about, you should also consider some sort of footnote at the bottom of the page where the translated text is, again to be on the safe side. The question is, are you going to literally translate the text you want or are you going to use an online translator for that because that's an important note, check the following blog post &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/12/citing-translated-works-in-apa-style.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; for more info. (Note: It's an APA citation example for translated texts)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the math formulas you're asking about as well, again you should cite them because none of them are really yours (You're taking them from a source whether it's a research paper, or an online source, or a book for that matter). Regardless of changing the variables or not, you should always include citations to avoid falling in trouble.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the following &lt;a href=&quot;https://gradstudents.carleton.ca/2014/use-mathematical-equations-thesis/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; might be of help for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6798" LastEditorUserId="6798" LastEditDate="2016-01-20T18:09:46.857" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T18:09:46.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20524" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-19T20:18:30.757" Score="2" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I use figure titles for &lt;strong&gt;diagrams&lt;/strong&gt; in web content if the diagram already has a caption? Guidance or references are appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The context is a marketing page whose basic structure is shown in the following image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QxDQq.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QxDQq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Basic layout of the page in question.&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I have read about web usability, I'd say the figure title is just another piece of content for readers to scan that is largely redundant with the other content on the page. Any different ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16585" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-22T12:47:51.733" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T12:47:51.733" Title="Should I use figure titles for diagrams on the web?" Tags="|technical-writing|marketing|websites|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20524" CreationDate="2016-01-19T22:28:52.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only reason to use figure titles if they already have a caption is to refer to multiple figures throughout the text, particularly if each one has multiple panels. If so, they should merely say &lt;strong&gt;Fig. 1 A&lt;/strong&gt;, for example. Take a look at any scientific article for examples of this, here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0143047&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt; for starters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your example, I don't think you really need figure titles if there's only one figure per page with the corresponding text right next to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16582" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T22:28:52.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20528" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20540" CreationDate="2016-01-19T23:05:40.777" Score="1" ViewCount="584" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading about this Japanese dance style written by a man who taught it. He said that the style was uniquely Japanese and few outsiders could really dance in the style properly. He said that he guessed that people from ancient cultures such as ones found in China, India, and some tribal people in Africa might come close, but anyone from Europe or North America didn't do it right, because their culture has one completely different belief about power and spirituality.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said that in Europe, people look up to find God. The power reaches up like a tree towards the heavens. European dance has people who look up, stand on tiptoes as if they were trying to fly away. European dance also focuses on beauty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Japanese culture, power comes found from the ground. Dancers focus on planting themselves sturdily on the ground and sink down into the ground when they wish to convey spirituality. This style of dance was also deliberately &quot;ugly.&quot; It came into being after WWII and expresses agony, loss and defeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, in my fantasy story, I have a character who travels from a European style world to an Indian style world. He desires to study a form of magic that can only be studied in that country. He tries very hard. He's told that he's the best they've ever seen from his country, but he doesn't get it. He can't really get better than mediocre at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I don't recall ever seeing a citation in a work of fiction. But I LOVE this guy's opinions about about philosophies about dancing. I think it would be a perfect way for my MC to get turned down when he applies for advanced study in the magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to copy it verbatim, but I really want to use the idea. What's the most ethical way to approach this? I'm not entirely certain that the guy is still alive. I think the article may have been written in the 80s. I could be wrong, but I can't guarantee that I could ask his permission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Regardless of whether you agree with this guy or not, I did watch several dancers on YouTube. I couldn't stand to watch Europeans dance the style. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was just &quot;wrong&quot; for some reason. After reading this article, I watched the Euro dancers, and he was exactly right. They didn't get down low enough and no matter how hard they tried to get low, they were trying to fight the urge to lift up. They also kept trying to make the dance &quot;pretty.&quot; When it's meant to be very &quot;ugly.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T14:33:49.700" Title="Is it plagiarism to use something from a nonfiction work and put it into fiction?" Tags="|fiction|citations|non-fiction|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20528" CreationDate="2016-01-19T23:36:45.970" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're using inspiration from a real-life character in a fictitious world, which has been done by every writer ever. Utilizing a mindset you notice in real life in your work isn't plagiarism any more than setting your story in a location that actually exists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that doesn't mean you should copy the guy's words verbatim from the previous article, but using the concept is perfectly fine. And there are tons of instances where authors will write a short blurb at the end of their novel describing which aspects of their story are based on actual events/locations or sources from whence their inspiration was drawn. If you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; wanted to, you could acknowledge the man/original article in a similar fashion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16582" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T23:36:45.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20492" CreationDate="2016-01-19T23:42:18.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A snappy sarcastic answer is tempting... Something like, &quot;How about Craigslist?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on second thought... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're looking for is for someone to solve your problems with writers block for you, rather than solving them yourself.  Writers block is something that all writers have from time to time.  There are a number of questions here that address it that give ideas on how to solve it.  Try searching for questions with the tag, &quot;Writer's Block.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're really stuck and really want someone to help you, start with the people you know best.  I always talk things through with my wife... She's great at coming up with ideas that help me through.  Also try taking a break, exercising, watching a movie, reading a book, or whatever gets your creative juices flowing again.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is sometimes easy, and it's that easiness that makes the times that aren't easy more frustrating and difficult, but it's also those times when you keep on writing even when you think you can't that you'll grow and become a better writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T23:42:18.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20481" CreationDate="2016-01-20T00:06:53.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers are quite good and very detailed. I would just like to add an issue of perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: Show, don't tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good work - especially fiction - doesn't &lt;em&gt;judge&lt;/em&gt; its contents/subjects. It doesn't &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; the readers what to think or feel. It presents situations and actions in a way that impacts the reader and causes them to form their own opinions and feelings about what has been presented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more real and detailed presentation which causes the reader to identify with people and events in the story will usually cause stronger responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the readers draw these conclusions for themselves or experience what something must have felt like, then that gets past all their filters and defences and changes them from within. That's the magic of great writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T00:06:53.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20533" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20539" CreationDate="2016-01-20T06:36:02.460" Score="1" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a story which is based on a flashback event of life. I want the past scene to appear as a current phase to involve readers in my flashback event as if it is happening now. Kindly guide me how to interpret it in an excellent way ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following are 2 forms of speeches to write a flashback scene:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is midnight, but still my eyes are awake and mind is baffled with the screams and laughs of all the students who made fun of me this morning. All these unwanted thoughts are ruining my sleep.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was midnight and I was trying to sleep but my eyes couldn't rest for a while because I was going through a thunderstorm in my mind which was still in the state of the morning scenario thinking of all the insults I faced in school.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kindly, guide which one would leave more impact on the reader. Currently, I am using (1) to depict a flashback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16576" LastEditorUserId="16576" LastEditDate="2016-01-20T10:07:33.383" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T14:30:26.087" Title="Which of the two cases of writing Flashback Stories is better?" Tags="|novel|flashback|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20506" CreationDate="2016-01-20T10:39:48.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add another consideration when you are considering translation: copyright laws. Somewhat inconveniently, these vary from one jurisdiction to the other, so you will need to check that out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may need to obtain the copyright holder's permission to translate something, depending on the length of the passage and the reason you are using it. In some countries, such as the USA, you are allowed certain fair use, while in other countries there is no provision for fair use as such, unless you are using a work for criticism, parody and the like. Also, don't rely solely on the brevity of a text if you want to use it without permission. In poetry, for example, even a line or two may require permission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16591" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T10:39:48.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20533" CreationDate="2016-01-20T14:55:04.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're asking whether to write flashbacks in past tense or present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems to me using past tense makes the most sense. In fact, your whole story can be past tense, as long as you're clear about what is flashback and what is current time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But really, it's not the tense you're writing in that makes an impact on the reader. Writing a great story with great characters, with a great narrative voice makes an impact on readers, not the verb tenses you use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T14:55:04.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20533" CreationDate="2016-01-20T14:59:01.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel both are confusing in terms of tense and of content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Is it midnight in real time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Is it morning in the dream, in past tense reality, or both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Did you just awaken from the dream, or are you obsessing about the past?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Speaking of which, did the laughing students happen in the real world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I turned my head. This time the clock read 12:05; it must have been another dream. They seem to be getting worse--the dreams, I mean. All right, so I guess lots of kids dream about being naked at school, but I doubt they feel my shame. The laughter comes from everywhere, and the screams stay with me--even to this very second. No way can I fall back asleep before dawn.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can take your reader inside the dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Charles, what do you think you're doing?&quot; Mrs. Hutchinson asked incredulously. What started as smiles and smirks from the classmates around me, quickly cascaded into gesturing and full-on belly laughs.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;N, N, nothing, Mrs. Hutchinson,&quot; I lamely replied. She didn't seem impressed with my answer.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Suzie came up to me and yelled, &quot;Haven't you heard of Erin's Law! They teach us about this you know! This is abuse!&quot; She turned to Jennifer, who just couldn't even remotely keep it together, and added, &quot;It's not funny!&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And that's what I woke up to at midnight.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-01-20T15:14:47.567" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T15:14:47.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2016-01-20T17:23:47.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no single answer to the question of how to start writing a novel. Different &quot;on ramps&quot; work for different people, and what works in one case doesn't work in another, but here are three possibilities which may work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A loose outline &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing an outline first can work - and it's standard advice. I find there's a trap to it, though. It's usually enjoyable to work out the details in the outline, but what often happens is you then have a terrible time fleshing it out into a full-length work. The fun has been sucked out of it like some previously enjoyed freezie, and you're left with this tasteless stick of ice. The writing stage feels as creative as painting by numbers. If you go the outline route, I find it helps to keep things vague, so that it provides the loosest skeleton for the structure. You might write something like &quot;Stephen meets Julia and they fall in love. For some reason, he realizes he must return to Nevada, and she vows to kill him.&quot; Then you have can have fun figuring out how those things happen when you write it, knowing that those events must happen (because you said so). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No outline - tell &quot;your&quot; story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try writing with no outline. Play the main character and confidently tell what happened, even though you (the writer) have no idea where things are going. For example, you might start, &quot;I'm going to tell you why I killed that damn goat. You see...&quot; If you find you know exactly where things are going, challenge yourself by taking it in an unexpected direction. That keeps it surprising for the reader. This approach works best for first-person novels. I wrote a book this way once, and it was a very enjoyable experience. Of course, this approach doesn't usually lend itself to a tight structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write what MUST be there first: &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of his books, William Goldman (Princess Bride) describes his process for screenplays, which you can apply to any fiction. He starts with the scenes that will be in the story, then works outwards from there, writing the scenes that set those up, and filling in other details. This approach is very organic because most of us start with a scene (or sometimes just a feeling) from the middle of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-21T23:22:27.020" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T23:22:27.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20533" CreationDate="2016-01-20T18:32:38.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting question. However, there's one thing confusing me. As far as I can tell, if I were to read a flashback, I would prefer reading one in the past tense because when talking about flashbacks you're actually talking about a sudden incident where you're in a current situation and something triggered a past memory, hence triggering a flashback. So this basically means using the past tense would make more sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can check the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/qp7-migration-all-articles/qp7-migration-fiction/3_tips_for_writing_successful_flashbacks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; for a more professional answer that is quite comprehensive and could be of a lot of help to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6798" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T18:32:38.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20528" CreationDate="2016-01-20T20:28:42.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism is an academic violation that applies to scholarly papers. It doesn't apply to works of fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole point of a scholarly paper is that you're presenting something that you claim is a new and original idea or discovery. If you copied it from someone else, then your paper is a fraud. Of course you may use ideas from others and build on them, hence, footnotes to distinguish what is yours and what is someone else's, and when someone else's, whose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you talk about a scientific discovery or a cultural phenomenon in a work of fiction, readers do not normally assume that you invented it. Indeed, it's very common to write fiction centered on some new cultural phenomenon. Science fiction often centers around a new scientific discovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the difference between plagiarism and copyright violation. If you read an interesting book about dance and copy sections of that book word for word into your novel, that might be copyright violation. (Depending on how much you copied it might be considered &quot;fair use&quot;.) But if you copy the ideas and put them in your own words, there is no issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T20:28:42.990" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20541" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-20T22:05:32.943" Score="0" ViewCount="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;If an author strongly wished to be referred to in other works by his or her given name, is there a way that the convention of referencing an author by last name could be broken?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13871" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T22:36:36.493" Title="If you publish something, do people have to cite you by your surname?" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20541" CreationDate="2016-01-20T22:36:36.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Poet e e cummings and singer k.d. lang are both referenced in all lowercase letters. Singer Prince famously went by an unpronounceable symbol for a few years (which many wrote as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, or TAFKAP). Many artists go by one name: singers Adele, Cher, Madonna; cartoonist Herblock; French writer Molière; British writer Saki. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to publish under Jacob (or another first name), you certainly can, but if it's a common name, it might be difficult to market your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if what you want is to go normally by &quot;Jacob Jones&quot; but for the &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt; to write in a review &quot;The new book by Jacob Jones came out this week. This is the third novel Jacob has written in the last three years,&quot; then no, you can't force publications to break their house style just for you and reference you as &quot;Jacob&quot; rather than &quot;Mr. Jones.&quot; Or rather, you can try, but you'll come across as a special snowflake, and earn a certain amount of critical derision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T22:36:36.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19314" CreationDate="2016-01-21T00:42:02.537" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create responsive HTML5 outputs that have interactive elements, like slideshows, using native MadCap Flare functionality AND you can extend Flare's native functionality by incorporating a pre-coded, front-end framework like &lt;a href=&quot;http://getbootstrap.com/getting-started/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bootstrap&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some brief examples of how to accomplish what I think you are referring to above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Slideshows&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare11/Content/Home.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flare's webhelp&lt;/a&gt; for an example of the kind of slideshow Flare supports natively.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bootstrap supports &lt;a href=&quot;http://getbootstrap.com/javascript/#carousel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;carousels&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Expandables&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this, I assume you mean text that you click on to reveal more text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flare supports &lt;a href=&quot;http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare11/Content/Tutorials/Flare/TopNavigationAdv/HDYDT_DropDowns_TopNav.htm?Highlight=dropdown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;drop-down text&lt;/a&gt; for this need.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bootstrap supports &lt;a href=&quot;http://getbootstrap.com/javascript/#collapse-example-accordion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;accordions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have started to use Bootstrap with Flare, and I'm pretty sure that's what I'm going to do from now on. This method allows you to have a modern front-end with the beautiful content reuse of Flare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I'd get a trial version of Flare and try plugging in Bootstrap. See how you like it. PM if you need specific guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16585" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T00:42:02.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18745" CreationDate="2016-01-21T01:00:39.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia offers &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Citation_tools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;citation tools&lt;/a&gt; that generate citations from DOIs. You might see how those tools work, and whether you can use them outside Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16585" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-22T19:16:58.963" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T19:16:58.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20528" CreationDate="2016-01-21T14:33:49.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fictionalizing a philosophical/cultural concept isn't illegal, uncommon, or, in my opinion, unethical.  Fictionalizing can actually &lt;a href=&quot;http://popculturephilosopher.com/kierkegaards-narrative/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;help popularize&lt;/a&gt; a concept that might otherwise languish in obscurity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are fortunate to get published, you might ask to have an author's note included at the end of the book referencing the original article --I've seen that occasionally done.  I can't imagine that most writers wouldn't be completely happy to gain some positive extra publicity for their ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T14:33:49.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20547" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-21T18:35:10.417" Score="0" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a thesis and for one section the sources are only 3 papers. Some paragraphes are only about one paper. Sometimes it is also mixed, i.e. first sentence references to paper 1, second sentence to paper 2, third sentence to paper 1, fourth sentence to paper 1 etc. I think placing a reference for each sentence would be a bit crazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16570" LastActivityDate="2016-09-03T10:46:33.993" Title="How to correctly cite?" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18745" CreationDate="2016-01-21T18:53:21.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't tested this (which would require registering with them and obtaining an ID), but CrossRef provides a web service that appears to do what you need.  From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://help.crossref.org/using_the_open_url_resolver&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;documentation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crossref query:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.crossref.org/servlet/query?pid=username:password&amp;amp;id=10.1006/jmbi.2000.4282&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://doi.crossref.org/servlet/query?pid=username:password&amp;amp;id=10.1006/jmbi.2000.4282&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like metadata queries, DOI query results are returned in XML format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a username and password, you can construct a query URL for each DOI.  You'll then need to invoke that URL.  If I were doing this once I'd probably generate a shell script to call &lt;code&gt;curl&lt;/code&gt; once per DOI and run it from the command line; if I expected to do this on a regular basis I might (coax somebody to) write a nicer client interface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that that API is going to return XML; I presume it's the same XML that you get through the one-DOI-at-a-time web interface that you linked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T18:53:21.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20549" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20550" CreationDate="2016-01-21T20:51:04.817" Score="4" ViewCount="500" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me there is a relative limit for commercial fiction regarding the number of named characters. This makes sense, of course. Readers get confused; lots of people aren't good with names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy novels, or other fiction with an adventuring party, might have 6-10 protagonists, but the antagonists are frequently unnamed squash victims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Series, and epics cut into trilogies, might build up characters over time. But there are a lot of pages to fill, and the reader will have invested dozens of hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm curious if anyone knows of any &quot;behavioral science&quot; on the subject, or if you just want to express an opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, perhaps something like Fifteen named characters per 100,000 words ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-01-21T20:57:15.210" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T15:44:56.170" Title="How many names in a book are too many?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20549" CreationDate="2016-01-21T22:33:56.007" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there is a cognitive limit on the number of characters in a book, I suspect that the limit is on the author's side, rather than the readers'. As long as your characters are distinct, memorable, and important to the story, you should go ahead and use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want an example of a series with an unusually high amount of named characters, I would recommend the &lt;em&gt;Malazan Book of the Fallen&lt;/em&gt;. It contains many characters, and that series still has a devoted following. Take a look at the glossary in &lt;em&gt;Gardens of the Moon&lt;/em&gt; - the book's nine sequels and spin-offs are not shy about introducing even more characters than the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16610" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-26T15:44:56.170" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T15:44:56.170" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-22T11:09:31.233" Score="1" ViewCount="3496" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my thesis. and I need to know the correct way of putting the reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this is a sentence taken from someone [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this is a sentence taken from someone[2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this is a sentence taken from someone. [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this is a sentence taken from someone.[2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as you see in the four sentences about, there are differences in the space place and the dot place, which one of the is correct? (or maybe all wrong? )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T03:05:19.737" Title="should I put the reference number after the dot or after a space?" Tags="|style|publishing|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-01-26T20:17:21.657" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20554" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-22T11:37:56.917" Score="2" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my thesis and I need to know the correct way of putting the reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a sentence taken from someone [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a sentence taken from someone[2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a sentence taken from someone. [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a sentence taken from someone.[2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you see in the four sentences above, there are differences in the space placement and the dot placement; which one of these is correct? (or are they all wrong?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16606" OwnerDisplayName="sarah" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T14:05:53.527" Title="What is the formal way to write a reference in English?" Tags="|formatting|research|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20554" CreationDate="2016-01-22T13:56:04.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a typesetter, I would put the number after the period, no space, and then superscript it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;this is a sentence taken from someone.&lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like this is the most visually pleasing, since the footnote is snugged up to the period, doesn't leave ugly white space under it, and is smaller so it doesn't draw so much attention to itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this is correct in terms of various style guides I have no idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T13:56:04.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20557" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20564" CreationDate="2016-01-22T14:22:49.993" Score="1" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the sort of person that is really great at coming up with amazing ideas, plot-lines, worlds, etc. for stories, but I'm not so good at putting them to paper - at least not in a novel. I'm really great at adapting stories through actions and dialogue. Essentially, I write like I'm watching a movie - I'm fast paced and don't like getting caught up in setting descriptions or internal monologues. Because of this, I can write pretty spectacular screenplays, if I do say so myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm trying to adapt though and write novels. I'm having a difficult time figuring out how to write good prose when I'm so used to writing screenplays. I can say that it's not a matter of practice - I practice a lot. Very little progress is ever really made though... Does anyone have any suggestions for me as to where I can look to learn how to overcome this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14487" LastActivityDate="2017-10-21T15:26:09.140" Title="How can a screenplay writer learn to write a novel?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|novel|screenwriting|novella|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20533" CreationDate="2016-01-22T14:30:26.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the example, it seems as if the narrator is lying awake at midnight thinking about the day gone by. If so, this is not quite a flashback—you're describing your character's thoughts in the present. The choice between &quot;It is midnight&quot; and &quot;It was midnight&quot; is about whether you want to write the body of your story in present tense or past tense. Either is fine, but past tense is more traditional. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For short pieces of remembered dialogue, you can just drop them in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was midnight. My eyes were open and my mind was buzzing with the&#xA;  taunts of the students. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Idiot!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Why don't you just leave!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You're an embarrassment to the school!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I rolled over in bed. I couldn't sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader will probably get the idea. If the transition out of the memory seems confusing or abrupt, you can add some description that places the reader back in that bedroom at midnight. Have your character adjust the sheets or glance at the clock. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing in the past tense, some writers are confused about how to describe events that are further in the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach is to use the past perfect tense (verbs beginning with &quot;had&quot;) in your flashback. A little goes a long way here, and readers may be irritated by long passages written in past perfect. You'll probably find it's sufficient to use it at the beginning of the section, then switch back to the same simple past tense you use for the rest of the story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was midnight. My eyes were open and my mind was buzzing as I&#xA;  remembered the cruel treatment I had received from the students that&#xA;  morning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Melissa's mouth had curled into a cruel grin as she pinned me against&#xA;  the wall of the school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You think you're welcome here?&quot; she'd asked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Give her a real welcome,&quot; said Gina. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Melissa's fingers drew a teasing line down my face, then pinched my&#xA;  lips. It was agony. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The other girls laughed and jeered, then kicked and punched.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I rolled over in bed. I couldn't sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many other ways to set off memories and short flashbacks. Some writers do it by placing the past events (often part of a memory) in italics. Others use description, phrases like &quot;I remembered...&quot;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I remembered how Melissa's fingers had drawn a teasing line down my&#xA;  face...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no single &quot;correct&quot; way to do this. You may want to try different options and see which one you like best. Also consider whether you want to use flashbacks at all. It is often better to reveal a story in real time rather than through memories, and if events have already been described as they occurred, further reminders may not be necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T14:30:26.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20210" CreationDate="2016-01-22T14:59:24.347" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a complex question. The business of balancing information and story is always tricky. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One good approach is to give minimal information, then bury further descriptions in the course of the story. Tolkien often works like this. He offers a brief description of a character's appearance, and other details appear in the course of the story. He does the same with magic. At one point, Gandalf uses his fire magic to burn wood, but when the wood has gone, so evidently he can't create fire from nothing. This is important in the story, but the facts aren't set up in advance and don't need to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related but more deliberate approach is to withhold information and make a virtue of the mystery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I saw Virgaz in the marketplace. Fortunately, he didn't see me. I&#xA;  crushed a seed between my finger and brushed my sandal against the&#xA;  ground. Moments later, a horrified crowd was forming around his fat,&#xA;  dead body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be better than describing the wonderful magic system I have just invented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I saw Virgaz in the marketplace. Fortunately, he didn't see me. I&#xA;  carefully took a Mesher seed from the pouch at my belt. I looked at&#xA;  it. Within this tiny seed was an infant demon. If the seed was crushed&#xA;  or broken, the demon would be released, and its first task would be to&#xA;  feast upon a human life. A rune, drawn into the ground with finger or&#xA;  even foot, was sufficient to protect me from the demon's hunger, and,&#xA;  if I concentrated my thoughts, keeping Virgaz foremost in my mind and&#xA;  suggesting him as a target, the demon would follow my instructions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We writers often overexplain in this way. What might be seen here as vital information is boring and probably unnecessary. In a fantasy novel, it can easily turn magic into a mechanistic and rather un-magical routine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T14:59:24.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20560" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-22T16:14:28.140" Score="2" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I have a group of characters who go to a new land.  They're stuck on this land, and eventually encounter the culture.  How can I show their gradual assimilation/adaption of traits/characteristics of the new country to the point where they don't speak their native language and their native customs are now foreign-seeming to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T19:13:45.607" Title="Showing cultural assimilation" Tags="|character-development|world-building|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20560" CreationDate="2016-01-22T16:45:59.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say you just describe the details of the transition. It might help to look at how &quot;going native&quot; is handled by other authors. For example, James Clavell's &lt;em&gt;Shogun&lt;/em&gt; (sailor becomes samurai), or Heinlein's &lt;em&gt;Stranger in a Strange Land&lt;/em&gt; (human raised by aliens adjusts to Earth), or Kipling's &lt;em&gt;Jungle Book&lt;/em&gt; (boy raised by wolves and animals (eventually) encounters his own people). There are many more.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T16:45:59.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20554" CreationDate="2016-01-22T17:16:20.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what style you're using. If the number in square brackets indicates a superscript number for a footnote, it goes after all punctuation (including any quotation marks). The &lt;em&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt; recommends that footnote numbers follow all punctuation except a dash. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She said, &quot;It is wrong to write on a Wednesday.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is exactly what Lauren Ipsum recommended earlier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;APA style works differently. It indicates citations with parentheses rather than superscript or brackets. Citations go inside the quotation and are are preceded by a space. So: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a sentence using an idea taken from someone (2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a direct quote, things are slightly more tricky. The citation usually follows the quote marks but comes before other punctuation. This may involve removing the punctuation from the end of the quotation so you can add it after the quote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He said it was &quot;an outrage and a shame&quot; (2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not 100% sure what you'd do in cases where the quote ends in an exclamation mark or question mark—if, say, the original quote was &quot;This is an outrage and a shame!&quot; I don't see anything in the style guides I've checked (look it up under &quot;direct quotations&quot;) but I think I would probably add an extra period.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He said, &quot;This is an outrage and a shame!&quot; (2). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-01-22T21:12:12.557" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T21:12:12.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20560" CreationDate="2016-01-22T17:27:05.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This happens all the time in the real world.  Immigrant populations are constantly having to assimilate with new groups of people.  Most families have stories about odd things their grandparents or great grandparents did or words they used that were from the old country.  It's likely that you won't have to work too hard to find someone close to you that is going through this experience right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When my great-grandfather died, my great-grandmother had my great uncle go out into the yard and bring in a big pile of dirt from the garden and put it on the living room floor.  She then laid my great-grandfather's body on the pile of dirt.  Nobody in the family had any idea why.  They thought she was crazy.  Turns out it was a cultural tradition from parts of Eastern Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might try reading through some of the posts on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humansofnewyork.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.humansofnewyork.com&lt;/a&gt;.  Sometimes you don't have to be from somewhere else to have a hard time fitting in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cultural assimilation usually goes both ways.  There are recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencenordic.com/danish-bronze-age-glass-beads-traced-egypt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;archaeological findings&lt;/a&gt; where archaeologists are tying the sun worship cult in ancient Denmark to sun worship in Egypt.  When people move from one place to another they pick up new things but they also bring things with them, but it usually takes a lot of time.  Assimilation happens, but it's usually the children of the immigrants that assimilate and not so much the initial immigrants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were going to be realistic, what you'd probably have is that your group of people would stick together while moving into the new culture.  They might learn some of the new language and pick up some of the new ways of doing things, but it would be their children that would be the bridge.  The children would be the ones that would kind of fit into both cultures but not really in either of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that about groups, there are the individuals that you'll see that move from their own culture where maybe they didn't ever really fit in and adopt a new culture almost as a way of creating a new identity.  The movie Lawrence of Arabia is a good example of that, also C. J. Cherryh's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Faded_Sun_Trilogy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;The Faded Sun&quot;&lt;/a&gt; series.  And also this recent Escape Pod episode, &lt;a href=&quot;http://escapepod.org/2015/11/12/ep510-them-ships/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Them Ships.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Culture and customs are not some uniform thing.  Every family is a micro culture of its own with rituals, beliefs, and even family language that isn't shared outside the family.  Toddlers invent words that their parents pick up and use in regular family conversations.  I've found that the more children a family has, the richer their individual family language is.  No one family, no matter how similar they are to their neighbors, celebrates Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever the same exact way, but they are consistent within their individual families.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I hope I've answered your question and given you some ideas on how to proceed with this.  Short answer - I don't think the original group of people would forget their culture and customs, but if they were separated from their native people for long enough, I'm betting things would have changed enough back in the old country to make the old country seem &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19721/19721-h/19721-h.htm#RIP_VAN_WINKLE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;strange&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T17:27:05.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20557" CreationDate="2016-01-22T17:39:46.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obvious answer is to read more novels. At the same time, don't worry about your previous skill set; novels are as much about dialogue as they are prose. Try and have a strong grasp of figurative language while still remaining clear in your description of events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise I recommend learning to slow the pacing of the story quite a lot. You have time to be indulgent in v prose that you v don't in a screen play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an interesting middle ground, try writing a comic first. Comic writing is almost exactly like screen play writing except for the fact that it allows more structural play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16599" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T17:39:46.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20557" CreationDate="2016-01-22T18:33:03.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have an ability to write screenplays that even you are forced to describe as &quot;pretty spectacular.&quot; Given this, and your dislike of descriptive writing, I can't for the life of me understand why you want to make the transition to books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on your screenwriting. A screenplay will typically make you much more money a novel. Current WGA rates start at around $67,000 for a screenplay. Of course, a Hollywood production would make far more. Not many books get that kind of advance. Why bother with them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T18:33:03.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20560" CreationDate="2016-01-22T19:13:45.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd pick a few things and highlight them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like, at the beginning of the story the characters arrive in this culture and comment to each other about some strange custom. Like, &quot;Wow, these strange people wear socks with sandals. Why would anyone do that?&quot; Then later you mention one of the characters putting on socks and sandals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be subtle about it, you just say he did it and leave it at that, and leave it to the reader to realize, &quot;Hey, just a few chapters back didn't this same character say that this was a bizarre thing to do?&quot; If you're worried the reader might miss it, you can have another character ask him why he's doing this, and he replies, &quot;Oh, I don't know, I didn't think about it. It just seemed normal.&quot; If you really want to make a point of it, you can have the character say, &quot;Yes, now that we've been living here, I understand why the natives do this. You see ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the point of the story is their cultural assimilation, then you could go through this for many customs and practices. If that's just a side note or a step to something else, then just mentioning two or three such things would probably be plenty. I'd intersperse them with other action. Like have the first one be something very minor, then other stuff happens, etc, and then the last one is something big, the Greek sacrifices his son to Moloch or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T19:13:45.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20501" CreationDate="2016-01-22T20:07:01.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a thing called Stockholm syndrome, where one gains sympathy towards his/her captives.  Perhaps it is something in his/her backstory, or maybe he/she has been kept in captivity for so long.  Maybe you can implement this with your character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to go is to have a previous  truth stated by this potential-darksider or one of his/her friends that (s)he admires which gets proven false by the villain.  This can be a gateway revelation to help the potential-darksider start doubting his/her teammates and/or self.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe something his/her friends do gets misinterpreted, and the character, with his/her morals unclear, will challenge one of his/her friends and have small arguments with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it starts out with small doubts/ second-guessing that then get proven right after something bad happens to the character and his/her friends after he/she is broken out of prison.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this can serve as an epiphany point for your character--that his/her morals, ideas, whatever-- aren't getting the job done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, use internal monologue to help the character logically reach his/her decision, and don't forget to use subtle foreshadowing in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, check out Star Wars episode I-III.  In them, the reasons for Anakin's turn are foreshadowed at an ever-increasing frequency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck, and make sure to tell us how you finally do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T20:07:01.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20500" CreationDate="2016-01-22T20:10:18.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's your book, but I'd suggest using real places for the majority.  What if one of your readers were from that city, and become annoyed at inaccuracies?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you can still get away with making a school up, as long as it's not supposed to be a well-known school.  I did this in my own novel.  Plop it down on a nonexistent street and done give any landmarks, and voila! J.K. Rowling did this in Harry Potter, if you want examples you can read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T20:10:18.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20488" CreationDate="2016-01-22T20:12:58.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you use nerdy-language to build up a sense of authenticity.  However, you might not want to use it for all objects.  And the ones that you do use, I'd suggest you give a BRIEF explanation about what it is.  Read Jurassic Park.  It does this well with biological terms... But then again, I know biology very well, so I may be slightly biology-biased... Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T20:12:58.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20485" CreationDate="2016-01-22T20:15:32.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, go ahead.  However, you might want to think about adding some Indian cultures into the mix, just to make it interesting.  But then again, this is your book, and of course you can write it however you want.  I wrote an entire book with made-up traditions that make no sense in the current world, so do whatever you feel like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T20:15:32.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20477" CreationDate="2016-01-22T20:19:55.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well I had a book that I really wanted to write and I wrote it.  And then it was pathetic.  But I came back to it a few years later and edited it to death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line, write what you want now, because you might not get a chance later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T20:19:55.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20366" CreationDate="2016-01-22T20:30:00.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of Polari.  However, I'm not from the U.K.  Maybe combine it with another language.  Or keep it, because probably no Americans have ever heard of it.  It IS a secret language after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T20:30:00.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18028" CreationDate="2016-01-22T20:48:44.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like that you have him be referred to by different names.  It adds nuance to his character.  Now, I did something like this in one of my books.  There was a character whose full name was never used at all to reference her, except in the very beginning.  It's her formal name, and is only listed on official documents, and so on.  Then there's her nickname, which is used for the majority of the book.  Then a single character calls her something else.  However, I use  the nickname the most frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in the example above, Andreas can just turn his head around when someone calls him.  The reader will understand that the other person is referring to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could explain up front about his three names, only this way means that you have to avoid THE DREADED BACKSTORY DUMP.  Good luck, and I hope the force goes with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T20:48:44.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20468" CreationDate="2016-01-22T20:52:21.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now, you don't have to listen to any of these rules.  As long as your dialogue isn't overly convoluted, like &quot;ba'aout tiym' dn'tch'y'a th'n'k?&quot; You should be fine.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T20:52:21.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20461" CreationDate="2016-01-22T20:54:53.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of Ulysses.  I'd suggest you write everything down, even if it contradicts itself.  Then you work on fixing it when you edit.  Whatever you do,  DO NOT BECOME PARALYZED IN A BOG OF DOUBT!  Cheers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T20:54:53.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20433" CreationDate="2016-01-22T20:57:07.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd write it all out.  Then edit to death.  Sure, it's inefficient, and sure, you might have to spend a few extra years on it.  But at least you've gotten it out.  And maybe outline.  Outlining helps too.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T20:57:07.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20488" CreationDate="2016-01-22T21:39:53.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technical jargon can be incorporated into the story with varying degrees of success and effect. Unfortunately, there is not a formula to determine if there is too much in your story. In most cases, it is better to leave out the details of all of the technical inner workings, and leave that part up to the imagination of your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to determine if there is too much technical mumbo-jumbo is to let people do peer reviews of portions of your work. As the author, you might think an entire chapter that describes the inner-workings of a robot, toaster, etc, but your readers may disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to be aware of is that it does not take much to turn a reader off, and have them permanently put your book back on the shelf. A good writer knows their audience, and they know how to keep them entertained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get around the problem of boring your readers with useless technical information. You can give a physical description without getting too detail oriented. Just as example, if you are writing about a car, you don't need to write about the parts of the engine, but you opt to write about what the top speed is, and about the physical features such as the make, model, color, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to write more about the technical aspects, then those details should be ones that will come in handy later. If you were writing about a robot and you mentioned how high it could jump, then you should write about it jumping later on in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T21:39:53.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-22T22:29:13.063" Score="3" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you do find you have a best place to do your writing? In the movies, writers seem to live and work in places with beautiful homes (lighthouses, windmills...) overlooking a valley or the sea. I've never found that scenery did much for me, but I had one productive stint working with a co-writer in the concrete-walled basement of an optometrist's office. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a location, or type of location, that makes you more productive? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T15:59:37.897" Title="Where do you do your writing?" Tags="|writers-block|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-01-24T03:36:04.293" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20581" CreationDate="2016-01-22T23:40:45.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you enjoy a beautiful view, then a place where there is a beautiful view is probably the WORST place to write, because you'd be constantly distracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe for some people the right setting could help put you in the mood. I'm sure that wouldn't work for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall when I was in college a teacher once gave the advice to always study in the same place, because then you quickly get to know the place, and it's boring. If you work in some new and strange place, the moment you start getting bored or tired with the job you're going to look around and say, &quot;Hey, what's that over there? ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I write sitting on the sofa in my library. It's comfortable, there's good light, and if I'm writing something that requires research, all my books are right there. Downside: there's a TV in the room, so if I get bored it's way too easy to say, hey, I'll just watch TV for a little bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T23:40:45.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20581" CreationDate="2016-01-22T23:49:25.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question doesn't really have an answer and should probably be closed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'll give my own perspective on the role location can play in productivity. Movies rarely depict the life of a creative in a realistic light. Some people write in coffee shops or offices, sure, but I'd hazard to say just as many people end up doing their best writing while sitting on their couch in their underwear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think location is all that important so long as it's comfortable and you can &lt;strong&gt;maintain focus&lt;/strong&gt;. So places that are loud or offer a wide variety of distractions are probably best avoided. Personally, I write pretty frequently sitting on the floor of my bathroom. No distractions, it's quiet, and it's not so comfortable that I feel the urge to take a nap. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16582" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T23:49:25.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20581" CreationDate="2016-01-23T00:31:04.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this question may be a good one. Perhaps the writer thinks that he doesn't have the proper writing space and that's why he has the block. In my opinion, any place and any tool that works is a good one. Piers Anthony used to write in a storage shed with a typewriter on a card table. I'd never feel comfortable there. I had long writer's block until I got an iPad. I do my first drafts on it because I like the freedom. I can stand up, lie or sit down. I can use any location because it fits in my purse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no magic formula guaranteed to get you writing. Just keep moving around until something works for you. I firmly believe that writer's block can be caused simply because you're trying to write in an environment that doesn't work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T00:31:04.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20210" CreationDate="2016-01-23T00:46:22.980" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to give another answer that goes in a different direction than my first. Write down every detail about what you're dumping about. Then look at each detail. Is it REALLY vital that the character know everything that there is to know about the entire history and every nuance of the magic? Probably not. You may feel it's vital, but it's probably not. If it's vital to the story, you can work it in little bits at a time later, but I see no need to do huge dumps that explain 200 years of history in one sitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you had a guest over that had no experience at all with electricity. They say it's dark and they'd like some light in the room. They are standing next to the light switch. What do you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you tell them the history of electricity and the invention of the lightbulb? Do you tell them all of the science involved to make it work? Do you tell them about how the house was wired with copper and how electricity comes from a power station far away? Do you tell them all the other things you can do with electricity besides make lights?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No! You tell them that there's a thing next to them called a switch. If they wiggle it, the light will turn on. They may be fascinated and ask all sorts of question later, but chances are that if they've never been exposed to electricity, they won't even know what questions to ask until they've been around it longer and notice that it seems to work in predictable ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might step outside a day later and point to the telephone poles and say that electricity comes to the houses through them. You might be cooking and show them how electricity makes the stove hot. If you dumped out all of this info at once the poor guy would have no idea what you're talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as a writer, it may be important for you to know everything, but the reader doesn't really have to know what you know. You have to know it so your rules. Of magic are consistent, but really, the characters don't have to know everything in the world about it to understand it well enough to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T00:46:22.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20593" CreationDate="2016-01-23T01:26:59.967" Score="5" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have decided to take up writing as a hobby. First because I have so many ideas and like creating things. Second, because I enjoy it so far and thirdly, I like the idea that if my writing is any good, others may want to read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my issue right now has to do with my approach to writing. I am working on a sci-fi novel with integrate plot lines. I have been spending most of my time developing the plot lines and trying to storyboard them. I haven't worked out a climax that I like yet but I feel like I'm spending so much time preparing to write, with out having done much narrative writing yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I don't feel like I can properly begin writing until I have the story clearly laid out in my mind. I'm sure everyone does things differently. I don't feel like I can write this kind of story in a free flowing create-while-you-write method.  But since this is my first attempt at weighting a novel, I don't know if I'm being too perfectionist, or if I'm getting stuck in planning mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16627" LastEditorUserId="14560" LastEditDate="2016-02-18T02:27:26.443" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T02:27:26.443" Title="Need guidance on my writing method" Tags="|technique|planning|organization|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20589" CreationDate="2016-01-23T01:36:29.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start writing. Don't be so afraid to get it wrong. A writer can get a long way by emphasizing quantity over quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T01:36:29.260" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20589" CreationDate="2016-01-23T01:49:27.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I just spill my heart and soul and guts onto the page, and then arrange it all into a good book afterwards.  I am doing this with the first book I've ever written, and although it takes a couple of years, you eventually get good enough to edit it into something great.  Cheerio!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T01:49:27.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2016-01-23T01:51:34.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fanfic can help you learn writing skills if you treat it as a professional project.  If you strive to make it the best it can be, then you will have learned something while doing it.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T01:51:34.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20589" CreationDate="2016-01-23T01:51:41.837" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plotters, and discovery writers. You sound like a plotter. There's nothing wrong with that. Take the time you need to outline your story so you feel comfortable with it, and additionally accept that things will change as you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many different methods to creating a plot, and none of them are wrong; you just have to figure out what works for you. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Snowflake Method&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/193290736X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hero's Journey&lt;/a&gt; are two structures/processes which I've recommended before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be wary of, and what happens more often to SF/F fantasy writers, is Worldbuilder's Syndrome, where you spend so much time creating the world for your story to be set in and polishing all the details that you never get around to writing your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-02-17T22:32:47.663" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T22:32:47.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20210" CreationDate="2016-01-23T01:57:26.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Brandon Mull has a very well-paced narration in his series &lt;em&gt;Fablehaven&lt;/em&gt;. In the book Kendra and Seth have to get used to this new side-of-reality. While Kendra and Seth are in this preserve(land in the book), they have to learn about creatures and such. Reading his books should give you an idea on how to disperse the information. &lt;em&gt;Beyonders&lt;/em&gt; is also another one by Brandon Mull. Just explain stuff as you go. Have the character learn fast but paced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16528" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T01:57:26.697" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20553" CreationDate="2016-01-23T03:05:19.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first is most often seen. Most journals have their own specifications for citations, but that one is very common. Also note you don't always have to place them at the end of a sentence. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0143047&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16582" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T03:05:19.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5341" CreationDate="2016-01-23T05:24:57.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key to good tech writing is not style. Style helps with clarity, and that is useful, but it is not enough. They key is to present the right information to enable a particular user, with a particular background and set of skills, to complete a task. The goal is correct action, not necessarily understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too much information is almost as bad as not enough. At best it slows the reader down. At worst it saps their confidence. If they can't see the relevance of the information to their task, they begin to worry that they don't understand the task or the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to learn to be a good tech writer, therefore, is to figure out what information people do and do not need. There are several ways to do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One it to do the task yourself and carefully note what information is needed -- particularly noting when you already know something that your target audience may not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another is to observe actual users, but this can be expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third is to study forums that cover products like yours and see what kinds of questions people ask and what kinds information they need before they are able to successfully solve their problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T05:24:57.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20581" CreationDate="2016-01-23T13:59:11.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on how your brain works, and because of that, everyone's solution will be different. It will probably even change from day to day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some days I like silence, but most days I like music. Some days I feel lonely and go to Starbucks (wishing for a more bohemian experience like when I lived in Portland!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, exercise helps, TV doesn't. My brief stints of block are solved by doing chores and blogging. Computer and video games are a bad idea. If you prefer structure, you can set up a space where you live, decorate as you wish, and use it as an office. My imagination flows pretty freely: laptop on the kitchen table, coffee, and music in the background--and I'm usually good to go for four hours. But that's just me. I will now stop blogging and get back to work ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T13:59:11.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20599" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-23T15:57:29.327" Score="3" ViewCount="315" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of you have probably read a sequel to a book and have found it to be worse than the original book.  I am writing a sequel and would like to know if there is any way to avoid this &quot;sequelitis&quot;.  Does anyone have any tips/ things to look out for when writing a sequel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-03-22T11:18:49.800" LastActivityDate="2019-03-22T11:18:49.800" Title="Sequels and avoiding sequelitis" Tags="|creative-writing|structure|book|sequel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20581" CreationDate="2016-01-23T15:59:37.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not really.  I just write in my room or in my office.  I'm pretty productive wherever I write.  I've heard that changing the location where you write can change the way you write, but I haven't tried this out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T15:59:37.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5341" CreationDate="2016-01-23T18:06:56.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Write and seek feedback!&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Useful ways to get feedback:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Volunteer for writing projects that will be reviewed critically.&lt;/strong&gt; Reviewers are often more attentive and critical when reviewing promotional content, rather than technical. However, for many products, promotional content &lt;em&gt;needs&lt;/em&gt; to be technical. As a technical writer, you should know your company's products pretty well. By volunteering for projects that are traditionally considered &quot;promotional&quot;, you can help ensure accuracy and clarity of promotional content, while opening yourself up to more and better feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cultivate relationships with reviewers who value clear communication.&lt;/strong&gt; Be appreciative of reviewers who give good constructive criticism. Ensure reviewers understand that their criticism makes you a better writer, which translates to better content and a better brand image.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Participate on stackexchange.&lt;/strong&gt; Although I have just started using this site, I have already noticed that community members are great at copy editing questions/answers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16585" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T18:06:56.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20599" CreationDate="2016-01-23T18:39:32.207" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have a new story to tell.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't planned out your overall story as a series from the beginning (that is, you deliberately set it up to be three, five, seven, etc. books), and you're just writing an additional story with the same characters, then make sure you have a reason to write something about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your sequel should have a beginning, middle, and end. It should be a standalone story (even if you need the previous story to understand it, which isn't the same thing). It should have a reason for existing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be a rehash of the first story.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take a TV example, the show &lt;em&gt;Heroes&lt;/em&gt; did very well in its first year because it was very fresh and new and was telling new stories, despite uneven writing. Creator Tim Kring thought that people enjoyed the idea of &quot;characters slowly discovering they have powers&quot; and created a new batch of people slowly discovering they have powers at the beginning of Season 2. However, what people were really enjoying was the crazy breakneck pace of the end of Season 1, where the characters had &lt;em&gt;finished&lt;/em&gt; discovering and were now &lt;em&gt;doing&lt;/em&gt;. So Season 2 was, in a word, dreadful. Kring was trying to write Season 1 over again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast that with the movie &lt;em&gt;How to Train Your Dragon&lt;/em&gt; and the sequel. The first movie is about Hiccup and Toothless learning to trust one another and being able to work together to end the Viking-Dragon war. But the sequel is set five years later. There's already peace; they don't re-fight that battle. Hiccup and Toothless face dragon trappers, a dragon-kidnapping vigilante, and a crazy war leader. There has been significant character development for everyone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So whatever story you told in your first book, make your sequel something completely different.&lt;/strong&gt; If it was a Hero's Journey, the new one can be a family drama. If your first book was an origin story, your sequel can be your newly minted hero/ine(s) learning how to use his/her/their gifts, alone or in concert, on a regular basis, and how that fits into everyday life &amp;mdash; what happens &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the debut. If your first one is a romcom, the second can be a political battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T18:39:32.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20487" CreationDate="2016-01-23T18:49:22.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just from what I saw online, it looks like prisons during that time period were almost more of like work camps. Almost everyone was wearing black and white striped pants and shirts, and it almost had the same atmosphere as a Nazi prison camp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16626" LastEditorUserId="47470" LastEditDate="2021-02-18T02:56:45.960" LastActivityDate="2021-02-18T02:56:45.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20605" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-23T22:17:11.653" Score="5" ViewCount="229045" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote the sentence: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From far away, he could easily be mistaken for a ten year-old, at 5’1 he was as thin as a rail and wore a flannel shirt tucked into a brown, leather belt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote 5'1. When writing height in fiction, is it 5'1? Or Five-foot-one? or neither?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16635" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-07-28T05:13:25.673" LastActivityDate="2019-07-28T05:13:25.673" Title="How should I write a height in feet and inches?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|numerals|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20605" CreationDate="2016-01-23T22:24:20.310" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Chicago Manual of Style, they recommend spelling it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;At five foot one, he was as thin as a rail.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases a hyphen may help avoid ambiguity. If it's being used as an adjective, you might add hyphens. &quot;His five-foot-two-inch body was thin as a rail.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use numbers if you prefer—&quot;He was 5'2&quot; and small for his age&quot;—no spaces, and be sure to add the mark for inches. There's no absolute right or wrong here. Styles vary with different publishers. The main thing is to be consistent within your story. Don't spell it out in one place and use numbers somewhere else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T22:24:20.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20607" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-23T22:32:40.533" Score="0" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote the sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Walking into the room, Zion was standing at a tall drafting table putting together what looked like a space station with his legos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When using brand names for toys, should I write Lego or legos or Legos? Because there's more than one lego. I was thinking legos, but I know the brand name is Lego.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16635" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-01-24T03:27:31.173" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T14:34:20.227" Title="How do I refer to a trademarked object in fiction?" Tags="|creative-writing|trademark|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20500" CreationDate="2016-01-23T22:42:16.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a good idea to invent a school name if your story presents the school in a bad light. For example, if you are writing a fictional story about someone being sexually abused in class, and the school officials do nothing about it, you are moving in dangerous territory. Regardless of any disclaimer at the start of your book, people may think the events are true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another potential problem with a real school is that you then need to be extra careful with character names. Say you create a hypocritical teacher, Mr Jones, or a mean student named Jen White, it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; cause legal issues for you if, coincidentally, the names match real people, and your novel embarrasses them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your novel ever gets turned into a movie or TV series, lawyers will go through every name and check whether or not they are real. If they are, they often have to be changed so the production can get insurance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to be too paranoid about it. There may be good reasons to use a real location—in which case, be careful what you say about it. Usually, though the best practice is to drop in some neutral references to real places to set the scene, and invent a plausible sounding school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T22:42:16.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20501" CreationDate="2016-01-23T22:59:57.180" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this part is a problem: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His friends understand what he has been through whilst in prison, so&#xA;  they would not be unreasonably antagonistic towards him in order to&#xA;  make him leave them so abruptly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are usually too much in their own heads to be that understanding of someone else's experiences. And why make them so understanding if it just causes you problems? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, when you have a group of people who think one thing or act in one way (&quot;his friends understand...&quot;), it's often a sign that you need to think more about the individuals in the group and differentiate their views. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, maybe...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jimmy idolizes the hero, misses him, and wants him back. (Your&#xA;hero used to enjoy this adulation, but now it feels meaningless.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will K is impatient to have your hero back in the gang. There are a&lt;br&gt;&#xA;few schemes he's had to put on hold. (And your hero suddenly starts&lt;br&gt;&#xA;to see that he's just a pawn in Will's plans.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Butterball is apprehensive about your hero getting out. While your&lt;br&gt;&#xA;hero was in prison, Butterball has moved into the number two&#xA;position, and he doesn't want to lose his status. (Your hero used to&#xA;see Butterball as a joke, but now sees a threat from him.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this is the type of group you have in mind, but whatever it is, try to work out the details of each person's feelings. I think you will then see various ways to move forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T22:59:57.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20610" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-23T23:05:46.880" Score="0" ViewCount="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote the sentence:Our next door neighbors that lived on either side of the fence were shooting them off, although we could barely see them because of the huge Lilac bushes that separated our yard from their's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spelling and check has an issue with the word &quot;their's&quot; at the end of the sentence.  Is there anything wrong with using their's?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16635" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T03:15:18.650" Title="Editing fiction and proofreading" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-02-06T22:26:32.630" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-23T23:41:43.073" Score="1" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you use italics in first person if you are showing the main character's inner thoughts even if the main character is also the narrator?  I was told by someone if your whole novel is in first person you don't need italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote the sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Zion turned the corner into the yard, just then-huffing and puffing real loud.  He began pacing in circles.  I wondered where he just came from.  &lt;em&gt;Did he find Burns? And if so, did Zion and Burns have a fight over the ruined tank?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(the asterisks sentence is in italics) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16635" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-01-24T03:28:30.700" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T22:04:10.233" Title="How should I format a point-of-view character's thoughts?" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20610" CreationDate="2016-01-23T23:42:20.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's supposed to be &quot;theirs&quot; instead.  Spellcheck doesn't always work right, but sometimes it does.  Try a grammar book if you're still confused, consult a grammar book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T23:42:20.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20610" CreationDate="2016-01-23T23:46:19.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;People sometimes get confused with &quot;hers&quot; &quot;its&quot; &quot;theirs&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember, they're in the same family as &quot;his&quot;—and you wouldn't write hi's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T23:46:19.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20611" CreationDate="2016-01-23T23:57:23.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the thought interrupts the description the way a piece of dialogue does, you can italicize. (Some writers use quotation marks instead, while still others capitalize the thought like a quotation, but without the quote marks.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of italics is to separate the character's thought from the rest of the text and avoid any confusion between what's going on in the character's mind and what's happening in the &quot;real&quot; world around him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, it looks like the thoughts are part of the flow of the narration, so you don't need to separate them with italics. (If you get too heavy with the italics, it can get annoying for the reader.) However, for added clarity, you could perhaps put the thoughts in a separate paragraph from the more descriptive passages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He began pacing in circles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where had he come from? Did he find Burns? And if so, did Zion and&#xA;  Burns have a fight over the ruined tank?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have too many of these narrator thoughts, then by all means italicize them and run the paragraphs together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T23:57:23.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20607" CreationDate="2016-01-24T00:03:48.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In description, unless you're trying to capture a folksy voice, they're Lego bricks, with a capital L (it's a trademark). An individual one is a Lego brick, or just brick. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, people sometimes call them Legos in real life, so you could use that term in dialogue, even though it's not officially correct. I would still give it the capital L though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By convention, trademarks are capitalized. So a drug name like Zantac is capitalized, because it's a trademark, but heroin would not be. However, heroin used to be a trademark (it was a Bayer product), and would have been written Heroin. Now it has become a generic term for the drug and is lowercased. Similarly, tarmac (the stuff they make runways out of) is written lowercase these days, but was a trademark. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not usually the writer's responsibility to protect a manufacturer's intellectual property rights. Capitalizing a trademark is all you need to do, and you should not add trademark® symbols™, unless you're working for the company that owns the trademark and they insist on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't capitalize a word like Kleenex or Lego, you or your publisher are quite likely to get a letter from the company's lawyers advising you to do so in future. A company that doesn't take these steps to protect its trademark is likely to lose it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastEditorUserId="16571" LastEditDate="2016-01-25T14:34:20.227" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T14:34:20.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20616" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-24T00:22:05.017" Score="2" ViewCount="664" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any 'active' irc channels designed for writers? I say active, because I've found a couple channels, bit they were all empty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16637" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T01:04:45.600" Title="IRC for Creative Writers" Tags="|community|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20617" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20633" CreationDate="2016-01-24T00:56:08.707" Score="4" ViewCount="2546" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was a kid, I could sit down put the pencil to the paper and the words would just flow; then I was diagnosed with OCD and things started changing for me. The words don't flow anymore, and whenever I try to write I typically just stare at the page waiting, or get a few lines down before scrapping it as hopeless drivel. I know what my problem is, thankfully, it's simply that I'm over thinking it all. In this question I'm asking for advice on how to write again, I'll never get the words to flow quite the same way again, but maybe if I can find a system to stop myself from thinking too much and editing myself, I can at least start writing again. I love to write, it's the only way I've ever been able to express myself and my emotions properly. Through writing, I'm free, but without it, I feel caged and lost. So please, help me find a way to write again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16637" LastActivityDate="2018-03-01T15:54:10.987" Title="OCD Writing Techniques" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20611" CreationDate="2016-01-24T01:29:26.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't necessarily need the italics if it's first-person inner-monologue.  This is basically where the character thinks.  If you want to show that the character actually thought something in a specific way, then you can use italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T01:29:26.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20617" CreationDate="2016-01-24T01:33:20.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Listen to music.  I suggest Two Steps From Hell or Thomas Bergerson.  Both of them write inspirational music pieces that will let your mind be transported somewhere else other than scrutinizing your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing: is it because you've been diagnosed with OCD that you feel you can't write freely anymore?  Maybe this diagnosis has put a mental block in your way.  Maybe think to yourself something like &quot;just because I have OCD doesn't mean I have no flow&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T01:33:20.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20557" CreationDate="2016-01-24T01:35:47.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd force myself to spend 20 or so minutes on only describing one scene or only going through a single character's internal monologue.  Stop yourself from going ahead and only work on describing/monologue.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T01:35:47.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20610" CreationDate="2016-01-24T03:15:18.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Their's&amp;quot; isn't a word. The correct term is &amp;quot;theirs.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, you would add an apostrophe and an &amp;quot;s&amp;quot; to show possession. (For example: &amp;quot;It was the dog's bone.&amp;quot;) However, an apostrophe is unnecessary when using these words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;he &amp;gt; his&lt;/strong&gt; (It was his money. The money was his.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;she &amp;gt; her/hers&lt;/strong&gt; (It was her money. They money was hers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;it &amp;gt; its&lt;/strong&gt; (It was its money. The money was its.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;them &amp;gt; their/theirs&lt;/strong&gt; (It was their money. The money was theirs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;you &amp;gt; your/yours&lt;/strong&gt; (It was your money. The money was yours.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T03:15:18.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20616" CreationDate="2016-01-24T05:18:28.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few floating around that are at least semi-active and usually have a few people in them. I'll list two that I've found helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.snoonet.org/allnightwriters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;#allnightwriters on snoonet&lt;/a&gt; stems from the subreddit with the same name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.snoonet.org/shutupandwrite&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;#shutupandwrite on snoonet&lt;/a&gt; is a personal favorite.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many others that are more genre-specific, you just have to search a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16582" LastEditorUserId="16582" LastEditDate="2016-01-27T01:04:45.600" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T01:04:45.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2016-01-24T06:24:55.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a practical production standpoint, it's best to write them as two scenes, because for the newscaster's setting and dialogue, it will need to be shot in a separate studio or building, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside about style: if you're not going to direct it, eliminate shooting directions except where it's absolutely essential to effectively conveying the story. Directors often ignore shooting directions and reinvent things spontaneously as they go; and they might have a better idea about how to shoot it besides (or, at least, &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; they do). &quot;THE RETURN OF THE KING&quot; almost completely ignores all shooting directions in the script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16640" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T06:24:55.257" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20617" CreationDate="2016-01-24T08:05:02.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might try voice recording instead of writing. I sometimes brainstorm by recording during my morning commute. It uses a different part of your brain... Can't hurt to try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T08:05:02.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20605" CreationDate="2016-01-24T20:54:20.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend you don’t write it in feet and inches at all. Those are antique, non-standard measurements that are understood by maybe 10% of the world population, and that number is shrinking in size every single day. You can not only make your manuscript understandable by the whole world if you use modern, standardized measurements, you can also future-proof your manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your subject is 155 centimeters tall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T20:54:20.067" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20611" CreationDate="2016-01-24T21:23:26.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Placing italics with thoughts in first person puts you in a difficult position because you will frequently be faced with that decision. Where do you draw the line?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would draw it where you have a tense change from past to present. And possibly from past to past perfect, but that doesn't really alter the reader's flow. Change to italics lets the reader know you have jumped time frame. It's analogous to regular dialogue in a third-person, past-tense point of view. However, several successful writers simply stick to roman in first person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-01-24T22:04:10.233" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T22:04:10.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20617" CreationDate="2016-01-24T22:02:38.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't be offended, but what does OCD have to do with this?  What intrusive thoughts are you dealing with that keep you from writing?  Is it just the editing and rewriting too much, so much that you realize its not a real problem with the writing but OCD?  Is it you need this &quot;feeling&quot; to make the words &quot;flow.&quot;  Most people with OCD realize something in their thought process is irrational.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you need to identify your OCD thoughts and follow what your counselor is telling you, assuming you still have one (you mentioned you were diagnosed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deal with the OCD first or at the same time you're fighting your writers block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is making a significant impact on your life, and if this is keeping you from enjoying life, then get more counseling and help or practice what you've been taught.  It is a lifelong problem you are battling, so don't give up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, it sounds like you are waiting for inspiration before writing.  If that is true you will never write very much.  You have to discipline yourself, and with life's responsibilities that is not easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T22:02:38.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20630" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20631" CreationDate="2016-01-24T22:48:51.347" Score="18" ViewCount="4549" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel, and I think I've come up with a very good title (The Power of the Powerless). It conveys the moral question of the story well, and gives a good sense of the style of the story. Unfortunately, when I googled the title, it was the same as the title of a political essay written during the Cold War. The title isn't trademarked. Should I keep it or change it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16626" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2021-12-29T14:06:19.953" LastActivityDate="2021-12-29T14:06:19.953" Title="What should I do if my book's title is already taken?" Tags="|fiction|copyright|titles|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20630" CreationDate="2016-01-24T23:58:48.337" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think the title is the best fit for your novel, you should keep it. There are many novels with the same name in the market, which makes it a little hard to find a novel with smaller market presence written by unknown author. Thus why, it is only a problem if the novel you're writing has the same name with another novel written by an author with more market presence than you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a novel and the name is already in use for a political essay, it won't hurt you at all. If you want to be safe, put &quot;[your name]'s Power of the Powerless&quot; as the title. I don't think it's necessary, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15738" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T23:58:48.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20630" CreationDate="2016-01-25T01:17:35.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Titles cannot be copyrighted or trademarked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, “Star Wars” is trademarked, but not because of the book or movie. It is the toys and other goods that enable the trademark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you should go ahead and use your title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T01:17:35.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20617" CreationDate="2016-01-25T01:46:21.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If marijuana is legal where you live, you should consider it. The marijuana you find on the street is typically “party marijuana,” but at a dispensary, you will find many different strains for all kinds of purposes, including treating ADD and OCD, while allowing you to still think clearly and have creative energy. A key thing is that they don’t have the horrible side effects of the complex chemicals that are found at a corporate pharmacy and prescribed by corporate doctors, which can not only hurt your body in myriad ways but can often switch off all creativity. Choose an edible marijuana product like gummy bears or use a vaporizer for maximum healthfulness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, keep in mind that OCD or not, writing is like working out in that you can’t go from zero minutes of writing per day to 8 hours of writing per day overnight. You should set a goal to write for 5 good minutes per day and once you have achieved that, work on 10 good minutes per day, and so on until you are doing a 4 hour session. A lot of writers — OCD or not — try to do too much too soon and then feel like they have failed, but it’s just that your burnout level is very low if you haven’t been writing daily. Treat it like a workout plan and allow your body and mind time to adapt to more and more writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also remember that when we are kids, we have a special energy and focus that enables us to learn the things we need to learn to survive. It’s not quite the same when we are adults. Again, OCD or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you can try is exercise. For some people with OCD, a really good workout plan sort of tires out the OCD and gives them some relief. You might find that if you workout for an hour, you then have a window of 1–4 hours when you have the best chance of doing a good writing session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is good that you asked for some help. Keep working at this and asking for help as you go and you will conquer it. Don’t be too down about it because many great writers faced similar challenges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T01:46:21.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20607" CreationDate="2016-01-25T01:51:38.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don’t think trademark has anything to do with it. “Lego” is a proper name, so you capitalize it. If there is more than one, you put an “s” on the end to show that. So you get “his Legos.” You would also write “Bill” or “Stan” or “Rover” or “Google” or “MacBook” with capitals, and only some of those are trademarked. If someone carries 2 MacBooks, you could write “his MacBooks.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T01:51:38.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20630" CreationDate="2016-01-25T02:48:43.730" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked in bookstores for 10 years and libraries for five. You have no idea how often someone asks for a title that seems unique, but two or even three hits come up. It's even worse when it's a single word title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd check and see what the other book is about. If the subject matter is too similar and its recently published, it might cause confusion. But if the other book is 30 years older and is a totally different book style, the issue isn't too bad. You want the online shopper, bookseller, librarian or shelf browser to easily distinguish your book from the other one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a bookseller can ask, &quot;Is it that new romance novel or a 30 year old book about macrame?&quot; Even the most clueless customers can figure out which one they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T02:48:43.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20636" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20637" CreationDate="2016-01-25T03:29:55.327" Score="4" ViewCount="1081" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a novel, particurlarly fiction, what are the basic ways to reveal something that happened in the past? What ways, (flashback, protagonist telling, etc.) are the most used and most effective? Specifically, what is the technical distinction between the protagonist having a flashback, and a flashback that is only for the reader? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16626" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T23:39:47.337" Title="Different types of &quot;Flashbacks&quot;" Tags="|creative-writing|flashback|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20636" CreationDate="2016-01-25T04:07:14.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting question. Here's my take:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dialogue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;So in ninety-one, I was following the Grateful Dead around the country. I swear, the last two minutes of 'Black-Throated Wind' from that MSG show was one of the highlights of human history.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third-person omniscient information dump&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Fans of the musical band the Grateful Dead widely regard their show from 9/10/91 at Madison Square Garden a top performance in the band's illustrious history thanks in part to a cameo appearance by renowned saxophonist Branford Marsalis.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A true psychedelic-style flashback (usually first person)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I hadn't taken LSD in 25 years. One minute I was with my friends reliving our wilder days now that our kids are grown ... The world spins, and lights flash all around me. Confusion dominates my psychology because there is no saxophonist in the Grateful Dead, right? Apparently there is tonight! I can't imagine a sweeter sound.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dream states&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either 3) or 4) have to be done extremely well not to appear sophomoric. You might try the movies &lt;em&gt;Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Memento&lt;/em&gt; for some very interesting takes on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All four are common in fiction and their effectiveness varies with author and scene. I tend to use mostly dialogue, but I dabble in the others. Information dumps are specifically for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll add 5) &lt;strong&gt;Third-person limited thinking about one's past.&lt;/strong&gt; This is usually done in past perfect, and it can make for confusing sentences &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Joe thought about that time from 1991. He had used drugs, to be sure, but he had known at the time it was a special moment either way. Only later did he realize how special it was. Would he ever feel that way again?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-01-25T16:38:43.470" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T16:38:43.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20630" CreationDate="2016-01-25T12:21:51.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're using a title already used before, you should check out how popular that book was. If it was, then you should probably change it. Chances are that it might still be fresh in peoples' memories. Each book title should be as unique as possible. However, if the previous book was not so well known and is deeply buried in the mists of time, then you can go ahead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12670" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T12:21:51.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20640" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-25T12:36:35.370" Score="3" ViewCount="505" Body="&lt;p&gt;In advance of the recent blizzard which struck the East Coast of the U.S., many media outlets were trying to coin a catchy name to describe the event (mainly to hashtag it on social media, let’s be honest). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What struck me was that no one name really caught on &amp;mdash; people were using repeats from previous years, like Snowmageddon and Snowpocalypse; Slate tried desperately to make “David Snowie” work; The Weather Channel labeled it “Jonas”; and there was a lot of defaulting to “blizzard2016.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting parts of two words together to create something new is called a &lt;em&gt;portmanteau,&lt;/em&gt; from the French word for “suitcase”; it's also known as a name smush or a ship name. The modern, culturally relevant version started with celebrity pairings (Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez were the original &lt;em&gt;Bennifer&lt;/em&gt;) and has exploded from there, especially names for fictional &quot;ships&quot; (romantic relationships which are discussed or imagined for TV or movie characters) and any brouhaha which can be combined with &quot;-gate&quot; (from the Watergate Hotel, the scene of a break-in which started the scandal which toppled U.S. President Nixon). No single portmanteau for this storm became popular, which makes me wonder if it was because no one could figure out a good new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the criteria for a good portmanteau?&lt;/strong&gt; What aspects should you think about when trying to coin such a term? What makes &quot;Snowmaggedon&quot; and &quot;Brangelina&quot; and &quot;Johnlock&quot; work but not &quot;BeyonZ&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T01:23:15.310" Title="Tips for Coming Up with a Good Portmanteau (Name Smush)" Tags="|naming|social-media|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20630" CreationDate="2016-01-25T15:02:26.547" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case, there's not likely to be a problem if you give your novel the same title as a Czech essay. You're not trying to confuse anyone, and intelligent people are unlikely to be confused by it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protection given to a title is complicated. People sometimes say &quot;You can't protect a title,&quot; but this is not true. Some titles can be registered as trademark (particularly the title of a series of books), and even if a book's name is not explicitly trademarked, the copyright owner could still sue someone for publishing a similar title if the intent was to trick the public. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A title like &lt;em&gt;Vengeance&lt;/em&gt; is fair game. Calling your book &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; will likely get you sued.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This site discusses some of the legal issues, and explains why you shouldn't title your next book &quot;The Great Gatsby&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2011/02/titles-and-law-can-i-call-my-novel.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2011/02/titles-and-law-can-i-call-my-novel.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T15:02:26.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20399" CreationDate="2016-01-25T16:31:16.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize that there are already several great answers to your question, and I'm not trying to override any of them, I would just like to share an idea that came to mind when reading your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea goes back to the usage of &lt;em&gt;two worlds&lt;/em&gt; in fantasy stories; the mundane world, and the fantasy world. The level at which you seperate these two worlds is up to you, but the idea of using two worlds is one that distinguishes fantasy from most other genres. The protagonist starts in the mundane world, with a weakness/need that applies to that world, in the story, he is placed in a fantasy world,one which challenges, and eventually overcomes his internal weakness. In the end of the story, he is placed back in the mundane world, where the solution of his weakness is shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My&lt;/em&gt; idea, is that, when in the mundane world, the level of realistically is higher, making it more mundane. And when in the fantasy world, you could inconspicuously lower the amount of realisticality, which might result in the fantasy world seeming more fantastical, if you don't wish to make it be like Wizards, dragons, ogres, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16626" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T16:31:16.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20671" CreationDate="2016-01-25T17:05:37.237" Score="6" ViewCount="671" Body="&lt;p&gt;So Amazon has been delisting and removing works of small publishers for a while now, as it seems some of them are in violation with its terms, such as &quot;incest&quot;, &quot;under age&quot;, and &quot;graphical depiction&quot;. &#xA;But &lt;em&gt;A Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; seems to violate every regulation, is it still not a problem for Amazon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So does the axe swing for just small houses and self publishing authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I am hoping to use KDP and Amazon to publish my first work. So a concise answer, with supporting facts explaining why this partiality is possible from Amazon's side would help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16656" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-09-22T23:34:02.380" LastActivityDate="2019-09-22T23:34:02.380" Title="How is &quot;A Song of Ice and Fire&quot; not in violation of Amazon's policies?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|self-publishing|kindle|amazon|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20599" CreationDate="2016-01-25T17:51:51.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One important thing to do is to keep all of the popular / familiar elements that people loved about the original story (or at least reference them). Bringing back beloved characters, themes, locations or even smaller details like running jokes or minor characters with persistent motivations can help a reader feel like they're at home in the new book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the new book has to have a reason for being and a fresh story all of it's own. It primarily should be a new canvas painted with familiar pigments, a bold new direction in a journey with (at least some) familiar friends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16657" LastEditorUserId="16657" LastEditDate="2016-01-25T17:58:59.140" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T17:58:59.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18048" CreationDate="2016-01-25T18:09:34.310" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think soften is quite the right word for what these kinds of words do, nor is filler. I think of them as signal words. They indicate to the reader what direction the text is about to take. They are like the curve signs on the highway. The signs don't make the road curve. In this sense they don't add anything. But they alert the driver/reader that a curve is coming, which helps them avoid ending up in the ditch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common example of a signal word that I can think of is &quot;but&quot;. But and and actually mean exactly the same thing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Tom went to school but Jane went home.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Means exactly the same thing as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Tom went to school and Jane went home.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of the information conveyed, these two sentences are identical. The use of but as the conjunction simply signals that there is going to be some significant difference between the phrases it joins. It does not create the difference and is not necessary for the reader to understand the difference, it simply prepares the reader for the possibility of the difference. Such words are part of the ergonomics rather than the semantics of language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T18:09:34.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20636" CreationDate="2016-01-25T18:25:02.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think we should distinguish between what I would call a personality flashback and a plot flashback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A plot flashback occurs when, for whatever reason, the narrative begins after the events of the story begin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A personality flashback occurs when there is an aspect of a character's personality that is best revealed through an anecdote from their past which illuminates who they are, but is not itself an incident in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that if you are having a hard time with a plot flashback, it is most likely a symptom of not starting in the right place. I think the most natural way to do them is in the case where the protagonist is not aware of the back story until some critical juncture in the story. Telling it then is natural and it is what the reader wants and expects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think personality flashbacks similarly need to be used where they are critical in the development of the character's personality. The key thing is, though, that they should not cause a reset of the reader's view of the person. They should explain, not reset, what we have already seen of the character's behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, timing seem to me far more important than method. When I see it done badly, it always seems to me that the problem is the author's impatience to get all the pieces on the board, resulting in flashbacks as the wrong time, not the particular narrative technique that was used to convey them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T18:25:02.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20640" CreationDate="2016-01-25T18:38:00.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not easy to pin down, but I will make a stab at a partial answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, people need to be able to recognise that it is made up from two separate words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, they need to know who or what the two halves are. For example, I would never have worked out 'Bennifer' if you hadn't explained it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two halves need to clearly represent the phenomenon and complement each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pairing must be seen as being clever and original. However, piggybacking on an already existing portmanteau is quite popular with words like 'Grexit' and 'Brexit'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T18:38:00.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20640" CreationDate="2016-01-25T20:40:39.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no experience but here's what I came up with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: make it flow.  In your examples above, Brangelina and Snowmageddon both flow much better than BeyonZ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make it catchy.  Snowmageddon is very catchy.  So is Bennifer.  Blizzard2016 isn't catchy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make it relevant.  Calling a snowstorm Jones had no relevancy towards the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep it short.  If someone were to call the blizzard &quot;super-duper-snow-scare&quot; it would have been too long to say easily.  Blizzard2016 is also too long.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Creativity.  I have personally never heard of &quot;Snowmageddon&quot; before, but it is very creative.  Something like &quot;blizzard2016&quot; is just stating the obvious without any artistic flair.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps a little with explaining the aspects of a good portmanteau&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T20:40:39.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19396" CreationDate="2016-01-25T20:43:56.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Putting section-titles will help give your summary structure so you can focus on summarizing different aspects in different subjects.  Just remember that a summary is supposed to be short and very broad, using only relevant information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T20:43:56.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18048" CreationDate="2016-01-25T20:46:56.577" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Filler words can help you reach a higher word count, but if you want to be more concise, delete them.  I find that filler words can help in rough drafts, but in final drafts, they sometimes detract from the power of the sentence.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This was founded.  So people came. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is slightly less powerful than &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This was founded.  People came.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has to do with the order of the words and such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T08:21:16.693" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T08:21:16.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20630" CreationDate="2016-01-25T21:02:58.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might  have to consult a lawyer, but from my time as a newspaper editor, I recall that (in the 1990s) BOOK TITLES WERE NOT SUBJECT TO COPYRIGHT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So long as you are not &quot;attempting to trade upon the prestige of the earlier work by that title,&quot; (or words to that effect) you are okay. That means, in &quot;real language,&quot; that so long as your ms. does not materially resemble the previous work, using the same or very similar theme, locations, characters, et. al., there is no &quot;effort to defraud&quot; the first author/publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, do not lose any sleep over it! Continue to use that as your &quot;working title,&quot; and write the best ms.of which you are capable! If your publisher has any misgivings about continuing to use your &quot;working title;&quot; well, that's what blue editing markers are for!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are agonizing over irrelevant details, my friend! If your publisher is worth a fig, there will be an attorney somewhere or other, kept on retainer, expressly for such copyright questions. Just let it go, and continue using your &quot;working title.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best of luck to you, Tommy! Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15754" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T21:02:58.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20636" CreationDate="2016-01-25T23:39:47.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you thought about giving Prince Reuben a companion, such as an older &quot;Sergeant of the Guard,&quot; who's been behaving like the prince's adviser since the lad's been a teen? The &quot;Man-At-Arms&quot; has been acting as a combination bodyguard, teacher, and foster-father; rather than bowing and scraping like some sycophantic subordinate &quot;Squire.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When something requires a detour to an explanation, there's the crusty old duffer, who says words to the effect: &quot;Prince Reuben, I know you were a mere child, more interested in the intricacies of a rag-teat than the obscure details found in Treaties of the Realm, when Baron Obstreppio was granted all the low-lands adjoining the so-called Marsh of Miseries, in exchange for his pledge to provide seven Legions annually to be the defenders of the Valley of Mere against the raids of the wild men of the Mountains of Woe . . . .&quot; and so forth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yep! I know that was hopelessly corny! Just giving an example of how you might use the old man as a handy font of all knowledge, and the constant live-in teacher of Prince Reuben. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has saved Prince Reuben's life on several occasions, and the lad feels affection and respect for the old soldier, which softens his attitude toward the old man, when the old gentleman occasionally loses patience with the admittedly arrogant young punk and tries to show the lad the difference between the &quot;statesman&quot; he knows Prince Reuben can grow to be, and the arrogant punk he occasionally threatens to become.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is another old man's suggestion of a way to reveal vital facts, part-way through the third chapter, without dropping some Owlsley!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15754" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T23:39:47.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20154" CreationDate="2016-01-26T00:32:44.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I can see, there seems to be no way of writing an &lt;em&gt;interesting&lt;/em&gt; account, without violating your ethics. But I would bet my bottom dollar that &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; 50% of &quot;non-fiction&quot; accounts embellish on the facts. Sure, maybe you don't want to add whole paragraphs of made-up details, but without some details (e.g, &quot;My hand held tightly to the cold metal of the gun...&quot;) your story will be as dry as dust. Non-fiction is taking the things that you remember happening, and telling them in an interesting, way, that accurately portray the emotions that you felt while going through the events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16626" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T00:32:44.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20657" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-26T01:05:45.413" Score="0" ViewCount="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have to capitalize the second part of a dialogue if the second part is separated from the first. &#xA;“Behind every great fortune,” he said as he started to zip up his jacket, “is a great crime. Do you capitalize is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16665" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-01-28T14:12:08.570" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T14:12:08.570" Title="Format for capitalizing quotes" Tags="|style|creative-writing|grammar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20657" CreationDate="2016-01-26T01:33:46.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question for &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;http://english.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt; . But the answer is no. When you are continuing a quote, as long as it doesn't begin the sentence or begin the quote, you do not capitalize it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16528" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T01:33:46.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20657" CreationDate="2016-01-26T05:56:21.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The capitals are &lt;em&gt;yours&lt;/em&gt; — they belong to your sentence, not the speaker’s sentence. So your sentence is capitalized correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T05:56:21.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20154" CreationDate="2016-01-26T09:33:48.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written 2 narrative travel books. My advice is  - use lots of dialogue, look into the monomyth structure, increase drama where possible and try to build an emotional connection between the reader and characters by embellishing the ups and downs the character is facing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T09:33:48.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20154" CreationDate="2016-01-26T16:13:48.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use internal monologue in between the action beats.  Show reaction beats: &quot;I did this.  He flinched.  Then he did that&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T16:13:48.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20662" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20666" CreationDate="2016-01-26T19:10:58.107" Score="1" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;The specific example that I was thinking of is writing about people traveling through a snow-storm. I tried to write one, and I found myself using phrases like, &quot;The blasting wind blew against their cold faces...&quot;&#xA;How can I make a scene like this more diverse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16626" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T20:59:15.240" Title="How to make a non-action-packed scenes enjoyable" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-26T19:36:57.437" Score="5" ViewCount="184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have almost completed a high fantasy novel that I have spent over 10 years designing the world and everything that works in the story. It is the first of a trilogy and therefore has a main story line, a overarching series story line in it, and still has to provide room to show the rich cultural history of my world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It currently weighs in at 186,058 words and is projected to be finished at 200K words. All my research say 100K to 120K max. Bringing it down to such would be  throwing away half my book! I have thought about trying to split it into two novels and just write a little more to round them out, but I have no clue where to start there. I am not finding a climax in the first half, and doing so would leave a reader with a lot of standing questions. Is that allowed for a first time author to do if the second book is already written and ready to publish? I don't want to anger my readers before I even have them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have only a handful of chapters left to go to finish completely but I have been so concerned about this topic that I have found it impossible to move forward. I am open for any suggestions that would help get me back on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16670" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T15:29:00.673" Title="What do I do with the length of my book and how to split it in two if needed" Tags="|book-length|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20366" CreationDate="2016-01-26T20:00:40.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've already described a great solution to your problem in your comment to your own question, but I'm going to give my two pence worth anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Factors against using Polari:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;as you hint in your question, it could be perceived as mocking rather than celebrating the original users. I am quite sure that is not your intention, but there is a tendency nowadays for some people to be hyper-sensitive about &quot;cultural appropriation&quot;. Conversely, you might also get hostile reactions from people who object to its associations with the gay subculture. (Although Polari was never exclusively used by homosexuals. Growing up in the 1970's, I would have thought of the few Polari words I had come across as market traders' slang.) You could end up being shouted at by both sides in a political dispute when all you wanted was to add a bit of local colour to your story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if your setting is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; derived from Earth, having a language that recognisably includes quite well known Earth languages like Yiddish and Italian suddenly appear without explanation just seems odd. It chips away at the suspension of disbelief. Readers accept the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TranslationConvention&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;translation convention&lt;/a&gt; that puts the main language of the story into English or whatever language the book is written in, but you don't want them to think about the process too much. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the more closely you stick to real Polari, the more glaring your inevitable mistakes will be.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Factors in favour of using Polari:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;there is an explanation within the story of why and how Polari is still in use, or has been revived. That could give an ambience rather different from the usual run of fantasy stories and suggests some interesting plot ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you say in a preface that just as English is being used as a translation for the &quot;Common Tongue&quot; or whatever language most of your characters speak, so Polari is being used as a translation for a specific secret language spoken in your world. &lt;em&gt;Some&lt;/em&gt; writers can pull off putting in this sort of dual language translation convention &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; any explanation, thus overcoming my second &quot;against&quot; point by sheer writing skill and confidence. It is a matter of having such an authoritative tone that the reader instinctively falls in with your decisions as to how to indicate what language is being spoken. But it is easier just to say explicitly what you are doing. Plenty of authors add prefaces and afterwords to their fantasy books; sometimes they are more interesting than the story!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Writers SE question about the use of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5980/using-latin-words-in-fantasy?rq=1&quot;&gt;Latin&lt;/a&gt; and this one about using &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/13037/real-world-languages-in-fantasy-world?rq=1&quot;&gt;Russian&lt;/a&gt; in fantasy settings might interest you. You have independently found a method to create slang but &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17270/methods-for-creating-slang?rq=1&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is another question on that subject, specifically about creating a jargon as a marker for an in-group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T09:28:58.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20663" CreationDate="2016-01-26T20:04:35.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find an editor and ask that person to help you find a spot to split it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This absolutely can be done; David Eddings's Belgariad series was originally planned to be three books and his publisher had him split it into five. I think it's book 4 which just abruptly &lt;em&gt;ends&lt;/em&gt; at a dramatic moment (the group of protagonists is kidnapped and herded off) without wrapping up any of the storylines or coming to even a partial resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen R. Donaldson's &lt;em&gt;A Man Rides Through&lt;/em&gt; is the first book of two in the Mordant's Need duology (the sequel is &lt;em&gt;The Mirror of Her Dreams&lt;/em&gt;, published a year later) and also ends smack in the middle of the story. All the plot lines are left wide open. I don't know anything about its publication history, but clearly it was managed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If two books are finished and ready to go, this might be more of a selling point for an agent/publisher, because they don't have to wonder if you have another book in you. Point out that these are &quot;two of four&quot; (or two of six, potentially) and that might even be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T20:04:35.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20662" CreationDate="2016-01-26T20:59:15.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's a snowstorm, there's bound to be plenty of challenges to write about... are your characters able to see where they're going? If so, how? Is the terrain treacherous? Are they cold, freezing? Is there threat to their lives? Are they committed to the journey, despite the conditions? If so why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how are they taking it? Are the characters trying to make light of the situation and joking about it? Or are they drawn into conflict and in-fighting? Perhaps merely stoically persisting despite the burden those conditions place upon them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the hardship of the snow storm itself can provide plenty of conflict that should make for an entertaining story if you're prepared to explore it's effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16657" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T20:59:15.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20667" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-26T21:02:07.730" Score="5" ViewCount="1016" Body="&lt;p&gt;The villain so far has only appeared in two chapters. However now he's making a return in a chapter which is mostly about him, his actions and his past. Now. What are mistakes I should avoid when writing a villain, one that'll play a role till the end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-23T14:18:50.293" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T09:31:54.030" Title="What to avoid when writing a villain?" Tags="|character-development|antagonist|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-05-24T16:08:36.410" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20667" CreationDate="2016-01-26T21:40:28.093" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Avoid making him a caricature. Don't make him villainous simply by having him espouse a caricature of political ideas you oppose. Remember that no one thinks of themselves as a villain. He is a human being with an agenda that is opposed to, or incompatible with, the agenda of your hero. He has fully justified his agenda to himself and therefore feels justified in his actions. His actions may be cruel, but there is a reason for them that makes sense to him. Portray him like that, and be just as careful to keep his actions consistent with his character and motivations as you would with you hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T21:40:28.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20667" CreationDate="2016-01-26T23:07:45.600" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second @Mark Baker's answer: Make sure he's not a caricature of villainy. Motivations are critical: Give him motivations that make sense for the story and the characters in it. If he's going to oppose your protagonist (and that's what he's there for), make sure he either wants the same thing for his own valid reasons, or he's pursuing something that causes him to go directly against your protagonist's goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also add, make sure he's the hero of his own story. Internally, what he's doing should appear right, good, correct, or whatever, even if it's not in the eyes of the rest of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like @Mark Baker says, make him a person, with real reasons for doing what he does. Those actions only have to make sense to him, but if you write the character believably &lt;em&gt;and consistently&lt;/em&gt;, his madness, obsession, weirdness, or just his reasons for going against your protagonist, will make sense to the reader, even if in reality don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastEditorUserId="14291" LastEditDate="2019-05-23T18:38:03.407" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T18:38:03.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20640" CreationDate="2016-01-27T01:23:15.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the qualities I came up with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Flow.&lt;/strong&gt; The two words have to flow together smoothly. &lt;em&gt;Brangelina&lt;/em&gt; is an easy combination of &lt;em&gt;Brad&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Angelina&lt;/em&gt;. It helps when the two words share letters or sounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Syllables.&lt;/strong&gt; Swapping out the same number of syllables keeps the rhythm of the original word. This is why &lt;em&gt;Snowmageddon&lt;/em&gt; works. &lt;em&gt;Snowpocalypse&lt;/em&gt; has the same syllables but less flow because there's a slight pause where the two consonants come together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spelling.&lt;/strong&gt; The written version of flow. You have to be able to spell it easily and intuitively, or people won't want to share it. &lt;em&gt;Bennifer&lt;/em&gt; works really well; while &lt;em&gt;BeyonZ&lt;/em&gt; has flow, you have to think about how to write it so the names are recognizable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recognizable parts.&lt;/strong&gt; It's easy to pick out &quot;John&quot; and &quot;Sherlock&quot; in &lt;em&gt;Johnlock&lt;/em&gt; or &quot;drama&quot; and &quot;comedy&quot; in &lt;em&gt;dramedy&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New recognizable entity.&lt;/strong&gt; Obviously there's no such thing as a &lt;em&gt;Sharktopus,&lt;/em&gt; but you know exactly what that word is trying to describe. A &lt;em&gt;mockumentary&lt;/em&gt; is a parody of a documentary. &lt;em&gt;Brunch&lt;/em&gt; is the meal well after breakfast but too early for lunch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sound.&lt;/strong&gt; It has to sound like a word. &lt;em&gt;Jorts,&lt;/em&gt; a combination of &quot;jeans&quot; and &quot;shorts,&quot; sounds weird and hasn't caught on. &lt;em&gt;Spork&lt;/em&gt; is silly but workable. &lt;em&gt;Motel&lt;/em&gt; has been around so long that you might not know it's a combination of &quot;motor&quot; and &quot;hotel.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T01:23:15.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20644" CreationDate="2016-01-27T08:34:10.337" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @rolfedh mentions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are comparing a work from a publishing house with works from Kindle Direct Publishing. Different content sources = different legal contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200672390&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon seems deliberately vague to help bolster its position on accepting or rejecting KDP works:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Original Wording&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pornography&lt;/strong&gt; :&#xA;  &quot;We don't accept pornography or offensive depictions of graphic sexual acts.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Offensive Content&lt;/strong&gt; :&#xA;  &quot;What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Updated Wording&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[W]e reserve the right not to sell certain content, such as pornography or other inappropriate material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200164670&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Offensive and Controversial Materials Guidelines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=15015801&amp;amp;language=en_US&amp;amp;ref=efph_home_cont_200164670&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This includes titles, cover art and descriptions as well.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the vagueness, the clear intent of the KDP guidelines is to weed out a flood of cheap pornography, as well as deliberately vile books, and at least keep the &quot;erotica&quot; more tasteful by avoiding taboo or &quot;illegal&quot; subjects such as incest, rape, bestiality, underage sex, etc. (and thus keep Amazon less liable to prosecution)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is the small matter of who (originally) is publishing the book. Amazon potentially assumes more &quot;risk&quot; from a legal perspective (monetarily, prosecution for obscenity, etc.) by being the primary publisher via KDP. Thus publishing via KDP is likely to be more tightly controlled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the &quot;Song of ice and fire&quot; seems to violate every regulation, is it still not a problem for Amazon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a bad book to compare anything to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It isn't published via KDP, so yes, those particular rules don't apply.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amazon is not the primary publisher (and it is published by a larger company Amazon is unlikely to be able to bully too much).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It &lt;em&gt;clearly&lt;/em&gt; isn't pornography (or even erotica) in the &quot;traditional&quot; sense (arousal isn't the main point of the book) and thus likely fairly immune to obscenity charges, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The book is already worth about a bazillion dollars. This gives it special consideration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So does the axe swing for just small houses and self publishing authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is legal action for the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To reiterate, if Amazon is partnered with a larger entity (publisher) and are sued by a third party, they are less likely to be as financially or legally liable in court since they have a large partner. And if things go badly with the book (obscenity charges, recovering money for books that incur other costs for some reason) perhaps they can sue the original publisher to recover some or all of the cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small houses/individual authors don't have &quot;Amazon&quot; money usually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So a pseudo first time publisher is different from an actual publisher (or house) that exists outside of Amazon (no matter how small )? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. But even a small &quot;outside&quot; publisher is still unlikely to get the full benefits of consideration a larger publisher might, especially via legal contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note too, as mentioned, using KDP Amazon is essentially replacing a traditional publishing house. But even with a regular publisher, Amazon can of course &quot;reject&quot; that material simply by refusing a contract to distribute the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Original (Non-Updated) Link&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160317021224/https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A3KIRDTX1UQJX0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20160317021224/https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A3KIRDTX1UQJX0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10627" LastEditorUserId="10627" LastEditDate="2019-09-22T21:09:27.600" LastActivityDate="2019-09-22T21:09:27.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20672" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-27T10:52:30.880" Score="2" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am proofreading a novel chapter for the first time. I do not have the other chapters to review. The book is a 2nd edition, and several chunks of text have been inserted, so the end of the chapter is now on an extra page (eight lines only on this last page). As the novel is at the proof page, I am assuming I should try to save lines, so the chapter occupies the equivalent number of pages as before the extra text was inserted? It would mean trying to save eight lines, though. Or is this not important? I am just worried about the impact on the rest of the book. My mentor is telling me to 'follow my gut instinct', but I am struggling...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16679" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-02-04T01:51:51.717" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T19:00:16.253" Title="When proofreading a chapter, should I try to prevent a few lines spilling onto a new page?" Tags="|editing|proofreading|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16199" CreationDate="2016-01-27T13:18:45.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I do not know what have you written in your thesis statement. However, I will give you some advice on how to do it better. First of all, if you need to comment the quote, then do not write what has been already written. Write your opinion and stick it to the end, providing a lot of good reasons for it. Your professor will like it. Also, it would be great if you weren't SO critical of the saying. You can be critical, but not so strongly. Here is an excellent post at &lt;a href=&quot;http://dissertationwriter.org/tips-on-writing-a-thesis-statement/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dissertation writer&lt;/a&gt; that gives quite good tips on this kind of writing. Think in a unique way and stay positive. That's all that I have to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16681" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-31T11:23:23.637" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T11:23:23.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20674" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-27T13:22:16.537" Score="1" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any rules or procedure to write a great product description. Any examples of good desciptions online?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16682" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T04:43:30.823" Title="How do you write a good product description?" Tags="|creative-writing|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-03-19T20:02:43.313" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20330" CreationDate="2016-01-27T14:59:58.290" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The impact of any turning point in a story depends not on how the scene is written but on how invested the reader is, in how much they are hoping for or dreading or startled by the turning point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over dramatic writing is the result of not having created the conditions in which the reader will react to the event in the way you want. Remember that the core art here is not writing but storytelling. The real impact comes from the structure of the story. Writing is merely a medium to tell stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your death scene will be as dramatic or as anticlimactic as the structure of your story makes it. Focus on that, not the prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T14:59:58.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20676" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-27T18:44:23.627" Score="3" ViewCount="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;While writing some documentation I stumbled upon the need to describe the location of a field in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/glossary/#term-collection&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mongo Collection&lt;/a&gt; on one of our corporate servers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After spending a bit of time on this I arrived at the following:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;code&gt;mongodb://user:pass@host:port/database.collection.field&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I document data structures in Mongo? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;disclaimer: If this out of scope, It was suggested that I might find help in this SE &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158495/where-to-ask-about-writing-docs-for-a-library&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;(if this incites strong emotions, please vote there too!)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16688" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T10:29:42.173" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T17:50:29.257" Title="Documenting a Mongo Collection Field" Tags="|api-documentation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20678" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-27T19:02:59.067" Score="5" ViewCount="1275" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scene is about one of the protagonist who was until now, more a cold than a warm person. However she's not a sociopath, she just mostly hides her emotions and tends to push people she cares about away. Now the scene is very important. Her sister was kidnapped and she meets the other protagonist on a hill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I write a scene where she gets really emotional and sad, while not writing her out of character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-23T14:19:35.943" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T14:19:35.943" Title="How do I write an emotional scene?" Tags="|character-development|emotions|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16402" CreationDate="2016-01-27T21:17:32.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Legally, in the US or the UK or countries with a similar legal tradition, the older the quote, the more famous the person quoted, and the more famous the quote itself, the safer you are. Quotations from works that are centuries old, as well as very famous quotes from the modern era, are held to have passed into the public domain. If you have &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; reason to think it's likely to be a real problem, consult a lawyer - but in practice, no one's going to sue you for quoting something that's already appeared in a million magazine articles. Things might be a little more awkward if the author is alive and not seeking your vote, especially if he or she makes a living by writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are in the US, the author of &lt;a href=&quot;http://info.emilymcdowell.com/using-other-peoples-quotes-in-your-work-when-is-it-ok/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; has written a useful summary of the situation there about using quotes on products made for sale. This presumably includes works of literature; things are more relaxed about stuff you give away. (Although I wouldn't guarantee that there will be no adverse reaction to the use of extensive quotation from living people or works still in copyright in fan fiction even though it is given away. But given that the entire field of fan fiction defies the laws of copyright a little extra scarcely matters.) She in turn quotes from a webpage produced by the University of North Carolina: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;When U.S. Works Pass into the Public Domain&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. There's a less user friendly but more comprehensive summary of US copyright terms produced by the Cornell Copyright Information Center &lt;a href=&quot;http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turning to the question of whether a deliberately misattributed quote works as part of a story, it depends upon the tone. When the reader spots the misattribution he or she will momentarily be lifted out of the story and reminded of the real world. For a humorous work, or a scene with humour in it, that's fine. Some people above have already quoted the &quot;old Vulcan proverb&quot; from &lt;em&gt;Star Trek VI&lt;/em&gt;. I also liked a scene in &lt;em&gt;Stargate&lt;/em&gt; where Teal'c claimed that an old proverb of his people was &quot;Do not fix that which is not broken&quot;. Talk of proverbs brings me to a possible in-universe justification for using an adapted quote which would work even in a serious setting: that some truths are so universal that they are likely to be independently expressed across different worlds and species. For instance many, many real-life cultures have their own version of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Golden Rule&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;Do unto others as you would have done unto you&quot;. Come to think of it, that might be a good rule to follow when quoting other writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-01-27T23:21:37.680" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T23:21:37.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20678" CreationDate="2016-01-27T21:30:59.803" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possibility is to show the character hiding her emotions in the earlier scenes. So readers know she feels emotions, and has reasons not to show them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then when she feels emotions that she cannot hide, the readers will know that her outwardly emotional reaction is a big deal for her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For additional ideas, listen to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/2014/05/04/writing-excuses-9-19-showing-emotion/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Showing Emotions&quot; episode of Writing Excuses (season 9)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T21:30:59.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20681" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20691" CreationDate="2016-01-27T22:23:41.363" Score="1" ViewCount="509" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my fantasy story, there is about 10,000 words before the inciting incident. I originally intended to land the end of my story at about 40,000 words. This is partially due to the fact that a lot of plot set up and weakness/need development happen in my story before the IncInc, but it also has to do with the fact that there is a rather long (Not unecisarrily boring) conversation scene, that builds in some of the necessary legends/story-world. My question is, do you think that this is common in fantasy stories, due to world building, do you think I definitely need to shorten the length before the IncInc, &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; do you think that my story is just going to end up being longer than I planned?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16626" LastActivityDate="2024-01-26T18:12:51.030" Title="Inciting incident in Fantasy" Tags="|fiction|plot|fantasy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1182" CreationDate="2016-01-27T23:20:26.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, these are essential for fight scenes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Motivation. I want to know why your characters (on both sides) are fighting and why. What are the stakes? What will happen if they lose / win? Is there a danger of severe injury or death to make me care about the outcome?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tactics. Reading &quot;he hit him, and then he hit him back, etc.&quot; isn't engaging for most readers. What are the more understandable ways that characters are using to try and win the fight? Do they work? Are they countered? What will the character do next and how does it affect them?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Emotion. How are the characters who I care about dealing with the fight? Are they afraid? Confident? Angry? Desperate? Emotions run high in battle, and though it's tricky, it's good to play on them and bring them out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Position. In big, complicated fights, where is everyone? Fights need to be written simply, quickly, intensely, but I still need to know who is fighting who and how far away from each other they are because it can get confusing or difficult to visualise easily. (And that's not to mention when characters I thought were in one place turn out to suddenly be in another...)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16657" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-01-28T09:43:56.097" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T09:43:56.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20686" CreationDate="2016-01-28T11:47:05.020" Score="2" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written summary and storyline of Shakespeare's plays. I need to know the process of publication, and the legal notes, on publishing synopses, where the original author is someone else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16692" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-01-28T15:46:23.267" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T15:46:23.267" Title="Do I need copyright, trademark or other registrations, to publish stories by Shakespeare?" Tags="|creative-writing|publishing|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20681" CreationDate="2016-01-28T11:58:25.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's necessarily what's common.  It's more about what you want to do.  As long as your bridging conflicts are engaging and your characters are given goals and pre-arcs, and are characterized in an engaging way during the setup, you should have no problem with this.  I know that in Jaws (even though it isn't a fantasy), the author gives us the backstory dump on every single character,  but he does it in such a way that helps us readers understand their motives.  So while world building, you might want to characterize simultaneously.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T11:58:25.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20684" CreationDate="2016-01-28T14:50:13.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shakespeare's plays are in the public domain. For more recent works, such as works produced in the past 100 years, check the copyright laws of the country where you plan to publish your works and consult a lawyer. To gain background in this area, I recommend reading the Wikipedia articles on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Copyright&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_copyright_treaties&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;International copyright treaties&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T14:50:13.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20678" CreationDate="2016-01-28T14:57:52.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm more of a show-er than a teller. If I'm way off base, perhaps you can extrapolate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Arielle saw him coming from a quarter mile. His relaxed gait and flowing hair reminded her of an innocence now lost to distant memory. As he got closer, Orion smiled and waved.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Does nothing bother you?&quot; Arielle pointedly asked.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Well, I, I guess I was just trying  to be friendly,&quot; replied Orion. &quot;I know this is a big deal; I wasn't intending to making light of the situation.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Sure, but you have a tendency to not take me serious--anything serious! Sometimes I don't even know why we're friends!&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Listen, Arielle, I mean ...&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, Arielle tried to steady herself. She was doing it again. She knew she was doing it again. It had to stop; she needed to let someone in, and Orion was &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; the one most qualified. Her lower lip quivered and she briefly sniffled.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;She didn't even think she knew how to cry; she could never even remember doing so. But suddenly, her arms were around his neck, and she wept into his shoulder. &quot;I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T14:57:52.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20688" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-28T15:52:43.927" Score="7" ViewCount="715" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can one organically develop a strong relationship (father-son, to be precise) between 2 strangers over the course of a novel without making it seem contrived? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2019-06-13T14:22:40.150" LastActivityDate="2019-06-15T19:23:05.307" Title="Forming a strong relationship between 2 characters" Tags="|technique|character-development|fantasy|relationships|child-characters|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2016-01-28T15:55:18.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your description will need to tell what the product is, and describe it in the best possible light.  Use vivid prose to accentuate the positive, and never mention the negative.  You are seeking to draw buyers into wanting to but the product, so you should also identify a felt need that this product will address.  Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T15:55:18.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20688" CreationDate="2016-01-28T16:42:22.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make the older guy more forgiving.&#xA;Make the older guy more forgiving. Long story short, the older man doesn't want the kid to drive fast. But he is in charm, drives fast, and got into some huge trouble with some rich guy. But instead of beating him up, he tries to ease his pain, etc., you can do whatever you like, from sci-fi to horror or old time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16696" LastEditorUserId="16696" LastEditDate="2016-01-29T09:43:42.607" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T09:43:42.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20681" CreationDate="2016-01-28T18:23:14.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you keep the reader engaged, and provide them enough interesting aspects of the story and a strong hook, then the II occurring at 10K probably won't be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I would recommend, though, is allowing yourself the luxury of writing the story to the story's requirement, rather than a word count. If the movement of the story goes longer than 40K, let it. If it comes in shorter, you might have to look at where the II is, but again, if you have a strong hook to draw the reader in, you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps a little, and all success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14291" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T18:23:14.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20694" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-28T20:57:37.557" Score="1" ViewCount="582" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to use gerunds in my writing and I wonder if I'm overdoing it. I wrote this paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I couldn’t help &lt;strong&gt;thinking&lt;/strong&gt; to myself, who is this woman on the phone? And if it’s not Burns’ mother then why does she want to speak with Burns?&#xA;  Monica’s purse was rattling again and I walked back out to the living room to find her &lt;strong&gt;sitting&lt;/strong&gt; down.  She took out what I believed was a handheld tape recorder.  “Oops,” she said, &lt;strong&gt;placing&lt;/strong&gt; the item back in her purse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started using gerunds a lot because readers were commenting that I needed more dialogue tags besides s/he said. Dialogue tags coupled with gerunds seemed to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16635" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-01-29T00:28:02.390" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T02:21:07.767" Title="Gerund Overkill" Tags="|creative-writing|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20694" CreationDate="2016-01-28T23:49:25.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're concerned that you're using too many, then &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you're done your first draft, go back and search for any &lt;em&gt;-ing&lt;/em&gt; words. Replace them at least half the time. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I couldn’t help &lt;em&gt;thinking&lt;/em&gt; to myself, who is this woman on the phone? And if it’s not Burns’ mother then why does she want to speak with Burns? Monica’s purse &lt;strong&gt;rattled&lt;/strong&gt; again and I walked back out to the living room to find her &lt;em&gt;sitting&lt;/em&gt; down. She took out what I believed was a handheld tape recorder. “Oops,” she said, and &lt;strong&gt;placed&lt;/strong&gt; the item back in her purse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &lt;em&gt;-ing&lt;/em&gt; verbs are continuous action; your &lt;em&gt;-ed&lt;/em&gt; verbs are completed actions. Consider where you can finish an action and change those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T23:49:25.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20694" CreationDate="2016-01-29T00:27:18.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Grammar Side-Rant&lt;/strong&gt; (Ignore at will)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, none of the words you have in bold are gerunds. A gerund is a verb form used as a noun. Examples would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hunting is a sport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We love sailing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as overdoing it goes, your paragraph sounds fine to me. However, looking at one paragraph is not the same as looking at the whole page. You might be using the phrases too much if you use them &lt;em&gt;everywhere&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're having trouble with dialogue tags, include actions with the tags, like you have; but also be sure to include some simple tags without additional phrases. You don't want to just repeat the same thing over and over, so keep the tags changing. If you still feel like your tags are lacking something, try taking out the dialogue altogether and replacing it with looks, postures, or other wordless sounds (sighs, noncommittal grunts, etc.). Something else you can do is split the dialogue up and put the tag in the middle (you should probably only do this if you want the dialogue to seem split to the reader). For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I know what you're doing,&amp;quot; she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;They're after us,&amp;quot; they cried as they ran away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Are you sure you want to do this?&amp;quot; he asked, twirling the dagger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her look was enough to tell him what he needed to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sigh and a shake of the head was his only reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I...&amp;quot; he paused, gasping for breath, &amp;quot;...made it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T02:21:07.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20698" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20699" CreationDate="2016-01-29T13:29:07.803" Score="1" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a fan of the book &quot;Machine of Death&quot;; &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://machineofdeath.net/pdf/MachineofDeath_FINAL.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://machineofdeath.net/pdf/MachineofDeath_FINAL.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PDF Page 452 of the above link details the copyright for the material contained within the book. However I cannot determine if the actual &lt;em&gt;concept&lt;/em&gt; of a &quot;Machine of Death&quot;, that determines your cause of death from a drop of blood, is copyrighted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically can someone create a &quot;Machine of Death&quot; story that is completely original to the stories within the book &lt;em&gt;except&lt;/em&gt; that a &quot;Machine of Death&quot; as described above is within the book (and indeed is a major plot device)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16700" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T21:02:10.370" Title="Is the Concept of &quot;Machine of Death&quot; Copyrighted?" Tags="|fiction|copyright|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20698" CreationDate="2016-01-29T14:10:49.773" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Concepts are not copyrightable. However, unusual similarities in story, characters, plotline, accidental or otherwise, can form the basis for a copyright infringement claim. This usually only comes up when the claimant can demonstrate economic harm or is protecting valuable IP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T14:10:49.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20678" CreationDate="2016-01-29T15:03:36.217" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best example of this I've encountered is in the book/movie &lt;em&gt;Remains of the Day&lt;/em&gt;.  The main character is a butler, whose chief trait is total emotional repression.  Nevertheless, the author skillfully portrays his emotional state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my memory serves me, there's one crucial scene where the butler learns that the housekeeper is leaving.  His feelings for her are deeply hidden, even from himself.  The only clue to how he really feels is when he goes to fetch the master of the house a bottle of wine --he drops it and it shatters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a small moment, but we've come to know this man as a consummate professional of machine-like perfection.  The thought of him dropping anything is absurd.  The breakage of the wine bottle lets the reader know how much the housekeeper means to him, even if no other character observes it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T15:03:36.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20663" CreationDate="2016-01-29T15:29:00.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Diana Gabaldon also is a good example of a writer that is commercially successful in the modern publishing world between 140,000 to 180,000. One of Clancy's had to be 230,000 (paperback was 900+ pages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, we as writers are far more enamored with our work than others are at reading it. I tend to binge-write. My last book's rough draft was 192,000 at first draft, 162,000 at second draft, and is now in beta reading where I expect another 30,000 words to be lopped off and maybe a character or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is you first need to find agents, publishers, whomever to read your book; and first-time authors especially will struggle with finding any takers. Jane Friedman is an agent hosting a blog site with an immense readership for publishing advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest writing your book as is. Then you can go back and remove unnecessary scenes (store them in a virtual notecard). Most sentences can be shortened to be more succinct (for instance, removing the word &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; as often as possible). You might rewrite a whole chapter from scratch cutting the word count in half for that chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then use beta readers or an experienced editor (might cost $2,000), depending on how serious you are. Peter Jackson was reportedly crying as half the diector's cut of &lt;em&gt;The Return of the King&lt;/em&gt; was slashed. And the extended version was still close to four hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T15:29:00.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20667" CreationDate="2016-01-29T18:01:28.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once heard to make him emphathizable, even if it is just once.  A human who can hurt others is scarier than some super-powered god.  Make your audience hate to love him and love to hate him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also make him more skillful than the hero so that the hero can grow over the course of the book(s) and finally defeat him at the end.  Some examples of this are: Harry Potter( Voldemort is much more skilled than Harry at the beginning, but at the end, they are about equal.) the Matrix (Neo isn't strong enough to defend himself against Agent Smith... Until the very end of the first movie.). And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T18:01:28.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20204" CreationDate="2016-01-29T19:10:15.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Annoying as it is, I have often found at least this number of errors. I usually expect most code samples to be correct and work -- expect is different to finding they actually will run. However, I have found numerous errors in explanatory text. Often books will have online errata lists that you can consult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try it yourself, you will find it is incredibly hard to get books like this perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second and third editions (if they make it that far, which most coding books don't) should have less errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T19:10:15.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20704" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-29T20:07:30.973" Score="4" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not deaf and nobody I know is, yet I am curious how an author goes about writing in a newly-deaf character's POV when they aren't deaf themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T20:45:11.020" Title="Realistically Writing newly-deaf characters" Tags="|technique|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20704" CreationDate="2016-01-29T20:40:34.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no substitute for research. Either find a deaf group in your area or contact a national group, or possibly Gaulladet University, and start talking to people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T20:40:34.977" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20688" CreationDate="2016-01-30T01:37:01.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There should be a natural draw between them, as if they would normally be friends. If the younger character has a backstory similar to the older character or someone the older character cares/cared about, that would help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;father&quot; role is very tough to build with a stranger, but mentor or &quot;uncle&quot; is easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind bonds are formed through shared experiences, so the relationship should build over time as the younger character doesn't listen and has to be rescued, or his ignoring the older character gets people he cares about hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T01:37:01.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20688" CreationDate="2016-01-30T06:25:37.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends a lot on the context of course (not to mention the genre, if applicable), but try to see it from as a realistic perspective as possible - if indeed your goal is to make it appear natural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do people get closer in real-life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sociological causes&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;When they have to be united against something else. There is an element of tribalism involved, but for a father-son relationship this should not appear as too peculiar. Example: Father and son have to unite against a corporation threatening to confiscate their land&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal causes&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;There might be a specific reason (that the readers and/or characters might only partially know of) for which one character is attracted to the other and wants to be around them. Example: Father has a terminal disease but he does not want his son to know about, so that the son can feel connection, not pity. There's a lot in such scenarios you can use dramatically, to enhance tension. Particularly if you allow your audience to know about it (while the character does not), there are strong elements of tragic irony at play&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Miscellaneous/Forced causes&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Sometimes people can be forced to be together, for a variety of reasons. Think of two people who are castaways together (somewhat of a cliche, I know, but only to give you an idea of how it works). To develop this organically, this should ideally evolve into more personal reasons. But it can be a start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T06:25:37.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20708" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-30T07:01:06.157" Score="6" ViewCount="11909" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been going out of my way to avoid referencing famous people in my novel as well as fictional characters, but I keep seeing pop culture references in other books I read as well as in TV shows, songs etc., and I'm wondering if I'm being overzealous about deleting the stuff I had written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering how other writers feel about referring to real people and places or fictional characters in a fictional work and in what situations it's best to get permission or avoid it altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do know that the chances of these people/place representatives even reading the reference are very slim, but in theory, let's say you ended up writing a best-seller, what would happen in these situations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you reference the name of a real hotel in a novel such as the Plaza, NY. without asking for permission? Nothing negative is written about the hotel. We just know the scene takes place in front of it. Should you get permission to mention them first, or is it not necessary? Would you probably just not name the hotel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People: I see references to famous people all the time on TV shows, in songs etc, but I feel like it's riskier in a novel for some reason. If you referenced someone in a silly way, eg. to make some funny comparison, could that end up being a problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. &quot;She looks like a 50-year-old Lady Gaga.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take it further, would you feel comfortable writing this in a novel:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;She's like Rosie O'Donnell on crack.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess in theory some famous person could sue if they thought you were depicting them negatively, but would that just be totally unrealistic or is it a real possibility? If they are in the public eye and can be picked apart on blogs, star shows etc, is it different in novels, even if it's just a passing reference? Is it best to err on the side of caution at the expense of the content of your novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't put a fictional character like Chewbacca in your book obviously, but can you just reference such a character in passing?&#xA;E.g. &quot;My ex-wife looks like Chewbacca after a good shave.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or how about: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;He did a Sherlock Holmes on the filing cabinet.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could the company that owns the rights to the Sherlock Holmes/Star Wars franchise have a problem with such a line or is that just extremely unrealistic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Referencing Gordon Gecko, Mary Poppins and the Terminator would allow me to inject some humorous (IMO) lines into my book. As long as they aren't actual characters in the book, is this ok?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I understand, saying your character wears Gucci heels, or drives a BMW, or reads the NY Times or eats Rice Krispies or listens to Bon Jovi - all that type of stuff is fair game, right? I recently read a novel which referenced about 10 different singers the character liked. I can't imagine the author got permission to put those names in - I'm guessing he just went for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the chances of a book being successful enough for the parties in question to even know about the reference to them are very slim, but I'd like to know what experience other writers have with this stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I know it's all subjective and no one can give legal advice, but any feedback from anyone who's published/edited fictional work would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T00:40:22.283" Title="Referencing real and fictional people/characters in novels - legal implications" Tags="|novel|editing|characters|legal|trademark|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20709" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20711" CreationDate="2016-01-30T08:31:47.950" Score="2" ViewCount="1651" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fellow writers,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am plotting a crime mystery novel. I have the story and gist in place. It should have the &quot;whodunit&quot; element. I want to use Third person multiple pov narrative(more than 6+ povs). I've seen it done (but not in mystery) by having the character name at the beginning of a chapter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my dilemma, how do I get around keeping the killer/killers a suspense while using such an approach. Are there any other ways to incorporate the pov I want, without giving away the name of the character. It is okay if the reader knows its the killers pov (just not who he/she is). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe by a clear depiction of the criminals dark opinion? Or by altogether avoiding character names before chapters, and letting the reader figure out who's pov it is(but I feel it would be confusing, with 6+ povs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any input, suggestions and experience with using 3rd person multiple povs is welcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16656" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T05:51:50.070" Title="Third person multiple pov in a crime mystery" Tags="|fiction|narrative|third-person|crime|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20704" CreationDate="2016-01-30T08:42:15.577" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research is surely the way to go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An even deeper alternative would be to lose your hearing, not forever of course. Just wear protective earplugs or some gear of that sort, and try interacting with your family/friends for more than a week. You'll get first hand experience to how it feels to be suddenly isolated from the world of sounds. You may vocally get loud during this course of time and experience a lot of other feelings from within. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the catch is you can't take them off midway. Suppose you want to talk to your girlfriend or boyfriend — you have to play along, you can't take small breaks from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would definitely give you a deeper level of understanding and emotional transition and experience the helplessness that a person feels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best, do update on the approach you take. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16656" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-02-01T20:45:11.020" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T20:45:11.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20709" CreationDate="2016-01-30T10:13:21.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need character names in chapter headings, unless you are attempting multiple first person narratives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore your only problem is how to name the villain. Dan Brown does this n every novel. Just pick something descriptive, e.g. The Controller, The Military Man, The Survivor. Names like these allude to a role or a personal history which can be a secret even to their closest friends or colleagues. Thus in your final act you can reveal Brian the chicken farmer was secretly The Assassin the whole time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively you can introduce your villain through the eyes of a minion or victim, and thenceforth name him as that person saw him, e.g. The Man in White, or The Limping Man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers may tire of it however, but to maintain mystery, these pov chapters would likely be few and brief anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T14:12:49.663" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T14:12:49.663" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-30T14:13:43.823" Score="1" ViewCount="435" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I include an extract of another persons book in my blog with references?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, are there any restrictions that I must follow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16709" LastEditorUserId="16709" LastEditDate="2019-11-14T15:55:47.843" LastActivityDate="2019-11-14T15:55:47.843" Title="Including a book extract in my blog" Tags="|legal|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20708" CreationDate="2016-01-30T15:09:32.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Sherlock Holmes is public domain. No one's going to sue you for it. We all own it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) While classics like Sherlock Holmes are safe, referencing pop culture can date your work. Just FYI...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T15:09:32.600" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20712" CreationDate="2016-01-30T16:26:04.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends a lot on the context and scope. If you simply post excerpts from a copyrighted work without any commentary, criticism, or analysis, you're pushing your luck (&lt;strong&gt;even&lt;/strong&gt; if you include attribution). If, on the other hand, you need to include some excerpts as a part of an article of your own that, for instance, analyzes the work in question (or compares it to others), this is generally acceptable, within reason (= you can post a paragraph or two, but not any extensive blocks of text).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T16:26:04.237" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20715" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-30T20:43:20.843" Score="0" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always wanted to write a scenario for a series that could be translated into several episodes, but I didn't know where to start or how should a scenario look like.&#xA;My question is: does any one know the right tools in order to write a scenario? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16714" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T15:49:34.573" Title="Writing a scenario" Tags="|technique|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20708" CreationDate="2016-01-30T20:58:59.860" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you're just making references that don't portray them in a negative light, you're fine for brands and celebrities. Things like Jaguar or Rice Krispies don't really date a work, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fictional characters, however, are copyrighted for a long time. So no using Luke skywalker as a character. Your characters can talk about Luke, swing swords around like Luke, and watch Luke. They just can't BE Luke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But be careful about using pop culture. A lot of millennials wouldn't know who Rosanne Barr is, and have never heard of New Kids on the Block. To them David Copperfield is a Dickens character, not a magician.  If your character listens to the Victrola, hears Father Coughlin on the radio, shaves with Bar-sol, and rides an Indian motorcycle on his way to his date with a telephone switchboard operator, that will place him firmly in the 40's. If instead he listens to Iggy Pop on his 8-track in his Trans-Am on the way to his job at the Hard Rock cafe, it's probably the early 80's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's okay to add pop culture references, but make sure they will still be relatable in 30 years. Star Wars and BMW are safe. The Beatles are too. One Direction and Kristen Stewart are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T20:58:59.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20709" CreationDate="2016-01-30T21:09:04.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The POV for each scene should be made clear very quickly. But that's not hard if you mention their name in the narration when doing something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned above, you can just use &quot;the killer&quot; or something like that for the killer. Use &quot;they&quot; instead of &quot;he/she&quot;, or even switch to first person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing is that most people wouldn't title themselves a &quot;killer&quot; but instead consider themselves an instrument of justice, vengeance, purification, etc - focusing on their motivation not the act. Make sure the killer has a realistic reason for doing what he does, whether revenge or God telling him to, to protecting others, not just &quot;he's evil/crazy so he kills people&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6+ is a lot of POV characters. You'll need to work hard to build empathy, unless several are less-used side characters. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T21:09:04.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20718" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-30T23:07:28.660" Score="9" ViewCount="2628" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an aspiring author, and I have recently just begun developing my first novel. It is a series, but I have engineered the first novel to be a standalone in case the series falls through. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I look at other successful series, I continue to see inter-connected plots across all the books. Scenes that we thought didn't have much meaning turn out to spawn chapters later on. The day is saved by a seemingly insignificant moment back in book one. And it's not just little things: the climax of book two may start the quest of book three, which launches the drive of book four and forms the antagonist of book five. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I create plots that are woven together so expertly, and inter-connect with each other in so many ways? Is there some special formula I've missed? Or is it purely writer genius? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;em&gt;Fablehaven&lt;/em&gt; series, the climax of book two turns out to spawn the entire side story of book three (the shadow plague). In addition, it transforms the secondary protagonist, giving him abilities that are crucial to the plot of all later books. In a separate case, in book one the main protagonist receives a transformation, giving her abilities that at the time seem random. Every single one of her abilities is used multiple times in future novels, and the very fact of her transformation is a key plot element all the way to the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; series, the protagonist does a seemingly random-though-spectacular action (catching his first snitch). The action never comes up again until the final book, where it turns out to have significant bearing on the climax of the entire series (sort of). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are many other examples. These are just a few off the top of my head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-02-14T04:20:48.960" Title="How can I create an inter-connected plot across a series?" Tags="|plot|planning|series|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20712" CreationDate="2016-01-31T01:03:01.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can, so long as it meets the criteria for &quot;fair use.&quot; For more background, I recommend reading the following Wikipedia topic: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T01:03:01.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20732" CreationDate="2016-01-31T03:40:44.793" Score="2" ViewCount="2261" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I use -- or --- to stand in for — ? I've seen people use double hyphen minus, but some apparently use triple. It could be nice to use triple, since then you can reserve double to stand in for en dash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I know that em dash can be typed directly on most keyboards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16720" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T16:37:20.960" Title="Use double or triple minus hyphen (-) to stand in for em dash?" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20718" CreationDate="2016-01-31T04:17:54.283" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working on a new project, what I doing is that I'm working with an outline and think of stuff that will happen in broad strokes and how it relates to other things. Personally, I found that it helps a lot if you plan backwards that way you'll have an easier time to weave different plots and helps you in foreshadowing as well, this is what works for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also try reading the original Mistborn trilogy, if you haven't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16539" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T04:17:54.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20718" CreationDate="2016-01-31T07:06:14.580" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't a one-fits-all answer here. Generally speaking, your personal talent/skills in seeing and imagining connections will allow you less effort (and &quot;work&quot;/&quot;formula&quot;/&quot;method&quot;) in devising them. It doesn't make you a better or worse writer to have that gift, but it certainly makes your job easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a couple of tips on how to be able to either recognize more easily or create for yourself such patterns, the best advice I can give you is to learn to recognize &lt;strong&gt;plot nodes&lt;/strong&gt; (you might think of them as deviation points).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Example:&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;a character in book 1 meets a stranger in the street. The stranger offers the character a gift which is rejected. The stranger disappears from the plot and we never hear from then again... (until, say, book 3, where he appears again or the gift is offered to another character)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T07:06:14.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20720" CreationDate="2016-01-31T15:11:34.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use a double.  Before I went to writing camp, I never even knew of the different types of dashes.  But when I was there, I learned to use a double dash for em dashes.  Congrats on knowing this type of stuff!  Because not everyone knows...  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T15:11:34.147" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20730" CreationDate="2016-01-31T19:30:19.577" Score="3" ViewCount="56599" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having a problem that is not addressed by &lt;em&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt; or the &lt;em&gt;AP Style Guide&lt;/em&gt; I have access to: How does a writer express laughter in fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen no consistent answer. It seems playwriting and screenplays generally include it since actors are taught to say what's in front of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most commonly used expression in prose is &lt;strong&gt;ha ha&lt;/strong&gt;, with numerous variations. However, some feel &quot;inclusion of such expressions are a sign of bad writing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to write: &lt;em&gt;Stu laughed and then exclaimed, &quot;So the bug turns into the robot!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or one could write: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Ha ha! So the bug turns into the robot!&quot;&lt;/em&gt; [Assuming it is understood Stu is the speaker.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or even: &lt;em&gt;Laughing, Stu could barely be understood through his chortling: &quot;So the bug--ha ha ha!--turns into the robot, ha ha!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this truly a style issue, or do these have a ranking in terms of readability and fiction preference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T12:25:03.007" Title="Describing laughter in dialogue?" Tags="|style|word-choice|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20720" CreationDate="2016-01-31T20:32:50.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A double dash would be most correct. In fact some word processors will automatically change a double dash into an em dash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T20:32:50.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20752" CreationDate="2016-01-31T21:10:59.300" Score="2" ViewCount="345" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where in the Chicago Manual of Style is the answer to my subject question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked in the CMOS, but could not find the answer to my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book is nonfiction, self help divided into parts with chapters. In headings, the parts are numbered Part I, Part II, Part III, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I cross reference within text, what is the CMOS recommendation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recall in part I, ... (roman, same as in headings)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recall in part 1, ... (arabic)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recall in part one, ... (spelled out)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I know that the overarching rule is consistency and that house style overrules whatever external authority is being used. When developing a house style, it's helpful to know if a style rule is the same as or an exception to CMOS (or other style authority).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11559" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T14:16:13.180" Title="If a heading is in roman numerals, is an in-text cross reference also in roman, or arabic, or spelled out" Tags="|style|business-writing|chicago-manual-of-style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20726" CreationDate="2016-01-31T23:27:01.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In CMOS 16th edition, section 9.29 (Numbered divisions in legal instruments) comes (as best I can determine) to answering my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Arabic or roman numerals are sometimes used to distinguish divisions within legal instruments and other documents. ... A mixture of arabic and roman numerals sometimes distinguishes small from larger divisions.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example they provide suggests choosing how you want to treat it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Constitution of the United States, article 2, section 4 (&lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; Article II, Section 4)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11559" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T23:27:01.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20667" CreationDate="2016-02-01T01:13:31.013" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is really just an extension to other answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Become the villain when you're writing the villain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16228" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T01:13:31.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20724" CreationDate="2016-02-01T01:35:21.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your first example is the best, but I would avoid using &quot;exclaimed&quot; - it's generally better to stick with &quot;said&quot; all the time, as words like &quot;exclaimed&quot; tend to draw attention to themselves and away from the actual dialogue, where the focus should be. I would recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stu laughed and said &quot;So the bug turns into the robot.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or simply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stu laughed. &quot;So the bug turns into the robot.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the third example, I would avoid &quot;chortling&quot; for the same reason that &quot;exclaimed&quot; is avoided. I would suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stu was laughing so hard that it was almost impossible to understand him. &quot;So the bug turns into the robot.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16228" LastEditorUserId="16228" LastEditDate="2016-02-01T03:57:38.127" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T03:57:38.127" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20724" CreationDate="2016-02-01T03:54:56.010" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write &quot;ha ha&quot; if you want those words spoken, but not for laughter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vera rolled her eyes. &quot;Ha ha. Very funny.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actual laughter is a nonverbal sound and is better described. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vera's eyes widened. &quot;You mean you—&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A roar of laughter escaped her mouth. Tears streamed down her cheeks,&#xA;  and her body shook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't normally spell it out, just as I wouldn't normally spell out the sound of a cough or a sneeze. Of course, there may be rare cases where you want to describe the unusual sound of certain person's sneeze or laugh (often for comic effect), and then you can go to town:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His laugh sounded like a mixture of a masonry drill and a guinea pig&#xA;  squeal: &quot;Hweaww-HEEE-hee-heghgh!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T03:54:56.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20718" CreationDate="2016-02-01T03:58:27.107" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;J K Rowling said that she imagined her entire story nearly all at once in one sitting. That means that while the readers were doled out a single book at a time, she basically had one giant story, broken up into seven parts. If you think about it that way, connecting all of the stories  together is not much more complicated than connecting elements between chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't believe Rowling when she claimed it happened to her. I thought she was being dramatic. But this November I had a nearly identical experience (though I seriously doubt I'll experience identical success!) I'm writing one story at a time, but have have four complete interconnected stories all outlined and am researching and planning them as I work on the first draft of the first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have to force a sense of interconnectedness. The stories all do this naturally because it's basically one giant story with four very large chapters.  There's no scheming or difficult elements to work with. It's completely natural. Of course it all fits together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't attempt this if youre simply trying to do a neat literary trick. And I hope you're not offended, but your question seems to focus on devising and working with methods and formulas rather than wanting to tell one single story with multiple parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't attempt this unless you need to do it to make the story work. Don't do it unless you honestly believe that there is no other way to express everything you need to. It won't work otherwise. It will look like you tried a gimmick. It won't ring true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T03:58:27.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20720" CreationDate="2016-02-01T04:19:00.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you're doing with the text. In some cases, a double hyphen with surrounding spaces will be automatically converted to a dash, but that might not work with a triple hyphen. If you must enter text in typewriter style, I'd suggest using space and a double-hyphen for a dash. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is much clearer, however, to use the correct characters, and with the widespread use of UTF-8, these should print correctly on most platforms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In typography, a dash can be represented either as an en-dash surrounded by a space on each side – like this – or as an em-dash character with no spaces—like this.  The en-dash with spaces is sometimes better behaved at line breaks, but the em-dash is arguably more correct. The en-dash is traditionally used mostly for number ranges (eg, 100–114). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These characters can be easily inserted on a Mac keyboard (Option-hyphen and Shift-Option-hyphen). It's more awkward on Windows (Alt-0150 and Alt-0151), but there are many ways to remap the keyboard or use a program substitute other keystrokes for dashes. (AutoHotKey is very good and free.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T04:19:00.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20734" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20736" CreationDate="2016-02-01T11:22:48.390" Score="1" ViewCount="2632" Body="&lt;p&gt;The current book I'm working on has named chapters with epigraphs... is it general practice to include these in the word count of the book when talking to agents / publishers, or do you just count the main text of the novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that they won't add up to much extra words, but I thought I'd be precise :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16657" LastActivityDate="2020-12-15T14:36:24.970" Title="When describing novel word counts to agents / publishers, are chapter titles and epigraphs included?" Tags="|novel|wordcount|agent|publisher|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20735" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20737" CreationDate="2016-02-01T12:59:21.250" Score="1" ViewCount="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a fantasy story, I'm still planning the plot and characters, I have an idea about the setting, but I'm divided about the technological level of the setting. It is more of an adventure story, that's inspired by manga such as Fullmetal Alchemist, One Piece, and games like Final Fantasy VII.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm confused what should I do with the setting, whether there should be electricity, and cars etc. Any advises?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16539" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T14:45:34.360" Title="Help in deciding setting" Tags="|fantasy|world-building|setting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-02-06T22:19:55.703" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20734" CreationDate="2016-02-01T14:19:37.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't count them, but word count is not any exact science. Publishers/agents want to know whether your book is 70.000 words vs 90.000 words; they don't care if it's 71982 instead of 72001&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T14:19:37.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20735" CreationDate="2016-02-01T14:45:34.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best things about those stories, especially the Final Fantasy series, is that the technology changes drastically from continent to continent and village to village. In most cases there is the evil empire or corporation that is technologically superior, but only because they cull it from everything and everyone around them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The poverty stricken could be simple farmers or hunter/gatherer types who fear the technology that has oppressed them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another great thing is that magic can play a factor. Maybe the magic in your book is your electricity, or maybe it is a forgotten power which the hero holds the key to and the villain is seeking at all costs. Maybe the magic is far more powerful than any tech in the known world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books like that are popular right now because they identify with the struggle of modern life and the knowledge that there is a select 1% of humanity that is so rich and powerful that we may just be kept in the dark and controlled so that they can stay powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even still, your question is very broad and I'm not sure that any of this is applicable to your ideas and concept. Hopefully this helps with the technology question. Ultimately, I think a wide range of technology is best, it opens your book up to have more locations and differing landscapes in terms of a Manga or FF style storytelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16514" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T14:45:34.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-01T19:08:57.777" Score="6" ViewCount="15745" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's what I'm talking about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PALO ALTO, Calif., January 5, 2016 — Example Inc. today delivered on the promise to reinvent the PC by bringing premium consumer design into a commercial-grade device &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cyberalert.com/blog/index.php/does-your-press-release-follow-ap-style-9-rules-for-pr/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;what I found&lt;/a&gt;, my understanding is that this might be a requirement outlined in the Associated Press stylebook - at least that's where the custom state abbreviations are defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to understand why is it like that. I've seen that approach used in a press release issued by a large IT corporation (quoted above), as well as a lot of radio presenters and major news agencies, so there must be a convention. At the same time, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reuters&lt;/a&gt; only does this in some articles, and I couldn't figure out the dependency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please clarify!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16733" LastActivityDate="2017-09-07T17:38:29.350" Title="Why do news articles and press releases start with date and location?" Tags="|journalism|press-release|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20738" CreationDate="2016-02-01T20:11:10.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure it originates as a Journalism style. It is a newspaper era journalism technique and ultimately I think its an easy and quick way for journalists to answer two of the important 'W's right off the bat. As soon as you begin reading you know where and when, and the story can focus on explaining the who, what, and why. It saves print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all the many forms of media out now, it is not as rigid a tradition as in former generations, but it is still an easy way to shorten the key points of the story if one is to save copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16514" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-02-01T20:28:15.820" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T20:28:15.820" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20738" CreationDate="2016-02-01T21:32:05.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a news story it is very, very common that you will need to specify the place and the date. A convention that you put it at the beginning of the article is more concisely than working it into the text, and makes it easy to find when people are referring to a newspaper article long after the fact. Sure, you could say, &quot;There was an earthquake in Someville yesterday, January 31, 2016, registering 6.2 on the Richter scale ...&quot; But putting it up front saves a couple of words and probably more important, makes it less likely that you'll forget to say. When you're writing the story, it's obviously &quot;here&quot; and &quot;today&quot;, so I can see it being easy to forget to mention that. The reader, of course, may read it days or years from now and could be anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T21:32:05.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20698" CreationDate="2016-02-01T21:44:46.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;U.S. copyright law explicitly says that you do not have a copyright in an idea. There's a big international treaty about copyright so most other countries would be the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You only own a copyright to the exact words, pictures, or other &quot;tangible expression&quot; of an idea. If you're not copying someone else's exact words (or pictures or music or whatever), you're not violating their copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should add, the NAME &quot;Machine of Death&quot; could be trademarked, if that's the actual name used in the stories you're stealing from ... I mean drawing inspiration from. You can avoid any problem there by just using a different name. I think that would be a good idea in any case to make your own work look more original. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your intent is that you want to write stories that fit into someone else's universe, I'd heartily encourage you not to. It's one thing to say, &quot;hey, that's a cool idea, I'd like to adapt that and use it in my own stories&quot;. It's quite another to take someone else's characters, settings, plot arcs, etc, and plagiarize wholesale. Make up your own universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2016-02-03T21:02:10.370" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T21:02:10.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20698" CreationDate="2016-02-02T02:11:55.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is treading on thin ice in this case. Although ideas cannot generally be copyrighted, US law does offer extra protection for a series, and the story you're a fan of is a series of stories under the conceptual umbrella of the Machine of Death. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, it might well be a problem if you come up your own story using the &quot;Machine of Death&quot; label. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could safely borrow the idea in a general sense—some machine, computer or other method that predicts a person's death with unerring accuracy. If you're determined to write another story in the universe of the original book, you could try asking permission from whoever owns the rights. If they don't plan more books, they might say yes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T02:11:55.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20738" CreationDate="2016-02-02T02:18:21.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The dateline shows when and where the story was &lt;em&gt;written&lt;/em&gt; (or filed), not merely where the events occurred. Newspapers and other news services spend a lot of  money to send reporters overseas. An overseas dateline tells the reader that they are getting the news from someone who was close to the event, rather than a second-hand account. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T02:18:21.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20718" CreationDate="2016-02-02T02:43:46.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest creating the connections as you go. I know it seems like it would make good sense to plot out the grand story first, but this approach can make the actual writing a soul-destroying experience, and tends to produce a predictable narrative. Inventing the big story on the fly is much more fun and not difficult. Just look at what's gone by and bring some of those details back into the story. Sketch out only as much structure as you absolutely must have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story involves a character trying to achieve some sort of goal, and trying to deal with various obstacles along the way. If you want to extend your story, just keep the trouble coming. You THOUGHT it was over, but there's more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say you're written your first story about Prince Beanbag, who defeats the Vile Sisterhood, aided by the lovely Wendy. If you decide to keep it going for a second book, you can reveal that the Vile Sisterhood were under the control of Zingar, Lord of Evil, and now Prince Beanbag has to defeat Zingar too. Which he does. Until you realize you wanted a third book, so it turns out that Zingar was not actually dead but has returned to his demonic form and has possessed the lovely Wendy, who now leads an army of undead goblin werewolves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at Tolkien, it's pretty obvious that the ring Bilbo discovers in The Hobbit wasn't intended to be the ultimate evil. It was elevated to that status later, when Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings. Many apparently tightly constructed stories are written on the fly. The TV series Breaking Bad holds together perfectly from beginning to end, but each season was written with a blank slate. Characters that worked well (eg, Gus) were given more prominence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T02:43:46.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20708" CreationDate="2016-02-02T04:59:43.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing---NOTHING!---in the detailed list given by you that's forbidden, if used, just as you described, in a &quot;passing reference.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOR is there any problem with mentioning real businesses or hotels, UNLESS you do so in a derogatory way; such as: &quot;I stayed three nights in the SOUTH NARK hotel, right off Broadway, in New York. And it took me three weeks to clear the bed-bugs out of my clothing, belongings and suitcase! Couldn't get a decent night's sleep there, either; there was a continual party going on, hosted by the Grunge-Rockola band, &quot;ROCK, PAPER, SWITCHBLADES,&quot; and they were raising hell non-stop along the entire length of the 13th floor!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wrote that about a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; hotel, you'd be hip-deep in hell, but otherwise--- simply &quot;I/he/we/they stayed at the SOUTH NARK,&quot; you would have no problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some great authors created new brand-names for all the businesses, vehicles, and even tools, that were mentioned in their short stories or novels. Others were intricately detailed, and so generous with the geographical references in their stories, that a reader or researcher could track the action 'round the city, even half a century later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read many, MANY similar works---not only ones exclusively in your genre---and &#xA;simply do as those authors do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And please stop with the paranoia! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The vast majority of authors DO NOT live to sue other authors; I've something like 80-odd things still in print (almost all are under other names and in other nations, by now) plus I've been &quot;publishing for money&quot; since about 1968. AND I'VE NEVER SUED ANYBODY!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, gee! Somebody used &quot;my&quot; catch-phrase: &quot;It Cost Him A Shiny New Nickle.&quot; Big deal!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck, my friend!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15754" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T04:59:43.233" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20709" CreationDate="2016-02-02T05:51:50.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Multiple pov is promising until it is not confusing for readers. You can simply include the killer's narrative whenever you want to spice things up. I would love to read such work until it is not frustrating. You can simply cross check your lines by thinking as a reader than a writer. As a character's voice is oblivious, you can twist the plot by shifting concentration on each and every character.Hope this helps you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16738" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T05:51:50.070" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20748" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-02T07:48:40.487" Score="1" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen double and double again a lot. Redouble, not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found out that redouble can mean to double again, to double, or in general to intensify whether that is double, triple, quintuple, or something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if I want to use double again I pretty much know when to use it. However I wouldn't know when to use redouble or if I should use it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I use redouble where I would usually use double then the reader would think that it has doubled twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I use redouble where I would usually use triple or quintuple or something besides double then again the reader will think that it has doubled again when it might have tripled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I use redouble where I would usually use double again the reader wouldn't have the intensify vs double again confusion but still the reader might think &quot;It is irrelavant to use redouble when you could just use double again.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So should I use redouble in any scenario when writing or editing or should I just use double, double again, triple etc. which I would usually use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to expand my vocabulary while editing so that is why I am asking if I should ever use redouble? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8607" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T03:32:51.633" Title="Redouble, double, or double again?" Tags="|editing|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20748" CreationDate="2016-02-02T11:10:06.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Redouble&quot; is almost always used in the idiom &lt;em&gt;to redouble one's effort&lt;/em&gt;, meaning to increase the effort one is exerting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Double again&quot; has the very specific meaning of &lt;em&gt;This was increased by 100% of the original, to make 200%, and will now be increased by 100% of that, making it 400% of the original.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one you want to use is dependent on context and your intended meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T11:10:06.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20750" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-02T13:47:23.280" Score="2" ViewCount="1440" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I guess camera action is up to the director. Would I ever be allowed to pan if it is important? Would I not be able to pick certain angles? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I can, what would be the best way to specify --for example --that a character is fixing his/hair in the mirror from the mirror's point of view? My instinct is to just simply say: From the mirror's POV (character's name} fixes his/her hair in the reflection. Can anybody think of a better way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16741" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-02-02T19:30:41.037" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T18:25:58.747" Title="Can you specify camera angles in your screenplay?" Tags="|screenwriting|description|scene|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20750" CreationDate="2016-02-02T13:58:13.777" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The current fashion in screenwriting is to avoid mentions of camera angles and focus on storytelling, but you can certainly mention POV. Some people do this with a slugline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;INT. BEDROOM—DAY&#xA;&#xA;BILL'S POV&#xA;&#xA;Bill fixes his hair in the mirror.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're going to do the trick where a mirror image turns out to be the real one, you don't need to mention POV at first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;INT. BEDROOM—DAY&#xA;&#xA;Bill smiles. &#xA;&#xA;    BILL&#xA;  You mean everything to me. Everything. &#xA;  I love you, and I'd do anything for you. &#xA;&#xA;A WIDER ANGLE shows Bill is talking into the bathroom mirror.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, write it whatever way it works best for a reader. This is more important than making the details clear for a director (who will ignore it anyway). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T13:58:13.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20726" CreationDate="2016-02-02T14:16:13.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should certainly follow the same style used in the heading if there are multiple levels, and different systems are used for numbers. It avoids confusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a less structured document, like the chapter titles of a book, you have more flexibility. I'd suggest either spelling it out or using the style from the chapter heading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chapter XX&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Chapter XVIII, we examined the methods for the investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chapter XX&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Chapter Eighteen, we examined the methods for the investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might see a mix of number styles in cases where the layout person decided the chapter titles would look nice in Roman numerals, but I wouldn't recommend writing that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's probably easiest to stick to Arabic numbers, and then just follow the usual rules for writing or spelling numbers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T14:16:13.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20204" CreationDate="2016-02-02T14:30:14.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you mean &quot;errors&quot; rather than &quot;errata&quot;. A book's errata is usually a list of errors that have been noted and are corrected on a separate page. You don't see errata so much these days—it's cheaper to correct the error and reprint it, and there's less of a financial inducement to print the errors on a separate sheet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5 errors in 50 pages might be acceptable, depending on the nature of the errors. If it's a book on programming, and the errors mean that most of the programs don't work as printed, this is unacceptable. But if it's a missing comma here or there, then it sounds normal, and possibly better than average. Some people's &quot;errors&quot; are issues of style—for example, the so-called Oxford comma. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T14:30:14.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20678" CreationDate="2016-02-02T14:40:45.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The real challenge here is writing the earlier scenes. A character might not express emotions, but they had better feel them, or the reader will have a hard time caring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at a book like &lt;em&gt;The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,&lt;/em&gt; the main character is autistic and has difficulty connecting with other people; however, he feels strong emotions, and this places the reader inside the character's head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, a sociopath can still experience a wide range of emotions. In &lt;em&gt;A Clockwork Orange,&lt;/em&gt; the main character is very emotional. He's just completely lacking in empathy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T14:40:45.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20750" CreationDate="2016-02-02T15:54:21.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Never put camera angles/shots in your screenplay, it screams amateur. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can however cheat to create visual clues. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;INT.  PRISON - DAY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pair of shackled FEET shuffle down the hallway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16744" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T15:54:21.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16237" CreationDate="2016-02-02T16:31:48.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The smart thing to do is to add continuos to the slug line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;INT. GARAGE - NIGHT (CONTINOUS)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This indicates the action is happening at the same time as...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;INT.  SECURITY OFFICE - NIGHT (CONTINOUS)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16744" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T16:31:48.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5590" CreationDate="2016-02-02T16:38:57.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Final draft has a script compare function. TOOLS &gt; SCRIPTCOMPARE. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you compare two drafts it will point out the differences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16744" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T16:38:57.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19256" CreationDate="2016-02-02T16:49:02.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Final draft has a SHOT under the ELEMENTS menu&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would format it like this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;INT. LIVING ROOM - NIGHT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steven watches a news broadcast on TELEVISION (This is in caps to indicate a prop)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ON TV (this is how a shot looks in final draft)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                      MALE NEWS REPORTER&#xA;              Blah, blah, blah!&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ON STEVEN (Shot to indicate a return to the main scene)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the script is broken down for production the shot will pop up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16744" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T16:49:02.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18472" CreationDate="2016-02-02T17:02:43.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The correct way to do this depends who we are watching. Assuming we are looking at Jane..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jane is on the phone talking to Michael.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                        JANE&#xA;          Fine, I'll see you on Thursday.&#xA;&#xA;                       MICHAEL (V.O.)&#xA;                       (filtered)&#xA;          I'm looking forward to it.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jane hears ANOTHER WOMAN'S VOICE close to Michael. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                       JANE&#xA;          Who the hell is there with you?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16744" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T17:02:43.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20760" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20771" CreationDate="2016-02-02T18:36:11.933" Score="3" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've submitted some of my work to an agent that requested an exclusive submission. They say that after 6 weeks of no contact I can assume a rejection.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: would I be breaking my exclusive submission if I submitted similar, but not the same, work to a different agent before the 6 weeks have expired? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it makes a difference, one of the stories that I'd like to submit is in the same world/series as one that was submitted to the first agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-03T11:19:15.413" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T11:19:15.413" Title="Would I be breaking my exclusive submission by submitting similar works to different agents?" Tags="|agent|submitting-work|conventions|ethics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20766" CreationDate="2016-02-02T21:52:58.510" Score="8" ViewCount="765" Body="&lt;p&gt;My protagonist is an anti-hero. He's manipulative, cunning, kills, and sacrifices others for the greater good, which is to destroy an oppressive regime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm at the point where he has destroyed the regime, secretly taken over and now is destroying the secret society which was in control of the country. I want this to be his last mission. However, I want a fitting end for him. But I don't want to kill him yet because I feel like he has to be punished for his &quot;sins&quot;. So, how do I write a fitting end, an appropriate punishment for him to suffer, that isn't just killing the character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-24T01:43:07.817" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T01:43:07.817" Title="How do I write a fitting ending for an anti-hero?" Tags="|characters|ending|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20763" CreationDate="2016-02-02T22:36:56.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the Anti-Hero needs punishment. The new order that rises up in the wake of all this destruction could hold trial against him and imprison him for what 'sins' he did commit. I'm not sure if this is futuristic or mid-evil or whatnot so, he could either be frozen in a carbonite like substance Han Solo style, or shackled and put in the deepest darkest dungeon depending on your settings. Then you could just leave him there and end it so that if you need him again you could bring him back Rambo style &quot;John we need you&quot; and do a whole new adventure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise he could just disappear into the night like Batman and the reader is left to churn about where he'll go next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a big thing, that holds much importance is whether he won the hearts of the people. Robin Hood killed and was a highway robber, but he won the hearts of the people, so even when the Sheriff caught him, he couldn't really catch him, because he'd just escape somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could even leave it at the second before death. A true cliff hanger for sure, It'd be like Butch and Sundance, they are surrounded, sure to die, and they just jump out guns a blazing, but because it never actually shows them die, they become a legend. Maybe your Anti-hero could become such a legend?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16514" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T22:36:56.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20763" CreationDate="2016-02-03T00:05:19.663" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like the idea of how &lt;em&gt;Star Trek: The Next Generation&lt;/em&gt; dealt with the discovery of a new Q. Although she wasn't quite an anti-hero, her development of new godlike powers created chaos in the cosmos and Picard asks [the original] Q, &quot;So which is it: Does she live or does she die?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And Q's response: &quot;I haven't decided yet.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An external entity holds your protagonist's life in it's hands.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T00:05:19.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20763" CreationDate="2016-02-03T01:58:46.970" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Determine what sins he needs to be punished for, and set up mirrors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's murder: someone important to him should die.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's toppling a government and he sets up a new one: his new&#xA;government falls apart because the people are now revolting against&#xA;&lt;em&gt;him&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If he destroys a secret society because he loathes secrecy: in some&#xA;way he has to establish a new one in order to hold the government&#xA;together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on. You're going for a &lt;em&gt;Twilight Zone&lt;/em&gt; kind of irony. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T01:58:46.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20768" CreationDate="2016-02-03T03:49:00.513" Score="4" ViewCount="583" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand why publishers often ask for exclusive submissions.  They're counting on a story that has been submitted to them to be available for them to purchase if they decide they like it and it fits in with their current publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But why would an agent request an exclusive submission when it's not so much the story they're looking at but the author themselves?  Is this a common thing among agents?  Generally my understanding is that authors work for publishers and agents work for authors.  I understand it's more complicated than that, but what advantage does an agent gain by requesting exclusive submissions other than keeping an author from submitting to other agents until they decide to reject or accept them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T16:11:46.153" Title="Why would an agent request an exclusive submission?" Tags="|agent|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20767" CreationDate="2016-02-03T04:21:12.120" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because evaluating an author's work is expensive. It consumes time that could otherwise be spent finding other authors. That time is a dead loss if the author signs with another agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end this is a matter of power. While the agent does work for that author, there are more authors looking for agents than there are agents looking for authors, so the agent gets to set the terms of the courtship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the author comes with an existing platform, of course, then the power is reversed. If George Clooney wants a literary agent, he can submit to as many as he wants and they will drop everything they are doing to read his stuff. (If they even bother to read it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T04:21:12.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20672" CreationDate="2016-02-03T14:39:59.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say you are proof-reading, so you are the copy editor? You should concern yourself with the readability of the text, but not the pagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, if a novel chapter goes 8 lines into the last page, that is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T14:39:59.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20767" CreationDate="2016-02-03T14:42:02.070" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never worked with an agent, but I'd think the reason is obvious: An agent gets a commission on anything he manages to sell for a writer. If the writer uses multiple agents, than an agent could spend significant time trying to sell something this writer has produced, and then another agent sells it and collects the commission, and agent number one gets nothing for all his effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard that publishers don't like it when a writer works with multiple agents. If they get the same manuscript from two different agents, they now could get in the middle of an argument over which agent should get the commission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T14:42:02.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20760" CreationDate="2016-02-03T15:17:32.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You never MUST submit to someone who requests exclusive submissions, but once you've done it you should take it seriously.  It would be surprisingly good fortune to have the two different books in your series accepted by different agents, but if it happened it could put you in a tough situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that their window is only a month and a half, I would wait it out, and then pick agents without that requirement for your next round of submissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T15:17:32.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20760" CreationDate="2016-02-03T15:52:15.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I definitely wouldn't send out the other book that contains the same characters. Rather, I would wait four weeks and then send out your original submission to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasoning behind this is because the last time I submitted something it took a week just to travel across the country and arrive at the publishers office. You can safely assume that the majority of the second week, your submission will be in the slush pile awaiting review. This system will prevent you from crossing the line with your exclusive submission because it is highly doubtful that the second publisher will be calling you the same day or week that your submission arrives at their office. It does however, help you to minimize your thumb twiddling time waiting on a response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing that you should do is update your query letter to include the fact that you now have two related books with reoccurring characters. If the publisher allows for simultaneous submissions, you may even be able to send both at once the next time you submit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it is only six weeks, you could even submit your completed second book to the original agent. Have your query letter up to date to include reference to the other title and try to wait the six weeks or at minimum the four weeks before sending to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately it is your material and your work so you make the decisions on what to do with it. Try to respect the publisher/agent's wishes, but respect your time too. Try to see through anything that seems overly picky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another big, highly important thing is to always stand by your word. If in your query letter you have stated that you are sending an exclusive submission, then they will assume it means for the whole six weeks and thus you need to stand by your word and wait. I generally don't build any false hope with the publisher/agent with that regard. It is best to not have your query letter include any promises that you can't or don't want to keep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16514" LastEditorUserId="16514" LastEditDate="2016-02-03T16:02:21.977" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T16:02:21.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20738" CreationDate="2016-02-03T16:07:38.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is called a &lt;em&gt;dateline&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the relevant &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dateline&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; for a guide to proper formatting and links to the Wall Street Journal and Associated Press style guides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to what the Wikipedia article claims, the dateline does not (necessarily) describe &quot;where and when the story occurred&quot;, but &lt;strong&gt;where and when the news originated&lt;/strong&gt;. I have read several newspaper articles where the dateline referred to, for example, an embassy in my country (which became clear from explanations in text), while the actual news took place in the home country of that embassy. Similarly the death of an explorer is often not reported by journalists on site, but relayed through their agents whose offices and press conferences are in turn credited in the dateline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The origin of the news or feature story, and thus the DATELINE preceding it, is a matter of editorial decision making. It does not arise from a location fixed inevitably at a named locale of given latitude and longitude. The latidude belongs to the editor. Thus where news happens is wherever a news editor decides that the newsworthy situation took place, or where a news-peg could be found. (Grady Clay, &lt;em&gt;Real Places&lt;/em&gt;, 1994, p. 15)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/world/europe/germany-train-collision.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a recent article&lt;/a&gt; in the New York Times:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/f3wck.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/f3wck.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can read, the event described happened in Bavaria, while the datline gives &quot;Cologne&quot; (not in Bavaria) as the origin of the news. Apparently, when she wrote the story, author Melissa Eddy &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/meddybln/status/696685320214081536&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;was still in Cologne for the carnival&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-zika-microcephaly-insight-idUSKCN0VI0AL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another example&lt;/a&gt;, this one from Reuters, the author reports on events in Brazil from Chicago:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1c02I.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1c02I.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the proper formatting (and inclusion) of a dateline, you need to refer to the house style of whoever you are writing for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-02-09T12:50:51.640" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T12:50:51.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20767" CreationDate="2016-02-03T16:11:46.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agents are a rare breed. Agents can be picky. Even more picky, than publishing houses. Every agent has just a limited amount of time that he will be able to dedicate to new writers. He is trying to make sure, that his time is well spent and not wasted to an author, that is maybe hired by another agent the moment he starts to read his manuscript. I think youl'll find a lot about writer's etiquette while working with agents in &quot;The forest for the trees&quot; by Betsy Lerner. Most agents won't ask you to do this; they just will silently assume that you are a writer playing fair. That you did your research on the publishing industry and that you won't waste their time. If you will be picked by two agents, they might end up pissed and you'll get a bad name in the industry. (It is small. News travel.) Try to avoid that. Play fair. Agents are subtle and quick to anger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T16:11:46.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20487" CreationDate="2016-02-03T17:40:04.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you already know it is California, Depression-era, then pick a real prison and use that as a setting. If you can find a prison that somebody has written a comprehensive book about, then choose that prison and get that book. It may have maps and descriptions of what life was like there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many books about what it is like to be a prisoner, and about particular people who were imprisoned. Get one of those, too. Ideally from the same era. If from the actual prison you have chosen, that is even better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those books form the foundation of your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T17:40:04.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20748" CreationDate="2016-02-03T18:01:42.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of trying to use a derivative of &lt;em&gt;double&lt;/em&gt;, you can use the suffix &lt;em&gt;-fold&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;three·fold&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;three times as great or as numerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;a threefold increase in the number of stolen cars&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no real maximum number that can be used for this. You can use ten-fold, one hundred-fold, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T18:01:42.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20763" CreationDate="2016-02-03T21:00:41.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What drives him throughout your story? Is it money, power, love, lust? What is it that he thinks he deserves when the fighting is over? Fame, gold? Aside from the overall plot, what his his personal quest? Happiness, sanity, to recover the use of his legs? What's the thing under the surface which actually matters more than just beating the bad guys? Being reunited with his family? Being accepted in a foreign land? Being aquitted of a terrible crime he didn't commit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever it is, it's there throughout the story and we're rooting for him, hoping he does the right thing for once and claims his reward. But he fails us, so wrench it away and be cruel. You are writing a tragedy, so make it tragic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2016-02-26T21:09:41.017" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T21:09:41.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20778" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20779" CreationDate="2016-02-03T21:23:08.867" Score="9" ViewCount="3976" Body="&lt;p&gt;My second-grader has been asked to write a &quot;fairy tale.&quot; We are both clueless about what makes a story a &quot;fairy tale&quot; different from a fantasy story. Is there some special, defining element to a fairy tale that we're missing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16767" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-02-03T22:27:41.840" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T18:33:12.937" Title="What defines a Fairy Tale versus typical Fantasy?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20778" CreationDate="2016-02-03T22:04:04.750" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that the traditional sense of the term fairy tale is used for a fairly concise story that is written to appeal mainly to children. The general context of a fairy tale would be the standard &quot;Once upon a time.... and they lived happily ever after, THE END&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally these stories involved magic, fantasy characters and creatures, and were meant to teach a lesson, but not always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Merriam Webster's dictionary defines fairy tale like this&#xA;1&#xA;a :  a story (as for children) involving fantastic forces and beings (as fairies, wizards, and goblins) —called also fairy story&#xA;b :  a story in which improbable events lead to a happy ending&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fairy%20tale&quot;&gt;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fairy%20tale&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy can include all of these, but is generally perceived to be a longer work of fiction and may or may not be geared toward a younger audience. You can have works of Fantasy that follow parallels of a fairy tale type story, but do not fit the traditional definition of a &quot;fairy tale&quot;. Hope that helps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16514" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T22:04:04.750" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20778" CreationDate="2016-02-03T22:43:05.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A fairytale is a more palatable way of demonstrating a moral or ethical lesson to your audience. No-one wants to be preached to but if the lesson is couched in an entertaining form - in this case a story - then they will listen and, despite themselves, learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for the fantasy elements is part of this. By using otherworldly characters, creatures and settings the storyteller isn't pointing fingers or apportioning blame to any particular individual or group that the audience might know. This keeps things clear in the audience's mind and makes it much easier to use allegory to tell the tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13109" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T22:43:05.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20778" CreationDate="2016-02-04T01:00:11.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are probably evolving terms rather than hard and fast divisions, but what I would say distinguishes fairy tales from fantasy is that a fairy tale is a tale about a human being encountering fairy folk, who represent a danger to ordinary human life. Fairies have been Disnified in recent years, but Yeats poem &quot;The Stolen Child&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/816/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/816/&lt;/a&gt;) is much closer to the original idea.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy, on the other hand, has become more and more about the wielding of magic or otherwise fantastical powers. Thus we have Harry Potter: not a story about ordinary people encountering dangerous magic, but about an extraordinary boy practicing magic and using it for good. In this sense fantasy is very close to science fiction, which is again about the exploitation of knowledge for power. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this sense we may see the fairy story and fantasy as diametrically opposed takes on the same theme. And in this sense, horror today is perhaps closer to fairy stories than fantasy is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T01:00:11.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20748" CreationDate="2016-02-04T03:32:51.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this context, redoubling your effort means trying harder, but not by any set amount. Maybe 150% of the original effort. At least that's the understood meaning in modern English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're speaking the language the word comes from (French), &quot;redoubler&quot; is to double &lt;strong&gt;again&lt;/strong&gt;, or 400% of original. The same is true if you're playing a bidding game (like contract bridge).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T03:32:51.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20734" CreationDate="2016-02-04T03:38:58.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's part of the manuscript, you should include chapter titles and espcially epigraphs. It's not likely to be much, but anything that isn't &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scribendi.com/advice/front_matter.en.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;front matter&lt;/a&gt; should be counted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T03:38:58.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20786" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-04T07:19:46.323" Score="5" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to start a new story, and I feel it would be better if I started in media res. (aka at some point in the middle.) I know this is a fairly common style used to hook readers into the story but I intend to write a series of stories and as such the start of my first book will not be actually reached until about the middle of the second book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this a done thing?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I don't want my readers to be confused or annoyed if and when the scene that opens the book isn't actually in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sub question: It seems to me that most cases of in media res occur during an action packed sequence or in cases such as Citizen Kane important story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I intend to start at a sequence shortly after a later described action scene but the sequence itself will not be action packed or particularly central to another part of the plot either before or after it (The main protagonist has been jailed after a large battle and it's just him sitting in jail being miserable trying to escape.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I avoid this approach entirely or pick a better scene?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16772" LastEditorUserId="13149" LastEditDate="2016-02-04T10:49:00.570" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T15:16:58.850" Title="Picking a place to start (In media res)" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|series|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20786" CreationDate="2016-02-04T10:45:25.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's altogether a bad idea, it depends on how you implement it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the ways it can be achieved is to have the present day story and the past story running in parallel. This would mean that events would need to develop for the character in prison, whilst he remembers back to what happened previously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering your question about the scene, having it not plot-oriented or action-packed is very useful, as it will be a time in the character's life where all that he can do is sit and think, therefore he would naturally reminisce about the events that led him there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The past story would need to develop faster than present one, in order for the timelines to catch up, but it would allow intermissions from the memories to progress the current story slightly. This may simply be the character talking to one of the prison guards about something (like how long is he going to be stuck there), then going back to remembering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The present story would likely need to eventually progress significantly, such as the character breaking out of the prison within the first book, but without the past story having caught up yet. This way when the past story reaches the part where he is imprisoned, the reader will understand that the two timelines have merged and the story can then be simply told from the present setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, rather than catching up to the current story in the middle of book two and continuing from there, the end of book two will culminate at the point that you have originally planned, as well as simultaneously allowing them to see how the main character originally landed in jail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your other question, this &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a done thing: a similar example of this is in the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Name_of_the_Wind&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Name of The Wind&lt;/a&gt; by Patrick Rothfuss, who has a character recount tales from his past whilst living in the present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this style has limitations. Firstly, the story would have to be told entirely from the main character's point of view. Otherwise it will make no sense having multiple POV character's when the story is about the experiences of a single person in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, it will need to be made &lt;em&gt;very clear&lt;/em&gt; whether the part of the story currently being read is in the past or the present. The example I gave switches from 3rd to 1st person, making it obvious what part of the story is being developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you're writing a series: I would say it wouldn't make much sense to write in this style to plan on merging story-lines in book 2 if you're planning on doing 7 books. It would change the style of book too much over the course of time, meaning readers might invest in the story but then decide they don't like the change in writing style later in the series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say three books would be acceptable, with the last book the culmination of the character development from the first two books (the character likely learning in the present day from his experiences in his past).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are probably other ways to do this type of story, but hopefully this will give you at least one idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="13149" LastEditDate="2016-02-04T11:05:24.530" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T11:05:24.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20789" CreationDate="2016-02-04T13:14:34.033" Score="3" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wish to write short stories based on the experiences I have from my life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I love writing inspirational stories. But somehow, when I start to write them, I could not focus on the subject; also I fail to maintain a seamless flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been trying this for more than half a year, but could not do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help me or else guide me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13099" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T23:49:55.057" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:49:55.057" Title="How to start writing short stories?" Tags="|style|short-story|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20788" CreationDate="2016-02-04T14:42:12.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Easy question. When you start to write them, do not focus on the subject, do not attempt to maintain a seamless flow. Just write them out. What's coming out it a compilation of all the things you consciously or unconsciously put aside as worthy of thought and retelling. However, this is just your raw material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, with the benefit of a daily writing schedule, go and pick through your raw material. Find a piece that evokes a feeling of potential. Now rewrite that piece, expand on its incompleteness. Gain insight into the conflicts and emotions it raises. Amplify those until you've got a whole story. It's still a rough draft, but it is somewhat whole. You might feel excitement or disappointment: Don't worry about either feeling. Put it away for a week or so while you work on something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, go back to the rough draft. Don't edit it. Just reread it. Open a new file, on new paper, start rewriting the story. You'll find that you're moving elements around, adding new elements, and tossing out others. Finish this story. Spend some time editing/revising it. You've got a finished story. Put it away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Come back to it one month later. If you see a way to make it better, have another go. If you don't, it's really finished, and ready to share with others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with this approach, but figure out what works for you. There are no good first drafts, there are only good revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T14:42:12.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20788" CreationDate="2016-02-04T14:42:40.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don’t have to write in a seamless flow. You don’t even have to write a first draft that flows seamlessly. It may take a number of rewrites before you have a story you are happy with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can’t necessarily sit down and write for 4 hours or 8 hours if you haven’t already been doing that regularly. Writing works the same as any other exercise: you have to do a little each day and build up to where you can do as much as you want to. Try and write for 5 minutes a day. Then next week, try to write for 10 minutes per day, and the week after, for 15 minutes per day, and so on until you are writing for 4 hours a day or however long you would like to write. As you go, your body will adapt and you’ll get better at it. Same as lifting weights or doing yoga. It takes some time to adjust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A really good tip is to read as many short stories as you can. The length of stories, the way they begin-middle-end, the tone and voice they use, and other characteristics will rub off on you and inform your writing. If you are writing short stories, there is nothing better than to be a student of short stories, to really dive into the form and experience as many examples of it as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite writing tips comes from Kurt Vonnegut: “start as close to the end as you can.” That is even more important in short stories than in novels. A great short story is not the same story from a novel just shrunken down — it is just the end of the novel. A novel is like meat and potatoes and rice and salad, but a short story is just the meat. You get right to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T14:42:40.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5054" CreationDate="2016-02-04T14:46:21.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A short story is the same as a novel, except you leave out the first 450 pages. You just write the end. It’s not a short novel, it’s the shortest possible story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no better way to learn how to write short stories than just to read a ton of short stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T14:46:21.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20715" CreationDate="2016-02-04T15:06:01.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you want to write &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_treatment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a film treatment&lt;/a&gt;. This is a recognized approach for creating and marketing story ideas to the film and television industry. Typically, you start out by creating and organizing the story elements using index cards (or similar software). Or, if you are working on an adaptation, you start from a short story or news article. Then, you write a treatment, which is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;a piece of prose, typically the step between scene cards (index cards) and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture, television program, or radio play. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline (or one-page synopsis), and it may include details of directorial style that an outline omits. Treatments read like a short story, but are told in the present tense and describe events as they happen.&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_treatment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is what you're looking for, I searching your library or book vendor for titles on &quot;film treatments&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-04T15:49:34.573" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T15:49:34.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20778" CreationDate="2016-02-04T15:29:24.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several distinctive elements that differentiate fairy tales from modern fantasy, if we understand &quot;modern fantasy&quot; to mean &quot;the modern literary genre established by authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, and the various sub-genres that have emerged from it since.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope:&lt;/strong&gt; A fairy tale takes place close to home for the character.  Jack plants a beanstalk in his own back yard.  Red Riding Hood wants to go visit her grandmother, who lives within walking distance for a young girl.  Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Cinderella all got mixed up in the affairs of local rulers, and so on.  But in modern fantasy, &lt;em&gt;the journey&lt;/em&gt; is a central element.  Bilbo travels from the peaceful Shire to a far-off mountain kingdom, and the generation after him goes much further, all the way to Gondor and Mordor.  The children from &lt;em&gt;The Chronicles of Narnia&lt;/em&gt; are transported from Britain all the way to another world, and they spend a great deal of time adventuring throughout one exotic locale after another within that world.  Rand al'Thor's journeys take him to practically every notable location on an entire continent, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Location:&lt;/strong&gt; A fairy tale takes place close to home for the (original) audience.  Even if it's not explicitly set in the real world (but with magic), its setting tends to be a very familiar place.  Modern fantasy, on the other hand, is very bound up with the art of worldbuilding.  It almost always takes place on a different world, one that is alien in many ways.  (Even with locations like Terry Brooks's &lt;em&gt;Shanara&lt;/em&gt;, which is theoretically set on a post-apocalyptic Earth where magic somehow exists, it's sufficiently non-Earthlike that that's more of a framing device than anything.)  Fantasy authors often tend to revel in seeing just how &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; they can make a world.  For example, Brandon Sanderson's Roshar, the setting of &lt;em&gt;The Stormlight Archive,&lt;/em&gt; is a world that's been ravaged by hurricanes, powered by magic so they don't blow themselves out over land, every few weeks for millennia.  As a result, there's no such thing as soil; everyone lives on bare bedrock, with plants and animals adapted to such an alien ecosystem.  You would never see a world like that in a fairytale!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Characterization:&lt;/strong&gt; In a fairy tale, the protagonist is generally an audience surrogate, and the characters that he or she interacts with are archetypes.  Just look at how many stories Prince Charming shows up in: he doesn't even need a &lt;em&gt;name,&lt;/em&gt; because his archetype is who he is, and that rarely changes for any of the characters.  Whereas in modern fantasy, character development and character growth is frequently a central theme.  Compare Luke Skywalker the naive young farmboy to the fledgling Force-user who turns off his targeting computer to rely on the Force, the brash trainee who abandons Yoda and Dagobah to confront Darth Vader and rescue his friends, and the mature and confident Jedi Knight who can stand without flinching as Vader stands right behind him holding an active lightsaber.  (Yes, &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; is very much a modern fantasy tale; the sword-and-sorcery elements are far more integral to the plot than the spaceships and computers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Magic:&lt;/strong&gt; In a fairytale, magic is something that &lt;em&gt;happens to&lt;/em&gt; the protagonist.  Whether it be Snow White's poisoned apple or Cinderella's gifts from the Fairy Godmother, the magic is always external in nature and something the protagonist has to deal with.  In modern fantasy, it's very common to have the protagonist be a magic-user themselves.  Even in Tolkien's works, both Bilbo and Frodo actively wielded the power of the Ring to help advance their goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not every story in one genre or the other will conform to all of these points, (Urban Fantasy in particular blurs the line quite a bit,) they make good general guidelines to distinguish between the two story types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1933" LastEditorUserId="1933" LastEditDate="2016-02-04T16:06:45.330" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T16:06:45.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20786" CreationDate="2016-02-04T16:02:29.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kurt Vonnegut advised that writers “start as close to the ending as possible.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you decide what is the best ending you have right now, and then write that book. After that book is done, you can start a new book and write the best ending you can come up with for that book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that movies are suffering from right now is they try to make 2 or 3 at once, and actually end up making just one movie that is stretched out to 3 and ends up being 3 bad movies. One is missing a beginning, another is missing an end, another is a jumbled mess. They split one of The Hunger Games books into 2 really weak movies that ended up doing much worse both critically and financially than if they have made just 1 good movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to jump around in the timeline, I think you should have a really, really good reason for that. Don’t do it arbitrarily. For example, do it to hide the true identity of a character that will later be revealed and cast a whole new light on the entire story. Or to hide some important event so that when it is revealed, the reader will understand the true significance of that event. You really put a burden on the reader and if that ends up being for nothing, I think a lot of readers resent it, whether consciously or subconsciously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T16:02:29.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20778" CreationDate="2016-02-04T16:07:31.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this specific case, I'd be very surprised if your child's teacher expected you to define it narrowly.  Any fantasy story would probably be acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, however, a fairy tale is a short story with archetypal characters and plotlines.  According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_tale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; the characters and settings are usually drawn from European folklore, however, there are similar kinds of stories from all around the world.  The stories nearly always include some element of magic (spells, wishes), fantasy (little people, fairies, talking animals) or the supernatural (fate, prophetic dreams, genies), but there are stories which arguably fall in the category that don't (usually stories about tricksters or heroes of extraordinary cleverness).  Fairy tales often seem to have deeper psychological meaning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A typical fairy tale plot has a hero/heroine who is the youngest child, and who is abused, neglected, or considered worthless (or who is under a spell or curse).  The hero will get supernatural aid (sometimes because of personal merit, sometimes not) to overcome a series of challenges, and will finish the story by becoming king or queen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T16:07:31.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20688" CreationDate="2016-02-04T16:13:34.143" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have them face the worst possible moment of their lives together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if they were in an earthquake and got trapped in the basement of a building, just the two of them, with no way to call for help and limited food and water and the air running out and both are injured in some way … if they get out of that together, they will be each other’s closest friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T16:13:34.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20798" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-04T16:15:49.123" Score="5" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to share many song/poetry/lyric works.  I would like to share them as freely as possible, allowing modifications, use of small pieces or lines or concepts, etc..  I want to encourage commercial use of the material, but I would like to have the right to get a cut of any commercial proceeds.  I have perused the Creative Commons licenses and it seems the choice is between allowing commercial use with no compensation, or simply not allowing it.  Is there some sort of licensing choice that lies somewhere in between?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16776" LastActivityDate="2019-11-16T23:20:04.760" Title="best licensing option for freest possible sharing of lyrics while retaining the right to get paid if someone else makes money from them" Tags="|legal|creative-commons|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4138" CreationDate="2016-02-04T16:22:37.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give him a totally unexpected hobby or interest that seems at first to be antithetical to his character. For example, if he loves to bake in his spare time, or likes to do Karaoke on the weekends, that reminds us not to assume we know everything about him. What other unexpected traits might he have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don’t be afraid to give him typical flaws. A character doesn’t have to be perfect to be likable. If we see one of our flaws in him, that draws us to the character and makes him more real. It could be as simple as never picking up after himself. Or he doesn’t feel comfortable around dogs. Or he can never resist sweet foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T16:22:37.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4046" CreationDate="2016-02-04T16:32:09.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The “Fantasy” genre is stories that are “fantastical” — not stories that are unrealistic wish-fulfillment. If I write a book where the main character is a total loser who wins the lottery and travels the world dating the most beautiful people, that is not a “Fantasy” genre book. That story has wish-fulfillment but it is not fantastical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the characters are not realistic then we won’t care about them. If we don’t care about them character, why would we read a story about them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look through any genre, the standout stories are always the ones where the characters are real people that we can relate to and fall in love with and learn from. The worst stories are always populated by cardboard cutouts that we can’t understand and forget about immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T16:32:09.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20688" CreationDate="2016-02-04T16:36:51.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Relationships are contrived. They are contrived by the people in them. They are formed because one of the parties sets out, more or less deliberately, with more or less forethought, to create the relationship. In other words, relationships are the result of courtships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are social creatures and we court other people all the time. In many cases, the courtship is mutual, or becomes mutual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you attempt to have the relationship form without one character courting the other, that will seem contrived. It will seem contrived because the relationship will appear without either of the characters doing the things that form relationships. Figure out who wants the relationship and why and have them act accordingly to try to create the relationship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, have one character court the other for believable reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T16:36:51.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4046" CreationDate="2016-02-04T18:13:35.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Realism is just another style, fiction is never reality.  With that said, unrealistic characters can make it harder to suspend disbelief, identify with the characters or care about them, regardless of genre.  If you are discarding realism, you need to have a good reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most adults don't find characters and plots that are pure wish-fulfillment to be very interesting or compelling.  We can all create our own wish-fulfillment fantasies if that's all we're looking for in a book or a story.  The dominant impression when you read something like that is that the author is writing just for his own satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T18:13:35.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20804" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-04T18:20:27.043" Score="1" ViewCount="500" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a novel where my young protagonist has certain character flaws/issues which are the result of having survived a horrific incident as a child. The incident occured during a time when many people, including a family member, die of starvation, and where there are cases of cannibalism. One night my protagonist and her best friend are attacked. She barely escapes but her friend does not. My plan is to give veiled references to this incident only in the first chapter or  prologue. My protagonist has blocked out the incident which, nevertheless, defines her character and life choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering where I might find information to believably describe the specific effects such trauma might have on the human psyche without having to dive too deeply into psychological texts. Would also welcome any thoughts/ideas on how to do this most effectively. Thanks! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11398" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T00:56:15.823" Title="How do I describe the effects of extreme psychological trauma on my protagonist?" Tags="|fiction|technique|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4138" CreationDate="2016-02-04T18:28:15.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of the reason we read is to learn. When Superman stops a bullet with his bare hands, it doesn't really teach us anything.  But if Superman overcomes his own pride and arrogance, we might glean something useful from that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if a character successfully and believably overcomes a challenge we also might face, that is compelling.  And even a character who has vast powers still has internal struggles such as arrogance, insecurity, lack of empathy, selfishness, laziness, paranoia, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's part of the reason so many movies have a &quot;training montage.&quot;  The lesson is that if you want to go from hero to superhero, you have to put in the time and hard work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T18:28:15.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20688" CreationDate="2016-02-04T18:37:31.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The characters should start the story with a need --probably subconscious --for someone in the opposite role.  The son-figure may not think he needs a father, but he's in desperate of advice, guidance, a male role model.  The father figure may have been running from the commitment a family represents, but he's keenly feeling how empty his life is.  If there's no void in their lives, it can't be filled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T18:37:31.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20798" CreationDate="2016-02-04T18:50:44.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you license something, you're giving people the freedom to use it under certain conditions (eg, for noncommercial purposes). That doesn't mean someone who wants to use it for commercial purposes can't do so—but they'll have to contact you first and negotiate a separate licence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want, you could add an explicit commercial licence, but you'd have to state the prices and terms, and they should work for everyone, from the old lady who wants to use your poem in her home-printed poetry journal going to 90 subscribers, as well as for Disney who want to use your poem in their latest blockbuster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T18:50:44.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20672" CreationDate="2016-02-04T19:00:16.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Simon White says, it's a non-issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there were only one or two lines on the last page... then it would be a minor issue. You might flag it, but you don't need to change it. The layout person can make a few simple tweaks to pull the extra lines back, or push more lines forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T19:00:16.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20786" CreationDate="2016-02-04T19:14:17.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Big Flashback can work, but it's a tired cliché. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general strategy is to open with Louise fighting for her life the grip of the Acturan Octopus Tyrant, then jump back in time to her childhood in Idaho, and the strange sequence of events which will lead to her becoming Earth's one hope against the alien invaders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I read something like this and, by the end of the book, the writer hasn't even touched on Louise and her death struggle with the octopus, I wouldn't bother with book 2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers often came that it's important for readers to know the backstory. Usually it isn't. We are all deluged by stories. We change channels to the middle of a cop drama and pick up the story in minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have a compelling artistic reason to do otherwise, start with the action and move forward in time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T19:14:17.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20804" CreationDate="2016-02-04T19:23:38.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a friend whose mother remembered being fed human flesh as a child. This was late in WW2 in Holland, at time when everyone was starving and many died. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She was a cheerful older lady. If she was traumatized by it, it didn't show. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real life, people react in many different ways. Some find it easier to take things in their stride. Others might be deeply scarred by quite minor events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fiction, one possible approach would be a character who is very well balanced, very positive, but that's only what's on the surface... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T19:23:38.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20804" CreationDate="2016-02-04T20:25:58.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What, in the end, are you asking? You have planned out parts of the story: your protagonist blocking an incident and that incident 'defines her character and life choices'. It seems like you have decided what is going to happen whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet you want information that is believable without you having to take the trouble to 'dive too deeply into psychological texts'. This seems like wanting to eat your cake without wanting the calories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T20:25:58.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20786" CreationDate="2016-02-04T20:47:32.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think in medias res should necessarily be understood as jumping into the middle of the story. I think we should look at it more as a story is embedded in a history. You may need to understand the history in order to understand the story, but the story itself -- the character's moral arc -- does not begin at the beginning of the history. So you start where the story begins, but at some point you have to go fill in the parts of the history necessary to understand the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we look at it this way, we realize that the idea that the opening in medias res &quot;hooks&quot; the reader hard enough that they will then plow through pages and pages of background stuff that they would not otherwise read because they are desperate to get back to the action probably does not hold up. A story should follow its story arc. Background should come in only to the extent that the reader demands to know it in order to comprehend what it going on in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are clearly exceptions to this. Sometimes you get a &quot;how did things end up like this&quot; story, particularly in long running TV shows where we already know the characters. But overall I believe in medias res is not starting the story in the middle, but starting it where the story starts and filling in background later when it is essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T20:47:32.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20814" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-04T21:13:55.323" Score="2" ViewCount="1411" Body="&lt;p&gt;The villain was, like the protagonist, a child soldier/mercenary, who served with him. The villain was captured, tortured, and snapped. He feels a burning hatred for the protagonist, believing that he left him behind. The protagonist however feels heavy guilt, blaming himself for not saving him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now. They meet each other, when the protagonist infiltrates a building and is then faced by the villain. Now, I don't know how to write that scene, though. Like what should I avoid? What clichés should I avoid for example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-24T01:42:14.823" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T17:45:43.027" Title="How to write a scene where the villain meets the protagonist?" Tags="|characters|scene|antagonist|cliches|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20804" CreationDate="2016-02-05T04:44:34.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You describe &lt;strong&gt;post-traumatic stress disorder&lt;/strong&gt;. I would start with the &lt;em&gt;Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;V&lt;/em&gt; for psychiatry. The PTSD section isn't that long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'll add &quot;blocking it out&quot; has been considered a medically incorrect concept for about 30 years or more and usually appears sophomoric in fiction. (It is, of course, possible to forget things.) If it's really what you need to do, I'd approach the recovering process cautiously. The norm for PTSD is re-experiencing phenomena, flashbacks, obsession, avoidance, and a high-adrenaline state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-02-05T04:57:51.247" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T04:57:51.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20786" CreationDate="2016-02-05T15:16:58.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I've seen working quite well is to open with a short &quot;action sequence&quot; that naturally leads to (some) back-story exposition. One example would be the start of Charles Stross's &quot;The Atrocity Archives&quot;, which starts with a new-ish occult field agent's first assignment and then in a fairly natural way segues into a (small amount) of back-story, interspersed in conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I've seen is to start with an action sequence &quot;in the past&quot;, that naturally leads up to &quot;now&quot; (ideally, this sequence contains useful back-story exposition), the clearest example I can think of is David Devereux's &quot;Hunter's Moon&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="51" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T15:16:58.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20738" CreationDate="2016-02-05T15:56:15.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A dateline must be where the reporter reported from. As an analogue to web publishing, it is a location and timestamp on an article. For example, an earthquake may occur in a remote part of Brazil, and the dateline would be RIO DI JANEIRO if that's where the report was filed from (the reporter sat in an office in Rio and gathered the news and filed the report from there). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are filing for AP (Associated Press) or are a member newspaper, you use AP style for datelines. This includes which cities need or don't need state names, what abbreviations to use for states (hint, not postal abbreviations), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some might see datelines as archaic, but they absolutely serve a purpose in any filed report where the location and time of filing matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8356" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T15:56:15.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9198" CreationDate="2016-02-05T16:01:53.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many great jargon terms for these things. At one publication we called any such blurb an &quot;excuse&quot; (pronounced as the word that means 'why something happened,' not 'excuse me')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8356" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T16:01:53.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8185" CreationDate="2016-02-05T16:16:28.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use Sherlock Holmes, since he is a public domain fictional character and he has a famous fictional address. I think this adds a little fun but not so much that it is distracting, and it feels more like a real person than “John Smith, 123 Main Street.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sherlock Holmes&#xA;221B Baker Street&#xA;London, England&#xA;NW1 6XE&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can localize it also if necessary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sherlock Holmes&#xA;221B Baker Street&#xA;New York, NY 10001&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T16:16:28.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20814" CreationDate="2016-02-05T18:42:37.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Western audiences are into heroic self sacrifices in &quot;brother v. brother&quot; conflicts, such as the archetypal death of Ben Kanobi at the hands of Darth Vader in &lt;em&gt;Star Wars, Episode 4&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some, like the &quot;death&quot; of Neo at the end of &lt;em&gt;Matrix Revolutions&lt;/em&gt; or of Ripley at the end of &lt;em&gt;Alien 3&lt;/em&gt; include Christian symbolism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hero's journey usually entails the correcting of wrongs in some way. As such, perhaps your protagonist offers his life, soul, honor, etc., to his long-lost friend. The villain does what he will with it. Perhaps he then gets pulverized by bits of building falling on him. That's up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T18:42:37.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="834" CreationDate="2016-02-06T14:22:20.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for a book on writing comics and graphic novels, this is the one to get: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0692577106&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;OPTIONAL&quot;&gt;The Working Writer's Guide to Comics and Graphic Novels&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16794" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-06T22:19:19.677" LastActivityDate="2016-02-06T22:19:19.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20825" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-07T11:53:43.343" Score="2" ViewCount="17342" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a story about anthropomorphic animals in a noirish setting solving murders. I came up with the concept and wrote the first draft about a year ago and am planning on releasing it soon. However, I recently saw a trailer for the movie Zootopia and realised that the basic premise is quite similar, even down to some of the characters. From the looks of things though, my story is far darker and more violent, and the humor style and themes are very different. I'm just worried that if released in such close proximity it might end up being accused of plagiarism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16801" LastActivityDate="2019-03-22T01:19:07.743" Title="Should I worry that my storyline is very similar to another?" Tags="|style|plot|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-03-22T16:00:50.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18591" CreationDate="2016-02-07T13:02:32.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think whether or not you can get the book “published” is irrelevant. I recommend you don’t even concern yourself with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first place, you can publish it yourself, on your own website, or through iBookstore or Amazon. But perhaps even more important, the process of writing the book and expressing yourself and growing as a writer is the key thing. I would say that to a writer of any age, but to a young writer such as yourself it is even more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an ambition to write, then write write write write write and also read read read read read. When you have a finished manuscript, then you have a sort of sidecar concern of how to share it with people. That really is secondary. Many great writers wrote multiple books before they got one published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A supportive family is good. Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T13:02:32.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20825" CreationDate="2016-02-07T13:10:40.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;George Lucas wrote a Flash Gordon movie, but couldn’t get the rights to produce it. So he changed all the names of the characters and changed the title to Star Wars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So short answer: no, it doesn’t matter. Plagiarism is when you literally copy/paste pieces of someone else’s work into your own, not when your story belongs in the same section of the bookstore as someone else’s work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T13:10:40.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20825" CreationDate="2016-02-07T13:22:56.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are only a few basic storylines. Some say there are only &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;seven basic plots in all fiction&lt;/a&gt;. What differentiates different works is the telling. If the telling of your work reminds people too strongly of the telling of another work it will seem derivative. But if the basic story structure does not resemble one of the story archetypes written into the human psyche, it will just seem boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T13:22:56.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20829" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20830" CreationDate="2016-02-07T13:26:02.807" Score="3" ViewCount="535" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if you could help me with this:&#xA;I'm starting to write a book, but I don't really know how to describe the physic of the main character (in 1st person). I heard some techniques like, compare the character with herself when she was young (while watching an old pic), but I don't know if techniques like that look good in the story. Any advice? Cheers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16802" LastEditorDisplayName="user16802" LastEditDate="2016-02-07T13:55:30.897" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T17:04:29.247" Title="Describe a main character" Tags="|characters|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20829" CreationDate="2016-02-07T13:55:39.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your narrator compares herself to others.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I met Sandy at the coffee shop. I towered over her by a full head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheap and simple: &lt;strong&gt;Your narrator looks at himself in a mirror.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the bathroom, I ran a hand through my hair. Still black, just like my dad's, although thinner. He went gray early &amp;mdash; nothing for me yet. I had my mom's blue eyes, which was surprising unless you knew I was mostly Welsh. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Straightforward: &lt;strong&gt;Your narrator describes himself.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I caught the guys in the bar looking. They had plenty to look at: tall, blonde, green-eyed, still pretty fit. Not a six-pack, maybe, but not a beer belly either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T13:55:39.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20829" CreationDate="2016-02-07T18:20:45.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several techniques for doing this, as Lauren Ipsum illustrates, but consider that the first person narrator is also a character and how they narrate the story is part of how their character is formed in the story. So if the narrator describes their physical appearance, the fact that they are doing so says something profound -- and not necessarily very complimentary -- about their character. It may paint them as vain or self obsessed, for instance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider that by choosing a first person narrator, you are inviting the reader to adopt the narrator as a substitute self -- to see the world through that character's eyes, rather than to observe them directly. Therefore it may not matter much what they look like unless some aspect of their appearance is inescapably relevant to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it may not need doing, and will almost certainly have side effects that you may not want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-02-08T17:04:29.247" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T17:04:29.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20825" CreationDate="2016-02-07T20:45:41.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very common for writers to come up with similar ideas—sometimes extraordinarily similar. In some cases, it comes about from two writers being influenced by the same previous works. I remember, when &lt;em&gt;X-Files&lt;/em&gt; was popular, quite a few people independently came up with TV series ideas that were basically &quot;X-Files for kids&quot;. Other times, the connections are less obvious, but the idea just seems to be &quot;in the air&quot; somehow. Perhaps the sight of a generation staring at screens has spawned the current interest in zombie stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, there's a fine line between one writer being influence by another (which is OK) and a writer plagiarizing another (which is not). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although plagiarism of ideas (versus exact words) is explicitly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; covered by copyright laws, that doesn't mean people can copy ideas with impunity. This kind of sleazy idea theft has been the basis of some very expensive lawsuits. In your case, since you didn't copy the other work, and your work is not similar to it in tone, I don't think you have much to worry about. A film noir animal murder mystery is unusual but not unique. The same idea underlies the comic book &lt;em&gt;Blacksad,&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Who Killed Roger Rabbit?&lt;/em&gt; It's a niche genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T20:45:41.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20825" CreationDate="2016-02-07T21:37:24.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you make your story unique and different, it doesn't matter. Maybe you know &quot;The Hunger Games&quot; by Susan Collins. The storyline is practly the same than &quot;Battle Royale&quot; by Coshun Takami. The idea of a group of people stucked in a place killing each other, is the same, but Susan Collins put her own style turning it into a TV show. Same story line, totally different results.&#xA;My advice? Make the story yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16802" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T21:37:24.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-07T22:28:02.197" Score="4" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the agents I intend to query to requests the first fifty pages be attached to the query email. When I formatted the first four chapters and prologue into submission format, it reached 52 pages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if it's best to cut off the last two pages to match the exact length she requested, leave them so it isn't cut in a random place, or cut the last chapter so that it doesn't go over which would put me under the requested 50 pages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I certainly don't want my manuscript turned down because I simply failed to follow simple directions. What would be the correct, professional solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16811" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-03T11:21:19.470" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T10:58:16.653" Title="What to do when my preview exceeds the requested submission length?" Tags="|agent|submitting-work|conventions|queries|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20835" CreationDate="2016-02-07T23:11:12.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it were me, I'd send the 52 pages. It would be ridiculous to trim the last two pages, and any agent who would reject you on the basis of such a tiny excess isn't worth bothering with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're worried, it should be easy enough to make small adjustments to margins or font to reduce the page length. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T23:11:12.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20838" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20839" CreationDate="2016-02-08T05:53:35.010" Score="3" ViewCount="2503" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two characters who don't get along and are sniping at each other from the moment they meet in the book. Throughout the story, they keep ramping it up. At a certain point, one character is still attacking, but the other one just telling the other one to shut up, and the attacking character has no idea who the second character really is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the second character snaps. He decides once and for all to set the record straight. The two characters went to school together years before the story began, and when they meet in the story, they haven't seen each other since school. The second character was a popular jock and he bullied the first character very badly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when the second character snaps, he decides it's time for the bully to tell the nerd about how things looked from his perspective. He talks all about not wanting to go to the school, feeling pressured by his parents, being sneered at by kids similar to the nerd. He was miserable and took it out on the nerd. He's all grown up now and he's over with high school drama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's a pretty long monologue. Is it an info dump? I kind of hate info dumps, but I can't imagine this story trickling out and having the same effect in the story. I want the bully to just keep taking the insults and getting angrier, but not taking the bait. I want the guy's story to totally shock the nerd. This is the point where I want the nerd to realize that he may not be the only person with problems. Perhaps he's not the innocent victim he's always portrayed himself to be. This is the point where the nerd and bully very slowly start a strong friendship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16322" LastActivityDate="2017-10-27T11:51:49.810" Title="When a character tells a long story, is it always an info dump?" Tags="|technique|plot|characters|dialogue|character-development|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20838" CreationDate="2016-02-08T07:27:59.357" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No it should not be an info dump. The story continues. The only thing that should change is you switch to the character’s voice instead of using your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might think of it as though your reader is going to put down your book, pick up a short story written by a character in your book and read that, and then pick up your book again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, you can do the same. Stop writing your book, get into the head of the character who is going to tell the story, and write a short story as that character. You can literally create another document to work in, and you can make notes as that character, think as that character, and produce a stand-alone short story that you will then put into your book in the same way that you might put in an illustration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T07:27:59.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20840" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20857" CreationDate="2016-02-08T11:03:22.440" Score="-1" ViewCount="909" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to write a simple introduction on the topic &lt;strong&gt;HTTP&lt;/strong&gt; and its audience will be high tech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am having a bit of problem in how to describe it in high tech audience?&#xA;Can any one would suggest me how to complete the task?&#xA;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16493" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T17:35:33.857" Title="High Tech Audience" Tags="|technical-writing|audience|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20838" CreationDate="2016-02-08T11:39:38.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, a character telling a long story is not by default an info dump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to making sure it's not just clunky exposition is to make sure it is not a case of 'as you know, Bob' by which I mean one character should not be telling another character something they already know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of this would be experienced police officers explaining procedures to each other for the benefit of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also be sure to keep the story in character, and make sure it's interesting for the readers, and preferably forwards the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is backstory / flashback type information like this, then it's also better to make sure it's not right at the beginning of your story, because it will slow down the pace a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T11:39:38.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9935" CreationDate="2016-02-08T11:49:44.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Novel Factory software is specially designed to let you add pictures to your novel manuscript and notes files. You can attach multiple images to characters and locations, and view them alongside each scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T11:49:44.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20487" CreationDate="2016-02-08T12:08:02.473" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I want to describe a location, I use the following techniques:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Browse Google images for pictures of the location to get initial inspiration and a feel. I find pictures of these places often have details I hadn't thought of. I recently described a prison cell myself and the pictures showed me rats and a bucket under the sleeping bench, when I had been preoccupied only with the walls and size of the place.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to jot down some words for each of the senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. Words, phrases, images, ideas. By thinking about each sense in turn your inspiration will hopefully be sparked.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do a word brainstorm to list a bunch of words that relate to the theme  location, without trying to hang them nicely in sentences and paragraphs. Then when it comes to writing the description properly I can dip into them as I wish. Allowing the brainstorming gives the mind freedom to come up with more interesting concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.novel-software.com/developinglocationsandsettings.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;You can read more about developing locations and themes here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T12:08:02.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20487" CreationDate="2016-02-08T13:05:50.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to know what prision you are talking about: modern, old, with security...&#xA;Then, you could look for some pics and information in order to know what are you describing aproximatetly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, when you know everything you have to know about the prision, start writing. You can start with an explanation about you character are looking at, like: After that those two cops leaved me here I sitted in a corner of this little and unclean prision. Everything is dark and lacking of life here. I only have that tiny window with too many iron bars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just let your imagination get out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16802" LastEditorDisplayName="user16802" LastEditDate="2016-02-08T16:13:29.090" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T16:13:29.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20838" CreationDate="2016-02-08T13:26:11.443" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;An infodump is when the author has to get a whole bunch of important information to the reader, but it's not integral to the plot at that moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Character 2 is ranting and finally getting something off his chest, it's not an infodump. It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the plot. It's the culmination of the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep it from being a wall of text, break it up with stage business and reaction (physical or mental) from Character 1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T13:26:11.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20840" CreationDate="2016-02-08T13:27:30.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like &quot;high tech&quot; is the ideal audience. You don't have to dumb it down or use analogies. Your explanation can be, like, two sentences. Look up the definition in a few places and rewrite it in your own words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T13:27:30.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5400" CreationDate="2016-02-08T15:06:36.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding an idea that seemed to work for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write in your usual font (by font I mean &quot;times new roman&quot;, &quot; Ariel&quot;, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Change the format of the whole manuscript to a different font preferably with the following properties: A font you never read in, one that is similar to cursive (handwritten). Also change the line spacing if you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It seems very effective, it slows your reading speed. We have read tons of books in &quot;print suitable fonts&quot;. This new style causes our brain to read afresh ( turns off autocorrect in our brain).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cycle between the fonts once a while, to re-gain freshness. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus : Re-reading in a cursive style, appears to stimulate my mind to restructure a lot of sentences. Making them crisp and comparatively better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16656" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T15:06:36.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20848" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-08T18:21:13.183" Score="6" ViewCount="1817" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a fantasy story in a medieval-like time. There is a lot of information I want to share with my readers, but I feel if I incorporate it all in the main story it will make it to long and tedious to read. So the idea I'm having now is to start each chapter with a few lines to explain things and this will be in the form of pieces of a fictional book that exists in that world. &#xA;Is this a good thing to do, or will readers get irritated by the snippets? I will make them relevant to the chapters they are in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-02-09T19:29:41.803" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T19:29:41.803" Title="Is it a good idea to start each chapter with a snippet from a fictional book?" Tags="|creative-writing|fantasy|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20848" CreationDate="2016-02-08T18:34:21.767" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something that has been done successfully in the past by authors like Douglas Adams and Frank Herbert, but it has to be done just right or you'll run the risk of annoying readers, like you said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you end a chapter in a cliffhanger, and then begin the next chapter with a five paragraph essay on the boll weevil and its habitat, you'll probably find that people will skip it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should go ahead and write out the rough draft the way you want it, and then send it through your beta readers and see what their reaction is.  If they universally hate it, then you'll have your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastEditorUserId="16155" LastEditDate="2016-02-08T19:48:28.267" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T19:48:28.267" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20848" CreationDate="2016-02-08T19:26:12.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as &quot;a few words&quot; is less than 50, sure, go for it. It's additional interstitial information which can be useful to the reader, or can at least add background and flavor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than two paragraphs about the Merovingian boll weevil will probably annoy people, so keep it brief. If you need more than that, either make it a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9505/when-do-i-explain-my-created-world-scenario-in-a-prologue-vs-letting-it-unfold&quot;&gt;prologue&lt;/a&gt; or find some way for a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3811/how-can-i-break-up-a-lengthy-explanation/&quot;&gt;cabbagehead&lt;/a&gt; character to look up the information.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T19:26:12.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20848" CreationDate="2016-02-08T20:27:26.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Opening extracts or poems give a slightly old-fashioned feel to a book, so if that's the goal, it could work. In Dune, the extracts are a constant reminder that this is a story of an epic struggle in future history. However, if the point is to shoehorn in more information, the beginning of a chapter is not the best place to do it. If the information is vital, demonstrate it in the body of the story somehow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors often add lengthy exposition because &quot;the reader needs to know this.&quot; But it's surprising how much the reader can infer without being told, and removing such long, dry passages can greatly improve the pace of your novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T20:27:26.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20848" CreationDate="2016-02-08T20:59:52.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Readers are unlikely to get irritated.  This is a fairly well-known practice, and if you keep it short, so the intro doesn't detract from the actual story, it works quite well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several variations you can use on this theme, in fact.  For example, Orson Scott Card's classic &lt;em&gt;Ender's Game&lt;/em&gt; was written in a third-person limited viewpoint following Ender around, but each chapter began with a conversation between third parties talking about Ender and the situation he was in, giving the reader some context.  Decades later, when Card wrote &lt;em&gt;Pathfinder&lt;/em&gt;, which is thematically similar in many ways to &lt;em&gt;Ender's Game&lt;/em&gt;, he took the basic idea and changed it around quite a bit:  The intro to each chapter is a small snippet of a secondary story that's completely separate from the actual main &lt;em&gt;Pathfinder&lt;/em&gt; story, and not until the end of the book do you realize how they're related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think my favorite use of the &quot;quasi-related intro text&quot; trope has to come from Brandon Sanderson's &lt;em&gt;The Way of Kings&lt;/em&gt;.  Every chapter has a little intro to it, and different sections of the story have different themes.  One is a letter from one mysterious entity to another, talking about differences in opinion between the two of them over big-picture stuff.  One consists of research notes by one of the main characters into the workings of magic.  But the ones that will really blow your mind are the death quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several chapters simply begin with a transcript of the last words of various people, quoted with formal, dry annotations.  (Stuff like &quot;Recorded 37 seconds prior to death.  Subject was the third daughter of a minor noble house.&quot;)  They seem mildly interesting, if a bit morbid, and if you've been paying attention you can pick up on a few details based on what various people say, but at the end of the book you find out who's collecting and annotating these last words &lt;em&gt;and why,&lt;/em&gt; and it totally changes your perspective on them and then you have to go back over it and read through them all again!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head I can't think of any examples of using this device as a form of direct exposition instead of infodumping all over the reader, but it could almost certainly be done in an interesting and enjoyable manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1933" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T20:59:52.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18280" CreationDate="2016-02-09T03:01:42.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A musical has 3 kinds of writing in it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the “book” (aka the “play”) written by the writer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the lyrics, written by the lyricist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the music, written by the composer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;… if you don’t write all 3 yourself then you need collaborators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, the lyrics are written either first or concurrently with the book because they are the most important parts of the story, and the book weaves the various lyrics into one big quilt of a musical. The music can be written at various times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can do it any way that you want. But to me, writing the book first sounds like the hard way. You risk a lot of wasted effort because you may put the lyrics in and notice that the book has to change a lot. A lyric might obsolete whole sections of the book, or require whole new sections to be written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T03:01:42.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20838" CreationDate="2016-02-09T10:20:12.563" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Synthesising the ideas above, you could consider leaving the framework of a strict dialogue for this kind of scene. Instead of merely fleshing out the dialogue with &quot;stage action&quot; as suggested by Lauren Ipsum, you could start the scene as a dialogue and lead the reader into the short story of Simon White by means of a transition phrase such as &quot;He told him of ...&quot; or &quot;He remembered how ...&quot; or &quot;He thought of ...&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is this: In a pure dialogue scene, the reader will witness your character's anguish and rage &lt;em&gt;while telling the story&lt;/em&gt;. This can be very powerful. However, the actual source of these emotions will remain blurred. Relaying on the &quot;short story concept&quot;, you can reveal the source and create an emotional connection between the character's troubled past and his disturbed emotions of the present. Thus, you get the best of both worlds: The present turmoil, and the past suffering that led to it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T10:20:12.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2016-02-09T14:48:59.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.novel-software.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Novel Factory&lt;/a&gt; (as you might expect) which allows me to have tabs for up to three drafts, plus 'blocking'. I also occasionally save a new version of my entire novel file in case I want to go back to something earlier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that if you have too many copies, then, after a while, the overhead of searching for something gets too high. And probably, when you finally go back and find it, you'll discover it wasn't actually the work of genius you remember!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps that's just me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-09T19:28:25.683" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T19:28:25.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20840" CreationDate="2016-02-09T15:51:58.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Audience can be broad. You may have some folks who are new, they may need that explanation (just a gist) to remind them that concept (yes, even http!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can have a stand alone standard definition, and right after that a funny analogy or humorous view at it. This would make the &quot;high tech folk&quot; appreciate a humorous way to look at something they feel is very basic. And also you don't risk missing out on the &quot;newer&quot; audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never assume an audience as a single entity. There is almost always a knowledge spread amongst them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16656" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T15:51:58.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5352" CreationDate="2016-02-09T17:17:58.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Associated Press Stylebook is very similar to the &lt;em&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt;, but much easier to use. Why go against the grain? You're going to reach the broadest possible audience with the Associated Press Stylebook, which I believe should be the ultimate goal here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16830" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2023-09-05T17:35:43.530" LastActivityDate="2023-09-05T17:35:43.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2016-02-09T17:22:48.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using a Mac, one thing that many people miss is that there is built-in system versioning that is available in any app that supports it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you are writing in Pages, you can go File ▶ Revert ▶ Browse all Versions to essentially go back in time to previous versions of your document. It works somewhat like how Time Machine works for all files. And it is available on many different built-in and 3rd party apps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can also use Time Machine to browse back in time within a folder that contains your chapters or other writing documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is definitely work exploring learning to write in Markdown (which takes all of an hour) and then that basically makes you a programmer, and you can use programming tools. I write in BBEdit because it gives me the feeling of a long empty page and the writing I make there can be easily machine-converted into any kind of format for publishing. BBEdit has Git and Subversion support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T17:22:48.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20840" CreationDate="2016-02-09T17:35:33.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is the same as any writing project: tell a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In technical writing, it is not only just as important to tell a story, it might be even more important than in other disciplines. The material can be dry or very conceptually mysterious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be tempted to read an HTTP spec and just crib dryly from that. But if you think about it, HTTP is what literally links the entire WorldWideWeb together. It’s actually one of the more romantic technologies in the world. Tell us how and why it came to be, who created it, who uses it and how, what it does and how it does it, and what it has enabled us to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T17:35:33.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20861" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-09T19:00:00.527" Score="7" ViewCount="2603" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story, however I just can't seem to form a platonic relationship between my characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I am writing my characters (Eric and Abigail), it feels they should just kiss and make out on the spot. The thing is I do not want their relationship to go too fast but let a few events pass before I make them committed to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I (and they) know that it's love, but don't want to commit because of the situation they are both stuck in. &lt;strong&gt;What are the qualities of a platonic relationship and how do I apply this to my characters in my writing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16831" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2019-05-25T15:44:12.733" LastActivityDate="2019-05-25T15:44:12.733" Title="Writing a Platonic Relationship" Tags="|creative-writing|style|characters|technique|relationships|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20862" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-09T19:13:39.867" Score="3" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've run into an issue with illustrations and cover designs. I have a member of my family who designs covers to the novels I'm writing, and a friend in Alaska that I'd like to have illustrate a children's picture book for me.&#xA;Does this level of management and customization doom me to only being able to self publish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've wondered what is the most appropriate method for informing a potential publisher or agent that I have a cover already, should I state it in my query? or wait until my work gets accepted and then spring it on them? I don't want to hurt my chances, but I feel like its something important to let the publisher know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16514" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T21:10:22.283" Title="If I have a cover for my novel, when should I let the publisher/agent know?" Tags="|publishing|novel|self-publishing|artwork|queries|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20946" CreationDate="2016-02-09T19:17:17.300" Score="5" ViewCount="7120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a fantasy novel that is set in medieval times. I created my world, started to write, and then bumped into a big problem. My MC is blind (along with others of its race) and I find it really hard to describe the people she meets without using visual clues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it is still possible to write in 3rd person and show how the people look that way, but I think it would be most immersive to describe everything from her point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, what are tricks I can use to describe people? How can I make them different from each other without just saying things like 'the woman with the high pitched voice'? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The setting is also in a world with magic, and she has some sort of magic that makes her able to 'sense' people, and 'see' stone. Maybe that is of any help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T18:36:10.937" Title="How to describe people from the 'eyes' of a blind person?" Tags="|creative-writing|description|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20863" CreationDate="2016-02-09T20:10:18.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about how your character distinguishes between people. Is it by footsteps, smell or knock? You need to work out how someone who is blind tells the difference. You could try asking a blind person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T20:10:18.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20862" CreationDate="2016-02-09T20:16:31.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have possible cover designs lined up and you have sample illustrations, it seems to me that you are in a much stronger position than someone who has neither. Send both to an agent. If he/she thinks your story is great but either of the other aren't this will be pointed out. However, if the cover or the illustrations look good, and the story is good, a publisher will want to save work by employing someone in situ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T20:16:31.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20861" CreationDate="2016-02-09T20:39:45.223" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're eager to write the &quot;good stuff&quot; where your characters are&#xA;kissing, go ahead and write it out of sequence. Get it out of your&#xA;system. Now you can go back and create the &quot;building up to it&quot; part.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your characters can acknowledge that they are attracted to one&#xA;another but that it's not the right time, for whatever your obstacle&#xA;reasons are. That's not platonic, but it's not full-on snogging&#xA;either.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about your own platonic (non-romantic) friendships. Practice&#xA;writing those scenes. Describe the last time you hung out with one or&#xA;more of your friends to whom you are not attracted. Write about how&#xA;it feels and what you did. Use that as a template to write about Eric&#xA;and Abigail not being attracted to one another.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T20:39:45.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20867" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-09T20:41:40.580" Score="7" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a manuscript that I'd like to add Drop Caps to at the beginning of each chapter. I currently have it loaded into my Storyist program on my Mac-book Pro. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does anyone know how I'd go about adding my Drop-caps?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't seem to find any tools for this. I know it's not a common practice, and I know the Storyist program typically leans toward trimmed and well formatted manuscript style, so maybe I'll have to export my manuscript and tackle it in Pages. I'm not sure. Can anyone help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16514" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-26T18:41:31.710" LastActivityDate="2021-03-23T09:05:12.653" Title="Can I add Drop Caps to my manuscript in the Storyist program?" Tags="|formatting|software|tools|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20863" CreationDate="2016-02-09T21:01:39.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing you might try: To give the reader a clue about how the MC distinguishes individuals, have the MC confuse two people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of when you see someone, and for a moment you think they are someone else....what is that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some signature movement as they step off a train; maybe a way of holding their body, an item of clothing they might have worn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for your MC, maybe it would be a scent of the place where they first met the person, or maybe there is some other sense that humans don't have...what piece of history does this sensation evoke for the MC?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dogs actually can't see all that well, and they recognize by smell and sound long before they can distinguish a person by sight. Think of the way they freeze into that moment of recognition....it's as if their whole world pauses for a moment; a trigger is tripped, messages flower and howl across their doggy grey matter down their spine to tail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16833" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-17T18:36:10.937" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T18:36:10.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20869" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20872" CreationDate="2016-02-09T21:07:22.960" Score="12" ViewCount="7347" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to obtain some ISBNs for a few books I plan to publish as an eBook and possibly in print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From books I have bought from major publishers, I gather that the eBook and print version have separate ISBNs. I also gather that a new edition of a book would require a new ISBN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I publish a correction to either the print or ebook version, would that require a new ISBN? What if this results in a change of page numbers? Or the insertion/removal of paragraphs or whole chapters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, at what point are the changes sufficient to warrant a new ISBN?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16834" LastActivityDate="2022-05-04T15:03:10.470" Title="When do I need a new ISBN?" Tags="|publishing|isbn|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20862" CreationDate="2016-02-09T21:10:22.283" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's a book for younger children, the pictures are an important part of the package. You'll have a better chance submitting pictures and story than story alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an adult book, having a cover is not a big selling point, and I wouldn't suggest including the cover in your submission to a publisher unless it's something so perfect for your book it will knock their socks off. The cover and title are important elements in selling a book to the public, and publishers usually like to have tight control over them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T21:10:22.283" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17106" CreationDate="2016-02-09T21:14:30.947" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has this short list of graphical elements for interfaces that use the prevailing WIMP paradigm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_graphical_user_interface_elements&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_graphical_user_interface_elements&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the example you've provided above, I think what you have there is a &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;zoomable popup &lt;strong&gt;control&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;zoomable popup &lt;strong&gt;widget&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps! Personally I've never liked the word widget!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16833" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T21:14:30.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20869" CreationDate="2016-02-09T21:16:40.157" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Minor corrections do not need a new ISBN. But you do need a new ISBN for new editions, revised editions, and different formats. A change in cover does not require a new ISBN. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding chapters or paragraphs makes it a new edition, and technically it should have a new ISBN. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, many publishers bend the rules because in the US and UK, ISBNs are expensive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find more details here. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.myidentifiers.com/help/isbn&quot;&gt;https://www.myidentifiers.com/help/isbn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T21:16:40.157" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18280" CreationDate="2016-02-09T21:29:05.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming it's something you're writing on spec, I think you need to write your best attempt at the song lyrics. (Why write a musical if you don't write songs?) If you're offering a musical and you write &quot;Insert song here&quot; it seems jarring for the reader. It's a like reading &quot;Insert great plot twist&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a writer has been hired to write a musical, it could work in various ways. The writer will be told how to proceed. They may work with the musician, or they may be told to incorporate certain songs that have already been written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T21:29:05.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5894" CreationDate="2016-02-09T21:59:01.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ability to write a short story is notably different from that of a novelist. In sporting terms, one is a sprint, the other, a marathon. They are as different as lyrics and poetry, and very rarely will you find the best of one is the best of the other (e.g. Leonard Cohen). A poet may be tempted to write music, because there's a lot more money in music, but that in itself should not be sufficient cause to ignore your natural talent and inclination. Some of the finest short story writers have never written a novel, or at least, if they have, not to the same acclaim. This group includes Alice Munro (Nobel winner), Raymond Carver, Chekhov, Saki, and O. Henry. To quote Munro:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn't intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. [...] So I wrote in bits and pieces with a limited time expectation. Perhaps I got used to thinking of my material &lt;em&gt;in terms of things that worked that way.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (Emphasis mine.) -- Alice Munro (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/10/why-alice-munro-is-a-short-story-writer-not-a-novelist/280463/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Atlantic&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is always a question of experience. If Munro had spent years focused on writing novels, perhaps she would have become a novelist. The demands on her time by her family didn't allow for the requisite concentration. Ultimately, if it's your desire to write novels, and you have the time, skill, and dedication, you should follow your instinct. Not because novels are more commercially viable, or because they are seen as great works of art, but because you want to, because great writing can only happen at the convergence of desire, action, and inspiration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16835" LastEditorUserId="16835" LastEditDate="2016-02-10T02:39:37.093" LastActivityDate="2016-02-10T02:39:37.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20778" CreationDate="2016-02-10T07:47:24.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mathematico-logical: fairy tales are a subset of fantasy tales/stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For second graders, one would want a short story with a happy ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story with a moral to it is a fable (a la Aesop or LaFontaine), a different sub-set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16841" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-17T18:33:12.937" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T18:33:12.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20763" CreationDate="2016-02-10T07:55:49.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do ends justify the means?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very fact that he acts just like the regime he wants to overthrow is punishment enough. If he realizes it early on, he may choose not to act, thus not overthrowing the oppressive regime. Having to live under it may be punishment enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16842" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T20:33:57.420" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T20:33:57.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20589" CreationDate="2016-02-10T16:24:57.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing and World building are different. It sounds to me that, even though you like the world building part, you could be postponing the writing part.  If you ever want to finish a book, it is critical that you like writing. So let's test it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just write a small story. It could be a side story, it could be the main plot of your book, it could be a story that just happens to happen in your world, it could even be something completely unrelated to your story. The reason you write it is solely to confirm to yourself that you like writing and that you can finish the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know you like writing, it doesn't matter how long your worldbuilding takes. Some stories need a good background, and that costs time. This is not a bad thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16365" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-17T18:37:58.200" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T18:37:58.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5894" CreationDate="2016-02-10T18:47:03.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A key thing is to understand that a novel is not a long short story, it’s &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; stories. The ending likely remains very similar, but there are more stories preceding that ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to get more stories is to have more characters. Most short stories follow just one character, but novels typically follow a few characters. It might help for you to imagine you are writing 3 short stories, each about a single character, but they all have basically the same ending. Then you weave those 3 short stories into a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a short story might be about someone whose loved one is killed by gangsters and who seeks out those gangsters and ultimately takes revenge. The novel version might add the stories of 2 other people whose loved ones were also killed by those gangsters, and whose stories also end when they take revenge. The thing that could weave those 3 stories together would be that the only reason the revenge succeeds at all for any of them is they meet and end up working together. So you are weaving 3 short stories together into a novel that depends on all 3 characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-10T18:47:03.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20883" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-10T20:33:56.083" Score="1" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;p&gt;Am trying to do due diligence to find the niche for a self-help book. I &quot;get&quot; the general idea of whether to piggyback or avoid popular titles, being exquisitely specific about your reader, and avoiding being a johnny-come-lately, me-too book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My fuzzy plan is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start at the Library of Congress and to research titles with words similar to those I'm thinking of incorporating, and using the LC Advanced Search to limit the parameters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a spreadsheet to record titles of interest and author names.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use titles from the spreadsheet to do research on Amazon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sites or books or personal experience can you offer to help me refine my plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: If the final form is relevant to your answer, then know that the book will be published in paperback. At the moment, there are no plans for Kindle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11559" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T09:50:04.220" Title="Strategy, tactics, and resources to refine the niche and title for a self-help book" Tags="|non-fiction|resources|titles|audience|theme|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20863" CreationDate="2016-02-10T21:23:00.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How can I make them different from each other without just saying things like 'the woman with the high pitched voice'&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; describe a voice as high or low pitched. Your detailed description of a voice - its changes of pitch, rhythm, speed, pattern of breathing, hesitations, precise accent, individual quirks of pronunciation - is your opportunity to let the reader experience the world in the way that creatures of this blind race experience it. (Of course you should do the same for all the senses other than sight.) If you can emphasise the differences between what a blind human would perceive and what a blind non-human of this race with the extra senses you mention would perceive, so much the better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a book where something similar is done well is &lt;em&gt;Watership Down&lt;/em&gt; by Richard Adams. The main characters are rabbits, and spend much of their time underground where they cannot see. Adams describes how the rabbits sense how big an underground space is by the quality of the sound and the currents of air, how they greet each other by touching noses, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2016-02-10T21:23:00.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20888" CreationDate="2016-02-10T23:08:36.227" Score="6" ViewCount="702" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been considering writing as a fiction novelist.  However, the impression of difficulty in making a reasonable living as a fiction author is quite pervasive.  So much so, that I am constantly held back by a mental check that says, &quot;with so little free time, you should spend it doing things that have a potential to generate enough income to say goodbye to the day job.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I love creating worlds, crafting stories, making things the way I want them.  So I keep getting drawn back into contemplating it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done research online about author income, but much of it lumps together fiction with non-fiction, merchandising income, movie rights, and more.  Those things are nice, but merchandising and movie rights are only available usually after decades of effort and many entries on the bestseller lists.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what I'm asking, after all, that background is simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would the median expected book sales (royalties and advances) income be per year for a mid-level author, after two years, who published 1-2 novels per year? Would it be a firmly upper middle class (e.g. $100k plus), or much less?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a difference in book sales income potential for self-publishing vs. legacy publishing?  In other words, all else being equal, are one's odds greater of making a reasonable living as a legacy published fiction author, or a self-published author?  Yes, I know that the chances of getting picked up by a legacy publisher are long, but for this question, I am assuming that one is found and published though the legacy publisher with the same level of marketing and advances as a mid-tier writer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16851" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T20:34:27.800" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T20:34:27.800" Title="Reasonable income expectations from fiction book sales only" Tags="|fiction|publishing|self-publishing|money|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20863" CreationDate="2016-02-10T23:33:14.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you don't describe the characters physically: you describe their personalities based upon their unique energies. The reader will most likely form a mental picture of the character-- whether they've got a permanent pout on their face due to their exceedingly arrogant and condescending nature, or a great smile due to their sunny outlook on life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-02-10T23:33:14.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20885" CreationDate="2016-02-11T01:41:39.483" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The range is enormous, but the average income for published authors is spectacularly low—around $500 a year. No missing zero. Five hundred. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tiny minority who hit the bestseller lists will do quite well. Many novels sell movie rights. Most are never made into movies, but if you are lucky enough to see your book turned into a major movie, of course you will do very well by it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being able to self-publish has increased the percentage royalties the author can earn (70% versus under 10% with traditional publishing), but the competition is enormous (over three million books on Kindle), and the competition stays in print forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, the odds are better than a lottery!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-11T01:41:39.483" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20883" CreationDate="2016-02-11T01:48:42.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might find it more useful to browse a bookstore. It has books currently in print, and the covers and titles represent the latest trends. Assuming you know what you're going to write about, invest plenty of time in the title, description and cover, because these are the things that have a disproportionately large influence over the book's chance of selling to casual buyers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In self-publishing, most people have more success on Kindle than in printed form. The books are cheaper and there's less competition. A $20 paperback will make you perhaps $6 in royalties. A $3 digital book makes you $2 in royalties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-11T01:48:42.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20861" CreationDate="2016-02-11T01:57:27.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's great that you want your characters to kiss on the spot. If you write it well, the reader will want that too. If you want to turn it into a great story, you should now throw everything possible in their path to stop it from happening. There are countless ways to do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Her father, the boxer, doesn't want him coming near his daughter. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She's about to go off to do missionary work in India, and can't get&#xA;entangled.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She's engaged to a soldier posted overseas. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;His jealous ex-girlfriend connives to make her think he hates her.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The things that get in their way are what will make it a good romance. If they are platonic, it should be because they have to be, not because they want to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-11T01:57:27.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5508" CreationDate="2016-02-11T14:20:48.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prices of goods have nothing to do with cost of production. They are entirely determined by what people will pay for them. Goods that cannot be produced for less than people will pay for them simply do not get made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hardcovers are a case of market segmentation. You have rich consumers and you have poor consumers. To maximize your return you want to sell to both, but you want to charge rich consumers a higher price. To accomplish this, you find a way to segment the market so that rich people are willing to pay a lot for your product even though it is also available to poor people for a lower price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is everywhere. Organic foods segment the food market. Yellow label generic products segment the other aisles of the supermarket. Luxury badges segment the car market. Hardcovers segment the book market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-02-11T14:20:48.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5508" CreationDate="2016-02-11T22:42:54.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The hardcover version is the full version of the book. It costs full price. It is sold on the first day the book is available and marketed to the most enthusiastic readers who are willing to pay full price, and who typically want the prestige and ruggedness of hardcover. It is not designed to be cheap. It’s designed to be prestigious and enduringly rugged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paperback version is the &lt;em&gt;cheap&lt;/em&gt; version of the book. It is cheaper because it is primarily designed to be cheap. The thick cardboard is replaced with thin cardboard, the thick paper with thin paper, the color illustrations with black and white, and so on. It is available about a year after the hardcover and is marketed to readers who are either less enthusiastic than the hardcover readers, or more budget-conscious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An analogy for this in movies is the way that a movie is released in 8K quality for $15 per ticket at the cinema on day one, and then a year later you can watch the same movie in 2K quality on Netflix as part of your $10 monthly subscription. The people who are most excited to see the movie want to see it in higher quality and don’t care that it is $15 per ticket. The people who watch it a year later are less excited and want to see it cheaply and don’t care that it is lower quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, “The Wolf of Wall Street” was released:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553805460&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hardcover September 25, 2007&lt;/a&gt; $36.52&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553384775&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paperback August 26, 2008&lt;/a&gt; $9.77&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-11T22:42:54.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20893" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20898" CreationDate="2016-02-11T23:23:13.200" Score="1" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story and I would an idea for the intro to open up the story. The story is about two kids who find an old box in their grandparents' garage holding papers about a covered stairway in their basement. When they go down that staircase they find the back of the declaration of independence, which is really a treasure map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the news spreads, the whole world finds out about it and, in the end, the kids walk up to the president and put it on the table and say &quot;This may not be true&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16863" LastEditorUserId="16863" LastEditDate="2016-02-14T19:22:20.787" LastActivityDate="2016-02-14T19:22:20.787" Title="Writing A Story and Need help with intro" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2016-02-13T23:27:42.517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20688" CreationDate="2016-02-12T07:43:43.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many ways. One example: Make them eat dinner together. Does the son care to serve the father, ask about his favorite dishes, about how he spent his day, plans for next day, and if he gets sound sleep, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16826" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T22:41:02.723" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T22:41:02.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6114" CreationDate="2016-02-12T13:34:21.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on you. You can use the present tense to give an effect of continuation, for example: Wed June 8th- &quot;The alarm clock rings. I wake up and groggily shake off the vestiges of sleep. My eyes slowly focus on the surroundings. .....&quot; and so on. You can continue in the same tense for the next day to get that continuation effect. You can also switch to past tense in between to describe events such as &quot;I decided to visit Anna today. She has been expecting me for a while now.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12670" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T13:34:21.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20893" CreationDate="2016-02-12T14:18:34.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always start with characters. I create a few and write a lot of scenes where they interact with each other. This is exploratory writing that might not make it into the final drafts, but it helps you figure out who your characters are, what their motivations are, what they think of each other, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the plot emerges from the characters. I never begin with the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like you'll need to find yourself a good proofreader at some point, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T14:18:34.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4046" CreationDate="2016-02-12T14:59:32.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All stories are morality plays. That is, they all deal with moral questions and moral choices. They may express very different moral viewpoints, but to make a satisfying story, they have to speak to the moral concerns, beliefs, or experiences of real readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because stories are fundamentally moral in character, you are free to change the settings and the physical rules of the universe in order to create a stage in which you can contrive a particular morality play. Thus you can come up with just about any physical characteristics you like in a character, but you have to give them a recognizable human moral character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the moral character of fantasy characters often tends to be very clear and simple. Think of LOTR or Harry Potter or Star Trek. Their worlds are fantastical but the morality is very straightforward, and the stories are often quite on-the-nose morality plays. Certainly that is not universally true, but I think it is demonstrably true of the most popular examples of the genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you don't need physical realism, because stories are not about the physical -- that is merely set dressing. But you need moral realism, because stories are always moral at their core.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T14:59:32.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20901" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20904" CreationDate="2016-02-12T16:24:24.897" Score="1" ViewCount="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a master thesis and got confused by the location of the reference details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 1 :&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the reference be before the dot or after a dot in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The exploratory analysis of each of a signal showed a clear distinction of treated and untreated samples. (see Additional File: Add.Sup.Fig 1) However, blab...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The exploratory analysis of each of a signal showed a clear distinction of treated and untreated samples (see Additional File: Add.Sup.Fig 1).  However, blab...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, is there any particular case where the citation is put after a sentence (after a dot)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16870" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T19:55:56.017" Title="Where to put a reference to a figure or literature" Tags="|citations|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20902" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-12T16:37:09.610" Score="3" ViewCount="1192" Body="&lt;p&gt;My teacher asked me to move some part to the Annex of the master thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know where should I put this Annex thing,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have index, list of figures, list of appreviatiosn, then many chapters, then the references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so where does this Annex sit please ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16871" LastActivityDate="2016-06-12T18:30:30.113" Title="where to put the Annex" Tags="|style|formatting|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20902" CreationDate="2016-02-12T18:08:04.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The annex is a separate, standalone document, with information that supports your thesis, but is not part of the thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T18:08:04.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20901" CreationDate="2016-02-12T19:55:56.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should the reference be before the dot or after a dot in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reference is semantically part of the first sentence, hence it should typographically be part of it as well, i.e., it should be before the full stop that ends the sentence. When reading the variant with the reference after the dot, my brain wraps up the sentence when I read the dot and gets confused when it continues reading something in brackets that presumably refers to this sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read papers from several disciplines and I am not aware of any style that treats such references differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, is there any particular case where the citation is put after a sentence (after a dot)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In rare cases, if you have a reference to add to more than one sentence (usually a whole paragraph), you can give it in a standalone, parenthesed sentence. Note that in this case, the entire sentence should be in parentheses and start with a capital letter (at least in all languages that I am aware of). For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adding bananas to the discombobulator activates the transmogrification procedure. To initiate the metaposyxion process, a small amount of unobtainium is injected via the abtromyfier at this point. If, after twenty minutes, there is no indication of either metaposyxion or procomsugnation, the abtromyfication is repeated. This is at most done eleven times. (For a detailied schematic of this procedure, see Appendix Q.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, for the sake of completeness, note that some styles using superscript numbers for citations place those after the full stop, if they occur at the end of a sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using Numbercrusher’s test⁶, we obtained results challenging the theory of discombobulated transmogrification.⁷&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find this quite irritating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14946" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T19:55:56.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-13T16:55:23.583" Score="5" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a book and I would like to know about  some literary agents that publish books by a child.  I write many stories (I'm writing as I get ideas) but this is my first book, and I would love to publish it for the world to see. I need a literary agent but I don't know where to find one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16863" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-02-14T23:51:05.990" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T23:18:50.407" Title="Where can I find literary agents that publish books by minors?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20955" CreationDate="2016-02-13T19:06:08.307" Score="4" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;amp;field-keywords=%22CJS+Hayward%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;I have a fairly large collection of titles on Amazon&lt;/a&gt;, and I'm wondering whether I should by my own efforts replace them with covers I've made myself by services like canva.com. I have an MFA friend who teaches photography and would probably give me a lot of nice basic images if I asked nicely, but I'm less concerned with the difference between his photography and stock photographs made freely available, than with the drawbacks and benefits of migrating from a cookie-cutter system that is foolproof and consistent, to the time of building individual covers from the array of options available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rudaD.jpg&quot;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pictures I have are consistent and recognizable from one another, and I thought from my foggy marketing perspective that this would constitute recognizable branding to people who had recognized a title and liked one. In other words, my thought was that the design was uninspired but would serve some branding purposes well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be interested in the relative merits of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retaining the existing approach to branding,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Either incrementally, or for a subset, or on a triage basis, start migrating titles to one of the many free ones out there (I'm wondering how to select one), or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it a priority to make covers that represent better branding for all titles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I be considering in weighing these options? Should I be paying attention to options / approaches I have not listed above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8761" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2018-12-30T16:09:45.543" LastActivityDate="2018-12-30T16:09:45.543" Title="How do existing covers compare to possible new ones?" Tags="|self-publishing|marketing|book-cover|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20893" CreationDate="2016-02-13T20:57:28.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't worry too much about 'where to begin'. Just pick a moment, a scene from the story in your head, choose a couple of your characters (why not the main ones?) and 'let them talk'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For now there's not even a need for your characters to be conversing along the lines of dialogs that serve the story. Just let them talk about whatever. Have them for instance sit down for dinner and talk politics, their workday or school day, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, you and your characters need to get used to one another. And this is a good way to accomplish that. After a while you will find that some parts of your story will start to seep into this free-wheeling you have going. That is the moment that you 'start' to tell your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If at this point anything you wrote is of any use, then by all means use it, otherwise just write it off (pun intended). The main thing is you've started writing your real story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16881" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-02-14T11:00:55.840" LastActivityDate="2016-02-14T11:00:55.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20910" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20913" CreationDate="2016-02-13T21:52:46.553" Score="3" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story in which a story teller (the possibly-historic Aesop) addresses an audience. He tells his short story (within my short story), after which I will describe dialog between him and his audience. I began formatting the dialog by placing Aesop's story in double quotes, and using single quotes within the double quotes to indicate what the characters in the story within the story are saying, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A cloaked man, short of stature, lumbered toward his audience. He began his tale with the voice of a sun-baked toad. “The sun slowly climbed above the horizon,&quot; he croaked, &quot;revealing an ocean shrouded in mist. Captain Nafplios could scarcely see the nearest trireme half a ships-length to port. There was a splashing in the water, loud and insistent. Nafplios strode to the rail of his ship and looked down into the dark green depths. An eel peered out of the depths up at him. It raised its head out of the water and laughed, its voice filled with venomous mockery, ‘today shall be your last. Before even the mist clears, I shall feed upon your corpses.’ Nafplios drew a deep breath, his chest thrust proudly toward the heavens. ‘You know not of what you speak, for the fleet of Athens cannot be defeated.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally when writing dialog, I have learned to start a new paragraph when changing speakers. I have done this for Aesop, but not for the characters within the story that Aesop is telling (within my story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I format both the dialog (Aesop and his audience) and the dialog-within-dialog (speakers in Aesop's story) so that it is clear to my readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastActivityDate="2016-02-13T23:59:43.797" Title="Formatting a Story Teller's Dialog" Tags="|formatting|dialogue|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20911" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20944" CreationDate="2016-02-13T21:55:04.377" Score="4" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m an Admin for a Facebook group of poetry and prose writers (mainly Dutch), with about 5,000 very active and talented members. I’m thinking about creating a book with some of the members where each of the participants contributes a couple of poems or pieces of prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my question: what are some of the best ways of going about organizing a project like this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please answer with advice about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.) The best method for the selection process (both poets and their work), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.) How to best finance this project (Kickstarter, or something else?), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.) What legal concerns are there to consider when sharing your work with others in one publication? (Who has the rights to the work? Do I need to make the participants sign a legal document?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for all the help you can give.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards,&#xA;Tarik&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16881" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T11:19:19.517" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T11:19:19.517" Title="How to collaborate on/ create a poetry and prose anthology" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20718" CreationDate="2016-02-13T23:53:12.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would suggest working backwards following completion of book 1 after outlining book 2.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This of course requires you to finish book 1 and make alterations before going into query mode (or self publishing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, you write book 1 as is. After plotting book 2, plant in talismans, characters, prophesies, whatever, into book 1 as naturally as possible, as early in your book as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now when you wind up with an eight-book series, you might have to extemporize a bit. Call it the hybrid phase to discovery (I just learned this term from K) writing, and perhaps the best of both worlds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two other things to think about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) After the first book you'll have a much better scope of what you're trying to accomplish. You may be able to outline the rest of the series at that point. The process I mentioned above wouldn't change, but you would have a much better idea of what to implant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If you're like most writers, including myself, the improvement you'll show in the first (few) books you write is significant. If this is your first full-length novel, you may just kick butt by the end compared to the beginning as a writer. You may decide to rewrite much of the beginning anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-02-14T04:20:48.960" LastActivityDate="2016-02-14T04:20:48.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20910" CreationDate="2016-02-13T23:59:43.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of a few options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indent the story-within-a-story and treat dialogue normally&#xA;(just double quotes).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put your Aesop section in italics, the story-within-a-story in book, and treat all dialogue&#xA;normally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use some kind of scene break formatting (extra returns, a&#xA;dingbat, a string of * * * * ) to indicate &quot;this is the story within&#xA;the story&quot; and treat all dialogue normally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story-within-a-story starts in the Aesop section, use nested quotes, but then when you break to the other section, resume normal quotes. If this were TV, imagine you're shifting scenes from seeing Aesop tell the story to actually watching the characters themselves act out the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-02-13T23:59:43.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20914" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-14T00:36:30.443" Score="4" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;The protagonist of my new story is a young cyberterrorist, who mainly attacks corrupt governments and uses his hacking skills to harm corrupt leaders and high nobles in his country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I write about (and what should I avoid when writing about) a terrorist who's supposed to be likable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-24T01:40:48.163" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T01:40:48.163" Title="How to portray a likable terrorist?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20914" CreationDate="2016-02-14T01:33:44.557" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you haven't watched the movie &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakers_(1992_film)&quot;&gt;Sneakers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, I recommend it for research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And think of this quote (supposedly from &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.za/books?id=umunFWsvz68C&quot;&gt;a Gerald Seymour book&lt;/a&gt;): &quot;One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are always two sides to a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A protagonist is likeable if a complete person:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give him hopes (besides the bigger goal he is working for as a cyber terrorist)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;let him love and be loved &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;let him be loveable (cares for his elderly grandma, rescues street kittens... just not too stereotypical)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give him a history (but prevent stereotypical background, like a sad childhood... )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make him funny or let him make people laugh because he always nails it with his quick wit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give him friends and enemies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give him flaws and weaknesses... and strengths too&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it will be the small things that make a person likeable. The snarky comment when somebody is verbally attacked at the supermarket, babysitting the neighbor's son while hacking into the enemy's base so she can have a hour of uninterrupted sleep...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are character attitudes we always see as positive, like loyalty; kindness to children, animals, and persons in need; respect for the elderly; being funny without making bad jokes about vulnerable people; being reliable... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take good and bad pieces, with a few more good pieces and try to mold a round and full person that is more than just the cyberterrorist with a talent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-02-14T10:55:03.477" LastActivityDate="2016-02-14T10:55:03.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20916" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20917" CreationDate="2016-02-14T11:38:17.287" Score="0" ViewCount="168" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has opening a story with something like &quot;I hurtled to my death&quot;, &quot;I had destroyed the earth&quot;, or other outlandish statements like these become cliché? And if so, what are some alternative methods to hook readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16885" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T20:34:01.620" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T20:34:01.620" Title="Trying to avoid being cliché" Tags="|openings|cliches|tropes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20916" CreationDate="2016-02-14T12:27:11.560" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the tone of your book, you can make that work for you by making subsequent text sarcastic, funny, meta, or the intro to a flashback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had destroyed the earth. Okay, it was just a bit of dirt in a test tube. And I didn't really destroy it; I just washed it down the drain. Fine, I was cleaning up after my lab partner. Yes, she ditched me. &lt;em&gt;Again.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hurtled to my death. This one would probably hurt a bit more than the last three; Reichenbach Falls was taller than the roof of the hospital. Still, there was nothing for it but to wait until I hit, regenerated, and woke up at the beginning of the next story. What pastiche writers lacked in originality they certainly made up for in persistence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had destroyed the earth. At last. A ragged cheer rose from the survivors behind me, growing and swelling until the air was so thick with hosannas and applause and shouts of relief that I thought I might go deaf. And if you think that sounds strange, you should hear how I got here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I have destroyed the earth! And now I will go on to wipe out the sun! And the &amp;mdash;&quot; Gorbo's ranting was cut short by a quick blast from Captain Amazing's laser pistol. &quot;I hate it when they brag,&quot; she grumbled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. If you can't rewrite the clich&amp;eacute;, subvert it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-02-14T23:18:55.087" LastActivityDate="2016-02-14T23:18:55.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20918" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-14T13:13:59.913" Score="0" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am now planning to start with the third chapter of my novel. I got an interesting idea to write it as a ballad. But I am much better with prose. Will I better off if I continue writing prose or should I experiment with a ballad?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16607" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T22:38:14.270" Title="A ballad or prose?" Tags="|fiction|style|fantasy|poetry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-02-14T22:16:36.433" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20916" CreationDate="2016-02-14T13:28:33.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want to start a tale with an outlandish statement? Go ahead. Just listen to your heart, write and complete it. Now, if the whole story feels 'unoriginal', then you can make some changes. Write first, then rewrite and rewrite until you are satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16607" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-02-15T18:20:07.500" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T18:20:07.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20918" CreationDate="2016-02-14T15:53:03.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you have written first two chapters in prose, you should stick with prose for them. However, as you have a strong urge to write a ballad, I would say that you must give that a try. If you could manage to write it successfully, you could start the third chapter in prose and then introduce the ballad in pieces along with the prose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16887" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T22:38:14.270" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T22:38:14.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20916" CreationDate="2016-02-14T16:10:53.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Readers are not hooked by outlandish openings. Readers are hooked by character, story, and setting. You can introduce a character, story, or setting in an outlandish way. (See Steinbeck's introduction to Monterey in Cannery Row for an example.) But it will hook or not hook depending on its effectiveness in establishing character, story, or setting, not merely by being outlandish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cliche only becomes a problem when it becomes a substitute for effective storytelling, when it feels like the author has reached into a bag of stock language because they had not the skill or the patience to think through and thoroughly imagine the scene, the story, the character, or the setting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-02-14T16:10:53.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20918" CreationDate="2016-02-14T16:19:48.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you on a deadline? If not,  there's little downside to experimenting with a ballad form. Might be harder to get traditionally published,  but still: I'd say if you've got the urge to give a ballad a shot, go for it. If it doesn't work so well nothing would stop you redoing it in prose.  You could also do it the other way - keep going so you don't break the prose, but then have fun trying it out as a ballad after and see how you like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'd definately encourage giving it a shot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8034" LastActivityDate="2016-02-14T16:19:48.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20927" CreationDate="2016-02-14T23:51:18.960" Score="1" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need an illustrator for my first self-published children's book.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where do I find artists that will work on a small budget?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the compensation options?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I find an artist that specializes in multi-racial characters?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If an illustrator is not in the budget, is there a software program that can turn photos into illustrations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should I expect for a 20-page book that has 15 illustrations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17892" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-18T02:27:46.547" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T22:39:49.850" Title="Find: Children's book illustrator" Tags="|self-publishing|book|children|artwork|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4046" CreationDate="2016-02-15T15:32:18.477" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't have to make a character realistic, but you do have to be careful &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; you make a character unrealistic if you choose to do so. There are plenty of examples of unrealistic stock characters. A 'manic pixie dream girl' is one example of an unrealistic wish-fulfilment character that's relatively common in fiction: she's beautiful, playful, and adores the hero for no apparent reason (because he's so &lt;strong&gt;wonderful&lt;/strong&gt;). She's completely unburdened by family, obligation, or interest that doesn't involve the hero. Her entire purpose is to help the hero find happiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that if you aren't careful, any unrealistic character (especially of the wish-fulfillment variety) can make your story tired, clich&amp;eacute;d, and boring. If you're writing for yourself, that's fine. If you're writing for an audience, not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16548" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T22:40:34.903" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T22:40:34.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20926" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20929" CreationDate="2016-02-15T16:16:35.427" Score="3" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I started writing the first draft of my current novel project. I was wondering  what should I do with it when I'm done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16863" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-02-15T19:40:22.740" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T19:40:22.740" Title="What should I do after I finish writing my novel?" Tags="|creative-writing|publishing|first-draft|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20923" CreationDate="2016-02-15T17:15:27.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you look for artists on their webcomic sites, like Cucumber Quest, Hark! a Vagrant or Helvetica, you may have some luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, check out Deviant Art for users with worldwide artistic talents&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10834" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T17:15:27.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20928" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20931" CreationDate="2016-02-15T17:29:36.180" Score="12" ViewCount="563" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my first novel. When I finish, I'd like to try publishing it. I've read other questions regarding the publishing process and they suggest that an aspiring author must do things like book tours, interviews, etc. While I'm not opposed to those things, I would like to remain anonymous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case anyone is concerned, I'm not writing anything inappropriate. I just value my privacy. I read &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8443/expectation-of-privacy-using-a-pseudonym&quot;&gt;another question&lt;/a&gt; about how practically to implement a pseudonym but I want to know how doing so effectively might hinder my entrance into the world of fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm willing to do things like radio interviews, podcasts, blog posts, etc as long as they don't require me to show my face or disclose personal information. How severely do you guys think this would harm me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14560" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T11:37:17.950" Title="Is it foolish to pursue a writing career while desiring complete anonymity?" Tags="|publishing|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20926" CreationDate="2016-02-15T18:22:58.400" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put it in a drawer for a month or three. Pull it out, re-read it, mark up problems, and fix them. Then hand it off to an editor. Implement those edits. Lather, rinse, repeat as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point you'll need to decide if you want to publish it. If so, you can either self-publish or hire an agent to try to find you a publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T18:22:58.400" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20930" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-15T19:49:24.913" Score="3" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm at the end of chapter 1 of my book, where the protagonist (a cyberterrorist) commits his first terror attacks by attacking the servers of a power plant and a government at the same time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is, these kind of attacks aren't as exciting as direct terror attacks (e.g. bomb attacks), because it's &quot;only&quot; computers being attacked; the personal staff is pretty much safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So. How do I write a terror attack on servers? How do I make this exciting without an immediate, personal threat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-02-23T14:45:06.393" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T07:12:53.483" Title="How do I create tension around a threat which isn't immediately, personally harmful?" Tags="|thriller|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20928" CreationDate="2016-02-15T20:46:32.823" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt this will harm you at all. Many writers are introverts, and writing under a pseudonym is common—even traditional. You don't have to do any promotion that would make you feel uncomfortable. You can easily promote your book with written interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T20:46:32.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20933" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-15T22:51:25.577" Score="0" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the second to last scene in the first chapter. It starts with Lisa hunting and getting a deer and ends with Lisa getting bit by a venomous snake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you might be thinking &quot;You can't carry a deer all by yourself.&quot; but these humanoids can carry deer easily and can even carry an adult black bear over short distances. Their muscles are about the same size as ours so that means that each myocyte(muscle cell) is stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lisa hunting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lisa went on the hunt in the forest a few weeks later. She climbed a tree and saw a deer. She got it with her bow and arrow. While she was carrying the deer, a snake was heading towards her. Lisa heard the snake slithering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here she doesn't know yet that the snake is venomous until she turns her head and looks at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Venomous snake encounter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She widened her eyes and screamed “A snake is heading straight towards me! It is venomous!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Robin heard her screaming and said “My father developed a natural antivenom. Namely, his own antibodies. Maybe your antibodies will react to the venom and your white blood cells will get rid of it.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lisa said “I hope so because, ouch!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Robin said “Lisa, are you okay?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lisa said “I have been bitten by a venomous snake. It didn’t even warn me to back off.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Robin said “Hmm, the only venomous snakes around here that I know of are rattlers and they almost always rattle before they strike. Let me catch that snake to see what bit you. In the meantime, keep the bitten area below your heart and move slowly if at all.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lisa said “Okay. Be careful out there.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Robin said “I will. I learned how to catch a snake during the 21 years I had to survive in nature including venomous snakes.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So Robin went into the woods and got the snake. He then calmed the snake down. He really knew how to be around snakes, including venomous snakes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here people have told me that saying Robin said right after Lisa opened her eyes and screamed diminishes the tone. I honestly don't think it does because of the words that Robin says(antibodies, natural antivenom etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have also told me that exclamatory is wrong here. I honestly don't think it is because Lisa didn't know the snake was venomous until she looked at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And they have told me that Robin's use of Hmm is wrong here. Again I don't think it is because he is wondering what venomous snake bit her since he knows that the only venomous snakes he has seen are rattlers and they almost always rattle before they strike and the snake the bit Lisa did not even warn her to back off but instead bit her with 1 fang and that's that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how can I improve this scene? I know that expansion is probably going to be the number 1 improvement and is the one that comes most naturally to me, but is there any other way I can improve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8607" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T02:27:12.223" Title="How can I improve this scene?" Tags="|editing|scene|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-02-18T05:42:55.430" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20934" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20957" CreationDate="2016-02-16T01:13:44.820" Score="6" ViewCount="719" Body="&lt;p&gt;I gained a lot of momentum from the answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/20589/16829&quot;&gt;my first question&lt;/a&gt;.  I've read a couple of writing books and read a lot of articles online.  Although I'm still quite 'green', I have a much better idea as to what writing is all about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently studying and trying to get a handle on Story Structure.  But I'm getting confused with the information I've come across.  I've found good info at websites like thescriptlab.com, helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com, and advancedfictionwriting.com.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They talk about 5 plot points, two plot points combined with pinch points, 3 disasters...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any real consistency, other than everyone agrees with the 3 act structure.  I've even reviewed several additional writing books to get more clarity, but most of the descriptions of structure are vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a plotter, I feel I need to get a clear understanding of the important structural / plot components before I can move forward.  Can anyone shed some light on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16627" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T14:02:49.607" Title="Story Structure" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20933" CreationDate="2016-02-16T03:28:34.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, Robin seems like a mindless, emotionless drone. When the snake bites Lisa, your scene implies that Robin asks if she's okay in a robotic tone. He should run over to her because she's hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17902" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-18T02:27:12.223" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T02:27:12.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20936" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-16T03:46:54.150" Score="5" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I've finished my book, had it professionally edited, and am ready to self-publish my book, how much would it cost for a paperback, 300 page novel? I've already hired an editor, and I'd like paper copies. The length of the manuscript is 78,649 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17902" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T05:41:45.523" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T06:06:32.120" Title="How much does it cost to self-publish?" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20934" CreationDate="2016-02-16T04:14:02.580" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;All these analytical schemas are interesting, but I don't think you can rely on them for building a story. It is like dissecting a body. An autopsy may tell you what killed them, but it won't bring them back to life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think they can be great tools to figure out why a story is not working. But I don't think they are a scaffolding for building a story. If they were, everybody who read a writing book would be turning out best sellers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the way you write a story is this: You invent a set of characters. You spend time with them until you know them and eventually fall in love with them. Then you torture them until either they break or triumph. It is a cruel business, and emotionally exhausting. I think most stories fail because the writer is not patient enough to fall in love, or not cruel enough to torture, or not tireless enough to see it through. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when it is all done, if the story works, an analysis may reveal that it fits the common pattern, or, if it fails, that it fails to meet the pattern. But the patterns means nothing without the falling in love and the torturing and the patience unto death. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T05:29:03.013" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T05:29:03.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20934" CreationDate="2016-02-16T04:41:09.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plots are like skeletons.  They're made up of individual bones called plot-points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can look at any specific plot-structure and see how its plot-points are arranged.  You can perceive where the high and low points are, and with a little study, you can even find out why those points are where they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...but that doesn't make any specific plot-structure/skeleton universally right and all other bones arrangements wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wouldn't use a human skeleton to build a horse, nor would a horse skeleton work for a whale.  No plot-structure will serve every writing task, and a body of writing isn't necessarily bad just because it doesn't strictly adhere to your favorite plot-structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you plot first and apply structure later.  Get the important plot-points out on a sheet of paper, then see which skeleton best fits the resulting story.  Once you find a structure that your story can live in, study it closely and follow or ignore its guidelines as your story demands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that you are lucky and the story that is growing inside you seems to fit a Hero's Quest plot structure.  In a hero's quest, a lone hero leaves a life of normality to find friends, fight enemies, face challenges and finally defeat evil; returning to his normal life with improved wisdom and maybe wealth.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to think of the Hero's Quest as a horse skeleton.  It has an obvious front where we meet it's character, the kind eyes and a noble long nose.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Climbing aboard near it's shoulders, we are completely divided from our world; literally, our feet can no longer touch the ground. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lacking both bridle or saddle, we slide down our mount's back, in constant terror that when we run out of horse, we will return violently to the ground.  Our quest is to grab the mane and take control of beast before it bucks us off.  If we can do that, the horse will take us to whatever destination we desire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our struggles to stay on board and avoid the looming calamity, are the middle plot points.  These are the opportunities that yield the minor victories and defeats which make the ride interesting.  Finding that a shoulder blade provides a hand-hold.  Victory!  Discovering that sweaty palms can't hold onto horse hide.  Defeat!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The adventure is in the details, not in the destination.  But those details can take on many forms.  By the time your story is finished, your horse might look more like a camel or maybe even like a centipede, with dozens of bumps which offer your hero hope.  The important part isn't how many plot points occupy the back of your horse.  It is the constancy of the quest and the turmoil of the ride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can learn from a plot structure is subtler than simple plot point counts.  Hidden in the structure is valuable advice on how to handle the transitions between points, a.k.a. the joints.  In the case of my own use of the Hero's Quest, I have discovered that hopeful climbs should be slow and carefully-arduous.  Falls from hard won heights should be fast and chaotic and hope-shattering.  Then in the plains between each mountain (or camel hump), your hero should be quick (but only believably quick) to get back to climbing.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the cadence of the story that I get from its plot structure.  That is how these valuable tools continue to help me write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T04:41:09.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20930" CreationDate="2016-02-16T04:59:38.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The classic antagonist against a white hat hacker is black ice, but that is still fictional.  Black ice is computer countermeasures which can literally kill the attacker despite their distance from the scene of the crime.  Grey ice, identity discovering countermeasures can also be great sources of tension for the hacker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to make this question and answer more useful to other readers, let's cover a few other, non-computer-ish, non-terrorist-ish options...  Tension arises from a perception of risk, not from risk's reality.  Your hacker doesn't need to actually be in any danger at all, as long as he believes that he (or someone he cares about) is in danger.  That danger can be real or imaginary, local or distant, immediate or eventual.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to your specific scenario, your protagonist may be concerned that these actions will not be seen as the noble acts of rebellion that he believes they are.  He may be worried about hurting his cause with this attack.  If the government he is attacking has control of the media, he may have legitimate concerns, which you can built upon within his quavering mind, having him pause after every firewall falls.  &quot;Should I continue?&quot;, &quot;Have I already gone too far?&quot;  With the right build up, his entry of the final computer command to trigger the attack will be a tension bomb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T04:59:38.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20928" CreationDate="2016-02-16T05:08:24.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Historically there have been a good number of authors, both traditionally published and self-published, who have been very successful writing under a pseudonym. There isn't really any reason why you couldn't do the same. I myself have published over thirty titles using three different pen names, and I have had some moderate success with two of those. Ultimately, it isn't your name that will sell your books, but the quality of the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T05:08:24.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20928" CreationDate="2016-02-16T05:14:51.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The modern reality of writing is that putting words on paper is only a small part of the job.  To be successful, a story-product needs a marketing strategy.  Great writers get turned away every day by the big publishing houses, not because of faults in their stories, but because the authors don't include a preexisting fan-base, a legion of twitter-followers and a low-budget, high-promotion marketing plan with the submission letter.  The big publishers don't have to build their authors' communities anymore.  There is such a glut of supply, that they can pick and choose from authors who have already created their own following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self publishing is even worse, since getting people to read and review your creations is like pulling teeth.  The only hope many starting authors have is to leverage their family and friendships as the seeds for their reviews and online marketing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to stay anonymous, you are cutting yourself off from every resource you have, except for your writing skill.  Unless you have an absolutely incredible story subject, whose title will instantly self-market itself to thousands of initial readers, you should seriously reconsider this choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of use dwell in obscurity no matter how loudly we try to shout our names.  Keeping your name silent seems counterproductive if you want to get your words into other peoples hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="11221" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T13:41:52.720" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T13:41:52.720" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20934" CreationDate="2016-02-16T06:01:45.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems you have done enough reading/thinking about writing, and  should go ahead with writing. You do have your &quot;toolbox&quot;, now you need practice. Make outlines and follow through with writing. When you have enough of it, in a split second it'll occur to you when its time. You can always structure your story even during second draft. First drafts are for putting down your story, minus the fancy words, structure, and anything else that isn't story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story structure usually happens on itself. You can create a rough outline and start writing, but you can follow a strict structure,it is better if you dont. After all you are writing Fiction. You can't expect to put story inside a formula and churn out a book. Like other's suggest, structure is easy to see after a first draft is finished, and impossible to get to a draft with structure alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story telling comes first, anything else can wait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16656" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T06:01:45.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20936" CreationDate="2016-02-16T06:06:32.120" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since it appears that you are interested in self-publishing in print format, the answer to your question will depend on where you go to have it printed. There are companies such as CreateSpace and Nook Press which will allow you to create your print book and buy copies yourself or just make them available for Print on Demand (POD). These are the two easiest formats I have found, so I am going to answer using them as examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With CreateSpace, you can use the &quot;Buying Copies&quot; tab on their &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/&quot;&gt;Book Product&lt;/a&gt; page to see how much it would cost to produce each book. Using an estimated page count of 300 pages, with black and white print, and a book size of 6x9, your cost would be about $4.45 per book. You could also choose to make your book available through POD at no cost to yourself at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Nook Press, you can use their &lt;a href=&quot;https://print.nookpress.com/print-on-demand##quick-quote&quot;&gt;Quick Quote&lt;/a&gt; tool to find out the cost for producing each book. Using an estimated page count of 300 pages, with black and white print, a paperback cover, and cream colored paper, with a book size of 6x9, your cost to produce each book will be about $6. I haven't used this service, but I believe you can make your book available through POD with them and it won't cost you anything at all, just as with CreateSpace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of using each company's POD service is that you don't have to spend any money yourself, plus they provide a sales platform for your book. Both companies also provide an easy means of making your book available in e-book format, which means you have the potential to reach an even larger audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are only looking to obtain copies for yourself and a small group of family or friends or such, then either of these services would be worth looking into. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T06:06:32.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20911" CreationDate="2016-02-16T06:47:28.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a very interesting and possibly complex undertaking. I am assuming that you would be self-publishing this, so my answer will be based on that assumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step you will need to take is to identify who will be the editor, which is the title that would be assigned to the person responsible for all the work involved in making this project happen. While it may be beneficial to identify a few people who can help go through the initial selection process, I would recommend having one final editor who is responsible for the final selection, editing, and formatting of the poems that will be included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you go about obtaining the poems you need for your anthology could take several different approaches. The easiest would be to approach this as an opportunity for each writer to have their work published as part of an anthology. If you state that you are willing to include their poems in exchange for the one-time publishing rights, then I'm sure you will find that there will be a good number of poets willing to accept those terms. This would grant the editor the legal right to publish the poems while still permitting the poets to retain their copyright privileges for their work. If you state these terms as conditions for inclusion, then that should be sufficient enough for protecting yourself from a legal perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have selected the poems you wish to include in your anthology, the next step would be the actual publishing process. You could use a service such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kindle Direct Publishing&lt;/a&gt; to easily self-publish the anthology in e-book format. You could also use a service such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CreateSpace&lt;/a&gt; to make the book available in print format. There are a number of other services you could use, but I personally prefer these two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This step is where it becomes more important to have just one person who is ultimately responsible for handling things. Each of these self-publishing services requires that you create an account for managing any work that you publish through them. Most of them will only allow one person to manage that account, and when it comes to paying royalties, they will usually pay them to only one person. If you want to do this as a group, then one person will have to take responsibility for distributing the funds, and that could become quite a major undertaking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the editor is the person doing most of the work, most people would not begrudge him/her receiving payment for that effort. However, people I have known who have undertaken such an effort have decided to donate the proceeds from their anthologies to a charity that is identified in advance. Some might retain enough money to offset any costs they may have incurred, but that is ultimately up to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you would prefer to buy the rights to each individual poem in advance in order to provide the poets with some form of compensation, then you could use a service like Kickstarter to raise the funds for that. You could also use it to pay for having the book professionally edited and for the design of a book cover, but that would be a slightly larger undertaking. Ultimately it will depend on how much effort you really want to put into this project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T06:47:28.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20934" CreationDate="2016-02-16T12:02:07.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a similar problem to you, in that there are such a vast majority of books to read about how to write that it's difficult to choose which ones to read. And once you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; read them, their advice is often conflicting, meaning that if you follow one then you are actively ignoring the advice of another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Writer's SE helped me immensely, because it made me realize from asking questions that even if you get half a dozen answers to a single question, that doesn't mean that any of those answers are wrong: they're just different. You simply need to choose which ones to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it like cooking. If I wanted to make a pot of chili, I could find at least 100 different chili recipes just from a quick internet search. None of them are wrong, they're just different. I just need to find the one I like and follow the recipe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I read all 100 recipes and made a chili using a mixture of ingredients from them all, that almost certainly wouldn't work. Certain ones would tell me to put coriander in, whilst others would advise me to leave it out. It's impossible to make a chili based on every recipe, in the same way that it's not possible to adhere to every bit of writing advice that you will read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean that you have to strictly adhere to the advice or rules that a single book sets out. You can always mix together a couple that you think would work. It might turn out to be a disaster, but you might end up with an interesting result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I now make great chili because I took the parts I liked from a few recipes and ended up making my own recipe. I also have my own unique style of writing because I follow rules and pointers from a number of authors that I like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will also offer a word of caution: you could read every recipe in the world, but that doesn't make you a chef if you've never cooked a meal. You will not know what tastes right together, you'll simply have a theoretical understanding of food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the same with writing. As others here have suggested, you will never know which story structure to use unless you try some out. You might find you love the first one you try, or you might need to spend some time attempting different ones until you find one that works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, reading does not make you a better writer. It's difficult to get your head around this, because reading and writing are so obviously linked most people assume they're the same thing, but they're not. I could happily eat a nice meal, but that doesn't mean I can cook it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a footnote, consider that anyone who has ever written a book could reasonably then write a book about how to write. There will be thousands of them, so don't venture down that rabbit hole. Most of them will say the same things anyway, so choose some and see if they work. If not, then you can try some more out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, on re-reading my answer, I realize that I really went to town with the food metaphor, so I can only apologize, but hopefully it helped you out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T12:02:07.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20863" CreationDate="2016-02-16T14:47:00.487" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a potentially rich world of non-visual sensations with which to play, and unique situations to explore! I actually envy you the potentially-rich experience of writing this!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have other senses--- sound or hearing; smell; feel or textural variations (presuming your character[s] can or will touch each other, or those with whom they'll interact); along with those very astute suggestions already provided!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've an Israeli friend who was blinded in a terrorist bombing in the mid-1970s. He had participated in the martial art called Krav Maga. After becoming able to get about, again, he worked with his instructor and several students to perfect a &quot;Blackout Krav Maga:&quot;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's amazing how one can zero in on others without needing sight--- people make noise all the time, whether simply the sound of the rush of air as they breathe (stronger if winded or frightened!) plus coughs, wheezes, whistling from breathing through a deviated septum; along with the very common &quot;creaking&quot; of knees and &quot;cracking&quot; of joints not to mention the sounds of footsteps (many people drag their feet; slap down their toes when stepping; &quot;kick&quot; the floor with their heels; plus shoes [even 100% synthetics!] will creak, squeak, crack, pop, &quot;Click&quot; because of hard-plastic or metal heel-pieces, and more) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, some people even carry on a continual whispered monologue! No, they're not barmy; this is their way of &quot;thinking.&quot; Only instead of it being a nonverbal process, they'd begun to &quot;articulate their thoughts!&quot; (This is rare, but could be made into a unique character identified as &quot;Whispering Gael&quot; or the like!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, what people wear as well as carry are also abundant sources of sounds. Cordoroy, silk, and other fabrics make noise when surfaces rub together; leather and webbing accessories will almost always creak as one moves---sword baldrics or equipment belts; burden straps; shoulder-slings, and the like. Also, the impacts of twigs (or, underground, roots) will make metallic noises when striking against helmets, plate-armour, shields, and such-like as the wearer moves along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, &quot;personal items&quot; can always make noise: Coins jingle in pouch or pocket; things analogous to ID tags can make noise--- necklace medallions, metallic charms, and other devices. Keys are also classic noisemakers--- the Seneshal or Bursar; a head servant like the more-contemporary butler, will carry keys as a &quot;badge of office,&quot; and this can be seen by your character(s) as somebody like &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;'Mister Clink-clank,' the one who can get to the best wine and cheese!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (They may even silently shadow him, hoping to filch bites or sups of cheese or wine from the hoard!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, there are the thousands and thousands of different smells! This is something I've personally noticed: Different ethnic groups prefer to use different spices, and differently prepare often vastly-different types of foods, which in turn almost always makes &quot;native&quot; body-odours very different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Victorian times, people simply assumed &quot;different Races smelled differently;&quot; well, people actually &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;--- but it was &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;NOT&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; because of genetics! It was simply &quot;cultural,&quot; in the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who eat large amounts of red meat will have very different &quot;aromas&quot; from fish-eaters, and this differs from those who, by reason of economics or perhaps religious proscription, eat mainly/only vegetables and grains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, consider different occupations: In a &quot;Middle Ages&quot; setting, soldiers would be enveloped in the combined odours of old spilt blood and body-fluids, stale sweat, musty &amp;amp; moldy leather, and the inevitable &quot;rancid old oil smell&quot; from cheap oil used for leather-dressing and weapons-rustproofing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also many other examples: Men who care for horses would smell like strong sweat, and the stables; blacksmiths will have a strong odour of coal- or charcoal-smoke, a strong aroma of sweat; and the &quot;hot metal smell&quot; that's peculiar to smiths. Butchers would wear the aromas of an abattoir or slaughterhouse, being the strong smells of old blood, offal, and incipient decay. Cooks, of course, would be enveloped in food- and spice-smells. Turgeons or doctors (going from historical human prototypes) would stink of old pus and blood, herbal concoctions, smokes of herbs and grasses, [and despair.] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barkeeps would smell strongly of food, drink, smoke, and sweat. Barmaids (possibly prostitutes too) would smell of many liquors and beers, as well as many men; plus, probably, inexpensive perfume-herbs such as lavender and sweet-grass. Noble folk would be the ones heavily anointed with &quot;expensive&quot; floral scents such as rose-water or orange-blossom-water, as well as extracts of lavender, and other sweet-smelling herbs to cover their smells of sweat. Probably, the &quot;lordly types&quot; would have stronger sweat-smells because of frequent sword-practice, and an undertone of sword-belt and blade-oil aroma. In the Middle Ages, many if not most &quot;Nobs&quot; and knights took part in daily sword-practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nobility may practice the Greco-Roman habit of &quot;oiling&quot; the body with olive-oil, followed by using a bronze or horn &quot;stigil&quot; to scrape off dirt, sweat, and excess oil--- this would put an olive-oil odour on these worthies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open your mind to think deeply, and you will realize that every profession or way of life found in the Middle Ages will have almost-unique &quot;professional aromas!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combining some of the examples of &quot;non-visual identification&quot; in a sort of third-person narrative (as in WATERSHIP DOWN) allows you to create mental images of characters in the readers' minds every bit as memorable and impressive as any visual description!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15754" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T14:47:00.487" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20934" CreationDate="2016-02-16T16:49:23.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's intuitive, but also logical.  No story lies neatly on a scaffold, but if you follow logic, and intuition, you will find that the scaffold emerges beneath the story as you put it together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your story will typically be driven by character and plot. There are exceptions to this. Dan Brown's books are driven by the (unfulfilled) promise of secret knowledge for example, but character and plot will do it in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structure of your story has to serve the purpose of building your character, and progressing your plot. Insufficient plot makes us disengage from the character because their circumstances are boring. Insufficient character and the plot will have no impact because we don't care about how the events impact on our people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story becomes rather like a complex tamagotchi. We have to balance the different variables and advance our characters and plot in a way that makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At each and point in the story, you need to be thinking things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does the reader know the character enough to care that she just died - No? Build the character before the death to help the reader bond.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the reader invested enough in the plot to care about the character building you are trying to get over? No? Move the backstory further downstream. Perhaps take the story out of order.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the reader in flow? Yes? Don't mix the story up at this point with cuts to other scenes, keep the momentum. No? Cut to another scene. Make sure you flag the cut somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have we just sat through a lot of fast paced action? Yes? Moderate the pace a little with some emotional depth.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No story fits into a box, each one is unique, but if, at every point, you think critically about all the different 'pulls' on your plot at that moment, you will naturally find a structure emerges that creates emotional depth, reader engagement and modulated pace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is true whether you are plotting or pantsing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15426" LastEditorUserId="15426" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T22:35:43.707" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T22:35:43.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20977" CreationDate="2016-02-16T19:15:11.380" Score="3" ViewCount="644" Body="&lt;p&gt;All my supporting characters are really cool and have their habits and problems and backstories but I just feel so lost when it comes to my main character.  She just seems to be floating around in the story, not doing anything that sets her apart.  She is a volleyball player who wants to get better but is on a lazy, not serious team.  I just don't know what to do with her?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17907" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T01:55:57.700" Title="how can I make my main character interesting and not bland?" Tags="|plot|characters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20934" CreationDate="2016-02-16T19:15:57.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll be brief as the other answers are thorough and valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Novels succeed because they are good stories. Three-act stories are consistently successful, but many books become bestsellers with alternatives. A good story envelops the reader in your built world and makes them care about the outcome. The characters leap off the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Eventually, a plotter needs to take some risks by unleashing imagination. You can hold to an outline, but between your &quot;data points&quot; the material needs to be fresh, and it should flow with smooth transitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) There is NO replacing just sitting down and writing. Plotting is great, but one must get ideas down on paper as they pop into your head because one will forget later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T19:15:57.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20950" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-16T19:16:52.000" Score="4" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a novice working on a historical novel with four viewpoint characters. Three of them will be involved in subplots connected to the main plot, and each character will have a character arc and will undergo change. The fourth will be the title character and &quot;main&quot; protagonist and and will be given correspondingly more space. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am undecided about giving a fifth secondary character POV status, namely the grandfather of the protagonist who will appear in only one or two chapters. This character has deep convictions and his life experiences have great meaning to the overall theme and so I would like to give him his own viewpoint, but I already have four POVs!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: How can I give a sense of this character's lifetime of suffering and disappointment without giving him his own POV? Is there some kind of technique? Is it possible to write something like the following about him? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*John was aware of what imprisonment can do to a man. He had felt the agony himself and had seen its effects on others. The experience had changed him. He was no longer the bright young lad his father had once admired; the favored son who would conquer the world. The world had conquered him. *(Not actual text)**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I am concerned about the diluted effect of having too many POVs for a 300-page book but I would still like to make this particular character's story important and meaningful. Is it possible to do that effectively through have  description rather than quoting the character's own thoughts and feelings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11398" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T01:49:57.237" Title="Struggling to define a character without giving him viewpoint status" Tags="|fiction|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20950" CreationDate="2016-02-16T19:20:49.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If George R.R. Martin can have something like 47 POV characters per book, including one who is only in the prologue and then gets killed by a crow dropping a statue of a lion eating a dragon on his head, you can have a POV character for only two scenes. Go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T19:20:49.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20933" CreationDate="2016-02-16T19:33:07.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robin heard her screaming and said “My father developed a natural antivenom. Namely, his own antibodies. Maybe your antibodies will react to the venom and your white blood cells will get rid of it.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like Robin says all this &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; Lisa gets bit. In addition to being bad advice, it doesn't help Robin avoid the bite. At this point, he should be shouting advice on how to calm the snake down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robin heard her screaming and shouted &amp;quot;Keep still! Don't provoke it! I'll be right there.&amp;quot; That wasn't much comfort to Lisa, as she stared at the brightly-colored reptile that was now winding its way around her feet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The snake's head brushed up against her exposed ankle, and Lisa immediately tried to kick it away. The snake easily dodged the kick and bit hard into her skin. &amp;quot;Aah, ****!&amp;quot; She dropped the deer, and the sudden threat of impact caused the snake to leap away and slither quickly back into the woods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robin arrived and said &amp;quot;Lisa, are you okay?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To have Robin give more helpful advice, I'd advise that you search for actual tips for dealing with wild snakes. &lt;a href=&quot;http://wgbis.ces.iisc.ernet.in/snakes/snake-to-do.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's a short but informative article.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This text has other issues, but the biggest issue with this story isn't in the text. You seem overly eager to come up with excuses to disregard the comments that other people make. If multiple people have the same issue with your text, then you should strongly consider that they are right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16610" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T19:33:07.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20953" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20954" CreationDate="2016-02-16T19:49:42.627" Score="0" ViewCount="1726" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main character is on a sports team, and I want to describe games, but I don't know how to without having to explain every point or without explaining it enough.  I want it to be a page or two long the game itself, but have no idea how to write it so it doesn't get boring for the reader or seem rushed and unplanned.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17907" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T07:02:46.317" Title="how to write a sports game scene?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|planning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20953" CreationDate="2016-02-16T20:54:59.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focus on the highlights. Whenever you watch a game recap on television, they don't replay the entire game. Instead, they just show you the highlights. You need to do the same with your writing. Identify three or four crucial elements within the game itself: someone scoring, someone getting hurt, or someone making an important save. If you focus on those crucial elements and provide enough detail for the reader to be drawn into them, then you should be able to accomplish your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T20:54:59.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20908" CreationDate="2016-02-16T21:35:26.637" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Don't judge a book by it's cover.&quot; We've all heard that, but how many of us actually adhere to it? I believe that is a totally antiquated statement, especially these days when more and more books are being sold online at places like Amazon, where we quickly browse through literally thousands of books and tend to stop at the ones whose covers catch our eye. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After looking through your list of titles, I have to say that there isn't a single one that would have made me stop to explore it further. I'm really not sure what you consider &quot;branding&quot;, unless it is having the same color for the covers of books that share a similar topic. All of your covers are exceedingly bland and simple. Anything you can do to improve them would be a step in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I think of branding, I think of common elements that are shared across a series. This may be a certain picture, a specific font, a special layout or design, or a consistent color scheme. It appears that the only differentiating factor in your books is the color of the cover. The font appears to be the same across all titles (many of which are way too long, IMHO, BTW), and that is the only other feature on each cover. Even the font is problematic because you are constantly changing the size to accommodate the length of the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the topics of your titles, I have a hard time imagining suitable images that you could use. Just throwing a picture on the cover doesn't necessarily ensure that the book will sell any better. It might draw more attention, which might in turn spark more interest and eventually lead to sales. However, if you want to try to brand your books in a way that helps the reader recognize similar titles they may find equally interesting, you need to find a way to provide a better and more recognizable connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at a site such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goonwrite.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Go On Write&lt;/a&gt;, which is a collection of premade covers that are available for purchase, you can see several examples of books in a series. These books provide a consistent theme that is easily recognizable by the reader, and they provide elements that are repeated on each cover to establish a form of branding. Below are some screen shots I took from the site to use as examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the image below, you can see how the author's name is positioned in the same location on each cover, using the same font. Each title follows a different style and font, but adheres to a consistent positioning. To further tie these books together, you have the series tag at the bottom to let readers know very clearly that these books go together. The images don't have to be the same, but by applying consistency to the other elements, you provide branding for each of the books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gRqM5.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gRqM5.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this next example, you see the same types of elements, but they are applied in different locations on the covers. The principle is still the same. Again, the images are different for each book, but that helps to differentiate each title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gmzzI.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gmzzI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are planning to design your own covers, then look at sites like this to give yourself some ideas on how to design them. At least that way you will have a game plan for what you want to do, rather than just randomly changing from one cover to another and hoping that will make your book more noticeable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T21:35:26.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20950" CreationDate="2016-02-16T22:09:04.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;So far as I can see, the extract you quote &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; having John as a viewpoint character, albeit only briefly. It is not currently hugely in fashion for writers to briefly dip into another character's head when apart from that the book has a format in which POV characters all have a significant fraction of the text to themselves. So, yes, in a sense you are violating a rule - but whether you care is up to you. You could regularize it by making a feature of having brief episodes at the beginning of chapters in which the viewpoint of people other than the main viewpoint characters is touched upon. If you do this, don't always kill them within a few pages, that's a clich&amp;eacute;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is not the strategy I would recommend. How can you give a sense of this character's lifetime of suffering and disappointment without giving him his own POV? Answer: by &lt;strong&gt;dialogue&lt;/strong&gt;. He is the protagonist's grandfather so there is no difficulty in arranging circumstances such that the protagonist and he will converse. Whether the conversation that reveals how the grandfather has suffered will be one of many as part of a loving relationship or the sudden breaking of a long and bitter silence depends on your conception of the characters of grandfather and grandson. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T23:06:52.730" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T23:06:52.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20934" CreationDate="2016-02-17T02:23:22.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember feeling the same frustration and wondering why, if a plot point was such an essential element of fiction, wasn't there a definition that clearly explained the concept?  I found cute little charts that showed the tension building until the last act but no explanation of how to put one of the structure models into practice.  And even worse, every so often someone would add a new term and never bother to explain it either, just adding to my confusion.  Did I need a logline, throughline, one-sentence pitch, theme, dramatic structure, central conflict, etc., and where did I put them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with a few others here that the key is simply to get to work and let the story sort out most of these issues, but I get that desire to understand the model too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What helped me was a story structure that James Brooks explains on his website storyfix.com - something he calls the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://storyfix.com/storytelling-to-the-beat-of-a-different-drummer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beat Sheet&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;  What he suggests is using a four-part structure and begin by arbitrarily adding fifteen scenes in each part.  He suggests rough guidelines, and clear definitions, of where the inciting incident, first and second plot points, first and second pinch points, Mid-Point shift, etc., should go and isn't overly anal about the whole thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the flexibility of the template, and if a section needs detailed, intricate plotting, then I can certainly expand the outline format as much as I want.  If less works then a simple phrase or sentence describing the action works just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bryce Beattie at storyhack.com has a nice post on structure - '&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.storyhack.com/2013/10/28/five-ways-to-plan-a-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Five Ways to Plan a Story&lt;/a&gt;' with helpful links and explanations of some structure styles, including the Beat Sheet I just mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look around those two sites, you will find links to templates, outlines, explanations, definitions, etc.  (I can't post more than two links at my current &quot;rep&quot; so you'll have to do some digging.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These should put you well on your way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17912" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-23T14:02:49.607" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T14:02:49.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19889" CreationDate="2016-02-17T02:40:41.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can add the figure directly from your paper because the work is yours to use as you wish but you will need to reference the figure, at the place it is used and in your list of References.  You can find a thorough explanation with examples at &lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.gwumc.edu/c.php?g=27779&amp;amp;p=170358&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA Citation Style, 6th edition: Figures&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cited the figure originally from another source then you should use that source but are allowed to use the &quot;As cited in&quot; technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17912" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T02:40:41.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19285" CreationDate="2016-02-17T02:51:13.327" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are selling your work to the author your exposure is limited, and you should not have an issue other than finding out what the author wishes to do regarding keeping/using the original artwork moving forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not turn down the work because you are coming in after the original illustrator.  If the author has the rights to reuse the original artwork, that should be easily answered and if not he will need a whole new approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17912" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-23T14:04:53.730" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T14:04:53.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19903" CreationDate="2016-02-17T02:58:39.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not an expert here but in exploring how to use LaTex and Scrivener I found this article on WordPress.com website created by a UK doctoral candidate - &lt;a href=&quot;https://onhavingwords.wordpress.com/2013/10/06/replacements-latex-scrivener/#more-440&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Replacements for easy LaTeX inclusion in Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully it will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17912" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T02:58:39.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16293" CreationDate="2016-02-17T03:20:57.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this situation you would use the Washington, DC location because it is the location of the Government Publishing Office (GPO) which handles the physical publication of all government documents.  The Superintendent of Documents is the federal administrator responsible for the GPO and that is why you found the &quot;for sale&quot; info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find a catalog of all government publications put out by the GPO on their website - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fdlp.gov/about-the-fdlp/supdocs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Superintendent of Documents&lt;/a&gt; - but you are absolutely correct to list only the one publisher with the Washington, DC location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an excellent guide to citing government documents from Indiana University - &lt;a href=&quot;https://libraries.indiana.edu/guide-citing-us-government-publications&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Guide: Citing U.S. Government Publications&lt;/a&gt;.  Most of the time the info on this site will be enough to point the way but remember that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;no system, regardless of what a professor might imply, has a comprehensive citation format for every source type&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  The important thing is to follow the basic format for your citation style and provide enough information so that a researcher can easily find the document you are citing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17912" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T03:20:57.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20969" CreationDate="2016-02-17T03:56:03.113" Score="10" ViewCount="71992" Body="&lt;p&gt;It happens to most if not all of us. Something extremely emotional happens to us and we're just hysterical. Logic doesn't work. You contemplate punching a wall because that will help . . . somehow. Perhaps you just had your big idea stolen at work, your partner is trying to console you but it only hurts you more, and you are screaming, crying, and about to burn your house down. Either way, you are manic and your voice carries that tone. I have been told that all caps and multiple exclamation point is bad style so &lt;code&gt;&quot;I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!!!&quot;&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;is pretty much out. So what would best convey that kind of over the edge, spinning your wheels, shrieking kind of hysteric yelling? Would I just explain it after the dialog? For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Honey what's wrong?&quot; asked unassuming husband of wife who was obviously freaking the f- out.&#xA;  &quot;I don't know what to do,&quot; said wife in a way matching her frantic pacing of the house tearing her hair out because of reasons previously stated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13430" LastActivityDate="2022-08-25T15:35:31.713" Title="How to convey (screaming) hysterics in dialogue" Tags="|style|dialogue|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20963" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-17T04:26:21.207" Score="2" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to writing research papers and I need some help, with plagiarism in general. Here is an excerpt from my paper. Is this within the usual norms for research papers, or am I risking plagiarizing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Clay has the general theoretical formula Al2O3 2SiO2 2H20 There are numberless varieties of clay, but it may roughly be divided into ball clay, china clay, and fire clay; or, in other words, a plastic clay, a non-plastic clay, and a refractory clay.” (Stephenson 12)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a link to a pdf of the text. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ia800302.us.archive.org/12/items/ost-chemistry-ceramic_chemistry/Ceramic_chemistry.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ceramic Chemistry by. H.H. Stephenson&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17913" LastEditorUserId="28912" LastEditDate="2019-07-23T19:43:03.270" LastActivityDate="2019-07-23T19:43:03.270" Title="Should I be concerned about plagiarism with this excerpt in a research paper?" Tags="|academic-writing|citations|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20044" CreationDate="2016-02-17T04:37:33.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't seem to figure this one out but some people on the Scrivener Forum do seem to have solved it ---- &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&amp;amp;t=32591&amp;amp;p=210759&amp;amp;hilit=metadata%20compile#p210759&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Custom MetaData in Compile&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully you can duplicate their results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17912" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T04:37:33.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7354" CreationDate="2016-02-17T12:30:32.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As part of a test in to force a WP-post to strip itself &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; built-in style &amp;amp; theme codez  ... it's not perfect but it worked plus &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tapper7.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/outline-html-test.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the content is a decent answer&lt;/strong&gt;...an outline of one of my &lt;strong&gt;Copy Editing 101&lt;/strong&gt; lectures.&lt;/a&gt; Without further adieu...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Credit due to &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; editing teacher, Dr Teresa Allen.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastEditorUserId="15292" LastEditDate="2016-02-17T12:45:34.593" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T12:45:34.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6750" CreationDate="2016-02-17T13:08:14.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Errors abound in everything from Stephen King novels to The LA Times. Daily newpapers get &lt;em&gt;sort-of&lt;/em&gt; a pass from me, because they are on tight deadlines, but still it drives me nuts seeing errors in the 'A' section every time I read it. With books, there should be -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more editors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;multiple editions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes prose, style, spelling, grammatical and clarity-type mistakes harder for me to swallow. Maybe it's because I have some form of OCD and I catch errors w/o looking for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;to answer&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;em&gt;the number of acceptable mistakes is zero&lt;/em&gt;. Pro musicians are expected to sight-read at a 100 percent proficiency. That means; it has to be perfect the first time else--&gt; get fired. In Process Improvement we identify action(s) that drag &quot;on-time-delivery&quot; (usually of widgets), We call it a finished-project once we deliver 'dem widgets on-time &amp;amp; error-free over 98.5 percent of the time. Only in baseball is it ok for pros to accomplish their main function less than 30 percent of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T13:08:14.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20963" CreationDate="2016-02-17T13:13:09.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For research, refer to AMA Style. If it's not your words, idea or IP - &lt;em&gt;attribute&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Looks like you are doing ok so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T13:13:09.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20962" CreationDate="2016-02-17T15:47:47.693" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;All caps can sometimes be acceptable if they're used very sparingly (think once or twice in a book), but yes, it tends to be a sign of bad writing. Extremes of emotion can usually be conveyed through action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He swept the pictures from the shelf, sending them smashing to the&#xA;  floor. &quot;Who the hell do you think you are?&quot; he shouted. &quot;Answer me!&quot; &#xA;  His fist punched through the drywall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very loud screaming is better described than shown through ever-increasing font sizes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her words were shrill and deafening. &quot;&lt;em&gt;Get out!&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives you much more control over the impressions you create in the reader's mind. You can describe the tone as hysterical, angry, manic, panicked, an indignant roar, a savage scream... and a million other variations that would be impossible to express merely by using capital letters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T15:47:47.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20934" CreationDate="2016-02-17T17:21:35.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will read more expert nonsense on story structure than anything else involving writing. The most common advice is to structure a story in three parts—a beginning, middle, and end. This comes from Aristotle, who never wrote a story in his life, and, in any case, was writing about Greek theatre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the recent story theories derive from a 19th century German writer named Freytag, who talked about a &quot;story pyramid&quot; with a five-part structure, including an introduction, rising action, a &quot;climax&quot;, falling action, and conclusion. These corresponded to acts in a play, but other theories have suggested structures with eight acts, four acts, and the current darling, three acts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Freytag's system was later adapted into a &quot;story arc&quot; structure, with the climax usually moved closer to the end, because his terms are widely misunderstood. Freytag's version of a climax doesn't refer to the peak of the action, but to a certain turning point in the story where the main character undergoes a change in fortune, and that often happens roughly in the middle of the story. In screenwriting, this is sometimes called the midpoint. Today we think of climax more as the big confrontation at the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is NO simple structure that applies to all works of fiction, although some people have made money peddling such theories. (I'm looking at you, Joseph Campbell!) Many stories have a compound structure, with different stories interweaving. But for a story involving a good protagonist and a happy ending, I've found the following structure useful when actually writing, as opposed to analysing. (It's based closely on Freytag. Many stories follow a structure something like this.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(I) Introduction. Describe a happy, or at least stable situation in a way that you can't help but be interested in the main character. (Show the main character caring deeply about something the audience can understand.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This ends when: Something occurs which shakes things up. A problem. In screenwriting, the first &quot;plot point&quot;. In English class, &quot;the inciting incident&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(II) The character tries to solve the problem but the situation is confusing. Things get worse and worse and the character's discomfort builds to a peak. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This ends when: The character makes a discovery or comes to a realization which changes his attitude. (Typically, this is where they discover the REAL problem, eg, the person behind it all.) This is Freytag's &quot;climax&quot;. This phase might be in an act of its own. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(III) The character's energies are now focused on dealing with the real problem. Now the character is making steady progress.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which ends with: A final test or confrontation where some unexpected twist brings a satisfying conclusion. The &quot;climax&quot; in the action movie sense. Assault on the Death Star. And, when he's won against all odds... &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(IV) A conclusion, where things are back to normal, stable, and perhaps better than they were. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this is just one more formula, albeit a common one. Take it all with a pinch of salt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hard part is the introduction, the &quot;normal&quot; before the story starts. Many writers are anxious to get into the action, thinking that action is interesting, but without a baseline for normal, it's hard to make people care about something unusual. When an author makes the investment at the start so we connect with the protagonist, readers care deeply when things go wrong and will root for the character's efforts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T17:21:35.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20950" CreationDate="2016-02-17T17:34:08.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's usually better to plant yourself and describe the character through the eyes of the viewpoint character. It doesn't usually require too much of a change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Carla looked at John's gaunt face, his haunted eyes. This was what&#xA;  imprisonment did to a man. It was a face that had felt &#xA;  agony and seen its effects on others. Prison had changed&#xA;  John. He was no longer the bright young lad his father had once&#xA;  admired; the favored son who would conquer the world. Now the world&#xA;  had conquered him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that the viewpoint character knows all this. If not, comment on what is visible, and reveal the rest later, in dialogue maybe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T17:34:08.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20962" CreationDate="2016-02-17T18:05:32.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be a perseverent observer. Make a note of things people do during such emotional aggravation. To be exact, the stuff they do subconsciously. Clenching of fists, eyebrows extending, short fast breaths. Show the anger or pain flowing out of the characters. I am not going to give you an example, it'd be too easy. Some people stutter when they are overwhelmed. Some wave hands frantically. Some sweat. Some use &quot;some&quot; words repeatedly, when their mind is unstable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build the tension with words. Show the reader how mad/angry/aggravated he is by describing his actions(all in narratives). Blow it up with a single line of dialogue. Use simple yet strong words for the blow. When people are mad its highly unlikely to bring out the best of their vocabulary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following the description after the dialogue often misses the effect you seek. Make the reader &quot;feel&quot; that its gonna blow up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16656" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T18:05:32.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9269" CreationDate="2016-02-17T23:30:32.537" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am learning this in Language Arts right now. I am in sixth grade, and we are writing 5 paragraph argumentative essays. I believe the counterargument should be in the 4th paragraph, and then you give more pros that will outnumber the cons, so the reader is convinced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We usually use three prongs, to make our writing more organized. So if you do it this way, you can introduce your third reason in your fourth paragraph, and THEN provide a counterargument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17920" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-02-21T09:23:10.723" LastActivityDate="2016-02-21T09:23:10.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20804" CreationDate="2016-02-18T00:56:15.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a newbie to writing, I can't comment on how to dramatically portray the lifelong impact of childhood trauma.  But as a person with PTSD, I can confirm that as Stu W explained &quot;flashbacks, obsession, avoidance, and a high-adrenaline state&quot; are real symptoms.  Others include general depression and anxiety.  But an important feature is triggers.  A trigger can be a smell, an object, a sound etc.  Anything that reminds the person of the event.  As the name implies, a trigger is a stimulus that leads to a strong response of anxiety or flashback.  It can cause a fight-flight-freeze response.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I know a soldier who can't sleep near a window for fear of snipers.  And a woman who is afraid of turbans because she was assaulted by a man wearing one.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person may also be plaited by destructive thoughts or beliefs about themselves.  Things like I deserved what happened, my life is cursed, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the book I'm writing, I am planning a critical scene where the character freezes with a flash back at a very critical moment.  More subtle features can be woven in as things like lack of trust, avoidance of people, addictions, risk taking, avoidance of triggering situations, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common attribute is the effect and damage it has on relationships. Also the burden it puts on people around the character who can see the traits and the self destructiveness that the character can't see in himself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would avoid reading the DSM.  It is too technical and dry.  There are many biographies of people with PTSD.  Many news articles.  You should be able to do some surface reading to get an idea of the experience.  This type of reading will give you a better feel of how it affects people than anything written from a psychological, sterile point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16627" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T00:56:15.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20975" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20979" CreationDate="2016-02-18T01:41:39.687" Score="2" ViewCount="10967" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current book, the main character is a knight and in one of the beginning scenes, he interacts with the princess.  He's intimidated because of who she is (royalty) and acts very formal around her (never calling her by her first name, etc.).  There's a scene with just the two of them before they know each other. my question is, what kinds of things can I have them say?  I'm kind of hitting a block.  In my head, the characters are both sitting there awkwardly because I cannot think of a single natural thing for him to say.  Any ideas?  (Again, he acts very formal and polite around her, because she's a princess.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I make this scene?  I need some ideas for dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  The knight is kind (not shallow/vain or overly courageous, just a typical boy who was drafted when he was young and trained to serve the kingdom) and not typically shy, but he doesn't know what to say around the princess.  I think this is where my problem lies.  I don't know how to make their conversation happen when he doesn't feel like he can talk to her without being &quot;improper&quot; or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the romantic interest, the princess is interested in him because he's different than the men she is usually around. When he was drafted to be a knight, he came from a farm. So he's very different from the boys who grew up in the castle. And, he has a girl back home, so he's not interested in the princess.  He is nervous/stiff around her because of her status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-20T03:09:36.610" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T15:06:31.960" Title="How would a knight act around a princess?" Tags="|novel|characters|dialogue|character-development|fantasy|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20950" CreationDate="2016-02-18T01:49:57.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's perfectly fine to have a character's POV even if it's just in one or two chapters.  The novel Cinder by Marissa Meyer (extraordinarily well written) has the MC for the first half (or so) of the book, then jumps to her doctor's POV for just one chapter to explain some of the technical stuff that is wrong with MC (she is a cyborg).  He is a semi-important character and only the one chapter is in his POV.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author also does different POVs throughout the rest of the series.  The first book is mainly in one POV (with a handful of other POV chapters).  The second book is mainly TWO POVs (the MC from the first book and the other main girl that was introduced in the second book).  The third book has three main POVs, the fourth book has 4.  There are also other POVs besides the 4 main characters (their love interests for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that was clear.  Short answer: yes, I think it's okay to have as many POVs as you want as long as each storyline is easily distinguishable and there is a purpose for each one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T01:49:57.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20948" CreationDate="2016-02-18T01:55:57.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always found it useful to answer a few questions about the character like I'm interviewing them.  Imagine what they would say and how they would respond.  Maybe you'll learn a little bit about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your MC's passions?  You said she is a volleyball player, what motivates her to play?  Does she find it fun or is there some deep story behind that?  Did her father/mother play?  Is she trying to be better than her older sister?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other hobbies does your character have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some flaws?  Is she too talkative, bubbly, quiet, shy/awkward, confident, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said your MC doesn't do anything to set her apart.  MAKE her stand out.  Make her interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the MC will automatically connect more with the reader since we're seeing the story through their eyes, so even if your MC isn't super interesting or unique, it's not a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T01:55:57.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20934" CreationDate="2016-02-18T03:43:49.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been amazed and impressed by the thoughtful responses everyone has provided.  They have helped me greatly.  I agree that characters are important and need to jump off the page.  After the hook, no one will continue reading based on curiosity alone...they have to be interested and care about the characters.  And then, yes, you have to torture them, or there is no story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question wasn't meant to negate the importance of character development.  It was simply on understanding structure.  And I understand from the great responses, that there is no 'golden rule' for structure.  There may be traditional and popular structures, but like all true art, you can't just use a colour-by-numbers approach.  That was a good revelation for me to learn.  I do still believe, however (as some have expressed) that the knowledge I have gained of structure to date does give me a running start to writing my story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were also some responses that downplayed the idea of focusing on structure too much in the pre-writing stage.  I agree that a solid structure does not automaticlally equate to a great story.  However, there is much to be said of the differences between writing paradigms.  I.e plotters vs Pantsers.  As a true plotter, my strengths lie in planning out the story (as described in the snowflake method).  My brain works in such a way that I need to understand the story mile markers, big or small, and to understand the flow of the story and where it is going, before I can begin writing.  As such, the mapping of a solid structure into the story outline is a natural progression in my pre-writing planning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My biggest take away is to not get too hung up on finding a perfect structure.  Thanks everyone!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16627" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T03:43:49.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20975" CreationDate="2016-02-18T10:20:36.197" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would entirely depend on their personalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the knight was charming and superficial, he would be in his absolute element in this situation. Spouting off lines such as, &lt;code&gt;&quot;You are as radiant as the sun above, with a smile that lights up this chamber like it were midsummer's day&quot;&lt;/code&gt;, which sounds good but doesn't really mean anything. Then later on when they got to know each other she would see he is a shallow buffoon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If she is intelligent and worldly she might respond to this coldly and know immediately that he is simply flattering her, and shrug off these comments with aloof pleasantries such as, &lt;code&gt;&quot;Thank you, kind sir. You flatter me so.&quot;&lt;/code&gt; However, if she is also quite vain and pompous she might blush and respond in kind with, &lt;code&gt;&quot;Why, sir knight, your compliments match your bravery and valor.&quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, if he is quite a rude/ brash knight, or is rather inexperienced with entertaining dignitaries, he might stumble over his words and end up embarrassing himself. Or he may inadvertently insult her by &lt;em&gt;trying&lt;/em&gt; to be polite in a situation he is uncomfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She may also be rather reserved having had a sheltered upbringing, and be equally as nervous and awkward. In which case, your scene would likely work as is, with a couple of chunks of broken and indelicate dialogue thrown in. If this is the case, you can focus more on the inner thought process and the stress of the situation, with the characters attempting to think of things to say that will not seem inappropriate (and likely failing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one of the earlier scenes, it would be a perfect opportunity to portray to the reader what your main characters are like (in a formal situation anyway), which may lead into the character development later on in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may turn from vain/superficial into deeper, more thoughtful characters. They may develop from awkward, nervous people into brave, more assertive ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're still struggling for specific dialogue, try thinking about what a real person would think about saying to a superior, such as an employee to the CEO of their company if they were in a business meeting. Then simply convert the context into that of a fantasy setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T09:07:18.303" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T09:07:18.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20975" CreationDate="2016-02-18T15:43:11.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming your knight is supposed to be courageous, and there's some romantic tension between knight and princess, have him take a few chances. He's polite because he has to be, but how far can he push that without getting executed? Have him push the boundaries. Good manners alone aren't going to arouse much interest from the princess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want historical realism, this kind of chivalry was mostly in fiction. A knight probably wouldn't have needed to be overly courteous to a king's daughter, because she didn't have much say in who she married. He'd be better off impressing her father. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T08:52:42.033" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T08:52:42.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20975" CreationDate="2016-02-18T16:33:59.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are they focusing on a specific topic? If not, I would suggest having the princess ask him questions, trying to get him to talk, but when he answers, it is either short and unsatisfactory, or he doesn't know what to say and he awkwardly tries to mumble out answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16626" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T16:33:59.647" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20923" CreationDate="2016-02-18T22:39:49.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If an illustrator is not in the budget, is there a software program that can turn photos into illustrations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many image editing programs have a feature called Effects or Filters that can transform a photo in many ways. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Photoshop&lt;/a&gt; probably has the widest range of choices, though there are also free alternatives. The image below was created using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getpaint.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paint.NET&lt;/a&gt; (Effects menu / Artistic / Ink Sketch...). There are quite a few &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getpaint.net/doc/latest/InstallPlugins.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;plugins for Paint.NET&lt;/a&gt; that offer a variety of effects (pay attention to the big red warning on the plugins page). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gimp.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GIMP&lt;/a&gt; is another popular, free choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effects for all image editing programs have a variety of parameters you can tweak to adjust the look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will probably get much better results if a quality illustrator is in your budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BoGB2.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BoGB2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T22:39:49.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20994" CreationDate="2016-02-18T23:02:17.127" Score="3" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a scene in which two characters are introduced to the reader. They met once before at a party, prior to the start of the story. In the following excerpt, I add a short explanation of that first meeting for the reader's sake. Is it appropriate to inject background in the dialog? Is there a better way to handle it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Oh yes. Jake Hayden. The guy who thinks chocolate milk is a health drink.” &#xA;  Jake’s mouth froze in place. His gaze shifted down and off to the side. Last time they met, he was drinking a chocolate protein beverage, while Sara was drinking ginger-kale juice. He had made playful remarks about her plant juice then. &#xA;  Jake’s lips formed a tight smile. Eyes still lowered, he muttered “Yeah, that was me.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T22:19:28.407" Title="Handling small bits of background story" Tags="|technique|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20986" CreationDate="2016-02-19T00:45:21.240" Score="3" ViewCount="1251" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know it is important for main characters to have flaws to make them believable and real.  But should an antagonist have redeeming or good qualities, to make him more real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17932" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T09:08:40.883" Title="Should a villain have redeeming qualities" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20985" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-19T00:49:54.670" Score="2" ViewCount="18534" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am finishing a short story by describing how the silence of a deceased character is more unnerving than that character's cries before he died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a simile to describe a traumatic or gut-wrenching scene? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17933" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T09:08:31.570" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T09:08:31.570" Title="Describing a Traumatic Silence" Tags="|creative-writing|language|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-02-23T14:06:49.417" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20984" CreationDate="2016-02-19T00:49:55.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on whether you want the villain to be liked or not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is hard for people to believe in a good character who has no flaws.  But it is easy to believe in a villain who appears completely bad.  A bit of a double standard...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you are creating some sort of anti-hero or just want a likeable bad guy then give him some redeeming qualities.  If you want him to be disliked by the readers, then it's probably best to keep him all bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16627" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T09:08:40.883" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T09:08:40.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20985" CreationDate="2016-02-19T01:02:35.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Silence itself can be unnerving.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A ghostly slice or emptiness can be eerie. Or perhaps the calm after a tornado surrounded by the visual display of destruction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16627" LastEditorUserId="16627" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T05:12:02.563" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T05:12:02.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20985" CreationDate="2016-02-19T01:26:04.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could mention that it's like a beating heart being ripped from someone's chest.  One second beating, the next silent and still.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's something conclusive about dead silence.  When a dying person cries, there's still hope for survival but in the silence that follows death, it's a hopeless black void.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The silence symbolizes the shift from life to death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could describe it as &quot;jarring&quot;.  Like the shock of a bucket of ice water being poured over your head.  I think &quot;unnerving&quot; fits pretty well too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T01:26:04.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20990" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20995" CreationDate="2016-02-19T01:30:19.303" Score="4" ViewCount="1015" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read a forward by Piers Anthony in the midst of his bestselling &lt;em&gt;Incarnations&lt;/em&gt; series about how he used two drafts on paper then one on the typewriter and shebang. He admits to switching to a laptop by the midnineties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think 1995 was the last time I did any kind of significant chunk of fiction on paper. Using a computer allows me to get a lot of words down, and it's easier to not forget what I want to say; however, I struggle with endless revisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It almost seems like, if I put more effort in and slowed down the first time, then it would save hundreds of hours of edits downstream. Assuming the dog doesn't eat it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two-part question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Is there anyone out there who does their rough draft on paper (specifically because they feel it is time saving in the long run)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Is there something practical (other than pay someone to edit work) to cut oneself off in the revision process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T10:00:53.053" Title="Maybe it *is* better to write rough drafts longhand?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21010" CreationDate="2016-02-19T01:43:48.767" Score="2" ViewCount="7990" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find myself overusing phrases like &quot;his eyes flickered to (object/person)&quot; and &quot;he shifted his gaze to (object/person)&quot;.  I use the words 'eyes' and 'gaze' a lot to describe what the character is staring at (ie. his eyes locked onto (object), or his eyes wouldn't move from (object), etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also overuse words like &quot;stare&quot; and &quot;glance&quot; as well.  Any ideas how else to describe 'looking at something'?  Or shifting one's gaze to something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T20:53:31.967" Title="Different ways to say &quot;I looked&quot;?" Tags="|style|novel|technique|description|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20990" CreationDate="2016-02-19T01:46:49.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't technically an answer to your question, but for me, as a new writer, I am concerned with getting my thoughts out as fast as possible i.e. Before I forget them.  It's not pretty and requires reworking.  But if I spend the time to focus much on how I'm presenting the thoughts, I sacrifice in raw creativity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16627" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T01:46:49.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20991" CreationDate="2016-02-19T01:49:43.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can observe something.  Something can capture or draw your attention.  You can notice something, or become aware of something.  Instead of describing looking at something, you could show the reaction to the event...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16627" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T01:49:43.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20983" CreationDate="2016-02-19T02:04:49.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That works fine.  It's not a huge description and it fits in well with the dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would change the &quot;was&quot; to &quot;had been&quot;.  &quot;Last time they met, he had been drinking a chocolate protein beverage, while Sara had been drinking ginger-kale juice.&quot;  Or you could shorten it to &quot;he'd been drinking...&quot; if you want.  The use of &quot;was&quot; just sounds weird to me and doesn't really fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T02:04:49.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20990" CreationDate="2016-02-19T02:16:16.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is actually a really interesting subject.  I used to only write on my laptop and never on paper - the thought sounded ridiculous to me, especially since I type 100 WPM - but lately I've been writing on paper.  I wanted to write outside and the sun kept glaring on my screen so I grabbed a notebook.  I was surprised by well I wrote when I wasn't distracted by the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, it's not about slowing down because I tend to write super fast when jotting my thoughts onto paper (to compensate, I guess, since I'm used to getting my thoughts down faster).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;advantages&lt;/strong&gt; of writing on paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) No distractions (like the internet)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) No glare (if you want to write outside)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;disadvantages&lt;/strong&gt; of writing on paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Don't get your ideas down as fast, may forget thought process or ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Not neat or organized, especially if you're writing fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Could lose your papers/notebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) You have to retype everything you've written onto your computer (although this does allow for some editing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it easier to write on paper when I know &lt;strong&gt;exactly what I'm writing&lt;/strong&gt; and have the scene planned out and have already researched all of my information.  That way I can just sit down, no distractions, and write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it &lt;strong&gt;hard to plan out plot on paper&lt;/strong&gt; because when I'm planning, I constantly shift around scenes or come up with new ideas.  On paper that's hard to fix without scribbling out things and even then it gets to be very messy and sometimes illegible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I personally &lt;strong&gt;plan on my computer&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;write first drafts on paper&lt;/strong&gt; (sometimes).  Then I edit a little when I type it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T02:16:16.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20984" CreationDate="2016-02-19T02:26:54.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In real life, very few people are &quot;pure evil&quot;.  They have history that makes them the way they are and motivations for their actions.  So it would definitely be more realistic to have a few redeeming qualities or at least &lt;strong&gt;a background explaining why they act the way they do&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character who is evil with no explanation as to why isn't very realistic.  People aren't just born evil (unless they have some sort of mental illness) and oftentimes something happened to them to make them the way they are, whether it was just how they were raised or a traumatic experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few possible scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Your &lt;strong&gt;antagonist was once a good guy&lt;/strong&gt; but someone did something to him (killed one of his family members for example) and he &lt;strong&gt;wants revenge&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Your &lt;strong&gt;antagonist was traumatized early in life&lt;/strong&gt;.  A lot of people who were beaten as children also beat their kids when they get older for example (obviously not always the case).  Some people also &lt;strong&gt;want others to feel the pain they feel&lt;/strong&gt;, which is a good motivator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Your &lt;strong&gt;antagonist is insane&lt;/strong&gt;.  They have something wrong in the head and are literally psycho.  This can make for an interesting story because the character doesn't necessarily have to have motivations for his actions.  They can be completely random.  (Although a little direction or purpose is always good, even if the insane character seems like his actions are random.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you don't necessarily have to make the antagonist &quot;good&quot; or have redeeming qualities but I do think a good backstory and motivation is required to make the bad guy more realistic (unless he is psycho).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T02:26:54.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20997" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-19T03:51:50.177" Score="1" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I plan to seek out another author to work on a school counseling book. What should I do to protect myself from another author taking the idea before we complete the project and publishing it as their sole work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17936" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-02-19T20:17:16.790" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T20:17:16.790" Title="Protecting your idea when working with another author" Tags="|copyright|collaboration|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20998" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-19T06:52:42.693" Score="0" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a character name to design a personality of a guy who teaches how to build wealth. In the real world, they are financial advisors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17939" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-24T01:39:36.983" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T01:39:36.983" Title="A character who teaches how to build wealth" Tags="|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-02-23T14:07:53.713" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20998" CreationDate="2016-02-19T07:18:25.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd advise against giving your character a name that is blatantly related to his character, unless you are writing a comedy. Calling the rich man &quot;Rich Dollarman&quot; and the policeman &quot;Jack Law&quot; and so forth quickly sounds very lame. Just call him &quot;Fred Miller&quot; or &quot;Bob Dalton&quot; or some such ordinary sounding name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T07:18:25.783" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20990" CreationDate="2016-02-19T07:39:10.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easy answer is: Do what works for you. The computer is a marvelous tool, but that doesn't mean it's the best way to do every possible job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, when I'm working on a book or an article, I always write on the computer. It's easy to back up and rewrite a sentence, re-arrange text, etc. I often change my mind as I go along, so I like the way on the computer I can delete a few words or a sentence, type the new thing, and it's all clean and neat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are many tasks that I COULD do on a computer but which I find easier to do on paper. For example, for my job I have to keep track of how many hours I spend on each project each day. I used to do this with a piece of software that includes a feature designed for this. But then I noticed: On the computer: Start up the program. Navigate through the menus to the place where you enter hours. Select the appropriate project. Set the status to &quot;in work&quot;. Set several other irrelevant fields that are required by the software. Scroll down to where I can enter the number of hours. Type in the hours. Click OK. Click Save. Shut down the program. On paper: I keep a piece of paper on the corner of my desk. When I finish working on a task, I grab the piece of paper, scribble an abbreviation of the project name and the number of hours. Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're spending a lot of time wrestling with the mechanics of doing things on the computer, or if you're not a very fast or accurate typist, the computer may be more trouble than it's worth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is often more difficult to go back and forth between things on a computer than on paper. On the computer, you may have to scroll around, search, and generally press a bunch of keys. On paper, you pick up the pen and put it down in the new place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While computers are getting lighter and more compact, if you want to sit back on the sofa and write it's more comfortable to hold a pad and pen than a laptop. Or to put a desktop on your lap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Et cetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I say, it's what works for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T07:39:10.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20990" CreationDate="2016-02-19T10:00:53.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the essence of your question is actually “should I write with a writing tool or an editing tool?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using a typical word processor on a typical computer, that is not a writing tool. It is actually an editing tool. It’s a digital printing press, not a digital typewriter. That is why it is easy to get into doing revisions when you are not done writing. That is a productivity killer in many cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution is to use a &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; tool. But you don’t have to use longhand writing or a paper typewriter. There are many writing tools today. There are specialized apps like iA Writer (Mac, iOS) and others that basically present you with a digital typewriter with one endless page loaded into it. They run full-screen and are optimized to not distract you from writing. You not only don’t have editing tools, you don’t even have WYSIWYG — you write in plain text and do italics with Markdown syntax. (Put asterisks around a work to &lt;em&gt;italicize&lt;/em&gt; it.) You don’t even have to Save because that is done automatically. That keeps your mind in a writing mode, not an editing mode, and not a computer mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you don’t have to switch to writing by hand or use the 1983 version of Wordstar on an MS-DOS PC like George R. R. Martin. You can use the same computer you are already using, but you have to run an app that is as distraction-free as those tools. Once you are done writing a story or chapter or book, you can then open your manuscript in an editing-oriented tool and do some surgery-like revisions or editing or spell-checking and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing is to make sure to turn off Wi-Fi and notifications when you are writing. Don’t let the computer run interruptions while you are writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to run your distraction-free writing tool on its own computer with Wi-Fi and notifications turned off. Maybe your old computer. Maybe an iPad with Bluetooth keyboard. Even a second-hand iPad. Maybe in a quiet room on a little desk with comfortable chair, and you go in there to write and it is all optimized to be distraction-free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T10:00:53.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20984" CreationDate="2016-02-19T11:10:43.563" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everybody has redeeming qualities and everybody has flaws. Any character that doesn’t have both is unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t think it is a good idea to separate antagonist and protagonist when doing character work. Those are plot roles. Character-wise, everybody sees themselves as a protagonist. Everybody thinks they are the good guy. Hitler thought he was the good guy. Generally speaking, the only thing that makes someone a villain is they are willing to hurt other people to get their way. But they typically have all kinds of excuses for that which enable them to see themselves as a protagonist in their own life story. So a villain might still be nice to his dogs or give to charity or be a great baker, even while he is having somebody killed to achieve his professional goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T11:10:43.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20953" CreationDate="2016-02-19T11:42:35.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While you did find your chosen answer already, I still have another option in mind: use the commentators to describe what happened. If there are any at all... Well, when this is some fantasy sport in an environment where no television or radio broadcast is available, that not an option. But if you have such kind of devices in your world, feel free to have two commentators speaking about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this is a sport that is non-real and would need much explanation to make sense to the reader, let these guys spending half of the time sharing the latest gossip about the number 5 (your protagonist) and the ladies or boys he or she was seen last time... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and oh, now that huge brute from the other team did a bad foul to him. Looks like he needs a new leg soon, isn't he, Larry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's right, Scott, but Mr Velentine, who happen to be the trainer of him, also own a cybernetic replacement, and he feels good about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what is now? Did they just flat the ball? Well, Larry, this is going to be a long game tonight. And now for a consumer hint proudly provided by our sponsor &quot;Synty Limbs inc.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17943" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-22T07:02:46.317" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T07:02:46.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20991" CreationDate="2016-02-19T12:30:08.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can consider some of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Noticed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Observed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Caught my eye&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eyed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Piqued my interest&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17944" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T12:30:08.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20991" CreationDate="2016-02-19T13:43:46.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is nothing wrong in using plain &quot;looking&quot; as the action, just follow it up with why and and with what emotions&lt;/strong&gt;. Unless you explicitly want to focus on the way a character is looking, its best not to bring up looking at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex: &#xA;1. He ran into Emma last week, in the elevator, she looked beautiful.&#xA;2. He ran into Emma last week, he looked at her, she was beautiful. &#xA;(in the 2nd case, is it not obvious, that he looked at her. Do we really need to emphasis on that he looked. How else would he know she was beautiful?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet if you still desire to have other options read on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your characters don't always have to &quot;look&quot;. The process of their eyes falling on someone/something, can be many things other than &quot;looking&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider  these examples&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;-he can ogle at someone/ an object&#xA;-have a blank look towards the object(seeing not noticing)&#xA;-eyeball an object&#xA;-he can fall in a trance at seeing a girl&#xA;-his eyes can get hypnotized (not literally)&#xA;-something/ someone can enter his field of view while looking at something else.&#xA;-He can &quot;chance&quot; on something accidentally.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best writing :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16656" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T13:43:46.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21006" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21011" CreationDate="2016-02-19T13:45:24.010" Score="0" ViewCount="3540" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a sentence in my manuscript with the following structure:&#xA;&quot;As to the technologies...., 10 participants identified ...., and 5 participants identified .....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to APA: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use numerals to express numbers 10 and above, and use words to express&#xA;  numbers below 10 (see sections 4.31–4.32, pp. 111–112).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the APA, I guess I have to say &quot;five participants&quot; is that right? But then this creates inconsistency in the sentence (10 vs five). I wonder what is the common practice here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15548" LastEditorUserId="15548" LastEditDate="2016-02-19T13:50:42.120" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T21:33:29.507" Title="Using Numbers in APA: 10 and 5 in the same sentence" Tags="|academic-writing|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20997" CreationDate="2016-02-19T14:41:29.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're starting out on the wrong foot. To produce a successful book, it's important that you foster a spirit of collaboration and contribution with your co-author. One way to do this is to have an agreement up front. The agreement should state that both of your names will appear alphabetically on the cover, it should include a preliminary outline of the book, and should identify who will be the primary author of each chapter or segment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's likely that the two of you have different writing styles, so you should also discuss how you're going to achieve some consistency in the book. You can talk your way through this issue, select a style-guide,  agree to peer edit each other's work. Again, the key thing is to work things out constructively and diplomatically ahead of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the book might not make much money, it could help both of your careers and create new job opportunities. If your collaboration doesn't work out, with the two of you parting ways and publishing separate books, you still get the same benefits from publishing an excellent book on your own. The existence of a book by another author won't affect your outcome. No matter what, you have a lot to gain, and little to lose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-19T16:57:29.140" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T16:57:29.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20998" CreationDate="2016-02-19T16:59:05.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you're naming characters, one of the important things you'll need to remember is keeping the names consistent within your world.  If all of your characters are from India, then having someone named Bob will be kind of strange unless he's spent a lot of time outside of India.  Venkata or something similar might work better in that case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, just because a character's parents may have given them one name, doesn't mean that they actually go by that name.  Just like in real life, you can have a character go by a nickname. Venkata might go by Vinnie when he's around friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one more thing - don't make two character names too similar or you'll have people confusing them.  If you have a Bob and a Rob, people will have a hard time remembering which is which.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, like Jay says in his answer, just pick something normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T16:59:05.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20492" CreationDate="2016-02-19T20:29:38.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a website specifically for finding co-writers, &lt;a href=&quot;http://co-writers.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://co-writers.com&lt;/a&gt; .  It's not hugely active, but it is free, so it doesn't do any harm to try it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T20:29:38.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20991" CreationDate="2016-02-19T20:53:31.967" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the possibilty that your problem isn't a shortage of verbs, but an overuse of the concept of characters looking at things. Maybe you are too intent on having your PoV character guide the reader's focus with his actual eyes. Describing the action of looking, doesn't always give the reader something useful. Perhaps you also need to find new ways to direct our attention, or just jump with confidence between your subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some basic examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of these...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He sat in silence at the campfire. His gaze sank through the flames to Anna on the opposite side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He stepped into the bar and took a glance around. The locals did not look impressed with his fashion choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She passed him the letter. He looked at it and recognised his father's handwriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try these...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He sat in silence at the campfire. The firelight played on Anna's face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He stepped into the bar and killed the atmosphere stone dead. Something about his fashion choices seemed to cause the locals some discomfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She passed him the letter. The handwriting was as familiar as his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay it doesn't exactly answer your question, but it does addess your concern, 'I find myself overusing...'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T20:53:31.967" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21006" CreationDate="2016-02-19T21:33:29.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are correct! However, this was not always the case. Here's some background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fifth edition of the APA publication manual required the use of numerals when numbers below 10 were grouped for comparison with numbers 10 and above in the same paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I saw 10 small dogs and 9 large dogs at the park today.&quot; (As you know, in other situations we would write &quot;nine&quot; instead of the numeral &quot;9.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the sixth edition of the manual dropped this requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/manual/whats-new.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.apastyle.org/manual/whats-new.aspx&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/01/numbers-anyone.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/01/numbers-anyone.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17946" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T21:33:29.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20983" CreationDate="2016-02-19T22:19:28.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its a teensy bit awkward to me, possibly because I have an extreme aversion to past perfect ('He had made...')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gag about the milk is a good one, but the exchange would probably be better if the ginger-kale juice were introduced in a comeback (either witty or awkward) rather than reaching into the past for an explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Oh yes. Jake Hayden. The guy who thinks chocolate milk is a health drink.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jake’s mouth froze in place. Last time they met, he was drinking a chocolate protein beverage. &amp;quot;So says the girl,&amp;quot; he said, &amp;quot;last seen trying to get drunk on ginger-kale juice?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies for changing the nature of the exchange (and the party) but hopefully you can see it's a bit clearer and more immediate. You can probably think of a more appropriate response for Jake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T22:19:28.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21013" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21020" CreationDate="2016-02-19T22:32:27.663" Score="0" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for character names to design a personality for 4 children in my story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16863" LastEditorUserId="16863" LastEditDate="2016-02-22T22:16:02.640" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T22:16:02.640" Title="Coming up with names for 4 children" Tags="|fiction|naming|child-characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2016-02-22T02:45:45.280" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21014" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-19T22:42:10.663" Score="2" ViewCount="816" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanna start to write my first book. My problem is if I could use real country names in my book. For example, can I say that the action takes place in USA, California, Los Angeles or in China or in Iraq? What if my book is a fiction and I transform the story into a conspiracy theory like saying that UK is trying to destory the world making a secret pact with Russia to land some nuclear bombs on the center of Europe.&#xA;And what about using real-world problems in my book? For example; the refugees crysis, the earthquake in Japan or any other things like these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17947" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-02-23T14:10:14.713" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T14:10:14.713" Title="Using country names in my book" Tags="|copyright|book|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21014" CreationDate="2016-02-19T22:51:05.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is important to include a disclaimer in the opening of your book because in every book I have read, it states that it is a work of fiction and that businesses, locations, and organizations, while real, are used in a way that is purely fictional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16863" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-02-20T23:24:27.817" LastActivityDate="2016-02-20T23:24:27.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21014" CreationDate="2016-02-19T23:53:05.513" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishers will include those disclaimers of liability in the frontpapers. As long as your book is marketed as fiction, you don't have to worry about legal ramifications for including the names of real-world countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for including humanitarian incidents or disasters, you'll want to examine &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you're including them and &lt;em&gt;why.&lt;/em&gt; One-off references can contribute to setting, by rooting your novel in a particular time and place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if (for instance) the refugee crisis in a certain country makes up a significant portion of your book's plot or setting, you'll want to do the research that will let you examine it in a thoughtful and empathetic manner. Otherwise you run the risk of appropriating a serious event instead of reflecting on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16278" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T23:53:05.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21017" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21019" CreationDate="2016-02-19T23:59:08.777" Score="4" ViewCount="346" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the early stages of a story with a large number of characters, a complex backstory and a long history. This is mostly because I crafted the world myself for months before deciding to write it down. The issue is, I don't know whose point of view my story should be written from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary conflict comes from an immortal witch who feels that humans are stupid little punks who need to be eliminated from the planet. She tried to wipe them out several hundred years ago in a huge, world-shattering war between a bunch of immortals, each of whom had their own reason to beat the crud out of everyone else. The witch lost and went into hiding, letting everyone else forget she ever existed. Meanwhile, she has been using magic to make monsters to infiltrate society and eventually blow it up from the inside out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have three heroes as major candidates for my POV character:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The witch's reformed son who works as a diplomat in the main country,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A girl bored with her life that faked her way into the army, despite having no credentials, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A nobleman's son working to bring a forgotten race of people back into civilization. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these characters has pros and cons as the lead hero, which I am willing to explain further if need be, but I don't know what best to do. Can I have some help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've explained what I feel to be just what is needed to be helpful. There's a lot more I'm willing to explain if need be, but I feel it might be better for myself and other readers to hear the process of choosing a POV character. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14251" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-02-23T14:03:58.170" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T14:03:58.170" Title="Who should I use for my POV character?" Tags="|fiction|characters|fantasy|voice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21013" CreationDate="2016-02-20T00:58:52.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the idea of 3 rhymed names and a discordant one. A retro example would be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde (Pac-Man)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a modern example (from Nickelodeon):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These sorts of things flow well with children's characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-02-20T00:58:52.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21017" CreationDate="2016-02-20T02:18:38.207" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not use all three?  Write it in third person and alternate chapters from different POVs.  I love reading books that do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have a main character that gets the most chapters or you could make all three of your choices equal in importance, as long as they each have interesting storylines.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You sound like you've fleshed out your outlining and fictional world pretty well.  &lt;strong&gt;For books with larger casts&lt;/strong&gt; I feel like it works really well to &lt;strong&gt;have several POVs&lt;/strong&gt;, that way you get to know more of the characters and there are lots of different relationships (rather than everyone somehow interacting with the one MC to fit into the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marissa Meyer does an excellent job in The Lunar Chronicles alternating POVs.  For most of the first book it was mainly one character (just a few chapters of someone else's POV if something need explaining).  In her second book, she introduced another main character and the two girls got equal chapters.  There were other characters whose POV was shown as well.  The third book had three MCs and the fourth book had four (the love interests of the main characters got a few chapters from their POV's as well) and we were even given several chapters from the &lt;strong&gt;antagonist's POV&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do whatever you feel is right for your book.  If that's alternating POVs and having several main characters, awesome.  If you'd rather choose one and really focus on that, cool.  I think your idea is solid and sounds very interesting, definitely something I'd be interested in reading.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love to see the POV of all 3 characters you mentioned.  They seem diverse enough that it could work, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastActivityDate="2016-02-20T02:18:38.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21013" CreationDate="2016-02-20T02:26:40.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What type of candy is it?  Are there different flavors?  Were the candies the same that all four kids ate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could do different colors/flavors perhaps.  And the different flavors make for different superpowers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Red Juiceberry&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turquoise Taffy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Green Slimesuck&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Crack Caramel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Red Poprock&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roasted Poprock&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Salted Chew&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sweet Purpleblast&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flavorblast&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these what you're looking for?  The candies could also bring out the kids' natural personalities.  For example, if one of the kids had a bad temper, it could enhance that trait and make him extremely fiery (lots of attitude, anger issues, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastEditorUserId="17922" LastEditDate="2016-02-22T20:36:51.223" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T20:36:51.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20998" CreationDate="2016-02-20T03:35:53.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some names that came to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paige (&quot;Pay&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Money (as a last name - Michelle Money is a real person so it's not&#xA;an unrealistic surname)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rick (his nickname could be &quot;Rich&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dollarman (as a last name - one of the other answers had this)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible combos: Rick (&quot;Rich&quot;) Money, Paige Money, Rick (&quot;Rich&quot;) Dollarman, Michael Johnson (completely random but you could give him a money-related nickname).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people said not to name your characters directly but what if your character's name is the reason why they decided to get into 'wealth building' in the first place?  &lt;strong&gt;If a guy had the last name 'Money' it could motivate him to choose a career in a field related to finance.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, just have their nickname be something related to money.  If your character is a financial advisor, have someone give him a &lt;strong&gt;nickname related to his career&lt;/strong&gt;.  You can call him &quot;Wealth&quot; or &quot;Dollarman&quot; or &quot;Mr. Money&quot; without it being his actual name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastActivityDate="2016-02-20T03:35:53.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21017" CreationDate="2016-02-20T06:24:50.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I considered writing a book based on a storyline I was working on in my head once... I never made it past actually writing the first paragraph, but it would have been a good book I assure you. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would vote for #1 if I thought I would read it; the dynamics of the situation would offer potential internal conflict and an ever-present imminent danger, thereby promising to secure the attention of the reader. However, in this I make some assumptions about your intended storyline, e.g. supposedly &quot;immortal&quot; characters will be characterized by occasionally recurring visits into your storyline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just my humble unbiased opinion. I don't care for witches either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16829" LastActivityDate="2016-02-20T06:24:50.550" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21014" CreationDate="2016-02-20T07:59:38.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are writing a work of fiction, you can write what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Country names are not copyrighted features of someone else’s work. You can set your work wherever you want to. A caveat is that if you set all or part of your work in China and you don’t know anything about China, it will be unrealistic and the reader may lose their suspension of disbelief. The adage to “write what you know” definitely applies here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make up worldwide events wholesale. Consider that the entire world blows up in many books and movies. Aliens land. Plagues wipe out all but a handful of survivors. Go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can certainly be informed by actual events. But again, if you don’t “write what you know” then you risk being unrealistic and taking the reader out of the story. It might be better to create a fictional event that is informed by real life rather than describe actual events in an uninformed way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is nothing stopping you from writing what you want to write. You don’t have to ask anyone’s permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-20T07:59:38.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21025" CreationDate="2016-02-20T23:39:10.343" Score="0" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I give the 4 children in my fictional story personality traits? One is a bossy 12 year old girl, one is a 11 year old girl that thinks that life is unfair, one is a 12 year old problem solving boy, and the last one is an kind 11 year old boy.Is this enough to develop a whole personality or do i need more information about my characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16863" LastEditorUserId="16863" LastEditDate="2016-02-23T00:38:31.707" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T03:02:36.467" Title="How can I develop a whole personality for my characters in my fictional story from personality traits" Tags="|fiction|character-development|child-characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21024" CreationDate="2016-02-21T02:15:31.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The bossy one. (Per my daughter)&#xA;She points her finger at me like an accusation. &quot;You said I was the &lt;em&gt;b-o-s-s&lt;/em&gt; boss!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The frustrated one. [My son then says] &quot;Why do we always do what she wants to do. It's not fair!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Daddy says I get to make the rules. I'm the &lt;em&gt;b-o-s-s&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I hate girls!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Yeah, well what about Charlotte? You just spent the last hour playing with your hair because we're going to their house tonight.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The problem solver. &quot;Maybe if we tried to compromise we can figure out something we all want to do.&quot; Yeah, right.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The introspective kid that just wanders off and does their own thing. &quot;What do you mean you just started painting? We finally all get our shoes on, and now I have to clean paint off the floor?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-02-21T14:47:46.423" LastActivityDate="2016-02-21T14:47:46.423" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21026" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-21T05:50:19.020" Score="3" ViewCount="234" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently read two quite &quot;hard core&quot; novels, both by famous authors. One was erotic fiction and one was a thriller which was very violent and gory. At the end I realized something: the F*** word was never used once in either book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, I realized that I don't actually see it a lot in novels, or perhaps the novels I read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both the above books had a lot of sh**, damn, freaking, screw, bi**** etc, but not F*** or F***ing and variations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some unwritten rule about this? Is it seen as very vulgar in novels? Or just unnecessary? Can it put readers off? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T20:17:44.717" Title="Using profanities in novels" Tags="|style|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20985" CreationDate="2016-02-21T08:24:57.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd call this &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The silence of the lambs&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;. While recent, this simile has wormed it's way into many heads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-02-21T08:24:57.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20985" CreationDate="2016-02-21T08:50:42.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider putting in blank lines and/or many spaces between words to represent the silence. That makes the reader read “silence” and experience it along with the character. It is a fairly common poetry technique but is also used in prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;he breathed                     and breathed          and        then&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;nothing&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-21T08:50:42.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21029" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-21T10:17:47.507" Score="7" ViewCount="1005" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to writing and I am trying to a write a novel.  In the first chapter, my main character travels from her hometown to a different town far away. I want to use this time to give the reader a view of the kind of place she lives in and also hint at some things that will be touched on later.  It's about three short paragraphs.  But then she arrives at her destination.  At first, I cut out her arrival and the description of the new town because I was afraid it was too much narrative, but when I went back and read it, it felt like she hadn't gone anywhere and was in the same place, so I felt like I still needed that description as well (around two sentences).  Then she checks into her hotel (more description) and runs into someone there, which is where the action picks up.  She is by herself, so there isn't much opportunity for dialogue during the transition from her hometown to the new town. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know all of this just sounds riveting.  But if anyone could give me some advice on how to transition from one location to another without just listing the actions (the train arrives, then she checks into her hotel, then she goes to the bar, etc.), but also giving the impression of a new place, that would be great. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17959" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T00:13:02.803" Title="Describing a Character Traveling: Too much narrative?" Tags="|narrative|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21029" CreationDate="2016-02-21T11:34:18.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A train presents a pretty good solution, practically and thematically. You could have her stand at the back of the train and watch her old town recede into the distance while she has a few thoughts/regrets/memories about the town and about her old life there. Then she can walk through the train noticing the passengers and how they are different and then stand at the front of the train and be excited/scared/pensive (or whatever) about the new place she's going to, ending as it pulls into the station. Then cut to the next scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13109" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T09:52:23.743" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T09:52:23.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21026" CreationDate="2016-02-21T11:39:17.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At a guess I'd say it's probably a bridge too far for most publishers, but the other thing to remember is that it's pretty much top-of-the-tree as a far as profanity goes, so once you've used it, where do you go? If you want to represent levels/layers of emotion and associated profanities then you'd start small and build up, leaving the big stuff for when it's really needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I'm speculating, but it's as a good a reason as any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13109" LastActivityDate="2016-02-21T11:39:17.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21035" CreationDate="2016-02-21T11:41:34.013" Score="10" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can one still make money from short fiction, and what is the best way? I know in days gone past it has been possible to sell short fiction to magazines or papers, who would pay per word, or some such, but is this still possible and is it the best way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I really mean by best is, surprise, most money, though any comments anyone might have on alternative benefits to consider are welcome. It's not that I'm particularly rapacious or anything, and I'm not trying to make a living from it, but money is useful stuff, and it seems irresponsible to not make the most of any asset, not to mention I do have a mortgage as well as the usual collection of other obligatory bills to pay!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that selling ones work via Amazon/Kindle is possible, and provides a presumably easy route, though I must admit I still don't understand exactly how this works yet, especially when some fiction seems to be free, and I have not the faintest idea if it's a rip off for the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17962" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-04-12T17:48:44.357" LastActivityDate="2018-07-11T20:30:07.637" Title="Can I make money from short fiction?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|short-story|money|kindle|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21029" CreationDate="2016-02-21T11:54:12.597" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there is no story there, just say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She traveled by train from London to Paris.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then get on with the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don’t have to “use this time” because that train ride takes time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is story, you might tell it as flashback story the character recalls as she looks out the window of the train at familiar locations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really a rewriting/editing question, though, not a writing question. You should consider just writing and writing the story that you have without stopping to edit until your first draft is done. Then these questions are easier to answer in the context of the completed draft manuscript, either by you as you rewrite or by an editor as they edit. Extraneous and/or missing parts become more obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programmers have a saying: “premature optimization is the root of all evil.” For writers, it is premature rewrites, because rewrites are writing optimizations. So it is usually better to write without questioning what you write too much. The second draft is all questioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-21T11:54:12.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21034" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21057" CreationDate="2016-02-21T12:55:11.340" Score="4" ViewCount="7956" Body="&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thesis without a preview of the supporting points of the essay: &quot;With a more international world, every citizen should learn to speak a second language.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thesis with a preview of the supporting points of the essay: &quot;Everyone should shop at Walmart &lt;strong&gt;because they have variety, a large inventory, and cheap prices&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know whether a good thesis statement should always include a preview of the supporting points to be discussed in the body of the essay or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17963" LastEditorUserId="17963" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T00:37:14.177" LastActivityDate="2020-10-26T23:04:48.123" Title="Thesis statement with or without a preview of the supporting points of the essay?" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21032" CreationDate="2016-02-21T12:57:26.853" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost certainly no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the positive thing is: the answer was always “almost certainly no.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most fiction writers in any era did not make any money. Even the greats often worked day jobs and still died young and penniless. And even when a short story or novel sold millions, the writer often got very little. Certainly not enough to get above minimum wage when considering the thousands of hours of unpaid writing that came before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today the cost of production is much lower than in the past, but the cost of living is much higher. So it is the same as ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as always, if you are not driven enough to write fiction while working a day job, then give it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could be a writing day job like advertising or technical writing. But that has its drawbacks because you can be written out by the time you sit down to write fiction. A job that is the opposite of writing can be a blessing. Especially if it feeds your writing with good social interactions and/or people watching. So don’t be too down if you have that or have to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you self-publish, you have to self-promote. It is very hard, and takes time. Be prepared to publish 3 books at least that hardly anybody reads before getting any traction at all. Be prepared to work at it for years. But it can be rewarding creatively because you can write and publish and write more and publish and write more and build up a library that gets better and better and more and more attractive to readers. And you can control the final product and make something right from your heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best marketing is just to improve your product. Work really hard to make something really great. But you still have to promote it and it still takes time for it to spread. You have to become good at social media and make your own website with something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://squarespace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Squarespace&lt;/a&gt; and learn how to make and publish eBooks with something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; and also how to interact with &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon Kindle Direct&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/itunes/working-itunes/sell-content/books/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apple iBooks&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don’t self-publish, then you still have to promote yourself to publishers, which today means social media and &lt;a href=&quot;http://squarespace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Squarespace&lt;/a&gt; again because the majority of published books start out as blogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this is said not to discourage you from writing. The really discouraging thing is to have illusions that get shattered with each step you take. Have high expectations for the quality of your writing and the work you put into it and the work you put into promoting it and low expectations for fame and fortune and you can avoid disappointment and focus on what matters and enjoy a productive writing career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you still might sell the rights to one of your stories to a movie producer for $50,000 at some point. I’m not all bad news!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-21T12:57:26.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21036" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-21T14:43:22.400" Score="13" ViewCount="7364" Body="&lt;p&gt;If, for example, I plan for a character to die in the middle of the story, and let's say I'd like to foreshadow his death by dropping a few hints here and there, what should I avoid when dropping hints about the approaching death? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-24T01:14:15.050" LastActivityDate="2020-11-06T03:06:07.183" Title="What to avoid when foreshadowing a death?" Tags="|characters|foreshadowing|death|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21036" CreationDate="2016-02-21T15:05:48.927" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't make him mention death eg &quot;someday, you'll be the death of me...&quot;&#xA;Eg Star Wars&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't make him show pictures of home to his buddies. This is a DEAD giveaway (excuse my pun),  especially in military fic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to weave in a death theme (Eg gladiator) which doesn't really foreshadow anything until it's too late-- the end of the story. Or in your case-- the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also might want to check out Writing Excuses episode 9.49: Hiding the Open Grave. It is basically what I said, only with more elaboration. You might find it useful to refer to while writing your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell us how it goes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-02-21T15:05:48.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21038" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21039" CreationDate="2016-02-21T18:40:47.720" Score="4" ViewCount="582" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story in third person. When writing internal dialog, should I use first person or second person? Does it matter? Should I be consistent in the entire story? Should I be consistent &lt;em&gt;for a given character&lt;/em&gt; in the entire story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the specific example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John strained under the weight of his pack. &lt;em&gt;I'll never make to to the summit. I just can't keep this up.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John strained under the weight of his pack. &lt;em&gt;You're never going to make it to the summit, Johnny. You can't keep this up.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T21:02:37.847" Title="Internal Dialog - First or Second Person" Tags="|style|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21038" CreationDate="2016-02-21T19:11:24.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a matter of style.  Note that your example is the same: both are from Johnny's perspective, just he's referring to himself in the third person in the second case. Personally, I prefer the first example, as third-person self-reference has always felt a bit awkward to me. I never refer to myself in the third person in my thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever you decide, you should remain consistent throughout. Inconsistency in any form, be it exposition, dialogue, or your personal writing style, throws your readers off, and can keep them from immersing in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15134" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-23T00:05:17.737" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T00:05:17.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21026" CreationDate="2016-02-21T20:06:11.213" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be true to your characters. If the characters swear, do so. If they don't,  don't. Be true to the moment, if the scene requires swearing, then swear. Don't confuse your preferences or personality for your characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if you swear a lot, or not at all, that shouldn't reflect on how your characters speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most common mistakes in even accomplished writers is judging their characters. Write your characters with sincerity, and let your readers judge them. If you are a good writer, they'll land on the conclusion you want them to make. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important to note, though, that you'll generally only swear in character. Third person exposition will almost never use any form of profanity. Exposition is objective, not subjective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing: crudity or profanity has little to do with verbiage, it is mostly context. You said it yourself: a hard core novel that didn't use F once. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider:&#xA;&quot;She is so fucking smart not even her professors can keep up with her.&quot;&#xA;vs&#xA;&quot;I'd pound her brains out if she weren't as ugly as a leprous orangutan.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is a compliment, the other misogynistic. The swear is nothing more than color. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15134" LastEditorUserId="15134" LastEditDate="2016-02-21T20:14:29.267" LastActivityDate="2016-02-21T20:14:29.267" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21042" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-21T23:34:14.610" Score="4" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently accepted a job working for a publicist who is linked to a well renowned celebrity chef. My first assignment is to compose an email that can be used to pitch blog post sales. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What elements are necessary for constructing a successful pitch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17957" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T10:00:10.140" Title="How to Write a Pitch Letter?" Tags="|marketing|business-writing|websites|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21038" CreationDate="2016-02-21T23:51:53.193" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Internal dialogs are very personal events.  There's usually only one character involved, barring schizophrenia or telepathy.  That being the case, you can easily drop a few pronouns and make the whole matter moot...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Never going to make that summit!  Can't keep this up.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="11221" LastEditDate="2016-03-21T21:02:37.847" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T21:02:37.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21044" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-22T03:57:05.060" Score="0" ViewCount="361" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a book I saw many years ago. The book showed how a sentence could have different meanings, depending where you placed the emphasis. To indicate the emphasis, the book put a dot above a particular word. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a technique I'd like to use in a book myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're familiar with the book, do you know it's title? Otherwise,  do you know of an alternative resource or topic on this technique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the sentence &quot;I never said she stole my money&quot;, if you stress a different word each time you read it the meaning changes. Try it, it's cool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1633" LastEditorUserId="1633" LastEditDate="2016-02-22T19:38:37.670" LastActivityDate="2021-12-30T03:56:30.390" Title="What's the book that explores emphasis on words in sentences to change the meaning?" Tags="|technique|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21045" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21071" CreationDate="2016-02-22T04:56:12.767" Score="2" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to self publish for the first time. Is it common to create a registered company when you self publish? I like the idea of separating my book revenue from my regular revenue and having my own bank account just for any book revenue as well as website or book-related expenses. Has anyone else done this when self publishing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-02-23T14:38:40.540" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T04:45:46.697" Title="Is it common to create a registered company when you self-publish?" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21042" CreationDate="2016-02-22T08:59:00.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just write it like any professional letter. If you include more than one or two “marketing words” it will go into a spam filter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have people recommend a pitch-specific style or format, but generally speaking, that stuff is antiquated today. People under 50 prefer that you just communicate with them like actual humans. They will spot boilerplate. Be professional, but also be conversational, and be brief and to the point and no BS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your recipients are authors/writers, the above is doubly true. They will recognize and be wary of wordplay, no matter how well-intentioned. If you are real and down to earth you will likely get a better result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your recipients are younger than you, do not talk down to them. Actually, do not talk down no matter what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to express the tone of your brand. If the chef is very upscale, try to express that. If very homey, try to express that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might start by making a point-form list of what you want/have to say, then expand that into a nice professional letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Production-wise, email is its own medium like Web or TV or radio. You have to learn some email-specific principles in order to avoid many common pitfalls (like using marketing words and ending up in a spam filter.) So lookup commercial email production guides. There are lists of words not to use, guidelines on how to use images and reasons not to, how to choose a format, how to do branding and layout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also laws not to break:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CAN-SPAM Act&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastEditorUserId="13337" LastEditDate="2016-02-22T09:13:36.093" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T09:13:36.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21024" CreationDate="2016-02-22T12:03:07.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than prescribing their traits, you can let them reveal themselves to you by just putting them in situations together and writing. See how they interact, how they disagree, how they respond to conflict, etc. I find this exploratory writing to be a lot more effective than deciding who's who ahead of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T12:03:07.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21036" CreationDate="2016-02-22T13:03:28.353" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about the purpose and effect of foreshadowing. If you are walking home and you see a column of smoke rising over your neighbourhood, you will probably rush forward with a lump in your throat fearing that you house is on fire. But when you turn the corner and see your house in flames, you will probably stop dead in your tracks, at least for a moment. Which of these effects do you want to have on your reader? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to them to rush forward, if you want to put a lump in their throat, you must strongly suggest the possibility while leaving some ambiguity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to stop them dead in their tracks, you confront them with the reality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hinting the possibility of the death will have one effect. Hinting the certainty of it will have the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="22216" LastEditDate="2018-05-20T08:33:16.240" LastActivityDate="2018-05-20T08:33:16.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21050" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-22T13:10:39.380" Score="1" ViewCount="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;My cousin is an extraordinary little girl from an extraordinary family. She was featured last Christmas on NBC Nightly News.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have discussed with her about writing a book about their story because it needs to be told and people need to read about it. I write pretty well but don't have a publishing background and they don't have anyone seeking their story rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking about offering to write the book on spec optioning their rights on spec for something like 6 months and then we would each receive half of the profits of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any experience writing books in this situation? Does this seem like a fair deal on both sides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T11:43:33.637" Title="A fair deal for purchasing a true story" Tags="|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21036" CreationDate="2016-02-22T14:55:36.227" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it said that the ideal ending to a book is completely expected and completely surprising to the reader at the same time.  The reader needs to be placed in a mode where the end will seem exactly right, and emotionally truthful, and believable, and yet also it needs to seem fresh and astonishing.  Obviously it's a tough balancing act, which is why so many writers find the end of the book the hardest part to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foreshadowing is a tool to build that effect at the end.  You don't want the reader to feel completely blindsided and betrayed by a character's death, but you also don't want it to be expected, so you create a subtle sense of doom, hopefully quiet enough to pass unnoticed by the reader until later.  What you want to avoid is hitting the reader over the head with something that needs to still register as a surprise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ways of foreshadowing are to make the character particularly frail, or often sick, or (conversely) reckless and brave/foolhardy.  Having those traits (in real life or fiction) doesn't necessarily mean a character is doomed, but it does make us worry a little more about him or her.  If you have a first person narrator, they can also speak of the person in an elegiac manner (as in &lt;a href=&quot;https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/f/fitzgerald/f_scott/gatsby/chapter1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the opening to &lt;em&gt;The Great Gatsby&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;).  It's also possible to use a little indirection.  In &lt;em&gt;The Fault In Our Stars&lt;/em&gt;, the main characters are all critically ill, but who lives and who dies is not necessarily who the reader is initially led to expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-02-22T15:08:35.587" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T15:08:35.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21045" CreationDate="2016-02-22T15:06:13.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I self-published a non-fiction work, not a novel, but much of your questions apply to both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I did not create a separate company, but it might not be a bad idea if you plan to make a real business out of this (which is a good mindset to adopt).  In my case it wouldn't have been worth it, but that's a reflection of my being insufficiently committed to the process to self-publish successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kindle is a common place to start because it has a large audience, and potentially doesn't cost anything.  If you're only interested in ePublishing that's a bit of a different question than if you want to self-publish physical books.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dan Poynter's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1568601425&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Self Publishing Manual&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is oriented towards non-fiction, but it's an excellent overview of the business of self-publishing by someone who actually did it successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own personal advice is to self-publish if-and-only-if you are a gifted and dedicated salesperson, fully prepared to treat your book as a product that you will have to market and sell entirely by yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T15:06:13.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21053" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-22T15:44:59.337" Score="4" ViewCount="1363" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm naming characters for my fantasy story, and so far many of them have nmes that mean something. Characters from different regions have names from different cultures, several names represent their roll in the story or draw parallels from mythology or literature, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, can it become inappropriate after a while? I know there's moderation in everything, but I just want to know when. Many of the names I chose don't sound forced, (Nikolas and Katherine are two of my leads), and characters from the same region have similar enough names (Hiraku, Ayumu and Daiche all live in the same country) to not sound clunky. But is there a point where my reader will become irritated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am familiar with a work that specifically has a &quot;Color Naming Rule&quot; which means literally every character has a meaningful name, and the writers pull it off very well, partially because they have an in-universe excuse, which I don't have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just something that's been bugging me, can I get some help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14251" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T00:44:16.170" Title="How many meaningful names can I put in my story?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|naming|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21053" CreationDate="2016-02-22T16:10:17.457" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no hard and fast rule --the more that characters have clearly meaningful names, the more the story will feel allegorical rather than realistic.  In other words, if all the characters have meaningful names, readers will start looking for a secret meaning underlying the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you're on safest ground if either everyone has a meaningful name, or only one or two people do.  One or two can be believable, and if it's everybody (or nearly everyone, as in Harry Potter), you get used to it.  If it's a handful of characters (without an in-universe explanation), it calls attention to itself, and continues to do so throughout the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T16:10:17.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21055" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-22T16:38:40.380" Score="-5" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joshua heard himself say, “I’m heading over to Jason’s.”  He felt his footsteps leading towards the door.  Joshua opened and shut the door in a daze, not knowing where his steps would lead him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17973" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T18:55:06.650" Title="Re-write needed" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-02-22T20:20:44.003" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21055" CreationDate="2016-02-22T18:49:55.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess normally this site doesn't answer questions unlikely to help more than the asker (OP). But welcome! Also, you didn't ask a question. However, I'll interpret and generalize to &lt;em&gt;&quot;How do I make a limited third-person point of view not sound monotonous? Here is my sample:&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can reverse the subject and predicate or just put the subject after the verb.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can start a sentence with a prepositional or participial (&lt;em&gt;-ing&lt;/em&gt;) phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can pair a quote with an action to minimize the use of &quot;said.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can use adverbs to give your storytelling &quot;body.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your passage, I like the sleepwalking/psychedelia feel. As an aside, sleepwalkers generally have no awareness or recollection of their actions. With third-person limited point of view, it would (have to) be altered consciousness. How about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Joshua felt the urge to move; he knew not where. Inspiration led him to the door but all else was confusion. &quot;I'm heading over to Jason's&quot; came a voice from every place and no place at once. Shutting the door behind him, he tentatively stepped out into the world.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-02-22T18:55:06.650" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T18:55:06.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21034" CreationDate="2016-02-23T00:07:19.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was always taught that the &lt;strong&gt;second option&lt;/strong&gt; is what a Thesis statement should look like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a Five Paragraph Essay, you have your introduction, three paragraphs and your conclusion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The introduction paragraph should include your hook (the first sentence), your thesis statement, and a closing sentence to lead into the next paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of the three paragraphs of your essay should have their own subject or point to get across.  Make sure you do a good job of rolling into the next paragraph, otherwise it will sound rough/jarring/confusing to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion should be just that: a conclusion.  Sum up your essay and drive your point across one last time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to your original question, the &lt;em&gt;Thesis statement&lt;/em&gt; itself should &lt;strong&gt;state your declaration&lt;/strong&gt; (the point of your essay) and &lt;strong&gt;three supporting points&lt;/strong&gt; or three reasons why to believe you (each reason being elaborated in your body paragraphs).  The second example you gave was the &lt;strong&gt;perfect example of a good Thesis statement&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example, &quot;Everyone should shop at Walmart&quot; is your declaration.  It's what your essay is about and what you're trying to convince your readers of (that Walmart is where everyone should be shopping).  Then you list your three reasons why they should shop at Walmart: they have variety, a large inventory, and cheap prices.  You would then go on to write a paragraph on their variety, a paragraph on their large inventory, and a paragraph regarding Walmart's cheap prices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good Thesis statement will have a declaration and three supporting points, &lt;em&gt;however&lt;/em&gt; if your essay is formatted differently or doesn't have three reasons, you could get away with just using your declaration as your Thesis.  For example, you could say &quot;I believe everybody should shop at Walmart&quot; and use that as your Thesis statement.  It's simple and gets your main point across.  Obviously the more elaborate Thesis is preferred, but this simple one will do fine if you are struggling coming up with the three points.  My English teacher actually gave this as one of the options for a Thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up, the second option is preferred, however a good Thesis does not &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; have to include a preview of the supporting points to be discussed in the paragraphs.  You could get away with a &lt;strong&gt;simple, straight-to-the-point Thesis&lt;/strong&gt; with just your declaration and depending on your essay, it might sound smoother with the rest of your writing and essay style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastEditorUserId="17922" LastEditDate="2016-02-23T00:16:00.370" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T00:16:00.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21038" CreationDate="2016-02-23T02:03:02.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both First Person and Second Person internal dialogue would be acceptable, however I much prefer the First Person example.  I find it more realistic for someone to be thinking &quot;I'm never gonna make it!&quot; than telling himself &quot;you're never gonna make it!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also keep their thoughts in Third Person, although it wouldn't be as personal.  For example, &quot;John strained against the weight of his pack.  He was never going to make it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if all of his thoughts were in Second Person I don't think I would like that.  However, if it was only one instance where he referred to himself in the Second Person, it could make the moment more intense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T02:03:02.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20928" CreationDate="2016-02-23T08:46:18.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you might try to write under pseudonym, but if you will be successful, someone will do research and will find your true identity anyway.&#xA;So whatever strategy you will apply, you should be prepared for someone identifying you and maybe even dig through not public but not secret information about your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17923" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T08:46:18.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21063" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-23T08:59:15.130" Score="1" ViewCount="230" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing the text for my book jacket. My book is a novel and it's written in the first person. Does that mean that the text on my book jacket should also be in the first person, or does it not matter? Is the jacket copy supposed to reflect the narrative POV of the book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, should I write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I thought I had the perfect marriage. That is until...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anne thought she had the perfect marriage. That is until...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My book is written in the present tense. Do I have to reflect that in the jacket text or can I write it in the past? Are there generally accepted conventions about these things or can writers pretty much do what they want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastEditorUserId="6276" LastEditDate="2016-02-23T14:32:58.557" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T09:52:36.430" Title="Writing book jacket copy - first person perspective" Tags="|novel|marketing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21063" CreationDate="2016-02-23T11:10:33.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would find it pretty smart for a jacket to be in the first person, especially if the book is this way. I don't think &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; many people would notice, but some will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, generally most books I've seen use the other way round&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anne thought she had the perfect marriage. That is until...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because what you'd need in the jacket is a summary and this way seems a pretty simple way to summarize your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6276" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T11:10:33.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20928" CreationDate="2016-02-23T11:37:17.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course it won't harm you! Look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thomas Pynchon&lt;/a&gt;. He has been writing for more than 50 years and all we have is 2 pictures of his, and his voice has only been heard thrice on the media (Twice on the Simpsons and once in a promo for a book of his).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite his recluse though, he is considered one of the best American writers alive today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to remain like this, I think you should go for it. Keep in mind though that if you start to gain some fame, fans and reporters will try to find out who you are, take your picture etc. This has happened with Pynchon as well. And nowadays, everyone has a smartphone with a camera, so it'll be easier to take a picture of you if someone wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6276" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T11:37:17.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21050" CreationDate="2016-02-23T11:43:33.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;fair deal on both sides&lt;/em&gt; really depends on the sides. To me it seems fair. But to them it might not. So the best thing to do would be to discuss it with them. A person like your cousin or her parents (just an example here; nothing personal) might say that since this is the child's story, they might deserve more than half the profits. Or they might say that you should agree on a price beforehand and stick to that. There are many different options here and I doubt anyone can actually tell you what you should do, besides discussing it with your cousin (and her parents if she is underage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6276" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T11:43:33.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21044" CreationDate="2016-02-23T13:54:30.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is called the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_%28linguistics%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;accentual function of prosody&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/a&gt;. I know a book that describes this- &lt;strong&gt;English Phonetics and Phonology (Cambridge 2009)&lt;/strong&gt; but I also pasted a link to Wiki on the definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17975" LastEditorUserId="17975" LastEditDate="2016-02-23T15:01:05.680" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T15:01:05.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19898" CreationDate="2016-02-23T14:38:17.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kind of depends on what you want to do later in your career. For instance if you want to write something about the church, your erotic novels might stand in your way. But as a novelist, I doubt they will have any negative effect on your career. Especially if you support them yourself. People wouldn't care if they enjoy your novels. It's not like you killed someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6276" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T14:38:17.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20930" CreationDate="2016-02-23T14:49:43.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create tension by saying it is dangerous. Like 'The terrorist has hacked our computers, only God knows what is next! He could do anything!' and stuff similar to these. You can also have one of your characters say &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; was on the computers and why the terrorist getting his hands on that info is harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in popular culture, it is shown that hackers can hack their way around a building. Like they can disable the alarm, open safes etc. These kind of stuff aren't personal, but can be harmful if something valuable is stolen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6276" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T14:49:43.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21045" CreationDate="2016-02-23T14:53:00.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've self-published three books. Yes, I created a company for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know where you live. The legal steps to create a new business are a lot more involved in some places than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here in Michigan, United States, all I needed to do was fill out a form and file it with the county clerk, pay a modest fee, I think it was $50, something like that, and my business was registered for five years. Then I have to renew it every five years. Basically that just says that I'm allowed to do business under the company name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My business is also registered with the U.S. Copyright Office and the Library of Congress as a publishing company. I used the business name on my last two books for the imprint, i.e. the title page says &quot;Published by&quot; my business and the logo on the spine is my logo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I lived in Ohio I created a business -- not related to writing, but that's not the point -- and there was a little more paperwork and a little more cost, but still in the same ballpark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm talking here about creating a sole proprietorship. That is, the business is just a name. Legally, your money and the business's money are the same. When you do your taxes the business income is added in to your personal income, etc. If you want to create a corporation or a limited liability company, that's more work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to your comment about using a pseudonym:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is excerpted from the instructions for filling out the form to register a copyright:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What Is a “Work Made for Hire”? A “work made for hire” is defined as&#xA;  (1) “a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment”;&#xA;  or (2) “a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a&#xA;  contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other&#xA;  audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation,&#xA;  as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as&#xA;  an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by&#xA;  them that the works shall be considered a work made for hire.” If you have&#xA;  checked “Yes” to indicate that the work was “made for hire,” you must give&#xA;  the full legal name of the employer (or other person for whom the work&#xA;  was prepared). You may also include the name of the employee along with&#xA;  the name of the employer (for example: “Elster Publishing Co., employer&#xA;  for hire of John Ferguson”).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Anonymous” or “Pseudonymous” Work: An author’s contribution&#xA;  to a work is “anonymous” if that author is not identified on the copies&#xA;  or phonorecords of the work. An author’s contribution to a work is&#xA;  “pseudonymous” if that author is identified on the copies or phonorecords&#xA;  under a fictitious name. If the work is “anonymous” you may: (1) leave the&#xA;  line blank; or (2) state “anonymous” on the line; or (3) reveal the author’s&#xA;  identity. If the work is “pseudonymous” you may: (1) leave the line blank;&#xA;  or (2) give the pseudonym and identify it as such (for example: “Huntley&#xA;  Haverstock, pseudonym”); or (3) reveal the author’s name, making clear&#xA;  which is the real name and which is the pseudonym (for example, “Judith&#xA;  Barton, whose pseudonym is Madeline Elster”). However, the citizenship&#xA;  or domicile of the author must be given in all cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T04:45:46.697" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T04:45:46.697" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19025" CreationDate="2016-02-23T15:04:38.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you mean, Is there a law against it? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A retailer might ask you to sign a contract promising not to sell for less than their price. As Dale mentions, Kindle -- and Amazon in general -- ask you to promise this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your own point of view, why would you want to do this? If people can find your book for sale for $5 and available elsewhere for free, why would they pay for it? It seems like you would be competing against yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RE ISBNs: An ISBN identifies a particular edition of a book: the text, the cover, the binding, etc. If you produce, say, a hardcover version and a paperback version, or a version with color pictures and a version with only black &amp;amp; white pictures, they must have different ISBNs. But you wouldn't have a different ISBN just because you're distributing through a different channel or charging a different price. An ISBN is like a part or item number: it identifies the specific book for ordering purposes. If a company made a red shirt and a blue shirt, they'd need different item numbers to distinguish them. But they wouldn't make different item numbers for each store that sells their shirts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T15:04:38.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20930" CreationDate="2016-02-23T15:40:24.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's the same kind of silent/non-immediate terror that happens when a virus epidemic strikes.  There is fear of the future even if the person doesn't have the disease or doesn't know anybody who has it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With cyber attacks, you could definitely play up the tension of &quot;What will happen next?  Could he break in?  Is he willing to hurt people?&quot; and while it's not an immediate threat, it can definitely create suspense in your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have the cyberterrorist do things like &lt;strong&gt;steal valuable information&lt;/strong&gt; with which he could do serious harm if he exposed or used the info.  Maybe he stole the blueprints to build a powerful weapon.  Or maybe he stole the location of some top secret object.  Or he stole a whole database of people's personal information; who knows what he could do with that!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a toe curling anticipation sort of fear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T15:40:24.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21063" CreationDate="2016-02-23T15:47:43.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jacket summaries are typically written in Third Person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anne thought she had the perfect marriage.  That is until...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second version sounds much more natural and familiar to me.  I much prefer it over the first example, even if your book is not written in Third Person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say you &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; write it in First Person.  You certainly can and it might stand out, potentially in a good way.  It would also represent your book better, like you said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is such a creative thing; you can go any way you want with this;  Third Person, First Person, Present-tense, Past Tense, etc.  As long as the jacket cover is well written, chances are the tense you use won't be a make-or-break factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most publishers write the jacket summary for you though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T09:52:36.430" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T09:52:36.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21075" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21079" CreationDate="2016-02-23T15:49:32.450" Score="8" ViewCount="14844" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm attempting to write one or two chapters with one of my main characters in a jail cell. It's important to the character development that he is isolated for an extended period of time, antagonized by others and also made to feel powerless. Therefore a jail cell seemed to be the perfect location for this character development to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, after now planning the close of my story around what occurs in this section of the narrative, it has just occurred to me that in all of the books I have ever read, I can't think of a single time I have read a full chapter from the perspective of a character who has been captured/ imprisoned and it has actually been interesting and engaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure why this is, because it happens in even exceptional books that are otherwise flawless. I'm not sure if this is a personal dislike or if it is something that others also consider to be an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read plenty of part-chapters, or chapters from the POV of a captor/ jailer that I consider good, but when it is 1 or 2 full chapters written from the perspective of the prisoner it just feels like a chore to read these sections, even if they are broken up between chapters that progress the story with different characters elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would assume that it is because it feels like it halts the flow of the story (even when it doesn't, for example when there is character development or the plot moves forward somehow within the jail). Being trapped in a single location feels unnatural to any narrative, particularly when other chapters are seeing a constant progression of story/ settings etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any ways that I can keep a full chapter set in a jail cell interesting?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sub-question:&lt;/em&gt; Are there any examples of similar chapters where the POV character has been captured/ imprisoned that you thought were good/ had interesting elements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: In the story it is a new prison, so the character is the first &amp;amp; only prisoner, therefore adding other characters who are prisoners is unfortunately not an option, as this was the only way that I could think of enhancing the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it turns out that there is no way that I can make these chapters good using this set up then I am willing to change them, but as it would mean me changing how I get to the climax of my story it would be ideal if I didn't have to change the narrative too drastically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2020-05-21T03:30:04.677" Title="How to write a good prison scene" Tags="|fiction|technique|character-development|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21075" CreationDate="2016-02-23T16:41:55.183" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's important to the character development that he is isolated for an extended period of time, antagonized by others and also made to feel powerless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your character is stuck in one spot, antagonized by his enemies, and isolated from his allies, that sounds like quite a bit to go on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He can't get out.&lt;/strong&gt; How does he know? He has to try. So he tries a number of ways to escape. They all fail. Or more dramatically, one has a delayed success (which is the way he gets out at the end of this section). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He's isolated from his allies.&lt;/strong&gt; Next he tries to send a message. Each way is blocked, or doesn't work, or just isn't feasible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He's antagonized by his enemies.&lt;/strong&gt; There may not be other &lt;em&gt;prisoners&lt;/em&gt; there, but there can sure be jailors, leaders of his enemies, professional torturers. People come and go to torment him, or to offer false hope (he tries to get a message out through a guard who seems sympathetic, and then two scenes later finds out that the guard destroyed the message). And why can't there be other prisoners? Other people who aren't his allies or enemies but other victims, who are also being tortured?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He feels powerless.&lt;/strong&gt; See the false hope above, and also the inability to help the other prisoners.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your concern is that you don't want to spend two continuous chapters in this guy's head. So don't. Do other things with him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T16:41:55.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21077" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21080" CreationDate="2016-02-23T17:12:00.630" Score="6" ViewCount="20131" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a scenario that describes what one person did when he worked for a company and want to use proper names for readability, but not use the real names of the people or company. But my phrasing keeps coming off as awkward. What's a clearer way to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My friend &quot;Chuck&quot; who worked for a vendor &quot;ThisCo&quot; decided he'd had&#xA;  enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My friend (I'll call him &quot;Chuck&quot;) worked for a vendor (I'll call it&#xA;  &quot;ThisCo&quot;) decided he'd had enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="419" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T22:28:54.130" Title="How to introduce a fake name or alias for the sake of making a story clearer" Tags="|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21077" CreationDate="2016-02-23T17:25:02.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer the first example.  Example 2 sounds a bit wordy and the breaks in the writing (the parenthesis) make it sound choppier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think you need the parenthesis around Chuck's name.  Just say &quot;My friend Chuck&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternate ways you could phrase it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My friend Chuck who worked for vendor ThisCo decided he'd had enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My friend Chuck worked for vendor ThisCo and decided he'd had enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My friend Chuck who worked for ThisCo, a vendor, decided he'd had enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all depends on what you are going for.  Your second example could be used if that sentence flows well with your writing style and the way your narrator talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T17:25:02.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21075" CreationDate="2016-02-23T17:40:12.040" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;it just feels like a chore to read these sections&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, I typically find it a chore to read long stretches of lengthy description.  The key for writing a chapter like you mentioned is &lt;strong&gt;dialogue&lt;/strong&gt;.  Chapters without much dialogue tend to be boring.  Obviously this is not always the case, but dialogue definitely speeds things up and &lt;strong&gt;engages the reader&lt;/strong&gt;.  I once read that &lt;strong&gt;dialogue is the sugar of writing&lt;/strong&gt;.  To keep your reader interested, you have to give them a little sugar every once in a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with chapters where your MC is alone is that he doesn't have anyone to converse with (besides himself, but that's not a proper conversation).  I find that when I write chapters with little to no dialogue I worry about readers finding it engaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few things you could do to make up for the lack of dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include lots of &lt;strong&gt;action&lt;/strong&gt;.  Make things happen to keep the reader interested.  A brawl outside his prison cell.  A fistfight.  Someone trying to escape, maybe attacking a guard.  These bits of action will hook your reader into a chapter that might otherwise be dull.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interesting &lt;strong&gt;internal monologue&lt;/strong&gt;.  Try to make his thoughts thought-provoking and interesting to the reader.  &lt;strong&gt;Avoid repetitive thoughts&lt;/strong&gt; and try not to make his thought process unrealistic or too dismal.  If he's sitting in a prison cell all depressed with thoughts like &quot;I'm never getting out of here&quot; or &quot;I hate it here, I hate myself, etc.&quot; then you will quickly lose the reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't clutter&lt;/strong&gt;.  What I mean by this is don't include unnecessary description or words &lt;em&gt;just to fill up a page&lt;/em&gt;, especially in a chapter that you are already concerned about being boring.  Make it &lt;strong&gt;sharp&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;concise&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;not too wordy&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Add dialogue&lt;/strong&gt;.  Even if the guy is in a prison cell alone, you can try to include dialogue to sweeten it up and keep the reader going.  Can he hear other inmates talking?  Are they planning an escape?  Does a guard say anything when he walks by his cell?  What about when the MC eats lunch?  You could have him talk to the other prisoners in the lunchroom.  Or he can even talk to himself, just make sure to keep it realistic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the chapter is later in the book where your reader is already attached to the characters and immersed in the story, I wouldn't worry too much about it.  Especially if you know it moves the story forward and develops the character.  As long as it's not boring the reader will stick through a couple chapters even if there is minimal dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your subquestion, I read Cinder and the rest of The Lunar Chronicles a few weeks ago and she has a few prison scenes which are all very interesting.  I haven't read a single chapter by that woman that isn't completely captivating.  Marissa Meyer does a fabulous job with balance character devlopment and plot.  Anyway, I highly recommend checking out her scenes where the MC is stuck in a prison cell.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were many interesting elements in her writing that kept the prison scene engaging, but here are a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The MC is a cyborg and has an &lt;strong&gt;interface inside her mind&lt;/strong&gt; (so she can look things up on the internet while she's in the cell and see what's going on in the outside world).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A few different &lt;strong&gt;people come to visit her&lt;/strong&gt; (one of them brings her a gift which she later uses to escape).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The MC's &lt;strong&gt;internal monologue is not overdone&lt;/strong&gt; and I think that's one of the things I really like about it.  It isn't thought-based, but rather the chapters are pushed forward by actions and events.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The prison scene &lt;strong&gt;doesn't last too long&lt;/strong&gt; (not more than a chapter or two) and she ends up escaping.  The escape was a whole chapter by itself and while I could see how it could have been boring, Marissa Meyer made sure to steer clear of any boringness!  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good author knows how to couple up character development with plot to make scenes that engage the reader in both ways at once.  This makes for a really powerful scene.  If say, for instance, a main character betrays everyone else in a scene that is followed by a toe-curling fight (or some other action scene; maybe someone dying).  It makes the scene very intense in a lot of ways and gives it a lot of depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I see your note about not having any other prisoners.  I think you could still make do with the scene.  If you have a lot of interesting elements, I wouldn't fret.  As long as it's interesting you won't have a problem.  The MC can still converse with the guards perhaps.  My advice is to try to keep the chapters of the MC by himself as short as possible.  Include all the interesting elements and essential things you need for character development, but scrap the unnecessary description or boring monologue.  Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One element you could try is having one of the guards slip him a note.  Maybe the guard is somehow related to one of the MC's friends.  The note could say anything.  Are they trying as hard as they can to get him out?  Are they informing him of what's happening in the outside world?  You could do a few cool things with this concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more note: You can add &lt;strong&gt;flashbacks&lt;/strong&gt; while he's in the prison cell.  That way, the reader gets some dialogue and a bit of the character's past.  A nice tactic.  With all that free time in the cell, he is bound to reminisce on his past at some point.  Why not give the reader some of that to keep the prison chapters from being too dull?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastEditorUserId="17922" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T15:49:35.250" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T15:49:35.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21077" CreationDate="2016-02-23T18:47:11.997" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you add commas to your first example, it will carry the weight of the parens without needing the larger pause and extra words. The quote marks and the generic wording of &lt;em&gt;ThisCo&lt;/em&gt; make it clear you're using placeholders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My friend, &quot;Chuck,&quot; who worked for a vendor, &quot;ThisCo,&quot; decided he'd had enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subsequent references don't need the quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chuck had been working for ThisCo under a manager, &quot;Kate,&quot; for 10 years, but when Kate left and &quot;Vern&quot; came on board, conditions quickly soured. Vern was the nephew of ThisCo's CEO, and it showed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T18:47:11.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21053" CreationDate="2016-02-23T20:53:42.047" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Ken Mohnkern mentioned, meaningful names are gimmicky. Speaking from personal experience, I've yet to meet anybody whose parent predicted at birth what their child would become as an adult, save those who inherited family businesses. Meaningful names really only make sense culturally, e.g. when names are given as a coming of age ritual, and are determined in part by the character traits of the person in question. If these are birth names, and the parents aren't premonitory, or there isn't some other story-driven reason why their names &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be meaningful, then you run the risk of sounding amateur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean that you can't rely on tonality to infer meaning...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'Kadraak' has a hard sound to it, and might fit a rough-and-tumble type&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'Mesilya' has a feminine ring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'Eglerus' could be scholarly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'Shebayul' is a bit alien, perhaps a mysterious creature or race&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a side note: 'Catherine' was my barista this morning (dead serious, not to poke fun)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just be careful, if you opt to create your own names, to make sure that they aren't so alien that they alienate your reader. You and your reader will be spending a lot of time with your characters, their names will be sung or whispered (or mocked) accordingly, by fans and detractors alike. Invest the time to come up with names fitting to their respective legend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15134" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T20:53:42.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20930" CreationDate="2016-02-23T22:12:29.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;these kind of attacks aren't as exciting as direct terror attacks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Au contraire, they are as exciting as you write them to be. Your job, as the author, is to convey the emotion you want your reader to feel. Whether excitement, fear, abandonment, ecstasy; no matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My simplest advice to you is that if you can't make it exciting, then you're not excited by it. And if you're not, there's no way your reader will be. Writers vend an intriguing form of Meisnering, in that it's third-party, nontemporal, but it's still conveying emotion to a reader nonetheless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when you're writing that scene, &lt;em&gt;feel it&lt;/em&gt;. Put yourself in your characters' shoes, and run through the scenario in first person. What is at stake? What would you be worried about? What would you try to do? Are you calm, are you nervous, are you intrigued by the idea that somebody managed to get past your Triple-blind Encrypted Reverse Proxy TBERP™ software that six years of Ivy League mathematics helped you build?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of all the movies you've seen that this has happened in...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Something's weird...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Define weird.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't know, it's... like something keeps pinging against the CORS.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Pinging the CORS? Like a DOS attack?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't think so. It's just a 2-bit packet, it's not-- oh my god, CORS just went down!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;WHAT?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Not just CORS, all three blades just went!  What the f--&quot; His sentence is finished by the team mascot, a smartass parrot that keeps repeating WTF, WTF, throughout the remainder of the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alarms start ringing, &quot;Processor cycles are going nuts... 81% usage, 96... 105!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WTF!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How is that possible? 112%, 116%... PC thermal readings rising!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;121! The server board is going to melt!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WTF! ASCii art of Donald Trump starts popping up on all the screens in the room&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Firewall is down! TBERP is totally compromised!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WTF, WTF!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Somebody strangle that damn parrot!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explosions are physical: action drama. Head games, tension, stress: that's the stuff of psycho drama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My example is lame. Write something better. You're a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15134" LastEditorUserId="15134" LastEditDate="2016-02-23T22:34:05.770" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T22:34:05.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21077" CreationDate="2016-02-23T22:28:54.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;John Green has &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lx1pQ2d0KE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on one occasion&lt;/a&gt; used members of heavy metal bands to give a bit of clever flavor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So today some people wanted me to talk about, uh, tell some ex-girlfriend stories. I'm happy to tell an ex-girlfriend story although of course I don't want to use any ex-girlfriends' real names because they are nice people and now they are adults, and they have lives, and the thought of, y'know, them being discussed during FIFA matches is probably not something that's terribly exciting to them... So I am going to use, uh, pseudonyms. Specifically... I'm just going to name my ex-girlfriends after members of 1980s heavy metal bands. So, today I'm going to tell you the story of Dave Mustaine, uh, one of my college girlfriends. Dave Mustaine: nice girl, dance major, very, um, opinionated? Very very attractive, nice person, who I made the mistake of going to Alaska with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to borrow from fiction; one popular option for office-corporate type situations is to use the characters from the movie &lt;em&gt;Office Space&lt;/em&gt;, which comes replete with a cast of characters: flawed protagonist &lt;strong&gt;Peter&lt;/strong&gt; works at &lt;strong&gt;IniTech&lt;/strong&gt;, also mentioning a rival company (IniTrode), an annoying boss (Lumbergh), two close coworkers (Samir, Michael), a bumbling but ultimately sympathetic coworker (Milton), an annoying coworker a couple cubes down (Nina), and an inappropriate coworker (Drew). Similarly one could steal, say, the cast of the &lt;em&gt;Dilbert&lt;/em&gt; comic strip, or to really call attention to the deception you could say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My friend -- let's call him Garfield -- worked for Lasagna Incorporated when one day he decided he'd just had enough...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Green above also employs a tactic of deliberately calling attention to the change before telling the story; this is often phrased as &quot;names have been changed to protect the people involved,&quot; or sometimes, &quot;the innocent.&quot; So you can just mention, &quot;I'm going to change names to protect the innocent here, but I had a friend named Chuck who worked for ThisCo when he decided that he'd had enough...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17985" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T22:28:54.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20930" CreationDate="2016-02-23T23:52:30.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make them care about the people affected by the attack in the same way as they would care if it happened to them or to a friend or family member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fictional situations that do not put anyone's life at threat can actually be &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; tense than life-threatening situations because (a) there is less reassurance to the reader from the conventions of fiction, and (b) unlike a life-or-death situation, they are within the experience of the vast majority of your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often one can guess with confidence that, yes, the hero will manage to deactivate the atomic bomb in the penultimate chapter, but one can't be nearly so sure that a sympathetic character in Chapter 2 won't have their hopes and ambitions dashed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terrorism is scary but will, I trust, touch very few of your readers' lives and so often doesn't feel quite real. However if your reader has shared the plant security manager's uneasy sense that something is not right and his worry about saying something when he has no proof (when management already think he's prone to panic after that false alarm last month), then they will really feel for him in the moment of dreadful realisation when the attack finally happens. He has to make a decision in haste which turns out to be wrong - that's happened to them.  He can't immediately remember the correct emergency procedure - they've been there. He may not be under any fear of death in this attack, but he is terrified that after this he's going to lose his job and find it hard to get another to support his family - they can relate to that fear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T07:12:53.483" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T07:12:53.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19025" CreationDate="2016-02-24T00:24:20.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend that you publish your book in both a paid electronic book version and ad-supported Web version. Those are two different mediums. Each of them has distinct advantages over the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is fairly common for technical books to also be available in a Web version. I’m pretty sure that all of the last 10 technical books that I purchased were also on the Web in their entirety. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001552/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Web Audio API&lt;/em&gt; by Boris Smus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read portions of that book on the Web before paying for it, same as in the past I would read portions of a print book in the bookstore before paying for it and carrying it out of there. I paid to get these advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;quality — better user interface, no ads&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;convenience — offline access and lifetime access, because a website can go away at any time&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;honor the implicit contract between reader and author and publisher — the author and publisher basically said to me, “if this is the right book for you, if you find value in it, you are part of the book’s community, so please pay into the community’s shared production costs to support this book and also future books from this author and/or publisher.”&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because there was no metaphorical gun to my head, it wasn’t a grudging decision of “OK, OK, I’ll pay for the book,” it was a very positive decision of “you guys nailed it with this book, this book will really add value to my life, I want the convenient and high-quality version, and I am happy to put a little money in the book’s tip jar.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Internet is still young and electronic books are like tiny babies. The fact that a model of free sample chapter in your electronic book reader has been done a lot so far doesn’t mean that is the right way to do it for the benefit of either the reader or the author or publisher. The ad-supported Web version with a downloadable electronic book is actually much more like the print bookstore. In both cases you can browse the entire book before you buy, and in both cases, when you buy you get similar advantages of a higher-quality reading experience, more convenience, and honoring the implicit contract between reader, author, and publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem today is so many authors — especially new authors — are doing all this writing, production, publishing, and promotion of their electronic book, and then they sell 3 copies because nobody loves that book yet. Nobody has really even seen it. If you have already written 5 best-sellers then maybe you can expect people to jump at buying your 6th book sight-unseen. But that is only a small minority of authors. For most authors, you are still trying to build that kind of relationship with your audience. One way to do that is a Web version of your book so that a broad range of people can read your book and get that relationship started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important thing to recognize is that your audience is divided into 3 significant parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;enthusiastic readers who have enough money to pay for books, and generally like to pay for books&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;enthusiastic readers who do not have enough money to pay for books, but may one day have enough money to pay for books&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;people who won’t pay for a book under any circumstances, either because they don’t want to or because they can’t&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the sample chapter method is focused on converting people from group 2 and 3 to group 1. The ad-supported Web method is focused on pleasing the enthusiastic readers in group 1 and 2, who are by far your best customers, and selling paid books to them. Group 1 will pay for your book now, group 2 may pay for your book later, and group 3 was never going to pay for your book anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did a lot of research on this, and the thing that really converted me to doing the ad-supported Web version plus paid downloadable version is the cost of advertising. It is really hard to reach people today because the market is so fragmented. I was looking at paying Google a lot of money to place ads for my paid version on other people’s websites in order to get readers to go and view a sample of the paid version and maybe buy it. But I realized that if I did an ad-supported Web version, that acts as an ad for the paid version, but Google pays &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt;. Still have to promote the website, but that is easier because you can go to social media with a link and say here is a link to something you can enjoy right now, whether you go on to buy the paid version or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for ISBN and book contract pricing issues, there are none. A website is not a book and does not have to have an ISBN, although you can apply one to the website version if you like. If you do, you use a different ISBN. A paperback book and hardcover book and electronic book (Amazon or iBooks) and interactive book (iBooks) of the same work have 4 different ISBN’s. So you may put your electronic book ISBN XXXXXXX123456 into Amazon at $5 and the contract prevents you from putting that same ISBN into Apple for $3. However, it has no affect on the website version which either doesn’t have an ISBN, or has a different ISBN XXXXXX654321.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where to put your book on the Web is put it at your own dot-com that you create with something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://squarespace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Squarespace&lt;/a&gt; which gives you complete control over it without having to learn to be a Web designer. And you place ads on it through Google’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://adsense.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AdSense&lt;/a&gt;. Do a dot-com of your name (e.g. Ernest Hemingway) and put your book at a so-called “clean link” (no extraneous information or tech ephemera) like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://ernesthemingway.com/the-sun-also-rises&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;… and that gives you a very easy to remember, easy to promote, easy to type, easy to understand Web location that you can promote like crazy on social media and elsewhere. And of course you put a prominent link on there to the paid version(s). And then your next book would go at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://ernesthemingway.com/a-farewell-to-arms&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;… and now your website is really becoming a destination for readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T00:24:20.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21075" CreationDate="2016-02-24T00:45:20.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prison drama can be interesting and fascinating, actually. You can read books about real prison experiences for inspiration - I would recommend &lt;em&gt;Inside: Life Behind Bars in America&lt;/em&gt; if you need a starting point. Also recall that several works of fiction revolve entirely around prison settings - &lt;em&gt;Oz&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Orange is the new Black&lt;/em&gt;, and the classic story/film &lt;em&gt;The Shawshank Redemption&lt;/em&gt; leap immediately to mind. (&lt;em&gt;Shawshank&lt;/em&gt; was inspired by the prison section of &lt;em&gt;The Count of Monte Cristo&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sets your story apart is that you are determined to not have other prisoners. This cuts down on a lot of dramatic potential - a reader can only take so much institutionalized sadism toward a sympathetic character before they lose interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see three possible approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tell the story of the characters who aren't in prison. How does the hero's absence affect them? What are the antagonists now able to accomplish? Does someone else try to take the hero's place, but with less effective results?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If nothing interesting happens while the hero is locked up, then you can just skip ahead in time. The difference in characterization between the previous chapters and the subsequent ones might tell the story of his incarceration all by itself, if you do it right.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are determined to show the character in prison, do it quickly. Describe the cell, the guards, the food. State how long he spends here. State how many months it took for him to finally give up hope. Make it very brief - a handful of carefully chosen descriptions can have the right emotional impact, without dragging the pacing of the story down at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you decide, you need to know ahead of time what the effect on your hero should be. This will shape the story of his time in prison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16610" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T00:45:20.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21088" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-24T05:57:05.683" Score="8" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a lot of writers forums and in articles, it seems like Kindle is the main platform most self-publishing writers use just because that one is the one that is referenced all the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if many writers ONLY publish on Kindle? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or do they publish first on Kindle and then see if their book does well before publishing on other platforms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want my book to be available to as many people as possible, but in the experience of other self-published writers, is it best to just start with one platform and see how it goes rather than going to the trouble to publish elsewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any input!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T16:43:06.693" Title="Do most e-book writers just self publish on Kindle to start with?" Tags="|novel|self-publishing|kindle|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21026" CreationDate="2016-02-24T06:48:07.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can it put readers off? Yes, by all means. Are there rules? Yes, don't turn off your intended audience, for obvious reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that regional differences and religious views hugely impact what could be considered norms, but you should at very least gauge your language off the rest of the content. On one extreme, if your book could otherwise be admitted into a local church library, why introduce potentially offensive language, and limit your audience? On the other hand, if the content will be such as to attract an increasingly large audience among whom vulgar speech is second-nature, language used will have far less impact on acceptance than content. I personally would rather encounter some mild language prior to questionable scenes so I would better realize the direction of the book (especially when reading alongside, or out loud to, others, e.g. younger siblings, friends, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You really just need to make the language usage fit in with the book. That said, I would err on the mild side just to be safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16829" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T18:37:01.653" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T18:37:01.653" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21026" CreationDate="2016-02-24T07:32:55.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no rule for not using the F word. It just might be that the author(s) are avoiding it. I recently read a book by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Embirikos&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Andreas Embirikos&lt;/a&gt; (whose style resembles that of Sade's) and he used the F word quite often. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can it put readers off?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends on the book IMO. If I was reading a book like the aforementioned one, I wouldn't be offended. If I was reading a romantic novel, I might be. But generally I wouldn't say that people are offended by these words. They use them and hear them on a daily basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6276" LastEditorUserId="6276" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T11:26:42.787" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T11:26:42.787" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21091" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21095" CreationDate="2016-02-24T08:04:35.150" Score="14" ViewCount="2808" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently have the prospect of writing a considerable amount of technical documentation (describing interactions with an extremely complex online service). I consider myself a reasonably proficient creative writer but that never seems to do me any good when writing tech docs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem, of course, is the dryness. You can't explore the feelings and emotions of the Chromecast when it betrays the TV. It has to be 1. plug in 2. connect 3. watch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the very (extremely) informal approach to documentation that a lot of consumer goods acquire but I often find those a little cringeworthy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there a way to write technical documentation that doesn't put you to sleep, but also treat the reader like a three year old. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to write 1. plug in 2. connect 3. watch. that the reader can feel engaged by. Is it possible to marry technical writing and creative writing successfully. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be very curious to see any examples that you think might have solved this problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13990" LastActivityDate="2024-02-25T11:24:24.903" Title="Can technical writing suck less" Tags="|creative-writing|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21091" CreationDate="2016-02-24T08:14:01.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way I use is to make a little joke in between. Like 1. Plug in. 2. Do it again, this time upside down, you got it. 3. Connect. 4. Watch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Burgess used something like this in &lt;em&gt;Earthly Powers&lt;/em&gt;. The protagonist had grabbed an artificial leg and Burgess was describing how he was handling it as a weapon (the technical point) and then he said that it was like he was an artificial leg seller and thinks something like 'Here lady look at the quality of this leg, the best leg you'll find' and then he swings it at some person. (This is not the exact quote.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can write some description in between, like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;X was reading the manual '1. Plug in', it said. X plugged it in. 'Nice. Next step now: 2. Connect'. 'All right! Let's connect...' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something you can do quite easily and keep the interest of the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6276" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T14:57:12.727" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T14:57:12.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21029" CreationDate="2016-02-24T10:32:23.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the other posts that if there is no story, there isn't much point in described the travel. &lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt; if you want to describe it, you should. A beautiful description is a beautiful description. A couple short paragraphs well formed will be nice to the reader, even if that doesn't add much to the story. Haruki Murakami uses a lot of descriptions that aren't that essential to the story line, but they are so beautifully described that you don't care and it isn't a burden to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just keep in mind that it will have to be interesting. A description like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A tree on  a hill and then another tree and some houses etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;will indeed seem boring and a burden to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6276" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T10:32:23.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21053" CreationDate="2016-02-24T13:52:20.030" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to disagree with the other answers and say &lt;strong&gt;I don't think meaningful names are necessarily gimmicky&lt;/strong&gt;.  It's all about how you use them and they can add a lot to your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, a parent could give their child a name like &quot;Genius&quot; and the kid could be inspired by that name to learn a lot and become really smart.  Hence, they become a genius, true to their name.  But the parents didn't &lt;em&gt;foresee&lt;/em&gt; the kid being a genius, rather the character was inspired to become a genius &lt;em&gt;because of their name&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A name like Blue (if the child has blue eyes as a newborn) or Red (if she has red hair) or Ringlet (if the baby was born with a head of curls) - these are tedious names but bear with me for example's sake - could easily and realistically be incorporated into your novel.  I wouldn't name &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; character after one of their physical characteristics, but it's certainly not unrealistic to do so in this fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you bad guy has some really evil name &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; that would be considered gimmicky in my book.  Did his parents foresee him becoming evil?  Did they want him to?  Assuming it was his birth name and not a nickname, that is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings me to my next point: &lt;strong&gt;nicknames&lt;/strong&gt;.  While parents might not be able to foresee how their kids will turn out when they're born, people CAN develop nicknames later in life.  If someone loves toads, maybe his friends call him Toad.  Or if someone has curly hair they could be called Corkscrew.  Nicknames could also be related to personality traits (Temper, Fury, etc.).  &lt;strong&gt;Nicknames are a great way to give your reader a meaningful name without sounding gimmicky.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some civilizations you get &lt;strong&gt;several names throughout your lifetime&lt;/strong&gt;. Oftentimes children aren't even born into a name; rather, they are &lt;strong&gt;given a name that reflects something about their personality&lt;/strong&gt; as they get a bit older.  And for each &quot;chapter&quot; or &quot;turning point&quot; in the person's life, they get a new name.  I read a book like this awhile back that had to do with Native Americans but I can't remember it's name.  The MC's baby brother was never given a name (the ancestor in the tribe said a name just never came to her) and as it turned out, the book was foreshadowing the baby's death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, there are many non-gimmicky ways to incorporate meaningful names into novels.  And at the end of the day, I don't think it could negatively impact your book even if your names are somewhat gimmicky.  For me personally, I love when characters have meaningful names.  I dislike boring or useless names that serve almost no purpose in a piece of writing.  Also, meaningful names are more likely to stick with the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T13:52:20.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21091" CreationDate="2016-02-24T14:38:25.010" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number one thing that you have to realize about technical writing is that people do not read it for its own sake. They read it because they are trying to do something and they need more information. The writing does not need to engage or entertain because the reader is already engaged with the task. It is their engagement with the task and their need for information that drives them to read on, not their engagement with the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for this reason, technical writing should not attempt to engage or to entertain. Anything you do in that area just gets in the way of what the reader wants: getting the information they need to get back to the job they were doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plainness and clarity of instruction and description are therefore key virtues in technical communication. That should not make technical writing a dull job, though. Rather, it presents a different set of writing challenges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making ideas, concepts, and tasks plain and clear is a challenge in its own right. And because the reader is often coming to the documentation with false ideas about how things ought to work, there is a real challenge in how to engage them and their thought processes and how to put their feet on the right path, particularly because their attitude is &quot;just tell me which button to push!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, remember that while in all other forms of writing your goal is to attract and keep the reader's attention, in technical writing the goal is to get them back to what they were doing as quickly as possible. The less time they spend reading and the more time they spend successfully doing, the better your technical writing is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T15:35:46.870" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T15:35:46.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21096" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-21T17:01:59.620" Score="4" ViewCount="2695" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no prior experience as an book/Ebook writer, nevertheless I've been able to write my first full book (which I feel that I did a good job on).  However, I have an issue with my mom, who has been my editor so far.  Embarrassing, right?  But she's actually done some pretty intense editing with me (probably because she's writing something herself) which I've gone with so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, she has insisted that she now get 25% of the profit from the book and she also wants to have her name on the front of it, as if she's the second writer, or she at least wants some credit.  I'm asking, to those who have done this before (written and published books, or read about it), if this a fair rate for an editor?  More importantly, how should I give her credit?  Can't someone just be listed as an editor, on the page before the table of contents or something?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want her to take credit for my characters, story, and ideas, which I came up with alone, but she did do grammar and word/structure corrections as well as certain suggestions, so I guess that she was a very involved editor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also concerned that some of the scientific background and concepts in my Sci-Fi book would be falsely attributed to her, because she's obviously older than me and actually holds a degree, (although she's not an active scientist).  For the sake of being specific, I was going to use Amazon Kindle to publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Tom Fernandez" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T15:59:49.843" LastActivityDate="2018-04-05T19:17:14.890" Title="How should book credit and profit be given for an individual editor?" Tags="|editing|money|collaboration|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21096" CreationDate="2016-02-21T21:42:21.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, these family collaborations are fraught with dangers, as you can imagine. There's nothing wrong with having a family member do the editing if the person is qualified and agreeable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have dealt with the same issue myself. Does one's participation require a separate byline?  This is especially an issue in Amazon, where you can list multiple authors if you wish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a doubt you should give a generous acknowledgement  to your mom's assistance on the copyright page. If it's nonfiction, I would certain add her name to the credits on the Kindle details page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, if it's a fiction work, you should  only have a single author even if someone helps substantially with the editing. It's rare that a fiction work has two authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With nonfiction, if it's a personal memoir, it's not uncommon to have more than one name (with the first name being the primary author). But having a second name has a social stigma because it implies that one of the two is a ghost writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing a nonfiction work (about current events, science, psychology), it is much more common to have multiple authors (And no one would look down on you or the work for that reason). For example, if you look at the Oreilly books (which are considered top quality in the IT field), typically you will have a technical expert be the lead author and then someone with a strong background in publishing be the second author. That combination works well. But the second author also does a substantial amount of writing/organizing of material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It probably is a bit presumptuous for your mom to ask for 25% after the fact. If anything, this should be a lesson for you to clarify these royalty issues at the start so you don't encounter these disputes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you should err on the side of giving too much credit rather than the opposite. I think your mom wants acknowledgement that she made a valuable contribution to your efforts, and getting a share of the profits is one way to do this. But it's unfair for her to arbitrarily set a rate after the fact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how I would approach it. I would say, &quot;Mom, clearly you helped a lot on the production of this book, and you deserve the credit. But we never talked about a royalty split, and it would be unfair just to decide you are entitled to &quot;25%&quot;. I think that 10/15/20% would be more appropriate -- even though I admit it doesn't take into account your true contributions.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(To support your argument, you might be able to draw up some numbers to suggest that you have spent more hours on the project than she has). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally the big issue in book production is lack of professional editing. Often editors want payment in advance rather than a percent of the royalties. In a way, your mom is doing a huge favor by agreeing to be paid by future royalties rather than charging you an hourly rate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, look at the big picture. Maybe your mom wants more credit than she is entitled to, but I also think you want this collaboration to be something you are both happy with. Paying her 25% seems to be a small price to pay to show your gratitude for her help and ensuring smooth family relations in the future plus preserving the happy memory of working together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And if the books hits it big, then next time you can choose to do it alone or clarify the royalty arrangements so that both of you know what you are getting into). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, here's some typical industry rates &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-efa.org/res/rates.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.the-efa.org/res/rates.php&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://freelancewrite.about.com/od/finances/a/Freelance-Writing-Rates-List.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://freelancewrite.about.com/od/finances/a/Freelance-Writing-Rates-List.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not knowing what help she gave or how much time she devoted, I would say that 15-20% is a fair rate to give to a second author. But now is a time to be generous, not stingy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;  Both of you should have a candid conversation about who owns the copyright. All editors feel a sense of &quot;ownership&quot; about book projects, but that doesn't imply that the person deserves to own the copyright. I would urge against putting two people on the copyright line unless it's unavoidable. Having two people own the book copyright makes it legally complicated for you to sell or authorize rights of distribution. It's much more practical for one person to own the copyright. Personally, I feel that I have made substantial editorial contributions for a number of books, but I feel almost a ghoulish pride in my willingness to  let the author take all the credit. Maybe that's just me though...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" OwnerDisplayName="idiotprogrammer" LastActivityDate="2016-02-21T22:00:33.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21096" CreationDate="2016-02-22T11:37:14.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only to complete the &lt;a href=&quot;https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/questions/6437/how-should-book-credit-and-profit-be-given-for-an-individual-editor/6438#6438&quot;&gt;answer by idiotprogrammer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first remark is that there is little that is ebook specific in your&#xA;question, and it might be more appropriate in&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://writers.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;http://writers.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;. At least, you should check what may&#xA;already be on that site, but &lt;strong&gt;do not cross-post&lt;/strong&gt;. It is however true that&#xA;by reducing the editing chain, and to some extent by isolating authors&#xA;from a professional environment, digital publication makes such&#xA;situations as you describe more likely to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue is that older people are more worried about having their&#xA;names attached to some hopefully lasting contribution, and books are&#xA;considered as such. Then older people may also be more worried about&#xA;income since age makes it harder to get. Income and name credit are two&#xA;separate issues which can be discussed, and possibly balanced. It is&#xA;not so unusual to have a main author in large letters, and possibly in&#xA;smaller font &quot;with contributions from xxx&quot; or &quot;with the participation&#xA;of xxx&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, estimating contributions is an extremely subjective issue, and&#xA;it is easy to underestimate or forget other contributions. Sharing&#xA;credit should not be much of a problem, especially if the main&#xA;author remains clearly identified. One can only benefit from it, by&#xA;keeping good relationship, and even possibly by getting some credit&#xA;from the second author when she is, or becomes, well known. And there&#xA;is no loss. Unlike money, you often get credit by giving some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sharing the income is a private matter of agreement between you, and it&#xA;can take many forms.  I would think it is also an issue of who needs&#xA;it, between members of the same family. It is indeed always better to&#xA;settle that beforehand. But the actual contribution may be even harder&#xA;to estimate beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding copyright ownership, which is yet a (third) different&#xA;matter, it is indeed wise not to spread it. Sharing copyright is the&#xA;best known way of killing any creative work since each partial&#xA;copyright owner can object to exploitation of the work, and has thus a&#xA;form of blackmailing power. Of course, one can go to court, so that&#xA;lawyers get the benefits. Whatever you decide regarding copyright&#xA;should possibly be clarified on a written document, independently of&#xA;remuneration issues, since copyright is only indirectly linked to&#xA;remuneration (it can be used for other purposes). However it can be touchy to&#xA;settle legally, since the initial attribution of copyright is not a&#xA;contractual matter, but linked to the creation of the work itself (see&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/text.jsp?file_id=283698&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bern Convention&lt;/a&gt; and US Copyright Act). Note that copyright is attached only to the creative&#xA;part of the work, and in no way to any editing activity (though very&#xA;extensive editing might be construed as impacting the creation itself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the wording regarding the participation of a second author may&#xA;impact copyright attribution. But it is perfectly possible to have a&#xA;contractual agreement stating that the second author transfers to the&#xA;first whatever part of the copyright he might claim, possibly in exchange&#xA;for some remuneration from the first author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6647" OwnerDisplayName="babou" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T13:00:05.683" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T10:02:40.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21096" CreationDate="2016-02-23T15:36:57.383" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, an editor does NOT have their name listed on the cover of a book. It is more common to acknowledge the editor in the acknowledgements. The exception to this would be in an anthology where the editor is responsible for selecting the titles to be used in a collection. Some authors will add a byline that states &quot;Edited by: Editor Name&quot;, but that is definitely not the standard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as royalties are concerned, an editor should never be entitled to a percentage unless the author agrees to that in advance. Typically, an editor is paid a flat rate or a standard rate based on the number of words in the completed document. It is definitely NOT standard for an editor, regardless of how much work they did, to be paid a percentage of the royalties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" OwnerDisplayName="Steven Drennon" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T15:36:57.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21105" CreationDate="2016-02-24T16:03:31.537" Score="4" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the software world, it's easy to do A/B testing where a website introduces two versions of the same information to test which one users prefer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if it's possible to do something similar with book titles: To create two books with the same content but different keywords in each title. Then, publish both and see which does better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;em&gt;Dish Washing for Authors&lt;/em&gt; vs. &lt;em&gt;Dish Washing for Writers&lt;/em&gt; - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the era of self-publishing, ebooks, and print on demand, the barrier to doing this seems minimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is this allowed?  Is this sensible?  Is this considered bad practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17990" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-02-25T02:43:28.427" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T02:43:28.427" Title="Is same content different titles allowed (or sensible)?" Tags="|self-publishing|marketing|ebook|titles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21088" CreationDate="2016-02-24T16:12:37.440" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Τhis is a highly opinion seeking question and isn't suitable for an SE site. I'll try to respond with supporting facts. I am talking only about publishing e-books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Facts&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Kindle is by far the easiest &quot;commercial&quot; platform to publish your book, with the least barriers to get your work out there. Kindle has reading devices and also apps for smartphones. This gives it the largest digital content consuming user base. No fee for publishing or showcasing your content. Easy payment gateway for both buyers and publishers. You can publish under multiple pseudo pen names (one for each genre). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My opinion&lt;/strong&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making it so easy to publish, it gets a lot of mediocre and bad content. A good piece of writing tends to get lost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unless you can market your book, it might never catch the right audience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fiction novels are most difficult to gain user base. People may or may not like your style, leading to bad reviews, if any.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Great place to put up non -fiction and self help books, provided you are an expert in that field. Buyers know what to expect from your title. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To get your name out there, it is a great platform. Add a bit of marketing and you can see some decent sales, provided that your book is good. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kindle's KDP select program provides some aid in marketing your book. But for it you must make your book exclusive to Amazon Kindle, i.e you can't publish it elsewhere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have put real effort and feel your book is good, you might try pitching it to publication houses/literary agents. If you can invest in marketing, Kindle is a really good platform. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16656" LastEditorUserId="16656" LastEditDate="2016-02-26T16:43:06.693" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T16:43:06.693" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5641" CreationDate="2016-02-24T16:36:08.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key question to ask in deciding if something is in or out in technical communication is this: What would the user do differently if they knew this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer it that they would not do anything different, then leave it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have determined if the user would do something different if they knew this, ask, what would they need to know to do this with confidence? Focus on the completion of the action. That which supports the completion of the action is in; that which does not is out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But remember that confidence is key to action. The reader needs to feel that they understand the consequences of an action before they perform it. They need to know what good it will do, and they need to know it will not cause harm. If it helps the user understand the consequences of the action, it's in. Otherwise it's out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T16:36:08.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21075" CreationDate="2016-02-24T20:48:25.797" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;prison chapter&quot; should convey at least a sense of the boredom, tedium and desire to escape that the character experiences.  Of course, that's no excuse for boring the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the character is interacting frequently with the guard, that seems like an easy enough situation to add interest to --they can be in conflict, or strike up an unlikely friendship, etc.  The tough scenario, therefore, is the locked room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, I would think you'd want to focus on the character's internal life:  Thoughts, plans of escape, regrets, flashbacks, fantasies, hallucinations, internal battles, &lt;em&gt;etcetera&lt;/em&gt;.  The novel that made Jean Genet famous was basically entirely a record of his sexual fantasies in prison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T20:48:25.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21075" CreationDate="2016-02-25T00:00:53.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you ever done any time? If not, it is really, really hard to understand it. That is why the prison scenes you referred to were uninteresting. Those writers are the ones who did not do time. When writers write something they don’t know, it is empty, hollow, staged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the thing is, if you are writing fiction, don’t use other fiction as research. Read non-fiction. There are plenty of non-fiction books written by people who were imprisoned, about their imprisonment. Read those books as your academic research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also do practical research by getting a friend to lock you in a room for a weekend with nothing to read, no distractions, no comforts, no blanket, no conversation, and no food and water except what your friend provides, which he may or may not do on schedule and/or reliably. Have him give you a bologna sandwich for every meal also, and treat you with disrespect when he does so. And a bucket for waste that he may or may not collect later. That will give you just the &lt;em&gt;tiniest&lt;/em&gt; taste of what it is like to be imprisoned, but what you learn will surprise you, and will inform your work &lt;em&gt;immensely&lt;/em&gt;. At the end of the weekend, have your friend give you your writing tools along with your final imprisoned meal and you will likely write a scene that is 1000x better than before the weekend. You’ll understand the humiliation and helplessness your character is feeling. It will be life-changing, but then writing is &lt;em&gt;supposed&lt;/em&gt; to be life-changing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s like if you wanted to write a book about a character who uses a wheelchair. First step is to read non-fiction written by people who use wheelchairs. Extra marks if you also rent a wheelchair and spend a week in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don’t want to do either the academic or practical research or both, then change the jail setting to somewhere else that you already know about from your own life. There are lots of settings where a character is trapped and feels powerless and demoralized, like trapped in a job in a cubicle farm with crushing debt, or trapped in an abusive marriage, or trapped in their own body by a severe injury while gradually learning to walk again. If you have experience with any of those — or something similar — you can just write what you already know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T00:00:53.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21100" CreationDate="2016-02-25T01:38:10.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes! You can do this most easily with Adwords to see which title performs better. Tim Ferris did this when deciding which title to use for &quot;The Four Hour Work Week&quot;. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://boingboing.net/2010/10/25/howto-use-google-adw.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://boingboing.net/2010/10/25/howto-use-google-adw.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a cost-effective channel with very clear definitions of success (e.g. which title got more clicks). You can also do this with Twitter or Facebook ads and see which text performed better among your targeted audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17946" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T01:38:10.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21088" CreationDate="2016-02-25T03:42:42.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kindle is the most popular platform for ebooks. It's not so much a question of whether you should publish on Kindle as whether you should publish exclusively on Kindle (which gives you some bonuses, like a larger royalty, and distribution on Kindle Unlimited) or whether you should publish on a number of platforms. If you publish on Kindle Select (exclusive) you are not trapped there. If you want, you can add other platforms when the 3-month term has expired. (You will then lose the bonuses from Amazon, of course.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will probably find it's easier to start with one platform, get a feel for it, then expand to others afterwards. Each platform has its own way of working. Kindle is a good one to start with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It used to be that self-publishing was a black mark against an author, and it made it difficult to sell a book elsewhere. These days, it seems to have swung the other way. Why should a publisher take a chance on an unknown author when they can buy a successful self-published book and take it to greater heights? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-02-25T22:04:19.047" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T22:04:19.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21091" CreationDate="2016-02-25T05:37:21.860" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what you are missing is that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; writing tells a story. Just because there is no love story or car chase, that does not mean your technical writing is not telling a story. You are just telling the story of hooking up a Chromecast. That is actually an exciting story for people who just got a Chromecast. They are your characters! Don’t diminish their excitement with crappy writing. Get excited along with them — we’re Chromecasting! — just as you would get excited along with a fictional character who is falling in love or having any adventure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get your head right, get into the story, and then write a personable, concise, helpful, plain language, understandable-by-all guide to Chromecasting that is a joy to read and use and that improves people’s lives by making their new Chromecast setup into a fun event with maybe a minor pitfall here and there that was easily solved, rather than a horrible chore that robbed them of hours of their precious life and then left them disappointed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of a fictional character waiting for you to tell them what to do, you have a community of real characters waiting for you to tell them what to do. You can make a million lives better with great writing. It is a serious responsibility and a great opportunity to grow as a writer and as a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T05:37:21.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21108" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21112" CreationDate="2016-02-25T06:48:46.840" Score="1" ViewCount="424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a game book where the story's plot is about an antagonist who keeps people hostage and, based on the reader's choices, they can survive or not. Now I am at a point where I am deciding between two different ways how to tell the story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The reader is communicating with the antagonist (kidnapper) and tries to save lives of his family members or friends. In this scenario, I see the problem in the fact that there is a conflict between the reality and the characters I am presenting to the reader. For example, he might see that his mother would never behave like that, and it would ruin his immersion to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The reader is interacting with the protagonist (kidnapped person) and makes decisions for that person so that he/she escapes. This kidnapped person is a character he has never met, and they can create a connection through storytelling. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think that will have a bigger impact on the reader's mind and in which case he will care more about saving the people lives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17994" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-06-05T01:51:16.727" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T01:51:16.727" Title="Interacting with the antagonist or protagonist" Tags="|antagonist|branching-narrative|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21091" CreationDate="2016-02-25T07:29:51.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @mbakeranalecta that the purpose of tecnical writing is not to entertain but to inform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall a textboook on software development that I had in college where the text was regularly interrupted with little stories about &quot;Sally's first day as a programmer&quot; and the like. These stories were presumably intended to liven up the text while illustrating poings from the chapter. Personally, they just made me feel embarassed for the author. The stories were not only mostly irrelevant, but lame and cloying. &quot;Oh, how exciting it is to work in the real world of software development! Sally exclaimed.&quot; It was just dumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think it can be good to break the tedium of dry material now and then. I wrote a database book where I got a cartoonist to draw some cartoons for me that I THINK were not-stupid, maybe one for every chapter or two. I wrote a user's guide once where in the section describing how to add and delete users from the system, I introduced the section on how to restore a deleted user by saying, &quot;If you delete a user, and then they come crawling begging for their old job back, you can restore the user by ...&quot; Okay, not the sort of joke that will have people roaring with laughter, but I figured it was worth a chuckle and helped lighten the mood. I think that sort of thing is helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would be very careful not to overdo this sort of thing. One little joke every ten pages can lighten the mood. Even if the jokes aren't very good, the reader probably won't mind. It's a break. But if you do it constantly, readers are eventually going to be saying, &quot;Hey, I'm trying to learn how to operate a Foobar, not hear a bunch of your lame jokes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T07:29:51.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21110" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21111" CreationDate="2016-02-25T07:57:54.350" Score="-2" ViewCount="18874" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing an email to my professor as a reminder to update my grade on a particular assignment. I had an assignment that is graded based on a written essay and a presentation. I submitted the written part on time, but I delivered the presentation about a week late. I received a partial grade for the written part, but my professor has yet to update the grade to reflect my presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The email doesn't have to be extremely formal, but I do want to remain very polite. The message is really a reminder, but I thought it would be more polite if I framed it as a question. So far I have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hello,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is XXXX from your XXXX class on Tue/Thu mornings. I received a grade in for the written part of the XXXX assignment only, as I just completed the in-class presentation last Thursday. Could you please let me know when I should be expecting an updated grade reflecting my presentation as well? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you guys tell me if I am sounding rude or if there is a better way to phrase this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5826" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-02-25T19:37:19.623" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T19:37:19.623" Title="Reminding my professor to update a grade?" Tags="|email|vocabulary|letter|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-02-28T08:47:52.307" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21110" CreationDate="2016-02-25T09:33:07.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With this type of questions what I would recommend is to begin as straight forward and precise as possible, and add the politeness after. If you're worried about not irritating someone, first thing to consider is clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how I would've written it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is XXXX from your Tue/Thu mornings XXXX class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering about the grading of the XXXX assignment presentation I did last Thursday. I did get the grading for the written part, but still wondering about the presentation. Could you please let me know when can I expect this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17998" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T09:33:07.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21108" CreationDate="2016-02-25T10:36:29.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you stick with the first option, I'd suggest you find a very interesting back story for your kidnapper, so that when the reader 'talks' with him, the conversation will be interesting. Otherwise, if the kidnapper doesn't have such an interesting backstory and motives, I don't think I'd be interested in interacting with him for a long time. Κeep in mind though, that if you interact with the antagonist more than the protagonist, the antagonist will be kind of the protagonist, even if he is the 'bad guy' -- thus an anti hero. By using this option, the reader will sympathize or hate more the antagonist and will care a little less about the kidnapped people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ι believe the second option will make the reader sympathize with the kidnapped person, because through storytelling they will get closer and get to know each other. If you want something like this, I suggest you go with the second option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6276" LastEditorUserId="6276" LastEditDate="2016-02-25T10:43:50.913" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T10:43:50.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16700" CreationDate="2016-02-25T11:00:05.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like all the other answers state, it's not a common thing to do, but there is nothing to prevent you from doing otherwise. A great example that I'd suggest you read is Italo Calvino's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_on_a_winter%27s_night_a_traveler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;If on a winter's night a traveler&lt;/a&gt;. It's exactly what you are looking for. An entire novel whose protagonist is &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not only good received by the critics and readers, but it also considered one of Calvino's masterpieces. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another notable example is Anthony Burgess' &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clockwork Orange&lt;/a&gt;. The narrator of the book often refers to the reader (usually when in a tough position) with phrases like 'Oh, my dear reader' and 'You are the only friend left' etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6276" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T11:00:05.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21114" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-25T14:00:13.290" Score="2" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;The language industry has a long tradition in the pursuit of correctness, based on manually drafted rules. However, the end goal has always been communicative efficiency, which is something that can now be addressed directly using empirical methods. Since there are systematic conflicts between rules and efficiency (or between normative and empirical rules), what kind of evidence would it take to convince writers to prefer efficiency to correctness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18002" LastEditorUserId="18002" LastEditDate="2016-02-29T12:38:43.140" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T12:38:43.140" Title="Efficiency or correctness in communication?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21114" CreationDate="2016-02-25T14:23:26.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;John Carroll did extensive research on an aspect of this in the 80s. His finding are recorded in a book called &quot;The Nurnberg Funnel&quot; and lead to the development of a practice called &quot;minimalism&quot; in technical communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Carroll observed was that people do not read manuals linearly. They prefer to engage with the product, work till they get stuck, and then use documentation to try to get unstuck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carroll posited the existence of &quot;the paradox of sensemaking&quot; that says that what the reader already knows gets in the way of what they are reading and that it takes real world experience, and failure, to break down preconceptions and  to actually makes sense of what the text is telling you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is only one aspect of the broader question you are asking about -- and perhaps a higher level case, but I think the principles and the evidence to support them might be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T14:23:26.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17149" CreationDate="2016-02-25T14:36:37.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two dogs. One bone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dogs are antagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is the good dog? Which is the bad dog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One dog may have the objective right to the bone, but that does not change how each dog sees things. Each lives in a world in which that bone is their bone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your antagonist lives in a world in which the bone of contention in your story is his bone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand that world and describe it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T14:36:37.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21091" CreationDate="2016-02-25T16:15:31.280" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question touches on one of the central ideas of technical writing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dita.xml.org/topic-based-authoring&quot;&gt;topic-based authoring&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your paradigm example, &quot;1. plug in 2. connect 3. watch.&quot; is a specimen of the &quot;task&quot; topic, but there are also (at least) 2 other types, namely &quot;concept&quot; and &quot;reference&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding a short concept topic describing the &lt;em&gt;benefits&lt;/em&gt; of performing steps 1-3 would be more engaging, and absolutely fall into the remit of technical writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Techincal writing aims to take the perspective of the &quot;user&quot;, whatever it is they're &quot;using&quot;. So it has the potential to be very imaginative and creative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example that sprung to mind is the instructions or &quot;rules&quot; for games. Some of these books can be so engaging that a lot of fans just read the rulebooks without actually playing the games (I know I have, and I notice people on discussion forums for e.g. roleplaying games reporting the same fascination).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree fundamentally with @mbakeranalecta but I would gently contest the idea that the reader is always engaged with the task you are currently explaining - part of the job of writing help or FAQ is to help the reader figure out what problem (s)he is actually trying to solve; the more complex the subject, the harder to identify your knowledge gap, and the more imagination it's going to take to get the reader from &quot;there&quot; to &quot;here&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16176" LastEditorUserId="16176" LastEditDate="2016-02-25T16:20:58.377" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T16:20:58.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-25T16:28:58.137" Score="0" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any features in MS Word (ideally for Mac) that can be helpful in requirements gathering/tracing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, at present I'm using comments in the Review pane to index requirements and have an automatic set of links to navigate among them within a large, structured document that give the categories of requirements (functional, non-functional) and stages of the process (dependencies analysis etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any more tricks and tools that make Word-only requirements management smoother and more useful for the technical (in my case software development) and business departments that need to use (some parts of) my master document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16176" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T17:28:09.623" Title="Requirements engineering: getting the most out of Word?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2016-02-25T16:32:01.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the type of product, and the specific supply chain, there are even very particular standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you could supply more detail as noted in the comment to the OP, it might be possible to suggest something very relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16176" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T16:32:01.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21053" CreationDate="2016-02-25T16:35:14.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Names with meanings that match the character’s story are really a kind of easter egg. Most readers won’t know the meanings, so you are putting in effort for just a few readers. You may also be detracting from the enjoyment of your work by all readers because the names become forced and complicated and may be hard for the reader to remember.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other approaches to naming that you might consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;create names that are easy for the reader to remember&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;create names that are beautiful&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;create names that are unique&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;use names that are selected at random from a list of names, such as those found in census data.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T16:35:14.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21053" CreationDate="2016-02-25T18:36:31.307" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @kmunky that blatantly meaningful names almost always sound gimmicky and trite. If the rich man is named &quot;Rich Cashman&quot; and the violent drug dealer is named &quot;Coke McBullitt&quot; and so on, it just sounds lame. Periodically on this forum people ask, &quot;What would be a good name for a character who ...&quot;, and my response is always &quot;Fred Stover&quot; or &quot;Jack Williamson&quot; or some such perfectly ordinary sounding name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is an allegory, that's a special case. Then, sure, name the characters &quot;Piety&quot; and &quot;Prudence&quot; and &quot;Hopeful&quot;. It can also work in a comedy, where the character's blatant name is part of the joke. Like &quot;Cruella Deville&quot; for the villianess in 101 Dalmations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have mixed feelings about subtly meaningful names. Like someone mentioned &quot;Draco Malfoy&quot; in the Harry Potter books. If the reader doesn't get it, than it makes no difference. If he does, he may feel like he's gotten an &quot;in joke&quot;. But if it's a serious book, characters' names should be jokes, should they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think giving a character a name that has a tone or connotations consistent with his or her personality is good and reasonable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall musing once that I'd be quite surprised to hear, &quot;The winner of this year's Nobel price for physics is ... Bambi.&quot; Or that the world champion boxer is named Dexter. Etc. I don't know if anyone's ever done a study on whether a person's name is related to his personality. I don't think it would be implausible: what your parents named you is likely related to how they raised you and your environment in general, and maybe a certain type of name inclines people to act a certain way. But whether it's true or not, I think we expect certain kinds of people to have certain kinds of names. Giving a tough character a tough name and a sweet feminine character a sweet feminine name helps create the desired perception in the reader's mind. Again, as long as it's not too blatant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T18:36:31.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21114" CreationDate="2016-02-25T18:54:19.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmm, but the whole point of &quot;correctness&quot; is that if everyone follows the rules, then we have a common ground for understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, there's a rule that a pronoun should agree in gender and number with its antecedent. So if I see the sentence, &quot;Bob gave his girlfriend her book&quot;, I know immediately that the book belongs to the girlfriend and not Bob, because the girlfriend must be female, while &quot;Bob&quot; is almost surely male, and so &quot;her&quot; must refer to the girlfriend. If we threw out this rule for whatever reason and said that &quot;her&quot; could refer to a man or to a woman, then the sentence becomes ambiguous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally people say, Why do we make such a big deal about spelling? If you write the word &quot;difference&quot; and I write it &quot;difrans&quot;, we both know what it means, so what difference does it make? My version is shorter and more efficient. But in real life, the problem is that if you write &quot;difrans&quot;, I can't be sure if you mean &quot;difference&quot; or &quot;deference&quot; or &quot;diaphragm&quot; or maybe dozens of other words. I may be able to figure it out from context, but at the very least that's extra effort. And if you use your own spelling for every word, where do I begin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, correctness should increase efficiency, not be its enemy. Correctness should reduce the effort required to decypher the meaning of a text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course any given rule could be a bad one. Like the silly rules, &quot;Never use a preposition to end a sentence with&quot;, or &quot;Be sure to not split an infinitive&quot;. But the issue there isn't that rules are bad, but that these particular rules are bad, because we end up writing sentences that are awkward and hard to understand (&quot;That is a rule up with which I shall not put&quot;) just to conform to an arbitrary rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to convince ME to &quot;prefer efficiency to correctness&quot; ... first you'd have to prove to me that those are in conflict. A language with no rules at all ... I'm not sure how that would even qualify as a language. It would surely be impossible for people to communicate with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T18:54:19.060" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21088" CreationDate="2016-02-25T19:08:09.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The obvious advantages to publishing on Kindle for a self-publishing author is that there's no up-front investment. You don't have to pay a vanity press to print thousands of copies of your book before you know if anyone besides your mother will buy a copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But their are print-on-demand publishers who offer the same or similar deals for print books. I believe the most notable examples are CreateSpace and Lulu, maybe Lightning Source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did my last two books as both paper POD and Kindle. I think producing a paper book is easier than producing a quality Kindle. (To make a good Kindle book you really should hand-work a lot of the HTML tagging, though you can get a quick-and-dirty Kindle out pretty easily.) It's no harder to distribute: you can get a paper book on Amazon and Barnes &amp;amp; Noble very easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do one, the extra effort to do the other is pretty small compared to the effort you presumably put into writing the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T19:08:09.980" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21026" CreationDate="2016-02-25T20:17:44.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The limitation is on the publisher or agent but not for legal reasons, for marketing ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always use an agent. They will tell you what to do about this issue in particular (among others). I've seen some ghetto drama where &lt;em&gt;F&lt;/em&gt; bombs didn't break the top 5 on insults, for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally write the story I see. Finishing a book is an awesome experience. Once you've gotten that far, it's time to consider the tone of your story, and whom you are trying to appeal to. I find it a true head-scratcher that erotica mostly stays away from profanity (at least by the George Carlin standard). Despite that, it does so well commercially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The few times I've seen bestsellers like Grisham and Clancy cuss in print, it actually stands out in my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, consider comedians often swear successfully, both on stage and on paper, but you should be sure you're funny (with beta readers). If you are self-publishing, you may give yourself a bad name if it comes across as crude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current work, not that I should just talk about myself, has A LOT of profanity. The catch is it is 15th century historical fiction when many of our favorites were coming into use. It remains to be seen whether they will survive the editing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T20:17:44.717" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21125" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-25T20:40:45.267" Score="-1" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;I apologize if this is a tedious question but …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My wife and I may be moving overseas soon and I have been considering looking for work that I can do remotely, possibly writing.  My background is that I have an MA in music and am a professional jazz musician.  I also worked in high-tech for many years and studied engineering.  I’m well read and write English well.  I’ve also sidelined privately as a tutor for years (academics, SAT, GRE, etc.) and have done some editing and proofreading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I was wondering if there is some kind of writing that I can do.  When I scan many of the freelance writing sites, I see many writing, editing, etc. jobs but often offering scandalously low compensation.  Of course, there are a lot of people around the world willing to do it cheaply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering about grant writing.  I see requests for grant writing come up from time to time and realize that being more specialized work, it might not attract as many low bidders.  I see advertisements for seminars for grant writers but I wonder if it’s a waste of money.  Are there any grant writers here?  Is this a reasonable plan?  Can I become a successful grant writer taking a class and working remotely, from overseas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m not looking to get rich.  I just want something that I can do part-time and make a respectable wage to supplement my income.  What can I do remotely from overseas?  I don't mind hard work and won't mind investing some time and money building this, I just don't want to go down the wrong path and end up in a scam or dead-end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanx,&#xA;Kevin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T16:50:55.807" Title="Remote work advice?" Tags="|editing|business-writing|career|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-02-25T22:08:19.300" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21125" CreationDate="2016-02-25T20:55:40.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a complete answer, but grant writing is a very, very specialised area, in my experience. It does depend on what type of grants, of course, but I would be very wary of anyone charging money to teach grant writing -- institutions and groups that want grants provide experts to help those applying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastEditorUserId="13409" LastEditDate="2016-06-17T16:50:55.807" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T16:50:55.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21108" CreationDate="2016-02-25T21:17:56.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At risk of sounding trite: the scenarios are moot. What will make your reader care about the outcome is a well written story. Always write passionately if you want a passionate response from your reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I don't mean romantically,  I mean to write what interests you most. Write whichever character &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are most invested in, that is the most surefire way to ensure that it will be your best writing, and to convey investiture to your reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're completely undecided, &lt;em&gt;brainstorm until something excites you&lt;/em&gt;. And if brainstorming fails, then go in a completely different direction; chances are that you're only stumbling because you're taking a wrong path. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow your instinct, write with passion, throw all your energy on the page, don't fret over logistics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15134" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T21:17:56.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21128" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-25T21:20:18.240" Score="4" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written some stories about my adventures in the wars.  I don't think they're Hemingway caliber, but I don't think they're bad.  They're non-fiction and I am careful not to embellish for the sake of entertainment, so maybe mostly people with a similar background would find them appealing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, since they're not short fiction stories, which is what most sites / magazines seem to publish, I don't really know where to look.  Could you point me in the right direction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13268" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T04:48:03.250" Title="Where to find a place to publish a specific kind of work?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21088" CreationDate="2016-02-25T22:53:54.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can produce a quality ePub file, and you don't have any particular interest in Kindle Select (which requires exclusivity), I see little reason to limit yourself to Kindle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why limit yourself to only Kindle readers? There's a big world of readers out there. Get your book in front of as many of them as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, using multiple retailers does create more work for you. You will need an account for each. The biggest nuisance is setting up your payment and tax details--each retailer has their own peculiar ways of doing that. But you have to do this work only once per retailer. A nuisance, but a one-time nuisance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And using multiple retailers multiplies the amount of work per book. Now have to describe the book and upload the cover and ePub files once per retailer. It also multiplies the amount of effort to make changes (e.g. new cover, update to fix typos, update front- and back-matter, and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aggregators like Smashwords and Draft2Digital can greatly reduce the amount of work you have to do. You upload your files to them, and they distribute to the retailers (including Kindle, iBooks, and many, many others). The tradeoff: They take a cut of each sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently go direct to KDP, and use Smashwords and Draft2Digital to distribute my books to other retailers. Some day soon I may go back to working directly with the major retailers (iBooks, Nook, Kobo, a few others). But for now I'm (reasonably) happy to have Smashwords and Draft2Digital do the nuisance distribution work for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T22:53:54.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20907" CreationDate="2016-02-25T23:18:50.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Literary agents are the stepping stone between authors and publishers (and in my opinion, an absolute necessity until you have a long-term deal with a publisher, which happens rarely). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several resources to consider both nationally and internationally. I would point you to two websites. The first is JaneFriedman.com &quot;How to Write a Query Letter,&quot; and the second is pw.org/literary_agents (poets and writers). They keep up to date better than others I've tried. Expect about 100 rejection letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T23:18:50.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21131" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-25T23:45:29.530" Score="4" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a part-time freelance writer, and I'd like to put together a blog to showcase my writing through posts and to link visitors to my work on other sites.  However, I'm a little bit lost about what exactly I should do with the site.  Ideally, I'd like to write blog posts that act as samples of my writing - basically, to show the kind of writing that paying clients would receive for their own sites or magazines or whatever.  For that reason, I'm planning to write posts on a wide variety of subjects.  I've also read, though, that blogs that have no focus in terms of subject don't really attract long-term readers.  (I've also read the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3015/mixing-topics-in-a-blog&quot;&gt;Mixing topics in a blog&lt;/a&gt;&quot; post.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm wondering about the best way to go here.  I'm not exactly looking for long-term readers, I guess; I'm just looking to attract clients.  But I still have to attract them.  Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15256" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T09:54:45.343" Title="Putting together an effective writing blog" Tags="|marketing|blog|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21131" CreationDate="2016-02-26T00:46:38.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest looking at other blogs and take note of both things you like about them and things you don't like about them.  One site I like is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are many others out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16627" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T00:46:38.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21131" CreationDate="2016-02-26T02:33:27.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider arranging your website as a gallery of writing samples, rather then as a blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then as you create a writing which you wish to put in this gallery (writing for which you have sole ownership and publishing rights), contact bloggers who already blog on the subject of this particular writing and ask if they would post it on their site (as a guest writer).  Many bloggers will be happy for the free content.  When you find someone who is willing, arrange to publish your writing on both sites (yours and theirs) on approximately the same day.  Let them have first publication rights, if they insist; but push your writing to your own site within a few days of it being published elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, make sure that every guest writer blog, which you have published on other blogger's sites, has a prominent link back to your gallery, where further samples of your writing can be found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T02:33:27.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21135" CreationDate="2016-02-26T04:41:15.110" Score="0" ViewCount="399" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a phobia of decision making and am asking for your help. I want to write a YA steampunk book with lots of made up stuff. Now, fantasy isn't really written in the first person, but I want to try the first person out. Also, I suck at writing, but I have a love/hate relationship with it too. If you bother to read this, then thanks for you &lt;em&gt;pew pew&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problems with first person&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;difficulty moving from to place to place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's just too hard for me. I don't want to make words too repetitive like &quot;I stepped,&quot; or &quot;The floor creaked as I took a step in,&quot; or &quot;I walked,&quot; or... whatever the hell I do it makes it feel too repetitive for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;action, action, I said action &lt;em&gt;click&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I should have mentioned this earlier, but I do not have a very creative mind. Action themes I write are just too bland. &quot;I felt the twinblades dicing my chest as I tried to sway. My skin had frozen like it had been skinned off. Putting my right hand on the bleeding breast, I thrusted the short spear, only for it to be deflected and tossed.&quot; Jesus, this is quite boring. I also plan to add a part where he has to zip line off of broken steel cables and throw wind slices from his wrists to kill the guys trying to kill the MC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Describing everything&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to do the 'mirror' cliche to describe the MC. Also, should exaggeration be added to almost everyone and everything I describe? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dialogue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing &quot;I said' or 'She laughed' is really sad for me&#xA;Problems with the third person&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;repetitiveness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like the first person, I have to deal with this bull crap in a way that I make it look impossible, but it isn't and I'm just a dumbass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;difficulty moving to place to place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;pretty sure you get the idea&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;action&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;intimate scenes&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Romance isn't my thing, but c'mon, gotta give some love man. Plus, it's almost in every book (amirite? no? !#$ yourself. ur opinion doesn't madder)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;info about the MC vs. info about the world&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually give information more about what's happening around the MC than 50/50 which would be what the MC is thinking. Usually, I do one, and I'm five pages in, still describing what the MC is doing and what he thinks or describing the place around him and what is happening around him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what to write after dialogues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing 'he said' or 'she smirked' just makes me wanna puke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are my problems with the two perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18013" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-28T22:09:47.037" LastActivityDate="2018-04-28T22:09:47.037" Title="Writing first person or third person limited for steampunk?" Tags="|style|characters|dialogue|young-adult|steampunk|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21134" CreationDate="2016-02-26T08:12:55.230" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything you have a problem with is stuff that isn't a problem, or that you needn't do anyway. Regardless of which POV you choose, the symptoms you are experiencing are common novice symptoms and are easily cured. So go cure them and choose either perspective. It really doesn't matter a whole lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking and answering multiple questions in one post is supposed to be off topic here but I'll give you brief answers to illustrate my overall answer, which is: it's all in your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving place to place: you don't need to describe the action of it. Just start a new chapter/paragraph and describe the room in one sentence and move on. Omit the action of entering the room, and describe the first thing the MC does once she's in the room, eg grabbing a beer, or setting fire to the sofa. Same applies in either 1st or 3rd person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Describing the MC: Don't do it. Who cares what the MC looks like? If he looks bad, other characters will cross the street to avoid him, and if he looks great they'll blow him kisses. The interaction is what matters. Even in 3rd person describing the MC isn't necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialogue: the he said/she said problem isn't a problem. There are very good solutions on this site. Short version, the word 'said' bothers writers more than readers. Again POV is irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Action: your example is fine. Write more of it, learn to write it as fast and with as few words as possible. Swap 'dicing', 'had frozen', 'thrusted' for slightly more immediate, 'dice', 'froze', 'thrust'. Read some action novels to pick up more incisive vocabulary, especially verbs. If you still don't enjoy it, write 'they fought.' and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intimate scenes: if you don't want to, don't write them. About 10% of the books I have read include them. That's sci-fi, thrillers, fantasy and humorous versions of those. I'm sure these scenes abound on &lt;em&gt;certain&lt;/em&gt; shelves but you don't need to go there. And again POV is irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2016-02-26T17:34:51.370" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T17:34:51.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18158" CreationDate="2016-02-26T09:22:56.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Andy vaulted onto his bed, the pillow hugging his face accepting his torment. Once the first tear got away, the rest followed it, creating a huge pool on his pillow. His lungs rummaged for oxygen, and his sobbing had the same force of someone drowning. The flesh under his ribcage throbbed, his cheeks burned, and his mind created memories and scenarios that made the tears continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18015" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-03-02T06:46:47.750" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T06:46:47.750" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21131" CreationDate="2016-02-26T09:54:45.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://squarespace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Squarespace&lt;/a&gt; which is dot-com website platform that is optimized for non-technical creative people to make their own Web presence. It has pages (timeless writings) and also has a blog (journal writings) and also redirects (which are great for marketing) built-in. You would create pages for your writing, use the blog to document your ongoing writing career adventure, and use redirects to link out to things you are doing elsewhere on the Web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, if Ernest Hemingway was working right now, he would make story pages at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://ernesthemingway.com/the-sun-also-rises&#xA;http://ernesthemingway.com/a-farewell-to-arms&#xA;http://ernesthemingway.com/the-old-man-and-the-sea&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;… and then his journal would be at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://ernesthemingway.com/blog/&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;… and would have entries about how hard it is to write, various hunting trips and what he learned from them, musings on masculinity, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entires get date links as you create them, like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://ernesthemingway.com/blog/2016/02/25/hunting-accident&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then he would use redirects so that this kind of link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://ernesthemingway.com/facebook&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;… takes the reader to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://facebook.com/blah/de/blah/user/hemingway5339&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;… so it is easy to remember and never changes. If the Facebook link were to change, he would just put the updated Facebook link into his /facebook redirect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blogs have categories. Hemingway would make categories like writing, hunting, masculinity. The reader can tap on writing to see just the entries on writing. Ideally, you probably keep it to a handful of categories, but there are exceptions to that. Depends on your interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blog sort of acts like keywords that draw people into your storybook through Google Search, and enables them to get to know you. To promote your blog in the old days you would have wanted to be high up in Google results and that was it, because the Google Search engine was like a sun around which the Web orbited. Today, the Web is more like a galaxy, and the additional stars are Twitter, Facebook, Medium, and others. So once you post a new story page or a new blog post, you want to link to it from Twitter and Facebook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Medium, you actually put the whole story or blog posts on there, but it is still a good idea to have your own dot-com where you have your own copy of your work, because at some point Medium will change and/or be sold and/or be shutdown. If you control your own dot-com, you can create permalinks that readers can rely on to always act as a gateway to whatever you are doing. It doesn’t matter if you switch your T-shirt sales from CafePress to Spreadshirt if your T-shirt link is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://ernesthemingway.com/t-shirts&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your dot-com website/blog is very much about acting as a nervous system for your entire Web presence. Everything else on the Web may change, but your dot-com is all the permanent stuff. That enables you to grow and grow your Web presence but still enable a reader or prospective employer to find all the stuff you’ve made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T09:54:45.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21139" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-26T19:37:13.597" Score="6" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a web programmer at a small web firm. When we have a larger programming project, I write a specification document for the client to review, make necessary changes, and eventually approve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our clients are not very tech-savvy, so I &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; include an overview of the programming, written in simple prose. I think they get that part… it's the point at which I describe the, well, technical aspects I'm afraid is going over their heads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do to try to make it easier, is create a table that explains &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; is being collected and &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a simple contact form would include a table similar to he following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    | Field    | Type     | Options   | Notes                    |&#xA;    --------------------------------------------------------------&#xA;    | Name*    | Text     |           |                          |&#xA;    | Email*   | Text     |           | Will ensure valid format |&#xA;    | State*   | Dropdown | US States |                          |&#xA;    | Comments | Textarea |           |                          |&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll explain what the asterisk indicates in a paragraph above, and I always describe the field types in footnotes, the first time the field is mentioned.  But, as my specifications have gotten more complicated, and the data collected has become more lengthy, I've started to wonder if there's a better way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've researched this (here, UX.SE, and Google in general), but I've found very little and nothing specific. Usually, the examples are for in-house documents, not for those who think websites are magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard way of explaining form fields/database data/collection methods to a non-techie client?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13278" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T21:23:03.687" Title="Is there a standard for describing a form in a programming specification?" Tags="|technical-writing|formatting|specifications|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20975" CreationDate="2016-02-26T20:54:31.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually you have the makings of a good story there. That's because your &quot;characters&quot; are acting a little &quot;out of character&quot; for who they're supposed to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one of the commenters pointed out, a knight is a member of the nobility. Not quite &quot;royalty&quot; but not far from. And ordinarily someone who would not be intimidated by a princess, because he is &quot;milord&quot; himself. That is, someone who is rich himself, but not quite as rich as say, Ivanka Trump (who may become &quot;first daughter or &quot;princess&quot; if her father is elected President).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the knight shouldn't lack things to say, because they will be prescribe by royalty etiquette. A &quot;safe&quot; subject is weather. He might say something like, &quot;It's a nice day, Your Highness.&quot; The conversation could get awkward when it gets &quot;personal.&quot; But that's not limited to knights and princesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The princess is an unusual one, because she is willing to look past the knight's &quot;status&quot; to who he really is. Most princesses aren't that way, because they expect to be queens someday; the classic counterexample is Marie Antoinette, who was a princess before she became Queen of France.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your knight is a perfect foil. He is not an &quot;opportunist&quot; who wants to capitalize on the princess' status. And he's got a viable alternative in his own sweetheart. That's why the princess wants him for all the right reasons. The prince has a choice to make. He's clearly comfortable with his sweetheart and uncomfortable with the princess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How will he make his choice? Will the sweetheart &quot;fall down&quot; and the princess come through? Will there be a &quot;national emergency&quot; that goes beyond the personal emergency of the knight saving the princess' life and will that help define the knight's choice? That was the plot of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aida&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aida.&lt;/a&gt; If the knight elects the sweetheart and not the princess, will that be a tragedy, or will she go about her business of finding another one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a potential conflict because the princess is &quot;chasing,&quot; dating, and potentially marrying &quot;beneath&quot; her. What do the laws of the kingdom say? Do they forbid her to date &quot;knights?&quot; Do they allow her to marry a knight, but she will have to forfeit her role as princess to become a knight's wife? Will she be happier if she does this? Or do they allow her to raise him to her level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real life, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria,_Crown_Princess_of_Sweden&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Crown Princess of Sweden&lt;/a&gt; married her gym trainer, that is a &quot;knight.&quot; He will get to be called Prince,&quot; but when her father dies, she will become &quot;Queen&quot; and he will remain a prince and not a king.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-02-26T21:09:17.740" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T21:09:17.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21142" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-27T02:23:31.203" Score="6" ViewCount="10963" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a sequence in my screenplay where the same news broadcast continues on different screens in different locations. For example, a bunch of people in a bar are watching the broadcast, then it continues in a family's living room on their TV, then people on the street are watching the same broadcast on a TV in a shop window, etc.  How should I format this in a screenplay? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18028" LastActivityDate="2016-06-02T03:49:58.297" Title="How Do I Write a News Broadcast Montage in Different Locations in a Screenplay?" Tags="|formatting|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21150" CreationDate="2016-02-27T02:35:20.513" Score="4" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a fresh pup to this site and I have a bit of a quagmire at my fingertips.&#xA;My novel takes place in a dystopian future approximately half a century from the modern day.  Consumerism and promotional branding have subverted the way people fundamentally think and speak.  The ability to read and write in modern English has become relatively rare and useless.  While people still communicate through spoken word - particularly the elderly - the youth communicate almost entirely by instant message Emojis, even in face to face discussion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, I would like the reader to become fluent in this very basic language with limited meanings as the novel progresses somewhat in the same vein as 1984's Newspeak and A Clockwork Orange's slang.  I would like this dialogue to be communicated to the reader through Emojis with a crude translation included.  I am considering stylizing the dialogue as such, but I would love to get some feedback on a more streamlined method of doing so; do you know of a simple but appropriate program to use Emojis in a word document (Microsoft 10), or do you think this idea is fated to cause hysteria?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Emojiite&lt;/em&gt; language for example would consist of the pictographs of: A man running, a party hat, a beer, an alarm flashing. (This would be followed by the translation for the reader: &lt;em&gt;Hurry.  Party.  Get drunk.  Now.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your input is greatly appreciated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18026" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T17:02:36.843" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T17:02:36.843" Title="Transcribing a fictional pictograph based language" Tags="|dialogue|language|translation|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21114" CreationDate="2016-02-27T08:44:50.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what kind of evidence would it take to convince writers to prefer &#xA;  efficiency to correctness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers already prefer efficiency to correctness. That is why we use computers instead of typewriters and before that, typewriters instead of shorthand, and before that, shorthand instead of longhand. And all along we used fewer and shorter words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Efficiency over correctness is also how English works. There are no rules in English. Nobody has ever managed the syntax. There is no single correct way of doing anything. You can’t write English for correctness. It evolves constantly for more efficiency. There are no masculine/feminine words. “Thou” was dropped. “Motor hotel” became “motel.” Words are implied all the time, like referring to a mobile phone as a “mobile” or a computing device as a “device.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at an English book from 1800, it is barely the same language as today, and it gets more efficient the newer you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only check on this is comprehension, not correctness. In American English there are misunderstandings based on using too few words that you wouldn’t necessarily see in British English. In California, where I live, people act out emotions rather than describe them when telling a story. (I was like, “wow!” and he was like “no way!”)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you are trying to get that process to go faster, the first step might be to recognize it is already going really, really fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And certainly, the writers are not holding it back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-27T08:44:50.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21142" CreationDate="2016-02-27T10:21:53.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's a spec script and breaking it down into multiple scenes would be unnecessarily burdensome on the reader, you may simply write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;INT/EXT. - MONTAGE &#xA;&#xA;TVs around the world, in bars, homes, and storefronts relay the same news story.&#xA;&#xA;         REPORTER&#xA;&#xA;    You join me live at Houston Mission&#xA;    Control where we await contact from&#xA;    the brave astronauts...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then relate the story as if it were happening on a single screen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a later production draft it might get broken into individual scenes for the sake of scheduling, or it may not. This could be filmed outside the main production schedule, in which case it might have its own documentation and not rely on the script for a clear breakdown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expanding a bit now I'm on a proper keyboard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to add a little more colour into each of your locations, or you want to use any of the cast characters it's safest to break up into different scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;INT. BOSTON BAR -- DAY&#xA;&#xA;In a Boston bar, six alcoholics stare at the TV through glassy eyes.&#xA;&#xA;        REPORTER&#xA;&#xA;    You join me live at Houston Mission&#xA;    Control...&#xA;&#xA;EXT. HARRODS LONDON -- NIGHT&#xA;&#xA;An old couple hold each other tight watching the same report on a TV in the window.&#xA;&#xA;        REPORTER (cont'd)&#xA;&#xA;    ...where we await contact from the &#xA;    brave astronauts...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some scripts will use CONTINUOUS as the tag on the second scene. eg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;EXT. HARRODS LONDON -- CONTINUOUS&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in this example, doing that hides the fact the second scene is at night, which is likely to be far more useful for a reader to know. The fact the scene is continuous should be obvious already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note you may need to add the &quot;cont'd&quot; manually to the dialogue since your screenwriting software will not do this automatically across scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2016-02-29T10:07:32.463" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T10:07:32.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21146" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-27T14:24:11.917" Score="5" ViewCount="817" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, the title is unclear. What I mean, is I want to create a piece of writing which the reader does not imagine as &quot;real&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want the reader to imagine this piece of writing as pictures instead, and nothing happens in the pictures, its just a picture showing things. What techniques can I use in my writing to create this 'picture' effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T23:53:26.933" Title="Techniques for picture writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21147" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-27T16:02:41.590" Score="3" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a paper for National History Day in my Social Studies class and am using MLA formatting. It occurred to me that I had a lot of differing information from some sources, such as a historical novel. How would I cite it if I put information from the same source into the paper in varying parts? Should I, instead, figure out a way to put it all together at once per source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18034" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T01:06:50.430" Title="Using sources multiple times in a paper in different places--how to cite" Tags="|citations|essay|mla|historical|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21148" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-27T16:25:44.787" Score="0" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a phrase or type of argument for the line of thinking that goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The remote control is lost. Since I have not (literally) checked every inch of the living room, I don't know for sure that the remote is not in the living room.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I'm trying to express the absurdity of this type of thinking when compared to other problems, for example, &quot;I have not literally checked every inch of the world so I don't know for sure that there are no unicorns.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and also the opposite:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The remote control is lost. I've checked three places in the living room, so I know it is not in the living room.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I'm trying to express the absurdity of this type of thinking when compared to other problems, for example, &quot;A tiger was not in any of the places that I checked, so tigers must not exist.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18036" LastActivityDate="2016-02-27T21:09:13.963" Title="What type of argument is this?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21149" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-27T16:43:44.843" Score="0" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had two recent ideas for short stories that I feel would be best written as epistolary pieces where the main character is basically giving a monologue. I know that there will be a lot of 'I's and 'you's, so I was wondering, what can I do to avoid too much of that repetition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I know &quot;Flowers for Algernon&quot; is a short story composed of journal entries. What other pieces can I read to help me with ideas for writing these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other advice is more than welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18035" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-02-27T21:21:20.220" LastActivityDate="2016-02-27T21:21:20.220" Title="Avoiding repeating &quot;I&quot; and &quot;you&quot; in an epistolary piece" Tags="|fiction|short-story|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21143" CreationDate="2016-02-27T19:24:08.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might help point you to a model you could use, or it might put you off the whole idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently Herman Melville's classic &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Moby Dick&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; was translated into emojis as a Kickstarter project. There is a pdf of &lt;em&gt;Emoji Dick&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.czyborra.com/unicode/emojidick.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and a web page explaining the project &lt;a href=&quot;http://emojidick.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the comments to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21750&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;em&gt;Language Log&lt;/em&gt; blog, where I first read about this, say that the conceit quickly becomes tiresome, but someone does concede that &quot;here and there, one can find a flash of brilliance.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the pdf, scroll down past various title pages and so on to page 15 to see the start of the actual text. Sentences of English and allegedly equivalent emojis are interspersed. Knowing only six emoticons myself I am unable to comment on the literary qualities of the text in emoji language but from a purely visual examination it seems as if something might be lost in translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is going to be the problem, I think. Your story is about people's thought and language becoming limited, which is a very powerful theme, but it is very difficult to make a story some or all of which is told through the medium of a deliberately impoverished language into an enriching experience itself. George Orwell's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;1984&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; relegated the description and examples of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Newspeak&lt;/a&gt; to an appendix for that reason. It's fascinating, but it is not part of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you can pull it off it could be awesome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-02-29T18:36:15.747" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T18:36:15.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21149" CreationDate="2016-02-27T20:08:56.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short, simple, straightforward words like &quot;I&quot; and &quot;you&quot; don't really interrupt reading flow with moderate repetition; they're clear and unobtrusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing to do right at the start is &lt;strong&gt;get some material written&lt;/strong&gt;. Then you'll be able to deal with problematic repetition, not just by &lt;em&gt;how often&lt;/em&gt; the word is repeated, but actually seeing when that repetition is actually problematic, where it actually distracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other point I'd suggest right now is: what you need to worry about is less repeating the &lt;em&gt;word&lt;/em&gt; &quot;I&quot;, or &quot;you,&quot; which are very common and natural. It's repeating a similar sentence pattern, which is easy to fall into while writing, but can start getting cumbersome. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I went to the store this morning. I wanted some gnocchi. I got to the cash register, but then I realized I had forgotten my wallet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here is less the repetition of the word &quot;I&quot; - if you used a character name, or third-person &quot;he,&quot; this would feel just as odd. So you need to switch up your sentence structure a bit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I went to the store this morning, to get some gnocchi. It was only at the cash register that I realized I didn't have my wallet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One handy trick for this is, once you've established the narrator (&quot;I&quot;) as the subject, you can shift into describing what he sees and experiences, and enriching associations, rather than just describing his direct actions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I went to the store this morning. Ralph's has my favorite brand of gnocchi; you can't find it anywhere else. Believe me; I've tried. The cashier was all chirpy and polite right up until the moment I patted my pockets and realized my wallet had stayed home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This version may take a little more wordcount, but it lets you fill out your text with extra detail (a favorite brand, fussiness, a polite cashier), and a lot more voice (rather than &quot;Person X did Y. Then Person X did Z.&quot;). Particularly, notice how giving attention to &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; things (the store; the gnocchi; the cashier) makes the sentences no longer &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; about the protagonist, helping solve your difficulties with overusing &quot;I.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-02-27T20:08:56.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21148" CreationDate="2016-02-27T20:17:11.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both are logical fallacies. The first is Argument from Ignorance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Description: The assumption of a conclusion or fact based primarily on lack of evidence to the contrary.  Usually best described by, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explanation: There is an infinity of things we cannot prove -- the moon being filled with spare ribs is one of them.  Now you might expect that any “reasonable” person would know that the moon can’t be filled with spare ribs, but you would be expecting too much.  People make wild claims, and get away with them, simply on the fact that the converse cannot otherwise be proven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/54-argument-from-ignorance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is perhaps Hasty Generalisation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Description: Drawing a conclusion based on a small sample size, rather than looking at statistics that are much more in line with the typical or average situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/101-hasty-generalization&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-02-27T20:17:11.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21153" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-27T20:41:05.530" Score="2" ViewCount="296" Body="&lt;p&gt;What have you found to be the least expensive portable computer that will handle Microsoft Word?  I don't need any other Office applications or the internet;  however, I do need either a USB connection or a CD drive so I can save my work and take it to a printer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18037" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-02-27T22:02:54.883" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T07:02:32.443" Title="Minimal requirements for a portable computer for writing only?" Tags="|tools|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2016-03-08T23:27:09.110" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21148" CreationDate="2016-02-27T21:09:13.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second is Hasty Generalization. The first is not a logical fallacy at all. It is perfectly correct and logical to say that, if you haven't done an exhaustive search for unicorns, you can't state with certainty that there are no unicorns in the world. This type of reasoning is important in science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you take this uncertainty very seriously, you tend to get into a philosophical viewpoint called radical skepticism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, though, uncertainty tends to go hand in hand with inductive reasoning, which says that, if you have examined 2000 crows and every one of them is black, it is likely that all crows are black, and this becomes the prevailing theory until a counterexample appears. It becomes about what is probably true rather than what is certainly true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, it might be argued that there are indeed unicorns in the world. The animal was first described, in some detail, by a number of Greek writers—a large, one-horned animal, with legs like an elephant and a body like a horse. They were probably talking about the rhinoceros, but the &quot;body of a horse&quot; part seems to have been misinterpreted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastActivityDate="2016-02-27T21:09:13.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21143" CreationDate="2016-02-28T05:25:30.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neal Stephenson's book Anathem is set in a world where the writing system of the people who live outside the main character's monastery is something like you describe.  I think the only reason that it worked so well was that the main character didn't understand it and Stephenson never tried to make the reader learn it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like something dangerously like dialect, which just isn't a good idea to include in your work.  If you wrote a book that had Chinese people in it, and  all of them spoke using Chinese characters, then you'd alienate all of your English speaking readers that couldn't read Chinese... that's most of them probably.  And here, you're proposing to write dialogue in a language that &lt;em&gt;none&lt;/em&gt; of your readers will understand.  Sounds like a bad idea to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever tried to read the original Uncle Remus stories about Br'er Rabbit?  They're written in a phonetic transcription of a dialect, and are just about impossible to read.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/Harris2/toc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Try it and see what you think.&lt;/a&gt;  Then decide if writing your book in the dialect your characters are using is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastEditorUserId="16155" LastEditDate="2016-03-01T06:03:50.050" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T06:03:50.050" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21158" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21168" CreationDate="2016-02-28T07:16:53.167" Score="4" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a junior in high school and have been asked by my teachers to prepare a welcome note and start the ceremony. I have to: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;introduce the principal and the guest of honor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;thank the faculty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;acknowledge the graduates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;recite some quotes and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;narrate some success stories. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that I am supposed to introduce two seniors who are going to host the rest of the ceremony. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone give me guidance in how to write such a welcome note and provide links to some examples? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18044" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-08T14:38:22.703" LastActivityDate="2020-10-08T03:32:27.507" Title="How to start writing a graduation speech?" Tags="|getting-started|speechwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8443" CreationDate="2016-02-28T10:24:39.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don’t think you can expect a pen name to be bulletproof. It is more of a camouflage than an invisibility cloak. It enables you to maintain some privacy because you are promoting the pen name instead of your real name, and so even if your pen name gets very famous, you can still check into a hotel under your real name. Notice that we know Mark Twain’s real name, but it is not famous, so relatively few people know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are legal tricks you can do to further obfuscate, but still, it is not going to be bulletproof. Your name is still going to be legally connected in some way and the more famous your pen name gets, the more likely you are to be found out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way pen names get found out is somebody — typically a reporter — goes looking for Richard Bachman and finds that he is not a real person because he has no birth certificate and other paperwork. Then they go looking for the actual author, who turned out to be Steven King.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T10:24:39.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21146" CreationDate="2016-02-28T13:54:44.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don’t have a narrative story to tell, you probably want to write poetry. You can find lots of articles on the Web that will help you get started writing poetry if you haven’t written any before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might even want to write poems in such a way that the shape of the words actually creates a visual picture, which is called &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_poetry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Concrete Poetry&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T13:54:44.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21162" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-28T15:45:52.217" Score="0" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear professor,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following is an online writing resource that could help learner to&#xA;  write the essay: &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/&lt;/a&gt; . May I know If&#xA;  could I send it to the course? Thank you in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if this email is well written. I am a teaching fellow and I should ask for permission before sending something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17976" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T17:53:20.457" Title="I want to ask for permission to send a link to a group of students" Tags="|email|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-03-01T13:05:29.840" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21162" CreationDate="2016-02-28T17:53:20.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a request for proofreading, which doesn't really fit here on the writer's group.  We're looking for questions about and related to the writing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my edit to your email.  This is just one way to do it, and might not be the best way... There are a million ways to write something like this and it can depend on personal style and the relationship that you have with your professor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Professor,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a web link that might be helpful to the other students taking our course.  I'm wondering if it would be appropriate if I sent it out to them, or if you'd prefer that I do not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your reference, the link is: &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T17:53:20.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21164" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-28T19:44:21.743" Score="4" ViewCount="891" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just interested. Since there were many plot twist in books, movies, etc some critics say they're unbelievable. Now I'm asking myself, what makes a plot twist believable/unbelievable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-06-05T01:52:10.143" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T01:52:10.143" Title="What makes a plot twist believable/unbelievable?" Tags="|plot|realism|twist|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-28T21:49:18.953" Score="1" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a picture text book for children and there will be around 20 books in the series. I have a publisher that has shown interest, and wants to know whether I want my books to be published as a collection in one volume of work, or for all books to be published separately but at the same time, or for all books to be considered distinctly on their individual merits, potentially allowing time for the first to generate sales. I am new to this so it would be great for someone to give a little advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18055" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T18:02:32.647" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T18:02:32.647" Title="Should I publish a series of children's books simultaneously or separately?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|publisher|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21166" CreationDate="2016-02-28T22:12:10.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I think about all the picture books my son has owned, the only ones (that I can think of) that are less than twenty pages are the very cheap, cardboard-page books that we bought from the supermarket for a pound each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything else has many pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You really have to talk to the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing in a volume just means putting more than one story in a single book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T22:12:10.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21158" CreationDate="2016-02-29T00:50:28.487" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on being asked to give this speech! Not everyone gets to welcome a graduation ceremony. I'll try to help by giving you a general structure that you can use when you write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start by thanking everyone for attending and for spending their time honoring the seniors who worked hard to get to the point they're at now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then comes your success stories. Figure out what you want your main message of this speech to be and pick your stories accordingly. Do you want the audience to feel nostalgic for everything that's about to change? Should they be smiling about new opportunities ahead? What emotion do you want to evoke and how can you do that? Find some quotes that can accompany your stories and include those as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then move on to introduce everyone you need to and thank the faculty. Introduce the two seniors and congratulate them once again on their accomplishments. Then let them take the stage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll include this link for you to look at as well: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzle.com/articles/welcome-speeches-for-graduation.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.buzzle.com/articles/welcome-speeches-for-graduation.html&lt;/a&gt;. At the end of the article, it includes a very famous graduation welcome speech that is worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Humor is not only encouraged, but to some degree, expected. Make a joke about &quot;senioritis&quot; or about the students who still have to make it through more years of schooling. Poke fun at all of the ramen noodles that stereotypical college students eat. Unfortunately, I'm not a funny person but anything that makes the audience smile is worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;End with a bang. This is an exciting moment for a lot of people; act like there's no where else you'd rather be.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Practice, practice, practice! Have someone listen to you read your speech beforehand and have them comment on your delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, have fun. You only have one more year left yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your speech and let me know if you need any more help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16350" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-02-29T00:57:31.927" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T00:57:31.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21139" CreationDate="2016-02-29T01:12:07.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't a &quot;standard way&quot; to explain technical concepts to those who wouldn't understand, at least to my knowledge. I do, however, have a few techniques that you might be able to try when you have to write up a technical report in a simple way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Break up your report into clearly divided sections. This allows for the reader to more clearly understand what they're looking at.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Define everything in easily understood words. Personally, I dislike looking at footnotes; it makes the document look more difficult or complex that it actually is. But the decision on where to define words is up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Generalize. If you can give a small description of how something works without going into great detail, then give it as an overview.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you can, use analogies and/or diagrams. Your tables probably help a lot, but make sure that they're big enough to easily read and see. Many clients likely don't want to have to think too hard about what a table is showing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get help. I often pretend I'm explaining things to my mom and that helps me use smaller vocabulary and generalize technological functions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, this is something that might always plague tech developers. I do have one last suggestion, although it might not be the most ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep your client on a partial &quot;need-to-know&quot; basis. Give them all of the information, but for the technical sections, leave it as complex and lengthy as it needs to be to share the information. Give them a general overview of collection methods/etc, but if they can trust you to develop a product that will achieve the intended objectives and meet the given requirements, then your job will be much easier. Offer to meet with them and go into more depth if they'd like/if you're able to, but if they won't understand it then they don't need to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16350" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T01:12:07.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21164" CreationDate="2016-02-29T01:21:33.563" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;@gravity_train has it correct in the comment above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a plot twist is unbelievable if it comes from absolutely nowhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A plot development, twist, and/or character action is unbelievable if it seems &lt;em&gt;arbitrary.&lt;/em&gt; If there is no evidence, no foreshadowing, no hints, no clues, absolutely &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; a reader could have picked up, even on a second reading/viewing, to point to the action or event, then it shatters the &quot;willing suspension of disbelief&quot; which a reader must have to embark on a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A meta example of this is the satirical film &lt;em&gt;Murder by Death.&lt;/em&gt; Parody versions of a group of famous literary detectives are invited to a mansion to solve a murder mystery in exchange for $1 million. At the end of the film, all the detectives assemble and one after another accuse one character of committing the murder(s). But the character stands up and snipes at all of them: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You've all been so clever for so long you've forgotten to be humble. You've tricked and fooled your readers for years. You've tortured us with surprise endings that made no sense. You've introduced characters at the end that weren't in the book before! You've withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, when a character acts &quot;out of character&quot; by doing something without any kind of motive, or acting against what's been established for the character previously, without explanation, the audience loses belief. &quot;Without explanation&quot; is the important part — over the years of &lt;em&gt;Star Trek&lt;/em&gt;, Vulcans (who are presented as logical, stoical, and generally imperturbable) have laughed, wept, danced, screamed, and raged, but all &lt;em&gt;believably&lt;/em&gt;, because the script made a point of explaining why the Vulcan in question was behaving that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T01:21:33.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21171" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-29T03:44:35.507" Score="8" ViewCount="677" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I write the passing of a few years in a story? I have two separate character timelines and I want to show the characters aging throughout the story. Should I divide it up into parts? You can read what I have of my story &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wattpad.com/story/59535165-visions-reign-of-the-dark-for-critiques/parts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; to see what different segments I'm working with and get a better idea of what I'm asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18060" LastEditorUserId="14560" LastEditDate="2016-03-01T11:56:51.497" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T17:09:07.207" Title="How do I show a long amount of time has passed?" Tags="|time-depiction|pacing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21171" CreationDate="2016-02-29T04:35:29.810" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to show passage of time is by referring to time-based events.  Over the course of a year you can use seasons for this; if we see your characters walking through the snow, and next see them walking through the fall leaves, we know that at least half a year has passed.  For multi-year spans, look for milestone events: a graduating student who we last saw entering college, somebody celebrating his five-year anniversary at the job, the birth and progress of children (could be relatives/friends and not your characters), the first fruit from the tree they planted as a sapling in the earlier part, whatever works in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way, if you're using the close-character POV, is to use your characters' thoughts: &quot;Had it really been three years already since (prominent event from the earlier part)?&quot; and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T04:35:29.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21139" CreationDate="2016-02-29T05:27:46.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That table is not client-ready. I understand the technical terms like “dropdown” and “textarea” but those words should never be put in front of a client. Except for the rare exception who has some programming experience, at best the client will get nothing out of it, and at worst, they will have a really uncomfortable experience and resent you for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you don’t use tables to explain these interfaces to your clients — instead, use an illustration. It is very standard to use illustrations in technical writing. When I wrote technical books, they were 1000 pages with 500 illustrations. If not for the illustrations, they would have been 3000 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the most non-technical client has very likely used a Web form. So all you have to do is show them something that looks somewhat like a Web form, and they will see a Web form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/npvFd.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/npvFd.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I made that illustration with &lt;a href=&quot;http://graphic.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Autodesk Graphic&lt;/a&gt; in about 5 minutes, tops, including placing it within this article. It is just a few rectangles and a few text objects. The hardest part was looking up a list of alphabetical US states that I could paste in there. Even if you don’t have any experience with drawing tools, it will still likely take you less time to make an illustration like this than it would to make a table or write a description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to put a caption “for illustration purposes only — not a final layout” on your illustration to prevent the client from thinking that is really what the final form will look like. It is meant to simply be a step up from the table you made, not to be a layout. But an additional advantage beyond better client comprehension is less ambiguity for the person who makes the final layout. The table version could be accidentally misinterpreted, but it is pretty hard for a Web designer or programmer to misinterpret an illustration like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So illustrations improve your specification for everybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastEditorUserId="13337" LastEditDate="2016-02-29T05:35:18.693" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T05:35:18.693" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21153" CreationDate="2016-02-29T06:40:53.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Tave says in a comment, to get an authoritative answer you could go to the Microsoft website, check the system requirements for MS Word, and then go to any website that sells computers and look for something meeting those requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, with the current state of technology, MS Word is a pretty light load for a modern computer. If that's all you plan to run on it, I think almost any current generation computer would do the trick. I'd suggest you consider what size keyboard and display you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you'd have little trouble finding a low-end laptop adequate to the job for under $300.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T06:40:53.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21153" CreationDate="2016-02-29T06:56:53.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The minimum writing computer today is an iPad mini 2 with a Bluetooth keyboard, which you can get for about $300 total. It is basically a digital typewriter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key advantages over a traditional PC:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;it is mobile and has 10 hour battery, so you can take it everywhere with you so that you can write whenever and wherever inspiration strikes&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you can choose from literally thousands of Bluetooth keyboards, either generic ones or ones that are made specifically for iPad, and that enables you to choose one that really suits your taste, as opposed to just using whatever keyboard is built-into a cheap notebook or came with a cheap desktop&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;there are writing apps for iPad that are totally focused on writing, and are much better for a writer than Microsoft Word, with less distractions, auto-save, auto-backup, beautiful text rendering, and they cost $0 to $10 each — but if you specifically need Microsoft Word, it runs on iPad also&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;there are great note-taking and outlining tools, again that are only $0 to $10&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;there are great native blogging tools, so that you can very easily manage a blog to go with your writing, and these are typically free&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;your writing apps run full screen by default (although you can bring a second app out from the side) so that you are really focused on your writing, like with a typewriter — the default style is like Kerouac’s typewriter with teletype paper in it: a giant endless page that you can type into without distraction&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;iPad backs itself up to the cloud, so you don’t need to work with disks or USB keys to do that — although there are USB keys with both USB and Lightning that work with iPad&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;there are apps for sending print jobs directly to printers over the Internet — for example there is one that you can use to send a print job to a FedEx Office and then you go to the FedEx Office location and put a code into a photocopier and your print job comes out&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you spend less time working with the computer, troubleshooting it, using USB keys, backing it up, and so on, and therefore you get more time and focus for your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, ideally you don’t go to a computer or lug a computer around, and you don’t use sneakernet with USB keys — you just have writing tools in a backpack or briefcase or purse that you can use at any time and which can send print jobs over the Internet and back themselves up over the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastEditorUserId="13337" LastEditDate="2016-02-29T07:02:32.443" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T07:02:32.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6450" CreationDate="2016-02-29T09:27:33.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;shall&quot; language is universally accepted, as testified by the official recommendation from ISO (International Organization for Standardization):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;“shall” indicates a requirement&#xA;“should” indicates a recommendation&#xA;“may” is used to indicate that something is permitted&#xA;“can” is used to indicate that something is possible, for example, that an organization or individual is able to do something&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SOURCE: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iso.org/iso/foreword&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.iso.org/iso/foreword&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISO standards are produced across international and disciplinary/business areas, so I would say that this language is definitely a good starting point - with the best practice being to explicitly say which terms you'll use and what they mean!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16176" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T09:27:33.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21171" CreationDate="2016-02-29T10:13:58.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key word in your little conundrum is &quot;context&quot;. Remember the basic elements of plot; setup, conflict, resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The setup is just that; you set everything up. Now understand that each new &quot;timeline&quot; is essentially a different context with a new setup. What Monica above suggested with the seasons is essentially a way of signaling the reader that things are &quot;different&quot; in a way that can't be explained other then the passing of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't get autumn leaves in the springtime, nor snowfall in the summer. You don't watch the wrinkles on your receding hairline at age 15 nor do you pop pimples when your 6. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your task is this; think about what features each timeline has that is both distinct and readily apparent to the narrating character. Then you must describe them in a way that is concise and relevant to the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use these descriptions to separate them in your story. Consider breaking it into parts, like chapters or sections, with said descriptions beginning each part. Also consider just naming the time and date between each timeline. Separating them is important, and you need to figure out how you want to do that. Breaking it apart is just one possible solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11118" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T10:13:58.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21179" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21180" CreationDate="2016-02-29T10:48:04.297" Score="9" ViewCount="1107" Body="&lt;p&gt;My character is a police detective. But not the best one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to stay away from idealizations in this book. Characters will make normal, human, mistakes; they'll change their minds and be more like real people. Not perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this book won't be for everyone. But for me, it's kind of a real story of an ordinary man doing extraordinary things. But not saving the world. He will be strong in his attitude, his moral code, and his behavior to the other people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm expecting that some readers will be able to solve the problem early, before the detective does, and continue with the flow of the story. But my character will make a normal mistake. Not in procedures, and not a moral failing, but in ordinary things - like expertise, or people reading. And he will jail an innocent person, although it might be obvious to the reader that he's got the wrong guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I accomplish this without boxing this character as dumb in a reader's eyes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14020" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-25T09:33:13.970" LastActivityDate="2021-05-14T03:56:28.563" Title="How to make a dumb decision as a character and still not let the reader to think same about him?" Tags="|characters|character-development|structure|mystery|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21179" CreationDate="2016-02-29T12:58:50.377" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to make the mistake understandable. &#xA;One way to do this is to make the falsly accused victim look guilty enough for people to believe the mistake. He could be framed in such a way readers would know what really happened, but the detective not. Or you could give the victim a reason to want to go to jail, so he will confess. Maybe he is threathened, or does he have something to gain? Maybe he is homeless and wants a roof over his head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All by all you just need to make the readers believe and understand his mistake, and they will think no less of him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T12:58:50.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21190" CreationDate="2016-02-29T14:46:01.927" Score="7" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I left my writer's group out of personality issues, invariably somebody becomes a know-it-all, it's been a real struggle to find people willing to invest time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The friends/acquaintances I have who are generously giving time for my last project are likely to be a bit burnt out since it is a 160,000-word epic (which probably has no chance of being published at that level, so I'm going to have a lot of follow-up questions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, my current novel of 80,000 words, give or take, may be ready before the epic gets back into my hands leaving me bereft of a readers' group. So now I don't know where to turn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas on &quot;hiring&quot; free labor for beta readers? I imagine I can offer trade, but one of my problems with the writer's club was the expectation of 4-6 books/year, and I'm not sure if I can commit to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: There is an answer from 5 years ago listing two websites. However, considering the explosion of self-publishing and the growth of electronic media, could I leave this open for a few days to see if there are new ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-02-29T20:28:50.133" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T22:42:00.840" Title="Where to find beta readers?" Tags="|editing|beta-readers|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2016-03-01T13:09:35.253" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21183" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21783" CreationDate="2016-02-29T18:27:30.357" Score="1" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;I occasionally have a case where I want to give a formula and also attribute it. This ends up like that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xywFG.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xywFG.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not really like that, though. The citation looks very odd at this spot. If the next paragraph would continue right after the citation mark, it would be worse, I fear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One solution would be to just attach the citation mark at the end of the sentence, perhaps even after a colon behind “by”. This does not really make sense from a reading-flow perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One could also try to mangle in another sentence, attribute that and give the equation afterwards. That would look nicer but not be correct.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, we can use the &lt;code&gt;\textcite&lt;/code&gt; command from &lt;code&gt;biblatex&lt;/code&gt; which will produce&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Schatz, Weidinger, Deicher [SWD10]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;instead and can by used in the text like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the factor is given by Schatz, Weidinger, Deicher [SWD10] as EQUATION.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or one could append that like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the factor is given by EQUATION as given by Schatz, Weidinger, Deicher [SWD10].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be a good solution that is both scientifically correct and also the least ugly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16336" LastEditorUserId="16336" LastEditDate="2016-05-26T15:52:17.647" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T15:52:17.647" Title="Citation behind a display equation" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21184" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-29T19:45:23.627" Score="5" ViewCount="1846" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know the question seems pretty unclear, so let me try to explain it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm writing my first book and already have big plans. I don't aim to publish. It's just for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want the book to be philosophical. I want it to contain all the ideas and experiences I made in life.&#xA;For that matter, I chose to have a young man coming from an oasis in a desert going out on different adventures. Every adventure is like a short-story, but it's all linked together and at the end of each experience he made there will be something like a moral. At the book's end, he will be a wise person (maybe an old man by that time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to the central question:&#xA;I want so set the story in the Arab world like it was about 1500 years ago. I already did much research on that. But on the other hand, I want it to have a surreal/fantasy feel, which allows me to let him meet a jinn for example, but still everything should feel realistic. I don't want it to be a fantasy book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Bible or the Qur'an could be good examples. (No I don't wish to be the next big prophet.) For someone who believes in it, everything seems real and indeed many of its Information contains real historic events, but for other people who don't believe in the respective religion, it's just a nice story with some real facts.&#xA;Also Paulo Coelho's &quot;The Alchemist&quot; is a excellent example of the feeling I'm talking about. I'm sure most of you read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I want to draw a close line between reality and fantasy. I thought to let the story take place in form of a dream, but in the end I thought that's too simple. That takes the complexity and the sense of all the experiences of the protagonist away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I explained enough since I don't want to bother you with unnecessary details.&#xA;Maybe one of you creative writers out there has made experiences with that or can suggest some stylistic devices on how to handle that &quot;problem&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there isn't a definite answer and the question still seems very vague, but I'm grateful for every advice from you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18068" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-03-02T21:52:30.093" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T04:02:56.137" Title="How to create a surreal/fantasy - feeling in a real world?" Tags="|fantasy|philosophy|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21184" CreationDate="2016-02-29T20:44:17.367" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term you are looking for is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_realism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;magical realism.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; This is when supernatural elements (magic, djinns, wishes, fae, dragons, elves, talking gargoyles, people with wings, meddling gods, spells, demons, and so forth) exist alongside what we consider the &quot;real world,&quot; and everyone considers it normal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this takes place in a contemporary setting, it's often called &lt;em&gt;urban fantasy,&lt;/em&gt; although this is not how you are describing your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between magical realism and plain ol' fantasy is primarily the setting: if it's on some other world, a vaguely defined Dark or Middle Age Europe, pre-Saxon Britain, Ancient Greece/Rome, or any other culture from so long ago that historical records are scarce, that's generally just fantasy. If you research your time and place thoroughly, however, and write it so that it is accurate and realistic, it would be magical realism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between &quot;fantasy&quot; and &quot;surreal,&quot; however. Fantasy, urban or classical, can be extremely straightforward and clear (see the works of CE Murphy and Mercedes Lackey respectively for examples). &lt;em&gt;Surreal&lt;/em&gt; is when things are just slightly off, or everything is a bit weird and dreamlike. Narration tends to consist of a lot of run-on sentences, and events sound like a Dali painting. &lt;em&gt;(The man walked by me, his face melting into feathers, blue to gold to orange to white to blue again in a ceaseless stream, the wind whipping them into flames, which fluttered off and became dancing leaves, glowing and gleaming and tumbling end-over-end like glittering fish in a rippling river of time unending. He tipped his smoldering hat to me as he passed.)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T20:44:17.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21184" CreationDate="2016-02-29T20:48:25.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh my! This is one of the coolest things I think you can do in writing! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can we make our stories set in the real world be like a fantasy?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Paranormal event method&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, when it comes down to it, use real events - but slightly change them according to the powers of your characters. For example, you might write as though it was in a history book - the real past. Then, you could make the jinn just have a trick up his sleeve which wouldn't happen in reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make your writing sound as real as possible, and slowly build up paranormal events until the climax, is a really good method of writing alternate realities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Alternate history method&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to say, that I love these books so much, they are really enjoyable to read. To create an alternate history book, just take events that actually happened in history but change them. Make them more interesting! Make them exciting! There is just so many possibilities of what you could do with this, for example, writing about the christian crusades but maybe adding magic, or machinery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fantastic example of alternate history is the &lt;em&gt;Leviathan&lt;/em&gt; series by Scott Westerfeld. I really think you should read it if you take alternate history seriously as it is just written so well and really reflects on the events of WW1, but with it's own fantastic twist and mechanics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Other methods&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above, I listed the two methods which my English teacher taught me when we studied this. However, I am sure there are an incredible amount of ways to write about something like this, and when it comes down to it, just practice. Write lots of different accounts of what you &lt;strong&gt;might&lt;/strong&gt; want to happen in your story. This way, you might be able to experiment with different styles of writing, different mechanics you might want to include without actually completely starting the book. This will also give you a great outline of what characters you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Surreality?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surreality is a massive part of this writing. Surreal means something is real, but kind of not real at the same time. Keep surprising your reader with more of these &lt;em&gt;surreal&lt;/em&gt; events with the jinn, and keep making the world become slightly more paranormal until the climax. Make very subtle changes to make things seem real. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T20:48:25.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18263" CreationDate="2016-02-29T21:58:35.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this as a classic guide for reporters. A news story should answer all these questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of someone drawing diagrams of it or building some big system out of it, but I don't doubt that someone would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't consciously think in these terms. But it certainly wouldn't hurt to analyze your writing from this perspective. If you proof-read a section of a story you've written looking for answers to these questions, and realize that you never said who was doing something, like maybe you had in mind that Fred did this but on re-reading your story you realize that you never said, this is certainly a problem that should be fixed. In some cases an omission may not matter. Whether event X happens before or after event Y may be crucially important to the plot ... or not. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T21:58:35.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21164" CreationDate="2016-02-29T22:10:55.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What makes anything in a story believable or unbelievable? Is it consistent with what we know of human nature, the laws of physics, etc? (If this is a fantasy or science fiction story, is it consistent with the laws of physics et al as this story has set them out to be?) Is it consistent with what has happened in the story up to this point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can often make the wildest things believable if you foreshadow them properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard an interview with a novelist once where he said that he spends a lot of his time when writing putting door in alleys. Of course he said it this way to be cryptic, but then he explained: If you say the hero is being chased by the villain, and he suddenly turns into an alley, and there's a door there that leads him to a place where he's safe, the reader is going to say, &quot;Oh come on! He just HAPPENED to find a door that leads to safety?&quot; But if in a previous chapter you had the hero come to that alley and find that door, and now at a crucial time he runs there and uses the door, it sounds quite plausible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RE plot twists specifically, I'd add: they must be used sparingly. One plot twist in a story can surprise and entertain the reader. A second plot twist and the reader may say, &quot;wow, you got me again&quot;. But beyond that, the story starts to be too unpredictable for the reader to care. I recall a book I read years ago where every chapter there was another plot twist, every chapter we were told that the person or group that we were told were the villains the previous chapter are really good guys, or somebody wasn't who they seemed, etc. After 3 or 4 of these I realized that nothing in the story could be taken at face value. By the time the writer got to the end and had his final plot twist, I was left thinking, &quot;So is this supposed to be the truth now? Or am I supposed to understand that this is a fake too, that the reality is yet something else?&quot; I quit caring long before I reached the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T22:10:55.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21182" CreationDate="2016-02-29T22:21:18.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fictionpress.com/betareaders/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.fictionpress.com/betareaders/&lt;/a&gt;.  You'd have to have a fictionpress account, but there's a long list of betas to choose from with their list of strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and they are reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14026" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T22:21:18.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21182" CreationDate="2016-02-29T22:42:00.840" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a previous answer mentioned, fictionpress.com is one site that offers connection to beta readers. Outside of that side though, there are plenty of places that offer beta services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Critique Circle &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.critiquecircle.com/&lt;/a&gt; is a popular writing community&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tumblr has some blogs that are devoted to pairing beta readers with writers. One google search will do the trick!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goodreads.com &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/50920-beta-reader-group&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/50920-beta-reader-group&lt;/a&gt; provides a discussion forum of sorts to find a beta reader as well as advertise your own beta services.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;World Literary Cafe &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldliterarycafe.com/forum/125&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.worldliterarycafe.com/forum/125&lt;/a&gt; also offers to pair beta readers and writers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this, networking will be your best friend, even if it is just within your community. Social media sites can advertise your need for a free or low cost beta reader. Many places have local writing groups (who I find often meet in local libraries) that you can probably join and make a &quot;mutual beta relationship&quot; with another reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16350" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T22:42:00.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21053" CreationDate="2016-03-01T00:38:28.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no definitive answers, depends on skill and richness of the story as Tolkien proved. IMO for a single novel, it shouldn't be more than a dozen or so, with distinct sounding names. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree both with tonal meaning and gimmicks, both work as illustrated by the many authors who use either or both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your names If Hiraku &amp;amp; Ayumu are minor characters, after a while i may only remmenber the &quot;U&quot; ending and confuse the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw, for me Nikolas and Katherine are moutfulls ( Ni-Ko-Las (or Laus), &amp;amp; Ka-Te-Rin (or Rina)) that would tend to be slightly irritating as pages go. It could be worth it to go with short versions or nicknames like Kat &amp;amp; Nick, Kol &amp;amp; Ther, Las &amp;amp; Rin... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also their names reminds one of Tsars, Emperors....may be too grand and majestic for the &quot;everyday hero&quot; , if that's what they are...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Else you could go descriptive with their atributes. For Nickolas you could use Victor, Vicci, Warren (as in &quot;war end&quot;), for Katherine maybe something like Flame, Torch, Tampered, Crystal, Chrysalis.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2016-03-01T00:44:16.170" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T00:44:16.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21179" CreationDate="2016-03-01T10:21:25.170" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Challenge accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, allow me to patronise you with this lecture. I was asking myself a similar question recently and came up with this answer to myself. &lt;em&gt;Your&lt;/em&gt; answer is In the last paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to write a compelling story do not have your main character make mistakes without good reason. Just because 'it's realistic' is not a good reason. Arbitrary events are worthless in story currency. What's the moral of such a tale? 'Don't make mistakes'? That's a little unhelpful!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the characters can be as dumb or random as you like, but the bond between your MC and your reader is very strong, almost psychic. In a way, your MC &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; your reader. If you have told your reader there is danger ahead, your MC's instinct should tell him the same thing. If it doesn't, your reader may get confused, or frustrated, or simply scornful of the strange or dumb ways your MC is behaving, and they may just take it out on your writing. You as the writer are held responsible for everything in the story. You won't be around to explain that random slip-ups are 'realistic'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want your MC to make mistakes he should do it because he is visibly at fault. He's ignoring instinct, advice or clues because he's struggling with character flaws, e.g. pride, stubbornness, prejudices. His refusal or inability to do the right thing is the heart of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should look at the mistakes you want him to make, and find his reasons for doing those things. They should define his personal journey, whether it ultimately ends in success or failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lecture over. You knew all of that. What you're looking for is a way around it or a way to subvert it. Try this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surprise your readers with a twist: reveal that detective is not the main character of the story. Somebody else is. Somebody else, whose personal story was actually deeper and more compelling (maybe his partner, maybe the narrator?) steps into the limelight to finish off the overall story, and his/her own personal story. Perhaps in the way Dr. Watson would have to step in to save an incompetent Sherlock Holmes. This gives you a framework to hang up the detective's story and poke holes in his judgement or lament his terrible bad luck, without the reader feeling they had been robbed of a satisfying and logical conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T10:21:25.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21142" CreationDate="2016-03-01T12:33:25.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;em&gt;The Hollywood Standard&lt;/em&gt; by Christopher Riley (2nd Edition, pages 54-56), the simplest way to set up montages is with a scene heading of MONTAGE or SERIES OF SHOTS followed by the content separated into paragraphs. (Or including dialogue as follows):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;KEVIN'S APARTMENT - MONTAGE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kevin makes the bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;KEVIN (V.O.)&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  There's something about cleaning that calms me down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He dusts the bookshelf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;KEVIN (V.O.) (CONT'D) &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  It relaxes me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, if you don't think that looks very organized, you may include scene headings for each shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;KEVIN'S APARTMENT - MONTAGE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A) INT. BEDROOM - DAY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Kevin makes the bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;KEVIN (V.O.)&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;    There's something about cleaning that calms me down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;B) INT. LIVING ROOM - DAY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;He dusts a bookshelf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;KEVIN (V.O.) (CONT'D)&lt;br/&gt; It relaxes me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that the action is indented to the level of the heading and not flush with the left edge.&#xA;Of course, the dialogue is still formatted the same way as normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A note about &quot;CONTINUOUS&quot;:&#xA;Continuous is ONLY used when you are following the character through to a new location. Do not use it when you are indicating something is happening at the same time in a different location. If your character walks outside and we follow, then it is continuous. If he or she walks outside and we stay inside for a moment before cutting to the character, it is not continuous. (This is something that gets misused a lot in screenplays.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18074" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T12:33:25.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19286" CreationDate="2016-03-01T12:40:56.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is not specifically for writing about health-related topics, &lt;a href=&quot;https://studio.envato.com/explore/content-writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Envato Studio&lt;/a&gt; has a marketplace with writers who are available to write content on any subject.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can contact the writers you like and ask if they can carry out the task you need help with. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also find copy editing, blog writers, press released, technical writers, cover letter help, and creative writing. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I have a shop set up there, but I am not self-promoting. I have no experience writing for health topics.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18074" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T12:40:56.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21179" CreationDate="2016-03-01T14:50:30.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Distract him. Exhaust him. Put him under pressure from his boss, from the press, from his wife, from the party next door that goes on until 4am when he has to be up at six, from the pain he thinks might be cancer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe his very horror at the crime and sympathy for the victim - good qualities in themselves - stop him from thinking clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of the reasons that have caused &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; to have a day from hell and inflict them on him on the day he most needed to be alert to see the clues that were there all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T14:50:30.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21171" CreationDate="2016-03-01T17:09:07.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could go with the old direct method: &quot;Years later, Kate drove the same road...&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T17:09:07.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21147" CreationDate="2016-03-02T01:06:50.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reference is abbreviated to the minimum required to clarify the source. For example, the work first referenced as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;7 Jane Doe, &quot;Infinitely Anonymous,&quot; &lt;em&gt;Every Knows My Name&lt;/em&gt;, 2nd ed., I Am Jane Doe (New York: Jane Doe Publishing, 2016) 42-43&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;on the second and subsequent reference would become either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;8 Doe 45  (if you use only one book by that author, or)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;8 Doe, Everyone 45 (if you use multiple books by the same author.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It used to be customary to use &quot;Ibid.&quot; (short for the latin for &quot;in the same place&quot;) or sometimes &quot;op. cit.&quot; (&quot;in the same place&quot;) for a subsequent reference, but I understand that the MLA no longer recommends that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to check college and university websites, which frequently have 'how-to' instructions on whichever kind of citation they use. MLA is common enough that you should be able to find a number of places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16548" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T01:06:50.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21128" CreationDate="2016-03-02T01:43:44.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, figure out the bare-bones general description of what you've written. From what you've said, I assume it would classify them Non-fiction military short stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hit Google with 'non fiction military short story', and got the following links on the first page: Goodreads 'most popular military non-fiction' and Goodreads 'best modern day military accounts', 'How To Write A Story That MEA Will Publish' at  militaryexperience.org, and 'Nonfiction Short Stories - 3:AM Magazine' at3ammagazine.com (along with a few other less helpful links). Try some similar searches, such as substituting 'army' (or whatever branch you served in) instead of 'military', adding 'magazine' if that's the kind of publisher you want, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for potential publishers for a book (a collection of short stories), try looking for books that are the same kind of non-embellished military non-fiction short story collections, on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes &amp;amp; Noble, etc., and see if there are any books in that niche. If so, see who published them: you now have the name of a publisher that prints that kind of book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And thank you for your service!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16548" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T01:43:44.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21201" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21202" CreationDate="2016-03-02T05:31:39.843" Score="0" ViewCount="4222" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a multi-faceted essay that will fill multiple pages (I suppose that it could be considered a collage of essays that build on each other to support one larger theme). This is something I've undertaken for pleasure, with the intent of eventual circulation if peer review is positive. I placed acknowledgements, dedications, and a preface in front as I feel they complement the theme and help introduce the relatively lengthy piece. Generally, would academic standards permit such in an essay, or do I need to call this something else? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, the structure of an essay is fairly vague, but is typically small enough not to warrant such paraphernalia; would it seem out of place on an essay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I should have mentioned that I did some Google Searches about forewords/prefaces on essays, but what I kept seeing was, '...a foreword is an essay...' or the like.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Note: I originally asked about putting a foreword on this essay, but should have realized that it was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersandeditors.com/preface__foreword__or_introduction__57375.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;really a preface&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16829" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-03-15T00:34:49.203" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T00:34:49.203" Title="Can an essay have a preface?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|essay|forewords|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21201" CreationDate="2016-03-02T10:59:04.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're not submitting this as part of any assignment or for publication in a standardized format, where there are rules about content and structure, I say go for it. Foreword, dedication, acknowledgments, preface, interstitial matter, footnotes, afterword, index, glossary, colophon, reader survey — whatever you want to add. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; submitting it for publication or review, then you have to follow whatever the rules are about such submissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T10:59:04.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21201" CreationDate="2016-03-02T11:57:55.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you may be getting bogged down with semantics. After all, what is a foreword besides an introduction, really?&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;There is a a sizeable portion of the academic community that is exploring academic-as-creative writing.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;For example, using poetry as part of an essay or find a different way of presenting an idea than the standard MLA-cited article.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;In other words: go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18074" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T11:57:55.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21204" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-02T14:09:52.343" Score="3" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does publishing on Amazon work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I retain my rights and can I later send it to a print publisher if any becomes interested, and rescind from my obligations towards Amazon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15695" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T16:36:23.970" Title="Self-publishing on Amazon" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16775" CreationDate="2016-03-02T14:37:09.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a big difference between using an expletive, and quoting an expletive.  I would strongly advise against the former in an essay, but the latter is a quite different situation --it's reportage, not usage.  If the quote is important to your essay, go ahead and include it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If using the quote makes you personally uncomfortable, or if your professor asks you to censor it, LaurenIpsum's advice is the correct path to follow.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T14:37:09.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21204" CreationDate="2016-03-02T14:56:32.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to sell your ebooks through amazon. And your rights as the publisher depend on the one you choose. And Amazon &quot;hosts&quot; your content it doesn't buy away your publishing rights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just using amazon as a publisher and not signing up for &quot;kdp select&quot;. If you choose to go this way, you can sell your book elsewhere too. Even with other venues that compete with Amazon such as Barnes and Noble's. Or host it at your website too(for a price ofcourse). At no point can you give out your work for free and still put a price at Amazon's listing of your book. Its just unethical.You can post a sample chapter for free, for promotion/marketing (not sure maybe 10% of your content).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Selling/publishing at Amazon and also signing up for &quot; KDP select&quot;. Now if you do this you are locked in for a period of 3 months, during which you can't sell your work elsewhere. You can post a  sample chapter for free (not sure maybe 10% of your content)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After 3 months of you can opt out of &quot;KDP select&quot;, by doing so you get to sell elsewhere too along with Amazon (like I said in the first way). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you choose to stay in &quot; KDP select &quot; after 3 months pass, the exclusivity again applies for another 3 months and so on. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is KDP select is a whole topic it's own. Just visit Amazon's site for the whole Terms and conditions and fine print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it comes to publishing with Amazon. Below are general stuff about copyright.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note : Unless your content has been given out for free(excluding short promotion periods) you own the publishing rights to your work. Or if you sign it away for a sum of money(however small it may be), you give away your first publishing rights. Amazon isn't buying your rights, it's just hosting your content for a fee, which it collects after every sale. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you give it out for &quot;free&quot;, or post it on some site. You give away your rights(electronic publishing rights) to publishing it. There are legal work arounds. But that a huge discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look into &quot;First publication rights&quot; or &quot;FNASR&quot;, for a detailed study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16656" LastEditorUserId="16656" LastEditDate="2016-03-02T16:36:23.970" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T16:36:23.970" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21201" CreationDate="2016-03-02T17:30:47.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Call it a (short?) book because many of the elements you've listed are commonplace in books. You also hint that this project is growing, so it might in the end, fill the space between boards, but either way, many masterpieces have also been notable for their brevity. Good luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14708" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T17:30:47.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21184" CreationDate="2016-03-02T19:56:08.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Word of advice: don't put Mohammed into your story, unless you want to spend the rest of your life in hiding from extremists.  So I'd stay away his time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about ancient Babylon instead?  Then you can have Abraham, Job, jinns, magi, &quot;god&quot;-kings, various &quot;gods&quot;, peasants, priests, craftsmen, traders, merchants, students, city folk in general, soldiers, fortified city-states only a few days' travel from each other, caravans, desert raiders, slavery, polygamy, concubines, etc.  Or, ancient Persia, before Alexander the Great (and well before Mohammed).  Most of the stuff would be roughly the same.  You'd eliminate Abraham and Job, but would add monotheistic Jewish exiles.  (Read the Biblical book of Ezekiel if you want an example of surrealism from Persia.)  For either time period, you have a ready-made mythology and a lot of archaeology to give background, but the exact history is sketchy (except on a grand scale).  A lot of the background research you've done would still apply.  Side trips to the Indus valley could add Hindu and Buddhist ideas/experiences, depending on your time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideas to add surrealism: 1) Anachronisms.  People/things from the wrong time period.  Maybe extend that to anatopisms: people/things from the right time but wrong place.  2) Tragi-comic characters who strongly espouse some philosophy but are living refutations of their philosophy (Ex: satires of Voltaire, Moliere, Defoe; Don Quixote).  3) Situations where the reality is possible but suspect (Ex: The Life of Pi).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5956" LastEditorUserId="5956" LastEditDate="2016-03-02T20:24:15.340" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T20:24:15.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21201" CreationDate="2016-03-02T20:30:19.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An essay is an essay is an essay. What I mean by that is, so long as you do not have specified requirements given to you by a professor or a publisher, your essay can reflect anything and everything you want to have included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do choose to put it into circulation- which I will almost always encourage people to try- depending on how you release it, you may have to bend to make certain specifications. However, while some publishers do have these requirements, you can most always find many who only want the work to be the best that it can be. And if your foreword improves the quality of the piece, then you're golden. If you still worry, consider finding a publisher and asking about their requirements for such a piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16350" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T20:30:19.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21210" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-03T02:24:23.563" Score="1" ViewCount="1024" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really enjoy using Scrivener to write. I don't actually use all of its features -- in truth, I would be satisfied if the program only offered its full screen composition mode plus the binder on the left side of the screen. I like the binder, and I like the full screen composition mode, and I wish that I could combine them. I should also mention that I love a good dark theme, and Scrivener is great in that you can customize the color of many elements, yet I wish I could also change the color of (or hide) the menubar and such. If anyone has any idea how I could go about making these changes, I would love to try. I actually own the OSX and Windows versions and use the Linux version regularly. I'm no hacker, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along these lines, Atom or similar seems really cool except that it's markdown. (It would be nice for me if Atom displayed italics and such)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18085" LastActivityDate="2017-07-21T16:14:10.787" Title="How to hack Scrivener's appearance or add binder to full screen composition mode?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|editing|scrivener|theme|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20487" CreationDate="2016-03-03T03:16:09.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;John Steinbeck's &lt;em&gt;The Grapes of Wrath&lt;/em&gt; might come in handy as background for the Great Depression. The story is about a family that moved to get away from the Dust Bowl conditions in Oklahoma to California during the depression. The book could serve as a part of your research.  Good luck!   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18082" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-03-05T06:27:25.783" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T06:27:25.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21128" CreationDate="2016-03-03T06:39:05.123" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should consider putting them on &lt;a href=&quot;http://medium.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medium&lt;/a&gt;. It is basically a magazine that anyone can contribute to. You tag your stories with keywords, and Medium readers &lt;em&gt;follow&lt;/em&gt; keywords in the same way you can &lt;em&gt;follow&lt;/em&gt; users on Twitter. For example, there may be readers following every article tagged “war.” So tagging your work should be done with great care, because you are basically choosing what section of the magazine your work belongs in, and which readers — interested or disinterested — see your work. Investigate exactly which tags apply to your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other magazine editors also look at Medium for articles to syndicate to their sites. So it can be a way to get started publishing in other contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T06:39:05.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7612" CreationDate="2016-03-03T19:16:02.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know it's two years later, but in case others have the same question...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just end it. Write in the first person, try and tie up any loose ends before the death. Then, BANG, your narrator is dead. Last page. Last sentence. Bang. The narrator never gets to finish the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this, you can get creative. Discuss chest pains, numbness in the left arm, nausea, all signs of a heart attack, and then the last sentence of the book ends mid-sentence signifying that your narrator died before they could finish the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18096" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-03-05T06:28:10.580" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T06:28:10.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21184" CreationDate="2016-03-03T20:27:45.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a couple of ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Changes in scene and time&lt;/strong&gt;. The simplest would be a geological event. In &lt;em&gt;The Wizard of Oz&lt;/em&gt;, set in the Great Plains of the US, a tornado accomplished this. In your case, a sandstorm would suffice. Alternatively, you could enter a vortex in an otherwise normal setting such as in Diana Gabaldon's &lt;em&gt;Outlander&lt;/em&gt; series propelling her main characters back and forth 250 years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I actually like the idea of meeting Mohammed as long as this is for yourself. Talking with God, or his prophets or interceders, can be a dynamic philosophical discussion. For commercial purposes, it (including Mohammed) won't succeed on any level, but you stated this wasn't your intent. I don't remember when, where, or the title, but in high school, I read an amazing story between Joan of Arc and Mary (Jesus's mom) about the role of women in society written during the time of the Equal Rights Amendment in America.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Surrealism&lt;/strong&gt;. As previously mentioned, this is a great way to blend the line between fantasy and reality. A slightly more approachable term to Google search would be &lt;em&gt;psychedelia&lt;/em&gt;. This term derives from the use of psychedelic drugs in the 1960s and beyond. There will be a large number of movies and books to help guide you in this genre. Confusion is the key element.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Perceptual Disturbances&lt;/strong&gt;. It won't take long, but you may benefit from looking at the definition of &lt;em&gt;psychosis&lt;/em&gt; in medical terminology such as &lt;em&gt;DSM-V&lt;/em&gt;. Understanding what really happens to the brain when you're talking about bordering on reality will make for a better story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-03-04T04:02:56.137" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T04:02:56.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2016-03-03T21:11:15.340" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO, there are better ways to insult or curse. From my latest chapter: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm tired of of dancing around and putting up with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You slimy tentacled clingy bloodsucking snot dripping unearthly scheming demented mental asinine cruel psychotic callow narrow-minded gutter-slug!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She pulled in the cold air cooling her sore throat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I put no commas in it as she's saying that all in one breath. Hea.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way is to have the characters: She swore under her breath about headers and gods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must have swearing, make it rare so it has the punch you're looking to create. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18098" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-03-05T06:28:48.470" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T06:28:48.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7612" CreationDate="2016-03-04T06:35:18.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need not switch narrators or anything like that. You can still continue the story to give the impression that the main character is still a mute witness watching over incidents from above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am correct, in the novel &quot;A Stone for Danny Fisher&quot; by Harold Robbins, the main protagonist dies in the end but starts the novel from beyond the grave, explaining to his family how he got there and the story of his life. Use the style which best suits you but keep in mind that the story and continuity of the novel should not be interrupted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12670" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T06:35:18.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21220" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21227" CreationDate="2016-03-04T07:00:45.400" Score="2" ViewCount="1161" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I know, when I'm writing, which perspective I should write in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I almost always write with a 1st person narrative because it makes it easy to get great immersion in with the characters. Is it &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; okay to write in 1st person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a piece of fiction writing, how do you know which perspective to use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T12:20:18.830" Title="How to know whether to write in 3rd person or 1st person?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|perspective|third-person|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21091" CreationDate="2016-03-04T08:08:11.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a background in programming, take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://freecomputerbooks.com/The-C-Programming-Language.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kernighan and Ritchie&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I swear that half of the reason Unix became so popular was the truly amazing quality of that book and a few others like it! I know it definitely inspired me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the other extreme, try looking at Unix/Linux man pages, which, while clear, almost never explain anything or even offer usage examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many programmers just don't want to take the time to explain things to lesser beings, or they find it very difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know enough to design and implement something, you know way more than any typical user of it ever will (or would want to!) There are so many facets and underlying background skills needed, that to be competent, many of these have to become second nature, or, to use one of the most pernicious words in the English language, &quot;obvious&quot;. When you're close to something like this as a programmer (or to any other intense area of subject expertise), when you simplify it down to what you think are the basics, it may still be incomprehensible or at least confusing to a user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you probably wouldn't be working on it if you didn't already understand what problems it will solve and why you would want to use it. Things like this are assumed by the programmer before they even start developing and become somewhat unconscious or &quot;obvious&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be a major task to discern what most of your audience would be likely to know and understand and then to provide those things which are necessary to bridge the void between them and the technical information you are presenting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you present too little, then some readers will be lost or misdirected (see lots of SE questions where people ask about those cute little strings of gibberish which are really fork bombs - some of which have already crashed the OP's computer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you present too much, then people stop reading, feel insulted, get lost in irrelevant details, or mutter things at you about TL;DR !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a very special (if usually unsung and under valued) achievement to write something in such a way so that someone who reads it  comes away from it saying something like &quot;I didn't know it could do that!&quot;, &quot;I can't wait to try it myself!, or &quot;Now, I see!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may not have dragons to slay, but if you can make someone feel confident enough to even approach a monster like gimp or inkscape (Those are the sorts of things I usually keep in closets that I'm afraid to open!), then that's a big deal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a huge space for technical writers who can actually explain and teach things - not just document them! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T08:08:11.863" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21091" CreationDate="2016-03-04T09:12:57.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of great answers here. One of the best examples of creative user manuals  I've come across recently is this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jamhub.com/docs/JamHubOwnersManual_English.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://jamhub.com/docs/JamHubOwnersManual_English.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They've done a great job writing for highly technical users who love the techy detail and don't want to be talked down to, and 'plug play' style users who just want to get going with the product but would be confused by the techy stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shows what's possible when you think of your audience!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18100" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T09:12:57.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21220" CreationDate="2016-03-04T11:21:34.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use whatever you think will work best for your story. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote all but two or three of the Sherlock Holmes stories in first person, from Watson's perspective, and you see the longevity and popularity of those works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are benefits and drawbacks of any perspective, but no blanket rules. No one will think it's a problem if all the stories you choose to write are in first person. You may get people suggesting that a story might be told more effectively in third, but that's a function of your story, not some arbitrary writing requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T11:21:34.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21210" CreationDate="2016-03-04T12:33:46.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are focused on how Scrivener looks, then you might be missing the point of Scrivener. The idea there is to be immersed in your book and the writing of your book, not the app itself. Scrivener expects you to be thinking about your characters, research, story, dialogue. The full-screen writing mode is a typewriter. Ideally, when you are using it, you would be in a comfortable chair, maybe some music playing, and just hack away at your writing project. Scrivener expects you to go into full screen mode and write 5000 words, then come back out to use the other tools to prepare for another full-screen session of writing 5000 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if you are focused on how the text looks in a Markdown editor, then you might be missing the point of Markdown. The idea there is to focus on the semantics of what you are writing, completely separate from the way the text looks. In the final product, the italics might be shown in dozens of ways, with extra letter-spacing or slightly larger font size, but you don’t think of that when you are writing because what matters when you are writing is the semantics of italics. The &lt;em&gt;emphasis&lt;/em&gt; that you are putting on a word or words. You want to be &lt;em&gt;thinking&lt;/em&gt; italic emphasis, not thinking “this should look italic.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m sympathetic to your point because I also do visual art and the way things look matters to me. But when writing, we have to put that kind of stuff aside because writing is something that takes 100% of our focus and effort to do well. If you are a fan of George R. R. Martin’s “Game of Thrones,” consider that he literally writes on a 1983 MS-DOS PC. That is one of the ugliest things every created. The radiation alone is problematic. But the reason it may work for him is because there is nothing there to distract him from his story and characters. Which obviously, have captivated millions of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T12:33:46.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21225" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-04T12:40:16.303" Score="1" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm searching for a tool that would make real-time suggestions based on &quot;real world&quot; text. The only corpus-based tool I know of is &lt;em&gt;Writefull&lt;/em&gt; - does anybody know of any others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18002" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T17:55:28.400" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T12:11:00.240" Title="What corpus-based writing tools do you use?" Tags="|style|tools|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21226" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25193" CreationDate="2016-03-04T14:37:10.707" Score="0" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;In narrative essays, should I make all the paragraphs narrative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the introduction, the body, and the conclusion are all narrative paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if I started the introduction with a descriptive paragraph and the body with a narrative paragraph? Is it still a narrative essay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm holding in my mind now is that every narrative essay must contain narrative paragraphs only. (Like descriptive essays, which contain only descriptive paragraphs/ argumentative...) Is that true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18104" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-03-07T12:20:33.487" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T17:17:38.637" Title="In narrative essays, should I make all the paragraphs narrative?" Tags="|essay|narrative|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21220" CreationDate="2016-03-04T14:54:30.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say work around your strengths. 1st person narrative, compared to 3rd person, requires a lot of dialogue. You can explain a lot of expressions in 3rd person narrative that would otherwise require you to convey by dialogue. And conveying silent emotional situations in first person is not easy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine yourself writing different emotions; see what you are comfortable with. Seeing the nature of your question, I assume you have just started to explore writing; I would suggest 3rd person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get in touch with your inner genius and voice, you won't need to think what voice to use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1st person or 3rd person is not the only choice you have to make. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You refer to the word &quot;perspective&quot;, it's more of whose (which character's) point of view you want to use. You can choose to tell the story from the perspective of either of the two lead characters, or both. You can always mix 1st and 3rd person, and character point of views in the same piece of fiction. Just make sure it feels natural and doesn't confuse the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Good writing requires a lot of effort to write and none to read.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16656" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-03-07T12:20:18.830" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T12:20:18.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21228" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-04T15:02:17.980" Score="0" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;What word suggests the phenomenon of a man who has a broken heart? He feels like he has nothing to lose. This man will take unnecessary risks for the reward because death doesn't mean much to this broken man. There doesn't even have to be a reward just the feeling of taking the risk gets him off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18105" LastEditorUserId="18105" LastEditDate="2016-03-04T16:23:16.503" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T18:13:08.140" Title="Broken Hearted Man" Tags="|fiction|character-development|romance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2016-03-06T00:19:51.907" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21228" CreationDate="2016-03-04T15:44:26.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Careless crossing of the street during heavy traffic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a good man, could help out someone in trouble for e.g: to fight off an armed thug in an alley.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick fights, get beaten up but doesn't let go until passed out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self abuse by using excessive alcohol, drugs, unprotected sex.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fast driving (but this is probably too boring).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gambles without restraint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17944" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T15:44:26.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21220" CreationDate="2016-03-04T16:00:05.693" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you take a subset of your story and try both and let the story tell you which perspective is best suited for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All stories &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be told in both perspectives but not all stories &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be told in one or the other just because. I myself mull over the idea for a bit before I progress and if I am confused I certainly do the afore mentioned exercise. It not only helps with selecting the ideal perspective but also helps with the detail I can put into a scene later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17944" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T16:00:05.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21220" CreationDate="2016-03-04T18:04:44.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would agree with the answers above. It all depends on what you  feel more comfortable with as a writer. If you think your story would be better suited in third person than go for it! As stated above It's a good idea to test your story in both narrative's to decide which flows easier. Just make sure in whatever narrative you use that you state everything clearly and in detail, in first person I've found some description to be a bit harder than in third person. Once again! Do what your comfortable with always :) Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18060" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T18:04:44.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21228" CreationDate="2016-03-04T18:13:08.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if you are looking for behavioral tendencies or words that would describe him, I'll go ahead and list a few of the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Desolate, Devastated, Depressed, Wretched, Heavy-Hearted, woeful, Heartsick, Despairing, Indifferent, Apathetic, or Fatalist. &#xA;Hope this helps :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18060" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T18:13:08.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21220" CreationDate="2016-03-04T19:34:53.617" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thanks everyone for your answers!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading them through, I tried some things and found out what helped me settle into the first person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;- Rewriting the story in different perspectives&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After rewriting the story, I found that in 3rd person the story didn't flow well, and it was harder to distinguish exactly who the main character was. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;- Strengths&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past, I've written plenty of short stories in different narratives, and I have certainly found that I am able to make a more emotional connection with the character and reader if I write in 1st person, as I can really get inside their head and think exactly what they would think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;- Technical reason&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a theme of depression and anxiety early on, and a lot of thoughts the character thinks to himself until things really get going. I found that instead of having to write &quot;he thought to himself&quot; or whatever, it was so much easier to just do it in 1st person as it helped me avoid that similar sentence structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;- What do I think in conclusion&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, I think you should base the narrative of your story based off the answers above certainly, but, I think it also depends around what you think would be better. Also, think of if its hard to distinguish which person is your main character, or if it's too hard to convey how a character is feeling in 3rd person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also take into consideration your own strengths and weaknesses, and base your ideas off them to create the best work you can create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T19:34:53.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21237" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-05T03:18:40.027" Score="3" ViewCount="9470" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the KDP content guidelines it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pornography &#xA;We don't accept pornography or offensive depictions of graphic sexual acts.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they sell hundreds of erotic novels, including very graphic ones. I was wondering if anyone had experience publishing erotic fiction on Kindle and if they had any knowledge of where the boundaries are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the &lt;em&gt;offensive&lt;/em&gt; part is clear; I guess they are talking about acts that are violent or would be distressing to read, but when they say &lt;em&gt;pornography&lt;/em&gt;, do they mean visual only? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone heard of KDP banning erotic fiction for being too graphic? Just based on some of the other authors that they publish, I'm guessing they are pretty lenient. Does anyone have any experience in this domain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastActivityDate="2021-04-20T06:42:52.137" Title="Erotic fiction: Kindle Direct Publishing guidelines on pornography" Tags="|novel|kindle|erotica|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21238" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21260" CreationDate="2016-03-05T04:19:14.773" Score="4" ViewCount="977" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing up a new story (which I've asked for help on in a few other places) which is a little outside my forte. The majority of my current work is saturday-morning cartoon stuff, light fantasy or allegorical. Now I'm writing a science-fantasy drama that is darker than most of my work. It features heartbroken antiheroes, well-intentioned extremists and keep-to-yourself people who get caught in the crossfire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if there's something I've seen a lot of, it's stories with grit that falls flat in one of 2 ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The premise or events are so absurd, stupid or far-fetched that you either laugh at its absurdity or boo at its stupidity. You just don't feel the grit because you can't take the setting, the characters or the plot seriously enough to care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The story turns into &quot;When hell goes to hell&quot; and everything sucks beyond all possible hope. Here, readers are inclined to laugh at the over-the-top Eeyore-grade pessimism of it all or, more often, simply give up on the story all together under the pretense that there's no point in anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like some tips for myself and other grit-yearning writers on how to find the happy medium between too little and too much. How can I adjust my voice to keep readers turning pages and enjoying the story while feeling the tension and understanding the pain of my characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been looking for advice on this for months now, but haven't been able to find anything helpful. I apologize if this is a duplicate, as I'm sure this question has been asked before, but I simply haven't been able to find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14251" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-03-05T12:10:49.773" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T00:26:27.477" Title="Tips on writing grit" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|voice|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21237" CreationDate="2016-03-05T04:25:14.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have self-published several erotica titles under a pen name through KDP, and I've participated in a number of discussions about this in a writer's forum that I frequent. What we have seen over time is that there are certain topics that Amazon considers taboo, and those are pretty certain to get you banned. These topics include bestiality, incest, and non-consensual sex of pretty much any kind. There may be some writers who have managed to sneak in a book that might cross those lines, but these seem to be the main red flags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the graphic nature of your content, Amazon doesn't seem to be too restrictive unless it happens to cross into one of those forbidden territories. They don't have the resources to read and analyze every title submitted to them, so it would be hard for them to screen every erotic title that comes their way. The main thing they focus on initially will be your description, so make sure that you aren't too graphic there and that your description isn't offensive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something even more critical than the content, however, is the cover of your book. If it depicts anything blatantly sexual or shows too much flesh, then it could get your book blocked or, even worse, labeled as an &quot;Adult&quot; title. If your book falls into that category, then it will usually be blocked from pretty much all search results and will find it harder to make any recommended lists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T04:25:14.797" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21128" CreationDate="2016-03-05T04:48:03.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could always consider self-publishing your work. Whether your stories are a collection of individual tales pertaining to different incidents or a continuous timeline of events, I'm sure you would be able to find an audience. If you aren't familiar with what is required to self-publish, I would recommend visiting a forum where writers discuss the steps they have taken. One that I frequent quite often is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kboards.com/index.php?board=60.0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writer's Café&lt;/a&gt;, which is part of the Kindle Boards community. You can find several authors there who can help answer questions and provide guidance on what you need to get you going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the easiest place to submit your work would be &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kindle Direct Publishing&lt;/a&gt;, where you can make your work available in e-book format. Amazon basically provides the sales platform for you, so all you have to do is promote the book. You can also make your book available in print by using &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CreateSpace&lt;/a&gt;, which is Amazon's print distribution model for self-publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in going through a traditional publishing house, then I would suggest considering a monthly subscription to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersmarket.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writer's Market&lt;/a&gt;, which will provide you with a list of publishers and agents along with their submission guidelines. This would be a quick and simple means of identifying potential publishers that you could consider submitting your work to, but it would involve more time and effort on your part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T04:48:03.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21241" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-05T07:14:59.990" Score="1" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know you are supposed to used Chapter breaks to cut between scenes, but I was wondering if you are supposed to use Chapter breaks when you reference a period of time elapsing within the same scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, should there be chapter breaks (indicated by the three stars) in the following examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“That’s it. Keep a firm hold.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fifteen minutes go by in a flash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;            *       *       *&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Thank you for your help, sir.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You're most welcome.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Let's have a cup of tea before I leave.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;            *       *       *&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twenty minutes later, we watch as she dons her Chanel jacket...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to use a chapter break if you actually reference the time that elapsed? Is it better to use it to jump from one scene to another, rather than to indicate jumping to a later point within a scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a question of author preference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastEditorUserId="15309" LastEditDate="2016-03-05T09:15:48.117" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T14:59:08.690" Title="Using chapter breaks" Tags="|style|novel|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21241" CreationDate="2016-03-05T09:17:37.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would advice you against that. Like you said, the chapter breaks are used when there is a scene changing and that is what people would be expecting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can simply format it as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Let's have a cup of tea before I leave.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twenty minutes later, we watch as she dons her Chanel jacket...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course, if you like the way people perceive the breaks, you can use them. If you want the reader to pause for some fractions of the second, so as to realize that 20 minutes have passed, you can use the breaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6276" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T09:17:37.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12813" CreationDate="2016-03-05T13:57:43.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, lack of description leads to a boring story, while over-describing gets nauseous very quickly. (In regards to character clothing)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I developed a personal style that I think you might want to consider using. That is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;General Description&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detail Description&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gradual Description&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say Mr. John was wearing a black shirt, brown jeans, a blue coat and a cowboy hat. (That would be the general description that comes first) this description doesn't change (Or at least, it shouldn't) and should be given the moment the character is introduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, depending on how your plot moves, a detail description can be given. An important note should be made that this detail description should not be about his clothes (That is to say: NOT about anything previously described) it should instead be something like: Mr. Jack noticed that Mr. John had a strange looking antique wristwatch or a tattoo of a puppy or some other accessory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At last, we go on to the gradual description. That is in regards to his clothes. For example, Mr. Jack said, &quot;That's an ugly coat you gots on yar'self John, why haven't you been wearing dat worn thin' since last year?&quot; to which John replied, &quot;It may have a fews holes, but it's still a good coat.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In so doing you would have managed to say that John is wearing a worn blue coat that has holes and that he has been wearing for a few years, though John still thinks it is a good coat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is if you cover the most important descriptions first and add a few more details later, the later ones help define your characters clothes better. I think that suits my style since I like my characters to have fairly well-described clothes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18116" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-03-07T12:20:43.987" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T12:20:43.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21259" CreationDate="2016-03-05T18:02:26.487" Score="6" ViewCount="10233" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are publishing erotic fiction in KDP, how do you avoid getting the &quot;Adult&quot; rating that will stop the book being easily searched for and stop it showing up in any suggested reading lists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine that the front cover has to be mild and that the contents shouldn't involve grossly offensive sex acts, but are there other factors such as cursing a lot? My book uses the f*** word about 100 times over 150,000 words, and often as the verb as part of a physical act, rather than just as a profanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could being explicit in terms of body parts, even if the scene itself is fairly ordinary, lead to an Adult rating?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been doing research on KDP but can't see the info about the ratings. Does most erotic fiction published on there fall into a milder category such as Erotica or Mature or something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was looking at other erotic fiction on amazon, and I can't see the rating category for each book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone has any experience in publishing erotic with KDP and knows about this, any advice would be appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T23:40:02.110" Title="How to avoid &quot;Adult&quot; rating when publishing erotica on KDP" Tags="|novel|kindle|erotica|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18158" CreationDate="2016-03-05T18:40:25.633" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three questions you can ask yourself when writing a scene where you intend to convey emotion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) How often have I seen this phrase used?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If it's something you've seen a lot of, it's probably a cliche and is likely to be read as overly sentimental. If too cliched, it can even distract the reader from what you are trying to convey. (If I NEVER read about how 'a single tear rolled down her face' again....)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Could this description be used to convey a different emotion or different context?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Your character just 'sniffed and wiped her eyes, while trying to smile.' Is she reminicing about an old flame? Watching Beaches on her DVD while telling a friend how much she loves this movie? Did she just win an academy award and is thanking all the people who supported her? Or is she glad that someone just gave her more medication for hayfever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in my opinion, the most important:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3) Is it 'pretty'?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Sentimentality is pretty; strong emotions rarely are. Imagine the difference between the female lead crying in a movie, as compared to someone crying in real life. When someone cries, their face gets red and blotchy, their eyes bloodshot, and their eyelids puffy, none of which are attractive. They get a lump in their throat; their voice cracks when they try to speak. They scrub or blow their nose so they don't end up with snot running down their face. Their breath stutters when they try to take a deep breath.&#xA;While an adult's reaction is likely to be more subdued in most cases (1), it can be helpful to use a search engine to look up images of babies and children crying (or whichever emotion you are trying to convey). It may also help to consider how an adult is subduing a strong display of emotion, rather than trying to 'emotionalize' a subdued display.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Does not include events such as Superbowl or World Series victories by the adult's favorite team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16548" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T18:40:25.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21248" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21249" CreationDate="2016-03-05T20:24:00.527" Score="1" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been looking for a writing software, but while I have seen a number of mentions about how this or that program helps you keep track of characters, I haven't seen any mentions of ones that are good at helping you keep track of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing a Man vs. Nature story. There are only a few characters other than the protagonist, and they don't take much time on stage. What I need to keep track of is &lt;strong&gt;data&lt;/strong&gt; - what food is available, how much of certain limited resources he has used, tracking his travel, that sort of thing. Are there any writing programs that would help with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are no writing programs that would do this, are there any other (non-writing) programs that could help me track this kind of information? Or even any techniques that would work well? I'm almost at the tearing-my-hair stage on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16548" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T18:21:02.563" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T18:21:02.563" Title="Good writing software for tracking information/facts (for Man vs Nature plot)" Tags="|fiction|software|resources|research|organization|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21248" CreationDate="2016-03-05T21:46:11.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other than Scrivener, already noted above, Excel or another spreadsheet program might be what you need here. In your first column you have your scene or other outline notation to identify where your character is in the story, and then your subsequent columns are &lt;em&gt;Food Remaining&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Location&lt;/em&gt; or whatever. If you want to get real fancy-schmancy, you can even use the columns to plot a nifty line chart to show diminishing stores. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T21:46:11.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21251" CreationDate="2016-03-05T23:25:55.213" Score="0" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a book on web design, titled &lt;em&gt;Best website design&lt;/em&gt;. I will list photos of some good-looking &lt;a href=&quot;http://cssbest.com/blog/category/inspiration/best-portfolio-websites/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;portfolio websites&lt;/a&gt; in the book. Do I need to take permission from the website owner? Will it be copyright infringement if I use it without permission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am quite confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16692" LastEditorUserId="346" LastEditDate="2016-06-25T23:40:03.723" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T23:40:03.723" Title="I am writing a book on web design. What elements should I remove to avoid copyright issues?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21250" CreationDate="2016-03-05T23:37:21.717" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL, but I think this would be borderline. It's arguably &quot;fair use&quot;, and sounds like it meets the exception specifically provided in copyright law for &quot;review and criticism&quot;. But copying an entire web page is pushing it. I'd ask for permission, and if someone says no, don't use their site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you CAN do is, if you see something on a web site that you think is a good idea, make your own sample web page that embodies that good idea, but that is not copied from the original. For example, if you think the collection of colors used on a particular site is particularly attractive, easy to read, eye-catching, whatever, you could mock up a web page using those same colors but your own text. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T23:37:21.717" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21254" CreationDate="2016-03-06T00:08:37.020" Score="1" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having difficulties with a sentence (and others like it) in the prose of a story. I've heard a lot of advice to both remain consistent with tense but also to not be too rigid about it. Could someone please advise whether or not a sentence like the following would be considered correct if writing a story in the past tense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His secretary Ivy, holding her head up with one hand, slowly spun the Rolodex with a level of boredom fast approaching insanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is specifically regarding the tenses of &lt;em&gt;holding&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;approaching&lt;/em&gt; vs. &lt;em&gt;spun&lt;/em&gt;, which are obviously different, but does that affect the sentence in a negative way? I realise I could write something like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His secretary Ivy held her head up with one hand and slowly spun the Rolodex with a level of boredom which fast approached insanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But before committing to a story-wide tense parsing, would like to know whether it is entirely necessary to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In this example, Ivy is being introduced, if that makes a difference at all.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18121" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-03-07T06:31:34.587" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T06:31:34.587" Title="Correctly implementing past tense" Tags="|tenses|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14731" CreationDate="2016-03-06T04:58:43.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The trees have been turned into 'people' who start to whisper,&#xA;which is personification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your example would be a metaphor if it were phrased as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'the trees were a whispering among themselves (that began).'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e. one thing is the same as another. &#xA;The trees are 'a whispering among themselves'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simile only says they're like/as each other.&#xA;i.e.The trees were as a whispering among themselves (that began).' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I changed 'started' to 'began' to make the sentence sound a little less clunky).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18123" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T04:58:43.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21252" CreationDate="2016-03-06T09:48:09.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your example is perfectly fine, provided the secretary has two arms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The -ing words in sentences like this are not present tense verbs, they are &lt;strong&gt;present participles&lt;/strong&gt;, and you are using them in &lt;strong&gt;participle phrases&lt;/strong&gt; where the whole phrase functions as an adjective to describe the state of the secretary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for example these are equally valid ways to describe Ivy...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ivy, &lt;strong&gt;bored&lt;/strong&gt;, spun the Rolodex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Feckless&lt;/strong&gt; Ivy spun the Rolodex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Having no interest in the affair&lt;/strong&gt;, Ivy spun the Rolodex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ivy spun the Rolodex &lt;strong&gt;wearing her usual expression of boredom&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although a present participle might sound like you are supposed to use it in the present tense, that's not the case at all. It's to describe something that is true or occurring in the 'present' relative to your main verb. So it works in past, present or future. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barney, feeling hungry, looked in the fridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Becky, tired of his excuses, puts down the phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rufus, being the King's eldest son, will claim the crown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why your secretary needs two arms. The participle phrase must be true &lt;em&gt;while&lt;/em&gt; she performs the action in the verb. If she only has one arm, she can't be holding her head up while spinning the Rolodex. The following are other examples which are incorrect, because they can't be happening at the same time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Loading her gun, she fired three times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking out to sea, he closed his eyes and thought of home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T18:36:05.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21250" CreationDate="2016-03-06T17:40:49.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to feature a gallery of websites that you think represent good Web design, just ask the designers of those sites. Most will be happy to say yes. Doesn’t matter whether it is fair use or not. You don’t want to publish and then see somebody complaining on social media that their site is in your book. It is also polite to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also get the designer to provide a proper credit, for example “example.com — design by Milton B. Harmanfagle.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, make sure to capture a really good rendering of each site so that you reward the designers permission to use their site by making that site look its best. There are many tools such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pagelayers.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PageLayers&lt;/a&gt; (for Mac) that can render a high-resolution (i.e. 2x pixel ratio) full browser rendering of any website, including the part you would only see if you scroll, at multiple sizes to show responsive design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastEditorUserId="13337" LastEditDate="2016-03-06T17:48:03.523" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T17:48:03.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21257" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-06T19:28:38.450" Score="3" ViewCount="6142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought that the ISBN was needed to publish all books, but the KDP guide says that they will provide their own Amazon Publishing number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also want to publish on other platforms potentially, so should I get one anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there disadvantages to publishing on KDP without an ISBN if you intend to potentially publish on other platforms at a later date?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T18:53:40.907" Title="Should you get an ISBN even if KDP says they don't need one?" Tags="|publishing|kindle|isbn|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21257" CreationDate="2016-03-06T22:50:12.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll get better rates from Amazon if you'll publish exclusively and you don't have to pay for the ISBN. &#xA;I can't see any real problem for you, if you'll start without an ISBN. Usually you can get one at any time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16443" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T22:50:12.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21245" CreationDate="2016-03-06T23:40:02.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, in my experience the use of foul language or descriptive sex scenes will not cause your book to receive the dreaded &amp;quot;Adult&amp;quot; content rating. The primary content taboos are bestiality, incest, and non-consensual sex. Also, any nudity or blatantly sexual images on the cover will result in your book getting labeled as &amp;quot;Adult&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some discussions on examples of people who have had their content labeled as &amp;quot;Adult&amp;quot;, I would recommend going to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kboards.com/index.php?board=60.0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kindle Boards forum&lt;/a&gt; and searching for the term &amp;quot;Adult Dungeon&amp;quot;. Here is an additional &lt;a href=&quot;http://welcome.raythereign.com/amazons-adult-dungeon-or-why-you-cant-find-what-you-really-want-to-read/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;discussion on the Amazon Adult Dungeon&lt;/a&gt; that will show an example of the randomness of Amazon's identification process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you not worry too much about it. Just publish your book, and as long as it makes it beyond the initial review, you're probably okay. You can always monitor your books by using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salesrankexpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sales Rank Express&lt;/a&gt; web site. Just enter the author name and do a search to find your books. You will see your titles listed with a thumbnail of the cover, and to the right you will see something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Book Title&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Author Name | [No publisher] | 2016-03-01&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kindle Edition | ASIN: ##########&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Languages: English (published) | Content Rating: Safe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing you want to look for is that &amp;quot;Content Rating&amp;quot;. If it says &amp;quot;Adult&amp;quot;, then that is like the kiss of death. If you feel that your content should not warrant such a label, then you should contact KDP and ask them to reconsider your book. If you think it is a valid label, then you may want to tone down your content or change your book cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you would like to do a quick check before publishing, then try to find a book that you think would be similar to your own, and search for that author. If that book has a &amp;quot;Safe&amp;quot; content rating, then there's a pretty good chance that yours would as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T23:40:02.110" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21238" CreationDate="2016-03-07T00:26:27.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something I've struggled with, too. Sometimes I end up re-reading my own output and thinking, &quot;&lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; wouldn't persevere with this stuff, it's too depressing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Often a gritty, realistic feel is conveyed not by squalor &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; but by concentrating on practicalities. Your hard boiled detective doesn't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to be an alcoholic, but he does have to pay the rent on his office. That means compromises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Study books you like that have the level of grittiness you're aiming for. How exactly does your favorite author convey that the main character has had some tough breaks without going on about it at tedious length? How does s/he convey that nonetheless a core of idealism remains?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Forget about looking cool as an author. What has this to do with grit, you ask? Well, our society has a tendency to regard literary pessimism as sophisticated. When I find myself writing the aforementioned overly depressing stuff it's often because I pulled back from including something more optimistic - even when it was actually &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; realistic to include it - for fear of looking naive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T00:26:27.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23657" CreationDate="2016-03-07T04:32:09.200" Score="3" ViewCount="2746" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently based in Vancouver, BC and will soon be self-publishing with KDP. Although I'm now in Canada, my instinct is to publish on KDP USA rather than KDP Canada, because the USA KDP has a bigger selection of books, seem less strict when it comes to rating erotica as Adult (based on all my research) and have a much bigger market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just unnecessary because the book will be published in all Kindle markets anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it best to just publish on your own country's platform?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an advantage to publishing on KDP USA even if you are outside the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T14:38:29.710" Title="Publishing in KDP direct from outside the US" Tags="|self-publishing|kindle|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20798" CreationDate="2016-03-07T06:15:31.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you wrote the lyrics down, you established a copyright on those lyrics. Nobody can legally use them for commercial purposes without your permission. That is what copyright means. &lt;em&gt;They&lt;/em&gt; have to get a license from &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, you don’t have to give one to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the Creative Commons license that seems to you to be missing is not needed because that is the default license. That is the one that existed before Creative Commons. The one that everybody already has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Creative Commons licenses give you other options that not everybody needs. It sounds like you probably don’t need them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So just publish your work in such a way that it includes a copyright notice and also contact info so that the reader can contact you for a commercial use license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T06:15:31.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21264" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-07T15:26:49.000" Score="0" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing fiction and considering using past tense by default but then switching to present tense for action scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12242/10949&quot;&gt;This answer&lt;/a&gt; leads me to believe switching tense can be done. I assume that changing tense needs to be done carefully not to confuse the reader, but what other challenges are there in changing tense, and how can these challenges be over come?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any recent literary classics that employ a similar style? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10949" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T16:39:37.240" Title="Challenges in switching tense" Tags="|fiction|tenses|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-03-15T08:53:43.383" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21257" CreationDate="2016-03-07T19:37:03.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to publish elsewhere, you will need to have an ISBN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the Amazon Publisher number as a national ID card for your book on KDP. It's necessary and only this is necessary on KDP. But if you want it goes on another publication circuit, your book have to got it's passport. It's the ISBN. But you can take it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Mela said, Amazon will probably give you more visibility if they have exclusivity, at least for some time. But I've to admit it's more a expectation than a certainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5637" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-03-10T18:53:40.907" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T18:53:40.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21266" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-08T08:04:51.690" Score="4" ViewCount="3587" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a word for when the last word of a line is the first word of a sentence, which creates a rhyme when combined with the preceding word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might not be clear on its own; this excerpt from &quot;Satisfied&quot; (from the musical Hamilton, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda) contains several examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So so so—&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  So this is what it feels like to &lt;strong&gt;match wits&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  With someone at your level! What the hell is the &lt;strong&gt;catch? It’s&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The feeling of freedom, of seein’ the light&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  It’s Ben Franklin with a key and a kite! You see it, right?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The conversation lasted two minutes, maybe &lt;strong&gt;three minutes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Ev’rything we said in total agr&lt;strong&gt;eement, it’s&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A dream and it’s a bit of a dance  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It may help to listen to the verse as performed: &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/JrbCFR1FsZk?t=128&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://youtu.be/JrbCFR1FsZk?t=128&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And later in the same song:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That elevates his &lt;strong&gt;status, I’d&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Have to be naïve to set &lt;strong&gt;that aside&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/JrbCFR1FsZk?t=203&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://youtu.be/JrbCFR1FsZk?t=203&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a clever way of rhyming that I'm not sure I've ever encountered before. Is there a word for this? Can you point me to any other examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18144" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-08T20:13:49.110" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T20:13:49.110" Title="Is there a technical term for a rhyme using both the end of one sentence, and the beginning of the next?" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21266" CreationDate="2016-03-08T11:00:25.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about the rhyming part, but running a sentence onto the next line is called &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poetryarchive.org/glossary/enjambment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;enjambment&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enjambment is the continuation of a sentence or clause over a line-break. If a poet allows all the sentences of a poem to end in the same place as regular line-breaks, a kind of deadening can happen in the ear, and in the brain too, as all the thoughts can end up being the same length. Enjambment is one way of creating audible interest; others include caesurae, or having variable line-lengths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enjambment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning runs over from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation. Lines without enjambment are end-stopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reading, the delay of meaning creates a tension that is released when the word or phrase that completes the syntax is encountered (called the rejet); the tension arises from the &amp;quot;mixed message&amp;quot; produced both by the pause of the line-end, and the suggestion to continue provided by the incomplete meaning. In spite of the apparent contradiction between rhyme, which heightens closure, and enjambment, which delays it, the technique is compatible with rhymed verse. Even in couplets, the closed or heroic couplet was a late development; older is the open couplet, where rhyme and enjambed lines co-exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T11:00:25.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21268" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21271" CreationDate="2016-03-08T16:57:07.410" Score="2" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;I learned early on (as most writers have) &quot;show, don't tell,&quot; which I agree with for the most part. However, I've found many situations in writing when I'd start to write a statement in tell, catch myself, and then try to rewrite it with show. Something not a lot of people talk about is that there seems to be a trade-off with showing. Are there tradeoffs? If so, what are they and how do I avoid them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give you an example. Consider the following sentence (in tell format):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ex 1:&lt;/strong&gt; He heard a cough behind him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Ew!&quot; the writer says, &quot;That's bad style! I should show, not tell!&quot; The writer changes it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ex 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Someone coughed behind him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, alternatively (to avoid &quot;behind him&quot; referring to the cough):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ex 2b:&lt;/strong&gt; From behind him someone coughed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed a slight variation on the two examples. &lt;strong&gt;ex 1&lt;/strong&gt; implies immediacy: The character hasn't expected anyone to be there, and suddenly--&lt;em&gt;cough!&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in &lt;strong&gt;ex 2&lt;/strong&gt;, the immediacy is dampened so that it's almost as if the character was aware someone was behind him and was not as surprised by the cough. Also--let's face it--they sound more awkward. In addition (delving into human psychology), when the fight-or-flight response is activated, our brains aren't trying to analyze &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; coughed (&quot;someone&quot;), so (IMHO) adding &quot;someone&quot; makes the f/f response seem less believable. I thought of a third example that may remedy this situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ex 3:&lt;/strong&gt; He didn't even flinch when someone unexpectedly coughed behind him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;ex 3&lt;/strong&gt; (at least from my perspective) while this does amp up the immediacy this also makes it less clear if someone actually did cough just then or if, generally, the character doesn't flinch when someone coughs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize I'm nitpicking these simple sentences, but I've always been annoyed when authors make a case for &quot;show, don't tell&quot; and then ignore these difficult cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Question&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a pace trade-off or some other trade-off that comes with showing? Perhaps some other writers are willing to share examples of a sentence (or passage) they struggled to (and were able to) convert to show?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10310" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T00:59:00.800" Title="How do I avoid tradeoffs with showing vs. telling?" Tags="|fiction|technique|description|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2016-03-09T12:33:09.660" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21268" CreationDate="2016-03-08T17:59:54.937" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're describing isn't really a case of show vs. tell, it's active vs. passive voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, passive voice is describing someone's reaction to something as opposed to the simply describing the thing itself and leaving the reaction to the reader's imagination. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;A cough came from behind&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as opposed to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;He heard a cough behind him&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that ex. 3 is ambiguous and doesn't really describe the action as per what is happening now. Ex. 2 / 2b implies a someone, which is less intriguing and mysterious (also implies a safe situation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, you always want to show the action itself where possible, because it builds that all-important sense of reader interest at what may come next and is more immediate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16657" LastEditorUserId="16657" LastEditDate="2016-03-08T18:07:47.673" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T18:07:47.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21268" CreationDate="2016-03-08T18:18:31.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example 1 puts us in the POV of the listener: &lt;em&gt;I heard a cough.&lt;/em&gt; There's also the very tiny implication that it's not a &lt;em&gt;person,&lt;/em&gt; but perhaps an animal, a monster, or maybe a mechanical sound which appears to be a cough but later turns out to be a silenced bullet or something. But that depends on your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2 does not at all to me imply &quot;he knew someone was behind him&quot; or &quot;he was safe,&quot; but again, that's dependent on your story. If he's in a crowded bar, a cough may not be a big deal; if he's alone in his flat, someone else coughing is a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 3 has the least immediacy to me because you've piled so many words between the person and the cough, plus you've used &quot;flinch&quot; (which means a jump at a sudden action) with &quot;unexpectedly,&quot; making the adverb redundant. But if you're using it as part of an ongoing description, it still might work: &lt;em&gt;He stared fixedly at Moriarty's cold black eyes. The red lights crawling over John's face didn't distract him. He didn't even flinch when someone coughed behind him.&lt;/em&gt; That context isn't &quot;sudden,&quot; but it's piling on the tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are pacing trade-offs. There are also style and content trade-offs. Do you want your audience to wonder what is coughing? Go with 1. Is the cough one of several events going on? Go with 3. If a cough is just a cough, then 2 is fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T18:18:31.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21268" CreationDate="2016-03-08T18:25:51.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a reader, your first sentence is the best. It's short, without ambiguity and express the surprise you want to show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the &quot;Show, don't tell&quot;, I'm not sure it's relevant here. Even in ex 2, we can said you tell than someone cough behind your character. This advice is more when description is your main objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use ex 3 if you want to speak about how fast after your character goes here (wherever it could be) and been surprise. Otherwise, like you said, it's not very clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, in this kind of situation, it's more a question of POV or what it's important to show. Don't use long sentence where the rhythm of the action is fast. Your readers would be more captivated for what happens after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5637" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T18:25:51.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12193" CreationDate="2016-03-08T19:26:05.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that it might work if you switched tense at a large break in the story, such as a chapter. This would especially work well if you were switching the POV character. A friend in my writing class is doing this, where there is a girl and a horse trying to find each other, and whenever the chapter is told from the horse's POV, it's in first person present tense, but when the chapter is from the girls POV, it is third person past tense. It seems to be working quite nicely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16626" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T19:26:05.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2082" CreationDate="2016-03-08T22:36:27.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is an app that tries to make plotting out your story very easy: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plotmynovel.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Plottr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's got a timeline that is a very graphical way to show each story line (main plot and subplots) and each scene. Across the top are the scenes and along the side are the story lines. You aren't held to specific dates on the timeline. It let's you put in whatever description you want across the top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nice thing is that you can flip it so the scenes are down the side and the story lines are across the top. It's better for some people to see it like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the scene and story line intersect you can add a card which is just a place you can write a description about what happens at the intersection of those two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can even drag and drop cards easily anywhere around the timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also has a place for general notes, a place for characters, and a place for settings. For characters and settings you can add custom attributes which is really handy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the notes you can tag with your characters or places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use it for my stories and it's been invaluable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8493" LastEditorUserId="8493" LastEditDate="2017-10-26T18:30:28.767" LastActivityDate="2017-10-26T18:30:28.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16152" CreationDate="2016-03-08T22:55:08.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is an app that tries to make plotting out your story very easy: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plotmynovel.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Plottr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's got a timeline that is a very graphical way to show each story line (main plot and subplots) and each scene. Across the top are the scenes and along the side are the story lines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the scene and story line intersect you can add a card which is just a place you can write a description about what happens at the intersection of those two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can even drag and drop cards easily anywhere around the timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also has a place for general notes, a place for characters, and a place for settings. For characters and settings you can add custom attributes which is really handy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the notes you can tag with your characters or places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not meant for writing your stories, and there is nothing for transferring your notes to a writing app, but I use it for my stories and it's been invaluable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8493" LastEditorUserId="8493" LastEditDate="2017-10-26T18:28:14.003" LastActivityDate="2017-10-26T18:28:14.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21268" CreationDate="2016-03-08T23:08:49.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Andy, but beyond just passive voice (rampant in amateur writers) I see an issue of style. Some sentences read smoother than others, this is absolutely true. So if your question is merely about style, you just have to read a million books and reread your own book a million times until your words flow like syrup on a stripper's thigh. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your question is really about show vs. tell, the only trade-offs there always has 'tell' on the losing end. If you want to maintain pacing, then pace it appropriately. Pacing and showing are mutually exclusive.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to divulge certain information, don't. Information and showing are also mutually exclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's awkward, rewrite it. If it's too wordy, use less words. All of the issues of show vs tell are writer issues, style issues, but none mitigate the value of the show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only time you should tell your reader anything is when there is no emotion or plot involved. When what you're saying is objective and a vehicle to move the story along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;They walked across the tarmac.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No problem. You can tell that, especially if the plane or the characters or whatever else is what's important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But not if the tarmac is made of meat. That requires a show, not a tell, because a meat tarmac is out of the ordinary and should &lt;em&gt;generate a reaction from the reader&lt;/em&gt;. You want your readers to &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; the discomfort of their feet squishing on meat, rather than the familiarity and assurety of rough concrete. If you merely tell them it's uncomfortable, it has no impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books do not merely tell a story. They evoke them, in ways that not even movies can attain. Movies can impact you through visuals and sounds. You can see a character react and know what they're feeling. You can hear the low, stomach-churning pitch of Sauron's spell razing the amassed soldiers. The music swells, the skies darken, and the wave of magic crashes into the front lines, countless bodies like blackened matchsticks, violently tossed asunder or carried along in its horrific wake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book is &lt;em&gt;internal&lt;/em&gt;. You can know the minds of the characters far more than you can with any other medium, and you would be remiss to lose that opportunity to invoke the readers' emotions to your aims. The best books, like the best movies, will make you cry, rage, yearn, laugh, worry, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can't tell your reader to cry. You gotta weave magic for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15134" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T23:08:49.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21268" CreationDate="2016-03-09T00:59:00.800" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Show don’t tell&lt;/em&gt; is not about the way you structure a description of some action. It is about allowing the reader to reach their own conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you want your reader to understand that a particular character is an evil person, you can tell them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was an evil, evil man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;… or you can show them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He plunged the knife into her neck. Blood sprayed across his face and into his mouth, warm and metallic. Her body slumped against his. He wanted to feel something. Excitement, maybe — even remorse. But like a hundred times before, he felt nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;… and let the reader come to their own conclusion that he is an evil person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T00:59:00.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21278" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21280" CreationDate="2016-03-09T11:15:28.817" Score="12" ViewCount="1460" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the book I'm writing, the first character I introduce dies before the end of the chapter. She is the girlfriend of my hero and is setting up their date before her untimely end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hero is also there, preparing in his own way so the chapter itself swaps between the two before the disaster occurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read it out to the writing group I'm in, one of the others said they didn't like it. Since I'd introduced the female first, he thought she was the hero and found it unsatisfactory that she'd died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like it this way because I think it has more of an impact but I'm interested to know. Should I introduce my hero first?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2016-04-07T23:24:23.573" Title="Introducing the hero first?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21278" CreationDate="2016-03-09T12:40:11.163" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clive Cussler always started with the Damsel in Distress, never with the hero. This is your book. People will always hate what you've written. Do your job right and some people will love it too, but count on the haters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, after listening to what your reviewer said, do you think you've written it correctly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T12:40:11.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21278" CreationDate="2016-03-09T12:58:28.110" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that it depends on how you want to progress with your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every (good) book, or series of books, that I've ever read sets the tone for the rest of the book in the first few pages. Whether that's with a mysterious murder, the establishment of a prophecy/chosen one or world-building and exposition, the rest of the book will continue with the theme that it begins with. This is so that the reader can tell straight away what type of book they are actually reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore if you're planning on having your book being filled with shocks to the reader (having the character that they think is the MC die almost immediately is pretty shocking), having unexpected deaths or even just your hero experiencing many tragedies, then this could be a good start to your story. It would set the tone for what to expect later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if you're looking to use it simply as a tactic to engage the reader, then yes it would be wrong. People might initially like your book, but if the writing style that they got interested in the first place changes for the rest of the book, then it's unlikely they will stick it out until the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that you can't have the exact same events occur if your book is not in this style, just establish them differently. Make it obvious who your protagonist is immediately, preferably by changing the POV character at the beginning of the book. Then the unexpected death could set him off on the Hero's Journey to get justice, meaning that even with the same events, the tone of the book is set differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More to the point about your story specifically, every Dan Brown book begins with the main character of the prologue dying almost immediately, so it can definitely be done. However the character is generally given very little background or depth; that usually comes later when their murder is being investigated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works well as a shock tactic, as it surprises the reader quickly. However, the reason that your reviewer might have disliked your passage is if the extract was exploitative. If you give the female character a lot of background and are setting her up as the protagonist, only to immediately pull the rug out from under the reader unexpectedly, then you're simply making the reader feel stupid. This is a good way to get people to stop reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like it is quite similar to Deus Ex Machina, where the writer just puts something in unexpectedly in order to fix a problem. If you're just putting something in fully unexpected and random, such as (who the reader perceives to be) the main character getting hit by a bus, then what is the point in carrying on reading if anyone can die at any time for no reason whatsoever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, you put in a short passage about her choosing heels that go with her favorite outfit for the date, but one of the heels is loose, and she offhandedly thinks that she will fix it tomorrow as she is already late, followed later by that same heel breaking and &lt;em&gt;making her&lt;/em&gt; fall in front of a bus, then you have knowingly set up a tragic event. The reader will feel that such a horrible occurrence, whilst unexpected and easily avoidable (a staple of tragic tales), was at least given a reason for happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T12:58:28.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12193" CreationDate="2016-03-09T16:39:37.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Changing tenses can work as an &lt;strong&gt;exclamation mark&lt;/strong&gt;. Particularly in denoting a mental process. In other words, using past tense and switching to present tense for action scenes is something I wouldn't do - it's just too extensive, and it loses its meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of what I mean by &quot;exclamation mark&quot; (I'm just making these up, they're not from any book). Notice the mental process (flashback and inner thoughts respectively)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Switch from past perfect to past tense to indicate the passage into a flashback&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michael felt worried as he looked at his reflection in the mirror. Something was peculiarly familiar about those scars, he'd seen them before. Perhaps when he'd gone on that trip, the previous summer. He'd gone to the lake and had met John in the cabin. The scents were amazing, the trees emitted this amazing aroma that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Switch from past to present to indicate inner thoughts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What on earth are you mumbling about?&quot; asked Nick.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;I told you, and I have nothing more to say&quot;, Mark said. His lips quivered, and his facial muscles twitched, as if he was suddenly nervous.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Leave me alone... I've got nothing more to say&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;Come on, man&quot;, Nick insisted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T16:39:37.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21278" CreationDate="2016-03-09T17:07:06.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to see how an expert does it, go watch Psycho. Hitchcock lets the audience think they know who the heroine is, but then she takes a shower...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18074" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T17:07:06.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21278" CreationDate="2016-03-09T20:49:16.607" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do what you believe is right, but do it for a reason. If going against your critiquers' advice fulfills some essential aspect of your story or creates some effect you want, go ahead. However, if you are doing it just to be different, I suggest you think about why you are breaking that rule, and if you can strengthen the scene so as to give it more impact. Or scrap it all together if you find it does not work out as you had planned.&#xA;It is up to you. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T20:49:16.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20750" CreationDate="2016-03-09T23:01:14.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Screenwriters who put in camera direction label themselves as amateur. OTH, do NOT leave out the time of day at the end of the slugline. CONTINUOUS is meaningless, and rarely useful. DAY/NIGHT is crucial and must not be inferred; time of day must be explicitly stated. DUSK/DAWN require a short page count because there is a very small amount of shooting light for true Dusk or Dawn. Transitions should be CUT TO: when necessary, ignored otherwise. Leave out suggestions of DISSOLVE:, SMASH CUT:, JUMP CUT: and other meaningless phrases the director will ignore anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18167" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2016-03-10T18:25:58.747" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T18:25:58.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5317" CreationDate="2016-03-09T23:09:11.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To introduce a character for the first time, to draw attention to an element of the script: e.g. &lt;code&gt;The POISON BOTTLE&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;the TICKING BOMB&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All actual breakdown for department heads will be done by the First Assistant Director (who numbers the scenes -- don't you do that -- and rewrites your sluglines) and the Department Heads (e.g., Prop, Wardrobe, Mechanical Effects, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, after introducing new characters, cap anything that makes sense and brightens the page. e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The RAIN POUNDED the windows scaring FIDO.&#xA;  JENNY, 7, cute, blonde, snuggles next to the now WHIMPERING Fido.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In this example, you're letting Sound and the animal handler know Fido has to whimper.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18167" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-13T09:22:35.127" LastActivityDate="2016-03-13T09:22:35.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19095" CreationDate="2016-03-09T23:14:36.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Director, Cameraman and Location Manager will all participate in finding what's available and works. Writers should describe in impression, like an Impressionist painter. Overly specific location descriptions are without much meaning and mark you as an amateur. Why tell them about the window frames when you can't know what city the show will shoot in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EXT. SCARY HOUSE - NIGHT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perfect for a Horror Movie, the dark, musty, long-abandoned home was almost as threatening as the WORSENING STORM. Sheila ran to her car when suddenly,...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18167" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T23:14:36.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20433" CreationDate="2016-03-09T23:18:30.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;John Truby has written and taught story structure for film, tv and novel for decades. His book is very accessible and deeply informative. He has software, audio recordings of his genre classes (thriller, detective, romance, horror, etc.). Buy the book. Read it. That's a heck of a start. Write following Truby's suggestion of figuring out who's the Main Character, what does she want? Who stands in her way perfectly able to compete over the Hero's desired outcome. Who are the minor characters? How do they interact? Read Truby. Do the chapter exercises. Write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18167" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T23:18:30.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18195" CreationDate="2016-03-09T23:20:36.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Side by side dialog. The screenwriting programs have a command to move selected paragraphs from inline to side by side. Very straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18167" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T23:20:36.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6618" CreationDate="2016-03-09T23:24:45.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;John Truby, screenwriting teacher for decades, has started teaching Novel structure. Similar but different. Novels are more free: you can write anything and cost of production is all the same (words printed on a page) -- not so in movies. Novels have interior monologs from the Hero, sometimes from others. Movies almost never do that. Novels can spend more time on description of people, place, thing, events, environment, etc. Novels can be less conflict-driven than movies, where more things have to HAPPEN than in a novel where things, people, events, etc. can just BE, if sufficiently well described. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18167" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T23:24:45.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21142" CreationDate="2016-03-09T23:36:20.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;INT. BAR - NIGHT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The USUAL CROWD watches NEWS on TV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;            TV NEWS WOMAN&#xA;        Breaking News: Mayor Doyle arrested&#xA;        for drunk driving after crashing into…&#xA;&#xA;                                            CUT TO:&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;INT. SMITH FAMILY ROOM - NIGHT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The broadcast continues as the 3 Smiths and Fido all watch the same broadcast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;            TV NEWS WOMAN( CON’TD )&#xA;        …into Grant’s Tomb, knocking over the&#xA;        150 yr old statue of the General. The Mayor’s &#xA;        car burst into flames shortly after the Mayor           &#xA;        was pulled from the wreckage by…&#xA;&#xA;                                            CUT TO:&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;INT. LAST TV STORE IN AMERICA - NIGHT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Metropolis CITIZENS watch the broadcast through the store window. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;            TV NEWS WOMAN( CONT’D. )&#xA;        Superman! The Caped Crusader was unavailable&#xA;        for further comment. The Mayor, however, called&#xA;        a four hour news conference to blame the car maker,&#xA;        the bartender, the liquor company and the statue.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18167" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T23:36:20.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16611" CreationDate="2016-03-09T23:41:53.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is a fantastic tool that's also a remarkably well-written piece of software. The programmer deserves recompense for his effort. Neither Word nor Evernote nor OneNote are sufficiently similar to Scrivener to merit comparison. Look at the Literature and Latte website. Read about it. Check out Gwen Hernandez site; she's an expert on Scrivener. Yes, it costs money. Yes, yes, yes, it's worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18167" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2016-03-10T18:12:01.663" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T18:12:01.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21292" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-10T03:34:52.943" Score="1" ViewCount="4000" Body="&lt;p&gt;My story involves a government run program for the paranormal and the main protagonist is a demon. My problem is that I don't want people to think &quot;Hey , you stole that from Hellboy&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18172" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T19:04:02.703" Title="What to do if your story seems too similar to another?" Tags="|fantasy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-03-10T19:36:04.460" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21257" CreationDate="2016-03-10T04:12:29.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to disagree pretty vehemently here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need an ISBN for printing no doubt about that. But if you're publishing only ebooks, all the ebook distributors (except for Apple) will stick an ISBN onto your ebook file. (so you'll have one for Smashwords, one for Kobo, one for Google Play, etc). There is absolutely no need to spend your precious dollars to purchase ISBN numbers; it's just one gigantic racket from Bowker to make money for doing nothing. It would be different if Bowker charged individual ISBNs for only a few dollars,  but they sell individual ISBN for ridiculously high prices compared to what it costs to buy in bulk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with Apple, it doesn't matter because you can publish on Smashwords, use Smashwords' ISBN to get it into the Apple store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Big 5 probably assign their own ISBN's to their books (partially because they are publishing in print too and have already bought a gigantic block of ISBNs in bulk). But individual authors have no need to do this unless they are thinking of selling printed copies as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T04:12:29.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21294" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21299" CreationDate="2016-03-10T04:51:26.483" Score="1" ViewCount="13130" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some of the criteria for a chapter title (In a fictional novel)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How deep should a chapter title be, what should it try to convey, and how important is it that these things be met? Also, what are some good ways to come up with meaningful titles for your chapters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16626" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-13T12:56:31.493" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T12:05:29.300" Title="Coming up with Chapter titles" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|titles|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16611" CreationDate="2016-03-10T06:10:06.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're on IOS and write on the go like I do? You should try out Storyist. It's more of a management suite like Scrivener. Works really well on iPad with BT keyboard. The price is affordable, way less than what you'd likely spend on Scrivener for comparable capabilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15684" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T06:10:06.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21294" CreationDate="2016-03-10T09:37:48.730" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no real criteria for chapter titles, as with most things in writing you can do what you like. There's no reason to have them if you don't want to, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it's probably a good idea to keep them short and succinct (no longer than about six or seven words).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most authors use them to tease the reader with a vague description of what's coming, for example &quot;downfall&quot; for a chapter in which one or more characters fail to do something spectacularly. Others merely take a curiosity-baiting phrase or sentence from the chapter and use it as the chapter title. They should always be appropriate, even if they don't always give the reader the most accurate initial impression. For example, &quot;downfall&quot; could also mean that someone or something important literally falls in the chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books with multiple viewpoint characters also tend to name each chapter after the character who is the primary viewpoint character for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16657" LastEditorUserId="16657" LastEditDate="2016-03-10T09:42:58.180" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T09:42:58.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21292" CreationDate="2016-03-10T09:55:56.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think as long as there's enough differences in your story compared to Hellboy, you'll be fine. A lot of stories seem similar when boiled down to a simple concept, it's the finer points of character, plot, etc. that makes the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Michael Crichton wrote two stories which were essentially about high-tech, somewhat unethical theme parks going wrong and killing their guests. However, Jurassic Park and Westworld are different enough that it doesn't matter so much (and this is quite an extreme example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16657" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T09:55:56.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21298" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21837" CreationDate="2016-03-10T10:16:40.297" Score="8" ViewCount="1687" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6864/text-editors-suggesting-tracking-changes-to-plain-text-documents&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, but with (hopefully) a clearly defined use case: sharing and reviewing basic tech docs with a minimal, intuitive GUI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm producing technical documents using MS Word. These docs need to be reviewed, commented and have minimal additions &amp;amp; changes to their content, e.g. text, headings, tables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to both&#xA;1. Track the changes&#xA;2. Accept/reject per change&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In between focussing on getting the content right, a lot of issues come up (too many to list) around formatting, versioning, application compatibility etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be great if I could sidestep these and just&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maintain a single source in Markdown while&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;providing a WYSIWYG &quot;user interface&quot; that only allows minimal interactions, i.e.:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;changing/adding/deleting text/numbers/tables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;commenting particular areas of text&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to allow &quot;users&quot; to do these things without being in the Markdown workflow behind the scences, ideally this would be a Web-based editor with change tracking that outputs [some flavour of] Markdown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone know of such a thing? Or something that fits my requirements [explicit or as yet unconscious ;) ] even better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;pt. 1&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hallojs.org/demo/markdown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This (hallo.js)&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; close to what I'm talking about, I just need more headings (H3 etc.), commenting, visible change tracking, and simple tables in addition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;pt 2.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nytimes.github.io/ice/demo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This (ice)&lt;/a&gt; is the sort of change tracking in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16176" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-28T01:34:18.850" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T01:34:18.850" Title="Web-based WYSIWYG Markdown editor with commenting?" Tags="|technical-writing|editing|software|markup-languages|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21294" CreationDate="2016-03-10T10:18:26.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For fiction, you should be concerned with painting the picture as vivid as possible in the minds of your reader. So no, your chapter titles should not be deep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter titles may be one of these things&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A summary of the chapter in a word or two&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A punchline or &lt;em&gt;punch word&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The geographic setting of the subplot in that chapter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You risk losing your reader with an intriguing chapter title. If your reader has to go back and ask &quot;Why was this chapter named so-and-so?&quot;, you have introduced a break in their minds, and this is counterproductive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8667" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-13T12:58:37.677" LastActivityDate="2016-03-13T12:58:37.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21292" CreationDate="2016-03-10T10:31:29.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may seem somewhat cliché, but here's what I think: You don't have to worry too much about what makes your story unique because what makes it unique is the fact that you are telling it.&#xA;No one else is going to tell the story the exact same way you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you are telling the story and just keep thinking, &quot;This is &lt;em&gt;Hellboy&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; then maybe you don't have the urge to tell a story. Maybe you just want to watch/read/think about Hellboy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18074" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T10:31:29.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21257" CreationDate="2016-03-10T10:49:28.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I thought that the ISBN was needed to publish all books[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, NO electronic book &quot;requires&quot; an ISBN. ISBNs are the basically the domain of printed books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For electronic books, it is essentially superfluous. Much of the things that an ISBN is used for in the &quot;real&quot; world (e.g. sales tracking, returns, etc.) are either not applicable or are accounted for in other ways (e.g. downloads, customer order history, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any &quot;need&quot; for electronic books to have an ISBN is dictated by e-book retailer policy and the desire of R.R. Bowker (who distribute ISBNs in the U.S) to make money -- not because it is practical in any way to that medium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ebooklaunch.com/faq/need-isbn-publish-amazon-kdp/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is a list of services you might (or might not) need an ISBN for when publishing an e-book through them&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISBNs are purchased in the U.S. via &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.myidentifiers.com/get-your-isbn-now&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;R.R. Bowker and their MyIdentifiers.com service.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bit expensive, but one thing to consider is that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;if you use an e-book retailer ISBN, they will be the official listed publisher for that work, not you&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. This is because whoever bought the ISBN is listed as the publisher and &lt;em&gt;this is non-transferable&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isbn.org/faqs_ownership_rights&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Per this ISBN.org FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;ISBNs cannot be transferred on an individual basis. If a self-publisher wants to be identified as the publisher, the self-publisher must get their own ISBN. &lt;strong&gt;A printing company or publisher services company cannot sell, give away or transfer one of their ISBNs to a customer&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that makes a difference, you should buy your own ISBN(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also want to publish on other platforms potentially, so should I get one anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general recommendation is that every edition through every medium (hardcover, softcover, Amazon, Apple, etc.) should have a unique ISBN, so you will likely want to buy a block of ISBNs in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that ISBNs cannot be reused. So if a book goes &quot;out of print&quot; (stops being produced), the ISBN for that book can't be assigned to any other book. So you will likely need more than you think. =)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there disadvantages to publishing on KDP without an ISBN if you intend to potentially publish on other platforms at a later date?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming I am reading this correctly, there should be no obstacle assuming that there truly is no ISBN attached to the book (i.e. not even one assigned by KDP). Otherwise, if an ISBN is assigned, not being listed as the publisher for the book could (potentially) create issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;KDP guide says that they will provide their own Amazon Publishing number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A36BYK5S7AJ2NQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;KDP FAQ Topic&lt;/a&gt;, as you note, an ASIN (Amazon Number) can be used by Amazon, avoiding the need for an ISBN on KDP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Recommendations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the silliness of ISBNs for electronic books, if you can afford it, I would buy at least 10 ISBNs, preferably 100, at least if you are semi-serious about writing (this isn't a one-off thing) and plan to publish on multiple platforms, in multiple formats or multiple editions. ISBNs do not expire and there are no renewal fees. It is best (again, if you are serious) to treat it as a &quot;real&quot; business and make a financial investment in that business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, however, I would shy aware from Bowker's &quot;extended&quot; services, such as bar codes, etc. There are options for that later if need be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also highly recommend you consider offering the book for download yourself. You certainly don't need an ISBN in that case. However, the trade-off are (of course) potentially marketing boost and technical details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10627" LastEditorUserId="10627" LastEditDate="2016-03-10T11:36:56.280" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T11:36:56.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19989" CreationDate="2016-03-10T11:32:34.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Poetic forms an interesting subject because in recent times, new forms have been developed. These new forms have begun infiltrating the mainstream traditional forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally, any eight-line poem is called an &lt;strong&gt;octave&lt;/strong&gt;. An octave is a basic poetic form. There are variations on the octave based on rhyme scheme and meter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest form to your specification and the poem you used in your explanation is a &lt;strong&gt;Strambotto&lt;/strong&gt;; it's a Sicilian peasant song form. Of the Strambottos, the one with that specific rhyme scheme is either the &lt;strong&gt;Tuscano&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;Romanguolo&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8667" LastEditorUserId="8667" LastEditDate="2016-03-10T16:03:47.313" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T16:03:47.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21248" CreationDate="2016-03-10T15:11:32.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;yWriter&lt;/a&gt; also keeps a timeline for each viewpoint character and keeps track of characters, locations, and objects present on a scene-by-scene basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16251" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-03-11T16:37:01.697" LastActivityDate="2016-03-11T16:37:01.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21294" CreationDate="2016-03-10T16:18:15.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, many fiction novels only use numbers to label the chapters. I'm sure you've considered that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter titles, though, can be created in the same way as the title of a story or book. Sometimes I'll read the piece and underline words and phrases that resonate or catch my attention. Those are good candidates for titles, or they can lead to something new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T16:18:15.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17892" CreationDate="2016-03-10T17:17:15.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Acceptable to whom? As with &quot;quality&quot;, we are talking about a characteristic that is defined by the context. Whatever the customer, user or other stakeholder accepts is &quot;acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, from a professional perspective there's a lot of experience you can draw on to suggest what users &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; find acceptable - without any guarantee that the &lt;em&gt;customer&lt;/em&gt; agrees!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, technical writing should aim to be comprehensive - the &quot;length&quot; or &quot;size&quot; (how do you measure these exactly?) of a document &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be correlated against the basic criterion &quot;did I describe the whole topic?&quot; - i.e. &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the features; &lt;em&gt;enough&lt;/em&gt; details for the user to understand the concept; links to &lt;em&gt;all relevant&lt;/em&gt; references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - &quot;how heavy is your topic&quot;? It's an interplay of internal and external factors, case-by-case. Hence the profession exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16176" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T17:17:15.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21292" CreationDate="2016-03-10T19:04:02.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you're incredibly brilliant and creative, any story you write will be similar to other stories in some ways. &quot;Oh, that's a love story, just like Romeo and Juliett.&quot; &quot;A story about spies, just like James Bond.&quot; Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately for those of us who like to read fiction, there is a lot of variation possible within these broad categories. If your story matches somebody else's story in a hundred ways, if it sounds like you took somebody else's story and just changed the names of the characters and a few other details here and there, then sure, people will rightly say your story is a rip-off. But having a couple of points in common with someone else's story in the broadest sense ... I wouldn't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of how many books and movies and TV shows have been written about a brilliant detective who solves a baffling murder mystery. Or about two people who fall in love, then something happens to separate them, then they get back together and live happily ever after. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T19:04:02.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21298" CreationDate="2016-03-10T19:31:05.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally, the reviewers don’t get to do any editing, no matter what the workflow. Even if they just want to see a small change like uppercasing a word, it is better if they just put in a comment and &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; make the changes. Or not, if you have a reason to reject the proposed change. That way you can maintain strict control of your master document. Again, no matter what the workflow, but especially with Markdown, where your manuscript is a letter-perfect source code for building published HTML or RTF or PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your workflow could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write document in Markdown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;convert Markdown to RTF for Microsoft Word or PDF for Acrobat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;distribute Word or PDF document to reviewers who only modify the document with comments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;receive reviewed Word or PDF document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;review each comment in turn and apply changes to original Markdown document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if another review round is needed, go to step 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;convert finished Markdown to HTML for publishing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, editing privileges are for co-writers or editors to make extensive changes, but minor changes should just be made as comments. If they have additional content like a table or photo, they can just put a comment “table X goes here” and send you the table in an Excel document or wherever they made it. So you don’t necessarily need a complicated workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastEditorUserId="13337" LastEditDate="2016-03-10T19:36:31.310" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T19:36:31.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19986" CreationDate="2016-03-10T22:21:39.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may consider using 'the authors' to represent the two of you in the third person.  I have often seen this in more formal papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your examples from above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tom discovered he wasn't the only one; that is when the authors met and started working on this concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tom felt this way[, and so] the authors did this together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14026" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T22:21:39.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21310" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21311" CreationDate="2016-03-10T22:52:54.530" Score="1" ViewCount="689" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if anyone has used yWriter for Mac and has downloaded it from Softonic. I feel a little iffy about this site(pic attached). I suppose a better question would be: Is it safe to download from Softonic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VbgR9.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VbgR9.png&quot; alt=&quot;yWriter | softonic website&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18176" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-03-13T15:29:02.923" LastActivityDate="2017-03-04T21:30:24.947" Title="Is yWriter for Mac reputable? Is this a safe download?" Tags="|creative-writing|software|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21310" CreationDate="2016-03-10T23:05:33.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I checked the yWriter website (www.spacejock.com) and there's no mention there of a Mac version anywhere. As it's the personal site of the developer I'd be wary of anything that didn't come directly from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13109" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T23:05:33.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17892" CreationDate="2016-03-11T00:41:47.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the important metric is “is it usable?” I think it is really about the quality and organization of the table of contents and the index and the data. It doesn’t matter if it is 10,000 pages if the reader can find the 3 useful pages they need easily in a short time. On the other hand, a confusing, disorganized 200 page document with mediocre data might frustrate readers and not help them at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second metric to me would be “is it maintainable?” If it is so big that it can’t be well-maintained and parts are always out of date, it will just decay and decay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you go on the basis of usability and maintainability, you might determine that 1 giant book is better off as 10 shorter books. The separate books act as a meta-index. The reader or maintainer can ignore the other 9 books when appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the document is frustrating &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, so maybe it is frustrating others also. You might do a survey of readers and maintainers to see what their complaints are, ask them a few questions. That could generate the hard data you need to suggest an improvement project, and maybe give you a list of things to focus on improving also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-03-11T00:41:47.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21313" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-11T22:30:02.350" Score="0" ViewCount="373" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yeah, I just decided today to write a Porn/Erotic Book. Seems writing ebooks is a quick way to make a couple of bucks and rise up the ladder these days. But, the problem is I don't know how to write a romantic/erotic scenes. Also, I still haven't had any relationships or dated anyone or had sex with anyone, so that's again a problem for me if I wish to write a platonic or romantic relationship for my main character. So, any suggestions on how to write them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main character's name is Puss Conan. The basic Idea of my story is that Puss Conan is a Room Attendant/Room Keeper aboard the &lt;em&gt;SS Paradise&lt;/em&gt; which is space carrier on it's way to the Andromeda Galaxy from the Solar System, Mars. It follows Puss Conan and his sexual encounters with various Human Females and aliens aboard the ship. Also, Puss Conan will have various non sexual adventures later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18188" LastEditorUserId="18188" LastEditDate="2016-03-11T22:39:48.267" LastActivityDate="2016-03-11T23:38:26.953" Title="How to write sexual/romantic scenes?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|technique|characters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-03-13T15:35:14.800" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21313" CreationDate="2016-03-11T23:38:26.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read a few dozen of them. Whenever you read one you like, study the romantic/erotic scenes that were particularly effective for you. Make notes about how you felt as you were reading, and what the writer did in the text that made you feel that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-03-11T23:38:26.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21294" CreationDate="2016-03-12T00:27:58.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Recommendations will be subjective&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike books, chapters do not need titles in the first place. To have them can be more convenient, for the same reason why human beings have names, not numbers. Additionally, I argue that titles can unfold nicely if they fit their context. They will never enhance the chapter itself, but they are an opportunity to highlight motives or moments, and can be an overall pleasant addition to the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you want to use them, the only &lt;em&gt;strong&lt;/em&gt; requirement is to choose a &lt;em&gt;scheme&lt;/em&gt; for your titles that fits the type of text you are writing, and that you will keep throughout the whole of the text. I will elaborate on two schemes mentioned before, but only after saying: Good advice is a bad advisor. Even infamous rules like &lt;code&gt;Show_Dont_Tell!&lt;/code&gt; are marginal. Here is what I call the writers' imperative: Decisions must address the requirements &lt;em&gt;implied by what you want to achieve&lt;/em&gt; with that text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, let's tackle some titles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There was a suggestion about putting [Location] or [Time] in the title, and I feel that such a scheme is closely related to scientific or other &amp;quot;purposeful&amp;quot; literature. The information given may replace description within the chapter, saving space and providing structure. In prose, using such &lt;strong&gt;explicit data&lt;/strong&gt; in title format can be used to underline a main trait of a text. The format fits well with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;short&lt;/em&gt; texts - whose confined space may dictate efficiency;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;diary&lt;/em&gt; types and &lt;em&gt;journey&lt;/em&gt; plots: formats that commonly use this scheme;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;overall technical mindset&lt;/em&gt; (beaurocracy, logistics company, main character ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all of those cases, leading each chapter with a statement of setting is perfectly justified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without such context, however, I would fail to see the point in providing that kind of detail in the title section of a narrative chapter. This can be misleading, too. For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(A/The) &lt;strong&gt;House at the sea&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... seriously evokes images for readers who have been to the sea - but these may be the wrong images, as a more detailed description will ensue in the chapter, possibly causing friction with what the reader already expected. This title is better suited for a book cover where there will be an accompanying picture. Here, it contains a high risk of annoying the reader during the course of the chapter, because they did not choose to create the wrong assumptions - the author did!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Instead, for most kinds of narration a less informative, more &lt;strong&gt;interesting title&lt;/strong&gt; could work well. Why is that? Assuming that story telling should be &lt;em&gt;entertaining&lt;/em&gt; (to make the reader &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to continue, because they are &lt;em&gt;not obligated to read&lt;/em&gt;) - and considering that titles are not compulsory - quickly doubt will arise in sight of any flat, descriptive or commonplace titles: Why do they exist in the first place? Such doubts hurt the experience, and I conclude that titles for a narrative chapter should strive to be interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; is interesting? Humor helps, but many unexpected connections will work. Anything unclear, ambiguous or encrypted - that which needs further information to be put together. Note that your title, in order to be &lt;em&gt;rewarding&lt;/em&gt;, should have potential to create a moment of satisfaction, when after staying unclear first, suddenly interacts with an ongoing development inside the chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although 'yogurt' turned out to be a typo, I'll use it for my some examples anyway:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A case of yogurt&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... this one is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; interesting, a very generic and meager title. Alas, sometimes inventing titles for every chapter is a burden. Certainly, nothing is wrong about a less interesting title here and there - pick a plot element and wrap it up in a phrase, when nothing else works. But if you do, make it count! Reading the expression &amp;quot;a case of X&amp;quot;, a reader can expect a plot element to go down the crime/analytical route, or to be a parody thereof. Or both. If the chapter meets one of those expectations, the title has a reason to exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(To thicken the promise, there is also the secondary meaning of &amp;quot;case&amp;quot;. If any case gets carried or lost somewhere in the chapter, the title will bear more fruits.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yogurt dependancies&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... more curious, suggests either a form of drug theme (dependancy, with yogurt as a placeholder), or a depiction of special human relationships (that are somehow similar to yogurt). Or more. The word &amp;quot;dependancy&amp;quot; gravitates towards serious business, but not necessarily. Could also be a hint to a programmer's unsolved yogurt problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yogurt on the top shelf&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... this time, yogurt (&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a placeholder) is set in an odd location. Implying it was put there momentarily, the yogurt may be the object of a kid's or cat's longing inability to reach that yogurt - or, on the opposite, it may be the victim of someone's bad memory. In that case, the yogurt may have become rotten, a source of disgust, a symbol for a being without purpose. Or more. A very plot-oriented, motivating and potentially insightful title, that could &lt;em&gt;expand the plot&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that &amp;quot;top shelf&amp;quot; will be misleading if the chapter has no shopping mall. It shows again how concrete data is a risk in titles. Try to validate the obvious meanings your title could have, if any. Or confirm the setting in the very first sentence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will be dozens of good possibilities for a title of any half-decent chapter, but their selection will most likely be &lt;em&gt;plot-related&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;ambiguous&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;entertaining&lt;/em&gt;. It will fit in a &lt;em&gt;scheme&lt;/em&gt; used throughout the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18185" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-03-13T17:12:15.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21316" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-12T02:23:03.940" Score="3" ViewCount="446" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have wanted to write a novel for the past three years.  I have read books on writing and taken online courses.  Some of that material recommended not using an outline to write a book, and some recommended using an outline initially.  No matter which way I have chosen to proceed, I have felt guilty about about my choice a little ways in to the process.  Then, my perfectionist tendencies shut me down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just this past week, however, I decided that I was going to do what feels right to me and get to work!  I discovered my own personal method involves writing without an outline, and then creating an outline when I am done to generate the next revision.  And it has gone well!  I've written a few pages!&#xA;To this end, I found this article on the Internet:  &lt;a href=&quot;https://grubstreet.org/grub-daily/to-outline-or-not-to-outline/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://grubstreet.org/grub-daily/to-outline-or-not-to-outline/&lt;/a&gt;.  Is there, in fact, a hybrid method to writing a novel that involves both pantsing (writing by the seat of ones pants) and plotting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9885" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-13T15:03:34.430" LastActivityDate="2020-11-03T23:12:28.980" Title="Is there a hybrid novel writing method that incorporates both &quot;pantsing&quot; and plotting?" Tags="|novel|outline|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21326" CreationDate="2016-03-12T18:20:02.300" Score="2" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a dialog heavy scene in which one of the characters walks up to a door marked with a sign. I wrote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A warning etched under the sign read “Electromagnetics strictly prohibited.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it correct to quote the text of the sign, even though there is no speaker? If not, should the text otherwise be offset from normal text? I'm already using italics to indicate internal dialog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T09:51:16.647" Title="Formatting Text from a Sign" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21319" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-12T20:04:59.283" Score="4" ViewCount="1247" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my story, my characters have to go on a journey, plus it's medieval. (So original right?) Anywho, they've already been captured by road robbers once and escaped. Also, they've stumbled upon a town and acquired a new member to their party. I'd like for the three to bond but... What else can happen to them before they reach their destination? I know a bunch of boring camping scenes is not the way to go, so what is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18195" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-14T21:47:12.830" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T21:47:12.830" Title="How do I keep a journey sequence going?" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21320" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21321" CreationDate="2016-03-12T20:25:19.127" Score="0" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Gone. Of course. How could I expect anything less?&lt;/em&gt; I searched around in his room anyway. Once I was convinced that he truly left, I rushed out of the empty bedroom and thundered down the halls. I flipped the hood of my cloak over my head as I dashed down the grand steps and into the main hall. Just as I was about to speed out of the door, I was stopped. &#xA;“Hold on just a minute. You’re not allowed outside.” I huffed and shoved the guard aside, still aiming for the door. He and his partner exchanged looks. The guard then reached out and took hold of my arm, stopping me once more. &#xA;“I am under orders to prevent you from leaving,” he repeated with a hint of annoyance in voice. I relaxed and feigned surrender, before I ripped my arm free and burst through the doors. I had to. I had to track him while it was still fresh. My shoes dug into the soft dirt as I sped out of the castle walls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;~EDIT~ ( I hope this is at least slightly better. XD)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Gone. How could I expect anything less?&lt;/em&gt; I swallowed hard, trying to calm the terror inside me as I searched around in his room anyway. The gleam of an arrow caught my eye. His bow and arrow lay untouched against the wall. &lt;em&gt;Okay so he’s weaponless.&lt;/em&gt; I strode over to the balony and glanced down. It was high, but not too terribly high that you couldn’t just- &lt;em&gt;Oh great. He’s brainless as well.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I turned and reentered the silent room, desperately trying to think of where he could have gone in such a hurry that he forgot to arm himself. Suddenly, I felt a gentle tug. &lt;em&gt;Of course.The Bond.&lt;/em&gt; A slight relief filled me as a smile slowly inched it’s way onto my face. I didn’t have to know, I could track him. It led me out of the empty bedroom and down the candle lit halls. I flipped the hood of my cloak on as I dashed down the grand steps and into the main hall. Just as I was about to speed out of the door, I was stopped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Hold on just a minute. You’re not allowed outside.” &#xA;&lt;em&gt;Idiots. I have to get out of here.&lt;/em&gt; I huffed and shoved the guard aside, still aiming for the door. He and his partner exchanged looks. The guard then reached out and took hold of my arm, stopping me once more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I am under orders to prevent you from leaving,” he repeated with a hint of annoyance in voice. I relaxed and feigned surrender, before I ripped my arm free and burst through the doors. I had to. I had to continue to track him while it was still fresh. My shoes dug into the soft ground as I sprinted out of the castle walls. As I distanced myself with the castle, I began to doubt myself. Maybe he was perfectly fine. Perhaps he had just gone for a late night walk… by escaping through his balcony. I frowned, pushing myself even harder. Something was wrong. Very wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18195" LastEditorUserId="18195" LastEditDate="2016-03-13T05:33:49.730" LastActivityDate="2016-03-13T05:33:49.730" Title="Does this opening draw you in?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-03-13T07:05:01.363" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21320" CreationDate="2016-03-12T21:22:50.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it does sound intriguing (I myself would continue reading) I do happen to think it could use some work. It seems very abrupt and sudden and just a bit too 'thrown in' while you always want to start with action to get your readers excited I personally felt it was a little too fast. Try adding some description, maybe a few more of you MC's thoughts, just to spread it out a little, show a bit more emotion. Is this someone your MC was found of? Perhaps express more annoyance/distress in his/her thoughts. You need to start building up tension from the moment you begin writing, and I felt it needed just a bit more to make us really care about what was going on, as a reader its seemed almost dull and unimportant though I can tell it is meant to be your clincher, so I'd add just a little more detail and pump it up on the tension, make us REALLY care about what's going on even though we don't know yet! I'd like to read more of this story I think, it seems enticing and has awesome potential! (I'm kinda a fantasy geek and I was getting some of those vibes from this!) Hope you post your edited version if you end up writing one! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18060" LastActivityDate="2016-03-12T21:22:50.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21319" CreationDate="2016-03-12T21:33:57.137" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question I've asked many a time myself. I'm also writing a fantasy/medieval story and I've struggled with this to the point that I just skip writing these traveling scenes (which you shouldn't do; it's essential to show time and distances have been passed/covered).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on what voice you're using (first person, third person, etc.), I would fill in some of the gaps with dialogue and thoughts of your MC(s). This can be used to develop your character(s), mostly by leaving them alone with their thoughts! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it never hurts to add a LITTLE description of passing scenery of villages if you make it interesting enough, an odd tree, mountains in the distance. It's also a good idea (if they're traveling for some time) to include a campsite, a place when your characters rest, and include them being tired and sore. Possibly to make it more interesting one of them can be hurt and have trouble traveling at the same pace as the others; he/she could get better or worse and this could add some tension! Will this character live??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all else fails and you've got no idea how to add excitement, make a character suffer. TENSION!!! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also don't stretch it out too long because even if your characters are being hunted with an injured companion and no hope of escape, making them travel hopelessly for too long will get extremely boring!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also a good idea to add a character plot twist - a secret of some sort that is revealed about one of your characters and makes your other characters think differently about this character. (Yes, I know I said character four times, wasn't sure how to put it so it could make sense. Hope this helps! :) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18060" LastEditorUserId="16829" LastEditDate="2016-03-14T08:04:46.513" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T08:04:46.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21278" CreationDate="2016-03-12T21:56:11.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a writer, you write for yourself. Other than generally, you do not write for your audience, for the exact reason this thread illustrates: opinions will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean is that you do obviously have to consider demographic. Bad form to put Nazi zombies in a children's book, for the most part. But you don't write to please your audience, because you'll never succeed. If I say you suck, doesn't matter. If I say you're awesome, doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You write until &lt;strong&gt;you're&lt;/strong&gt; happy. You try whatever you want to try. A clever writer can break any rule. You'll know it's good &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; when you get a glowing online critique, but when &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; reread it for the fourth time and think to yourself &quot;wow, that's awesome, I did it!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it doesn't make you say wow, it won't make your readers say it either.  And if it makes you say wow and some people disagree,  %#@% 'em.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15134" LastActivityDate="2016-03-12T21:56:11.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21319" CreationDate="2016-03-12T23:26:27.863" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not going to tell you how to solve your problem. Quite frankly, I don't know how to solve your problem, despite having faced it countless times myself in the past. Instead, I'm going to show you why you have this problem in the first place. I'm going to show you how to treat the cause instead of the symptoms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not knowing what to include in your novel is a sign that you don't know what your novel is about. It sounds strange, I know, so allow me to explain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your novel needs to be &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; something. Contrary to seemingly-popular belief, you cannot just write a cool plot and leave it at that. There will be gaps, such as boring journeys, that are not covered by the 'cool plot' (amongst other things). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way: what are you trying to accomplish with your novel? I'm not talking about publishing here, I'm talking about your own goals. Are you writing just to get a story out on paper? Are you maybe writing just to see if you can? Or are you actually trying to say something through your writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to say something, then take that message (called a theme by some), and craft your story around it. Theme will tell you what kind of story you want to write, if you look at it closely enough. It will tell you what kind of characters will get the theme across to the reader. It will tell you what kind of plot will vault the theme from beginning to end, to that very moment in the climax where the reader suddenly realizes what you're trying to tell him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know this, you will &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; be faced with what I like to term the 'awkward journey' or anything similar. You will &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; know where you are going, why you are going there, and how to get there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself facing an 'awkward journey,' think about why. Is this truly part of what the theme told you to do? Or are you simply including it because it is 'cool' or a chance to show off your medieval world? Write your story from the theme alone, and every single scene will have a purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. More directly related to your dilemma: I find myself often faced by awkward journeys, despite the story coming straight from the theme. When this happens, it is usually because I had a vague idea of what I wanted the story to be like before I considered the theme, and then that idea found its way into the plot. You can fix this by asking yourself if those two people really need to be apart. Does that city really have to be that far away? Is an entire journey necessary, or will the same thing be accomplished by the protagonist going two houses to the right and knocking on the front door? Watch your plot. It may seem like letting it take its own route is a good idea, but it's not. At least not until you know where it should go from beginning to end. Trust me; I've been there too many times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-03-13T23:42:57.863" LastActivityDate="2016-03-13T23:42:57.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21318" CreationDate="2016-03-13T13:33:24.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what you have in your example is fine. Quotes don't have to be strictly spoken dialog. You've indicated in narration twice that it's written on the sign. The reader will understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-03-13T13:33:24.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21316" CreationDate="2016-03-13T15:22:14.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you'll find there's no one &quot;correct&quot; way (or two ways, or three, or ten). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everybody figures out what works for them. There are &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; ways to balance between outlining and improvising, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing an outline as a starting point, then feeling free to diverge from it, to the point that the final product bears no resemblance to the outline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pantsing the whole thing, treating that as a rough first draft, and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; writing an outline that's clear and well-structured in advance of your next draft.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing an outline that's full of holes and gaps, to be pantsed in during the process (e.g.: &lt;code&gt;&quot;[Something devastating] happens to main character here, and she leaves the agency! She's also growing increasingly intrigued by Jack, after she spots him [doing something suspicious; figure this out once I know who Jack's actually working for]&quot;&lt;/code&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing an outline for the primary plotline, but establishing multiple side-plots without any outlining.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Switching back and forth from outlining to writing; whenever you feel like you're veering away from the outline, you go and change the outline to account for the changes you want.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is this &lt;strong&gt;An outline is a tool.&lt;/strong&gt; It's a tool that gives you some sense of where you're headed; that lets you look at your story at a macro level. Knowing where your headed is particularly powerful because it makes your writing more purposeful; it gives you very specific goals to move towards; it gives you grounding in details the &quot;reader&quot; doesn't yet know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;strong&gt;it's not always the right tool for the job.&lt;/strong&gt; If you're feeling like the story doesn't interest you, then knowing exactly what the end is going to be might &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be the right tool. If you're focused on making the story energetic and exciting, then focusing on moving the story along to the next plot point is not helpful. If you have &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; idea where you're headed, then striking out in some random, enticing direction may be much more helpful than trying to plan your entire route before you've taken a single step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no problem at all with mixing between the two. Every author does, finding the mix that works for them (which may well be different from project to project.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At every point, you just need to figure out &lt;strong&gt;what you need next&lt;/strong&gt;. If you need firmer grounding and clear direction, go outline. If you need to sit down and get some words on the page, or to play around with some of your characters, go write. If you have no idea, pick one, see if it works; if it doesn't, go do the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With time, you'll find your rhythm, your preferences, the way &lt;em&gt;you're&lt;/em&gt; most happy using your toolbox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-03-13T15:22:14.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21329" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-13T17:18:05.570" Score="5" ViewCount="600" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a major piece of information in my story, which I could either make tell right away - or else keep it a secret, and use it as a plot twist later. I'm having a hard time choosing which way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my particular case, there are two brothers travelling to rescue a prince; the thing is, he's not just a prince - he's their brother, and they're princes too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like this is something I could build up into a good surprise, a real &quot;A-HA!&quot; moment. On the other hand, it can also get awkward (e.g., if I use one of the brothers as a POV character, I need to show how &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; thinks of the prince), and I'm just not sure how effective this is in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't surprise myself; I can only try to figure out what will surprise the reader. &lt;strong&gt;How can I tell if a plot twist I'm writing (or planning) is good and worthwhile?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18195" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-15T20:00:50.030" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T02:52:04.440" Title="How to decide if a plot twist worth doing?" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21319" CreationDate="2016-03-14T19:22:45.877" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your goal,&lt;/strong&gt; as the author, &lt;strong&gt;is for the characters to bond over the journey.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But what is your reader reading for?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your reader doesn't know that the characters are meant to bond by the journey's end. They might not even care, at this point, about the characters bonding. You've given the reader one thing to look forward to, one milestone he &lt;em&gt;knows&lt;/em&gt; is the next step in the &amp;quot;actual&amp;quot; plot: the destination they're headed for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means that any delay that &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; seem like part of the &amp;quot;actual&amp;quot; plot, basically feels like marking time. An unnecessary delay. You can have obstacles on the path - but unless you make them &lt;em&gt;important&lt;/em&gt; obstacles, with greater significance for the overall story, then the reader's basically just waiting for them to be over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question you need to answer is: &lt;strong&gt;What is your reader reading the journey for?&lt;/strong&gt; If you gave your reader the option to skip right ahead to the destination -- does he &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; any good reason not to take it? Or does he just need to take it on faith that something interesting will happen, and he has no idea what that might be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me toss out a few possible answers to that question. Not &amp;quot;here's what you should do&amp;quot;; just some examples demonstrating different approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The obstacles on the road form a contained plot arc.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &amp;quot;The area is battle-torn and the destination is under siege.&amp;quot; Or &amp;quot;The characters are accompanying a travelling circus, and one of the circus crew is murdering the others one by one.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives you, right from the start of the journey, some clear conflicts, tension, and milestones to look forward &lt;em&gt;during&lt;/em&gt; the journey. It might be entirely unrelated to the &lt;em&gt;rest&lt;/em&gt; of the story, but it serves the purpose of making the journey interesting, significant, with a clear arc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;A major plot element is also affecting the journey.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the book is about fighting the evil Medusa Emperor, than the journey might take the characters through towns taken over by the Medusae, or they're hounded by a Medusa commander who knows they're a threat. If it's about how magic is fading from the world, maybe there's a town impoverished because they've run out of magic power, maybe the King is collecting a &amp;quot;magic tax&amp;quot; along the road, or maybe the characters are chased by a wizard who thinks they have a rare remaining powerful artifact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, you don't need an entire plot arc &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; for the journey. Instead, every time something happens, the reader &lt;em&gt;knows&lt;/em&gt; it's important because it ties in to what's already important to the story at large. This gives you a chance to work in different angles and aspects of your primary plot strands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The interaction between the characters &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; what's interesting.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite possible that the journey is uneventful, except the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; drama is what happens between the characters on the road. One's in love with the other; one's trying to figure out the other's dark secret; one's trying to convert the other to his religion; what-have-ye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be a subplot, like the first case (&amp;quot;We only have until Tiramisu City to convince him, brother!&amp;quot;), or it can be a boiling point for an overarching conflict (&amp;quot;I was perfectly in control of myself before I spent a month by your side, my beloved!&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, you're simply building up an ongoing arc of developments &lt;em&gt;advancing the interpersonal plot.&lt;/em&gt; Say, first the prisoner tries to escape; then one of the captors needs to guard him extra-close; since there's so close, the prisoner starts learning some private, personal details... Have a progression. And make sure that every major step of the progression holds some promise and appeal to the reader, right from the start - that things are going to be interesting; that something's about to &lt;em&gt;change.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you know what purpose your journey-time is serving, all you need to do is move &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; purpose further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can mix and match between these - the story can do multiple things at once. You can have development between the characters &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; a subplot for the the journey (&amp;quot;Are Bob's infuriating prayers keeping the vampires away, or keeping them following us?&amp;quot;). That might be what you want here - some external action, which will &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; provide material for your bonding arc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;em&gt;whatever&lt;/em&gt; you choose, tie it in to a larger arc. Keep to a minimum episodic, &amp;quot;random&amp;quot; encounters - the kind of obstacles that the reader has no vested interest in, and that leave the protagonists in exactly the same state they were beforehand. One every now and then is OK - dangerous, surprising stuff happens - but don't let the reader feel like you're treading water, or marking time until there's been &amp;quot;enough bonding.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last option is that there &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; anything interesting on the journey. Not enough to sustain the amount of writing you want, for a sense of time, a gradual progression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, consider cutting the journey out entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This requires some juggling, but it's very doable. It means that anything important you were planning to portray over the journey, needs to be moved to before, or after, or to be flashbacked to, or infodumped... But you've got &lt;i&gt;options&lt;/i&gt;. Don't get locked into one thing just because it's the most intuitive, without considering if maybe there are other ways to solve this that will solve your problem entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T19:22:45.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21146" CreationDate="2016-03-14T23:53:26.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a very interesting idea. I would suggest that you use a lot of description if you don't choose to write poetry, which would be the preferred method of writing in this fashion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this, you will definitely need third person. You will have to describe everything meticulously, and switch between the &quot;pictures&quot; smoothly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the length of your chapters, I would probably keep it to ten pictures a chapter. Twenty if you are writing an extremely long chapter, but try to keep it consistent so the reader does not get thrown off guard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll want to describe everything about the picture, and in the first few chapters you will want to paint the characters in as effective a way as possible, because there really isn't a way to show dialogue. You might be able to describe little bubbles coming from the character's mouths, almost like in a comic strip. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will probably have to do a lot of planning for this to be an effective story. You need to split up the major events in the story into their own respective chapters, so maybe you should write it narrative-style first. Then, you can tweak it however you would like and split the scenes up into different chapters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18205" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T23:53:26.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21334" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21337" CreationDate="2016-03-15T07:42:01.097" Score="1" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a story about fictional events in several nations all over the world. Much of the plot is influenced by ongoing practices of many nations. (e.g. - torture, extra-judicial killings, big nations bullying smaller ones into economically lopsided treaties, destruction of natural resources, genocide, etc...) This includes some actions done by my own nation (U.S.A.) as well as several other nations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to omit these actions and policies, because that would take much of the tension and conflict out of the story. But I don't want to annoy or offend people of those nations if I describe the actions their governments do on their behalf. (Side note: My story also mentions many of the positive altruistic actions done by many countries, and how those actions contribute to the plot.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first thought is that people have written about horrible atrocities before and pointing out that dictatorships and democracies do these is fair game. People have written about slavery, colonization, genocide, economic exploitation, etc... many times before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything foreign governments would do about it? Other than throw my books into a bonfire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18199" LastActivityDate="2016-03-31T17:42:32.247" Title="Would a government care if my novel mentioned their controversial / questionable practices?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3513" CreationDate="2016-03-15T12:31:24.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it appears to say a lot. It is for you to decide whether it works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I am almost unable to edit once completing a draft so I 'edit on-the-go': I write a chapter or two. Then, get them proofread, etc. Then write some more. When I reach the 'end of the beginning', I go back and make sure that the beginning is working out as planned, and that there are no hiccups to trip me up when I'm writing the middle. I repeat this approach when I reach the end of the middle and end of the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18226" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-03-21T21:26:57.277" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T21:26:57.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21334" CreationDate="2016-03-15T14:48:19.543" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can write whatever the heck you want. Don't worry about what other governments will say; all they can do it ban your book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your book reaches international fame and is a hit all over the world, governments will not pay any attention to it. They may catch wind of your book, but unless a multitude of their people are reading it and they perceive it as propaganda that needs to be destroyed, you're fine. You will not start a war with just a single book unless thousands, or perhaps millions of other people rally to the same cause and twist your book into something altogether different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it is a fictional story, most likely people will not take it that seriously. Make sure you emphasize its fictional state and veer off the trodden path a bit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18205" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T14:48:19.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21385" CreationDate="2016-03-15T17:19:43.177" Score="2" ViewCount="1100" Body="&lt;p&gt;So let's say the story is about a ''anti-hero'' who uses harsh methods to kill/expose corrupt politicians and banksters. Now let's say that I'd want to write a romantic subplot happening between him and another person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a good way to make such a subplot fit when the main story doesn't revolve around love? Or should I just keep the parts apart, except for the fact that the hero both kills the bad guys and loves the girl?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-03-16T07:10:34.777" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T16:41:13.133" Title="How to handle writing a romantic subplot when the main plot is very different?" Tags="|romance|subplot|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21340" CreationDate="2016-03-15T18:36:45.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Avoid killing/raping/otherwise injuring the love interest (particularly a female love interest) just to create &lt;a href=&quot;http://fanlore.org/wiki/Manpain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;manpain&lt;/a&gt; in your anti-hero. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid making the love interest a plot device with no other background, characterization, or purpose than being a Love Interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid making the love interest a helpless pawn who has to be rescued all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T18:36:45.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21342" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21347" CreationDate="2016-03-15T20:40:03.017" Score="8" ViewCount="453" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a few short stories over the past few years, and I have shared a few of these with beta readers and asked for feedback. I have one that I decided was ready to go find a home, so I found a journal that I thought was a good match and submitted it. It was rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't take the rejection personally. I know there are a lot of reasons to reject a piece, but that's the rub -- I can't tell if it was rejected because it's crap or for some other reason. I also can't tell if the rejection was a form letter or not. It was via email and the editor invited me to join their writing group. That could be a nice &quot;hey, get to know us better&quot; or it could just be stock. I can't tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to invest my time wisely. I know that even good stories get rejected and that it takes time to find a place to publish. I wasn't expecting to get work accepted on the first try, but I also wasn't expecting that I would suddenly falter in my feeling that this story was ready for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I decide if I should spend my time re-writing this story, or if I should look for another place to submit it and spend my time writing more stories instead? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2074" LastEditorUserId="2074" LastEditDate="2016-03-16T12:58:44.400" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T04:46:40.257" Title="How do I know whether to revise or submit elsewhere?" Tags="|publishing|short-story|revision|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21342" CreationDate="2016-03-15T22:08:46.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because it was rejected by one journal doesn't mean that it isn't ready for publication.  All it means is that the person reading the slush that day thought that your story didn't fit with what they were looking for that day.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe, possibly, they thought your story was junk, but if your beta readers thought it was good and they weren't just lying to you because you're their friend, then most likely your story just didn't resonate for whatever reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many publications reject great stories because they just can't currently use the story and they don't have the budget to buy a story that they're just going to file away for a couple months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try submitting it to a couple more places before you give up completely, and don't let it get you down.  Move forward onto new stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if the journal that you submitted to didn't give you a personal rejection, but a form letter rejection, you might try submitting to journals next that are known for giving out personal rejections where they tell you exactly why they didn't accept your story.  There are web services, like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Submissions Grinder&lt;/a&gt; that will tell you information like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastEditorUserId="16155" LastEditDate="2016-03-15T22:21:39.770" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T22:21:39.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21344" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21435" CreationDate="2016-03-15T23:41:00.213" Score="1" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a novel I am working on that opens in present tense narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning of chapter two it is revealed that the previous chapter, and the rest of the novel, are POV narration from a particular character, of events he experienced many years ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I keep the bulk of my novel in present tense, even though it's describing things that have already passed? Or should I have all the experience-from-the-past narration be in past tense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18231" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-16T08:29:41.920" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T16:19:38.037" Title="Using present tense for events in the novels past" Tags="|viewpoint|tenses|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21334" CreationDate="2016-03-16T00:03:47.027" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of two things will likely happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By far, the more likely is that it will reach a small audience of Americans, you will get your &quot;props&quot; from that handful of Americans, and that will be it. Most foreign governments know that the American &lt;strong&gt;government&lt;/strong&gt; disapproves of them, and will not pay attention to a &quot;no name&quot; American author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other possibility is that your book, or more likely, a book like yours, becomes the modern equivalent of Harriet Beecher Stowe's &quot;Uncle Tom's Cabin.&quot; Then some governments will be offended, and censor your book, but Americans, plus other &quot;first world&quot; readers, plus some citizens of the offended countries will praise it highly. In that event, it could be in line for a Nobel Prize. (But, this, the second possibility, is &lt;strong&gt;far&lt;/strong&gt; less likely than the first.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T00:03:47.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21342" CreationDate="2016-03-16T02:12:50.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;William Edward Hickson put it perfectly; If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. If you truly think your beta readers have put forth the effort to really give you their true opinion on your work and you have edited it a few times, read it through a couple more to make sure it flows well, try many, many places before you just throw it away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You stated that you want to use your time effectively and wisely, and sometimes, waiting for the right publisher is the right thing to do. Sometimes, especially if it is a longer work that took much more time to write and edit, it is worth those few more days spent looking for someone else to publish it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the publisher is willing to give you criticism and a little bit of insight on as to why they turned it away, listen carefully. Learn from your mistakes and your writing will improve drastically. Listen to what people have to say, because it is they that are on the receiving end of your work. If they are unwilling to tell you a reason, do not give up hope. Try, try again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18205" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T02:12:50.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21342" CreationDate="2016-03-16T02:43:22.987" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Editors often reject stories for reasons that have nothing to do with the “quality” of the story (whatever that might mean).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few weeks ago I watched seven editors select stories for anthologies. Each editor was buying stories for their own anthology. There were about 250 stories submitted by 40 writers. Every editor talked about every story, and said whether they would buy it if they were editing the anthology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven’t tallied up the reasons for rejection, but it seems to me that approximately half were for reasons like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal taste.&lt;/strong&gt; Just not the editor’s kind of story. This happened a lot. I would say that a quarter of the rejections were for this reason.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Balance of stories.&lt;/strong&gt; The editor already had two humorous stories, or too many stories in the same genre, or too many in a very similar setting, or …&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fit with the anthology theme or requirements.&lt;/strong&gt; The editor couldn’t see how the story was clearly connected to the theme of the anthology. An editor rejected one of my stories because it was a cozy mystery, and she had explicitly asked us not to submit cozies. I goofed. “You, sir, have committed cozy!”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the 40 writers were all invited to submit stories. They were all known to the editors to be generally good writers. So these were not typical slush pile stories. Overall, about a third of the stories were selected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to apply Heinlein’s third rule: &lt;em&gt;You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.&lt;/em&gt; And by “editorial order” he means the order of an editor who could buy your story (not an editor that you might hire to make suggestions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I don’t rewrite stories unless someone who wants to buy it asks me to. And even then I apply Ellison’s Addendum to Heinlein’s third rule: &lt;em&gt;… and then only if you agree.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is to send it out again. And again. And again. And maybe package it into an ebook (and maybe a paperback) and put it up for sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Move on. Write something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2016-03-17T04:46:40.257" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T04:46:40.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21329" CreationDate="2016-03-16T02:52:04.440" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If any of the viewpoint characters know the brothers' identities, this won't work as a plot twist. It might work if you use viewpoint characters who are not privy to the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, a revelation makes good plot twist only if it &lt;em&gt;surprises the current viewpoint character.&lt;/em&gt; That is, the reader learns the information at the same moment when the viewpoint character learns it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a revelation only to the reader, and if the viewpoint character already knows the thing that's being revealed, that's not a plot twist. That's an authorial swindle. That's you (the writer) playing unfair with the reader. Readers get very annoyed at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if a character is shocked and surprised by some revelation, that's characters playing unfair with each other. And that's delightful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T02:52:04.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21349" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-16T05:41:29.577" Score="1" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;Paul McCartney, upon composing the melody for &quot;Yesterday&quot;, felt certain that it was too good to be original, and that he must have heard it before and just couldn't remember it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;McCartney composed the entire melody in a dream one night in his room&#xA;  at the Wimpole Street home of his then girlfriend Jane Asher and her&#xA;  family. Upon waking, he hurried to a piano and played the tune to&#xA;  avoid forgetting it. McCartney's initial concern was that he had&#xA;  subconsciously plagiarised someone else's work (known as&#xA;  cryptomnesia). As he put it, &quot;For about a month I went round to people&#xA;  in the music business and asked them  whether they had ever heard it&#xA;  before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yesterday_(Beatles_song)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yesterday_(Beatles_song)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in no way comparing any story idea I've come up with to the creative work of McCartney, however, I do struggle with this same fear, especially in my preferred genre of science-fiction. As a consumer of science fiction across the ages (from Asimov, Phillip K. Dick, Twilight Zone, to Star Trek and modern works) it is increasingly hard to know / believe that I am thinking of anything truly original and that instead every idea is derivative at best and essentially unconcsious idea plagarism at worst. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there are some websites where you can search for themes and ideas &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isfdb.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.isfdb.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sffrd.library.tamu.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sffrd.library.tamu.edu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(TV Tropes being another one: I won't post the link lest anyone get lost for days there)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am either failing to use these resources appropriately or they do not have precisely what I am looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do other aspirant authors have this nagging fear / issue? (Healthy fear of this is a good thing certainly - it keeps one honest.) In other words, how can you know / determine with reasonable good faith effort that your idea is original?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15813" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-03-16T12:26:30.757" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T12:26:30.757" Title="How to deal with cryptomnesia (falsely recalling generating a thought or idea)?" Tags="|creative-writing|resources|science-fiction|ideas|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-03-16T12:55:10.677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12156" CreationDate="2016-03-16T07:22:31.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that sometimes writing a story can be a journey as much for the writer as for the reader. See the where the journey takes you, and leave the prophecy blank. Then, after finishing the story, come back and write the prophecy. It works much easier, especially if a basic idea of a prophecy is already written and only embellishments are needed. Then, reread or ask someone else to read and tell you if the prophecy makes sense and fits in with the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18235" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T07:22:31.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7818" CreationDate="2016-03-16T11:27:05.430" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes...&lt;/strong&gt; before writing, writer feels the emotions of the character thats been depicted into the story. Its a role of a writer to create emotions of the character and personally feel the emotion and be into the character while writing. If you as a writer don't feel the character, readers will never be able to feel. So its important to be in the mood and emotion of the character while writing and it does effect your writing... :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18240" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T11:27:05.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21342" CreationDate="2016-03-16T15:43:08.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can certainly look at it from the market perspective. What one editor rejects another may accept. What 100 editors reject, the 101st editor may accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can also look at it from the perspective of your own ability to make it better. The passage of time allows us to see work in a new light. Reading it over after a rejection, you may find:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That it still seems fine to you  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That you can see problems with it but&#xA;don't immediately see how to fix them &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That it has problems and you&#xA;can immediately see how to fix them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, send it out again. In the third case, revise and send it out again. The second case is the tricky one. You can send it out, get a critique to see if it helps you come up with a fix, stick it in a drawer and pull it out in six months, or sit down and rework it until you figure out what the problem is and how to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, my rule is, if I can't see a flaw, send it out. If I can, don't send it out till I figure out how to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T15:43:08.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21357" CreationDate="2016-03-16T20:27:44.703" Score="10" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm 50,000 words into my first book. Based on my plot and roadmap, that's about 25% of the way into it, so about 200k.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have roughly 110 pages in a good place, as I've already re-drafted three or four times, polishing it up to get it ready for submission. This part is ready, but obviously the remaining 3/4 of the book isn't even drafted yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: do I need to have a first draft completed to the ending in order to start talking to or submitting to publishers or agents? Is the first five chapters enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Aside: I've done my research and I recognize that 200k is very long for a debut novel. But it's not unheard of, so I'm writing it first and I'll worry about word count later.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15134" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T22:18:04.707" Title="Submitting a partially complete draft?" Tags="|publishing|agent|submitting-work|first-draft|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21354" CreationDate="2016-03-16T21:13:34.573" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's completely up to you. Most likely, the first few people you contact will turn you down, even with a completed first draft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually a pretty good idea, because you will not have to wait hardly as long for an agent to read through what you have and tell you their thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say go for it, and don't be discouraged when it is turned down. If you already have an agent and have published a book with them, they like to see the beginning of the book and read through as you progress to give you tips and ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all up to you if you want to do this or not, because either way will work about just as well. I you publish a completed first draft, you will have many more ideas about how the story would progress. If you give them a plot summary of 3/4ths of the rest of the novel, you won't have nearly as many ideas for it as when you've gone through and written it all out. I find that I come up with my best ideas on the go as I write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18205" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T21:13:34.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21354" CreationDate="2016-03-16T22:18:04.707" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not try to query with an unfinished manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Query Shark,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an incomplete fantasy novel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;here's where I stop reading and send a form rejection letter&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Janet Reid, &lt;a href=&quot;http://queryshark.blogspot.co.il/2009/09/134.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://queryshark.blogspot.co.il/2009/09/134.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google will find you this advice over and over: an unpublished author should not query an unfinished novel. e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?57672-Any-agents-who-accept-unfinished-manuscripts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gracebooks.org/book-publishing/query-unfinished-manuscript/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rachellegardner.com/should-you-write-the-whole-book/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://litreactor.com/columns/ask-the-agent-a-review-of-when-to-query-agents&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An agent or published have no reason to take any risk or spend any effort on a writer who has not yet completed one book. It costs them time, and puts them at risk of you not finishing the book, or finishing the book poorly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finish the book. Edit the book. Polish the book. Get the book as perfect as you can, so the moment someone says &amp;quot;OK, let's take a look,&amp;quot; they'll have nothing but a marvelous read ahead of them. &lt;em&gt;Then&lt;/em&gt; you can start querying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T22:18:04.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21342" CreationDate="2016-03-17T01:46:50.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would have been a miracle if the one journal you sent your story to accepted it. Even the best writers collect tons of rejection letters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what you do: Send it to 10 journals at once. Most allow simultaneous submissions, provided you let them know if your story's been accepted somewhere else. And when you get 10 rejections, send it to 10 more. That's what we do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some journals give feedback, and others don't. As others have said, you can ask for feedback, though you might not get any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T01:46:50.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21261" CreationDate="2016-03-17T04:47:35.467" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think, we just have to publish books in our Kindle Account. It will be showing in all local kindle domains. I just published books in my account, and traffic is coming from many countries. Royalties vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18245" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T04:47:35.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21360" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-17T05:32:04.480" Score="11" ViewCount="6067" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you write a story where the point-of-view character knows something, but you want to keep it a secret from the reader until later in the story? How do you effectively suppress a &lt;strong&gt;vital&lt;/strong&gt; detail for effect later, on without adversely impacting the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, take a plot following two traveling brothers on a journey to rescue a kidnapped prince. But I think it would be cool to keep secret the fact that the prince is the travellers' brother. Of course, this would restrict the manner in which the characters interact, especially since one of the traveling brothers is the MC. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is something that has the potential to aggravate readers, but I've seen stories where the POV character knows important things that the reader doesn't. I understand, for example, that Gregory McDonald's &lt;em&gt;Confess, Fletch&lt;/em&gt; is in close third person POV, but for long stretches of the novel it doesn't let on whether the protagonist has committed the murder he's being accused of. Clearly it can be done; I want to know how to do it well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a spin-off question based on the original form of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/21329/how-to-decide-if-a-plot-twist-worth-doing&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16829" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2020-02-14T17:37:39.660" Title="How can I keep secret a major detail known to the POV protagonist?" Tags="|plot|viewpoint|suspense|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21360" CreationDate="2016-03-17T05:45:27.717" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is possible to pull this kind of thing off. In this particular instance the intriguing idea of keeping their relationship secret for a while would obviously change what details, memories, etc. you can delve into during inactive periods, but if done right this could lend a strong hand to grabbing the reader's interest sometime in the middle or end of the plot, as well as possibly adding an element of mystery in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as how dialogue and thoughts go, I think that will come fairly naturally; you might relax a bit on the title of Prince once the reader is familiar with his position. If you think about yourself in this position (even were he unrelated to you), would you always think of relieving &quot;The Prince&quot;? Wouldn't it be, &quot;Prince Henry&quot; to the supporting cast, and &quot;Henry&quot; between the brothers? (If they are risking their lives trying to help Prince Henry Walter, they likely know which Henry is being referred to.) The one hard thing might be if they shared a common last name. (Perhaps this could be skirted by the travellers using falsified names to promote their safety on the journey.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they shared a common childhood, fond memories could easily be like those of good childhood friends so commonly depicted in novels. You don't ever talk to your siblings about &quot;your brother John&quot;, they all know who you're talking about when you say &quot;John&quot;, and you always think of him simply as &quot;John&quot; (supposing, of course, that you have a brother named John). Having these two blokes be of high enough position to have at least interacted somewhat with him shouldn't incite any suspicion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they've never met, perhaps they are experiencing the anticipation of wondering what he will be like. They believe that they hold a key that will be vital to his release, and who would question their intention? If they released the prince, who knows how lavish the rewards could be? But what if they don't succeed? What if he is ungrateful for his release? What if this? What if that? What ifs may just keep them up some nights and seemingly nearly deter them from their purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their relation could be withheld from the knowledge of acquaintances without suspicion for a while, perhaps indefinitely. But perhaps someone essential to their goal (and maybe someone they don't entirely trust) demands to know exactly why he is of such interest to them, and what they have/know that others don't. During a breathless moment of anxious indecision, one of the brothers states desperately, &quot;He is our Brother!&quot; And if you're really cruel, knowing that this information will intrigue the reader, the chapter will end and the scene will change to the captors. Thus, the reader will go on through another chapter before turning the lights off for the night and still be in suspense through the next day. Or, maybe they don't yet know that they are related...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16829" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T05:45:27.717" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3513" CreationDate="2016-03-17T06:46:53.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this is why we have chapters. The novel is broken down into more manageable chunks for both writer and reader. You don’t have to work on the novel — or read it — as though it is one big chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my suggestion to you is: &lt;strong&gt;write straight through to the end of the chapter, then on a separate day, with fresh eyes, edit and refine the chapter, then move on to writing the next chapter&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach solves many giant problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you don’t interrupt your writing time and flow with stop-and-go editing and second-guessing because you know you are going to edit the complete chapter during a separate editing session&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you edit while the writing is fairly fresh in your mind, but with a little distance of a separate day to get perspective&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you build each additional chapter on a fairly solid foundation of edited, refined previous chapters — not on the shifting sand of unedited chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T06:46:53.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21360" CreationDate="2016-03-17T07:20:06.613" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the character knows the vital detail, and if the vital detail matters to the character, and you want us readers to be deeply inside the character's head, you have to give the detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, when you reveal the detail, we suddenly discover that we were never really deeply in the character's head after all. If we were, then we too would have known the thing that they knew and that mattered so much to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That kind of sudden discovery is enormously jarring, and not in a good way. It throws us right out of the character, and perhaps right out of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want us to feel cheated, you have three options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the viewpoint characters from knowing the detail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the detail from mattering &lt;em&gt;in even the slightest way&lt;/em&gt; to any character while we're in their viewpoint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep us out of the character's viewpoint altogether.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T07:20:06.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21360" CreationDate="2016-03-17T10:44:57.457" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/21361/2533&quot;&gt;Kai's answer&lt;/a&gt;, one thing to add though is that you should make sure that you leave teasers throughout the book. Flashbacks to the two of them playing together or other clues, this is the main key to having a twist like this not feel like a cheat. When you can look back and see all the things you missed and go &quot;of course, that's why&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of the movie sixth sense for an example of this being done well. All the scenes played fine when you don't know the twist. But they work equally well once you do know it, and they have added meaning at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing this it doesn't feel like a cheat when you do unveil the twist, since there were subtle clues there all along. The trick is to get the clues to the right level of subtlety where most people can see them looking back but don't work it out ahead of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10615" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T13:30:52.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21360" CreationDate="2016-03-17T11:26:06.467" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can be done in a number of ways, but it may affect the plot to your story depending on which you choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. They don't know it's their brother&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is pretty straightforward. Either they are working freelance to save &quot;someone&quot;, (perhaps they know it's royalty that they are rescuing, but have been told no more than that) and when it is revealed that it is the Prince that they are rescuing, the reveal comes that it is their brother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of this is that the reader has no reason to believe that the narrator is unreliable. The brothers can even discuss their older brother, and it never need to come into consideration that they themselves are royalty at all. You can establish their backstory without needing to include plot points that you don't wish to reveal to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside of this is that the characters would not have the same emotional attachment to their quest until the reveal. This may work in your favor plot-wise or in developing your characters, but it might mean the journey is a little hollow to begin with as they would just be on a generic rescue mission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would also be stacking many reveals on top of each other (that the person captured is the heir, that it is their brother, and that they are also royalty). You can always space these reveals out, but the captive being who it is would need to come last, as the other things would need to come immediately after if they had not been revealed yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. They don't acknowledge it's their brother&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the &quot;having your cake and eating it too&quot; option. The brothers know who the captured person is, but they do not acknowledge their relationship to him. The reader never finds out what's really going on until you want them to, but the characters will act the same throughout the story as they know what's going on all along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be done, and I've seen a good example of it. Following is a massive spoiler for The Banned And The Banished series by James Clemens:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From the very beginning of the 5 books in the series, the narrator of the entire story refers to the main character as &quot;the Wit'ch&quot; or &quot;betrayer&quot; etc. and it is immediately understood he holds incredible disdain for her. Over the course of the books in the prologues and epilogues he comes to understand the reasons why she made the choices she did, and slowly comes to forgive her. At the end of book 5 the reader learns the narrator is the MC's brother, and he acknowledges her as &quot;sister&quot;, as he finally accepts the role he played in the story (which is significant), and realizes that it was he who was in the wrong the whole time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The POV character(s) could simply refuse to acknowledge their relationship to their older brother. Perhaps he was abusive, or entitled due to being the heir, or they resent him for being next in line for the throne. They could simply refer to him as &quot;the bastard&quot; or &quot;Prince Perfect&quot;, establishing their feelings towards him and never revealing that he is related to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside to this method is that you cannot go into much depth about their relationship with him. If you start to establish any sort of backstory between them, unless it's done very carefully it may become obvious that they are related. You might be able to drop hints about it, but if you want it to come entirely out of the blue it may be difficult to fool a perceptive reader for that long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also might make the reader question why they are rescuing him at all. If they hate him so much, why would they risk their lives and not let him rot, or not just send some hired goons to rescue him? They could maybe have been ordered to do it by their parents, or feel they have a duty, but it may be a little convoluted for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. They don't acknowledge that they're royalty&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be just a mission to save their older brother that they love, which later becomes a mission to save the realm when it is revealed to the reader who their target is. The readers get to find out who the characters are, why they are doing what they are doing, and what the relationship and backstory is like between the three of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows you to establish to the reader all of the backstory much better, and the reveal can come much later in the story, as it is realistic that they would journey to rescue their older brother without any sort of additional motive needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, much like option 2 you would be limited in how much backstory you can give. You would have to focus more on the brothers playing in a garden as children as opposed to any memories of official functions. Perhaps you can let on that they are nobility, so they could reminisce about attending fancy banquets without revealing who they really are, and if they are well-mannered and trained in weaponry then it may be difficult to ignore their backstory altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would also need a convincing reason for them to not even think about who they really are. Perhaps they are ashamed of being royals and just want to be ordinary folk. But you would also have to avoid the reader questioning why their older brother was kidnapped in the first place if he is supposed to be just a nobody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will be more options, but those are the best 3 I can come up with. However, I would encourage you to read &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/21278/introducing-the-hero-first/21280#21280&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; about whether to put the plot twist in at all (which is more an answer to your other question, but it relates to this too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a normal Hero's Journey, which has a huge plot twist in the middle and then resumes as normal, is entirely exploitative to the reader. If it's supposed to function as a big shock just to engage the reader without any thematic reason, then it might be better not to include the twist at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, including the twist and having it as part of the theme of the story can be incorporated into any of the three options. Whether that's 1) trickling gradual reveals about the main characters into the story, 2) a story about rebuilding a relationship with an estranged sibling, or 3) having them come to accept their responsibility as royalty, the way the secret is kept from the reader, and how the eventual reveal is manufactured will be very important to the overall arc of your characters and your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T09:49:49.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6864" CreationDate="2016-03-17T12:23:12.313" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of trying to find a markup standard you should stick to the methods utilised by the tool. They wouldn't deviate too much from general markup standards and most of the time they hide the markup from the editor and just display it when needed. There are gazillions of text editing tools out there. I'm using at least 3 or 4 different tools with probably different markup and/or versioning methods. I don't care for the details and just benefit from the output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the tools suggested by the commentators (criticmarkup, acrobat pro, xml etc) I can get down the tools I'm currently using or did use in the past which all are capable of marking, commenting, drafting and/or versioning content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://draftin.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Draftin&lt;/a&gt; is an online tool for just writing plain text in a collaborative setup and has a few extra markup features above the basic feature set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I'm creating service and end user documentation in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Confluence&lt;/a&gt; which has many powerful collaboration, markup, versioning etc features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past I've used Redmine which again had many built-in (or extendable with addons) powerful markup and versioning features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also using Microsoft's and Google's online word processing and spreadsheeting tools which have almost every feature for collaboration, versioning, commenting, or marking up content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10460" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T12:23:12.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21298" CreationDate="2016-03-17T12:32:01.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://draftin.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Draft&lt;/a&gt; seems to satisfy your requirements. The versioning process is done by drafting (hence the name) but it's almost the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10460" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T12:32:01.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21360" CreationDate="2016-03-17T14:55:35.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The novel Engleby by Sebastian Faulks does this, with a very simple and well known trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; The novel is about the fallout from the murder of a young woman. &#xA; It eventually becomes clear that the narrator is responsible, but the&#xA; stress of the event has caused him to suppress the memory of his deed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll have seen similar things done is other novels before, although not usually with the POV character. The author's skill here is in misdirecting the reader and slowly dropping clues as to what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, there are many ways of doing what you want. Doing them in a manner that doesn't feel artificial or stereotypical is, however, difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6371" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T14:55:35.257" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6062" CreationDate="2016-03-17T15:15:17.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whoa I do not know where you learned to write, but at our &lt;a href=&quot;http://authorformat.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book and Ebook formatter service,&lt;/a&gt; we use &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_(typography)#Flourished_section_breaks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;flourishes&lt;/a&gt; to separate subchapters in a book. Sometimes small ones some times larger ones. This is the only proper method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using html this may be harder to do. Chances are, you will have to convert them to .jpg or .png files instead of .eps. This method takes care of paperback books and ebooks, and makes them manageable and good looking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18257" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-17T22:30:56.980" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T22:30:56.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21374" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21375" CreationDate="2016-03-17T16:32:33.920" Score="-6" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write mainly short stories and poetry, and am unsure of what social media platform will garner more attention to this type of writing. Is there a tried and true social media that will get me more attention than another? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18261" LastEditorUserId="18205" LastEditDate="2016-03-18T13:42:38.960" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T14:48:18.743" Title="How to seek an audience?" Tags="|creative-writing|short-story|poetry|attention|social-media|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-04-04T03:26:24.797" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21374" CreationDate="2016-03-17T17:29:01.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your goal is to share what you think, then pick any of the social media you personally enjoy -- particularly if you feel you can find people whom you want to follow and learn from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="202" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T17:29:01.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21374" CreationDate="2016-03-17T22:19:13.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no perfect place. No social media platform is going to give you attention just by posting there. The internet is full of Stuff for people to read; they aren't queuing up to read your material. Anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wherever you're writing, you'll need to build up an audience. You'll need to establish some kind of platform, a home base, and find places you can publish your work which will get it read, and ways to promote your work so people go read it wherever it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some platforms are better than others; different ones can have different pros and cons. But no platform will provide you with widespread attention, unless you go out and get it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T22:19:13.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21377" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21398" CreationDate="2016-03-17T23:01:42.883" Score="1" ViewCount="1612" Body="&lt;p&gt;My research paper focuses on a novel with a nameless protagonist, so I'll be referring to him a lot.  Is there some convention for referring to such characters in academic papers?  For context, the novel is &lt;em&gt;The Wings&lt;/em&gt; by Yi Sang, and here's an example sentence I'd like to be able to write:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many of these sentiments are channeled through [nameless protagonist].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18266" LastEditorUserId="18266" LastEditDate="2016-03-18T15:23:18.743" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T03:45:22.363" Title="Referring to nameless protagonists in essays" Tags="|essay|naming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21378" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-17T23:30:18.623" Score="0" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;i'm ready to go to copyright but the gov.copyright page is to confusing help please thought I knew what to do but now lost. thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18267" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T16:27:57.350" Title="how do i copyright my book? please help thanks" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2016-03-19T20:02:29.483" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7818" CreationDate="2016-03-18T00:24:24.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything about you on a particular day influences your creative output. Not only mood, but also how tired you are, what drugs you have been taking, whether you are hungry or not hungry or have eaten way too much food, whether you have worries or not, whether you feel rushed or not, what location you are writing in. That is why you see a lot of writers (and artists and other creative people) carving out a quiet, neutral room to work in so that when they go into that room, they go into a neutral place and mood, apart from the details of that particular day, apart from the world, and then they can shift high or low in mood and intensity as required by the subject matter of the work they are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are doing by writing the same story while in different moods reminds me of the following art project, where the artist painted the same self-portrait multiple times while under the influence of different drugs. Included here as food for thought about how state of mind influences creative work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bryanlewissaunders.org/drugs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bryan Lewis Saunders — Under the Influence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to experiment with any or all of the above factors. Like fast for a day and then write your story, and then eat 10,000 calories in a day and write your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T00:24:24.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20674" CreationDate="2016-03-18T04:43:30.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are going to write Google Algorithm friendly product description, you have to follow the guideline like following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Length of description: 300 to 500 words &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Error free(good grammar)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good Keyword research &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relevant Product Description etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18245" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T04:43:30.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21340" CreationDate="2016-03-18T13:32:43.763" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you need to do is &lt;strong&gt;define the relationship between the subplot and the primary plot.&lt;/strong&gt; In other words, you need to &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; what role the romance subplot is playing in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost any relationship will do (and you can use more than one), but knowing what you're aiming for will help you write the right thing, and put the focus on the right places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some simple examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The romance is a complication.&lt;/strong&gt; The romance is important to your anti-hero, but it keeps getting in the way of Important Things (and/or, Important Things keep getting in the way of the romance). Think of Peter Parker and Mary Jane - &lt;i&gt;Spider-Man&lt;/i&gt; isn't a romance story, but the romance and the primary action arc keep interfering with one another.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The romance is a counterpoint.&lt;/strong&gt; In the primary plot your anti-hero is doing awful things to awful people; in the romance plot, we can see other sides of his personality. We can see what he wants for his future, his society, his world. We can see how he interacts with regular people, how he deals with regular, everyday problems. (If he's enough of an anti-hero, the answer may be: Not Well. An extreme example is &lt;i&gt;Watchmen&lt;/i&gt;'s Rorschach, who's insane and paranoid.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The romance is a haven.&lt;/strong&gt; The primary plot is tense and full of action; the romance is where your protagonist (and your story!) goes to relax, to wind down a little.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The romance is part of the plot.&lt;/strong&gt; The romance is intrinsically linked with the primary plot; the progression of one affects the other. Imagine a detective dating the crime boss's daughter - there's going to be constant back-and-forth between the romance and the investigation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The romance is a link to a character with her own subplot.&lt;/strong&gt; A lot of these position the romance as &lt;em&gt;supporting&lt;/em&gt; your protagonist and his story, in one way or another. But that doesn't have to be the case. If the romantic interest has her own dramatic arc, and the romance is mostly used to link the two together, that's awesome too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are only a few options. You can think up a dozen more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All you're trying to avoid&lt;/strong&gt; is having the subplot be there &lt;em&gt;purely&lt;/em&gt; for romance, and feel mostly disconnected from the primary plot. That seems to be your failure mode here - that's the point where readers go &quot;Well, the main story is great, but what's this mushy love story doing mixed in?&quot; (I'm assuming you're &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; going deliberately for Romance+Suspense, which surely has its fans as well.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As long as your readers understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the romance subplot isn't out of place in your book, you're absolutely fine.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can you tell what the relationship should be?&lt;/strong&gt; Look at what you've already got planned, and ask yourself, &quot;OK, why is that interesting and important &lt;em&gt;to this story&lt;/em&gt;?&quot;. Whatever you answer is the germ of the relationship. Work on it until you've got a full answer, until you know exactly what relationship it is you want to focus on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I focus my romance subplot on the particular relationship I've chosen?&lt;/strong&gt; This can vary wildly, so I can't really answer this except in very broad terms: You know what you're after, so check that your writing is achieving it. Ask yourself &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you'll get across your focus to your reader. Ask what will keep the reader from thinking you've chosen some other relationship you didn't intend. Ask beta readers what they thought of the subplot, what their reactions to it where; see if they were looking where you wanted them to look. Adjust accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T13:32:43.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21374" CreationDate="2016-03-18T14:48:18.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Forget about promotion. Just write your stories. Submit them for publication in journals and magazines. (I much prefer getting my stories into print rather than getting them online.) If you get to the point where you're working with a publishing company (say, on a book), they'll advise you on how to promote yourself and your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T14:48:18.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21091" CreationDate="2016-03-18T14:53:49.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say first to take your ego out of the equation. Technical documentation serves a specific purpose, which is to impart information from an authoritative source to a reader. Superfluous information, such as humor, is a distraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say I want to connect my DVD player to my new flat-screen TV. I don't want to hear about how your grandfather poo-pooed color when RCA introduced it. How does that help me complete the task? Here are the criteria for technical docs, in order of importance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it accurate?&#xA;Is it complete?&#xA;Is it appropriate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stick to the task and the facts. If you are new to the game, find a good editor, hopefully one who is conversant in the field, and pay attention to their comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18277" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T14:53:49.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21340" CreationDate="2016-03-18T15:59:23.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Anti)Heroes are romantic by nature. They perform heroically, passionately, in order to attain an ideal. I think the issue you might be facing here is not one of writing, per se, but of psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You're probably judging your character.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You presume that because he uses 'harsh' methods, that must be his sole definition. He can't like cake and pie? Coffee and tea? Because you use the term anti-hero, we can further presume that maybe you're only offering clarification for sake of brevity in your question, or it could also point to an underlying belief system you hold, that killing people for any reason is bad. Therefore, MC is an &lt;em&gt;anti&lt;/em&gt;-hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the case, I think the first thing you need to do is not worry about your subplot, but learn to love your MC. You have to forgive him as an author, and at least in the abstract, embrace his ideals. You aren't going to be able to convince the reader of his conviction and his passion if you're constantly apologizing for him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He does what he does, because it is the right thing to do. (In his mind.) He is a murderer of murderers, sine qua non, and it is a role he is willing to accept in order to make the world a better place... for those he loves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The opposite of love is not hate, it is apathy&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Do pardon my Rand, but this is true. If you love something, if it matters to you, and it turns into something you find distasteful, that it is the inception of hate, but its core is still love. If something doesn't matter to you, you don't give a shit either way. Shoelaces for example. I doubt you have a heated, passionate feeling towards shoelaces either way. But the naturalistic right to life, on the other hand, likely sparks you strongly, and you have very specific ideas about how that should be addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point here is that your MC might be angry, spiteful, vindictive, hateful, that does not mean he is evil. While you and I may disagree with his motives, he would argue them to his death, and would have very specific ideas about why what he is doing is right. In his mind, even if he recognizes his actions as questionable, he still finds them justifiable, and therefore good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if he's hateful, that's because he loves that which he hates. Hm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have come to terms with the MC's psychology/philosophy, likely you will see that there is not only a lack of contradiction in a love story mixed into your primary arc, it actually &lt;strong&gt;ADDS&lt;/strong&gt; to the primary arc. Your reader needs to be able to relate to your MC in order to be invested in him. If he's just a single-minded assassin lacking in humanity, you're going to have difficulty pulling that off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By making him more complex, by adding the fuel of a romance, you have&#xA;  a million opportunities to draw contrasts and metaphors between his&#xA;  actions and his values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you handle seemingly contradictory subplots? The same as any other subplot. You lace it into the story. You use it to teach the reader about the world and its characters. Your use it to build empathy for your characters; to draw the reader into your story through the common ground of morality and sexuality, and then leverage it to whatever aims you desire. To humanize the MC. To deliver him. To destroy him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your subplot, as it is, could be even more powerful than your primary arc. (Perhaps not more important, or maybe that too.) I think maybe you're judging your character, and your subplot. Maybe it's not a subplot at all, but the foundation. You just need to tweak your perspective, and you may realize that it's not the plots that are contradictory...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15134" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T15:59:23.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21386" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-18T16:04:34.587" Score="3" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;How might one go about creating character conflicts that intrigue people? As in, ones that are innovative/original that are not cliched (for example, the love triangle when it was brand new).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastEditorUserId="16622" LastEditDate="2016-03-18T16:10:37.490" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T02:07:53.083" Title="How to create interesting character conflicts" Tags="|technique|characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21387" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-18T16:17:38.460" Score="4" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have noticed lately, that when I write letters describing things I've done recently, I default too often to sentences that look like &quot;We did such-and-such, which was really great.&quot; I notice that I often have to append the &quot;which...&quot; to almost every event description, just to get the point across that I enjoyed something. Is there a better way to go about this, or a fix to this fundamental problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there is this idea of show, don't tell, at least when it comes to writing a story, but I'm not sure how to apply that here usually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18280" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-06-05T01:52:41.997" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T01:52:41.997" Title="Eliminating repetitive “which was ... ” statements at the end of sentences" Tags="|style|letter|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21378" CreationDate="2016-03-18T16:27:57.350" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://copyrightregistry-online-form.com/?gclid=Cj0KEQjwzq63BRCrtIuGjImRoIIBEiQAGLHdYSgKm6Z75J4lJjVTdOJyskYRX0mgdb2dWZCE7L1LET8aAlcW8P8HAQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://copyrightregistry-online-form.com/?gclid=Cj0KEQjwzq63BRCrtIuGjImRoIIBEiQAGLHdYSgKm6Z75J4lJjVTdOJyskYRX0mgdb2dWZCE7L1LET8aAlcW8P8HAQ&lt;/a&gt; easy to follow and in most cases instant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18257" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T16:27:57.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21360" CreationDate="2016-03-18T16:30:22.670" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;tl;dr on all the answers here, but I'm actually facing the exact same quandary in my own novel. In addition, the secret the MC is keeping (his career) would come up conversationally between himself and the rest of the characters, so it's a constant struggle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am employing a number of different tactics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Making the secret a known-unknown to the reader&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In other words, the reader knows there is a secret, because of the MC's (and exposition's) lack of specificity. By being glaringly obvious that I'm not going to come out and tell them what the MC does, the reader knows that there is a secret to find out, and I can lay breadcrumbs to keep them turning the pages. When I was first concepting the story, this was a sticking point. When I decided, oh wait, this could fun, it became a commodity. It adds a mystique to the MC, and gives the reader something else to look forward to in the book. Plus, it's not a sudden, unprojected surprise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Misdirection&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I tweaked my concept once I decided to embrace point 1, adding a couple supporting characters, and voila, I have red herrings everywhere. I am intentionally using specific language and situations to suggest to the reader that the MC does X for a living, and I will often write as though X were indeed true. It helps me to embrace the lie, as the MC does (Method Writing? &lt;em&gt;wink&lt;/em&gt;) and further obfuscate the truth. When situations arise in which the MC has to actively cover, I don't hide that from the reader, just the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, I decided on third-person limited multi-perspective. It allows me to give clues from the MCs POV, and when I'm writing from other characters' POV, I try to fill in the blanks of what the reader might be asking of themselves (wait, if he does X, why would he say that?) and also further misdirection with their own theories of what he does.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I sweat a lot&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Which is to say that this is really fn hard to write. I'm constantly checking my language and phrasing and keeping notes (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.literatureandlatte.com/trial.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; footnotes and thumbtacks are really helpful for this) on what I say and how I say it. Obviously I don't want it to read clunky, and I don't want to disenfranchise my reader, I want to use that mystery as a subplot to draw them into main plotline. So I read and re-read what I write, and I have a brilliant, sexy, red-headed editor to bounce drafts off of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might recommend finding a writing circle (&lt;a href=&quot;https://writeon.amazon.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Write On&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://critiquecircle.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt;, et al), and doing control experiments. Keep one group in the dark, let the other in on the secret, and then ask each to give you their feedback on how it's progressing. Does this make sense? What do you think the secret might be? How did you come to that conclusion? Is it frustrating or fun? Etc. A potential benefit to this technique is that readers can often come up with wonderful theories that you can employ in the book!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backspace&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You can use Shft+Left/Right/Up/Down arrow keys to select larger selections of text for deletion. How do I know this little shortcut? I'm using the same tactic! ;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did I mention that this is really hard? Don't expect to get it right the first time. But if you can pull it off, it can only add to the story. Cheers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15134" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T16:30:22.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21340" CreationDate="2016-03-18T16:35:47.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a double themed story (anti hero versus the bad guys, anti hero vis a vis the girl), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two conflicts that have the potential to get in each others' way. The more time/energy that the anti hero spends chasing the bad guys, the less time and attention for the girl, and less likelihood of winning her. And vice-versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story can be analyzed in a 2 by 2 matrix, with four possible outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;          Result 1            Result 2&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theme 1: Anti hero defeats/does not defeat bad guys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theme 2: Anti hero gets/does not get girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Outcome 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Happy ending all around. Anti hero defeats bad guys, gets girl. This is the &quot;classical&quot; ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Outcome 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Bittersweet ending. Anti hero defeats bad guys, loses girl in the process. This is the ending I recommend for you. Yes, your protagonist wins, but there is a cost to victory. Still, the protagonist has a clear sense of priorities, and the victory over the bad guys is more important than the loss of the girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Outcome 3:&lt;/strong&gt; Consolation prize. Anti hero loses to bad guys, but gets the girl as a consolation prize. This outcome goes &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; the thrust of your question and I would not recommend it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Outcome 4:&lt;/strong&gt; Anti hero loses both the fight against the bad guys and the girl. This is called tragedy, and is too much for most people to bear (including me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-03-18T16:41:13.133" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T16:41:13.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21386" CreationDate="2016-03-18T17:30:10.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basic block of conflict is &quot;Person or Group A wants something, and Person or Group B wants to stop that.&quot; The intrigue and originality are all in the details. Create intriguing characters and give them an original dilemma and you've got interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T17:30:10.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16871" CreationDate="2016-03-18T17:33:13.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might end up with The Walking Dead problem. No one calls a zombie a zombie. It becomes a distraction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Dead?&quot; Yup. &#xA;&quot;Drinks blood?&quot; Yup. &#xA;&quot;Turns into a bat?&quot; Yup. &#xA;&quot;Is it a vampire?&quot; No, we call it a plasmosucking werebat.&#xA;&quot;Err... you know what a vampire is, right?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18282" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T17:33:13.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21387" CreationDate="2016-03-18T17:33:39.810" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do a search for &quot;which was.&quot; (or whatever your problem structure is)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set up a checklist of five different ways to rewrite it: &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;1) We did such-and-such. I enjoyed it.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;2) When we did such-and-such, everyone had a great time.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;3) Plus we really had fun that time we did such-and-such.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;4) Have you ever done such-and-such? What a blast.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;5) Such-and-such is so much fun; I have to tell you about the most recent time.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;et cetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then go through and rewrite. You can leave some of the originals, but vary them until your ear stops tripping over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T17:33:39.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21396" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-18T19:33:28.527" Score="4" ViewCount="625" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://canva.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://canva.com&lt;/a&gt; appears to offer support for multiple formats including &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.canva.com/design/DABt88QAXY8/Bkmy3U-RbnOW3VN4yUunKA/edit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eBook&lt;/a&gt; (and also &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.canva.com/design/DABt8y0W-Bk/i7tVjGIKbi862-09ZqiEag/edit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kindle&lt;/a&gt;), but what I can't tell from the homepage is whether they offer direct support for creating a cover (front, back, and spine in one image) that CreateSpace will accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I create a complete book cover for a CreateSpace paperback? I know the basics of GIMP, and if absolutely necessary, I can design something online and then drop it onto an .xcf original that will be uploaded as a PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8761" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-25T11:18:27.213" LastActivityDate="2018-04-25T11:18:27.213" Title="How can I (or can I?) create a Canva.com cover for a CreateSpace 6&quot;x9&quot; title?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2018-05-01T15:24:07.387" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21377" CreationDate="2016-03-18T20:55:34.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't really a single conventional word that is used, I believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Protagonist might work, but it's pretty dry.  I'd say in this case, for this story, it might be better to use a more descriptive word, or combination of words that identify the man more directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by looking at the character's relationships with the other characters in the story - especially the antagonist, his wife.  If she's his wife, then he must be her husband.  So he is the husband.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the main character is also a willfully pathetic victim.  When I read the story I just want to shake him and say, &quot;Wake up!&quot; (Which I think is maybe the point of the story.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calling him one thing over and over, will start to get awfully repetitive, and if writers have one convention, it's that they don't want to be boring.  You might pick a couple of characteristics about the man out of the story and rotate through them, using all of them to identify him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T20:55:34.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21091" CreationDate="2016-03-18T21:10:52.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clarity in your technical writing should always be the top priority, but that doesn't mean you have to sacrifice an emotional connection to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I would take an approach that's similar to the way some websites do copy writing. As a copy writer, you wouldn't imagine you were telling the tale of Chromecast betraying the TV. Instead, you would imagine you're writing the dialog for a single roll in a drama that's playing out in your reader's life. Your reader is the main character in this story. You, or rather your manual, is the helpful friend. The big, frustrating, technical thing they're trying to set up is the antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing like this, keep in mind the story already started without you, before the reader picked up the user manual. Once they start reading it's your job to expect the emotional state they're in and try to amplify it if positive, or diffuse it if negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to think about the situation your reader is in. Are they frustrated that they can't get something to work? Or are they super stoked that they just got a new toy to play with? Adjust your voice and tone to suite the likely situation. You may even need to adjust your tone throughout the manual. For example, the introduction might be chipper and enthusiastic, but a troubleshooting section might shift into a more sympathetic tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to crack jokes, or add in fluffy extras that don't move the reader toward their goal. But you do need to understand who your reader is, what they're doing, and why they're doing it. With that, you can guess the kind of person they would want help from in their current situation - dad? a trusted doctor? their buddy from work who just set up his system yesterday? Once you figure out who that is, use that person's voice. Think about the level of formality in the words you're choosing and the complexity of your sentence structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I want my dad to explain something to me, maybe I want extra details so I can learn how to do the thing on my own. If I want a doctor to explain something to me, I expect more technical language (in fact if it was too simplistic I might not trust the doctor!) If I want work-friend to explain something, I might expect simple steps to just get it done - full sentences but no extra tidbits about why it works.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MailChimp (an online newsletter delivery service) excels at using a consistent, friendly voice across their website, even when talking about technical things. They adjust the tone to fit the circumstance so readers never get a corny joke cracked in an error message. While they might crack superfluous jokes, they never get in the way of understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://voiceandtone.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MailChimp Voice and Tone Guide&lt;/a&gt; is an excellent place to start to wrap your head around writing like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18286" LastEditorUserId="18286" LastEditDate="2016-03-18T21:36:42.427" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T21:36:42.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21386" CreationDate="2016-03-19T02:07:53.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty broad question. In high school English we had to tease out conflicts from books. Man v. man, Man v. nature, Man v. God, Man v. machine, and Man v. himself. What we generally found was that there were a lot of conflicts between Man v. man because of a disagreement in opinion on how to deal with one of the other confounders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess my suggestion, of which I imagine there will be several good suggestions, would be to arrange for a disagreement on an essential variable in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, dialogue is generally a good way to encourage opinions in your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about the character in conflict with himself on whether to give into his depressive urges:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To be, or not to be: that is the question./Whether 'tis nobler in the mind/To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,/And by opposing end them?/To die: to sleep.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflict. Brilliant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T02:07:53.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21401" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-19T08:48:12.880" Score="2" ViewCount="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a few experiences of things which I learned from some amazing people in my life. I would like to share some of these stories. The basic theme of these essays would be to follow your ambitions and to find balance in your life. I think that they are motivational stories for personal development.&#xA;Can anyone tell me where I could publish these essays? The specific names of journals/magazines/websites would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18293" LastActivityDate="2016-03-20T13:58:33.180" Title="where to publish essays about a life stories for personal development?" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21401" CreationDate="2016-03-19T09:23:13.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://medium.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medium&lt;/a&gt; is probably what you are looking for. It is like &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt;, except instead of 140 character messages, you publish full-length articles, and instead of other users following you, they follow keywords that are like sections of a magazine. So you might tag your articles “inspiration” and Medium users who are following the “inspiration” tag will see your work. The advantage of Medium is it is easy to get started and there are already readers there at Medium to read your stuff. Another advantage is other website publishers read Medium and may want to syndicate your work if they like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to create your own blog, which you can do using &lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wordpress&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://squarespace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Squarespace&lt;/a&gt; or many other options. The upside is you can control the way your work is presented, but the downside is you have to drive readers to your blog, which can be challenging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to consider is a mixture of the two. Publish your articles on Medium, and also collect them on your own blog so that if (when?) Medium stops publishing, you still have your writings on a blog that you control. That gives you the advantages of both platforms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T09:23:13.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21404" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-19T17:56:08.550" Score="1" ViewCount="425" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a little homework, I have a good story, but its not a story that can be told by letting it unfold and writing the events that happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to do, is tell a story of events in the past that changed the future to what it is now. I would like to have a narrator telling the story of what happened, like an omnipotent voice that tells you what's going on. To underline this omnipotent voice telling you the story of the past, I want to be able to describe the events and characters that were involved. I would like to be able to have a storyteller, describing what is going on in the story basically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would I write this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="15545" LastEditDate="2016-03-19T20:33:22.450" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T02:51:46.380" Title="Explanatory narrative in fiction" Tags="|creative-writing|short-story|narrative|narrator|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21404" CreationDate="2016-03-19T18:06:42.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with most of the &quot;laws&quot; of writing, Show-Don't-Tell is more of a recommendation than an absolute rule.  It is not like some potential reader is going to glance at the first line of your story, then scream &quot;TELLING!&quot; while tossing your hard-won words into the fireplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are &quot;allowed&quot; to share your story using whatever technique or method you choose.  (unless this is for a writing class in which case ignore everything I have said here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That having been said, I would question if an omnipotent narrator, (a.k.a. distant third person narration) is a good choice for a piece about suicide.  Suicide is an intensely personal subject and is overflowing with emotional and philosophical potential.  Every good suicide scene that I have ever written was written as close to the victim as possible.  Try a first person POV, spoken by the now-ghost of the victim.  You might be surprised by what you create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T18:06:42.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21404" CreationDate="2016-03-19T18:07:54.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;All stories (narratives) unfold. It you ain't got a narrative, you ain't got a story. One thing happens after another over time told by someone. Of course, the time ordering is your choice. It can be chopped up several ways and played with many ways. You can tell it any way you want. The question is: Does it work? Will people want to read it. If I tell you how to write it, I would be writing it for you. That said, it you only describe the event, it sounds pretty b-o-r-i-n-g as in: He took 50 pills while sitting on the bed in the cold, uninviting cellar and then died. What may interest a reader on the other hand are the cumulative factors that led the poor person there....Just try it, I am sure you Cann do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16725" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T18:07:54.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21420" CreationDate="2016-03-20T00:43:12.170" Score="1" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing an email to my professor in hopes that I can make up an exam that I missed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I missed the exam under fairly extreme circumstances, catching the flu and not being aware it was on that day, so I feel like I have a case to make. But the syllabus states that no make up exams are allowed, which makes me feel like adding personal pleas is my only hope. But I am also afraid that it might hurt my case more than help it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my draft, as a starting point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hello,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is XXXX from your Tue/Thu mornings Speech class. I came down with the flu last week and unfortunately I was too sick to attend class. I opened D2L today and was shocked to see that I missed the midterm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looked at the syllabus and I was horrified to find that the midterm is worth 20% of the final grade, which means that the highest possible grade for me is most likely a C, or a B only if I get 100% on everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would mean a lot to me if you were to give a small extension to the exam, even for partial credit or a more difficult version of the test. I desperately need to get an A in all my classes this semester. I am planning to transfer to XXXX University to study Mathematics, and they have a very strict in their acceptance process. Until 2015 I was sort of a bad student with not the greatest GPA, which meant that my chances of getting into XXXX were non-existent. However ever since last summer I have been getting only A's in all my classes, and I am hoping that a string of straight A's will give me a chance to get into XXXX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5826" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T16:42:30.350" Title="How do I explain personal details to my professor without being inappropriate?" Tags="|email|vocabulary|letter|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21404" CreationDate="2016-03-20T13:44:49.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems you've answered your own question. How to tell a story that doesn't unfold naturally? One option is to use a first-person narrator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your narrator can be as spastic as you need, jumping around in time, focusing on one idea then another, switching perspectives as necessary. As long as they clearly orient the reader with each transition, making clear where and when we are each time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, though, that scenes are typically more engaging than exposition. Have your narrator tell us stories about people in places doing things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-03-20T13:44:49.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21401" CreationDate="2016-03-20T13:58:33.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of (printed, non-digital) journals that publish non-fiction essays. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pw.org/literary_magazines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Poets &amp;amp; Writers&lt;/a&gt; has a great list of them. (&quot;Great&quot; quantitatively and qualitatively.) I'll leave it to you to find the right one for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, check your local newspapers: the big press and the alternative weeklies. Lots of them have columns that are open to reader submissions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you want to keep them together as a collection, you can self-publish or contact a publisher that has a history of publishing similar pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-03-20T13:58:33.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21387" CreationDate="2016-03-20T14:03:34.690" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just write your first draft naturally, including whatever peculiarities you generate. Then edit and revise. Your first draft is for getting your ideas out, and revision is for making it read well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, like in your example, &quot;We did such-and-such, which was really great,&quot; you can just delete that phrase. The words you use to describe the such-and-such can convey your enjoyment of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-03-20T14:03:34.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21411" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21601" CreationDate="2016-03-20T14:30:08.670" Score="2" ViewCount="9577" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a character that whistles when pronouncing the &quot;s&quot; sound, how can I write in the lisp effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried using multiple &quot;S&quot;s, but it reads as a snake-like sound, which I don't want since there are elements of the character being snake-like as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I make the whistling &quot;s&quot; lisp really stand out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18288" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2016-03-20T19:10:11.060" LastActivityDate="2020-01-22T02:02:52.953" Title="What is the best practice for writing a character that speaks with a whistle lisp?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21377" CreationDate="2016-03-21T03:45:22.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's pretty common to refer to the main character in a story as &quot;the hero&quot; or &quot;the main character&quot;, or, as you say, &quot;the protagonist&quot;. If the writer doesn't give him a name, you could use one of these terms. Or shift between them for variety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @DoWhileNot suggests, if you can give the character a brief description, use that. Like, &quot;the husband&quot;, &quot;the traveler&quot;, &quot;the soldier&quot;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers give him a letter. I've read papers that say things like, &quot;The character is not given a name in the story, so I shall refer to him as 'M'&quot;. I've seen one-letter names that stand for something relevant, like &quot;B&quot; for the man from Britain. Or simply X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T03:45:22.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21334" CreationDate="2016-03-21T03:57:57.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That depends a great deal on the country you are writing about and the country you are living in. And on how famous you are or how successful your book is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The United States has a pretty strong tradition of free speech, so you can criticize the government very freely without getting arrested or persecuted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;North Korea, no so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are living in country A and attack country B, and country B is an enemy of country A, there will likely be no repercussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if you attack Christianity or Buddhism or Judaism, people may object, they may throw counter-criticisms, but that's likely to be the end of the story. But attack Islam and your life may be in danger. Make jokes about rednecks and people will laugh. Make jokes about homosexuals and you may be charged with a hate crime. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're famous, or if your book sells millions of copies, people you offend will take notice and maybe there will be some reprisals. If you're like most writers on this site and your book sells hundreds of copies, it's likely that no one will particularly care. It's pretty common for powerful people to say, &quot;Nobody has read this book. If we make a big deal of it, then everybody will read it to find out why we're making such a big deal of it. Better to just ignore it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T03:57:57.893" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21294" CreationDate="2016-03-21T04:09:18.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many, probably most, novels don't give names to chapters, they just number them. I presume they do this to avoid giving away plot developments. To give an extreme example, suppose you were writing a mystery novel. You probably include a number of suspects who are later shown to be innocent. But if when the  reader opened the book he saw the table of contents and saw, &quot;Chapter 7: The Butler is Exonerated&quot; and &quot;Chapter 9: Miss Scarlet's Alibi is Confirmed&quot;, well, there wouldn't be any tension about whether those people were guilty. Even something less blatant, like &quot;The Murder Weapon is Found&quot;, could give away information much too early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note this is rather the opposite of a non-fiction book, where you WANT to &quot;give away the plot&quot;. If a reader opens a math book looking for information about how to find the derivative of a trig function, you want to make it easy for him to find this information. It's not supposed to be a surprise that you can, indeed, find the derivative of such functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T04:09:18.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21360" CreationDate="2016-03-21T08:08:27.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;(spoilers) I second the user who recommends reading Agatha Christie's novel,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; 'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the finer points of the novel was the fact that the narrator spends much of the time dwelling on other characters in the story rather than himself, its almost as if he is a secondary character rather than the arch typical narrator who is almost always assumed to be the 'hero' someone who reveals everything to the reader through steam of consciousness or some other trope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Want more proof? watch The Usual Suspects if you haven't already. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18304" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-21T08:16:09.040" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T08:16:09.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21411" CreationDate="2016-03-21T12:49:08.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no real way to do that that I can think of.  There is also no way I know of for signifying a whistle using only English letters, so the only thing you could really use here is to say that the character has the lisp afterwards.  For example, if the character says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Green potatoes are more like teddy bears,&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you mights afterwards say something to signify his lisp, like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A severe lisp had turned all of his S's into whistles,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or, if we know about the lisp already, something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The whistles his lisp somehow produced turned his very serious statement into humor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to do that (it does seem sort of tedious to write and read) you might consider changing the lisp to something easier to write, like if S's turned into Th's, or Sh's, or something; or, as this can be hard to read, just remove the lisp altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16671" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T12:49:08.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21411" CreationDate="2016-03-21T15:51:31.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's best to just write the character's speech normally, and tell the readers that he has a lisp. Nobody wants to slog through dialogs full of misspelled words. Maybe you can remind us of the lisp throughout the piece by showing other characters' reactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you read A Prayer for Owen Meany? Owen has a horrible loud voice. Check it out, even to just read a few chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T15:51:31.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21226" CreationDate="2016-03-21T16:38:33.050" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's absolutely natural for narrative essay to bear descriptive elements. I've seen many such examples in term papers; you can easily start with a description. There are certain peculiarities of a narrative essay: it has a clear point, it is often a story, has dialogues, vivid language and turns of phrases. Basically, the purpose of a narration is to describe some events so why not to start with a description to put readers into the picture.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18311" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-21T21:29:10.353" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T21:29:10.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21407" CreationDate="2016-03-21T16:42:30.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think adding too many details harms your case --it makes you sound like someone who habitually searches for excuses rather than someone who experienced a valid, one-time emergency.  Therefore, I would initially go with the simplest reasoning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is XXXX from your Tue/Thu mornings Speech class. I came down with the flu last week and was too sick to attend class the day of the midterm.  While I understand that you do not generally allow makeups, I hope you will make an exception due to the medical nature of my absence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the request was denied, I would follow up with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any possibility I can do additional make up work to compensate for missing the exam? I desperately need to get an A in all my classes this semester. I am hoping to transfer to XXXX University to study Mathematics, and they have a very strict GPA requirement in their acceptance process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to stick as closely as possible to your strongest reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T16:42:30.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21424" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21425" CreationDate="2016-03-21T21:54:17.677" Score="2" ViewCount="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some fiction titles put a small block of text listing relevant setting details like the scene's time, date, and location between chapters' section headings and bodies.  Heres an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Chapter or Section Heading&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Date&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Location&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Body Text…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this block of text have a name, and, if so, what is it?  I haven't yet been successful in finding any reference material giving it one so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18316" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T03:16:43.597" Title="Name of Journal-Like Setting Description Lines Under Chapter Section Headings" Tags="|fiction|style|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21424" CreationDate="2016-03-21T22:28:58.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd probably call it a &lt;em&gt;dateline&lt;/em&gt; if it's describing time/date/location. If it's a subheader or describing anything about the content, it's a &lt;em&gt;dek&lt;/em&gt; (that's the correct spelling, from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_style#Subhead&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;journalism,&lt;/a&gt; without the C).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T22:28:58.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21411" CreationDate="2016-03-21T22:55:19.910" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Affected speech is really hard to do. Few are the authors I've seen pull it off, and sometimes even the masters fall short. A few points of advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it's not important to the story, ditch it. It's nice to give your characters personality and traits to bring them to life, but unless his lisp is integral to the story, give him a third nipple instead. Save yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be affected speech, you have two paths available to you: overwhelming success or dismal failure. There is no try.  Among those books whose authors pulled off affected speech: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lenny (and half the other characters) in Of Mice And Men&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diana Gabaldon's Scottish brogue in Outlander&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gollum in Lord of the Rings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hodor in Song of Ice and Fire (pardon my snark)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among those who failed: pretty much all the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you still must, don't write it out phonetically. For all the reasons I listed above. Have the character speak normally, and tag his lisp as needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, there'n seven apples when I sat down,&quot; whistled Fidge, &quot;But no&#xA;  sooner as I stood up to see the sunset as I heard a sussurus over-&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stephanie punched poor old Fidge right in the face, and he tumbled&#xA;  backwards over his bench with a terrible holler and clamor. I can't&#xA;  say as I blamed her either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15134" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T22:55:19.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21427" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-22T01:33:11.017" Score="1" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a good online creative writing course to take. I want it to be less than 100 dollars (free would be wonderful), and that can be done for high school credits. I live in Alberta, Canada so I would like the credits to be applicable for my location. Feedback on assignments would also be wonderful, maybe I could email them to the teacher? If anyone knows of a course like this please tell me as I have been looking all over for a course with this criteria. You will truly make my day as I really want to take a good creative writing course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18319" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T08:14:29.187" Title="Any good online writing courses?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|poetry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21427" CreationDate="2016-03-22T08:14:29.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you heard of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like this: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/learn/craft-of-plot&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.coursera.org/learn/craft-of-plot&lt;/a&gt;, or the one that appears (I can't post the link as I'm new) if you replace the word 'plot' in that first link with 'setting-and-description'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's just a couple  which I stumbled on last week. I think they might be part of a wider series, if you explore the website. They charge a course fee, but there is a free option to 'audit only', which lets you access everything except the assignments. If you're looking to get school credit, maybe you could show the course materials to your English teacher, and agree some suitable assignments he/she is willing to grade for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd like something at a good introductory level, I've followed this course, operated by the UK's Open University, and it was worthwhile: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/start-writing-fiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/start-writing-fiction&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't looked around the internet, and I'm sure you'll find more options if you invest some time in searching. Organisations/websites offering MOOCs include Coursera, FutureLearn, Iversity and edX. There are probably more, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T08:14:29.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21429" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21430" CreationDate="2016-03-22T10:59:41.687" Score="1" ViewCount="9113" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally in fiction writing, you don't italicize company names (even though you would italicize the name of a newspaper).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what do you do if the company name is fictional, especially a name that is not a real word (Like Schwaye). Italicizing it would make it clearer to the reader that it is a name (and not a typo). It would also make the name easier to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens if the text has a mix of fictional and real world company names (e.g. the BBC and Schwaye). It seems a bit odd to have a mix of italics and roman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alice would always go to Adam's restaurant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Couple of chapters later]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After leaving Adam's, Angela checked her email. She had got a message from Schway, the famous social network, which was even bigger than Facebook or Twitter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;versus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alice would always go to Adam's restaurant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Couple of chapters later]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After leaving &lt;em&gt;Adam's&lt;/em&gt;, Angela checked her email. She had got a message from &lt;em&gt;Schway&lt;/em&gt;, the famous social network, which was even bigger than Facebook or Twitter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure but I feel it might read easier with italics (especially Adam's)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18325" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T17:51:39.830" Title="Do you italicize fictional company names?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21429" CreationDate="2016-03-22T11:20:18.403" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Company and brand names are not set off in italics, period. It's irrelevant whether the name is real or fictional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The kinds of names/titles which do take italics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publications (newspapers, magazines)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Books&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Albums&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TV shows&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Movies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Court cases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May or may not take italics depending on house style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Newsletters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blogs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Podcasts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Videogames&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's no reason to italicize the name of a brand (Apple, Pepsi), social network (Twitter, Facebook), or restaurant (Le Bec Fin, McCloskey's). These are names of products, services, or establishments. You are establishing what the named item is in context, and by the capital letter(s). For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We picked up an apple at the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We picked up a Mac at the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We picked up a mackintosh at the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is a piece of fruit, the second a computer, and the third a raincoat. It takes very little to make that clear, and italics aren't necessary. Calling attention to the fictional nature of your product or service will only be a distraction and make your reader wonder why you're calling it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Italics in fiction can be used to indicate &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8077/punctuating-dialogue-with-oneself&quot;&gt;thoughts&lt;/a&gt; (internal dialogue, or telepathy if your story has it) and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1742/whats-the-best-way-to-show-a-foreign-language-in-a-manuscript/&quot;&gt;foreign languages.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T11:20:18.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21431" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21432" CreationDate="2016-03-22T11:42:44.057" Score="4" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to start writing blog articles online as a guest writer. Most blogs have guidelines that have to be loosely followed; like what the niche should be, if it needs to be a list, and a bunch of other ideas of what they're looking for. Let me give you a for instance of my thought process with a hypothetical situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say this blog is about handyman work. They want tips and tricks for house crafts or basic construction. Now, I don't know much about this, so I decide to research the idea. Now, this is where I start to get confused. How do I research tips and tricks without plagiarizing these other articles? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have a lot of experience with most things, but are all articles out there personal experience only? How do I research in a way that doesn't plagiarize others, while finding my own interesting article?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much appreciation to everyone's constructive criticism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18326" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T16:51:39.970" Title="How do I keep from plagiarizing others?" Tags="|research|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21431" CreationDate="2016-03-22T12:16:28.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most important maxims in writing is “write what you know.” If you don’t know anything about handyman work, then don’t write about handyman work. You’re right, it will be hard to write anything original about handyman work if all of your knowledge about it is direct from a book with no practical experience or knowledge of the basics to draw on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not to say that research is not important. It certainly is. But research is not going to enable you to write articles that compare favorably with articles written by someone who has years of schooling and years of practical experience on a subject, and who has also done research on that subject. And today, there will be millions of such people writing about any particular subject that you might choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, when people blog about something, it is the thing they either know best or are most passionate about, or both. So you might start by making a list of the 5 things you know best and the 5 things you are most passionate about. There may be some overlap. And then ask yourself if you have something to say on those subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13337" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T12:16:28.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21431" CreationDate="2016-03-22T12:23:03.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you cite the original source, if you are researching ideas that others have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This how to do X thing. Y method can be used, as shown [here].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then you are not claiming it as your own work. Anyone else can then access the original poster's website, from which you have done your own research, and will know that that is where you have got the information from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you are directly copying any text from said article/blog post, then you will need to add them as quotes. You can, however, summarize or explain in your own way what they have written, such as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Person A uses X technique, which is good for achieving Y effect. However, make sure to take note to &quot;Never do Z if attempting X technique&quot;, as Person A states in the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously if you are drawing from your own experience on anything, then there is no question of plagiarism. However, plagiarism comes when you attempt to pass of the work of another as your own, hence clearly referencing whose work your research has come from will not be plagiarism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T12:23:03.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21434" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21473" CreationDate="2016-03-22T16:10:47.847" Score="0" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;To help create descriptive differences in the way my characters talk I am looking for a list of how each language sounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example the German language has lots of clusters of consonants, and could be described as harsh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that many of the descriptions of how a language sounds are subjective, however German objectively sounds different to Chinese, and it is these differences I want to describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was hoping there was something I could use to give me a starting point, as the only other option I can think of is to start listening to recordings of people speaking in various language and begin to build my own set of observations on how they sound. However this will end up being entirely my opinion, and I was hoping to get something a bit more universally accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I have only mentioned German and Chinese here, I am looking at a very wide range of languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10949" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T09:50:04.587" Title="Describing the differences between languages" Tags="|description|language|voice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21344" CreationDate="2016-03-22T16:19:38.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing a flashback in present tense can give a certain dreamy feel to it.  For example, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I remember it like it was yesterday.  I remember Billy-Bob McJoe saying, &quot;It's all about steady hands.  All about hands and cheese and potatoes.&quot;  He looks me square in the face, eyes hardening.  &quot;Never forget the potatoes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, this is sort of awkward in the third person:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She remembers it like it was yesterday.  She remembers Billy-Bob McJoe saying, &quot;It's all about steady hands.  All about hands and cheese and potatoes.&quot;  He looks her square in the face, eyes hardening.  &quot;Never forget the potatoes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is writing the present in present and the flashback in past tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I/She remember(s) it like it was yesterday.  I/She remember(s) Billy-Bob McJoe when he said, &quot;It's all about steady hands.  All about hands and cheese and potatoes.&quot;  That's when he looked me/her square in the face, his eyes hardening.  &quot;Never forget the potatoes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing both in the past does not work well--in my opinion--in first person, since in that case there is no way the reader can think of chapter two as in the now, but this works fine in third person; auhors frequently use past tense and third person when telling a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So take your pick of person and tense, I won't make the choice for you.  I only eliminated the bad ones.  So choose either 1st person present/present, 1st person present/past, 3rd person present/past, or 3rd person past/past.  Just remember: &lt;strong&gt;You &lt;em&gt;will not&lt;/em&gt; write in 2nd person future.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16671" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T16:19:38.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21434" CreationDate="2016-03-22T18:15:20.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think doing your own research and making your own observations is perfectly legitimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also get a bunch of friends over and have everyone listen to the same video/audio recordings and take notes, and then discuss afterwards. This will allow you to note similarities (e.g., does everyone think German is harsh, or just me?) and also hear how other people word their observations (one says &quot;harsh,&quot; one says &quot;lots of fricatives,&quot; one says &quot;why does he always sound angry?&quot;) so you have a range of verbiage to draw on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T18:15:20.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2016-03-23T04:03:42.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found this to be pretty cheap and DIY:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdeKG4xz0uQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdeKG4xz0uQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drilling machine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Needle &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;thread&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tape (any type - required only for hiding the stitching)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also follow this YouTube channel, which has a lot many different methods of binding.&#xA;The videos are made beautifully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/user/SeaLemonDIY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/user/SeaLemonDIY&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10966" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T04:03:42.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21438" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-23T04:04:01.767" Score="10" ViewCount="4679" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a story about a girl who was found by a couple in a magical isolated town, where everyone is named by the leader. I want her to not have a name because of two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She doesn't belong in this town so the leader cannot give her a name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Names have special power that the leader can use so by not being able to name her, he has no control over her (I'm hoping to work this angle later on in the story).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm finding that I'm struggling to try to keep a name out of it and I'm just wondering if there are any tips anyone has to keep a nameless main character OR if there is a different angle I can approach that still keeps the idea that &quot;names have power&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18334" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-12T13:11:35.477" LastActivityDate="2018-05-12T13:11:35.477" Title="How to keep a main character nameless?" Tags="|technique|characters|naming|conventions|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21438" CreationDate="2016-03-23T04:26:49.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd give her a nickname of sorts, otherwise I think your going to have a lot of trouble with this (speaking from personal experience) You usually have to have at least some reference name for your character(s) especially your MC. I'm not really sure how helpful this is but I think you should consider giving her a nickname, perhaps something she calls herself. (unless she knows her real name, but this would only apply in thoughts or in the first person viewpoint.) If your story is in 3rd/2nd person note that it will be a bit harder to have her be the 'character with no name' so to speak. Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18060" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T04:26:49.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21438" CreationDate="2016-03-23T07:46:56.460" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the way back to &lt;em&gt;A Wizard of Earthsea&lt;/em&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IKnowYourTrueName&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Names-Have-Power trope&lt;/a&gt; usually handles this by giving people nicknames for &quot;public&quot; use. Their &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; names are closely-guarded secrets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can definitely give your protagonist a nickname; that's what people would do in the situation, because you have to call her &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;, and that also solves your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to emphasize her namelessness, you can put focus on how these monikers are nicknames, not her real name. One idea would be for different people to use different names; none of the nicknames &quot;catch on&quot; and become a widely-accepted name for her. You could even have her give a nickname to herself, if you need a name she gives herself from her own POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="15813" LastEditDate="2016-03-24T03:04:20.090" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T03:04:20.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21438" CreationDate="2016-03-23T09:23:04.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could always have her decide on a secret name for herself, perhaps one that she wishes she had but never reveals to anyone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, if the story is from her perspective, you could get away with referring to her as such (with constant reminders that it's not her &quot;proper&quot; name).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16657" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T09:23:04.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21438" CreationDate="2016-03-23T10:00:41.330" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; in the town is named by the leader, and a couple adopts her, then most people are going to refer to her as &quot;the Kents' girl.&quot; To her face they might cal her &quot;Miss Kent&quot; or &quot;Kent Girl,&quot; depending on their level of courtesy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She can earn a use-name later depending on what she does, what she looks like, or how she behaves, like Carpenter, Red, or Stubborn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also note that the first-person narrator of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0380730405&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rebecca&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;/a&gt; the second Mrs. de Winter, is never given a name. When we studied the book in high school our teacher said she made every class come up with a name for her just so we could talk about her. (Our class chose &quot;Mandy&quot; from Manderley, the name of the house.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T10:00:41.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21443" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-23T11:48:56.887" Score="0" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a writen story is set in a fiction world or when a character changes locals to an environment that may be vastly different to what was introduce/what they would know from real life (ie. going from the deserts outside Rabanastre to the Golmore Jungle in Final Fantasy XII) is it wise to infodump about the area for the sake of having the reader having a clear image of the location before being fed the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ie. with a Golmore Jungle infofump one would describe the insanely huge trees and how they can get so large, how the Viera make use of the trunks and branches to from paths and buildings and how these paths are maintained and how the things transition to the jungle from the Ozmone Plains&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T18:20:31.270" Title="Should one Infodump the reader when a new environment of a fictional world is introduced?" Tags="|fiction|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-03-25T10:42:55.340" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21444" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-23T11:58:41.327" Score="2" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;So my understanding of copyright (which isn't much to be honest) it costs money to apply for copyright. and i can get that publishers probably do this themselves but with the internet we can self publish to the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when we self publish is the copyright implied or does one need to apply for copyright before they release their work for sale?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="633" LastEditDate="2016-03-24T02:47:32.890" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T16:21:53.743" Title="Is copyright implied when you self publish?" Tags="|self-publishing|copyright|international|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21445" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-23T12:04:36.393" Score="1" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few books that are at least 100 years old and without an audio book format. Is it legally possible to do the voice for it and sell it on audible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4969" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T14:13:44.093" Title="Is it possible to create an audio-book for very old text/book?" Tags="|audiobook|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21438" CreationDate="2016-03-23T12:25:04.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If she's not of the same race/species of the people of the new town, she can be called by her town/planet/race.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Greetings, Earthling.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T12:25:04.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21443" CreationDate="2016-03-23T16:50:52.017" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not generally a good idea to infodump, because it bores the reader and grinds the plot to a halt. You can get some of the information you want in through normal scene descriptions - the size of the trees will be obvious to any character who can see them, for example, as will the wooden paths and buildings between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule of thumb, if it's not relevant to the plot or your characters, it should probably stay out of the story. How do the trees get so large? Well, if it's relevant to the plot, your characters (and readers) will find out in time anyway. If it isn't, you're probably better off leaving it as a footnote than explaining it for pages: 'Character A had heard that the trees were so big because of [magic/high oxygen content in the atmosphere/the locals' incredibly good composting regime], but it was hard to imagine that even [magic/high oxygen levels/an entire ocean of horse manure] could ever have this effect'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep it relevant to the plot or the characters somehow. If you really feel you have to discuss it, let your characters react to it with [wonder/scientific curiosity/disgust at the amount of animal crap lying around] - don't shut them out of the story so you can ramble to the reader for a page and a half about the wonders of compost. That sort of stuff belongs in a companion book or website, not the main story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18341" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T16:50:52.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21445" CreationDate="2016-03-23T17:51:23.867" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you sure that there is not a version? Have you tried &lt;a href=&quot;https://librivox.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LibriVox&lt;/a&gt;? If there isn't a version, you have to ask yourself why and would anyone want it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, as far as I know, if it is out of copyright, you can record a version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T17:51:23.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21449" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21450" CreationDate="2016-03-23T18:08:51.197" Score="1" ViewCount="3732" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I finish a novel, I'd like to get just one copy printed to give to my parents. Would a publisher do this? How would I get a publisher to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I am not going through any people to edit it, I literally just want one copy published when I finish it (I ask now as I'm at the halfway point). Also, would it be too long at 56k words at the halfway point? I think I'll split it into two parts, or acts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2016-03-23T18:56:59.617" LastActivityDate="2016-03-26T17:05:20.983" Title="Is it possible to publish a single copy of a book?" Tags="|novel|self-publishing|book|printing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21449" CreationDate="2016-03-23T18:14:58.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you could get a traditional publisher to do it, but plenty of print-on-demand companies will do it for you. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epubli.co.uk/book/book-printing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's one in the UK&lt;/a&gt;, for a start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18341" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T18:14:58.547" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21443" CreationDate="2016-03-23T18:20:31.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how you mean &quot;infodump&quot;. If you mean should you set the scene and describe the environment so that the reader is now aware of where the action is taking place (and / or that travelling has occurred) then yes, though only what is necessary for the plot / story to continue for the time being. If you don't, your reader could get confused and hung up on this fact, thus losing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean should you explain (as opposed to describe) the environment and how it came to be as it is, then no... unless it's really, really interesting and has some bearing on the plot. Even then, it really ought to be incorporated into the story in a more relevant way that interacts directly with the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My general take on worldbuilding is that it should work for your story, as opposed to your story working for your worldbuilding. After all, the reader wants a story first and foremost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Hope that helps!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16657" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T18:20:31.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21404" CreationDate="2016-03-24T02:51:46.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like what you are looking for is an understanding of what a &lt;a href=&quot;http://narrativefirst.com/articles/framing-devices-and-what-they-mean&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;framing device&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is and how it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should understand, though, that not even a framing device will disoblige you from creating a narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T02:51:46.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21444" CreationDate="2016-03-24T05:20:22.317" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on where you live, you own the copyright to a written work the instant you write it. (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Berne Convention&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to &lt;strong&gt;apply&lt;/strong&gt; for copyright. You already own the copyright. There may be legal benefits to &lt;strong&gt;registering&lt;/strong&gt; your copyright with your government. In the US, for example, when you sue someone for copyright infringement, you may gain additional legal remedies if you registered your copyright before you brought the suit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you live in the US, get a copy of &lt;em&gt;The Copyright Handbook&lt;/em&gt; by NOLO Press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-03-24T16:21:53.743" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T16:21:53.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8308" CreationDate="2016-03-24T10:54:52.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd use the latter option, &lt;strong&gt;Thesis &gt; Why &gt; A &gt; B &gt; How &gt; C &gt; D &gt; Where &gt; E&lt;/strong&gt;. As commenters have mentioned, it's probably best to keep the gap between A,B, and Why as short as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This structure also lends itself more easily to formatting, and it should also cut down on the number of cross-references you need to make from one section to the next (as you're likely able to discuss the Why, How, and Where mostly independently from each other).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastEditorUserId="18289" LastEditDate="2016-03-29T20:49:02.090" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T20:49:02.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18178" CreationDate="2016-03-24T12:12:42.557" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a professional writer but I do have some experience in writing poetry and lyrics. Sometimes I write the lyrics and give them to somebody else to find the right melody, and sometimes I have the melody to build up the lyrics on, which is of course more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you read lots of books with different subjects, listen to people talking about things, and let your imagination 'fly' :) It really helped me!&#xA;Sometimes I do use the 'rhyme finder'on google but with a very good imagination and a complex vocabulary everything will come together pretty easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18353" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-04-13T17:26:00.990" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T17:26:00.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21449" CreationDate="2016-03-24T14:01:16.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are print-on-demand publishers who will do this no problem. Here in the U.S., I know of CreateSpace and Lulu. If you live somewhere else, try doing a google/bing/whatever search for &quot;print on demand publishers&quot;. Check out their terms. You want someone who doesn't charge any non-trivial one-time fee to get started. (Like in the U.S., Lightning Source is the other big POD publisher, but they'd be a poor choice for one copy as they charge a one-time setup fee, I think it was $75 last time I checked but that was years ago.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do this every year. I like a calendar/appointment book in a certain format. I used to search office supply stores every year to find something resembling what I want. Now I just make my own. CreateSpace charges me something like $7 to print and ship it. I've done this for, I don't know, 5 or 6 years now, and they've never complained about me printing just 1 or 2 copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T14:01:16.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21445" CreationDate="2016-03-24T14:13:44.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the book is old enough that the copyright has expired, this is completely legal. The length of copyright protection has changed over the years, but anything published before 1923 in the U.S. is now &quot;public domain&quot;. For anything published after 1977, copyright is good for life of the author plus 70 years. There are various rules for anonymous works, works published by multiple authors, works that list an organization as the author, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T14:13:44.093" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21444" CreationDate="2016-03-24T14:25:23.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ditto @DaleHartleyEmery. Copyright is a form of property right. You don't have to apply for the right to live in your own house and lock the door against strangers, you just have it. Same with copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it costs money to register a copyright, but not that much. In the U.S., I think my last book cost me $35 to register, plus you have to send the copyright office two copies of the book. You just fill out a form, which today you can do on-line, and send them the fee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two big advantages to registering your copyright. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) It is strong evidence that you did indeed write the book on the date you claim. If you don't register, someone who steals your book could claim that he wrote it, and how would you prove otherwise? I often hear people talk about various schemes to prove they wrote the book, like mailing a copy to themselves and never opening the envelope, leaving a copy with a lawyer, etc. None of these alternatives have the same weight in court as registering, and many are more trouble and/or expense than registering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) It gives you extra legal protection. For example, in the U.S., if you don't register your copyright, you can sue for actual damages, but not for punitive damages. i.e. if someone steals your book and costs you $1000 in lost sales, without registering, you could get your $1000 back. With registering, you could get $1000 plus possibly another $2000 in punitive damages plus if you're lucky you could make them pay your lawyer's bill. (I am not a lawyer, this is just an illustrative example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T14:25:23.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19285" CreationDate="2016-03-24T14:41:50.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether or not you accept the job depends on whether you think the terms are acceptable. Find out what terms they are offering. As @fredsbend says in his comment, are they asking you to sell all rights, i.e. &quot;work done for hire&quot;, they would own the copyright, or are they asking for a license to use your work but you would still own the copyright?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea how valuable your work is to you or what they are offering. If you're just starting out and you're doing the work in your spare time, maybe $20 and the fun of seeing your work in print would be worth it. If you do this for a living, maybe you need thousands for it to be worth your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's better for you if you keep the copyright and just sell them permission to use it. If they insist on owning the copyright, how big a deal is this to you? Do you think you could sell the same illustrations elsewhere? Do you think they will likely use the same illustrations in another book? Etc. If someone offered, say, $1000 for the right to use your pictures in one book, or $2000 to buy all rights so they can use them all they want, which would you prefer? I'd never say, &quot;No, I will not sell my copyright, period.&quot; What if they offered a million dollars? Or more realistically, what if they said, &quot;Hey, if this book works out, we have many other books that we'd like you to do illustrations for.&quot; Getting your foot in the door is often worth the trouble of a small first job. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T14:41:50.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21465" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-24T16:16:03.900" Score="3" ViewCount="1750" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the beginning stages of writing my first book, and it is a true crime novel about something that happened down the street from my own home. My question is to anyone else who has written a non fiction or true crime story: What are my best options for research in regards to finding court documents, autopsy reports, etc.? I am feeling a little overwhelmed and would love some insight to help steer me in a more clear direction. Any input will be highly valued. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18357" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T15:20:12.583" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T15:20:12.583" Title="True Crime writing research: Where do you even begin?" Tags="|non-fiction|research|crime|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21466" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-24T18:17:29.967" Score="0" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the following technique for improving one's writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;at the end of every &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt;th day, rip up all your work for that day and destroy it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;when you replace it, try to do something better, whether in overall conception, form, content, or all of these.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't tried this yet, but the idea is increasingly appealing. What are the pros and cons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18358" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T15:37:52.080" Title="The &quot;destroy a day's work every nth day&quot; method of improving one's writing - sensible?" Tags="|creative-writing|writers-block|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21449" CreationDate="2016-03-24T18:21:51.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt; At FastPencil.com, if you select the &quot;Private Publishing&quot; option to get a single copy of your book for $9.99, plus shipping and handling. There are a variety of customization options available, including the option to have back-of-the-book and/or front cover text and cover art. There are a variety of pre-packaged formats FastPencil offers to customize the feel of the text itself, with various fonts and font sizes and margin widths that change the way your text will appear on paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience FastPencil has been quick and efficient, and generally the quality is good. I have had one issue with them---a book that was bound improperly so that the paper became mostly detached from the binding pretty much upon taking it out of the box. I haven't had a chance to contact FastPencil yet, as this was quite recent, but in the past they have had good customer service, so assuming this is a fluke and that it will be fixed, this shouldn't be seen as a major strike against them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18263" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T18:21:51.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21466" CreationDate="2016-03-24T19:38:41.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a blunt-instrument extreme variation of &quot;Kill your darlings.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind &lt;em&gt;kill your darlings&lt;/em&gt; is that sometimes we as writers fall too much in love with our own voices. That perfectly-turned phrase, that exquisite image, that awesome scene, that character who's too cool for the room &amp;mdash; we don't want to give them up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But sometimes that perfect whatever is exactly wrong for where it is. That character &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5705/my-cool-character-is-doing-nothing-for-the-plot-how-do-i-deal-with-him/&quot;&gt;needs his own book&lt;/a&gt; and shouldn't be sucking all the oxygen out of this one. That awesome scene is slowing down the story because it's a pointless tangent from the plot. That exquisite image isn't an accurate description of the event. That perfectly-turned phrase isn't something the character would ever say. So you have to kill them: remove them from the book. (I usually keep my dead darlings in a slush file, the better to coo over their corpses when I'm feeling unmotivated.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your suggested technique seems to be putting &quot;everything you've done today&quot; in the category of a darling, and forcing you to rewrite everything from scratch so you can work on it afresh and maybe come up with some other angle on the same problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could it work? Well, maybe. Depends on a lot of variables: how much you do in a day, whether it was critical progress, whether you're stuck or in a groove. I wouldn't recommend it wholesale, but you could give it a try and see if it does anything for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T19:38:41.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21469" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-24T23:55:15.427" Score="1" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering about if I could use the name of the fictional character Magneto in the scifi book I'm writing.  There is no direct connection between the Marvel/DC universe and my book.  Instead, I was going to have a character be genetically modified to produce the &quot;Magneto&quot; protein, which lets them detect magnetism.  Is it okay in this case because I'm using it in a different context, like as a parody?  I'm actually going off of a discovery of a magnetism sensing protein where journalists referred to it as that.  Its not nearly as important as the first thing, but I was also wondering if I could mention some other scifi/superhero thing in a new context, like describing a laser weapon as being &quot;like a Star Wars laser blaster&quot; or something, again being different in its details and context (I made a point to describe a real world laser that can theoretically operate at very high powers minus a few technical problems).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18361" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-27T19:03:27.263" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T20:47:28.827" Title="Using the name of fictional characters/series in a different context" Tags="|legal|naming|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21465" CreationDate="2016-03-25T03:51:41.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start with your precinct/village police department. Police reports are open to the public (with some exceptions). There is usually a small fee to print or download.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, you're going to have some issues with confidentiality depending on the case. You might try contacting the reporting officer, but the detective assigned to the case probably won't talk to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most court transcripts will be available once the case has been completed (with many exceptions), but it will only contain what was said &quot;to the court.&quot; Records cost money; it depends on what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Witnesses will probably talk to you, lawyers won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having tried this once, you're best bet to get a story is to talk to the victims (or immediate family in the event of a murder). You should be very sensitive to this. I would suggest a handwritten letter introducing yourself mailed by USPS with your contact information. Victims may have fears and paranoias. Do not proceed without the consent of the victim(s) in a nonfiction book. If they agree with your proposal, they may give you access to confidential medical info. Best case scenario, they set up a meeting with the detective and you. You don't have a book without talking to the detective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-03-25T12:44:01.673" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T12:44:01.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21466" CreationDate="2016-03-25T08:38:14.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, this method wouldn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write some idea, that idea is &quot;satisfied&quot; or &quot;done&quot; for me emotionally, and I find myself unable to write it again. This might be a personal shortcoming, making rewriting impossible or tortuous for me. But I also feel that the first version of an artwork often contains some raw energy, that is lacking from the more technically refined subsequent versions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is to &lt;em&gt;not remain stuck&lt;/em&gt; on some imperfect work, but rather &lt;strong&gt;write the next book&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem I perceive in inexperienced writers is that they cannot let go of their works but keep polishing or rewriting in an attempt at perfecting it. My view is that either a book is good – there is no perfect! – in the first go, or it isn't. And if it isn't, your time and energy are better invested in another book, which, in my experience and observation, will usually be better than the previous one*.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you were asking about a day's worth of work, and not a whole book, but to me a similar principle applies: if I have written a page of my book, and it works, then I cannot write something equally good again (no matter how bad it may be).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing for me is an organic process. As an analogy, think of dancing or swimming or riding a bike. If you tried to &quot;undo&quot; a particular part of this large and fluent movement, going back to a previous place and repeat (or do better), what you had previously done, you'd simply trip, or drown or fall under a car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, when you &lt;em&gt;learn&lt;/em&gt; to dance or swim or ride a bike, you do break down that huge, unmasterable mountain of skill and pracice individual movements, and if you practice writing in the same way, doing dialog exercises for a few weeks and opening sentences for a month, then, sure, you can rip up your work and do it again, but you are doing that anyway with every new exercise every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When, on the other hand, you are actually trying not to drown on your way from one side of the pool to the other, there is no redoing that arm stroke – either you make it, or your dad grips you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is, of course, a bit different. All writing contains redoing parts. You write the next sentence, and it may sound a bit bumpy, so you change it, until it sounds fine. Then you move on to the next sentence or paragraph or chapter. We all redo parts of our writing constantly. But that is not &quot;ripping it up&quot;. That is part of base writing. That is like moving your arm through the water, reacting to the waves and other swimmers. That is like holding your balance on your bike when there is a bump in the road. That is like adapting your dance to the movements of your partner. When you write, you too adapt your writing to your thoughts and the restrictions of language (or vice versa), until your sentences feel balanced, in tune, and right. That is not &quot;ripping it up&quot;. &quot;Ripping it up&quot; would mean that you delete the writing when it works (or after you are done). And that is not possible without falling/drowning/losing your step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you write something &quot;for real&quot;, with the intention, not to practice, but to create a work of art, then writing is like being out in the open water, out in the city traffic, out on a date with a person you desire, and when you approach this kind of writing (or living) with the idea that you are just practising, then what you create cannot become a finished work of art (or love).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to create art, you have to approach it with the intention to create art and the courage to risk failure. If you don't, all you'll create is an exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that exercise useful, you'll have to find out for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&amp;nbsp;exception: the second volume in a trilogy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T08:38:14.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21438" CreationDate="2016-03-25T08:58:48.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two ways you can accomplish not giving a name to your character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since there is a reason why she isn't given a name, you can simply explain that reason to the reader (e.g. by having the characters talk about it) and have the community handle the problem of a person not having a name in whatever way you think fitting (e.g. by using a nickname [which I wouldn't do, because a nickname is still a name in the magical sense], refering to her by function [&quot;Mr. President&quot;, &quot;Doctor&quot;, &quot;baker&quot; – think how many family names happened] or status [&quot;unnamed one&quot;, &quot;foreigner&quot;, &quot;girl&quot;, &quot;daughter&quot;, etc.]).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want the reader to remain unaware that the character has no name or don't want the reader wondering about why the character has no name (because you want the reason hidden), then simply tell the story from the first person perspective (people don't think of themselves by name, but by pronoun, so you don't have to give a name in narration) and paraphrase problematic parts of dialog (so whenever you feel that avoiding the name makes your writing awkward, you just do something like: 'The lord called for me to step forward.' or 'The lord pointed at me and waved for me to step forward.' instead of 'The lord shouted: &quot;Step forward, Sarah!&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-03-30T08:46:30.387" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T08:46:30.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21434" CreationDate="2016-03-25T09:41:55.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a writer of fiction, you are not a linguist. You do not need to describe language in an objective way, in fact that would even hinder your purpose of telling a powerful story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character description in narrative fiction is not scientific. It has the purpose of telling us something about either the character or the person describing him or her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Julia, come to the blackboard,&quot; Mr. Bergmann said in his Nazi officer voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can imagine that the German teacher, Bergmann, not only sounds like a movie character, but is also very strict and would love to resort to corporal punishment if he could get away with it. Or we can imagine that Julia is an emo teen who finds all figures of authority equally evil, and just projects her own self-pity onto the really very nice native German teacher's accent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my example, it is totally irrelevent wether or not there is such a thing as a &quot;Nazi officer voice&quot;, the only thing that counts is that there is such a cultural sterotype and that you can make use of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another example, using not accent but sound of voice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, honey,&quot; Linda purred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, if Linda actually purred her words like a cat, she wouldn't sound sexy but creepy, but there is this convention of using animal sound descriptors (bleat, roar, etc.) or general sound descriptors (rumble, grate, etc.) as short hand for certain emotions or traits. Again, depending on the context of the example, the purring would tell us something about Linda (she wants to seduce someone or is pleased) or the person perceiving and describing her (who might be mistaken and misinterpret Linda's intention or state of emotion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we don't have to use existing stereotypes or universally agreed upon descriptions, we can make up our own:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John spoke with the slow accuracy of a blinking cursor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case we describe the speed and rhythm of someone's speech to describe a mindnumbingly pedantic, self-alienated nerd – or some observer's prejudices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope these examples make it clear to you, that /jə doʊnt hæv tu juz ˌsaɪənˈtɪfɪk ˌɑbdʒɛkˈtɪvᵻdi/ in narrative fiction and that in fact scientific objectivity would make your narration as flat and uninspiring as that blinking cursor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A note on &quot;harsh&quot; German:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How a foreign language will sound to a person will depend on that person's mother tongue and his or her mastery of the foreign language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To a person speaking English, maybe German sounds harsh. To a person speaking an African click language, it will probably sound different. The point of reference is important, so there certainly is no universally correct way of describing any language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you learn a language, become more familiar with it, and eventually make it your own, the initial outside perception of that language fades and you will find yourself unable to characterize that language. Foreign languages are most strikingly dissimilar, if you don't understand them and only hear them as meaningless sound. If you know them, the meaning overlays the characteristics. I'm a native German speaker and have read, spoken and written English for about thirty years now. The two languages no longer sound different to me, or no more than my two hands differ from each other: they are not the same, and they cannot do the same, but they are the same and do the same – if that makes sense to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-03-25T09:50:04.587" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T09:50:04.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21474" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-25T14:46:48.630" Score="0" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;p&gt;How long/how many pages does a teen science fiction novel need to be in order for a publishing agency to take it seriously?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18366" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-27T11:10:18.057" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T11:10:18.057" Title="How long does a teen science fiction novel need to be?" Tags="|novel|science-fiction|book-length|young-adult|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21475" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-25T14:54:40.610" Score="0" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a teen novel in google docs.  Right now, I'm considering a page single spaced. What is the industry standard for what a page is considered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18366" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T03:26:51.793" Title="What constitutes as a page? Single or double spaced on google docs?" Tags="|pages|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21475" CreationDate="2016-03-25T15:19:07.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Industry standard is not to count pages but words.  Also, when submitting a manuscript to publishers, industry standard is to double space your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more guidelines see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Shunn.net&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/what-are-the-guidelines-for-formating-a-manuscript&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writersdigest.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastEditorUserId="16155" LastEditDate="2016-03-28T03:26:51.793" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T03:26:51.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21466" CreationDate="2016-03-25T15:37:52.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This feels very opinion based (maybe the bulk of my time spent on scifi.se has conditioned me to cringe at opinion, not fact based responses :) - however, as a software developer, there is some precedent for this practice in what is called a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/spikes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;spike&lt;/a&gt;&quot; - which is thought of as an experiment or proof of concept. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a true 'spike' - you always throw away what you write because it wasn't intended to be the final product, but a learning experience. From the experience gained in the spike, you can then start over and construct the code properly and using best practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we take this idea to the writing world, you could 'spike' on thought experiments, writing prompts, etc... with no pressure other than to gain experience and learn. I don't know if I would recommend a set of rules though that demanded you throw out work on actual projects though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15813" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T15:37:52.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6769" CreationDate="2016-03-25T22:40:59.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It also would depend on dialogue I think. I pulled out a book last night that had 4 novels in one. Page size was around 8x10. I looked up the first novel and the original paperback had 200 pages. In the version I had in the bigger format it was type set on 90 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18370" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T22:40:59.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21479" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-25T23:33:27.873" Score="4" ViewCount="3154" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the main character in a short story need a name? My story gives lots of other details about the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18369" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-03-27T10:56:48.990" LastActivityDate="2019-12-15T16:01:41.343" Title="Does the protagonist need a name?" Tags="|characters|short-story|naming|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21479" CreationDate="2016-03-26T10:55:47.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a lot easier to think of the character if s/he has a name, but it isn't strictly required. In Daphne DuMaurier's &lt;em&gt;Rebecca&lt;/em&gt;, the first-person narrator is never named, and is only known as &quot;the second Mrs. De Winter.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-03-26T10:55:47.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21474" CreationDate="2016-03-26T16:59:44.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will answer your first question, as it seems to me like you are asking two questions. How long should a sci-fi Young Adult Novel be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, the number of pages in a book does not matter. Adjusting the margins, font size, or spacing even slightly could alter the page count. What matters is the &lt;em&gt;word count&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A novel is classified as any book with 40,000 or more words. For adults, about 80,000 seems to be the sweet spot. However, Sci-fi novels tend to be longer, averaging 100,000 to 115,000 words in length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, Young Adult novels are usually between 60,000 and 80,000 words, probably due to shorter attention spans or something else about the target audience. Balancing these two figures is also a question I struggle with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that once you hit about 50,000 you should be good, as in long enough that publishers would &quot;take you seriously&quot;. However, it would be a pretty short novel. If you are aiming to be average-sized, I would suggest that your novel be in the range of 75,000 to 90,000, because of the average longer length of sci-fi novels in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishers take a lot more into consideration when publishing a novel, and word count ends up being one of the smaller factors when publishers decide if they want to publish your novel. Factors like writing quality are immensely more important, so remember that. If you're writing is stellar, your characters deep, your plot intricate, your world developed, then publishers will usually be willing to forgive any grievances on the word count front. Unless, of course, you're novel is &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; short. Again, I would caution against going below 50,000 or 55,000 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18378" LastActivityDate="2016-03-26T16:59:44.270" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21334" CreationDate="2016-03-26T17:09:48.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends more the the people that you are offending. You are living in the United States (along with me), so you are fine. You are protected by Constitutional Rights to say whatever you want about the US without being arrested or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are attacking a religious group (like the Islamic faith) or cultural group, or another people group, then you will offend someone. Take care when doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I don't think other countries can do anything about it, although the people in said country may be offended by your book. Like you said, they might ban the book or toss into a bonfire, but that's about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18378" LastActivityDate="2016-03-26T17:09:48.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21479" CreationDate="2016-03-26T17:47:40.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Important characters in many books are left unnamed, but (in my opinion) it's a bit risky. Unless your narrative is gripping and fast enough to divert the attention of the reader away from the name, or lack thereof, it feels fake. 'Fight Club, for example, is a splendid example of an unnamed protagonist. You could also call your protagonist by their profession or a trait, if you find you need other characters to call out to your protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6834/characters-with-no-names&quot;&gt;Characters with no names&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check this out, it might be a similar question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15806" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-03-26T17:47:40.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21487" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-26T19:03:15.280" Score="0" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;My book starts at the end of my main characters research on a topic. And I wanted to give a feeling of him being neck deep in research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought of those stereotypical moments on tv shows where a police group busts into a room and it's full of circled faces and connected lines with thread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;however, all his research is discreetly nestled in a folder in his bedroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've written, but I still feel like I want to explain months, if not years of research, without outrightly saying that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18379" LastActivityDate="2016-03-26T21:53:00.613" Title="My Main Characters Expostion Peaks at a Point, but How?" Tags="|novel|characters|character-development|exposition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-03-27T19:11:50.577" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21487" CreationDate="2016-03-26T21:53:00.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What did he research? Why? How? What did he find out? The point I am trying to make is that &quot;research&quot; as an abstract does not really mean anything. It only has meaning and impact in how it connects to the story. Do exposition on those connections, not on the research itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention wanting to make clear that he spent months on that research. So you could mention the motivation that made him invest the time. Or how spending that much time impacted him. How he missed an entire season or was cut off from his family or friends. Or the economic impact. Or the volume of things he learned and how they changed him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These all have story impact. Motivation is obvious, but the emotional, social, and economic state he is in at the start of story is also important and you can link it to the fact he spent months doing research and that changed him and his circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this assuming that I understood what you wanted, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastActivityDate="2016-03-26T21:53:00.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21489" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-26T22:34:19.070" Score="-1" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am putting together a fun facts book and my computer (HP office jet 500 series) graphic designs which are mostly colorful preferably glossy. What kind of paper should I use for my regular print and what paper for my designs? I will be self publishing a spiral spin book but do not know what paper should be used for the cover. I am thinking about laminating the cover itself. Any suggestions? JK&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18380" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T17:00:13.317" Title="Writting a self published book containg many glossy pictures" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-04-04T03:24:53.733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21479" CreationDate="2016-03-27T11:09:03.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can manage without one, but I'd recommend against it, unless you have a compelling reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A protagonist without a name is often awkward to write, and certainly awkward to think or speak about. A character's name is a pretty basic, fundamental aspect of their identity; there's something &lt;em&gt;weird&lt;/em&gt; and forced about deliberately avoiding revealing his name. There's also the simple fact that the reader &lt;em&gt;expects&lt;/em&gt; to get a name; if the reader doesn't get one, he's going to think that's a little odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are all things you can overcome, certainly in a short story that can stand a little weirdness. That might be worth doing - &lt;strong&gt;if&lt;/strong&gt; you have a good reason for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what's happening in the examples some of the others have given:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Rebecca&lt;/em&gt;, the protagonist has no name; she's only known as &quot;the second Mrs. De Winter.&quot; That emphasizes how her own name &lt;em&gt;has become unimportant&lt;/em&gt;; her identity is being subsumed in her marriage, how she's constantly being compared and contrasted to Rebecca.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Fight Club&lt;/em&gt;, there's good reason to conceal the protagonist's name - there's a major twist involving it at the climax. It also represents how the character feels hollow, fading away, a nobody.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are good reasons to leave a character nameless. If you have a good reason, a short story can certainly bear that weight. But if you just don't have a name for them, or if having a nameless character is just an arbitrary decision, then you're probably better off choosing some name and avoiding the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T11:09:03.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21489" CreationDate="2016-03-27T17:00:13.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am assuming yours is an inkjet printer. (If it isn't specify the exact model.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you are only going to print one or two copies (in which case buy photo paper for the colour pages and heavy, ordinary paper for the others) you are much better to print on a colour laser printer and use reasonable quality paper (e.g. 80 gram or above). The print will be clearer, the pictures will be much better, you can (with care) print on both sides, and it will be much quicker and cheaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider using a print on demand service if you are going to print more than a few copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T17:00:13.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21475" CreationDate="2016-03-27T18:27:35.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, a page is anywhere from &lt;strong&gt;250-400 words&lt;/strong&gt;.  Sometimes less, sometimes more.  300 words is a good number if you're trying to estimate how many physical pages your printed novel will be (but keep in mind, physical page count is affected by the size of the page, the size of the text, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Google Docs, highlight your text (ctrl+a highlights everything) and click &lt;strong&gt;ctrl+shift+c&lt;/strong&gt; to see your word count.  Divide that number by 300 to get, roughly, your page count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Word count is definitely the &quot;industry standard&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17922" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T18:27:35.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21497" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21530" CreationDate="2016-03-28T00:32:53.420" Score="2" ViewCount="1288" Body="&lt;p&gt;Really, just how long should a solid scene in a chapter be? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what about when characters move setting but the topic is still relevant to the scene? How long would that be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently my scenes in chapters are only about 2 pages long and it still feels way too short. Is there a rule of thumb?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18379" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T08:36:33.027" Title="Length of a scene?" Tags="|style|novel|technique|scene|pacing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21499" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-28T02:11:57.157" Score="3" ViewCount="501" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do I need permission from the owners of a building to depict a drawing of it on the cover of my novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18390" LastEditorUserId="18390" LastEditDate="2016-03-28T18:31:43.027" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T18:31:43.027" Title="permission from the building owners needed to depict a drawing of it on cover of novel?" Tags="|fiction|self-publishing|legal|copyright|book|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21500" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-28T02:57:17.517" Score="-1" ViewCount="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm making a book and I already wrote 54,099 and 278,889 characters how much pages do I have for a paper back or hard back book &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18391" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T04:17:29.243" Title="how much pages do i have for a paperback book" Tags="|fiction|mystery|thriller|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-03-28T05:06:54.893" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21500" CreationDate="2016-03-28T04:17:29.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That depends on the size of the page, the margins, and the font.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Print a page or two in the format you want, or find a book in that format, and count the number of characters per page. Then divide your total number of characters by that number and you'll have your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T04:17:29.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21479" CreationDate="2016-03-28T04:26:22.967" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you do this? Of course. There's no law against it. The Novel Police will not break down your door and arrest you for failing to give your hero a name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But why do you want to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have some good reason, then sure. Like, My protagonist represents all humanity, and so he has no name because he is a generic person and not an individual. Or, My protagonist has no name because, as I tell the reader in the first paragraph, he is keeping his identity a secret. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if your reason is, Because I saw it in this other story and it seemed like a cool idea. Or, Because I can't think of a good name. I'd say, don't. Make up a name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of times when it is a good idea to break the conventional rules. Break the rules when it serves to make a point. Break the rules when following the rules creates a problem. But don't break the rules just so you can say, Look! I'm creative and original! I broke the rules! This almost never works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T04:26:22.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21503" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-28T07:18:12.937" Score="0" ViewCount="2387" Body="&lt;p&gt;So i have this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Fate's worry grew and grew something drew her attention to a moving star in the sky. it's light got bigger and appeared to be falling to her&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Feeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiitoooooooooooooo-chan&amp;quot;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nanoha flew right into Fate swinging around with her arms around Fate's neck unable to keep the excitement in seeing her girlfriend in any longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;what's happening is that Nanoha is flying towards Fate. if i was using different font sizes when when she is calling out Fate's name (in this case is her petname Feito-chan) the first part of the line would be very small and barley legible but the font size will increase to the point that &lt;em&gt;-chan&lt;/em&gt; would be normal size which is when Nanoha's flown into Fate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visually (as in if it was animated) the viewer would be hearing Nanoha's voice in the distance but only seeing Fate until Nanoha flys past the screen taking Fate with her and &lt;em&gt;-chan&lt;/em&gt; would be brief because Nanoha would only be on screen for a mere moment before the view will have to change to Nanoha's and Fate's new position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since i am typing this up in Notepad++ i'm trying to avoid using any fonts but i also want to keep the illusion that Nanoha is off at a distance calling out to Fate as she flys in. how can i achive this without using different font sizes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T19:34:52.973" Title="How do you describe someone approaching and calling out at the same time without using different font sizes?" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21479" CreationDate="2016-03-28T15:36:26.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the most beloved stories are fairy tales where the characters are not named. They're the princess, the wicked witch, the boy, the big bad wolf, and so on. (Aimee Bender writes some fantastic stories with unnamed characters.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, names are not necessary. However, you'll have to evaluate for yourself whether naming your own characters will work better for your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T15:36:26.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21503" CreationDate="2016-03-28T15:42:38.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the author doesn't specify type sizes. That's something you'd have to negotiate with your publisher, but it can come across as gimmicky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, I'd recommend simply deleting the long spoken noise. It doesn't help us understand what's going on here. Just write the action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, *its.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T15:42:38.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21503" CreationDate="2016-03-28T15:46:48.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;As Fate's worry grew and grew something drew her attention to a moving star in the sky. &lt;strong&gt;The sky brightened as the light got closer and a voice yelled out in the distance from the star,&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Feeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiitoooooooooooooo-chan&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nanoha flew right into Fate swinging around with her arms around Fate's neck unable to keep the excitement in seeing her girlfriend in any longer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, this is how I would word it. It's alright to have the movement described literally. The only time you would really change font in place of description would be in a graphic novel. I am not sure if this is helpful at all, but here is my best suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16510" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T15:46:48.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21497" CreationDate="2016-03-28T15:51:52.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about what your scene is meant to show. Each one should contribute something to the story. Then, of course, the scene should end when it's accomplished that. A paragraph, a page, whatever, then move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you think yours aren't doing enough. In that case, dig into the details, end the scene later or start it earlier. Play around with it. Rewrite it a hundred times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, my writing tends to expand and contract several times. I'll start with not enough detail, then I'll dig in and write way too much, then trim it down. (In the final draft some of those scenes become nothing more than a sentence if that's all they deserve.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T15:51:52.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21499" CreationDate="2016-03-28T16:00:20.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of different things to consider. First, the picture itself if drawn would be your property so you don't really have to worry about that aspect of it, however it may depend on the type of property, and the type of ownership the property has. You could avoid the issue entirely by changing a thing or two about the building itself, such as an extra window, a few extra steps, and writing a disclaimer that anything that depicts real life is coincidence or something like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you previously owned the property, you are probably safe, but as a courtesy it may be polite to ask, though I don't think it is necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is owned by multiple people, or a corporation, or a government agency, you may run into more issues and if it were deemed a security risk how it was depicted you may run a greater risk. In this case I definitely would recommend depicting publically viewable perspectives of the property, and altercating something in the depiction as previously mentioned to protect yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say the safest way to check yourself would be to look up the property on the internet, whatever is viewable via a search of the property is going to be safe to depict as is, and you should not run any problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just my recommendations, but I do not have legal credentials, and am only speaking from personal experience on how I would handle this specific situation. Hope this is helpful! Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16510" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T16:00:20.830" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21469" CreationDate="2016-03-28T16:15:25.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're probably safe in how you are using these references, however you have to be the judge of how much you are using and how you want your audience to view your work. Parody is fine, and is acceptable to the farthest extent as it is seen as being almost satirical and not taking away or competing with the original work, but highlighting and referencing it. I found this helpful article that I think probably describes your question best and should help you determine whether these references are acceptable or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fair-use-rule-copyright-material-30100.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fair-use-rule-copyright-material-30100.html&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a quick note, it may also be helpful to review the use of copyright law under the people you reference. Steven Spielberg for instance is notorious for legally protecting his work and going after things he considers rip offs, so be careful, just because it is well known doesn't necessarily mean it will be well received by the original source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My last personal recommendation is aside from the &quot;Magneto&quot; reference which I thought was really clever and interesting, unless you are writing a parody it is always better to try and describe it as best you can instead of referencing it. It'll grow your skills in descriptive writing, and will help your reader a lot as a reference can be very distracting from the rest of the narrative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16510" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T16:15:25.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21497" CreationDate="2016-03-28T17:31:06.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with what Ken said, and would also add this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at other books in your genre. They won't all be the same, and some may be completely opposite, but sometimes, you'll find a commonality in them. I write thrillers, and they &lt;em&gt;tend&lt;/em&gt; to have shorter chapters, so that's how I write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider your Point of View. If you are writing in third person limited, then you'll probably need to change chapters (or scenes) more often as you change POV characters. But if you're in first person, in one person's head the entire book, you may not need to change scenes so often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the biggest thing is just to figure out what your story demands. If the scene needs a lengthy chapter (for example, your climax scene), then stay with it longer. If it doesn't need much to accomplish what you need it to, then stick with a few paragraphs and move on. You shouldn't dictate how long your scenes are by &quot;rule of thumb&quot; because then your story often won't sound right. You'll either have scenes that say too little or too much for what the scene demands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T17:31:06.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21515" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-29T00:23:41.910" Score="1" ViewCount="5663" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a long non-fiction text that describes a fictional setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came up with a fiction piece for that setting, to include as further illustration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided it would work best if I split it up in three ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One part to go in the beginning (as a prologue);&#xA;One part to go in the middle;&#xA;And one part to go in the end (as an epilogue.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, what should I call the part that goes in the middle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing it all in Spanish (my native language), but so far I've been unable to find a proper or even vaguely accurate term, regardless of language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help in either English or Spanish would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18394" LastEditorUserId="47470" LastEditDate="2021-01-20T10:51:10.037" LastActivityDate="2024-01-16T22:33:21.307" Title="Is there a term for a fiction piece that goes after the prologue but before the epilogue?" Tags="|fiction|non-fiction|terminology|prologues|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21516" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21519" CreationDate="2016-03-29T03:16:28.153" Score="0" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an essay I excerpted from a writing course material.I need to omit uncessary words which make the essay wordy and longer than they should be..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is the original passage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every single time I had to do a writing assignment, I was always&#xA;  really unhappy and miserable. Due to my complete lack of confidence as&#xA;  well as  my total inability to express ideas of mine on paper, I&#xA;  believed that I had to work almost twice as hard as any other student&#xA;  in this world. This included spending hours and hours looking at a&#xA;  blank page and spending more hours editing essays of mine, just to&#xA;  make sure I had really appropriate content, organization, and grammar.&#xA;  Since English was not my first language, I was concerned that I would&#xA;  not do so very well at the university. When I entered the class&#xA;  offered by College Writing, everything changed in a positive way due&#xA;  to the fact that my writing skills increased throughout the semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the beginning of the semester, I had a lot of trouble with my first&#xA;  couple of essays; however, with careful analysis, patience, and my&#xA;  will to succeed, I started to write essays that I was quite proud of.&#xA;  I learned that if I could relate any topic of any essay with my&#xA;  personal experience, I believed that these essays were truly good, and&#xA;  would submit it to my instructor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is the passage in which I omit words I think I don't need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every (&lt;strong&gt;single&lt;/strong&gt;) time I had to do a writing assignment, I was always&#xA;  (&lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt;) (&lt;strong&gt;unhappy and&lt;/strong&gt;) miserable. Due to my complete lack of&#xA;  confidence as well as  my total inability to express ideas of mine on&#xA;  paper, (&lt;strong&gt;I believed that&lt;/strong&gt; )I had to work almost twice as hard as any&#xA;  other student in this world. This included spending hours and hours&#xA;  looking at a blank page and spending more hours editing essays of&#xA;  mine, just to make sure I had really appropriate content,&#xA;  organization, and grammar. Since English was not my first language, I&#xA;  was concerned that I would not do (&lt;strong&gt;so very&lt;/strong&gt;) well at the&#xA;  university. When I entered the class offered by College Writing,&#xA;  everything changed in a positive way due to the fact that my writing&#xA;  skills increased throughout the semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the beginning of the semester, I had a lot of trouble with my first&#xA;  couple of essays; however, with careful analysis, patience, and my&#xA;  will to succeed, I started to write essays that I was quite proud of.&#xA;  I learned that if I could relate any topic of any essay with my&#xA;  personal experience, (&lt;strong&gt;I believed that&lt;/strong&gt;) these essays were truly&#xA;  good, and would submit it to my instructor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do more so as to make it sound succinct&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12900" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T13:52:33.177" Title="how to write an essay in less wordy way" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-03-30T13:46:32.333" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21515" CreationDate="2016-03-29T04:14:29.157" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2009/09/parts-of-a-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2009/09/parts-of-a-book/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not familiar with this page, but it seems accurate from what I remember of my technical studies in that regard. You've got frontmatter, main body, and backmatter. Prologue is frontmatter, epilogue is part of the main body, as are all the other chapters of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18349" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T04:14:29.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21515" CreationDate="2016-03-29T06:01:02.753" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The part of a book that comes between the prologue and the epilogue is normally called &quot;the story&quot;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, I take it you mean you have some explanatory material that you want to put in the middle, that is not part of the story itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps &quot;interlude&quot; is what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T06:01:02.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21516" CreationDate="2016-03-29T13:29:54.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well done on the first pass. There are a few other places where words can be omitted. If the option to add words (and punctuation) or otherwise restructure sentences is on the table, even more words can be omitted. However, since you didn't state that as an option, I present the following, further streamlined version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every time I had to do a writing assignment, I was always miserable. Due to&#xA;  my complete lack of confidence as well as my total inability to express ideas &lt;strong&gt;(of mine)&lt;/strong&gt; on paper, I had to work &lt;strong&gt;(almost)&lt;/strong&gt; twice as hard as any other&#xA;  student &lt;strong&gt;(in this world)&lt;/strong&gt;. This included spending hours &lt;strong&gt;(and hours)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  looking at a blank page and &lt;strong&gt;(spending)&lt;/strong&gt; more hours editing &lt;strong&gt;(essays of&#xA;  mine)&lt;/strong&gt;, just to make sure I had &lt;strong&gt;(really)&lt;/strong&gt; appropriate content,&#xA;  organization, and grammar. Since English was not my first language, I&#xA;  was concerned that I would not do (so very) well at the university.&#xA;  When I entered &lt;strong&gt;(the class offered by)&lt;/strong&gt; College Writing, everything&#xA;  changed in a positive way due to the fact that my writing skills&#xA;  increased throughout the semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the beginning &lt;strong&gt;(of the semester)&lt;/strong&gt;, I had a lot of trouble with my &#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;(first couple of)&lt;/strong&gt; essays; however, with careful analysis, patience, and my&#xA;  will to succeed, I started to write essays that I was &lt;strong&gt;(quite)&lt;/strong&gt; proud of.&#xA;  I learned that if I could relate any topic &lt;strong&gt;(of any essay)&lt;/strong&gt; with my&#xA;  personal experience, these essays were truly good &lt;strong&gt;(, and would submit it to my instructor)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of what I've omitted is clear from the context of this essay. For example, there's no need to keep mentioning essays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T13:29:54.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21516" CreationDate="2016-03-29T13:50:03.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd cut down on 'my's and 'I's, and consider using simpler terms (if you like how it sounds. I'd also suggest better sentence flow, especially avoiding repetition- e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to my complete lack of confidence as well as my total inability to express ideas of mine on paper, I believed that I had to work almost twice as hard as any other student in this world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;becomes (note added comma, and 'the' for 'this' as well)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to a complete lack of confidence, as well as the inability to clearly express my ideas on paper, I believed that I had to work almost twice as hard as any other student in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17926" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T13:50:03.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21516" CreationDate="2016-03-29T13:52:33.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tips for streamlining:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the simplest tense &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove repetition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove unnecessary adjectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every time I (had to do - not the simplest tense) did a writing&#xA;  assignment, I was (always - repetition of 'every time') miserable. Due&#xA;  to my (complete - unnecessary adjective) lack of confidence as well as&#xA;  my (total - adjective) inability to express ideas (of mine) on paper, &#xA;  I had to work (almost) twice as hard as any other student (in this&#xA;  world). This included spending hours (and hours - repetition) looking&#xA;  at a blank page and (spending - repetition) more hours editing essays&#xA;  (of mine), just to make sure I had (really) appropriate content,&#xA;  organization, and grammar. Since English was not my first language, I&#xA;  was concerned that I would not do well at the university. When I&#xA;  entered the class offered by College Writing, everything changed (in a&#xA;  positive way) due to the fact that my writing skills increased&#xA;  throughout the semester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the beginning of the semester, I had a lot of trouble with my first&#xA;  couple of essays; however, with careful analysis, patience, and my&#xA;  will to succeed, I started to write essays that I was quite proud of.&#xA;  I learned that if I could relate any topic (of any essay with) my&#xA;  personal experience,  these essays were truly good(, and would submit&#xA;  it to my instructor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps and isn't overdone now!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T13:52:33.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21522" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-29T17:26:00.177" Score="0" ViewCount="2711" Body="&lt;p&gt;My style of writing is - I think - more investigative into characters and what drives them. I think however that this could be problematic for readers because nothing major happens in every single chapter. I feel like a lot of writers suggest just moving right through the story but I am not sure that I can do that with my story without it becoming overly simplistic. I am writing a story with a world that has a lot of details, so I'm not sure that I can really just move through it without everything becoming to 'easy' for my characters. What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18404" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T18:38:00.903" Title="Does something need to happen in every single chapter?" Tags="|creative-writing|characters|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21522" CreationDate="2016-03-29T17:35:36.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your suspicions that this approach may be problematic for readers is correct. However, it is entirely possible to have an investigation into character motivation that still doesn't have chapters where nothing major happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What exactly do you mean by &lt;em&gt;chapters where nothing major happens&lt;/em&gt;? In this case, whether something is major or not is defined by how it affects a character, not how it affects the world. Typically, events cause a character to act, and your investigation can enter at that point, letting us know the interior aspects of a character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also mention that your story takes place in a world with a lot of details, but I'm struggling to see how that makes things &lt;em&gt;easy&lt;/em&gt; for your characters. World details ground the character and give the readers context. Difficulty may arise from that, but it's not directly related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like more specificity may yield better answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T17:35:36.233" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21522" CreationDate="2016-03-29T17:36:17.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That depends on whether you want to write a good book.  The key rule of Strunk&amp;amp; White's &lt;em&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;Omit needless words!&lt;/strong&gt;  Presumably this goes for chapters too.  If you have a chapter you don't need, it should not exist.  Burn it and throw the ashes into the ocean or outer space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the definition of &quot;needing&quot; a chapter is not solely based on plot.  Characters and setting are important too.  So stick by this folden rule: &lt;strong&gt;If a chapter or segment does not advance the plot or develop the characters, cut it.&lt;/strong&gt; If you find a segment that advances only worldbuilding, cut it and integrate said worldbuilding into other, more interesting parts (in other words, &lt;em&gt;Show don't Tell&lt;/em&gt;).  The ideal chapter advances all three--plot, characters, setting--equally and at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16671" LastEditorUserId="16671" LastEditDate="2016-06-24T16:16:17.493" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T16:16:17.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21522" CreationDate="2016-03-29T18:36:34.410" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is no, I don't think something &quot;needs to happen&quot;. Instead, what you need is to be interesting. Five minutes online is all that's needed to find thousands of stories which stink despite having much happen. Conversely, my favorite author, Dostoevsky, wrote many, lengthy scenes where nothing &quot;happened&quot; because it was all dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While any one story won't interest everyone, a good story will interest some people and a bad story will interest no one. You should aim to be interesting to a specific audience rather than to have something &quot;happen&quot; in every scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14560" LastEditorUserId="14560" LastEditDate="2016-04-07T12:26:07.427" LastActivityDate="2016-04-07T12:26:07.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21503" CreationDate="2016-03-29T19:34:52.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd simply say, &quot;Her voice started out very faint but grew louder as she approached.&quot; I'd avoid trying to convey the idea with font changes or other typographical gimmicks. (a) If you eventually get this published, the publisher may not be prepared or willing to do that. And (b) Unless you explain it, the reader may not understand what you are trying to convey. And of course explaining it would break up the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T19:34:52.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21529" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-30T07:16:52.277" Score="6" ViewCount="504" Body="&lt;p&gt;All detective novel ends with the killer caught, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to write a completely bad ending detective novel? Imagine the Titanic of Sherlock Holmes, or is it done yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By Titanic I mean specifically sad. Not the cliche mixed ending where the killer got caught, but he killed the detective's daughter first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My imagination is the detective pointed the wrong killer, jailed ,and after the innocent is hanged, the killer kidnapped the detective where he confront him with his deduction error before he ends him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18411" LastActivityDate="2018-10-03T07:10:38.983" Title="Is it possible to write about failed detective novel?" Tags="|technique|ending|mystery|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21497" CreationDate="2016-03-30T08:36:33.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The length of an &quot;average&quot; scene is about 750 words. But anywhere from 300 to 1200 is fairly normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that scene length varies by genre. Scenes also tend to be longer in the beginning as there is more description and exposition. Depending on the level of overall action, they can be shorter towards the end where there is more tightly-worded action. &lt;a href=&quot;http://bekindrewrite.com/2013/07/05/how-long-should-a-scene-in-a-novel-be/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's a good analysis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Active&quot; scenes tend to be longer than &quot;reactive&quot; scenes (scenes vs sequels), unless you're putting a lot of time into aftermath or decision-making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, remember that these are just averages. Scene lengths naturally vary based on their content, and it's better to not have all scenes be the same approximate length, as that can get monotonous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T08:36:33.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21529" CreationDate="2016-03-30T08:39:51.093" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of a few detective stories where the protagonist is fooled by the real criminal, who ends up escaping at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the protagonist be &lt;em&gt;killed&lt;/em&gt; by the murderer is more unheard of, however. This is mostly because it leaves the story with no other option than being open ended; there is no closure or fulfillment at the end of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in stories where the killer gets away, the majority of the time the investigator ends up realizing who the killer was a second too late, so the murderer gets away with it whilst the reader feels like the detective achieved the discovery. This provides fulfillment, whilst leaving the option open for a sequel so the protagonist can continue their hunt for the perpetrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also probably also detective novels where the lead investigator who &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; the protagonist gets killed, and then the main character will take up the role in order to get revenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also examples of the protagonist dying alongside the antagonist, usually by sacrificing themselves in order to trade their own life for justice, which would also provide a satisfying end for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with having the killer kill the protagonist is that to continue the story, the writer needs to have a new, unfamiliar character continue the story. As detective novels go, they usually revolve around a strong protagonist figure who has a complex background, and just inventing another that is equally as popular to the reader would be unnecessarily difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be examples of what you're looking for, however there is a reason they would be a rare occurrence in the genre. The only way that a story like that can end is with no closure for the reader, as the entire investigation would have been in vain if the killer gets away and some other Joe Stranger continues the investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T08:39:51.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21469" CreationDate="2016-03-30T08:44:18.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would hesitate to use the name if there any sort of powers associated with it. It's one thing to say a guy is a big as the Hulk, it's another to make him have super strength and be called that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was going to suggest Magneton, but that's apparently a Pokemon. But still, much less likely to cause issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blasters are generic. &quot;Lightsabers&quot; are copyrighted. You can have laser beam swords, just not that term. Again, one reference like &quot;he looked like a Boba Fett reject&quot; is fine. But not if you're going to use the term/item/name repeatedly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T08:44:18.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21533" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-30T10:44:25.700" Score="1" ViewCount="411" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I'm writing a story that isn't a fantasy story, it's more of a realistic thriller. However, I want to include a character who has psychic powers like telepathy and psychokinesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to include a character like that, and still have a realistic story?  If so, how should it be handled?  Are there good reasons not to do this or any particular pitfalls to look out for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2019-06-05T01:56:39.800" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T01:56:39.800" Title="Including something implausible in an otherwise realistic story" Tags="|fiction|paranormal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2016-03-30T13:40:22.690" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21533" CreationDate="2016-03-30T11:06:43.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An excellent statistician maybe, someone who can predict different events given certain elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or someone remarkably observant (think Sherlock Holmes), such that what seems like supernatural powers to the &quot;avarage&quot; individual is just 'watch and conclude' for this person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18381" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T11:06:43.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21529" CreationDate="2016-03-30T14:30:34.817" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it POSSIBLE? Of course. You just write the story with that ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Is it a good idea?&quot; is a more realistic question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most fiction stories have a neat, happy ending: The lovers get married and live happily ever after. The adventurer finds the lost treasure. The criminal is caught. Etc. But not necessarily. Romeo and Juliet do not live happily ever after. The Sheriff of Nottingham kills Robin Hood. Irene Adler escapes from Sherlock Holmes without him recovering the photograph his client wanted. (Hope those weren't spoilers for anybody.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many catches to NOT having the &quot;normal&quot;, &quot;happy&quot; ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers generally want a happy ending. If the story doesn't end happily, there has to be a good reason. Either you're making a point about fate or futility or the horrors of evil, or it's a surprise twist ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers normally want an ending that wraps everything up. They don't want an ending that leaves them wondering, &quot;So what happened next? How did this end?&quot; A friend of mine once said, &quot;Some stories don't end. They just stop.&quot; &#xA;Most readers find this very frustrating. Like, I've read all 300 pages of your book, and then you don't tell me how everything ended up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of a detective story, normally you are building up the hero as a brilliant solver of mysteries. If he fails to catch the criminal, then apparently he wasn't so brilliant after all. The whole premise is undermined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you kill off the hero in the middle of a story, then you need a new hero to replace him, and you have to begin the process of introducing a character and getting the reader interested in him all over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case you say you're killing the hero at the end of the story, so you avoid that problem. But it does mean that you've caught yourself off from a sequel. Detective stories are often written in a series: In each story the detective solves a new crime. Presumably once the detective is dead he's not solving more crimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But can you do it? Sure. I can see the ending that you're describing working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T14:30:34.817" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21536" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21537" CreationDate="2016-03-30T15:35:45.670" Score="1" ViewCount="9277" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen styles where writers end sentences with commas if it is inside double quotes and styles where writers end sentences with periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;She's late again.&quot; mumbled Jason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;versus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;She's late again,&quot; mumbled Jason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is it considered common practice to end a sentence with a comma instead of a period?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18199" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T23:34:24.033" LastActivityDate="2019-12-09T02:32:10.160" Title="Why end sentences with commas instead of periods when the sentence is in a quote?" Tags="|style|punctuation|grammar|quotes|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21536" CreationDate="2016-03-30T16:11:34.667" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because you are attaching your speaker tag to the dialogue being spoken. If you were using an action tag, or separating the speaker tag from the dialogue, then the quoted material stands alone and uses a period. Other punctuation varies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;She's late again,&amp;quot; mumbled Jason. &lt;em&gt;[comma]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;She's late again.&amp;quot; Jason looked down the street, hoping vainly to see her. &lt;em&gt;[action tag; period. speaker is implied to be Jason]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;She's late again.&amp;quot; Jason made an irritated noise, then said to Maria, &amp;quot;Can you look out the window and tell me if you spot her?&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;[speaker tag for a different sentence; period]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jason sighed. &amp;quot;She's late again.&amp;quot; Maria nodded. Jason asked, &amp;quot;Can you look out the window and tell me if you spot her?&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;[speaker tag for two different sentences; speaker is implied to be Jason for the first; periods throughout]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Can you see her?&amp;quot; asked Jason. &lt;em&gt;[Because this is a question, even though it's a complete sentence, it ends in a question mark before the quote, and not a comma.]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I see her!&amp;quot; Maria shouted. &lt;em&gt;[Same idea, with an exclamation point.]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T16:11:34.667" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21536" CreationDate="2016-03-30T22:24:31.470" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A great explanation: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-use-quotation-marks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-use-quotation-marks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that American form can be different than UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T22:24:31.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21542" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21545" CreationDate="2016-03-30T23:54:44.653" Score="2" ViewCount="455" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to experiment with rhetorical devices to add spice in my writing. Repetition can be used for emphasis, establishing rhythm, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Over and over again&lt;/strong&gt;, my mind jumps between her ghoulish presence on the night she lured me into the woods, near-human behavior when she tried to justify her barbarism, and blood-stained figure after she mutilated the people who were once my friends. &lt;strong&gt;Over and over again&lt;/strong&gt;, I'm plagued by the fright she put into me, pity she'd led me to have for her, and rage she put into me. &lt;strong&gt;Over and over again&lt;/strong&gt;, I see the faces of my neighbors and friends, previously residents of the small town I'd grown up surrounded by, now victims of Adaneene and her father's hunger. &lt;strong&gt;Over and over again&lt;/strong&gt;, I see their bodies, the way the monster and her father had left them after their horrifying last moments that the monster couldn't care enough to spare them from. &lt;strong&gt;Over and over again&lt;/strong&gt;, I see myself &lt;strong&gt;not able to save&lt;/strong&gt; them, and see myself in the future &lt;strong&gt;not able to save&lt;/strong&gt; anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This passage alone not only repeats &quot;over and over again&quot; five times and &quot;not able to save&quot; twice, but it also uses parallelism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this excessive repetition? What's a way to determine whether or not repetition, used as a literary or rhetorical device, is too much for the readers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2016-03-31T02:13:09.830" Title="How much repetition of a word or phrase is too much?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21536" CreationDate="2016-03-31T01:30:24.327" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason for using a comma instead of a period depends on what purpose the dialogue is serving in the sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;She's late again,&quot; mumbled Jackson. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case the dialogue, &quot;she's late again,&quot; modifies the main verb, &quot;mumbled.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;She's late again.&quot; mumbled Jackson. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This case, however, is improper grammar. &quot;Mumbled Jackson&quot; is a dependent clause, and needs the preceding &quot;She's late again,&quot; to be a complete sentence. &quot;She's late again&quot; can be considered the object of the action; it is what Jackson is mumbling. The period needs to be replaced with a common, merely because the dialogue serves as a modifier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the dialogue needs a period generally depends on whether or not the narration can be a complete sentence without the dialogue a part of the sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jackson mumbled, &quot;She's late again.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Jackson mumbled. &quot;She's late again.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both sentences, in this case, would be grammatically correct, though the meaning is slightly different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally comma's are used to follow a speaker tag when introducing a quotation. The comma indicates that the quotations that follow are what the speaker is saying, mumbling, whispering, etc. The comma serves the same purpose when the dialogue precedes the speaker tag.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter example is grammatically correct, although replacing the comma with a period implies that Jackson is mumbling, perhaps because &quot;she&quot; is late, but doesn't imply that the quotations are what Jackson is mumbling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply put, the commas clarify who is speaking and what that person is saying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2016-03-31T01:30:24.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21542" CreationDate="2016-03-31T02:13:09.830" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read it out loud, or have somebody read it to you.  Part of it is personal preference, but as a reader and listener, I've noticed that edited speeches or novels will not usually have more than 1-2 repetitions (after the first occurrence of the phrase).  On the other hand, if you are at a critical point in your book - the end of a part, or the end of the novel - it might be more generally acceptable to have more repetition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emphasis on the word &quot;general&quot; - there are no rules in creative writing, only opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18421" LastActivityDate="2016-03-31T02:13:09.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21529" CreationDate="2016-03-31T02:26:12.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you haven't already read it, I recommend the last book in Agatha Christie's Poirot series: &lt;em&gt;Curtain&lt;/em&gt;.  The plot definitely has the pathos and irony of a &quot;Titanic&quot; ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18421" LastActivityDate="2016-03-31T02:26:12.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21522" CreationDate="2016-03-31T03:13:10.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Define chapter where nothing happens? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if there are chapters that do not have a lot of action, perhaps a group is sitting talking, or people are simply walking down a side walk observing things, etc, each chapter needs to have a purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing your explanation in the comments, I believe what you are thinking about is what some call a &quot;filler chapter.&quot; Filler chapters serve as important transitions from one major plot point from the next, and they sometimes don't really have much going on. But, they do a lot for the purpose of the novel, sometimes teaching you about the characters, the setting, adding depth to the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Major plot points do not need to happen in each chapter, but there should not be any chapters that can be omitted without consequence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2016-03-31T03:13:10.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21334" CreationDate="2016-03-31T17:42:32.247" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look up what happened to the Tron cartoon series, specifically why it was &quot;cancelled&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18430" LastActivityDate="2016-03-31T17:42:32.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21550" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-31T18:47:03.873" Score="5" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a math book, is it OK to have a diagram wider than text width (so overriding the margins)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how do I center a wide figure so that it occupies both the left margin and the right margin (not only the right margin) using LaTeX software?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T03:55:08.960" LastActivityDate="2021-01-03T08:52:15.947" Title="Diagram wider than text width" Tags="|academic-writing|formatting|latex|graphics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21551" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21553" CreationDate="2016-04-01T04:54:41.693" Score="1" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;In creative writing, how do you know if the pace of your writing is too slow or too fast? How do you find the right rate for your story to unfold?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="7986" LastEditDate="2016-04-01T18:54:08.387" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T18:54:08.387" Title="How do you find the right pacing in your story?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21552" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-01T07:50:18.123" Score="3" ViewCount="1171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a newbie in the field of writing. After writing a book, I need to visit a number of publishers. So, how do I secure my written work from being stolen or copied before it's published? Is there any official body who regulates theft or plagiarism of written content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18437" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-13T00:14:37.800" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T00:44:23.687" Title="How to secure my written work from being stolen or copied before publishing?" Tags="|copyright|book|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21551" CreationDate="2016-04-01T07:50:33.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never felt that the pacing was wrong in any book I read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read books that contained &lt;em&gt;boring&lt;/em&gt; parts that I skipped; for example, lengthy backstory, especially the worldbuilding backstory in fantasy, or endless rumination on the part of the characters in a love story. I am interested in the protagonists and what they &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt;, so everything that is not relevant to that is boring to me and I skip it. But I never felt that these parts were too &lt;em&gt;slow&lt;/em&gt;, only that these parts were &lt;em&gt;not relevant&lt;/em&gt; to (my perception) of the story: for example, I don't need to know the pantheon of a fictional world to understand the motivation of the hero; I don't need a detailed description of every room in which the hero fights for his life; and I want to be allowed to have my own thoughts and emotions about a romance that I witness, not be forced to slavishly follow every anxiety of the heroine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when I read, I feel that the pacing is right when the writer only writes what is really &lt;strong&gt;relevant&lt;/strong&gt; to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write, I don't care about pacing at all. I follow the story as it unfolds. When the hero is relaxed and has time to look around, I let her look around. When the hero needs to think about something, I let her think. When the hero wants to do something, I let her do it. And when she does something, I describe what she does, and not what she would have seen had she been relaxed. When she's relaxed and doing nothing, I don't describe the idling of her mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel, the pacing (whatever that is) of the story is right, if you get into your story and feel what it is about at any given moment. And write that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write a children's book, &lt;em&gt;become the child&lt;/em&gt; and go through the story as the child, looking at, experiencing, and behaving as a child would – and your pacing will be appropriate for a children's book. If you write an action thriller, get yourself into that dangerous situation and &quot;see&quot; what you would see if you had to fight for your survival. And so on. Let your story tell you what it needs, or rather, &lt;em&gt;get into your story&lt;/em&gt;, become your protagonist, and &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; what is going on and describe that. Do not describe what a bystander would see, or someone who is unaware of what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I ask you to follow your story, I don't mean the chronology of the observable events. Think of the beginning of Chuck Palahniuk's &lt;em&gt;Fight Club&lt;/em&gt;: the protagonist-narrator has a loaded gun put in his mouth. Definitely a moment that in the average action thriller is &quot;fast paced&quot;. Yet, the moment is &quot;paused&quot; and the story continues somewhere in the past that led up to this moment, before the rest of the moment is allowed to unfold. Thinking in terms of &quot;pacing&quot;, Palahniuk breaks the pace. But does it feel wrongly paced to the reader? Not to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I tell you to follow your story, I mean the opposite of looking on from outside and narrating it as a chronicler would. The &lt;em&gt;logic&lt;/em&gt; of a story is not necessarily chronological. &lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; are the logic of your story. You are its organizing principle. Usually you will not even understand what your story is about, rationally, completely, but you will have a strong and definite visceral feeling for what the story &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;. So trust your intuition and let the story unfold as it will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pacing will be right if you don't interfere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-04-01T08:11:19.230" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T08:11:19.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21552" CreationDate="2016-04-01T09:29:06.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, you can't really protect an 'idea' (otherwise every story would have to be unique). I'm not an expert when it comes to these things, but I can imagine that it's rather simple to take an existing story, change a few names and elements, so that it counts as 'new'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to have a prove that you came up with it earlier (maybe to avoid being accused of copying the story from the one stealing it from you (which would be ironic) ), without revealing the story itself, one possibility would be to 'publish' an anagram (or even better, a hash) of your story somewhere. That way, you have a timestamp and can prove that you already had that specific draft written previously. Just make sure to not edit the text you used for the anagram or hash - otherwise it would not be possible to recreate it without knowing the changes you made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://wordsmith.org/anagram/practical.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://wordsmith.org/anagram/practical.html&lt;/a&gt; (Trusted Timestamping)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15271" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T09:29:06.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21555" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21557" CreationDate="2016-04-01T10:05:14.810" Score="8" ViewCount="1008" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working on a quite large story for a while now, but going through my drafts I noticed one weakness: My villains are very underdeveloped / weakly characterized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll try to &lt;em&gt;generalize&lt;/em&gt; the question &amp;amp; example, to keep it relevant for other cases as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main protagonists are not directly facing a villain, but are facing the results of the villain's actions (for example, war). So, they don't really face 'a villain' in the classic &quot;hero vs evil overlord&quot; sense, but instead face the situation and eventually the villain's troops or other minor odds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This creates a large problem for the story: My protagonists face &lt;em&gt;&quot;faceless&quot; soldiers&lt;/em&gt; but are never involved with the (charismatic? power hungry? misguided? manipulated?) leaders. Why would they want to? It would only cause more problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to remedy this problem by giving the &quot;other side&quot; a voice, basically a protagonist that is involved in the bigger (background) conflict - but that just feels artificial (at least so far).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not that the protagonists are not heavily involved - the problem just is that with a certain command structure, it wouldn't make sense to involve a leader who should delegate, not run around and do it himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;(and my problems with it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A large war between two faction breaks out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anna, for some reason, has the key (let's say, a magical artifact?) to make one side win over the other at the expense of her life. She doesn't want either side to win but can't leave the area either, so she tries to stay under the radar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both sides make it a priority to hunt Anna down - whoever finds her first and brings her back gains a huge advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I would say the leaders of the two factions do the only thing reasonable: they delegate the issue. Search parties, troops, etc. They maybe even give one high ranking member the responsibility to solve the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this is exactly &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; problem: there wouldn't be one person searching for Anna, there would be dozens, hundreds or more (depending on the resources available). She would never face the same 'hunter' twice if she keeps changing location, which would be the reasonable action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to have a reappearing presence would be to bring the leading person in the picture - but he would most likely just be sitting in some headquarters and organize his men. He would only come into play when Anna was captured, without any build up - and then his job would be done and he would be out of the picture again after delivering her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are good techniques to make an impersonal (background) conflicts more personal for the protagonists, or give the conflict a &quot;face&quot;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it necessary / expected to force a person (that usually just sits behind a desk and wouldn't have a personal connection) directly into the scene, even if he would just delegate the issue and wait for results?&lt;/strong&gt; (which isn't very exciting)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15271" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-06-05T01:55:15.670" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T01:55:15.670" Title="How to write a strong villain who isn't really present?" Tags="|characters|technique|antagonist|conflict|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21555" CreationDate="2016-04-01T10:28:52.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So give your villain more to do. Raise the stakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the General overseeing the various troops and hunters doesn't feel scary enough, give him more motivation. Give him someone REALLY scary to report to who is breathing down his neck and has no tolerance for failure, or even lateness, on pain of death. Or the Bigger Bad is holding the General's family hostage or something, so that the General's ruthlessness isn't even purely business but personal to save something entirely unrelated to Anna. Maybe if the General's side wins the war he can extract some tribute from the conquered land which is a cure for some fatal disease his child has, and that could be a way for Anna to win him to &lt;em&gt;her&lt;/em&gt; side by having one of her allies procure the cure for him in exchange for the General backing off. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T10:28:52.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21555" CreationDate="2016-04-01T12:15:32.290" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well let's look at this from the perspective of the Generals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst this object that could turn the tide of the war is obviously important, it might turn out to just be rumor, or might end up being so well hidden that neither side would ever find it. Therefore committing a significant number of soldiers to pursue the girl is a massive waste of resources. &lt;em&gt;Particularly&lt;/em&gt; in a war that is so well balanced an extra squad in an important checkpoint could turn the tide of the battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, the generals would send one, or at most two, small strike teams to hunt her down. Maybe even individual sleuths to follow her trail discretely and catch up to her. Sure, the troops would be on the lookout for women of her description, but they can't do an all out manhunt whilst there is a war to win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So she would come to know her pursuers, or at least know they are on her trail and recognize them. Even if just rumors from towns (the local barkeep mentioning that there has been a tall man in a white hat asking around town about a girl who fits her description). This way, the antagonists become personal, because they are hunting &lt;em&gt;her&lt;/em&gt;. She doesn't need to know their names, she just needs to know what to be on the lookout for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the leaders, she might know their names as they may have won fame or renown from battles they have won. She might even catch a glimpse of them from afar. But as you say, they would not lead a hunt for her, they would be too busy fighting battles. But again, with them giving the order to find her, it would be personal to her that they have ordered her capture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best example I can think of is the movie Inglorious Bastards. Hans Landa hunts down and kills Shosanna's family, whilst she ends up escaping. She remembers &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; who he is years later, whilst he doesn't recognize her when she is sitting across the table from him. However, he is doing it under orders from Hitler, but it's still Hans that she hates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might not be personal to the hunters, they are just doing their jobs. But she would know exactly who they are. There is your antagonist. Maybe she meets one of the generals if she gets captured later on in the story, so even though no love would be lost, she would still only see them as the figurehead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Entirely forgot to say that the white hat idea came from Butch Cassidy &amp;amp; The Sundance Kid, which is worth a watch if you haven't seen it as it features a similar antagonist scenario, with the main characters being hunted by a particular person/group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="13149" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:41:05.380" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:41:05.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21551" CreationDate="2016-04-01T13:56:06.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is definitely a sweet spot between too fast and too slow, and if you find it, you may have commercial success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a separate issue from the length of the book, which incorporates a whole different set of variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Symptoms your book is progressing too quickly:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a lack of character development: Characters appear without background. They may have new powers without an explanation. They progress in relationships in an unbelievable fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The story is choppy: How did we get from A to B? Where did Cassandra go? Now we're fighting dragons; how'd we get past the goblins?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The average reader might zone out a few seconds here and there. Do they get jarred and jostled around? Meaning, does action build, or does it explode without warning?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Time gaps are necessary from scene to scene in most books, but books moving too quickly with timeline will leave the reader with the sense of How did that happen?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Symptoms your book is moving too slowly:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You write a chapter without any dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You write a chapter getting you no closer to your climax. People who spend money on fiction want to be entertained more so than informed. Ideally you can do both, but one must be cautious about information dumps.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your introductory chapters are longer than your average chapter. This will usually work itself out in the editing process, but our tendencies as writers is to show how clever we are at Worldbuilding.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You find rereading your book boring and tedious. You may eventually get sick of it as you get into query, and you've now done 3-5 rounds of complete edits, but boring? There is nothing wrong with saying, &quot;This chapter sucks,&quot; and deleting it. Try it; it's fun.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-04-01T14:02:23.967" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T14:02:23.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21552" CreationDate="2016-04-01T14:23:25.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're dealing with reputable publishers, they're not going to steal your idea. They just aren't. They wouldn't stay in business long if they did. If you're not sure whether a particular company is reputable, ask around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T14:23:25.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21643" CreationDate="2016-04-01T16:01:33.870" Score="4" ViewCount="21923" Body="&lt;p&gt;The terms are bandied around quite often to describe fictional characters, generally in order to help describe how developed a character is in terms of personality and backstory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, are there explicit cut-off points of when to describe such characters in this way? What makes a character go from being 1-dimensional to 2- or 3- dimensional? Are there any good examples in fiction to represent such characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2021-02-23T12:23:42.083" Title="What's the difference between a 1-, 2- or 3-dimensional character?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21561" CreationDate="2016-04-01T18:01:16.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the novel Flatland, a book where the characters are all geometrical figures, there are one-dimensional characters: lines, two-dimentionsal characters: squares and circles, and three-dimensional characters: cubes and spheres. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside of that, we pretty much talk about &quot;one-dimensional&quot; versus &quot;three-dimensional&quot;. The latter is also called &quot;well rounded&quot; or &quot;well developed&quot;. I don't recall ever hearing someone talk about a &quot;two-dimensional character&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &quot;one dimensional&quot; we mean a character whose entire personality can be summed up in a sentence or two. He is a stereotype. If I tell you the character is a &quot;rebellious teenager&quot;, a &quot;greedy businessman&quot;, a &quot;zealous political activist&quot;, etc, I've told you all there is to know about him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;well developed&quot; character is much more difficult to describe. You might start out by saying that he is, say, a greedy businessman. But to understand the character, you would also have to explain that he is a loving father, a thoughtful Libertarian, an enthusiastic but unsuccessful baseball player, a lover of Mexican food, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of real people you know. Could you describe them in one sentence? Probably not. Real people have not just many attributes to their personality, but often seemingly contradictory attributes. Someone may be excitable and emotional in some ways but very calm and reserved about other things. He may be generous with friends and familiy but tight-fisted with strangers. Hard-working at her job but lazy about housekeeping. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the main characters in a story should not be one-dimensional. For the reader to be interested in them, they should be complex, realistic people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most stories have peripheral characters who can, and arguably should be, one-dimensional. For example, if there's a brief mention of the hero stopping at a store to buy whatever, the clerk will normally be a very simple, short-lived, one-dimensional character. He may be helpful or rude, capable or incompetent, as fits the story. But we don't normally expect a long discussion of his family background, his hopes and dreams, his religious and political affiliation, etc. In most cases that would bog the story down with irrelevant detail that would distract the reader from the main action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I've seen plenty of movies and read plenty of books where I found myself saying, &quot;Yeah, yeah, I get it, this character is the enthusiastic but inexperienced young man, this one is the pretty girl who turns out to be tougher than any of the men, this one is the corrupt politician, etc.&quot; That makes them all boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T18:01:16.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21563" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21574" CreationDate="2016-04-01T19:42:00.920" Score="4" ViewCount="752" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Born late in the year, Adam was the only kid in his small 4th grade&#xA;  class that had already turned 11. Every morning he got up at exactly&#xA;  4:56, the latest he could rouse in the morning with sequential numbers&#xA;  and still meet Bus 9 on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-or-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Born late in the year, Adam was the only kid in his small fourth grade&#xA;  class that had already turned eleven. Every morning he got up at&#xA;  exactly four fifty-six, the latest he could rouse in the morning with&#xA;  sequential numbers and still meet Bus Nine on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a hard rule in general fiction when to use numbers and when to spell them out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15134" LastEditorUserId="15134" LastEditDate="2016-04-04T16:25:21.710" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T20:27:17.337" Title="Should I write out numbers or use the actual numbers (ordinals)?" Tags="|fiction|style|numerals|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21564" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21622" CreationDate="2016-04-01T19:59:11.230" Score="4" ViewCount="1715" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a narrative featuring many young children. Some of the children are under the age of five, and I'm wondering what the best way to write dialogue for their age group would be. I know that when they're young, they have trouble pronouncing certain consonants and consonant blends, like &amp;quot;l&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;r&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;v&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;th.&amp;quot; When writing dialogue, would we express their mispronunciations and treat it like a dialect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Homewess&lt;/em&gt;?&amp;quot; Three-year-old Billy asks. &amp;quot;What does &lt;em&gt;dat&lt;/em&gt; mean?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It means we &lt;em&gt;haveta wiv&lt;/em&gt; in a box,&amp;quot; four-year-old Flora answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Wiv&lt;/em&gt; in a box?&amp;quot; Billy cries with wide eyes. &amp;quot;I &lt;em&gt;wike&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;wiving&lt;/em&gt; here!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Homeless?&amp;quot; Three-year-old Billy asks. &amp;quot;What does that mean?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It means we have to live in a box,&amp;quot; four-year-old Flora answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Live in a box?&amp;quot; Billy cries with wide eyes. &amp;quot;I like living here!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it best to leave it to the reader's imagination, or to actually transcribe what their saying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-06-08T20:15:16.977" Title="Voices of young children, how to write?" Tags="|style|technique|language|narrative|child-characters|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21564" CreationDate="2016-04-01T21:33:54.593" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like Lauren Ipsum said, don't overdo it. I personally prefer a slight dialect over the example you gave, which would become cumbersome if used in more than a few paragraphs. &#xA;Also, don't make their grammar perfect. I don't mean that you should use garbled grammar, but rather some slight errors, and omissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18443" LastEditorUserId="18443" LastEditDate="2016-07-02T18:22:54.447" LastActivityDate="2016-07-02T18:22:54.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21522" CreationDate="2016-04-01T21:43:36.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there must be substance to every chapter, or else what is the point from including it in the book? Padding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not mistake things happening though, with action. A chapter (or scene) can be about a soldier in a battle; the soldier's musings in the hospital tent, after taking an injury; his emotional struggles and major decision he made on the march back home; and an exploration of the capital once the army reaches it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18443" LastEditorUserId="18443" LastEditDate="2016-04-02T21:57:40.033" LastActivityDate="2016-04-02T21:57:40.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21529" CreationDate="2016-04-01T21:49:40.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see anything wrong with your idea. There are, after all, no rules to writing. Just things that work for some authors, and things that don't for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether it has already been done, well, just write the book you want to write, and if something similar was written before then so what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the book is good enough people will read it, as we like familiar stories by nature. How many readers do you know that never reread their favorite books? Not many in my case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you want to make it your own, and have originality to it, then explore different cultures and time periods, or flip the stereotypical detective upside down. Change the roles. Make your original villain the detective, and the detective character the villain, or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're an author, make something up.&#xA;Cheers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18443" LastEditorUserId="28831" LastEditDate="2018-10-03T07:10:38.983" LastActivityDate="2018-10-03T07:10:38.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21570" CreationDate="2016-04-01T21:54:20.787" Score="1" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one is describing a gala ball, what level of detail of the room is considered appropriate? For example, if the ball is a lavish one, is it appropriate to include the table settings (conical red napkins, crystal wine, and water glasses, etc.) or is the designation &quot;lavish ball&quot; sufficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15683" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T00:28:30.460" Title="Scene descriptons?" Tags="|screenwriting|description|scene|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21569" CreationDate="2016-04-01T22:02:34.763" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focus on the viewpoint character's attention and opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Describe whatever the viewpoint character pays attention to, especially if the character has an opinion about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't describe anything that the viewpoint character pays no attention to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T22:02:34.763" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21536" CreationDate="2016-04-01T22:29:16.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;She's late again&quot; is a quote that is a part of a sentence, not the sentence itself. The rule is that you separate the quote and speaker tag with a comma. Therefore, you put a comma after &quot;again&quot; and a period after &quot;Jason,&quot; which is where your sentence actually ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2686" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T22:29:16.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21572" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-02T02:33:58.737" Score="6" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I resubmit it through the regular submission channel or directly to the editor who replied (she included her contact info)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have revised the MS quite a bit this week based on their comments, but I don't want to rush sending it back to them.  Is there a proper waiting time to resubmit?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I kind of want the story to be fresh in their minds when they see it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18447" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-03T11:23:06.460" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T11:23:06.460" Title="What is an appropriate waiting time before resubmitting after I received positive feedback?" Tags="|editing|submitting-work|feedback|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21563" CreationDate="2016-04-02T07:40:59.773" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hard rule? No. &#xA;Style guide? Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aspiring author, you absolutely need to pick a style guide and use it or these problems will keep picking at you. I like &lt;em&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such: &lt;strong&gt;Born late in the year, Adam was the only kid in his small, fourth-grade class that had already turned eleven. Every morning, he got up at exactly 4:56 a.m., the latest he could arise in the morning with sequential numbers and still meet Bus No. 9 on time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot! of individual rules involved here, and some variation with the time of day and the bus number. It would also potentially change from narrative to dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the above examples (in addition to the punctuation issues):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Numbers are spelled out from one to one hundred, as well as most fractions. This is highly variable depending on the style guide. What you don't want to do is mix things like &lt;em&gt;three-and-3/4&lt;/em&gt;. Numbers without ones or tens are often spelled out. &lt;em&gt;Two hundred&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;one million&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;thirteen thousand&lt;/em&gt;, for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Times are written with arabic numerals (ordinals) if they contain minutes. You may use AM, PM, a.m., p.m. but &lt;em&gt;Chicago&lt;/em&gt; cautions against A.M., P.M., am, pm (but they are not incorrect). Whole hours are often written out &lt;em&gt;Three o'clock in the morning&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An effort should be made to use the modern convention of what a bystander or person knowledgeable in the industry would see and recognize. A &lt;em&gt;Boeing 747&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Channel 5 news at 9&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Bus No. 9&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Bus #9&lt;/em&gt; seems better to me than &lt;em&gt;bus number nine&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, in dialogue, the writer may spell out everything. Just be consistent. Brand names, such as &lt;em&gt;Boeing 747&lt;/em&gt; should maintain ordinals even in dialogue, but not if the brand is written out: &lt;em&gt;Coke Zero&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There will be times to break this pattern. It is best not to mix ordinals with roman text in the same sentence or short paragraph. In this case, ordinals are preferred. &lt;em&gt;His 15-year-old dog is 105 in human years&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-04-04T17:09:05.690" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T17:09:05.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8486" CreationDate="2016-04-02T13:22:35.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A contemporary, commercial example of this writing style is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Child&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lee Child&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Reacher_(book_series)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jack Reacher&lt;/a&gt; series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simple, clear, and &quot;pragmatic&quot;, I find it incredibly useful to aspiring writers in general because the skeleton of plot, characterization, and other story-telling components are clearly visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2016-04-02T13:22:35.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8486" CreationDate="2016-04-02T13:40:06.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;More than any how-to book, I've found the best references to be stories themselves. Reading is how writers get better. And the more you read, the more you're able to read as a writer, understanding how the words and sentences work together to create an effective piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-04-02T13:40:06.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3505" CreationDate="2016-04-02T15:15:44.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can start writing and making videos on basic programming Tips and guide. There are many fresher programmer who search for such topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18245" LastActivityDate="2016-04-02T15:15:44.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21579" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-02T16:41:38.770" Score="2" ViewCount="512" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seemed to have a problem with getting this right and doubting myself. In regards to writing dialogue, do you follow up with capitalisation after punctuation marks? Can someone tell me which is correct:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'Do you know where we are going?' She said.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'Do you know where we are going?' she said. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if it isn't an exclamation but an action, is it the same rule. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'Do you know where we are going?' She laughed. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'Do you know where we are going?' she laughed. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and also, to be a nuisance, can someone tell me which of the following are correct too:&#xA; 5. 'Seraphina?' the dark Persian man cried. &#xA; 6. 'Seraphina?' The dark Persian man cried. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18452" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T15:28:27.187" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T15:28:27.187" Title="Capitalisation after punctuation in dialogue" Tags="|style|dialogue|formatting|punctuation|capitalization|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21563" CreationDate="2016-04-02T20:36:05.163" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best answer to this is based upon how people read and how brains work in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example of How Brainz Work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If u cn rd ths ur 2 cloz&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do Everything Possible To Keep Readers Reading&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, you can read that, but for some ppl* it will take longer.  Even if it is a negligible amount of time measured you don't want it to take longer when people are reading your fiction.  If it takes them too long they will quit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*A little hidden joke in this explanation. :)  Also, did you notice how the asterisk made you slow your reading for even a millisecond?  That's the experience that writing number symbols can have on readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;strike&gt;Writing&lt;/strike&gt; Reading Conventions, Not Rules&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about the reader, not about your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer that you've been waiting for is:&#xA;Write out the number as a word.  Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because when a brain is reading words, it (generally) slows the brain down to switch modes and turn number symbols into words which are then added to the understanding of the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jerry went fishing on Lake Timonga every 32 minutes he pulled in 3&#xA;  fish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jerry went fishing on Lake Timonga every thirty-two minutes he pulled&#xA;  in three fish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Last Sentence is &quot;Easier&quot; (Faster)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a very fast reader, but if I read a sentence like the first I often stop for just a moment and read the first number as three two, then my eyes scan over it and re-read it as thirty-two.  With the words, my eyes just keep flying over the sentence.&#xA;Something to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2016-04-02T20:36:05.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21579" CreationDate="2016-04-02T21:13:58.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't capitalize the dialogue tag &lt;em&gt;she said&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;she laughed&lt;/em&gt; if it's attached to your dialogue. You would only capitalize &lt;em&gt;She laughed&lt;/em&gt; if it's a new thought. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Do you know where we are going?&quot; she said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We're going to Albuquerque,&quot; he responded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Seraphina!&quot; the dark Persian man cried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Do you know where we are going?&quot; She struggled not to shout. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We're going to Albuquerque.&quot; He laughed. It was an old joke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Seraphina!&quot; The dark Persian man wept to see her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a related recent discussion here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/21536/why-end-sentences-with-commas-instead-of-periods-when-the-sentence-is-in-a-quote/&quot;&gt;Why end sentences with commas instead of periods when the sentence is in a quote?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-04-02T21:13:58.973" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21583" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21587" CreationDate="2016-04-03T00:38:09.220" Score="1" ViewCount="709" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of the minor characters in my story have official titles. CEO, Sergeant, Lt. Colonel, Ambassador, President, Prime Minister, Chief of Staff, Director, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the character is minor, should I just use the character's title and never give the character a name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the character is very minor (appearing in only one chapter), can I just use the title?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if the character is recurring?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a certain character is a major figure in the story and has multiple titles and names, which one should I use? (i.e. - The character is called one name by his best friend, another by his wife, and another by his employees. Everyone else just uses his official title.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Must I use the same name consistently for this character when writing as an omniscient narrator?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18199" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T11:27:49.143" Title="Refer to character by title instead of name?" Tags="|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21584" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2016-04-03T00:58:02.697" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-04-03T00:58:02.697" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T00:58:02.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21585" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2016-04-03T00:58:02.697" Score="0" Body="Questions about the use of numbers in text and how to format them. Can also be about the formatting and reference to page numbers, figure numbers, etc. " OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-04-03T00:58:02.697" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T00:58:02.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16871" CreationDate="2016-04-03T04:23:53.797" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally find it a little odd when authors go out of their way not to call something what it is. If you have an undead entity that sleeps in a coffin, hates sunlight, and drinks blood, why not call it a vampire? If it's because the word &quot;vampire&quot; is cliche, why is the creature itself not cliche as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, there are a few ways around using generic names like &quot;vampire&quot; and &quot;fairy.&quot; Technically, those are both blanket terms for many different types of creatures. If your vampire is African and likes to attack its victims from the trees, you can call it an asanbosam. If your fairy is attuned to the element of water and has a hypnotic voice, it can be called a nixie. If you have a fairy-vampire hybrid, why not make it a baobhan sith? Heck, Romero-style zombies are technically better described as ghouls or draugr.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're invested in making up your own names I would probably suggest not basing them on the existing words, e.g. &quot;fayree&quot; could potentially leave the viewer wondering why you didn't just say &quot;fairy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18458" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T04:23:53.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21583" CreationDate="2016-04-03T11:27:49.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no hard and fast rules. It all depends on the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even an omniscient narrator is going to focus on one viewpoint character&#xA;at a time. So, consider that person's point of view. How will they&#xA;address a given character? How will they refer to the character when&#xA;speaking about them to someone else? (This also depends on who they're&#xA;speaking to, of course.) How do they think of the character in the&#xA;privacy of their own mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider one character, John Q. Everyman. How will the following people&#xA;think of him, speak to him, speak about him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;His wife&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;His ex-wife&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;His boss&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;His 6-year-old son (who lives with him and his wife)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;His 17-year-old daughter (who lives with his ex-wife)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;His mother&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;His best friend&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A waitress who's serving him and has never seen him before&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Himself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found the best way to study a technique is to read books that use&#xA;that technique. For omnisicient narrator from multiple viewpoints, I&#xA;would recommend Fannie Flagg's &lt;em&gt;Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop&#xA;Cafe&lt;/em&gt;, which tells its story through an enormous variety of viewpoints.&#xA;Some other good examples are Lois McMaster Bujold's &lt;em&gt;Shards of Honor&lt;/em&gt;,&#xA;all Vorkosigan books from &lt;em&gt;Komarr&lt;/em&gt; onward, and all books in the&#xA;Sharing Knife series. Bujold is a first-class writer, well worth reading&#xA;for anyone who wants to improve their writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8535" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T11:27:49.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21588" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21600" CreationDate="2016-04-03T13:54:13.840" Score="1" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a spec script where a TV newscast is supposed to appear on the screen for a couple of minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It starts with the anchor speaking from the desk about a trial that's going on. Then it cuts to some highlights of the courtroom with the anchor doing a voice over. Then it cuts to recorded video of one of the attorneys giving a statement to the press outside of the courthouse. Then it cuts back to the anchor at the desk to give her final words on the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, this newscast is supposed to segue to the next scene where a character is sitting at a diner and the newscast is playing on a TV (the character is not necessarily paying attention to it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would I go about formatting this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5996" LastEditorUserId="8535" LastEditDate="2016-04-03T23:52:52.967" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T13:02:34.193" Title="In TV script writing, how to format complex newscast?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21563" CreationDate="2016-04-03T14:06:32.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took a class with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ellenmeister.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ellen Meister&lt;/a&gt;, who said that it doesn't really matter until your book becomes published, that the publishers will decide how to write the numbers according to their rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastEditorUserId="15134" LastEditDate="2016-04-04T20:27:17.337" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T20:27:17.337" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21590" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-03T14:42:33.277" Score="1" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a scene that initially takes place in the padded room of a mental institution. A guard opens the door, the prisoner knocks him out and steals his gun and starts firing from the room into the hallway. Then eventually the entire scene spills out in the hallway. So to recap:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scene in padded room&#xA;Scene in padded room / hallway (character fires gun in hallway from padded room)&#xA;Scene in hallway (the action spills out into the hallway)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you format this in a TV script?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5996" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T12:51:39.623" Title="How to format complex action scene?" Tags="|scriptwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21561" CreationDate="2016-04-03T14:46:34.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some subjective &lt;strong&gt;examples&lt;/strong&gt; in accordance with the definitions below: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1-dimensional: Katniss Everdeen. Harry Potter. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2-dimensional: I'm at a loss here, although I very much like Lauren's definition. However, I feel that remembering this special type of character is rather hard, since they neither annoy you like the 1-dimensional characters, nor do they stay with you like the 3-dimensional characters. They're just ... there, somehow. I'm pretty sure that you can find them in any major Blockbuster or Bestseller. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3-dimensional: William Stoner, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Davy Jones of Pirates of the Caribbean, Counselor Sam Healy of Orange is the new Black, and pretty much the entire ensemble of American Hustle. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the &lt;strong&gt;definition&lt;/strong&gt;, I can offer a slightly different perspective that is however consistent with the definitions above. For me, 1- and 2-dimensional characters are soulless. I can just dump them into a story and they will serve their purpose, no questions asked. They feel hollow and uncomfortable when using them, like a piece of clothing that doesn't quite fit. 3-dimensional characters on the other hand are stubborn. They have their own mind and will flat out refuse to engage in any action that is in disagreement with their nature. It is still possible to force them into certain situations and actions, but writing these scenes will feel like a lie to you, until you surrender to your character and let him or her have her/his natural way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T14:46:34.780" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21592" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-03T17:34:30.927" Score="9" ViewCount="797" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a strong believer in writing what you know. Everything I write is at least partially based on something that I have experienced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that for plot reasons, I need one of my characters to grow up in a culture and environment I am not familiar with. I need at least a chapter in that area. My goal is to portray the culture and belief of that region as a native.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought about reading books located in that area and maybe speaking with natives. However, it is in a region that is not portrayed in movies and seldom in books. Yet enough of my potential readers are familiar enough with the area to spot made-up things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any methods to facilitate simulating an empirical knowledge of a relatively unknown area? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N.B. this is not a duplicate of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7182/writing-about-a-subject-on-which-you-have-no-expertise&quot;&gt;Writing about a subject on which you have no expertise?&lt;/a&gt;, which is about technical writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a partial answer in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/18950/how-to-do-research-to-write-characters-from-a-different-culture?rq=1&quot;&gt;How to do research to write characters from a different culture?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T15:52:13.670" LastActivityDate="2020-09-25T23:21:54.027" Title="How to write about what you don't know?" Tags="|creative-writing|description|research|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21592" CreationDate="2016-04-03T17:45:49.137" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The bit &quot;Yet enough of my potential readers are familiar enough with the area to spot made-up things. &quot; leads to the conclusion that you should not do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you want to invest the necessary time researching and reading about this community, then, it seems a recipe for disaster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have any experience about something, you will always get interested about different aspect of it, or present it in a different light. That shows up, and not in a positive way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18463" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T17:45:49.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21569" CreationDate="2016-04-03T18:06:53.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dale Hartley Emery answered&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Don't describe anything that the viewpoint character pays no attention to&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this principle Zola's books would be short stories and The Lord of The Ring, a novella. A good portion of the world fiction would be reduced to shreds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer as to the level of detail would be that it depends on your skills. Some authors can write pages after pages of intricate details without boring the reader, other authors make you speed-read and jump any bit of description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it depends if the description is needed or not. Is the environment an important character, are you writing an atmospherical novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just saying &quot;lavish ball&quot;, would be enough only if it is the umpteen unimportant ball the character attends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the setting is important yes, I would like to know details about the napkins,  glasses…mesmerize us, show us the wonder of the child seeing it for the first time, regale us with minutia, show us that it is lavish…do lavish in the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T18:06:53.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21564" CreationDate="2016-04-03T18:16:15.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;i find this type of writing very quickly irritating. If you ask the reader do do an extra effort understanding what you write, you break the narrative flow. Use phonetic writing mininimaly, and only if you have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T18:16:15.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17090" CreationDate="2016-04-03T21:45:27.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some good examples of this kind of story to study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E. L. Konigsburg, &lt;em&gt;Silent to the Bone&lt;/em&gt;. Hops back and forth between the&#xA;present day and the events leading up to the present situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neal Stephenson, &lt;em&gt;Cryptonomicon&lt;/em&gt;. Jumps around between the 1990s and the&#xA;1930s-40s, multiple viewpoints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spider Robinson, &lt;em&gt;Mindkiller&lt;/em&gt;. Two alternating stories told by two&#xA;narrators, a few years apart. Connection not revealed until the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fannie Flagg, &lt;em&gt;Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe&lt;/em&gt;. Jumps all&#xA;over the place in multiple eras, told from many viewpoints. I had to&#xA;read it twice before I could really follow it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8535" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T21:45:27.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21588" CreationDate="2016-04-03T22:35:06.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easiest way might be to treat it as if you are writing that TV footage as a standalone script, with each cut as a separate scene, then add the extra identifiers and camera directions when you embed it into the larger script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the courtroom scene, depending on how you've formatted the rest, I'm guessing something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;COURTROOM INTERIOR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Muted footage of lawyer speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anchor (voiceover): The prosecution asserted...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-cut-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Muted footage of lawyer speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anchor (voiceover): The defence argued...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-cut-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Muted footage of judge speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anchor (voiceover): The judge ruled....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-cut-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;COURTROOM EXTERIOR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18466" LastEditorUserId="18466" LastEditDate="2016-04-04T13:02:34.193" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T13:02:34.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21411" CreationDate="2016-04-03T22:49:41.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about going with this♪?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly with the note raised as superscript. After an initial description it serves as a reminder to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18466" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T22:49:41.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21564" CreationDate="2016-04-04T00:22:40.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just write the children's dialog normally. Intentionally misspelling chunks of text makes reading difficult and slow. (And if reading a story is too hard, I'm putting the book down.) If it's important for a character to have a speech problem, just tell us what it is. We're pretty good at interpreting the words on the page into the character's voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/21411/what-is-the-best-practice-for-writing-a-character-that-speaks-with-a-whistle-lis&quot;&gt;See this question.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T00:22:40.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21569" CreationDate="2016-04-04T00:28:30.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Focus on the viewpoint character's attention and opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agreed. But some stories are told by an omnipotent narrator, so more care must be taken to stop describing things before the reader gets bored and skips ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I'd suggest having people read your work and be brutal about critiquing it. I like adding a note where I lose interest in the narrative and feel like jumping to the next paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T00:28:30.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21605" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-04T13:04:15.507" Score="0" ViewCount="874" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a couple of questions about how to correctly cite sources in order to avoid unintentional plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, let me give you an example of a paragraph I was reading the other day as part of a course I'm taking on Coursera:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nkNDo.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nkNDo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As can be seen in the example paragraph above, the person who wrote it didn't use any in-text citations, which makes me think that they either drew upon their own experience to write the content or just didn't need to acknowledge the sources at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my first question is, if after doing some research, i.e., reading extensively, I write a compare/contrast essay without using in-text citations( as in the example above) but crediting the sources by including a Works Cited page at the end of the document, am I unintentionally committing plagiarism? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask this question because the author of the compare/contrast paragraph above didn't cite the sources, and so I assume that maybe there's no need to use in-text citations when you draw comparisons between two things, because the comparisons that you draw are a product of your own thinking and reasoning, and therefore there's no need to include in-line citations--even if you took the information from outside sources. The only thing you need to do, I assume, is to add a Works Cited list at the end of the document for reference purposes, and that would be enough to avoid plagiarism. Now, please tell me if my assumption is correct. Is this the reason why the author of the example paragraph I've given at the beginning of the post didn't include any in-text citations in it? Or were they simply using their own experience to make the comparisons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, let's say I want to write an essay on three specific scientific theories. Hence, I go and read in detail about each theory until I have understood them thoroughly, and then I finally write a 5-page &quot;essay&quot; explaining and describing the theories, all in my own words and without including any in-text citations, only a Works Cited page at the end of the paper. Now, would this 5-page paper that I've produced be considered an academic essay? I personally think it wouldn't, because I didn't use my own ideas to write it. All I did was to sort of unintentionally summarize and paraphrase the content from the sources I read, didn´t I? Would it be considered an academic essay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if this hypothetical paper I’m talking about couldn't be taken as an academic essay, could it be deemed a long summary from multiple sources? Or would it just be a random, non-academic, plagiarized piece of writing that I just wrote without using my own ideas? In other words, a piece of writing produced following neither the academic essay nor the academic summary formats.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if my questions are too obvious, but I just need to clarify these points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18475" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T14:10:46.923" Title="MLA: Avoiding Unintentional Plagiarism in Essay Writing" Tags="|citations|essay|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21606" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-04T13:19:20.833" Score="3" ViewCount="101" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing long academic summaries, like 2 or more pages long, how should we acknowledge the sources in MLA format?&#xA;Should it be as in the example below?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Original&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Buffy, a small, delicate-looking blonde of superhuman strength, relies on Giles not only for adult support and coaching, but also for the research necessary to do that for which the Vampire Slayer has been chosen. In the third season, Giles was officially relieved from his Watcher duties, but he ignores that and continues as Buffy's trainer, confidant, and father-figure.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary in Paper (MLA)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To help her fulfill her Slayer duties, Buffy can always turn to Giles &lt;strong&gt;(DeCandido 44)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example above illustrates how to cite short summaries, but I’m not sure if this same format should be used to cite longer summaries of more than two pages in length. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I'm not asking about summaries you can insert into longer papers, such as essays, reviews, etc., as supporting details. I'm asking about summaries in itself as one single assignment, e.g. book summaries, movie summaries, etc. Those kinds of summaries that your teacher would ask you to write for homework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how do you cite a short or long summary from multiple sources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18475" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T20:55:59.057" Title="MLA: How to cite academic summaries" Tags="|citations|mla|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21605" CreationDate="2016-04-04T14:10:46.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To avoid unintentional plagiarism, the safe thing to do is always to give a citation. The form of the citation depends on the style sheet being used, whether it's a footnote or an endnote or the citation is included inline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting a &quot;Works Cited&quot; at the end without having any citations in the text would be inaccurate. If there are no citations, then how can you have any &quot;works cited&quot;? You could have a &quot;Bibliography&quot; or &quot;List of Works Referenced&quot;, but I think most academic institutions would see this as evasive. Okay, you're acknowledging that you consulted these sources, but you're not giving any clue what information came from these sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your problem is that you are comparing two sources, and so sentence 1 may come from source A, sentences 2 and 3 from B, 4 and 5 from A, 6 from B, etc, I think an accepted alternative to having a hundred footnotes is to just put two at the end. That is, give all the information coming from the two sources, and then at the end have, e.g. footnotes &quot;1,2&quot;, and then list the two sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are mixing information from these sources with your own comparisons, observations and conclusions, it gets more complicated. At that point you probably should have a mess of footnotes. Note you don't have to repeat all the information every time, you can use &quot;ibid&quot; and &quot;op cit&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T14:10:46.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21609" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-04T15:47:26.040" Score="0" ViewCount="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a trending topic paper for my Sociology class using APA format. I have 10 topics that I must talk about. How do I do this with the headings? I need the reader to know the different topics I am talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18479" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T02:30:44.257" Title="Question regarding topics and headings for APA papers" Tags="|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21610" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21613" CreationDate="2016-04-04T19:10:17.550" Score="2" ViewCount="1079" Body="&lt;p&gt;My novel contains emails, titles of news articles, parts of technical journals, and snippets of computer output in addition to regular dialogue and action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it common/acceptable to use one font for computer output and emails, another for news articles, and something else for regular dialogue and action? I consistently use the same font for each throughout the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18199" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-25T14:42:19.117" LastActivityDate="2019-05-25T14:42:19.117" Title="Should I use different fonts in my manuscript?" Tags="|style|formatting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21610" CreationDate="2016-04-04T19:35:47.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say yes if you're careful about it and don't overdo it. Different formatting can be useful in quickly alerting the reader that the text is from an article or an email, particularly if it begins a chapter. I wouldn't make it a third of the book, but used judiciously, sure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T19:35:47.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21610" CreationDate="2016-04-04T19:39:02.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what I've seen most commonly used is the same font throughout, but that anything which the characters read, such as from a computer, in print, or on signs, and I think even excerpts from audiovisual media, is italicised and has wider left and right margins&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less commonly a different font, such as one mimicking handwriting or the actual font of the text, might be used. It can help to build character. I recall some novels making use of a dot-matrix style script when those printers were in common use, or a mish-mash of different fonts to mimic the cut from newspapers ransom note.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either option can potentially work well. The first keeps the onus purely on the reader's imagination, the second provides more of an illustration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18466" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T19:39:02.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21610" CreationDate="2016-04-04T20:41:18.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're planning on submitting to a traditional publishing house (i.e. print media), then you're probably going to want to avoid using different fonts. Many publishing houses have requirements on submitted manuscripts that involve using a particular font (fixed width seems to be popular).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you're planning to self-publish, then I'd say use different fonts. I'd limit yourself to no more than 3 different fonts as a rough guideline, just to avoid confusing the reader. But keep in mind that font choice is a design/layout choice in the publishing process, so if you're using a professional editor or layout person (which hopefully you are), then you'll need to work with them. They may have their own ideas of which fonts and how many are acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T20:41:18.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16871" CreationDate="2016-04-04T21:03:06.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In urban fantasy style fiction with multiple supernatural characters, is it understandable to the reader if race names of each group are a combination of stereotypical species names (such as 'vampire' or 'fairy') with made-up names or regular names that have been altered somehow? A quick example for the sake of my question could be spelling fairy as 'fayree' or using latin/ancient language terms in the name such as 'necro' being part of the created name for zombies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a balance here, but I'd say err on the side of caution. Using latin or ancient terms in the name might be appropriate, but it depends on your audience and how common the term is. Your example of &lt;em&gt;necro&lt;/em&gt; is great, but something like &lt;em&gt;vulpine&lt;/em&gt; might not fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want my story to contain some of the usual creatures of fantasy but I also want to avoid cliches with the trope-y boring names and connotations associated with such. I am worried that creating my own titles alongside normal ones could create too much confusion for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hold on a minute. Tropes need not be boring. Tropes are the touchstone for your reader; they're a great shorthand. The trick is to use the trope, like the name, but then put your twist on it. It sounds like this is exactly what you're trying to do, so don't throw the baby out with the bathwater by not using a name everyone recognizes. It'll make the twist much more satisfying (&quot;Wait, the vampires in this setting &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; afraid of crucifixes!?&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any advice on how to structure narrative to explain any created names/traits etc without info-dumping yet making it easily understandable to the reader that if for instance they read the word 'fayree' without too much background info that they would immediately associate it with the common ideal of fairy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show, don't tell. Seriously. You dole out the information. One way to do it is to give the name away immediately with a story element that keeps with the trope. Next scene (or chapter or whatever) introduces the unfamiliar element. Go back and forth introducing familiar and unfamiliar elements to keep the reader engaged and on their toes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T21:03:06.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21615" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-04T23:10:24.973" Score="2" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my screenplay, the lyrics of &quot;Shenandoah&quot;, a traditional American folk song, are heard once. May I publish a few lines with the words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18483" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2018-07-23T09:05:47.953" LastActivityDate="2018-07-23T09:05:47.953" Title="Including (public domain?) lyrics of a song in my screenplay?" Tags="|copyright|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21615" CreationDate="2016-04-05T00:53:49.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say you're pretty safe with that one. Some sort of acknowledgements page is usually good form, or whatever the equivalent is in scriptwriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18466" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T00:53:49.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21609" CreationDate="2016-04-05T01:10:41.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given what you describe, I'd assume they are all top level headings, so each one would be bold and centred according to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/04/how-to-use-five-levels-of-heading-in-an-apa-style-paper.html?_ga=1.4127600.1910058635.1459817868&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/04/how-to-use-five-levels-of-heading-in-an-apa-style-paper.html?_ga=1.4127600.1910058635.1459817868&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The introduction doesn't need a heading, it comes straight under the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18466" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T01:10:41.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21615" CreationDate="2016-04-05T01:19:41.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you mean &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh_Shenandoah&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Shenandoah&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, that one seems safe enough from a legal&#xA;standpoint, being quite old and a folk song with no clear author; but be&#xA;careful with more recent works. A work can be in the public domain&#xA;federally but still be under copyright in some states or encumbered in&#xA;other ways. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sita_Sings_the_Blues#Copyright_problems&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nina Paley was famously bitten by this&lt;/a&gt; when she made &lt;em&gt;Sita&#xA;Sings the Blues&lt;/em&gt;. And, of course, international copyrights might apply&#xA;to anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8535" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T01:19:41.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21469" CreationDate="2016-04-05T20:47:28.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iubmb/proteinName.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; proteins are usually named ending in '-in', so maybe something like &quot;magnetin&quot; might work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16251" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T20:47:28.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8650" CreationDate="2016-04-05T21:17:08.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;KISS is always best. Think simple short names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any culture there are names which are kind off international sounding and others which require proper pronunciation, use of silent letters, un-western letters, consonant clusters, over 3 syllables… &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance I would easily relate to Saad, Saami, Sabik, Sachin, Saje, Samouet, Sanjay, or Sahir… from &lt;a href=&quot;http://nameberry.com/search/boys_names/S&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nameberry.com/search/boys_names/S&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But not much to made up names like shad'rakhadhoui, Sim'bariwi'jini, Swahm-Kajinwea, Sabint’alhahalaouia, Skrreepharkchirthas, or Smneingamniangtay...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though I have to admit to a certain loving penchant for Cherryh’s Alliance-Universe alien names like the mysterious &lt;strong&gt;Knnn&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;strong&gt;Chi&lt;/strong&gt; from &lt;strong&gt;Chchchoh&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;strong&gt;Tc’a&lt;/strong&gt; from  &lt;strong&gt;Oh’a’o’o’o&lt;/strong&gt;,  &lt;strong&gt;Ismehanan-min&lt;/strong&gt; the &lt;strong&gt;Mahendo'sat&lt;/strong&gt;, or the &lt;strong&gt;Kif&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;“akkikt” Akkukkak&lt;/strong&gt;. It takes quite some skill to pull these off, another good author, McCaffrey wasn’t able to do so in her early Pern novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T21:25:23.527" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T21:25:23.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5989" CreationDate="2016-04-05T23:46:03.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is what I hope is a sufficient short answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science Fiction and Fantasy both change or add some aspect to our world. The general difference is that, in Science Fiction, the new aspect (like interstellar space travel or aliens) could exist, following the laws of the world we live in. It also usually has a technological theme/tone. Fantasy usually invents something that requires new laws and/or does not fit in or follow the laws of our universe (like magic). Fantasy usually has a more magical/mystical tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is also a little choice involved. Something that breaks the laws of the universe but it achieved through the press of a button or through a machine might be considered science fiction. Likewise, something that does not violate the laws of our universe but is accomplished with the swish of a wand might be considered fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, the line between science fiction and fantasy is not a line at all. It's more like a gradient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say if it's tech, like warping between space, you're probably in science fiction. If you're magic, like Harry Potter, you're probably on the Fantasy side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18378" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T23:46:03.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21564" CreationDate="2016-04-06T05:03:52.257" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone with a speech impediment myself (far more pronounced as a child) I cringe reading this type of dialog. If it's important to the story, perhaps you could describe the type of impediment (like mixing up w/l sounds in this case) or have another character comment on it (for example if the child is being mocked, the other character might use &quot;wiv&quot; in dialog to emphasize the error). There are also other types of ways in which children speak differently than adults that are less uncomfortable and still 'cute' if that is what you are going for, like mixing up similar sounding words, common (realistic) incorrect grammar mistakes, if it is a very small child using made up words/nicknames for people, and so forth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18500" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T05:03:52.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21623" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21636" CreationDate="2016-04-06T06:14:02.630" Score="7" ViewCount="2282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like feedback on if this portrayal of male emotion is unrealistic. I have been told (beta readers) that men don't cry in real life (already know this is not true). The character is meant to be emotional, yet realistic (and male). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18500" LastEditorUserId="18500" LastEditDate="2020-05-20T07:05:44.480" LastActivityDate="2020-05-20T07:05:44.480" Title="Is a male character crying realistic or excessive?" Tags="|characters|novel|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21555" CreationDate="2016-04-06T06:35:11.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps to see more deeply into the villain's character, you could write about what he is doing when he is not just sitting beside his desk delegating...his decisions there impact Anna, but what leads to those decisions? Does he make one decision because of something that irritated him at breakfast? Is catching Anna on his mind at other times, like when he's at home with his wife? Does his failure to catch her remind him other other failures in the past? Can you imagine what it would be like to be him, a day in his life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18500" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T06:35:11.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21623" CreationDate="2016-04-06T07:09:03.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If he is a sensitive man, then writing about him crying will convey that to the reader. And yeah, even a less sensitive man might cry when he discovers that his former wife was carrying on an affair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could ask other male test readers besides that one. If you ask several, you're more likely to get a well rounded opinion than just asking one person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18199" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T07:09:03.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21623" CreationDate="2016-04-06T13:11:36.507" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A man crying is not unrealistic. From what you've stated here, there are two emotional stressors acting on him: the rejection from the woman he's in love with and the discovery that his dead wife cheated on him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find more beta readers. Seriously. This level of emotion is reasonable, given the character's temperament and what's happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that being said, have you developed these things in the character? Do we see him being emotional in other places? It sounds like you've had several scenes with him on the edge of tears, so you've set the stage nicely for this scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something to consider is what emotion you're attempting to evoke in the reader. Pity? Empathy? Another thing is where the character goes from here. This scene sounds like a breaking point, where he must either change and move on or find a way to cope while retaining his emotionalism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Know that not everyone will agree with your scene here. That's why it's important to have more than just two beta readers lay eyes on it. And people who don't have an emotional tie to you (although it sounds like your current two beta readers are willing not to pull punches).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T13:11:36.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21628" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21633" CreationDate="2016-04-06T14:38:54.167" Score="0" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a math book, should I write &quot;diagram 3&quot; or explicitly &quot;diagram at the figure 3&quot;, when referring to a diagram in a displayed figure? (The title of the figure (as autogenerated by LaTeX) is &quot;Figure 3.&quot; not &quot;Diagram 3&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2025" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T03:53:35.807" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T03:53:35.807" Title="Referring to a diagram" Tags="|technical-writing|grammar|graphics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21635" CreationDate="2016-04-06T16:37:00.597" Score="3" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a publishing question. The idea is: someone with a smartphone gets the card, scans the QR code printed on it, and downloads the PDF of your book off the web. I would have thought that a PDF would be pretty hard to read on your average smartphone screen, but I'm told they are used very commonly for that purpose. A link to an ebook version would make more sense, or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14619" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T21:26:46.147" Title="Is a QR card linked to the PDF of a book a good idea?" Tags="|publishing|ebook|electronic-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21572" CreationDate="2016-04-06T16:52:08.940" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inclusion of contact info is a show of preferred contact method. Reply directly to the editor and send it back as soon as it's done. Responding quickly will show that you are engaged and interested, and that you care about your work and their opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, having said that, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; possible to send it back too early, but taking a day or two will look like you're responsive. Sending it back within a few hours will seem like you rushed through the revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T16:52:08.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21632" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-06T16:56:50.640" Score="1" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have a 6 page document. (MS Word)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want the first 3 pages to be numbered i, ii, iii&lt;br&gt;&#xA;and the remaining 3 pages to be numbered 1, 2, 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I achieve this?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried the automatic numbering option from office, but I can only have 1 numbering style. And I don't want to do it manually, because my document has so many pages that it will be very time consuming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18507" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-23T21:30:25.963" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T21:30:25.963" Title="How to get 2 different page numberings in the same document in MS Word?" Tags="|formatting|software|tools|pages|numerals|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21628" CreationDate="2016-04-06T17:34:42.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should refer to it as &lt;em&gt;Figure 3&lt;/em&gt;. For the purposes of the text, the diagram is the part that counts. The caption and anything else are information that augments the diagram.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T17:34:42.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21623" CreationDate="2016-04-06T17:53:47.027" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe there are actual physiological reasons (related to hormones?) that adult men are less likely to cry. I'm far from a &quot;tough guy&quot; but I've personally found it more difficult and rare to experience tears as I grow older. We also can't discount social and cultural pressures against male tears that are stricter in some cultures and sub-cultures than others. For those reasons, I think you should take your beta readers' opinion seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean you shouldn't include the tears, but you might do some things to make them feel more realistic.  One thing I've found true is that I often have delayed emotional reactions --it's as if it takes a while (sometimes a very long while!) for the emotion to find it's way out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is a first person narrative, you might also want to dramatize your character fighting tears based on an awareness of how others might perceive them. Thoughts like these are often hard to avoid, even when you are actually alone.  Although things are rapidly changing, many men (especially in more traditional cultures) are acutely afraid of appearing feminine in any way.  This would be a realistic concern for your character to wrestle with in your book.  Even if he doesn't agree with the stereotypes, it may be hard for him to be completely free of them.  In other words, he would be very aware of how people like your beta readers would react if they caught him crying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T17:53:47.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21629" CreationDate="2016-04-06T21:26:46.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;PDFs use a fixed layout that doesn't scale with the device or window size, so they're not as friendly for smaller screens.  Some people &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; read PDFs on some phones, though -- some screens are pretty big and some people have good eyes and can read the small page.  Also, some of your readers might be using tablets rather than phones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I wouldn't make the QR code link to a PDF &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; an ebook.  I'd make it link to a &lt;em&gt;landing page&lt;/em&gt; -- a web page where you can include links to whatever download formats you like and say a little about your book.  (These cards sound like marketing materials, so bridge that gap between &quot;somebody handed me this QR code&quot; and &quot;I want to read this book&quot;.)  If your needs change (e.g. new formats) you can just update that page.  Someday it might even contain links to the sequel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one example of landing pages, look at the per-book pages in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baen.com/catalog/category/view/s/free-library/id/2012&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Baen Free Library&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T21:26:46.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21623" CreationDate="2016-04-07T00:20:28.590" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, haven't we already had more than enough macho, tough-guy characters who are too strong and silent to express their emotions? In my opinion, that kind of character has become a cliche. Men in fiction are emotionally stunted and are only allowed to show aggression and pride. They can get mad, they can break things, they can hit people, but they can't just have a good cry. Not to be overly dismissive of your beta, but I have to wonder why they think it's unrealistic to show a more nuanced character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your character as he is now would be a good person to write about. Your story soundd like it's about a person rather than a trope. It's good that you aren't reinforcing harmful notions about masculinity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18458" LastActivityDate="2016-04-07T00:20:28.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21637" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-07T02:51:04.263" Score="3" ViewCount="617" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I set it so that there is a certain amount of space between the text on each page and the header?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18509" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-04-07T05:34:23.970" LastActivityDate="2023-03-03T23:52:20.930" Title="Scrivener: Can I set spacing below the header?" Tags="|style|screenwriting|scrivener|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21623" CreationDate="2016-04-07T09:44:36.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was going to add this as a comment, as it involves responding to another comment you have made on the answer of @Snarkeet, but it ended up being quite long, so I'll try to flesh it out into a proper answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not be surprised that your female beta reader understands &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; how a male character would act when they're alone. You can't expect a female to be more empathetic to a man crying because she is a female, that's again reinforcing stereotypes, which may come out in your writing to make your character unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, you may feel that your male beta reader would be less prone to crying himself, but that doesn't mean he doesn't understand why someone else might. If you write a relatable character that has thoughts and feelings and performs actions that others might, then unless the reader is a robot or a psychopath then they will be able to empathize with them at least a little. Whilst they may not cry in that situation themselves, they will not be surprised that the character did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may not have written the stereotypical macho man trope character, but you have written the stereotypical sensitive guy trope character. Whilst less common, it is still a complete exaggeration of what a man actually is, which is probably the reason he is unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've read briefly about this character, I don't think he would cry in this situation either. I think he would be petty and jealous, and get angry and blame the woman he coveted for breaking his heart, ending up getting angry because of his frustration. And he would be determined to eventually win her heart, because he has already invested so many feelings into this relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/20092/any-techniques-to-make-the-reader-feel-sad-and-very-sorrowful/20105#20105&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; about invoking sadness in the reader, but the &lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt; is that sadness is made from other emotions, nobody goes directly to sadness. You need to create a situation in which there is a happy ending possible, but because of mistakes made or external factors, that happy ending does not materialize. Sadness does not come from a situation that is doomed from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your character has confessed his love for this woman and proposed marriage at the same time, at no point can I see any other scenario than her rejecting him. Kindness and friendship does not equal love. She may love him in her own way, but why would she have romantic feelings for him if he has never told her how he feels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about some things that make you sad, &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; sad, and in that moment try to analyze why you feel that way. If you cannot access your own emotions and understand the reasons that feel them, you cannot understand how to access them in others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the above is quite general, I'll try to be a little more specific here. You can make this situation work with some slight changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always have your character act angrily because of his rejection, and then through his anger he drives her away, as she is seeing a new person materialize who she doesn't recognize. Then when he later realizes that he has made a mistake by acting angrily he realizes that he has now lost his best friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or give him a win condition. Maybe make it so that she has told him she loves him first, and because of things that happened in his previous marriage, his lack of confidence and/or his shyness, he does not respond despite the fact he feels the same way. Then when he later moves past the things that were stopping him being with this woman that he loves, when he goes to tell her then she has already moved on, or moved away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-04-07T09:44:36.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21623" CreationDate="2016-04-07T15:54:02.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, it depends on how feminine you want your character to be. The average man will not &quot;blink back tears&quot; often and usually tend towards anger or another irrational emotion instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Washing tears away is okay, if he gets angry afterward. A more masculine character would lead towards anger of discovering an affair then sadness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, crying as a male is a lot more meaningful. It usually means deep pain or loss. Discovering an affair or something of the like would usually result in anger or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, it comes down to how feminine you want your male character to be. I would, personally, make him a little more masculine. Women might not relate to him because of his seeming &quot;lack of bravery&quot; by crying, and men might not relate to him because of how &quot;soft' he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18378" LastActivityDate="2016-04-07T15:54:02.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21561" CreationDate="2016-04-07T17:45:18.713" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would firstly like to say that the answer by @Jay is excellent, and provides some good pointers on which characters should be one-dimensional or three-dimensional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like others here, I have never heard of two- or three-dimensional characters. I have heard of one-dimensional and multi-dimensional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One-dimensional&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This reflects a character that lacks depth, as if he was made of only one dimension. As Jay has pointed out, a one-dimensional character can often be summed up in one line or phrase. There's nothing wrong with one-dimensional characters, as long as they don't have a large part to play in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Multi-dimensional&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multi-dimensional characters have several layers, facets, or dimensions to them. They are more complex and harder to figure out than one-dimensional characters. Once again, as Jay pointed out, multi-dimensional characters can take several lines to sum up, because they have several different characteristics. I believe it goes deeper than that though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every &lt;strong&gt;protagonist&lt;/strong&gt; in a book (who should always be multi-dimensional) needs two basic parts: strength and inner conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Strength&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of people like to focus on making sure their characters are flawed. This is fine, but what they seem to forget is that we have to like the characters too. Who wants to read about someone we don't care about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main characters need a strength, some quality about them that the reader can root for. Honesty, integrity, humility, humor, thrift, etc. The list goes on and on. The strongest of strengths are self-sacrifice and forgiveness (notice: they are both selfless qualities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Inner-Conflict&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your hero needs strength, but with nothing else, he will still bore the reader. As @Filip has pointed out with Harry Potter, this is because they need something more: Inner Conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inner Conflict can manifest in two ways: either two opposing desires in direct opposition to each other, or sides of the protagonist (dimensions) that are incompatible, and therefore conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During a war, a woman seeks vengeance against the enemy for the murder of her parents. At the same time, her sister is sickened by the war. Out of love for her sister, the woman seeks to end the war entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The woman both wants to be a part of the war, and end the war, simultaneously. Her Inner Conflict pulls her in two opposite directions, both unrelenting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to your question. Making a character multi-dimensional is not an easy process. One-dimensional characters often have a single purpose, determined by the plot, and a physical appearance. Multi-dimensional characters have a physical appearance, ways that they act, ways that they &lt;em&gt;interact&lt;/em&gt; with others, and why they do what they do. If your character is a main character (but not the antagonist) they will also have inner-conflict; if he is a protagonist, he will also have strength &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; inner-conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To form characters, you need to start with your protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Determine what makes your protagonist who he is. What defines him? What strengths are central to his very being? What inner conflicts keep him awake at night? Defining these two things alone will highly develop your protagonist. Then get in his head, figure out how he thinks, and from there, how he acts and interacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have your protagonist down, all other characters are secondary. No matter how large of a part they play, they have a reason to exist, a reason that is linked to the protagonist. Maybe one helps him realize something he otherwise wouldn't. One is holding him back. One is pushing him forwards. One spreads doubt. One fans the inner conflict. One simply acts as a target for the protagonist's strength. One may see things the protagonist can't. (This is a different PoV character, and often acts as a secondary protagonist. This character needs strength as well.) The reason that you need side characters will determine who they are. You can then assign them inner conflicts (not necessarily strengths, unless they are very large characters in the story), and get inside their heads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The further away you get from the protagonist, the less you will have to develop characters. Eventually you won't need inner-conflict anymore, and soon you won't even need to get inside a character's head and figure out who they are. You've arrived at one-dimensional characters, those people that pop into the story, perform their purpose, and then are never seen again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-04-07T17:45:18.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21522" CreationDate="2016-04-07T20:22:05.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's up to you. Whether you decide to advance the plot in each chapter or not is entirely your call. Your readers may disagree with your decision, but frankly that's their problem. Ultimately, what you write is yours. If your goal is to sell copies, then by all means appeal to the common denominator. If your goal is to convey meaning, not everybody is going to &quot;get&quot; it anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I actually find that almost always, my favorite parts are the parts where nothing &lt;em&gt;happens&lt;/em&gt; in the common interpretation of plot advancement, but instead we see exposition. For example, in Michael Crichton's &lt;em&gt;The Great Train Robbery&lt;/em&gt;, there's a part where, in the course of the titular heist, the main character decides to run atop the train, and jump between cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crichton breaks what many readers would implicitly consider a pretty important rule: he tells the reader something exciting is happening, but then takes a pretty lengthy unexciting detour before resolving the tension. He goes into detail about why this character decided that running on top of the train was not a terrible idea. Crichton explains concepts of fluid dynamics, which actually shed light on real-world phenomena that lots of readers have probably wondered about (and in fact, I ended up asking my high school physics teacher about it and learned about all kinds of stuff as a result). Then he explains that the character's application of these concepts is fundamentally flawed and it actually really was a terrible idea after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's by far my favorite part of the book. It could have been an entire chapter and I would have loved every word of it, even with Mike &quot;leaving me hanging&quot; on the action. Maybe some other readers didn't care and were put off by it but, like I said above, that's their problem. If Crichton had left it out for their sake, &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; wouldn't have enjoyed the book nearly as much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you feel like there's a way you can add meaning, don't be afraid to spend time (pages? chapters?) not advancing the plot to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18519" LastActivityDate="2016-04-07T20:22:05.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21278" CreationDate="2016-04-07T23:24:23.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the death is meaningful, keep it. It should have a reason for being there. If it impacts the hero's personality or starts a subplot, or if this is a murder mystery or something of the like, I would recommend you keep it. Also, the reason she died should become apparent very soon. Not to actual cause of her death, but why her death was important, and moreover, why it was important to be in her point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that, of course, is an opinion. This is your piece or writing, so at the end, it's your opinion that matters the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18378" LastActivityDate="2016-04-07T23:24:23.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21294" CreationDate="2016-04-07T23:28:13.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should say something about the chapter, but not the plot. An example of this is that some books I have read have the chapter name be the POV of the character, since they switch a lot. Never have a chapter that will make a reader go back and wonder why it was named what is was. A chapter title should not be to deep. At the very most, it should introduce just a hint of wonder about what is to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18378" LastActivityDate="2016-04-07T23:28:13.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21647" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21652" CreationDate="2016-04-08T01:09:27.193" Score="0" ViewCount="623" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to rewrite my sentence in technical writing style. Could you help me rewrite my sentence? Thank you in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The proposed methods has 4 variables need to update in a optimization process, comparison with 2 variables in the method A, 3 variables in method B. Thus, it requires more time consuming, but it provides more accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sentence means the proposed method has 4 variables which need to updates in a optimization process. More variables tends to more accuracy, but it is less effective in computational time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18438" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-04-08T18:46:51.853" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T18:46:51.853" Title="How can I rewrite the sentence for technical writing style" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-04-08T18:46:46.040" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21564" CreationDate="2016-04-08T05:02:44.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find this style of dialogue (and even when it's done in other media) extremely annoying and (as a father of three) completely unrealistic and unrepresentative of how children speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly, some children have trouble with speech and pronunciation, however it's not as cartoonish as often implied. A stammer or stutter is not, however, uncommon, nor is physical emphasis for their words. But again, don't over do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of writing an accent, you'd be better served, as others have suggested, in keeping the dialogue simple. Children don't use large words or complex sentences. And a lot of them don't even make sense half the time. And they repeat themselves. A lot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T05:02:44.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21649" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-08T06:44:27.467" Score="5" ViewCount="1648" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently developing a series of fantasy novels, and have discovered that I will likely be adding a second point of view in the second or third book (five books total in the series). Up until that point, I have only had one PoV character, the protagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This new PoV character has been around since book one and has been important. She just hasn't been the PoV. I'm wondering if adding a new PoV after at least book one will be jarring to the reader, since he expects the series to follow the style of book one (I would imagine). Is this the case? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that Christopher Paolini added a PoV character half-way through his series; but I also know that many here consider Paolini slightly less than a literary genius. :) So I will not use that example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Can I add a new PoV in book two or three after book one only had one PoV? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2018-03-22T22:13:08.773" Title="Adding a PoV after the first novel in a series" Tags="|fiction|characters|series|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21294" CreationDate="2016-04-08T12:05:29.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many literary greats have deep chapter titles. They can be as subtly deep as you want but their main purpose is to intrigue and give hints of what may come next. My advice would be to keep them obscure enough so that the chapter content is not too obvious before you read it. Think along the lines of TV series and the individual titles they give to episodes. Chapters contain themes, titles string the theme along. Don't be afraid to create your own style, I'm a big believer in not sticking to stuffy conventions that would be taught in an English class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18528" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T12:05:29.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21647" CreationDate="2016-04-08T14:15:58.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd probably write it something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The proposed method uses 4 variables, 2 more than method A and one more than method B. This gives a more accurate result, but it requires more computational time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastEditorUserId="18289" LastEditDate="2016-04-08T16:40:03.107" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T16:40:03.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21654" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-08T06:13:03.157" Score="3" ViewCount="568" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fantasy is often fitted to medieval age. Space opera is often fitted to far future and all those futuristic is only background that says it is science-fiction. Also, in space opera can be present various things that cannot be (or rather should not be) present in classical science-fiction that thinks about relation of human and machine or so - for example Force from Star Wars. Such Force (or anything similar with different name) could be present also in fantasy and effect would be probably the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, regardless of weapons, where is border between fantasy and space opera?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18534" OwnerDisplayName="Václav" LastEditorUserId="18466" LastEditDate="2016-04-15T07:07:54.857" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T07:07:54.857" Title="Border between fantasy and space opera" Tags="|fantasy|science-fiction|genre|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21655" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-08T18:06:04.917" Score="3" ViewCount="5024" Body="&lt;p&gt;So for the novel I'm writing,  the main character is a college student living in Michigan.  Is it okay for me to have her go to a college that really is in Michigan?  I wouldn't be displaying it in a bad light,  or anything like that,  I'd just be using information from their website (such as the campus layouts,  what academic programs they have,  etc.).  Is that okay,  or do I need to make something up instead?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18533" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T21:56:56.933" Title="Can I use a real college in my fiction book?" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-04-11T05:47:37.380" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21564" CreationDate="2016-04-08T20:22:43.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writers seem to believe that readers need every last bit of detail in order to realize the author’s vision. But the truth is, readers aren’t actors who need direction in how to act out a scene exactly. In fact, some of the best performances in acting are the result of the actor winging it or otherwise improvising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give your readers a chance to improvise. Tell them a child is speaking, use uncomplicated language, and they’ll read your dialogue in a child-like voice automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2686" LastEditorDisplayName="user2686" LastEditDate="2016-04-09T01:49:15.600" LastActivityDate="2016-04-09T01:49:15.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21655" CreationDate="2016-04-08T21:56:56.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt you'd have any trouble. Here's an explanation from an attorney. The bulk of it equally applies to organisations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2010/12/could-i-be-liable-for-libel-in-fiction.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2010/12/could-i-be-liable-for-libel-in-fiction.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When in doubt you can do what the beat poets did and change names and places, or even make a collage of different ones, but they were generally fictionalising real events. &quot;And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks&quot; being the most notable example of why they often did that - more to escape criminal proceedings than civil ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the point of view of writing it, it helps to have some RL experience of the place, but then Bram Stoker famously never visited eastern Europe and he didn't even have the benefit of the internet. Social media could help you get a sense of it as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18466" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T21:56:56.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31605" CreationDate="2016-04-08T22:00:24.330" Score="8" ViewCount="31629" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to submit my manuscript in ecology, containing Figures. However, in Author guidelines, I found that I have to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Indicate per figure if it is a single, 1.5 or 2-column fitting image.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are those measures? In another journals I found (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pitt.edu/~mcs2/teaching/biocomp/tutorials/journal_req.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.pitt.edu/~mcs2/teaching/biocomp/tutorials/journal_req.html&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;single column width (21 picas, 8.9 cm, 3.5 inches),  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a 1.5-column width (30 picas, 12.7 cm, 5 inches)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a full two-column width (43 picas, 18.2 cm, 7.2 inches)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are those measures the same for every journal? &lt;strong&gt;Does it also mean, that in my paper I can use only 3 types of figures' widths, nothing between e.g. width of 6 inches?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18535" LastActivityDate="2017-11-22T05:20:03.323" Title="What is the image size in scientific paper if indicated as &quot;a single, 1.5 or 2-column fitting image&quot;?" Tags="|academic-writing|scientific-publishing|science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21658" CreationDate="2016-04-08T22:22:41.043" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, I finally found it. It seems to vary by journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are ones related to &lt;strong&gt;publication of artwork (figures and plots)&lt;/strong&gt; for Elsevier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.elsevier.com/authors/author-schemas/artwork-and-media-instructions/artwork-sizing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.elsevier.com/authors/author-schemas/artwork-and-media-instructions/artwork-sizing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&#xA;*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bbB4I.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bbB4I.png&quot; alt=&quot;image width for Elsevier&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18535" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T22:22:41.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21637" CreationDate="2016-04-08T22:36:36.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You just need to increase the height of your header. Alternately you could drag down your top margin on the main part of the page. I haven't used Scrivener so I couldn't tell you exactly how to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18466" LastEditorUserId="18466" LastEditDate="2016-04-08T22:44:38.637" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T22:44:38.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3669" CreationDate="2016-04-09T01:35:10.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;APA Style&lt;/strong&gt; uses a unique headings system to separate and classify paper sections. There are 5 heading levels in APA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 6th edition of the APA manual revises and simplifies previous heading guidelines - &lt;em&gt;regardless of the number of levels, always use the headings in order, beginning with level 1&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The format of each level is illustrated below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;APA Headings&lt;/strong&gt; (level, format)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1&lt;/strong&gt; : Centered, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase Headings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2&lt;/strong&gt; : Left-aligned, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase Heading&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3&lt;/strong&gt; : Indented, boldface, lowercase heading with a period. Begin body text after the period. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4&lt;/strong&gt; : Indented, boldface, italicized, lowercase heading with a period. Begin body text after the period. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5&lt;/strong&gt; : Indented, italicized, lowercase heading with a period. Begin body text after the period. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, if the article has four sections, some of which have subsections and some of which don’t, use headings depending on the level of subordination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section headings receive level one format. Subsections receive level two format. Subsections of subsections receive level three format. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;                    Method (Level 1)&#xA;&#xA;Site of Study (Level 2)&#xA;&#xA;Participant Population (Level 2)&#xA;&#xA;          Teachers. (Level 3)&#xA;&#xA;          Students. (Level 3)&#xA;&#xA;                    Results (Level 1)&#xA;&#xA;Spatial Ability (Level 2)&#xA;&#xA;          Test one. (Level 3)&#xA;&#xA;          Teachers with experience. (Level 4)&#xA;&#xA;          Teachers in training. (Level 4)&#xA;&#xA;          Test two. (Level 3)&#xA;&#xA;Kinesthetic Ability (Level 2)&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;APA Style&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;em&gt;Introduction&lt;/em&gt; section never gets a heading and headings are not indicated by letters or numbers. Levels of headings will depend upon the length and organization of your paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, always begin with level one headings and proceed to level two, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18536" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-04-09T17:04:38.320" LastActivityDate="2016-04-09T17:04:38.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-09T09:56:04.323" Score="0" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novella. A lot of it is told from the protagonist's point of view when he is telling someone about the events of the last three years. I'm struggling with tenses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written the pieces from the past in the present tense and the 'current day' pieces in past tense. Does this go against convention too much or can it work? What's the best way to tell a story with long flashbacks into present day? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18528" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-04-09T16:06:31.567" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T11:14:31.057" Title="A question of tenses" Tags="|fiction|tenses|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21669" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-10T02:29:53.190" Score="0" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a fanfic where the protagonist is a skeleton living on Earth. He possesses a magic skill which revolves around moving objects. Of course, there are limits. He cannot move things as heavy as a tower. Although the limit point isn't very clear, (I am not planning on establishing it either), it'd be good to assume that he cannot exactly magically move anything that has more mass than him. His other notable skill is the ability to teleport, but this once again does not have an established limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, the protagonist is to use his magic to move simple objects around during the story, such as lifting a piece of ribbon in air, maybe even a medium-sized box. One of my goals is to capture the sense of what the magic user goes through in order to make the reader more familiar and comfortable with the theme of magic. What are some of the ways I could approach this kind of magic experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16394" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T03:00:55.723" Title="Describing protagonist's experience from using magic" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-04-18T20:05:16.930" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21669" CreationDate="2016-04-10T03:00:55.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could attempt a backstory for the character in a chapter. I wouldn't go for expalining the magical aspect too much, but rather explain the way he solves his problems with his ability and how he overcomes the limitations of the same. It also depends if you're going for &quot;Hard Magic&quot; or &quot;Soft magic&quot; or somewhere in between. Think if you want to approach your story with magic being more mysterious or more all-out and visible. Soft magic needs scarcely be explained, whereas Hard magic needs a little more explaining since it's so obvious and it affects the course of the story in a stronger way. Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18545" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T03:00:55.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10110" CreationDate="2016-04-10T08:29:08.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem here is there actually is no plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a vague sibling context, and everything else seems shoehorned around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either we're not being told enough of the plot mechanics to understand it, or the plot doesn't actually exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO you have two choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;forget the plot and develop the characters further&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;develop the fantastic aspect further, until a plot emerges&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now you barely have enough for a coherent short story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T08:29:08.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10117" CreationDate="2016-04-10T08:43:57.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem is your characters have no readily identifiable &lt;em&gt;motivation&lt;/em&gt;. That makes them less than human and impossible for an audience to relate to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that motivation is not necessarily the same as &quot;backstory&quot;. People are different, and react differently to the same circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to understand your characters better, otherwise manufacturing a history will highlight your lack of understanding rather than justifying motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T08:43:57.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21654" CreationDate="2016-04-10T14:37:09.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no watertight definitions when it comes to fantasy, the Gothic, and science fiction. In my personal opinion (which, though educated, is still only a possible reading), the best way to approach this is through Tzvetan Todorov's definition of the fantastic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell:&#xA;- if the world remains as you know it and everything is explainable within the existing laws of nature (even &lt;em&gt;probabilistically so&lt;/em&gt;; e.g. faster-than-light is, lo and behold, possible because this and this), then it's &lt;strong&gt;science fiction&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;- if the world is not the same, and the laws of nature must change, then it's fantasy.&#xA;- if you don't know, then it's Gothic (or steampunk, or whatever you wanna call it to feel better)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fantasy:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;There are unicorns, I don't care why. Live with it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Science Fiction&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;There are no unicorns on earth, but we just found an alternative world where there are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gothic&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;I know there are no unicorns, but I just saw one running down the street. Have I gone mad? Am I losing my mind? Or are there really unicorns? But will anyone believe me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T14:37:09.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21674" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21676" CreationDate="2016-04-10T15:21:17.197" Score="2" ViewCount="545" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea, to make the protagonist pull themselves together at a point in a work of fiction. I've been writing a novel, and for practically the entire first half the main protagonist has been running from everything, scared to kill, generally scared of the battle he has been plunged into. He relies on someone else to help him get through it, that he recently broke away from as he wanted to escape from the thing entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea to have these two characters come back together, fast forward a few weeks and continue the story? After that event, and those few weeks which nothing exciting happens in so I don't need to go through them, the main protagonist thinks &quot;Okay, if I run from everything nothing is going to change. Let's put an end to this once and for all.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better way to put across such a massive change in attitude? Is this a good move to pull off? I've written this at about 50k words in the novel, so the protagonist has been being scared for a while. I'm worried that the change will be too sudden and the reader would not respond well to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I skip forward one week, is that too far forward to skip?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-04-23T16:13:12.477" Title="Is it a good idea to make the protagonist pull themselves together" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21674" CreationDate="2016-04-10T19:12:29.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you think the reader will expect?&#xA;I don't think that when reading your novel, they will think: &quot;Well, he is going to be scared the rest of the novel, he will never do anything, the end.&quot; &#xA;I think, that by creating the conflict, and the scared protagonist, the readers will expect him to not be scared at some point, and do something about the conflict. &#xA;You already created the premise for the protagonist to change, now you only need him to do it in a believable way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think skipping a week is a problem, if you explain in one way or another to the readers what happened, briefly or not.&#xA;Really simple would be to say:&#xA;&quot;As the weeks passed by, he realized running away was taking him nowhere. All those days he was trying to get away were just time wasted. &lt;em&gt;insert more here&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&#xA;Not the best example, but I hope you get the meaning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have written the 'transition', just let your beta readers see it and ask them how sudden/fake it sounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T19:12:29.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21674" CreationDate="2016-04-10T20:12:05.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, your protagonist almost &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; change, or there's not much point to your book. If s/he does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; at some point stop running and pull him/herself together, your reader will feel like the book is a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it seem not rushed or fake, you need two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sufficient buildup before the epiphany&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to give enough space to the epiphany that the reader believes it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &quot;buildup&quot; I mean the protagonist has to be thinking about the things which will lead up to the epiphany before it happens. S/he feels afraid, but you have to &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; the terrible things &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; you have to show how the terrible things affect the character. Then the character briefly needs to reflect on or think about the gradual pileup of scary things &amp;mdash; and by &quot;brief&quot; I mean a paragraph or two a chapter, but on an ongoing basis &amp;mdash; and also to think about how things could be better. &lt;em&gt;If only I could do X&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;If only Y were different&lt;/em&gt;, then the scary things would stop or be defeated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the character is finally at rock bottom, then the desire to change will outweigh the fears of not acting. Remember that the fears don't have to go away. The character does not magically have to stop shaking, or stop being afraid. The character just has to push on &lt;em&gt;through&lt;/em&gt; the fear and act anyway. This is &quot;pulling it together.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This scene shouldn't be only a few paragraphs; it should probably be a few pages. The reader needs to believe that the protagonist has genuinely weighed the choices and felt that moving forward was better than avoiding risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T20:12:05.783" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21674" CreationDate="2016-04-10T20:56:48.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the previous answers are better than what I am about to tell you but if it was me writing it I'd give my character a REASON to stop running. I would have my character witness something so horrible s/he would realize that there is no running,that they personally would have to do something about it for the sake of others (or even just him/herself) s/he would have to stand and fight because something so terrible cannot be left to rule. For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Character who is living in a time of slavery has it pretty good even though he himself is a slave. He sees others rebelling against their slavers but doesn't feel the need to fight even though others around him are dying for this cause and he has seen some slight mistreatment around him. Others beg for his help but he doesn't want any part, choosing to remain in his 'sanctuary' until one day he is with someone he loves (who happens to be among the rebels) This person he's with sees a slave child being beaten to death (kinda dark but I'm trying to make a point) s/he goes to the child's rescue and as a result both are killed. The man sees now that this fight cannot be avoided, this evil must be put to an end. &#xA;Now this man has the revelation, he pulls himself together, joins the fight and he does it for a reason. Not because he's simply rethinking his actions, but because he wants revenge and/or an end to this injustice. He has a REASON to fight now, and thus, a reason to pull himself together. Hope this has helped :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18060" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T20:56:48.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21649" CreationDate="2016-04-11T01:57:45.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer this question, if you have the time and the will to read five very long novels, read the series &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/a&gt; by George R. R. Martin. There is a different POV in each chapter, and the chapters are titled by whose viewpoint is being trotted out. Sometimes the chapters are even about characters who have undergone a transformation, and their transformation name and POV are used. One would would have to say the series, with all its viewpoint switching, is a success, at least commercially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="633" LastEditorUserId="633" LastEditDate="2018-03-22T22:13:08.773" LastActivityDate="2018-03-22T22:13:08.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-11T03:11:50.537" Score="6" ViewCount="2581" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context introduction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In my story the protagonist is both curious and fearful. He wants to know what is in a forest but is too afraid to go inside. He is also distracted by his basic needs for food and water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a subplot of a greater plot where the character first overcomes his fear and his biological desires that are holding him back before confronting some supernatural power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;How can I write this subplot where the protagonist overcomes his internal flaws while achieving the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the process believable and non-contrived&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create some character development and make the readers sympathize the character&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Attempts at solution&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe Make the character fail a few times and show that the character recognizes and accepts the responsibility of failure (instead of blaming). This may make the character likable for the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make the things that is holding the character back things that are reminiscent of things that holds some of the readers back in real life, so it is believable and the readers will want to know how they are overcome. (I don't have any specific ideas in mind though)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18553" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-04-13T17:21:35.443" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T17:21:35.443" Title="How to write believable &quot;Man vs self&quot; plots" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5980" CreationDate="2016-04-11T08:06:33.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most cases it's to make the book look more complex, while also being intelligible and cool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own book, you will find loose, slightly-changed Latin sprinkled all over it - like a  species  of bird called &lt;em&gt;tabbelarees&lt;/em&gt;, or &quot;bells.&quot; The original word translates to &quot;carrier&quot; as from the term, message carriers (&lt;em&gt;Tabbelarrius Nintius&lt;/em&gt;), effectively letting the reader (if they know Latin) know what the bird does for the community. And if the reader doesn't know that, then it sounds cool, it's original, and the bird gets described anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all, I'd say it's a good use of a  deceased language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18558" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-04-11T19:27:32.243" LastActivityDate="2016-04-11T19:27:32.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21649" CreationDate="2016-04-11T11:43:44.133" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always answer these kinds of questions from my own experiences as a reader. For me as a writer it is irrelevant, how many other authors have done this or that; the deciding factor is how I feel about it as a reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my first suggestion would be that you find examples of what you want to do, read them, and see how you feel about them. I can't really give you a lot of examples, one (Philip Pullman's &lt;em&gt;His Dark Materials&lt;/em&gt;) was mentioned in a comment by @Filip, another one is Ally Condie's &lt;em&gt;Matched&lt;/em&gt; trilogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that it is important that you come to your own conclusion regarding this, because readers are just as different as writers, and if you like reading trilogies where the second volume adds a second POV, then others will, too, and you should write it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I want to give you my own opinion, and try to explain it. Maybe it will give you some useful insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read, I very strongly identify with the main protagonist. For that reason, I generally don't like books with multiple POVs as much as books with a single POV, but I will read a multi-POV book, if it is really good. I have written elsewhere on this site, that when I read George R. R. Martin's &lt;em&gt;Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt;, I used to read all the chapters of one character, and then all the chapter of another character, instead of in printed sequence. I did this, because when I came to the end of a chapter and was forced to switch to another POV, I was so engrossed in this character's experience that I simply couldn't care about the other character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same happened to me, when I read Ally Condie's &lt;em&gt;Matched&lt;/em&gt;. To me, the first volume was a really great read. I enjoyed &quot;being&quot; the protagonist, and living her life. The reason I picked up the second volume was that I wanted to live that life a bit longer. But then the second volume had two POVs, that of the first book's protagnoist, and that of her love interest. This was a major disappointment for me, because I simply did not care about the other character at all. I cared about him as the love interest of &quot;myself&quot;, of course, but wasn't really interested in &quot;being&quot; him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while the book (as well as the third volume) turned out to be quite okay, I never got into them as much as into the first volume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are other readers like me, who get into their protagonists so much that they hate being forced to switch POVs. Your book will fail these kinds of readers. But I have no idea what their percentage is, and how much other readers &lt;strong&gt;love&lt;/strong&gt; to switch. Maybe there are those people, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-04-11T11:43:44.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21681" CreationDate="2016-04-11T11:56:05.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some common themes in literature; whether you choose to use them or not is up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Mental illness/instability&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anxiety, depression, psychosis, and phobias are common subplots and how the protagonist overcomes them. You might look online for the medical definition of these to fill out the character's deficiency. The most common solution in entertainment is the use of a guru to overcome this, but drugs, elixirs, prayer, and self-discovery of some power are also utilized&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Interpersonal conflict&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also common for a &lt;em&gt;man v. self&lt;/em&gt; problem to be secondary to a &lt;em&gt;man v. man conflict.&lt;/em&gt; A love interest coming to fruition lending to fortitude, for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Fear of personal insufficiency&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is most typically solved with some form of training regime resulting in enhanced physical, magical, or emotional prowess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. The need for a companion to complete the journey&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5. Increased stress from the antagonist which creates suspense, forcing the protagonist to act, or else&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6. The discovery of a talisman&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-04-11T11:56:05.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21686" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-11T14:52:37.203" Score="1" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I've always enjoyed writing but never had the stamina to write a short story, let alone a novel. Mostly what I write these days is Micro-fiction (all short pieces of a couple hundred words, I've included one of my favorite pieces of mine below). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if anyone else writes this, and whether they know of any communities built around it? Google hasn't been especially helpful, mostly because I don't know which forums are useful, helpful, and encouraging places and which are toxic, troll-ridden nightmares. Any suggestions would be very gratefully received! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18147" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-04-13T17:28:36.663" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T14:59:06.313" Title="Writing and sharing Microfiction" Tags="|resources|flash-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21687" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21693" CreationDate="2016-04-11T15:31:58.563" Score="6" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;At what stage in writing do you ask for feedback on your new story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After writing a plot outline?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After the first draft?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After the second draft?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After you polish it for the public?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of feedback do you like to get (and don't want) after each stage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At what stage do you ask people to proofread? (As opposed to editing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18199" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-06T08:29:18.993" LastActivityDate="2018-03-06T08:29:18.993" Title="When to ask for feedback of novel?" Tags="|editing|reviews|proofreading|feedback|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21687" CreationDate="2016-04-11T15:52:46.067" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can ask for feedback at any and all of those stages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The feedback which is helpful at any stage is &quot;This works and here's why&quot; and &quot;This doesn't work and here's why.&quot; The &quot;here's why&quot; is the MOST IMPORTANT part of feedback. If your reader can only say &quot;I don't like this,&quot; it's a waste of everyone's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proofreading should be done at later stages &amp;mdash; second draft and public polish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-11T15:52:46.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21681" CreationDate="2016-04-11T18:38:41.243" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The trick is to link his internal flaws and deliberations to clear, concrete details. That gives him something to &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt;, something to engage with. It gives him a way to express his character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, he's conflicted about entering the forest. That means you want one or two very specific things that he &lt;strong&gt;wants&lt;/strong&gt; to find in the forest, and also one or two very specific things that he is &lt;strong&gt;afraid&lt;/strong&gt; of finding in the forest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If he's hoping to find a unicorn, but is afraid of bandits, maybe he'll try to hide in a bush and listen to the forest, to help him decide what to choose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If he's looking for a safe place to hide from somebody but he's afraid of getting lost, maybe he'll start by edging along the forest, constantly considering hiding places and rejecting them, steeling himself (or faltering) to step inside.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If he's hoping to find buried treasure but is afraid of deadly forest-ghosts, then maybe he'll buy a bunch of charms and protection spells -- on credit, and then feel miserable if he's still afraid to go in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Wants to know what's inside&quot; is a somewhat weak motivation on its own - unless you additionally provide some enticing rumors or suggestions, &lt;em&gt;specifics&lt;/em&gt; that give your protagonist specific goals and threats to deal with. Or, maybe the specifics are in your character's personality - maybe he's superstitious, and trying to prove his own bravery. Maybe he's in love, and thinks the seldom-visited forest will undoubtedly have something strange and wonderful that would make a special present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any of these gives you concrete details - which gives you some immediate, concrete problems and balances for your character to deal with. Showing &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; your character deals with a concrete problem relating to his central tension is much more effective than simply having him waffle between to extremes which remain abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-04-11T18:38:41.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5980" CreationDate="2016-04-11T22:48:27.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it works well and can add to a story, if it's used sparingly. Using it for the names of relics, weapons, vessels and titles are all great uses of it that can add another layer of depth and atmosphere to a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you've cited Warhammer 40k, there are, in my opinions, some Black Library authors who do it well, and other Black Library abominations that don't. The likes of Graham McNeil, Chris Wraight etc use the pseudo latin of 40k quite well. It doesn't distract the reader, it adds depth to the story and can be seen as a little easter egg for those who do understand it to cotton on to the meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, at the other end of the spectrum, lies Gav Thorpe. I just recently read The Purging of Kalidus - about the Dark Angels on Piscana V - written by Mr Thorpe. Throughout the dialogue are scatterings of pseudo-latin. Entire phrases that don't have any context, that jar the reader out of the story and add absolutely nothing to it. It's taken it too far and comes across as the author being rather pretentious and allowing him to ignore any failings in the book as a petulant whine of &quot;but you just don't understand&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-04-11T22:48:27.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21697" CreationDate="2016-04-12T03:20:59.620" Score="2" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm asking this on Writing.SE because I'm doing a short presentation on &quot;What is an anthology,&quot; and I'm not sure how to answer the question &quot;Why is X an anthology and Y is not?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Merriam Webster defines &quot;anthology&quot; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A collection of selected literary pieces or passages or works of art or music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a bit more research, I found that a film series such as &quot;Alfred Hitchcock Presents&quot; is an anthology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(a) Which of the items in the following list are anthologies?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(b) Is there a critical attribute that professional writers use to say with confidence that a collection is or is not an anthology? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A book of American quotations. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A cookbook built around a common theme.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Guy Kawasaki's book, &lt;em&gt;Enchantment&lt;/em&gt;, because each chapter ends with a&#xA;contributor's essay on &quot;How I did it.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Academy Awards gown section of a magazine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first I thought that &quot;literary piece&quot; was the acid test, then I found definitions about &quot;literary work&quot; and &quot;collection&quot; to confuse matters more at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/register/tx-collective.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.copyright.gov/register/tx-collective.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11559" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-03T09:04:45.590" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T09:04:45.590" Title="What is the &quot;acid test&quot; for a nonfiction anthology?" Tags="|non-fiction|genre|terminology|concept|anthologies|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21687" CreationDate="2016-04-12T04:10:09.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My husband is also a writer, so I'm constantly bouncing ideas off of him throughout my researching and plotting phases. Usually by the time I'm writing, I don't say much about story changes. But once I start writing, &lt;strong&gt;no one&lt;/strong&gt; looks at my work until I've edited it a few times on my own. Then my hubby sees it, I edit it again, and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; I send it out to beta readers and my writers group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that if I ask for a lot of people's opinions throughout the entire process, ideas get muddied in my head and I have a hard time remembering why I had something the way I did, and then when I change it, suddenly 200 pages down the road, I remember why, and now I've got to go back and fix it all over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I have found it helpful to bounce ideas off of one person's head that I trust and that knows my story pretty intimately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for proofreading, I have a copyeditor's eye, so my story is getting proofread every time I read through it. I also have my writers group to go through proofreading for me, which comes after the story's been written and edited several times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2016-04-12T04:10:09.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21649" CreationDate="2016-04-12T08:16:13.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I think that there is no definitive answer to a question like this. Stories are different, and a mechanism that worked fine in one story might fail in another. You will have to try out what works best for your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said I don't see a reason why introducing a new POV in the second book of your series should not work out. Think of the following examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;His Dark Materials&lt;/em&gt; by Philip Pullman introduced a never-before-heard-of POV in his second book. When I read the book as a teenager, I was surprised by this, but not taken aback. On the contrary, I enjoyed the surprise and was very curious about how Will's story would be merged with Lyra's. By introducing a new POV, Pullman created additional suspense that worked out very well for me. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speaking of suspense, the TV series &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2699110/?ref_=nv_sr_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Affair&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; uses an interesting concept to create curiosity in the viewer: The series follows the affair between the two main characters. While this is not terribly interesting on its own, the first episode shows the same events twice: From his perspective first, then from hers. The suspense for me in this approach lay in the fact that these two viewpoints were not congruent: They depicted the same events, but they interpreted them in radically different ways. That hooked me so thoroughly that I watched the entire first season within a few days. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A similar approch is used in the excellent Norwegian movie &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0948544/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_16&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Troubled Water&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;: Instead of switching frequently between the two POVs, we see Jan's perspective first. Only after this story is fully told, Agnes takes over and tells her story. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming back to your question, considers as well that series generally work differently from stand-alone works. While both need to follow a clear structure, series allow you - and the readers - to spend much more time with your characters. Hence, when your new POV is interesting and adds to your overall story - go for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, long series need to keep surprising their readers. An example for this would be &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411008/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lost&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;: In the first season, Lost keeps throwing new POVs at us. At the end of the season, we are hooked by the mystery of the island and the various stories of the characters and have well understood the basic mechanism of the show: Continue the island-based storyline of the show, while thoroughly developing the individual characters. That is fine and works out for the next two seasons. By the end of third season, however, a certain weariness kreeps up on the viewer: We feel that we know the characters well, interest in their past fades. Lost does a very clever thing now: It replaces its well-working mechanism of seasons 1-3 by a new one. Instead of showing the past of the characters, they show their future. The trick is: At the beginning of the season, the audience doesn't know that. Suddenly, new mysteries are amassing and a whole range of new questions is brought up. Curiosity in the audience is re-invigorated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;overall&lt;/strong&gt;, I think that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introducing a new POV is a risk. You attached your readers to your main characters (or what they think is the main characters) and risk surprising them unpleasantly or even angering them by directing their attention away from the character they love. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, introducing a new POV is also a natural way to create curiosity. Especially in long series, this is very necessary to keep your readers interested. Consider as well that in a long series, you have the opportunity to present your readers not with one but with a number of characters they can identify with. From a series, I actually expect that it presents me different viewpoints and a nuanced interpretation of the plot itself. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, keep in mind that your series &lt;em&gt;as well as the individual parts of the series&lt;/em&gt; need to have a well-defined structure: If you switch POVs, it should be for a reason, and at the end of the second book, the reader should either be aware of this reason or be so madly in love with the new POV that he simply doesn't care why it is there at all. Mind, however, that readers are different from each other and there is a good chance that your new POV will not enchant every single one of them. In this case, the structure of your work must appease your readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2016-04-12T08:16:13.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21674" CreationDate="2016-04-12T08:41:15.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, your question sounds, as if you have trouble showing the &lt;em&gt;gradual&lt;/em&gt; development of your character. A good discussion of how to provide well-rounded characters arcs is provided, for example, in &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chris Vogler's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/193290736X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Writer's Journey&lt;/a&gt;: This was the most helpful book I've ever read about storytelling. It adresses the very essence of what a story is and how it works, i.e.: It discusses the dynamics of storytelling. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;K.M. Weiland's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0985780401&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Structuring your Novel&lt;/a&gt; is much less concerned with the dynamics of a story and feels a bit formulaic at times. Still, it gives you a good idea of how to apply the infinite wisdom of the Hero's Journey (sorry for getting carried away with the Hero's Journey, I just love it). This book is more about practice and not so much about understanding. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning your question (and speaking as someone who focuses very much on the development of characters), I would definitly be taken aback by an epiphany that comes out of the blue. Sometimes, this happens. However, I'm not interested in stuff that &quot;just happens&quot;. I want to be presented with a thorough interpretation of &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it happens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The generic answer to this question is (and it really boils down to this in every single story): &lt;strong&gt;The transformation of the main character had to happen, because otherwise, he would have died.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a drastic statement, but I truly believe it is true. Transformation is painful, tedious, and everything but comfortable. Think of the transformations you have gone through: Pubity sucks, losing weight (or gaining it) is a constant struggle, realizing that you will never be with the boy you are so helplessly in love with rips your heart apart. Nobody chooses to undergo a transformation because of all the fun it will be. People change, because they have no other choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, you need to make sure that your main character has no other choice but to grow out of his fear. Build up the pressure he is under gradually and increase the strain his hesitation puts on him. Have him doubt his apathy. Then, when his entire world is on the brink of collapsing due to his passivity, make him realize it actually &lt;em&gt;is in his power&lt;/em&gt; to prevent this dire fate. As far as I see it, this is the heart piece of your story. Hence, do not attenuate it by understressing it or not preparing it meticulously. In the words of Weiland: Make it big, make it fast. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2016-04-12T08:41:15.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21681" CreationDate="2016-04-12T09:13:27.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/21674/is-it-a-good-idea-to-make-the-protagonist-pull-themselves-together&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, and my answer is basically the same: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hurt him.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want him to go into the wood, but he hesitates? Great, that is natural and very nicely illustrates the concept of the &quot;Threshold Guardian&quot;. Threshold Guardians generally try to prevent any kind of transformation. They are the inertia, the fear of the unknown, the indifference that keep the hero from comitting to his journey. In order to be successful (and, in the Greek sense, to evolve into a hero), the main character must defeat the Threshold Guardian. It is his first trial - the one that shows that he is worthy to participate in the journey that lies ahead and worthy, too, of the sympathy of the readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to defeat the Threshold Guardian, the main character must undergo the first minor transformation. In your case, he must get rid of his fear. As I have argued in the answer to the question above, transformation is neither pleasant nor easy. It is painful. Hence, pressure your main character until he has not other choice but to face his fear and enter the forest. In other words: Hurt him. In agreement with @Standback's answer, you need to provide detail: Why is he scared to go into the forest in the first place? Similary, why should he go in there at all? Why not stay on the nice, sunny lawn surrounding the forest? There's food, there's light, everything is well. Unless, of course, the lawn is poisoned. Or the love interest of the main character is captured and held prisonder in the wood. Or a spectre stole his soul and hid it in the forest. And so on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a more serious note and in case you speak German, here is a brilliant but terrifying reportage on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zeit.de/zeit-magazin/2015/34/boko-haram-frauen-gefangen-flucht&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the fate of women that have been kidnapped by Boko Haram and held prisonders in Nigeria's Sambisa forest&lt;/a&gt;. (This is not for the faint of heart and I post it here for the sole purpose to illustrate what a forest can be. In the case of the reportage it is hell.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, make sure that your main character has no other choice left but to enter the forest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning your sub-questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To me, a &lt;strong&gt;believable development&lt;/strong&gt; is one that happens gradually and is well-prepared. You need to give me the chance to the see the character evolve. Granting him a sudden epiphany on his nice, sunny lawn would not work for me. Similarly, being shown a caterpillar on one page and a butterfly on the next would not convince me. Show me the chrysalis inbetween and explain to me why the caterpillar had to pupate to survive. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character development&lt;/strong&gt; is intrinsic to the approach sketched above. Inspiring &lt;strong&gt;sympathy&lt;/strong&gt; however, is a different matter. Generally, I sympathize with characters that are in trouble. Again, by leaving your character no other choice but to enter the forest, you automatically create trouble. (Mind, creating a likable character is different from creating a character that your readers can sympathize with.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-04-12T09:13:27.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21692" CreationDate="2016-04-12T09:58:21.100" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &quot;selected literary pieces or passages&quot; is your linchpin here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take that college mainstay, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0393913090&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Norton Anthology&lt;/a&gt; (this one is American Literature). This is a book which contains quotes, poems, short stories, and excerpts of longer works. (IIRC — it's been a while) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The various pieces can be grouped by kind (poetry, quotes), by date, by region, or any other criteria. There may be context, analysis, and discussion around the pieces, or just an introduction to each one. There is nothing in the book which doesn't pertain to those pieces, and the author(s) or editor(s) don't have another story to tell or another agenda to promote outside discussion of the pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to take your list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A book of American quotations &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be an anthology. I think it&#xA;would need some context around the quotes to qualify.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A cookbook might, but it would be a stretch. Cookbooks are&#xA;instructional; you're actually meant to use the recipes. An&#xA;&quot;anthology cookbook&quot; sounds to me like a collection of ancient&#xA;recipes which are presented for educational purposes (like how the&#xA;Egyptians prepared a corpse for mummification) rather than something&#xA;you could use to make dinner tonight.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Guy Kawasaki's book is his book, and if he includes other excerpts,&#xA;that doesn't make it an anthology. If he were collecting an anthology&#xA;of other people's work and he was the only one providing analysis,&#xA;that might qualify.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A magazine about something else which happens to have a section on X&#xA;is not an anthology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2018-01-24T14:47:28.527" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T14:47:28.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19196" CreationDate="2016-04-12T19:05:46.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was also searching for a similar tool that would help me in organizing my characters. I stumbled upon &lt;a href=&quot;https://charahub.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Charahub&lt;/a&gt; in one of the sites that I visited. You can add a lot of things about each character and also connect them to other characters. There is also an option to group your characters (i.e. group them according to family name). Charachub has free and paid plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18580" LastActivityDate="2016-04-12T19:05:46.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21704" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-13T12:55:07.600" Score="7" ViewCount="4015" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story that involves three main characters. They appear in linear form, each one's story leading to the other. So for example character A's story finishes leading to B's story which finishes leading to character C's story. But each story is relevant to each character. This for one book and it is all written in third person. Is this a good or bad idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18586" LastActivityDate="2022-07-28T01:55:10.503" Title="Is it a bad idea to have three protagonists?" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21705" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-13T13:34:48.473" Score="4" ViewCount="791" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay so I have collected personal spending data of myself and significant other over a period of 6 months. I'm quite happy with the data and would like to present it and write it up as a research paper. I'm not going to be publishing it but would like to do it for fun (and a bit of practice can't hurt).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dilemma I am facing at the moment is that I cannot figure out how to refer to myself or my significant other as participants in the study. I have been trying to figure this out for a few days now and google is really giving me a hard time. I cannot find a single thing relevant to what I am trying to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first issue I have come to is that I am captioning a figure that reads similar to this. Figure 1: Average daily spending vs time for myself (solid line) and significant other (dotted line).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the correct way to refer to myself and significant other? It feels much too informal for my liking. I have considered making a small statement that states that myself will be referred to as &quot;participant A&quot; and my significant other will be referred to as &quot;participant B&quot;, but this might add unnecessary confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard on this? This has been driving me absolutely crazy over the past few days and would really appreciate any insight or suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18588" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T15:29:05.723" Title="How to refer to myself in a research paper?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|research|third-person|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21704" CreationDate="2016-04-13T15:24:42.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's your book; you make the rules.  If writing it that way would inspire you to write more creative and vivid passages, then do it.  If you're writing for others, the bottom line when it comes to 'rules' is that your work must engage the reader and make them want to continue reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5940" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T15:24:42.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21704" CreationDate="2016-04-13T16:12:00.200" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to the site, Chimere! As a general rule, it's best to stick with one protagonist. As @Private has mentioned, if you have two, it should generally be a hero and a heroine (please see the comments below for details). However, I've asked a good number of questions myself, and I know that your story probably requires three protagonists, otherwise you wouldn't be asking the question. On that note, I will answer your question below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; It's not a bad idea, but you need to know how to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(Very) Long Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a protagonist is developed correctly, the reader cares about him. The reader wants the protagonist to win, to overcome the obstacles and conflicts he faces. He's on the protagonist's side. I explain how this is done in my answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20189/10394&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you introduce a new protagonist, the reader at first is not on his side. He wants to stay with the first one. Using what I detailed in the answer linked above, you can eventually make the reader care for this second protagonist, but it does take awhile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mistake most writers make when trying to do this is to think of their protagonists on an equal level. Essentially, they are both the &lt;em&gt;main&lt;/em&gt; protagonist. This simply doesn't work, because the reader is going to like one more than the other (generally whoever was introduced first). Fortunately, you don't have this problem, since you introduce your protagonists one after the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your problem lies in trying to get the reader to let go of the first protagonist and accept the second (the same process applies to the third, as well). I can really only think of one reliable way that you could do this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overlapping characters.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I mentioned above, it will take the reader some time to switch between protagonists. He will &lt;em&gt;not want&lt;/em&gt; to switch, and forcing him to do so is actually quite dangerous, as you run the risk of losing the reader entirely. Therefore, the only way you'll be able to do this is by lessening the impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you should do is to have the protagonists overlap. Once you start approaching the point where the first protagonist disappears, introduce the second protagonist as a side character. Don't switch PoV or anything yet, just introduce him. Give him strength and inner conflict like a normal protagonist. This will increase the reader's investment in him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a good idea to have your current protagonist look up to your new one, and recognize him as better. If your current protagonist sees the new one this way, the reader will slowly start to accept that idea too (because he cares for the current protagonist, and so values what he thinks about other people). At the same time, start decreasing your current protagonist's strength, which is the very core of why the reader is on his side. Pick the quality that makes the protagonist heroic and start having him fail at it. Very slightly, but still failing. Slight failures will be enough to start tipping the reader towards the new character. Don't destroy the strength entirely; &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; slight failures will be enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes time to switch over entirely, get rid of the old protagonist. The best way to do this is with a symbolic/literal 'passing of the torch,' as it were. Make it clear that the role the protagonist filled, at least in the reader's mind, is being taken over by this new character. This should likely end a chapter/section, and the next part will start with the new PoV. Only do this once the old protagonist's role is completely finished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then get rid of the old protagonist. This doesn't necessarily mean death, but you don't want him cropping up in the story after his time is done. If he does, the reader will have a harder time forgetting him and switching over. The only other option here would be to make the old protagonist into an antagonist - turn him into someone the hero wishes to &lt;em&gt;lose&lt;/em&gt;. Then you can safely include him. In fact, doing this will repulse the reader away from the old protagonist and towards the only other option: the new one. Make &lt;strong&gt;sure&lt;/strong&gt; that the reader is &lt;em&gt;ready&lt;/em&gt; to go over to the new one if you do this though, otherwise he won't want to. It's a good idea to only turn the old protagonist into an antagonist only once the switch has been made and the reader has settled in with the new protagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to the third protagonist, the process will be more or less the same. The transition will be easier because it's happened before, but this only means that it will take less time. You should still follow the entire process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to experiments like this, it's best to remember three things: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The rules are there for a reason. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The rules can be bent or broken. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everything you do is done for the reader. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself wanting to break one of the 'rules,' ask yourself how to do it in a way that will keep the reader, and keep the book enjoyable for him. Remember, every single part of writing and development is done for reader. Without him, why are you writing?* &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Some books you write only for yourself. In this case, write the way you want to write, since you will be the only one reading it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you the best in your writing endeavors! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T17:11:08.260" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21704" CreationDate="2016-04-13T16:48:21.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished reading Susan Cooper's &lt;em&gt;The Dark Is Rising&lt;/em&gt; sequence which does almost exactly this, although over five books. The first book has three siblings as main characters, book 2 has one boy (with many siblings), book 3 has the boy and a second boy both as main characters, and books 4 and 5 use all the kids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was fine with the idea of the story going back and forth; my only caveat is that it should be the same &lt;em&gt;kind&lt;/em&gt; of story. The three siblings were &quot;mortals getting involved with magic&quot; and the two single boys were &quot;magical folks dealing with magical things,&quot; and those are not the same kind of tale. That created more whiplash for me than changing protagonists or POVs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anne McCaffrey did it better in her Harper Hall trilogy; books 1 and 2 are about Menolly and book 3 is about Piemur. Each is a minor character in the other's story, and the overall storyline is chronological. It works fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T16:48:21.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21705" CreationDate="2016-04-13T17:27:28.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd go with the approach you've already hit upon here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have considered making a small statement that states that myself will be referred to as &quot;participant A&quot; and my significant other will be referred to as &quot;participant B&quot;, but this might add unnecessary confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's going to add any confusion. If participant is a bit too long, you could also use the term &lt;em&gt;subject&lt;/em&gt; if that would help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if the fact that you are participant A and your SO is participant B is significant (I don't know what your thesis is), than you may want to continue using similar language. I'd opt for &lt;em&gt;self&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;partner&lt;/em&gt; to keep it succinct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T17:27:28.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20902" CreationDate="2016-04-13T17:30:52.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your teacher is requesting that you take the annex (which is a separate, standalone document) and integrate it into the main document. How best to do that is going to depend largely on the content of the annex and how your thesis is structured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T17:30:52.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21654" CreationDate="2016-04-13T17:55:46.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In simplest terms, the narrative of a space opera must occur primarily in space, and it must contain some concept of events that affect a multitude of planets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy (again, in simplest terms) just means containing elements of the fantastic (what most people would consider magic or the supernatural).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The line between the two is blurry (as most things involving genre are), but the difference would be in how you'd characterize the setting and the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the fantastical elements dominate, then I'd call it fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it occurs in space and has an epic or larger than planetary scope, I'd call it space opera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastEditorUserId="18289" LastEditDate="2016-04-13T19:17:46.120" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T19:17:46.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21704" CreationDate="2016-04-13T19:47:20.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does your story have an ensemble cast? If yes, then having 3 (or more) main characters is expected. Look at Game of Thrones. It has many main characters and you can root for any of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some guidelines for deciding format of story based on number of main characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have one main character, the story should focus on that person. This works well for Person vs. Self, Person vs. Nature, or Person vs. Society.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have two main characters, the story should focus on the interaction between them. This works well for Person vs. Person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have three or more main characters, then the story should focus on their many interactions. Now you can tell many separate stories within your novel. Each one can be either  Person vs. Self, Person vs. Person, or Person vs. Society.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18199" LastEditorUserId="18199" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T07:29:16.640" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T07:29:16.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21704" CreationDate="2016-04-13T21:45:49.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Brandon Sanderson's &lt;em&gt;Elantris&lt;/em&gt; does this to good effect.  There are three protagonists, all of whom are intelligent, strong characters who are competent enough to carry a story on their own:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Crown Prince Raoden, the most beloved man in the kingdom of Arelon.  His father is not a particularly competent king, and Raoden is the only one who has a good chance of holding the kingdom together.  Unfortunately, the book opens with the curse of the Shaod falling upon him, a chaotic magic that turns him into what the author once described as &quot;a zombie leper.&quot;  He gets thrown into the ruined city of Elantris, which was once a glorious place but is now a filthy oubliette where Arelenes send those who have been transformed to forget about them.  From this point on, the rest of the kingdom considers him dead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Princess Sarene of Teod, Raoden's fiancee in a political marriage to cement an alliance between Teod and Arelon.  She arrives by ship soon after Raoden's transformation and is not told about what really happened to him, due to the highly embarrassing nature of the Shaod.  Instead, she is told that he died while she was &lt;em&gt;en route&lt;/em&gt;, and by the terms of the marriage contract, she is officially considered his widow.  Due to the political nature of the marriage, she's required to remain in Arelon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gyorn Hrathen, a high priest of Shu-Dereth, a foreign religion that combines all the scariest and most authoritarian aspects of the Roman Empire, the Vikings, and militant Islam.  He's been sent to Arelon to convert the people before the Wyrn (Pope/Caliph/etc) of Shu-Dereth decides to launch a holy war and wipe out the Arelene unbelievers.  He doesn't want such slaughter, so he sets to the task of trying to bring Shu-Dereth to the people.  He arrives at roughly the same time as Sarene.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story alternates between the three viewpoint characters by giving them one chapter each in strict rotation: a Raoden chapter, a Serene chapter, a Hrathen chapter, then a Raoden chapter, and so on.  In Teod they view Shu-Dereth as a religion of evil, which sets up a direct conflict between two of the protagonists right off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, Raoden may have been thrown into Elantris, but he refuses to believe that his life holds nothing more for him than to rot away and become a miserable zombie leper, so he tries to figure out ways to improve things for himself and the other victims of the Shaod in Elantris.  And eventually, as the plot goes on, he starts to interact directly with Sarene and Hrathen for various reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three character rotation structure works well as a rule to write by, and it also works well when the author breaks the rule: when the story begins to approach the climax, the strict viewpoint rotation falls apart, which really adds to a sense of wild, chaotic plotting and helps build tension for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do a three-protagonist story, you could do a lot worse than to study how Brandon Sanderson did it in &lt;em&gt;Elantris&lt;/em&gt;, because he did it really, really well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1933" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T21:45:49.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21686" CreationDate="2016-04-13T21:59:41.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, others write microfiction. (I write 100-word stories.) There are several journals (online and print) that publish it. You don't ask about publishing, but you could start with &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Tiny_Text&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;@Tiny_Text&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.100wordstory.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;100WordStory&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecupboardpamphlet.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cupboard&lt;/a&gt; publishes really interesting chapbooks of tiny fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any online communities, but they might be out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T21:59:41.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21654" CreationDate="2016-04-14T02:01:27.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your mind the barrier is. Hmm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bad Yoda jokes aside, aside from hard core rigid genre-ists (think Tolkein fan fiction)  everything is a continuum. You could call Peter Pan a space opera in a way. It's an epic with space travel, but generally it's more of a fantasy. Similarly the Cameron movie Avatar is a clash of a science fiction Earth culture and a fantasy based Pandora culture within the same fictional universe. It brings to mind greek epics where swords and technical ingenuity clashed with magical beings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as Clarke is quoted ad nauseum &quot;Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.&quot; A theme which was ever present in his work. Epic Sci-fi almost always has some kind of mysticism, which others answering here have noted. What some call hard magical fiction, has the same high degree of technicality as hard science fiction. A magical universe can have very complicated laws, both large and small, which govern how one operates upon them, little different to quantum physics, chemistry, etc. And there's plenty of real world occult sources to draw on if you want a whole treatise on what one practitioner thinks is the correct way to look at something, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you throw in broadly referential works like Hitch-hikers guide or Adventure Time, or yes I know lots of things that predate those. The genre lines can become almost meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And speaking of things predating things, there would be no Star Wars without Dune, and there would be no Dune without millennia of cultural knowledge, practices, myth and religion. The division of science and magic is quite a recent idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18466" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T02:01:27.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21705" CreationDate="2016-04-14T02:02:48.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting notion. If you consider how a normal scientific research paper is set up :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Title&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introduction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Materials and Methods&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistical analysis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discussion of Results/effect of bias&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestions for further research&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Financial disclosures&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I would place your chosen name in both abstract and introduction but not in author or title. You can then use such nomenclature throughout. The name itself doesn't really matter; personally I'd make it funny in an ironic way. A recent brain protein was named &quot;sonic hedgehog,&quot; for instance. You should also disclose in the discussion section the bias of being one's own researcher.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T02:12:15.253" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T02:12:15.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21704" CreationDate="2016-04-14T05:38:29.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The night watch series (Sergei Lyuenko) each book is made up of sub-stories each of which has several central protagonists as well as sub-protagonists who are antagonists in other stories. This sounds like what you are trying to do.&#xA;Peter F. Hamilton also writes a lot of stories with a LOT of protagonists but generally has one main storyline and then sub-plots moving along in tandem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are two series that handle multiple main characters well but in completely different ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the important thing is to make sure none of the storylines are throwaway or pointless and that your characterisation is honest to each character's identity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18602" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T05:38:29.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21719" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21721" CreationDate="2016-04-14T11:27:53.257" Score="3" ViewCount="1872" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been a few very good answers and comments. The feedback I've got so far has made me question whether I'm even going into the right direction with my story. I felt like the themes and dilemmas of the story (see below) would suit a YA-audience and was very similar to a coming-of-age story, but now I realize that it's really rather different. So right now I'm torn between turning it into more of a coming-of-age story (which would change it significantly) or leave it as it is and make it more of an all-age story. I also like Lauren's idea of multiple protagonists with parallel storylines a lot. Anyways, my head hurts now, but I think I see a lot clearer now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot for everyone's input so far!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case anybody is still interested, here's the original rephrased problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently exploring/plotting/mulling over a novel idea of mine that I would like to write for a YA audience. It's a story about finding your place in the world, about living according to your values, about questioning assumptions, about sticking up against authority and about who gets to decide what a society should be like. (Phew!) Lots of stuff, I know, but it came together rather nicely all on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, I think the themes fit nicely for a YA audience. However, the way the story is going right now the protagonist is in his early 30s. Every time I try to make him younger the story gets weaker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is set in a near-future totalitarian society which works by subtle manipulation rather than oppression so most people don't care much that they aren't &quot;free&quot;. The media is used to keep the population dumb, distracted and lethargic. Think Orwell's 1984 but more modern and subtle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist has always been convinced that the usual wisdom (as perpetuated by the media) of getting a good (government approved) education, getting a job, getting a family and settling down, was the path to happiness and he dedicated his whole life to that goal. When the story starts he is just a few years out of college but has already achieved much. He has everything he ever fought for, however it feels hollow and empty. He does love his family but he realizes that all his life and that of everyone else in this society is completely controlled and restricted and he has just been too busy to notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's not exactly the courageous type but he does have an independent mind. So, still being somewhat young and naive, he starts to follow up on his intuition about the oppressive nature of the society he lives in. At this point he doesn't think of rebellion. He just wants to verify (or refute) his theory about the manipulative nature of the society he lives in and is looking for like-minded people to discuss his thoughts. He starts to visit corners of the internet that one shouldn't be seen in. He voices opinions that don't sit well with the establishment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What he doesn't realize though is just how tight the grip of the government can become. He finds out soon enough, when the government takes note and starts framing him as an enemy of society in order to discredit and silence him. His family, friends and colleagues renounce him. For one because they trust the establishment but also because it can be dangerous to be associated with a known criminal. In order to protect his family (and his own life) he decides to go into hiding. He joins an underground rebellion as a new safe haven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the story revolves around coping with the loss of his family, the disorientation of finding out that his values are not his own, that his views of the world are wrong and the personal growth that results from that struggle. And, of course, the dangerous life as a rebel fighting a Big-Brother-style regime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key points are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He didn't want to lose his family. His fall from grace was due to him being naive and underestimating the seriousness of he situation but it was &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; on purpose. He feels very, very guilty for deserting his family. The fact that his family now thinks of him as a criminal is a major cause of pain for him. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He wants to win back his family but doesn't know if he should even try. Is it egotistical to want his family back and possibly endanger them in the process? Should he let them heal and go on with their lives on their own? Do they even want him back? Is it time to move on? Would they follow him into the underground if he could make them see the true nature of this society? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is a rebellion even a good idea? Apparently most people are too numb or busy to even notice the oppression. If most people are content being sheep, shouldn't he let them be sheep? Or should he wake them up? Do they even want to be woken up?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He realizes that he values freedom a lot. But is it wise to actually &quot;live&quot; this value when it means he will endanger others in the process? Is it better &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The things that drive his story are these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;His family ties him to his old life. Without the family it would be too easy for him to cut his ties and move on. A side point: I want his kids to be old enough to understand what's going on. I've got scenes in my mind where he stalks his own family (to be close to them) and overhears conversations of the kind &quot;Mum, why is daddy evil now?&quot; (Yes, I can be a sadist with my characters).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The wake-up effect. This realization that society is not what it seems to be. He lived life according to the rules and values of society. He thought he had it all figured out but realizes that he doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: he should have something that ties him to his old life and he should have this wake-up effect. As a teenager your whole world is changing anyways, so I feel that this process of leaving behind your old life and orienting yourself in a new world comes a lot more natural and is not nearly as traumatic. Everybody else around you is going through the same thing, after all. Making him older and more established really makes the story stand out and much stronger, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So (finally!) my question is twofold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it ok to write a young adult novel with an older protagonist?&#xA;Will this appeal to a young adult audience?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to make the protagonist younger (18 - 20) without&#xA;considerably weakening the story?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus Question:&#xA;Most YA novels have somewhat of an upbeat ending. I'm not sure of the ending yet but I've got a feeling it's going to be bitter sweet. It's going to be somewhat of a happy end but it will come at a price. One of the takeaways is that you have to make sacrifices, you can't have it all and that you have to learn to cope with that fact if you want to live a happy live. The protagonist will have peace in the end, but also regrets and lingering pains. Is that YA-compatible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18609" LastEditorUserId="18609" LastEditDate="2016-04-15T13:28:05.317" LastActivityDate="2021-05-13T17:49:59.967" Title="YA novel with old protagonist?" Tags="|characters|genre|audience|young-adult|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21719" CreationDate="2016-04-14T14:12:43.653" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your listed themes and goals are at cross-purposes. You have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finding your place in the world&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;living according to your values&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;figuring out what really matters to you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;questioning assumptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sticking up against authority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who gets to decide what a society should be like&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;balancing desires that are equally important but can't be reconciled&#xA;(the rebellion and the family)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;making sacrifices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;deciding which sacrifices are worth it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;coming of age story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;struggling with the tension between your ideals and the way the world&#xA;actually works&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;figuring out that you can't have it all and that that's ok&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You really have several stories going on here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;person comes of age, has to find his/her place in the world, figure&#xA;out his/her own values. &lt;em&gt;(almost every YA novel ever)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;person living in totalitarian society which dictates all&#xA;parts of life, and protagonist must decide &lt;em&gt;whether&lt;/em&gt; to fight the&#xA;power. Does society even want or need change?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;person must decide whether to sacrifice an established life,&#xA;including a spouse and dependent children, in order to save the&#xA;greater good.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while these are three interesting stories, they are not the &lt;em&gt;same&lt;/em&gt; story. You can't have the protagonist of the YA story who is trying to figure out where she belongs in the world &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; be the 30YO middle manager who is willing to abandon his wife and children and join an underground rebellion for The Good Of The Many. That person IS &quot;of age.&quot; Losing your established life and dependents is a very different fear/risk/loss than &quot;finding your place in the world&quot; for the first time. You are right that making the middle manager younger would weaken his plotline/character, but someone who's older and established cannot have the flailing, lost, unanchored feelings you're also trying to pursue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most straightforward way to deal with this, I think, is have multiple protagonists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have your Katniss YA heroine who is just waking up to the wider world and realizing how Big Brother is controlling everything. Then you have your Winston Smith middle manager who finds himself arrested and then on the run. Your third plot can be the world-weary rebel leader who has seen this rebellion go on for a while, has seen the toll it takes on the lives of the Winstons and the Katnisses, and is trying to decide whether it's worth it or whether she should chuck it all and go back to &lt;em&gt;her&lt;/em&gt; own life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T14:12:43.653" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21704" CreationDate="2016-04-14T16:57:10.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do whatever you want in your novel. I am writing a book with 4 protagonists, which goes against the rules as well. But if you have enough skill, you can do it. Look at Orson Scott Card's Enders game--I've heard he does this in the book. (Only with 2 characters, not 3.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastEditorUserId="16622" LastEditDate="2016-04-16T11:59:28.393" LastActivityDate="2016-04-16T11:59:28.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21727" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-15T07:33:31.657" Score="2" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a large amount (a couple thousand) of rather small text files with short notes or stories. I use them to generate ideas on topics I'm writing about. My problem is that these are just text files on my computer; there is no index and no database. Every time I write something, I add new files. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a software that can manage all those snippets and has a full text search engine built in. The best solution would be something that I can run on a server, so that I can access my library from anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are you guys using? How are you mastering your snippet collection?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18623" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-04-19T15:34:45.257" LastActivityDate="2016-04-19T15:34:45.257" Title="How can a writer efficiently manage many text snippets?" Tags="|tools|software|organization|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21719" CreationDate="2016-04-15T09:31:46.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually think that this story would work better with someone who is 18-20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read any YA novels for a few years now, so I don't know at which point plots and themes might be deemed &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; complex for such an audience, but here is what I would do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being early 30s with a wife and kids and a stable job is not only normal for a lot of people, it is the &lt;em&gt;dream&lt;/em&gt; for a lot of people. So having your protagonist then feel this is 'wrong' would possibly alienate a lot of readers right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, having such a young person already have an 'established life' is more unusual. It will signify that he never really got to live a rebellious lifestyle, and readers will immediately be suspicious of the protagonists life, meaning it will make more sense when &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; becomes suspicious of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, being so young and having a family isn't wrong, it happens a lot, but it is less common and not necessarily something sought after by a lot of young people in the modern day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way when your MC leaves his family and joins the rebellion, he initially feels like he has walked out of a trap, and that that was not the life he was supposed to have. This would alleviate him of any guilt he has when pursuing another romantic entanglement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then have something happen later in the story when he is fully committed to the rebellion that makes his resolve waver. Maybe he sees a family die that is similar to his own, and he then thinks about the responsibility he has to &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;, and whether he has made the right choice. Maybe sprinkle in a couple of things that the rebellion does to make him doubt further, like torturing POWs for information or committing war crimes for 'the greater good', showing that neither side is &lt;em&gt;fully&lt;/em&gt; in the 'right'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He will then doubt whether he has just been caught up with more propoganda, just from the other side, and then needs to find a middle ground. He will also consider that he actually might have &lt;em&gt;truly&lt;/em&gt; loved his family, and he now realizes he abandoned them, and doubts how much the governmental conditioning had a hand in the choices he made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This actually gives him a &lt;em&gt;choice&lt;/em&gt;, as there are reasons to accept and reject both sides, as opposed to setting up an obvious choice and giving him no say. That is the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; freedom he chooses, instead of only being able to accept his life or seek to destroy everything about it. Give him reasons to want aspects of both lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also makes the final decision more meaningful, and ends in the bittersweet way you wanted. Either he betrays the rebellion and allows the status quo to continue in order to save his family (and the countless others like them), or he needs to ruin the lives of many people in order to give them freedom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're struggling to find reasons &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the government have encouraged him to have multiple children by the age of 18, then just add in something like that they are using a significant proportion of the population (maybe like 50%) and training them to be soldiers to colonize other planets (depending on how far in the future this story is set) and wipe out alien races in order to steal their planets or resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or they could be using them as forced labor, or using them for meat etc. but using them as dispensable fodder for any reason will make up the protagonists mind once he finds out that it is the government that is really the ones that need to be stopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T09:31:46.417" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21727" CreationDate="2016-04-15T17:46:20.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Evernote and MS One Note for all of my writing work.  You can make separate/unlimited notebooks for everything, save web pages and items from the web.  You are also able to search all your text in both.  You are able to make audio files in both that you are also able to search.  In Evernote, you are able to create tags for all of your work that makes it easier to search and catalogue everything also.  Both of these programs are great for writers and they both work on all platforms and there are both free and premium versions.  OneNote is part of Office 365, but there is also a web version which is free.  They are laid out differently, it just depends on which one you like best.  I use them both for different things, especially when I am doing research on the web - I use EverNote when I am using Google/Android and OneNote when I am using Explorer/Edge.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You are able to access your files/Notebooks from anywhere/device/platform.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18629" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T17:46:20.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21727" CreationDate="2016-04-15T19:33:19.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't used it for exactly this kind of thing, but I'd recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Confluence&lt;/a&gt;. It's a wiki software that does full-text searching of everything in it (even attached files). I use it primarily for storing a large collection of PDFs. It's fast, and it's intended to be installed on a server. The $10 for the cheapest license is very affordable for the functionality you get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T19:33:19.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21733" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-15T19:51:16.660" Score="3" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is an appropriate title for an introductory section where I introduce myself, the author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a series of short educational web books for learning to do web development, and I want to include a section in the first book where I introduce myself. I'm having difficulty with the title for this section, though. Normally, I'd just use the word &quot;introduction&quot; -- but I'm already using  using that for the section actually introducing the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the typical name for a section like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18630" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-04-16T17:48:36.767" LastActivityDate="2016-04-16T17:48:36.767" Title="Name for introductory section about the author" Tags="|forewords|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21733" CreationDate="2016-04-15T20:12:01.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest &lt;em&gt;About the Author&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Preface&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T20:12:01.887" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21649" CreationDate="2016-04-15T20:48:57.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is dangerous to switch POVs. It is difficult enough to succeed as a writer, so why stack more obstacles if you do not have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with @What. The reader will like the character or the world. If the reader identifies with the POV character, switching POV would be detrimental.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple POVs are more adapted to very detail led epic worlds, and are generally embedded there from the start. Else, there are long series with different POVs for each book. &#xA;A good illustration of switching POVs from one book to another are the Discworld and Xanth series. However, you will note that in these and other example given there are many POVs. So, it seems that what normally works is one POV or many POV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For just a few POV look at the Chalion “trilogy” by LMM Bujold, each book has a very different POV and story. Readers respond very differently to each book. Many do not consider it a series but 3 independent books in the same world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2016-04-15T20:54:52.553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T20:54:52.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21727" CreationDate="2016-04-15T23:34:43.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Literary Machine&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literarymachine.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.literarymachine.com/&lt;/a&gt;) is exactly about storing, finding, and connecting lots of small texts (and more). I never used it much, but the concept was very nice, so it is not really a recommendation, but a research hint. It is local, not server, Windows, I presume. The current version is free (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literarymachine.com/the-literary-machine-database-and-creativity-software/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the download page&lt;/a&gt;) but a little old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4075" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T23:34:43.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21438" CreationDate="2016-04-16T12:10:18.883" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first-person narrator, as Lauren Ipsum's answer points out, readily lends itself to namelessness. The problem here would be that the first person narrator is usually invisible anyway. Explicitly thematising namelessness is perhaps best achieved by taking something conventionally visible and making it ostentatiously invisible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Freud's Totem and Taboo discusses certain primitive prohibitions on saying names, as well as the forms of their survival in modern civilisation. It also considers how this kind of belief in the magical properties of language is parcelled out socially--how leaders have special powers but also suffer correlative prohibitions--sometimes even to the point where they become indistinguishable from sacrificial victims ... all of which seems relevant to your premise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18636" LastActivityDate="2016-04-16T12:10:18.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21719" CreationDate="2016-04-16T15:28:57.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of examples of novels about adults written for young people in the canon. Look at Rosemary Sutcliffe for example. But this involves a different view of how a reader identifies with a work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally, most works were written for the reader looking outward. They were windows. For children or young adults, they were about looking forward to adulthood and the assumptions of its responsibilities, not to what you were but what you were trying to become. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fashion today, however, seems to be more the mirror than the window. The focus is not on other but on self, not on what you want to be but what you are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would love to see a return to an emphasis on fiction as window rather than mirror. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But whether you prefer your fiction to be mirror or window, I think it the questions about making such a book work are not technical, but cultural. Are you writing an outward looking book for young adults who want to look outward? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-04-16T15:28:57.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21740" CreationDate="2016-04-16T18:17:24.810" Score="1" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many writers employ an interviewing technique in order to give characters depth and realism within a plot. This makes sense to me and is a solid practice for creating deep, meaningful characters that foster realistic relationships within the prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is regarding characters who age noticeably throughout the course of a single novel. My specific example is a protagonist who is 25 years old in the first act, and after a gap which is not directly portrayed, is 46 in the second act. To add to this, there is also a potentially life changing event planned for the first act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I interview this character as a 20 year old, a 40 year old, or at both ages, as separate interviews?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18121" LastEditorUserId="18121" LastEditDate="2016-04-16T19:24:39.380" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T17:11:03.857" Title="Character interviews - how to handle characters that age noticeably within a single novel" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21739" CreationDate="2016-04-17T01:51:39.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both ages as separate interviews, since his answers will be different and you will have to handle his responses differently. In the second interview, he can even look back and say &quot;Yeah, I remember the first time you asked me this. I can't believe I said X! Now I know thus-and-such and it's &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; Y.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T01:51:39.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21649" CreationDate="2016-04-17T04:16:12.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can most definitely add POVs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reader, I don't remember ever being bothered by multiple POVs (other than in a suspense sort of way, as in I'm interested in what POV A has going on right now, then it switches to POV B, but it's a good way to get pages turning), and it could be an excellent tool for adding information you think is necessary about multiple characters without an info dump or having to carefully work in backstory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Diana Gabaldon is a master at this in the &lt;em&gt;Outlander&lt;/em&gt; series- Book 1 was first-person POV, and only one person. The remaining novels so far switch between TP POV and first-person POV (always the same original POV in first-person. Everyone else in third person), and each person is distinct. It adds so much depth to each person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Veronica Roth is another example that I think pulled this off well - first 2 books in one POV, and the last one in 2 POVs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18641" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-04-18T19:54:26.157" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T19:54:26.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21742" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-17T13:57:03.233" Score="0" ViewCount="4274" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;cue Team America song&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, now that you know I like to have fun with my writing... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to write a montage in prose fiction. It would be a sort of a wizard training sequence, or something to that effect (pretty close). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously montages are easier to do in movies, as they're a very movie-focused technique, which are basically film-editing at work on sequences shot on film. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Novels could conceivably do the same thing, as it's story-telling, but there's obviously different strengths and weaknesses to the two different mediums (media?). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The context: four years ago (in-story) a bunch of rifts opened up above all the major cities of the world (Earth). These brought through monsters, and gave people super powers, wherein they are able to either do things with super powers naturally, such as wield an element (fire, lightning, ice, whatever) or some other set of related powers. Ninja types could use shadow powers or even actual invisibility, for instance. It's generally tied in conceptually. If a character's power-concept is storms, you can usually fling lightning from your hands, be immune to electrocution, and even fly, as storms are often windy. That's one example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character I'm writing this story about is that character's girlfriend. She is able to manipulate Rift energy, where it exists. She doesn't have inherent elemental powers like her boyfriend. He's limited to storm-based powers. His best friend has rock powers - the ability to manipulate the ground in various ways, and even to create rock-skin for a short duration. He can only control dirt, rock, earth stuff (not really trees, that's a different power, just literal rock. (No surprise, he loves rock-n-roll. It's kinda his thing.) Another female member of the group has a few psychic powers, such as mind-reading and invisibility. They're not as destructive, so she can use them for longer - they have a lower mana cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This girl learns how to weave effects with Rift energy. She has the whole range of powers to work with, but a more limited amount of willpower and energy/mana/whatever to work with. She has an affinity for healing powers, and is usually called up for patching them up (it takes longer the nastier the wound, it's not an instant process). The title I want to go for is Cliche Healer Girl, which tested interestingly somewhere else. I was talking about a JRPG stereotype, which is the shy, meek, kinda not-very-interesting, but &quot;pure&quot; character type in soooooooo many JRPGs. Girls who are 100% pure are the default in a lot of fantasy, it sometimes seems, not so much in the west, but in the east, at least in games, you get the stereotype. I titled a post Cliche Healer Girl, to see if the forum had experienced this a lot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And someone thought &quot;Oh man, I thought this was going to be a story!&quot; I think they loved the title, too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Years later, I've just come up with my story. This character, who starts of kinda shy and plain and pure, but also a bit Ivory Tower syndrome (think Rapunzel or the stereotype of the fair princess) goes through magical training that opens her mind and strengthens her as a character. Not sure exactly what she'll go through, but at some point, I think it might be useful to have a learning montage. It'll be a short story, after all, though it could probably spin out into a novella naturally. I don't know for sure, I'll see where it goes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the question is, how to do a montage in prose form? I &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; the word is a french one from literary theory circles, so does that mean it originally came from written narrative? If it did, I think I'd know about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In film and TV, you can do a montage much easier than in a book, I think. You get training montages the most, as well as lock-and-load and power ups in more fantastic stories (ie Power Rangers and Sailor Moon). Even Rocky had a montage! (I'll stop now, promise)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think readers coming across a montage might find it hilarious, as you normally get it on screen. Team America sings a song explaining how to do a training montage in film. Can't say I've seen too many montages in games, but I'm sure there's one at the end of Mass Effect 3 when the Alliance finally descend on Earth for the showdown. Been a while since I played it though. Could be off, but I swear I remember that happening! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't been able to find a whole heap of advice on this particular way of doing montages. The general advice is &quot;context needed&quot;, so I've said everything I've worked out SO FAR. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The setting is very apocalyptic, with ruined cities, and there are references to nerd culture (that does of course irk some while delighting many others, from what I understand. But with the type of humour it displays, a montage wouldn't be out of place. I just don't really know how to do one in prose, as it's not, to my knowledge, a prose device but a visual device, even if the word and definition first would have appeared in books. (I have a book on critical and literary terms, which I'll be referring to for more info.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that's everything I've currently got. I hope that's a good explanation (I seem to be doing well here! :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18646" LastActivityDate="2019-12-06T18:59:24.297" Title="How to write montages in prose? (fantasy novel)" Tags="|technique|narrative|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8038" CreationDate="2016-04-17T14:42:45.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sci fi and fantasy get shelved together in the bookstore because they are such interchangeable sub-genres of the one umbrella genre: speculative fiction. What would life be like if X happened or existed? You get one cool thing that doesn't exist for free; the rest you have to earn by telling a good story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Around 2003, I discovered D&amp;amp;D. D&amp;amp;D isn't so much a game as a TOOLBOX for playing games of the adventure type. They have stories, and you can draw on so many inspirations, both those mentioned in the published rulebooks, and those that aren't. D&amp;amp;D is a game, and is one part dice rolling, one part statistics, and about a million parts storytelling. The setting is typically of the fantasy variety, but that definition is to writers what an arts degree is to a Starbucks employee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Telling a speculative fiction story is to pick and choose which &lt;em&gt;elements&lt;/em&gt; to use, and which not to. What monsters, spells, hero types, gods, landscapes, types of societies, tech levels, etc do you WANT to use? Answer that and then go ahead and USE them. Stuff what the naysayers say - you can use ANY story or setting element you want, as long as you tell an engaging story. A painter chooses which colours, types of paints, brushes, surface, size, easel, and so on to use to create his or her painting. There are methods to achieving success, and there's a lot of art knowledge to help you understand what you're doing, but ultimately, it comes down to what you WANT to paint. It's the same with writing speculative fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone who says you CAN'T have science in your fantasy fails to understand fantasy. Those who demand that all fantasy follow the same formula is missing the whole point of fantasy to begin with - anything goes! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18646" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T14:42:45.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20975" CreationDate="2016-04-17T15:06:31.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like that they're not romantic interests. It seems to always be romantic these days. In modern movies, and a bunch of YA books, it's often mandatory that they fall in love/have sex/sexual tension. It's like, a law or something of stories these days. But you DON'T. The sheer number of stories that have the woman be the romantic interest is just mind-boggling, and kinda transparently forced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example I like from a great author is David and Megan from The Reckoners by Brandon Sanderson. David sees Megan for the first time and is awestruck. He's almost never met a girl before, and he's actually surprised that she sees right through his transparent wooing attempts. At first he doesn't know what he did wrong to offend her, but she's quickly made up her mind about him. He does win her over later, but he has to &lt;em&gt;work&lt;/em&gt; for it. Prove he's not as clueless as he seems (he comes off a naive kid at first though). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's an example where the romantic interest is clearly not interested, at least not at first, and she's just that much stronger than he is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhere along the line, a lot of people decided that every story has to have a romance subplot. It's so in-vogue that a lot of other readers I know are getting sick of it. I mean sure, love, sex and relationships are part of the normal human experience, and it's messy, and books can help us navigate our own. To have that missing is to make people really sad and frustrated, so love does make life better. Not easier, just more bearable with someone by your side and on your side. (Being a hopeless romantic in a hookup culture is a special kind of Hell!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not many mainstream books or movies or games deal with man-woman relationships as anything BUT romantic or sexual, or at least with tension or potential. It's in the Hollywood Handbook. Don't bother looking it up. :p (Hey, that's a great title for a book I could write on the three main story-telling industries, ie the big buck ones - books, games and movies). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harry Potter was originally supposed to end up with Hermione because of course he was. I loved how she and Ron ended up together instead. They are a classic opposites-attract deal. Harry is the every teen. Hermione is little miss genius, while Ron is ginger loser. Pretty much every fan liked that better. It might have been more interesting if Harry never actually got a girlfriend that it ever worked out with, though. (He did end up marrying his biggest fan, Ginny, ie Ron's star-struck younger sister. At least you know there that she likes him for him, not his fame. That's not a bad way to do it. Him NOT getting a girl, at least in the seven books so far, would certainly make for an interesting alternative to the standard rules of books, where all characters that are good end up happily ever after. Happy endings are always more popular, but sad endings are where you can really show your teeth as a writer. You can also show you aren't pandering to the fans by having a non-romantic, non-sexual friendship. It'd be a good idea to give readers a break from the kinds of stories where it has to be a HEA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18646" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T15:06:31.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21739" CreationDate="2016-04-17T17:11:03.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I like the concept of character interviews, in this special case, I would sketch the entire character's biography. In that way you not only have a clear idea of the character's personality state at the two times of your story, but you will also have a keen sense of the character's development in-between (think Boyhood here). It's more work, but for me, it pays off in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to stick with the interviews, I would definitely do the extra work and write both interviews. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T17:11:03.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7460" CreationDate="2016-04-17T20:27:07.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;It is hard to describe great pain if you've never felt it yourself.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is better to write scenes like this in an omniscient POV, because you can focus both on the feeling itself and on what is happening. If you were in a first-person POV, the focus would be more on the pain. Here are two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then the knife slashed at my arm. Pain erupted, blocking my vision. My arm felt like it was on fire, and my head spun. I could barely see what the man standing above me was doing. My eyes rolled back in my head and I gave a deep, &#xA;guttural roar of pain.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then the knife cut through his right arm. He writhed, roaring with pain on the ground. The man above him laughed and wiped the knife clean, ready for a more fatal stab. His eyes rolled back in his head and he gave the loudest roar of all, a shout that shook the walls.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, with option one, there is a more blind perspective of the situation that leaves out the key details, of, for example, the man readying the knife. Option two, however, gives a more broad overview of both the man's and the rest of the perspectives and feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18650" LastEditorUserId="18650" LastEditDate="2016-04-17T21:28:59.900" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T21:28:59.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21747" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21756" CreationDate="2016-04-17T22:20:49.073" Score="1" ViewCount="326" Body="&lt;h1&gt;I am currently writing a high fantasy novel.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing this novel, which is set in a different world, I am having some trouble giving the Tolkien feel of a multi-cultured world. I have tried to use, by studying international mythology, creatures different than Tolkien's typical elves and dwarves and hobbits and whatnot. But I am still having trouble conveying the feel of a world the has many races and cultures and species, even if the main character is human. What could help me give this effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18650" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T16:06:54.770" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T16:06:54.770" Title="How to create an &quot;otherworldy&quot; feel in a fantasy novel?" Tags="|creative-writing|fantasy|research|world-building|mythology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21747" CreationDate="2016-04-17T23:18:52.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possibly, this might be better off on Worldbuilding. Either way, what do you mean by a feeling of many races/cultures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in Tolkien's world, the races did not mix a great deal, nor did people move around on a global scale. You could use a similar mechanism - the main protagonist, being human, has, of course, heard of the other races, but hasn't had a great deal of interaction with them. He doesn't speak any of their languages and doesn't know their customs. The stories, also, don't quite match the reality (i.e. He grew up hearing stories where elves are 10 feet tall and can shoot lightning from their...eyes...but, upon meeting one, finds that they are only 6 feet tall and don't shoot lighting - although this never stops him from constantly watching for sparks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the other thing to remember, in most Fantasy, it's not a global world - for the vast majority, long distance travel as we know it just doesn't exist. People tend to stay in their own little corners of the world. They might know of someone's cousins wife's uncle who once ventured into the neighbouring kingdom or even further, but for the most part, it's rather sedentary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T23:18:52.470" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21749" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-18T00:33:34.213" Score="4" ViewCount="465" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel with an ensemble cast. Each chapter is told from a different person's point of view. Some of the chapters are about a non-sentient machine that communicates with the human characters. It's not a sentient android like R2D2 from Star Wars or the killer machine from the Terminator movies or Data from Star Trek. It's no more self-aware than a very sophisticated machine, but many of its actions and communications drive the plot and decisions of the other characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This character will never become sentient during the story. It will never have feelings the way your laptop never has feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would I write from its point of view?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit to Add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This character only &lt;strong&gt;seems&lt;/strong&gt; intelligent and sentient.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It does not comprehend human motives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It considers human requests baffling even when it understands the requests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It seems extremely intelligent in that it has access to extraordinary amounts of knowledge and can even put that knowledge together in unpredictable ways.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18199" LastEditorUserId="18199" LastEditDate="2016-04-18T07:19:14.880" LastActivityDate="2016-04-23T19:09:12.527" Title="How do I write from a non-person point of view?" Tags="|novel|characters|character-development|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21749" CreationDate="2016-04-18T01:20:23.057" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few possibile viewpoints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An omniscient narrator who describes what the machine does and says.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of the nearby sentient beings, when any are available to observe the machine's important actions or communications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reports from someone who pieces together the machine's communications and actions from available evidence after the fact.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T01:20:23.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21749" CreationDate="2016-04-18T01:41:59.017" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write it as data inputs and responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;INPUT: USER 1 enters room&#xA;RESPOND Y/N? Y&#xA;OUTPUT_$content: {greeting}; {Salutation: 'Good'} {TOD: 1415, 'afteroon'};&#xA;INPUT: USER 1 response {&quot;Good afternoon yourself. Did you finish compiling that report?&quot;}&#xA;SEARCH_DB6b.46: report {SMITH, CHARLES: activities prior 72 hours};&#xA;LOCATED&#xA;COMPLETE Y/N? N&#xA;ET COMPLETION: 4.7 hours&#xA;OUTPUT_$content: {apology}; {report SMITH, CHARLES} {STATUS};&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-04-18T17:54:25.170" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T17:54:25.170" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21747" CreationDate="2016-04-18T11:18:42.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. Are you looking for a way to come up with exotic species or with how to convey their presence without actually showing them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's the later you could try this environmental storytelling and the use of stories within stories. Thomo already mentioned this and it's also something Tolkien did amazingly well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have people tell stories to your character. You can even make them third hand, kinda like &quot;My father once knew a miller who said that one of the cart drivers who delivered the grain to him once saw a company of elves during one of his travels... Strange fellows they where, he said. He couldn't quite see them through the leaves but they where tall and white and glimmed with an eerie light even in the dark of night, I tell ye. And they was singing a song more beautiful than any woman can sing under these here heavens!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there's rare artifacts. &quot;Do you see these runes? This blade was made in the splendid smithies of the dwarves of Coal Mountain over a hundred years ago! Look, it's still as sharp as if it was newly forged! This is a rare treasure you have here.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then of course, ruins help. &quot;The stones where mostly overgrown with ivy and moss but one could, with some effort, still make out the dimensions of these once great halls. Nearby was a crumbled statue of an elf lord of sorts. It must have stood 10 feet tall before it fell. Carl wondered if elves had really been this tall. The face of the statue was unnaturally slim and the ears ended in long, slender tips, almost as long as his fore arm. The eyes were slit-like and dark. Imposing creatures they must be, these elves!&quot; (Of course the statue is a stylized version of an elf but Carl - not knowing anything about the elven art style - doesn't realize this and takes it for a realistic depiction)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there's of course bards, messengers and other far-traveled people. In the middle ages this was how news would travel. Bards would often earn their living by telling stories and singing songs from faraway places where they had been during their travels.&#xA;Veterans could talk about this war that they fought five years ago in the far reaches of the western plains where they fought an army of Yrch and how they still have nightmares about it, proudly displaying their scars for a mug of wine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have maps where the far reaches are sketchy and labeled &quot;Elf Land&quot; or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the big cities (probably where the king resides) there might be the odd &quot;outlander&quot; on a diplomatic mission. In cities with big markets on important trade routes you might find a handful of elvish traders, offering exotic wares. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As these things go, it's always informative to look at material about the middle ages. The book Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet illustrates it well, but it is a massive tome and the part where he talks about how the islamic and the christian world learn about one another and how information travelled across Europe is just a comparatively small part of it. It's quite a good book though and definitely worth reading if you have the time. Not for the faint-hearted though. And of course, reading Tolkien is always instructive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creature design is a different topic though and probably fits best into the Worldbuilding SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18609" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T11:18:42.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21759" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-18T23:20:42.417" Score="0" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently using Dropbox to sync and backup my stories (which are generally in LaTeX).  However, I've read that it's probably a better idea to switch to a &quot;real&quot; version control system, especially to separate my LaTeX formatting changes (and restructuring) from my content changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the answer is yes, here are some of my follow-up questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I use Hg or git?  I currently use git for my programming projects, but would not mind learning Hg.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I host on my server or use a cloud service (GitLab or Bitbucket) private repository for sync and redundancy?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Misc. situational details (may already be mentioned):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Primarily single-author short stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Text is in LaTeX documents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've used Dropbox's history feature before to recover from iOS apps not playing nicely with my project's structure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a VPS I could use for file storage &amp;amp; sync&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18634" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-04-19T15:37:42.447" LastActivityDate="2016-04-19T20:20:11.643" Title="For a single author writing short stories in LaTeX, is it worthwhile to switch to a &quot;real&quot; version control system from Dropbox?" Tags="|short-story|tools|latex|version-control|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21727" CreationDate="2016-04-18T23:31:19.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Windows will already do this for you if you just turn on the search contents option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Open any folder&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Go to Tools / Folder Options&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Select the Search Tab&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Check the radio button for Always search file names and contents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The search will take longer than normal and the results aren't going to be really beautiful, but it'll give you what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not using Windows, you can still do this - just do a google search for &quot;Search in Text files linux/mac&quot; and you'll get a bunch of answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastEditorUserId="16155" LastEditDate="2016-04-18T23:36:33.397" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T23:36:33.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21749" CreationDate="2016-04-19T09:11:35.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need to overthink this. Readers will accept whatever reality you present to them so long as it is consistent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just create a set of rules for the robot's AI then write the character as you would for a human. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can only use 100 basic words and key phrases.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will only process the world as raw data. It doesn't see colors or humans; it just sees shapes and movement. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It doesn't ever make a personal judgement about the world. It only comes to logical conclusions based on its programmed parameters. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact you're expressing its thoughts in English and not binary code doesn't really matter. Readers won't question its sentience as long as you follow the rules of its AI. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to keep in mind is that a machine really doesn't have sentience. So you can't truly express its thoughts in words without giving it a veneer of human consciousness. But just as we see things on a computer screen translated from code, so too will readers assume the English words they read are translations of code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18610" LastActivityDate="2016-04-19T09:11:35.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21759" CreationDate="2016-04-19T17:46:42.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're anticipating large structural changes to your LaTeX documents, then a version control system might do you some good. If that's the case, use git since you're familiar with it. Mercurial (hg) is similar enough that you wouldn't have problems if you go that route, although the cloning and branching paradigm seems a bit different (FWIW, I'm pretty familiar with git and only a beginner with Mercurial).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for using GitLab or BitBucket, it's a cost-benefit analysis of whether you'd rather have total control (your server) versus the reliability and performance of the third-party services (GitLab or BitBucket).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Edit: Changing answer due to new data involving Dropbox potentially causing repo corruption]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastEditorUserId="18289" LastEditDate="2016-04-19T20:20:11.643" LastActivityDate="2016-04-19T20:20:11.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21764" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-19T22:06:58.773" Score="6" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always feel that a book or movie has achieved something great when I have an emotional reaction to it. For a very brief moment, the protagonist's pain, drive, happiness, or shock becomes my own. For a brief moment, I enter the world of the story. And in that brief moment, I become heavily invested in the tale before me. If the protagonist loses, I lose with him. If he triumphs, I do as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I can elicit this kind of reaction in my readers as well, I consider it a great accomplishment. Additionally though, it gets them invested in the story. They really care about the outcome. And getting the reader to care is what it's all about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; That's all well and good. The problem is that the response - that sudden surge of emotion mixed with understanding - is generally brief. It's powerful, but it doesn't last. The reader may remain invested, but the emotion, the link between reader and hero, is gone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I keep that emotional connection alive and healthy? Is there a way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/strong&gt; Spoilers to the Scorch Trails (movie) below: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I generally considered the sequel to the Maze Runner, the Scorch Trials, to be a mediocre movie (I have not read the books). It was all right, but it lacked depth. At the very end, however, the main character states that he will go back to what they just escaped, and he states his reason why. While he was speaking, I felt a brief connection. I understood, and my investment with him grew (which was fortunate, since the rest of the movie didn't do much in that department). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though the third movie is not out yet, I know that if it somehow maintained the feeling I had at the end of the second movie, I would like it. I would be invested in the hero's mission all the way through, no matter what happened. That's my question. How would such a feat be achieved? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T23:12:07.323" Title="How Can You Prolong an Emotional Reaction in the Reader?" Tags="|fiction|style|readers|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21663" CreationDate="2016-04-20T11:14:31.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Re. tenses - choice of tense is entirely up to you, but make sure you have considered the reason/s for your choice, and that they will make sense to your reader (e.g. does use of present tense make past events sound more immediate?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes re-writing a paragraph in different tenses can help clarify which tense 'feels' most suitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your reader can clearly understand when your action takes place, there should be no real issue with which tense you choose.  However, if you want to make things less explicit (leave the reader to work out what is happening when) then you may need to reconsider your choice of tenses.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re. telling a story with long flashbacks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to make sure you have strong connections between flashback and present day, a logical reason to structure a past narrative at that point, and that the flashback is always necessary to your plot.  Then structure it in a way that makes sense to you - it's your story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend asking others for feedback quite early on, to see what their impression is as readers of how both these issues are working in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18683" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T11:14:31.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6514" CreationDate="2016-04-20T12:29:54.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.storywars.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;StoryWars&lt;/a&gt; is a pretty new writing site that focuses on building each other's stories. Each chapter is written by several people, before voting commences. Then the winner gets his/her writing as the next installment in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this is what you're looking for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18685" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-04-21T16:29:40.497" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T16:29:40.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21606" CreationDate="2016-04-20T12:35:20.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are citation websites across the internet such as citationmachine.net and easybib.com that do this for you in multiple formats. I would suggest using them, as they make life much, much easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18685" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T12:35:20.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21764" CreationDate="2016-04-20T13:06:51.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if there is a way to draw out a strong emotion of a certain scene into further scenes (particularly into the sequel). You can, however, draw out the emotional scene itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen The Scorch Trials, so I don't know the scene in question, but if the character gave an emotional speech and then turned and left, you would feel the emotion for the length of the speech and the immediate aftermath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if after the speech his companions asked follow up questions to explain the decision he was making, it would prolong the scene and therefore the emotional connection to the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to do it then is to have the intensely emotional part of a scene as early into that scene as possible. Then it will be easier to ride the crest of that emotional wave through the rest of the scene, maintaining that intense emotion without drawing it out for &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; long, as that will dilute the emotional impact of the entire scene and it will be less intense or memorable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the only possible way to carry that emotion into a sequel would be to begin by reliving the memory of the incident, or perhaps showing the direct and immediate consequences/ fallout from whatever had occurred. This will certainly be a watered down version of the emotion felt from the previous scene, but will allow them to at least be in the same mindset as they were when finishing the earlier part of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T13:06:51.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21769" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21786" CreationDate="2016-04-20T13:58:24.540" Score="3" ViewCount="559" Body="&lt;p&gt;So far, I've written about 10,000 words or so and have yet to name the character. I've talked about the character a lot. But no name yet. He's the &lt;strong&gt;ONLY&lt;/strong&gt; character so far. I'm pretty sure that I don't have to mention his name yet, coz my character has been alone for the entire time. Also, so far, I've used only First Person POV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it awkward or uncomfortable for the reader not to know the name of my character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I should've mentioned this too. I don't plan to keep him unnamed for the entire story. Or even for a significant amount. Right now, there's no reason for my character's name to be mentioned. Depending on the answer, I would've decided if the character &lt;strong&gt;HAD&lt;/strong&gt; to have a name and would've found some way to insert it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18686" LastEditorUserId="18686" LastEditDate="2016-04-21T17:09:29.407" LastActivityDate="2019-02-08T20:51:48.937" Title="Is there any limit on how long a story can progress without the reader knowing the name of the character introduced so far?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|naming|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19388" CreationDate="2016-04-20T18:18:35.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can call it a Work Cited page&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18688" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T18:18:35.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21774" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-20T20:32:29.120" Score="6" ViewCount="3346" Body="&lt;p&gt;One common setup for a story goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have the heroes on one side&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have the villains on the other side&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The bad guy has an evil plot that will cause some undesirable result&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The heroes know about the plot and are trying to stop it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very frequently in such stories--in almost all of them, in fact--the villain either actually succeeds in accomplishing their goal or comes within a hair's breadth of it, with the heroes utterly defeated, before some thing happens and the good guys are finally able to improbably snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.  A few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt;: The Death Star is literally seconds away from blowing up the rebels' base when Luke scores the decisive shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thor&lt;/em&gt;: The Destroyer rampages throughout the town, defeats all of Thor's companions, and blasts Thor almost to death before he suddenly regains his worthiness and manages to turn things around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aladdin&lt;/em&gt;: The only way to stop Jafar is to literally let him win and become &lt;strong&gt;an all-powerful GENIEEEE!!!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt;: It's only possible to defeat Voldemort after Voldemort kills Harry and the Death Eaters overrun both the Wizarding government and (most of) Hogwarts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Order of the Stick&lt;/em&gt;: Not finished yet, but the story is clearly approaching the end, and there are currently two different major villains, each with their own distinct plan to effectively ruin the world as we know it.  Both are currently only one step away from total victory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on (and on and on...) but you get the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first glance you'd imagine the purpose of this device is to build tension, but that only works until you've seen it enough times to be able to predict that this is exactly what's going to happen, &lt;em&gt;again&lt;/em&gt;.  So, I have to ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any other reason to use this device in a narrative, beyond &quot;to build tension&quot;?  And what good alternatives are there to it (that don't involve the bad guy actually emerging victorious)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1933" LastActivityDate="2016-09-04T11:37:42.730" Title="Why does the villain always win right before the hero defeats him?" Tags="|plot|conflict|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21769" CreationDate="2016-04-20T20:37:28.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally people read for details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On 12 December 2014, Captain James D. Arkey sat in front of his&#xA;  computer and typed furiously.  His mind began calculating and he&#xA;  squinted at the response code that appeared on his screen and slammed&#xA;  a fist down on his desk.  &quot;They couldn't have,&quot; Arkey yelled at empty&#xA;  office.  &quot;Those dirty rotten...&quot;  A thought occurred to him and he&#xA;  opened another shell window and connected to the DefCon server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast that to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A person sat at a desk doing a thing.  The person did some other things and&#xA;  yelled out at the walls, &quot;They couldn't have!&quot;  The person&#xA;  slammed a fist on the desk the person was sitting at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details are the reason people read.  Especially fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what's the reality of that?  How many people do you not know their name (or even a handle/nickname/whatever) and yet you are interested in what they are doing?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you provide lots of details. Many amateurs think they are writing something mysteriously interesting because they are keeping a name mysterious.  But it is rare that such non-detailed writing holds a reader's interest.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2016-04-21T15:44:46.887" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T15:44:46.887" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21774" CreationDate="2016-04-20T20:41:16.463" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's an attempt to build tension to the maximum possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The villain has won.  Oh no.  Much tension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will Hero be able to get out of this?  How will Hero ever get out of this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author is hoping these unstated questions will drive tension and keep the reader interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T20:41:16.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21764" CreationDate="2016-04-20T23:12:07.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Growing up through the original (Episodes 4-6) Star Wars, I can tell you &lt;em&gt;Return of the Jedi&lt;/em&gt; was going to rock most of America no matter what it looked like. We were all invested and even enjoyed the Ewoks--sort of. The same was true, but to a lesser extent, with &lt;em&gt;The Matrix&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Terminator&lt;/em&gt; series. When the first two kick ass, the viewer/reader is invested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that doesn't really answer your question. A lot of the drama depends on the story. A love story usually ends with the hero and heroine being in love. An epic fantasy usually ends with the hero on top of a pIle of dead bodies. The emotional connection occurs as part of the drama of overcoming the obstacles the antagonists throw in the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is our task as writers. From my perspective, it's easier to describe what not to do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Don't assume your readers will automatically fall in love and be invested in your characters (except there might be exceptions with biography and historical fiction).&lt;/strong&gt; Characters should be developed. You can have action and love scenes or whatever, but initial interactions with the major players should create a feeling of a circle of friends and camaraderie against a sadistic plan to be overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Don't be front heavy with all your cool ideas.&lt;/strong&gt; Stories should build towards a climax. These are &quot;page turners.&quot; The more you build, the more invested the reader. A successful novel of 100,000 words can have the reader interested by 10,000, fascinated by 40,000, on the seat of their pants by 80,000, and up to 3 AM to finish. There's no let down there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Be wary of melodrama.&lt;/strong&gt; Intentionally eliciting a reaction usually backfires. An untimely death, a &quot;twist,&quot; a big speech--these better be well-placed and perfect to maintain a steady emotional reaction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Don't settle into one emotional state assuming your reader will jump into it every time they open the book.&lt;/strong&gt; Interspersing some comedy improves the drama and makes your characters more likable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5. Be wary of crying characters.&lt;/strong&gt; Dudes cry when their dog or spouse dies,  maybe not even in death. If your dude is crying, it must be pretty seriously believable, or he has a mental illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T23:12:07.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21769" CreationDate="2016-04-21T05:49:43.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you intentionally do not want to reveal your character's name, this could be a very interesting way to write your story; it might become awkward to read, however, although less so if you're writing in first person: in this case the reader only learns the character's name once another character calls him out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character himself knows his name; he doesn't need to think about it every hour of the day; usually you'll need to introduce it for the reader, but it remains information that can be given very late in the story, if you're careful to keep the reading comfortable without it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T05:49:43.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21774" CreationDate="2016-04-21T09:16:39.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's in order to raise the stakes of the situation. When the heroes reach a situation where they fight or they fall, it's makes you much more invested than if the heroes have to fight or meh, someone else might come along and beat the bad guys. There were probably plenty of people that &lt;em&gt;could have&lt;/em&gt; defeated The Destroyer in &lt;strong&gt;Thor&lt;/strong&gt;, but they weren't available at the time. This meant that Thor had to step up and be heroic in order to win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the time the heroes fight at the last minute because &lt;em&gt;it is&lt;/em&gt; the last minute. They go into the fight unprepared and outmatched, which is what &lt;em&gt;makes them&lt;/em&gt; heroic. They fight despite the odds being stacked against them. Usually if they had more time, most heroes could prepare much better, but then it would just be a story of two people fighting. The rebels in &lt;strong&gt;Star Wars&lt;/strong&gt; could have called for some reinforcements and fought the Death Star with many more fighters, but because they were in a race with time it meant they had to go then and there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also much easier to root for the underdog fighting against terrible situations, as opposed to supporting the person with all of the power. Which is why in stories like &lt;strong&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/strong&gt;, the Villain has to regain all of his power before the epic battle takes place. If the good guys had attempted to end the fight at the end of book 4, it would have been much easier and much less satisfying for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T09:16:39.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21774" CreationDate="2016-04-21T10:06:09.010" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is there any other reason to use this device in a narrative, beyond &quot;to build tension&quot;?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, but that's a heck of a good reason. Tension is the core of storytelling. But I do see your point about the way that the supposedly tension-increasing device of building up the stakes defeats itself when everybody knows that the heroes will win at the last moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;And what good alternatives are there to it (that don't involve the bad guy actually emerging victorious)?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;em&gt;Do&lt;/em&gt; make the bad guy actually emerge victorious. Sometimes. When your readers know that your heroes can lose and can die they'll be that much more scared in your next story, or the next part of this story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Do make the bad guy actually emerge victorious - but then have it turn out that things were not as they seemed, and his victory is a happy result. Either the bad guy was actually the good guy, or one or both sides had misunderstood the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Set your story amidst a huge conflict but only as background. The tension in your story is whether your heroes will survive. Some very gripping war movies do this. Everybody knows from history who wins WWII; they &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; know what's going to happen to Private Ryan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;em&gt;They think it's all over&amp;hellip;&lt;/em&gt;  Consider the end of the &lt;em&gt;The Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; (the books, not the films). The heroes have defeated Sauron, Aragorn has been crowned king. The hobbits return home to the dear old Shire to enjoy a well earned retirement, right? Wrong. The conflict described in &quot;The Scouring of the Shire&quot; is on a far smaller scale than the epic battles earlier, but it is gut-wrenching because you realise that nowhere is safe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-04-21T10:48:35.780" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T10:48:35.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21183" CreationDate="2016-04-21T12:47:36.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your second option is one I have seen frequently.  As an example of its use, have a look at page 19 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1501.07274&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://arxiv.org/abs/1501.07274&lt;/a&gt;, just above their equation (2.3), where they use that format of citation for a formula.  (Never forget, though, that citation style is usually dictated by the journal you are submitting to.  Be certain to check &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; editorial and style guidelines for the context-dependent answer to your question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10746" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T12:47:36.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21769" CreationDate="2016-04-21T14:03:00.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may be a good reason to do this. But in general I'd say, don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We normally identify people by their names. Sometimes we use a title or capsule description, like &quot;the mayor&quot; or &quot;Sally's brother&quot;, if we don't know the person's name or if the description is important or is how the person is addressed. Referring to a person regularly without using a name or title is just ... odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's perfectly good and valid to do something odd in a story. But only if the point is to highlight that it is odd. If your hero has amnesia and doesn't know his own name, or if the point is that he is living in total isolation and so there is no one to address him by name, not mentioning his name could certainly highlight this. I recall reading a story many years ago -- right now I don't recall anything about it but this one sentence -- where a man is stranded somewhere for many years, and when he is finally found someone calls him by name, and the writer says, &quot;He slowly realized that this was his name. It had been so long since he had heard it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But without a good dramatic reason, if you're just doing it because you think it's cool to be unconventional or you haven't needed it so far or something, I wouldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be especially jarring to the reader if this character is just &quot;I&quot; and &quot;me&quot; for half the story and then suddenly others refer to him as &quot;Mr Miller&quot; or whatever. If done wrong, the reader might be asking, &quot;Miller? Who's that? Who's this new character who has been introduced and where did he come from?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T14:03:00.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21769" CreationDate="2016-04-21T15:19:50.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are tons of beautiful stories out there with unnamed characters. Aimee Bender's collection &lt;em&gt;The Girl in the Flammable Skirt&lt;/em&gt; is full of them. None of the characters in Hemingway's &quot;Hills Like White Elephants,&quot; one of the best-known stories, are given names. In Aesop's Fables we don't learn the names of the hare or tortoise, or the ant or grasshopper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find plenty of precedence for unnamed characters in short fiction. I'm not as familiar with novels, but Cormac McCarthy's &lt;em&gt;The Road&lt;/em&gt; does that. There must be other good examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it works in your story, then go ahead boldly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T15:19:50.887" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21769" CreationDate="2016-04-21T20:56:40.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do just about anything, including leaving a character unnamed, as long as you do it well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we're in first-person POV, then leaving the character unnamed could be a way to invite the reader to identify with the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yeah, you can totally do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you plan to reveal the character's name &lt;strong&gt;eventually,&lt;/strong&gt; then it would probably be best to do so &lt;strong&gt;up front.&lt;/strong&gt; Otherwise, when you finally get around to it 370 pages in, it may seem weird or jarring. Your reader might be all, &quot;Wait...seriously? SIMONE? I didn't picture her as a 'Simone' at all. I was thinking more along the lines of a 'Janet.' Now I'm confused and distressed. I'm gonna to put this thing down and take a nap.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Potentially ok if done well:&lt;/strong&gt; letting a character go nameless as creative choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Probably not so great:&lt;/strong&gt; neglecting to mention a character's name because it hasn't come up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="343" LastEditorUserId="343" LastEditDate="2016-04-21T21:04:02.303" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T21:04:02.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21788" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-22T18:52:09.077" Score="3" ViewCount="627" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any rules for proper indentation in thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am physicist so my thesis includes number of images and equations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I think you should not indent first paragraph after:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Title of chapter, section, subsection...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Image&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Equation&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you should follow the rule &quot;One paragraph for one thought&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18709" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T18:37:35.403" Title="Bachelor thesis indentation" Tags="|formatting|scientific-publishing|latex|rules|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21789" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-23T01:37:30.970" Score="1" ViewCount="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're submitting and app to the app store and polishing up the app description. If you used something like &quot;This is the James Bond of email services&quot; would that be a copyright or trademark infringement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18711" LastEditorUserId="18711" LastEditDate="2016-04-23T18:05:34.997" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T04:19:01.107" Title="Can trademarked or copyrighted characters be referenced to in an app description on one of the app stores?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17289" CreationDate="2016-04-23T08:44:06.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading is an imaginative act on behalf of the reader which means two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to give a reader all the information necessary to imagine whatever it is you want them to imagine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Readers will imagine whatever they want and you can only control them so much. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically in more old fashioned writing you will see huge amounts of description telling us what the character looks like and what their background is. But readers form an impression of a character immediately from the rest of the story you've told and from inferences they will make. So modern stories are more likely to leave it up to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I introduce Tom as a 41-year-old plumber and the story is set in small town Ohio then I've already given you enough information. He's white, probably working class, and is balding and unfashionable. You only need to guide us around the things we'll presume from basic information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His mannerisms, his actions, his environment, and how others respond to him can tell us enough to fill in the rest. What's more important than how much information you give is how evocative the information is and the voice and style you use to tell it to us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian begins with: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of physical description not much more is given than that opening line but it tells us so much about this character already. We can also see from the style of writing that this is a stark and brooding tale and we'll read the character in that light. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There aren't any rules about how much information you need to give and just as the rest of a story shapes the character, so too does description of a character shape the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18610" LastEditorUserId="18610" LastEditDate="2016-04-23T08:50:24.160" LastActivityDate="2016-04-23T08:50:24.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21788" CreationDate="2016-04-23T12:55:03.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, you would either use block format or full indentation for the whole paper. The only major exception would be the abstract, which is usually block format to save on characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Charles Lipson has a book entitled &lt;em&gt;How to Write a BA Thesis&lt;/em&gt;, and Robert Day's &lt;em&gt;How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper&lt;/em&gt; has an index that should help. They are probably available in your library and can quickly answer individual questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-04-23T12:55:03.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21789" CreationDate="2016-04-23T14:53:05.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nope. It isn't copyright infringement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You aren't using a representation of James Bond in any way, only the idea of James Bond. Ideas are not copyrightable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further information &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aspectlg.com/posts/copyright-in-characters-what-can-i-use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see this page&lt;/a&gt; on characters and copyrights from Aspect Law Group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18074" LastActivityDate="2016-04-23T14:53:05.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21674" CreationDate="2016-04-23T16:13:12.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;First of all, every main character in the history of the world has to change in a certain way.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;That's how you know your character has grown.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it be coming out of their shell, growing up, or learning new things, your character has to change and learn something at the end of any story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, your character can't just &lt;em&gt;change.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has to be buildup, hints at a braver inside, at a stronger personality underneath the fear. A person can't become fearless in a week. They need time to grow and need to have a valid reason to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This change should take nearly the entire book to work believably, because no one starts as a total introvert and becomes a international singer overnight. They have to face their fears and defeat them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18650" LastActivityDate="2016-04-23T16:13:12.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21795" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21797" CreationDate="2016-04-23T16:35:45.237" Score="3" ViewCount="9069" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, recently one of my characters lost someone very dear to her. Some background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character has a controlling, cold family that doesn't care about her. This one person is a friend, a guide, and a mysterious person that will come in moments to comfort her. He knows everything about her, but she knows nothing of him.Then one day, he is killed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how to describe deep grief, never having felt it myself. No one really close to me has died or had anything serious happen to them, and I know trauma and grief are multilayered, confusing feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18650" LastActivityDate="2018-09-04T16:34:14.570" Title="How to describe deep loss?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21795" CreationDate="2016-04-23T17:08:37.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edit: &#xA;I reread your post and noticed you wrote that she knew nothing about him. That makes it kind of hard to grieve for a person. Grieving, at least in my opinion, presupposes some kind of connection. But it's hard to have a connection if the other person is completely closed towards you. What I wrote below still applies though. However, rather than grieving for the actual person, the feeling would probably center more around the ideas and speculations that your character had about this mysterious helper and about being alone again. Now she'll never find out about his true feelings for her or about who he really is. It's easy to build up an idealized fantasy about someone you lost. She would (could) then mourn the life she wished they would have had but that's gone now, forever. The thoughts are more along the lines of &quot;how will I handle this without him?&quot; &quot;I wonder what he would think about this&quot; &quot;I wonder if he would be proud of me&quot;, something like that. But still, it's much harder to have someone feel deep loss and grief about someone they didn't really know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, everybody grieves differently, I guess, so there is likely no universally True Way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it's generally better to rely on your own feelings for descriptions rather than following some recipe that someone posts here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe try to relate it to a less intense form of grief or pain that you have felt. The loss of a pet or a really good friend who moved away. A break up. Something like that. Than really dig into that feeling. Get lost in it for a while. Try to intensity it in your mind, concentrate on the bodily sensation of it and the self talk that happens inside your mind. Then try to relate to that loss that your character is feeling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again, plain old imagination might do the trick. Close your eyes and imagine the person (or animal) that means the most to you. Make it really vivid. Sight, sound, smell, touch, the whole thing. Ten imagine that person being killed, right before your eyes. Again, make it vivid. Stay with the feeling. It's not going to be nice but that's the point. Then imagine what your ordinary life would be like. All the situations where you would notice that they are not there. When you come home and they are not there to greet you. The place where they always liked to sit, now empty. The places you loved to go to together. Things you liked to do together. Mutual friends. Seeing their favorite food somewhere. Seeing someone in the street who reminds you of them. That sort of thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, if none of that helps: here's my take, based on my experiences. The pain is almost physical, somewhere in the middle of the torso. You want it to go away but you can't. The initial shock can be disorienting, you might feel dizzy, your sight might go blurry, your knees might grow weak. You might be at a loss of words. Maybe you'll feel empty inside, unable to accept or even process the situation. You'll probably be unable to do anything at the same level that you used to be able to. You won't be able to enjoy anything at all for a few days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the initial pain will pass after a day or two, especially when you have someone to talk to and when you give in to the pain. If not it can take considerably longer. The worst thing though is the emptiness that this person left behind. You'll be reminded of them by the most innocent and banal of things. As I already wrote: places where you've been together, their favorite food, stuff they used to hate, stuff they used to like, etc. And every time it stings. Every time the pain comes back. Not as strong as in the beginning but bad enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty pale description and might be hard to transfer into your story. As I said, it's best to draw upon your own experiences, even if you have to stretch yourself to get them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18609" LastEditorUserId="18609" LastEditDate="2016-04-23T18:43:14.440" LastActivityDate="2016-04-23T18:43:14.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21805" CreationDate="2016-04-23T17:32:30.050" Score="1" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it better to start writing without making notes or do I have a few notes set up and then start writing? Or the other way, where I simultaneously write the novel AND the notes?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18686" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T14:53:44.887" Title="Notes first or just start writing?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21749" CreationDate="2016-04-23T19:09:12.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is your story purpose for giving the machine POV? Why does the reader need to get inside the machine's &quot;head?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to show the machine's limitations, it can be done with a POV human struggling to get the machine to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if you intend for the machine to make an important mistake at some point, then I can see using the machine's POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12987" LastActivityDate="2016-04-23T19:09:12.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21774" CreationDate="2016-04-23T19:30:07.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a matter of how high you want the drama to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Author Aaron Michael Ritchie has offered this example (and I like to use it):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's compare a typical episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation to one from the reboot of Battlestar Galactica.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both episodes there is the Unthinkable Occurrence that must be avoided because it's awful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In STNG, we follow the crew as they struggle to avoid the UO, and just barely succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In BG, we follow the cast as they struggle to avoid the UO, and just barely fail. The UO happens, and things get even worse. The cast struggles and just barely succeeds at coping with the new circumstances, drawing on the best of who they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is the more interesting story? That's a matter of preference. Which is the more exciting story? I think Battlestar Galactica wins, because it uses a story arc that is almost unavoidably more exciting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12987" LastActivityDate="2016-04-23T19:30:07.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21798" CreationDate="2016-04-24T03:59:53.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's possible to give a definitive answer to this question. Different people have different styles. Do what works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write non-fiction. (I've got two false starts on novels that I've set aside to work on another non-fiction book.) I try to collect all my raw information in a mass of notes, not necessarily well organized, and dump them into a big MS Word file. Then I work my way through that file turning the notes into (hopefully) comprehensible text. I flesh out explanations, re-arrange blocks of text into a coherent order, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You certainly COULD write a novel that way. Write a mass of notes about who does what and when. Then go back and edit this into complete sentences, add connecting events, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't think most fiction writers work that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should certainly know where you're going. I forget where I heard it, but one writer said that the ending of a story should be a surprise to the reader, but not to the writer. If you find it helpful to sketch out how the story will go, and then go back and fill in the details, great. If you find you write better when you just make it all up as you go along, that's great too. If you're not sure what works for you, try it both ways and see which works better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always be savage with your own text. If you find that a scene in your story adds nothing and/or doesn't really fit, cut it out. It doesn't matter how much time you spent working on it. I've had plenty of times that I've labored for days over some long section of a book, and then when I came back and re-read it I said, This is worthless. It will just confuse the reader, or take him off on a total tangent from the point I'm trying to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T03:59:53.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21789" CreationDate="2016-04-24T04:19:01.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would certainly not be copyright infringement. Copyright law explicitly says that you cannot have a copyright to a general idea, a name, or a title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be trademark infringement. Usual disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand: My understanding of trademark law is that for it to be trademark infringement, it has to have the potential to confuse potential customers. Like if you started your own hamburger restaurant and called it &quot;McDonald's Hamburgers&quot;, you would clearly be guilty of trademark infringement. If you are not trying to trick people to come to your restaurant instead of a real McDonalds, it certainly sounds like you are. But if you started a muffler shop and called it &quot;McDonald's Mufflers&quot;, McDonald's Hamburgers would be unlikely to successfully sue you for trademark infringement because no one is going to buy a muffler as a substitute for a hamburger. You are not costing them any sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, it is unlikely that someone will confuse your email service with a spy novel, or that they will subscribe to an email service instead of buying a spy novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand: The publishers of James Bond novels might conceivably bring a case against you if your advertising could be construed as indicating that your service has some connection to their novels -- like if it leads people to believe they can get copies of the books emailed to them or some such -- or if it implies that the publishers have endorsed your service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And people can bring lawsuits even when a rational person would say they have no valid case. If you're a small company, then the time and cost of defending yourself in court could destroy you, even if you win in the end. (Sometimes courts orders the loser to pay the winner's legal bills, but often not.) There are plenty of horror stories out there of companies bankrupted by lawsuits even when they won, or that ended with the suit being dropped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you're asking on this forum tells me that your company does not have a team of lawyers on staff to handle such questions. Which means that if someone did sue you, you'd be scrambling to pay the legal bills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice would be: Don't. There must be a million other slogans you could use. You could even use variations of the same idea. Just call it &quot;the master spy of email programs&quot; or whatever the idea is that you're trying to convey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which, by the way, brings up that it is not at all clear what you mean by saying &quot;the James Bond of email services&quot;. Are you trying to say that your email service helps you spy on people? That using it is a dangerous and difficult adventure? The slogan is probably weak anyway because customers will have no idea what it means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T04:19:01.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21808" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21815" CreationDate="2016-04-24T08:10:13.803" Score="1" ViewCount="458" Body="&lt;p&gt;The character in my book doesn't have a name. I mean, he probably does, but its not used by any other character in the book, including the character himself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has a generic name, kind of like the &lt;strong&gt;The Dark Lord&lt;/strong&gt; or something along those lines.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read a lot of books with characters like these, but they all seem to end up mentioning his name and using them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it taboo to never actually use the character's actual name but keep on calling him the generic name or rather, &lt;em&gt;title&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18686" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T14:07:36.353" Title="Is it okay to have a character who doesn't actually have a name?" Tags="|character-development|naming|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-24T09:13:25.890" Score="2" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does there always have to be a big, showy production about the revelation of a character's name?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I was thinking that I'd just slide the name in quietly, in an off-hand manner. Probably the reader might not even realise that they're even reading the protagonist's name there. Is that a good idea? Or is too extreme?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18686" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T16:06:33.817" Title="Making a big deal out of revealing a character's name" Tags="|naming|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21808" CreationDate="2016-04-24T14:42:08.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this and your other similar question is the same: Your Mileage May Vary. If you can get it to work, go for it. There's no rule about it one way or the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Susanna Clarke's &lt;em&gt;Jonathan Strange &amp;amp; Mr. Norrell,&lt;/em&gt; the main villain is always referred to as &quot;the gentleman with the thistledown hair.&quot; He's never given a name at all. The book has done very well, so it doesn't look like that was a dealbreaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T14:42:08.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21809" CreationDate="2016-04-24T14:44:28.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on context. Why has the character's name never been mentioned? Why does no one know it? What label, nickname, or epithet are you using to describe the character instead? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would mention that as a reader, I'd be surprised and maybe do a double-take or two to wonder &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; more of a big deal wasn't being made at the reveal. If the other characters have been desperately trying to establish the person's name and it shows up and there's no fuss, that won't work. But if you can make it work, go for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T14:44:28.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21809" CreationDate="2016-04-24T14:45:19.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; be a big showy production about the revelation of a character's name. (Unless it's absolutely necessary to do so.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T14:45:19.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21798" CreationDate="2016-04-24T14:53:44.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone has their own process. If you don't, then try one and see how it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect I'm in the minority here, but I never outline or make notes. I begin by writing and I see what story emerges from that. Writing scenes reveals who the characters are, how they relate to each other, what they're going to do in the story, etc. Through revision, much of this writing gets shed, but it's the foundation of future drafts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In truth, I do have lists of story ideas, and those act as the kernel for that initial exploratory writing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T14:53:44.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21774" CreationDate="2016-04-24T15:11:10.460" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to think of this not as a mere means to create suspense, but in terms of character development: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every story is about change. The Three Act structure provides a suitable framework to illustrate the change that your story deals with: Act I shows why change is necessary. Act II achieves change. Act III consolidates the change -- or &quot;transformation&quot; -- that has been achieved in Act II. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sequence &quot;Villain nearly wins --&gt; Hero defeats him in the ultimate battle&quot; for me is Act III: The protagonist has commited to defeating the villain in Acts I and II, all that is left to show is how he succeeds. (Note that the transformations here might be multi-layered: Evil has to be defeated, the protagonist has to rise above his previous self and become a hero in the Greek sense of the word, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, transformation is not easy, and good will is hardly ever sufficient to bring it about. New skills must be acquired and the proagonist's personality must adapt to the challenge, either subtly or in the process of a general overhaul. In my opinion, &lt;strong&gt;the protagonist desperately needs the final push of the villain's almost-win&lt;/strong&gt;. Without it, lethargy would win and the protagonist would be provided with no reason to actually change. The most fierce enemy of transformation is inertia -- the belief that things are not so bad, actually, that problems will just disappear on their own accord if you give them enough time, that some mysterious law of nature will balance the scales and re-establish stability, no intervention necessary, thank you. Although the protagonist has comitted to transformation, he's not yet fully convinced that it is inevitable for him to actively bring it about. Alternatively, something other than inertia might be holding him back, a lack of knowledge, fear, you name it -- which, in a wider sense, are just different flavours of the same phenomenon: inertia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being almost defeated by the villain provides the momentum that propels the protagonist out of his inertia and allows him to act. It is an integral part of every story and, arguably, one that can not, under any circumstances, be omitted. There's a reason we call this moment The Climax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T15:11:10.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21808" CreationDate="2016-04-24T15:37:13.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/name&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wiktionary&lt;/a&gt;, a &quot;name&quot; is &quot;any nounal word or phrase which indicates a particular person, place, class, or thing.&quot; Implications: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The Dark Lord&quot; is a fully valid name. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no reason whatsoever why a character should not have more than one name. As a matter of fact he can have as many names as intelligent entities who are referring to him or her.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't think multiple names can be ranked. They refer to the same thing, and there is no reason why one should be better or more powerful than the other. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, recall that a number of languages have rather &quot;telling&quot; names. Indian and Turkish names, to my knowledge, can usually by literally translated, for example into phrases like &quot;The one with the skin like moonlight&quot;, the same goes for a number of Gaelic names and so on. These names are in league with the likes of &quot;The Dark Lord&quot;, we just don't understand it because we don't speak the language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is: We name things. All the time. I'm not even sure our brains can process thought about things that we haven't previously named, even if that name is horribly clumsy such as &quot;that weird wiggly thing on the other side of the road&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;tl;dr&lt;/em&gt;: You &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; name your character. It just so happens that your name is not a canonical first name such as John or Mary. However, in my opinion, that is not a problem. Consider Moby Dick. The first line of this book is &quot;Call me Ishmael&quot;, indicating that his real name is something else. Yet, to my knowledge, nobody has ever complained about this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T15:37:13.117" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21816" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-24T18:45:43.203" Score="7" ViewCount="611" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say there are elements of good writing such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Characters, Conflict, Dialogue, Ideas, Mood, Plot, Scene, Style and World&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to start focusing on one of them. Which do you think is the most effective order? Do you invent a universe to place the character in, or do you just invent a character and follow his journey? What is the right way to organize all these elements to serve a great story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you start with setting, characters or plotting? What kind of instruments (such as generators, note-taking applications) do you use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard for me to organize my own planning process...it's like trying to tidy a very cluttered room: you don't know where to start, and where are you going...I believe I need to make a sort of a skeleton for the work and then work on it, for I am very prolific when there are a clear plan and message. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18726" LastEditorUserId="31570" LastEditDate="2018-06-02T22:23:58.130" LastActivityDate="2018-06-02T22:23:58.130" Title="How do I organize my writing process?" Tags="|planning|organization|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21816" CreationDate="2016-04-24T20:41:37.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no One True Way. Every writer is different. Even the same writer may have two different approaches to two different books (or series).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JK Rowling plotted out the entire seven-book Harry Potter series in her head on a train ride before writing them, but is still working on the Robert Galbraith books (which, so far as I know, do not encompass a single arc). JRR Tolkien created his Elven languages and then made up the LOTR universe to have people to speak them, but then separately created &lt;em&gt;The Hobbit&lt;/em&gt; as a bedtime story for his children. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers must do a lot of background work (universe, character, plot) before writing. Some must jump in and see where the story goes organically. Neither is wrong; neither is right. You have to do what works for you and the story you're telling right now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T20:41:37.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21818" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21902" CreationDate="2016-04-24T20:48:06.340" Score="4" ViewCount="1407" Body="&lt;p&gt;My novel is set in India, and I'm having trouble finding good but pronounceable Indian names. Many characters are royal, so I'm looking for rich, respectful names that mean important things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I go about finding suitable names?  What resources can I use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18650" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T14:05:56.997" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T14:05:56.997" Title="How can I find Indian names that will be accessible to my readers?" Tags="|characters|fantasy|resources|naming|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="563" CreationDate="2016-04-24T20:57:43.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Practice beats talent!&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always keep this in mind. You &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to practice. Remember, ten thousand hours of work will make you good. if you need motivation, I suggest you watch this video and read this blog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://storybird.com/blog/2016/2/gap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://storybird.com/blog/2016/2/gap/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18650" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T20:57:43.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21818" CreationDate="2016-04-24T22:45:26.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/gen-male-us-us.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/gen-male-us-us.php&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;You can choose gender, country, and group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T22:45:26.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11111" CreationDate="2016-04-25T05:39:41.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Totally fine in prose writing. Where it gets iffy is in formal writings like cover letters and scholarly essays. You really need a license to do so in these occasions or else it is kind of seen as lazy. But as far as your case in concerned, completely acceptable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18733" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T05:39:41.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-25T12:44:14.220" Score="0" ViewCount="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to describe a process such as  production of fruit juice. When I started my sentence which explains a process and then what the best way to explain its purpose is in terms of  verb and modal preference in a formal writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First of all fruits are harvested and then they are sorted so that the&#xA;  rotten ones &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; be removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Firs of all fruits are harvested and then they are sorted so that the&#xA;  rotten ones &lt;strong&gt;would&lt;/strong&gt; be removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First of all fruits are harvested and then they are sorted so that the&#xA;  rotten ones &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; be removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First of all fruits are harvested and then they are sorted so that the&#xA;  rotten ones &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12900" LastEditorUserId="12900" LastEditDate="2016-04-25T21:42:49.770" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T21:42:49.770" Title="Is there a standart way of describe a process" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-04-25T23:05:04.270" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21809" CreationDate="2016-04-25T13:52:47.367" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your phrasing seems backwards. In fiction, there is almost never a &quot;big, showy production about the revelation of a charactedr's name&quot;. Usually character names are introduced quite matter-of-factly. &quot;When Bob arrived at work he met his friend Charlie.&quot; &quot;Sally entered the room.&quot; Etc. We just say the person's name and that's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only time you'd have a &quot;big showy production&quot; would be if the writer had built up some big mystery about the person's name. Like if the character has amnesia and doesn't know his name. Or if the character has been keeping his identity a secret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-02-03T12:15:32.650" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T12:15:32.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21808" CreationDate="2016-04-25T14:07:36.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is at least the third question you've posted about revealing the name of a character. I think you're obsessing over this tiny point way too much. Just give him a name and be done with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most stories start out identifying the main characters' names in the first few paragraph, usually in a totally nonchalant way. Often at least one main character is named in the first sentence. Lots of stories start with a statement like, &quot;George lived in a small apartment in Chicago with his wife Sally.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is some good reason in your story why the main character's name should be unknown or a secret, okay fine. Otherwise, just give him a name and move on. Just start the story, &quot;Fwacbar, the Dark Lord, thought he was the only man alive&quot; or whatever, and get on with the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T14:07:36.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2428" CreationDate="2016-04-25T14:55:21.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your sentence: Over the ensuing years I read as much as I could, trying to increase my knowledge and understanding of my own language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of many variations I can do: Over the the ensuing years I read as much  as I could, with ambitions to increase both my knowledge and comprehension of my own language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are clearly reasons, rhetorical reasons for using the gerund constructions but it functioning much like the infinitive. (To try, trying both exhibit null tense as a result of the way trying is deployed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You made the choice to use the constructions, most likely because of the personal nature of the writing assignment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your use of trying, is more revealing than using other constructions assumed as more appropriate for the audience being written to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your personal use of trying semantically emphasizes the process in a way I order to obscures. Not only the process but how that process is ongoing and maybe it will never be done. The action is highlighted in a way that seems more appealing to an organization that highlights individuality and personality when considering man applicants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more, your use of the &quot; understanding&quot; is revealing, too. You didn't choose these other forms because they we're not fit to describe what I think you meant. The the process of understanding is just as important as &quot;understanding&quot; or similarly &quot;&quot;to understand&quot;  conformed to the sentence parameters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, you're initial choices revealed so much more of how you view the processing and experience of reading to understand language. More importantly, it reveals your comment of the process and experience and intelligently uses aspect in so many interesting ways, semantically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your voice was weakened by the choice to change to a more seemingly elite form. In, both, my opinion and analysis (I'm  pseudo-amateur at best), this his so much about the experience and transformed the entire message to some generic scholarship essay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next time when analyzing verb and verb like constituent (verb phrase), try to looking for makers of the tense aspect and modality, or absence of one or more. This will help you to understand what your utterance and the intended meeting and which reveal most accurately what you are attempting to get across. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your original statement is great. It's beautiful. Your youth is revealed in away that juxtaposes it to the wisdom you demonstrate in the statement as it was first written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also your mother's English major friend, if I understood your story clearly, was incorrect in her prognosis on the nature of &quot;trying&quot;'s tense comment. a previous commentator was correct in showing how past tense would be if you had actually used the past tense. Ing is known to mark continuous aspect which means the speaker uttering this construction is commenting on the flow of time being continuous or on going. &quot;read as much as I could&quot; is used as topic and you focused it on the experience and process and its relation to time. As I see it, your comment was very appropriate and smart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all opinion but I think prescriptivist concepts and other circumstances (i.e stress, life) really took away from they statement completely. You writing this undeniably took place at a cognitive level which obscured your analysis at the time and implicated your mother or your mother's friend (still not sure if I understood the whole story) as being incorrect when analyzing tense aspect mood and implicated the study of English as not effective, when solely used, in analyzing the different layers that go to work as language is expressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could be wrong and this explanation could be stupid. But I think it's smart that you looked at the sentence again and reconsidered the value as it was initially argued. Also, I think I read instances in which you still weren't confident. I'm an example of someone who's impressed by the sentence, no matter how subjectively I could have, or did, analyze it. You can call into question if what I did qualifies as analysis. Looks like I'm not confident either. But seriously I like the initial statement. You speak and write in English just as well as other speakers of the language. Remember that. Also take my advice on on researching Tense aspect mood and the different ways they function in English. It's fascinating, of time reference and time flow reference can function in ways that are sometimes meant for things that aren't essentially commentary of times nature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I changed your statement is arbitrary and imply something different semantically. Maybe it's more accurate but prob not. Maybe though. Although, you are talking about &quot;your language.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18741" LastEditorDisplayName="user12726" LastEditDate="2019-02-12T15:40:25.773" LastActivityDate="2019-02-12T15:40:25.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21822" CreationDate="2016-04-25T19:14:24.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would break it into two sentences such as: All fruits are harvested. The rotten ones are removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't a formula that I am aware of, but I would recommend trying not to use 'then', using the present tense and using a third person perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend using a grammar checker such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.languagetool.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Language Tool&lt;/a&gt; to show you where there are problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T19:14:24.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21830" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-25T23:33:13.157" Score="6" ViewCount="253833" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I use '14, '15, '16, etc., instead of the full four digits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18751" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-04-27T20:58:53.400" LastActivityDate="2018-11-04T15:23:17.610" Title="Can I use an abbreviated two-digit format for year in a resume?" Tags="|formatting|resume|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16519" CreationDate="2016-04-26T00:16:46.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about the ending, write it down. How and what will the characters do to get to the ending? Start in small steps; first figure out the name of the main pov, and gender. What does this charicter do? Say in a——fantasy are the characters just a thief, mage, dragon, knight? Do these jobs define and limit them? Or are they more then a title? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same with other titles like valley girls, geeks and such. Don't think of the characters in those terms or they will come off as caricatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where do you want to start the story? In a town, outside, between realitys, in space, in a cave? Its up to you, but start somewhere. This is a first draft and the most important thing to do is just start. It's  perfectly fine if later on it doesn't work anymore. All that matters is that it got the story underway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make an outline, use no outline, or make a simple outline to stay focused on the ending, but other then that let the characters decide where the story goes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think most people here forget how daunting it is to be just starting. My advice is not to pile too much on at once right now, as you're just staring to get to know your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choosing what writing point of view, you'll be using for the story is critical for how the overall feel of the story. There's First person, third person, deep third person, and many sub-Povs of these. There is also Omniscient and second person pov, those two are not recommend as they are hard to write well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that first chapter is done study up on another pov and write it in another pov style. Find the one that works best for the story, not just the one you like the most. And be sure to save them in a separate file, so you can pick the best one. With this first chapter consider proof-reading it for errors and submitting it a critique site, like critique circle or find help in the writing clubs on Wattpad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you keep, going with the, story the plot line, the theme, and sub plots will show more and more. All if this needs to work towards the ending. Starting with the ending is like making a pineapple up-side-down cake. It's delicious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ヽ(*・ω・)ﾉ &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll see ways to connect them back to the end when revising. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have fun and don't stress it too much, it will get there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final note sometimes what the writer wants isn't what the characters want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18752" LastEditorUserId="18752" LastEditDate="2016-10-26T17:00:11.497" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T17:00:11.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21809" CreationDate="2016-04-26T00:44:41.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you're too over focused on the name and other details. To the reader, we only care if the name is way too hard to remember, too long, ridiculous, or if the other charcter are saying it way too much. But, yes, if they can't remember their own name, it would make a good revelation.  Other than that it shouldn't be a big deal at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's  the characters and story that matters more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18752" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T00:44:41.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21552" CreationDate="2016-04-26T00:57:30.017" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you live in America, the moment you write your first words for the story it is automatically protected under copyright law. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite insulting to professional publishers to think that they would want to steal your book. Honestly and integrity is the way publishers go if they want to make a good name for the company. It just isn't good businesses to be dishonest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way: they would make far more of a profit making you, the writer, happy by paying you to continue making lots of books for them. Why would they want to shoot their cash cow? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two, expecting a first or even third draft to be ready to be published before it has been proofread, edited, revised several times, edited again and read by several beta readers to find logic errors, plot errors, and loose storyline threads is pure arrogance. Sorry, but expect the reject pile if you haven't even done any of these things. The editors will not be doing your work for you, much less want to take such a rough draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure you haven't yet or you wouldn't be so concerned about publishers stealing your &quot;baby.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go google: &quot;Will a publisher steal my manuscript?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read up and feel better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just stay away from vanity publishers that try to get you to pay them and you'll be fine. Remember honest publishers will pay you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, in the end that's what this is really about you want to make sure that you aren't ripped off. That's fine, but consider what I said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advise I've read on this it to submit to the big name publishers if you're worried. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18752" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-04-26T06:09:36.367" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T06:09:36.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21834" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21963" CreationDate="2016-04-26T07:02:19.147" Score="3" ViewCount="556" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I was reading different stories, I came to wonder about what is better for the reader to identify with the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, it is often unclear whether the MC (main character) is like the reader or better than him because he is often both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, the MC will easily find the answer to a complex problem (showing more cleverness than most readers), but sometimes he will react as 'stupidly' as most readers, or even worse (take the idiocy of most Shōnen manga MC for example).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example is the 'ordinary world' of the story. It is common to see a weak MC, with all in all quite a pathetic life, or on the contrary for the MC to be a prince or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally prefer smart MCs, but I guess it depends on the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what is better : a &lt;strong&gt;MC similar to us&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;better than us&lt;/strong&gt; in order for us to &lt;em&gt;identify&lt;/em&gt; ourselves with this character ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18743" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-05-07T07:33:38.773" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T08:57:01.473" Title="Should a main character be like the reader, or better than him?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21834" CreationDate="2016-04-26T08:47:32.670" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are oversimplifying a complex issue. And it is complex because humans are complex beings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;strong&gt;can't&lt;/strong&gt; compare two human beings in a general way, and therefore you can't make the claim that a MC is similar/better/worse than the intended reader - another assumption: is the intended reader a single person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At best, what you can do is present a single, very narrow characteristic of the MC, with the assumption that s/he will be better/worse than a vast majority of intended readers. For instance, you may have a MC who is exceptionally, consistently calm when being yelled at. In some stories it might work, in most probably won't (I think non-realistic characters make for poor identification).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really depends a lot on the story you're writing, but generally speaking readers identify with people who are similar to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-05-07T07:45:32.700" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T07:45:32.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21298" CreationDate="2016-04-26T11:13:37.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://etherpad.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Etherpad.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commenting PLUS change proposals PLUS attribution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Output as plaintext (even better than Markdown for the workflow)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaboration in realtime with color coding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Minimal&lt;/em&gt; WYSIWYG&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A local installation for security&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16176" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T11:13:37.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2016-04-26T11:20:46.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't use pronouns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The user chooses a password, and then he types it in the text box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...becomes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;User chooses password, types it [or &quot;password&quot;] in text box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;They&quot; is the next best thing in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally: given that this example actually has 2 steps, consider splitting text into smaller steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User chooses password.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User types password in text box.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This repetition (of words, not content!) avoids the need for &lt;em&gt;grammatical&lt;/em&gt; reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use some &lt;em&gt;factual&lt;/em&gt; references to make it clear &lt;em&gt;how many passwords&lt;/em&gt; (!) and &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; text box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16176" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T11:20:46.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21830" CreationDate="2016-04-26T11:21:17.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why? Is that extra bit of space needed for something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to stick with the generally accepted four digit year. While resume styles evolve, this is not the place for you to push the envelope. You want the reader to have no objections to your resume to start getting into their heads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T11:21:17.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21840" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21841" CreationDate="2016-04-26T13:23:28.493" Score="1" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether I am watching, reading, writing or telling a story, I always pay attention to internal coherence in the characters' behaviour (and of course I am not the only one).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By writing and reading, I became able to understand how difficult it is to keep in mind each character's personality and history.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, I learned about MBTI and jungian functions, and although I know MBTI isn't everything, I was thinking of using it in order to structure my characters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it wise, or should I just go with intuition, or should I find another way ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18743" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T13:55:35.757" Title="Is using MBTI and the Jungian functions to create a character a good idea?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21840" CreationDate="2016-04-26T13:55:35.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;sure, why not? I think as long as there is some coherent structure behind the character so that you can establish that this person would behave in thus-and-such a way, and it's consistent and credible, the nature of that structure is up to you. MBTI, Jungian, RPG alignment, personality quizzes &amp;mdash; use whatever tool or combination of tools works for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T13:55:35.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21842" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-26T15:00:30.273" Score="2" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my students is conducting a research project on how being deaf affects one's likelihood of getting a job. Her parents are both deaf, and she is fluent in ASL. She wants to interview other acquaintances on their experience with gaining and maintaining employment in order to supplement her traditional research on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thought was to treat it as an interview and include a note as if it was translated from another language (which it technically is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Mr. B" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T16:55:16.000" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T16:55:16.000" Title="How does one cite an interview conducted in sign language (ASL) using MLA format?" Tags="|citations|language|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21843" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-26T16:06:26.587" Score="2" ViewCount="1213" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my thesis, I have added some links as footnotes. I have seen it in some published papers also. But my supervisor tells me to not to add footnotes to them, but add citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The links I have added cannot be considered as direct references, therefore, as I think, I should not go for citations for them. They are not from published papers. They are just some links. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8XXO8.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8XXO8.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following link gives an example of a published paper with similar footnotes.(page number 4 of the pdf)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/14956/Music&amp;amp;Mood-final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/14956/Music&amp;amp;Mood-final.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sort of confused now. What is the methodology I should follow?. Which way is correct? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16026" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-04-27T03:44:40.183" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T03:44:40.183" Title="Adding links as foot notes" Tags="|citations|academic-writing|footnotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21834" CreationDate="2016-04-26T16:09:19.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of the reason we read is to learn.  Fiction places us in scenarios we might never encounter in real life, but we can still learn life lessons from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to best learn from a character we need to a) perceive ways in which we are like that character, b) sometimes see the character making mistakes that we can thus learn to avoid, c) sometimes see the character making good decisions that we can thus learn to emulate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your question is all three.  A character that is always better or always worse than us is not relatable --one that sometimes does right and sometimes does wrong is truer to life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T16:09:19.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21845" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-26T17:24:24.023" Score="4" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a story where I adhere strongly to plausible physics for space combat (some behind-the-scenes development for the story: &lt;a href=&quot;https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/40597/how-does-a-spacecraft-attempt-an-intercept-course-with-a-hostile-one-realistical?noredirect=1#comment115589_40597&quot;&gt;How to Conduct Plausible Space Combat Intercepts and Tactical Options Available&lt;/a&gt; at Worldbuilding.SE)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is: in the actual battle itself, how do you keep Newtonian physics and explanation to the reader easy to understand and NOT involve a series of complex mathematical equations that include Kepler, Newton and Tsiolkovsky? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18760" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-05-29T15:41:18.957" LastActivityDate="2019-10-04T11:39:34.267" Title="How do I describe Newtonian physics to the reader in a way that is realistic yet not too complex?" Tags="|science-fiction|science|exposition|combat|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21846" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21847" CreationDate="2016-04-26T18:18:42.953" Score="3" ViewCount="748" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the general question: How does a book published via CreateSpace end up being sold blindingly fast by other booksellers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I edited two self-help books, one targeted to small businesses and the other to Christian leaders. Both authors published through CreateSpace. Author #1 used his own imprint; and author #2 used the CreateSpace imprint. Within days (or maybe even hours?) of going live on Amazon, both books were offered via other booksellers on Amazon on the new and used reseller page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the business book is being resold by Any Book, Brooke Books, and Wordery USA. The Christian leadership book is being resold by PBShop UK, Books Mela, and Peach Media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither author has done anything special to promote their book. I.e., just announcements on their websites and emails to their subscribers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How and why does that happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are those resellers buying the books at a discount from Amazon? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the impact on author royalties?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11559" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T18:30:23.633" Title="New CreateSpace books appearing on Amazon from book resellers?" Tags="|self-publishing|non-fiction|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21846" CreationDate="2016-04-26T19:10:47.307" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;They make their profit either by buying at a discount the same as other retailers, or by selling at a premium to buyers who don't notice that the book is available at a lower price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How they buy books:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the retail price from CreateSpace's or Amazon's store, same as any other retail customer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the wholesale price (60% discount from retail price) through CreateSpace's extended distribution program, same as any other retailer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How they do this:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They use automation or cheap labor to watch CreateSpace, and when a new book appears, they use automation or cheap labor to list it. So their cost to list a new book is very, very low.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because the books they list are print-on-demand, they do not need to stock books. So their cost to carry a book in their &quot;inventory&quot; is very, very low.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They often apply a large markup. I have seen some of my $4.99 books listed at $30 or more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why they do this:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Their costs are so low that they can make a profit even at very low volume, even at very low markup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How this affects your royalties:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Your royalty is the same as any other book sold through CreateSpace (retail or wholesale) or Amazon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the bookseller buys the book through CreateSpace's retail store, you get &lt;strong&gt;the same royalty as if CreateSpace had sold the book to any other retail customer&lt;/strong&gt; (list price minus printing costs).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the bookseller buys from Amazon, you get &lt;strong&gt;the same royalty as if Amazon had sold the book to any other retail customer&lt;/strong&gt; (list price, minus Amazon's 40% cut, minus printing costs).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the bookseller buys through CreateSpace's extended distribution program, you get &lt;strong&gt;the same royalty as if CreateSpace had sold the book to any other retailer&lt;/strong&gt; (list price, minus the retailer's 60% &quot;extended distribution&quot; discount, minus printing costs).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T19:10:47.307" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21848" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21864" CreationDate="2016-04-26T22:25:14.437" Score="1" ViewCount="2574" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many times I come across phrases or single sentences (never longer) on the internet in the form of YouTube comments and the like which resonant with me. Often I am inspired to use these in my writing. As a writer, is it 'allowed' to really consider this my own work? I would give credit when due, but adding footnotes in fiction crediting a YouTube account seems a bit odd. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the question of song lyrics. If I adapt a single line into from a lyric into my writing, should I cite it? If I have a dialogue sequence using say four short sentences of lyrics, should I cite it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a new writer and I am still trying to understand the boundary between &quot;borrowing&quot; and &quot;stealing&quot;. People say that great writers steal; I am aware that part of being a good writer is recognizing good writing. Still, I feel unsure about incoporating someone else's words into my work and calling it my own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I am NOT talking about anything longer than a sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15760" LastActivityDate="2016-05-27T18:55:28.423" Title="Borrowing or stealing phrases" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6164" CreationDate="2016-04-27T00:34:50.570" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a good question and I keep tripping over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a director writing my first original screenplay and I constantly go back and forth between including angles and not. One day I will put them in and the next day I will go back and remove them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a tricky one. On one hand I want to show the way I visualise the drama unfolding photographically but on the other hand I don't want to bog down the reader with technical detail when they should be deep in story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a first time screenwriter with the clear aim to direct what I am writing, I want industry people to see my flare for the way I will direct it as they read... but there is a big danger of over doing things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PT Anderson is an obvious example but also a good one for a guy who is probably an equal talent at writing and directing. Take a look at Boogie Nights, it has camera angles thorough it and it reads similarly to how it was directed and cut. So I think the script worked as a clear blueprint for the picture he wanted to make. When you read the script I think the visual style, tone and rhythm of the picture are clear but aesthetic ideas don't overpower the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then take a look at Magnolia which is pretty extreme. At that time New Line said they would give him final cut on whatever he wanted to do next and his dad had passed so he went balls out and wrote an epic script with an abyss of detail. Read the first 10 pages, sooooo much camera direction. I saw the film before I read the script but my feeling is unless you are someone who reads a LOT of scripts it could distract you away from the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps if you read Magnolia without camera direction and PT just said &quot;it will have the intensity of Goodfellas in the way I direct it, that could have been enough to understand how it played out in his head. BUT the benefit for him at the time of writing was (because he knew what ever he wrote he'd direct) he could just create the blue print of exactly what he planned on doing. He's also said in early interviews that he does 90% of the work in the writing and then he doesnt have to worry too much about working it out later. Or something along those lines. To be clear I love both films, just a hand example in regard to writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand have a read of Pulp Fiction. An incredibly visual picture with almost no camera direction in the screenplay. It's more or less a talking picture  so it's the right approach. BUT QT knew he's be directing and he'd work out the detail in pre-production, it's worth mentioning he spends a lot of time on that kind of detail leading up to shooting. He's the opposite of Woody Allen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid strikes a bit of a balance where by you know what you are looking at through the writing without William Goldman ever saying &quot;camera&quot; or &quot;angle&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeff Nichols did a great talk about it that can be found on the On Story podcast. You can find it via iTunes. His school of thought is more in the William Goldman zone whereby you speak visually though action and description and let that tell the reader where you see the camera without resorting to technical jargon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it is about finding the balance and doing what is right for the story you are writing? I find the best scripts are the ones I read straight through without tripping over superfluous detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, they are thoughts. I better get back to adding and removing camera details. Later. x&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18762" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T00:34:50.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21843" CreationDate="2016-04-27T01:21:28.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A citation is a pointer to a source.  While a URL is technically that, when universities say &quot;citation&quot; they mean something following a formal citation format.  A citation typically includes an author, the title of the work, a publisher, and the date of publication.  A URL, on the other hand, contains none of that, and if it turns into a dead link later, the reader of your thesis will have no idea what you accessed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/08/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MLA style&lt;/a&gt;, your first citation would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sonic Annotator: A batch tool for audio feature extraction&quot;. Centre for Digital Music, Queen Mary, University of London. n. d. Web. April 26 2016.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Though note that in this particular case, the page actually includes instructions on how to cite the page!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MLA does not require a URL, though it permits one.  If using it, it goes at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using MLA as one commonly-used example, but you should ask your institution if they follow a particular style guide.  If so, use its format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T01:21:28.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21851" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21870" CreationDate="2016-04-27T04:22:33.740" Score="4" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've self-published a few things with print-on-demand services (notably Lulu). Now, my partner has written and illustrated a children's picture book, and she's run into a notable stumbling block: each individual illustration (already complete) is intended to cover two full facing pages at once, across the fold. We have numerous picture books at home where this seems pretty standard. However: The print-on-demand services that we've looked at (for example, Lulu), all have a minimum blank gutter width, like 0.5&quot; or so, which would unacceptably break up the artwork. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we self-publish a picture book when we need to print it full-bleed, and through the gutter (i.e., no white space in the gutter)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18765" LastEditorUserId="18765" LastEditDate="2016-04-27T04:46:03.300" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T01:02:06.220" Title="How to Self-Publish a Picture Book with No Gutter?" Tags="|self-publishing|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21848" CreationDate="2016-04-27T04:46:12.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fiction, pretty much everything is allowed legally-wise, including using trademarked catchphrases. If you plan to say something really bad about a famous company, you might wanna cover your posterior by including a disclaimer in the front that it's a work of fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT: I'm talking within the body of the text. You can't use a trademark phrase as a book cover, promotional material, things like that. I hope it's obvious.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're definitely allowed, legally, to use something a YouTuber said in a comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, in fiction you can borrow lyrics from other people. What you can't do is write a song and take other people's lyrics. But if, for instance, you write a scene with a character listening to music and then you mention a couple of lyrics and how he liked them, that's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T04:46:12.227" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21845" CreationDate="2016-04-27T07:47:33.670" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Describe the &lt;em&gt;effects&lt;/em&gt;, particularly where the effects in space without the presence of air resistance/friction &lt;em&gt;differ&lt;/em&gt; from the familiar effects in an atmosphere where friction slows things down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/40604/9207&quot;&gt;Thucydides' answer&lt;/a&gt; to your question in Worldbuilding SE gave several possibilities, e.g. &quot;Kinetic energy weapons will go until they run into something.&quot; Since your scenario takes place in a war, the effects will kill and injure people, injecting drama, which your scenario sorely needs. At present I doubt one in a ten readers has done more than glance at it, and this is on Stack Exchange where the geeks hang out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Include vast-hulled spaceships smashing together and bouncing apart in near-perfect elastic collisions like billiard balls. Include tragic mistakes where someone forgets in the heat of the moment that any object expelled at speed will go on forever until it crashes into another object - that object could be an allied ship or person. Or maybe they do know that if you fire a kinetic weapon then whatever platform you fire it from is going to move backwards - and do it anyway, suicidally projecting themselves beyond the reach of aid, so long as their shot harms the enemy. Include triumphs as a result of clever use being made of Newton's laws, or the relativistic departures from them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Include emotion. People will understand if they care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:23.590" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T07:47:33.670" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21854" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-27T08:29:09.167" Score="3" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you think a role play can be good for publishing after some editing from the partners? Role Playing is my beloved hobby, but I am not sure what it takes to present it as decent literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18726" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T03:29:07.010" Title="Do you believe a role play can be published?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21818" CreationDate="2016-04-27T08:38:53.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try asking for suggestions in the NaNoWriMo (&quot;National Novel Writing Month&quot;) sub-forum &lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org/forums/appellation-station&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Appellation Station&quot;&lt;/a&gt; or at the Livejournal community devoted to fact-checking for writers &lt;a href=&quot;http://little-details.livejournal.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Little Details&quot;&lt;/a&gt; . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found out about both of these via the answers people here kindly gave to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/20108/an-online-resource-where-writers-can-get-quickie-answers-to-questions-about-the&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, which was about resources for real-world research generally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When asking for suggestions you will get better answers if you specify the time period in which your story is set, the part of India which the characters come from, whether the setting of the story is strictly real-world or includes elements of magic or alternate history, the royal characters' religion and the historical background to their royal status, and any similar constraints.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T13:23:49.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21854" CreationDate="2016-04-27T10:04:16.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gary Gygax's &lt;em&gt;Gord the Rogue&lt;/em&gt; series was allegedly an entire RPG campaign turned into a set of novels (which explains the ridiculous deus ex machina ending). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If role-playing helps you to flesh out a plot and characters, why not? There's no One Right Way to create a story. You'll still have to get it on paper and edit it &amp;mdash; which is &quot;what it takes to present it as decent literature&quot; &amp;mdash; but how you conceive and structure the story originally is entirely up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T10:04:16.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21818" CreationDate="2016-04-27T10:24:23.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a generator for Hindu names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fantasynamegenerators.com/hindu_names.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fantasynamegenerators.com/hindu_names.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can pick among hundreds - names and family names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18726" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T10:24:23.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21834" CreationDate="2016-04-27T10:43:18.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not make him perfect, however, I think readers need someone to look up to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take Bridget Jones - she is more real and amazing than any of the perfect goddesses of most paperback novels. It's because she has flaws, we women recognize in ourselves. Most important of all is that your character should be in trouble the entire time - and being imperfect is good trouble. People look up to her because she is genuine, romantic and gradually developing her self-esteem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my answer is - both: yes, your character shouldn't have it all, but yes - your character should be unique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18726" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T10:43:18.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21854" CreationDate="2016-04-27T11:14:10.987" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it can certainly be done and it's a cool idea. However, as an avid role-player myself I want you to be aware of some (pretty major) pitfalls. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This post turned out to be rather long, so let's start with the &lt;strong&gt;summary&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Role-playing campaigns are hard to translate into entertaining stories. If you already have a really good story in your campaign, go for it! It has certainly been done before. But this depends on a lot of stuff (group dynamic, GM skills, player skills, actual campaign content, etc.) and will require A LOT of editing, structuring and rewriting. In the end, the campaign is likely more of an inspiration for your story, rather than the actual story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for the &lt;strong&gt;details&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most RPG campaigns are really only great for the people who've been there. Role-playing can be a very intense experience if done right and with the right people. This intensity rarely translates to paper though since it comes mainly from the social interaction and the spontaneity of being in the moment. Too many times did I have to listen to some passionate account of &quot;And then, there was this time in the dungeon when the elf said [...] and then the dwarf said [...] and then there was this huge monster, you know the one, and we were like wooaaaah! And then Ironfist, our dwarf, came and took his vorpal axe of slaying +4 and rolled three sixes and just chopped its head clean of! Our GM turned pale! We were laughing so hard!&quot; It must have been great from the players viewpoint but the magic sauce was in the social event, not the in-game story. I myself have played many campaigns that I remember fondly but that I wouldn't dream of publishing since the story wasn't really that good, when viewed objectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good story takes interesting and memorable characters, a well measured and intentional plot progression, juicy conflicts and a satisfying resolution. This is very hard to achieve in a role-playing-game since role-playing is very chaotic and spontaneous in nature and most players just aren't good at this stuff. Nor do they need to be! The goal of role-playing is not to create a great story but to create a captivating experience for the people around the table. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's several things at work here. For one, it's not easy to come up with an interesting character. Most RPG characters are very bland and two-dimensional. They are more like archetypes than actual people and there are good reasons for that. In addition, it's even harder to come up with three to six interesting main characters, who actually work well together, get roughly an equal amount of spotlight and create interesting conflicts between each other and the environment. Once you have those characters it's difficult to play them in a way that would create an interesting story. Many players fall in the trap of playing for maximum in-game gain or play &quot;in-character&quot; too much, ruining the fun for everyone else because &quot;that's what my character would do&quot; or &quot;you can't do [this cool story thing] because it's not true to your character!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also very hard to take care of the story structure while relying on random dice rolls and the inputs of all your players. A climactic end battle might end abruptly with some (un-)lucky roll of the dice. Or some great and interesting encounter might never happen because the players just found a way around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a long time I tried to approach my role-playing like storytelling. It never worked. Once I started to approach role-playing as the spontaneous, chaotic, gamey, improv-thing it really is, it all started to come together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm getting at here: role playing and storytelling are two very different activities and require two very different skill sets with &quot;fantasy&quot; being the only real overlap. If you happen to be playing with a group of people who are good at storytelling, great! There certainly are groups like that, although in my experience they are extremely rare. If you're in a more ordinary group, it's gonna be a lot of work to turn your campaign into something that somebody who's not been there would want to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way, your campaign transcript would be more like an inspiration or a first draft. Everything is in there but it's almost unreadable. You then re-write and re-write until it's a good story. But after you're done it might only have a passing resemblance with your actual campaign. This is very similar to the way that straight retellings of actual events rarely make for a good story. These things get &quot;dramatized&quot;, events are added, removed or reordered, characters altered, etc. (see just about every historical Mel Gibson movie...) That's probably what you'll have to do with your campaign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18609" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T11:14:10.987" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21848" CreationDate="2016-04-27T11:51:09.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend once said:&#xA;&quot;Every beautiful thought we consider ours.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the age of 13, I used quotations in my writing so often, it felt like I didn't have a single thought of my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They called me &quot;the walking sutra&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As much as I revere the talent of other writers, I have to say I have outgrown this practice big time! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I try to steal or borrow the thought of another - be it a thought I like very much - it now looks to me peculiar, especially in contrast with my own writing. The good flow of words is breaking. Your style is suffering. What you can do instead is borrow the idea and dress it in your own words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Picasso said: Bad artists copy. Great artists steal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18726" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T11:51:09.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21834" CreationDate="2016-04-27T12:03:52.540" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure where we got the notion that readers have to identify with the main character. We are one of the most narcissistic societies of recent memory but we are still interested in people other than ourselves. We do still read about characters who are interesting even though (or even because) they are not like us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are four kinds of appeal a character may have for the reader: fantasy, aspirational, ideological, and representative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;fantasy&lt;/em&gt; character is the one we wish other people were like: the Bond girl, the romantic lover of a romance novel. They don't represent reality; they feed our appetites. We don't want to identify with them, we want to possess them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;aspirational&lt;/em&gt; character is the person we would like to be ourselves. James Bond, or the heroine of a romance novel. We identify with them in the sense that we want to think we could be like them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;ideological&lt;/em&gt; character represents (at least figuratively) something we would like to be true about human beings, even if it is not. This can be negative as well as positive. Many portrayals of businessmen in fiction are ideological hatchet jobs. They appeal because &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;they confirm our prejudices&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;representational&lt;/em&gt; character represents a genuine truth about the human condition. They appeal to us on the basis of recognition or sympathy. If we are narcissists, we are interested only in the representation of ourselves. If we are not we are interested in the representation of others. However, my guess would be that most narcissists are more attracted to aspirational or ideological characters than to truly representational ones. They prefer a magic mirror to a real one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of these is better is an ideological and commercial question as much as an artistic one. Indeed, which of these is your prime consideration is likely to guide your answer. &lt;em&gt;Artistically&lt;/em&gt;, representative characters should presumably appeal. &lt;em&gt;Ideologically&lt;/em&gt;, ideologically compatible characters are presumably to be preferred. &lt;em&gt;Commercially&lt;/em&gt;, fantasy and aspirational characters are probably the most reliable sellers, along with those that support the popular ideology of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, I aspire to create representative characters. But I am aware that fantasy, aspirational, and ideological characters are likely to creep into my work based on my own fantasies, aspirations, and ideologies. I'm also aware that this is probably not the most commercially viable choice to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-05-07T07:51:32.093" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T07:51:32.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21686" CreationDate="2016-04-27T14:59:06.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is worthwhile also searching for flash-fiction; although this can be up to 1000 words it will often be shorter. Also 'drabble' is another name for works of circa 100 word lengths. I myself write humorous flash-fiction, but don't really belong to any communities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17926" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T14:59:06.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21863" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-27T18:17:39.977" Score="0" ViewCount="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I have been browsing writing jobs in several renowned freelancer sites, and I often come upon cheap propositions for ghost-writing a series of books ...well if you like working for peanuts. I feel I can come up with a series of books, but what do they do afterwards? How can you market your own work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18726" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T05:55:35.170" Title="How To Market A Series Of Books" Tags="|publishing|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-06-22T17:53:12.480" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21848" CreationDate="2016-04-27T18:38:11.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three issues here: copyright, trademark, and plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright law explicitly says that you can't claim a copyright to a phrase or slogan. If what you have in mind is some clever turn of phrase or witty line, there's no legal barrier to using it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting classic phrase is generally not considerred plagiarism, as long as  you don't imply that the idea is original to you. Lots of writers include phrases from Shakespeare, the Bible, and other well-known sources, old and new. If it's an old book, this is often considered educated and sophisticated. If it's a new book (or song or movie or whatever), it's considered trendy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like, people often say things like, &quot;After my company lost that big contract, I could see the handwriting on the wall&quot;, without mentioning that &quot;the handwriting on the wall&quot; comes from the Bible. Or referring to a couple facing challenges as &quot;star-crossed lovers&quot; without citing Shakespeare. Etc. It's perfectly fair and legitimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd avoid using a borrowed phrase in a way that implies that you made it up. Anyone who has seen the original will think less of you. But just using it in the proper context is fine. If I'm quoting a phrase or sentence in a way that could be taken to imply I made it up, I'll often toss in a disclaimer like, &quot;Like they say ...&quot; or &quot;As the old saying goes ...&quot; or &quot;I once read ...&quot;. Or if I want to be slightly more formal, give a casual citation, like, &quot;Winston Churchill once said ...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that plagirism is not a crime, but an academic violation. You can't be sued or fined for plagiarism. If you plagiarize in an academic environment, you may lose your job or be publicly humiliated, but you won't go to jail. Plagiarism does not really apply to fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trademark: A company will pretty much always have a trademark to their brand name and may have a trademark to an advertising slogan. That doesn't stop you from using the word or phrase, but it limits how you can use it. Like the CocaCola company pretty regularly sues people for using &quot;coke&quot; as a generic word for any brand of cola. Sometimes it comes down to the capitalization: If you say in your book, &quot;Fred ordered a sandwich and a Coke at the restaurant&quot;, CocaCola will smile happily at the free advertising. But say &quot;... and a coke ...&quot; and if they see it, they'll sue you, because now you're using their trademarked name as a generic word. Briefly, if you use a trademarked name to refer to the company owning the trademark or to the appropriate product, there should be no problem. The problem is if you try to use somebody else's trademark to refer to something other than their product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T18:38:11.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21866" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-27T21:30:52.173" Score="6" ViewCount="2021" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a short story (900-1000 words) about a character presenting some election process and at the end, we learn that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; he got elected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem that I have is that the suspense in that story lasts about as long as you needed to hover over the spoiler part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the future, I am wondering what techniques I could use to keep the conclusion somewhat a surprise, or at least make it less certain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought about adding some red herrings, but due to the length of the story, it isn't very simple without losing myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13879" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-04-27T22:10:26.493" LastActivityDate="2019-06-21T13:17:45.140" Title="How to create suspense in a very short story?" Tags="|technique|short-story|suspense|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21866" CreationDate="2016-04-27T22:23:03.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems almost too simplistic to make a good answer, but if your problem is that you can't generate suspense in a very short story, make the story longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, decide that the story is fine the length it is, and just accept that such a short story does not require suspense. The reader doesn't spend enough time with the characters to care about what happens to them (in this case whether the main character wins his election or not), or enough time in your setting to care about who is going to govern it for the next few years. But that doesn't make the story lacking, it just means its merits lie elsewhere. The &quot;point&quot; of a very short story can be found in some sort of twist or irony, in its comedy, or in the haiku-like vividness of a single well-presented scene.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T22:23:03.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21866" CreationDate="2016-04-27T22:58:33.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a few ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Every word matters.&lt;/strong&gt; Avoid adverbs, information dumps, and descriptive adjectives to the greatest extent possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Still make it a &quot;play of three acts&quot; but with the first act being a single paragraph describing the protagonist, the antagonist, and the problem to be overcome.&lt;/strong&gt; To build suspense quickly, we need to know right away what the issues are.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Limit your cast of characters.&lt;/strong&gt; I would say 3 or 4 tops. Your MC/protagonist, a sidekick, the antagonist, and a &quot;mysterious stranger&quot; who can affect the outcome (my thought is you can have one and no more than one additional characters presented no later than halfway through). Too few and there isn't enough conflict for drama, and too many and you have a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The time frame is essential.&lt;/strong&gt; The problem needs to be solved immediately ... or else.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep it simple!&lt;/strong&gt; One problem gets solved.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-04-27T23:06:29.263" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T23:06:29.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21869" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-27T23:16:35.183" Score="3" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an avid reader who loves a good story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, I have many book ideas swirling in my head constantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have one book idea that keeps coming to me. My wish is that I could write and publish it to the public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only issue is that I don't know my options in terms of self-publishing and the process behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would someone be kind enough to direct me in the right direction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18774" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T13:57:06.230" Title="How does one go about self-publishing their first book?" Tags="|self-publishing|book|authorship|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21851" CreationDate="2016-04-28T01:02:06.220" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider creating a print-ready PDF for uploading to Lulu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not an expert on Lulu nor publishing nor PDFs, but I have published a full-width photo book with Lulu a few years ago.  I don't recall having any margins to deal with.  Some pages were only text, some pages had text and photos, and other pages were full-width photos.  In Lulu, I used a 6x9 perfect-bound paperback in full color.  Looking back at my materials from years ago, I see that I rendered my book into a PDF file that was 6.25x9.25 so it was a bit bigger than the final book to account for color bleed.  Every page in the PDF was exactly one page in the book, so two full facing pages (like you've mentioned) actually caused me to split the photo in half and put one half on one page and the other half on the next page.  Yes, it was all put together manually this way and I didn't use any online tools.  I would assume that I uploaded the final PDF to Lulu and my book came out as expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://connect.lulu.com/t5/Print-and-eBooks/tkbc-p/forums_kb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;knowledge base at Lulu&lt;/a&gt; seems pretty robust with lots of tips.  There is probably more than one way to do it.  Have fun with your book project!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18495" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T01:02:06.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21871" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-28T02:26:25.840" Score="0" ViewCount="386" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable practice to write a fiction novel set in an imaginary universe in first person plus have the main character be an alter ego of yourself? (The main character has my voice, essentially.) Are there any precedents for this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18755" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-07-29T14:19:07.627" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T14:19:07.627" Title="Can a first person protagonist be the writer's alter ego?" Tags="|fiction|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21854" CreationDate="2016-04-28T03:29:07.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It certainly can, MadMonkey's answer is very well detailed. A few of the (very successful - and coincidentally two of my favourite authors) examples off the top of my head are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Magician&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;Raymond E Feist has said that Midkemia was born out of RPG's, all the main characters started out as PC's in a campaign he was part of. Subsequently, it's spawned it's own RPG's so it's kind of come full circle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Malazan Book of the Fallen&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;Again, Erikson has said that his world and some of the notable characters are the result of Roleplaying, and shared with Ian C. Esslemont (who's spin-off works I also highly recommend).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can definitely be done, but, like the above authors, the focus is on the story and not the mechanics. But you can feel the effort that's gone into their worlds - they are some of the richest settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, of course, doesn't mention the numerous 'official' books (i.e the Forgotten Realms, DragonLance novels etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T03:29:07.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21876" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-28T07:50:29.310" Score="4" ViewCount="624" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have noticed I work best in collaboration with another.&#xA;I am extremely prolific and have a lot of time for writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you find that reliable, positive person who is deeply involved in playing with you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18726" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-06-03T01:26:28.387" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T01:26:28.387" Title="How Can You Find A Writing Buddy?" Tags="|creative-writing|collaboration|writing-groups|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21877" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-28T10:41:14.200" Score="5" ViewCount="404" Body="&lt;p&gt;So... imagine you have a story in your native language written down, with protagonists that speak this language and no problem at all, except a bunch of scenes where your protagonist meets someone who speaks another language. And you write it down in that language. I don't think this is a huge problem at all, even if you assume that your protagonist does not speak this tongue (but the reader may understand it) and you are using this as some kind of a plot element. Everything is fine until now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the unexpected happens: your story is kind of successful and gets published in your country. Now it even amasses more fame and suddenly someone gets the idea to publish it in other countries too... so what should be done with these dual language scenes, especially if it got published in even that language your protagonist has no clue of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What starts off as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Poor Siegfried was standing around, listening to the foreigner speaking &quot;Ha, der versteht uns doch sowieso nicht, der Depp&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;will get to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Der arme Siegfried stand herum, hörte dem Gespräch der Fremden zu &quot;Ha, der versteht uns doch eh nicht&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or (inverse it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Poor Siegfried was standing around, listening to the foreigner speaking &quot;Ha, he will not understand what we are saying, that moron&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, you can't just flip the language, if you state that this did happen in country whatever before, because readers will get confused if the native language in Germany is suddenly declared to English. For example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way to avoid this kind of pitfall, aside from writing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They said in their native German language &quot;that moron will not understand what we are saying&quot; and poor Siegfried indeed did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17943" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T19:28:12.143" LastActivityDate="2020-07-02T22:01:43.143" Title="Scenes with different languages spoken after translation" Tags="|creative-writing|style|translation|language|multilingual|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21877" CreationDate="2016-04-28T13:09:52.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While not a perfect solution, this may help somewhat:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Der arme Siegfried stand herum, hörte dem Gespräch der Fremden zu &quot;&lt;em&gt;Ha, der versteht uns doch eh nicht&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to demonstrate in english:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Poor Siegfried was standing around, listening to the foreigner speaking &quot;&lt;em&gt;Ha, he will not understand what we are saying, that moron&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there is always the possibility that it will appear that Siegfried can understand the foriegn language, but it does suggest that the words are in a different language (akthough in this case it may appear that the foreign language is not german/english.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17926" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T13:09:52.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21869" CreationDate="2016-04-28T13:57:06.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a big question. As Digital Dracula says, it's like asking, &quot;what car should I buy?&quot; or &quot;How do I write music?&quot; But to give you a starting point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's pretty easy to self-publish these days, so you can be confidant that you can do it. Therefore, the first task is to actually write the book. When you're close to getting done, then is the time to get into the details of self-publishing. But it certainly helps to have an idea where you're going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can publish a printed, paper book, and/or an electronic book like a Kindle or a Nook or a simple PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a paper book, you contact a self-publishing company. There are basically two kinds: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) The ones who will print just about anything you give them. You send them the text of the book in an appropriate electronic format -- usually PDF -- and they print it. You have to arrange for any proof-reading, format the book exactly like you want it, design the cover, etc. They will then make it available for sale on on-line sellers, like Amazon or Barnes &amp;amp; Noble. Any marketing beyond just showing up when potential customers search is up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) The ones who proof-read your book, do the formatting, design the cover, etc. Again, they will then make it available for sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Group (a) these days charge minimal fees up front. There may be a setup fee or a cost to get proof copies printed, but typically less than $100. Group (b) charge considerable amounts of money for their services, typically thousands of dollars. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, you collect royalties when copies of the book are sold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you live in the U.S.? Your profile mentions the U.S. but doesn't say if you actually live here. But here in the U.S., I think the main &quot;do it yourself&quot; publishers are CreateSpace (which is owned by Amazon), Lulu, and Lightning Source. You might want to check into them. I published my first book with Lulu and my second and third with CreateSpace. Both of those are very much geared to working with individual, self-publishing authors. Lightning Source primarily works with big publishing companies. They will work with an individual author, but that's not their target customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to name type (b) publishers because I've never worked with any of them. I'll warn you, many of them are borderline scams: they charge you large amounts of money and give very little in return. But some are legitimate, and if you need the services they provide can be worth the investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to publish an electronic book, you can work with Kindle Digital Publishing. They are geared to working with individual authors. I've published two of my books through them. They'll take you through the entire process of creating and publishing your e-book. I understand there are other services out there -- I've heard SmashWords brought up a lot -- but I've never used them so I can't say much about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expect most or all of your sales to be on-line. It is very difficult to get a self-published book by an author who is not already famous into bookstores. I've talked to a lot of writers who have devoted considerable effort to getting their books into bookstores, and most got nowhere. The few success stories I've heard are people who got their book into some small local bookshop. Your chances of being picked up by a national chain are minimal. Personally, I don't waste my time. I wrote a computer book that is sold in a college bookstore, where the college is using it as a textbook. I have a book about the Bible that is sold in a tiny bookstore attached to a church. That's nice, but probably 70% of my sales are through Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T13:57:06.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21877" CreationDate="2016-04-28T14:12:58.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not advise swapping round the languages. Part of the flavour of any story is its setting. If I am reading a book set in Germany or Austria I expect and understand that, for the most part, the characters will be depicted as speaking German, even if it is translated into English for my benefit. I also accept and understand that English will be a foreign language to them. (Quite possibly I picked up that book specifically because I wanted a change from the usual sort of books I read that concern native English speakers in the US or the UK.) As you suggest, it just looks &lt;em&gt;weird&lt;/em&gt; if a bunch of characters who have hitherto been stated to be German are suddenly revealed to be native English speakers for whom &lt;em&gt;German&lt;/em&gt; is a foreign tongue. My response is likely to be, &quot;Huh? What? Is this a science fiction novel about an alternate timeline, or am I dreaming?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, sometimes the inversion you describe is done, or sometimes a third language is brought in to be the foreign language. It is common enough that there is a whole &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KeepItForeign&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TV Tropes page&lt;/a&gt; about this phenomenon. However often it is done, I still say flipping around the languages almost always looks stupid and jarring. The only way it ever works is as a joke. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my strong recommendation is either to translate all the dialogue into the target language or, preferably, to simply state that Character X said something in English that your viewpoint character did not understand, even if he did catch the &lt;em&gt;tone&lt;/em&gt; of what X was saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to add a few minor points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The difficulty you describe would not be likely to arise in the first place with novels published in English because the convention followed by most publishers in the UK or the US is that very little of the dialogue is left in the original language, usually only greetings, exclamations, culturally-specific terms and any speech where the plot depends on the reader knowing the exact words spoken in the original language. I realise that the convention may be different in Germany where a greater percentage of the people are multilingual. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you look at some previous questions and answers on Writers Stack Exchange that cover questions related to yours. The question most relevant to you was &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8903/how-to-convey-that-the-pov-character-does-not-understand-whats-said-in-dialog&quot;&gt;&quot;How to convey that the POV character &lt;em&gt;does not understand&lt;/em&gt; what's said in dialogue?&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There have also been questions on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1742/whats-the-best-way-to-show-a-foreign-language-in-a-manuscript&quot;&gt;the best way to show a foreign language&lt;/a&gt;, on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7519/how-are-multilingual-scenes-handled-when-the-storys-main-language-is-translated&quot;&gt;how to handle multilingual scenes&lt;/a&gt;, on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/18987/untranslated-passages-in-translated-works&quot;&gt;untranslated passages in translated works&lt;/a&gt;, and on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/20311/show-the-translation-of-foreign-language-thoughts-in-a-manuscript&quot;&gt;translating thoughts in a foreign language&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While we're on the subject of translation, in the excerpt in English about Siegfried, replace &quot;speaking&quot; with &quot;saying&quot;. The verb &quot;to speak&quot; just isn't one of the verbs we use to immediately precede a direct quote in English. I can offer no logical explanation; it's just one of those quirks that all languages have.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T14:48:09.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21882" CreationDate="2016-04-28T14:18:33.743" Score="2" ViewCount="1471" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an English high school exam in five days in which I will be given 2-3 prompts e.g. A story which includes the sentence, &quot;I could not not believe when my neighbour walked right past me&quot; or a story in which an interview plays an important part or something like that for a short story writing (350-500 words) and I have to choose one. I get around 50-55 minutes to plan, write and proofread the short story. How can I develop a plot in 5 minutes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18044" LastEditorUserId="18044" LastEditDate="2016-04-28T17:04:10.453" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T17:04:10.453" Title="How to think of a plot in 5 minutes" Tags="|plot|short-story|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21881" CreationDate="2016-04-28T14:28:14.780" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're being given a prompt, so that will do half the work for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it was J. Michael Straczynski, writer of &lt;em&gt;Bablyon 5,&lt;/em&gt; who wrote that one could sum up &quot;conflict&quot; in three questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does the character want?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What will the character do to get it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What will someone do to stop the character?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you take your prompt &lt;em&gt;(John needs to find a flat in an expensive area of London. Describe your favorite childhood memory. There's a hungry cat on your porch.)&lt;/em&gt; and apply the three questions to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John needs a flat. [Want] He'll look online and through newspaper ads. [Do] But&#xA;his current flatmate doesn't want him to move out, so he'll delete&#xA;voicemails from prospective landlords and otherwise sabotage his&#xA;efforts.[Thwart]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My favorite childhood memory was getting ice cream at the fair. [Want] I had&#xA;to share it with my sister, [Do] and she wanted to hog the whole thing, [Thwart]&#xA;but my mom stopped her.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The cat sat on my porch, meowing occasionally and looking hopeful. My&#xA;mom said &quot;No more cats!&quot; [Thwart] but really, was I going to let a cat starve&#xA;to death on my porch? [Want: to feed the cat] Of course not. [Do: feed the cat]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T14:28:14.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16829" CreationDate="2016-04-28T15:35:21.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another approach would be, on your own website or blog - is to write a veiled rebuttal. I wouldn't directly mention the bad review, but just write as if you are clarifying some issues or points for current/future readers. But of course this blog post would address the issues that the bad review got factually wrong, and even address some of the other issues the review raises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18781" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T15:35:21.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21884" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21887" CreationDate="2016-04-28T22:16:14.103" Score="4" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always wanted to write a book but have never actually taken the time to do so. There are many things that hold me back but one of them is that I often come up with story lines in my mind. As I am processing them in my thoughts I think of different routes that the story can take. I then seem to reach a standstill as I cannot decide which plot route would be best. I then just stop trying to figure out the rest of the plot. What are some techniques that I can use to narrow down which plot direction to take? Or do I just randomly choose one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18787" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T22:46:40.547" Title="What are some techniques for deciding which of two or more plot directions to go with?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21918" CreationDate="2016-04-29T00:27:38.153" Score="1" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is generally a bad idea to write only for exposure, since exposure doesn't pay the bills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are many &quot;social media&quot; websites that make money by trying to get people to provide content without any monetary compensation. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc. are possible examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These websites are successful, because people want to write out their ideas, and then see other people read them. This seems the essence of &quot;exposure&quot;. So, would posting on these sites be a form of 'writing for exposure'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18788" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T18:08:34.733" Title="Is contributing to &quot;social media&quot; an example of &quot;writing for exposure&quot;?" Tags="|social-media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21884" CreationDate="2016-04-29T10:15:55.277" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sketch out both (or multiple) ideas as fully-fleshed plots from beginning to end. Get all your separate possibilities down on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put everything aside for a week. Come back to them and re-read them.&#xA;See if any one jumps out at you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give your multiple outlines to friends and see if any one is&#xA;particularly popular.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a series of short stories playing on the very idea that this is&#xA;the same plot with multiple endings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a literal Choose Your Own Adventure book. If you can't decide,&#xA;let the reader do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T10:15:55.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21888" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-29T10:42:13.203" Score="1" ViewCount="1962" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a novel and looking back the story line was good but the grammar wasn't great. I submitted the book to a few agents and received some constructive comments which I took on board. I have rewritten the story and corrected many of the errors. For instance I removed gerunds. Now that it's complete I'm getting hung up on other issues for instance starting sentences with quickly. I don't want to put agents off accepting my work but does this honestly matter? Should I just bite the bullet and start submitting the novel again? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18794" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-05-01T10:50:36.547" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T22:18:40.180" Title="How much does imperfect grammar put off an agent?" Tags="|editing|agent|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2016-04-29T10:58:42.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your grammar doesn't need to be perfect in fiction and breaking certain rules is perfectly acceptable so long as you convey the correct meaning. An agent isn't going to turn down a brilliant story because it needs to be proofread. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you know full well that there are lots of grammatical errors and it will require significant re-writing at some point, then clearly you do need to fix it before you send off your manuscript. Especially for the beginning of the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've noticed the mistakes that implies you are capable of fixing them. If you can't be bothered to present the best work you can -- why should anyone else bother with it or take it seriously? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18610" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T10:58:42.730" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2016-04-29T12:32:45.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I wouldn't consider &quot;gerunds&quot; (or even adverbs) to be mistakes, if you're worried about your grammar, hire an editor to do a line-edit. Explain (if this is the case) that you're happy with the story and don't want a content edit, but you do want to polish your grammar, structure, word choice, spelling, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishers do have editors, but if your work is not already the best it can be, why would they waste their time and money on you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, IMHO, it does honestly matter, and you should make the effort to clean up your manuscript as much as humanly possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T12:32:45.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2016-04-29T12:57:10.453" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you submit to an agent or publisher, your writing is all they have to go on when forming an opinion of your work. You want to make the best impression that you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way: If they're considering two equally engaging stories, where one will need significant line-editing to fix the grammar, and the other doesn't, they'll want to buy the story that requires less work to publish. I think it will be worth your time to give it one more pass to tighten things up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16251" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T12:57:10.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21884" CreationDate="2016-04-29T22:46:40.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Choose the plot direction that makes the most sense for your characters. Who are they and what actions make the most sense for them? (Some folks start writing characters and let the plot emerge naturally from their actions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T22:46:40.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21895" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-29T23:49:18.580" Score="6" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a character who I specifically wrote to be a certain way. However, I want to rewrite the character to be different--weaker, and less independent in order to allow room to grow. How do I do this while keeping the character's identity intact so that the character doesn't seem like a new person all together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T15:00:03.820" Title="Recharacterizing a character" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21866" CreationDate="2016-04-30T00:43:02.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that suspense isn't about WHAT will happen, but about WHEN it will happen. When will the bomb under the table go off, when will the rival candidate's rigging of the polls be found out? If at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, to answer your question, you might want to increase the stakes--if the campaigner doesn't win, the rival will do something bad. You might want to stack the odds against the protagonist-- say the rival rigged the election and bribed the board to allow him/her to win. Now the protagonist has to expose the rigging to the public before the election results are mentioned. This could create more tension. What if the public doesn't care/doesn't believe the protagonist? What if the protagonist doesn't have the public support? What if the protagonist has a flaw that gets him/her intro deeper trouble/complicates stuff? What if the board sends out people to dissuade the protagonist from trying to expose the rival?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-introduce a time limit--the election results are out tomorrow and we STILL have to convince the public that a candidate used wrongful means!&#xA;-introduce sources of doubt (pile up the odds against the protagonist)&#xA;-make your character have a flaw that works against him/her achieving his/her goal.&#xA;-make the antagonist more powerful than the protagonist.&#xA;-escalate the conflict&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, you could expand the story, and introduce sources of doubt into the reader's mind. However, if you are aiming to write short stories, this may be better used with slightly longer stories--or just shift your focus to the point in the story where you see the most opportunity for instilling doubt into the reader's mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-04-30T00:43:02.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21898" CreationDate="2016-04-30T03:34:51.353" Score="3" ViewCount="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently completed my adventure/fantasy novel. I am planning to self-publish it via CreateSpace's POD option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am from India and want to sell my book in various countries, but could find no mention of it on the CreateSpace site...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is what (if any) are the legal and/or licensing requirements to sell in the US and UK via Amazon's CreateSpace service?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18803" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-05-12T04:03:55.930" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T04:03:55.930" Title="What is required to sell books in the US and UK from another country via CreateSpace?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|print-on-demand|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21897" CreationDate="2016-04-30T08:22:14.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely none, except filling in a US taxation report (this can be done inside the CreateSpace website). It sounds complicated but it isn't the system guides you through&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-04-30T08:22:14.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21895" CreationDate="2016-04-30T08:27:05.933" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create a turning point, a defining event for this character, with elements of trauma. Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John is as stable as a rock, he's very trustworthy and everyone at work depends on him. Nothing seems to scare him. Until, one evening, on his way home, he witnesses a young boy mugged by gangsters. This triggers a memory that was buried in his unconscious: something similar had happened to him, and with the past memories rushing in, uninvited, so does a forgotten, repressed sense of insecurity. Things are about to change, at work, and in his marriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-04-30T08:27:05.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21901" CreationDate="2016-04-30T16:51:31.383" Score="3" ViewCount="473" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing my first novel, which has gathered about 150000 words. I guess it will be around 170-180k words when it is finished. Assuming that it will loose 20% after the first draft, it will have around 150k words when it is finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this too long for a first novel? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the quality of the writing, on the story and on a thousand other factors, but I am worried that publishers will think the book is too long for the market, especially if there is no known name on the cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The genre of the novel is soft science-fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15723" LastEditorUserId="15723" LastEditDate="2016-04-30T19:52:11.960" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T22:56:01.217" Title="How long can a first novel be?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21900" CreationDate="2016-04-30T22:52:16.987" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It probably is, but what you can do instead is rework it as two books, and then when shopping for an agent, present it as book-plus-sequel. Science fiction (and fantasy) in particular are forgiving of long works and love series, so length and sequel would be features, not bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-30T22:52:16.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21818" CreationDate="2016-04-30T23:39:36.040" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indian culture is very complex. The names and characteristics of Indian royalty varies from state to state. To create a royal name you will need to answer several questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the period your character is set in? This is important because names have evolved over the years. TL;DR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will restrict my name choices to a particular part of North India. If you want a simple North Indian royal name near the state of Rajasthan, simply add the surname &quot;Singh&quot; to the end of the name and Raja or Maharaja in the beginning. I am skipping the &quot;h&quot; in the end (i.e don't use Maharajah). Furthermore you will need names of an entire family and not just a person. Indian royals take pride in the family history. For example you could say there existed &quot;Maharaja Rudrapratap Bhavani Singh Rathore&quot;. He had a son &quot;Maharaja Umed Bhavani Singh Rathore&quot; and four daughters. The eldest child, his son, &quot;Kunwar Ratan Singh Rathore&quot; too the reigns thereafter. The erstwhile king &quot;Kunwar Ratan Singh Rathore&quot; had a son &quot;Kunwar Veer Singh&quot; and one daughter. Veer Singh now goes by the nickname Vicky. Other answers have given possible  names for Vicky but they are common names. Old kings had multiple middle names. The current generation has shorter name - a first name and a last name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need some family history too. For example, you can imagine that the fore-fathers of &quot;Maharaja Rudrapratap Bhavani Singh Rathore&quot; were filthy powerful rich royals who fought wars against the Mughals and thrived. But &quot;Maharaja Rudrapratap Bhavani Singh Rathore&quot; lost most of his wealth to the British. Whatever was left, &quot;Maharaja Umed Bhavani Singh Rathore&quot; lost in 1947 due to independence when the elected government took over. Finally, &quot;Kunwar Ratan Singh Rathore&quot; is into politics, maintains some servants, a long line of family portraits hangs on walls of his mansion. He has a collection of guns and the big mansion needs repair. He lived on government pension and mostly pride. Finally Vicky goes to college, runs after chicks, drinks and is mostly ignored by people except for his friends who want a free drink. Finally, I must reiterate that I made up the names. Also for the Indian royals, it is not unusual to have a large joint family that includes uncles, aunts and so forth who may or may not not be faithful to this guy. You could add that &quot;Maharaja Umed Bhavani Singh Rathore&quot; was killed by a greedy uncle and his children were brought up by his mother/aunt/servant etc.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This structure does not answer your question completely but explains to you a short history of the decline of typical royalty in the past few hundred years. But any story about Indian royals needs some historical background and culture as they take pride in it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6584" LastEditorUserId="6584" LastEditDate="2016-05-01T12:11:40.327" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T12:11:40.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21903" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-01T00:14:05.013" Score="3" ViewCount="465" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, the character is an anti hero, he loses all his morals, and becomes the very thing he fights against. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I make the downfall of this character more emotionally moving/impactful without making it seem contrived or cliche? Are there any things to watch out for when doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-17T03:16:30.783" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T18:04:22.547" Title="How do I make the downfall of a character moving without being cliche?" Tags="|characters|technique|emotions|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2016-05-01T08:06:51.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you send your work to a publisher or agent or anyone, it should be the best that you can do. Which would you rather read: A story that is the writer's absolute best effort, or a story that he figured was &quot;good enough&quot; and he was too bored with to bother working on any further?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many writers crank out a first draft hurriedly as thoughts come to them, and that draft includes many grammar errors, clumsy wordings, incomplete thoughts, etc. That's fine ... as long as you go back and clean it up later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would you NOT fix the grammar errors? Is it because it's too much work? If that's your answer, then I can only say, knuckle down and do it. Producing a quality product -- whether a novel or furniture or a gourmet meal or whatever -- requires having the discipline to do what it takes to get it done right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it because you're anxious to see your work in print? But if grammar errors result in your book being rejected by agents and publishers, then in the end you may well have to fix the errors and start all over, and it will only take longer. And if you made a bad impression on your first submission, they may not be willing to seriously consider your second try. When my books got close to being ready to go to print, I rushed some things because, hey, I've done all this work and now I want to see it in print. But that's a bad attitude. Don't throw away months of work because you got impatient at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it because you don't know grammar rules well enough? Then you need to take some time and learn them. Get a good book on grammar. If I buy a car and it doesn't run, and I take it back to the dealer and he tells me, &quot;Well, yes, but the engineer at the car company doesn't really know a lot about auto mechanics so this was the best he could do&quot;, my response will be that I want my money back. Publishers and readers want a good, quality book, not excuses about why you couldn't produce one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it because you don't think anyone cares? They do. Grammar errors make a book hard to read and understand. They make the author look unskilled. This is a novel, but imagine you were writing a non-fiction book and found it was filled with spelling errors. At some point you would say, If the author doesn't even know how to spell (say) the word &quot;astronomy&quot;, why would I think he knows anything about the subject? Yes, we all make mistakes. If you have two grammar errors in a 300 page book, likely no one will think much of it. But if every other sentence has errors, readers are going to give up on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T08:06:51.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-01T15:39:48.307" Score="2" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a science fiction/fantasy quadrology and would like to eventually expand on it. I have an entire world built around it and I would like to know the best way to introduce it. Prequels? Separate series? Guides? Through experience, which one best enthralls readers and/or best conveys the expanded world? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18820" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-05-01T22:08:31.803" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T23:08:30.980" Title="How to expand beyond a single series?" Tags="|science-fiction|series|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21907" CreationDate="2016-05-01T17:23:55.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tell more stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've built a world, put sentient beings in it and put conflicts in front of them. Let the world unfold in front of your characters, and let the characters talk about the other parts of the world, and the history of it, which haven't been discussed before. Write stories set long before or shortly after your existing series. Link it to your existing series via character, plot, place, or time (so that there's some reason for your readers' interest to carry over). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mercedes Lackey has the planet Velgarth on which her Heralds of Valdemar stories take place; she has jumped around something like a thousand-year timeline telling various stories with various characters who may or may not interact (depending on how far apart they are). Many of her books are set within a period of three generations, but there are also quite a few set hundreds of years earlier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anne McCaffrey created the planet Pern. Most of her stories are set in a twenty-five year period long after Earth humans colonized the planet, but there's also one story about the colonization and few set before that group. The main links are locations and species (the dragons and their growing intelligence). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your series get popular enough, you might be able to publish your Silmarillion or Codex, but to &lt;em&gt;get&lt;/em&gt; popular, write more books in your universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T17:23:55.077" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21900" CreationDate="2016-05-01T22:56:01.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;2 books deals are not common; better develop the present book into a &lt;strong&gt;trilogy&lt;/strong&gt;. Each book should be 80-100K words. I know you are almost done, but you can add various subplots to lengthen the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For now, only concentrate on the first book, find an end point, weave in subplots and flesh it. Only after polishing and publishing, continue developing books 2 and 3. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to go is to stay with a &lt;strong&gt;single novel is by mercilessly editing and pruning&lt;/strong&gt; your story to under 100 000 words, some novels have been greatly improved from extreme editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T22:56:01.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21907" CreationDate="2016-05-01T23:08:30.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before trying to expend it into more than a quadrilogy, &lt;strong&gt;publish the first one&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure the book is a success and the world appreciated before spending more time on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even great authors sometimes create universes that do not resonate with the reader.  Sometimes it is a game of try-and-miss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better fail with one book and spend time developing another universe or series, than spending more time than necessary in a bag end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Bag end, did you note the bad pun :) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T23:08:30.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21895" CreationDate="2016-05-02T09:51:24.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can rewrite him, but you can also look for other areas the character you have can impove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is he independant? That can lead to arrogance, boldness; so teach him humility.&#xA;Is he strong? Not everything is resolved through strength of arms. Make him face situations where his power is useless. Situations he is unfit for, more generally. And there you'll find room for improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T09:51:24.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21895" CreationDate="2016-05-02T10:17:05.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to develop (rewrite) a character's personality, just take it slowly. Normally, in books you will find the stereotypical farmboy-hero. You can see that in these novels, slowly the main  protagonist gains confidence eventually saving the lands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You basically want to do the same but backwards. If I were you, I would just totally tear his life apart. Everyone has their flaws, you need to find the flaws in your character, and open them up and make them bigger. This way we can slowly decimate him, turning good events into bad ones, causing him to become depressed and basically wrecking his life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing it in multiple events like this, you can prevent the sense of &quot;Okay my dog died now I'm so depressed I can't live.&quot; scenario's, which tend to be a bit unrealistic. Say your main character is arrogant, let his arrogance slowly consume him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bit like Anakin Skywalker actually. His character evolved from being one of good, to becoming seduced by palpatine into becoming a sith. Seducing your character might be a good tactic to try, actually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T10:17:05.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21845" CreationDate="2016-05-02T10:42:27.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know in Jurassic Park by Michael Creighton, he described code in a way that emphasized what it DID instead of getting into the intricacies of it. He'd be like &quot;Bob sent a command to locate the virus--the command failed.&quot; I don't know if this helps you, but the code was described in such a way that it didn't get in the way of the story. Maybe check it out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T10:42:27.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14506" CreationDate="2016-05-02T14:36:20.007" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, language that conveys higher social-economic status generally has a wider vocabulary, uses more complex or rare words (and more foreign words), is (at least superficially) more polite, and is more indirect and euphemistic.  It tends to be abstract and emotionally removed, and can be poetic in a clever or intellectual way. It's basically an intersection of highly educated with highly &quot;refined&quot; (meaning highly trained in things such as manners and manipulation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Language for lower-socioeconomic status is more direct and blunt, more sensual, less polite, more emotional, more likely to use curse words, and to rely on a smaller and simpler vocabulary.  It can be poetic in a vivid and earthy way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both groups will also have their own characteristic slang and in-jokes.  There are also always exceptions to these rules (and people who emulate the speech patterns of the opposite group for effect).  Rather than just using stock phrases, you'll want to understand the different ways the groups use language --for the upper class, it's part of a complex and political web of constantly shifting social status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T14:36:20.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21895" CreationDate="2016-05-02T15:00:03.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer is in your question --you want to give this character room to grow.  In that case, make the original version of this character the endpoint of the new version.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one starts out life having it all together.  This is basically the &quot;prequel version&quot; of the character, showing how he or she learned to become the strong, independent person you first envisioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T15:00:03.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21885" CreationDate="2016-05-02T18:08:34.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is yes and no. Social media sites do indeed not pay you for your content, but their platforms (in most cases) is not really for providing stories or articles, but rather the 'social' component. As such, the negative effects of contributing to a non-paying market are reduced.&#xA;Furthermore, &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; you write has a huge impact: a novelist providing a piece of flash fiction for use on facebook, or making a short twitter story is very different from providing a full-fledged short story.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, there is a case where it definitely isn't the normal meaning of 'writing for exposure': writing a blurb on facebook, interacting with fans on twitter. While you are writing, and doing this for exposure, you are clearly not providing your product for free.&#xA;So to sum up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) if you are providing a form of your product on these platforms, you are writing for exposure, but within a different 'marketplace' from your usual one; which means that it's not as bad as giving your stuff away to a magazine for free. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) modified, smaller versions of your product (as in a fiction writer providing a hundred-word musing etc.)that are easy to produce : this is writing for exposure, but can often be quite easy to justify when the costs (time spent) and loss (not being able to sell that work) are taken into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) If it isn't your product- i.e. it's promotional work, teasers, musings etc- it is called marketing. The only question is how effective it will be, and whether it's a waste of time or not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17926" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T18:08:34.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21919" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-02T19:38:44.530" Score="3" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a technical reference book and am looking for some software, preferably free, that will allow me to put a short sentence or two of small notes or tips in the sidebar. Each of these might fall under a particular category and have a specific heading such as &quot;Note:&quot; or &quot;Warning:&quot; as well as a related graphic to go with them. What are some good software options for doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I would need the side note to move with the paragraph it is related to if the paragraph gets moved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, I would prefer if these category headings and images were added automatically if I were to specify the the category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My preference would be software that works on Linux, Windows, and optionally Mac and can output to PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18787" LastEditorUserId="18787" LastEditDate="2016-06-03T17:16:45.043" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T17:16:45.043" Title="Software that allows for notes in the margin" Tags="|software|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21834" CreationDate="2016-05-02T21:08:50.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether your main character (MC) is &lt;strong&gt;similar to&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;better than&lt;/strong&gt; a particular reader depends largely on your intent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your intent is to have the reader identify with the MC, then you should strive for &lt;strong&gt;similar to&lt;/strong&gt;. However, if you want to motivate the reader, creating a MC that is &lt;strong&gt;better than&lt;/strong&gt; the reader is likely preferable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, different genres of fiction will answer the question differently (but are still based on intent). For example, in horror, it's typical for the MC to be similar to a reader in order to provoke emotional resonance and heighten the tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also feel the need to tell you that I think you're oversimplifying the issue on several fronts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not all readers are going to identify or be motivated by the same things. Your readers aren't homogeneous (at least I hope they aren't), and you shouldn't treat them as such.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Similar to&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;better than&lt;/strong&gt; aren't the only options. There's also the possibility that they're &lt;strong&gt;worse than&lt;/strong&gt; a particular reader.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Related to #1, but slightly different, is that your MC should be more than one-dimensional. You would do well to craft interesting characters with multiple facets to their personalities. If that's the case, what makes the MC &lt;strong&gt;similar to&lt;/strong&gt; one reader will make them &lt;strong&gt;better than&lt;/strong&gt; another reader, and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T21:08:50.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21888" CreationDate="2016-05-02T22:18:40.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agents and publishers get so many manuscripts that they have to screen them quickly. Anything, especially in those first few pages, that makes you seem no better than average will get you rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most published books are commercial failures. I read that 90% of books for which royalties were advanced do not earn out the advance. Since publishers know they are shooting craps when they select a book, they are as fussy as they know to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Big publishers don't do the degree of editing that they used to, in order to keep labor costs down. So a first-time author needs to have their work professionally (or at least competently) edited before submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get yourself a copy of the &quot;Chicago Manual of Style&quot; and read relevant parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect, too, that if your grammar is shaky, there are other things wrong with your writing. Although it is targetted for mystery writers, I strongly recommend fiction authors of any genre read &quot;Don't Murder Your Mystery&quot; by Chris Reorden. It's not really about writing mysteries, it's about writing fiction well, heads above your competitors--who are also sending their manuscripts to the same people you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9935" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T22:18:40.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21876" CreationDate="2016-05-03T14:31:56.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The website &lt;a href=&quot;http://co-writers.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://co-writers.com/&lt;/a&gt; is specifically set up to help people find writing partners.  It's not the most active site, but it gets a steady stream of postings, and doesn't charge for usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-05-03T14:31:56.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21927" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-03T16:42:10.023" Score="3" ViewCount="1523" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question about dialogue indents. I'm proofreading a piece for my proofreading course and I've come across something that's stumped me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first 6 lines of the story are dialogue and they are all unindented. The prose doesn't start until line 7 and that's unindented too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, do I indent them &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; or just the &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; line? And what about the prose on line 7? Do I indent that too or leave it unindented? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using Oxford's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart%27s_Rules&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hart's Rules&lt;/a&gt; for guidance but it doesn't say much about this. Any help would be appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18850" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-05-12T04:21:21.047" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T04:21:21.047" Title="Paragraph Indenting Rules" Tags="|style|editing|proofreading|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21919" CreationDate="2016-05-03T17:03:12.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easiest solution is to use DTP (desktop publishing) software. It used to be very expensive. It isn't now. There are some free titles available. Personally, I use Serif PagePlus. A free version is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.serif.com/desktop-publishing-software/?MC=SERPPCFDPaP&amp;amp;gclid=Cj0KEQjwmKG5BRDv4YaE5t6oqf0BEiQAwqDNfB7QVqci3HvvfOFiUwsc6CqobbSjSSgJ-7E0Yljcr-UaAnYw8P8HAQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;available here&lt;/a&gt;, but I don't know what the limitations are on this version (usually they then offer you an upgrade for very little).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although you can do the sort of thing you want using a word processor, it is so much easier to use DTP software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-05-03T17:03:12.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21929" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-03T18:37:56.273" Score="1" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this is the right site for this question. If not, please direct me to the correct one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for help to provide feedback to someone on a letter they have drafted. I have found it tough to search for a comparable format on Google because it overlaps with other kinds of letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This letter in context is along these lines: A certain amount of money started as a stipend for something that was not part of the main job description. But over time the responsibility has been effectively added to the main job. So the person wants to request that the stipend be moved over to be part of the main salary since the work is now part of the main job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I tried to search for examples or advice on such a letter, I got results about cover letters, asking for raises, expressing salary requirements and so on. But this is not quite those - no raise is being asked for, just a change in how the money is treated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the minor grammatical feedback that I tend to give, I would like to review the draft for the bigger picture to make sure the letter is effective and does not include deal-breaker lines that would imperil the request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18852" LastActivityDate="2017-05-07T21:00:20.863" Title="Seeking resource for salary related letter format" Tags="|style|business-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21834" CreationDate="2016-05-03T19:39:32.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with mbakeranelecta, but what I want to say is too long for a comment so let me write it as it's own answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I've never understood the concept of &quot;a hero that the reader can identify with&quot;. I guess there are readers out there who want such stories. I never did. I remember when I was a kid, there was a TV show that was advertised all the time as being &quot;about kids like you&quot;. And every time I heard that advertisement, I thought to myself, &quot;I don't want to watch TV shows about kids like me. What, a show about somebody going to school and doing homework and delivering newspapers? I want to watch TV shows about spies and astronauts and adventurers, people doing things that are exciting.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, I often hear critics say, &quot;This was a great story because it's so realistic. It's about ordinary people leading ordinary lives.&quot; Well I don't want to read a story about someone going to work in an office and mowing the lawn and paying bills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to read stories about people dramatically different from me. Maybe someone whose life is exciting, like space travelers visiting strange planets or an archaeologist fighting Nazis. Or maybe someone who simply has a life much different from mine, like someone who lives in a faraway time and/or place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, what makes a story interesting is often precisely that the hero is different from me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read &quot;inspirational&quot; stories where the point very clearly is that the hero is a better person than the reader, and that the reader should try to imitate him. I generally find such stories boring. I'm sure there are some that do it well, but I think it's hard to pull off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I rarely find myself saying about the hero of a book or movie, either, &quot;Yes! That person is just like me!&quot;, or &quot;Yes! I'm going to work to make myself more like him!&quot; I'm much more likely to say, &quot;Wow, what an interesting character!&quot; Which may be good or bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-05-03T19:39:32.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21931" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21933" CreationDate="2016-05-03T20:47:20.827" Score="3" ViewCount="612" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a writer of primarily science fiction, I've often struggled with finding a happy medium between making the prose/dialogue relatable for readers and avoiding using too many &quot;Earth words&quot; as I've come to call them. On a couple of occasions, I've had readers mention that the use of idioms, etc. (especially American ones) seemed unrealistic for the alien culture featured in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of &quot;Earth words&quot; I've gotten hung up on are related to characters' hairstyles: &lt;em&gt;ponytail&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;mohawk&lt;/em&gt;. Obviously the latter is a Native American word, and the former looks like a horse's tail. But in a fictional universe where Earth doesn't even exist (and therefore the Earth-based origins of these words doesn't exist) would they seem totally out of place? Or if you were a reader, would you even notice them because they're so commonplace? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18840" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T05:07:30.407" Title="Using &quot;Earth words&quot; in a futuristic, fictional setting" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|science-fiction|terminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21932" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21934" CreationDate="2016-05-03T22:32:57.833" Score="1" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hatha yoga is also a great form to use because it combines both spiritual and physical attributes which could help beginners find out what they like the most.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having a hard time trying to discern where to place a comma here or if I even should. I was thinking of placing it after attributes, but that doesn't make the sentence feel right to me. Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18854" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T19:00:47.573" Title="Where should I place a comma in this sentence?" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-06-02T10:57:38.790" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21931" CreationDate="2016-05-04T01:16:13.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends. If it's being described from the POV of a human, then it should be ok, the person is merely describing the look in terms they are familiar with, which in turn, the reader redefines to terms they are familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's not a necessary  detail in the story, though, do you need to include it? Is there a plot reason for a pony tail, or could you instead mention that the hair is 'tied back', or describe it as a top-knot instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the Mohawk, could it be described as 'a crest of hair'? I've heard 'warrior crest' used before, and it also invokes the same image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example of what I'm (badly) trying to explain, instead of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt; He had an orange Mohawk. &lt;/i&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt; His scalp was mostly shaven except for a bright orange crest running down the middle. &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastEditorDisplayName="user18397" LastEditDate="2016-05-04T05:07:30.407" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T05:07:30.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21932" CreationDate="2016-05-04T10:04:18.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Separate your sentence into individual thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• Hatha yoga is a great form to use.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;• Hatha yoga combines spiritual and physical attributes.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;• The spiritual and physical attributes could help beginners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first two thoughts have the same subject, but the third thought has a different subject. So you should definitely use a comma to separate 1 and 2 from 3:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hatha yoga is also a great form to use because it combines both spiritual and physical attributes, which could help beginners find out what they like the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This pause and separation allows the reader to understand that the referent of &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; is &quot;spiritual and physical attributes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you broke your entire sentence into two, then you could separate 1 and 2 with a comma:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hatha yoga is also a great form to use, because it combines both spiritual and physical attributes. This could help beginners find out what they like the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you're emphasizing &quot;why hatha yoga is a great form to use.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T10:04:18.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21932" CreationDate="2016-05-04T11:47:40.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Punctuation is a style issue. As such, you can determine as the writer the message you want your readers to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;nonessential clause&lt;/em&gt; is an unnecessary piece of information which adds explanation to a sentence. It is separated by commas or em-dashes or parentheses from the rest of the sentence (or a single comma or em-dash or parentheses at the end of a sentence). The sentence should be clear without the nonessential clause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;em&gt;essential clause&lt;/em&gt; occurs when it cannot be separated from the main clause without altering the meaning of the sentence. Essential clauses generally do not take commas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say your clause starting with &lt;strong&gt;which&lt;/strong&gt; is necessary to convey the information hath yoga is good for beginners, and it is thus an essential clause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would say no comma but neither is incorrect.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-05-04T13:28:35.550" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T13:28:35.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21932" CreationDate="2016-05-04T19:00:47.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Commas clarify sentence structure. The only place you need one is before &quot;which,&quot; which sets up a non-restrictive clause. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/which-versus-that-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;See Grammar Girl's explanation.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, unless &quot;could help beginners find out what they like the most&quot; is a restrictive clause, in which case you should use &quot;that&quot; without a comma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T19:00:47.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7434" CreationDate="2016-05-04T20:23:51.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You sound like you are concerned with the quality of materials and other elements of a professional, polished presentation. &lt;strong&gt;Why not hire a book designer?&lt;/strong&gt; A book designer can guide you to printers that can produce the kind of books you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Quantity&lt;/em&gt; has a bearing on what materials are available for your book. For instance, if you are printing over 500 you can use our fine domestic book printers. You may even have a printer in your own community who has the right binding equipment for your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Quality&lt;/em&gt; extends to design as well as materials, so a book designer can make that polished, custom design that will express your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason that &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CreateSpace&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingramspark.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IngramSpark&lt;/a&gt; offer inexpensive design is because they have automated the process. The price is right, but you may be the discerning author who actually needs human intelligence and creativity focused on your particular message, not a computer algorithm that solves the easy problems that satisfy the crowd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18865" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-05-07T07:10:16.380" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T07:10:16.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21940" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21947" CreationDate="2016-05-04T22:59:07.423" Score="1" ViewCount="613" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need suggestions for stories I can read to get inspiration on how to tackle a nonfiction rags-to-riches-to-rags story with an uplifting ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to find rags-to-riches stories, but I'm having difficulty finding those about rags-riches-rags; i.e., the person who climbs up from nothing, does stupid things to reduce their hard-won place in life, and is happy with being back to &quot;rags.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I put &quot;rags&quot; in quotes, because they don't have to be reduced to where they started from; just to a greatly reduced place from what they achieved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone have suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11559" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T16:38:47.993" Title="Stories about people who went from rags-to-riches-to-rags and stayed there?" Tags="|non-fiction|resources|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-05-08T13:12:39.420" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21941" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21971" CreationDate="2016-05-05T02:46:51.230" Score="3" ViewCount="590" Body="&lt;p&gt;After I began writing my series, I decided to type some of the names into Google. I found that the name of one my characters (Trent Steele) was used in an episode of The Simpsons. I also found that a faction (The Brotherhood of the Shadows) was in Mortal Kombat. If I am not using traits from either of them, would I be able to have them in my books without an issue? I did not know about these until I looked them up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18825" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-05-05T11:57:15.997" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T18:02:46.193" Title="Can I use names of characters and groups that other authors/creators have used already?" Tags="|naming|plagiarism|trademark|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21942" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21970" CreationDate="2016-05-05T11:00:22.760" Score="0" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am involved in a three way partnership with narrator and illustrator to share royalties from our book equally.  However, as the author, the copyright to the book carries my name and year of first printing (via Amazon's Createspace using their free ISBN.)  Am I the sole/primary owner of this work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No monies were paid up front to the illustrator nor to me as the writer.  The narrator who asked me to write her story is also to receive one-third of the profits, and we have a written agreement to that effect.  Seems simple, but if things get complicated down the road, could the copyright situation potentially create a legal tug-of-war with my partners? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're all close friends now, and I would like to keep it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paula Kirby, Author&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(THE LIGHT ON THE STAIRS)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18873" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T17:49:16.790" Title="Can a copyright be shared with narrator and ilustrator?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19986" CreationDate="2016-05-05T11:55:52.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read a couple of academic journals as they are peer reviewed. The aim is to communicate to the reader new knowledge that flows and I've interpret your questions as multiple authors and multiple participants. Your academic references should be second and third person for example, Bourke et al (2008, p.67), suggest.... third person. That's my sort of understanding, approach and two cents worth, off the top of my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With referencing yourself, first person is probably preferred while team members will be second and third person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18875" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-05-06T02:00:11.917" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T02:00:11.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21941" CreationDate="2016-05-05T12:31:44.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within reason, if the name itself is not already instantly recognizable (Bart Simpson, Lara Croft, James Bond), you can probably get away with using it. &quot;Trent Steele&quot; may be generic enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, there are only so many variants and arrangements of &lt;em&gt;organization&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;darkness,&lt;/em&gt; so whatever you come up with has probably been used or alluded to elsewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to avoid charges of plaigiarism, make sure your Mr. Steele and Brotherhood are different enough from the ones you Google that readers would not easily confuse them. You might do this by changing your character's gender and/or race, and making your organization's name less mustache-twirlingly evil. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T12:31:44.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21818" CreationDate="2016-05-05T15:27:16.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia is also a decent source of information about names (though I'm not sure about the English version). It often gives the etymology and the names of famous people who have (or had) the name. It also says if the name is shared, with different meaning, by other cultures, which can be useful to prevent cultural misunderstandings about where the character is from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18876" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-05-12T04:12:58.640" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T04:12:58.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21940" CreationDate="2016-05-05T16:38:47.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My favorite rags-riches-rags story is the classic folktale &quot;The Fisherman and His Wife.&quot;  It's not clear that the title couple is happier at the end, but there's a strong sense that they are better off as they are. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm019.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm019.html&lt;/a&gt;. Orson Scott Card's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sindark.com/LaTeX/unaccompanied-sonata.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Unaccompanied Sonata&quot;&lt;/a&gt; also has the up and down story arc, with an ambiguous ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best examples I can think of is the original novel &lt;em&gt;The Neverending Story&lt;/em&gt; (not to be confused with the movie version).  The title character completes an entire arc from bullied kid to godlike Emperor and then back, but he ends the book with a new sense of identity and self-confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a true life story, what about Jimmy Carter?  From peanut farmer to leader of the free world, but arguably at his best in the years after his presidency, not during them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T16:38:47.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21949" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21952" CreationDate="2016-05-05T20:19:57.210" Score="1" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;I clearly cannot guarantee that my series will be popular or well received by readers. I was wondering if it would be beneficial to have another series which is told differently, has a different plot and characters, etc ready in case the first series is not popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18825" LastEditorUserId="18825" LastEditDate="2016-05-06T02:14:15.563" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T02:50:42.243" Title="Is it useful to have a backup series?" Tags="|series|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21903" CreationDate="2016-05-05T21:31:22.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best method would be to make the downfall fairly slow. Make sure it is quite detailed, and let the reader truly understand the downfall. I suggest a good deal of inner dialogue. As for what you should avoid, try and keep the anti hero in character. For instance, if they are rational and like to think things through, have them reason out why they are doing this. So, to summarize, don't rush it or alter the character's personality. One other technique, though it is used often, is to show the emotions of those the character knows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18825" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T21:31:22.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2016-05-05T22:42:00.953" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read good novels without dialogue, and most with. As one poster said, writing about past events makes dialogue seem stilted. I agree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it's not necessary, there is none in &lt;em&gt;1984&lt;/em&gt; as far as I remember, but dialogue is fun and essential in many novels. Don't worry about padding. That's for the editing stage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18880" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-05-08T13:12:10.073" LastActivityDate="2016-05-08T13:12:10.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21949" CreationDate="2016-05-06T02:50:42.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend working on Series B, Book 1 while awaiting the query/publishing phase of Series A, Book 1, before working on Series A, Book 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is for traditional publishing with the intent on being a fiction writer as a career. A traditional publication can take well over a year to hit the shelves, and it is unlikely an unheralded author will get a multibook deal. The exception is some agents appreciate knowing you are committed to Series A and will consider it a boon to have Series A, Book 2 in queue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With self-publishing, it doesn't really matter. You can publish whatever you want knowing you can always publish more. Consider, however, if you self-publish Series A, Book 1, it is unlikely a traditional publisher will publish anything from Series A thereafter (with some notable exceptions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on your definition of &lt;em&gt;series&lt;/em&gt;. Do you mean a single story told in discernible segments, or a group of stand-alone novels with a common theme? The former case should really wait in the traditional publishing framework with an extended outline for an agent or publisher. However, with the the latter you can take more chances. Piers Anthony wrote 4 or 5 Xanth novels before &lt;em&gt;A Spell for Chameleon&lt;/em&gt; got published. He was a bit green, and you could basically see where he made impromptu changes in later works as earlier ones were modified at the behest of the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For myself, I have Book 1s of two stand-alone series that I would love to retire with if either gets any recognition. And I'm now working on something totally different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T02:50:42.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21953" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-06T04:35:12.477" Score="2" ViewCount="560" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is about word processing tools and outlines specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been hacking at a story idea for a couple of years now, and enough is developed to commit it to paper.  But, as an inexperienced writer one problem I have is economy of language.  My energy level correlates to how much detail I give a topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My solution is to use an outline to draft most of the story details, and assign page amount guesses to each topic.  I can decide how much &quot;language&quot; to devote to a topic in the outline itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I really want is not only a great outlining software, but the ability to almost color code or tag topics (i.e.: items pertaining to a specific character, an interwoven theme, etc.).  I want to be able to collapse or hide all topics but the one I'm looking at.  This way I can see how a plot point, character development, or theme develops across the narrative.  This will let me judge how much attention is given to different things and how to balance it all before I put pen to paper so to speak.  If I know exactly what I'm writing about, my word economy will be much more focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of a software that can do this (separate topics within an outline), or otherwise recommend a good outlining program (M. Word might be fine, but I'm not super familiar with its outlining tools, I also have OneNote).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18882" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T14:58:59.597" Title="How Do I Create A Dynamic Outline?" Tags="|tools|software|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21953" CreationDate="2016-05-06T07:52:51.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrivener does all of what you're asking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can color code documents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can organize documents in an outline, in a &quot;corkboard,&quot; in various collections and categories, and in a hierarchy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can create keywords represent anything that interests you (characters, locations, plot threads, themes, ...), tag each document with the relevant keywords, and view and select documents by keyword.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can assign target word counts to each document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can add custom metadata fields to the documents, to show (for example) which character is the viewpoint character.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T07:52:51.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21955" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-06T10:15:38.293" Score="6" ViewCount="2372" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a war story, and it's dark. However, I find that every scene turns out to be depressing because of it. Readers will be overwhelmed. Are there ways I can induce hope/shine the light in the darkness in my novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T20:02:57.313" Title="How to make a dark story not-so-dark (Shining the light in darkness)" Tags="|fiction|style|technique|characters|editing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21955" CreationDate="2016-05-06T11:19:37.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the stories that I have read are incredibly dark, based simply on the events that occur, but did not feel that way when read. Bringing out a lighter side can be done in a number of ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Characters/ Relationships&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having characters that are hopeful or optimistic will go a long way to brightening a story (unless they are annoyingly optimistic to the point of delusion). Even when terrible things are happening, when the horror becomes an everyday reality there will be people who do not let it get to them, and can still remain light-hearted and boost the morale of others around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your characters feel less downtrodden about what is happening to them, then the reader might feel a little less beleaguered when reading the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you do not wish to introduce a character like that, every character will have stories to tell that are perhaps humorous or uplifting. The scene near the end of Saving Private Ryan where Matt Damon's character tells a story to Tom Hanks' character about the last time he saw his brothers would be a good example of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the most miserly characters will have tales from their youth of when they were happy and carefree. If the readers are needing some relief from the reality of a situation, then the characters certainly will be too. Having interactions like this are unlikely to feel out of place in slower parts of the story, and it will allow insight into the characters and their backstory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Light at the End of the Tunnel&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to every character having a backstory, they will also all have a vision of the future. Maybe they have a family that they want to get home to, or plans to buy an abandoned shack at the edge of town and turning it into a pub.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the characters hang on to their humanity, and retaining a sliver of hope that they will pull through and survive the war, will allow them and the reader a better outlook on the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Successes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't have to be the characters winning every battle, but being able to find successes in the small things even despite the losses. Perhaps the enemy managed to capture an allied checkpoint, but your characters manage to evacuate all of the civilians or retrieve a full cache of weapons before they are forced to retreat before the enemy closes in on their position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could even be personal successes instead of ones based on the plot or the the war, such as receiving a message from back home that their child has been born healthy and happy, or they successfully created an edible meal from their rations by combining it with some of the local flora they found whilst scouting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, just like you are trying to find ways to make your book more bearable for readers, the characters will be looking for ways to make their own lives bearable. No one wants to feel awful, particularly in the worst situations, so they themselves will seek ways in order to lift their own spirits, and make a better situation for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T11:19:37.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21942" CreationDate="2016-05-06T13:37:12.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, let me say that I'm not a lawyer, just a freelance editor that's done contract work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears you have no current written documents that answer the question of ownership. You need to get one. Quickly. At a minimum, it needs to have the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who retains the copyright.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How the copyright is to be transferred (written authorization from all the copyright holders, unanimous decision, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with a conversation with the other partners, and see if they care about the copyright. They may not, in which case, I'd still make a contract and have them sign, saying they are declining the copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Friends are friends, but people change. Contracts protect both you and them and show that you're taking the work seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T13:37:12.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21955" CreationDate="2016-05-06T17:36:29.823" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can talk to real-life veterans and see how they coped with war. One tactic is &quot;gallows humor&quot; or &quot;black humor,&quot; which is seeing the humor even in grim moments (common to veterans, law enforcement officers, doctors, and first responders). The TV show &lt;em&gt;MASH&lt;/em&gt; was essentially built on this. There are many examples on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GallowsHumor&quot;&gt;TV Tropes&lt;/a&gt; page (consider yourself duly warned). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T17:36:29.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21960" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21965" CreationDate="2016-05-07T02:39:55.070" Score="3" ViewCount="930" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my novel, there is a large scale battle involving several factions, tens of thousands of fighters, and is a defining part of the book, as it lasts for a good deal of the novel. As I wrote it, I tried to paint a clear picture for readers, but I found it difficult to decide how. How in depth should it be described (General descriptions such as simply stating that many fighters died, or describing in depth the specific experiences of the fighters and leaders)? Is there anything specific that should be avoided that could bore readers? If this question is to broad, I will edit it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18825" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-03-24T21:57:57.210" LastActivityDate="2019-03-24T21:57:57.210" Title="Describing a large scale battle in a science fiction/fantasy novel" Tags="|description|science-fiction|scene|combat|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21969" CreationDate="2016-05-07T07:00:38.023" Score="1" ViewCount="4445" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a tutorial on how to manually use those plastic binding combs without using a binding machine? cause I don't want to buy a binding machine since I won't often use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18898" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T17:28:38.467" Title="How to manually bind a book without using binding machine?" Tags="|book|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21834" CreationDate="2016-05-07T08:57:01.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do readers want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The protagonists of the most popular and bestselling books all start out as similar to their readers. They are normal people, leading normal lives, and have problems that the readers can identify with.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make your characters similar to your readers.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The protagonists of the most popular and bestselling books all achieve their dreams. They find friends (MG) or love (YA).&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Let your character achieve &lt;em&gt;your readers'&lt;/em&gt; goals.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The protagonists of the most popular and bestselling books all achieve something grand and useful. They solve a mystery (MG) or save the world (YA).&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show how &lt;em&gt;normal people&lt;/em&gt; will do heroic deeds if the circumstances require it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;That is, the protagonists are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; better than their readers, rather they discover how awseome they are, if presented with the right opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The most popular and bestselling MG fiction ends after the goal has been achieved. The protagonist has solved the mystery and made new friends.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Some of the most popular and bestselling YA fiction lets the protagonist achieve a mixed and painful victory. Katniss wins the Hunger Games and overthrows the government, but her love life, after some momentary happiness, turns into a desaster. Same in the Maze Runner.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In certain genres of YA, let your character achieve great things in the world but fail spectacularly in their private lives.&lt;/strong&gt; That is, take away what you gave them in number 2 above, thus making them normal and like your readers again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Please note: You cannot write for everyone. So identify your target audience and get to know who they are, what problems they have in everyday life, and what they dream of.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T08:57:01.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11057" CreationDate="2016-05-07T09:57:59.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; use the passive voice in complex pieces of writing and/or it is in a grammar lesson about passive voice. Pretty obvious if you ask me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18899" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T09:57:59.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21960" CreationDate="2016-05-07T14:37:33.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Lauren Ipsum, byt read from a variety of authors, not just one. In addition, read The Art of war. I know I just gave you more homework, but if you know what each side's strategies are, you could establish that for the reader, then twist things up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also recommend reading the Illiad (or at least the battle scenes). Homer does what you do--says that this dude got stabbed through with a spear, and then &quot;the darkness&quot; fell over his eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any rate, try to have emotions. In the sense that you could zoom in on a few soldiers and their emotional connections with each other. Soldier A is friends with soldier B. Soldier B hates soldier C, so they both try to kill more enemies than soldier C, and they're having a grand time until Soldier A dies, and then soldier B is enraged and starts killing off everyone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take the time to include little vignettes such as these, the fighting will seem more personal/visceral, since it's not just two random armies going at each other, but people fighting people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of the battle of Helm's Deep in the Two Towers--Legolas and Gimli have a contest to see who could kill more orcs--this provides comic relief, and humanizes their army. Aragorn fights to avenge a dead friend--this further humanizes their army.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humanizing both sides would be harder. Think how much longer LOTR would have been if Tolkien had introduced a bunch of sympathetic Orc characters who were hunting for the ring--not to mention how this would muddle the narrative. If all of you MC's are on one side, focus on the specific experiences of their side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in conclusion, focus on specific experiences--it makes the battle more real, and is more engaging to the reader overall. I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T14:37:33.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21960" CreationDate="2016-05-07T14:46:26.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend that you look into military theory and historical examples. The subject is larger than life, so well chosen indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some pointers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/132&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Art of War by Sun Tzu&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;&#xA;The Project Gutenberg version with commentaries included. May sound outdated but it is still being studied today.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thermopylae&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Some few battle pundits shaming the biggest army the world then knew.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/caesar/gallic_e1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gaius Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A whole series of battles and the biggest personal marketing campaign of the time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Waterloo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Waterloo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This battle could have gone two ways until the French elite Imperial Guard faltered in heavy crossfire, and broke Napoleon's career.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Charge of the Light Brigade&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Just one unwise tactical move but still a great example of an epic battle scene.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty random list. There is a whole lot more to discover if you are so inclined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T14:46:26.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21953" CreationDate="2016-05-07T14:58:59.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally would use a mind mapper like &lt;a href=&quot;http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;freemind&lt;/a&gt; but there are many &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept-_and_mind-mapping_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;alternatives&lt;/a&gt; out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to look up an earlier question:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/554/how-do-you-map-out-your-storyline&quot;&gt;How do you map out your storyline?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;which features a simple spreadsheet solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept-_and_mind-mapping_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept-_and_mind-mapping_software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T14:58:59.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21968" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21972" CreationDate="2016-05-07T15:58:20.163" Score="6" ViewCount="23020" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a third person story that focuses on a main character. Sometimes I want to express the internal thoughts of the character, but I don't want to use internal dialogue in italics. What's the best way of doing that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I have so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mandy arrived at 3:00pm, but he was nowhere to be seen. Her mind&#xA;  immediately flooded with panicked thoughts. Was making the request via&#xA;  email inappropriate? Had he gone back to California already? Was he&#xA;  simply caught up in the traffic? She realised she was simply being neurotic and so took in a few deep breaths. The yoga techniques she had learnt might have seemed silly, but they certainly were better than worrying. She paced around, taking in the sights of the street. However, after an hour of waiting it was clear that he wasn't&#xA;  coming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three questions are obviously something the POV character is thinking, as are the comments about the yoga techniques. &#xA;I thought this would be clear, but I get complaints from my readers that the text shifts POV. What's the best way of approaching it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I can just use internal dialogue in italics, but I personally always find that it spoils the flow of reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18325" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2020-03-13T15:10:43.240" LastActivityDate="2024-01-14T21:35:28.953" Title="How to express character thoughts in the third person without using dialogue?" Tags="|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21962" CreationDate="2016-05-07T17:28:38.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about a book. I think the trick would be punching the holes. You'd have to someone cut 20 or so holes, with just the right spacing and the right size. Once the holes are punched, it's not that hard to put the comb in manually. I've done it plenty of times when I wanted to add or remove pages. You just bend the comb and slide the pages on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get a cheap binding machine for like $40. I don't know what you consider an acceptable amount of money to spend. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B013SQBRN6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Flexzion-Scrapbook-Laminator-Manually-Capacity/dp/B013SQBRN6/ref=sr_1_13?s=office-products&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1462641916&amp;amp;sr=1-13&amp;amp;keywords=binding+machine&lt;/a&gt; The main difference between the cheap ones and the more expensive ones is how many pages they can punch at a time. I used to have one that could only punch 7 pages, so doing anything sizable took a bunch of time. But if you're not going to use it often, maybe not a big deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T17:28:38.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21942" CreationDate="2016-05-07T17:49:16.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you register a copyright with the US Copyright office, there is space on the form (paper or on-line) for multiple authors. For example, here's the paper form: &lt;a href=&quot;http://copyright.gov/forms/formtx.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://copyright.gov/forms/formtx.pdf&lt;/a&gt; There is a place to fill in just what each author's contribution is. Like you could say, &quot;Alice Smith&quot;, &quot;text&quot; and &quot;Bob Jones&quot;, &quot;illustrations&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find plenty of books that say, &quot;Copyright 2010 by Alice Smith and Bob Jones&quot; and the like. Lots of books have multiple authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does CreateSpace have an option for Amazon to register the copyright for you? I've published two books with Amazon and in both cases I registered the copyright myself. If there's an option for that and you gave only your own name and not your co-authors, that's a mistake. Note that getting an ISBN is not the same as registering a copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, nothing on a copyright registration says how royalties are to be divided. As TrskalJM says, you should discuss the division, write up a contract, and all sign it. You say you have a written agreement about the &quot;narrator&quot;s portion, anyway. Does that also specify the division between you and the illustrator? If not, you should write that up also. Putting things on paper can prevent confusion and arguments down the road. &quot;I thought I was supposed to get 35%.&quot; &quot;No, we agreed you'd get 25%.&quot; &quot;That's not what we said last year.&quot; Etc. People forget exactly what was said, interpret words differently, make assumptions, change their minds about what's fair, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &quot;narrator&quot; hasn't actually written any text, just told her story and you wrote it down, she wouldn't have any claim to copyright. The actual author and illustrator certainly would. But as I said, copyright registration doesn't specify division of royalties. There are all sorts of reasons why someone not named on the copyright registration might get a share of the royalties. That's why you need a written agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T17:49:16.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21941" CreationDate="2016-05-07T18:02:46.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are probably lots of names and titles that are coincidentally repeated in multiple books. To take a silly extreme, if someone tried to sue saying &quot;He had a character in his book named John, and I have a character in my book named John. He's stealing my character name!&quot;, I can't imagine the courts would let that go very far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can own a trademark in a name. I am not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that if you wrote a book about a boy with magic powers named &quot;Harry Potter&quot; you would lose a trademark suit pretty quickly. But a writer can't claim trademark to the name of every character in a story, every made-up place, etc. Especially if your character has no obvious relation to theirs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more commonplace the name, the harder it is to win a trademark suit. I recall when I started a business a few years back I did some checking on trademarks of business names -- not the same thing of course but it's covered under the same laws -- and they said that made-up words have the strongest protection, descriptive phrases the least. Like if you started a business and called it &quot;Fracnoblag&quot; -- a word I just made up -- you'd have a strong case if someone else started a business with the same name. But if you call it &quot;Main Street Auto Repair&quot; and somebody on Main Street in another town uses the same name, your case is very weak. By analogy, I think if you wrote a story with a character named &quot;Aragorn&quot; you'd be in trouble. But &quot;Henry Smith&quot;? No problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW LaurenIpsum mentions &quot;James Bond&quot;. Ian Fleming did not invent the name &quot;James Bond&quot;. There was a James Bond who wrote books about birds, and Fleming just liked the name and so used it. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_(ornithologist)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_(ornithologist)&lt;/a&gt; You could probably make a case that his trademark claim is weak because of that. Not that I'd try it, I'm sure the publishers can afford better lawyers than I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T18:02:46.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21968" CreationDate="2016-05-07T21:39:23.827" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Internal thoughts are usually expressed either by italics or by quotation marks. If you don't want to use any special formatting and you’re writing in third person, you can just tell the reader what your characters are thinking. &#xA;You have to be extra careful to make it clear that these are the character's thoughts and not the narrator's voice forgetting his role in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to do that in your paragraph is to rewrite the questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Mandy arrived at 3:00pm, but he was nowhere to be seen. She panicked. Maybe that email request was inappropriate, Mandy thought, or has he gone to California already? Probably he was simply caught up in the traffic. She quickly realised she was being neurotic and...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15651" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T21:39:23.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-08T03:40:10.747" Score="1" ViewCount="879" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that (in fiction) when the protagonists are three children, they normally follow these stereotypes: one is the &lt;strong&gt;hero&lt;/strong&gt; (whose parent is famous), another is a &lt;strong&gt;nerd girl&lt;/strong&gt; (best student in the class) and the last one is a &lt;strong&gt;freaky/weird kid&lt;/strong&gt; (best friend of the hero).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In &quot;Harry Potter&quot;: Harry is the hero (son of a famous wizard), Hermione is the nerd girl and Ron is the freaky kid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In &quot;Mucha Lucha&quot;: Rikochet is the hero (son of a famous wrestler called &quot;Lone Star), Buena Girl is the nerd girl and The Flea is the weird kid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In &quot;Aaahh!!! Real Monsters&quot;: Ickis is the hero (son of Slickis, a famous scarer), Oblina is the nerd girl and Krumm is the weird boy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In &quot;Naruto Shippuden&quot;: Naruto is the hero (son of the 4th Kage), Sakura is the nerd girl and Sai is the weird boy. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that this is not a coincidence. So, my questions is: &lt;strong&gt;which is the origin of this combination of these three stereotypes?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is there an ancient and famous book which uses this combination (and that serves as inspiration for later works)?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18904" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T19:02:38.167" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T19:02:38.167" Title="Types of characters for three protagonist" Tags="|fiction|characters|tropes|child-characters|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21974" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21978" CreationDate="2016-05-08T04:59:44.347" Score="6" ViewCount="629" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a technical tutorial which fits better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this tutorial you'll learn&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this tutorial you will learn&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or in general does it make no difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18907" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2020-03-14T12:33:00.593" LastActivityDate="2020-03-14T12:33:00.593" Title="Should I use contractions in a technical tutorial?" Tags="|technical-writing|tutorial|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21968" CreationDate="2016-05-08T06:07:05.267" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've written the thoughts themselves very well. When I read those, I feel as if I'm in her head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What pops me out of the viewpoint are the places where you &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; us that she's thinking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her mind immediately flooded with panicked thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She realized...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are not her thoughts in the moment. They are &lt;em&gt;some narrator's commentary&lt;/em&gt; on what's happening in her head. And &lt;strong&gt;that&lt;/strong&gt; is where the viewpoint shifts occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get us into the character's head, you don't ever need to say &quot;she thought&quot; or &quot;she realized.&quot; That sort of commentary is unnecessary because &lt;em&gt;every word of the story&lt;/em&gt; comes to us through her perspective. Every sensory detail comes through &lt;em&gt;her&lt;/em&gt; senses. Every bit of reaction and opinion and thought is &lt;em&gt;her&lt;/em&gt; reaction and opinion and thought. We know this because you've drawn us into her head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're doing fine with her thoughts. Drop the parts where you tell us explicitly that she's thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edited to add this example:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mandy arrived at 3:00pm, but he was nowhere to be seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where was he? Was making the request via email inappropriate? Oh, God, had he gone back to California already?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No. That was silly. She was simply being neurotic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She took in a few deep breaths and felt her heartbeat slow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm not happy with my transition between the first and second paragraphs. But I hope you get the idea. No need to say she's thinking. Just write her thoughts.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2016-05-08T07:54:39.207" LastActivityDate="2016-05-08T07:54:39.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19672" CreationDate="2016-05-08T13:18:19.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a case pending that may answer this in court: &lt;em&gt;Paramount v Axanar&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://conlang.org/axanar/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Conlang.org&lt;/a&gt; for more info, including formal legal briefing and a memorandum from Dentons on conlangs &amp;amp; IP law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Disclosure: I direct the Language Creation Society's lawyer on this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also just commission a conlanger to make a language for you, so you have one that's bespoke, fitted to your specific needs / setting / aesthetic / etc, and w/ translations by the person who made the language. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://jobs.conlang.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LCS offers that service&lt;/a&gt;, FWIW.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18910" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-04-04T15:10:35.453" LastActivityDate="2022-04-04T15:10:35.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21977" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-08T17:29:07.380" Score="2" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is &lt;em&gt;Writer's Market&lt;/em&gt; a viable place for a freelance editor to find possible clients? As I understand it, the book is geared towards writers finding agents/publishers, but I've never even paged through a copy; does it have other uses? Are there similar resources that I might find helpful for my purposes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T14:05:03.540" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T14:05:03.540" Title="Writer's Market" Tags="|editing|resources|freelance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21974" CreationDate="2016-05-08T19:13:01.927" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how formal the context is.  If you're writing a short blog post about getting started with a new game, &quot;you'll&quot; probably won't be out of place.  If you're writing a tutorial as part of the documentation set for expensive enterprise software, it's more common in my experience to avoid contractions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your company or publisher has a style guide, follow it.  If they don't or you're self-publishing, decide how formal you want to be: &quot;you'll&quot; is more folksy and &quot;you will&quot; is more formal (but not stuffy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One tangential note: I try to avoid making promises about what the reader will learn; who knows if my reader will actually get it?  I talk about what we will show, not what you will learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-05-08T19:13:01.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21973" CreationDate="2016-05-08T19:26:18.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure there is a certain origin for this specific combination. All three characters draw from typical archetypes/stereotypes, and I guess that this specific composition feels the most balanced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can learn more about these typical archetypes in this very interesting undergraduate thesis about Harry Potter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sörensen, J. (2013). &lt;a href=&quot;https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/35062/1/gupea_2077_35062_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Archetypes and Stereotypes in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series&lt;/a&gt;. BA. University of Gothenburg.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research can be applied to many of the trios you are referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15651" LastActivityDate="2016-05-08T19:26:18.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21973" CreationDate="2016-05-08T19:44:32.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the trope is less of a conscious choice than the result of a series of decisions by the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the author wants the protagonist to have broad appeal.  Because he is intended to be a reader-substitute, he cannot be unusual in any way that is not unambiguously positive.  He can be smarter, stronger, richer, or better-looking, on the theory that every reader wishes to himself be smarter, stronger, richer, and better-looking, but nothing controversial.  He is unlikely to be a follower of an unpopular religion, a minority ethnic group, overweight, noticeably old or young, or odd in any other respect, unless the work is explicitly aimed at people who are themselves already in the same situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, the hero tends to be rather bland.  He's usually a white, heterosexual male in his twenties or thirties, handsome in an uninteresting way, unexceptional except in his heroic qualities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the author finds himself with a dull hero.  What to do?  I know: a sidekick!  A sidekick can be eccentric and unattractive, he can be fat, skinny, cowardly, forgetful, superstitious, foolish, really anything, because he is mostly comic relief.  The reader is not supposed to want to &lt;em&gt;be&lt;/em&gt; him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now we have two males wandering the landscape, alone together.  That will strike the more liberal readers as sexist and the more conservative ones as gay.  So let's add a female.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the female cannot be comic relief, that would be sexist or un-gallant.  And making her a distaff mirror of the hero would be boring, redundant, and rather obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving us with two choices: either she is the Action Chick, kicking ass and taking names, or she is the Smart Chick, supplying solutions to unsolvable problems as and when the plot demands it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice, for whatever it's worth, is just avoid this whole line of reasoning completely.  Don't try to make your protagonists &quot;likeable&quot; or &quot;relatable&quot;.  Make them &lt;em&gt;unique&lt;/em&gt;.  Make her an old, fat, racist lesbian with one leg and anxiety issues.  Make him a superstitious ailurophobe who exposes himself on the bus and never showers.  Something different.  Something &lt;em&gt;interesting&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2016-05-08T19:44:32.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21981" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-08T20:38:08.283" Score="1" ViewCount="2141" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a book about famous works of art. For example I want to give an in-depth analysis of the Mona Lisa and use a picture of it in my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I do this and still sell the book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18913" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-05-12T04:18:19.683" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T04:18:19.683" Title="Can I use famous works of art in my book?" Tags="|book|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21982" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21986" CreationDate="2016-05-09T06:17:42.080" Score="1" ViewCount="443" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today I received a mail from our support team which is beyond our concern and we can't look into the matter.&#xA;I need to mail them back &quot;As we can not do anything regarding this case&quot;. Since this will not be appropriate way to mail them, what else i can use in my mail to reply them back politely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16206" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T11:04:24.263" Title="How to write mail where the topic inside mail is not our concern" Tags="|business-writing|email|letter|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21982" CreationDate="2016-05-09T11:04:24.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;FYI - This issue is not related to our department/team. Please refer to --- --- for a better solution.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Our team is not in the best position to handle this issue. Refer a more oriented team for quicker resolution&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18922" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T11:04:24.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21981" CreationDate="2016-05-09T12:26:44.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Items which are in the public domain are free for use in any way.  This includes works of art such as the Mona Lisa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get far more information about this at:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public-domain/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public-domain/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Here's a quote from that site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a book, song, movie, or artwork is in the public domain, then it is&#xA;  not protected by intellectual property laws (copyright, trademark, or&#xA;  patent laws)—which means it’s free for you to use without permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Photo of Public Domain Work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you have a photo of the Mona Lisa that someone else has taken then they own the rights to the photo and that may be protected.  However, many times you can obtain an image of the public domain work from wikipedia and the rights to use the photo from their may be an open license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T12:26:44.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21927" CreationDate="2016-05-09T14:19:06.100" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hartpub.co.uk/hartstyleguide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Hart&amp;#39;s Rules&quot;&gt;Hart's Rules&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Section 3.2 Paragraphs&lt;/em&gt; has the relevant info:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;New paragraphs following headings should be ranged full left. New paragraphs not&#xA;  following a heading should be indented one tab. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leave the first line of the story alone, but the dialogue and the paragraphs following should each have a single tab indentation for the first line. The following lines should be &lt;em&gt;ranged full left&lt;/em&gt; (to use Hart's nomenclature).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18289" LastEditorUserId="18289" LastEditDate="2016-05-10T21:30:45.323" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T21:30:45.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21990" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-09T15:31:27.273" Score="3" ViewCount="501" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once copyright registration has been filed, does a separate copyright need to be obtained if original book is reprinted by copyright owner in another language?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18873" LastActivityDate="2016-06-10T11:56:03.130" Title="Copyright Registration of translated original work" Tags="|copyright|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21992" CreationDate="2016-05-09T21:57:26.653" Score="2" ViewCount="1944" Body="&lt;p&gt;In English, I can never remember where to put the comma when using the conjunction word, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to stay home and read a book, but I need to pick up some cat food.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jenny asked not once, not twice, but three times to see the open house that weekend.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But where is Godot?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure the first example is right.  Can anybody confirm the different comma configurations of the 'but' in the second and third?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_(grammar)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_(grammar)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This helps, but not sure they covered the correct comma placement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18844" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T03:07:27.943" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T03:07:27.943" Title="Where does the comma go when using 'but'?" Tags="|punctuation|grammar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21991" CreationDate="2016-05-09T22:31:50.790" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first and second examples are correct. The third example is actually more of a sentence fragment. If you are presenting it like it is written in, say, dialogue, then no comma is necessary, unless of course you wish to show a pause (As though you wrote &quot;But&quot; he said &quot;where is Godot?&quot;). If you wrote &quot;I know where ______ is, but where is Godot?&quot; then the comma would be required. Otherwise, it would be best to present it simply as &quot;Where is Godot?&quot;. Hope that answers your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18825" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T22:31:50.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21991" CreationDate="2016-05-09T22:32:39.707" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The word 'but' follows the same rules as any other conjunction, just like 'and' or 'or'. It's a word that joins two phrases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of your examples are correct. The first phrase ends with a comma, and the second phrase starts with the conjunction. Your first two sentences follow this rule perfectly. There is no comma in the third sentence, and as far as I know, neither should there be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your wording, you might be thinking that the word 'but' requires a comma at all times. It does not. Treat it like any other conjunction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T22:32:39.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21994" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22004" CreationDate="2016-05-09T23:12:02.687" Score="0" ViewCount="944" Body="&lt;p&gt;My novels contain several fictional races, but I have been trying to decide how to name them. Therefore, I must ask: is it more common for science fiction/fantasy writers to completely make up the names of races or to use words from other languages? I have seen examples of both (for instance Darth Vader means dark father). I wish to use the less common method, whichever it may be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18825" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T18:43:00.173" Title="Naming fictional races with original names vs with words from other languages" Tags="|naming|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21994" CreationDate="2016-05-09T23:20:51.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for the less common way, the most prominent way is to use combinations of foreign languages and meld them into a unique one. This is often great for an English audience that is not fluent in other languages, but if you are planning on selling your novels internationally, it might shatter the suspension of disbelief if a reader sees a word that they know. Overall, I believe that maybe taking some words from different languages and changing them slightly might work, as it is easier to write, but it might be more interesting to make a whole new language and really catch your readers off guard. I hope that helps at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18926" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T23:20:51.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21998" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-10T18:08:38.997" Score="-1" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;is it correct to ask, WHY LAUGHING&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a scenerio where the antagonist is laughing at the hero... is it right for the hero to ask... why laughing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of &quot;why are you laughing?&quot; but I've heard people ask &quot;why laughing?&quot;... and everytime I do, it sounds somehow to my ears, so I wonder,is it actually correct to ask, &quot;WHY LAUGHING?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18933" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T18:44:22.837" Title="Is it correct to ask, &quot;WHY LAUGHING?&quot;" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-05-10T18:55:04.487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21998" CreationDate="2016-05-10T18:44:22.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not grammatically correct, no. To be grammatically correct, you would use: &quot;Why are you laughing?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your hero speaks a certain way and it would be natural for him to ask the question like that, then write &quot;why laughing?&quot;. It all depends on your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T18:44:22.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22000" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22001" CreationDate="2016-05-10T20:35:18.353" Score="1" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;When is it NOT appropriate to use the combined words of &quot;they&quot; and &quot;are&quot;? (e.g.,  They're)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a grammatical rule to only refer to people or can it also refer to things? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Referring to printed paper forms: &quot;They're in the back office.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13464" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T20:56:38.610" Title="They are = They're... when?" Tags="|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22000" CreationDate="2016-05-10T20:56:38.610" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some style guides consider contractions to be informal, and therefore would not be used in certain contexts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, there's no grammatical restraint, either on &lt;em&gt;they are&lt;/em&gt; vs. &lt;em&gt;they're&lt;/em&gt; or the referent of the pronoun &lt;em&gt;they. They&lt;/em&gt; is the plural pronoun for both &lt;em&gt;he/she&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &quot;They are in the back room&quot; can refer to two or more people &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; two or more objects. (I would not, however, mix them. If you have a woman in the back room who is holding a bunch of printed forms, you would say &quot;She has them in the back room.&quot;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T20:56:38.610" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21990" CreationDate="2016-05-11T10:59:35.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lawyer, but in the absence of anyone else answering so far, here's my view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A translation of a book is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://bookwormtranslations.com/copyright-law-and-translation-what-you-need-to-know/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;derivative work&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; from the book in the original language. But it is ALSO a &lt;em&gt;separate work&lt;/em&gt; from the book in the original language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a person to translate a copyrighted work without the original owner's permission is definitely a violation of copyright. There have been many cases where  authors have successfully sued those who made pirate translations in an attempt to beat the authorised translation of a bestselling book into print and profit from doing that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in that sense, the original copyright owner automatically retains ownership and doesn't have to do anything more to assert that ownership. No one can legally claim that an unauthorized translation &quot;doesn't count&quot; as copyright violation just because the same story is put into a different language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the authorised translation is also a work in its own right. The work of translating involved skill and effort. The translation is separate from the original and has its own copyright. If the law where you are requires you to do something to register copyright for each work, then you should register the translation as well as the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the book is translated into multiple languages, all the above applies to each translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you are just asking out of curiosity, but if there are significant bad consequences for getting this wrong, I strongly advise you to check with a copyright lawyer in your own country / jurisdiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T10:59:35.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21955" CreationDate="2016-05-11T15:02:40.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I would do, is give the characters something to look forward to. Give them something to fight for. They need a motivation to keep going, something to comfort them in their time of need. I think by giving the characters this, you'd be able to make them have more courage and generally be happier for what is to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always give characters a motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T15:02:40.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21994" CreationDate="2016-05-11T17:42:01.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, it can be both. Authors will often take a foreign language and edit it into a new language. For example, Tolkien's elf language was based off Finnish, and in fact, he was linguist. A reason why he made lord of the rings was to have somewhere to use his made up languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the sheer difficulty of simply creating a name off the top of your head, I would have to say that copying another word and editing it is the more popular method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, I should probably point out the amount of endings that are cliche in fantasy. They include: -dell (surrendell), -far (fellenfar), -fell (evenfell). Those make it so easy to make new words, that I literally thought of those examples off the top of my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A tactic I personally find helpful, is to say your idea's out loud, and see if they actually sound good in a sentence. Like, &quot;The Urterall armies are going to attack.&quot;. I should actually point out how 'urgal' from 'The Inheritance Cycle' inspired me to think of that just now. I took the -ur sound at the start of the word, and took it from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped with naming your races!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T17:42:01.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22025" CreationDate="2016-05-11T19:07:36.170" Score="3" ViewCount="1116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to publish my book. I would like to publish it as print on demand. I don't like the idea of giving my book away to a publisher. I want to have control and remain responsible for marketing and for my book in general. I don't want waste; the idea of first printing a book when there is a buyer is amazing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is POD cheaper than publishers? I think it should be: you don't have waste while you traditionally have a lot of unsold books. It's only printed while traditional publishers have a huge team working on the book for an entire year. And making a lot of PR for the book as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18943" LastEditorUserId="16" LastEditDate="2016-05-12T04:10:17.733" LastActivityDate="2021-12-11T19:52:00.763" Title="Are print on demand books more expensive than normal published books?" Tags="|publishing|print-on-demand|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14720" CreationDate="2016-05-12T05:03:50.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;this answer generated from &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/5645/what&quot;&gt;@what's&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/14720/what-referencing-style-is-this/22006#comment23957_14720&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically these are &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Note_(typography)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;endnotes&lt;/a&gt;. They are often used in popular non-fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Endnotes give the text a more &quot;narrative&quot; appearance, whereas footnotes distract the lay reader and confuse those without the necessary training (e.g. to deal with contradictory information).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually pop science endnotes do not meet the more severe academic style standards. Endnotes are uncommon in academic publications today (footnotes are preferred).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some academic styles (such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APA_style&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;APA&lt;/a&gt;) avoid both foot- and endnotes, referring inline to a list of sources in an abbreviated style (e.g. author name and year of publication).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T05:03:50.377" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21968" CreationDate="2016-05-12T09:45:32.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the odd position of thinking that the sample texts in the answers given by Dale Hartley Emery and Thanasis Karavasilis both read well despite the fact that in terms of the advice given they directly contradict each other. &lt;em&gt;And&lt;/em&gt; I thought that your original formulation was fine - in fact I liked it best of the three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DHE is advising you to consistently omit all the insertions of &quot;she thought&quot; or equivalent tags and just go straight to third-person recapitulations of the character's exact thoughts. TK is advising you to consistently put them in. To me DHE's recommended style reads as slightly more fast paced and tense, at the cost of being a little less clear than TK's recommended form. Your original had a mixed style. Personally I thought yours was a happy medium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that &quot;I get complaints from my readers that the text shifts POV.&quot;  Meaning no disrespect to your beta readers, but given that you sensibly started by explicitly telling the reader that these are thoughts with the words &quot;Her mind immediately flooded with panicked thoughts&quot;, I think you shouldn't worry too much. It was certainly clear to me what was going on. When it comes to clipped sentences like &quot;Had he gone back to California already?&quot; the &quot;rule&quot; that one must never shift point of view scarcely applies. Very short phrases or questions that come in a stream of thoughts aren't really perceived as having a POV. Even if technically there is a shift from the character's POV to an unspecified narrator's POV it is in practice obvious who is doing the thinking. It is the POV equivalent of omitting the personal pronouns in casual speech, e.g. everyone understands that &quot;Seen Harry around recently?&quot; is short for &quot;Have you seen Harry around recently?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I conclude, boringly, that there is no &quot;best way&quot; to do it. It is a matter of style and personal preference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-05-12T12:52:44.650" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T12:52:44.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21968" CreationDate="2016-05-12T15:13:28.690" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No special formatting or quotation marks or even textual cues are necessary. Just write the thoughts. It's done this way all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I picked a book at random at Amazon (&lt;em&gt;The Noise of Time&lt;/em&gt;, by Julian Barnes) and flipped through until I found an instance of a character thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The overnight case resting against his calf reminded him of the time&#xA;  he had tried to run away from home. How old had he been? Seven or&#xA;  eight, perhaps. And did he have a little suitcase with him? Probably&#xA;  not...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thoughts are written in third person too, and readers know what they are without any extraneous nonsense explaining what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your example is fine as-is, but I think &quot;Her mind immediately flooded with panicked thoughts&quot; is unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T15:13:28.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22011" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-13T02:58:18.437" Score="0" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am unable to understand if this phrase is meant to be sarcastic.&#xA;&quot;I'm glad you're constantly thinking about how to make your life easier :).&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is made by a higher ranking official in reference to an senior and respected person proposing a solution from someone who is not very favored by him. Hint?: This statement is followed by part embracement of a solution and part differing view, but subtly hinting at complete disagreement. Does the above statement means to be sarcastic?.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18958" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-05-13T19:01:40.760" LastActivityDate="2016-05-13T23:11:22.933" Title="Unable to identify this phrase as sarcasm" Tags="|phrasing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-05-17T18:13:44.760" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22011" CreationDate="2016-05-13T06:55:45.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no proper way to answer this, and here are three reasons I can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We lack the context. Although you do try to offer &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; context, in&#xA;the greater scheme of things we would need to know more about the&#xA;characters, the plot, and the scene&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Irony and sarcasm depend a lot on cultural information. What an American considers as ironic, an Indian, Russian, or Vietnamese might not (and vice-versa).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Furthermore, irony and sarcasm also depend on individual readers. One person might see as ironic something someone else does not. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do ask whether the question is &lt;strong&gt;meant&lt;/strong&gt; to be seen as ironic, implying authorial intention. That's another problem we could be debating on for hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I absolutely had to pick one or the other I'd say 'yes, it feels a bit ironic'. Try the same phrase without the adverb &quot;constantly&quot; and see what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-05-13T06:55:45.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22014" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22022" CreationDate="2016-05-13T17:44:50.603" Score="2" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ever since I started taking my writing seriously, I have had trouble getting immersed in books. Every reading session devolves into analyzing the style, characters, themes etc., often with a view to what the writer is doing wrong in my not yet humble opinion. (I am just starting out and twice as infuriated with what I write. Is it envy? I am not sure.) The experience is educational, but getting too focused on the craft means I can't give the words the distance they need to do their magic thing. Language itself starts feeling alien. It has gotten to the point where I find myself putting down books fast, turning to music or art instead for inspiration. With no musical training, it is easy enough for me to ignore a song's simple chords or formulaic structure and just &quot;feel it&quot;. As long as I successfully avoid paying too much attention to the lyrics...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you experience something similar when you started writing? How did you overcome it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18967" LastEditorUserId="18967" LastEditDate="2016-05-13T17:55:59.933" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T11:36:09.430" Title="How to avoid slipping into fault-finding when reading?" Tags="|habits|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22016" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-13T22:49:29.243" Score="1" ViewCount="478" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a story with a strong theme of spirituality and divinity. At around the halfway point my protagonist has a religious experience which changes them. This experience is a highly important and pivotal to the make-up of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is from the first-person perspective of the protagonist in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you write a life changing and pivotal religious experience? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, any examples of religious experiences in fiction would be a great help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3903" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T03:27:02.700" Title="How to write a religious experience?" Tags="|fiction|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22011" CreationDate="2016-05-13T23:11:22.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;irony&quot; and &quot;sarcasm&quot; are not interchangeable words. They are two different techniques. There is no objective method of detecting irony in a short text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;xxP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18972" LastActivityDate="2016-05-13T23:11:22.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22014" CreationDate="2016-05-15T19:05:21.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I experience this all the time, though I don't see it as a bad thing. I embrace it as an opportunity to learn more. If I want to experience someting without analyzing it, I try listening to it on audiobook, or reading it to music. Not music with words. Orchestral music. Since I usually read action/adventure books, I resort to movie soundtracks. These help to immerse me in the book, and I don't analyze it as much. But if you're reading something like a realistic fiction book, you could put on a jazz beat, or for historical fiction, try a piece of music from that time-period. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16622" LastActivityDate="2016-05-15T19:05:21.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22021" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22024" CreationDate="2016-05-16T10:52:37.547" Score="2" ViewCount="1150" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might be a stupid question but I am trying to write a small novel, and my structure just doesn't seem right. The text just flows continuously until the end of the chapter (with dialog being typed on their own lines).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to make use of paragraphs, and if so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I just write start a new paragraph after a certain number of lines (if so how many lines would constitute a paragraph)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;OR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I just use indentation at the start of a particular line to mark a new paragraph? I have seen in some novels, the text is structured like I described mine except after a certain number of lines there's an indentation at the start of a line. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18989" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T21:24:14.533" Title="Do I need to make use of paragraphs when writing a novel and if so, how?" Tags="|novel|structure|book|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22014" CreationDate="2016-05-16T11:36:09.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a similar experience with movies. Watching movies was my favorite hobby, then it was entirely ruined when I watched the second Hobbit movie. I found it so bad that it ruined everything that I watched for a year. I constantly picked holes in the plot, relationships, acting, everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ironically enough it was the third Hobbit movie that fixed this obsession for me. That was because it was &lt;em&gt;so close&lt;/em&gt; to being good, despite still being an awful movie. I realized why it caused this change in me to happen, so hopefully this will help you with your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make up your own story. And by this I mean pretend the issues aren't there. Every piece of art is flawed, even masterpieces, which most people are willing to look past due to the fact that the rest of the piece is exceptional. But for others who create the art, it is easy to spot what could have been done differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So imagine that it is different. Iron out the creases in your own mind. Rather than not trying to analyze the work, go into &lt;em&gt;too much&lt;/em&gt; analysis. Think past what is on the page and make up your own ideas about what could have happened behind the scenes to make it make more sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you disagree with the motivation for a betrayal, conjure up your own elaborate backstory that explores a deeper motivation for the character that explains in your own mind. If a character literally defies the laws of physics to overcome an obstacle (looking at you 'Legolas running on falling bricks' scene), just pretend it didn't happen, and something else happened entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I love the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/comments/3qvj6w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Darth Jar Jar&lt;/a&gt; theory of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. A movie that I previously didn't particularly like is now actually incredibly entertaining by over-analyzing things that happen in the film, and coming up with a unique theory as to what is going on behind the scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will allow you to more easily distinguish how good pieces of writing are. There are great pieces of fiction with boring parts, and there are utter train-wrecks with incredibly engaging individual scenes. You can discern the good from the bad, and it's actually a really good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some things that are so bad that they are unsalvageable, and so good you will be immersed and never need to do any over-analysis to fix them in your own mind. Either way, you can appreciate them for what they are. Then you can start to appreciate the flaws, and understand that nothing will ever be perfect, but still like them anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T11:36:09.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22021" CreationDate="2016-05-16T11:50:06.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, this is an issue perhaps related to whatever software you're using, though for the life of me, I can't imagine what that may be (everything should be standardized). Of course your question &quot;Do I need to make use of paragraphs&quot; confuses me - it's a question I would not expect from someone writing anything, let alone a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FWIW:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oHpSG.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oHpSG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Text on the left shows paragraphs with simple line breaks (without indentation). Text on the right shows first-line indentation. The example on the right is preferred for fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how many lines would constitute a paragraph... There's not a single right answer to that, and probably it's not a valid question either. A paragraph is a text region that - more or less - encloses a group of sentences that are related to each other. For instance, it might be a description of a certain item, or someone's feelings in relation to a certain situation. Which means, a paragraph can be 2 or 122 lines long. There are no rules (or, to put it this way, there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; but you are free to break them - provided you know when or how; like Todorov said, you need to know what it is you're sacrificing before you offer the sacrifice ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T11:50:06.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22021" CreationDate="2016-05-16T12:00:00.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like all rules, only break it if you understand why it works, and you're breaking it deliberately to create an effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paragraphs break up the copy into more digestible chunks and make it easier to read. A paragraph can have one to a few thoughts in it, or one thought can be spread over multiple paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't use paragraphs, what you're writing is just stream-of-consciousness. This can make it hard to read, because your copy becomes a wall of gray text. Some readers like stream-of-consciousness; some characters need it. It doesn't work for me as a reader, but it may work for you as a writer. You have to write your book and share it with others and get feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use paragraphs, the length is dependent mostly on content, with some influence of &quot;rhythm&quot; &amp;mdash; your inner ear telling you that this is a natural pause point for a thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For formatting, you indent the first line of a paragraph rather than using an extra return. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-05-16T13:42:27.697" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T13:42:27.697" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22005" CreationDate="2016-05-16T13:55:52.290" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having worked in the &lt;i&gt;Print&lt;/I&gt; industry for over 20 years, in different shops that print traditionally (offset) and digitially (POD), it usually comes down to quantity if you are asking for an apples to apples cost per book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want &lt;b&gt;one&lt;/b&gt; book printed, it's much cheaper to send finalized artwork to a printing company and they could process your file for a digital printing machine, bind it and send it to you for a fee, let's call it X Dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the contrary, if you want &lt;b&gt;100,000&lt;/b&gt; books printed and did it digitally (POD style) it would cost 100,000 times X dollars. But if you did it traditionally using offset printing, it would cost a small fraction of that price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you contact a local printer who has the capability to print &lt;I&gt;and bind&lt;/I&gt; both digitally and traditionally, you could ask for a quotation, which may look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Digital-------------------------Traditional&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 book $50----------------------1 book         $1,200&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10 books $500-------------------10 books       $1,200&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1000 books $50,000--------------1000 books     $1,350&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10000 books $500,000------------10000 books    $2,000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would have to work with the sales team and find out where the &quot;cutoff&quot; is based on the number of books you are going to print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18990" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T13:55:52.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22021" CreationDate="2016-05-16T15:03:25.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have already selected an answer; however, as you mentioned your book has a lot of flow to it. I'm sure you know, conventionally novels have some form of paragraph structure. You may want to think about forgoing them altogether or deliberately formulating a structure that fits your piece of writing. Consider, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Road?wprov=sfla1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;On The Road - by Jack Kerouac&lt;/a&gt;, it was first typed out on a long continuous scroll. This book is revolutionary both in its style and content for its time. If you were to maintain a consistent approach it may provide a more immersive experience and set your book apart from others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoYsC.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoYsC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;The first page of, On the Road&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18937" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T15:03:25.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22028" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22029" CreationDate="2016-05-16T15:44:49.440" Score="7" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question regarding sentence openings in English language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write most of my sentences start with determiners and pronouns (personal and posessive). This gets repetative quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Arkadiy Arkadiyevich was an interesting man. His nose resembled a potato...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my native language (Russian) I can write this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Arkadiy Arkadiyevich was an interesting man. Nose resembled potato...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To a Russian reader it is clear from the context whos nose are we talking about. I can still say &#xA;&quot;His nose&quot; or even &quot;Nose his&quot; but that is not required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this it is very easy for me to vary sentence openings. I know that in English you can use nouns as sentence openings as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Colors flooded his face.&#xA;Pages flew out of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it seems it applies only to a set of &quot;some&quot; or &quot;any&quot; objects. Not specific object like in the case of Arkadiy's nose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of following variations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;His nose resembled a potato.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A little potato-like nose was planted on his face.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nose of his was as big as potato. (Doesn't sound right for my ear)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arkadiy Arkadiyevich was an interesting man with an interesting nose. The nose was just like potato.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arkadiy Arkadiyevich was an interesting man with an interesting nose. It was just like a potato.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even his nose was interesting, just like potato.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Though his nose was just like potato, he nonetheless was very proud of it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When somebody looked at his nose all they could see was a potato.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All round him were countless flies that attempted to land on his potato like nose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to avoid using words like Arkadiy's, his, he, a, the, it, my brain tends to rephrase the sentence often times completely loosing the original meaning or at least shifting the focus. E.g from nose to flies. Or it uses other words not nouns to add varaity. The problem is there are infinitely more nouns then these other special words and thus they are more flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone point me as to how to achive varaity in sentence openings? Am I missing something? Can I start sentences with nouns in the abvoe example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that you can start sentences with adverbs, verbs and using other parts of speach. And also I can combine short sentences into long ones. I guess I need to change my mindest, switch somehow from thinking in Russian to thinking in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18993" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-06-02T11:00:14.177" LastActivityDate="2018-01-21T09:49:11.163" Title="Sentence openings variations to avoid repeating determiners and pronounces" Tags="|style|structure|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22028" CreationDate="2016-05-16T16:38:27.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost all the variations you have are fine. A few notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A little potato-like nose was planted on his face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The grammar here is correct. However, the combination of &quot;potato&quot; and &quot;planted&quot; would only work in a humorous book, where you're constantly joking throughout the narration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nose of his was as big as potato. (Doesn't sound right for my ear)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correct; you can't say it this way in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The nose was just like potato.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do have to use the article &lt;strong&gt;a&lt;/strong&gt;, as you did in the next example. That carries down to the next two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All round him were countless flies that attempted to land on his potato like nose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;All around&quot; and &quot;potato-like&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, you have the right idea for variations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T16:38:27.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22021" CreationDate="2016-05-16T21:24:14.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a novel it is conventional to start a new  paragraph when you change:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- speaker (yes, every time)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- place&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- character&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- topic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can change the 'meaning' of your text just by where you choose to place a new paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T21:24:14.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21968" CreationDate="2016-05-16T21:26:50.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your original example is good deep POV. Deep third-person POV is nearly as intimate as first-person POV. The one case where you will have to resort to italics is if the thought is in first person, which you may need to do infrequently. The italics are needed to show the reader you really meant the momentary shift in person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9935" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T21:26:50.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14720" CreationDate="2016-05-16T22:33:53.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this is, indeed, an endnote as noted by others, the part in parenthesis IS a citation. It seems to follow Chicago's endnote style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(City: Publisher, Year.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not pure Chicago because it doesn't include the author's name and book title in the standard format, but to me it looks like it was influenced by Chicago's style, adapted for use in the endnote with some commentary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18955" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T22:33:53.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12948" CreationDate="2016-05-16T22:40:52.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has nothing to do with the source control, so the GIT support in V11 and 12 is a red herring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no better way of doing this, as of version 12 (April 2016). What you are doing and your work around are the only two ways I know of doing what you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our group, we use Track Changes for the changes that we want the author to review. We don't use Track Changes for the changes that we have the authority to make without having the original writer re-review it. But this has the undesirable effect of requiring the editor to keep clicking the on/off button.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your other option would be to only allow the reviewer to annotate the doc, rather than edit the doc, but that has other painful repercussions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I will point out that in Flare 12, when you generate a PDF, Flare now has the option to print the track changes content and the comment bubbles in the PDF, so people can review the PDF file itself and see the tracked changes. I know this still doesn't directly answer the need in your question, but it is a cool new feature related to what we are talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing to do at this point is to submit a feature request on MadCap's website giving them an example and use case. They are pretty receptive to feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18955" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T22:40:52.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22034" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-17T04:47:24.503" Score="4" ViewCount="942" Body="&lt;p&gt;The newest version of the MLA manual came out in April and so the OWL Perdue website is technically out of date.  Also, additional websites (including the Illinois State University page on citing government documents) all differ quite extensively when it comes to requirements of citing US Government documents and what information you should include.  I am reluctant to buy the new edition because even the official manuals are confusing concerning specifics of this detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I want to cite this document &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ40/pdf/PLAW-107publ40.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ40/pdf/PLAW-107publ40.pdf&lt;/a&gt; (as is, in the online version) specifically.  I am unsure whether it is important to note that it says &quot;Congressional Record&quot; on it, which was mentioned in various university website guidelines, something along the lines of &quot;If another agency published it, you may not need to include GPO in your citations.&quot;  Also, how would I find out whether it was in print before it was published online?  How would I note that it is an electronic reprint if it is?  What does S.J. Session 23 mean, and is it necessary to include this info in the citation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18692" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T01:01:31.493" Title="How to cite Authorization for Use of Military Force as published online in MLA style?" Tags="|style|citations|academic-writing|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22035" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-17T11:07:40.490" Score="2" ViewCount="937" Body="&lt;p&gt;When rotating POV between multiple characters, how long should a segment in one POV be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing ensemble 3rd person and tend to like to let the story dictate its own pace. However, I'm concerned that as the chapters are relatively short, the POV changes — usually 3 POVs per chapter — are very frequent, and the segments may be jarringly short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19009" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-06-02T11:04:17.917" LastActivityDate="2016-06-12T15:34:09.563" Title="Length of segments in rotating POV" Tags="|viewpoint|pacing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22035" CreationDate="2016-05-17T12:15:57.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no one right answer. You have to write your story and let other people read it, and ask your readers if it feels too jarring. Maybe one POV per chapter is correct, or maybe your story requires a frequent POV shift. But there's no generic template or requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-05-17T12:15:57.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22035" CreationDate="2016-05-17T14:06:12.203" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see the length of each segment done in a particular character's point of view as the issue. I've seen excellent stories split into many short glimpses of the world through multiple characters' eyes, and I've seen stories equally excellent split into just two halves consisting of Character A's view of the story followed by a contrasting second half from the POV of Character B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be a problem with short sections in different POVs is failure to make the identity of each new POV character clear at the start of each section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go for short sections, I recommend starting each section with either of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a single-word announcement of the name of the character we are following, or&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;stating the viewpoint character's name in the very first sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2016-05-17T14:06:12.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22016" CreationDate="2016-05-17T15:09:21.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply and directly is usually the best way to write about religious experience. And focusing on the emotions. There are some classics on religious experience in real life (not fictional accounts) such as &quot;Autobiography of a Yogi&quot; by Paramahansa Yogananda and &quot;The Varieties of Religious Experience&quot; by William James. More contemporary accounts: &quot;The Experience of No-Self&quot; by Bernadette Rogers and &quot;A Christian Woman's Secret&quot; by Lilian Staveley. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19013" LastActivityDate="2016-05-17T15:09:21.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22016" CreationDate="2016-05-17T16:11:37.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd write about a religious experience the same way I write about any experience. Something tangible happens, which the character witnesses, and his own behaviors change in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;em&gt;A Prayer for Owen Meany&lt;/em&gt;, which begins like this: &quot;I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-05-17T16:11:37.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22040" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-17T19:06:47.513" Score="1" ViewCount="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you are doing a research paper or a writing and you have two people doing it, do you put a comma before the and in something like... By Arielle, and Bella?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19014" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T04:33:44.873" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T04:33:44.873" Title="A heading on a paper" Tags="|academic-writing|punctuation|collaboration|authorship|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22016" CreationDate="2016-05-17T19:25:21.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmm, the question is too broad to give a definitive answer. How would you describe any experience? It depends on the nature of the experience, the nature of the character, and the role of the experience in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the experience was fundamentally emotional, like a character is sinking into despair at the mess he has made of his life and suddenly decides that his only option is to turn to God for help, than I'd describe it in emotional terms. I'd have the character describe his feelings -- either in narration or in conversation with another character. If you can write emotions effectively, you could talk about his despair and sobbing and calling out to God in desperation. (Or &quot;to the gods&quot; or whatever. You didn't say what religion you're talking about.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the experience was intellectual, if the character has spent years carefully studying objective evidence and has now come to the conclusion that the weight of scientific and/or historical and/or philosophical evidence favors this religion, then I'd talk about how hard he has studied and all the evidence he has reviewed and how he has carefully considered arguments and counter-arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, you should consider whether you want to express approval of the character's new beliefs, disapproval, or if you want to avoid expressing any value judgement. Do you describe his experience in ways that make him sound like a reasonable, intelligent person who has come to a rational conclusion, like a raving lunatic who has gone off the deep end, or do you want to frame it in a way that leaves the reader to judge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with any scene in any story, you have to consider how readers will react. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A strong emotional scene can make a story powerful and appealing. Some of the best loved stories are those with powerful emotional scenes. But overdo it and readers can be turned off. I've read plenty of stories where overdone emotional scenes leave me saying, &quot;Yeah yeah, I get it, she's sad. Why can't you just tell me she's sad and move on?&quot; If I had a formula for how to do this right, I suppose I'd be a world-famous writer and not the dabbler that I am. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Religion can be particularly touchy. If you attack a religion, you can expect people who follow that religion to be uninterested in reading your book. Why would I want to read a book that attacks me? A few such books manage to get a reputation for being controversial and important and so even opponents read them so they can give a rebuttal, but that's hard to pull off. Usually if you insult people, they just ignore you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you endorse or praise a religion, people who dislike that religion may similarly respond negatively. This tends to be less dramatic. I'm a Protestant, but I tend to have a favorable view of books or movies that praise other branches of Christianity, as long as they're not attacking Protestantism. I'm pretty neutral on religions that are largely dead. Like I read Greek myths without worrying that they are advocating paganism, because that's just not much of an issue today. But atheists tend to react negatively to stories that praise Christianity, and Christians tend to react negatively to stories that praise atheism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-05-17T19:25:21.177" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22042" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22043" CreationDate="2016-05-17T20:17:47.900" Score="1" ViewCount="364" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a story that is being told from 3rd person that switches perspectives frequently, but I'd like to focus on only one character's train of thought for a paragraph. The thoughts aren't in the first person, though the thoughts are not part of narration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rhea sees this, and decides to act, knowing that Colton is the one that knows Leeanna almost as well as Emma does, and understanding that the people watching the camera probably know that, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Just think about it,&quot; Rhea tells her, making eye contact, as Leeanna and Colton often do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Emma, still staring at the door, thinks logically through her cause of worry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leeanna had been taken to an unknown room for an unknown reason, though Emma's best guess is that it wasn't so they could give her a cake. She could be in trouble, but yet again, this man needs them, he wouldn't hurt them if he knew it could prevent them from fulfilling his needs. So, chances are that Leeanna isn't actually being hurt. But, they may be attempting to control her, using whatever way they had of getting inside of their heads. Even so, those men think she's Emma, when she's actually not. Whatever they're doing to her is going to be aimed at Emma's powers, so it shouldn't affect Leeanna much at all. Really, Emma does not have much reason to be concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just like that, she feels the worry dissuade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The center paragraph is all Emma's thoughts. Passages like these happen frequently throughout the novel, though it's more their thought process than their direct thoughts. For direct thoughts, I usually use italics to differentiate between direct thoughts and dialogue, but in this case is it necessary to use phrases like &quot;Emma thinks&quot; and &quot;Emma understands&quot; since the passage features multiple perspectives? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would one differentiate between the narration and the character's thought process? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2016-05-17T21:56:48.307" Title="Specific character's thought in 3rd person omniscient writing" Tags="|technique|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22042" CreationDate="2016-05-17T21:56:48.307" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simple way is to differentiate the narrative voice. Your narration should be clean, standard, grammatically correct prose, while these narrated thoughts can sound a bit choppier and more like speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Separately, this is much harder to do if your book is in the present tense, so I'm shifting it to past for now.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leeanna had been taken to an unknown room for an unknown reason, though Emma assumed it wasn't so they could give her a cake. She could have been be in trouble. Still, this man needed them. Hurting them would only keep him from getting what he wanted. Best guess, Leeanna wasn't actually being hurt. They &lt;i&gt;could&lt;/i&gt; be trying to control her, using whatever method they had to get into people's heads, but even if they were, they thought she was Emma, and whatever they might be doing would be aimed at Emma's powers. Leeanna wouldn't be affected much at all. Probably. Most likely. Really, there wasn't much reason for Emma to be concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emma's worry began to dissipate. She took a few deep breaths, closed her eyes, and reached out with her mind. Her awareness rose to the top of the building and then slowly sank, floor by floor, as she searched for the object she'd been assigned to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;Emma assumed&amp;quot; (thinks/understands/etc.) tells the reader that this is Emma's POV, and the speech-like patterns shows that it's narration of thoughts (the thought process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-05-17T21:56:48.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22044" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-18T02:11:23.743" Score="4" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing in third person, limited , past with half a dozen POV characters. I make an effort to never slip into omniscient and try to keep my character POVs in their own voices i.e wheel of time. My problem is that I tend—with one character especially—to give a lot of their personal thoughts, reactions etc. My question is how far can you go before it needs to be in the first person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19009" LastActivityDate="2016-05-22T19:22:49.943" Title="Depth in third person limited" Tags="|narrative|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6957" CreationDate="2016-05-18T02:16:55.107" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wheel of time does this very well, as does the edge chronicles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19009" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T02:16:55.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22005" CreationDate="2016-05-18T02:34:22.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'd have to give more information for a true apples-to-apples comparison. As @chowzen says, a key factor is how many copies you are printing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To offset print a book requires a certain amount of &quot;setup&quot; work to create the master plates. I've never paid someone to offset print a book, but I've had one-page flyers and the like printed, and the printer has charged me $25 to $100 to create the plate. I'm sure that includes some administrative overhead so a 200 page book probably isn't 200 times that, but that's the ballpark. So several thousand dollars anyway to make all the plates for a book. (If anyone on here has more precise number, please jump in. I tried Googling but the on-line printers I found all want me to fill out a form with my phone number and they'll call back with a quote. Didn't want to get into that.)  If you then printed one copy and threw the plates away, it would cost you thousands of dollars for that one copy. If you printed a million copies, the cost of the plates divided by 1 million comes to a fraction of a penny per copy, practically nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With print-on-demand, there is essentially zero setup cost. It's like printing a file on your computer printer: you send the file and it's done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But offset printers are much faster than computer printers, technically simpler, and easier to maintain. So the cost per copy is small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The end result of all this is that if you're printing a small number of copies, POD is cheaper. If you're printing a lot of copies, offset printing is cheaper. The exact breakpoint depends on a lot of factors, but it's on the order of several hundred copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But printing isn't the only cost. You also have to consider storing and shipping. With POD, you print copies as customers buy them. Storage cost is zero. With offset printing, you print thousands of copies. When they are all sold, you print thousands more. In the meantime you have to store them somewhere. You have to ship them to the warehouse, pay people to unload them from the truck and put them on shelves, and then when they're sold retrieve them from these shelves. And of course the warehouse costs something to build, and you have to heat it in the winter and cool it in the summer and keep the rain out and so on so the books aren't damaged. You have to keep track of how many copies are in the warehouse and where they are. Sometimes there are accidents or mistakes and copies are lost or damaged. All this costs money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With POD, if you only sell 5 copies, you don't make much money but you don't lose anything. With offset printing, if you print 10,000 copies and only sell 5, you're out all the money you spent to print those 10,000 copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in practice, the per copy cost of a POD book is usually higher than an offset printed book. But it's usually preferred by self-published authors because it requires little or no up-front investment and no risk of being stuck with unsold copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T02:34:22.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22044" CreationDate="2016-05-18T04:52:23.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no rules, really. Or, to put it this way, there are &lt;em&gt;conventions&lt;/em&gt;, but that's precisely where a skillful writer comes in. A skillful writer, in control of her art, is able to see when something works and when something doesn't. Narration perspectives and focalization are no exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice I can give you is this: Don't focus too much on what you're supposed to do; focus on the best way to convey the message, then pick whatever method works for it, both locally (i.e. in a specific scene) and globally (in the entire book). What I mean by that? In an otherwise 3rd-person narration, if you really want to accentuate a feeling, you can switch to 1st-person (perhaps with &lt;em&gt;italics&lt;/em&gt;), to indicate inner thought. But if you plan to do this extensively, it a) loses its &quot;exclamation point&quot; quality; b) you have to be consistent - in other words, if a characters stars having inner dialogue like that, you can't just stop it at some point without a reason&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T04:52:23.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22040" CreationDate="2016-05-18T19:04:21.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No comma is needed in lists of two things: &quot;By Arielle and Bella.&quot; And &quot;I have a dog and a cat.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the list has more than two items, then add commas: &quot;Written by Arielle, Bella, and Clara.&quot; (Some styles don't add that last comma, the &quot;Oxford comma.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T19:04:21.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7142" CreationDate="2016-05-18T21:38:28.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write technical instructions for software, and I've found that creating a &amp;quot;format&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;style&amp;quot; is an important step in the writing process. What I would recommend here is that you have a specific style for the different content types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned several content types:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practical Advice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dealing With Problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Equipment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start there and I'd create a standard format and tone for each of these types of content, so all &amp;quot;Practical Advice&amp;quot; articles follow the same format and have the same tone. This helps readers know what to expect and know what kind of information they expect to get, depending on the article type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As was mentioned earlier, it is very important to do audience analysis to make sure you understand your audience. If you are new to the idea, it can be helpful to create 'personas' for your different audience types. You describe the characteristics of the person and you give them a name. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Persona: Susan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Susan is a single adult between the ages of 21 and 45. She travels extensively, usually 2 to 3 times per year. She loves outdoor activities and has hiked Machu Pichu and all the highest mountain peaks in the lower 48 states. She has visited 60% of National Parks, but prefers state-side travel to international travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is just a silly example, but it illustrates the idea. Now as you are writing each section, you can think to yourself &amp;quot;What information would Susan be interested in? How can I present it in a way that will be helpful for her?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18955" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T21:38:28.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21550" CreationDate="2016-05-18T23:02:19.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can extend visual media as far as you want on the printed page; so long as there is an adequate benefit to the reader (bigger will be more clear, diagram is complex, want subscripts and other symbols more readable...) The only limit is (of course) the page itself and the left-hand gutter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recommend asking the technical q re: LaTex separately or diff forum. I just wanted to address that since I'm ostensibly &quot;a-ing the q&quot; -thx.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T23:02:19.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22052" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-18T23:05:15.997" Score="1" ViewCount="314" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do online journalists report on things if they aren't actually out in the field reporting?  I'm assuming they simply watch mainstream news, listen to government/organizational websites, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19028" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-05-21T20:50:49.070" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T20:50:49.070" Title="Where Do Online Journalists Get Their Info?" Tags="|journalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22053" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-19T01:58:56.720" Score="0" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do online publications afford to pay writers 20-50$ per written article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19028" LastActivityDate="2016-05-22T16:09:02.613" Title="How Do Online Sites Afford Writers?" Tags="|journalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22054" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-19T02:56:59.787" Score="8" ViewCount="782" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;em&gt;Markdown&lt;/em&gt; to write my stories, and have started using Pandoc to convert to PDFs and HTML. The PDFs could use improvement, however, and I would like to make them look like Manuscript submissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19027" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T19:52:11.683" Title="Is There a Pandoc Latex Template For Novel or Short Story Manuscript Submissions?" Tags="|style|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22016" CreationDate="2016-05-19T03:27:02.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is easy to imagine that moments of religious experience are great strum and drang affairs, but they are more often moments of quietness. Not the storm but the calm after the storm. Consider 1 Kings 19:11-13:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;11So He said, &quot;Go forth and stand on the mountain before the LORD.&quot; And behold, the LORD was passing by! And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12After the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of a gentle blowing. 13When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. And behold, a voice came to him and said, &quot;What are you doing here, Elijah?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are moments when one feels a great clarity or certainty. They are not the noise but the thing that cuts through the noise. They are the coda, not the crescendo. This may not be universal (sometimes, like Paul, you get knocked off your horse) but I believe it is very much the norm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The religious experience is above all a moment of recognition. &quot;Then the two told what had happened on the road, and how they had recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread.&quot; (Luke 24:35) C.S. Lewis describes his conversion something like this &quot;I broke down and confessed that God was God, the most reluctant convert in all Christendom.&quot; Just because you have the moment of recognition does not mean you are happy about it. But it is still a moment of recognition. And of course, recognition can be a profoundly life changing event. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To describe a moment of recognition, I think, is more a matter of preparation than anything else. Consider a scene in which a man sees a stranger approaching him on the street and then suddenly recognizes that it is his father. The impact of that moment of recognition depends not on how you tell the meeting itself but on whether they have been separated for a long time or dad just went down to the shop for a bag of chips. It depends on it there is some grievance between them, or if he has special need of his father, or if his father is missing. What the reader knows about these things will determine how they react to the moment of recognition. The impact is all in how it is set up, not how it is described. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you set up the moment of religious recognition so that the reader appreciates the gravity of it (whether they share it or not) they will feel its impact on the protagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T03:27:02.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22052" CreationDate="2016-05-19T09:03:51.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I worked for a major news portal, about 97% of news was purchased from news agencies (the remaining 3%, authored by own journalists and columnists was kept for publicity - definitely not for articles, but for bragging rights of &quot;having own journalist team&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These agencies, in order, purchase their news from independent journalists doing their own &quot;hands-on&quot; research, or from newspapers/magazines employing own journalists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journalists doing research don't need to be physically present &quot;at the site&quot; either. There's phones, there's social media, even Google StreetView to show the location; Social Media will very likely have eyewitnesses with own recordings of the events, who can be contacted for publishing rights (or sometimes their publications taken without asking...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditional hands-on journalism, being slow and costly, is slowly vanishing. It's still valuable - it's prestigious; having own reporter on site is viewed as &quot;elite&quot;; that's the stuff for the front page. But for each newspaper there's only one front page and good several pages inside to fill - that content is usually purchased, or assembled from sources that don't require leaving one's desk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T09:03:51.720" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22053" CreationDate="2016-05-19T09:13:25.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At about $2.80 per thousand impressions, eight display ads per page will break even if the article gets a thousand views. And there are ad campaigns costing much more, sponsored articles, and so on - that brings even more revenue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, any publication will rarely exceed 10% of own content. Most of it will be purchased from news agencies (in bulk, so the price per article is considerably lower), press materials received from entities that want the publicity, material copied from other sources (anywhere from long-term content exchange contracts, through &quot;digests&quot;, to outright plagiarism), content they are &lt;em&gt;paid&lt;/em&gt; to publish (articles with desired slant), and so on, and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, even if &quot;own writers&quot; technically cost the publisher more than they allow to rake in directly, they are kept for the prestige - a Journal / Newspaper is more prestigious title than &quot;News aggregation site&quot; - and their publications can be resold to other outlets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never mind &quot;Premium articles&quot; that require a paid subscription.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2016-05-22T16:09:02.613" LastActivityDate="2016-05-22T16:09:02.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16458" CreationDate="2016-05-19T11:23:22.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What makes a passage strong is almost always its context. We walk by the wonders of nature unseeing everyday. Only at certain times and in certain moods or circumstances do we pause to notice them or be moved by them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Squirrels accidentally plant forests by hiding nuts and forgetting where they put them. By itself, that is a mildly interesting fact. In the right context, that mildly interesting fact could illustrate a broader truth about the universe, which is what you are going for here. So far so good, your passage does that well. But for it to have a profound emotional impact on a person (or an audience) we have to be in the right mood and circumstances to receive it. We have to be in a moment in which this truth makes a profound impact in our lives or how we understand them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your passage states that this happens. But whether the audience will feel this strongly will depend on whether what comes before puts them in a receptive mood. With the right setup, a truth like this can be devastating. With the wrong one it can be as banal as a grade school science fair. It's all in the setup. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T11:23:22.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16458" CreationDate="2016-05-19T15:41:56.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The passage is making too many assumptions, and does not really open much of a dialogue with the reader. The De-Shi character is just kind of thrown at us without really explaining who they are, and why we should care about what they are saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also very little supporting evidence of forests that are planted by squirrels. Sure, a handful of acorns may germinate, and some trees may grow as a result, here and there, but there is no evidence presented which would make us think that entire forests are being planted. Trees reproduce in many different ways. This is simply one way that it can happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that things in nature are interconnected. Seeds are spread by many different kinds of animals. Flowers are pollinated by bees, and other insects, as well as by humming birds, and the wind. The flowers themselves have bright colors, and sweet smells which attract insects. The flowers also produce an excess amount of pollen, which is enough for the bees to convert that to honey and feed their hive, which in turn feeds other animals, including people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also true that many living organisms have flaws. The argument that we have flaws for a reason is very weak. Sure, there is a positive side effect for some of the flaws in nature such as with squirrels, but not all flaws are positive. What is the purpose of a human being getting cancer, or some kind of other disease?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point I am trying to make is that a writer doesn't need to get into lofty discussions about how the world works to have an impact. Especially if the writer does not have a complete understanding of the subject. The reader will not necessarily have a passionate response to something just because the writer intends it to be about a passionate subject. You can't guilt someone to be passionate, you must engage them in the conversation, and give them enough information for them to arrive at the place where you are. Sure, this is something you believe in, but you need to tell the reader how you arrived there, so they can follow along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11107" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T15:41:56.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16177" CreationDate="2016-05-20T01:29:54.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think one thing you are missing in all of this is that at the time they were written these books were the latest science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give you an example of a few things I have seen in my own lifetime (I am 60):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We went from wondering if we might find life on Mars to being assured there was no life on Mars to having the discovery of past life on Mars announced to having that brought in question to having water discovered on Mars to having people now wondering if that might mean the discovery of extremophile life on Mars. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We went from not knowing how the dinosaurs died out to knowing it was caused by rock from outer space to now knowing the rock was the straw that broke the dinosaur's back to knowing ? killed them off sometime in the future.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science is built up of layers of theory that become rock hard fact sometimes.  Unfortunately every once in a while one of those rocks become shifting sand and then we have to go back and reevaluate everything we have put on top of it.  This is bad for the scientist, but good for the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Want to get rid of a few &quot;known scientific facts?&quot;  All you have to do is come up with new theories that knocks them off their pedestals.  You do not have to prove these new facts; just make sure they are feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't believe me?  Look at all the FTL ships out there in science fiction land.  Current science gives them a thumbs down, yet we refuse to give them up.  They are just too darned much fun. And who knows - we were all supposed to die when they came up with trains that went more than 20MPH according to some scientist of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you need to know that about all those books about little green men on Mars that did not get shifted back and forth multiple times, is exactly the reason that old science fiction never gets labeled as fantasy.  Once it is in the science fiction section no one is going to move it.  Librarians would have a cat fit!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to write an ole time science fiction story have at it.  Just fill current theory full of holes because in 2020 such a scientist discovered... and then write your fun story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19040" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-05-29T08:37:47.003" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T08:37:47.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22063" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22076" CreationDate="2016-05-20T02:50:08.160" Score="2" ViewCount="9266" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on an engineering project and lots of the design decisions I've made are based on application notes or application reports made by manufacturers, like this one: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ti.com/lit/an/slva057/slva057.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ti.com/lit/an/slva057/slva057.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I cite this kind of sources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19041" LastActivityDate="2020-03-31T09:15:16.540" Title="APA: How to cite an application report or an application note" Tags="|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16177" CreationDate="2016-05-20T12:25:19.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tolkien wrote a wonderful essay called &quot;On Fairy Stories&quot; in which he essentially rejected the notion of suspension of disbelief as an explanation of what is going on when a reader reads any kind of fantasy (and science fiction is a branch of fantasy). Tolkien argued that a story is an act of sub-creation (under God's creation). The author creates a world and makes it believable. The reader enters into that world and believes it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no question of disbelief being suspended. It is all about belief in the sub-created world. If belief in the sub-created world ever wavers, it collapses entirely. The reader does not disbelieve and then suspend that disbelief. The reader enters into the sub-created world and either believes or does not believe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you can successfully create a world in which the laws of nature as such and such as you want them to be, and if you can make the reader believe this world, they will believe and the story will work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some part of your readership will, of course, be Philistines for whom (to their great loss), entry into sub-created worlds is not possible. Nothing you can do for them, alas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T12:25:19.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22068" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-21T01:16:00.247" Score="3" ViewCount="882" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am thinking about writing a work on fantasy fiction (casually, mostly for my own entertainment). Would the style of a memoir be suitable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, the writing would be the personal account of a fictional character on his experiences of the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fantasy part would be this: the world is like the one we have, up until 2015, when magic &amp;quot;invaded&amp;quot; it. A bunch of people died and an apocalypse started, the narrator struggles to survive in the post-apocalyptic, magical world. The memoir is written after everything got better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is there any obvious problem with this style for a fantasy fiction novel? For example, would there be many situations where it would be natural for the character to talk about things involving magic but the reader may not know enough background for the conversation to make sense? Also, would the fact that the writing is a memoir suggest to the reader that no matter how intense things get, the narrator will survive, and thus removing the tension and excitement? If so, is there any way to achieve those effects in this style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19054" LastEditorUserId="33848" LastEditDate="2020-09-26T00:46:03.920" LastActivityDate="2020-09-26T00:46:03.920" Title="Memoir-style fantasy fiction" Tags="|fiction|novel|fantasy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22068" CreationDate="2016-05-21T02:47:21.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing a memoir style fantasy story could work well, if you follow a few guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write it as though the main character intends to explain the magic to someone who doesn't understand it. For instance, someone born in the new peaceful age who wasn't around for the introduction of the magic and therefore might require an explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create suspense. You mentioned that this could be difficult due to the fact that the protagonist clearly survives. However, you can use the death of his friends and family as well as some disability he gained from his experiences which is not mentioned at the beginning. One other option could simply be shocking scenarios (Strange creatures, Genocide, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that you can mention something and explain it later. Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18825" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T02:47:21.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22070" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22071" CreationDate="2016-05-21T05:58:22.373" Score="1" ViewCount="580" Body="&lt;p&gt;The villain is evil; he does evil things to the world's people. The hero (a.k.a &quot;the good guy who does good things and is against the villain&quot;) wants to stop this evil, and goes in a journey to face the villain and stop him. However, in order to achieve that, the hero ends up also doing things considered evil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, maybe this could be used in the plot, something like &quot;You came to stop my evil, but look at you, you've become just like me&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm not sure. Wouldn't it be contradictory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Oh, please, I know this is cliché, I'm just asking about the good-guy-becoming-evil stuff, everything else is just an example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastEditorUserId="14490" LastEditDate="2016-05-21T16:42:10.077" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T19:03:52.313" Title="Is it bad writing or just the plot if the hero ends up being as evil as the villain in order to stop the villain's evil?" Tags="|fantasy|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22070" CreationDate="2016-05-21T06:19:07.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that when the protagonist shows a darker side it only allows you to create a more in-depth profile of said character. It allows the reader to have an inside look at what really goes on behind the mask of the character you have created, and gives the story a 'real life' feeling, and not something you have fabricated. It is a commonly used 'plot twist' though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it all depends on someone's idea of what something &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&amp;amp;ion=1&amp;amp;espv=2&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8#q=definition%20of%20evil&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;evil&lt;/a&gt; is. Stealing is wrong, and in some eyes, considered evil. But if you have no money and you are stealing an apple to feed your child, who is unable to care for themselves, or find sustenance on their own, is that considered evil? What is worse: allowing the starvation of a helpless being, or taking an apple that you didn't purchase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sometimes, in order to do the right thing, you have to do the wrong&#xA;  thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19057" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T06:19:07.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22072" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-21T07:54:35.200" Score="1" ViewCount="6266" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a short horror story. What are the best ways to set a dark tone or mood to the story? Just in a short introduction, if I want to introduce a character or place as a place I would not like or a person I would not like, what is the &lt;strong&gt;best&lt;/strong&gt; way to do so? This story would be based on a slight mix with the supernatural with realistic touches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have a seen where I have to build up tension till a certain character meets a ghost or demon, how would I do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19059" LastEditorUserId="19059" LastEditDate="2016-05-21T08:44:12.603" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T18:47:28.090" Title="What is the best way to set a dark tone to a story?" Tags="|style|horror|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22072" CreationDate="2016-05-21T08:33:37.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very generic question, because a) it depends on many things; b) there is more than one way, and more than one &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; way&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want the story to be supernatural, explained, or ambiguous? &quot;Supernatural&quot; means there are, indeed, demons, ghosts, and goblins. &quot;Explained&quot; means you're just imagining it, or you're being taken for a ride - it's the so-called &quot;Scooby Doo Gothic&quot;. Ambiguous is, well, self-explanatory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some general tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;try to unsettle your reader. The best way to do this is to opt for&#xA;ambiguity. Demons are scary, and so is madness, but it's even scarier&#xA;when you can't differentiate between the two.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;try to &lt;em&gt;include&lt;/em&gt; the reader. Use metatextual strategies, try to make the reader realize that the reality of the text and his/her own reality need not be two separate things. There are many ways to do this, but perhaps the easiest and a quite effective one is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;defamiliarization&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be ambiguous when you describe time or setting. &quot;Some time&quot; is better than &quot;five minutes&quot;, and &quot;a field of unknown length&quot; is better than &quot;a field as long as a football stadium&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use &quot;marker words&quot; related to your genre, as well as to the point above. Examples: &quot;endless&quot;, &quot;infinite&quot;, &quot;vast&quot;, &quot;unreal&quot;, &quot;hazy&quot;, &quot;uncanny&quot;, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T08:33:37.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22070" CreationDate="2016-05-21T08:49:22.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not bad writing, but gives you more insight on said character. It depends on the plot of the story and how you manage to pull it off. It can either be a good twist in the story or people just say &lt;em&gt;&quot;oh wow so original&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several movies (2 as of now) in this year have played on this topic, namely &lt;em&gt;Batman v Superman&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Captain America: Civil War&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spoilers (for the movies):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; In Batman v Superman, Batman fails to see how Superman could be the world's greatest hero and wows to brings him down; to strike before Superman can be corrupted and save the world from any possible threat from him. He even goes as far as to try and kill Superman.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; In Captain America: Civil War, Iron Man does realize that Captain America was right about the Winter Soldier's innocence. But later on, when he finds out that it was the Winter Soldier who brutally murdered his parents on a mission and the fact that Captain America knew about it, he forgets all his moral values and tries to kill the Winter Soldier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end this is not a bad practice, but it severely depends on how your story is and how you pull it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19059" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T08:49:22.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22063" CreationDate="2016-05-21T11:19:51.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The APA Publication Manual (6th ed., 2009) gives several reference examples for technical and research reports (in section 7.03, pp. 205-206) which suggest the following format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rogers, E. (1999). &lt;em&gt;Understanding buck power stages in switchmode power supplies&lt;/em&gt; (Application Report No. SLVA057). Retrieved from Texas Instruments website: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ti.com/lit/an/slva057/slva057.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ti.com/lit/an/slva057/slva057.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T11:19:51.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22040" CreationDate="2016-05-21T11:54:19.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you cite a source following a style guide like the APA Manual, you may encounter something like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mohnkern, K., &amp;amp; Maiuro, A. (2016). A heading on a paper. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, the comma before the &quot;&amp;amp;&quot; is the closing comma after the parenthesized abbreviated first name (&quot;K.&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you saw something like this and thought it applied to all lists of names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T11:54:19.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22079" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22086" CreationDate="2016-05-21T13:26:40.250" Score="4" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am at a dilemma, as I cannot title my novel. So I created these questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What creates a good title for a novel?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should I include/not include in my title?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, I have come up with 'The Day Before', however I believe that that's quite generic. On the other hand, it does fit the plot, as the end of the novel begins to revolve around what happened the very day before the day in which the first chapter is set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, after writing that paragraph I came up with this addition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I make my title original?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2020-01-01T21:11:31.480" Title="How to create a title" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|titles|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22079" CreationDate="2016-05-21T15:17:23.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to approach this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;marketing &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;artistic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, an excessively obscure title might be risky in terms of the former (although, it might also help; you never know).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to ignore any marketing concerns and focus on art. A title must be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;indicative of the book in question (can you imagine &lt;em&gt;Jaws&lt;/em&gt; being called &lt;em&gt;The Seaside Town&lt;/em&gt; instead?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;interesting. There are several ways to achieve this, but some ideas can be: obscure words; alliteration; deliberate bending of grammatical rules - &lt;em&gt;Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde&lt;/em&gt; would not sound as... strange with the article included.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;participating in meaning-rendering mechanisms. Think of a title that makes sense when you have reached the last page of the book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T15:17:23.113" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22070" CreationDate="2016-05-21T16:36:41.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, I think it's a very good plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of Newton's laws is that &quot;every action causes an equal and opposite reaction.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason evil is evil because it threatens to make the rest of us evil. In happy ending stories, the good guys stay good, and manage to defeat the evil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is only one of four possible outcomes. Perhaps the second most likely outcome is, &quot;the good guys stay good, and that's why they are not strong enough to fight evil.&quot; That, in fact, was the story of World War II (before the Americans got involved).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third possible outcome is, yes, the bad and good guys &quot;work on&quot; each other, and sometimes the bad guys win. That is your story, it's a realistic one, entirely plausible, and should be told, because it happens more often than people would like to admit. Your downside is that the theme is unpopular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fourth possible outcome is also the least likely; the good guys not only defeat, but &quot;convert&quot; the bad guys (Christ and one of the two thieves during his Crucifixation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T16:36:41.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22070" CreationDate="2016-05-21T18:08:44.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO, if your protagonist uses evil methods to save the world from the evil villain, and becomes popularly known as a great hero, evil things can result from that.  Thus you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) add a postcript telling that the hero's example has made every member of every side in every later conflict feel justified in using even the most evil methods to defeat their opponents.  Thus ten thousand more people have been killed in conflicts per year for the past ten thousand years, or a hundred million people in total, more than would have been killed without that example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)  Foreseeing such a possibility, the hero decides to keep secret the fact that he saved the world (and some of his methods were evil) secret, giving up all the glory for saving the world in shame at some of the evil things he did and fearing that others would use it as an excuse to do evil in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Or perhaps the otherwise grateful people who the hero saves using evil methods arrest and try him for doing those evil things, out of fear they will become evil themselves if they don't, and fearing his evil example as in 1) above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO history is full enough of examples of people using evil methods to defeat evil villains, and other people later using those examples to justify their own evil deeds fighting against those they consider evil villains. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19062" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T18:08:44.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22070" CreationDate="2016-05-21T18:38:05.000" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your first mistake is identifying protagonist with a good guy.  Both your protagonist and your antagonist should have good and bad traits.  The thing you need to keep in mind is that your audience needs to be able to identify with your protagonist.  If he is going to do bad things he needs to do them for a good reason.  Likewise if he is going to do very bad things he needs to do them for a very good reason.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19040" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T18:38:05.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21994" CreationDate="2016-05-21T18:43:00.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use letter substitution ciphers or anagrams to make different versions of short English words with basic meanings.  Then modify some of them to sound better.  If you do this with a few hundred basic English words you will have a few hundred basic words in an imaginary language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can assemble them into words and names each consisting of 2 to 4 of the short basic words.  And modify some of them to sound  better, assuming that the speakers of the language have done the same over the centuries.  Your readers will thank you for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you can do the same for several languages in your story if it is a science fiction or fantasy novel with lots of characters from different societies and cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of your characters might sometimes react to the liternal meaning of some of the names, especially if they think they are not very appropiate for those ho have them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And other characters might sometimes react to the associations of a name:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Your parents named you after Bloktar the Terrible?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;No, they named me after my great grandfather, Bloktar the Humiliated. They hoped I might bear up to that accursed name as well as my great grandfather did.&quot;&#xA;&quot;Did you kill your parents?&quot;&#xA;&quot;No, but I'm still considering it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19062" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T18:43:00.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21955" CreationDate="2016-05-21T20:02:57.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could make the story lighter by setting some scenes in a peaceful landscape, perhaps in the homes of the characters, showing who they are fighting for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have the protagonists suffer defeats and setbacks and hardships in the first chapters, and start to break down, and seem on the verge of defeat.  Then have chapters set in the enemy camp,and show that the enemy soldiers are also on the verge of breaking down and think that they can't go on much longer.  This shows that victory or defeat are still balanced on a knife's edge and could go either way, and that in any case the war can not last much longer.  This works in a relatively evenly balanced war like the American Revolutionary War or the American Civil War, but not in a war where the enemy has overwhelming superiority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could have chapters set in the distant future, a time of peace, when kids are studying the war your characters are fighting in, and trying to understand what it would be like to fight in such a terrible war.  Perhaps the teacher could mention to them that they owe part of their present happiness to the outcome of the war, without specifying how the war ended since they already know that, unlike the readers or your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can lighten the darkness by contrasting cruel deeds with a few acts of kindness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19062" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T20:02:57.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22079" CreationDate="2016-05-21T21:06:59.327" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) What I like to do is go to a book store and look at the titles in the genre I am writing in. If you do that, you will notice that books from the same genre often have titles that are similarly structured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, thrillers have short one or two word titles that relate to things hard, cold and dangerous. YA SF also has one word titles, but these words are mysterious and emotional. YA romance has humorous phrases. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, get an idea of title conventions in your genre. These exist because they sell, so use them to create a structural frame for your title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Try to write down what your novel is about in a few words. Brainstorm and don't censor yourself yet. What is the moral premise? What is the plot? What is the end? What is the character's handicap? Etc. Collect as many short phrases and words as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then try to rephrase these ideas, fitting them into the structural frame you deduced from looking at genre titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) While you do that, try to imagine what your target audience wants. Why do they read? How does your book satisfy their desire. Use your intimate familiarity with your readership to further shape and finetune your title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Show a selection of possible titles to your trusted beta readers, your husband/wife, your agent, your writer's group, and ask for their feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Select a title and submit your manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6) Get rich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T21:06:59.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17149" CreationDate="2016-05-21T21:41:13.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Antagonists and villains (which are not identical) do things for the same reasons that protagonists and heroes (which are not identical) do.  They have the same motivations. Antagonists and villains feel like they are the protagonists and heroes of their own stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of real historical persons and real historical conflicts used in fiction, writers can choose which sides and persons to make protagonists and/or heroes and which sides and persons to make antagonists and/or villains.  Thus there are examples of the same historical sides and persons being depicted as protagonists and/or heroes in some works of fiction and depicted as antagonists and/or villains in others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ability of writers to chose the protagonists and antagonists in a fictional situation should not be abused.  When both sides are more or less equally good, and neither is evil, then the writer is free to make either one the protagonist. For example, in sports stories both teams are usually fairly good people, and the writer thus has perfect freedom to depict either team as the protagonists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If either side is evil, they must be depicted as antagonists and villains.  if both sides are evil, both sides must be depicted as antagonists and villains; and the writer must be careful to avoid making either side too sympathetic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that a person or group can have: 1) good goals and ethical methods of achieving them, or 2) good goals and unethical methods of achieving them, or 3) evil goals and ethical methods of achieving them, or 4) evil goals and unethical methods of achieving them.  A person in the last three categories is evil, only those persons in the first category are good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since antagonists do not have to be villains, or more evil than the protagonists, or evil in objective terms, they can have good goals and ethical methods.  Thus antagonists can have exactly the same motivations as writers and readers and other hopefully good persons, and use methods that are similarly as ethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evil villains can have evil goals, but they don't have to.  An evil villain can have good goals and unethical methods of achieving them.  Thus evil villains can have exactly the same motivations as writers and readers and other hopefully good persons, but sometimes use unethical and evil methods to achieve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus it seems perfectly easy to imagine a situation in which the protagonist wants a certain event to happen to achieve his goal, while the antagonist ants to prevent that event to achieve his goal, without either being evil.  And it seems perfectly easy to give an evil villain a perfectly normal and understandable goal that he sometimes uses unethical and evil methods to strive for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19062" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T21:41:13.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22079" CreationDate="2016-05-22T02:46:27.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I am Writing my titles I make a list of what I think is most important about the story. Then what I do is I reread parts of it. then I brainstorm and write words that come to me, about and from the book. I will read them then try and make a something that sums up the book. For instance, I wrote a story about a well that holds all the memories of the world.  I titled it well of memories. Then I search for the title, I came up with just to ake sure it not taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19069" LastActivityDate="2016-05-22T02:46:27.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22079" CreationDate="2016-05-22T05:28:38.130" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently watch 7 editors choose stories for anthologies. They had read all of the stories a month or two earlier, and were now considering them in front of a live audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every now and then, an editor would pick up a manuscript from the pile, read the title out loud to the audience, and say, &quot;I have no memory of this. Give me a minute...&quot; Then they'd flip through their notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two of the stories were called &quot;Payback.&quot; Fine stories both, but the titles did not help the editors recall them or distinguish them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there were the stories where the editor would read the title out loud, and everyone in the room would instantly recall the important details of the story. (Sorry, I can't give examples. The stories haven't been published yet.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we in the audience learned from this: One key goal of a title is to help the editor instantly recall the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the same for readers, and for word of mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So find a title that helps people instantly recall some key ingredient that makes this story unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-05-22T05:28:38.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22091" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-22T08:14:23.423" Score="3" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see several writing and proofreading styles around. There are AP, APA, and CMS to name a few. My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the most popular proofreading styles today?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When is each style used or applicable (when the writer of the work to be proofread does not specify the style to use)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What style (among those given in no. 1) do most professional writers recommend to use?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19070" OwnerDisplayName="Portcall" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-08-05T02:08:54.093" LastActivityDate="2019-08-05T02:08:54.093" Title="Proofreading style to use" Tags="|style|proofreading|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22044" CreationDate="2016-05-22T19:22:49.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Intimately deep third-person limited POV is wholly acceptable and can be just as intimate as first person. It seems to work well to start scenes or chapters in a more shallow POV to establish the scene and then progressively get deeper. As a scene gets more intense, the POV should get deeper. When you want to back off the intensity, get shallower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I admire writers who can do first person well, getting very detailed while still believably sounding like someone telling a story of what they experienced. But first person is more challenging than third person when working with a character with impaired self-awareness, such as a schizophrenic character I'm currently using. I found I needed a more objective description of her experience than was plausible to relate in first person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12987" LastActivityDate="2016-05-22T19:22:49.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20205" CreationDate="2016-05-22T22:03:02.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you need to fear compatibility issues moving forward with Word, as it's more or less the business world's &lt;em&gt;linga franca&lt;/em&gt; of text document file formats.  And even if it goes belly-up, there's so much information corporations rely on that is captured in it, there will be conversion utilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to ask yourself is what's missing in your toolchain? What features do you need to help you write better with your specific working processes and methods? Do they cover your entire workflow? Do you need a one-stop shop? Or do you prefer multiple applications in your toolchain?  What do you want to use to write, edit, collaborate, and deliver your document?  If Word does everything you want, then stick with Word.  Just because there are newer toys out there doesn't necessarily mean they're better toys for what you want to get done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Word is a pretty dang good word processor. But if you need to lay out documents in multiple columns for magazine, newsletter, or newspaper layout, it can suck royally. If you tend to write in a  At that point, a page layout application might make more sense.  It also sucks as a content management system (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CMS&lt;/a&gt;). It sucks as an ebook authoring tool. It sucks for really long complex documents. (I prefer FrameMaker, but I'm a dinosaur with vi and nroff/troff skillz, and can still remember when Frame was cross-platform and produced by Frame not Adobe. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener isn't a word processor so much as it's an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IDE&lt;/a&gt; for document development. It's a different kind of tool. If you're the kind of person who works with a cluttered desk, keeps multiple notes in multiple formats (text, graphics, links), and likes to have the ability to glance over all your research or ideas at once on a big board, or to be kept tidy in whatever organization you like, and to be able to refer to that material while writing, then Scrivener can help do all of that on the computer.  It can foster writing in non-linear fashion.  Word, not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But. Keep in mind that when getting a book &lt;em&gt;published,&lt;/em&gt; chances are good that for collaborating on edits with a copy editor and editor, chances are good you'll have to go back to Word because of the business world &lt;em&gt;lingua franca&lt;/em&gt; thing. See Charles Stross's blog entry on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/07/writing-a-novel-in-scrivener-e.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Writing a novel in Scrivener: lessons learned&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13023" LastEditorUserId="13023" LastEditDate="2016-05-24T18:25:19.193" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T18:25:19.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6545" CreationDate="2016-05-23T17:37:35.577" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The subdivisions of a chapter, signified by an asterism (⁂), dinkus (* * *), or extra space, are called &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_%28typography%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sections&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T17:37:35.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21788" CreationDate="2016-05-23T18:15:53.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most universities have a style guide that you must follow when writing your thesis. When my wife wrote her thesis, she was required to follow the MLA style guide, which is where the rules for indentation and spacing, etc. are found. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd go to either your thesis committee or to your university's library to talk to somebody about the submission requirements. These are usually very strict, so knowing them in advance will save you much time later when it comes time to edit your thesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18955" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T18:15:53.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22098" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22114" CreationDate="2016-05-23T20:53:58.003" Score="5" ViewCount="1031" Body="&lt;p&gt;What if I decide to write a story with a character based off a historical figure but under a different name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) I write a story with a hero named Tom, who is a political figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Tom is based on John Adams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Therefore, without references, I paraphrase a lot of Adams's ideas that he wrote in his works for use in my character development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) Furthermore, even some of Tom's dialogue may include direct quotations or paraphrases of Adams's works without direct references to their origins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(5) My intent is not to pass these off as original, but it is my hope that people will see the parallels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is:  &lt;strong&gt;Since my story will obviously include ideas and words that are not my own, am I plagiarizing?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19081" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-05-23T21:18:39.500" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T21:21:33.227" Title="Is it plagiarism to adapt a known figure into a fictional charcter?" Tags="|creative-writing|copyright|short-story|word-choice|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22098" CreationDate="2016-05-23T22:48:12.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First point, as Lauren Ipsum indicated, be very, very careful about taking a living person as your model. Taking a dead person as your model could also give you problems if that person was a writer (a category which could include people primarily famous for other reasons), and his or her writings are still in copyright. Whether this (putting in-copyright words from a dead author into the mouth of a fictional character) counts as plagiarism or simple breach of copyright I'm not sure. I am not a lawyer. But &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_lengths&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;check here&lt;/a&gt; to see how long copyright lasts after the death of an author. For a long-lived author it can be surprising how long their work remains in copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person from whose writings you quote has been dead for centuries, you are safe legally. Assuming the John Adams you mean is the second president of the US who died in 1826, you'd be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must confess, however, that as described your story sounds as if it might feel as though it violated the informal 'contract' between author and readers. If your readers &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; sufficiently  well versed in American history that they spot the words depicted as being said by Tom really originated  with John Adams they are likely to think that you couldn't be bothered to think up original dialogue for your character. If they are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; sufficiently historically aware to spot the Adams link it might as well not be there. That said, I've seen this sort of thing pulled off well as a twist ending, e.g. by using real incidents taken from the historical record the story gets the reader to dislike a character whose name is cleverly concealed, and then it turns out they were some famous popular hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-05-24T07:38:12.323" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T07:38:12.323" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22108" CreationDate="2016-05-23T23:25:32.443" Score="4" ViewCount="2050" Body="&lt;p&gt;It’s no secret that in literature we see characters that remind us of other characters. Furthermore, it’s no secret we see plots that remind us of other plots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, an author reads Book A and decides to model the main character in his novel, Book B, after the main character in Book A. Is he alluding, plagiarizing, or neither? The same question goes for plot as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give some flesh to this example, consider the case of &lt;em&gt;Romeo and Juliet&lt;/em&gt;. Shakespeare, although he did include elements of his own, borrowed from prior written works. Do we give Shakespeare a pass because of his brilliance? Perhaps the conduct I’ve described isn’t unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where do we draw the line?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19081" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T16:26:12.600" Title="How do we draw the line between plagiarism and allusion?" Tags="|creative-writing|publishing|legal|copyright|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22101" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-24T09:20:04.677" Score="3" ViewCount="378" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where did the concept of multiple parallel plotlines (that may or may not interact and converge) originate? These days they're also known as throughlines, subplots, narrative/character arcs, series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it is quite an intuitive thing, but I would really like to know the first recorded instance of someone talking about it/teaching the tabular method (each row/column is an arc and each column/row is a point in time-&gt; usually divided into Acts or chapters). In fact, I can't find any book at all that discusses this tabular method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19088" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-07-31T13:20:42.087" LastActivityDate="2016-10-29T14:33:43.960" Title="What is the origin of multiple 'plotlines' tabular diagram?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|narrative|subplot|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22072" CreationDate="2016-05-24T10:58:13.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remove the notion of 'sight'. Vision is by far the most important way we have of seeing things; fear comes greatly from what you're unable to perceive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So add some unknown. Remove sight,  increase smells, sounds, and any other form of perception. There is nothing so frightening as the anticipation of what's coming to you, so make sure to stretch the phases of unknown to their maximum. Anticipation is your best tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T10:58:13.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21903" CreationDate="2016-05-24T11:06:54.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The plotline you're describing (good guy goes bad) is, in itself, cliche, BUT that doesn't make it intricately a bad thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to doing this well is to make it believable. To make the reader connect with the character, even as he's turning evil, because the circumstances allow for no other reasonable option. Anything short of that will most likely fail to convey the right amount of angst.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T11:06:54.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22100" CreationDate="2016-05-24T11:34:14.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Legally&lt;/strong&gt;, there have probably been millions of words written on the ramifications of this question for the law of every nation that has laws on the subject at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Historically&lt;/strong&gt;, Shakespeare didn't just get away with it because he was brilliant but because the laws and customs of Elizabethan England did not have any more than an embryonic &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/wipolex/en/notes/gb.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;concept of intellectual property&lt;/a&gt;. Stories and songs belonged to everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Morally&lt;/strong&gt;, speaking for modern day people who do have, rightly or wrongly, a concept of intellectual property at least for recent works, the answer to your question about where the border between allusion and plagiarism falls is hard to specify in terms of rules that can be made to apply to all cases. Yet when it comes to writing that makes me say, &quot;why, Author Y is just ripping off Author X&quot;, nine times out of ten I know it when I see it. The test is whether in going from X's character to Y's version of that character anything unique to Y's mind was added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same goes for plots and scenarios as for characters. David Weber's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_Harrington&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Honor Harrington&lt;/a&gt; science fiction novels concerning space warfare around the year 4000 are consciously and openly modeled on C.S.Forester's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Hornblower&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Horatio Hornblower&lt;/a&gt; novels set in the Napoleonic wars. The two main characters even have the same initials. Nobody gets upset because there is obviously a vast amount of Weber's own work and imagination put into the Honor Harrington books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weber clearly admires Forester's books, but there have also been very successful &quot;inspired by&quot; characters (and plots and scenarios) where the second author was reacting &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; the way the first author did it, saying, &quot;no, that's not the way things would be.&quot; I haven't read it but from what I've heard Eliezer Yudkowsky's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10016013-harry-potter-and-the-methods-of-rationality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; would be a case of this. Yudkowsky gets away with having his book be about literally the same character because a positively obsessive amount of his own thought has gone into making his story different from J.K. Rowling's original. That difference is the whole point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many aspects of the story I am working on arose in my mind because I said, &quot;no,that's not the way things would be&quot; to some common tropes of the sub-genre, even when I generally liked the books in which I saw them. I hope that the eventual story will be &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; than just a reaction to other writers' works, but it will certainly allude to them, though not by name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't get myself into trouble by specifying an author or book that I see as falling on the wrong side of the line between moral plagiarism and allusion. But when every &lt;em&gt;memorable&lt;/em&gt; aspect of a character comes from the original author, then I'd mutter about plagiarism, even if it is cleverly arranged to be within the law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-05-24T16:33:58.890" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T16:33:58.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22111" CreationDate="2016-05-24T12:03:55.693" Score="6" ViewCount="613" Body="&lt;p&gt;My story involves a kind of plot-twist towards the end. The problem is that the one of the sources of the misdirection comes from a kind of &quot;Story so far&quot; chapter towards the beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sets up what all the characters know (or at least think they know) about the last few years of a journey they have been on, during which events have happened unbeknownst to (most of) the characters, and other things didn't happen the way the characters believe they did. But the chapter is a summary to explain all this to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story itself starts three years into the journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is this. I want the reader to have similar knowledge to the characters, so they will be surprised by the reveal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I can't have the narrator simply lie to the reader, or leave out vital information that would obviously appear in a &quot;how we got here&quot; summary without it being silly or feeling contrived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(e.g. it would be like in a novelisation of &lt;em&gt;The Sixth Sense&lt;/em&gt;, the author describing in detail Bruce Willis' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; operation after he was shot and heavily implying that it was a success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19089" LastActivityDate="2016-05-25T05:14:27.647" Title="Preserve &quot;The Reveal&quot; vs lying to the reader" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|readers|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22100" CreationDate="2016-05-24T12:25:40.653" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;We don't. It's a blurred line and a fortune in legal costs on arguing where it lies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there is a classification, but the lines are always blurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the &quot;white side&quot; there's &lt;strong&gt;alluding&lt;/strong&gt; - when you make your own characters, but draw specific parallels, exploring what-if's of the other work, mocking its shortcomings, or referencing its most brilliant elements. Example: &quot;Space Balls&quot; heavily alludes to &quot;Star Wars&quot;, often parodying its elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also &lt;strong&gt;drawing inspiration&lt;/strong&gt;. It's where you take some of the concepts, but modify them deeply enough to make your story entirely original. Example: &quot;The Lion King&quot; was inspired by &quot;Hamlet&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gray area has &lt;em&gt;referencing&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;pastiche&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Referencing&lt;/strong&gt; is when you copy concepts of the original, nearly verbatim, but apply a twist deep enough to create an original story. It may or may not be legal, it may fall under fair use, or be treated as a derivative work. Example: &quot;The Last Ringbearer&quot; is &quot;Lord of the Rings&quot; retold from perspective of the Orcs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another gray area practice is &lt;strong&gt;Pastiche&lt;/strong&gt;. It's purposeful, deliberate copying of one's style, up to and sometimes including forging the signature. Since &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt; can't be copyrighted, it's &lt;em&gt;technically&lt;/em&gt; legal... in most cases. In art, &quot;discovering&quot; a &quot;lost&quot; Van Gogh painting will be treated as full-scale crime, even if the forgery isn't a copy of any existing Van Gogh painting, merely a pastiche of the style. Sometimes it's a parody (and then protected as fair use), but sometimes it's serious. Example: Dave McClure's poem &quot;The Traveler&quot; is a pastiche of Edgar Alan Poe's &quot;The Raven&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there's the dark area of &lt;strong&gt;plagiarism&lt;/strong&gt;, where not enough original thought was put into the work to set it apart as unique, and outright &lt;strong&gt;piracy&lt;/strong&gt; where all pretense of authorship is dropped; only revenue is redirected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, how little referencing is merely drawing inspiration - or how much is plagiarism - this is not firmly defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T12:25:40.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22107" CreationDate="2016-05-24T12:39:23.053" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh man, it really bugs me when all the characters know a secret but I don't. It feels deceptive and manipulative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What works is to have a character who's also ignorant of the secret. Tell the story from their perspective. Then the reveal is not pointed at the reader, but at the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In The Sixth Sense Bruce Willis is that ignorant character. The twist is revealed to him. We, the viewers, witness it and feel it from his perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T12:39:23.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22110" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-24T13:27:50.047" Score="1" ViewCount="233" Body="&lt;p&gt;Weird thing just happened. I added a new document to a manuscript and when typing, all letters are in caps. Caps lock is not on. It's not happening in any other app, just in Scrivener and just in a new document. I deleted the problem document, opened another an the same thing happened. I tried cutting/pasting lower-case characters from another document which worked, but still...it's annoying and I don't want it to keep happening. Any help in Scrivenerville?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19091" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-10-12T16:38:30.073" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T16:38:30.073" Title="All capital letters in a new document" Tags="|formatting|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22107" CreationDate="2016-05-24T15:26:37.267" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But I can't have the narrator simply lie to the reader&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure you can. That's called an &lt;em&gt;unreliable narrator.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of having a generic narrator-to-reader chapter, your &quot;The Story So Far&quot; material can be delivered via some other medium, or two characters who aren't in your story otherwise. It can be a newspaper article, a series of emails, a radio broadcast, two people talking, a lecture, or anything else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So have a history teacher talking to a class. Write the introduction to a thesis. Make it a religious sermon, or a mom talking to her child, telling the child The Story So Far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any of these narrators have the potential to be unreliable &amp;mdash; to edit, to omit, to lack information, to embroider, to editorialize. Your reader gets just the information you want, and you haven't outright lied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T15:26:37.267" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22107" CreationDate="2016-05-24T16:38:47.947" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You appear to be writing your &quot;the story so far&quot; from the point of view of an omniscient narrator, hence your concern abut lying.  Instead, describe events through a character lens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do this by writing these parts from the point of view of a particular character -- treat it as a speech, diary, or other thing that the character wrote.  Another way to do that is to &lt;em&gt;narrate&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The story so far: Bob and Carol have identified the fingerprints found at the murder scene and tracked the killer to his lair.  During a long stake-out they watched the housekeeper come and go.  Late that night they saw a man emerge, face covered by his hoodie, and drive away.  Carefully they followed, headlights off, to see where the trail led.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unbeknownst to them, Bob and Carol should have been paying more attention to the housekeeper -- the man in the car is a red herring.  &lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; know that, but &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; don't -- and neither does your reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T16:38:47.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22098" CreationDate="2016-05-24T17:26:00.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;George RR Martin created the entire A Song of Ice and Fire because of the War of Roses.&#xA;So did William Morris, I think he used a battle between the Romans and Gauls, I can't remember. Correct me if I'm wrong anybody.&#xA;Anyways, using history is very common among writers. It's actually something most will encourage you to do.&#xA;Just don't be dishonest with your story, don't try to write your political belief into a character based on someone important to American history.&#xA;If you're going to do it, try a compare and contrast of how American values, political philosophy, etc., has changed since John Adams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15327" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T17:26:00.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22098" CreationDate="2016-05-24T17:50:35.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: There is a spectrum of copying from regular story-telling that re-uses ideas and themes, to plagiarism, to copyright infringement. These are not all the same and only the last is illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept of plagiarism is not clearly defined. There is a spectrum of idea-borrowing and word-for-word copying that exists and some of it is acceptable, but if you copy too much, or the wrong thing, then you can be accused of plagiarism. Generally, it's not illegal to plagiarize but in some contexts it is forbidden (i.e. in school you're supposed to write your own work and not copy someone else's).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shakespeare based Romeo and Juliet off of an older story. Countless current movies are re-hashes of pre-existing material. Every story that re-tells an older story, in a sense, plagiarizes that story. To some degree this is fine, acceptable, commendable even. It's how storytelling works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legally, the problem of copying is usually restricted to copyright infringement. Laws vary by country but lots of &quot;retelling&quot;, not to mention any sizable outright copying of text, is usually prohibited by law. However you are intending to copy historical speeches that are certainly not under copyright anymore. Thus even outright word-for-word copying is allowed by law. Whether your readers will like it depends on what you do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, ideas: ideas are generally not copyrightable. Even though J.K. Rowling made Harry Potter famous, she does not have a monopoly on the idea of a boy going to wizard school. Even if you copied many elements of her story, you're not likely to see problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A case in point is the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind, which features a convent of sorceresses who serve the Light and try to struggle against the Keeper of the Dead, yet have been infiltrated by Sisters of the Dark who server the Keeper. This sounds remarkably like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time's Aes Sedai, who are a convent of sorceresses who serve the Light and vow to maintain order and ready for battle against the Dark One who has power over the dead. They deny the existence of the Black Ajah, a secret organization of Darkfriend Aes Sedai who server the Dark One. Occaisionally, the Aes Sedai must contend with the Aiel, a race of desert warriors who raid amongst themselves and forbid outsiders from living in their until a messiah comes and unites them together to forge an unstoppable army that will be pivotal in the cataclysm to come. This reminds many of the Fremen of Dune, a race of desert warriors who raid the Harkonnen until Paul Atreides comes from the planet Caladan to unite them and forge them into a galaxy-spanning fighting force etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chronologically, Dune came first, then the Wheel of Time, then the Sword of Truth. Are these writers plagiarizing the work that came before? Perhaps. Or are they just borrowing certain set pieces to tell a bigger story? What they do with the story is ultimately what matters and makes them worth reading. (or not: Skip the Sword of Truth, it starts out mediocre and becomes terrible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T17:50:35.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22115" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-24T18:20:10.003" Score="1" ViewCount="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a beginning writer.  I would like to write a science fiction / fantasy book that is critical of psychiatry, including diagnosis inflation, the influence of Big Pharma, and the field's de-emphasis of spiritual concerns as biochemical imbalances.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it may require research, my fictional story must let the research &quot;play out&quot; through standard literary devices such as setting, characters, plot, theme, voice, etc. instead of lectures or preaching. However, although I can take a poetic license, I want my ideas to be also somewhat grounded in fact, because my goal is to explore the above issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to show the full scope of my project in this post, but I fear that it would be too involved.  Suffice to say, my story will touch on a number of disciplines, including medicine or psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy or counseling, sociology, political science, and spirituality or religion, among others.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for informed people to evaluate my writing, either as I produce chapters (my preference right now), or at the end of the process.  This support could be beta reading or something else.  How would I advertise for or seek this support?       &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9885" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T19:43:06.300" Title="Looking for informed people to evaluate a creative writing project about psychiatry" Tags="|fantasy|science-fiction|research|beta-readers|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21903" CreationDate="2016-05-24T18:37:56.813" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually people find things moving when they identify with them.  So your best bet is to start with an identifiable character, and then show that person making choices that, while they might be wrong, the audience can imagine themselves making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the show &quot;Breaking Bad.&quot;  The main character is originally a likeable person in a common profession.  His initial choice, to start manufacturing drugs, is understandable, given his circumstances --a limited amount of time to live, a family to take care of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the choices become less justifiable and more immoral, the audience, once identified with the character, continues to think &quot;I'm just a few wrong decisions away from being in his shoes.&quot;  That makes his downfall moving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T18:37:56.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22117" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-24T18:42:12.497" Score="0" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was sending files between two email accounts and accidentally sent the first 8k words of a work-in-progress to a stranger. I'm not published, should I be worried or am I being arrogant? Is there anyway for me to protect myself legally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19009" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-05-24T20:35:19.590" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T21:26:22.663" Title="Accidentally sent a work-in-progress to a stranger" Tags="|legal|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22100" CreationDate="2016-05-24T19:01:11.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, using William Shakespeare as an example is bad. First off, he has been for centuries and this makes it harder to gauge his authenticity as a writer.&#xA;Who could say William Shakespeare  retold &lt;em&gt;&quot;Romeo and Juliet&quot;&lt;/em&gt; ? Do you see how bad your example is without an historical account or anecdote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use something more contemporary cases like Mother of the Matrix, the many cases of James Cameron, Disney, Andre 3000, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm trying to say, if  my first paragraph wasn't clear; William Shakespeare has been dead for centuries, we only know from what we're told about him and from what has been left behind. This is why I said it's better to use contemporary cases like those I've listed above, the writer is alive. In this situation, it's not good to use a dead writer, especially one that's has been dead for centuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, you've already answered it yourself. You can borrow elements from a previous written work, but you make it your own. There's nothing wrong with being inspired by someone's else work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15327" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T19:01:11.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22115" CreationDate="2016-05-24T19:43:06.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt;, which is a free online critiquing community. (I haven't used it, but others here have.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have enough rep, you could ask in our Chat Room, &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/168/the-overlook-hotel&quot;&gt;the Overlook Hotel&lt;/a&gt;. There are a number of members here who are freelance editors who might be able to work with you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T19:43:06.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7460" CreationDate="2016-05-24T21:08:35.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice to you is don't write about pain if you don't know pain.  I would never have included so much pain in my stories back before I felt the torture of pain's company every day.  Remembering pain won't help you either--it has to be with you now, inside you, gripping you.  We are biologically programmed to forget pain once it has passed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19094" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T21:08:35.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22117" CreationDate="2016-05-24T21:26:22.663" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd send the person an email apologizing for accidentally sending them the document and requesting them to ignore it and throw it away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The probability that a random stranger is going to be interested in stealing your work is pretty close to zero. Unless he's a writer himself, odds are he doesn't have the faintest idea how to go about publishing it. He probably has no idea how copyright law works, or what steps if any you may have taken to protect your rights, so he'd have no idea if he could get away with stealing your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in any case, advice I give to new writers all the time: Many new writers worry way too much about someone stealing their work. Don't waste a lot of time protecting yourself from thieves. Spend your time writing and polishing your work to get it to the point where it would be worth stealing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are people out there who steal others' work. But it's not like there are millions of them just waiting to pounce. You take reasonable precautions and don't worry about it. There are a lot more people who will steal your television than will steal your writing. But if you're like most people, that doesn't mean that you cower in the corner clutching your television to your chest and holding a shotgun. You take a few reasonable steps, like locking your doors and not advertising to the world a list of all the valuables in your house, and get on with your life. Likewise, if you hope to ultimately be paid for your work, I wouldn't make a habit of emailing it to random strangers, or posting it on the Internet. I'd certainly register the copyright when you're ready to publish. And that's about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realistically, the thieves are more likely to steal from famous authors, not little people like you and me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: I have had my work stolen, sort of. I found an article I posted on my web site being sold on one of those &quot;we'll write your term paper for you&quot; sites. But as I was publishing on the web where anyone could get it for free anyway, I didn't much care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T21:26:22.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22122" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22123" CreationDate="2016-05-24T22:18:12.377" Score="2" ViewCount="796" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the following exchange: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; &quot;Hello&quot;&#xA;&#xA; &quot;Hi&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They were sitting on the bench.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dialogue lines are indented. Should the descriptive sentence also be indented? What if we had&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; &quot;Hello&quot;&#xA;&#xA; &quot;Hi&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They were sitting on the bench, feet naked against the ground, blah blah blah blah blah blah **new line*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is a full paragraph, should it be indented? (My gut thinks yes). If so, would we then indent the firsts sentence as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15760" LastActivityDate="2016-05-25T00:25:57.163" Title="Formatting dialogue and single lines" Tags="|formatting|dialogue|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22122" CreationDate="2016-05-25T00:25:57.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you indent paragraphs, every paragraph gets indented, period. It doesn't matter if that paragraph is a single word of dialogue, a page-long rant, or four pages of stream-of-consciousness. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;    &amp;quot;Hello.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;    &amp;quot;Hi.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;    They were sitting on the bench, feet naked against the ground, enjoying the warm sun and the sound of the surf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;    &amp;quot;Did you see Mack &amp;amp; Manco's changed their name?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;    He turned around to look. &amp;quot;Manco &amp;amp; Manco's? That's silly. I used to go there every year when I was a kid. Mack and Manco's, I mean. We would come down the shore for two weeks every summer and get pizza there every day. My mom made us eat it on the boardwalk so we wouldn't get sand in it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-05-25T00:25:57.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22107" CreationDate="2016-05-25T05:14:27.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put the backstory into the mouth of a character, rather than narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I opened, say, a mystery story, and it began, &quot;Fred Smith murdered his brother John,&quot; I would understand that to mean that that is what actually happened. If later in the story I read that in fact Fred didn't kill John, I'd be turning back to that page and saying, &quot;Wait, but back here you told me he did. What is this?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, weasel words in a narration are a giveaway. If you wrote, &quot;Everyone believed that Fred Smith murdered his brother John&quot;, I'd understand that to mean that he didn't, but everyone thought he did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the problem completely goes away if you have a character say it. If in a mystery story I read, &quot;The detective said, 'Fred Smith murdered his brother John'&quot;, that might or might not turn out to be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect the narration of a story to be true -- &quot;true&quot; within the story's world of course, not necessarily in rea life. So if the narration says that a character said X, I understand that to mean that he really did say X. But I readily accept that he may have been lying or mistaken when he said X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note this only applies to a third-person narrator. With a first-person narrator, I understand the narration to be what that person knows or believes, which may or may not be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some stories stretch this point by having hallucinations or dreams or the like described as if they were real, and then saying, no, that was a dream. In a story about a character who cannot distinguish his hallucinations from reality, this can be effective. Done well it can be effective. Done poorly it's lame and readers will get annoyed that they never know what's supposed to be real and what's supposed to be an illusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm suddenly reminded of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- a classic of Western fiction that will no doubt go down in history with Shakespeare -- where Buffy's mother collapses, Buffy calls an ambulance, the paramedics revive her mother, you see her with her mother in the hospital ... and suddenly the scene snaps and her mother is lying dead on the living room floor and you realize that was all her pleasant delusion. My daughter said she thought it was obvious and lame. I thought it was very effective. So it's reader's point of view.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-05-25T05:14:27.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22125" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-25T06:06:43.687" Score="0" ViewCount="791" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I use famous art work images that were created prior to 1900 in my book and sell the book legally? Are all artworks prior to 1900 Public domain? I want to use images of paintings made in 1800 to 1900 in my book and I need to understand if there are limits or restrictions to these artworks of this era?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19096" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T14:55:58.923" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T14:55:58.923" Title="Public domain does it apply to any and all art work prior to 1920's?" Tags="|publishing|copyright|artwork|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-05-25T17:48:50.000" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22126" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-25T10:00:43.703" Score="3" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose the outline of my PhD thesis looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acronyms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preface&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Part I: some topic&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chapter 1: ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chapter 2: ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Part II: another topic&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chapter 3: ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chapter 4: ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recommendations and outlook&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Glossary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the table of contents it is immediately clear that the Conclusion chapter is on the same level as the parts, and it is therefore a conclusion about the entire work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the actual body of the thesis, parts are indicated by a full page with &quot;Part I: topic&quot; on it, a relevant picture and probably a bombastic quote of some kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: how do I visually separate the conclusion from Part II, such that when reading the entire book it is clear to the reader that &quot;ah, this is the end of Part II and now we get something else entirely&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard way to do this? Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19098" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-01-22T17:35:02.060" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T20:29:42.507" Title="PhD thesis: how to visually separate the &quot;general conclusion&quot; chapter from the last part" Tags="|formatting|academic-writing|outline|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22125" CreationDate="2016-05-25T16:58:28.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Images can be tricky. If you went to a museum and took photographs of a 200 year old painting, you would be completely safe: the copyright on the painting has long since run out. But if you use a picture of that same painting that you found in a book, the photographer who took the photo can say that his photograph is an original composition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd have to check the details, there was a court ruling a few years back that a photograph or other reproduction of an image cannot claim a copyright of its own if the photograph simply shows the original image. But if there are other elements in the photo, the photographer CAN claim copyright. Like if a photograph of the Mona Lisa showed people standing in front of it examining it, the photographer can say that these people and their poses, expressions, etc, are an essential element of the image, and his original composition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-05-25T16:58:28.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22128" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-26T02:31:34.367" Score="0" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a first draft of a novel. What are some of the best ways people have found to build a writing habit? I have tried the writing marathon approach and run out of steam. I am now heading into the final portion of my novel and am looking to establish a regular routine that might result in less productivity, but more reliable output to get me to the finish line, so I can get going on my second draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19105" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-05-26T10:17:02.827" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T10:17:02.827" Title="Forming a Writing Habit" Tags="|discipline|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-05-26T10:15:56.423" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22126" CreationDate="2016-05-26T04:09:21.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each field has their own formatting habits, and each university/school/department their own. Most often, you number them separately so that you have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1 Introduction&#xA;&#xA; 1.1. Aims of the Research&#xA;&#xA; 1.2 Theoretical Background and Primary Works&#xA;...&#xA;...&#xA;3. Aspects of Femininity in *Frankenstein*&#xA; 3.1 [a title]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on... The conclusion would be the last, before any appendixes (that's where your acronyms, bibliography, etc should be)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T04:09:21.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22128" CreationDate="2016-05-26T04:16:39.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to right:&#xA;a) Write for someone else.&#xA;b) Write for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great artistic work can only come when you're writing first and foremost for yourself. And forming a &quot;writing habit&quot; is in conflict with that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it this way, I began working on an idea last week. I am so enthralled by it, that in 10 days I've written 150 pages of text. I write only for myself, and yet the text is among the best I've ever written. I go to sleep at night and can't wait to wake up so that I continue writing - scenes that I'm composing in my head before going to sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you force yourself to write when you either don't feel like it or you don't want to, nothing good can come of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; mention that you're heading into the final portion of your text, so the largest volume is presumably already behind you. My advice is still the same: Don't try to be consistent and produce a certain amount of text per day, or impose deadlines on yourself. It will be ready when it will be ready. If it takes 1 week so be it, if it takes 1 year, that's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T04:16:39.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22131" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-26T15:26:45.213" Score="1" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like writing on my laptop because I can type quickly. I like writing with a pencil because it is more relaxing and pleasant to edit: The words just flow and there is no bright light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there options that combine the advantages of both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14560" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2020-05-30T21:01:36.783" LastActivityDate="2020-05-30T21:01:36.783" Title="How can I combine the advantages of pen and laptop?" Tags="|tools|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2016-05-26T20:42:18.320" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="529" CreationDate="2016-05-26T16:02:20.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of how this can be handled:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The journey took three, long, weary days, and when they finally&#xA;  reached the city, the sun was about to disappear below the horizon.&#xA;  Hoping they were in time, they hurried through the wide streets and&#xA;  narrow alleys, until they reached a large building. A sign, hanging on&#xA;  the wall, read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;THE BARLEY INN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mikael pushed the door open and stepped in, followed by James. As soon&#xA;  as they had stepped in a warm flow of air engulfed them, and they&#xA;  headed towards the Inkeeper. He was a tall, hairy man who towered over&#xA;  them menacingly, his eyes darting to and fro as he cast dubious&#xA;  glances across the empty inn. As the two men approached, he kept his&#xA;  eyes on them hungrily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You need a room?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mikael spoke first. &quot;Yes, please. We'll be sharing it together, so you&#xA;  can keep it as the price for one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Inkeeper shook his head. &quot;I'm sorry, sire, but we make our prices&#xA;  depending on the number of people, not rooms. It will be twenty-five&#xA;  for each person.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mikael sighed, and produced the required money from his pouch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Inkeeper pointed a bony finger to a set of steps in the corner of&#xA;  the room. &quot;The second door at the left. There's no keys, so you'll&#xA;  have to do with that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They walked up the staircase and emerged into a large corridor, with a&#xA;  set of doors on each side. The door to their room was weakened by&#xA;  years of carelessness, and it creaked when they pushed it open. The&#xA;  room was plain, with two beds laid carefully on both sides. Apart from&#xA;  the beds, the chamber was empty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James' face fell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, at least the door will creak if someone tries to intrude at&#xA;  night,&quot; Mikael said, seeing James' face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James scowled. &quot;There's no one in this Inn anyways.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mikael chuckled, and dropped his bag on the floor. He sat down on the&#xA;  bed, surprised at how tough it was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Don't complain,&quot; Mikael said cheerily, &quot;we'll be leaving for Teans&#xA;  soon. The dragons will make sure of that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James managed a smile, but it fell quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The beds! They could be rocks!&quot; he moaned, rocking crazily on one of&#xA;  the mattresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Stop acting like a child and sleep,&quot; Mikael ordered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James scowled again. &quot;We didn't even have supper.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The next day, James opened his eyes and was surprised to see Mikael&#xA;  stuffing his clothes into his bag hurriedly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What are you doing?&quot; James asked sleepily. &quot;Do you realise that I've&#xA;  worked hours just for unpacking this mess?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mikael turned to face him. &quot;Get up. We've got no time. Grab all you&#xA;  need annd we're leaving.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Just do it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James sprang from his bed. He was feeling tired as he pulled on his&#xA;  clothes and grabbed his sack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What now?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mikael pulled the door open and stepped out. James went after him,&#xA;  feeling angry and tired after his forced awakening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Inkeeper was there, frowning at them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You're leaving?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mikael strode past him and stormed out of the door. The Inkeeper gazed&#xA;  at James questioningly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James shrugged. &quot;Don't ask me,&quot; he said, and headed out of the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second journey was longer than the first. They crossed the Areon&#xA;  River with much efforts, only to find a new challenge awaiting them on&#xA;  the other side. The Fortis Range towered over them like a huge,&#xA;  fire-breathing dragon. James felt exhausted after several days of hard&#xA;  climbing through the harsh weather. But he soon realised that the&#xA;  climbing had been child's play. Now they had to make their way down&#xA;  the snowy slope, against the north wind and the danger of prowling&#xA;  wolves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the other side, the city of Teans lay surrounded by blood-thirsty&#xA;  dragons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not friendly ones like Oneaon, but terrifying, seven clawed ones.&#xA;  Even Mikael's genius seemed no match for the hungry dragons, and James&#xA;  feared they would meet a roasted end. But he kept his thoughts to&#xA;  himself, and followed Mikael across the snowy slope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the fourth day, Teans was in sight. A careful look around the snowy&#xA;  peaks proved the rumors true: huge dragons could be seen shooting&#xA;  across the sky in a frenzy of claws and fire. They circled the city,&#xA;  and James felt fear prick through him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was still some way left down the slope that led to the city, and&#xA;  they crossed it fairly quickly. Soon they stood under the walls of the&#xA;  city. James kept casting glances around himself, hoping the city walls&#xA;  would open and engulf him before the dragons did. Mikael was calm as&#xA;  he called out to the inhabitants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was no answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mikael shouted again. His voice rang out across the snowscape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suddenly, a heart-wrenching shriek achoed across the land. James&#xA;  turned around just in time to see a huge dragon sweeping low to attack&#xA;  him. He stared, too scared to move, at the dragon's jaws as they flew&#xA;  open and sped towards him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helped. My point is that you should write some things about the time spent in Inns, and when you're writing down the travel scene, then just make a rough account of it eg: the time it took, the atmosphere: in this essay, the characters have to reach Teans before it is destroyed by dragons. You should mention the objective at least once. If something vital to the storyline takes place, then you should write it down with as much description as possible.&#xA;I really hoped that helped. I know my essay was pretty rough and speedy, but the point here is about the traveling(though I did include a lot of scenes where the characters aren't moving). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19112" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-05-29T08:34:33.960" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T08:34:33.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22133" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-26T17:14:06.967" Score="4" ViewCount="365" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard a lot of people ask how to properly depict intelligence in a written work, but I'd like to go in the opposite direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know how to write a moron/fool without having them be the over-the-top, in-your-face &quot;Patrick Star&quot; type character who spews non-sequiturs and stumbles mindlessly into every trap he can find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character in my story is naive and dim, and I want to know how I should write her so that she can be believable and, while making some facepalm-inducing decisions, genuinely tries her best to make the best decisions possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14251" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-05-26T18:54:26.103" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T10:19:16.487" Title="How do you believably write a moron?" Tags="|creative-writing|characters|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22131" CreationDate="2016-05-26T17:29:18.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While die-hard wordsmiths might cringe, dictation is a great way to get your words on paper!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19113" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T17:29:18.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22135" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-26T17:55:00.030" Score="6" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really love writing, mainly screenwriting. I can also come up with ideas and start writing. But there is one problem, I just start writing them and never take up the work again.&#xA;What do you do to keep youself motivated and get back into writing a certain story? Are there any tricks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19114" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T16:53:37.720" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T16:53:37.720" Title="How to keep writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|screenwriting|ideas|psychology-of-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22131" CreationDate="2016-05-26T18:01:29.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could always also use a typewriter if you find one somewhere&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19114" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T18:01:29.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22131" CreationDate="2016-05-26T19:14:01.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like writing with a really great pen. If the instrument feels good in my fingers and makes nice marks on the paper, then I'll enjoy the whole process more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T19:14:01.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22135" CreationDate="2016-05-26T19:16:42.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot recommend &lt;strong&gt;The War of Art&lt;/strong&gt; by Steven Pressfield highly enough for this very struggle. The whole book is about finding the motivation to finish the creative projects you start. It's marketed to all creative types but written by a novelist, so many of the examples and insights are specifically catered to writers. You can very likely get it at your local library. I got an ebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside the scope of that book, one thing I find really helpful personally is to immerse myself in a bunch of different creative works. Novels (expand your genres!), poetry, good movies, songs, etc. Also, getting outside and being in nature really helps get my creative juices flowing. The more beauty you find in the world the more you will be inspired to make something beautiful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19116" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T19:16:42.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22141" CreationDate="2016-05-26T22:04:26.577" Score="2" ViewCount="9203" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a scene where a character is trying to be level-headed and professional. However, something happens that is funny to him. He lets out a satisfied chuckle but tries with partial success to hold it in as it is not entirely appropriate. The whole process is mostly subconscious. The viewpoint in the scene is a different character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I describe that concisely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He stifled a satisfied chuckle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He suppressed a satisfied chuckle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but I'm not convinced that sounds good, or that it means exactly what I intend. What are some other options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2022-03-01T00:09:09.227" Title="Describe person attempting but failing to suppress a laugh" Tags="|word-choice|description|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22139" CreationDate="2016-05-26T22:30:43.790" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in the student's viewpoint, here are some possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write his opinions about:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what's so funny&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what's so satisfying&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what makes chuckling inappropriate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Say something like:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He stifled a chuckle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He tried to stifle a chuckle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He snorted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write whatever he notices about any noise or expression he makes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write his reaction to whatever he notices&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;thoughts and emotions about whether the chuckle leaked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;behaviors to cover it up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe the professor's reaction to the stifled chuckle, which would indicate how successful the viewpoint character was in stifling it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of this won't fit if the whole incident is truly subconscious. But then, if it's subconscious, you can't mention it from his viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing you can do even if it's subconscious is describe the professor's reaction. This could trigger the student to realize that he just chuckled. Then you could write his reaction to that realization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T22:30:43.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22139" CreationDate="2016-05-27T01:25:20.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think it's the &quot;satisfied&quot; that throws it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could, perhaps try something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A small chuckle escaped before he could suppress/stop it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He gave a small chuckle, briefly amused at something, before continuing on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He snorted, a small grin flashing across his face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-05-27T01:25:20.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22068" CreationDate="2016-05-27T01:50:50.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can work, and quite well. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciaphas_Cain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ciaphas Cain&lt;/a&gt; series (Warhammer 40k) does this to a degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the wiki stub:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The novels are presented as Cain's personal and often rambling notes. After his death, a third party edited them into a more coherent form, interspersed them with footnotes or snippets of other accounts where Cain's first-person (and self-centered) perspective does not provide sufficient context, and made them available for use by the Holy Inquisition. This editor is revealed over the course of the first account to be Inquisitor Amberley Vail of the Ordo Xenos, Cain's long-time collaborator and herself a prominent figure in the accounts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the knowledge that the main protagonist lives isn't the only way to provide tension. How do they survive? What do they lose? Who do they lose? all form a part of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like in the &lt;em&gt;Hobbit&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; - you know that Bilbo and Frodo survive, that it is &amp;quot;their story&amp;quot; that they are telling. It doesn't make it any less captivating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also, I find, allows you to have a much more interesting perspective - how much does the main characters' opinions of themselves differ from the perception of others (something the Cain books do quite well - he sees himself as a coward, largely lazy and a hero only by circumstance - albeit one happy to claim the 'benefits' that come with it - as opposed to being viewed as a brave, heroic figure willing to do everything possible to ensure victory by nearly everyone else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastEditorUserId="44281" LastEditDate="2020-09-21T00:48:59.100" LastActivityDate="2020-09-21T00:48:59.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22161" CreationDate="2016-05-27T12:10:54.670" Score="3" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please, before flagging this question as subjective or generic, take a moment to read it through. IMO this is a valid, specific question, albeit a bit complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To try and unpack the admittedly obscure title, I will use an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine you have a character who plans her life and daily activities according to &quot;fate&quot; or &quot;signs&quot;. Let's say she has suffered some past trauma and thinks she is fated to never meet a kind man. Now, assume you want to introduce a turning point in the narrative journey, something that will make this woman realize that there is no such thing as fate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thought on how to achieve that, since the idea of a turning point seems intrinsically connected with the very notion it tries to dispel (the presence of fate)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&#xA;Based on Anir Mass's input, I'd like to clarify this a bit:&#xA;By &quot;turning point&quot;, if the term isn't transparent, imagine something in the direction of a &quot;Deus ex machina&quot; device. In our case, then, the question becomes: How do you &quot;awaken&quot; someone from their fallacious thought that life should be lived according to signs, if such a device (i.e. that would cause the awakening) can be construed as a sign itself&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastEditorDisplayName="user16555" LastEditDate="2016-05-28T04:50:43.997" LastActivityDate="2016-07-22T20:14:26.190" Title="How do you force a turning point in a narrative that is supposed to be precisely about the lack of such devices?" Tags="|fiction|technique|plot|character-development|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22177" CreationDate="2016-05-27T12:53:10.717" Score="21" ViewCount="6051" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all I'm completely against this idea but a few people who contribute to the technical documentation project constantly suggest that to attain a short, quick, economic, comprehensive message some basic rules can be broken. Things like completely omitting the articles, using simpler words to explain things, using the imperative mode to shorten verbs, even tossing out basic grammar rules etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there some rules of thumb or even legal directives about the language of machine safety labels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm citing a few examples of text written by those outsiders and my suggested corrections to make my case more clear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not open this cover while powered&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Do not open this cover while the machine is powered&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ensure power is disconnected before servicing&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Ensure that the power is disconnected before servicing the machine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not clean the machine using water or materials that can generate an&#xA;  explosive atmosphere&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Do not clean the machine using chemicals that can generate an&#xA;  explosive atmosphere or using water that can create an electric shock&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your answers. I mostly conclude with every answer but I have to apologize to all of you because I think I did mislead you by not presenting my case in detail. I'll give more details even if it's a little bit late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We manufacture big machines which have too much surface area and therefore our labels have too much space for details, too. We have 4 kinds of labels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are &lt;strong&gt;informational labels&lt;/strong&gt; which are used to designate the inlets (The type of the heating power such as steam or gas and the water inlets), the power switch, and the grounding connection quickly and precisely. Those inlets are also designated on the installation layouts and projects, so these labels are not the only markers of these inlets. They are there mostly to quickly remind the authorized personnel of their functions. They just include the 1 or 2 words describing the inlet type, a pictogram for it and if it's necessary the pressure limits of the heating supply.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any problems with these labels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are two purely &lt;strong&gt;graphical labels&lt;/strong&gt; which don't have any words on them. They only show the rotation direction of the blades of a fan and the bolt locations of the safety belts which have to be unbolted after the installation phase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any problems with these labels, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There two &lt;strong&gt;legends&lt;/strong&gt; for the explanation of the status light patterns and the explanation of the abbreviations used on the simpler model of the control panels that we are using.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I don't have any problems with these labels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are the &lt;strong&gt;safety and information labels&lt;/strong&gt;. We've designed the labels to include as much information as possible but at the same time to display this information in a practical and useful manner. Most of these labels include an internationally valid &lt;strong&gt;pictogram&lt;/strong&gt;, a word describing the message &lt;strong&gt;type of the label&lt;/strong&gt; in colored background and big fonts (Information, Warning, Caution, and Danger), a &lt;strong&gt;title of the label&lt;/strong&gt; in very big fonts (which corresponds to the content that most of you were answering) and the &lt;strong&gt;details of the title message&lt;/strong&gt; in either just one font size or sometimes if the message details are too long in two different font sizes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mostly don't have any problems with the title of our labels. They are the type of labels which most of you did mention in your answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is with these detailed text parts of our labels. I'm including a screenshot which contains four types of our safety and information labels so you can clearly see how they are constructed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that most of your answers can still be valid for them, too. I'll try to be more open minded when dealing with them in the future but I'll wait for your reactions to the detailed edit to my question before accepting one of your answers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: These label are printed on a transparent material which is the reason for different font colors. The ones with black fonts are meant to be fixed on light colored panels whereas the ones with white fonts are meant to be fixed on dark colored panels to enhance the readibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MIq3B.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MIq3B.png&quot; alt=&quot;safety and information labels&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10460" LastEditorUserId="10460" LastEditDate="2016-05-30T05:27:31.290" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T02:32:38.050" Title="Can basic grammar rules be skipped when writing text for machine safety labels?" Tags="|technical-writing|grammar|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22144" CreationDate="2016-05-27T15:47:04.957" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I understand that space can be at a premium with these labels, I will always, always come down on the side of clarity. Warning labels frequently get turned into jokes precisely because the originators thought that words could be dropped.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not open this cover while powered&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My thought:&lt;/em&gt; While the cover is powered? So as long as I unplug the cover, I can leave power on for everything else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one is probably okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not clean the machine using water or materials that can generate an explosive atmosphere&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My thought:&lt;/em&gt; Water can generate explosions?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so yeah, I'm with you. Clearer is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-05-27T15:47:04.957" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22144" CreationDate="2016-05-27T15:53:09.410" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like this question.  I cringe to say it, but I somewhat agree about breaking grammar rules in the interest of safety.  I frequently write technical emails/IT system announcements that are sent out to a large group of non-technical people and I find that if I write the emails using the same language that I'd write in my short stories, or even my technical diagrams, then nobody will read them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Machine safety labels - any safety labels - need to get to the point... Right Now!  The fewer words the better, and the simpler the better because you're working to do two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep people from getting hurt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the company from getting sued because someone got hurt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love it if safety labels were grammatically correct, but I think they just wouldn't be as safe then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Sir/Madam,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please do not touch the violently spinning wires in the wire rope&#xA;  machine in front of you as they may cause certain parts of your body&#xA;  to become separated from the rest of your body, or in the event that&#xA;  your different body parts do not separate, your whole body may be&#xA;  pulled into the machine.  Either way, a gruesome, bloody, painful&#xA;  death will occur and everybody will be sad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thank you, and good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: If you're looking for specific legal advice about this... I'm just a writer and a computer geek... You should ask your company's lawyer and then write the labels whatever they say is the correct way. Your lawyer is going to have specific knowledge about your industry and about the risks involved and will probably be quite happy to put in their two cents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastEditorUserId="16155" LastEditDate="2016-05-31T13:37:15.123" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T13:37:15.123" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22133" CreationDate="2016-05-27T18:31:23.447" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interacting with people who think differently is a good way to start.  Using the word 'moron' is a bad place to start.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have very strong spatial thinking skills - I can imagine things in 3D and can intuitively understand how mechanical things work, but I'm very bad with numbers and math.  My wife is nearly the opposite.  She thinks in words and logic, but has problems understanding things spatially.  She struggles to understand things that are obvious to me and I struggle to understand things that are obvious to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, while we both are very intelligent, we're also different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might try understanding this by imagining thinking about something that's difficult for you to understand - take for instance the relationship between gravity and time (look it up... it'll blow your mind.)  Then imagine what it would be like if listening to someone give directions to the nearest bathroom were just as difficult to understand.  Then imagine if everything were just as difficult to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine the emotions you'd feel if everyone else could understand things easily while you can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then you can probably start writing your character.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-05-27T18:31:23.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22144" CreationDate="2016-05-27T19:34:24.963" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The label should be as short as possible without creating ambiguity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many workplaces, the employer is required (OSHA, ISO, FDA, etc.) to train anyone who would be working in a particular area with the hazards of the environment and the equipment.  The label acts as a reminder (as well as a legal obligation).  Everyone in that lab knows lighting a flame near the hydrogen hood is a bad idea.  Anyone entering that lab should require safety training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the labels you used as examples are positions such that there is no ambiguity as to which system has to be turned off or which cover can't be opened, then clarify.  If it's clear, don't add additional wording.  If the label is on the wall, then, yes, it should specify you're talking about the spectrophotometer with the yellow cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working in a small business that is not government regulated, then the need for more explicit labels may be required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19131" LastActivityDate="2016-05-27T19:34:24.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22135" CreationDate="2016-05-27T19:50:34.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Probably Indicates Belief of How Good It Is&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your own mind may be trying to tell you something -- though it may be a lie.&#xA;Your own mind may be trying to tell you that it doesn't believe that the story is &amp;quot;good enough&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Malarkey and Bunk, You Say&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You might believe that viewpoint is not correct.  Here's a little test to determine if that is true for yourself.  For the test to work you have to take a moment and imagine this really happening.  Okay, ready...let's go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publisher Read Your Draft, Wants Entire Story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that you posted a partial draft of chapter 1 of your fiction on a blog.&#xA;The acquisitions editor of SuperBig Publishing stumbled upon it and loves it.&#xA;You receive the following email:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Writer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My name is Jon Jonsmith of SuperBig Publishing and I love&#xA;your fantastic writing (squee).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there isn't enough of it.  I&#xA;need the entire book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you please consider finishing the book in&#xA;the next 3 months.  If you will sign an agreement to finish the book,&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;I'll forward you a check for $10,000 advance&lt;/strong&gt; immediately so you can&#xA;start writing.  &lt;strong&gt;Don't worry about it being great, because your author's voice is fantastic so you have no worries there&lt;/strong&gt;.  Just write 300 pages and I'm happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Love always,  SuperBig Acquisitions editor, Jon&#xA;Jonsmith&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really consider that.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Could you now write 300 pages of the story that you stopped writing before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Motivations Are Obvious Now&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, your mind has obvious motivations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;someone loves your writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;$10,000&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can You Tell Why Your Mind Believes It Isn't Good Enough&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, now we're back to the original thing. If you &lt;strong&gt;could&lt;/strong&gt; write the story with the two aforementioned motivations, then why can't you write the story &lt;strong&gt;without&lt;/strong&gt; those two motivations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is Your Mind Trying To Save You?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it because you yourself don't even believe in the project?&#xA;If the answer is yes, then it is best that you do stop writing that story because if you don't like it then there is no chance of anyone else ever liking it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is true, your mind has saved you from working on a bad project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If It Isn't True?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a great project then why aren't you writing your project right now?&#xA;That is a much deeper thing, isn't it?  It may be that you just don't like sitting alone writing.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Here's a book that can really help with that:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2px0dPc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon link to Becoming A Writer by Dorothea Brande&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical Skills?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your not writing simply because you fear you won't write the story well, then you are in a great place.  Learn to write well, by writing this story as best you can and editing it.  This is how you become a writer: hard work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most instructive book I ever read on writing skills is:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qEWv3K&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;amazon link to Make Your Words Work by Gary Provost&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:01:04.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22144" CreationDate="2016-05-27T20:18:21.323" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say yes, but ... not if it loses clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warning labels have to be concise or people won't be able to read them, or won't bother to read them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a label that says &quot;HIGH VOLTAGE&quot; expresses the warning very briefly and concisely. Yes, it's not a complete, grammatically correct sentence. But you can write it in big letters so people can it from far away. It takes a fraction of a second to read it so they get the message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, you could write a more thorough explanation. &quot;This machine has a variety of electrical and electronic components. If you were to touch bare wires, either with one hand on each of two separate wires, or a hand on the wires and your feet touching the ground, this might make it possible for electrical current to pass through your body, which can have adverse consequences on your health ...&quot; etc. Would that be better because it uses complete sentences? Obviously not. Yes, that was a ridiculous extreme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the opposite extreme would be warnings that use incomplete sentences and invalid grammar in a way that makes them ambiguous. Like suppose someone posted a warning that read &quot;DANGER RED BUTTON&quot;. Does that mean that it is dangerous to touch the red button? That you should push the red button when you believe that something dangerous is happening? That the button lights up or something when there is danger? It's hard to say because the warning has been abbreviated too far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take one of your examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Ensure power is disconnected before servicing&quot; versus &quot;Ensure that the power is disconnected before servicing the machine&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see how &quot;that the&quot; after &quot;ensure&quot; adds anything or clarifies the meaning. It's easily left out for brevity. Likewise, what does adding &quot;the machine&quot; help? Of course we mean &quot;servicing this machine here that the label is on&quot;. As opposed to what? Servicing a customer's charge account? I suppose you could imagine someone thinking that you mean servicing the power supply. But the power supply is a machine too, so specifying &quot;the machine&quot; doesn't clarify the only remotely plausible alternative reading. Thus, I conclude this one is fine the way it is. The meaning is about as clear as it's going to get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one about cleaning with water is debatable. Someone might think it means that cleaning with water can generate an explosive atmosphere. That's not irrational: Perhaps chemicals can leak out of the machine, and if you put water on them, the chemicals react with the water. Or some such scenario. You'd have to know a lot about the machine and how it works and the environment that it's in to say, and if you knew all that, you wouldn't need the warning label.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-05-27T20:18:21.323" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22144" CreationDate="2016-05-27T21:42:48.273" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only rules you should feel free to violate are the rules about having a subject (which is implied), and possibly the trailing period of the sentence. All of the remaining rules should apply. For example, these three sentences from your examples should be logical enough for the average human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not open while powered on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disconnect power before servicing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not clean with water or explosive chemicals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that in all three cases, there is no subject. The subject is implied by label placement: we can (and usually do) naturally assume that the label is intended for the device it is affixed to. Also, we don't generally say &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you shouldn't do something, partly because it's usually obvious (e.g. power is usually shocking, explosive chemicals tend to... explode), and partly because we don't want to have people trying to do risk assessment without proper training. A trained professional &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; choose to violate the warnings because they know what can go wrong, how to avoid things going wrong, and how to minimize damages when things go wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12934" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-05-27T22:24:21.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="529" CreationDate="2016-05-27T21:53:19.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pick travel scenes and locales that advance the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, I'm writing a screenplay that features a South American cruise. I skimp on scenes in the glitzy places like Rio de Janeiro Brazil, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Santiago, Chile. On the other hand, I have major scenes in out of the way places like Puerto Madryn, Argentina (one character thinks that visiting this place is &quot;trivial,&quot; but it is highly important to two others), the Straits of Magellan (the hero gets seasick), and the &quot;funicular&quot; in Valparaiso, Chile, (a romantic spot where the hero and heroine make up)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-05-27T21:53:19.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22133" CreationDate="2016-05-27T21:59:16.327" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By having the 'moron' use faulty logic, nonsensical assumptions, and idiotic conclusions.&#xA;Though you have to make sure it isn't silly, unless you want to write comedy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18443" LastActivityDate="2016-05-27T21:59:16.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22144" CreationDate="2016-05-28T00:30:51.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In support of @DoWhileNot, the words &quot;No Step&quot; is placed on almost every airplane wing.  It's bad grammar, but gets the point across to even the most basic English speaker/reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, when I first read it, I was very confused... looking for faded or missing words that may have fallen off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SvpmD.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SvpmD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19137" LastActivityDate="2016-05-28T00:30:51.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22160" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-28T06:24:43.817" Score="1" ViewCount="2105" Body="&lt;p&gt;In preparation for IELTS I want to write on &quot;It is important for children to learn the difference between right and wrong at an early age. Punishment is necessary to help them learn this distinction. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to say that although I think sometimes punishment is important, it should not be severe punishment that would affect a child physically or mentally. So if I say in the introduction as &quot;In my opinion, I believe that although sometimes punishment is necessary to guide the children in the right path it should be well thought, accepted and reasonable punishment&quot; do I sound as &lt;strong&gt;partially agreeing&lt;/strong&gt;? OR am I being away from the topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19140" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T12:33:18.450" Title="essay writing agree, disagree partially agree" Tags="|style|essay|introduction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22143" CreationDate="2016-05-28T06:52:27.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see your problem, humans can show striking ingenuity in constructing narratives to support the notion that everything is a divine sign. I can only come up with two solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The chaotic one. Rather than trying to destroy her narrative, have her realize that different narratives can be constructed around the same events and take agency as the writer of her life. The lazy way to do this is to introduce her to a teacher figure with such a radically different worldview from hers that she will have to reconsider everything she knows, someone who will plunge her life into chaos by showing her the forking paths where she sees clear road signs. It seems much harder to replace this with an impersonal force, but hey, maybe it is possible. By the end she should ideally have enough self-awareness to note the irony of the situation - how fateful the encounter that made her denounce the idea of fate was.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The satirical one. Look up &quot;Inside Amy Schumer - The Universe&quot; with Bill Nye on YouTube for reference. See how the ridiculousness escalates? You can have your characters' beliefs become increasingly monstrous in their selfishness. Then any reminder that she is not the center of the universe should be enough to make them crumble.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18967" LastActivityDate="2016-05-28T06:52:27.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22162" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-28T06:55:43.893" Score="3" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my own needs I write fantasy. But at this time I am not sure what genre it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Base of that world is probably classic fantasy, because there are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unicorns&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dragons&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;magic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lycanthrops&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;other extremely powerful beings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I also placed there some very modern things like (and some more I still did not used)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fluorescent tubes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;nuclear reactors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;nuclear bombs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but they are very improved to be &lt;em&gt;magic&lt;/em&gt; (not in definition &lt;em&gt;Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;). For example local version of fluorescent tubes are emiting cold light, they have similar shape - but their construction is simplified (to use magic as source of energy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; - only one using of this A.C.Clarke's law is cybernetic visitor from else world; there Icefingers (healer, scientist and former soldier) will use variation of this law to explain being of that visitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18534" LastEditorUserId="18534" LastEditDate="2017-10-16T19:53:37.407" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T19:53:37.407" Title="How to call sub-genre of my fantasy?" Tags="|fantasy|genre|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22160" CreationDate="2016-05-28T08:12:13.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good essay is supposed to offer new perspectives and clear argumentation. You are expected to demonstrate clarity of thought and the ability to think &quot;outside of the box&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these in mind, I wouldn't be preoccupied about sticking to &lt;em&gt;either/or&lt;/em&gt; limits; rather the contrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a good strategy for your argument would be to create a differentiation between &quot;punishment&quot; and &quot;disciplining&quot;, unpacking then your for/against arguments for each. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-05-28T08:12:13.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22162" CreationDate="2016-05-28T10:47:09.357" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using actual fluorescent lights and nuclear energy and so forth, or fluorescent lights which have been slightly improved or altered by magic but are essentially the same technology, this is generally called &lt;strong&gt;urban fantasy.&lt;/strong&gt; While &quot;urban&quot; means &quot;city,&quot; in this context it means &lt;em&gt;fantasy or magical elements in modern society.&lt;/em&gt; The setting can be a city, town, or country. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using fairy dust inside a long tube for a light bulb, such that it is entirely magical, that's just &lt;strong&gt;fantasy in a contemporary setting&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-05-28T10:47:09.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22144" CreationDate="2016-05-28T11:43:34.910" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, absolutely you can throw grammar rules out the window.  Machine safety labels need to convey the danger clearly first and foremost.  They also need to consider that the audience may not be fluent or conversant in the language at all.  Grammar is largely irrelevant, and simple is always better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As example, here are a collection of safety labels from some Japanese made equipment (installed in North America).  I've not included the awkwardly translated text from some of them, and for many it's not even the grammar that's the worst part so much as the vocabulary itself.  That said, strong iconography makes the point quite clear in all cases.  The wording itself plays second fiddle, really.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1doxW.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1doxW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;machine safety label catch/pinch&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ACeHP.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ACeHP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;machine safety label suffocation&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/u4Qxu.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/u4Qxu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;machine safety label explosion&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jL9Lm.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jL9Lm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;machine safety label falling&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BreiO.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BreiO.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;machine safety label heat/press&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1FzUi.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1FzUi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;machine safety label no standing&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hBVzM.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hBVzM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;machine safety label pinch/press&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19146" LastEditorUserId="19146" LastEditDate="2016-05-28T19:49:23.603" LastActivityDate="2016-05-28T19:49:23.603" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22174" CreationDate="2016-05-28T12:11:51.973" Score="4" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the following sentence, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NAME is a community that helps each other code better by rating each&#xA;  other's efforts and helps managers pair with other fellow developers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was suggested by the community that the sentence is stylistically poor because the two elements in the sentence are of different syntactic/semantic type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, I have tried to break up the sentence by producing &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NAME is a community that helps its members code better by rating each&#xA;  other's efforts. It also helps managers pair with other fellow&#xA;  developers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is that I feel there is something odd there, from a writing perspective. It is intended to be a subheading, so I am trying to keep it concise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19148" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-05-29T04:06:04.827" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T04:06:04.827" Title="How to communicate two elements of different general syntactic/semantic type in the same sentence?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|editing|business-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22160" CreationDate="2016-05-28T15:53:55.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, stay away from expressions like &quot;in my opinion.&quot; It's your essay; this is understood, increases word count, and takes time if the essay is in an exam situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, this is a topic with a GREAT DEAL of social science research. If you have an unlimited time frame, this is the sort of thing you can at least get as far as Wikipedia. Some of the data is conflicting. This can be part of your conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, a great outside-the-box argument would suggest an approach in which children don't require very much discipline &lt;strong&gt;or&lt;/strong&gt; punishment because they've been given appropriate &lt;em&gt;guidance&lt;/em&gt;. (I have kids.) Things like stability, structure, exercise, love, a voice in family decisions, lessons in charity and generosity and peaceful resolution of problems, safety, empathy, and compassion reduces discipline issues probably 80-90%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific to your question, your introduction sounds like a conclusion. An introduction should define your question and clarify your end points (e.gs. &lt;em&gt;this or that&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;this and that&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;this or that or some other entity&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;strong&gt;In your sentence, it appears you are being on-topic and in agreement.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in consideration of above, I'd rewrite your sentence more simply: &lt;em&gt;If punishment is necessary to educate children in the difference between right and wrong, it should be thought out, agreed upon by both partners, and proportional to the offense.&lt;/em&gt; Again, this sounds more like a conclusion rather than an introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-05-28T18:30:33.680" LastActivityDate="2016-05-28T18:30:33.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22144" CreationDate="2016-05-28T19:23:07.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the beauty of the English language. It can convey a greater meaning from the individual parts even when some words are omitted, or grammar is truncated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The clue is that good warning language or brief instructions should be written so that the reader can infer the meaning. And if you look closer very often you can fill in the blanks and then you have a complete sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Airplanes are a perfect place to see or hear signs, placards and brief messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fasten seatbelt while seated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No smoking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doors to manual and cross check&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prepare for departure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prepare for take off&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flight attendants be seated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and of course the best of them all&#xA;NO STEP&#xA;meaning do not step here or do not place your foot/step here&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19152" LastActivityDate="2016-05-28T19:23:07.820" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22171" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-28T20:35:18.687" Score="6" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have started and stopped at least a dozen erotic romance novels because &quot;I&quot; don't think they are good enough and never finish them. How do I put my own doubt aside so I can finish what I started?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19154" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-05-29T09:42:06.363" LastActivityDate="2016-06-05T17:57:35.450" Title="I keep setting aside WIPs I don't think are good enough" Tags="|romance|discipline|erotica|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22171" CreationDate="2016-05-29T01:39:34.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is, of course, the way most aspiring authors start. Many will never get beyond Chapter 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might try a short story or a sample first chapter onto a public domain fiction review site. &lt;em&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/em&gt; is a trade and publish opportunity to show your work to other people anonymously. It's divided by genre, and &quot;Chick Lit (I never liked that name) and Erotica&quot; is commonly submitted. You can also pay for membership and publish longer works for review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll probably get mixed reviews, but I've been impressed because even a few great ideas can make the difference between a hobby and a career, and I've definitely gotten a few great ideas (commercial fiction). Erotica is highly competitive right now; you might find a group of people who can help inspire you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T01:39:34.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22171" CreationDate="2016-05-29T02:39:27.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing is similar to exercising. You should start by writing some short stories, perhaps just even a page or two, then work on gradually increasing your story length. You'll build endurance and confidence as you finish some smaller stories. Make sure that you get some feedback on your stories from a third party, such as a friend, significant other, or people generally interested in reading those kinds of stories (like alt.sex.stories on Usenet). Being validated by a third party usually bolsters confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, some of the most effective writers are also some of the most effective &lt;em&gt;readers&lt;/em&gt;. Read a lot of different stories similar to the one you're trying to write for inspiration. Consider reading a sampling of stories on alt.sex.stories as well (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://asstr.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ASSTR&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;NSFW&lt;/strong&gt;), and you'll see that authors tend to write &quot;as best they can,&quot; and care more about sharing the stories than having a finished product. The FAQ section on that site includes a few good articles about writing stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, focus on including elements in your story that appeals to your personal interests and fantasies. They will be far more enjoyable if drawn from favorite personal experiences or things that you think about frequently, which will help you gain confidence and make it more likely you'll finish. It's hard to write about things that do not interest you, and will actually trick you in to believing that the story is worse than it actually is. And, in most cases, &quot;good&quot; and &quot;bad&quot; are subjective attributes that are colored by a person's life experiences, so write the stories that give you the most satisfaction, and you'll find that some other people will enjoy the story, and yet others will not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12934" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T02:39:27.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22167" CreationDate="2016-05-29T04:05:41.857" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem you're having is in attaching the final clause:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NAME is...that helps...by rating...and helps... .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the reader gets to the &quot;and&quot; he's expecting it to bind to the &quot;by&quot; -- NAME helps by doing two things, rating and...helping.  But the next word is &quot;helps&quot;, which doesn't fit that pattern.  So the reader has to mentally backtrack and conclude that instead of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clause (that helps by (A and B))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;he's looking at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clause that (helps by A) and (B)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be jarring anywhere, but it's especially disruptive in &lt;em&gt;technical&lt;/em&gt; writing where the writing is usually more precise and careful than in, say, fiction.  The readers of technical documentation sometimes also read specifications, requirements, interface designs -- all areas where precise bindings of phrases and specific word choices matter.  Now in the case of your example that binding question is only a distraction; it would be more severe if you instead had something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perform an emergency shutdown of the nuclear power plant by frobbing the widget and twiddle the doohickey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is &quot;twiddle the doohickey&quot; part of the process of shutting down the power plant, or is it a separate, later step?  This is the &lt;em&gt;structural&lt;/em&gt; problem in your example, though I trust that your readers will have fewer safety concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean to say that the community helps its members code better by (something else and) helping managers pair with fellow developers (i.e. helping managers is part of making members code better), the minimum change to make that work would be to change &quot;help&quot; to &quot;helping&quot;, for parallelism with &quot;rating&quot;.  But I'd massage it further; the double &quot;help&quot;/&quot;helping&quot; feels repetitive, and arguably you'd want a second &quot;by&quot; because of the length of the first clause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first version presents two clauses with equal intended weight -- two ways that the community does what you say it does.  Your rewrite makes one of those reasons primary and one secondary, by moving the latter into a new sentence and saying &quot;also&quot;.  If the manager part really is secondary, then your rewrite is fine.  If both are meant to be equal, though, try splitting it up differently, putting both reasons together in the same sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NAME is a community that helps its members code better. It does this by having members rate each other and by helping managers to pair with other developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm focusing on the structural question here; you might want to word-smith this further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T04:05:41.857" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22171" CreationDate="2016-05-29T04:07:42.220" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often think of what Ira Glass says in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this video about the gap between your work and the work that you admire&lt;/a&gt;. Here's the quote in text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone told me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good&#xA;  taste. &lt;strong&gt;But there is this gap.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good.&#xA;  It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your&#xA;  taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your&#xA;  taste is why your work disappoints you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through&#xA;  years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that&#xA;  we want it to have. We all go through this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you&#xA;  gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a&#xA;  lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will&#xA;  finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that&#xA;  you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your&#xA;  ambitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever&#xA;  met. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta&#xA;  fight your way through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paraphrased: As we get to love a creative pursuit (like writing) we develop really good taste and get to recognize good and bad work. Then we look at our own work, comparing it to the great stuff, and we see that it's not great and we give up. Ira says don't give up. Everyone goes through that phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-05-29T09:47:15.233" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T09:47:15.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22091" CreationDate="2016-05-29T09:46:27.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To answer #1 invites opinion; I believe there are special forums for polling and/or &quot;popularity contests&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As for the style itself; the first rule of English prose style is the same as that for writing code - HAVE A STYLE.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For myself, in answer to #2, lacking specific guidelines or requirements for style I would use Associated Press (AP) Style. My preference for it derives from reading books and periodicals as a youngster growing up...also I had it shoved down my throat in college so it is the style with which I am most&#xA;a) &lt;strong&gt;comfortable&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;b) &lt;strong&gt;experienced&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;c) &lt;strong&gt;familiar&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AP Style develops continuously. It is designed to optimize readability, clarity and brevity. When new acronyms, words and slang make their way into the zeitgeist, AP determines a style to use for each. A stylebook is handy when the writer hits a grey-area; like the &lt;em&gt;Federal Bureau of Investigation.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;(Is it &quot;F.B.I. ...FBI... do I spell it out on first reference?)&lt;/em&gt; Normally we spell out acronyms on first reference and append periods in-between on second ref. If an organization or acronym is &quot;common enough&quot; ... your stylebook tells you how best to communicate it to the reader. In the example, &quot;the FBI&quot; is considered so well-known that the abbreviated form I used on &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; reference is a-ok. Note also that common acronyms like CIA, ISIS (or is it ISIL?) USMC, NBA, NFL, DVD, IBM and others appear sans-periods between them. They may or may not require a spell-out on first reference. &lt;strong&gt;This is just one of 100s of reasons to learn, develop and use a style.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To tackle question #3 (&quot;number three&quot; in AP Style) professional writers use AP Style as a &lt;em&gt;template&lt;/em&gt; format. It could be stand-alone (for a solo project), or if writing for a technical guide, journal, brochure, site (....) your organization will also have a set of style rules to augment AP and fill in all the &quot;grey areas&quot; for industry-specific abbreviations, terms, definitions and all that good stuff. The same goes for a series of fictional tales, you may decide to create your own style--unique to your own fictional world in order to give the story a more creatively-structured feel. &lt;em&gt;Pay special attention to the style used for versioning (documents, labels, presentations) and the style company editors use when a document is routing...that is, how they markup documents for errors, changes, suggestions, questions and the like.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T09:46:27.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22144" CreationDate="2016-05-29T11:41:04.830" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Of course you can't just ignore &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; basic grammar rules.&lt;/strong&gt;  For example, writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not cover the opening machines power be while do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;obviously makes no sense to anyone, even though it's got all the right words (plus or minus a few grammatical suffixes) in there.  It's just broken English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; totally write, say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not open cover while machine is powered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or, if space is really at a premium (or you just want to make the letters as big as possible to make them stand out), e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DO NOT OPEN WHILE POWERED!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So what's the difference, then?&lt;/strong&gt;  The difference is that, in effect, English has a special &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_%28sociolinguistics%29&quot;&gt;linguistic register&lt;/a&gt; for terse messages like signs and headlines that modifies or relaxes &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; otherwise (nearly) universal grammar and style rules in the interests of brevity.  But not &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; rules; only those that do not introduce any significant ambiguity in the message (or for which an alternative method for conveying the same distinction is available).  In effect, it's a different language variety with (somewhat) different grammar rules from general literary English &amp;mdash; but it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; still have grammar, because a language with no grammar at all is not a language, but just a bunch of random words thrown together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what are the differences between general English and this &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlinese&quot;&gt;&quot;headlinese&quot;&lt;/a&gt;?  I haven't personally read any scholarly studies on the grammar of this special language register (although it &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; been studied, and the Wikipedia page I linked to even references a couple of articles on the subject), but just off the top of my head, the most notable differences are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Omission of definite and indefinite articles.&lt;/strong&gt;  When you really think about it, articles are rarely essential for conveying the meaning of a sentence.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_%28grammar%29#Variation_among_languages&quot;&gt;Plenty of languages get by just fine without them&lt;/a&gt; &amp;mdash; the &lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EuropeArticleLanguages.png&quot;&gt;map&lt;/a&gt; on the linked page shows pretty strikingly that the (near) compulsory use of articles in front of nouns is a distinctively Western European areal feature.  In many languages it's a relatively modern one, too; classical Latin didn't have articles, but most of the Romance languages that descended from it developed them (generally from demonstrative pronouns that became a compulsive part of the noun phrase) under the influence of neighboring Germanic languages.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Omission of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula_%28linguistics%29&quot;&gt;copula&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;  Have you &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; seen a sign that said &quot;Door &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; closed,&quot; or a headline that read &quot;Politician &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; caught lying&quot;?  Again, plenty of languages get by just fine without a copula at all, anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use of stand-alone noun phrases instead of full sentences.&lt;/strong&gt;  Related to the above, it's very common to replace sentences that in standard English would use the copula &quot;is&quot; with just a plain noun phrase (with, effectively, an implied &quot;there/this is&quot;).  This is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; common in signs: &quot;NO SMOKING&quot;, &quot;WET FLOOR&quot; or &quot;OUT OF USE&quot; communicate their ideas much more concisely than &quot;Smoking is not allowed here,&quot; &quot;The floor is wet&quot; or &quot;This machine is not currently usable.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Omission of implied referents.&lt;/strong&gt;  The default assumption is that a sign refers to the object or the location it's attached to.  Thus, you don't need to write &quot;&lt;em&gt;This store is&lt;/em&gt; closed&quot; or &quot;No trespassing &lt;em&gt;on this property&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; Of course, such omission also occurs in standard literary English (even if some grammarians frown upon it), but it's extremely common in signs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also some grammar and style features that, while not directly serving the interests of brevity, have nonetheless come to be commonly associated with this particular style of English.  A notable example is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case&quot;&gt;title case&lt;/a&gt;, which (as the name indicates) is very popular in titles and headlines, but also commonly found in other places that employ a similar terse style.  (Exercise: Open a drop-down menu on your computer and look at the entries; there's something like a 50-50 chance that they'll be In Title Case.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, my point is that, as long as you &lt;em&gt;follow the established style and grammar conventions&lt;/em&gt; relevant to the context you're writing in, you certainly can (and, arguably, even &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;) break any &quot;rules&quot; of prescriptivist &quot;standard English grammar&quot; that conflict with actual established usage in your field.  That's not the same as throwing grammar, willy-nilly, out of the window &amp;mdash; that's just understanding that grammar, like all things in human communication, is a context-dependent and flexible construction that can and does adapt to fit the needs of the medium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3172" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T11:41:04.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22180" CreationDate="2016-05-29T15:01:07.567" Score="5" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently describing a scene of a girl listening to music. My question is, should I say what singer is she listening to? Or I better skip that part and and say something like &quot;she sat on her bed while one of the songs of her favourite singer was being played&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16802" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-17T02:51:52.830" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T18:41:02.660" Title="Should I name specific artists?" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21973" CreationDate="2016-05-29T15:18:00.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think about 'Star Wars' you could find a similar structure. In the first movie (1977) the hero is not the Jedi, but Jan Solo. With him,  besides Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is old (but in any case he dies), you have two friends, a boy and a girl (later you will know that they are brother and sister). One time, many years ago, George Lucas talked about it during an interview. He explained that the story was taken from another very ancient book (I don't know what it is called). I think that you can find the interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19163" LastEditorUserId="19163" LastEditDate="2016-05-30T16:24:46.533" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T16:24:46.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22178" CreationDate="2016-05-29T15:24:52.367" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use Details To Grab Readers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract Detail&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A guy drove down the road in his car and a thing happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More Detail&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Walt Chambers, sat behind the wheel of his 1968 Camaro and revved the&#xA;  engine waiting for the red light to change.  He looked right, out the&#xA;  passenger window and saw a green Mustang sitting in the lane next to&#xA;  him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details are one of the reasons people read fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reason You May Decide To Include Artist Names&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely the artist the character is listening to will give the reader an idea of who the character is.  It will add to the reader's understanding who the character is by showing what they like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pop Culture References Can Date A Book/Story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only problem you might have is that pop culture references can become stale over time as artists become distant memories and could later confuse people if the artist is no longer known.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ultimately: Your Choice Is Your Style&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, whether you provide the specific detail of the artist your character is listening to is your style and your voice coming through.  For an example of someone who drops references to music like this all the time and builds his stories on it, check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYdSjD&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nick Hornby Hi Fidelity - amazon link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T14:57:33.453" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:57:33.453" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22178" CreationDate="2016-05-29T15:31:16.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do what serves your story best. If the artists are relevant, then mention them. In most cases, though, the artists are not necessary. Keep in mind that readers might not even know the artists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The genre might be useful, though. If her playlist is unique in some way it might contribute to our understanding of her: 70s punk or 60s easy listening or Tuvan throat singing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best is to write your best draft and have your readers look it over with a critical eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T15:31:16.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22182" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-29T18:33:02.927" Score="3" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a question in general. Let's say the protagonist has succeed in his goals, but has lost everything, then he gets badly wounded and slowly dies. What is to avoid when writing his death? Just asking in general. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-17T02:50:29.077" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T02:50:29.077" Title="What to avoid when writing the death of the protagonist?" Tags="|characters|narrative|protagonist|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22182" CreationDate="2016-05-29T18:42:12.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Melodrama!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how has he managed to succeed in his goals and still lose everything? Was his goal to lose it all? (I remember some comedy where someone had to get rid of a lot of money in order to inherit even more, but he didn't die in the end...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T18:42:12.173" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22171" CreationDate="2016-05-29T18:51:26.927" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way is to allow yourself to write a crappy first draft and then fix it in editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of authors go that way. They just keep writing, not looking too much at what they've written in previous chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their editing work then turns into gold digging where you grab a bunch of muck and rinse away a lot to find the golden nuggets that gets to be included in the second draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't judge your work too much while you're writing the first draft. Just keep going until you reach the conclusion of the story, then put the manuscript away for 3 months and read it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might surprise yourself!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to go is to try outlining the story more. You might be a writer that detests going into unknown waters without having a plan, and that might stop you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T18:51:26.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22068" CreationDate="2016-05-29T19:22:45.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This style has been used in fantasy novels and series before to a extent. Mostly written by either a third party or as a really older version of the main or side characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the best examples of this are -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox&lt;/strong&gt; by Barry Hughart (&lt;em&gt;They are written from Number Ten Ox's POV at he records the adventures at some later and undated point in time&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Duncton Chronicles&lt;/strong&gt; by William Horwood (&lt;em&gt;Points of the story are written by a scribe recalling the events&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Natural History of Dragons ((Memoir by Lady Trent)&lt;/strong&gt; by Marie Brennan (Written from the POV of Lady Trent)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is a well used style if only to a degree... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the writing is good then matter of keeping the interest of your readers isn't an issue (when going into a series it is a for gone collusion that the main guys will be with you until the last book (except if the series is GoT))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for talking bout magic... Have the character explain himself, like one does when talking things out to make sense to oneself. This is his recording of events... have him say &quot;Little did I know so and so worked like so at the time but if I had so and so event would not have happened&quot; or something like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18936" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T19:22:45.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22186" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22195" CreationDate="2016-05-30T01:05:19.713" Score="1" ViewCount="3046" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is it possible to become an Ernest Hemingway?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, someone can learn to spell, put punctuation in the right places, and keep his sentences down to twenty words. That doesn’t make you Earnest Hemingway, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being good at writing appears to be an inherent quality because not everyone who knows the rules can do it. Think of it this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) If writing well were teachable, then anyone could become a good writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Not anyone can become a good writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Hence, writing well isn't teachable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So writing well must be an inherent quality because there are good writers, and we know writing well isn't teachable. They had to have been born with such potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you guys think? Should people who follow the rules and yet still write poorly just quit? I'd like to know your thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19081" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:56:22.107" Title="Can anyone become a good writer?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|academic-writing|screenwriting|philosophy|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-05-31T21:35:05.407" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22186" CreationDate="2016-05-30T01:19:24.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question that I personally believe is a matter of perspective. There are people who consider some writers who are thought of as good/great writers to be terrible. This is a matter of finding your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking from that perspective, yes anyone can be a good writer. If you write, market and put your content in front of other people. Then there will always be someone willing to read your work and perhaps even become your fan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a more objective standpoint, if we are to take into the basics of writing into consideration. Let's use English as an example, people who are more familiar with the language and have a stronger grip on it have a better chance at being more successful as writers vs. those who are at a novice level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT imagination plays a big role as well. Even if your English is great, but your imagination well is dry, then most likely it would be boring to read that person's work. Rich imagination + great grasp on the language they write for can make great writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18301" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T01:19:24.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22186" CreationDate="2016-05-30T04:15:38.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what your intent is when you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People write for pleasure, for money, for fame, for influence, for immortality, and etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the best writers - the ones whose names you remember a hundred or five hundred years later achieved all those things, but for every Shakespeare there are hundreds of writers who had success if you measure success by their own standards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your object is to write for pleasure and you're still having fun even if everyone else hates your writing, then keep on writing! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your object is for money and fame and everyone for the last 20 years has said your stuff sucks, then maybe it's time for a different hobby. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T04:15:38.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22178" CreationDate="2016-05-30T05:09:11.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I'd avoid naming a specific musician in a causal reference like, &quot;When Sally got home, she sat on her bed and listened to X&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) Popular musicians come and go pretty quickly, and naming one is likely to make your story sound dated very rapidly. Singers who were top of the charts just 10 or 15 years ago are often unknown to modern teenagers. Just recently I looked up on YouTube some singers who were popular when I was a young man in the 1980s, and my college-aged son had never heard of any of them. If someone reads your story 10 or 20 years ago, they may well think, &quot;What? A teenager was listening to this grandpa music? Is this kid some kind of extreme traditionalist? A student of music history?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) Musicians are often unknown to people not interested in their genre. Country music fans tend to be unfamiliar with rappers and vice versa, etc. An unfamiliar name is likely to just be distracting, as the reader wonders who it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(c) Similarly, people who are not particularly interested in music may not know a name even if the musician is fairly popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the nature of the music doesn't matter, I'd just say, &quot;listening to her favorite singer&quot; or something generic. If the type of music is important in establishing the character, you can describe the music. &quot;She was listening to raucous heavy metal&quot; or &quot;listening to mellow, sentimental love songs&quot; or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's some reason why the particular singer is important -- like, I don't know, an important plot element is how she sees parallels between her life and the lyrics of his songs or something, where you have to go into detail for the story to make sense and be interesting -- that would be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW In general I agree with SaberWriter that details are important. No one wants to read a story that says, &quot;Some guy did stuff and then other things happened. The end.&quot; But pop culture references are tricky for reasons I outlined above. I'd be more inclined to describe the kind of music then to name a contemporary singer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, I should say that if it's a musician who is very widely known and has been for many years, that's a different category. A reference to Beethoven or Elvis (whew, that's an odd pairing) would likely be recognized by almost any American anyway, and I think it's a fair bet that they'll be remembered for many years to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T05:09:11.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22186" CreationDate="2016-05-30T07:15:13.810" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think everyone can become &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; at something. With a lot of practice, I can learn how to play the piano better that I can now, but either due to motivation or to some innate way my brain is wired, I consider it outrageously unlikely that I will become as good as some classically trained soloist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everyone can become &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not everyone can become &lt;strong&gt;good&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, however, it is imperative to realize how generic &quot;good&quot; is in this context. As it was mentioned more eloquently by those who answered before me, there is one definition for writing for a specific audience (marketability), another definition for writing for invoking emotions and thoughts (artistry), and yet another for feeling a sense of reward writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T07:15:13.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22182" CreationDate="2016-05-30T14:09:32.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest a secondary protagonist that &quot;carries the torch&quot; when the protagonist dies. Even when done well, there's a marketability issue if the one character everyone cares about bites it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there's a great deal of respect for self-sacrifice. Dying for a cause is a successful and uplifting way to accomplish your task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two blockbuster movies coming to mind are &lt;em&gt;Terminator 2&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Armageddon&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there was this American movie from the '70s called &lt;em&gt;Ordinary People&lt;/em&gt; which won &quot;Best Picture&quot; Academy Award, but nobody tried to replicate because it was so depressing--the MC commits suicide at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T14:09:32.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22144" CreationDate="2016-05-30T16:23:29.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Doors to manual and cross check&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good example of brevity, IMO. The instruction is not supposed to replace the cabin crew training course, nor explain aircraft operations to passengers, but to remind the target audience (the cabin crew) with a few essential words what they need to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19177" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T16:23:29.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22186" CreationDate="2016-05-30T18:23:55.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nature Or Nurture? (Maybe Both)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it is always difficult to separate nature from nurture (was an artist born that way or did the events of her life transform her into the artist she now is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My knock-down, number one favorite book of all time (&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qEWv3K&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Make Your Words Work by Gary Provost - amazon link&lt;/a&gt;) on teaching writing starts out with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NuNwK.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NuNwK.png&quot; alt=&quot;make your words work intro&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What Would Proof Look Like?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have you ever read something that you know is written well?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have you ever read something that you know is written very poorly?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means you (even if you're an amateur) can differentiate between good writing and bad writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Isn't That Just Subjective?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only to a degree.  Take an exaggeration to discover the truth of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The person went down to the place and decided they going to do a&#xA;  specific thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sentence is &lt;strong&gt;vague&lt;/strong&gt; and contains a &lt;strong&gt;grammatical error&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most Readers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most readers will have difficulty with it and if that type of thing continues for a few sentences most readers will decide to stop reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What If Most Readers Liked Your Writing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that the final determination of whether you are a great writer like Hemingway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even that is a bit subjective, because I loathe the book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qEOFXK&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Sun Also Rises&lt;/a&gt;, but Hemingway's &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pwVxca&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Old Man and the Sea&lt;/a&gt; is one of my favorite books of all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better? Maybe You Learned, So Maybe It's Possible&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a sentence that is better (grammatically and less vague) than the previous one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At 1:32am, John Amberson scanned the parking lot from where he huddled&#xA;  in the bushes.  All clear, he thought, then jumped up and scurried to&#xA;  the back door of the donut shop.  He pressed himself against the door&#xA;  and began working on the lock with his pick tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There Is A Difference&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've noticed any difference between the two examples, you've probably just proven to yourself that writing can be taught.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There Are A Few Reasons Writers Believe Writing Can't Be Taught&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People who do not actually want to write much, try it, are not good and then think, &quot;you can't learn this stuff&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Great writers themselves don't necessarily know what they do that is good.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Literary types believe only certain writing is &quot;good&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are There Objective Things You Can Learn?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is there are objective things you can learn in order to become a better writer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Grammar&lt;/strong&gt; -- write grammatically correct in order to write clearly (don't be a grammar snob)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dialogue&lt;/strong&gt; -- learn to write great snappy dialogue which doesn't repeat what you said in your narratvie&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Description&lt;/strong&gt; -- learn to write description that comes alive and isn't just static explanations of the &quot;sunny day&quot; instead maybe &quot;the sun baked on Giles head, increasing his frustration&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character&lt;/strong&gt; -- much to learn to create and describe characters who are interesting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plotting / Story-telling&lt;/strong&gt; -- Learn to write in scenes which add up to an entire story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is much to learn and all of those &lt;strong&gt;topics are covered in Make Your Words Work&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T14:56:22.107" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:56:22.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7749" CreationDate="2016-05-30T19:42:16.647" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short Chapters are used to keep the suspense in not that far of a reach for some books or maybe so that all books that are short chaptered have a really good story line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19178" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T19:42:16.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22144" CreationDate="2016-05-30T20:19:48.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think one significant problem boils down to this attitude&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More-so a problem with the younger generations; there's a perceived coolness around not-learning.  Also, reading words is more cognitive load than simply recognising a (good) pictogram or even identifying a colour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in this case, &lt;em&gt;less is more&lt;/em&gt; and fewer words leads to better outcomes.  If grammar suffers, then at least waffle is decreased and signal-to-noise ratio increases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19165" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T20:19:48.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22133" CreationDate="2016-05-30T21:28:37.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By being one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting yourself in someone else's shoes and thinking like them is an integral part of writing fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is essential that the character comes to life. If you can’t identify with a simpleton, err sorry, learning disabled, differently-abled person; don’t bother to write one, or a novel for that matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but just on top of my head use decision making  based on your childhood, and adult moments when you where drunk, sick, or half-asleep.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-05-31T05:28:31.807" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T05:28:31.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22186" CreationDate="2016-05-30T21:52:39.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You post show that “English student” attitude toward writing and the classics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the historicaly celebrated hack writers stink by modern standards. Earnest Hemingway would probably not be published today. People like him became famous in a dilettante field with very few competitors who produced mediocre works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like every art form there is natural talent, but that is nothing without being honed by education and training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays millions try to write the great modern novel and a myriad talent abound. The average writer today is much better than any amateurish old codger who became a &quot;classic&quot; by default.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2016-05-30T21:58:47.953" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T21:58:47.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22133" CreationDate="2016-05-31T10:19:16.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By not backing off from bad ideas and stupid questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all have these. We have them countless times every day. The only difference between a moron and a smartass is the speed and ease in recognizing shortcomings of these ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So start off writing the character like a normal smart character. Then whenever you have a wrong idea about what the character would say, conclude, understand, do - take a step back, evaluate if the shortcomings are something your &quot;moron&quot; could miss, and then apply them. Follow normal logical (or emotional) track, but trim all non-obvious contributions to the decision-making process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T10:19:16.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22072" CreationDate="2016-05-31T18:47:28.090" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To learn writing a specific tone; read books that has the kind of tone you want. You can even retype a chapter or two to get a feel for how that author/tone &quot;feels in your fingers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few specific examples of what might work (and they are kind of in priority order as well):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A protagonist that follows a negative character arc has the potential to leave your readers with a sense of doom and gloom (short story tip: start with the climax)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In general dark stuff that happens and dark things that characters have to do should help get things dark - death and depression; death by sword for adventures; death by cancer for more adult dark stuff...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A light contrast to the darkness will make things even darker, e.g. hopelessly hopeful character (that bites it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Descriptions and metaphors that allude to death, decay, destruction, what have you, think morbid thoughts while describing everyday things E.g. chest drawers like toothless life sucking jaws, or a bone white full moon (cliché warning), oh and night, and darkness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listen to depressive, dark music while writing, it might contaminate the pages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an exercise: Your character's father has just hanged himself in the barn. Describe the barn from the character's point of view. Then edit the text and remove all references to the hanging. How have you described the barn?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't think you have to have so much &quot;dark tone&quot; in there. Just a few well chosen words here and there... or it risks turning into melodrama or exaggeration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, you shouldn't start with the tone, if that's what you're doing. Your first step should be to develop the characters and the plot, and write the first draft. Once you have that, see what edits you can do to turn things darker. You could develop the darker things and remove some of the lighter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T18:47:28.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22070" CreationDate="2016-05-31T19:03:52.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your character can follow a negative character arc (e.g. Anakin Skywalker, Nick Carraway) which can mean that he rejects the truth in preference for a lie, even a darker lie than the one he started out with, and this in turn can make him do bad things. (In the case of Anakin Skywalker, he saw the truth, but rejected it in order to embrace the lie - I think we all know how that turned out in the end... Nick Carraway believed in a lie, but overcame it and found the new truth was tragic.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Characters that follow negative arcs might have to pay a steep price for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your hero saves the world, but the world isn't thankful for it and shuns him, so the story might become a battle between doing what must be done on one side and conforming to the social codes and risk the world on the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T19:03:52.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22182" CreationDate="2016-05-31T19:10:26.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The death of the protagonist and the events surrounding it should further the plot or character development&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If giving him a slow death in no way furthers the plot or someone's character development, then please kill him quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a whole lot of unanswered questions here which would influence how much writing you want to put into Mr. P's death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do the readers have any sympathy for Mr. P?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a lot of interest in Mr. P., then his death can be expanded.  You can use it to delve into why he made the choices he made or didn't make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How did he lose everything and does that make him a more complete character?  Is it important to the story (or to the theme) that he lost everything?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you want to leave an air of mystery around his death.  Did he or didn't he?  Might he come back in the sequel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess what I am saying, to answer your question, is to make his death meaningful.  Avoid any other claptrap that does nothing but fill the pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19131" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T19:10:26.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22206" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-31T19:11:51.140" Score="0" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example my story is placed in WW3, well the second chapter is placed in WW3, and yet I struggle, to write a plausible WW3 scenario. I have planned to make it about false flags committed by one person to create tension between many countries which then collapse and trigger a third World War. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what are some things to avoid when writing a World War scenario or a war scenario in general?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19188" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T03:16:49.603" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T03:16:49.603" Title="What to avoid when writing a war scenario?" Tags="|fiction|combat|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-06-02T11:09:05.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22206" CreationDate="2016-05-31T19:47:17.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possibly, You Are Struggling With the Scope&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds as if you are struggling with the scope of writing about a huge war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking your question might be better as something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How do I deal with writing on a grand scale event such as an entire war?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find the Proper Point of View (POV)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is that because a war is so large, you cannot write about all of it.  It would take a parchment the size of the sky.&#xA;However, if you focus on a specific POV within the grand scale the story will most likely become much better anyways, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it will focus on one person's experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reader will live the story vicariously through that character&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sympathetic and emotional moments will come through the character and absorb the reader &lt;strong&gt;more completely than an overview narrative&lt;/strong&gt; that just tells about events happening.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus On Character &amp;amp; Scene Within the Larger Story (War)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you will focus on one character and one scene you will find it much easier to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individual Scenes Add Up to Story (The War)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, your individual scenes with transitional narratives will sew it all together and the reader will experience it as one war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Small Example&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene&lt;/strong&gt;: Pvt Jones stationed at front leads charge into robot caves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene&lt;/strong&gt;: Corporal Samson calls in airstrike from field command HQ&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene&lt;/strong&gt;: Combat unit disembarks water crawlers at beach.  Many are killed and Officer Smith is shellshocked but goes berserk leading her people to take the west caves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write Each Scene With Detailed Precision&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jones pushed a button on her communicator, &amp;quot;There are only three of&#xA;us, but we're moving into southwest cave.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Jones stepped into the&#xA;cave, she heard something to her left, then saw the robot's red&#xA;glowing eyes.  She dropped to her knee, brought up her 44 caliber&#xA;pistol and fired. The robot's head exploded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Don't sneak up on&#xA;me,&amp;quot; Jones said.  &amp;quot;I don't like sneaky robots.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write the next scene.&#xA;These will all add up to the entire story and war for your readers.&#xA;Readers are smart and add it all up for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we (authors) don't write, the reader's imagination writes for us. :)&#xA;Their brains fill in the blanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T19:47:17.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22144" CreationDate="2016-06-01T02:18:55.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question specifically asks for &lt;em&gt;grammar&lt;/em&gt;, but perhaps you might consider distinguishing grammar and punctuation. Punctuation is variable for clarity, also known as typesetting, while grammar is more or less fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Punctuation: commas, periods, exclamation points ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grammar: &lt;em&gt;Grammar consists of the rules governing how words are put into sentences&lt;/em&gt;. [The Chicago Manual of Style 5.1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not place finger in nose.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not place finger nose&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't place finger in nose!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yo! Nosepicking ain't cool, dude&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I like about (1) is the proper use of grammar AND the use of a period. Over time, warning labels get smudged, burned, drawn on, etc. When you complete a sentence, imperative or otherwise, use a period--we know a thought has been completed even if a word is smudged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) is an example of improper grammar. I don't think you can get away with any grammar mistakes and achieve the clarity you're looking for. To the extent you can leave out articles, &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt;, pronouns, and certain auxiliary verbs does not make for improper grammar--I mean, makes not for improper grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) I think contractions are OK. Someone who has such poor conception of English to misunderstand probably needs a label in a different language. However, I'd recommend only using an exclamation point once per label or maybe twice, but even then, CAPS or &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt; may be a better choice for the &lt;em&gt;most important thing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) Stay away from idioms! Period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-06-01T02:32:38.050" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T02:32:38.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22212" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-01T12:18:38.590" Score="2" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a character that I want to give a huge slap across the face to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I absolutely hate this character, does that mean my reader will hate him too? Is it good to purposely include a character in your writing which the reader is designed to hate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-06-02T08:12:06.500" Title="Is it good to hate a character?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|characters|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22212" CreationDate="2016-06-01T12:55:08.677" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, &quot;good&quot; is subjective. You can have a loathsome, hissable, completely irredeemable villain who roasts puppies, shoots women with crossbows, and writes comics where Captain America is revealed to be a lifelong HYDRA agent at the end, and your reader will likely despise that character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even your wretched villain should be three-dimensional. Just because there's nothing good about this person doesn't mean the character doesn't have motivation, personality, or a backstory. The motivations can be horrible (he likes kicking sand in the faces of 90-pound weaklings and hates that one was turned into a supersoldier), the personality can be insane (she blows up hospitals just to watch first responders scurry around), and the backstory can be horrendous (he's a thoroughly spoiled and coddled royal brat who's the product of brother-sister incest and inherited the throne at age 13, with no one who can stop him or even discipline him), but do come up with something. Flat villains aren't interesting. We just want them to go away and stop being obstacles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a place for a character we love to hate. Think of Joffrey Baratheon on &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt; and Red Skull from &lt;em&gt;Captain America.&lt;/em&gt; They are horrific and we generally want them to die, but they aren't cardboard cutouts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare with GOT's Ramsay Snow/Bolton and The Waif, or Jafar from &lt;em&gt;Aladdin&lt;/em&gt;. They are villains, but beyond varying levels of anger, sadism, and hunger for power, we don't have backstory or motivation for them. They aren't as interesting or rounded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T12:55:08.677" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22212" CreationDate="2016-06-01T13:00:58.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think if you try hard to make a character hateable, most readers will hate him. And yes, it's good to have such characters in stories. If all your characters are nice and kind, the story might get a little boring. Those hated people are something different for your story. If you really want your readers to hate him, make him bully the protagonist or something. Readers will boil out of anger every time he shows up. Of course, this also opens possibilitys for the outcome. Will you kill him off in a very sattisfying way, finally rewarding your readers for everything they've been through because of that guy, or will you have them change their personality and become good? The latter one also uses to be a good idea, but you have to do it in a convincing way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19194" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T13:00:58.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22215" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-01T13:42:36.577" Score="1" ViewCount="342" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a developer and a writer. I use Github version control for some of my writing, to keep track of changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got one ebook about Cycle touring that I have in a public repository on Github. I've got a new one I'm working on about Investing. It's rather more of an earlier draft that the other one, so I'm wondering whether to keep it in a &lt;strong&gt;public&lt;/strong&gt; repository, which anybody can see, e.g. on github, or in a &lt;strong&gt;private&lt;/strong&gt; repository, e.g. on bitbucket, where only I would have access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to clone a repository from one service to the other with all its revision history and branches (&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22906917/how-to-move-git-repository-with-all-branches-from-bitbucket-to-github&quot;&gt;details here&lt;/a&gt;), so I'm not locking myself in to either platform. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is it a problem to share my work publicly like this, before its fully baked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:40:35.973" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T09:48:27.817" Title="Hosting my writing on Github - public or private repository?" Tags="|version-control|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22216" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-01T15:11:57.770" Score="0" ViewCount="172" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was thinking about my own style of writing. Turn out, in every role play I've written, I have a good writing style when I use the first person pov. I'll add some &quot;voices&quot; to the main character. (like a schizophrenic) I've already done it, and everybody was really enjoying all the jokes and situation created with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would like to use this to write a SF roman. A full one.&#xA;So, some questions/debates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The narration. I'm thinking of not using the narration at all. Everything will be the main character's mind. So, dialogues can be a little hard to write and follow if more than 2 people. (No &quot;, she said.&quot; Just the dialogue, with no indication, and the thoughts before and after should be enough to understand.) And the description of city, places, will be just enough for the characters, but that's all. I'm really bad in narrative description, so, the action and the places will not be detailed. Just the necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The voices. I want to use them with different police, italic, etc... Should be the main one, the main character's thoughts. 2 more, for fun and extra fun. And some other when drunk etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Language. When we talk in our head, we don't use a formal style. I'm French, and I think I will use contraction like &quot;I'm&quot;, forgetting some words to make it more like a casual talk. And some (many) &quot;bad words&quot; too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The plot. I didn't imagine a plot and story yet. It will take place in a world post-apocalyptic, similar to borderlands (the game). I'm afraid the special style of writing will create a story a bit empty for a SF Roman, and maybe to much axed on the jokes of the voices. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ? What you guys do you think about this ? Have some advice or else before I start ?&#xA;(If you read something similar, please say so. I think it's pretty original, but I'm maybe wrong)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19195" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T15:34:09.527" Title="New style of first person pov" Tags="|language|narrative|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22216" CreationDate="2016-06-01T15:34:09.527" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The narration. I'm thinking of not using the narration at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please don't do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very, &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; hard to understand even when handled by a master. If this is your first book, it will be almost impossible for your readers to follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion for you is this: Start a blog, and write short stories, flash fiction, or chapters of your book using this style. Show it to your friends and get feedback. Find out if your audience likes what you are writing and how it's written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it works, you can figure out your plot (or if you are a discovery writer, just get started). If it doesn't work, you can find out from your readers what is not working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I salute your enthusiasm and your desire to write. Ce sont bons! But &quot;writing for fun&quot; still has to be guided by rules to be readable by others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T15:34:09.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22218" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22222" CreationDate="2016-06-01T16:37:55.220" Score="11" ViewCount="773" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a fantasy novel, in which the story progresses over a number of years. Throughout the story, I want to display an evolution of the magic, much like technology evolves in our world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speed of the magic evolution would begin slowly but would eventually progress very quickly, due to reasons to do with the plot and the main characters of the story, therefore there will be a great many more things that the magic allows close to the end of the story than the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my worries is that it may seem as though I'm making up additional rules for my magic as I go along, due to the fact that it will seemingly appear from nowhere (the protagonists contribute some of the magic evolution, but the majority of it is done by the antagonist behind the scenes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I foreshadow, or introduce early into the story, that the magic in my world will advance quickly in the future, and entirely new realms of my magic system will eventually become available, without it appearing as though I'm making up new rules for the magic system as I go?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, imagine that the technology equivalent would begin in a medieval - flintlock era, and progress to basic robotics in a span of years (not necessarily in the same order as in our world, there will be some steps missed out, as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/14942/how-to-build-a-robot-using-magic&quot;&gt;robots will be built using magic&lt;/a&gt; and not technology, therefore computers will still not exist).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="43118" LastEditDate="2021-01-06T22:34:24.850" LastActivityDate="2021-01-06T22:34:24.850" Title="How to demonstrate an evolution of magic without it seeming like it is improvised?" Tags="|technique|fantasy|showing-telling|foreshadowing|magic-system|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22218" CreationDate="2016-06-01T17:05:14.023" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Show a little preview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick one thing which is small and easy to do: call Fire. So your character can light a cooking fire. But Fire can be used for a lot of things: a lamp, a furnace, a hot air balloon. Once you have charcoal, you can use that to heat a boiler, which makes steam, and now you have a steam engine... and this all progresses in one district in let's say a month. (or whatever your accelerated timeframe is)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shows the reader, and more importantly the characters, that if you topple the right domino, you can knock down a &lt;em&gt;ton&lt;/em&gt; of other dominoes. This will encourage people to master a lot of small magics and start experimenting with them to see what the next Fire will be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the rules, follow the rules of physics, or whatever your magical physics are, throughout the book. The reader will see that your characters are just discovering how magic works, very fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T17:05:14.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22220" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-01T17:15:10.227" Score="1" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sales reports for my book from the publisher (about 2 per quarter) are grossly inconsistent with visits to the novel's Web site (about 100 per month) and people who've told me they bought a copy.  How do I find reliable data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19198" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-06-01T18:27:42.800" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T20:22:28.553" Title="How do I find total sales of my book?" Tags="|sales|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22220" CreationDate="2016-06-01T20:22:28.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's interesting marketing / sales data for my Tech book at amazon.&#xA;I recently paid for advertising and you can see that views of info rarely turn into actual sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, that's right, the ad was displayed over 25K times yet only clicked 6 times and only purchased once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UbeLX.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UbeLX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;sales info&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, 100 views probably doesn't even equal 1 sale.  That's how marketing works, I guess. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T20:22:28.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22218" CreationDate="2016-06-01T21:19:38.727" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;All you need to do is establish the idea of &lt;strong&gt;progress in magic.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to introduce the reader to the magic system as it stands at the beginning, sure. But for this case, you &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; need to demonstrate that magic is something that can be investigated, innovated with, used in new ways for new uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple example would be: early on,make some mention of a discovery or an evolution that has &lt;em&gt;already occurred&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be relatively minor, but &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; magical discovery has potential to have impact and cause conflict. That should be plenty to find a small story hook. And in that little arc, you tell us what we need to know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That magic is not &quot;complete&quot;; it progresses and evolves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That breakthroughs &lt;em&gt;have happened before&lt;/em&gt;, and will presumably continue to happen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the pace and dynamics of &quot;magic science&quot; are in this setting. (Are there magic-scientists? Are there geographical pockets that have technologically advanced far beyond other areas? How disruptive have advances been?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does a real discovery look/feel like?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's necessary to succeed at innovating in magic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, a solution is to &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; that magic-tech is fluid, evolving. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Establish that, before the setting starts to calcify into something set and unquestionable, and the reader won't think &quot;whoa, they're breaking the rules.&quot; If you &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; us &quot;Listen, this setting is still &lt;em&gt;figuring out&lt;/em&gt; the rules,&quot; you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-02-02T09:22:45.607" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T09:22:45.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22218" CreationDate="2016-06-02T02:54:25.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find a story of a magic system that evolves and see if you can follow that pattern. In the &quot;Goose Girl&quot; series, the characters discover long lost magical abilities, so their power grows as they learn more and try new things over time. In the book ”The Rithmatist&quot; the power is changing in ways that were never before known. Is the magic changing? Are new rules being invented? We don't yet know, but I bet Brandon Sanderson knows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a good distinction to make in your own mind is this: you should know whether the magic system itself is evolving, or whether the magicians are simply getting better at it and discovering new things based on established magical patterns. Is the magic new, or is it an innovative way to use the magic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the distinction is important because it changes the way you talk about the magic system. Ancient knowledge rediscovered had one tone. Innovative ways of using existing magic has a different tone (and discovery arc). Making up new magic is still a different tone and arc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18955" LastActivityDate="2016-06-02T02:54:25.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22212" CreationDate="2016-06-02T08:12:06.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends a lot on the plot, the &quot;genre&quot; (I don't like this word too much, but there is a difference between pulpy science fiction and literary fiction), and other dynamics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For genre fiction (=science fiction, horror, fantasy, detective, etc.) stereotypes are generally expected. This means, characters should be rather clearly offered as good/evil, smart/dumb, etc. Check about character theory: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_theory_%28media%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_theory_%28media%29&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Literary Fiction (&lt;strong&gt;or&lt;/strong&gt; if you want your genre story to be more complex - &quot;high-brow&quot;; at your own risk!) the exact opposite should happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A character cannot be evil; s/he can be misguided &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A character cannot be omniscient; s/he must have doubts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A character cannot be omnibelevolent; s/he must have some dark side (or, at the very least, some fundamental character quirk that assigns a flawed quality to his/her ethics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-06-02T08:12:06.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22218" CreationDate="2016-06-02T08:20:29.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another really useful tool here is &lt;strong&gt;foreshadowing and buildup.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is your first defense against the feeling of &quot;awww, he just made that up&quot;: make it clear that the elements surprising the reader deep into the book, were present and significant right from the start. The reader only realizes that when he reaches the twists and surprises, but when he does, you want his reaction to be &quot;Ohhhhh, &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; it all makes sense!&quot; rather then &quot;Where the heck did that just come from?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are elements early on which we understand as not quite fitting, or there just being something &lt;em&gt;weird&lt;/em&gt; about them, these can click in to place later as the system is fully uncovered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That will make it feel much less as though you're &quot;making it up as you go,&quot; and much more as though you're making exciting new discoveries and answering long-standing questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-06-02T08:20:29.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22228" CreationDate="2016-06-03T00:30:46.023" Score="29" ViewCount="3404" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the very commencement of my writing &quot;career&quot; (I have virtually zero experience), I have an idea I would like to flesh out and turn into a full story. Being extremely proud of the concepts I have developed, I don't want to ruin the story by attempting to pursue publication it while I am still unexperienced, but I don't want to have to wait too long to actually start writing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, is it better to start developing/writing ideas (with the goal of publication) as soon as they are had, or to reserve them until one has more experience in order to get the most out of it? What ideas are fine to develop at the start of one's career? Should ideas with large potential be reserved or acted on immediately (considering skill level)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(PS: This is also my first Writers.SE question so feel free to be as critical as you like!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19213" LastActivityDate="2018-11-27T14:37:22.987" Title="Is it smart to reserve one's best ideas or to utilise them early in their writing career?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|ideas|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22227" CreationDate="2016-06-03T01:02:56.493" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use your best ideas. Write them as well as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, your writing will improve with experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And your ideas will also improve with experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you reserve your &quot;best ideas&quot; until you're a better writer, then your early stories will exhibit neither your best ideas nor your best writing. Why hamper yourself like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes people love great stories even if the writing is somewhat clumsy. Use your best ideas. Give people a chance to love your story even as you gain writing experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing your best ideas will keep you motivated, and that will make your writing better. Maybe not as good as it will be, but as good as it can be for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about wasting a great idea. You will have more great ideas. Plenty of them. There is no need to hold back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use your best ideas. Write them as well as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T01:02:56.493" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22227" CreationDate="2016-06-03T05:15:37.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;FWIW, here's my personal story that can perhaps serve as a teaching point in relation to the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I wrote my first fiction when I was 6 yrs old - a 2-paragraph Donald Duck mystery&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I began writing short stories when I was 13-14&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I won a small local award for a short story I wrote when I was 18&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I began writing novels at that time, &lt;strong&gt;fully expecting&lt;/strong&gt; to be published immediately (seriously, I thought the Oscar for best adapted screenplay awaited just around the corner). When that didn't happen, I wondered how on earth could those amazing ideas be ignored.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the age of 25 (having been - rightfully - ignored), I got published by a pretty well-known publishing house. I then realized what &quot;backstabbing&quot; really means (a story for another day).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I stopped writing fiction. I started studying Literature. Fast-forward to the present day (a good decade later), I have a PhD in English Literature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last year I began writing fiction again. In this past year I have written three (3) 70.000-word novels, which are hands down the best darn things I've ever written (including my latest one, the best ever, written in 2 weeks).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I seriously doubt I'll want to dirty my hands with publishers again, but you never know, we'll see.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom line:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing fiction is a tool to create a reality better than the one &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; live in right now. Never write for anyone other than yourself. Never. Don't try to control your creativity with things such as saving an idea for later, or what publishers/agents/audiences will think or want. Write only what you like. As your experience grows (both in terms of writing but mainly in terms of life experience), ten years down the road you will laugh at the things you're writing now. That's part of the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T05:15:37.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22218" CreationDate="2016-06-03T12:03:28.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can have a minor effect of a particular type of magic being there all the time and taken for granted, but then the characters maybe discovering why it happens and using that to push the evolution along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, we've always known that we get light and heat from the Sun. But only (relatively) recently did we discover electromagnetic radiation and what it exactly is and how it works, and now we have X-Rays, radio , Gamma Rays, Microwave ovens, Wi-Fi, Infra-Red, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19089" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T12:03:28.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22231" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-03T15:23:25.160" Score="-1" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;So where are the forums, the groups, the social networks in which writers dwell in harmony and happy collaboration? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18726" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T15:39:49.117" Title="How To Meet Fellow Writers Online?" Tags="|creative-writing|collaboration|social-media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2016-06-06T07:27:29.013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22231" CreationDate="2016-06-03T15:39:49.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Last time I was there, &lt;a href=&quot;http://fmwriters.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Forward Motion for Writers&lt;/a&gt; was a thriving, helpful group.  Life issues stole the time which I used to spend there or I would still be an active participant.  My favorite feature was the genre specific critique circles where I could securely share small section of my writing with a consistent group of similar writers and trade critique services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T15:39:49.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22218" CreationDate="2016-06-03T16:09:03.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an excellent Sanderson essay on creating &lt;a href=&quot;http://coppermind.net/wiki/Sanderson%27s_Laws_of_Magic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;believable magic systems&lt;/a&gt; that has been posted here several times.  The core of it is this (paraphrased):  &lt;strong&gt;Magic feels contrived when the author leans on it to solve plot problems, or problems that the characters face.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This applies to your situation as well.  It won't feel like a cheat to your audience if the rules change, as long as that doesn't help you or your characters out too much.  If they suddenly discover a new magic that solves all their problems, that feels like the author getting lazy.  But if they suddenly discover a new magic that makes things tougher on them, that feels like real life (unless the rules just change every time you, the author, need a new plot conflict!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T16:09:03.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21919" CreationDate="2016-06-03T17:10:00.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openoffice.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OpenOffice&lt;/a&gt;, which is &lt;strong&gt;free&lt;/strong&gt;, but somewhat awkward, you may File/Insert a &quot;frame&quot;, designate its alignment (page/paragraph/etc.) and position (left margin, right margin, outside mirrored, inside mirrored).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The text that you type inside this frame can be formatted just like anything else, size, color, etc.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You can insert picture(s) into this frame in addition to the text.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I don't have access to MS Word anymore, but this may be possible in that environment as well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CiNsn.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CiNsn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18990" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T17:10:00.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22227" CreationDate="2016-06-03T17:38:48.673" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself: how motivated will you feel writing about a mediocre story? To improve, you need to write—a lot. You won’t enjoy writing if you’re not passionate about your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick your best idea, the one that sets your creativity ablaze, and write it. Make sure you finish it. If the writing is not good enough for publication, then move on to the next story. Complete another novel. Do that again. You’ll have improved a lot by then. If you still feel passionate about your earlier stories, go back and turn them into something that can be published, either by editing them, or rewriting them entirely. Otherwise, keep going until you strike gold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the indie publishers I follow who make a comfortable living wrote several unpublished novels before finally producing something they felt was good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Dale said, you’ll get more ideas, better ones most likely. Don’t ruin it for yourself by working on something that doesn’t interest you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2686" LastEditorDisplayName="user2686" LastEditDate="2016-06-04T01:07:28.157" LastActivityDate="2016-06-04T01:07:28.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22236" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-03T20:20:33.797" Score="0" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;So what do you ask them? Do you have a questionnaire?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18726" LastEditorUserId="18726" LastEditDate="2016-06-04T05:02:25.067" LastActivityDate="2016-06-04T11:31:06.960" Title="Do You Use A Specific Set Of Questions For Developing Your Character" Tags="|plot|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-06-04T18:39:56.930" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22227" CreationDate="2016-06-04T01:34:30.357" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use your good ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just don't give away the rights to your creation.  Make sure that you can re-use your story and elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen countless stories about people who made a wonderful classic early in their career.  (I'm talking about creators, and not necessarily writers specifically.  Could be writers, game makers, etc.)  Then later in life, they decide to repeat their story, updating it to reflect the newer &quot;modern times&quot;.  Then later in life, Hollywood loves their creation and wants to make a movie using the nostalgia of these old things, and other people are involved in creating the new feature, but the initial creator still gets to authorize this idea and give his or her blessing on the new project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other cases, the main character ends up being used as a template for another story.  Often I've read about how beloved heroes were just an evolution of the ideas that someone had when they created an earlier character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may end up creating another character for the story.  Then you might always remember that other character, who may end up being useful for some future work you get involved with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, use up your best ideas, and see what works and what doesn't.  If it doesn't work, you may be more likely to see an actual problem, instead of blaming your artificial limitation of using less ideal stories.  After your creation becomes the most awesome thing ever invented, or after it doesn't, it can still be a good basis for you to be able to draw upon later.  And, if you do decide to draw upon your earlier ideas in this way, it will be better if your earlier ideas are more fleshed out.  Then you can easily tap into what worked well, or immediately start making changes and head off into a new direction, instead of wasting time much later in life (by learning the lessons that your earlier experience could have taught you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19230" LastActivityDate="2016-06-04T01:34:30.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22238" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-04T05:03:45.260" Score="4" ViewCount="1322" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is essential for a character-driven story - except, obviously, appearance? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18726" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T14:27:23.357" Title="How To Develop A Character For A Character-Driven Story?" Tags="|plot|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22238" CreationDate="2016-06-04T11:19:41.597" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;By definition, character-driven fiction is that where the plot takes a back seat to the characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's essential? Everything that's in a plot-driven story, really, just in a different balance. There is usually a plot, but its purpose is to keep the readers engaged while the author digs into the characters. A teacher of mine said plot is the shiny keys that the author jingles as a distraction while he picks the reader's pocket. That is, plot is there to just keep the characters moving around while the author tells the stories of the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that any story - even sci-fi, romance, crime - could be a character-driven story with that shift in balance. Tone down the plot, tone up the character. Dig into their minds and emotions. Make the finale more about an internal change than in an external achievement (even if you include a final achievement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice I have is the same advice I'd give almost everyone here at writers.stackexchange: go read a lot of books that are like what you want to write. Go read character-driven fiction. It's sometimes called literary fiction. It's Raymond Carver, John Updike, Lorrie Moore, Larry McMurtry, and gazillions of others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-06-04T11:19:41.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22236" CreationDate="2016-06-04T11:31:06.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people do. I don't. I prefer to discover who my characters are by just writing them. I'll put them in scene after scene with each other and see what happens. Sometimes the unexpected happens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This requires a lot of exploratory writing that might not make it into the final draft, but I find that this technique creates characters that are more natural, yet are surprising. I've tried questionnaires, but they're not as fun as writing scenes and they make you decide things rather than just letting characters reveal themselves to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-06-04T11:31:06.960" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22227" CreationDate="2016-06-04T15:35:30.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use them, before someone else does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do a &quot;remix&quot; later, you probably won't accuse yourself of plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19236" LastActivityDate="2016-06-04T15:35:30.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22227" CreationDate="2016-06-04T18:56:29.913" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In any creative discipline you should absolutely work to the best of your ability at every stage of your career as your previous works are both your way to show  the world what you are capable of and a platform for you to build on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly 'ideas' are often a bit overrated, creativity is not so much about having brilliant flashes of inspiration so much as the, skill, knowledge and experience to properly articulate, evaluate and refine them. Ideas are cheap, it's the ability to turn them into a finished work which is important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also an idea isn't destroyed once you have used it,  many writers and artists have repeatedly returned to the same themes throughout their careers and why would you even bother going through all the effort of writing and refining something that you think is based on a second or third rate concept when you know you have something that you think is more interesting ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case my experience is that really good ideas come from actually going through the process and discovering the fine detail of the possibilities, challenges and limitations of a particular process so the way to get new ideas is to thoroughly test your current ones. It is entirely possible that you may discover that what you thought was a brilliant idea was not really what you wanted to say at all but you only find that out by testing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19238" LastActivityDate="2016-06-04T18:56:29.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22238" CreationDate="2016-06-04T19:06:25.810" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character-Driven Story Is Driven From Self-Concept&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-concept is one of the strongest powers on earth. That's because so many people have self-concepts which put them at odds with the world around them.   Self-concept drives the actions a person takes.  Because it is so real, it is the essence of what we search for in our stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self-Concept Drives Real People&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People act from the foundation of their self-concept. They follow actions that are based in the belief of who they are. Your characters -- if they are to be real -- must do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;American Idol: (Failed) Self-Concept On Display&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider those terrible, awful, singers, auditioning for a spot on American Idol, who sound worse than a cat with its tail caught in a door. One of the judges, like Keith Urban might ask, &quot;Well, how do you think you did?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I think I killed it,&quot; the contestant answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The horrified judges stare. Blink. Blink. The cat with its tail caught in the door has evidently grabbed their tongues. They cannot speak. Why would this obviously terrible singer believe he is good?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason: self-concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the singer is joking? Sometimes you see the judges laugh because they cannot believe the singer is serious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You don't really believe you are good do you?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The smile slides off the contestant's face. &quot;Uh, yeah. I love to sing. I don't know how to do anything else.&quot; Self-concept is about to take a beating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is at this point, the contestant either cries (full on blubbering) -- realizing that maybe the self-concept is incorrect. Or, the more fascinating and often occurring response is that the contestant becomes angry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self-concept erupts&lt;/strong&gt;. &quot;Who are you to say? Some people like this kind of thing. My mother loves to hear me sing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you sure? Is she usually in the same room when you are singing? Maybe she's out at the grocery store or something.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More anger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then, J Lo tries to ease the contestant down&lt;/strong&gt;, &quot;Baby, it's a no.&quot; The soft sell. Get the crazy guy out of here and make sure he gets his meds before he kills us all. Now that his self-concept is bruised and battered, anything could happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example of how it might work in a story:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Push Character Up Against His/Her Self-Concept&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What we need is Herman, an inveterate philatelist who is mid-thirties&#xA;  but still lives at home with his mother. He loves stamps. He knows the&#xA;  historical story behind each stamp he owns. He stares at them for&#xA;  hours memorizing small details of each. You learn that his stamp&#xA;  collection is worth a huge sum of money, but that doesn't matter to&#xA;  Herman. He loves stamps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Meanwhile he pines away for the girl next door who is gloriously&#xA;  beautiful. (I'm having to tell here instead of showing you guy's&#xA;  tongues fall out of their mouths as she walks by, because telling is&#xA;  faster for this summary, but believe me, she's a knockout with curves&#xA;  in all the right places.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Herman has a discussion with her as she's arriving home late one&#xA;  evening and trying to get rid of the guy who took her out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Why do &#xA;  you go out with him if you don't like him,&quot; Herman asks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a moment&#xA;  of honesty she explains that the gentleman has a huge net worth --&#xA;  &quot;that's right, Herman, he's rich and I like being pampered. I suppose&#xA;  you think I'm terrible&quot; she says and brushes his face with a hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I&#xA;  could never think you're terrible, Ophelia.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ophelia gets into her house leaving Herman to contemplate. Instant&#xA;  realization of what he must do lands inside Herman's mind like a&#xA;  boulder smashing through a wall: I must sell my stamps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They're worth millions. Ophelia would marry me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self-Concept: Stamp-lover&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, he loves stamps. Now the faltering of the self-concept. He has to alter his self-concept. Sell the stamps, get the girl. But the stamps are the essence of who Herman is and his entire meaning in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You Can See How This Will Turn Out&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you know how this is going to play out? Herman is going to sell the stamps, spend his money on wild living with the painted lady and then lose her too. Then, where will his self-concept be? Completely trashed. No stamps. No beautiful girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That's The Power of Self-Concept Playing Out In A Story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get the self-concept correct with your character it will drive your story and your story will be completely believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-02-09T14:27:23.357" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T14:27:23.357" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22238" CreationDate="2016-06-05T00:49:12.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see three keys to character-driven stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character wants something strongly enough to struggle for it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character has a unique reason for wanting the thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something about the character makes the struggle more difficult.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is common to all stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure the second one is essential, but it sure helps. Give the character a unique reason to want the thing, and to want it so badly. This distinguishes &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; character from others who, on the surface, might want the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third factor is, for me, what distinguishes a more character-driven story from a more plot-driven story. In a plot-driven story, it's often enough that external forces keep the character from achieving the goal. But for character-driven stories, something about the character must be a key obstacle. That's what forces the character to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those three things combine to tell the reader a great deal about the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-06-05T00:49:12.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23244" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-05T05:02:09.780" Score="4" ViewCount="1243" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a discussion with someone who claimed she'd once read (though she couldn't remember the source) that men can identify and empathize with male as well as female protagonists, while women identify better with female protagonists (the claim being, they can certainly sympathize with male protagonists, but identification is harder).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this seems like a gross and peculiar generalization (though it's hard to say more about it without knowing the source). Still, if it's hypothetically valid, it would create some odd dynamics in stories with a male protagonist and a female antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if anyone has heard of anything related to that - if you also remember any possible source, it'd be a bonus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2017-10-06T14:20:38.693" Title="Is protagonist identification/empathy influenced by the reader's gender?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23244" CreationDate="2016-06-05T16:20:46.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;men can identify and empathize with male as well as female protagonists, while women identify better with female protagonists (the claim being, they can certainly sympathize with male protagonists, but identification is harder).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I would consider the reactions of a percentage of male fans to the all-female &lt;em&gt;Ghostbusters&lt;/em&gt;, Daisy Ripley's Rey in &lt;em&gt;The Force Awakens,&lt;/em&gt; and the female lead of &lt;em&gt;Rogue One&lt;/em&gt;, just in the past year, to refute this assertion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously I am also speaking in gross generalities, but seriously: male leads have dominated fiction in most media for, like, millennia. American fiction is finally reaching a point where female leads are starting to show up more often in bigger-impact works, and a certain subsection of the audience is losing their tiny bigoted minds. These men don't want women to be protagonists in the entertainment they interact with because they &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; empathize or identify with female protagonists. Those female-led stories are outside their experiences, and it makes them uncomfortable and upset when they, and their stories, are not the focus of the tale being told. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have primarily &lt;em&gt;been&lt;/em&gt; male protagonists for a significant majority of time and fiction, so by default, any female readers would only have had male protagonists to emphathize and identify with. Women simply haven't had the option of a woman being the main character driving the story in a &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; movie before now. Not that Leia didn't kick ass and keep her head, but the journey was clearly Luke's. So little girls had the option of playing &quot;Leia, the sidekick and love interest,&quot; or pretending to be the hero, Luke who is male. (Or Han, the snarky sidekick. I confess I never met anyone who wanted to be Chewie.) Now little girls can be Rey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no particular statistics to back up my assertions either. I think the answer to your question may be yes, but in the opposite way your friend claimed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-10-06T09:32:51.330" LastActivityDate="2017-10-06T09:32:51.330" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22171" CreationDate="2016-06-05T17:57:35.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't Doubt, Write a New Draft&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the first stage of a writer’s development ends when they finally realize that editing and rewriting are two completely different things.  Also at play, the difference between an idea and execution, observation and analysis.  Again, all completely different.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you’re ready to see this.  Why?  Because your writer’s gut (what I like to call my ‘crap-o-meter’) is sufficiently well tuned to detect crap before your story is even done.  My guess is that you’re simply misinterpreting your gut as doubt because you have yet to commit to rewriting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’ll explain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editing involves improving a draft you’ve already written - shortening, polishing, tweaking it to get the best possible version of that execution.  Much writing advice recommends quickly jumping to editing as the means to improve writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what if your draft is crap?  Something fundamentally flawed; something that will never work (given the current execution) - certainly not worth putting time into.  That is why editing is over-rated, because editing really means salvage - keeping the draft instead of just throwing it out and starting over.  Editing is only appropriate when you’re almost there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you’re not finishing your stories, then it seems to me they must be first drafts.  But everybody’s first drafts, yours, mine, even the pros, tend to suck.  I find it unproductive to edit first drafts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perhaps the writing world would be better off calling first drafts&#xA;  ‘prototypes.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the IT world, a first attempt at something big and complex warrants a prototype.  Prototypes are throwaways, a kind of research, their only purpose to inform what the real thing should be.  IT pros do not salvage their prototypes and prototypes don’t have to be finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On some level, even though you’ve judged your stories as flawed, you seem to be avoiding simply rewriting them from scratch - which is what a draft is.  Deep down I’ll bet, you want to keep them, because some parts of them you like.  Maybe you took a few shots at editing, which got you nowhere, but you still don’t want to let go.  This is salvage thinking.  So instead, you’re moving on to the next story, tucking the earlier story away somewhere, unfinished, but safe from harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are two reasons why everybody tries to salvage.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, writers fear the loss of the good stuff from the earlier draft.  Trust me, when you’re rewriting, the good stuff just pops back out; the good stuff is easy to remember.  What you’ll forget is everything else, the crap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, writers believe that editing is faster, but in reality, it isn’t.  For clarity, a single edit is faster than a single rewrite, but editing a fundamentally broken execution takes many passes at editing.  This is what I used to do.  I would edit a story’s first draft endlessly, never getting anywhere.  Compared to that, I have found that starting over is much faster in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that’s the opinion I’m tossing out there.  Now let me give some practical advice.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pick a story to rewrite.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Other answers have given good advice about taking time away from a recent draft that I won’t argue with.  I’m just saying, I don’t care if it’s your first story or your most recent, pick a story to rewrite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Analyze that story.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Your crap-o-meter might have correctly told you that your story sucks, but this is merely observation.  This is all that your gut can do.  Now it’s up to your conscious mind to figure out why it sucks.  Note, the best analysis tends to be short and obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plan a high-level solution.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Based on your analysis, create a high-level plan for your rewrite - one fundamentally different than the previous approach that addresses why it didn’t work.  Avoid any kind of exhaustive  outline.  You’re looking for a new execution.  Don’t get lost in the weeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rewrite it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Open a blank document or put a blank sheet of paper in the typewriter if that’s your thing, then start typing.  DO NOT have the previous version also visible for reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Repeat as necessary.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Yes, your next draft might suck as well, but since it will suck in a different way, you’ll be better off.  I’ve worked with other writers and watched their approaches.  The best of them worry little about early drafts.  They happily take criticism and fearlessly rewrite.  Sometimes their second draft is worst than the first.  But eventually, they circle their way to best final draft.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, writers who can’t let go of their first drafts, those that attempt to salvage them with editing, get lost in the weeds; their story’s don’t improve and are eventually abandoned.    Perhaps writing itself is eventually abandoned as well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s not about doubt.  It’s about clinging to the first execution of your idea.  But your idea is fine, they all are.  You just need to experiment with other executions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck and I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1904" LastActivityDate="2016-06-05T17:57:35.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23247" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-05T20:03:18.957" Score="1" ViewCount="856" Body="&lt;p&gt;I purchased Scrivener a few weeks ago. As I was messing around with it trying to get a hang of how to use it I accidentally added too many scenes in one chapter. How do I delete these scenes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-06-06T02:39:44.560" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T18:04:28.457" Title="How do I delete a scene in Scrivener?" Tags="|tools|scrivener|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23247" CreationDate="2016-06-05T21:25:33.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If each scene is a separate document, drag the unwanted ones to the trash folder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-06-05T21:25:33.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22035" CreationDate="2016-06-06T05:44:05.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have already said, there's no right or wrong answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, however, I feel that having more than one POV per chapter (with relatively short chapters) is too much chopping and changing, and can quickly become either confusing or distracting (either way, it means that I'll quickly become disinclined to continue reading).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask why you need multiple POV's within the one chapter? Are the POV characters together within the scene? Can the presence, and actions, of other characters be noted by a single POV Character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple POV's work quite well, especially with epic-scaled stories. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/series/41526-the-wheel-of-time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Robert Jordan&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Game_of_Thrones&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;George RR Martin&lt;/a&gt; both do(/did) the one POV per Chapter style quite well, it kept the story moving and is fairly easy to follow. They also move around the timeline with the POV's, and allow you to identify &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; something is happening, and this is what I think makes it successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Steven Erikson&lt;/a&gt; also writes a multiple POV style quite well - again often referencing the same event in multiple sources to allow you to slot it into a timeline without it being force-fed to you (often across multiple books as his world is massive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stormlight_Archive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brandon Sanderson&lt;/a&gt; does a multiple chapter POV style (with the Stormlight Archives in particular) that works well, and progresses the story along nicely but isn't, in my opinion, quite in the same realm as Erikson, Jordan and Martin - those three have epic worlds, with epic characters that just have so much depth to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these series though have one thing in common - it's clearly stated whose POV it is, either at the start of the chapter or the start of the part. There is a distinct break between chapters/POV's/Parts and it is made clear through the use of a title (and also the voice of the character) whose POV you are in, and this is what I think is needed. It's a solid, visual clue for the reader to get them in the right frame of mind for the next character and allow themselves to stay immersed in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-06-06T05:44:05.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22227" CreationDate="2016-06-06T09:37:48.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends. If you're actually planning to publish that idea anywhere else than Wattpad, you might want to wait. No one is going to write a book to be published on his first try, no matter how talented he is. The first book you write might seem amazing to you at the moment, but look at it again one year later, after much more writing experience, and you're probably going to think something like &quot;how the hell did I write something so bad?&quot; It's normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on the other hand, you should write something you really, really like. And if you have a great idea, you might want to just go along with it. It happened with me. I had a story idea in my head for several years when I finally thought it was fleshed out enough to give it a try. After starting several books and giving up, I had faith I would finish that one, because I was so interested in it. Maybe the only way you'll finish your first story is writing that idea. You'd be surprised how many writers give up in their first few attempts to write a book. Maybe you can write that story the best you can, and later re-write the first couple chapters and edit the rest, when you have more experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19194" LastActivityDate="2016-06-06T09:37:48.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23272" CreationDate="2016-06-06T10:13:21.067" Score="1" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to establish the acidity of paper produced with the FSC labels and any help regarding this would be greatly appreciated. I am interested in figuring out the lifetime and decay of this paper. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17944" LastActivityDate="2016-07-09T06:47:17.340" Title="What is the quality (specifically acidity) of FSC paper?" Tags="|printing|paper|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23252" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-06T10:49:54.370" Score="3" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to make an announcement to my users at my website about a new feature launch. However, in its first phase, this new feature has limited access - it will be supporting only one city for now, and later to some others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My attempts so far feel like they'll be discouraging to all my visitors who &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; from those particular cities. How do I write enthusiastically about this, without most of my readers feeling like they're being left out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19251" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-06-09T06:59:11.767" LastActivityDate="2016-06-18T00:21:33.800" Title="How do I announce an area-restricted feature without discouraging the rest of my visitors?" Tags="|technical-writing|marketing|tone|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23254" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-06T19:08:40.090" Score="-1" ViewCount="1997" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you provide list of specific items you use to evaluate whether or not a piece of fiction is good or bad?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you really had to explain why a piece of fiction were terrible what criteria might you use to analyze it in order to inform the writer without (blatantly) hurting her feelings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you had something like the following excerpt and you had to evaluate it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She needed him.  And he was nowhere to be found.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  There was no one&#xA;  else she could rely on.  No one like her brother.  No one else at all,&#xA;  now that the New Republic stood on the verge of implosion, of&#xA;  destruction, of complete collapse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They had thought that with the fall&#xA;  of the Empire it would all be so easy.  That people would understand&#xA;  the need for patience, that time would be required to rebuild that&#xA;  which the Empire had taken away.Ψ&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;pre&gt;Ψ Star Wars: The Force Awakens (page 1)&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-06-08T09:15:06.827" LastActivityDate="2022-02-24T12:28:18.863" Title="what are some specific criteria for evaluating a piece of fiction that can be used repeatedly?" Tags="|criticism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23254" CreationDate="2016-06-07T11:10:03.627" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a volunteer reader for a literary journal, so I read and evaluate a ton of stories. (Very few are &quot;terrible,&quot; but terrible usually shows up in the first sentences.) Of course, the purpose of the story and the needs of the reader/publication both come into play, but I can come up with a few things that make a story less than great (for me). (I'm guilty of this stuff myself, and have to fix it in editing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An excess of stuff that doesn't go anywhere.&lt;/strong&gt; Many early drafts include a lot of &quot;throat clearing.&quot; We see the characters meet and exchange pleasantries and talk about Aunt Mary's goiter for a page and a half until they finally say the thing the reader needs to hear. We don't need to read the entire conversation; just give us the important bits. We don't need to see the character wake up and get dressed; just get him out the door. We don't need detail about every knick knack in the room; just set the scene and get the characters doing something. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/tips-masters/elmore-leonard-10-rules-for-good-writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elmore Leonard said&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A lack of action.&lt;/strong&gt; I don't mean car chases, but just human action. What is the character doing as she talks? Making coffee? Changing a car's oil? Fidgeting? Little actions break up the dialog and, when done well, show the character's state of mind. &quot;Henry's hands shook so much that he dropped the spoon.&quot; That reads better than &quot;Henry was nervous.&quot; and &lt;em&gt;much better&lt;/em&gt; than &quot;'I understand,' Henry said nervously.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keeping secrets from the reader.&lt;/strong&gt; This irks me so much. All the characters know what's going on, but the author is keeping it from the reader in order to spring it on them at the end. That comes across as manipulative. If your story needs a big reveal, then make the reveal to one of the characters, not to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice to avoid this stuff is to (1) get yourself some good readers, (2) do enough revision, and (3) read a lot. A LOT. Pay attention to how your favorite authors write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T11:10:03.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23258" CreationDate="2016-06-07T12:32:47.163" Score="1" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good day everyone,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the following sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Around 70% of small businesses in the United States struggle to hire&#xA;  qualified employees, and around 50% attribute this challenge to&#xA;  candidates' lack of skillset needed for the job. This is our area of&#xA;  focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My issues are as follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The word around is repeated twice, and hence feels redundant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am not sure if people feel that &quot;this is our area of focus&quot; ties directly to candidate lack of skill set of the general problem which is hiring qualified employees.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am not sure if they clearly understand what &quot;this challenge&quot; refers to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I am mainly targeting hiring managers looking for developers in small businesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19148" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T12:57:50.087" Title="How to communicate multiple meaning in a sentence more concisely?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|technical-writing|technique|word-choice|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23257" CreationDate="2016-06-07T12:57:50.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe this will work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Approximately 70% of small businesses in the United States struggle to&#xA;  hire qualified employees.  Almost 50% of those&#xA;  small businesses cite lack of skills of potential employees as the&#xA;  reason jobs go unfilled.  Filling those jobs with appropriately&#xA;  trained candidates is our focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T12:57:50.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23254" CreationDate="2016-06-07T14:25:03.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The great difficulty here is that &lt;strong&gt;there are no absolutes&lt;/strong&gt;. The same piece could be achingly poetic or achingly dull, depending on whether it's part of a literary drama or a high-octane adventure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That makes it very difficult to give &quot;specific criteria&quot; for evaluating. There's no rubric that covers hard SF &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; slipstream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; evaluate fiction, and justify your evaluations. I've got some experience both as a beta reader and as a reviewer, and I've got two insights I think will address your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The best evaluation you can give is your own reaction.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Precisely because fiction is so subjective, and has so many different shapes and forms, you don't really want to say &quot;This piece was terrible.&quot; You want to say &quot;This piece was terrible &lt;em&gt;for me&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; What you want to get across is not how the story fails, but how it failed &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason this is helpful is because your response is subjective, but it's also factual. It may be wrong to say &quot;This is boring,&quot; &quot;this is ludicrous,&quot; &quot;this is heavy-handed,&quot; because other people may react differently -- but it is perfectly correct, and indeed unarguable, that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; found it boring, or ludicrous, or heavy-handed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The better you are able to describe your own reaction while reading, the more helpful your feedback will be. Consider, just as an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the beginning I was interested in how Sarah's relation with the stepmother would develop. Then when Sarah's friend won the lottery it was funny at the beginning, but then I got tired of it as it dragged on. Then when the stepmother stole the lottery ticket, that really jarred me, because it didn't seem to me like something she'd do; it didn't fit in for me with why the conflict was interesting to begin with. That kind of threw me out of the story; I don't have many reactions to the final climax because by that point I just didn't care about Sarah and her stepmother any more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You had a lot of references to downtown Miami that I thought were really well done; I recognized a bunch of them and I think you nailed them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The little brother was really annoying; I don't know if that's what you were going for, but I just wanted him &lt;em&gt;gone&lt;/em&gt; every time he showed up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As much as you're capable of, &lt;strong&gt;be specific&lt;/strong&gt; on what you're reacting to and what the reaction is. &quot;The stepmother stealing the lottery ticket felt out-of-character to me&quot; is much clearer than &quot;I felt like the stepmother's character wasn't consistent and bounced all over the place.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The clearer you are, the more specific you are, and as long as you focus on your own reaction, you will find that your feedback is helpful and also avoids being insulting. You're not dismissing the person's work or ripping it apart, you're keying onto particular details and reacting to them naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of criticism also makes it very clear how in one story you can say &quot;OMG this car chase is absolutely AWESOME I am LOVING IT&quot; and in another you can say &quot;The car chase was very energetic but felt detached from the rest of the story, and I was frustrated because I was really waiting to find out what happened to Dianne.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The criteria to evaluate by is &quot;did this piece achieve its intended goal.&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons there are no hard-fast rules is because different stories are trying to do different things. &quot;I didn't connect with the characters&quot; may be irrelevant if you're going for zany satire; &quot;There's no plot&quot; might be the whole point of naturalistic literary fiction; &quot;This isn't scientifically accurate&quot; may not be an actual issue to the author's intended audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For every story you're evaluating, you must first answer the question: &lt;strong&gt;What is this story trying to do? What is it trying to be?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you can answer that question, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; you can start asking &quot;Does it accomplish that?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's you're specific criteria: Identify the goal. Then ask whether it achieves that goal, how it succeeds and how it fails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you cannot identify the goal, that's an important criticism in and of itself. The questions &quot;Where is this going? Why am I reading this?&quot; are important ones, and often missed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can break this down - identify the goal for a particular scene or snippet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The opening of &lt;em&gt;The Force Awakens&lt;/em&gt; is obviously trying to draw us into the novel. It opens on Leia, introducing her as being in a precarious position and desperate for Luke's support. &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;-- This is the snippet's goal.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It took me a few read-overs to realize that we're meant to identify Leia and Luke. To me, this felt really generic and bombastic - broad statements like &quot;she needed him&quot; and &quot;the New Republic stood on the verge of implosion&quot; don't really set a scene for me; they just seem like McGuffins whose details will be filled in later. &quot;She needed X,&quot; &quot;something bad is happening to Y&quot;. I'd much prefer opening on strong specifics that ground me in a scene, or speak about concrete action rather than broad, vague &quot;Save the New Republic.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the trick of figuring out who's being spoken of is nice - slotting the beloved characters into new positions, letting that click.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let's be honest; nobody who reads the first page of a Star Wars novelization is going to put it down at the first page. This sets the scene, establishes tension, re-introduces characters we know. I don't like the vagueness, but you're probably fine as long as you bring us to a concrete scene soon. &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;-- This is your evaluation - it does an OK job of getting the reader to turn the page, which is all it's meant to do.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-06-08T19:29:48.757" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T19:29:48.757" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23261" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-07T19:28:27.010" Score="1" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;People often say writers have a 'style' or 'voice'. Does that mean your able to work out what your style of writing is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, how would you work that out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-06-12T12:46:14.833" Title="Writers style, voice" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22215" CreationDate="2016-06-07T21:02:55.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep my fanfiction on Github.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/IWriteThings/fanfiction.fmpgcol&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://github.com/IWriteThings/fanfiction.fmpgcol&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have since moved all of my original writing over to a Gitlab self hosted server that I have through a company called scaleways. This allows me to do all of my editing and work flow through something I enjoy like Github but without worrying about fees or licensing concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should look into hosting your own Gitlab server. Companies like scaleways can do one-click installations of Gitlab for less than $10 per month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6753" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T21:02:55.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23263" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-08T05:16:35.757" Score="2" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a newbie reader and often find myself needing to open the dictionary at least once every few pages. Although I'm a newbie, my vocabulary is at least of an average proficiency so I wonder what it's like for the majority of readers, how much does the average reader care about vocabulary? Do you need to be careful not to use uncommon words so as not to break the flow of a reader? Or maybe you need to decide on your target audience and try to find the appropriate vocabulary for them? How do authors choose their vocabulary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1541" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T01:01:53.340" Title="How find an appropriate vocabulary" Tags="|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22215" CreationDate="2016-06-08T05:24:05.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to share your work while you write it, github is an okay way to do that. It's not great, because it's usable only by the tiny fraction of people who know how to use git.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider LeanPub.com. Many of my colleagues publish their books through LeanPub.com. LeanPub converts writers' manuscripts (written in markdown) into standard epub files. And writers can make their books available while they write, and update as often as they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LeanPub may be slightly less convenient for the writer (because you have to do a teeny tiny bit more than simply commit your changes), but it's much more convenient for early readers who don't know git.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T05:24:05.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23261" CreationDate="2016-06-08T09:42:36.607" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very broad question and a lot of thoughts come to my mind when trying to answer it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two things, however, are specially important to me : &lt;strong&gt;Read a lot. Write different things.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read a lot because other writers' styles will bring you new ideas and narration techniques. Much like drawing style is influenced by visual artists we love (see all these teens drawing in manga style ? Mangas made them want to draw because they love the style, so they naturally draw things with the influence of what they like.), writing style will get its roots and key elements in your favourite pieces of writing. As &lt;strong&gt;writing style is a mix of your influences and your own perception&lt;/strong&gt;, it will really help if you read a lot and especially from many different styles and authors. The more you find readings that makes you think &amp;quot;I like what the author did there&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;What a clever way of doing that !&amp;quot;, the more your brain will be able to process these valuable information and produce its own clever ideas, plots, characters, ways of saying, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here comes my second advice :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try to write a lot of different things. Take writing challenges&lt;/strong&gt;, for instance :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Describe with as most details as possible the ugliest person you can imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell a story about a potato wearing a hat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write the most boring text you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are three challenges I once took from fellow writers on a community website and they all brought something to me and my style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first made me work my descriptions : what can you tell about a person's appearance and how to give the reader a certain impression about him ? How much details can you add in the description of a character ? How to link elements of description to imitate the narrator's look inspecting the character ? How to make the writing flow between these elements without just putting declarations one after another ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The second one is a plain stupid topic. A potato wearing a hat really isn't an epic hero or a deep character. So how could I write a story about it ? I made a funny and absurd story out of it, which made me work my humorous writing and, as it was an absurd story, I had to adapt my style to fit it and then got new narration techniques. These techniques could be reused in other stories, other kinds of writings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The third one may seem like a weird way to improve your style but actually, it made me wonder about what makes a text and a style boring. I had to totally break my style to come back to simple, stupid sentences and story. If you can find out what to remove in your style to make it boring then you know what to work out to make it great. This exercise is a great way to get self-awareness about your style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is not just about writing challenges (although they are great). If you want to write novels for instance, consider giving a try to poetry, plays, or shorts stories. I don't say you should do this everyday but just &lt;strong&gt;sometimes, try writing something else and get out of your comfort zone. It will force you you think differently and will bring you awareness of writing techniques.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When you are aware of the techniques you use or can use, you can then chose how to apply them to guide your style towards certain directions of what you want it to be.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, once again just as drawing style, you can hardly control your writing style to be &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; something. You can chose your influences and make choices about the narration (ways you draw things in the case of drawing) that will result in the &lt;em&gt;kind&lt;/em&gt; of style that you want. But a writing style is ever changing, improving and is an abstract notion. There will always be a certain part of your style that you can't change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am an amateur writer, so my advices are not professional ones. Also, I am not a native English speaker (I write in French actually) so I apologize for spelling mistakes or bad formulation.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user19124" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T09:42:36.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22215" CreationDate="2016-06-08T09:48:27.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;medium.com&lt;/a&gt; it is built for writers it has revisions and notations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1541" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T09:48:27.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23263" CreationDate="2016-06-08T09:53:12.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write for your audience plus a little. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a book for five-year-olds, you don't want to use &quot;sesquipedalian,&quot; but there's nothing wrong with &quot;lengthy.&quot; Part of how we expand our vocabularies is by seeing new words in context (and looking them up if we have to). I remember learning &lt;em&gt;guerdon&lt;/em&gt; (a reward or gift) and &lt;em&gt;gravid&lt;/em&gt; (pregnant) from Anne McCaffrey novels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are correct in thinking that too many unusual words may break the reader's flow, so unless it's jargon (all the various terms for horse accessories or armor, for example), try not to overdo it. But the occasional stretch word is a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T09:53:12.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23244" CreationDate="2016-06-08T19:20:14.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had a related discussion with my wife two weeks ago about whether there's anything significant about men writing a female protagonist and women writing a male protagonist.  For example, Robin Hobb writing about FitzChivalry, or Witi Ihimaera writing about Paikea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, my wife and I concluded together that &lt;strong&gt;the protagonist's gender is really only a small part&lt;/strong&gt; of what makes a reader identify or empathize with the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The larger part that causes the reader to engage with the protagonist is how similarly or dissimilarly the protagonist's &lt;strong&gt;experiences and objectives match the readers own life&lt;/strong&gt; experiences and objectives.  We found that my wife's upbringing and my own upbringing have lead us to enjoy and desire different qualities in our protagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in some cases, a secondary character induces a sense of identity and empathy that may also not align by gender.  For example, my daughter connects more with Draco Malfoy over Hermione Granger.  Go figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a secret for you.  If there were an article that stated, &quot;&lt;em&gt;that men can identify and empathize with male as well as female protagonists, while women identify better with female protagonists&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, and if your personal experiences and objectives align with this statement, then you may be much more likely to consider the article to be truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18495" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T19:20:14.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23263" CreationDate="2016-06-08T20:43:09.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;have you ever read the series of unfortunate events by lemony snicket? in those books, the author uses an abundance of long and complicated words that many children wont understand, however, he explains many of them with examples relating to the story. &#xA;your choice of vocabulary depends a lot on your targeted audience. if you are writing for your own age group, use vocabulary that you yourself enjoy reading and the vocabulary that comes to you naturally. personally, i enjoy reading books that have a slightly harder vocabulary. it makes it more challenging, interesting and engaging. likewise, when i'm writing, i find myself using the thesaurus a lot to add a little more spice to my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19261" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T20:43:09.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23263" CreationDate="2016-06-09T01:01:53.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prose should slide off your fingers like warm butter. If your brain screams &quot;discombobulated&quot; at you, you don't have to ignore it because it's a big word. There is of course a limit based on your working vocabulary and the genre. Too many big words is snooty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I became a much better writer when I stopped using a thesaurus. My dictionary primarily gets used for parts of speech and hyphenation; however, my spelling's not great, but I use Word so it tells me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T01:01:53.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23277" CreationDate="2016-06-09T05:56:10.357" Score="1" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story I'm writing is based in a post apocalyptic world. In the first few chapters, when I'm introducing the characters jump starting the threads, I find myself repeating several ideas again and again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For e.g. since it is a post apocalyptic scenario, I have to describe that the building/structure that they are in, has survived the ravages of time. Even though so many things happened, this structure/device/building/thingamajig survived. Since it is important to take the story forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is OK when I do it for one but when I've to do it for everything to highlight it's important and to show that it is the only one in existence, it becomes repetitive and tedious. After a point, even the reader would start to think that this has survived the ravages of time, like everything else, what else is new...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do I show this, maintaining the reader's attention without compromising the importance of the thing ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastActivityDate="2016-06-12T11:20:46.680" Title="How to stop repeating the same idea" Tags="|ideas|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23251" CreationDate="2016-06-09T06:46:58.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FSC 100% means that all the wood in the product comes from FSC-certified forests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FSC Recycled means all the wood or paper in the product comes from reclaimed material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FSC Mix means at least 70% of the wood in the product is from FSC-certified material or recycled material; and 30% is controlled wood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, the FSC label tells you something about where the materials came from, but nothing about the actual quality of the paper. &amp;quot;FSC 100%&amp;quot; paper would presumably have exactly the same qualities as non-FSC paper made from non-FSC wood, and using precisely the same process from that point on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T06:46:58.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21632" CreationDate="2016-06-09T10:51:47.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Haven't done this lately and I don't have Word on this machine, so this&#xA;may not be 100% accurate, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insert a section break (new page) at the point where the numbering&#xA;should change. Go into headers/footers. Insert a field for page numbers&#xA;where you want it in the first section, formatted as Roman numerals. Go&#xA;to the next section (there's a button somewhere to do that). Turn off&#xA;the thing that says same header/footer as previous section. Insert page&#xA;numbers in this section, formatted as Arabic numerals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific interface details will depend on what version of Word you have.&#xA;Look around in Word; use Google if you can't find something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8535" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T10:51:47.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23274" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23276" CreationDate="2016-06-09T12:24:44.920" Score="11" ViewCount="6167" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my setting, a city was founded by people from all over the world, and developed in almost complete isolation (&lt;a href=&quot;https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/39775/space-wizards-city-is-it-sustainable&quot;&gt;long version here&lt;/a&gt;). The story in itself starts several generations after the foundation. All inhabitants of the city have mixed origins, but not enough time has passed for an &lt;em&gt;“average physical appearance”&lt;/em&gt; to emerge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing my first test scenes, I found myself describing in too many details  the appearance of my characters. For now, my solution is to make the diversity of the city population clear early in the story, and to give only a couple of physical traits to each main character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I have the same problems with my crowd descriptions. They end up either full of purple stuff, too dry or just plainly awkward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I’ve tried describing skin tone with colors only, but it’s not very evocative. I’ve also tried comparisons, using minerals (copper, terra cotta, etc.), plants (wood, flowers, etc.), weather stuff (clouds, sea, etc.) or even &lt;em&gt;food&lt;/em&gt; (chocolate, honey, etc.)...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;It was the worst&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just don’t know how to show the variety of skin tone, hair color &amp;amp; curliness, eyes shapes, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What guidelines should I use to convey the image of a diverse crowd and to show the physical appearance of my main characters while avoiding purple prose and awkward comparisons?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quick translation of some of the descriptions I'm not happy with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stranger at the kitchen table looked up from her newspaper. She had a thin face splattered with chocolate freckles and flanked by two big round ears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the door frame stood a little old man with a closed face and hair like a storm cloud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Adda stepped on the deck, she was greeted by a sailor leaning against the parapet, sipping a bowl of coffee almost as dark as his skin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her long oiled hair made her look like she was coming back from a swim in the nearest canal. This impression was accentuated by the sweet and sickly smell following her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was a man of dignified attitude and slow gestures. His daughters and him shared the same delicate features, the same golden skin, the same brown freckles and the same thick black hair, but not the same ears. The girls had their mother’s ears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sentence trying to show the population diversity :    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fever of merchants and buyers filled the market place. Here, one circular look offered the full palette of all the colours, faces and hair &lt;em&gt;métissage&lt;/em&gt; * could create.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;* (Not sure how to translate it, mixing maybe?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:23.590" LastActivityDate="2016-06-10T12:33:50.210" Title="How to describe a diverse set of characters without falling into purple prose or exoticism?" Tags="|creative-writing|characters|word-choice|description|rules|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23274" CreationDate="2016-06-09T14:30:39.883" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of solutions that I have for this, as I suffered from the same problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Only describe what you need to&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine trying to describe James Bond to someone. You could say that he is handsome, looks good in a suit, and has an athletic build. This could be enough to get a good image in the reader's head, and could describe any of the actors that played James Bond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Describing someone down to the last detail is generally quite boring for a reader to endure, and they will likely picture something else in their head anyway. It's also very difficult to ingest all of that information and assign it to a single character, so the reader may overlook details of the character that become important later in the story. Rather, just say the &lt;em&gt;important&lt;/em&gt; details, those that will help to describe the more unique aspects of a character, and the reader can fill in the rest of the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to go for around 3-4 pieces of description that would distinguish a character from John/Jane Everyman. Heavyset, red-haired, tall, muscled, just enough for the reader to distinguish that character from any other that they may read about. If something insignificant like a character's eye-color becomes important later on in the story then mention it as an extra attribute after the description, as it will not be enough to get a good picture of someone on it's own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Introduce characters gradually&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to get details between characters mixed up, especially when they're described close together. Needing to describe what 5 people look like on a page can make a reader easily forget which person is the redhead, who is the person with the large nose and who only wears black clothes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to do this, particularly if the requirement is that many characters are to be introduced at once, is to stagger the introductions. Have someone approach the character first, have a small interaction to cement that character into the mind of the reader, then introduce another afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If introducing two people at once, it is best if they are completely different or very similar. This way it is easiest to describe how they are different from each other, again allowing the reader to remember them with minimal extra description needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cliched introduction to a team of people, where one person goes round introducing the newcomer to each member whilst they are performing a specific task, is overused because it works. It immediately cements that Max is the blacksmith, Helen is the archer and Dave is the wizard. This then distinguishes each of them without having to go into too much detail until later in the story when they can be described separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Descriptions for wider groups&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may help with your issues of having different groups of people that don't fit a single description. Describing a specific trait that is prevalent across an entire group/ family means that it never really needs to be brought up again. After a single clarification, everyone knows that Lannisters have blonde hair, Weasleys have red hair, and elves have pointy ears. That description isn't usually needed again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can introduce a group and describe them as having a specific set of characteristics, or describe a single person and specify that a particular feature that they have is prevalent among the group to which they belong: &quot;She had the dark curly hair that was the trademark of her race, however she was much taller than rest of her kin, as they were generally of a much shorter stature.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever someone of that group is then identified, other descriptions of that individual can be used, and the reader will know to assume that they are similar to the rest of that group, rather than having to reiterate that each person of a specific race looks a particular way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;POV perspective&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing from the perspective of a character, remember that they would only notice things that they would be likely to notice. So they would not think about or be amazed at things that they are used to, but the reader is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that, as in your story where every person looks quite different and unique, no one would generally comment on it, as for them it is not out of place. However, they may comment on something that &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; out of place for them, and explain why it's out of place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, seeing a group of people who look similar and explaining &quot;I've never seen so many people who look so alike before...&quot; would get across to the reader that most people are supposed to look quite different. This means that the need for awkward exposition, such as &quot;everyone looked incredibly different and individual, as expected,&quot; is completely bypassed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="13149" LastEditDate="2016-06-09T15:24:19.467" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T15:24:19.467" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23271" CreationDate="2016-06-09T14:54:31.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give contrast. Insist on everything that hasn't survived, which could also serve to explain everything that happened. If there are more instances (small side notes, rather than big paragraphs) of destroyed things than things that have survived, the latter will stand out much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T14:54:31.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23278" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23284" CreationDate="2016-06-09T15:06:47.490" Score="4" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written for years on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.andrewwelch.info&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my site&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;about cycle touring, adventure, and gear reviews, but I'm aware that I may have put off my audience by starting off writing about these things, then losing my focus and writing about other stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My blog has some traffic, under 1000 unique hits per month. I really would like to find out if there is actually a readership there and if it is possible I can improve my writing to better serve the readership. At the moment it seems a bit futile as no one ever comments, whereas in the past people would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-06-09T20:27:48.143" LastActivityDate="2016-06-10T11:33:28.740" Title="How can I encourage conversation on my blog posts?" Tags="|marketing|blog|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23274" CreationDate="2016-06-09T18:27:47.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Mike C. Ford's excellent suggestions, there is a secret technique, misunderstood but effective, known to all professional writers but divulged to few outsiders&amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't show, tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The city was founded by people from all over the world. Generations had gone by, but not so many that its people all looked the same.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Job done!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T18:27:47.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23278" CreationDate="2016-06-09T23:04:56.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're hinting at is &lt;em&gt;cringe&lt;/em&gt; ...Marketing...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And marketing is something that writers are traditionally crappy at - thus the need for agents and publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might try reading up on self publishing because a lot of the ideas that self publishers use will translate pretty directly into readers on your blog.  One great self publishing podcast that talks a lot about this side of the business is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rockingselfpublishing.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Rocking Self Publishing Podcast&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideas that can help include contests, giveaways, guest blogging, and doing other slightly more devious things like massaging Google's search responses to raise your blog higher up on the list of hits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the problem is that there's a world of bloggers out there and there's no good way for people to find you unless you're putting yourself in their face somehow... and that takes marketing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T23:04:56.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23271" CreationDate="2016-06-10T03:39:47.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, make sure character has different concerns and preferences and attitudes about things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, each character would naturally notice or focus on different aspects of the building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if two or more characters were to linger on the same aspect, they would have different opinions of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the characters notice different things, and have different opinions of things, that will keep their descriptions fresh and distinct. And their descriptions will not only describe the setting, but also characterize the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-06-10T03:39:47.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23278" CreationDate="2016-06-10T08:05:37.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few related issues here, which are tightly intertwined:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How big is my readership?&lt;/strong&gt; A small readership usually mean comments are few and limited. There's nobody talking, and there's nobody to talk to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What's the character of my readership?&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;Fans of the blog writer&quot;, &quot;professional experts in the field&quot;, and &quot;buyers looking for product reviews&quot; are three vastly different audiences, even if their numbers are the same. Their commenting and conversation patterns will also be very different - fans will be prone to squeeing and asking the author's opinion on unrelated topics; subject-matter experts will analyse and argue; review-seekers will get their review and never look at the comment section, nor will they have anything to add to it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is my readership's motivation to comment on any particular post?&lt;/strong&gt; Do they feel like they're helping someone? Setting someone straight? Engaging in a conversation? Making a new friend? If your blog post is nice and maybe informative but doesn't bake in some incentive &lt;em&gt;to respond to it&lt;/em&gt;, you can get plenty of readers who just don't comment at all. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I say, these issues are intertwined. Engagement in the comments can increase your readership; re-focusing on a particular target audience can change the nature and attractiveness of the comment section; bringing in new readers by better marketing can change who's talking in the comments and about what; and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the point is that these are the three levers you can try to use to get more conversation:&#xA;* Enlarge your readership (by investing more in social media; by writing a standout piece that brings eyeballs to the rest of your work; etc.)&#xA;* Know your target audience, so you don't stray off-target; modify your target if you're not happy with what you've currently got.&#xA;* Be deliberate about what kind of conversation you'd like to see on each individual post, and write the post with that in mind: to encourage the particular conversation you'd like there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of these, I'm going to expand a bit on the third point, because it's the one that really involves writing. &lt;strong&gt;How do you encourage a particular conversation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly, you need to be familiar with the different typical &lt;em&gt;types&lt;/em&gt; of conversations, and write with that in mind. Types of conversation include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Argument:&lt;/strong&gt; People arguing with your post, or with each other. (Encourage this by taking clear stances, by writing about loaded topics that people care strongly about, and if you're so inclined - by being somewhat inflammatory.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Community:&lt;/strong&gt; Your post is a touchpoint for a community, who congregate around your posts but branch off into all kinds of topics. (Encourage this by being warm and personal in your writing and in particular in the comment section, by &lt;em&gt;treating&lt;/em&gt; your blog as a community.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assistance:&lt;/strong&gt; You provide a question, or a question with a solution. The comments are for the rest of the internet to chime in with &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; solution, which will help people with the question or problem. (Encourage this by structuring your posts around specific questions, problems, or needs. Explicitly ask readers to chime in with their answers.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conversation:&lt;/strong&gt; Your blog post provides a theory or a starting point for a wider conversation, where people share their opinions and insights. (Encourage this by writing about clear topics, discussing difficulties and complications, and perhaps avoiding strident, total conclusions. Also, participate in the comments to shape the kind of discussion you'd like to see.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Open Floor:&lt;/strong&gt; Your post is a question you want to put to the readership; the whole point of the post is for people to give interesting answers in the comments. (When doing this, be straight and to the point about this being a request from your readership; otherwise it edges into &quot;Assistance,&quot; where you have your own thoughts but readers &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; share theirs as well.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are other types I've missed, but this should be enough to give you &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; types, so you can figure what specific types you'd like to see on your specific posts. Once you've defined that, figuring out how to encourage that specific type of conversation is usually fairly straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps; all the best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-06-10T08:05:37.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23278" CreationDate="2016-06-10T08:22:08.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write more frequently. I realise that for hobby and product review blogs it may not be possible to keep up the rate of posting commonplace with celebrity news blogs, or mummyblogs, or political blogs, or other blogs for which the world provides a daily stream of writing prompts. Nonetheless if you want your blog to host conversation you need to make it a &quot;go-to&quot; place. If I type the letters &quot;st&quot; into the search box at the top of my screen the autocomplete supplies stackexchange.com. Ideally you want that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that you put off your cycling audience by writing about other stuff, but I observe many bloggers do successfully mix one main theme with extra material about other interests. Discussion of solo outdoor sports is clearly your blog's &quot;unique selling point&quot;. Readers are probably more likely to &lt;em&gt;seek out&lt;/em&gt; your thoughts on tents than on whether you should work for free. Nonetheless posts like the latter can contribute to the success of a blog by making readers feel they know the author. (Incidentally, when thinking about how to get more readers for your blog, be aware that the vast majority of bloggers do effectively work for free. That does not mean they get no reward, as you already know. There are non-material rewards. But as you also already know, ad revenue is peanuts.) Returning to the point, you might like to think about what would be your desired ratio of &quot;main theme&quot; posts to &quot;general interest&quot; posts and stick loosely to that for a while and see how the clicks go. You might end up changing your main theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But more importantly, do what DoWhileNot said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="13531" LastEditDate="2016-06-10T11:33:28.740" LastActivityDate="2016-06-10T11:33:28.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23274" CreationDate="2016-06-10T12:33:50.210" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In looking at your excerpts, and granting for translation, I think the problem is that you start well and then add too much. You don't have to give all the details at once. If this is a person we never see again, secondary details don't matter; if your protagonist is interacting with the character, then there's time later in the scene to add more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The stranger at the kitchen table looked up from her newspaper. She had a thin face splattered with chocolate freckles and flanked by two big round ears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remove &quot;and flanked by two big round ears.&quot; You can add it a paragraph or two later, or even a scene or two later: &quot;Her hair was drawn back, highlighting her big round ears.&quot; However, if her ears are not important later &amp;mdash; if it's not something which distinguishes her from someone else or sound doesn't play an important part in the plot &amp;mdash; I wouldn't describe them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the door frame stood a little old man with a closed face and hair like a storm cloud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is perfect. Don't change it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When Adda stepped on the deck, she was greeted by a sailor leaning against the parapet, sipping a bowl of coffee almost as dark as his skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the comparison, but the phrasing is purple, I agree. I'd remove the drinking action: &quot;She was greeted by a sailor leaning against the parapet. He had coffee-colored skin and a brilliant smile.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her long oiled hair made her look like she was coming back from a swim in the nearest canal. This impression was accentuated by the sweet and sickly smell following her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drop the second sentence here, and if the smell is important, add it later in the scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was a man of dignified attitude and slow gestures. His daughters and him shared the same delicate features, the same golden skin, the same brown freckles and the same thick black hair, but not the same ears. The girls had their mother’s ears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is almost fine. I'd end it after &quot;thick black hair.&quot; Unless the ears are important to the plot, you don't have to describe them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A fever of merchants and buyers filled the market place. Here, one circular look offered the full palette of all the colours, faces and hair métissage * could create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is fine; I like this image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, dial back by about a third, and you should be okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-06-10T12:33:50.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6797" CreationDate="2016-06-10T18:09:47.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Others answered the key points. Let me address just one lesser issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;the main part of a song is its music rather than lyrics.&quot; Maybe true and maybe not. I recall Gilbert and Sullivan had something of a falling out over whether the lyrics (Gilbert) or the music (Sullivan) was more important. But even if true, the fact that a part of a copyrighted work is less important than some other part doesn't mean you can freely copy it. Like, if someone said that chapter 3 of a book is not a very important chapter and not really central to what the author was trying to say, therefore I'm going to copy the entire chapter into a book of my own without permission .... I can't imagine that a court would listen for a moment to an argument that this is okay because the chapter is &quot;not the main part&quot; of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-06-10T18:09:47.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23290" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-10T18:27:55.287" Score="2" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’d like to try a regimen of short writing exercises for a few weeks, ideally doing at least one every day.          &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no problem with waking up early and my lunch breaks are needlessly long, so I can easily spend 20 minutes writing in the morning before leaving home, another 20 minutes during lunch break and 15 to 30 minutes in the evening, before going to bed.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;On lucky days (when the train isn't too full or when I manage to snatch a sitting spot), I could also add to the schedule some kind of observation exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What types of writing exercises are best suited for each environment (home, workplace, public transportation) and each part of the day ?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also don’t know if it’s best to do 3 distinct extra-short exercises every day, or to choose one exercise per day, for example writing down whatever nonsense comes to my mind when waking up, then expand it and rewrite-it into something coherent during lunch and re-draft it again in the evening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note :&lt;/strong&gt; The inclusion of other locations (parks, school, bars, libraries, etc.) or other times of the day (3 am, after-nap, etc.) into the answers you be greatly appreciated, as it would make them susceptible to help other people, with different life-styles and schedules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastEditorUserId="13689" LastEditDate="2016-06-13T08:35:51.950" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T16:19:18.363" Title="What writing exercices should I schedule for the different parts of my day?" Tags="|creative-writing|planning|organization|exercises|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23290" CreationDate="2016-06-10T18:54:09.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard a really great interview... by someone... somewhere... can't remember though - I'm only saying this because I don't want to take credit for the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The essence of what he said is that whenever you ask an author what they do when they write, they're always going to tell you the things that came hard for them, or the things they really had to work on to learn.  The other things - the things they don't tell you about (but that they're often known for and are excellent at) are things that just come naturally to them - they don't even consider them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you're going to run into both kinds of things no matter what environment you work in, be it a completely silent room, the train, or on a park bench while watching the kids play.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some aspects of writing, for you, may be extremely hard and you'll have to work on them and others may come so naturally you might not even know you're doing them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thing is - for each person it's different, so no matter what great advice we give, it'll be great advice that works for us but maybe not you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, I keep a pad of paper and a pen with me, and I use Evernote on my phone.  I try to keep things simple because one of the things that's hard for me is starting a project and the simpler it is to start, the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-06-10T18:54:09.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23294" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-10T23:10:41.440" Score="-2" ViewCount="1288" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yeah, So I was bored and decided to write some action Naughty adult fanfic type story today. And then as I started to write I was faced with this issue. How the legit **** am I suppose to describe my character. Like what type of clothes she/he is wearing? What type of Hair Style he/she has? So, How should I describe all of that? Or Should I not bother describing it? But, I kinda do want to describe my characters since there is not much of a plot. I want to focus more on what character wear and how they look. And other crap like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets say I want to describe the person in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KyZ9X.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pic&lt;/a&gt;. So, how do I describe that character? What level of granularity should I maintain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just wanna write a Naughty adult fic about a hot cop chick and become famous.And have the title as &lt;em&gt;Chick-Merde-Ya&lt;/em&gt;. Help PLz!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18187" LastEditorUserId="18187" LastEditDate="2016-06-11T04:30:06.690" LastActivityDate="2016-06-11T19:49:15.383" Title="How to describe a characters clothing?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|technique|characters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-06-11T22:22:43.873" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23295" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-11T04:40:12.960" Score="12" ViewCount="662" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to self-publish my first novel using a pen name. I will be registering the copyright this week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, on the first page of the novel where you put all the publishing/copyright info, should I say that the novel is copyright of my pen name, in order to protect my true identity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example, let's say my real name is Jane Smith and my pen name is Denise Smithers. I will register the copyright with the copyright office using my real name (but will also write what my pen name is), but I don't want to put that on the book as I want that kept private.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I write (c) Denise Smithers, will that imply that the copyright belongs to the actual person behind the pen name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the copyright belongs to me anyway, but I still want to add that copyright line to my novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-07-29T23:40:44.337" LastActivityDate="2022-05-24T17:44:43.203" Title="How to express copyright when you use a pen name" Tags="|publishing|copyright|self-publishing|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10375" CreationDate="2016-06-11T14:08:38.753" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply put:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An abstract is what you did and what you found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The background is why you did it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19308" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-06-22T19:29:15.750" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T19:29:15.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23294" CreationDate="2016-06-11T19:49:15.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Describe whatever the viewpoint character notices and has opinions about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a naughty story, the characters might choose their attire to have certain effects on other people, or to express certain aspects of their attitudes, mood, or desires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means that the characters will have opinions about their attire and the attire of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So describe whatever the viewpoint character notices and has an opinion about. And make sure to give the character's opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-06-11T19:49:15.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23298" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-11T20:42:53.870" Score="6" ViewCount="438" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've finally decided to give a protagonist a happy ending, but what is there to avoid? What makes a happy end too cheesy? For example, if the story is about a anti-hero, who destroys his enemies, what can I avoid when writing the happy ending? What makes it too cliché?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T03:15:54.043" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T11:50:09.480" Title="What to avoid when writing a happy ending?" Tags="|fiction|ending|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23298" CreationDate="2016-06-11T20:58:24.067" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would turn the question around: What makes a happy ending work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The character has &lt;em&gt;earned&lt;/em&gt; the happy ending.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The happy ending comes about as a direct result of the main character's actions. At the very least, the happy ending comes about as a result of the main character &lt;em&gt;realizing&lt;/em&gt; something (as in &lt;em&gt;The Wizard of Oz,&lt;/em&gt; where Dorothy realizes that happiness is home and family).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The main character had to &lt;em&gt;struggle&lt;/em&gt; for it.&lt;/strong&gt; The happy ending did not come easily. To bring about the happy ending, the main character must do something difficult, or come to some difficult realization, or sacrifice something important.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So avoid having something or someone other than main character being agent of the happy ending. Avoid getting to the happy ending without a struggle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-06-11T20:58:24.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23319" CreationDate="2016-06-12T10:21:34.003" Score="5" ViewCount="4985" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’d like to include in a story “mysteries” and deceptions that (ideally) should be obvious in hindsight (By obvious, I mean &quot;elephant in the room&quot; kind of obvious).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to give to the reader every element they need to unravel a mystery, while keeping them from resolving it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to hide something in plain sight?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m looking (preferably) for methods to keep the reader from seeing what is right in front of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example&lt;/strong&gt; (in a story with magic and stuff):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Main Character meets early in the story auntie A, who appears to be an old man wearing women clothes. Since other characters have known auntie A for years and don’t seem to find it weird or unusual, the MC doesn’t comment on it. She regularly goes to Auntie A for advices and guidance afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the course of the story, MC discover that she is immune to some specific types of magic (including illusions and mental manipulation), and learns why they don’t affect her. Also, a couple of characters who know auntie A show signs of bigotry towards sexual minorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While investigating the disappearance of one of her relatives, MC finds the months old corpse of a woman. At first she assumes that the deceased is the person she was looking for. She realises later that it’s the corpse of the real Auntie A, and that the man she met actually stole her indentity, used a spell to make himself look like her and lives in her home, wearing her clothes to increase the spell’s effectiveness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m afraid that since the readers will have every element they need to realise the deception, the reveal won’t have any impact. Moreover, my only readers for now are close friends and I already talked with them about this idea, so I won’t know if it works when I’ll show them the first complete draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastEditorUserId="13689" LastEditDate="2016-06-13T08:21:33.347" LastActivityDate="2018-03-28T13:43:07.537" Title="How to hide something in plain sight (and keep it hidden)?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|readers|mystery|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23271" CreationDate="2016-06-12T11:20:46.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can concentrate on details, without describing the whole &quot;thing&quot; that survived, so everytime you describe a small part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other solution : the &quot;Show don't tell&quot; rule. The reader with some indications will know that you're in a post-apocalyptic world, so it's kind of obvious that some buildings were destroyed and other still stand, but you don't have to say it, make your charachter evolve in this world and let the reader see what's he's seeing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastActivityDate="2016-06-12T11:20:46.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23261" CreationDate="2016-06-12T11:33:51.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a writer style or voice is something inner : you already have it, you just don't know how to express it.&#xA;For that, you have to see and read other &quot;voices&quot;, see what is possible to do, the different manners that exists, read, read and read, absorb all of it and let it age and then, when you've done enough reading : unlearn it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to, unless you just want to be a copycat of an other writer's style, or some kind of literary chameleon (I did it myself by stopping to read for a certain time, to avoid any further influence, and spending time thinking about what I wanted to write and how i wanted to do it) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, your voice is just near to you, but you have to make a trip around the world to find it !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastActivityDate="2016-06-12T11:33:51.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22227" CreationDate="2016-06-12T11:45:33.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Carpe Diem. it could summarize it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use your best ideas, while you're still enthusiastic about it, it will give you the enregy to write it down (and writing takes a lot of energy) &#xA;You will evolve, as a writer and as a person, so trust your future self to find other great ideas !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carpe. Diem !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastActivityDate="2016-06-12T11:45:33.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23261" CreationDate="2016-06-12T12:46:14.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think your voice is chosen, it's what comes naturally from you. Therefore, it changes as you mature, as you read and write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-06-12T12:46:14.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23301" CreationDate="2016-06-12T15:09:47.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would scatter a lot of small, subtle clues throughout the text. The idea is that no single clue will give it away, and they’re disparate enough to prevent the reader from putting 2 and 2 and 2 and 2 together and getting 8. &lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt;, on a second reading, in hindsight, they should all clearly be clues pointing to the big secret. “Ah! Of course, &lt;em&gt;that’s&lt;/em&gt; what that meant!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few examples plucked from bookshelves and memory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Steven Gould, &lt;em&gt;Wildside&lt;/em&gt;. A character with a big secret, not revealed until the end, but many clues before then.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spider Robinson, &lt;em&gt;Time Pressure&lt;/em&gt;. Likewise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kazuo Ishiguro, &lt;em&gt;Never Let Me Go&lt;/em&gt;. Here, the secret is about society at large. Many hints throughout, but the full picture needs to be explained at the climax. The hints are not very disparate or subtle, though; more like a picture being gradually revealed, bit by bit, then the rest of the mask torn off at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8535" LastActivityDate="2016-06-12T15:09:47.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23308" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-12T15:30:24.427" Score="4" ViewCount="6450" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using a couple edited books in a paper I am writing. From each one, I need to cite 2-3 chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MLA offers a way to &quot;cross-reference&quot; within a reference list when citing multiple chapters from the same anthology (see  &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/&lt;/a&gt; about halfway down the page).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my paper is in APA format. Is there any such way to do this in APA references, or do I need the full citation for each chapter I am citing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19315" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T13:29:41.037" Title="APA Cross-referencing Several Items from One Anthology" Tags="|citations|academic-writing|research|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22035" CreationDate="2016-06-12T15:34:09.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m working on a novel with multiple POVs, and my rule is one POV per section, where “section” means a part of a chapter that describes one scene, event, conversation, or such. Typographically, sections are separated by a blank line (or * * * at a page break), and the first line isn’t indented. I adopted this style from the books on my shelves; it seems fairly common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally try to make it clear to the reader fairly early whose POV it is, by internal monologue or something else only that character could know, but there’s at least one short section where it’s not at all clear whose POV it is, and it doesn’t really matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for length, a section is as long as it needs to be to achieve its purpose. One might run ten pages, another half a page. It depends on how the section fits into the overall work and what its purpose is: to advance the plot, to develop one or more characters, to set up a situation that will be resolved later, to resolve a situation set up earlier, to drop a hint about something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just write and read, rewrite and reread. If a transition or juxtaposition seems awkward, I fiddle with it until it's better. There are very few fixed rules in the writing game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8535" LastActivityDate="2016-06-12T15:34:09.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23301" CreationDate="2016-06-12T15:50:50.733" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mystery Requires Vicarious Experience&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiction is best read when you experience it as the main character.  That is why modern fiction which is written in close 3rd person is quite popular.  Of course, first person fiction is also quite popular but it is often sloppy and only used because the author thinks in first person so s/he writes stories that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were to write in a Close 3rd Person throughout your story then the reader would only know what your main character knows and only experience the things your main character experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means you could simply write the story as a journal of what your 3rd person character discovers and your reader would learn the details of the mystery.  As your character learns these details then your reader would also.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mystery Requires Structure&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Writing in such a way should clear it all up for you.  However, it also reveals that you need a bit of structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Warning&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Do Not Think High School Outline&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of writers have been damaged by learning formal outlining in high school with all the rigid rules.  An outline is just a &lt;strong&gt;tool so you can pre-think&lt;/strong&gt;.  It is a &lt;strong&gt;prototype of your story&lt;/strong&gt;.  This prototype will allow you to test your story to see if it'll work overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quick Sample&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Synopsis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scotty Watkins, computer programmer moonlighting as a network repair guy discovers a virus on his small business client's computer. Investigating the code he determines where it is from.  Local police are no help so he goes it alone.  This leads him to a local gang of programmers which he infiltrates.&#xA;His local client's bank accounts are all drained and he has to figure out who did it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 1&lt;/strong&gt;: Watkins meets local business owner and works on computer, discovers nefarious activity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 2&lt;/strong&gt;: Reverse engineers code and discovers a geographical clue - believes person behind it is local&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 3&lt;/strong&gt;: Client's bank account is drained, they think it is Watkins who did it. Confrontation by owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 4&lt;/strong&gt;: Watkins is arrested.  Clients money is in Watkins account.  The hackers are attempting to frame him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 5&lt;/strong&gt;: Released on large bail.  Attempts to get police to help him.  One sympathetic investigator but a lot of politics involved, he must prove his own innocence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 6&lt;/strong&gt;: Watkins is forced to change his identity to stay out of jail and investigate the theft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 7&lt;/strong&gt;: Studying the code further leads him to a society of hacker criminals who may know more.  Attempts to contact them as someone interested in helping them hack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 8&lt;/strong&gt;: He meets with one person who knows the hackers.  person warns him that they are dangerous and you can never get out alive once you're in.j&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;True Outline Form : Stimulate Creativity, Not Overwhelm&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can then layer in the detailed clues across this outline more easily and then we can write the entire story.  I just made the entire story up while writing this answer so the outline is meant to be just enough to stimulate thought while allowing flexibility.  Just because it is on the outline doesn't mean it won't change.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe these items may help you get further along with your story.  Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2016-06-12T15:50:50.733" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23311" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-12T17:56:37.693" Score="5" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;I very recently finished my first sci-fi novel and sent out agent queries, and fortune has smiled on me. Out of four responses, one was a request for the full manuscript, which was sent about a week ago. The last one I received late Friday, was from someone at the Donald Maas agency requesting a partial. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She also asked as a courtesy whether I'd sent it to anyone else. I intend to be honest, but just how honest should I be? Should I mention the full manuscript sent to another largish agency? Do you think this would work in my favor, or will it encourage her to give my work a pass? The bottom line is, what do you think is the logic behind their question? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19318" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T22:50:09.673" Title="A question about agents and multiple submissions" Tags="|agent|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18591" CreationDate="2016-06-12T22:55:05.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you are too young to publish a novel. Look at work you have from a year ago, chances are you likely want to change it and don't like it. You aren't even in high school yet, you haven't had enough experience to write a great novel. Even for adults it is hard to find a publisher, chances are even slimmer if you are a child. &#xA;You can write all you like, and you will get better and better by writing and reading more. Save the manuscript you write, and if the idea still sounds good to you when you are an upperclassman in a high school, review it. Then in college go forth and try to publish it. Good writing will come with time. &#xA;When I was 12 I thought my writing was great. I look at it now and oh my god does it suck. I am not being rude here I am being honest- with close to full certainty I say your writing likely sucks. It isn't that you can't write well for your age, it is that the audience you are looking out to likely does not want to read writing from such an inexperienced person. I wouldn't. Just keep writing and one day you can become good enough to be published professionally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19323" LastActivityDate="2016-06-12T22:55:05.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23315" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-12T23:42:33.783" Score="3" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;In school I've always been taught to use colorful adjectives/verbs in writing. I recently wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/@danielmeng07/media-trump-and-democracy-a162a5ca866b#.c9kzynsqh&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog on Medium&lt;/a&gt; and sent it to a couple friends, they advised me to use simpler language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love to have you guys take a look, and give some feedback ~ especially areas where I can improve... it feels like my English is getting worse by the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19324" LastEditorUserId="19324" LastEditDate="2016-06-13T08:02:40.600" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T16:19:41.863" Title="Colorfulness of Language Vs. Simplicity" Tags="|style|publishing|technique|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23315" CreationDate="2016-06-13T08:43:19.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It boils down to balance between primitive and pretentious. Both are bad, but unless you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; a simpleton, it's easier to fall into pretentious than boorish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rule to avoid this is simple: if a simpler word carries exactly the same meaning as the elaborate one, pick the simple one. If you need a phrase (two simpler words or more) to simplify the more elaborate word, use the more elaborate one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, make completely sure the word you use means exactly what you want it to mean. There's not many faster ways to make an ass of yourself than by using a &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; elaborate word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll bold the good uses of words that replaced simpler alternatives correctly, and correct the wrong uses. Of course this is subjective, and the border is blurred, but you can get the rough clue where you went wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Somewhere in the &lt;strong&gt;transition&lt;/strong&gt; from print to &lt;strong&gt;electronica&lt;/strong&gt;, our news generating process broke down. Today, we have in place an incentive system&lt;strike&gt;s&lt;/strike&gt; that &lt;strike&gt;awards&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;em&gt;rewards&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;viewership&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strike&gt;ergo&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;em&gt;thus&lt;/em&gt; ad revenue, on grounds of ethical flexibility over journalistic integrity. It is process that &lt;strong&gt;subverts&lt;/strong&gt; the &lt;strong&gt;underpinnings&lt;/strong&gt; of good reporting — accuracy, objectivity, and impartiality for practically all things &#xA;  &lt;strike&gt;pursuant to&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;em&gt;driving the&lt;/em&gt; clicks and shares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the last couple years, we have been &lt;strike&gt;beset&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;em&gt;bombarded&lt;/em&gt; with stories about Trump demagoguery and phone/tablet/TV releases where the only &lt;strike&gt;distinguishable improvement&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;em&gt;visible advance&lt;/em&gt; is the 2mm curvature / reduction in thickness from the previous. When I open my news app, it feels like I’m trapped in some &lt;strong&gt;microcosm&lt;/strong&gt; of &lt;strike&gt;myopia&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;em&gt;short-sightedness&lt;/em&gt; — article after articles of political idiocy, and celebrity banality. So what has changed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some highlights: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;misuse of &lt;em&gt;awards&lt;/em&gt;. The system doesn't give viewership as a prize. It gives a prize for viewership.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good use of &lt;em&gt;subverts the underpinnings&lt;/em&gt;. Simplification of that would be roughly two times as long.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm not adamant about &lt;em&gt;beset&lt;/em&gt;. It feels a little archaic to me, but that's just my personal impression.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It feels like &lt;em&gt;distinguishable improvement&lt;/em&gt; could be improved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microcosm is a nice metaphor, but not being a native speaker, I had to look up Myopia. That's deterrent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T08:43:19.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23301" CreationDate="2016-06-13T09:15:40.830" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see others missing the problem the clue is an &lt;em&gt;elephant in the room&lt;/em&gt;. They hint on hiding various subtle clues. The problem is this is not a &lt;em&gt;subtle&lt;/em&gt; clue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Missing this clue would totally break suspension of disbelief. It's far too obvious. It must be hidden in the plain sight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need here is misdirection. Unintentional, accidental event that changes the perception of the clue by the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I'd play on the character's &lt;em&gt;bigotry towards sexual minorities&lt;/em&gt;, by making the genuine appear a mockery. In particular, pick a person who's known Auntie A for years, and have them poke fun at Auntie's bigotry. The genuine Auntie's offense will appear utterly ridiculous when spoken by a cross-dressing man. The situation where the joker pokes fun at a straight-face will be easily misinterpreted as humorous blather between two jokers. The fact others don't &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; Auntie for who she is really, will be easily taken for this being a quirk of the relationship, where the crossdressing fact is so accepted that rude jokes between friends about it are taken well and enjoyed by all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficulty is in writing a single dialogue that has two meanings. One is a genuine exchange between a cosmopolitan and a bigot (who are still friends despite their differences). The other is a parody of the above, where all the genuine ripostes are taken as tongue-in-cheek mockeries, the situational humor contributing to their appearances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T09:15:40.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17060" CreationDate="2016-06-13T09:47:30.560" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you intend to publish for free, just do it. It falls under &lt;em&gt;fanfiction&lt;/em&gt; clause. Technically illegal, hardly ever fought. The work improves strength of the franchise, solidifies the fandom, fighting it would be bad PR - so copyright owners simply let it be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you intend to publish commercially, disregard &quot;not accepting unsolicited submissions for novels&quot;. You don't want &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; to publish it anyway; it doesn't apply to your case. What you want, is to contact their legal department, and ask about &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;purchasing&lt;/strong&gt; a license for using the franchise for the purpose of self-publishing the novel&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be ready to shell out a... pretty much arbitrary amount of cash they will quote you - it may be free, it may be a token amount, it may be a percentage, or it may be a barrier sum intended to deter you if they want to keep a tight hold on the franchise and not allow any third-party &quot;paraphernalia&quot;. Nevertheless, make sure you aren't appearing as a bothersome fan looking for freeloading on their IP. You are a businessperson, a paying customer, willing to buy their product - specifically, a limited use of rights on their intellectual property. You aren't &quot;asking permission to extend their world&quot;. You are making a purchase of a product they have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T09:47:30.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23295" CreationDate="2016-06-13T13:15:47.830" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The form for filing copyright has fields for both &amp;quot;Author&amp;quot; (the person whose name is on the work) and &amp;quot;Copyright Claimant&amp;quot; (the person who is claiming the copyright). Under Author, there is an option to check &amp;quot;Pseudonymous&amp;quot; to indicate that the Author is a pen name. If the Copyright Claimant and the Author are different names, there is space on the form to indicate why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If for some reason, you do not want to have your actual name associated with the pseudonym, you are allowed to give the pseudonym as the name of the Copyright Claimant, though you must still identify it as a pseudonym.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are risks to assigning the copyright to the pseudonym as the Claimant. If the copyright is challenged, it may be difficult for you to prove ownership in court if the Copyright Claimant is a pseudonym. Also, the copyright term for pseudonymous works where the author's true identity is not revealed is different -- it's a fixed term, whereas if the true identity behind the pseudonym is listed in the records, the term is the usual author's life + 70 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information see &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20210428165628/https://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl101.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this PDF document from the copyright office&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2744" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2022-05-21T21:26:12.437" LastActivityDate="2022-05-21T21:26:12.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23315" CreationDate="2016-06-13T15:51:52.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the setting, the writer can use a conversational tone as a goal.&#xA;The sentence probably needs work if it sounds pretentious when spoken aloud, or requires a deep breath to get through.&#xA;Write with the reader in mind. However, even when the presumed audience is highly educated, readers are likely to prefer clarity over &quot;fancy&quot; language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16192" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T15:51:52.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8956" CreationDate="2016-06-13T15:58:55.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My colleague Rob Waters taught me the value of &quot;right-branching sentences.&quot;&#xA;Sentences work best when they begin with a subject and a verb. &#xA;Additional elements can follow if needed.&#xA;Ex. John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln in an act of cowardly treachery, then ran for his life.&#xA;Not: After shooting President Lincoln in an act of cowardly treachery, John Wilkes Booth ran for his life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16192" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T15:58:55.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23290" CreationDate="2016-06-13T16:19:18.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I applaud your ambition to develop the habit of writing every day. I now understand why you want exercises. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://writingexercises.co.uk/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WritingExercises.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; has a number of writing prompts and exercises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than worrying just about writing, you might want to think about spending some time editing every day in order to improve your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T16:19:18.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23311" CreationDate="2016-06-13T16:54:05.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agents are on commission as are you. Her question isn't entirely fair because it is generally assumed if you have no prior commitments with an agent or publisher, you may already have put out dozens of queries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since she asked, I would give a brief, complete, and honest answer without using specific brokerage names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dear Diane:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On Friday, June 10, 2016, you requested a partial manuscript to HEARTLESS. Attached is that manuscript. You also wished to know if there were other agents having requested and received submissions. As of Monday, June 13, 2016, I have communicated directly with four agencies including yourself and submitted one complete manuscript. That manuscript was sent electronically Monday, June 6, 2016.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thank you for your time and interest. I look forward to hearing from you.&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Malebranche&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;male@branche.edu&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;strong&gt;503-555-1212&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would put no more no less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the logic, she's probably just trying to plan her month. An agent who's just decided to read your book needs to reserve a full day of time for, say, every 40,000 words. An agent listed anywhere online as accepting submissions receives at least 15 queries a day.* Try not to let her logic psych you out; it is irrelevant in consideration of supply and demand. If you've gotten this far, congratulations, you've done better than 99%+ of aspiring authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;This information was taken from Jane Friedman's blog on publishing. She is an agent of the finest quality.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-06-13T22:50:09.673" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T22:50:09.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23328" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23343" CreationDate="2016-06-13T18:45:50.453" Score="0" ViewCount="559" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a story from a 3rd person perspective as the omniscient narrator. When my antagonist is revealed first, people believe him to be a certain person - X, not that any one says that to him  or confirms with him but they believe it amongst themselves. This is a major plot point in the novel and serves a major twist later on. I would like to make my readers believe that he in fact is X and not Y. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing this is well and good from other character's POV but when I'm writing from the antagonist's POV, I find it hard. In fact, even introducing him at beginning of the chapter presents a difficulty. I'm trying to retain the illusion when writing from the antagonist's POV, what are some of the tips that you can suggest ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;E.g. - A cool wind blew, ruffling his hair as he moved forward towards&#xA;  his destination. The target had eluded him, for so long but finally,&#xA;  vengeance was his, X of the elvish clan. He was the foremost of the&#xA;  Forsworn and he would not be denied his revenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastEditorDisplayName="user19346" LastEditDate="2016-06-15T16:34:53.967" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T18:58:59.420" Title="How can the antagonist mislead the readers?" Tags="|style|ideas|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23328" CreationDate="2016-06-13T19:04:21.617" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't name him in his own thoughts. (I'm going to add names here for ease of discussion.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vengeance was his, Garth of the Bill clan. He was the Foremost of the Forsworn&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But he's not actually Garth of the Bill clan. That's what he wants his enemy Dave to think. He's actually Wayne of the Ted clan. While Garth and Wayne are both Dave's enemies, Dave &lt;em&gt;thinks&lt;/em&gt; it's Garth after him (because Wayne has framed him). Wayne wants to get rid of Dave &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; Garth, and he's doing it by setting Dave and Garth against each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you use generic terms, and reference what &lt;em&gt;Dave&lt;/em&gt; is thinking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but finally, vengeance was his. He moved forward. The last thing Dave would see was Garth looming over him with the axe, ready to split his skull. And Debbie would run shrieking to the elders of the Carlin tribe that the Bill clan had begun their long-heralded attack at last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Revenge would be cool and sweet, like fresh juice at the end of a long day's stalk. The man [&lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; the hunter, the warrior, etc.] slipped forward through the long grass, barely parting the stalks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;revenge&amp;quot; is not just against Dave, but against Garth, because Dave's people, the Carlin tribe, will be going after Garth's people, the Bill clan. Neither will suspect Wayne. You can reveal that later. And you always refer to the antagonist in this scene with generic terms: the man, the hunter, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T19:04:21.617" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23330" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-14T05:51:08.257" Score="1" ViewCount="475" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many articles you read online start with random quotes and abstract thoughts or philosophy, not on the actual subject, but on things related to the subject, including a lot of personal opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I was reading articles on the performance of a particular graphics hardware. Almost all articles started off with an abstract talk about how NVIDIA was battling AMD and certain other moves by the manufacturer etc. It said what the writer thought about those moves taken by the company and then some poor assumptions of what the public thinks. It's almost as if the article writer is making a YouTube stream&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It took like 3-4 paragraphs of scrolling before the article actually showed something remotely close to the subject like how the hardware actually performs and even later it showed the actual figures and bar charts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mind that the title of the article was about that hardware test case and not about its company, rivals, company history, or market competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why do so many articles contain placeholder information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is due to a lack of quality control? Like big online magazines hiring dozens of low-quality writers so they have something to put out quickly all the time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19334" LastEditorUserId="39219" LastEditDate="2023-02-14T20:40:44.400" LastActivityDate="2023-02-19T01:31:49.393" Title="Why do most online articles get to their point only after 2 or more paragraphs?" Tags="|technique|structure|essay|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23331" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23333" CreationDate="2016-06-14T09:13:19.943" Score="1" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a short story which begins with the main character reading the lines of a book, and while he is reading, he often gets distracted by his won thoughts. He alternates between his thoughts and reading. &lt;strong&gt;I am writing the story in first person&lt;/strong&gt;. Since the lines of the book and his thoughts both have significance in the story, I wish to communicate both to the reader. How can I do this so that the reader is able to distinguish between his thoughts and lines of the book. I would appreciate if someone can also point me to an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19335" LastEditorUserId="19335" LastEditDate="2016-06-14T09:21:21.050" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T10:15:50.393" Title="Character alternating between his thoughts and reading a book" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23332" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-14T09:25:41.867" Score="1" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am still fairly new to writing, so I am bound to make plenty of mistakes.&#xA;The beginning goes like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The female protagonist wakes up in the morning after passing out at her female friend's house. She wakes her friend up, wanting an explanation.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I technically don't have a chance to describe the protagonist as I am writing in first person, but because I see the female friend as the narrator, with my own eyes, I end up describing her facial features, etc etc, before the protagonist's appearance is described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have considered that it would be weird for the reader to know about a more minor character's appearance first, rather than the main protagonist's, but I am not entirely sure if I am doing the wrong thing.&#xA;Is this something I shouldn't have done? Does this matter? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16394" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T10:52:50.423" Title="Is it okay to describe the protagonist's friend's appearance before the protagonist?" Tags="|fiction|technique|characters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23331" CreationDate="2016-06-14T10:15:50.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think emphasis can be very helpful. You need to make sure the reader knows when is he reading actions, when thoughts and when book. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I went on and read the book &quot;&lt;em&gt;I looked through the sky and there I saw it, a great bird...&lt;/em&gt;&quot; My bird, I still wonder sometimes where it went. Another sip from my coffee to continue. &quot;&lt;em&gt;I thought it's all gone&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of what I've read used the same font for thoughts and actions. A lot of them use emphasis when a flashback occurs. It's usually used to defer two narratives told one within another, like you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14838" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T10:15:50.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23332" CreationDate="2016-06-14T10:52:50.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing in first person, you would only write about what your POV character is seeing, thinking, feeling, experiencing. This means that unless she is looking in a mirror, or particularly self-conscious, she would not be thinking about her own appearance in great detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that it would make sense that she would notice her friend's appearance first. However, when I see my friends, I don't immediately assess their looks in my own head, unless something is different or notable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore unless her friend's appearance is particularly noteworthy, she wouldn't necessarily acknowledge that either. And unless the friend is an important character throughout the story, her appearance may not even need to be given in great detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore you could always begin with a minimal description of the friend from your protagonists perspective, and then bring it back to the main character's appearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps she wakes up her friend, who is lay down with her hair covering her face (opening up the opportunity to describe her hair, or note that something else looks out of place in her disheveled state). Then when the friend wakes up, she comments on something about the MC such as &quot;what's that on your face?&quot; or &quot;what happened to your nose?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then she can perhaps rush to the bathroom and look at herself in the mirror to assess her features, or maybe even just feel her face with her hands to find out what is on it, opening up the thought process of your protagonist to her own features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T10:52:50.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23330" CreationDate="2016-06-14T11:27:00.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that too. I'm certain it's because the first paragraph becomes the excerpt in Facebook (or LinkedIn or wherever). And because there's no useful information in the excerpt you're forced to click through to see the rest of the article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all about the clicks. All about the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T11:27:00.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23330" CreationDate="2016-06-14T15:05:20.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're sick of the '&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=nut%20graf&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;client=firefox-b&amp;amp;gfe_rd=cr&amp;amp;ei=7xlgV__GBIjS8AeF-qCoDA#safe=off&amp;amp;q=nut%20graf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;nut graf&lt;/a&gt;'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broadly speaking, it's a paragraph explaining why the topic is worthwhile. Writers are often trained to use it. It answers the question 'Why should anyone care about this article?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's potentially useful for a reader who happens on the article while browsing. But in your case, you're specifically &lt;em&gt;hunting&lt;/em&gt; for the information that follows — you already care — which is probably why, to you, it's just redundant introductory blather.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the other possible explanation is that the articles aren't very good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T15:05:20.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8956" CreationDate="2016-06-14T15:29:43.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might help to think of these phrases as &lt;em&gt;signposting&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too much signposting will clutter the landscape and obscure the view. Whether that's the mountains, or the ideas in an essay, obscuring them is bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, judicious use of signposting can help the reader parse what you're saying. (For example, the chances are that in your mind, you effortlessly arranged that sentence opposite to the one before it, because I slipped in &lt;em&gt;on the other hand&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Used well, signposting will clarify your students' writing, not clog it. My advice would be to coach them to think about it like this: if the signpost is helping the reader to navigate complex ideas, great. If it's adding nothing but wordcount, then it deserves the chop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T15:29:43.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23315" CreationDate="2016-06-14T16:19:41.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What strikes me on reading your opening paragraph is that you have a dozen abstract nouns and no concrete ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Somewhere in the &lt;strong&gt;transition&lt;/strong&gt; from &lt;strong&gt;print&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;electronica&lt;/strong&gt;, our news-generating &lt;strong&gt;process&lt;/strong&gt; broke down. Today, we have in place an incentive &lt;strong&gt;system&lt;/strong&gt; that awards &lt;strong&gt;viewership&lt;/strong&gt;, and thus &lt;strong&gt;revenue&lt;/strong&gt;, on grounds of ethical &lt;strong&gt;flexibility&lt;/strong&gt; over journalistic &lt;strong&gt;integrity&lt;/strong&gt;. It is a process that subverts the &lt;strong&gt;underpinnings&lt;/strong&gt; of good &lt;strong&gt;reporting&lt;/strong&gt; — &lt;strong&gt;accuracy&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;objectivity&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;impartiality&lt;/strong&gt; for practically all &lt;strong&gt;things&lt;/strong&gt; pursuant to &lt;strong&gt;clicks&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;shares&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing concrete here — nothing I can &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; in my mind's eye. Imagine your first line were something like &lt;em&gt;Gone is the age when printers arranged the news in little blocks of lead.&lt;/em&gt; Okay, it's hardly an inspiring first line — but do you see how all of a sudden there's an element the reader can picture? I can &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; little blocks of lead, in a way that I can't see the abstract idea of 'flexibility' or 'underpinnings'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you getting the difference? Concrete nouns slip more easily into your reader's brain. They're much, &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; easier to latch on to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract nouns are important — they help you express complex, interesting ideas — but your writing will be strongest with a balance. If your first three sentences contain seventeen (seventeen!) different abstract nouns, and no concrete ones, there's a good chance your reader's eyes will glaze over. But if you understand this, you can write better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T16:19:41.863" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23341" CreationDate="2016-06-14T16:58:02.100" Score="1" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;I try to, but always end up shutting down and thinking it's stupid. Especially when I haven't been writing it for long. Help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T17:24:56.887" Title="How do I successfully describe a story?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23362" CreationDate="2016-06-14T17:21:33.633" Score="1" ViewCount="3932" Body="&lt;p&gt;The concept of my story is that i would rewrite the story of the first ever vampire in a medieval setting, and from two perspectives, one from the vampire's friend and brothers in arms, and the other from the vampire itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The climax of the story is supposed to be during a confrontation between the two warring kingdoms, where the sheer amount of blood makes the vampire completely mad to the point where he can no longer keep up appearances, where he goes on a rampage, murdering friend and foe alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with my idea is that this scene is supposed to be told from the point of view of the friend, who has no idea what is going on. &#xA;Every time i try to describe the vampire and his actions it feels too &quot;familiar&quot;. Basically, how do i describe the cliche &quot;Red eyes, sharp teeth, lust for blood&quot; as if it was completely new and mysterious?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The idea is that the description feels foreign even for the reader, who has a vague knowledge of that character's &quot;vampirism&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19342" LastEditorUserId="19342" LastEditDate="2016-06-14T17:27:10.813" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T19:34:15.117" Title="How do i describe a vampire from the perspective of someone who has no idea what they are?" Tags="|fiction|description|horror|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23339" CreationDate="2016-06-14T17:24:56.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, this is kind of a broad question, but i suggest trying to pinpoint exactly what you find stupid about it, and seeing how you can make it less stupid. &#xA;Maybe think of plans for future characters or future conflicts, think about what's cool about your villain, etc.&#xA;Unfortunately, there is no set answer for &quot;How do i story&quot;. You just have to write and see what comes out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19342" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T17:24:56.887" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23328" CreationDate="2016-06-14T18:01:40.113" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This comes from a novice author, so take it with a pinch of salt, but here goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not 100% clear which perspective you're writing from (you've mentioned omniscient as well as individual characters' POVs), but it sounds like you're using what's often called 'third-person limited'. The narrative says 'he/she', but follows the viewpoint and experiences of one character at a time. While you're with a given character, you're inside his/her head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you're writing from the antagonist's perspective, he needs to be called by the name &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; uses for himself. Inside my head, I don't think of myself as 'the man', 'the skinny writer', 'the gormless manchild'. I think of myself as 'Andrew'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Therefore: whatever the antagonist calls himself inside his own head, that's what you have to call him, while the narrative is in his head. If you do anything else, you're cheating your readers and they'll ditch you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Say the antagonist's name is Lord Evildeeds. For simplicity's sake, say that's also how he thinks of himself. In the narrative, while you're in his perspective, you call him Lord Evildeeds.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You want your readers to believe that Lord Evildeeds is Person X.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Introduce them to the idea that a person X exists. Somewhere. Who could it be? They want to know! The mystery is driving your plot forward.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give them new information which suggests Lord Evildeeds is Person X. Don't say it outright! If you lie to them, you've cheated. The twist won't be satisfying. Give them just enough that &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; jump to the conclusion you want. However you do it, be clever. Be interesting. Make them piece multiple things together to work it out. Make it so good this itself feels like the twist. Never have Lord Evildeeds think 'I am Person X,' because he &lt;em&gt;knows&lt;/em&gt; he's not, and you can't lie to them - you have to let your readers jump to that conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once you're back inside other characters' heads, you can say outright that Lord Evildeeds is Person X, if that's what they believe.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When it's time for the reveal, give your readers new information. Something that shows, at last, that they jumped to conclusions. Lord Evildeeds was never Person X, he was Person Y! Your readers are flabbergasted. They are impressed with your cunning. They suspect you, the author, highly attractive to your chosen sex. Because you didn't lie to them, you just outsmarted them. They realise, in retrospect, that Lord Evildeeds never actually said he was Person X. Of course he didn't! &lt;em&gt;He&lt;/em&gt; knew all along.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However you set up the reveal at 8, it has to be even more clever and interesting than the reveal at 6. This is why they like your book.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All of that: easier said than done? Erm... yes, probably. But that's why you want to be a writer, right?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastEditorUserId="18324" LastEditDate="2016-06-14T19:28:51.793" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T19:28:51.793" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23347" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23364" CreationDate="2016-06-14T23:27:49.097" Score="0" ViewCount="2127" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, in my story, a main character gets sick with a virus. (Not a real one). I alternate POV's, and she is one of my favorite to write. I'm pretty sure her mindset would change slightly. But how? Please help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T09:17:25.903" Title="How to write a sick character?" Tags="|creative-writing|voice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23348" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-14T23:29:07.640" Score="1" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;So guys. I have a great idea for a book. And have been working on it for quite some time. The plot is kind of surrounding some government conspiracy theories in a more futuristic way. Basically a group of people came together in the early 1940s and the group has been passed down to some of the original founders children. It'll tell the story of how the group investigated each &quot;conspiracy theory&quot; at the time it occurred  and showing how it was planned by the government for control and or fear. It's hard to explain really, im sorry if I come across as confusing to some. But. After I finish it, do you think it's too radical to try to publish? Given its plot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19350" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T15:07:47.140" Title="Question about a plot." Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-06-23T07:25:25.620" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4705" CreationDate="2016-06-15T01:03:34.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I do is usually just sit down and write without thinking, then edit it later. I have a basic idea of a story, but it usually just happens as I go along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T01:03:34.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8013" CreationDate="2016-06-15T02:13:06.357" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe just black? Probably not helpful, so here's more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coal Black&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can't - see - A - thing Black. &#xA;Hope this helped! (Probably not)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T02:13:06.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12813" CreationDate="2016-06-15T02:16:12.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not unless it drives the story forward. Do not describe every outfit the MC puts on, puh-lease! It gets annoying. If they're looking in a mirror, maybe, but otherwise I don't see a reason for it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T02:16:12.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10751" CreationDate="2016-06-15T02:19:44.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have described the personalities of characters upfront before, but I also left that manuscript to die, so yeah. If you want to, you can have another character describe one or two traits, but I would let their actions (and if it's first person, their thoughts) describe the rest. Hope this helped!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T02:19:44.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9365" CreationDate="2016-06-15T02:23:36.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would hardly call myself an &quot;experienced writer&quot;, but here we go. I feel like slow motion could be a good idea, but a lot of the time car crashes are very fast, and you can't really decipher what happens afterwards. So in conclusion, slow motion can be a good idea, just not in that specific scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T02:23:36.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23355" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23515" CreationDate="2016-06-15T02:35:54.257" Score="0" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, so I have two characters, and they are very snappy to each other (as they  are to everyone) and yet I'm planning a romance between them that hasn't emerged yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a little bit of conversation between the two after the girl became sick and the boy is acting as her caretaker:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I woke up to Thomas staring at me from a chair across the room. &quot;Go away, I'm fine,&quot; I snapped. He replied with &quot;I'm sorry, do you have memory loss as well? Because last I checked, you couldn't stand,&quot; I glared at him. &quot;Why are you still here anyway, I'm pretty sure all I've been so far is rude&quot; I asked. He shrugged &quot;I like being close to you,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's actually pretty far along in the story, and Thomas' statement &quot;I like being close to you&quot; comes dangerously close to exposing the truth. How do I tell when (now, a bit later, or much later) to bring it out into the open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-06-25T04:31:40.327" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T18:35:58.893" Title="When to expose a hidden romance between two very snappy characters?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|romance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2016-06-25T18:36:43.953" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19767" CreationDate="2016-06-15T02:39:46.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a problem for a lot of writer. My advice is to incorporate  as many as you can with the story still making sense. The rest just need to be discarded, or put into another that story. Hope this helped!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T02:39:46.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12370" CreationDate="2016-06-15T02:52:56.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's absolutely fine. I have seen many famous authors end a book on a cliffhanger and no one cares. For example, Margaret Peterson Haddix (I think that's her name) wrote her book Turnabout, in which case it ends in total uncertainty with a cliffhanger. So yeah, go ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T02:52:56.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23340" CreationDate="2016-06-15T04:57:59.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You said the scene was from the POV of the friend, who I am assuming doesn't know he's a vampire. Maybe instead of Red eyes and sharp teeth, you could describe something else. As for luster for bloof, maybe reword it? I'm pretty sure I didn't help at all, but,hey, I tried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T04:57:59.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16324" CreationDate="2016-06-15T05:06:08.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The character doesn't have to be &quot;normal&quot; to be relatable. I have read books where the character is the leader of the rebellion and is still more relatable than a character I read that was middle school fiction. The character just has to have feelings that are appropriate for the situation, and have a well rounded personality. No one will relate to a Mary Sue that is always happy even if their best friend just died. Hope this helped!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T05:06:08.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2888" CreationDate="2016-06-15T05:11:55.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not been in any kind of trauma, but here we go. You said the protag. is in shock. There is a change they would experience &quot;survivor's guilt&quot;(If I'm reading this right). It happens when everyone else in the party dies and the patient doesn't. The patient then tends to think it's unfair, and that they should have gone as well. I probably didn't help at all, but at least you got a psychology lesson!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T05:11:55.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23348" CreationDate="2016-06-15T07:11:39.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plenty of novels revolving around government conspiracies have been published already, just look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Who_Kicked_the_Hornets%27_Nest&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The girl who kicked the hornet nest&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Soylent Green&lt;/a&gt; (those are the first examples I could think about).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your novel won't be seen as a radical, because &lt;em&gt;it's fiction&lt;/em&gt;. If you wanted to write a non-fiction book presenting conspiracy theories as true, you could maybe have trouble finding a publisher, and even in this case it wouldn't be impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to not worry too much about people misinterpreting your story, and focus on writing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T07:11:39.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23340" CreationDate="2016-06-15T08:28:55.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If this doesn't help, sorry. I tried.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just don't dumb it down too much. The guy doesn't know what a vampire is, but he isn't a complete imbecile. The readers already know what a vampire is, no need to explain it to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: how does his friend know he has a lust for blood, maybe he's just really violent? Don't imply it right at the start. Usually people get it wrong the first time. Don't give him the answers, if that makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: don't dumb it down, we already know what a vampire is. Also, use logical deductions &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; would make to reach the logical conclusion &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; makes. Work your way to the conclusion w/ him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically put him in your shoes. Think of it like acting, if that helps: you're the actor, and the vampire's friend is the character you're playing. When actors act, usually it isn't just reading lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, actors examine their characters: what are their goals, what do they want, how do they reach their goal, what's happening, what is the context, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So , in other words, be like an actor, I guess.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19352" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T08:28:55.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23340" CreationDate="2016-06-15T11:03:18.703" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say that the reader also don't really know the character vampirism, so are you just going to jump from nothing to your climax, where his vampirism will be revealed ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, I think a climax is efficient when it comes after a crescendo : some indications of the character vampirism, growing suspiscions from the part of his friend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think it would be difficult to hide it from the reader, but since you don't want the friend to be aware of you character true nature (despite all the clues) it can be intresting to let the reader know that secret before the friend, so he will anticipate the moment everything will be clearly revealed, and then you climax will be a real apotheosis !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T11:03:18.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23347" CreationDate="2016-06-15T11:18:01.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put yourself at her place !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make her first observe some symptoms, without paying a real attention, it has to be small details, you don't even have to make it like she is noticing, like she sees something in her eye but she thinks it's because she did'nt sleep enough, or she feels weak that afternoon, or her cat acts strangely in her presence  etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But slowly bigger symptoms will appear, ans she will begin to suspect something !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, are you writing a realistic story or a SF story ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T11:18:01.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23365" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23522" CreationDate="2016-06-15T13:26:01.660" Score="3" ViewCount="742" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to further explain my intent here. I'm writing down some procedures in operating manuals and servicing manuals. I mostly use numbered lists and sometimes just bulleted lists. Recently I started to realize that some of the steps that I've written were in fact not ordered steps but parallel processes. My first reaction to correct those problems was to merge such steps into one step and describe the simultaneous character of the processes in the step explanation itself but this solution turned out to create very ugly and long procedure explanations. This problem is best seen in the textual parts of how-to processes in a flowchart's text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is if there are common practices to write parallel processes in a step-by-step procedure. I saw some kind of visual solutions before which combined the use of boxes in a flowchart-like outline but when you already write step explanations for how-to steps of a flowchart this solution doesn't apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry for the late reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple example would be something like this (this is a manual check procedure for the service technicians, it's not meant for the operators of the machine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Turn on the air pipeline input vane  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Check if the indicator arm moves to the set value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two procedures have to be performed simultaneously. The valve used to turn the input vane and the vane's indicator arm aren't placed in close vicinity (the technician can observe the arm's movement from where they turn the manual valve), so at first we thought of explaining them in two separate steps. We also have accompanying videos for them which use the same text as subtitle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To solve the visual part of this problem recently I've come to the conclusion to split the video scene in two and show these steps side-by-side whilst displaying the combined text as one big ugly subtitle text underneath of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the textual part still remains to be a problem. If I merge the steps then I would need to combine them with conjunction words or maybe re-structure the following sentences with word groups like &quot;at the same time&quot;, &quot;whilst&quot;, &quot;during&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10460" LastEditorUserId="10460" LastEditDate="2016-06-23T09:54:22.240" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T03:05:16.293" Title="How to structure the text when describing the steps of a procedure which has simultaneous processes?" Tags="|technical-writing|structure|process|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23348" CreationDate="2016-06-15T15:07:47.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yeah, I think its fine. Almost any idea is viable in fiction because well, its fiction. Don't worry at this point on people not understanding it well, because people will probably understand it if you explain it properly throughout the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That brings me to this point. You said you could not explain it well. I think that before you begin it, you should make sure you 100% understand your idea and are able to make a synopsis, in which you can explain it without difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T15:07:47.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23367" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-15T15:19:56.527" Score="2" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I was thinking, and I've been wondering if some ideas are so overused readers don't get the 'thrill' of reading them anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm really into last-man-standing type novels, I love them. I've written one, and I'm planning on writing another, but my question is, is this idea too overused? &lt;em&gt;The Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt; uses it, and I'm sure plenty of other novels do too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've written one major practice novel at this point, and two littler ones that aren't as long. Considering I love this type of writing so much, I want to be able to write and publish my own last-man-standing novel. Even if I have my own unique ideas and plot to make my book special, it still revolves around the fact that only one of the 24 people entered shall remain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can ideas be used so much that even if you have your own little plot and mechanics to it, readers don't get engrossed because they've read it so much? I understand that every writer writes uniquely, but, is it possible for such a scenario to happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T16:58:57.103" Title="Are some ideas too cliched?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|cliches|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23367" CreationDate="2016-06-15T15:45:00.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hunger games surely weren't the first novel with this theme (there was battle royale, for example) but it works and people love it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid of overused ideas, because common themes are everywhere anyway, instead, try to make your book stand out because of the details, of the characters, the conflicts, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example (and now i will go into a topic that is separated from books, but serve to tell a story nonetheless) the anime and game Danganronpa follows the guidelines for a &quot;Last man standing&quot; story completely. A bunch of teenagers, trapped in a place, where they can only escape if they kill each other, pretty standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It stands out in the small things, to the point where i believe it to be one of the best stories in this genre. I can't go on detail on &lt;em&gt;How&lt;/em&gt; it does it, both because of spoilers and because it would deviate from the theme of the question, but let me summarize:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;INTERESTING CHARACTERS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a story with this concept ALL of the character must be interesting, no exception. Be it Katniss with her bow, Kazuo (from battle royale) with his UZI (and overall badassery), or Gundham (from Danganronpa) with his oddities, The characters must be memorable, because when an interesting character dies, that's when it stings, and these are all stories about characters dying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the 3 stories cited above have almost the &lt;strong&gt;EXACT SAME THEME&lt;/strong&gt;, yet they are uniquely amazing in their own ways, but most importantly, through well built, memorable, and likeable characters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19342" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T15:45:00.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22143" CreationDate="2016-06-15T16:40:52.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;So basically, the question is, how can she change her mind on fate, given that she takes every event that happens to her as fated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a tough one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, a turning point here could be an intellectual one. Let's assume, as you mentioned, she believes she's not fated to meet a kind man.&#xA;Rather than having events prove her wrong by introducing her to a kind man, despite her expectations, perhaps you could try changing her mind on the matter, by seeing how unreasonable her belief is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This starts with emotions, then thought, then conviction changes slowly, almost imperceptibly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- she meets a person who has a similar, more extreme belief, in fate&#xA;2- that person makes a bad, or a series of bad decisions that the main character sees as ridiculous and wrong.&#xA;3- such decision ruin the character's life in some way (death? suicide?), which affects the main character emotionally.&#xA;4- This leads to her blaming her friend's silly notions &#xA;5- then a realization of similarities in concept, if not in form&#xA;6- the main character revises her own beliefs.&#xA;7- The main character makes a decision. Remain in the comfort of old beliefs, or get rid of them, even if driven only by grief and doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important part here, in my opinion, is the decision. That is what would make a reader relate to the main character or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, this is my take on it. Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18443" LastEditorUserId="18443" LastEditDate="2016-07-02T18:25:56.960" LastActivityDate="2016-07-02T18:25:56.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23367" CreationDate="2016-06-15T16:58:57.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're fine. There are only so many plots, so go ahead and write the book you want to write because you love it. Remember that there are always new readers coming along who &lt;em&gt;haven't&lt;/em&gt; read or seen all the other stories with that plot, so maybe for some people you'll be the first and &lt;em&gt;The Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt; will be the clich&amp;eacute;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T16:58:57.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23371" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-15T18:43:49.060" Score="1" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it very uncommon or out of place to mix your own opinions within the story lines? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it uncommon to change the tone from third person and talk to the reader directly? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read many tips on letting the readers come to conclusions themselves.  But sometimes it helps talking to the reader directly and describe how the characters feel. Or sometimes it just helps to make a quick point within the story. Any tips on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any name for this style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As he hugged her one more time, Andrew whispered: &quot;I'm sure I'll see&#xA;  you soon Linda&quot;, knowing very well that this is the last time they will ever&#xA;  meet. She nodded and vaguely smiled at him without saying anything. He touched her face, kissed her on the lips and left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a moment in your life that you make a hard choice, knowing the consequences might hurt someone, but you still make it because of a greater good. In those situations if you respect them you try to be as honest as possible. Andrew, however, couldn't help but lying. He lied not to make it easier for Linda, but to make it easier on himself. Looking her in the eyes and telling the truth was beyond his courage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8611" LastEditorUserId="8611" LastEditDate="2016-06-15T19:19:16.150" LastActivityDate="2016-11-01T09:07:02.577" Title="Mixing essay-like opinions with the story" Tags="|fiction|style|novel|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23371" CreationDate="2016-06-15T20:04:26.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the reader is firmly in the character's POV, and expects to remain firmly in the character's POV, this is jarring and can throw the reader right out of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reader is firmly in an omniscient, opinionated narrator's POV, and is prepared to dip in and out of characters' heads, this works just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this to work, you have to prep the reader to expect it. Begin the pattern early in the story, and do it often enough that the reader experiences it as part of the tone of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Given that dipping in and out of characters' heads is &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; difficult to do well...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another alternative is to stay firmly in the character's head, to put the dilemma into the POV character's thoughts. In your example, the moment between the hug and the lie are a perfect spot for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader will understand that this is a universal thing. And putting it into the POV character's thoughts keeps it personal, and helps the reader to &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt; the principle rather than merely reading about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Odd but true: The more personal you make a dilemma for the character, the more universal it becomes for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2016-06-15T20:13:34.460" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T20:13:34.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22135" CreationDate="2016-06-15T20:20:12.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This what I do: I give what I have to someone I trust to tell me truth. If they like it, it gives me motivation to keep writing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I hope this helped!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T20:20:12.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23328" CreationDate="2016-06-15T21:09:20.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would avoid using the antagonist's POV if you want him to remain a mystery.  In &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,&lt;/em&gt; one of the main characters is referred to throughout as person X, but is eventually revealed as person Y in disguise.  This only works (to the extent that it actually does) because the series sticks closely to Harry's POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're really dedicated to including significant amounts of the antagonist's POV, the only ways I see to do it well is for him to either actually be convinced he's X, or for him to be such a dedicated method actor that he habitually thinks of himself as X.  It's tricky, but possible to pull off a scenario like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, you're limited to using brief sections of the antagonist POV that could work as well for X as for Y.  The one good side of that is you could use those sections to drop subtle clues about the antagonist's true identity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-06-16T18:58:59.420" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T18:58:59.420" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17731" CreationDate="2016-06-15T22:42:09.440" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is rather common for good feedback and opinion to be mixed. I can't really help you if you put it online, but if you show it to people you know well, you will be able to tell if they are giving good criticism  and not opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This doesn't help, but I tried&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T22:42:09.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22238" CreationDate="2016-06-15T22:52:27.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice (Probably not helpful advice, but still)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make the character relatable&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You have probably heard this a million times, but it is important. Many readers, including me, are turned off by relatable characters. And I've also learned &quot;relatable&quot; does not mean &quot;average&quot;. The character could be the leader of an empire, but they're still human. They have good points, and they have flaws. It's a part of life. You &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to flesh out your chatacters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not let the character take backseat&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;It is a character driven story. The character is as important as the plot, if not more. I have seen too often the following scenario: The plot takes over, and the character is forgotten. The character is still there, they're just leaning back and watching. This cannot happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hope this helped!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T22:52:27.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17615" CreationDate="2016-06-16T01:40:36.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possibly, maybe 1 or 2 chapters. However, be warned. The critique online isn't the best by far. In fact, it's usually the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T01:40:36.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23385" CreationDate="2016-06-16T02:23:22.737" Score="1" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, in the case of this sentence:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I drove past the empty stables and servant's quarters, and after another quarter mile I entered a very large circular driveway.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it implied that both entities, &lt;strong&gt;the stables&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;the servant's quarters&lt;/strong&gt; are empty? Or do I have &lt;em&gt;empty&lt;/em&gt; stables and &lt;em&gt;servant's quarters&lt;/em&gt; that may or may not be occupied?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I assert that both are empty without sounding redundant? I don't want to do this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I drove past &lt;strong&gt;the empty stables and the empty servant's quarters&lt;/strong&gt;, and after another quarter mile I entered a very large circular driveway.&lt;/em&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18990" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-06-16T16:22:39.370" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T16:22:39.370" Title="Description: How to apply an adjective to a list of nouns without seeming redundant?" Tags="|style|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23379" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-16T02:58:52.483" Score="0" ViewCount="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story that has a character telling a story in this story, they mention a label from a statue they remember vividly, can I write the label in a separate paragraph. I've noticed other books put pieces of information such as poetry into separate paragraphs and italicised, but I don't know if this can be done though a character's dialogue. I'd rather not write the label of the statue in a regular sentence, I want it in a separate paragraph, am I allowed to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, could I do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I entered the courtyard and there stood a statue inscribed with words&#xA;  that I will never forget&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Warrior Boobikay 1900 - 2000 bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla. bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla&#xA;  bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla&#xA;  bla bla bla bla bla bla.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And that I shall never forget. Bla.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1541" LastEditorUserId="1541" LastEditDate="2016-06-16T08:57:57.283" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T10:04:43.887" Title="Inserting piece of writing into a character's dialogue" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23378" CreationDate="2016-06-16T05:18:55.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply choose another adjective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I drove past the empty stables and the deserted servant's quarters, and after another quarter mile I entered a very large circular driveway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or break up the sentence so that you can group them together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both the stables and the servant's quaters were empty as I drove by. After another quarter mile I entered a very large circular driveway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T05:18:55.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23328" CreationDate="2016-06-16T05:43:17.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't mislead the reader. It is a cheap trick that will leave the reader unsatisfied and disinclined to trust you as an author. This does not mean you cannot have surprise, but the surprise should be produced by the logical progress of the story, not by artificially withholding information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself, whose story is this. There may be surprises in the course of unfolding that person's story. They may be as surprising to the reader as they are to the character. But if you are telling a person's story and withholding information to create an artificial surprise for the reader alone, that is dishonest storytelling and the reader will not thank you for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T05:43:17.243" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23382" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23384" CreationDate="2016-06-16T05:52:54.983" Score="2" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are two lines of dialog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't know what order to put this in,&quot; says Max.&#xA;&quot;I don't know what order to put this in,&quot; Max says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When is it better to use one over the other? Is one preferred over the other in writing? Should you keep the same order throughout the entire piece? If you should swap the order are there rules about when it would be good to use one over the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8618" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T14:36:16.203" Title="The order of says in the present tense" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23382" CreationDate="2016-06-16T08:28:25.473" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; you can use whichever you want, and there's no need to be consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer:&lt;/strong&gt; you could, in theory, choose between them every time based on which works better — maybe if you really, really want to save the reveal of who's speaking until the last word for maximum punch — but honestly, I wouldn't overthink it. They're semantically identical, and any effect on your rhythm or cadence will be negligible. Unless you're writing poetry, your reader will barely register whether you used one or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other ways to attribute dialogue, of course, and playing around with these will give you much more control over your impact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'Your hat's on fire,' said Eleanor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eleanor said, 'Your hat's on fire.'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'Your hat,' Eleanor said, 'is on fire.'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eleanor said: 'Your hat's on fire.'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also use no attribution at all, if it's already clear who's speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Your hat's on fire,' Eleanor said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Pardon?' said Jack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Your hat. It's on fire.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a good way to maintain pace. It also creates a lot of white space on the page, which readers like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you can use blocking and description to make clear who's speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Your hat's on fire,' Eleanor said. Jack waved a hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'My hat collection? Sweetie, the entire case is made of fire-resistant glass. It's state-of-the-art, brand new, there's no way it could–'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'No, your hat.' Eleanor pointed. 'The one on your head.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Oh! I &lt;em&gt;thought&lt;/em&gt; it was warm.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these are correct and have their place, but this last one in particular is a great way to achieve economy of words. If you resist the urge to be lazy with your beats, you can do much in a short space, and your readers will never have a chance to get bored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T10:12:13.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23378" CreationDate="2016-06-16T09:07:39.323" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the simplest way to achieve this is to say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I drove past the stables and the servants' quarters, both empty&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would personally avoid using a synonym like 'deserted' — functionally, you're just repeating 'empty', and most readers will notice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One question, though. It's not what you asked, but since you're recasting your sentence to mention that the servants' quarters are empty, I'm guessing it's important: is this building glass-fronted? If your character's passing on the road, how can he/she tell there's no-one inside? Be careful you're not making a POV error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, one last suggestion, then I promise to go away! If it's particularly important that the buildings are empty, consider breaking the sentence in the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I drove past the stables and servants' quarters, both empty. After another quarter mile, I entered a large, circular driveway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Information that comes at the end of a sentence will stick better in the reader's brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T09:07:39.323" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23379" CreationDate="2016-06-16T10:04:43.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've almost got it — you need to add a few more quote marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have quote marks for dialogue. In American English that's a double quote (&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When something is quoted within dialogue, you nest single quotes (').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a person is speaking in paragraphs, you have opening quotes on all paragraphs, but closing quotes &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; on the last paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific to your example, I would be okay with using italics to indicate that the material which the speaker is quoting (') aloud (&amp;quot;) is being read. Throw in a few words to help the reader out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I entered the courtyard and there stood a statue inscribed with words that I will never forget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It said: &lt;em&gt;'Warrior Boobikay 1900–2000 bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla. bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla.'&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;And that I shall never forget. Bla.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an example which isn't being read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Martin Luther King gave many inspirational speeches and offered powerful words of hope. I have often been moved by his eloquence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In addition to the famous 'I have a dream' speech, King also said 'Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I hope that someday my words can be as inspiring as Dr. King's.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T10:04:43.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23389" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23391" CreationDate="2016-06-16T12:18:59.667" Score="1" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any legitimate use for using bold to emphasize something in written speech within a sentence? I understand that bold can be used for formatting and highlighting, but I am looking to understand whether bold is meaningful within a sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, marking a date as bold is something I consider as highlighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding so far is that bold is used in lack of proper text structure that would otherwise provide the desired emphasis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is purely about boldface and not about italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19364" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T13:37:33.777" Title="Are there legitimate uses for using bold for emphasis within a sentence?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10643" CreationDate="2016-06-16T13:27:50.197" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all comes down to the familiarity of the audience with the interface. The words of a procedure describe parts of the interface. Will the audience immediately recognize which parts of the interface those words refer to? If yes, then screenshots are unnecessary and will simply slow the reader down. If no, then you need a way to show the reader which part of the interface the words refer to, and a screenshot is one way to do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As computers have become more ubiquitous, interfaces have become more standardized, and people do more and more activities on the computer, people have become more familiar with interfaces and thus more likely to recognize what the words in the procedure refer to. Thus we have more shortcuts like File &gt; Print, because people now know what that means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a universal phenomena here: as products become ubiquitous and users become experienced with them, the need for documentation diminishes, and may eventually disappear altogether. Thousands of products ship with no documentation other than that demanded by lawyers. It is all about where your product fits on the familiarity scale with its intended audience. This affects far more than just the decision about screenshots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are still specific cases in which the audience may not know what the words in the procedure mean. If the audience is inexperienced or the interface is non-standard, the reader may not recognize what the words mean and you should use screen shots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, there may be small parts of the interface that are non-standard, meaning you should use screenshots for those parts and not for others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, therefore, use them where you anticipate that a significant portion of you audience may need them, and otherwise not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2018-06-08T11:30:45.170" LastActivityDate="2018-06-08T11:30:45.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23389" CreationDate="2016-06-16T13:37:33.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bold is one way to emphasize something in a sentence. Recasting the sentence to put the emphasis where you want it is another method. Is one preferable to another? I'm not sure. The point of any writing is to communicate your point clearly and if using bold does that, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conventional practice, however, seems to shy away from it in published work. You very rarely see bold used for emphasis in books or magazines. For technical material, you often see bold used to call out text from a different source, such as words appearing on a computer display. Obviously if you are using bold for this purpose, it would be confusing to also use it for emphasis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One the other hand, in quick communication, where the writer may not have the time or the skill to recast, then the use of bold to clarify meaning is common and I see no reason to object to it if gets the job done. It is also commonly used on signs, where the emphasis is on reducing the amount of text to a minimum, and recasting for emphasis might increase word count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T13:37:33.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2845" CreationDate="2016-06-16T14:29:23.750" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that the newest, and in my view most promising, trend is in the use of lightweight markup languages, specifically &lt;strong&gt;Markdown&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;reStructuredText&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;ASCIIDoc&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both commercial WYSIWYG tools like &lt;strong&gt;FrameMaker&lt;/strong&gt; and XML vocabularies like &lt;strong&gt;DocBook&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;DITA&lt;/strong&gt; require complex and somewhat cumbersome editors and tend to clutter the writing experience with either formatting or structural conformance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lightweight languages, by contrast, can be written in the text editor of your choice with little overhead, and the source format is very readable, unlike XML. All three have well supported tool chains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don't have the capacity for structural constraints that you find in an XML application, but you did not indicate the need for that. For ease of writing a technical paper with reasonable support for things like math, using inexpensive or free tools, I would look at either reStructuredText or ASCIIDoc (Markdown is more simplistic and more oriented to simple web pages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="36742" LastEditDate="2021-01-04T14:47:30.243" LastActivityDate="2021-01-04T14:47:30.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23382" CreationDate="2016-06-16T14:36:16.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that one is preferred over the other or that you have to be consistent. However, I do believe that they signal something slightly different, at least in certain locales. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the England I grew up in, &quot;says Max&quot; signals that Max's interjection is unexpected or cheeky. It might be used where a child interjects something into an adult conversation, for instance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether that subtlety is more widespread or still current, however, is more than I can say. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T14:36:16.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23394" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23412" CreationDate="2016-06-16T17:26:51.763" Score="1" ViewCount="915" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story where the main character gets burned pretty badly. He's admitted into the hospital, and he's on a trolley, which is moving. He just got in, and he's in critical condition. I'm thinking third degree burns (he got lit on fire by a barrel of gasoline.) There &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; doctors around him, and they're are where the dialogue comes from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the problem is: I don't know hospital jargon/dialogue. He just got admitted, remember. I also don't know how they would treat him, and what procedures they would perform on the spot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19352" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T20:36:36.823" Title="Need help with hospital dialogue" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23394" CreationDate="2016-06-16T19:49:47.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like writing hospital scenes. Can't help with the treatment, but from my experience there are two types of doctors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The sugarcoat &#xA;These tend to have dialogue like &quot;You'll be just fine!&quot; and &quot;It's not even that bad!&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The honest one&#xA;These people will tell it as it is, no doubt about it. They cut right to the point, and will not lie about the patients condition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience, every hospital has one of each. Which one your character will get, you choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hope this helped!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T19:49:47.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23396" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23399" CreationDate="2016-06-16T19:56:42.097" Score="9" ViewCount="2429" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard quite a few complaints about character deaths being used to further the plot. They say it's boring and overdone and mention that there are plenty of other ways to get to the same point &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; killing off a character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel that involves the death of an important character, which is integral to the plot. I am not killing her off for &quot;shock value,&quot; to make the main character sad/angry/depressed, or to make my novel &quot;dark.&quot; This character has a very high-ranking position and has been the prime target for the enemy group since the beginning of the novel (and everyone is aware of this). Despite the efforts taken to protect her, she dies anyway, and her death triggers many other events that could not happen if she was anything but dead. The main character, for example, undergoes great change, and everyone else falls into a state of chaos after losing their leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried thinking of alternatives in which she doesn't die, but these alternatives don't quite deliver the same effect, and it would be very difficult (if not impossible, in some cases) to get the same places in my plot if she did not die. After all my consideration,  death still seems like the best route to take for this character... but then, I have read things from other people saying that death for the sake of furthering the plot is bad writing. My issue here is that if there was no death, there would be no plot. So is the whole &quot;death used to further the plot = bad/boring/overdone&quot; thing really true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastActivityDate="2021-03-10T14:53:30.153" Title="Is killing a character to further the plot necessarily a bad thing?" Tags="|characters|plot|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23396" CreationDate="2016-06-16T20:18:52.550" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the key:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;these alternatives don't quite deliver the same effect&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the alternatives don't create the effect you want in the reader, they're not good alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If killing the character creates the effect you want in the reader, kill the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust your instincts. You're a storyteller. You know what you are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-06-16T21:27:07.107" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T21:27:07.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23396" CreationDate="2016-06-16T21:26:01.513" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is one rule in writing from which everything else stems: you write for the reader. However, from that rule, you can deduce that if you turn out a novel that you know could have been better, you are cheating the reader from reading it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've examined other possible routes which do not include the character's death, but you've found that none of them have the same effect. That's all you need. If those other routes weaken your novel, &lt;em&gt;do not use them.&lt;/em&gt; Turn out the best novel you can, deaths or no deaths. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the whole 'death to further the plot is bad' thing.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to realize that a lot of authors have no idea what they are doing. Even some of the successful ones are lacking in certain areas. The reason they are succeeding is because there are very few people out there who &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; know what they are doing (in &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; areas), meaning there is essentially no competition. Readers and authors then look at those novels, and deduce that they are 'what works.' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Killing off a character to advance the plot is common in fiction. However, because most authors don't know how to do it, why to do it, when to do it, or who to do it to, wrong conclusions are formed when the readers are displeased. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, a character death has no meaning because the &lt;em&gt;character&lt;/em&gt; had no meaning. Critics then assume that character deaths in general have no meaning. A death scene that is mishandled can leave readers feeling confused or lost. Some critics then assume that death scenes generally have this effect. And if a character dies that the reader &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; liked, they will start to look for a reason, and if they don't find one, they will be greatly displeased. Critics then assume that character deaths are largely a bad thing, and should be avoided. You get the picture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm trying to say here, is that you have to look at feedback while trying to determine the true cause. I know that I've left feedback where I was struggling how to articulate what I meant, and I doubt I'm the only one. Such comments usually cause those that read them to come to the wrong conclusions, and that leads to wrong opinions on how to write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would revise the original statement to this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Killing off a character &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; to advance the plot is bad. Killing off a character to advance the &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; is perfectly fine, as long as you are sure it is the best route to go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plot is only one part of the story. The story is made up out of setting, characters, stakes, tension, and above all, theme (plus many more). If killing off a character is furthering the &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt;, and you know it's the best route to take, do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T21:26:01.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23394" CreationDate="2016-06-16T23:55:34.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing of emergency treatment is vital signs and airway--blood pressure, heart rate, respirations, and pulse oxygenation of the blood. Burning gasoline will produce volatile vapors which will also cause inhalation injury to the &lt;em&gt;laryngeal and pulmonary mucosa&lt;/em&gt;. A &lt;em&gt;pulse ox&lt;/em&gt; less than 85% will result in &lt;em&gt;intubation&lt;/em&gt;; otherwise &lt;em&gt;supplemental oxygenation&lt;/em&gt; with a mask is the norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It hurts like hell. Placement of an IV, probably a &lt;em&gt;central line&lt;/em&gt;, would be one of the first orders of business with administration of about 10 milligrams of morphine IV. This is a lot of morphine (IV). Fluid loss can be a big deal for a serious burn. An IV might start at &lt;em&gt;half normal saline with 20 milliequivalents per liter of potassium at 100 millilters an hour.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The patient will then likely head to the ICU where he'll get some combination of antibiotics (burns weren't my specialty). If you want to pick something, I'd say &lt;em&gt;ampicillan&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;gentamycin&lt;/em&gt;, but you could Wikipedia &quot;burns&quot;and go with whatever they list, or you could just say, &quot;give him something to cover the skin flora.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cold packs will be used on the second-degree burns, and a plastic surgeon will be called potentially to &lt;em&gt;debride&lt;/em&gt; the third-degree burns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The patient will go to a burn unit, which is essentially a clean room, wrapped in light gauze and given a shit-ton of pain medication. In fiction, it might be better to give an impression this is a lot rather than just a number like &quot;If I give you any more you'll overdose and die.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As recovery progresses, you can do something cool like use &lt;em&gt;medical maggots&lt;/em&gt; to eat away the dead tissue. &lt;em&gt;Systemic infections&lt;/em&gt; are the biggest problem, and the most likely cause of death, especially if the lung tissue was burned resulting in various forms of &lt;em&gt;pneumonia&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-06-17T00:01:34.827" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T00:01:34.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23401" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-17T07:45:16.307" Score="8" ViewCount="629" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_series&quot;&gt;A book series&lt;/a&gt; is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in&#xA;  common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series&#xA;  can be organized in different ways, such as written by the same&#xA;  author, or marketed as a group by their publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let say a series called: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;World's Religions&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; consist of 6 volumes. Is it possible that one of those book volume appears under different series, for example: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Modern Religion&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is possible, what are some minor differences between the 2 books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Surely the volume numbering will be different. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will the ISBN of the 2 books different?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19371" LastActivityDate="2019-06-28T00:30:09.860" Title="Can the same book appear in a different series?" Tags="|publishing|series|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23402" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-17T09:41:49.813" Score="-1" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a fantasy novel where antagonists have ability to steal skills/abilities from any creature (actually it's more like replacing own skills with others). I need ideas what skills they might steal from different creatures (including mythical ones) besides flight (they already got wings). Please help poor, troubled new user. :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19373" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T13:34:31.843" Title="Superpower recommendations" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-06-19T03:33:27.013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23403" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-17T11:53:15.693" Score="2" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've undertaken to write a book with 50 tales, one per page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard going, because the stories keep coming out too long. How can I &quot;filter&quot; the job, or extract short ideas and work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19002" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-04-12T17:46:49.240" LastActivityDate="2018-04-12T17:46:49.240" Title="One-page tales: what do I have to spit out and what is indispensable?" Tags="|editing|short-story|wordcount|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23402" CreationDate="2016-06-17T13:34:31.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as superpowers are concerned you are limited by your imagination. Extracting the substance dreams are made of, or reading minds, or changing form and appearance, being invisible, being at many places at the same time, time-travelling, controlling the elements fire, water, wind, space, earth could be some of the superpowers that come to my mind. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19378" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T13:34:31.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23403" CreationDate="2016-06-17T13:51:23.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write a lot of tiny stories. There are no rules about what they can and can't do, but usually mine focus on a single moment. I include minimal descriptions and minimal dialog, when necessary. I usually write the event then add little bits of the surrounding story: why did it happen and what were the repercussions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice is probably to read a lot of them. Learn from other authors. Look for flash fiction and microfiction. Sherrie Flick and Lydia Davis write a lot of tiny stories and they do it very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T13:51:23.787" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17836" CreationDate="2016-06-17T14:01:01.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Books of flash fiction usually list the places where the included pieces have been previously published. So you can safely assume that those journals accept flash. Send your stuff to those. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Might be a good idea to visit their websites to double-check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T14:01:01.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23409" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-17T19:33:35.730" Score="8" ViewCount="379" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble deciding what year I want my Novella to take place. How do other Sci-Fi writers make up what year it is in their writing? I want it to be far enough in the future that the present is considered a part of history that hasn't been forgotten, or considered ancient. So, how far ahead should I put the year that the story takes place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T13:43:21.393" Title="When writing Sci-Fi whats a good way to determine the year?" Tags="|science-fiction|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23409" CreationDate="2016-06-17T19:56:56.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking around 2300 or 2500, although my reasoning is that I consider the American Revolution to be history, and everything before that to be ancient history. Although, that's just me. Try judging time on technological revolutions, i.e. American, French, industrial, modern technological revolution. All advanced the game quite a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could just make up your own time system. It's a lot easier in my opinion, but to each their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19352" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T19:56:56.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23411" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-17T20:31:17.190" Score="4" ViewCount="544" Body="&lt;p&gt;The saying goes to never judge a book by its cover, but let's face it: a cover is a very important part of a book. However, many people don't have access to an illustrator, or cover designer. I myself don't have the skills to design my own cover, and I've had very little luck finding an artist at my community college interested in designing a book cover for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I signed up for SelfPubBookCovers.com thinking that I do like a lot of the covers, but they're anywhere between 60-95 dollars. This is a lot of money for me to put upfront, and I know that it could be worth it, but have any other self published authors had any luck with the book covers from SelfPubBookCovers.com?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2019-03-26T19:15:40.740" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T19:15:40.740" Title="Is SelfPubBookCovers.com a good website to buy book covers?" Tags="|self-publishing|marketing|kindle|book-cover|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23394" CreationDate="2016-06-17T20:36:36.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to do in person research. In my experience I've had many people more than happy to let me use them as the basis for a character, or learn terms I need to know. Try hanging out at the emergency room entrance, or visiting a burn ward, and asking the patients about their treatment. A lot of my soldier jargon I get from my friends and family who are veterans, and they're always more than happy to give me information to make my portrayal real, and convincing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T20:36:36.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23413" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-17T20:45:32.637" Score="1" ViewCount="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a book about everything I thought while stuck in a certain situation I have only partially come out of throughout many years (sort of like Anne Frank, but I don't think I'm as wise). Do you think my book would be able to be received with a good audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19386" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T23:09:18.310" Title="Writing a book about what you thought while stuck in a situation" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2016-06-18T00:25:03.460" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7681" CreationDate="2016-06-17T20:54:14.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have no Twitter account yet, I highly recommend it. There are a lot of organizations that use twitter to promote products, and one of the companies I follow is freemykindle on Twitter, as well as other Twitter accounts that help promote authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Freemykindle specializes in advertising free, or really cheap E-books, and has 1342 followers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2016-06-19T18:14:41.513" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T18:14:41.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23413" CreationDate="2016-06-17T23:09:18.310" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter how your book is received. What matters is that you write the book of your heart before you die. If this is that book, don't worry about what anyone else thinks and go for it. No matter what anyone else will think, you will know that you wrote your soul onto paper. Or something like that. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19388" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T23:09:18.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23252" CreationDate="2016-06-18T00:21:33.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can cast it as an early report on your &lt;em&gt;beta launch&lt;/em&gt;, or as a preview of your &lt;em&gt;forthcoming launch&lt;/em&gt;.  Assuming that you're restricting it now so you can work the kinks out before spreading more widely, it helps to also talk about what you've learned -- we found and fixed this performance problem at scale, we discovered that this one part of our user interface was confusing and did such-and-such to fix it, this week we fixed this many user-reported bugs (average turnaround time N hours), and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along with conveying news about your feature, for a beta launch like this you want to convey that there is &lt;em&gt;forward motion&lt;/em&gt; -- that people who have to wait are benefiting from this wait.  Assuming that the broader availability is in the foreseeable future, regular progress reports can also help you keep people interested -- this is the &quot;update bulletin&quot; model used by Kickstarter and similar services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-06-18T00:21:33.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23409" CreationDate="2016-06-18T01:15:45.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know. My Sci-fi is about 10 years in the future, but you said you wanted the present to be history. Maybe about 50-100. That should work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hope this  helped!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-18T01:15:45.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23433" CreationDate="2016-06-18T02:37:02.187" Score="11" ViewCount="915" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say you want to talk about a piece of command-line software, like &lt;code&gt;make&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;bash&lt;/code&gt; or the &lt;code&gt;cp&lt;/code&gt; command. These commands are all lower-case, and case-sensitive (i.e. won't work on the computer if you capitalize them), and also often double as the names of the software projects that write the programs that the commands invoke. What happens when you want to start a sentence with the name of one of these tools? Which of the following is best?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cat is a Unix utility for concatenating files. (Start a sentence with a lower-case letter, which looks weird.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cat is a Unix utility for concatenating files. (Capitalize the command name, which looks weird and won't run.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;cat&lt;/code&gt; is a Unix utility for concatenating files. (Start the sentence with one of these weird code box things. Requires that that formatting option be available, and you still end up leading with a lower-case letter.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One Unix utility for concatenating files is cat. (Just write around the problem because you don't know what to do otherwise.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any style guides address this issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19390" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T18:34:18.250" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T13:41:51.533" Title="Starting a sentence with the name of a program or command-line tool: capitalization?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|software-documentation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23419" CreationDate="2016-06-18T04:06:09.137" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The GNU site itself treats the name of the Make utility as an uppercased word: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gnu.org/software/make/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.gnu.org/software/make/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There does seem to be a convention to frequently use &lt;code&gt;make&lt;/code&gt; (the command) where Make (the name) would seem more appropriate. The GNU Make manual seems to do this almost exclusively (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html&lt;/a&gt;) but always with a font change to indicate that it is the command that is being used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So those examples would justify the second and third options for Make, though the manual seems to avoid using &lt;code&gt;make&lt;/code&gt; at the beginning of a sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is less clear that &lt;code&gt;cp&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;cat&lt;/code&gt; can be treated this way, though. They are commands more than stand-alone products like Make. I'd be inclined to avoid using them as stand alone names and instead use &quot;The &lt;code&gt;cat&lt;/code&gt; command&quot; as in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;cat&lt;/code&gt; command is used to concatenate files. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T13:41:51.533" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T13:41:51.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23409" CreationDate="2016-06-18T05:51:14.597" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that your characters relationship with the past is similar to your own, look back through historically significant events until you find one that feels old enough but not too old.  Also consider which aspects of our society make up the history you are looking at, because different types of memories age at different rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the days before computers and cell phones probably seem like ancient history to anyone under 30.  While films of Jimmy Hendrix performing at Woodstock seem relevant and recent.  The amount of change is more important that the amount of time when laying out your characters understanding of the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, setting the date for a Sci-Fi novel should justify the differences between your mythical and our real worlds.  If your characters have neural implants instead of cellphones, then it is probably more than 10 years from now; but if instead, they still have cellphones whose batteries die every night, it is probably less than 10 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The date of your story is just a number that appears at most, every couple of dozen pages.  Focus on your story!  Don't worry about such details until later.  You can change it once your story tells you in what age it needs to live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-06-18T05:51:14.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23422" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23428" CreationDate="2016-06-18T13:10:06.717" Score="2" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a book I want to publish. The book is in PDF format. I want to sell it on Amazon or somewhere similar for 5 $ each in electronic format (downloadable to Kindle or the Kindle app for smartphones), or $12 in which case $7 could go to Amazon for printing the book for me, the buyer would then pay for the shipping. Is there a better way to index my book for sale with given keywords and sell it online. How do I proceed? I am looking at minimizing my profits as I am just starting out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19386" LastActivityDate="2023-12-15T02:42:23.437" Title="Where can I publish a book/e-book at a minimal cost?" Tags="|software|marketing|planning|research|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19632" CreationDate="2016-06-18T13:19:55.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The correct citation depends on your style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;APA&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;MLA&lt;/strong&gt;, you must cite every repetition of each source in the same way, no matter how close or far they appear. In some cases, the same reference may appear in subsequent sentences or even within the same sentence. &lt;strong&gt;Neither APA nor MLA allow the use of &quot;ibid.&quot; or &quot;op.cit.&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt; Example (in APA format):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In their study, Paul and Pope (2004) have found that citing sources is a pain. They used the APA Manual to style their citations. Johnson (2003) on the other hand found citing to be a joy. In his study he used MLA. But using APA is recommended in certain fields (Paul &amp;amp; Pope, 2004). Many studies also found some other stuff (Paul &amp;amp; Pope, 2004; Johnson, 2003; Whoever, 1783).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note how I referred to a source using a pronoun in a subsequent sentence (&quot;They used ...&quot;) and thereby avoided having to repeat the citation. If there is no referring pronoun, the source must be repeated. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In their study, Paul and Pope (2004) have found that citing sources is a pain. Although using APA is recommended in certain fields (Paul &amp;amp; Pope, 2004), other fields recommend MLA (Paul &amp;amp; Pope, 2004), Chicago (Johnson, 2003), or not to cite at all (Whoever, 1783).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note how in the last list-style sentence, the same source is given twice, once for each list item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guiding rule is that it must be unmistakeably clear where each quotation or paraphrase in your text comes from. In the following example it is unclear, what the source for the recommendation to use MLA is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although using APA is recommended in certain fields (Paul &amp;amp; Pope, 2004), other fields recommend MLA, Chicago (Johnson, 2003), or not to cite at all (Whoever, 1783).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-06-18T13:19:55.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23409" CreationDate="2016-06-18T13:24:21.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at it the opposite way, I'd say that anything that your grandfather saw is &quot;not-that-old&quot;. If you met (or may have met) the person that witnessed it, it does not feel that much different than being told of something that happened yesterday. E.g. I knew a person that was just around the corner when a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid%C3%B3nio_Pais&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Portuguese president was shot&lt;/a&gt; back in 1918, so I kind of was there too. So, &quot;not-too-old&quot; would be 3 generations ago, from my grandfather being young, until I am really old. With current life expectancy that would be a little bit more than a century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat the thought for my grandfather, and something that is &quot;not-too-old&quot; for them, but &quot;too-old&quot; for me, would be your desired time frame. Roughly more than a century, less than three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am guesstimating here, but I wonder if there is any psychological studies about this kind of time perception? I am partially inspired by the memory of some study claiming that we choose mates based not on increasing our &quot;success&quot;, nor that of our children, but the probability of &quot;success&quot; of our grand-children. I don't know if any of those are somewhere out there to be found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4075" LastActivityDate="2016-06-18T13:24:21.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23425" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23444" CreationDate="2016-06-18T18:11:45.837" Score="2" ViewCount="446" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a fantasy story in which there is a contemporary earth (our earth) and a secondary world. Due to certain reasons &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; earthlings who are able to reach the second world have great magical powers which can cause great ruckus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that I need to explain whether other earthlings in the past have caused conflicts inside the second world, before the main characters of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it happened, I need to figure out why am I narrating the story of these characters and not of previous earthlings. The reason can't be that they are simply special (I don't want them to be &quot;the chosen&quot; or something like that). I just want these characters to be in the XXI century because it's better for the plot. But I can't say that to the reader, i need to justify the choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it didn't happen, it begs the question: why the adventures of these characters and the effects they had on the second world didn't happen before? All previous earthlings who visited the second world had the same powers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In front of me I see the following options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a chronology and a big backstory of how previous earthlings have affected the second world. It's the most consistent option but also the most challenging (I'm not fond of it because most plots of my characters don't rely that much in past events);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Made up an excuse to make previous earthlings unable (or not willing) to affect the second world in meaningful ways;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a special reason why affluence of earthlings to the second world has increased in the XXI century. In the past only a small number of earthlings were able to reach it (for some reason).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you solve the dilemma?&#xA;Do you see any other option? Which one would you choose?&#xA;It would really be helpful if you could provide examples of dilemmas you encountered while writing one of your stories and describe your mental process in order to solve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I tried to keep it simple in here because the reason they have magical powers is kind of complicated and I don't think it helps to solve the problem (on the contrary it opens other problems, but I don't want to diverge your attention).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19406" OwnerDisplayName="Pigna" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-06-19T06:35:09.020" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T21:52:54.383" Title="My premise suggests a LOT more history than I want in my book" Tags="|fantasy|world-building|exposition|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23426" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-18T20:06:30.820" Score="3" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a book that will have 8 music albums as a soundtrack (one for each chapter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking about submitting my work to some publisher, but I am not sure if I could then also sell my book on my website along with my music albums, which can be purchased separately or with the book in one piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do? I do not want to end up unable to offer my work as a complete thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19396" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2016-06-18T22:09:33.097" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T16:22:42.697" Title="Book with soundtrack music, how to publish?" Tags="|publishing|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23425" CreationDate="2016-06-18T21:14:01.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look for a reason of their magic powers that could make ancient travelers unable to have great powers. May be that magic powers are increased by exposition to TV sets radiation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19397" LastActivityDate="2016-06-18T21:14:01.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23422" CreationDate="2016-06-18T21:15:57.390" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Print Edition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to publish a paperback edition, you  can use CreateSpace or other print-on-demand (POD) service. CreateSpace (and maybe the others) take no money up front. They take a cut of each sale. And the retailer takes a cut of each sale. You set the retail price, and your royalty is whatever is left over after CreateSpace and the retailer take their cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For CreateSpace, their cut depends on the page count and on whether you want color or black and white. See CreateSpace’s royalty calculator here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ebook Edition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For ebooks, you have a few options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 1.&lt;/strong&gt; CreateSpace can make an Kindle book from your PDF. That’s an epub or mobi file with the PDF inside. I have never tried that, because it creates a fixed-format ebook, which prevents users from being able to adjust the font or the type size. So there’s a good chance that the book will be challenging to read on a small screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 2.&lt;/strong&gt; Make your own epub files. There are several tools available for this, some free and some not. Each tool involves a bit of a learning curve. Perhaps others can recommend tools for this. (I created my own, and I can't recommend that one for anybody other than me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 3.&lt;/strong&gt; Use an “aggregator” such as Smashwords or Draft2Digital. These aggregators can typically convert your Word file into epub format. And they can submit your book to a variety of retailers. For their contribution, they each take a cut of the purchase price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 4.&lt;/strong&gt; Use an ebook formatter service. This involves an upfront fee. I have never looked into this, so cannot offer pointers here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps there are other options that I'm neglecting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cover&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to create or purchase a cover for your book. To create the cover yourself, you will need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Licenses for the art you use in the cover. There are many sources of stock photos. You may be able to find suitable art that is freely-usable without a license fee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Image editing tools to create the book cover. Some are free. Some are very expensive. Each involves a learning curve.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can hire a cover designer. Naturally, this will involve a fee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-06-18T21:15:57.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23429" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23431" CreationDate="2016-06-18T23:17:32.557" Score="2" ViewCount="292" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a third-person novel I am writing, one of the characters has a very significant dream that I would like to transcribe. The problem is, I would like to focus on the character's reaction to the events in the dream, but do not know whether it is realistic to have her reacting as the dream is happening, or have her react to the specific events in the dream after she wakes up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[while dreaming] Rhea understands what this dream is now. It's how Dr. Evans imagines it will be once he has the kids under his control. Even so, only in his dreams would he ever be able to call Colton &quot;son&quot; without getting hit. Colton replies with a terse nod, showing that he doesn't desire to return the feeling. It encourages her to know that even in Evans' dreams, Colton isn't comfortable being referred to as &quot;son&quot; by this man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After Rhea wakes up, despite the unsettling images she has just witnessed, she finds a small amount of solace in the fact that even in Evans' warped dream reality, Colton still wasn't comfortable by being referred to as son by that man. Especially since, in real life, her brother would most likely attack the man if he ever attempted to refer to him as such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, simply put, should I write the dream sort of like a flashback, merely narrating what happened and then have her wake up and analyze it, or write the dream like normal narration and show the character's reactions as the dream events happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I should mention that this character has the ability to see dreams that are not her own, and knows when she is dreaming, and when the dream is not hers, even though she cannot interact with the dream-world or control her actions within it.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T17:09:00.307" Title="Writing a non-lucid dream" Tags="|style|creative-writing|narrative|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23396" CreationDate="2016-06-19T02:42:46.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd guess this isn't a romance novel :)  As you've said, the character's death sets events in motion that wouldn't have happened otherwise.  You're giving your other characters the opportunity to react to that; you're giving yourself plenty of opportunity for other sudden changes (shifting of allegiances, strong characters giving up, weak characters finding strength, revelation of treachery...without knowing the details I can't really guess the scope, but it's there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The main character...undergoes great change.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as it doesn't seem too premeditated - it &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; come as an unwelcome surprise to everyone, including the reader - in my opinion, that the main character undergoes great change is enough of a reason to justify it.  The only question I'd have is how far into the work it happens, but that's a bit off the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19399" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T02:42:46.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23429" CreationDate="2016-06-19T03:00:15.903" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go with the first option. It's my understanding that's not Rhea ' s dream, but it's someone she knows well. Depending on the character, they would or would not tell the person they saw their dream. I feel as though the second option works well in scenes like they didn't know what the dream was about, or if you want to show other character's reactions to the dream.  But I would go with the first option if I was you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I hope this helped!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T03:00:15.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23432" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23442" CreationDate="2016-06-19T03:30:38.493" Score="1" ViewCount="2531" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand this can and probably will be shut down for many reasons, but how long is too long for a short story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to write a short story, but tend to write novels if I write anything (Even though I have yet to finish one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current guidelines are 3 pages and under, too short. 20 pages and up, too long. Is this good? Again, I know this will probably be shut down, but I'm asking anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2016-06-19T18:14:17.963" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T18:14:17.963" Title="In a short story, how long is &quot;too long&quot;?" Tags="|short-story|book-length|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23419" CreationDate="2016-06-19T04:12:47.627" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rule #1 in technical documentation is: don't mislead the reader.  If the command or function name begins with a lowercase letter, capitalizing it is an error -- it's not &quot;Cat&quot; but &quot;cat&quot;.  The &lt;em&gt;Microsoft Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt; specifies that literal elements like this should be written with their correct case.  It also calls for using text styling to offset them, as do other style guides I've used.  (Microsoft favors bold; others favor monospace.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surprisingly, software-oriented style guides in my experience don't address the specific case of beginning a sentence with these items.  If you can write around the problem &lt;em&gt;without making the documentation more cumbersome&lt;/em&gt;, I've found it's best to do that.  Instead of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;cat&lt;/code&gt; is a Unix utility for concatenating files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be able to write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use &lt;code&gt;cat&lt;/code&gt; to concatenate files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;cat&lt;/code&gt; utility concatenates files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this can quickly become either cumbersome or inconsistent -- if you say &quot;the &lt;code&gt;cat&lt;/code&gt; utility&quot; in some places but &quot;&lt;code&gt;cat&lt;/code&gt;&quot; in other places, you leave readers wondering why.  But if you use the former formation everywhere, you make the documentation harder to scan and add extra words seemingly needlessly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The software-documentation teams I've been part of for the last 20 years or so have all followed this guideline: write around the problem if you can do so reasonably, and if you can't, just start the sentence with the lowercase name.  Using text styling for command/function/etc names mitigates the capitalization &quot;error&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T04:12:47.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23434" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23440" CreationDate="2016-06-19T06:52:15.190" Score="1" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a writer belongs to a society which is not very scientifically advanced, creating organizations like NASA and characters like indigenous Scientists would look terribly out of place. And, if the writer decides to set his story in any advanced society, his characters might look contrived, because he might not be fully aware of their culture. How does the Writer break this deadlock?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19335" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T09:09:08.530" Title="Writing Science Fiction when the writer is from a society which is not very scientifically advanced" Tags="|technique|science-fiction|setting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23435" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-19T07:05:31.050" Score="3" ViewCount="9790" Body="&lt;p&gt;The prologue of my story is past tense, then the rest will be present tense. I cannot figure how to word a sentence correctly to take out 'now' or to make it sound correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rayanne had found out she was pregnant shortly before she got sick. She was, now, five months pregnant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second sentence sounds like present tense, but I need it to sound past tense. Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19401" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T03:47:57.257" Title="Use of 'Now' in past tense" Tags="|tenses|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23432" CreationDate="2016-06-19T08:16:08.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, a short story is a very precise, succinct set of plot points which outlines and resolves the situation in quick movements.&#xA;How quickly can you get the story out without compromising the feeling of each movement. How quickly can you create suspense without it feeling akward.&#xA;The length is a good balance between good movement and quick realisation. There is no definitive length. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long is a poem? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, if you wish to publish keep the publisher and the audience in mind. Some publishers will offer guidelines to what they require and what their readers enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19403" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T08:16:08.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23409" CreationDate="2016-06-19T08:27:35.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its actually a very subjective and artistic question. I would take tech, emotional attachment and the audience into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tech.&#xA;What tech is there and how forward thinking is your futurist mind?&#xA;How revolutionary is the tech and how long would you estimate science to get there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emotional attachment&#xA;What historical events are woven or known about in your world?&#xA;Does it relate to the real world?&#xA;How many generations does it take before the emotion of the past events lose their attachment to that future present?&#xA;Ww2 can feel like a moment ago or a lifetime away depending on the emotional attachment by the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Audience&#xA;The reader can be surprised in your story. Sometimes it can leave the reader with a pleasant surprise or it can be negative if they do not believe. Your time can be more real if its close and more fantasy the further away.&#xA;There are a lot of examples of real tangible stories written for a fantasy future or a real story written for the near future.&#xA;Does the audience want near or far?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19403" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T08:27:35.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23435" CreationDate="2016-06-19T08:42:09.470" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Novice here.. but what about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple way ( but could be missed by reader.) Make everything present and then push the present again in the last sentence.. Using 'is'  and dropping 'had'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rayanne found out she was pregnant shortly before she got sick. She is five months pregnant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way is to be declarative and obvious. I changed to 6 months for accuracy of the sentence :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rayanne found out she was pregnant shortly before she got sick. Six months later she is starting to show. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ps. I dropped the Now as it doesnt seem a good word to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19403" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T08:42:09.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23432" CreationDate="2016-06-19T09:06:15.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One remark up-front, length is measured in words instead of pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually publishers have their own policy on this and will buy offerings only when they comply. There are short story, novella and novel formats, maybe others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are general guidelines for each literary category: Short stories range anywhere from 1,500 to 30,000 words; Novellas run from 30,000 to 50,000; Novels range from 55,000 to 300,000 words with emphasis on the range of 80,000-100,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: (just a random one)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and-quandaries/marketing/novel-and-short-story-word-counts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and-quandaries/marketing/novel-and-short-story-word-counts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T09:06:15.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23434" CreationDate="2016-06-19T09:09:08.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are basically 5 stages that worlds go through as they develop (read more here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bang2write.com/2013/05/top-5-tips-for-writing-science-fiction-by-robert-grant.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bang2write.com/2013/05/top-5-tips-for-writing-science-fiction-by-robert-grant.html&lt;/a&gt;) and some the best sci-fi takes place in the period of transition from one stage to the next. By choosing to set your story between two world stages you get to watch both society and individuals struggle with change, you can bend the rules because they are not fully established and you can compare and contrast what was and what will be. If you can't decide when to set your story then it sounds to me like you should choose a transitional period and write from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13109" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T09:09:08.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23347" CreationDate="2016-06-19T09:17:25.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I correctly read your question, its more about the voice and pov.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can research symptoms and bring it out in forgetfulness, repetition, misidentification etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A knock on the door, it was a salesman. What does he want to sell me? It was the third one this week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Mom, are you okay?&quot;, asked the salesman&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19403" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T09:17:25.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23432" CreationDate="2016-06-19T11:27:14.910" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The trick is to measure your story in words, rather than pages. Your page count depends on arbritrary things like font size, page size and line spacing. You'll find that, when it comes to publishing opportunities, length is nearly always expressed in words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first story I sold was 71 words (&lt;a href=&quot;http://neonmagazine.co.uk/?p=6490&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). The publisher wanted stories of no more than 75. &lt;a href=&quot;https://mastersreview.com/short-story-award-for-new-writers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; competition is for stories of up to 6,000 words. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.narrativemagazine.com/node/332521&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt; accepts stories up to 15,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that every publisher wants something different, and there's a home for nearly any length of story &lt;em&gt;somewhere&lt;/em&gt;, if it's good enough. But of course, in the real world, some lengths are easier to sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Flash&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitions vary, but up to around 1,000 words is generally called 'flash' or 'short-short' fiction. The piece I mentioned above is a fairly extreme example — paid opportunities for a piece &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; tiny are rare, in my experience. But in general, there's an established market for pieces in this bracket. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Short&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up to about 10,000 words is generally still called a short story. As a rule, if you're a novice author, the closer you stick to the bottom and middle of the spectrum, the easier it'll be to sell your work. This makes sense if you consider the publisher's perspective — longer stories take up more of the available space in a paper magazine, or, since authors are usually paid per word, simply cost more. When you're an unknown author, your name won't necessarily be selling copies of the magazine, so it's easier for them to justify making a little investment in you than a big one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Novella&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, definitions vary. But in my experience, above 10,000 words is the territory in which some people will start to call your story a novella (a mini-novel). I've heard it said that this is a 'difficult' length, or that it's the province of well-established authors who can bank on writing within the universe of an already-successful series. Of course, there's no reason in theory you couldn't write one, but if you're a novice author, the same warnings apply as from the section above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So after all that, practically, how should you approach length in your stories? My advice would be this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write the story you want. It will help to have a length in mind, but at this stage, don't overthink it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you're finished, edit it. Cut as much length as you can. It will make the story better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you're finished, you've found out how long that story was. If you think it's ready to shop around, now you know what markets you can aim for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you start writing your story and it turns into a novel, that's okay! As you repeat the process, you'll develop your sense of what stories you can tell in 1,000 words, and what stories you'll tell best with 50,000. With experience, you'll find the accuracy of the guess you make at step 1 gets better and better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastEditorUserId="18324" LastEditDate="2016-06-19T11:33:28.553" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T11:33:28.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23435" CreationDate="2016-06-19T13:21:23.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your sentences are fine. Readers understand that &quot;now&quot; refers to the present in the story's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T13:21:23.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23425" CreationDate="2016-06-19T14:27:56.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you sure you have to justify to the reader why you've chosen to write about certain people in a certain century?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, there is the question, why does the story start here? But it could be as simple as your protagonist has come of age and are starting to see his abilities manifest, or some antagonist has finally found a proof that the magic ones exists and now he's going to tell EVIL GOVERNMENTAL AGENCY, or some other reason that isn't the beginning of the whole world. (Think The Lord of the Rings vs Silmarillion, Tolkien started writing LOTR with tons and tons of backstory he mostly skipped--although specifically Tolkien is a bit backstory heavy sometimes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are allowed to simply chose one reason to start the story and then, via dialog, flashback and similar tell the rest of your backstory &lt;em&gt;as it is needed&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's important to start the story in the middle of some kind of event that naturally generates action and movement of the characters, so I'm not overly fond of prologs, but that might be a way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, on the problem of telling the rest of the backstory convincingly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give a character an urgent reason to figure out what happened in the past? Say for instance, this information is needed to solve the story problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, put these past events into the backstory of a character and make them vital to that character's personality or backstory. For instance, what if one of your characters actually was one of these older people, that via magic had survived to these days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also don't be afraid to &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; use all the backstory information. Sometimes it adds extra dimension and dynamic to a story that doesn't explain everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard you could possibly use about 1% of all the backstory of characters and the world you develop without making your story too backstory heavy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, the reader wants things that happens now, not to hear anecdotes of past adventures that they are not allowed to be a part of... (Imagine two of your best friends talking in lengthy detail about something they did yesterday when you weren't there--you get the idea!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, don't be afraid to kill all the darlings that prevents you from writing a good story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T14:27:56.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23445" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23447" CreationDate="2016-06-19T14:29:50.677" Score="1" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does a writer transition from one setting or location to another in his story, in a way that the reader does not feel the jerk. For example, in a prior scene the character is shown getting dressed up at his apartment, and in the next he is at a hotel for the party (without actually showing him take a cab). Are there any established patterns that writers use for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19335" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T16:07:39.757" Title="Transitioning from one setting or location to another" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23463" CreationDate="2016-06-19T15:26:10.223" Score="0" ViewCount="4940" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifically, how to describe a person's voice or tone of speaking, and ideas on how dialogue should be formatted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19405" LastActivityDate="2020-03-09T12:37:13.630" Title="Do you have any tips on describing dialogue?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23445" CreationDate="2016-06-19T16:07:39.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can make the transition smoother by either revealing the intention to go somewhere and/or stop by the entrance made into the new setting. Skipping boring details about getting a cab will be taken for granted by your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can weave it into the story even stronger by making your character worry about something related to the next setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise you can picture back from the new setting to the old by touching on something forgotten or with a stray thought on the differences between the settings themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the characters moving forward through the story, changing settings along the way give the audience something hold on to (the character) and something to discover (new vista's, with the character in it) so it will be very much part of the story itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry, work it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T16:07:39.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23429" CreationDate="2016-06-19T17:26:53.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a writer, I sometimes criticize the poor writing in my dreams while dreaming them, or note how a person or place is distorted from the real world example it is based on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I seem to  make myself wake up from a dream that seems about to turn bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't ask us writers in the writers stack exchange, ask science experts in the science stack exchanges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T17:26:53.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23409" CreationDate="2016-06-19T17:50:17.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I note that Rolazaro Azeveires wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Looking at it the opposite way, I'd say that anything that your grandfather saw is &quot;not-that-old&quot;. If you met (or may have met) the person that witnessed it, it does not feel that much different than being told of something that happened yesterday. E.g. I knew a person that was just around the corner when a Portuguese president was shot back in 1918, so I kind of was there too. So, &quot;not-too-old&quot; would be 3 generations ago, from my grandfather being young, until I am really old. With current life expectancy that would be a little bit more than a century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That does not fit too well for a few people.  Harrison Tyler (born 1928) is the grandson of President John Tyler (1790-1862).  Doctor Otto Habsburg (1912-2011) was photographed with Emperor Franz Josef I (1830-1916), who was the grandson of Emperor Francis II &amp;amp; I, (1769-1835).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, in science fiction it is fun to use different calendars and have the reader wonder just what date in the Gregorian calendar 3,000 A.U.C. corresponds to, for example. Or 37 New Age.  But of course the writer would have to give an example of a date in both systems somewhere to be fair to the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19408" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T17:50:17.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23446" CreationDate="2016-06-19T18:51:18.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, to format and describe dialogue are two different topics, but on describing dialogue - as in choosing whether to use &amp;quot;said&amp;quot; or another word, or adding a description to that, it's mostly about how you imagine it being said. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sally said, &amp;quot;Don't make me go to school today.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's dialogue on a very basic level. It doesn't portray any emotion, or depth. It's only telling exactly what she said, not how she said it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With describing dialogue the first question you can ask is &lt;strong&gt;how is it said?&lt;/strong&gt; and then you can ask &lt;strong&gt;What emotion is it being said with?&lt;/strong&gt;. That's where the description comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's good to vary the words you use and not use &amp;quot;said&amp;quot; too much, though there is nothing wrong with using it. If you google alternates for said you'll probably get a ton of websites, but this one was one of the first hits: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spwickstrom.com/said/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.spwickstrom.com/said/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sally pleads, &amp;quot;Don't make me go to school today,&amp;quot; with a huge pout and watery eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for formatting you can think of it like an equation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Character + word for said + &amp;quot;what they are saying&amp;quot; + description of how it's being said&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though the &lt;strong&gt;character + word for said&lt;/strong&gt; can go at the beginning, middle, or end of the phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to remember with formatting is to start a new paragraph whenever a different character is speaking.&#xA;As a final example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I'm sorry sweetie,&amp;quot; Sally's mom begins in a no-nonsense tone,  &amp;quot;But, you have to go school today.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But, why Mommy?&amp;quot; Sally cried, the tears breaking loose and streaming down her face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T21:24:54.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20914" CreationDate="2016-06-19T19:27:19.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is a cyberterrorist?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of a terrorist is someone who wounds and kills people who are not acceptable military targets according to the laws of war,  in order to cause fear and panic among his enemies and possibly change their policies.  All terrorists, by occupation, are evil criminals, just as all vikings, by occupation, were evil criminals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A computer hacker will not be a terrorist unless he causes hospitals to lose electricity, planes to fall from the sky, and other disasters that kill people.  A computer hacker who doesn't disrupt things in a manner likely to cause death is not a terrorist.  Just as it is a crime to be a terrorist, it is a crime to cheapen the impact of the word terrorist by using the word terrorist to describe someone who is not a terrorist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it seems to be a literary crime to depict a likeable terrorist.  I hate the very idea of a likeable terrorist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19410" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T19:27:19.233" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23425" CreationDate="2016-06-19T21:52:54.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You see three options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) I like history so I like option 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) involves a change in the abilities or plans or desires of Earthlings who go to the secondary world, so that more of them change things there.  This involves a sociological change in all Earthlings in recent history, or a change in a small subset of Earthlings that you define as the ones able to  go to the secondary world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) involves a change in Earth that explains why more Earthlings go to the secondary world, such as growing population combined with other factors involving whatever small subset of Earthlings that are able to go to the secondary world according to the (possibly complex) rules of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) The one you didn't mention, is a change in the secondary world that enables more Earthlings to go there and change it.  Maybe more magical equivalents of transporter pads are built there so more Earthlings can cross over.  Maybe the Anti Earth Magic Service has worked too well and the secondary world congressional budget committee doesn't believe that magic users from Earth are a threat and slashes the budget, allowing more magic users from Earth to drastically change the secondary world, including  abolishing the secondary world government and its Anti Earth Magic Service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend a combination of two, or three, or all four options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The increasing numbers of Earthlings who cross over and use magic in the secondary world can be a important plot element.  Separate characters can each identify a trend that is partially responsible for more magic users coming from Earth, and calculate that the number who cross over will eventually destroy both worlds.  Later they meet and compare notes and discover that the several different causes reinforce each other and the doomsday moment will be much sooner than they thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19412" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T21:52:54.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23455" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23474" CreationDate="2016-06-20T03:45:01.170" Score="1" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story where the protagonist lives in a town that is thought to be abandoned, even though there is secretly an entire city beneath the radar. How do I write this? The last thing I want is to have it be a stereotype.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19341" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-06-20T19:43:12.607" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T19:56:20.570" Title="How do I write an original work using a familiar concept?" Tags="|world-building|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-06-22T11:41:09.513" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23456" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23459" CreationDate="2016-06-20T04:03:24.433" Score="8" ViewCount="5347" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that all of the characters are unique, interesting, and stand out from the rest of the cast, is there a limit to how many characters I can introduce in the first chapter before my reader starts struggling to remember who's who?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not a limit, is there a certain number (or maybe a percentage relative to the total amount of characters in my cast) that is considered &quot;good&quot; or &quot;reasonable&quot; to introduce in the first chapter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T15:43:36.010" Title="How many characters can I introduce in the first chapter before the reader gets overwhelmed?" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23301" CreationDate="2016-06-20T04:22:41.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I try to do when hiding clues is to make the POV character misinterpret them believably. Using your example, what if the MC knew a cross-dressing man who was generally accepted and commonly called Auntie So-and-so? This gives a plausible reason for the MC to mistakenly take for granted that everyone else knows auntie is a man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The principle I'm trying to describe is that there need to be at least two plausible interpretations for clues hidden in plain sight. It has already been mentioned that one technique for doing this is dialogue (a clue) that can be interpreted multiple ways. Each interpretation of a hidden clue needs to fit into a self-consistent theory of the truth, only one of which is completely right. By having many clues all reinforce that same mistaken theory, it can be quite the surprise when a new clue contradicts the theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12987" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T04:22:41.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23461" CreationDate="2016-06-20T04:31:04.163" Score="3" ViewCount="322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand the &quot;only describe what is necessary&quot; rule. If a character's appearance is important, I'll describe it in moderation. But what if I'm writing a scene that &lt;em&gt;needs&lt;/em&gt; a lot of description? What if the main character of my story, who is a strict vegan, stumbles into a slaughterhouse? My MC would definitely see every detail... but how do I describe every detail without falling into purple prose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible, could you provide a line or two of examples? Or maybe a &quot;what to do&quot; vs. &quot;what not to do&quot; sort of thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T20:37:04.540" Title="How to write a scene that needs a lot of detail without falling into purple prose?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23456" CreationDate="2016-06-20T05:25:20.187" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;At risk of sounding glib, I would say &quot;as many as will fit&quot;. But I think that probably is the answer. A chapter should have a shape to it. It should accomplish something. It should have focus. As many characters as fit within that shape and contribute to that goal should be fine. Sometimes that will be one. Sometimes it will be dozens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An opening chapter has to achieve something in story terms. It has to establish a conflict or a relationship or a challenge, or something of value to be gained or lost. The characters that are essential to achieving the chapter's story goal should not overwhelm the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introducing people who don't fit just because you want to establish them for later may overwhelm the reader, not because readers have a fixed maximum for character introductions, but because outside the story arc of the chapter, they don't know what to do with them. They are information that the reader does not know how to process. That is what will overwhelm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-06-20T18:02:23.387" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T18:02:23.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23435" CreationDate="2016-06-20T08:23:22.407" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The trick is to keep everything in past tense except the word &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;. This is how it's done in published books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ancestor&lt;/em&gt; by Scott Sigler:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the screen, a man crawled across the floor, leaving behind him a glistening trail of puss, blood and other fluids Chapman didn't want to think about. The man's once-white lab coat was now wet-pink, clinging to his body like a thin straightjacket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Warbreaker&lt;/em&gt; by Brandon Sanderson:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The straw figure returned to his window. It carried a large ring of keys. The figure’s straw feet were stained red. The crimson blood seemed so dull to Vasher now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Examples chosen for no reason other than I happened to have a PDF on my hard drive for an easy Ctrl+F!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing how it works?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you say...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jeff was six when he first discovered he could play trombone with his feet. He had come a long way since then — he played four nights a week at MacLennan's, now — but life had only gotten harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...as your readers, we immediately get that &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; refers to the past of your story, and &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; refers to the present of your story. See how everything except the &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; stays in past tense? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works because of what's known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.washington.edu/cbehler/glossary/freeindsty.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;free indirect style&lt;/a&gt;. Modern readers are completely used to this. We intuitively understand that we're reading the character's inner monologue, so we understand that the &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; means the 'now' of the story, as the character is thinking it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T08:23:22.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23458" CreationDate="2016-06-20T08:34:08.857" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this depends a lot on what you want to achieve. If, in your given example, you want to convey the feelings your MC experiences, you must be graphic or even gory. Parenthetically, as a vegetarian myself, I can totally empathize with such descriptions - but, trying to see the other side, you should try to visualize how they would make meat-eating audiences react.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best piece of advice I can offer (albeit, a bit generic one) is to limit yourself to visual (and aural) depictions. Describe scenes &lt;strong&gt;during&lt;/strong&gt; and emotions &lt;strong&gt;afterwards&lt;/strong&gt;. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;John felt sick to his stomach witnessing the dark rivers of blood flowing by his feet, soaking the soles of his shoes. He felt immense rage and despair hearing the distant cries&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opt for:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;John walked carefully on the stained floor, dark rivers of blood flowing by his feet, soaking the soles of his shoes. In the background, lost amid the cold bangs of the killing machines, he could hear some distant cries&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T08:34:08.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23456" CreationDate="2016-06-20T12:20:41.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general humans are able to track no more than 7 distinct factors. If you want the reader to root for everyone you introduce I think that number would be the practical limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From another angle, you want to give each character enough attention without the story slowing down to snail's pace. Think Tolkien: Many people do not dig him because of the very very broad scope the story follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway if the number becomes big enough, that is exactly what you have: A group, NOT a big number of characters. If not in your mind than still in the mind of your reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T12:20:41.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23446" CreationDate="2016-06-20T13:08:03.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In school, lots of us were taught to avoid 'said'. This is really terrible advice. In modern writing, you should definitely &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; look for fancy alternatives to 'said'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Said' is simple, effective, and does its job without distracting from your story. There's a good article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SaidBookism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TV Tropes&lt;/a&gt; which explains more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best tip I have is to write dialogue that speaks for itself. Convey your character's tone, mood and subtext through well-chosen actions and body language. Instead of telling us how your character 'snorted [whatever] angrily', show us her fist slammed into the wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On punctuating dialogue, I really like &lt;a href=&quot;http://theeditorsblog.net/2010/12/08/punctuation-in-dialogue/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt;. The author made some follow-up posts, too, which are linked at the bottom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully that helps?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastEditorUserId="18324" LastEditDate="2016-06-20T14:57:53.567" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T14:57:53.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23446" CreationDate="2016-06-20T13:54:28.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Those &quot;said&quot; tags are not really meant to be read and parsed. They're meant to be nearly invisible, just keeping the reader oriented about who's speaking. Descriptive ones make the reader pause a bit and understand the tag when they're just trying to read the dialog. So avoid non-&quot;said&quot; tags when possible. (And avoid using &quot;said&quot; with an adjective at all costs, he added quietly.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T13:54:28.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23465" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23466" CreationDate="2016-06-20T18:18:47.770" Score="5" ViewCount="365" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I realize there have been similar questions before, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/18190/how-to-deal-with-a-story-that-95-of-it-takes-place-in-a-different-language-coun/18197#18197&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7519/how-are-multilingual-scenes-handled-when-the-storys-main-language-is-translated/7520#7520&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, but the answers to those unfortunately did not help much with my specific issue.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have three characters. Sally speaks both English and Japanese, Bob only knows English, and Shintaro only knows Japanese. The story is written in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first part, Sally goes to Japan, where everyone speaks Japanese. She meets and makes friends with Shintaro there. Because the book is written in English, all of the dialogue will be in English. The reader should understand everyone is really speaking Japanese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, in the second part, Sally brings Shintaro to the United States, where people speak English. She introduces him to her childhood friend, Bob.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I effectively write a dialogue involving these three characters?&lt;/strong&gt; Not just for their first meeting, but for the rest of the story? Sally is the only one who understands both languages, so she's essentially the translator. But I fear that having her translate everything for Bob and Shintaro will make for terrible and confusing dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I feel like I've seen you before,&quot; said Shintaro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What did he say?&quot; asked Bob.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He says he feels like he's seen you before,&quot; Sally said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bob rested his chin on his hand. &quot;Well, I did go on that trip to Tokyo last year.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Bob says that he went to Tokyo last year,&quot; Sally said to Shintaro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I was living in Tokyo last year,&quot; Shintaro said. &quot;Maybe that's when I saw you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it work if I got rid of Sally in the translator position? Would the readers understand that everything Bob and Shintaro are saying is being translated by Sally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I feel like I've seen you before,&quot; said Shintaro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bob rested his chin on his hand. &quot;Well, I did go on that trip to Tokyo last year.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I was living in Tokyo last year,&quot; Shintaro said. &quot;Maybe that's when I saw you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if I take the second route, &lt;strong&gt;what should I do if Sally wants to purposely mistranslate what one person says?&lt;/strong&gt; In such a case, could I then introduce Sally as the translator? Would that be strange since in all previous dialogue, she was never seen translating anything?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bob's head was down. &quot;I'm the one who killed your sister.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shintaro waited on Sally with a helpless look. Sally struggled to find her words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Bob says he's sorry your sister died,&quot; she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shintaro's gaze softened. &quot;I appreciate your sympathy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He says he's over it,&quot; Sally said to Bob. &quot;Shintaro forgives you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thing: &lt;strong&gt;how do I handle a scene where Sally and Shintaro try to teach Bob Japanese?&lt;/strong&gt; Do I stop translating Japanese to English? Do I actually write what he's learning in Japanese?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Repeat after me,&quot; said Sally. &quot;Hajimemashite.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hajimemashite,&quot; Bob repeated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, he's pretty good,&quot; Shintaro said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Only because he watches too much anime.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Repeat after me,&quot; said Sally. &quot;Nice to meet you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Nice to meet you,&quot; Bob repeated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, he's pretty good,&quot; Shintaro said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Only because he watches too much anime.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard using italics help lessen the confusion... but what if I use italics for emphasis already? That just seems more confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T03:58:05.237" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T03:58:05.237" Title="Writing scenes that involve two languages" Tags="|dialogue|translation|language|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23465" CreationDate="2016-06-20T18:56:06.160" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're 95% of the way there; you have good instincts for what's readable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• For your first example, I'd try to put as much of the logistics of translation into narration as I could manage. After a bit, the reader will understand that Sally is acting as the intermediate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I feel like I've seen you before,&amp;quot; said Shintaro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;What did he say?&amp;quot; asked Bob. Sally translated. Bob rested his chin on his hand. &amp;quot;Well, I did go on that trip to Tokyo last year.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I was living in Tokyo last year,&amp;quot; Shintaro said after she explained. &amp;quot;Maybe that's when I saw you.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Where was he in Tokyo?&amp;quot; Bob asked Sally. Shintaro hedged, but eventually told Sally the name of the neighborhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But I had a good reason for being there.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Of course you did,&amp;quot; Bob agreed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• Your second example is perfect. Sally is established as translator, but you don't need to have tons of repeated dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• For your third example, use the first version, where you actually use the Japanese because you want the reader to understand that Bob is speaking a new language. What the words &lt;em&gt;mean&lt;/em&gt; isn't the point of that passage; it's that he's learning the Japanese words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T18:56:06.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23465" CreationDate="2016-06-20T19:07:39.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a very interesting question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like, of the choices you provided, combining the first route and the 3rd route would be most effective. But, I also agree that writing things twice does tend to be a bit redundant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having faced a conundrum such as this in my own writing, the third method might be easiest to use completely, if you actually speak Japanese. Then, you'd have to translate every part of dialogue while their in Japan instead of only what Shintaro is saying. And in cases where she's intentionally misinterpreting, you would merely have to actually translate, then explain the misinterpretation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't desire to use either the 3rd route or mix the first and the third, you could just not use as much dialogue while their in Japan, and instead explain what the people are saying, example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sally walks into a bar with Shintaro, and catches snippets of Japanese exclamations and greetings. Shintaro apparently is friends with the bartender, as he greets him warmly, then asks about his wife and kids. The bartender sees Sally and offers her a drink, on the house. She accepts the offer graciously, and asks Shintaro how long he has known the bartender. He replies by explaining that they are old friends from primary school... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to use this method, then the 3rd method is a bit easier and less confusing and more consistent than switching methods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind this is merely what I had done in a similar scenario, though I hope this eased your own decision making process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T19:07:39.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18983" CreationDate="2016-06-20T19:08:26.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Kate S. has a good point, in that the odds are that your first few poems may not be up to the snuff of what publishers are looking for. If you're not successful and get frustrated with the time it takes, there are sites that will allow you to post your poetry, just to be able to share it, without having to go through an acceptance process. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poetry.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Poetry.com&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;is one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a good site where you can give and get critiques on your writing, try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scribophile&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T19:08:26.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23411" CreationDate="2016-06-20T19:19:54.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have experience with that site, but you might want to try looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiverr.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fiverr&lt;/a&gt; to see if anyone offering to make covers there seems appropriate. While everything on Fiverr starts at $5 you will likely want a package that costs a bit more. There are multiple folks there who do covers, so explore and see if you find some one you want to work on your cover, then check their options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T19:19:54.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23470" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23479" CreationDate="2016-06-20T19:37:23.913" Score="3" ViewCount="14273" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may seem like an off-topic question, but it's really more about writing than about the grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a lot of dialogue in my writing, sometimes too much, but while I'm writing it, though the story itself is in the present tense, I don't know whether it would be confusing to use the past tense for dialogue tags. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I swallow and look at Mac.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He looks back at me, just as frightened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Tell me the truth, should I be scared?&amp;quot; He asked me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I answer, &amp;quot;I don't know.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this confusing to do? The way I usually look at it is by imagining the way the narrator is hearing it. Like, if the narrator is narrating after it's said, use the past, or he/she is narrating during use the present, etc.b&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it best to just stay in one tense in dialogue regardless of when the narration is happening?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2022-05-23T19:49:46.717" Title="Writing dialogue, present or past tense &quot;said&quot;" Tags="|dialogue|tenses|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23456" CreationDate="2016-06-20T19:40:14.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a general rule of thumb I only introduce the main MAIN character in the first chapter. That's to say, just one person. You can introduce someone else with them, but no more then one other person. After that, you can gradually introduce the characters at whatever interval you deem necessary. I like trios or introducing single characters by themselves, but in a scene with the main so they aren't completely alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19352" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T19:40:14.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18983" CreationDate="2016-06-20T19:50:58.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One more benefit which can be gleaned from submitting your writing for publication, is that occasionally someone at the publishing company will include some constructive criticism in their rejection letter.  When it happens, that advice is a treasure buried under what is otherwise, a pile of disappointment.  Once you get clear of the anger and self-doubt which often accompany such letters, go back with an unemotional eye, and search for some clues on how to make your writing better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once got a rejection letter that simply said... &quot;Not in the specified format&quot;.  I got pissed.  I got self-righteous.  I eventually even let in a little self-doubt.  But eventually, I went back and read the publisher's website and found their submissions requirements page.  Before that moment, I didn't even know there was such a thing.  Since then, I have searched for and found one on almost every magazine and publisher site.  From that reject letter, I learned something that made my submission packages, if not my writing itself, better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn from your failures and then they aren't failures any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T19:50:58.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23455" CreationDate="2016-06-20T19:54:13.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no intrinsic reason using a familiar setting means creating a derivative work.  How many different stories have been set in New York, for example, or Paris?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your plot and characters are original and distinctive, it shouldn't be a big problem if the setting is vaguely familiar --unless you're actually ripping off details from someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you definitely want to stay away from is having plot, setting and characters all seem suspiciously familiar at once (although even that can work if you're good enough --nearly all Shakespeare's canon was composed of adaptations of earlier works).  A trick that has sometimes worked well for other writers is to place the plot and characters of one story in the setting of another --Star Wars is a fairy tale in space, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T19:54:13.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23455" CreationDate="2016-06-20T19:56:20.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start with your story's POV.  Since your plot has a big secret hidden inside, you will want to tell it from a limited, non-omniscient perspective.  It is that point of view character which is going to make your story unique.  Who they are, how they see the world and what leads them to uncover the secret is what makes your story interesting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your story shouldn't be about a not-so-abandoned town.  Instead, it should share a few days or weeks in the life of a special person and their one-of-a-kind point of view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T19:56:20.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23470" CreationDate="2016-06-20T20:06:29.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Avoid the tags and you avoid the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I swallow and look at Mac.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He looks back at me, just as frightened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Tell me the truth, should I be scared?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hesitate.  &amp;quot;I don't know.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most readers will assume that any un-tagged quote came from the most recently mentioned character.  Even when the speaker is unclear, most readers are willing to read a few more lines to figure it out.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;In the case above, either character might have said &amp;quot;Tell me the truth...&amp;quot;, but &amp;quot;I don't know&amp;quot; is obviously a response from the POV character.  This clarifies that Mac spoke the earlier question which makes the now-absent tags redundant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T20:06:29.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23458" CreationDate="2016-06-20T20:37:04.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supporting Digital Dracula's excellent answer, don't be afraid to leave out details which have a long shelf life.  Revulsion, for example, is not likely to leave your character in the moment he leaves the killing room.  If your scene demands detailed and emotion-inducing descriptions, leave your character's emotions unspoken until a quieter, less word-bound moment.  Instead, use your words to assault the reader's senses, unfiltered by either your character's perspective or a distant third-person POV.  Just drop the facts of the scene on the page in simple sentences, cold truths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;John walked carefully on the stained floor, dark blood congealing into the his shoes with every step. Gears grind constantly in the background.  The clang of metal striking metal abuses his ears.  Metal on flesh and bone sounds worse.  Under it all, the desperate cries of the animals, waiting to die.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then when both the reader and John escape that horrifying room, you can reflect on John's emotional reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T20:37:04.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3274" CreationDate="2016-06-20T20:53:48.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story arises out of a challenge to character. The same event may challenge some characters and not others. A given character will be challenged by some events and not others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to create a story, you need a character and an event that challenges that character. Which comes first? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, I am sure, the character comes first and the author must then come up with events to challenge them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other cases, the event comes first and the author must then come up with a character who will be challenged by those events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, perhaps, it is the combination of event and character that occurs to the writer as a single piece. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the event-first approach is most likely to produce dull books, as the author may be so engrossed in the event that they never really develop a character who is genuinely challenged by it, except in a generic or technical way. Much of fantasy and sci fi seems to fall into this trap, with the author so absorbed in world building that real character development never happens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might lead to a recommendation to always start with character, but this far to much writing advice takes the form of &quot;this is often done badly, so don't do it at all,&quot; which is actually pretty bad advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again, I suppose you could argue that dull literary fiction is the result of all character and no challenge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm inclined to doubt that an author really has much choice about which story element occurs to them first. I think they simply need to remember that they need all the elements to succeed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T20:53:48.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20914" CreationDate="2016-06-20T21:09:52.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are describing a dark hero and the best way to make a dark hero palatable to the a non-sympathetic reader is to draw a line in the sand, across which your character will not cross.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;He's successfully bypassed the firewalls of the air defense missile battery and targeted the throne room of a corrupt monarchy.  Black Ice defenses are tracking him down and he only has a few moments before they locate his computer center.  It's now or never, fire or flee, and chances are that he will never get this close again.  He glances down at the throne room security feed which he tapped into a few hours earlier.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nuns, petitioning the king for aid!  &quot;No! ...anything but Nuns&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dashing to the wall, he yanks the main power feed.  Every computer in the room falls to black, invisible in the resulting darkness, both here and in the cyber world beyond.  With a prayer that the monarch's black ice defenders haven't marked his location, he resigns himself to letting the monarch live a little longer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T21:09:52.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23470" CreationDate="2016-06-20T21:15:01.053" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter how much dialogue you have. If your story (the narration) is in present tense, then all the verbs have to be in present tense. All the dialogue tags, all the narration, everything. The only exception is if you're talking about something which happened in the past relative to the present moment of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[Bolding is for emphasis, not because the story needs it.]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I swallow and look at Mac.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He looks back at me, just as frightened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Tell me the truth, should I be scared?&amp;quot; &lt;strong&gt;he asks me.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I answer, &amp;quot;I don't know.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we &lt;strong&gt;left&lt;/strong&gt; town &lt;strong&gt;an hour ago&lt;/strong&gt;, we &lt;strong&gt;were&lt;/strong&gt; tired and hungry, but uninjured. We &lt;strong&gt;walked&lt;/strong&gt; for an hour before we &lt;strong&gt;fell&lt;/strong&gt; into the crevasse. Now we're tired and hungry, Mac has a broken arm, and my ankle is twisted. I don't know if we can get out of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T21:15:01.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23482" CreationDate="2016-06-20T22:17:34.017" Score="7" ViewCount="2459" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing (planning to write) a fantasy novel.&#xA;I'm done with the worldbuilding, rules of magic, main characters (even though I think I will add some more in the future) and their initial plots and interactions. The problem is that I don't have a clear idea of what's gonna happen in the middle/end of the story. I only have vague ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I first complete the storyline (at least the main events) and then start writing or should I start to write and see how my characters behave as I write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19406" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T17:58:21.360" Title="Should I start writing even if I'm not sure how the story will end?" Tags="|creative-writing|fantasy|plot|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23480" CreationDate="2016-06-20T22:26:25.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not all writers know exactly where they're going when they start writing. Sometimes, they don't even know what the first turning point will be until they pick up the pen, or get on the computer, and start typing/writing. If you're not quite sure about the story-line yet, then maybe starting the first chapter is exactly what you need to do to get the creative juices flowing. In quite a few of the stories I've written, and completed, I had no idea how it was going to end until I'd already written the climax. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T22:26:25.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23480" CreationDate="2016-06-20T22:44:17.980" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of writers start writing with no idea where it will go, much less how it will end. Dean Wesley Smith has a book about that, called &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/28JO1jK&quot;&gt;Writing Into the Dark&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I once heard Richard North Patterson claim that &quot;Any mystery writer who starts without knowing the end is committing authorial malpractice.&quot; (The next time I read one of his books, I knew the ending about 25% of the way in. And the one after that, I figured out on page 8. So go figure.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have some way of progressively moving in the direction of a climax, that will help. You don't even have to know the climax. You just have to know that you are moving toward one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pretty good way to do that: Start with a character with a problem. Then write &lt;em&gt;try/fail cycles&lt;/em&gt;. The character tries the smartest thing they can think of. But it fails. Not only that, it leaves things worse than they were before. So they try the next thing, which is more difficult in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This progresses (more or less) in the direction of a climax because eventually the character runs out of easy ideas, and has to try harder ones, or ones they are more and more reluctant to try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you keep that up, you get to a point where the only way forward is to do something the character has sworn all along that they would never do. And you have &lt;em&gt;discovered&lt;/em&gt; a climax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice: Whichever way gets you writing is the right way (for now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you end up throwing stuff out, everything you write is practice. It's learning. That's worth a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T22:44:17.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23483" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-20T23:29:40.573" Score="0" ViewCount="333" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering, and hope this question is not too broad, but these days, what are the advantages of writing a book versus making a series of YouTube videos? Do people read any more, or do they just watch videos online instead of cinema movies, television, and yes, books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what kind of books habe YouTube videos made obsolete and how do I chose which is best for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19386" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T23:56:18.800" Title="Books versus YouTube videos" Tags="|community|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23480" CreationDate="2016-06-20T23:37:49.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, it doesn't matter whether I know where a story is going or not, because I can only type so fast.  I love to flesh out characters and plot out outlines while I'm preparing to write, but once I start writing, all bets are off.  The finished product rarely looks like I thought it would as I started typing the opening scene.  That used to bother me, but over the years it has become more of a reassurance.  Each night, as I sit down to write something new, I assure myself that I don't have to get anything perfect tonight.  Between now and final edits, everything is likely to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is organic.  While we write, we grow.  The story grows.  Our talent grows.  Everything changes between conception and birth.  You are not the author you are going to be by the time you finish this book and like that future you, the book will be different from what you expect.  Don't worry about how the story ends.  Let the future you figure it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T23:37:49.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3274" CreationDate="2016-06-20T23:39:56.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some creators develop a mild case of schizophrenia. Or imaginary friends. Or Tulpas, if you like. They can distinguish and identify the imaginary companions, but these companions have own ideas, own opinions, own thoughts; quite rich to that; they are separate, fully-featured persons for all practical purposes, despite living only in the writer's head, and technically being figments of the writer's brain&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And these characters often have quite fascinating stories to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The muse&quot; can become quite literal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a time I had such companions too, and writing at the time was quite fascinating. I didn't need to plan, design, invent. I'd just ask my companion for a story, and she would tell me, actually a pretty good story, often with twists I wouldn't expect, jokes I'd laugh at, or moving fragments that would bring tears to my eyes. In fact, she wasn't telling her own story, just recalling tribal legends she had heard while traveling through her lands, but I wrapped the collection into the bracket of her telling me, me writing, our discussion, her commentary. In the end I couldn't even get myself to take the credit for writing this. &quot;Tribal Legends, told by Aris, written down by SF.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I talked with other creators - writers, artists - they often do have such muses. And they always have some backstory, some origin, some history to tell, often about distant places, and often taking the central role, though sometimes just acting as observers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: how often? Pretty often. Why? Because that happens. No reason. These muses just appear or disappear, for no apparent reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things happened in my life and my imaginary companions just vanished. I can no longer feel them around, talk to them. And I miss them quite a bit. And it's very hard to squeeze a story out of my own imagination nowadays. Back then, all I needed was to ask, and write it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T23:39:56.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23483" CreationDate="2016-06-20T23:56:18.800" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about &quot;How To...&quot; books versus &quot;DIY...&quot; videos, then there is probably some grounds to argue that YouTube is biting into book sales.  But for any process which takes more than 5 minutes to master, or for anything that needs to happen more a few feet from your computer's screen, I think that even that genre still has a purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the rest of the realms of non-fiction, nothing beats a book.  The longest television documentary on any subject pales before the depth and completeness of a competently written textbook.  Using a video as a reference document requires scrolling to the right spot in the timeline and the home pages of few YouTube videos come with time-stamp indices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for fiction, radio, cinema, and television have been attacking the dominance of the written word for decades.  YouTube brings nothing new to that battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have valuable thoughts and ideas... write them down!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T23:56:18.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23494" CreationDate="2016-06-21T00:59:10.653" Score="4" ViewCount="3359" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may seem like a duplicate of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8814/changing-the-way-one-addresses-a-character-in-a-dialogue-to-create-variation/8844#8844&quot;&gt;Changing the way one addresses a character in a dialogue to create variation&lt;/a&gt;, but it the answers there did not apply. My question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When writing in the first person, is it appropriate to alternate terms of endearment, like using &quot;Mom&quot; and &quot;Mother&quot; interchangeably in both dialogue and narration?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Quorraline!&quot; A voice calls. Yes, I know it's a strange name. My &lt;em&gt;mom's&lt;/em&gt; an oceanographer and wanted to name me Corral but my dad wanted to name me Caroline. So they just combined the two names and spelled it with a Q to be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm here, &lt;em&gt;Mother&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; I call out. Seeing me, her features visibly relax. Her dark-brown arms reach out, and I step in to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Mactaurum,&quot; My &lt;em&gt;mother&lt;/em&gt; called, she always seems to know who's coming inside the house. My brother entered the kitchen, frowning at &lt;em&gt;Mom&lt;/em&gt; calling him by his full name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See, in this excerpt the narrator uses &quot;My mom,&quot; &quot;Mother,&quot; &quot;Mom,&quot; and &quot;My Mother&quot; to refer to her mom. Because the narrator is speaking, do I have to refer to her mother in the same way to maintain consistency, or do I only have to refer her the same way in the dialogue itself?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should add that Quorraline's brother only refers to their mother as &quot;Mom&quot; in conversations with their mother and in addressing her. Does her variance make her more dynamic or just inconsistent? Perhaps I'm just over thinking this, and how the protagonists refer to their parents isn't even noteworthy at all, but I would like it if someone were to shed some light on the issue and answer this question. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T20:38:38.100" Title="First person POV &quot;mom:&quot; vs. &quot;mother&quot;" Tags="|characters|dialogue|character-development|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23487" CreationDate="2016-06-21T01:21:38.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, dialogue is not bound by the rules of grammar as tightly as the rest of the novel. Therefore, if a person says something a certain way, you write it that way. As far as your example goes, there is no right or wrong way to refer to Quorraline's mother in dialogue. If Quorraline refers to her both as 'mother' and 'mom,' then her dialogue should reflect that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the rest of the novel: Go with what is best for the book. If referring to Quorraline's mother solely as 'mother' sounds best, do it. If mixing the terms sounds better, do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is generally a good idea to refer to things (excluding during dialogue) the same way throughout a book. The more specific you get though, the less this rule of thumb applies. For example, if your book contains references to time, you should always write them the same way. Personal pronouns? Not so much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if you are trying to sound slightly more sophisticated, keeping it to 'mother' might be the way to go. It all depends on what you want to achieve with your novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T01:21:38.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23525" CreationDate="2016-06-21T01:39:21.383" Score="2" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like totally chronological (starting in the beginning of the world's story events and going on to the future), or in the present-past-future order, or another? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any specific time order better or more advantageous than the others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T12:45:22.740" Title="For trilogies, is there any order of time periods the story should follow that is considered more appropriate?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23480" CreationDate="2016-06-21T03:17:12.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't have to know how it ends, but you do have to know how it begins. It begins with some pain, some longing, some need, some disturbance in the equanimity of life that forces some deep deviation from the ordinary course of affairs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to know how the deviation will end, or even what course it will take, but you have to know what it is and why it is. You cannot meander along waiting to discover it or waiting for it to happen of its own accord. Or rather, you can, but nothing worth keeping gets written till you find it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T03:17:12.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23487" CreationDate="2016-06-21T06:35:20.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Mom&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;mother&amp;quot; and the other variations are all common enough that alternating between them probably won't be disruptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; different, with nuances of formality and attitude - so if you're alternating between &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of them, with great frequency, like you do in this sample - then yes, it does start to feel a little weird. I think the answer is: &lt;strong&gt;you aren't limited to just one, but also, don't treat them as freely interchangeable.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My best advice is to point you at &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4146/is-it-ok-to-refer-to-some-characters-by-first-name-and-to-others-by-last-name/4148#4148&quot;&gt;this previous answer of mine&lt;/a&gt;, I explain some general guidelines about consistency in labeling characters in a way that's appropriate to point-of-view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here are a few more thoughts specific to your particular case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be a little weird if Quorraline, when addressing her mother, would sometimes use &amp;quot;Mother&amp;quot; and sometimes &amp;quot;Mom.&amp;quot; I'd expect one of the two to be the baseline the mother's expecting, and the other to feel either too formal or too casual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I have no issue with Quorraline addressing her mother as &amp;quot;Mother,&amp;quot; but in the privacy of her own thoughts, or discussions with friends or siblings, referring to her as &amp;quot;Mom.&amp;quot; That'd even give decent justification for sometimes referring to her as &amp;quot;Mother,&amp;quot; even privately - she can think of her mother in both ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;My mother&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;my mom&amp;quot; is a little different: it's using &amp;quot;mother&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;mom&amp;quot; not as a name, but as a role. (This might be a little confusing, because they're so close - &amp;quot;mother&amp;quot; vs. &amp;quot;my mother&amp;quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you write &lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;Mactaurum,&amp;quot; My mother called&lt;/code&gt;, that strikes me as odd, because you've already introduced the character to the scene, so it seems weird to refer to her by her role instead of just using her label. It draws attention to the role, the relationship, where that doesn't seem particularly pertinent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll use a different example to demonstrate. Imagine we're already in the middle of a scene, where Captain Elijah Peterson, who is also the narrator's lover, is calling out to a new character named Mycroft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Mycroft,&amp;quot; Elijah called; he always notices the instant somebody steps on the bridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Mycroft,&amp;quot; the captain called; he always notices the instant somebody steps on the bridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Mycroft,&amp;quot; my lover called; he always notices the instant somebody steps on the bridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using &amp;quot;Elijah&amp;quot; makes sense here, because that's the narrator's personal label for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using &amp;quot;the captain&amp;quot; sounds odd, though, because that's probably &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; how the narrator thinks of him, even though he's very much in &amp;quot;captain-mode&amp;quot; right at the moment. &amp;quot;my captain&amp;quot; might work, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using &amp;quot;my lover&amp;quot; sounds odd too. Even though it makes sense for the narrator to think of him as &amp;quot;my lover,&amp;quot; there's no relation between calling out to Mycroft and being the narrator's lover. The juxtaposition almost &lt;em&gt;forces&lt;/em&gt; the reader to read this as a connection, as though the narrator is implying how attentive and caring their lover is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your piece, the &amp;quot;natural name&amp;quot; or label is &amp;quot;Mother&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Mom.&amp;quot; Whereas &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; mother_&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; mom&amp;quot; put focus on the role and relationship. This works fine in your earlier use: &lt;code&gt;My mom's an oceanographer and wanted to name me Corral&lt;/code&gt; -- because there the relationship is obviously relevant. But when calling out to her brother, it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T06:35:20.340" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23492" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-21T07:15:06.130" Score="1" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it ok to use subsections in place of lists? Consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;%----------------------------------------------------&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My plans %(section starts here)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;abcdefgh ijkl..... Following are my specific plans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.1 Plan1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;................................&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.2 Plan 2..............&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;%-----------------------------------------------------------&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to keep the section / subsection format. However, I feel that with the colon introduced before, the subsections are serving more as a list, rather typical subsections. Should I do away with the colon and write a full sentence like &quot; I will describe my specific plans in the following paragraphs&quot; ?&#xA;Hope this is the right community to ask this sort of question.&#xA;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19383" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T04:20:36.903" Title="Can I use subsections in place of lists" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23493" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-21T08:40:56.043" Score="1" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm talking about teenagers/young adults.&#xA;If you had to choose one, which plot can be more fun (without being vulgar - maybe just a little bit) to write and to read?&#xA;Can you explain why and make some examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that it wouldn't be the main storyline, but part of the plot of one of the protagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19406" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T12:02:46.583" Title="Guy in the body of a girl or girl in the body of a guy?" Tags="|fantasy|gender|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-06-22T11:39:14.050" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23487" CreationDate="2016-06-21T09:20:39.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Addressing characters in dialogue:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything goes. I usually call my mum 'mum', but I might call her 'mother' to be mock-serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Queen of the Muffins'? Sure, if in the middle of some exchange it makes sense for me to call her that, as a joke, as an insult, whatever — you can put it in my dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Addressing characters in the narrative:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Orson Scott Card! Politically, you might think he's a lunatic (I do). But he's an extremely well-established writer and is regarded as an excellent teacher. A writer asked him exactly your question, and he answered it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/lessons/2004-09-28-1.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. He refers to third-person POV, but the advice applies to any perspective where you're inside the character's head:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rule for how to refer to a teenage character's parents is really the same as the rule for referring to any character in any fiction where you're using limited third person point of view: You refer to the parents by the names or titles that the point of view character would use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that teenage character Anna calls her parents Mom and Dad. When you're in Anna's point of view, then they are &lt;strong&gt;invariably&lt;/strong&gt; called Mom and Dad. If you call them &amp;quot;her mother&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Mr. Smith,&amp;quot; you are violating point of view. Even if Anna, in her dialogue, calls them &amp;quot;Mother&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Harold,&amp;quot; when you refer to them in the narrative you still use Mom and Dad because those are the titles she actually thinks of them with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when you do a chapter from Mom's point of view, she isn't Mom, she's Agnes. And she thinks of her husband, not as Dad or Mr. Smith or Anna's father, or even as Harold, but as Harry. She might CALL him &amp;quot;honey&amp;quot; in their conversation, but in the narrative throughout the section from Mom's (Agnes's) point of view, he is invariably referred to as Harry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you have the chapter from the point of view of Anna's brother, Jason. He thinks of Anna as Anna, but in his own mind he calls his mother Mother and his father He or Him with a capital letter, the way some people refer to God. It's sarcastic, but he's also sincere - that is, he REALLY thinks of him this way, it isn't just a pose. You continue to use these terms whenever we're in Jason's point of view. Then, when Jason and his father have a rapprochement and Jason comes to understand him, he can come to think of him as Dad and his mother as Mom, at which point you start referring to them by the new appellation that applies inside Jason's head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Should you vary your terms for variety's sake?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice? Probably not. If your characters aren't dynamic enough to hold the reader's attention, you're not going to fix the problem with a carousel of nicknames. There are much better ways to engage the reader, and you're probably already doing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're really worried their names are getting repetitive, maybe it's a sign you're overusing them. I do this all the time. My brain seems to think that 'You're an idiot,' is a terrible line, but 'You're an idiot, Jack,' is superlative. When I'm editing, I'm constantly hunting for the parts where my characters overuse each other's names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, though, you'd be surprised what you can get away with. Watch &lt;em&gt;Titanic&lt;/em&gt; and count how often Jack and Rose say each other's names. It doesn't seem to have hurt the movie much...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T09:20:39.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3180" CreationDate="2016-06-21T09:35:42.067" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you read the &quot;Strunk and White&quot; style guide? It is not &quot;English&quot;, it's apparently &quot;Anglo-Saxon&quot;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I notice is that, it is brilliant! I am also trying to find a more modern guide to help with some technicalities, however, Strunk and White's guide is far more eloquent and deals with the art of writing also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19429" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T09:35:42.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23489" CreationDate="2016-06-21T09:58:31.307" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most trilogies or series follow chronological order, but there's no requirement. Do whatever serves your story. As long as it's clear to your reader what's happening when in relation to other events, you can present events in whatever order works for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T09:58:31.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23480" CreationDate="2016-06-21T11:48:23.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it odd that some writers scope out their story, beginning to end, before writing it. Where's the fun in that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never know how my stories will end. I learn about the end as the characters do. The ending flows naturally from the characters' actions through the story and their, well, their characters. I can't prescribe an ending on the story, and on these characters. They change as they're written, and in revision, so it's futile to specify ahead of time what they're going to do and how the story will end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T11:48:23.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23493" CreationDate="2016-06-21T12:02:46.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be honest, it's pretty much the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the same scenario, same context, and generates roughly the same conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But well, generally speaking, people tend to find the &quot;boy in the body of a girl&quot; funnier, maybe because of how we are conditioned to expect masculinity and toughness from men. Also because of how little we understand about the intricacies of the female mind, maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But all in all, not that big of a deal really, pick what you like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19342" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T12:02:46.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23480" CreationDate="2016-06-21T15:17:52.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Some people talk about Plotters vs. Pantsters.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Plotter works out the whole book, chapter by chapter, point by point, then writes to the outline. It takes a long time up front, but then writing can progress quite quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Pantster, on the other hand, writes by the seat of his or her pants, sitting down, clearing his mind, and then writing what comes. JRR Tolkein could be described a pantster I believe. For a pantster, the first draft is often quite scrappy and inconsistent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my WIP, one of my characters has Alzheimer's in about half the chapters and a daughter in the other half. My hero's hair changes colour. I have a half dozen chapters that need refactoring to make them consistent. The first draft functions like an outline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an intermediate stage called a Planster: a person who has a general idea of the main plot points, but who discovers the details on the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many different ways to produce a book, and you'll discover your own style as you go. Don't be told that there is only one way, there are lots as you'll discover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15426" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T15:17:52.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23500" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23534" CreationDate="2016-06-21T16:05:51.587" Score="2" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;Comic book scripts include panel details, dialogue, captions, SFX... Dark Horse Comics has an example in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://images.darkhorse.com/darkhorse08/company/submissions/scriptguide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;submission guidelines&lt;/a&gt;, and the format for every panel can look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Panel 1. &lt;code&gt;(Description of the visuals of the panel)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CHARACTER X: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Dialogue spoken in this panel by character X!&quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SFX:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;WHAM! POW! SFX, e.g. a sound effect visible in the panel!&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Panel 2. &lt;code&gt;(Description of the next panel begins...)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether its a good idea to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Work on both the panel details and the dialogue and SFX&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) Work on panel details first then revisit to fill in the dialogue and SFX&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;because I need a time efficient solution, I need to know which one is ideal for a faster work time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18888" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-06-24T02:30:19.043" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T12:04:18.443" Title="What is the ideal approach to writing a script for a comic book?" Tags="|planning|script|comics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23426" CreationDate="2016-06-21T16:22:42.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good news — I don't think you need to worry about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find a publisher, you will sign a contract. The contract might restrict your rights to offer the book and/or the music via your website, but only so that the publisher can offer it via their chosen means instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a good thing, because a reputable publisher will be better at promoting and distributing your work than you will be on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exact details of what you are allowed to do after signing a publishing contract will depend on what you negotiate (or your agent negotiates) with the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's good to think about these processes, but you should cross that bridge when you come to it. The best thing you can do is to concentrate on finishing the book first!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last note: &lt;strong&gt;Be careful about making your work freely available online.&lt;/strong&gt; Copyright law varies from place to place, but in many countries, doing so will use up your 'first publication' rights, which can make publishers less interested in the work in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T16:22:42.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23340" CreationDate="2016-06-21T19:34:15.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you really need to focus on those things that the friend can observe and then conclusions from those observations. This will likely make your descriptions concern the physical manifestations. Not &quot;lust for blood&quot; but maybe &quot;behaving like a berserker&quot; or &quot;in a frenzy.&quot; What other odd things might the friend notice? And please don't rely on the &quot;not showing in the mirror&quot; as it has been done a zillion times. Maybe instead it's a cold day and the friend notices there is no cloud of chilled breath when the vampire speaks? Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T19:34:15.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23487" CreationDate="2016-06-21T20:17:12.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel they are similar enough that they could be used interchangeably, as long as it's not too frequently. Also, consider the personality of your characters, and the scenes that they interact in, and their upbringing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Growing up, because of my families Southern Appalachian heritage, I generally tended to call my Mother Momma. Growing up in the mixing pot of South Western Ohio in formal settings I use the term Mother. When handling paperwork for college I use the term mother, and put on all my forms that I would like to be addressed using my Mother's maiden name. However, when I am in the company of my friends at the college, especially ones who have migrated from Kentucky, and Virginia for school I generally will revert to using the term Momma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, overall I would say it would depend on your characters personality type, and her family background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T20:17:12.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23487" CreationDate="2016-06-21T20:38:38.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The choice of &quot;mom&quot; or &quot;mother&quot; or some other word helps to characterize the narrator. They differ in formality, and perhaps other attributes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This offers an interesting opportunity: Your character's choice of words could indicate something about her mood or her attitude toward her mother at each particular moment in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to how a parent's use of a child's middle name might indicate an increasing level of annoyance with the child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T20:38:38.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3274" CreationDate="2016-06-21T22:10:19.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often create characters, and factions for my stories before developing a more polished plot. Generally after creating a character I have a rough idea of where my plot is going, and what I want to do with these characters. From there world building takes over, and I make notes in Scrivener for future reference as I write the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T22:10:19.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23480" CreationDate="2016-06-22T00:15:04.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The most important thing (the only important thing?) is the end result--and that someone reads it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the process to get there is important, because, duh, it's how we get there! But any way you do it, if it turns out good, it's a good process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's your process!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imitation is important - feel free to pick and choose from other people's processes - but in the end you're going to have to invent your own process that works for you. Don't be surprised if it evolves from one book to the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your personality might help deciding which way to go.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As has been said before, there are two main ways to write a book. Outlining and Pantsing. And then there are a myriad of combinations and variants of those two...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I've found (I've used both approaches) is that pantsing makes for a very messy first draft. You have to love picking your story apart, rewriting, moving stuff around, putting stuff together, experiment, throwing stuff away! And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pantsing can be a good thing though if your creativity takes time to get going and you feel that you don't have the ability to just be creative within the small confines of a single scene. If you have to have the whole organic flow from beginning to end, pantsing might be your way to write a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outlining on the other hand (usually) limits the chaos of the first draft, although you're still going to have to write several drafts. However, outlining requires more of an on/off-switchable creativity that you can use to go in and just create that scene, then move on to the next scene that may be years later, some place else or with a totally different group of people. (Of course, with an outline you can plan your scenes in one order - jumping between plots, locations etc as you see fit - and then write them in an other order as to limit the amount of disconnect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I'm clinically impulsive, so pantsing turned into a pretty varied assortment of &quot;stuff&quot; (A.k.a. total mess!) Outlining fits me better since I can just go wild with that one scene and it's &quot;contained&quot; within a reasonable story structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The kind of book you're writing can suggest one way or another.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book has a complex plot with many twists (e.g. books in the crime/thriller genre), outlining the story first might be better to avoid having to throw so much away due to logic holes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other types of books might work better with pantsing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-06-22T17:58:21.360" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T17:58:21.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23489" CreationDate="2016-06-22T01:53:10.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends entirely on your story and what you are trying to achieve. Certainly, most trilogies and pulp series are chronological, but there are a number that flow between eras. The one thing they all need, though, is something to connect the separate eras/characters/stories together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20895325-ancient-future-trilogy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Traci Harding's Ancient Future trilogy&lt;/a&gt;, which  tells a story that, chronologically, goes all over the shop as the protagonist travels through time - however it can be argued that the story progresses linearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other examples include parts of a series that deal with past events relevant to the story. Stephen King's Wizards Glass, part of the Dark Tower series, deals primarily with events in Roland of Gilead's past from when he was 14. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Raymond E Feist plays with this somewhat in Magician, with the duality of Thomas/Ashen-Shugar and their connection through time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steven Erikson's Malazan books also play around a bit with this, with the chronological events not matching the order the books were published in (however, his story and world are epic in scale and the published order fills in a lot of context that would be missing if you read it chronologically).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cloud Atlas also plays around with different era's characters, although I haven't read the book so can't really comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other examples that I just can't quite remember at the moment, where there are a number of separate stories all joined by a common link - lineage, some artifact etc. Frustratingly, it's on the tip of my tongue (so to speak). I'll see what I can bring myself to remember and edit my answer accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lauren's advice is, as always, good. As long as it is clear to the readers what is happening when, and why, you can present it in any way that works. Having something to use as a point of reference, or link between, is vital for this to work successfully, I believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T01:53:10.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23513" CreationDate="2016-06-22T02:19:36.383" Score="5" ViewCount="5317" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing my first series of novels, which will contain four books. As often happens, about half way through developing the books, I opened up the possibility for an entirely new series set in the same world with the same characters, but several years later. I could possibly do this again as well, after the second series is complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any technical term for a collection of novels like this? It's several series, probably with varying numbers of books, that are all connected through the setting and characters. The series would be different in their plots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2021-01-10T19:32:45.617" Title="Term for a collection of novels divided into several series" Tags="|series|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23509" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-22T02:51:37.280" Score="6" ViewCount="1399" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in learning the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snowflake Method&lt;/a&gt; to outline a novel.  Question is:  I'd like to write dual plot novel.  One part is science fiction set in the near future.  The other part is a fantasy world, set in the past, that communicates or is dreamed up by the main character in the science fiction world.  In other words, events in fantasy world influence the science fiction world, but not vice versa.  Can the Snowflake method be adapted to handle this? Thanks, Craig.  P.S. Are there other better outline methods to accomplish this?  Also, am I correct in identifying my story structure as dual plot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9885" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-19T06:24:13.947" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T06:24:13.947" Title="Is it possible to outline a dual plot novel using the &quot;Snowflake Method&quot; or other method?" Tags="|plot|outline|snowflake|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23508" CreationDate="2016-06-22T03:40:18.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sorry I'm a budding contributor here so I don't have comment permissions. &#xA;Just to confirm you are writing something like The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, right? Where each series has its own books in different time frame. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes then that's a massive project and wouldn't be bound by something like trilogy or any of that sort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saga being a long tale that can take over enormous period of time would be the most suitable choice. Apart from this I'd think calling entire project as a Saga/Series/Project with each series being called as 'Act' and each book as chapter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex. Project Ghost Speaks 101 -&gt; Act 1 (The dead resurrects) - &gt; Chapter 1(ghost of Sherlock Holmes).. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OH and best wishes for the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19437" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T03:40:18.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6642" CreationDate="2016-06-22T04:13:00.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try gong deeper in the pov:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1rst person:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where was everyone? Had they all gone to a safe place that nobody told me about? I stared at my hands. Did anything in this world really belong to me? No, nothing did everything had turned to dust. Boyfriends and friends they possessed and accompanied me but nothing substantial. I sat down, and looked back at the moon, left alone, waiting for the moon to fall from the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third person close:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where was everyone? Had they all gone to a safe place that nobody told me about? Adele stared at her hands. Did anything in this world really belong to me? No, nothing did everything had turned to dust. Boyfriends and friends they possessed and accompanied her but nothing substantial. She sat down, and looked back at the moon, left alone, waiting for the moon to fall from the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please do this in your own style this is just an example to try and help. It takes time study sentence structure and flow both can help keep a writer mindful of staying away from anything that makes the words choppy. Your writing is beautiful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18752" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T04:13:00.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21863" CreationDate="2016-06-22T05:55:35.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reach out to book bloggers and offer them a free copy of your work in exchange for an honest review. If you have a series of books, offer the first one for free on Amazon whenever they allow it. This is an easy way to capture sales for the later books. You can also arrange a blog tour in order to promote your work, but if you are completely unknown you may have to pay for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get involved in the community of authors and readers online. The challenge of self-publishing is always to get your book in front of it's audience. If you have a relationship with other fans, it's easier to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19439" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T05:55:35.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23508" CreationDate="2016-06-22T10:22:33.020" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The good news is that there's nobody policing this! You can call your series anything you want — just like naming your individual books, you're looking for whatever you think will best serve the series and appeal to prospective readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'&lt;strong&gt;Trilogy&lt;/strong&gt;', '&lt;strong&gt;quadrilogy&lt;/strong&gt;' etc. obviously have technical meanings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So does '&lt;strong&gt;sequence&lt;/strong&gt;' (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel_sequence&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Terry Pratchett simply wrote 'The Discworld &lt;strong&gt;Novels&lt;/strong&gt;', and his covers would just say 'A Discworld Novel'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kameron Hurley writes 'the Worldbreaker &lt;strong&gt;Saga&lt;/strong&gt;'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Patrick Rothfuss calls his series 'the Kingkiller &lt;strong&gt;Chronicle&lt;/strong&gt;', which of course was also used for the Chronicles of Narnia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brandon Sanderson writes 'the 'Stormlight &lt;strong&gt;Archive&lt;/strong&gt;'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're writing humour, you could use a &lt;strong&gt;joke description&lt;/strong&gt; like Douglas Adams's 'A trilogy in five parts'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'&lt;strong&gt;Series&lt;/strong&gt;' does the job, and no-one will find it pretentious&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;George RR Martin uses 'A Song of Ice And Fire', that is, &lt;strong&gt;a unique name with no 'series' word&lt;/strong&gt; at all&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use as much imagination as you would when writing the book itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One note of caution! The above applies when naming your work for prospective readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're sending it to prospective &lt;em&gt;publishers&lt;/em&gt;, clearly, a cool series name still won't hurt. But in your first approach, it might be smart to focus on the initial book, or at most the initial trilogy. Ambition is great, but if you're an unknown author whose cover letter says 'I enclose my masterpiece which I anticipate to be the first in a fifteen-book series,' it could mark you out as having unrealistic expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publisher will want to see how well your book sells before they commit to publishing a dozen more, and it's good to show you understand that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T10:22:33.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23508" CreationDate="2016-06-22T15:55:51.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, it is simply a &lt;em&gt;series&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, when you look at writers' bibliographies on Wikipedia, multi-cycle series are usually grouped under a heading that refers to what they all have in common. For example, several of the novels of C. J. Cherryh are grouped under &quot;the Alliance-Union universe&quot;. In this case, &quot;universe&quot; is the term used to describe the connection between otherwise only vaguely related novels and novel cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But from a &lt;em&gt;technical&lt;/em&gt; point of view, that is, disregarding the content of the books, all these books form a series in that they are published one after another and are meant by the author and publisher to be perceived as belonging together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has an article where what you are talking about is called a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel_sequence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;novel sequence&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, but that is the first time I have encountered that term and am not sure it is actually used except ad hoc. That page also gives the model of &lt;code&gt;trilogy &amp;lt; sequence &amp;lt; 'saga' grouping (single author) &amp;lt; shared universe &amp;lt; genre&lt;/code&gt;, which I find interesting and appropriate, except that I would replace &quot;sequence&quot; with &quot;series&quot; and would maybe drop &quot;saga&quot;, because it implies a unity of protagonist, place or topics that is not present in many series' of novels set in the same world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T15:55:51.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23355" CreationDate="2016-06-22T16:01:50.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can indicate attraction with nothing more than intense interest. If your characters are secretly attracted to one another, they will watch each other very closely. They will remember each other's likes and dislikes, even when mentioned in passing, and they may use this information to needle each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your POV character will think about Thomas a lot. She may make observations to herself about how Thomas looks, moves, and smells. She will be very aware of him physically. He may exasperate her but he will be on her mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An observation: &quot;I like being close to you,&quot; clearly signifies interest and doesn't sound snappish at all. You may want to dial that back if you're still in the beginning stages of their romance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19439" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T16:01:50.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23509" CreationDate="2016-06-23T02:45:38.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never heard the term &quot;dual novel&quot; before (do you mean a novel with a dual timeline?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently using the Snowflake method to outline several books in a series, so perhaps I can be of help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm making one &quot;snowflake&quot; per book, but when characters are reappearing, I can reuse steps that deal with their backstory, psychology and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is; &lt;strong&gt;one snowflake per book&lt;/strong&gt;. Because you want the three acts, the plot points and all the other things that make the story into a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you have to keep track of two stories (or timelines), but they have to be confined in one book (and one snowflake).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Snowflake method, you would use characters to create sub plots. In fact, some of the character development steps of the method is meant to examine the story from a specific character's point of view. You will have a slightly different story for each character - or perhaps in your case, a very different story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case I selected one character to be main protagonist, and her story is very similar to the story of each book as a whole (e.g. she and each book share the same storylines).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I added detail by having the other characters see things slightly, or wildly different. In one book, one character is in a prison camp, while the protagonist is planning to free her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Snowflake method has the potential to have a sub plot for each character, although that would be a bit much. In most cases you use the slightly different perspectives to make sure all characters are three dimensional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my estimation, you shouldn't have any problems creating a story with dual timelines using the Snowflake method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The method is not designed specifically for dual timelines, but dual timelines are just one way of telling a story, regardless of what type of method you use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T02:45:38.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23519" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-23T06:57:46.350" Score="5" ViewCount="2264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am under the impression they do but I have colleagues who believe nobody reads blogs anymore, and that if you must blog, video blogs are better. Any thoughts on this? Is writing becoming redundant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19444" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T04:31:07.423" Title="Do people still read blogs?" Tags="|blog|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23520" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23521" CreationDate="2016-06-23T09:42:37.433" Score="5" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;This protagonist born and lives in a peasant village in a medieval-like age, where education and science aren't known much. But a certain awful event occurs in this village that leads this character to leave his homeland and starts a journey to put an end to the causer of such event. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But many things about the world are unknown by him, and have to be explained by another character that knows about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: is it believable that the protagonist only know about things related to his village and peasant life, and nothing more? Or would he look too &quot;ignorant&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T17:00:25.977" Title="A protagonist who knows little about the world he born and grew up in until majority (present)?" Tags="|characters|fantasy|world-building|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23520" CreationDate="2016-06-23T10:01:52.267" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a classic &quot;cabbagehead character,&quot; who allows you to gradually unveil your worldbuilding as he leaves his isolation and goes out into the larger community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing wrong with this at all. First example I can think of is Garion from David and Leigh Eddings' pentology The Belgariad (and second pentology The Malloreon). He is exactly what you describe: a sheltered peasant boy who leaves his small village to venture out on a great quest. In fact, one of his adult companions, the smith Durnik, is &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; a village man (a blacksmith, so not utterly ignorant) who joins the adventurers and learns about the larger world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very usable trope. Go for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T10:01:52.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23365" CreationDate="2016-06-23T11:09:29.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to join them into a single step, or else there is a risk that the user will do the first step without paying attention to the indicator arm, and may thus hold the input vane open too long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I presume that there is a third step here, which is to close the input vane when the indicator arm reaches the set value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You definitely need to join the first two parts of this, and the appropriate conjunction seems to be &quot;until&quot;. You might also join the third with &quot;then&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Turn on the air pipeline input vane and keep it open until the indicator arm moves to the set value. Then close the input vane. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can put the close instruction on a separate line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Turn on the air pipeline input vane and keep it open until the indicator arm moves to the set value. &#xA;  Close the input vane. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can decide that it is implied by &quot;keep open until&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Turn on the air pipeline input vane and keep it open until the indicator arm moves to the set value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is hard to locate the indicator arm, then it makes sense to tell people to locate it before they open the value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Locate the indicator arm by [how]&#xA;  Turn on the air pipeline input vane and keep it open until the indicator arm moves to the set value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this sounds like a procedure that can affect both worker safety and protection of property, make sure you field test your instructions to make sure they result in correct action with your target audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-06-24T03:05:16.293" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T03:05:16.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23403" CreationDate="2016-06-23T11:11:56.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, direct world building and character building goes out. &quot;Show, don't tell&quot; becomes your first commandment and you dive right into story progression, establishing the world, characters and mood as a side-effects of the plot. A man in a spacesuit, riding on a camel through a desert is worthy two pages of traditional worldbuilding. Give him scars, a plasma gun and foul language and you have another page of world- and character-building done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cut down on full originality of the setting. Using generics - common tropes, common settings, character archetypes, allows you to squeeze into 2 lines what otherwise would take half a page. Apply quirks and modifications as you like, to provide the necessary originality, but you have no room to establish something entirely new from scratch - you obtain the effect by mixing generics. Generic history elements help building it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: Instead of establishing from scratch a tribal culture with own traditions, mystic rituals, thriving on bloodlust, and menacing the population with raids, have offspring of an order of monks exiled from their monastery two centuries ago, turned nomadic rogues, seeking revenge on descendants of their enemy but cultivating traditions and rituals of ancestors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drop enough hints, and the reader will be able to build the whole world without need to establish it verbatim. You have the story to tell, and everything else happens as effects of flavors in which you write that story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T11:11:56.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23519" CreationDate="2016-06-23T11:22:29.913" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;My blog is still being read, and at about the same level it always was. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as blogs have become a popular form of content marketing, it is inevitable that fewer and fewer of them are being read. Ineffective marketers pump out boat loads of drivel which people do not read. Since producing something that is not drivel is hard work, they are always chasing the next media fad in hopes that it will get people reading their drivel. They see stats that show fewer blogs are being read and immediately jump to producing videos. Perhaps briefly people who have started to avoid blogs because of the drivel may turn to videos, but as all the drivel producer flock to video, people will see through that as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Text and video are both valuable means of expression, each with their own areas of particular strength. But drivel is still drivel and people will not watch drivel just because it a video rather than text. People will consume quality content in whatever media they find it in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create quality. Make sure you have something real to say and that you understand who you are saying it to. Choose the media that best suits the message. People will come. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T11:22:29.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23489" CreationDate="2016-06-23T12:45:22.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The previous answers are pretty good, contributing my penny. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing a trilogy, you are talking about a specific set of characters which are time bounded (can exist for a specific period of time it's upto you to make them live in all 3 books and/or show their ancestors-descendants) in other 2 books. &#xA;If you are depicting same people throughout the series then it should be chronological. (Enough theory lemme give an example) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing a trilogy of a hero Ashk first book depicts as if it is 2020, so I can't stretch story to 2018 in book 2 or 3, cause readers know he is going to make it in 2020(unless you show time travel where he risks his present if he messes up in past, am I giving you clues, sorry for putting thoughts in your mind) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility Is the story happens to be about hero Ashk in 2020 and ends up with new hero(say Nymeria) rising. This new hero (Nymeria) can have her story in the same time line for book 2, and you can make wonder in book 3  depicting how it all started/blast from past/mystery revelation/any other cool idea and make both of them coexist or however you may please. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To cut it short, if it's about same person chronological timeline should be adhered unless it involves time travel. if it has more than one central character and a very deep mystery or something like that helping you keep the grip over audience alternate timelines can be used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: its your trilogy you can write it whatever the way you want, the motto should be making yourself happy. One should not write to please people, that prevents him from writing to his full potential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19437" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T12:45:22.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23429" CreationDate="2016-06-23T16:19:03.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your questions says that your character is having a non-lucid dream, yet in your first description, which is supposed to be in dream, it says &quot;Rhea understands what this dream is now.&quot; That is exactly what a lucid dream is. I think your best option may be to describe what she is seeing and her reaction as if it is a normal scene and either her reaction within the dream that helps her realize she is dreaming (maybe she realizes her surroundings look fuzzy) or describe the scene and then describe her waking up and realizing it was all a dream. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T16:19:03.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23429" CreationDate="2016-06-23T17:09:00.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of the two writing samples, I found the first one terribly confusing, and the second one much clearer.  If you do want to give a sense of how Rhea reacts to the dream while she is experiencing it, you should stick to what she is aware of &lt;em&gt;at any given moment&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Feeling better, son?&amp;quot; Dr Evans asks patronizingly, and Rhea braces for a violent response.  Surprisingly, Colton responds instead with a tense nod.  How can he stand to have that man call him &amp;quot;son&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only later, after she awakes, will Rhea understand that this is how Dr. Evans imagines it will be once he has the kids under his control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T17:09:00.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20914" CreationDate="2016-06-23T17:38:19.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My main point would be to use humour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps make him look forward to his next hacking session, and get him all excited for it. Maybe you could have a classic saying for before he hacks something, to create humour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to be careful that you don't cross over the line, and just create a sadistic maniac. If you don't include themes aside from just the terrorist activities, your character could appear a bit one-sided, and only really cares about money he gets from hacking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, I'd make a likeable terrorist by giving them different themes to their character, making sure they are not entirely one-sided, and also using humour. Oh by the way, maybe the reader would like him more if he wasn't entirely bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T17:38:19.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23530" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-23T19:02:34.590" Score="3" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an extension to an earlier post.  Below are some summaries for a novel outline using the Snowflake Method.  I am looking for clarification if sections A and B are dual plots, of if section B is a subplot of section A (with the two tied together by the character Clarissa).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Section A:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richard Conners is an affluent, woman abusing young business major sophomore at Andrews University in Shady Oaks, NY, and Beth Yang is a slightly older secret agent (called a moralpractor) in training for the Medical Sociological Moralist party, that is responsible for saving him from a villainous drug lord.  Richard's days as a freewheeling fraternity brother are over when he begins to have visions of a fairytale world with a spirit named Clarissa that both challenges his view of himself and lands him in a university counseling group (that Beth monitors).  When Richard does not comply with the group, he is forced into becoming indebted to Beth, a woman, for helping him gain a reprieve from long-term psychiatric treatment (she explains his visions as a religious awakening).  The university puts Richard on trial again for mental illnesses when he helps Beth successfully follow a trail to the Andrews University board of regents' president, and Richard must give up the remainder of his freedom.  Richard endures psychological torture in a secret psychiatric hospital while public pressure grows to the point where the facility releases him, the MSM party wins a hundred seats in Congress, and he marries Beth after much therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Section B:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ophelia Platescrubber is a forty year old scullery slave for the most popular restaurant in Kingdom's Crossing, the capitol city of the magic land of Alcadeny, and Duncan Musicman is an older feeble minded man who parades through the city's streets amusing the population with his one man band.  When Ophelia petitions Saint Clarissa, the spirit who sees love in all hearts, to force Duncan to marry her, Clarissa tells Ophelia that she must prove to her that she has earned his trust first and she stipulates that she cannot learn magic to do it.   When Duncan is imprisoned in a madhouse by the Duke of Alcadeny, Ophelia decides to learn magic to free him by restoring his sanity and falls out of favor with Clarissa.  Duncan's sanity returned, Duncan loses his trust in Ophelia when she decides not to work magic when he leads a revolt against the Duke because she fears for his life if she tries (her magic is imperfect).  Clarissa intervenes and helps Duncan overthrow the Duke on Ophelia's behalf, Duncan trusts Ophelia again, and they get married.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;By the way&lt;/strong&gt;, the Opheilia world influences the Richard world. Clarissa is a spirit that transcends both, and she appears as a medium, channel, spirit guide, body possession, clairaudient or clairvoyant effect, etc. Clarissa stipulates that Richard must learn from Ophelia's relationship troubles so he can mend his own. However, Richard right now does not influence Ophelia's world (although it maybe could?). There is also a definite theme of madness in both worlds -- this is intentional. Ophelia's world addresses how madness was treated in past societies; Ricahard's is a warning for the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9885" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-19T06:28:26.333" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T06:28:26.333" Title="Are these dual plots or a plot plus a big subplot?" Tags="|plot|outline|subplot|snowflake|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23530" CreationDate="2016-06-23T20:04:24.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry, but I see no real connection between the two plots ! Clarissa appears in the two stories, but that is all ! I don't think you can consider B as a subplot of A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you plan to set any interactions between the characters of the two worlds ? Will the actions of Richard have any influence on the plot involving Ophelia (or vice-versa) ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastEditorUserId="19312" LastEditDate="2016-06-23T20:54:29.213" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T20:54:29.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23532" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23533" CreationDate="2016-06-24T05:29:36.803" Score="5" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that authors often show the main character's though process in third person using the prose itself, almost as if the character were the one narrating. Made-up-on-the-spot example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Albert paced back and forth, looking at his watch every few seconds. They were late. Again. Why did he even bother offering his expertise when they didn't even show the slightest bit of respect? Yes, he was only a journeyman, but when he was a novice he showered his tutors with the adoration a superior deserves! If he had done this with his own tutor, he'd have been rejected immediately. He was going to have to have quite a talking with them. One more situation like this and they were gone, and he would not be persuaded otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that paragraph you can clearly see Albert's stream of consciousness, but it's never explicitly stated as such. It's almost like he is the narrator. Heck, when I was little I thought that &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; the opinion of the narrator. Realizing that it was the thoughts of the character was quite the revelation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also noticed that in first-person stories where the current narrator is very different from his past self, a similar technique will be employed with the narrator speaking the thoughts of his old self.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a name for this technique? Where can I find more information about it and how to properly employ it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19470" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T14:35:43.900" Title="What is the technique of displaying stream of thought in third person?" Tags="|third-person|narrator|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23532" CreationDate="2016-06-24T10:23:57.713" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.washington.edu/cbehler/glossary/freeindsty.html&quot;&gt;free indirect style&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you know the name, you'll find lots more about it on Google. The description I've linked is probably the easiest one to start with. Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastEditorUserId="18324" LastEditDate="2016-06-24T14:35:43.900" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T14:35:43.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23500" CreationDate="2016-06-24T12:04:18.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;AFAIK from casual encounters to comic writing advice (I read stuff that sometimes has them) the actual workflow is more like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write a summary of the story, with the sequence of events you want to have in it, and the characters, props and places relevant to events described to degree sufficient for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Split the sequence of events to pages. Each page should have the same amount of content and the flow should not be too broken or uneven. (The amount of separate events per page should not be high or highly variable.) This will require more detailed descriptions of events. You might need to merge, split or otherwise modify the events to get a good flow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Split the pages to panels and plan the panel layout. Decide what goes to each panel and plan the layout to reflect the contents. Might need to add or merge pages, which might trigger a partial rewrite...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write the actual script. This adds detail to visual descriptions and writes actual dialogue instead of just descriptions of what is said. You might find some panels have too little content and some have too much, which might force you back to step 3, which might prompt going back to step 2 and so on...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that by the time you write the script you should &lt;strong&gt;already know&lt;/strong&gt; what is in the panel. So the order you use at that stage should have little impact on time needed. I'd suggest going iteratively, so that you see whether your panel split and layout are good &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; putting too much work in describing individual panels. Also the speech bubbles and SFX are a part of the visuals of the panel, specifically you need to know that they fit, so doing things separately might cause an issue it takes time to fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; possible to work bottom up, script panels first and then plan panel layouts and page splits based on that as your question seems to assume, but as comics have a natural top down hierarchy of story pages panels it is unlikely to be the fast option. IMHO top down also makes easier to design the panel layouts, but you might not want to make that a priority anyway, just checking that the panels will fit their pages might be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again I am hardly an expert on this, but I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T12:04:18.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21522" CreationDate="2016-06-24T16:32:33.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does something need to happen in every chapter? Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something needs to happen in every paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something needs to happen in every sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story must advance. A story needs more to advance than physical action by the characters, however. It is the telling that needs to advance. Actions are merely one device for advancing story. Description, reflection, and conversation can all advance the story. One the other hand, action does not always advance the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Description, reflection, conversation, action, and all the other parts of human life are matter for story. The right use of any of them advances the story and the wrong use of any of them retards the story. Action may seem like a easy and reliable way to advance story, but story is about the arc of a character and you can have action galore without advancing the arc of a character. Thus many big action blockbusters fall flat, while many quieter slower-paces movies become hits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every chapter, every paragraph, every sentence must propel character along the arc of story. How is entirely a matter of the nature of the story itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T16:32:33.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23537" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23548" CreationDate="2016-06-24T16:34:52.977" Score="5" ViewCount="3392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently been struggling with a very strange problem in my writing: I can't find the main conflict in my novels. This has inspired quite a bit of thought and reflection on exactly what a main conflict is, but I'm still just as stumped, if not more so. I'm not new to writing, so this issue is quite baffling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backstory:&lt;/strong&gt; To understand where I'm coming from, you have to know that I'm a plotter, meaning I plan my novels out almost to the scene before writing a word. It's a good thing I do, because it filters out problems like this before I run into them while writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to this, &lt;em&gt;and this is very important&lt;/em&gt;, I center my novels around a main message, or theme. Literally &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; in my novel has a purpose. Nothing is random. Everything works to tell that message in some way. This isn't just some aspect of writing that I can change, either; this is how I write. I want my novels to have meaning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conflict:&lt;/strong&gt; Until recently, I've always seen conflict as a struggle &lt;em&gt;between&lt;/em&gt; two things, be they choices or just opposite directions/paths. Because I've been developing novels that seem fine but appear to have no main conflict, I've quickly realized this can't be the case. Because of this, I've arrived at the conclusion that main conflict would be more properly described as an obstacle &lt;em&gt;in the way&lt;/em&gt; of whatever is trying to be attained: the goal (arrived at by envisioning a novel where the main conflict is to get through a maze). That still doesn't help me though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Problem:&lt;/strong&gt; Based on the above definition, I was able to finally identify the main conflict of my current WiP. However, I am still unable to identify the main conflict of typical mystery novels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was struggling to define main conflict, I used the example of a typical detective/mystery novel. The goal is to catch whoever did the crime, or maybe prove he's guilty. There's nothing really standing in the way of that, unless you count the detectives' simple ignorance of all the facts. And that hardly seems like it could be the &lt;em&gt;main conflict&lt;/em&gt; to me. Obviously there are mystery novels with twists on the basic design where the main conflict is more obvious, but what about the generic typical detective/mystery story? Where is the main conflict? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Either my understanding of main conflict is completely off (which I doubt), or there's something I'm just not seeing. &lt;strong&gt;Could you please explain where I'm going wrong here?&lt;/strong&gt; Where's the main conflict? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important Note:&lt;/strong&gt; My novels seem fine, meaning they seem to have a main conflict. Because of this, I don't think the problem is a lack of main conflict. I think the problem is that I simply can't define that main conflict (which I need to do in order to develop it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5575/my-story-portrays-a-process-not-a-conflict-how-do-i-make-the-process-my-focus&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; is slightly similar to this one. While the answer to that question was helpful by listing different kinds of conflict, I don't feel that it answered my question, as I still can't determine the main conflict of typical detective/mystery novels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; After some thought inspired by my own reflections and Lauren Ipsum's answer below, I believe the reason I can't find the main conflict in my example is because it does not have a theme. Every scenario I've thought of that includes a theme results in a definable main conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T18:47:36.187" Title="Hang on - where's the main conflict?" Tags="|fiction|novel|planning|conflict|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21522" CreationDate="2016-06-24T16:44:50.703" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are wrong in thinking that nothing happens in your chapters. As you said, you are focusing more on the characters, and when you develop your characters, there is something &quot;happening&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It shouldn't be underestimated, chapters to let the reader delve in the mind of the character. It creates a much needed sense of connection, and not only that, but a deeper understanding of who they are and what they think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book is not an action movie. You can take your time. Describe thoughts, describe things, describe scenes. It's your imaginary playground, and it is your job to populate it with as much depth as you find necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see, i am Brazilian, and our classic literature has a lot of this sort of thing. We have entire chapters used to describe how beautiful the love interest of the main characters. We have poems describing the beauty of the arms of a beautiful woman. The arms for god's sake!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a chapter in a brazilian book called &quot;Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas&quot; or, as the english translation goes &quot;The Postumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas&quot;. In the book there is an entire chapter where the main character describes his delirium. One entire chapter, nothing happening story-wise, not even deepening the character in any way. Just describing his delirium, describing what he saw and thought. I'm going to translate the first paragraph of this chapter, because i think it that what the narrator-protagonist says sums up well what my point is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe no one has described his own delirium yet. So i'll do it myself, and let science thank me! If the reader is not keen on the contemplation of such mental phenomena, then by all means, skip this chapter, head straight back to the narrative. But, no matter how little curious you are, i believe it is interesting to know what was going on in my head for 20 or 30 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that is a rough translation, used only to get the point across. Yes, some people will find it boring, but no matter how uninterested you are, is always good to see what goes on in the mind of the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, you don't need to have a major plot point in every chapter, in fact, in my own opinion, having a couple of &quot;break&quot; chapters, that focus only on the thoughts of your characters make them feel way more alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19342" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T16:44:50.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23537" CreationDate="2016-06-24T17:22:43.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excellent question, to which you have partially provided your own answer, though you don't seem to realize it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The goal is to catch whoever did the crime, or maybe prove he's&#xA;  guilty. There's nothing really standing in the way of that, unless you&#xA;  count the detectives' simple ignorance of all the facts. And that&#xA;  hardly seems like it could be the main conflict to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet it is. It just doesn't seem &quot;grand&quot; to you because genre novels (in our case, detective novels) are quite stereotypical in their structure and without any great depth in character development. Let's take a look at narrative and character theory, and we'll get back to your example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A solid narrative has a central goal that some characters (and chiefly the protagonist) tries to reach. Other characters (and chiefly the antagonist) tries to inhibit the MC from reaching the goal. In genre narratives this is usually straightforward. For example, a &quot;good&quot; detective tries to find the truth and arrest the &quot;bad&quot; murderer, who tries to cover his tracks and throw the detective off. Things get more complicated in, say, literary fiction. Picture this scenario: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A man is plagued by his past fears and refuses to see the truth about his current situation. A friend of his tries to convince him to get out of the quagmire. In narrative &amp;amp; character theory terms (assuming these two are the major characters and the narrative is heavily built around this element) we have indeed a protagonist and an antagonist; someone who wants to &lt;em&gt;stay away&lt;/em&gt; from the truth (that is his goal) and someone who wants to pull him out of this &quot;goal&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to get back to your example. As I said, the detective's goal is to reach the truth. The antagonist (presumably the murderer, or some other character with motive to distract the detective) tries to keep the detective from reaching the goal. There's a conflict there. &lt;strong&gt;Even if&lt;/strong&gt; there was no antagonist (a rather rare occasion for detective fiction) there is - narratively speaking - a clash precisely between the detective and his ignorance (in a way, &lt;em&gt;his own self&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general piece of advice, I could suggest that you ignore the connotations associated with the words &lt;strong&gt;protagonist, antagonist, conflict, goal&lt;/strong&gt; etc. In narrative theory, a conflict is not always a bad thing; an antagonist is not always the protagonist's enemy; a goal is not always a &quot;good&quot; thing for a MC to achieve. Particularly in literary fiction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T17:22:43.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21118" CreationDate="2016-06-24T17:28:09.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this isn't exactly for requirements management within Microsoft Word, my company, QRA Corp, has launched QVscribe - a plugin for Microsoft Word that identifies and analyzes requirements to help ensure they are clear and unambiguous. QVscribe analyzes requirements based on best practices from organizations like NASA and INCOSE to flag potential issues that will cause delays and re-work throughout development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tool is currently in beta and can be downloaded from &lt;a href=&quot;https://qracorp.com/qvscribe/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://qracorp.com/qvscribe/&lt;/a&gt; give it a try and let us know what you think!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adam Anshan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19477" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T17:28:09.623" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23537" CreationDate="2016-06-24T18:29:53.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong here it just feels you don't like your conflict to be nerve gripping and mind boggling. I understand your concern and find it very genuine cause as long as you don't satisfy your own nerve you won't be happy about what outcome will be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know you never asked about probable conflicts but I wrote them cause I feel you are not happy with your present conflict. And I swear on god I don't want to feed my ideas in your plot, it's your story altogether and will always be. But here is what I feel strong conflicts can be &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of capabilities from the detective &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hidden agenda of detective behind the veil of ignorance &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highly skilled criminal &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Criminal with a legitimate motive and people who are helping him to delay the trapping (maybe for a period of time and after that it won't be a crime anymore and/or the purpose of these people is served) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Loopholes in the process &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any side plots which derail the detective from doing his job &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A mystery woman (I always like them maybe they are all what I fascinate about) or choose a man if you may please. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anything that you feel is worthy of keeping the outcome/catch/confession delayed. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amazing idea, the criminal confesses in first chapter itself but the circumstances make the evidence disappear hence causing the delay in justice or maybe the crime never happened (you'd be hating me by now) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps in anyway. Good luck with your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19437" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T18:29:53.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21522" CreationDate="2016-06-24T18:38:00.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you mean by &quot;nothing happens&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean &quot;nobody gets killed, there are no car chases, and nothing blows up&quot;, then certainly you can have chapters where &quot;nothing happens&quot;. There are lots of books that have no action of that sort at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect you mean something more like, &quot;there are chapters that are entirely the heroine considering what she wants to do next&quot;. If that's the case, then of course that's totally legitimate and may be very interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is not, &quot;Does this chapter have action in the sense of people engaging in vigorous physical activity?&quot;, but rather, &quot;Are the things that happen in this chapter likely to be interesting to a reader?&quot; If, after honestly considering what you have written, your answer is, &quot;No, this is boring and irrelevant&quot;, then it's not a good chapter. Throw it away or rewrite. But if the answer is, &quot;If they care what's going on inside this character's head -- and they should be because I've tried to build up psychological conflict or character development -- then yes, this chapter should be interesting&quot;, then great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course what you find interesting and what a potential reader finds interesting may not be the same thing. You might fight an account of a character struggling to decide whether to wear a red dress to the party or a blue dress to be a fascinating subject, while someone else would think that's boring, &quot;just pick one already&quot;. But that's a big piece of what writing is all about: trying to come up with a story that will interest the reader, or at least some number of potential readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T18:38:00.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23537" CreationDate="2016-06-24T20:28:12.997" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My two cents! Which cost me significantly more after this morning's referendum result, mind you...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What's conflict?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflict exists when &lt;strong&gt;one desire is opposed to another.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opposing desires can belong to two &lt;strong&gt;different characters:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Batman wants to punch Joker in the face&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;But Joker wants to not be punched in the face&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or the opposing desires can belong to the &lt;strong&gt;same character:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Batman wants to save Rachel Dawes from the bomb at Location A&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;But Batman wants to save Harvey Dent from the simultaneous bomb at location B&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This definitely won't end well. Oh goody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, those come from a big-budget action movie — they're concrete and external to the characters to hopefully better illustrate the point. But good fiction will also build conflict from desires which are internal. More subtle or emotional. (Say, 'I hate endangering Aunt May, but I have to fight crime because of my Uncle-Ben guilt.')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Where should you use conflict?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; should have conflict, and your individual &lt;em&gt;scenes&lt;/em&gt; should have conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At a story level,&lt;/strong&gt; conflict might be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Dick Punchman P.I. wants to stop the killer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;But he also wants to save his marriage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wait! Those aren't opposed. There's not necessarily any conflict here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Dick Punchman P.I. wants to stop the killer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;But he &lt;strong&gt;has to be less obsessed with work&lt;/strong&gt; to save his marriage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much better. &lt;em&gt;Now&lt;/em&gt; we're ruining his life. Mmmmmm...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At a scene level,&lt;/strong&gt; conflict might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Dick Punchman wants information from Sultry Broad #14&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;But she wants to see him punished for putting her boyfriend in jail&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two desires, check. Opposed, check. Completely dumb? Also check! But it's a conflict. Woohoo!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How should you use conflict?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two considerations, as I see it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Watching characters &lt;em&gt;resolve&lt;/em&gt; conflict is satisfying&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scenes which don't have any conflict are boring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example above with Sultry Broad #14, if Dick finds a way to give them &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; what they want, then that act of problem solving is satisfying for us as readers; you've got a potentially compelling scene; but &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; then continue it for fifteen pages if you've just resolved the only conflict. Either close the scene, or sprinkle in more conflict to keep us interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;I think your headache might be...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I might be completely wrong here, because, of course, I don't really know what I'm talking about. But I think you're potentially getting tied in knots because you're thinking of conflict as a single absolute to be identified for the book, then ticked off. You're cooking a meal, and you need to choose the meat — will it be chicken or duck or lamb? What's your 'main conflict'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, think of conflict like the spice. You need some here and there. Make sure every part of the story has enough — taste it, and if it's boring, add more — but don't stress about what is 'the spice' of your dish. It's about multiples and degrees, rather than an absolute. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastEditorUserId="18324" LastEditDate="2016-06-24T22:35:32.683" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T22:35:32.683" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23546" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2016-06-24T20:34:47.840" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-06-24T20:34:47.840" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T20:34:47.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23547" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2016-06-24T20:34:47.840" Score="0" Body="For questions about brainstorming techniques.  Do not use this tag to request help in brainstorming ideas for your work; those questions are off-topic." OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-06-24T20:34:47.840" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T20:34:47.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23537" CreationDate="2016-06-24T21:36:46.623" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/21881/how-to-think-of-a-plot-in-5-minutes/21882#21882&quot;&gt;related answer&lt;/a&gt; may help you, but I'll expand more here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it was J. Michael Straczynski, writer of &lt;em&gt;Bablyon 5,&lt;/em&gt; who wrote that one could sum up &quot;conflict&quot; in three questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does the character want?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What will the character do to get it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What will someone do to stop the character?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As noted in some of the other excellent answers here, the Someone who is Stopping the character could be the character him/herself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what you consider to be a &lt;em&gt;message&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;theme&lt;/em&gt;, but let's say your message is &quot;Work is important, but love is more so.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your detective is assigned a case. And it's a really big case, Mr. Muckety-Muck got whacked and nobody knows who did it, and the superintendent is really breathing down your detective's neck to solve this before the Police Officer's Ball next week. Separately, your detective's husband has been feeling lonely and neglected, and has been threatening to pack up and go home to mom if your detective doesn't put some more effort into the marriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your character now &lt;strong&gt;wants&lt;/strong&gt; two things, which happen to be in opposition: (1) to find and catch the killer (2) to spend more time with/attention on husband so he doesn't leave. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What will the detective &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt;? Take hubby to dinner but keep fielding phone calls? Stake out a suspect but also trade texts with hubby? This balance can keep seesawing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The boss will want to &lt;strong&gt;stop&lt;/strong&gt; the detective from being distracted (or maybe not, if the boss is really sympathetic). The killer wants to &lt;strong&gt;stop&lt;/strong&gt; the detective from catching her. The husband wants the detective to &lt;strong&gt;stop&lt;/strong&gt; working and come home on time for once. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To resolve this in favor of your message, at some point the detective would have to choose between catching the killer and doing something important for hubby, and chooses hubby in some way. Or maybe the killer is caught and the detective quits and they both move to mom's city. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be going at this backwards with your current work. If your message or theme is the central point, then you have to define that first. The conflict then becomes what gets in the way of the characters realizing or embodying that message. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T21:36:46.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23537" CreationDate="2016-06-24T21:43:54.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I think you might be overthinking it and trying to use improper abstraction to understand detective fiction. So instead of explaining conflict in typical detective fiction, I'll use an abstraction I find more convenient, which should be broadly applicable to understanding the conflict if you wish. Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;thesis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The society we live in is ordered. When things that blatantly violate the accepted order, there is some agent of chaos that breaks the accepted rules of society causing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;antithesis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A blatant violation of social order, a crime, has happened, but no agent responsible for it is known. This leaves the order incomplete and threatens with descent to chaos and anarchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;synthesis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The responsibility for the violation of order is properly assigned, natural order is reaffirmed by completing the cause and effect, chaos and anarchy staved off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;what it means&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main conflict of a typical detective fiction is essentially the compound of three separate but closely related conflicts. Explains why it can be difficult to explain as a single main conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;thesis - antithesis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to believe that the society is ordered and secure, but crimes that endanger the order and security happen. Society wants order and that rules are followed, but some will wish to break the rules, set themselves above the rules, which violates natural order. There is unsolved crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;antithesis - synthesis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conflict between powers that threaten order and ones that seek to restore it. Assigning responsibility and avoiding responsibility. It is more difficult to write detective fiction unless there at least appears to be someone who tries to avoid responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;thesis - synthesis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to believe that society is naturally ordered, but in fact constant effort is required to stave off chaos. Great detectives are generally deeply committed to order, but their function is to reaffirm the rules after they were broken, not to follow them. So there is often a degree of creative interpretation of the rules, of seeing beyond the rules to their actual purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastEditorUserId="11425" LastEditDate="2016-06-24T21:53:28.457" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T21:53:28.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23550" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23577" CreationDate="2016-06-25T03:21:41.320" Score="2" ViewCount="555" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a novel I am writing, there are three main characters.  One a 16-year-old, another an 11-year-old, and a third a 12-year-old. The story is in first person, being told from their three perspectives. But, my question is, how do I make the 11-year-old character seem so much older than the 12-year-old, while at the same time seem much younger than the 16-year-old without portraying the 12-year-old as immature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the question will be easier to explain if I provide some background: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 12-year-old grows up in a family with parents that shelters her from almost everything, yet gives her the responsibility of caring for her 7 younger siblings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 11-year-old's parents die in a car accident, leaving her older teenaged siblings to run the family, which doesn't seem to be going so well, until she lands a very illegal, but extremely well-paying job, which includes taking a lot of risks to protect and feed her family, without getting caught by the governmental agencies that desire to return them to the foster care system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 16-year-old's parents died a few years earlier, then she's adopted by a close family friend. A certain circumstance causes her to take a step back from everyone around her, until she ends up with her adopted mother's husband, and has to assume the role of a mother figure for her younger siblings, the birth children of her adopted mother. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three eventually meet, though the first two meet first. I've already established the contrast where the 11-year-old acts and seems much older than the 12-year-old, but I'm not sure how to proceed with the 11-year-old meeting the 16-year-old without contradicting previous descriptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To simplify: &lt;strong&gt;How would one go about writing a single character from different POV's where the two POVs have opposite views of the character?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T19:19:36.737" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T19:19:36.737" Title="Writing the same character in two different perspectives?" Tags="|characters|character-development|perspective|child-characters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23553" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23556" CreationDate="2016-06-25T03:53:56.527" Score="4" ViewCount="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a semi-fantasy novel, which is set in medieval India and today's New York. I have never been to New York, and will not be there, for far period. How can I do research to embed the cultural and political references of New York into my novel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19480" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T13:07:17.967" Title="How can I do research about the geographical scenarios of plot?" Tags="|fantasy|screenwriting|research|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23537" CreationDate="2016-06-25T04:44:07.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, the main conflict is what the main character wants and can't get. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think the point that needs making here is about what plot is. I think it is all to easy to get into the habit of thinking of plot as a kind of history. You can meticulously develop an imaginary history and write it down, including lots of conflicts, without actually creating the kind of conflict that drives a story arc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would suggest looking at plot this way: Plot is what stops the main character from getting what they want, and eventually, grants it to them or permanently denies it to them. The function of plot is to first frustrate and then reward or punish the protagonist. Nothing else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this reasoning, any part of the imaginary history that you have created that does not serve to frustrate and then either reward or punish the protagonist is not plot. If you can't find the main conflict in your plot, therefore, it may be that it is an imaginary history rather than a plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-06-25T18:47:36.187" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T18:47:36.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23396" CreationDate="2016-06-25T04:44:38.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This wasn't a &quot;death,&quot; but a resignation, that had a similar effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once had a boss who people expected to go to the top. He left for a better job, and just about everyone in his &quot;sector&quot; was sorry to him go. We all felt that he had very big shoes to fill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was in fact the case. But his departure created opportunities for no less than five people under him, one of which actually did rise to the top (he had stopped at roughly the executive vice president level).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you need a character to &quot;die,&quot; not because the character is &quot;bad,&quot; but because s/he has fulfilled a mission in the novel, and is now standing in the way of a bunch of other characters that need a chance to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T04:44:38.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23553" CreationDate="2016-06-25T08:35:50.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google Maps and Street View is your friend. Take a virtual walk, learn the area, click on local stores, read reviews for these stores, check bus &amp;amp; metro schedules, find out about the parks, etc. &#xA;If you're interested in more in-depth elements, you'll need to provide more details about the particular elements. But basically, the answer is the same: Researching nowadays is easy with Google. If you're after something really niche (say, how inhabitants of a certain district of New York think about another district), find a NY discussion group or something like that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T08:35:50.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2016-06-25T09:08:37.653" Score="11" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Kill your darlings&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that the mind is able to think &quot;ingenious&quot; about any old idea, and that the truth of that assessment can only be tested by trying the idea in reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately sometimes an idea will not work, but the &quot;ingenious tag&quot; persists and we try anything we can to keep our idea in play, even bend reality!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is when you need to remove that concept, scene, sentence in order to make the story (or any other enterprise) work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to implement this is to keep a separate file (the &quot;Darling file&quot;) where you move all your darling scenes, sentences, and concepts. That way you haven't really killed your darlings permanently dead as much as removed them &quot;for later use&quot; (You'll probably get back to that file in a couple of years and realize they truly were darlings and they truly did not belong in your story...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, of course is a rule that can be broken. An example is the author John Ajvide Lindqvist (&quot;Let the Right One in&quot;), who has claimed he never kills his darlings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastEditorUserId="10826" LastEditDate="2016-06-25T09:31:16.683" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T09:31:16.683" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-06-25T09:08:37.653" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2016-06-25T09:17:29.727" Score="11" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Cut 10% of your first draft in editing&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tip is from Stephen King's memoir &amp;quot;On Writing.&amp;quot; He got the tip as a comment in one of his rejection letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that the language of your first draft is going to be flowery and full of superfluous words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cutting 10% of those words will tighten your prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;King includes an example of how he edited the first draft of &amp;quot;1408,&amp;quot; and rather than removing whole blocks of text or whole sentences, he had cut a word here and a couple of words there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my interpretation, this rule should be applied to the scenes you decide to keep in the text, rather than removing whole scenes to remove 10% of the text as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Finish the first draft, only then edit it&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finish your first draft and only once you've done that, go on to edit it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to feel a need to edit while writing, and it may even be a valid need from time to time (make a note in the margin, a separate document, or similar).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This feeling can also be your inner critic wanting you to do better, or it could come from doubt that the story is good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will most likely not know where the story will end up until you've finished the first draft (&lt;em&gt;even&lt;/em&gt; if you're a crazy detailed outliner), so, instead of stopping to do lots of edits while you should be writing, push through and finish the draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then put it aside (See &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writing.stackexchange.com/a/24073/10826&quot;&gt;Value a fresh eyes point of view on your material&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;) and only then start editing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may realize some, or all of your notes were wrong. You just didn't know, when you wrote them, what you know now when you've finished the draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This advice fits some writers, other writers actually do edit as they go. I think the best reason to push through to the end is if you feel that your work isn't good enough, or the section you want to edit isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, don't be surprised if you think you're really smart and know exactly what you're doing just to realize once you've finished the first draft (including lots of clever revision) that you've edited the thing to pieces...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastEditorUserId="10826" LastEditDate="2022-03-27T17:30:13.657" LastActivityDate="2022-03-27T17:30:13.657" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-06-25T09:17:29.727" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23553" CreationDate="2016-06-25T13:07:17.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google Maps is fine for &lt;em&gt;geography&lt;/em&gt;, but your question mentions &quot;cultural and political references.&quot; If you cannot travel there, you have to find some way to be exposed to and/or interact with the people there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cities have their own personalities. They have neighborhoods, cliques, sections, classes, ethnicities. With New York in particular, you have boroughs, and the personalities and cliques of those geographical distinctions are important. Manhattan is focused on wealth, art, culture, shopping. Brooklyn is more family-oriented. Some neighborhoods used to be grungy and are now full of hipsters. How do people feel about the hipsters? What have they done to the neighborhoods? Is it good or bad? There are neighborhoods which used to be so Italian that they developed their own dialect of the language (a mix of Sicilian and Neapolitan) and now they're full of Chinese and Russians. The Chinese make great neighbors because they're clean and polite; the Russians don't because they aren't. And so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are sports teams and rivalries. Baseball has the American and National Leagues, so you have Mets fans vs. Yankees fans. What borough are the fans in and what are the interactions? The Knicks now play basketball in Brooklyn. How did the locals feel about the stadium being built?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the food like? What was invented in that city? What's made a particular way there? New York pizza and Chicago pizza are different things and have different fans. New York bagels are not Philadelphia bagels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do people get around? The New York subway system is legendary, but it's also breaking down, and delays are rampant. There's an extensive bus system, plus Uber and Zipcar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The city is heavily Democratic, but they've elected Republicans before. Relations with the police range from good to murderous, sometimes literally. 9/11 left an enormous, unfathomable, indelible mark on the city which you cannot comprehend if you weren't there. It left scars on the pysches of millions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all not to say that you &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; write about New York without being there, but to give you an idea of things you need to research if you want to represent the culture and politics with any accuracy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with newspapers. There's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nydailynews.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New York Daily News&lt;/a&gt; (a tabloid, but still a real paper), the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt; (the Gray Lady, the country's paper of record, occasionally stuffy and too far left, solid reporting), the New York Post (trashy Murdoch-owned tabloid, makes stuff up, the U.S. version of the Daily Fail), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsday.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Newsday&lt;/a&gt; covers Long Island and Queens (worlds away from Manhattan). There are magazines as well, but newspapers are dailies, and following a story from day to day gives you the feel of how people are reacting. Try the local TV news as well and watch entire broadcasts from different networks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T13:07:17.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23562" CreationDate="2016-06-25T16:10:04.933" Score="4" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a paper but I don't know how to move back to the main section after I'm done writing a sub-section, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1.1 Main section&#xA;1.1.1 subsection 1&#xA;1.1.2 subsection 2&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I write long subsections I don't how can I make readers understand that we are back in the Main section. Two pages goes by on subsections but then I want to do a proper finish by ending the main section after those 2 subsections but I don't know how to indicate this without pointing it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically I want to end it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1.1 Main section (starting)&#xA;1.1.1 Sub section 1&#xA;..writing...&#xA;1.1.2 Sub section 2&#xA;..writing...&#xA;*and then back to Main section 1.1*&#xA;1.1 Main section (ending)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I make that proper ending of Main Section after writing subsections?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user19485" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-21T00:16:20.770" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T00:23:14.813" Title="How to move back to main section after finishing a sub-section" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|research|outline|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23561" CreationDate="2016-06-25T16:35:27.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might depend on your field (or department/school/institution guidelines), but at least I simply insert the epilogue (because that's what it is) at the end of the last subsection. If your writing is coherent enough, it shows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Main section&#xA;... In chapter 1 I will talk about a, b, c, because of this and that, and it's important because, blah blah&#xA;1.1 &quot;a&quot;&#xA;...blah blah&#xA;1.2. &quot;b&quot;&#xA;... blah&#xA;1.3 &quot;c&quot;&#xA;...blah blah blah&#xA;As I have demonstrated in this chapter, the elements of a, b, and c are important because. I will further examine the importance of d in chapter 2.&#xA;&#xA;2.  &#xA;...blah&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T16:35:27.147" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16961" CreationDate="2016-06-25T17:39:29.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a copyright specialist, but I think the general rule of thumb would be yes, you always have to ask permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are rules for fair use and quotations that may apply. Look them up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would look up some writers union where you live and see if you can ask their lawyer. I did once when I had a similar problem (this was in Sweden so it may  or may not apply to your case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastEditorUserId="10826" LastEditDate="2016-07-26T02:12:29.737" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T02:12:29.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12813" CreationDate="2016-06-25T20:29:10.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clothes could be important if the social standing of the character is relevant to the plot. Take this description of the heroine from my screenplay:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;She dressed in Prada, her handbag is Coco Chanel, and her shoes were made by Jimmy Choo. She’s used to “the best.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The woman is one of few female partners in a professional firm in the late 20th century, and the story is a demonstration of the Mexican proverb: &quot;The rich also cry.&quot; (Los ricos lloran tambien.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if this is important to the &quot;setting,&quot; it's best to introduce it early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T20:29:10.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23561" CreationDate="2016-06-25T23:48:52.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indentations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1.1 Main section (starting)&#xA;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet&#xA;&#xA;  1.1.1 Sub section 1&#xA;  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet&#xA;&#xA;  1.1.2 Sub section 2&#xA;  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet&#xA;&#xA;    1.1.1.a.&#xA;    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet&#xA;&#xA;1.1 Main section (ending)&#xA;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes it very easy to follow. Granted, if you have &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; many subsections you're going to have a left margin which is half the page, but that's an organizational issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have access to header/footer text, you can also put &lt;code&gt;1.1.2 Ri meliora dies&lt;/code&gt; in the header, so the reader can look up and see what section the copy is in. Transitional copy like &quot;As noted in § 1.1.1 above...&quot; certainly won't hurt either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T23:48:52.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23561" CreationDate="2016-06-26T03:22:41.927" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There really is no convention for indicating the end of things in text. You are asking for a way to move up the hierarchy of the document without a title to indicate the change. There really isn't a reliable way to indicate that to a reader. Titles indicate the beginning of things not the end of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What there is a convention for is creating a subjection that is a summation of the entire chapter. The name of that subsection is generally &quot;Conclusion&quot;. A concluding section is not really returning to the main level. The reader is too far removed from what they read in the main level for it simply to resume. Rather, the concluding section is a subsection that reviews the subject matter of the whole chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a perfectly symmetrical or hierarchical design, but then text is not really hierarchical at all. It really is linear. The reader cannot receive it in any form other than linear, and in many texts, headings do not occur in a strict order of hierarchy. Rather, the act more like road signs: a large sign to announce you are entering a large town; a small sign to indicate you are entering a village. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't think of a text as a hierarchy, but as a sequence with sign posts which may or may not follow a hierarchical sequence. Your concluding section, which summarizes the argument of the whole chapter, deserves a heading that announces it as such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-06-26T05:07:18.057" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T05:07:18.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23567" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-26T06:43:26.623" Score="4" ViewCount="411" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see many similarities in films to the point where I can often guess what will happen next,even if the part was intended to be suspenseful. is that bad writing?&#xA;should &quot;plot twists&quot; always be surprising or do viewers/readers expect a level of predictability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19490" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T19:13:07.883" Title="should I use predictable plot elements?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23567" CreationDate="2016-06-26T07:36:25.403" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an easy answer: It depends on the genre. Generally speaking, genre readers (that is, detective fiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance) will expect a certain degree of predictability - you are in control of the degree, knowing that some pleasant twists and surprises are welcome, but something too experimental will probably be received less warmly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exact opposite is the case with literary fiction, which is based first and foremost on in-depth characters, complex emotions and situations, and impossible dilemmas. Things &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be predictable there (because people can be predictable), but your approach and resolution should, generally speaking, not be. After all, good literary fiction depends mostly on characters rather than plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I now see your tag &quot;screenwriting&quot;. It's basically the same with films. If you're writing a thriller, an adventure film, a detective story, then you've got to follow certain stereotypes and be a bit predictable at least in your structure. &#xA;Also, do keep in mind that all this is also conceived in terms of marketing (or, to put it less prosaically, in terms of audience reaction). If you're writing simply for your own pleasure (which ideally should be the goal for all artistic endeavors), there are no limits&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T07:36:25.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20307" CreationDate="2016-06-26T11:00:11.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create custom meta-data tags for the date and time information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get this information into the chapter headings, insert the meta data in the chapter heading in compile, using the &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;$custom:TAGNAME&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;-tag (where TAGNAME is the name of the custom meta-data tag).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To work with this information in regular editing, add the meta data as columns in the outline view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a more detailed discussion of headers in Scrivener: &lt;a href=&quot;https://genelempp.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/3-minutes-to-better-scrivener-chapter-headings/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3 Minutes to Better Scrivener Chapter Headings&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T11:00:11.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23567" CreationDate="2016-06-26T11:05:22.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Surprise is the cheapest of literary devices. People often reread their favorite books and re-watch their favorite movies. They would not do so if their enjoyment of them depended on surprise. With effective storytelling our hearts can still be in our mouths for a character at a critical juncture no matter how often we have read the story. If we can enjoy a story even when we know exactly what is going to happen, then predictability of plot is not a problem in itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When people complain about predictability in fiction, I think what they are referring to is predictability in the writing itself, the writer's use of cheap and easy tricks and emotional manipulations, of stock ill-developed characters, or heroes and villains without subtlety. They are complaining that it is like every other book in the telling.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T11:05:22.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1832" CreationDate="2016-06-26T11:25:21.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every human being strives to establish a place in the world, to be seen and accepted in a certain way. Their voice, the way they react to each situation,  is developed in an attempt to establish and maintain that place. Their way of speaking, their vocabulary, their boldness or timidity, is shaped by the place they wish to claim and maintain. What they say in a given situation is shaped by the attempt to maintain that position in that situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter the situation, what we say and do is and attempt to maintain our position, to be seen and treated the way we wish to be seen and treated. In other words, we are all attempting to establish our character in the eyes of our peers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the character's voice: how they maintain, or attempt to maintain, their position in society. Some people, of course, are bad at it, lacking the ability to read the social cues that tell them how people are reacting to them. Other people are unable to attain the position they seek and become hostile to others for not granting them that position. For both these groups, it is still about position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we mean when we say that a character acts &quot;out of character&quot; is that they act inconsistently with their usual attempt to establish their position in the group. It often seems easy to resolve a scene by having a character say something, or refrain from speaking, but if their normal attempt to establish their position in the group would result in them saying something else, or speaking rather than remaining silent (or vice versa) it will ring true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing every conversation as a jockeying or social position, therefore, and clearly understanding how each character wants to be accepted by the group, should lead you to their voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T11:25:21.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23520" CreationDate="2016-06-26T17:00:25.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's understandable that your character doesn't know many things about the world when he leaves his village. That's where he came from after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But he should know &quot;a lot more&quot; by the end of the story. That's just part of his &quot;journey.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he doesn't, that's when he would look &quot;ignorant,&quot; not having learned anything (or at least &quot;enough&quot;) from his experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T17:00:25.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23456" CreationDate="2016-06-26T17:10:47.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the first chapter, you need to introduce the protagonist and antagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you consider the story a &quot;duel&quot; between these two, you might introduce their &quot;seconds.&quot; That brings the total to four.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be a fifth, (and possibly sixth) character that gives the early part of the story its &quot;flavor.&quot; But that's pretty close to the max.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, I'm not counting incidental or throwaway characters. For instance, my screenplay opens with five partners of the firm, but only two of them, the heroine and the &quot;big boss&quot; (a second) really matter; the other three are &quot;throwaways.&quot; The hero and his &quot;second&quot; are also introduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T17:10:47.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20676" CreationDate="2016-06-26T17:50:29.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you document X?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on who's going to read the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb I use to look at my documentation from two perspectives; the system perspective and the audience perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The system perspective deals with what system is being documented, and if several systems should be dealt with in one document or if a system should be documented on a per-sub-system level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The audience perspective deals with who your audience is. You will usually see the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;End users&lt;/strong&gt; - want a non technical &quot;user guide&quot; description of the system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Programmers&lt;/strong&gt; - want information to be able to change or extend the code of the system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maintenance personnel&lt;/strong&gt; - want information on how to maintain (stop, start, backup, relocate etc) and sometimes configure the system &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other kinds of users like testers and support personnel usually want information from several of the above document types, but they are usually able to spend more time figuring out the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each audience should have their own document. It's very seldom a good idea to put all different perspectives in one document unless the system is really small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I know what system I am documenting and for whom, I think &quot;use-cases&quot; (kind of); What would an end-user need to know to use the system? What would a programmer need to know to change the system? What would &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; need to know if I was one of these people trying to perform their tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T17:50:29.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23519" CreationDate="2016-06-26T20:32:15.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read several blogs each week. If they are relevant, well-written and interesting I take the time to read them. If they aren't, I delete the without reading them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T20:32:15.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23576" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-26T23:42:28.500" Score="7" ViewCount="554" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing heroic fantasy. Plot demands hand-to-hand combat, about which&#xA;I know little. What is the best/quickest way to learn enough about pre-firearms&#xA;defense to write convincingly about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19493" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-03-28T08:37:13.533" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T08:37:13.533" Title="Learning about hand-to-hand combat?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|resources|research|combat|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23550" CreationDate="2016-06-26T23:51:00.120" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are talking about two different things here but you are treating them like they are the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sheltered vs. not sheltered is different than immature vs. mature. A girl who takes care of seven younger siblings will probably be somewhat mature for her age because she is used to responsibility. If she is sheltered, she may also be rather innocent. The 11-year-old may be less naive but that doesn't necessarily make her mature. She may know more about the harsh realities of life but she will still make errors in judgement because she is a kid and doesn't have a lot of life experience. The 16-year-old will speak and think more like an adult than the other two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is unrelated to your original question but I want to point it out. You may have trouble selling this book to a traditional publisher because it doesn't have a clear audience, as far as age range. An eleven or twelve year old protagonist signifies a middle grade novel. Sixteen would be YA. Who is your audience for this book? Generally speaking, kids like reading about kids who are a couple years older than them. They don't usually read down. Ten-year-olds like reading about twelve-year-olds. Fourteen-year-olds don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19439" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T23:51:00.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23578" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-27T00:05:26.733" Score="3" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to professional writing, and I've been brushing up on standard manuscript format. I bought Scrivener to help me format for direct publishing, and standard manuscript formatting. So, how do I tell when I'm supposed start a new scene in the same chapter, or start a new scene in a new chapter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T04:11:50.923" Title="What is the difference between an ending scene and the end of a chapter?" Tags="|formatting|scene|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23576" CreationDate="2016-06-27T00:22:32.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest doing some field research if possible. This helps develop a network of contacts that you can use to help you write accurately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could look up a history professor at your local college that might specialize in warrior cultures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible source is to hang out at local martial arts dojos/tournaments, and take notes on their body movements, or talk to them directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A history museum with exhibits about warrior cultures could provide information you're looking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a last resort, I guess you could just research it on the internet, but where's the fun in that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T00:22:32.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23567" CreationDate="2016-06-27T00:37:49.633" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my writing professors is a fellow believer of the notion that everything is cliche. Almost everything has been done before, and redone many times over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, can you write it in a way that your characters are still unique and interesting? Lots of things can be similar, but still different, and entertaining. In comics many characters are based off one another, but are still their own characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take Hawkeye, and Green Arrow for example. They both use a bow, and are both super heroes, but they aren't exactly the same. The same can be said for plots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR There is a reason they are called tropes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T00:37:49.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23578" CreationDate="2016-06-27T01:47:53.290" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's ultimately up to you, but genre and pacing may influence where you place your chapter breaks. A chapter can be as short as a sentence or it can be several thousand words long. Shorter chapters will make your novel seem more fast-paced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thrillers frequently end chapters on a cliff-hanger to encourage you to keep reading. A long fantasy novel, on the other hand, is more likely to use a chapter break as a place the reader can set the book down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing a book with multiple POV characters, you might start a new chapter every time you change point of view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19439" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T01:47:53.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-27T02:01:34.620" Score="2" ViewCount="2394" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Scrivener when I write, and I've imported what I've written so far from pages. The problem now is that the cursor size is huge now. How do I get the cursor back to regular size? It's rather bothersome having this huge blinking line right next to my letters that are tiny by comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T19:41:02.463" Title="How do I change my cursor size in scrivener?" Tags="|formatting|scrivener|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23578" CreationDate="2016-06-27T04:11:50.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are two different &quot;form factors&quot; in my view...one involving the cognitive science of &quot;reading&quot; the other in the expression of an image to produce an emotional reaction. Obviously this is all up to the creators discretion in both instances but to &quot;end a scene&quot; as it were I would ask &quot;to what effect?&quot; Is the purpose to end the entire artistic enterprise? Or just end one aspect of it? Alternatively a &quot;paragraph&quot; exists in writing to delineate the ending of a thought process of a larger whole. One interesting exception might be indenting the term &quot;The End&quot; to literally in fact state for the reader &quot;this work is over...I paragraphed the term The End to manifest this.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T04:11:50.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23576" CreationDate="2016-06-27T07:48:18.277" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are contemplating about mediaeval warfare with longsword type weapons, try &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_reenactment_groups&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;reenactors&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p3GUj.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p3GUj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;reenactment of knights in armor fighting with swords&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These people are actually researching what can, cannot be done with the means at the time. This includes fighting in full plate using realistic swords.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of visuals to be found but best would be to seek out a group from a compatible age and go through your scene on-site, separating out the impossible and adding meat to the spectacular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_reenactment_groups&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_reenactment_groups&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_reenactment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_reenactment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.123rf.com/photo_6354020_knights-battle-in-hand-to-hand-combat.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.123rf.com/photo_6354020_knights-battle-in-hand-to-hand-combat.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://zwaard-steen.tumblr.com/likes/page/2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://zwaard-steen.tumblr.com/likes/page/2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2019-03-28T07:51:13.310" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T07:51:13.310" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23587" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-27T11:09:38.687" Score="1" ViewCount="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume a manuscript written in AmE (if it matters, also assume an American MC). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be relatively easy to change spelling, word choice, etc. to make a BrE manuscript. However, since I write with an AmE brain, I feel that such a change would be somewhat lacking (not to mention, I might miss something).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How bad a tactic would it be to send a manuscript in AmE to a British literary agent - keeping in mind the MC is American anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T11:31:59.820" Title="AmE text for a British literary agent (and viceversa)" Tags="|style|publishing|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23587" CreationDate="2016-06-27T11:31:59.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best approach is to query the agent first and ask them what their preference is. It is unlikely that they all have the same policy. Asking them first shows them that you are aware of the issue and willing to adjust if required. That shows professionalism, which counts for a lot with agents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T11:31:59.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21871" CreationDate="2016-06-27T11:43:51.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends entirely on whether your voice is an interesting one. We all tend to believe our own voices are more interesting than they really are. Despite all the talk about expressing oneself, what readers really want is something interesting to them, and there is perhaps a better chance that you will find something interesting to write about out in the world rather than between your ears. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that said, all fiction is really in the author's voice -- in the author's words. To say that any other voice is speaking is a conceit. However outward looking the author may be, it is still their telling of what they saw and how the interpreted it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the end this issue is probably not your voice, but what part of your thoughts and observations that voice expresses. If it is inward-looking and self indulgent, most readers will probably not be interested. If it is outward looking and honest they may well be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T11:43:51.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23576" CreationDate="2016-06-27T12:12:48.403" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most martial artists will not be able to inform you about &lt;strong&gt;conflict&lt;/strong&gt; nor will you pick it up watching tournaments. (Opinion informed by over 30 years in a Kung Fu style which is pragmatic and was taught to one of the Chinese armies, but we don't spar full-contact.) They may be able to describe or critique unlikely movement. Too many arts are either sport-oriented or just ban dangerous moves for safety reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A readable but possibly upsetting book is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0964920549&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;On Combat&lt;/a&gt; which talks about the psychological and physiological basics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of John Ringo's SF books cover this kind of conflict, with good training descriptions in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baen.com/there-will-be-dragons.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;There will be dragons&lt;/a&gt; which is free from Baen. It's about how a far-future group of re-enactors rise to prominence when technology goes away. (Ringo's style is to pick an idea like &lt;em&gt;how can tech go away&lt;/em&gt; and build a believable case for the event and after.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Baen tend to publish a lof military SF much of which is the &lt;em&gt;we got stranded on an an alien planet/back in time and need to recreate military history&lt;/em&gt; sub-genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I forgot about the video series by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/user/SkallagrimNilsson/about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Skallagrim&lt;/a&gt; who does a lot of sword and armour critique. The ones I have watched look plausible both in technique and criticisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="581" LastEditorUserId="581" LastEditDate="2016-06-30T06:52:33.100" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T06:52:33.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21871" CreationDate="2016-06-27T16:02:30.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Autobiographical fantasy is not unheard of --&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Luis_Borges&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Borges&lt;/a&gt; practiced it in many of his short stories, and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Munchausen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Baron Munchausen&lt;/a&gt; novel was based on a real life autobiographical fabulist.  The frame story for &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Bride&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Princess Bride&lt;/a&gt; is fictional autobiography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, for the reader, there's no real difference from any other first person novel, except in as much as you want the reader to actually believe these events happened to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, the problem to avoid when writing an alter-ego is that it plays out as a shallow fantasy of who you would like to be, or what you would like your life to be --such narratives are generally uninteresting to other people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T16:02:30.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23621" CreationDate="2016-06-27T16:11:58.543" Score="3" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a novice writer, just starting on a mini novel in the Science Fiction genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The crux of the novel is about 4 or 5 discussions between protagonist and a set of particular individuals with their own motives, and trying to convince them to do something. The setting is very limited - imagine an alien coming to earth and talking to few key people (leaders) one by one without much exposure to the public (a little bit like in the movie &quot;The Day the Earth Stood Still&quot;, but not entirely so in the sense of the protagonist interacting with both leaders and non-leaders).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you point me to some references in literature (scifi primarily) where arguments are the crux and there is not much action or story going on. That is, whatever the story is, will come out in the discussions itself. I think socratic method (question answer sessions leading to some conclusion), matches closest to what I want but &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) I want to put in a little more story than that since this is going to be a work of fiction and not purely a philosophical treatise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) I was unable to find any fiction books doing that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, do such books make an interesting read? I know it depends on the writer's ability, but just trying to gauge the general interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18672" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T16:20:12.850" Title="Writing a novel largely composed of question-answer sessions" Tags="|science-fiction|philosophy|novella|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23595" CreationDate="2016-06-27T16:42:58.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like you want to write a philosophical novel. Two examples that I can think of are Walker Percey's Lost in the Cosmos and Robert Persig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Both of the above are interesting reads, but interesting as philosophical texts, and as approaches to doing philosophy. You would probably not read them for the story alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T16:42:58.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23595" CreationDate="2016-06-27T16:46:44.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;and welcome to the site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know of any novels that follow the format you are describing, but that is a good thing. I believe one of the reasons World War Z stood out from the mass of zombie fiction out there is because it had a different format: letters. That format made it stand out from the crowd, and I think a novel made primarily out of Q&amp;amp;A would have the same effect, as long as it is written well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether or not the novel you are describing would be an interesting read: It's hard to gauge the general interest, as we are all individuals and have our own opinions, and the format you are describing is very rare. For example, my first instinct of such a book would be that it would be boring. Q&amp;amp;A? No action? What is this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again, that would have been my first impression of World War Z had I known the format. Therefore, your job is to overwhelm what the reader expects. Your key in doing this will be tension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A discussion is inherently not the most gripping thing on earth. You need to add tension to it on every page so that the reader will be on the edge of his seat. Pretty much all tension can be summed up as questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why is he nervous? Why did he ask that? Why is he glancing towards the door? Why did he word it that way? Why is this guy so tense? What did that mean? Who is this guy? What's this person's agenda? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list goes on and on. Get the reader to ask himself these questions through the dialogue/narrative, and you will have high tension. Remember: there can never be too much tension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T16:46:44.443" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23598" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23606" CreationDate="2016-06-27T18:35:17.030" Score="2" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the novel I am working on, there are few major characters who are in position of power, and are not interested in speaking to the protagonist at all. What are some techniques using which we can make it happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little bit about the setting: A single human protagonist goes to a different planet, the scientists and one or two politicians are interested in communicating with him briefly - but there ends the matter; no one is further interested in deeply engaging in a conversation with the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the central piece of my work are going to be conversations. Can you please give me some references to characters, or techniques or examples used in the past for a set up where a disinterested person is forced to talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18672" LastEditorUserId="18672" LastEditDate="2016-06-28T16:53:19.013" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T16:53:19.013" Title="Making a disinterested character speak" Tags="|characters|dialogue|character-development|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2016-06-28T16:26:41.807" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23601" CreationDate="2016-06-27T19:32:19.430" Score="1" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a novel in which the characters talk to the protagonist and explain lot of backstory. It can run into tens of pages - essentially the entire story is told by the character to the protagonist and the reader is a third person learning about it in parallel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: what are the rules for quotes in these kind of conversations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance (H: hero, C: a local character)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page 1: H: So, how did you end up here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page 1 - 15: C: tells a 15-page long story ......&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page 16: H: &quot;But, didn't you realize that what you were going after had these issues early on?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page 6-30: C: gives a long explanation with a couple more backstories involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I'd quote all the &quot;H&quot;'s statements. But what about the &quot;C&quot;s dialogue? How should it be written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18672" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T20:18:20.330" Title="Quotes around long backstory narrated by a character" Tags="|dialogue|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6712" CreationDate="2016-06-27T19:46:47.357" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My rule of thumb: Publish when the paperback is thick enough to put a readable title on the spine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use CreateSpace for my paperbacks. For CreateSpace, you need a minimum of 110 pages to put text on the spine. That gives 1/8&quot; of room for the title. That's maybe an 11 or 12 point font (assuming all caps or small caps with no descenders), which is pretty darned small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I figure a minimum of 130 pages total, including frontmatter and backmatter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of &lt;em&gt;text&lt;/em&gt; you need depends on a bunch of parameters that affect page count: trim size, font, font size, leading (aka line spacing), margins, paragraph length, amount of frontmatter and backmatter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know numerous writers (including me) who publish collections with 5 stories. My one collection (so far) has 27000 words, including 24000 words of story content, an introduction for the collection, and 300–500 of author notes for each story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T19:46:47.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23599" CreationDate="2016-06-27T20:18:20.330" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider writing the local character's story as a separate scene (and perhaps a separate chapter), with clear transitions between the two timeframes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So, how did you end up here?&quot; Hero said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Make yourself comfortable, youngster,&quot; Local Character said. &quot;This is going to take a while.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;# &amp;lt;scene break&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was 1953, and my mother had just shot the sherrif...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... tells the story in first person ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;# &amp;lt;scene break&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Local Character looked at his hands for a long moment. Then he said, &quot;I know you don't believe a word of that. Nobody ever does. But swear every word is true.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... continue with &quot;present-day&quot; story ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T20:18:20.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23602" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23605" CreationDate="2016-06-28T03:30:09.207" Score="12" ViewCount="2943" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story I'm writing has its epicness and drama, but I also want it to be funny, with jokes, puns, etc., made by a character (mostly) or the narrator himself; funny situations, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I fear that the plot would be ruined by such comicalness, kind of breaking the immersion or emotion, or making the readers start to expect every scene to be humorous and not take them seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I right? Should I limit to one or two funny scenes, or decrease the level of &quot;funnyty&quot;, like slight jokes? Or is it possible to a story to be epic/dramatic and funny at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-09-08T18:33:34.610" LastActivityDate="2019-09-08T18:33:34.610" Title="Does having too many humorous scenes make the readers unable to take the plot seriously?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|fantasy|humor|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23602" CreationDate="2016-06-28T03:45:37.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Humor&quot; should be taken in context of the whole story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is basically humorous, then &quot;humor&quot; is what one would expect, and would help, not hurt the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is basically serious, you may have one or two humorous scenes for &quot;comic relief,&quot; but &quot;too much humor would detract from the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the sound of the question, your story is of the first kind, and a lot of humor would be OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T03:45:37.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23602" CreationDate="2016-06-28T04:07:16.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Sarcasm&quot;, &quot;Logical Comedy&quot; completely fits this genre. You know, sometimes when plot gets too serious, you can make a joke or two about how one got saved. Let the characters induce the comedy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19480" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T04:07:16.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23602" CreationDate="2016-06-28T10:41:23.283" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a novel-length work, there is almost always room for &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; humour. I'd say the trick is to choose the right type, and in the right places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Be the right kind of funny&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've seen it, think of the TV show &lt;em&gt;Breaking Bad&lt;/em&gt;. Its subject matter was bleak and often gruesome; its emotional content was utterly brutal; but the writers sprinkled in plenty of humour. If they'd had Jessie Pinkman cracking hilarious puns while [spoiler for season one]...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; liquidizing the corpse of a rival drug dealer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...or going off into wacky flights of fancy à la &lt;em&gt;Family Guy&lt;/em&gt;, it would have sucked away the impact of the story. Instead, In &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; scene, the writers inserted no laughs, and when they wrote them into other scenes, the comedy was black. Gallows humour and irony. The laughs were bleak, just like the story. That meant they didn't detract from the story's impact. And in fact, they probably increased it, because (segue alert)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Be funny in the right places&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a novel-length story, you need to vary your tone, your pace, your level of action and tension. You might open with a high-intensity horseback chase — great! — but if, thirty chapters later, the characters have spent every moment locked in high-octane action, then the impact will be lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/xrIYT-MrVaI&quot;&gt;piece of music&lt;/a&gt; — the power of the loud parts comes from the quiet parts. It's the contrast that makes them meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want your readers to feel it when you crank up the tension, then you need to give them moments of &lt;em&gt;lower&lt;/em&gt; tension. That categorically does not mean bore them! But it means that if your story goes &lt;em&gt;battle scene — gunfight — bandit attack&lt;/em&gt;, you can increase the impact of the final bandit attack by replacing the gunfight with something like &lt;em&gt;campfire scene, worrying about medicine for a wounded character&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tension is one of the things you, as the author, want to fine-tune from scene to scene, and from moment to moment. Humour, of the right type, is one of your tools to do that. You probably know lots of ways to &lt;em&gt;build&lt;/em&gt; tension. &lt;strong&gt;Laughter, whether joyous, nervous, or otherwise, is a &lt;em&gt;release&lt;/em&gt; of tension.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A belly laugh in the middle of a climactic action scene would probably release too much tension — your instincts are good, here, this is the immersion-breaking, emotion-breaking effect you want to avoid — but at the end of a completely different scene, you might want exactly that in order to let your readers feel relief. On the other hand, in a different moment, you might want a smaller release — picture your characters clustered around the door to the castle's throne room, near-certain death awaiting on the other side. They've battled to get this far and there's no turning back. Somebody's fingers hover an inch from the iron handle, when he stops and turns to the others, and says, 'I've just realised something...' A droplet of gallows humour here could be the set-up you want for your climax, releasing a whisper of tension in the last second before you pull your readers into the dramatic final showdown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is hard, I'm no better at it! But if you're worried, don't be. Nobody writes a perfect first draft. Try it, and when your story's ready, get some feedback. Your readers will be able to tell you if the humour isn't working  right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; It's definitely possible for a story that contains humour to be epic and dramatic. Humour is one of your tools. Like you've worked out, it can hurt the plot, if used badly. But if used well, it can make it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps a bit!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastEditorUserId="18324" LastEditDate="2016-06-28T23:27:03.857" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T23:27:03.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23598" CreationDate="2016-06-28T11:00:48.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While through your description i assume your story is a serious one, i think your best point of reference would come from comedy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a common trope in comedy, specially british comedy, to have characters who don't like anyone else, or that aren't particularly interested in anyone else. Like for example Jim, from Yahtzee Croshaw comedy novel &quot;&lt;em&gt;Mogworld&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&#xA;&quot;Hitchiker's guide to the galaxy&quot; wouldn't be a bad choice either, but i'm gonna use Mogworld as my example, just because i remember it more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He doesn't like any of his companions, or, at the very least, is absolutely indiferent to them, giving him an air of arrogant superiority, even though it is not intentional, &lt;em&gt;he just doesn't care, really&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as to &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they would talk to your protagonist, i can't really say, as it's too much of a broad question. Just make it seem like they have to, not that they want to. Make this politician guy be stuck with him in a room in some way or another. Make the protagonist pester him nonstop, or make the protagonist lie to make the politician believe that he is important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read comedy to study characters who just don't care, and make it seem like the politician has no other choice but to talk to the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19342" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T11:00:48.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23602" CreationDate="2016-06-28T12:55:11.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the saddest stories I know, &quot;In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried,&quot; by Amy Hempel, is full of humor. (Interesting - &lt;a href=&quot;http://fictionaut.com/stories/amy-hempel/in-the-cemetery-where-al-jolson-is-buried.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it's available online&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The humor is used there like a magician uses misdirection. The narrator and the main character are both funny, and they joke around through the whole piece until the end when things go bad, then the story breaks your heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read it, and read lots of other things too. Tons of authors write serious stories full of humor. Lorrie Moore is famous for humor in her stories, even &quot;People Like That Are the Only People Here,&quot; the one about an infant with cancer. (It's in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_of_America_(stories)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Birds of America&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastEditorUserId="7986" LastEditDate="2016-06-28T16:32:23.823" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T16:32:23.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23608" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23613" CreationDate="2016-06-28T15:04:23.167" Score="7" ViewCount="743" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background Info:&lt;/strong&gt; My main character starts out the story with kind of a sad back story, it's not in a tragic way, just the normal kind of misfortune; losing family members, having to drop out of college (with a lot of debt) to take responsibility for her family's small business, and also losing all of her friends after she naturally breaks down from the stress and goes on a drug bender, they also felt uncomfortable that she wasn't in school anymore and stopped supporting her. I'd like to think that this is a common thing to have happen to someone, the story takes place several years later. She's fine, mostly happy, and engaged but still has a lot of anger and regret about how she handled things in the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My problem:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm not really sure how to express that without having her have some kind of an annoying internal monologue or just seem pathetic. Her circumstances change a lot in the story and she has to come to grips with and let go of all of that negativity in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; What is a good approach (or approaches) to depict her underlying anger enough to show that it's a problem, but also have her still be likable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully I made this clear enough, let me know if you need more info! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19488" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T13:40:07.687" Title="Advice on portraying my protagonist's anger without making her insufferable" Tags="|novel|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22101" CreationDate="2016-06-28T15:26:20.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Wikipedia article for &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_line&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;through line&lt;/a&gt; explaines that Konstantin Stanislavsky suggested the concept in his method of training actors, the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislavski%27s_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stanislavski system&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, at the beginning of the 20th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Google book search brings up about &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=%22throughline%22%20OR%20%22through%20line%22&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;tbm=bks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;234.000 results&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you search for &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=through%20line%20stanislavski&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;through line stanislavski&lt;/a&gt;&quot; – everyone except Wikipedia seems to write his name with an &quot;i&quot; at the end –, you will find a plethora of articles that explain Stanislavski's concept in detail and give references to his writings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept of throughlines is one foundation for the theory behind the story writing software &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_line&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dramatica Story Expert&lt;/a&gt;. Here is a diagram visualizing throughlines as conceptualized by the authors of Dramatica:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VTP0V.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VTP0V.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-07-31T13:25:01.217" LastActivityDate="2016-07-31T13:25:01.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23608" CreationDate="2016-06-28T15:38:44.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest a popular literary technique called 'indirect characterisation'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your writing in first person; write about her thoughts and reasons and actions. If she is approached by someone who speaks and she reveals how that person has affected her ,good or bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in second person you may start a chapter revealing that she had suffered a breakdown and is recovering in a bar, then you hint what's going on in the bar and what affect this has on her senses. Smell of beer, taste of free water, feeling of splinters under the bar table...and so on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T15:38:44.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23308" CreationDate="2016-06-28T15:39:37.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In APA, if the whole book has been written by the same author(s), you always cite the whole book and give the page of the reference, thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reference list:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Author, A. A. (1967). &lt;em&gt;Title of Work&lt;/em&gt;. Location: Publisher.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;In text:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ... (Author, 1967, p. xxx) ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cite a text in an anthology or a chapter in a textbook where every chapter has been written by a different author, you cite it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reference list:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Author, A. A., &amp;amp; Author, B. B. (1958). Title of text. In A. Editor &amp;amp; B. Editor (eds.), &lt;em&gt;Title of Book&lt;/em&gt; (pp. xxx-xxx). Location: Publisher.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;In text:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ... (Author &amp;amp; Author, 1958, p. xxx) ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In APA you need to create a citation for every individual text. There is no &quot;cross-referencing&quot; of the kind allowed by MLA. You can cite the whole anthology, if the individual texts all endorse a common viewpoint and you are refering to this (e.g. a collection of texts about a new theory or methodology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refer to the APA Manual for more information. You find it in every university or large public library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-06-29T10:10:04.673" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T10:10:04.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23456" CreationDate="2016-06-28T15:43:36.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You involve up to five to eight characters in the beginning and add more in later chapters to which it's most preferable when their roles are smaller.&#xA;Depending on the size of the story, remind the reader who they are and what they look like in casual description of what they're doing in scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T15:43:36.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23608" CreationDate="2016-06-28T16:07:53.990" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being filled with regret does not necessarilly make your character pathetic.&#xA;If what she is regretful about is truly horrible and self-damning, then that regret may be an appropriate response to the loss.  It only becomes pathetic in the eyes of your readers, when what has been lost and is now sorrowfully missed, was never real or really valuable in the first place.  If you want your reader to empathize with your character, invest in making what she lost real and tangible to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond building empathy, you can postpone most readers' judgement of your character by making her aware that this anger and regret are personal faults which need to be healed.  Have her struggle to overcome them and to consciously change the way that she sees the world.  Most readers will tolerate a little pathetic in their heroes, as long as there is some foreshadowing of the growth which is soon to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, consider that anger and regret are not the only way that an unfortunate history can express itself within your character.  It can also come out as wisdom and compassion.  As she is sitting in a bar, have the bartender offer her another round and with a sad smile, have her pass on the opportunity, reviewing in her mind how she has already paid those dues and therefore doesn't need a repeat.  Have her view the bar's other patrons with pity instead of disgust.  If you don't want her to seem pathetic, don't paint her that way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="11221" LastEditDate="2016-06-29T05:16:22.143" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T05:16:22.143" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23602" CreationDate="2016-06-28T16:30:30.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Two Weeks with the Queen' by Morris Glitzman is a very funny book, but it is about death and grieving. (It doesn't use black humour.) It is sometimes used to help children and teenagers who have suffered a bereavement. The right type of humour in the right position always has a place in a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T16:30:30.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23401" CreationDate="2016-06-28T16:56:23.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two possibilities that I can see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The book is republished. Either of both publications can be part of a series or a standalone. Many classics fall into this category.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The book is co-published by different publishers in different countries. &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23826/5645&quot;&gt;Here is an example&lt;/a&gt;. This typically happens with scientific handbooks or textbooks. Sometimes these are part of a series.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case one ISBNs will differ between editions; in case two all ISBNs are listed in all editions of the book, and it is sometimes hard to tell which edition you are holding from the book alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T20:28:19.837" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21842" CreationDate="2016-06-28T17:06:05.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cite sources. You do not cite your data. You can append the full data to the publication or publish it online. In a scientific or scholarly publication, the method of data collection must be described, as well as the resulting data set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The method must comply with current standards in your field, of course, and if you apply methods from a different field, such as transcribing sign language, which does not have the same syntactic structure as spoken or written English, you must give sources for the methods you apply and argue for their use, as readers will not be familiar with what you are doing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &quot;data&quot; is depends on the field of study. In your case the interviews are the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T17:06:05.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23617" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23619" CreationDate="2016-06-28T17:26:36.563" Score="2" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's imagine a book where my character holds the power of light. Reason being, everyone in his country is born with telekinesis. He however, is the only one with enough grasp of the (maybe a little unrealistic) physics of that world, and that's why his light powers are so impressive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, how much should i explain these physics? Can i give a broad answer (Like &quot;yeah i'm using telekinesis to reflect light everywhere) or should i go into detail as to how and why that works?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If i do need to go into detail, how do i make it not long and boring? I'd have to explain something a bit convoluted, but i don't want to bring the whole story to a halt to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lauren linked me to a question that this is supposed a duplicate of, however, as Standback pointed out, the difference here is that he is the only person who understands this, meaning that's what makes him stand out as a character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding complex physics that literally no one else understands and using it to his advantage is what separates from everyone else. If i don't explain it, it might seem a bit Deus-ex-machina, or even worse, it might seem as if he was born with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem with the answer to that other question is that i can't introduce a cabbagehead character because essentially, everyone is a cabbagehead. Nobody understands as much as he does, and some wouldn't even care if he explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how should i do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19342" LastEditorUserId="19342" LastEditDate="2016-06-29T10:42:31.370" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T13:35:53.517" Title="How much detail should I go into for a character taking advantage of physics expertise?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|exposition|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23617" CreationDate="2016-06-28T18:28:35.293" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on what the main problem is in the novel. If the main problem is technical in nature, the reader needs to have some sense of what it technically possible. If the main problem is psychological or moral, however, what matters is the decision to use or not use the power in question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a whole cottage industry online doing &quot;if A has power B why don't they just do C&quot; analysis of superhero movies. Most superpowers are poorly explained and inconsistently applied, and it usually doesn't matter because the movies are essentially morality plays.(&quot;With great power comes great responsibility.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing is that the reader should not feel that the author has changed the rules in the middle of the game in order to get the ending they want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T18:28:35.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23595" CreationDate="2016-06-28T19:46:55.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting concept to make a story in dialog only (hopefully with some description and motion by the characters). I'm assuming the tension will come from the different perspectives of the speakers. One thing which you may want to do is have the speakers include stories in what they say and have those stories demonstrate their philosophical stance. In other words, have them give concrete examples of people (or animals - think Aesop's fables) personifying the philosophies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may already be planning that, but I thought I'd mention it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T19:46:55.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23595" CreationDate="2016-06-28T20:24:58.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plato's &lt;em&gt;Dialogues&lt;/em&gt; are the paradigmatic example of philosophical arguments in the form of fictionalized conversations, but no one reads them for the plot. More recently, Jostein Gaarder's &lt;em&gt;Sophie's World&lt;/em&gt; is a famous attempt to dramatize a general introduction to philosophy in the form of a novel (although opinions are mixed as to how well it succeeds in either goal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my own personal list of favorite books where weighty philosophical topics are integrated into the action (more or less successfully), I'd try the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fyodor Dostoyevsky - &lt;em&gt;The Brothers Karamazov&lt;/em&gt;: One of the most justly famous philosophical novels of all time --it combines a soap opera plotline with long intense theological arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neal Stephenson - &lt;em&gt;Ananthem&lt;/em&gt;:  The majority of the book manages to be compelling while following a cloister of philosophically inclined monks and their arguments.  The book moves towards a more action-oriented narrative at the end, a move I personally found to be unfortunate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Zindell - &lt;em&gt;Neverness&lt;/em&gt;: The book dramatizes a number of abstract mathematical and theological concepts.  In my opinion, one of the more successful integrations of philosophy with plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Samuel Delaney - &lt;em&gt;Dhalgren&lt;/em&gt;: A lurid and surreal exploration of topics around race, sexuality, identity, reality, sanity and aesthetics.  Brilliant, but notoriously difficult to read and understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lewis Carroll - &lt;em&gt;Sylvie &amp;amp; Bruno&lt;/em&gt;:  A dizzying postmodern mashup of philosophy, romance, fairy tale and whimsy, less integrated than simply chopped together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Russell Hoban - &lt;em&gt;The Mouse and His Child&lt;/em&gt;: A deceptively deep meditation on the existential push towards self actualization, in the presence of fate and the infinite, all as presented in the form of a children's fairy tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Walker Percy's - &lt;em&gt;The Moviegoer&lt;/em&gt;: The integration of several core themes from proto-existentialist philosopher Kierkegaard into &lt;a href=&quot;http://popculturephilosopher.com/kierkegaards-narrative/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a single unified dramatic narrative plotline&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, not novels, but &lt;em&gt;Waking Life&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;My Dinner With Andre&lt;/em&gt; are well-known movies that revolve almost entirely around philosophical monologues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-06-30T16:20:12.850" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T16:20:12.850" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23608" CreationDate="2016-06-28T20:48:24.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One key thing you can do is to have your character fight against their own anger, instead of luxuriating in it.  If she's really doing her best to move on, but having trouble --well, most of us can identify with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also don't have to have all the back story come out at once, and you might want to simplify it.  If one detail or another has a real and living impact on where the character is now, that gives you an organic approach to it.  If it doesn't, do you actually need it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T20:48:24.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23608" CreationDate="2016-06-28T21:27:42.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dialogue and monologue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialogue with her friends, one by one, until they leave. With a bartender or barista. On a chat room or a BBS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monologue could be writing in a diary or a blog. Or potentially she monologues at her cat, who will look interested only until she's fed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whoever the audience is, have the character say out loud the things she's thinking and feeling, with occasional asides of things she's thinking and feeling that she doesn't want to admit out loud. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T21:27:42.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23624" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-29T00:24:11.737" Score="3" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a &quot;quest&quot; (a sort of real time you are the hero adventure online) and find myself using the formula &quot;You feel/do/see/etc X&quot; much more often than I would like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it makes my writing uninteresting and am searching for different approaches, but English is not my first language and I do not know where to look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where can I find different ways to express things that happen to the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19516" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T19:25:31.597" Title="How to find different ways to express things that happen to the reader?" Tags="|technique|word-choice|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23624" CreationDate="2016-06-29T00:49:32.937" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the sensory input, instead of &quot;you see/feel/smell/touch/taste,&quot; try moving the thing to the front of the sentence or phrase to make it the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of &quot;You see a shiny red rock,&quot; try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A shiny red rock glints in the gravel at the side of the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;em&gt;presupposes&lt;/em&gt; (rather than stating explicitly) that the reader is looking at the red rock in the gravel at the side of the road. This sort of presupposition can lull the reader into the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of &quot;You feel the smooth silk curtain,&quot; try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The silk of the curtain slides between your fingers, cool and smooth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're describing inanimate things like this, it's sometimes difficult to find a good verb. But give it a try. You may not be able to eliminate all of instances of &quot;you see,&quot; but you can get rid of a lot of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't think of how to reduce the actions. Maybe someone else can think of ways. If you can get rid of &quot;you see,&quot; maybe the actions will seem less troublesome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T00:49:32.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23626" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-29T02:56:47.017" Score="2" ViewCount="4062" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a World War 3 Novel, and I want to write the backstories of the main characters as prologues. It's really short, so I can't make another book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it even possible to make multiple prologues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19517" LastActivityDate="2024-01-11T17:34:14.260" Title="Can you make multiple prologues in one book?" Tags="|prologues|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10110" CreationDate="2016-06-29T03:57:54.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I get the sense that your protagonist is not important enough to the plot. He is instrumental in the development of the two women, but he isn't doing all that much for himself. As such, the hero is clearly a &quot;point of view&quot; character but I'm not convinced that he is a real protagonist. I can think of two ways to fix this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is to &quot;make a virtue of necessity&quot; and &quot;demote&quot; the hero to the narrator, while making one (or both) of the women the protagonist. Think of Nick Carraway in &quot;The Great Gatsby.&quot; The story was more about &lt;em&gt;Gatsby's&lt;/em&gt; development than Nick's, but Nick played admirably as a &quot;sidekick.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second idea is to upgrade your hero. The two women, a sister and potential girlfriend are competing for his attention, and potentially pulling him in different directions, creating a potential conflict. How does he resolve that conflict? If that's what he does in the story, he is really the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist is the most important person in the story. Ultimately his (or her) decisions and feelings are the ones that count most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T03:57:54.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23626" CreationDate="2016-06-29T04:36:25.607" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible? sure.  It is your novel, so structure it as you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it wise? probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prologues are theives which steal from their creators.  They steal the backstory and motivations which defines who your characters are; leaving you, the author, with nothing except your characters' future actions to build your story with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very hard to write a prologue about a main character, without giving the coming story away.  The historical facts which you choose to share, subtly inform the reader of what parts of all of a world's history is important to this particular story.  The particular character details which you share, let the reader know what the character is likely to do, and which personal demons they will have to slay along the way.  No matter how carefully you craft a prologue, you are likely to give away more than you desire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep that precious backstory hidden.  Save it for the slow moments between the action, when your characters might naturally reflect on their past and how it relates to their current adventures.  Don't reveal your characters' pains and dreams before the reader has even met them.  Allow time for the reader to learn to love them, before telling more about who they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the proper quantity of prologues for any novel, is none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T04:36:25.607" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23626" CreationDate="2016-06-29T10:13:56.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I gave an answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/16542/prologues-with-no-protagonist-how-can-they-work/16546#16546&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; about why prologues are useful, which may be relevant to what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: a prologue is useful for setting up a story, and including any relevant information that cannot be worked into chapter 1 without an exposition dump. It is useful as it does not have to follow the same flow or narrative style as the rest of the book, and serves to engage the reader immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@HenryTaylor is correct in his answer, there is no need to tell the reader everything about the characters before they are introduced, because the reader will not be invested in their life story, as they will not know who the characters are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming from the context that the backstory would refer to their lives before the war began. However until the reader understands who they are now, it doesn't matter to them who they were. This is why so many TV shows now run the story of characters in their current lives in parallel with their previous lives (such as Lost, before and after being on an island, and Orange Is The New Black, before and after being in prison).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get to understand who the main characters are, and gradually learn who they were, how they changed, and how they came to be that way. That is how readers connect with the characters, and understand them deeper. You wouldn't immediately give your life's story to a person you had just met. They don't care, because they don't know you. But close friends would be interested, as they are invested in who you are as a person now, just as a reader would be invested in the current story of the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your question 'Can you make multiple prologues in your book?' is no, because you shouldn't have to. If you can't make it into a single prologue, it shouldn't go into a prologue. If you are setting up the backstories of multiple separate characters, that should be happening within the body of your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, if there is salient information needed to understand who these characters are before the story begins, it should be done altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T10:13:56.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23626" CreationDate="2016-06-29T13:12:07.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This strikes me as a semantic quibble. You can have a section in which the stories of various main characters are told before some larger action commences. Lots of novels have multiple parts, often with gaps in time between them. Calling the entire first part, with its multiple chapters, a prolog, however, seems to stretch the meaning of the word for no obvious purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you should also bear in mind that backstory is not really backstory unless you are already in a story and, at some point, reaching back into the past to reveal earlier story. What you are talking about is starting the story earlier. And that means that your character introductions need to be stories in their own right. Simply writing biographies or case files that do not work as stories is not going to engage the reader, and calling them prologs is not going to change that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-06-30T20:09:26.157" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T20:09:26.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23617" CreationDate="2016-06-29T14:42:09.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing for broad audience, you will be accepted if you're skimming the details and not going in-depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you focus on a specific audience, you might ride the wave of the success of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_%28Weir_novel%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Martian&lt;/a&gt; if you go really in-depth. Instead of &quot;power of light&quot;, gain mastery of electromagnetic waves. Radio, laser, X-ray, microwave (+radar), infrared, ultraviolet, matters of light pressure, albedo, polarization, even quantum entanglement - that's all your oyster to open, discover ways the character can exploit the understanding of common &quot;light wave&quot; and apply it to their advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't see how it could be derived from levitation though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T14:42:09.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23617" CreationDate="2016-06-29T17:22:46.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A former boss asked me to: &quot;State your results, but don't tell me the details.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might be a good rule for your physics &quot;whiz.&quot; Talk about what he can do, but don't tell how he does it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T17:22:46.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23617" CreationDate="2016-06-29T18:40:04.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;How well do YOU understand the physics of what the character is doing? If you have a detailed, fully internally consistent process worked out, then you can probably just allude to it in very general terms if the in world population wouldn't understand it (and perhaps the character himself doesn't have the scientific vocabulary to articulate it if he is the only one with this capability). A detailed &quot;data dump&quot; could be reserved for an appendix just so you could show those readers interested how cool it all is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a generally good rule of thumb for technical explanations is that if you have to resort to mathematical equations, you've gone too far (unless you are trying to write the fantasy equivalent of a Tom Clancy technothriller) :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for example, you may say &quot;harnessed the intensity of high energy green visible light to cut through armor plate&quot; rather than &quot;focused 540 nm wavelength radiation in 0.5 nanosecond pulses to sear through tempered steel&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19367" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T18:40:04.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23576" CreationDate="2016-06-29T18:59:13.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are historical and modern combat manuals you could use. They typically have woodplate illustrations or photographs and often focus on a specific weapon/style versus various opponents with different arms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hans Talhoffer has some, there is Joachim Meyer, and of course Miyamoto Musashi has the classic &quot;Book of Five Rings&quot;. Guy Windsor, Christian Tobler, and John Clements are some (of many) modern folks trying to record or recreate these techniques. There are plenty of martial art manuals and modern weapon fighting as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember that many of these manuals over-emphasize the &quot;flashy stuff&quot; over what most folks probably actually used. But you'd be amazed at how versatile something like a sword can be versus what we see in most movie fights (I've seen VERY few films that utilize the blade for trapping, reverse it to strike with the hilt, or have folks choke up on the blade). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little of this stuff goes a long way, IMHO, so a more generic description with one or two specific techniques should suffice. Nothing drags a fight down like intricate descriptions of &quot;his right arm dropped behind the enemy's left knee, pushing it forward, while his left hand gripped the enemy's belt, pulling him over his shoulder into a forward roll...&quot; just trying to visualize what is actually being done can be exhausting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19367" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T18:59:13.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23567" CreationDate="2016-06-29T19:13:07.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use of a predictable sequence can bore your audience but can also make them feel smart. There was an article that concluded that audiences preferred knowing the story (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ew.com/article/2015/07/27/trailer-spoilers-southpaw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ew.com/article/2015/07/27/trailer-spoilers-southpaw&lt;/a&gt;). A predictable plot element is a miniature version of this. The audience knows what is going to happen (&quot;Don't open the closet!&quot;), still gets the thrill (&quot;eek, it was just the cat!&quot;) and then awaits the expected conclusion (&quot;yay, killer got her as she was walking away!&quot;). Subverting this will challenge your audience, possibly not fulfilling their expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows you to manipulate the audience by setting up what appears to be a predictable sequence that gets turned on its head (the film &quot;Feast&quot; does this repeatedly) but if not done well it can turn folks off. Obviously this is highly dependent on the genre and expected audience. A general audience film designed to appeal to the most people possible will typically eschew trope thwarting plot twists (or make the twist part of their marketing to craft expectations) while a more niche product must rely on changing up the plot in order to feel fresh and innovative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19367" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T19:13:07.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23582" CreationDate="2016-06-29T19:14:05.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Start &gt;&gt;Control Panel&#xA;    Accessibility Options &gt;&gt; Display (tab).&#xA;    Under &quot;Cursor Options&quot;, move the &quot;Width&quot; slider all the way to the left (narrow) and click APPLY.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further information, you may refer to the following article:&#xA;Accessibility in Windows XP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T19:14:05.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23624" CreationDate="2016-06-29T19:25:31.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anything can happen, avoid telling the reader how they should feel directly. But if you think of something dramatic, extreme or awesome think about what characters may usually forget when they're in a burning inferno /building from how they got around 'slump'or 'heavy' to what they think or remember for short times. &#xA;Just write what they may forget to feel if they live to tell of the venture&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T19:25:31.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3435" CreationDate="2016-06-29T19:43:51.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also try Scribophile at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scribophile.com&lt;/a&gt;. The premise is that folks earn points by critiquing and spend points to put their work up for critique. The system means that no one hogs the spotlight without helping other folks. You're pretty much guaranteed 3 critiques. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T19:43:51.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23626" CreationDate="2016-06-29T21:36:35.123" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Multiple prologues I suggest are more acceptable if they each have at best two paragraphs each because characters need to process every detail, besides readers may remember actions more clearly than statements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T21:36:35.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23642" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23645" CreationDate="2016-07-01T05:15:36.440" Score="3" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;p&gt;When translating something, how do you maintain a consistent style throughout?  I'm concerned about starting off in my own style, then gradually slipping into a style more influenced by the original.  I'm not trying to be faithful to the original style because I'm changing it from an anachronistic historical style to a more accessible modern one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean style as it's defined &lt;a href=&quot;https://nataliesutherlandwriter.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/styletonevoice/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Style is the particular manner of writing individual to an author, the unique way an author puts his words together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14189" LastEditorUserId="43055" LastEditDate="2020-05-14T05:59:36.220" LastActivityDate="2020-05-30T19:39:00.273" Title="Maintaining consistent style in a translation" Tags="|style|translation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23642" CreationDate="2016-07-01T07:51:19.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's never anything wrong with breaking convention if there's a purpose and if you are precise. However, on that note, there is an enormous volume of research that has been done on translation. Linguists have created very clear styles and people are quite accustomed to them. If you did create a new style, it would beget the question as to whether the style is more important than the content that you are writing about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14311" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T07:51:19.110" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23642" CreationDate="2016-07-01T08:45:39.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never translated anything longer than a paragraph, but I have had to produce extended pieces of writing in a consistent style. Here are my suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rather than starting at the beginning of the original and steadily translating page by page until you reach the end, do the translation out of sequence. E.g. if the original has twenty chapters, translate chapter 13, then chapter 4, then chapter 9, then chapter 18, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the first draft is complete, read it as a whole and revise it for consistency. If you are not working to a tight deadline take some time off before you do this to allow yourself to &quot;step back&quot; and see it as an outsider would.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if circumstances permit, get someone else to read the revised version and ask them to comment on whether the style holds together, as well as on any other potential improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These suggestions can apply to any piece of writing, not just a translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T08:45:39.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23492" CreationDate="2016-07-01T11:02:46.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;1. My plans %(section starts here)&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;abcdefgh ijkl..... In the sections below I'll go into my specific plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;1.1. Plan1&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;................................&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;1.2. Plan 2..............&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.e. remove the colon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not at all strange to assume one part of the text points to later parts. I think it's more of an implicit expectation from a reader of both fiction and non-fiction that the earlier parts and the later parts are tied together somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;1. My plans&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Plans are good for you. You should have at least one at any given moment. When I was a kid I wanted to go to the moon, now I've evolved my plans some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;1.1. Go to business school&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Going to business school will be .....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;1. My plans&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;1.1. Go to business school&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Going to business school will be .....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as there's text after the header, you should probably use sections rather than lists. But if it's just a list of your plans, a paragraph each, then a list might be more appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My plans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I want to go to business school to feel the pulse of the economy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I want to learn to tango to feel the pulse of life!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;.....&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a list with a header, I suggest an introduction about plans somehow. Maybe through an anecdote, or your general thoughts about plans, or even an expansion on your most important plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;1. My plans&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My most important plan will always be to live a meaningful life. Every other plan I make is an attempt to fulfill this plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I want to go to business school to feel the pulse of the economy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I want to learn to tango to feel the pulse of life!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;.....&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastEditorUserId="10826" LastEditDate="2016-07-03T23:11:34.513" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T23:11:34.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23602" CreationDate="2016-07-01T13:26:17.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anything &quot;epochal&quot; requires the full range of emotion. &quot;Humor as tragedy&quot; or a farce works very well in such idioms...or as a prelude to something horrific. Nothing like a good joke before one of your characters is suddenly deceased. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T13:26:17.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23617" CreationDate="2016-07-01T13:35:53.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since he or she appears to be your protagonist leaving out how such a powerful &quot;tool&quot; can exist is a powerful tool indeed. A kid's imagination is not going to be overwhelmed by the fact of such an ability but what your character does with it. If it's such an exceptional power how is this so? meaning...through usage show the exceptional nature of this ability...but I would say to add the necessary drama you need to show the Fatal Flaw in it as well. If there is some &quot;laboratory&quot; or &quot;reflective zone&quot; where your character can go to &quot;refresh&quot; this power that sounds pretty cool to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T13:35:53.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23608" CreationDate="2016-07-01T13:40:07.687" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could put her in a situation that forces her to relive her past. That definitely would make her your main character as not only is she confronted with her past but she must do so with something she must deal with in the present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T13:40:07.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23651" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23652" CreationDate="2016-07-01T16:02:23.713" Score="0" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have looked at the half-human-half-vampires a.k.a Dhampirs in the Wikipedia section to find that most of them had mortal mothers and vampire fathers. In history records in Serbia it was said that Serbian women were impregnanted by 'Vampires'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what if a mortal human male knocked up a vampiress, would that still be the same result, in spite of the genders being reversed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T20:22:49.490" Title="Do vampire hybrids inherit powers from male vampires?" Tags="|fantasy|planning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2016-07-01T21:22:24.080" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23651" CreationDate="2016-07-01T17:25:59.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vampires are fictional. You make up their characteristics. Vampires, in fiction, have evolvled over time. Try reading Bram Stocker's &lt;em&gt;Dracula&lt;/em&gt; so you can see what the original was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T17:25:59.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23651" CreationDate="2016-07-01T20:22:49.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The great thing about writing fiction is that generally you can make it whatever you want. As others have stated, a lot of vampires in fiction are completely different from each other. One of the most successful vampire fiction franchises breaks pretty much all of the old school rules. If you don't like Twilight vampires that's okay. I was just using them as an example of breaking traditional folklore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T20:22:49.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23654" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-01T20:35:21.337" Score="0" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that names of countries, states, cities, and counties are always capitalized, but what about governments and organizations? In my novella there are basically 2 sections of space, and each have their own names. So in dialogue and in description do the names of factions, governments, and organizations need to be capitalized, or do I leave it uncapitalized?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T21:08:29.560" Title="Do you capitalize the names of governments in a story?" Tags="|dialogue|description|punctuation|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23654" CreationDate="2016-07-01T21:08:29.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Proper names get capitalized. Generic names don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Federal Bureau of Sparkly Vampires&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Department of Redundancy Department&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Imperial Dogwalkers Consortium&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sacred Order of Turnip Twaddlers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Church of Saint Spock the Pointy-Eared&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The United Provinces of Cumberbatch&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the Hiddlestoners Rebellion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Judean People's Front (not to be confused with the People's Front of Judea)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the Cumberbatchian government&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the rebels&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cat lovers of the Empire&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tautologists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;those who twaddle turnips&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hobbyist turnip-twaddlers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T21:08:29.560" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21261" CreationDate="2016-07-02T02:49:30.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've published 6 books so far on KDP, and I'm based out of Calgary. When I log into kdp.amazon.ca, it actually redirects me to kdp.amazon.com. It's one and the same site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what you're looking for firstly, is what marketplaces your KDP account is configured for. After you log into KDP, click on upper right-hand link for your account, mine says &quot;Adam's Account.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will bring you to a screen that has your address, and if you scroll down, you will a spot called Tax Information (make sure you've got a green checkmark there, if not, you have some work to do). After that is Amazon Marketplaces, that's where you'll see how you are going to get paid for each of the different marketplaces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my account, every marketplace states either EFT or cheque.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I go to publish a title (and I just setup #7 today for pre-order), I just setup the information, upload the content, and set the price in all the various marketplaces. That's all I need to do. Amazon will publish my books from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who want to buy your book will be required to go to the location associated with their account. For example, when I'm in Amazon.com looking at an eBook, I can't buy it. There's a link over on the right hand side which will take me to the equivalent page on the Amazon.ca site, which will then allow me to buy the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's no &quot;publishing it on KDP US vs not,&quot; there is only publishing it. Everything else seems to be driven from how your account is configured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adam&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19534" LastActivityDate="2016-07-02T02:49:30.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23661" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23666" CreationDate="2016-07-02T19:30:03.790" Score="1" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;The narrator is called Karl who is a sixteen year old pupil at a boarding school. During a summer Sports Day with a rival school, he meets one of the pupils who is both a nuisance and is adorable (and is a boy his age)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where do I go from here to use this friendship to spice up the storyline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(There are other storylines in this story but they too aren't fully developed)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastEditorUserId="19511" LastEditDate="2016-07-03T11:50:22.737" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T17:46:38.987" Title="In a nutshell, how can a friendship become a tragedy?" Tags="|technique|planning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-07-07T18:20:43.257" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23663" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23665" CreationDate="2016-07-02T22:16:54.923" Score="1" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my fictional world which is very much like Earth, I have started the development of a royal family who shall appear in meantioned news reports and dialogue (in the fictional world) throught the chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two questions about planning ahead&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is this controversial?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do they count as 'background characters' if the narrator itself doesn't meet them in person through the course of the story?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T05:32:47.917" Title="Developing a fictionalised Royal family" Tags="|technique|dialogue|planning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22110" CreationDate="2016-07-03T01:00:50.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're probably in Script Mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my version of Scrivener (Mac) you can press command-8 to switch back and forth between modes. (I.e. prone opportunity for mishaps...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also be able to uncheck it by selecting: &lt;code&gt;Format &amp;gt; Scriptwriting &amp;gt; Script Mode&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be checked if this is your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T01:00:50.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23663" CreationDate="2016-07-03T05:32:47.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's start with 2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's up to you - nobody decides &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; about your manuscript except you. Do you want them to be background characters? Then let them be background characters. Do you want them to play a major part? Then don't let them be background characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for 1,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be controversial if you wished it to be so, by assigning certain characteristics borrowed from real life. Say, if you have a royal couple be estranged because the prince wants to be with his mistress, then all of a sudden it becomes possible because the princess is killed in an automobile accident.&#xA;See what I mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember what I just said: &lt;strong&gt;You&lt;/strong&gt; should be in control of your narrative. You decide whether you want a character to be in the background or foreground, controversial or safe, and so on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T05:32:47.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23661" CreationDate="2016-07-03T12:18:48.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I understand what you're after. Here are a few examples that come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Karl quietly befriends boy, boy is mocked or teased by others, boy is significantly injured or killed as a result of bullying or self-harming, and Karl carries the weight of having done nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Karl befriends boy, is jealous of boy because of confidence or other issues, doesn't trust boy, and thus Karl does something that results in harm/pain for someone else. Karl is deeply guilty.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially you have to bring them close, establish that they are close, and then have the reason why a split happens. Making it a tragedy means that there has to be some large emotional event, e.g. a death, something burns down, someone is significantly harmed such that it changes them, etc. This can either result by explicit action (like in #2 above) or through inaction (like in #1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing you're looking at using this as backstory. However, if you aren't, it sounds like you aren't planning to have this as an over-arching element of the story. Careful not to overwhelm your story with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19534" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T12:18:48.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23247" CreationDate="2016-07-03T12:30:58.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Right click on Windows, or two fingered click on a Mac. From there, select Move to Trash. It'll then stay in that document's specific trash folder. You can retrieve scenes out of the document's specific trash until you empty the trash. Some writers will only empty the trash at the end of a writing project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19534" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T12:30:58.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18846" CreationDate="2016-07-03T12:36:13.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's what I've learned over the past three years. It doesn't have to do with the size or length of your book, but rather with industry norms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For large chains to consider stocking you book, i.e. putting any copies on the shelf, your book needs to be at the 55% discount and returnable. This is &quot;not negotiable.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smaller bookstores seek a 45% discount and most want returnable, but it doesn't have to be. It's just strongly preferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Returnable is absolutely all kind of terrible for us on the author side, however there is no option as the book industry seemed to have optimized on this some time ago. Another thing that gets me is being responsible for shipping the books to them, and then in the case of returns, being responsible for shipping the books back (or having them destroyed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now an interesting thing is that if the books aren't offering a 55% discount and are not returnable, almost everywhere will list the book on their websites and will order one when someone orders off their website. This can be sufficient, depending on what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19534" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T12:36:13.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20547" CreationDate="2016-07-03T12:59:53.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does the applicable manual of style say? (E.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APA&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/a&gt;, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the manual doesn't answer your question, you can look in your source papers for inspiration. How do they cite works in this scenario?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, ask your thesis advisor if you still don't have a clue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T12:59:53.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2016-07-03T13:31:14.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a secret not everyone knows about the inner workings of the mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't follow the same rules as the world outside your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the mind, things can't be fixed, turned off, ignored or avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't believe me? Here's an experiment: Do not think about a yellow postbox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aha! You did. And the more you try not to, the more you'll think about that darned postbox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experiment, if you like to. Take one minute of just doing whatever and note every time you think of a yellow postbox, then take another minute and concentrate fully on not thinking of the postbox. Compare the number of times you thought of that postbox in each minute... And, if you managed to think fewer times of the postbox when you concentrated on not to, what did you accomplish instead, what did you think of instead? I spent my minute 100% focusing on a green apple, but I fear that isn't going to get me far in life...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for the good news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; your head has nothing to do with what happens &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; your head &lt;em&gt;until you decide to act on your thoughts and emotions.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are a few evolutionarily conditioned emotional responses that are in fact reflexes, but they are way fewer than you think - but that's a different discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do you deal with self-doubt, fear, anxiety, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to live your life and do what you want/like/have to, while still having these things going on in your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure you've been in situations where you had to deal with the outer world while the inner world was in turmoil; mid-terms, asking that special person for a date, being in a relationship, taking care of children, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do this by accepting that things in your head are going to happen and that you can't control them (Yellow Postbox!), that you do not have to have 100% control of the mind in order to make things happen outside of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step is to have a plan, like an exercise or a new habit. I've seen several good examples of that among the other answers to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T13:31:14.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23672" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-03T17:22:24.513" Score="1" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I have been questioning myself about this: when I'm writing and done with a chapter and I am about to start the next one, can I start with a different scene and others characters like in another place? I am writing in third person omniscient. Do I need to have a character's POV ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19547" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T11:04:38.173" Title="Can I change scene and characters in the next chapter?" Tags="|novel|plot|narrative|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23672" CreationDate="2016-07-03T21:19:58.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can change the character and setting on a different chapter &#xA;J.K Rowling changed her narratives in the beginning of 'The Goblet Of Fire' and frequently in ,Order Of The Phoenix'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Describe their feelings and sensory thoughts in your third person&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T21:19:58.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23674" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-03T21:50:48.743" Score="7" ViewCount="2160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel of historical fiction about the Second World War. It is written in the POV of several German and Russian characters but is intended for English readers. Which units of measurement should I use when referencing distance, weights and time? Miles or kilometers, pounds or kilograms, 24-hour or 12-hour time designations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11398" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2018-07-23T09:06:21.693" LastActivityDate="2018-07-23T18:00:49.343" Title="Miles or Kilometers for historical fiction?" Tags="|fiction|historical|historical-fiction|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23676" CreationDate="2016-07-04T01:10:39.753" Score="3" ViewCount="6754" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a title or a name of a place in a novel, do you capitalize the &quot;T&quot; in &quot;the&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example the name of an establishment, which of these would be correct:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They went to &lt;strong&gt;The&lt;/strong&gt; Cloak and Dagger Inn?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They went to &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; Cloak and Dagger Inn?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18989" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T23:48:29.557" Title="Do you capitalize the &quot;T&quot; in &quot;the&quot; in a Title or Place's Name?" Tags="|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23675" CreationDate="2016-07-04T01:18:47.610" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You capitalize &lt;code&gt;The&lt;/code&gt; if: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It begins a sentence. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is part of the name. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the inn is &lt;code&gt;The Cloak and Dagger Inn&lt;/code&gt;, everything is capitalized (except the &lt;code&gt;and&lt;/code&gt; of course). If the name is the &lt;code&gt;Cloak and Dagger Inn&lt;/code&gt;, then the &lt;code&gt;the&lt;/code&gt; is not capitalized, as it is not part of the name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the &lt;code&gt;the&lt;/code&gt; does not &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; the name, then it is not capitalized: &lt;code&gt;Inn of the Cloak and Dagger&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully that wasn't too confusing. ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-07-05T23:48:29.557" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T23:48:29.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23674" CreationDate="2016-07-04T01:30:29.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not versed in who used what when, so I can't tell you exactly what to use. Fortunately, I &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; tell you how to find out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most fiction, your write for your readers. So if your audience is German or Russian, you use the Metric System. If they are American, you use the US Customary System&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In historical fiction, Germans or Russians would use the metric system, so they should do so within your novel. You can always include a conversion somewhere within your novel if the detail is important, or even just a vague description of the distance: &quot;A field away,&quot; &quot;A castle the size of a pigeon on the horizon,&quot; &quot;a stone's throw.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when you the author are talking to the reader (ie, narration, no character is speaking), you should use the Us Customary Units. It might seem a bit jarring, so if possible, you might want to not use exact measurement units all the time. Rather, use descriptions like I included above, or simply things like, &quot;arm's reach&quot; and &quot;a stride away&quot; for short distances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that answers your question, and good luck in your writing! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2018-07-23T18:00:49.343" LastActivityDate="2018-07-23T18:00:49.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23674" CreationDate="2016-07-04T02:21:39.143" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're looking at this from the perspective of a set of characters talking to each other, it would depend on their background. If their country used metric, then they would have metric as their instinct. If you want them to 'convert' because of the presence of an American character, for example, you can do what we Canadians sometimes end up doing which is &quot;It's about half a meter... hang on, two and a half centimeters per inch, it's about 20 inches.&quot; From that point you could have the &quot;metric&quot; character providing US Customary units or Imperial, or whatever (or the reverse).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, you don't want to break your reader out of the story. You don't want them to feel like you're ignorant of what was used, and you don't want to make things awkward. Doing something like this, or finding another means, allows you to have the transition to &quot;what you assume your reader is most comfortable with.&quot; However, whenever they would come across &quot;official documents&quot; or they would receive orders, you could keep it in the &quot;other&quot; system, which would also allow you to create a sense of distance and formality about those issuing the orders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19534" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T02:21:39.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23672" CreationDate="2016-07-04T02:36:40.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can. You just want it to be clear to the reader, be consistent throughout the chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful with how many points of view you use throughout your book, as you can end up overwhelming your readers. I had a few readers bring them up in one of my books once. Having a few points of view, and making them definitive and unique can really add to the story. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19534" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T02:36:40.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2016-07-04T02:47:47.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is a mistake to try to define literary fiction in terms of themes, language, or the primacy of plot vs character. I would suggest that it can be better understood in terms of the pleasure it gives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories can give different kinds of pleasure. Some provide vicarious adventure (you want to pretend you are a spy or a mountain climber). Some provide wish fulfilment (you want to get the girl or win the battle). Some provide immersion in a subject of interest (you will read anything about horses). Some provide confirmation of our biases and prejudices. Some flatter our egos and make us think we are insightful or cool or wise. Some provide genuine insight into the human condition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with any of these pleasures (given reasonable proportion). But they are very different pleasures and we may seek each of them at different times. Works that, in addition to whatever other pleasures they provide, give genuine insight into the human condition tend to last a long time and we call them literature. (Insight here does not mean the statement of a psychological truth or diagnosis, but rather a recognition of something genuinely human in the circumstances of the story itself. It is an experience, not a proposition.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some works of literature can also be rip snorting adventures or taut thrillers. (Think of Dickens or Joseph Conrad.) There is no limit on either the subject matter or the use of language for a work of literature. It is the type of pleasure and the type of insight it provides that defines it as such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a commercial genre, literary fiction refers to works that attempt or claim to provide this kind of insight. Since works of genuine literature are rare, most literary fiction does not provide the pleasure of genuine insight. It may, however, provide the pleasure of confirming prejudices or flattering our belief in our own insightfulness or sophistication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes genre fiction genre is similarly not its subject matter but the class of pleasure it intends to provide. A genre is defined not only by subject matter but by a specific formula designed to reliably provide a certain kind of pleasure to the reader. Many stories involve romance, but a romance novel promises a much more specific formula calibrated to provide a very specific type of pleasure. Not all stories set in the west are westerns. Not all stories set in the past are genre historical fiction. Not all stories set in space are sci fi. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible (though rare) for a work to transcend its genre and also qualify as literature. (Raymond Chandler might qualify here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Works of general fiction are those that do not attempt to follow the conventions of a genre, no matter their subject matter. (In some sense, literary fiction is also a genre, in that it follows a formula designed to deliver a particular kind of pleasure.) Some small part of general fiction rises to the level of genuine literature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T02:47:47.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23672" CreationDate="2016-07-04T11:00:43.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, no problem at all. Just make sure to let the reader know as fast as possible, as they'd have to do some backtracking in their minds if they thought the chapter started with the same characters from the previous chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by immediately making the change clear, and you should be fine. In fact, i find it even more interesting to change point of views, as it gives a lot more depth to the side characters and how they see things, rather than focusing exclusively on the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19342" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T11:00:43.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23684" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-04T22:27:46.643" Score="2" ViewCount="3796" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble finding any reputable source online that indicates how to cite a poem in APA, and I don't have access to a physical copy of the APA manual right now. Does anyone know how to cite a poem in APA style? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I'd like to cite Robert Burns's &quot;To a Mouse&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43816&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43816&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_a_Mouse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;It&quot;&gt;This poem&lt;/a&gt; was included in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilmarnock_volume/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Kilmarnock volume&quot;&gt;Kilmarnock volume&lt;/a&gt;. I'm having trouble putting together this information in an APA citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19315" LastEditorUserId="19315" LastEditDate="2016-07-06T22:58:22.207" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T20:49:11.743" Title="Citing a Poem in APA" Tags="|citations|poetry|apa|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23687" CreationDate="2016-07-05T00:46:51.060" Score="0" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen some passages use italics, others just use single/double quotation, or they use quotation with italics. So I'm a bit confused as to what the actual rule is regarding this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when describing what a person sees written on a sign, what is the correct format for describing what they see?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example a sign reading: &lt;code&gt;Georgetown County Fair&lt;/code&gt;. Which format would be correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They approached a large sign reading 'Georgetown County Fair'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They approached a large sign reading &lt;em&gt;'Georgetown County Fair'&lt;/em&gt; &lt;code&gt;(single or double quotations?)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They approached a large sign reading &lt;em&gt;Georgetown County Fair&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18989" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T08:56:57.523" Title="Formatting for written text, e.g. a sign" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-07-06T08:58:51.577" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23686" CreationDate="2016-07-05T11:49:10.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have the Viewpoint Character Take Action&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bill approached the sign and read it: &lt;em&gt;Georgetown County Fair&lt;/em&gt;.   He&#xA;  scratched his head. &quot;Georgetown?  I thought this was Mapleville.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use italics for the sign if possible or use single-quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Even If You Don't Use the Word 'Read', It Works&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice how if you have the viewpoint character take the action, you don't even have to tell the reader that the character read the sign and it still makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bill approached the sign: &lt;em&gt;Georgetown County Fair&lt;/em&gt;.   He scratched his&#xA;  head. &quot;Georgetown?  I thought this was Mapleville.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T11:49:10.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4861" CreationDate="2016-07-05T13:01:42.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to be the careful type. I am annoyed with the repetition of something in your excerpt.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;&quot;She wanted to fall asleep and sleep but she couldn’t sleep because she couldn’t fall asleep even though she was very tired. &quot;&lt;/em&gt; This was &lt;strong&gt;very annoying&lt;/strong&gt; as you have to wrap mind around it. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;But, I&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; think you should go for idea, nice to try it and see respone from website like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19557" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T13:01:42.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23690" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23712" CreationDate="2016-07-05T15:03:48.220" Score="2" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my screenplay, I feature a CEO of an advertising agency who is &quot;pot shaped,&quot; shy, tongue-tied and a few other characteristics that make you wonder how he ever became an advertising executive, never mind a CEO. Until the retired founder comments that this &quot;careful and earnest&quot; executive &quot;made no enemies and very few mistakes on his way up, and had a way of coming up with the right answer to complex problems.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I felt that these salient points were adequate for a character description. Until a (female) critic told me, &quot;You've got to tell us more about him; what kind of family life does he have, what does he do for fun. (He's the third most important character who &quot;gives the bride away.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is his first (female) boss, whom I present as vain, narcisstic, luxury-loving, etc. Again my critic asks me to tell more of her &quot;backstory;&quot; that she hailed from Minnesota befor she came to New York City, fell in love with the lights, is a dilettante, because she can hardly describe the plays and paintings that she's seen once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is my critic correct in pushing me to give minor details about my characters? Or am I more nearly correct in trying to keep the focus on people's most important characteristics? FWIW, my critic was born around 1940, and things may have been different in &quot;her&quot; time, than today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-07-05T16:18:59.050" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:52:20.283" Title="In character development for a screenplay, is it enough to present only a person's most salient characteristics?" Tags="|character-development|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7" CreationDate="2016-07-05T15:10:47.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is bound in hardcover, reviewed in a respected publication, written by someone with an MFA in English, or assigned as required reading in a college course, it's literary fiction. Literary fiction is prestigious, and generally assumed to be read by a wealthier, more highly educated audience, as opposed to genre fiction, which is issued in mass market paperbacks, and is assumed to follow the formulaic conventions of a genre such as romance, science fiction, horror or mystery.  Literary fiction is aimed at posterity, while genre fiction is disposable and interchangeable --at least in theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, some of the best respected classics began life as genre fiction, while many celebrated or uncelebrated works of literary fiction are quickly forgotten.  It's perhaps best to conceive it, therefore, as primarily a marketing designation, aimed at helping books reach their most receptive audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-07-05T15:18:38.957" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T15:18:38.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23692" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-05T19:49:10.233" Score="3" ViewCount="411" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story I’m trying to write have several characters who have been raised in foster families. None of them have been physically or emotionally abused, but I still felt like their childhood sould have some sort of impact on who they are, even as adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I’ve started reading real world studies focusing on orphans and people raised in foster famillies. It helped me build my main character and make her reactions and choices more consistent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think I overdone it and now too much of my characters' personalities, quirks and motivations are inspired from these studies, and I’m afraid they’re becoming stereotypes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it a good idea to use sociological studies and such for character building?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In what cases can/should it be done?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to do it right?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T08:08:28.197" Title="How to use sociological and/or psychological studies in character building?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|character-development|resources|research|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23694" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-05T20:59:44.133" Score="1" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in the different ways that academic essays can be structured.  Of course there is the 5-paragraph style learned by most Americans in secondary school:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Argument 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Argument 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Argument 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there's this more advanced structure often taught in English 101 type courses in college:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Background&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Argument&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Counterargument and Refutation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some other ways to structure an academic paper?  Side question: I've read several popular (as opposed to scholarly) articles which lack an introduction and/or conclusion (more often the conclusion).  Is this ever acceptable in a scholarly work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19569" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T19:18:17.437" Title="Structural templates in scholarly writing" Tags="|academic-writing|structure|planning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23692" CreationDate="2016-07-06T01:34:19.523" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am afraid it is the best way how to discourage everybody from reading something like &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;. I am serious, characters need to be someway interesting, being alive, believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I can imagine a story of a writer trying that way and - will fail.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T01:34:19.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21318" CreationDate="2016-07-06T09:35:34.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different ways to format written text. Examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A warning etched under the sign read “Electromagnetics strictly prohibited.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Italics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A warning etched under the sign read, &lt;em&gt;Electromagnetics strictly prohibited.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Special formatting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A warning etched under the sign read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ELECTROMAGNETICS STRICTLY PROHIBITED&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fiction, all of these are fine; each gives a somewhat different visual impression, so choose whichever you feel is most appropriate. If you have no preference, choose the simple italics or quotes; those are entirely clear and will not be misunderstood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do be sure to stay consistent; don't use one format in one place and a different format in another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T09:35:34.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23692" CreationDate="2016-07-06T09:52:11.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing research for characters can only be good, as it will make sure that they do not break the suspension of disbelief. If you make characters that do not fit with their upbringing, they will seem too fake to be able to relate to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficulty with character building is finding a good balance in each character between &lt;strong&gt;interesting&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;believable&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character who is a charming genius, who backflips everywhere and earns their living through juggling street performances but also moonlights as a ninja-for-hire is an incredibly interesting character, but hardly believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a story about a middle manager in an accounting firm who has a cat is a believable character, but not very interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly with doing so much research into what makes your characters believable, you have stripped away any semblance of a personality or uniqueness that they may possess, making them formulaic. That's not to say that they &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; be interesting, but you will need to add layers to their personality so that they're not one-dimensional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a character be &lt;em&gt;defined&lt;/em&gt; as an orphan isn't really a character. What makes them a person? Being an orphan would be just one facet of their personality. They may well possess all of the personality traits that you have mentioned, but if that's all that they are then they will not be someone to write a story about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same way that children from poorer backgrounds generally do worse than those from rich backgrounds, that doesn't mean an individual child from a poor family can't go on to become a Nobel laureate, or someone from a rich background can't go on to be homeless and destitute. They will be the exceptional statistic, but those are the ones who get stories written about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your characters can have some, or all of, the traits associated with children growing up in foster care, as that will make them believable. But siblings, even twins, who grow up in the exact same conditions can still be polar opposites. So even if they all have attachment issues, one might be sullen all of the time, whilst another is jealous and quick to anger, and a third may be laid back but vindictive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So whilst your research is not useless, and will make a very good background for your characters, make sure to add more to each of them in order to distinguish who they are, what their motivations are, their goals and dreams, and also make them interesting enough so that they are worthy of being characters in a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T09:52:11.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23690" CreationDate="2016-07-06T10:38:03.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Characters are defined by what they want and what they are willing to do to get it. The specific details you give about them are there to justify what they want and what they are willing to do to get it. Joe wants X because he was raised by wolves in a trailer park in the 70s. Mary is willing to do Y because she was raised on a commune in Argentina by a mother with a an extra finger on her left hand. The details is there so that we will understand what they want and what they are willing to do to get it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much detail is required to do this depends on the nature of the work, what kind of desire, and what kinds of inhibitions you are exploring. Genre fiction has it tropes that allow you to shortcut this process somewhat, especially for secondary characters. Literary fiction that explores more subtle motivations and more subtle inhibitions may require more, and more precise, detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the answer is not an absolute one. Some characters and some styles and genres require a lot of detailed backstory; others require only a few strokes the the pen to place a character in their familiar role in a familiar story structure. The test is, is the level of detail adequate to justify what the character wants and what they are willing to do to get it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T10:38:03.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21774" CreationDate="2016-07-06T10:58:42.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any other reason to use this device in a narrative, beyond &quot;to build tension&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. In &lt;strong&gt;Story&lt;/strong&gt; Robert McKee describes the structure of a story as a series of attempts at a goal met by increasingly dire setbacks until the protagonist is forced to the limits of human experience and must make a final decision, a final change of values, that alters the course of their life forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the villain's foot on the hero's throat is one way to script this moment. But this is the pivotal moral crisis of the whole story. The whole structure and satisfactory resolution of the story depends on it. But there are also many other ways to bring the protagonist to this point other than the villain's boot on their throat. The hero does not have to be at the villain's mercy. But they do have to reach the crisis of values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bringing them to this point will, of course, produce tension, but it is not a &quot;device to create tension&quot;. It is the essence of the story structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that matter, you should not need devices to create tension at all. Tensions should arise out of the moral force of the story itself -- the great question that the protagonist must face in order to achieve the object of their desire. This is why a good story is just as good the second time around even when you know exactly what is going to happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-09-04T11:37:42.730" LastActivityDate="2016-09-04T11:37:42.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2016-07-06T16:31:47.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are you trying to sit down to write? A novel? Maybe that seems large and daunting, so focus instead on a short story - not nearly as scary, not as much of a commitment, and maybe that will help loosen your creativity. If you're stuck trying to write a short story, try a poem or an essay instead. It may be that you have expectations about whatever you are trying to write and those expectations are giving you some anxiety and blocking you up. This is a bit more structured than just trying to write something/anything for ten minutes, but it's another way of of untying the knot, hopefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T16:31:47.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23703" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-06T16:46:40.183" Score="-2" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;'There once was a popular soap opera staged in the southern, modern capital of Imaso in Europe.&#xA;It had run for 50 years and over time produced new characters; some viewers liked them, but other viewers loathed them.&#xA;   Then there was a news broadcast breaking the news that the actors who played some characters since the mid-2000s, perished in a blazing building which was the obvious work of arsonists.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would the personal characteristics of the culprit be, that could be made obvious to the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scene in a particular film where a mass-murdering psychopath is looking at a photograph (of one of the families he murdered) when he's alone.&#xA;It assures the audience that this isn't a cliffhanger (film or not) it was a teqnique&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastEditorUserId="19511" LastEditDate="2016-07-06T19:22:16.443" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T21:11:00.490" Title="How do you give the murderer away?" Tags="|technique|proofreading|mystery|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-07-26T09:40:38.553" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23704" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24705" CreationDate="2016-07-06T20:35:16.073" Score="3" ViewCount="380" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written poetry for a long time, but most of it is free verse. Sometimes I want to experiment with forms (sonnets, villanelles, etc.). Are there any suggestions for working with the more formal structures, rhymes, etc.? I have several books on forms, so I'm not looking for a description of structures, but techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T03:39:10.607" Title="Tips for writing poetry in forms" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23703" CreationDate="2016-07-06T21:11:00.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do it any way you want. &quot;He's your psychopath&quot; with apparently a posse. No better way to &quot;give a mass murderer away&quot; than to see how those around him and are part of his gang view him since it would appear he is their leader of some sort. A classic is of course Captain Ahab in Moby Dick. The story is not told from his point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T21:11:00.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20009" CreationDate="2016-07-06T21:37:12.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am now going to try to answer this question based on what I've learned since our December exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have &quot;taste-tested&quot; both books without reading through either. The styles are different enough that I'm going to assume that Stephen Fry didn't plagiarize any of Dumas book in the usual sense of &quot;copying&quot; one or more passages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a doctrine called &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;striking similarity,&quot;&lt;/a&gt; whereby copyright infringement can occur even in the absence of plagiarism. The two works have &quot;parallel&quot; sequences regarding abduction, incarceration, a treasure hunt, and ultimately revenge. So Fry might have some vulnerability on those grounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, but I have learned some things from my &quot;day job&quot; about how &quot;copying&quot; is viewed. From what I understand from my reading of case law, it is not a &quot;literary&quot; test as a writer would understand it, but rather a marketing test: Does Work B go after the same market as Work A with essentially the same type of bait? Here, Fry is probably on safer ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I'd cite is that both are &quot;period&quot; pieces. Dumas' in &quot;pre-Republican&quot; (before 1871), Fry's in the modern era. One would not expect Fry to follow up with another &quot;pre-Republican&quot; thriller like the Three Musketeers (deterrence is an element of the law). Nor could Dumas imagine the modern world that Fry's character lives in, so we can't accuse Fry of taking away Dumas' follow-up opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best chance of convicting Fry is to convince the jury that there is a specialized and limited audience of &quot;kidnap-revenge&quot; story afficionados that Fry was cutting into. Fry's counterargument would be that &quot;modernizing&quot; the setting would draw large a &quot;crossover&quot; audience that would now buy &quot;The Count of Montecristo&quot; but would never read it otherwise. Maybe even yours truly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of &quot;probable&quot; fair use was &quot;Pretty Woman&quot; by Two Live Crew that was a takeoff of Roy Orbison's original. Crew actually copied the first line of the song, and then veered off in the opposite direction; Crew's &quot;woman&quot; was a &quot;streetwalker,&quot; Orbison's was an &quot;innocent.&quot; The Supreme Court threw out the judgment in favor of Acuff Records and ordered a new trial because it could reasonably be seen as parody. And the &quot;oppositeness&quot; of Crew's version basically brought in a new audience with minimal damage to Orbison's. So Acuff Records did the smart thing and cut a deal with Crew instead of risking a new trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T21:37:12.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23690" CreationDate="2016-07-06T22:35:45.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a screenplay so I think your initial salient points are plenty.&#xA;I want to learn about the character by seeing what he does not have all kinds of details about why he ties he shoes a certain way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Viki King explains that a lot of this backstory writing is often a way that authors escape doing the real work of writing the screen play.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2p8Ji2X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How To Write A Movie In 21 Days by Viki King - amazon link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The few lines you explained the character in are plenty for me to get the idea so I can start seeing him on screen with an idea of the basics of how he'll behave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all wrapped up in his &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/22238/how-to-develop-a-character-for-a-character-driven-story/22243#22243&quot;&gt;self-concept&lt;/a&gt; really  and that'll be obvious as we watch the character behave on screen.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T14:52:20.283" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:52:20.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23694" CreationDate="2016-07-06T23:56:33.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always written my History using 3x5 cards and reading what I think are the salient aspects from a Primary Source. My first work concerned the use of lead shot as a contributing factor in the decline of the North American duck population. (Seriously. I was 14 years old when I wrote it.) So I went to &quot;the Library&quot; and read all the articles arguing for and against said argument then established my thesis and wrote and footnoted accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T23:56:33.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23674" CreationDate="2016-07-07T05:48:53.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say: In general, use the system familiar to your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;German officers during World War 2 presumably spoke German. But if I wrote an historical novel intended for American readers, I would give the dialog in English, for the obvious reason that most of my readers do not understand German. The reader understands that the dialog is intended to be a translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, I'd generally give units of measure in the Imperial system, because that is what the reader is familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say this is borderline because most Americans are at least generally familiar with the metric system, so they wouldn't likely have serious trouble understanding the units that German officers would really have used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be an issue if the actual numbers matter. For example, if I was reading a novel where a German character said, &quot;Our reinforcements are still 13 miles away. 13 is proving a very unlucky number for us today&quot;, as a reader I might balk and say, &quot;But wait, he would have really said 21 kilometers. Why would the character relate 21 kilometers to the unlucky number 13? This doesn't make sense.&quot; (Assuming Germans think of 13 as an unlucky number. Just making an example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd avoid using one set of units in dialog and another set in narration. I think that would get very confusing. Readers would have to convert back and forth to make sense of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T05:48:53.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23674" CreationDate="2016-07-07T08:54:00.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would just use kilometres, it's a fairly world-wide unit of measurement, known even in the English speaking world. Most people have a vague idea of how far it is even if they can't easily convert from kilometres to miles in their head - I imagine even more so if they are interested in &lt;em&gt;military&lt;/em&gt; fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, don't (Didn't) even the American military use the slang &quot;klicks&quot; to mean kilometres? You'd often see it used in American media by American characters for an American audience - and they don't seem too bothered about the audience knowing exactly how many miles that is (not to mention what the hell a &quot;klick&quot; is)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if they did as far back as WW II but your audience are &lt;em&gt;modern&lt;/em&gt; English speakers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If exact distance is a factor, you could always add in extra information like (&quot;so it will take fifteen minutes to get there&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19089" LastEditorUserId="19089" LastEditDate="2016-07-07T08:59:22.267" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T08:59:22.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23690" CreationDate="2016-07-07T11:20:35.663" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some stories where backstory is extremely important; there are some where it's entirely inconsequential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easy answer is: &lt;strong&gt;If you know what kind of story you're telling, you know whether backstory is important or not.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take a few simple examples, in a light adventure, or a police procedural, you probably don't need anything more than establishing everybody's current role in the ensemble. In a family melodrama, it's practically a given that everybody is keying off of patterns and history that have been building up gradually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you could have a light adventure where the team is pursued by their old enemies, and you could have a melodrama with no backstory, e.g. about a sudden change that came out of nowhere. In many ways, backstory is a tool in your toolbox. Usually you use it by choice, because you've &lt;em&gt;chosen&lt;/em&gt; to write something involving history and long-term developments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are also times where backstory feels &lt;em&gt;absolutely necessary&lt;/em&gt; - because everybody has a history; because a person's history affects his life; because there's some element that doesn't make &lt;em&gt;sense&lt;/em&gt; without a backstory explanation. Points can come up in a story where you feel like backstory is &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt;, and if it isn't there, that can simply feel false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there's a case in the middle. Where there's no &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; demand for backstory, but there's still a vague sense that backstory &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be there. Because if nobody has &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; backstory, the characters might feel unmoored, living in their own little plot-bubble and having no substance to them that doesn't directly affect the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the problem in this middle case isn't the lack of backstory. It's that the characters seem poorly developed, or that the story feels too self-contained and artificial. Backstory is &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; tool to help solve that problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the questions you can ask yourself (or your critic, or additional beta readers) are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What backstory do I &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What role does backstory play in my piece?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the backstory  details that I &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to make sure the story gets across?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What backstory am I &lt;em&gt;missing&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there points in my story where backstory seems called for, but isn't provided?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do I have issues where backstory would &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are my characters well-developed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does my story feel vivid, rich in detail?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does my story feel artificial, constructed, with everything working out conveniently for the story?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a broader point, when receiving criticism, I think it's always important to differentiate between comments going &quot;This bothered me&quot; and comments going &quot;Here's how you should fix it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your critic's comment is &quot;There's not enough backstory,&quot; that's unfortunately a little unhelpful - backstory is a tool or a solution, not a universal requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're in one of two situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is that your critic had &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; that bothered her, and she translated that into a &quot;You need backstory&quot; solution. In this case you'd ideally like to find out what was &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; bugging her so you can fix &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;; maybe with backstory and maybe not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other is that your critic has adopted an &quot;Every story needs backstory&quot; guideline, in which case, well, she's probably off-base, applying a rule indiscriminately without being able to justify &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; that would be a good change to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of all is if you can ask her outright if she can explain what the problem is that backstory can solve. You might get a really helpful answer. Second best is, get more opinions - if this criticism, or associated issues, are repeated by others, you'll know you've got a problem and you'll have a better idea of the specifics; if they aren't, then it's just this one person's taste and you don't need to worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T11:20:35.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23674" CreationDate="2016-07-07T15:20:33.570" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not &quot;history&quot; but rather &quot;geography&quot; that determines whether you should use kilometers or miles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your characters are German or Russian, use kilometers, because that's what they use, even today. (Depending on the time, e.g. Tolstoy in the 19th century, a Russian might use &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verst&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;versts&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which are just a bit more than a kilometer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you were writing an American Civil War novel, use miles, because that's what nineteenth century Americans used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-09-21T20:02:13.370" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T20:02:13.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23704" CreationDate="2016-07-07T16:47:21.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Forms are there to help you express yourself. They are not set in stone. For example, there is more than one type of sonnet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Poets use forms but also 'break' them. Haiku is a good example.&#xA;People get very precious about haiku in English and make up all sorts of rules around it. Consider that written Japanese doesn't even, I'm told, have syllables and you can appreciate the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not claim to be a great poet, but when teaching teenagers to write ballads I encourage them to get a rhythm in their heads and then start trying to fit words to it. Write down any lines that come close and when you have a few, start to work on them. Don't expect them to be perfect from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colleague of mine suggests thinking of pairs of words that rhyme related to the topic of your poem before you start. Make up a list and then start fitting them to your structure. I have used a variation of this with students where I gave them a list of rhyming words about Christmas before asking them to write a poem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to write something that rhymes, on line rhyming dictionaries can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T16:47:21.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21774" CreationDate="2016-07-07T17:42:59.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good story is fundamentally an even &quot;match&quot; between a hero and villain, or a protagonist and antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hero wins because s/he gets in the last shot, blow, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in order to make it an &quot;even&quot; match, the villain has to get in the &lt;em&gt;next to last&lt;/em&gt; shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story in which the hero first &quot;scratches,&quot; then wounds, then kills the villain without being threatened in any way wouldn't be very interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T17:42:59.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23661" CreationDate="2016-07-07T17:46:38.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;In a nutshell,&quot; &lt;strong&gt;Romeo and Juliet&lt;/strong&gt; was the &quot;classic&quot; story along this line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, that was a &quot;boy-girl&quot; story, but you could have an &quot;all boy&quot; story along similar lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two schools are &quot;rivals&quot; after all. If there was a plot development that made them &quot;hate&quot; each other, that would create the conflict you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T17:46:38.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23704" CreationDate="2016-07-07T19:48:34.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Formal poetry has a &quot;puzzle&quot; aspect to it, it's not enough to find the right word, it also has to fit the rules for its particular placement.  That can be restrictive and frustrating, but it can also lead to unexpected creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend starting with a stricter form and following the rules exactly (no matter how arbitrary).  Once you've internalized the lessons of structure, you can start relaxing or breaking the rules a bit as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The classic sonnet in iambic pentameter is a good place to start, since it's strict, but also close to the rhythms of natural speech (so not impossible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T19:48:34.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23690" CreationDate="2016-07-07T20:01:05.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your critic is telling you that your characters aren't three-dimensional enough &lt;em&gt;for her&lt;/em&gt; to care about them or see them as more than thinly sketched &quot;types.&quot;  Adding backstory might or might not help that problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best writing advice I've heard on detail (Sturgeon, via Delany) is that you should know much more detail than ever makes it into your final piece of writing.  So you should know the entire backstory of your characters, but only put it in the screenplay if it makes sense or is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the problem might not be that you're not telling enough about your characters, but that you don't &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; enough about them --in other words, that you haven't imagined them richly enough for them to live onscreen.  The way you phrased your question suggests that you're not much interested in them beyond the role you need them to play in the plotline (something that may be coming through in your writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T20:01:05.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23720" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-07T21:12:50.337" Score="2" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;The setting of my latest story is a alien world that uses a different calendar and timekeeping system. This is because the planet spins at a slower pace than Earth, so the days are longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are two main characters. One of them lives on the alien planet, while the other one lives on Earth. I am worried that things can get confusing when they talk to each other (when they are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; physically with each other) since the alien character's &quot;day&quot; could make up two of the Earth character's &quot;days.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have considered putting timestamps at the beginning of each scene or chapter (depending on if the setting changed) in order to make things clearer to the reader. For example, one timestamp may read &quot;Siirox 48, year 2153. 32:13.&quot; However, I have never seen timestamps in fictional writing before, so I am wondering if this is okay to do. What I mean is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it make the story look cluttered or amateurish?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it unnecessary? Is there a better way to lessen the confusion?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T21:12:50.337" Title="Timestamps in fictional writing: yay or nay?" Tags="|fiction|clarity|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-07-08T03:18:10.007" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22098" CreationDate="2016-07-07T21:15:12.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lawyer, but I'll point you in a direction you may want to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are doing sounds like something called &lt;a href=&quot;http://literarydevices.net/parody/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;parody.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; It turns out that &quot;parody&quot; is one of the so-called &lt;a href=&quot;http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;fair use&quot;&lt;/a&gt; defenses for copying. More to the point, John Adams is not alive to sue you, and no one else can, on his behalf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you should &quot;make a virtue of necessity&quot; and follow the parody format. (Get professional advance on this matter.) For instance, you should call your work something like the&quot; President Tom ADAMS Chronicle,&quot; to make it clear that the character is a take-off on John Adams. Renaming him &quot;Tom&quot; is a signal that you're dealing with a fictitious character and not the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-07-07T21:21:33.227" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T21:21:33.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23722" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23723" CreationDate="2016-07-07T21:46:34.640" Score="11" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to describe a process. There are two players in the scenario. Player A tries to find player B. If player A finds player B, then player A tags player B. Something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fox tries to find a rabbit that is sleeping, and when it finds one it eats it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I know what each &amp;quot;it&amp;quot; refers to. But how can I rewrite the sentence so it would not sound confusing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what is the rule when there are two things (fox and rabbit) in the sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19588" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-12-24T13:57:29.633" LastActivityDate="2021-12-24T13:59:23.977" Title="How to clarify the objects of a sentence's two pronouns?" Tags="|technical-writing|grammar|pronouns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23722" CreationDate="2016-07-07T22:33:38.477" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is usually to just rewrite the sentence until you get it. Try to determine the root of the problem, as that might help. In this scenario, I can tell that the construction of your sentence may be the issue. It is two independent phrases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;A fox tries to find a rabbit that is sleeping&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;and when it finds one it eats it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to fix the sentence, I would try weaving the last phrase in with the first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fox, trying to find a rabbit that is sleeping, will eat it when it finds one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still have two &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt;'s in there...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fox searches, and when it finds a rabbit that is sleeping, will eat it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in this case I put in another verb &lt;em&gt;searches&lt;/em&gt;, which allowed me to put the whole rabbit part in a separate phrase. So for your construction, it would follow something along these lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Player A [verb], and when [pronoun] finds player B, will tag [pronoun].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-12-24T13:59:23.977" LastActivityDate="2021-12-24T13:59:23.977" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23692" CreationDate="2016-07-08T08:08:28.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a similar problem with my current novel project. The first draft was quite horrible, exactly due to the fact that my characters felt like stereotypes cut and pasted from my literature research. I had several episodes in mind that I read about and wanted to include in the novel - say, for example, the story of a couple in the 60s: The husband is at sea living an extravagant life in the flourishing homosexual sub-culture of the British merchant navy. His wife stays at home; she know about his lifestyle and supports it, welcoming his partners at her home, even including them in her family as &quot;uncles&quot; and &quot;cousins&quot; of her kids. - That was a cute episode and I wanted it told. So I took a minor character and plastered the episode on to him. Result: The episode stuck out. The character did not. I was left feeling that I was dealing with a rainbow-colored mannequin -- smartly dressed, but otherwise utterly forgettable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem, I found, was that I had put too much emphasis on the research and neglected actual character development. My characters were placeholders for roles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I did is: Character development. I took the piece of information that I wanted to include in the novel and formed a character around it. I usually do this by just writing the character. There is many ways to do this: Sketch a biography, do an imaginary interview with your character, write scenes from his or her perspective. All of these techniques help you to get a better feel for your character. Personally, I prefer to write more or less elaborate characters biographies and tell the novel plot from their point of view. None of this goes into the novel itself, but it gives me the great opportunity to listen to anything that my character wants to tell me. Where does s/he come from? What does s/he do for pleasure and fun? Which relatives are his/her favourites? Is s/he a good cook, painter, watchmaker, ruthless manager? Has s/he a soft spot for kittens or turtles, does s/he collect shells, coins, or spontaneous laughter (guess the movie here)? Which party does s/he vote for? And so on. By writing the character for a few pages, I get to know all of these details. I usually deliberately include a few character traits that seem to be at odds with a major characteristic of the character. Let a body builder foster adoration for chihuahuas (here: guess the actor), give a caring mother a talent for electronics and so on. In the end, all of these small traits have to add up to a character that feels rounded to you. If you feel that s/he is still nothing more than a collection of clichés -- keep digging. At some point, at least for me, the pieces start to fall into place and form a personality that is more than just a placeholder for a role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of my novel project, I started out by envisioning a character that is flippant, well-dressed and sharp-tongued. These were traits that came up again and again in my literature research, and they do make sense in the setting I am describing. However, they are also clichés. I felt that my main character was too shallow. So I wrote him -- gave him a family background, a flat for rent in Liverpool, an independent-minded wife, hobbies, past affairs, friends, an adorable boss, passion for theatre, no talent for cooking whatsoever, a precarious affair with alcohol, latent weariness of short-term flings, and a pretty divided relationship with the sea. I could go on for paragraphs trying to put him into a handful of sentences. That, however, would not work. I feel that he outgrew the stage in which it was sufficient to label him with &quot;This is XYZ. He's part of the homosexual subculture of the British merchant navy in the 60s and has a cool wife.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;: Researching the psychological background of your characters is essential and an excellent point to start your character development. Once you have a good feel of what the &lt;strong&gt;average&lt;/strong&gt; human being would act like in your character's situation, do the specific character development. Write about him or her. However, avoid to give your character &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; traits that are associated with his/her general situation. That's how averages work: They are representative of a large collection of subjects, but hardly of the individual. Throw in traits that have nothing to do with his/her situation at all and even seem to be at odds with it. Physicists -- even the theoretical ones -- can be well-spoken womanizers. (I've witnessed this.) Players of the national soccer team can study for their degree in philology. And yes, please: Any woman can aspire to be more than a mother -- in the same way that any husband can aspire to be more than the provider to his beautiful wife and adorable children. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: Think outside the box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T08:08:28.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23730" CreationDate="2016-07-08T14:12:21.187" Score="4" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Background&lt;/strong&gt;: I'm writing a novel that is set in the working quarters of a cruise ship. It's named after the &quot;stage identitiy&quot; of the main characters. (Let's call her Nancy.) All the subplots I have developed so far nicely hinge on Nancy. However, one of my secondary characters (Tim) turned out to have an excellent story to tell that is predestined to be a subplot in the Nancy-novel. Tim's story is neatly tied to another character. Unfortuanetly, this character is not Nancy, and no: It cannot, ever, be Nancy. Nancy is a concerned witness of Tim's story. That is all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Problem&lt;/strong&gt;: I'm determined to tell Tim's story, since it is important to me and an integral part of life at sea. However, I'm afraid it will feel out of place in a novel called and centered around Nancy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Question(s)&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your experience with subplots? When do they become too complex or emotionally engaging to act as valid subplots? Have you ever picked a subplot from it's original story and wrote an independent novel around it? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I engage the reader emotionally with a strong subplot without drawing his main sympathies the protagonist?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lastly: Since life at sea is communal, I considered using multiple points of view to capture the &quot;village feeling&quot; prevailing in ship communities. I feel that I have enough interesting secondary characters to pull this of. Yet, the novel should remain centered on Nancy. How do I weigh my narrators to make sure that Nancy is the single main character?*&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Yes, I concidered renaming the novel. However, Nancy &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the core of the story and I feel the name is well justified. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T15:42:25.260" Title="The Subplot: What to do when it is only loosely tied to the main plot?" Tags="|novel|plot|subplot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23726" CreationDate="2016-07-08T14:18:31.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The various parts of a novel may be tied together in different ways. They may be connected by the threads of plot. But equally they may be thematically related to each other, or provide thematic counterpoint to each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wholeness and integrity of a novel depends on the wholeness and integrity of its effect of the reader. If the subplots intersect thematically it does not seem necessary that they should intersect at the level of incident or character. But they must intersect somehow, or they will seem out of place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T14:18:31.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3395" CreationDate="2016-07-08T15:40:47.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrivener has a learning curve but there are a number of good online courses that will get you going if you have not used it before. I took the course offered by Gwen Hernandez and it was very good, but there are others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My process is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write the book in Word&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Import the book into Scrivener&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide the Word documents into chapters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Format the chapter headings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create the TOC&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add the cover photo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Export to .epub&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expert to .mobi&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are so many people using Scrivener these days that there is a great deal of specific how to information available online.  Many authors also use Adobe InDesign to produce their e-books. I have used Scrivener for several years so I have used Scrivener for my first e-book, but I do plan on learning InDesign in order to have more formatting control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19601" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T15:40:47.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23726" CreationDate="2016-07-08T15:42:25.260" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no reason not to include it. It will display the fact that your protagonist does not exist inside a vacuum. Whilst her personal story progresses, so does everyone's, and the effects of this will be seen through the eyes of your protagonist. It will help to flesh out the characters you have created, and make the world more believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is how much attention you pay to it, which depends on the type of story that you wish to write. If you wish to have a handful of main characters, then each of their personal stories must be pretty equal. They must all go through character arcs, have their own problems to overcome (even if they are the same problem, they each must have their own motivations and ways to overcome it), and they must all be worthy of a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you still want to focus on a single character, you will have to sacrifice the depth to which you can run into the sub-plot. Your protagonist can see it all unfold, and possibly hear through the grapevine about certain occurrences, and then be there for the pivotal moments (either directly, or for example being a shoulder to cry on when something tragic happens).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say the sub-plot won't be unfolding, just that the protagonist would not be present for every single evolution of that plot (unless it was massively coincidental), as it is not her story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I love creating characters that have their own things going on outside the story of the protagonist. They each have their own stories, and they pass by each other like ships in the night, their stories intertwining for the briefest of moments before they go their separate ways. But that requires a certain amount of ruthlessness to discard these side-stories that might be interesting to a reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T15:42:25.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23722" CreationDate="2016-07-08T16:44:36.223" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's any ambiguity in your example. You said that the fox is trying to find the rabbit, so it's the fox that finding, not the rabbit. Thus when you say &quot;when it finds one&quot;, clearly &quot;it&quot; refers to the fox and &quot;one&quot; to the rabbit. I suppose theoretically &quot;it eats it&quot; could be ambiguous, but a reader would normally understand that the fox eats the rabbit, and not the other way around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, we can often tell who or what a pronoun refers to from our general knowledge of the world. If the parties conform to common stereotypes, the meaning is clear. If not, if the roles are switched, then you need to reword the sentence to make this clear. &quot;The general met the private and he ordered him to return to the barracks.&quot; We'd normally assume that the general gave orders to the private and not the other way around. If it really was the other way around, if the private is giving orders to the general, then you need to reword to make that clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, a reader assumes that the subject remains the subject, the &quot;active party&quot;, unless otherwise specified. For example, consider a slight variation of your example. &quot;The policeman was hunting for the criminal, and when he found him, he shot him&quot;. I and I think most readers would understand this to mean that the policeman shot the criminal, and not the other way around, even though it is quite plausible to say that the criminal shot the policeman. We assume that the same person, the policeman in this case, remains the subject throughout. If you wanted to say that the criminal shot the policeman, you'd have to specify that. Like, &quot;The policeman was hunting for the criminal, and when he found him, the criminal shot him.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the pronouns are different, the problem goes away. &quot;Sally was looking for John, and when she found him, he gave her the box.&quot; There's no question about whether &quot;he&quot; refers to John or Sally, because we assume that Sally is a &quot;she&quot; and John a &quot;he&quot;. If the sentence used names of ambiguous gender, the problem comes back: &quot;Kelly was looking for Tracy ...&quot; And of course it's possible that someone has a name that we normally associate with the opposite gender. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When in doubt, replace the pronouns with nouns. &quot;Sally was looking for Mary because she was supposed to give her the box.&quot; It's not clear who was supposed to give the box to whom. So change one of the pronouns to a noun: &quot;Sally was looking for Mary because Sally was supposed to give her the box.&quot; Now it's clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes using nouns would lead you to use the same noun many times in one sentence, which can get awkward. It's helpful if there are multiple nouns you can use to identify a party. &quot;Sally was looking for Mary because she was supposed to give the tall girl the box.&quot; If in context we have previously identified one of them as &quot;the tall girl&quot;, this makes clear which is which without having to repeat one of the names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T16:44:36.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23732" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23734" CreationDate="2016-07-08T16:57:37.997" Score="3" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a published author, though I am nearing that stage. This is because I decided many years ago to learn all I could about writing, and hone my skill with practice, &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; actually writing my first novel. It's that practice that is now the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I practiced writing by creating fan fiction and posting it on a fan-based website devoted to a board game (great way to start, btw - free critiques). My question now is: is that fan fiction going to be a problem once I have a published novel? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been assuming that I'll have to either delete all the fan fiction or just never mention it altogether to avoid people finding it. However, I recently asked myself why this was, and found that I couldn't think of a good reason. &lt;strong&gt;Are there drawbacks to readers/publishers finding fan fiction I wrote before I began publishing?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fan fiction in question is copyrighted by the website, and is fully integrated with the board game it is about, so plagiarism shouldn't be an issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T17:59:01.247" Title="Are there drawbacks to having previous fan fictions written before being published?" Tags="|novel|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23732" CreationDate="2016-07-08T17:59:01.247" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are proud of the work, you needn't be concerned.  I wouldn't draw attention to it if it wasn't a professional sale or if it isn't related to the work you are doing now, but otherwise?  I really wouldn't worry about it.  If you want to use any of the stories or concepts, however, you might want to pull &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt; works down.  When you're querying agents and editors, they may do a Google search to see what else you have out there.  You just want to make sure what they find doesn't misrepresent you.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19602" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T17:59:01.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23735" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23736" CreationDate="2016-07-08T19:59:02.780" Score="3" ViewCount="3954" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to write a sequence where the main protagonist is taken in their dreams to an archangel. However, I kind of think it sounds a bit childish, as I'm unsure how to structure such a sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maria’s dreams began to drift into a realm of their own, rapidly&#xA;  changing in front of her eyes, until they were expelled from her mind&#xA;  entirely, and her eyes opened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Welcome.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't think this sounds very professional, or realistic. Could someone provide advice on how to structure sequences like this, and how to say when they begin, and end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-07-14T16:18:13.923" Title="How to write dream sequences?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23735" CreationDate="2016-07-08T21:51:51.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written dream sequences, and remembering, a number of different ways. I think the main thing to focus on is having something that fits with your book. If your book is hard buttoned down realistic, then you could go the same route, or you could go decidedly against that making the dream sequence seem more ethereal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the only wrong way to do this is one that confuses the reader and pulls them out of your text. Often we can look for a definitive answer for something like this when we're scared of getting it wrong, and I don't think you really can if you just pick a way and execute on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I like using contrast between the style I'm writing the rest of the story and how I write a dream sequence. It gives me a few extra tools to be able to remind the reader (if it's going on for a while) that they are in a dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the piece you provided, I think it's important not to make the dreams seem separate from Maria. &quot;Maria’s dreams began to drift...&quot;  Maria might feel the world drift away or change, but she only has one dream at a time, and so this makes it seem like a collection of dreams left her, which I don't think it what you meant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick the way you like best, make sure that it's clear to the reader, and have fun with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19534" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T21:51:51.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-08T23:17:13.677" Score="3" ViewCount="1186" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are the lyrics &quot;signed, sealed, and delivered&quot; copyrighted?&#xA;I want to use these words as part of the title of a book to be published and need to know if I can do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19608" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-07-09T00:20:55.870" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T15:28:28.710" Title="Can I use a phrase from song lyrics as the title of my book?" Tags="|self-publishing|copyright|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23737" CreationDate="2016-07-09T00:19:09.143" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short phrases like that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ34.pdf&quot;&gt;can't usually be copyrighted&lt;/a&gt;.  The link is from the US government, but I believe it to be the same for most of the Berne Convention countries.  Of course you should consult your local law on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this specific case, there's already a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed,_Sealed,_Delivered_(TV_series)&quot;&gt;TV show by that name&lt;/a&gt;, so &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; apparently didn't run into trouble either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use the phrase &lt;em&gt;as part of the song&lt;/em&gt;, for example if you quote a verse of the song, you'll be in murkier waters.  But just a title should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-07-09T00:19:09.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17585" CreationDate="2016-07-09T11:10:37.373" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a you're looking for a real-world name, and have a general feeling of what you're looking for, you could try using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.thenamestork.com/recommendation-engine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;name recommendation tool&lt;/a&gt;. Rather than going through long lists, you can type in a few options you are considering, and then browse a focused recommendations list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19611" LastEditorUserId="19611" LastEditDate="2016-07-09T16:02:53.167" LastActivityDate="2016-07-09T16:02:53.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23737" CreationDate="2016-07-09T13:06:28.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that phrase comes from the United States Postal Service...as if to say &quot;I'm as right as the mail.&quot; An example I have used is &quot;Games without Frontiers&quot; (in French) as was used in the title sequence of the song by Peter Gabriel. This was an academic work but I was given no grief for it as the expression was considered part of the &quot;public domain&quot; as it related to trying to describe two World Wars. (I used it in the context of the European Union attempting integration.) &quot;Signed, sealed, delivered&quot; sounds like part of the public domain if ever there was one to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-07-09T13:06:28.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23744" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-09T14:57:27.793" Score="2" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've stumbled upon some &lt;a href=&quot;http://coschedule.com/blog/best-places-to-write/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;insights&lt;/a&gt; regarding the best writing environment. There are many different advises regarding this matter, and maybe it is too subjective for a fact based research. Nevertheless, I guess there some objective measurements that could be used to determine the optimal writing environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific research indicating what environment is the best for writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19614" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-07-17T15:38:33.447" LastActivityDate="2016-07-17T15:38:33.447" Title="Scientifically proven optimal environment for writing?" Tags="|technique|tools|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23745" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-09T20:14:49.557" Score="2" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;Puns introduced by authors make a text look witty to a reader. Professional writers skillfully manipulate words and phrases to demonstrate their smartness and, most important, gain the affection of the audience. Personally, I see no other way to create a pun, except by accident. I think so because I am new at writing. Although, I totally understand that experienced ones use this stylistic device intentionally and do not spend hours thinking up a new pun. &#xA;So my question is: How can I acquire a skill to play on words? What steps should one take to make a pun? &#xA;Thanks in advance for your help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19599" LastActivityDate="2016-07-10T21:19:13.387" Title="How to become a master at creating wordplays?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23745" CreationDate="2016-07-09T20:38:59.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try looking at lists of homophones and homonyms. These lists can give you ideas about similar sounding words. However, in the end, you just have to keep practising. Sometimes it does take hours to get a line or a sentence right, whether it contains a pun or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-07-09T20:38:59.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23747" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-09T20:56:09.270" Score="3" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, obviously, I'm a writer.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I have pretty bad ADD/ADHD and though it's never bothered me before, it's really affecting my writing as of late. I don't really think this is a medical question, as doctors can't really give me advice with this. Before I got off my meds (It was a decision I made myself because of the hormonal imbalance.), it was hard for me to really focus on my writing because my medicine made me a little groggy and cranky and that interfered with my creative process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I got off, my mind really went a mile a minute and I had no problem doing several stories at a time. Now, I can barely get maybe ten or fifteen thousand words in before I completely lose all interest. I don't know if it's a personal bump in the road I'm going through or if I need to get back on my meds.                                                      Any advice? I mean I haven't been off an extremely long time, I stopped taking them when I was thirteen and I'm twenty now. I was on Adderall if that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: Even though people assumed I wanted you all to tell me whether or not I should get back on my meds, I appreciate the writing advice that was given to me. I mentioned my meds because as people who take them know, they affect many aspects of your life, such as your creativity. I wanted it to be known in case another writer with the same issue could help me. I didn’t go back on my meds and my creativity has improved exponentially. I found that what I really needed was a change of scenery. The monotony of my life was beginning to affect my creativity, not the absence of my meds. A little bit about me, I’m not a very social person. I decided to change that, get out there, and actually meet other writers, go to workshops, conventions, and all in all, take writing more seriously, and it did wonders. I also learned that I’ve always been a writer that wants to read what I’m writing far more than I actually wanted to write it. I was so ready for the finished product that the actual work that I needed to put into it seemed excessive, and oftentimes boring. I’m grateful for all the advice I was given and I really want to thank everyone who answered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19619" LastEditorUserId="19619" LastEditDate="2019-10-06T14:36:21.883" LastActivityDate="2019-10-06T14:36:21.883" Title="I'm having an issue committing to my novels" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|process|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2016-07-11T15:19:58.353" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23747" CreationDate="2016-07-09T22:35:20.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that if you want to write more, getting back on those meds will be easier; I found these tips for when your on Adderall:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Eat essential amino acids, glycemic carbohydrates and healthy fats&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exercise is known to release certain hormones that relieve you (but do it as a general activity)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rest for 8 hours&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2016-07-10T13:37:47.750" LastActivityDate="2016-07-10T13:37:47.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23737" CreationDate="2016-07-09T23:09:10.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Signed, sealed, and delivered&quot; is a standard phrase used in everyday life. As such, it cannot be copyrighted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For something to be copyrighted, it needs to be an original e&lt;strong&gt;xpression&lt;/strong&gt; of an idea, as opposed to an idea itself. This phrase is too &quot;standard&quot; (and too short) to qualify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-07-09T23:09:10.890" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6136" CreationDate="2016-07-09T23:31:51.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer but here's my &quot;take.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer will get sued for doing the actual infringing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publisher will also get sued, for aiding and abetting, and because it has the deeper pockets. The publisher may have a defense if it took steps to prevent infringement such as questioning the author about the antecedents of his work, and/or doing a computerized search of works with similar topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-07-09T23:31:51.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23747" CreationDate="2016-07-10T00:03:58.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I'm going to come at this from a writer perspective, not an ADD/ADHD perspective.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends on what kind of writer you are. It's possible you just haven't found &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; story for you yet. You haven't found the one that really captivates your attention and makes you want to push through. So you may just want to keep trying out books until one keeps you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you're like me, who feels really anxious with unfinished works, and whose mind works a little differently. Some writers can go for years in between writing on one book and come back to it like it was yesterday. I can't do that. In order for me to work, I have to force myself to keep writing the book. Usually that middle part is difficult to write because it's less interesting than the beginning and ending (as is true of almost every book). So, I make myself get to the ending, because if I don't, I will never finish a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that has helped me is to know where my stories are going. I am a hardcore planner. I think up plot points for my book, I outline the overall story, I use an index card for every scene, I write up profiles for my main characters. You don't have to go to that extent (unless it works for you), but maybe knowing the ending and having some idea of the fun that's to come will help you push through the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2016-07-10T00:03:58.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23745" CreationDate="2016-07-10T01:28:50.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although, I totally understand that experienced ones... do not spend hours thinking up a new pun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you know that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skills take time and practice. Maybe the good writers &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; spend hours working on puns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to practice at wordplay, you need to think about the meanings of words, and how they can be looked at obliquely. One exercise I did in high school was to take a list of common clichés and idioms and turn them into questions. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where do you buy elbow grease? Does it work better than knee grease?&#xA;Does it come in cans or squeeze tubes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would a durian fruit by any other name still smell like a&#xA;four-week-old diaper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a doctor's spouse bought an apple farm, would that be automatic&#xA;grounds for divorce?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What if I'm only happy as an oyster? or a shrimp?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on. If you do enough of these, it allows you to crack open the language to get at the meanings, and come back through the meanings to choose another word which creates the pun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a pun is the lowest form of wit, is a bun the lowest form of&#xA;wheat?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was a man who entered a local newspaper's pun contest. He sent&#xA;in ten different puns, in the hope that at least one of the puns&#xA;would win. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-07-10T01:28:50.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23757" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-10T04:44:57.993" Score="4" ViewCount="872" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a fictional book which would be similar to that of Winnie-the-Pooh in terms of its format and ability to be read, but I want there to be philosophical meaning to what goes on in the book. My problem is that I will be using some fairly unique, -- or at least attributable -- ideas from philosophers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One such example is one of the characters having &quot;bad faith&quot;. I wouldn't include direct quotes from Sartre, but the idea of &quot;bad faith&quot; will be quite thinly veiled. Anyone who would read it that knows about Sartre would probably see some pretty clear connections. My question is whether I need to cite my sources for the idea of bad faith or not, since I'm not going to include any quotes from him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I don't want to cite the source of using his philosophy would be that I think it would take away from the story for you if you were reading and then all of the sudden see a parenthetical citation or footnote. Would it best to just include his name in acknowledgements or in some other type of recognition after or before the book itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Morella Almann" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-07-11T02:33:51.207" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T13:11:17.130" Title="Would employing the use of philosophical ideas in fiction without citing the sources be considered plagiarism?" Tags="|fiction|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6797" CreationDate="2016-07-10T06:23:35.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Music lyrics are &quot;poems,&quot; and are therefore copyrightable independent of music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That makes it invalid to say that &quot;the main part of a song is its music rather than lyrics.&quot; There's little or no truth to that argument, and even if there was, it would not prevent lyrics from being copyrighted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-07-10T06:23:35.430" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18158" CreationDate="2016-07-10T06:35:07.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking it would be kind of easier if it was the protagonist experiencing someone else in that situation. In that sense if they were in a situation (for example) where the protagonist was the best friend, of a girl who had just been dumped, &lt;strong&gt;not only would you have to describe her crying but the gestures she makes as well as the gestures the protagonist makes&lt;/strong&gt; ( Oh, and metaphors help &lt;em&gt;HEAPS&lt;/em&gt; .)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was painful to see her like this. All I could do was embrace her and let the torrent of her tears to soak through my shirt. I could feel her clench her fists, not knowing whether to be mad or to give up hope all together. I could hear her silently screaming, suffocating with each breath she took holding onto her pride. I ran my fingers through her hair, time and time again, in an attempt to calm the silent war within her mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(That's not necessarily much good; I just wrote it in the spur of the moment.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to take into consideration the type of character this person is.  It sounds a little weird but &lt;strong&gt;everyone cries differently&lt;/strong&gt;... like, they might be annoyed that they're crying, so they try to stop, but it makes it worse. Or in this case, they're angry, so their tears are described as a &quot;torrent&quot; because,  well, a torrent or (if you want) an avalanche is destructive - a natural hazard which, if you get what I mean, seems &quot;angry&quot;... (I'm sorry if that doesn't make sense)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Also know that:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A person doesn't just &quot;cry,&quot; so the way you describe how their tears fall needs to in some way reflect the situation they're in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone may be crying out of happiness, crying out of anger, crying out of disappointment...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll give an example for each to make that easier to understand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Happiness:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was the best day of my life. My tears overflowed with joy and fell just like the bouquet that I had thrown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anger:&lt;/strong&gt; (just like before)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She tried to hold back the seething torrent/avalanche of tears that had been building up since the moment she had been angered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disappointment:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mot even the steady stream of liquid trickling down my face could cure my thirst for her. After all, she loved him, not me...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;anyways yeah...I hoped that helped :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;~Mereesha&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19621" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-03-23T10:24:50.053" LastActivityDate="2020-03-23T10:24:50.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2016-07-10T06:37:12.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's fine as long as you're acknowledging the philosopher (clearly or not).&#xA;But if you don't want to add the quotation details (such as the originators) to too many other quotes, you could always make reference by adjusting your story to actual events that also happened to those philosophisers: such as one of your characters having a mystery reason to depart a settled job (like John Dunnes) or having an affair (like Benjamin Constant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastEditorUserId="19511" LastEditDate="2016-07-10T06:58:28.603" LastActivityDate="2016-07-10T06:58:28.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23747" CreationDate="2016-07-10T13:32:42.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like you are off the old hyper-focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ADHD makes it impossible to proceed with anything unless extreme interest breaks through the barrier and produces an immense ability to focus, far beyond regular levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If at first you could, and now you cannot, you have sunk below the threshold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge is, how to get it back. Maybe it is just a phase. Maybe there are too many new things going on. Maybe the topics you are handling no longer really engage you.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What changed between the can-phase and the current block?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You yourself are the best help you can get. You have an enormous ability to live in the here and now. You have creativity. If you give yourself some leeway and dedicate your thinking power to getting back to what you really want I think you can reacquire the initiative in your life and carry on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It just &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; be something different from writing though, even if only for a period of time. Do not put yourself in a box. Life is larger than that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2016-07-10T13:32:42.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23762" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23766" CreationDate="2016-07-10T13:37:04.453" Score="3" ViewCount="2938" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a realistic-fiction novel set in the USA during the Great Depression. I intend to use some stock characters to make the story colorful and to flesh out the culture of the period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stock characters are types of fictional individuals who have one thing in common with another, like Dr. Frankenstien &amp;amp; Dr. Moreu. They're both mad scientists, from different stories and authors but in the same category based on what their characters are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not making ALL my characters stock characters, but I think stock characters would help my story because I think they make better sense than my own characters. Are stock characters still really useful to readers, or people of this century? Or are characters like this out of date? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-07-11T13:59:13.090" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T18:42:52.963" Title="How useful are stock characters in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|planning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23745" CreationDate="2016-07-10T21:19:13.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To quote &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oscar Wilde&lt;/a&gt;: Improve your own writing by reading the work of people you admire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oscar Wilde was a so-called 'Wit', someone invited to enliven parties. His conversation was pure entertainment, and his wit carried over in his writing. Highly recommended. His biography reads like a tragedy, sadly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/oscar-wilde-writing-quotes-slideshare#sm.00001f3o3mtua6ergtboe2twihep9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/oscar-wilde-writing-quotes-slideshare#sm.00001f3o3mtua6ergtboe2twihep9&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2016-07-10T21:19:13.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23747" CreationDate="2016-07-10T21:34:48.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You summarize the problem very well when you said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I can barely get maybe ten or fifteen thousand words in before I&#xA;  completely lose all interest.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really hope you'll reconsider the difficulty you are going through and see that it isn't something wrong with you, but is a very common challenge among most (if not all) authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most Common Problem of All Authors?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may, in fact, be the most common problem of all authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why Might This Problem Occur?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few reasons why this problem may occur:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your subconscious knows there is something flawed about the story&lt;/strong&gt; you are writing and it's attempting to let you know, but you aren't picking up on it.  This is not mean to sound mystical, but instead what I'm attempting to say is that our minds are amazing and are doing far more than we know.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is a subject that you really aren't interested in&lt;/strong&gt;.  It is possible that by the time you've written 15,000 words you've explored the subject to the level you find interesting and after that, there isn't much left.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The subject (or treatment) simply isn't enough to build a story around&lt;/strong&gt; and by the time you've written some you lose interest.  It is what it is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Every Writer's Fear&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every writer's fear is that s/he will spend long periods of time writing a novel that is completely worthless -- which no one wants to read and even the author believes is a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wasting Time&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most authors are afraid they'll waste their lives writing the wrong thing and it often locks them up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How Might You Get Around It?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Story Prototyping, Just Like Product Prototyping&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outline your ideas ahead of time: Oh, boy, I said the word outline.  Think of outlining as prototyping your story.  Write it as short as you can to determine if it hangs together and if you are going to continue to be interested in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another similar answer where motivation was dicussed here on Writers stack:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/19743/how-to-motivate-yourself-to-finish-something/19752#19752&quot;&gt;How to motivate yourself to finish something?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-07-10T21:34:48.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2016-07-11T02:42:15.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Footnotes and citations in fiction (and, in particular, children's fiction) are &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; rare, and I recommend against using them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's often said that ideas are common; it's how they're used and implemented that matters. Nevertheless, fiction writers who feel they owe a debt to another writer's ideas &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; say as much in an acknowledgements section. In extreme cases, they may write an entire afterword if the story is complex (and something the reader would care to read). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are exceptions to this, though. (Aren't there always?) An obvious example os Terry Pratchett, who used footnotes in his novels to great comedic ends. But he had an extremely strong authorial voice, and an awful lot of experience writing. I'd hold off unless you're &lt;em&gt;certain&lt;/em&gt; a footnote is the right way to go. Just do it knowing you're writing something that's a bit off-beat that may take the reader out of the experience temporarily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2016-07-11T02:42:15.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23762" CreationDate="2016-07-11T12:02:32.437" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think we need to make a distinction between a stereotype and an archetype here. The two are often confused, as illustrated by Wikipedia's unhelpful definition of a stock character:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A stock character is a stereotypical person whom audiences readily recognize from frequent recurrences in a particular literary tradition. Stock characters are archetypal characters distinguished by their flatness. As a result, they tend to be easy targets for parody and to be criticized as clichés.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Archetypes are the building blocks of stories. Stories are particular constructions of human experience that produce an emotional response in us. We are wired for story. Archetypes are the anchors of key human relationships: hero, trickster, monster, mother, lover, etc. There is no story without archetypes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stereotypes, on the other hand, are lazy portrayals of characters, relying more on appeals to prejudice than on appeals to the recognition of the truly human. Archetypes must be fleshed out, and the lazy way to do this is to rely on stereotypes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stereotypical characters can appeal to readers by appealing to their prejudices. This is not a literary effect, but since it is satisfying to have ones prejudices confirmed, it may sell lots of books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A properly fleshed out archetype, on the other hand, is essential to producing a satisfying literary experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might use the term &quot;stock character&quot; to describe either one of these, but the effects and the merits of each are worlds apart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-07-11T14:35:25.397" LastActivityDate="2016-07-11T14:35:25.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2016-07-11T16:11:42.857" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge (not a lawyer), you don't have any legal responsibility to attribute the ideas in your actual text, unless you're directly quoting or paraphrasing.  It's very rare (but not unheard of) to footnote a fictional text because it damages suspension of disbelief (except where the fiction is presented as if it were an academic work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you want to give credit where it is due, I would suggest an endnote where you discuss where the philosophical ideas came from.  If I recall correctly, this is the approach Neal Stephenson took in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2845024-anathem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ananthem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; where real philosophies are attributed to fictional characters within the narrative (and correctly credited in the endnotes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, if the characters are themselves influenced by the real-world philosophers, and not reinventing their philosophies, then it would be simplest to have them refer to the philosopher directly when introducing the idea.  &quot;As Sartre would say, you're in a state of &lt;em&gt;bad faith&lt;/em&gt;, Gertrude.&quot;  I think that is the approach taken by Walker Percy in &lt;em&gt;The Moviegoer.&lt;/em&gt;  Typically, that's what people do in real life as well (although you want to be sparing with it if you don't want the whole thing to read transparently as a philosophy lesson).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-07-11T16:17:40.310" LastActivityDate="2016-07-11T16:17:40.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17585" CreationDate="2016-07-11T22:20:59.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I like to look into the inspiration for the character, the characters background story, or their personality. For example, I have a character in my novella who is on the LGBTQ+ and I borrowed his last name from a long dead gay author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another character I named is based on a greek tragedy that has become a regular trope in many manners of fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some characters names can be puns, or a clever play on words that I like the reader to figure out, and give them a laugh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also look up at a list of names, and surnames from different countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A slightly more morbid approach would be to look through the obituaries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2016-07-11T22:20:59.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23770" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-11T23:17:29.937" Score="0" ViewCount="835" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need help for a idea I've got a bit of a start but need help on continuing it it's about two teenagers who fall in love in love with each other. I just want it not to be like a normal love story but it to be tragic. I want it to be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19635" LastEditorUserId="19635" LastEditDate="2016-07-12T00:52:34.260" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T05:39:23.987" Title="Need help with a tragic love story" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-07-13T10:12:06.630" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23770" CreationDate="2016-07-11T23:35:53.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Fault in Our Stars, I can go on. There's a lot you can do to make it original. But you need to spend the time to brainstorm. You need to spend the time to write. To fail. To write again. If you're committed, you'll find your way (and your ideas). You may start with a cliche template, and then figure out ways to make it more original. But there is no magic potion to help. It's all up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck, and persevere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19388" LastActivityDate="2016-07-11T23:35:53.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23770" CreationDate="2016-07-12T01:05:09.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind cliche isn't necessarily a bad thing. Anything can be whittled down to a cliche if you dissect it enough. Even the best seller books and movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is doing it in a way that makes it unique, and like user19388 said, there is no magic potion to help you do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just write, continue to write, tweak your story a little bit, until you have something you feel you, and your readers will be satisfied with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T01:05:09.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23773" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23776" CreationDate="2016-07-12T03:17:32.763" Score="10" ViewCount="1242" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a scene in a short story where the character and her party are suddenly attacked in the night. It's written in first-person and the character had just been shaken awake from a nightmare; so I had purposefully written it to be disorienting. One of my beta readers and my editor have commented on how it reads confusing and seems like some details have been missed in my excitement. At first, I was very excited to hear this from them, because that's exactly how I had wanted the scene to feel. But I started to wonder if, perhaps it was too much and hard to follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think that some details would be missed and even with some combat training, the character would have been out of it having just been woken up suddenly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess I wondering how a scene can be written from a disoriented character's perspective, and not alienate readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19637" LastEditorUserId="26683" LastEditDate="2019-05-29T17:57:18.373" LastActivityDate="2021-11-06T14:19:48.100" Title="Can a scene be written to be disorienting and not be too confusing to readers?" Tags="|technique|short-story|grammatical-person|perspective|combat|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23773" CreationDate="2016-07-12T04:41:19.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A disoriented character does not have a perspective. A perspective is what you have when the world makes sense to you. When you are disoriented, you don't have a perspective. You have a whirl of sensations the refuse to resolve into a perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seem to remember that it was Dr. Johnson who said something to the effect that you cannot reproduce the effect of being dullness and garrulity without being dull and garrulous. The same seems to apply here: you cannot reproduce the effect of disorientation without being disorienting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't think there is any good story reason to try to reproduce the sensation of disorientation. It is a mere physical symptom. It may be a plot point, but reproducing the sensation is never essential to the plot, or to the reader's attachment to the character's story. It is always the character's moral arc, the decisions they have to make, what they want and what they are willing to do to get it, that are the crux of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, the enjoyment of adventure without its physical discomforts is much of the pleasure of literature. The reader who reads about a character being hit on the head does not want to actually experience their headache. At most they want to sympathize with their headache. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it should be enough to tell your reader that the character is disoriented, without trying to reproduce that disorientation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T04:41:19.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23770" CreationDate="2016-07-12T05:39:23.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think in that case you should just let the story unfold on its own. Since you've already got a start, each step you take you should ask yourself what the possibilities are, what may possibly happen next, and don't settle with just one choice. Brainstorm and list out all the possible options for the next action/scene/twist/... in the story. Then you can choose which one to go for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19626" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T05:39:23.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23773" CreationDate="2016-07-12T06:57:43.513" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want the scene to initially be confusing, go ahead! Since it's written in first person, that's just realistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, keep it brief. It would probably be rather annoying to try to read through more than a paragraph of stuff that makes no sense, and readers might just want to skip it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, to make sure they don't continue to feel confused after the scene is over, try to find a time for your character to realize what's been happening and what details she initially missed so the readers can have it explained and get a sense of closure about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13347" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T06:57:43.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23773" CreationDate="2016-07-12T09:04:27.717" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems like a great idea, and possibly the best way to approach this would be to have the time of disorientation be relatively brief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've not written dream sequences ever, so I don't have any suggestions beyond making it obvious that it's a dream sequence. Possibly making what is occurring straightforward for the reader, but with signals that it isn't real. Then as the protagonist begins to wake up, the dream starts to morph into what is happening in reality, and both the character and the reader still believe they are asleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow this up with something that jolts the character awake, and they will be disoriented as they will realize this isn't part of the dream, and be unsure as to how much of what they had just experienced was real and how much wasn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the way to clarify what is going on would be the natural reaction of the protagonist anyway, which is &lt;em&gt;trying to find out&lt;/em&gt; what is happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character would not stay in a disoriented state. Particularly if battle-trained, they would first attempt to assess the situation, then try to find out as much information as possible to understand the danger they face, and how they can try to combat it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The vividness and horror of the nightmare might keep popping back into their head and causing them to be confused (for example if the nightmare involved being chased by werewolves, they might think they are currently being attacked by werewolves in reality, even if they don't exist), which would add to continuing the confusion of earlier, whilst keeping the true &quot;what the hell is going on?&quot; thoughts of the reader to a minimum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the protagonist and reader can be brought up to speed, either by Basil Exposition or their own assessment of the situation. This way no important information is lost, but you still get the feeling of skewed perception for a brief period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T09:04:27.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17585" CreationDate="2016-07-12T11:58:54.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I avoid picking names based on their &quot;meaning&quot; it's lame and highly unoriginal. Also names don't affect your personality at all, so why would it define your character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do is just collect names/surnames when I read a name somewhere I find interesting I just save them in a document. Then when I need a name for a character I just browse through them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19643" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T11:58:54.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17585" CreationDate="2016-07-12T13:37:57.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a few methods for finding a name for a character - I like to have names that have the right kind of sound and / or also have the right kind of meaning behind them. Though it's not always possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I quite often start with going to baby naming sites and searching for meanings to find out which names come up. They often let you filter by country or similar, so you can get the right 'kind' of name.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm rather fond of just entering words with the right meaning into Google translate and picking some of the different language options to see what the word sounds and looks like. Sometimes I might use that as a base and change it slightly to sound better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scientific names - like Katniss, scientific names can often have nice meanings that people might not know right away but will give you kudos once you're a best selling author and people start hunting for that sort of thing : ) Also it gives you a nice warm smugness to know that stuff's there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maps - I'm British and British place names are very often weird and wonderful. I'm sure this applies across the world. You can pick a country that has the right kind of sound and feel for your character and zoom into Google maps and browse the words.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T13:37:57.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23762" CreationDate="2016-07-12T18:42:52.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Stock characters&quot; are shortcuts to creating characters. As such, you want to limit their use to secondary characters that nevertheless play important parts in one or more scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doctors are examples of stock characters. They may play an important role in saving the life of the hero or heroine, for instance. But they do this in their roles as physicians, and not as human beings. So you want to portray them as generally competent, very knowledgeable in their chosen field, and reasonably sympathetic, but you don't need to give a lot of background details about their private lives or likes and dislikes for them to &quot;do their job&quot; in your story. That is, when people hear &quot;doctor,&quot; it's easy for them to make the connection to &quot;life saver,&quot; and that's all they need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's different with your primary characters, particularly hero and heroine. Here, you don't want &quot;stock&quot; characters but rather fully developed ones because they dominate the story. The doctors (usually) don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T18:42:52.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23737" CreationDate="2016-07-12T19:09:39.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually it doesn't even need to be copyrighted to give you trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A copyright is just the formally asserted right to something - a phrase in this case. You can be sued without a copyright, a copyright just makes the suing position stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just look at the Red Hot Chili Peppers lawsuit against the TV Series Californication (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californication_(TV_series)#Lawsuit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californication_(TV_series)#Lawsuit&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your book targets the same audience as the song someone might argue the same as the band.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They state in the lawsuit that the series &quot;constitutes a false designation of origin, and has caused and continues to cause a likelihood of confusion, mistake, and deception as to source, sponsorship, affiliation, and/or connection in the minds of the public&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically assuming your book is successful enough a similar lawsuit could be brought forth. The Californication suit was settled out of court - usually meaning by pay-off - even though there was no copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though as a legal layman I agree with the other answers that the expression is to common to warrant a suit. On the other hand &quot;too common&quot; may be and indicator to choose something different as a title for your book, but that's another question altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: &#xA;To clarify two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In this case the &lt;strong&gt;deception as to source, sponsorship, affiliation&lt;/strong&gt; could be most likely brought forth, since the TV series could argue for example that the book could be mistaken as an accompanying work regarding that series. Especially if it was from a TV station that regularly has accompanying books to their TV series.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Secondly I am &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; making a qualified assessment about the likelihood that the OP will be sued. I am just pointing out that you don't have to violate a copyright to be sued.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19623" LastEditorUserId="19623" LastEditDate="2016-07-13T15:28:28.710" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T15:28:28.710" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23782" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24760" CreationDate="2016-07-13T01:00:01.070" Score="5" ViewCount="3702" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here and there I've been hearing about what readers 'expect' from certain genres. Romance readers expect the hero and heroine to wind up together. Fantasy readers expect epic fantasy full of battles and otherworldly creatures. Mystery/detective readers expect an element of, well, mystery, and a satisfying ending in which the mystery is solved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the fact that I just rattled off that list, it has occurred to me that I don't really know the full scope of what readers expect from standard genre fiction. I'd like to know this, otherwise I might fail to deliver what was expected, resulting in an unsatisfied reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do readers expect from a fantasy novel?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I plan on splitting this question up into several, one for sci-fi, one for mystery, etc. If you think I should just ask about all genres in one question, let me know and I'll edit this one.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T14:53:36.360" Title="What do Readers Expect from a Fantasy Novel" Tags="|fiction|genre|readers|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23784" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23816" CreationDate="2016-07-13T03:58:44.223" Score="8" ViewCount="15699" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Apologies if this question has already been asked. I've looked around but can't find this specific question, only related ones.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general advice seems to be &quot;don't start your story with dialogue.&quot; Readers will be disoriented from the start and feel unmotivated to continue reading since they don't know and don't care who's talking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what if the dialogue is woven into the opening scene like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Talk, or I'll shoot.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beads of sweat rolled down Adam's face as he stared at the barrel of John's gun. It was hard to see in the darkness of the room, lit only by a single dim lantern hanging from the ceiling. The smell of cigarettes and urine muddled his senses, and he bit back the vomit that was rising from the pits of his stomach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Okay, okay,&quot; Adam said, giving in. &quot;I was there. I saw her take the money.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John's eyes were dark. &quot;Where'd she go?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't know.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John pulled the trigger. The bullet flew past Adam's face, blasting a hole in the wall behind him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Fifth Avenue!&quot; Adam blurted, trying to steady his breath. &quot;In a red sedan—there was another man in the car. That's all I know, honest.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John lingered for a few moments, then lowered the gun and dipped his head in thought. Seeing his chance, Adam struggled against the ropes that bound his arms and legs, desperate for escape. If the smell of the room didn't kill him, John definitely would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would this approach work? Will publishers frown upon my work after reading the first line?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do people mean when they say &quot;don't start your story with dialogue&quot;? Do they mean a full conversation or just &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; dialogue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can anyone offer a better explanation why starting a story with dialogue is bad? I don't quite understand. Many great stories start with dialogue, and they definitely hook me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastActivityDate="2021-05-18T10:52:16.083" Title="Is starting a story with dialogue bad?" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23788" CreationDate="2016-07-13T05:00:12.890" Score="3" ViewCount="301" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/3319/16341&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, unless you're an established author, you don't have the luxury of declaring your work to be fantasy or science fiction like Fowler does; someone else has to do that for you. That means your editor, publisher, your readership, and/or your peers and critics must declare it fantasy to be so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know next to nothing about publishing. After reading this, I am worried about being published in the wrong genre (assuming I ever get published). In my particular case, I am worried about being published under &quot;young adult romance&quot; (rather than &quot;young adult fantasy&quot;) since my two main characters are very close, and their relationship can be mistaken as a romance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Romance is something I want to avoid entirely. Is being published in the wrong genre something I have to worry about, or am I just being paranoid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T20:59:29.073" Title="Is there any risk of being published in the wrong genre?" Tags="|publishing|genre|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23784" CreationDate="2016-07-13T05:38:55.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you say, there are many stories that work that start with dialogue. Far too much advice about writing is much too mechanical in nature. Dialogue is just a mechanism for telling a story. Rules about which mechanism to use are silly, and usually easy to prove false with counter-examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What a story must do is to establish conflict. Can you do that with dialogue? Of course you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But note that conflict does not mean violence. Nor does it mean confrontation or argument. Conflict, in story terms, means desire and obstacles to that desire. Bullets whizzing by heads are not exciting or gripping until we care about whose head they are whizzing by and understand what desire drove them to the place in which bullets are apt to whizz by heads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Desire and obstacle are what you need to establish. Dialog is as good a tool as any for doing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T05:38:55.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23785" CreationDate="2016-07-13T05:43:46.260" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Genre is a marketing tool. Publishers are marketers of books. That is why you seek out a publisher rather than publishing yourself -- because you want the services of someone who knows how to market books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if a publisher says your book is in a particular genre, chances are they are right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-07-15T20:59:29.073" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T20:59:29.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23785" CreationDate="2016-07-13T10:07:13.560" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Romance&quot; vs. &quot;fantasy&quot; are significantly different genres. You can absolutely have romance in a fantasy and fantasy in a romance, and you can absolutely write a romantic story in a fantasy setting without the book being a &quot;romance.&quot; The differences are in the plot and characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm not familiar with the subgenre of YA Romance vs. adult Romance, a &quot;romance&quot; book focuses on the relationship. It's the point of the story. Robert Gellis's &lt;em&gt;Fires of Winter&lt;/em&gt; is a romance set in medieval England and Scotland. The story is about the two characters coming to fall in love. &lt;em&gt;Robin Hood&lt;/em&gt; is set in medieval England and has romance in it, but it's an adventure story because the romance is not the main purpose of the tale. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is not &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; the romance, it's unlikely to be classified there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T10:07:13.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23782" CreationDate="2016-07-13T11:18:56.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oooh,  i liked this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, for fantasy novels, i believe that readers expects epic battles between huge armies, they expect a deep lore, fantastic new creatures, fantastic new places. I guess that is the best definition i can give for what people expect in a fantasy novel. They expect &lt;strong&gt;Fantastic&lt;/strong&gt; things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But let's get a bit broad here, now that i answered the main question. What do readers expect from &lt;strong&gt;All genres?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, what everyone expects from a book, or anything for that matter, is it being good. It needs interesting characters, and an engaging plot. If you have that, i't doesn't really matter what is the defining characteristic for that specific genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, it is quite common to see books trying out twists in common genres (Teenagers solving crimes, instead of cops, it is actually even more common than regular detective novels nowadays, but it started as a twist) , mixing together genres you don't normally see together (Like a romance in medieval times, or horror books with more erotic themes) or even switching genres in the middle of the book (Like teenager books that just keep getting darker and darker until you wonder if it's a suspense book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main focus of fantasy books is to make everything feel new and fantastic, big castles, cool spaceships, giant ruins, horrendous monsters, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't try to hard to stick with only what your genre offers you, and do your best to make it all feel fresh. After all, what makes a good book is the story, not the genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19342" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T11:18:56.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23782" CreationDate="2016-07-13T12:04:02.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not difficult to think of fantasy novels that don't have big battles (Voyage of the Dawn Treader). The battles, the strange creatures, etc, are set dressing. Sci Fi and Fantasy are often lumped together, and often appeal to the same readers, because they essentially do the same thing. They examine life through the lens of a different set of rules. The set dressing is used to establish that the rules of are different. Typical items of set dressing turn up frequently, but they are not essential to the appeal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if the rules of life were different? How would people behave? Fantasy is a means to examine what it means to be human. What would still be recognizably human about us if we lived in a world with different rules? You don't have to use fantasy to do this. You can use foreign countries or past times or constrained situations (a ship at sea). But fantasy and sci fi give you the greatest scope to change the rules so as to force some aspect of human nature to the fore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy can also allow us to address issues that are too sensitive to write about directly. You can write about a conflict between green people and blue people without fear of being pilloried for an incorrect portrayal of green people culture or of secret biases against blue people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less nobly, fantasy and science fiction are also vehicles for wish fulfillment. The powerless and the put-upon imagine a life in which they have a power they do not currently possess. This flatters our wish to be &quot;special&quot;. (Why is it that Harry Potter constantly breaks the rules at Hogwarts and is invariably praised and rewarded for it? Because he is &quot;special&quot;.) Thus the popularity of both genres among teenagers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the reader expects the frog to turn into the prince, because they are a frog and they would like to be a prince. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-07-13T14:34:15.950" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T14:34:15.950" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23782" CreationDate="2016-07-13T15:37:05.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the (note: controversial) theorist Bruno Bettleheim, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uses_of_Enchantment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fairy tales&lt;/a&gt; have an important psychological function because they directly access archetypal images with deep cultural resonance. In other words, they play out the central conflicts of the universal human life in an allegorical manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a big difference between modern fantasy novels and fairy tales, but the latter is the raw material for the former. A good fantasy novel has the magic and mystery of a dream, as combined with the structure and development of modern storytelling. The influential Jungian theorist Joseph Campbell identified elements of classic myths as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;underlying nearly every successful plotline&lt;/a&gt;, in all genres, but in fantasy this connection to the origins of storytelling are closer and less veiled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no single list of elements that defines fantasy as a whole, although there are more formulaic sub-genres, such as &quot;sword and sorcery,&quot; which tend to follow a set pattern.  Rather, the important quality of a fantasy story is the liberation of the imagination through abandoning the requirement of sticking true to the parameters of reality as we know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-07-13T17:54:06.423" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T17:54:06.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23784" CreationDate="2016-07-13T17:39:38.770" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course you can start your story with dialogue. It happens in many books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is true that the reader will feel disoriented from the get go, so you should do your best to clarify everything (through dialogue or otherwise) as early as possible. Nobody drops a book completely in the first chapter, the absolute worst thing that could happen is people not liking the first chapter because they just don't know what is happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with starting with dialogue is that dialogues are usually character focused, and in the first lines of your book, you usually don't have a defined character. The reader will be forced to imagine something you haven't given him juts yet. What if the character is actually an old man, but the reader imagines a young adult? What if the protagonist is actually the guy with the gun, and not the other way around? The reader interprets as he wants, because dialogue is, most of all, a way to deepen what has already been established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that doesn't mean you CAN'T start with dialogue, you just have to paint a clear picture of what you want to establish using only dialogue. The example you gave does this absolutely perfectly. You know from the get go that Adam is the victim, you can also make out where he is, based on the description of the room right on the second paragraph. Everything paints a picture, and that is all happening during a dialogue. But now imagine this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Talk, or I'll shoot.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Okay, okay,&quot; Adam said, giving in. &quot;I was there. I saw her take the&#xA;  money.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John's eyes were dark. &quot;Where'd she go?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't know.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John pulled the trigger. The bullet flew past Adam's face, blasting a&#xA;  hole in the wall behind him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Fifth Avenue!&quot; Adam blurted. &quot;In a red&#xA;  sedan—there was another man in the car. That's all I know, honest.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can clearly see the difference. You have no idea what is Adam position in relation to anything. Nor do you know what he has to say, where he is, what is his personality, what he is feeling, nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, it's a dialogue, and it's not a bad dialogue. Maybe if you put this in the middle of another scene, in a later part of the book, it wouldn't be so bad. But since this is how the book start, and nothing is established yet,  this basically doesn't give the reader to go on, and he is left guessing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can start a book with dialogue, but establish the setting and the characters as soon as possible, or the reader will have to do a lot of guessing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19342" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T17:39:38.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18591" CreationDate="2016-07-13T17:49:56.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, this has a lot of answers, so i'll keep it simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people don't publish their first book, regardless of age. You could be forty, writing a book, and still wouldn't be able to publish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a good book, obviously you can get it published, no big deal. It's actually pretty impressive. But good writing comes with practice, not with age. Write a lot, read a lot, and maybe you'll get a book published before you turn eighteen. But that doesn't necessarily mean the one you are writing right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19342" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T17:49:56.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23735" CreationDate="2016-07-13T18:50:26.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you dream? If so, what sorts of dreams have you experienced? If not, perhaps reading up on the experiences of others in their dreams may prove beneficial. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, are you writing in 1st person or 3rd person, or even switching between views to emphasize the dream sequence? How the events are presented will need to be worded differently depending on the viewpoint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, is the character typically self-introspective? Are they aware that they are dreaming? Should they be aware from the beginning that they are dreaming? Presenting a given scene or sequence as factual to the reader may cause dissonance if later the character views those events as only a dream. Other combinations are possible too, each with a slightly different impact. What do you wish to evoke? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for myself, I dream extensively, so I have learned over the years some of the logic my particular dream environment operates on. In discussing dreams with others, I have also learned that shared characteristics of dream environments are only occasional, and unique arrangements per person seem to be the norm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I may suggest, perhaps a recounting of the bits she sees, more of a visual journey. Perhaps she realizes that she is dreaming, and then is when the next scene takes place. After establishing the dream state, then change it to the vision state. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19658" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T18:50:26.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18591" CreationDate="2016-07-13T20:37:39.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's okay to publish a book at any age. If it is a good book (or at least &quot;good enough.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worse come to worse, if you can't publish at age 13, you can try again at age 18 or age 23.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A famous writer, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_S._Buck&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pearl S. Buck&lt;/a&gt; published her first book at age 10, I believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T20:37:39.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23784" CreationDate="2016-07-14T06:34:30.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's fine to start a story with dialogue; a lot of books do this. Using dialogue at the start could help you build a sense of mystery, or suspense, as you have been thrown straight into an ongoing scene. Starting a story with dialogue isn't bad, but some might say its overused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be sure not to throw the reader into a maelstrom of dialogue right away though. Sometimes, if you throw it all at them too fast, with lines upon lines of dialogue, they will feel like they've been put into a fast whirlwind which they can't escape from (when people say 'don't start with dialogue' they probably mean this). Make it clear what the setting is, and who the protagonist is, and what is going on before spamming dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I enjoyed your description and thought it was fine. If your story benefits from starting with dialogue, just start it that way. Weaving it into the opening scene is something you should definitely do, as it helps avoid the dialogue maelstrom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-07-14T06:34:30.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23805" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-14T14:11:56.900" Score="1" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a story about a man in a bad place in his life and how he finds his way back to his destiny. This seems to be to be a redemption story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at Monkeys with Typewriters, it seems to fit a coming of age plot. Do you think a redemption story is a coming of age plot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2016-07-14T18:11:28.137" Title="Would a redemption story be a coming of age plot" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23805" CreationDate="2016-07-14T15:26:22.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It could be both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Coming of Age&quot; describes how a young person puts aside childish wants and needs and accepts adult responsibilities and priorities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Redemption&quot; can happen at any age, and describes someone who has done bad things, recognizes that they are bad, and wants to make amends and become good (for some values of &quot;bad&quot; and &quot;good&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should point out that if your story is about a &lt;em&gt;man&lt;/em&gt;, not a &lt;em&gt;boy&lt;/em&gt;, you're going to have some trouble with the coming of &lt;em&gt;age&lt;/em&gt; part, but beyond that, sure, you're fine. A story about a juvenile delinquent putting his bad past behind him to become a productive and contributing adult would totally work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-07-14T15:26:22.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23735" CreationDate="2016-07-14T16:18:13.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, when dreaming, we don't realize we're dreaming, so the way to write that most closely approximates the actual experience of dreaming is just to write as if it were any other scene, but with the unquestioned alterations to reality and believability that are typical of dreams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the character is fooled by the reality of the dream, you probably don't want the reader to be as well.  You don't have to be elaborate, just acknowledge that it's a dream and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maria dreamed she was standing in front of a golden throne, high on a cloud...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common way to tip off the reader is to place the dream in italics.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Somehow, Maria found herself standing in front of a golden throne, high upon a cloud&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, try a simple heading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maria dreamed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;She was standing in front of a golden throne, high upon a cloud...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes authors change tense, or from third-person to first-person.  These are just ways to suggest an altered state of consciousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maria fell deeply asleep.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Suddenly I find myself in front of a golden throne...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-07-14T16:18:13.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23805" CreationDate="2016-07-14T18:11:28.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Laura Ipsum on redemption but argue &quot;Coming of Age&quot; stories are more about losing childhood innocence after being exposed to the cruel realities of adult life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14418" LastActivityDate="2016-07-14T18:11:28.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23809" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23813" CreationDate="2016-07-14T21:18:49.407" Score="7" ViewCount="512" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a word frequency analysis on my story. Unsurprisingly, the most over-used words often corresponded to passages where I was lazy with my description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm tackling my over-used words &quot;laughed&quot; and &quot;chuckled&quot;. For example, there is a paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No 'we'll see', bring him around. I’m old, you have to listen to me.&quot; Abel chuckled. &quot;Take care, Sara.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Chuckled&quot; feels rather generic; I don't want it repeating over and over. When I write &quot;chuckle,&quot; I picture Morgan Freeman or Ian McKellen expressing with a faint chuckle mild delight with the humor of his previous statement and genuine caring for and approval of Sara. All the visuals and the character dynamics are there for me. I can see it vividly in my head, but can't find the words to express it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I studied the thesaurus and failed to find alternate words to describe this interaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a specific example, but I'm sure every writer has their own words that just keep popping up over and over in their story. And it seems so natural and essential, I don't know how to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I remove the overused phrases, and what do I replace them with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-07-14T22:03:03.573" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T18:54:50.983" Title="How do I get rid of overused words in my story?" Tags="|word-choice|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23810" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23864" CreationDate="2016-07-14T23:14:54.627" Score="1" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to create a documentary about the history of a sports team, and have identified some compelling story arcs. However, as we know in reality, stories do not begin and end one at a time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;story 1 exposition&#xA;story 1 rising action &#xA;story 1 climax&#xA;story 1 falling action&#xA;story 1 resolution&#xA;story 2 exposition&#xA;story 2 rising action &#xA;story 2 climax&#xA;story 2 falling action&#xA;story 2 resolution&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but rather are interwoven&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;story 1 exposition&#xA;story 1 rising action &#xA;story 2 exposition&#xA;story 1 climax&#xA;story 2 rising action &#xA;story 1 falling action&#xA;story 2 climax&#xA;story 2 falling action&#xA;story 1 resolution&#xA;story 2 resolution&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can easily modify my documentary to make scene transitions seamless/connected by having a connecting theme. BUT this doesn't ensure the viewer can identify the 2 different story arcs and feel the satisfaction that all plots were explored and resolved. To them, the interwoven structure above just looks like a bunch of connected scenes with no overall meaning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do screenwriters do to ensure viewers don't get lost and remind them that there is a (set of) journeys to be payed off that they should keep watching to get rewarded with? Apart from just narration which explicitly identifies the 2 separate plots, I don't get how this is done (I'm an amateur screenwriter with no training). But since I don't want to rely on English narration (I want people from other countries to watch it too), I'm wondering if there are any non-narrater ways to help orient viewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13987" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T21:30:23.757" Title="Interwoven story arcs (for video) - guidelines so viewers will not get lost?" Tags="|plot|narrator|subplot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23810" CreationDate="2016-07-15T04:02:53.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Watch any of the reality TV shows in the documentary theme that are currently &quot;popular&quot; like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pawn Stars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;American Pickers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tiny House Hunters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any of the home renovation/flipping/decorating shows&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pay attention to how they summarize and cut between acts. Also some of them like Pawn Stars start a story (say someone wants to sell a stuffed buffalo) but they don't resolve it straight away. They cut to another seller (say selling a diamond), and intercut some conflict between the family. Then back to the Bullalo. Back to the Diamond. Back to conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if not for TV, a TV hour (43 minutes) is 4-5 well defined acts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To cut between story arcs make sure you leave each story on a question or cliff hanger, like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;ACTION SHOWING&#xA;&#xA;The team nearly folded in 1919 when scandal rocked the dressing room.&#xA;&#xA;FADE OUT:&#xA;&#xA;Commercial break&#xA;&#xA;FADE IN:&#xA;&#xA;ACTION SHOWING&#xA;&#xA;Meanwhile in 1968 the team lost it's third finals series in a row.&#xA;Newspaper reports of the day started reporting the &quot;Ghost of &#xA;the Dressing Room&quot; had cursed the team. &#xA;A voodoo priestess was called in to exorcise the evil spirits.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using graphics is almost essential if you are going to split the narrative without a narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But remember am English language narration can often be dubbed or subtitled for other markets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19655" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T04:02:53.557" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20798" CreationDate="2016-07-15T06:51:42.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this provides you with an idea of how this works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My production company provides event photography which we currently shoot and provide digital photos under a Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-SA 4.0&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used to keep ALL RIGHTS RESERVED but that meant clients broke the license by sharing photos online. So we changed it rather than risk our rights by not enforcing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So our licensing page now states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Some event photography by Dreamspinner Media is licensed under Creative &#xA;Commons BY-NC-SA, your booking agreement will state if this is the case&#xA;with a section like this below.&#xA;&#xA;Creative Commons License&#xA;Event photographs by Paul Zagoridis/Dreamspinner Media is licensed&#xA;under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0&#xA;International License.&#xA;&#xA;Permissions beyond the scope of this license are available at&#xA;http://dreamspinnermedia.com/photography/licensing.&#xA;&#xA;Contact us using the comment form below for additional licensing enquiries.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editors feel free to obfuscate the url if it breaches the self-promotion guidelines of this site. It's in there to show that you MUST have contact details in your CC license.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what that means is the photos can be used, changed and rereleased provided there is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;attribution to the source (me)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the derived works are similarly licensed and attributed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-commercial&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if a photograph is used by a media outlet, they should obtain an appropriate license from me. If they don't they can't claim they just grabbed it from the public domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19655" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T06:51:42.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23809" CreationDate="2016-07-15T08:46:10.543" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possibly the underlying issue is that you're trying to portray a particular sentiment or idea, and you keep doing it in the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, it seems that you're trying to show that Abel is attempting to get a serious point across and show his firm stance on a situation, but not being too strict or overbearing about it. Him chuckling after saying that sentence would certainly get that point across, but in order to get around the repetition, you may need to entirely restructure the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No 'we'll see', bring him around. I’m old, you have to listen to me.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The glimmer in his eyes told Sara that he wasn't being serious, but she got the sense that if she failed, that glimmer would quickly fade to be replaced with something less friendly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She nodded wordlessly, and he dismissed her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Take care, Sara.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously it can be anything you want, but this shows that by restructuring the sentence a little, you can completely subvert the need for having to find a direct word replacement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's fine to repeat words over and over, every writer will have something that they constantly fall back on, the trick is to identify it (which you've already done). Then it's just a case of picking up on the those instances when you're editing, and remove a few to make the story more balanced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the future you may never use the word chuckled again because you'll be hyper-aware that it is one of the words you have previously overused, but at that point you'll probably write something else that becomes too abundant in your work. Then it will simply be a case of repeating the process for that word or phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T18:54:50.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23814" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-15T11:15:35.797" Score="3" ViewCount="1693" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a client who is based in London who wants between 500-1000 word blog post written each week. How, much should I charge? The blog post will have a few images in it. The quality should be high and require some research as it is a specialist subject (not academic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-07-17T15:36:37.200" LastActivityDate="2016-07-17T15:36:37.200" Title="How much to charge for a blog post in the UK?" Tags="|blog|freelance|jobs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23809" CreationDate="2016-07-15T15:15:12.897" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start by asking myself if that behavior 'types' the character or not. When other characters think of this character, is that the first thing that comes to mind? Is it part of the characterization? Then I would ask if the behavior or attitude I'm attempting to emote from that character can be expressed another way? Is the chuckle the typifying hallmark of this attitude and outlook on life? Or are there other ways to portray this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you identify with specific actors, perhaps you could do some research to collect other scenes with these actors portraying the sorts of things that match your character's personality. This may give you some additional visuals to use as you are making your word choices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Escalation or gradation is also a possibility. Someone who audibly chuckles every single time will have a certain feel to them, something the other characters (and you as the author, as well as any beta-readers you have exposed your work to) will recognize. Audibly chuckling all the time might actually be considered strange or weird, depending. However, feeling humor or attempting to project humor can be done a number of additional ways: a smile, a smirk, a rolling of the eyes, body language, narrative of the internal emotions, and more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a few thoughts and methods to tackle this that I hope are helpful to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19658" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T15:15:12.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23784" CreationDate="2016-07-15T17:23:23.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason people say not to start your story with dialogue is because doing so throws you into the story without giving you any context. The exposition you give has no background to build off of, and the action that tends to follow feels meaningless to a new reader. Here, that lack of exposition is very prevalent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I have--and that a lot of your readers will have--is that we know nothing about Adam or John. There's tension in the scene, but no meaning. You illustrate the scene perfectly, but that illustration conveys little about the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This line is the problem with this scene exemplified:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing his chance, Adam struggled against the ropes that bound his arms and legs, desperate for escape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior to this, we don't know that Adam is tied up. One can easily imagine Adam being cornered by John as he advances on him, or frozen still as John blocks the exit and points the gun at him. Without warning, the reader has to completely change the scene to account for it, and that change is both disorienting and disrupting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I don't believe you need to scrap this work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons that people say that you should never start a story with dialogue is that there's almost always a better way to do so. Most of the time, that better way is to introduce the characters and setting before the dialogue. With this scene, you can introduce the characters beforehand while still keeping the great scene you've wrote, introducing meaning and character development without sacrificing anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adam cursed as he struggled against the rope wrapped around his arms and legs. Once more, he desperately tried to reach for the knife in his pocket, fiercely fighting against his rope bindings, but the ropes held strong against his efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[space to expose Adam's background]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The door in front of him flung open, and a large man's frame appeared silhouetted by the outside night. John, intimidating in all his stature, stood in front of him, a large pistol in hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Talk, or I'll shoot&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This example gives Adam a lot more background and the setting a lot more detail. It keeps the tension of the scene, while also explaining what exactly is going on. Obviously, there is room for improvements, but this format provides all the information the reader needs while expanding on your current introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, while you can start with a quote, most of the time there is a better way to introduce your story, and I'm sure publishers will appreciate not starting with a quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19678" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T17:23:23.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23784" CreationDate="2016-07-15T23:14:38.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want to begin a story with &quot;action.&quot; In most cases, it's physical action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in some cases, it's &quot;psychological&quot; action that is best depicted by dialog, so starting a story with dialog is not necessarily a bad thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice begins, &quot;IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-07-16T00:00:11.500" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T00:00:11.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23744" CreationDate="2016-07-16T14:58:46.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most productive thing to do is make sure you have an environment that allows you to remember and operate mentally on the detailed results of your thinking, without having to set everything down. This is so you don't get into the habit of writing as soon as anything comes to mind and editing it, and rewriting it, over and over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more productive habit is writing satisfactory text if you are writing, and moving on. This is possible only if you can edit in your mind and the environment aids you in this, instead of disrupting this process. You later rewrite or cut or add to this whole only a few parts. Editing thoughts is much easier. Easier than what? Than editing copy. It's much faster, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Donald Broadbent's &lt;em&gt;Decision and Stress&lt;/em&gt;, 1971, London, Academic, has quantitative discussion with graphs of the effects on productivity and problem solving and memory --- of most environmental factors. Varying irritations in quantity has often nonlinear results. A significantly large number of things reduce work productivity --- and they interact. This book reviews most of the literature. Research level text, still cited. Much of it is about what harms representative memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most memory is reconstruction (anticipated by George Mead, 1932) not storage, you abstract and chunk (Miller, Pribram, Galanter, 1960). Stored bits are rapidly processed into reconstructive memory and the stored bits discarded: Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater, April 2015, The Now-or-Never Bottleneck, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39(1):e62.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must remove all the irritants from your environment, yes, if you want it go like that. A work room, according to Bohr (says Wheeler), is a room where nobody can stop you from working; that is however the bare minimum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your brain neuronal at a cognitive level is a model reconstructing a similar sensation with similar and often different inputs all of several types. So there is no bits storage capacity limitation problem like in a hard drive --- but there are reconstructive limitations (Karl Pribram, 1966, Some Dimensions of Remembering, &lt;em&gt;Macromolecules and Behavior&lt;/em&gt;, New York, Appleton Century Crofts). They correlate with where you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you also need anything present that regenerates the thoughts you usually think. Only then can you edit them mentally into mental text. Presence of irritants such as temperature prevent remembering, but so does &lt;em&gt;absence&lt;/em&gt; of other things. If you can't remember long texts, you'll be more frequently writing down text as as it comes. Then you will edit it, and rewrite it many times. Which is a much slower process of working than ... It violates Robert Heinlein's rules for writers about not rewriting too much. Rewriting too much gives you less output. For more publishable output you want a quiet peaceful environment, not too warm, but also one that is &lt;em&gt;rich&lt;/em&gt; in objects to aid memory or cause you to recall related ideas. Functions with no input reconstruct no output and you don't remember much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13168" LastEditorUserId="13168" LastEditDate="2016-07-17T08:15:44.543" LastActivityDate="2016-07-17T08:15:44.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20798" CreationDate="2016-07-16T15:05:58.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could license your lyrics for a percentage &lt;em&gt;royalty&lt;/em&gt; (instead of say, for a flat fee).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is to say, if the licensee gets nothing, you get nothing, but if some licensee &quot;gets lucky,&quot; you get your percentage. That's only fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T15:05:58.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23820" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-16T15:10:21.310" Score="11" ViewCount="6320" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certainly there are many Science Fiction writers who touch upon the subject of beings supreme to Man...but always Man is central in writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T14:45:26.053" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T14:45:26.053" Title="Why not God as our subject?" Tags="|fantasy|pov|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23820" CreationDate="2016-07-16T15:51:10.683" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because God does not have a story arc. If story is the conflict between desire and what stands in the way of the fulfilment of that desire, God cannot have a story arc because nothing can frustrate the desires of God.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, of course, stories about gods. But those gods are really supermen. They have limits. They have desires. And they have forces that frustrate their desires. Thus they have the components of a story arc, and thus also they are, for all that matters in story terms, human. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same applies to the animals in stories like Watership Down or The Wind in the Willows. In story terms, they are human too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T15:51:10.683" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23820" CreationDate="2016-07-16T17:50:22.827" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of SFF stories which deal with deities. There's an entire &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Avatar_Series&quot;&gt;Forgotten Realms (D&amp;amp;D)&lt;/a&gt; series about gods being forced to take mortal avatars and walk the earth. The Belgariad pentology by David and Leigh Eddings (and less so the sequel pentology, the Malloreon) heavily features deities as significant secondary characters. Rick Riordan writes about Greek, Egyptian, and Norse gods in his various series. This &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/533247/&quot;&gt;thread&lt;/a&gt; has many other suggestions involving deities of various religions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're asking why Yahweh, the deity of the three Abrahamic religions, isn't used as a character in SFF stories, the main reason is probably what mbakeranalecta suggests: there's no character arc. Omnipotence renders a lot of plot useless. ST:TNG's Q had to have his powers removed or had some ethical obstacle in his way in order to have a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T17:50:22.827" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2016-07-16T18:22:24.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &quot;idea&quot; is not copyrightable, only its &lt;em&gt;expression&lt;/em&gt; is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Bad faith&quot; is an idea that is as old as time, that Satre &quot;popularized,&quot; but did not invent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is attributable to him is an exposition of what constitutes &quot;bad faith (say a paragraph or longer). &lt;em&gt;That&lt;/em&gt; would be copyrightable. That you would cite and attribute to him (and get permission to use).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as long as you use &quot;brief&quot; passages from Satre (a few words or short phrases) and not long sentences or paragraphs, you're ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this kind of &quot;use,&quot; you don't need to cited sources, because Satre also had his sources,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T18:22:24.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16936" CreationDate="2016-07-16T18:45:04.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give your characters names that match their physical or psychological attributes. For instance, in my fiction, I named a man Phil &quot;Potter&quot; because of his &quot;pot-shaped&quot; physique. And a &quot;corny&quot; woman got the name &quot;Cornelia.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T18:45:04.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23820" CreationDate="2016-07-16T19:55:41.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer lies in our ability to define 'God'. Note that while we talk of God, we are personifying an all-pervading aspect; and sometimes the language in which we write or speak becomes insufficient to define 'Him' [note that even in this case, 'Him' indicates that I am referring to 'God' as a male character].&#xA;So what is this aspect called 'God'? Ancient languages such as Sanskrit (of which I know a bit) talks of the concept called 'Prana' (how you pronounce it is another consideration) that leads to, and not directly is, the aspect of 'God'; and this implies both human and non-human sub-aspects. So while a story needs to be written, it is important to confine 'God' to the human characteristics (which has been already earlier pointed out), however that would not suffice given that it would seemingly not be sufficient to cover, if not conflict with, the non-human aspects. Hence, any attempt to write a story on 'God' would boil down to a lesser being of being a 'human'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19689" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T19:55:41.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4605" CreationDate="2016-07-16T20:18:44.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from a book being &lt;em&gt;re-published&lt;/em&gt; by different publishers, a book can also be published by two or more &lt;strong&gt;co-publishers&lt;/strong&gt;. Here is an example, showing different citation styles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;APA&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Martínez, F. G., &amp;amp; Tigchelaar, E. J. C. (Eds.). (1997-1998). &lt;em&gt;The dead sea scrolls: Study edition&lt;/em&gt; (Vols. 1-2). Leiden: Brill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;MLA&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Martínez, F. G., and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, eds. &lt;em&gt;The Dead Sea Scrolls: Study Edition&lt;/em&gt;. Leiden: Brill; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997-1998. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note how following APA only the first publisher is given, while following MLA both are listed, divided by a semicolon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the title and copyright page of volume one of this example (taken from &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0802844936&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon.com&lt;/a&gt;), showing multiple ISBN numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wTngV.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wTngV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BM8WW.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BM8WW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T20:18:44.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23827" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-26T19:22:31.123" Score="0" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a scientific report and repeatedly found myself sneaking sentences like &quot;with the aim of...&quot; or &quot;with the purpose of&quot; in my text. Despite how trivial this problem may seem, it isn’t. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scientific process is repetitive in essence. We customarily do things with a purpose in mind: we apply methodology X &lt;strong&gt;with the aim of&lt;/strong&gt; calculating Y or use theorem P &lt;strong&gt;with the purpose of&lt;/strong&gt; solving Q, and that kind of mindset easily surfaces in our manuscripts.  Also, given that our writing must convey rigour, certain constructions like &quot;with the hope of&quot; or &quot;wishing&quot; are proscribed and the abuse of passive is considered a burden put upon the readability of text that are already complex in itself. In summary, it isn't strange to run out of ideas on how to say &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; one did X, Y and Z...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would like to ask, are there good formulas and sentence structures to express purpose and at the same time convey a sense of exactness without using too many &quot;with the aim of&quot; (or its derivatives) or too much passive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="je_b" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-08-18T12:11:34.513" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T12:11:34.513" Title="Overusing &quot;with the aim of...&quot; in a scientific paper" Tags="|vocabulary|scientific-publishing|phrasing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23827" CreationDate="2016-06-26T19:46:37.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about &lt;strong&gt;to&lt;/strong&gt;? For example &quot;we apply methodology X &lt;strong&gt;to&lt;/strong&gt; calculate Y&quot; or &quot;we use theorem P &lt;strong&gt;to&lt;/strong&gt; solve Q&quot;. I find that pared-down technical writing alleviates some of the repetition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Doug Glancy" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T19:46:37.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23820" CreationDate="2016-07-16T22:30:26.320" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a counter-point to mbakeranalecta's answer: God can have a story arc albeit one with an obvious victor. For example: the Christian God Yahweh takes human form (with the name Jesus) in the books Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Since he is omnipotent there is no evenly matched opponent however there is an introduction, a goal, a journey, build up, a climax, and a resolution. There's even suspense at a few points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jesus had a desire (to save humanity) and antagonists (namely the pharisees) which stood in the way of the goal. Granted he was never frustrated by their attempts but certainly this qualifies as a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there are plenty of conflicts, all of them are one-sided. The trick questions given by the pharisees are easily and immediately answered. And if you read the back story (the Old Testament) you'd know that by definition (of omnipotent) God can't fail. Which forms a weird &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor&quot;&gt;plot armor&lt;/a&gt; in that we know that Jesus will die but he will also always succeed (even if painful). And that no force can even slow him down with temptation and death happening exactly as expected. And this exactly what we would expect from an omnipotent main character: people stand in his way but it in no ways hinders his progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories of a utopia are about a perfect place, writing about a perfect person has some similarities. Writing about a perfect place could have a purpose of &quot;this is the perfect place and we should strive to make our society just like it&quot; likewise writing about a perfect person could have the purpose &quot;this is how a perfect person acts and we should all strive to be like him&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty much the only stories about a perfect person are wrapped in either religion or philosophy because generally speaking these stories aren't as popular. A lack of challenge is considered boring and of course no reader can relate to a perfect person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer answers &quot;can it be done&quot; (yes) and &quot;why would it be done&quot; for a perfect all powerful main character. As for viewpoint: it exists and is called an omniscient third person narrator (whether the narrator is a god or not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19693" LastEditorUserId="19693" LastEditDate="2016-07-17T22:55:25.350" LastActivityDate="2016-07-17T22:55:25.350" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23820" CreationDate="2016-07-17T07:08:56.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read several stories like this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one, humans of the future are able to use sci-fi tech to &quot;read&quot; any moment in the past, and use this to bring back the consciousness of those who have died.  The Utopian society they returned to was, effectively, heaven.  Mankind is indeed still central in this novel, but it brings about another concept for god: he/it doesn't exist YET, but will, as a culmination of OUR evolution. (Light of Other Days, Stephen Baxter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a similar vein is a short story I highly recommend, Asimov's, the Last Question.  Oh, I found a link right to it ( it's pretty short: &lt;a href=&quot;http://multivax.com/last_question.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://multivax.com/last_question.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Culture novels, by Ian Banks, there are super-intelligent computers, that are able to simulate entire worlds in such detail that the citizens of these simulated worlds are even granted &quot;living-entity&quot; status.  This status prevents the more moral of these intelligences from deleting the simulation, (over which they are indeed omniscient and omnipotent), when they are done with it!  Of course he also talks about simulations in THOSE simulations, and multiple &quot;levels&quot; of reality.  To make the omnicient/God thing even more clear, one of these novels even deals with simulated hells! (Surface Detail, Ian Banks)  While most of these stories DO revolve around human-like people, to make it relate-able and interesting, I would not dare to call the Culture &quot;human-centric&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19700" LastActivityDate="2016-07-17T07:08:56.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23820" CreationDate="2016-07-17T07:17:01.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The lack of involvement of a God in Science Fiction (as opposed to, say, epic poetry) is really a bit of historical trivia--God was simply a less popular character in the times in which Science Fiction was written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This phenomenon isn't unique to Science Fiction--not many very popular works have been written in the past few centuries with a benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent viewpoint because it's too difficult to try to resolve the Epicurean Paradox[1] while keeping the usually quite devout masses happy because, surprise! The Epicurean Paradox is paradoxical!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only answers I've seen continue to crop up are the idea of &quot;optimism&quot;, that is, that this is the best God could do (Paradise Lost, Theodicy), but that idea was roundly thrashed by Voltaire, OR that God continues to allow this evil so that humanity may (depending on who you talk to) prove it's worth, build character, etc. in so many words: become stronger (kind of like how working out at the gym hurts, but it saves you future pain). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &quot;If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why is their evil? If he is not omnipotent, then he must be weak (and therefore not godly). If he is not omniscient, then he must be ignorant (and therefore not godly). If he is neither, why call him God? (for he must be not godly)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19701" LastActivityDate="2016-07-17T07:17:01.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23820" CreationDate="2016-07-17T07:52:17.337" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you mean a singular God as prime mover, it's been done, usually as a gag rather than seriously. (For example, the grad student who is getting a failing grade on his create-a-planet lab assignment; personally I'm particularly fond of Stanislaw Lem's treatment of that in The Star Diaries where it's a matter of incompetent committee work.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean one of a pantheon of gods, it's been done many times in many ways. Tanith Lee's books about the Lord's of Darkness. The Sandman series of comics, by Neil Gaiman. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the premise of the question is flawed. The fact that you haven't seen it does not demonstrate that it hasn't been done. It's just harder than average to do &lt;em&gt;well&lt;/em&gt;, for the reasons others have provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8125" LastActivityDate="2016-07-17T07:52:17.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23814" CreationDate="2016-07-17T12:00:32.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;usual&quot; rate because writing skills are a very wide spectrum ranging from &quot;kid out of high school who thinks they are a writer because their Dragonball fanfic got over 2000 views&quot; and &quot;world renowned bestseller author whose name alone guarantees millions of readers&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about how much you consider your writing services worth per hour. While estimating that number, keep in mind that as a self-employed author you have risks and costs an employee has not. For example, finding clients and negotiating with them is work you don't get paid for. To compensate for that you need to charge them more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about how much time you would need to write a blog post in the quality the client expects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiply the two numbers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a bit on top to leave room for negotiation (Ferengi Rules of Acquisiton #212: &lt;em&gt;If they accept your first offer, you either asked too little or offered too much&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2016-07-17T12:21:55.030" LastActivityDate="2016-07-17T12:21:55.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23820" CreationDate="2016-07-17T12:39:58.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;With respect to the `no story arc' issue, there is a certain amount of latitude in frustrating the desires of an omnipotent being, as per the following dialogue by the logician Raymond M. Smullyan: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/godTaoist.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Is God a Taoist?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's further discussion on this in Douglas Hofstadter's book `Metamagical Themas'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19706" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T14:38:54.807" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T14:38:54.807" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23840" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23841" CreationDate="2016-07-17T13:22:09.957" Score="11" ViewCount="1681" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a narrative I'm writing, the characters have to plan an escape from a facility. The thing is, they'll be doing the actual escape in the chapter following them planning. I know usually the right way to go is to show, not tell. But, &lt;strong&gt;if I show the characters' planning processes during the hours they spend planning, won't it be redundant when the characters act out the plan in the following chapter?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should mention that there are 7 main characters and they'd be planning throughout a dialogue that's supposed to be hours long. In a previous plan the characters made, I'd just said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;So, I had an idea for escaping,&amp;quot; I begin, factoring Zuke and Kinnie not coming into the plan before I explain it. As I present my idea, the group seems to listen intently. After, they offer a few suggestions and add a few things. We spend the whole day, taking a break while the guards come in for meals, planning. Even though Kinnie and Zuke aren't escaping, they still had a big part. By the time the guards herd us back to our rooms, we were ready to put our plan into action the next group confinement day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, I used the following chapter to show the readers what the plan was, not tell them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the section I'm writing now, I already showed the protagonists thought process while she was figuring out what needed to be done, but all of the main characters will be planning how they're going to do it together. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if we did disable the cameras, there are definitely LE's patrolling on foot. I haven't seen any yet, but that doesn't mean they aren't in other corridors, or guarding the doors to other rooms in the building waiting to pounce at the first sign of trouble. I'm not sure my friends and I can handle another one on one confrontation with an LE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, there's the whole ordeal of locating an exit. Who knows how many corridors will have to go through to find one. And, how do we tell the difference between an exit and a regular door if the exits are pass-code protected, too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, if we do somehow get out of here, where could we go that the LEs won't be able to bring us back here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I had a plan, well the beginnings of it, and now it just seems overly optimistic and impractical. The others helped a lot with the last plan we made, that I had come up with the idea for, but all that did was lead us here. Maybe Kinnie's right, maybe this is impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I showed the protagonist planning without revealing what exactly they're going to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T04:08:59.443" Title="Using &quot;show not tell&quot; while characters are planning for something that happens" Tags="|style|plot|dialogue|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23840" CreationDate="2016-07-17T14:24:16.210" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's why the tropes &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnspokenPlanGuarantee&quot;&gt;Unspoken Plan Guarantee&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImpossibleMissionCollapse&quot;&gt;Impossible Mission Collapse&lt;/a&gt; exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you first describe a plan in detail and then describe its flawless execution in detail, the latter is just a retelling of the first, which is boring and redundant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is often more interesting to have the elaborate plan fail early in some way, which challenges the characters to turn the failure into a success through clever improvisation. This means you get to tell two exciting stories in one: the escape story as it was planned and the actual escape story how it happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when your story requires that everything goes according to plan (for example, because you want to show off the planning skills of your characters), decide what's more interesting to describe, the planning or the execution. Then describe one and skip over the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most stories focus on the execution, revealing the elaborate planning as it goes (often using non-linear storytelling which jumps back and forth between planning and execution). But when you want to focus on the planning instead, you can simply have one chapter where the escape is planned and then start the next chapter after the execution with the characters talking about how everything worked exactly as planned (but this should better not be the end of your story because it is rather anti-climatic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2016-07-17T15:02:43.923" LastActivityDate="2016-07-17T15:02:43.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23840" CreationDate="2016-07-17T15:00:33.517" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Philipp provides a good answer, but I think there is more to say. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, &quot;show don't tell&quot; has kind of become the touchstone of all advice about storytelling but it is good to remember that it originated as a piece of advice for novelists moving to writing screenplays. What is told in a novel must be shown in a movie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, novels do have to do a fair amount of telling. It is, after all, storytelling. Dramatizing everything -- which tends to mean casting everything into dialogue and action -- can be extremely tedious and false. In particular it leads to a great deal of false dialogue as characters explain things to each other that they already know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of things can work on shows like CSI because while the characters, who are all trained CSIs would know that the others were doing and how the tests work, the audience does not, and the forensics are part of the business of the show. But most of the time this falls flat and feels false. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we do, in fact, have to tell from time to time. It is the privilege of the novelist to address the audience in a way that other media cannot, provided only that we actually do it reasonably well. And of course, there are definitely times in which a scene should be dramatized. Show don't tell can be very sound advice in particular passages without it having to the the universal rule of all writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, both the plan and its execution are merely the mechanics of plot. They exist to build the elements of story: to establish character, setting, conflict, tone, theme, etc. From a purely mechanical point of view, showing the planning and then the successful execution of a plan would be redundant. But both can be vehicles for character development and conflict. The story arc can thus progress through both the planning and the execution. It would be appropriate to treat them both in detail if the story arc progressed through them both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-17T15:00:33.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23840" CreationDate="2016-07-17T15:26:12.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The pertinent question here is: &lt;strong&gt;what is it you're trying to show?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you need to first understand what the focus and purpose of the planning scene is. Only then do you know what to show, and therefore how to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few simple examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the purpose of the scene is to set up a brilliant plan &lt;em&gt;which later fails dramatically&lt;/em&gt;, then you obviously want to show the details of the plan - build it up so that later you can knock it down.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the purpose is to demonstrate how dangerous the plan is, and how high the stakes are, then what you want to show is the threats and challenges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nobody had ever gotten past the electric octopi. They had the most incredible reach - a single one could stop a fully-armed team of eight, catch each and every one of them in a tentacle and fry them all into underwater fritters. &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With nine people, probably one person could get past one octopus.&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But there were only four of us. And there were a full four of them. &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fortunately, Emma had a plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; they're trying to overcome, gloss over &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; they intend to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the purpose is to demonstrate how clever and ingenious the characters are, then you don't need to show &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; they're planning; you need to show &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; they plan it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm gonna need a few things. The guards wear security bands to control their ins and outs. I need one. That dude there. I need his prosthetic leg. And see that black panel? There's a quarnex battery behind it. Purplish box. Green wires. To get into that watch tower, I definitely need it.`&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show them being brilliant, or roguish, or zany, or ruthless. By picking one small corner of the planning, you can demonstrate that trait in action, (showin, not telling!), without giving away the specifics of the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if the purpose of the scene is to establish character dynamics, you show those dynamics playing out &lt;em&gt;while doing the planning&lt;/em&gt;, rather than going over the plan in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One character crushing on another and trying to keep them out of the dangerous part? A shady character that nobody's sure if they can really trust? An obsessive leader who's invested far more than healthy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They all work the same way: you give a hint as to what's being planned; enough to give you material to work with but not enough to spoil the fun. And over that hint, you can have the characters act over-protectively or suspiciously or obsessively or whatever else you like.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and so on. A scene can have pretty much any focus you come up with; I hope these examples make clear how to work with your particular choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single scene can have multiple points of focus (maybe you're showing that the team's really smart &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; that the leader's obsessive). That's fine; you just show &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel like you don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; any focus, then good focuses that work in most situations are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building tension.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Showing off character.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establishing group dynamics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setting the current mood of the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps, and all the best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-07-17T15:26:12.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23844" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-17T16:08:56.133" Score="1" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently noticed that I consistently follow an -ed clause with further action or elaboration using -ing. I feel like something is wrong here, even though it sounds and reads well enough to me. I'm relatively self-taught where writing is concerned and so I struggle a bit with the jargon, so bear with me if I have to ask for clarification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a snip; any feedback you have would be great:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The insinuation had the desired effect. Erim's fingers relaxed, &lt;b&gt;showing a golden glint of sweat that had collected in his palms.&lt;/b&gt; The deep valleys and crevices of his worn fury relaxed into dry rivers along the landscape of his weathered face, &lt;b&gt;his grim mask slowly melting into a look of consideration.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see just glancing at it that I could just as easily change it to &quot;and&quot; without changing the meaning, but it doesn't feel any more or less acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just a question of style? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19709" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T09:48:54.643" Title="Habitual use of -ing follows -ed -- is this wrong?" Tags="|style|structure|grammar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23844" CreationDate="2016-07-17T16:33:12.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see anything wrong with the construction per se. It's just how English works for a structure that is action followed by consequence. It is far more important that your prose should seem natural than that it should be varied in structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the passage you present as an example strikes me a overwritten. This kind of stuff may be okay in very small quantities, but it gets very tiresome very quickly. Remember that focus is key to storytelling. Where is the reader's focus supposed to be directed? The number of times it is desirable to direct the reader's attention to &quot;deep valleys and crevices of his worn fury relaxed into dry rivers along the landscape of his weathered face&quot; are few. They may not be zero, but they are few. You probably don't want to indulge in this kind of writing unless you are very sure it is essential to the story you are trying to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your sense that you may be overusing the ed/ing construction may come more from overuse of this kind of description rather than from any fault of the ed/ing construction per se.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-17T16:33:12.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23847" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-17T18:40:35.060" Score="7" ViewCount="705" Body="&lt;p&gt;After years of critiquing fiction as a hobby, I feel like I've gained some skill at editing. I'm now wondering how I can try my hand at actually editing fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I've got a decent sense of how one starts out as a writer, I have no idea how one starts out as an editor. Editing seems to require a venue to edit for, and writers submitting publishable stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a typical development path for editors? Where do I begin? And how do I gain actual, hands-on experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T19:27:57.087" Title="How do I gain experience in editing?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23827" CreationDate="2016-07-18T00:04:08.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could vary your sentence structure to minimize your monotony. Here are a few examples of what I mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In calculating Y we applied methodology X. This gave the advantage of using the &lt;em&gt;flux capacitor&lt;/em&gt; model from Steven Spielberg, et. al.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solving problem Q vexed the research team for weeks. Theorem P offered the strongest potential solution because it answered the difficult operator question.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Although we considered J as the unknown protein, it lacked the 3-D construction we find in K&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T00:04:08.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23840" CreationDate="2016-07-18T04:08:59.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start by &quot;showing&quot; what the guards are up to in the eyes of one of the plotters...then connect this vision to the eyes of another plotter who sees the same thing...thus &quot;showing&quot; without telling (they simply see the same thing as a pattern which implies a weakness and possible escape.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To build the suspense then have the plotters discover a &quot;code&quot; where they can speak without being heard...simple diagrams using a stick with some rocks...trips to the Library to get material, etc. So the guards keep the same routine...but your plotters have discovered a &quot;gap&quot; of some sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also would employ a &quot;ruse&quot;...something that surprises the reader as the plotters initiation of said plan goes undiscussed to the reader until it happens (some type of diversion like a fight in a cell or some planned event that becomes a distraction like a music show or something)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the plan is executed upon there is no going back so that would be the ultimate focus of &quot;show not tell&quot;...the story can go however you want it to from there...you're the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T04:08:59.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23820" CreationDate="2016-07-18T04:31:13.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indeed, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that to be because most people don't spend a lot of time actually contemplating God or Gods in a realistic fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, individual, group, cultural, and theological assumptions keep getting in the way, not to mention there isn't much profit perceived in such activity by most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply put, most people don't actually have a clue what a real God would actually be like. Even those who can trot out a list of characteristics and may even fervently believe in a God or Gods, seldom actually apply any logic or natural conclusion effect to said characteristics and try to figure out what it means in real terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have the people who reject it out of hand based on little to no thought, others who decide it doesn't make sense and never dig into it, some who associated it with a poor experience, those who simply like to troll, and on and on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very rarely do you have someone who studies it thoughtfully and with an (actual) open mind, regardless of outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will give one possible example of an excellent viewpoint for a stereotypical deity which would make good writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's even use the Judaeo/Christian God as our example, as that has already been brought up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An omniscient, omnipotent being. For the purpose of the example, let's suppose this being conceives the desire to not be alone. However automatons just won't do, that's the same as still being alone with toys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, other beings who are agents unto themselves, who have the ability to move, to perceive, to act. Also, inherent in that, the ability to NOT do what the being wants, and a commitment to never interfere with these other being's ability to act and choose for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second assumption for the example: purity, cleanliness, and holiness/sacredness are also typified by said being. No impure, unclean, unholy thing can exist or dwell with said being. This concept is also pretty well established, even if the nuts and bolts are debated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the ability to act, therefore, these other beings can commit acts which render it impossible to dwell with the original being. Therefore a method of teaching not only the knowledge of how to be pure, but a method to cleanse an impure other being is needed, and a way to teach an appreciation for the value and worth of remaining pure or regaining purity and dwelling with the original being. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so forth. I'll stop here, but I hope my concept can be extrapolated from even this little. In recap: a God who self-limits by never interfering with the ability of mortals to choose but requires purity of all prospective dwellers, life therefore being some kind of school and test all in one, and the desire for other free agents who are capable of being pure enough to dwell with God of their own free will and choice; and you have the makings of all sorts of interesting stories with conflict and drama, successes and failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Omnipotence is limited by the non interference clause, and even with omniscience being able to calculate every possible outcome, the being still cannot act in an interfering way, thus allowing for drama and conflict and challenge even from a divine viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19658" LastEditorUserId="19658" LastEditDate="2016-07-18T04:38:09.320" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T04:38:09.320" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23844" CreationDate="2016-07-18T09:48:54.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This structure isn't bad itself, the problem may appear if you overuse it. Remember that diversity is key if you want to keep your reader's attention and give your text a pleasant rythm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once read a fiction in which the overuse of this scheme was so extrem that it was painful to read. Because you are essentially stopping the action to look at the consequences. I'd say you should avoid using this structure twice in a row, as it slows down the pace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, it's not inherently bad to use this construction. You have to be aware of the effect it produces and use it accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask for feedback from honest third party and see what they think about your text. Put it aside for a few months and then read it again. See if your text needs some rewriting or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also do some research by reading works from several different authors, professionals and amateur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19595" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T09:48:54.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15919" CreationDate="2016-07-18T11:26:53.910" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are worrying about the wrong thing. No one wants to steal your stuff. Unpublished fiction on the web is of zero commercial value. There are far more people writing it than there are reading it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only people who should worry about being plagiarized are successful authors who are, first, making money, and, second, have a fanbase of people who admire and may want to emulate their work. Only then would anyone have a motive for plagiarizing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, your work is not worth stealing until it is published. Once it is published, it is available to anyone who wants to plagiarize it, and the remedies lie in the courts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-03-15T18:37:09.370" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T18:37:09.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23847" CreationDate="2016-07-18T11:39:41.927" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that many if not all of the small literary magazines are edited by volunteers. How those volunteers are selected I am not so sure, but I would begin by scouring their websites looking for any call for volunteers. Failing that, write to them and ask. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I would imagine that they will have the same criteria for editing for them as they do for writing for them. They will want you to actually read some copies in advance or perhaps even subscribe. My impression is that very few writers actually do this, because it is quite expensive to do when you are scattershooting your manuscript to every lit mag in Writer's Digest. But I would guess that a prospective volunteer editor would have to actually show some familiarity with and affection for the magazine they were proposing to edit for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other option, of course, is to start your own. Pretty easy to do on the web these days, but building an audience is a Herculean task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-07-18T16:15:38.263" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T16:15:38.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22143" CreationDate="2016-07-18T12:07:57.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to present an alternative explanation of why things happen, and provide your character reason to believe the alternative. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chaos. Everything happens at random. Have the character get to know one of two men based on the roll of a die.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Human Agency: Things happen because we cause them to happen. Have the character do something that causes the desired outcome, rather than having it imposed from outside. e.g. Sign up to a dating web site where she can find the ideal man.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A bigger god: Replace a belief in &quot;fate&quot; with a belief in different kind of super-natural agency.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A combination of these.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="247" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T12:07:57.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22143" CreationDate="2016-07-18T12:22:45.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hate to try to divine motive, but are you sure this is a story question? It sounds more like you are trying to make an argument than tell a story, more like you are trying to find a way to convince that reader that their lives are not governed by fate than that you are trying to find a convince the character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The destruction of someone's life view is worthy matter for fiction, but the focus should then be on the experience of abandoning one view or adopting another. It should not really be germane whether the new view is more correct than the old one (per the author's view). If the work is actually an argument for one life view against another, it is a polemic, not a novel. Then the question becomes, what are the arguments against fate, which would clearly be off topic here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the topic is, what it the experience of conversion from one worldview to another like, then there are countless conversion stories you can look at, a surprising number of which are more about the nature of the experience of conversion than about the rightness or wrongness of the new/old views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-07-19T11:36:19.157" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T11:36:19.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23861" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23862" CreationDate="2016-07-18T16:23:07.180" Score="7" ViewCount="1454" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I'm in the process of writing a Sci-fi novel, and I use a website to upload chapters before I complete it. On the website, I use chapter titles simply because  &quot;RE Lavender has just updated Faces, Names, and Memories, Chapter 41 - Way Out.&quot;  looks more interesting and distinguished on my feed then &quot;RE Lavender has just updated Faces, Names, and Memories, Chapter 41.&quot; So far, I've kept the table of contents and the chapter titles, but I'm debating whether or not to leave them in the print copy. In another of the stories I've working on, using the same website, I've used the chapter titles online, but not in the working document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I was wondering if anyone could provide some insight on whether, in a work of fiction, chapter titles contribute a lot to book, or if having a table of contents is just annoying and unorthodox.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read the answers &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/14239/chapter-titles-or-numbers&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. But, this didn't provide the detail I needed pertaining specifically to &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; someone would put chapter titles and what the benefits and disadvantages of putting them would be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/chapter-titles/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; website provided some reasons one could use chapter titles, but I'm looking to see if there are any other purposes to keeping them. If not I'll most likely omit them entirely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any assistance someone could provide is greatly appreciated. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T11:57:52.887" Title="Benefits of Chapter titles in fictional writing?" Tags="|fiction|style|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23861" CreationDate="2016-07-18T19:03:28.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chapter titles which aren't &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/14239/chapter-titles-or-numbers&quot;&gt;used as orientation&lt;/a&gt; sort of delineate the story: &lt;em&gt;Potions Class, The Quidditch Match, A Long-Expected Party, The Tower of Cirith Ungol.&lt;/em&gt; They are a distillation, not even a précis but a suggestion, of what's coming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is whether you feel the reader needs this sort of narrative flag in the TOC and/or at the beginning of each chapter. Does the description add to the experience or does it feel childish? Ask a bunch of your beta readers. Read many books in your genre. See what other writers are doing, and see if you agree or disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T19:03:28.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23861" CreationDate="2016-07-18T19:47:42.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think chapter titles are one of the elements that contributes to the sense of a strong narrative voice -- that is, the sense that there is a narrator telling the story. This style is somewhat unfashionable today. Many authors like to create the sense of a stream of consciousness narration or to suppress the voice of the narrator in favor of the voice of the character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Injecting titles into the narrative stream has the effect of announcing that a story is being told. Having simply a number or even just a blank space creates more a neutral beat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But while the narrative voice is somewhat out of fashion, some of the most popular books today, including those from which Lauren Ipsum takes examples, do have a very definite narrative voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying this is a particularly strong effect, or even a deliberate one, but it seems consistent based on pulling a number of titles off my shelves. I particularly note that titles are more common in children's books than in adult books, and children's books tend to have a more distinct narrative voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T19:47:42.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23810" CreationDate="2016-07-18T20:29:49.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thanks to Bookeater for this recommendation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'd use music to unify an arc. Out there usually human leads are used to tag arcs as people easily identify with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also answers another question I hadn't yet crossed yet - how many different soundtrack songs should I use in my show (anything from one for the whole show, to one for every scene). One per story sounds like a good way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13987" LastEditorUserId="13987" LastEditDate="2016-07-18T21:30:23.757" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T21:30:23.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23810" CreationDate="2016-07-18T21:25:02.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories are the way human being make sense of life. They are an attempt to impose order on the chaotic stream of events that we experience day to day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;History is the interpretation of the stream of past events as a set of stories. As such, those stories will overlap each other in the time scale. When telling multiple stories, you need some way to keep them distinct. TV ensemble dramas typically split their casts up in small groups to tell separate (though possibly intersecting) stories. The viewer knows when you have switched to a different story because the cast changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In history, dividing up the cast does not often work so neatly, so it is quite common to separate the stories out, tell one all the way though, and then hop back in time to tell another. Stories told later can reference ones told earlier, so it is important to tell them in the right order. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever approach you choose, the key is to remember that stories are always artificial imposition of order on the chaos of events, and as such the logic and continuity of the story trumps all other threads, including linear time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T21:25:02.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2016-07-19T01:02:12.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, Dostoyevsky explored religious and existentialists ideas in many of his books--his genius was to add to the discussion by exploring existing ideas through fiction and finding new ground through the exploration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19738" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T01:02:12.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23867" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23884" CreationDate="2016-07-19T01:58:01.287" Score="3" ViewCount="1440" Body="&lt;p&gt;Allow me to explain what prompted the question before you immediately say that it's not okay and it would confuse the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The protagonist of the novel - also the narrator - has the ability to see the memories of others, sometimes as they are being made, through flashbacks.&lt;/strong&gt; (Please don't get into how realistic a person having an ability like this is, this is a work of science-fiction and to explain the ability I'd have to explain a lot more and I don't want to get off track with this question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one crucial plot point in the novel, t&lt;strong&gt;he narrator is rendered unconscious and I intend to continue on from that point, but assume the perspective of one of the narrators close friends to relate the following events.&lt;/strong&gt; For the previous flashbacks, I've just italicized all the text. I was planning to do this when I start with the other character's POV and somehow explain how she was able to see things from his eyes when she wakes up, but there is a problem with that plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In her other flashbacks when she was seeing something from the eyes of someone else, she wasn't in the flashback, so I was able to keep a more distant tone of just relaying what the characters are saying, how they're saying it, and what their doing and not having many of her interpretations or thoughts until after she's awakened from the flashback. This way, I was able to keep it in the first person, yet have the reader understand that while she's still narrating, she's narrating for a different character. But, if I am to do this, she will be in the flashback, actually in the arms of the person who's mind she's supposed to see things from. Additionally, &lt;strong&gt;instead of taking the voice of a outside narrating with no elaboration, explanation or inner thoughts, I wanted to really have this other character's thoughts and emotions prevalent, as if he's just taken over narration entirely. The only thing I plan to do so the readers can tell that it's not the main character speaking is italicize the text and make it immediately clear that the passage is from his perspective and not the main characters.&lt;/strong&gt; I would resume normal narration when the main character awakes and un italicize the text. &lt;strong&gt;This would only be for one chapter&lt;/strong&gt;, a chapter in which a lot of significant events occur. If I don't relay that information to the readers while the events are happening, when the protagonist rejoins the story, I'll have to resort to the cliche'd, as soon as the character wakes up, a close friend tells her everything's she's missed in a weepy voice and then gives her a moment to herself to get her head around it. I would like to avoid this, if possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, &lt;strong&gt;is this plausible, or would it be way too confusing for the readers? If it's not, is there any way I could make it plausible,&lt;/strong&gt; perhaps by using single quotes to represent the new narrators thoughts or leaving it in the first person perspective of the unconscious character, just have her be narrating the thoughts of the other character? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to research this, but any time I typed in some variation of my question all I got were tips on how to switch POVs, which I am already reasonably familiar with, and even if I wasn't there are many different posts on this very website that I can consult. So, if anyone can help me out with this, it would be greatly appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I apologize sincerely for the post being so awfully long. It's a rather abstract background and I felt like the question would be confusing and not nearly specific enough if I did not provide some context)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2016-07-25T22:51:14.787" Title="Switching perspectives for a single chapter in a first person POV novel, to do or not to do?" Tags="|technique|perspective|narrator|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23867" CreationDate="2016-07-19T03:43:49.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I couldn't even follow it in the question. I wonder if you may just be trying too hard not to have a narrator. I realize everyone wants to do first person narration these days, but that is a highly restrictive form and often results in false notes even when the protagonist stays conscious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with a first person narrator, though, it is possible, and even common, to introduce some narrative distance. The first person narrator does not have to always narrate in the immediate present. They can report to the reader things that they were not present/conscious for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to maintain stream of consciousness narrative when the narrator is unconscious just does not seem like the best narrative choice. However you do it, it is going to feel like a gimmick, and the last thing you want is for the reader to be taken out of the story by the gimmicky way the story is told. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I fear an exaggerated reading of &quot;show, don't tell&quot; has got writers shunning any kind of narrative distance. Yet narrative distance is one of the best tools in the writer's toolbox and is used to great affect by many of today's most prominent authors, and by virtually all authors of the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T03:43:49.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2016-07-19T07:06:55.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ideas&lt;/em&gt; are not copyrightable. Having a character follow a philosophy is definitely not a form of plagiarism. Presenting that philosophy as a paraphrase of the original work &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be plagiarism, though dubiously illegal (copyright on most of these works has long expired already anyway.) In most cases, if you just follow the idea but express it in your own way, this just falls under &lt;em&gt;drawing inspiration&lt;/em&gt; which is an entirely legal, common and perfectly acceptable practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's still a good form to credit the original author, possibly in an afterword, or similar &quot;paraphernalia.&quot; There's definitely no need to add footnotes to the fictional story or follow academic practices of bibliography or such - you're neither violating copyright  nor writing a paper that needs to follow academic scrutiny. But giving a credit where it's due is a &lt;em&gt;good savior-vivre&lt;/em&gt;, not obligatory but welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T07:06:55.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23871" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-19T07:45:06.730" Score="1" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;What matters more? The story the writer wants to write or the story a reader might want to read? Choose one and state reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18400" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T06:54:51.233" Title="As a writer, should you write because you want to write or write for your readers?" Tags="|style|readers|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-07-20T12:41:38.280" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23871" CreationDate="2016-07-19T09:03:43.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write what you wish to write, which includes writing for others if and when you wish to. One caveat: In the end, there is no reward in writing anything that makes you come to despise writing, no money, no fame that can bring back what you will have forfeited, so check in with yourself along the way and remember that respectful choices are important to creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19743" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T09:03:43.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23847" CreationDate="2016-07-19T09:33:25.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a few sites where you can offer your services. Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiverr.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fiverr.com&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.upwork.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;upwork.com&lt;/a&gt;. I've worked with several editors on Upwork before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also look for local writers groups. Although, that would be more for practice then for contract work. A good resource for finding local groups is meetup.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15068" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T09:33:25.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23867" CreationDate="2016-07-19T09:53:14.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Patricia Briggs did almost exactly this in her Mercy Thompson novel &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/044102002X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Frost Burned&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/a&gt; The series overall (this is book 8) is told in the first person from Mercy's POV, but in two chapters Briggs shifts into third person, and the story is told from the perspective of the main character's husband. She labels those two chapters &quot;Adam.&quot; It's just those two chapters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not write entire chapters in italics; it's visually exhausting. It's okay for sections, and I understand why you're doing it, but not for more than a page or two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you segue into this other character's POV for &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; chapter, I'd call it &quot;Interlude: John&quot; (whatever the non-main character's name is) and write it from limited omniscient third. That way we get all of John's thoughts and feelings, but it's clearly not your main character, and the style is different enough that there's no confusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-07-21T00:47:52.287" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T00:47:52.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23871" CreationDate="2016-07-19T12:55:51.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The answer is &quot;it depends&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt; It depends on why you are writing and the answer to that defines how and what you will write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing for money more than the joy of writing then you are going to be looking hard at what people want to read. That's fine insofar as it goes. Maybe you can write well without having any passion behind what you are doing... Maybe. The problem you will find is that without some form of personal motivation (beyond getting paid) you work is unlikely to be imaginative and is quite likely to be middling and average. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most financially successful works are almost always written by an author who really wanted to write. Game of Thrones does not exist because Mr Martin wanted to get paid, it exists because he really wanted to write that story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that brings us to &quot;the other option&quot; write for yourself first and hope that it pays. This can work out well. I could cite Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and so on and so forth. All written by a writer because that's what they wanted to write. However, I could also cite the huge slush piles in any editors office of stuff that was written that way and never saw the light of day. I could cite the huge number of really bad self-published books (or some of the pretty good ones) that are unlikely to ever earn much money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is a third option&lt;/strong&gt;. In the Venn diagram of what the writer wants and what the reader wants is an overlap. Write in that space and it is no longer a case of what the reader wants vs what the writer wants but both at once. This is where the best chances of commercial or cult success are found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the only indicator of what the reader wants is what the reader already has. So to deliberately aim for the third option there is every chance that what you are really doing is jumping on a bandwagon, probably long after any chance of being the big name there has already been and gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often &quot;what the reader wants to read&quot; is something that not even the reader knows. No one wanted to read Lord of the Rings until Lord of the Rings came out (some might say until The Hobit, but that's a whole other debate), suddenly a whole new genre started to open up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The odds of getting any reward for your writing other than the joy of having written is slim. Therefore, the only thing a writer can do is write for the reader that they know best - themselves. That way the motivation to finish is so much higher that the writing has a real chance of being finished and to a high standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Side note: If I have just written your homework please include a credit link.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T12:55:51.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3626" CreationDate="2016-07-19T12:56:46.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Places where you can find technical writers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Society for Technical Communication - &lt;a href=&quot;http://stc.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://stc.org&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your local STC chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Technical Writer Mailing List (TechWhirl) - &lt;a href=&quot;http://techwhirl.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://techwhirl.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write the Docs - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writethedocs.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writethedocs.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Technical Writing World: - &lt;a href=&quot;http://technicalwritingworld.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://technicalwritingworld.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any number of groups on LinkedIn, Google+, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A local college or university that has a program or even a single course offering in technical writing. Students are always looking for ways to build a portfolio of writing samples.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-07-19T13:05:42.750" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T13:05:42.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18532" CreationDate="2016-07-19T13:13:13.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For simple epub docs, I use Calibre to generate the TOC for me. It doesn't matter whether or not you have Scrivener generate the TOC. I end up deleting it anyway. In Calibre, if you go to the 'Edit Book' function in the main toolbar, you can select 'Edit table of contents' in the following toolbar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, I select 'Generate TOC from major headings' and it populates the left column. You can select it from all heading if you wish. Then, you can choose to delete unwanted items, as well as adjust the nesting of them (either making them all equal, or breaking up your chapters). You can also rename the TOC items to whatever you want. Hit 'OK', then save the document. If you try to close the window, it will prompt you to save.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That should provide your new TOC, which works in iBooks (and probably others).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19751" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T13:13:13.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23879" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-19T13:42:15.980" Score="4" ViewCount="169063" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to write a reminder to a professor to see if he has had time to read my proposal and what he thinks about it. What do you suggest to add/remove to the below email, and what subject should I choose for the email?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Email subject: &amp;quot;kind reminder&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Prof. XXXX,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to check if you have had time to read my proposal that I sent to you on 3rd July. I would be grateful if you  take a moment to look into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be waiting your answer and many thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best Regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19752" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T12:45:13.407" Title="How to write a polite reminder email to a professor?" Tags="|email|letter|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-07-20T12:43:59.230" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23879" CreationDate="2016-07-19T15:09:28.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're on the right track but some parts of your letter could come off wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the subject should be descriptive of the topic at hand. &amp;quot;Kind reminder&amp;quot; doesn't give any information about the proposal. A better title would be &amp;quot;re: Proposal for ____&amp;quot;. Also, you could reply to the original email to keep everything in the same thread.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Saying &amp;quot;I would be grateful if you took a moment to look into it&amp;quot; is something you should have said in the first email, and is redundant at this point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;I will be awaiting your answer&amp;quot; sounds a bit pushy, saying thanks in advance or perhaps &amp;quot;thanks again&amp;quot; is enough to finish up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that professors are some of the busiest people around, and if an email thread drops off the first page of their inbox, they may have completely forgotten about it. Your goal is to gently remind them your request exists and by continuing the original email thread it will show how long it's been since you first reached out without you having to say &amp;quot;it's been X weeks&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re: Proposal for [subject]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Prof. XXXX,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would just like to check if you have had time to look into my proposal.&#xA;Thanks again for agreeing to help me with it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best Regards,&#xA;Your name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19669" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T15:09:28.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23881" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-19T15:14:15.813" Score="8" ViewCount="5567" Body="&lt;p&gt;I enjoy writing, I really do. I don't want to kill my time to make a living. I want to enjoy earning money. I don't want to be rich, I just don't want to be poor. Can I make a living as a novelist? I live alone. Do I need to be a really good writer to make a living from it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19754" LastEditorUserId="40124" LastEditDate="2023-10-03T13:08:35.493" LastActivityDate="2023-10-03T13:08:35.493" Title="Can I make a living as a novelist?" Tags="|fiction|novel|book|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23881" CreationDate="2016-07-19T15:20:55.080" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to make a living as a novelist? Yes, a few people do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it sensible to plan on making a living as a novelist, the way you might plan on making a living as a dentist or an accountant? Absolutely not. Very few of those who try ever make even pocket money from writing fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A realistic approach is to plan on making your living doing something else and write novels on the side. If you ever make enough to live on, quit your day job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can, of course, make your living writing, perhaps as a journalist, copy writer, or technical writer. These are careers you can plan for and work towards with a reasonable hope of success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-31T13:30:28.890" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T13:30:28.890" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23867" CreationDate="2016-07-19T16:33:32.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was planning to do this when I start with the other character's POV&#xA;  and somehow explain how she was able to see things from his eyes when&#xA;  she wakes up, but there is a problem with that plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see absolutely no problem with that. If your character's magic/superpower/special abilities allow her to experience the world from someone else's point of view, it is unavoidable that she will eventually see herself, when inhabiting a friend's or even lover's mind. I suggest you emphasize the effect and let her learn a thing or two about how her new &quot;host&quot; thinks and feels about her...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be challenging, but worth it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T16:33:32.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23847" CreationDate="2016-07-19T19:27:57.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scribophile.com is more for writers and mutual critiquing, but there are forums where you might mention that you are looking to do edits. This wouldn't work for paid gigs, I believe, because I don't think that's allowed on the site, but, if you were willing to do freebies or an exchange of work (to maybe get a feel for editing vs critiquing) it would be a reasonable place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T19:27:57.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23886" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23894" CreationDate="2016-07-19T23:24:43.763" Score="5" ViewCount="1014" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say he's bland by any means, but this character is &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; talkative, and he's supposed to be. He's not the main character but does show up quite a bit. He tends to lecture and ramble on about things that don't really matter to the main character. What are the dangers of having a character like this? Is there anything I need to look out for or avoid doing when writing him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: how much dialogue is too much dialogue for a talkative character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; The character is a walking encyclopedia, particularly in the history department. He's also very strict with the rules, so he often sounds like a parent reprimanding his child whenever the main character breaks a rule. The story takes place in a fantasy universe, so he tends to ramble on about (1) the history of their people and cultural values or (2) how the main character needs to adhere to the rules of their society and think about the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's pretty helpful in the beginning of the story where he does drop quite a few helpful pieces of information about the fantasy world that the characters live in. It's not an info dump; I scatter pieces here and there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess you could see him as comic relief too. He's super oblivious to everything and could talk for an hour about rutabagas if he got into it ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastEditorUserId="16341" LastEditDate="2016-07-20T22:32:08.710" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T23:21:34.813" Title="Pitfalls for writing a talkative character?" Tags="|characters|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23887" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-20T02:54:56.203" Score="-1" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there an appropriate amount of paragraphs to a chapter, I have honestly been trying to compact some techniques in my head, I have just been curious if there is an amount of paragraphs when i know to stop and slow don the particular chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19760" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T03:59:27.957" Title="Amount of paragraphs for a chapter?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-07-20T15:00:26.807" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23887" CreationDate="2016-07-20T03:59:27.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way i found out was just writing the first chapter. This is my first pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After, you will look furthermore things, like the paragraph size itself, its pace, their communication...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll probably get some huge chapther forward, but will find ways to break on two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19002" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T03:59:27.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23871" CreationDate="2016-07-20T05:00:15.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should write what you want to write, because only with your &lt;strong&gt;emotional investment&lt;/strong&gt; will your story have the richness that makes readers enjoy it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you will only be successful if &lt;em&gt;by pure chance&lt;/em&gt; what you want to write coincides with what readers want to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to write what readers want but don't enjoy writing it, you will never have more than moderate success, no more than if you wrote what you wanted but readers did not want to read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T05:00:15.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23890" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-20T06:51:43.980" Score="2" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written out two full manuscripts for this story. They are completed. Then I met the actress that the lead character was inspired by. She likes the character she mentions to me if I write it as a screenplay she'll show it to her manager. Try to get it pushed through and see if they can actually make the movie. I'm like &quot;Yeah no problem the manuscripts are written how hard can it be to write it as a movie?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently so hard that I just don't write it. At all. Which is killing me. In fact, since January when she said this to me I've written basically nothing. The worst part is it's all in my head. I've been working on this one concept and this one story for 5 years. I know it like the back of my hand. If you had me sit down and tell it to you I could tell you the entire thing. Beginning, middle, end. Yet for some reason I cannot write it. Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a person who used to write tons of stuff. Tons of original stories. Tons of fan fiction. Had a huge following for it as well. Now everything is just frozen. It's not that I don't have ideas, I do, all the time. Then they just...go away. I can write at most 3 pages of a new idea and then nothing else. I constantly think of story ideas, constantly develop them in my head. Nothing is coming out and I can't figure out why. I thought &quot;Okay I just won't work on the screenplay for a bit, maybe that will help.&quot; But I can't work on anything else either. I need to write this screenplay this is a window of time here. This is my chance and I can't write it, which is stupid because it's all basically written it just needs to be in a new format. What is wrong with me and how do I fix it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19763" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T06:51:43.980" Title="I have this story all planned out, why can't I write it?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|screenwriting|writers-block|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2016-07-20T12:42:10.970" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23871" CreationDate="2016-07-20T06:54:51.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write what you want to write and what you love writing. Post it in an appropriate forum for that genre. Your followers will come. Trust me, with what I write I thought NO one would ever read it. Couple of years later I'm able to sell an E-book because I gained enough of a following. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19763" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T06:54:51.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23886" CreationDate="2016-07-20T09:42:45.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get everything out in the first draft. Let him ramble on all you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put the first draft aside for a month or so. Go back and re-read, and be absolutely ruthless in your culling when re-reading his rambling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still can't tell if he's talking too much, hand the ms off to a good beta reader with the explicit instruction that you need to know if/when Mr. Motormouth is overtaking the narrative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-09-30T23:21:34.813" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T23:21:34.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23886" CreationDate="2016-07-20T11:01:03.260" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your character can be boring, but your story shouldn't be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the golden ideal: every line of prose and every line of dialogue should &lt;em&gt;serve a purpose.&lt;/em&gt; If somebody is saying a lot of boring stuff, most of that stuff doesn't serve any purpose - and should be avoided in your final draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, there's a difference between &lt;em&gt;being bored by a character&lt;/em&gt;, vs. &lt;em&gt;being entertained by a character being boring&lt;/em&gt;. It's just a question of &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; is getting bored - boring other characters in the story is fine; boring the reader is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some typical purposes of demonstrating a character being boring:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To establish character.&lt;/strong&gt; Being boring, talkative, or chatty is part of who the character is; giving him a few characteristic lines helps you bring that character to life.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For humor.&lt;/strong&gt; A talkative character can often offer comic relief, by going off on tangents, by hyperfocusing on some minor detail, or another dozen ways.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To ridicule the character.&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes you're deliberately mocking the character's talkative nature. &lt;code&gt;Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit / And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes / I will be brief,&lt;/code&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/brevity-soul-wit&quot;&gt;says &lt;em&gt;Hamlet&lt;/em&gt;'s Polonius&lt;/a&gt;, and his inability to say things simply and straightforwardly is uproarious.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For others to be affected by it.&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes, the point is that &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; characters are bored, or exhausted, or amused, or engrossed. In these cases, it's much less important to report everything the talkative character says; instead you can gloss over the content, and focus on other characters' reactions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in brief, whenever you're thinking, &quot;OK, this character's going to go on forever now&quot; -- consider &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you want to portray that, and what purpose you want that to serve. Sometimes, you want the text. Sometimes you just want to write &lt;code&gt;And then Malcolm went on for an hour about rutabagas, and we all nodded along politely.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, don't worry about it too much in the first draft; recognizing &quot;boring areas&quot; and places where readers might drift off is better suited for later edits - it's &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; easier to take a meandering bit of text and chop it down to something quick and snappy, than it is to write everything quick and snappy on the first go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T11:01:03.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23886" CreationDate="2016-07-20T12:22:15.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Heed Coleridge's admonition to Wordsworth: &quot;it is impossible to imitate truly a dull and garrulous discourse, without repeating the effects of dullness and garrulity.&quot; So this may be one of those time to tell rather than show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it is possible to present a garrulous character who is highly amusing to the reader while clearly tedious to his audience. Dickens and Shakespeare both provide examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T12:22:15.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23881" CreationDate="2016-07-20T16:25:46.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Artists starve. They hold food service jobs part time, or the like, and devote themselves. Or they have alternative forms of income or a supportive spouse or savings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To try to give yourself a reasonable target, taking into account the time it takes to publish and see an income from an accepted manuscript, six years (a number out of my behind) is my suggested time commitment. You won't know unless you try. This gives time for three or four full-length novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do it! It starts with page 1. Some artists do quite well. But don't get your hopes up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T16:25:46.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23881" CreationDate="2016-07-20T20:19:52.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people do make a living as novelists, but it's a very small percentage of the people who write. To offer some personal perspective, over the course of nearly 20 years writing, I've produced one traditionally published book (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0689833997&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a picture book&lt;/a&gt;).  It was well-reviewed, reasonably successful and went through more than one printing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the lifetime of the book I made about $5000 total.  Even doubling that number (due to the fact that I had to split my royalties with an illustrator), I'd have to regularly publish around eight books a year, to similar success, in order to approach the salary of my day job as a programmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most professional writers are either insanely prolific, do writing-for-hire jobs and/or make most of their money on touring and speaking (and possibly direct sales).  As with any artistic job, you could potentially be gifted, hard-working and lucky enough to create a big hit, but most people only get to that level after years in the trenches.  For what it's worth, I get as much writing done now, in the evenings, as I did during the brief period of time when I was trying to do writing full time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-07-20T20:55:53.797" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T20:55:53.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2016-07-20T21:55:02.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, I know of several fantasy authors who not only use citations without the philosopher's name, but attribute the quotes to a fictional author who is part of their world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T21:55:02.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23881" CreationDate="2016-07-21T02:14:47.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The US Census bureau reports that 126,601 Americans are employed full time as &quot;writers and authors&quot;, and they have a median income of $58,150. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/people/io/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.census.gov/people/io/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's way more people and way more money than I would have guessed. They don't define &quot;writers and authors&quot; nor do they break it down into categories. This probably includes many people who have jobs writing, like people who write instructions on how to put together furniture and the like, as opposed to novelists. There's a separate category for reporters, so I guess this doesn't include reporters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article from the UK -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11550871/Just-one-in-ten-authors-can-earn-full-time-living-from-writing-report-finds.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11550871/Just-one-in-ten-authors-can-earn-full-time-living-from-writing-report-finds.html&lt;/a&gt; -- finds that 11% of Britons who describe themselves as &quot;authors&quot; actually make enough money writing to live on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I've read several sources that say that hundreds or perhaps a few thousand Americans actually earn enough by freelance writing to make a living. (The exact number depending on how you define &quot;author&quot; and &quot;living&quot; and how you collect the statistics, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To echo mbakeranalecta, there are many professions where if you are at least reasonably competent, you have a good chance of being able to earn a living. A competent plumber or auto mechanic or accountant or lumberjack can usually find a decent job and make a comfortable living. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are other jobs where a few people achieve huge success and become very rich, while the vast majority earn little or often nothing. Jobs like rock singer, movie actor, drug dealer, and novelist. Success in these occupations depends on a lot of factors other than your individual skill -- call it &quot;luck&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been writing on and off for over 20 years. I've published maybe 20 or so magazine articles, contributed chapters to four textbooks, and self-published three books of my own. I haven't added it up exactly but I'd guess my lifetime earnings from my writing are several thousand dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to get rich writing? Of course. Do many people accomplish this? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is a wonderful hobby, but a terrible profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T02:14:47.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23582" CreationDate="2016-07-21T02:22:35.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because I can't ask questions (system won't let me), I'm going to assume you mean that within Scrivener, there is the insertion point line that blinks. When you say it is huge, the first possibility is that your zoom level is too high. In the bottom left-hand corner of the text block, you should see a percentage. Try reducing that to see if that solves the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is that you are at the right text size percentage, but your line spacing is large. The insertion point will grow with the line spacing. Try adjusting that. It won't solve the problem if you like double-spacing, but it will reduce the insertion point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is the blinking that is bothering you most, you can toggle that off. Go to Preferences&gt;Editor, then tick the checkbox that says &quot;Disable insertion point blinking&quot;. That will at least turn off the blinking, hopefully making it less bothersome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19751" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T02:22:35.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2016-07-21T13:11:17.130" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism is an academic violation. If you wrote a scholarly article for a professional journal and did not give proper credit to your sources, you would be guilty of plagiarism. If you were caught you might lose academic standing, maybe even lose your job at the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But works of fiction are not scholarly articles. We do not normally expect a work of fiction to have footnotes. Fiction writers routinely incorporate moral or philosophical themes into their stories without giving a scholarly discussion of the history of the idea and their sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that, as a couple of others have implied but I don't think quite stated clearly, there is a big difference between plagiarism and copyright violation. If you write a book, you own a copyright to the specific words used to express that idea. If others copy your words, you can sue them. But copyright law specifically says that you do not have a copyright to an idea, just to the words to express that idea. Plagiarism is copying someone else's ideas without giving proper credit, but plagiarism is not a crime nor a tort: you cannot be arrested or sued for plagiarism. It's an academic violation that can get you in trouble with universities and publishers, you could lose your job or be blacklisted by professional journals, but they can't sue you for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T13:11:17.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23861" CreationDate="2016-07-21T13:32:42.217" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a work of non-fiction, a table of contents with chapter titles helps the reader find specific information he may want and see where the book is going. Like if I'm looking for information about World War 2, I might open a history book and scan chapter titles for something about World War 2. Or if I open a math book and scan the chapter titles I might see a title that says &quot;Basics of Calculus&quot; and then I say to myself, Okay, yes indeed this book does discuss calculus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is exactly the reason why many, probably most, fiction books do NOT have chapter titles. If I open, say, a novel about a love triangle and the whole point of the book is that Alice is torn between whether she wants to marry Bob or Charlie, if I look at the table of contents and see that the last chapter is titled &quot;Alice and Charlie's Wedding&quot;, well, that would rather ruin any suspense. Of course that's an extreme case, but chapter titles could give things away in more subtle ways. In a story about the hero searching for treasure, if I see that there's a chapter called &quot;Egypt&quot; and he finds that it's not there, and then there's a chapter called &quot;Sudan&quot; and it's not there either, and then I start the chapter called &quot;Ethiopia&quot;, and I see in the table of contents that this is followed by chapters called &quot;Kenya&quot; and &quot;Madagascar&quot; and then &quot;Returning Home&quot;, I think I'd guess that he won't find the treasure in Ethiopia or Kenya either. Looking at titles of chapters we haven't read tells us something about the &quot;future&quot; that the characters don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could, of course, have chapter titles that are so vague that they tell the reader nothing. But then, why bother?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not to say that chapter titles are never appropriate in a work of fiction. In a book made up of essentially independent stories, like a story about a detective where he solves ten crimes but each is pretty much independent of the others, chapter titles wouldn't give away anything, and if the titles are interesting, they may encourage the reader to want to get to that chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose you could have deliberately deceptive chapter titles. Like in my love triangle story example, maybe the last chapter is &quot;Marriage With Charlie&quot;, but when we get there it turns out that Charlie is marrying somebody else and Alice then runs off with Bob. In general I'd think that would be a lame trick to pull on the reader, but like so many things in writing, if done well, it could be amusing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be able to come up with chapter titles that are vague enough that they don't give anything away, but interesting enough that the reader sees them as something to look forward to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Children's stories have chapter titles more often because they usually don't have a lot of dramatic tension. When I see a chapter title of, &quot;In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets Caught in a Tight Place&quot;, I don't usually think, &quot;Oh, so I guess Tigger does NOT kill Winnie the Pooh in this chapter, because he's still alive for the next one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T13:32:42.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19764" CreationDate="2016-07-21T13:39:08.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a variation of Fritz Freiheit's Master Writing Log. It is a LibreOffice spreadsheet (works under excel too) and doesn't have graphs but they're easy to put in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://fritzfreiheit.com/wiki/Master_writing_log&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fritzfreiheit.com/wiki/Master_writing_log&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19655" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T13:39:08.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23861" CreationDate="2016-07-21T16:05:58.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chapter titles can work for you or they can do nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Numbered chapters only give your readers an idea of what is an average length of a chapter in relation to the total number of pages in your book and offer them a break from the pace of the narration, because one has to turn a page to get to the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can name your chapters any way you wish if you think it helps to keep the reader interested in your story. You can have them named &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; numbered, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter names do not have to be descriptive to the point of spoiling the mystery element of your story, if it has one, and they can be even deceptive to a certain degree, but only if you can imbue them with a subtle double-meaning, making sure that your reader says '&lt;em&gt;ahh... that's what happened? nice...&lt;/em&gt;' (top of the head oversimplified example: your hero is captured, imprisoned and sentenced to death; next chapter is named &lt;em&gt;Execution&lt;/em&gt;, where he miraculously escapes, sneaks up on the villain who is getting ready to enjoy the spectacle, accuses him of being criminally bad guy and executes him instead).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use date or timestamps (as it was mentioned elsewhere) is the names of the chapters, if the timeline is important to the story and to elevate the sense of urgency of what is happening. If there is a time bomb ticking, you can use the countdown markers ( &lt;em&gt;4 hours to big boom&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;3 hours to big boom&lt;/em&gt;, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George R. R. Martin names the chapters of his &lt;em&gt;Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; by the POV character. He has many, different in each chapter, and this naming convention really helps to understand whose story you are about to switch to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is a quest (as it was mentioned as well), you can title your chapters by the names of places your character(s) travel to, if you wish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no recipe; it is all up to you...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2016-07-26T13:33:54.563" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T13:33:54.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23906" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23908" CreationDate="2016-07-22T00:08:23.557" Score="3" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story I'm writing is all about discovery, so 95% of it needs to be unknown by the reader at first. But I just don't know how to make a short description of it, for example when telling to a friend about the story, or even an official description, that doesn't spoils anything but still gives enough information to show that it's an interesting and deep story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how should the description be in such scenario?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastActivityDate="2016-07-22T12:11:37.017" Title="Preventing spoilers in a short yet interesting synopsis of the story" Tags="|fiction|synopsis|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23906" CreationDate="2016-07-22T00:53:36.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your description has to be about the setup &amp;mdash; the 5% that isn't about the discovery. Or maybe the first 10%, after the initial discovery which gets your protagonist over the threshold of the adventure. The rest will have to be vague puffery about the wonders of discovery, adventure, fantasy, thrills and chills, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-07-22T00:53:36.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23906" CreationDate="2016-07-22T12:11:37.017" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Millions of people bought tickets to see Titanic even though they knew in a advance that the ship sinks. They went back to see it again and again even though after the first time they knew exactly who lived and who died. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good books do not depend solely on the audience not knowing what happens. Rather, they rely on the identification with the characters to whom it is happening. Our hearts can be in our throats at a climactic moment in a well told story even if we have heard it ten times before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in many cases we know what will happen in a book because only one thing can happen and we would be wildly disappointed if it did not. Boy wizard battles Lord Voldemort and ... loses? Or consider a novel about Columbus. What does he discover? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while you don't have to reveal any more than is necessary to get the reader interested, you have to reveal at least that much and if your story is well written, it won't detract from the reader's enjoyment. But the reader will not enjoy it at all if you don't give them enough information to decide that they want to read it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Far from not wanting to know the ending, most readers want a guarantee of what kind of ending it will be before they buy the book. The ending, and the emotional satisfaction that the ending provides, is the payoff the reader is looking for and they want to know what flavor is inside the chocolate before they bite into it. A romance in which the girl does not get the guy? A mystery in which the detective does not get the killer? No thanks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that we don't care about spoilers. For certain kinds of books, in particular, there are details we don't want to know. But even then, we have very definite expectations about what kind of ending we will get, even if we don't want to know the details of how we get there. But if the story is really good, we will read or watch anyway because we have to be along for the experience even if we know exactly what will happen, as we always do when we reread a favorite book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if people don't care enough to want to go along for the ride anyway, then merely not knowing what will happen is not going to make them read because they will not care enough about the characters it happens to to want to find out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-22T12:11:37.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22143" CreationDate="2016-07-22T20:14:26.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I did in one of my stories is to have the character change her mind about &quot;fate,&quot; even while believing in &quot;signs.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Briefly, my heroine meets a man who echoes something she did before her trauma. But while she continues to believe in fate, she starts to question the premise that her fate is not to meet a kind man. Because she also takes this &quot;echoing as a &quot;sign&quot; that this is the one for her. And when he does turn out to be kind, then she maintains her belief in &quot;signs,&quot; and decides that she read her fate wrongly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-07-22T20:14:26.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10444" CreationDate="2016-07-22T22:16:45.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking as something of a practitioner of writing in archaic language, I advise learning the way people write in current language: old texts can be a teacher of sorts. &lt;a href=&quot;https://CJSHayward.com/doxology/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Doxology&lt;/a&gt; is modeled after KJV English, and the older style of English, with for the most part the simpler, appears as insets from a fictional &lt;em&gt;Brocéliande&lt;/em&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;https://CJSHayward.com/grail/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Sign of the Grail&lt;/a&gt;, which has meticulous drinking in of Sir Thomas Mallory not as the beginning of modern tellings of Arthurian legend but as a last great flourish as the medieval tellings of Arthurian legend basically closed. Someone with any perception of the tradition may notice I left out a major feature from the (12th cent.) Brut to &lt;em&gt;Le Morte d'Arthur&lt;/em&gt; (15th cent.; the work is essentially a thousand pages of sheer synopsis where one of Chrétien's complete romances is condense to a page or two) keeps on entering interminable battles between knights in which both combatants hack each other to death's door but are fully healed within a fortnight. In that regard, Chrétien de Troyes (12th cent.) didn't just deliver courtly love and worlds of wonder; he also delivered what would today be Arnold Schwarzenegger action-adventure movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One basic and generic piece of advice is to decide what you want to write, and read a thousand books in your preferred genre. Want to write romance? Read a thousand romances. Want to write a thriller? Read a thousand thrillers. Want to write mystery? Read a thousand mysteries. The principle is generic, and it doesn't just apply to languages where there are living native speakers. There is some extra effort needed to work on an archaic or a dead language, but the added burden can often be surprisingly light. And even if you are taking a living language, people speak about how enlightening it can be to read just &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; novel in the language and culture you're learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8761" LastActivityDate="2016-07-22T22:16:45.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23911" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-22T23:25:22.987" Score="1" ViewCount="3470" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for several suggestions for techniques to handle 2 similar cases ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While writing my current non-fiction book, there are a few times where a section ends with somewhat of a teaser of a statement, or is completing a thought - but I want to say something to the effect of&#xA;     - 'I'll expand on this in a later chapter' , or&#xA;     - 'as we'll see later ...'&#xA;     - 'more on this later..'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then the next section (not chapter) would continue with the narrative without discussing in any more detail, the prior concept.  I don't want to branch off on a tangent that will be covered in more detail later.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18781" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T15:59:24.720" Title="Suggestions for ways to say &quot;I'll come back to this later ...&quot;" Tags="|style|technique|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23913" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-23T00:19:16.900" Score="2" ViewCount="484" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two different &quot;authorities&quot; produce widely different word counts - which is correct?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I am using &quot;Times New Roman&quot; with 1 inch margins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One authority &quot;says&quot; one word equals 6 characters.  Since each line has 96 characters, this approach yields 16 words per line.  16 times 25 lines equals 400 words per page&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other authority &quot;says&quot; use 10 words per lines.  This approach yields 250 words per page.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They cannot both be correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19799" LastEditorUserId="10460" LastEditDate="2016-09-23T14:17:59.900" LastActivityDate="2020-11-05T16:57:16.187" Title="Word count using &quot;Times New Roman&quot;" Tags="|wordcount|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23913" CreationDate="2016-07-23T01:07:27.203" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your font doesn't matter. Publishing industry standard is 250 words per page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-efa.org/res/rates.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Editorial Freelancers Association:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The industry standard for a manuscript page, however, is a firm 250 words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=608972&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Answers thread&lt;/a&gt; has some other citations (almost all of which are 404 links, sadly), but I think Google Answers is like Stack Exchange, so take it cum grano salis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-07-23T01:07:27.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23915" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23918" CreationDate="2016-07-23T01:10:57.770" Score="0" ViewCount="750" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see that a lot of people like Scrivener better than yWriter. I know Scrivener is better, but my dad refuses to buy it, and I don't have a credit card. So, what does make Scrivener better than yWriter5?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19801" LastActivityDate="2020-09-07T01:43:07.593" Title="What is the Difference Between yWriter5 and Scrivener?" Tags="|technique|scrivener|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23916" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-23T01:22:39.707" Score="5" ViewCount="15513" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to write a newspaper article inside my work of fiction. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to write ages and dates in this article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took journalism in college, and I know that if I am submitting an article to a newspaper, I would need to write ages and dates as numbers: July 22, 2016, Nathan Smith, 34. But if I am putting this in a work of fiction, do I do it like this, or do I write the ages and dates as words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Smith, 37, was arrested on July 10, 2016, or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Smith,, thirty-seven was arrested on July tenth, twenty-sixteen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help will be appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19779" LastActivityDate="2016-10-23T12:02:04.763" Title="How to write ages and dates in a newspaper article inside a work of fiction" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23915" CreationDate="2016-07-23T13:32:25.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're on a Mac, you can't use yWriter. :) Beyond that, from the screenshots it looks like yWriter only allows you to break into chapters, while Scrivener lets you have files in folders with no restraints on organization, as deep as you like, plus photos and audio files. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener has many tools, like Word Count Goals, frequency analysis, a name generator, a compiler, and the ability to do snapshots of your work so you can roll back to a previous draft. It's simply a more expansive, powerful program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just need to get underway (and you're on a compatible platform), start with yWriter and save your money until you can get Scrivener. You can write in Notepad if you need to; you don't have to have Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-07-23T13:32:25.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23916" CreationDate="2016-07-23T13:33:31.427" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're &quot;reproducing&quot; a newspaper article in your book, write it exactly as you would an actual newspaper article. That makes it look real, and helps keep the suspension of disbelief for your reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-07-23T13:33:31.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23916" CreationDate="2016-07-23T18:16:36.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely numbers, not words, in this case.  The second way you have it written does not track at all with a newspaper article. It looks more like some kind of scientific paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19807" LastActivityDate="2016-07-23T18:16:36.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23921" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-23T19:16:52.807" Score="1" ViewCount="1622" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying my hand at editing a friends work, and I've got a little stumped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They wrote the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Thinks he's the smartest one in the room,' Henry wrote on a piece of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For context, when they write dialogue they use double quotation marks.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, on a piece of paper, Henry has written the words: &amp;quot;Thinks he's the smartest one in the room.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial thought was that the single quotation marks are incorrect. (Though I might be wrong about this.) I can only think of two alternative ways to go, and I don't know which of these three options would be correct:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Single quotation marks (as my friend has):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Thinks he's the smartest one in the room,' Henry wrote on a piece of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Double quotation marks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Thinks he's the smartest one in the room,&amp;quot; Henry wrote on a piece of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Italics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thinks he's the smartest one in the room&lt;/em&gt;, Henry wrote on a piece of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I'd think to use double quotation marks for quoting words. However, I feel that that would make it look and read too much like dialogue--especially because there's a conversation happening around the line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reason I'm leaning towards the italics is because, even though &amp;quot;Thinks he's the smartest one in the room&amp;quot; is a quote, it's also a thought that Henry's having. If it was &amp;quot;Henry thought&amp;quot; instead of &amp;quot;Henry wrote&amp;quot; then I'd know to use italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, am I to use single quotes, double quotes, or italics in this situation? Or something else? Or is it just a matter of style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19808" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T00:26:26.150" Title="What punctuation to use when a character is writing something down?" Tags="|style|editing|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23921" CreationDate="2016-07-23T20:24:29.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's usually just a matter of style. I'd use italics, but it honestly doesn't matter (but you shouldn't use single quotation marks like that in the US, that's normally done in Britain). &lt;br&gt;&#xA;One example I have is with thoughts. Some use italics, some use quotes, and some write it like:&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I hate this, thought Bob.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all just a matter of style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19505" LastActivityDate="2016-07-23T20:24:29.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23923" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-23T20:31:31.820" Score="5" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm proofing a document that employs the APA citation style. It contains several citations of the form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Michaelson, 2000; cattle only)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;em&gt;seems&lt;/em&gt; wrong to me, especially since the semi-colon is used to separate references. However, I can't find anything in the Sixth Edition that gives me any guidance one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would either put the &quot;cattle only&quot; bit in square brackets, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Michaelson, 2000 [cattle only])&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or rewrite to cite non-parenthetically, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;... as was also noted by Michaelson (2000), but for cattle only.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd prefer to go to the client with more than &quot;I don't think you should do this because it violates my sense of aesthetics&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the APA Sixth Edition give any guidance on how extra information should be displayed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15115" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-26T10:37:37.537" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T18:32:32.023" Title="APA parenthetical citation: is extra information in the parentheses okay?" Tags="|academic-writing|citations|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23921" CreationDate="2016-07-23T20:34:32.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I too would recommend italics. Also, I'd avoiding single quotes as I find things can get a bit confusing if there are apostrophes in the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15115" LastActivityDate="2016-07-23T20:34:32.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23684" CreationDate="2016-07-23T21:05:55.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably too late for the OP, but in case someone else is curious...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find anything specifically about poems, but I think following the style used for a chapter or entry in a book should be fine. That is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Author, A. A., &amp;amp; Author, B. B. (1995). Title of chapter or entry. In A. Editor, B. Editor, &amp;amp; C. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (pp. xxx–xxx). Location: Publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of Robert Burns' &quot;To a Mouse&quot;, the Kilmarnock volume's title page gives Robert Burns as the author (and no editor), therefore we can cite the poem as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Burns, R. (1786). To a Mouse. In R. Burns, &lt;em&gt;Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect&lt;/em&gt; (p. 138-140). Kilmarnock: John Wilson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15115" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-10-22T18:05:38.350" LastActivityDate="2016-10-22T18:05:38.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-24T08:00:38.243" Score="1" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a reliable professional editing service where I can get my papers reviewed. Searching google returns gazillion options but its very hard to determine which one is truly professional and worth spending money on. What should I look for in evaluating services in order to sort the wheat from the chaff?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19383" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-07-24T18:06:13.933" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T17:54:03.067" Title="Finding a reliable professional editing services for research paper" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23916" CreationDate="2016-07-24T09:18:39.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is actually quite a variety in the way dates are depicted in a newspaper article.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends, as usual, on the nature of the event. Please note that the samples below are all fairly old. A quick scan of today's newspapers and on-line publications seems to show that detailed dates are on the decline, with just plain weekdays mentioned most frequent for subjects that happened at a specific moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some samples:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;'Thursday night' for a well-known headline event.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MZiDo.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MZiDo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;'April 6' for a snippet about an obscure discovery.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Xbnu.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Xbnu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;'Friday, Dec. 9' for a courtroom report.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IH6yx.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IH6yx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14077" LastActivityDate="2016-07-24T09:18:39.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23928" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23930" CreationDate="2016-07-24T12:34:34.173" Score="5" ViewCount="204" Body="&lt;p&gt;For nonfiction book translations where the target language does not use the Roman alphabet (e.g. Russian, Indonesian, Mandarin Chinese, etc.), if a particular name, brand, band or song title is mentioned in English, what is the standard approach? Do they stay in English, or should a translator attempt to transliterate them into the target language? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19813" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T16:15:04.647" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T16:58:26.623" Title="For nonfiction books, do you translate or transliterate names, brands, etc. that aren't in a Romanized language?" Tags="|non-fiction|translation|language|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23928" CreationDate="2016-07-24T14:29:27.533" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My rule of thumb is not to translate proper nouns unless the translation is already in common use in the target language. For example, it's fine to call Tolstoy's book to &quot;War and Peace&quot; since everyone knows it by that title, but if I started referring to Rio de Janeiro as January River, people would be confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applying this to your case, use a common transliteration if one exists, otherwise stick with the Romanized foreign name and provide a parenthetical translation for clarity as well as to satisfy curiosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Beyond the above, let common sense guide you. A lot of the time this will come down to style and aesthetics. Sometimes the translation is awkward and so you might prefer the original. And in fiction, you can get a little playful and creative with transliterating with parallel metaphors and suchlike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15115" LastEditorUserId="15115" LastEditDate="2016-07-24T18:18:06.070" LastActivityDate="2016-07-24T18:18:06.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23911" CreationDate="2016-07-24T16:13:15.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends a bit on the topic (or any possible guidelines you have to adhere to), but the best way is to have a specific section/chapter you can refer to. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[...], as I will explicate in more detail in section 3.4.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[...]. To this I will return in chapter 4.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, however, don't overdo it. Doing it once or twice is OK, but excessive referencing of this kind messes with your cohesion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16555" LastActivityDate="2016-07-24T16:13:15.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22126" CreationDate="2016-07-25T13:16:07.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really don't think there is a reliable way to do this visually in the text simply because whatever visual cues announced to the reader that they have started Part II have long been forgotten before they get to the end of it. You can always do things like devoting an entire right page to &quot;Part I&quot;, &quot;Part II&quot; and &quot;Conclusion&quot; but that is no guaranteed that the reader will recognize their significance when they encounter them so many hours apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, at the semantic level, it is unlikely that they are holding a hierarchical structure in their heads as they read. Even if we organize a long work hierarchically, this is more for our convenience than for the readers. It may help them get an initial sense of the work from the TOC, if they bother to read it, but when they are actually reading, the will read linearly. They will experience one thing after another, not one thing inside another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to make sure they they know they have arrived at the conclusion of the whole work, the most reliable way to do it is to announce it in the opening of the conclusion itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Part I we looked at some topic. In Part II we looked at another topic. To sum up, some topic and another topic both lead us to the conclusion ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And after all, this is the job of the conclusion, to remind the reader of the larger structural and logical unity of the argument, which they will likely have lost track of during the long read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, don't rely on visual clues to guide the reader as to the structure of your text. Do it in the text itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-25T13:16:07.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23926" CreationDate="2016-07-25T15:21:31.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past I have used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prowritingaid.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.prowritingaid.com&lt;/a&gt; for editing creative writing peices and also essays when I was in college and I've found it works well as a free option. It's easy to paste a chunk of text and see what needs some refining based on the reports that are generated. &#xA;This isn't the same as a human person giving feedback, but it does provide helpful information. &#xA;Hope this helps.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19637" LastActivityDate="2016-07-25T15:21:31.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16961" CreationDate="2016-07-25T20:34:14.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, so please get competent legal counsel if other measures do not suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are doing &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; falls under the heading of &quot;fair use,&quot; (for criticism), which is a defense against copyright infringement. Nevertheless, it would be wise to approach the copyright holder, and get their &quot;blessing&quot; (or at least acquiescence) to your own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several possible replies. 1) The copyright holder grants permission. It is fair use, after all, and they may benefit financially from a &quot;debate&quot; about their film. 2) The copyright holder wants a small financial consideration, basically a &quot;tribute&quot; or acknowledgement of their copyright. That's usually worth paying to avoid legal hassles. 3) The copyright holder refuses to give permission under any circumstances. Here, you need to see a lawyer,even if you are in the right. In that case, the company will fight your use, whether or not it has merit. So &quot;forewarned is forearmed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two Live Crew tried to get permission to do a parody of Roy Orbison's &quot;Pretty Woman.&quot; The copyright holder refused, and the case went all the way to the &lt;em&gt;Supreme Court&lt;/em&gt; before the copyright holder relented. On the other hand, Crew's experience made other copyright holders more willing to &quot;cut a deal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-07-25T20:34:14.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-25T20:35:10.247" Score="0" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose, you have some steps before final paper distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know steps and work process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Info gathering. Evernote and Notes - gathering information.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paper writing. Git and Text Editor - impressing thoughts and gathered information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paper publishers. MS Office Word and iBooks Author - publishing final paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors could save alternatives of chapters into some kind of Git. ( I think so )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe some necessary steps were missed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4430" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T18:42:48.047" Title="What software do you use before paper distribution?" Tags="|software|process|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23867" CreationDate="2016-07-25T22:51:14.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best thing you can do is try it one way, and if it doesn't work out, revise it as many times as necessary until it does. It sounds like you can come up with enough angles to try until you find something that suits the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19781" LastActivityDate="2016-07-25T22:51:14.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23937" CreationDate="2016-07-26T05:12:15.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't get that complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write non-fiction, which I'm sure is a different process from fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I start out by throwing a bunch of notes into an MS Word document. Basically a collection of &quot;here are things I want to talk about&quot;. Initially I don't worry about order, structure or consistency. For some things I may just put a sentence or a headline. For another point where I have specific words in my head, I might write several paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I have a bunch of such notes, so that I think I basically have every main idea I want to cover, I group related ideas with some cut-and-paste and put in chapter and section titles. Then I arrange the chapters and sections into a rational order. Then I go throw my notes, generally front to back, and pad out all my notes into full sentences and paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have occasionally thought of using SVN or a similar product to save working versions, but I've never seen enough value to it to actually bother. I'm a software developer by profession so I'm quite familiar with library managers. For programming it makes a lot of sense: You have a history of when changes were made and why. If many people are working on a project, you can see who made what change. If a program used to be working and now is broken, you can go back to the working version. None of these apply to writing a book. I don't produce a &quot;working version&quot; of a book and then make incremental changes to it. Even if I did, there isn't a clear distinction between &quot;working&quot; and &quot;not working&quot; like there is in software: in real life, I can't imagine saying, &quot;Oh, a reader has pointed out a mistake in my book. I'd better hastily restore to an earlier version that doesn't have this mistake, and then rework the changes until they are correct.&quot; Etc. I do occasionally make back-up copies of a draft, mostly so that if I make some clumsy mistake in editing, like accidentally deleting a chapter, I can get it back. Maybe this is a lazy version of a repository.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see what the advantage would be of writing a book with a plain text editor and then later migrating it to MS Word (or some other word processing program). If I'm going to put in italics or block quotes or whatever formatting, it seems a whole lot easier to do it as I'm going alone then to have it all in plain text and go back and add the formatting later. As I'm writing it, I know what formatting I want. If I tried to put it in later I'd have to figure it out all over again. I suppose if you're going to keep your book in Git or whatever, repository software works a whole lot better with plain text than with a docx.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never used &quot;note keeping&quot; software. It seems to me a whole lot easier to just throw all my notes into MS Word, and then when I'm writing the book, I just edit the notes as I go along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For books, when I've got the text complete and I'm happy with it, I export it to PDF to send to the printer or publisher. For magazine articles, the magazine usually wants to be able to edit, so they want them in Word or something editable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if I have illustrations I'll use some sort of drawing software. Usually CorelDraw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always on mechanical things like this, I'm happy to drone on about the process I use and why I like it, but it comes down to, What works for you? I know writers who prefer to write on paper and not put it on the computer until they have a good draft. I find this incredibly awkward -- you lose all the advantages of the editing features of the software, the ability to easily backspace and fix a mistake, switch sentences or paragraphs around, etc. But I guess these folks find that having to manipulate the software distracts them from the creative flow of writing. If it works for you, than fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T05:12:15.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23928" CreationDate="2016-07-26T05:34:44.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dittos to Cary C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd add that if words in a name are being used as common words and the meanings of those words are relevant, I'd probably translate, while if they are just sounds, I'd transliterate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To use a Roman alphabet example for simplicity: Suppose I was writing a history book and wanted to mention the German leader, Friedrich der Große. I would almost surely translate this &quot;Frederick the Great&quot;. That is, I would translate &quot;der Große&quot; to &quot;the Great&quot;, but I would translate/transliterate &quot;Friedrich&quot; to the common English equivalent, &quot;Frederick&quot;. The name &quot;Friedrich&quot; comes from German roots meaning &quot;peaceful ruler&quot;, but I have never seen an English writer refer to Friedrich der Große as &quot;the Great Peaceful Ruler&quot;. Likewise, I have never seen an English writer call him &quot;Frederick the Gross&quot;, which would in a sense be a fair transliteration but would completely obscure the meaning of the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if I was translating a company name that meant, say, &quot;Delicious Fruit Corporation&quot;, I'm sure I'd translate that. But if the company used made-up words, I wouldn't try to hack out the root. Like if I was translating &quot;Microsoft&quot; to another language, I'd transliterate, I wouldn't try to translate &quot;micro&quot; and &quot;soft&quot;. Even more so if I was translating &quot;Ford&quot;: the word &quot;ford&quot; means a place where you can wade across a river, but that has nothing to do with what the company is about, so I wouldn't look for a word in the target language for a river crossing. I'd just transliterate &quot;Ford&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work on a lot of web sites that get translated into foreign languages, including Far East languages. We usually leave company names in the Roman alphabet, and so will have a string of, say, Japanese characters, than a company name in English, then more Japanese characters. Personally I think this looks very strange, but that's what the translators do. On the other hand, when we have Chinese, Japanese, or Korean companies, for the native language version, of course the name is in, say, Japanese, but for the English version, it gets translated or transliterated into English. I guess far easterners are more accepting of English names stuck in the middle of text in their native language, than English speakers are of the reverse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T05:34:44.080" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-26T09:34:39.430" Score="2" ViewCount="921" Body="&lt;p&gt;So much of communication is nonverbal - facial expressions, body language. Often, it's entirely clear what somebody is thinking and conveying even if they aren't saying a word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I portray this in fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These can be such powerful moments (and, in TV and film, often are). But all the &quot;easy options&quot; I know seem to resort to telling the message instead of showing the emotion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Literally convert the nonverbal message into a verbal one:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The expression on her face said &quot;Get out &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe the nonverbal action in a way that just spells the emotion and message out for the reader:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She didn't say anything, only gazed at me pleadingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use established cliches that we already have strong associations for, and know precisely what they're meant to convey:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Do you want to--&quot; I began, but Maria was already rolling her eyes at me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just like every time Corrington dropped by to visit, Nate was grinding his teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are fine some of the time. But there are times when I want to have wordless communication, and to do it &lt;em&gt;well&lt;/em&gt;, vividly, engrossing the reader in the moment and not resorting to telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-07-26T09:47:57.387" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T19:26:35.890" Title="How do I convey messages that are clear, but unspoken?" Tags="|dialogue|description|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17476" CreationDate="2016-07-26T13:33:17.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is usually considered OK to cite the source once for a paragraph or page, and mentioning it in the footnote rather than bombarding the reader with note after note of the same source. As you said, you are aiming for readability and common sense, so once per paragraph or page would be ok, as long as you mention it in the footnote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19832" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T13:33:17.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23915" CreationDate="2016-07-26T16:12:44.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is now also available for iOS (the $19.99 app which is compatible with both Mac and Win desktop applications and allows you to sync the files over Dropbox), the features are subset, but still very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T16:12:44.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23861" CreationDate="2016-07-26T17:06:33.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to use chapter titles while I write, as a minimal outline, to keep track of the sequence of events in the story. Typical chapter titles for me look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(1) Boarding the Lifeboat&#xA;(2) Saying Goodbye&#xA;(3) Party at the Chinese Embassy&#xA;(4) Driving Off a Cliff&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They work for me as an author, keeping track of my story, but they're terrible for readers, because they summarize the events of the chapter before the reader has a chance to actually &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; those details for herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when I export my final manuscript, I strongly prefer to just use numerical chapter titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But having said that, if my chapter titles were less utilitarian and a bit more poetic, I'd be happy to include them in the final output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6665" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T17:06:33.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23946" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24008" CreationDate="2016-07-26T17:52:13.263" Score="2" ViewCount="768" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to create a table of contents in Scrivener 2.7 on Mac OS X. I know there is an &quot;Edit &gt; Copy Special &gt; Copy Documents as ToC&quot; command that allows you to paste a static list of links to the copied pages. My problem is that the formatting for the ToC is horribly off and I can't change it.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YZpGd.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YZpGd.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I change the text size, text just gets smaller, formatting stays the same. Deleting spaces before the &quot;??&quot; just causes the number to jump right behind the headline. Caps and newlines go straight back to the position beneath the headline. Spaces are possible but first every single line needs to be individually filled with spaces and second it looks as bad, since distance will still be off for individual numbers by some pixels. And than there is still the problem that it does't even display the page numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19835" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T07:07:15.660" Title="ToC formating impossible with Scrivener" Tags="|formatting|scrivener|table-of-contents|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23942" CreationDate="2016-07-27T01:44:07.947" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a (first or third person) limited perspective, you could show the POV character's emotional state through the descriptive details she considers noteworthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps one of the most brilliantly executed examples I can recall for this would be the (French) poem &lt;a href=&quot;https://whitegoo5e.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/poetry-jacques-prevert-dejeuner-du-matin-english-translation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Déjeuner du matin&quot;&lt;/a&gt; by Jacques Prévert. It begins:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He poured the coffee&lt;br&gt; Into the cup&lt;br&gt; He put the milk&lt;br&gt; Into the&#xA;  cup of coffee&lt;br&gt; He put the sugar&lt;br&gt; Into the coffee with milk&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  With a small spoon&lt;br&gt; He churned&lt;br&gt; He drank the coffee&lt;br&gt; And he&#xA;  put down the cup&lt;br&gt; Without any word to me&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that the unnamed &quot;he&quot; is important to our POV character because of the detailed focus she holds on his actions. And while we do not know why, we know she is separated from him through his inactions, neither looking at her nor speaking to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is not a single line of dialogue, but we feel her pain. And at the end, yes, she cries, which may be cliché, but by that point you're ready to cry with her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19841" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-07-27T06:59:16.040" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T06:59:16.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23942" CreationDate="2016-07-27T02:57:51.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You tell it. Show vs tell has become a monster that is twisting fiction out of any recognizable shape. While it is often good advice for particular passages, telling is a fundamental part of the novelist's art. It it the great privilege we have over the movies. As E. M. Forster pointed out, it is what allows us to show those things that go on in the head that are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; reflected in action. These are very important human things. Sometimes we feel deeply but show nothing. Movies cannot portray this very important human characteristic. It leads to a certain shallowness in movies: they are all surface. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Show vs tell&quot; originated as advice to novelists trying to write screenplays. Movies are a visual medium and therefore the story must be carried by the visuals, by what is shown. The novel is a verbal medium. The story can and often should be carried by what is told. A novelist trying to write a screenplay needs to find a different way of telling a story. But the novelist trying to write a novel is not bound by any such restrictions. And the novelist lacks so many of the visual and auditory tools that the movie maker has, that if they give up their own tools and attempt to emulate movie storytelling without any of the movie directory's tools, they are going to be in trouble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that the author of a movie is not the screenwriter but the director. In the novel, it is the writer who gets to sit in the big chair. A novelist should master and use the tools of their own trade: storytelling with words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T02:57:51.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23950" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-27T03:17:18.577" Score="2" ViewCount="1017" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wanting a site where I can do any character development in a form with lots of questions. So far I have found a few android apps but they don't satisfy me(most of the good ones have a price). I have already found hiveword but are there any other free sites like it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character development is important for me in this Kepler Bb story because I have so many events with my characters. It would even be good if I could separate 1 character into different ages so that I could see development not just at that moment but over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would prefer it to be online like hiveword but it would also be nice if you gave me the names of good free android apps for this exact purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8607" LastActivityDate="2016-08-06T20:40:40.947" Title="Character development site free?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23952" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23954" CreationDate="2016-07-27T13:14:45.957" Score="8" ViewCount="1834" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like a utility that could analyze a document and give me stats like this:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;WORD:           FREQUENCY:&#xA;a               47,268&#xA;the             37,201&#xA;gross           215&#xA;irregardlessly  1  &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know if this is available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, I'd rather not use an online tool. Call me paranoid, but uploading my unpublished novel to the internet, to me, would be akin to walking down main street with nothing but a condom on. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18990" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-17T03:49:30.860" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T03:49:30.860" Title="Programs that analyze word frequency?" Tags="|editing|software|tools|text-analysis|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23530" CreationDate="2016-07-27T14:19:56.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears that while there are echoing themes in both plots, they are still unrelated with the exception of a common deity. In that sense all stories set in a world of Christianity have something in common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The traditional relationship between a plot and subplot is usually more intertwined: detective John Doe is searching for a serial killer, finds him and arrests him (plot). At the same time his ex-wife Jane asks him to help her move. While loading the truck they rekindle their relationship and get back together (subplot).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can read each of your stories separately and both hold as stand-alone pieces, it means they do not need really each other to complete themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that I would like to emphasize that I do not in any way question your artistic choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many brilliant examples of seemingly independent stories (Bulgakov's &quot;Master and Margarita&quot; for example) delivered side by side with little or no correlation. It is all up to you after all, so why worry about labeling one &quot;plot&quot; and another &quot;subplot&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T14:19:56.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23952" CreationDate="2016-07-27T15:20:35.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My beloved &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; does the job beautifully. Paste your text in and then go under Project —&gt; Text Statistics and it gives you the list you're looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other people on this board have recommended &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.supermagnus.com/mac/Word_Counter/download.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Word Counter&lt;/a&gt; (Mac) and both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.primitivezone.com/primitive-word-counter.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Primitive Word Counter&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;yWriter&lt;/a&gt; (Windows), but I cannot speak to their utility as I've never used them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T15:20:35.560" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23942" CreationDate="2016-07-27T15:48:11.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmm, seems to me that you've summarized the options pretty well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) You can describe the physical action and rely on the reader to understand what it means. &quot;She stared at me and frowned.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) You can have the narrator explain the meaning. &quot;'Hey George, it's 5:00, workday is over', I said. And he looked at me, and I could tell by the look in his eyes that he wanted to go to Harry's Donut Shop and order a Boston creme donut and a cup of coffee with hazelnut creamer, and sip it slowly while he read a novel, probably that new novel by Tom Clancy. But it was clear from the set of his jaw that he knew he couldn't, and that he'd have to go straight home, where his wife would probably tell him that the dishwasher was broken again and he'd have to fix it.&quot; (Well, okay, maybe you can't tell THAT much from non-verbal communication.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(c) You can clarify the meaning of a non-verbal communication by other character's reactions. Like, &quot;Sally stared at George. 'Hey,' George said, 'I'm sorry. I didn't realize it would make you this angry.'&quot; Now we know it's an angry stare and not a puzzled stare, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, I'm not sure what other options there are. You either have the narrator explain, have a character explain it, or no one explains it and it's up to the reader to figure it out. I don't think there's some other magic solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T15:48:11.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23942" CreationDate="2016-07-27T19:26:35.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The thousand yard stare. I was standing right in front of him but I might as well have an oak.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words tell the story from your point of view(1st person) thus &quot;saying&quot; nothing but what is on people's minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can be used to great effect when words are in fact spoken. (Drama)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T19:26:35.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23957" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-27T23:13:08.277" Score="3" ViewCount="51841" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really have problems giving the military nation of my protagonist a unique, but also serious name that fits into the whole military nation thing. So here are my questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What makes a name sound unrealistic (or unserious/unbelievable)? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do I prevent such dilemmas in the future? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to hear any names, I'd just like to see how I could get more ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16382" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T03:14:51.080" LastActivityDate="2021-11-17T13:32:37.510" Title="How to create a good name for a fictional nation in my story?" Tags="|naming|setting|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23957" CreationDate="2016-07-28T05:20:34.763" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hollywood and British Film &amp;amp; TV industry often chops existing names or provinces together&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buranda - African&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brungaria - Eastern European&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Elbonia - Balkans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Corto Maltese - South American&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kyrzbekistan - Central Asia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Genovia - Europe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_countries&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_countries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also Country name generators online. Click till you find one you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pick a foreign-sounding word you like the sound of e.g. sorelle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change a consonant for effect e.g. germanic military use harsh sounds so &amp;quot;sorek&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change a vowel e.g. &amp;quot;sorok&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add nationalistic trimmings e.g. People's Democratic Republic of Sorok&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check google for meanings in other languages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;swear words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unintended meanings &amp;quot;pee cola&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19655" LastEditorUserId="19655" LastEditDate="2021-11-16T22:54:27.877" LastActivityDate="2021-11-16T22:54:27.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23881" CreationDate="2016-07-28T08:45:25.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can potentially make a living as a novelist, but you have to reassess what that means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a novel is as much a part of being a novelist as slicing people up is being a surgeon. If someone else publishes your work then book sales are a trifling part of your income unless you are extremely popular. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly you need to promote yourself and the book. You can sell your own books, give talks, do radio, judge competitions, run a digital marketing campaign, or make appearances at festivals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next you need to use your writing skills to make money. This means teaching writing, running workshops, editing or developing books with others, or writing articles for a few hundred dollars a pop (if that). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you supplement an income with prizes, grants, competitions, and writing residencies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a novelist is like any other serious profession. It's full-time, it involves a lot of tedium, and it takes a few years of training and not getting paid before you make any money. To make writing novels exclusively into a living (not many 'writers' do this) you either need to be talented enough to get grants or hardworking enough to market your own work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of people overplay the level of luck involved. Are you seriously talented and capable of being original? Are you happy to work 50 hours a week? Can you write half a million words a year? Will you be constantly creating working and promoting it? Are you content to earn less than a manager at Starbucks? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of being a novelist like trying to become a professional athlete. Do you think you can get into the Olympics by just playing basketball once a week with your friends? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18610" LastActivityDate="2016-07-28T08:45:25.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5590" CreationDate="2016-07-28T13:32:22.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An ancient question, but I've an updated suggestion. Final Draft is only useful for script formatting, submission, and production. It is not designed for collaboration or multi-party editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest writing a draft in Final Draft. Then convert to fountain (a Markdown-like text format see fountain.io) and import into Word or Google Docs for collaboration and revision. I prefer Google Docs myself, but keep the fountain syntax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally when the next draft is &quot;finalised&quot;, turn revision marks off and save the text back to fountain format. Convert back to Final Draft and you have Draft 2 in Final Draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used this procedure many times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively &lt;a href=&quot;https://writerduet.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writer Duet&lt;/a&gt; has amazing collaboration tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also Final Draft from version 9 recommends desktop screen sharing via join.me for live online collaboration (&lt;em&gt;yuck&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt; even FD11 built in collaboration still sucks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19655" LastEditorUserId="19655" LastEditDate="2019-11-21T02:27:13.130" LastActivityDate="2019-11-21T02:27:13.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23963" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-28T17:11:26.370" Score="4" ViewCount="1661" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing fiction and dialogue tags, I find myself using the word &quot;said&quot; approximately 1-1.5 times a page (or every 250 words or so), and the word &quot;asked&quot; slightly more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is (around) the average frequency of the words &quot;said&quot; and &quot;asked&quot; and other common dialogue tags in popular fiction? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is my current rate of said/asked average, below average or above average?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is &quot;said&quot; and &quot;asked&quot; favorable over fancier dialogue tags or should the more elaborate dialogue tags be used more than simple dialogue tags?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I realize it all depends on how it's being said and that sometimes elaborate dialogue tags are redundant, but in general what would be recommended?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19857" LastEditorUserId="11428" LastEditDate="2016-08-02T03:02:43.477" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T05:15:59.430" Title="How many times should I use the word &quot;said&quot; in one page?" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|wordcount|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23963" CreationDate="2016-07-29T11:02:19.187" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no standard number of &quot;saids per page.&quot; Use it when you need to let the user know who's talking. Not on every quote, but whenever clarity is needed. (Less often when two people are speaking, more often when more than two are speaking.) Have your readers mark the spots where they get confused about who's saying what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be shy with them. Readers tend to barely register that word. They're much more interested in the dialog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T11:02:19.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23957" CreationDate="2016-07-29T13:34:48.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at names of real countries in the region where you are setting your fictional country, and try to match the pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, there are several real countries in south Asia with names ending in &quot;-stan&quot;, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Kazakhstan. So a name ending in &quot;-stan&quot; would sound plausible. Several countries in Europe have names ending &quot;-ia&quot;, like Romania and Slovakia. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know the language, or with a little help from an on-line translator, you can come up with a name that means something. Unless this is a humor book or an allegory, I wouldn't use a name that means &quot;evil tyrant&quot; or something like that, a name no one is likely to actually give to their own country. More something like &quot;Transylvania&quot;, meaning &quot;land beyond the forest&quot;; &quot;Australia&quot;, from &quot;Terra Australis&quot; meaning &quot;southern land&quot;; or a Chinese friend once told me that &quot;Taiwan&quot; means &quot;beautiful bay&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to match the &quot;sound&quot; of real country names. It occurs to me that a gotcha would be to have a letter in the name of your country that represents a sound not found in the languages of that region, like having an &quot;L&quot; sound in a country where people speak Chinese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T13:34:48.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23963" CreationDate="2016-07-29T14:41:42.610" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to use &quot;said&quot; as little as possible, because said doesn't communicate anything aside from speech. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are talking in any particular manner, try to use a different verb to present the way they are talking, like &quot;shouted&quot; or &quot;whispered&quot; or &quot;muttered&quot;, so on and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are times when character really are simply talking, with nothing particularly extraordinary happening in their language (or body language). That is why you shouldn't really count your &quot;saids&quot; through number, and more through scenes. You can have scenes where your character blandly talk to each other, but you should try to make every single scene feel relevant, and present a little bit about your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't count number of &quot;saids&quot;, count number of scenes where characters are simply &quot;saying&quot; things, as there are many ways to present personality in the speech of a character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19342" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T14:41:42.610" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3489" CreationDate="2016-07-29T20:18:33.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wrestling with this issue right now. It is annoying to see a long, long URL, but equally annoying to see meaningless short URLs (beginning 'bit.ly,' which I mistakenly took to be malware sites at first). Since Bitly now allows customized short URLs, how about this as a citation: &quot;Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 41, Part 3, 423. Google eBooks [shortened URL] &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/OfficialRecords-I-43-3-Eli-Long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bit.ly/OfficialRecords-I-43-3-Eli-Long&lt;/a&gt; . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short URL indicates the source, and replaces this monstrosity: &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=xcVZAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA423&amp;amp;lpg=PA423&amp;amp;dq=col.+eli+long+and+waterhouse%27s+house&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=ZrL5PI1rYe&amp;amp;sig=46cfvONeV8KIjIJmGFeLMgLH6DY&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0ahUKEwix9JGPt5nOAhVM5yYKHRjyDRAQ6AEIJzAC#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=col.%20eli%20long%20and%20waterhouse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://books.google.com/books?id=xcVZAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA423&amp;amp;lpg=PA423&amp;amp;dq=col.+eli+long+and+waterhouse%27s+house&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=ZrL5PI1rYe&amp;amp;sig=46cfvONeV8KIjIJmGFeLMgLH6DY&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0ahUKEwix9JGPt5nOAhVM5yYKHRjyDRAQ6AEIJzAC#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=col.%20eli%20long%20and%20waterhouse&lt;/a&gt;'s%20house&amp;amp;f=false . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long URL produced a broken link anyway, because Google used the (') character. Some eBooks have even longer URLs, so I need this common-sense solution. For my current project, this is my decision to make, but for a formal thesis or publication, would it be acceptable? Chicago Style allows a good bit of leeway. MLA Style is less flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19875" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T20:18:33.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23969" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23990" CreationDate="2016-07-29T20:41:34.847" Score="2" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;While researching computer &amp;amp; tech investigations, hwich my novel is about, I stumbled across headlines for baby-cam intrusions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My premise would be that someone hacks the baby-cam of the prince of the country which is used so his father who is very busy can glance at his royal baby when he feels like (the mother died).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've already seen &lt;em&gt;CSI: Cyber&lt;/em&gt; during my research, but all the comments say that it's full of inaccuracies, which I would like to avoid. More precisely it would be about how to find the right places and forums to seek technical information about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: How to research what kind of evidence such an intrusion would leave from the procedure and different watch devices? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9949" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T00:54:53.407" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T00:54:53.407" Title="Rewriting about a baby-cam intrusion" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|research|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23969" CreationDate="2016-07-30T14:32:29.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I suggest you research hacking things like electric road signs, wifi toasters, etc.? I did read an article about all the different types of devices that had been hacked, how it was done and the sort of evidence that is left. (I can't find that article but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/12/30/the_internet_of_things_is_a_long_way_from_being_secure.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; should get you started.) You could look at security posts about the Internet of Things on sites like dzone.com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest, from your point of view, way to get access would be to get the password. Then the traces would be how they got the password.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-07-30T14:32:29.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23972" CreationDate="2016-07-30T16:25:38.403" Score="6" ViewCount="1075" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a plot bunny lingering in my head about a rag-tag band of defective cyborgs facing off against a god-like supercomputer. I've outlined a great deal but I'm frequently finding that it's difficult to come up with clever ways that the group wins against the antagonist because... how does one defeat something that's all-knowing and god-like? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In this case, the supercomputer was originally created to do everything it can to increase the profit margin of a certain company, so it's specialized in things like game theory and anticipating people's motives and actions, and it has since become out-of-control, power-hungry, and unsympathetic to the human (and cyborg) condition.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am having trouble coming up with any weakness for the antagonist that doesn't seem like a cop out. I'm not all-knowing or god-like (surprise), plus I'm not a computer scientist and research is only getting me so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I go about developing my plot ideas, despite my lack of computer science background, without breaking believability for the reader or forcing some unsatisfying &lt;em&gt;deus ex machina&lt;/em&gt; ending?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plot ideas or prompts are fine, encouraged even, but &lt;strong&gt;what are the tools or skills required to get past this blockage?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19880" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-22T13:32:14.803" LastActivityDate="2019-10-02T09:31:52.647" Title="How do I plot the defeat of an all-knowing, god-like antagonist?" Tags="|technique|plot|science-fiction|antagonist|deus-ex-machina|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23971" CreationDate="2016-07-30T16:57:33.883" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are doing what I do sometimes - focusing on the finding a weakness in the defences of the antagonist rather than asking where the protagonist is in any way better or different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greek Tragedy might be of help here. They had a concept called Hamartia - a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine. Which sounds like what you are looking for. Often this flaw was because of rather than in spite of the strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, the computer is unfeeling towards humanity and therefore lacks empathy. As long as the human units act in their own best interests, the AI wins. But, what if the humans and cyborgs act against their interests, or act randomly, or are utterly illogical? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if the protagonists act from the emotions that the computer does not understand? Surely then it would be at the least surprised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At heart, your story sounds like an exploration of the human condition, albeit in a really interesting sci-fi that I would love to read. Here your cyborg gang's best attribute is that they do have empathy, they do feel pain and they are not always logical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the AI is designed to manage the odds and minimise risk. The emotional human types would, on the other hand, be willing to gamble on unpredictable outcomes. They might be willing to try hopeless, million-to-one, shots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could, for example, this lead to an act of self-sacrifice that brings a faction, unexpectedly (for the cynical god-like AI) to side with the protagonists? Does it inspire self-sacrifice in others? Does the AI have any defense against such actions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the protagonists randomise things so that neither side has any idea what will happen? Or at the very least leave the outcome somewhat open to chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The AI is built around understanding gain but it would have a limited understanding of the human ability to willingly lose, give up in the face of apparent victory, or stubborn refusal to take a path of apparent gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, there was a Star Trek episode where Data won a game by refusing to take any path of advancement until his opponent rage quit. He points out &quot;I did not win, he quit&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could the emotional humans provoke an emotional act of frustration in the AI?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could the cyborgs create so much chaos that the AI has to devote increasing amounts of runtime to calculating what will happen whereas the human protagonists simply go with the flow and hope for the best? Could they, perhaps, do this so much that the AI is locked up with calculations and no longer paying attention somewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is lots you could do with this, I think. I hope I have given you a few ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: The &quot;skills&quot; required here are simply the ability to think in new ways about the differences between the protagonist and the antagonist and make that the &quot;battlefield&quot;. Especially, any area where a character's strength might also be a weakness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="7926" LastEditDate="2016-07-31T12:53:14.000" LastActivityDate="2016-07-31T12:53:14.000" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23969" CreationDate="2016-07-30T17:15:04.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are asking about are &lt;strong&gt;computer forensics&lt;/strong&gt; which is where us geeks are tasked with figuring out what went wrong after the fact. There is so much to know that for story telling purposes it might simply be best to have a wise lab geek say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I won't bore you with the details, we are waiting on legal for an address but it looks like the intruder might have been based in [Rough Location]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the time, prosecuting a hack boils down to identifying an IP address and then using the courts to subpoena the name, address and telephone number of the bill payer from the ISP. So work with that and let the technical expert keep the details to himself somewhat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information on computer forensics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_forensics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_forensics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://courses.southwales.ac.uk/courses/563-bsc-hons-computer-forensics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://courses.southwales.ac.uk/courses/563-bsc-hons-computer-forensics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://forensiccontrol.com/resources/beginners-guide-computer-forensics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://forensiccontrol.com/resources/beginners-guide-computer-forensics/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/computing-and-ict/introduction-computer-forensics-and-investigations/content-section-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/computing-and-ict/introduction-computer-forensics-and-investigations/content-section-0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find something in that lot that could inspire your imagination. But failing that, there are ways to have technical information given to a  non-technical character without knowing the specifics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lab guy kept talking but all Bill was hearing was gobbledygook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Anyway,&quot; said Mr Labman, &quot;Here's the address.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much you want to make that a feature of the story depends on you as a writer. The take away is you might not need to know all that much about something to have it feature in a story. If something is a mystery to you let it be a mystery to your protagonist too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also simply have the protagonist elsewhere when the technical conversation starts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bill came into the room with a frown on his face. &quot;What's going on,&quot; he asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Please don't make him repeat all that,&quot; begged Sam. &quot;Long story short, we have an address.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Let's go,&quot; said Bill. &quot;You can explain on the way.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not suggesting you avoid all technical explanation. The story needs to be believable but sometimes it pays to have one non-technical person explain the details to another non-technical person. Then, anything you get wrong was actually the non-expert getting it wrong and was really (&quot;honest&quot;) character portrayal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; This is pretty much what happened recently: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/security-camera-hack-in-childrens-bedroom_uk_57adc7f6e4b01f97d8f296e4?vue8bq8vuyqy9cnmi&amp;amp;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/security-camera-hack-in-childrens-bedroom_uk_57adc7f6e4b01f97d8f296e4?vue8bq8vuyqy9cnmi&amp;amp;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="7926" LastEditDate="2016-08-12T15:24:36.657" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T15:24:36.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23975" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23978" CreationDate="2016-07-30T21:46:28.920" Score="2" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some sentences where I am unsure whether a colon or semi-colon would be best, as they seem to lie somewhere in the middle of the colon or semi-colon rule. Any advice about the example sentences below and which punctuation to use would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There is no doubt; the man in the pictures is my Jack.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Her insinuation is right; I am here under ambiguous circumstances.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a colon better in the sentences above or is the semi-colon fine? I have gone with the semi-colon but for some reason it seems a little awkward to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I’ve seen it with my own eyes: otherwise fully-functioning women who choose to ignore the truth so that their lives don’t implode.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a colon fine here (or would perhaps an em dash be better)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I look around me; the road is quiet apart from occasional cars that thunder past in either direction.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would a full stop be better here or is a semi-colon okay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The things that John has just told me stab at my consciousness: Sarah's affairs, David's lies, the investigation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here we are introducing a list, but not directly. Is a colon appropriate in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A list that is not introduced clearly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I study every inch of his face as if seeing him for the first time: his sharp cheekbones, wide-set eyes and the scar on his jaw.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would an em-dash be better here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;My eyes dart to the alarm clock next to our bed: 6.12 p.m.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a colon possible here or should I just use a full-stop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T18:19:56.003" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T18:19:56.003" Title="Subtleties in colon/semi-colon use" Tags="|fiction|style|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23976" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-30T21:47:31.640" Score="1" ViewCount="494" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering whether it's necessary to use commas in the sentences below when addressing or introducing someone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You look after each other, okay children?&quot;&lt;br&gt; “You look after each&#xA;  other, okay, children?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which version would be better or are both fine depending on whether there is a pause in speech?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'll have a sparkling water, please, sir.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should there be a comma before sir (or does it make the sentence stilted?) or should it be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'll have a sparkling water, please sir.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I turn to see my friend James Grand walking towards me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should it be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I turn to see my friend, James Grand, walking towards me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same vein:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He and his elder sister Evie once looked after us...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should it be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He and his elder sister, Evie, once looked after us...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar question is regarding commas and the introduction of a name with the possessive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We are attending our friends', John and Crystal's, engagement party.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should it be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We are attending our friends John and Crystal's engagement party.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice on these points would be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T17:05:12.573" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T17:05:12.573" Title="Comma before names of people or titles" Tags="|style|grammar|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23975" CreationDate="2016-07-31T02:49:15.637" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;True--there are certainly situations where the use of such punctuation is nuanced.  Assuming you know the grammatical rules associated with them, then it all comes down to style, tone and pace. When in doubt, I always pull out my trusty Strunk and White.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding colons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The colon has more effect than the comma, less power to separate than the semicolon, and more formality than the dash. ...Join two independent clauses if the second interprets or amplifies the first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Semicolons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...it suggests the close relationship between the two statements in a way that [using a period] does not attempt, and better than [using a comma and conjunction] because it is briefer and therefore more forcible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dashes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A dash is a mark of separation stronger than a comma, less formal than a colon, and more relaxed than parentheses. ...Use a dash only when a more common mark of punctuation seems inadequate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Above quotes from &lt;em&gt;The Elements of Style&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that said, the choice of punctuation rests heavily on the importance of the information that precedes it. Combine this with the narrative flow of the surrounding sentences and the tone you're trying to achieve, and you have a nice selection of options from which to choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per your example sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There is no doubt; the man in the pictures is my Jack.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although both clauses are complete sentences, the first clause benefits from the second clause to interpret or amplify why there is no doubt. So here I would use a colon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Her insinuation is right; I am here under ambiguous circumstances.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The semicolon seems fine here, depending on context. The second clause is closely related to the first, but if the fact that her understanding that you're here under ambiguous circumstances is a huge revelation then the colon would also be appropriate. A period is technically correct but it halts the flow of the two sentences, which could be useful for dramatic effect if put into their own paragraph but runs the risk of annoying the reader if not necessarily important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I’ve seen it with my own eyes: otherwise fully-functioning women who choose to ignore the truth so that their lives don’t implode.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second clause cannot stand alone as its own sentence, so a semicolon is out of the question. The colon is appropriate here, and works well because the second clause interprets the &quot;it&quot; in the first clause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I look around me; the road is quiet apart from occasional cars that thunder past in either direction.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The semicolon is technically correct, but I think a dash would serve the sentence well. It is more immediate than the semicolon and helps the reader put themselves in the narrator's shoes as they &quot;look around.&quot; The semicolon adds an extra pause that makes the description seem less connected to the action. This is matter of style, but I vote for the dash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The things that John has just told me stab at my consciousness: Sarah's affairs, David's lies, the investigation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Colon is a must. The list can't stand alone, so no semicolon. For dramatic effect, you could end the first clause with a period and also use periods instead of commas for each item in the list, should the situation call for it. This would make the items appear more like stream-of-consciousness thoughts channeled straight from the character. Tone allows you to break a few rules, but it always, &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; depends on context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I study every inch of his face as if seeing him for the first time: his sharp cheekbones, wide-set eyes and the scar on his jaw.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same rules for the previous sentence apply here. If this is a dramatic moment, such as a character realizing s/he has feelings for the other, you could definitely use a dash instead of the colon, as you suggested. You could also do something like this:  &quot;I study every inch of his face as if seeing him for the first time. His sharp cheekbones. His wide-set eyes. The scar on his jaw.&quot; The periods add a pause to each feature in such a way that mimics the act of actually studying a person's face. Taking in specific details of a face would suggest that you take a good, long look at these features. Using a comma makes it seem like the character is glossing over them in a way that seems less genuine. But again, this always depends on context. Periods would slow the pace way down and may not be what you need here, and the dash would be just fine. Without the dash or periods, though, the sentence could a little too ordinary for the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;My eyes dart to the alarm clock next to our bed: 6.12 p.m.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colon is appropriate, but I agree with you that a full stop with a period after the first clause would be better, especially if the time holds some significance other than just being a background detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned before, context is king when determining what to use, but also consider pace of the story and the tone you're trying to convey. Use your instincts to decide which punctuation serves your story best. Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19880" LastEditorUserId="19880" LastEditDate="2016-07-31T02:54:17.170" LastActivityDate="2016-07-31T02:54:17.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-31T03:37:51.730" Score="1" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to find a Print on Demand (POD) outfit that will print my book without an ISBN, as I do not want to sell my work through any outlet, print or electronic.  I just want copies to have and give to friends and family.  What do I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19888" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T15:01:10.363" Title="Printing or Private Use" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23530" CreationDate="2016-07-31T13:32:18.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no rule, set in stone, that a novel must have a single coherent plot; nor any law that demands that one thread be &quot;the plot&quot; and another only &quot;the subplot&quot;. Indeed, there is something to be said for an artist taking conventions and breaking them quite deliberately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said having two plots, either side-by-side or one-after-the-other, already has their own conventions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the works of Arthur Conan Doyle. For example, A Study in Scarlet (although others followed this pattern). As novels, they essentially carry two separate stories. The first story is that of the famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, but the second story (in the case of A Study in Scarlet) is only tangentially related and does not involve Mr Holmes at all. In each case, the reader should eventually realise that the second story is a flashback explaining the history of the victim from the first story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither story is a &quot;subplot&quot;. At least, not in any way that we understand subplots. This is two thematically linked stories presented together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider, Inversions by Iain M. Banks. This story alternates, chapter by chapter, between two apparently unrelated characters. There could even be some debate as to if the two stories happened at the same time, or even on the same planet. Nevertheless it is a truly great read and I recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, neither plot is a &quot;subplot&quot;. Although there is some attempt to vaguely connect the two stories in the epilog nevertheless it is basically two plots in parallel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lew's answer gives additional examples of this artistic choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the great wealth of precedence for doing such, I would suggest that if this is the form that appeals to you then you should certainly use it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your own terminology, I could only call your pair of plots &quot;dual plots&quot;. Although, what they are called is not half as important as how you write them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2016-07-31T13:32:18.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23976" CreationDate="2016-07-31T15:29:57.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Commas in dialogue indicate pauses. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You look after each other, okay, children?&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &quot;I'll have a sparkling water, please, sir.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interrupter commas (I'm sure there's a technical name for this and I've forgotten it &amp;mdash; something like restrictive and non-restrictive clauses) are used for clarification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He and his elder sister, Evie, once looked after us...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means he has one elder sister, and her name is Evie. (The name Evie is non-restrictive here; if you removed it, the sentence would be okay because he only has one elder sister.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He and his elder sister Evie once looked after us...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means he has multiple elder sisters, and the one named Evie was the one who looked after us. (The name Evie is restrictive here &amp;mdash; he has more than one elder sister, and you must specify which one.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I turn to see my friend, James Grand, walking towards me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This emphasizes &lt;em&gt;my friend&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;James Grand&lt;/em&gt; clarifies that friend instead of some other friend. Non-restrictive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I turn to see my friend James Grand walking towards me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This emphasizes &lt;em&gt;James Grand&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;my friend&lt;/em&gt; is sort of his title. Restrictive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We are attending our friends John and Crystal's engagement party.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hate trying to sort out multiple possessives. Rewrite the sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are attending the engagement party of our friends, John and Crystal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-07-31T15:29:57.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23984" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-31T19:48:54.957" Score="1" ViewCount="209" Body="&lt;p&gt;When can I go from thwarting, to destroying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, say the protagonist was working towards a goal, but towards the end they killed the people they had spent the novel with, as they became so obsessed with the desire and didn't want to be stopped. The threat was not destroyed, their friends were dead, and they were left to well, be insane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would doing something like that be way beyond thwarting the readers hopes, and destroying their enjoyment of the novel? Its pretty obvious that the protagonist would reach their goal from the start, so, I was thinking about destroying it. Is going to that point too far, or would it be more sensible to let them have their goal, but at a price?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T16:45:13.177" Title="Is it a good idea to thwart everything?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23984" CreationDate="2016-07-31T20:11:49.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you want a happy ending, or a downer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you want to explore the idea that &quot;winning&quot; or &quot;achieving the&#xA;goal&quot; can come at too high a price?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will your protagonist realize that it doesn't profit if s/he gains&#xA;the whole world, and loses his/her soul? Or will s/he stand cackling&#xA;amid the ashes clutching the prize regardless?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your protagonist become evil in the end (another antagonist) and&#xA;wind up getting taken out by another character?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How the &lt;em&gt;reader&lt;/em&gt; supposed to feel about the protagonist's pyrrhic&#xA;victory?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-07-31T20:11:49.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23979" CreationDate="2016-08-01T07:27:10.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you want to print without an ISBN just because you don't want to pay for one? Or is there some reason why you really don't want to have an ISBN on the cover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the issue is the cost, then Create Space and Lulu will give you an ISBN for free, making that a moot point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T07:27:10.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23969" CreationDate="2016-08-01T08:16:47.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think most baby monitors work with radio signals. Those would be very easy to hack: get close enough with a radio device that is tunable to the right frequencies, then scan through frequencies until you hear the signal. I'm sure you could look up somewhere what frequencies are allocated to such devices. Then someone with a little skill in electronics could modify an ordinary radio to receive the proper frequencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know there's no way to tell who has listened to a radio signal. There's no electronic trace that would be left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main trick I see would be that you'd have to get close enough to pick up the signal. These devices deliberately have a short range -- so that they don't interfere with each other. I just checked some ads and saw advertised ranges generally around several hundred feet. You might get caught because someone saw your car sitting in front of their house or that sort of thing. If you're talking about a prince, he likely has a big piece of property, so getting close enough to the house to pick up a signal might be an issue. If you have to break into the grounds to get close enough to the transmitter, obviously that creates all sorts of dangers of getting caught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some baby monitors encrypt the signal, presumably exactly to prevent others from listening in like this. In that case, you've have to somehow discover the encryption key. I don't have any idea how sophisticated the encryption is, so I can't say how hard it is to crack. Someone like a prince, who presumably has valid fears of kidnapping or assassination or just paparazzi, might well get a baby monitor that encrypts the signal. I'd assume that to a prince the extra cost would be a trivial issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the baby monitor is an internet device, it's a whole different story. I don't know what sort of security they have on internet baby monitors, whether they have passwords or whatever. But let's just talk about hacking internet devices in general. There are basically three ways (I can think of) to hack it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Method one: Connect to his network. If it's a Wifi network, you can make the physical connection from outside the house as long as you're in range of the signal. If the prince has no security on his wifi, this would be trivial. Hopefully he's not that foolish. Assuming he has a password or some such to connect to his network, you'd have to crack that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you gain access that way, his router should keep some record of accesses. Some routers keep long logs, but any router will keep track of any device that connected to the network. So if they checked, they'd know that someone connected. They'd know what IP his router assigned to you, but that's useless information. They'd know the machine ID of the device you used to connect. If someone had a registry somewhere of what machine IDs were sold to who, maybe they could track you down. I don't know if anyone keeps this information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he doesn't have a wifi network but relies on wired connections, you'd have to physically connect to his lines. That presumably involves breaking into his house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Method two: Connect over the Internet. This assumes that the baby monitor is accessible from outside the local network, but I guess if you're going to have an internet baby monitor, the idea is so that you can check on the baby while away from home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case you again have to gain access to his network, presumably enter some passwords or something. In this case his ISP and your ISP will have logs of the connection. They can track down your IP and probably determine your physical address. I presume that clever criminals have come up with ways to beat this: run messages through long, hard-to-trace routes or some such. There are &quot;anonymizer services&quot; created to let people hide their internet identity. The service would know who you really are, and if they're subpoenaed I presume they'd have to turn over the information. But if they're not in the same country, maybe they'd just say no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Method three: Sniff the lines. That is, intercept the signals travelling over the internet and listen in. I don't know how to actually do this, but I know it's done. Presumably if you do it right you leave no trace, because, like listening in on a radio signal, you're not sending any messages, you're just listening to someone else's messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T08:16:47.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23992" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-25T15:29:17.437" Score="1" ViewCount="38465" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you attribute it to whomever wrote the lyrics, or to who actually sings/speaks them?  Or it is simpler/more correct to just use the name of the band/group?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about a cover song?  Can you quote the covering singer/group if you prefer them (for whatever reason), or must it always go back to the original singer/writer/group?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The context is irrelevant (to me); whether I want to use a quoted lyric as something to relate to my personality (yearbook quote, online profile, etc.), or if I needed to include it in something formal (research, presentation, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19927" OwnerDisplayName="istrasci" LastEditorUserId="46563" LastEditDate="2021-12-24T04:39:39.320" LastActivityDate="2023-01-16T22:02:33.377" Title="What's the correct way to quote song lyrics?" Tags="|lyrics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23992" CreationDate="2016-08-01T12:57:47.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The context does actually matter. For something informal, such as an amusing poster, you would put the group or singer. For example, &quot;When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me ...&quot; you would attribute to The Beatles. However, in other contexts you would want to attribute it to the writer, Paul McCartney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting the name of a cover performer is quite acceptable in informal contexts, particularly if the cover version is more famous than the original. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T12:57:47.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23979" CreationDate="2016-08-01T15:01:10.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked in numerous printing companies and every single one of them would gladly print your book any way you want it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISBN's are not required by printers or authors (at least not if you are simply giving them away to friends and family); you'd simply supply your artwork/copy however you like.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a small run (read: qty. of books produced) and a small page count (less than 100 pages), you could conceivably get Kinko's or the UPS Store to print and bind using Plastic Coil or Wire-O binding.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a larger run (&gt;500 books?) and/or a larger page count, you'd most likely need to go to a commercial printer for Stitch, Perfect or Case binding. Mind you, they'll also likely be able to do what you could get done at a retailer as mentioned above with better quality, but at a greater cost.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be beneficial to quote your project both ways: through a retail establishment &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; a commercial printer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18990" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T15:01:10.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23976" CreationDate="2016-08-01T15:40:57.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pauses in speech often coincide with grammatically correct comma placement, but do not &lt;em&gt;necessarily&lt;/em&gt; do so. Using speech pauses as a rule for comma placement is a fallacy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/where-do-i-use-commas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grammar Girl&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;&quot;The 'put a comma everywhere you’d pause' idea is an unfortunately common myth.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address your first specific example, I believe that the word &quot;okay&quot; is actually the start of a new sentence, and I believe that the correct structure would be either:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“You look after each other. Okay, children?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;or:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;“You look after each other; okay, children?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(semicolons may link two sentences together to show that are related)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your second example,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;I'll have a sparkling water, please, sir.&quot; is correct.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The word &quot;please&quot; is non-restrictive, superfluous. The sentence works perfectly without it:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;I'll have a sparkling water, sir.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This means that the commas surrounding the &quot;please&quot; are necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18990" LastEditorUserId="18990" LastEditDate="2016-08-01T15:48:53.160" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T15:48:53.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23984" CreationDate="2016-08-01T16:45:13.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No! Not too far!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People have liked this kind of thing for thousands of years.  In the play &quot;Medea,&quot; the main character step by step destroys everything that was important to her including her own children.  It was written around 400 BC and has been continuously popular for over 2400 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other good examples are the character &quot;Jack&quot; in the movie &quot;The American&quot; where his life is on a downward spiral and ends with his likely death.  Also, Darth Vader is also a good example, although his story arc ends with his redemption at the last moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not everyone is going to like everything.  There are people who enjoy cozy mysteries, people who like horror, people who like stories with warm and fuzzy endings, and people who like tragedies that end in the protagonist's destruction.  As long as you have a passion for the story and you write it well, you can tell any story you want and there will be people who will enjoy it with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T16:45:13.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23997" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-01T18:04:49.897" Score="2" ViewCount="1433" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a question that's nagging me. I want to cite different authors from one edited anthology in Harvard style inline citations. Note, this is not for one particular quote, but throughout the paper I want to cite one author here and then another there. Do I just use the editor's name for the inline citation (Jones, ed. 2016: 114) or do I cite the particular author each time I do this (Robinson in Jones, ed., 2016: 114) in order to give each author I use his/her due?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19905" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T06:24:32.240" Title="How to cite multiple authors from one edited anthology Harvard style" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6707" CreationDate="2016-08-01T18:12:09.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have wrestled with this question as well,&#xA;and there was a time I didn't even know how to articulate the question &#xA;(which itself exhibits the problem).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem: You can read and hear words and understand what they mean, but when you need to formulate your own sentence, the words aren't available to you.  They may be on the tip of your tongue (if you're lucky); or they may be absent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could read and listen and I knew the meaning of the words I perceived.&#xA;I could do very well on verbal tests--especially multiple choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to phrase this problem of active versus passive vocabulary comes from the field of memory.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The difference is between &quot;recollection&quot; and &quot;recall,&quot; (I hope I'm not confusing the two terms or even misremembering one of them--that would be unhelpful).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that there is a clear difference between, say, a multiple choice quiz which provides you with a choice of 4 provided answers; and a quiz that demands you to come up with the correct answer yourself--either by writing it in the empty box or saying it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you intend to give a speech, then recognition will not help you.&#xA;You need to recall, not recognize.&#xA;Giving a speech is a very active activity, and requires you to recall;&#xA;whereas listening to someone give a speech is more passive, and requires you merely to recognize (or understand the input).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that I can perform well in recognition tests,&#xA;but I often can barely formulate a coherent sentence when I'm anxious or I've not communicated for a day or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are specific thingamabobs which I've noticed help me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reading any well-written passage, OUT LOUD.  I've used C.S. Lewis, an English translation of Kafka, and Shakespeare.  You might think that Shakespeare would not be very helpful, since his writing is filled with archaic, obscure words and may seem clunky--but reading it out loud seems to have a magical quality of dramatically improving my active vocabulary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reading any well-written passage, out loud IN YOUR MIND.  This has the same effect as #1, but you must HEAR a voice--any voice--in your mind as you read the words.  To be honest, I have no idea how this works, but it does.  When I used to speed-read, I read silently and fast.  But I stopped speed-reading on purpose because I noticed it seemed to relieve me of my active vocabulary.  Words were not easily accessible anymore.  I deliberately read books out loud, or heard a voice in my mind read it.  In fact, this impaired my comprehension during the reading, but it greatly improved my active vocabulary and sentence structure while talking.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reading the dictionary.  Unfortunately, it is hard to find an electronic dictionary you can read cover to cover.  You may need a paper one for this exercise.  I still have yet to find an online or e-book version of a dictionary which you can read from A to Z.  I have not even read beyond the letter B, but I have found that reading the dictionary indiscriminately always helps my active vocabulary (even beyond the letter I'm on).  It sounds boring, but it is a good exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19904" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T18:12:09.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-01T19:24:13.637" Score="0" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel of historical fiction containing a short scene in which the city of Kiev is bombed on the first day of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Twenty-two people were killed and 76 wounded in Kiev, according to official statistics. A 2011 Kiev newspaper article about this event mentions about ten specific targets that were bombed, and states &quot;production and military facilities&quot; and &quot;peaceful city districts&quot; were also bombed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written a scene in which bombs fall on a large group of people who are celebrating within a certain park, which I name. I do not know if any bombs &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; fell on this particular park. However, this one is germane to my story, and one of my characters is killed by a bomb blast there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: Is it &quot;permissible&quot; to name this park without knowing for certain if there were casualties there? Although I think that this falls under &quot;artistic license&quot; I would like to read some other opinions. Thank you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11398" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T02:30:10.567" Title="How much license is provided by artistic license?" Tags="|fiction|technique|research|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23963" CreationDate="2016-08-01T19:47:46.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Text analysis of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some standard Gutenberg texts&lt;/a&gt; using Mathematica:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;100N[Count[#,&quot;said&quot;]/Length@#]&amp;amp;@Quiet@Flatten[#[[1]]&amp;amp;@(ToLowerCase/@DeleteCases[StringSplit@StringReplace[#,Except[Join[&quot;A&quot;~CharacterRange~&quot;Z&quot;,&quot;a&quot;~CharacterRange~&quot;z&quot;]]-&amp;gt;&quot; &quot;],&quot; &quot;])&amp;amp;@#&amp;amp;/@StringSplit[#,&quot;' &quot;]]&amp;amp;@Import@#&amp;amp;@&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/580/pg580.txt&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to calculate the percentage of &lt;code&gt;said&lt;/code&gt; in words immediately following closing quotation marks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens: &lt;code&gt;43%&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll: &lt;code&gt;45%&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen: &lt;code&gt;45%&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;said&lt;/code&gt; takes up over &lt;code&gt;50%&lt;/code&gt; of words immediately following closing quotation marks in Harry Potter. Below is a selection of those that are verbs, in case you are in need of inspiration for the remaining &lt;code&gt;50%&lt;/code&gt; (in order of frequency):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;said,asked,whispered,muttered,added,shouted,yelled,called,repeated,began,&#xA;bellowed,hissed,continued,snapped,gasped,roared,snarled,demanded,mumbled,&#xA;pointed,sighed,cried,growled,screamed,murmured,explained,suggested,moaned,&#xA;squeaked,breathed,replied,croaked,interrupted,barked,thought,spat,reminded,&#xA;grunted,corrected,sneered,pressed,groaned,choked,urged,shot,hesitated,&#xA;sobbed,burst,stared,stared,stammered,smiled,informed,indicated,blurted,&#xA;admitted,started,shrugged,agreed,advised,waved,warned,squealed,spluttered,&#xA;retorted,mouthed,swallowed,persisted,yawned,wailed,thundered,laughed,&#xA;gestured,boomed,wondered,whimpered,wheezed,wheezed,screeched,recited,&#xA;peered,howled,giggled,cleared,smirked,puffed,pleaded,ordered,nodded,jeered,&#xA;exclaimed,enquired,drawled,consulted,begged,answered,announced,yelped,&#xA;worried,translated,shuddered,scowled,resumed,remembered,reeled,protested,&#xA;prompted,observed,leered,jabbed,invented,interjected,imitated,ignored,&#xA;hastened,grinned,faltered,exploded,coughed,contradicted,concluded,clapped,&#xA;chuckled,chortled,chanted,wrote,wounded,winked,whined,trilled,swore,stormed,&#xA;stifled,stated,snorted,shivered,scrawled,reassured,quoted,promised,pouted,&#xA;persevered,instructed,gulped,grumbled,grimaced,frowned,found,faded,erupted,&#xA;encouraged,echoed,dismissed,decided,dashed,crooned,convinced,confessed,&#xA;commanded,burped,blustered,beckoned,beamed,bawled,appealed&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8271" LastEditorUserId="8271" LastEditDate="2016-08-02T05:15:59.430" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T05:15:59.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-01T22:11:29.210" Score="5" ViewCount="864" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that many great writers of the past had dyslexia, so it's obvious to me that these writers were able to overcome their disorder. But with me, it seems like my dyslexia has done nothing good in my quest to become a better writer. I am currently a Junior in Highschool, and my mother is a writer and librarian in a public library near by, because of this I am told countless of times,&amp;quot;to become a good writer you must read!&amp;quot; I wish I could. I imagine myself in a chair reading a hundred books a day in a comfortable fancy house in the middle of no where. I really do want to read, I wish I had that drive that so many other have, and I certainly don't want to be labeled as one of those, 'Malineal illiterate Wannabe's.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ever sense I was a kid I made a conscience effort to put as much space between myself and books as possible, I hated them and no one knew why, however I did love music/film/animation/and oral story telling. It wasn't until this year that my parents and I acknowledged the fact that something wasn't right with me. I am slow reader and an awful test taker. When I read I get stressful head and stomach aches. 10 minutes feels like a whole hour, as I loose concentration with every bleeding second I read a book. During tests, Anxiety and fear control me, and I often go blank, wondering why I can't solve 18 - 26. So it wasn't until I wanted to improve my writing that I found out I had dyslexia, which has explained a lot. The SAT is coming up in october, I need to do as good as possible on it. The stress is building. I know I am a relatively smart kid, with a 3.8 GPA, but the American exam system leaves people like me at a huge disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the greatest fear I have in this entire world would be to grow old and die without bringing my ideas to life, and because I do not read other people's stories my own stories will never be as good as they should. I need help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user19907" LastEditorUserId="30637" LastEditDate="2021-05-28T16:49:42.383" LastActivityDate="2021-05-28T16:49:42.383" Title="Problem: Aspiring writer, with dyslexia?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24001" CreationDate="2016-08-01T23:35:43.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes... Was that 18-26 or 18-62... I look at it a second time and it's 62-18 and look at it again and it's something else.   I learned to read by reading the whole word rather than sounding things out because I couldn't trust things to stay put, and thank God for autocorrect.  I don't have a problem reading to myself, but ask me to read out loud and it's torture and I feel like an idiot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there are lots of resources out there for you - way more than there were when I was a kid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, your local library is probably part of an online audio book consortium like Overdrive. Ask your librarian for help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, listen to podcasts.   Lightspeed, Podcastle, Escape Pod, Pseudopod, Clarkesworld, The Dunesteef, Writers on Writing, Writing Excuses, and there are tons more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, dictate.  You don't have to write your story, just record your voice and have a friend type it out for you or use voice recognition.  There are a number of mainstream authors that write this way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, don't give up. You really can do it, and you can be great at it and you'll be coming to it with a perspective that will be extremely valuable for other people who struggle to say what they want to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T23:35:43.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24001" CreationDate="2016-08-02T04:00:32.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a couple of things I'd like to address in your post, but before that I want to say this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having dyslexia or any other 'disorder' does not mean you can't, or shouldn't, do what you want to do. You aren't alone, there are plenty of (quite successful) authors out there who have had all sorts of issues. If you enjoy writing, then write. The only way to get better at storytelling is by telling stories. Don't compare your works to others, look at it from angle of &quot;is this the story I wanted to tell? Have I told it how I wanted to tell it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On to your actual post, though, first up is this bit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am currently a Junior in Highschool, and my mother is a writer and librarian in a public library near by, because of this I am told countless of times,&quot;to become a good writer you must read!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I fully support the idea of becoming a better writer you need to read, however I think that particular adage (while well intentioned) is perhaps a little outdated. It's not so much about the act of physically reading a book - it's immersing yourself into the story. If it's graphic novels, animation, feature films or whatever - interacting with a story (regardless of media) and the creative process within it fuels your own creative processes. Certainly reading novels highlights the correct use of flowing storylines, paragraph and chapter construction, dialogue etc, but it's not the be all and end all. It's useful to help identify the structure and process of a story, but those elements can be found in films, music, graphic novels, games etc. Find something that inspires you and your creativity, and start from there. Unfortunately, the only way to become a better writer is to practice, practice, practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think the greatest fear I have in this entire world would be to grow old and die without bringing my ideas to life, and because I do not read other people's stories my own stories will never be as good as they should. I need help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a problem restricted to you. This has nothing to do with being dyslexic or having any other condition other than being an artist/author/creative person. Show me a single author who hasn't struggled with this at one time or another and I'll show you someone who is lying through their teeth. We are our own worst critics. That said, the best thing you can do is write something, then show it to someone who can offer critical advice (i.e. actual constructive advice) and listen to what they have to say. Having a second set of eyes read something really helps to point out where things are missing/need improving - simply because when we read it ourselves, we automatically fill in the missing information, or can make the assumptions because of knowledge we have about the story that may not be as apparent as we think it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your tests, don't stress too much. School is only one (relatively small) part of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, that said, as far as successful authors with learning difficulties, check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/success-stories/famous-authors-with-dyslexia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;these&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bachelorsdegreeonline.com/blog/2011/25-famous-authors-with-learning-disabilities/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lists&lt;/a&gt; - you might just be surprised. They didn't let it stop them, don't let it stop you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T04:00:32.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23999" CreationDate="2016-08-02T04:11:11.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is definitely permissible, but as Lauren pointed out you will get angry keyboard warriors explaining (in detail) why you're wrong etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way around this though is to make absolutely clear that you are writing a Historical Fiction based on real-world events. Bernard Cornwell does this quite well (particularly the disclaimer in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bernardcornwell.net/books/azincourt-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Azincourt&lt;/a&gt; - a brilliant book to read if you haven't already read it). He highlights, in particular, that he was taken liberties with the story and characters (and briefly explains where), but the most historically significant events occurred when and where they were meant to (and even includes references to the research he undertook).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T04:11:11.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23997" CreationDate="2016-08-02T05:39:06.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Harvard referencing, you would use the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surname author, Initial(s) (Year) 'Title of chapter', in Surname editor, Initial(s) (ed.) Book title in italics. Edition. Place: Publisher, page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.e:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beizer, J.L. and Timiras, M.L. (1994) 'Pharmacology and drug&#xA;  management in the elderly', in Timiras, P.S. (ed.) Physiological basis&#xA;  of aging and geriatrics. 2nd edn. Boca Raton: CRC Press, pp. 279-284.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ntnu.no/viko/english/papers/harvardlist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This site here&lt;/a&gt; has a handy reference guide for numerous publication types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T05:39:06.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23999" CreationDate="2016-08-02T14:49:51.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at it this way: artistic license is granted by the reader. You are not entitled to it in any blanket way. Some readers will grant you more; some will grant you less. Generally, they will grant you more the more you charm or entertain them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to write what I like to call diorama fiction, you will get very little license on these kinds of details, because physical and temporal verisimilitude the the chief pleasure of diorama fiction. (Though moral and philosophical verisimilitude are generally not wanted at all. Diorama fiction is a reenactment by modern people in period costume; historical values and patterns of thought are definitely not wanted.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you are not writing diorama fiction, then your intended audience is not going to care, nor are they necessarily going to be deterred by the slings and arrows of the outraged diorama fiction addicts with too much time on their hands. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to look at these matters this way: what pleasure is my book designed to provide? Will doing this or that enhance those pleasures or diminish them? There are no absolutely wrong techniques. It is all a matter of which ones create the pleasure your book is trying to deliver.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T14:49:51.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23946" CreationDate="2016-08-02T20:01:58.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a solution to the formatting problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark the ToC link list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to 'Format &gt; Text &gt; Remove All Tab Stops'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Push the page number with tabs to the line end&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The '???' is the result of folders that are not documents at the same time, so the reference doesn't find an actual page in the script to refer to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19835" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-08-24T07:07:15.660" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T07:07:15.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24009" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-02T21:39:43.443" Score="5" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completed a draft of a fiction book that several friends have read and enjoyed. Assuming I can raise the money on Kickstarter, what services should I employ to maximize success of the book? I plan on releasing it as an eBook and in paperback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously I need the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professional content editing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professional cover and artwork design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professional self-publication (like iUniverse and Kindle)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professional marketing and promotion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else should I add to this list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15357" LastEditorUserId="22172" LastEditDate="2017-01-28T14:26:37.767" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T14:41:30.813" Title="What are the main steps to prepare and promote my fiction novel?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|marketing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23952" CreationDate="2016-08-02T22:41:11.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have access to Linux or Cygwin on Windows, you can get it to tell you just about anything you want to know about your text with a few lines of shell code. &lt;a href=&quot;http://doofussoftware.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-linux-one-liner-to-count-unique-words.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; one approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine/work-shell-counting-words-and-letters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; another article which explains the process in more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, you would probably first have to copy your text from its native format and then paste it without formatting into a text file so the internal formatting codes, etc. don't interfere with the logic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of an approach like this is that, with a little effort, you can get your tool to report anything you want in exactly the format you want it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft is also talking about adding such shell capabilities into an upcoming release of Windows 10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're on a Mac, you probably already have all of the necessary tools installed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T22:41:11.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23999" CreationDate="2016-08-03T04:00:59.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fiction writers routinely take far bigger liberties than this with real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One I find amusing for some reason: The movie &quot;The Wind and the Lion&quot; is based on a real-life incident in the early 1900s in which an American, Jon Pedicaris, was taken hostage by what today we would call a terrorist group. In the movie, Mr. Pedicaris was played by Candace Bergen. That is, they turned a man into a woman. Before Caitlyn Jenner, even.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The movie &quot;Argo&quot;, about a CIA operation to get six Americans out of Iran during the hostage crisis, shows Iranian authorities figuring out the plan at the last minute and chasing down the runway after the airplane as it takes off, creating a dramatic scene where the audience is supposed to be on the edge of their seats wondering if these people will be caught so close to escaping. In real life they boarded the plane and departed without incident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or to take an extreme case, the comedy &quot;Which Way to the Front?&quot; has a group of American mercenaries capture Hitler during World War 2, which you probably know didn't really happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And almost every work of historical fiction puts people at the scene who weren't really there. There are probably more fictional characters who have been placed on the Titanic than real passengers. Maybe that's why they didn't have enough lifeboats: they didn't plan for all the fictional characters on board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is not whether you can get away with changing the facts of history, but how much? I don't think there's any hard and fast rule. Of course for an alternate history story you can change anything. Readers will give you more leeway for a comedy than for a serious story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the guidelines are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) The less well-known a detail is, the more free you are to change it. In your example, only the most ardent students of history would know off the top of their heads how many people were killed in that particular bombing. If you said it was hundreds, few would even know that was wrong. If you said that Pearl Harbor was attacked on November 7, I think lots of readers would be laughing at the error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) You can change facts when they're relevant to your story. If you said Rommel was killed in Africa, and this &quot;fact&quot; has no relevance to your story, many readers would question it. But if there was some reason why you need to get Rommel out of the way for your story to work, I think most readers would accept it. You just need to establish the reason before the event, so the reader is prepared for it. More realistically, you can insert your fictional characters into events where the reader knows that no such people were there pretty freely. Readers tend to accept that fictional characters are, well, fictional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(c) The more &quot;serious&quot; the story, the less flexibility you have. A screwball comedy can play fast and loose with the facts and the reader will just laugh. A story that is very serious and gets 99% of the facts right will be considered glaring if it gets one or two wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it also depends on your audience. A book about WW2 written today can probably get away with a whole lot more than a book written in 1946, because there are far fewer people around who lived through it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T04:00:59.093" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24012" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-03T06:36:35.747" Score="0" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could it be a problem (legal one) if in a fiction novel, I depict…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Law enforcement/military organisation with quite a few details about their organisational structure in an inaccurate manner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not naming any specific company or brand name, but rather depicting an entire industry in bad light (For eg: making claims that the insurance industry is in general prone to misrepresentation of facts while pitching their products) or more specifically stereotyping the industry behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19922" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-08-09T03:30:39.843" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T16:33:19.950" Title="Depicting inaccurate information about real organisations in fiction?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24012" CreationDate="2016-08-03T13:02:51.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think, if you slander the insurance industry in general, that should not be a problem. But if you want to show one specific company being bad, you should use a fictitious company, or you might find a law suit taking the fun out of your next years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The military and other government institutions (police, schools, parliament, etc.) are free to bash, and this is done every day in every tv show, movie, book, and so on. The simple reason for this is that it is impossible to use a fictional military for an existing country. There is only one. So it is understood that whatever you write about government institutions is fiction, unless you clearly state otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T13:02:51.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24009" CreationDate="2016-08-03T13:21:33.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two things that will make your book successful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;1&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need first and foremost is readers. So you need to build a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=platform%20marketing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;platform&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. See the books by Michael Hyatt, Jeff Walker, Guy Kawasaki, and others* on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, what you need to do is have a website, start to blog, connect through Twitter, and generally brand yourself and network with prospective readers through social media. Ideally you would have already done all that while you were writing your book, so that now that it is finished you could simply mail out a newsletter or post a Tweet with a link to the finished product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second most important thing is that you quickly write your next book. Books sell each other, and a happy reader not finding another book by the same author is one reader lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All bestselling authors have a score of books out there. So sit down and start on the next novel and publish that within six months to a year. And then the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously 1 and 2 take away time and energy from each other, which is why successful authors either have a publisher who takes care of marketing, a husband who takes care of marketing, or pay someone to take care of marketing. There are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; few successful authors who do all of this alone, and most can only do it alone on the basis of past success from publisher-published books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* All these books contain about one page worth of useful advice, and this advice can be found freely on the web, so don't buy the books. I'm just naming these authors so you know who the popular authorities are and were to start googling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T13:21:33.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24015" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-03T15:19:44.747" Score="2" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to write a short story about a man who visits China. I have never been to China; I have never even been to Asia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is meant to be realistic and accurate so just imagining what it would be like to be in the place and getting it completely wrong is not an option.&#xA;I am also afraid of portraying stereotypes and  media misconceptions of Chinese culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do I write about the experience of being in China when I don't know it myself? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19892" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2016-08-27T14:44:18.077" LastActivityDate="2016-08-27T14:44:18.077" Title="How do I write what I don't know?" Tags="|setting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2016-08-12T11:53:27.813" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16124" CreationDate="2016-08-03T15:31:45.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The important thing is that you have the curiosity and aptitude for technical fields. Your English degree should help sell your ability to communicate effectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a Bachelors in English (writing emphasis) and currently work as a technical writer. The advice in other answers is similar to what I've suggested to people when they want to shift careers to technical writing. Examine what you are currently doing and see if there are job duties or projects where you had to write content. Highlight them in your resume. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you looked at the Society for Technical Communication? They recently started offering a certificate program in technical writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19926" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T15:31:45.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24017" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24024" CreationDate="2016-08-03T16:22:15.260" Score="6" ViewCount="15727" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing a YA mystery book in which one of the three main characters is a detective—who now seems to share his name with another fictional character on TV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was pretty young when I came up for the idea for the characters, and wasn't really aware that there was another fictional character out there with the same name, let alone that he was on a fairly popular show. (Found out when I saw commercials that repeatedly used the name!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My character has nothing to do with the one on TV; besides the name they only share the characteristics of both being white and male.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really like that name anyways, since it fits my character so well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I tried to publish this someday, would I run into copyright/legal issues, even though my character is nothing like the one on TV? Would I therefore need to change his name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: the name itself is somewhat uncommon, but it's really just two fairly common names together. The first name is just Harvey, but put that with the last name and you get a character on a popular show (I only withhold it to save myself the embarrassment of having it on the Internet forever :) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19928" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T00:12:39.320" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T07:15:18.527" Title="Help! I accidentally gave my fictional character the same name as a fictional character on a TV show. Do I have to change it?" Tags="|fiction|characters|copyright|naming|mystery|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24017" CreationDate="2016-08-03T16:27:49.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its absolutely fine. I bet there is hundreds of main protagonists called Jack in the world of fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just be careful if you're going around naming your characters something along to lines of Aragorn or Jon Snow. If you name your characters a normal name (from any culture), its fine. If you name a character something that is made up, and already taken (like Aragorn), then you might run into some issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="28374" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T07:15:18.527" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T07:15:18.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24017" CreationDate="2016-08-03T16:44:00.703" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to refer to the answers here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/291/are-names-of-characters-copyrighted-by-authors&quot;&gt;Are Names of Characters Copyrighted by Authors?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, you can safely write about an alien bounty hunter called Harry Potter who has no magical powers and travels the galaxy in a spaceship called the Enterprise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the short and generic answer since copyright law is very complicated. Here is another enlightening article you might want to read: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aspectlg.com/posts/copyright-in-characters-what-can-i-use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Copyright in Characters: What Can I Use?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15651" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T16:44:00.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24001" CreationDate="2016-08-03T18:27:26.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To all the other excellent encouragement, I would simply add: Take your time! You need to give yourself the freedom to take as long as you need to find the strategies that make you successful. This means as a student (both in high school and college, if you go there) and as an author. It doesn't matter what score you get on the SAT, because the classroom of learning how to be a better writer is all you need to become the person you want to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19781" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T18:27:26.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24001" CreationDate="2016-08-03T19:26:00.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you need to read or write? Why not write about what you experience instead of what you have read? Why not make movies or draw comics – or make music?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to become experienced, and there are many ways to express your creativity. It seems to me that you are trying to force yourself into writing, because your mother is a writer and books are a part of her life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not want to read. Maybe you do not want to write either. Be openminded, and explore yourself. And have the courage to not live a life for your mother. It is your life, and you have to make yourself happy. Not her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you come to the conclusion that indeed you want to write, then find your own path. There are so many ways of writing. Find your own approach. &lt;strong&gt;Experimentation&lt;/strong&gt; is the key to forming your own creative self, no matter if you try to find an alternative to writing or your own way to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T19:26:00.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24015" CreationDate="2016-08-03T19:40:58.877" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are four things that writers do, when they want to write about something they don't know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get experience. If you want to write about sword fighting, learn sword fighting. You don't have to become an expert, but taking a few classes will give you very much better idea of what it means to swing a sword.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do research. If you want to write about living on a space station, read the books, blogs, articles written by those that have been in space. Again, you don't have to become a space cadet, but you can easily find out about how peeing in low gravity feels.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Imagine it. If you have no time or cannot find the information you need, use the experiences you have and extrapolate from the. Being a woman is not so very much different from being a man, and if you have ever experienced pain, you can write about menstrual cramps, even if you are a man, or about being kicked in the groin, if you are a woman.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hint at it. You don't really have to go into all that detail all the time. When you write about riding a bike, you don't go into how it feels to sit on the saddle, how you have to balance the vehicle, and so on. You just assume that most readers will have an idea of what riding a bike entails and will fill in the detail. Do stuff you don't know in the same way. Readers have a great imagination, and they know lots of things, so use that. Give them some hints, and let them imagine the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These options should be employed in decreasing order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T19:40:58.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24015" CreationDate="2016-08-04T02:04:29.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go to an exhibition on Chinese art. The near totality of your readers have never been there either so don't get hung up on &quot;getting it right.&quot; Sometimes the fresh minds with no experience offer the best points of view as experience truly does stifle creativity. If the book is winner &quot;pay a visit&quot; and &quot;revise and extend your remarks&quot; as they say in Congress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T02:04:29.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24017" CreationDate="2016-08-04T04:42:14.207" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;To contradict the other answers there is a difference between copyright and trademark law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to sell your YA novel to a major publisher or wish to see film &amp;amp; TV rights, merchandising or any ancillary revenue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; name your character the same as a major TV character. I guarantee they have trademark protection (registered or not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can change the name now and find one that you like and fits your character. Plus it will give you a chance to get used to the new name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could change a few letters and Harry Potter becomes Perry Hotter the intergalactic spaceship captain, but it seems petty unless it's a parody or comedy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer to change either the first name or the surname of characters I discover too similar. So &lt;em&gt;Mike Hammer&lt;/em&gt; becomes &lt;em&gt;Mike Montag&lt;/em&gt;. He may even become &lt;em&gt;Jack &quot;Hammer&quot; Montag&lt;/em&gt; if the story suits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19655" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T04:42:14.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23952" CreationDate="2016-08-04T10:04:53.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Notetab Light (and the paid version, too) for Windows offered this feature the last time I used it. It's an older text editor with loads features that I used before converting to Linux, which happened in 2007 or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use an editor I made myself, now, with that feature and lots of others I like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10606" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T10:04:53.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24015" CreationDate="2016-08-04T13:04:40.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How important is setting for your story? If it absolutely has to happen in China, dig into National Geographic and other reference materials--read, watch documentaries, etc. If the story can take place elswhere, take the man some place you know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T13:04:40.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24028" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24037" CreationDate="2016-08-04T22:33:49.063" Score="1" ViewCount="731" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;style guide&quot; of any kind for this report, or any reports in this company. Formal reports aren't too frequent. This is a mostly internal report, though it may end up with a consultation rep. The audience is generally my own manager and coworkers, though it is possible it makes it up two or three levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my situation, which may help refine the answer. But is there any reason I should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; include the company logo on the cover page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20948" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T11:12:04.620" Title="Including a company logo in a report" Tags="|style|business-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6707" CreationDate="2016-08-05T03:31:22.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the general point of widening your active vocabulary, I'm entirely with you Aerovistae. A rich vocabulary is one of the foundations of good writing. J.R. describes it well with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's a big difference between using a fancier word when a simpler one will do (which can be unnecessarily pretentious, something that commenters have exhorted you to avoid), and using a more precise word that more accurately captures the nuances of what you are trying to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd actually go even further. I think what nuance describes in this case is the complex interplay between denotation and connotation. It might be that a simpler word denotes the same meaning to your reader, but to think of language in this way is to entirely undermine the associative power of words. In short, no synonym is exactly alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfamiliar words can also be a powerful way to engage readers. A quick example: I read Les Miserables around 10 years ago and can barely remember the basic plot outline. I can however remember a particular metaphor in which a daydreaming man is imagined as a caryatid on holiday. I had no idea what a caryatid was, which is exactly why it had such potency - it stuck out. Once I looked the word up it was firmly in my mind, which primed me ingeniously for the surprising number of times Hugo uses that word, and had me pondering its significance more deeply. Simple words can't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, on the practical side of improving your active vocabulary. I use spaced repetition software (Anki in my case) to memorise the definitions of words, but with a twist. Instead of just reciting the definition, I write out a sentence using the word whenever it appears on a flashcard. The software is helpful because it shows the words you're struggling with more often. It also allows you to study hundreds of words without losing track of where you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20949" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T03:31:22.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="178" CreationDate="2016-08-05T06:41:23.297" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely. Example: Gregory Rabassa, an English-speaking U.S. citizen, grew up to translate many prominent Latin American works into English. Gabriel García Márquez, one of the most prominent Spanish-language authors of all time, considered Rabassh's English translation of his novel &lt;em&gt;Cien Años de Soledad&lt;/em&gt; to be better than the original Spanish version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this is a slightly different case, it demonstrates that you can achieve mastery in the mechanics of a language you didn't learn as your first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14905" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T06:41:23.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24031" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24034" CreationDate="2016-08-05T06:42:46.517" Score="0" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pretty much what it says in the title. A single English word, that can preferably be used as a noun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any antonyms that use chaos as a root word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20951" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T11:06:46.437" Title="A single English word for &quot;not chaos&quot;" Tags="|word-choice|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-08-11T15:15:31.660" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24032" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-05T06:47:12.853" Score="1" ViewCount="619" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I use a real car company in telling a story about a bank heist, can I be sued for it? What could happen if I do use the company in that way? Say if I say the men drove to the bank in a Ford van, could Ford  sue me for using their company name in that way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20952" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-08-11T18:44:58.033" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T18:44:58.033" Title="Using real a car logo or gun in crime fiction - can I be sued for it?" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24032" CreationDate="2016-08-05T07:07:10.750" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case I'm pretty sure you should have no problem thanks to what's called &quot;Artistic License&quot;. Basically, as an author of fiction, you are entitled to fictionalize elements of the real world in pursuit of your art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risk writers run with stuff like this is being accused of something like &quot;defamation&quot;. For example: if every single Ford in your book is shoddily built and suffers from debilitating manufacturing defects, Ford might become displeased at the shadow you've cast on their real-world image. Any book that so aggressively mars a company's image that it seems purposefully deleterious starts edging into Defamation territory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any statement meant to mar someone's reputation counts as &quot;Defamation&quot;. However, as a writer, I would think you'd have an easy time claiming that your statements were in the service of your art, not some anti-Ford agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And just having the bad guys drive Fords? You are 100% in the clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helped!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14905" LastEditorUserId="14905" LastEditDate="2016-08-05T07:19:10.127" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T07:19:10.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24031" CreationDate="2016-08-05T08:00:42.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One common antonym to &quot;chaos&quot; is &quot;order&quot;. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chaos&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chaos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need an antonym that contains &quot;chaos&quot; as a root, then you have to create one, as it does not exist. Possibilities include &quot;non-chaos&quot; and &quot;dischaos&quot;. I wouldn't use &quot;inchaos&quot;, as that might lead to confusion with &quot;inchoate&quot;, which means something else entirely. The neologism &quot;dischaos&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ralph-abraham.org/articles/MS%2376.Dischaos/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;has been used&lt;/a&gt; by mathematician Ralph Abraham as the opposite of &quot;chaos&quot;, but it seems less self-explanatory than &quot;non-chaos&quot; to me and I would only use it when addressing a highly educated audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-08-05T11:06:46.437" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T11:06:46.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24017" CreationDate="2016-08-05T08:17:27.153" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another aspect not mentioned by the other answers is that you might not want readers be reminded of that tv show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legal aspects aside, when I read a book that is not about J.K. Rowling’s young magician and the protagonist is called Harry Potter, I will constantly be reminded of that other fictional universe and compare this protagonist to that other, which will both undermine my attempts at make-believe and make the character appear as a charicature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So unless the name of your protagonist is common in the real world &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; it is not the name of a protagonist in a bestselling book, movie, or tv show &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; it is not the name of a celebrity, – change it to something either unique and original or common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Please note a special case where a character bearing a name like a character from popular fiction is a driving element of the story, in the comment by @Lostinfrance, below.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you publish your book through a publisher, they might require that you change the name anyway, even if it is original or common, simply because they have a better idea of what kind of name attracts your audience. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://io9.gizmodo.com/5977781/these-character-names-should-be-banned-forever&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;They will probably go for a variant of Katherine, if it is a woman.&lt;/a&gt;) So you can leave worrying about the name until you are ready to publish. It is an easy search-and-replace that you can quickly do at any time. So do it last, or you may find that you have to do it again and again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-08-05T13:33:20.123" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T13:33:20.123" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24036" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-05T10:58:02.860" Score="0" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;How many Stories would be required for it to be considered as a Collection of Short Stories ideally? &#xA;What would be the approximate Word Count for a Short Story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20956" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T12:42:25.887" Title="Short Stories - Questions" Tags="|style|technique|plot|structure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-08-06T19:07:13.613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24028" CreationDate="2016-08-05T11:12:04.620" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's a report generated by your company, you may as well put the logo on it. The only reason not to is if it's literally an internal memo, like an email or something, which isn't really being &quot;distributed.&quot; If it's a report, with a title and organization and work which went into it, by all means brand it. It might lend the report a little gravitas, so people &lt;em&gt;won't&lt;/em&gt; think it's a dashed-off memo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T11:12:04.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23950" CreationDate="2016-08-05T12:09:34.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a page-based physical app (what my grandmother used to call a &quot;book&quot;) called the &lt;em&gt;Writer's Guide to Character Traits&lt;/em&gt; that does a good job of what you're looking for. It gives an excellent, high-level, discussion of character traits, along with general examples of how such traits develop, co-morbidity, and how they will present at different ages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Written by Linda Edelstein, it's not free but sounds like it might suit the bill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T12:09:34.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24036" CreationDate="2016-08-05T12:42:25.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short story lengths can vary widely, and you can do nearly anything you want, but certain lengths are more easily accepted and more easily published. &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/23432/in-a-short-story-how-long-is-too-long&quot;&gt;Does this help?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how many stories it takes to make a collection, I've got no idea, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6712/how-many-short-stories-make-a-collection&quot;&gt;some other smart people have given their thoughts here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T12:42:25.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24040" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24041" CreationDate="2016-08-05T16:06:25.097" Score="6" ViewCount="692" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I'm not much of a writer, in fact the last time I wrote a story was when I was 10 (Been nearly 10 years since).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where I usually write is in roleplay situations. Where my characters are constantly interacting with others, as we all make our way through some ridiculous problem together, or kill something disgustingly difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I wanted to know, are there any specific exercises I can take as a person to accomplish the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep My characters personalities separate.&lt;/strong&gt; It may seem like a silly question, however I struggle with this. What i mean is, when running multiple characters I tend to sort of &lt;em&gt;merge&lt;/em&gt; their personalities into one abomination, it takes time, but eventually they all become the same old character with different weapons, or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I had two characters, one named Adrian, another named Ashley. In the beginning Ashley was a light hearted smooth talking kinda guy, whereas Adrian was more on the Edgy side of things. He had a classical 'I'm rich, so i'm better than you' demeanor... In the end, their personalities merged slightly and it was just messy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to prevent this in the future, though don't want to stop my Roleplay activities. Is there anything I can do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20963" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T22:49:16.827" Title="Are there ways to help stick to character traits?" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24040" CreationDate="2016-08-05T16:54:11.517" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing that determines how a character acts in a story is not their personality, but their motivation. In short, what do they want.  If your characters all want the same thing, they will tend to seem the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People with different personalities will definitely pursue their goals in different ways. But what people want is also a result of their personality. People with different personalities, in other words, are likely to want different things. That puts you back in the realm of what they want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the issues becomes, is their behavior in this scene consistent with what they want. What they want and how they act to get it will reveal who they are. If they want the same things, to the same degree, chances are they have similar personalities that will be hard to tell apart. If they have different personalities, that will manifest itself in different actions in pursuit of different goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick in any scene is to keep each character pursuing their own goals. If you forget what one of your characters wants in a scene, they are not going to ring true and will probably start to blend in with others. They are blending because you have forgotten what their individual motivation is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T16:54:11.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23950" CreationDate="2016-08-05T21:59:10.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One that I know of is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.charahub.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CharaHub.com&lt;/a&gt;. It's a good site to get a feel for things and keep your characters organized, and even upload pictures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option which always a good idea, though a little slow and requiring meticulousness from the creator, is to create a character document. You can do this with an iOS app/Android app or a plain old Word document (I recommend this since there seems to be a dearth of writing apps in the Google Play store). What you do is you organize everything by character, including the questions. If it does not pertain to that particular character, then you leave it out or stick it somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good place to get questions from is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/writing-prompts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tumblr&lt;/a&gt;, where they have things called &quot;memes&quot;* - specified for writing, they just might get your creativity going. You could also visit various writing blogs on the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*search the tags for 'writing meme' or something similar. A lot of roleplayers use these to understand their characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20969" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T21:59:10.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24043" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-06T03:40:26.723" Score="2" ViewCount="1178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had been maintaining two blogs focusing on two different niches - tech stuff(computer world) and lifestyle(life hacks and short stories) - but now I want to get my own domain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard that a blog must only focus on one niche or a set of similar niches, so will having lifestyle hacks and tech stuff in one blog, be unprofessional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is there a creative(or trendy) way to put both in one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20974" LastActivityDate="2016-08-06T11:15:50.820" Title="A creative way to combine two niches?" Tags="|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24043" CreationDate="2016-08-06T05:31:16.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most people aren't interested in one thing alone. You are a good example: you like tech stuff and lifestyle stuff. A blog combining both would be perfect for you, apparently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about the people who like tech stuff and sports, but dislike lifestyle stuff? Or the people who like lifestyle stuff and fashion, but dislike tech stuff? They might come to your blog because of a link to an article, browse your posts, and get turned off by half of them. They will find another blog that fits them better. If your blog were about only half of their interests, it would still fit them better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what about people like you? I can only speak of my own experience. I do like different things, but I ususally focus on one of my interests at one time. When I like to involve myself in, say, drawing, I prefer to read about that and not be distracted by input and ideas about the other things that I enjoy. I want to learn how to draw better, generate ideas, and that needs focus and concentration, and thinking about, say, cooking or gardening at the same time will make reading about drawing less helpful and less intense an experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I prefer to decide for myself what I focus on at a given time. If I read about one thing and then think that I want to turn to something else, I will turn to something else. I dislike thinking about one thing and then being forced to deal with something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it all come down to the question: What does one of your blog have to do with the other? If the life hacks seamlessly integrate into the tech theme – e.g. all of your posts in both blogs deal with how to live as and be a good programmer – then they combine easily and will provide an integrated experience. But if they sand side by side and have little or nothing to do with each other except that one may be interested in both, then I would keep them separate so as not to confuse or disinterest readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-08-06T05:31:16.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23950" CreationDate="2016-08-06T05:50:39.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I ask my own questions.&lt;/strong&gt; Only I know what my story is about and what character traits are relevant to that story. When I try to ask generic questions that I have found on the web (e.g. &amp;quot;What is the favourite food of your character?&amp;quot;), the answers are usually meaningless to my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked at character software, but I found that their preconceived structures of character relations (e.g. protagonist-antagonist or hero-sidekick) or their pseudoscientific concepts of personality (e.g. the Enneagram) have more stifled my creativity and made my stories generic and unoriginal. I sometimes do use some lists of character questions I find on the web when I need inspiration, but once my imagination has been sparked, I quickly abandon them and let my mind roam free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;If you want to be original and creative, then using another person's concept of character will hinder you.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take writing to be a dynamic process. I don't have to answer all questions about all my characters before I begin to write. I can always stop the writing and answer further questions, as they are raised by the advancing plot. I have found that I rarely had to rewrite anything I had written before because of these new Q&amp;amp;A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep my characters organized I use a &lt;strong&gt;spreadsheet app&lt;/strong&gt; (Excel), because it allows me to ask the same question (row) of all characters (columns) and see their different answers side by side and compare them. I can even easily highlight certain columns that currently interest me the most, or rearrange rows or include images. A spreadsheet app works better for me than a text editor (Word), where relations between pieces of content are difficult to visualize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One method I employ to understand my characters better is to &lt;strong&gt;act them out&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got this idea from drawing. When you try to draw a figure in a certain pose, it is sometimes difficult to translate what you see into lines of the page. To better understand the pose and how it exists in space, I often simply get myself into the same position (or, if I'm in a public space, imagine myself in that position, which works almost as well, because your mind remembers your body holdin certain poses). I can't explain how this works, but once I know my own body in the pose I see, I find it much more easy to render that pose on the page, often even without looking much at the model anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In writing, I do the same. I actually often get up from the table and do what my character would do and say what they would say. Again, if I'm in a public place, I try to imagine acting it out as intently as possible. Interestingly enough this helps me better imagine what &lt;em&gt;another person&lt;/em&gt; would do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book &lt;em&gt;Getting into Character&lt;/em&gt; Brandilyn Collins explains this method. She adapts Stanislavski's technique of &lt;em&gt;method acting&lt;/em&gt; to writing. I haven't read the book, so I don't know how good it is, but the description seems promising, if you need more detail and (probably) additional ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-08-06T20:40:40.947" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24043" CreationDate="2016-08-06T11:15:50.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having your own domain does not force you to have only one blog. You can very easily set up two blogs on one domain. It is likely that you have essentially three audiences: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People who like tech stuff&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People who like lifestyle stuff&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People who like your writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combining the two blogs serves only the third audience. The other two audiences now have a blog that interests them 50% of the time at most, and that may not be worth their while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you could do is keep the two blogs separate, but list new posts from each blog in a sidebar on the other. That way you would serve all three of your audiences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-06T11:15:50.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24047" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24052" CreationDate="2016-08-06T13:16:26.347" Score="1" ViewCount="5966" Body="&lt;p&gt;The person in question is a superior and I was wondering how to start the email I am writing to this person with a reminder of that meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20979" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T20:37:44.743" Title="How to politely remind somebody of a meeting we had a few days ago?" Tags="|email|letter|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2016-08-08T00:46:17.740" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24048" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24050" CreationDate="2016-08-06T16:23:24.200" Score="3" ViewCount="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sentence is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Where do you want these?” Jon’s publisher asked, bobbling a box with the word books scrawled across the side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do I do with the word, &quot;books&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I quote it (as above)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I italicize it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a rule here or is it predominantly an issue of style and/or author preference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20982" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T15:00:25.270" Title="Do I quote this, italicize, or something else?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24047" CreationDate="2016-08-06T16:27:53.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I am assuming you actually &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt; the meeting - and want to refer to it, in the email)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Boss]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for meeting with me on Wednesday. Recall that I was the [engineer] who had many questions about [issue]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked me to send a summary email with the questions, so you could more easily address them. Here they are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for giving this some attention. It will really help me to [complete my job better or more quickly] - and will go a long way towards [resolving a specific issue or improving a specific situation - name it here]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[employee]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18781" LastEditorUserId="18781" LastEditDate="2016-08-07T20:37:44.743" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T20:37:44.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24048" CreationDate="2016-08-06T17:37:35.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's author preference. Either of these would be okay:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Where do you want these?” Jon’s publisher asked, bobbling a box with the word “books” scrawled across the side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Where do you want these?” Jon’s publisher asked, bobbling a box with the word &lt;em&gt;books&lt;/em&gt; scrawled across the side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would use the italics, but it's purely a preference, not a rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-08-06T17:37:35.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24051" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24054" CreationDate="2016-08-07T00:31:56.777" Score="9" ViewCount="13952" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, in the following exchange,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Shut up!&amp;quot; she yelled. &amp;quot;I can't think when you ramble.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For context, it's for a novel or online story publication.) I want to emphasize the two words shut up using italics. Normally, if there was only one word or a part of a sentence emphasized, I would only italicize that word or part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I said there were &lt;em&gt;three&lt;/em&gt; people missing. Can't you ever listen?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, only the word is italicized. What if the whole dialog is emphasized? Which is correct:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Shut up&lt;/em&gt;!&amp;quot; she yelled. (only the two words are italicized)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Shut up!&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; she yelled (the exclamation mark is italicized)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Shut up!&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; she yelled (the whole sentence, including quotation marks, is italicized.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or are none of these correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3666" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-04-02T12:52:15.637" Title="When dialog is italicized, should the quotation marks be italicized as well?" Tags="|formatting|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24047" CreationDate="2016-08-07T03:53:49.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Business correspondence is just one of the subjects discussed at &lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workspace&lt;/a&gt;, a Stack Exchange forum for career and work related subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific to your question...&#xA;Do you have a real-business reason to contact this superior or are you just trying to demonstrate that your willing to waste both of your work time, in the hopes of improving your visibility (and therefore your career) within the company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When dealing with people who have authority, always demonstrate professionalism until they invite you into a more relaxed correspondense.  There doesn't have to be a critical business emergency to justify every short note, but there should at least be a reason for your writing.  If you received any take-away assignments from that previous meeting then informing your superior that those tasks are complete is an excellent excuse to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a reason for writing, it is good practice to remind the receiver of who you are, especially if this is your first time writing to them.  So right after you tell them the purpose of the correspondense, thank them for something they said directly to you during the previous meeting.  If no such statement is available, then mention the date, time and subject of the meeting and move on to your reason for writing.  Then next time you are in a meeting with the recipient, make sure to say something memorable so that you can use it in your next correspondense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:50.297" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T15:40:14.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24051" CreationDate="2016-08-07T11:59:00.430" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Purely a question of formatting aesthetics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a personal story or you're distributing it, do whatever you like. (I would italicize everything, including the quote marks so they hug the italic text nicely.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're being published professionally, the publisher will have its own style guide and formatting preference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T11:59:00.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24048" CreationDate="2016-08-07T15:00:25.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @Lauren Ipsum  that it is a matter of preference/style, but I disagree with her preference. I prefer the quotes:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Where do you want these?” Jon’s publisher asked, bobbling a box with the word “books” scrawled across the side.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that it is comparable to quoting what the box has said:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The senator said, “guilty.”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The box said, “books.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18990" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T15:00:25.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23952" CreationDate="2016-08-07T19:49:14.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most Tex and LaTeX editors how text analysis that give you a number of uses of each word in a block, in a table, and so on.&#xA;For example TEXstudio is a popular one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13168" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T19:49:14.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24064" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-08T15:27:40.297" Score="3" ViewCount="618" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question that doesn't directly apply to me, though I can easily see myself having this problem. I thought I'd run writer's block for a loop and find the answer before the problem arose. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like designing stuff. No, scratch that. I &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; designing stuff. It doesn't really matters what it is. I got into drawing because of it, and from there Photoshop, and from there 3D and Blender, and so on. Even my writing comes from my desire to design - I love designing my writing process and designing the actual books, I love creating worlds and languages, rules and belief systems for fictional races, imaginary plant species that likely no one will ever hear about... you name it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once everything is designed though, and it's actually time to write, I have a problem. The actual act of writing isn't design (not by the time I'm done with the disturbingly detailed outline anyway). The result is that I invariably would rather design more than write about what I've created. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I get myself to write? I don't want to feel like I'm forcing it, because that can't be good for creativity.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I did a search on other writer's block questions, and I don't think this is a duplicate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-08-08T19:06:13.493" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T13:55:38.010" Title="Writer's Block: How to Stop World-building and Start Writing?" Tags="|world-building|writers-block|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24064" CreationDate="2016-08-08T16:24:33.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find combining words into sentences fun enough by itself to keep me going :)&#xA;But, seriously, it sounds like you have a rich and interesting world developed, and that is a great accomplishment already.&#xA;The question is whether you have a story, set in that world, because no world by itself can be used as a substitute for an interesting story, no matter how beautiful and wondrous that world is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once everything is designed though, and it's actually time to write, I have a problem. The actual act of writing isn't design (not by the time I'm done with the disturbingly detailed outline anyway). The result is that I invariably would rather design more than write about what I've created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somebody said once that a right question contains half of the answer within itself. I am afraid that you are the only one who can answer that question for yourself. But if you have an outline, what's stopping you? Type away, all you have to do is fill in the blanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I get myself to write? I don't want to feel like I'm forcing it, because that can't be good for creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree. If you do not exercise your writing, you will not develop your writing skills. Do make yourself write. Try, at least, and see where it takes you. You might like it... and if not: you can always revise later!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/tag/world-building/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some useful reference on worldbuilding&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/tag/worldbuilding/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;more of the kind&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2016-08-09T14:08:22.367" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T14:08:22.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24064" CreationDate="2016-08-08T19:22:02.793" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write your &lt;em&gt;Silmarillion&lt;/em&gt; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tolkien created his Elvish languages because he was a professor of linguistics. He created the world of LOTR to have someone to speak his languages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Silmarillion&lt;/em&gt; is the collection of mythology, creation stories, and history which built the world for &lt;em&gt;The Hobbit&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;The Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; to stand on. Collecting all your world-building into short stories, myths, little scenes, individual characters with backstories, and so on may generate a plot bunny, and from there you can see if it attaches itself to a larger structure like a Hero's Journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, then you still have a cool collection of history and mythology, and maybe you can work with someone else to have other folks tell stories in that world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-08-08T19:22:02.793" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24064" CreationDate="2016-08-08T20:55:16.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Design is the stage. Story is the play. Story is built around desire and the frustration of desire. The stage exists as a place for that desire to be born, to be frustrated, and to be ultimately achieved or denied. Stage dressing without a play in mind, therefore, is apt to be futile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To start the story process, you have to discover or invent a character who wants something and a reason they can't get it. You then have them pursue that desire through your world, overcoming increasingly greater obstacles until their desire is ultimately achieved or they are defeated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How compelling your story is will ultimately depend on how compelling your character is and how much we can sympathize with their desire (sympathize with is not the same things as approve of). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, story is design as well, so there is no reason not to take a design approach to story as much as to world building. But you now need to turn you design attention in that direction. Start with a desire. What sort of person has that desire. What sort of obstacles will they face. What will they do to overcome those obstacles? These are the elements of story design. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-08T20:55:16.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23911" CreationDate="2016-08-09T02:11:03.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possibly you could say &quot;we'll explore further&quot; because it sounds rather adventurous when sandwiched into some non-fiction paragraphs. Also, I think that by using &quot;we&quot; for instance, or &quot;us&quot; you begin to immerse the audience (reader) in the book even further- which will make it more exciting.&#xA;P.s- is this a non-fiction book to be published? Either published or not, it sounds really cool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20998" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T02:11:03.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23999" CreationDate="2016-08-09T02:30:10.567" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a historical novel, you should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; alter historical facts. What you do in your &quot;fiction&quot; is to insert fictitious characters into those factual events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, the backdrop of my Revolutionary War novel is the fact that some 40 guerrillas set free some 150 American soldiers taken as prisoners of war (POWs) after the British won the battle of Camden, South Carolina. You should not claim that the Americans won the battle of Camden when they lost it (badly), but you can insert your main characters in the successful POW rescue. Here, one of the rescuing guerrillas takes home one of the rescued POWs to meet his sister, and you have a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, you can have your hero as an aide to General George Washington. But make sure that Washington actually said and did the things your hero reports he did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a historical novel, only your main characters are fictitious; everything else is fact. In essence, you want the reader to &quot;believe&quot; the story about your characters. To create the necessary &quot;suspension of disbelief,&quot; everything &lt;strong&gt;else&lt;/strong&gt; other than your characters has to be accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T02:30:10.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24012" CreationDate="2016-08-09T15:20:43.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could it be a problem from legal point of view? That's a question for &lt;a href=&quot;https://law.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;law.SE&lt;/a&gt;. You might be able to protect yourself with a standard &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_persons_fictitious_disclaimer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;All persons fictitious disclaimer&lt;/a&gt; in the preface:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this novel are fictitious. No identification with actual persons, places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but you should ask a lawyer for details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But no matter what's legal, keep in mind what this means for your work. When you portray a real-world organization or industry in a way which is simply untrue, then that's a sign that you didn't do proper research before you wrote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the best case, the reader will know more about the subject than you do, realize you are just making stuff up, will feel disappointed by your general lack of effort, greatly lower their suspension of disbelief and see your whole work more sceptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the worst case, the reader will believe your depictions, think they actually represent the reality and get a completely false impression of the subject you write about. This is deliberately misinforming your audience, which is simply irresponsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about how much you know about, say, police procedure. Likely most of what you believe to know about the daily work of police officers actually comes from fictional media. What if all that media depicted police work completely wrong? Would you realize that? What if it gave you a completely different impression of the thousands of people who work in the police force? What if you treat them completely differently than they actually deserve because of their wrong fictional representation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So please be responsible and think about the many real people you indirectly write about when you depict a non-fictional organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2016-08-09T16:33:19.950" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T16:33:19.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="761" CreationDate="2016-08-09T17:18:17.120" Score="11" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Value a &quot;fresh eyes&quot; point of view on your material&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a set of tips and techniques to try to come at your material with fresh eyes (especially after the first draft).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set the first draft aside for a few months&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have finished the first draft, set it aside for a few months (2-3) before you read it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to come at the material with somewhat fresh eyes (something that is very hard when you're the writer). It also helps to let go of it a bit before going into editing so you have a more objective view of your text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Work with beta readers and a critique group&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beta reader usually falls into two categories (and optionally you have access to both):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Readers from your target group&lt;/strong&gt; that will be able to tell you if the story &quot;works,&quot; if it was &quot;engaging,&quot; and if they &quot;liked it&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other writers&lt;/strong&gt;, for instance in a critique group, that will also be able to talk about the craftsmanship of your writing. And, more importantly, might be able to not just say what doesn't work, but also offer advice on how to fix it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important aspect of a beta reader is that they have not seen your text before and will be able to talk about it more or less objectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T17:18:17.120" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-08-09T17:18:17.120" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24051" CreationDate="2016-08-09T18:27:04.793" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's about your personal preference, really. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely you don't really need to italicised your dialogue unless of course you're using them to empathise the point on your speech with a sharper tone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally would rather avoid them entirely in dialogues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Shut up!&quot; she yelled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd already indicate that she's stressing her words by adding exclamation point while explaining what the subject(she)is doing(yells). Perhaps you could go by adding some descriptive behaviour on the way that she yells. Frantically? With exasperation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I said there were three people missing. Can't you ever listen?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could use some method like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I said there were three people missing. Can't you ever listen?&quot; Jake explained once more, empathised on the word 'three'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I said there were 'three' people missing. Can't you ever listen?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that I'd added apostrophe on the word 'three' to sharpen the tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is all about what you feel most comfortable with. Some writers would use italicise words to indicate a character's thought. Some uses them to manipulate the tones of a character. And some uses them to clarify their point, like a missing joke that a reader could potentially miss. Just be mindful with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21012" LastEditorUserId="21012" LastEditDate="2016-08-09T18:56:08.430" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T18:56:08.430" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-09T18:42:31.323" Score="0" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the major oversights of the worldbuilding process is that worldbuilders tunneled their focus on the story at hand, which usually means making things up as they go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't afford that.  How can I build a world without ACTUALLY building the world?  In reality, the world comes before the story.  It's that simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, finding online forums on the biggest pictures of worldbuilding--geography, geology, astronomy, climatology, meteorology, biology, ecology, glaciology, paleoclimatology, atmospheric chemistry, geodesy, paleogeography, biogeography, oceanography--has proven to be very tedious with very few rewards. It is crucial for me that before I make any embellishments set in my fictional world, I need to create a believable alternate Earth &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;FIRST&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. (Magic, fantasy and mythology count as embellishments.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know any discussion forums online that allow hard-science on speculative scenarios regarding any of the science disciplines listed above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19270" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T12:54:50.757" Title="The Search for Good Places to Discuss Science for Worldbuilding" Tags="|resources|world-building|science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-09T19:21:03.353" Score="5" ViewCount="492" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a beginner so naturally I'm a little bit curious towards the whole procedure on writing. Outline, plotting, drafting, editing, and then publishing (minus marketing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, how long does it take for a writer to fully publish their book? If possible, tell me the whole procedure (Personal experience required).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21012" LastEditorUserId="10460" LastEditDate="2016-09-22T10:01:35.330" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T10:01:35.330" Title="How long should it take for a writer to publish his/her book? (The whole process)" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24076" CreationDate="2016-08-09T20:17:08.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it really varies from writer to writer. I'm an editor and have one client who went from idea to publication on a 70,000 word genre novel in about 3 months, but I have another who has been writing and revising and writing and revising a literary fiction novel for over 9 months now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of publishing, timelines vary hugely between traditional and self-publishing. Traditional publishers can take a year or more from accepted draft to published book, while self-publishing can take a matter of weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kristen &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21020" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T20:17:08.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24032" CreationDate="2016-08-09T22:00:07.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you reference any product, whether it is a car, a gun, or a laundry detergent, you need to be aware of the trademark associated with that product. This is basically the &quot;name&quot; part of a &quot;brand name&quot;, such as Chevy Malibu. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design that identifies the&#xA;  source or origin of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rule for referencing a trademarked brand is simply to capitalize the name to identify the product. For example, you would use &quot;Chrysler Sebring&quot; instead of &quot;Chrysler sebring&quot; or &quot;chrysler sebring&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether or not you could be sued for using that brand name, it really depends on how you use it. If you refer to any product in a negative way, then the company that owns the trademark could take action if they feel that you have tarnished or defamed their trademark in any way. If you are making a positive reference, then they won't mind as long as you remember to capitalize the brand name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a really great article at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.betternovelproject.com/blog/trademarks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Better Novel Project&lt;/a&gt; by Kathryn Goldman, a lawyer who represents writers, artists, and businesses to protect their intellectual property. She gives some very good examples that may help you to understand this better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T22:00:07.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24015" CreationDate="2016-08-10T01:15:05.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don’t bother going to Venice.&lt;/strong&gt; When writing fiction, I used to assume that I couldn’t write about things unless I had direct experience about them. I once wrote an entire story taking place in Chicago without having ever visited Chicago. But after doing a little Internet research, I was able to write a good and plausible story about Chicago which worked reasonably well — and nobody ever suspected me of faking it. (I later visited Chicago and confirmed that I got the details basically right). I am currently working on a story taking place in Venice. I never have felt “handicapped” because I never had the opportunity to go to Venice. You shouldn’t either. Writers get great at faking things; that’s the whole point of writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen King once wrote that you should research the hell out of a subject (by interviewing people, reading nonfiction books, etc), and then cover your tracks by hiding as much of your background research as possible in the finished story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote stories about animals -- and often I will read articles about lifestyle and habitat. But you can't get too worried about what you don't know. Just try to imagine the best you can...(If you get a detail wrong, you can correct it later). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: I would try to read a book or two about the specific time period and setting.  But don't sweat it too much. (For example, do you know that in Venice the locals don't ride gondolas but the cheaper vaparettos. Who cares though!)  But as a nonnative outside the culture, people don't need to be impressed by your realistic details. I would worry more about plausibility; i.,e, would a Chinese character know about certain information from youtube, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="7968" LastEditDate="2016-08-10T01:21:01.413" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T01:21:01.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24082" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-10T01:35:52.017" Score="1" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written poems in iambic meter before, and they didn't seem to be wordy. And for a long time I have wanted to use metrical effects in my prose, which is called prose rhythm. But I am wondering how it can be possible to restate something that is so clear and concise in another way that has the kind of rhythm I want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been reading a book on how to write clearly. It makes no mention of accents on syllables or choosing and arranging words for prose rhythm. And I am honestly wondering how it is even possible to achieve specific rhythms without violating the principles in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What concerns me is the lack of synonyms we have available for a given word. Maybe I am over thinking this, but how can we possibly achieve specific rhythmic effects if we don't have the right sounding word available? if I want to refer to a specific thing or concept, what do I do if I cannot find a synonym that has the right sound?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are definite means for phrasing thoughts in specific kinds of rhythm, what are those means? I have read and written poems that contained lines so direct and yet so rhythmical. I don't understand how this is not an accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the works that seems to baffle me in this respect is the King James Bible. I know it is the word of God but how did other authors imitate the style and rhythm of some of the books in it? They actually imitated the narrative style of the King James Bible. So they should be able to imitate the style of the prophetic books, the psalms, and the epistles as well. But how can this be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not really asking specifically how to imitate the style of the King James, but how to use rhythm at all without being unnatural or indirect. You read the whole question. You get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help me to figure this out so that I can use prose rhythm in my writing. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10405" LastActivityDate="2024-01-05T15:10:02.633" Title="How can we revise sentences so that they remain clear and concise but gain a rhythm of a specific kind?" Tags="|rhythm|phrasing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24082" CreationDate="2016-08-10T04:30:59.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are good arguments to be made that rhythm and clarity are closely connected. We tend to have a very puritanical view of prose preached to us today. It is all spare and bleached and square corners. It is dessicated language. It does nothing to engage the ear or the eye or the senses. It may be statically clear, but I am not convinced that it is transitively clear, that it actually makes its way into the mind in a memorable way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is certainly clear that we do recall the elegant phrase. And a truly elegant phrase is made up of many things, it is the perfect image, but it is also the perfect rhythm of language. Clarity, of the highest kind, is not a dessicated whitewashed thing, but a thing of beauty and richness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you do it? I think it is largely a matter of training the ear. You have to listen for the rhythm of language (which is a much more subtle thing than the rhythm of poetry). You have to weight the sentence and even the paragraph or the passage as a whole. You have to consider the imagery and the words that paint those images and how the choice and arrangement of those words reinforces those images and leads the reader to them with elegance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it is not about finding individual words with the right beat pattern to drop into a sentence. It is about working all the component of writing at a larger scale, and working and reworking them until all the parts come together. You have to train you brain to compose in this way. A large part of that has to be reading writes who do it exceptionally well. Evelyn Waugh, John Steinbeck, and Jane Austen are the names that come most readily to mind.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T04:30:59.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24084" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-10T10:37:41.537" Score="2" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a website to share short stories (5-20 pages), or longer stories in episodic form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Preferably, it should either be in French or multilingual, not be focused on fanfiction and have an option to share stories by adding chapters episodically (for example, &amp;quot;releasing&amp;quot; a chapter every month and making them easy to navigate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-09-21T15:40:10.363" LastActivityDate="2022-09-21T15:41:06.013" Title="Websites to share writing in French?" Tags="|self-publishing|short-story|websites|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24085" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-10T12:11:13.503" Score="1" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any (books, articles or other online) resources that give practical guidance on writing non-fiction to a general audience at a level less technical than a pure scientific paper? I am specifically interested in advice relating to the hard sciences and mathematics, though I imagine most of the techniques of good writing will be universal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to analyse the work of various science journalists, popular science writers and textbook authors whose writing style I admire, and found that the things I enjoy in their writing are conciseness, a clear sense of enthusiasm (without going into purple prose) and a semi-informal style that sounds natural, as if spoken. I am a mediocre writer myself but can tell when something is well or badly written, so with specific practical tips and style guidance I hope to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21026" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T15:09:11.427" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T15:09:11.427" Title="Resources for non-technical science writing" Tags="|non-fiction|resources|science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24085" CreationDate="2016-08-10T12:39:43.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best possible sources are the writers you admire. The best possible way to improve as a writer is to read with attention. Good writers read differently, constantly paying attention to the technique of the writers they admire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is a complex activity. You can't write by following a set of tips. You have to develop your ear, and the foundation of that is attentive reading. The next step after that is attentive writing, and the critique of your peers. The point of critique is again to develop your ear, in this case to develop your ear for your own writing so that you more easily hear when you go astray. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All kinds of tips and pseudo rules fall out of the critique process. They are ways of expressing what a person thinks is not working. Rules like &quot;cut the adverbs&quot; arise when people read peice that use adverbs badly. It becomes elevated to a general rule to never use adverbs, which is absurd. Learn to use them well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't expect to become a good writer by trying to mechanically follow each of these tips or rules. Read with attention. Write with attention. Seek feedback. Train your ear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: On this subject of training your ear, one of my favorite books on writing is Francine Prose's &lt;em&gt;Reading Like a Writer&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-08-10T12:58:17.557" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T12:58:17.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24015" CreationDate="2016-08-10T16:36:07.787" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research Chinese culture and history in the specific area you want to place your story. China is huge, so the local customs and history of the region or city you want your character to attend would help a lot in terms of accuracy. Researching dialect or slang might help too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21028" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T16:36:07.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9217" CreationDate="2016-08-10T16:40:01.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a good structure for Romance novels in the book &lt;em&gt;Romancing the Beat&lt;/em&gt; by Gwen Hayes. It's available on Amazon. She lays out a four-part structure with five key beats per section. I've found it useful in thinking through all the in-betweens of boy-meets-boy, boy-loses-boy, boy-gets-boy-in-the-end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21029" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T16:40:01.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24001" CreationDate="2016-08-10T17:08:55.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm dyslexic, and enjoy writing and making stories too!  There's two things you need to remember.  Firstly that you enjoy creating stories, and secondly that practice makes perfect.  Admittedly you and I are at a disadvantage compared to the average non-dyslexic.  Especially those who can read at light speed.  But let's not be pessimistic.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the issue here isn't your dyslexia, but the fact you believe that talent is something one is born with instead of earned.  Writing, like almost everything else, is a skill one has to practice.  That's about it.  Your being dyslexic has no relation to how much effort you choose to put into writing, nor how much satisfaction you can achieve from this.  You want to be good at painting?  Practice.  You want to be good at a musical instrument?  Practice.  You want to be good at programming?  Practice.  Etc, etc, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a problem many people have, in attempting to get good at something.  They immediately dislike what they've done.  They look at their peers who have been practicing since they were children, and throw their hands up and say &quot;I can't do it!  I'm no good at this!&quot; they compare what they've done to experts and masters of their craft, who often spent years refining their best known art.  But this is a terrible and self destructive comparison.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example; we read Game of Thrones, but do not also read everything Martin had written before he became a published author.  We don't see the progression, and how long it took to get to Westeros.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignore everyone else, just start doing what it is you want to do; that which you enjoy.  Accept that your early efforts will not be great.  This is fine, and you will see yourself improving over the weeks and months you choose to spend practicing.  In the future you will look back to your earliest work with great fondness.  Sure, it'll be filled with plot holes and bad spelling, but it meant something to you, and you actually bothered to do it, didn't you?  It's a success, because it's progress.  Practice makes perfect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask for help too.  Find someone (ideally more than one) who can offer constructive criticism from which you can learn and improve.  Ideally another writer like you.  Feedback is important, but some people are toxic and should be avoided if they can't encourage the best from you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To conclude: don't worry.  Just write.  Enjoy writing!  You didn't get it right that time?  Don't worry, think about how to improve it.  Rewrite it.  Bin it.  Write it again.  Write something else.  Keep writing.  If it makes you happy, that's all that matters.  After all.  It's a damn sight more civilised and responsible a hobby than stealing cars, or joining the Islamic State.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19796" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T17:08:55.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24090" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-10T19:32:22.903" Score="2" ViewCount="554" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am quoting a phrase (not dialog) that happens to come at the end of a sentence. Formal writing protocol - I think - tells us that punctuation goes inside the quotes but it seems strange here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A gangster might channel The Godfather movies by proclaiming &quot;he sleeps with the fishes.&quot; Of course we all know what this means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now then - if the quote was inside the sentence, there would be no need for a period near it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A phrase like &quot;he sleeps with the fishes&quot; is common among old style gangsters. Of course we all know what this means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in other words - the period is not inherently part of the quoted phrase- the period is to indicate the end of the sentence - yet it seems just as strange outside the quotes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A gangster might channel The Godfather movies by proclaiming &quot;he sleeps with the fishes&quot;. Of course we all know what this means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And something is missing if I leave out the period, altogether:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A gangster might channel The Godfather movies by proclaiming &quot;he sleeps with the fishes&quot; Of course we all know what this means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not looking for ways to restructure the sentences or reword. Above is just a made-up example.  I'm looking for advice or consensus as to the proper placement of the period within the quotations - particularly when another sentence follows it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18781" LastEditorUserId="18781" LastEditDate="2016-08-10T19:43:42.180" LastActivityDate="2016-08-14T00:31:26.347" Title="Period outside quotation marks ...?" Tags="|style|punctuation|grammar|chicago-manual-of-style|ap-style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24090" CreationDate="2016-08-10T21:12:27.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All your examples are good, except #3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A gangster might channel The Godfather movies by proclaiming &quot;he sleeps with the fishes.&quot; Of course we all know what this means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Periods and commas go inside the quotation mark, whether the punctuation is part of the quoted text or not. (In American English.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T21:12:27.340" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24092" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24093" CreationDate="2016-08-10T23:45:06.503" Score="3" ViewCount="7091" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering about the use of separating fiction into &quot;parts&quot;, similar to chapters but larger and spanning more text and using these to divide up books within a series. If I am unclear, refer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.ca/search?q=miss+peregrine%27s+home+for+peculiar+children&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;gws_rd=cr&amp;amp;ei=97mrV4zPHIuOjwP7i43YDQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Book 2, Hollow City&lt;/a&gt;. In this series, the second book is divided into two sections: part 1 and part 2, as well as chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering where this is done in various works of fiction. I assume within a single stand-alone book it should be fine, but would it still be fine within a series where not all the books are divided into parts that way, such as the Miss Peregrine's book series? How about for a novella? Is it more advisable to keep all the content in one main body than to divide it in a smaller text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21033" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T18:51:22.527" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T18:51:22.527" Title="Use of Separating Fiction into &quot;Parts?&quot;" Tags="|fiction|chapters|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24092" CreationDate="2016-08-11T00:43:30.227" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Breaking a book into parts is very common, in series books and in standalone books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read the books you mention, so I can't comment on those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just yesterday I finished reading &lt;em&gt;Mr. Mercedes,&lt;/em&gt; by Stephen King. He breaks the book into parts. Each time I got to the title page for a new part, I realized I was about to enter a new phase of the story. It sort of shifted my mood a little. Not a big effect, but a definite one. Especially for the final part, where the title made it clear that we were headed for the climax of the story. I definitely felt an added bit of anticipation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this story, breaking the book into parts worked well for me as a reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that's one effect of breaking a book into parts. There are probably others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: &lt;strong&gt;Do you want to create that kind effect in the reader?&lt;/strong&gt; If so, break your book into parts. If you'd rather give the reader a more subtle or continuous experience of the flow of the book, rather than announcing transitions so blatantly, don't break it into parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That's a question for each book,&lt;/strong&gt; even each book in a series. Even if one book benefits from explicit breaks between parts, that doesn't mean you need breaks in every book. (I don't know whether the two following books in King's series are separated into parts.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T00:43:30.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24092" CreationDate="2016-08-11T02:29:04.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories are made up of incidents. Each incident is a distinct unit of storytelling. Incidents lead the protagonist closer to or further from their goal. Each incident has a structure of its own, its own build and its own payoff. In long works, incidents may themselves be made up of incidents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some incidents may be separated from others in time or in space. Some may place the protagonist in different places, circumstances, or with different characters. The larger the break in continuity between scenes, the greater the need for the author to signal the change to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many tools a writer can use to indicate the extent of the break between incidents, for blank lines to paragraphs. to sections, to parts, to books. How many of these you need and of which kind depends on the kind of continuity breaks you need over the full arc of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, not so much a recommendation as an observation, but the division of a work into large units, such as parts, would seem to be effective where there are large breaks in continuity between incidents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T02:29:04.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24097" CreationDate="2016-08-11T04:38:23.340" Score="2" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately I have been getting low on fantasy inspiration for a series I'm writing.&#xA;I think this may be due to reading into realistic-genre books for a long period of time.&#xA;Is reading fantasy novels to imagine more my best option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T15:07:57.863" Title="Should I read fantasy novels for a better mindset on the topic?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24096" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-11T05:08:51.013" Score="3" ViewCount="612" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a fantasy writer and seldom exposing myself to sci-fi albeit both of them can be categorise as the same genre. I have this idea to start a sci-fi short story where the technologies in this world are impossible, a gravity defying technology that can lift an entire city, otherworldly hybrid experiments, atomic manipulation, cells manipulation, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that it is &quot;science fiction&quot; that I could just disregard about the laws of science and use my imagination but at the same time I want the things that I write sound at the very least convincing to readers as if it'll actually happens in the near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm an art student and I rarely got myself into science oriented subjects in school so it's rather difficult for me to understand the laws of science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is there some tips and trick to start conducting scientific research that I can use them to support my story? If there's websites that covered everything about science would be nice too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21012" LastActivityDate="2019-04-05T08:51:56.220" Title="How to start doing research on scientific facts for my sci-fi? Tips and tricks" Tags="|science-fiction|research|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24095" CreationDate="2016-08-11T06:00:34.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no doubt about it: yes. Not only can reading fantasy inspire you, but at the same time, it can also increase your understanding of the genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good original story doesn't come easy for a writer. Just reading sometimes isn't really enough to get us inspired. Our mind doesn't really adapt to the whole situation just by reading, but by actually experiencing things. What I would suggest you do is take inspiration from your surroundings, go for a walk, go camping, watch movies, play video games, learn a new language, do things that you wouldn't normally do (but hurting others is not encouraged). You'll be surprised by how much inspiration the world can offer. Always have a recording device or a pen and notepad with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned earlier that you read a lot of realistic-genre books, perhaps you could apply your inspiration to those stories that you've read and make them a fantasy? Just don't plagiarise others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21012" LastEditorUserId="18324" LastEditDate="2016-08-12T04:18:05.737" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T04:18:05.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24095" CreationDate="2016-08-11T08:29:28.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hope below will help you .&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Write Your Thoughts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Read Your Thoughts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ask your friends to read it &amp;amp; rate it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Again Write the same thought in the way which can add weight to it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;And then analyse by your own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BEST example every cricketer or musician look his own performance and analyse what addition he she want to do to make it fruitful .&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;amp; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;if still is thoughts are void then may be you are made good for something else.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best OF Luck !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21035" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T08:29:28.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24100" CreationDate="2016-08-11T08:37:41.793" Score="1" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to write poems in Hindi but i don't know the way to publish them in India. Many times i tried on google or my local publisher but they do ask me to give them content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21036" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-12T07:03:20.917" LastActivityDate="2019-06-12T07:03:20.917" Title="I used to write poems. but i don't know how can we publish our hindi poem in India?" Tags="|publishing|poetry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2016-08-11T15:14:05.363" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24099" CreationDate="2016-08-11T08:40:51.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start saying or demo in front of people. If they will appreciate, you will known on a better height.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21035" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T08:40:51.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24095" CreationDate="2016-08-11T08:40:53.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it would depend on what exactly you wanted from your writing.  If you want to create something very much within the confines of the fantasy genre and its tropes (or perhaps contrary to them) then it would make sense to keep reading similar things.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, for example, I'm world building for a story which will be some sort of steam punk / fantasy something or other.  But the inspiration for it is political power struggles and how society can regress into chaos.  Which is a more historical and political issue, so though I will have strong fantasy elements, these exist to express power dynamics grounded in history.  So in my case, I don't much care about other steampunk or fantasy works because that's not the point of mine.  It makes more sense for me to read cold war history.  But I don't know what is it that you want, and importantly what was the main inspiration and direction of your work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tolkien for example seemed inspired as much by myth and language as political events he lived through; the Lord of the Rings was clearly expressing his beliefs, which strongly related to his faith and politics.  So at the very least it's good practice to try and read broadly and learn about lots of unrelated things which can inspire you.  If you don't learn things and make new mental connections between new concepts you can't create new ideas.  Watch a nature documentary, go to a gallery, go for a walk to somewhere you haven't been before.  Have those new experiences and learn new things which can spark your creativity in unexpected ways.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go back to whatever it is that first inspired you.  If that's a fantasy story, re-read it.  If it's a nature documentary, watch it again.  Etc, etc, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19796" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T08:40:53.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24096" CreationDate="2016-08-11T10:02:52.380" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To get a basic view of science, go to educational websites aimed at school pupils studying science subjects. In fact I have found a good starting point for research into practically any subject is to look at materials written for children. I have often used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/education&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC Bitesize&lt;/a&gt; to get an introduction to subjects I know little about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want something a little more advanced, search for books, magazines or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howtogeek.com/120865/the-best-websites-for-expanding-your-scientific-knowledge/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;websites&lt;/a&gt; about popular science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also consider going on an evening course if one is available near you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble with anti-gravity and so on is that such things are far beyond the level of present day science. I am usually a strong proponent of researching from facts, not from fiction, but in this case fiction and speculation is all you've got! So try reading science fiction novels by well known writers dealing with the pseudo-scientific topics you want to cover, not to copy them, obviously, but to get a sense of what is considered plausible and what jargon to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia pages on mainstream scientific topics are usually accurate, but pitched at an intimidatingly high level. In contrast the Wikipedia pages for &quot;far out&quot; topics like &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-gravity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;anti-gravity&lt;/a&gt; are fairly readable and don't have a lot of mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a native English speaker, but often prefer the &lt;a href=&quot;https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Simple English Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; to the standard Wikipedia for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend an old (1983) but still useful book called &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Fiction-Peter-Nicholls/dp/0394530101&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Science in Science Fiction&lt;/a&gt; edited by Peter Nicholls. The chapters on biology and cloning have been mostly overtaken by scientific progress since then, but the parts dealing with speculative technologies of the far future obviously haven't been. Chapter 4 &quot;The Limits of the Possible&quot; has a section on anti-gravity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Added later:&lt;/em&gt; as you state in your question, your aim here is to get enough of a grounding in science to come up with convincing justifications for futuristic technology. Better understanding of scientific principles will definitely give a more authentic flavour to your science fiction, and will also help you think up new ideas, but remember the writers' proverb that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.josephfinder.com/writers/tips/research-a-writers-best-friend-and-a-writers-worst-enemy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;research should be like an iceberg&lt;/a&gt;: only 10% of it should be visible on the surface. Remember that to your characters flying cities will be mundane. They will not feel the need to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/19408/avoiding-the-as-you-know-trope-in-exposition/19425#19425&quot;&gt;explain them to each other.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.217" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T17:37:02.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24095" CreationDate="2016-08-11T13:35:51.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your foray into more realistic writing is a desire for content that is more relevant to the real world. I see that as a clue that you want to take on more &quot;real&quot; (complex, sticky, difficult, moral, emotional) problems in your fantasy writing. I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T13:35:51.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24095" CreationDate="2016-08-11T13:37:07.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily.  The danger is that you'll end up writing something derivative.  Here are some different options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start a dream journal - some of the most evocative fantasy imagery comes originally from dreams, and your own dreams will be more original to you than inspiration from somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reimagine one of the realistic novels you've read in a fantasy context.  This has been very successful for many writers --there's a whole sub-genre of fantasy detective noir.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go back to the original source --folk and fairy tales from around the world.  Again, this has been the inspiration for some of the most successful fantasy works.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T13:37:07.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24001" CreationDate="2016-08-11T13:52:39.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The people who say &quot;to become a good writer you must read!&quot; are operating on the assumption that everyone can read with ease. In your case, I would rephrase it as &quot;to become a good writer and teller-of-stories you must listen to stories and understand how they work!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are emerging from a centuries-long period of history when text was king. In previous times, the spoken word was dominant. And now, fortunately, text is not the only alternative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from buying recorded-voice versions of books (which you can also borrow from your local library) you can download many copyright-free classics from Project Gutenberg and then use a computer to read the text out loud. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different approach would be to immerse yourself in verbal storytelling, such as TED talks, and focus on developing your skill in that area. When you find those things of value that you have to share, others can help you optimize the text version of the content for you. (As they seem to have done here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T13:52:39.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24096" CreationDate="2016-08-11T17:52:40.923" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are straight up inventing technology, then the key is not trying to hammer out some sort of pseudoscientific explanation, but rather to think out the 2nd and third order effects of the technology so that they fit seamlessly into your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, anti-gravity. Sure, it allows for floating cities and such, but does it also replace stairs (with vertical tubes that shunt folks up and down), allow for bizarre inverted buildings that are larger on top than on the bottom, or things of that nature? You don't really need a deep scientific base for this, just some time thinking about how your technology would affect the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What technical reading COULD help you with is naming scientific phenomenon. Coming up with plausible sounding things like &quot;Wesbowski FTL Engine&quot;, &quot;Kellerman's Principle of Gravitronic Repulsion&quot;, or the like. Some choice scientific/engineering jargon can go a long way towards imbedding your technology into the minds of readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite frankly, Wikipedia probably goes as indepth as is necessary for most scientific things unless you want to really dive deep into research about a specific topic. But for things that don't actually exist today, I don't think there is much value added in trying to tie in existing technology as some sort of precursor for invented future tech. For example, I think it is highly unlikely that some type of mind reading cranial implant that replaced cell phones is going to be called the iSkull, utilize existing wireless protocol terminology, and be invented by Apple. You are better off creating the vocabulary around this device from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19367" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T17:52:40.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24032" CreationDate="2016-08-11T17:58:13.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are authors writing lengthy fictional series LOADED with &quot;gun porn&quot; descriptions of real world gun manufacturers, scope makers, ammunition loaders, holster makers, etc. Plenty of authors name drop real world cars as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In movies and such if they block out a logo or whatever it is probably because they want endorsement $$$ TO FEATURE the logo, not that the film makers would have to pay to use it. So rather than give free advertising to Ford, they just black out the oval logo unless Ford coughs up a few grand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, making up manufacturers for things like cars or guns, in an otherwise &quot;real world&quot; setting, would be very distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19367" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T17:58:13.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24110" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-11T22:00:55.937" Score="8" ViewCount="941" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am aware that there are lots of different ways to do this. I'm being subtle about it thus far. Our standards of beauty are skinny but with an ample bosom here in the US for the most part. The women thought beautiful in the other culture are mainly what we would call overweight. I am not saying that anyone overweight can't be beautiful, I just want to convey that the cultural standard differs from our own, without pointing out that it's weird in any way. It's normal for that culture, and I want to convey this well. &lt;strong&gt;Any tips or books (fiction or non) I should be reading?&lt;/strong&gt; I've just read &lt;em&gt;Pierced by the Sun&lt;/em&gt;, and though the MC doesn't follow the standard of beauty for the US, I don't like her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Hey guys, do also include any fiction or non-fiction that I should be reading which might help with this. Fiction is more desirable. I want to see some literary examples. Tips have been great so far!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastEditorUserId="19827" LastEditDate="2016-08-13T16:03:46.923" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T04:39:32.267" Title="How do I express that a culture has a different standard of beauty?" Tags="|fiction|resources|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2016-08-11T22:22:34.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My re-write of number two, adding in lost details from #1. This is how people actually think, they don't refer so directly to things. We still know something is killing him, but now we're wondering what it is...This is first person POV, straight up. If you want to be in his head that much, it might need to be from his POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's four o'clock in the morning. The psychiatric clinic is dark and&#xA;  silent and empty, like a morgue. There's nothing dead in here,&#xA;  nothing except my hope of healing anyone. But here I am, sitting in&#xA;  the dark, trying to stop caring about not caring, with my own&#xA;  prescription of vodka. I take a sip, and grimace, because it's too cheap to enjoy. But, it's not as though I'm drinking it for the taste. At least it can't&#xA;  kill me any more than what I've already got.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T22:22:34.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24040" CreationDate="2016-08-11T22:49:16.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To begin with, follow the advice of mbkeranalecta regarding motivations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like a dialogue problem? As though they all start to sound the same eventually because you favor a particular &quot;voice&quot; in a dialogue? That happens a lot, so I am just going to answer it from this tack as the major point has, I think, been covered. Different motivations make for different reactions, and thus, different people, but dialogue, that's about developing a particular voice that comes from a particular background. If you can write dialogue that the reader can immediately identify as a specific person, without the name, then you've done something beautiful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So--have their voice in your head. How do they talk? Do they have any verbal tics? This isn't about putting the words &quot;he said gloomily&quot; at the end of whatever they say...it's more than that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example. Character #1 has a verbal tic. One word sarcasm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Fantastic. Perfect. Can nothing at all go right?&quot; he said, sopping wet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Nothing ever has before, but it's never stopped me. Don't look now, but there's a stunning barmaid coming over here to clean it up,&quot; he answered, wringing out his hat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I heard that,&quot; she said, towel in hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I meant you to,&quot; he said with a brilliant smile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I am going to smell like a damned brewery for the rest of the day. Wonderful.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also react differently. Even though they aren't named, you know exactly who is speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T22:49:16.827" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24110" CreationDate="2016-08-11T23:14:09.383" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to go about this would be to have the narrator and/or another character describe or comment on the character's looks in a positive way. If it's important to you to contrast this culture's standards of beauty with those in the U.S., I think that's best done through the words of a character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you can also play around with emotional and psychological cues. I'm reading a Jane Smiley novel right now in which one of the most physically attractive characters is a narcissist and a disengaged parent, and another character is described as plain but is at the emotional center of many of the relationships in the book because she is warm and funny and empathetic. Your narrator can filter and shape what your readers know and think about your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21020" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T23:14:09.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24082" CreationDate="2016-08-12T01:33:56.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best of all in dialogue, is often set in rhythm. To please the ear, to please the mind, is valued just as clarity, but please do use it sparingly, in principle for prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a little fun with it...Really depends on what advice you've been given on what clarity means. In straight prose, I'm saying: Some of the best dialogue is rhythmic. Writing a pleasing turn of phrase for mind or soul is more than clarity, but it shouldn't distract from the message. &lt;em&gt;Myself, I love the sounds, the particular beat, the words that turn to song so easily once they've touched your mind.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make anything fit a particular form, however, particular forms outside of their milieu, when not used subtly or well, can sometimes be quite distracting, even if they don't rhyme.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the works that seems to baffle me in this respect is the King James Bible. I know it is the word of God but how did other authors imitate the style and rhythm of some of the books in it? They actually imitated the narrative style of the King James Bible. So they should be able to imitate the style of the prophetic books, the psalms, and the epistles as well. But how can this be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked about the Bible--actually I find the tone quite different in different parts of it, but the upshot is that it got edited by a specific group of people in the 1600s. So a lot of that has to do with the conventions of prose and poetic writing in the day--Shakespeare was very nearly contemporaneous with and certainly shaped it. It's got a sameness because a bunch of dudes from the 1600s who already thought in these forms edited it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the HOW...well, it's a lot like music. You can learn to think in iambic given enough time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What concerns me is the lack of synonyms we have available for a given word. Maybe I am over thinking this, but how can we possibly achieve specific rhythmic effects if we don't have the right sounding word available? if I want to refer to a specific thing or concept, what do I do if I cannot find a synonym that has the right sound?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That question is a question every single poet and rapper has ever asked. The answer is to put the wrong word in, but torture it until it cooperates. Or use two words instead to break up the syllable issue. I've done that to get around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how to use rhythm at all without being unnatural or indirect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using these things more subtly than in poetic form, and choosing when to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T01:33:56.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24110" CreationDate="2016-08-12T03:22:57.827" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is very much a matter of the overall narrative style of the work. Some narrative styles will give you great liberty to do this, some will make it very difficult or forced. The question then becomes, do you choose a narrative style that makes it easy to deal with your subject matter in the way you want to, or do you hobble yourself with a style that does not work for what you want to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The show-don't-tell style that is so popular among aspiring writers today, forces you to do almost all exposition through physical action or naturalistic conversation. It does not work well for this kind of thing because a culture's standards of beauty are largely assumed in polite converation. A conversation in which people list of the attributes they find attractive in someone will tend to portray them as boorish or creepy, which may not be what you want at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are willing to adopt a more narrative style in which the writer is allowed to say things to the reader in their own voice, then you can tell the reader, for instance, that such and such a character was considered very beautiful because she had sharp elbows and crooked nose, and that establishes that those features are the marks of beauty in that culture. Jane Austen is a great exemplar of this narrative style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are willing to adopt what we might call the storyteller style, you can address it even more directly, and say, &quot;in those days&quot; or &quot;in that country, the standards of beauty were very different from our own.&quot; There is a lot of this style to be found in Kipling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can use a narrative frame (as Conrad does in Heart of Darkness) where the story is told by a character to an audience, and can explain things to that audience. Naturally here you portray an audience and a narrator that fits the kind of thing you want to get across. So choose an audience who would want to hear and a narrator who would want to comment on different standards of beauty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you choose, though, is likely to be a choice for the whole work. You probably can't get away with dropping into a different style for one scene just to get this point across. It is difficult to change narrative styles in the middle, though Melville does it to great effect in Moby Dick. But it is entirely appropriate to choose a narrative style that gives you the liberty to deal with the issues you want to deal with in a work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T03:22:57.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24110" CreationDate="2016-08-12T06:24:33.663" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The trick that most novels use is not to describe what is thought beautiful in that world. In most novels, when a character is supposed to be beautiful, this is simply stated, and it is up to the reader to imagine what that person looks like. In fact, in most novels you have no idea what skin color, body height, or wheight the protagonists have. I like this approach, because it allows anyone to project their own ideas of beauty into their reading and come out satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only when physical characteristics play a role in the story, is it necessary to describe them in more detail. Otherwise I would abstain from physical descriptions, as they stifle the imagination of the reader and limit the novel's applicability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to explicitly define a beauty ideal different than the one prevalent in your culture, this will always lead to friction. I remember reading a book about some non-human characters, and one character was seen as beautiful by another and the aspects of their beauty were described. I remember clearly how I thought that fur is not something I find erotic on a person and how I could not follow the character in their emotions, so I finally dropped that book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will cause a similar effect. If you explicitly describe overweight bodies as beautiful, no matter how subtle, there will be a point at which those that don't share that beauty ideal will drop out, or at least take a distance and start reading differently: no longer involved, but more like reading a documentary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess that overweight persons have a similar experience when they read of a thin ideal, so there is a choice you have to make: when you promote non-standard ideals, you will lose readers that do not subscribe to this ideal; when you promote standard ideals, you will lose readers that have other ideals; when you promote no beauty ideals at all, all readers can follow you, but beauty ideals are no longer a topic of your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you want to create a culture in which overweight bodies are perceived as beautiful, &lt;strong&gt;you really don't have to be too subtle&lt;/strong&gt;, because no matter how subtle or unsubtle you are, only the readers that share that ideal will be attracted by that book, while all others will find it uninteresting or irritating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't focus your attention on the subtleness, but rather focus your attention on conveying that culture well. For that, just get into your characters and look at their world through their eyes. How would they describe it? Use their words. &lt;strong&gt;It is all about understanding your characters well&lt;/strong&gt;, and the challenge is not to tell them from your own, outsider eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you want to convincingly show a culture-wide beauty ideal that differs from what is healthy and vigorous, you will have a problem. People do not simply think something beautiful because it is beautiful. Beauty always signifies something for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a certain facial shape appears attractive to a person because it signifies a certain personality. A look (hair style, clothing) appears beautiful because it signifies a lifestyle that we find attractive. And so on. In US-mainstream culture, physical beauty is what signifies youth, health and physical power. There are subcultures where men fatten their wives because they like fat bodies, but for a person from the cultural center another person appears beautiful because they appear vigorous and healthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you have a culture where the majority find overweight bodies beautiful, a person of that culture will think of and feel the reasons for this beauty ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of US culture. The average man looking at the average beautiful woman will not just think: &quot;She is beautiful.&quot; He will think: &quot;Oh my god, her skin is so smooth [= healthy], her waist is so thin [= vigorous], etc.&quot; So in an overweight-loving culture, you'll have to argue for your ideal in a similar way. A person of that culture looking at another person will have to think of what being overweight signifies for them, and since it is not a fringe subculture (such as the fattening subcultrue in America today), those arguments have to be such that a whole culture can endorse them. And that is difficult, as being overweight is unhealthy (scientifically proven fact) and limits the physical ability of the individual (they cannot run so fast, jump so high, stand for so long, etc.), so you'll have to be very creative in finding a convincing mechanism that lead a whole culture to that ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the polynesian culture that I mentioned in my comment to your question, the ideal of being fat was limited to the upper class. It was not something thought beautiful, but something thought aristocratic. Being fat was a luxury that only very few could afford, so it signified power and wealth. It was not an idea that every member of the culture tried to aspire to, but more like a crown: a symbol of a social position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-08-12T08:42:03.893" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T08:42:03.893" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24118" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24120" CreationDate="2016-08-12T09:34:30.240" Score="9" ViewCount="1927" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes authors invent regions, which are very similar to real ones, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gabriel García Márquez's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macondo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Macondo&lt;/a&gt; (which is similar to real city of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aracataca&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aracataca&lt;/a&gt;) or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;William Faulkner's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoknapatawpha_County&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yoknapatawpha County&lt;/a&gt; (similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafayette_County,_Mississippi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lafayette County&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the benefit of using an existing region as a scene for fiction because you know it well, and you can describe it in little details, which makes the reader feel that you know the place intimately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what's the benefit of inventing a fictional region, which is based on a real one? Why not use the real one in the novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking because I'm writing a story, which plays in a region I grew up in. I need to decide, whether I should use a fake city based on that real city, or use the real one in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benefits of inventing a new city:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Easier pronunciation.&lt;/strong&gt; The real city is in German-speaking part of Europe. My target audience is English-speaking and is likely to break their tongues, if I use real location names in my story. In a fictional city I can name the places so that English-speaking readers can remember them more easily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adaptability of the world.&lt;/strong&gt; I can bend the history of the fake city so that it suits the needs of my story in the best possible way (even if in reality the history was different).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No stereotypes.&lt;/strong&gt; If I say that the story plays in Moscow (strongly stereotyped place), the reader will have ideas about the characters and the settings, incl. those I don't want her to have. If I have a fake city based on Moscow, it's me, who decides, which ideas come to her mind based on the geography of the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other benefits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6696" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2020-05-26T17:59:31.903" LastActivityDate="2020-05-26T17:59:31.903" Title="What's the benefit of inventing a fictional region, if it's based on a real one?" Tags="|world-building|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24118" CreationDate="2016-08-12T10:48:25.103" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks to me as if you have already answered your own question very well. All I can think of to add is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;it saves you from having to do a lot of detailed research into the geography and history of that region. Some people love to nitpick when authors get factual details wrong; with a fictional region as your setting you can shrug these complaints off.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;setting your story in a fictional region minimizes the danger that you will be sued for libel if, for instance, your story includes a scene in which the poshest restaurant in the city of X gives all its diners food poisoning. (But people should note that in most jurisdictions a libel case can be sustained if the restaurant in the story is recognizable to the average reader as referring to a real restaurant.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T10:48:25.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24118" CreationDate="2016-08-12T12:40:58.147" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the most important reason may be that it is one small step into faery. There is always something of faery about every story. Stories take place in a neater, stronger, brighter world than our own, a world in which coincidences are more likely and more meaningful than in the real world, in which people are more definitely and consistently who they are, in which the weather and the seasons reflect the moods of the inhabitants. It is a world of symbol and a world of consequence. It is more real, more gritty, more permanent, and yet also smaller and more ephemeral than our own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, stories are not really set in real places, but in the faery equivalent of real places. Some places, like New York or Rome exist more in our minds as their faery equivalents than as their real noisy crowded selves, so you can set a story in faery New York or faery Rome without changing the names. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for other places, and perhaps this is more for the author's sake than the reader's, it is necessary to create the faery equivalent of those places under a new name so that the faery place can have a clearly established character that differs from the real in all the ways that story places differ from real places. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T12:40:58.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24118" CreationDate="2016-08-12T12:46:32.683" Score="5" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can tweak the geographic details of the place to fit your story. If I were writing about my fair city, Pittsburgh, but lakes would suit my story better than rivers, I can change them. Maybe in my fictionalized city it's better to put the brothel next to the bank. I can remove the vacant building across from my character's office window and add a cliff for his foes to fall off of.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T12:46:32.683" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24084" CreationDate="2016-08-12T13:44:50.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps these are not the most fitted options for your needs, but they are definitely worth checking out. If you are looking to publish for free there is wordpress (which you can use in either case to promote your content).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have found this link, which was last updated last year, but which still points to working solutions for your problem: &lt;a href=&quot;https://theonlinenovel.wordpress.com/where-to-read-or-list-serials/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Where to read or list serials&lt;/a&gt;. Particularly promising is Amazon's Kindle program, although I must say the royalties with them are quite low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You could try Patreon, where you could have your works only accessible to those who pay above a certain threshold each month. Like, say, those who pledge you $5 or more each month may read your stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You could also use Leanpub, a publishing platform that let's you publish works as 'unfinished' and then update them periodically. The great thing with this platform is that you can set a minimum of money you want, but then the reader can pay you more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21051" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-09-21T15:41:06.013" LastActivityDate="2022-09-21T15:41:06.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24110" CreationDate="2016-08-12T13:50:02.070" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So if you want to create a culture in which overweight bodies are perceived as beautiful, you really don't have to be too subtle, because no matter how subtle or unsubtle you are, only the readers that share that ideal will be attracted by that book, while all others will find it uninteresting or irritating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the post I quote has many valid points I am not sure that the passage above works for each and every scenario. The subtlety of your depiction of the said cultural standard depends largely on how important it is for your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your world being full of fat beautiful women is one of the many aspects of the culture you are building, you can just brush upon that here and there, describing different characters--through the narrator's or other character's perception--and using positive wording to convey the person's reaction to the certain features, like &lt;em&gt;'smooth curves of her ample body'&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;'magnificent breasts'&lt;/em&gt;, etc., and let the reader's imagination fill in the blanks without much risk of irritating or distancing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your main character struggles with the fact that she is way too thin and considers herself ugly because of that and her internal conflict is what drives your story, then, by all means, go full throttle. You still may consider employing a targeted mixture of positive and negative epithets when she enviously measures herself up against her peers, who are beautiful, and &lt;em&gt;'my elbows are bony'&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;'oh, I have a gap between my thighs--it is repulsive'&lt;/em&gt;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am trying to say is that for as long as you are not trying to blantly expose your reader to the rather alien to our culture idea that &lt;em&gt;'flapping folds of fat'&lt;/em&gt; are a pinnacle of physical attractiveness, you might have a better chance to reliably suspend disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T13:50:02.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24064" CreationDate="2016-08-12T13:55:38.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting past the designing stage without a clear goal in mind as to what should be the story can be hard, and not necessarily something you can satisfactorily solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have thought about the characters and an overall idea of the plot, you could start small, maybe with an introduction of one or more or them. From mine and other people's experience, I have seen that writing, even when not having a clear destination - or a clear path toward that destination - often makes you see what makes sense about the story and what does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If still it does not help, perhaps devoting time to other writing projects will put things in perspective. Sometimes there simply may not be a solution for this kind of block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21051" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T13:55:38.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24110" CreationDate="2016-08-12T14:21:10.170" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most natural way to do this is just to have characters from the culture, in the story, comment on the traits of someone they find beautiful.  People often do this in real life, so it shouldn't be too hard to do this subtly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want the culture to feel fully realized, however, you might think about the entire range of differences that surround the different beauty standard.  I would imagine a culture that celebrates thinness as being more ascetic and goal focused, and one that celebrates a heavier body type as being more sensual and pleasure focused.  Compare these two real life quotes from different sub-cultures.  &quot;I hate her, she's so skinny!&quot; (one woman envious of another in a thin-oriented culture).  &quot;Man, she thick as hell!&quot; (a man boasting to a friend about the attractive heft of a woman in a buxom-oriented culture).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe thin-orientation is more common in the societies where food is plentiful and obesity is common, heavy-orientation is more common in places where food is scarce, something you might want to consider.  You also want to think about about perjorative terms being reversed.  For instance, your culture wouldn't use the term &quot;overweight&quot; because that implies being heavier is wrong.  Conversely, they might say &quot;scrawny&quot; instead of &quot;skinny.&quot; The subgenre of African-American romance novels is a good place to find fiction from a sub-culture with a tendency to be oriented towards heavier body types. Alexander McCall Smith's well-known &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No._1_Ladies%27_Detective_Agency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Number 1 Ladies' Detective Agency&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; series, set in Botswana, might be another good place to look. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-08-15T14:46:17.403" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T14:46:17.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24110" CreationDate="2016-08-12T15:30:37.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the story you're writing center around this idea of the concept of what is beautiful being different from what the current Western standard of beauty is?  Or is this just window dressing and world building?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's just background for the story, then treat it that way.  Mention it casually, and incorporate it in as you would hover car or faster than light travel.  It's there, and it belongs as naturally as trees belong in a forest and glass belongs in high rise buildings.  Say the girl is beautiful and has deliciously chubby fingers, or whatever, and leave it at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't have to be a big deal.  It's a given - this is what people think in the culture of your story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the idea that you're going to lose readers just because of some small element of world building is nuts.  You might lose readers if your plot has holes in it, or if your writing is poor, but not for something like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T15:30:37.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24127" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2016-08-12T16:14:20.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag should be used for questions about the act of creating elements for your own fictional world that you will use in your &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/creative-writing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;creative-writing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;creative-writing&lt;/a&gt;. If you are considering asking a question about world-building, please consider asking it on StackExchange's launched site dedicated to this specific topic, &lt;a href=&quot;https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;WorldBuilding.StackExchange&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-18T11:57:50.943" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T11:57:50.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24128" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2016-08-12T16:14:20.393" Score="0" Body="This tag should be used for questions about the act of creating elements for your own fictional world that you will use in your creative writing. If you are considering asking a question about world-building, please consider asking it on StackExchange's launched site dedicated to this specific topic, worldbuilding.stackexchange.com." OwnerUserId="15844" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-18T11:57:50.943" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T11:57:50.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24129" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24136" CreationDate="2016-08-12T19:19:59.120" Score="0" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been finding it very difficult to come up with topics/ theses for my essay assignments and I think reading the works of more experienced scholars may be useful.  However, I haven't been able to find a site that hosts good quality literary critiques.  All I've found are sites with thousands of essays of varied (and mostly poor) quality and sites with &lt;em&gt;reviews&lt;/em&gt; of literature as opposed to works which make an argument about a specific part of a novel/ poem/ film (which is what I'm looking for).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear I'm looking for a website which hosts articles/ essays on topics like (from the top of my head) intertexuality in [some famous novel], use of color to convey [something] in Akira, or an comparison of tones in Yehuda Amichai's &quot;Jerusalem&quot; and Mahmoud Darwish's &quot;Identity Card&quot;.  My ideal (though almost certain such a site doesn't exist) would be a website that gives its audience a reading assignment each week and then provides several different good quality essays about different aspects of that work before moving on to the next one the week after.  I'm looking to see how professional writers respond to classic works.  I'm not looking to use the site to plagiarize anyone else's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does such a website exist?  Where do professional critics publish their works?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21057" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T21:04:57.503" Title="Finding literary critiques" Tags="|academic-writing|resources|essay|research|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24129" CreationDate="2016-08-12T19:31:57.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it might not be &quot;professional,&quot; there are about eleventy gazillion words of meta-analysis (shortened to just &lt;em&gt;meta&lt;/em&gt;) of the BBC's &lt;em&gt;Sherlock&lt;/em&gt;, easily accessible on Tumblr by looking for the appropriate tags. T&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read posts of 100 to 10,000 words by people who are analyzing the use of color in various episodes (green, rainbows, blue/purple, light/dark cinematography), the &quot;drinks code,&quot; M-theory, the femme fatale trope, how set designer Arwel Wyn-Jones uses mockingbird designs on background wallpaper to indicate villains, character mirrors, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have probably learned as much about cinematic and textual analysis from reading two years of meta as I did in two years of literary criticism courses in college. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T19:31:57.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24096" CreationDate="2016-08-13T01:59:03.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was a science major in college, and I was in a writer's group. I tended to be the go-to guy for science/medical in our group. And there were others who were &quot;consulted&quot; based on what they knew: religion, country living, guns and ammo, etc. You could find some science geek, buy the person coffee, and chat. You might even convince your new friend to review and critique your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T01:59:03.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24095" CreationDate="2016-08-13T14:57:25.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter what genre you're writing in, if you're a writer you need to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read until you start to read like a writer, until reading becomes your instruction and your classroom, and authors become your teachers. Pay attention to how they do what they do. Are you moved by a section? Pick it apart and see why it worked. Are you disappointed in a section? Pick that apart too. Why did it fail? (The answer to many questions on this board is &quot;Read more.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, I can come up with story ideas on my own, but reading provides the inspiration to keep going and improve my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastEditorUserId="7986" LastEditDate="2016-08-13T15:07:57.863" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T15:07:57.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23911" CreationDate="2016-08-13T15:59:24.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please absolutely do reference later pages, chapters or sections, because if I am interested in a particular topic that you are talking about, I might want to turn directly to it for more info. Whenever I am reading a how-to, a reference manual or, even an RPG, I find these markers within text extremely helpful to me as a reader. I would even recommend getting specific about what's covered, in very short form (maybe not on the first draft).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like what's below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You will also want to make sure that you have the right tires on your&#xA;  bike and that they have just the right amount of air. More detailed&#xA;  information on tires will be covered in section 12.1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of this depends on the tone of your writing. If it's less like a book that you think people will use for reference and more of a conversational book, the format of: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We'll be exploring this later in the book. OR We'll be getting more&#xA;  detailed about this topic, but the quick and dirty version is: the&#xA;  more unstable the ground, the wider your tires should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every reader has a preference on this, and it will also have to fit in with what you are doing and how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T15:59:24.720" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23937" CreationDate="2016-08-13T18:42:48.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many things which I have found useful to organize both thoughts and the writings themselves:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any note-like app on the phone to write ideas that occur at any time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trello, an application which allows you, for example, to create different categories such as 'ideas', 'work in progress', 'finishes', to categorize your different ideas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google docs seems to me, so far, the most reliable text editor. Always stored in cloud, allows you to add comments anywhere, share your work with friends easily, and even convert your text to html and process it with a google apps script - although this requires some programming knowledge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21051" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T18:42:48.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23694" CreationDate="2016-08-13T19:18:17.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is a scientific paper published in an academic journal the format is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abstract (summary of your topic and the results).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Materials and Methods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussion/Conclusions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reference list. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19809" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T19:18:17.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24129" CreationDate="2016-08-13T20:57:05.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scholarly work&lt;/strong&gt; on literature and language is listed in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mla.org/Publications/MLA-International-Bibliography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MLA Bibliography&lt;/a&gt;. To access it, go to a university or big public library and ask a librarian. The MLA Bibliography lists publications by topic, that is, it offers a systematic search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know what you are looking for, you can try finding articles through &lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt;. Google Scholar is a search engine, that is, it finds words in the articles. You need a good search strategy and a bit of luck to find what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scholarly articles are usually accessible online, but paywalled. You can access the most important ones through any university or big public library. Most such libraries offer introductions into scholarly research. If you are completely new to this, I recommend you take one such &quot;course&quot;. Again, ask in the library nearest to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know where you live, but in most countries university libraries can be used by the public. Bring a passport to register as a user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reviews and literary critiques&lt;/strong&gt; are published in newspapers and review journals. There are many of the latter, most focussing on either &quot;high&quot; literature (e.g. the New York Times Book Review) or a specific genre. You can start your search in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_magazines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia List of Literary Magazines&lt;/a&gt; or in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pw.org/literary_magazines&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Poets &amp;amp; Writers Literary Magazines Database&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are similar lists for magazines in other languages. Use Google to find them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll have to buy most of these magazines, but the more popular and high class ones (such as the Paris Review) can again be found in some public libraries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-08-13T21:04:57.503" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T21:04:57.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24118" CreationDate="2016-08-13T21:30:48.723" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, a fictional city, country or other kind of location, embodies the &lt;strong&gt;essence&lt;/strong&gt; of what it stands for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gotham City in the Batman comics is New York City stripped of its tourists, commuters, family life, and all the other normal things that exist elsewhere, too, leaving only the metropolitan politics, the gangs and crime, the brutality of that moloch. Depending on your own views of New York City, Gotham City represents either the understanding or prejudice of its authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fictional place allows the author to express a stereotype or deeper truth. It is like cooking tomatoes until you get tomato paste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T21:30:48.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24092" CreationDate="2016-08-13T22:32:28.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why is a text visually structured at all? Because it has an internal structure. And the outward, visual structure of paragraphs, sections, chapters, parts, and books represents that inherent structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When does a paragraph break happen? When the subject changes. When does a section break happen? When the place, time, protagonist, or narrative perspective change. When does a chapter break happen? When an action begun by the protagonist has led to an outcome and a continuous sequence of events is completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From paragraphs to chapters, all books are structured the same. Where they differ, is from parts, to books, and beyond. These breaks all happen &lt;strong&gt;when a story arc is finished&lt;/strong&gt;. So why are some books divided into parts while others aren't? Because the book that isn't divided into parts tells only one story arc (or multiple &lt;em&gt;parallel&lt;/em&gt; arcs), while &lt;strong&gt;a book that is divided into parts tells several sequential (sub-)story arcs&lt;/strong&gt;, which together build one large arc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at this graphic. Each rise and fall in the line represents a rising action, a climax, and a resolution and denouement. The smallest &quot;bumps&quot; are the chapters, the larger bumps the parts, and the whole mountain is the overall story arc of the complete book or other larger unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0kyPq.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0kyPq.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all stories have these (internal!) sequential substory arcs, so not all books have (visual) parts. It depends on the story that is told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T22:32:28.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24118" CreationDate="2016-08-13T23:47:06.717" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the main advantage of using a fictional place is what you perhaps allude to in your comment about &quot;adaptability&quot;. With a fictional place, you can invent whatever you want that helps your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've occasionally heard people really nit-pick details of a story set in a real location. Like, &quot;What?? The author says that the hero ran out of an Italian restaurant and into a newspaper office next door. Now here I have carefully compiled a list of every Italian restaurant in that city and every newspaper office, and there is no case where the two are side by side.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course by definition a fiction story is not true. The rational reader expects details to be altered to fit the story. At the very least, people will be invented who never lived in this city, indeed who never lived anywhere. Fictional details will be invented. For most readers, if you say the hero lived at 137 Broad Street in a 3-bedroom house with a green door, etc, they're not going to rush to Broad Street to see if such a house really exists and really fits the description in your story. But if you set the story in New York City and mention the hero driving past the Eiffel Tower, most readers will balk. We expect the big details to be right. Thus, the writer may often find himself wondering whether some detail that he wants to put in the story is &quot;big enough&quot; that he has to make it match reality, or not. With a fictional place, this issue goes away. You have to be consistent with what you said earlier, but you don't have to be consistent with reality because there is no reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T23:47:06.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24110" CreationDate="2016-08-14T00:03:54.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are at least three ways to do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Explain it in narration. This could be direct and blunt, like, &quot;In this culture, unlike our own, to be considered beautiful a woman had to be a little plump.&quot; I suspect it would work better if done a little more subtly, like, &quot;Fwacnia was considered very beautiful and had many men chasing after her. In our culture she might be considered overweight, but by Ruritanian standards she was just about perfect.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have the characters discuss their standards of beauty. &quot;'You know,' Rothnar said, 'I really like a woman with a little meat on her.' 'Yes,' Bragniss agreed, 'Skinny women just look too unhealthy to me.'&quot; This has the danger of making the men involved seem overly ... objectifying? judgmental? I'm sure it can work if done well. There's also the problem that it can fall into the &quot;as you know dialog&quot; trap: characters sitting around telling each other things that they all know, not to inform each other, but to inform the reader who they are not supposed to know exists. Personally it always throws me off when characters start telling each other, &quot;As you know, your father owns a shoe store&quot;, or &quot;As you know, since the Martians invaded Earth two years ago we have been living under their domination.&quot; Why would people tell each other things that they all know?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a character from another culture discuss standards of beauty with the locals. This should have less of the &quot;sexist jerk&quot; problem, as there's then good reason for all involved to view it as an interesting philosophical discussion. Toss in a few sentences of speculation about how different standards came to be and it could be made to sound not weird at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to do this with a pure &quot;show don't tell&quot; approach seems to me to be very difficult. Yes, you could say in chapter 1 that Sally weights 180 pounds, and then in chapter 3 talk about Sally winning a beauty contest. But without some explanation, that's likely to just be confusing. An American reader might well be forgiven for wondering, &quot;Did she lose weight? Is there something about how she carries herself that makes men think she's beautiful despite her weight? Did she win the contest because it's not really about physical beauty at all but that the judges were impressed with her grace or musical talent or something?&quot; Etc. I'd think you'd have to include at least a sentence or two explaining the different standard somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-08-14T00:03:54.170" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24090" CreationDate="2016-08-14T00:31:26.347" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;American and British English differ here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In American English, the convention is to put the punctuation inside the quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He proclaimed that &quot;he sleeps with the fishes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In British English, the convention is to put the punctuation outside the quotes unless it is part of the quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He proclaimed that &quot;he sleeps with the fishes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though note that in either style, question marks are included in the quotes only if they are part of the quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He asked, &quot;Do you sleep with the fishes?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Versus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did the character in the movie really say, &quot;he sleeps with the fishes&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, even though I am an American, I think the British style makes more sense because it can avoid ambiguity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take a perhaps extreme example, I had a case where I was writing a technical manual once where I was trying to explain that the user should not include decimal points when typing numbers into the computer. And so I wrote something like (not the exact quote, I haven't bothered to look it up, just giving the idea):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not enter decimal points as part of a number. For example, don't type &quot;14.&quot; -- type &quot;14&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company's editor changed this to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not enter decimal points as part of a number. For example, don't type &quot;14.&quot; -- type &quot;14.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, umm, that didn't make things very clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing as to conform to some style guide, then follow the style guide. If it's up to you, pick which style you like best and use it consistently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-08-14T00:31:26.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24076" CreationDate="2016-08-14T00:50:46.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The real answer is the uninformative, &quot;it depends&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine wrote a book that went from initial concept to publication in one month. I've heard of writers taking decades to write a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've self-published three books, all non-fiction. In my case, for each book I spent 2 or 3 months doing research and getting notes together, than about a year turning those notes into a book, perhaps a month getting someone to proofread it and making updates, and then a few weeks going through the mechanics of getting it published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-publishing will almost always be faster than traditional publishing, because you don't have to spend time finding a publisher who is interested in your book, and go through additional cycles of their edits and requested changes. I've written free-lance magazine articles where I spent considerable time sending them off to various potential markets and then having to just sit around and wait for their replies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting words on paper and going through editing cycles is normally the long pole in the tent, and how long you spend on that is mostly up to you. If you have a full time job and kids to take care of, finding time to work on your book may be a big challenge, and it could take you years. If you have nothing else to do but sit and write, and you have the discipline to do it, then like my friend you may get a book together in a month. (She had a job, but she was president of the organization and the book was related to her job, so she basically just made it her priority for a month.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-08-14T00:50:46.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24076" CreationDate="2016-08-14T02:26:36.297" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Concept/research + Chapter 1 = 2 months&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always send my Chapter 1s through various beta readers to give some time to simmer and plot. These numbers I'm giving are gross generalizations, by the way, and have varied on projects and through experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bulk of the story = 4 months per 70,000 words&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Beta reading and rewriting = 2 months&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You should have a workable manuscript in under a year.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Query phase 1 (finding an agent) = 1 month. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the rate-limiting step for traditional publishing. Most books go to die here--or you can self publish. But for kicks let's keep going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;5&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Revisions at the behest of the agent = 2 months&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Query phase 2 (finding a publisher) = 1 month&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Revisions at the behest of the publisher = 3 months&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Professional reviews and marketing = 6 months. These are the reviews going on the cover and retailer websites.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Final revisions after legal has a look and the publisher sets a printing date = 3 months&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2 years is typical of the process.&lt;/strong&gt; Most of the second year, and even much of the first year, the novelist is free to work at a different phase of Book B and Book C. I recommend looking at Jane Friedman's blog/website on publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-08-15T19:25:17.590" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T19:25:17.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24145" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-14T03:26:55.823" Score="-1" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't decide what to name a certain character. It could either be Hamu or Humu. &#xA;The other names of the characters would be Japanese, and the story is a fantasy setting with Japanese aspects thrown in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His name is supposed to be, and mean “Hum”. I'm worried that my English audience would find this confusing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However Humu or Fumu (H and F are similiar) are Japanese onomatopoeia for the “hmmm” sound. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I kind of like Humu, precisely for this reason, because he's supposed to be named after his father who carries the name “Taisho” meaning &quot;to hum or sing softly&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, I'm not looking for advise on Japanese, just honest opinions about the character's name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21074" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2016-08-19T18:52:12.230" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T18:52:12.230" Title="Looking for help on deciding a name for a character" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-08-19T22:19:15.610" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24145" CreationDate="2016-08-14T05:50:48.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not quite clear what you're asking. Is your question whether &quot;Hamu&quot; or &quot;Humu&quot; is the better name for a character for an English-speaking audience? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's it, I can assure you that it makes zero difference to someone whose only language is English. Neither name carries any meaning or significance. They're both just sounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-08-14T05:50:48.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24147" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24154" CreationDate="2016-08-14T17:24:24.113" Score="1" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a novel that is told from a single narrator in third person. A number of subplots detail the stories of secondary characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My problem&lt;/strong&gt;: From &lt;em&gt;their point of view&lt;/em&gt;, I could easily write full-fledged scenes about the secondary characters and their respective stories. However, I would very much prefer to stick to my single narrator and have him, somehow, observe the story of the secondary characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings me to &lt;strong&gt;my questions&lt;/strong&gt;: How do I write a good, dynamic scene, when the narrator is a mere observer? Do I need to go to the trouble and give him a separate goal that is somehow related to the &quot;real goal&quot; of the scene - the goal of the secondary character? Or can the secondary character's goal support an entire scene?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example&lt;/strong&gt;: Meet Hannah. Hannah wants to be a dancer and works very hard to get accepted at the country's best dance ensemble. She's the narrator of the story, the main plot evolves around her struggle to get accepted. A subplot is the story of Hannah's mother, who's had a mild problem with alcohol for quite some time. She falls in love with a senior dancer in Hannah's group and decides to stop drinking. This has nothing to do with Hannah. Yet, for me, it could be a crucial element of the story. When I write the story from Hannah's point of view, how would I go about writing her mother's resurrection - the scene in which she proves that she can give up drinking for good? How can I make the scene about Hannah's mother, while it still is part of Hannah's story, too? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T10:14:55.807" Title="How to stage a scene conflict that is not about the scene's narrator?" Tags="|novel|scene|narrator|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24147" CreationDate="2016-08-14T18:26:18.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two main options regarding the secondary character's story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having the full-fledged secondary story told effectively changing the narrator for that chapter. This may be confusing if you don't make the fact that it is other character the protagonist for that block, but it can prove useful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having the secondary story be something the secondary character narrates, maintaining the main character's point of view. You could implement this by either your main character explaining something that it has read/seen/been told.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or can the secondary character's goal support an entire scene?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are excellent examples of secondary character's goals supporting entire scenes. One of my favorites is the story of Gollum, in The Lord of the Rings. Gollum is a secondary character, but his whole story is told - at least in the movie - and it adds a lot to both the story as a whole and the depth of the character. In that particular case, one of the characters is telling a story he remembers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21051" LastActivityDate="2016-08-14T18:26:18.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24145" CreationDate="2016-08-15T03:16:27.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is a very subjective Q. I don't know Japanese but to me &lt;strong&gt;Fumu&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;sounds&quot; the most Japanese and reminds me of the Fugu fish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me &lt;strong&gt;Hamu&lt;/strong&gt; sounds like &quot;ham&quot;, or &quot;Hamburger&quot; as in a Hamuger, Hammurabi, or Hammer. &#xA;Also, it is a name used in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.namespedia.com/details/Hamu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;several countries&lt;/a&gt;, has meaning in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamu_Shiru&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Arabic&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the-meaning-of/hungarian-word-5d9ee027e4015e424b82ec4d2453bd1903827154.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hungarian&lt;/a&gt;, not forgetting the text “hmu”, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110630162120AA0yIBY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hit me up.&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Famu&lt;/strong&gt; would be even worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me &lt;strong&gt;Humu&lt;/strong&gt; sounds like hum, him, hummer, humbug, humus, human, humongous, humor. &#xA;You find Humu in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/humu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Swedish and Swahili&lt;/a&gt;. It is also a name found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.namespedia.com/details/Humu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4 countries&lt;/a&gt;.  A humu humu is also a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reef_triggerfish&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hawaiian triggerfish&lt;/a&gt; and a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR0t5_SAdV0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Skating longboard&lt;/a&gt;. Plus it is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://maoridictionary.co.nz/word/1568&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Maori hip bone&lt;/a&gt; and is apparently English slang for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=humu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;beautiful&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though to be fair &lt;strong&gt;Fumu&lt;/strong&gt; is also an acronym for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fumu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fuck up move up&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/FUMU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;“foul up…”&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;It is also Chinese for &lt;a href=&quot;https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-english-pinyin-dictionary.php?define=fumu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;elders&lt;/a&gt; , has meaning in &lt;a href=&quot;https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/fumu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Corsican&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordsense.eu/fumu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Esperanto&lt;/a&gt;, and is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.namesite.com/content/fumu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Swahili name&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In spite of that I like &lt;strong&gt;Fumu&lt;/strong&gt; the best for a Japanese character, though &lt;strong&gt;Umu&lt;/strong&gt; without the H, which is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://thejadednetwork.com/sfx/search/?keyword=umu&amp;amp;submitSearch=Search+SFX&amp;amp;x=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;alternative spelling&lt;/a&gt;&#xA; of Humu could also do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T03:16:27.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24096" CreationDate="2016-08-15T04:09:16.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“both of them can be categorise as the same genre.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it is sometimes, wrongfuly, done, I can’t agree to this statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, be careful as you could easily go overboard, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hard Science Fiction&lt;/a&gt;   is all about science and its writing is better suited for scientists types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to be writing in the SF sub-genres of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fantasy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Science Fantasy&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Soft Science Fiction&lt;/a&gt;. For that you need minimal scientific knowledge, just find a novel about popular science like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/03/steven-weinberg-13-best-science-books-general-reader&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;best science books for the general reader&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ebookcrossroads.com/science-fiction-writing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Science Fiction Writing Resource&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;and Google &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?biw=1600&amp;amp;bih=775&amp;amp;noj=1&amp;amp;q=best+general+science+websites&amp;amp;oq=%22general+science%22+web&amp;amp;gs_l=serp.1.2.0i19k1l2j0i22i30i19k1l3.8419.9270.0.12671.3.3.0.0.0.0.120.322.0j3.3.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..0.3.322.-cNOi9EdC5I&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;best general science websites&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T04:09:16.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24110" CreationDate="2016-08-15T04:45:34.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Skinny=beautiful is a recent western concept, most cultures still see fat as healthy, beautiful, lively, or desirable and skinny women as diseased, ugly, barren, and close to death.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good illustration of Fat as ugly or sexy is in the Soldier Son Trilogy by Robin Hobb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N.B. &#xA;I admit that a large part of this was a rant, I skimmed your Q and I may have been unfair and over-reacted. Also, I just saw that you are a recent member, in Writer’s we tend to be nicer than in other SE sites and less-judgmental, particularly for new users, so mea culpa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After rereading I saw that you that you mentioned other cultures standards, and that you used “for the most part”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(because based on American’s rap culture, strategically placed, fat seems highly desirable, and having lived in the US I knew many people who though of fashion models as walking skeletons and preferred more rotund people. I guess I just didn’t like my interpretation of those “our standards”, and that “Hey guys” was the drop that pushed my buttons the wrong way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, here are some beautiful descriptions, some of them about &lt;a href=&quot;http://io9.gizmodo.com/5823291/great-character-descriptions-from-science-fiction-and-fantasy-books&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;unconventional beauty&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She possessed a beauty much different from Daisy, more like a wildflower in the unspoiled earth than a prize-winning rose in a formal garden.” ― Gary Inbinder, &lt;em&gt;The Flower to the Painter&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found a mention of &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.fr/books?id=XtLWPWNO8gUC&amp;amp;pg=PA235&amp;amp;lpg=PA235&amp;amp;dq=%22alternative+beauty%22+fiction&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=pNapI1y4vu&amp;amp;sig=M-oOKrsBqr0u7MfqZrTt4l0R8JM&amp;amp;hl=fr&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0ahUKEwi84oPZssfOAhVBuRQKHT_1AmkQ6AEIHzAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22alternative%20beauty%22%20fiction&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bigger girl lit&lt;/a&gt; featuring fat protagonists like in in &lt;em&gt;Good in Bed, Conversations with the Fat Girl, The Way It Is, and Alternative Beauty&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it is a foreign culture, a fantasy culture I assume, readers should not expect western cultural standards; so any descriptions you make should be taken at face value, they would be a natural part of that society and not &quot;weird&quot; in any way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can just use classical descriptions of beauty and substitute what is beautiful to that person and expend it with sexy fat terms. Something like: the heavenly softness of her ample thighs, the inviting curve of her round belly, the glow of her moon face, her lustrous thick arm, voluptuous curves, full-figured majesty, plump over-ripe breasts, motherly/womanly form, imposing body, big as a mountain; filled with honey-dew, shapely as a fathered pillow, chubby , curvaceous body, comfortable folds, full lips, prominent bottom, generous features, land of plenty, country of milk and honey, mountain of beauty, abundant gifts, liberal size, gorgeous ampleness, stunning presence, picturesque curvature, pleasing softness, superb figure, pleasing roundness, encompassing arms, spherical perfection, substantial form,  profuse gifts, wide comforting chest, portly padding, stout flawlessness, striking splendor, grand fruitfulness, vast bosom, considerable attributes, bursting cleavage , shapely body, munificent shape.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also build the differences &lt;strong&gt;progressively&lt;/strong&gt; introducing the alternative standards of beauty and smoothly building up on it; this may be less jarring to readers unused to see things differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wrote that you are afraid of loosing readers who could be weirded out. I think this relies more on the skill of the description that its subject. A good description can make literally anything seem beautiful. For instance, I used to dislike mushrooms, after reading Tolkien, I began craving to eat some raw, now I like them, and every time I eat one, I am transported back to middle-earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jay, you argue &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“But if the book is written in English, presumably the target audience is English-speaking countries, where for the most part the standard is &quot;thin”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure about SE, but in similar sites user are up to 40% from India. The site is international and speaking English is no the same as sharing a mostly modern western cultural bias. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the distribution based on an &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016&quot;&gt;estimate on professional developers&lt;/a&gt;  for SE. While modern Indians are influenced by western standards, traditionally Fat is a sign of health, welth and beauty. Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2320136/Indian-women-fat-pills-GAIN-weight-emulate-curvy-Bollywood-stars-Aishwarya-Rai-Vidya-Balan.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Indian women taking dangerous 'fat pills' to GAIN weight and emulate curvy Bollywood stars“&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibiblio.org/hazine/india.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;“ it has never been considered attractive to be thin in India”&lt;/a&gt; , yes it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/opinion/15iht-edmohanty15.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;changing&lt;/a&gt;,  but still, there are countries were girls try their damnest to be fat; read about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a3513/forcefeeding-in-mauritania/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;forcefeeding&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/fat-land-western-standards-beauty-clash-west-african-notions-843573&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;west Africa&lt;/a&gt; , or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-susan-albers/fat-is-beautiful_b_526534.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fat is beautiful&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-countries-celebrating-female-obesity.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Top 10 Countries Celebrating Female Obesity&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:40:35.973" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T04:39:32.267" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24152" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24153" CreationDate="2016-08-15T06:46:04.350" Score="5" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to APA style and have noticed that web search results for specific APA style questions (e.g. &quot;apa style p-values&quot;) tend to yield results from Q/A sites or of people's personal blogs summarizing the style, rather than any official-looking, fully-specified specification. Does an official specification exist? Is it available online?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Clarification: I mean is it legitimately available online, in a web format. A google search for &quot;apa manual pdf&quot; turns up some PDFs where someone scanned in every page of the manual...better than nothing but not optimal.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21079" LastEditorUserId="21079" LastEditDate="2016-08-15T18:50:21.827" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T18:50:21.827" Title="Is there a comprehensive APA style manual available online?" Tags="|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24152" CreationDate="2016-08-15T07:00:53.507" Score="7" Body="&lt;h1&gt;No&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apastyle.org/manual/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;APA Manual&lt;/a&gt; is published in print only. You will find it in any big library, or you can buy it (for $29.95), if you work in that style on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are summaries of important rules available online from the teachers who made them for their students (usually you recognize them by a university URL), and there is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/10/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Purdue Online Writing Lab&lt;/a&gt;. But as I have learned in years of writing in APA style, there is nothing that replaces the original in scope and detail. Buying it is money well invested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specialist questions that are not answered by the manual can be asked on the official &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.apastyle.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;APA Style Blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T11:29:25.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24147" CreationDate="2016-08-15T10:14:55.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you're writing a story from the POV of a single character, you're doing it because the story is about them. Of course, they do not exist in a bubble, and other side characters will have their own things going on. They will have their own stories unfolding in the background, and this is usually encouraged in order to have a more fulfilling story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the thing to remember is that your story is not &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; the side-characters. They are just a part of your MC's story. So when the stories of the side-characters develop, you need to mostly explore how it affects your protagonist. Is Hannah angry that her mother is dating a fellow dancer? Is she happy that her mother is recovering from her illness? Which is more important to her?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding another POV character will mean that the stories need to be equally as important. There is no point in focusing heavily on another character just to flesh out the experiences of the first, their stories will have to be on a similar level to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it depends on the story you wish to write. Is it more a story about the relationship between mother and daughter, and how they both live their lives separately but fundamentally intertwine? Or is it mostly about the daughter's pursuit of becoming a dancer, and her mother is obviously a big part of that, but ultimately the daughter is attempting to be her own person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for a specific scene, you could set up throughout the story that the mother visits the daughter regularly, and she seems to be doing better with her alcoholism, but she thinks something is iffy, for example her mother is spending every weekend visiting as opposed to doing something for herself. Eventually she sees her kissing a fellow dancer, they have an argument and the mother storms off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there can be a scene where the daughter is driving around, frantically looking for her mother making sure that she does not go off on a bender, and she is worried about her mother's safety, guilty because she feels as if she has affected her chances of recovery, but still angry at her for creating this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So whilst this is clearly a huge moment in the life of the mother, you are still focusing on the daughter and how her mother's actions are affecting her. She may then choose to forgive her mother, or disown her, etc. but the story is still centered around the daughter and her feelings on the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T10:14:55.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9052" CreationDate="2016-08-15T11:44:04.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was testing out different theories regarding the right price, and I used different strategies for several pen names that I have. There were some variations from time to time, but this is what I found works best&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://katherinemilkovich.wordpress.com/2016/08/13/setting-the-price/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://katherinemilkovich.wordpress.com/2016/08/13/setting-the-price/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;I was never into selling my novels for $0.99, because I think it's important to value your own work. And it works for me, I make a lot more money than before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21081" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T11:44:04.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24157" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-15T23:17:07.580" Score="1" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've planned out a good deal of the plot. I know what I want each character to be, their names, and what will become of them in the end. I've internally reasoned how the lore works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I can't progress.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I haven't finished the plot, though I know what I want to try and reach, and I can't even bring myself to &quot;wing it&quot; using what I have already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I try to start again, it hurts. Not just an emotional &quot;tough to go on,&quot; but an actual physical pain in my joints and head that I thought were from disease, but I'm certain it's writers block. They appear to be psychological pains, as I despise the experience of feeling them but they do not sting like a physical injury, and I'm worried that it will stop my writing permanently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I stop the pain and just get working?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16245" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T03:48:14.593" Title="The pain of starting to write" Tags="|writers-block|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24110" CreationDate="2016-08-16T02:24:49.713" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of great answers here already, but I wanted to chime in with something that I felt was missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to show (not tell, as alluded to earlier in the Conrad / Kipling discussion) that a culture has a different beauty standard, then that different standard should be represented in their cultural media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention in your post what the standard of beauty is in the US -- how did you arrive at that conception of what the standard of beauty is? Are people constantly talking about what is beautiful to them? Or, more likely, are people who match up with the standard of beauty more represented in media than people who don't? Wouldn't this be the same in the society you're writing about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever means of cultural transmission the society you're thinking about uses, the standard of beauty will be represented in them. Paintings will feature people that meet the standard, professional or popular actors and dancers will exemplify the beauty standard, even bathroom signs might subtly reflect what that society expects people to look like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have fun with it -- try to notice what everyday things subtly (and not-so-subtly) reinforce the beauty standards you've grown up with, and try to think of what would be analogous to those reinforcements in the society you're writing about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, don't forget that while the characters in your story can represent and indicate the beauty standards of cultures, so can the objects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20964" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T02:24:49.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24157" CreationDate="2016-08-16T03:48:14.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;https://litreactor.com/columns/7-strategies-to-outsmart-writers-block&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a link&lt;/a&gt; on how to do it. Mainly, just write on anything, not just your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write around your characters. Start doing exercises where you just write a scene about the character that you don't intend to be in the book. This will get you out of the world-building, plot-sculpting head-space and into scene and character-building. It will take the pressure off, because it doesn't have to be perfect, or at all related to your plot, it's just an exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write a different way. If you tend to type, use a pen and paper. If you use a pen and paper generally, start typing. Or, use a voice to text program and just start talking it through--worry about editing later. This isn't about editing. This about getting things on the page. Those things can be complete dross. At this stage, it's not about quality, it's about quantity, later you can worry about all making it quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My other answer is: drunk writing. It may be crap when you're finished, but it will loosen you up and give you a start. Be careful not to turn into Hemmingway. He was an alcoholic, but, he said &quot;Write drunk, edit sober.&quot; With a couple of shots in you, the crippling anxiety which is manifesting in physical pain, might fade. Instead, you won't actually care, you'll just write. If you are lucky, that will open the flood gates, and once you get past it you won't need a crutch like that. (If you are underage, then of course I don't advocate underage drinking).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T03:48:14.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24096" CreationDate="2016-08-16T03:57:54.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;This link&lt;/a&gt; may change your life. In the stack exchange forum provided by the link you can ask questions regarding world building. Many of these questions are about science, but it's in the context of world-building for fiction or role-playing games. Do make sure to search for similar questions and do look at the rules. As long as it's a specific question and not too story-based, it's a marvelous research tool. I would have made this a comment, but there's a long discussion there about the validity of this question on this particular writers stack exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:23.590" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T03:57:54.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="34488" CreationDate="2016-08-16T10:25:42.430" Score="7" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the ulysses app have anything that is useful for creating placeholder text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, if I didn't have a character name, or a place name I could do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;{protagonist_first_name}&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;{placename_1}&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then just do a search and replace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just wondered if there was anything built in that made this process simpler. (Keyboard shortcuts etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13462" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2019-03-15T07:38:11.333" LastActivityDate="2019-03-15T07:38:11.333" Title="Are there custom placeholders in Ulysses app?" Tags="|editing|software|tools|ulysses|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24110" CreationDate="2016-08-16T13:30:27.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of helpful answers here. I'm adding one more as I think the suggestions which accompanied this quote...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The show-don't-tell style that is so popular among aspiring writers today, forces you to do almost all exposition through physical action or naturalistic conversation. It does not work well for this kind of thing because a culture's standards of beauty are largely assumed in polite converation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...are very helpful for writers who want to eschew the 'show-don't-tell' style mentioned, but I also think there's no need to eschew it. That style allows more than enough freedom to do this naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to do it, without departing from a normal, modern style of narrative&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most non-word-people haven't heard of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_indirect_speech&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;free indirect speech&lt;/a&gt;, but all modern readers intuitively understand it. That means you can give us the point-of-view character's internal monologue as part of the narrative. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jack stared at the door. What was behind it? Could Sarah still be alive? He wiped a dramatic bead of sweat from his brow.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's perfectly fine in this style to give your character's thoughts about something, as long as those thoughts feel like a natural part of the character's internal monologue at that time. You can use this to show your character is attracted to a person, the same way you could show your character is attracted to anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jack stared at the door. The craftsmanship was stunning. He moistened his lips. Mahogany. Viennese jambs. The studs were iron, smooth and plump. The varnish was thick, fresh, gleaming... he extended a hand to touch it, but stopped himself. To sully something so beautiful would be unthinkable.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example is daft, of course, but hopefully you get the idea. If you let us live inside your point-of-view character's head, we can see what they're thinking about, what distracts them, what they fixate on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Creepiness&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Noticing someone's attractive features doesn't have to make them a creep — it's all about context. They could be...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aware of the attractive person but trying not to stare&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shaking their head at an advert, say, where the attractive features of the picture are cartoonishly exaggerated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ruefully recalling how somebody else fell for the charms of the attractive person&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tutting at how the attractive person was treated by others who &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; being creepy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Giving the attractive person direct compliments and attention which the person actually &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt; (let's not forget that between consenting adults it does occasionally happen!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Closing blather&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sense (perhaps wrongly) that the person who kindly gave you the answer above is not a fan of the 'show-don't tell' principle. That's fine, of course. But I would caution that it's popular for a reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It engages the reader with your story better, because it more closely approximates the experience of being &lt;em&gt;there&lt;/em&gt; for the story. The experience of reading the words 'Cole was angry' has only a distant connection to the experience of being confronted with an angry person. If instead you make me feel present as Cole punches the table, see him hyperventillate through his teeth, make me twitch when I'm flecked with his spittle — that more closely approximates the experience of being &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; the story, and that makes it more compelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't be so quick to abandon 'show-don't-tell' style. Of course, maybe I'm just blinded by my slavish adherence to fashion ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastEditorUserId="18324" LastEditDate="2016-08-16T13:35:50.183" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T13:35:50.183" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24163" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-16T15:46:30.047" Score="26" ViewCount="2889" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am asking this question because I think we need a precise definition of what Show Don't Tell means if we are to decide if it is good advice or bad, or if it is a valid suggestion for certain passages but not a general rule for a whole book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Orson Scott Card was a particular critic of Show Don't Tell&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OSC Replies:&#xA;You said: &amp;quot;I made it a point throughout the novel to not tell motivations, but try to show them.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you did this because ... of those morons who told you &amp;quot;show don't tell&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because motivation is unshowable. It must be told. (In fact, most things must be told.) The advice &amp;quot;show don't tell&amp;quot; is applicable in only a few situations -- most times, most things, you tell-don't-show. I get so impatient with this idiotic advice that has been plaguing writers for generations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/24110/how-do-i-express-that-a-culture-has-a-different-standard-of-beauty/24162?noredirect=1#comment34478_24162&quot;&gt;this discussion&lt;/a&gt; it is suggested that reporting of motivations is allowed in Show Don't Tell, which provokes the question: what is in and what is out in Show Don't Tell. Because if it is good advice or bad, we can't expect people to follow it if it is not well defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-01-14T20:00:31.607" Title="What does Show don't Tell actually mean" Tags="|fiction|novel|technique|showing-telling|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24163" CreationDate="2016-08-16T15:46:30.047" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, the phrase Show don't Tell can have only one clear meaning, and it comes down to what it means to show. Show means to describe what the reader would see for themselves if they were present in the scene. This means that you can describe action and you can report dialog. You can also describe the scenery, though not its history or its significance. You cannot describe thoughts or motivations, because those cannot be seen, and what cannot be seen cannot be shown. All you can show is the things people do or say as a result of their thoughts or motivations: the things the reader could see for themselves if they were a fly on the wall.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &quot;show&quot; is allowed to encompass things that cannot be seen, then where is the limit to it? What then is not showing? What would then count as telling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This definition does not make &quot;show don't tell&quot; bad advice or good advice, but it does make it a technique that is rarely seen in successful published fiction, either today or in the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-08-18T21:23:07.467" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T21:23:07.467" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24163" CreationDate="2016-08-16T17:58:08.163" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most books are a combination of show and tell. The quick and dirty definition is this: showing is what you see in a movie, actions happen and you see them. Telling is narration, explaining it in short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saying someone is angry is not unacceptable. Showing that that they are is harder, takes more time and sometimes doesn't serve the story better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think writing is a bit of a combo platter. Books, as a medium, have an advantage over most movies, in that they can &quot;tell&quot; rather than show. Although some movies, like &lt;em&gt;The Shawshank Redemption&lt;/em&gt; (which was, after all adapted from a book), include narration that tells. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a bit of writing from what I am doing, which includes telling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The wood for the door had come from a fleet of fishing boats, well past their prime. Generations ago, some entrepreneurial soul managed to make money on the half-wrecked fleet, cutting wood for doors before the hull gained curve, and fashioning the rest into furniture of all types--mainly rocking chairs. Not every door with a colored stripe had been reclaimed from a ship. In more manicured parts of the Isle, where wealthy retired shipmen ended up, in charming little villages, surrounded by garrisons fully stocked with private security, there too, were doors with stripes, only because the owners thought a proper door in the isles had to have the stripe. But here, amid the rough warehouses, the door with the red stripe remembered the sea. Or it would have, if sections of wood had any method of remembering things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I've used the history, the telling of it, to give the reader a taste of the culture in the Isles. You can use telling to show something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Motivations are interior, so I absolutely understand having to tell those rather than show them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Telling can weaken a story if it is used too much. I use dialogue, which shows, to give readers an idea of who the characters are, but I also sprinkle in telling, to ground it out in motivation. Couldn't do a block quote for this one. Everything that's &quot;telling&quot; is bolded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Tribelia sat outside the cave, by a small fire, trying to count the number of bandits in the camp. One of the men walked towards her, two bowls in hand.&#xA;“Here’s the usual stew. Not exactly palace fare, but--it’s good anyway,”  Jinn said with a half-smile as he handed her the bowl.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Tribelia took it, &lt;strong&gt;warily&lt;/strong&gt;, remembering that Jinn was the one who’d searched her for coin. She looked &lt;strong&gt;distrustfully&lt;/strong&gt; at the brown goop. &lt;strong&gt;She hadn’t eaten since arriving at the camp.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Do you think it’s poison?” he asked, his smile widening. “Poison is expensive, my lady. You’re not so hard to kill that we’d need to do that.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;She relaxed&lt;/strong&gt; after he said that, studying him as she took large bites of the stew. She saw a man whose face, at first, appeared youthful, boyish, even, but there were crinkles at his eyes, sandy curls laced with grey. &lt;strong&gt;He took her scrutiny well, not seeming to care.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“We didn’t get introduced before,” she said “I’m Tribelia.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“I’m called Jinn. Pleasure to meet you, my lady.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“It’s nice that somebody in this camp has manners.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jinn didn’t say that manners don’t cost anything.&lt;/strong&gt; Instead he said, because it was true too, “I aim to please, my lady.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“So,” she said &lt;strong&gt;conspiratorially&lt;/strong&gt; “What’s it like, being a bandit?”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“It’s like camping, only with more knives,” he answered.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“That’s clever, but it isn’t an answer,” she said, cocking her head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“No, but it is, my lady. You’re asking--‘What’s your life like? Summarize it now.’ And I did.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“I was hoping for something longer than a sentence, of course,” she said.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“You should stay and find out, my lady. Be a bandit for a turn of the moon.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“I wouldn’t want to do that until I knew what it was like, besides, I didn’t enjoy getting stripped of all of my coin,” she said &lt;strong&gt;with dignity.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Not all of it. You still have some sewn into the the leather of your riding boots,” he said &lt;strong&gt;blandly&lt;/strong&gt;. When &lt;strong&gt;she looked appropriately disquieted&lt;/strong&gt;, he said,&lt;/em&gt; &#xA;&lt;em&gt;“Don’t worry, my lady, your secret’s safe with me. But, tell me--what’s the life of a palace princess like?”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I could go to the trouble of intricately describing &quot;Appropriately disquieted&quot; by describing the character's face, but this communicates exactly what I need. Showing that would get in the way. I don't have to show it, nor do I have to show &quot;distrust&quot;, or the physical motion of Tribelia relaxing. You'll notice that adverbs tell, a lot, and there are many, many lists of tips and tricks advising you to cut all the adverbs and use action to show instead. I think that you should not overuse them, but in the interest of pacing, sometimes, you have to tell and you've got to use an adverb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too much &quot;showing&quot; lengthens writing unessarily or it ends up turning into a movie script rather than a book, with dry descriptions of a scene and pure dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastEditorUserId="19827" LastEditDate="2016-08-16T18:15:19.290" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T18:15:19.290" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24163" CreationDate="2016-08-16T18:25:17.740" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me it is more like &quot;Choose what to show and what to tell.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both techniques serve their purpose, the balance between the two is a matter of taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Erin: it is perfectly acceptable to tell that someone was angry--or the word would not exist in the language at all--just as it might be beneficial to show that person flinging a coffee mug at the kitchen wall. The choice is your and yours only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For as long as you take care to always avoid alliterations and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/parts-of-speech/prepositions/Ending-a-Sentence-with-a-Preposition.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;preposition is not what you end your sentence with&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T18:25:17.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24167" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-17T00:38:29.820" Score="4" ViewCount="1164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently started writing, but hit a wall during a certain scene. In the story, the characters have an open debate on discrimination in an attempt to raise awareness for their issues and pass new legislation in the fictional country they live in. However, I've found it difficult to find good arguments to use in the story without it coming off as overly simplified or unnatural. Does anyone have tips on debate, or how to write good arguments that flow in a story format?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21094" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-09T04:38:51.040" LastActivityDate="2019-02-09T04:38:51.040" Title="How do you write a political debate in a story?" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|conflict|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24167" CreationDate="2016-08-17T02:32:18.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The starting point here has to be to ask yourself whether you are writing a novel or a polemic. If your story is just an excuse to make an argument against some form of discrimination, then you are going to be stuck trying to write both sides of a debate where you are on one side and trying to set it up to win. It's not that that can't sell, as long as your audience feels the same way you do about the issue. People love books that confirm their opinions. But you also need a victim for them to root for. Save the victim, stand them in the front row of the debate, and have you hero make the speech your audience wants to hear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you actually want to write about politicians and how they behave, that is something altogether different because politicians don't actually debate, they posture. It is not ever about proving a point by argument, it is always about positioning yourself to win votes and casting your opponent in a bad light. Politicians never answer the question they are asked and they never address the points their opponents make. They talk past each other and over each other. The key to making that sort of a scene work it to write it like a prize fight. Each one is looking for an opening, for a way to sting, for a way to grandstand. The arguments themselves are secondary at best. There are mere weapons in the war. What makes or breaks the scene is not the arguments but how they are used tactically in the war for votes. Make every line a blow and let the battle go back and forth, and you will have a compelling scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T02:32:18.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24169" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24173" CreationDate="2016-08-17T04:32:49.823" Score="2" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a decently big online following (~40,000). This includes a blog, YouTube channel, Etsy, and other social media. My biggest thing is writing articles and blog posts, among some other content such as videos and graphic design work, specifically for students. All under my pseudonym.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I also write for newspapers, magazines, and have an internship running a website and creating content for my college's Academic Support Center that includes this writing as well as some graphic design work. All under my real name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to separate the two because my blog is slightly personal (which has helped me accrue my following) and thus potentially bias-inducing if professionals could find it. But good work is still good work. So I'd like to repost certain works from my blog into a more professional portfolio that can be accessed under my real name, without mention of my online pseudonym.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be considered plagiarism if I reposted (or updated/adapted) my blog work for work I can put in a professional portfolio? Or are there any other concerns I should have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For context, I'm an undergraduate student soon to be graduating. Meaning I want to add some sort of portfolio to my LinkedIn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21096" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T11:06:32.383" Title="How to navigate potential self-plagiarism when using different online and professional personas?" Tags="|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24163" CreationDate="2016-08-17T07:59:02.400" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Russian novelist Anton Chekhov once said, “Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is essentially the difference between show and tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not that there isn't a time and a place to use one or the other.  For example, a fast paced scene (say a chase scene through a corridor) would be all tell (&quot;he ran towards the lift and repeatedly slammed his hand on the button, willing it to arrive quickly&quot;, not &quot;he vaulted between the long, cream coloured walls, like a gazelle attempting to escape a pride of lions)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T07:59:02.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24169" CreationDate="2016-08-17T11:06:32.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Web is an open book. If you make a connection between two personas it is there for people to find. How likely are they to find it? That is very hard to say. But if you don't acknowledge the relationship between the two personas, people will be free to construe it how they may. If someone discovers the same work under your pseudonym and your real name, they may conclude that either one had plagiarized from the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are tools for detecting plagiarism online. I have no idea how often people use them in hiring situations. There are also online vetting companies who specialize in this stuff. I have no idea how often employers use them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you do this there is clearly the chance of the relationship being discovered. At that point they may conclude either that A is B or that A stole from B. Not knowing A and B I can't say how bad the first is for A's job chances, but the second is certainly fatal for them. It's not like they are going to ask or dig further. People with a stack of resumes in front of them are looking for a reason to say no. A whiff of plagiarism will be all it takes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if you want to keep the two personas separate, you are probably well advise to keep their work separate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, your pseudonym has a following and has therefore demonstrated the ability to build a following. That is a huge plus for anyone looking for a communication job. Unless the work there is really unsavory (in which case, why would you want to reuse it anyway) that pseudonym may be your biggest asset in landing a job or clients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Audience is the currency of the Web. If you can deliver eyeballs, you are golden. Your pseudonym proves you can deliver eyeballs. Own it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T11:06:32.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24167" CreationDate="2016-08-17T11:23:31.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't have to write good arguments for two characters arguing opposite points in a debate, you need to write good characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone writing a debate, it's likely that you will favor one side over the other, therefore bias to the debate will likely creep in, as it is difficult to write arguments to support a point that you don't believe in. You will feel the person who is arguing against how you feel personally doesn't have good points, because you don't personally think they are good points. The trick is then to make sure that the &lt;em&gt;character&lt;/em&gt; truly believes in the points that they are arguing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One good thing to do would be to practice writing out a debate about something you are 100% decided about, let's say the Earth not being flat. Then think about how someone trying to argue that the Earth &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; flat would attempt to convince people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may resort to appealing to emotion over solid facts, misrepresenting statistics, using specific theories or studies that agree with their point of view or any number of &lt;a href=&quot;https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;logical fallacies&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then when writing about an issue that may actually have two valid sides of an argument, you can intersperse tactics that someone would use to argue a lost cause with actual solid reasoning that they may use. Depending on the characters debating, they may both resort to some of these tactics to some extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not about writing a good debate, it about writing how characters would attempt to debate well. Whether their points are good or believable or agreeable is irrelevant, it is about how they are argued by the characters you have written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T11:23:31.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24163" CreationDate="2016-08-17T12:15:38.190" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the difference between &lt;strong&gt;show&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;tell&lt;/strong&gt; is really the difference between &lt;strong&gt;implicit&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;explicit&lt;/strong&gt;. We can describe actions that represent something else within a piece of writing, or we can state it outright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Frank was unhappy with his mundane job, so much so that he wished he could leave to go on an adventure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Frank stared wistfully out of his office window. He felt like he spent more time there now than he did at his desk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two sentences, one explicitly stating Frank's displeasure at his job, and the other implying it. The difference with the latter is that we currently know what Frank is doing, and where he is, without needing to include an additional sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason that showing is chosen to take precedence over telling is because showing is more entertaining. I could write a page stating in detail who Frank is and how he feels, or I could write a page on how Frank moves about his office and interacts with others, which would allow the reader to come to all of the same conclusions, but also picture Frank physically undertaking all of those actions, which is then a story rather than a character bio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, showing is not always an option, such as stating why characters choose to do what they do. It is also sometimes much easier to say that someone is angry rather than describing them stomping around a room and slamming doors, or writing that their breathing became heavier and their nostrils flared and their face turned red.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think overall that it is a balance between including actions that entertain the reader, and excluding descriptions that serve only to portray something that could have been said much easier with a couple of words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore I would rephrase the popular &quot;show, don't tell&quot; as &quot;show when you can, tell when you can't&quot;, because, ironically, the phrase &quot;show, don't tell&quot; is a perfect example of telling, and not showing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T12:15:38.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23827" CreationDate="2016-08-17T12:56:39.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good news! You can say 'to' or 'in order to', and stop worrying about the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reasons to use 'to':&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's simple&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's clear&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Readers will thank you for keeping your wordcount down&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reasons to use 'in order to':&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's simple&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It’s even clearer, because it avoids any confusion with the other meanings of 'to' (prepositional 'to', or infinitive 'to', for example)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That means readers will parse your sentence on the first try, understanding what you mean without having to double back and reread.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reasons to use wordy alternatives:&lt;/strong&gt; 'with the aim of', 'with a view to', 'for the purpose of', 'with the goal of', 'with the intention of', 'for the objective of', 'in an effort to':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're convinced that finding ways to complicate your vocabulary... equals... literary merit?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're convinced that to your audience this notion of literary merit is more important than communicating your ideas clearly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I hope you’ll take my cheeky tone in the cheery spirit it’s intended. But seriously… just think! A shocking amount of academic prose, when trying to read it, feels like hacking through jungle with a blunt machete. But you can spend less time — &lt;em&gt;less!&lt;/em&gt; — fumbling around looking for unnecessary vocab, and make yours feel like gliding down a crystal-blue river of clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;…Okay, okay, if you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; want variety for its own sake, you can have ‘so as to’ ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastEditorUserId="18324" LastEditDate="2016-08-18T12:00:42.500" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T12:00:42.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24167" CreationDate="2016-08-17T16:35:13.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding unnecessary comments or arguments is one of the most likely pitfalls of writing a political debate.  Make absolutely certain that each and every comment that your characters voice is for a specific purpose.  Everything must have an intended result and meaning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all about condensing and being concise.  If 'George' voiced his opposition to the Bill on the floor make sure his next comment is communicating his reasoning behind his opposition (BUT ONLY if his reasoning is pertinent to your story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialog often loses its power with needless repitition of points already voiced, or adding details that are simply pointless to the purpose of the story and scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20961" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T16:35:13.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24179" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-17T18:57:34.553" Score="1" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a book which is told in first person from the main characters point of view. There is a group mainly of four people which the story involves most heavily, and one of them is planned to betray the main character in a very selfish way which probably cannot be forgiven. Is this too rapid of a decline in the security of their little group  if I am planning to write two consecutive books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21099" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T15:54:25.903" Title="Can a character close to the MC betray them in the first book of a series?" Tags="|fiction|characters|character-development|series|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-08-25T07:49:08.697" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24179" CreationDate="2016-08-17T19:47:39.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it can be argued that a character can betray your MC in the first paragraphs of your story, it all depends on why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is that betrayal is part of the fabric of life -- just as is love, trust, and hope. And that's ignoring that many antagonists start out as confidants of the protagonist. If you make it believable -- done for a reason that makes sense to the character themself, whether they agree is irrelevant -- then I say: have at. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21105" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T19:47:39.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24181" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-17T19:57:46.200" Score="3" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always been poor at writing things without including excessive detail, but I managed to rewrite my synopsis with very little detail and with personal detailed side notes not included within the actual synopsis. It is solely the overall plot, but it is still 18 pages. Is this too long?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21099" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T18:16:50.117" Title="How long should a good synposis be for a novel?" Tags="|fiction|novel|plot|book-length|synopsis|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24179" CreationDate="2016-08-17T19:59:07.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think it can be argued that a character can betray your MC in the first paragraphs of your story, it all depends on why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely agree (+10). It is your story and it is up to you how to tell it. If you want to build to it, make the readers like your characters first (one book should give you enough time to do so), then go for a conflict. Or make it the inciting incident of your plot or sub-plot and start with it.&#xA;The turf is yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T19:59:07.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24181" CreationDate="2016-08-17T20:14:58.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quote from the linked source, which pretty much summarizes the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...if you ever send me five page synopsis for every 15K words I'll toss it unread. 3-5 is the MAX no matter how long your novel is. And no cheating by using 5pt fonts and .25 inch margins. Synopsis are not a blow for blow recitation of the plot. It's major points, turning points, character description and development and it's SHORT...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://misssnark.blogspot.com/2005/10/synopsis-flopsis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Miss Snark, the literary agent&quot;, answers the question about the preferred length of the synopsis of a novel in her blog post.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2016-08-18T18:16:50.117" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T18:16:50.117" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="40" CreationDate="2016-08-17T21:46:31.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The accepted answer is reasonable, but I would add this angle. Don't write a synopsis of the plot, write a synopsis of the conflict. There can be a lot of business in a plot and it you try to summarize it, you may end up either missing the key points or skipping too lightly over too many plot points. The essence of the story is the desire that drives the protagonist, the things that frustrate that desire, and how the desire is achieved or how it is ultimately frustrated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A wants B because C so he tries D and E and F and fails each time until he tries G and ultimately succeeds/fails while in the process realizing that H is really more important to him. Desire -&gt; Frustration -&gt; Triumph/Tragedy -&gt; Realization. Summarize that way and you should capture the essence of your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-22T14:11:51.830" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T14:11:51.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24179" CreationDate="2016-08-18T00:17:36.693" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can have your main character killed in the first paragraph if you want. Dickens did that and wrote a masterpiece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T00:17:36.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24187" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-18T00:28:13.500" Score="2" ViewCount="230" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it better to fill your first draft with excessive detail and edit the unneeded parts out after or if it is better to write simply and go back and add in the details after it is done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21099" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T10:39:47.730" Title="When is the best time to add detail?" Tags="|fiction|technique|editing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24187" CreationDate="2016-08-18T01:18:53.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a personal writing preference. Very much however it works best for you. I've done both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the questions I would be asking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which is faster?&#xA;Which is better creatively for me as a writer?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to ask yourself, and be honest: &lt;strong&gt;how brutal can you be when you need to cut your detailed work? Is it easier for you, emotionally and artistically, to add in content or cut it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T01:18:53.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24187" CreationDate="2016-08-18T03:20:24.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't see why, at time of writing, you would ever include a detail that did not seem apt and necessary at the time. Nor can I see why you would ever omit a detail that did seem apt and necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite likely that you will decide later that many of the details you thought apt and necessary are either not apt or not necessary or both. You will remove them. And you will also discover that other details are apt and necessary. You will add them. That is what revision is for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I can't see why you would plan to say too much or too little in the first draft. The first is a waste and a distraction and the second risks losing the inspiration that allowed you to imagine the scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write as much or as little detail as seems apt to you in the moment. Whether it is too much or too little is something you will discover later in revision.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T03:20:24.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24190" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24211" CreationDate="2016-08-18T05:13:17.963" Score="6" ViewCount="462" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a book and intend to sell it to make some money on the side. Now I don't have any dreams of grandeur for this book such as it being an instant hit or anything like that and I'm certainly not going to rely on it for an income so I intend to self publish rather than try and find a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I don't really like my real name being on the internet I would just use the a pseudonym. However, being the person I am, I want to make sure that even in the remote chances that this book or whatever else I release becomes a hit I'll be able to use opportunities that may be presented to me. One such opportunity is having my book adapted into another format such as an anime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now yes I'm not Japanese and in fact Australian however there is precedent. &lt;em&gt;Deltora Quest&lt;/em&gt; written by Emily Rodda was adapted into an anime and Emily Rodda is the pseudonym for &lt;a href=&quot;https://deltoraquest.wikia.com/wiki/Jennifer_Rowe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jennifer Rowe&lt;/a&gt; who too is an Australian. However I would suspect that while she used her pseudonym it was her publisher &lt;em&gt;Scholastic Australia&lt;/em&gt; who contacted her when &lt;em&gt;Oriental Light and Magic&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;SKY Perfect Well Think&lt;/em&gt; and others wanted to adapt her Deltora Quest books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The series was produced by Oriental Light and Magic and SKY Perfect Well Think. Rodda was approached with many film offers, but it was only this studio that promised to not change the story. It aired its first episode on January 6, 2007 in Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://deltoraquest.wikia.com/wiki/Deltora_Quest_(anime)#Production&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deltora Quest (anime) - Production&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if I was to use a pseudonym and self-publish the only person who could match my pseudonym to me will be me. So I am wondering: Is it possible to self-publish with a pseudonym but still be approachable for these kinds of offers (book being adapted into another media, a proper publishing deal for future titles)? or do I lock myself out from these if I don't use my real name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2019-06-08T01:53:12.423" LastActivityDate="2019-06-08T01:53:12.423" Title="Is it possible to self-publish with a pseudonym but still be approachable for offers?" Tags="|self-publishing|publisher|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24163" CreationDate="2016-08-18T06:49:09.477" Score="18" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Thought verbs&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chuck Palahniuk, an accomplished master of showing, &lt;a href=&quot;https://litreactor.com/essays/chuck-palahniuk/nuts-and-bolts-%E2%80%9Cthought%E2%80%9D-verbs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;suggested an exercise&lt;/a&gt; to learn not to tell. The exercise is to not use &quot;thought verbs&quot;. Instead of telling the reader what a character thinks or feels, you have to show them how they behave. Palahniuk calls this &quot;un-packing&quot; the emotion or thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this exercise and Palahniuks examples, we can understand what the difference between &quot;showing&quot; and &quot;telling&quot; is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Incapacitating the reader&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you use thought verbs to &quot;tell&quot; how a character feels or what they think, you &lt;strong&gt;tell the reader what to think&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;You interpret the world for them.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you avoid thought verbs and &quot;show&quot; the reader the raw version of the world,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;you allow them to think for themselves&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– and to come to a different conclusion than you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John loves Joan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tells the reader how to interpret John's behavior. While&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every day John bought Joan a flower and walked to the other side of town to lay it on her door step - then quickly ran away so she wouldn't see him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;shows the reader what John does. And the reader might disagree with you. The reader might think that what you show is not love, but, for example, obsession, and that John is stalking Joan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Hubris vs mastery&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A writer who tells claims to understand the world. When I write &quot;John loves Joan&quot;, I do not in fact tell you that John loves Joan, but that I know what love is and that I know John's mind better than he does himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But different people have different ideas of love. And most people don't know how they feel. They feel sexually attracted to someone, or they care for the wellbeing of someone, or they are afraid of loosing someone's care and attention. Showing means that you do not fob off the reader with an abbreviation of the story but give them the wealth of sensory input that being in the story would entail. Which requires good observational skills and a mastery of language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Show/tell vs point of view&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Showing and telling have to be distinguished from first and third person narration. &quot;I love Joan&quot; is telling in first person, &quot;Every day I put flowers in front of Joan's door&quot; is showing in first person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Show/tell vs stream of consciousness&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Showing and telling must also be distinguished from interiority and exteriority. The examples above take an outside view of events, and just as you can tell or show what goes on from outside, you can tell or show thought processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Telling interiority looks exactly like telling exteriority:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John loves Joan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Showing interiority can of course not completely avoid thought verbs, because we lack the words (and probably the self-reflective power) to describe the details of our thought processes, but it can &quot;un-pack&quot; the abbreviations and abstain from interpreting more than necessary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Laying the flowers on Joan's door step, he strained to listen for any sounds from within. Every creaking or bump sent a jolt of terrified lust through his tense body. John both hoped and feared that Joan would catch him, and he was both glad and disappointed as he walked away from her house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These examples aren't well written, but I hope you can still understand the idea I'm trying to convey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9901/what-does-telling-and-not-showing-mean&quot;&gt;What does &amp;quot;telling and not showing&amp;quot; mean?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/15942/thought-verbs-a-sign-of-weak-writing-or-a-stylistic-choice&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Thought&amp;quot; Verbs: A sign of weak writing or a stylistic choice?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/15826/writing-techniques-or-exercises-to-improve-ability-to-show-rather-than-tell&quot;&gt;Writing techniques or exercises to improve ability to show rather than tell?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/16460/skipping-telling-to-get-to-the-showing-pros-and-cons&quot;&gt;Skipping telling to get to the showing - pros and cons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17316/how-can-i-implement-more-show-less-tell-in-my-writing&quot;&gt;How can I implement more show less tell in my writing?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T10:32:07.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24187" CreationDate="2016-08-18T10:39:47.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it interests you, this have been the subject of researches, notably by french literary theorist and semiotician &lt;strong&gt;Roland Barthes&lt;/strong&gt; (in &lt;em&gt;Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barthes divide writers in two categories : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ellipsis writers :&lt;/strong&gt; (sorry, not sure of the exact term), such as &lt;em&gt;Flaubert&lt;/em&gt;, who will write an extended first draft (or many versions of the same text or dialog) and then cut into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that's the category which write &quot;Excessive detail and edit the unneeded parts&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Catalysis writers :&lt;/strong&gt; Like &lt;em&gt;Marcel Proust&lt;/em&gt;, who will write a first draft and then add extensions to the text (Look for &lt;em&gt;Paperolles de Proust&lt;/em&gt; on Google images)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wich correspond to filling with details afterward.&#xA;Barthes tried to find the semiotic significance of both practices, and it's really interesting, if a little bit of theory don't repel you (basically it's about the ways a writer will formulate what he's trying to say)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would just like to add that it's not about the &lt;em&gt;necessity of those details&lt;/em&gt;, but about the moment you will like to add them &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you need to write many versions or an extended draft to decide which part will really serve your narration (or just because you want to follow you imagination with the &lt;em&gt;Edit Demon&lt;/em&gt; shut off), but then your text can become muddy, that's what I was used of, and that's why I tend (or try) to get closer to the second category : writing a simple first draft (of a single chapter for example) with a clear structure that will contain all the basics of my narrative unit, without additional details, like a skeleton, and then flesh it out with all what needs to be developed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T10:39:47.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24197" CreationDate="2016-08-18T14:16:50.500" Score="0" ViewCount="1262" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in writing a novel about a song from a band. It will have the exact same plot but different names of the characters. Is this considered plagiarism? The idea of the song and my book are exactly the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21113" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-08-18T20:59:40.197" LastActivityDate="2020-03-13T14:13:25.690" Title="Is writing a novel about a song considered plagiarism?" Tags="|fiction|copyright|lyrics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24196" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24198" CreationDate="2016-08-18T16:47:00.910" Score="0" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a 12 year old aspiring writer who would love to enter writing contests.  I'd like to find some writing contests that are free to enter, are for people my age, and preferably, have prizes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I locate contests like this? How do I know which ones are worth entering? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21114" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-08-18T17:27:11.857" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T21:39:57.173" Title="Writing Contests For Teens" Tags="|contests|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24195" CreationDate="2016-08-18T17:31:37.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#102&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ideas are not protected by copyright&lt;/a&gt;. What is protected is the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Non-infringing_types_of_works&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unique tangible expression of that idea&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, in this case the words and music of the song. A derivative work does not infringe on copyright if it is not &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;substantially similar&lt;/a&gt; to the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how a court of law would rule, but to me personally a book that retells the story in a song is substantially different enough not to infringe the copyright of the original, even if it did use the same character names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_that_retell_a_work_of_literature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;songs that retell a work of literature&lt;/a&gt;, so I would think the reverse must be legal as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T17:31:37.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24196" CreationDate="2016-08-18T19:04:29.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are based in the UK, there is a really great charity called &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youngwriters.co.uk/writing-and-poetry-competitions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;young writers&lt;/a&gt; and they run lots of competitions throughout the year to encourage writers of poetry and short stories right from primary school. Also, in November you could take part in &lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NaNoWriMo&lt;/a&gt;, an international novel writing &quot;competition&quot; with the aim of writing 50,000 or more words in a month. There are prizes for completing the challenge, but there's no first place etc. Everyone who passes the 50,000 words mark gets the prizes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21103" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T19:04:29.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9403" CreationDate="2016-08-18T21:06:28.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are actually quite a lot of popular and critically acclaimed children's books with tragic elements.  Many kids dislike these, of course: I remember despising &lt;em&gt;Bridge to Terebithia&lt;/em&gt; as a child, and Gordon Korman even wrote a book called &lt;em&gt;No More Dead Dogs&lt;/em&gt; mocking the prevalence of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/675.The_dog_dies_a_cautionary_list_&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dead pet subgenre&lt;/a&gt; of children's books.  However, they are popular among parents and teachers, and even some children love them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, unlike adults, who have some experience of both life and literature to fall back on, children are new to the world, and things can accordingly have a much more powerful impact on them.  They may take what they read as a model to follow, or a foreshadowing of what life will actually be like for them.  For that reason, I'd suggest either writing a positive, life-affirming book with tragic elements (&lt;em&gt;Charlotte's Web&lt;/em&gt;) or a bleak, dark book with a happy ending (&lt;em&gt;The Wolves of Willougby Chase&lt;/em&gt;) because where an adult might find a bleak book followed by a bleak ending cathartic and even perhaps pleasurable, a child is likely to just find it horribly depressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might ask yourself why you want to write this book &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; children.  There are a number of tragic books &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; children but &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; adults, is it possible you want to write one of those?  Typically most serious children's book have some aspect of teaching, what do you want your reader to learn?  Most tragic children's books have the theme that death is a part of life, but life is still worth living.  If you're contradicting that lesson, you'll get a lot of resistance (and perhaps rightfully so).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T21:06:28.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24196" CreationDate="2016-08-18T21:08:25.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most writing contests have a fee to enter because they need the fees to pay for the prizes. In fact, a lot of small magazines need fees from their writing contests just to stay in business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few well funded magazines or publishers may put on contests to find new writers, but this is rare because they already receive far more manuscripts than they have time to read. These contests are usually not open to children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The places you are most likely to find contest with no fee that are open to children is your local library or town council or other community organizations or charities. Children's magazines may also occasionally run contests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T21:08:25.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24201" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-18T21:09:11.853" Score="-1" ViewCount="13117" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a series and need help creating a name for them. An example of what I am looking for would be something like Cassandra Claire's Mortal Instruments or Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle. My series is about the conflict between angels and demons and breaking the forged stereotypes about them. A young girl is abruptly thrust into this world when a demon who is illegally trying to earn wings, throws her life off balance and returns a year later needing her help to complete his search. She will learn that demons are not the monsters we think and angels are not the flawless creatures we see them as. She becomes wrapped up in a feud much larger than herself as the war between the world above and the one below enters her life and she discovers that the stories are always written by the victor, but the victor is not always the rightful hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21099" LastActivityDate="2019-11-09T11:10:16.913" Title="Help creating a name for a series" Tags="|fiction|naming|ideas|series|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2019-11-18T23:21:38.337" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24163" CreationDate="2016-08-18T21:39:20.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To show vs. tell is to show a character's physical reaction to everything (relevant) that she sees, hears, smells, touches, and tastes. Conversely, telling is the author speaking on behalf of the character, usually by using the words for specific emotions or thoughts rather than the words for the physical manifestation of those emotions or thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too often (and I see it in this thread), the notion of Scene vs. Summary is confused with Showing vs. Telling. Whether Summarizing an event from a character's past, for example, or writing an action Scene in the moment, both may be done using either techniques of Showing or Telling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15187" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T21:39:20.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24201" CreationDate="2016-08-18T21:50:43.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;After a quick google search I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://writersrelief.com/blog/2013/08/great-title-for-your-book-or-story-or-poem/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt; with tips on how to get started on creating name ideas for a book. Also, you could name your book after a key theme in your book i.e demon wings as the story centers around the demon who wants to earn his wings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that book and essay titles come to me after writing a first draft and picking out themes that run through the book and playing around with words related to the theme. Maybe try putting related words into a hat and picking a few out at random to create a combination until you find one you like? I can't tell you what to name your story. Just give you advice, and there is plenty of it on google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21103" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T21:50:43.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24205" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24206" CreationDate="2016-08-18T22:15:35.870" Score="1" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my novel, the protagonist starts out as a runaway slave, and I want to point out to the reader that she is avoiding those who are in charge of slaves who all wear a uniform involving a blue shirt and brown leather jacket. I have her travel through a busy crowd, and I want to show her being paranoid whenever she sees the colour blue. However, I do not know where it would be sensible to describe the uniform of these men. Do I include it where the characters are first introduced (which is currently in a flashback to the MC's childhood)? Or would it make more sense to include the description later when they are being spotted by someone due to the distinctiveness of the uniform?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21103" LastActivityDate="2021-01-22T04:54:19.190" Title="Where to put a description of characters that have a uniform?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|description|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24205" CreationDate="2016-08-19T01:53:13.783" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We can't tell you how to write your story, but this is a kind of question that comes up from time to time, the sort that asks: &quot;What is the &lt;em&gt;correct&lt;/em&gt; way to do this thing?&quot; Making a rule for yourself about where to describe a thing means that you're making your fiction formulaic and consistent. Good prose has life to it, it's not a list of people, places, events, and descriptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Descriptions are a writing technique like any other. They can set the stage and ground the reader, sometimes by conveying atmospheric information and sometimes by giving detail important to the plot. While the plot in this story demands some amount of description, please take care not to over-use it or use it in a predictable way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your question, it sounds like you're going to be in this character's head more than a little, so it's important to ask yourself how she would view the world. She'd live in fear of those who could return her to slavery, of course, and she'd search for these distinctive uniforms. But the reader can find out why this is the case anytime in the story. You do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; need to set up cause and effect like ducks in a row in a story, you just need to keep the reader satisfied and interested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T01:53:13.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24207" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-18T19:02:49.073" Score="1" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the pros and cons of basing the world on the characters found in it and conversely what are the pros and cons of basing the characters on the world in which they live?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28410" OwnerDisplayName="William Oliver" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T17:51:21.640" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T17:51:21.640" Title="Should the world be based on the characters or the characters based on the world?" Tags="|fiction|characters|setting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2016-08-25T07:59:30.060" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24207" CreationDate="2016-08-18T20:19:47.990" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The advantages of building a world and then basing the characters on it is that this is generally the direction that the real world works.  Your parents were not chosen based on what profession you were supposed to enter.  They were your parents first, and they shaped your profession.  Building in this order typically helps make very credible worlds because you're not cheating when you build the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, few stories are focused on the world.  They usually center around characters and a plot.  In these cases, you tend to want to avoid weakening your plot just to fit the world.  Nothing's worse than building up your story of the boy turned king than finding out that the world brought the black plague to his castle and he died a horrible death just before the plot really took off.  Many stories rely on exceptional happenings, and it can be hard to build a world and then find those exceptional events.  It can be easier to bend your world to fit your characters.  However, this comes at a price: the believably of your world can go down because the characters start &quot;getting lucky&quot; too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ideal solution is to balance both approaches.  Make it so that its hard to tell from your final product whether you took the world first or character first approach.  Create a beautiful gleaming plot with rich characters, and make sure the world fits that.  Make sure that the world looks like it really could have generated these characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14106" OwnerDisplayName="Cort Ammon" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T20:19:47.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24207" CreationDate="2016-08-19T04:47:10.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories are fundamentally about people, not places. The psychology of why we like stories has been fairly well worked out, and the archetypes of stories are fairly well understood. At its simplest, a story is about a character with a desire, the things that frustrate that desire, the things the character does to overcome those things and achieve their desire, and the final achievement of loss of the desire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything else in a story revolves around this. If a story invents a world (rather than using the one we live in) it is because an invented world is a better vehicle, in some way or another, for the staging of this conflict between a particular desire and the things that frustrate that desire. A fantasy world may create the conditions for a new desire, or new ways to frustrate a desire, or new ways to overcome those frustrations. These need to be analogs of real desires, real frustrations, and real opportunities or the story will not hold the reader, but a fantasy world can provide a new stage on which to tell one of the archetypal stories and to highlight its key conflicts in different ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of which means that character comes first, and the world creates the right stage on which to tell the story of the character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That does not mean you can't do worldbuilding and then discover a character and place them in that world. But it means that actual storytelling begins with character, not world building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T04:47:10.907" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24190" CreationDate="2016-08-19T09:10:49.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There will be a link back to you for two reasons.  Your payment to whatever organisation you use to 'self publish' and their payments to you generated from any sales of your book.  If it does become the focus of a film or TV series then we can assume that it has also had at least a few sales in book form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an assumption but I would suspect that the self publishing organisation would have a reference to themselves inside the front cover of the book.  I mean you normally get the 'published by' information where the copyright and ISBN information is printed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should it become a hit and large organisation wanted the rights then I think they have large enough legal and marketing departments and existing networks into publishing houses to at least try and track you down through that link.  It's where I'd start as a complete novice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm investigation what would happen for any royalties accrued by your book in terms of library lending and reproduction so I will be editing this to include that later.  At present it's my belief that you may just miss out on those if you can't be easily tracked down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have mention I think creating some social media or contact information for your pseudonym would be a good idea if for no other reason than allowing your readers to contact you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having spoken to someone in the industry my answer is correct.  They would go through the publisher who may not divulge your identity but would pass the contact request along to you.  Now in 'real life' you can lose that link if perhaps the request was made long after the book stopped selling and the publishing house have lost contact with you because perhaps you moved and never told them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21127" LastEditorUserId="21127" LastEditDate="2016-08-19T09:27:56.997" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T09:27:56.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24190" CreationDate="2016-08-19T11:20:44.213" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure it is possible for prospective business partners to reach you. Create a website for your pseudonym where you advertise your work. Make sure that website is easy to find. Put the address into the copyright information of your book, on the back-cover, into the profile of any social media presences you have, etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are services which allow to register domains by proxy, so your real name doesn't show up in the domain records. Make sure to point out that you are interested in business proposals and offer an easy way to contact you through your website. That can either be an email address which is also a pseudonym or a contact form. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When people contact you with a serious offer you can reply with your real personal information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with working under a pen name. Many cult-classics of literature were published under pen names. Like, for example the whole life-works of Samuel Clemens, Eric Arthur Blair or Howard O'Brien. What, never heard of these people? You might know them as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; Mark Twain, George Orwell and Anne Rice&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might notice that pen names usually sound like names a real person would have. So when you want to make a writing career under a pen name, you might want to pick a less obvious pseudonym than &lt;em&gt;Memor-X&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2016-08-19T11:57:16.390" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T11:57:16.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24213" CreationDate="2016-08-19T11:43:58.163" Score="0" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a BS student and my major is computer science.&#xA;I like to know more about this major. I mean that i like to read professional essays about different topics in computer science. But the problem is that i don't know where to start ! My question is not just about computer science. I've asked from my professors at university but they always say somethings that disappoint me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For example they say you should be sure that no-one has ever wrote something about your topic. How on earth can i do that? I can't just go and read every essay that the world wrote about a specific topic ! that's crazy right?! How can i be sure that i've read every essay about a topic?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another problem is that they say you should write about a brand new thing ! Maybe i want to write about my experiences of Web design. There are many companies and many people who know how to design a website. But i have my way and i think my method is useful for others. My point is that for example designing a website is not a new thing that i invented !! But i know the issues about it. So, is this not a good topic?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The third problem is about the products that i made relating to my major. For example i can write a new software. This software is not unique ! I mean there are other softwares like it but they all have their differences comparing to each other! Is it not acceptable that i write an essay about my software?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Please consider this question as a general question. I mentioned my major just because i wanted to clarify my points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21128" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T16:50:42.617" Title="Is it really hard to write an essay?" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-08-19T22:24:52.370" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24212" CreationDate="2016-08-19T12:17:14.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your professor wants to protect you from wasting your time with writing something nobody will be interested to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About points 1 and 2: Your work should not be redundant. There is no point in writing the same thing someone else has already written. When you do proper research before writing your essay (academics call that &quot;literature review&quot;) you should easily find works about the same topic. When you take a closer look at them you might find out that your way isn't actually unique. Likely other people have already tried the same thing, found out the flaws about the method and improved on it. Then your contribution wouldn't really add anything to the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't prove a negative, of course. When you can't find anything despite doing a thorough research, that work &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; exist but be too obscure or behind a paywall, so there might in fact be demand for a more &lt;em&gt;available&lt;/em&gt; essay on the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About point 3: Every software should have an essay written about it which explains what it's good for, how to use it and how it works. It's called a &lt;em&gt;documentation&lt;/em&gt;. But it is unlikely that this document will have much value for people who don't directly work with the program. There are few software projects where the techniques used to develop them are so revolutionary and unique that it is worth writing an essay just about that. Chances are that your processes and patterns are already described by existing literature. In the unlikely chance that you indeed found some revolutionary new way to develop software, then I (as a professional software developer) would still not be interested in reading about that until you have a history of &lt;em&gt;multiple&lt;/em&gt; successful projects where your methods have proven to be useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2016-08-19T12:33:42.987" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T12:33:42.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24214" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-19T13:07:31.270" Score="-2" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;A plot is a very complex thing consisting of complicated interactions between the fuzzy characters and situations, each of whom have different idiosyncrasies and intricacies. Further, you have to set the events and interactions in such a way that the end result should be interesting, entertaining and fulfilling to your reader, not some boring jumble of sentences. How do you manage all that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4917" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:50:11.617" Title="What is the trickiest aspect of devising a plot for your novel?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-08-25T06:47:25.537" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24214" CreationDate="2016-08-19T14:24:30.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Know Your Goal&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all you have to really know the story you want to tell.  Don't get bogged down with side issues in the beginning while you're initially plotting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE&lt;/strong&gt;: For you pantsers out there, this does not mean you have to have a full outline of everything that will happen in your story.  It simply means that you know &lt;em&gt;what type of story you are telling&lt;/em&gt; and where it will all end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What Type of Story You Are Telling&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYa7uw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Twenty Master Plots, by Ronald Tobias - amazon link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There you'll find the major types of plots (quest, pursuit, rescue, revenge, riddle, metamorphosis, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Write In Scenes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, break down the story showing your main character in action (make her do something on &quot;screen&quot; and not just sit there thinking about what your plot is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader will &quot;watch&quot; your character in action and want to know what happens next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Each Scene Must&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each scene must put the main character further behind the goal she is trying to achieve.  &lt;strong&gt;It must build tension.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn more about how scenes should really work from &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pYjXwN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jack Bickham's great book Scene &amp;amp; Structure -- amazon link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep it simple and you can plot great novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a bit more about writing in scenes from another of my entries here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/23301/how-to-hide-something-in-plain-sight-and-keep-it-hidden/23310#23310&quot;&gt;Write In Scenes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T14:50:11.617" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:50:11.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24179" CreationDate="2016-08-19T14:30:12.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that actually sounds really interesting actually. Sometimes, the question, &quot;Can I do something with what I am writing?&quot; isn't really the question. You can do whatever you want in writing in terms of plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what you are asking is not, what is possible with plot, but how do you pull it off in the narrative. In that case, I would look over some of the great stories that feature betrayal, and see how you can pull ideas from them. Here are some that I came up with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Euripides' Medea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Harry Potter (Many examples throughout.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;King Lear&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Macbeth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Gospels (Judas' betrayal being archetypal for much Western fiction.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are stories that stand on their own without sequels (save Harry Potter) that deal primarily with betrayal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harry Potter is an easy one to dissect because I can assume you have read it, and betrayal is a theme throughout the whole book series, culminating in the penultimate book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first book, the idea that Snape is a traitor is laid out from almost the very beginning, the MC's obsess over it and it seems so sure, then in the climax of the book, Quirrel turns out to be the traitor. In subsequent novels in the series you have different examples and types that would be good to go over and examine. In the final book, you have a different kind of betrayal with Ron leaving. This is ultimately settled but it could be a good study about how to bring a lot of tension into your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of thoughts, but hopefully something in there triggered your brain. Besides the HP novels, the other things I listed are pretty accessible and consumable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21119" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T14:30:12.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1742" CreationDate="2016-08-19T14:38:35.497" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Je ne comprends pas,&quot; she said. &lt;em&gt;I don't understand.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not the only way to do it, as Lauren mentioned, but I find it the most elegant, and least disruptive to the flow of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21131" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T14:38:35.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24218" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-19T14:50:29.123" Score="1" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;A background is a very critical aspect of your fiction story/novel and can easily make or break it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, Dan Brown's famous novel, &lt;em&gt;Da Vinci Code&lt;/em&gt; was all about the backgrounds. The mysterious properties of the number &lt;em&gt;phi&lt;/em&gt; (which are actually mysterious), the interesting historical events surrounding the Knights Templar, Roman Emperor Constantine, Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene, etc. was what made the novel ultimately famous and extraordinarily popular. The actual plots and events surrounding Robert Langdon were just circumstantial and a result of the usual plotting process that could be typical of almost any other novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example where the background and ambiance shines is Harry Potter - A magical school for prodigal children with extraordinary gifts and a whole new world surrounding that! Though, Rowling had to invent a lot of things from scratch as opposed to Brown, who just modified the actual historical facts a bit to make them more interesting to the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, how do you come up with such backgrounds for your novel? If you were to write a novel (be it historical or pure sci-fi), what all do you research and how do you shape that research into backgrounds and ambiance that should be an interesting/fascinating read for your readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4917" LastEditorUserId="4917" LastEditDate="2016-08-19T16:35:50.900" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T00:47:07.310" Title="How do you create interesting background and ambiance for your fictional work?" Tags="|plot|subplot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-08-25T06:47:07.880" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24225" CreationDate="2016-08-19T15:41:19.100" Score="2" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the title for a map that shows point locations distributed across a beach where biologists will count the number of clams.  The claims will be harvested and used as bait in a crab fishery.  Should the title be &lt;em&gt;Bait-Clam Survey&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Bait Clam Survey&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21132" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2016-08-23T11:21:12.903" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T11:21:12.903" Title="Should these words be hyphenated?" Tags="|editing|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-08-25T07:56:26.347" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24220" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-19T15:51:41.847" Score="1" ViewCount="458" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to use a quote from a song for my new wine label.  We would use quotation marks and give credit to the artist.  Is that ok?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21133" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T06:24:19.003" Title="Is it legal to use a song lyric on the back of a wine label if we give attribution to the creator?" Tags="|copyright|lyrics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2016-08-25T01:36:57.313" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24179" CreationDate="2016-08-19T15:54:25.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is up to you. As the author, you may know the reasons and backstory, but the readers don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In effect, what you are describing (opening paragraph betrayal) becomes &quot;The Hook&quot; of your book. Some stories start on a dark and stormy night, others with a massive explosion, some with a series of unfortunate events, and a few start in a nice, comfortable, one might even say luxurious, hole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you get feedback. Have a few people read your opening paragraphs, change the names if you must, and tell you if they would read a story that started off this way. Also, step back and think about this from a neutral perspective. Do &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; like a book that starts this way? Does it hook you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A tragic beginning might start a book off with a bang, it might even become great. It is certainly... intriguing. Not all stories start and finish with a happy little elf, after all. I believe that book was in aisle two, just a few down the way over there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19658" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T15:54:25.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12717" CreationDate="2016-08-19T16:04:53.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having the same problem, only I met it by having one character see the other's hair as red-blond, though in reality his hair is more of a dark ginger. Everyone's colour perception is different, and I try to avoid having it sound as though a Croyola box blew-up in the narrative.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having different character's say different things about one character is a good way to go. Another character was like her mother, petite, and she accentuate's it by wearing a pixie cut under cloche hats and antique frocks from the Roaring Twenties.  It's my method, using personality and perceptions to describe a character, not actually giving a police blotter bulletin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Pride and Prejudice, we all agree that Bingley is a perpetually smiling young man who has fair hair and a light colouring, yet the only description of him is that 'he wears a blue coat!' the rest is conveyed through his personality.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same for Darcy, that he is dark, tall, and attractive, through the fact that he has become handsomer through his fortune of '10000 a year.' and the descriptions of his arrogance and conceit.  No physical descriptions needed, just a few brisk examples of who they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21134" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-30T08:29:15.033" LastActivityDate="2018-05-30T08:29:15.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24226" CreationDate="2016-08-19T16:27:19.143" Score="2" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read the question &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/24163/what-does-show-dont-tell-actually-mean&quot;&gt;What does show don't tell actually mean?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and in the answers, there were a few examples of showing that had extensive description. However, there are numerous websites (and even questions on this website) that say you should cut all unnecessary content while editing, including extensive, unnecessary detail. Maybe I'm wrong, but&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Laying the flowers on Joan's door step, he strained to listen for any sounds from within. Every creaking or bump sent a jolt of terrified lust through his tense body. John both hoped and feared that Joan would catch him, and he was both glad and disappointed as he walked away from her house.&quot; (Answer by &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/5645/what&quot;&gt;what&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;seems slightly extensive and full of things that you could cut in the editing process. (And there are plently of other examples too; this is just one of the first few examples I could find.) Of course, the example above is much better than&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John loves Joan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but it could be reduced to fewer sentences. As quoted before, &quot;It seems that perfection is attained, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint_Exup%C3%A9ry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Antoine de Saint Exupery&lt;/a&gt;). So to what extent is too much &quot;showing&quot; description too much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T22:46:55.120" Title="When Showing Over Telling Becomes Too Extravagant" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|editing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24212" CreationDate="2016-08-19T16:50:42.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difficulty of writing an essay largely depends on the type of essay (Narrative, Descriptive, Expository, and Persuasive being the main types) and the writer’s experience with the topic. Writing an effective Persuasive essay is usually the most difficult. Before determining which type of essay to write, you need a thesis statement (topic sentence, if you prefer), which is just a statement of your Topic with a Controlling Idea. The Controlling Idea will help you to deduce which type of essay would best present your message. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google your thesis statement to see whether other publications exist. If they do, then read them to determine whether your experience is different and worth writing a complementary or contrasting essay (citing those pubs). Modify your Controlling Idea to accommodate this. You can find ideas for a thesis at &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/&quot; title=&quot;Stack Overflow&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;; try the “hot” page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend &lt;em&gt;The Craft of Research&lt;/em&gt;, by Booth, Colomb, and Williams, as a reference for writing essays of science and engineering research (not to be confused with Technical Writing--different objectives). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15187" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:40:35.973" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T16:50:42.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24219" CreationDate="2016-08-19T16:57:58.313" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go with &quot;Bait-Clam Survey&quot;. Generally you hyphenate when the two or more words coming before the noun form a compound adjective. Because &quot;bait-clam&quot; is acting as a single adjective they should be hyphenated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information on hyphenation see:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/hyphens.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/hyphens.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21135" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T16:57:58.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24223" CreationDate="2016-08-19T17:30:06.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no one right answer, but generally I'd say it's too much when it slows down your narrative and you don't want it to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John looked through the two windows to see Sherlock standing beside the cabbie. He lifted a long pale hand to his mouth. The cabbie did the same. The pills! Sherlock was about to take one of the suicide pills! John lifted his Browning and took aim. His hand hadn't been so steady since before Kandahar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;versus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John looked through the two weathered windows of the deserted college buildings to see Sherlock, tall, cool, and forbidding, standing beside the dishevelled cabbie. The man wore a crooked, anticipatory grin. The detective regarded him with a look of slight disdain. He lifted a long pale hand to his mouth. The cabbie's grin grew wider, and he did the same. John could see something small and white between Sherlock's fingers. He was taking a pill. The doctor inhaled sharply — even though they knew that the murderer had been convincing people to take the pills, it was something else again to watch it happen. John drew his Browning from his back holster and aimed at the seated man. His hand, he registered dimly, was not trembling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one has more detail, but the first one has much more punch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-08-19T21:21:14.727" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T21:21:14.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24223" CreationDate="2016-08-19T17:49:00.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question has no single answer. Only opinions will you receive. &#xA;Here’s mine: if the description seems to be too much, prune it to let the fruit show. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I may be able to shed light on why the example you shared seems extensive. It ends with this chunk of Telling: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John both hoped and feared that Joan would catch him, and he was both glad and disappointed as he walked away from her house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here’s a rewrite with less Telling: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Laying the flowers on Joan's doorstep, he crouched to listen within. A creaking floorboard tightened his entire body. John bolted up to stand face-to-face with her and explain everything. The peephole in the door stared at him, accused him. Then he saw it darken. &lt;strike&gt;Joan was staring at him, accusing him through the door that might as well have been a mile thick.&lt;/strike&gt; He drifted back, as his feet carried his unforgivable soul away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s longer, but (arguably) more engaging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15187" LastEditorUserId="15187" LastEditDate="2016-08-19T22:46:55.120" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T22:46:55.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24220" CreationDate="2016-08-19T18:54:48.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. You are using a work of art for commercial purposes. Trying to sell your wine is not fair use. You must ask the copyright owner for permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T18:54:48.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24201" CreationDate="2016-08-19T19:11:24.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I firmly believe that you should use a working title while you write and only try to find the publication title when writing and revisions are completely done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually the title to a popular novel is decided by the publisher anyway. The title is part of the marketing and tuned to your target audience. If you write popular fiction, leave finding the right title to the marketing department of your publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write literary fiction, you should still wait until you know what your story will be. While you write, you don't know yet how the story will evolve, and any title you try to give prematurely might not fit the final form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have taken many of my titles from the final sentences of my (literary, not popular) works. Writing the ending, I realized what I was writing about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An approach recommended for popular fiction is to write a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log_line&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;log line&lt;/a&gt; and condense that further into a title. (The purpose of the log line is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_pitch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;elevator pitch&lt;/a&gt;. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10916/how-to-distill-a-plot-into-a-logline&quot;&gt;How to distill a plot into a logline?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T19:11:24.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24214" CreationDate="2016-08-19T19:18:00.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You manage all that by experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a common mistake that many aspiring writers make that they want their first ever novel to be a bestseller. But you have to learn to write first, and the best way to learn to write is to write many novels. In the course of these failures, you will learn how to avoid previous mistakes and finally succeed in writing a well-plotted book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just in any other form of art and any other skill, there is no shortcut to diligent practice. If you try to cut a corner, you will find yourself writing the same book for the next twenty years of your life and finally give up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T19:18:00.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24218" CreationDate="2016-08-19T19:23:03.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What Dan Brown did was &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=dan%20brown%20read%20a%20lot&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;read a lot&lt;/a&gt;. He is famous for the amount of research he does for each of his novels, and all that knowledge is not lost after the writing but keeps on accumulating. Dan Brown simply knows so much about what he wants to write about, that he can write about it with the same intimate familiarity you could write about your living room. &lt;strong&gt;To create a rich, vibrant, and convincing background, immerse yourself in what makes up that background.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Do research.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T19:23:03.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24218" CreationDate="2016-08-19T19:55:44.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In any case, how do you come up with such backgrounds for your novel? If you were to write a novel (be it historical or pure sci-fi), what all do you research and how do you shape that research into backgrounds and ambiance that should be an interesting/fascinating read for your readers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you come up with your ideas is entirely up to you. I write fantasy, set in made-up medieval secondary world, but I do research real history of the similar time period and geography, pick out what interests me and what I consider cool and unusual, deconstruct and re-use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The settings and backstory should work for your narrative. No matter how fascinating your world (whether it is real or imagined) is, if you don't have a compelling story, set over that backdrop, you have nothing to write about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone has their own way of doing research, and there is no single right way to do so. The Internet makes research much faster—one just have to check your sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a wrong way, however, which is NOT to do research at all... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2016-08-20T00:47:07.310" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T00:47:07.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24201" CreationDate="2016-08-20T01:10:41.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The format would matter first and foremost. Is this a series of books ala Harry Potter...or something &quot;serialized&quot; where the reader only is given the story one bit at a time over time? For extended novels I think a dramatic title is warranted  say....&quot;the Dark and the Damned&quot; or &quot;The Wizened and the Wicked.&quot; For something serialized you would want something brief...preferably a single word say &quot;Tartus&quot; or &quot;Black Anthem&quot; and then &quot;rote&quot; from there. Since the Battle between Good and Evil never ends there really is no &quot;end&quot; to the amount of story to be told and being it is told purely through the Mind's Eye I would say just write and then see if a title jumps out at you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T01:10:41.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24235" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24572" CreationDate="2016-08-20T03:10:53.890" Score="2" ViewCount="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a works cited page in MLA format, when citing a book part of the citation is, for example, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stewart, James. &lt;em&gt;Calculus: Early Transcendentals&lt;/em&gt;. [EDITION] ed. Belmont: Brooks/Cole, 2009. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This calculus textbook is the AP edition of the Sixth edition of the textbook. Should &lt;em&gt;[EDITION]&lt;/em&gt; be written as &quot;AP ed. Sixth ed.&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21139" LastEditorUserId="21139" LastEditDate="2016-09-07T22:35:37.833" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T11:52:47.030" Title="How do you cite a book classified under two editions?" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24238" CreationDate="2016-08-20T17:15:00.280" Score="10" ViewCount="5647" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard some advice that you're only supposed to use an exclamation point every 100,000 words or so. I'm finding this advice very hard to follow; I've written 2,000 words so far and have about 5 exclamation points (which all appear in dialogue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, take this scene where two characters are separated on opposite sides of a large room, and they can't communicate with each other without speaking loudly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.) &quot;Press the green button!&quot; Alice called to Frank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This reads naturally to me. The exclamation point fits the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2.) &quot;Press the green button,&quot; Alice called to Frank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when I know there is a long distance between Alice and Frank and that they have to speak loudly in order to hear each other, this line of dialogue reads to me as if they are right next to each other. It's more difficult for me to hear Alice calling out to Frank from the other side of the room when the exclamation point in the dialogue is absent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is using exclamation points okay in this context? I don't use them in my actual narrative, only in dialogue when someone is speaking loudly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; If it's okay, I'd also like to give another example, one I'm having some difficulty removing the exclamation points from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She was already halfway down the hall when she heard a voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Alice!&quot; It was Frank, running toward her from the other end of the hall, waving a piece of paper wildly in the air as he called for her. &quot;Hey! Alice! Can you hear me?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rewriting this with periods just doesn't sound right:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She was already halfway down the hall when she heard a voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Alice.&quot; It was Frank, running toward her from the other end of the hall, waving a piece of paper wildly in the air as he called for her. &quot;Hey. Alice. Can you hear me?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lythric advised me to use adverbs/adjectives in order to get around my exclamation point issue, but what should I do when I can't seem to fit them anywhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastEditorUserId="16341" LastEditDate="2016-08-20T20:06:56.053" LastActivityDate="2019-12-03T14:36:15.580" Title="Using exclamation points in fiction" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24237" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-20T17:36:29.970" Score="1" ViewCount="347" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to start a chapter with a text message. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe based on the style guides I've read that you should indent text messages, but how about if they are at the start of a chapter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually you don't indent the first line of a chapter, so I was wondering if anyone had any advice about what to do in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastActivityDate="2016-09-24T13:38:37.780" Title="Do you indent a text message at the beginning of a chapter?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24236" CreationDate="2016-08-20T18:26:06.423" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exclamation points should  be used to create emphasis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I'd like to let out my opinion on that 100,000 word thing for exclamation points. I believe that the lot of it is nonsense. Use exclamation points &lt;strong&gt;when you believe it will benefit your writing&lt;/strong&gt;. Its the same with chapter lengths, and everything else. Do not let these word count rules push you around, because its best to always do what you think will benefit your writing the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exclamation points are used to create emphasis/tension in a piece. Use an exclamation mark when you wish to magnify a certain feeling, e.g. excitement, anger, anxiety. However, because the use of an exclamation mark is so powerful, I don't think you should use them all the time, only for the perfect situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the use of an exclamation mark normally being magnification of feelings or emotions, I think that it would be best to not use one in your example. Instead, you could try saying something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Press the green button,&quot; Alice vehemently called to Frank for her final attempt of gaining his vacuous attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, if you are writing about two characters calling to each other from a distance, you would not use an exclamation mark. Instead, I used the adverb &lt;em&gt;vehemently&lt;/em&gt; to intensify the fact that they are far away, and Alice is most likely frustrated that she can't be heard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would save exclamation marks for situations of extreme importance or magnification, requiring extra emotional power:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kill me. I swear, kill me before I rip the goddamn gun out of your hand and do it myself!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was a bit of an exaggerated example, but it gets the point across rather well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In you're rewrite, I think you need to put the description of the dialogue before the dialogue, so the reader will preemptively know how it sounds in their head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Frank summoned the courage to shout as loud as he could. &quot;Alice,&quot; he shouted, &lt;strong&gt;his voice ricocheting off the corridor walls&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By saying Frank is shouting before the dialogue begins, we know that this will be loud. I think that to further emphasis the loudness, we could try using effects like a echo off the walls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey?&quot; he began, his voice searching for her. &quot;Alice, can you hear me?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because you used &lt;em&gt;hey&lt;/em&gt;, I believe there needs to be a question mark. The use of &lt;em&gt;hey&lt;/em&gt; or a similar word, like &lt;em&gt;eh&lt;/em&gt; creates a sense of confusion in the piece. Because Frank is confused as to why he she can't hear him, his voice &lt;em&gt;searches for her&lt;/em&gt;. This could be a great way to begin some tension too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe the voice before the dialogue if you want him to shout. Possibly add further clarification by describing how the voice travels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use question words like &lt;em&gt;hey&lt;/em&gt; to create tension.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use 'volume' words in general like: &lt;em&gt;crescendo&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;dissonance&lt;/em&gt;. In fact, if you wanted to say somewhere was already loud and your character was trying to speak over it, without exclamation marks you could say: &lt;em&gt;his voice joined the overwhelming dissonance&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, this is only my advice on how to achieve these effects. There are no other answers on this post, so use what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this edit helped you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="15545" LastEditDate="2016-08-21T13:33:33.500" LastActivityDate="2016-08-21T13:33:33.500" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24242" CreationDate="2016-08-20T22:14:36.470" Score="2" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a scene where two identical people talking to each other. There is no difference in terms of their physical appearance. The only difference is that one is standing while the other one is leaning against a tree. What is the best way to refer to them in speech tags and narration? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want them to refer to each other by names in the first lines of dialogue as it feels unnatural. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two man stood next to a lake. &lt;strong&gt;One&lt;/strong&gt; looked at the horizon while &lt;strong&gt;the other one&lt;/strong&gt; leaned against a tree.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;I know,&quot; &lt;strong&gt;said one of them&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Do you?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Sure, I saw it myself&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;You did not!&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;The one that was leaning against the tree&lt;/strong&gt; picked up the stone from the ground. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example it is not clear who started talking first. Would next example be better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two man stood next to a lake. &lt;strong&gt;First one&lt;/strong&gt; looked at the horizon while &lt;strong&gt;the second one&lt;/strong&gt; leaned against a tree.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;I know,&quot; &lt;strong&gt;first one said&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Do you?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Sure, I saw it myself&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;You did not!&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;The second one&lt;/strong&gt; picked up the stone from the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there are better way to write this?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18993" LastActivityDate="2016-08-21T01:33:48.843" Title="Speech tags for nameless characters" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24239" CreationDate="2016-08-20T23:09:00.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try to use the few differences there exist. Make them interact with the tree, or look around, or... whatever makes sense for your men. E.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two man stood next to a lake.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;I know&quot;, one said, while scanning the horizon.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Do you&quot;?, replied the other man, leaned against a tree.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Sure, I saw it myself&quot;, his eyes following the fast flight of a kingfisher in the distance.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;You did not!&quot;, he took a step away from the tree and picked up the stone from the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4075" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T23:09:00.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17155" CreationDate="2016-08-21T00:44:41.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you see both white space and three asterisks, it should always be the case that the asterisks are just being used at a page break, where the reader might not notice the vertical white space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21146" LastActivityDate="2016-08-21T00:44:41.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24239" CreationDate="2016-08-21T01:33:48.843" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have two characters that are pretty much completely identical at this point in your narrative, and you are purposely withholding their names from the audience. In such a situation, I would suggest going with your second route and using &quot;first man&quot; and &quot;second man&quot; as your speech tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two men stood next to a lake. The first one looked at the horizon while the second one leaned against a tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I know,&quot; the first man said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Do you?&quot; replied the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sure, I saw it myself.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You did not!&quot; As he said this, the second man picked up a stone from the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the men are identical, and the audience doesn't know who they are, you should be very careful to distinguish who's saying what. Unless the men have noticeably different speech patterns, it will be hard to tell otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also like to bring up a point of consideration. Is there any reason why you're purposely being vague with the identity of these characters? You say that you &quot;don't want them to refer to each other by names in the first lines of dialogue as it feels unnatural.&quot; In my experience, it may be awkward as a writer to throw in character names into your narrative without a full introduction, but as a reader, I see no issue with it. In fact, pretty much every book I pick up will mention the main character's name within the first lines of dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if it's important that the reader does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; know the identity of these two men, go for the &quot;first man,&quot; &quot;second man&quot; route. Otherwise, I would suggest just naming them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastActivityDate="2016-08-21T01:33:48.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24237" CreationDate="2016-08-21T13:05:05.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your book is going to be published by a traditional publishing house, they'll format it however they like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book is going to be self-published, you can format it however &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; like. Go ahead and break convention for one chapter if you need to. I promise you won't be punished for it. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-08-21T13:05:05.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24244" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-21T16:17:14.183" Score="2" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an older source that has no pagination. My question concerns the correct mode of multiple parenthetical in-text reference to the source according to MLA style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the works cited section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smith, Alexander. &quot;The Problems of Writing.&quot; New Inquiry (1940): n. pag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In text (version 1):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smith argues that writing is &quot;a problem of its own&quot; (1940). He goes on to refer to the &quot;complicated process of writing a text.&quot; He explains it in ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: How do I back up the second, third, etc. reference to the unpaginated source in my own text? Is the text above right or do I need to have the year in brackets every time I quote from the text? Something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;version 2:&#xA;Smith argues that writing is &quot;a problem of its own&quot; (1940). He goes on to refer to the &quot;complicated process of writing a text&quot; (1940). He explains...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or do I reference &quot;n.pag.&quot; in the text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;version 3:&#xA;Smith argues that writing is &quot;a problem of its own&quot; (1940 n. pag.). He goes on to refer to the &quot;complicated process of writing a text&quot; (n. pag.). He explains...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you very much!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Sarah K" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T21:00:30.300" Title="MLA multiple parenthetical citation essay without page numbers" Tags="|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23913" CreationDate="2016-08-22T02:36:35.797" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There were various methods for estimating words from the number of pages in a typed manuscript, since typewriters don't count words, but tend to have very consistent fonts and spacing. All modern word processors produce accurate word counts so you don't need an estimation method. If you want number of words, use the count provided by the word processor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are quoting some form or payment on a per-page basis, however, but actually want to change by the word, then you do need a conversion factor, since pages produced in a word processor today can have widely varying number of words. But again it comes down to the same thing. Take the word count from word processor and divide by your standard word per page factor, such as 250 as in Lauren's example. (In other words, page here is a unit of measure defined at words / 250.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-08-23T11:07:58.973" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T11:07:58.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24236" CreationDate="2016-08-22T11:02:04.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using only one exclamation mark per 100,000 words not a lot – a typical page of a book only has 500 words when completely filled with words in a small font. This will be more like 250 or 300 words on average for most books, so this would be only one exclamation mark per 400 pages, i.e. this means only one exclamation mark for most books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would, however, limit (or even avoid) exclamation marks that are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; in a dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21163" LastActivityDate="2016-08-22T11:02:04.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24236" CreationDate="2016-08-22T11:21:44.470" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the exclamation points thing is probably to do with writing it outside of dialogue. As you said yourself, all of your occurrences of the punctuation appear in dialogue, and from what I can tell they are mostly necessary to convey the tone of the conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, putting exclamation marks outside of the dialogue is an entirely different matter. Extending one of your own examples to portray this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She was already halfway down the hall when she heard a voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Alice!&amp;quot; It was Frank, running toward her from the other end of the hall, waving a piece of paper wildly in the air as he called for her. &amp;quot;Hey! Alice! Can you hear me?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She could tell that he was worried. She realized that he was carrying the document that she'd asked him for!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I feel like the last sentence doesn't look right, it feels quite immature, possibly because the sentence could be very easily restructured to not require the exclamation point. This could likely be what the advice that you heard was referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still feel like you wish to reduce the number of exclamation marks &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; the dialogue, I would say perhaps to use only one per paragraph. Once you have established that someone is exclaiming something through excitement or volume, the reader will likely assume that the rest of the speech within the paragraph will follow the same emphasis, unless explicitly stated otherwise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She was already halfway down the hall when she heard a voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Alice!&amp;quot; It was Frank, running toward her from the other end of the hall, waving a piece of paper wildly in the air as he called for her. &amp;quot;Hey, Alice, can you hear me?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst no other exclamation marks are used at within that speech, the reader will likely realize that he continued to shout for her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, a further way would be to attempt to negate the need for excessive use of them at all. You are, after all, the writer. You can simply change the situation to ensure people are exclaiming less. Changing the example given:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She was already halfway down the hall when she heard a voice behind her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Alice!&amp;quot; She turned to see Frank, running toward her from the other end of the hall, waving a piece of paper wildly in the air as he called for her, concern etched onto his face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alice stopped walking and allowed him to catch up to her. By the time he reached her he was panting heavily. Breathlessly, he managed to say, &amp;quot;Hey, I have that document that you asked for&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-08-22T11:21:44.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24254" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24258" CreationDate="2016-08-18T16:17:14.910" Score="6" ViewCount="2651" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I'm writing the following clerihew resume where I'm constrained to 40 characters per line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;+----------------------------------------+&#xA;|Peter Turner                            |&#xA;|code burner                             |&#xA;|PHP, perl, python, object pascal, css,  |&#xA;|javascript, html, sql, yml, java, c++,  |&#xA;|c, tex, actionscript, bash and tsch     |&#xA;|are his niche                           | &#xA;+----------------------------------------+&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;what punctuation can I use to convey to the audience (that hip HR person) that the 3rd line is one line and not two?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clerihews by design are four line couplets with no perceptible meter, so it's important that the 3rd line be perceived as one line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is just an example, I really just want to know what the proper punctuation to use to convey to reader that the reason we haven't rhymed yet is because the line is not done yet.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, if there is no proper punctuation, then I'll just make one up and move along, not asking for advice, just if there's an esoteric sense of the solidus that can come in handy here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like how:&#xA;&lt;code&gt;&#xA;echo blah\&#xA;to be continued....&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;tells a shell not to echo &quot;blah&quot;, but &quot;blahto be continued...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="715" OwnerDisplayName="Peter Turner" LastActivityDate="2016-08-22T13:02:19.403" Title="How to show that one long line of poetry is only one line" Tags="|punctuation|poetry|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24254" CreationDate="2016-08-18T17:20:30.807" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This totally isn't a question about the English language, but you could indent the continued parts like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;+----------------------------------------+&#xA;|Peter Turner                            |&#xA;|code burner                             |&#xA;|PHP, perl, python, object pascal, css,  |&#xA;|    javascript, html, sql, yml, java,   |&#xA;|    c++, c, tex, actionscript, bash     |&#xA;|    and tsch                            |&#xA;|are his niche                           | &#xA;+----------------------------------------+&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31126" OwnerDisplayName="Max Williams" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T01:12:53.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24254" CreationDate="2016-08-18T19:42:48.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I venture to say that there is no such thing as a &quot;hip HR&quot; person, but you've asked a question about punctuation, which is a matter of style. In such matters, you are best guided by your chosen manual of style. Naturally, in this case it would be best if you chose the manual the HR person uses, but that would likely be hard to determine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use the &lt;em&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt;, which says this for quoted poetry:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If more than one line is run into the text, the end of a line of&#xA;  poetry is marked by a solidus (/), with equal space on either side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be clear enough for your original work of poesy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="deadrat" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T08:32:44.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24254" CreationDate="2016-08-18T21:41:01.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not really a question about English, but here's a go at it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use a back-slash, &quot;\&quot;, at the end of each line that is continued on the next.  Many parsers I worked with would interpret it as a continuation character and so would a human reader familiar with shell coding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;|PHP, perl, python, object pascal, css,\  |&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;|javascript, html, sql, yml, java, c++,\  |&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;|c, tex, actionscript, bash and tsch      | &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Al Maki" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T21:41:01.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24254" CreationDate="2016-08-20T07:58:48.623" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two forms for long-line poetry line 'turnovers' (sometimes 'dog-leg turnovers'), or 'runovers', are conventional. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One is as indicated by a previous answer: left indentation or double-left indentation of the turnovers. The second of those, double-left indentation, is best used where single indentation is already used as a signifier in surrounding textual material. The double-left indented form for line turnovers is a familiar convention for academics, and so is supported by, for example, &lt;em&gt;The Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt; (14th, 10.23), with reference to block (that is, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; in-line) poetry &lt;em&gt;quotations&lt;/em&gt; in academic works. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;10.23&lt;/strong&gt; In a work containing quotations from poems with lines too long to be centered on the page, such as Walt Whitman's &quot;Song of Myself,&quot; all poetic quotations may be set with a uniform, short indentation&amp;mdash;two or three picas from the left, for example&amp;mdash;with any runover lines being further indented....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For verse typography and design, &lt;em&gt;Chicago Manual&lt;/em&gt; also weighs in, but only to punt the question to the designer and author:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;18.59&lt;/strong&gt; Works such as poems and verse plays differ from prose in that the length of a line is determined by the author, not...by the designer. The designer must try to reproduce the author's intention....  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;18.60&lt;/strong&gt; The size of type and the width of the type page should, wherever possible, accommodate the longest line...if more than a few lines must be run over, the shape of the poem may be lost.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;18.61&lt;/strong&gt; .... Blank verse and poems characterized by a preponderance of long lines are generally not centered but are given a standard indentation. No hard-and-fast rules can be laid down here; each book must be considered with its own characteristics in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The other form is a convention adopted by some authors, such as Auden. In this form, the 'turnover' line is aligned under the right end of the line so extended. A practical discussion of this convention is available at &lt;em&gt;Little Star Journal&lt;/em&gt;, in an article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://littlestarjournal.com/blog/2011/11/all-poets-bulletin-help-us-make-a-poetry-style-guide/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;All Poets Bulletin: Help Us Make a Poetry Style Guide&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. The article quotes Edward Mendelson, &quot;expert in both poetry and typography&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ‘turnovers’ should be set on the right, indented so that the first word of the turnover is somewhat to the left of the end of the last word of the first part of the line.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;This is a line that is going to be turned over&#xA;                                            like this.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the two conventional forms, the best choice is yours, as the author and designer receiving the &lt;em&gt;Chicago Manual&lt;/em&gt; punt. However, the 40-character constraint seems to me to favor double-left indentation, that is, twice the indentation of any paragraph or other significant indentation found in the surrounding text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21203" OwnerDisplayName="JEL" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T17:06:42.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24254" CreationDate="2016-08-20T10:06:07.907" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Max Williams has given the best workaround with that indentation suggestion. However, one other possibility is to rearrange the items in the list, thereby producing more couplets that fit into the 40-character-line limit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;+----------------------------------------+&#xA;|Peter Turner                            |&#xA;|code burner:                            |&#xA;|perl, python, PHP,                      |&#xA;|java, tex, bash, and c,                 |&#xA;|object pascal, actionscript,            |&#xA;|yml and javascript,                     |&#xA;|c++, html,                              |&#xA;|object pascal, yml.                     |&#xA;|All of these are his niche –            |&#xA;|did I forget to mention tsch?           |&#xA;+----------------------------------------+&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course, it's no longer a clerihew, so I've broken convention there, but I still couldn't help but wonder if those might fit into some more conventional prosodic form.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3298" OwnerDisplayName="J.R." LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T10:06:07.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24260" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-22T14:23:32.317" Score="3" ViewCount="1587" Body="&lt;p&gt;I' am used to write short stories, to quickly set a plot and develop the story, but this time I have to do it in less than &lt;strong&gt;1000 words&lt;/strong&gt;, which is (IMO) really short !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, what approach should I take in my writing ? do I have to set a plot here, with a final twist (but is it even possible in so few words) or does it have to be a &lt;em&gt;slice of life&lt;/em&gt; kind of story ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's any advices or examples you know It would be helpful for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T09:04:03.680" Title="Writing a short story of less than 1000 words" Tags="|plot|short-story|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24262" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24264" CreationDate="2016-08-22T14:31:35.253" Score="34" ViewCount="5433" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing some fantasy. Now, inevitably because its a big piece of fantasy, its all very involved with the world, culture, story and general bits. Personally, I'm really enjoying writing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that in a few fantasy novels I have read, I just haven't been able to remember who everyone/what everything was. For example, Thomas Covenant, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Malice represent this perfectly. There are so many materials and things, strange concepts that sometimes I'm completely unable to keep track of them. For example, in The Hobbit I didn't know which dwarf was talking half of the time...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, in my novel there are many different materials and characters, and the world is really big. How much of this can I expect the reader to remember without having to flick to the glossary or map every two minutes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T11:04:40.120" Title="How much can a reader remember?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|fantasy|structure|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24262" CreationDate="2016-08-22T14:52:38.900" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately this is a question of psychology or perhaps neurology. How does human memory work? But I think it is reasonable to suggest is that what people remember is a novel is story and the things that matter to the story. If that is true, people will remember things that are connected to the story, and the more strongly they are connected to the story, the more strongly they will remember them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I think what that means is that if you introduced something 200 pages back as an aside or a piece of scene setting but did not connect it strongly to the story arc, then the chances of the reader remembering it when it becomes plot-relevant 200 page later are close to zero. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you introduced it 200 pages back in a way that was integral and important to the story, there is a good chance that when it becomes important again, readers will remember it. That is, of course, supposing you do actually have a strong story arc connecting the two incidents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect the reason that you can't remember which dwarf is speaking in the Hobbit is that, other than Thorin, the dwarves are interchangeable. It really does not matter which of them is speaking. Whether that is a design choice on Tolkien's part or a defect in the story is another matter. But I can't think of any way in which it matters if you can tell Bifur from Bofur from Bombur. The names rather suggest that it is not supposed to matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-08-22T14:58:05.557" LastActivityDate="2016-08-22T14:58:05.557" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24262" CreationDate="2016-08-22T15:08:23.230" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Mark's excellent advice, I would suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Start slowly.&lt;/strong&gt; In &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones,&lt;/em&gt; we start with just the Starks, and Martin adds on characters a few at a time and lets us live with them for a chapter before bouncing back to someone we already know. Granted that by book 4 you may need to refer back to the index, but that's over thousands of pages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;Either build your world or introduce characters, but not both at once.&lt;/strong&gt; In David and Leigh Eddings's Belgariad and Malloreon pentologies, we start with one boy who has one aunt and one adult friend, the aunt's father shows up, and then the band collects more members one by one as they leave the small farm and go out into the wider world. Each person is distinctive and has a part to play, and the Eddingses either introduce a new setting/city or a new character, but not both at the same time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;strong&gt;Remind the reader occasionally.&lt;/strong&gt; If you want us to remember that Sadi keeps a poisonous snake as a pet, make the snake's entrance memorable, and then remind us every 40 pages or so that the snake is around. Have Sadi feed her, talk about her, let her out of her bottle to crawl around. Then in the big showdown 200 pages later, it won't be a surprise when the snake bites the bad guy, because we've been reminded that the snake exists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2018-07-11T09:49:12.363" LastActivityDate="2018-07-11T09:49:12.363" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24260" CreationDate="2016-08-22T15:18:59.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the best way to learn how to write something is to read a lot of it. Look for flash fiction. Look also for microfiction, short short stories, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write 100-word stories. They're fun. Typically I focus on a particular moment in time and do a lot of exposition about its causes and its effects. Then comes revision, where I trim it down, deleting adjectives, choosing verbs and nouns more precisely. I rarely waste words on dialog or descriptions unless they contribute directly to the moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-08-22T15:18:59.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6975" CreationDate="2016-08-22T18:27:50.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of the many cases in which advice about writing is misstated. Long sentences are not bad. Convoluted sentences are bad. A sentence can be long without being convoluted. A sentence can be quite short and still be convoluted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convoluted sentence do tend to be long.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A greater percentage of long sentences are convoluted than short sentences.      &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The process of fixing a convoluted sentence will often result in multiple short sentences being created. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Length is easier to quantify than how convoluted a sentence is. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of which makes it easier to say, &quot;avoid long sentences&quot; than &quot;avoid convoluted sentences&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People often prefer hearing this advice as well because it may be difficult to tell if your sentence is convoluted, but it is easy to tell if it is long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, the advice is wrong. Being convoluted is the sin, not being long. If your thought is convoluted, you need to untangle the thought. Merely introducing more periods into the mix just turns a convoluted sentence into a convoluted paragraph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, some thoughts are better and more elegantly expressed with a single long sentence than by many small ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-22T18:27:50.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24262" CreationDate="2016-08-22T20:30:27.030" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use epithets&lt;/strong&gt; like the stories in the pre-literate oral traditions. by using a name or phrase that reminds you of a character's defining characteristic, it becomes much easier to remember them. The more unique or outlandish the characteristic, the easier it will be to remember the character.  So, for your main characters, you can just use a simple common name like &quot;Joe&quot;. But for some minor character who only shows up every 200 pages, call him something memorable and graphic like &quot;Barfie the pirate&quot; every time he is mentioned. You would be surprised how natural that writing style can feel after a few chapters. Look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epithets_in_Homer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;epithets of Homer&lt;/a&gt; for inspiration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21173" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T11:04:40.120" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T11:04:40.120" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24262" CreationDate="2016-08-22T21:36:29.637" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use knowledge about how people remember things to your advantage.&lt;/strong&gt; There's a number of websites, books, etc. out there talking about how people remember and providing tips and tricks for memorizing. As a writer, you can incorporate lessons from these &lt;em&gt;aides memoire&lt;/em&gt; into your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Repetition&lt;/strong&gt; People remember things better when they're encountered multiple times. Readers will be familiar with your main characters' names because they'll happen on practically every page. That minor government official mentioned once, 200 pages back? Probably not. The same minor government official, but who now has been popping up repeatedly in several chapters? Much better chance of being recognized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Method of loci&lt;/strong&gt; People's memories are highly contextual. You might recognize a barista on sight when at your local coffee shop, but completely fail to recognize them when you're at the DMV. The coffee shop environment primes you to remember things related to the coffee shop. Likewise in writing, it's easier to remember a priest if they're re-introduced in the context of a church, rather than in a bakery. As a writer, be aware of the contexts your characters appear in, and be more conscientious about re-introducing characters who re-occur outside of their standard context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General vs. specific&lt;/strong&gt; It's much easier to remember the general outline of things, rather than specific details. So people might remember that someone is a Lannister, but forget exactly how they're related to Tyrion. When you're writing things that may be forgotten, don't overload the reader with &quot;useless&quot; details, and make sure that the &quot;general outline&quot; of the character you present is the salient feature which will become important later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to this, remember that the main interface you'll present to readers is the &lt;em&gt;name&lt;/em&gt; of the item. All too often writers will use names that are very similar to each other (e.g. Ori/Dori/Nori, Bifur/Bofur/Bombur). If all readers remember is the general outline of the name, the exact details (i?/o?) may be glossed over. This gets worse for polysyllabic names. Only the most astute reader will remember - or possibly even notice - the distinction between &lt;em&gt;Amaphidalia&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Amothifalia&lt;/em&gt;. Using unique and distinguishable names helps to keep people from confusing things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, sometimes similarity of names is helpful. For example, if you're attempting to invoke the trope of &quot;practically indistinguishable siblings&quot; (e.g. Fili/Kili), or if the relationship between objects is the most important trait (e.g. the &lt;em&gt;Amaphae&lt;/em&gt; people are ruled by the &lt;em&gt;Amaphidalia&lt;/em&gt; from the capital city of &lt;em&gt;Amaphidon&lt;/em&gt;), using similar names may be warranted. If using related names to show a relationship, be sure to introduce them in close proximity to each other, so readers are clear on the relationship and are alert to the distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Connections&lt;/strong&gt; One very important point about memory is that memory is less about facts and more about the connections between facts. The richer you can make the interaction of your characters with the &quot;interesting&quot; parts of your world (while simultaneously avoiding unnecessary details), the better your readers will remember them. That named-but-faceless guard isn't going to stand out, but one with interactions and associations with other important characters or important places/events will. (Note that it's the &lt;em&gt;connections&lt;/em&gt; that are important. Extra detail that's unique to the character and doesn't connect them with characters/places/events that the reader is already interested in will be promptly ignored.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a sampling of how you can parlay memorization advice into advice for helping your readers remember your characters and settings. There's likely more tricks you could use, so I'd recommend reading up on memorization aides, and thinking about how they might be applied in structuring your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21172" LastActivityDate="2016-08-22T21:36:29.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-22T23:38:50.037" Score="0" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read a novel with a section that went something like this: &quot;I have often wished that I had born into a different family; that I had never studied art at college; that my voice weren't so high-pitched; and that I hadn't got married to the first woman I dated.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't often seen that type of structure in novels, but I wondered if it was common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to use incomplete sentences after semi-colons when you are writing partial clauses that are continuations of a previous clause that you don't want to repeat? Basically the clauses are a kind of list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I feel grateful that, for whatever reason, being near Sean makes me forget about my self-absorbed misery for a brief second; makes me forget the images of John and Riley I saw; forget the messages I found on John's phone; forget about the divorce that is looming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or how about something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She’s a woman incapable of having a single solitary thought for another human being; a woman so brazen that I’ve seen her flirt with men right in front of their wives; the type of woman for whom advancement is the only thing that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15309" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-08-23T10:54:58.783" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T10:58:30.990" Title="Partial clauses after semi-colons" Tags="|style|punctuation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24271" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-23T00:54:15.843" Score="0" ViewCount="3696" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if there are any copyright concerns when writing about elves, dwarfs, wizards, clerics and the like?  How do I write high fantasy without stepping on the toes of Tolkien or Forgotten Realms?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I am noticing that many people include these similar elements, from Discworld to Eragon, so I am assuming the general subject matter, being based in myths and legends, is open game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21179" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-08-25T06:44:03.577" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T06:44:03.577" Title="Are there copyright concerns writing about fantasy elements other authors have used?" Tags="|copyright|fantasy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24272" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-23T01:14:17.053" Score="1" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a first person novel, and the main character has just overcome some emotional and mental barriers in order to unlock his telekinetic potential, under the training of his mentor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Do it, Aiyzaya. I believe in you!”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;“Let it motivate me.”&lt;/em&gt; I whispered, channeling my energy towards everything around me. All this pain, all this suffering, all my stress will be worth greatness. &lt;em&gt;“Come on, Aiyzaya.”&lt;/em&gt; I whispered.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;&quot;Lift the block, Aiyzaya!”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;And suddenly, every block in the chamber rose into the air, hovering high over our heads.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I dunno if it's me looking at things too deeply, but I just don't feel the climax. This is obviously my first time writing a novel. The idea in my head is great.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Prior to this Aiyzaya's come to terms with the huge sacrifices he's had to make, and the dear ones he's lost, and now after having confronted those repressed feelings, he's going to try one last time to lift a human sized, marble block with his telekinetic abilities. This moment is pretty key, and it marks his triumph over his repressed emotions. It just feels really sh*t, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S I'm aware it's spelled Isaiah lol. Also feel free to correct me on any grammatical/structural errors in terms of this being a novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21178" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-09-18T14:07:00.677" LastActivityDate="2016-09-18T14:07:00.677" Title="How do I portray a particular moment as climactic?" Tags="|fiction|description|pacing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24271" CreationDate="2016-08-23T01:21:09.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Insert Standard &quot;I Am Not A Lawyer&quot; Disclaimer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing about ideas or mythical races is, generally speaking, quite alright. They are not copy-right/trademarked because they are ideas/in common usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not directly related to writing, but it is in a similar creative space - Games Workshop have quite a history and reputation for retaining a rather rabid legal department who will bully and harass anything they see as encroaching on their &quot;Intellectual Property&quot; on 'brands' that they own. The most infamous of these were their Space Marine suits. They would send anyone and everyone breaches if they were using the words &quot;Space Marine&quot; in any commercial sense (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130206/06521321890/games-workshop-proves-it-would-rather-bully-authors-than-be-culture-participant.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130206/06521321890/games-workshop-proves-it-would-rather-bully-authors-than-be-culture-participant.shtml&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this backfired on them when a court ruled that they couldn't enforce trademark on terms or ideas such as Space Marine, High Elves etc and they have been busy rebranding their products ever since (i.e. Space Marines have now become Adeptus Astartes - which they always where, mind you, but were commonly referred to as Space Marines. The Imperial Guard became the Astra Militarum. High Elves became Asur and then Aelfs, Orcs becam Orruks etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR version:&#xA;Using concepts such as elves, mages, clerics and adventurers etc isn't impeding on any IP. If your cleric was a Cleric of Lathander, your elves were Eladrin  and the capital city was Ankh-Morpork etc IS directly impeding IP and you will be liable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T01:21:09.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24271" CreationDate="2016-08-23T02:20:50.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try to be original!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, assuming that you are trying to write something other than mediocre derivative works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is legal, but that doesn’t mean you have to use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although JK Rowling showed us that you could write brilliant novels re-using worn out concepts and ideas, many readers are sick and tired of the same formulaic re-hashed elves, dwarves…. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by reading more extensively about the genre. Asking “is it legal?” shows that you haven’t read the myriad of fantasy books containing those elements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you might find out that your brilliant and original ideas about “&lt;em&gt;High Fantasy, along with some sci-fi, and parody&lt;/em&gt;” have been exhaustingly written about by a few dozen writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T02:20:50.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24272" CreationDate="2016-08-23T02:39:05.333" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what you have described, it seems pretty clear why this does not feel like a climax. Prior to this, the hero has come to terms with the sacrifices he as made and the people he has lost. But in story terms, that is the climax. All that is left is a technical accomplishment of floating blocks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a technical accomplishment is not a story climax. The climax is the moment of greatest moral danger, from which proceeds either triumph or tragedy. Moral danger is often, though by no means always, created by physical danger. Does Spiderman save Mary Jane or the busload of schoolkids? The heart of that is not the physics problem but the moral dilemma. Why is Superman turning back time to save Lois Lane such an unsatisfactory ending? Because it cheats on the moment of greatest moral danger. Given Sophie's choice, he cheats and saves both kids, rendering his moral choice meaningless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at this point in your story, the protagonist is long past his point of greatest moral danger. He has triumphed over his sense of loss. That he now gets the power of levitation is simply a reward for this moral triumph. It is not the climax, but the denouement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T02:39:05.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7540" CreationDate="2016-08-23T02:48:58.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For French words, at least, it is mostly a pretentious way to show the author is cultured, thought funnily enough their &quot;French&quot; is often incorrect, though it will pass mustard for most readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other languages, there are words or concepts that are not easily translated like the German &lt;em&gt;gestalt&lt;/em&gt;, the Czech &lt;em&gt;litost&lt;/em&gt;, or the Japanese &lt;em&gt;bakku-shan&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, as suggested, it is also sometimes used to give it a foreign flavor and greater realism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that it targets speakers of that second language only if the book is mostly culturally dependent and the readership is assumed to be bilingual. For example a book using Spanish words whose MC is a Mexican descended teenager having a Quinciniera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2016-08-23T03:04:25.713" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T03:04:25.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7540" CreationDate="2016-08-23T03:20:02.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It used to be common practice in scholarly works and in popular works aimed at educated audiences to quote works in the the language they were written in, at least for major classical and modern European languages. This is not a matter of the author using &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; native language, however, but of using the original language of the quotation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is less common practice today, presumably because Latin, Greek, French, German etc. are far less often taught in schools and far less often required for bachelor's or even advanced degrees. However, examples of it may still exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T03:20:02.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6975" CreationDate="2016-08-23T04:03:38.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a native speaker and I have trouble with long sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A long sentence is tiring to the eye and requires more concentration. Long is bad; you need to come up for air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, a longer sentence may be needed to break the pattern of medium and short sentences, but even then a long sentence should not be longer than &lt;a href=&quot;https://jgwritingtips.wordpress.com/2010/02/17/how-long-should-a-sentence-be/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;about 50 words&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some academic writers using long sentences are tolerable because it is the subject matter and not the style that is important, but for creative writing, to me, it is a definite no-no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, some authors get away with them, so it may be in part subjective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that the “and &amp;amp; and” model works for some over-excited children, in some circumstances, but I think that most children will tend to speak in short bursts of short sentences and fragments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some related Q in Writer's SE like &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/19534/seeking-a-humorous-example-of-long-winded-paragraph-one-sentence-long/19536#19536&quot;&gt;seeking a humorous example of long winded paragraph one sentence long&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/14329/whats-the-difference-between-purple-prose-and-vividly-descriptive-writing/14339#14339&quot;&gt;What's the difference between purple prose and vividly descriptive writing?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2019-02-27T22:39:57.697" LastActivityDate="2019-02-27T22:39:57.697" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24260" CreationDate="2016-08-23T09:04:03.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a story, regardless of length, then it has to have a plot and a beginning, a middle, and an end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character development and descriptions are less important here but should be enough to set the scene and give your reader a mental image of what they're &quot;seeing&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, 1000 words isn't that small a word count.  I myself have seen stories starting from just 2 sentences (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=2+sentence+horror+stories&amp;amp;oq=2+sentence+horror+stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=2+sentence+horror+stories&amp;amp;oq=2+sentence+horror+stories&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself write a lot of 300 word flash fiction for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.writing.com&lt;/a&gt; which is always a challenge and really teaches you to chop and edit everything unnecessary to get a very tight but coherent story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T09:04:03.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24270" CreationDate="2016-08-23T10:58:30.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is much easier to accept if it's a first-person narrative, because the book is written in your character's voice. Speech/monologue/dialogue is much more forgiving than prose narration. Since these snippets are clearly your narrator &quot;speaking&quot; to the reader, you have a lot of poetic license to be flexible with grammar. It sounds fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anything, I'd use commas rather than semi-colons in &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt; particular snippets because the individual clauses don't have commas themselves. You can get away with a string of fragments separated by commas here. If any clause had commas in it, then the semi-colons would be useful in separating them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T10:58:30.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24284" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24294" CreationDate="2016-08-23T11:35:14.797" Score="1" ViewCount="1138" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I'm completely new to this &lt;em&gt;forum&lt;/em&gt; (or whatever it's called) so don't hesitate to point out anything done wrong. Also, please excuse the bad English, it's not my mother tongue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm &lt;em&gt;planning&lt;/em&gt; (yeah, it's kinda blurry) on writing a story with someone and we'd both have a character to put in the story and both would be some sort of main character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my problem : What I want to explore for my protagonist would be &lt;strong&gt;questionable morals&lt;/strong&gt;. By that, I mean someone not minding killing (though not some kind of psychopath) or abandoning others if he can benefit from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I wanted my protagonist to kill a few innocent people (leading to a major conflict happening later) without immediately being too much troubled about it. Does this sound too much ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, this idea comes from me being fed up with 'too kind' or 'morally irreproachable' protagonists (sparing enemies, giving big inspirational speeches, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think this is a viable concept ? Is it compatible with a female protagonist ?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Should the other &lt;em&gt;main character&lt;/em&gt; compensate for this trait ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for your answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21187" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T21:00:02.710" Title="Can a protagonist with questionable morals be appreciated?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24284" CreationDate="2016-08-23T12:00:46.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course it can be done.  Jason Bourne is a great example of a hero who will do whatever it takes to survive himself and complete his mission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Star Trek films the phrase &quot;the needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few, or the one&quot; has been used on a few occasions.  While it has been used in this case as a person sacrificing themselves for the good of the hundreds on board ship, it could easily be reversed to killing a few people to save lots more later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sex of your protagonist is irrelevant here.  The sidekick (or whatever they are) could perhaps be a moral compass but your hero has to feel justified in their actions or they shouldn't be doing it and nothing the sidekick should say or do should get in the way of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T12:00:46.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24336" CreationDate="2016-08-23T12:44:49.957" Score="2" ViewCount="2725" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or more helpfully, how do I gauge for myself in a realistic setting, how many hours an evening it will take to write 1,666 words (assusming all planning is done and no editing is done during NaNoWriMo, as unrealistic as that may be). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect this will be different between people, so I'd like a way to 'figure this out'. Like '&lt;em&gt;calculate your WPM then divide by ten&lt;/em&gt;' or '&lt;em&gt;Set an hour aside an hour see how much you can write&lt;/em&gt;'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3986" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T02:08:40.600" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T02:08:40.600" Title="How many hours a day will it take to complete NaNoWriMo?" Tags="|planning|time-management|nanowrimo|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24286" CreationDate="2016-08-23T13:09:28.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So NaNoWriMo requires 50,000 words over the course of 30 days or 1,666.67 words written per day (total words / total days).  Rounding up this means you need to write 1,667 words a day, and you will have 50,010 words at the end of November 30.  Let's say you write 500 words an hour, this is an arbitrary number, I've never timed my writing.  You would need to spend 3.34 hours per day writing (total words needed per day / words per hour).  So you gave yourself the first part of the answer.  Set up a timer for 60 minutes and start with a blank document.  After the 60 minutes are done, you will have what you need to plug into the formulas above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21192" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T13:09:28.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24288" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24291" CreationDate="2016-08-23T13:23:35.703" Score="0" ViewCount="564" Body="&lt;p&gt;The average present-day human whisked away to a fantasy and/or scifi world is a common &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrappedInAnotherWorld&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;trope&lt;/a&gt;. It can be used &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia?from=Main.TheChroniclesOfNarnia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;well&lt;/a&gt;, or end up in &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/LightNovel/SwordArtOnline?from=Main.SwordArtOnline&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;boring&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Gate?from=Main.Gate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stories&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like this trope is a bit overdone, but still want to use it.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part that worries me the most is the integration of the Muggle character into the setting. I'm afraid it will end up being perceived as a lazy way to add a cabbagehead or as some sort of &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SummonEverymanHero&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wish-fulfillment&lt;/a&gt; story, or even break the suspension of disbelief. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it still possible to play this trope straight?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What does it takes to integrate an average Joe in a fantasy setting well?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What basic criteria should the Muggle character (personnality/motivation/etc.) meet to not be a walking cliché?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastEditorUserId="13689" LastEditDate="2016-08-23T17:54:49.397" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T16:28:13.140" Title="Adding a character from present-day Earth to a fantasy/scifi setting" Tags="|character-development|fantasy|setting|cliches|tropes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23684" CreationDate="2016-08-23T14:06:19.843" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use this tool to refer in APA style (and in any other style): citethisforme.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Burns, R. &amp;amp; Bohne, P. (1974). &lt;em&gt;To a mouse, a louse and a mountain daisy&lt;/em&gt;. Rosemead, Calif.: Bookhaven Press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21190" LastEditorUserId="21190" LastEditDate="2016-08-23T14:25:37.620" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T14:25:37.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24288" CreationDate="2016-08-23T14:18:16.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it still possible to play this trope straight?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Yes.  Setting doesn't drive a story.  Characters do this.  They have to be interesting, rounded and with a purpose.  In this type of story the purpose is usually to get home but not always.  As long as the characters are worth reading then using this trope is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to avoid making this kind of story boring or stereotypical?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Come up with a twist.  Do something different with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What basic criteria - meet to be interesting?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;There's no answer for this one as an interesting character is a matter of personal opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T14:18:16.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24288" CreationDate="2016-08-23T14:52:31.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This trope has been used lots, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there are no new ways to approach it. There are thousands of iterations of the same stories, but they're each different and engaging because they tell their own tales in their own way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to make your story feel fresh, you just have to do something different with it, whether that is done with plot, setting, magic, characters, or something else. &lt;a href=&quot;https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Worldbuilding.SE&lt;/a&gt; is a great place to start off with trying to come up with new ideas and angles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could start off with the character accidentally being summoned into another world that was trying to conjure a powerful demon, and got the spell mixed up and summoned a random person instead. You can have someone introduce technology into a fantasy world by accident, setting off a battle between technology and magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for integrating the character, you can approach that in any way you want as well. Perhaps they are transported to a world where the people look like humans, but the MC is actually much stronger than most people in that world, despite being average in our world, giving them a physiological advantage over others whilst they learn about how to survive in a fantasy world they are not yet accustomed to. Incorporate their unfamiliarity with the new world into their character growth, as they develop their understanding of this new world, so do they develop as a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for something necessary for the character, I would say they would definitely need to have an opinion on returning to their own world. Whether they love the new place, hate it, or have mixed feelings, they would not suddenly forget about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:23.590" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T14:52:31.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24292" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-23T15:10:36.470" Score="2" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to create two versions of a document, one in future tense and one in past tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Document A: &lt;em&gt;The consultant will do X.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Document B: &lt;em&gt;The consultant did X.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past, I've handled this by writing document A, then editing a copy into document B. This creates problems when making major changes; I can try to modify both documents simultaneously, or I can just edit document A and recreate B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of those approaches seem very efficient. Are there any well-established processes or patterns to handle this challenge? Is there a term to describe this scenario? Just knowing the right terminology would help me in researching this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19210" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T20:02:41.310" Title="Managing Document Versions for Multiple Tenses" Tags="|tenses|version-control|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24284" CreationDate="2016-08-23T18:06:22.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This could be done pretty easily, especially if the story goes on to show some moral redemption for the protagonist.  Strictly for research purposes, I suggest you view &lt;em&gt;My Super Ex-Girlfriend&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The redemption doesn't even have to be for the protagonist.  Consider the film &lt;em&gt;Hancock&lt;/em&gt;, in which the redemption is mainly for the character played by Jason Bateman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also lots of other stories where the protagonist is an &lt;em&gt;anti-hero&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3293" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T18:06:22.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24284" CreationDate="2016-08-23T19:15:21.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are talking about is called a &lt;strong&gt;Dark Protagonist&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Short Answer:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. This is possible, if handled correctly. If handled incorrectly, your main character will fail and take the book with her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Long Answer:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick with any protagonist (and indeed any part of writing) is to consider what you want &lt;em&gt;for the reader&lt;/em&gt;. The main thing that you want is for the reader to keep reading, all the way through your book. A protagonist that he doesn't sympathize with (or worse, doesn't like) is going to seriously detract from his experience, and possibly cause him to stop reading. Creating dark protagonists is tricky, especially for new writers. However, it can be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a new writer, my first answer would be to not write a dark protagonist. Seriously consider if your protagonist can be &lt;em&gt;observing&lt;/em&gt; these qualities in someone else. That will really help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, being a writer myself, I know these ideas have a way of sticking with us, so if you want to write a dark protagonist, there is a very particular way you need to go about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one wants to read about a purely evil person. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. If your protagonist is a murderer or even something as simple as a thief, you're in trouble. In order to fix this problem, you have to think about what a reader &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; want to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of characters, readers want to read about heroes. You might be tired of heroes from reading about too many poorly developed protagonists, but hear me out. A reader wants to read about someone that they can look up to. They want to see the qualities that they themselves wish they had. They want to read about people who are willing to do the things or say the words that they would never dare, but would nonetheless applaud. A character that is this way is called &lt;em&gt;larger than life&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how does this apply to dark protagonists? There really isn't much difference. The dark protagonist still needs &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; - some quality or mentality - that makes her heroic in some way. And when it comes to dark protagonists, this usually comes out as a sign that the protagonist is &lt;em&gt;not entirely dark&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Stephen used Jason Bourne as an example, so I'll use him too. Bourne kills ruthlessly, and appears to do so with no emotion whatsoever. How on earth are we behind him? As Stephen pointed out, it's the reasoning behind what he does. We empathize with his mission (which come from a different part of character development), and so sympathize with him and whatever it takes to complete that mission. And we discover that he has emotions, cares for people, and only kills when necessary (think about it: he never kills unless it's a trained assassin that actually poses a threat to him).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good example is Artemis Fowl. I don't know if you've read the Artemis Fowl books, but they are about a young boy who is a criminal mastermind, stealing simply to increase his own wealth. Worse, he keeps his ill mother in the dark about what he's doing, and kidnaps a certain 'gifted' individual simply to learn her powers. How does the novel work? Artemis is not dark. Not entirely, anyway. He's devious and evil, certainly, but he &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; suppress the feelings within him. He cares for his mother. He sympathizes with his prisoner. While he feels a thrill during a robbery, he even feels sorry for that afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you create a workable dark protagonist? Show that she is not entirely dark. Give the reader a hint, a glimmer of hope, something that they can cheer for whenever it wins over the protagonist's darkness. I doubt your story is about how the actions of your protagonist are right. Give her doubts. She can suppress them all she wants; they'll still be there. As long as they are, and as long as they refuse to go away, resurfacing at every opportunity, the reader has hope. Keep that hope alive, and your protagonist will succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck in your writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T19:15:21.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24296" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-23T23:08:48.973" Score="9" ViewCount="18392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm attempting to lay some groundwork for a story that I've been working on in various aspects for a good many years now, and I'm finding myself in need of a visual representation of character relationships. I've done some digging looking for software that would meet this need (I looked through many suggestions in some older threads on the same subject at &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8938/software-for-developing-and-organizing-characters&quot;&gt;Software for developing and organizing characters&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://geek-related.com/2012/01/24/i-need-a-relationship-mapping-tool/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;geek-related.com: I need a relationship mapping tool&lt;/a&gt;) and have so far not met with much success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of what I'm finding is either mind mapping or flow chart type programs, neither of which are going to work for my purposes as I'm trying to incorporate more characters than any of this sort of software could realistically hold without being buried under all the connective lines- I need something with a filter or selective view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best option I have found was the WriteItNow program, but I don't care at all for the rest of the program and the one feature that I'd use isn't polished enough to justify me dropping a load of money on it- especially when my detailed character files are elsewhere already and it wouldn't provide enough of what I'd need to choose it over other programs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'm hoping that since those other threads were made, some other options have come up and ya'll have had better luck finding them than I have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mind mapping software is OK if elements can be isolated to show only things that connect directly to it. Otherwise, this type of software isn't going to work for me. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm looking for something that isn't based online in such a way that it's visible to the public (looking at you, Kumu) - my preference is for something that can be downloaded. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I need to be able to customize the connections in some capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Otherwise, I'm pretty open to ideas. At my wits end here- I've been surfing the internet looking for something useful all day and have pretty much nothing to show for it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21200" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2019-05-25T16:20:53.037" LastActivityDate="2020-06-11T04:33:54.480" Title="Character Relationship Mapping Software" Tags="|characters|character-development|software|tools|relationships|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24262" CreationDate="2016-08-24T08:38:48.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my edition of &lt;em&gt;War and Peace&lt;/em&gt; (not sure if it was added by the author or the editor, so can't tell if it's in all editions) there is an addendum to recap all the main characters (a lot), give an overview of their biography and their relationships. Very useful when you haven't heard of a character for a few chapters and can't remember his full name. It's only a couple of lines for each character but it saves going back in the book to find who is the daughter of X and the lover of Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The maps and addenda in &lt;em&gt;a Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;the Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; (maps only) play a similar role and I often find myself marking the maps and house history pages because I access them all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not terribly aesthetic (except for the maps) but it certainly does the job in an efficient way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is explicitly something you want to avoid apparently, but if the cast of characters starts to become really large or confusing (unfamiliar and/or similar names for instance), I think this is still the best solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21207" LastEditorUserId="21207" LastEditDate="2016-08-24T08:45:20.377" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T08:45:20.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24296" CreationDate="2016-08-24T14:48:14.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/updates/Tinderbox662.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eastgate's Tinderbox&lt;/a&gt;. The initial learning curve is steep but there's very little like it out there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21188" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-08-24T15:12:30.037" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T15:12:30.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23926" CreationDate="2016-08-24T17:54:03.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest looking for professional editors associations in your country. Here in Canada, for example, we have the Editors Association of Canada. Such associations will likely have referral services and perhaps certification programs. Membership in a professional society is usually a plus in evaluating any service provider. (Not sufficient in itself, but a good sign.) Most associations have code of conduct and practice. Some require proof of experience and/or competence to join or to achieve full membership. And there mere fact that the person is willing to pay their dues says that they are somewhat serious about what they are doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T17:54:03.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22126" CreationDate="2016-08-24T19:23:27.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although different fields will assuredly have variation in formats, doctoral candidates are expected to design their own research protocols and report them in a meaningful way. As such, I don't think there's a wrong answer per se as long as it doesn't put off your Primary Investigator or thesis committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've already decided to give Part I and Part II their own title pages; you should consider staying consistent and give the Conclusion it's own title page in the same format. This is assuming your conclusion takes up a few pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think I'd leave out the clever ideas and separate page from the bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T19:23:27.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20861" CreationDate="2016-08-24T20:05:49.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a bit late, but I disagree with Duncan McKenzie's answer. Great platonic relationships come out of wanting to stay friends and not start anything romantic. Obstacles aren't everything, either; unless it's supposed to be a love story (and even sometimes if it is), one good external or internal obstacle is the most you'll ever need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the note of how to write a platonic relationship, there are a ton of really good examples out there. My favourite of all that I've seen would have to be Roy Mustang and Maes Hughes in Fullmetal Alchemist. They definitely share deep love for each other, but it's not romantic at all. They care for each other like brothers and lovers and best friends and so much more that can't be categorized or neatly put in a box. They each understand what the other is thinking and feeling, and they watch out for one another. They bring out the best in each other, and they're the only ones who can really bring out the worst (the angriest they ever get is when someone hurts the other).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, maybe you're not looking for something quite that deep. That's fine. In that case, I'd follow Lauren Ipsum's advice: Look at your own friendships and build off of them. That way will almost invariably give you a fantastically realistic platonic relationship that your readers can usually relate to with ease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This part applies to any level of friendly relationship, and it's mostly just my personal preference. When reading and writing stories with characters who have known each other for some time, I find that some of the best material comes from the banter between them. You know, the little inside jokes, the running gags, the spurious insults, and stuff like that. For example, I recently read a story where the two main characters had a running game where they would scream and rage at each other over the smallest things (&quot;How DARE you borrow my pen, you soulless son of a bitch!&quot;) or dramatically declare their undying love for one another in &quot;raunchy, hyperbolic detail&quot;, with the point of the game being that they had to remain completely serious no matter how far it escalated or how ridiculous it got. This little game turned two otherwise serious characters into children for a paragraph or two and added some much-needed comedy to an otherwise dark and horrific story. Point is, it's the little things like that that really give a relationship dimension and intimacy. Think of the things that you and your friends do that annoy others and/or that others wouldn't understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, having these little things develop over the course of a story is a great way to show the growth of a relationship between some characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, having them interact a lot in general in a realistic and intimate fashion (no, not necessarily in that sense, just in the sense of making sure that the reader can tell that they have a deep connection) can go a long way. Showing that they can usually tell what the other is thinking or feeling is a great way to show that they're &quot;more than friends&quot; in the literal sense of the phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beauty of a strong platonic relationship that becomes romantic is that you don't even have to lose the platonic aspect of it at all. Sure, things are different between them, but they're not any less friends because of it. In fact, it can even deepen their bond, just adding another layer to what makes their relationship so special. The banter continues, their friendship still shines, and the romantic aspect of their love never completely takes over (unless you're turning the book into a romance, of course). Think of Chandler and Monica from &lt;em&gt;Friends&lt;/em&gt;, or Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy from &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice&lt;/em&gt;. Even after admitting their feelings for one another, they don't just suddenly turn all lovey-dovey. They keep cracking jokes and teasing one another, just as couples as well as close friends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helped and wasn't just a wall of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21218" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T20:05:49.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24220" CreationDate="2016-08-24T20:40:26.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will need permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a song, you probably need to credit the music publisher (and possibly the music label) as well as the person who wrote the lyrics. If you are granted permission, they'll tell you the format the credits should take. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fair Use&lt;/strong&gt; (a.k.a. &lt;strong&gt;Fair Dealing&lt;/strong&gt; in the UK) is a defence in law, not a permission or a Get Out Of Jail Free Card. And it only covers the territory for which the law was drawn up. So a Fair Dealing defence could be used in a UK court, but is not valid in a USA or South African or Japanese court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Also be careful of folks telling you that you can use it because it is &lt;strong&gt;Insubstantial Part&lt;/strong&gt; (a.k.a. Insubstantial Use). Songs are short, so even a few lines may be over the limit of what is considered acceptable. Also, very important/crucial bits of a work are excluded from Insubstantial Part - for instance the punchline to a joke, or the bit of a crime novel where the murderer is revealed. So very recognisable song lyrics (say the chorus) may be excluded from being used as Insubstantial Part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if the song lyric is &lt;strong&gt;out of copyright&lt;/strong&gt;, there is no need for permission. In most countries, that is &lt;strong&gt;70 years after the death&lt;/strong&gt; of the lyricist. So you can't use 'Imagine' because John Lennon only died in 1980.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lawyer, but part of my day job involves clearing footage, stills, quotations etc for TV. We have lawyers on the staff to handle the really tricky stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19809" LastEditorUserId="19809" LastEditDate="2016-08-25T06:24:19.003" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T06:24:19.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24284" CreationDate="2016-08-24T21:00:02.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have stated, the actions that your character takes should be put into a context that makes the reader understand, if not approve of, the action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I look at the main character in the TV show Dexter.  He's a serial killer.  But the people he kills are &quot;bad&quot; people.  If your character needs to kill innocent bystanders, there needs to be a reason that the reader can attribute to why.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the character only has to &lt;em&gt;believe&lt;/em&gt; that it is justified.  And believe it in a way that can convince the reader.  It may end up that the characters assumptions are incorrect, but that wasn't known when he took his actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dark protagonist is a difficult line to walk, so be very careful, and get feedback from beta readers as to whether you are portraying your character like you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21219" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T21:00:02.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20861" CreationDate="2016-08-24T21:01:55.190" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It rather sounds like what you are writing is not a platonic relationship but a frustrated romantic relationship. There are, of course, millions of stories of frustrated romantic relationships. And the key to them always is, what is it that is causing the frustration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic shape of story is desire meeting with frustration. This is followed by an attempt to overcome the obstacles that cause the frustration, followed by either success or failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it feels like the characters should just fall into each other's arms, that suggests that it is not clear what is preventing them from doing so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers expect stories to be shaped like stories. They look for the story shape in the work as they read. If there is a guy and a girl, story shape says they must fall in love, be kept apart by various forces, struggle against those forces, and either be joined or separated forever. If it feels like they should be joined now, that is probably because the story does not contain anything that would keep them apart. If so, the solution is to provide a sufficiently cogent obstacle so that the reader recognizes at once that they can't possibly kiss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-08-24T23:21:45.883" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T23:21:45.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24286" CreationDate="2016-08-24T21:02:49.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned, a lot of it depends on yourself and factors about your writing style. The ones I can see are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sustained typing speed: Tests usually give you peak speed but I think most people slow down over time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long can you type: I binge write so I do 18 hour writing sessions every month or so, belt out a lot of words, but then don't do anything else. Others like to do the steady 1.7k/words a day and stop as soon as they are done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uninterrupted time: If you are interrupted every twenty minutes by a small child, it doesn't matter how fast you write, you'll spend more time coming up to speed to get to the average time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What else you are doing: If you are writing at the end of a sixteen hour day, you'll probably be less productive if you have only two college classes in the afternoon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning: There is planning and planning. If you have a vague idea of what you are doing, you'll spend more time working on plot. If you have everything including rough dialog, you'll go a lot faster.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compartmentalization: We all have an inner critic. How easily you can shove them in a box and ignore them will impact your creation speed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Environment: If you have a good writing environment, then you'll relax more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Online, Phone, Family, and TV: When you are just belting out words, it is good if you aren't distracted by Facebook, Stack Overflow, or anywhere else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That many factors makes it hard to come up with a formula, but it should give you an idea. As I said, for me, I binge write and I have a very tolerant spouse, but I have a heavy workload from my day job which doesn't give me a lot of time. The last time I did NaNoWriMo, I did it in 17 days but I also didn't have to visit family that year for Thanksgiving and used the few days she was visiting family to frantically write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21220" LastEditorUserId="21220" LastEditDate="2016-08-26T13:25:53.363" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T13:25:53.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24286" CreationDate="2016-08-24T23:25:43.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I'm thrilled for you that you are considering doing NaNo!  I'm the Municipal Liason for my local region and have done NaNo every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to shoot for 2000 words a day.  This lets me have &quot;off&quot; days (whether coming up short or brain freeze or whatever).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first piece of advice:  Don't fall behind.  It's way harder to catch up than it is to start out ahead and maybe slip back toward your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second:  I tell all the local WriMo's that the goal is getting words on the paper.  It's a quickly written first draft, and will NOT be good.  Strive for mediocrity.  December and January is when you can work on fixing things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get in touch with your local Municipal Liason.  We try to schedule &quot;write-ins&quot; where you go spend several hours as a group focusing on getting words down.  It's amazing how much easier it gets when you have the support right there with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning:  There are two different types of writers (roughly):  Plotters and Pantsers (otherwise known as discovery writers).  You need to figure out which you are.  Plotters will have outlines and scene lists and a plan of what is going to happen before they start.  That's me, and that's what I do in October.  You can do all the planning you want ahead of time and it's not cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a discovery writer, then you will probably have a character in mind and plop them into a situation and see what happens.  For those types, I encourage the writers to get to know the characters as much as possible.  Character sheets, questionaires, those sorts of things.  I find it helpful to do character interviews.  That's where I sit in front if the keyboard, ask a question as me, then write an answer as the character.  Conduct it like any other interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the proper prep work, I spend two hours a day (give or take) and hit my 2000 words every day.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be &quot;writing buddies&quot; on the NaNo site, look me up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org/participants/jandrewjansen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nanowrimo.org/participants/jandrewjansen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you go through with your story and best of luck!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21219" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T23:25:43.307" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24296" CreationDate="2016-08-25T00:08:50.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you looked at Scapple?  It's by the same people who make Scrivener.  Similar to mind mapping, but you aren't limited to a single structure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;30 day free trial is nice, and the price is pretty low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been trying it and it seems useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21219" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T00:08:50.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24075" CreationDate="2016-08-25T00:30:52.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can start at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cartographersguild.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.cartographersguild.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have lots of info on map making and the geography and what not that goes into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, look for resources used by role playing game designers.  I don't have anything specific, but if it's a fantasy world, look at Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master resources.  For sci-fi, you can look at Shadowrun and the like.  Game design has a lot of the same requirements and can definitely point you in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I only do the world building required to cover the story I'm telling.  Magic system, local geography, sociological considerations to avoid the &quot;all elves are the same&quot; and what not.  Throw in enough history to get your characters they need to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've not seen anyone (other than Tolkien) go that deep into the world build.  If that's where you enjoy creating though, then absolutely go wild!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21219" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T00:30:52.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24236" CreationDate="2016-08-25T06:11:12.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the reason for the advice you cite. &lt;em&gt;Excessive&lt;/em&gt; use of exclamation points&amp;thinsp;&amp;mdash;&amp;thinsp;I'm not saying your use is excessive&amp;thinsp;&amp;mdash;&amp;thinsp;will result in your writing sounding strident, overemphasized. Often, however, the use of exclamation points can be reduced by choosing better, stronger verbs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in your first example, the verb you chose communicates that the speaker is &lt;em&gt;calling&lt;/em&gt; across a large room (supposing you've already set the scene), even without an exclamation point: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Press the green button,&quot; Alice &lt;em&gt;called&lt;/em&gt; to Frank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rewriting your second example, though, you can see the potential benefit of considering the reason for the advice: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Alice,&quot; Frank &lt;em&gt;yelled&lt;/em&gt;, running toward her from the other end of the hall, waving a piece of paper wildly in the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this rewrite, the weak &quot;it was&quot; has been replaced with the active, strong and descriptive verb, &quot;yelled&quot;. As a result, the phrase &quot;as he called for her&quot; is no longer needed, and the sentence so becomes much leaner and tighter. In addition, I think quite possibly Frank's concern has &lt;em&gt;already been expressed&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;will be expressed&lt;/em&gt;, in context, by &quot;yelled&quot;, &quot;running&quot;, and &quot;wildly&quot;, and so &quot;, concern etched into his face&quot; can also be left out without any loss of sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The caveat included with all this is that it's &lt;em&gt;your writing&lt;/em&gt;. The overall tone of the piece may be such that stridency is not an issue, or rewriting on the model I've suggested doesn't suit your style, or ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21203" LastEditorUserId="21203" LastEditDate="2016-08-25T18:19:11.193" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T18:19:11.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24075" CreationDate="2016-08-25T12:54:50.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seriously, you aren't aware of &lt;a href=&quot;https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;worldbuilding.stackexchange&lt;/a&gt;?  You can tag questions with &quot;hard science&quot; if you want answers with citations, or just &quot;science based&quot; or &quot;reality-check&quot;.  I've found it very helpful, for example, when I wanted an answer about the &lt;a href=&quot;https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/49308/where-are-the-wettest-and-driest-places-in-this-world-and-why&quot;&gt;climate of my world map&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19796" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:23.590" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T12:54:50.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24292" CreationDate="2016-08-25T13:01:50.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With some tools, you can tag the two verb forms as conditional text in the source document and then render the version you want in the output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a status report, I recommend using verb forms that let you sidestep revising/conditionalizing text, as shown here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example A&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consultant writes blog post. Completed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client publishes blog post. In progress.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example B&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consultant: Write blog post. Completed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client: Publish blog post. In progress. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2016-08-25T13:08:59.997" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T13:08:59.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24237" CreationDate="2016-08-25T13:29:18.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use a screenshot of the text message or messages. Doing so will give a more direct impression of seeing the message on a phone. The next best thing might be to place it in a text box (with rounded corners) to suggest that the text is being displayed a screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T13:29:18.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17476" CreationDate="2016-08-25T14:30:57.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't cites the source for a paragraph. You cite the source for an assertion. Each assertion should be cited, regardless of whether it occurs in the same paragraph as another assertion, and regardless of whether it comes from the same source as a previous assertion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not really a matter of style. It is a matter of the nature of citations. A citation says, &quot;what I am saying is true cuz it says it here too&quot;. You cite when you make an assertion that requires this backup. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a matter of style is what type of assertions you have to back up with citations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T14:30:57.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24316" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24320" CreationDate="2016-08-25T19:33:57.420" Score="0" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the novel (3rd person omniscient) that I'm writing, there is one character that has an overbearing presence all through the story but is never seen and no one interacts with him. What I'm trying to do is write the epilogue with the character as the focus. I'll be introducing the character at the beginning of the chapter (without naming who he is), focus on his actions and just when the chapter ends, I will identify him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what I'm looking for is - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you think of this approach ? Will the readers (or you as a reader) like this ? or do I need to change my approach ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any Good books which have chapters using this approach ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I do use this approach, then how do I introduce the character ? The setting is a post-apocalyptic world and the character is the titular reclusive dictator of the survivors. So calling him &quot;Thin man&quot; or &quot;The Long Haired man&quot; ala &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10196/multiple-characters-without-names-how-to-address&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; will not be appropriate and calling him &quot;The Dictator&quot; would ruin the surprise. So how do I approach this ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: While the question looks similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7262/how-to-have-a-character-be-nameless-for-the-first-few-paragraphs-of-a-book&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, it is not as that question was focused on a specific scenario and I'm looking for a more generic approach (In other words, I can't have tribal names).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T22:54:17.230" Title="Naming a character late in the chapter but introducing him first" Tags="|style|novel|naming|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24319" CreationDate="2016-08-25T20:23:30.733" Score="3" ViewCount="2357" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the dedication of my upcoming book, I have written&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For my child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think that period should be there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21230" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T21:48:01.483" Title="Dedication Punctuation - include a period?" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24317" CreationDate="2016-08-25T21:33:06.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;sure, why not? just don't do the crazy poetry thing and hold the period until the blank page after the About the Author blurb. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More seriously, it's a purely aesthetic choice. Use it, leave it out, doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T21:33:06.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24317" CreationDate="2016-08-25T21:48:01.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all based on the author, both ways work.  If you like the feel of a completed sentence, punctuation is your friend!  If you would rather prefer the dedication to be more like a headline, skip the periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21234" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T21:48:01.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24316" CreationDate="2016-08-25T22:11:53.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love this approach, don't change it!  I once read a mystery book with an approach similar to yours, it ended on a cliffhanger but was nevertheless, satisfying.  Try describing him like &quot;the &lt;em&gt;adjective&lt;/em&gt; figure&quot; such as &quot;the brooding figure&quot;.  Pretend you're at the scene where the character is in and you don't know his name.  How would you describe him?  I hoped this helped!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21234" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T22:11:53.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24316" CreationDate="2016-08-25T22:26:56.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's a good approach! As a reader, I would enjoy the sense of mystery, and I don't think you should change it at all. As for what he should be called before he's introduced, what about his eye color? There's nothing special about, for example, brown eyes. It would be hard to make that a spoiler.&#xA;If not that, what about giving him a habit- for &#xA;example: &quot;the smoker;&quot; &quot;the fidgeter;&quot; &quot;the foot-tapper;&quot; &quot;the whistler.&quot; &#xA;While I can't recall any books that use the nameless approach, ( though there are probably a good amount of them out there) I have used it in my own writing by referring to a man according to the color of his cloak and &quot;the hooded man.&quot; There's so little ways to use this approach, which makes it pretty difficult, but I do like it a lot.&#xA;I hope you can work it out, and the very best of luck to you! (I hope I was helpful, and I apologize if I wasn't)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21185" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T22:26:56.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24316" CreationDate="2016-08-25T22:54:17.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A character does not have to be named, but they do have to be identified, otherwise the reader gets lost. If you don't identify them by name, then you should identify them by some defining characteristic that makes sense in the context of the story. This says something important about them in story terms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, taking this approach is an expression of how other characters see that character. The defining characteristic by which you identify them should make sense as the characteristic that define them for the other characters, and it speak volumes about how the other characters see that character: are they in fear, awe, or contempt of that character? How they identify that character will define that relationship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giving that character a name later also define a shift in mood or in point of view. Maybe one of the characters gets closer to the character. Now the sobriquet they use to use no longer fits and they need to use a real name. Maybe they are in different company where the sobriquet would be inappropriate or dangerous to use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point is, all these choices are structural, not arbitrary. They say something important about the relationship between characters and you need to make sure that they say the right things about those relationships at the right time. Any techniques works when it supports the story; every technique fails when it does not support the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T22:54:17.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24323" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-26T00:15:09.607" Score="0" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;At times, my action beats feel awkward and repetitive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seem to reuse similar action patterns. For example, &quot;A studied/looked at/observed B&quot; or &quot;A smiled/grinned (optional adverb)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I sometimes get feedback that words in the beat that I assume are &quot;showing&quot; are in reality &quot;telling&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this description&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dylan Lockwood twisted around in the cramped space capsule and slapped Musa on the back. “Musa, you got to relax. You’re ‘bout as calm as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.” &lt;strong&gt;He studied Musa, a patient, weathered half-smile on his face&lt;/strong&gt;. “Look, we practiced this a hundred times. It’s just another simulation, son.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I create more diversity, avoiding the the &quot;A studied/looked at/observed B&quot; pattern that I seem to overuse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is &quot;patient&quot; descriptive, or does it come across as telling? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific to this example, is it obvious and unambiguous that the half-smile is on Dylan's face rather than Musa's? If not, how can I improve?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T04:39:16.797" Title="Repetitive pattern for action beats" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24325" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24326" CreationDate="2016-08-26T00:25:33.273" Score="1" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have adopted the use of italics to denote internal monologue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reviewer suggested that I italicize a word of spoken dialog to denote emphasis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What… what in the Sam Hill is &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is ultimately a question of style. Is it common to use italics for both purposes in a given work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T01:20:47.547" Title="Italics for both internal monologue and dialog emphasis?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24325" CreationDate="2016-08-26T01:20:47.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;yes, it's fine. It's obvious which is which in context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Separately, if you want to emphasize something in internal monologue which is already italics, the usual convention is that the word is in roman/book (that is, the opposite of italic). I have seen bold italic used, but rarely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T01:20:47.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24323" CreationDate="2016-08-26T06:19:33.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, in this particular scene, we are immediately told that Dylan twists around (I assume in a chair) to pat Musa, so I don't see a need to incorporate any looked at/studied etc. because we already know he's looking at him. As for 'patient,' I do think that's &quot;telling,&quot; but it can still be incorporated in a different way.&lt;br&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dylan Lockwood twisted around in the cramped space capsule and slapped Musa on the back. “Musa, you got to relax. You’re ‘bout as calm as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Look, we practiced this a hundred times. It’s just another simulation, son,&quot; &lt;em&gt;he said patiently, his half-smile weathered.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not always necessary to use actions like the ones you're over-using; if you find yourself falling into that pattern, you should try rephrasing, as in my example.&#xA;And yes, I think you aren't clear enough on whose smile it is, thus the rewording.&#xA;I hope this helps, and good luck on your writing! (Sorry if this doesn't help, though)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21185" LastEditorUserId="21185" LastEditDate="2016-09-11T04:39:16.797" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T04:39:16.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24328" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-26T08:35:16.643" Score="1" ViewCount="802" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know what expression I can use for the gentle (but strong) reminder to the person who has bad manners to ignore emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21239" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T11:28:29.243" Title="Gentle reminder to the person who haven't reply my email at all" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-08-26T21:56:20.717" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24329" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-26T09:54:08.923" Score="0" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having thesis statement in the intro; what would you think is it a good practice to have in non-academic writing &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21240" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T21:35:50.533" Title="Is it a good practice to add thesis statement to non-academic writing?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-09-18T14:04:17.780" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24328" CreationDate="2016-08-26T11:28:29.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's how I would deal with this by email:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Name],&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry to hassle you, but this is now urgent. [Optional: explain briefly but firmly why it's urgent.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will you please let me know when I can expect a reply to the message below?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Andrew&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other things to bear in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you suspect this person is ignoring their inbox, why send more emails? You need another route. Can you call them instead?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you believe they're only ignoring &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; emails, that's different, but in my experience you will still be more likely to change that if you can find a way to telephone them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nobody ever does anything because of 'bad manners'. Especially if this is a workplace email, it's more likely that they have been too busy, or they've been forced to prioritise something else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may or may not think that's excusable, but if you want them to help you, don't adopt an accusatory tone. Put yourself in their position: whatever the circumstances, through their eyes, they've been doing their best.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T11:28:29.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24329" CreationDate="2016-08-26T11:43:46.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it serves the story then I don't see a problem. But it must be entertaining - be interesting for the reader and provoke imagination; it should catch the reader's attention - to work as a hook. Every intro should be a representation to the whole literary work in a way. It should not be long to become annoying (maybe filter only the interesting parts). And the statement should be correlated to what you want to convey with your writing. It might be a good idea to be something controversial and to raise questions. Also it should fit the rhythm of the rest of the discourse and suit the mood.&#xA;If I had to place such a thesis as an intro I'd leave a lot of information blanks which to be answered/revealed later.&#xA;And last, remember that all the points above might be valid or invalid for your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T11:43:46.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20861" CreationDate="2016-08-26T12:18:41.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, if your character types are supposing a slow building to their romantic relationship then what I guess is that you have answered all the questions for their personalities in your mind but you have not put it into paper. Ask the questions why are they so passionate about each other and why they love each other. What makes them fit to each other and what connects them. What do they give to each other that the other can't live without. After getting these answers then think of the best ways to present it to the reader - by situations, relations, conversations and obstacles. &#xA;Sometimes we as writers have the whole story in our head and it seems it is great but we forget that the reader knows only what is written and can guess only based on this.&#xA;By the way if you have this feeling that they should kiss, the reader will feel it too and if you delay that kiss then you will raise the excitement and pleasantly irritate the readers mind. So try to delay that kiss if you think the story can benefit from this.&#xA;There is also this option that the characters are so passionate that the kiss should really happen early and this is ok if this sis natural for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastEditorUserId="21243" LastEditDate="2016-08-26T12:23:59.613" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T12:23:59.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20861" CreationDate="2016-08-26T12:58:48.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It rather sounds like what you are writing is not a platonic relationship but a frustrated romantic relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does, does it not? If your characters want to make out, there is nothing platonic about that (neither there is anything wrong with that, of course, it is only a matter of your choice of how to develop your story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question to ask yourself is &lt;em&gt;why am I not letting them go at it, and does it work for the story?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it does, invent a believable cause, explaining why the cannot be together, like they are separated by space or time (or both), if it doesn't, have mercy on them and let them behave in a natural for them way, whatever it might be, and concentrate on moving the story forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T12:58:48.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24329" CreationDate="2016-08-26T17:46:16.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a research report, then yes, you should have &quot;here is the thing we are studying&quot; or &quot;this is the question we are trying to answer&quot; in the introduction of the report. Otherwise the reader won't know what you're reporting on. I don't know if you'd call that a thesis per se. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T17:46:16.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24335" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-26T18:19:53.300" Score="2" ViewCount="615" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, 'platform' might not be the best word. I am talking about what you construct a website with, as in Wordpress, vbulletin, etc. I can't seem to find what these are called. I will use the word platform for now, until someone enlightens me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering creating a website to host online writing competitions. They would be free and have no prizes, save maybe on-site titles or something. They would be frequent, and I would quite possibly have several running at the same time. My problem is that I've so far been unable to find a website 'platform' that would best suit my purposes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details about what I'm looking for as requested: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I anticipate this to be a large operation. Even if it isn't, I would like the ability to easily deal with any number of writers (at least 1000, and up to 10,000). People tend to flood in when something is free. On that note, if I have anywhere above twenty people in one contest, I would create several contests to split them up. One person judging 1000 entries would take awhile. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I need control over who has access to what. I am envisaging people starting out with basic challenges, proving themselves, and graduating to the harder challenges. This would also filter out the less-skilled writers. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I need the ability for someone (not necessarily me) to give out a challenge, and then have everyone else write something for that challenge. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I need to be able to sort all this, so that one can find challenges and entries and specific entries quickly and with ease.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you know of a website platform that could easily support writing contests?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus points if you can find one that supports blog format at the same time. Otherwise I would likely just create a subdomain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I have next to no knowledge of php, so any php editing you give me will go over my head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-08-26T22:17:25.823" LastActivityDate="2016-08-27T13:12:45.847" Title="Best platform to run an online writing contest?" Tags="|software|contests|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-09-18T14:05:16.293" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24286" CreationDate="2016-08-26T19:03:39.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You know how many words per day you need to average. The main question is how quickly can you write. I tried to estimate my writing pace by timing myself writing short stories and dividing the word count by the time taken. This gave me a pace which I plugged into a spreadsheet. I then kept daily records of how many words I'd written that day to see how my actual pace was compared to my minimum required pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what I discovered was that my estimated pace was really a best-case scenario, because short stories come easily to me while novels don't. Thus it was very hard to maintain my pace and the length of time I needed was approximately double. Given that and the fact that you can't miss a day if you're only doing the daily minimum meant that I fell off pace fairly early on in the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus my advice to you would be to write something fairly long (spend 30 minutes writing at least), then see how many words you got. Halve that speed as your estimated effective pace and allocate that much time per day. Then, keep track of your daily and average pace (time spent writing today, words written today) and update your estimates for how many hours remain. Schedule in long blocks of writing if you can, and try to get ahead early on so that you have some slack later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T19:03:39.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24244" CreationDate="2016-08-26T20:37:04.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the University of Maryland, University College's page on MLA style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If you are citing an entire work, or a work that has no page numbers, you want to include information that will allow the reader to locate the source in your works cited list. If it is not possible to include this information in the text, follow the sentence where the citation needs to be made with an in-text citation containing only the name of the author.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They offer the following examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his article &quot;Allston Gothic,&quot; local historian Forman Jackson demonstrates how completely the neighborhood's gruesome past has been forgotten by its residents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent newspaper article demonstrated just how thoroughly the neighborhood's gruesome past has been forgotten by its residents (Jackson).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/mla_examples.cfm#intext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/mla_examples.cfm#intext&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21135" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T20:37:04.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24323" CreationDate="2016-08-26T23:33:39.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a character is simply smiling or looking at another character, I'll go out on a limb and say you can delete that whole sentence. A character looking at something or someone, in most cases, adds nothing to the narrative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if Dylan looks at Musa and sees something that contributes to the story, then tell the reader about it. Maybe Musa is green or dead or eating a hole in his spacesuit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T23:33:39.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24335" CreationDate="2016-08-26T23:38:56.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of literary journals manage submissions via &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.submittable.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Submittable&lt;/a&gt;. I've never used it as an admin, but I know you can assign stories to particular readers and it keeps track of correspondence between you and the authors, and of readers' votes and comments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For submitters, it keeps track of what's been submitted, and the stories' status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T23:38:56.213" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24341" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-27T00:33:36.143" Score="1" ViewCount="674" Body="&lt;p&gt;Show is better than tell, but that is not the whole of the story. What are some tried and tested ways of conveying a lot of knowledge, understanding or information - not necessarily technical - in a fairly short period of time in a novel? For example, one might have a character who likes to explain a lot, or there might be effective ways to convey knowledge or information while at the same time depicting action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The knowledge need not have been learnt by a character or the narrator through being formally taught, even by himself. He may have learnt it through acute observation and detailed consideration and analysis, perhaps over a period of several years, perhaps without talking about it much or even at all. This would include life lessons learnt through meditation about experience. I am trying to keep this question general, but particular examples might include&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the social geography of high streets and the factors that have determined the architecture and the range and positioning of different kinds of shops&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;skills that have been learnt largely in practice, with only a fairly small amount of formal teaching, such as the skills of salesmanship or advanced deception&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;highly honed skills of charming people&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a solid and detailed framework for understanding certain types of social interaction or social environment that the character or narrator has conquered by himself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than just showing that a character or the narrator has this knowledge or set of skills, and how he uses them - that's if he actually does - how might we convey the knowledge to the reader fast? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21247" LastEditorDisplayName="user21247" LastEditDate="2016-08-27T12:45:33.553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T14:35:14.287" Title="Ways to convey detailed knowledge or understanding in a novel?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24341" CreationDate="2016-08-27T06:02:59.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, I don’t think there is really one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of Information, “teaching” = &lt;strong&gt;Technical Writing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fiction the &quot;teacher&quot;character quickly becomes contrived and pedantic. The reader will become bored and drop the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though you can illustrate some of the teachings through the character’s direct experience. I think this Q is linked to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17930/technical-subjects-non-fiction-vs-fiction&quot;&gt;technical subjects - non-fiction vs fiction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-08-27T06:02:59.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24341" CreationDate="2016-08-27T06:55:44.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way that you can use that is by creating a scene where the teachings have been used - in action. You could have the main character (MC) reminisce to the teacher's teachings as he tries to resolve the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For e.g. If your teacher is a bomb disposal expert, the MC could walk into a mall where a bomb has been planted. As he tries to defuse the bomb. he would think about (flashback to) what his teacher has taught him, what to do and what not do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastActivityDate="2016-08-27T06:55:44.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24345" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-27T12:04:28.427" Score="5" ViewCount="3592" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a book, in which the protagonists are two teenagers. They fell in love and it is time they were alone and had sex. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the book is destined for teenagers from 15-19, I would like to ask how should I handle the sex part. What ways is sex generally handled in YA books? Are there commonly accepted methods for doing this without turning the book into an adult romance novel with underage sex scenes, or with scenes taken out of a porn movie? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18488" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2021-02-09T04:32:19.747" LastActivityDate="2021-02-09T04:32:19.747" Title="How do I handle teenage sex in books for teenagers?" Tags="|young-adult|erotica|sex|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24335" CreationDate="2016-08-27T13:12:45.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest using a website builder, like Wordpress, Squarespace or Weebly. Then if you are looking for some database capabilities, which it sounds like you are (ex. storing records, user logins, viewing records in tables, creating records with forms) then I suggest you check out Knack.com.  Full disclosure, I am a part of the Knack team, but it is a database/web app builder that can be embedded into other sites like WordPress. Seemed like it might be helpful for you so figured I would mention it. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18569" LastActivityDate="2016-08-27T13:12:45.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24345" CreationDate="2016-08-27T13:38:46.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are various ways to handle this, depending on how you want the scene to come across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vague&lt;/strong&gt;. That is to say, the reader knows they had sex by reasonable inferrence. You end one scene with them entering a 'private' area (bedroom, bathroom, remotre area of the woods, etc) and start the next scene with them being sweaty, touchy-feely, and much more physically and emotionally close to each other. In this way the more savvy will get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Euphemism based sex&lt;/strong&gt;. In this you have two options. You can just say what it is, just not in a clinical way. They didn't 'have sex' they 'made love' or 'screwed' or 'did the thing' or 'he popped her cherry' or whatever you want to describe it as. Or if you want a more direct approach, you can try the 'looking back sequence' this: &quot;He isn't quite sure how things escalated, but he remembers the sensations, the warmth, the closeness. The nervous excitement is like a drug, even now.&quot; Be sure, if you take this route, you don't encourage your audience to 'do the deed', but show it in a real light (e.g. show repurcusions thereof: STI, pregnancy, risk of losing virginity to a jerk, insecurity afterwards, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21105" LastActivityDate="2016-08-27T13:38:46.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24341" CreationDate="2016-08-27T13:54:42.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I tend to do in my writing is consider the options. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flashbacks (/flashforwards) are a good way to show how someone learns it if the Main Character is already an expert when your story starts. In gaming one would call this in Medias Res (in the middle of things), where you flash forward to a scene where mechanics can be explained in context or just before the ever popular 'anmesia' sets in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your MC is a student, why not portray a class where the teacher is explaining it, but your MC is daydreaming, more focused on the class clown getting in trouble, staring at their crush (or pointedly not staring at them). This gives you the chance to both give the boring information to the reader, and offers a great chance for characterization in one fell swoop.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What if your MC &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; the teacher? Have them droning to a class, protégé, small group of students, or what have you. Why not intersperse the droning with mental rants? Same as the last point, but different point of view.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick isn't to see what options are available (though it's important to know). The trick is to see what fits your character, scene, and narrative best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps ^_^&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21105" LastActivityDate="2016-08-27T13:54:42.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24341" CreationDate="2016-08-27T17:25:02.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider writing a literary novel, a meditative novel of ideas, not a novel that you assume the reader will stop reading if he doesn't get action scene after action scene, interspersed with occasional scenes in which the narrative tension builds towards action. Or consider writing a novel in an experimental form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One work that comes to mind, that perhaps you may usefully study if you're not already familiar with it, is Robert Pirsig's &lt;em&gt;Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance&lt;/em&gt;. Critics disagree about whether it's a novel! If I were Pirsig, I probably wouldn't care: it sold five million copies!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18358" LastActivityDate="2016-08-27T17:25:02.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-27T18:03:12.267" Score="0" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need help. I have written 4 novels, 3 in kit form.I will try to be brief, but this is complicated. The stories are brilliant....and in current form unreadable.I am a conflicted writer hampered by the fact that I cannot type.I am both a manic writer,and also lazy.Once I get a thought,the whole novel pops into my head from beginning to end.At times I have written 16 pages or more at a sitting,not being disturbed in the least by screaming grandchildren,or blaring T V sets,then gone months without writing a thing.I NEVER get writers block,my problem is quite the opposite.When the creative juices are flowing I don t stop to correct the obvious spelling mistakes or malaprop (everything is handwritten)the upshot is that I write partial chapters,then jump to others and return later The results can be chaotic.Though I have improved considerably in my early&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21252" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T14:55:16.517" Title="novel frustration" Tags="|structure|book|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2016-08-29T02:21:09.737" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24353" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-27T20:53:15.333" Score="1" ViewCount="533" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble deciding if the manner I have decided to narrate my story is too complicated or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a story set in a completely foreign and alien world (fiction story). I then uproot my main character from their place of birth to a completely foreign culture (to them). I felt if I just dived straight into the story, readers wouldn't be able to relate to the surroundings and settings. I also felt they would get confused if I give them several contrasting settings and cultures at once. I do know readers are not dumb and can adjust but I don't want to get side-tracked describing something when it will interrupt the actual story flow. I'd rather have the confused MC experience something new and then later learn what this and that strange feature/animal/plant etc was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I felt I could use my MC's experience of culture shock to my advantage. So my reader learns about the world through their eyes, as they do. This would allow me to introduce differences/exotic features and have the Main Character's curiosity/misunderstanding/lack of knowledge mirror that of the reader's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I still had trouble with POV. I didn't want to write in the first person as I want to incorporate many different characters POV, so I have decided to write in the Third person. So I have been toying with a narration sub story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, this what I have come up with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Narrator is having to explain their world and recent history to a New Arrival to the planet. This confused New Arrival would be a stand-in for the Reader. Everything is being 'dumbed' down and explained to them so that they can fully appreciate the current political and cultural situation. My Narrator is using the story of my MC's similar confusion and experiences of a new culture to slowly bring the New Arrival up to speed. My Narrator knows everything that occurred as it is all in the past, coupled with a tiny bit of applied phlebotinum. The Narrator is not reliant on the Authorised history books but actually does know what happened to each character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you will have an introductory few passages from the New Arrival's point of view, then he meets up with the Narrator. The Narrator starts telling the story in Third Person Objective style (ie no thoughts and feelings are mentioned of the MC, the New arrival is getting the slightly 'censored' version of the story). The writing then switches to the Third Person Subjective/Omniscient style (ie thoughts and feelings are mentioned for the several MC's, this is what really happened - as it happened). There would be an occasional interruption back to Third person Objective with the Narrator and New Arrival at certain story development stages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have intended there to be some curiosity as to who the Narrator and New arrival are in relation to the Main Story. As well as how the Main Character's relate to the New arrival and the Narrator. So there can/will be several 'easter eggs'? (is that the right term) and 'red herrings' hinting to who is who and what might happen to certain characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this feasible? or is it introducing too many different elements and POV's? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or am I overthinking things again, and this is a completely normal setup?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19585" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T14:52:20.213" Title="Is my method of Narration switching from objective to subjective too complicated?" Tags="|style|viewpoint|narrative|outline|third-person|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24353" CreationDate="2016-08-28T00:57:29.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you make sure the POV transitions are smooth and clearly let the reader know that the POV has changed, (Have you had any trouble with that?) I think it will make for an interesting, intricate read. Since you seem to have it planned out in so much detail as well, I think you should go for it, and having &quot;too many POVs and elements&quot; really depends on the opinion of who's reading- no author's book can be suited to the taste of every reader.&#xA;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21185" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T00:57:29.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24353" CreationDate="2016-08-28T03:19:32.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are worried that it is too complicated, it is probably too complicated. Not there there is not a place for narrative innovation in literature, but the basics are the readers want to be immersed in the story and narrative trickery is likely to pull them out of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an old saying in moviemaking that if you notice the cinematography, it is bad cinematography. Once you notice the cinematography, you are engaged at the technical level of movie making, not the literary level of storytelling. The same goes for narrative technique in prose. If the reader notices the narrative technique, it is probably bad narrative technique. And if it is complex narrative technique, the reader is probably going to notice, unless it is done really really well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an example of it done well, see No Country for Old Men. But even there, you definitely notice. But Cormac McCarthy is a genius and can get away with it. Most of us should probably stick to trying to tell an immersive story using the simplest narrative techniques we can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-08-28T14:52:20.213" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T14:52:20.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24323" CreationDate="2016-08-28T03:36:22.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess is that you are describing actions rather than motivations.  That is, you are too removed from the character.  Since Dylan seems to be our POV character, get us deeper into his mind.  What is he thinking?  What is he feeling?  If you immerse us in the character, the telling will become showing much easier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dylan Lockwood twisted around in the cramped space capsule and slapped Musa on the back. “Musa, you got to relax. You’re ‘bout as calm as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”  His own stomach coiled tightly, but he couldn't let it show.  Instead he forced a smile onto his face, hoping to calm his own nerves as well as his jittery partner.  “Look, we practiced this a hundred times. It’s just another simulation, son.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or similar.  The deeper we get into the character, the less you'll find those filter words (looked, studied, etc.) appearing in your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21219" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T03:36:22.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24392" CreationDate="2016-08-28T04:06:54.770" Score="3" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a sort of act related question. I have an important drug that causes the protagonist to encounter people and things he normally wouldn't, and it is the foundation of a convoluted plan by the antagonist. The drug is fantastical, causing others to experience what the protag hallucinates, essentially making it real as more and more people believe it is. Otherwise, the world is 'real life.' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to introduce the fantasy concepts in the first act outright, or is hinting at their existence sufficient? I want the reveal that he's been poisoned to come out of nowhere at the end of the story and turn it all around, but even suggesting such a drug could exist in acts 1 and 2 would instantly tip the audience off that the mystery isn't genuine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21257" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T15:11:26.403" Title="Introducing a plot-critical hallucinogen partway through a mystery?" Tags="|creative-writing|mystery|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24358" CreationDate="2016-08-28T08:32:50.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well. In my opinion you should do what feels right for the story and not thinking so much of the reader. When you finish your novel, then you will have a better look on the whole story and might edit if you find something could be better.&#xA;I think you should consider the following when you choose.&#xA;If your drug is only to catalyst for the interesting events then I think you should reveal most of it sooner in the story as it is a Macguffin - nothing so important just a cause.&#xA;But if you want the drug to play an important role in the story then you should not raise the mystery very early - reveal only what is needed for the story to unfold.&#xA;In conclusion what I can say in your case is if you want the readers surprised and keeping the mystery then just suggest of this effect by the drug but in order to grab the attention from the beginning then think of another effect that the drug does - maybe it is the intended effect and the fact that it affects the real world is like a side effect that is revealed later.&#xA;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T08:32:50.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24351" CreationDate="2016-08-28T08:38:56.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not this type of a writer but in this case what I can suggest is when you have the jouces - just sit and write down what you think or even record it. Try to make it as a whole story as much as you can. Then when you have it somewhat structured go and talk to an editor and together consult how to write your story planning and putting deadlines.&#xA;What else I can suggest is collecting all your ideas, laying them down and then talking with a ghost writer who can finish your novel. I wouldn't do the seccond think though but it might work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T08:38:56.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24361" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-28T09:45:19.393" Score="3" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there resources (books, blogs...) which describe proven techniques to obtain certain effects? For example: you will obtain this effect if you use the first person, effective ways to describe fear, doubt, exhaustion, love... are the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21259" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T05:33:41.630" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T08:20:07.783" Title="Writing technique resources" Tags="|technique|tools|resources|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24361" CreationDate="2016-08-28T13:15:03.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a habit I read some educational General Literature and Factual/Referance on Google Books (previews are free)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;booksgoogle.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;www.writersdigest.com &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T13:15:03.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24353" CreationDate="2016-08-28T14:40:45.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand your strugglings, but IMO it would be too complex ! Think about the reader, he will be, at least, as lost as the New Arrival, then you will switch to 3rd person objective, then 3rd person subjective, and &quot;red herrings&quot; on top of that ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one will ever make the effort to read that til the end !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to maintain the POV switching, you have to simplify : 1st person for all as in Faulkner's &lt;em&gt;As I lay dying&lt;/em&gt; for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experimentation is good, but not if it's to the reader detriment ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T14:40:45.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24351" CreationDate="2016-08-28T14:55:16.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the same problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to fight your laziness, to stop procrastinating, because all the creativ part of this work (the inspiration, the story &quot;popping out&quot;, the ideas, the plan, some brilliant dialog fragments) is the good part, the exciting part. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then, if you want to make it real, there's not secret to it : you have to &lt;strong&gt;work hard&lt;/strong&gt; (correcting, proofreading, (re)writing the less engaging parts of a chapter) and yes most of time you ideas seems less brilliant when you put them on paper, and yes it's frustrating and unpleasent, but then again, is the only path !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Switching from a novel to another novel is just a disguised way for escaping these inconviniences ! I was doing the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T14:55:16.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24361" CreationDate="2016-08-28T15:47:54.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writers read. We read lots of things in order to learn from our betters how they do what they do. Read the instructional blogs and books, but being a reader who picks apart stories and sentences to see how they achieve their effects will provide better, more inspiring, instruction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T15:47:54.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24368" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24373" CreationDate="2016-08-28T15:51:20.760" Score="2" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to write a blog under the heading  &quot;A tale of happiness&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that it sounds odd and almost all the heading that sound right have &quot;two $NOUN&quot; format (in case of common nouns) or &quot;$WORD and its opposite&quot; format (in case of abstract nouns) at the end of &quot;A tale of&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like &quot;A tale of two cities&quot;, &quot;A tale of two sisters&quot;, &quot;A tale of Love and Darkness&quot; etc. These headings have more impact rather than &quot;A tale of happiness&quot; or &quot;A tale of starvation&quot;. Apart from &quot;A tale of&quot; examples, even &quot;A song of Ice and Fire&quot;, &quot;Beauty and the Beast&quot; give a strong impact on readers mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that my thoughts are very subjective and are based on pure observations, far away from the rules. So, can you please help me by figuring which if there exist some semantics rule which can explain this? Also can you suggest some alternate heading?     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21261" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-08-28T18:37:45.057" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T19:04:14.667" Title="A tale of noun?" Tags="|titles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24368" CreationDate="2016-08-28T16:33:22.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's about word associations. If you write about starvation, and call it 'A tale of starvation', it's... not really telling anything other than that the writer lacks imagination. Or if you write about star-struck lovers and call it 'A tale of love', it basically says the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal advice: avoid this at all costs. Unless the title is sardonic in some way, or about the after affects of what the title might have hinted at. For example: A Tale of Loss, being about finding love and &lt;em&gt;losing&lt;/em&gt; the bachelor's lifestyle. A Tale of Hunger, being about wanderlust, or bloodlust, or lust for battle. In other words, if you can imagine what the entire book is about just by hearing the title, then no one would want to read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alternate naming suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A journey to happiness&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Traversing happiness&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Simple things (then as a subheader: Happiness is about perspective)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to be creative about what your overall theme is, and use that to your advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21105" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T16:33:22.273" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24370" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-28T16:46:39.850" Score="2" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my book in Scrivener, I have custom images as each chapter heading instead of just &quot;Chapter 1&quot;, which works well. However, that means the Scrivener generated Table of Contents doesn't work for me (Scrivener automatically replaces the text of the chapter link in the ToC with the image link, which doesn't show up in the ToC, so you just end up with a blank page for your Table of Contents), so instead I wrote the Table of Contents out myself and linked them to my folders, which works perfectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my custom Table of Contents isn't populating the NCX ToC in the Kindle app. How can I fix that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried checking and unchecking &quot;Use flat list of contents in navigation controls (NCX)&quot;, but it doesn't seem to make any difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2837" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T17:12:19.310" Title="Kindle NCX with Chapter Header images" Tags="|scrivener|kindle|table-of-contents|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24370" CreationDate="2016-08-28T17:12:19.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually figured this out myself just now. Scrivener was replacing document links with my title prefix (i.e., my custom images for chapter headings), even in the NCX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I needed to uncheck &quot;Update titles in document links with prefix and suffix settings&quot; under &quot;Title Adjustments&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this saves someone else lots of time if they decide to use custom chapter headings and can't get their NCX to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2837" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T17:12:19.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24358" CreationDate="2016-08-28T18:40:42.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that you should hint at it, so that it doesn't feel like a deus ex machina, but write your story and show it to some beta readers asking about that in particular. If you hint too strongly, it becomes obvious, but if you don't mention anything about this drug until the protagonist receives it, it shatters the suspension of disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T18:40:42.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24368" CreationDate="2016-08-28T19:04:14.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought about all the examples you gave and if you think behind each of the couples there is a simple but strong story. Love &amp;lt;-&gt; Darkness; Beauty &amp;lt;-&gt; beast. These two words are enough for the reader to start imagining. It thrills you the moment you read it and you want to know more. One word does not suggest a story for example &quot;happiness&quot; - at best you'll think of a moment in your life which you felt happy but not a new story. While if you say something like &quot;Happiness and Maria&quot; or &quot;Happiness and motels&quot; then this suggests a story right away. Also when making up the title try omitting &quot;A tale of&quot; and see how it sounds. &quot;A tale of&quot; is not the important part so when you put one word only after it it loses its strength.&#xA;So this is my theory - I haven't thought about it before so hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T19:04:14.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24374" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24380" CreationDate="2016-08-28T22:44:50.390" Score="10" ViewCount="2451" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking some advice &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24211/9888&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You might notice that pen names usually sound like names a real person would have. So when you want to make a writing career under a pen name, you might want to pick a less obvious pseudonym than &lt;em&gt;Memor-X&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking up names I could use currently coming up with a lot of female Japanese names, the latter probably influenced by all the anime/manga/light novels/games I have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being male and not of any sort of Japanese descent, could I run into any problems down the track particularly if people find out who I really am?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This question is in the context of self-publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="36670" LastEditorDisplayName="user12726" LastEditDate="2019-06-24T12:58:31.917" LastActivityDate="2019-09-04T13:12:00.790" Title="Would there be any problems with choosing a pseudonym of another ethnicity and sex?" Tags="|self-publishing|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-29T07:38:47.267" Score="9" ViewCount="1356" Body="&lt;p&gt;Servus, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once again started wondering what might be the problem that keeps me from finishing most of my novels. To compare, there are two novels about 400 pages; one of these was really liked by its (single) reader while I thought it was a huge mess (looks like there is serious character development happening I didn't even notice), while the other one confused the living daylight out of the other (single) reader (while I hoped it was way more... tidy in terms of structure).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside this, there must be about 20 or more drafts which barely made it past 50 pages (usually it stops at 20 pages), which may be better or worse than the &quot;finished&quot; ones. I often ponder about why I never did end them, and usually its the same conclusion: &lt;em&gt;It feels stupid&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its not like the finished ones are more &quot;sane&quot; in any case; we are talking about sci-fi and fantasy with some espionage elements or steam-punky worlds, cruel architecture and some references to favorite media art. To be honest, both stories are kind of insane when thinking about it, but for some reason they came to an end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now whats wrong with all these other stories? I know it will be hard to find out if you didn't read them, but usually they are more or less as &quot;insane&quot; as the other ones...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;but why does one keep ending up with the impression that what has been typed to virtual paper is crazy batsh!t and not worth a continue?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When carving out this cry for help I stumbled upon &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/22135/how-to-keep-writing&quot;&gt;this writers question&lt;/a&gt; which touched a topic kind of close to mine, but it didn't came up with an answer for me (while still offering some insight).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To push this further... this is highly sujective perception, but sometimes when wandering through bookstores and looking upon new books I start wondering &quot;&lt;em&gt;This has been printed? Seriously?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, and wonder why they managed to pull this through while I (not even aiming to publish this) end up thinking bad about what I made up so far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking more about it usually leads to the idea that I simply failed or will fail to keep up the suspension of disbelieve... but at the other hand there are stories out there which are about zombies/apes/aliens/insert-favorite-menace-here taking over the world or being beaten by some pretty unlikely heroes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why this feels more sane than... hm... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I once let my characters lay waste to the grand exhibition (the first world exhibition in London) using a experimental blimp which ended up in... uhm... lets say there are mummies, airships, vampires, conspiracies and romances happening. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other example includes some lab assistant who teleports not from A to B, but back into time, and whats happening after this are... it messes up the timescale we know and produce an infamous art thief usually known for other reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some older stuff includes (sci-fi this time) a missing battleship, a near-collision, huge empty areas, invisible stalkers, ninja-assassin-kitten and pretty scared (not scary) mutants. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Last example includes a classic fantasy-world, a pyramid, some guys which failed to summon a demon and a magical gate which leads right next to the comic con. Oh, and Bob of course, which is... a janitor. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why did one (I in that case) came to a complete halt at a point early in the story and keep on thinking &quot;&lt;em&gt;that's just plain stupid, do not waste your time!&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, while out there authors are busy writing stuff like this and even earning enough money for a living. I do not think there is a &quot;secret&quot; they have, but... what is missing at my side?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel motivation building up to create a new story (as discovery-writer I cannot tell what will happen at this point of time). And this time I hope I can end it at least. Wonder who will be the single reader this time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, If you can point me in a good direction I would be most grateful. Before formulating any responses about books to read please consider that English isn't my first language and less common books in English sometimes are hard to get here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greetings, ConfusedMerlin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDiT: From one answer I will pick up something to read which I stumbled upon some time ago but didn't remember exactly what is was about: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/ira-glass-success-daniel-sax/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Gap&lt;/a&gt; You'll find a youtube link in the answer of... Ken Mohnkern, but for all who can't/won't watch a video, this link of mine will offer a silent reading of what this is about (and that video too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17943" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T16:56:04.703" LastActivityDate="2022-06-23T19:08:41.127" Title="Stop thinking own work is stupid" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|psychology-of-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24374" CreationDate="2016-08-29T10:52:16.617" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a long history of women using male pseudonyms to be taken seriously.  It's a sad fact that there's still prejudice, even in academia, against female authors.  And so the practice continues; by women publishing anything from research to fiction under a male pseudonym.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also been noted that applicants using the exact same CV/Resumé with a &quot;black&quot; name attached get asked to substantially fewer interviews than those with a &quot;white&quot; name in the USA.  Similar situation in France regarding Arab and French names respectively.  So Pseudonyms are often used to help negate prejudice.  For similar reasons &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/31/male-writers-hide-gender-sell-more-books&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sometimes male authors write under genderless or female pseudonyms&lt;/a&gt; because of a belief that men can't write female protagonists.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you were writing a story which was immersed in Japanese culture, and worried that it wouldn't be taken seriously because you were not Japanese, you may adopt a Japanese pseudonym if your writing could otherwise pass.  So it depends entirely on what you want to achieve.  If you want to write a novel set in a Japanese setting, whose protagonist is female, and if (big if) you can pass as a Japanese author, then maybe that makes sense?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has to be given serious consideration, because people are often prejudiced by author's names.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19796" LastEditorUserId="19796" LastEditDate="2019-06-24T08:49:17.090" LastActivityDate="2019-06-24T08:49:17.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24376" CreationDate="2016-08-29T11:44:43.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's good that you feel motivated to write again, despite the fates of your other stories, however, if you do start a new story, please give it a chance. All of your previous stories seem to be over-the-top absurd. There's an audience for that- as you see in bookstores- but I think I see what you may have failed to understand, depending on your answer to this: Are your stories, the unfinished ones, are they intended to be- to some extent- comical? The only way absurdity can hold its own is by being intentionally humorous, or no one will &quot;get&quot; it: a book involving a ninja-assassin-kitten shouldn't be expected to be read with a straight face (I don't think), so if such a story was intended by the author to be a serious-toned, sci-fi thriller but is getting laughed at instead would be very bad. My best advice to you is to make sure you look at whatever fantastically absurd tales your imagination concocts through a comedic lens. Anyone that may read your story will enjoy it more thoroughly if they understand that the author intends the story to be, to some extent, an absolutely silly, but thrilling adventure. It might even change the way you view your old unfinished works. Very best wishes to you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21185" LastActivityDate="2016-08-29T11:44:43.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24379" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24381" CreationDate="2016-08-29T15:16:55.490" Score="2" ViewCount="430" Body="&lt;p&gt;So in my story, theres a character (name's Tris) in love with a girl, but she died. Her name was Lais. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later when he's older, he saves a little girl who looks the same as the girl who dies. He adopts her and re-names her Lais, after the girl who died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a little messed up? There's more,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In between these two situations (the two Lais's) Tris is acquainted with another girl, he talks to her about the first Lais, and realises that this girl is in love with her, and is jealous of Lais (she's unaware that she is dead). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He runs away from her, but she finds him, and starts going by the name Lace - similar to Lais, this girl is a bit crazy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way the story is written, Lace meets the second Lais a few times while chasing Tris, then readers learn about the first Lais.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically the two Lais's and the Lace are all in the story at the same time, is this too confusing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's actually a comic, so they would all be shown, and they would look different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the value of the name Lais is an integral part of the story but is it just too much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The existence of the first Lais isn't revealed until near the end, so I've realised that by the time this happens readers should be used to the Lais that was introduced first. The three of them are only in the story at the same for a short while, and any confusion should &lt;em&gt;hopefully&lt;/em&gt; be brief, and helped by the visuals :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21270" LastEditorUserId="21270" LastEditDate="2016-09-02T23:33:45.707" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T23:33:45.707" Title="Using the same name more than once?" Tags="|fiction|naming|comics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24374" CreationDate="2016-08-29T15:47:43.987" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using a deliberately deceptive pen name is essentially a marker of fake authenticity.&lt;/strong&gt;  It can lead to success, but also criticism on the grounds of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_appropriation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cultural appropriation&lt;/a&gt;.  I would personally recommend against it.  While not illegal, or even particularly uncommon, it strikes me as a little ethically suspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two cases I would exempt from this blanket ban:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Case 1: If the name change is unlikely to make any difference in how the work is received.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Case 2: &lt;strong&gt;If you have very good reason to believe the name change would make the intended audience &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; likely to judge the work solely on its own merits&lt;/strong&gt;, not less.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first case is fairly straightforward, the second might be more difficult to judge. In general, if you are disguising the fact that you are a member of a generally disfavored minority solely in order to escape prejudice attached to that minority, I would personally find that acceptable --for instance a female author taking on a male or androgynous pseudonym because of writing in a time and place where only male authors get read and published.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were writing in Japanese for a Japanese audience, I might place you in that second category (you would be seeking to escape the negative prejudice attached to foreigners), but if you are writing in English for an English-speaking audience, I would not (you'd be attempting to cash in on a positive assumption of authenticity as attached to a Japanese name). In other words, people would give your writing a presumption of authority and legitimacy it really isn't entitled to.  Whether or not you personally agree with it, you need to be aware, as a writer, that &lt;strong&gt;we are in a cultural moment that prizes authenticity&lt;/strong&gt;.  Today's literary audience harshly judges those who are considered to be claiming false legitimacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2019-09-04T13:12:00.790" LastActivityDate="2019-09-04T13:12:00.790" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24379" CreationDate="2016-08-29T15:56:18.713" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It makes a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; difference that it's a comic. Seeing the visual cue of how the character is drawn will go 90% of the way towards dispelling any confusion, particularly if we only see child Lais and adult Lace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to have a written text with similar or identical names and have it be a plot point, like V.C. Andrews's &lt;em&gt;My Sweet Audrina,&lt;/em&gt; but you have to be very careful in pulling it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-08-29T15:56:18.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24376" CreationDate="2016-08-29T16:36:04.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes work that is hugely flawed in one respect can have some other aspect strong enough to make up the difference.  Conversely, a work that seemingly makes all the right choices can still fail to be worth the reader's time.  And, of course, readers vary greatly in tastes and tolerances.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An artist is often not the best judge of his or her own work. The fact that even one person made it all the way through your first book and loved it speaks well for it --400 pages is a serious commitment of time and attention.  If the work is complete, you might as well go ahead and try to sell it.  If it sells, then you know it was &quot;good enough&quot; to get published.  If not, you're no worse off than you are now, and you might possibly get some good feedback along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although many talented authors with brilliant books never get them published, there are --as you have discovered --any number of books that are &quot;huge messes&quot; that make it into print. Some even find a devoted audience.  At this point, the one confirmed difference between the authors of those books and you is that they didn't let doubts about the quality of their work stop them from pushing forward.  To quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gazetteofthearts.com/writer3.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Robert Heinlein's&lt;/a&gt; famous 5 Rules For Writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You must write.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You must finish what you write.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You must put the work on the market.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You must keep the work on the market until it is sold. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-08-30T13:15:24.143" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T13:15:24.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24374" CreationDate="2016-08-29T19:45:46.197" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a lot of people find issues with being blatantly mislead, such as a white American male pretending to be a Japanese female. There have traditionally been women using men's names and so on, as described in the other answers, but there is the cultural appropriation issue when done in reverse and many women who find that a man pretending to be a woman seems like encroachment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to be obvious about your gender, then I suggest using either an historically gender-neutral name (Robin, for example) or simply use initials and let people guess or make their own assumptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for pretending to be from a culture other than your own, I think folks are more likely to feel tricked if they find out. There's marketing and then there's false pretenses. If your writing is good enough, work the marketing. If it isn't, pretending to be something you're not probably won't get you passed the bad reviews anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-08-29T19:45:46.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24376" CreationDate="2016-08-30T06:44:26.677" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are trying to do too much in each step of the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing (or any art) in not a single process, it takes different skills to produce a work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see that you are trying to produce something &amp;quot;good&amp;quot;. But you can't create  something &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; while you are judging it in order to &amp;quot;improve&amp;quot; it. Something that can be &amp;quot;improved&amp;quot; is by definition not yet &amp;quot;good&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay let me get rid of these semantics. Here is my process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The First Draft&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;featuring &amp;quot;The Author&amp;quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write a &lt;em&gt;First Draft&lt;/em&gt; I try to get the words and ideas out &lt;em&gt;as fast as possible&lt;/em&gt;. I even try to leave the spelling errors, as long I as understand the word. I normally fail and [backspace][backspace] retype. Some writers do this first draft in long-hand with pen and paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;First Draft&lt;/em&gt; is holy. It is an infant. It will have problems. I don't care what those problems are until the first draft is complete. My creative self is in charge, I call him &lt;strong&gt;The Author&lt;/strong&gt;. I write things like &lt;code&gt;{{does a spectacular gymnastic move to disarm the ninja}}&lt;/code&gt; when I find myself getting bogged down in the action. I've put &lt;code&gt;{{this seems totally against her character!}}&lt;/code&gt; and moved on. Notes to myself are always enclosed in &lt;code&gt;{{}}&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't judge the quality of the writing. If I find myself judging, I gently remind myself &amp;quot;not yet, that is the next step.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing gets in the way of producing that day's word count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;800 words per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stop when I've written at least that many words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't go to sleep unless I've written at least that many words (on a writing day).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Polish&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;featuring &amp;quot;The Judge&amp;quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I print out my manuscript double spaced, one side per page, 2.54cm margins. Occasionally I will polish on screen. Rarely because it is very bad for the step after this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I go through the manuscript judging it. My internal self is called &lt;strong&gt;The Judge&lt;/strong&gt; who is a fussy editor. But he is a consistent and structured editor. He asks questions like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does each character have their own voice?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does each character stay in character?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does this match my hero's journey?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how should this fight scene play out?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is this a plot hole?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is this character really needed or should the role be filled by someone else?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who's story is this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If our hero is the girl, why is her brother doing all the fighting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This process gives my inner Judge freedom to complain and rant. It means he knows he will get his chance after the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hand-write any answers and all these questions on the manuscript. I also flag typos and grammatical kludges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Second Draft&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;featuring &amp;quot;the Author&amp;quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take my marked up manuscript and start retyping from scratch with &lt;strong&gt;the Author&lt;/strong&gt; in charge. Note, I do not copy and paste from the original file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is important to separate &lt;em&gt;the Judge&lt;/em&gt; from &lt;em&gt;the Author&lt;/em&gt;. The Judge cannot create, he can only improve. The Author cannot improve he just creates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I type again. If there are pages and pages without change that means the Author created and the Judge approved. If every page has changes, that's okay too. The Author loves creating fixes to problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Judge shows up while I'm typing I politely tell him that it's not his turn yet and then I remind the Author to keep going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Author completes the second draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Second Polish/Copy edit&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;featuring &amp;quot;The Judge&amp;quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Judge now gets a chance to edit the manuscript. If it's close to complete, this may just be a copy edit for spelling and grammar. Again I print it out with space for notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I normally allow at least 3 drafts and 3 polishes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final step is always a copy edit, spell check, grammar check, typo (your/you're) check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try separating writing from editing and see how that feels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19655" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T06:44:26.677" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18530" CreationDate="2016-08-30T10:32:27.553" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Introduction in an essay is the most difficult part for me. Let me explain some useful tips that would help you to start your paper. Introduce the topic with some indication of its inherent interest or importance, and a clear definition of the boundaries of the subject area. Then you should indicate the structure and/or methodology of the essay, often with the major sections of the essay or its structural principle clearly stated&#xA;In the end of introduction (yes, sounds crazy) state the thesis of the essay, preferably in a single, arguably statement with a clear main clause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21190" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T10:32:27.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21705" CreationDate="2016-08-30T10:50:24.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally it is considered problematic when the researcher is also the subject of the study, because of possible &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;confounding effects&lt;/a&gt;. For example, you expectations could change your behavior; this is called the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rosenthal effect&lt;/a&gt;. Also, in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-subject_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;single-subject design&lt;/a&gt; such as yours, any results could be caused by your possibly non-average personality, circumstances, or mere chance, and therefore not be representative of the population. In normal research, what you report would be considered &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;anecdotal evidence&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless many &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-experimentation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;self-experiments&lt;/a&gt; have been undertaken, especially in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-experimentation_in_medicine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;medicine&lt;/a&gt;, when experimenting on another person would have been unlawful or unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your question, the single most important rule in scientific writing – besides &lt;strong&gt;truthfulness&lt;/strong&gt;, of course – is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;clarity&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any reader of your paper must easily understand what you did. &lt;strong&gt;The fact that you were the subject of your research must not be cloaked behind obfuscating terminology.&lt;/strong&gt; Instead of calling yourself a &amp;quot;participant&amp;quot;, which suggests that you gave instructions to another person and observed his behavior,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;speak of yourself as yourself.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And make it equally clear what the relationship to your &amp;quot;significant other&amp;quot; is, as far as it is relevant to the study: is that person your husband/wife (implying legally joined finances) or a boy/girl-friend (possibly living in their own flat).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T10:50:24.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24376" CreationDate="2016-08-30T12:52:07.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wise words from some very smart people might help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anne Lamott wrote in &lt;em&gt;Bird by Bird&lt;/em&gt; that you should feel free to &lt;a href=&quot;https://jlserna1125.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/shitty_drafts_2_-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;write shitty first drafts&lt;/a&gt;. Make sense of what you've written in later revisions and rewrites.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ira Glass, of &quot;This American Life,&quot; talked once about &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the gap between your good taste and your skills&lt;/a&gt; as a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T12:52:07.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24358" CreationDate="2016-08-30T14:27:44.740" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will be very hard to write this in a way that doesn't feel like a cheat.  However, in my experience as a reader, endings that feel emotionally real can get away with tying all sorts of pretzels in logic.  What this means is that if the problems and challenges posed in the &quot;drug-world&quot; are all resolved prior to the big reveal, the book will still feel complete, whereas if the problems and challenges are solved by &quot;oh it was all just a hallucination,&quot; people will want to toss your book out a window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good model is the &lt;em&gt;Wizard of Oz&lt;/em&gt; (movie version).  The entire adventure is a dream, but it has a beginning, middle and end within the dream.  Dorothy can't escape her story in the middle (despite unknowingly having the means to do so), she has to complete her quest.  After that, finding out it's a dream doesn't make the viewer feel cheated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also make it so that the protagonist is able to gradually figure out what is happening prior to the reveal --this matches dream logic, where figuring out it's all a dream is typically the cue for the dream to end.  This way he is working for his release from the drug world, rather than just getting it handed to him on a platter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T14:27:44.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24358" CreationDate="2016-08-30T15:11:26.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Describing a psychedelic experience is inherently difficult. You might try weaving in some behavioral changes seeming out of place as your hints something is amiss. If you wait to the reveal, you'll miss out on the fantastical and spiritual elements accompanying hallucinosis. Does your character know where he's getting his visions from? Is he receiving commands via auditory hallucinations? Whose commands? God's? You get the picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T15:11:26.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24394" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-30T16:49:18.350" Score="6" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is important to keep in mind when planning a book? Is it important to create every character and it's abilities before you start to write the actual book? How hard is it to start writing if you don't have the plot fully planned out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thankfull for answers. Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21289" LastActivityDate="2020-09-28T02:28:14.777" Title="How to plan your writing throughout the book?" Tags="|plot|planning|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24394" CreationDate="2016-08-30T17:27:52.153" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different writers have different approaches. Some plot everything out in detail before they begin. Others begin with an idea or a character or even just a picture and start writing to explore from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even for the pre-planners, though, writing is an act of discovery. You are going to learn things about your subject matter, about your characters (in fiction), and about your own ideas as you write. This will force changes to the plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is fair to say that writing is recording that which has been imagined, so I think the question becomes: when and by what process does one's imagination form a picture or an idea that is clear enough to write down. For some, a plan may be necessary to reach that point. For others, a plan may lead them away from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find the plan comes somewhere in the middle of the process, as a means to understand how the threads of things imagined can be brought together into a cohesive whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to find the thing that gets you to that point at which you have something clearly in your head to be recorded, and then start writing it down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T17:27:52.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24396" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-30T17:51:27.617" Score="2" ViewCount="356" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a futuristic light novel, in which the world looks really different than the world we're used to and thus I feel like I have to describe every single detail. However I won't really have space for that since it's a light novel, so i'm wondering if and how impotant the scenery would be in my case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21289" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2020-04-11T11:37:08.927" LastActivityDate="2020-04-11T11:37:08.927" Title="Is describing the scenery important in unfamiliar places?" Tags="|scene|light-novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24396" CreationDate="2016-08-30T18:15:53.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the story. Is the scenery important to the events of the novel? Does it actually have an effect on things? Does it change the outcome? If so, then yes, you need to describe it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, usually the scenery is not necessary to the story. In fact, scenery by itself is &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; necessary to the story. If the scenery is just scenery, there is no need to describe it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, scenery (or setting as it is usually referred to) is commonly used to describe the vibe of a particular place (ie, raining during a depressing/sad scene), or to act as a base to show a character's emotions (ie, showing &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; he sees the setting: &quot;rejoicing in the brilliant sunrise,&quot; etc.). Occasionally you can show the same scenery twice, far apart in the novel, and demonstrate how a character has changed by noting how differently he now sees the same scenery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to make a long story short: decide if your setting serves a purpose. If it does, then describe it. Don't go overboard though. The description only needs to be enough to accomplish the setting's goal. If your setting does not serve a purpose, there is no need to describe it. You can drop one-liners mentioning the setting on the side (details always add a small measure of credibility to a work), but never focus on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T18:15:53.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24396" CreationDate="2016-08-30T18:31:17.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't describe in details if it is a light novel and has to be read easily. But I think that if the whole novel is set there then you will have the opportunity to be quite thorough. Just don't do it at once. Start with some basic facts and tell only what is needed and then as the story goes you can tell more. I think action is very important to make the story light so I'd include a lot of action scenes which use the specifics of that place - I mean you could use the different physics there, the different architecture, the different demographics etc. to make the action scenes more intriguing and also introduce the world to the reader. And to repeat Thomas - make sure that every information you give serves a purpose for the story. To sum up - what I am trying to say - make up of alternative ways to show the environment like action scenes and dialogue instead of just describing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T18:31:17.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24345" CreationDate="2016-08-30T19:26:32.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it may be okay if the writing about making love is euphemistic -- but don't let the emotions around it be vague. It should be a big event for your characters and that is what is more important than the physical act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T19:26:32.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24361" CreationDate="2016-08-30T22:31:44.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At first this seemed a superficial Q, but when you think about it, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many arts, like painting, there are clear technical manuals. This is in no way limited to “crafts”. Obviously the artist interprets and applies the method, or goes against it, in his own personal way. Why should writing be different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should be &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“proven techniques to obtain certain effects?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, Adrien Hingert, I am not aware that any such site exists.&#xA;You might find some answers by combing through S.E. Writers for Q like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing&quot;&gt;The “Rules” of Writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/books-to-improve-writing-skills&quot;&gt;Books to improve writing skills&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/148/what-are-good-reads-about-writing/220#220&quot;&gt;What are good reads about writing?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T22:31:44.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24402" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24429" CreationDate="2016-08-31T00:55:37.127" Score="2" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm developing an idea for a story in a video game which I'm going to design and program. I've already got a good idea, however, I'm having a hard time developing it to where it can be long and entertaining while not boring to the player later on. What is the best way to do this, and how do I know it will not bore the player? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The game will be a choice based story game where you decide the majority of what happens in the game, the game's target audience is around 16 or 17. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21296" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2019-09-06T17:50:23.247" LastActivityDate="2019-09-06T17:50:23.247" Title="Having a hard time developing an idea" Tags="|planning|videogame|branching-narrative|concept|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24403" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-31T03:05:32.063" Score="9" ViewCount="1007" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't afford much right now, so I am looking for free writing tools that can help me. I already have Microsoft Word, but am looking for something to outline with. I am also interested in anything else to help me or motivate me. I have ADHD and sometimes it's hard to stay on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21300" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2021-02-24T11:41:55.593" LastActivityDate="2021-02-24T11:41:55.593" Title="Best free writing software?" Tags="|software|tools|outline|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24403" CreationDate="2016-08-31T03:23:38.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best is a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; relative term because it depends on &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;. But, some suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want your basic Microsoft Word, go with it. It has an outlining mode which works out pretty well. Plus you can use a ordered or unordered list for most outlines which it handles fairly smoothly. It is also the tool you appear to know, so that's a bonus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also look up Freemind or Freeplane. These are mind mapping tools which are pretty good for outline most novels or concepts. It has a lot of outputs and is relatively easy to use and expand as you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also consider Evernote or OneNote as possibilities. They are good for gathering information and also building up an outline complete with images. Both are free at lower levels but have premium versions if it works out for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't use Microsoft Word, but I do most of my outlining in a text editor with Markdown. It works for me, but it very &quot;low tech&quot; as it were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21220" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T03:23:38.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21846" CreationDate="2016-08-31T04:48:14.190" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just noticed that Wordery USA and half adozen other companies are  selling what they claimed to be used new condition copies of a book that I have just published at about 7 dollars below the retail value. I believe that they are not getting them from expanded distribution because the author (me)has not selected expanded distribution as a distribution option. I think that they are new copies obtained directly from the printer. I have noticed that Amazon have a complex system of bots that checks my site every few hours and puts my books in the purchase cart. Every book. The point of this seems to be to check the final price. I think Amazon uses this system to sell CreateSpace books at a discount and undercut the author and the author's publisher. Because these are being sold as used books the author isn't getting royalties and they are taking the bulk of the sales because they are undercutting the authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21302" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T04:48:14.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24402" CreationDate="2016-08-31T05:28:50.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you read some materials on story structure. Actually if you prefer there are lots of videos on You tube too. You should also check how to build your character to an interesting level - this is very important for the story. Then check out what is a plot and the difference between story and plot. Then you could check out the role of the surrounding environment to the plot and he story telling. Also check out some important writing principles like &quot;Show, don't tell.&quot; etc.&#xA;Sorry this s a broad answer but your question is broad too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastEditorUserId="21243" LastEditDate="2016-08-31T10:17:41.240" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T10:17:41.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24407" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-31T06:55:40.997" Score="0" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would it be totally wrong to make a few characters in your light novel time jump/travel whilist some other characters stay in the same period of time? How would you guys take on this challange? Would you stop writing about the characters that are still in the present and focus on the group of characters that have traveled in time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21289" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2020-04-11T11:36:01.970" LastActivityDate="2020-04-11T11:36:01.970" Title="Complicated time jump allowed in a light novel?" Tags="|time-depiction|light-novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24407" CreationDate="2016-08-31T07:07:33.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why would it be wrong? I mean there are many stories which fulfill that scenario and they are good. You can even bound your story to the fact they are separating. &quot;Cloud Atlas&quot; has a very complex time lapse descriptions and it is still good and even it is built on that fact.&#xA;There is no correct answer if you should stop writing for the characters which are left behind but you could also check out quest stories where a band of character take on a long way. If you think the concept is the same no matter if you travel in time or in distance. If keeping the reader informed about the characters left behind serves the story then do it, if they have nothing to tell then just leave them for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T07:07:33.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24403" CreationDate="2016-08-31T07:39:02.737" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use paper and pencil for outlining. To be more precise, I use loose sheets of paper and scissors, to cut and rearrange story elements. I later number the paper snippets with a thick black felt pen (so I won't loose their ordering if they get mixed up).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paper and pencil has several unbeatable advantages to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can order your thoughts any way you like. Most software forces you to order your story elements in a linear fashion, and from top to bottom. That is not how my stories are represented in my mind. I need my story elements to be arranged side by side, from left to right, like a timeline. And I need the option to lay other elements above or below that linear development. There are mindmapping tools that allow this kind of ordering, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No matter how many computer screens you have and how large they are, with a long plot and many story elements they will never all be visible and readable at the same time. Either you see the whole mindmap, but then the text is so tiny that you can no longer read it; or you zoom in to read some text, but then the relation to the other parts becomes invisible. In other software the elements of your story will be in different windows, stacked one behind the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On my floor, all my paper snippets are visible at the same time, and bending forward to read something everything else still easily lies within my 160° field of view and the relation between parts is never hidden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While computer software allows for easy cut-and-paste, it is still extremely cumbersome and slow in relation to just moving paper snippets around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I work with pencil and paper, I am offline. Do not underestimate the powerful distraction that a computer connected to the internet poses. Google for this. Most professional writers set up their work space so that they have no internet access. With pencil and paper, you are offline without the need for self-control. There just is no internet. And even if the computer is running next to you, &lt;em&gt;you are not at it&lt;/em&gt; and there is some effective obstacle between what you do and where you are and surfing the net.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I just feel more myself when I work without a computer. There are studies that have shown that writing by hand increases creativity. It has other beneficial effects. Again, google it. For me, my well-being is a good enough indicator: I just feel more happy and relaxed when I do not type into a computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course I do use a computer and writing software for much of what comes after outlining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Writing software&amp;quot; doesn't need any special functionality. Novels have been written by hand and on typewriters for centuries. The less options you have, the more focussed you will be on your writing (especially if you have ADHD and might be tempted to fiddle with layout and such). George R. R. Martin is writing on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/05/14/george_r_r_martin_writes_on_dos_based_wordstar_4_0_software_from_the_1980s.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DOS plain text editor&lt;/a&gt;. It does not show in his novels. Many others use plain text editors (such as Notepad). Personally, while I do use Scrivener to compose my writing, I often use TextWrangler to work on sections that I then copy-paste to Scrivener (and italicize, where appropriate). I wouldn't use Word, as it has too many irrelevant and confusing options for me, but if that's what you have, then use it where I use Scrivener and switch to something better whenever you can afford it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My workflow looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;plot the story using &lt;strong&gt;pen and paper&lt;/strong&gt; (and scissors)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;walk to the library in the morning and write down ideas in a &lt;strong&gt;paper notebook&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;transfer those ideas to a &lt;strong&gt;plain text editor&lt;/strong&gt; and polish and expand them in the process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;copy-paste to &lt;strong&gt;Scrivener&lt;/strong&gt; and integrate, expand and polish further&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, my actual writing is done in three &amp;quot;apps&amp;quot;: notebook, plain text editor, and writing software. I don't always use them all, and not always in the above order. Sometimes I take notes in a plain text editor on my laptop while on the bus; sometimes I copy ideas from my notebook directly to Scrivener; sometimes I directly write from my head into Scrivener; sometimes I go back to writing into my notebook (or plotting on my paper slips) from typing at the computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To explain my workflow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a plain text editor because it is just text and allows me to completely &lt;strong&gt;focus&lt;/strong&gt; on my writing. I use Scrivener, because in the end I want to see the text &lt;strong&gt;as it might look like in print&lt;/strong&gt;, with a nice font and italicized words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what you will need for your writing, so just download and try out different apps and see which feel most comfortable and inspiring to you. Most apps have free trial versions, and even paid writing software often is not very expensive. Scrivener costs 40 dollars and has an educational license for 35. TextWrangler (Mac only) is free, for Windows there is Notepad++ (also free).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want free and a great look, then learn some basic HTML, write in Notepad++ and look at the finished text in your web browser. HTML is easy to print or convert to PDF, RTF or any other format, and Word can open HTML and save it to Word format, if you need that. All you need to do is enclose paragraphs in &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;...&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; and italics in &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;...&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; – apart from the header section, which will stay the same in all documents and can be copied from examples on the web, that is all the HTML you need to create good looking documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-03T16:50:01.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24402" CreationDate="2016-08-31T08:02:58.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good, story based video game really has to immerse the player in the world and make them want to play further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you worry about your story, develop a character that people will care about otherwise it won't matter how fantastic the story is, people won't play it.  In terms of video games, you can easily look at the likes of The Last of Us.  I care about Joel and Ellie and that makes some of the events that happen in the game much more emotional for me and, I presume, other players.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I've read books (since this is the writers forum) whereby the writer has created a beautiful world full of scenery and wonderful buildings that were well described and well thought out but the main character was as dull as anything and I simply couldn't read a lot further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing is that there are times when a well developed character will simply refuse to do something you're trying to get them to do and to force them to do so will only ruin the player's sense of disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the main and any other characters your story may need, you then go for story development.  There are a number of ways of doing this but the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;three act structure&lt;/a&gt; is tried and tested and works for all stories.  How many bumps in the road your character(s) hit on the way remains up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T08:02:58.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24407" CreationDate="2016-08-31T08:10:44.667" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How you handle this is entirely up to you.  As a reader, I would both want to know about the brave new world your time travelers are facing but I'd also want to know how those left behind are coping although a lot of this is dependent on how the time travel occurred.  Was it intentional or an accident?  Is there anything those left behind can do to &quot;help&quot; those in the future?  If they're just wandering around wondering if the time travel worked then that's not very interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they have a purpose to still be in the story then keep them there.  If they don't, then take them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worst case scenario for you would be to write the parts of the people left behind the scrap it because you've decided it's not working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T08:10:44.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24403" CreationDate="2016-08-31T09:50:53.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can suggest some free writing software:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;FocusWriter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;WriteMonkey&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Celtx&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LibreOffice Writer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sigil&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can check them out and choose the one you'll like the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21190" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2021-02-24T11:38:41.823" LastActivityDate="2021-02-24T11:38:41.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24394" CreationDate="2016-08-31T10:49:45.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid if you have not planned in advance most of the things before you start writing. The worst case would be that you'd have to go back and change some things but this is not bad and probably would happen anyways.&#xA;If you plan everything in advance then when the time comes to sit down and write you might find that even though the idea looked well in your head it is different when you start putting flesh on your characters. So planning is no insurance for less changes later.&#xA;Also if you plan the whole story in details before, this would require a very complex way of writing down everything and building your structure so that you don't forget anything. Also this way when you start writing then you might find there isn't that much thrill any more as you know how it will end before even starting.&#xA;What I like is having a single thing what I'd like writing about - could be a place, and event or a character. I first imagine a character and have some vague knowing of what I would like it to be about. Then I can start writing and developing.&#xA;There surely is no Correct and False approach. For example if you write a biography, then you are already working with basically ready story.&#xA;What I'd like to mention as a warning is that when you have a big part of the story in your head, it is difficult putting it on paper because You mess up with what you know and what he reader knows. For example you might have a very round and complex character in your head and you think it would be like that in the book. But when you start writing you don't put a lot on presenting this character (because it already feels complete in your head) to the reader and miss to convey what you have imagined. This could happen with everything and even with a complete story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T10:49:45.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24415" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-31T11:52:22.723" Score="2" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that I am good at expressing things specially in writing. I like to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen on this site that people usually have stories in their mind but don't know how to write it! &#xA;My problem is that I can describe something very well, but I don't have the imagination to &quot;create&quot; stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are my options for writing as a hobby?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3638" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T17:49:10.333" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T17:49:10.333" Title="What to write when I cannot create stories?" Tags="|planning|inspiration|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24415" CreationDate="2016-08-31T11:58:58.950" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ghost writing? You can even make money from it. Editing would also be good for you I think. Also journalism, biography novels, travel stories, memoirs. For example you can create a blog and include stories of places you have visited. Just an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T11:58:58.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24415" CreationDate="2016-08-31T12:42:54.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can describe things well then don't worry about not being able to create story. Every writer is different in his/her style. Once you start writing you can move into different genres of it. For you at this phase, you can do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Travel writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Content and technical writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blogs - you can write any genre of blogs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fashion Blogger - if interest in fashion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just some options. You could pursue any of them and with time you can earn a living through this. But initially, I would suggest not to think more about money but think about how well you can describe things, places, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16576" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T12:42:54.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24415" CreationDate="2016-08-31T12:47:20.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Poetry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write 100-word pieces of fiction and it's sometimes tricky to get &quot;story&quot; into so few words. It's much easier to make them into little scenes or observations or even tiny essays. I don't write poetry, but these little things sometimes feel like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T12:47:20.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14692" CreationDate="2016-08-31T14:02:22.620" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The writing of the abstract and introduction of a paper is a very difficult task because if you have 1000 readers most of them read these parts and your paper evaluation strongly depends on these parts too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In abstract, you should give an overall view of the paper including the importance and necessity of the paper topic (the first line of the abstract), the previous works and difficulties on this topic( second and third lines), the big picture of your novelty in this paper (fourth and fifth lines), and verifying your results (the final part of the abstract). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Introduction, you should provide an extended abstract here. Write a paragraph to explain the ingredients of the abstract as I explained.&#xA;The important fact in this part is to write everything with a valid reference for it. Also in the paragraph containing  &quot;the previous works and difficulties on this topic&quot;, you should carefully review and categorize the benchmark techniques in the topic of the paper and specify exactly the subtopic of your work.&#xA;Also for your novelty and contribution, you should clearly state your approach with benefits versus the earlier works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you don't to refer works in the abstract (exception if your work is directly related to the earlier published works) but you should mention important and benchmark works on the paper topic in the introduction section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Friendly speaking, you should mention the recent works in your introduction and also some published ones in the target publication for submitting!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To see good examples, you can see most published works on highly valued journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21305" LastEditorUserId="21305" LastEditDate="2016-08-31T18:23:25.727" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T18:23:25.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24403" CreationDate="2016-08-31T16:26:29.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends...  Personally,  I like to use &lt;strong&gt;latex&lt;/strong&gt; for my word processor. You can use it for free locally or online.  With latex you can just  type and worry about the formatting later.  If you get familiar with the syntax,  formatting wouldn't be an issue.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21309" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T16:26:29.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24403" CreationDate="2016-08-31T17:50:30.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For outlining, &lt;a href=&quot;https://workflowy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WorkFlowy&lt;/a&gt; is good for topical focus, tagging, and simplicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For writing, &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Docs&lt;/a&gt; has an automatic outlining feature based on headings and I also enjoy the built-in speech-to-text capability for when I'm tired of typing then I can speak my story as a means to get content typed up quickly with the intent of going back and reworking into better sentence structure later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18495" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T17:50:30.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-31T19:19:09.293" Score="2" ViewCount="656" Body="&lt;p&gt;I may take on the task of leading a one session (2 hour maximum) workshop on poetry. What would be the most important aspects that should be covered in such a workshop? I would assume that most folks going to a workshop like this would be beginner-intermediate level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T16:23:32.043" Title="What should be covered in a poetry workshop?" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24423" CreationDate="2016-08-31T20:14:21.280" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The kinds of poetry: blank verse, free verse, structured&#xA;(limericks/sonnets/haiku etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rhyme and meter: when they matter, when they don't, when to violate, when Mr. Pritchard should be told to suck pipe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sounds: beginning/ending, alliteration, repetition, opening/closing&#xA;and rising/falling vowels, consonants, how syllables create or&#xA;interrupt flow and rhythm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Puns, double entendres, and other wordplay&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My poetry teacher always talked about &lt;em&gt;paring away:&lt;/em&gt; remove as much as&#xA;you can, distill as much as you can, so that every word is meaningful&#xA;and no words are extra.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shakespeare, because you can't talk about poetry without talking&#xA;about the Bard&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;More advanced:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Enjambments: how to use them and violate them for effect and meaning&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How to use extra white space, extra returns, and oddball formatting&#xA;for effect and meaning&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T20:14:21.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24415" CreationDate="2016-09-01T02:17:56.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;“Where do you get your inspiration?” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an often hated, and feared, Q author’s get. Their ability to generate good ideas at the drop of a pin seems unnatural and exceptional to non-writers. They appear like inspired and gifted individuals for whom muses dance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple years ago I started developing a story mostly based on my life. After a few weeks of expending on the novel, all these other ideas started coming to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As time went by, I had more and more ideas, aand I now have a dozen notebooks full of books projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is that it seems to me that inspiration is like a muscle, the more you exercise it, the bigger it gets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, devote some time to try to write a story, any story, and soon you will start hearing the soft echos of divine murmurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2016-09-01T07:43:35.673" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T07:43:35.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24402" CreationDate="2016-09-01T13:21:57.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, a choise based story game... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing that came to my mind was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inklestudios.com/80days/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;80 days&lt;/a&gt; from inklestudios, which is - as one can guess from the name - something that's based on the famous book from Jules Verne. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It got a pretty art work which is... coherent (hope that's the correct word), a fitting but non interrupting music and sound environment and... well, here is not the place for a review, but you can grab it from steam or as app (steam version should be more rich in terms of features).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many other games around on steam, like that one with the boat and &lt;em&gt;underground London&lt;/em&gt; where you die (way too much for my taste), so go ahead and get first-hand experiences about how others did make narrative games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't make the mistake and assume that a good story is all a game needs. Well... way too many games do have a lame story but still sell, because as a type of media games can compensate for bad story by fine looks or other stuff. World of tanks offers no story after all (except for the wrong history) but draws in too many gamers. At the other side, adventures these days lack a huge audience, because the new generation of consumers cannot think and is overwhelmed with controls that require more than one button to press *sigh*.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how to draw in a gamer using nothing but a story? I still keep on wondering if it would be a better idea to just offer a huge load of example games and tell how they are good in terms of story, but... I think this isn't the right way of doing it. At least not here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So explain how to produce a well-written piece of a story may not be my strong point at this moment (yet...); there are others which are better in that. But I know my way around game design and will try to offer some advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Living world&lt;/strong&gt; - whatever the story is about, if the world it unfolds in does not respond in a way noticeable, it will lose much of its charm. Like in many RPGs where you can rob the entire town of their valuables without anyone caring. It will be hard to keep track of what caused what, but it needs to be clear why stuff happens in the way it does when this was caused by something the player did earlier. That's something pen and paper masters usually are pretty good at, but nothing you need to take care about inside a book... no, wrong, you don't need to keep track all the possible outcomes, just one, which is way more easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;colourful NPCs&lt;/strong&gt; - the not protagonists in stories usually fall a bit flat, because not everyone needs a deep backstory to appear for a brief moment inside a book. But in a game, chances are good the player will encounter some uninteresting background-NPCs over and over again... if they do not have a purpose to fulfill, but can be interacted with, you will confuse the living daylight out of your players. By the way, the living world applies to them too, even if it's just them talking about what the player did like they heard it from someone else. Even more, you can use company-cubes... eh NPCs to push the player in the correct direction by dropping hints about what will happen if things are done this way or that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;keep your artwork in line&lt;/strong&gt; - huh, nothing about the story (again)? Yes, because the background is where much of the story will unfold. You do not need lines of text to describe something you can just paint. Such graphical pieces of story will be able to transport messages and everything you would need to describe using way too many words by just being there. They can add Color to your NPCs and Life to you World. When you crash a huge UFO and it does not appear in the scenes a player would expect it, it will be rather strange. At the other side, you can tell the story by adding military around it and never waste a single moment of game flow by having the player need to read about this happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the Skyrim/Oblivion Variant of Storytelling&lt;/strong&gt; You can use most of Bethesda's games for this, but they just put a burned down house right in the middle of nowhere and a smoked note about &quot;add this and this and DONT ADD THIS&quot;. Finish. No text, no telling needed; a curious player will go try out for himself what happens if you combine these things. And if he blow up himself... well, what did he expect to happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't punish!&lt;/strong&gt; Most important for every game I think - if your player didn't do something the way you want, do not punish him hours of game later. If you need an artifact to continue six levels laters, but that artifact was hidden somewhere in the first level, and the game cannot continue because of that... that's bad game design. And it will be the dead of every game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay... I need to keep it short this time, so these should be sufficient. Last but not least: What the others did say is pretty important for the general storyline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have a character with a believable motivation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;switch between high tension and relaxation like in a good act&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have the world being believable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and never leave the house without your towel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;oh and don't insert forced (stupid) events... yes, I look at you Mass Effect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never mind the last one. But one last piece of advice still remains: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reward your player&lt;/strong&gt; - while the story can be lame, you need to reward your player for processing in the game. That is how to keep him motivated. Collectables where used for this, more skills and so on. The player must feel that he moves in the right direction and notice that good process is being made. &lt;em&gt;Sadly, a good story is just secondary to this&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aaaaand... I'm afraid that isn't even Writing.StackExchange territory any more. Still, I have to repeat: game design and keeping the gamer encouraged isn't done using a story alone. Its a collage of all the media game offers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17943" LastEditorUserId="37111" LastEditDate="2019-09-06T15:57:38.423" LastActivityDate="2019-09-06T15:57:38.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24433" CreationDate="2016-09-01T13:39:03.280" Score="2" ViewCount="4234" Body="&lt;p&gt;I began writing a novel. It's something I'm preparing for a long time and I now have enough material. Given the fact that I will concentrate on my main character's poitnt of view, and that I want to show his toughts on a daily basis, I decided that the better form should be a fictional diary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, I know (most of) what the main character will have to say. For each Chapter / Day, I tried to see what could compose the text : the easisest part is the sequentials events : Where the MC will relate his interactions with other characters (or between the other characters) : &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; did something to &lt;em&gt;B&lt;/em&gt; in day 1. &lt;em&gt;B&lt;/em&gt; spoke to &lt;em&gt;MC&lt;/em&gt; on day 2. &lt;em&gt;D&lt;/em&gt; decided to ask &lt;em&gt;MC&lt;/em&gt; what &lt;em&gt;B&lt;/em&gt; said to him in day 5. etc — It's the easiesst part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem lies in what remains : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Descriptions :&lt;/strong&gt; The MC will describe a part of his environment in each chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Flash-backs :&lt;/strong&gt; The MC will remember what led him to this place, everything that happenned and that is related to his present situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stream of consciousness :&lt;/strong&gt; Here we go deep in the MC's toughts (feelings or general ideas about life, love, death in his actual context)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These three parts are not bound by any chronological or &quot;cause and effect&quot; rule in the diary ! So, nothing can decide that you have to write this part in that chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my quetsion is : Is there any method, advices or guidance to help me stucture this in a less arbitrary way ? (like alternating flash-backs parts and descriptions parts from chapter to chapter, things of this kind)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastActivityDate="2021-01-04T22:21:27.120" Title="Text structure in a fictional diary" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24430" CreationDate="2016-09-01T14:04:38.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a diary. It can be arbitrary. It can be long or short, meandering or brisk, organized or all over the place. Do whatever serves your story and your character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only guidance you might need is to make sure that it's readable. If you're trying to build suspense, then you may need to focus on just &quot;here's what happened today&quot; for a few entries, and then have a &quot;and here's what I think about it&quot; section rather than insisting on rigidly using all three in order. Or conversely, if your character is a rigid sort, have him insist on putting in those sections but just writing &quot;Nothing to report&quot; for that bit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T14:04:38.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24430" CreationDate="2016-09-01T15:03:47.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I'd make the diary is the way my character would make it. Don't think that much what will suite the way of story telling. On first place I'd consider my character. It he is male or female the structure would be different. If he is lazy, then it will be different. If he is messy, then it would be different and if he doesn't complete his planned tasks it would be unfinished or with gaps. If he has free time for writing, if he/she feels obligated to make this diary etc. etc.&#xA;Then plan what parts to take from it to present to the reader.&#xA;At least this is what I'd do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T15:03:47.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24430" CreationDate="2016-09-01T15:30:23.073" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The diary format gives you a lot of liberty, as Lauren suggests. But I believe that there is a reason that this format is seldom used in fiction. It can be difficult to make a set of diary entries into something with story shape and still have them be sufficiently convincing as diary entries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories have a very definite and well documented shape, and they have it for a reason. You want to unfold a complex history that leads to the climactic moral choice that is the crux of any story. Without the history, the difficulty and the poignancy of the moral choice are not apparent and the story falls flat. But in order to get there, you have to keep the reader's attention while you unfold that history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what makes storytelling difficult. You have to keep the reader's attention at each step along the way. You can earn some indulgence from the reader along the way to get them to persevere through some of the necessary exposition, but basically you need to keep the engagement high throughout. Stories have the shape they do because they need that shape to maintain engagement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But diary entries are all flashbacks. They all occur after an incident is over and the narrator sits down to record their thoughts. The mood is reflective, which means that they begin with what is the ending emotion of the incident they are about to tell. That inversion is a challenge to story shape. It could be an immensely effective tool in a certain kind of story, but difficult to wield well and consistently across an entire novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without the reflective tone, however, there is little to distinguish a diary entry from ordinary first person narration. And without that distinction, the diary format is likely to just be a distraction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An interesting variation, and one that might give you similar liberties with fewer difficulties, is the tale told in old age. In this form, an elderly character tells the story of something that happened in their youth. The beauty of this form is that the narrator can assume either first person or third person POV as it suits the needs of the moment. They were there and they experienced things for themselves, but they also have the historian's perspective as well and have had the chance to learn what others thought and felt and did. Bernard Cornwell's Arthurian books strike me an a good example of this form. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T15:30:23.073" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24434" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24440" CreationDate="2016-09-01T15:54:39.750" Score="2" ViewCount="446" Body="&lt;p&gt;The culture I have created needs some unifying phrases but I'm having trouble thinking of some that spur emotion but do not sound silly or too technical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there there any techniques for generating catchy rallying cries, slogans, or chants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely with propaganda and social control in today's world there is some good information out there.  I can't seem to find anything not related to advertising...  They mostly tend to say the slogan should differentiate the product by highlighting it's strengths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking about differentiating by referencing the religion but that leads me to something like:&#xA;&quot;For Tyr's blessing!&quot;&#xA;While I'm looking for something not so generic like:&#xA;&quot;Odin owns you all!&quot;&#xA;My ideas are lacking in the inspirational factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14967" LastEditorUserId="14967" LastEditDate="2016-09-01T16:25:04.277" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T20:26:37.380" Title="Creating Slogans/Rallying Cries" Tags="|creative-writing|phrasing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24430" CreationDate="2016-09-01T16:00:43.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest a hybrid approach, keeping in mind the comments by @mbakeranalecta. How about only having certain chapters as diary entries? These would focus on the pieces where your MC has to show his or her opinion, thought processes, etc. The rest of the story could be third person, if you like, and that would have the burden of moving the story along in a style that reflects a more normal story arc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T16:00:43.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24436" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24438" CreationDate="2016-09-01T17:13:56.310" Score="6" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the time period of the story, certain names are different from the modern day language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of the &quot;Japan&quot; word in Portuguese: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Portuguese 2016: Japão&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Portuguese 1506: Iapam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The questions:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How the characters should introduce objects and names like this above? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I put today's Portuguese term, will it sound unrealistic? Or will the archaic term be too most complicated for the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12932" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T17:02:06.307" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T17:02:06.307" Title="Archaic language in a historical novel?" Tags="|word-choice|language|historical-fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24436" CreationDate="2016-09-01T18:58:04.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many novels that use unfamiliar terms have a glossary at the beginning or end. Just list all the archaic terms and their modern translations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T18:58:04.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24436" CreationDate="2016-09-01T19:12:35.443" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would make a distinction between linguistic drift and anachronistic references. You cannot write a story about the middle ages in Middle English because no one speaks Middle English anymore. That people use different vocabulary to talk about the same things in the 14th century and the 21st century is linguistic drift. When a 14th century character pulls out a cell phone or discusses supply-side economics, that is an anachronism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the modern term when the change is due to linguistic drift. Avoid anachronisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, at least, avoid the anachronisms that will irk the reader. This is the tricky part because virtually all historical novels have anachronisms because most readers want costume drama rather than actual history, so they tend to want modern people with modern attitudes, not actual historical attitudes and ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T19:12:35.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24434" CreationDate="2016-09-01T19:51:08.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have an historical event that your characters discuss, that is clearly something everyone in their culture would know. Have a phrase that relates to the event and let that be a rallying cry. Something along the lines of &quot;Remember the Alamo.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T19:51:08.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24434" CreationDate="2016-09-01T20:02:37.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most slogans and rallying cries are banal in themselves. Terri's example of &quot;Remember the Alamo&quot; is a case in point. Unless you do remember the Alamo, and unless you care about what happened there, it might as well be &quot;Remember Schenectady&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slogans and rallying cries work by invoking stories that the hearer cares about. If you don't know the story, or care about it, then the slogan will sound silly, no matter what it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you need to tell the story, make the reader care, and then create the rallying cry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T20:02:37.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2016-09-01T22:12:04.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I would much more prefer to post this as a comment, but reputation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Frankly, I wish I could get away with &amp;quot;it.&amp;quot; As in &amp;quot;it puts the lotion on its skin.&amp;quot; Creepy, right?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that you actually have a chance to get away with it. I got to this question after asking &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/q/342834/191293&quot;&gt;my own&lt;/a&gt; about usage of &amp;quot;it&amp;quot; to describe &amp;quot;contributor&amp;quot;, which is done by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MPL&lt;/a&gt; (section 1.1 for definition, sections 2.1, 2.3, 2.5 for usage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2.5. Representation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each Contributor represents that the Contributor believes &lt;strong&gt;its&lt;/strong&gt; Contributions are &lt;strong&gt;its&lt;/strong&gt; original creation(s) or &lt;strong&gt;it&lt;/strong&gt; has sufficient rights to grant the rights to &lt;strong&gt;its&lt;/strong&gt; Contributions conveyed by this License.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21323" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T22:26:52.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24442" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-02T02:41:56.480" Score="6" ViewCount="396" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the set up. You're reading a traditional fantasy. Something is attacking the land of the elves. At long last the invaders are discovered, and they are... intelligent rabbits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea isn't quite &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; far out, but it is similar in nature. Assuming you aren't writing a comedy, how could you pull something like that off while still maintaining the serious, epic, LotR feel you're going for? More importantly, &lt;strong&gt;how can you introduce something potentially laughable, and have the reader accept it as part of the story?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My ideas: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first I thought you should do it bit by bit. Find signs, tracks, rumors, that sort of thing. That would lessen the shock. The problem I see here is that doing so would increase the suspense, which could then result in a big let-down for the reader when the invaders aren't what he expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2019-01-08T12:02:20.330" Title="How to Introduce Something Potentially Laughable?" Tags="|style|novel|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24442" CreationDate="2016-09-02T06:11:42.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make it believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the fairies are small, they might well be threatened by animals harmless to humans. For example, mice do not find cats adorable, and thumbsized fairies probably wouldn't either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then cats are predators and would indeed eat small fairies, while rabbits (as far as I know) nibble on grass, so how could they threaten the life or stuff of fairies? Maybe they eat the grass-made houses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make the threat by rabbits (or whatever you have in your story) believable, take in the perspective of those threatened by it. If you write about rabbits from your human perspective, the rabbits munching the fairy huts will be laughable. But if you get yourself into the fairies and write how they experience this threat, the humor will be gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of pigeons. Many people love pigeons on the cities. They find them adorable and feed them. Now think about them from the perspective of city officials, who have to battle the effect of pigeon droppings on buildings and monuments, and the public health office, trying to contain the potential of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/pigeon.page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;human infection from pigeon droppings&lt;/a&gt;. You can tell that story in two ways: either you start with the parents-and-kids view and slowly shift to the view of the officials, taking your readers, who presumably start on the pigeons-are-adorable side, with you to the pigeons-as-problem side; or you start with the problem-battling mindset, focussed on the problem and leaving no room for the naive adoration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a more adult, action, mystery and suspense focussed rabbit-battling fairy story I would probably choose the latter; in a children's tale focussed on the wonder and strangeness, the shift from our world and views to the fantastic is common and I would probably employ that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your musings in the comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you conceive of fairies as human-like beings living basically human-like lives, then it is very plausible that they do not only have to deal with supernatural enemies. In fact they are no longer supernatural at all, but just a different species, and they will of course have to deal with all the everyday problems that all other species have to deal with as well, including their small grass huts getting eaten by rabbits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you coneive of fairies as supernatural beings, then humanizing them in that way is indeed breaking believability. Supernatural beings are not part of any biome. Trolls do not get bitten by insects, even though they live in the gnat infested forests of Scandinavia; selkies do not get eaten by orcas; and faries do not have bad hair days. These beings exist only in relation to human thoughts and emotions, not to the physical world, and any problems they might have are derived from this relationship. They may have to deal with sin or feel bothered by humans sleeping on their fairy hills, but there is (to my knowledge) not one single &lt;em&gt;traditional&lt;/em&gt; tale where a mole digs up such a hill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So be careful what you want your faries to be. Do you want to humanize them, as has been the fashion in recent fantasy? Or do you want to tell of them as the powerful mystery that they were once believed to be? You cannot have both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-02T06:27:10.223" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T06:27:10.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24430" CreationDate="2016-09-02T07:00:08.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Write it, read it, re-write it&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to take a very rational, constructionist approach to writing: think about what you want; write an outline; build the text. But writing does not work like that. Language is not something that can be mastered in a rational fashion; we express and understand language from the gut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The laws of grammar can be taught like traffic regulations: drive on the right side of the road; indicate that you want to turn; and so on. But try to teach someone to ride a bike. It is not something you can explain and they just follow your instructions. You show them. And they try. And after many tries, they suddenly stay on the bike and wobble along until they crash, or their parent catches them. And after a lot of wobbling, their sense of balance develops and they become able to look around and evade lamp posts. Then they can ride on the sidewalk. And after a few years, and in the company of their parents, they can begin to ride on a real street.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is how writing works. It is, to use a technical term, not declarative but &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;procedural knowledge&lt;/a&gt;. It is something that you &amp;quot;just know how to do&amp;quot;, but cannot explain. Which is why all the how-to books and Q&amp;amp;As won't help you to learn it, and only doing it will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as a reader, you already have a gut feeling for good writing. You do not know yet how to achieve that goodness in your own writing, but when you write and then – maybe after some time, to distance yourself – read it, you will immediately know if it is good and, if it is not, what went wrong and how to fix it. And in this feedback loop of writing and revision you will slowly develop the &amp;quot;balance&amp;quot; (as in riding a bike), the gut knowledge of how to write. And when you have got the knack of it, you will be unable to explain it to other aspiring writers. You'll tell them: Just try. It won't work for a long time, and then suddenly it will click and you won't know what you did differently, but for no apparent reason at all, it all just suddenly works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So just write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T07:00:08.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24442" CreationDate="2016-09-02T09:50:19.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; telling a humorous story, and your protagonists come across something which looks like it should be funny but ends up being deadly, then you have a Killer Rabbit situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear with me: In &lt;em&gt;Monty Python and the Holy Grail&lt;/em&gt;, the knights come across the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmu5sRIizdw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Killer Rabbit&lt;/a&gt; in the cave. They protest: &quot;It's just a harmless little bunny!&quot; But the rabbit flies out of the cave and attacks them savagely. Being Monty Python, of course, it's taken for laughs (&quot;Run away! Run away!&quot;), but three armored, armed knights &lt;em&gt;are killed&lt;/em&gt; in the charge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So play it as if it were real: your protagonists see the intelligent rabbits and snicker amongst themselves about &lt;em&gt;Oh look, the widdle bunnies, let's go talk to Mister Cottontail Fluffypants,&lt;/em&gt; and then the six-foot jackrabbit pulls out a pair of swords and lops the arms off the two guards sent to talk to her, and nobody's giggling any more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take your readers and your protagonists on the same journey. The MCs may or may not be tracking footprints, finding clues, whatever you'd normally do to set up an opponent. They come to the warren/camp/city and see huge angry-looking soldiers walking around wearing armor and looking irritated. Maybe you do the reveal from behind, so first we only see warriors, and weapons, and then one of the soldiers turns around... and it's a bunny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The readers will be laughing at the enormous bunnies, right up until they moment everyone realizes they aren't funny because they're genuinely dangerous. Your killer rabbit characters are &lt;em&gt;accustomed&lt;/em&gt; to being underestimated, and they use that to their advantage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T09:50:19.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24442" CreationDate="2016-09-02T10:36:00.710" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, if you say 'killer bunnies' it sounds funny, but everything can be creepy and be taken seriously, you just have to describe it right. I don't think it makes any difference whether you introduce them slowly or quickly, it just matters how you describe them and how you create the atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, creepy rabbit type creatures already have a precedent, so a little research into existing myths and legends might give you ideas on how to make them more threatening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a very unsettling rabbit type figure in Donnie Darko, and the Yoruba people in Nigeria have a Hare god (we have a very creepy artwork of it on our wall which isn't cute in the slightest). I would also recommend looking up Nanabozho (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanabozho&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanabozho&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I would avoid using the word rabbit, and don't even think about using the word bunny. Hare is better if you must use anything, but if it's a fantasy you could misspell it slightly so people know what you're on about but it feels kooky and wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary I would introduce it the way you would introduce anything else scary, and focus on atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T10:36:00.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24434" CreationDate="2016-09-02T15:13:18.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of two sources I would mine for inspiration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is political slogans. They have been used for centuries to unify people around key figures and ideas, but without the same sort of silliness of advertising slogans. Google can supply you with endless lists that could spark an idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't do it, I'd start brainstorming lines from choruses of popular songs, looking for something with a slogan-like quality that I could modify for the purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21329" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T15:13:18.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24402" CreationDate="2016-09-02T15:23:49.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your game is essentially a &quot;choose your own&quot; adventure game. I would play through several games of that type (choiceofgames.com has a goodly supply of these) and analyze several of them. The issue with this type of writing is that it isn't just one story in a linear direction, you have to have the story for a number of different branches and what ifs. Again, the gamedesign stack may have words of wisdom on this. I think you'll find you have to have a very good organization to what you are doing in order to map out the different pathways that your reader/player can take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T15:23:49.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24442" CreationDate="2016-09-02T16:06:59.793" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The classic, critically acclaimed novel &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watership_Down&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Watership Down&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is all about intelligent rabbits, and I don't recall it being a laugh riot.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point being, it isn't the premise, it's how you approach it.  What you haven't told us is why you, the author, are making a choice that you're personally having trouble taking seriously.  To continue with the rabbits example, is it because you want to explore rabbit social structure as extrapolated to intelligent entities?  Or because you want to evoke rabbit-like traits?  Or because you want them to be underestimated, or their enemies (or the reader) to be astounded?  &lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt; you have a valid reason for your approach, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; you explore it in the story, initial resistance on the part of the reader should diminish --for most people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to remember that any time you do speculative fiction, you're inevitably taking on concepts that a great many people find laughable.  There are people out there you would lose the moment you said &quot;land of the elves.&quot;  I, myself, have never been able to get past the fact that nearly everyone in the superhero genre is some overpowered lunk traipsing around in his underwear. That hasn't, however, stopped people from writing any number of successful and (and often deadly serious) books, comics and movies based around that same core conceit.  (Nor do they seem to have missed me from their audiences.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-09-02T16:13:45.530" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T16:13:45.530" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24423" CreationDate="2016-09-02T16:23:32.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have attended several (and run a few) poetry workshops. They were all about writing poetry -- not talking about writing poetry, not discussing approaches, but actually writing poetry. None of the things mentioned by Lauren Ipsum were mentioned unless they pertained to what had been written by someone in the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does depend on your audience and what they expect. Most of the workshops I have attended were for intermediate to expert writers. The workshops I have conducted have been for beginners and experts. I largely took what I had tried in the workshops I attended and used it with the participants in my sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T16:23:32.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24454" CreationDate="2016-09-02T16:51:36.533" Score="0" ViewCount="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning a series of fantasy novels which will be told in linear time with relatively small time jumps.  One novel in the collection, however must span several generations while keeping the same protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This novel will need to have several large time jumps and I'm worried about readability. I believe I have 3 options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Linear narrative with large time jumps (Resulting in several large gaps)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Linear narrative with much exposition to explain past events (Resulting in roughly 1/3 of novel being exposition or historical conversation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-linear narrative&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is which is generally regarded as easier for the reader to follow?&#xA;Also if I missed an option it'd be nice to know of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14967" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-09-02T19:47:04.040" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T20:41:33.863" Title="Readability for narrative type with respect to time" Tags="|novel|narrative|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21977" CreationDate="2016-09-02T17:42:11.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may have had a chance to look at the book by now, but just in case... The books are put out by Writer's Digest and there are a series of them put out annually (Poet's Market, Writer's Market, and others). These list journals, publishers, contests, conferences, etc. and their information as they pertain to a writer trying to market his or her work. As an editor, you might find useful the section on conferences, in case there are any that provide for a range of attendees and not only writing workshops. You might find contact names at various publishers, but I can't help but think you'd be better off looking at resources that discuss the whole thing from the perspective of the publisher. Unless, I'm completely misinterpreting what you are trying to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T17:42:11.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24452" CreationDate="2016-09-02T19:51:58.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Option 1 will probably be easiest. Create a Part or Section break and give it a name: Part II, Rivendell, The War. You indicate the passage of time with some kind of identifying text at the beginning of the chapter (Ten Years Later) or within the name itself (After the War), or just have the character muse that it had been five years since some event at the end of the previous chapter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gaps are okay. In graphic design, we often say &quot;Don't be afraid of white space. The design needs to breathe.&quot; Same here with the narrative. You don't need to cover every minute of every day. It's fine to jump ahead of the quiet parts to get to the meat of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T19:51:58.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24452" CreationDate="2016-09-02T20:41:33.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are telling a story, not a history. There are times in the history of the character when the arc of the story is not progressing. That really does not matter as long as the story arc continues smoothly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the time gap will seem disconcerting is when it creates a story gap. (The same would be true if you did not jump ahead when the story arc was not progressing. There would be action without story movement, and that would confuse the reader.) Trying to fix the time gap is probably going to create a story gap. If you absolutely need to fill in the history, do it briefly. But the real key is to make sure that you pick up again at the point where the story picks up again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, don't focus on historical continuity. Focus on story continuity. If there are time gaps in story continuity, that really does not matter. In fact, if you read with attention to this, I think you will find that it happens all the time in novels, often without you really registering it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T20:41:33.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24459" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-03T06:31:43.837" Score="1" ViewCount="500" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I was trying to write about creatures that would vomit maggots, and then a different creature would lick it back up and vomit it out again to keep the meal going around. There was loads of maggots everywhere, and these huge flying beasts, these weird tentacle creatures. It was gross.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could barely write that synopsis without retching. Earlier, while actually trying to write about that, I had to rush to the toilet because I knew I would vomit, and I actually did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm vomiting and retching as I write about this, does that mean my reader will too? Is it even a good idea to write about something which is going to make me spew sick all over my toilet seat? Are there any tactics to help me get through these 2 chapters which are really gross?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="25517" LastEditDate="2019-05-27T10:23:20.110" LastActivityDate="2019-05-27T10:23:20.110" Title="Am I just a coward, or will my reader be a coward too?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|fantasy|description|monsters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24459" CreationDate="2016-09-03T09:48:06.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question, I gather, is generally whether or not you should be writing gross content if you think readers will be liable to throw up, no? Well, not every reader is going to be &lt;em&gt;as&lt;/em&gt; sickened by your story as you were. Take me for example: reading that synopsis didn't even make me cringe. Yes, it's repulsive, but if I was reading your book, that scenario you described would be a mere &quot;ew&quot; moment, and not something I would be hit very hard by. In short, you should base your decision on the continuation of this story wholly on whether or not you are physically and mentally capable of bringing it into the world, instead on the chance that the content will make readers vomit- yes, certain ones &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; actually be running for the toilet, but others will just cringe and continue. Readers of even the same genre still &lt;em&gt;greatly&lt;/em&gt; vary.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Also, bear in mind that there are many fans of things like your story- whatever the genre - and gory horror that are such hardcore fans that they'll still read\watch\play it even if it makes them- literally- sick. Best wishes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21185" LastEditorUserId="21185" LastEditDate="2016-10-21T11:42:13.973" LastActivityDate="2016-10-21T11:42:13.973" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24403" CreationDate="2016-09-03T14:47:04.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ommwriter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;oomwriter&lt;/a&gt;. It's not free, but it's super cheap at just $8.76, and it's very much worth the expense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21332" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2021-02-24T11:40:05.727" LastActivityDate="2021-02-24T11:40:05.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24436" CreationDate="2016-09-03T18:36:33.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read a few old books in my native language. From my experience, books written in late eighteenth century language are generally understandable, maybe with a few notes for some words. Books written in sixtheenth century language are understandable, but with a lot of notes. You definitely don't want a lot of notes, that will just annoy the reader. Words that are even older (you suggest early sixteenth century) are generally very hard to recognize, you should avoid them in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use a few things, for example, in English, you could replace &quot;you&quot; by &quot;thou&quot; sometimes. This has been used in a few books, for example, in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Shadows&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;King of Shadows&lt;/a&gt; (Susan Cooper, 1999). I don't know whether there exist similiar useable substitutions in Portugese, as I don't speak that language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21163" LastActivityDate="2016-09-03T18:36:33.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24465" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24467" CreationDate="2016-09-03T20:15:29.640" Score="4" ViewCount="595" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do realize that this is a very generic question, and I apologize if it doesn't meet the requirements of this forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have plenty of ideas for stories and I come up with new ones all the time, which always results in me starting off very ambitiously creating a story world, characters, the main storyline etc. But I'm never able to finish it before I get a new idea which I feel like I have to write down before I forget it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: What are some key elements to finishing writing a story. (By finishing I mean having a beginning, middle and end. Finishing touches are not included.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21342" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T03:13:56.873" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T03:13:56.873" Title="How to finish a story?" Tags="|novel|ideas|psychology-of-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24459" CreationDate="2016-09-03T20:19:28.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is your aim in writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want your book to be a bestselling success, then you better delete that scene. The majority of people (as far as I can tell) prefer not to be sickened by their entertainment. Writing content like that will forever damn your book to a minority readership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, you write to indulge in your vomit fetish (for apparently you enjoy both the description and the actual throwing up, or you would stop writing it), that is, if you write for yourself, then by all means go ahead. There certainly is some interest in such material, as can be seen, for example, from the prevalence of porn that features vomiting (don't do a Google image search on that after a meal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a more general level, &lt;strong&gt;I don't think that the question is about courage, but about story&lt;/strong&gt;. As a writer, you are not working on overcoming your disgust, but telling a story. Everything in your writing must submit to that goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Does it forward the story? Then it needs to be told.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it not forward the story? Then it needs to be deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Courage can be found when a writer has a chance to educate the public by telling a truth the telling or publication of which will be painful to him or her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I guess I am seeing here, is a writer who lets himself get carried away. That's okay. Some of us like to write pages of steamy sex into our young adult romances, others go crazy with worldbuilding. But in the end it must all go. The porn sex becomes a chaste kiss, and the elaborate world is condensed to some hints here and there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I recommend is that you write whatever you like at the moment. Then, when you are finished, put your story in a drawer and let it rest for a few weeks or months. And then read it. You will have a clear feeling of whether this scene blends into your novel harmoniously or whether it sticks our like acne and needs to be healed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-03T20:27:28.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24465" CreationDate="2016-09-03T20:34:20.043" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are a discovery writer, then just write your story until you hit the end. If you have ideas for other stories, note them down, and then return to writing the story at hand. You will know when the beginning that you set out from wraps up and completes from your gut feeling of completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are an outliner, then figure out what the story is about. What is, to use an example, the mystery that needs to be solved? What is the goal that the hero tries to achieve? The end will be, when the hero achieves his goal or finally fails forever. The end will be, when the murderer is caught, the riddle solved, the world saved, the lovers married. I don't know what you are writing about, but if you are not just meandering through your imagination but are actually telling a &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt;, then the end to that story is implicitly contained in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I understand you correctly, you are not actually writing anything, just playing with your ideas. You need to decide on one and work on it. If you cannot do that, then you are not a writer but a dreamer. Writing, like all other occupations, needs a certain focus and discipline. If you cannot control your attention to stay focussed on one task, then you cannot succeed at that task. And no amount of advice for writers is going to help you, because then the problem is not in a lack of craft but in either your attitude or your ability to focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-03T20:40:45.893" LastActivityDate="2016-09-03T20:40:45.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24469" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-04T12:06:44.710" Score="13" ViewCount="3457" Body="&lt;p&gt;In genre fiction, the antagonist is usually either known throughout the book or revealed before the end, so that protagonist and antagonist can battle it out during climax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am wondering is, how can a story work out, if the antagonist remains unknown? That is, the protagonist works towards his goal against an opposed force, the source of which is never revealed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of the &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; without anyone knowing of Sauron and what he wants. The hobbits and Gandalf would be unable to form a coherent plan. They wouldn't know the goal of their opponent, his weakness, the purpose of his actions, the relationship between him and the Ring. They would flee the Nazgul, seek information and allies, just as they do in Tolkien's novel, but they would have to figure out a solution by trial and error. Maybe they would come to the conclusion that they have to destroy the Ring, and maybe they would manage to do it in the right manner, but all the indication they got of their success would be the letting off of Saurons attacks. Much like the draft stills once you close the window, but you never get to see the source of the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would one pull that off? How could that be an interesting and satisfying read despite the lacking climactic battle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And more to the point: What story would we tell? In &lt;em&gt;The Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; there is a conflict between two identifiable forces. There are many interpretations, e.g. that Sauron and his forces represent Nazi Germany, or industrialization, or just plain Evil, but despite the final meaning being open, the two forces are unmistakeable and the story tells of their conflict. In a story without antagonist, there would be no conflict, as a conflict needs two or more goals to be pitted against each other. In a story without antagonist, there would be no opposing goal. Even the protagonist does not have a veritable goal except to end the disruption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; without an antagonist would lose both the Lord (the antagonist) and the Ring (the goal of the antagonist) from its title and with it the essence of its story. It would no longer be a story of two opposing forces, but a story of – what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it would be a story of whatever goes on inside the heroes. It would be a psychological novel. Or it would be a story of a society that has to deal with desaster. It would be a social or political novel. How could it remain fantasy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, are there examples of novels (or films) where the antagonist remains unknown, so that I could look at a working example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I ask this question is that I am always dissapointed when the antagonist is revealed in a horror or fantasy novel. When, as a teenager, I watched the old black-and-white Fankenstein movie, there was a strong sense of mystery and suspense, until Boris Karloff appeard. Immediately the wonder of the movie was lost. Special effects have gotten better, but still the same happens to me: as soon as I see the Alien, it appears banal and unterrifying and – as if the movie makers felt the same way – the movie turns from suspense to action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always wondered how you can uphold the mystery. How the supernatural, the terrible, the strange, can remain what they are. And I think the only way is by not revealing them, by having them remain unknown and unknowable (which, I believe, is one reason the judaeo-christian God is such a powerful idea).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-05T07:56:34.100" LastActivityDate="2022-06-04T15:41:39.353" Title="Antagonist that remains unknown" Tags="|plot|structure|antagonist|climax|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24469" CreationDate="2016-09-04T17:32:25.677" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not every novel has an antagonist. Basic story structure is about desire and the things that frustrate desire. The thing that frustrates desire does not have to be a person -- an antagonist. In many cases, what frustrates the protagonist is their own pride or an anonymous social structure. Who is the antagonist in Pride and Prejudice (other than the titular emotions), Cannery Row, Brideshead Revisited, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, or Death Comes for the Archbishop? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the reveal of the antagonist, in genre fiction particularly, proves disappointing (which I agree it often does) because it is at that point the we realize that the protagonist is not going to be pushed the limit, and particularly not to the great moral challenge which I believe is the heart of all stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, every hero's greatest antagonist is their own weakness. The greatest obstacle they must overcome is within themselves. Some device is needed to bring them to that point, but if the villain does not live up to the task of bringing them there, they are a disappointing villain. The author's real mistake, though, was probably in the penning of the hero rather than the villain. The villain disapoints because the hero does not have a satisfying story arc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-09-05T12:17:28.263" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T12:17:28.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24472" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-04T20:00:12.527" Score="5" ViewCount="1735" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm based in the USA.  I wrote a book in the Russian language.  My book had already been published in Russia - 500 paper copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I would like to republish my book in a digital format and as an audio book and list it for sale on a number of online stores, such as Ozon, B&amp;amp;N, Bookland, Amazon, Kobo, Apple, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some kind of agency that could help me accomplish this?  I don't need my book to be translated to any other language, at least for now.  Working with Russian agencies based in Russia is difficult due to the incompatibility of money transfer services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21351" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T05:37:49.703" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T05:37:49.703" Title="Can I publish my book in the Russian language with advertising and selling online?" Tags="|publishing|translation|international|audiobook|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24469" CreationDate="2016-09-05T02:06:40.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a case of leaving unanswered questions, or a sense of mystery in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite possible for this to happen. I recall that the books &lt;em&gt;A Series of Unfortunate Events&lt;/em&gt; quite often left that sense of mystery, pretty much right up to the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of an individualized antagonist, it is also possible to accomplish. The cunning and nefarious mastermind who always escapes, leaving behind little evidence, would be a prime example. Agents may be caught and unmasked, plots upset, plans foiled... but if the villain always gets away and remains mysterious, yes, it can be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cartoon Inspector Gadget also toyed with this idea. You never see the face of the villain, he always gets away. Technically though the villain is &quot;known&quot;, at least to the audience, in that example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there needs to be a mechanism to reveal information, and also hallmark the acts of the villain, for example, a trademark of some kind as a symbol denoting that &quot;the villain was here&quot;; there is no reason that the villain HAS to be revealed, or ever even shown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19658" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T02:06:40.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24474" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-05T05:10:26.010" Score="0" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;Laying in a pool of vomit at one o clock on a tuesday morning in the room of a lousy hotel room was not a situation peter ever thought hed find himself in. But as fate would have it he lay there lifeless as roadkill on the damp carpented floor of the sleazy hotel that reeked of alcohol and cheap cigareets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21358" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T07:51:33.407" Title="I want some critique on my writing" Tags="|fiction|style|novel|criticism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2016-09-05T22:32:42.940" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24465" CreationDate="2016-09-05T05:13:05.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you start writing a story, don't stop. If you get brilliant ideas, write them down for later. But always finish your stuff, even if it's absolute garbage. Finish it and then get on to a new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21358" LastEditorUserId="7986" LastEditDate="2016-09-06T00:26:25.927" LastActivityDate="2016-09-06T00:26:25.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24474" CreationDate="2016-09-05T07:51:33.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Critiques are off topic here. But I think something may be learned here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first sentence is too long. When I come to &quot;in the room of ...&quot;, I feel that I want the sentence to wrap up and not extend itself futher. Reading on, &quot;the lousy hotel room&quot; is repeated in &quot;the sleazy hotel&quot;. So there are two reasons to cut that from the first sentence. &quot;Laying&quot; is repeated also, so find a different verb here or in the first sentence. Also, your spelling is wrong (shoud be &quot;lying&quot;, &quot;he'd&quot;, &quot;o'clock&quot;, &quot;Tuesday&quot;). Finally, is the floor damp or does the hotel reek of alcohol and cigarettes? Both, but both is too much for one sentence. So turn the smell into a new sentence, if possible not a purely descriptive one, but one that drives on the action. (And what is a &quot;carpented floor&quot;? Did you mean a carpet or parquet?) Oh, and a &quot;pool of vomit&quot; is not damp. It seems to me you are not actually describing a scene, but simply throwing together stereotypic phrases that do not properly fit. First, come up with a clear mental image, then describe it, and do not get carried away by the sound of the words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Passing out in a pool of vomit at one o'clock on a Tuesday morning was not a situation Peter ever thought he'd find himself in. But as fate would have it, there he lay, on the floor of a sleazy hotel room, lifeless as roadkill and unperturbed by the stink of cigarettes and alcohol that the old man breathed into his nose, thinking him dead and trying to bring him back to life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T07:51:33.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24469" CreationDate="2016-09-05T09:03:41.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you looked into Kafka's work, espcially Metamorphosis and The Trial? I think there's an adjective for what you try to achieve, and it's &quot;kafkaesque&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from that, I'm not sure how satisfying a story could be without a clearly defined antagonistic force (or one that is so well hidden it is hard to point a finger at it). As you point out yourself, stories are driven by conflict. The antagonist is the embodyment of the mechanism, force, literal person that tries to keep the protagonist from reaching its goal. If the reader doesn't know the antagonist -- I don't think the protagonist needs to know it(1) --, he will have a lot of trouble following the story. The best example I can think of is Chris Nolan's movie Inception: Cobb has a clear goal almost from the start of the movie. His antagonist are the &quot;projections&quot; of Fisher's mind -- subconscious defensive systems that try to keep intruders out of Fisher's head. When they sense that something is messing with Fisher's thoughts, they attack. While this is a great antagonist and makes a lot of sense in the framework of Inception, &lt;em&gt;I didn't get it when I first saw the movie&lt;/em&gt;. The result was this: I saw a lot of battling and a lot of opposition to Cobb's goal, but I didn't get where that was coming from. I was confused. I enjoyed the movie enough to watch it again and get the whole concept of projections, but when I left the cinema, I was kind of dissatisfied. I wouldn't be surprised if there's people out there, who put Kafka's Trial down for the exact same reason. Not having an antagonist &lt;em&gt;that the reader can understand and pin down&lt;/em&gt; leaves us confused. We might be aware of what the story is about, but we don't understand why the protagonist can't reach his goals. At some point, we get frustrated -- and might even stop reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;t;dr&lt;/strong&gt;: While it's not necessary that the protaganist is aware of the antagonist force, the reader should know it, even if it's abstract. Otherwise, s/he might have difficulties following the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: Another thought: What if Fate is the antagonistic force? Fate is so abstract we can hardly grasp it. Yet, an entire school of Greek dramatists did nothing but write dramas about how Fate is inevitable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.2.S.: Concerning fantasy and horror: Yes, horror, for me, too, works best if I don't know what's going on. (Think of Stranger Things. At sime point, the Demogorgon just stopped being scary, because it was so unrealistic, and at that point, the whole series lost its appeal to me.) &lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, if I still don't get it at the end of the movie, I might have been scared like never before in my life, but I won't take any satisfaction from the experience. Rather, I'd be pretty grumpy, because I have suffered for no apparent reason (and probably won't be able to sleep for a week because I can't figure out why all the horror happened, and could it happen to me?). While this happens in real life, I don't think this is what we expect from storytelling. When I read a book or watch a movie, I want to take some emotional message from it, such as: Growing up is messy. Some marriages can't be fixed. Dropping out of college is not the end of the world. Family supports you, even if you're not a beauty queen. If I don't get this message, I might have been entertained (or scared), but the story probably won't stay with me. (Yes, I'm aware that's personal taste.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Example: A coming of age story. The story goal is for the antagonist to grow up. For the protagonist, it is very unlikely that s/he will ever be consciosuly aware of an antagonist, because s/he doesn't set out to &quot;grow up&quot;. Nobody does. It's something that happens to you, and usually you don't even know what being &quot;grown up&quot; means until you realize that you're part of a social structure and cannot continue to live an insular life. The reader, on the other hand, is very aware of the antagonistic force -- say, selfishness and unawareness of others, innocence maybe, however you define that or &quot;childhood&quot; in general, as opposed to being &quot;grown up&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A beautiful example is Hirokazu Kore-Eda's movie I wish (Kiseki) that reminded me a lot of the Stephen King adaption Stand by me. It centers on Koichi, a 12-year-old that wants to reunite his broken-up family. When he hears that two bullet trains passing each other at full speed for the first time grant a wish to the person who sees it, he sets out with a few friends to watch this magical moment. His wish is: Let the volcano Sakurajima next to my new village errupt really badly so that nobody can live there anymore. Then, he thinks, his mother will go back to his father in Osaka and he can be with his entire family again. It's a very selfish wish but something that a child is apt to do. Maybe you can guess how the movie ends. (It's really evident from the beginning, but still so beautiful to watch.) -- So, in Kiseki, what's the antagonist? Sure, Koichi encounters trouble: He loses faith, his younger brother is not really on board with his plan, he doesn't have the money to buy train tickets, the kids don't know where to spend the night. That's all problems, but not really the antagonist. The antagonist is Koichi's wish that cannot be granted, not even by a mircale. He suffers from his longing for his reunited family and must accept that his life has changed. Once he has achieved that, the movie is over. BUT: Koichi doesn't know that. And yet, the movie works -- because the audience knows the source of the conflict.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T09:03:41.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24469" CreationDate="2016-09-05T10:19:53.263" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with not putting a name or face to an antagonist is that you're not allowing the reader to feel as if the protagonist is achieving anything. If the antagonist is defeated without ever being revealed, then it strips the feeling of accomplishment and justice being served to the evildoer who deserves it. If this is the effect you're trying to achieve then that's great, but it's very difficult to get a feeling of accomplishment when you're not sure what it is that you've accomplished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a definite person or organization that is the antagonist in your story, then your protagonist will want to put a name or face to them, that is what humans do. We need to try to know or understand what we are facing or it is much more difficult to overcome it. So whilst the enemy might be Joe, CEO of the Illumninati, the protagonist may not know that particular person, but will likely still understand that they are facing the Illuminati as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the protagonist cannot put a name or face to their enemy, let's use your example of Sauron, then the antagonist in their story will not be Sauron to them. It will be Saruman, or Gothmog, or any other lieutenant that they know or face. If Sauron is not known to them, then he would not be their enemy, they would instead name the person they understand to be in charge of the evil in Middle Earth as their ultimate opponent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem usually in fiction with making the reveal of the villain is that the villain in person is not the thing to be afraid of. It's usually their influence over others, or their power to convince others to do evil, that is their real strength. Whilst Hitler was the ultimate enemy of the Allies in World War 2, I doubt anyone would have been overly scared to take him on 1-on-1 for a chance to end the war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when the heroes meet the villain in person, the reader understands that the biggest threat is already over. They have usually overcome much more difficult obstacles in order just to face their opponent, so the actual final showdown is less of a climax than beating their true difficulty was, which is the villain's command of every obstacle and enemy that the heroes have faced so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sauron is actually probably the best example of what you are looking for that I can think of in fiction: They know who he is so can put a name to their ultimate enemy. He is incredibly powerful, but his power comes from the fear and control he has over his minions. At the climax of the story, that is what is overcome, as the company face off against his army that he has built through fear of his power, whilst Frodo literally fights to overcome the influence of the Ring in the final moments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T10:19:53.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="902" CreationDate="2016-09-05T14:12:53.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are an infinite number of plots. The claim is that there is a limited number of &lt;em&gt;types&lt;/em&gt; of plots. This list that Aaron Digulla quotes is a list of &lt;em&gt;types&lt;/em&gt; of plots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being an orderly species and liking simple answers as we do, we like to take anything complex and divide it into parts to help us understand it better. This means finding something that a subset of the objects we are looking at have in common, calling it a type, and continuing until there are no more instances left. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A truly rigorous type system would have no overlaps (nothing could be of more than one type) and nothing, by the very nature of the type system itself, could ever not be of any of the types. Coming up with a type system that rigorous is very difficult and arguably impossible in most cases. Most actual type systems fake the property of being all inclusive by including a category that is a tacit &quot;everything else&quot;. I'd say that ascension and descension fulfil that role in this typology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you put an &quot;everything else&quot; category in your type system, you make it impossible for there to be anything that does not fit the type system. But this is fundamentally a cheat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the thing is, no such type system is an objective truth. It is an intellectual convenience. It may be useful, but it is not definitive. Someone else can some along and make a type system with more of fewer types or types based on different properties, and as long as they include an implicit &quot;everything else&quot; category, their system too will be logically complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So can there be a plot that does not fit in this type system for plots? No? Does that tell us anything? No, because the catch-all categories assure that everything will always fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T14:12:53.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24465" CreationDate="2016-09-06T01:18:57.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took him out back and I shot him. It didn't make me feel bad really. I didn't even think twice even as the police completely exonerated for any involvement in the murder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I waved.&#xA;The detective waved back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went back inside, switched on the Television, grabbed a cold one from the fridge and a chilled glass from the freezer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That beer went down real good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-09-06T01:18:57.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19019" CreationDate="2016-09-06T05:12:46.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used my Psion 5MX on long trips to other countries (Europe, Africa, South America) and wrote entire chapters of some of my books on it. Loved the (average for me) 28-hour battery life, plus the fact that instead of looking for a place to plug in a charger, I would just pop out the 2 AA batteries and replace them and keep going. Once my batteries went dead on a long flight, and remembered the external flash for my camera used AA's. Solved my problem. Plus the advantage of being an easy fit for an inside coat pocket. Alas, my screen cable broke. (I see the cable is now available on Ebay. Maybe I will try to fix it.) I replaced it with an HP Jornada 720, which I also love, though the battery is around 8-9 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Steve, central Mexico&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21367" LastActivityDate="2016-09-06T05:12:46.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19019" CreationDate="2016-09-06T09:35:04.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is certainly possible. See these two news stories:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/first-book-ever-written-using-mobile-phone-is-published-52774982.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;prnewswire.com /&#xA;first-book-ever-written-using-mobile-phone-is-published&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/7598842/Commuter-who-wrote-fantasy-novel-on-his-phone-on-verge-of-multi-million-dollar-movie-deal.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;telegraph.co.uk /&#xA;Commuter-who-wrote-fantasy-novel-on-his-phone-on-verge-of-multi-million-dollar-movie-deal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall a third story about a science fiction novel written by a UK author on an underground train in London, over a course of several months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it depends how desperate for time you are, and how devoted you are to your story. (Or how bored you get on the train.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just be sure to take regular backups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="804" LastActivityDate="2016-09-06T09:35:04.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24486" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-06T15:12:10.503" Score="3" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a series of novels and it didn't take long into writing the first one that I realized the need to do some more outlining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how complete does my outline need to be before I start writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got my first two novels outlined pretty well and just rough outlines of the next 3.  The first novel does have a few minor gaps in my outline but I'm wondering if I should deal with those when they come up in the writing or complete the outline before starting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14967" LastActivityDate="2020-09-26T16:02:24.997" Title="How much outlining is needed?" Tags="|novel|outline|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24486" CreationDate="2016-09-06T16:27:41.063" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no one answer to this because everyone writes differently. Some people have to outline every beat in every scene; some are complete pantsers. Every book is different too; some stories need a lot of outlining and some fall into place with broad strokes. Move forward, and if you're finding yourself bogged down or meandering, back up and try some outlining to see if it helps get you unstuck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-06T16:27:41.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24486" CreationDate="2016-09-06T18:59:22.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is needed is a definite story shape. Stories are not merely a sequence of incidents. There is a definite progression. The protagonist has a desire. That desire is frustrated. The protagonist act to achieve their desire and is rebuffed. They try again and are rebuffed again. Repeat as necessary until the protagonist comes to the final attempt which brings them to the limit of their ability and to a moral crisis. They then either succeed or fail. (This is based on Robert McKee's &lt;em&gt;Story&lt;/em&gt;. There may be other ways of expressing story shape, or possibly other story shapes, but the point is, stories have a shape. At minimum, there is a challenge, a crisis, and a resolution.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story will meander if it does not have a good story shape. An outline will not help unless the outline expresses a story shape. I suspect that some writers start out with a strong sense of the story shape in their heads, while others perhaps just start with a character or a setting and set out to discover the challenge, the crisis, and the resolution. For some an outline may be a way of mapping story shape. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what role an outline may play, and how extensive it may need to be, and when it needs to be created, really depend on the role it plays in the author's quest to discover the shape of their story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-06T18:59:22.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24489" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-06T22:45:26.243" Score="4" ViewCount="361" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a singular form for the ideas behind the words 'them' and 'they'? You have 'he', 'she', and 'they' (which often implies more than one person, but can imply one). In another tense you have, 'him', 'her' and 'them' (which again implies both a single individual AND a group).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I go on, I'm asking in Writers SE and not English Usage SE, because I don't mind what language the solution is in. I also feel Writers SE may be more aware of other conventions or phrases for what I'm after, maybe some writer or even entire language has already had this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to write a non gender-identifying 'prophecy' about an individual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to write 'he' or 'she' as I want to keep the gender underwraps. I could use 'they', but I want to specifically indicate a single Individual* rather than a group**.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also like to be able to mention non-specifc groups at the same time as the individual. A prophecy that goes...''&lt;em&gt;and they decided that they need to get together with them&lt;/em&gt;''... (1 single and two groups, or is that 2 singles and one group, or wait is that 1 individual mentioned twice and one group?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also like to mention specifically gender-mentioned individuals (without actually naming them) alongside my unspecified individual. A prophecy that goes...&quot;*He married her, much to the joy and celebration of 'them**'. After X years had an argument with 'them*'. 'They**' were not Impressed and kill him/her*&quot; is kindof ambigious and confusing (to write and to read, if I hadn't put in some asterisks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realise prophecy is meant to be ambigious. But...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd still like myself, the readers and the characters to be able to sort of follow the gist. Yes, I'd like to be ambigious but not so ambigious that &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; can't even decipher the prophecies 2 months after I've written them, without using a cheatsheet!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any known single (or maybe two-part) word that implies a gender neutral individual person? Maybe some writing convention I haven't come across. I'm not too fussed on the language. My story is set a long long time from now and would theoretically be in another language (although the reader would be reading an English 'translation'). As long as I will be able to explain the concept of the word in my text. I can have the word come across as 'didn't translate'/'no English equivalent'...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried just making something up myself, I don't think with much luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best I could come up with was combining, 'he', 'she', and 'them' to get 'shem'. I'm not too happy with it. Or should I just pick a random word or group of letters? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19585" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-09-07T13:09:30.483" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T18:44:16.323" Title="Phrasing a prophecy to avoid specifying gender or number" Tags="|fantasy|word-choice|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19019" CreationDate="2016-09-07T06:04:50.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I bought a Psion 5mx three years ago for exactly the same reason. And also because I am a fan of vintage palm PCs. But it seems mine was not in a great condition. I felt malfunctions and once even got my whole drive reset (I did not save my data on a storage card so it was lost and I was very frustrated.) It was also very hard sending everything to the normal PC. And what I found most disappointing I could not write in Bulgarian with it - no language support than its natively installed. Otherwise it was fun using it. I even planned learning how to program on it. But I got mine really cheap. Now I see on ebay they are quite expensive and I don't think it's worth all that money. I think I'd rather use pen and paper if I want something for creative writing :D I also felt very well with my ultrabook with SSD - it is light, fast and battery holds for 4-5 hours on Ubuntu and more on Windows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T06:04:50.470" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24489" CreationDate="2016-09-07T07:04:05.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually the solution to what you are asking should be your creative achievement!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George Perec wrote a novel without the letter &quot;e&quot;. He didn't ask others how to do it and then just followed their advice. He found out how he could do it. It was his creative genious that made that novel possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you lack the will to experiment and find the solution, or if, after much experimentation, you cannot find a solution, then you are not meant to write this story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some suggestions, nevertheless:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write in first person perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I sat there thinking, what gender am I?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write in first person, you never have to disclose the sex or gender of the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid pronouns altogether. There are many ways to do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the uninflected or imperative form of the verb:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tired. Get up. Yes, get up. Good. Now walk over and press the buttion. No. No. That is wrong. But do it, nevertheless. Do not care what is right or wrong. Good. Yes. Press. Well done. Now go back. Sit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use (non-gendered) names. Here is the beginning of &lt;em&gt;To Kill a Mockingbird:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When Whorl was nearly thirteen, my sibling got an arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Whorl's fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, Whorl was seldom self-conscious about the injury. Whorl's left arm was somewhat shorter than the right; when Whorl stood or walked, the back of Whorl's hand was at right angles to the body, the thumb parallel to the thigh. Whorl couldn't have cared less, so long as Whorl could pass and punt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course simply replacing pronouns by names in an existing text will create an odd effect, but if you adapt your writing to this, you can avoid some of the oddity. Also note, that I replaced some of the possessive pronouns by &quot;the&quot; (e.g. &quot;his arm&quot; becomes &quot;the arm&quot;). I could also have used the continuous form in some places (e.g. turning &quot;when he stood or walked&quot; into &quot;standing and walking&quot;). And I deleted the name in one place without replacing it by anything (so that &quot;my brother Jem&quot; becomes &quot;my brother&quot; or, to take the gender out of that noun also, &quot;my sibling&quot;). I just wanted this to be an example for replacing by names, so I left many of the names-for-pronouns in place, but you can of course combine all the options to make each single replacement or avoidance less jarring.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are many more options, but now it's your turn and you need to just sit down and experiment and find out how you can achieve the effect you want. I'm sure it can be done. But I'm also sure that the result will by necessity sound strange to our ears, because signifying gender is such an essential part of our culture and language, that you will have to create a new way of handling language – and that cannot be done without people stumbling over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T07:04:05.867" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24469" CreationDate="2016-09-07T07:24:46.253" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it was Mark Twain who said, &quot;Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What your question describes is what a lot of real life is like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very often, especially in politics and medicine, the problem people think they have to solve (and who/what is to &quot;blame&quot;) is really just a symptom of some much deeper issue which is unknown because of ignorance, deception, or even just from having a world-view/paradigm that isn't powerful enough to encompass the true situation. Maybe it's something which hasn't been discovered yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are all to some extent in this position. Nobody knows everything. Nobody consciously understands everything that makes them who they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People just know something is wrong and that something has to be done about it. Something is better than nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within this limitation, there are still heroes, villains, and great stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a hero wins &quot;the battle&quot;, a great deed has been done, but if what is gained doesn't solve the underlying problem, then &quot;the war&quot; remains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't make the story less interesting, less compelling, or even less true. It doesn't invalidate all the transformations the hero underwent in achieving his/her goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's just more like real life where progress is incremental rather than absolute. And lots of people act with the best intentions, but flawed understandings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happily ever after doesn't exist in the real world. We have to deal with things being better or worse than they were before we acted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simplistic example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A person becomes ill and goes through a healing journey and becomes much better (possibly including moving away from the place where they got sick), but never finds out that the reason they got ill was the factory upstream dumping pollution into the water. Beyond that, they never find out who made the decisions which caused the dumping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are stories like this in the news all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's more satisfying if the conflict is totally solved, but it's more realistic if it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone can be just as heroic fighting the wrong problem as they would be fighting the right one. It just tends to be more tragic if the reader realizes it was the wrong problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conspiracy theories and stories built upon them often feature unknown villains or vaguely defined ones who never come into view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're compelling because they make us question our views and, even if the real villain is never confronted, defeated, or even identified, some bad things that the villain originated do come into view and may be overcome or stopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T07:24:46.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24486" CreationDate="2016-09-07T07:32:58.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to expand on Lauren Ipsum's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are different, yes, and some people like to outline, while others dislike to outline. The latter are often called &quot;discovery writers&quot;, because they need the experience of discovering things while they write to keep them motivated. Plotting the story beforehand will give them the feeling that the story has already been told, that everything is known about it, and they will find themselves uninterested and unable to make the effort to write following that same path again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story is something that you learn. Which is why reading is helpful in writing. A person who reads and writes a lot will eventually develop a &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; for how a story is structured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the beginning they will have to consciously think about and plan their plot, of if they don't they will find themselves lost and stumble into plot hole after plot hole. But with each story they read, this structure becomes more and more ingrained, and with every story they write, they become more and more sure of this &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;procedural knowledge&lt;/a&gt; and better able to subconsciously produce this structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And eventually they will no longer need to plot, because each seed of a story idea will always contain this structure and unfold &lt;em&gt;just right&lt;/em&gt; in writing, even without an outline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a few days ago I sat down to analyze the first draft for a novel I had written. I had written it in discovery style: I had begun with the idea of the first scene, without knowing anything else about what story I would write, and then simply followed my protagonist from there, until the story came to an end. I am currently rewriting that novel, so to intensify and emphasize the inherent structure, I took a book explaining the schema for the plot points in a three-act structure and went through my draft to identify those plot points. I had never before studied the details of the three-act struture, and while I knew what it was and what plot points were, I had never tried to understand it in a manner that would enable me to apply it to my writing. This was the first time I actually really looked at that structure, and I was surprised to find it reflected in the structure of my draft exactly. All the plot points were there, the division into three acts was obviously apparent, and the character arcs had precisely the increasing-amplitude up-and-down curve that the theory prescribed. I had written a three-act structure without having learned it! So, apparently, I &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt; learned it, but not through a how-to-write book, but from reading, watching movies, and many failed attempts at writing a novel or screenplay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite all this, it seems to me – from many interviews with writers and my own experience – that the smoothest way to write is a combination of outlining and discovery. Develop your idea as much as necessary, and leave yourself as much space for discovery as possible. This will help you avoid lengthy and painful rewriting, and at the same time it will make writing fun and exciting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly how much outlining is ideal will mostly depend on the kind of story you write. A contemporary romance does not need much outlining, as the appeal lies in the interaction of the characters. A detective novel will need a lot of planning, because the narrative structure needs to integrated with the logical system of clues and discoveries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the end, as Lauren says, you will have to find what is right for yourself. No one can tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-07T07:41:26.713" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T07:41:26.713" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24489" CreationDate="2016-09-07T10:12:31.167" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not just erase the requirement for he/her entirely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I'm aware prophecies don't tend to be overly long, so rather than saying &lt;em&gt;He/she will accomplish these feats&lt;/em&gt;, just say &lt;strong&gt;The Chosen One will accomplish these feats&lt;/strong&gt;, or whatever name you want to give in the prophecy. In at most a couple of paragraphs of writing, it shouldn't be too out of place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can even be an actual prophesied name. Take for example the prophecy from &lt;a href=&quot;http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Azor_Ahai&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There will come a day after a long summer when the stars bleed and the cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world. In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword. And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again, and the darkness shall flee before him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you change the instance of &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;the one&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;em&gt;him&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;the Chosen One&lt;/strong&gt; and all of a sudden you have a gender neutral prophecy. And if it is rewritten slightly then actual name of Azor Ahai could be used instead of pronouns at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to make this work, you may need to restructure the exact wording of the prophecy to minimize the requirements for these swaps. &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/23809/how-do-i-get-rid-of-overused-words-in-my-story/23813#23813&quot;&gt;My answer to this question&lt;/a&gt; may help with minimizing the uses of pronouns in a piece of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prophecies don't tend to fit with how languages are spoken in an everyday context, so having an uncommon sentencing structure that exchanges the instances of he, her etc. will not be overly conspicuous, it will simply seem to be how the prophecy was originally read and will allow you some artistic license with allowing it to seem historic or mystical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T10:12:31.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24489" CreationDate="2016-09-07T13:43:47.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prophecies are often written as metaphors. So you can use a metaphor for the person which is an object or an animal. This allows you to refer to him/her as &quot;it&quot; and thus conceal their gender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;*He married her, much to the joy and celebration of 'them**'. After X years had an argument with 'them*'. 'They**' were not Impressed and kill him/her*&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could be prophesized as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The holy bond of matrimony will bring great delight to the eagle. But the eagle will fall into disdain and they will slay it without mercy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The eagle&quot; in that prophecy could be a male or a female person. As prophecies are, it could also be interpreted as a group of people or even as an abstract concept. How plausible that interpretation would be depends on how vague the prophecy is in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2016-09-07T13:50:01.947" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T13:50:01.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24436" CreationDate="2016-09-07T16:31:53.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is fairly standard practice for historical novels, actually.  The important thing is to apply it consistently and carefully, and only when it won't hurt the reader's comprehension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the older names for places is very common and harmless.  But if you do that, you need to do it for ALL place names and all names of people.  If your medieval knights are heading to the port at Lundenwic they'd best not run into anyone named Olivia or Miranda.  This means sometimes doing an absurd amount of research to make sure your characters have names appropriate to their time and place of origin.  No pre-contact native americans named Tim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-specific nouns, like &quot;horse&quot;, just use &quot;horse&quot; (assuming you're writing in English).  And don't use &quot;Thee&quot; and &quot;Thou&quot; unless you're directly quoting something.  Your characters and your narration are all using contemporary English (or whatever language).  These just become stumbling blocks which annoy (or worse, confuse) the reader.  When they call Japan &quot;Iapam&quot; they are calling it by its proper name, in their time and place.  When they call a horse a horse they're just referring to a horse, and you can &quot;translate&quot; like you are for everything else they say and think.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are grey areas, obviously.  Nicknames are a good example.  A young Mongol in the army of Genghis Khan might have the nickname &quot;Horse&quot; or it might be &quot;Aduu&quot;.  Whichever you think sounds better, it's unlikely to put off a reader either way.  But don't refer to actual horses in the story as &quot;aduu&quot;.  Even in worlds with wizards and dragons where no one has ever heard of England or English, people usually ride horses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, use proper names of people and places taken from the actual historical context (Londun for London, Iapam for Japan, etc) but do your research to keep this historical accuracy consistent because you WILL get letters for the smallest mistake.  Do not use archaic language for common nouns.  There are exceptions because there are always exceptions, and there's a frustrating lack of logic to when such exceptions are made.  Avoid writing in dialect (thee, thou, ye olde) as it just irritates people, unless you're directly quoting an historical document or speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of historical fiction you also have the bonus option of being able to include a short afterword or glossary to explain archaic terms or mention what you've changed in the events.  When someone writes about wizards and makes a Tolkien-esque appendix to explain the history of imaginary countries at the end, it usually comes off as ridiculous.  When you write about Napoleon and include an appendix explaining what REALLY happened and how you changed the order of events or whatever, it's considered thorough.  If you write about a wizard who was at Waterloo I guess it can go either way, but you should probably err on the side of &quot;what really happened&quot; over &quot;the history of wizards and why Napoleon was still an important historical figure despite them&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18544" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T16:31:53.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24489" CreationDate="2016-09-07T16:58:29.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Word Usage&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proper word is &amp;quot;one&amp;quot;, when one wishes to avoid specifying the sex. For example, &amp;quot;One might well consider this.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in English even though this is a number nonspecific neutral reference, this could be still mistaken for a number, and thus fails to fully meet your criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Grammar Options&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other option is grammatical in nature, and is called circumlocution, defined as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;cir·cum·lo·cu·tionˌ(sərkəmˌləˈkyo͞oSH(ə)n/), noun; the use of many words where fewer would do, especially in a deliberate attempt to be vague or evasive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also a term used when talking around a subject without using a keyword or certain keywords. As you have noted, you could use plural nonspecific words, but again that connotes a number, namely any number other than one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet might be to refer to events, causes, and effects without referencing any people specific words at all, unless such a word is important to the prophecy in question. Except, again, you do wish to be able to on occasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tricky Language&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more option is to use another language. Make up words and define them as you like. In another language there may very well be words which refers to people singly and/or in groups, with and/or without a reference to the sex, and in any, or as many combinations as you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19658" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T17:05:36.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24436" CreationDate="2016-09-07T17:53:00.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The language of your narrative is a delivery system, employed to communicate your story to your readers. This is why you should generally use modern language to address modern people, otherwise you would be making your story hard to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, calling certain places by their historic names is absolutely appropriate (I am actually having difficulties recalling a work of historic fiction which would &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; follow that principle). Your readers will learn the terminology easily (think of all secondary world fiction--they are full of made-up names, like Narnia, and it doesn't bother anyone...), just give them some credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T17:53:00.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24499" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-07T18:07:43.757" Score="5" ViewCount="503" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a Young Adult (&gt;12 y. old) novel, once the obviously bad words (F-word, C-word, N-word, etc.) taken away, how far can rude language go ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, can I use insults like : &quot;Go sit on a rusty nail!&quot;, or &quot;Hang yourself.&quot;, or &quot;Eat your deads&quot;?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Those contain everyday words, but sounds a bit too violent to me. I wonder if insults basically telling someone to harm or even kill themselves, or to have sex with animals/parents/corpses, even if said with PG vocabulary, are too crude for a YA novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a general rule for this ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13689" LastEditorUserId="13689" LastEditDate="2016-09-08T10:16:21.373" LastActivityDate="2018-02-24T22:16:43.833" Title="How far can insults go in a &quot;Young Adult&quot; novel?" Tags="|language|young-adult|rules|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24489" CreationDate="2016-09-07T18:44:16.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could the prophecy be worded as if spoken to the Chosen one by the prophet or a deity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the Goddess called out to the future bloodline of the Chosen: You shall be joyous at the marriage of X and Y. But after many years you will be consumed by bitterness and slay X, and be forced to flee the land. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19809" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T18:44:16.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24499" CreationDate="2016-09-07T18:46:22.613" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't a general rule, but perhaps one that might be useful to you. Teachers, like myself, don't really want swearing or explicit sexual references in the texts we teach. Reading them out loud can cause problems even if the language is realistic. (A novel becoming a common school text will mean greater revenue than just appealing to casual YA readers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, insults, etc. are a part of everyday life and have to be written about. Using violent, common words and phrases is fine. Robert Swindells in &lt;em&gt;Stone Cold&lt;/em&gt; manages to make his characters, mostly homeless people, sound realistic without using a single 'four-letter word'. Eoin Colfer, in the very popular Artemis Fowl series, made up swear word: 'darvit'. Soap operas before the nine o'clock watershed avoid swearing, but there is plenty of violent language in some of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YA novels can be very violent. Think about the Hunger Games series or &lt;em&gt;Maggot Moon&lt;/em&gt; which includes a very graphic scene of a teacher kicking a student to death, including things like an eyeball popping out. Teenagers actually like to read about violence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glorifying violence can be a problem, but violence per se isn't. Stand in a school for a while and you'll hear a lot worse than what you have suggested above, and novels often exaggerate reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastEditorUserId="13409" LastEditDate="2016-09-07T19:26:52.763" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T19:26:52.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24502" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24505" CreationDate="2016-09-07T21:07:22.527" Score="1" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;My character has a habit (or running gag) of pointing out plot holes in conversations with her friends who lie a lot.                             She is quick to tell them what fragment of their stories about what they had just done recently doesn't make sense. She knows when they are lying about something as if she is Sherlock Holmes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Sherlock Holmes was made of two things according to a Wikipedia article of the character's category sections&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intellectual &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Detective &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is my character most likely to be clarified as?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19511" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T15:53:25.570" Title="Is my character an intellectual or detective or both?" Tags="|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24499" CreationDate="2016-09-07T22:26:23.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a whole world of insults out there! From disparaging your opponent's parentage, denigrating their intelligence, making fun of clothing, and saying your opponent is ugly or cowardly--all these are acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The insults you put forth are fairly tame. If you are worried about violence in them, you must not be writing for an American audience. Successful YA novels are rife with violence. Sex not so much. YA is written for teens. And teens have been exposed to much worse than &quot;go sit on a rusty nail.&quot; &quot;Hang yourself&quot; is fairly blunt really. That's not really an insult, that's a suggestion to kill yourself.  It really depends on what you want your insults to achieve. &quot;Eat sh*t and die&quot; was a popular one when I was growing up, punctuated by rude gesture, generally as a conversation ender. But prior to that there was a build...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;eat your deads?&quot; I have never heard that one and have no idea what it means...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can certainly get more creative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Maybe if you ate some of that makeup you'd be pretty on the inside.&quot; (found that one on the internet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on if this is here on earth, or in a created reality (like the Hunger Games). You can create subs for cursing in a created reality. Gorram it! Watch your fracking language!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, look to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/resources/shakespeare-insults/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shakespeare&lt;/a&gt;, that guy was pretty darn good at it. It's not hard to go through this list and update it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastEditorUserId="19827" LastEditDate="2018-02-24T15:22:24.743" LastActivityDate="2018-02-24T15:22:24.743" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24504" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-07T23:33:22.867" Score="0" ViewCount="360" Body="&lt;p&gt;so i have a scene where a bunch of people are arguing about their race&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;don't act all high and mighty you snobby Evian prick&amp;quot; Yatsurobo yelled slamming his hands on the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;and you should refrain from acting like a baboon. know your place in society Tengu&amp;quot; Byakuya calmly said putting his cup back down, still refusing to make eye contact&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;know my place! since when did the Evian dictate that? the Tengu mastered our Wind Magic long before you pointy eared shits learned you could like fires with any magic&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as Yatsuboro and Byakuya continued to bicker Kaisei leaned back in her chair turning to Zhuli &amp;quot;it's great being Human huh?&amp;quot; she laughed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;and just how is it great?&amp;quot; Byakuya asked &amp;quot;Evian, Tengu, Undine, Dranov, Nekolum, even bits and pieces of the Dark races like Lillan and Succubi are mixed in your ancestry. &lt;strong&gt;a bastard race&lt;/strong&gt; that would gladly leap at the opportunity to add Yuko and ARC:: to your already populated bloodlines and sully theirs.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;and it's because we are a mix of many races that we don't act all superior. we can't fanatically hate another race because we are ourselves apart of it.&amp;quot; Kaisei smiled &amp;quot;instead we'd likely kill you because we plan don't like you as a person&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now i'm not entirely sure bastard race first popped into my head (maybe it sounded cool) but when i think on it a bastard is someone born out of wedlock and while there may be some &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt; who are bastards it would be inaccurate to call an entire race a bastard race because of mix bloodlines. but it's entirely possible i'm overthinking this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so is using the term &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;bastard race&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; an accurate way to negatively describe a mix-breed race?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T06:57:15.043" Title="Is this an accurate way to negatively describe a mix-breed race?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24502" CreationDate="2016-09-08T00:29:15.333" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sherlock Holmes is famous for &lt;em&gt;deducing&lt;/em&gt; answers to puzzles from observation. He was widely and deeply read, although he also deliberately forgot information which he felt wasn't important. He was a detective because the matters brought to him were problems which needed investigating &amp;mdash; often crimes, but not always. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An intellectual is someone who is intelligent and studied, but not necessarily someone who is greatly observant or someone who can deduce facts given those observations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your character knows that Bill is lactose intolerant but he says he was drinking milkshakes with Suzy, she can call him out on that lie. That's being a detective. If Bill starts going on about the benefits of supply-side economics and she counters with examples of Kansas's distastrous budget, that's being intellectual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-09-08T15:53:25.570" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T15:53:25.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24504" CreationDate="2016-09-08T07:28:22.370" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not use bastard. It does not mean mixed race.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are terms that denote persons of mixed race, such als &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulatto&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mulatto&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mestizo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mestizo&lt;/a&gt;, but these specifically refer to mixes of human races and cannot be applied to mixtures of races of other species (they are not even synonymous and interchangeable when speaking of humans). There are of course terms for race mixes of other species, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongrel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mongrel&lt;/a&gt; for dogs, and they are being applied to humans in a derogatory fashion. So mongrel is a word you could use, if your world has dogs. But since you make up terms for the races, and your audience has to learn and remember these to follow along, you might as well make up a term for a mixed race as well. Look at the etymology of mulatto and mestizo (the one means &quot;mixed&quot;, the other means &quot;mule&quot;, a mixed bread animal) for an idea of how to go about that. The meaning will either become clear from the context of its usage, or you explain it in the same way you explain the other terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Actually, according to the OED, &quot;bastard&quot; does mean someone of mixed race in South Africa. But I assume you are not writing for a solely South African audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T07:28:22.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20883" CreationDate="2016-09-08T07:59:14.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you need to do is define to yourself (!) how the book is different from those in the same niche. What is its &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_selling_proposition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unique selling point&lt;/a&gt;? That should be signalled by the title. And it should guide your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T07:59:14.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24361" CreationDate="2016-09-08T14:04:43.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes and no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes: There are heaps of resources to explain how to do pretty much anything in writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No: The world changes and humans change faster. What worked once might not work later, and a technique that might be used to great effect now could be a tired cliche in a few years. Plus your readers will all be different. The first time I read the twist that the narrator was the murderer all along, I was thrilled. After that, it's old hat. But other people might read the same books in a different order...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically to your examples, you can read about the general consensus on which 'person' to write in, but when it comes to describing emotions on the page - finding the perfect, original way to do this is every writer's goal. If it were fixed (or easy) we wouldn't need writers to be creative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you should read about 'motivation-reaction' units, which break down reactions into: Feeling &gt; Reflex &gt; Rational speech / action. That's quite helpful to understand. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/writing-the-perfect-scene/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/writing-the-perfect-scene/&lt;/a&gt; (you have to scroll down a fair way)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T14:04:43.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24512" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24513" CreationDate="2016-09-08T14:54:30.983" Score="1" ViewCount="322" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.english-for-students.com/Non-Fiction-Short-Stories.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.english-for-students.com/Non-Fiction-Short-Stories.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non fiction means based on reality. So, how do the stories listed there fit in this category?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I wish to write a non fiction story for kids, what am I supposed to write? I need an example distinguishing fiction story and a non fiction story for &quot;kids&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3638" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T16:00:41.360" Title="What is the meaning of non fiction stories w.r.t kids?" Tags="|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24512" CreationDate="2016-09-08T16:00:41.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just took a quick glance at your link and I don't consider those stories non-fiction either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what I would consider non-fiction for kids, I'll use the example of a book I bought for my nephew. It was a biography of Pele (since my nephew plays soccer). It was written for children and is definitely non-fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head, other ideas might be the story of a lost dog finding its way home or perhaps a bit of history. It's more about the way the story is told, in these cases, that make it for kids. As long as the subject matter is age-appropriate (however you define that), you can have a wide range. Base it in reality and it is non-fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T16:00:41.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24504" CreationDate="2016-09-08T16:24:44.577" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bastard&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;archaic derogatory&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  a person born of parents not married to each other.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  synonyms:   illegitimate child, child born out of wedlock&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;informal&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  an unpleasant or despicable person.&#xA;  &quot;he lied to me, the bastard!&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bastard&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oxford Dictionaries&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/thesaurus/bastard&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thesaurus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While your phrasing doesn't follow the strict definition of &lt;em&gt;bastard&lt;/em&gt;, consider that some mixed race couples in more prejudicial societies can ONLY have children outside of marriage. That's why, in what's answer, you can see that it meant that in South Africa. In the United States, in the deep South, decades ago, it was also used colloquially in this manner. Back when there was slavery in the 1800s every mixed race kid was considered a bastard, because that's what they were. White men would often already be married when they had those kids out of wedlock, off of their slaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mixed race=bastard here in the US, in certain regions for many years, though that is changing/has changed...Also, I think, until about 1960 it was actually illegal for blacks and whites to marry at all, so any child of mixed heritage was considered this. I believe Alabama finally repealed the last law forbidding it in like 1999 or 2000. (Even though on a Federal level it was legal.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my answer to you is this: does this fit culturally in your world? Are all half-breeds considered tainted, or as the result of a forbidden union? If so, this can fit your world. It's all about context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2019-03-20T06:57:15.043" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T06:57:15.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24520" CreationDate="2016-09-08T20:44:32.357" Score="10" ViewCount="70375" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been looking for a word to describe this tone of voice for a long time but never came across it. &#xA;Now let me just spread a pinch of context. It's a first person novel, and our protagonist is very emotionally conflicted within. Dead parents, dead friends, blames himself etc. &#xA;The only thing he has left is his younger companion who he cares for like an extremely over-protective older brother. Our protagonist is responsible (involuntarily responsible) for some earthquakes (long story), and his younger companion at this point in the novel questions if he himself was responsible for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how it goes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He didn’t say a word, as he stared motionlessly straight ahead. He was doing that thing where he overthinks.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;“Stop overthinking. I’ve told you if you keep doing that you’ll get grey hairs.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  All of a sudden his eyebrows curled against each other, and his eyes widened with grief, &lt;em&gt;“Please don’t tell me I caused that earthquake?”&lt;/em&gt; he whimpered.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Hearing this, I dropped to my knees, and grabbed his face, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Have you absolutely lost your mind?”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;I yelled.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK. So the final bit of dialogue where the protagonist asks &quot;Have you lost your mind,&quot; is actually the part I'm struggling with here. He does't actually yell. His voice is more like a throaty growl, as if to convey some frustration as well. Hearing this from Raaisel (younger companion) just turns his world upside down, because he would never allow his naive younger counterpart to step foot near the earthquake. &#xA;Yeah, so instead of &quot;I yelled,&quot; what the hell is that word. You ever watched the dark knight... where Batman goes to the joker &quot;Where is she?&quot; in that interrogation scene. Well it's a voice like that, but obviously with a bit less aggression. A brooding voice. &#xA;God, what's the damn word?! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, thanks if you take the time to read and/or answer my question, and sorry for my panicky tone. I get super worked up over minor word haha. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and one last thing. I feel like I could have simulated the &quot;I dropped to my knees and grabbed his face,&quot; a little better. How do I describe holding Raaisel's face in urgency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21178" LastActivityDate="2023-09-03T22:34:15.743" Title="How to describe an angry voice in dialogue?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|novel|young-adult|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24516" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24523" CreationDate="2016-09-08T20:50:50.937" Score="3" ViewCount="4374" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel in which the story is told from a first person pov. I don't want it to be predictable so I feel that if I kill the protagonist it will give it a sense of difference since they usually don't die and the readers know it. How can I do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21393" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T15:09:05.647" Title="How do I kill a protagonist in a first person point of view?" Tags="|novel|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24515" CreationDate="2016-09-08T21:06:52.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I looked up at some words &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macmillandictionary.com/thesaurus-category/british/words-used-to-describe-someone-s-voice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on this list&lt;/a&gt; and the ones I found best were &quot;gruff&quot; and &quot;penetrating&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yowl - noun&#xA;Yowling/yowled - verb&#xA;I don't know, maybe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21393" LastEditorUserId="21393" LastEditDate="2016-09-08T21:30:59.453" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T21:30:59.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24516" CreationDate="2016-09-08T22:08:05.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has been done in John Grisham's The Testament.  Read Chapter One which is in first-person at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2cG7Jzj&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;John Grisham's The Testament on Amazon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prologue?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the book is what happens after the rich old man kills himself.&#xA;It is possible, but it is quite odd.  It's really more of a prologue that sets up the story so you could do it that way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T22:08:05.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24515" CreationDate="2016-09-08T22:29:40.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, &quot;said&quot; will be the most effective choice. As a writer, &quot;said&quot; might sound repetitive or too boring, but it's one of those few invisible words that the reader will just glide over. Anything else draws attention to itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're relying on &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; specific word to convey the emotion from your dialogue, you might want to take another look at your scene. Your dialogue should stand for itself. You must be able to craft the scene in such a way where the reader should be able to effectively imagine how your characters say what they say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Leave me alone,&quot; he said angrily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Leave me alone,&quot; he growled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;can be rewritten as this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Leave me alone,&quot; he said, slamming the door. He stormed to the middle of the room, fists clenched, then kicked the chair beside his desk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exaggerated, but you get the point. Depending on how you construct the scene, your reader should be able to have a sense of the emotion that each character is feeling. What happens in the scene and what happened to lead up to the scene are more important things to consider than a single dialogue tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, instead of &quot;I yelled,&quot; go for &quot;I said,&quot; or you could even remove the dialogue tag completely. Your character's action of dropping to his knees and grabbing Raaisel's face makes the reader understand his intentions. Even before you told me that the main character was growling, I heard his words in my head that way already. Considering how this scene is in the middle of your story, you should have established the main character and Raaisel's personalities by now, and the reader will also know their background. The reader will know the main character's relationship to Raaisel and how he feels toward his younger companion. So, when Raaisel sounds like he's blaming himself for the earthquake, the reader will understand that the main character will be very alarmed. &lt;em&gt;What&lt;/em&gt; he says (&quot;Have you lost your mind?&quot;) is also a hint toward what he's feeling, so it works well enough for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the &quot;I dropped to my knees and grabbed his face&quot; part, I think you're gonna have to wait for another answer that addresses that. It sounds fine to me, but then again I don't know too much about your characters!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T22:29:40.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24515" CreationDate="2016-09-08T22:46:48.483" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your trouble in finding a word is that it does not exist. You will need to use adjectives and other descriptions to properly describe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first piece of advice would be to find a good example of what you want and describe it. You've found a good example with batman, but you're obviously having trouble describing it, so here's what I'd do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 1- Breakdown&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the scene you are referring to in the Dark Knight is where Batman 'interrogates' the Joker, and, upon realizing Dent and Rachel are both gone, yells 'where are they?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to do when trying to figure out how to describe something is go for the technical and literal side of things. Break it down into exactly what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Elevated voice. Batman is pancking, realizing what is going on, and his voice is raised as a result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gravelly undertone. Here it's because Batman is trying to hide his identity. I don't think your protagonist is doing that (unless he's a superhero too), so we'll come back to that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 2 - Brainstorm Description&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know what's technically going on, describe it. I often find I don't have the right word or answer for something. When this happens, I sit down with a piece of paper and start writing descriptions, no matter how ludicrous or implausible they might be. Make them up if necessary. Below I'm just going to write whatever comes to mind to describe the two above characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Elevated Voice.&lt;/strong&gt; Angry. High-pitched. Loud. Yelling. Shouting. Echoing. Shattering. Violent. Stinging. Reeling back from. Sudden.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gravelly.&lt;/strong&gt; Undertone. Deep. Gravelly. Rumbling. Threatening. Ominous. Like subdued thunder. Dangerous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 3 - Determine Cause&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now go back to your scene, and determine the protagonist's emotional state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Responsible. The protagonist (I'l call him Jim due to lack of a name) is responsible, and obviously Raaisel doesn't know that and thinks &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; is instead, so Jim is probably feeling a shade of guilt over that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Panicked? Really depends on the background, but it feels to me like Jim could be a bit panicked. His world got turned upside down you said, so I think this is reasonable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Afraid? Afraid for Raaisel. Obviously Jim cares for him a great deal, and besides obviously not wanting him to be hurt by bearing the burden, he also doesn't want Raaisel to take the blame and the hit that will inevitably come with it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we know that Jim is probably a bit afraid/panicked, probably feeling responsible for what's going on, and since he's overprotective, most likely wanting to shield Raaisel from any potential damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 4 - Apply Description&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now all we have to do is figure out which of the descriptive terms we have in step two will work, given our context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first half of the words relating to elevated voice deal primarily with loudness. You don't want this. Some of the later ones seem to hit closer to the mark. &lt;code&gt;Shattering&lt;/code&gt; has interesting visualizations. &lt;code&gt;Reeling back from&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;sudden&lt;/code&gt; indicate Raaisel wasn't expecting the tone of voice. Actually that presents an interesting idea: instead of trying to describe the words, describe Raaisel's &lt;em&gt;reaction&lt;/em&gt; to the words. We'll take that into consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving on, we have the gravelly part of the dialogue. &lt;code&gt;Rumbling&lt;/code&gt; has a nice ring to it, as well as &lt;code&gt;dangerous&lt;/code&gt;. I like the &lt;code&gt;subdued thunder&lt;/code&gt; idea, and that also gives me a thought: we could be using the setting to describe Jim's words. There's an earthquake, right? If it's still going on, it conveniently has the low rumbling, dangerous sort of undertone that you're looking for. You could just say that Jim's voice matched that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 5 - Put it all together&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So using that, I'll give this a few runs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hearing this, I dropped to my knees, and grabbed his face. “Have you absolutely lost your mind?” My voice was filled with fear and the urge to protect Raaisel, and just a hint of guilt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a thought. Take out the tag completely. Note that I've replaced the comma before the dialogue with a period, as the previous sentence has ended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hearing this, I dropped to my knees, and grabbed his face. “Have you absolutely lost your mind?” My voice shattered the quiet before it, rumbling, trembling, almost dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's try describing Raaisel's reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hearing this, I dropped to my knees, and grabbed his face. “Have you absolutely lost your mind?” My voice was low, rumbling, but louder than I had intended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Raaisel blinked as my words struck him, actually taking a small step away from me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'll try using the setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hearing this, I dropped to my knees, and grabbed his face. “Have you absolutely lost your mind?” I said, my voice akin to the rumbling of the earthquake below us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'll just say the line a few times myself the way I think you're visualizing it, and describe it that way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hearing this, I dropped to my knees, and grabbed his face. “Have you absolutely lost your mind?” My voice was half way between a whisper and a shout, deep, rumbling like the earthquake below us, but still full of the panic and guilt I felt in my heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word whisper brings the mental tone way down, but the sentence keeps going. 'Shout' and 'earthquake' bring the volume up slightly, and 'panic' is far enough after 'whisper' to bring it up to the level you want. 'Guilt' adds a hint of emotion contradictory to 'panic,' giving the whole line a taste that can't quite be defined, but is still understood by the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of this depends on Jim's emotional state at the time, as well as that of Raaisel if you use his reaction for the description. Changing those factors will probably give you different results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the long answer, I tried - believe it or not - to keep it as brief as possible. Hopefully you find it helpful, and welcome to the site!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T16:57:50.077" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24515" CreationDate="2016-09-08T23:03:32.393" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to give the reader the sense the the character speaking is angry is through the words they say, not through the description of how they say it. Make the word angry and you don't need to describe the voice. The reader reading angry words will hear an angry voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effective writing is about focus. If you describe every intonation and twitch of a speaker, you are inviting the reader to focus on the face, not the words. This works (and is necessary) if your speaker is giving curt one word answers. The reader cannot tell from &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot; if the speaker is angry, so you describe the tone. But if the reader cannot tell that the character is angry from &quot;Have you absolutely lost your mind?&quot; then they are singularly tone deaf. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never give the reader more than they need. It simply becomes a distraction. If you want them to focus on the words, don't distract them with facial expressions and tone. If you want them to focus on the face and voice, don't distract them with excess words.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T23:03:32.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24516" CreationDate="2016-09-08T23:32:27.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the main character is eventually the enemy in the book (because she's hurting people) and her death would be a good thing for the people around her, then the end of the story would be relief on her part as she's dying or killing herself, because then she can't hurt anyone else. But the main story ends when she dies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your only real issue to address is what to do for the denouement, the wrap-up after her death to show that she succeeded in stopping herself from causing others more pain. Whether you change POV or have her ghost/spirit/etc. view others' reactions is up to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T23:32:27.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24516" CreationDate="2016-09-09T00:13:04.367" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a old idea that in the moment of one's death, their whole life flashes before their eyes.  Perhaps your entire story, up to the point where the narrator dies, is just their giving voice to that final moment; reviewing the facts of her life on her way to face Judgement.  This approach will grant your narrator hidden fore knowledge which can justify any foreshadowing which you work into your prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Killing your pov character midway through a story is a powerful tool, but it leaves your readers without a guide for the remainder of your tale.  You can avoid this issue by splitting the pov between two characters earlier in the story.  If you shift between two narrators repeatedly during the first few chapters, you can still use the survivor to narrate the remaining pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, be careful with how you build your disposable narrator.  If the soon-to-be-deceased is, in any way, a sympathetic character, then their death may wound your readers emotionally and will definitely cost you their trust.  We may all enjoy a good George R.Martin novel, but we don't trust him.  We have learned not to get too attached to any of his characters, because they usually don't last very long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="11221" LastEditDate="2016-09-09T12:44:04.137" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T12:44:04.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24515" CreationDate="2016-09-09T07:05:48.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going for your addendum: &quot;I dropped to my knees and grabbed his &lt;strong&gt;face&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grabbing his &lt;strong&gt;face&lt;/strong&gt; sounds to me like you have positioned the hand in front of the face. Palm at the nose/mouth area, finger tips along the hair line (like a face palm turned facehugger). Is this really what you want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you'd prefer to grab his &lt;strong&gt;chin&lt;/strong&gt; instead. The line from thumb tip crossing the palm to middle finger tip follows more or less the chin line. This way you can forcibly control the way he faces (probably to look into your face) and it keeps him free to see and breathe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21397" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T07:05:48.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24516" CreationDate="2016-09-09T07:19:06.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several examples that come to mind, where this technique was used effectively:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Michael Crichton - Jurassic Park - several characters (not all necessarily protagonists), are killed, and Crichton has them narrate through their own death. Definitely worth reading, I found his techniques very memorable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In some popular movies, in different forms, offhand the following come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the recent movie &quot;Joy&quot; - I don't want to spoil it for anyone - but the movie is narrated by a character who dies somewhere during the movie (the character narrates before, during and after death)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;some movies that are Quentin Tarantino-esq, where the character dies in an early scene - but then the rest of the movie is out of chronological order - so the main character can narrate their own death.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;other movies. the main character is narrating most of the movie, and at one point, the main character is killed, and continues narrating - so you realize the entire story is being told &quot;past tense&quot;. American Beauty is one popular example.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, Jesus Christ Superstar comes to mind: Judas, who is essentially the main character and (oddly) spun as both protagonist and antagonist - his death is portrayed from the first-person POV  (and while singing, too! : ) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18781" LastEditorUserId="18781" LastEditDate="2017-01-25T15:09:05.647" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T15:09:05.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24515" CreationDate="2016-09-09T10:17:57.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some interesting answers here - I think it's important to recognise POV in this. Since we're in the POV of the character you're trying to portray as angry then using angry sounding adjectives to describe the voice is awkward and inserts unnecessary distance between character and reader. It also dilutes the immediacy of the scene. Less is (almost always) more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I snapped and grabbed him by the face. &quot;Have you lost your mind?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would do it for me. &#xA;Any added anger signifiers could be demonstrated in the expression/reaction of the other character. Remember whose POV we're in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I snapped and grabbed him by the face. &quot;Have you lost your mind?&quot;&#xA;Seeing terror in his eyes, I drew back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd remove all possible speech tags and adjectives, and only put back what you absolutely have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21402" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T10:17:57.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24528" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-09T14:38:52.607" Score="1" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been meaning to write this for a while, nevertheless there some points that I would love to have clear before doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21406" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T19:36:57.213" Title="Is it possible to write a Romance between a hero and an anti hero?" Tags="|creative-writing|characters|romance|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-09-12T12:52:34.847" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24529" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-09T15:03:17.633" Score="3" ViewCount="882" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story in first person. There's a point in the story where two characters are having a dialogue, while the narrator is listening. The problem is that the narrator is also in pain while this dialogue is occurring (think super-villain explaining their evil plan while the hero is injured). There are also a few points where the narrator asks questions during the dialogue, although these questions are very short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dialogue is actually pretty long -- it's about two pages in length. The dialogue needs to make it into the story -- it contains important information for the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's a good way to multitask and convey that the narrator is in pain, while also including the dialogue in its entirety into the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2007" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T19:55:46.023" Title="How to convey that the main characer is in pain while dialogue is occuring" Tags="|dialogue|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24434" CreationDate="2016-09-09T15:44:48.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of slogans (and this goes for advertising as well as politics, since slogans are a sort of political advertisement after all) follow one of the following patterns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three words are optimal in many languages. This was quite explicitly stated by Nazi propagandists (Goebbels made it an explicit rule), but has also been found whether consciously or unconsciously by propagandists of all ideologies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bomben auf Engeland!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dieu le veut!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Вся власть – Советам!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Black is Beautiful!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drill, baby, drill!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Éirinn go Brách!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alba gu bràth!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tiocfaidh ár lá!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's interesting in a way that those of the above which aren't English but which remain in three words in translation (&amp;quot;Bombs on England&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;God wills it&amp;quot;, and &amp;quot;Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood&amp;quot;) retain the most force while those that don't (&amp;quot;All power to the Soviets&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Ireland forever&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Scotland forever&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Our day will come&amp;quot;) lose some of their impact. Indeed, &lt;em&gt;Dieu le veut&lt;/em&gt; was first found as the Latin &lt;em&gt;Deus vult&lt;/em&gt;, but the French packs more of a punch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are easily chanted, work well typographically, and are a microscopic example of the Rule of Three, and just long enough to convey an idea without being long enough to encourage people to think about it too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer slogans tend to turn on a conjunction or a copula between two roughly equal-length parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Come and take it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give me liberty or give me death!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each for all and all for each!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The personal is political!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rich get richer and the poor get poorer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vivre Libre ou Mourir!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve! (comma rather than conjunction, but similar pattern)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In visual use, instead of a copula there could even be an equal sign, as in the ACT UP slogan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silence = Death&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything longer, if spoken, than that will generally rhyme and have a balanced rhythm:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep your rosaries / Of our ovaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are gay, we are straight / It's the bigots that we hate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hey, hey, LBJ! / How many kids did you kill today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One, two, three, four / We don't want your bloody war!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One, two, three, four / Fuck the rich, feed the poor!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Six, seven, nine, four, seven, double-oh / A woman has the right to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vårat svar på monarkin / gör som Frankrike, giljotin!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These last though are more appropriate for several rounds of repetition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything longer than that or without a rhyme, tends to work better on a placard than spoken, and then things are a lot looser. Snappiness and two-part balance still often feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4626" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T20:26:37.380" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24529" CreationDate="2016-09-09T18:40:51.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several tools you can use to infer distress through your narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have your narrator ask a confusing question, and then correct themselves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have your narrator ask for clarification on something the other person said as if they missed what was said due to distraction from the pain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have your narrator interrupt part of the dialogue with thoughts of the pain or distress they are going through.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also do this from the other persons point of view by having the speaker demand the narrator pay attention, or they could ask the narrator if they understand because they look confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19778" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T18:40:51.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24529" CreationDate="2016-09-09T18:44:36.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the story is in the first person from the narrator's point of view, then simply have the narrator think about how much pain they're in, you could even have sections where the dialogue fades out while the narrator focuses on their injury, leaving you ways to have some mystery elements in the story. For all the reader knows, they were talking about where the evil bomb is kept during those breaks, or what they want for dinner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You often read the narrator's thoughts in books written in the first person, because it's from their point of view, and character's thoughts are often very important in explaining their motivation and actions, so having the narrator think about their injury - even complaining about how distracting it is - would fit in well. If this is too complicated, then simply show the readers that the narrator is injured and in pain, have them &quot;hiss in pain&quot; a short time after they were injured, as a simple reminder that they got hurt badly. The important part is making sure it doesn't take away from the dialogue and make sure the reader gets all the information they need from reading this dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21103" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T18:44:36.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24516" CreationDate="2016-09-09T18:46:28.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a story in first person in which the narrator died. I placed the death at near the end and switched to a third person POV to give the final scene that explained the affect of the narrator's death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this allowed the reader to feel like they where still in the narrator's mind, floating outside what was happening, not allowing the reader to attach themselves to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19778" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T18:46:28.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24504" CreationDate="2016-09-09T19:54:55.363" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Accurate or not (whatever &quot;accurate&quot; might mean here), it's a perfectly good word to put into the mouth of a fantasy character in a made-up world with made-up races. Your characters get to use words in metaphorical ways. The way you've used it, the term comes across as a metaphor that characterizes both the race and the speaker. It works perfectly well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T19:54:55.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24528" CreationDate="2016-09-09T20:17:34.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, anything is possible. The question is: &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; will you write it? It's all about how the story is told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21411" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T20:17:34.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24529" CreationDate="2016-09-09T22:26:01.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone has made very good suggestions about this, and a few other ways to convey that your narrator is in pain is by utilizing the short questions they ask: their voice can be strained or quaver, their breathing labored.&lt;br&gt; They can sweat with the agony as well. &lt;br&gt; Good luck with your writing! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21185" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T22:26:01.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24538" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-10T02:43:14.990" Score="1" ViewCount="663" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel called &quot;&lt;em&gt;Kimberly Rose&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; but the thing is, I'm 12. I'm not sure if there is an age cap when it comes to publishing books. Please tell me if you know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21413" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-07-24T11:54:23.997" LastActivityDate="2021-07-24T11:58:05.330" Title="At what age can I publish a book?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|novel|young-author|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-09-14T01:38:47.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24538" CreationDate="2016-09-10T04:55:49.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, good for you! Secondly, have a look at this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0768778.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Children as Authors&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think your age will affect the publishing of your book, but the quality of your writing will — just as it would any adult author. I suggest you have a proofreader read your story so you can know if it needs adjustments or corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! I really hope your book gets published and you write many more in the future!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21185" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-07-24T11:58:05.330" LastActivityDate="2021-07-24T11:58:05.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-10T06:19:51.050" Score="1" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen similar questions on here but often people use short hand when they are chatting like &quot;U&quot; and &quot;R&quot; and how would you go about this using screen names? Or a public chat with multiple strangers and adding in random people for the effect? I seem to be having trouble doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21414" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T19:44:38.000" Title="How to type chat dialogue?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24538" CreationDate="2016-09-10T07:15:03.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your age shouldn't have an affect on whether or not you get published. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180418233500/http://www.ekristinanderson.com/?p=6339&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&#xA;So You Want to Be a Teenage Author? Published Teen Authors Tell It Like It Is&lt;/a&gt; has lots of case studies on writers who got published as teenagers, and how it effected their writing careers and lives. The general advice is not to tell an agent or publishing house your age until you meet in person, this prevents your query from being thrown out the window immediately, as many people believe young people cannot write with the depth an adult can, simply because they haven't written enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's fantastic you're already writing a novel at 12, so make sure to keep at it. Have friends, family or teachers read a draft for feedback and use this to make your writing better. Once you've finished that all important first draft, feel free to pat yourself on the back, it's hard finishing a draft and not giving up partway. Once the celebration is over, it's time to think about editing. Your first draft won't be perfect, so put it down for a month, maybe write something else for a bit, before coming back to look at your novel with fresh eyes, ready for editing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're still young, so you have plenty of time to perfect your novel and your writing, don't rush something out of a lower quality than what you would be happy with seeing under your name just so you were published young. Just remember to always be proud of what you've done. Even thinking as far ahead as publishing is a great ambition that I certainly didn't have at 12!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21103" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-07-24T11:56:52.203" LastActivityDate="2021-07-24T11:56:52.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24540" CreationDate="2016-09-10T07:44:52.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing that I would do is defining a bunch of writing styles which are used by different people in the chat. Some might care for correctness, while others do less so or not at all, and even then they can write things differently; For example, the phrase &quot;I am&quot; can be rendered as: I am, i am, I'm, i'm, Im, im; Some might only use/prefer one specific variation while others use several on different occasions.&#xA;Other things you can variate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;grammar&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;spelling&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;number of typos&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;use of smileys&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;puncuation&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;AE/BE, and dialects in general&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;use of uppercase letters&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;general length of messeges (like some tend to write longer messeges)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;period of time someone needs to answer (some people type slowly)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also be sure to have at least one person who can't be bothered to use backspace at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21415" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T07:44:52.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24529" CreationDate="2016-09-10T08:01:40.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It also somewhat depends on what kind of pain, but in general I would use the second person here (&quot;You don't look good, are you OK?&quot;, &quot;Is anything wrong?&quot;, etc.)&#xA;The narrator could then could answer truthfully, giving more details on the pain, or could try lying, giving his reasons to the reader only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21415" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T08:01:40.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24528" CreationDate="2016-09-10T15:47:24.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is possible. You're the writer so that mean it's yours story to tell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of stories out there that had its hero involved in a romantic relationship with anti-hero or villain. Take &lt;em&gt;Batman&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Catwoman&lt;/em&gt; for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21012" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T15:47:24.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24538" CreationDate="2016-09-10T19:21:05.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;At your age you shouldn't try to judge yourself by commercial success, but by whether you finished the project successfully. That includes not only coming up with and executing the idea, but also maintaining quality control over everything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to  keep an eye out for markets which appeal to people your age. (I talked recently to a 16 year old who published and sold her first comic book 2 years  ago. Now she is running her own comic book company). I once created a  75 page Dungeons and Dragons module at the age of 14 -- I was very proud of that -- I ended up enjoying it at a well-attended gaming convention which I organized at 15. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently judged a fiction writing contest for 7th and 8th graders. Although many works dealt with typical zombie and superhero plots -- and some of the writing was horrible -- generally their ideas and characters and dialogue were interesting and original. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing I'd warn you against is trying to finish things too quickly. Write it, let it sit around for a while, and then come back to it.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, we are in an age where publishing is relatively easy; the hardest part is being to package and market what you've written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T19:21:05.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24529" CreationDate="2016-09-10T19:55:46.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;He felt certain he would black out.&#xA;Tony snapped his fingers. &quot;Hey! Hey! Wake up! We're not finished yet!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T19:55:46.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24361" CreationDate="2016-09-10T21:18:34.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not familiar with anything exactly matching your description, but you might want to take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tvtropes.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tvtropes&lt;/a&gt;. They don't describe how to archieve certain effects, but they do describe more or less general concepts (so-called tropes). Some tropes are things you can just use in a story (e.g. tomato surprise, lampshade hanging), while others are concerned with completely different things (e.g. writing by the seat of your pants).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21415" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T21:18:34.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24551" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24552" CreationDate="2016-09-11T00:00:26.983" Score="3" ViewCount="965" Body="&lt;p&gt;I should start by saying that this question is not this question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/21329/how-to-decide-if-a-plot-twist-worth-doing&quot;&gt;How to decide if a plot twist worth doing&lt;/a&gt; despite how similar they sound. And, the answer I'm looking for was not at this question either, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/16188/how-when-to-include-twists-when-developing-plot&quot;&gt;How/When to include twists when developing plot.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here is the situation. The novel that I'm working on is very close to completion; the climax and falling action are done, and it's in its resolution. But, to avoid ending the book too quickly and leaving the readers with questions unanswered, I had thought of a twist to put into the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll keep the explanation of the twist as simple as possible: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 8 main characters trying to escape a very dangerous situation. So dangerous, that one of the characters perishes in the escape. Now the other characters didn't like this character very much, one of those other characters liked her the least. I intend to have the characters find out that this deceased character was actually his little sister. Now, I don't think this will change much of the ending of the book, but I still think it would be an interesting twist to the story and it would definitely change his view of the character. Neither character involved in the twist is the protagonist of the story, though you do see things from the potential brother's perspective twice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not asking whether or not this specific twist is good, rather, &lt;strong&gt;is it needed?&lt;/strong&gt; In a more general sense, &lt;strong&gt;how do you differentiate between a good plot twist and a unnecessary page filler?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T03:27:23.407" Title="How to determine whether or not a plot twist is needed?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|planning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24551" CreationDate="2016-09-11T01:17:09.643" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plots twist. Stories don't. Sometimes a plot twist will show that reader that the arc of the story was something other than what they were expecting. But the story still needs to have a satisfying arc. If the plot twist destroys the story arc, or is simply irrelevant to the story arc, then it ruins the story. If the plot twist is integral to the story arc -- and generally that means the moral arc of the story, it is essential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a plot twist is not an optional extra that you throw in gratuitously at the end. It is either where the story was heading all along, and the thing that reveals the story for what it is, or it is a disastrous distraction that destroys the story arc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's how you tell the difference. Either the twist is necessary to the story or it is superfluous. Either leaving it out ruins the story or putting it in ruins the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-12-28T03:27:23.407" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T03:27:23.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24551" CreationDate="2016-09-11T01:20:39.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a good question, but one that's hard to answer without reading the book itself. My first thought is, it might depend on genre and the expectations of your readers. A good twist is always welcome if it builds the story and keeps your reader guessing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a plot twist that is necessary will very likely be integral to the story. It will not be something that can be taken out with zero effect on the rest of the book. It needs to contribute something. Your reader should think, &quot;Oh, that's interesting.&quot; and then go back and see all the clues you'd put in there along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11151" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T01:20:39.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24361" CreationDate="2016-09-11T01:23:52.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for effective techniques for producing an effect on the reader, you will not find them in writing so much as in storytelling. It is in the juxtaposition of people and events that you create an emotional effect. Robert McKee's book &lt;em&gt;Story&lt;/em&gt; may be useful to you on this point. He makes that point that a good story badly written beats a bad story beautifully written every time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T01:23:52.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24528" CreationDate="2016-09-11T19:36:57.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A romance is possible between any characters. Sometimes they can happen between the most unlikely of characters. The most important thing to remember is that they should have natural chemistry. The more you force it, the more evident it will become to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T19:36:57.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24540" CreationDate="2016-09-11T19:44:38.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on your novel, and the chat platform your characters use. Every chat platform is different. Some characters might use their real name, others will use a screen name. Whatever they choose for their screen name will ALWAYS say something about who they are as a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether characters use text speak, abbreviations, line breaks between each sentence, and emojis will tell the reader a lot. Characters may also use line breaks to emphasise a point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it works for your character to write U and R, then go for it. It can be jarring to read, but if it fits your character, do it. Just be cautious of long passages of text using it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at other books that use similar concepts. The only ones I can think of right now are some of Meg Cabot's - The Princess Diaries and Every Boy's Got One. The latter is written purely in diary entries, emails, and BBMs. While BlackBerries are hugely out of date now, it's always interesting to see what other authors do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also the option of using triangular brackets to break things up as some chats do. For example, &amp;lt; Liam entered the chat &gt;. It can also be used to type an emotion: &amp;lt; sobs &gt;. This is often used in gaming communities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having had a similar predicament deciding how to format text messages in my novel, the best advice I can give is to experiment. Try as many variations as you can to decide what works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T19:44:38.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24499" CreationDate="2016-09-11T19:52:51.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read plenty of YA novels with swearing in. The Gossip Girl series is a prime example - from what I can remember, it uses the F word, and possibly worse, although it's been a long time since I read it. I don't really think anything is off-limits, to be honest. Teenagers are far less likely to filter what they say/do than the rest of us. If they already know the offensive language, why patronise them by using a sugarcoated version of a word if the swear word is more effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of violence, as mentioned above, there are lots of YA novels that contain violence, too. So long as the violence is justifiable, there's no reason you can't go into detail. You'll lose more points with the reader for omitting something than for going into graphic detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T19:52:51.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24465" CreationDate="2016-09-11T19:57:41.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plan, plan, plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to be vehemently against planning, but had I not, I never would've finished anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research the five point plot structure, and use that for each of your characters. You don't have to have all the plot points when you start writing, but I find it helps to at least have a beginning and an end. I've never finished a story where I didn't know the ending very early on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the other ideas, make notes on them. That gets the ideas out of your system while still allowing you to focus on your chosen project. Ultimately, you have to decide which one to focus on, or you'll never finish anything. Pick the project that's closest to your heart. If you don't have one, go for the one you have the most ideas on. There is always an idea that stands out to us the most, even if we don't want to admit it because it's too difficult or too sensitive or for some other reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give yourself a daily target for writing. I aim for 1000 words a day (some people prefer to go by time frames). Once I get home from work and have eaten my dinner, I don't leave my laptop until those words are written. It's important to write even on the days you don't feel like it, because that's how you build a routine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T19:57:41.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-11T19:58:30.103" Score="1" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a story about a segregated city with a river a border between the two sides -&gt; a black girl and a white boy become friends when they both come to the river... they make a pretend &quot;world&quot; together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the girl tells her friends about the world, her friends don't believe her not because the world doesn't exist, but because people don't think that a black and a white kid can be friends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is to answer the prompt &quot;write about a favorite memory that did not actually happen.&quot; Does it fit the prompt well? If so, can someone tell me how to write the tone and mood of the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21425" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T04:02:17.237" Title="How to a write a partly- serious story with kids as its main character? How would the tone be like?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|fantasy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24486" CreationDate="2016-09-11T20:01:43.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the series. Planning is definitely important, but it's important to be flexible. Your characters will always be capable of leading you down strange and unexpected paths: that's what makes them realistic and believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have certain things that NEED to happen, map those out - and the events that lead up to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning your story in-depth allows you to foreshadow future events. It can also make you excited to write future books and keep up the writing momentum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genre also plays a part - it's far more important to plan out a crime, fantasy, or scifi series with lots of world building involved than it is a romance or literary series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12771" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T20:01:43.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24566" CreationDate="2016-09-11T21:26:13.423" Score="6" ViewCount="650" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story and it is really hard to avoid putting my own speech patterns into my stories. Especially for the mean and dark types. My character is a deceiving, mischievous leader. He plays poker a lot and cheats at games (or bends the rules). I always end up making the characters sound like me and before I know it, stray off the storyline I wanted it to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21424" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T03:12:59.303" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T03:12:59.303" Title="How do I avoid making all my characters speak like me?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|dialogue|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24559" CreationDate="2016-09-12T00:35:08.650" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very possible to do, and has been done before. To Kill a Mockingbird has a protagonist that's a child, and that's a serious story, as well as the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Fin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question isn't whether or not it can be done, but can you pull it off while keeping the characters true to their ages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/how-to-write-child-characters/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This website &lt;/a&gt; provides some insight. But as a summary of the headers: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make your characters cutesy &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make your characters sagely wise &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make your characters unintelligent &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have them use baby talk &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write your characters as unique individuals &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give your characters goals &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make your characters smart &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;keep in mind your characters are children &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link I provided above provides the explanations for these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastEditorUserId="21415" LastEditDate="2016-09-12T04:02:17.237" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T04:02:17.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24564" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-12T02:18:24.253" Score="8" ViewCount="559" Body="&lt;p&gt;So a little while ago someone said that I'll never be able to write on a native level because I wasn't born in the UK or America. I did, however, go to elementary school in the US at the ages of 5-10 or so, so that has to count for something, right? I just feel really let down for some reason. I can definitely tell when a sentence is or isn't grammatically correct, but I just feel like there's something missing. I'd like to write a novel one day, but I have no clue where to start or if I'm even qualified to write one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone give me some tips? I'm currently a nineteen-year-old freshman in college pursuing a bachelor's. I haven't decided on a major yet, but I've been considering Professional Writing/Technical Communication because I think it would be quite cool to make a living writing. However, I'm not sure if that would be a poor degree choice. A lot of people say that it's not very marketable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do read a lot of blogs and such daily, and I constantly try to improve my writing by writing as concisely as possible. I feel like the biggest thing that  I need to work on right now is increasing my vocabulary size--which means being good at something so that I actually have material to write about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21427" LastActivityDate="2020-06-18T06:34:01.703" Title="Will I ever be able to write like a native writer?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|grammar|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24564" CreationDate="2016-09-12T02:59:14.050" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joseph Conrad was one of the greatest novelists ever to write in the English language. He was born in Poland and did not become fluent in English until his twenties. It can be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But writing a novel is not about being able to write a grammatical sentence. It is about being able to tell a compelling story. There is no certain way to equip yourself to tell a compelling story, but reading lots and lots of them, including the very best ever written, is a great way to go about it. I would suggest starting with Joseph Conrad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no way to guarantee that any specific skill will stay marketable. Not even for the time it takes to get a degree, let alone for a career. (I studied to be a teacher because there was supposed to be a huge demand. Only three people in my graduating class got hired. The boom was over by the time we graduated.) If your heart is set on a career that requires specific training, like teaching or law, you should study that, not because it is marketable but because you love it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not need a degree in technical communication to get a job as a technical writer. A degree (or experience) in a subject related to what you will be writing about can often help much more. Tech writing is one of the most diverse fields on the planet. No one qualification will make you a candidate for all tech writing jobs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You only get to go to college once in your life. Study the thing you are most passionate about. You will be a better student for it, a more engaged student, a happier student. Whether the subject you study will be marketable or not one, five, ten, or twenty years after you graduate will be impossible to predict, but you will be more marketable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T02:59:14.050" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24561" CreationDate="2016-09-12T04:14:30.187" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't tell you what to write for the character's speech patterns, but I can say that the best way to learn how to write a character's voice that isn't your own is to think like that character would, so you write like that character would. Also, when you have multiple characters, it's always a good idea to get a good description in your mind of each character as an individual so, before you type something a character would say, you can think: would he actually say this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually write down a brief description of each character so I have it to reference whenever I need to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/how-to-create-a-memorable-character-voice-what-i-learned-writing-storming/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; provides some other useful tips. So does &lt;a href=&quot;https://killzoneblog.com/2014/05/five-key-ways-to-create-characters.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T04:14:30.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24567" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-12T06:51:44.210" Score="1" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing noobie here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm at a point in my story where one of the characters recalls a memory from their past and talks about the impact it had on them. I've written what I want them to say but I can't recall if I've seen how this can presented to the reader. All that comes to mind is back and forth dialogue but this story will easily take an entire page or two. Is it awkward to have an entire page devoted to one character talking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16005" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T13:19:52.203" Title="How do you get a character to tell a short story?" Tags="|structure|short-story|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24564" CreationDate="2016-09-12T07:56:46.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not know enough about what obstacles you face. What I do know is that no matter what ability a person wants to master, practice is the key. I am sure that you will understand what you need to do when you reflect on your failures. Feedback on your writing helps you find problems with your writing, but it does not help you find out about what obstacles you have inside yourself. Focus your problem solving on your &lt;em&gt;writing process&lt;/em&gt;. Watch how you work, what you avoid, how you feel, and what you think when you cannot write, etc. Maybe your problem is not linguistic at all. Perhaps the solution for you is to overcome your inhibition to speak English regardless of your pronunciation. This might be more about your linguistic identity than your linguistic ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-14T21:18:15.127" LastActivityDate="2020-06-14T21:18:15.127" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24561" CreationDate="2016-09-12T08:16:39.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read other novels. They have dialog examples.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Observe people. They have dialog examples.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Understand your character. Imagine you are that person. Try to speak how that person would speak. Act it out at home, like an actor learning a role. Every time you write what that character would say take the time to get into that person and then speak from the state of being that person.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T08:16:39.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24571" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-12T08:24:50.533" Score="3" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a plot-driven novel. The plot stands, and the changes the characters undergo, that is, the character arcs have been devised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I need now is the lack or fault that makes my characters who they are at the beginning, that are an obstacle to their goal, and that they finally overcome. There seem to be several options, none of which feel perfectly right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how could I deduce a character's lack, fault, flaw, or weakness from the plot (or character arc)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking this without examples from my own writing and in a general manner, because I hope to find a method that can be used by other writers and in other situations, too. But do use examples if you feel that helps your explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-12T09:54:57.697" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T08:45:19.987" Title="How to deduce the protagonist's flaw from the plot?" Tags="|plot|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24235" CreationDate="2016-09-12T09:39:21.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Library of Congress has another edition and cite it as: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://lccn.loc.gov/2012359139&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;7th ed., alternate ed.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing how the main title page (as a librarian that's the most important source for cataloging a book) or other parts of the book look like, I'd say it is the 6th ed. of the AP ed.: &quot;6th. ed, AP ed.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend going to your next academic library and asking a librarian/cataloger on-site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21211" LastEditorUserId="21211" LastEditDate="2016-09-12T11:52:47.030" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T11:52:47.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24567" CreationDate="2016-09-12T10:10:06.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not awkward at all. The key is to tell it in a way that keeps the reader engaged, and doesn't detract from the rest of the story. You could put it as part of a dialogue, let the character talk for two pages, or you can have the story told by the narrator; it's been done in all three of those ways at one point. You just have decide which way fits into your story better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used all three though I normally gravitate to letting the character do the talking, but if your story isn't dialogue-heavy throughout it might not be the best choice for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T10:10:06.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24561" CreationDate="2016-09-12T11:35:58.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a bit of advice a friend gave me: Try writing your main character as someone completely different from you. So my first story was told in the voice of a 25-year old woman who works in a convenience store. (I was, at that time, a 40-something man who worked at a university.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, my main characters usually start off as me. (She did too, in voice and temperament.) Through revision and the critique of my readers (Do you have readers?) characters become less me and more who they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust the process. Just write your first draft, then tweak your characters as you rewrite and revise. And get some readers that you trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T11:35:58.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24571" CreationDate="2016-09-12T12:23:37.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, considering the information in the comments, what you know for your character is that in the end he sympathizes the antagonist. I would take this as inspiration for his flaw. So in the end it turns out the antagonist was right in a way. I'd make the reason why the protagonist didn't see that at the beginning (that the antagonist was somehow right) as the protagonist's flaw and prove it throughout the plot. For example the protagonist was too superficial or he was too conservative or the detective was too brutal with the criminals etc. The antagonist will &quot;help&quot; the protagonist grow this flaw of his.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I always try to answer the WHY question and not the WHAT. If you have the what... happens for example, show the reader why actually it happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T12:23:37.257" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24564" CreationDate="2016-09-12T13:16:34.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a story, you can tell it in any language you know well enough to communicate. Living in English-speaking environment for a considerable number of years would give you a tremendous advantage in terms of getting a &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; of the language, but I believe that you can do without it, providing that you &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; run your lines by a &lt;strong&gt;native speaker&lt;/strong&gt;, who is a &lt;strong&gt;friend and supporter&lt;/strong&gt;, and not the one who told you that you will never be able to write in the language which is not your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Send that person a signed copy of your published novel, when you get the author's batch from Penguin Random House.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T13:16:34.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24564" CreationDate="2016-09-12T14:56:00.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bah humbug, the other answers should convince you that you can do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another story to remember is that Samuel Beckett was an Irishman who lived in Paris and wrote in English and French. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not convinced you need to live in an English speaking place. And if you did, would you choose Goa or Singapore? Botswana or Cardiff? Nova Scotia or Dunedin? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do don't become a bad copy of a New York or London writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't live in a city of native English speakers you can mix with them in your local community. While they may not know all the latest tween slang, they will provide an unique and authentic voice for your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A writer writes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19655" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T14:56:00.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24578" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24580" CreationDate="2016-09-12T14:12:32.940" Score="1" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if this statement is sound:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Is code your way of life?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am trying to ask here is if coding is the most important thing in someone's life. What is the best way to write that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21432" OwnerDisplayName="mql4beginner" LastEditorUserId="9888" LastEditDate="2016-09-13T19:33:29.273" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T19:33:29.273" Title="How can I write a question about profession as a way of life?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24578" CreationDate="2016-09-12T14:49:50.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For starters, &quot;Code&quot; is a noun. &quot;Way of life&quot; is generally taken to mean something like a philosophy or code of conduct, so your phrasing seems awkward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean &quot;Is working your way of life&quot; seems less awkward than inserting the noun &quot;Is job your way of life&quot;. But even the term working doesn't really fit that phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question then is can &quot;coding&quot; taken to mean an overarching code of conduct? I'm not sure.  I mean, I live a fairly structured life and have already instantiated two child objects with multiple inheritance from their pair of parents.... :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm not sure I could ever call &quot;coding&quot; my code of conduct, and I don't think I've ever run into anyone who would call something as vague as &quot;coding&quot; as their personal philosophy because it is so nebulous a term with multiple sub-disciplines, frameworks, standards....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you ask someone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Is coding your life?&quot; and that would be taken as asking if coding was the predominant interest and activity that this person engages in, and the focus that they wish to continue as that central item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Michael Broughton" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T14:49:50.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24578" CreationDate="2016-09-12T15:45:51.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could ask: &quot;Do you &lt;a href=&quot;http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/live+and+breathe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;live and breathe&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; code?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;to be extremely interested in something &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I found it hard to discuss the poems, since I did not live and&#xA;  breathe poetry like many of my classmates did.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, a Google search of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/webhp?ion=1&amp;amp;espv=2&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8#safe=off&amp;amp;q=%22live+and+breathe+code%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;live and breathe code&quot;&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/webhp?ion=1&amp;amp;espv=2&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8#safe=off&amp;amp;q=%22live+and+breathe+programming%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;live and breathe programming&quot;&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/webhp?ion=1&amp;amp;espv=2&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8#safe=off&amp;amp;q=%22live+and+breathe+coding%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;live and breathe coding&quot;&lt;/a&gt; returns a bunch of results of people using exactly this phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Kevin Workman" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T15:45:51.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24571" CreationDate="2016-09-12T17:04:36.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you may be making too much of the idea of a flaw. To have an Achilles heel, you must first be Achilles, and who among us is? Most stories are not driven by a single flaw (which would imply an otherwise perfect hero -- an Achilles, a Superman) but by the ordinary circumstance of human life. Human being are limited in so many ways, and those limits stand in the way of our achieving our desires. Mere humanity, the reach that exceeds our grasp, is enough to fuel a million stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nor is the overcoming of a flaw central to the emotional or moral climax of a story. It is usually a choice, and a choice not driven by a particular flaw, but by the very nature of human existence. We all must make hard choices in life, and those choices are the stuff of stories. All that is won comes at a cost, and the hero must be willing to pay that cost, flaw or no flaw. Different character's strengths and weaknesses may bring them by different routes to the moment when that price must be paid, but it is the paying of the price that is the climax. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question I think you should be asking is, does the plot I have sketched out bring the character I have invented by a plausible series of incidents to the moment where the price must be paid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-09-13T02:41:47.027" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T02:41:47.027" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24564" CreationDate="2016-09-12T17:55:00.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you will be able to write as well as a native speaker, in fact you already do. Your written English is already far better than many native speakers, so you now face the same challenge all us native speaking writers do, which is to hone your writing skills 'til they're sharp enough to bleed, find your voice, and then give yourself to getting that first novel penned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3467" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T17:55:00.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24585" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-12T23:06:36.930" Score="3" ViewCount="346" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to write a book about an open source software product. Should I contact the creator of that software and get their explicit permission for writing the book? Or can I continue without consulting the creator and risk copyright infringement issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12670" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-10-18T14:46:19.370" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T14:46:19.370" Title="if I write a book about an open source software, should I take permission from the software's creator?" Tags="|copyright|software|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24585" CreationDate="2016-09-13T01:30:54.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copyright covers the expression of an idea. The author of the software has copyright on their code. But the result of that code is a subject in the public domain that anyone is free to write about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you should certainly write to the author of the software and tell them you are writing a book about it and ask for their cooperation. For one thing, this will impress a potential publisher. For another, if you can get an endorsement from the author of the software or maybe get them to write an introduction for the book, that will really help to market the book (which in turn will impress the publisher.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T01:30:54.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24587" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-13T02:52:10.713" Score="5" ViewCount="4924" Body="&lt;p&gt;First:  I did look for similar questions and this is the closest one I could find, and it's not quite answering the question I'm asking:   &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8533/legalities-about-fictionalizing-current-events&quot;&gt;Legalities about fictionalizing current events&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the question: pretty much every fiction title I've read includes a disclaimer to the effect of &quot;all persons, places, incidents and actions in this book are a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, places, incidents or actions is coincidental&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, but what if your book is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; entirely a work of fiction?  That is, what if you loosely model the narrative on something from a news story, but fictionalize the names of the people involved and create new plot elements, characters, etc.  How should your disclaimer read then?  And will publishers accept a work of this nature?  Is there any extra friction involved with getting such a book out (assuming it's otherwise publishable)?   Any other pitfalls one should be aware of it making a story which models on real world events? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm not looking for an answer to the general question of &quot;how do disclaimers work&quot;. I'm interested in knowing more about how they work in a specific situation.  And not just the strict legal aspects, but the implications as far as how publishers view a work that has this &quot;loosely based on real world events&quot; element to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T06:05:21.253" Title="How do disclaimers work for fictional books that are loosely modeled on real events?" Tags="|fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24588" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24594" CreationDate="2016-09-13T05:42:26.180" Score="22" ViewCount="7605" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his book &lt;em&gt;How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy&lt;/em&gt;, Orson Scott Card mentions the differences between fantasy and sci-fi readers, and even says that an author should stick to only one genre, as the readers of the other genre will not know who he is (to which my answer is to simply be a bestseller in both, but I digress). My point is, those two genres are different, and have very different readers as far as tastes are concerned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I am wondering if it is a bad idea to create what I am terming 'Science-Fiction-Fantasy.' Or maybe 'Fantastical-Science-Fiction.' The idea is that the novel is both science fiction &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; fantasy, no matter how inconceivable that might seem at first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this a bad idea?&lt;/strong&gt; My assumption is that it would be, as fantasy readers would be turned off by the sci-fi elements, and sci-fi readers would be turned off by the fantasy elements, thus turning out a novel that was 'mediocrely' received at best (obviously there would be some cross-over, but on the whole readers tend to stick to one or the other). Consider some examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A fantasy novel, concerning elves and magic and such, but taking place in a post-apocalyptic setting where 'magic' is based in hard science, and explained as such. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A strange fantasy world, which turns out to be a massive space ship hurtling through space. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An advanced sci-fi civilization, which gets invaded and destroyed by vastly superior elves, using magic to invade Earth. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last one in particular is a prime example of what I'm going for, and I think it really shows the total contrast between the two sides of the genre. Creating a novel like this would certainly be original (to the best of my knowledge). But would it work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T00:59:40.990" Title="Can You Mix Readers of Fantasy and Sci-Fi?" Tags="|novel|genre|readers|originality|" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-09-13T06:39:12.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it could be mixed - in the end the author decides what is best for the story. I am not a fan of both but your examples sounded intriguing. Anyways, if I wanted to do this then I would maybe try to escape the stereotypes which have been established so far and think of something different - different mythology, different places and science. (I would do this with anything I would write but still :) ). As everything is different then for example a sci-fi fan will not be disappointed by the fact that there are elves or dwarfs.&#xA;It is definitely possible - it depends if you can do it. The project is interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T06:39:12.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24571" CreationDate="2016-09-13T08:31:44.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Here is how I solved my problem:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike channeled texts, that are transferred into the mind of the medium as a complete whole, creative writing usually begins with an idea and unfolds from there. Different stories grow from different seeds. Sometimes a writer has a scene in mind and develops the story around that scene: Who are the people in that scene? How are they related? What led them here and what happens to them now? Sometimes a writer has a character they find interesting and develop the story around that character: What would the life of such a person be like? Sometimes the initial idea is a relationship: What kind of people have such a relationship? How does it evolve? Will it last? Sometimes it is a world: Who lives there? What problems do they face and what culture evolves to deal with them? In my case the seed for my story was a plot, that is, a series of events, and I needed to develop my characters to fit that plot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What kind of person would do these kind of things?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had the series of events the characters would go through and even how this experience would change them. I knew, very roughly, a few rudimentary aspects of what kind of person they were at the beginning, and who they would turn into at the end. I had the basic form of their story arc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plot was thrilling, but to make the narrative interesting on the character level, too, I needed a &quot;flaw&quot; that my characters would have to overcome to succeed on their &quot;quest&quot;, something that my readers could relate to and which would help them identify with the characters and care about their involvement with the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To find these missing aspects of their characters &lt;strong&gt;I tried to identify the key elements of their character arcs in clear and concise terms&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the example that I have used in my comments, of the detective who comes to understand and sympathize with the motives of the murderer, the key terms for this character arc might be something like these: At first, in the beginning of the story, the detective was focused on solving the case and bringing the murderer to justice. That is, he was law-abiding, principled, and correct. At the end, the detective had come to think that there was a good and valid reason for the murderer to kill his victim and he had to face the choice to bring him to justice regardless (upholding the law even when the law is wrong), or to let him go (and approve of and support the deed for some higher justice). That is, the detective had become sceptical, compassionate, and humane. I'm sure there are better terms to describe the personality states of that detective, and of course there are different personalities that fit the character arc. For example, at the beginning, instead of being overly correct, the detective could have been identifying with the victim, feeling affected by the victims fate, wanting revenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With the key descriptors of what kind of person the character was and turned into, I then &lt;strong&gt;researched both the initial personality and this personality change&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again using the example, I began to look into developmental and personality psychology to understand which persons are emotionally rigid and overly correct and law-abiding and what kind of experiences force these people to become more empathetic (or how victims come to understand and forgive perpetrators).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, I &lt;strong&gt;worked both this flaw and the motor for change that I had identified into the narrative&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the detective story, I would have given the detective a background that explained his emotional rigidity (or victimization and vengefulness), making it a problem in his private life just as it was an asset in his profession. And I would have identified and expanded those aspects of the plot that could serve as catalyst for the detectives growth and help him overcome the self-limiting aspects of his personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some comments that insist that developing the characters after the fact is &quot;unnatural&quot;, and that characters must &quot;grow&quot; and not be constructed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course developing the characters after the plot is a lot of work and it means that I have to rewrite much of my current draft. But rewriting is an integral part of writing. Tolstoy wrote the whole of &lt;em&gt;War and Peace&lt;/em&gt; seven times. Hemingway wrote the end of &lt;em&gt;A Farewell to Arms&lt;/em&gt; 47 times. So I'm in good company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And doing research to find elements of a story does not mean that this will make my story (or my characters) &quot;unnatural&quot;. Research is an integral part of writing, too. It would be unnatural if I just pasted what I found into my narrative. But if I process what I find, translating the results of my research into ideas, then they will either melt into the story, adapting to it, or the story will evolve to accomodate the new information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All information that goes through my mind will harmonize with each other, because it will be turned into what makes me who I am.&lt;/strong&gt; People are translators. They turn everything into their world view. So the research I do cannot disrupt what I have already written. It will become the nutrient from which my writing continues to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then maybe research is not – or not always – a means to find new information but rather an opportunity for self-reflection, and rewriting is not a forced process at all but rather a way to find out what feels most natural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What surprised me was how seamlessly the results of my research fit into my existing plot. It was as if I had subconsciously known my characters all along and they had already guided me when I developed the plot, and I had only needed the research to help me become conscious of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-13T08:45:19.987" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T08:45:19.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24564" CreationDate="2016-09-13T08:59:37.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading (and listening) is a good way to 'absorb' a language, provided the source material is good. Blogs are likely not to be written as carefully as novels, a BBC news anchor is likely to be more careful with his pronunciation than a random guy on Youtube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your writing skills will improve with practice, and with feedback. Join a writers' group (*) and ask people to review your work. Review the work of others (also a learning experience, as it'll force you think about language, rather than use it intuitively). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*: any writers' group, locally where you live or online. Subject doesn't matter, as long as you have fun writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6022" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T08:59:37.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-09-13T09:08:01.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it can work if done well.  I read both Sci-Fi and fantasy and enjoy both so I'm perhaps your target audience as I see no reason that the two could not be mixed if there is a point to doing that.  As long as the story supports the need for it and it's done in a logical and believable fashion then it should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also explore the effect of the discovery of real 'magic' on the advance sci-fi people.  Maybe initial denial and attempts to scientifically explain it followed by a split in the culture caused by part of the population simply wanting to believe in the 'magic'.  That might give your Elves an embedded force sympathetic to them and allow them to eventually win even if they were not initially superior to the high tech people on the battlefield. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand if you try and cram both into a single novel just as a means to try and double the potential audience then it will probably fall flat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21127" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T09:08:01.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24587" CreationDate="2016-09-13T09:54:53.460" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're essentially talking about historical fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Susan Elia MacNeal writes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B01JHHD166&quot;&gt;Maggie Hope mysteries&lt;/a&gt;, about a (fictional) woman who is raised in America but then goes to work for the British government during WWII as a spy. MacNeal's disclaimer runs thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mr Churchill's Secretary&lt;/em&gt; is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you specify what's historical and what's not, and disclaim the imaginary part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T09:54:53.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-09-13T09:55:41.060" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The novel I'm writing is actually along this vein, and I had the same thought as you: it appears to be a portion of the market that is yet to be fully recognized and tapped into. Whilst it definitely exists, not a lot of mainstream fiction seems to explore the vast possibilities of combining these two distinct yet similar genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Media are generally categorized as &quot;Sci-Fi/Fantasy&quot; because there tends to be a lot of overlap between the people who like the two different types of fiction. Although this isn't always true, it's usually enough of a generalization to assume that if someone is a fan of one, they would also be a fan of the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a high majority of fans of both Sci-Fi and Fantasy will have an opinion on which they prefer; they will rarely like both types of fiction equally. This means that few people will &lt;em&gt;looking&lt;/em&gt; for pieces of work that combine the two 50/50.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So writing books that split the two down the middle will be a niche audience, who are looking to read something that caters to multiple of their interests, whilst readers who prefer one over the other may choose to read it, but are unlikely to be drawn to it naturally. That's not to say that you shouldn't write it, but you would need to understand that it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a niche market that you are writing for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you may be looking for, and what I believe is the best solution to the issue, is to not do both entirely equally, but rather have either a Fantasy piece with Sci-Fi elements or a Sci-Fi novel containing aspects of Fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, let's say you choose to write your first example of Fantasy creatures in a post-apocalyptic age on earth, you could write it as a Fantasy novel with swords &amp;amp; sorcery, but also contains things such as radiation, ancient technologies from humans before the apocalypse, and even maybe popular themes of Sci-Fi such as attempting to rebuild civilization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it would need to be made clear to the readers early on what it is they are reading. Within the first 2 or 3 chapters you would need to establish which genre your piece is, but also establish that it will also contain portions of another genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That last thing you want to do is write an entirely Fantasy novel, then in the final couple of chapters include a big twist that they were on a spaceship all along, unless you drop clues about it throughout the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="13149" LastEditDate="2016-09-13T16:14:33.677" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T16:14:33.677" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-09-13T10:16:54.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not believe that the readership of SF and F is as distinct as you claim. I love, read, and write both SF and F. I also like crime fiction, romance, and many other genres. Many people have tastes that are not totally exclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But reading is like eating: Just because I like both hotdogs and strawberry cake does not mean that I like my stawberry cake with mustard. In the same way I don't like my Fantasy and Science Fiction mixed up. I don't like guns fighting magic. Because technology and magic don't mix. And I don't like dragons in space ships. Because a dragon has a mystical meaning, a psychological truth, that does not fit the context of either space opera or hard SF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to mix genres, you'll have to be so good that in fact you are creating a &lt;strong&gt;new genre&lt;/strong&gt;, not merely mixing elements from two existing genres. Your work has to feel fresh and inspiring, like a new idea, not like two old ideas thrown together. And that new genre made from SF and F already exists:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hybrid genre of Science Fiction and Fantasy is called&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fantasy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science Fantasy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A famous successful example is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_McCaffrey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anne McCaffrey&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;em&gt;Dragonriders of Pern&lt;/em&gt; series. Other examples and subgenres are given in the Wikipedia article on Science Fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your elves in SF: that is not for me. Like dragons, elves have a specific meaning for me that makes them incompatible with SF. But I know that there are many novels in which elves have become something more akin to an alien humanoid species, and there isn't really that big a step from certain kinds of fantasy to putting the elves in spaceships. I don't quite understand why you would need these aliens to be called &amp;quot;elves&amp;quot;, and how what elves are in folk tales has anything to do with the story you want to tell, but again: hybrid genres are popular, from urban fantasy to steampunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spacefaring elves can be found in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Warhammer 40,000&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfquest&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elfquest&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T10:16:54.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-09-13T11:20:31.067" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only caveat I would offer to mixing SF and fantasy is not to scramble the level of technology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are all steeped in Papa Tolkien's example of &lt;em&gt;fantasy,&lt;/em&gt; which is Middle Ages technology and pastoral Merrie Olde England settings. This level of industrial advancement doesn't mix well with &lt;em&gt;Star Trek&lt;/em&gt; spaceships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are a few things you could do to make the combination not so weird:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Urban fantasy&lt;/em&gt; is magic in a contemporary setting. Most of today's vampire/werewolf/witch YA lit is urban fantasy. Push it another 100&#xA;years forward and you can reasonably add sci-fi tech to the setting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set your story in a sci-fi setting (in space, another planet, far in&#xA;the future) and establish that magical creatures also exist. There&#xA;may be elves, but they aren't Legolas the archer, and if Merlin is&#xA;still waiting for Arthur, the mighty sorcerer might be a professor or&#xA;a researcher, or a sentient computer, not sporting a pointy hat and the latest Gandalf Lauren&#xA;robes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go in the other direction and deliberately play on the contrast. Have&#xA;a spaceship crash-land in Middle Earth. How are the Sindarin going to&#xA;get along with Vulcans? Would the dwarves pose a reasonable fighting&#xA;challenge for Klingons whose disrupters are magically disabled? (I'm&#xA;using shorthand, but you get the idea.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To lean on a different franchise, Jedi using the Force are referred&#xA;to in-universe as magic and mysticism, but Star Wars is pretty&#xA;clearly sci-fi (however soft). So you're starting with SF but adding in magical&#xA;elements which aren't classic elves and dwarves but are absolutely&#xA;beyond the explanation of science (midichlorians, &lt;em&gt;oh please&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-09-13T12:19:11.237" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T12:19:11.237" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-09-13T11:40:29.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some nicely detailed answers here already, so I'll keep my response short:- of course you can blend the two. As long as you balance the main aspects of each, eg. magic and technology, then you will appeal to both audiences equally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend taking a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWn6b8vi-PY&amp;amp;list=PL7atuZxmT954UvydqNVClXAH3GRT0pAp2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana&lt;/a&gt;. This is a table-top RPG web series on YouTube, with a custom-designed universe, which is a perfect blend of sci-fi and fantasy; Technological remnants left behind after an apocalyptic war, mixed with the more primal magic that the inhabitants of the planet now draw upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21444" LastEditorUserId="21444" LastEditDate="2016-09-13T12:48:19.067" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T12:48:19.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-09-13T13:14:30.180" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to a number of a very good points, already brought up here, consider this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any technology which is advanced enough &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;will likely be&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  considered magic by a less tech-developed society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you consciously approach this from the point of view of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nownovel.com/blog/unreliable-narrator/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unreliable narrator&lt;/a&gt;, you might just provide yourself with a potent delivery mechanism for your story, without utterly compromising the genre of your writing. You decide, if you let your reader to figure out that the mirror-mirror-on-the-wall is actually a tablet with Retina screen, or not--it is entirely up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mixing genres to me is entirely appropriate. In fact, I cannot point out a work of strictly Fantasy, which would not contain elements of Romance, Mystery, Adventure, and so on. It is the balance which makes your recipe unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2016-09-13T20:10:31.857" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T20:10:31.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-09-13T13:24:03.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course you can mix these genres, and by all means, pleaaase do so. A lot of bestselling and well-known works have successfully mixed these before:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dragon Riders of Pern (Anne McCaffrey) have been mentioned here before. Generally, Anne McCaffrey does a lot of hybrid stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marion Zimmer Bradleys &quot;Darkover&quot; Series is a nice mixture of both. And a classic. Read them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ShadowRun Roleplaying Game and associated computer games are definately a hybrid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, i enjoyed the Shadow-OPs series a lot (Myke Cole)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Albion computer game is also a nice example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if the mixture sounds interesting in your head, and your story setting seems to be so unique, fresh and awesome that you really want to write it... go for it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveat: but do you really &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; to do it? Or could your story be achieved without going all the way to mixing two genres? Could your spacelelves just be psionically active aliens? If that was the case, i'd suggest you try to go for the pure genre, as it will probably not only be easier to write (think of all the interactions and tech-questions you don't have to answer to), but might also be easier to publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21430" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T13:24:03.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24601" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24616" CreationDate="2016-09-13T14:31:45.210" Score="1" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the following sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Earn Up to $12,000 for Evaluating Code!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of using this as a headline to entice visitors to enter their email, but most people feel this sentence scares people off, because it’s worded like a scam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subheading is the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We’re recruiters, not professional developers. We pay you to help us recruit better developers… it’s that simple!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it’s really the heading that stands out. When you think about it, this shouldn’t feel like a scam because software developers make 80-140k a year, and you’re getting 10% for issuing the recommendation, as opposed to recruiters who currently charge 20-25%, but I feel most people won’t dig down into understanding what this is about if the headline feels sketchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, I want to the headline to remain catchy. Hence, my question is, How do I communicate the same thing without it feeling like a scam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15452" LastEditorUserId="537" LastEditDate="2016-09-14T16:34:05.727" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T16:40:42.080" Title="How to make a sentence seems more legitimate?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|technical-writing|editing|software|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-09-18T12:40:32.953" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-09-13T14:34:04.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The readers of SciFi and Fantasies have different structural and trope expectations in their books.  They are often ABOUT different things.  Threading the needle that satisfies both in the same book will be difficult but far from impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get away from those structural elements, the idea of mixing technology and magic is not a problem.  I would argue that barring the most studiously researched hard science novels the science in most science fictions novels is just a (hopefully) internally consistent magic system.  The magic system is your fantasy should also be internally consistent.  A book with multiple magic systems is hardly impossible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you put veneer of high tech, steampunk, mutants, psionics, sigils or bones on your magic is less important than how society interacts with it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A society that has the scientific method will not leave magic as a separate thing.  If it has a measurable, reproducible effect on the world or behavior then it will become a branch of science.  Likewise a society with out that will look a high tech item and call it an enchanted relic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21450" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T14:34:04.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-09-13T18:04:36.567" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, as almost anything regarding readers, it depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy and sci-fi are broad genres. They have several subgenres each, and not every subgenre on each one caters to the entire public that reads sci-fi or fantasy. When you are mixing sci-fi and fantasy, you are actually mixing up subgenres of the two, and that combination may or may not work in your favor. Still, we have some very good examples of how it can work nicely - and not just on books!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm not giving just examples on which sci-fi and fantasy are mixed in equal parts - some of those examples just have a little bit of the other genre added in for extra flavor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Shadowrun&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is a RPG setting which mixes up &lt;em&gt;heavily&lt;/em&gt; sci-fi and fantasy elements. It is one of the best examples how to make elves, orcs and The Matrix work on the same universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Discworld&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is a heavy fantasy work with some dabbling on sci-fi elements. While it is fantasy to the core, the sci-fi elements spice up the books in a interesting way when they appear. They are not core to it by no means, but they do add up to the works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is a popular space opera with heavy fantasy elements on a &quot;spacey&quot; backdrop. While there are spaceships, FTL travel, and laser weapons, the core of this work is heavily grounded around the magical energy that is The Force, sword-based duels and mystical overtones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Foundation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; by Isaac Asimov is a heavy sci-fi book with a drop of magic on it, by means of telepathic powers of some characters. While there is a scientific explanation for it on the books, it still has that &quot;plot-powered&quot; usefulness that magic usually has. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Golarion&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is the default RPG setting for Pathfinder. While it is mostly fantasy, it does have some hints of sci-fi with its multiple planets, aliens, and even the possibility of magic-powered space travel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Dark Tower&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; by Stephen King. It is a incredible series (for the good and the bad meanings of the word &quot;incredible&quot;), and has several fantasy elements mashed up with a really subtle sci-fi background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Iron Kingdoms&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is a RPG setting that is mix of tech and magic that has a deep &quot;steampunky&quot; feel. It has a really detailed way of explaining how magic-powered tech works, and is an awesome reading, even if you don't intend to play it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Warhammer 40K&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is the pinnacle of the &quot;mixed up stuff&quot;, with space-faring elves, armored super-soldiers, psychic powers, and almost everything you can find on fantasy and sci-fi mixed up together. While it seems a bit dark because of the background narrative, it is an excellent example on how those two broad genres can be mixed up together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;The World of Synnibarr&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is... well, this one can't really be explained without a Google Image search. I'll leave it up to you to check it, but it is an awesome game if played with the right mindset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Asura's Wrath&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is an incredible tale in the form of a video game. It mixes up some barely used mythology with sci-fi tones that make the game memorable in several ways. It has a space cowboy ninja Jesus, a really angry cybernetic dad, space battles, religious overtones and a super-weapon somewhat reminiscent of the Death Star, powered by human souls. It is a hell of a trip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, mixing up fantasy and sci-fi is not just possible but done pretty frequently. It is not something that can be done to make every single reader happy, by no means, but &lt;em&gt;it is done&lt;/em&gt; and it &lt;em&gt;works&lt;/em&gt; if your works are interesting enough! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18163" LastEditorUserId="18163" LastEditDate="2016-09-13T20:08:47.350" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T20:08:47.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13030" CreationDate="2016-09-13T19:28:49.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since doctor appointments cost actual money, which not every writer has, 'successful' (according to &lt;strong&gt;someone's&lt;/strong&gt; standards - what a snooty, elitist response!) or not, let me point you to this excellent resource I found while writing character injuries. From a range of normal reactions to pain, to how fast a person will bleed out without immediate medical intervention: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~leiafee/ramblings/realistic_injuries.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~leiafee/ramblings/realistic_injuries.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't see any specific info on eye injuries (hopefully your EMT cousin can help!) but there's plenty of useful info there. I hope that helps you as much as it helped me. Just remember that &lt;strong&gt;every&lt;/strong&gt; writer is successful - by actually writing! And all of us - even the published ones - are 'wannabe' writers. We all started that way, and we never stop wanting to write! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21457" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T19:28:49.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-09-13T21:14:00.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the many volumes about the Liaden Universe (R) by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller illustrate a perfect blend of the two genres. As for Card's contention, he seems to forget that many readers of speculative fiction follow more than just one genre!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21463" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T21:14:00.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24607" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-14T02:51:59.223" Score="2" ViewCount="1810" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of somewhat of a poetic way to describe how time flows, via an hourglass. Does sand simply 'flow' through an hourglass? Drip doesn't sound applicable, and 'stream' is just basically flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, what's another applicable word to describe sand moving through an hourglass?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21468" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T12:53:44.200" Title="How to describe the flow of an hourglass" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-09-18T14:04:31.903" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24567" CreationDate="2016-09-14T03:15:01.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some ways I've seen it written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pure narrator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pure dialog (telling it to someone else)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In between&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) This one really depends if you're writing in first or third person perspective. Writing in first person, you would write it almost like a conversation, but only to the character themselves. So something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oh, how did I get into this situation? That's right, it happened back then. Back when I decided humanity over barbarism. Back when I first met her, those eyes... so sweet and innocent. I couldn't have know back then. No. My heart wouldn't have let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and then go on to tell the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's in third person you could say the same thing, but with a less personal description and more of an observation description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He wondered how he found himself in such a predicament. &quot;That's right&quot;, he remembered, &quot;it happened back then.&quot; Back when he decided humanity over barbarism. Back when he first met her, and fell in love with those eyes that were ever so sweet and innocent. He couldn't have know back then, or rather, his heart wouldn't have let him know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) A pure dialog would be somewhat similar to the first in first person, except you'd probably want someone to interject every now and then to actually make a conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) For this one, you would purposefully omit the character telling everything to their listener, while filling in the audience with narration. So like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What happened to her?&quot; she asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;She died,&quot; he replied simply. And a horrible one too, he knew. And worst of all, it was by his hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21468" LastEditorUserId="537" LastEditDate="2016-09-14T13:19:52.203" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T13:19:52.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3152" CreationDate="2016-09-14T05:04:37.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The majority of respondents opted for not indenting first paragraphs of chapters. Their attitude appears to be, “Do what you want.” That’s fine, but if you are writing with an eye toward having someone publishing your novel it would behoove you to keep in mind, 85% of publishers, literary agents, and copyeditors want to see your work presented in the Chicago style of writing: therefore, make first paragraphs flush left. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21469" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T05:04:37.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24516" CreationDate="2016-09-14T07:09:19.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;The narrator is not a person. The narrator is a function of the written text.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of all those first person narratives. Do they all presume that the protagonist actually sat down and wrote that text? And how would that work when the text is about the future, or a past before writing had been invented, or the protagonist does not know the language the text is written in? Some novels create a fiction of the protagonist writing their memoirs or telling their tale to the author or the author translating a found text, but even then most readers do not actually believe that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Since the telling of the tale is not necessarily part of the narrative, you don't necessarily have to make it plausible.&lt;/strong&gt; Just as Star Trek does not explain how we can know of what the crew of the Enterprise did in the future, you don't have to explain how a first person narrator can keep on telling their tale after death. Some readers will explain this to themselves by thinking of religious concepts of an afterlife, or superstitions of ghosts, but mostly they will not much worry about how this is possible, if you don't rub it in their face (&amp;quot;Hey, look, I'm still here and talking to you after my death.&amp;quot;) and break their make-believe. Just continue as if nothing had happened (to the narrator) – which it hasn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John raised his gun and shot me in the face. I fell to the floor, dead. John looked at my dead body with satisfaction, then turned and walked away. Finally, he was free of me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that was the end of the novel, that would be perfectly fine and not irritate anyone. Switching to third person for a few sentences is completely unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a whole chapter coming after the death, switching narrators is the standard solution. But I think that you don't actually need to do that. Remaining in first person would be original and intriguing: something that readers can, but don't have to, wonder about. To me, it would add to the reading experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T07:09:19.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-09-14T11:34:41.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a SciFi and Fantasy reader myself. I usually read Fantasy, and when I want to take a break from that I read some Science Fiction. I've read some books where they mix SciFi and Fantasy and I've really enjoyed them. &lt;em&gt;The Saga of Tramorea&lt;/em&gt; by Javier Negrete is a good example, it consists of four books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sword of Fire&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Spirit of the Magician&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Dream of the Gods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Heart of Tramorea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a tetralogy based on a &quot;samurai style&quot; fantasy. It begins fulfilling all the features of the genre of epic fantasy (an imaginary world without technology, set in a medieval setting with magicians, imaginary creatures, heroes fighting with swords...), but through the history all that magic is being revealead as high science (without stepping in to deep, just deep enough for you to know how this could work) in a wonderfully explained story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you give it a go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per Orson Scott Card comments, one thing is mixing some science explanation in a fantasy book and another thing altogether is to stop the story in order to explan in two or three pages some sciency thing (something like this happens in Ender's 3 or 4, I remember reading too many pages full of gibberish (to me) about how outside the sapce our rules doesn't apply and therefore you can do anything you want, or something among those lines). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21475" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-15T10:23:55.317" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T10:23:55.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24607" CreationDate="2016-09-14T12:53:44.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;strong&gt;flow&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;stream&lt;/strong&gt; are two good choices, because they simply give the reader a clear idea and mental image of what you're describing. &lt;br&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here's some others, for the sake of poetic charm: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gush &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;drizzle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pour&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sprinkle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;leak&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;run (running through)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Hope I could be of a little help, and good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21185" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T12:53:44.200" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24561" CreationDate="2016-09-14T14:04:53.927" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start speaking like the character every time you would write his dialog. Act while you write. Mimic his way of moving his body, the way which he speaks, the faces he does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will provide you a lot of immersion while you are writing, it will not only boost your productivity and quality but will also make the experience of writing more fun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, I write most of the speeches of my characters just after my bath - where I spend a bit of time enacting them, just for fun, to get a feel about how &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; would feel and sound in real life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, taking acting classes (or even just playing make-believe with your kids, if you have them) can really boost your writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18163" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T14:04:53.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24341" CreationDate="2016-09-14T14:35:14.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have other characters know he has those skills and rely on that knowledge and skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Bob where's Al setting up his three card monte today?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hm... It's&#xA;Tuesday.  If he didn't get hassled, he's out in front of DeMarco's.&#xA;Old Man DeMarco visits his sister on Tuesdays and Eddie has a soft spot for&#xA;Al.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or just wish that they could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If Frank was here he'd just do his charm thing and talk his way past the guard.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But he isn't, so you're going to have to hit him.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare themselves&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I can pick the lock, but I'm no Angela.  It'll take me at least five minutes.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has to be something that is scene and story relevant rather than just something contrived, but in most stories there are people around the character who knows his strengths and weaknesses and might have reason to mention them under the right conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21450" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T14:35:14.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20667" CreationDate="2016-09-14T16:31:20.097" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ditto @Mark Baker and @josh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see lots and lots of villains in stories who I find totally unbelievable because they have no coherent motivation. The worst are those Hollywood villains who scream, &quot;I shall destroy all that is good and right and true!!&quot; and then bursts into insane laughter. Think of even the worst real-life villains. Hitler and Stalin didn't boast that they were fighting goodness and truth and laugh maniacally. No, Hitler said things like, &quot;Germany was betrayed by the Jews, and we must take steps to protect ourselves from these dangerous people.&quot; Stalin talked about the need to stop the greedy kulaks from exploiting their neighbors. Etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read lots of stories where the explanation for the villain's behavior is that he has some extremist religious belief, sometimes a made-up religion, sometimes supposedly based on a real religion. Except 90% of the time the religion is silly nonsense that no one in the world really believes. And if you're an atheist and your response to that sentence is, &quot;But all religion is silly nonsense that no rational person would believe&quot;, you need to take a step back. Ditto if you say, &quot;But all Republicans/Democrats/socialists/Teabaggers/hippies/whatever believe utter nonsense that no rational person would believe, so of course their motivations and actions don't make sense.&quot; You just don't understand people well enough. Even the people I think are craziest almost always have an internal logic that makes sense to them. They don't do evil things at random for no apparent reason. When they do evil things, it's usually because they honestly believe that they are serving a greater good. Their beliefs may not make sense to me, but they're usually not random and incoherent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course when villains give a justification for their actions, maybe they really believe it and maybe it's just an excuse for selfishness. But selfishness is a comprehensible motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2019-05-23T20:41:43.150" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T20:41:43.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24601" CreationDate="2016-09-14T16:40:42.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this relates to the classic warning, &quot;If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.&quot; Any advertisement or headline that sounds like you're giving a big reward for little effort will instantly make most rational people suspect a scam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overstating your offer can make it sound suspicious. Even if the offer is completely legitimate, if the headline makes it sound TOO good, it can be counterproductive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like, &quot;Code evaluator jobs. Competitive rates.&quot; would not make me think of a scam. If I was looking for a job I might read it. &quot;Code evaluator jobs. $10,000 per week!!!&quot; I would probably dismiss as a scam instantly and delete without even opening. Maybe I've missed some incredibly great offers with that attitude, but I'm sure I've also missed out on losing lots of money to scams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you need to make the offer sound &quot;good&quot; without making it unbelievable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T16:40:42.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24617" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-14T17:19:54.383" Score="4" ViewCount="298" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently asked a question which cited a book by Orson Scott Card, &lt;em&gt;How to Write Fantasy &amp;amp; Science-Fiction&lt;/em&gt;. Orson Scott Card is the author of &lt;em&gt;Ender's Game&lt;/em&gt;, as well as many other sci-fi and fantasy books, and I've always assumed he was generally respected as a reliable source on how to write, seeing as he is a bestselling author. I was surprised, therefore, when a user left a comment on the question, as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consider the source. I would take anything OSC proclaims with a hefty dose of salt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This implies that OSC is generally &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; respected as a reliable source. This isn't the only time this has happened: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When reading the Inheritence Cycle, I thought that Paolini did a fine job, especially given his age (minus the boring half of &lt;em&gt;Eldest&lt;/em&gt;). When I came here, I found that the general opinion of Paolini was very low indeed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to avoid making a similar blunder with much larger stakes, is there any way I can determine an author's standing amongst the readers? Obviously I could do detailed searches on everyone, looking up book reviews and spending hours browsing forums, but I'm wondering if there is a location that puts it all into a concise 'general opinion' description. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where I can I find such a description?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-09-14T20:57:05.263" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T13:10:06.913" Title="How can I determine the public opinion of an author?" Tags="|readers|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24618" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24623" CreationDate="2016-09-14T18:16:36.500" Score="1" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I was writing a story and realized that there was more then enough background material from the characters and actions that these characters went through to write a whole book just on them and the adventures they went on beforehand.  But that story would have no real plot.  The characters and people in the story would have many adventures but, at the end of the book, all that would have really happened would be that they would have gone from children to teens to young adults... that and it would be fairly traumatizing as they don't exactly have happy happy lives, that's why they go so far to have fun...  so basically...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do I need a plot for this book.... or is 'sorrow and fun' enough of a plot? I mean that's the 'plot' of 'Doctor Who' so...?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  Its not much of a &quot;Coming of Age&quot; story, only one character really &quot;Comes of Age&quot; during this story, while the others grow up there's an important difference between growing older and &quot;Coming of age&quot;, and the one character that does is a secondary character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help here would be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21483" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T18:59:47.050" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T18:59:47.050" Title="Plot: is it as central as &quot;fun&quot; or &quot;entertaining&quot;?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|plot|fantasy|subplot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24618" CreationDate="2016-09-14T18:25:50.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;they would have gone from children to teens to young adults&quot; is called a &lt;em&gt;Bildungsroman,&lt;/em&gt; or a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;coming of age story&lt;/a&gt;. It's a classic and perfectly serviceable plot journey. Your plot is based on each character's development and growth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm not sure how &lt;em&gt;Doctor Who&lt;/em&gt; fits into your example other than &quot;goes on adventures.&quot;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T18:25:50.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24617" CreationDate="2016-09-14T19:18:37.523" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are two questions here. The first (the OSC one) is about the helpfulness of a given writer's advice on writing fiction. The second (the Paolini one), if I understand it right, is about the &quot;goodness&quot; of a given writer's fiction, and (I'm guessing) about the usefulness of examining their fiction for the purpose of learning how to write fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll tackle the second question first. If an author's work is popular, and you want to write popular fiction, then there is probably something you can learn from it. For me the example is Dan Brown. I find his writing awful to the point of annoying me. And yet whenever he releases a new book, I buy it immediately, and I can't put it down. So clearly he's doing &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; that works for me. Given that I would love to write books that people can't put down, I could probably learn something important from Dan Brown's books, regardless of what other people think of his writing. And regardless of my own annoyance at his authorial shenanigans. (If only I had the stamina to fight through my annoyance long enough to analyze what he's doing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the first question, about a given author's advice about writing, I think you can apply a couple of tests:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How successful are the author's books?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To what extent have other authors benefitted from this author's advice?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would give more weight to advice from an author who has demonstrated success repeatedly over many years, and less weight from an author with one or two books, or with books with limited sales. Or no books at all. (Note that my interest is commercial fiction. Literary writers might weigh things differently.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A caveat: People do not always know the causes of their own success. Their advice may (unbeknownst to them) rest on many assumptions and on conditions that are peculiar to them, assumptions and conditions that might apply to you, or might not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which leads me to my second test. Can you find other successful writers who attribute their success partly to advice from the author in question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of numerous writers who attribute their success in part to workshops they took from Orson Scott Card. Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, David Farland. And several writers in turn attribute some of their success to things they learned from David Farland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of those people have achieved significant success. Of course, the caveat above applies here as well. Their success doesn't prove that OSC's advice is any good in general, or that it is right for you in particular. But it's gotta count for something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final note. A single Stack Exchange contributor's opinion of a the worth of a given writer's advice does not imply that the writer is generally not respected. That contributor (whose respect around here is enormously well deserved) was careful to phrase that opinion clearly in the form of a personal opinion. If you get a lot of opinions like that, that adds up to &quot;generally.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that &lt;em&gt;I am not&lt;/em&gt; commenting on the wisdom of that contributor's comment. I am cautioning only about treating any one contribution (no matter how wise) as &quot;generally.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OSC has said things I abhor. Those things are outside the realm of advice to writers. So I weigh his advice very differently depending on the domain of the advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2016-09-14T19:26:16.693" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T19:26:16.693" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24617" CreationDate="2016-09-14T22:42:28.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect the answer is you can't easily find the meaningful reputation of an author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first problem is a question of which authority do you wish to trust on the issue.  We'll make a fictional Bob, who is willing to answer this question for you.  Send him author names and he'll tell you their reputation.  The question of why do you think that he has a better sense of author reputation than you comes immediately to mind and plays strongly into the next point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No community is a monolith.  Some believe that any author with great sales should be respected, others seem to think that any author with great sales is producing trash and should be ignored.  Parse it by genre, age, gender and who knows what else and you'll get very different results depending on who you ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also the issue that authors have more than one reputation.  Taking OSC, his politics have a horrible reputation among most people who know them.  For some that colors all he does, for others he might be a fine author and might even have good advice on writing, but they'd never want to have dinner with the man.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given all that, the idea that there might be somewhere you could look up an author's reputation seems daunting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21450" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T22:42:28.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24618" CreationDate="2016-09-14T22:49:21.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you restructure it to be an anthology of short stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the whole might not have a beginning/middle/end, I assume the individual events within the characters life contain conflict and transformation on a smaller scale.  If you can package those short stories into a book that doesn't offer a larger arc, but does provide a plot on the small scale, that might be something that works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21450" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T22:49:21.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24625" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-15T02:45:32.117" Score="1" ViewCount="425" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on editing and revising a 100 year old text for re-issue and running into several concerns.  The one I will deal with today concerns citations and deciding whether to use anonymous or unknown and how to cite it.  Throughout the work, the author liberally intersperses verses of poetry without referencing anything.  I have been able to track down most of them but am left with about fifteen that I just cannot find.  I do not like the idea of using ‘anonymous.’  They have an author.  I just don’t know who it is.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Whichever way I decide to go, I still do not know how to cite it.  All the references I can find are for citing an entire work.  These would all be an unknown work by an unknown author on an unknown date, etc.  At the same time, there would be a noticeable gap between Milton and Shakespeare if I didn’t put anything.&#xA;Suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21490" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T10:18:42.000" Title="deciding Anonymous or Unknown and citations" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24626" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24640" CreationDate="2016-09-15T04:48:32.187" Score="2" ViewCount="1912" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an action/adventure in the same genre as Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider. I've reached the climax, where the heroes have saved their friend from death at the last moment, and the cave/tomb is about to collapse around them. Now, I have a dilemma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently have a scene after this where they escape. The midboss from before is back for one last fight, and they battle above a rickety old bridge, with a literal cliff hanger before the heroes escape to the surface. But that feels like I've put something mediocre after a stunning climax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, I can brush the escape aside and cut to them making it out just before the rocks fall, and pivot right into the resolution; or I can do something in the middle, where the escape is exciting but they don't fight a villain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I know when to stop the action? The story isn't done, but the remainder can't compete with the climax. It almost feels like a required dangling bit of story, which feels unpleasant. How much falling action can I have before it starts to drag on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, put another way, would the reader feel cheated if the scene cuts to the heroes escaping the dangerous underground with the friend they've saved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I know I can have story follow the climax for the purposes of tying off loose ends, mending relationships, etc. What I want to know is if there's room for action after an action-y climax: in this example, whether it would be underwhelming to show an escape from the underground temple after defeating the big boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3666" LastEditorUserId="3666" LastEditDate="2016-09-23T04:34:36.430" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T04:38:18.933" Title="How much falling action can follow the climax?" Tags="|fiction|structure|climax|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24627" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24633" CreationDate="2016-09-15T06:46:13.983" Score="10" ViewCount="761" Body="&lt;p&gt;At this point in my story, it's already been revealed that 2 characters share a telepathic link with one another that allows them to communicate to each other with their minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Now before we get to business there is one issue I must resolve,&amp;quot; Hitagi said, getting up before pinning Kabaru against the wall with her heel. &amp;quot;Care to explain why the hell you thought it funny to send me photos of a prostitute who looked like you?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;How do you know it's me in here?&amp;quot; Kabaru asked, her voice distorted by the vocal mask inbuilt into her helmet. &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Yulia, help?&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;I told you off for the same thing too remember? Don't be surprised if Rise starts beating you with her staff after this now that she know the truth.&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hitagi turned her head sharply glaring at Yulia. &amp;quot;Knock it off. I know you're both using that telepathy thing.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see currently when I want to show that a conversation is occurring in the minds of characters, I use italics (plain text wise I use &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; tags to show where it goes). This way it distinguishes this from the vocal stuff with having to repeatedly say &amp;quot;he/she said in his/her mind.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the generally the accepted format style for telepathic communication in the midst of verbal communication? If not, and if there is one, what would be the general format style for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T14:10:15.693" Title="What is generally the accepted format style for telepathic communication in the midst of verbal communication?" Tags="|style|formatting|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24628" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-15T06:52:06.857" Score="9" ViewCount="2472" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does there exist an abstract system that can help plan overviews or approximations of a creative writing piece, by way of symbols, conceptual abstract components, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want a system that can help me visually and logically plan out stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of any such systems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21493" LastActivityDate="2016-09-17T11:14:00.450" Title="To visually and logically plan out stories" Tags="|planning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24618" CreationDate="2016-09-15T07:04:25.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take care not to write a Fan Fiction of your own work. While Fan Fictions are fun to read when you know the story it belongs to, they might not be able to hook a reader that is not familiar with the background of the story. If you decide to write a Coming of Age story for your characters, make sure it is a stand-alone book that includes all the necessary ingredients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A question you can ask yourself to decide whether your story has the quality of a Fan Fiction (in the sense that it is a spin-off that can usually not survive on its own) or a full-fledged novel is: Do I write the book because I want to have fun with the characters? (Fan Fiction.) Or do I write the book, because the story fascinates me? If you have a solid story to present -- and kids growing up is a very solid story, in my opinion --, you should be able to flesh it out into a stand-alone novel. Advice on &quot;plotting&quot; can be found in a number of standard text books.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(By the way, I've written Fan Fiction scenes in my own stories and the best advice I've gotten so far was &quot;Kill your darlings&quot;. It made my stories much better.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T07:04:25.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24628" CreationDate="2016-09-15T07:41:27.787" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many different theories of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;story structure&lt;/a&gt;, but almost all of them relate somehow to the Aristotelian view that all stories have three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Many other numbers of acts have been proposed and used: Horace advocated five acts, in the Renaissance eight acts were popular, and so on. Today, most screen writing and novel writing theories posit three acts, but the actual number of acts is not that important, as a movie has a continuous narrative without curtains (so has only one act) and a novel usually has more than three chapters (although trilogies are still en vogue). What is more important than the number of acts in current story theory are the plot points, that is, the number, type, and placement of certain changes or &amp;quot;turns&amp;quot; in the narrative, and this is where the different theories differ and become both interesting and inspiring. Story structure also entails the structure of the relationships between the characters, with protagonist and antagonist being one example of such a relationship. To explain all or even a few theories of story structure is a bit beyond the scope of an answer on this site, and you will have to read up on them yourself. Here is an overview of a few of the systems most popular and well-known in screenwriting: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dramatica.com/articles/how-and-why-dramatica-is-different-from-six-other-story-paradigms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://dramatica.com/articles/how-and-why-dramatica-is-different-from-six-other-story-paradigms&lt;/a&gt; I will focus on the aspect of visualizing the story structure for the purpose of writing, instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two visualizations of story that have helped me. The first is the&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;1. Plot&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is often depicted as a kind of mountain, with the climax as its peak (from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plot_(narrative)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nil87.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nil87.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plot_point&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;plot points&lt;/a&gt; and the &amp;quot;subsidiary summits&amp;quot; of the build up of tension are depicted, with the exact form depending on the specific story. For Star Wars the plot graph could look something like this (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4032/beyond_pacing_games_arent_.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gamasutra&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cs1M9.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cs1M9.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with the plot points maybe loosely corresponding to something like those of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;three-act structure&lt;/a&gt; (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://goteenwriters.blogspot.de/2013/03/story-brainstorming-sheets-for-download.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Go Teen Writers&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QMq6z.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QMq6z.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last graphic already includes half of the second visualization and shows how the two are related: through the three-act structure which (may) underlie both. There are many such graphics of a general plot structure, and you can find a lot of them through a Google Image Search for something like &amp;quot;story structure&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;story plot points&amp;quot;. Among them are circular graphs such as that for the Hero's Journey,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kiYtM.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kiYtM.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but there are &amp;quot;climax graphs&amp;quot; for that as well. The exact form will depend on your needs. It's a tool, not a truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you think there is no big rise to a big climax in a story, but a constant barrage of equally intense twists, the plot graph may look more like the EKG of a stressed person, as in this representation of the plot of the &lt;em&gt;Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt; (from Google Image Search, website no longer online):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jAzOW.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jAzOW.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may disagree with this graph, it is only meant as an illustration of a possibility to represent your own perception of your own plot. Maybe your climax is not a peak, but the bottom of a deep chasm, representing the darkness your protagonists have to cross to reach the light on higher ground again. The important idea here is that &lt;strong&gt;the plot can be represented as a graph in a coordinate system&lt;/strong&gt;, with the falling and rising of the line representing more or less of whatever story element you want to explore through your drawing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second visualization, the&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2. Three-Act Structure with Throughlines&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is a tabular representation of story, with the three-act structure as the four (sic!) columns of the table (the second act is divided into two halves) and the rows representing the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_line&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;throughlines&lt;/a&gt;. Here is the basic system as presented on the website to the story writing software &lt;a href=&quot;http://dramatica.com/articles/how-and-why-dramatica-is-different-from-six-other-story-paradigms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dramatica&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bgd8O.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bgd8O.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of Dramatica label the columns as four acts, in other representations the middle two are two halves of the second act, with the story midpoint between them. The exact form of the table (and the curve of the plot) will depend both on your personal theory of story structure and on the story you tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tabular structure can become as complex as you need it. Here is the one that Joseph Heller created for the writing of &lt;em&gt;Catch-22&lt;/em&gt; (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://susancushman.com/writing-on-wednesday-sagging-mattresses-and-plots/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Susan Cushman&lt;/a&gt;, wrongly attributed to J.K. Rowling):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7OxvH.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7OxvH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, what the columns and rows represent is up to you and the needs of your writing process. The idea here is that &lt;strong&gt;structure can be represented as a table&lt;/strong&gt;, and the columns (or rows) representing the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(filmmaking)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;beats&lt;/a&gt; of your story and the rows (or columns) representing characters or themes that develop and change in the course of the narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I use a combination of both visualization methods, often drawn above each other so that the curve of the plot rises and falls above the columns of the table. Or I may draw a curve for each character throughline, or even for different aspects of a character's development (love throughline, action throughline), because they usually don't develop parallel to each other (the protagonist may win the race but lose his girl-friend).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-17T05:48:15.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23626" CreationDate="2016-09-15T09:42:01.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read White Death by Clive Cussler &amp;amp; Paul Kemprecos. Two Prologues, and they work extremely well. Useful for when you want to tie two seemingly disparate story lines together later on in the book. BUT -- you must plan this carefully, or you leave yourself open to confusion, plot holes, or even worse writing yourself into a corner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21495" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T09:42:01.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24627" CreationDate="2016-09-15T09:59:44.623" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Italic text is the most common format for telepathic communications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Savil spotted the soldiers filing into the pass and called up to her nephew. &lt;em&gt;Get into position. They're here,&lt;/em&gt; she sent.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;And the demon?&lt;/em&gt; he asked.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;I can smell it from halfway up the mountain,&lt;/em&gt; Savil confirmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes other punctuation is thrown in to set telepathic speech apart from emphasis or thought. Mercedes Lackey uses double colons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vanyel glanced over at Yfandes. &lt;em&gt;::You'd better go now,::&lt;/em&gt; he sent to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also use guillemets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yfandes snorted. &lt;em&gt;«And leave you alone with that thing? Not bloody likely.»&lt;/em&gt; He smiled grimly at his Companion's loyalty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might use asterisks as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vanyel made his decision. &lt;em&gt;*Okay, you move into the valley and cover the soldiers. I'm going to the peak where I can get a better shot at that thing,*&lt;/em&gt; he sent Savil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a separate but related note, I would use &lt;em&gt;sent&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;thought at&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;thought to&lt;/em&gt; as the attribution tag, but that's a matter of style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I absolutely would not use quotes for telepathy or internal thoughts if you're using quotes for verbal speech; it's visually confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-09-16T09:40:31.410" LastActivityDate="2016-09-16T09:40:31.410" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24625" CreationDate="2016-09-15T10:00:15.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are editing an existing text, you will probably let your readers know that you did so, for example in a foreword or addendum, and in that explanation you could simply explain that you have added sources where you could find them. Where the source couldn't be identified, you would then simply mark them as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&amp;quot;Source unknown&amp;quot;.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how you are searching for the sources of the poems, but I hope you are aware that many published texts are not available online and cannot be found through a Google search. You will have to locate and browse the original publications of the time. Otherwise your efforts will seem amateurish to those that are familiar with the texts you accidentally do not know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T10:18:42.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24469" CreationDate="2016-09-15T11:30:32.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Mike C. Ford has stated in his answer, a story without a protagonist leaves the hero without an accomplishment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, the accomplishment in a story is achieved through a choice the hero must make, between two equal options: the hero must give up one thing to gain another. This choice is forced on the hero by the antagonist: you can save your parents, but if you do, I will kill the girl. Of course the hero will eventually overcome the antagonist and save both his parents and the girl (at least in Hollywood) or loose both (in literary fiction), but before that he must make the choice that will enable him to overcome the protagonist. His choice between two evils will change him and equip him with the ability that he lacked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a story without an antagonist, the demand to choose is still presented, but the hero does not make that choice. The antagonist disappears, leaving before the hero could have made the choice and overcome his weakness. The end is open and &lt;strong&gt;the audience is left to consider what choice they would have made&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T11:30:32.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-09-15T14:47:37.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't say if this would be a good or bad idea (it probably totally depends on the execution) but it is a fact that such universes already exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1st example to cross my mind is the famous &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Warhammer 40k&lt;/a&gt; : it is pretty much &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_Fantasy_Battle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Warhammer&lt;/a&gt; (hence Lord Of the Rings-type fantasy), but in space, and with a few handwaved explanations of &quot;magic&quot; as &quot;hard science&quot; thrown in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, pretty much all famous sci-fi universe use typical fantasy tropes to a certain extent. Vulcans are almost space-elves. The Force definitely is magic (if we forget the midi-chlorian &quot;sciency&quot; thing), and obi-wan in episodes IV-V-VI looks quite a lot like Gandalf or Dumbledore to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in my mind, it can definitely be a good idea. Proof is, it already worked with famous universes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I relate much more to &quot;purely&quot; sci-fi themes, but I'm sure a lot of people love crossovers between genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21500" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T14:47:37.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24617" CreationDate="2016-09-15T14:52:19.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If an author is a best seller, presumably the general public's opinion of his writing is high. Even if someone was taking polls on &quot;Do you like the writing of X?&quot;, I think books sales are a much better indicator. People are actually willing to pay money for his books. They must think they're worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose there's the caveat here that many people may buy a book with terrible writing because they think it is &quot;important&quot;. Mostly I think this would mean books by influential people on controversial subjects. Like if the president wrote a book on politics, I'm sure lots of people would buy it even if the writing is terrible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And books written by celebrities often sell well even if the writing is terrible, just because the writer is already famous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in general, if a book sells well, that usually means that lots of people think the writing is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any given reviewer may, of course, have a different opinion. But the fact that one reviewer says a book is terrible when 10 million people bought copies of it ... the reviewer may, of course, be right that the book is terrible, but clearly the consensus of the reading public is that that reviewer is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't link to the specific post about Orson Scott Card and I haven't bothered to find it. I suspect the author is referring, not to the quality of Mr Card's writing, but to his opinions on controversial social issues which she disagrees with. It is, of course, perfectly possible and reasonable to say, &quot;X is a brilliant writer, but I disagree with his political/social/religious/whatever views.&quot; I've had many occasions when I've been reading a book and thought to myself, &quot;This book is so interesting and entertaining, the writer has such skill at story-telling ... too bad he's using that skill to push this foolish and/or actively evil philosophy. I wonder how many people will fall for this bad idea just because this great writer presents it in a way that makes it sound so appealing.&quot; And there are surely many times when an author writes a great book that has absolutely nothing to do with his positions on controversial issues and you wouldn't even know that he's a [fill in group you hate].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T14:52:19.043" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-09-15T16:44:13.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from the fact that there are countless works, both small and large, that mix the genres, this is still utterly bunk.  In fact, I would suspect that many purveyors of fantasy also indulge in sci-fi now and then, and vice versa (look at any convention on either/both topic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware the words of the unwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a story idea, write it.  If it is in a genre you aren't super familiar with, write it.  If it crosses genres or creates a new genre, write it.  While OSC maybe be trying to offer advice, and some of it may even be decent, it's still simply advice.  There's no magic formula, there's no singular solution or answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write your story.  People will love it or they won't, but that's for them to decide, and even if it doesn't fare well, you still did something that most people will never bother to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T16:44:13.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24639" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-15T17:44:52.373" Score="3" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;My novel is currently only for sale in Canada. I recently received an offer from a US publisher. Can I use the same cover with a new publisher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21502" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-09-15T21:25:31.807" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T10:00:59.620" Title="Can I use my book cover for two publishers?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24626" CreationDate="2016-09-15T18:53:45.117" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure#D.C3.A9nouement.3B_resolution.2C_revelation.2C_or_catastrophe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;denouement&lt;/a&gt;, or resolution, has many story-related purposes, many of which Wikipedia nicely summarises, but it also has a reader-related purpose: that of gently guiding the reader out of the story and back into the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of us fanboys and fangirls are very familiar with a kind of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpartum_depression&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;postpartum depression&lt;/a&gt; that overcomes us when a great book (or tv series) ends. I'm not listing movies here, because a movie does not last long enough for its protagonists become a familiar and habitual part of our lives. The reading of a novel (and the viewing of a tv series) on the other hand can take many days or weeks (or even years), during which we have half lived in the story's world, and half integrated the story's characters into our own. And then suddenly the narrative ends, and the character are wrenched out of our lives, and we out of theirs, and if you are at all like me then you will have shed many tears over that traumatic experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what the denouement does for us is let the characters, instead of being brutally run over and unexpectedly wrenched from our lives by the speeding car of a climax, lie in bed for a few weeks, allowing us to say our goodbyes and come to terms with the natural end of the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you write someting that is at all intriguing, then do your readers the favor of having some few minor things happen after the big bang and let the story slowly peter out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course not all stories need a denouement. They are most fitting after a long epic. Some stories have to suddenly break off to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot decide now, just write the story with the second climax. Then let it rest a while to distance yourself and read it again later with fresh eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a scene in the first draft of a novel that felt both wrong and right. It had the emotional quality that I wanted, but really didn't make much sense on the level of story logic. But I couldn't bring myself to delete that scene, so I just wrote it in and left it there. Coming back to rewrite the story after a couple of months working on other things, my infatuation had cooled off enought that I could see how wrong that scene was and rewrote it. I didn't delete it completely, but changed it to something that made sense and felt right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is a lot of experimentation. You don't have to polish that section for your current draft, just write it roughly and see how it turns out. Maybe after getting it out of your system you are free to see how you could change it to something that feels good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And trust your gut: if you doubt, then it's probably a bad idea. Good ideas feel right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-15T19:36:03.513" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T19:36:03.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24641" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-15T19:17:44.247" Score="2" ViewCount="880" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a book and after publishing it, went to search for its availability. That's when I discovered that another book written 8 years ago has the same title. My title, unlike the other one, includes a subtitle.  Will that help me avoid legal issues, or should I just change the title?  Same subject matter, but written in different style, I'm sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21503" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T19:53:38.953" Title="Books with similar titles" Tags="|titles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24639" CreationDate="2016-09-15T19:39:46.977" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;That will depend on the contract your Canadian publisher has with the cover artist. If they have the right to that image for the Canadian edition only, then your US publisher can buy it from the artist for the US edition. If the Canadian publisher owns the international rights, then the US publisher can buy it from the Canadian publisher. I would just ask the artist or the Canadian publisher. They will know what their contract says. (Also make sure the Canadian publisher doesn't own international or US rights to your story. But I guess you already did that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And congratulations for your success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="10460" LastEditDate="2016-09-22T10:00:59.620" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T10:00:59.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24641" CreationDate="2016-09-15T19:53:38.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lawyer, but I found an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/can-you-use-a-book-title-thats-been-used-before&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; on the web published by Writer's Digest (who, I assume, are knowledgeable) that says that a title is not copyrighteable, so you can give your book the same title as an already existing book, unless the title or some part of it is a trademark (such as &quot;Harry Potter&quot;) or so unique and well-known that it has brand-like quality (such as &quot;The Da Vinchi Code&quot;). The more your title resembles a common phrase (such as &quot;Green Grass&quot;), the safer it will be to reuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like the Writer's Digest article, I would like to point out to you that having a book in the same genre with the same title can hurt your sales and your brand as an author (for example, because the other book is bad and readers will confuse your book with that one and not buy it, or they might search for your book and buy the other one instead, because its by Stephen King while you seem like a rip-off, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why didn't you research the title before you published the book? That seems like one of the first things you should do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T19:53:38.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24644" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-15T20:00:41.207" Score="4" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a short fiction piece that has rapid fire texts, emails, phone messages and dialogue. How do I format the piece so with one symbol I can use to cue the reader as to which it is? Is there a standard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21505" LastEditorUserId="537" LastEditDate="2016-09-16T10:25:41.757" LastActivityDate="2016-09-16T19:30:51.713" Title="Standard format for symbols that denaote text, phone or email message or dialogue, when all are used in same story" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24644" CreationDate="2016-09-16T07:17:56.857" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Telephone&lt;/strong&gt; dialog is usually formatted like normal dialog, with some description in text explaining which speaker is speaking over the phone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Then I went to—&quot; Sarah was interrupted by the phone ringing. &quot;Sorry, that's my mom. Yes?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Hey, honey.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Hey, mom. Look, I can't talk now. Can I call you back later?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Sure, honey.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Just talk to her, Sarah,&quot; Heather interrupted, &quot;I have to go anyway.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Thanks, Heather. I'll see you later, then.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Bye, Sarah. Give your mom my regards.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Okay, mom, I'm back. We can talk now.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Wonderful, honey. Who was that with you?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to realize that a person speaking to another person and a person speaking into a telephone are speaking in the same way and will sound the same to someone listening, so there is no reason to mark up their speech differently. The voice heard over the phone on the other hand has a different quality, or is not heard at all (because it is too quiet to an observer), so sometimes it is not reported at all (think of the above conversation with the mom's parts missing) or marked up in italics, similar to voices from a tv or radio. See my answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/17142/5645&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chat&lt;/strong&gt; is often printed in a different font.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John turned on the computer and went into chat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;John: Hey everyone.&#xA;Peter: Hey John.&#xA;  Bob: Glad you're back, John.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John sipped his coffee and settled into his chair, looking forward to spending time with his friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is not really very visible here, and there is a different color background under preformatted text here, but I hope you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Email&lt;/strong&gt; and letters are often set off as a block quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John opened the email and began to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Dear John,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;I'm glad to hear that you are well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes there is no indent to the left and right and the email is only set off from the surrounding text by an empty space above and below. But you can also use a different font like for chat protocols:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John opened the email and began to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Dear John,&#xA;&#xA;I'm glad to hear that you are well.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use one font (or color) for chat/IM/SMS and another for email, if you needed to differentiate them more clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Symbols&lt;/strong&gt; such as those often found on websites and in application icons, are another option, perhaps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WuCaG.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WuCaG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are common symbols for email, text messages, and telephone, respectively. But you can also use the envelope to signify actual letters and use the &quot;@&quot; for email and speech baloons for spoken words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iXjLF.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iXjLF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of these symbols in text could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sarah was just about to turn off her computer, when a new email came in.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p1DWc.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p1DWc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Sarah, can you come over?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Joan! Now what did she want that couldn't wait till tomorrow?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p1DWc.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p1DWc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; What's the hurry?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Sarah was just hitting &quot;send&quot; when her phone rang.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KEUor.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KEUor.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; What?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KEUor.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KEUor.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Sarah! Can you come over to Joan's now?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Huh? What was Barbara doing at Joan's?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aNGku.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aNGku.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Hey Sarah, can you please come over to Joan? It's really urgent. xo Mom&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Now this was getting really weird. What was her mom doing with Barbara and Joan?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KEUor.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KEUor.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Sarah? Are you there?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p1DWc.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p1DWc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Please just come over quickly.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Sarah felt dizzy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, this quickly becomes confusing not only to Sarah but to the reader, too. You might have to add some identifiers (such as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p1DWc.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p1DWc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; [From: Joan] Hey!&quot;), just as senders and recipients are identified in software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no standard for the usage of these symbols in fiction, and while it makes sense to use them with the meaning they commonly have on the internet and in applications, how exactly you employ them – and how you will keep your readers from becoming befuddled – will be up to your creativity and that of your book designer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No markup&lt;/strong&gt; is the final option. Let's revisit our last example and tell it in the way novels have told of communication for hundreds of years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sarah was just about to turn off her computer, when a new email came in.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Sarah, can you come over? it read.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Joan! Now what did she want that couldn't wait till tomorrow?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  What's the hurry?, Sarah typed back. She was just hitting &lt;em&gt;Send&lt;/em&gt; when her phone rang.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;What?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Sarah!&quot; Barbara's voice said. &quot;Can you come over to Joan's now?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Huh? What was Barbara doing at Joan's?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Then her mobile phone beeped, telling her a new SMS had arrived. She picked it up with the other hand, still listening to Barbara's impatient breathing on the phone in her right. Hey Sarah, the SMS read, can you please come over to Joan? It's really urgent. xo Mom&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Now this was getting really weird. What was her mom doing with Barbara and Joan?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Sarah? Are you there?&quot; Joan impored.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Another email arrived: Please just come over quickly.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Sarah felt dizzy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure you can write this much better than I did, but you get the idea. With some ordinary description you can quite easily convey the complexity of communicating on multiple channels, without confusing the reader at all. Italicizing chat messages (and maybe email) will make it even clearer. More isn't needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-09-16T16:25:13.963" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8440" CreationDate="2016-09-16T14:53:29.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend finding out who wrote the episode and embedding the character while citing the author as you normally would in-text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Eleventh Doctor once said, &amp;quot;We are all stories in the end&amp;quot; (Moffat, 2010).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is APA, but it could work with any citation style/format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more formal work, you might include the season and episode numbers or episode title as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &amp;quot;The Big Bang,&amp;quot; season 5, episode 13, the Eleventh Doctor said, &amp;quot;We are all stories in the end&amp;quot; (Moffat, 2010).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21515" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2020-10-22T10:47:22.063" LastActivityDate="2020-10-22T10:47:22.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24626" CreationDate="2016-09-16T18:48:05.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok...So here's my two cents...If I were to honestly give an opinion...as an avid reader...I would not mind the additional scene after the scintillating climax if...and this is a big if...it helps me gain closure with the character(s), tying up the loose ends...be it good or bad. If, however, you are only adding the scene because it is glitzy then I would advise against it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For e.g. as I stated in the comments above, the whole &quot;Scouring of the Shire&quot; arc from LOTR felt very boring and I barely got through...it however helped me see how the war affected the other far off areas and how the minor characters (both good and bad) finally gained closure. So it worked out...kind of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So...the question you need to ask yourself is - What are you trying to achieve with the scene ? Are you trying to show the fate of the mid boss ? or are you trying to show the escape as exciting ? or something else...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always work out options for your scenario - for e.g. if you are trying to show the fate of the mid boss, you can have him crop up in the middle of the final fight and end him there by hero (or even the villain)...if you want to show an exciting escape, you can drop the mid-boss and have the heroes attempt a new daring exit because the entryway has collapsed behind them...there is no dearth of alternatives...so first work out what you want to convey with the scene and then work towards that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, If you are not enjoying the scene...there is no chance that your readers will either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastActivityDate="2016-09-16T18:48:05.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24644" CreationDate="2016-09-16T19:30:51.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any &amp;quot;standard&amp;quot; way of representing different communications modes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note this is not a totally new problem brought on by 21st century technology. There have been multiple modes of communication since the beginning of recorded history, including speech, sign language, and writing. You probably need to distinguish a written letter from a sign or something engraved on a building. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 1800s people added telegraph. In the 1900s they added telephone, radio, teletype, and toward the end of the century fax and email. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally, writers have made the distinction by simply introducing a communication with brief text describing it's nature. Like, &amp;quot;Bob opened the letter from Sally. 'Hello, Bob', it read. 'I heard that you are now ...&amp;quot; etc. Or, &amp;quot;Jared picked up the telephone. 'Is that you, Jared?' the caller asked ...&amp;quot; And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You COULD use symbols. But because pretty much no one else does it, if you do it, it would look strange. Maybe readers would figure it out if the symbols were intuitive enough, but more likely you'd have to explain. You MIGHT succeed in starting a new convention. But probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you'd still end up needing text to introduce each new communication or your story would sound very choppy and abrupt. Like: (let me just use parenthesized words to represent the symbols, I don't want to bother digging up icons.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Juan arrived back at his office. He didn't realize how long he had been gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(email) Todd: Did you finish the Paradigm report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(email) Juan: No. I'll have it for you today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Juan walked to the window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(text message) Jane: Don't forget the party tonight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc. That seems really choppy to me. I think you'd need to say things like, &amp;quot;He sat down at his desk and opened his email&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;His phone beeped, indicating he'd received a text message. He pulled the phone out of his pocket. &amp;quot;Jane&amp;quot;, the caller ID said.&amp;quot; Etc. And once you do that, the text makes it clear what the communications medium is and you don't need to introduce additional symbols.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, sometimes there are scenes where you want to convey that something is happening rapidly, and writing, &amp;quot;he looked at his cell phone on the desk and saw that a message had arrived ...&amp;quot; could break the flow; it might make it seem like there's more delay than you want your reader to perceive. Still, surely you could find conventional ways to express the idea. &amp;quot;Then he got a text from Jane: Don't forget ...&amp;quot; If you want to convey a truly rapid-fire set of messages in multiple media, like someone at the disaster crisis headquarters in a whirlwind of texts, phone calls, emails, whatever, you could just put a word or to to identify the medium:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George was caught in a whirlwind of panicked messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Text: There's a fire on Cromwell Street!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Email: Reporters of riotors downtown!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another text: Wild animals rampaging through the streets!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I'd avoid creating a new notation or format or whatever unless you really, really need it. A new notation that the reader is not familiar with is going to distract from the story. The reader has to figure out the notation instead of just reading the story. And even when they figure it out, it's going to be jumping out of the page at them, because it's unfamiliar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's some reason why the communications medium is vitally important and you WANT it to jump out at the reader, if the story is about different communications mediums and how they affect our perception of the communication, maybe so. Otherwise, I'd stick with more conventional means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-16T19:30:51.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24617" CreationDate="2016-09-16T22:54:53.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no universal public opinion of any author. People read of pleasure and for edification. There are various pleasure you can get from reading, and various forms of edification. Some hold that some pleasures are higher than others -- aesthetic pleasure higher than vicarious adventure, for example. Some hold that edification is better than pleasure, or is a higher form of pleasure. Some hold that some forms of edification are better than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We esteem those authors who provide the kings of pleasure and/or edification that we value most highly. Since different people rank pleasures differently and rank edification differently, and rank pleasure vs edification differently, they admire different authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An argument about whether on author is good or bad or better or worse than another author will often turn out to be an argument by proxy about which pleasure or which form of edification is superior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advice about how to write tend to have a similar bias. It is how to write to give a particular kind of pleasure, or how to write to give a particular form or edification. But it is seldom qualified this way because most of the people who give this advice start with the belief that the forms of pleasure and edification they value of (naturally and indisputably) superior to all others and therefor the advice they are giving is universal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick in evaluating any advice to to work out the presumptions behind it. If you agree with those presumptions, they you will likely value the advice. If you don't, you will likely ignore it. (Though possibly it might cause you to rethink your own presumptions, which would probably be a good thing. Even if you don't change you views you will understand them, and alternative views, better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-16T22:54:53.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24626" CreationDate="2016-09-16T23:07:42.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The climax of the action of a story is not necessarily (or even usually) the climax of the moral arc of the story. The climax of the action is the crucible in which the hero is tested and purified. What remains after the crucible and purification is very often the reconciliation: the mending of relationship and the restoration of broken bonds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can too easily be dismissed as tying up loose ends, but its role in the story is far more important than this. It is the necessary completion of the story arc. It completes the moral arc of the story. If there is not necessary and satisfying work to be done after the peak of action, this may be a clue that there is something missing the the story arc, that the story brings the hero to a peak of action without bringing them to a peak of moral crisis. If what follows the peak of action is boring, this may mean that all you have is action, and that is not enough for story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-16T23:07:42.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24652" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24653" CreationDate="2016-09-17T08:00:09.140" Score="6" ViewCount="737" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just recently finished building the setting and plot of a fantasy coming-of-age story. I'm happy with the way it turned out; the character arcs feel compelling and the setting supports the plot nicely. I've got everything planned out — all the different subplots have been tied up in nice, neat packages — but I have no idea where to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a coming-of-age story, there needs to be a lot of character development. Being a fantasy, it's going to take a while to expose the plot. The main arc isn't quite enough to fill an entire book, so there's some room left over to use for exposition, but I don't know how much of it I should use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timeline goes something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Yr 10: Main character meets very important side character.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Yr 10.5: Main character and side character escape an attack on their home town.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Yr 10.5-16: Main character and side character scrape out a living in another town.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Yr 15: Main character and side character, tired of the town and its prejudice, decide to leave and live as nomads.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Yr 15-16.5: Main character and side character travel from town to town, living mostly off the land and from less-than-legal ways of acquiring goods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Yr 16.5: Main character and side character hear whispers of the people who attacked their town and go off to investigate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Main story arc begins.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question: How early should I start? The earlier ones have the benefit of more in-depth setting and character development, but I'm worried they won't have enough action to hold the reader until the main plot. Likewise, the later ones feel like they throw the reader into the story far too quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, I really have no idea how early in the story I should start. There's downsides to starting early, but there's also downsides to starting late, and without a good idea of how long the main arc will be I really have no idea how to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit: As some of the comments pointed out, I forgot to mention the length of the story. While I haven't ironed out that detail yet — it's partially based on the point at which I end up starting — it's certainly not a short story, but it's not a multi-book series, either. The best comparison I can make is slightly longer than&lt;/em&gt; The Hobbit, &lt;em&gt;but it remains to be seen just how much longer it will be.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19678" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2019-08-16T15:14:18.173" LastActivityDate="2019-08-16T15:14:18.173" Title="How early in the narrative should I start my book?" Tags="|plot|character-development|setting|exposition|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24652" CreationDate="2016-09-17T10:59:52.723" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story should start with the revelation of the desire that will drive the main character. In the case of an exile story, the desire is usually either revenge or to return home (which may mean to find a new home). To establish revenge as the desire, you start by establishing the character's love for those for whom revenge is sought. To establish a desire to return home, you start by establishing the character's love for that home. Then you deprive them of those people or that home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LOTR begins by establishing Frodo and Sam's love of the Shire, which represents the way of life that they are seeking to preserve. (Which is why the story ends with the scouring of Shire, not the crowning of the King.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harry Potter, on the other hand, is a escape story, and so it begins by establishing the place that must be escaped from (Privet Lane).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Desire and its frustration are the root of all stories, you begin by establishing the desire and the things that frustrate that desire. Without those things, the timeline you have described is mere travelogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-17T10:59:52.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24628" CreationDate="2016-09-17T11:14:00.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One small point in addition to What's excellent summary: It is important to make a distinction between story and plot. In &lt;em&gt;Aspects of the Novel&lt;/em&gt; E.M. Forster says that story is what happens, and plot is why it happens. Today, I suspect, we would reverse the terms when making this distinction. Plot is what happens. Story is why is happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories are driven by desire. The hero acts because they want something. Their actions are convincing or not depending on whether we feel they are proportional to their desire. Mapping out a plot simply as a series of actions will not get you very far if the hero's desire is not convincing and the hero's actions are not proportional responses to the desire and the things that oppose it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The act structure of a plot, however many acts you choose, consists of successive attempts to achieve the desire, each more desperate or at a greater cost than the last, until the desire is achieved or lost. This is the moral arc of the story: what price is the hero willing to pay to achieve their desire?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mapping the action with mapping the moral arc onto the action will give you a history, but not a story. The art is in weaving the two together convincingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-17T11:14:00.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24655" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-17T15:39:14.773" Score="2" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently written a couple of short fiction stories and I would like to get them published. My searches on the internet has left me dazzled. There are so many option and most of them are just not what I'm looking for. Do you know a place where they publish short fiction or poetry?  I'm not looking for a journal/magazine that you need to pay to get considered for publication or one where you have to wait for months to get a reply. I'm even thinking of starting my own journal/magazine for people just like me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21527" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T16:17:02.077" Title="Publishing short fiction stories?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|self-publishing|journalism|publisher|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24652" CreationDate="2016-09-17T18:04:05.403" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somebody said once that the right question bears half of the answer within.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you have your story already written or not, it is clearly structured and well thought through. Your characters seemed to be defined and developed, and I have little doubt that your plot is solid. I think that your question is not &lt;em&gt;how early&lt;/em&gt; to start your narrative, but &lt;em&gt;how to deliver&lt;/em&gt; your story in a most efficient way, keeping the reader engaged and motivated to continue reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an infinite number of possibilities, and they all depend upon your style and taste, the genre of your story, the length of it—as @KenMohnkern mentioned—and the audience you are targeting.&#xA;If you see your book as a hard action thriller, do not be afraid to start with a scene where your main character and his sidekick are being chased by the authorities because a random thug they teamed up with for this particular heist, sold them up to save his hide, but not before saying something about their hometown which makes them want to go there and see what is going on. You can then bring all the backstory piece by piece as a series of flashbacks between the action scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are aiming at a classic epic fantasy, do not be afraid to expand upon the exposition—epic fantasy readers do enjoy throughly built worlds and beautifully presented settings—but just keep building tension scene by scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The choice it yours and only yours, and no one can really tell you what words to type and in what order.&#xA;For me, you answered you own question when you said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Main story arc begins&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is just me :-)&#xA;Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-17T18:04:05.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24652" CreationDate="2016-09-17T19:36:52.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only you know where your story begins. I'll ask you a few questions to help you figure out what you already know, deep inside:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is, for you, the seed of that story? The initial core idea from which you built all of it? Sometimes it is a scene. Could that be the beginning?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10916/how-to-distill-a-plot-into-a-logline&quot;&gt;logline&lt;/a&gt;? The premise? The moral? The theme? The message? The change? The crisis or climax? Can you foreshadow the essence of rthe story in its first sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the plot or the main character's arc? Were does the protagonist stand at the beginning (in terms of life situation and personality development)? Can you create a scene that shows this outset to the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the beginnings of novels. A Google search for something like &quot;novel first sentence&quot; turns up many lists with famous examples. Also go to Amazon.com and look at beginnings of novels in your genre using Amazon's &quot;Look inside&quot; function. Go through these beginnings of famous and genre novels and try to understand how they work. Looking at them with the questions above in mind will give you many ideas for first sentences for your novel, and the rest will flow from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-09-18T16:43:21.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24345" CreationDate="2016-09-18T14:00:08.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, YA books have become fairly permissive. You can get away with a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt;, if it works within the context of your story. The important question you need to ask here is: &lt;strong&gt;What purpose is the sex serving in your story?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know what it's there for, you'll have trouble writing the scene well. If you know it should have dirty bits in it but you don't know &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;, then readers will probably come out of it without much impression beyond &quot;that was a dirty bit.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the questions here are: what is your book about; what does the sex signify in the story; what kind of scene and experience are you trying to create for the reader. You can choose just how graphic you want to get, but the important thing is to know exactly what effect you're going for. If you're aiming for &quot;sweet, tender first love,&quot; than using hardcore pornography term will not serve you well. If you're aiming for &quot;naked, vulnerable, and utterly down-to-earth,&quot; then you won't want passionate, exaggerated euphemisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, &lt;strong&gt;focus on feelings, not on mechanics.&lt;/strong&gt; Feelings, character and relationships are usually what a YA story is &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt;. You can reference body parts and intimate touches if you want to, but I think you'll usually find that getting into serious, explicit detail will be more of a distraction than anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-09-18T14:00:08.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-18T22:33:37.470" Score="3" ViewCount="3355" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently re-reading Erin Hunter's Warriors and I noticed something new, knowing what I now know; The antagonist is introduced as a hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those unfamiliar with the book, it starts with a battle between two clans, in the middle of the fight, a younger warrior is pinned and Tigerclaw (who is regarded as the strongest, most honorable warrior in the forest) saves them. This goes on with Tigerclaw being repeatedly shown throughout the book as trusted and honored by all, even his enemies show him honor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when the protagonist discovers that he has darker motives, they do not know whether they are mistaken or how to go about proving it and when he does prove Tigerclaw guilty, it is an even bigger revelation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a good writing strategy? How else can I make an antagonist appear to be a good guy to the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14853" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-09-21T00:12:50.650" LastActivityDate="2018-11-29T21:12:37.767" Title="Making the antagonist a good guy?" Tags="|fiction|plot|antagonist|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24662" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-18T22:52:22.243" Score="1" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine a story in which the criminal is, from the very beginning, already known to the protagonist. Now the task is to find the criminal, but the target evades capture easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is clearly different from normal crime stories, in which the identity must be found first, but I don't know what it is called.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16245" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T20:40:19.647" Title="What genre would this fall under?" Tags="|genre|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24661" CreationDate="2016-09-19T02:17:34.133" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this question is less of a &quot;can I make the antagonist a good guy&quot; question and more of a &quot;is it a good strategy to make the antagonist a good guy turned bad&quot; question. The example you cited with Tigerclaw would follow, since I would argue that he's not a good guy by regular means. (I've read the Warriors books!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a good writing strategy? Sure, if it fits your plot. I don't see the issue with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could you make the antagonist appear to be a good guy to the reader? Well, by all means, just write them like a good guy. The point is that the reader doesn't know that your antagonist is one of the good guys. So if you write them like a good guy, the reader is unlikely to suspect anything -- unless, of course, you give hints at the antagonist's true nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say it varies a little. If your antagonist was a bad guy from the start and is only &lt;em&gt;masquerading&lt;/em&gt; as a good guy, you might write them differently than a good guy who &lt;em&gt;turned&lt;/em&gt; into the antagonist by becoming the bad guy. The &quot;fake good guy&quot; antagonist has evil plans from the beginning; you may consider dropping clues to their real identity, or you might write them as a good guy through and through until you decide to reveal them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;good guy turned bad&quot; antagonist is a little trickier, I think. This is because something changed them and made them become the antagonist (unlike the &quot;fake good guy&quot; antagonist, who was just lying the whole time). The &quot;good guy turned bad&quot; antagonist generally goes through something serious, and as a result their character is changed. Maybe they became the antagonist because the main character got together with the person they liked, and they got jealous and plotted to murder the main character. Maybe they became the antagonist because their entire family died in a horrific car accident, and now he's frustrated with everything and goes mad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I'd like to mention that &quot;good guys&quot; and &quot;bad guys&quot; are relative. Every single person that's ever existed is simultaneously a good guy and a bad guy; the same goes to characters. Your antagonist may be a &quot;bad guy&quot; by regular standards, but to &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt;, they're a good guy. And that, I would argue, is how you should write your antagonist. Because not every antagonist believes they're doing evil. Many do &quot;evil&quot; things with the honest intention of making the world a better place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write your antagonist like a good guy, whether or not you're trying to make your reader think they're a good guy. Your antagonist most likely thinks they're a good guy too. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T02:17:34.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24664" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24703" CreationDate="2016-09-19T04:44:29.893" Score="4" ViewCount="575" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love writing, but I can never truly get past the first few pages of a story that I am attempting. Even if it is well planned out. I always get stuck on what should happen next or I get bored with it. Its been like this for years, never been able to get past the beginning of any story. If not that, then I always get stuck. How can I get past this? Or how do I keep myself interested in the story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21541" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-09-20T15:17:11.573" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T14:31:54.240" Title="Tactics to get past getting stuck?" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|technique|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24664" CreationDate="2016-09-19T05:09:04.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My best advice to you is to keep your stories interesting. Sometimes a writer may get bored with a story they're writing simply because the idea of the story doesn't motivate them to keep writing; it's just boring. If that's  your problem, the solution is to come up with a better idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other times it could be because you have no idea where the story is going, so it helps to already have a plot chart out for the story before you start writing it. Not to say, of course, that it's impossible to write a book without a plot chart, the first four I wrote I didn't use one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that helps is encouragement from friends. If you want to write a book, let your friends know. I wouldn't have even started half as many as I did if it wasn't for my friends pushing me. They've been asking me when my current works-in-progress will be done for years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to summarize: &lt;strong&gt;1. Keep your plot and characters interesting.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;2. Know where the book is going, before you get invested in it.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;3. Let your friends help you&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Helpful links: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://goteenwriters.blogspot.com/2011/12/8-ways-to-stay-focused-on-your-novel.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://goteenwriters.blogspot.com/2011/12/8-ways-to-stay-focused-on-your-novel.html&lt;/a&gt; (This one is geared towards teen writers, but it gives some good advice for all novices, I believe.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fictionfactor.com/articles/stay-motivated-with-writing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fictionfactor.com/articles/stay-motivated-with-writing.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T05:09:04.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24664" CreationDate="2016-09-19T06:56:15.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done quite a lot of reading on the question of talent, and apparently what we perceive as talent is a combination of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an inborn potential to be good at a certain task (for writing: creativity, verbal intelligence);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a liking for that task (that is, enjoying the writing, not just the idea of being a writer); and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;perseverance (a need to pursue the task and overcome difficulties).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it, you lack the second prerequisite, joy. You get bored. Writers do not get bored by their stories, they need to tell them in the same way that you need to eat or sleep. If writing bores you, then maybe what you love is the daydreaming and you don't actually want to approach this as a task. You want to invent, but you do not want it to become work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T06:56:15.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24664" CreationDate="2016-09-19T06:56:30.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you're bored because you know the story. If you plan it beforehand, you know how it will go. Some writers need to know how the story will go. Others get bored if they know how the story will go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try writing a story without planning it. Start with a character. Give them a problem. When they try to solve the problem, arrange for it to fail, and to make things worse instead of better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write a bunch of those try/fail cycles, without knowing ahead of time what the character will try or how it will fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever you're trying to figure out what the character will try next, or how you can make it worse, try to think of at least four possibilities. Pick the one that will be the most fun to write, or the most surprising to you, or the scariest, or whatever, and write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T06:56:30.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24664" CreationDate="2016-09-19T09:55:23.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There could be 1001 reasons why you can't commit to writing a single piece of work, some of which are mentioned here by other people. I think the important thing to do is to identify what it is that is causing you to struggle getting the words onto the page, especially considering you normally love writing. Obviously asking for reasons on here is a great first step to identifying your own personal reason, but no one here may be able to get it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, I realized my struggle with getting past chapter 2 of my book was because whilst I felt I had an excellent story in me, I actually had no experience with writing, and my writing skills were not great. This meant that I was lacking the ability to translate my great story idea into a great book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I looked for advice on how to motivate myself to write more than I had already, many things I initially read gave me the advice to 'push through' my hesitation and just get stuff down on the page. However, if I had done that I would now have a completed novel that would be pretty awfully written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst this would have given me the experience to write that I needed, simply writing some short pieces on Reddit's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/writingprompts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing Prompts&lt;/a&gt; also gave me some experience and insight into my own technique, and allowed me to grow and become a better writer by writing stuff that was outside of my comfort zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice would be to ignore advice that tells you to just push through the problem, because usually there's an underlying issue that needs to be tackled before you will be able to happily complete a piece of work, particularly if it's happening so early on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T09:55:23.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24655" CreationDate="2016-09-19T12:46:32.363" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm even thinking of starting my own journal/magazine for people just like me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many journals make serious efforts to be respectable towards their contributors. They don't WANT to make you wait long, they just don't have the funding or time to answer everybody in a timely manner, let alone with good news. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start your journal, and you'll see. You get a thousand entries in a week, at say an average word count of 3,000 words. That's 3 million words in a week. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21546" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T12:46:32.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24662" CreationDate="2016-09-19T12:50:35.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is extremely similar to a British show called The Fall, on Netflix. You know right from the get-go, and he gets plenty of screen-time throughout. I urge you to watch that before you start writing this. There are definitely some pitfalls to avoid with this sort of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21546" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T12:50:35.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24617" CreationDate="2016-09-19T13:10:06.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As other answers already indicate there is no such thing as a public opinion on people. Especially in the realms of internet comments there is a lot of binary opinions either adoring or condemning a public person. A good analysis of the reputation of people in the light of public opinion is way too complicated to be discussed here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I distinctly remember reading a lot of Orson Scott Card's reputation back when the Ender Game movie hit the cinemas. A lot of media outlets as well as the usual internet crowd focused a lot on his faith based views on homosexuality. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Scott_Card#Views_about_homosexuality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;It even has its own Wikipedia section on his page.&lt;/a&gt; I certainly don't want to take any stance on that issue here, but I read a lot about boycotts and general condemning of his stance on the issue and the societies he describes in his books - especially of the Ender series - in mainstream media outlets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, have in mind that the public opinion about writers that are outspoken about (controversial) topics may very well be subject to heavy opposition in the web. On the internet the ones opposed to something are always louder and it does not necessarily have to do anything with the writers ability to write or give writing advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19623" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T13:10:06.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24655" CreationDate="2016-09-19T16:17:02.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't mention having any other writing experience or what you may have done in terms of edits, etc., so my comments are assuming these are your first stories. Just because you've written some stories, it does not mean they are ready for publication. You may have great stuff there (evaluate them against some of the favorites that you've read) or they might not be ready for prime time yet. You may want to try workshopping them through a site like Scribophile.com, which is a good place to give and get critiques, or with a local writers' group. Making sure your writing is the best it can be will make the process of submitting to journals less painful, because you are more likely to be accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If/when the stories are ready to send out, in addition to @what's suggestion about looking at the magazines you read, you can also take a look at Duotrope.com. They have a database you can search and links to the different journals so you can check the individual magazine's submission guidelines. Always follow the guidelines or the odds are your stuff will get tossed. Duotrope usually gives an indication of how long it takes to get a response (I can't remember, you may have to subscribe to get those statistics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck. Keep writing. Work the craft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T16:17:02.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24673" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24675" CreationDate="2016-09-19T16:49:43.117" Score="15" ViewCount="7827" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I am not intending on doing this. It is just a question I thought was fascinating and might be useful to other writers.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the scenario. You're writing a series of novels. After the first book, you decide to change to a new protagonist. The reason isn't important. What's important is that if you've developed the protagonist correctly, the reader is invested in him. He wants him to win. Now he must suddenly shift to a new protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This presents a problem. The reader will want to stay with the old protagonist. That's the one he likes. He spent a whole novel with that person, learning deep truths about his character as they went through harrowing journeys together. Now he's suddenly forced to work with this new person, when he is only interested in reading about the old one. The reader puts the book down and leaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's my question: is there some tried-and-tested method for dealing with this? Suppose you write one novel, and then shift to the protagonist's best friend for the next novel. You could theoretically lessen the impact by making the friend a strong secondary protagonist in the first novel, so let's make it worse. What if you're telling a genealogy story, and the next novel picks up with the protagonist's kids? You can't exactly make a one-year-old a secondary protagonist before-hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can you shift to a new protagonist in the next novel?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: Ignore killing off the protagonist. This is for if he's still alive and well.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Additional Note: I develop my characters so that the reader cares about them. To me, every protagonist needs a reason for the reader to want him to win. I call this quality Strength. He also needs inner conflict, something unresolved inside of him that makes him endlessly interesting to read about. Inner conflict is usually resolved at the end of the book, but you still have Strength, drawing the reader back to the old protagonist.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The opening pages are very important, because if the reader likes the old protagonist (now a side character) more than the new one, he could easily turn against the new protagonist, which would completely skew your novel.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do note that this method of character development is my own personal method. It is not part of the question (nor should it be part of the answer), and I only include it to show you where I'm coming from.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have marked what's reply as the answer, mainly for the excellent outline it provides which I consider very useful. I wanted to note however, that I found part of Lew's answer also incredibly insightful. I wanted to note it here for anyone else who might have this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is character-driven, switching protagonist probably makes little or no sense, unless the person is killed and someone else has to carry the torch (but it is not the case, I understand).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is plot-driven, you can pick a new protagonist every time the story requires it. It is your story and you can tell it any way you desire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2021-08-14T01:17:18.803" Title="How can I Switch Protagonists Between Books?" Tags="|fiction|style|novel|characters|series|" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24673" CreationDate="2016-09-19T17:17:14.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen it more than once. It can be a bit jarring, but it can also work fine. It depends on the plot and the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Susan Cooper's &lt;em&gt;The Dark Is Rising&lt;/em&gt; pentology: the first&#xA;book is about three siblings, and then the second book is about&#xA;another young man entirely in a different country who has nothing to&#xA;do with them. They eventually meet in the third book and books 3&#xA;to 5 alternate between their viewpoints. It was confusing at&#xA;first, but smoothed out eventually.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anne McCaffrey's YA Harper Hall trilogy does something similar: Books&#xA;1 and 2 are about Menolly, a young girl who has to escape her abusive&#xA;home to become a musician, and Piemur is a younger boy who is a&#xA;singer whom she meets and befriends. Book 3 is about Piemur's&#xA;adventures and Menolly plays little to no role. It works better because McCaffrey set many books in this universe and frequently switches protagonists. Robinton, the Master Harper, is a secondary character in several stories and then eventually got his own origin novel. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another McCaffrey example in the same universe: &lt;em&gt;Moreta&lt;/em&gt; is about a queen dragon rider, while &lt;em&gt;Nerilka's Story&lt;/em&gt; is set starting about two-thirds of the way through &lt;em&gt;Moreta&lt;/em&gt; and follows someone else's experiences. Each woman is a tertiary character in the other's story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_with_Rama#Books_in_the_series&quot;&gt;Rama series&lt;/a&gt; by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee: Book 1 is almost a&#xA;&quot;history of the future,&quot; and books 2 to 4 are more traditional novels&#xA;about a family (and are set some years later, IIRC).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, you can do it. Make all your protagonists worthy of being admired and trust that the reader can keep up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T17:17:14.133" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24673" CreationDate="2016-09-19T17:36:09.383" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I deeply resent a shift to a new protagonist. There is nothing you can do to make me like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nethertheless it is often done. George R. R. Martin's &lt;em&gt;A Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; even does it every chapter. When I read his books, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12553/5645&quot;&gt;I read all chapters with one protagonist in sequence&lt;/a&gt;, and then those of the others, because I couldn't bring myself to care about the new protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I dislike about protagonist shift is exactly what you describe: that I have begun to indentify with and care for the protagonist, and I am torn from living that story and forced into another one that I don't currently care about. Maybe you too have &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24640/5645&quot;&gt;experienced the sadness at having to leave a book and its characters at the end of a novel&lt;/a&gt;. It often takes a couple of days for me to grieve that loss and fully return to my own life, before I can begin another book. A series that changes protagonists is one of the most hateful things I can think of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is only one kind of book where switches in viewpoints work for me: love stories. Because &lt;strong&gt;they don't switch protagonists&lt;/strong&gt;. Two-viewpoint love stories actually don't have one protagonist, they have two. And switching viewpoints, the story does not switch protagonists at all. The focus remains on the developing relationship between the two – &lt;strong&gt;and the reader is never forced to leave any protagonist&lt;/strong&gt; and can always stay with both, no matter which viewpoint the story takes on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the solution to your question is simple. If you don't want to traumatize the reader by tearing him away from a protagonist, what you need to do is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;switch viewpoints but keep the former protagonist central to the story.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reader has begun to care about the new protagonist in the first volume, because that second-volume protagonist was part of the life of the old protagonist, central to the plot, and well developed; and if the old protagonist remains an essential part of the reader's reading experience of the second volume; then the reader will experience the change in protagonist, or rather viewpoint, as part of that character's development, and not as a &lt;em&gt;loved one&lt;/em&gt; torn from his life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a decision tree for the problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If &lt;em&gt;the same&lt;/em&gt; story can be told without a switch in protagonist, then that is the story most people will prefer to read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you must switch protagonists, make each protagonist a central part of the other protagonist's narrative. This is not a protagonist switch but a switch in viewpoint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a protagonist must disappear completely, prepare the reader for that loss by letting them know well in advance, perhaps even from the outset (blurb). If possible, have other characters remember that person and show the continuing influence of his actions on the ongoing story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the story demands that the switch must be abrupt and total, then – but only then – will an abrupt and total switch be an enjoyable read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When a series is not narrative but thematic (like Kim Stanley Robinson's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Californias_Trilogy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Three Californias&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;), then no switch can be intentionally irritating (as in Michael Moorcocks &lt;em&gt;Jerry Cornelius&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reply to an argument in comments with @Graham, who claims that readers like to read protagonist switches, I have created a statistic of protagonist shifts in the best-selling fiction series listed in Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books#List_of_best-selling_book_series&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;List of Best-Selling Books&lt;/a&gt;. This list contains every kind of series, from children's books to adult erotica, and from 1896 to the present, that has sold at least 15 million copies. I have only counted series published in English or a European language, and only fiction. Any further exclusions are noted below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Frequency of Protagonist Shifts between Sequels in Bestselling Fiction Series&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aMnke.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aMnke.png&quot; alt=&quot;Barplot of&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not counted (with reason):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Choose Your Own Adventure&lt;/em&gt; (the reader is the protagonist in different stories)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; (based on a movie series)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;American Girl&lt;/em&gt; (based on a series of dolls)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Where's Wally&lt;/em&gt; (not a story in the ordinary sense)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rich Dad Poor Dad&lt;/em&gt; (autobiographical, non-fiction)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multi-series series, such as &lt;em&gt;Dragonlance&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Riftwar&lt;/em&gt;, have been counted according to the first published sub-series.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While these are only extreme bestsellers, and the distribution might be somewhat different if we counted everything on the New York Times bestseller list and only contemporary adult fiction – which you are welcome to either do or stop arguing –, I think the sample is representative enough to refute the claim that readers love to read protagonist switches. Only about a seventh of all mega-bestsellers contain protagonist switches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while protagonist switches certainly do not prevent a book from becoming a bestseller, &lt;strong&gt;not switching protagonists makes it six times more likely that your book will become a bestseller&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be notable that protagonist shifts happen more often with group protagonists, that is, a change from one group of characters in the first book to another group of characters in the sequel. When the protagonist is an individual character, he usually remains the protagonist: the ratio is 1:11.5 as opposed to 1:3.3 for group protagonists. This means that in every fourth best-selling series with an ensemble cast the cast changes between sequels, but only in every twelfth series with a single protagonist. Probably this is due to the fact that identification with characters is weaker with a group of protagonists, and shifts between them have been happening throughout the book already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T07:22:25.487" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24673" CreationDate="2016-09-19T18:39:37.717" Score="23" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...you decide to change to a new protagonist. The reason isn't important...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot let this pass. The &lt;em&gt;reason&lt;/em&gt; is paramount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is character-driven, switching protagonist probably makes little or no sense, unless the person is killed and someone else has to carry the torch (but it is not the case, I understand).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is plot-driven, you can pick a new protagonist every time the story requires it. It is your story and you can tell it any way you desire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire even does it every chapter...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not entirely correct. George R. R. Martin changes to a different character's &lt;em&gt;point of view&lt;/em&gt; with every chapter, the number of his protagonists (Jon Snow, Tyrion, Daenerys, Davos) is nowhere near the number of his characters. Yet he does have quite a few and does switch them promptly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robin Hobb has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.robinhobb.com/novels/&quot;&gt;over a dozen novels set in the same world&lt;/a&gt; with characters, antagonists and protagonists traveling from one story to another, all set over an epic storyline, spanning several decades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Make all your protagonists worthy of being admired and trust that the reader can keep up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely true. Besides that--there are no rules, only the author and the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T18:39:37.717" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24677" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-19T19:00:01.060" Score="2" ViewCount="1013" Body="&lt;p&gt;I myself do not have panic attacks, but I do know a few people who have had them. A few even while I'm around-- so I know what I'm doing for the most part, but..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a certain scene in the story where said character is having a panic attack after he is left alone (he is a prince and his guards, who at least one of them is with him 24-7, all go off somewhere and he has no idea where they are)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After it occurs to him that none of them are with him, he begins to have a panic attack, and this happens during an invasion on his kingdom where monsters are attacking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During his panic attack, he is about to be attacked by a monster before one of his guards comes back to save him. His guard ends up becoming extremely injured, possibly near death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem figuring out this scene is questioning whether his guard showing up and nearly dying would snap him back to reality, or if he would fall into even more of a panic and would be unable to help the guard. Or is this something where it would depend? How do I decide between these two alternatives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21549" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-09-20T15:28:19.100" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T22:50:42.327" Title="Writing a character who has panic attacks" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2016-10-05T23:28:45.250" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24678" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-18T22:12:12.240" Score="1" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I've come across this little (but very annoying) problem when writing my first novel in the present tense: I'm second guessing my choice of tenses all the time, very much afraid to end up being inconsistent but there comes a time I feel some actions need to be placed in the past:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this extract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ken is not in the basement or the attic, or anywhere near the upper floors. The garden? It could be, but it certaintly &lt;strong&gt;didn’t feel&lt;/strong&gt; like it. Fiona sits up on the cold floor and checks the watch on her wrist. It &lt;strong&gt;was&lt;/strong&gt; nearing midday, it seems, and it suddenly dawns on her that she should be at work already. She wonders about Mark and his roundabouts.  It &lt;strong&gt;was&lt;/strong&gt; weird for him to just flee a party, alone. They very often took a taxi together then crashed some friend's apartment but she's sure that &lt;strong&gt;wasn't&lt;/strong&gt; the case today, her sore back and the vomit by her side are hinting she passed out before getting to her house and nobody helped her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Just in case we're talking about a girl with &quot;powers&quot; here hence the 'feel' thing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you see I'm not very confident about those bits being left in simple past. Should I switch them? Or is it okay to leave it like this? I think the meaning is crystal clear but, nevertheless, I strive to achieve consistent writing so...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help/tips would be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21557" OwnerDisplayName="user196924" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T17:54:18.050" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T17:54:18.050" Title="Stating facts in novel written in the present tense, third person omniscient. Can I use the past tenses or would I risk losing consistency?" Tags="|style|tenses|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24678" CreationDate="2016-09-19T07:39:09.530" Score="-2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ken is not in the basement or the attic, or anywhere near the upper floors. The garden? It could be, but it certainly doesn't feel like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can she &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; it?  Has she looked for him in any of those places?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiona sits up on the cold floor and checks the watch on her wrist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where else would the watch be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiona sits up on the cold floor and checks her watch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's almost noon, it seems, and it suddenly dawns on her that she should have been at work already. She wonders about Mark and his roundabouts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roundabouts?  Traffic circles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She wonders about Mark and his whereabouts. It was weird for him to just flee a party, alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't do anything to establish a justification for the strong word &lt;em&gt;flee&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They very often took a taxi together then crashed some friend's apartment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could do this in present tense to avoid the code-switching problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They usually share a taxi and crash in some friend's apartment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I assume you mean they sleep on someone's floor -- that's crash &lt;em&gt;at&lt;/em&gt; -- otherwise I'd expect to see &amp;quot;crash a party&amp;quot; meaning attend a party without an invitation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They usually share a taxi and end up in some friend's apartment, crashing on the sofa, but she's sure that's not the case today, her sore back and the vomit by her side are hinting she passed out before getting to her house and nobody helped her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yuck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But hold on, the first sentence gave me the impression she was in a house she knows very well, such as... her own.  But where is she lying with her sore back and vomit next to her?  If she passed out before arriving home, then where the heck is she?  In the gutter across the street from her house?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, your tenses are the least of your problems.  Do me a favor.  Map out exactly what's going on.  Then your tenses will fall into place.  The paragraph feels as though you have a series of colorful images and you have just thrown them together in a meaningless collage of colored scraps of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the text doesn't make sense, the tenses won't make sense either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" OwnerDisplayName="aparente001" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T07:39:09.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24673" CreationDate="2016-09-19T20:48:27.163" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ursula K. Le Guin uses a fairly well-tried technique in Earthsea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write book 1 about protagonist A&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write book 2 about protagonist B&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At some point in book 2, establish how it relates to protagonist A's story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The essence is that some combination of the world, the story of book 2, and the character of protagonist B, must be strong enough to make book 2 worth reading. It can't survive solely on waiting to find out how it relates to protagonist A, although I suppose you could in theory use B as a false protagonist and return to A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Le Guin is good at her job, so protagonist A seen through B's POV isn't the same as A from his own POV. It's quite striking that A is not permitted by the author to become the protagonist of B's story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist of a novel is not necessarily &quot;the character we like most&quot; or even &quot;the character whose POV we have&quot;, it's the character who is questioned and tested, and whose decisions and development are the subject of the novel. So at risk of reducing this too far, you switch protagonists by writing a story in which a new person decides and develops, and the protagonist of the previous novel plays a role in which their decisions and development are not so important for the time being. A's in it, but it's not &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; A. I would suggest that if you try to make it be about both A and B simultaneously then you risk either muddying the whole thing, or else (like George R.R. Martin) writing several thousand pages more than you intended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you skip step 3, so it doesn't relate to protagonist A's story &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt;, then arguably it's not a series of novels, it's a separate novel in the same setting. Which is also fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now he's suddenly forced to work with this new person, when he is only interested in reading about the old one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are always going to be readers who wish their favourite authors would write about something different from what the author has decided to write about, no matter how compelling the new subject. Live with it. Just don't bait-and-switch them by &lt;em&gt;advertising&lt;/em&gt; a series as being about protagonist A when actually it isn't!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8477" LastEditorUserId="8477" LastEditDate="2016-09-19T21:33:03.770" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T21:33:03.770" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24673" CreationDate="2016-09-19T21:19:58.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To make it work you should distinguish between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what the story is about (mostly constant, can evolve, but only gradually),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the most relevant person or group (change is plot-driven),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;point of view and narrator (unless plot/genere forbids it, you can change any time you want).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the story is about how X and Y meet, then you can, in the middle of the book jump to the other character (e.g. The Master and Margarita).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can also keep the focus of the book constant, but switch points of view even every chapter, if you can make sure the reader knows what happens.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the book is about some group, then you can focus on a different members (and the group could change over time too).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the book is about a specific role, then you can change the protagonist every time somebody new takes that role.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes you can use lead-in character (that is, an extended introduction, but a whole book seems to be way too long for this).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an example of evolution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You start with some character X and the book is about X.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After a few more books you realize that X is not awesome enough by himself or herself, so you make X a leader of some group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then some other member Y takes over (esp. if Y was nurtured to be the next leader) and the book is now about the person who leads that group, whoever that is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The cycle repeats, but now you focus on how the group maintains its identity despite change of leadership. The book is about the group and its dynamics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then you introduce more groups and describe their iteractions (e.g., the respective leaders might unite against one common foe) and consequences, similarities and differences, how they mix with outside world. The book is about the community/society in which those groups exist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And so on...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...all the way to philosophy ;-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4619" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T21:19:58.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24677" CreationDate="2016-09-20T00:08:04.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had panic attacks. The most revealing event that happened to me during my panic attack years was when I admitted myself into an SLC hospital after having an episode. I was hyper-ventilating, my fingers and toes were numb and I thought I was dying. When I surrendered myself at the hospital, an angelic triage nurse told me - the worst thing that can happen to you right now is that your body will do its job and make you pass out. Your body &quot;knows&quot; what to do in this situation and that is to shut down. The angelic nurse told me that she'd admit me into the hospital - but didn't want to. She preferred for me to recognize my bodily functions and to just go home. I did. I left the hospital with a grandiose understanding of myself; however, I did not conquer the panic attics until years later. I continued to have trouble going to sleep thinking that my heart would stop if I succumbed to sleep. One night I said to myself - fuck it!!! If I am going to die - let's do it! But it would have to be while standing in front of my fears. Facing my warped fears worked perfectly! I told myself - ok - let's die - but only in the position of facing my fears straight up - not while retreating. The panic attacks never entered into my life again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21555" LastEditorUserId="21555" LastEditDate="2016-09-20T22:50:42.327" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T22:50:42.327" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24673" CreationDate="2016-09-20T03:39:35.633" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the question really boils down to: what/whose story are you trying to tell?  And is it a single story?  Look at Jim Butcher's Dresden Files stories, for example.  Those are almost all centered around the titular Harry Dresden, and he is the POV character for most of the books.  The story is his story.  Eventually, there are some peripheral characters who get stories, and become the narrator for a time, but it's all in service of telling Harry Dresden's story.  And most of the books end with threads left unfinished, so as a reader, I'd be exceptionally annoyed if, when I picked up the next book, I didn't get some amount of closure to the outstanding threads.  David Weber's Honor Harrington novels work in the same way.  Once the universe is large enough, and some of the peripheral characters have been flushed out enough that the reader starts caring about them as well, switching protagonists is less jarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can compare this to Terry Pratchett's books, which all take place in the same setting, but have many different protagonists.  But in his case, when you finish a book, the story is complete.  It doesn't mean that everyone is dead, but there aren't outstanding threads to the story.  He hasn't introduced a villain who escaped, or some pending disaster that the hero has to solve.  The same thing is true of Lois McMaster Bujold's books; again, a shared universe, but each book is a story in itself.  While I'm happy to spend more time with a given character, I don't feel like something is incomplete if I don't get to do so.  With the next book I read, the story is richer because I've read the other books, but I don't feel I'm missing something if I haven't read the other books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21558" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T03:39:35.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24677" CreationDate="2016-09-20T03:58:44.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Either one is plausible.  Work backwards from where your plot needs to get to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T03:58:44.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24662" CreationDate="2016-09-20T04:06:40.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Crime drama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia told me so.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_%28TV_series%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_%28TV_series%29&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@JStrange88 led me to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T04:06:40.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24664" CreationDate="2016-09-20T04:08:52.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two ideas for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go for a &lt;em&gt;much shorter&lt;/em&gt; work, plan it out, and then pick a day when you've got plenty of time to focus on your project, so you can write the whole thing in one sitting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Join a writers group.  Write to a very specific imaginary audience (your groupmates).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T04:08:52.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24673" CreationDate="2016-09-20T04:13:21.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider Almanzo in the Laura Ingalls Wilder classic children's novels.  He is a member of the cast of characters in most of the books.  But somewhere along the line he got a book of his own, that tells the story of his childhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are predisposed to like him because we know he will marry our primary protagonist when he's grown.  And then we get to know him and get invested in him for his own sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the new protagonist has a story worth telling you will be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T04:13:21.043" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24688" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-20T08:52:25.147" Score="2" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;Events happening in two places in one short story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this ethical to happen in one short story (craftwise) or is it unprofessional to break the linear flow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eg: A wakes up thinks, wait get dressed and leave to place X. In place X a bunch of characters discuss an issue and character A walks in to learn the conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;''I have never heard that the events in a short story must all take place in&#xA;the same location.''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can events in a short story happen (in the latter half of the story) without, in the absence of the protagonist? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He enters at the end of the story to learn what has happened to 'B' who just disappeared without a trace. He reminisces his acquaintanceship with B in the first half.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21564" LastEditorUserId="21564" LastEditDate="2016-09-20T10:29:52.873" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T16:56:11.830" Title="Events happening in two places in one short story?" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2016-10-05T20:02:18.793" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24688" CreationDate="2016-09-20T10:33:24.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only can this happen, it's frequently &lt;em&gt;assumed&lt;/em&gt; that it happens. You can't show two sets of events occurring at the same moment textually (unless you're doing some kind of weird formatting, and the reader can't read them simultaneously anyway), so you write about one set of events and then the other. Your time cues will advise the reader if events in Location X are before, during, or after events in Location Y. Having A get dressed and travel to Location Y and come in at the end of the conversation is an excellent way of showing simultaneous events in written sequence. You're totally fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T10:33:24.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24673" CreationDate="2016-09-20T12:51:08.170" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can always form a bond between character and audience through shared experience. In this case, if the reader is going to be bummed that the old protagonist is gone, starting the new book with the new protagonist also being bummed that the old protagonist is gone can form a bond between the reader and the new protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of ways you can spin this, depending on how you want your audience to feel. You can have the two protagonists be close friends, rivals, or bitter enemies, or you can even just have the former protagonist be a celebrity or remembered hero that the new protagonist admires but doesn't know personally; any kind of relationship that would imply some kind of emotional investment, which suits the tone you're trying to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18519" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T12:51:08.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24673" CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:00:52.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mark Twain did this with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Tom Sawyer,&quot; Huckleberry Finn was the number two character after Tom. After they discovered $12,000 of gold together (a quarter of a million in today's money), Huck became &quot;equal&quot; to Tom. So it made sense for Huck to have his own novel, with Tom as his number two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once considered doing this for a hero and heroine series (a his and her series if you will).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T15:00:52.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24664" CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:13:44.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've overcome this problem by writing chapters out of sequence. When writing my first novel, I wrote chapters 1, 2, 3 quickly, because I knew how the story began. Then I was &quot;blocked&quot; by a relatively boring middle section.  I skipped Chapters 4 and 5, and went to a &quot;favorite&quot; scene in Chapter 6 (Christmas at Rockefeller Center). Then I wrote the end chapters &quot;backward,&quot; that is 12, 11, 10 and 9, because I liked how the story ended. Finally, I could tackle Chapters 4 and 5, then 7 and 8, which I had skipped over earlier, to make a &quot;complete&quot; novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T15:13:44.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24688" CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:22:13.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the last part of the question, the protagonist doesn't have to be present at every event. All that is necessary is that every event &lt;em&gt;affects&lt;/em&gt; the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;second half&quot; could be about the group of people deciding the &lt;em&gt;fate&lt;/em&gt; of the protagonist. It may be a legal tribunal passing judgment and sentence, or it could even be a social &quot;judgment,&quot; of &quot;we don't want to have anything to do with this guy again,&quot; and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it could be that this group is passing judgment at the same time that the protagonist is shown doing an example of what the group is judging him for (e.g., using drugs, heavy drinking, hanging with the &quot;wrong&quot; people for some value of &quot;wrong&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-09-20T16:56:11.830" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T16:56:11.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24626" CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:35:16.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need enough post climax action to resolve the major outstanding issues, and &quot;close the loops.&quot; The climax only tells you that the story will end well (or not). You don't want to leave the reader &quot;hanging&quot; regarding other matters. You want to outline &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; your characters live happily ever after (or not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my writings, I typically have the climax at the end of the second-to-last chapter, or the beginning of the last, so that there is a chapter (more or less) of &quot;post climax.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-09-23T04:38:18.933" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T04:38:18.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24695" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-20T16:09:52.330" Score="3" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even after almost two years of daily consumption of US print (well, online) news, in particular, the NY Times, I still cannot get my head around the structure of their articles. I'll elaborate an example below. In summary, I fail to believe that this is accidental, and would like to understand the reasoning (or maybe just the history) behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article in question is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/nyregion/ahmad-khan-rahami-suspect.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ahmad Khan Rahami’s Father Told Police in 2014 His Son Was a Terrorist, Officials Say&lt;/a&gt;, and I'll try my best to state my question without copying too much of its content here, but some copying cannot be avoided to clearly make my point.&#xA;(Edit: I am happy I did, because the article has undergone a significant revision since I asked this question. Not for the better, though.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The headline of the article hints at the &lt;strong&gt;main theme&lt;/strong&gt; of the article: what the father told the police. This is the introductory paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two years before Ahmad Khan Rahami went (...), his father told the police that the son was a terrorist, prompting a review by federal agents, (...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then follows a bunch of paragraphs which have nothing to do with the headline or that introductory paragraph. When I encounter something like this, I always end up being puzzled. These two are very specifically about &lt;strong&gt;a book&lt;/strong&gt; he wrote and carried, which was unknown to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Separately on Tuesday, another official said that (...), he was carrying a notebook (...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one section of the book, (...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is more generally about &lt;strong&gt;his motivation&lt;/strong&gt;, yet unrelated to the theme of the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After Mr. Rahami was captured on Monday morning, (...), investigators have turned their focus to what might have motivated, inspired or led him (...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is again more specific about &lt;strong&gt;assistance&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Officials are also looking at whether he had any assistance (...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this one refers to the paragraphy BEFORE the previous one, the question of &lt;strong&gt;motivation&lt;/strong&gt; (not assistance!):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of particular interest to the authorities is a series of trips Mr. Rahami made (...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now this knocks me off completely. We finally come back to the &lt;strong&gt;main theme&lt;/strong&gt;, using the phrase &amp;quot;the statement&amp;quot; to refer to something introduced five paragraphs before. In passing, we mention &lt;strong&gt;a dispute&lt;/strong&gt; which will become relevant later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The father made the statement (...) when Mr. Rahami was arrested after a domestic dispute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following paragraphs are directly related to the previous one - a rare circumstance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The information was passed (...). Officers (...) interviewed the father, who then recanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An official, when asked about the inquiry, said (...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But after two paragraphs of the expected, linear structure, it seems like the reporter had again something else on his mind that should be written before forgotten:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not clear if officers interviewed Ahmad Rahami.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a consequence, we have to return the focus to the father again:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Tuesday morning, (...), the father (...) told reporters, (...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asked if he specifically (...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“No,” Mohammad Rahami said. (...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now again, for a final time, we come back to something (&lt;strong&gt;the dispute&lt;/strong&gt;) which was introduced six paragraphs before!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ahmad Rahami spent over three months in jail on charges related to the domestic dispute (...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(end of the article)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my problem with this is that there does not seem to be consistent line of thoughts which guides the article. My expected structure (as I know it) would somewhere along these lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An introductory paragraph (like the one in the article)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The most important facts, each directly coupled to relevant quotes and in direct succession (as opposed to separated by multiple paragraphs; here: the father's statements and the direct response)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other unrelated and background information (here: motivation and travel; the book; assistance; interview; the dispute and its consequences)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have many more examples like the one above, where the structure is more like this, with fact, quotes and background information interleaves, in an almost chaotic way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An introductory paragraph&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fact 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some unrelated information&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fact 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some quote on fact 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some other unrelated information&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fact 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some quote on fact 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this specific to English/US-style news writing? Or is this more specific to online publishing in a way that the reporters, at whatever damage to the article's structure, try to stuff as much information, as diverse as possible, into the opening paragraphs for the benefits of readers who do not even read half-way through the article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21569" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T07:10:12.313" Title="Why are news articles in the US structured so non-linearly?" Tags="|style|structure|journalism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24673" CreationDate="2016-09-20T22:57:57.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at Brandon Sanderson's &lt;em&gt;The Stormlight Archive&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He doesn't introduce a new protagonist, but rather shifts the primary focus from one protagonist to the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing so he retains the reader's interest, because the original protagonist is still present, and the reader can see how the new protagonist relates to the old one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21575" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T22:57:57.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24678" CreationDate="2016-09-20T23:15:44.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing in the third person present tense, you want to depict &quot;flashback&quot; scenes or other past scenes in the past tense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's fine. In fact, it clearly separates what was in the past from what's in the present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's may actually be clearer than the standard format of using &quot;all&quot; past tense. both the &quot;present&quot; past, and the truly &quot;past&quot; past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T23:15:44.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24695" CreationDate="2016-09-20T23:58:38.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;News&quot; articles (at least in America), aren't just about &quot;news.&quot; They are also about the &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt; who make the news. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So after beginning with a line or two of &quot;hard&quot; news, the article goes off on a tangent about police officers, public officials, or other people who are in any way connected with the news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's because the newspaper is trying to cultivate &quot;sources.&quot; The reason is that newspapers get most of their news from such sources. This is more true today, when reporters do less &quot;legwork,&quot; and instead &quot;compile&quot; most of their news from people they talk to on a regular basis. The amount of coverage they give to sources, as opposed to news, reflects that fact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A piece of &quot;news&quot; lasts for a day. A source can last for &quot;life&quot; (or at least for the career).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kudos if your post actually got them to alter their (online) article, if only a little bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T23:58:38.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24661" CreationDate="2016-09-21T00:18:13.370" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &quot;antagonist&quot; doesn't have to be a bad guy. He could be a very good guy. All he has to do is to stand in the way of your hero, sometime for the noblest of motives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing as a &quot;Northerner,&quot; but General Robert E. Lee was perhaps the greatest antagonist the United States has ever known. (He and his fellow &quot;Confederates&quot; killed more Americans than the Nazis and Japanese and other &quot;Axis&quot; nations put together in World War II.) This happened because General Lee wanted to defend his home state, Virginia, from encroachment by the &quot;federal&quot; government. In so doing, he and his troops ended up defending the awful institution of slavery. Even if you disagree with me from a historical perspective, I hope you see the literary point I'm making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now your antagonist, Tigerclaw, started out good like Lee, and turned bad later on. There could have been a &quot;dark&quot; ending to the Lee story. Specifically, his fellow southern General, Nathan Bedford Forrest, started the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War. To his credit, Lee didn't participate in this, but if he had, he would have taken the &quot;Tigerclaw&quot; route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2016-09-21T14:44:22.850" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T14:44:22.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24695" CreationDate="2016-09-21T06:56:40.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was in school there was a teaching unit on newspaper articles. We learned how they were constructed and had to write some. For printed news, &lt;strong&gt;the articles are structured so they can be easily cut&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newspapers have a fixed format, but news can have different volume. An article might be written, and then some other urgent news comes in that needs space on the page. So the first article has to be shortened – or something has to be added to it, as new important information comes in a few minutes before time of going to press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore news articles are always structured the same, so that the cutting editor does not have to think about where to cut. He just cuts from the end. For that reason, the more important information has to be at the beginning, and paragraphs – or sequences of paragraphs – are like self-contained subunits that, if you delete them, do not change the meaning of the overall article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second structural factor is time. Most readers do not have the time to read all of the New York Times every day. They scan the paper and only read what is important or interesting to them. For that reason, &lt;strong&gt;the articles are layered in three levels of detail&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first level is the headline. The headlines in a good newspaper contains enough information to tell a reader who scans only the headlines what is going on in the world. The second level is the summary paragraph at the beginning. It is often set off from the body text in a larger or bolder or different font. This summary contains the most important information beyond the basic &quot;what is going on&quot; of the headline. The third level is the actual article. It adds detail to the summary, and it is structured with the most important information first, to be easily cut from the end (see above), and to allow readers to easily stop reading when the information becomes too irrelevant to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Online journalism no longer has to allow for a possible cutting, but the New York Times still appears in print, so it is plausible that this still influences the writing. And the layers of detail are obviously still there, as reading online doesn't change the readership's time constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What did change is that online articles are not printed once a day but published immediately and sometimes edited later as new information appears. Maybe the New York Times stops editing once the article goes into print, but I don't know, and online-only news publishers sometimes keep editing an article as long as it is online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-21T07:10:12.313" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T07:10:12.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24673" CreationDate="2016-09-21T13:18:14.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ender's Game is a famous book by Orson Scott Card, that spawned a number of sequels. One of them, Ender's Shadow, isn't exactly a sequel, it takes place at the same time as Ender's Game. The book describes a lot of the same events but is viewed through the eyes of Bean, a supporting character in the original book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way it is done is by &lt;em&gt;telling the story of the new protagonist&lt;/em&gt;. His story is &lt;em&gt;interesting in its own right&lt;/em&gt;, and happens to start elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the same scenes are later shown from a new viewpoint, they're told differently. Actions taken by the original protagonist (Ender) suddenly don't seem as good or obvious as they did when viewed through Ender's eyes, because Bean has his own concerns and different information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That's the one he likes. He spent a whole novel with that person, learning deep truths about his character as they went through harrowing journeys together. Now he's suddenly forced to work with this new person, when he is only interested in reading about the old one. The reader puts the book down and leaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, make him like the new one too! And the new protagonist probably has his own views about some of those harrowing journeys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, nobody reads a new book just to read more of the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13008" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T13:18:14.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24702" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24853" CreationDate="2016-09-21T14:26:31.933" Score="1" ViewCount="386" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of all the millions of dollars actors are paid, and all the thousands of people who scroll by in the credits. Surely the cost of a printed book can't be translated to an audio book. The concept of an audio book is much more closely related to a movie ticket than the printed version, yet the price of an audio book is much closer to the printed version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21589" LastActivityDate="2016-10-05T14:20:29.067" Title="Why are audio books more expensive than a movie ticket?" Tags="|book|audiobook|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2016-10-05T23:25:56.497" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24664" CreationDate="2016-09-21T14:31:54.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try Freytag's Pyramid. It sort of a plot diagram. Begin with the exposition (characters, setting, nature of the conflict,) then, list a series of causally related events. This is how you can know in advance what is to happen next. It will become more interesting as you take your character through this chain of events. As you build action, your story will get more exciting. Take your story from the rising action developed by your list of causally related events to the climax, then to the denouement (unraveling to stable action.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Develop the exposition necessary to our understanding of the story's initial situation. The exposition should name the main character(s) and the setting in which the story occurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) In detailing the initial situation, be sure to reveal the main conflict that will drive the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Name those complicating (or causally related) events that lead to the story's climax. These events should serve two purposes: 1) to act as a link between the conflict and a plausible resolution, and 2) to maintain suspense or tension throughout the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Provide a resolution to the story for the reader (rather than for a particular character.) This resolution will be revealed as you describe the story's climax and denouement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers have been using Freytag's Pyramid since 1863.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21587" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T14:31:54.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24704" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25027" CreationDate="2016-09-21T16:36:16.033" Score="2" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a freelance writer. Sometimes people ask me to write samples as a test. I notice that sometimes the test itself takes too long and makes me suspicious. I've had a lot of disappointing engagements. What things should I look for to avoid such a situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21591" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T17:47:21.880" Title="freelance writing: how much of a test for a job would be considered actual work done for free?" Tags="|business-writing|freelance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23704" CreationDate="2016-09-21T16:39:09.087" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coming from free form, the poet's attitude towards poetry is somewhat &lt;em&gt;radical&lt;/em&gt;. And this comes from the fact that the words flow freely through your ink. Most times, as it is said with the voice in the poet's head, so it is written. Form serves to do two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constrict this frivolity to write more purposeful poetry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open up a form of expression hitherto unknown to the poet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to make this transition. But before making a transition into writing poetry to form, the poet needs to know, live, and breathe the forms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Learn (and practice!) the forms&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a poet writes to form, the poet's mind gets into the habit of thinking in that form. For starters, the poet can re-write a poem in a particular form with a pen and paper. Read the poem, and write it. For example, you see a Madrigal, you pick a pen and copy down the words on paper verbatim. Grunt work. This would get the poet thinking about being bound by rhyme schemes, refrains, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this point on, the poet can go on to exercises. Practice writing poems in that structure. They do not have to make sense. Write write write. Take this exercise like the Japanese martial arts kata. Do it mindlessly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat this for different forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we have the forms in mind, these are a few tricks I have used to write poetry to form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Start with the original idea&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have an idea, say an inspiration, a line, a scenario... (frankly I don't know how these things come), write down the idea as plainly as possible. Most times, this idea will fit into some type of form. You may then choose to discipline yourself into continuing the entire poem in this form, or change the form to whatever feels better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Use form purposefully&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some forms which exist for certain purposes. If an idea is meant to serve a certain purpose, I have found it easier to use the form for this purpose. A few examples&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to debate two points of view; I use a bob&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A song comes to mind; I use a limerick, a ballad, sound poetry, or pure lyrics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cajoling people or places? A clerihew would suffice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Showing linguistic prowess? A fib, monotetra, or any of them algorithmic forms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Mix and match&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most free-verse poetry finely fits into spoken-word poetry. This claim is on the grounds that free-verse poetry mainly originates from the voice in the poet's head. That said, free-verse poetry would yield more to mixing poetry forms. I find this to be the &lt;strong&gt;easiest transition method&lt;/strong&gt; for me because introducing many constrictions reduces the constricting. &lt;em&gt;It's an odd irony (:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The poet can start with a free-verse poem and break up parts into form. This can expand or reduce the poem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to use forms from different classes to increase the form variation. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Variated: (Limerick - Clerihew - Limerick - Haiku - Sonnet). These are from different classes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not variated: (Haiku - Renga - Tanaka - Tanaka - Senyu) OR (Rondel - Rondeau). These are from the same classes and have similar form structures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Start with the form in mind&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this to be the most difficult way to approach this task. In this method, before the idea comes, the poet already decides on the form: &lt;em&gt;I am going to write a &lt;strong&gt;four-leaf alternating Etheree&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. The poet could be less specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method serves to instill discipline on the poet. This is why I recommend it be used when learning about the forms. It could also be employed in poetry challenges and for other academic purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8667" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T03:39:10.607" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24662" CreationDate="2016-09-21T20:40:19.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could go with Thriller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If attempts are being made at capturing the criminal but s/he escapes everytime, I suspect there'd be lots of thrilling moments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also use Drama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends on how the story develops. For example if the detectives husband is the criminal who's been having an affair with the detective's sister on the side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8667" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T20:40:19.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24715" CreationDate="2016-09-21T21:37:59.313" Score="1" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Long introduction, feel free to skip to the end)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might not be the right place to post this, but a fellow organizer of a convention and I are having a slight disagreement, and I need some sort of qualified, quantifiable feedback. I suppose you can say I'm asking opinions, but when talking design it is often subjective and the 'correct answer' might be defined by the opinion of the masses. So here I go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our organization has recently started attracting enough international attention (it's a cosplay/comic-convention in Norway) for people to travel abroad to come attend our events - which is cool. We've begun adapting to this by having a multilingual website and by serving customers information in both Norwegian and English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our (kind of unofficial) slogan is, in Norwegian, &lt;em&gt;for folk med fantastiske fritidssysler&lt;/em&gt; which I roughly translated while trying to maintain the same style of phrasing to &lt;em&gt;for folks with fantastical hobbies&lt;/em&gt; - later to realize that switching 'hobbies' with 'fascinations' might be more fitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, my fellow organizer disagrees with the use of the word 'folks', saying that it's 'so archaic that people will think it's some sort of typo or lingual error, or simply that it's a bad joke'. I suggested asking another of our organizers who has a Masters degree in English literature, but apparently she's not good enough as this is 'more of a design/concept thing'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I ask of you - does the slogan 'for folks with fantastical hobbies' (or 'for folks with fantastical fascinations') strike you as bad slogans because of the use of the word 'folks' specifically? Would you recommend finding a different alternative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your advice, and sorry for the long introduction - I felt like some background was needed to justify my question. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21595" OwnerDisplayName="Aurora Schmidt" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T14:05:21.950" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T14:05:21.950" Title="Slogan design: choice of words" Tags="|style|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24702" CreationDate="2016-09-21T22:19:32.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prices are set based on supply and demand. Cost of production has nothing to do with it, except to determine whether a product is worth producing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T22:19:32.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24708" CreationDate="2016-09-21T22:30:26.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure this question works here either, but dang, it's a cool question, so here goes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing that probably a better English translation for the Norwegian word &quot;folk&quot; would be &quot;people&quot; instead of the direct translation to the English &quot;folk.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The English word has a sort of home grown, simple, farmer, hillbilly, country mouse not city mouse sort of feel to it.  Folk music, folk art, folk tales - these are all things that something science fiction doesn't fit well with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's often a mistake to translate a phrase directly word for word because you just aren't going to get the same feel that you would from the original language - so the answer is don't even try.  Just come up with something either similar, or completely different in English...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about, &quot;For Geeks with Crazy Ideas,&quot; or, &quot;Cosplay in Norway.&quot; (That last one even rhymes &lt;strong&gt;grin&lt;/strong&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T22:30:26.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24714" CreationDate="2016-09-22T01:42:38.170" Score="5" ViewCount="518" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the story I'm writing, the villain is a tyrant who is taking over control of the world (a very small one, with only two continents) as he pleases. The hero and many other people are affected by his actions, besides many other sub problems he is causing. But then the hero rises and head to the villain to put an end to all his tyranny. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the hero knows the villain (at least basic things like name and behavior), however, the villain doesn't even know that the hero exists, and then all of a sudden the hero appears before him saying that he'll be destroyed and such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read that its best when the hero and villain already know each other, so that the final encounter has more depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But can a conflict where the hero is unknown by the villain still have depth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastActivityDate="2016-10-21T03:42:35.397" Title="A villain that doesn't even know the hero's existence?" Tags="|fantasy|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24711" CreationDate="2016-09-22T05:04:23.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it can work quite well and has been used in the past. It's even got it's own &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButForMeItWasTuesday&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;trope&lt;/a&gt; (warning: that links goes to TVTropes. Don't say you weren't warned)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some well known examples of it include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terry Pratchett in Interesting Times (Twoflower and Lord Hong)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GRR Martin in A Song of Ice &amp;amp; Fire (When The Mountain duels The Viper, also when Tyrion &quot;confronts&quot; his father)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robert Jordan in The Wheel of Time series (the entire Aiel war was pretty much that)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Douglas Adams in Life, The Universe and Everything (Agrajag)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also, in my opinion, a good way to bring some reality to some stories, particularly those &quot;coming of age&quot;/heroic teenager stories where a &quot;Regular Joe&quot; suddenly becomes the Saviour of the World. Why would the Big Bad have any idea of the protagonist, especially if they're only starting out. World domination is demanding task, and there's a lot of details. Besides, it's not much of a heroic rising if the Hero is already well-known and at the top of their game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T05:04:23.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24711" CreationDate="2016-09-22T06:49:29.750" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love this. Why would a really big evil that attempts to destroy the world be aware of a single puny human trying to stop it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the comet approaching Earth know of the astronaut that tries to deflect it? No. Does that make the story less gripping? Certainly not!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While most tyrants will be aware of the resistance in general, they will not necessarily be intimately familiar with every individual opposing them. Think of your story from the tyrant's perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many individuals oppose them. Through his police and secret service the tyrant watches them. He tries to control them, by putting those into jail that he thinks most dangerous to them. But eventually one of those that he was not aware of or could not apprehend will kill him. That is the hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the tyrant's perspective, the hero is just one of many. Before he succeeds, he is not the hero. He is like one in a million sperm cells. One of a swarm of gnats. One of thousands of infections in the air you breathe every second of your life. And when he succeeds – when one sperm cell fertilizes the egg, when one gnat stings you, when you catch a cold –, it is not because it was this individual person's (sperm cell's, gnat's, virus') destiny, but because one of them eventually had to succeed, because if there are enough gnats, you will get stung. Is that the gnat hero? No. It is pure chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only from the perspective of the hero, does he appear as the hero. Think of the tale of one gnat and what obstacles it has to overcome to eventually drink blood – and get away alive! –, while all around it its peers are being eaten by frogs, poisoned by insecticide, and squashed by huge human hands. Of course you are aware of the gnats trying to suck your blood, but are you aware of the gnat hero that succeeds? Not in the Russian tundra, with tousands of them circling you. Until it stings. Then you know. And from that moment onwards, all the tyrant's power will be fighting the hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-22T14:18:58.763" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T14:18:58.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24708" CreationDate="2016-09-22T07:16:01.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll answer this from the perspective of a non-native speaker of English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Norwegian event, your marketing will most likely be targeted at Europeans, not Americans, Australians, and other English-speaking non-European countries. You will know better what countries (and languages) your foreign visitors come from, but I would guess that besides the UK they will mostly come from continental Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people from Scandinavian countries the Norse slogan will be perfectly comprehensible, so you are primarily addressing Dutch, German, Polish, and other central and southern Europeans. To these, who have learned English as a foreign language in school and then forgotten most of it, &amp;quot;folk&amp;quot; is either unfamiliar, or it is similar to a word in their own language (e.g. German &amp;quot;Volk&amp;quot; = &amp;quot;an ethnicity&amp;quot;), or they will most likely associate it with folk music. Many will probably not understand it to mean what it does in Norwegian, that is, people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A marketing slogan should not be ambiguous, unclear, or confusing, but simple, straightforward, and easy to understand. Therefore,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;if you need to address non-native speakers of English, many of which will only have rudimentary knowledge of English, use the most simple English you can, and avoid any words that are not among the most frequent.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The online version of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) contains information on frequency of words. The highest frequencies are rated 7 and 8. These words are known to everyone who has learned that language. &amp;quot;Folk&amp;quot; is in category 6. This contains words such as &amp;quot;dog&amp;quot;, that are familiar to most, but also words like &amp;quot;parish&amp;quot; that are a bit more difficult. If your words are from frequencies 6 or below, think carefully about them and whether they denote something that your audience typically thinks of in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OED is paywalled but accessible through most university libraries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T07:16:01.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24711" CreationDate="2016-09-22T09:49:37.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds great. I think what's throwing you is that you're expecting to get the story from both protagonist and antagonist perspectives. Just focus on the hero. His or her story will have the great arc, the joys and losses, the striving, the ultimate success (and the emotional payoff you're looking for). It's completely fine if we don't get the villian's half of the story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T09:49:37.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24711" CreationDate="2016-09-22T09:51:08.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe have their first encounter go as such. They don't know each other. But the villain might kill someone the hero has a personal attachment to, and so it gets personal next time. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19388" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T09:51:08.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24718" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-22T14:20:41.143" Score="1" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know how to write in accordance with the Oxbridge tradition. I would like to know more about their writing style and if possible get a book that teaches it, or something similar to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An instance of the kind of writing I wish to mimic is Alasdair Macintyre’s After Virtue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; I don't wish to get a reference to another kind of reference book. I want a book that could guide me through the writer's thinking process in that particular style, things like: how does he construct a sentence? whence the vocabulary from? etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21604" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-07T01:04:03.923" LastActivityDate="2019-05-07T01:04:03.923" Title="Writing guides for writing like the Oxbridge tradition?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|academic-writing|resources|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24720" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-23T02:05:38.410" Score="5" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the back of the &lt;em&gt;Strawberry Panic Complete Novel Collection&lt;/em&gt; there is a &amp;quot;Translation Notes&amp;quot; section explaining some of the terms like &lt;em&gt;genpaku&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;mogi&lt;/em&gt; (Japanese) and &lt;em&gt;financier&lt;/em&gt; (French), but it also talked about what the &lt;em&gt;Taisho Era&lt;/em&gt; is, which, unlike the other 3 I mentioned, is a historic thing rather than something from another language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if this kind of translation notes can also be used for a story set in a fictional world. If so with these 3 examples is there any I should/shouldn't use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 1: fictional term&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Danse de l'Ange: a hit novel series set during Heaven's Fall following the tales of Aurica le'Divant, speculating on her own previously unknown involvement in it. It is french for &lt;em&gt;The Angel's Dance&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2: Real World term with retained meaning (though in-story origin is different)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kosode (Real World): a basic japanese robe worn as either an overgarment or undergarment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kosode (In Story): a basic robe worn as either an overgarment or undergarment originating from Nipon&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 3: Real World Term with a different meaning&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okami (Real World): a Japanese term meaning &lt;em&gt;Great God&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okami (In-Story): A term in Shinto to refer to Izanami's 2 eldest daughters, Amaterasu-no-Mikoto and Tsukimara-no-Mikoto. The use of the term itself locally (Okami-sama) in Nipon or Ohana refers to that country's Okami (Amaterasu and Tsukimara respectively) while it can also used be used as an honorific for either of them (Amaterasu-okami, Tsukimara-okami).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: The (In Story) ones are what I would show. The (Real World) ones are just to compare to for the sake of this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: according to &lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com.au/?um=1&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;client=tw-ob#auto/fr/The%20Angel%27s%20Dance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;google translate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2: according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/945498-shin-megami-tensei-persona-4/48672121&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T15:38:03.920" Title="Can a &quot;Translation Notes&quot; section also be used for terms used in my fictional world?" Tags="|fiction|translation|notes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24711" CreationDate="2016-09-23T02:55:04.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea that The Villain knows the Hero that is coming for him does make for a much more dramatic entrance. One might as the author go so far as to put the Villain as a possible winner too...keep your reader on edge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some readers might actually prefer the Villain to win even.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Biblical Tale of the little kid with a stone taking down the Cyclops is timeless though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T02:55:04.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24720" CreationDate="2016-09-23T03:45:08.543" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course it can. From memory Brandon Sanderson uses this a great deal in both the Mistborn (with his guide to the magic system as well as a glossary for other terms). Robert Jordan uses it in the Wheel of Time series. Steven Errikson uses it with the Malazan series, as well as a Dramatis Personae list at the start of the books. There are numerous other examples out there as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's your story, in your world. Adding a 'translation guide' aids the reader in becoming immersed in your story. And if they don't want to read it, they don't have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T03:45:08.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24652" CreationDate="2016-09-23T04:47:57.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When to start a story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the main character realizes s/he has a problem. Stories are about one or more problems confronting the main character, and how s/he goes about solving it/them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't want to start the story with &quot;background,&quot; because without the problem, the story is &quot;trivial.&quot; Instead, use &quot;flashback&quot; scenes to depict the necessary background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the problem starts in say, Year 5, start it the story there. And use &quot;flashback&quot; to cover years 1-4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T04:47:57.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24708" CreationDate="2016-09-23T07:18:51.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're fine with &quot;folks&quot; because the context removes any antiquated notions it might create in other contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;eg. &quot;Food Fair: for folks that love munchies&quot; makes the reader think it's a old-time style fair, with a slight weed overtone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you're a cosplay convention, so the use of &quot;folks&quot; in the slogan becomes a wonderfully warm, enticing, comforting, familiar gathering of like minded people. And for something like Cosplay, that's a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Words like &quot;folks&quot; are entirely determined by their context. They don't become the focal point unless the context makes them so. This doesn't, your situation makes the word's use very inviting and... well, just right!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21616" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T07:18:51.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24720" CreationDate="2016-09-23T09:50:11.073" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is an excellent idea if you have multiple invented terms which your readers might or might not remember. Books which depend heavily on constructed languages sometimes have a glossary in the back; stories with huge casts sometimes have an index or cast list. Maps are de rigueur for fantasy stories with sprawling geography. Anything which aids your reader in understanding and enjoying your story is going to be a plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T09:50:11.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24704" CreationDate="2016-09-23T14:34:10.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Freelance writing, as a career, is enormously oversubscribed. At the bottom of the market there are far too many writers chasing far too little work, and therefore prices are rock bottom and market conditions greatly favor the client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, most freelance writers absolutely and irredeemably suck. Even the ones that can actually craft readable sentences don't really understand that writing is about something much more difficult and complicated than this: that figuring out what to say and how to say it to produce a specific commercial effect is difficult and demanding work. Most prospective clients understand that they want the writing they contract for to deliver specific commercial effects, but have no idea how to measure this or how to hire for it. Many have had multiple disappointing experiences with freelance writers who were cheap but sucked. No wonder they want to test writers, even thought they usually don't know how to do it effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to make a career as a freelance writer, therefore, you need to find a way to set yourself apart from the madding crowd of freelancers. That means, first, that you have to get good at the stuff that actually matters: commercial effect. Second, it means that you have to figure out how to convince potential clients that you have those skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then, once you have those skills, you will be able to use them to convince people you have them. That is, after all, writing with a commercial effect. And at the point, you will actually be able to make a living.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T14:34:10.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24711" CreationDate="2016-09-23T15:00:52.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certainly a story can have this structure. But your analysis of it seems to assume that the antagonist is a role equal to that of the protagonist in story structure, and that is not the case. Story structure is about the desire of the protagonist and the things that frustrate that desire. Generally this builds as the protagonist faces progressively greater frustrations and puts forth progressively greater effort to overcome them. An antagonist is merely one form of frustration. Sometimes their role is comparatively minor --- series of rivals in a romance plot, for instance --- and the real frustrations comes from another source. (The titular vices in &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice&lt;/em&gt;, for instance.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your hero is probably not going to wake up one morning and decide to overthrow tyrannous mundi. They are going to have a run in with some minor official, get into trouble, and have to face progressively more senior bad guys as they gather strength and attract the attention of first local and then regional authorities. Only when they have made a sufficient nuisance of themselves at the lower level will tyrannous mundi take any interest at all and start sending progressively more powerful lieutenants to deal with them, leading at last to the final confrontation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this fits perfectly with classical story structure of rising action and rising challenge leading to the great climactic moment. Not only does it work, it is in no way exceptional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-09-29T09:38:50.210" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T09:38:50.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24711" CreationDate="2016-09-23T20:44:37.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By all means. Your story can definitely &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; with the villain not knowing about the hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think it's important that the hero's opposition to the villain doesn't go unnoticed. After all, what kind of hero is that? Probably one that needs to up the ante several steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think at the latest the villain should become aware of the hero is at the midpoint of the story, where the hero usually goes from reactive to active mode. In essence, the hero starts to doling out serious harm to the villain which will force the climax and the final confrontation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an example of a story where the villain doesn't know about the hero from the start see &lt;em&gt;Braveheart&lt;/em&gt;. Edward Longshanks doesn't know about William Wallace from the start, but he surely becomes aware of him as the story progresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the villain doesn't know about the hero, I believe the conflict risks getting a bit impersonal. On the other hand, there are stories where the villain isn't a person (it could be a storm, a shark, Mount Everest) so if you want the villain to be a natural force you could go that way, however, it seems that would make the protagonist seem a bit small... I think. (Check how stories like Jaws deals with this... how about Moby Dick?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastEditorUserId="10826" LastEditDate="2016-10-21T03:42:35.397" LastActivityDate="2016-10-21T03:42:35.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24729" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24733" CreationDate="2016-09-24T05:04:59.417" Score="3" ViewCount="655" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been sending my fourth-ish novel through the my writing group. It is about a trio of teenagers running away from some mercenaries. One of them (Maris) is a girl who has only had a year of formal education but grew up on a crowded lumber mill. She has a rather blunt way of speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the story, the POV character (Kanéko) is rescued by the other two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kanéko worried her lip. &quot;Why?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You were in need.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maris' ears drooped and she looked sad. &quot;And Ruben said you were in&#xA;  trouble. And Pahim smelled like he wanted to fuck you. And he's mean.&#xA;  And I don't think he liked you. And I don't hate you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kanéko opened her mouth, and then closed it. She found herself unable&#xA;  to look into Maris' wide eyes and looked away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And other example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Pahim,&quot; snapped Kanéko, &quot;That horrible bastard. I mean... we slept&#xA;  together and what does he do?&quot; Kanéko's voice rose up as rage filled&#xA;  her. &quot;Then he kidnaps me and tries to sell me off like some slave!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maris gaped. &quot;You fucked Pahim?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kanéko gasped, and then blushed hotly. &quot;No! Not like that. I mean, we&#xA;  were in the same bed but we... didn't do anything. I swear!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part that the writing group got hung up was the use of &quot;fuck&quot; in this context. I intended it to be used purely as a verb to describe a specific set of actions with the connotation of not doing it for procreation. I thought about using a different phrase (&quot;mount&quot; or &quot;hump&quot; would be appropriate for the Maris).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: does this throw the reader out? I believe there are some fantasy authors who do use it but I'd just like to know opinions. Is &quot;fuck&quot; so encumbered by today's meaning that it can't be used without dragging in a whole lot of negative connotations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21220" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2019-03-07T22:16:43.783" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T00:06:10.027" Title="Can I use &quot;fuck&quot; as a non-vulgar verb in a fantasy/steampunk world?" Tags="|fantasy|language|conventions|steampunk|profanity|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24729" CreationDate="2016-09-24T11:05:40.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doesn't bother me, considering the context, but then I'm known for having a potty mouth. :) As long as your book is pitched to an adult audience, you're fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-24T11:05:40.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24729" CreationDate="2016-09-24T11:10:10.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it's okay depending on the context you use it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Fuck&quot; does throw off a couple readers because it comes off as a jarring to some readers. It's also not widely accepted in society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your character is built up to have such mannerisms, then it's okay to use it. I wouldn't expect to hear &quot;fuck&quot; from a devout nun, but from a psychopath murderer (which is an extreme), its expected. In this case, &quot;mount&quot; would sound weird. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8667" LastActivityDate="2016-09-24T11:10:10.310" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24729" CreationDate="2016-09-24T11:32:23.073" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your question you claim that you are using the word &quot;[un]encumbered by today's meaning&quot;. I disagree. The meaning that the word has in your world is exactly the same that it has today: have sexual intercourse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is this meaning that makes is useful as a swearword, since sex is taboo in our society. It is not the word &quot;fuck&quot; that is considered obscene, but the sexual activity it denotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is this reference to an obscene act that the word &quot;fuck&quot; still retains in your world. And since people like to use words for tabooed acts such as sex and defecation as swearwords it is very likely that &quot;fuck&quot; would be used as a swearword in your world, too. Unless sex itself had become something that the inhabitants of your world could engage in publicly, in the same way that we publicly engage in eating, that is, people would &quot;fuck&quot; while talking to others on a busy street or invite business partners to a &quot;business-fuck&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are levels of society where using strong language is common. The lower classes (or however you want to call them) don't use euphemisms such as &quot;sleeping together&quot; or &quot;going to the restroom&quot;, but use &quot;fuck&quot; and &quot;shit&quot; to denote these activities. Your excerpt makes me think of such rough folk, not of a world where the word &quot;fuck&quot; is no longer obscene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-09-24T11:32:23.073" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24734" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-24T13:41:38.243" Score="2" ViewCount="5605" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was looking for some writers who are famous for their rich in metaphors, poetic style (to study and learn from them). Surprisingly, Google had failed me, locating only one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/showthread.php/61708-Famous-highly-metaphorical-writers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt; with a relevant question (and no answers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be more specific, the metaphors I'm interested in are neither large-scale creative elements (such as &quot;the Castle in the novel is a metaphor for religion&quot;) nor extended metaphors that span a paragraph or more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for writers with well developed style, dense with sentence-level metaphors and other rhetorical devices (but probably not similes-only style). I'm not looking for &quot;purple prose&quot;, but rather for something clearly readable and yet poetic. It's a bit difficult to to provide good examples, but to give some idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The night was windy. The contours of the houses flew away like phantoms, staggering and shaking in the turbulent air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...conversations, through the sunny cellophane of which not very appetizing frustrations can be readily distinguished&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(To narrow it down a bit more, I'm looking for writers from the 20th and the 21st centuries using modern English)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking for a list of writers and not for a list of books because hopefully the whole body of work of such a writer will be useful and enjoyable to study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To clarify, I don't have anything against similes. Obviously, any master of metaphor will probably be using a lot of similes too, often in the same sentence - just as in the first example above (where &quot;like phantoms&quot; is a simile and &quot;flew&quot; and &quot;staggering&quot; are metaphors). It's just that similes aren't my primary interest here, and a writer who uses /mostly/ similes and rarely or never metaphors would not be a good example for studying the art of metaphor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6177" LastEditorUserId="6177" LastEditDate="2016-09-27T10:05:44.977" LastActivityDate="2019-11-09T19:28:59.620" Title="Highly metaphorical writers" Tags="|style|metaphor|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24735" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-24T14:50:21.827" Score="1" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for any type of oral literature (folktale, poem whatever), that would include an inserted story, however minor, that is in its content foreign to the primary poem, folktale...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give you an example of what I am looking for: a Russian fable in which a fox would tell to a chicken the story of Noah's ark or something like that. Something in this made up way...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know a story like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21629" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T22:55:43.207" Title="Folktale within a folktale" Tags="|plot|narrative|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-10-06T10:20:25.147" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24736" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-24T16:32:34.383" Score="5" ViewCount="1435" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently occupied with the all-too-familiar pursuit of banging my head against a brick wall. In this case, I am attempting to make my novel original. Here's why: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been developing the theory that originality is one of the main things that can turn a book into a bestseller in the short term. &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; combined magic with contemporary school systems in something that had never been seen before. &lt;em&gt;The Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt; hit upon the Dystopian setting, which spawned such things as &lt;em&gt;Divergent&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;The Maze Runner&lt;/em&gt;. The &lt;em&gt;Twilight&lt;/em&gt; books threw romance and vampires together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; obviously has excellent writing, but the writing of &lt;em&gt;The Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt; went downhill, particularly in the last book. &lt;em&gt;Twilight&lt;/em&gt; has been denounced as having terrible writing. If the writing was so bad, why did these books sell the way they did? To me, the answer is that they were original. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this a plausible theory? Can originality sell a book?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I am speaking in the short term here. I highly doubt that originality could create a classic; only good writing can do that.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T03:03:55.777" Title="Can Originality Sell a Book?" Tags="|fiction|originality|sales|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24736" CreationDate="2016-09-24T17:27:14.613" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; wasn't particularly original -- see Anthony Horowitz &lt;em&gt;Groosham Grange&lt;/em&gt; for a school to teach witchcraft in an otherwise ordinary world. &lt;em&gt;The Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt; had precedents like &lt;em&gt;Battle Royale&lt;/em&gt;. Romance and vampires have often been put together. Originality was not the secret to the success of these books. Appealing to the market with characters that people had sympathy for seems to me to be much more important in the cases you cite. People loved Bella and whatever his name was. Harry, Hermione and Ron are still adored. I was speaking to a colleague the other day who admires Katniss Everdeen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well, the books spoke to the things readers were absorbed by: heartbreak and divided loyalties in the Twilight series, for example. In &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt;, what mother didn't grieve with Mrs Wesley when her son died?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have often had teenagers tell me that they loved, for example, the Twilight series, but when they read it a few years later they didn't think it was that good. The books weren't any worse; the readers had just grown up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, aim to be original, but focus on plots that excite and entertain, characters that you care about, and issues that interest your reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastEditorUserId="6240" LastEditDate="2016-09-26T12:52:23.217" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T12:52:23.217" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24736" CreationDate="2016-09-24T20:44:59.230" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Harry Potter was not original. Anyone who grew up reading English Children's books would recognize that it is a pastiche of virtually the whole canon of 20th century English Kid Lit, in which trains and boarding schools and magic all play a role. Everything I read growing up is in there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Rowling has a virtue in this regard it is not that she is original but that she successfully repackaged that whole canon for today's child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that, I would suggest, is where the real secret of literary success lies, not in originality but in repackaging old stories and old tropes for a new generation. Stories have a very specific emotional structure that you really can't mess with much and still expect to engage the reader. The world keeps changing, but the emotional core of story does not. The task of the writer, therefore, it not to reinvent stories but to retell them for an every changing world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-24T20:44:59.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24739" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-24T20:51:59.217" Score="2" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most poetry I have seen, especially free-form, is written in broken lines. These lines them run into other lines and so not have any punctuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some have explained this using enjambment. Where I have seen enjambment being useful are in lines which have to keep a rhyme scheme but are too long; for example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Never did I ever&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Think or even wonder&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  That this country&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Which I live in&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Would make me begin to (&lt;em&gt;tah&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s: there could be a comma between &quot;think&quot; and &quot;or&quot;, or even at the end of the lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other people explain the lack of punctuation to be style. Some claim the introduction of punctuation would constrict the readers to one particular voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not just seen in free-form or open-form poems. But poems to form also sometimes lack punctuation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I be punctuating my poems or no?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8667" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T03:33:57.850" Title="Should I punctuate my poems" Tags="|style|poetry|punctuation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24739" CreationDate="2016-09-24T20:54:34.167" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prose is governed by the rules of orthography.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Poetry is governed by the poet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Punctuation is part of your artistic vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-09-24T20:54:34.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18702" CreationDate="2016-09-24T22:38:37.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you ask for help and someone gives to you an idea, then logically that idea then becomes yours, even if you have to reinvent it. In quantum physics, they say we might all share a portion of the atoms of Albert Einstein at a given point, so to answer with a question or two, who's atoms are they? Do we ever truly &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; anything, or is it simply a case of &lt;em&gt;passing&lt;/em&gt; things on to future generations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21634" LastActivityDate="2016-09-24T22:38:37.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24736" CreationDate="2016-09-24T22:40:12.983" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is not a complete answer, only a loose collection of some first, unordered thoughts.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;0.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the authors of current best-selling fiction are script writers. Examples are George R. R. Martin (before he wrote &lt;em&gt;A Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; he worked as a script writer for &lt;em&gt;Twilight Zone&lt;/em&gt;), Anthony Horowitz, Michael Crichton (Universal bought the movie rights to Jurassic Park before the book was published), and many others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can take this to mean that they are so good and talented they can word in both worlds. You can also take this to mean that they write their novels to be turned into film or tv shows, and that they have the connections to make this happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure any of the three books you mention were immediate mega sellers. I believe they slowly accumulated notoriety and have become the huge successes they are only because they have &amp;quot;added up&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Wikipedia says the first volume of the Hunger Games appeared in 2008 but became a number two (sic) bestseller only in the summer of 2012 – that was when the trailers for the movie adaptation began running, so the movie and the novel were sort of marketing each other. Later, the second and third part of both movie and novel where advertising for the first, second, and third part of movie and novel – six products on the market that made each other popular: when there is some hype around volume two of a movie series, many people go check out volume one of the book. Another factor that keeps adding sales to the Hunger Games is all the latter rip-offs that are marketed as being like the Hunger Games. Go to the YA section of a bookstore or library and read the front and back cover. Half of them will say that fans of the Hunger Games will enjoy that book, or that the book is &amp;quot;Hunger Games + something&amp;quot;. So if you are new in that section of the bookstore or new to YA, you'll hear Hunger Games here, Hunger Games there, and eventually you will buy and read it. Finally, after a certain level of fame, people will read it just because everybody is talking about it. Look at the reviews on Amazon. Sure, its only about 3% one-star reviews, but 3% of 55,000 reviews means that 1650 disliked that book, and many of those reviews begin with something like &amp;quot;everyone said this is a good book, so I picked it up and was disappointed&amp;quot;. And that is only those that wrote a review. The Hunger Games sold more than 20 million copies (all three volumes combined, I think), so maybe 600,000 people picked it up because &amp;quot;someone said it was good&amp;quot; and then where disappointed. That is more disappointed booksales that most books sell ever. So just the hype added hundreds of thousands of sales to people who don't like that kind of book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more books you sell the more books you sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think for a book to become a bestseller, that is, to start selling outside the core genre readership who read everything in their niche, it has to have something that speaks to the people of that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Hunger Games were published at a time when reality tv shows has begun to send people into survival camps and prince-of-persia-like action-riddle camps. Before 2000-something, reality tv was about people doing stuff in their normal lives, or people trying to become media stars, but a few years before the Hunger Games there was a wave of young, halfnaked people being sent to tropical islands or former prison islands or the jungle and having to fight to stay alive or fight an opposing group. So that was in the air, the &amp;quot;hunger games&amp;quot; of the Hunger Games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also there had been a decade of high school shootings, that is teenagers engaged in mass murders of teenagers. There had been a decade of heated discussion about violent video games. Virtual reality (World of Warcraft, Second Life) had happened in those ten years. That was the media debate the target audience had spent their puberty in. They grew from kids to adults in a world where everyone was concerned about adolescents and violence in the media turning into violence in real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book about teens sent to a game to kill each other was just hitting the right nerve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not least, because to many teens experience adolescence as a kind of battle zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;3.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading how-to-write books, the Hunger Games does everything right. I have been accused of always and only using the Hunger Games as an example whenever I answer questions, but (the first volume) is so perfectly done that I find it hard to find a better example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stakes are high (death; later: save everyone). But the abstract (save everyone) and selfish (save herself) stakes have been made concrete and selfless through a stakes character: save Primrose, then save Peeta, then her family, and the family of Rue, and in that way the stakes slowly expande to saving the world, instead of starting with that rather preposterous goal, so that it appear natural and unassuming. The protagonist has greath strength and a fundamental flaw she has to overcome (she cannot love or trust, except her sister). Overcoming that flaw (and loving Peeta) is the solution to her quest. That her love is faked is a nice twist, although we all know it isn't (a double twist). That she loves both Peeta and Gale (or rather, both loves and doesn't love both) is the perfect triangle, and by the third volume both Peeta and Gale have turned into the wrong boy, another nice twist. Katniss has been hurt: death of father, alcoholic mother, poverty, opression – there is something for everyone to identify with, but it never lays on too heavy, because Katniss doesn't let it get her down (her strength). Katniss also goes the proverbial hero's journey. She even litterally goes through the underworld (the game) and has to die (the berries). There is the refusal of the call (Katniss goes hunting on the morning of the reaping), the mentor (Haymitch), the supernatural aid (the flying presents), and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But most of all the Hunger Games is written like a movie script: mostly show-don't-tell, little interiority, focussed on character interaction and action. It must have been easy to sell that book to Hollywood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;4.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do think that the Hunger Games is original. Nothing in the book is new, but when you compare it to the YA dystopia that came before it (The Giver, Mortal Engines, Uglies) they are all very tame and slow so that the violence of the Hunger Games (the book, much of it is missing from the movie) hits you like a hammer. The Hunger Games is the first YA for adults, or adult fiction for teens. It brings together something from both categories and creates something new. To me (and I may be mistaken, because I haven't read every book out there) the Hunger Games was the first book in a new subgenre that the Maze Runner, Divergent, and others then have followed into. I would call that genre &amp;quot;YA dystopian action adventure romance&amp;quot;, or some such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;5.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twilight isn't badly written either. It employs simple language and simple thoughts, which makes is accessible to all those millions whose IQ isn't 125+. You have to remember that the majority of people are, to be blunt, too stupid to understand what is going on in the world or in their own lives. Ride a bus and listen to people talk and you will realize that if you want to sell a large number of books you must write in simple English. Why do tabloid papers and idiot tv shows sell like crazy? Because they are stupid enough for stupid people to get them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bestseller must not be too intelligent or eloquent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, Twilight isn't actually stupid either. It is simple, but not idiotic. Twilight is like the not so bright, but very warmhearted and friendly girl that is its protagonist. The whole book, despite dealing with vampires, leaves you with a warm glow. Edward's vampire family are very nice to Bella. I mean, think about it. Can you imagine Dracula's family being nice to Jonathan Harker? Twilight isn't about vampires, but about the shy outsider girl and the bad boy. It is an old story, but not in the vampire tradition at all. And when you come from reading teen romance, making the school's bad boy a vampire is acutally pretty original. I'm not such a teen romance reader that I would know if it has been done before, but if you look at the book from the eyes of the target audience (teen girls) instead of the history of horror literature, then you get an idea of how it might have been a fresh take on an old (love) story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bestseller must be original for its intended audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;6.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not underestimate marketing. While there are viral bestsellers that grow from word of mouth, it is simply not true that no one knows what makes a bestseller. A bestseller is made through marketing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paolini's Eragon became the huge success it is by being recommended by Oprah Winfrey on her show. His young age played a major part in how the book was received, the &amp;quot;wunderkind&amp;quot; always sells well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read Harry Potter and can say nothing on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T13:56:50.217" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24736" CreationDate="2016-09-24T22:48:36.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Originality tends to be judged retrospectively, it is at the best of times debatable and most people would agree that it its not something you can manufacture on demand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly it is entirely possible for an author to have a very distinctive style without necessarily being highly original in terms of the concepts underlying a book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed many commercially successful works, in any field, are often not truly original in concept. Often what successful work do is to bring together various elements which are appropriate for their time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Harry Potter series was a long way from being original, the magic is a bit vague and underdeveloped by the standards of serious fantasy and the school setting is a very, very  well trodden path in English literature. In fact the idealised English public school setting  is nostalgic rather than contemporary. However what JK Rowling did was to write very well, although the technical mechanics of the books don't necessarily hold up to very careful scrutiny and there are plenty of plot holes the actual writing in the books is very engaging and compelling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to this is that her writing style allows the reader to forget that they are reading the book and get absorbed in the immediate events and she creates a world which readers want to inhabit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that the real enduring appeal of the Harry Potter book for readers is that they can actually imagine being in the Griffindor common room sitting in front of the fire, watching a quidditch match buying exotic sweets or potion ingredients  in Hogsmead or Diagon Alley.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can perhaps guess that  part of the reason that this worked well is that she really cared about the settings and characters. This is a very different thing to trying to work out what the market wants or constructing an high concept based on academic ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying had to be original is a fools errand, if you create something that you personally cares about and are invested in then you will automatically want to try to make it as good as it can be to the best of your ability and there is a fair chance that there will other people who feel the same way about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Originality comes from putting your own individual personality into something, not from an active effort to be different from what has gone before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Ideas' are cheap, everybody has them and you can just pick worlds out of a hat to construct something 'original', the value is in refining, developing and communicating your ideas and having the self-critical  faculties to determine what works and what doesn't...this is also related to being able to see your ideas from another persons point of view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19238" LastEditorUserId="19238" LastEditDate="2016-09-26T20:10:47.563" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T20:10:47.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24736" CreationDate="2016-09-25T02:10:09.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Originality is almost impossible to achieve.  All modern works of fiction have predecessors who have worked in similar settings, showing similar themes.  Rowling may be the best-known example of the magic-in-a-boarding-school setting, but there are many well-known (and perhaps &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_Magic_(Doyle_and_Macdonald_novels)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;not-so-well-known but still worthy&lt;/a&gt;) predecessors. Hunger Games may be the most popular example of its kind, but there were certainly predecessors of that too (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Among_the_Hidden&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Among the Hidden&lt;/a&gt; and its sequels). And as pointed out in the comments, have been a thing just about forever, and the romance between Buffy and Angel in the &lt;em&gt;Buffy the Vampire Slayer&lt;/em&gt; TV series was arguably even more popular than Twilight was (at least in terms of sales of the book before the movie was released -- movies are great marketing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is to do what you do &lt;em&gt;well&lt;/em&gt;, which all of these books did, and to be &lt;em&gt;original enough for the reader&lt;/em&gt; -- but possibly not &lt;em&gt;too original&lt;/em&gt; as the conventions of a comfortable, familiar genre often provide the best marketing of all (and is probably at least part of why genres with strong conventions -- romance and crime fiction, for example -- sell particularly well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21635" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T02:10:09.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24739" CreationDate="2016-09-25T04:29:43.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Enjambment versus end-stopped lines can also be useful to speed up or slow down a poem. Punctuation can be used to give the reader an indication of when to stop for a breath or at the end of a thought. You may find that a particular poem needs punctuation and another doesn't. If you're not sure, read your poem out loud. It will help you get a feel for what is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T04:29:43.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24746" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24754" CreationDate="2016-09-25T10:40:21.147" Score="7" ViewCount="5513" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always been an avid reader of utopian novels. Not necessarily those that advertised themselves as such, but the small utopias, of people doing good, of relationships going right, of a happiness possible in the real world. And I don't mean a happy end, but a happy continuation and a description of how this might be achieved despite the obvious difficulties. A wise book to learn from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kim Stanley Robinson &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shareable.net/blog/galileos-dream-a-qa-with-kim-stanley-robinson&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt; that &quot;[a]nyone can do a dystopia these days just by making a collage of newspaper headlines, but utopias are hard&quot;. This is true of any kind of book. It is easy to write a postapocalyptic world, and it is easy to write an abusive marriage. But it is very difficult to write a happy marriage – and make it a suspenseful book worth reading. And it is difficult to write a book where the problems that our world faces today are resolved, as Robinson has tried in his &lt;em&gt;Science in the Capital&lt;/em&gt; trilogy, and make it a fun read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I am sick and tired of all the negativity in the novels I read. I want something to give me hope and the will and courage to go on and try and do better with my life. As Robinson continues, utopian fiction is &quot;important, because we need to imagine what it might be like if we did things well enough to say to our kids, we did our best, this is about as good as it was when it was handed to us, take care of it and do better. Some kind of narrative vision of what we’re trying for as a civilization.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why don't we write utopias? That is, why don't we write books that show us how to do things better? How to be better persons both in how we relate to other people and in how we take care of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do readers not want to read this? Wouldn't it sell? Or are authors unable to write it, because they don't know the answers to the problems, because they are afraid of losing sales by being political, because they don't know how to tell happiness in a non-boring way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you write a genre fiction about good people successfully living in good relationships and leading a good life in a good world, without it being boring or preachy and still full of suspense and thrill?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you make a utopia work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T05:12:09.877" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T05:12:09.877" Title="How to write a utopia?" Tags="|science-fiction|concept|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24747" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-25T10:55:46.893" Score="1" ViewCount="456" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about how many words I should have in my chapters. My books genre is fantasy, and my target audience is 10-14 year olds. Does anyone know how many words a normal chapter in a book has?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21638" LastEditorUserId="15545" LastEditDate="2016-09-25T13:54:20.763" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T13:54:20.763" Title="How many words does a normal chapter have?" Tags="|novel|fantasy|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-10-05T19:59:46.100" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24747" CreationDate="2016-09-25T11:26:05.930" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In my opinion, the word count of a chapter just doesn't matter.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, the word count of your chapters should depend entirely on the goals for the chapter, and how long it needs to be to tell the story. Many authors have incredibly varied lengths of chapters, however, I can provide some advice concerning writing for your target audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for young adults or teenagers to read your book, its best not to create excessively long chapters where nothing happens. Instead, I think you should include at least one interesting part per chapter, to keep them reading. For example, many young people don't finish Lord of the Rings because of the slow moving plot. Shorter chapters as well as more things going on per chapter, could help break this illusion of a slow moving plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't write unnecessary chapters. Every chapter should tell necessary parts of the story, and be as long as it needs to tell that. If a chapter doesn't advance the plot, I would deem it unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Chapter length doesn't matter too much. Focus on telling the story with as many words as you need to per chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For young readers, perhaps refrain from slow-moving chapters and a lot of pointless talking.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Never write an unnecessary chapter that doesn't contribute to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped you. As a final note, you might want to search the proper ways to break up your story into chapters, if you're still having trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T11:26:05.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24729" CreationDate="2016-09-25T11:55:38.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sexual act can be tender or it can be violent. Its violent aspects can be consensual or non consensual. There are many different words for it, reflecting each of these connotations. F*** is one of the more violent of these words. But f*** also has other connotations: to cheat, for instance, or to make a mistake. When applied to the sexual act, it tends to express lovelessness, casualness, and indifference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a grubby violent word (which is the reason I obscure it when I must make reference to it). There was an attempt to normalize it at one point but it came to nothing. Thirty years on, it is still a stock phrase of shock comedians. Overuse has not softened it, presumably because people do not want it softened, they want a grubby violent world for loveless sex, cheating, and incompetence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every word has its baggage and its baggage is what gives it its power, for good or ill. There is a reason that we have to invent clinical words for acts like sexual intercourse that have such powerful emotional overtones (which are in turn reflected in the various words we use to describe them). You should not expect to be able to rob any non-clinical term of its overtones. Nor, frankly, should you wish to. It is the overtones of words that give them their emotional power, which is exactly what you need in fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T11:55:38.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24746" CreationDate="2016-09-25T11:57:10.040" Score="7" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How should I write a utopia?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the utopian fiction you're describing would be challenging to write because it lacks climactic points. Its predictable. You describe it as if there is no wobbles, no wobbles at all in the relationships or whatever, and everything goes uphill with none who would foil the protagonist's plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is the right way to go, because its &lt;strong&gt;predictable.&lt;/strong&gt; At some point, in anyone's life, there will be unpredictability. Describing a perfect world where no wrong occurs is too unrealistic, and even if someone had the most perfect life, there would be a problem. The protagonists identifies the problem, and seeks to resolve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this doesn't have to happen in the form of a tyrant, or something bad. This might be a bit of a generic example, but take this: the protagonist sees a girl he likes, and wants to go out with her. That's the basic idea, and then the story would go on to expand that, and eventually bring them together. This type of thing can be very well executed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There doesn't even need to be some like a terrible illness to keep your reader interested. There just needs to be tension. I understand that your story might not revolve around a relationship, but I'll go back to my previous example. Imagine the boy and girl being a match made in heaven, but many nice people around them threaten that relationship working. The people are still nice, but tension and intrigue is still given to the reader, because there is inter-character tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are just looking to write a book which people can learn from, then perhaps write a self help book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why don't people write utopian fiction? Why is it all negative?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to this question boils down to a simple principle. In utopian fiction, the ideals are often met from the beginning. In dystopian fiction, the ideals are not met, and the reader wishes to keep reading to see if the ideals will be met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason authors don't write it, I think, is because it is very challenging. In a dystopia, things need to be corrected. This isn't the case with a utopia, hence the author might find it hard to create a point 'worth working towards' or more specifically, a climax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think authors don't write fiction about how we should care for the world, because that's mainly included in self-help books, and a variety of non-fiction works. However, those are often direct instructions. Its not hard to include a moral to the story expressing that these things should be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion: how should I make a utopia work?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create characters that give intrigue. Make tensions occur within characters - not negative ones though.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't make the book pointless. Give the protagonist an ultimate goal, a great ideal, from the very start. Give them something they would really want.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thwart the reader! I realised this just now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't make it so predictable we know whats going to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was an ludicrously, unnecessarily long answer. Sorry for making you read so much, and if I didn't even answer the question correctly. I hope this helped you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T11:57:10.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18702" CreationDate="2016-09-25T12:12:05.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When we give credit to a designer for an article of clothing, we do not caveat our praise by pointing out that they did not weave the fabric or grow the cotton or design the sewing machine or smelt the metal used to build the sewing machine, or invent the concept of clothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All work is enculturated and builds on the work of others. We give creative credit to the person who realizes the whole of the work, not to those who contribute all the elements that go into it. Many voices contribute to the material that goes into a book. The author is the person who weaves it all together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T12:12:05.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24746" CreationDate="2016-09-25T12:51:12.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, a true utopia would have no room for story. Story runs on desire and frustration and the moral challenges that result from the frustration of desire. A true utopia would leave no desire frustrated and therefore no moral challenge to be met. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But given our limitations, and the limited resources available to us, that kind of utopia is impossible. Attempts to build or describe a utopian society, therefore, have to deal with the frustration of desire that is inherent in our limitations. They are about governing our desires harmoniously and justly, and are therefore not really devoid of moral challenge. A utopian novel could deal with such challenges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is a much more difficult kind of writing to do. Dystopias are easy because the present easy desires (food, home, safety) and easy ways to frustrate them. Such problems are tackled with violence, so you get easy action. And most of these books suck because they wither contain no moral challenge, or the moral challenge is hackneyed or facile, thrown in carelessly by a writer more interested in world-building and action than in the essential moral dynamic of story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such works are also a relatively easy read for readers who are looking for nothing more than a little visceral sex and violence. A sophisticated utopian novel with involve more subtle moral questions that require a more thoughtful reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, one may choose to be among the many who write for the many or the few who write for the few. Both paths are valid, and both offer economic rewards for those who excel. But you are always going to find fewer utopias than dystopias because the problem is harder and the audience is different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T12:51:12.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24753" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24755" CreationDate="2016-09-25T15:43:54.003" Score="11" ViewCount="2384" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say there is a small detail in the beginning of the book that has a big effect later on. The reader might've forgotten about that by the time they get to that part. How should I remind the reader about the detail, other than straight-up saying something along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember the X 10 years ago? It returned and that's what caused this Y to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember Z's injury? That's why he did A instead of B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14299" LastEditorUserId="14299" LastEditDate="2017-03-19T23:12:20.357" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T03:05:16.843" Title="How should I &quot;remind&quot; the reader of something that they may have forgotten?" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24746" CreationDate="2016-09-25T20:09:32.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what's being missed here is the idea that what makes something a &quot;perfect&quot; world &lt;em&gt;is not the same for everyone.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want an example of a utopia, try &lt;em&gt;The Wizard of Oz&lt;/em&gt; and the subsequent 13 original Oz novels by L. Frank Baum. &lt;em&gt;The Wizard of Oz&lt;/em&gt; was once called by a reviewer (whom I can't find at the moment, sorry) something to the effect of &quot;the best kind of fairy tale for children, with all the goodness in and all the bad parts taken out.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oz as portrayed in all 14 Baum novels &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a utopia. Just the right amount of rain falls when it's needed. Everyone has food, shelter, and clothing. There's no money or debt. And yet there's still conflict and adventure, even just within Oz and not having to introduce extra-Ozian characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Baum liked to create villages of beings which exemplified some trait he wanted to parody or point out. There was the village of Flutterbudgets, who are people who worry hysterically over nothing, and the Rigmaroles, people who make sequipedalian and unnecessarily long-winded oratories. As long as they stayed in their own villages, the narration noted, they didn't bother anyone else. But when Dorothy came to visit, since she wasn't like them, conflict ensued. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the internal conflict in Oz books came when an individual or a group decided they weren't satisfied with what they had and wanted to take power or possessions from someone else. That group's idea of &quot;perfect&quot; conflicted with the rest of Oz's &quot;perfect.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because your world, society, etc. is &quot;perfect&quot; doesn't mean everyone is happy, or satisfied, or content, or fulfilled. The Shaggy Man is very happy in the Emerald City, but he's a wanderer, and insists on travelling even when he has a suite of rooms in the palace and is loved by everyone. His perfect world is to be in motion but to still have a home to return to. Polychrome, the Rainbow's Daughter, constantly slides off her bow and gets lost on land in Oz, and her conflict is that she needs to get home again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change your givens and you can usually find what you need to get a story going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T20:09:32.480" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24753" CreationDate="2016-09-25T21:33:27.377" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no ideal way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some readers have a good memory for detail and will be irritated that you keep reminding them of what they know they have already read. Other readers will be reading your book while distracted by WhatsApp and will not get what you try to tell them no matter how often you repeat it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing to do, I think, is make the repetition as natural as possible. If you want to remind the reader that the hero is allergic to something, give him opportunities to check the ingredients of stuff he buys or have him invited to dinner and reminding the host that he cannot eat nuts. If you want to remind the reader that the hero has a red shirt on, let a friend of the hero tell him that the shirt looks awful and that he shouldn't wear red.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-09-26T00:35:38.930" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T00:35:38.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24753" CreationDate="2016-09-26T02:24:34.943" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can show it somewhere in between your narrations, as if the character remembers that stuff or any incident, indirectly telling about it. A mention or a comic event is usually remembered by the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't do it in a way as if you are telling it again and again. It should appear as if the stuff was important to come up at the moment.&#xA;At least two references will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21651" LastEditorDisplayName="user12726" LastEditDate="2016-09-26T12:52:32.703" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T12:52:32.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24753" CreationDate="2016-09-26T05:51:16.070" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give a character a reason to think about, speak about, or interact with the small detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="272" LastEditDate="2016-09-26T07:04:35.057" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T07:04:35.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24734" CreationDate="2016-09-26T09:55:58.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two I can think of off the top of my head are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3078186-the-hitchhiker-s-guide-to-the-galaxy-hitchhiker-s-guide-to-the-galaxy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Douglas Adams&lt;/a&gt; (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dirk Gently, et al.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was &lt;em&gt;Oh no, not again&lt;/em&gt;. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/jeeves&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PG Wodehouse&lt;/a&gt; (The Jeeves and Wooster series, among others).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“When it comes to letting the world in on the secrets of his heart, he has about as much shrinking reticence as a steam calliope.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T11:14:36.140" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24735" CreationDate="2016-09-26T13:50:24.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes for example&#xA;There is a boy who has to find 7 gems to avoid a disaster in his town.&#xA;And then we can include a folk story of how these gems were made or found.&#xA;For example we can say a curse of some lady created those gems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21653" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T13:50:24.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23782" CreationDate="2016-09-26T14:53:36.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Despite my advice to go do research in the academic field of literary studies, I want to try and order what I know and think on the topic.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy is often named in the same breath with either Science Fiction or Horror or both. All three genres tell stories some aspect of which we generally believe to be unrealistic, or &amp;quot;fantastic&amp;quot;. In this the three genres differ from other genres such as historical, romance, or crime fiction, which tell stories that are unreal or untrue, but are set in the world as we know it and told in a realistic manner, and which could potentially have happened. The three genres, all of which tell stories that could not have happened in our world, are sometimes collectively called &amp;quot;the fantastic&amp;quot;, but this term has a wide variety of different definitions, so you should avoid it (or explicitly define how you use it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To understand what fantasy, science fiction, and horror are (as literary genres) we can look back at their form at the time of their conception. All three genres have been &amp;quot;invented&amp;quot; in the nineteenth century. Examplary works of that time for science fiction are &lt;em&gt;The War of the Worlds&lt;/em&gt; by H. G. Wells and &lt;em&gt;Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea&lt;/em&gt; by Jules Verne, for horror &amp;quot;The Fall of the House of Usher&amp;quot; by Edgar Allan Poe and &lt;em&gt;Dracula&lt;/em&gt; by Bram Stoker, for fantasy &lt;em&gt;Phantastes&lt;/em&gt; by George MacDonald and &lt;em&gt;The Well at the World's End&lt;/em&gt; by William Morris.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading those and similar books, you will note that they differ in &lt;strong&gt;setting&lt;/strong&gt; (both &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; the story takes place):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fantasy is set either in the past or in the present&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when set in the past, the setting is medieval&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the medieval world either contains supernatural elements from folklore and myth such as magic or dragons or gods,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or it is &amp;quot;realistic&amp;quot; but exists in a fictional universe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when set in the present, the setting includes either&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an otherworld that is either medieval or supernatural, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;supernatural elements from folklore and myth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;horror is set in the present&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it always tells of what you might call a breach in reality, like a glitch in a virtual game world, where the seams show and what is &amp;quot;behind reality&amp;quot; becomes visible; the horror genre has been invented before modern psychology and tells of perceptions that are identical to what contemporary psychology would describe as depersonalization, derealization, and delusion, as if its symptoms where real and not merely a dysfunction of the mind&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;science fiction is set in the present or the future&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when set in the present, it deals with alternate history, alternate social systems, or advanced and not-known-to-exist technology (such as the submarine in Verne's novel)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what many readers today will expect when they hear of either genre. Much of the contemporary confusion about these genres stems from &amp;quot;crossovers&amp;quot; both among the fantastic genres (such as Science Fantasy or science fiction horror) and to other genres (such as horror western or urban fantasy). This breach of genre conventions is not new. Many works from the nineteenth century, such as Mary Shelley's &lt;em&gt;Frankenstein&lt;/em&gt;, defy easy categorization. Is it horror (that is how it is told) or science fiction (because of the advanced technology it portrays)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The genres of fantasy, science fiction, and horror exist with their standards despite these difficulties to categorize individual works. In this they are like stereotypes or prototypes. I'll explain this, using an example. The colors green and blue come in all kinds of hues, and for some specific colors people find it difficult to decide for themselves and agree among each other whether what they are looking at is one or the other. Nevertheless when asked to pick a green color, most everyone will chose tints that are very similar and over the greenness of which there is neither confusion nor debate. The three fantastic genres are the same. For many works, there will be disagreement and debate which genre they belong to. But asked to tell a simple fantasy plot, almost everyone will come up with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;knights, magic, elves, and dragons.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T14:53:36.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24746" CreationDate="2016-09-26T15:33:13.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me give three examples of utopian novels published in the last century: B. F. Skinner’s &lt;em&gt;Walden Two&lt;/em&gt; (1948), Marge Piercy’s &lt;em&gt;Woman on the Edge of Time&lt;/em&gt; (1976), and Gidon Rothstein’s &lt;em&gt;Murderer in the Mikdash&lt;/em&gt; (2005). Each of these novels, I think, illustrates a different way to handle utopia within fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Walden Two&lt;/em&gt; has a structure very similar to the “classic” utopian novels of the nineteenth century. A skeptic shows up at the gates of Utopia and one of the residents, functioning as a sort of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intourist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Intourist&lt;/a&gt; guide, shows him all the features and answers his questions about how this can possibly work. The conflict is purely intellectual; the arc of the viewpoint character is from ignorance to enlightenment. It’s not the kind of plot that generally engages readers today, but &lt;em&gt;Walden Two&lt;/em&gt; did sell copies, and inspired some real-life communes (including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twinoaks.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one that is still a going concern almost fifty years later&lt;/a&gt;, although it ditched the &lt;em&gt;Walden Two&lt;/em&gt; model soon after it was founded).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Woman on the Edge of Time&lt;/em&gt;, the plot tension comes from the utopia being under threat from the outside. But wait—utopia, practically by definition, is the terminal state of humanity, so how can it be threatened? Piercy gets around this by making her viewpoint character a sort of time traveller who visits alternative futures, so the reader sees the dismal contemporary world that character lives in, &lt;em&gt;in contrast with&lt;/em&gt; a happy and egalitarian utopian future &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; a nightmarish dystopian future. The threat comes from how our own decisions, today, could put society on a path towards one possible future or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Murderer in the Mikdash&lt;/em&gt; is not a book I can recommend on its literary merits, but I find it fascinating as sort of an academic exercise. The author, an Orthodox rabbi, postulated what Israeli society would look like after the coming of the Messiah, and then set a murder mystery &lt;em&gt;in that society&lt;/em&gt;. The victim’s friend plays both the amateur-detective role in the mystery genre, and the skeptical-visitor role in the utopian genre. In the course of trying to solve the mystery, she &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; rubs up against the unique features of this utopian society. So this is a book about a society that is ideal on the “macro” level, but still contains flawed and occasionally malicious humans on the “micro” level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T15:33:13.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24762" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-26T16:54:30.727" Score="2" ViewCount="503" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether I'm writing short or novel-length fiction, I always find myself writing some relatively short chunk, then wanting to skip forward in time. My writing will look like this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[ Jeff is told by his mother that the house next door is haunted.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[ Jeff steps up to the gate of said house.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It just doesn't feel clear to me that considerable time has passed or the setting has changed without the &quot;enter + &quot;---&quot; + enter&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if it's considered a sloppy tactic or not, and I try not to overuse it though I want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21546" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-09-26T17:47:17.223" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T16:36:40.650" Title="Is it okay to skip forward in time rather than write scene transitions?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24762" CreationDate="2016-09-26T17:50:11.790" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually I often find myself reading that way, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many novels are so overexpanded that I find myself skipping the rumination and browsing to the next page with stuff happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you find what is between two scenes boring, it is very likely that your readers will find what you would write there boring, too. So skip it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are novels that are long and fat but manage to make what Jeff thinks on his way to the other house so interesting that I am completely drawn into his being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you find what is between two scenes interesting, it is very likely that your readers will etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are valid narrative styles. Choose the one that fits you and don't worry about it too much. Maybe the big fat novel is not your thing. There are wonderful slim bestsellers. Perhaps yours will be one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you will add something in between when you write your second draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T17:50:11.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24746" CreationDate="2016-09-26T20:29:15.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I am a bit lost in terminology here, I would still like to board this train–even a bit late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you make a utopia work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me the terms Utopia, Dystopia and everything in between are related to the &lt;em&gt;structure of the society&lt;/em&gt;, whether it is built as a purely secondary fantasy world of post- or pre- or never- apocalyptic reflection of the real one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each and every flavor of the social settings–while (hopefully) contributing to the realism and richness of the story–may have everything to do with your conflict, and just as well may only be a backdrop to the relationships between your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imaging a solid and loving family battling the elements in a nuclear desert just as easy as I can picture a relationship conflict in a highly advanced society which had forgotten what war, hunger, cancer and AIDS once were; the conflict will drive your story forward and engage your reader, but &lt;em&gt;there has to be a conflict&lt;/em&gt;–and even in the highly Utopian settings unanswered love can drive someone to suicide or murder, which would look even grimmer on such a festive backdrop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you write a genre fiction about good people successfully living in good relationships and leading a good life in a good world, without it being boring or preachy and still full of suspense and thrill?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, the way you put it... If everything everywhere is grand, and the most thrilling conflict of the story is whether little Annie makes the Honor Roll, err... it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; going to be tough...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unless it is a comedy&lt;/strong&gt; (take the TV series &lt;em&gt;Modern Family&lt;/em&gt;–it &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; about a solid and loving family in a good world, and it is brilliant and highly entertaining), where the little conflicts are blown up to ridiculous proportions just to make one point or another (and it is spectacularly well-written, directed and played).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for rambling. For me, there is no story without a real conflict, unless the narration is deliberately and predominantly humorous. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Durrell&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gerald Durrel&lt;/a&gt; wrote wonderful, funny and touching stories without any dystopian elements, and it is his style which made them so enjoyable without being didactic or sappy–and yet his characters still faced illness and death and other characters had to deal with those once in a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess there is no way around it. One needs a conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2016-09-27T16:50:55.003" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T16:50:55.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24766" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-26T23:27:33.763" Score="1" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand trickster is a character in a story which exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge, and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and conventional behaviour. Could anybody shed light on question which buzz in my head? Is Yoda trickster? What properties of the character should I remove( assuming Yoda is not trickster ) to make Yoda true trickster?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21657" LastEditorUserId="21657" LastEditDate="2016-09-27T08:41:05.080" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T08:41:05.080" Title="Is Yoda trickster?" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2016-09-27T03:27:07.150" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19275" CreationDate="2016-09-27T00:44:03.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.writersstore.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writer's store&lt;/a&gt; has a variety of software for writing support and analysis. I've used the &lt;strong&gt;Writer's Dreamkit&lt;/strong&gt; (the more or less stripped down version of &lt;strong&gt;Dramatica Pro&lt;/strong&gt;) and found it quite useful and insightful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have software targeted at other fields of writing as well, screenplay, scripts, and so forth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19658" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T00:44:03.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24734" CreationDate="2016-09-27T00:57:23.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, there are only two words that can answer this question: &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Patricia McKillip&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Lyrical, epic prose&quot;, is one way to describe her. &quot;The way everyone should write about magic&quot;, is another way I've heard to describe her. Me, I simply read everything she writes that I can find. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once met a book critic of some decades of career experience at a Barnes and Nobles. She challenged me to pick out of the Sci-fi and Fantasy section my best recommendation for her. A daunting prospect indeed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took a few steps over to reach my choice and pulled off the shelf the &lt;em&gt;Riddlemaster of Hed&lt;/em&gt; trilogy and the &lt;em&gt;Cygnet&lt;/em&gt; duology, both by Patricia McKillip and handed them to her. Of course, she had already read them all, but her response to me was that in all the years of her career as a book critic, the sole author she had not been able to find anything major to criticize about was one Patricia McKillip. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you try out her books, if you have not already, and enjoy them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19658" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T00:57:23.967" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24736" CreationDate="2016-09-27T03:03:55.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Originality won't sell a book, it's a nice pretty buzzword &lt;strong&gt;that&lt;/strong&gt; helps sell a book. Engaging the reader, crafting a wonderful tale, finding that emotional connection, these are what help sell a book. I would suggest forgetting about writing something original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the Hunger Games is far from original. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gladiators_(film)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gladiators_(film)&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;And, Vampires and romance have been married before Twilight inception. Urban fantasy has been a thing since the 90s, I think. Sexy, brooding, male vampires are a staple in the genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15327" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T03:03:55.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24762" CreationDate="2016-09-27T04:13:08.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bestsellers engross their readers. There are times you want your protagonist followed for every second during the climax, and other times where months or years go by and you want to skip most of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you want the reader to feel? An abrupt transition may jar them, but maybe the character is jarred after a transition, and you're setting the tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transitions which are smooth but brief will allow for flow between chapters, but a page turner also has sections where action doesn't let up between chapters. Instead, the characters or the venue of the action might be changing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no simple answer to your question. But &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; the author set the tone and pace the action. I don't think transitioning in a short, clever fashion necessarily lengthens a novel by more than 20%, but you eventually have to get on with it, sort of. &lt;em&gt;The Catcher in the Rye&lt;/em&gt; is one of the most popular books of all time. Really? It's like it never even started it took so long for Holden to pull up his trousers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T04:13:08.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24734" CreationDate="2016-09-27T06:45:13.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might also try &quot;Hyperion&quot; from Dan Simmons. He is, in my opinion, a god of metaphorical writing. Interestingly enough, in &quot;Hyperion&quot; the story is told from several different character's point of view, and only one of the characters (the poet) uses this style of writing. I thought this contrasts it even more, maybe give it a try :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21430" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T06:45:13.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24772" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-27T08:54:42.430" Score="4" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you consider planning, there are two kinds of extremes: outlining and discovery writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The outliners plan their stories and sit down to write them only when they know the plot of what they are going to write. The discovery writers just write; they start somewhere and then follow their intuition, letting themselves be surprised by what they will encounter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many discovery writers need that they do not know what they are going to write. If they have to rewrite something they have already written, they are often blocked by the boredom of already knowing what they are going to write. Apparently they need the often surprising exploration of the unknown to motivate them. Psychologists call this tendency &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_seeking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;novelty seeking&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a discovery writer, and looking at my life, I get the impression that novelty seeking not only determines my writing style, but many other aspects of my life as well. For example, I need to switch jobs every three years or I will die from boredom. I also tend to fall out of love after a couple of years and find myself yearning for another partner – and I realize that it is not another partner that I want, but the phase of not knowing the other person and the outcome of the dating. My hobbies are explorative as well, I like hiking and literally exploring places, and I like to learn new things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I was wondering if that was just me, or if other writers observe the same thing: that, maybe, discovery writers are novelty seeking in their non-writing lives as well, while outliners are maybe more steady.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have an insight into this that goes beyond the mere opinion that is disallowed on this site? Maybe you know so many writers privately that your observations approach objectivity. Or you have read something on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T19:42:58.590" Title="Are discovery writers more novelty seeking in general?" Tags="|outline|writer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24773" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2016-09-27T08:59:47.427" Score="0" Body="" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-27T08:59:47.427" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T08:59:47.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24774" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2016-09-27T08:59:47.427" Score="0" Body="Questions about the person of the writer – character traits, lifestyle." OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-27T08:59:47.427" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T08:59:47.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24775" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24781" CreationDate="2016-09-27T09:30:21.593" Score="1" ViewCount="588" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trickster is a character in a story, which exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge, and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and conventional behaviour. Trickster often is fun character, as well as clown is. What is difference between clown and trickster? Where is border when trickster stop to be trickster and become clown? For example, Jar Jar Binks? Is he clown, or trickster?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21657" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T16:04:42.003" Title="What is difference between clown and trickster?" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24775" CreationDate="2016-09-27T10:46:27.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A clown is traditionally a comedy character and played for laughs at themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A trickster (also known as a prankster) is one who plays jokes on others so the recipient of the joke is laughed at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jar Jar Binks is a clown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T10:46:27.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24775" CreationDate="2016-09-27T12:52:24.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dictionary.com/browse/clown?s=t&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clown&lt;/a&gt;: 1. a comic performer, as in a circus, theatrical production, or the like, who wears an outlandish costume and makeup and entertains by pantomiming common situations or actions in exaggerated or ridiculous fashion, by juggling or tumbling, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dictionary.com/browse/trickster?s=t&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trickster&lt;/a&gt;: 1. a deceiver; cheat; fraud. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more definitions for both, but I won't duplicate them here. Check 'em out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T12:52:24.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24778" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-27T13:15:02.650" Score="9" ViewCount="2745" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been delving a lot into the the crime investigation genre, and at first I thought &quot;Simple, just start of with Who, What, Where, When, Why and How and you've got yourself a story!&quot; but I quickly realized it's much more complicated than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A crime solving story has Leads, it has Witnesses, it has Clues, it has Unexpected Discoveries... and I'm just lost in a sea of possibilities...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I've tried to reduce the basic structure of a story to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a &lt;strong&gt;protagonist&lt;/strong&gt; who tries to find out the &quot;Who, What, Where, When, Why and How&quot; of the case&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are &lt;strong&gt;Clues&lt;/strong&gt; which may or may not go somewhere, and must be interpreted by the protagonist to have any meaning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are &lt;strong&gt;Witnessess&lt;/strong&gt; who serve both to bring light to the case or muddle it further.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are &lt;strong&gt;Misdirections&lt;/strong&gt; normally due to simple human nature that can cause someone to seem guilty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are &lt;strong&gt;Leads&lt;/strong&gt; which are advancements in the plot as the protagonist makes sense of everything else&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And there are &lt;strong&gt;Culprits&lt;/strong&gt; which are responsible for whatever the protagonist is investigating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is... am I leaving anything out? Is there some fundamental aspect to an investigation I'm forgetting? Bear in mind I consider Plot Twists to simply be a form of Misdirection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21666" LastActivityDate="2018-04-05T12:15:12.280" Title="What are the basic elements of a crime investigation story?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|character-development|crime|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24778" CreationDate="2016-09-27T13:35:40.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence&lt;/strong&gt; comes in mind. It is somewhere in the realm of &lt;strong&gt;Clues/Leads&lt;/strong&gt;, but more solid and obvious. Makes a perfect setup for unexpected plot twist, if misinterpreted in good faith from the very beginning.&#xA;And the &lt;strong&gt;Antagonist&lt;/strong&gt;, naturally, the one whodunit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T13:35:40.317" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24778" CreationDate="2016-09-27T13:41:48.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Motive.&lt;/strong&gt; Why did the person do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Helpers&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Hinderers.&lt;/strong&gt; People who assist in or impede the investigation. They can range from the detective's partner to evil minions to muckety-mucks on either side. This is apart from witnesses; these are people who can either bring information (clues, evidence) or hide it, who can provide witnesses or remove them, who can create misdirection or clear it up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T13:41:48.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24775" CreationDate="2016-09-27T16:04:42.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sort of combining my answer to this question with a comment based on your other question. I would agree with other comments that clowns are simply comic performers and there is no teaching aspect to what they are doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A trickster, mythologically speaking, is also a teacher, but in the sense that you are taught a lesson painfully. Often though, it's the only way the lesson comes through. The main aspect of a trickster is the trick aspects (may involve making the object of the trick look stupid, etc.) The trick is the most obvious aspect, to the point where many people aren't aware that there is a lesson being taught. Check Coyote in Native American stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elsewhere, you asked about Yoda. I do  not see him as a trickster because his teaching is what is most obvious and manifest. He may use trickster type actions as a tool, but that is secondary to his persona as a master teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T16:04:42.003" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24772" CreationDate="2016-09-27T19:42:58.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No takers? (stretches) All right, then, lemme take a swing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that my answer might be disliked, being chiefly my personal hugely biased opinion, but, in all fairness, my opinion is based on my experience in both my real and imaginary lives and should be worth something, even though I do not have my own Wikipedia page to cite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First and foremost: I try to avoid labeling things. I know that labeling things is a classic American approach to pretty much &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;, and that bothers me greatly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without sinking into an essay on that particular subject I would say that dividing writers into Outliners and Pantsers is a vast generalization. Even Republicans and Democrats have different shades of blue and red among them, although they elected to label themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both Outlining and Discovery Writing are merely methods one can employ in a unique personal blend to achieve the one and only goal--to finish the damn thing you are working on! This forum if full of complaints of self-labeled Outliners who cannot bring themselves to start writing, because their outline is not perfect enough; just as they are filled with the confessions of Pantsers who do not know how their stories end--all because a methodology flaw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One cannot be sure if one's outline works for the story, unless one tries to discover words to flesh it out, and one cannot just plow forward without at least a vague idea of where the story is going no matter what they say (please, do not bring Stephen King into this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do adhere mainly to discovery writing, yet I do have an outline (about five or six bullet points, this is why I am at 460K+ words at the time of this rant, being 3/4 through the first draft :-(--I should be writing, damn it), and I &lt;em&gt;do know how my story ends&lt;/em&gt;.&#xA;I get bored at work easily, and I love daily routine--it calms me down and brings some structure into my life. I had moved from place to place about 18 times during my lifetime, and I am married to the same partner for 35 years. I love animals, but I am neither a Dog or a Cat Person--I have had and do have both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point to which I am trudging is that the correlation between one's writing method and real-life choices might not be that immanent.&#xA;They are very different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is important (at least I think it is) is that labeling things is rarely precise and almost never unequivocal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the lack of graphs and statistics (and the length of this post).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T19:42:58.590" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24783" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24786" CreationDate="2016-09-27T22:26:14.387" Score="1" ViewCount="642" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying conceptualize character kinds. After several days of digging, me as non-writer found 20 attributes which most tricksters have. The list is still raw. I believe voice of others would be beneficial for my little research, so I am publishing the list in hope you destroy my proposition what will help me to make a better one. Here it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most trickster has attributes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In most cases curiosity, intelligence, and creativity are attributes of a trickster.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trickster led by curiosity or revenge for being wronged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trickster gets fun satisfying his curiosity, putting in the second place rules, moral, conventions and other own interests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trickster could trick others or could be too truthful character shedding light on what others conceal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put himself in one row with God/Devil, has extraordinary power, exceptional knowledge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage reader to think outside the box.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage reader and other characters to learn, gives tricky lessons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Openly questions and mocks convention and moral.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Often a trickster disobeys rules or dictates his own rules.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Entertaining yet sacred.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trickster fights against oppressive leadership if any.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usually has a fundamental role in creating a culture, changing rules of a game, a trickster is an agent of changes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usually selfish, but not profit-oriented.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mostly all trickster are males.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As well as clown could sometimes joke on himself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trickster is an outsider. Outside society. Often alone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trickster often takes what is expected and turn it upside down.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Often much weaker others somehow, has a defect. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Trickster is extroverted despite being alone; he is very close to the MBTI personality type 'ENTP'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Trickster can be both pleasant and cold depending on the situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Nathan Coustenoble noted trickster does not have to contain all of this attributes at the same time. And also I should point that some attributes from the list more important than others, need to prioritize them in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21657" LastEditorUserId="21657" LastEditDate="2016-09-30T16:33:56.390" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T16:33:56.390" Title="Trickster's attributes" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24784" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-28T06:15:14.503" Score="3" ViewCount="881" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel like I'm using too many commas. I'm a pretty young writer and I didn't exactly pay attention in English class very often (I was too busy reading a shit load of books and passing with C+'s) and well now that I look back on it, I really should have paid attention during the ':;,' proper usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpt from story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You need to drink this herbal tea” he said, handing her a stinking&#xA;  mug full of grossness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“...Right” she said and drank the glass in one long pull. Then threw&#xA;  the mug at the wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Don’t blame you. I’ve had that tea before...”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“What's your name, Magician”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Gnarf the Wise”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Your name is Gnarf?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Yours is Nu’nah, so you shouldn’t be talking”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They both broke into laughter. For Gnarf it was pleasant. For Nu’nah&#xA;  it was a pain filled movement that brought her to tears. Maybe he’ll&#xA;  think they’re tears of joy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You okay?” he said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Y-yeah” she said, squeezing her eyes shut and willing to pain the&#xA;  recede. “Bucket?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Nah, im good” she said opening her eyes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even he could see they were full of pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You poor girl” he said, his voice full of sorrow&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Just stop that ‘you poor girl’ thing, i hate it” Nu’nah said angrily&#xA;  “It’s happened, nobody could’ve stopped it, so just keep your pity to&#xA;  yourself”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the first piece I've written and I would like to know what I'm doing wrong. Maybe I'm just critical about my work or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21672" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-24T10:32:09.190" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T14:48:53.407" Title="Am I using too many commas?" Tags="|creative-writing|punctuation|breaking-bad-writing-habits|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24783" CreationDate="2016-09-28T08:11:43.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty accurate list.&#xA;You may want to note that : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you don't have to use  all of those attributes at the same time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the Trickster is generally extroverted despite being alone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the Trickster is very versatile, he can be both pleasant and cold depending on the situation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the trickster is very close to the MBTI personality type 'ENTP'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18743" LastEditorDisplayName="user18743" LastEditDate="2016-09-28T08:37:46.973" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T08:37:46.973" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24790" CreationDate="2016-09-28T08:57:03.970" Score="6" ViewCount="775" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a novel by a well-known author the title of which is a place name. The place is fictional and appears in the novel, although there are real places in the real world with the same name, but these places are small and not well known. Anyone who reads that genre will think of that novel first, if they hear that place name. The name is descriptive, like &lt;em&gt;Broken Rock&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Black River&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel in the same genre in which there is a similar place, and I would love to call it the same (because of the symbolism). Key events take place at that location, and the name of the place will be said by the characters rather often throughout the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What will readers think of that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will it throw them out the story to be constantly reminded of that other book? Will they perceive it as a rip-off or an hommage? Should I avoid it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-28T17:53:03.973" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T14:26:32.740" Title="Using place names from other novels" Tags="|naming|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24778" CreationDate="2016-09-28T09:10:20.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scanning the boldfaced terms on this page, I have to laugh aloud because it makes me imagine a novel about a crime investigation without a &lt;strong&gt;crime&lt;/strong&gt;! That would be a most intriguing book indeed – and I think I will write it, right after my &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2920/can-a-book-be-written-without-an-antagonist&quot;&gt;book without an antagonist&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to answer your question, the most important thing for me in a crime investigation story are the &lt;strong&gt;investigator&lt;/strong&gt; protagonist and his or her &lt;strong&gt;investigation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crime investigation fiction is a story of a process and the character and the mind of the person who drives, or is driven, by it. Crime fiction, if done well, is psychological fiction. The crime investigation is a situation into which the protagonist is cast and which serves as some sort of psychological test that will &lt;strong&gt;uncover his character&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is maybe not the traditional way these novels are written. Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple do not actually have much of a character. But it is the way crime investigation fiction is done in tv and movies today. They are no longer about riddles being solved, but about inspectors facing their own inner demons as personified by a crime, or being broken or healed by their lives, of which the police work is merely a part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T09:10:20.903" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24788" CreationDate="2016-09-28T10:16:02.500" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read 2 different series of books, both that have a place named &quot;Winterfell&quot; that is central to the plot, but whilst reading the second series I no longer thought about the place in the first series after around 15 minutes. Readers will have different things called to mind depending on the context, and it will be unlikely that they are reminded of the previous location after a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even though there are &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_(disambiguation)&quot;&gt;over 30 locations in the US called Manchester&lt;/a&gt; alone, as well as further places with the same name in other countries, no matter how much I hear it my mind will always first jump to the place I grew up in the UK, because that's what I immediately think of when I hear the name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think it really depends on whether the reader has enough attachment to something with the name already, but this could happen with names of anything. If a reader's sister is named Sarah, and the main character of the story has the same name, it may be very difficult to disassociate the character from their sister even if they are entirely different. There is absolutely no way a writer can accommodate for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if, as you say, it's highly likely that your audience would have read a book not only with the same place name but having it as the title of that book, it may be better to err on the side of caution. After all, if you knew a large portion of your readers had a sister named Sarah, you'd probably give your main character a different name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But generally, place names like the examples given in your question are named after something in the area that represents that place. But that means the founder could have named it &lt;em&gt;slightly&lt;/em&gt; differently depending on how they saw it, but it would not have to be too dissimilar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So rather than having the name &lt;em&gt;Broken Rock&lt;/em&gt; it may have been named &lt;em&gt;Rockfall&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;Black River&lt;/em&gt; could be something as simple as &lt;em&gt;Dark River&lt;/em&gt;. This could help with being very similar thematically, whilst also not being associated with a place the reader may already know of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T10:16:02.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24784" CreationDate="2016-09-28T10:56:01.233" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You aren't using enough, actually.&lt;br&gt; A comma belongs before each dialogue tag- unless your character is asking a question or exclaiming, in which case a question mark or exclamation point, respectively, should proceed the dialogue tag.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's a good idea for you to study up on punctuation and also grammer. &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare this example to your original excerpt to see why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You need to drink this herbal tea,&quot; he said, handing her a stinking mug full of grossness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“...Right,&quot; she said, and drank the tea in one long pull before throwing the mug at the wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Don’t blame you: I’ve had that tea before...”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“What's your name, Magician?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Gnarf the Wise.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Your name is Gnarf?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Yours is Nu’nah, so you shouldn’t be talking.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They both broke into laughter. For Gnarf, it was pleasant; for Nu’nah, it was a pain filled movement that brought her to tears- maybe he’d think they’re tears of joy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You okay?” he asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Y-yeah,&quot; she said, squeezing her eyes shut and willing to pain the recede.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Bucket?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Nah, I'm good,&quot; she said, opening her eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even he could see they were full of pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You poor girl,&quot; he said, his voice full of sorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Just stop that ‘you poor girl’ thing- I hate it,” Nu’nah said angrily. “It’s happened, nobody could’ve stopped it, so just keep your pity to yourself.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not too late for you to learn about commas and other punctuation marks, and doing so will make writing a lot easier for you. &lt;br&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you the best of luck! Keep on writing, reading and improving!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21185" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T10:56:01.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24788" CreationDate="2016-09-28T16:17:04.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would approach with caution, especially if the referenced place is from a recent or currently active book/series. A little goes a long way&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if I were writing a cosmic horror series set in the American Northeast (or New England, as I guess those folks call it :P, I FOR SURE would have characters who graduated from Miskatonic U., drove past Arkham, and once visited Derry :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judicious use of references from associated works can really bring a universe to life, but only as background color, in my opinion. I would never write a story that had a character specifically reference a killer clown from Derry or those weird fishermen in Innsmouth unless I was specifically working WITHIN THAT WORLD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the same token, I would never write an urban fantasy series that references Hogwarts. That association is too strong and well known, I think (plus Rowling's lawyers would probably come calling pretty quickly). But a sly reference to Chicago's magical protector might be ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19367" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T16:17:04.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24788" CreationDate="2016-09-28T16:22:33.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ten years ago, if I ran into the name Winterfell in two different books, I would think it was a coincidence. Now that Game of Thrones has exploded everywhere, if something new came out and used the name Winterfell, I would think it is a rip-off. I think you need to be careful about how popular the other book is. If it is as well known as you say, you might want to try emailing the publisher/author and see if they had an issue with you using the same name. Also, while titles aren't copyrighted, some authors may have separate trademarks on various things connected with their work. That's a complicated arena and I'm not an expert, but if the book's title is part of merchandise, you might be in deep water. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like @Mike.C.Ford's suggestion about having a similar name that also describes the location and is reminiscent of the other book, but still different. Make it your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T16:22:33.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24778" CreationDate="2016-09-28T16:29:07.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another aspect is &lt;strong&gt;Conspiracy&lt;/strong&gt;. A lot of crime novels have an onion layer structure to the bad guys, so the protagonist has to work their way through  expanding levels of the crime, such that what at first appears to be a simple homicide is actually a state-wide ring of satanic cultists who run a shadow government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the &lt;strong&gt;Traitor&lt;/strong&gt; which may be too strong a word. But he's the lovable ex-partner who helps the protagonist but in reality has been trying to guide the investigation astray because the traitor is actually working for (or is at least aware of) the bad guy and, at the very least, doesn't want the protagonist to get hurt. Heck, the TV show &quot;24&quot; had a mole in the CTU EVERY DAMNED SEASON, sometimes TWO! To the point where the most effective way to stop the bad guys would have been to immediately fire all the CTU employees at once (or at least send them all home for the day :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final aspect is a &lt;strong&gt;Past Connection&lt;/strong&gt;. I've read many crime novels where the current crime echoes or mirrors some past event in the protagonists life. May just bring up some repressed memories that have to be dealt with or be a old foe back for more. I guess this is more of a character development tool than an essential element of crime fiction, but it is pretty common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19367" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T16:29:07.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24762" CreationDate="2016-09-28T16:36:40.650" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you have to give the reader some sense of the passage of time. So in your example, I'd add at least a brief mention of it now being evening or something. Otherwise you risk folks losing the narrative flow (did he go right to the house, is it still daytime, when did he get that flashlight and shotgun?). This is especially important if you switch between different POVs that sync up in the novel. Visual media uses a lot of subtle clues to help orient the viewer (a different color tint for each POV or changing time is a common one), it is important to do the same for a reader. You don't have to explicitly describe what characters do between scenes, but a brief mention of &quot;After a shower John went to the haunted house...&quot; can allow readers to fill in the blanks and keep the timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19367" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T16:36:40.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24796" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24797" CreationDate="2016-09-28T18:09:50.553" Score="8" ViewCount="4822" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I use contractions in my narrative, or only use them in dialogue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that in some books, like &lt;em&gt;The Passage&lt;/em&gt; by Justin Crownin, contractions are used in the prose. In others, like &lt;em&gt;The Faithful and Fallen&lt;/em&gt; series by John Gwynne, I don't think I ever remember seeing a contraction in his narrative. The same goes for Tolkien's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, contractions or no contractions? Do certain genres lend themselves to contractions more so than others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2021-08-12T11:59:54.567" Title="Should I use contractions in my narrative?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|narrative|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24796" CreationDate="2016-09-28T18:29:09.703" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't understand this fear of using certain kinds of words. &lt;em&gt;Yes,&lt;/em&gt; you can use contractions. &lt;em&gt;Yes,&lt;/em&gt; you can use adverbs. &lt;em&gt;Yes,&lt;/em&gt; you can use &quot;bookisms&quot; (alternatives for &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt; which give additional information, like &lt;em&gt;hissed, muttered, shouted&lt;/em&gt;). I'll even allow the occasional split infinitive if the circumlocution to avoid it sounds ridiculous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bookisms and adverbs can be used badly and/or too often, which I'll readily admit. But fussing over contractions seems to me like an extremely prescriptive rule, like &quot;you can't ever use passive voice.&quot; Not &lt;em&gt;you shouldn't do it,&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;active voice/formal speech is stronger,&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;don't overdo it,&lt;/em&gt; but a blanket rule of &quot;don't do it at all.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion as a writer and editor, writing should be clear, natural-sounding, and easy to follow. Sometimes you can do that with a dense sentence if your audience knows the jargon; other times you have to spell things out at length. Sentence fragments? Sometimes they work. I'm in favor of whatever aids comprehension and reads smoothly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read either Crownin or Gwynne, so I can't comment on them. Tolkien was deliberately writing in &quot;high fantasy&quot; style, which he basically invented. Tolkien was also a professor of linguistics who invented several languages, so he can use or not use whatever parts of speech he damn well wants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T18:29:09.703" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24799" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-28T19:41:36.173" Score="1" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;When reading about subjects of genuine interest to me, I can spend countless amounts of time learning and informing myself about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21675" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T19:41:36.173" Title="Is this sentence grammatically correct -- is the verb informing after the modal verb can in the correct form?" Tags="|grammar|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-09-28T19:58:10.330" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24796" CreationDate="2016-09-28T20:24:31.517" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A book isn't just written by the author to tell the reader a story. It has a &lt;strong&gt;narrator&lt;/strong&gt;. The narrator is not the author. Even if there is no narrative frame in which the narrator of the story is made explicit. The narrator is a function of the narrative, just like plot or setting or character. It is &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; a real person, even in an autobiography. The narrator is a voice whose style of narration is chosen by the author in relation to the story, to effect a certain &quot;feel&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it is the narrator which makes a story humorous or earnest. Think of a friend telling you how he had to undergo a painful medical procedure. He can tell the same events to you in a way that you get a good laugh at his expense; or he can tell them with a focus on how bad it all felt and cause you to feel compassion and tenderness for him; or he can choose a more neutral style, considering the interesting advances of medical science. The story does not change, only the narrator does. And it changes with the choice of words, of grammar, of the linguistic register, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A narrator that uses contractions will maybe evoke a feeling of a more immediate, verbal narrative style, of being told something by someone, of a witness of the events, while a style without contractions might feel more distanced, more objective, less involved. Of course the use or disuse of contractions alone is not enough to have that effect, but it will be part of a narrative strategy that will put the reader in a certain frame of mind and thus help the story evoke the emotions in the reader that the author is aiming for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From all this it should become apparent that it must be your choice how you want to narrate your story. There is no right or wrong, only your artistic vision. If you feel unsure, you may need to experiment and learn the proper use of your tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-28T20:32:30.753" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T20:32:30.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7793" CreationDate="2016-09-29T03:06:20.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title ought to summarize the theme of your book--in a nutshell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title needs to answer, or at least address the question of &quot;what makes this book special?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take an example that just popped into my head, an alternate title for the &quot;Wizard of Oz&quot; might have been, &quot;Somewhere Over the Rainbow.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was the &quot;wizard&quot; that was supposed to make Dorothy's dreams come true (he didn't), but the real theme of the book was Dorothy's search for something &quot;somewhere over the rainbow&quot;--and just out of reach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T03:06:20.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24711" CreationDate="2016-09-29T16:07:25.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that just because the villain doesn't know the hero --very likely in this scenario --it doesn't mean that the hero doesn't have a personal connection to the villain.  Not only is this often found in fiction, it's not necessarily rare in real life:  People tend to get fired up about a larger injustice when it becomes personal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make this more or less direct, based on your preference.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The villain makes a new law, and the hero's mother ends up losing her job and starving to death.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The villain's entourage comes to town, and one of the soldier's horses tramples the hero's mother to death.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The villain stops at the hero's mother's coffee stand, refuses to pay for his drink, and then torches it to the ground, with her inside.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The villain probably doesn't care about or remember even the most personal of these incidents, but it's the biggest tragedy in the hero's life.  Compare the climatic fight scene in &lt;em&gt;The Princess Bride&lt;/em&gt; between Inigo Montoya and the six-fingered Count.  For Inigo, the death of his father reshaped his entire life.  For the Count, it was &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButForMeItWasTuesday&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;just another Tuesday&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;warning:&lt;/em&gt; TV Tropes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T16:07:25.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24804" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-29T17:09:06.443" Score="10" ViewCount="2769" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a little research but blogs are never enough. I would like expert advice or even sample contracts which spell out everything if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21692" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-30T10:33:10.350" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T10:33:10.350" Title="For publishing negotations I would like to know what a publishing company makes in profit?" Tags="|publishing|scientific-publishing|publisher|contracts|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24804" CreationDate="2016-09-29T17:32:14.837" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is why you should have an agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the answer will depend on your country, what you wrote, the publisher, the current market, and so on. It is the job of the agent to know this stuff and negotiate the best contract for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your current best path, as I see it, is to &lt;strong&gt;ask them honest questions&lt;/strong&gt;, and hope that they will be honest in their answers. Which they very likely will be, because most publishers aim for a long term relationship with their authors and don't want to undermine that by ripping them off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't try to poker with what will be your long term business partner, that is not a good basis for a healthy relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some further words after the comments:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my answer I presuppose that &lt;strong&gt;you know who the publisher&lt;/strong&gt; (or agent) &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go to a bookstore and look at the shelf with the kind of book you write, your publisher should be represented there. If what you write is not sold through bookstores, then their books should be (well) reviewed by whatever platform that type of writing has. If you look at the website of an agent or agency, that agent or agency should represent one or more of the relevant authors of your genre or field. If it is a small publisher or a new agent, you might want to contact their authors and ask what their experience was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really thought this one was a no-brainer. You want your book to be published by one of the major publishers in your section. Those are honest people. You don't need to double-check Penguin. If you are being approached by no-name publishers, then you don't only need to make sure they don't want to rip you off – you need to consider if they can even sell your book in the first place!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you have written a book in, say, children's literature, I assume that you have widely read books for children, that you know who the other authors that write for children are, and who their agents and pubishers are. I assume that if you are approached by someone who is not on that mental list, you wouldn't consider publishing with them anyway, at least not without researching them carefully and making sure that they can even benefit your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-09-30T07:38:06.833" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T07:38:06.833" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24735" CreationDate="2016-09-29T20:32:13.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One example could be the Growltiger song from Cats.  In the original staging, the song told the story of Growltiger's Last Stand - when his boat is swarmed by enemies and Growltiger killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Immediately prior to the attack, Growltiger and is girlfriend are sitting on the boat, and they sing The Ballad of Billy MaCaw.  The ballad could be dropped without affecting the Growltiger story in any way (and has been in some stagings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole piece is about 15 minutes long, and is drawn from T. S. Elliot's poem book, Old Possums' Book of Cats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21577" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T20:32:13.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24804" CreationDate="2016-09-30T03:04:04.427" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before you sign anything, read Kristine Kathryn Rusch's series on &quot;Dealbreakers&quot; -- clauses which, if they are in your contract, should make you walk away from the deal. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://kriswrites.com/2016/08/17/business-musings-agent-agreements-contractsdealbreakers/&quot;&gt;here's one about agents and the contracts you make with them&lt;/a&gt;. She doesn't seem to have a handy link where you can read the entire series, but this link comes close:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kriswrites.com/category/business-musings/&quot;&gt;http://kriswrites.com/category/business-musings/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She has the term &quot;Dealbreakers&quot; or &quot;Contracts&quot; in the headline of all the relevant articles, so you can scroll down and find all the articles in her Dealbreakers series that way. (You might have to click on &quot;Older Entries&quot; a few times to get all the articles -- and the Older Entries link is dark-grey-on-light-grey, so it's hard to see.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always keep in mind, whether you're dealing with a publisher or an agent, that this is a &lt;em&gt;business negotiation&lt;/em&gt;. Which means that even if both parties are being completely honest (which is true for some publishers, but not for all -- &lt;em&gt;caveat scriptor&lt;/em&gt;), they will not open with the best offer they're willing to accept. Negotiate &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; clause in the contract, even the ones you don't think are going to be negotiable. You might be surprised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And make &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt; you know ahead of time what your own dealbreakers are. You may not have ever thought about it before, so that's why Rusch's series is a good one. She quotes clauses from actual contracts, and explains in detail why they sound good in theory but are terrible in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, since you asked about sample contracts, I'll link one more article. This is about a &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; contract that came up in the news recently because the publisher is suing the author for breach of contract. The article will do a better job of explaining it than I could, and will link to the actual contract itself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kriswrites.com/2016/08/31/business-musings-a-real-book-contract-contractsdealbreakers/&quot;&gt;http://kriswrites.com/2016/08/31/business-musings-a-real-book-contract-contractsdealbreakers/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. Good luck with your search for a publisher, and remember that one totally valid tactic in negotiation is to walk away and say, &quot;These terms are unacceptable; I'm going to go find another publisher.&quot; Because ten years ago, if you wanted your book published, you didn't have much choice. But now, self-publishing through Amazon is always an option, which means you always have a fallback position at the negotiating table. And that gives you a lot more power, and will let you end up with a lot better contracts, than was the case ten years ago. So always keep that option in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21703" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T03:04:04.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24809" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24810" CreationDate="2016-09-30T06:13:19.960" Score="3" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a corporate guidelines manual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manual itself is made in InDesign, and contains sample documents in it that show employees how to correctly write/format despatches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These documents (made in Illustrator) have made up dates on them, which include the year, to exemplify a real written despatch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This manual will be printed and distributed and cannot be updated later on, therefore I am trying to find a way to not have it be aged by the dates contained in the documents. I would still like to show a full sample date so to avoid ambiguity and misunderstanding for the employees reading it, but sticking '5 may 2016' in the sample documents contained in the manual would make it obviously outdated in 2017.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I want to keep these documents from looking outdated in a year, without having to update it every year though, and I can't figure out how to do so while including the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could I achieve this clear exemplification while keeping my manual timeless?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Edited the question based on comments to make it clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21705" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-10-05T20:04:24.993" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T14:08:48.040" Title="How to keep documents with example full date timeless" Tags="|style|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24809" CreationDate="2016-09-30T19:07:29.383" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are concerned that a document containing a recent, past date (like from last year) will make readers think your document is out of date.  One way to address that is to use dates that are &lt;em&gt;obviously not recent&lt;/em&gt; -- Jan 1 1970, Dec 31 2037, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a section in the frontmatter about document conventions (the place where documents sometimes talk about special formatting), consider adding a note there saying that you've used ficticious dates in preference to placeholders like &quot;YYYY&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T19:07:29.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24735" CreationDate="2016-09-30T19:36:47.430" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oddly enough, this is the structure of my own children's book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1416961372&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How the Fisherman Tricked the Genie&lt;/a&gt;.  It's based fairly closely on a lesser known story from the &lt;em&gt;Arabian Nights.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The outer story is about a fisherman who has the misfortune to release an evil genie from a container.  The fisherman tells the genie a fairy tale about a wicked king and a magician, who in turn tells a fable about a prince and a dog. In my version there's a more pronounced difference of styles between the stories, but the nested structure is present in the original.  Arguably, the entire &lt;em&gt;Arabian Nights&lt;/em&gt; is itself an example of this structure.  Although it's not exactly a &quot;folktale&quot; it almost certainly compiles stories from the oral tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel certain there must be others, but I'm having trouble thinking of one.  The widespread folktale &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type1645.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Hidden Treasure&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (which inspired Paulo Coelho's bestseller &lt;em&gt;The Alchemist&lt;/em&gt;) has characters that retell their dreams. Possibly also of interest is the well-known spiritual &quot;Mary, Don't You Weep,&quot; which centers around figures from the New Testament, but interpolates Old Testament Bible stories.  If you don't require English, there are West African poems that are essentially compilations of allusions to well-known &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.openedition.org/obp/1202?lang=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;proverbs&lt;/a&gt;, fables and older poems.  This &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_within_a_story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; article, although not focused on the oral tradition, does give some other good examples, including the &lt;em&gt;Odyssey&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2016-09-30T19:59:18.913" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T19:59:18.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24735" CreationDate="2016-09-30T22:55:43.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The classic example would be The Arabian Nighs (AKA One Thousand and One Nights) (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Thousand_and_One_Nights&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Thousand_and_One_Nights&lt;/a&gt;) in which Scheherazade tells her husband an new story each night to keep him from cutting her head off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T22:55:43.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24813" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-01T12:01:20.503" Score="2" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the story I am writing, the main character is not in control of the events of the story, I did this to create a strong sense of powerlessness, but I have found a problem. I am having difficulties introducing the plot points in ways that feel real, every way I have of introducing new plot points only seems to feel forced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I introduce plot points to a non-spearhead character, without it feeling forced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In the unlikely event that it matters, the protagonist is a young underage soldier fighting for a guerrilla rebellion)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14853" LastActivityDate="2016-10-01T15:16:57.970" Title="Tips for continuing plot when the spearhead character is not the protagonist?" Tags="|style|plot|conflict|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24813" CreationDate="2016-10-01T12:26:06.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every protagonist wants something and is struggling to get it. Every plot point in a story consists of the protagonist's attempt to get the thing they desire and the things that frustrate that desire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not require the protagonist to be in charge of events. Nor does it require that they achieve the thing they desire. For a great example of a protagonist who is not in change of events and does not achieve their desire, check out Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy (Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, Unconditional Surrender). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even though they are not in charge of events and are usually or even always frustrated by them, the protagonist still has a desire that they are struggling to achieve. History may be driven by forces beyond their control, but the story is driven by their desire and what they do to achieve it (whether successful or not). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is no reason that the protagonists lack of control over events should feel forced if you simply focus on what it is the protagonist desires and what they can do in an attempt to achieve it, even if that attempt is doomed to failure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-01T12:26:06.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24813" CreationDate="2016-10-01T15:16:57.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also read books like One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Moby Dick, and the Great Gatsby, where the most proactive character isn't the viewpoint character. Analyze the ways these authors make it work, maybe even annotate the text in search of this, and then go back to your original manuscript and try to incorporate some of your findigs into it. Yes, this canbe tedious, but analyzing books can teach you much more than any other advice I could give you. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19388" LastActivityDate="2016-10-01T15:16:57.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24796" CreationDate="2016-10-01T17:44:15.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mark Twain used them all the time...ironically to create &quot;stupid talk&quot;...meaning writing &quot;hokie-isms&quot; is hard work because the spoken word is filled with t'aints and t'isms and all sorts of clap-trappery. There is an irony to the lyricism of apostrophes and ampersands etc. You would think clear writing would contain the minimum of punctuation but that is not in fact how we speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-10-01T17:44:15.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24804" CreationDate="2016-10-01T23:42:53.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Never had a paid for publishing offer but I think the negotiation is pretty straightforward and can be done ... and is best done ... without an Agent. If you think you have a best seller on your hands then you would want part of the sales...if this is your first time start &quot;big&quot;(15%) and aim small (no lower than 10%.) Also take a look at the publishing house...have they ever produced a best seller? Talk to another Publisher when you're not satisfied...and you will not be...to see if you can get a better producer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be sure they have a good editor on the payroll. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not agree to any follow on material unless you've already written it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always take any money offered up front...even if it's 500 bucks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-10-01T23:42:53.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24819" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24822" CreationDate="2016-10-02T02:06:39.497" Score="1" ViewCount="1345" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, in a novel I'm writing, there is a situation where the first-person protagonist is in a lot of pain, so much that she is screaming and sobbing. I've seen the onomatopoeia &amp;quot;Augh&amp;quot; used to represent a person screaming. Normally, I stray away from using too much of those like &amp;quot;bang, clang, ding, etc.&amp;quot; because they tend to be more distracting and I often don't have a place for them in my writing unless I'm using them as a verb. But, in this case, the screams are to come as an interruption of her thoughts, so instead of saying &amp;quot;I scream again&amp;quot; every few lines, I decided the onomatopoeia would be more natural to use to convey the effect of her being unable to concentrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also do this later in the chapter, but instead of using only &amp;quot;Augh,&amp;quot; I use &amp;quot;Augh&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;No.&amp;quot; Here is an excerpt from the chapter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Augh!&amp;quot; I scream out as a pain like a knife being pushed slowly through my head, and my skull, and my brain, takes hold of me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It hurts so much... I can't process. I can't-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Auugghh!&amp;quot; I scream again, this time punctuating it with sobs, as another stab of pain derails my train of thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Jade!&amp;quot; Someone shouts. It's Cale. I saw everything. I saw it from his eyes. That's not –&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Auughh,&amp;quot; Another scream escapes as if the very sight of Cale could cause me to reenter his mind. I shut my eyes and clutch my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No! No! No! No!&amp;quot; I scream. Why am I saying no? What am I saying no to? I don't know. I don't know anything. Everything is impossible. It's not possible for me to see me from the eyes of the person that's carrying me; it's just not possible, and it can't happen but, it did. &amp;quot;No! No! No!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Jade, you have to calm down. You're going to hurt yourself even more if you keep thrashing around. You're alive; it's going to be alright.&amp;quot; Deen tells me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No! No! No! No!&amp;quot; I shriek. The knife pain is not just in my head now. It's spread to my leg and my back and my entire body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It needs to go away. I need to understand how I could –&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No! Auuuggghhh!&amp;quot; I scream. It won't let me think; I can't even try to understand how I could see all of it. I shouldn't remember. I can't be able to remember. &amp;quot;No!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Auuuugggghhhh!&amp;quot; The knife pushes itself further in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kinnie saved Tammie's life after she had the heart attack. She knew how to fix Tammie's –&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No! No! No!&amp;quot; The knife is almost at the front of my skull now, and it's still twisting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deen led everyone through the woods until Spenzo took over. Deen was going so fast that Kinnie and Tammie had trouble keeping up. After the heart attack Spenzo carried Tammie, and Deen offered to –&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Auuuuuuuuggggggghhhhhhhhhh!&amp;quot; It's through. The knife is through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this style too distracting for the readers? Or is it just distracting enough for the context?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any feedback you guys provide would be a great help. And, if this onomatopoeia usage is too distracting, what's an alternative I could do to convey the same effect?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T13:54:36.297" Title="Onomatopoeia usage, how much of it detracts from the story?" Tags="|style|dialogue|readers|proofreading|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24819" CreationDate="2016-10-02T07:44:53.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is one major mistake your making, in my opinion. You are repeating multiple letters inside the dialogue. For me, this would really detract from my reading experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Auuuuuuuuggggggghhhhhhhhhh!&quot; It's through. The knife is through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We'll take that for an example. In my opinion, writing many letters on 'augh' appears childish. Rather, I wouldn't use dialogue at all at this point. Instead, perhaps you could try something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My stentorian wails failed to repel the knife, and it buried itself into my heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wild groans slithered from my throat while pain wrestled my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There certainly are other ways of saying this without using multiple letters in dialogue. Furthermore, I wouldn't use &lt;em&gt;scream&lt;/em&gt; all the time. You've used scream five times in this very short extract, which in my opinion, is too much. I think you should either use synonyms, like &lt;em&gt;groan&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;shriek&lt;/em&gt; (you used shriek), or you should just not mention that you're speaking at all. Every time you end dialogue, you don't need to say &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt;, or the myriad of other words like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to try saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No! No,&quot; I tore at my breast, leaving bloodied scratches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would be entirely valid. I know you already know this, because you used it in your extract, but I think you should use it more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first bits of dialogue, you use &lt;em&gt;scream&lt;/em&gt; almost every time. It removes the effect of the world. Instead of creating a harrowing, grievous call, you are making your character scream like a newborn baby. Lets take a look at a strategy to suprress the screaming:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Argh,&quot; I direly called again, this time punctuating it with sobs, as another stab of pain shreds my thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sentence was really good. I like the use of the word &lt;em&gt;punctuating&lt;/em&gt;. I changed &lt;em&gt;scream&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;direly called&lt;/em&gt; because it has a similar connotation, a loud and bellowing yell. I think it would be interesting to use &lt;em&gt;call&lt;/em&gt; here instead of &lt;em&gt;yell&lt;/em&gt; - almost as if you were calling for someone to come and tend to you. I edited out &lt;em&gt;derails&lt;/em&gt; because I think it just comes too fast, and to me, shreds gives me the feeling that the control of thought is being destroyed. &lt;em&gt;Augh&lt;/em&gt; was changed to &lt;em&gt;argh&lt;/em&gt; because &lt;em&gt;argh&lt;/em&gt; sounds more like a scream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final note, I have this piece of advice. &lt;strong&gt;In this scene, do not use exclamation marks at the start&lt;/strong&gt;, rather, it would be effective to use them at the &lt;strong&gt;climax&lt;/strong&gt;. Save them, and make them punch the reader in the face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't use dialogue with onomatopoeia in over and over again. Rather, just say 'wild groans' or something.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try not to spam out 'scream' or any word expressing the fact that someone has spoken all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there's one thing I want you to take away from this answer, &lt;strong&gt;please do not have multiple letters in your onomatopoeia. Please.&lt;/strong&gt; As a different option, you could describe the lengthy scream or use a word like 'crescendo'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't think you even need to describe every single scream. Just say that they're screaming, and you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final note, I would change &lt;em&gt;I shut my eyes and clutch my head&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;I shut my eyes and clutched my head.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like I've been nasty this answer - sorry! Anyway, I hope this helped you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-10-02T07:44:53.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24824" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-02T12:16:17.083" Score="2" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need both information about the material as well as about the time it requires to learn to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could be a comprehensive reading list of exemplary works for a solid base? And a good reading list of theory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much should a prospective students allocate for such purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading As much as possible might be an answer to become as good as possible. However, the question here is how to become a &lt;strong&gt;decent&lt;/strong&gt; writer, &lt;strong&gt;not an exceptional&lt;/strong&gt; one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That starting at a high-school level and with a desire to write both fiction and non-fiction (with emphasis on non-fiction).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18463" LastEditorUserId="18463" LastEditDate="2016-10-02T15:10:04.070" LastActivityDate="2016-10-04T07:20:49.390" Title="An educational ‘roadmap’ to become a proficient writer?" Tags="|style|academic-writing|learning|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2016-10-05T20:03:11.467" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24819" CreationDate="2016-10-02T16:44:40.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While fully agreeing with @Lythric on the multiplying letters in the onomatopoeia (it does sound childish and looks rather comic-book-like) and repeating action words (scream) I am not at all sure the following suggested passage fits into the narrative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My stentorian wails failed to repel the knife, and it buried itself into my heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me it sounds too encyclopedic and distant from the rest of a narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No! No,&quot; I tore at my breast, leaving bloodied scratches&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seriously doubt that the person in so much pain would care to check in the mirror if the scratches on their chest are bloody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's just me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And frankly (for me, once again) the main problem with the given excerpt was not the use of comic book  onomatopoeia and repeating words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While desperately trying not to slip into the uninvited literary critique, I have to admit that despite clearly getting the picture of the POV character being in a lot of pain (you made that work all right), I had no idea what is really happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is someone trying to cure a heart attack by putting a knife through the person's skull? Where than the pain in the leg fits? Or back? I would wish for more segregation between reality and biased perception of it (through pain).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do, however, understand that this is an excerpt and there is a story leading to it, so you have the right to ignore this remark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-02T16:44:40.910" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24718" CreationDate="2016-10-02T17:59:03.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not believe there's an &quot;Oxbridge style.&quot; That is, there's no Oxbridge writing style that's distinct from other polished and elegant styles. There are individual spins to any style, and I am sure Alasdair Macintyre has his own personal way of expressing ideas. However, what we have here is covered by general style principles - be concise, no padding, be specific, be clear, connect the ideas, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6196" LastActivityDate="2016-10-02T17:59:03.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24824" CreationDate="2016-10-02T18:45:24.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are searching for is a remedial writing course for college. That is, a catch-up course to bring high-school students to an acceptable academic level. It's also called &quot;developmental writing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many high-schools, students write loads of essays, but these are short essays. Student will become pretty lost when it comes down to develop an idea across 5-10 pages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gather enough material for 3-months of full-time reading. Choose stuff that interests you, not stuff that random people on the internet recommended. A good source of polished writing is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New Yorker&lt;/a&gt;. But if this is going to make you read more, buy some books (on paper) too. Reading on a screen might be tiresome sometimes. Authors like  Alasdair Macintyre, Bertrand Russell, Norman Mailer, Carl Sagan, Feynman, Steven Pinker, for example, wrote prolifically but took care to produce high-quality texts - well-organized, well-written and highly educational. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the theoretical part you could try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On Writing, Stephen King&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Merriam-Webster's Guide to Punctuation and Style&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some style guide from any mainstream newspaper or from the MLA&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, find some form of obtaining feedback about your texts. Write 5 pages or more and hire a private tutor (online or not). Try to get some feedback on maybe 100 of your essays. That will cost a little, but you are learning a skill that will be useful for the rest of your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feedback is essential. Most people are astonished to discover that many structures they deemed standard are actually unintelligible or simply wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6196" LastEditorUserId="6196" LastEditDate="2016-10-02T18:58:47.697" LastActivityDate="2016-10-02T18:58:47.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24828" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24858" CreationDate="2016-10-02T20:15:53.507" Score="2" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story. In it, someone hires a professional assassin to kill a young woman. While the killer is investigating his target he unknowingly starts having feelings for her but he only realizes it after he pulls the trigger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to do is describe the descent of the main character, from being distant to having a breakdown step by step - but I don't want it to feel too sudden. What I'm afraid of doing wrong is that the moment I start showing details inside the killers head, it feels like he goes from cold killer to lovestruck bird instantly, which is not what I want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I portray a shift like this? Is there a name for this technique? Are there any examples of this done correctly?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below is my story for reference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm sorry we didn't meet under other circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The trigger that ended your life was pulled the moment I signed the&#xA;  contract. I don't know why someone would want you dead but it didn't&#xA;  matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What matters is that the job is done. I took it and completed it. This&#xA;  is usually the part where I leave the stage and destroy any equipment.&#xA;  Yet here I am. Over your body, looking at you, waiting for you to&#xA;  speak to me. Almost like you are about to get up with your messy hair&#xA;  and puffy eyes so can go brush your teeth with your orange toothbrush.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'll never use a telescope again. The telescope brings you closer than&#xA;  it has to. I see all the details of your face without the awkwardness.&#xA;  Almost close enough to have your hair tickle my face. If I focus well&#xA;  enough I can almost read your lips murmuring songs while you wait at&#xA;  the bus stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A scope is much more appropriate for such use.  The crosshairs make&#xA;  sure a target remains just that: A target. Unfortunately I just&#xA;  realised you became something more. A person. Peaceful, on a pillow&#xA;  drowned in rose petals. Almost smiling, like in a pleasant dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I knew I shouldn't get close. I still don't know why I had to be&#xA;  inside your room to do this. Maybe it was curiosity, maybe intrigue.&#xA;  Maybe I wanted to know about whether your room smells of choc-chip&#xA;  cookies shampoo. Not quite, but close enough. At least that's from how&#xA;  much I managed to smell before my nostrils got choked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maybe it's not too late.  I know you will soon wake up, and while&#xA;  scared you won't scream. Please don't scream and give me a chance to&#xA;  meet me. We'll escape from this together and will be far away before&#xA;  anyone figures it out. We'll live together, away from this hellhole.&#xA;  You will wake up. You will wake up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You will wake up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-10-06T10:24:35.503" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T13:59:04.803" Title="How do I keep a major emotional upheaval from seeming artificial and abrupt?" Tags="|style|character-development|flow|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24829" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-02T20:59:30.267" Score="7" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was critiquing a friend's novel and I noticed that all the characters seem to have the voice of my friend.  Speech fillers, vocabulary, sentence structure all seems the same  throughout.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can he avoid this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15703" LastActivityDate="2016-10-05T17:56:39.600" Title="How can one not let their voice show through in all the characters?" Tags="|style|voice|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24829" CreationDate="2016-10-02T21:18:20.873" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two places a novelist may find a character: inside of themselves and out in the world. The desire to write may come from many places: sometimes from a desire to &quot;express oneself&quot;, sometimes from a desire to share what you have seen and heard in the world around you. I doubt there is any way for an inward looking writer to sound like anyone other than themselves. I think an outward looking writer will naturally pick up and reflect the voices of those around them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I not sure if you can become a sufficiently outward-looking writer simply to fix a problem like this. Writing is driven by what interests us most, and if we find that within, that that is where it will come from. I think the outward looking writer has a far better chance of producing something that is convincing and of interest to others. You don't have to be interesting yourself to discover what is interesting in the world. But the inward-looking writer may succeed if they find something sufficiently interesting within.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you certainly can do is to try to stand back from your characters and think about who each one of them is and what each one of them wants in a scene. Every character should have their own agenda, and should be acting to advance it in every scene. What makes characters real and distinct is far less how they talk than what they say and why they say it. If your characters are distinct people with distinct agendas, they will have distinct voices, even in they all share the author's tone and vocabulary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-02T21:18:20.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24832" CreationDate="2016-10-03T03:27:34.190" Score="2" ViewCount="398" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had a story developing inside my head for years (literally about 5 or 6 years now) but every time I try to put that story onto paper it never turns out how I wanted it. It feels like this is my calling in life but yet I can't even complete even a little of it before becoming frustrated and trying again. It's a never ending loop. So my question is, how can I put my ideas onto paper how they are in my head? Is there like a exercise or tactics I can use? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21541" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T17:20:21.547" Title="Translating from mind to paper" Tags="|technique|structure|word-choice|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24831" CreationDate="2016-10-03T04:56:42.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start writing a diary. At the end of the day, you will be able to imagine and put down that stuff which you have already lived. That is just a simple trigger. Don't take it for easy because you will have to struggle a lot in order to find the correct words and its formations in order to properly describe everything that which you experienced, that which you felt, that which you understand, expression of your perception, display of emotions, however subtle they be, and everything that is happening around the central theme of your existence i.e. you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have already spent 5 to 6 years imagining, spending a few more is not going to be a vain investment perhaps. It will take time but practice, for sure, will help you fetch that mastery which you desire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21734" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T04:56:42.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24824" CreationDate="2016-10-03T07:58:19.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start writing and keep writing. There will be many pitfalls along the way and grammatical nuances to overcome but if you so desire, you will achieve it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for reading material I recommend intermediate level books usually targeted for young kids. Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, learning the fundamentals of how something works can go a long way.&#xA;Riding a bicycle may be simple now but as kids we had to learn it at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professional BMX freestylers started out the same way but elevated their skills and dexterity by practicing further than what you and I are accustomed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn the different meanings of what one word may posess.&#xA;For instance, 'hold' has many different usages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I held your arms&#xA;I held up my bargain now its your turn!&#xA;Hold on, Im on the phone.&#xA;The prisoner is in a holding cell.&#xA;Please put that call on hold.&#xA;I will hold you to your promise.&#xA;Make sure you have a firm hold on that rope.&#xA;Relax and try to hold in your anger.&#xA;Men! Do not surrender, hold down the fort!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, this one little word can branch out into different meanings just by context and prepositional phrases alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking of meanings make sure that you try to use the correct word for a given idea, situation, sentence, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got a signal from outer space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I received a signal from outer space. (yes)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The car was going at 90 mph on a rainy day. Suddenly the car started turning left and right and crashed a tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The driver was going 90 mph on a wet slippery road when suddenly he lost control of the vehicle, swerving left and right and finally crashing head-on with a tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep ideas simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm fatigued. It has truthfully been almost an hour since I have had anything to consume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm tired. Its been an hour since I've eaten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep medical terms with medical context just like keep legal terms with legal documents. In other words, if you are writing an article about Biology you wouldnt use terms you otherwise would use in everyday speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For.instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these viruses stick to healthy cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these viruses attach to healthy cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These veins send blood througout the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These veins pump blood throughout the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21735" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T07:58:19.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24829" CreationDate="2016-10-03T11:31:22.367" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;He's probably already done the best thing that he can do, and that is to get someone to proof read his work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very difficult to extract ourselves from our characters if they are entirely invented in our own minds, so it will be necessary to get a second opinion to ensure that the character reads as someone real and unique, instead of &quot;Me as [Insert dominant personality trait here]&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did the same thing when I first started my novel. My three main characters became &quot;Me as jaded and sarcastic&quot;, &quot;Me as shy and withdrawn&quot; and &quot;Me as confident and outspoken&quot;, which sounds similar to how your friend's novel reads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about real people, they all have vastly different upbringings, morals, motivations and experiences. This is how we are all so different, and sometimes it is difficult to think about how they have all culminated to make that person, so it is much easier to start with what you know (yourself) and go from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst it is useful to see yourself in the main characters, as it helps to make them relatable and use your own feelings and life experiences to make them more realistic, it also causes the problem that your friend has, which is that the characters are all developed from the same start point, thus to an outside reader they all appear to be the same character but modified slightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using different methods of character creation will generally help to alleviate this problem. I found a few things that helped to create characters that seemed more real and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/21561/whats-the-difference-between-a-1-2-or-3-dimensional-character&quot;&gt;3 dimensional&lt;/a&gt;. There will definitely be more techniques, but these were the ones I used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The suggestion of @mbakeranalecta to base the character on someone real is a very good one. Rather than writing a character that is yourself with personality traits swapped, choose someone else who is similar to who you want the character to be, and adapt from there. If you don't personally know someone who is like that, then try choosing an actor who could play that character in a movie. Basing the character on another fictional character is also an option, but it may be difficult to see them any other way than who they are based on rather than being a unique character in and of themselves, and they may and up basically becoming a caricature of the original.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Drastically changing something major about a character can help to disassociate the writer from simply writing an extension of themselves. I realized one of my characters was pretty bland, until I decided to change them from male to female. The character's gender wasn't really important to the story, and once I thought about the character in a different light it was much easier to layer on new fresh aspects of their personality and make them much more interesting, rather than adapting aspects of my own personality. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Doing some research into personality types and why people are the way they are can be very useful to adapt characters into more rounded people. This helps tie into their background, and allows the writer to explore what things in their life may have caused the character to be the person they are. Once these things are looked into, more thought into what may have motivated the character to do what they do will help to think of them as their own character instead of an extension of oneself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A lot of writers suggest doing exercises such as &quot;How would this character react to being stranded on a desert island?&quot; or dropping characters into other hypothetical scenarios to get a feel for what they would do in that situation. Personally I struggle with this technique and I feel like it doesn't work for me, so I can't really expand on how to use it effectively, but I thought I would add it as an option to look into.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T16:34:50.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2990" CreationDate="2016-10-03T13:59:48.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;All you need, in place of your characters, is a strong dose of anthropomorphize-ing. By implying human characteristics and emotions within inanimate and insensate objects, you bypass the need for actual intelligent actors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a stand-alone chapter in one of my unpublished works, which describes the battle between an old wooden dock and the relentless ocean waves.  When I wrote it, I was attempting a deliberate hommage to the Ray Bradbury piece which is mentioned in another answer.  That characterless chapter turned out to be one of the prettiest, most poetic things, I've ever written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your submerged volcano story has the same potential.  Imagine a world of endless sea, with primitive life hidden beneath the waves, ready to crawl out on dry land, but trapped by the totally aquatic nature of their planet.  Enter the hero, a mound of growing lava, bubbling up from a fissure in the ocean floor.  Follow its adventures as it reaches up hopelessly for the distant surface.  Share in its sorrows as structural flaws and air pockets collapse, causing a loss of precious height.  Celebrate its triumph when unfiltered sunshine finally falls upon its finally dry shore.  It is the Rocky story!...  told with real rocks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T13:59:48.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2990" CreationDate="2016-10-03T14:00:03.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question really comes down to the definition of story (and, to a certain extent, of fiction). If we take story in the broad sense of a sequential narrative and fiction in the broad sense of any statement that is not true, then clearly there can be stories without characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we take story and fiction in the narrower sense of a drama, then there can be no drama without characters, since it is the desire of a character that drives drama. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But human beings are interested in other types of stories besides dramas, so there are is certainly scope for stories without characters. But since you posit that the intent of the question is to understand character by removing them from story, then I would suggest that what character is, in terms of a drama, is desire. Characters, dramatically speaking, are expressions of desire and the willingness to act in pursuit of desire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T14:00:03.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24829" CreationDate="2016-10-03T14:05:01.730" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers are good but they strike me as abstract. Maybe I'm a philistine, but I like my advice concrete and practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different people naturally use different:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vocabulary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sentence length&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sentence structure (think balance of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=simple%20sentences&quot;&gt;simple&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=complex%20sentences&quot;&gt;complex&lt;/a&gt; sentences)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Register (which is a mix of things, but roughly &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics)&quot;&gt;'level of formality'&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Patterns of thought (More direct or roundabout? More emotional or practical?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Approach (Blunt or diplomatic? Complainer or problem-solver? Loner or relationship-builder?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When people talk about voice, that's what they're talking about. If you want distinct voices, pull apart your dialogue and reconstruct it with one eye on the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Semi-flippant PS: this method of making your writing better might feel less like magic and more like work. I would argue that this is &lt;em&gt;not a coincidence&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T14:05:01.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24831" CreationDate="2016-10-03T14:18:58.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stop editing and reviewing your writing during the process!  Self-review, especially in the early pages of a project, can strip away your momentum and keep you from ever reaching the finish line.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were running a foot race, you wouldn't stop every few yards to look back at your footprints and criticize their placement and symmetry.  You would just charge on to the next step, ever improving your speed and stride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Nike made pens they would have &quot;JUST WRITE IT&quot; on their sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and they would help a lot of stillborn stories get past their author's prenatal hesitancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are writing during this first feverish rush of words is called a &quot;first draft&quot;.  It is not meant to be perfect.  It is meant to get you used to the discipline of writing every day.  It is meant to be a gathering of the characters and scenes which will make up later version.  The significance of those characters and the order (or inclusion) of those scenes may change in future telling, so don't waste any time getting any of them perfect.  Just get them down on paper.  Give them physical form today so that they can be a starting point for the real writing you will do tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I started writing, I believed that creativity and grammar were the only skills needed to successfully write.  Now, neither of those fakers make it into the top three attributes of a productive author.  That list now includes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dedication to the current story, despite all distractions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the discipline to write every day, despite all distractions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an unnamed human characteristic involving the willingness to end a story, even while you are in love with its characters and full of ideas for where the action can go next.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T14:18:58.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24831" CreationDate="2016-10-03T14:42:26.877" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Many&lt;/em&gt; writers have this issue. I think we should simplify this to something as innocent as a baby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You give birth to the child, but you don't discipline it right away. You let it grow and become amazing, and then when its old enough to understand discipline, you discipline it. You wouldn't go around shouting at your newborn, would you?&#xA; You mustn't hastily punish your baby at an early age, you need to let it grow and see how it goes. Then, you can discipline it the way you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your book is like the baby. You can't give up on something right away. What you should do, is you should put the idea on paper the best you can. You can try this, to help you not give up on your baby (your book):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My writing might be bad now, but that's because I haven't edited it and made it the best I possibly can. It doesn't matter if my first draft is bad, because I can go through and edit it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first time writing your story, it &lt;strong&gt;DOES NOT&lt;/strong&gt; have to be good. Because that, is your first draft - your first time going through it.  When you go and &lt;em&gt;edit&lt;/em&gt; it, you'll get rid of all those silly imperfections and tidy up all the unnecessary paragraphs and sentences, reorder events a bit, perhaps change structure, remove chapters. You'll do everything then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best way for you to appreciate the work you're doing, is for you to know that this is only your &lt;em&gt;first draft&lt;/em&gt;. A blacksmith doesn't just run his whetstone along the weapon once to sharpen it - he does it many times. Think of the image in your mind as that final version of the weapon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remember, you mustn't discipline your newborn.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You must acknowledge that this is only your first draft and not the final product.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep sharpening your weapon time after time until its as sharp as it is in your mind :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My analogies were bad, but I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-10-03T16:59:43.850" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T16:59:43.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24831" CreationDate="2016-10-03T17:20:21.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other answers assume that the problem you are having is inertia, and perhaps they are right. Perhaps you just need to start writing and keep writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But perhaps inertia is not the problem. Perhaps that problem is that what seems like a story in your head is not a story when you get it down on paper. One way to test this is to write down the key story elements and see if they are fully realized. By this I do not mean an outline. An outline is what happens. The key story elements are why things happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible formula for this is to write down the desires of each character:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the main character's main desire. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What stands in the way of their achieving that desire?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are they willing to do to achieve that desire.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does the desire, or what they are willing to do to achieve it, change with each setback they encounter. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since most of the setback to the main character achieving their desire come from the actions of other characters, you then need to ask the same questions about every other character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The things that other characters do which frustrate the main character's desire are the result of the secondary characters trying to achieve their desire and are based on what they are willing to do to achieve that desire, which may also change as a result of their own reversals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a story that feels coherent in your head falls apart on paper, it may well be because these complicated dynamics of character and desire are not worked out properly. Somehow the stories in our head seem to easily paper over the cracks in the story shape, but putting them down on paper reveals the gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing comes from imagination filtered through discipline, and to get a story out of your head and onto a page you have to subject your imagination to an appropriate discipline. The kind of discipline that works for each writer is clearly different. But one of the effects of that discipline is often to reveal that you do not really have a story (yet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T17:20:21.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24843" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24844" CreationDate="2016-10-03T17:38:18.913" Score="1" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it correct to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sign Up to our Newsletter&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sign Up for our Newsletter&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21725" LastEditorUserId="21725" LastEditDate="2017-01-24T08:49:21.700" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T08:49:21.700" Title="Which makes better sense?" Tags="|structure|description|grammar|tenses|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2016-10-05T20:02:43.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24843" CreationDate="2016-10-03T17:48:29.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sign Up for Our Newsletter&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is correct because it is grammatically saying: 'if you sign up to this, you will get our newsletter'. So, your signing up &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; the purpose of getting the newsletter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In English, capitalise everything in titles save: articles (a, the), connectives (but, and) and prepositions (on, at).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T17:48:29.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24829" CreationDate="2016-10-03T19:19:42.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Your characters do not need to sound different.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading current fiction, I rarely can tell the characters apart by their voice alone. That is, if you take a page of dailog and remove all references to who speaks, usually all the characters speak pretty much the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is part of your writing style and artistic vision to give each character an individual voice, then asking a question here is the wrong way to begin. You will need to listen to how people speak and try to emulate that in writing. There are no ready-made recipes that you can blindly follow, you will have to develop your ear and your writing ability by practicing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, you just want to tell a gripping story, different voices for different characters are not at all necessary, and most writers don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T19:19:42.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24829" CreationDate="2016-10-04T00:18:53.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two things in addition to what I've seen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The more characters you have, the harder it is to differentiate them, so you wind up with archetypes. Usually this isn't a problem, but one might have fewer characters in order to develop them more thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep track of your characters typical responses. &quot;Do we go into the tunnel?&quot; Well one of your characters might commonly say &quot;Perhaps,&quot; while another would say, &quot;Maybe, maybe not,&quot; and the protagonist would say, &quot;Are you out of your mind?&quot; It might seem subliminal at first, but over the course of a novel it gives each character at least a tiny voice of their own.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-10-04T12:03:21.503" LastActivityDate="2016-10-04T12:03:21.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24824" CreationDate="2016-10-04T07:20:49.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leaning how to write is quite simple and straighforward:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;All you need to do do is write.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this, writing isn't any different from any other skill. How do you learn to swim, speak a language, or programming? By doing it. And the good thing is that you already have everything you need to learn to write: you can write (i.e. draw letter-shapes), you have read stories (so you know how they work). Now all you need to do is practice. And practice, in writing, is writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how long it will take, there are different opinions on the web. The answer most commonly believed correct is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;10,000 hours&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/15904/5645&quot;&gt;about twenty years&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you better sit down and start writing now, instead of wasting your time on a reading list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-10-04T07:20:49.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24702" CreationDate="2016-10-05T00:39:14.873" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;I would have thought so as well, but the demand for movie tickets are much greater than audiobooks. So movie tickets should be even more expensive than audio books.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is incorrect.  Higher demand generally leads to a &lt;em&gt;lower&lt;/em&gt; price, not a higher one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, a movie ticket is a one-off - you can't re-use it.  Whereas, once you own an audio book you're unlikely to re-buy that book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you have to hire a voice artist or actor to read your book.  It has to be published, DRM, etc., etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's every reason for an audio book to be priced the same as the print version, and no reason at all for it to be cheaper than a movie ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21577" LastActivityDate="2016-10-05T00:39:14.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24850" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-05T02:15:16.213" Score="1" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a job that involves writing and pays well. What should I look for? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21753" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-12-07T03:16:03.147" LastActivityDate="2017-12-07T03:16:03.147" Title="What jobs or professions involve writing?" Tags="|jobs|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24851" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-05T04:22:46.403" Score="3" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the usual typographical conventions to set off text from the UI in a user manual?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, how should I style the text of the label on a button in:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Press the &lt;em&gt;Submit&lt;/em&gt; button.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or styling the text of labels and input values:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Select &lt;em&gt;Gluten Free&lt;/em&gt; from the dropdown menu. The enter &lt;em&gt;I also don't eat soy.&lt;/em&gt; in the &lt;em&gt;Notes&lt;/em&gt; box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21755" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-01-28T23:36:52.093" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T23:00:26.980" Title="Typographical styling of UI text in document" Tags="|technical-writing|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24702" CreationDate="2016-10-05T14:20:29.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;They aren't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUYING an audio book is similar in price to BUYING a movie, be it DVD or digital copy. Going to the movies is just RENTING the movie. You can rent audiobooks such that the price for each audiobook would be less than a movie ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus audio books are longer than movies, more equivalent to a TV season. Pricing for renting/owing a season of TV is similar to pricing for the longer audiobooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19367" LastActivityDate="2016-10-05T14:20:29.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24850" CreationDate="2016-10-05T17:40:01.257" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no jobs that pay well for which the only requirement is writing. This is a simple matter of supply and demand. There are lots of people who can write well enough for commercial purpose. The price for that skill alone is rock bottom. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And indeed, the ability to write is not of much use by itself. Useful writing is writing about something. To be useful, you not only need to be able to write, you need to know something to write about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every writing job that pays anything, therefore, requires both writing ability and something else. It is the something else, the X factor, which determines how well the job pays. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may say, &quot;but I can research any subject&quot;. But that does not cut it in the job market. Generic research skills (I can Google stuff) are even more common than writing skills. Researching complex subjects from scratch takes time, which runs up the costs and, more importantly, delays the writing project. For some subjects, gaining enough knowledge to intelligently research and write about a new topic in a timely manner can take years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The X factor is what you know about the subject area you are going to write about, and, of course, how many other people there are with similar levels of knowledge who can also write. Thus technical, medical, and scientific writing can pay very well because the X factor is huge for them. (Though tech writing pays a lot less than it used to these days are more people have those technical skills now.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-10-05T19:40:50.647" LastActivityDate="2016-10-05T19:40:50.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24829" CreationDate="2016-10-05T17:56:39.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are famous, well-respected writers whose characters all sound alike, so if the rest of the writing is strong enough, it might not even be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to fix it, the only real solution is this:  You can only do well at writing what you love, so if you want to improve your dialog, you have to learn to love the different ways real people speak.  If it's not something you pay attention to on a daily basis, it will never be reflected in your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-10-05T17:56:39.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24850" CreationDate="2016-10-05T19:26:06.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are few jobs that require &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; writing skills. Most jobs will want &lt;em&gt;effective&lt;/em&gt; writing for some &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; purpose, which requires specialization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journalism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Translation. (Including academic, technical, or medical translation.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Copywriting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publishing and publishing services.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within each of these fields, there will be different approaches and frameworks; you might be able to freelance or seek a permanent position; you'll find particular areas of expertise and specialization; different positions will carry different nuances and different responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've got some training and/or experience in your particular field, you'll get a much better sense of what your options are. Even simply choosing your focus will help you figure out what to ask, and find the most relevant people to speak to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-10-05T19:26:06.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24828" CreationDate="2016-10-06T12:28:38.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Falling in love has the quality that you are often not fully conscious of it while it is happening. The moment where you articulate to yourself that you are in love with someone can often come as a surprise to you. (It is a common enough trope in movies and books that the best friend has to explain to the protagonist that what they are feeling is love.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all fits in well enough with your plan. But it becomes much more difficult when you write in the first person stream of consciousness style because first person narrative consists of the protagonist articulating their thoughts to the reader. How do you show the reader the signs of an emotions the hero has not yet articulated when you are recording the articulated thoughts of the hero?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing to a style in which the first person narrator reports their actions rather than their thoughts, or to a third person narrator, would give you more room to establish the telltale signs of falling in love. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think there is a second problem that you need to address. Contract killers are generally sociopaths (in literature and in life) and sociopaths don't fall in love. If you establish your character as a sociopath, then the revelation that they have fallen in love undermines that characterization. That transition will feel sudden because you have essentially thrown out the old character and replaced it with a new. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard literary approach to the killer-turned-lover story, therefore, is to establish through the story why someone who is not a sociopath has become a killer. (Generally this involves brainwashing by some secret organization who exploits some childhood trauma to dehumanize their assassin in training.) The story then becomes a redemption story in which this conditioning is overcome, enabling the killer to fall in love like a normal human being. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, in order to portray a convincing transformation from killer to lover, you first need to establish how they went from lover to killer. Maybe you can do that in a stream of consciousness narration, but if not, I would suggest trying a different narrative technique to see if it works better for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-10-06T13:59:04.803" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T13:59:04.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24819" CreationDate="2016-10-06T13:54:36.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like many things in writing, it can be good if done well and bad if done poorly or overdone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wrote a story that was filled with onomatopoeic words, it would surely quickly become tedious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bob cried &quot;Ola!&quot; to me as my car clunked down the bump-bump street while my dog made grr-ing noises in the back seat ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worse if they're made up words rather than established ones. Like you'd get away with referring to the cat's meow and the machine's banging noises more than the cat's mmm-preee and the machine's brang-a-lang.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Picking one combination of letters to represent a moan or screen and re-using it throughout a scene seems pretty safe to me. I don't most readers would notice a problem. Well, there could be a problem if you go on and on about the character moaning and screaming and the scene gets too drawn out, but that's a different issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T13:54:36.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24860" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-06T00:10:58.507" Score="4" ViewCount="688" Body="&lt;p&gt;My comic novel has a scene in which the hero is battling a monster. And at a moment of tension, where he's losing badly, there's a scene break in which the narrator goes into a brief digression. After the break, we return to the battle, where more stuff happens and the hero wins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My readers don't like the digression. They say it &quot;takes them out of the story&quot;. I must be doing it wrong, because I'm sure I've seen books do this well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can a digression in the middle of a tense battle be done well?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to have a brief break in the written action scene that comes off more like a cliffhanger and less of an interruption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21769" OwnerDisplayName="Shawn V. Wilson" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-10-17T13:59:52.440" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T16:12:45.397" Title="A written action scene, interrupted?" Tags="|novel|technique|scene|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24809" CreationDate="2016-10-06T14:08:48.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One device sometimes used is to use hyphens or underscores or X's instead of the last couple of digits of the year. Like instead of writing, &quot;May 1, 2016&quot; write &quot;May 1, 20--&quot;, &quot;May 1, 20__&quot;, or &quot;May 1, 20XX&quot;. This might conceivably confuse a reader into thinking that they are supposed to put dashes or whatever instead of the full year, but I think most readers would get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhat like Monica Cellio's answer, I've sometimes used dates of well-known events in cases like this. Like &quot;December 7, 1941&quot; or &quot;July 4, 1776&quot;. (Significant dates in the US. If you're from another country, use well-known dates from your history.) I have sometimes worried, though, that using such far-past dates will be distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to just not worry about it. I've often read manuals and books that have a sample form or letter or whatever with a date that is a few years past, and I generally think nothing of it. If it's far enough past, I may notice and wonder when the book was written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose a lot depends on whether the reader expects the manual to be &quot;up to date&quot;. If I was reading a book about, say, how to grow tomatoes in your back yard, that probably hasn't changed much over time, so if I realized the book was 30 years old I'd be likely to shrug it off. If I was reading a book about tax law, that changes all the time and I'd be concerned that an old book might be out of date. And of course something about computers or cell phones could be out of date within a couple of years. My point being, if readers realize that the manual was written 5 years ago, will they care? If you're talking about a company procedures manual or something like that, I presume your readers will assume that if the manual was not up to date, the company wouldn't still be using it, so this is probably a non-issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T14:08:48.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24788" CreationDate="2016-10-06T14:26:32.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I'd say that clear references to another work of fiction are a bad idea. It makes it sound like you're writing fan fiction rather than an original work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can refer to particularly well-known works of fiction AS FICTION. Like if in your mystery novel the detective says, &quot;Hey, I'm no Sherlock Holmes&quot;, well, that's the sort of literary reference that a real person might make. But if in your story of 21st century soldiers fighting terrorists you say that the terrorists attacked Narnia, that's just going to be very disconcerting to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you keep such references within the genre, like if in your fantasy novel you mention a character having come from Narnia, it's likely to be distracting. As a reader, I'd immediately be thinking, &quot;Wait, is this story supposed to be tied to the Narnia stories?&quot; And frankly, I always start out with a bad opinion of someone who tries to piggyback on another writer's success. Just because JK Rowling wrote some very good books about magic at a place called Hogwarts doesn't mean that setting your book at a place called Hogwarts will make it any good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with almost any rule of writing, you can break the rules if you do it well. But you should really avoid gimmicks. If you're thinking, &quot;I'll use this other writer's place name because then readers will remember that other book and I can get all the associations that go with the place for free&quot; ... no, you won't. You're just being lazy and I think most readers will know it and look down on you for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T14:26:32.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24860" CreationDate="2016-10-06T14:41:57.317" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this very much depends on the narrative tone and style that have been used up to this point. If this is the first time you have done such a digression in what has otherwise been a straightforward narrative, the result is likely to do exactly what you reader says: take them out of the story. To fix this problem, you will need to introduce this narrative device earlier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is the question of where the dramatic tension comes from in the story. Sometimes (in the simplest form of fiction) the dramatic tension comes from the physical action. If that is the case, interrupting the physical action breaks the dramatic tension. (It does not, as you might think, increase it by creating a cliffhanger and making the audience wait. There is a reason people PVR shows and fast-forward past the commercials.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cliffhanger that is not associated with an enforced hiatus (commercials, season break) is only an effective dramatic device is something else, other than the resolution of the immediate action, hangs in the balance. This gives the narrative somewhere else to go and something else to do while outcome of the previous action hangs in the balance. This builds dramatic tension rather than breaking it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the dramatic tension in your story comes from something other than the physical action (as it does in more sophisticated stories) then the digression can pull the reader into the story rather than taking them out of it, but only if it increases the dramatic (or, in your case, comic) tension of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you need to figure out where the arc of dramatic (or comic) tension in you story lies and how your proposed digression fits that arc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T14:41:57.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24864" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-06T14:52:40.877" Score="6" ViewCount="3388" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fantasy worlds are usually set in a separate world, time, and space from our own. Many are set in an alternate world and dimension. They feature medieval-like setting and technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet some fantasy stories are set in our world. Imagine that an apocalyptic catastrophe changes our world into the medieval-like fantasy setting. Is this solution valid? Does it make sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-10-06T17:56:11.110" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T07:08:20.393" Title="Does it make sense to set a sword &amp; sorcery fantasy in a post-apocalyptic world on Earth?" Tags="|fantasy|setting|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24864" CreationDate="2016-10-06T15:01:07.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fantasy genre can apply to a large range of settings. So yes, and I think you already answered your question, a post-apocalyptic setting can fit, as long as you make it believable to your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think that your question would be more appropriate for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Worldbuilding&lt;/a&gt; stack exchange&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit : And although your setting may be post-apocalyptic it doesn't mean that it should be the main focus of your story. You can make it a seemingly regular fantasy world but drop some faint hints that it is a post-ap world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19595" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:23.590" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T15:10:16.673" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24864" CreationDate="2016-10-06T15:20:46.353" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can set a story anywhere. The challenge is not to make it consistent with our world but to make it self-consistent within itself. And I think this is a universal literary problem (and therefore I don't think this question belongs on worldbuilding). All stories take place in what Tolkien called a sub-created universe. Even the most gritty realism is a fabrication that takes places in a simpler, neater, less random universe than our own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the kinds of random chance and coincidence that happen in real life all the time do not work in stories. Readers feel that these things are cheats, that they violate story rules. Story worlds, even without magic, obey their own rules of causality and probability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you can construct a world such as you describe. You simply need to make it a self-consistent story world. It needs to have its rules, they need to be consistent with each other, they have to accord with the general rules of story worlds, and you have to stick to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But these are rules about shape, not about content. The reason that you see so many fantasy stories set in pseudo-medieval worlds is that it is easier for authors to borrow these existing tropes than do the work to create something new, and readers have less work to do as well, because the rules of these worlds are already well known to them. Establishing a new trope is much harder work, but it is not restricted in any way by the rules of existing tropes. It is restricted only by the rules of story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T15:20:46.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24860" CreationDate="2016-10-06T18:20:18.653" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like what you want is a narrative structure similar to the recent &lt;em&gt;Deadpool&lt;/em&gt; film, where the main character frequently breaks the fourth wall, has voiceover narration of ongoing events, flashes backwards and forwards in linear time, and generally metas all over the place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you establish this kind of Moebius strip narrative from the beginning, your readers may be more accepting of it happening in the middle of the big boss takedown. But if you do it for the first time at a crucial moment, then no matter how funny the rest of the novel is, you're breaking the suspension of disbelief. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do it early and often, and teach your reader that at any point you might interrupt the action with narration, flashback, poetry, or random jokes. Whether the particular fight works will then require fine-tuning, but the effect should be less jarring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T18:20:18.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24868" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-06T21:43:30.003" Score="2" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to write a book and publish it on my brothers life. He is a homebound person since age 17 and now is age 58 and suffers from a variety of mental and physical conditions like severe panic attacks, severe depression and many other painful symptoms. He is a farmer, owns 100 acres of black muck and lives off his crops but is very poor. I struggled for years getting medical help to come to the home from dentist to doctors of all types and therapists. One doctor told me to write his story but he has since died and no one every cured him. His whole life is rather depressing and not fun as there is no happy ending here only that he is alive but not well and not sure how long he will live without using today's methods of medicine. Is this book worth writing? Would anyone read such a story of struggles after struggles? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21778" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T22:25:42.323" Title="I want to write a book about my brothers life" Tags="|non-fiction|book|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24868" CreationDate="2016-10-06T22:25:42.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Yes.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at literary fiction, there is an abundance of hard lives and unhappy endings portrayed there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you do not have to make it a depressing book. You can focus on the strength of your brother that keeps him going and persevering despite his difficult fate. Or you can use your brother's story to reflect on the grace of God. Or you can write a parallel account of another life and find meaning in the differences. Or a hundred thousand other interesting things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not anyone will want to read your book, will depend on the power of your artistic vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T22:25:42.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24870" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-06T23:53:32.657" Score="3" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story that takes place in the future, sometime around the 2200s, give or take a few decades. The main characters live in San Francisco, in a repair shop that's been built right on top of an existing house. I've already taken a bunch of photo references and even made schematics of the to-be-made structure on top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The address is very important to the story; being heavily dependent on the part of SF it's located in, the proximity to the fire station, and the name of the shop sharing the street's. The protagonists' guardians live in the house below the shop, as well. And given the fact that the shop is on top of the building, I can't use a different one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could relocate the house, as the type of house I'm using is a city standard &quot;cookie-cutter&quot; type of building, found all over the area, or I could just rename the street, but I'd prefer not to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any problems I'd run into by using the real-life address if the building is still standing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21782" LastEditorUserId="21782" LastEditDate="2016-10-06T23:59:43.587" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T08:23:37.743" Title="Are there any problems using the real-life address of a building if the building is still standing?" Tags="|fiction|legal|science-fiction|world-building|setting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24871" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-07T01:10:02.700" Score="2" ViewCount="1182" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nownovel.com/blog/understanding-snowflake-method/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Snowflake Method&lt;/a&gt; to outline a novel. There is software available to assist with this (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/product/snowflake-pro-software/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Snowflake Pro&lt;/a&gt;).  I am having difficulty understanding step three.  In step three, the writer does a one-page summary sheet for each main character that reviews that character’s major goals, conflict, motivation and epiphany and summarises the story from the point of view of that character. This exercise can be helpful for the writer who struggles with fleshing out characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the Snowflake Pro page, there are two sections labeled &quot;Seeing the Big Picture&quot; and &quot;Understanding Your Characters&quot;.  In the first section (step 2), Scarlett O'Hara is the main character, and also appears as a character in the second section (step 3).  Yet, the one sentence and one paragraph summaries are different. Why is that?  Is it because the first section is about the whole novel plot, and the second section is just about Scarlett's character arc, based upon her ambition, story goal, conflict, and epiphany?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, why isn't there a place to include Scarlett's values in the section three screen?  The book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00LWBZ696&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How To Write A Novel Using The Snowflake Method&lt;/a&gt;&quot; talks about listing some values before stating a character's ambition.  However, there is not a field for values in the step three screen in Snowflake Pro.  Where should I put the values, if necessary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9885" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-19T06:17:50.103" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T06:17:50.103" Title="How do I use step three of the Snowflake method (character summary)?" Tags="|characters|software|outline|snowflake|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24873" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-08T16:00:04.727" Score="1" ViewCount="10956" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a legal document, what is the proper way to replace and/or in a list with more than two terms to remove ambiguity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I just have two terms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;deliver apples and/or oranges&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;could be replaced with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;deliver apples, oranges or both&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so the valid results are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[ &quot;apples&quot;, &quot;oranges&quot;, &quot;apples and oranges&quot;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I would like to do the same for the following sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;deliver apples, oranges and/or pears&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the valid results are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[ &quot;apples&quot;, &quot;oranges&quot;, &quot;pears&quot;, &quot;apples and oranges&quot;, &quot;apples and pears&quot;, &quot;oranges and pears&quot;, &quot;apples, oranges and pears&quot; ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21794" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-10-08T19:54:47.097" LastActivityDate="2020-04-29T13:12:31.140" Title="How to replace &quot;and/or&quot; in sentences with multiple terms?" Tags="|technical-writing|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24873" CreationDate="2016-10-08T16:22:14.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a purely stylistic point of view: &quot;any combination of: apples, oranges, pears&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you say this is for a legal document and lawyers may construe ambiguity where ordinary reasonable people would not, so if your question is a &quot;will it hold up in court&quot; kind of question, this is the wrong place to ask. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-08T16:22:14.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24877" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24878" CreationDate="2016-10-08T19:48:19.933" Score="5" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, so every 5 minutes I see a question uploaded to this site about writing software. What is writing software? Why don't you just plan on paper? I find it much easier to write out all of my muddled ideas in a big mind map than some ultimate sophisticated state-of-the-art godmode character organiser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything can be done on paper. And I think its easier on paper too. Characters can be mapped out nicely, and you can draw big pictures of them to accompany the description. Also, why use computer world-map software when you could stick together 9 sheets of A3? :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, whats the obsession with 'writing software'? How is it useful over paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T10:47:11.397" Title="What is useful about writing software?" Tags="|creative-writing|software|planning|paper|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24877" CreationDate="2016-10-08T20:37:22.940" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the definition of &quot;your mileage may vary.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people work better on paper; you are clearly one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was blocked for &lt;em&gt;years&lt;/em&gt; until I found Scrivener, which for whatever reason helped get all my creative juices flowing again. Scrivener clicked with me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people work better with absolutely bare environments. Some want all the bells and whistles. Some want LaTeX markup. Some people find mind-map software really useful and others find it overwhelming. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing software is only useful if you find it so. Different writers have different needs, so they will use different tools. Asking other people doing the same thing as you what they find useful is perfectly reasonable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA&lt;/strong&gt; To address @what's comment: Writing software can come with a lot of features which writers may find more useful and flexible than writing on paper. To wit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let's just start with &lt;em&gt;typing.&lt;/em&gt; I can type a helluva lot faster and&#xA;more neatly than I can hand-write anything.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extensive search/replace capabilities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tagging&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy rearranging of large chunks of text&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy copy-paste of large chunks of text&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to copy and save infinite variations of a page, scene,&#xA;chapter etc. if you need to noodle on something&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to gather various media (web links, video, sound, images)&#xA;in one project file rather than have them scattered in several&#xA;programs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to keep extensive research materials in one project file&#xA;rather than have them scattered across files and programs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mind-map features let you link and combine different elements in&#xA;different ways to see how characters and plot bits interconnect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to plot in a large flexible grid and move items and&#xA;threads around easily instead of physically erasing and rewriting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-10-18T09:48:56.297" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T09:48:56.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24870" CreationDate="2016-10-10T03:51:39.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, definitely we can not use real time addresses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are 2 issues we need to consider: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the address is existing, the people who are staying there may be trouble because of your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Its leads to wrong interpretation to the story, if readers know the address previously.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people like me will go and search for the address you have mentioned. If your story tells it wrong you will get bad reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21736" LastEditorUserId="21768" LastEditDate="2016-10-10T08:23:37.743" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T08:23:37.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24870" CreationDate="2016-10-10T04:32:30.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it a Residential property?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's an actual residential property - i.e. someone lives there. Then, no. Not only is it bad form, but you can get into a lot of trouble - not to mention the possibility of your work going viral and nutters starting to stalk the address - something the residents might be somewhat opposed to - especially without the prior permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it a well-known landmark/icon?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would include things like University campuses, famous and iconic buildings (such as The Globe Theatre, Edinburgh Castle, Langley etc), this is generally fine. It's an easily recognizable setting and allows your readers to better connect - however, you do need to ensure that you get the details right otherwise you will be found out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it a commercial property&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be touch and go. While there should be no problems setting the story at a location, you should be careful to not make sure that a particular business is implicated (for good or for ill). An example of this could be setting a fake company at a commercial office block, or have wreckers yard be set at the right location, but make sure it's clear that it is a fictional business.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, all this should be done with the disclaimer that you are using real-life locations for a fictional story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastEditorDisplayName="user18397" LastEditDate="2016-10-10T05:15:02.527" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T05:15:02.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24884" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24885" CreationDate="2016-10-10T00:50:09.037" Score="2" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is regarding he numbering of Figures across an entire textbook.  If a textbook contains chapters and each chapter contains sections, should I reset the counts in each section?  Or should I reset the count at each chapter? Or should I just use one continuous count over the entire textbook?  I believe I've seen all three in different textbooks. Is there a preferred method for authoring?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see how listing all of the Figures in an index would look nicer if I used a continuous count over the entire chapter or an entire textbook.  In the former case, Figure 2.37 would represent the 37th figure in chapter 2. In the latter case, Figure 247 would represent the 247th figure in textbook.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it would be easier to reference the Figure if I also narrowed it down the particular section.  Then the student would know where the Figure is located.  That is Figure 4.5.4 to represent the 4th figure in Chapter 4 Section 5.  It's numbering is going to look ugly but the flip side is that the figures are easily referenced to a section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question could also be applied to the numbering of Tables, Theorems, Lemmas, and Definitions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21805" OwnerDisplayName="Michael McCain" LastEditorUserId="21805" LastEditDate="2016-10-10T17:17:58.543" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T15:59:25.993" Title="Numbering of Figures in a Calculus textbook" Tags="|style|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24884" CreationDate="2016-10-10T11:52:57.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I like it if the numbers allow me to locate something in the book. For example, if you number all your illustrations in chapter 5 as Figure 5.1, Figure 5.2, etc., I know where I will have to look for figure 17.8, if I find it or a reference to it out of context (e.g. on the internet). I don't know why, but I often find myself leafing back and forth in a book, trying to find certain tables or figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I never have problems locating chapters or sections. I just look in the contents, read the page number, and go there. So what kind of numbers your chapters, sections and so forth have, is irrelevant to me. Some books don't have numbers, and they work fine for me, too. I would probably look at a couple of other books of the same type and see how they do it, and then adhere to reader expectation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-10-10T16:58:32.147" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T16:58:32.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24886" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-10T19:20:27.327" Score="10" ViewCount="2087" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a fantasy novel and there are many elements that will need explaining, such as precious items, cities, creatures, and certain terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A glossary won't suffice and I'm stuck as to what this &quot;section&quot; should be called and where it should be placed. I'm thinking it should be placed in  the back matter as people may read it first if it is included in the front matter, thus eliminating any &quot;surprise&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is it called and where is the best place for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of this would be in the &quot;Miss Peregrine&quot; novels where there is a section at the beginning of the books which explains who the characters are and also &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; some of them are (see &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thepeculiarchildren.wikia.com/wiki/Ymbryne&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ymbryne&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people feel that such a feature within a book would detract from the story, but I am of the view that such information could be helpful if there are so many elements that it would require the reader to remember a lot of extra information.  Also, characters explaining things is all well and good, but as my story contains a lot of unique, world-specific elements, it would mean that a significant portion of my book would be taken up by characters explaining things; however, there will of course be explanations by characters about the key elements within the story - the appendix/addendum would be for reference, briefly reiterating what each specific thing is and/or what it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-06-25T15:18:10.147" LastActivityDate="2019-06-25T15:18:10.147" Title="Section of a book that explains things" Tags="|novel|structure|appendix|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24886" CreationDate="2016-10-10T19:39:48.457" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are telling a story, not writing a manual. Everything goes in the story. The order in which it occurs in the story is the order in which it matters to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to introduce background material into a story. You can tell the reader yourself as narrator, or you can have one character tell another character. Both approaches are entirely legitimate, but they presume a different narrative style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to do have one character tell another, you need to do something to make it convincing that the characters are actually having this conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be bogus, as in every episode of every CSI show ever, in which one CSI explains the experiment to another CSI (who presumably would know all about it) as a means to tell it to the viewer. This is utterly bogus but is somehow made acceptable to the audience as part of the overall stylized nature of the show. Nothing is authentic about these shows, but they sell their conventions so relentlessly, and with so much glamour, that you half-willingly accept them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also do something like the Council of Elrond in which you contrive a reason for people of different backgrounds to be in one place to make an important decision and have each of them in turn explain part of the background to the others. The thing to note about this is that such explanations have to be in character -- the thing that this character would say at this moment to serve their personal agenda -- or they are not convincing and sound like an infodump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T19:39:48.457" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24886" CreationDate="2016-10-10T19:46:37.073" Score="8" Body="&lt;h1&gt;This is called your setting&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting is a very real part of any book, and especially of fantasy novels, as they take place in an unfamiliar setting, and therefore require more explanation. Setting is more than merely the backdrop for the story though. Through its rules, you can create circumstances you normally couldn't (ie, magic and the like), often driving the plot forwards. Its most powerful use though, is creating mood. If you're writing a cheery novel, you probably won't set it during a dreary rainy day. Likewise, if you are writing a horror tale, odds are it doesn't take place in a summer valley at high noon. Those are of course basic examples; you can use setting to convey mood in a much more detailed manner, as well as use it to show parts of your characters. However, that was not your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to setting in novels, there is one very simple rule: &lt;strong&gt;Do not infodump&lt;/strong&gt;. Infodumping is when an author, having a surplus of information which might or might not be relevant to the actual story, decides to dump it all in one place. The reader is correspondingly overwhelmed, and usually driven away by the lack of story. &lt;em&gt;Remember, the reader is reading for the story, not the setting. Stop the story and you lose the reader.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where do you put your setting? Everywhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show your setting through your characters. Don't focus on it. Have your characters interact with it naturally, in a normal fashion. Let the reader draw his own picture of what they are seeing, touching, smelling, or hearing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show your setting through the emotions. If your characters feel a certain way, have that reflected in the setting. Once again, don't focus on it during the description, merely mention the clouds, the sun, the grass, the man-eating trees - whatever there is - as you go along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show your setting through the plot of the story. Maybe that man-eating tree is a major plot device. Are the social habits of the orcs a main part of the plot that has to be described? Are you sure? Really? Okay then, have one of your characters discover them as the plot goes. You say all of your character know the social habits of orcs? Create one that doesn't. If it comes to it, have him ask questions that the others answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see the common thread here. Show your setting through your story as your characters come across it. Don't force the description. Let it flow naturally. Never focus on it, unless it is actually a part of the plot. And if it is, check again. Ask yourself if the reader &lt;em&gt;really truly&lt;/em&gt; needs to know this about your world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That will be the hardest part: realizing that a lot of your setting won't be in the novel because the reader simply doesn't need it. As @what said recently on a different question, you can take that extra setting and put it on your site. By all means include it in an appendix (keep it in the back, otherwise the reader might start with it and become bored). Include a glossary, especially if there is a complex net of characters and places to remember. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic rule is this: &lt;strong&gt;Don't tell your setting. Show it through your story and your characters naturally.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-10-10T19:52:15.797" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T19:52:15.797" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24889" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-10T20:08:30.167" Score="1" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some specific sci-fi themes I could use to structure my story?&#xA;I have some parts about a sci-fi story here and there written down but I can't put them in the bigger picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I know for sure, is a diagalactic war to be included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have thought, maybe from conflicting colonies that want independence..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there some existing themes I could use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want a bigger theme so I can insert my specifics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10408" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2016-10-11T06:39:26.053" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T15:50:30.473" Title="Various sci-fi themes" Tags="|science-fiction|theme|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-10-13T17:51:40.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24886" CreationDate="2016-10-10T21:06:59.440" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the word you are looking for is &quot;appendix&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;supplementary material at the end of a book, article, document, or other text, usually of an explanatory, statistical, or bibliographic nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dictionary.com/browse/appendix&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the definition implies, it is best to be placed at the end of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; Thanks @Lew for another good term, &quot;addendum&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;something that is added; especially : a section of a book that is added to the main or original text&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/addendum&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main difference between the two is that an appendix holds additional useful information, whereas an addendum generally adds new material &lt;strong&gt;after&lt;/strong&gt; the first printing of the book. I would expect most people would understand what you meant if you used either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21816" LastEditorUserId="21816" LastEditDate="2016-10-11T13:18:41.243" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T13:18:41.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24886" CreationDate="2016-10-10T21:20:01.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you need to do this, you should create an in-universe book within your book.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People have mentioned Tolkien: I've seen copies of his books with beautifiul maps at the beginning or end (always in a fake olde-worlde style to give the idea that they are genuine Middle Earth artefacts.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Douglas Adams's real book The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy isn't a guide to the galaxy; it is a novel. But it contains excerpts from an in-universe book called The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is an actual guide to the galaxy as its name suggests. This serves to explain some of the weird concepts Adams comes up with, which are at least as entertaining as the main plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(novel)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(novel)&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(fictional)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(fictional)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have created your in-universe reference work, you can present it either as a separate volume at the end of your novel (like the Tolkien map) or insert  excerpts into the text (As in Douglas Adams' Hitchiker series.) This could possibly be done in a different font. I remember one book I read had standard narrative interspersed with Police reports, the latter being in a very typewriter-ish font.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third possibility, as used in Moby Dick, is to have your story told in the first person, and dedicate entire chapters to the narrator describing in his own words aspects of his world, as a break from telling the main story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21817" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T21:20:01.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24892" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-10T21:36:29.217" Score="8" ViewCount="1199" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tokein. Jane Austen. Steinbeck. The greats of the past. I often come across people on this site and elsewhere who use the works of these great authors and others as examples and reservoirs of advice. These are the classics. These are novels that worked beyond a shadow of a doubt. Clearly, they did it right, and therefore are examples to be studied and copied. Right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key phrase is &amp;quot;the greats &lt;em&gt;of the past&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot; Not the present. The past. I don't doubt for a second that they are great authors, well worth studying and learning from. However, I believe that times change. As times change, readers will change also. This is just how the world works. If this is the case, we must ask ourselves: have the best writing practices changed with them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What worked fifty years ago might not work today. Certainly a lot of it does, but some parts might have changed. For me, this is specifically the attention span of readers (I'm sure there are more areas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fifty years ago, novels were a major form of entertainment. When someone sat down to read, they read. Period. Today novels have been overshadowed by TV and videogames. When someone sits down to read now, they are easily distracted (aka, by their cell phone for example). Those that grew up with videogames might find it hard to sit still for long periods of time and simply read (disclaimer: my opinion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is that fifty years ago, authors could afford to take their time. They could let the story develop at its own pace. They didn't have to introduce main characters right away. They could afford to explain the setting in detail. You can't do that today, unless you're &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; good at creating tension in everything. Today you need to get the reader involved from page one. Grab the reader in one hand, a bottle of glue in the other, and make sure he doesn't leave his seat until the novel is finished. A chapter dedicated to describing a house is a deadly invitation for the reader to fall asleep, or put the book down altogether. Below I have some further examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here's my question to you: Will what worked 'back then' necessarily work today? By that I mean, &amp;quot;do we blindly follow the classics step for step, assuming that everything they did was right and always will be; or do we assume that times and readers will change, and with them, the best way to write a novel?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this is primarily opinion based, so if possible, include research referencing the opinions of respected individuals in the fields of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: This question is speaking of literature and full-scale novels intended to be bestsellers. It is not about &amp;quot;pulp&amp;quot; or low-quality quick reads.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tolkein.&lt;/strong&gt; Tolkein is famous for writing &lt;em&gt;the Lord of the Rings.&lt;/em&gt; It is considered the definitive base for nearly every traditional fantasy out there. Let's take a look at how it starts, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prologue opens with &lt;em&gt;Concerning Hobbits&lt;/em&gt;, and continues for 12 pages, finishing with &lt;em&gt;Concerning Pipeweed&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;The Ordering of the Shire&lt;/em&gt;. This is nearly all backstory and setting, with a few mentions of Bilbo. Things then start to sound like a story (though still backstory) with &lt;em&gt;The Finding of the Ring&lt;/em&gt;, which continues for six pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an author on this site were to suggest starting a book with 12 pages of setting description, and another six of backstory, I believe most people would tell him not to do so (I could be wrong, but that has been my experience). They would almost certainly tell him to have a side character relate the backstory, and let the characters explore the setting. (I have seen this happen &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24880/10394&quot;&gt;before&lt;/a&gt;, which is what I am basing this statement off of. There are other examples.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to look at one other example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jane Austen.&lt;/strong&gt; I consider Jane Austen one of the best authors to live, and certainly one of the most witty. I will admit I have only read &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice&lt;/em&gt;, and cannot speak for her other works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice&lt;/em&gt;, the protagonist (Elizabeth) is not introduced until chapter two. Even then, she only says a few lines and we have nothing to base her character on, until the middle of chapter three. Even then, it is difficult for a new reader to tell who the protagonist is. In fact, for one unfamiliar with the book, Mr. Bennet himself seems like the most likely candidate in chapter one. It takes a while for us to get a good sense of what kind of person Elizabeth is. This clearly worked for Jane Austen in 1813. I don't believe it would work quite so well two hundred years later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, it is common practice to introduce your protagonist swiftly. Get the reader on his side, and he becomes invested in the novel. Without that investment, without that engaging character, the reader has very little incentive to keep reading (unless you are a master of suspenseful plots).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The examples above are my own opinion, and might not be the opinion of others. They serve only to illustrate what I am talking about.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T18:12:49.177" Title="Will what worked 'back then' work today? (Novels)" Tags="|style|creative-writing|readers|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24892" CreationDate="2016-10-10T23:23:24.473" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The vast majority of the fiction produced in any age is of the type that would generally be called pulp or potboiler. It is simple non-challenging stuff meant to occupy a vacant hour for an reader who is a mood for something light and frothy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally pulp does not have much of a shelf life, though there are occasionally works that were written as pulp which survive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there is literature. It is more challenging. It demands more of the reader and provides far greater rewards. It is much harder to write. You can do things in literature that you would not attempt in pulp, because they tax the attention of an inattentive reader. Some literature is much more accessible than other, even after the passage of time. A great writer can make lucid and engaging the kinds of passages that would be utterly tedious in the hands of any lesser author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, different things work in pulp than work in literature. Publishing houses and agents looking for pulp want different things than those looking for literature. But if a question on this site does not specify whether the writer is setting out to write pulp or literature, then we should not cite the rule of either pulp or literature as if they were universal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, we should notice that there are pulp authors of extraordinary gifts who are capable of transcending the usual confines of pulp style, even if they never ascend to the heights of literature. J. K. Rowling is a great example of this. The Harry Potter series is not literature by any stretch of the imagination, but it is pulp of extraordinary skill and accomplishment, and it does things that the usual rules of pulp say you should not be done, like starting with a several page descriptions of the place the hero comes from. Not only is there no action in the description of Privet Lane, very little of the story takes place there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer the question, no, I don't believe things have changed all that much. The reason they seem to have changed is that all that remains current from the past is its literature. Its pulp has long since faded away. But most of contemporary publishing, like most publishing in the past, is pulp. Comparing the pulp of today with the literature of yesterday is comparing apples and oranges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if writers.stackexchange is about writing and not just about pulp, then answers should talk as much about literature as about pulp, unless the questioner specifies pulp or literature in the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Dividing all of writing into pulp and literature is, of course, a gross oversimplification. But writing is a broad subject and we should not mistake the rules and characteristics of one of its many branches for the whole.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-24T18:12:49.177" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T18:12:49.177" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24886" CreationDate="2016-10-11T04:50:52.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common name for the kind of section you're describing in fiction is a &quot;Codex&quot;. Specifically for monsters you could also use &quot;Bestiary&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21822" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T04:50:52.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24892" CreationDate="2016-10-11T07:01:16.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not see much difference in style between Goethe, Proust, or Hawthorne on the one hand, and whichever book I pick up in the bookstore today. They refer to a different world and use some different words, but if you replace horses with cars and fireplaces with central heating, and disregard the different orthography, the sentences and paragraphs that they use to tell their stories are structured the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been some influx of film and tv on how stories are told, there has been some experimentation with reflecting thought processes (such as stream of consciousness or Palahniuk's novels), but the majority of narrative writing, both fiction and non-fiction, and both popular and literary writing, could have been written by Melville.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most readers prefer stories to be told to them in a coherent way and with the same language they would use to write a letter to their grandmother. Language changes with time, so of course there is some difference in vocabulary, orthography, and grammar, but if you subtract this, writing from the eighteenth century onwards has stylistically remained fundamentally the same. All the &amp;quot;avant-garde&amp;quot; experimentation, such as expressionistic writing, has fallen to disuse. Most people today do not read non-mainstream writing from the past. But they do read Moby Dick – because it is just as accessible today as &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the discussion going on here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;You are confusing &lt;em&gt;technique&lt;/em&gt; with &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course presend day readers are interested in different stuff as back then. The world is different today! What still works, though, is the same &lt;em&gt;narrative style&lt;/em&gt; of (prose) writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T19:40:02.300" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24892" CreationDate="2016-10-11T10:44:30.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the main difference between yesteryear classics and today's &quot;literature,&quot; as you define it distinct from &quot;pulp,&quot; is the attention span of the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are exponentially more inputs clamoring for our attention and less leisure time to spend it on. The instant-gratification nature of broadcast (radio, TV, Internet) has shortened our collective patience. We want satisfaction and we want it &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;. So writers must work harder and deliver a lot of little payoffs to keep an impatient reader entranced and holding on for the final blow at the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say that big overstuffed novels which meander to the end can't sell or aren't enjoyable today, but that these are rarer because the audience for that kind of narrative style is smaller. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're differentiating between &quot;literature&quot; and &quot;pulp,&quot; I might point out that the audience for &quot;literature&quot; is probably the very audience which has more patience, and preference, for the slow buildup and meandering plot. &quot;Pulp&quot; stories skip the beginning fluff and start in medias res because it's more interesting to cut to the good stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a separate note: I think the distinction introduced by @mbakeranalecta of &quot;literature&quot; and &quot;pulp&quot; is a false one. There are good books and crappy books. A good popcorn book is still a good book. A good beach read, airport distraction, or cheerfully trashy romance is still a good book. A crappy book is a book you don't want to finish or don't want to read again, period. Style, intended audience, length, content, even quality are irrelevant. For &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt;, Dan Brown books are tripe, and I won't even pick up the &lt;em&gt;Girl with the Dragon Tattoo etc.&lt;/em&gt; series, but for many people, they're great books and re-read and loved. And many of those readers would loathe the SFF I cherish. So how can you call one &quot;literature&quot; (good, enduring) and one &quot;pulp&quot; (bad, cheap, throwaway) when they don't have the same effect on everyone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-10-11T16:30:38.830" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T16:30:38.830" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24897" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-11T13:44:18.180" Score="2" ViewCount="4091" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been searching for a Runbook / Operations Guide example and can't seem to find a useful one for my company.  The current runbook they handed me contains use cases and requirements, which I know shouldn't be in one; however, I can't find a good example to show to my managers and say, &quot;This is what we should be using.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas where I can find one or any quick and dirty examples someone can give me in an answer here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19772" LastEditorUserId="19772" LastEditDate="2016-10-13T11:40:13.233" LastActivityDate="2017-12-08T21:25:59.950" Title="Runbook template example?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24892" CreationDate="2016-10-11T14:22:54.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With all due respect I cannot resist to point out that this discussion is swiftly drifting away from the question which originated it, and yet I am very glad that the question is not put on hold, for it is a good one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question, however, is not about &quot;real literature&quot; vs. &quot;commercial pulp&quot; or under one of those two categories our beloved Harry Potter falls. The question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will what worked 'back then' work today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and (to me, at least) it is about writing techniques and methods of delivering your story to the reader is a way which would keep the said reader invested in your narrative and keep him engaged in a little game of deciphering those little clusters of characters which make up words, stringing those words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into pages and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And my honest opinion is that &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; all of the writing styles/models/techniques which were used 200 years ago would be equally efficient today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time itself is changing; the very speed of life is different drastically from what it used to be years ago, and it is only going to go faster and faster. The lightsaber fight scenes in the original Star Wars movies (blasphemy alert) look excruciatingly slow today—and it was only decades, not centuries—a significant portion of your audience (a few generations, in fact) grew up watching TV and reading only comic books (which means that their attention span is now pre-conditioned to cut off automatically if the sentence barely fits into a speech bubble)—and it is just impossible to ignore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you are laboring to produce a rival to &quot;One Hundred Years of Solitude&quot; or just another installation of pseudo-historic Brown pulp, the way you present your story to your audience has to reflect the specifics and tempo of modern life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way you do it, however is entirely up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many recipes for writing a &quot;successful&quot; book. If you follow all of them, you will end up with a book, which had been written already, and not once—rules are meant to be broken, if you want originality, but they are meant to be broken responsibly, and that includes taking into account your prospected audience—not only &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; your readers are but also &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. If this site supported signature quotes, mine would be &lt;em&gt;the right question contains half of the answer within&lt;/em&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2016-10-11T17:10:44.987" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T17:10:44.987" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24889" CreationDate="2016-10-11T21:27:04.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sci-fi relies on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;humans vs other -- aliens, viruses, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;good vs evil e.g. Star Wars&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;nature vs capitalist disregared of nature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;black vs white&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;technology is good/bad&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick a theme related to the above. For example, 'Humans will succeed in the face of difficulty.' 'The human race is superior to all others.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T21:27:04.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24900" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-12T04:51:18.193" Score="7" ViewCount="5690" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is my first time in writers, so I apologise if I make a mistake. I've searched for this, but I can't find a concrete and complete answer. Please forgive me if I've somehow missed it and it had already been answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm dealing with right now is interruptions within dialogue and how to punctuate them (with em dashes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Please keep in mind that this is British style, so the dashes will be set off by spaces before and after, except when it comes to quotation marks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, when an action interrupts dialogue, the dashes go inside the quotation marks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl, but —” he took a puff of his cigarette “— she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the action doesn't interrupt dialogue but instead happens simultaneously, the dashes go outside the quotation marks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;She's a lovely girl, but&amp;quot; — he lowered his voice — &amp;quot;she cannot dance for the life of her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, my question is this: how do we treat the /interruption/. Do we capitalise it, punctuate it?&#xA;Should it look like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl, but —” He took a puff of his cigarette. “— she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl, but” — He lowered his voice. — “she cannot dance for the life of her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is each case different? If so, which one should be capitalised and punctuated and which one should remain bare? Is the rule of the dashes correct in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visually and stylistically, I prefer for both of them to be bare, but I don't know if there is a rule. I'd like to follow it if it exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21837" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T17:34:09.357" Title="Dialogue interruptions — using em dashes" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|punctuation|capitalization|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24900" CreationDate="2016-10-12T07:21:38.153" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The em-dash is used when something breaks off. Permanently. Here is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl, but—”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  “Shut up!” Ronnie interrupted him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The em-dash may also be used when there is an interruption in the thought of &lt;em&gt;the same&lt;/em&gt; speaker. Here is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl, but—and you may hate me for saying so—she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The em-dash is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; used when a comment by the narrator is inserted in dialog. The closing and opening quotes are enough. Here is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl,” he said, “but she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you know, the full stop at the end of a sentence is replaced by a comma when the narrator continues the dialog with a comment, as for example here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl,” he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where &lt;code&gt;“She’s a lovely girl.”&lt;/code&gt; becomes &lt;code&gt;“She’s a lovely girl,”&lt;/code&gt;. Narrator inserts are &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; set off with commas, unless the dialog is an exclamation or a question (where the &quot;!&quot; and &quot;?&quot; are kept, e.g. &lt;code&gt;“Is she?” he asked.&lt;/code&gt;). This will be important when we look at your example later, so remember it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The em-dash is also &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; used when a speaker pauses. Use an ellipsis instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl, but…she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you want to insert a comment by the narrator during a pause by the speaker, as in your example, the inserted comment by the narrator is enough to make the reader perceive a pause. In the third example above, the &quot;he said&quot; will be perceived as a small pause by the reader, similar to, or maybe a tiny bit longer than, the one we make between clauses (signified by a comma or full stop). To give the effect of the speaker making a distinct and longer than usual pause, just insert a narrator comment wherever the speaker pauses, make the comment of the narrator long enough to give a clear impression of a pause, and, if you want to be extra sure, &lt;em&gt;say&lt;/em&gt; that the speaker pauses. So either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl,” he took a puff of his cigarette, “but she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl,” he paused and took a puff of his cigarette, “but she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, finally coming to your original example, we can put all of this together. First, a comment by the narrator has the effect of a pause; any other indication of a pause, such as an ellipsis, is unnecessary. Second, the inserted narrator comment is always set off with commas. So the correct way to punctuate your example is either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl, but,” he took a puff of his cigarette, “she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl, but,” he paused and took a puff of his cigarette, “she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add ellipses, but that is not neccessary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl, but…,” he took a puff of his cigarette, “…she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rules of punctuation have two limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One, they only cover the most common cases. The rarer a certain construction is, the less likely it is that there will exist a rule that explains how you must punctuate it. That means that on the edges of common usage you'll have to extrapolate from the rules and punctuate your writing to make as much sense as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two, the rules of punctuation are binding only in schools and offices. In the real world, everyone can write however they like. There is no law to forbid you from using em dashes in whichever way you like, and your grandmother won't go to jail if she puts commas in the wrong places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at contemporary fiction, you can note many styles of punctuation that contradict all rules and style guides. And mostly, in those cases, these deviations from the rules work better than the rules. They convey a meaning that rule-based punctuation does not allow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Russian proverb says: Если нельзя, но очень хочется, то можно. (If you mustn't, but really want to, you may.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-10-13T21:59:55.283" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T21:59:55.283" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24902" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-12T08:24:54.457" Score="7" ViewCount="1702" Body="&lt;p&gt;I, like most writers, have a number of ideas about my current work in progress.  I know how some chapters in the story will play out almost precisely (the ending / final chapter, for example) and how some other key chapters will also play out (in the middle of the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know how common it is - and/or whether or not it is recommended (ideally based on personal experiences) - for writers to write chapters in a non-sequential order and then string them together at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem that I can see with this is linking up the plot if something should happen in the middle that hadn't been accounted for earlier in the story.  However, as I have already mentioned, I have a very good idea how the &lt;strong&gt;main&lt;/strong&gt; chapters will play out - the majority of the remaining chapters are mostly &quot;filler&quot; chapters which &lt;strong&gt;help progress the story but not the plot&lt;/strong&gt; - for example, characters travelling between locations, minor conflicts, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastEditorUserId="5328" LastEditDate="2016-10-12T08:45:54.647" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T09:40:18.287" Title="Chapters - Writing Order" Tags="|structure|chapters|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24902" CreationDate="2016-10-12T08:48:47.360" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that you think about outlining each chapter, I can encourage you that there are writing teachers and writers who hold that a writer should have absolute (rational) control over their writing and not let their urges drive their writing. Writing, for these writers, is a job that they perform in the same way a carpenter builds a kitchen: just as the carpenter has the dimenions of the kitchen and the specifications of his client to follow, the writer (of popular fiction) is writing to the taste and needs of his audience – not his own. (If he is lucky, these overlap.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this perspective of quasi-commissioned, rationally planned writing, it should be perfectly possible to write the different parts in any order suggested by practicality, not chronology or sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can testify that this kind of writing works, at least in non-fiction writing, where it is often the norm. It does need a final sequential rewrite, that is, when you are finished you will need to go over your whole work &lt;em&gt;from beginning to end&lt;/em&gt; to verify that it all works in the intended reading order and polish the edges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never tried this for fiction, but I am positive it can work, if you are the kind of writer who writes in a very planned and controlled fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am convinced that you will find that although you think that you have most of the plot planned out, enough of the narrative will change in the course of the writing, forcing you to rewrite the later parts you already wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dale Hartley Emery mentions the writer Kristine Kathrin Rusch in his answer, and in a comment gives a &lt;a href=&quot;http://kriswrites.com/2015/12/23/business-musings-writing-during-storms-and-holidays/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link to a blog post of hers&lt;/a&gt;, where she describes how it goes for her with writing out of order. Apparently it works, because she has been a successfully published writer for decades now, but if you read her blog post you will find that she suffers just the problems I have described: having to read and rewrite in sequence to fill in missing and cut redundant passages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for that it helps, as Mark Baker has pointed out in his answer, if you do not fall in love with the results of your writing so that it hurts you to delete what suffocates the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as is endlessy repeated on this site, people are different and you need to experiment and find out what works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After telling you that non-sequential writing can be done, I'd like to explain to you why I don't do it (and have never before your question considered the possibility). You are not me, and what you need to do will be different. But maybe this will give you some idea of what to watch out for: getting lost; and not having a hook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I always start with the beginning and let everything follow, usually in reading sequence, from there. There are two reasons why I work that way. One, I am a discovery writer. I usually do have some points on the map that I want to visit (and I mostly manage to get there), but I need the surprise of what I discover on my way there to keep me interested in writing. I am in the process of learning to outline more, but this only means that now I am a discovery outliner, and what was once the rewriting is now becoming the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two, the beginning of a novel is the most important part when it comes to selling it. Readers, if the cover and blurb make them open the book at all, usually look at the first page to decide whether they want to buy the book. I have bought books because of the first sentence alone. Therefore, getting the beginning right is vital for any novel. Maybe others can go back and polish the first chapter after they wrote the whole book, but personally, like the reader, I need the first chapter to set up the vision that will drive me through the writing and interested in finding the end. I think I spend 90% of my writing time on the first few paragraphs. It really is a painful process sometimes, but once I have the outset, I'm in the world and ready to explore. Without this &quot;beginning place&quot;, how could I possibly know what the story is about and where it needs to go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-10-13T09:40:18.287" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T09:40:18.287" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24902" CreationDate="2016-10-12T09:15:59.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For my personnal experience, I do not recommend it at all.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Four years ago there was this story I had in mind and really, really liked and wanted to finish. Although I knew almost exactly what was going to happen from beggining to end, I struggled writing the first chapter - I don't know why, but it always turned out incredibly bad. So I got tired of always writing the same thing over and over again and get something bad in the end, because really, I loved the story and this was disapointing as hell. So I started to write random parts of the story when I felt like it. And yes, doing so I was enjoying writing and got good results; I started to have very satisfying pieces of my story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the thing is, whenever I tried to come back to the first chapter and write a decent version of it, I still struggled. And it still was bad. And I figured out that I could never write this chapter correctly. So I changed my plans, made something different happen and boom - most of what I have already written became irrelevant. Plus, I had to prepare in this first chapter what happened in the later chapters I had already written and had not expected to. And the more did I write - whatever part it was - the more everything became a mess and the less I could link all the parts together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Result : I now have given up on this story and I feel bad, because I still love it but know I could hardly make anything with it now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I'm never writing in random order again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the funny metaphor : if you start by having a pregnant woman who gives birth to a child that slowly grows, in the end you get an adult human being. But if you take all the parts separately from adults and assemble them together, you get Frankenstein's monster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is writing : nothing happens like you expected it too. Details add themselves as the story goes. Characters do things you had not thought of. Things happen and you have to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However though, I suggest that if you want to try it, well who am I to tell you how to write ? Do it and see for yourself - I am just reporting you my personnal experience which was negative, but everyone is different and maybe this is how you would write best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just be sure you won't waste your story by doing so.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am a young amateur writer and english is not my mother language. I'm by no means a professional and don't have that much writing experience - still do I have some I can share. Do what you want with my advices ;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user19124" LastEditorDisplayName="user19124" LastEditDate="2016-10-12T14:52:36.130" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T14:52:36.130" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24900" CreationDate="2016-10-12T10:34:50.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(This construction is a pain in the ass to punctuate, so this is a good question to ask.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When your narration is a full sentence, it must be punctuated like a full sentence. With M-dashes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl, but — ” He lowered his voice. “ — she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl, but — ” He took a puff of his cigarette. “ — she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to use a full sentence of narration and &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; use M-dashes, then treat them as three separate items. Sentence fragments are okay in this structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl.” He took a puff of his cigarette. “But she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl.” He looked around and lowered his voice. “But she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl.” He paused and took a puff of his cigarette. “But she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your narration is a continuation of the opening dialogue, treat it as such:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl,” he said, taking a puff of his cigarette, “but she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl,” he said, and then continued in a lower voice, “but she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or if your narration ends before the second piece of dialogue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl,” he said, and took a puff of his cigarette. “But she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She’s a lovely girl,” he said. He looked around and continued in a lower voice. “But she cannot dance for the life of her.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T10:34:50.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20506" CreationDate="2016-10-12T11:24:03.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic writing is about developing your own thougths and research, so yes, translation would probably be considered plagiarism, since it is not your own work (beside the translation part of course). I studied in Eastern Europe for a while and putting transtaled text without any references was the most popular way of cheating among students, since even &lt;a href=&quot;https://noplag.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Plagiarism Checkers&lt;/a&gt; couldn't recognize it as plagiarism. But yeah, it's definitely wrong, and they could've get into real trouble if cheating was revealed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A math formula might or might be considered &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;common knowledge&lt;/a&gt;, but it's better to use citation just to make sure you won't get in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21842" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T11:24:03.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24902" CreationDate="2016-10-12T13:38:44.393" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may or may not be able to pull this off, but this is the danger you face: You may end up writing scenes that you fall in love with as scenes but which do not fit the arc of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robert McKee describes this as one of the great pitfalls of story, and of revision. The first draft of a script or a novel ends up with a few good scenes and a lot of drek. The writer then throws out the drek, keeps the good scenes, and tries again. They may write a few more good scenes, but what they end up with is a set of scenes that do not follow a coherent story arc. Because they are in love with the good individual scenes they find it very difficult to remove any of them from the story, and therefore are never able to build a coherent story arc. They end up with a collection of miscellaneous scenes and no story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The danger of falling into this trap seems much higher if you write scenes out of order. Someone with a very disciplined vision of their story arc may be able to pull this off, but I think that no matter how much of a planner you are, you discover things in the course of the writing that change the direction of a story by some greater or lesser amount. If you have already written later scenes that you are in love with, the temptation to turn the path of the story to pass through those pre-written scenes will be very strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T13:38:44.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24902" CreationDate="2016-10-12T14:03:50.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While feeling rather bad for @Ctouw, who admitted to struggle with managing out-of-order writing, I have to side with both @LaurenIpsum and @what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you have to try it for yourself, and yes it is practically possible (I have done it, and it worked for me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, being a poster pantser, whose whole outline is literally one sentence, usually write in a strict chronological order--thus trying to ensure a natural progress in the story and character development--but once in a while I become suddenly overwhelmed with such clear and concise (subjectively, of course) vision of an isolated scene, I just have to pen it down in order not to forget it. I do so, and then that scene drifts from chapter to chapter, being pushed farther and farther forward by the &quot;storyline&quot; text, until if finds its place in the narrative and snaps snugly into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I have to re-write parts of those &quot;orphan&quot; scenes--sometimes a little, to coordinate with the events which happened since they were written, sometimes quite a bit--but they find their places in the story and stay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if I were to give advise: do it (or at least try). Every word you nail to the page makes you better at your craft. Write in any order you feel like, just be aware of the fact that you might have to re-write a lot later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which will also make you better at your craft :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T14:03:50.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24889" CreationDate="2016-10-12T15:50:30.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Science fiction is, as a guide futuristic but that doesn't mean you can't use the past to help you with your idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take for example the USA's battle for independence from Great Britain.  It was a colony that fought for freedom.  As many others have as well throughout our history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that idea, do some research into what too place (and why), change the setting to the future with spaceships, colonies on distant worlds, futuristic weapon technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do remember though that your story has to be something your readers can relate to and as a result the setting becomes less important.  If you spend pages detailing the amazing worlds and colonies but your story and characters are dull, no-one is going to be interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T15:50:30.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24902" CreationDate="2016-10-12T17:24:36.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my personal experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stop thinking about how to write--just write.&lt;/strong&gt; If that means you write things out of order, then so be it. Write the parts that are in your head now, now. That way, you're writing instead of worrying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, those are the parts you know about, and they'll teach you about the parts you don't know about. Even if you don't end up including everything you write, it will probably still be useful to you in figuring out what's going on. For instance, I wrote a fight between two people because that was what was in my head. I'm not going to use that scene, but writing it showed me how cruel one of the characters can be, and I'm going to use that information. Everything you write is either worldbuilding, or character development, or both--or neither, in which case it's an alarm that you don't have enough [world|character] in your mind. If so, then you need to step back and work on that, not the first chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14374" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T17:24:36.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24902" CreationDate="2016-10-12T19:28:47.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know a lot of writers who write out of order. But Kristine Kathryn Rusch does, and her writing is awesome wins lots of awards in multiple genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will likely need some skill at gluing the pieces together, whether by writing short transitions or by writing scenes and chapters to bridge the parts you wrote earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you may have to be comfortable tossing out stuff that doesn't fit. (Which is easier if you treat it all as practice.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T19:28:47.947" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24902" CreationDate="2016-10-12T20:55:13.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree completely with MissMonicaE.  I would say so in a comment, but I have no reputation and so forth as this is my first post on a StackExchange site. In fact, I created an account specifically to comment on MissMonicaE's answer, but it turns out that I am forced to post an answer myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My personal experience:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I had a story idea in my head for twenty-five years that I had started to write over a dozen times, and never got past the first chapter.  Every time, I blew my creative load stressing about writing this part so I can write the next part.  Every time, I got frustrated or lost interest, and walked away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What finally worked was to write everything I knew about the story, separated by chapter breaks.  Then I went back and wrote transitions--I don't like the word &quot;filler&quot; because there shouldn't be any; all of the words in your story should contribute to the story or character development.  In some cases, I had to change things I had already written, but I suspect I would have had to do that anyway.  In fact, my &quot;final battle&quot; ultimately became an epic failure and major setback to my characters, requiring more story and a new &quot;final battle&quot;.  The last 30% of my novel was unplanned, and I got two more major characters out of the endeavor, as well as the realization that a minor character wasn't so minor after all.  To me, it's better to have to be creative to connect the parts that I know than it is to try to remember the parts that I know while I'm struggling to find a way to transition between them.  I had great ideas about events and dialogue for later, when my characters were on an island facing off against a group of sirens, but they were still in the desert and I had no idea how they were even going to get to the island yet.  I would have lost a good bit of the cool stuff if I hadn't jumped ahead to write it while I had it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no doubt that if I had tried to write it in order, this last effort would have just been the &lt;em&gt;nth&lt;/em&gt; time I tried to write that novel I always wanted to write.  Doing it this way yielded a complete novel, and about 70% of the next one in the series.  In the second one, I started by writing 12 chapters in the middle, the first chapter, then several chapters in between, a later chapter, and then some more at the beginning.  I've almost got it all connected up, and it's working out fine for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end though, it's what works for you.  Try it and see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21847" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T20:55:13.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24915" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25021" CreationDate="2016-10-12T21:26:05.697" Score="5" ViewCount="662" Body="&lt;p&gt;What would you do if you faced the same dilemma Sir Arthur Conan Doyle faced when he actually wanted to end &quot;Sherlock Holmes&quot; which was at it's peak of popularity with the public? What would you do if you wanted to end your story  in one way but you knew that the public would want a different ending?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For ex: If you wanted to end your popular story / series in a tragedy, would you still go ahead if you knew that your target audience wanted a happy ending? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12670" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-10-20T03:04:36.940" LastActivityDate="2018-01-17T08:54:19.353" Title="Should I follow my instinct or public demand when writing a story?" Tags="|creative-writing|authorship|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24915" CreationDate="2016-10-12T22:26:56.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have two reasons to study medicine: 1-heal and help people, 2-buy a house. The same applies to writing. You can do it to please the others (earning something from others) or enjoy writing (do without expecting rewards).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a supporter of a world of collaborative people. But we are a minority. Most people prefer doing things that give rewards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21833" LastEditorUserId="21833" LastEditDate="2016-10-13T17:16:50.707" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T17:16:50.707" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24915" CreationDate="2016-10-12T22:51:53.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are those that claim that bestsellers cannot be made. They advise you to write the story that feels most relevant to yourself, because otherwise your writing will feel void and empty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are all the professional authors and editors, whose daily work it is to make bestellers. They manage to understand the desires of their target audience and turn a mediocre manuscript into a bestselling book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is called art. Sometimes it results in fantastic mega-blockbuster success. But most often it is appreciated only by your friends (if you have any). The second is called all kind of names, and it often does not reach the New York Times bestseller list, but it consistently makes its authors enough money to lead a comfortable life, and their fans love them well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What path you choose, is up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take a middle path: I do consider what readers want (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10945/genre-conventions-which-end-do-readers-expect&quot;&gt;Genre conventions: Which end do readers expect?&lt;/a&gt;) and attempt to reconcile that with how I feel about the end myself. You need to be creative about how you find a solution that satisfies both you and your audience, but to me that kind of problem is what makes writing fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A vision without a focus is just rambling. It is your attempt to communicate with your readers that gives your writing that focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-10-19T05:18:24.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24915" CreationDate="2016-10-12T23:31:54.393" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a false dichotomy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be sure, there are many reasons to write. You may be writing only for your own amusement or catharsis, in which case merely getting your thoughts down on paper will suffice and you will have no need to consider anybody else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to be sure, you can write purely for the market. If the only goal is to make money by writing, and you don't have anything you are burning to say to the world, you can write formula fiction for companies like Harlequin or Disney. Don't kid yourself that this is easy. The formulas are exacting, the competition is fierce, and the pay rate as low. But if that is what you want, you can do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you want to write because you have something to say, then you have to think about both your message and your audience. Communication is about finding a way to deliver your message in a way that the other person is willing to receive and able to understand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aim is to say the thing that burns in you to be expressed, then you have to follow your own ideas, but you also have to think about the audience. It is about how to make your ideas palatable to the audience you want to reach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one is obliged to listen to you. To gain a hearing, you have to meet your audience's needs before your own. But to get you message heard, you also have to stay true to the thing you want to say. So it really is not one thing or the other; it's both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T23:31:54.393" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24919" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-13T00:34:41.643" Score="1" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can write first-person great, but many stories can only be told third-person and i dont have much experience here. It always feels clunky, doesn't flow right. And get distracted by pronouns and what is a private thought of the character and what is just descriptive of the situation. I cant really find my voice in 3rd person, how should i fix that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21852" LastActivityDate="2016-10-16T05:42:15.400" Title="Have a tough time figuring out third-person prose" Tags="|characters|narrative|grammatical-person|third-person|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24877" CreationDate="2016-10-13T00:40:51.470" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;WriteMonkey for the absolute minimalist, you can change it to a black screen and pretend to be GRRM. Otherwise word is fine, Im still trying to figure out the appropriate font. For screenwriting I like Trelby, although many dont seem to be using it for unknown reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21852" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T00:40:51.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24921" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24923" CreationDate="2016-10-13T02:06:40.510" Score="4" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in putting together an anthology --a work containing some original material, but also lengthy excerpts and/or full text of previously published material by other authors, from a variety of sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming I'm pursuing publication by a traditional publisher (print, not self-published) in the United States, how would I go about this?  Would I likely need to be approached or contracted by the publisher rather than the other way around?  Who would secure the rights, me or them?  Assuming me, what is the right way to go about this, and how difficult is it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would there be up-front fees, or would authors take a percentage of sales?  Either way, are the rates entirely up in the air, or are there standard rates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-03T09:12:17.100" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T09:12:17.100" Title="Editing an Anthology or Compilation" Tags="|editing|copyright|collaboration|anthologies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24922" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-13T02:39:02.647" Score="0" ViewCount="1035" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some writings offend the current political mainstream, because they contradict the prevailing opinions and propose different values. Where can such writing be published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Samples of writing are &lt;a href=&quot;http://getrichbangbabes.com/fiona-understand-what-it-truly-means-to-be-human/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://getrichbangbabes.com/fiona-understand-what-it-truly-means-to-be-human/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One place where we am posting this is in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usmessageboard.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.usmessageboard.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All we care is exposure. We don't care about money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the writing is politically incorrect because it makes fun of feminists and most religious people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21795" LastEditorUserId="21795" LastEditDate="2016-10-18T08:44:47.577" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T08:56:55.467" Title="Where can I publish politically incorrect writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24921" CreationDate="2016-10-13T04:08:41.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reasonably sure that you need to begin by selling the concept to a publisher, and once you do sell it, I am reasonably sure that the publisher is going to answer all of these question for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I also reasonably sure that no traditional publisher is going to even look at you as an anthology editor unless you have some kind of reputation or standing that would help sell the anthology. Anthologies tend to be edited by well known authors or editors, or come associated with the name of a well known magazine. In other words, you need a platform. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it from the publisher's point of view. Suppose you want to publish an anthology. How do you ensure you sell the largest number of copies? You put a well known name with an existing following on the cover. It is hard to imagine how you would persuade them to do anything other than that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T04:08:41.973" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24919" CreationDate="2016-10-13T07:38:34.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the opposite problem.  I can write in third person fine and much prefer this but struggle with first person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My solution?  Practise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give you an example, I wrote a story of two women having an argument in a cafe from the third person perspective of the waitress serving them.  Obviously, she couldn't hear everything that was being said and could only go on body language and brief snippets of conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I re-wrote the story from both women in the argument in first person, really making sure I got into their head.  Then I went back to third and was able to flesh out things I hadn't thought of before in my original draft and later, allowed me to put them in without having to go 3PP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd suggest you try this.  Write it in first person, perhaps from two or three characters POV.  Then write it again from the third person view.  Obviously, you can't say what the characters are thinking (though that doesn't mean you can't put in parts like &quot;Tom paused as he appeared to think, his brow furrowing&quot;) but you can add extra details in appearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I notice your comment about plot structure of the third person.  Plot is plot.  Yes, some stories are better in third and some would never work in first (can you imagine A Song of Ice and Fire in FPP?) but To Kill a Mockingbird is all the more powerful because of it's FP perspective.  It's all about telling your story in the best way possible to make it a better read for your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastEditorUserId="13684" LastEditDate="2016-10-13T07:59:48.380" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T07:59:48.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24919" CreationDate="2016-10-13T08:11:52.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pick three or four third person scenes that you like from other writers. Type about 500 words of each into your word processor, using whatever format you normally use for manuscripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you type (and afterward) notice the rhythms those authors use, and how they make it clear whether the character is observing something (through the five senses) or thinking something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T08:11:52.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24919" CreationDate="2016-10-13T10:00:14.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like @Stephen's idea, which I think you should adapt into a series of exercises. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sit in a park or at a caf&amp;eacute; somewhere and people-watch. Try to write down what you &lt;em&gt;see.&lt;/em&gt; You can't know what people are thinking; you can only observe. So write that down: &lt;em&gt;She spoke. He laughed. The dog barked. The waiter looked bored/interested/tired. She kissed the first woman on the lips and hugged the second woman. The little boy whined that he wanted more ketchup.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you're used to writing what you see, take that home and try to use it as a skeleton for a short piece. What could they be talking about that made him laugh? Why was the waiter tired? and so on. It doesn't have to be a story; just practice figuring out motivations from outside observations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do this with TV too, but I would turn the sound off so you aren't cheating by hearing the dialogue. The advantage is that you can pause and rewind to study faces and gestures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T10:00:14.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24897" CreationDate="2016-10-13T12:12:23.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the end, every technical document should contain whatever information the users need to get their jobs done. This takes precedence over any template or convention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the extent that there are standard templates for a technical document it is because it is often difficult to tell what information users need. If you can't get information on what your particular users need, you can fall back on a general template that you hope is based on experience with real users (though in many cases they are based on a bunch of people sitting in a room guessing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Runbook, however, is an internal document. You have direct access to the audience for your company's runbook and can directly observe the work they do. What your IT staff need in your organization may be significantly different from a standard template. You can base your runbook on what they actually need and use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T12:12:23.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7168" CreationDate="2016-10-14T06:00:23.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a novice looking at the same thing for my first shot at a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journal / Diary style seems very good for my personal voice and particularly for a story I wish to tell about scientific exploration and adventure. It also allows you to highlight emotions, feelings, reflections, etc. at different points of the story (assuming you have the in-story author writing an entry at a time instead of a lump-sum document at the end of the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The disadvantages can be tricky, I feel: yes, the blow-by-blow can be hard to convey, but perhaps more than that, the dramatic tension of interpersonal conflict is much harder to achieve without live dialog between two characters in conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine trying to tell the finale of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith where Anakin and Obi Wan are locked in conflict as an after-the-fact diary. Maybe you can do it, but you're going to suck the emotion and tension out of the scene, not just because it's not live, but because we know that the writer is writing it after the fact and therefore must have survived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I think diary style approaches can be very useful for twists by relying on either an unreliable narrator (omitting things - particularly about the narrator's own actions, exaggerating, lying, etc) or deceiving the audience about the nature or purpose of the diary / story, only for it to have a new meaning at the end of the story when accompanied by an appropriate twist ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to give it a shot, but I'm worried about two scenes of intense ideological opposition, and think I ought to research how other writers have solved this problem in their own works. I recall reading a few books where authors changed modes a bit and had the narrator say something like &quot;What happened next happened very quickly, but I will do my best to describe it to you as it happened&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21862" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T06:00:23.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24929" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-14T06:28:43.443" Score="4" ViewCount="660" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is a rather odd one. If I wish to use the text contained in an endnote from the work I'm using in my paper, how would I cite that endnote in MLA format? Would it be regarded as a regular page in the text or is there a more specified system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21863" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T17:48:16.257" Title="How to cite the text from an endnote in MLA" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2016-10-14T09:30:45.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no step 1. If you want to be a photographer ... start clicking. The same applies to writing a novel as well: Start writing! The first step is to put your ideas on paper and believe that you can do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main challenge lies not in starting, but sustaining the creativity and initial momentum later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck !! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12670" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T09:30:45.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="583" CreationDate="2016-10-14T11:20:28.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be a novelist is to be a story teller. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about the mechanics of how you tell the story until you have a story to tell. You can't know how you will write until you have something TO write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to write thrillers, why? Do you have a hero who lives in your brain and is struggling to get out? Did you see a man leave a bag on a train and have been thinking ever since about all the possibilities of how, where and who? Did you overhear a snatch of conversation that sent your imagination spiraling backward and forwards in time to track the tale it fitted into? Did you see a woman in a cafe who just looked like she was planning a heist...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the story that's burning to get out of you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19924" LastEditorUserId="19924" LastEditDate="2016-10-17T11:01:25.120" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T11:01:25.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24915" CreationDate="2016-10-14T15:05:44.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Terry Pratchett once said something along the lines of 'If I'd listened to the public I'd have written twenty Rincewind books'. And he would have had an audience for that, but he'd have been a different kind of writer. &#xA;Some writers clearly respond to the demand for more of the same to the point where even those who clamoured for it find it stale, Look at some of Janet Evanovich's Amazon reviews for later Stephanie Plum books for example. &#xA;Other writers seem to mix and match: Charlaine Harris gave readers all the Eric they wanted but paired Sookie up with the guy she always planned. &#xA;So I think the answer is that it depends what kind of writer you are and how you balance your trust in your readers' ability to trust you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19924" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T15:05:44.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24897" CreationDate="2016-10-14T15:13:42.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have a good example for this either, but my suggestion is that requirements do not go into a Runbook/Operations manual, but that the use cases would make a lot of sense, as you would be tying the steps needed to complete a function to the use case that the user is trying to accomplish from a business or technical sense. The manual then becomes a set of directions tied to the problem the user is trying to solve or the business process they are trying to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T15:13:42.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24922" CreationDate="2016-10-14T16:51:34.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a similar sort of dilemma and my solution was to create a blog on blogger.com. Probably you could try this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21871" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T16:51:34.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24936" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-14T20:10:49.593" Score="3" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a first person story I am writing, I have many subplots going on, but when I started writing it, I realized that the subplots were not obvious. How can I make it more clear that progress is occurring to my subplots?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14853" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T04:30:29.963" Title="How do I make sure my audience is aware of subplots?" Tags="|style|plot|subplot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24936" CreationDate="2016-10-14T20:27:02.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about it in your first draft. Wait until your second, possibly your third. Your first draft is to get the story down on paper. Then you let it sit for a month and go back. The second draft is to fix all the glaring errors you pick up in your first review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a second (fourth, etc.) round, hand it off to a trusted reader. Ask the trusted reader &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the reader is finished if the subplots were obvious enough. Take the reader's suggestions to beef them up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an obstructed arborvision problem: you won't be able to see the forest for the trees, because it's your story and you know where all the plot threads are. You have to ask for outside opinions to get perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T20:27:02.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24936" CreationDate="2016-10-14T20:55:17.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to be very conscious of the difference between history and story. If you have multiple sub plots that are not obvious, there is a good chance that they are more history than story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;History is a bunch of stuff that happens. History consists of many things happening at the same time in independent threads, so you have to do some folding of time-lines in order to describe all the various threads. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But story is something very different. Story is like a bent bow. It is an arc of rising tension. Everything you tell should contribute to that arc of rising tensions. You don't follow the logic of history in telling a story. You follow the logic of tension. Sub plots should follow their own arc of rising tension, but should also in some way contribute to the rising tension of the main plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it does not actually matter that a subplot is not advancing in time sync with you main plot. What matters is, where does the insertion of the sub plot in the narrative contribute to the arc of rising tensions. If that means telling the sub plot out of sequence with the rest of the time line, that's fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T20:55:17.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24940" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-15T14:23:42.210" Score="4" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am self-publishing my dissertation and want to use a picture of a painting, modified to fit the cover and with titles and author name on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The painter is dead for over a hundred years and a file of the painting &lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:August_Macke_041.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;can be found in Wikimedia Commons&lt;/a&gt; licenced under the GNU Free Document Licence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unsure about the implications. If I use this file in a modified version in a commercial product, I have to include a printout of the GFDL in my book as well as ensure that the original file can be downloaded. Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have to release the modified version under GFDL. Does this only apply to the book cover then? That would be fine. But I do not want to release the whole book under GFDL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else do I have to pay attention to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21881" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T14:32:04.263" Title="Using picture under GNU Free Document Licence as book cover" Tags="|publishing|copyright|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21550" CreationDate="2016-10-16T01:46:00.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the book design. Generally speaking, the width of a text column is kept within certain bounds in order to make the text scannable. A column of text will become much more difficult to read if the text gets wider than the reader can comfortably scan. But many books choose a wider page width so that they can accommodate wider elements such as diagrams, illustrations, and equations. Art books often have text that is less than half the width of the page (or in two columns) so that there is room to show the art at a reasonable size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the printable limits of the page are often wider than the width of the text column precisely to accommodate cases like yours. In this case, the equation is not overriding the margin of the page. Rather, it is the text column that is deliberately less wide than the margins of the page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-16T01:46:00.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24919" CreationDate="2016-10-16T05:42:15.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer to think of an either &quot;almighty character&quot; or a kind of Carnival Barker when writing in the Third Person...he can do anything he wants...and indeed he should passing through time and space, logic and reason...as mere impediments to give a wonderful insight into your story for the readers that the characters you have created have no idea (nor could they) that he is even there. If done well you can still surprise your reader too with the characters themselves...we are human after all and humans do odd things...and to me this is the art of creating a great story and hopefully a good read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-10-16T05:42:15.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24944" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-16T07:04:23.590" Score="0" ViewCount="1248" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not asking you to tell me to keep my sentences less than 20 words long because I am determined to write some really long sentences. What I want to know is how to avoid sounding unnatural. Do I have to avoid certain kinds of words, words of a certain length, etc? Is there something about the phrasing itself? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess by natural I mean smooth and pleasant. Rhythm is another thing, but before I deal with that fully, I need to make sure I can sound natural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed that when I wrote something, because I used the word, &quot;regarded&quot;, it sounded awful to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any idea what I am talking about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10405" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T18:57:38.073" Title="How do you avoid unnatural sounding language?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24944" CreationDate="2016-10-16T12:37:12.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;All of my answers are ludicrous and too long, so you can skip to the conclusion at the end if you don't want to read.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Introduction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it can be quite easy to make sure your sentences sound gorgeous and flowing, perfect and natural. I think it would be a good idea to begin by saying this: you do not have to avoid any words or phrases, as long as they fit your style and tone. You should use words that fit the &lt;em&gt;genre&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;target audience&lt;/em&gt; of what you are writing. Be consistent with these and use them throughout the piece, as tonal shifts can ruin your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;My advice and points&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some notes on words however, that you may want to pay attention to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid repeating words like &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; and other connectives in a sentence. Also avoid repeating &lt;em&gt;subject pronouns&lt;/em&gt; constantly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let us look at the following sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I ate bread and drank milk, and then I went to bed and got to sleep instantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sentence is very poorly written. It uses &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; three times. Your English teacher will tell you that repetition can be a good technique... But in this case it &lt;strong&gt;definitely&lt;/strong&gt; isn't. It makes your writing appear sloppy, unprofessional and bad. Also, pay attention to the style I wrote this in. I wrote this as if it were a diary, or blog, or retelling of a normal event. Because this is contemporary it would be fine for me to say &lt;em&gt;got to sleep&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;went to bed&lt;/em&gt; . If I was writing fantasy, I would perhaps refrain from these terms which in my eyes, seem too contemporary. Perhaps if you were writing fantasy set in a cliche medieval England setting, you could say &lt;em&gt;fell into a slumber&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;snagged my eyes shut&lt;/em&gt;. But of course, you wouldn't use these terms just around the house. They're very stylistic and revolve around genre and tone very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would rewrite the sentence like this to avoid repeating &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After enjoying bread and milk I went to bed, falling asleep instantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can see that the first part is all a main clause and I am just adding &lt;em&gt;falling asleep instantly&lt;/em&gt; as extra information without repeating anything unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to use different sentence lengths&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, I bet you already knew this, but I'll point it out anyway. You &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; vary your sentence lengths if you want to have good sounding sentences. Part of making sentences sound good depends on the passage they are in. Of course varying sentence lengths can make for epic cliffhangers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Go now,&lt;/em&gt; she thought, and closed her eyes; and when she opened them again she found she was alone. That was how she learned to do it. ~ Justin Cronin... The Passage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I swear, that sticks in my head. I can never unsee some of the things I read in that book. It makes for a great example of sentence length being used to create a cliffhanger here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't use too many interjections&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your &lt;strong&gt;narrative&lt;/strong&gt; not your &lt;strong&gt;dialogue&lt;/strong&gt; try not to use too many interjections. This'll remove a lot of formality, and also make the piece appear like a diary entry. Unless you want your narrator to be like this, don't write something like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She put some socks on; I guess she was cold&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;I guess&lt;/em&gt; is completely unnecessary here and the narrator doesn't really need to say it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understand English grammar and PUNCTUATION!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is totally self explanatory. Its so self explanatory I won't bother to extend my explanations even more on it. Good grammar and punctuation = instantly clearer meaning, instantly better sentences, hugely engaging passages. Learn about clauses, stressed syllables, trust me it'll help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid repeating words like &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; and other connectives in a sentence. Also avoid repeating &lt;em&gt;subject pronouns&lt;/em&gt; constantly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to use different sentence lengths&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't use too many interjections&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Understand English grammar and PUNCTUATION!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pick a style and be consistent with it throughout the entire thing. Ensure that every word is good for your genre and audience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-10-16T12:37:12.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24944" CreationDate="2016-10-16T16:01:09.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While we may be able to break down a successful long sentence analytically, I'm not sure that this is going to help you write them fluently. Language is about rhythm and balance and how the reader's focus is directed. I think that has to come from training your ear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to train your ear is to read writers who are noted stylists. You don't necessarily have to aspire to the same facility with languages as the greats, but if you want to develop the kind of ear for language that will let you write a long sentence with fluidity and grace, you need to immerse yourself in that kind of language, in the works of writers who do it superlatively well. And read with attention, roll the language around on your tongue and get the taste of it. You train your ear by immersion, but by purposeful and attentive immersion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider that a good long sentence is one that is naturally long. You probably will not notice how long it is as you write it, nor as you read it. Artificially long sentences are always going to sound awkward and contrived. Naturally long sentences are going to result from saying something sophisticated or nuanced, something that demands more that a few words to tease out it subtlety. So I would suggest that a determination to write long sentences is misplaced. Rather, determine to write something with the kind of subtlety or precision that sometimes requires long sentences, and don't worry about whether the sentences that result are long or short.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-16T16:01:09.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19459" CreationDate="2016-10-16T23:57:14.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most commonly used paper is (arguably) Newsprint.  Because it's cheap, very easy to get hold of, and is non-archival (i.e.: it breaks down easily).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty much every paperback in the west uses it for mass market paperbacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsprint&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other papers may be used; especially for large-format books that need to maintain their shape.  They will tend to use acid-free paper that is usually white.  It tends to have higher gsm, and is designed to be more durable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21577" LastActivityDate="2016-10-16T23:57:14.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24949" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24956" CreationDate="2016-10-17T02:30:20.567" Score="26" ViewCount="12947" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, I have to admit it. I don't like horror movies because (shocker) I find them scary. Unlike other people in my house, I do not like being scared. Especially right before I go to bed. I dislike going into haunted houses. I also dislike being alone in the dark. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to suggest I'm a paranoid wreck of nerves - far from it. I do have a problem when it comes to writing horror though. I realize that if I'm creeping myself out with my own writing, that's a good indicator I'm on the right track. That's great. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that I find it genuinely difficult to write horror. I tend to shut the door when I write to minimize distractions. I can get mildly claustrophobic. I find myself glancing over my shoulder as I write. If it gets really bad, I can't focus on the writing because I'm freaking myself out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything I can do to help with this? I feel like I could write a really good horror story, if... you know, I wasn't scared by it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Further information: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is not a great fear that grips me all the time. I &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;get past it, quite frequently, in fact. I dislike it whenever I watch&#xA;a horror movie before going to bed, yes. I stay awake for a few&#xA;hours, yes. But I eventually go to sleep. I dislike going through a&#xA;haunted house, but will do so if my friends are urging me to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I do not, as has been speculated, fear death. I am a Christian, and&#xA;death holds no fear for me. What I fear is the unknown. The darkness&#xA;can hide anything. When I watch a horror movie, if the 'horror'&#xA;element is not explained, it's more frightening because I don't know&#xA;what it is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should not be assumed that I am &lt;em&gt;forcing&lt;/em&gt; myself to write horror,&#xA;or that I write nothing else. Neither of those things are true. I&#xA;write Fantasy and Sci-Fi and thoroughly enjoy it. I once wrote a&#xA;short horror story which really focused on fear of the unknown. I got&#xA;through it and thought it was quite good, but writing it was&#xA;difficult. Now that I've written it, I'm curious to revisit the&#xA;genre, as I have some ideas for other horror stories. That is the&#xA;only reason I asked this question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Certain answers have suggested that I am afraid of what I write. I'm&#xA;not, primarily because &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; I wrote a horror story again, it would be&#xA;horror fantasy. Generally, nothing in it is going to be real. The&#xA;atmosphere of the story gets my imagination going though, and I start&#xA;to feel the urge to keep an eye on dark corners.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reviewing all of the answers, I would like to bring several to the attention of any future viewers. I found three to be the most helpful: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24958/10394&quot;&gt;answer by Mike C. Ford&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24968/10394&quot;&gt;answer by Cort Ammon&lt;/a&gt; were both excellent. They said the same general thing, but I thought Cort Ammon's answer stayed on topic better. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The answer by Deus Ex Machina, which I have marked as the answer, I initially did not like. After some thought, I believe it is the most likely to help me when writing though. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also found the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24959/10394&quot;&gt;answer by aaa&lt;/a&gt; to be good. It was the kind of answer I was looking for and provides some excellent tips for writers in need of an answer right away. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-10-21T00:28:20.567" Title="How can I Avoid Being Frightened by the Horror Story I am Writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|horror|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24949" CreationDate="2016-10-17T03:32:01.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Human life is ultimately terrifying. We are all going to die, and the thought of our own extinction horrifies us. But it is not just the fact of death, but also the fact that death (if it is not premature) is accompanied by a systematic loss of our abilities and of our friends. Man is uniquely cursed as the only animal that knows, from early life, that it is going to die. Much of literature is concerned with coming to terms with this final and unavoidable horror. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we think of as a healthy mental outlook, however, is one that does not dwell on the horror of what is to come. There are good arguments for this: why let the fear of the horror to come rob you of the pleasure of the present? At the same time, this healthy mental outlook is a kind of delusion. Even is we possess a faith in something beyond death, death itself remains the great unknown and the great horror of our lives when all we have will be stripped away from us. Everyone dies alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Horror stories are one way of dealing with the horror of death. They appear to be healthy for some people -- or perhaps at some ages. They help some people process their fears. For others, they are unhealthy, locking them into a cycle of morbidity. What is true for readers must be doubly true for writers, I think, since a writer spends a hundred times longer over a story than the reader does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is even remotely true, the writer of horror has to be willing to go down into the valley of death. Perhaps this is the only way for them to retain their mental health. Perhaps is it an ill-advised indulgence for morbidity. Perhaps is is an irresistible fascination. Or perhaps they should turn at the threshold and take another direction. But I doubt there is anyway to avoid the fear and still walk through the valley of death. If there were, it would be a different valley.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T03:32:01.340" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24952" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-17T05:10:04.217" Score="0" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received some critiques on my writing where the reader indicated it read fine but there was just something off about my tense. However, he couldn't put a finger on what, exactly, was wrong with it. I've been scouring for ages to uncover what could be a mistake in my learned writing and believe it's related to shifting tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say the story was written in past tense. Here's an example of the shifted tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He walked to the store. Disapprovingly shaking his head at the banners, he continued onward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I understand, the comma use here implies that he's &lt;em&gt;disapprovingly shaking his head&lt;/em&gt; while &lt;em&gt;continuing onward&lt;/em&gt;. Perhaps this is erroneous or jarring to the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could write it like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He walked to the store. He shook his head at the banners disapprovingly, and continued onward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to avoid so many 'they did this' sentence starters, if possible. Breaking it up as in the first sample looks a bit nicer to me, but perhaps my tense is slipping in these areas and I'm unaware of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;via. &lt;a href=&quot;http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/litpres.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Richmond's Writing Center&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;eg. Mrs. Mallory sees her returning son and, in her excitement, twisted her ankle rather badly. Her sister calls the doctor immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this one example reads poorly even when the statement included in the commas is removed, as the sentence no longer carries the same tense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mrs. Mallory sees her returning son and twisted her ankle rather badly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mrs. Mallory saw her son returning and twisted her ankle rather badly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is what I'm attempting considered a &quot;timeless&quot; noun phrase? Any help is appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21895" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T12:25:06.863" Title="Shifting Tense and Commas in Writing" Tags="|grammar|tenses|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24949" CreationDate="2016-10-17T06:55:12.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Name/Define the fear and you get chance to avoid it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think using own self for measuring level of horror is not always the best if expecting/hoping for same effect for other readers. Or is it a goal actually for Thomas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to be able to keep horror/fear/fright out, it should be defined: What is it, and what effect is harming Thomas' nerves. Every single thing that can be described will have features. Associating features to that fear make several step out from the state of unknown. Features can be addressed, avoided or even stand up against. Depending on the story, the nature of features and Thomas, tools like reality-check, story goal priorization, temporary or permanent elimination of fear source can be effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me know if we should work on this with further Q&amp;amp;A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21898" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T06:55:12.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24949" CreationDate="2016-10-17T09:18:09.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What I fear is the unknown&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This implies that you need to do 2 things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plan the structure of the story better&lt;/strong&gt;. This way you know what is going to happen. You know the ending. For example, if you think of the film &lt;em&gt;Alien&lt;/em&gt;, it is much less scary if you have a running commentary of spoilers from someone who has seen it before (e.g. if you don't like gore, look away now!) The real horror of the movie is the unknown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You need to depersonalise the object of the fear for yourself (not your audience though)&lt;/strong&gt;. Going back to the film &lt;em&gt;Alien&lt;/em&gt;, the actual alien on screen is terrifying. But if you know it is actually an actor in a suit, then it becomes far less frightening&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21905" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T09:18:09.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24949" CreationDate="2016-10-17T10:01:07.173" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also draw on that fear. I read in Jeff VanderMeer's &quot;Wonderbook&quot; about a concept called &quot;writing from your scar,&quot; which could also be applicable to your situation also. Basically, it means drawing on those experiences that have left a scar on you (figuratively). You could apply this to your situation by drawing on your fear, incorporating it into your characters' psyches, instilling microtension into all of their thoughts and actions via this fear vs what they want to achieve. If you can do this, you might be able to use your fear to your advantage. But if you feel inclined to writing what scares you (and I applaud you for this act of literary courage), you must not avoid, but rather explore. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21906" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T10:01:07.173" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24957" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-17T10:32:08.163" Score="3" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a long time, I have wondered which way of writing the following is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Is more than one correct?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The expected result for integers denotes that a value should be &lt;strong&gt;at least&lt;/strong&gt; a specific value &lt;strong&gt;or at most&lt;/strong&gt; a specific value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The expected result for integers denotes that a value should be &lt;strong&gt;at least or at most&lt;/strong&gt; a specific value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The expected result for integers denotes that a value should be &lt;strong&gt;at least, or at most,&lt;/strong&gt; a specific value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best, Patrick&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21907" LastEditorUserId="18324" LastEditDate="2016-10-18T12:26:13.737" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T12:26:13.737" Title="Structuring a sentence with two phrases qualifying the same ending" Tags="|style|editing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24949" CreationDate="2016-10-17T11:20:36.683" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seeing an axe murderer at the end of a hallway is scary, but not seeing them and knowing they're somewhere nearby, maybe round the corner, or maybe behind you, is much scarier. This is because, as you said in the question, the fear of the unknown is something that the majority of people have in some capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/19371/how-to-make-horror-events-more-interesting-in-daytime/19404#19404&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; about the scariest scene I've ever read, but that is because the character cannot see what is happening around them, and does not know what will happen if they are caught, therefore our brains fill the space with worst-case scenarios. But seeing the scene from a third person perspective would make the scene look quite silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what separates good horror writing from bad: Good horror will have us hiding behind our fingers barely able to watch, as we empathize with the fears of the character, whereas bad horror will have us shouting &quot;just get up and run! Don't hide in the closet, the killer will find you! Jump out of the window and get to the police station!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make sure you are not drawn into the horror scenario yourself is to eliminate the horrifying aspect: The Unknown. As you're writing the story, think to yourself about the hows and the whys, so that you know more than the reader will. It may even be beneficial to picture the scene in a less then serious way, so long as you don't let that bleed through into your writing, as it will cause it to change from the good type of horror to the bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, instead of picturing yourself as the character running through the house with a murderer behind you, imagine the house from a bird's-eye perspective, and have the scene unfold like some sort of Benny Hill sketch. This should at least help with the issue of needing to look over your shoulder when writing, as it will be easier to visualize exactly where the character and the thing they are afraid of are, as opposed to &quot;they could be anywhere&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or take a leaf out of the book of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_by_Daylight&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dead by Daylight&lt;/a&gt; and try to see the scene from the perspective of the murderer. They're unlikely to be afraid, so examine the situation from their point of view. Once you've experienced the situation in the position of power, the vulnerable position becomes less frightening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively get into the head of the thing causing the fear. Why is this person a murderer? Why did they choose this victim? Why is this big scary cloud monster harvesting souls? We tend to dehumanize things when they're scary, but if a person has a motive, and a backstory, then they are just another person who just happens to kill people. Perhaps it would be possible to reason with them, but the potential victim just never gets the opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Adding a summary, all of my suggestions really boil down to the same thing: recognizing that the frightening scenarios are not actually very realistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experiencing the horror feels realistic in the moment, because it preys on our deepest fears. But our fears tend to be unrealistic and expanded inside our own heads anyway, being in the actual situation is much less frightening than what we imagine it would be like inside of our own minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more you focus on the reality of the fictional situation, the more you will come to realize how the most realistic frightening situations are actually just fiction invented by our own brains. So then when you're looking over your shoulder and into dark corners, it will be easier to feel like the real fears are just fictional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T10:52:57.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24949" CreationDate="2016-10-17T11:40:13.643" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of ways that might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not be alone when you write. You don't have to sit in a room full of people. Just sit somewhere (preferably in the park) where there are many people around but not too close.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not base you story setting on the location you are in. If you are writing a horror story about something terrorizing people in the park, it is better to sit somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have to write at home, do it when other family members/friends are around. It helps when you know you are not alone. Opening the door will also help a bit because you know there are people right across the hall. If you concerned about distractions, you can convey that to others beforehand. They will understand.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write during the day.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to compromise on something but I think little distraction is better than sitting alone in fear and able to write anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21910" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T11:40:13.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24922" CreationDate="2016-10-17T12:00:54.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aqlli.com/#/aq-book&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;aqlli.com&lt;/a&gt; to post your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21911" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T12:00:54.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24957" CreationDate="2016-10-17T12:15:10.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;C is the clearest and easiest to read. The commas not only set off the interrupter to highlight it but give the reader a moment to pause and note the two items being discussed (&lt;em&gt;least&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T12:15:10.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24952" CreationDate="2016-10-17T12:25:06.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is not verb tenses. The problem is subject placement. You don't quite have a dangling participle, because there is no other person being discussed who could be shaking his or her head nor is there any non-person being assigned the head-shaking by accident, but the sentence reads awkwardly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting a sentence with an adverb and gerund is problematic. It's not impossible, but it's hard to do. I appreciate that you want to vary sentence structure, so try something more like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He walked to the store and noted the banners, but they weren't worth making a fuss about. With a disapproving shake of his head, he continued onward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Move some of the context (the banners) to the previous sentence so it's not weighing down the opening clause, and then rewrite the parts of speech so they flow a bit more. It's still inverted and still not &lt;em&gt;He did this and then he did that,&lt;/em&gt; but you aren't struggling to figure out whose head is shaking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Separately, when you have a gerund phrase like that, it describes continuous action. Make sure that you describe actions in the order they occur. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He goes to the store.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He sees the banners.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He shakes his head in disapproval.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He continues on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Shaking his head&lt;/em&gt; describes a situation where 3 and 4 are happening at the same time. This is fine as long as you structure the sentences to reflect that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He walked to the store and noted the banners, but they weren't worth making a fuss about. He continued onward, shaking his head in disapproval. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This describes him walking (continuing) away from the store without having stopped, but &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; he sees the banners and &lt;em&gt;while&lt;/em&gt; he is walking, he's shaking his head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T12:25:06.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24949" CreationDate="2016-10-17T13:16:35.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I little trick i sometimes use if my own writing gets &quot;too close&quot; for comfort (and i mainly write horror):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be your own comic relief. Maybe in your story, the murder is slowly creeping closer behind his victim, and the reader can see that in the mirror, but the character can't. He is helpless, unsuspecting. Slowly, the horrible murder clown gets closer - and trips over his feet, falling down, hitting a cupboard, on which there is a vase, that falls down, and hits him on the head, knocking him unconscious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that you are in power. you are in control of your story, and your own story can only frighten you if you let it. From time to time we need to remind ourself of this. And if knowledge isn't enough, we need to prove it to ourselves, by destroying suspension, and making the &quot;scary stuff&quot; do &quot;silly stuff&quot;. After you cooled down, just delete the funny scene and continue with the suspense... :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21430" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T13:16:35.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24957" CreationDate="2016-10-17T13:39:00.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question: all of your examples are grammatically correct. (Well done!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in most contexts, clarity and readability are even more important than grammatical correctness. By that measure, your third example is definitely the best, as Lauren has explained so well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T13:39:00.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24860" CreationDate="2016-10-17T16:12:45.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Just an addition to the excellent answers by Mark Baker and Lauren Ipsum:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure you can make that interruption work, if you write in a style where it fits. But if you write &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; an audience (and not just to pass the time and please yourself) it may be not the worst idea to at least sometimes think of how a potential reader could experience your narrative. Unlike you, they do not know the story when they read it. &lt;strong&gt;For you, the interruption is no interruption.&lt;/strong&gt; Because you know how the action will continue. Because you do not perceive your narrative sequentially, but as a unified idea. It is all in your mind at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the reader on the other hand, the interruption is a potential break of trust. Reading is a contract between author and reader. The reader allows you to manipulate their emotions and &lt;strong&gt;trusts you&lt;/strong&gt; to play by the rules that the cover, blurb, and first pages of your book have set. The reader has entered your world, identified with your protagonist, and is imprisoned with your characters in the chronology of the story. The moment of crisis, if well written, is a moment of crisis for the reader, too. If you interrupt the flow of such a suspensful and highly emotional moment, some readers will feel as if an important promise has been broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, of course, as Lauren and Mark have said, it is quite possible to interrupt the action in an enjoyable and satisfying way. I only want to warn you to (a) observe yourself closely so that you will notice when you stop writing to the reader's perspective – which is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the reader's taste! –, and (b) to believe your test readers. If there is a significant number of test readers who are uncomfortable with something in your text, it is highly likely that a similar percentage of your target audience will also feel uncomfortable about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, not every book is for everyone (which is why your beta readers must come from your target audience, not from your group of alpha-reading fellow writers), but the choice to limit the appeal of your book must be a conscious one, not an accident that you later regret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T16:12:45.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24944" CreationDate="2016-10-17T18:35:40.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lythric has a good start. I would add an old junior high teacher's advice. Don't worry about grammar or punctuation, if you can read it aloud, it is English. Then you can do the old chestnut, all writing is rewriting. Why are you writing in such a way? Does it advance your story, or point? Are you guilty of style over substance?  Find a good reader. Put a snippet or chapter out to a local or online authors group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21917" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T18:35:40.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24944" CreationDate="2016-10-17T18:57:38.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simple, semi-reliable test of whether your writing sounds natural: Read it out loud. Does it sound natural?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A less simple but more reliable test: Hand it to someone who has not read it, and ask them to read it out loud. Do they stumble as they are reading it? Does it sound natural?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I listen to lots of audiobooks. Even the most professional readers stumble sometimes (and some of those stumbles make it through to the published audiobook). Inevitably, when professional actor or audiobook reader stumbles, it's because the text is awkward in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T18:57:38.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24949" CreationDate="2016-10-18T02:07:46.937" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is really a psychology question, so there wont be a one-size fits all answer which a random individual on the internet can provide you.  However, one of your quotes suggests to me a direction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not, as has been speculated, fear death. I am a Christian, and death holds no fear for me. What I fear is the unknown. The darkness can hide anything. When I watch a horror movie, if the 'horror' element is not explained, it's more frightening because I don't know what it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting phrasing, given that many consider what happens in death and afterwards to be &quot;the great unknown.&quot;  And yet little unknowns like &quot;what's in this shadowy corner&quot; distract you.  If I may read into your statement (again, as a random individual on the internet who doesn't really know you), this suggests to me that you don't fear death because you know what comes after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, anyone with a little inductive logic can show that this should also be enough to not be frightened of the shadowy corner, but from your question, that is clearly not the case.  There must be some other logic which we can apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would postulate that you have a division in your worldview.  There are the present things, like what you're writing, what you are having for lunch, etc.  Then there are the eventual things, like death and all that holds from your religious beliefs.  You do not fear the eventual things, because you can intellectually rationalize that you shouldn't be afraid of them because you know what comes after those eventual things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there may be a gap in your worldview between the present things and the eventual things.  For some reason &quot;what's in the shadow in the corner&quot; can't link up with your faith in the eventuality of everything.  Thus, the fear of the unknown can manifest in present events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is accurate (again, I'm just a random individual on the internet), then you might benefit from creating your own &quot;eventuality&quot; for writing.  Focus on something that should be an eventuality that's fully in your control (perhaps &quot;I will feel like getting up from this seat, and all will be right with the world&quot;), and tie that eventuality to your confidence that everything will be all right for other reasons (such as your religious beliefs).  You may have to play around a bit with it to find the best anchor for you (by all means, find your own, don't borrow a random internet stranger's!).  Eventually you'll find something that's close enough to present events to provide you comfort in your certainty and immunity form the unknown, but something far enough out that you can tie it into your general sense of confidence that you know all that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I would recommend seeking a happy medium: find something that takes the edge off of the fear of the unknown, but doesn't insulate you from it.  The fear of the unknown is a powerful force in the human mind.  Why miss out on an opportunity to improve yourself.  Stare into the unknown, and smile at it.  Who knows, something may smile back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14106" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T02:07:46.937" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24877" CreationDate="2016-10-18T07:20:43.337" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in my last year majoring in software engineering in the university and the recommended courses in the following may be useful for writing software:&#xA;program design language, data structure, discrete mathematics, operating system, compile technology, introduction of software engineering, unified modeling language, software system structure, software requirement, software project management, algorithm analysis, oriented object program design, database principle and implementation technology, the principle of compile, computer security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21924" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-10-18T09:00:27.420" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T09:00:27.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24922" CreationDate="2016-10-18T07:20:45.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why does politically incorrect writing need a special place of publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many works of art criticize the current state of affairs. Political change, subversion, or social analysis are the motivation behind many works of art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently in the West we have a dominant feminist ideology. Writing something not feminist, or anti-feminist, appears politically incorrect. But half a century ago, the dominant ideology was what feminists call &quot;patriarchal&quot;, and feminist writing was politically incorrect. So where was it published? &lt;strong&gt;Wherever it would get the most exposure.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mainstream publishers avoided feminist writing at first, so feminists created their own publishing houses, their own printed magazines, and as their thoughts gained acceptance, they were slowly picked up by mainstream presses. Today, feminist writing is often no longer discernible as such, because it has become the common thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you have a political agenda, &lt;strong&gt;the first thing you will want to attempt is getting into mainstream publishing&lt;/strong&gt;. You want to be read, and to reach the widest possible audience you will want to get published by a publisher that has the power to get your book into book stores and reviewed by the major news papers and tv shows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If getting into mainstream publishing does not work, you will need a network of like-minded people and create your own outlet. If you want to change the world, as feminism did, you cannot manage that alone, so &lt;strong&gt;your second step must be to find or create a community of people who want to fight alongside you&lt;/strong&gt;. What that community's outlet will be, will depend on the message you want to send and the target audience. It could be a blog, a YouTube channel, a newspaper, a print-publishing house, or anything else – but most likely it will be &lt;em&gt;all of the above&lt;/em&gt;. You (and your community) will need to be your own marketing managers and think about how you can reach your readers and make your writing sell. Again, think of feminism fifty years ago and how they spread their ideas. There's lots of books that summarize their strategies, and you can learn a lot from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question, then, shouldn't be where you can publish politically incorrect writing. If it is good writing, and not too offensive, it will get published by regular publishers. If it is too offensive, your question needs to be, where you can find a community of like-minded people that supports each other in publishing their works. If it is bad writing, then you need to learn to write and should stop thinking about publishing anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-10-18T08:56:55.467" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T08:56:55.467" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24915" CreationDate="2016-10-18T10:04:07.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion you must do what you think is the better, look empty but i have seen so many authors writing wonderfull books and don't know when to stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ll be sad but i ll respect the choice of an author to end his story than continue to writing only for cash and be mediocre at end.&#xA;5 or 6 names come in my mind of authors i was blind of admiration and now i can't even read again one of their books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't rush the things and do what you feel is the better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21927" LastEditorUserId="21927" LastEditDate="2018-01-17T08:54:19.353" LastActivityDate="2018-01-17T08:54:19.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24877" CreationDate="2016-10-18T10:47:11.397" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing by hand has been found to enhance creativity. For example, studies show that people who write by hand generate more ideas. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/science/whats-lost-as-handwriting-fades.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An article&lt;/a&gt; in the New York times summarizes this and other research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now certainly people are different. The research findings cited above are averages, and there are of course people who are more creative when they use other methods of writing. So in the end, you will have to experiment and find out for yourself, what works best for you. Nevertheless, the average result indicates that the majority of people will probably benefit from writing by hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another argument against writing at a computer is distraction. There is not much you can do with a pen and paper. Sure, you can draw or compose a shopping list, but doing so will not keep most people from writing their novel. Social media, on the other hand, email, YouTube, and computer games are so irresistible that many find it quite hard to get anything done on a computer at all. Many successfully published writers testify that they can only work if they do not have internet. But not having internet is not easy, if you write on a computer. As many discussions on the internet show, not using the internet is not quite so easy as just disconnecting your computer – because when you feel the urge to check your email, it is quickly plugged in again. All the software that monitors computer usage or blocks internet access is a witness to the strong distraction that the internet offers as well as the difficulty of staying away from it while working at a computer. It is much easier to not have access to a computer at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, many people find that they can think better and have more ideas when they walk or move. While laptops have gotten smaller, nothing beats a paper notebook in light weight and &quot;battery life&quot;. You can write several weeks worth of holidays in a thick notebook, while your laptop becomes useless after half a day of not having access to a power socket. You can take walks with a notebook relatively unencumbered, while having a backpack with your laptop weighing down your shoulders and making your back sweat may keep you from ambulatory writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it seems, as if for the majority of writers writing on paper should be the method of choice. It is more creative, less distracting, and more mobile than writing at a computer. Yet many writers do use computers, and more specifically writing software to write. Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important reason is that you don't have to type your text into a computer when you are finished. You could pay someone to type your illegible handwriting and then read it and correct mistakes, but that is maybe not an attractive thought to many.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second most important reason is ease of correction. I'm not even going into that, it is so obvious and fundamental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third reason it that on a computer you can collect a whole of a lot more material that you need for writing than you can ever carry with you in a backback – from whole books, to movies, to images, to the whole information on the internet that is only a click away. What distracts some, is valuable input for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fourth reason is that on a computer you can, if you want, view your text in a representation that resembles the final printed version. For some writers it is important to be able to write the &quot;surface&quot; of the text, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some more reasons, but they all go in the same direction: a computer makes the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; of writing – from the initial idea to the printed book – easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this does not explain the appeal of writing software, only of the computer. As it is, the pros and cons of writing on paper and writing on a computer are pretty much balanced: handwriting is more creative, while writing on a computer is more practical. And on a computer, you could still type into a regular text editor. So why use specialized software to write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To tip the balance, of course. Much writing software tries to address the creative block that the computer represents. They offer a &quot;distraction free&quot; writing environment; and they offer tools to mindmap, develop characters, organize ideas, plot stories, and so on. Basically, writing software tries to bring the pen-and-paper experience into the computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing software is usually made by people who have experience writing and found the existing general purpose applications such as Microsoft Word at the same time lacking essential functionality and overwhelmig in superfluous functionality. So they try to create a tool that unifies all the needs a writer has into one application, and limits the functionality to what a writer needs  – such as generating and organizing ideas, collecting research, outlining stories, writing and rewriting, formatting their texts, and publishing their works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem then becomes that the process of writing is so complex and varied that it is difficult to cover all a writer's needs with one single application. As you can see from the many discussions online, most writers are not completely happy with the available software options, they want additional functionality, and keep trying out new apps and switching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For myself, until recently I had found a workflow that gave me as much as possible of both worlds, the computer and handwriting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I generated ideas, outlined, developed characters and so on paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I wrote the text on a computer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During the writing phase (after the planning was done), every day I walked to where I wrote. (I did not write at home but usually in the university library, sometimes in a cafe, on the train, or outdoors.) On my half hour walk to my writing place I came up with ideas for the day's writing and noted them down in a paper notebook. At my computer I used these notes to write. When I was done for the day, I printed out the current text so I could reread and revise it on paper. I worked in these revisions into the electronic version on the next day as a &quot;warm up&quot; between arriving at my desk and writing something new.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I did not write in special writing software, but in something like Word.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About five years ago I switched to doing more of my process at the computer. I no longer use paper at all, but generate ideas, develop characters, and outline at the computer. I use Scrivener to write the text. The longer I work in this way, the less happy I am with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener, while a specialized writing app, does not fit my individual needs. It does not do writing the way I do it. I also dislike most of the other software solutions I have found for other aspects of writing. Generally I find that using the computer feels like an impediment in many ways. I often find that I cannot think clearly. Sometimes because the software that existes doesn't do what I want to do in the way I want to do it. Sometimes it seems to be the computer that makes my mind go blank. I want to go back to paper, at least partly, but at the same time I don't want to lose the advantage of easily writing, editing, and copy-pasting text – not just the novel itself, but all the outlining and development, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm finished with my current project, I will reflect on my process and try to change my workflow and tools. What I need is a better integration of handwriting and notebook with typing and computer. I don't know yet, how that can be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may have to develop my own writing software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T10:47:11.397" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24974" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-18T12:34:29.473" Score="4" ViewCount="3106" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the term or name of the literary device/technique employed when a novel is mostly written in first person from the protagonist's view, but events as yet unknown to the character are written in the omniscient third person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21932" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-02-02T12:10:36.690" LastActivityDate="2017-08-10T17:20:34.227" Title="Term for writing mostly in first-person, but switching to third-person for things the POV doesn't yet know?" Tags="|style|viewpoint|perspective|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24976" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-18T15:30:55.310" Score="1" ViewCount="420" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can create a clickable TOC for my chapter headings in the Windows version of Scrivener. But what I want is to be able to include the sub headings in the clickable TOC for Kindle. I have tried numerous options to no avail. Can it be done? If so, how? All help greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21936" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-10-20T03:06:52.220" LastActivityDate="2016-12-25T16:07:31.827" Title="Table of contents to include sub heading in Scrivener for Windows for Kindle format" Tags="|technique|tools|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24915" CreationDate="2016-10-18T20:32:23.903" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would probably act as Doyle did.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1)  Certain of my popularity as an author, I would kill the character and hope people started reading my other books.&#xA;2)  Gradually become frustrated. &#xA;3)  Eventually write another Holmes story, possibly while grumbling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, to have such a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21943" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T20:32:23.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24978" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-18T22:03:16.187" Score="6" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a magazine where an individual author's name is not published with the article, it seems obvious to me that the article can be presumed to reflect the consensus of the entire editorial team on whatever has been written in the article. Now, in such a scenario, if a group of editors writes an article which is opinion based and the others strongly feel against the things written in the article then should the article make it to the publication according to standard Journalism ethics? Also, why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21945" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-11-24T18:11:45.747" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T14:04:34.027" Title="What should be done if there is a dispute of opinions within the editorial team?" Tags="|journalism|ethics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24915" CreationDate="2016-10-18T23:36:06.883" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another thing to consider when writing your ending is not what you want, nor what you think the audience wants, but rather &lt;em&gt;what does the story want&lt;/em&gt;?  I am a firm believer that if you tell a story well, the ending will feel right to you and to the reader alike.  If instead you get to the end of your tale and the ending you want doesn't &quot;fit&quot; what you want, perhaps the expectations you set up in the first 90% of the book don't fit what you want, either.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an example of &quot;fulfilling promises to your reader&quot; that the folks at Writing Excuses talk about all the time, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/2011/01/09/writing-excuses-5-19-fulfilling-promises-to-your-readers/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  It won't be easy to rewrite your story to make different promises, but I don't think you will ever be satisfied long-term with a story and an ending that don't fit well.  On the plus side, there is at least one person who wants to see that ending, and if you put the right tale in front of that ending, you may discover there are many more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19841" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T23:36:06.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24980" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-18T23:55:22.407" Score="8" ViewCount="4687" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to describe a character in a story and I'm having issues describing her appearance. She is a black woman with specific (vitiligo like) markings and I don't know how to write that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't plan on saying black women or anything like that, I just want to specify here black because shes more of African decent(so if I said woman of color I don't want her to be mistaken as Asian,Indian etc.) I like describe my characters in detail so the reader can get a good image of what they look like. She's a main character and is to be portrayed beautiful yet unique.&#xA;it's a fairytale styled story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex for other random charters off the top of my head. &#xA;(A more &quot;romantic feel for a woman) &quot;There she stood with her shimmering copper hair blowing in the wind. She was tall and slender with smooth olive skin rich brown eyes that captivated any who looked her way.&quot; &#xA;(gloomy creepy guy) &quot;glaring Calli's way with his cold blue eyes she froze. He had a bold nose and high cheek bones, His pale colorless flesh made him appear as if he were a corps recently risen from the grave&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21948" LastEditorUserId="21948" LastEditDate="2016-10-19T12:38:45.220" LastActivityDate="2016-10-20T02:47:37.877" Title="writing with color, skin tone" Tags="|fiction|characters|word-choice|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24980" CreationDate="2016-10-19T05:45:10.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see where your issues might come from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, try not to use the word &lt;em&gt;vitiligo&lt;/em&gt;. It is a medical term, and as @what said, you're obviously not writing for an audience of dermatologists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, we don't say &lt;em&gt;black woman&lt;/em&gt; we say &lt;em&gt;woman of colour&lt;/em&gt; instead, as this has a better connotation (to certain people). If I were you, instead of saying &lt;em&gt;vitiligo markings&lt;/em&gt; you could just say &lt;em&gt;skin speckled with white.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Standing boldly was a woman of colour, her skin speckled with white markings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would be an example sentence based off the things I just said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Say &lt;em&gt;woman of colour&lt;/em&gt; not &lt;em&gt;black woman&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check if a word is used in science/medicine, if so, try not to use it in fiction. But, of course that is only if the word is really complex and no one will understand it (like vitiligo which even the computer underlines)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry, I bet it'll come out totally fine :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-10-19T05:45:10.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24980" CreationDate="2016-10-19T09:54:34.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've upvoted Lythric's answer. I think both points could stand elaborating, and it turned out too long for comments, so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Check if a word is used in science/medicine, if so, try not to use it in fiction. But, of course that is only if the word is really complex and no one will understand it (like &lt;em&gt;vitiligo&lt;/em&gt; which even the computer underlines)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree — it's good to use the appropriate technical language, if your narrator would know and use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to be clever and contextualise the language so we understand what it means, but when you do it right, it builds your credibility as an author and the plausibility of the story. Plus, learning new stuff is cool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your narrator might or might not be someone who uses the technical term. But &lt;em&gt;use what they would use&lt;/em&gt;. And understand that lots of people do — women with endometriosis, for example, don't call it 'mysterious stomach pain', they mostly call it 'endometriosis' or 'endo'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Say &lt;em&gt;woman of colour&lt;/em&gt; not &lt;em&gt;black woman&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is good advice because &lt;em&gt;woman of colour&lt;/em&gt; is the wording that's modern and respectful. Use it if (a) your narrator is both of those things; or (b) you are making a conscious decision to make his/her language both of those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm saying is be conscious of the decisions you're making about language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm categorically &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; saying is you must embrace offensive or upsetting language in the bloody-minded pursuit of historical accuracy. Historical accuracy is only one of the things you need to balance in your writing, and &lt;em&gt;perfect&lt;/em&gt; historical accuracy is impossible anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many good reasons you would choose option B above. For example, you might want your story to make people happy, or find a wide audience, and have guessed that many people of colour don't want to read a story containing yet another reminder of how recently people like them could be lynched. It's okay — it might even be a good thing — for you to write in a way that respects that. Just be mindful that you're doing it and understand why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long story short: When you choose language, think about its impact on character.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've done that, it's perfectly appropriate to balance with other considerations, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18324" LastEditorUserId="18324" LastEditDate="2016-10-19T13:31:00.417" LastActivityDate="2016-10-19T13:31:00.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24983" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-19T11:05:10.653" Score="2" ViewCount="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a paper for IEEE using Microsoft office &lt;code&gt;Word 2013&lt;/code&gt;. I want to use &lt;code&gt;dynamic reference&lt;/code&gt; which is available in this version of &lt;code&gt;Word&lt;/code&gt;. In a place of my article the &lt;code&gt;references&lt;/code&gt; are similar to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;bla bla &lt;code&gt;[1,2,3,4,5]&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I convert it to some thing like &lt;code&gt;[1]-[5]&lt;/code&gt; without losing dynamic ability? &#xA;In other words I do not want to convert my references to &lt;code&gt;static text&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21953" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-10-20T03:03:08.937" LastActivityDate="2018-04-02T23:44:38.163" Title="Multiple continues references in Microsoft office word 2013" Tags="|academic-writing|software|tools|resources|microsoft-word|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24980" CreationDate="2016-10-19T13:31:57.510" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to describe a dark-skinned person with &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitiligo&quot;&gt;vitiligo&lt;/a&gt;, just say that her skin is dark with light spots. Which words you use exactly, and how much detail your description has, will depend on how the narrator feels about that character's skin and what effect you want your description to have on the reader. Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Heather stared at Paula's mud-colored skin with its ugly pink spots in disgust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When they were kids, Heather liked to outline the light patches on Paula's dark skin, imagining her friend to be a human-shaped planet, and the tiny people that might live on that map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I find vitiligo incredibly sexy and always wanted a girlfriend who had it. Now I even know what it's called :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-10-19T20:49:54.290" LastActivityDate="2016-10-19T20:49:54.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24980" CreationDate="2016-10-20T02:47:37.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know a single person who uses &quot;of African descent&quot; in everyday speech and the people I spend time with are pretty accepting, liberal-Democrat New Jersey sorts of people. The black people I know call themselves &quot;black&quot; when talking to me. While it may be language a narrator would use (depending on the tone) and my experience is limited to my specific circumstances, books that read like politicians speak tend not to be page-turners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when you're deciding on the language you're going to use, I suggest keeping in mind that the words you use and &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; you use them are equally important tools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Viewers visualize characters as being like them, unless they're told otherwise. And whatever you tell them first often makes the biggest impression. If the very first thing you write about your character is the color of her skin, you're not creating a character, you're creating, at best, an archetype; at worst, a token character of African descent. It's also worth remembering that &quot;of African descent&quot; doesn't necessarily mean dark-skinned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And readers will always remember the character, not as the woman who plays the piano and loves skiing and is dark-skinned, but as the African woman of color who plays piano and skis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Race and appearance are factors in almost every part of our lives. A question worth your time to ask: Why do you want this character to be this particular race? Why is her skin being black (with vitiligo) important to the story you're telling?  How is it important to her character? These questions should give you guidance about when to bring these up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2016-10-20T02:47:37.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24987" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24989" CreationDate="2016-10-20T05:35:17.020" Score="3" ViewCount="494" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a dilemma here and I hope any one of you can help me with this: I have been using double quotation marks for dialogues and italics for internal dialogues but I have no idea how to categorise the sentences below. Is there a correct way to format the emboldened words or is it simply a matter of preference? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The class chirped &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; in reply.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He gulped nervously when he caught a soft &lt;strong&gt;come in&lt;/strong&gt;, feeling chills run down his spine once again as butterflies simultaneously performed another set of dance routine inside his stomach.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like some variation in my writing so I am trying to avoid using the standard dialogue formatting (i.e. &quot;Yes,&quot; the class chirped in reply.). Feel free to give other suggestions that can introduce variety too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for the help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21963" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-10T04:20:29.003" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T04:20:29.003" Title="How should these be formatted? In quotes or italics?" Tags="|style|dialogue|formatting|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24987" CreationDate="2016-10-20T07:12:35.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you have written above is external speech so both should go inside quotation marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking to alter your writing so you don't have &quot;Yes,&quot; the class chirped you could always try remove the speech altogether while still having the same results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The class all replied in the positive, sounding almost chirpy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He gulped nervously as the soft voice beckoned him into the room, feeling chills.....&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or however you want to put it in your own words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2016-10-20T07:12:35.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24987" CreationDate="2016-10-20T08:45:49.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great question. The reason why this confuses so many is that the rules for punctuating direct speech are for syntactic structures where the narrator's explanations about the speech are attached to or inserted into the speech:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peter said: &amp;quot;I am Paul.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I am Paul,&amp;quot; he whispered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I am,&amp;quot; he said, and dropped the gun in the river, &amp;quot;Paul.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all these, the narrator comments are felt to be subordinate to the direct speech: the narrator reports &lt;em&gt;dialog&lt;/em&gt; and explains it – who speaks, how they say it, and what goes on while they speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the present example, on the other hand, the direct speech is subordinate to the narration: the narrator reports &lt;em&gt;events&lt;/em&gt; and explains the events with a brief spoken phrase. Sentences such as those given in the question are no longer dialog, but become part of narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do we punctuate this? Like narration!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What still applies is the basic rule that direct speech is enclosed in quotation marks. That is necessary to differentiate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He greeted her with a happy &amp;quot;Hello&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He greeted her by nodding hello to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and from&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He did not greet her with his usual &lt;em&gt;How are you?&lt;/em&gt;, but only nodded, then turned back to his work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing is said in the last two examples, so we do not use quotation marks here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does not apply to brief direct speech inserted into narration is the rule to set off direct speech from narrator comments with commas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Punctuate (brief) direct speech inserted into narration like you would any other phrase. If you are unsure, try to replace the direct speech with a non-direct phrase. For example, there are no commas around &lt;code&gt;an answer&lt;/code&gt; in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The class chirped an answer in reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;therefore no commas are needed around &lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;Yes&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt; in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The class chirped &amp;quot;Yes&amp;quot; in reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may insert commas, if you want to signify pauses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The class chirped, &amp;quot;Yes,&amp;quot; in reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both variants are possible and correct, and whether you prefer to enclose that chirped &lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;Yes&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt; in commas or not will depend on your general use of commas: Is your writing comma-heavy, or do you use them sparingly? Use commas around inserted direct speech in accordance with your global comma style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your construction differs, you may have to use commas. When you insert the direct speech between clauses, that construction more strongly suggests the insertion to be set off with commas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The class chirped, &amp;quot;Yes,&amp;quot; and sat down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and it appears at least slightly wrong without:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The class chirped &amp;quot;Yes&amp;quot; and sat down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your other example the direct speech is not merely inserted in place of a noun phrase (&lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;Hello&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt; = &lt;code&gt;an answer&lt;/code&gt;) but is nominalized and replaces the noun (&lt;code&gt;a soft &amp;quot;Come in&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt; = &lt;code&gt;a soft voice&lt;/code&gt;; note the indefinite article before the direct speech, which turns the direct speech into a noun). In such a construction, you cannot use commas and they are wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as there are no commas around &lt;code&gt;voice&lt;/code&gt; in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He gulped nervously when he caught a soft voice, feeling chills run down his spine ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the commas would seem out of place around &lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;Come in&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt; in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He gulped nervously when he caught a soft &amp;quot;Come in&amp;quot;, feeling chills run down his spine ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, direct speech, whether in dialog or inserted into narration, is always enclosed in quotation marks, but while narrator comments are set off with commas from dialog, direct speech inserted into narration is not set off at all because syntactically it becomes part of the narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So just as the full stop at the end of a sentence gets replaced with a comma in dialog (&lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;I am Paul,&amp;quot; he said.&lt;/code&gt;), it gets replaced with nothing when direct speech is inserted into narration (&lt;code&gt;With a mumbled &amp;quot;I am Paul&amp;quot; he sat down again.&lt;/code&gt;). And just as the off-setting comma is replaced with an exclamation or question mark in dialog, the &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; that sets off inserted direct speech is replaced with the appropriate punctuation if the inserted direct speech is a question or exclamation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He gulped nervously when he heard a shouted &amp;quot;Come in!&amp;quot;, feeling chills run down his spine ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He gulped nervously when he heard a soft &amp;quot;Who are you?&amp;quot;, feeling chills run down his spine ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my examples are certainly a bit forced and might more elegantly be replaced by indirect speech or other constructions, but they are only meant to serve as illustrations, and no recommendation for or against their use is implied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-10-20T10:16:33.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24915" CreationDate="2016-10-20T21:26:22.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It think this is a question that most writers face and struggle with finding an answer to. Unfortunately the current answers are mostly the private opinions of the answerers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, that was exactly the question, was it not? I quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you wanted to end your popular story / series in a tragedy, would you still go ahead if you knew that your target audience wanted a happy ending?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this is what the answers are trying to address. My personal favorite is @papidave's, but the fact that I can relate to it, does not mean that everyone else can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maybe we can come up with an answer that can help others to find their own answer? An answer that explains the pros and cons of both decisions and shows up a way to reconcile them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think that this question has a single answer. The pros and cons of such decisions would depend on the infinite variety of personal and professional circumstances, surrounding the inciting conflict of interests, and any attempt to summarize the options would border on speculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would follow the story and see where it leads me. Any attempts to bend the ending to please anyone else would ring false to me, and, therefore, work against the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-20T21:26:22.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24915" CreationDate="2016-10-21T09:41:42.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stories are like puzzles&lt;/strong&gt;. You start by outlining the whole thing, than add one piece after the other, taking care that the new pieces fit the work you have already created. The ending of a story is the last piece you insert into your puzzle: It completes the picture, and only when it is in place will you be able to understand the story in its entirety. Conversely, the last piece of your puzzle -- your ending -- is so strongly confined by what you have already laid out that there's hardly any room left for eventualities. Try to cram in a piece that does not fit and you will ruin the entire puzzle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observe that &lt;em&gt;this has nothing to do with the puzzle designer wanting something else than you&lt;/em&gt;, the puzzle solver. Because it is a puzzle and unless it is broken or you mixed it up with another puzzle or you lost a piece, the last piece &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; fit in. Of course, you are free to not like the puzzle once it is finished. You are allowed to critize what you see and think: &quot;I would have preferred another picture&quot;. But this has nothing to do with the puzzle per se -- rather, it is because your taste is different from the taste of the puzzle designer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe (imagine that word underlined twice, because I honestly cannot prove this claim) that stories are to a degree independent of the storyteller. Stories are abstract entities that are just &lt;em&gt;there&lt;/em&gt;. You, as the storyteller, can not create them -- you &lt;em&gt;discover&lt;/em&gt; them. Because of this, &lt;strong&gt;what storytelling really boils down to for me is honesty&lt;/strong&gt;. You have your idea, you have your characters, and while writing down your story or telling it in any other way, you discover it, piece by piece, like a puzzle, until it is complete. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to tell when a story is complete. To me, it's an abstract feeling that all the elements fit together and that the story I tell is as independent as possible from what I &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; for the story. Only when I feel that everything that happens in the story is necessary, natural to the characters, and a consequence of what has happened before, does the story feel right. As long as I read a scene, frown and think: &quot;Something else could happen here&quot;, I'm not done discovering the story. (And the fun thing is: When my test readers critize my work, it's usually because of things that I had not fully discovered yet.) This act of discovering of what really happens in your story is all about honesty -- you need to be honest to yourself and to your characters. This can be very hard, because you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have a vision for your story and sometimes this vision blinds you for the truth of your story. But my experience is that not seeking this inherent truth of a story and settling for something that you forced onto the story leads to unconvincing stories in the end(1). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now: &lt;strong&gt;The readers&lt;/strong&gt;. I think, this is very simple. Readers are extremely good at detecting inconsistencies in your story. In fact, they are much better at it than you are, because they do not share your story vision and hence can not be blinded by it. Consequently, when you write something that is not honest to your story, your readers &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; find it, and they will not like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, however, is independent of the point in the story at which the dishonesty occurs. It can be the ending, but it need not be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: What does &quot;writing for an audience&quot; actually mean? Does it mean to write a book that sells well to a specific target audience? If this is the case, &quot;writing for an audience&quot; is independent of the ending of your story. I do not buy books, because I know the ending and like it. I buy them, because I am interested in the story that they advertise and I am curious about how the story solves the problem that it poses. Solving this problem may take several books in a series, but in the end, I want to know how it is dealt with. In agreement with the puzzle analogy above, this finale of a series should be well prepared and inevitable. If the story is told well and captured my interest throughout an entire &lt;em&gt;series&lt;/em&gt; of books, I do not see how it could disappoint me -- unless it does not fit the preceding story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bringing all of this together, I would answer your question as follows&lt;/strong&gt;: I think your question is not whether the &lt;em&gt;ending&lt;/em&gt; of your story should cater to the tastes of your audience. The ending of a story is the inevitable result of the story itself -- changing it means to change everything that happened before. Effectively, you will end up a different story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather, your question is whether you should write your &lt;em&gt;stories&lt;/em&gt; for your audience or for yourself. And this question, you have to answer for yourself (as other commentators already observed). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Example: Stephen King's story &quot;The Secret Window&quot;. The ending of this book feels like an enormous cheat. When I read it, I was under the impression that King was scared to write down the ending that the entire story was pointing to -- because it is ugly and bleak and horrible and hardly anybody wants to read a story like that. However, giving his story an unexpected &quot;happy&quot; ending turned out just as desastrous. The reason is that it was not fitting the preceding 90% of the story. It felt wrong on every level, and I felt betrayed and lied to by Stepehen King. The fact that I immediately remembered the &quot;Secret Window&quot; -- a story that I first saw in its movie adaption twelve years ago and read shortly after -- when I saw your question tells you something about how lasting the bad impression was that I took from the book. If I hadn't known Stephen King to be an occasional storytelling genius when I read &quot;The Secret Window&quot;, I would have never touched another Stephen King book in my life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-10-27T09:01:34.920" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T09:01:34.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24993" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-21T14:36:17.897" Score="0" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my novel, there is a antagonistic character named Numbers who reacts in a similar manner to those he is talking to, even freakishly so. Because of this he is easily able to become a powerful character, but I am worried if his sudden personality changes (or rather lack of a personality) will make all of his actions feel forced. How can I solve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14853" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-10-21T16:10:53.117" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T03:06:49.980" Title="How to make a mimicking character believable" Tags="|style|word-choice|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24993" CreationDate="2016-10-21T16:19:40.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever you decide the reason is for Numbers to take on others' personalities, you have to explain it to the reader in a way which makes sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your character could have Giovannini Mirror Syndrome, exaggerated for&#xA;the &lt;em&gt;House, MD&lt;/em&gt; episode &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Mirror_(House)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Mirror&#xA;Mirror.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; If your story is set in modern times, someone would have&#xA;to diagnose the character (or take a stab at it) to let the audience&#xA;know that the character is doing this for a narrative reason and it's&#xA;not bad writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Numbers could be a sociopath who sort of wants to get along with&#xA;people, but he never really learned how, so all he does is mimic&#xA;whoever is in front of him because &quot;well, that person is doing it, so&#xA;it must be 'correct.' &quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're writing a fantasy, he could be possessed by&#xA;spirits/demons/etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the tack you choose, you must show the reader why Numbers behaves the way he does. The characters around him should notice that he seems to have no core personality, and should point out that it's not normal. They should wonder to each other why he's like this. If any of your story is from his point of view, revealing &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; thoughts and perceptions might also help the reader understand why he's acting this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other characters might try to fix him, depending on the setting and their proclivities. In a fantasy, that might mean &quot;lifting a curse&quot; or &quot;performing an exorcism.&quot; In a modern setting, it would be a hospital conversation. This also opens a window into his behavior, allowing you to justify it for the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-10-21T16:19:40.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24995" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-21T16:36:01.550" Score="1" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am finishing writing my first book (in Slovak, SF) and will be looking for publishers soon. I was considering self-publishing but I don't think I can do more then them in this field. Well, except for the translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have all heard the 3% problem where only this many books are translated to english. So I think about translating my book to english by my own money (i.e. paying someone to translate it - I'm not the one doing this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few reasons: 1) publishers in my country don't try hard to do it yet they keep the rights 2) sometimes they sell the rights but the other side doesn't hurry much and the translation is stuck somewhere in the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if I have an english version of my book - what can I do next? Should I proceed like any other writer writing in english and look for an editor? Have you ever heard about anyone having the same idea? How did it work out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21977" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T19:12:41.780" Title="Self-translating into English" Tags="|self-publishing|translation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24993" CreationDate="2016-10-22T00:49:55.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't make it a person.&#xA;The best example is The Raven who only says &quot;Nevermore.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is very clearly a very intelligent being and yet his lexicon is limited to not only one word but a &quot;kind of a number of nothing&quot; word at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the madness of the human mind...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-10-22T00:49:55.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19396" CreationDate="2016-10-22T18:24:47.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your summary should serve as a brief introduction into and overview of your research. The purpose of that summary is to allow your audience to understand your research, discuss it with you, and give you helpful feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just condensing your dissertation may not help them with their task of helping you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would do is create an interesting narrative. Look at some TED talks to give you an idea what that might entail. Generally, it begins with a very brief (one to a few sentences) summary of what you research, goes on to explain why you research this (i.e. why is this important and to whom), then you explain how you research it, but keep your explanations general and avoid jargon, to that an intelligent non-expert can understand it (imagine that you write for the New York Times), and finally you explain the problems that you currently face and ask your audience for ideas in how to solve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, on every level of your narrative you draw your audience in. First you make your research relevant to them. Then you explain it in a non-boring way, then you ask them to get thinking about how to do it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-10-22T18:24:47.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25000" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-23T05:47:31.060" Score="3" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have planned out my novel, but I also want to adapt it into a screenplay and comic book with a lot of differences. I have been pondering if it should be the other way around, or should I start with an alternative order?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21988" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-06-11T08:37:14.803" LastActivityDate="2018-06-11T08:37:14.803" Title="Which should come first, novel, Comic Book or Screenplay?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2018-06-11T15:22:12.800" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-23T07:59:41.703" Score="5" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reading a (proposed) novel for a friend, and they've used large chunks (as in, full paragraphs verbatim) from online sources within their text, usually sourcing from encyclopedias. The way they've done it is if a certain character is lecturing, or the protagonist is describing the geography or history of an area. It flows well with the rest of their writing style, but so much has been used that I'm quite confident it passes fair use under copyright. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: make them re-write the sections, or simply reference as if it were non-fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21990" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T19:10:34.340" Title="What's the best way to cite non-fiction in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|copyright|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25000" CreationDate="2016-10-23T08:30:29.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start with the one you're most excited about. The one you would have the most fun creating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-10-23T08:30:29.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25000" CreationDate="2016-10-23T10:08:18.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are serious about multi-channel distribution, you should start with the channel that has the most rigoros demands on content and structure, and that is film.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are very few movies made, so competition among scripts is extreme. If you want to get your story to be made into a movie, you better write it that way. That doesn't mean that you actually have to write the script, but that you should work on the outline of your story &lt;em&gt;as if&lt;/em&gt; you were going to write a script. Then write the novel from that outline, be successful with it, and have Hollywood buy the movie rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-10-23T10:08:18.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23916" CreationDate="2016-10-23T12:02:04.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With each number written out in letters, readers will, more likely than not, skip over that part because it's slightly tedious to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the date and\or age in question is of any importance--be it minor or crucial-- to the plot, use quick and simple numbers.&#xA;And good luck with your writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21185" LastActivityDate="2016-10-23T12:02:04.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25007" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-23T12:39:41.057" Score="0" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have wrote an initial draft of a short story.This is my first time. How do I get a review for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21991" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T16:06:45.030" Title="How do I get review for my first short story?" Tags="|short-story|dramatic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25009" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-23T17:30:20.773" Score="0" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that if you want to hire a writer to write an episode there are certain minimums set, like $15k for a 20min sitcom story plus teleplay. But, what if there are multiple writers writing a single episode, what happens then? Do both writers get $15k?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21995" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2020-10-18T19:14:44.483" LastActivityDate="2020-10-18T19:14:44.483" Title="What is the WGA compensation when multiple writers work on the same episode?" Tags="|screenwriting|money|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25009" CreationDate="2016-10-23T21:00:50.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If multiple writers have written a script they are &quot;considered a unit&quot; and get paid as if they were one person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If more than one writer shares the story or teleplay&#xA;  credit, then all of the writers sharing each credit shall be considered&#xA;  a unit and shall participate equally and receive in the aggregate the&#xA;  theatrical exhibition payment applicable thereto, except that in the&#xA;  case of a comedy-variety program, the Guild shall determine the&#xA;  proportions in which such participating writers will share the&#xA;  theatrical exhibition payment, will notify the Company thereof and&#xA;  Company will make payments accordingly.&lt;br&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;em&gt;~ Writers Guild of America 2014 Theatrical and Television Basic Agreement&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-10-23T21:00:50.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25000" CreationDate="2016-10-23T21:12:36.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have &quot;a lot&quot; of differences among the three media, then you have three different stories coming from the same kernel of an idea. Write them in whatever order you like — for pleasure, for money, for ease of completion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-10-23T21:12:36.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25012" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25028" CreationDate="2016-10-23T22:58:21.023" Score="7" ViewCount="1044" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this isn't too general. I wanted to ask for advice on making it unclear which characters will survive to the end. The first arc of the story involves a lot of characters, more than 12, but only a few of them will continue on to the next arc, and only a couple will survive till the end. I can give more details if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What I'm doing, Presently:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not having them die off one by one sequentially, like happens in many horror movies so you expect one or two survivors. Instead, I have a cluster of character deaths during the most dangerous point in the story arc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like there are some tricks and methods you can use for this. For example, if you swap to a character's perspective long before the scene where they die, it gives the audience the impression they will survive. I feel there is more you can do, like giving the character a motivation, a goal, and interesting traits which seem like they'll be important later in the story. If someone is the expert chess player, you feel that'll become important later, then you don't expect the sniper to take them out. If a character likes another character, you expect a romance to play out. In other words, giving the characters value to the story, then killing them despite that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'd like to ask, is about a method I can use as a rule of thumb, to get me started in the right direction, so I can begin to think about it more dynamically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21974" LastActivityDate="2018-05-08T11:53:19.563" Title="Making People Unsure which Characters will Survive" Tags="|plot|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25013" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25014" CreationDate="2016-10-23T23:20:48.090" Score="3" ViewCount="554" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a plotter, meaning that I develop and plan my novels before I ever start writing them. In my case, this is almost something of an extreme, as I develop every part of the novel carefully and then create a very detailed outline scene by scene before writing a word. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally have very little trouble with characters. I develop them like everything else, creating them with all the aspects they need. As I develop them, I get a general sense of who they are, and when I sit down to write, I can visualize them acting out what I have them do. This is all I really need to 'get in my character's head.' It works fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With my most recent work, I have a bit of a problem. I had originally created the premise for this work several years back. A year or two after that, I partially developed it, including the character, and wrote something of a first draft. I then moved to something else, and didn't come back to it until now, several years later. During re-development, a lot of things changed, including several key aspects of the character and who he was. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that when I now sit down to write, the character is coming across as an emotionless cardboard stick figure. It is my theory that this is because I have two versions of him in my head, which are essentially complete opposites in some areas (and thus cancel each other out). I think I know the previous version better and might still see him that way as I write, while trying to write him as the new version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I can fix this problem by getting to know my character better. &lt;strong&gt;What can I do to get to know my character better?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important Note:&lt;/strong&gt; Do not misunderstand this question as 'how can I &lt;em&gt;discover&lt;/em&gt; my character?' I already know who my character is and how he acts. What I need is the ability to write him that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After-answer-notes: I've marked Lauren's reply as the answer, but if it doesn't work for future viewers, the answer from Mike C. Ford is the way to go. Especially that bit about renaming the character. That is pure genius. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-10-24T15:11:48.377" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T21:30:52.393" Title="What Can I Do to Familiarize Myself with my Characters?" Tags="|technique|characters|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25013" CreationDate="2016-10-24T00:06:12.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write a bunch of short pieces with no particular plot to get used to writing him. Drabbles (100 words), double-drabbles (200), flash (1,000 to 2,000). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your stories should just be little windows into him to practice writing what he'll do. Like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He's out of milk. He goes to the store to get milk, and the store is&#xA;closed. (What are his reactions? What does he do next?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's a leak in the bathroom faucet. (That can be an entire set&#xA;piece depending on his reaction.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He decides to get a pet. (What animal? What gender? What breed?&#xA;fixed? name? Does it need a cage, a tank, a litter box, a leash?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He has to sell his vehicle. (What kind of vehicle? Why? is he happy&#xA;about it? Sentimental? Annoyed? Desperate for money? Does he enjoy&#xA;negotiating to get the best of the buyer? Does the buyer get the best&#xA;of him?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of these pieces is to become accustomed to figuring out what Dude 2.0 does rather than your original Dude 1.0 did, so that when you go back to your novel, the 2.0 version is already in your fingertips and you don't have to work so hard to access him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a bunch of little bits will help you to slough off 1.0's bad habits. Making them unconnected, meaningless bits which are not part of your novel will help you get past the concern of screwing up your current work. You don't have to worry about leaving your outline because these are essentially pantsed (discovery) pieces, purely for exercise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T00:06:12.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25012" CreationDate="2016-10-24T03:18:27.627" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does not matter if the reader expects them to die or not, it matters if they care whether they die or not. Suspense is not mathematical in nature, it is moral. It is not about how likely an event is, but how much you care about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every character should have an arc. That is, they should want something that is realistic in the world of your story and they should be acting in a realistic way to get it. Without an arc, they are throwaway characters. They are red shirts whose only function is to demonstrate that the situation is dangerous by dying in Act 1. You know they are going to die as soon as Kirk sends them to investigate something stage left, and you don't care because they have no arc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a character has a arc, however, they do not seem throwaway, even if the author knows they are doomed. If the reader gets invested in them, they are not expecting them to die casually, and they are moved when the death occurs. If the reader cares about a death, it does not matter how surprising or how predictable it is. The reader still cares. The unanticipated death of characters they don't care about means nothing to the reader. The anticipated death of a character they do care about means everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T03:18:27.627" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25013" CreationDate="2016-10-24T04:47:49.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest starting with three very basic questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What does he want.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why does he want it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why can't he get it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't give clear and consistent answers to those questions, you don't have a character yet. In a plot-driven story, it is perhaps easy to lose the handle on these things, especially in revision. Character drives plot, so if you change plot, it is easy to end up with a character who no long performs the task of driving the plot. They may be left with inconsistent motivation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a character driven story, you might have to change the plot to accommodate the logical way in which the character would behave. But if you are writing plot first, then you may need to reshape your character to convincingly drive the plot in the direction you want it to go. So then you are asking, &quot;what kind of character would have a desire and would follow that desire in a way that would move the plot in the direction I want it to go?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conceivably there is no such character -- no believable human motivation would create the plot twist you desire. In that case, plot may have to bend to the truth of human nature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T04:47:49.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25013" CreationDate="2016-10-24T10:14:32.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I massively struggle with the technique of putting my characters into random hypothetical scenarios to see how they act. I know a lot of writers do this, and it's probably very successful, but I am simply unable do it. So I came up with my own technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In thinking about how to get to know characters, I thought about how I would get to know a real person. For me, that would be by asking them questions. It generally turns into an interview type scenario as I think about the questions in my own head, which isn't necessarily how I interact with real people, but considering how many real life interviews I listen to on the radio on my way to and from work I'm comfortable enough with the format to be able to do make the process more efficient than if I were to imagine a conversation at a dinner party, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way I can ask pretty benign questions, which illicit an honest answer (or a lie if the character is so inclined), but then when I've thought of how they would answer I will ask another question &lt;em&gt;based on what they've just said&lt;/em&gt; in order to probe deeper into their personality. This helps me to get through the superficial 'this is who they are' to get to the real 'this is &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they are'. Over time I'll think of new questions I want the answer to, so I'll ask them, and usually I end up answering questions I didn't even know I had when I began the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason you're more familiar with your old character than your new one will likely be the same reason you would be more familiar with a real person in that situation: you've spent more time with them. Of course you'll know the old character better, they have existed longer. You haven't known the newer character very long, so even if you know &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; s/he is, like with a real person it will be impossible to understand them as well so early on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do always have the option of changing the character. I was struggling with something similar to this, but after a name change and gender swap it was much easier to restructure the character and think about them in an entirely different way. Changing something else significant (but ultimately unimportant to the story) might make it easier to anchor that this person is different into your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what you choose to do, it will take some time to overwrite the old character with the new, and whilst the process can be sped up I don't believe there is an overnight fix. Simply spending time with the new character in mind may be all you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T10:14:32.977" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25012" CreationDate="2016-10-24T10:24:56.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As addition to mbakeranalecta's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You need to show characteristics, traits, motives of the characters. Specifics.&lt;/strong&gt; If the reader finds among these that s/he like, adores, looking for, etc. then the character gets in the status of 'liked', the reader is &quot;attached&quot; (!!)! Depending on the setup and the reader, it may cause suspension, but it can also be just a good read. I liked Salvatore's dark elf stories, but I was not thrilled if the protagonists would die or not. I felt sorry for some characters, even for a few specific less meaningful ones, but should the big ones die? In that setting they were facing challenges, there was plenty of chances story-wise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expert chess player to be not taken out by sniper? Why not? It is a reasonable strategic move, should it be important in the story. On the other hand I don't feel a sniper to be a good thriller factor. For cluster deaths I would go with something else, like sneaking cut-throat by night, selectively killing some characters, with undisclosed, but recognizable preference. You can do several cases, where characters wander on potential, but not trivial big risk area. You may also work with &quot;never seen it coming&quot; events. As tools to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should provide more details if you would like to get more exact answer, because I think we can go this far in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21898" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T10:24:56.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23861" CreationDate="2016-10-24T11:57:52.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A table of contents is helpful guide to any reader that wants to backtrack to a certain point in the story, perhaps to remind themselves how a certain event occurred, or see again how a particular character got to be wherever they are, how they look, etc. Not to mention it's also great for when you  want to find and reread your favorite part of a book. &lt;br&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, tables of contents have never been a nuisance and chapter titles have always excited me, ignited my curiosity, charmed me, and even made me laugh. Chapter titles are unique to each author, and I think they add character to the book.&lt;br&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, neither feature in question is a necessity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21185" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T11:57:52.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25012" CreationDate="2016-10-24T12:24:06.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be careful about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you make readers identify with and care about characters, and then kill them off, that is gonna put off many readers. Personally, I avoid authors who do that and never read a book by them again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing is that for the reader to care about your story you need a continuous individual goal, someone who wants to achieve something. If the &amp;quot;carrier&amp;quot; of the goal dies, then the goal disappears and the story dies. The protagonist has to remain constant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Significantly, it is not one of the Hobbits who dies, but Boromir. It is not one of the Hobbits who the reader thinks has died, but Gandalf. The protagonists are torn and battered, but all through your first reading you feel that they will all come to the end in some way or other. Even George R. R. Martin doesn't randomly kill off his protagonists. Daenerys and John Snow are removed, both physically and logically, from the central plot surrounding the houses Stark and Lannister, and while the Starks and Lannisters (may) all die, these two give the plot a sense of continuity and purpose that would otherwise lack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So wanting to completely surprise the reader is, in my opinion, contradictory to your aim of holding the reader's interest and having him finish your book with a sense of satisfaction – so that he will recommend it to others and buy your next book. You can and should surprise the reader with the extreme things that happen to your protagonist and how the protagonist survives them, but the reader must be comfortably secure in their knowledge that the protagonist will survive at least until the last page of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exceptions are &amp;quot;greater&amp;quot; stories that are told through the eyes of multiple characters (these are not protagonists), such as Kim Stanley Robinson's &lt;em&gt;Mars&lt;/em&gt; trilogy, where the real protagonist is (the terraforming of) Mars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In reply to the comments.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get this straight: I am not against the single protagonist dying in the end. I am also not against important secondary characters dying. As Monica puts it in her comments: &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (single!) well-placed death of &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;a&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (single!) major character that means &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;something&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (is essential to the plot). But that is not what the question asks. The question is about apparently &lt;em&gt;randomly&lt;/em&gt; killing off &lt;em&gt;the majority&lt;/em&gt; of the &lt;em&gt;plot-driving characters&lt;/em&gt;. That is a truly bleak and devastating book, and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;I'm not gonna read it.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T04:56:54.180" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24915" CreationDate="2016-10-24T13:01:18.407" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's come at this from a different angle. There is a difference between the ending the reader wants and the ending that they find satisfying. An happy ending can be emotionally empty. A sad ending can be emotionally fulfilling. (There is a reason, a profound reason, why we listen to sad songs. They confirm our perception of the sadness of life, and therefore make our essential loneliness bearable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with the death of Holmes was not that it killed a popular character, but that it did it in a way that was utterly untrue to the characters of both Holmes and Moriarty. It was an unsatisfying death. If Conan-Doyle had given him a satisfying death, a death that made emotional sense, there would have been national mourning, but not national outrage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, give your character an ending that is true. Happy or sad does not matter. What matters is the emotional completeness of the ending. We can weep for joy or for sorrow with equal depth of feeling, but a trivial ending, whether happy or sad, gives no satisfaction.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-10-27T08:53:20.887" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T08:53:20.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25049" CreationDate="2016-10-24T13:48:19.597" Score="1" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;I began work A Long Time Ago(tm) on this particular book and only took it up again about eighteen months ago. Back in 2007, I checked around but didn't see anybody of note with the name of my protagonist, let's call them 'Froc Baegar' (because we can, and because there isn't one immediately back from the search engine), so I used the name I'd come up with. Nearing completion and beginning to look into publishing again, I had a sudden rush of blood to the head and Googled my 'Froc Baegar'. Blow me down, an IMDB listing, a live website showing photos of Froc and containing clips of their voice-over work, their Twitter feed, etc, etc, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm kind of attached to the name and have begun a little tinkering with cover art and icons based on my character. My character's name is used as a plot device, being given their equivalent of a frock coat and, while it's not an essential part of the story, it's a nice link in to something that is, so changing it is not a simple search &amp;amp; replace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anybody advise on how to best deal with this? Obviously, sending around a fictional hit squad is simplest, but produces no real world result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22001" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T00:10:42.090" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T00:10:42.090" Title="There's an actor with my lead character's name - how big a problem is this going to be?" Tags="|fiction|novel|legal|naming|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7132" CreationDate="2016-10-24T14:55:19.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize this was a long time ago, but I would like to clarify a couple things. APA, MLA and Chicago Manual Style have different purposes and uses that contribute to why they are preferred within specific disciplines. APA's in text citations are preferred in technical disciplines because they emphasize the author and the date (Jay, 2016)Those who are knowledgable within the field are aware of the authors' reputations and the date proves that the research is recent, so the author verifies that they are up to date on the field. The page numbers are less important because frequently what is being referenced are ideas rather than quotations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MLA has in text citations, not footnotes. They tell you the author and page number. (Jay, 293) or after a repetition of text cited (294). This is because they are the citation style of choice for the humanities in academic papers and the most important aspects are the author and the page number, so a researcher who is trying to follow the historical thread of the research can easily find the reference. Primary source material is considered key and therefore date is inconsequential to relevance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chicago Manual Style is a separate citation style from MLA and uses--most commonly--endnotes. Chicago Manual Style is a publishing style for the humanities. It allows the reader to consume the text uninterrupted but provides a means for including a more in depth citation style all around. All the information contained within the bibliography plus the specific page number is used within the initial endnote for a text and then the author name and page number, and finally an IBID, if the second citation is on the same page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22002" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T14:55:19.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25022" CreationDate="2016-10-24T15:56:31.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know how attached I can get to my character names, especially since it usually takes me weeks to come up with them (no exaggeration), but as a reader I also know how little importance character names hold for me, and I would have enjoyed the &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; equally if it wasn't Frodo and Sam but Fred and Bob getting the Ring to Mount Doom, so what I recommend is being professional about this and chosing another name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless, that is, if it is a very common name, and googling it turns up a variety of people, not just this one actor. If you do an image search and all you see is Tom Cruise, then do not use the name Tom Cruise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T15:56:31.657" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25022" CreationDate="2016-10-24T16:06:46.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it is very hard to come up with a unique name. I think this would partly depend on how well known this person is. You wouldn't want to use &quot;Tom Cruise&quot; or someone like that, as @what said. Someone who is lesser known (at least for now) might be okay. Don't forget that standard disclaimer about &quot;work of fiction, not based on anyone, yadda yadda.&quot; That may be sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T16:06:46.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25022" CreationDate="2016-10-24T16:13:58.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are names and there are brands. Lots of people have the same name and it is not reasonable to expect that no fictional character to have a name that no one else does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brands, on the other hand, enjoy a degree of uniqueness protection that ordinary names do not. Some actor's names are not only names, they are brands. But merely having a listing on IMDB does not make your name a brand name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protection of brand names is by no means absolute. It only covers specific protection against commercial confusion. And the fair use doctrine allows a fair amount of leeway for literary use. IANAL but is seems unlikely that the usage you propose is in any way conflicting with anyone's commercial rights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, people, and publishers, tend to give such issues a wide berth because they don't want the hassle of defending a nuisance suit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T16:13:58.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24704" CreationDate="2016-10-24T16:41:27.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What a great question. I have been burned many a time by this. This is especially a problem with small businesses and clients who have jobs (lasting less than a week) which they are looking to hire for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that employers are trying to exploit job applicants. They just don't realize how time-consuming these stupid writing tests/sample requirements are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The hidden problem is that job seekers are under pressure to hide the amount of work they actually have to do on something). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once had to demonstrate my competence at technical editing by editing about 5-10 pages of hugely complicated text. It easily took 4-5 hours, then I had to write a Scope of Work document (2 or 3 hours). Then I ended up not getting the contract (probably because I did not lowball my bid but gave an &quot;honest&quot; estimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked at that technical document 2 or 3 times to make sure it was great, and the scope of work -- which I hadn't really done before, needed to be done. (I recommend having a Scope of Work template ready at any time). Even if you have a template ready, it can easily take 1 hour to plug in what you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most recently I had to take a stupid grammar test. It was only an hour long, but a lot of the answers were iffy and required explanation. (The manager just took it from a website and didn't realize that sometimes there is no one right answer and that most people with English degrees already can pass these tests with flying colors). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a rule of thumb: the time to write the writing sample and do the scope of work should not be more than 20% of the total length of the contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me say that a lot of job applications involve 3-5 hours of work each, so I guess I can live with burning 3 hours of my time on writing tests, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T16:41:27.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25012" CreationDate="2016-10-24T17:04:22.720" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What I'd like to ask, is about a method I can use as a rule of thumb, to get me started in the right direction, so I can begin to think about it more dynamically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as you develop a rule of thumb &lt;em&gt;method&lt;/em&gt; of grooming your characters for execution, your readers will see through it instantly. Give them some credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The unexpected death must be unexpected, whether the character you are about to kill is a likable goofball, annoying whiner, or a treacherous coward, and the only way to ensure the desired effect is through developing each one of them as if they are going to survive, and that survival is &lt;em&gt;believable&lt;/em&gt;. How many stories have a really bad guy, who was doing really bad things all his really bad life, and who gets magically transformed by some emotionally charged event and sacrifices his life for the sake of others, he now cares deeply about? Guess what--from the very moment of his transformation it is clear as day that he is not going to survive, because he is already wanted dead of alive in all states of the Trans-Galactic Republic, and there is no possibility of happy ending for him, no matter how much he is transformed by the unconditional love of the scaled green puppy he saved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this will help--not as a method, but just a technique--keep an alternative storyline in your head where your living on borrowed time character survives (I wrote that and then saw your comment where you mention this yourself, so you know what I am talking about). It does not have to be detailed and developed, only roughly sketched, but it should be acceptably realistic. Even the transformed bad guy, already sentenced to death, might find a dusty magic carpet in some corner, which can take him away from the imminent prosecution into a non-extradition paradise on the edge of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are employing multiple POVs, make sure that your walking dead have an equal time under a spotlight with the few lucky ones who you decided to keep alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a team heist story, make sure that all of the team members are equally important for the success of the plan...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T17:04:22.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25362" CreationDate="2016-10-24T17:56:48.417" Score="4" ViewCount="513" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am unofficially &quot;fixing up&quot; a video game through modding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The game's Big Reveal is that the game world is actually a simulation, that the characters and population are all AIs, and that the villain is the programmer who created them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my problem: because the player is &lt;em&gt;playing a game&lt;/em&gt;, which is then revealed to be... a game, this Big Reveal might be taken as a fourth-wall breaking gimmick. That it might be seen as meta-humor, going &quot;Oh, this was a computer game all along, &lt;em&gt;of course&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's not what I'm aiming for. There's a clear, coherent plot. As long as the player takes the Big Reveal seriously, he'll understand the Big Reveal - not as a joke, but as something the game has been building up to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I keep that from happening?&lt;/strong&gt; How do I cue the player to take the Big Reveal seriously, and not just dismiss it as a gimmick?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22004" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-07T09:18:03.327" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T14:18:54.427" Title="How do I prevent a structure-breaking character from being seen as a fourth-wall-breaking joke?" Tags="|technique|dialogue|videogame|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25013" CreationDate="2016-10-24T21:30:52.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can only write what you know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the writers who are good at characterization are men and women with more than average experience of life. They have lived many intense encounters with many different kinds of people. Think of the life Hemingway led. A good writer of characters is like a gourmet of people, enjoying meeting every kind of person and actively seeking that experience out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not as full of life as Hemingway. Yet when I write, all the characters in my stories are people that I know. Not individual people, necessarily, but abstractions. Like my idea of a table is the result of all the tables in my life, my idea of a certain character in my story is the composite of all the people I encountered that gave me a similar experience of themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when I write, I write from that experience. I don't have to do exercises when I try to imagine what a certain character would do, just as I don't have to do an exercise when I try to describe a table to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, there is always something of me in every person that I write, and my characters are never truly independent people, but I don't want to avoid that, because that is what makes it my book and what makes reading a book by me an encounter with me for you. If I depicted the world truthfully, there would be no reason for anyone to read my novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T21:30:52.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25032" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-24T21:40:50.860" Score="2" ViewCount="226" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember the end of the Godfather, where they spliced all the different assassinations with the christening? Or any film with good cutting, where they swap between different characters and what they're doing? That can work great with books, too. But I want some advice on how to do it properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have several characters going through the same event, but from different places and perspectives. The question is the best way of writing the experience and presenting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I write out each character's story in full, one at a time? I could then look at the six completed stories and decide how to intermix them and work out the pacing. Of course this has the issue that if I write the stories to stand on their own, it might be hard to fit them into the pacing of the overall structure. I can rework stuff, but it may end up a lot of work, and some things may not click.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative is to plan it out more basically. Draw out a basic outline of each character's story, try to work out how the cuts will mix and when it swaps where, then after working out a plan you try to implement it and change it as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final method is just to go full discovery writer, swap by instinct when you think you need a lull in the action by swapping to the character who is trying to hotwire a car, to build tension as the reader wonders what is happening to the one who has been kidnapped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like advice on what you think may be the best way to splice multiple stories/perspectives together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bonus question, any advice on changing heads/perspectives in third person limited (but not limited to one protagonist) is also welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21974" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T21:58:02.533" Title="Splicing/Mixing Scenes" Tags="|plot|characters|editing|perspective|pacing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25032" CreationDate="2016-10-24T21:58:02.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A movie can establish a scene very quickly based on visuals. Once a scene has been established visually, you can cut back and forth between scenes very quickly because the viewer instantly recognizes the key visual elements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A novel builds up a scene one word at a time. When you change scenes you have to build up the next scene one word at a time. Once a scene has been established verbally, you can switch back and forth by recalling elements of the scene, but one word at a time. This is inherently a much slower process. I don't think it is possible to make such quick cuts work in a novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T21:58:02.533" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25034" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-25T02:48:58.297" Score="1" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written some short stories that don't seem to fit into any category I can find.  They feature God's relationship with various people, but they are not typical &quot;Christian&quot; writing.  For example, one of the stories is titled &quot;And God Said 'Watch This'&quot;.  One of them has aliens in it.  Not sure where to look for a market for these.  Would appreciate any advice.  Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22010" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T20:26:24.100" Title="Where can I find a market for &quot;offbeat&quot; short stories about God's relationship with us?" Tags="|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25012" CreationDate="2016-10-25T13:47:56.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It kind of sounds like you have a group of characters that you want to remove their &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;plot armor&lt;/a&gt;. If the reader realizes that anyone can die, then they will be unsure who could be next, as any of the main characters could go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people have named George RR Martin as someone who overdoes deaths, however it is unarguable that no one in the A Song Of Ice And Fire universe has any plot armor whatsoever, as central characters can drop at anytime. However, it can be noted that a lot of the characters appear to be dead, but end up returning to the story, meaning that death now is not even final. The mantle of permanent death has been removed, so that characters can potentially return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A franchise that &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; overused this is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So many main characters have come back from feigned death or the brink of death that it's now difficult to believe that even if a character does die, they won't just return at some point, robbing all of the deaths of their emotional impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the trick is to balance between maintaining the emotional impact of deaths that do occur, against ensuring that the characters who will actually make it to the end are not necessarily guaranteed to make it in the reader's mind. It is definitely a tightrope walk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think in order to subvert expectations, you need to not &lt;em&gt;allow&lt;/em&gt; any expectations. If there is a Chosen One who needs to make it to the end of the story along with a group of allies, then everyone knows that whilst any of the friends can die, the Chosen One can't. So making sure your group is all equal in their goal and their importance to it would be a good way to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is similar to if the POV character stays the same throughout the story; they cannot die because the story will end. It seems like you're doing the POV of a number of characters though, so that should help for the reader to be unaware who can and cannot be killed within the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, readers will know that as soon as &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Retirony&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;someone pulls out a picture of their family&lt;/a&gt;, they are doomed. So if you want to establish the backstory and unique role for a character who is going to die in order to make their death more meaningful (instead of them just being disposable) then you will need to have all of the characters get an established backstory and unique role. This means no one stands out as being the fatefully tragic character, as they all have things to lose, so have the whole group pass around pictures of their own families.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, make sure not to set people up for death. It needs to be believable that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of your characters &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; make it to the end, even if by the end few of them do. Readers will not want to emotionally invest in any character if they think there is only a 20% chance that they will live. Everyone needs to reach the end for their own reasons, the tragedy comes from when they really should have survived but didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T13:47:56.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25007" CreationDate="2016-10-25T16:06:45.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to assume you are looking for someone to critique your story, since you say this is your initial draft. I have two suggestions. Look in your area for a writing critique group (meetup.com may list one in your area or check your library bulletin board). The other is to check out scribophile.com -- you will need to critique other people's work first, to earn karma, and then you can post your work for feedback. You will actually learn from  trying to critique other writing, so this is actually a benefit. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T16:06:45.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25012" CreationDate="2016-10-25T17:49:52.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simplest way is to kill your main character in the first page. You can then play with time in order to make him your main character and then have people discover only at the end that the story isn't written from your protagonist's POV but that of a close be very much subordinate figure. Think of King Leonidas of Sparta and the 300...even he knows he's going to die. But it's not until after all that that we discover the entire story is being narrated in the third person by someone who was with the King and not by King Leonidas himself. This is a very effective method of story telling actually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T17:49:52.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25034" CreationDate="2016-10-25T18:18:30.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Novels are about people. This is true for Christian novelists such as Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Walker Percy, or Flannery O'Connor, just as much as it is true for novelists of no faith. When a novel treats the relationship between God and a character, they do it from the point of view of the character, not God. They examine the human experience of believing in God and in believing that they have encountered God. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a theme rather than a genre. You can explore this in any genre of fiction. Fiction that does not fit a genre is usually classified as general or literary for commercial purposes. Of course, certain themes appeal to some readers more than others, but the limits are not creedal. All of the authors I named above are Roman Catholic, but their appeal is far wider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, works that ascribe thoughts, actions, or feelings to God, that look at the relationship with a character from God's POV, are works of theology. You can write a work of theology in fictional form, just as you can write a so-called &quot;business novels&quot;, which is business writing in fictional form. Such works appeal to people interested in theology. Most markets for theology are creedally based, though there is certainly a market today for works that are &quot;spiritual, not religious&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are works of humor, satire, or mockery that attempt to make fun of religious belief. The market for these is pretty broad today. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not clear from your question which of these categories your stories fall into, but I think these cover the possibilities, at least in broad strokes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T18:18:30.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13077" CreationDate="2016-10-25T18:40:05.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize this is an old question, but thought I'd mention a couple of things. Note that I am speaking of copyright in the United States and I am not a lawyer. Going through the process to formally copyright a short story is not going to be worth the time, effort, and money (assuming you would want to copyright each story you are writing). The process is designed more for book length work, IMO. Also, if you send a short story out to a magazine, in hopes that they will publish it, and you tell them it is copyrighted, I believe that is seen as a sign of being an amateur. As @babou said, your work is automatically copyrighted when you write it. The danger of someone taking your work and trying to pawn it off as their own is slim. You don't need to protect yourself from the editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to insure your work -- I'm assuming you mean before sending it out in the mail. Just don't send your only copy. These days, presumably, you are writing on a computer of some sort and have digital copies of your work. Also, many journals are accepting submissions via email or online submission manager, so you don't have the concern of the post office losing your work. Your mileage may vary, and this may not apply, depending on geography, market you are sending to, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T18:40:05.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25001" CreationDate="2016-10-25T19:10:34.340" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;They should rewrite it. If the character is supposed to be smart enough to be lecturing on the subject, the words should sound like the character anyway and not like Wikipedia or wherever. Also, if they are citing in big enough chunks, it will likely get boring for the reader. Much better to have the character's audience interrupt with a question or something. There is opportunity to show a lot about the characters in a situation like that. Is the character that's giving the information pompous about it? Are they uncomfortable with being the center of attention and running through the info as quickly as possible? Suggest your writer friend think about the scene as a whole and not just a way to get information across. And that will all avoid copyright/plagiarism concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T19:10:34.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25034" CreationDate="2016-10-25T21:29:00.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speculative stories about God, or gods, can show up in the realm of speculative fiction, science fiction, or fantasy.  Consider the following examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some of the stories in &lt;em&gt;Wandering Stars&lt;/em&gt;, ed. Jack Dann&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Larry Niven's version of the &lt;em&gt;Inferno&lt;/em&gt; trilogy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark Twain's &lt;em&gt;Letters from the Earth&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Isaac Asimov's &quot;The Last Question&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Philip Pullman's &lt;em&gt;His Dark Materials&lt;/em&gt; trilogy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you consider gods in general -- others from Earth's history or ones made up by their authors -- there are many, many more, ranging from the light-hearted (e.g. Terry Pratchett) to the more serious/ponderous (e.g. Jo Walton's &lt;em&gt;The Just City&lt;/em&gt;), with lots in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T21:29:00.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25044" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25056" CreationDate="2016-10-25T23:40:20.410" Score="8" ViewCount="2219" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a main character.  I am attempting to disguise this fact, but it is tricky. Out of nowhere, the character rises up as a successful military leader. The events that lead up to that are plausible enough, but the focus on that military victory and the character leading it will be likely to brand them the main character. With that comes the expected safety and attachment of plot armour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question being how to prevent the plot armour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Methods:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One idea is to de-emphasize their main character status, have the story told mainly from other characters' PoVs after the battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way is to set up a secondary main character (or more than one,) give the impression the present one can be replaced (as has happened before.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could just give the impression this is the kind of story where the main character can die, whether at the end or sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final method would be to have the main character isolated from other character deaths. You don't put them in the thick of it where everyone else is dying so it stands out that the main character is still alive, but have them in safe places where death is rare. This makes sense for a military general character. When death and danger does suddenly come to them, you can make it feel much more dangerous (where the emphasis isn't on being the big damn hero, but on surviving.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If others could give advice on this, I would be much obliged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21974" LastEditorUserId="40124" LastEditDate="2022-06-27T12:29:40.067" LastActivityDate="2022-06-27T12:29:40.067" Title="Stripping the main character's plot armour" Tags="|technique|plot|characters|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25029" CreationDate="2016-10-26T01:08:25.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would really like to provide an answer to this, but, like the others, I'm not clear on what it is that you are asking for. And I know that this isn't the usual structure for an answer, but I think this needs to be said to help clear some confusion (and it's far too long to fit into a comment) - and once it's clearer I'll happily delete this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can you please clarify what it is you are asking&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it stands, my understanding of it is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are working on scripting/editing a video game&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The main scope of it is that it's a video game about a video game&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, where the confusion starts is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do the protagonists (Characters) know that they are a part of a game/programmed reality (ala Morpheus in the &lt;em&gt;Matrix&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are they self-aware enough to identify themselves as PC's and recognize others as NPC's - hence giving the ability to break the fourth wall (i.e. The Bard in &lt;em&gt;The Bard's Tale&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the Secret that you mention? Context would help greatly&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is the programmer evil? If your definition of evil revolves around a programmer creating a game/setting/happenings - then every GM ever is also evil.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, my two biggest issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now the problem with this is a large chunk of the story is not meant to be taken incredibly serious. It's meant to be funny and so the character's presence is generally written off as a fourth wall joke. In fact to make it even more confusing, the character is even supposed to be, in essence, the same person who originally made the game, but just a different version of them that has no relevancy to real life other than having the same name. In essence, the 4th wall is meant to serve as a red herring so people don't realize the truth until it is revealed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's not to be taken seriously, and isn't considered important - why is it being included? Sometimes, Less really is More - especially in video games. If it's designed for enjoyment, not a lot of people care about the backstory too much - they're more interested in exploring the game itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And secondly, you keep talking about wanting to break the 4th wall, but then say that the 4th wall is a red herring and doesn't really exist/matter. Either you are struggling with the idea of what the 4th wall is, or don't fully understand what a red herring is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deadpool, LICD, Ctrl Alt Del, The Bard's Tale, most Lucas Arts games (i.e. Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle etc), even Skyrim (&quot;Let me guess, someone stole your sweetroll?&quot;) toy with the 4th wall...it might be worth going back and looking at some of these to give you a starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T01:08:25.707" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25044" CreationDate="2016-10-26T04:35:59.653" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with plot armor is not false safety, but false peril. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The central peril of a story is always moral, not physical. It is about what a character wants and what they are willing to do to get it. Physical danger may test the character's resolve or complicate their plans, but the real heart of the story is what choices they make in the face of those dangers and in pursuit of their goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the only peril driving the story is whether the central character will or will not die, the story is a weak one with no moral core. Concealing who the main character is to make their death seem more possible does not in any way change this. The reader's anxiety about the possible death of a character depends on how much they care about them and how much the root for them (or how much they hope for their salvation). But all that goes with being the main character. Every character should have an arc, but the main character is the character whose arc is the main arc of the story. If there is no arc, they are a red shirt and their death does not matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Actually, for from being more unexpected, the death of a red shirt is incredibly obvious. You could set your watch by it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a good story, even a suspense story, the reader's pleasure does not depend on surprise. We can read good suspense stories multiple times and they are just as suspenseful each time. A good author can have the reader's heart in their throat for a character even on the tenth reading. It is always about engagement, never surprise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If plot armor is a concern, therefore, it is because the engagement is not sufficient. If the engagement is not sufficient, chances are it is because the reader is not engaged by the moral peril of the story. The fix is not obfuscation. The fix is to find the character's true peril. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-10-26T04:48:09.880" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T04:48:09.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25044" CreationDate="2016-10-26T09:50:59.380" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of this question in context of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/25012/making-people-unsure-which-characters-will-survive&quot;&gt;your other question&lt;/a&gt;. As you know from my answer there and my comments above, I am a sucker for identifying with a protagonist and a happy end for him. Nevertheless a story of a group of people who die off one by one, with one or a few survivors reaching the end of the tale, could be satisfying to me. To achieve that, you could try one or all of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; identify with whichever characters appear to be central to the narrative. Readers expect the &quot;lives&quot; of these central characters to be meaningful. If they just randomly die, that is like a slap in the face of the reader's trust. Nevertheless that is life. It is realistic that people die randomly. There is no divine plan to my grandmother's death. What makes it bearable is my perception that her live has been meaningful &lt;em&gt;for her&lt;/em&gt; and that I remember her and learn something from her death. My grandmother's death is something that makes me grow as a person. It also makes me love and appreciate the other people in my life more: my son, my girl friend, and in fact everyone I meet or just pass by on the street. The death of my grandmother makes life valuable and meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you have a group of central characters, and your readers do not know which one of them will survive, what makes their deaths a &quot;positive&quot; experience for the readers is if the narrator or the other characters reflect on that &quot;person&quot;'s life, their achievements and failures, and if that reflection causes them to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a fighter could have an opponent whom he manages to kill. But instead of simply turning the narration to other matters, the fighter could have a moment (or many moments spread over the following narration) where he thinks about the opponent, how he had a life and a goal that were just as valid as his own, and what it means for his life and goals that he thinks he can just reach them by killing that person. And he might come to the point where his goals no longer appear valid to him. In that story, the opponent was not just an obstacle that looses all relevance once it is overcome, but a &lt;em&gt;person&lt;/em&gt;. Similarly, the fighter is not just a plot device, but a person with feelings and emotions whom killing someone does not leave unaffected. Or if it does, then &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; is that person's growth and development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a number of characters, who all go through the same story in one way or another, they are probably in some kind of relationship with each other. They may be a team, a family, friends, enemies, people on the same bus, whatever, but their relationship through being part of the same events will make them care about each other. This care can be negative (glad he's gone) or positive (sad he's gone) or without direction (shocked at the death), but that does not matter for the death having an influence on them and changing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you have people on a bus, who don't know each other at the outset, and they are caught up in some plot and they start to die off, the people begin to care about each other. A common enemy may bring them together; an enemy hidden among them may cause them to turn upon each other. In any way, they will &lt;em&gt;relate&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you have a tale of a group of people, and at the outset you want it to be not clear who is the final protagonist, and you want most of the people to die during the story, then begin the story without a protagonist. Give equal weight to all characters. And when they begin to die, start to have the deaths change the relationships among the people, and the people themselves. And slowly, over the course of the narrative, bring certain survivors more to the front of the narrative, show how their outset-personality and their changes helped or hindered them in their attempts to get through whatever is going on. And &lt;em&gt;integrate&lt;/em&gt; the dying somehow into the surviving. Make what the dead did meaningful to those that survived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.217" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T10:10:19.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25048" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25051" CreationDate="2016-10-26T10:48:29.503" Score="1" ViewCount="927" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since starting to learn a little about writing I've noticed that I'm more critical when I read things.  This has led to a conundrum I've had recently and I'm not sure if it's inevitable or the result of 'bad' story telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that when reading a novel I often times identify and invest in the 'wrong' character.  By that I mean I'm more interested in one of the side characters than the protagonist and this leads me to not really enjoying the story.  Not because the story is necessarily bad but it's become not the story I wanted to unfold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this is because I'm now reading things in a different way and asking myself questions about character motivation and development during reading.  I'm not sure if this is because my imagination is starting to work on developing a story other than the one the author intended.  I'm not sure if this is happening because the author is failing to tell an engaging enough story in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best example I can quote is from a fantasy novel in which the young hero is being mentored in his early years by a veteran mercenary and a scholar.  The idea is that the hero&amp;apos;s formative years are full of lessons in both warfare and politics.  My problem is that both of these characters seem to have more depth to them than the hero.  I care more about them than the hero.  I'm interested more in their story than the one that is being told in the book about the hero.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've not finished the book yet.  I am at the part where for, reasons, both of these mentor characters are no longer in it.  I suspect that the hero will now be placed in a position to make decisions and face choices based on their teachings but I'm not sure I can be bothered to find out.  I don't really care that much what happens to the hero now those interesting characters are gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To turn this into a question.  Is this a fault of some sort in the story or the writing of the author?  Is it usual that some of a books audience will become more invested in a side character than the main one simply because of personal bias?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  I wanted to add something after selecting my answer.  That is because the one I selected most directly applies to me however I would urge anyone reading this now to look at all the answers as they do contain interesting information.  I don't really feel like selecting just one does the others justice.  I'm now of the opinion that there will always be a few people that identify with the 'wrong' character from the point of view of the author.  It's only a real problem if most people do that.  Even then the author may be more interested in telling the story they want to tell rather than making the work more popular.  That decision is theirs alone to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21127" LastEditorUserId="14898" LastEditDate="2016-12-28T10:31:39.687" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T10:31:39.687" Title="Investing in the 'wrong' character, is it a problem with the story?" Tags="|fiction|plot|characters|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25022" CreationDate="2016-10-26T12:48:22.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you possibly give your character a middle initial or name that would help push an internet search in the right direction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As has been mentioned there are probably a lot of well known names to stay away from but these days many, many people will have an internet footprint so avoiding them all is going to become more and more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21127" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T12:48:22.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25048" CreationDate="2016-10-26T12:48:26.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sci Fi and Fantasy are perhaps the genres least concerned with character. Worldbuilding (so called) is often the central obsession of authors in those genres. (Historical can just the same sometimes, with many authors, and readers, obsessed about getting the buttons right.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Characters in these genres often exist merely to animate the world that has been built. It is little to be wondered that they sometimes fall flat and loose interest. That incidental characters will sometimes turn out to be more interesting is hardly surprising. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if a story is not driven by a compelling character arc, but by the desire to explore all the features of the world that has been built (to have the character spring all the traps the author has planted or use all the gadgets they have dreamed up), then, again, interest is likely to flag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the curiosities of human beings is that real story never grows stale no matter how often we hear it. But all the gee gaws of world building will grow stale, and even the most original and inventive world building will cease to move us after a while. The human moral arc, as familiar as it might be, is the one thing that holds our attention indefinitely, presumably because we are inexorably caught up in it in or real lives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that you can't have character-driven sci-fi or fantasy with a strong moral arc. You certainly can. But these genres are often dominated by other concerns. It may be that you have simply sucked all the juice out of the speculative part of speculative fiction. It certainly happened to me over time. It may be time to try more story-focused/character-focused genres. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that readers often grow out of sci fi and fantasy as they age, whereas devoted readers of romance or mystery seem to keep reading them for life. This is not to say that that there is anything wrong with the pleasures the sci fi and fantasy give, simply that they seem to be exhaustible pleasures for many readers, whereas more character-driven genres seem to give less exhaustible pleasure. This mirrors our experience with food, where, in most people, certain tastes are diminished over time, while others persist for life.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T12:48:26.613" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25048" CreationDate="2016-10-26T12:48:45.677" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're seeing this problem in Hero's Journey stories, which have a pretty standard arc (Hero leaves Home, gains Mentors and Helpers, faces Challenge at Threshold, returns Home with Knowledge) and you aren't as interested in the Hero as you are in the Mentor characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you find this is happening in every Hero's Journey you read, from&#xA;the Belgariad to Star Wars, then it just means that you don't enjoy that&#xA;kind of story. Nothing wrong with knowing your tastes. I don't care for romantic comedies and &quot;overgrown adolescent/poorly launched twenty-something acts stupidly&quot; stories. That doesn't mean they're bad, just that they are for others to enjoy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you find this in every book you read no matter what the structure&#xA;&amp;mdash; you prefer Lestrade to Holmes and Watson, the comic-relief&#xA;sidekick to the romantic heroine, Cindy Lou Who over the Grinch &amp;mdash; then it sounds like you're thinking too hard about the&#xA;creation of the story and not allowing yourself to suspend your&#xA;disbelief enough to enjoy the tale.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you find this in, how shall I say this, books geared to the&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Twilight&lt;/em&gt; audience, then you're just reading a lot of lousy books. ;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For most books and most readers, the protagonist is the person in whom they are most interested. It's not typical for book readers to say &quot;I wish these books were about Sirius and Remus rather than Harry.&quot; (the typical response to that is &quot;hie thee to AO3 and start reading/writing fanfic.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I would say this is not necessarily the case with most &lt;em&gt;movies&lt;/em&gt;, by the way; I often read in movie reviews &amp;mdash; particularly of romcoms, particularly of female sidekick characters in any genre &amp;mdash; that the side characters and the people who play them are more interesting/better actors than the lead characters.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-10-26T13:19:02.613" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T13:19:02.613" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25053" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-26T14:51:18.057" Score="1" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to understand the workflow in regard to professional writing career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is regarding writing detailed articles (non-fiction) on various subjects that also involve HTML tables (for tabular data), charts/diagrams, photos something like Wikipedia-style articles but not for Wikipedia. What tools do professional writers use for this purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to make the process of articles written by the author easy to  save in a database and easily published online (HTML format). The nature of the article involves extensive research and collection of information to compose an article. So this also involves maintaining some sort of journal log.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22027" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-08-09T12:27:34.597" LastActivityDate="2023-08-09T12:27:34.597" Title="What tools and software do writers use to write Wikipedia-style articles for website content?" Tags="|technical-writing|software|tools|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24976" CreationDate="2016-10-26T15:06:57.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, there is a much better SE for this kind of question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question needs to be unpacked. First, how can an epub file have two levels in the TOC? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, how can a Kindle file (which is loosely based on the epub standard and uses a tool to convert files from epub format) render this TOC as intended. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some places to get you started: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://kindlegen.s3.amazonaws.com/AmazonKindlePublishingGuidelines.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://kindlegen.s3.amazonaws.com/AmazonKindlePublishingGuidelines.pdf&lt;/a&gt; You could also try the KDP forums on amazon.com &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/community/forum.jspa?forumID=13&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://kdp.amazon.com/community/forum.jspa?forumID=13&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paul Salvette's formatting guide (The eBook Design and Development Guide) would probably have the answer to this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Matt Garrish's book EPUB 3 Best Practices definitely has an answer, but I remember it was extremely complicated. Oreilly ebooks all use these scripts to have have these expandable/collapsible TOC functionality which use scripting to hide and reveal entries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting a two level TOC is not impossible to do, but you have to test it on various devices to make it work (keeping in mind that some displays are smaller or have less support for the standard). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dumber solutions might work too. For example, at the top of each chapter you could put TOCs for just that chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that human readers can't process more than 10-15 entries in a TOC very easily. (The oreilly books use about 100-150 entries, but they use expandable/collapsible menus).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T13:00:05.683" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T15:06:57.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8345" CreationDate="2016-10-26T16:50:31.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came here from a search looking for panic facial expressions. Want to make sure I do it right. Anyway, I think that the OP needs to tweek the first couple of paragraphs or get rid if them all, jump right into were he feels that something is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know how you can sometimes wake up in a tizzy sure that something is so very wrong? Have his heart race from the moment he wakes up, have him jump out if bed as if  someone yanked him out if his dreams and dumped him into this feeling of panic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's wrong for anyone to rewite that for you as without meaning to they'll put their own writing style into it, you have to do this in your own style and voice. Hope you read this, I know it's an old toppic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18752" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T16:50:31.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25044" CreationDate="2016-10-26T18:02:47.003" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you want the readers to genuinely believe the character is in jeopardy, including potentially lethal jeopardy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To accomplish this, you need a story where people can die, so I'd say you need to kill off at least one other character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to establish that suitably bad things can happen to this particular character and perhaps even things that happen and can potentially get worse (e.g. an arm is injured during a swordfight and it looks to be potentially infected, putting the entire arm or their life at risk).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You essentially need to show the reader that people can die and bad things can happen to characters, and you need to point a 'gun' at this character in a way that's potentially less dangerous than a 'gun' that's already gone off pointed at another character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, you'll need to do your best to ensure that the average reader has no idea that you're giving a particular character special treatment in terms of focused attention in the story - if a reader catches on that this is a 'pet character', the threat is empty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you should also call into question the reasons you might be wanting this scenario in the first place - is it for shock value? Is there a better way of achieving this effect? Does your story require this twist? etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21862" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T18:02:47.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25053" CreationDate="2016-10-26T20:16:09.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wordpress is probably a good solution. I just wanted to add that saving tabular data in a well known spreadsheet program is helpful for archiving. If you want to make tables on wordpress, try the Tablepress module; it's great. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My workflow may be strange, but I use Dropbox for version control, keep data and graphics in separate folders,  edit stuff in a simple text editor (Sublime Text, Notetab Pro, etc) and then transfer it to a rich text editor when I'm ready to finalize the presentation. For writing and collaboration, you don't necessarily need a database to store your data, but it's crucial to use a cloud solution like Dropbox -- which is very collaboration friendly. (A tip though -- free versions of cloud apps like dropbox have limited version control -- for Dropbox free, you only have versions from  30 days back). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T20:16:09.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25034" CreationDate="2016-10-26T20:26:24.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look in the collections of stories you have on your shelves. Usually in the back of the book is a list of places where the stories have been previously published. If you're reading the kinds of stories you write, then you now have a list of journals that publish stories like yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It's irrelevant whether or not they're about god. And, by the way, &quot;And God Said, 'Watch This'&quot; is a great title.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T20:26:24.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16519" CreationDate="2016-10-27T07:24:37.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is just a bibliographic reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edgar Allan Poe, &lt;em&gt;The Philosophy of Composition&lt;/em&gt;. (2011, September 3). In Wikisource . Retrieved 07:20, October 27, 2016, from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=The_Philosophy_of_Composition&amp;amp;oldid=3351218&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=The_Philosophy_of_Composition&amp;amp;oldid=3351218&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By explaining how he conceived his story poem &quot;The Raven&quot;, Poe makes the point on starting from the end (and from the emotional effect he desires the reader to receive). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here then the poem may be said to have had its beginning - at the end where all works of art should begin - for it was here at this point of my preconsiderations that I first put pen to paper in the composition of the stanza:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T07:24:37.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25048" CreationDate="2016-10-27T10:56:51.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you experience is the reason why I write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe sometimes it is bad writing that makes a book less satisfying than it could be, but very likely most often the perceived lack is that the book is not &quot;about yourself&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are, I guess, a person with a strong need to explore and experience their own mind. Books are for you a means to find yourself in a foreign landscape, in alien artifacts or magic creatures, in the lives of strangers. And when you feel that a book takes a wrong turn, then not because the story demanded otherwise, but because &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; would have taken the other path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading such books is both frustrating and inspiring to me. Frustrating, because I am rarely satisfied with my reading and unable to find a &quot;good&quot; book; inspiring, because it makes me want to write the &quot;right&quot; story myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't worry about wether those books are badly written or just not &quot;for you&quot;, and instead &lt;strong&gt;use them to drive your own writing&lt;/strong&gt;, by giving you motivation and ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes there are books that are just perfect. Often, they are not very well known and were not a big success with the general audience. One example is &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short,_Sharp_Shock&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Short, Sharp Shock&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Kim Stanley Robinson. In his body of work of hard science fiction, this magical realist fantasy is the only exception. It is out of print, probably because it has never sold well, and it has received very &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/092948018X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mixed reviews&lt;/a&gt;. Robinson is an author I love well, but this book is one of a handfull of all the books I have read that I might have written myself, it feels so much myself. Another example is &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_Place&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Beginning Place&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Ursula K. Le Guin. Again it is out of print and almost forgotton among her more popular books. For me, reading it was like reading about my own life. I think it actually helped me grow up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As these two examples show, there are, of course, books that are &quot;good&quot; or &quot;right&quot; in that they touch upon my core of being. But apparently I am a kind of person for whom the majority of writing (and films and tv shows) are &quot;wrong&quot;. &lt;strong&gt;I am not an average person.&lt;/strong&gt; And that mainstream literature does never completely fit me is therefore not surprising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T10:56:51.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25048" CreationDate="2016-10-27T13:11:53.687" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's important to know what kind of writer you are.  If you're disappointed at yourself at the way a book turns out (you didn't plan it that way) or whether you're intrigued by yourself at coming up with unexpected turns then I believe you might still be developing as a writer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to your question, I believe that there are many examples that portray a scheme of characters where the character that is least emphasized or a character that is least expected to come to shine in the spot light does indeed turn the whole plot on it's head and makes the reader have to re-evaluate everything from the first word he read.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21591" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T13:11:53.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25048" CreationDate="2016-10-27T14:41:46.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your questions can and have basically been answered with one-liners (&quot;Because taste is different, is it a true 'fault' of the author if you fail to like his hero?&quot;, and &quot;Yes, people are diverse. Yes, some of them will probably like your secondary characters better than your hero.&quot;), here's some further thoughts on the topic of &lt;strong&gt;secondary characters and likeability&lt;/strong&gt;:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed that I have a peculiar weakness for characters that are second in command. These characters do have power and provide an excellent source for secondary identification, but they are not the heroes. Yet, these characters are usually my favourite characters in the book. Examples would be Starbuck in Moby Dick, Henry in Donna Tartt's The Secret History, Sirius in Harry Potter, or Childermass in Jonathan Strange &amp;amp; Mr Norrell. I would not at all mind to read entire book series about these characters. And yet I'm happy to have them play secondary roles in their respective works. The reason, I think, is that for me these characters act as a piece of chocolate in the dietary plan of the book. I thoroughly like these characters, but I'm not sure I could devour an entire book about them. (Just think of the gorgeous piece of cake you saw in your favourite bakery. It sure looks delicious, but then, after a third of the piece, you find that you can't possible eat one more bite of it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings me to: &lt;strong&gt;The purpose of secondary characters&lt;/strong&gt;. Yes, usually they serve a well defined purpose in terms of the plot. The Hero's Journey knows half an army of different types of secondary characters that all swarm around the hero and help to advance his/her story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, secondary characters can also serve an emotional purpose. They can contrast or enhance certain traits of the main character, and sometimes, it's just a relief to take your attention away from the hero and focus on somebody entirely different for a moment. Secondary characters can provide likeability and the occasional smile when the hero struggles with his/her inner demons or just committed to enormous folly. In the same manner, they can provide utter unlikeability and spell out a simple insight for you: Really, that hero person is not that bad after all ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning your question, also think of this: You never get to know your secondary characters as intimately as the main character(s). It is easy to like someone that you don't know very well, especially if you are a hopelessly optimistic person when it comes to other people, and yes, humanity in general. Keeping up that sympathy, however, when you get to know that person better and are confronted with his/her failings and flaws, is not always easy. (Think that &quot;always&quot; underlined. When you meet your soul mate, falling in love with him/her should be the easiest thing in the world, at least when you believe in soul mates and Hollywood romantics.) I had (real) acquaintances that I hardly see any more, because at some point, I paused and wondered: &quot;How could you ever think that person likeable?&quot; Answer: Because you did not know all the dirty details. And while flaws are an essential part of human characters and tend to make a person interesting and approachable, there's some that I simply cannot tolerate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it boils down to is this: Maybe it is easier to like (or dislike) secondary characters, because they appear to be less complex than the hero. Who knows: If the mercenary and scholar mentors had stayed in the plot, maybe they would have turned out to be worshippers of the devil or that weird kind of person that tortures piglets for pleasure. Would you still think them more likeable than the hero -- a person who has flaws, recognizes them, and works hard to overcome them, despite his boringness or peculiar character flaws that led you to dislike him in the first place? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: And for the record: I'm exactly the kind of person who concludes every single conversation about Harry Potter with a sigh and a tormented: &quot;Why, oh why did she not write her series about the Marauders?&quot; Because for me, that story would have been so much more rewarding and interesting. One reason is that I would have enjoyed the (adult) Marauders's world much more than Harry's. The main reason, however, is that the screaming fan girl hidden deep in my chest would have finally gotten her novel with Sirius featuring as a main character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T14:41:46.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24995" CreationDate="2016-10-27T18:13:53.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are looking to hire someone by yourself to do the translation for you, there are a couple of websites which are essentially 'directories' of freelance translators:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://proz.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ProZ&lt;/a&gt; and&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/default.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Translator's café&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can look for Slovak &gt; English and see if you find someone suitable – this may be difficult, as skill levels in the industry can be patchy (I'm a full-time translator/proofreader myself, and I have seen the kind of unreliable quality that's out there). Above all, you'll need someone who writes well in English – ugly prose won't sell, regardless of how faithful the translation is to the original text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write short stories too, it might be a good idea to 'test' a translator on a small scale with a short piece before committing to hiring them for a novel. I also know that English-language SF short story magazines welcome translations, and many specifically mention them in their submissions guidelines, e.g. Clarkesworld, so taking this route could get you a good publication credit too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commissioning a translation and then submitting it yourself might be a bit of a gamble (just as much as writing a novel in the first place!). You would also have to consider who gets the rights and make a deal with your Slovakian publisher in your contract; a good lawyer familiar with writer's contracts might be able to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I don't know enough about the business side of fiction to give any tips on what to do after having it translated; hopefully someone else on here will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22034" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T18:13:53.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24995" CreationDate="2016-10-27T19:12:41.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go for it, I'd have it translated and then I'd have the translated version edited again by a native English speaker and then send it off to beta readers to make sure it reads well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22035" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T19:12:41.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25067" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26033" CreationDate="2016-10-27T19:23:44.153" Score="2" ViewCount="196" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number one reason I unsubscribe from writer's newsletters is negative email headlines like &lt;em&gt;Stop Procrastinating&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Finally, You Can Finish Your Novel&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;10 tips to focus better and finish in 2016&lt;/em&gt; Why are there so many negative assumptions all the time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get it that there are a lot of people who live in a world where they can't seem to finish something but what about those of us who &lt;em&gt;are finishing&lt;/em&gt; but still need to learn more? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So what are your favorite resources for writers that assume we're actually writing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually sign up for marketing, formatting and plotting tips, not to be shamed as if I were unproductive. I just hit publish on my third book this month (they weren't all started this month) and I'm looking for resources for &lt;strong&gt;active&lt;/strong&gt; writers.  I write about 5000 words per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22035" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-10-29T05:25:12.277" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T08:11:32.263" Title="Best Resources for Improving your craft?" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25067" CreationDate="2016-10-27T20:01:53.950" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once you get past the ra ra enthusiasm of the forums, you need genuine criticism, both of your own work and of literature and the writing process in general. That is hard to find online, in part because of the sheer volume of ra ra out there, and also because there is less of an outlet for mature critical thought online compared to more traditional venues like writing classes, writing conferences, and books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some classic works on writing that are well worth your attention. Some of my favorites are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reading like a Writer, Francine Prose&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story, Robert McKee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On Fairy Stories, JRR Tolkien&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Art of Fiction, John Gardner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Writer's Journey, Christopher Vogler&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T20:01:53.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25069" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-27T23:51:33.453" Score="0" ViewCount="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some translations surpass the original texts, thanks to the translator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a text become more poetic by being re-written into more beautiful language by an open-source algorithm? The algorithm could be tweaked and improved by poetry-lovers and writers, and would function as an editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A mundane text (ie a recipe) could more closely resemble poetry after such a process. Then a final editing stage could be done with care and attention by a human. Such a tool could encourage non-writers into a creative editing process, by doing some of their work for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22037" LastEditorUserId="22037" LastEditDate="2016-11-12T23:28:36.480" LastActivityDate="2016-11-12T23:28:36.480" Title="Has anyone attempted to automate some of the editing process? Specifically to style everyday text towards poetry?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-10-30T03:55:07.593" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25069" CreationDate="2016-10-28T00:15:32.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Poetry isn't a language or dialect - it's a form that something takes. It is something can't be &quot;translated&quot; in the sense that you are talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-10-28T00:15:32.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25067" CreationDate="2016-10-28T00:21:35.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other people&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Feedback, collaborations, challenges with other writers - some practical ways to improve your craft technically. You may be writing a novel, but challenging a writer friend to an unrelated exercise (ie short surreal story, dialogue, manifesto) each day will have a lot of benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughtful articulate people will illuminate &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; your stuff reads to others, which can steer you back towards your goal. Most writers I know work in a vacuum. The ones who share their work for ideas and criticism throughout the process write at a higher level, and are more frequently published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Politics and the English Language&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Orwell's ideas&lt;/a&gt; for improving writing in this short essay are very practical. If you create a checklist of his ideas, and apply them to a piece of writing, it will undoubtedly improve. I love his ideas on clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22037" LastActivityDate="2016-10-28T00:21:35.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25072" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25074" CreationDate="2016-10-28T20:25:06.160" Score="4" ViewCount="443" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found that at the end of a lot of my chapters, the endings feel quite forced and abrupt. This is because I don't know where to go, I've done what I need to do. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Excerpt from my own writing:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Let us see this matter through. None need to know of this; it is a private issue only for the castle to see to.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“It would be best to seek out the adviser’s” suggested (name removed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Very well.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems extremely abrupt.  Its almost like 'okay lets do this' 'do this' 'that it is, see you!'. This comes right after the two characters in this scene discovering a 'page without context'. Considering they've just discovered something so vital and important, I feel like there isn't enough of a &lt;em&gt;winding down section&lt;/em&gt; at the end of this chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Excerpt from my own writing:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A glowing explosion had imploded with embers, knocking warriors away as their clothes were ignited and weapons abandoned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(name removed) watched one fumble for life as he toppled to the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to make a note that I haven't decided whether I want to use &lt;em&gt;fumble&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;cling&lt;/em&gt; here, so this example will be edited a lot. I haven't edited this work yet. Anyway, I feel like I've gone from the battle scene to the chapter's end extremely fast, its almost like 'fire explosion!' 'see you'. Normally, after a battle you would have a bit of a winding down section where you consolidated. I haven't had this because I thought it would be obvious that the battle was won, however, it still seems a little bit forced. Also, I changed my mind, I'm changing it to &lt;em&gt;cling&lt;/em&gt; the second I finish this question. &lt;em&gt;Fumble&lt;/em&gt; connotates that someone is fumbling around the place or fumbling to keep his life, whereas &lt;em&gt;cling&lt;/em&gt; infers that he is clinging on to his final moments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I prevent the ends of chapters feeling abrupt? Is it always good to have a falling action section at the end, after the climax of the chapter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-10-29T09:03:23.170" Title="How can I prevent the ends of my chapters from feeling forced?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|structure|chapters|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25072" CreationDate="2016-10-28T21:21:33.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is hard to be sure from such small samples, but I would guess that the problem is not really abruptness. All chapter endings are in some sense abrupt. The action simply stops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, where should it stop. Every chapter should have a dramatic arc. It should stop at the end of that arc. A dramatic arc generally ends either with the creation or the resolution of tension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with your first example is that its &quot;'okay lets do this' 'do this' 'that it is, see you!'.&quot; structure does not seem to either create tension or resolve it. It is the end of a scene only in the sense that it is the end of a conversation, after which the characters presumably walk off in different directions. But it ends on what is essentially an administrative decision. No grave matter has come to a head. No grave matter has been resolved. The end of the conversation is not the end of a dramatic arc. The problem is not a lack of winding down but a lack of winding up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly in your second example, although it is a battle scene, there is no apparent arc ending. (By the way, explosions don't implode. The terms are opposites.) There was an explosion. Some people died. Okay, but do those deaths create tension? Do they resolve tension? What is at stake for our hero in this battle? Love? Honor? A moral dilemma? The fate of a loved one? Does this explosion create or resolve tension relative to what is at stake to our hero?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, the explosion is just a random bit of violence that no more creates dramatic tension than an administrative requirement to get advice from the castle. It is not the end of the chapter because it is not the end of a dramatic arc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A chapter end should be a point of flexion in the overall shape of your story. The fate of the characters should change in some material way -- or at least be in peril of changing. If a chapter ending feels abrupt, it is probably because it has not reached that point. (Or possibly because it as run on past it, or the chapter contains no such point.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-28T21:21:33.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25072" CreationDate="2016-10-28T23:35:35.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the story you are telling &quot;and in the telling how the story is told.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally the end of a chapter provides a &quot;forewarning&quot; that more is to come...though maybe not exactly in the next chapter certainly in the coming ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;boring&quot; or trite way this is done is to literally repeat the last sentence of the last Chapter as the first sentence of your next Chapter...which sounds goofy today but does have literary merit actually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example &quot;And he thought 'I think therefore I am' because of what had happened.&quot; End of Chapter followed by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 2: not in quotes&#xA;I think therefore I am.&#xA;What the heck does that mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then you go from there...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-10-28T23:35:35.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25072" CreationDate="2016-10-29T09:03:23.170" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;None of these endings feel forced to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second example the viewpoint character looses consciousness. That in itself may be abrupt, but for the chapter it is a natural end. In fact it would be odd to have the narration continue after the protagonist falls to the ground, unconscious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first example, a decision has been made and the decision process has been brought to an end. Again that is natural. As the viewpoint characters are still conscious, in the first example something more might follow the decision. I would not pick up the action that follows from the decision. That is a new substory arch and belongs to the next chapter. But you might have the viewpoint character reflect on the decision or feel something in anticipation of what they are now about to do. In fact the whole example is just dialog and feels very bare bones. I would add some description of what the characters do while they speak, or indicate their emotions or relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example. It will not fit your story and characters, which I don't know, and only serves to illustrate what I mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[stuff happens, things are said] ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Let us see this matter through,” Lord Brome interrupted impatiently, cutting Sir Falgor's rambling short. “None need to know of this; it is a private issue only for the castle to see to.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lady Shardley gently touched Lord Brome's shoulder. “It would be best to seek out the advisers,” she suggested quietly, careful not to anger the irritable Lord.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lord Brome stiffened, then caught himself. “Very well,” he said, then shook the Lady's hand off and turned to gaze out the window and to the distant castle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seek out the advisers he would. But not to ask them for advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-10-29T09:03:23.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25079" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25080" CreationDate="2016-10-29T15:15:05.140" Score="1" ViewCount="1192" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose this is not really advisable but how do you report speech in a conversation with another person? Should standard reported speech rules apply or do I treat it as direct speech? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;My homeroom students told me they &lt;strong&gt;liked&lt;/strong&gt; me too...&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;My homeroom students told me they &lt;strong&gt;like&lt;/strong&gt; me too...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm helping a friend proofread but I'm trying not to change her work too drastically. In this scene, the protagonist is excitedly sharing with his friend about his first day at work and this is one of the things he mentioned. &#xA;Changing the sentence to &quot;My homeroom students like me too...&quot; would definitely solve the problem but I'm curious if there are any set rules regarding verb conjugation for reported speech in conversations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for the help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21963" LastActivityDate="2016-10-29T16:04:05.857" Title="Reported speech in a dialogue" Tags="|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25079" CreationDate="2016-10-29T16:04:05.857" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grammatical formalisms (as opposed to fundamental grammar) do not apply in dialog. Dialog is a report of what someone actually said. In fiction, what characters actually say and how they say it is part of their characterization. What matters is, does this speech reflect who the character is. If you are writing an excessively mannered character, you might write excessively mannered speech for them. But a typical person would not make any distinction between the two examples you give. I suspect that most people would say the latter, since it is an indirect quotation (using some of the same words and phrasing without formally quoting what was said). But to answer your question, no, none of these rules apply within dialog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-29T16:04:05.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25083" CreationDate="2016-10-29T16:24:27.230" Score="2" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a plotter, meaning that I develop my novel before I start writing it. You could say that I'm almost an extreme variety of plotter, as I narrow my outline down to the scene before even starting the first draft. That's just how I write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I develop, I come up with all of the things I need to include, like the pieces of character development and stakes, for instance. I figure out what I need for those parts to come about, or in the case of stakes, escalate. When I'm done, I organize all the scenes I came up with, link them together, and then make the outline based off of that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that virtually every scene has an important function it plays within the book. Scene eleven introduces the character's drive. Scene twenty shows the inner conflict in more depth. Scene twenty-three escalates the private stakes of the story. And so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to keep track of what each scene is supposed to be accomplishing, but in the case of scenes that accomplish several things at once, this gets a bit difficult. Additionally, what I really want is solely the outline in front of me, with the development of the scene hidden, but easily accessible. I don't want to be wading through development while I'm writing from the outline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a program that can do this for me? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What I've tried&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been using Excel for this. On the left I have the scene. Going towards the right, I have details about the scene, like PoV, location, setting, time, so on. To the right of that, I have a column for each piece of development. Not all of the columns are used for every scene, so I tried combining the development information into one column, but things started to get messy and cramped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be ideal is if I have something like Excel, but where I can hide and view the columns at will. They could be tabs on the top that I could expand or shrink depending on what I need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way this could work is if I have the scene, then a pull down each for details and development. I can click the pull down to view what I have in that category for that scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a program that can do this? Best case scenario would be a free program that works on my computer (PC windows 10). I'd prefer to keep my writing off the internet if possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-10-31T17:45:49.580" Title="Program for Tracking Scene Information" Tags="|software|outline|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25081" CreationDate="2016-10-29T17:24:49.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/11142/outliner-software-with-annotations-for-os-x-or-browser-based-but-offline&quot;&gt;I don't know of any software that can do this.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have done in the past, and what I'm doing again after trying to work with Excel, is write my outline in a text document. Each chapter is a numbered section in that text document. I leave a very broad margin (half the page or more) for handwritten notes, after I print the document out. For character development, relationships, and other throughlines, I take a sheet of paper each and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/24628/to-visually-and-logically-plan-out-stories/24631#24631&quot;&gt;draw an annotated graph&lt;/a&gt;, with chapter numbers on the x-axis to relate the points in the graph to the chapters in the text document. Usually I don't have more than three developments going on in a novel, so when I sit down to write I have three A4 or A3 sized sheets of paper on my desk with development graphs and a bundle of A4 papers stapled together with the outline. If things got more complicated, I would create a table – on paper – where each row was a throughline and each column a chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-10-29T20:59:58.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25081" CreationDate="2016-10-29T17:34:50.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that you have googled for outliners and have rejected all of the many version available out there. So here are a couple of thoughts on alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Trello, or something similar. Trello is actually a process management tool, but it basically consists of boards to which you can add lists, to which you can add cards. The cards open one at a time as you click them, and you can add as much detail as you want to a card. But with the cards closed, you can just look at the set of lists and their card titles. So you could use lists for acts, and cards for scenes, which would let you see the whole outline in one view, but then open the cards for as much detail as you want on any scene. You can also rearrange cards and lists just by dragging and dropping. It is online, but you can create private boards so no one else can see them. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mind mapping tools. These are essentially outliners, but they are good at letting you quickly show and hide details and move stuff around. They also allow you to connect various points in the mind map with arrows, which you can use to plot the relationships between things outside of the linear flow of the outline. Most allow you to use color or icons to represent various properties of a node, which can further help with visualization. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Index cards and a large table or empty wall. You can write you scene titles large so you can see them at a glance but add detail in smaller size. You can even clip multiple cards together if you need a lot of detail on a scene. You can also color code for characters and highlight for rising or falling action, to see how people move through the story and how the arc builds.  Low tech, but very flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-29T17:34:50.427" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25084" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-29T21:02:10.807" Score="10" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading a novel the copy of which was bought and published in the US, but the novel was written and copyrighted by a British author and first published in the UK.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from the apparent changes in orthography (candour-&gt;candor), a couple of lines in the book left me wondering how heavy the editing process actually was. On reflection, it may have been nil, but it did plant the doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether there is a typical, default approach to the situation (another publishing house, but without translation into another language), and, consequently, a rule of thumb for me of what to expect when meeting such a text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will add that this is just a point of curiosity. I have no reason to expect one edition to be &quot;better&quot; or &quot;more original&quot; than another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* The book is John Le Carré, &lt;em&gt;The Night Manager&lt;/em&gt;, copyrighted in 1993 by David Cornwell, published by Ballantine Books, imprint of Random House (originally published in the US in 1993). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anemone" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-08T10:57:48.057" LastActivityDate="2018-05-08T10:57:48.057" Title="UK vs. US editions of fiction" Tags="|editing|international|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2016-10-31T00:13:46.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These answers are all very good and helpful. One thing I'd add is that if you want a page turner thriller type feel, you might want to gravitate to the lower ends of these ranges and prefer shorter chapters with hooks into the next chapter at the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21862" LastActivityDate="2016-10-31T00:13:46.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25081" CreationDate="2016-10-31T00:17:49.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Articy Draft is a game development tool for detailing a world,  it's characters,  and the interactive elements of the story.  It also supports templating and defining new fields if various types so you could define custom aspects to given scenes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21862" LastActivityDate="2016-10-31T00:17:49.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25081" CreationDate="2016-10-31T17:45:49.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a tool designed specifically for planning/research/writing anything, and it is very customizable and flexible. It is not free, but affordable ($40 for Windows version) and has a true 30-days trial which only counts days you actually used the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a small subset of Scrivener's features, and I will never use anything else for writing, for I am totally hooked (I do not work for L&amp;amp;L :-) ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also works well with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aeontimeline.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aeon Timeline&lt;/a&gt;, there are ways of linking their files together, and has a companion iOS app. ($20).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-31T17:45:49.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25090" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25092" CreationDate="2016-10-31T18:32:38.210" Score="1" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a new guidebook project (freelancing in IT) I wonder at which point I should evaluate the idea. I see these possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a website with a newsletter subscription form and see if people care about being informed once the book is finished.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a chapter and send it to a publisher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write the book and see if it sells.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can propably finish it within a few weeks (no, really, I mean it), so all 3 ways are feasible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22069" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-08T14:36:10.187" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T14:36:10.187" Title="When to evaluate whether your book will sell?" Tags="|technical-writing|getting-started|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25090" CreationDate="2016-10-31T22:11:55.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't. Major publishers publish thousands of books a year that don't sell. Movie studios release hundreds of movies that no one watches. TV Networks create new shows every season that get cancelled after a few episodes because no one watches. We don't know how to evaluate if a book will sell or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once asked my publisher if the sales for one of my books was in line with his expectations. (It is a niche book.) He said he has given up forming expectations about how books will sell. He just can't tell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can, of course, tell that an awful lot of manuscripts and book proposals won't sell because they are obvious drek. But there is also the category of not-drek-but-not-currently-fashionable stuff that is often rejected many times before it is finally published and sells millions. (Harry Potter is the current go to example of this, but there are many others.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do is try to build an audience for a book. For the book I mentioned above I wrote a blog for 18 months before I even pitched the book. The blog built an audience, which in turn helped sell the publisher on the book and now continues to help the book sell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-fiction, any publisher is going to ask you two basic questions. 1) Why are you the best person to write this book? 2) Do you have an audience? If you don't have good answers to those things, they are not going to read your chapter. If you have a good answer to the second question, the first takes care of itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, work on building an audience. That will probably take longer than a few weeks, but the interaction you get from your audience will make it a much better book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-10-31T22:11:55.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23371" CreationDate="2016-11-01T09:07:02.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Never liked the stories with mixed lines – it’s confusing because you never know whether the author hints at the character's thoughts or share their own.&#xA;PS.The more personal an author makes a dilemma for the character, the more his different stories &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22082" LastActivityDate="2016-11-01T09:07:02.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25095" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-01T11:39:37.927" Score="1" ViewCount="577" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's way of saying someone is posh that isn't rude? And without being over-aggrandising?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22086" LastActivityDate="2016-11-06T12:01:29.307" Title="What is a polite way of saying someone is posh?" Tags="|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-11-06T13:18:17.120" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25095" CreationDate="2016-11-01T12:05:43.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, &lt;em&gt;posh&lt;/em&gt; isn't considered a rude term in itself, nor do I think it excessively aggrandizes a subject, but if it's not the word you're looking for, this should be of help: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/posh&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/posh&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21185" LastActivityDate="2016-11-01T12:05:43.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23411" CreationDate="2016-11-01T13:22:46.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The business model of that site (I took a quick gander at the artist submission guidelines) is rather legit. They do require artists to submit original artworks, and if the stock photos are used, they ensure originality by making the artist use a combination of at least two images. Each cover is only sold once, once you paid for it, it's yours and yours only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While nominally that policy ensures that the covers, produced in that manner are, indeed, all different to some extent, please, consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The artists submits their works to the site with one and only purpose--to sell them. In order for the pre-fixed cover to be sold, &lt;em&gt;it must be generic enough to fit the widest variety of tastes&lt;/em&gt;, and this is what you have to select from: the wide selection of generic-looking covers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you will find the cover that matches perfectly the mood and other specifics of your book, you will still end up with a book cover which looks somewhat like the other one you saw, only the blond on the cover is a brunette and is looking the other way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want something original, you have to work with the artist on the project and let them read your book first. That is much more expensive, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The choice is yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-01T13:22:46.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20262" CreationDate="2016-11-01T15:25:44.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it depends. How direct (more in the lines of message) or indirect (true theme) is the theme? A theme such as 'love conquers all' can be repeated &lt;em&gt;ad infinitum&lt;/em&gt; and always produce fresh stories because you can add variety through characters, time/place settings, etc. But if the theme is more along the lines of 'tragically, a lesbian love can never find a way within a conservative small town' then the stories will end up feeling like variations of the same basic story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Portuguese 19th-century writer Eça de Queirós repeated themes in his stories and they still feel fresh. One of his themes was how education will influence the adult character of a person. Another theme concerned forbidden loves (whether adultery or incest, either purposefully or accidentally) ending tragically (especially for the female). However, he was not writing series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you said that your theme is the plot, I'll go with the example 'tragically, a lesbian love can never find a way within a conservative small town'. Being a series, we could have a couple looking for a place to live and in each place fighting against bigotry. For as long as each new story has a different problem (even if they all arise from bigotry), there should be space for variety. In one place they can be accepted by a liberal community and then there's a natural catastrophe that ends up pushing them out, or you can have them living quietly and out of the way and catching the eye of the local sheriff that decides he'll find a way to push them out of his town. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way, the series would be their search for a place where they and their love can be accepted and where they can live happily ever after, and each book/story would be another step in that direction. I doubt the example I gave could allow for a long series and retain its freshness, though. Unless they're a pair of detectives and their story is the line that unites all the crime solving adventures. The action/detective will alow for the variety that keeps the series spicy and alive, while the fight against bigotry would be a slow search ever present in the back (but forcefully pushing the couple into the action, otherwise it would be a sub-plot of little relevance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course your theme must have nothing in connection with the example above but, yes, it is feasible. You just have to expertly balance repetition and novelty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2016-11-01T15:25:44.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25099" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-01T15:46:16.773" Score="7" ViewCount="717" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this freeware app, labytrinth, years ago. It allowed to create elements (characters, places, objects, etc) and detail information about them. Then you could drag these elements into a wide area where you could set relationships in between them (arrows with little text tags). It also had a function where you could create a table with place / chapters / characters / etc in order to organise your plot and determine who was doing what and where. It was very basic: no colours, no great variety of arrows, but it worked perfectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last year I discovered YEd, an app that allows you to create extremely intricate diagrams, with variety of colours, shapes, arrows, etc, and it can also automaticaly rearrange all the elements. I've started using it because the diagram part is very useful, but, unlike Labyrinth, each element is created from scratch. So, if you decide to change the name of a character, labyrinth would automatically update the name in every diagram which included that element, whereas I have to change each diagram manually in YEd. For this reason, I never got around to transport all the information I had inserted into Labyrinth concerning a Fantasy series I'm planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This series comprises of 5 books, with the first four being completely planned by now. I have over one hundred characters with their relationships carefully anotated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And my computer crashed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I lost no files because I make regular backups but... I never did make a backup of the app. And now I can't find it online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, please, has anyone heard of this app (or freeware programme) and can direct me to a site where I can download it so that I can recover the information I've got locked in the files?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The name of the app is Labyrinth and it creates files with the PLT extension. I have tried PLT viewers with no success at all. Here is an image of a diagram made with the app:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QL6cX.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QL6cX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&#xA;I started using it 3 or 4 years ago and both the site and the look of the app gave me the feel that it was something that had been created at least 5 to 10 years before. It runs on Windows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A helpful user at stack overflow has directed me towards Python and graphviz as a way to read the diagrams. Another way is to manually associate ID numbers to names, events, relationships and slowly (manually) recover the connections. Either way, It'll take time, but I can recover everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll tell you all one thing: when people say not to bother with backing up software because it's all online and you'll have to go online to get the most up to date version anyway... Only photos you'd rather be forgotten stay online forever, so back everything else up. Better safe than sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you all for your assistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-07-08T04:25:59.243" Title="Labyrinth: old freeware to organise characters and plot" Tags="|software|tools|planning|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25100" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-01T18:14:06.790" Score="1" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;I needed some help with feedback with my &lt;a href=&quot;https://travelthroughoureyesblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/28/my-new-journey/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;writing&lt;/a&gt;. I am new to writing and would really appreciate if someone can read it and provide feedback. Any kind of tips and tricks or suggestion are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance. Happy writing :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22093" LastEditorUserId="22093" LastEditDate="2016-11-01T18:43:18.273" LastActivityDate="2016-11-01T21:54:44.913" Title="Help with writing feedback" Tags="|style|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-11-02T14:34:06.843" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25101" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25109" CreationDate="2016-11-01T19:28:55.173" Score="0" ViewCount="5178" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a book, how does bibliography work?&#xA;Can I just list all the resources used at the end in a &quot;Bibliography&quot; section? If so, do I need to put the exact pages that I used? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, do I need to cite the resources after each paragraph in my book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22096" LastActivityDate="2016-11-02T15:11:37.417" Title="Bibliography/Citation when writing a book" Tags="|citations|book|ebook|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3042" CreationDate="2016-11-01T21:16:32.173" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently used PS and here is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To: John&#xA;CC: Many people including executives&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subject: How to build a wall&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi John,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attached document explains how to build a wall...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also added details on how to get funding...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tom&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I didn't have permissions to add this information to your online document and therefore I have created a separate document. Please feel free to copy/paste this information to your online document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main topic of the email is how to build the wall and how to get funding. Why it's not added to the online doc is trivial and most recipients of the email would not care. Therefore, I don't think it needs to be in the main body of the email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22099" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-11-06T21:33:14.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25100" CreationDate="2016-11-01T21:54:44.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, but it would be helpful if you could post specific questions. I'll try to help when able, but otherwise I don't get reputation points. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's OK, you can post whole essays if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22100" LastActivityDate="2016-11-01T21:54:44.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24718" CreationDate="2016-11-01T22:54:41.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By purest serendipity I came across a reference to a book on writing in the classic style just yesterday. &lt;a href=&quot;http://classicprose.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://classicprose.com/&lt;/a&gt;. I have not read it myself, but it was recommended by an acquaintance whose judgement I respect. It might be what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-01T22:54:41.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25105" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-02T01:31:13.540" Score="2" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend and I are working on a story that we want to publish and share on the internet (kind of like what FictionPress does), but we have some formatting worked into our story that we would like to keep intact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two major pieces of formatting that we would like to keep is &lt;strong&gt;text color&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Zalgo text&lt;/strong&gt; (ex. Y͡O̸̧͘U͡ ̢D̶͝I̡͢D T͡HI̷̸S̶͡͝ ̡͏TO͘ ͜Ḿ̴E) (not because our story has anything to do with Zalgo, but because it makes our &quot;glitched out&quot; character's dialog a bit more fitting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10703" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T03:45:24.757" Title="Where can I post my story, but keep the formatting?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|websites|electronic-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25106" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-02T09:49:58.563" Score="1" ViewCount="331" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would love to work as a technical writer, copy editor, journalist, or whatever--as long as it's related to writing. I would especially love to freelance and complete contracts every day. So, I've been thinking of getting an English BA with an emphasis on creative writing from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nu.edu/OurPrograms/CollegeOfLettersAndSciences/ArtsAndHumanities/Programs/Bachelor-Arts-English.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National University&lt;/a&gt;, as the university would accept me and their program looks solid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm not sure if employers would frown upon the university name, and it's not that highly ranked, but I am considering transferring to University of Iowa (the best writing program in the states) that holds a name, but it would be x2 more expensive which would put me in debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it worth the financial investment? If I can't find a job after graduation but could make at least $1,500/month freelance writing and completing contracts with the degree, then it would be worth it for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22102" LastActivityDate="2016-11-02T10:23:19.103" Title="How hard would it be to find writing jobs with an English degree?" Tags="|creative-writing|technical-writing|career|jobs|degree|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25106" CreationDate="2016-11-02T10:23:19.103" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strictly speaking, you don't &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; an English degree to get writing jobs, nor are you guaranteed any kind of job in writing/editing/publishing if you have said degree. You get hired when you convince someone that you have the skills and/or experience to do the job. Whether you get that experience in our out of school is often irrelevant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can say, as someone who looks at r&amp;eacute;sum&amp;eacute;s, that I rarely register how &quot;highly-ranked&quot; the university is. I'll notice an Ivy League, obviously, or something out of the country, but beyond that, I'm looking for &quot;completed college/didn't complete college.&quot; And if you have a list of publications which takes up the whole page, I might not even care if you have the degree at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particularly with writing, I'm going to want to see samples of your work. Wow me with your turns of phrase and I'm not going to care if you taught yourself with coal on the back of a shovel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go where you can afford right now. You can always go back for a master's (or another bachelor's if it comes to that) later on. Don't start out your professional life in crippling debt when you really don't need to. If you were going for law or medicine it might make a difference, but writing is a lot more fungible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-11-02T10:23:19.103" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25101" CreationDate="2016-11-02T14:30:31.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Five seconds with Google turned up this article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_mla_format_examples.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project MLA Format Examples&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many more resources out there. FYI, @Dave, StackExchange folks are going to look for you to have done some work before you ask questions here. It will help you a lot if you click on the Help and do the Tour to understand better how this works. It isn't a typical forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-11-02T14:30:31.590" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25101" CreationDate="2016-11-02T15:11:37.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your real question here is not about the format of a bibliography but about the requirements for citation in various kinds of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some fields have very specific requirements both for what you are supposed to cite and for how you are supposed to cite it. These are laid out in style guides and different fields have different style guides that they use. If you are writing in a field that has such a style guide or for a journal or publisher that requires you conform to such a style guide, you need to buy the appropriate guide and use it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside of that, you need to think about the functions of citations. Citations exist for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To establish the authority of a claim. How often you need to do this depends on how much trust your audience places in you. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To enable the reader to find additional information on a point if they need it. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In academic writing there is a general requirement that you prove the authority of every significant claim that you make. Basically, you proceed on the basis that there is zero trust in anything you say and you have to support everything. In this case, you have to keep track of the source of every claim you make and cite it according to the prevailing style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In professional writing, you will enjoy a degree of trust based on your qualifications and most readers will not require that you prove every claim you make as long as it is not controversial or contrary to received wisdom. In this case, you cite judiciously to back up any claims that people might question or to give people access to further information if they need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In popular writing, you are generally assumed to deserve a high degree of trust and readers are presumed to be willing to take you at your word. Publishers may want you to prove you are qualified to write about the subject, but you will rarely be required to formally cite any sources, though you may do so informally in the text itself as a means of emphasis. (As in, &quot;according to the CIA ...&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting, however, that there is a genre of popular writing typified by Malcolm Gladwell, which involves the rather breathless boosting and popularization of soft scientific research. In this case, the text tends to tell the story of the research rather than citing the results the way an academic paper might. These books tend to have extensive bibliographies, though not usually a formal citation system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, there is no general answer. In the end you need to talk to your publisher about the level and style of citation they will want you to provide, and until you know that, you would be well advised to meticulously note all your sources. There is nothing more tedious that trying to track down the source of something after the fact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-02T15:11:37.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2016-11-02T22:40:52.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why don't you use a self publish site? There are many sites that are print on demand, which means that when someone buys your book, the company prints it and ships it. Which means that you don't have a bunch of books just sitting ther,e plus it looks more professional then handmade books. Most of them also come with/have epub options so that you can have electronic versions which can reach a wider audiance. The nice thing is, is that the print on demand books are usually paid for by the purchase price (the printing press takes a percentage of the sale but you decide how much the book costs in total), and just epub is potentially free.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smashwords (epubs) and lulu (Print on demand)  are two off the top of my head. I think that amazon also does it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22108" LastActivityDate="2016-11-02T22:40:52.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25111" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-02T23:14:50.323" Score="0" ViewCount="1577" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got the idea to write a book about my life story from my mother. At first I thought who would want to read about my life, then I thought back on my life and actually thought wow I have been thru a lot and still going thru alot. So it made me think would anyone actually read it and if I did it would have to have purpose,  it would have to help people realise thru my experience that if they are going thru similar  things they are not alone.  My book would be about becoming a mother at 14, high school drop out, heart health issues, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, depression, relationship issues, being diagnosed with cervical cancer and losing my 17 year old daughter a week later, financial problems, family feuds after losing my daughter, soul searching, spiritual connection and everything in between  by the age of 32.. I guess I'm asking, would you read it? would my experiences be helpful to others? And would my experiences be worthy of a book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22109" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-11-02T23:21:00.860" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T13:48:35.730" Title="Would anyone want to read a book about my life?" Tags="|book|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2016-11-03T22:02:49.787" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25105" CreationDate="2016-11-02T23:20:01.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I reccomend you to create a blog and post your story there - you can share the account with your friend so you don't have to work alone -, because you'll lose little to nothing at all about formatting and you can include photos, which is something that you probably can't do at Fanfiction.com. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nota that I do not reccomend you to post at a website that you intend to use like an online portfolio, because editors tend to shy away from writers who write fanfiction (which I assume is what you are writing) that use other people's work, like characters, stting, etecetera. Basically, fanfiction that are not original fanfictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, with some work from your side you customise the entire site to your liking, which I find really pleasent. Hope it helped!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22110" LastActivityDate="2016-11-02T23:20:01.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25111" CreationDate="2016-11-03T00:59:01.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would read your story - I like biographical narratives - isn't it always interesting to learn what other people have done with their life on earth?&#xA;- But i think my main motivation for writing is not so much about trying to be understood by others, but to better understand myself... Maybe it turns out to be reflective writing that wouldn't necessarily be a bestseller.. be that as it may, it could be the most important thing you do in life - to write it all down...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind of in the vein of:&#xA;“Poetry is a verdict, not an occupation.” &#xA;― Leonard Cohen  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meaning, to me, that writing is not a choice really, but a method of self-expression and the act of creatively summarizing your experiences is all the justification you need...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure this can be considered an answer to your question, but I wanted to make the point that if you feel like writing.. then write!!!  And see where it takes you... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers!!&#xA;Guinness&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22111" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T00:59:01.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25111" CreationDate="2016-11-03T01:05:43.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal view is that readers prefer books about meaning in one's life (Eat, Pray, Love) and aren't too picky when it comes to content. If there is a story to tell of course do tell it...and hopefully tell it well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T01:05:43.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25115" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-03T02:40:31.220" Score="0" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a book about a teenage girl. In one line, I am saying that she saw another female. When I say...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;she saw another girl&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think saying girl will make her sound like a child rather than a teenager (aged 15) and simply saying woman makes her seem more mature and like a woman in her 20's or older. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But saying...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a teenage girl that was of an age similar to her &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;seems like over doing it and too many common words. Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22113" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-11-03T18:52:03.873" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T18:52:03.873" Title="Word for a Female Teenager?" Tags="|word-choice|thesaurus|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-11-04T21:54:41.293" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25115" CreationDate="2016-11-03T04:23:17.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best bet in this scenario will simply be to prevent the reader from forming any false impressions. You can do this by correcting him immediately after the word. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She saw another girl, about fifteen years old. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use either girl or woman; be sure to use the word that you would use to describe the viewer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T04:23:17.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25117" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-03T07:00:00.367" Score="2" ViewCount="442" Body="&lt;p&gt;This goes for any amount of narratives, dual, triple, quadruple, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story with three points of views going on simultaneously right now, about at the same time. However, is it okay to have one of the characters a day ahead of the others, or one a day behind? If I end one chapter with the character's day ending, and I go back to resume from a cliffhanger on a different character where it is still daytime, and by the time I finish that I switch to the other POV where its already tomorrow, is that okay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a dual narrative, does time have to be absolutely in sync? Can characters be days ahead of each other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T01:46:49.920" Title="In multiple narratives, does time have to be in sync?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25111" CreationDate="2016-11-03T08:48:21.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;People don't read stories because there is a lot of bad things going on in the character's life. A story is more (and less) than life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of the books you have read. In many books, the characters don't go through much, when compared to your life. For example, in many bestsellers, the protagonist does no more than fall in love with someone and they get together. That is certainly less than a life. In other books, the characters achieve impossible things. For example, in many bestsellers, random ordinary people safe the world. That is certainly more than any real person has ever achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes a story a story (and not a life) is that a story tells of a clearly defined set of events with a distinct beginning and an unmistakeable closure. For example, in the &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;, Frodo's story (not life) begins with Bilbo giving him the Ring, and the story ends with Frodo destroying the Ring. The story does give some information on Frodo's life beyond his task of destroying the Ring, but only because his life is different than our own and we need to know a bit about his world to understand the purpose of his task. In a story set in our world, we are given much less background information and learn a lot less about the lives of the characters than in a fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make your life interesting to a wider audience, to make it &quot;readable&quot;, you would have to distill from it a story. It won't do to just narrate everything you rember, or have been told, from birth to today. You need to give your narration of your life an artistic form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Begin by identifying the &lt;em&gt;theme&lt;/em&gt; of your life's story. Looking back on your life, what is your life about? Try to find a single word or short sentence that for you represents the essence of your life. I don't know you, so I won't try to suggest anything. But do take some time for that, as everything else will be based on that. For the &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;, the theme could be something like &quot;overcoming greed&quot; (think of the temptation of power that the Ring offered, and how Frodo had to fight to overcome it, and how everyone else, from Gandalf to the elves, didn't have the integrity to resist it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have your theme, try to identify the &lt;em&gt;premise&lt;/em&gt;. Again look back on your life and identify the point in time when what is your theme began to have an effect on your life or began to be something that influenced your behavior. For Frodo, that moment came when Bilbo gave him the Ring. Then identify the moment when you achieved the goal or end that the theme implied. For Frodo, it was the destruction of the Ring. Then write one or a handful of sentences that summarize who you were at the outset of that journey, what obstacles you had to overcome, and how you managed to finally achieve the end or goal. For Frodo, that premise might be something like: a young hobbit is given the task of destroying the Ring that would enslave the whole world, and through the power of friendship and by his own inner strength he manages to overcome the temptations evil. (I'm sure others can come up with a better premise for the &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;, but I'm sure you understand the idea behind my example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you have a short version of your life's story. This is the scaffolding or skeleton or roadmap or reference point for your writing. And now you can start to &lt;em&gt;outline&lt;/em&gt; your story. Write a five page summary of your life, that includes the most important events and insights, as they relate to your life's premise. Again take some time for that. Go over it a couple of times and try to identify how you and the other people in your life changed in relation to the theme of your life. Did you learn something? Did you fail to learn something? How did this learning or failure to learn influence what happened? What effect did other people have on your life, and what effect did your life have on other people? What were the highlights and the low points in your life, what caused them, how did the happiness come to an end, and how did you overcome rock bottom?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have that outline, write a &lt;em&gt;first draft&lt;/em&gt;. Don't spend too much time polishing sentences, just try to write out the basic story. Then let it rest for a few months, maybe give it to someone to read (who is not a friend but a stranger and will give you honest feedback on the story, not supportive feedback on your life), and then reread your story. Finally, &lt;em&gt;rewrite&lt;/em&gt; your story, work in the feedback you have received (and that you think is valid) and your own experiences when rereading, and start to polish the language and style. Then &lt;em&gt;submit&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-11-03T08:55:15.813" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T08:55:15.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25117" CreationDate="2016-11-03T09:28:21.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you clearly mark what the date is so that the &lt;em&gt;reader&lt;/em&gt; knows your scenes are not in sync, you're okay in terms of clarity. But you should have a good narrative reason for doing so, and not just &quot;the cliffhanger was exciting.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a reading perspective, I prefer that the scenes not be out of sync by more than a day or so. If you have characters who absolutely don't interact, it's easier to manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This also assumes that you're not telling a story which involves time-travel of any kind, in which case go nuts with asynchronicity.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T09:28:21.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25115" CreationDate="2016-11-03T12:27:37.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In regards to your first example, if you establish beforehand that the protagonist is a teenager, the reader isn't liable to assume that the other girl is a child because of the &lt;strong&gt;another&lt;/strong&gt; preceding the &lt;strong&gt;girl&lt;/strong&gt; in the sentence.&lt;br/&gt; Putting &lt;strong&gt;another girl&lt;/strong&gt; is enough for the reader to gather that this other chick is also a teen girl, because she is directly compared to the protagonist, and also is not described as little, or small, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21185" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T12:27:37.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25111" CreationDate="2016-11-03T12:38:07.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to examine your reasons for writing and then the personal journey that would take you on.  A lot depends on your motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to write about your life?  Would putting down all the facts, feelings and memories into print be in any way useful to you as a person? In that case just go ahead and it doesn't matter if nobody ever reads it.  I assume that you are going to do a biography rather than fiction so you have to be factually correct and careful what you say about others.  That means it's not a novel where you can re-write parts or alter things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you then think it would be useful to someone else?  If you published and only a single person read it but it in some way helped them would that be enough for you to feel it was worthwhile?  Would you need it to be 10, 20 or 100?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are hoping for a large income from a best selling book and movie rights then you have to be realistic and understand that probably wont happen (it might but I don't think that should be your only motivation).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm trying to say is work out why you want to do it and from that you can figure out what 'success' means to you.  Just using sales figures is probably the wrong approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to actually answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you read it?  Not sure, as a 50 year old male I'm probably not your target audience but I think my wife would and that means I might be persuaded if she said I should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would my experiences be helpful to others?  Only 'others' can answer that and they can't form an opinion without reading it.  Also you have to define what helpful means.  It might be that someone just feels like their problems are not as bad as they thought or it might be someone thinking that there is another person who understand a bit about what they are going through at the time.  The word 'helpful' covers a lot of ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would my experiences be worthy of a book?  I don't see why not.  I've read enough woefully bad fiction that has managed to see print.  Why would a real life story rate lower than that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21127" LastEditorUserId="21127" LastEditDate="2016-11-03T12:46:49.433" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T12:46:49.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25123" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-03T14:32:41.620" Score="0" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;My work presents proposals with information divided by numbered headings. Under these headings, the technical writers use a variety of paragraphs, numbered indentations, and indented bullet points. By using this variety, they can end up with bullet points indented once under headings and twice under numbered indentations under headings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technical writers follow a style guide that decrees the use of solid bullet points first followed by nesting bullet points in the order of hollow circle, square, etc., to create consistency when scanning a page. But the different indentations, based on whether the bullet points are directly under a heading or under a numbered indentation, break up that consistency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the technical writers always start with solid bullet points or should they consider the numbered indentation as a substitute for the solid bullet point and first use a hollow bullet point under them so that there is consistency when scanning down the margins of a page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22121" LastEditorUserId="22121" LastEditDate="2016-11-03T18:57:53.577" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T18:57:53.577" Title="Which Bullet Points to Use First Under Different List Nesting Styles" Tags="|style|formatting|business-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25123" CreationDate="2016-11-03T14:45:00.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Logically, no. The headings delineate the hierarchy of the document. Bullets delineate the structure of lists, not matter where they appear in the document hierarchy. If your style is to indent sections based on the document hierarchy, this is going to result in lists occurring at different indentation levels due to the position of the surrounding text in the document hierarchy. But lists are not part of the document hierarchy, they are part of the structure of the text, and as such they should be used consistently in text no matter where they occur in the document hierarchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, paragraphs appear at different indent levels due to their position in the document hierarchy. Lists are just a different form of paragraph and will occur at different indent levels in the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T14:45:00.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25117" CreationDate="2016-11-03T14:55:51.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories are not organized according to time sequence, they are organized according to narrative arc. A narrative arc is built on rising tension, not the passage of time. Narrative arc can often be asynchronous. Any story with a flashback in it has an asynchronous narrative arc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A multi narrative story usually has multiple narrative arcs. The important thing is to make sure each of the narrative arcs works as an arc. If you try to hard to keep the narratives time synced, you may mess up both narrative arcs. (Remember, a narrative arc is build on rising tension. A cut away may add tension or defuse it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is also possible for a single narrative arc to have two intersecting timelines. Consider a story in which two lovers are separated and are trying to reunite. This could be told as a single narrative arc with frequent communication between the characters and perhaps multiple missed rendezvous, all requiring close time synchronization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it could also be told as two separate arcs. First you take her through a series of adventures leading her to the rendezvous point at the appointed time. Then you leave her there and tell his narrative arc leading to the ultimate intersection of the arcs (or their failure to intersect). Tension is built through her arc because she does not know if her lover will meet her. Tension is built through his arc because the reader knows she is will be waiting for him, but not if he will choose or be able to meet her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T14:55:51.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25126" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-03T18:56:32.817" Score="2" ViewCount="252" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of the documents we make at my work follow the same format; the document that takes the most time is, without getting into too many details, a report on a project that a client undertook. The report details the name of the project, the names/contact info of the people that oversaw it, and information on the project itself (like how the project went from initial design to completion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because all of these reports follow the same format, they all have snippets of identical information (boilerplate bits). However, some projects are more involved than others, and have more twists and turns in their design stages. I've drafted a template in MS Word that automatically fills in the boilerplate bits, and has content control sections for the things that need changed by whomever fills in the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one of the sections has nested bits that, potentially, could repeat forever. To spell it out, the document details an item that was made during a project, how the item was originally planned to have worked, what didn't work about those original plans, and how each of those issues were overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As simply as I can see it, there are 3 levels of this list. Say, for example, the report was about an alarm clock company trying to make a bigger alarm clock:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We wanted to make an alarm clock that was 50x the normal size&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This alarm clock would not fit on a regular table&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We made a table that's 50x larger than normal, which the alarm clock fit on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what if the company wanted to make a bigger alarm clock, AND they wanted to make a waterproof alarm clock? And what if they tried multiple things to fix their issues? So, each level of this list needs to be able to repeat independently to make lists like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We wanted to make an alarm clock 50x bigger than normal&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This alarm clock would not fit on a table&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We made a table 50x bigger than normal, which the alarm clock fit on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This alarm clock died quickly with AA batteries&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We connected it to a generator, which powered the alarm clock without issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We wanted to make an alarm clock that works underwater, by putting it in a box&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The box didn't keep any water out&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We made the box twice as thick, which still didn't keep any water out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We made the box out of metal instead of cardboard, which worked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. Now, this can be done in Word 2016 using the &quot;repeating section content control&quot; (RSCC) by nesting 3 together. However, the way an RSCC looks for a user, there's a button that comes up in the bottom-right-hand corner of the section-to-repeat. This is fine if what you're doing is repeating a single row of a table. But when you get to 3 nested RSCCs, You have three buttons right on top of each other, which gets confusing and ugly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an easier way to make a multi-level list's sections independently repeat aside from using RSCCs? Would there be a better program to do this in? From what I can tell, there isn't a way to do this in Adobe Acrobat XI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I going about this the wrong way? Ideally, I suppose a process could be drafted in a couple of paragraphs. Because of the nature of these reports, however, it is more efficient to explicitly list the project idea, the problems that those projects had, and the way these issues were resolved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22123" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T16:51:09.523" Title="What are ways to automate documentation generation?" Tags="|technical-writing|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25117" CreationDate="2016-11-03T22:45:53.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only is it okay for characters to be out of sync, it's also widely used in nearly any major fiction work that uses multiple POV's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As The Doctor said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... timey-wimey... stuff.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same applies with writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it means is that the more Points of view you have, and the greater area they cover, the more you can advance and regress within the setting timeline to make your story work. And it is a popular and successful took used by some highly successful authors, and it allows you to explore, in depth, events and situations behind your major plot points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robert Jordan did it in his &lt;em&gt;Wheel of Time&lt;/em&gt; series - multiple main characters that ended up all over the place. Events occurring because of one character impact events occurring around another character, or you get to see the same event from a different angle. When it's done well, you get a much more immersive setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George R R Martin with &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt; - again has multiple characters and events that occur generally in a linear fashion but has the flexibility to really develop the story and setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steven Errikson and his &lt;em&gt;Malazan Book of the Fallen&lt;/em&gt; series - similar to the two mentioned above - but goes one step further in that the books themselves aren't chronologically ordered. The published order and chronological order of events varies a great deal - but it works and flows because you are getting so much more information and a greater understanding of the setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are too many other authors to mention that do this, but the one thing that it needs, and you need to keep in mind when writing, is that you must have a point of reference or fixed point in time for your readers to fully understand when, how and why some events are occurring and show the progression of each characters story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's another thing - all those authors aren't just telling one story, they are telling each characters story within the greater story and that is part of why it works so well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T22:45:53.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3152" CreationDate="2016-11-04T07:36:34.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Merely look at all the above answers. They don't indent and follow the flush left rule - increasing then space between paragraphs. &#xA;This is becoming more and more common both in books as in scientific articles.&#xA;In the end, it depends on personal taste and editor/publisher preferences.&#xA;In Portugal, someone added that the first line of the first paragraph is not indented - that, also, varies with publishers. &#xA;Rules are made to broken by time and taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22127" LastEditorUserId="2204" LastEditDate="2016-11-05T06:14:37.487" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T06:14:37.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21816" CreationDate="2016-11-04T09:02:38.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With time and experience, I was able to solve this problem by myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how to get organized:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setting - knowing where we are:&#xA;I start with developing a fantasy world in my mind. I create maps. I gather hundreds of pictures from Pinterest and Tumblr to illustrate my world and its cultures. When the world is ready, as if you are boiling eggs:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Throw in some Characters:&#xA;What works best for me is creating characters on the basis of ideas sprang during roleplaying. This helps a lot, because the characters are actually developed by different story tellers, so they are more believable and unique. Then by all means:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stir trouble: create a conflict:&#xA;Each character has a compelling need, good if they even struggle against each other. Every character must want something the entire time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scenes: &#xA;Try to list the possible situations the characters may encounter. For instance: &quot;Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.&quot; Make a logical sequence of these. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spill. Everything:&#xA;Just start writing from the first sentence, and trust in God for the next. Try to follow you little plan, but don't be afraid to modify as the story blossoms. Write your entire first draft. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leave aside for one week. &#xA;Let the sunshine in. Do different stuff, get inspired. Return to your work with clear mind, pure hands and hot heart.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Please your audience:&#xA;Think of who is going to read your book - and translate your first draft into his language. For example, if you write a non-fiction book for teenagers call it: How to Score Chicks, not How To Seduce Women. Make sure you take the reader by hand and slowly and deliberately lead him to the resolution of your book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing Buddy:&#xA;Find someone to edit the book together with. It's best to work paragraph by paragraph. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Polish it:&#xA;Put the finishing touches to your masterpiece. You must have a feeling of content from the accomplishment. Work on the book until it makes you happy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a sequel:&#xA;Seriously. This sells.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards: LF&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18726" LastActivityDate="2016-11-04T09:02:38.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25132" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-04T14:04:28.807" Score="12" ViewCount="1881" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written my entire novel thus far in past tense. However, I feel like my final chapter/epilogue would work better in present tense. I want to give the reader the sense that everything s/he has read so far is a narration of events. What do you think? Is the tense-switching rule so vital that it would take away from the overall strength of my book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22129" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-03-25T23:23:15.530" LastActivityDate="2019-03-25T23:23:15.530" Title="Can I switch from past tense to present tense in an epilogue?" Tags="|fiction|style|novel|tenses|epilogues|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25132" CreationDate="2016-11-04T14:58:57.913" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This kind of thing is always Your Mileage May Vary, of course, but I think if you're doing it in an epilogue (clearly labeled as such), you can probably get away with it. The main story is done, and this is a separate after-piece. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tense-switching rule is meant to address comprehension. If part of what you want the reader to comprehend is that &quot;All of this part that you just read is in the past, and we're now in the present,&quot; then switching tenses may be exactly what you need to &lt;em&gt;aid&lt;/em&gt; comprehension. There's no ironclad rule against it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-11-04T14:58:57.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25132" CreationDate="2016-11-04T16:23:46.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do whatever you want, there is no law, governing the use of tense (past, present, or even future) in creative writing. Essentially it all comes down to how you are going to handle it: use of the present tense conveys a sense of urgency and often indicates immediate action, which makes writing (and reading) a longer piece somewhat difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give it a shot and see how it goes--you can always switch to past tense, if you feel that your epilogue sounds strained and unnatural (it is harder to decide &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; to write, then &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to write it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't tell, give it to a friend to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-04T16:23:46.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25132" CreationDate="2016-11-04T17:30:57.773" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Switching to present tense in the epilogue would suggest that the story is in a frame. That is, the story is a narration in the present of events that took place in the past. The narrator is not relating in real time, but is looking back over the entire story and relating it in hindsight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a common enough technique, but if it is employed only in the epilogue that means that you are springing the fact that there is a frame on the reader at the end, rather than placing it in the frame from the beginning. I don't see why that cannot be made to work, but I think you have to think about it consciously, and make sure the main story is narrated as if it were in a frame, even if the reader is not aware of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be subtle, but I think if it is done well, the reader should feel satisfaction, rather than surprise, when the frame is made explicit in the epilogue. In other words, the switch to present tense should make structural sense in the book as a whole, rather than coming across as a random change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-04T17:30:57.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25136" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-04T17:58:45.517" Score="1" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, a caveat: I am only the author of the &quot;play&quot; in question in a sense of the word; since much of the monologue is drawn verbatim from the writings and speeches of Mark Twain, I am really just the co-author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That having been said, the script is to a great extent &quot;mine&quot; - the order and connections from one anecdote to the next are unique to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, what I want to know is whether there are theaters that seek, or are at least receptive to, producing a play to be performed by the author (that is to say me, as my &quot;collaborator&quot; is unavailable)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forwardtheater.com/learn/submissions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, perhaps, but I am no longer a Wisconsin resident, so that won't work for me (I'm in Monterey, California).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13810" LastEditorUserId="13810" LastEditDate="2016-11-04T18:05:46.960" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T18:58:47.243" Title="Are there any theaters that are receptive to manuscripts for monologues from the author/performer?" Tags="|screenwriting|playwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25143" CreationDate="2016-11-05T03:43:37.873" Score="1" ViewCount="377" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a novel.  currently two girls are the only active characters.  I am curious if I need to separate the dialogue and action when one character is acting and another is acting but not speaking. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evie tousled her sister’s hair as she said, “You’re a mess.  Did you remember to put on some shorts with that dress?”  Maddy pulled up her dress and showed that she did.  “Good.  Grab your bike, let’s go.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't feel this is confusing and I feel that it adds unnecessary spacing.  if I am missing some rule or stylization please let me know.   Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22137" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-11-05T11:11:54.780" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T15:33:04.913" Title="Dialogue and action question" Tags="|fiction|style|novel|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25105" CreationDate="2016-11-05T03:45:24.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not super sure but I advise you to check out &quot;wattpad&quot;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22137" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T03:45:24.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25139" CreationDate="2016-11-05T07:33:57.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is completely fine to have the responses of different characters in a single paragraph, after one characters dialogue. I use this method of formatting all the time. Heres an extract from &lt;em&gt;To Kill a Mocking Bird&lt;/em&gt; that demonstrates it in published work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Calpurnia picked up Aunty's heavy suitcase and opened the door. 'I'll take it,' said Jem, and took it. I heard the suitcase hit the bedroom floor with a thump. The sound had a dull permanence about it. &lt;strong&gt;~The start of Chapter XIII&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T07:33:57.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25139" CreationDate="2016-11-05T13:21:43.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to think about where the reader's attention is supposed to be. You are painting a picture with words, asking the reader to build a picture in their head based solely on the words on the page. If your text hops about all over the place that gets to be much more difficult to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want them to focus on the substance of a conversation, you probably want to avoid interpolating much if any action because it will distract both from the momentum and the substance of the conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want them to focus on action -- to follow the action sequence and its consequences based solely on your words -- you probably do not want to be interpolating any significant dialogue into that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, speech is sometimes incidental to action. In the passage from &lt;em&gt;To Kill a Mockingbird&lt;/em&gt; that Daniel Cann cites, Jem's &quot;I'll take it&quot; is part of the action. It is not a piece of significant dialog that reveals character of advances the plot. It is just the sort of thing that people say when they are doing something. It is part of the action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reverse can also be true. An action can be incidental to a conversation. A person can respond to a question with an action rather than words, as Maddy does in your example. Essentially this is conversation by a kind of ad hoc sign language. The action is part of the conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would tend to put &quot;Maddy pulled up her dress and showed that she did.&quot; on a separate line to visually emphasize that this is her response in the conversation. I think this would make it read more like a response to the question rather than a bit of distracting background action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T13:21:43.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25139" CreationDate="2016-11-05T15:33:04.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The common rule is to start a new paragraph when the speaker changes during dialog or the topic changes during narrative passages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The confusion here stems from the fact that when Maddy non-verbally answers Evie's question, she doesn't say anything. And since there is no direct speech, apparently there is no dialog. But that is wrong. Dialog is a concept that we have taken from drama, where it usually consists of words alone. But humans communicate on many levels, and verbal communication is only one of them. Dialog in novels usually takes this into account and adds descriptions of non-verbal communicative behavior to verbal dialog. And when non-verbal communication is so unambiguous and clear that it can easily be rephrased with words (here: &quot;Yes.&quot;), it is in itself &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn-taking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;turn-taking&lt;/a&gt; in the two characters' conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your passage therefore represents dialog and may be broken into paragraphs representing the different &quot;speakers&quot; (or communicators):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evie tousled her sister’s hair as she said, “You’re a mess. Did you remember to put on some shorts with that dress?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maddy pulled up her dress and showed that she did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Good. Grab your bike, let’s go.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But paragraphs, as I stated initially, aren't just defined by a single speaker, they are also defined by a consistend topic and end when the topic changes. So when does a consistent topic &lt;em&gt;overrule&lt;/em&gt; different speakers taking turns and combine their verbal (or non-verbal) utterances into a single paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, when&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;utterances are &lt;strong&gt;short&lt;/strong&gt;, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they are &lt;strong&gt;embedded&lt;/strong&gt; in narration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Daniel Cann's answer provides a clear but incomplete example for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Calpurnia picked up Aunty's heavy suitcase and opened the door. 'I'll take it,' said Jem, and took it. I heard the suitcase hit the bedroom floor with a thump. The sound had a dull permanence about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we have here is what you might call an utterance of the narrator that is unified by the single and consistent topic. This passage is not dialog, although it contains direct speech, but a narrative description of the journey of the suitcase from outside the house to the bedroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is an incomplete example, because it contains only one speaker's utterance. Calpurnia and &quot;I&quot; do not speak, neither verbally, nor non-verbally. Therefore the example does not really provide the argument that Daniel Cann claims it does. But we can use it to create a similar example from Connor's question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Impatiently I watch as the girls are getting ready to leave. Why does Evie always have to play with her sister’s hair? “You’re a mess,” she says dreamily, and I shake with suppressed urgency as she draws Maddy's locks through her fingers with a lazy smile. I'm just about to explode, when Evie lets Maddy's hair go and asks, if she has put on her shorts. In a haze of adrenalin I see Maddy pull up her dress to show that she has. “Good. Let’s go.” I can no longer tell who is speaking. They trample out the door and I am finally alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm so relieved, that I start to cry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not the best writing, but you get the idea. This paragraph is not about what the girls say. It is about them saying anything at all instead of leaving quickly. As such, their speeches are just part of the narration of the viewpoint character's distress and need to be alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the utterances in your example do not have such a unifying overlay of the narrator's thoughts, I would break it into paragraphs as dialog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T15:33:04.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25132" CreationDate="2016-11-05T16:47:30.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 'rules' of arts and literature are there to make you stop and think before you break them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The adverse thing about changing tenses is that it can confuse the reader and break the sense of immersion. Typically if you use the more standard past tense for a narrative the reader stops thinking about it as being paste tense per se and just follows it as a sequence of events and keeping it consistent throughout the bulk of a story maintains the sense of a moving present which is also convenient for cutting out irrelevant passages of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that switching to the present tense for an epilogue can also make sense especially if it is a fairly well contained scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is often used when writing something where you want to give the impression that the narrator was involved in the events of the main story and it's often seen in 19/20th century proto-sci-fi/fantasy (Lovecraft, Verne etc ) . The danger here is that it can be a bit of a clunky way to force a twist. But it can work with care, especially if it gives genuinely relevant commentary on the events of the main story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately it is up to your skill and discernment as a writer to decide if it works or not but you are doing the right think by asking the question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19238" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T16:47:30.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25145" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25155" CreationDate="2016-11-05T17:53:05.893" Score="1" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel with several POV characters, one of which is the director of an intelligence agency. So far, the entire story is told in third person subjective. Each scene is told from the perspective of one of the POV characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realized that an additional subplot consisting of several scenes is needed to tie a few things together. This subplot is a mission ordered by the director but not carried out by her. It's not realistic that she could monitor it in real time and none of the agents involved in the mission can plausibly be introduced earlier in the story. It is important that the scenes have a real-time feel to them as the main storyline is up against a ticking clock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It feels excessive to introduce a new POV character (the agent conducting the mission) for only a few scenes, yet it would feel odd to tell that part of the story in third person objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your advice for telling this part of the story? Will it be jarring to have a few scenes told from an objective perspective? Will it be excessive to introduce a new POV character for this portion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T22:10:44.650" Title="Subplot with no established POV character present" Tags="|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25145" CreationDate="2016-11-05T20:19:57.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your story is in third-person, I think you're fine for that handful of scenes. Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope mysteries are set up like this: 95% of the scenes are from a specific character's POV, whether main or not, and a few scenes here and there are third-person objective. It works fine.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T20:19:57.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25132" CreationDate="2016-11-05T21:27:46.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that it's springing it on the reader a bit, but done properly it can be a powerful tool.  An example would be a story about WWII told by a veteran.  The main text of the story contains the events that happened, in the past, told in past tense - as a story like this often would be.  When the epilogue comes and the veteran is talking about missing his brothers, or that there are so few of them left, or something like that, the switch can be extremely powerful emotionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it drives the narrative, an emotional response, or benefits the scope of the story, then definitely go for it - just make sure you do it right! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T21:27:46.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25132" CreationDate="2016-11-06T03:30:50.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the story was written in &lt;strong&gt;first person&lt;/strong&gt; past tense, then a final chapter titled &quot;Epilogue&quot; would be perfectly fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A present tense epilogue after a &lt;strong&gt;third person&lt;/strong&gt; past tense story &lt;strong&gt;might&lt;/strong&gt; work, but I can't think of a way to do it satisfactorily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22147" LastActivityDate="2016-11-06T03:30:50.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25095" CreationDate="2016-11-06T12:01:29.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I googled it and found &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/posh&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/posh&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stylish, elegant, exclusive (expensive).&#xA;After the performance they went out to a very posh restaurant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21591" LastActivityDate="2016-11-06T12:01:29.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25151" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25157" CreationDate="2016-11-06T17:28:03.977" Score="3" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current novel, my main character has a rival for whom he has a deep personal hatred. Think Harry Potter and Malfoy, but with something solid at the beginning. I'm attempting to come up with a good reason for this hatred, but I'm quickly realizing that I don't know where to start. I don't know how to write a rival. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was homeschooled, so I was never in the public school system. I never had anyone remotely close to a rival. I have no experience of such an individual. How can I write a character whom I have no knowledge of? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T12:54:39.680" Title="How can I write a character whom I have no knowledge of?" Tags="|technique|characters|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25151" CreationDate="2016-11-06T18:27:01.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one is a rival. Lots of people have a rival. The distinction is crucial. Your protagonist's rival does not think of himself as a rival, and neither should you. He thinks of himself as having a rival. That is how you should write him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that there are not characters in fiction that are just evil. They certainly exist. There is Sauron in LOTR, for example. But Sauron is also completely remote from the story. We never even meet him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saruman, on the other hand, we do neet. But Saruman, though he had picked the wrong side, is not simply evil the Sauron is. We don't get to know him well, but he has some depth to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is Boromir, who give in to temptation but is final redeemed. He is an enemy for some period, but dies well. Him we know much better than either Sauron or Saruman. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choosing makes us human. Choosing is what makes a character human. You can make your rival a Sauron, a pure unreasoning evil, but then you will never know him. Or you can make him a Boromir, one who chooses and whose choices make sense from his point of view, even if they are not always nobel in the grander scheme of things, or even if they thwart the personal agenda of your protagonist (who may not be making the grand noble choices either).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-06T18:27:01.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25151" CreationDate="2016-11-06T20:30:44.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;rival,&lt;/em&gt; as opposed to a mere villain or antagonist, is someone who is competing with you for the thing, person, or goal you both want. The only place where Malfoy and Harry directly competed was in Quidditch, where they were both Seekers and were both after the Golden Snitch during games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, Draco was mostly Harry's &lt;em&gt;antagonist&lt;/em&gt; &amp;mdash; someone who is opposed to Harry and trying to prevent him from doing what he wants or being happy. An antagonist doesn't necessarily want what you want, or want it instead of you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So depending on what kind of character you're writing, you have to figure out a reason for your protagonist to hate this person. Are they competing for something or someone? Is the other person trying to sabotage him, personally or professionally? Are they from different social strata? races? religions? political parties? schools? office departments? businesses? Is one a crook and the other a cop? Do they play for different sports teams? Is one the other's manager? et cetera. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to figure out why they are at odds. This will give you the basic structure of their conflict. If you don't know &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; your protagonist hates your villain, then you need to do more work on your plot and your characters, because you don't have the bones of your story yet. Right now your Bad Guy is just a prop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have enough life experience to figure out how or why someone would want to thwart you personally, all I can suggest (besides getting out more) is to read more books and watch more TV and movies to study how other creators have established conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-11-06T20:30:44.497" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25145" CreationDate="2016-11-07T01:55:53.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need to introduce a new character to move the story forward, do it. Picking the flavor of POV is secondary, you can be either objective or subjective, the choice is yours only, and only the time and your alpha readers will tell, if you were right. The only advice is—do not abandon that character, when his or her task of progressing the story is done. Make sure they either stay in the picture or exit meaningfully. My preferred method would be killing them, of course, but it's just me. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T01:55:53.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25145" CreationDate="2016-11-07T04:30:13.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This doesn't have to be a problem at all. A &quot;B&quot; plot is an opportunity to enhance the main story by setting it off with something that feels a bit different and gives the reader some variety. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's generally not a good idea to underestimate readers. Most of them are perfectly capable of understanding that, in this book we're gonna follow along with more than one character. (Some have handfuls of them and do fine.) However, it's also nice when we make things &lt;em&gt;easy&lt;/em&gt; for the reader. Dropping in very occasional references to ground the reader can do this. A few random suggestions as to the type of thing I mean: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe the chapters with the B mission simply &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; different. The pacing might be a bit different due to the timescale. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps the lead agent simply has a different personality to your main protagonist or speaks differently. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the weather different? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe there's one plot in Shanghai and one in a small town in Russia, or a farm in South America. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps the action is of a different type. An action-oriented mission versus, say, a hacking plot or getting financial evidence can be a nice contrast.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you avoid being clunky and obvious about it - please avoid starting each chapter with &quot;The agent said, through his ski mask&quot; - and keep your references to ones that also advance the story, you should avoid any confusion and keep things moving along nicely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T04:30:13.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25151" CreationDate="2016-11-07T12:54:39.680" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing with writing a rivalry is simply a matter of perspective. I had an intellectual rival in secondary school that I had never really spoken to, but we both consistently competed for the top academic prizes. I also had one in primary school, and we just so happened to be best friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing with rivals is that they tend to be &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; similar. If you think of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, they are both clever, ambitious, talented, loyal, affable and great at the same sport in the same position. The Sorting Hat almost put Harry in Slytherin because he and Malfoy had such similar characteristics, and if he had ended up there it's very possible that they &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; have been the greatest of friends, very much the James Potter and Sirius Black of their generation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of their disagreements stem from where they differ: hunger for glory vs unassuming heroism, following a dynasty vs being independent, unquestioning leadership vs deferring to friend's counsel, selfishness vs willingness to sacrifice. That is why their relationship is antagonistic; they focus on where they differ. Had they focused on their similarities, they could very well have gotten along fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing that is consistent with rivalries, whether they're between friends or enemies, is that they cause each person to push each other further in order to stay ahead. This could be academically, professionally or athletically, or all of the above and more, the point is that each person sees themselves in the other person and wishes to be the one who does it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So rather than making rivals complete opposites, they need to be two sides of the same coin. Not necessarily identical, but similar enough that they will have a lot of parallels, and they will forever be comparing those parallels in order to try to be the one who is the best. It won't even matter that much if there are &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; people who are better than both, it will come down to who out of the two of them is more successful at their sport/job etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if these rivals are at odds with each other, it will be because of their differences, which will be what you need to focus on as their earliest interactions. Then when their similarities become clear, they will use them to push each other to be better, in order to try to come out ahead of the other. But remember to keep in mind that when they're facing off against each other that in another universe, they are the best of friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T12:54:39.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25158" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25160" CreationDate="2016-11-07T14:32:19.380" Score="0" ViewCount="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say you're writing a blog post based on a single source, like a podcast. You use several quotes from the podcast for the post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to cite the single podcast source every time you use a direct quote (or paraphrased content)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is introducing the podcast in the first paragraph enough, with the assumption that the following new quotes are from the same source? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find a specific rule for this in the CP stylebook. Is there one for AP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22162" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T16:57:23.360" Title="Attributing a single source in a blog post" Tags="|blog|ap-style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25158" CreationDate="2016-11-07T15:20:12.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say you have to &lt;em&gt;attribute&lt;/em&gt; the quotes, even if you don't have to cite them flat out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your first mention would be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This scene was in fact shot in Seville, Spain rather than Morocco (&lt;em&gt;Fire and Lunch,&lt;/em&gt; 7/15/06). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then subsequent mentions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Young Ned's rush into the Tower of Joy is halted by Bran's time-traveled shout. If Bran hadn't distracted him, as &lt;em&gt;Fire and Lunch&lt;/em&gt; suggests, he might have gotten there soon enough to get help for Lyanna. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T15:20:12.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25158" CreationDate="2016-11-07T16:57:23.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on how your blog is setup.  If the blog is one page that is searchable then I think your suggestion of once in the first paragraph is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21591" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T16:57:23.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25163" CreationDate="2016-11-07T19:01:45.380" Score="2" ViewCount="331" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering working in writing.  I'd like to save myself some time in case I'm not up for the job.  How do I go about evaluating myself as a professional writer?  I was going to ask for a peer review of some samples to do the task of evaluation but I saw that peer review of written material is considered off-topic here.  So, I have to evaluate myself and don't know how.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21591" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T22:02:10.353" Title="How does one evaluate his own writing ability?" Tags="|creative-writing|technical-writing|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25161" CreationDate="2016-11-07T22:02:10.353" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You evaluate yourself as a professional writer by submitting writing to respected publications and seeing if they offer you money for it. The beauty of writing is that there is no other criteria, no other qualification you need to possess, no licence you need to obtain. If it is good enough, it will sell. But by the same token, there is no infallible test of whether you will make it or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, of course, much easier paths to take. You could become a technical writer or a copywriter. Those are much less uncertain paths. But assuming that you mean you want to be a commercial book author, I don't think there is an accurate litmus test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developing as a writer takes time. It takes a lot of writing and, equally importantly, lots of attentive reading. The attentive part is different. Writers read differently from other people. We pay attention to how things are written, what works, what doesn't, and why. (See Francine Prose's book &lt;em&gt;Reading Like a Writer&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along the way you can submit your work for feedback. Bad feedback does not mean you can't succeed, only that you have not learned enough yet. Nor is bad feedback even a reliable guide to if your work is publishable. Lots of critique groups would rip to shreds works that have sold millions of copies (think Dan Brown or the 50 Shades of Grey author).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the strongest indication of whether you can succeed may be in your own question. It can be a very long journey to publication, and an even longer one to earning a living at it. It is the Everest of writing careers and most people who try it die on the mountain (or never get past base camp). If you are as ambivalent about it as you seem to be from your question, it is not likely you will have the resolve to get to the top.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From any rational standpoint, writing books is an insane way to try to make a living. The only possible reason for trying is that you are unable to stop yourself. If you are capable of stopping yourself from becoming a writer, do so. We are a ship of fools. Swim if you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T22:02:10.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25145" CreationDate="2016-11-07T22:10:44.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are basically giving exposition in these extra scenes, it is an opportunity to switch styles. Instead of yet another POV character or just omniscient narrated events, perhaps these scenes are written as an after action report, given as newspaper clippings, or some other manner that clearly distinguishes them as separate from the main narratives but still conveys the necessary information. They could make for a good way to signal breaks/transitions in the main storylines if they fall into a three act structure. If they need to be more immediate, perhaps audio dictations, transcripts of phone conversations, or emails would feel more immediate than an AAR clearly written after everything has unfolded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19367" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T22:10:44.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25165" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-07T22:59:53.307" Score="3" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in 11th grade in a New Zealand high school, and for my end of year exam I'm planning on using a quote from the book I have chosen which contains the word &quot;f*ckin&quot;. This is a quote which is important and relevant to my argument. How should I go about using this quote? Should I censor the word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies if this is not the right place for this question, but I wasn't sure where to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22164" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-11-08T01:49:47.587" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T18:27:10.403" Title="Quoting an expletive in a high school essay?" Tags="|word-choice|essay|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25165" CreationDate="2016-11-08T01:52:02.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you're writing this for your exam, your teacher is the authority on how to handle this. I'd ask them. If they're not available, you'll need to make this decision on your own. In the absence of any guidance from your teacher I'd err on the side of caution and censor the word as you've done above, indicating that you've done so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T01:52:02.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25167" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-08T04:50:50.580" Score="0" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you guys give a novice writer some advice on how to write good, frightening horror? I'm think more short story than novel, but anything that can give readers the creeps. I want to avoid being tacky or cliched, so I'd love the community's ideas! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15806" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T12:14:42.613" Title="Advice on writing horror?" Tags="|fiction|ideas|horror|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-11-08T22:48:21.003" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25167" CreationDate="2016-11-08T05:09:48.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a pretty broad question, but they key thing about horror, or any other strong emotion, it that it is all in the build up. What creates the tension in a horror movie, for instance, is not the thing that goes boo, but the quiet period where we keep waiting and waiting and waiting for the thing to go boo until our hearts are in our mouths hoping and dreading at the same time that the monster will finally go boo. So much on the edge of our seats, in fact, that the tiniest sound or movement will make us jump out of our skins.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot create a strong emotion or reaction in writing by writing the emotion itself. It is all about how you get the reader to the point of anxiety or longing in which there mere mention of whatever prize or terror or disappointment awaits brings an instantaneous burst of emotion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T05:09:48.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25169" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-08T06:56:37.770" Score="5" ViewCount="324" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two characters, Alice and Bob.  They have just met and each is trying to deceive the other.  But their thought processes and the nature of their deceptions are very different from one another, and I would like to contrast these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alice is engaged in some legally or ethically dubious activity.  Bob has arrived suddenly and with little explanation.  Her primary goal is to maintain control of the situation and prevent Bob from learning anything incriminating.  Her secondary goal is to learn who Bob is and what he is doing there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob has a very limited understanding of how he arrived and where he is.  His primary goal is to figure those things out.  When Alice initially spoke to him, she asked him a question which betrayed a profound and suspicious lack of knowledge.  As a result, Bob's secondary goal is to prevent Alice from learning anything which might be dangerous until he knows why she lacks this information.  That includes not giving away his own suspicion as well as accounting for himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both characters are quite intelligent and carefully consider their every word.  They also hang on each others' every word.  When I conceptualize their interaction, both characters have a great deal of narrative voice, fretting about what might be inferred from one sentence or another.  These narratives are, in my opinion, more important to the plot than the actual dialog, which largely consists of evasions and pretexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the idea of contrasting their asymmetrical approaches to the situation.  But I don't want to write two instances of the scene with a flashback, because I feel it would dilute the contrast.  I specifically want to juxtapose Alice's thoughts on saying something with Bob's thoughts on hearing that same thing, and vice-versa.  If I write a flashback, these things would be too far apart from one another and the contrast would not have the same immediacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thought I had was to tell the reader about the conversation, in third-person omniscient, instead of showing them every line of dialog in third-person limited.  But this breaks mimesis, and it just feels wrong.  I found the narratives entertaining because the characters sometimes jump to wildly incorrect conclusions which are logical based on the available evidence.  I find it difficult to tell the reader about these mistakes in a way which is still amusing.  I'm sure it's possible, but it seems like a lot of work for something I get &quot;for free&quot; if I stick with third-person limited.  I can just drop &quot;Obviously, [something absurd]&quot; into the running narrative, instead of having to go through the whole spiel of diegetically summarizing the conversation, the character's reasoning, how they are wrong, etc., and somehow still making the reader laugh.  Terry Pratchett could do that and it would be hilarious, but I'm not him and I have no idea how to pull it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm seriously considering just putting both narrative voices in and alternating between them along with the dialog.  I would differentiate them enough to avoid confusion (perhaps with paragraph separation, severe variances in diction or tone, or some other reasonably unambiguous factor).  This is certainly unorthodox, but my real question is &lt;strong&gt;can I get away with it?&lt;/strong&gt;  If not, what should I do instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm not a professional writer.  I don't care what the editor will think, because I have no editor.  By &quot;get away with it,&quot; I mean &quot;write like this without it being confusing or otherwise bad,&quot; rather than &quot;make it past the editor's desk.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11108" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T16:25:28.353" Title="How do I contrast the thought processes of different characters in one scene?" Tags="|dialogue|perspective|humor|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25167" CreationDate="2016-11-08T09:31:00.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What mbakeranalecta wrote in his answer is spot on but it is, as he already wrote, a very broad topic so I want to add some things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should really go without saying but since I've seen it in several places I will still point it out: make the reader care! I've read horror stories that get all the basics right. Bleak scenery, slow buildup, foreshadowing, bla, bla, but the protagonist was so bland and two-dimensional and boring that I couldn't care less if he was ripped apart by a horrific, frothing monster. I usually stop reading those books about half-way through. Read some Stephen King. His protagonists are usually no heroes or saints but they are very relatable. I want to know what happens to this poor tormented guy/gal!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next thing is contrast, which is closely related to what mbakeranalecta wrote about the buildup. You need to have light and friendly periods, otherwise the reader will become numb. When everything is grey and miserable and bleak and horrific, the reader will get used to it and nothing will scare them. Make the sun shine between the scares. Inject some hope in your story. There has to be a light at the end of the tunnel or you risk your reader becoming jaded. (Oh, to hell. Another one dead, they're not gonna survive anyways.) There is no shadow without light. Again, read some Stephen King for good examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And usually, also related, it's in what you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; see but what is suggested. A shadow, a noise, weird scratchmarks - on the &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; of the room you locked yourself in all night! One of the reasons why the first Alien movie was so brilliant is that you don't see much of the alien for most of the movie. This builds tension and fear of the unknown and it lets the readers fantasy fill in all the worst details, more scary (and more personal) than the writer ever could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the scares themselves I find that it actually works best if you kind of keep them more low key but there are many valid styles. Different people like different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's important that the reader can relate to what you're writing. Something you can actually relate to will scare you a lot more than something unimaginable. That's why King sells millions of books and movies and Lovecraft falls flat for many. Some writhing, multi-eyed, multi-mawed space monster from non-euclidean space is just too abstract for me to feel just about anything, let alone fright. (Lovecraft has other qualities though, don't shoot me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, using something that most people can relate to hits a lot closer to home. Bodily fluids and body parts in general (again, sparingly). Everybody can relate to the smell of stale urine. Saying that something has a sharp acidic odor doesn't do nearly as much to your imagination. Also, anything happening inside your own body or with your body (think King's Tommyknockers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along those lines, fear of the dark works well as does its big brother, loss of control. (The lights are out and it's coming. You can hear it. The grating sound. That sound! Like claws scraping slowly along the wooden floor in the hallway. Like a rusty knife. The ropes that tie you to your chair are digging deep into your arms and wrists as you try to break loose. The scraping sound has reached the door. It's here!) That's one reason torture and rape scenes are so hard to stomach. The victim is usually bound and totally helpless as horrific things are done to them. I think everybody can relate to that feeling of powerlessness and vulnerability. It's something from deep within us, from our childhood. Most people are scared shitless even by the thought of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and obviously use all senses. This goes for all fiction writing but for horror more than for most other genres. Use sound, smell, touch and taste in addition to sight and relate those to something known. Don't just say something has pungent stench. What does it smell like? Rotten meat? Excrement? A dead animal? Don't just say you hear footsteps in the hall. Do they stomp like an executioner, do they drag as if one leg was broken? You feel something slimey in the dark, okay. What feeling can you relate this too? Is it warm, like a body? Is it soft, like the innards of that fish you once caught and cooked with your uncle? Is it pulsating, almost as if breathing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, let the readers fantasy do the heavy lifting, create contrast, make the reader care and give them something to relate to. And read Stephen King! :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(man, do I sound like a fan boy)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: There's much more this obviously. A good start is to read a lot of horror and try to figure out why it does or doesn't scare you. It's pretty formulaic and easy to see, most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18609" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T09:31:00.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25167" CreationDate="2016-11-08T12:14:42.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found that creative writing including a horror deserves to come from inspiration.  Inspiration can come from many places.  What inspires you?  What would make your imagination take wing?  Maybe if you lived alone in a log cabin with nothing but the sounds of the forest to 'distract' you, you'd be inspired to think and write about the horrors of city living.  Depending on whether you already have a theme for the writing, see what would inspire your thoughts to write what it is you're looking to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21591" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T12:14:42.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25169" CreationDate="2016-11-08T14:24:32.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing about writing is that everything has to be accomplished with a single stream of words. A narrative can only ever be doing one thing at a time, in stark contrast to movies, where many things can be going on on screen simultaneously. On the screen you can create an 18th century ballroom or a 12th century battlefield with a single shot, and have a conversation going on in front of it at the same time, and have the actor's faces tell a different story from their words. In prose, you can't do any of that, you have to layer things in one at a time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you give the reader the sense that a character's thoughts in a scene differ from their words, or that both characters in the scene are lying to each other? You can't cram it all into one shot like the movies can, so you layer it in. You start by establishing one character's thoughts and motivations, then you show their willingness to lie in support of those goals. Then you do the same for the other character. Then, once they meet, all you have to portray is their actual conversation, because the reader understand what they really want and how they a willing to dissemble to get it, and the kind of ways they talk, and so they recognize what is really going on in the scene even though the scene itself it just the bare up-front conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, I would suggest, is the fundamental answer to all questions where the writer is struggling to say everything they want to say in a scene. This is fundamental to how storytelling works: is is all in the setup. The whole structure of storytelling is setup and payoff, and if the payoff isn't working it is because the setup didn't do its job. Reworking the payoff scene a hundred times won't change this. You have to go back and fix the setup.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T14:24:32.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25169" CreationDate="2016-11-08T15:25:45.557" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I should think that alternating paragraphs should be enough, as long as the tone/ voice that each character uses has been sufficiently different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not too dissimilar to two different people having an extended back and forth dialogue and not including the 'he said', 'she said' parts in order to preserve the flow of the conversation. The reader should be able to distinguish the two if they know the characters well enough already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing it as third person limited will be just that: limited. If you want to do it from both perspectives it will need to be omniscient, particularly if you're delving into their thoughts. If the internal dialogue is distinguished from the rest of the text, with italics for example, it should be quickly clear that they are internal thoughts without having to explicitly state it constantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is he suspicious? Quick, distract him.&lt;/em&gt;  &amp;quot;So, Bob, what do you think about the plan to diversify the customer base?&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;Good, that should throw him off guard.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Don't mention aliens. Don't mention aliens. Don't mention aliens.&lt;/em&gt; &amp;quot;Hmm, well I would be worried about losing money by alienating current customers.&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;Dammit Bob.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why is he mentioning losing money? Does he know about the embezzling? How does he know?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alice chuckled and ran her hand through her hair, &amp;quot;you know, I suppose there's no reason to worry about it. That type of thing is well above our pay station.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Above our station? Oh Geez, could she be one of them?&lt;/em&gt; &amp;quot;Haha, yeah, you're probably right. Anyway, I should probably just keep on marching.&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;Argh! Why did I say marching? It sounds like Martians! Run, just run now before you say anything more stupid.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alice watched him run awkwardly down the corridor. &lt;em&gt;He's going to tell someone. I need to tell Frank right now.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you throw in the names of the speakers/thinkers every so often, the reader should be able to keep up who the paragraph is focusing on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T15:25:45.557" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25174" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25178" CreationDate="2016-11-08T16:16:44.867" Score="13" ViewCount="2497" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is my belief that male and female readers are more or less the same. There are differences in how we view things, but those differences do not stop us from liking the same book or movie. I can see this clearly on iMDB. If I look at the broken down votes for a movie, I can see that there is a difference between what females and males like, but the difference is negligible. Often only within 0.2 difference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The below is a screenshot of the broken down voting for Star Wars VII. You can see that females liked it more than males, but that the difference is small: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ntw5C.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ntw5C.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; I recently had someone call this belief into question. He implied that differences between male and female readers are extreme, and said that an author would need to &quot;know a great deal about the significant differences between male and female psychology, neurology, world view, values, motivators, character traits, and 'hooks.'&quot; In a further discussion, he also said that male readers like a hero that they can look up to you, while female readers prefer a hero who is an ordinary person and more human. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never heard these claims before. If they are true, then they completly revise everything I've ever heard about character development. So I ask you: is he right? Are female and male readers really that different? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2020-04-11T12:51:43.577" LastActivityDate="2020-04-11T12:51:43.577" Title="Just how Different are Male and Female Readers?" Tags="|characters|readers|gender|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25169" CreationDate="2016-11-08T16:25:28.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the way you describe it and the fact that you're asking I'd have to say third person omniscient would achieve what you're trying to accomplish.  I also think it makes a difference if it's a short dialogue.  If the interaction is short than you might want to try portraying the characters in dialogue but if the interaction is not short, and again, because of the fact that you're asking, I'd go with the description of the dialogue as you suggested yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21591" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T16:25:28.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25176" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25185" CreationDate="2016-11-09T00:43:01.283" Score="5" ViewCount="1321" Body="&lt;p&gt;This could be a misconception of mine, but I've noticed that the popular fantasy novels of today seem to nearly all have main characters who are children or teenagers. I have a list of some off the top of my head below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this? Is there a drawback to writing a fantasy novel with an adult as the main character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;List of Fantasy Novels: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fablehaven - main characters are two kids. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Harry Potter - urban fantasy but features a kid. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inheritence Cycle - Features a teenager &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Twilight - probably more romance than fantasy, but still features vampires and the like. Features teenagers. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T17:16:46.307" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T17:16:46.307" Title="Why do Popular Fantasy Novels of Today Feature Teenagers?" Tags="|characters|fantasy|readers|young-adult|child-characters|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9226" CreationDate="2016-11-09T00:53:57.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A P.S. at the end of an email can be a handy way of avoiding condescension, especially when you want to clarify a small detail without explicitly stating what that detail is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, there will be a human reading your email, so you should consider elements of that if it can help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22174" LastActivityDate="2016-11-09T00:53:57.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25174" CreationDate="2016-11-09T11:35:16.250" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you would like to immediately disprove your friend about the fact that female readers prefer a protagonist that is an ordinary person, I'll refer you to the works of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jane Austen&lt;/a&gt;, which are favored by female readers, incredibly popular and about the landed gentry in the late 18th/early 19th century. Personally I wouldn't call any of the protagonists &quot;ordinary people&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's possible that your friend is getting confused about male/female readers and male/female characters. An author does certainly need to understand how males and females are different if they're planning on writing about them, but no more than they would need to know about what it's like to live in poverty if the character lives in poverty, or what it's like to live in India if the character is Indian. It's simply part of good character building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it all comes down to how realistic the characters are, and how much the readers relate to them. It's obviously easier to relate to a protagonist that is more similar to oneself (the entire genre of young adult fiction is centered around that premise) but that doesn't mean that people cannot understand or will refuse to read books targeted outside their demographic. A lot of adults read Harry Potter. Sure they were probably children once, so can at least relate to the character based on their memories of childhood, but the majority of women were never teenage boys yet still enjoy reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the claim about males preferring heroes and females preferring ordinary people, off the top of my head I would think that most fiction leans towards the characters fitting that stereotype. There are plenty more protagonists that are both heroes and men, but if anyone thinks that a hero can't be a woman then &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Games&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Katniss Everdeen&lt;/a&gt; would like to have a word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to go ahead and assume based on the pronouns in your question that your friend is not and has never been a female, so is probably unqualified to comment on what women generally look for in their books. Like I said, based on all of the books that have ever been written it may be safe to assume that writers tend to write their books following your friend's exact type of thinking, so it's at least unsurprising that he made the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if 2016 has proven anything so far, it's that things that have generally worked in the past don't necessarily mean people will like it in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-11-09T11:35:16.250" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25179" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-09T13:31:08.780" Score="1" ViewCount="662" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess this is a question about inspiration versus copying. I recently came across a story that really gripped me both with the inspiration for an idea and at the same time a doubt I could ever write anything as ground breaking or well written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is that doubt that is fueling my concern. I'm not trying to take it verbatim and I'd like to think I'm putting my own spin on events as well as throwing in my own ideas. But I can't help bits of what I've read popping into my head as I write, which leads to my wanting to add a bit based on it. Not in the sense of I must crowbar this in but more they did this which could work well like this kinda thought. Is that just the normal creative process and Im just worrying over nothing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; The basic idea of the story I read has a group of warriors battling to make their way through a magical maze to reach a treasure at the centre; which is the bit I really like. So writing a story about a group of adventurers each seeking glory to claim a dragon egg from an ancient dungeon would be different enough I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22178" LastEditorUserId="15545" LastEditDate="2016-11-15T05:44:13.890" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T05:44:13.890" Title="Am I copying an idea too closely?" Tags="|copying|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25179" CreationDate="2016-11-09T14:11:03.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normal creative process would be coming up with an idea or twist based on your ways. There is no big harm reading alternative ideas, or getting caught by a specific one. If that matches so well to your own ways of thinking, story, writing, you may adapt it, and work on to fit well in your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your style you may want to keep this idea from instant processing. Keep it around for a few days, let the thrill chill down, and look for it some time later. If at that time it seems very out of league, and you can't modify it enough to blend in well, you better consider to leave the idea, because then it will become pure copying without necessary creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: Involving Lew's answer, it is OK to be inspired by a story, and your setting is far enough from the source, however if you copy the mechanisms, occourance of events, the wave of thrill, etc., so if it gets same characteristics, pattern, it would still qualify as a copy. This is where I meant to rework them for your story, blend them in, make it fitting in there without being the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21898" LastEditorUserId="21898" LastEditDate="2016-11-10T08:27:36.993" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T08:27:36.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25179" CreationDate="2016-11-09T14:15:34.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's fairly safe to assume that at this point, we're all out of original ideas and every story written is using an idea from a story already out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crime fiction: a crime has been committed.  An investigation needs to take place to (hopefully) bring the criminal to justice&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Romance: Two people who should be together for whatever reason aren't.  It could be that they're from feuding families or one of them is a vampire.  The story is them working through what keeps them apart and overcoming it.  Usually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on through every genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're copying the other story word for word then yes, you're on shaky ground but the trick if you want to write your own story is to put your own spin and take on it.  Make it different enough that people can see your words, your story, your ideas coming through and not some cheap copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2016-11-09T14:15:34.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14085" CreationDate="2016-11-09T14:48:45.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Giving up perfectionism is great advice. It's also like blithely telling someone to give up heroin. I tried to overcome my perfectionistic approach to writing fiction by doing some simple writing exercises, only to find that I was just as phobic about doing the exercises. I even spellcheck my own diary!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;     I think the best way to approach this is not to think of it as a writing problem. Begin by being less perfectionistic in other areas of your life. Live with a bit of mess. Don't pay the bills immediately they come in. Go out with greasy hair and notice how little these things really matter. Aim lower in your goals too. Settle for a ten percent improvement rather than 100 percent. Aiming too high can make you feel overwhelmed and paralysed. Aiming lower gives you a can-do feeling and you end up accomplishing more than you expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22179" LastActivityDate="2016-11-09T14:48:45.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25183" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25186" CreationDate="2016-11-09T17:39:36.643" Score="1" ViewCount="1527" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually it's on a special info page before the title page/near the cover, but I can't find it for the book I have. I want to know, if possible, exactly how many were &lt;em&gt;printed&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The book's ISBN 10: 2909808742 / 2909808858, ISBN 13: 9782909808741&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22180" LastEditorUserId="22180" LastEditDate="2016-11-11T08:53:00.930" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T15:24:30.453" Title="Is there a way to find the book's circulation numbers?" Tags="|publishing|book|printing|isbn|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25179" CreationDate="2016-11-09T21:15:04.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well, the basic idea of the story I read has a group of warriors battling to make their way through a magical maze to reach a treasure at the centre. Which is the bit I really like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, this is not an idea for a story, this is merely a setting for one. There could be an infinite number of things, happening in that maze, limited only by your imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is maze an original setting for a story? Of course, not, but neither are forests, cities, deserts, castles, islands, mountains--you name it--yet it never stopped anyone from writing stories about the events, taking place in any of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is absolutely normal to be inspired by settings, whether real or imagined by other author, just make your maze unique enough by adding original details and watch for Minotaur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-09T21:15:04.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25176" CreationDate="2016-11-10T05:09:09.093" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's somewhat of a misconception, and a crossing of borders in audience as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those you've listed all fall into the bounds of Young Adult books - the target audience are teenagers and/or casual readers. The only possible exception are the latter Harry Potter books (but that is by deliberate design).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these stories are 'coming of age' stories, and are designed to resonate with their intended audiences (often teenagers). Having the main, focal characters be teenagers automatically allows the vast majority of the intended audience to draw a connection with the story. They are mostly about the growth of the character and them discovering who they really are, something most teens (and young adults) resonate with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Inheritance Cycle and Twilight are also very simple books. Very simple concepts, no real depth and really, really simple writing. There's nothing challenging or confronting in them, they don't ask questions of the author and frankly aren't that memorable. They were successful because they were well marketed and written to a predictable formula and the popularity only really took off when movies where made of them. They were also relatively short-lived phenomena (anecdotally, I don't know anyone personally who finished reading the Inheritance Cycle - I personally lost interest partway through the third book). The same can be said of The Hunger Games and Mazerunner They are quick reads where you don't have to invest a great deal of time, effort or thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are, in short, popular because they sell. They sell because they are marketable and they're marketable because they're &lt;em&gt;light&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;easy&lt;/em&gt; reads that have no real depth but just enough sprinkling to make them &lt;em&gt;&quot;edgy&quot;&lt;/em&gt; but not controversial. They are also aimed at and developed for a specific target market and the success is often dependent on feature films and associated merchandising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen King has this to say about them, and I think he sums it up quite well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I read Twilight and didn't feel any urge to go on with her. I read The Hunger Games and didn't feel an urge to go on. It's not unlike [my novel] The Running Man, which is about a game where people are actually killed and people are watching: a satire on reality TV. I read Fifty Shades of Grey and felt no urge to go on. They call it mommy porn, but it's not really mommy porn. It is highly charged, sexually driven fiction for women who are, say, between 18 and 25.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harry Potter, and  is a somewhat different beast and done so by deliberate design. The story grew up as the character and the audience grew up. It's still a coming of age story, but there is a depth to the latter books that simply doesn't exist in the other series. Many comparisons have also been made regarding the abilities and motivations of the authors themselves, but that's getting wildly off-topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short though, the &quot;Popular&quot; Fantasy novels (that is to say the main-stream media reported ones at any rate) feature Teens because they are Teen/YA Stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for Fantasy itself - that depends entirely on the story itself, and as many examples you can provide where teens are the focus, there are many, many more where they aren't:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Steven Errikson's and Ian C Esslemonts &lt;em&gt;Malazan&lt;/em&gt; books (and all their offshoots) certainly don't.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Brandon Sanderson's &lt;em&gt;Stormlight Archive&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;David Gemmell's &lt;em&gt;Drenai&lt;/em&gt; series&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Steven King's &lt;em&gt;Dark Tower&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scott Lynch's &lt;em&gt;Gentleman Bastards&lt;/em&gt; series&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Brian McClellan's &lt;em&gt;Powder Mage&lt;/em&gt; trilogy&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list goes on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastEditorDisplayName="user18397" LastEditDate="2016-11-10T05:21:09.787" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T05:21:09.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25183" CreationDate="2016-11-10T09:00:58.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may depend on the book, publisher, and the time it is printed. It can be that the page does not even exists or the info is not available. If you can provide the Title, Author, Year of print, it has some chance to get it looked for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21898" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T09:00:58.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25176" CreationDate="2016-11-10T10:28:19.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main drawback you ll have is you ll not get the same audience.&#xA;An adult character is more mature and have another conception of life, that means different choice based on logic more than affect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Young character are popular in YA fantasy cause it allows author to touch more easily young reader who feel the same thing. Moreover the novels you use in exemple are what i classified as &quot;low level fantasy&quot; (except for HP) --&gt; easy to pick, easy to read and easy to forget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YA fantasy is like our society, fast and easy enjoyment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21927" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T10:28:19.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25176" CreationDate="2016-11-10T10:54:36.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question sounds to me like an opinion query.  My opinion is that like many other forms of media like movies and music, novels have adapted to the general trend of media where the better looking people (young) get the job done cheaper, etc.  I believe it's a management and business decision.  You could probably research the topic and find some interesting things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21591" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T10:54:36.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25174" CreationDate="2016-11-10T12:22:09.103" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a strong confounding factor in the statistic you cite in your question: you only compare males and females who (a) saw the movie (that is, where interested in it in the first place) and (b) posted a review on IMDB. That is, your sample was taken from a Star Wars loving, movie critique writing, highly unrepresentative subset of the population and therefore almost completely meaningless when it comes to drawing conclusions about men and women in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you would need to do is compare the ratings of that (and many other) movies by a large, random sample of the population. That is, force many, many people to view that movie and then ask them to rate it. No one has done that, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://digiday.com/brands/star-wars-demographics-male/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;58% of movie-goers where male&lt;/a&gt; on the opening weekend, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quantcast.com/blog/the-fans-behind-the-force/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;women liked different characters than men&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is only one movie, and it is such a popular franchise that this alone will skew the statistic. Just as many men have seen &lt;em&gt;Twilight&lt;/em&gt; simply because it was such a mega hype, many women view Star Wars because it is part of our cultural heritage (or because they have boyfriends who take them to watch it). Also, Disney is known to work hard to include characters, topics, and storylines that appeal to a wide range of demographics. So a Disney movie is not a good example to test viewing differences by numbers of viewers alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to research viewing differences, you have to look at the whole market, and this research has been done repeatedly and it consistenly shows that women watch other movies and read other books than men, and they read them differently, focussing on different aspects, and have a different reading or viewing experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T12:22:09.103" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25179" CreationDate="2016-11-10T15:24:27.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basic idea could be repeated a thousand times but in the different ways. Just look how many popular stories in literature have smth in common, as the many recent blockbusters seems to be created by the similar formula. &#xA;I think, if it's about inspiration, you shouldn't just let it go. No single idea in this world is no owned by the human. Inspiration is like a voice from heaven or even higher&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22082" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T15:24:27.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25179" CreationDate="2016-11-10T17:08:54.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In plagiarism, you copy another persons words and idea.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you're not doing &lt;em&gt;precisely&lt;/em&gt; that you're fine! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously, I copy stuff all the time. In my writing, there's a city that was destroyed by a dragon. Sounds like Erebor from The Hobbit, right? Well, my city is crafted entirely of ash because when the dragon destroyed it, its fire was so hot it vindicated all life and turned everything into &lt;em&gt;ash&lt;/em&gt;. I just took a twist on Tolkien's idea. To be honest, I bet Tolkien took the dragon-burning-down-city idea from somewhere else. Dragons burn down villages &lt;em&gt;all the time&lt;/em&gt;. For one place, I literally ripped the entire mountainous, foggy scenery from Tomb Raider 2013 because I &lt;strong&gt;loved it so much. I am so glad I played that game and got to see such beauty. Lara Croft is totally gorgeous too!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want, you can even take that idea I had and put your own twist on it. It really, really doesn't matter. Don't stress, just chill and write, it's great. I love some of the groundbreaking things I've read and have used them in my own work. Just don't copy everything, don't copy every event in order. If you copy the events and stuff, but renames places/characters that's still copying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just chill and write, it's so fun to write. Throw in your own ideas, slap together some new ones, put those in, take some ideas from others, add it all together and you've got a superb best selling novel. For me, a good mix of ideas that have been repackaged, new thoughts, good inspiration, that's what makes stuff amazing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to know what I think about your work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think'll be great. Mix inspiration, new thoughts, stolen thoughts, cool stuff, put your twists on the thoughts you steal and beautifully integrate them. &lt;strong&gt;It'll be great!&lt;/strong&gt; I'm so excited for you to get published, please tell me when you do so I can read it! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T17:08:54.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21226" CreationDate="2016-11-10T17:17:38.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So if you were asked to build a wooden house, would you take that to mean that you could not use glass for the windows of fiberglass for the shingles or nails to fasten all the pieces together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We say a house is a wooden house because it is &lt;em&gt;structurally&lt;/em&gt; wooden, not because it contains nothing but wood. We call an essay a narrative essay if it is &lt;em&gt;structurally&lt;/em&gt; narrative, not because it contains nothing but narration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T17:17:38.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25179" CreationDate="2016-11-10T19:10:33.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are in the business of storytelling, and it is the telling, not the story, that sets us apart. Storytellers tell the same basic stories over and over and over again. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. Friends go on quest for McGuffin. Friends have setbacks. Friends get McGuffin. There are only so many ways to vary the basic shapes of stories without them ceasing to be satisfying stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what sets Jane Austen apart from Danielle Steele is not the story they tell, but how the tell it. This is not to say that there is not a market for the same story told in the same way. Some readers have endless appetites for the same basic love story told the same basic way, and Harlequin is set up to deliver it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That formula fiction, though, is not a simply copy of something genuinely original. Formula romance does not sound like Jane Austen, just as formula fantasy does not sound like Tolkien. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can write pastiche of the the style of good writers, but that tends to stand out as pastiche. Writing pastiche can be a developmental stage for a writer, particularly is you are inspired to write by a particular beloved author. But your need to grow past pastiche if you want to be an author of similar calibre to your hero. To do that, you have to read widely, exposing yourself to very different styles and different approaches to storytelling. Read outside your genre. Read outside you era. Read the greats. All this will enrich your literary pallet and get your imagination out of the rut of your favorite author's style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, though, it is important to remember that the reader is not looking for originality. (Specifically, they are looking for something familiar, something that will satisfy their existing tastes.) What they are looking for is poignancy. They want to be moved. They want to enjoy a vicarious emotion or experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blatant copying of another author in the field, or pastiche, deliberate or not, will spoil that poignancy if the reader recognizes it. Suddenly it becomes about the book, not the story; about the mechanics, not the experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up originality is not a goal. We all tell the same stories. What distinguished us is how we tell those stories. Avoid copyright violations so you don't get sued. (Copyright, not plagiarism, is what you worry about, unless you are submitting a work for a degree.) Avoid pastiche because it distracts the reader. Read broadly, deeply, and attentively to broaden your literary pallet and get your storytelling mind out of the rut of your favorite author or style. Or write formula fiction to the formula requested by the publisher and don't worry about originality -- it is not what you are being paid for.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T19:10:33.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25176" CreationDate="2016-11-10T21:59:16.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a variant of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. Adolescent characters are hardly new, Dorothy from &lt;em&gt;Wizard of Oz&lt;/em&gt;, Jason of the Argonauts, Theseus (of minotaur slaying fame), and more recently the kids from Narnia, Garion from David Edding's &lt;em&gt;Belgariad&lt;/em&gt;, arguably Frodo from LOTR, etc. These characters have the advantage of little to no backstory of merit, other than perhaps their parentage. So the audience gets their entire arc, as opposed to something like Odysseus, who had prior adventures before the Odyssey. The Farm Boy to King plot arc is pervasive and very compelling, even to adults. They serve as a readers entry into a fantasy world as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically marketed towards kids/teens, a protagonist of their age/experience allows the reader to more fully relate to the story, like having Jim Hawkins in &lt;em&gt;Treasure Island&lt;/em&gt;, with every other character being an adult what is the appeal for kids? Perhaps super-hero fiction deviates from this more than other youth media, but even then there is Robin, Spider-man (the most commercially successful superhero by a mile), Jimmy Olsen, etc, all young heroes/sidekicks that serve as a stand-in for the youthful audience. And of course comics have been trying to kick the &quot;it's all for kids&quot; association for decades!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19367" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T21:59:16.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25183" CreationDate="2016-11-11T10:29:48.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Russian books the print-run is always listed on the copyright page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11210" LastActivityDate="2016-11-11T10:29:48.897" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25176" CreationDate="2016-11-11T17:00:34.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Lauren's suggested reformulation may be a better way to express the phenomena. YA is a very popular genre today, and much of YA seems to be in the fantasy/sci fi realm. So there is a lot of sci fi/fantasy with adolescent characters out there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see two factors that help explain this. First, most fantasy and sci fi are power fantasies. The heros are endowed with magical or technological powers with which to face the monsters of the world. What kind of reader is most apt to find such works appealing? The powerless who feel vulnerable to the monsters of the world. Children are under the protection of their parents. Adults and experience and resources at their disposal. Adolescents are have no resources and are facing the monsters of the world for the first time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The fantasy and sci fi that is actually worth reading, however, is just the opposite: it is a warning against the lure of power. Thus LOTR is the very opposite of a power fantasy and it greatest heroes are those who resisted the lure of power.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor is that we are currently in a period in which we are encouraged to use literature as a mirror, not a window. We used to write books for children that encouraged them to look outward, and to aspire to adult virtues. (Notice that in the Narnia books, though only children can enter Narnia, they are expected to behave like adults when they are there.) But now literature for children is mostly focused on self-acceptance. It is neither outward looking nor aspirational. And so children and adolescents are offered heros who are as much like themselves as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-11T17:00:34.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25203" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25204" CreationDate="2016-11-11T19:31:34.733" Score="2" ViewCount="782" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Introduction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I said &lt;em&gt;a reader&lt;/em&gt; in the title. I don't know if I can answer this myself, as I'm not the kind of person who hates on something for not being good. I like virtually everything, and don't care if it's not realistic. I know for a fact that all readers won't be like me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, novels have a level of realism inside them. For example, contemporary fiction is well, contemporary, and so is crime, that's often quite real. Fantasy is often real to a degree - for example, there are peasants and lords, injustice in the realm. Sci-fi is also real to a degree, some parts believable and could actually be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just really like wandering minstrels, pretty princesses, valiant knights, strange dragons and beasts that the king and queen can slay together. I can safely say that, as a hardcore fantasy reader, &lt;em&gt;I have never read a fantasy book where there are wandering minstrels, plenty of princesses and princes, valiant knights that go on treasure quests for the king, queens that defend the city, etc.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, I have took note of this and made my novel so it &lt;strong&gt;is not&lt;/strong&gt; just wandering minstrels, valiant knights, and instead has plenty of peasants and injustice. I think that even for fantasy, those ideas are too unreal for a reader to like them. So...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How feasible and real does any book have to be for readers to enjoy it? Does a reader care if an author goes too far with the strange, wandering minstrels, and whatever else I said? Would it matter if I made the whole thing like what I described?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I acknowledge that stack exchange doesn't like hypothetical questions. I am not actually writing this, instead I am writing something more realistic and plausible (even for fantasy). This is more a question of if I write down what I dream about every night, what would happen?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T17:19:04.040" Title="Does a reader care about how realistic a book is?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|fantasy|readers|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25203" CreationDate="2016-11-11T20:53:18.990" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty complicated question, no matter how realistic your writing is you'll have people who can find faults and people who think you should have been more adventurous. It's probably worth accepting that from the get-go if it's going to bother you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say focus more on being &lt;strong&gt;consistent&lt;/strong&gt; in your world-building than realistic. &#xA;If you're creating an entirely 'unrealistic' world, you have to establish what the rules of this world are for your readers and stick to them. For Example, if it's established that knights being valiant is the norm in your world, it'd confuse readers if all the knights in your story were portrayed as being horrible people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what you've suggested as being unrealistic &quot;having peasants and injustice&quot; I wouldn't say that's unrealistic at all, injustice adds conflict which is what readers expect and is definitely more realistic than a world where everyone's jolly and nothing ever goes wrong. As for the &quot;peasants&quot; if there's anysort of class hiarchy in your story, there's bound to be people at the lowest level, what I'd be careful of is only having your poorer characters portrayed as transgressing laws and your kings, queens and knights etc, being the keepers of justice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day writing is about pushing boundaries, if you don't think your story fits in with other fantasy works then that could be a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19792" LastActivityDate="2016-11-11T20:53:18.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25203" CreationDate="2016-11-11T21:08:23.047" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The amount of realism in your book is set up by you as the writer. It's up to the individual reader to decide if this is the reader's particular cup of tea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some fantasy books are so stiff with clich&amp;eacute;s (valiant knights, pretty princesses, etc.) that they'll fall over in a brisk wind; some like to subvert them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mercedes Lackey does a lot of both in her Velgarth/Valedmar series &amp;mdash; there are pretty princesses, but most of them are also damned handy with a sword, powerful mages, or both. There are valiant knights and jerk knights, good and bad kings, and justice for peasants and lords alike. David &amp;amp; Leigh Eddings explored these tropes in the Belgariad and Malloreon by going past them: for example, Mandorallen, the typical Myghtyest Knyght on Lyfe, is also a well-rounded and flawed character with a backstory and a love life and personality beyond that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams wrote merry absurdities; you don't go in expecting realism. Tolkien deliberately was as serious as he could be in writing fantasy because he was trying to create a kind of &quot;modern mythology&quot; for Britain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're worried that life in the real setting of High Fantasy (the English Middle Ages) was nasty, brutish, and short for most people and you think your audience would object to that truth, I should point out that there's an audience for that kind of story too &amp;mdash; Bernard Cornwell did &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warlord_Chronicles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a set of historical novels on the real King Arthur&lt;/a&gt;, plus &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.com/Bernard-Cornwell/e/B000APAB68/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1478898863&amp;amp;sr=8-2-ent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;others set around that time period&lt;/a&gt;, so &lt;em&gt;somebody&lt;/em&gt; is reading this stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The upshot is this: write the story the way you think it should be written. Let your potential reader know how realistic you're planning to be in the blurb on the back or in the first few pages, and then your readers can decide if they want to go on the journey with you. There's no &quot;correct&quot; amount of realism for any story, no matter what the setting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-11-11T21:15:38.910" LastActivityDate="2016-11-11T21:15:38.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25203" CreationDate="2016-11-11T22:21:28.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people will only read books if they are gritty and realistic. Some people will only read books if they are about horses. Some people will only read books if they are about dragons. No book is written for the whole world. Every book is written for a specific audience or audiences with specific tastes. You have to write the book that works for your intended audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What matters is that your audience accepts the world you create as self consistent -- that it obeys its own rules. Tolkien wrote a marvelous essay called &lt;em&gt;On Fairy Stories&lt;/em&gt; in which he described the author as creating a sub-created world. Fantasy is not about getting the reader to suspend their disbelief, but to believe in the reality of the sub-created world. We may disbelieve in rings of power and elves in our own world, but we are not suspending our disbelief when we enter middle earth. We simply believe in them as part of the sub-created world of middle earth. They key is not to break the spell. Pop the bubble of that sub-created world (by giving Aragorn a cell phone, for instance) and the whole sub-created world lies in ruins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think it is also important to remember that the sub-created world is a bubble around a story. You don't have to answer questions about what elves do for a living or where orcs go on vacation. The story world does not have to make economic or geographical sense (the map of middle earth is geological nonsense, with its thin mountain ranges running in straight lines all over the place). The content of the bubble only has to make sense in story terms. If something nonsensical happens that affects the story, the bubble bursts. But outside of the logic of the story, things do not need to be explained or even explicable, as long as they all seem consistent with the nature of the sub-created world in which the story takes place.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story arc is about knights and minstrels and princesses then create a story world in which these characters live and which is self consistent. Don't introduce unhappy peasants and unjust rulers unless the story arc is about unhappy peasants and unjust rulers. They won't make your story more realistic, they will make your sub-created world less self-consistent, and therefore less believable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-11T22:21:28.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25208" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-12T05:49:28.030" Score="1" ViewCount="467" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the email I'm writing there are three separate points. The last two ones are not so long so that each of them can fit in a single paragraph. However, the first one is needed to be split into two paragraphs. Because it's the most important point, I want to put it on top. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q:&lt;/strong&gt; How can I indicate that after finishing the first one, the second point is mentioned? Or, how to tell the reader that the third paragraph is not belonged to the first point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can explicitly say &quot;as for point 2&quot; at the beginning of the third paragraph, or simply divided the email into three sections with headings, but I want to find a subtler method to do that, for practicing writing skills purpose. I think the solution lies on the combination of white-space and punctuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11428" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T18:22:43.847" Title="How to indicate that another point is mentioned withou explicitly saying that?" Tags="|punctuation|turning-point|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25179" CreationDate="2016-11-12T11:21:47.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just want to drop a general line to all who have commented on this little question of mine. What you guys have said has been very helpful. Hasn't exactly solved the problem but has helped me see exactly what the problem is a little more clearly. I hope to publish another question pretty soon that I would also like some opinions on. Hopefully this will let me get closer to an answer. Thanks again. White,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22178" LastActivityDate="2016-11-12T11:21:47.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25211" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-12T12:14:09.143" Score="2" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to write a memoir about my unique teenage adventures growing up in another country. Since this was ~35 years ago, I don't remember very many names. Is it ok to use pseudonyms?  I presume that I would have to state that all referenced names are, in fact, made up.&#xA;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22202" LastActivityDate="2016-11-12T15:24:52.067" Title="Pseudonyms in memoir" Tags="|memoir|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25212" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-12T13:27:36.483" Score="2" ViewCount="298" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question rather stems from my last question about inspiration vs copying from another authors work. While the suggestions I got there haven't completed resolved my issues and doubts, they have started me thinking differently about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a recap, this whole issue started when I read a piece of fiction that moved me in ways a piece of writing never had done before. It was fresh, it was exciting, it was groundbreaking writing in a way I had never considered. And maybe that was my problem. Could I have been too close to it when I wanted to start writing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few people have suggested that waiting for the idea to chill down before even thinking about writing it could be an idea to try. Which I certainly didn't do and maybe lead to my stewing over it and over analysing how it was written instead of being able to sit down and write it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All I do know is that this seems to have lead to an almost phobic response when I try to read this piece or even see a link or an advert for it accidentally, usually in my hastily shutting that page down. Which I know I'm reinforcing but honestly I'm scared to read it in case the feelings of doubt about it come back. Has anyone been through anything like this? Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. White.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22178" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T00:20:58.417" Title="Could I have a writing phobia?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25212" CreationDate="2016-11-12T15:09:46.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;My Personal Experience with Copy-Phobia&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I know exactly what you're talking about.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I had exactly the same thing. For example, I love the video game &lt;em&gt;Dark Souls 3&lt;/em&gt; very much, and I took it as inspiration for my own writing. I heavily inspired a character arc based of 'Anri of Astora', but I didn't exactly copy it or steal it. I kept thinking that my writing was too similar because I was taking too much inspiration, and critics would jump all over me if I ever got it published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as I started to write, and I continued to write, I realised that my work became more disconnected from it and realised that perhaps I shouldn't have been scared. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give you another real example. This is likely what is going on with you, because you sound like you are currently viewing your inspiration as you try to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I hold Justin Cronin's The Passage and the rest of the series very close to my heart.&lt;/strong&gt; Obviously, because of that, I took loads of inspiration from it. I thought that 'oh my god, I have the same kind of foreshadowing' and 'oh my god, I have &lt;em&gt;unnamed&lt;/em&gt; that's similar to The Twelve'. I had these thoughts and feelings &lt;em&gt;while I was reading the series&lt;/em&gt;. The second I finished the trilogy, a few months after that of continued work on my writing, I realised that actually, my work wasn't that similar. I realised that because I'd taken so much inspiration from so many sources it couldn't possibly be similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually think a lot of that happened while I couldn't differentiate between &lt;em&gt;copying&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;inspiration.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How Not to Have Copy-Phobia&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main point is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Take inspiration from many sources. Mix, create, devise, just throw in tons of inspiration. It'll be great!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, just write. &lt;strong&gt;Do not&lt;/strong&gt; think you can get past this problem without actually writing. You are going to have to write at some point, and from writing, you will come to the realisation that you are not copying exactly and your work is fine. I know you will because &lt;em&gt;I did&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another thing that has happened in my personal experience with a similar problem to the one you have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Read something, and later read something better. It almost always happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that's self explanatory enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Big Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I know that if I start writing, I won't just be copying? How can I actually start writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, &lt;em&gt;there isn't really a way around this&lt;/em&gt;. But seriously. As long as your not copying these things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Names&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exactly copying story arcs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Place names&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basically copying it exactly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're fine. I think that just because this work was groundbreaking, doesn't necessarily mean that you have to copy it precisely to make yours groundbreaking. Taking inspiration from something is totally fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to just write. I cannot stress this enough: &lt;strong&gt;it is fine to take inspiration!!!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope my personal experience with this problem helped you. Trust me, &lt;em&gt;you will overcome it. You'll realise it as you write. I don't believe you can realise this before writing, you can only realise it during writing.&lt;/em&gt; By the way, please leave a comment telling me what that groundbreaking work is. I'm really interested now and want to read it. I might even take a bit as... &lt;strong&gt;inspiration!&lt;/strong&gt; :P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Thomas Myron said, just write anything. You ought to get yourself used to writing and used to the thought of inspiration and copying. Just write your fears, perhaps even write what you did today. A great way to be able to actually bring yourself to start is to be really into writing, having the ability to see your own writing and realise that its fine and groundbreaking in its own way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good technique that Thomas didn't mention is to &lt;strong&gt;OBSESS&lt;/strong&gt; over what you're writing. This is really good because it helps you get into your &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; ideas and story rather than &lt;em&gt;someone else's&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you could get some more insight from: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/14085/what-are-some-tricks-for-managing-debilitating-writing-anxiety-phobia&quot;&gt;What are some tricks for managing debilitating writing anxiety/phobia?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-11-12T18:19:07.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25211" CreationDate="2016-11-12T15:24:52.067" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But perhaps you'd want to say 'I can't quite remember his name, let's call him x' or something along those lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make the reader aware that you are using a pseudonym&lt;/strong&gt; and you're fine. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-11-12T15:24:52.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25215" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-13T02:45:01.970" Score="2" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m wondering how to place a narrative parenthetical remark in dialog. I’m proofreading a book with a quote that doesn’t look right to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He whispered, “I think she will have a child in Raspberry Moon (this was around July in early summer).” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remark wasn’t said by the character, so it shouldn’t be in the quote, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22207" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-01-17T07:22:05.420" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T07:43:53.093" Title="How should a narrative parenthetical remark be placed in reference to a dialog quotation?" Tags="|editing|dialogue|narrative|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25216" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25231" CreationDate="2016-11-13T11:55:55.403" Score="7" ViewCount="425" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alright, so my friends and English teacher recently found out that I've written novels, and asked to read them. So, I gave them out because I have plenty of self-confidence and really enjoy writing. I let my friends read them and my teacher. All I've got now is massive, non-stop praise, about how 'good I am'. My friends have told me that everything interlinks and cliffhangers keep them going, and they love the characters, but my teacher went a step further and told me that &lt;em&gt;I'm going to be famous.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;No！&lt;/strong&gt; I'll probably never even get my work published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I have had plenty of criticism. For example, in some places my descriptions are too long and I need to break it up, or in other parts my meaning isn't too clear. I love criticism because I think its the only way to be a stronger writer. But, I've got praise from literally everyone I know now, about how it 'all comes together' and 'characters'. At least I know those are my strong-points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Almost every author loves their work and has a big ego when it comes to writing.&lt;/strong&gt; So, how can I respond to &lt;em&gt;oh you're going to be famous&lt;/em&gt; and whatever? Here's my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I respond to praise without appearing egotistical, or obsessive about my work?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T22:24:59.503" Title="How can I respond to praise without appearing egotistical?" Tags="|readers|beta-readers|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25216" CreationDate="2016-11-13T15:18:52.607" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the commenter. Is this a friend who is just being effusive, or someone who's offering constructive criticism (or praise) with an eye toward getting you published? Roughly speaking, it's the difference between your best friend saying &quot;dude, that presentation was awesome!&quot; and your boss saying &quot;Good job with that presentation in front of the bigwigs.&quot; Friends can be demurred with empty comments as above. Actual critiques open the conversation to a discussion of technique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your English teacher, for example, is saying that you did a good job with cliffhangers, you can talk about how you plotted them out (or didn't), if you were inspired by another writer or a movie, some of the concerns you had when you were writing it, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being egotistical is saying &quot;Yes, I did do a great job! I'm just waiting for the agents to start banging on my door offering me movie contracts. I think it's going to outsell Mark Twain. Teacher, don't you think my novel is better than anything you've assigned in class?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discussing the nuts and bolts of your craft is not being egotistical. Courtesously acknowledging that you did something well is not being egotistical. (I mean, isn't that the point of creating? Doing it well? You generally don't set out with the goal of doing something badly.)  &lt;em&gt;Assuming&lt;/em&gt; that you have done something better than anyone else ever is being egotistical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're allowed to say &quot;Thank you! I'm really happy with how it turned out. I loved writing it and I'm so glad other people are enjoying it as well.&quot; It's not a sin to take a reasonable amount of pride in a job well done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-11-13T15:18:52.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1742" CreationDate="2016-11-13T15:46:07.743" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often wondered the same thing. Recently I read a few books online that incorporate different languages into their stories, usually with dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two simple techniques that I learned to solve this issue of having the reader confused with what the character is saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After the main dialogue in another language, write the translation in brackets and italics. &#xA;Example:&#xA; My mother scolded me once I dropped the precious Vase which was so valuable. She yelled, &#xA;&quot;Neeku emaina piccha? [&lt;em&gt;Are you crazy?&lt;/em&gt;]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another way to incorporate some sort of translation would be for a character in the story to translate the words in another dialogue.&#xA;Example: &#xA; My mother knew that my boyfriend didn't know Telugu, but it was the only language she knew. So without hesitating, she greeted him saying,&#xA;&quot;Bagunnava abbayi?&quot; Karan tapped my shoulder and whispered to me,&#xA;&quot;What did she say?&quot; I whispered back,&#xA;&quot;She asked 'are you fine, boy?' in Telugu.&quot;&#xA;&quot;Oh,&quot; he then faced my mother, &quot;I am good Auntie.&quot; Then my mom asked me what he told her and I translated,&#xA;&quot;'Nenu bagunnanu Auntie.'&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22210" LastActivityDate="2016-11-13T15:46:07.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25219" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-13T19:07:06.863" Score="2" ViewCount="2592" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short version: In an essay that aims to persuade and leave an impact on the reader (which also involves making it flow logically), is it more effective to have the larger scale societal example in the first paragraph and the smaller more personal example in the third paragraph? Or vice versa?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the following essay format (which I am meant to follow):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intro&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paragraph 1 (1st Argument, including 1st example, rebuttal, counter rebuttal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paragraph 2 (1st Argument, including 1st example, rebuttal, counter rebuttal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paragraph 3 (1st Argument, including 1st example, rebuttal, counter rebuttal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 1 will be a &lt;strong&gt;large scale societal or historic example&lt;/strong&gt;, referencing a major event or phenomenon e.g. WWII, colonialism events or some other emotional event that impacted many people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2 will be around &lt;strong&gt;smaller scale/more local&lt;/strong&gt; example based about how X has occurred withing our country/community. That aims to  show the reader how it is relevant to our lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 3 will be &lt;strong&gt;personal&lt;/strong&gt; example that shows how X has effected  me. That aims to connect to the reader on a personal level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it more effective to:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have the larger/societal example in the first paragrapher and work down to more localised example and then the personal example in the third paragraph? &lt;strong&gt;Or&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have the personal example in the  first paragraph and the larger societal examples in the third paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bigger societal examples are arguably more &lt;em&gt;powerful&lt;/em&gt;, but the guides suggest we do the smaller scale and more personal ones as well so that we can 1) make it more relevant to the reader and 2) connect to the reader (as mentioned above)..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I believe are the pros and cons of each method:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Option 1 has the benefit of starting out strong and setting up the rest of the essay.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Option 2 has the benefit of finishing off strongly (and hopefully influencing the marker by having the last thing they read be the best part of your essay).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which would be more effective in persuading the leader of my argument (which also involves making it flow logically) and making an impact on the leader (in terms of giving them a take away message)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22214" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2023-08-11T06:38:53.183" Title="Order of body paragraphs/examples in essay writing" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25220" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-13T19:50:32.120" Score="3" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;Novelists seeking a literary agent's representation are advised to prepare a long list of carefully chosen agents (e.g. genre matches are important), but to only contact a few at a time. The response or lack thereof of the first few could suggest, for example, that the query letter or first chapter should be improved before the next round of agents are contacted. Agents differ in many ways. (For example, some are narrower in their genre preferences; some respond in different ways; some want a synopsis and some don't; some want a long opening excerpt, some a short one and some none.) Do any of these make some agents better choices for the first batch, or might one as well choose them at random?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22216" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T00:06:53.460" Title="Does it matter which literary agents one contacts first?" Tags="|novel|agent|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25212" CreationDate="2016-11-13T23:33:47.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One solution is to try and write a story backwards...literally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obliterate the very idea of making sense and this helps me at least to think in terms of creating and not so much writing...thus being called &quot;not yours&quot; or stolen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong at all with creating in the mold of another but yes the eternal struggle of copy/paste is the bane of every artist's existence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;How do I make this my own story&quot;...especially when it's not about you or your personal life is very hard. I wish you luck. Perhaps something fortuitous will happen...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19496" LastActivityDate="2016-11-13T23:33:47.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25220" CreationDate="2016-11-14T00:06:53.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would advise attending a writer's conference in your genre and booking some pitch sessions with agents. This lets you try out your pitch verbally and does not preclude you approaching the same agent by mail later. And if the agent ask you to submit a sample, then you are a requested submission, rather than slush, and you go to the top of the pile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agents receive thousands of submissions and they have to say no to most of them really quickly. Anything that sets you apart from that crush of submissions is an advantage. Going to a conference in your genre automatically matches you with agents interested in that genre and gets you past the initial winnowing. It also tells you which agents are actively looking for new authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, agents are looking for people who are serious about writing as a career. It takes a lot of investment on their part to get a writer launched, and they don't make any money on that investment unless the writer sticks with it and acts professionally. Attending a writers conference is one signal to them that you are serious. Yes, it will cost you some money -- but that is the point. It shows you are willing to invest in your chosen career, which is a good sign for them as they decide whether they want to invest in it too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T00:06:53.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25216" CreationDate="2016-11-14T00:13:40.230" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If someone asks you a writing question, don't answer with reference to your own work. Answer with reference to the works of the greatest writers you have read. This allows you to address the question while tacitly acknowledging that there are better examples out there than your own work. It also shows that you are genuinely interested in the craft, with is the opposite of an egotistical interest in your own work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Egoism, ultimately, is not about thinking that your work is excellent, it is about thinking that the work is excellent because it is yours. Showing an interest in and admiration for the work of others absolves you of egoism while showing that you have a genuine interest and enthusiasm for literary excellence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-11-15T00:42:16.703" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T00:42:16.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25212" CreationDate="2016-11-14T00:20:58.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, if you have not yet the read the writer who makes you say, oh no, I will never ever be able to be that good, you are not ready to start writing. Despair has to be the starting point, because only despair at imitation will break you out of the beginner's habit of pastiche and hesitation and get you to the point where you can do something that is genuinely your own.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may not be immediately obvious at the time it happens, but that despair is liberating. Once you get past it, you will no longer be intimidated, nor will you feel the need to imitate, any other writer you read. Then you can be yourself, which may be good, bad, or indifferent, but will at least be you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T00:20:58.417" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25219" CreationDate="2016-11-14T18:03:17.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on personal experience (I have written many an English essay on how x writer shows y theme in z extract), I would say write the large scale example first, and then narrow down to specific examples. This is a very logical sequence that the examiner/reader will be able to follow very easily, and it shows that you understand the subject to both a general level and also a very nuanced level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22230" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T18:03:17.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25208" CreationDate="2016-11-14T18:22:43.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can provide a signal at the start of each point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the first paragraph can begin, &quot;First, I want to say blah blah blah...&quot; and the second paragraph can continue your point. The third paragraph begins, &quot;Secondly, there's this...&quot; And the fourth paragraph signals itself as the last point with &quot;Finally, this other point exists...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Points two and three can be separated into short paragraphs or combined into one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make your structure even more clear, prelude the points with another signal, something like &quot;Consider the following three points.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T18:22:43.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25174" CreationDate="2016-11-14T19:13:08.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;So if I understand correctly, the claim is &quot;men want admirable characters&quot; and &quot;women want (normal) relatable characters&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer: I can't speak for men, but women definitely want both.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of a Mary Sue, right? They tend to show up in amateur fiction written by young girls, and I think their existence proves that there is certainly some desire among women for &lt;em&gt;admirable&lt;/em&gt; relatable characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An experience that I (and many of my friends) had growing up was thinking, &lt;em&gt;&quot;This series is so great... you know what would make it better? A character like [insert self] who's super cool and beautiful and  [basically everything we wanted to be]...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we couldn't see ourselves in the characters already in the show, we would create Mary Sue characters to serve the roles we wanted to see in the story. And maybe embellish a bit in the process...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now personally? As an adult female reader, I like characters that surprise me. They can surprise me by doing things that no ordinary person would do (quirky personality, aberrant behavior, strange reactions) or by relating to me on a level I didn't think was possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21573" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T19:13:08.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25216" CreationDate="2016-11-14T19:15:08.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple.  Answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks, I really appreciate it. I work hard and love writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You could do it too.  It's just a lot of hard work and enjoying the&#xA;  challenge of putting ideas in words so others understand and enjoy&#xA;  reading them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, Remy, &lt;em&gt;anyone can write&lt;/em&gt;. ~Gusteau&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2016-11-14T19:21:21.573" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T19:21:21.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25216" CreationDate="2016-11-14T22:39:00.883" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Underlying your question is what appears to be a belief in the following two premises:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is difficult or impossible to respond to praise without appearing egotistical.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Appearing egotistical is bad and to be avoided at all costs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's discuss each of the two premises. I most certainly disagree with the first one: there are many ways to respond to praise that have nothing to do with egotism. Some examples would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks, I'm glad you thought my novel was good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks, I'm really flattered that you think I'll be famous some day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks! I really enjoyed writing the novel, so it's very nice that you enjoyed reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to a non-egotistic reply is to acknowledge the praise but not affirm it. However, there is nothing wrong or egotistical (except maybe egotistical in a normal, healthy way -- see below) with showing that you appreciate the praise and enjoy receiving it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I feel it's also important to say that I don't completely agree with the second premise as well, in the following sense: you seem to shun the idea of appearing egotistical so much that you go to the opposite extreme and feel a need to actively deny the praise you receive, as in denying that you'll ever be famous and saying &quot;&lt;em&gt;No！ I'll probably never even get my work published&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. This kind of &quot;reverse egotism&quot; is (in my humble opinion) almost as bad as, and perhaps just as bad or worse, than &quot;normal&quot; egotism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about it this way: objectively speaking, someone who has read your novel is probably in a better position than you to assess whether you are likely to become a famous writer. &lt;strong&gt;They know what it feels like to have read your novel and enjoyed it. Who are you to disagree?&lt;/strong&gt; Isn't it in some sense just as egotistical to vehemently deny that your writing is good as to affirm it, since it implies a presumption that you know better than anybody else how good/bad your writing is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point I'm trying to make is that a modest level of egotism is normal, healthy, expected, and even appreciated. I'm sure you put in a ton of time and creative energy into writing your novels. With that kind of emotional investment, it would be completely bizarre if you &lt;em&gt;weren't&lt;/em&gt; proud of it and obsessed about it. Your friends are probably expecting you to show pride in the work and are themselves proud to be associated with someone so talented. Why not give them what they want? Discuss the work with them, share the passion and emotions you invested in the work, and show them that you appreciate the praise. It won't say anything bad about you, as long as you keep your ego in check and don't let the praise go to your head in an unhealthy way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22234" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T22:39:00.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25232" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-15T11:38:41.803" Score="1" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am aware of sites which offer the option to upload a cover so that it can be rated across a number of categories; the problem with this is that these sites appear amateurish (at least in my opinion) and seem to have relatively low traffic, with some sections of the sites not functioning at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to know is whether there is another method of finding out how my book cover is perceived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, failing that, a service that people have tried and tested which and which they would recommend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5328" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T12:43:57.150" Title="How is my book cover perceived?" Tags="|book|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25232" CreationDate="2016-11-15T12:37:43.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The process to receive meaningful feedback is always the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;network&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;evaluate the people in your network&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ask those that qualify for feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, you have to find people who are both interested in helping you and whom you think capable of assessing your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a free service. You have to invest the time to make friends among readers, authors, and graphic designers. If you try to get feedback from anonymous strangers, their help will be unreliable and of unknown credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sample your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create an online questionnaire that asks to evaluate your cover.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Post paid advertising on Facebook or elsewhere. Target that advertising to your target audience. Offer some incentive for participaton in a short survey. Clicks on your ad lead to your questionnaire.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collect answers from a large number of participants.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paying a professional graphic designer may be cheaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-11-15T12:43:57.150" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T12:43:57.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25234" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25236" CreationDate="2016-11-15T18:08:28.783" Score="1" ViewCount="489" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, let me explain that I am a plotter, and that I am an extreme case. This means that I develop my novels basically down to the scene before I even &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; of writing a first draft. This is how I write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every novel needs deep stakes. This is generally accepted by writers as a whole. There always has to be something at stake, and that something has to matter greatly. I've studied stakes in depth, and come to the conclusion that they work on two levels: the stakes that matter to the hero (private) and the stakes that matter to the reader (public). I am aware that a lot of authors have other stakes. I do not. This is just how I write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a plotter, I have a process that I go through when I develop a novel. This process has worked many times. Recently though, I've run into a slight issue in the area of stakes. I describe it below: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main character needs a &lt;strong&gt;drive&lt;/strong&gt;, some internal reason to complete the &lt;strong&gt;goal&lt;/strong&gt;. Without that drive, the hero is not involved in the main conflict, inviting the reader to ask why he cares about what he is doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;drive&lt;/strong&gt; is most commonly the &lt;strong&gt;private stakes&lt;/strong&gt; of the hero. It is what he can't lose, what is &lt;em&gt;driving&lt;/em&gt; him to complete the goal, whatever that might be. All is well and good with the process up to this point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have trouble creating the &lt;strong&gt;drive/private stakes&lt;/strong&gt;. I can (with some work) create a good drive, but there are always loose ends, and those loose ends have further loose ends. I never seem to be able to pin down exactly &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the drive matters &lt;em&gt;so much&lt;/em&gt; to the hero. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fortunately, I have a &lt;strong&gt;method&lt;/strong&gt; which wraps up all loose ends and yields a very powerful and inescapable &lt;strong&gt;drive&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;private stake&lt;/strong&gt;. This method is that whatever the hero can't lose or have happen, he &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; lose or have happen somewhere in the past, and is now living with the result, and either cannot do so again, or is hoping to atone for what he did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem? This is the only method that seems to work, and it's getting repetitive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a few examples below, but the question is: &lt;strong&gt;Is this a problem?&lt;/strong&gt; If all of my main characters equally have a failure in their past that they are trying to atone for, won't that start to get old for readers? It works fine in one novel, sure. But two novels? Three? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Current work&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Goal: To remove inner hatred of an individual &#xA;Drive: Hatred injured innocent bystander by accident. Character realizes hatred must go. &#xA;Problem: Needs to matter more. This is the drive. The hero cannot live with what he has done. Why? &#xA;Solution #1: Innocent bystander is a loved and respected mentor, who told hero to stop his hatred. Hero cannot live with look of disappointment. Why? This has to matter deeply to him. &#xA;Solution #2 (Method): Hero failed someone he cares for in the past, and, living with that pain and regret, cannot do so again. He cannot fail the mentor. He must get rid of his hatred.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Previous Work:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Goal: To be capable&#xA;Drive: Failed to be capable once, something bad happened as a result. &#xA;Solution (Method): Hero's mother died in past, hero was unable to save her. Now is driven to save others so that one day, he will be capable of saving her as well (in the realm of his mind; he knows she's dead).&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shortly after posting this question, I came across what I believe to be the answer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It dawned on me that the only difference between what I had and what the method did was time. The method put something in the past. That made me wonder why this made things different. The only thing it did was give the character more time to consider the consequences of his failure in the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realized that I was waiting for the character to 'come to me'. What I needed to do was mold the character so that what I had at stake mattered greatly to him. I had to create a hero that cared about that stake, not create a stake that the hero cared about. I was trying to create a stake that would turn &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; into who I needed, when what I should have been doing was creating a &lt;em&gt;person&lt;/em&gt; who couldn't ignore the stake I already had. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ah, the joys of over-analyzing everything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-11-15T20:15:30.463" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T18:45:40.713" Title="I'm using the same formula for stakes over and over - is this a problem?" Tags="|technique|stakes|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25234" CreationDate="2016-11-15T18:37:58.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What strikes me about your examples is that the goals are quite abstract. This may be the peril of taking such an analytical approach to developing a story (there are, of course, perils in every approach). Stories are very concrete things. Some very particular person wants some very particular things for a very particular reason.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking an analytical approach to the study of fiction has led people to see all the millions of specific concrete stories are breaking down into a handful of basic patterns. (The exact number varies.) We find that thousands of stories of particular boys falling in love with particular girls in particular times and places, losing those girls in particular ways, and winning the back in particular ways, can be analysed down to a pattern: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing that pattern does not in any way diminish the pleasure we find in reading any of the particular stories on which the pattern is based. Nor does it imply that the author of those stories was consciously creating an instance of that pattern. They were telling, and the reader was reading, a particular story, and it is the particularity of the story that not only makes it compelling, but makes it unique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The finding of common patterns is the point of analysis. Apply an analytical method to all of your stories and you are going to find repeating patterns because that is the nature of the method you are employing. And it fundamentally does not matter, because what matters to a reader is the particularity, the concrete grittiness, the tactile warmth, the particular quality of light and sound and smell that makes a story real. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, whether or not your extreme plotter approach is actually compatible with writing such as story is another matter. Regardless of whether there are repeating patterns to be found in your story, the question that should perhaps concern you is whether this method creates an actual concrete flesh and blood character or an animated archetype that performs all the technical functions of a hero but lacks that essential grittiness and particularity that is essential to the reader's enjoyment of each story in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story strikes the reader primarily as an instance of a pattern, then the fact that each story is an instance of the same pattern will doubtless strike them as will. But if the story strikes the reader primarily as a real and concrete incident in the lives of real people, then the next story will doubtless strike them as another concrete incident in the lives of real people, not as a repetition of a familiar pattern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T18:37:58.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25234" CreationDate="2016-11-15T18:40:03.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a great question, and I commend you on your self-awareness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're having trouble conceiving of a drive for your hero on your own, I suggest you go through some of your favorite books &amp;mdash; books that you enjoy, books which click, books you re-read &amp;mdash; and try to pick apart what the hero's drive is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples off the top of my head:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;By the Sword,&lt;/em&gt; Mercedes Lackey: The heroine is a mercenary. Her primary drive is to stay alive and employed so she can continue to&#xA;feed/clothe/shelter herself, and then secondarily when she becomes&#xA;captain, to lead her people with the minimum number of casualties. So&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;survival&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;responsibility.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sherlock Holmes stories: &lt;strong&gt;Solving the puzzle.&lt;/strong&gt; That's it.&#xA;That's all Holmes needs. He has to solve the puzzle. Might be a&#xA;crime, might just be a mystery, but without a puzzle, his mind tears&#xA;itself to pieces.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any given romance: &lt;strong&gt;Love.&lt;/strong&gt; A loves B, B loves A; A pines for B, B&#xA;is married to C; A and B met on a train and have to reconnect, et&#xA;cetera.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Harry Potter series: I'm sure there will be discussion of this, but generally, Harry wants to &lt;strong&gt;survive&lt;/strong&gt; Voldemort and&#xA;the Death Eaters and their repeated attempts on his life, and stop&#xA;Voldemort from taking over the world. He also wants to avenge his&#xA;parents, but I never read that as his main purpose. &lt;strong&gt;Passing high&#xA;school&lt;/strong&gt; is not an inconsiderable drive for him either.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Belgariad: &lt;strong&gt;fulfilling a prophecy&lt;/strong&gt; and averting the end of the&#xA;world.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Maggie Hope mysteries: &lt;strong&gt;It's her job.&lt;/strong&gt; Maggie is working for&#xA;the British government during WWII, and has various assignments.&#xA;Protect the princess, get such-and-such smuggled across the border,&#xA;find the murderer. Even if she might not have had personal stakes in&#xA;the problem, she's been ordered to do something.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now go through some other books and see if you can figure out what drives the protagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-11-15T20:35:10.240" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T20:35:10.240" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25215" CreationDate="2016-11-16T03:21:03.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the narrator is making that comment, it should be outside the quote. Here are several iterative revisions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He whispered, “I think she will have a child in Raspberry Moon.&quot; (This was around July in early summer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He whispered, “I think she will have a child in Raspberry Moon.&quot; He said this around July in early summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Around July, in early summer, he whispered, “I think she will have a child in Raspberry Moon.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15838" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T03:21:03.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25238" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-16T11:21:14.507" Score="1" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;People advise to keep description to a minimum, or to make it worthwhile to the audience. I'm talking about description that isn't really necessary/important to the plot but is necessary/important to the characterization of the character (which might make it necessary to the story). For instance, in The Catcher in The Rye, Holden Caulfield describes a lot of stuff that don't really matter other than that his description also tells of his reaction/perception of that stuff, which in turn informs his characterization. Seeing this idea used in TCITR, I'm wondering if characterization could serve as a valid reason to describe otherwise &quot;unimportant&quot; details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21906" LastActivityDate="2016-11-19T01:44:08.770" Title="Description of &quot;Unimportant&quot; Details" Tags="|characters|character-development|description|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25238" CreationDate="2016-11-16T11:38:11.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you answer your own question.  The details are not 'unimportant' in your question because they form part of the characterization.  If something is properly 'unimportant' then it can be cut without affecting anything else (and should be).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21127" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T11:38:11.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25238" CreationDate="2016-11-16T13:27:50.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of fiction is to give pleasure. The question, therefore, is not whether a detail is important but whether it gives pleasure. Different types and levels of detail will give different kinds of pleasure in different kinds of works. The details of military technology in Tom Clancey, the details of legal procedure in John Grisham, the details of time and place in John Steinbeck, the fantastical details of the wizarding world in Harry Potter, all gives pleasure to different kinds of readers. For some works, a secondary cottage industry grows up dedicated to nothing but additional details, which is why you can get detailed plans for the Millenium Falcon or an encyclopedia of Dr. Who monsters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean that all details give pleasure in all circumstances in all works, or to all readers. (Some readers will find the above mentioned details tedious in some of the above mentioned works. Personally the wizarding world had exhausted my patience by the end of book two. And I never did care where Chewie went to the bathroom.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The litmus test for details, I believe, is how the contribute to the pace and mood of the work at any given moment, and as a whole, and whether they increase the reader's immersion in the scene or distract them from focusing on what matters in the scene. Details are neither good nor bad, they are good or bad in context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T13:27:50.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21029" CreationDate="2016-11-16T13:46:45.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an example of just this being done brilliantly, read Harper Lee's &lt;em&gt;Go Set a Watchman&lt;/em&gt;. A journey is a rite of passage, a gate between worlds. Handled correctly is it a fantastic way to open a novel. Note that Harper Lee makes it very clear that the journey with which the books opens is a significant journey for Scout. Make sure that the journey is similarly significant for your character. If the journey is merely a means of getting from one scene to another, it will be tedious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T13:46:45.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25234" CreationDate="2016-11-16T15:00:47.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This method is that whatever the hero can't lose or have happen, he did lose or have happen somewhere in the past, and is now living with the result, and either cannot do so again, or is hoping to atone for what he did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a perfectly valid approach to developing a &lt;strong&gt;single character&lt;/strong&gt;. Your problem is that you decided to turn it into a &lt;strong&gt;method&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;a particular form of procedure for accomplishing or approaching something, especially a systematic or established one&lt;/em&gt;), which by definition will turn all your characters, whose mentality is shaped by the same mold, look pretty much the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some might argue that many people in real life are pretty much alike. Whether or not this is true, it is irrelevant to fiction, because your fictional characters--all of them--must serve different purpose in your story, and stand clearly apart from one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no point of having character A hate character B, because B's clansmen killed A's parents ten years ago, and B hate A, because A's brothers raped B's sister in retaliation the year after. They are basically the same character, and the sooner one kills another, the better off the story will be with just one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Call it a method or not, you have to use a different one for each and every character you create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...go through some of your favorite books ... and try to pick apart what the hero's drive is...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That will certainly help. Another thing is to observe real people and figure out where their motivations and goals are coming from. Not everyone has a dramatic life-defining experience in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I forgot, in what movie or TV series a serial killer says: &quot;No, I was not abused and tortured as a child. I just really like what I do...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T15:00:47.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="39439" CreationDate="2016-11-16T17:38:42.517" Score="3" ViewCount="2636" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is from a piece I wrote a couple of years back:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sky seemed like a big, large pool of grey smoke. The weather was cool, moist. A fresh, earthy smell hung on the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I peered through the window with slick navy blue curtains, swinging to and fro to the movement of the minibus, blocking my view to some extent. Tiny rain droplets drizzled onto the closed glass pane with a light tinkle, creating a rhythmical musical tune which doubtlessly was perceived by quite a few. I could see the vague reflection of a stressed me breaking into a little grin on the damp window pane, as well as my surroundings. I became lost into admiring the lovely shower for a few moments before reality struck me hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been told that most of my sentences are too complex and that it isn't easy to follow my writing. And my English teacher said that some of the sentences are downright confusing. And that I try to cram too many information into a single sentence. Is it really too difficult for the reader to understand what's going on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I prevent myself from writing overly complex sentences which might not get understood that easily?&lt;/strong&gt; Is it worth aiming for a poetic effect at the cost of not being clearly understood? It has become kind of a habit for me to write unintelligible yet impressive sentences. Somebody has even said that I write in a &amp;quot;charmingly old-fashioned way&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that I'm not a native English speaker &lt;strike&gt;and only 12&lt;/strike&gt;. I'm an aspiring writer, nonetheless. And I still need to improve my English writing skills a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;NOTE&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not 12 anymore, hence the strikethrough on that bit. Please keep in mind that this question was written a long time ago and got closed around that time. It is now over 2 years old and has been reopened only this recently. I was new here then and didn't know too well how to frame a proper question. I just happened to revisit this again one day and went on to patch up the issues it had. But I wasn't expecting this to suddenly get reopened and get such attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again I'm not still 12 (I'm 14 now, in fact) and now this piece is something I'm incredibly ashamed of. All the cringey stuff I wrote back when I was young and didn't know any better. I would never write something like this now. But thanks for all of your thoughtful comments!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22250" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-10-15T18:03:35.093" Title="How can I keep my writing from being perceived as &quot;too complicated&quot;" Tags="|style|editing|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25243" CreationDate="2016-11-16T17:58:37.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, your sentences are not at all confusing and your English teacher is wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I could see the vague reflection of a stressed me breaking into a little grin on the damp window pane, as well as my surroundings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I  am from England, and people use this sentence structure occasionally, so its totally fine. I loved that sentence by the way, it paints a picture in my head of the character with bags under their eyes, grinning at their reflection in a misted window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should always try and vary your sentence lengths/types in writing to achieve different effects. Sometimes, you should use short sentences, sometimes compound ones, and use these to your advantage as a writer. However, avoid falling into &lt;em&gt;purple prose&lt;/em&gt;. This is where almost every other word in your prose is an adjective/adverb, and this seriously isn't good. It's fine to have great description, but be careful not to fall into that. Sometimes, it's best to try and paint the pictures you're trying to create with less words than more. In fact, using the right words, &lt;em&gt;less is more.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in no place to critique your writing, as that's off topic on this site, but I'd like to point out that I feel that in some places you are being a bit too descriptive. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;closed glass pane&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It feels, a bit, too specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I became lost into admiring the lovely shower for a few moments before reality struck me hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this sentence, as well as a few others, your grammar isn't perfect, but you're a non-native speaker so don't worry. I think you're trying to build up a bit of tension/realisation with &lt;em&gt;reality struck me hard&lt;/em&gt;. This would be better achieved by making that a simple, short sentence, really juxtaposing the beauteous description before it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vary sentence structure&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't fall into purple prose!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to finally wish you luck with your writing. For not being a native speaker, you're &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; good!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I can sum up this answer in just a few words. &lt;em&gt;Sometimes, less is more&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T17:58:37.150" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25234" CreationDate="2016-11-16T18:40:34.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possibly one of the mistakes you're making that is leading to repetitive plots is the idea that any given character in a story will have only a single goal that defines and directs their life.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may lead to highly plottable stories, but it won't lead to complex, multi-layered characters who readers will enjoy, identify with, and care about, because nobody is really like that in real life.  We've all got multiple goals which often times are completely incompatible with each other... Like I want to be a writer, and a farmer, and a race car driver, and an artist, and also a good father and husband... and I want to write good code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the conflict between our goals and dreams that make us interesting people, and it's what informs us when we're faced with choices and have to pick one and we can't tell if one choice is good and one choice is bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a really tight plotter, the place you're going to need to bring out your inner chaos is in the beginning - the brainstorming stage.  I'd say give your characters a bunch of goals, some of them conflicting, with one of them being the main one you'll use to drive your plot.  Do the same thing with your supporting characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an analogy for you, brought to you by my kids:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two kids that really like to play chess.  They're young, they know the basic moves, and they don't really think very many steps ahead, so their games all kind of look the same, with both of them pounding away until they each only have a couple pieces left and are chasing each other around the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enter the toddler and a new game called Combat Chess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The toddler can't talk much, can't be reasoned with much, but she knows her brothers are playing a fun game and she wants to play too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Combat Chess goes like this - two players play a normal game of chess while the third, the toddler, can move any pieces she wants around the board, take any pieces she wants off the board, add any pieces she wants back to the board - including any of her toys, and the other two players have to play the game no matter what changes she made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The older kids quickly decided that it makes the game much more interesting and fun to play.  Plus they stopped getting into trouble for yelling at the baby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that's my way of saying - sure, go ahead and plot everything out, but start off from a place where you're not using the same old ideas to generate the plot in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastEditorUserId="16155" LastEditDate="2016-11-16T18:45:40.713" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T18:45:40.713" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25246" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-16T18:41:25.100" Score="0" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I boost sales of my Kindle ebook? I published it on 28 August 2016 and since then only seven copies sold. So any suggestions? What should I do? I shared it on my social-networking page but that didn't help much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22251" LastEditorUserId="15292" LastEditDate="2016-11-19T05:49:14.937" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T17:37:48.303" Title="Increasing sales of my Kindle ebook" Tags="|marketing|ebook|kindle|sales|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25246" CreationDate="2016-11-16T19:27:01.960" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can give you my personal experience. I wrote The Darkest Wand, Memoirs from Special Education, and Father Pimp. None of them are best sellers, but 2 made it to the top 50 list while on sale for free. All together with print and digital, I've sold somewhere around $500-$1000 of books  on my own (sorry - I never tracked sales super-closely).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advertising seems to be hard to analyze. I don't know what has and hasn't worked. Maybe all of it together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I shared things on Facebook. I wrote about the books in forums. And I put it in the paper. Those methods didn't yield much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I included the books in an internet group deal (I did a group deal on groupees.com and made a quick $100). I did discounts and freebies, which often yielded a few sales in the following months, and a few reviews popped up too (check US and other countries' reviews).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also gave several books away. A few professors liked Memoirs and used it as a classroom book. That yielded a few sales (and it suddenly popped up on pirated books websites ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I put ads on Facebook. For every $50 I spent on ads, I made $50 back in profit - so no profit. But it got the books some attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing, however, was writing more. Each book I put on the market yielded more sales for all of my books. I heard 6 or 7 is a magic number. Not sure if that's true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And lastly, of course, make sure your book is good and you're reaching your likely readers. If you do advertise, target your ads the best you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for things I've yet to do: library book signings. I hear they make a few sales. And there are more stores than just Amazon. Get out there. (I'll eventually take my own advice on those ideas, I've been out of the field for a bit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that most authors get a few thousand dollar book advance and publishers usually never sell enough books to make up the advance. Only a few get through to make real good money. I don't say it to discourage you, but to encourage you. You may have a good book on your hands, but unless you keep writing, keep pushing, and keep advertising, it's possible nobody will read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22252" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T19:27:01.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25243" CreationDate="2016-11-16T21:07:21.007" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If writing long sentences is a habit, you have two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Break the habit.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;2) Write Regency romances, where lengthy and convoluted sentences are preferred. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More seriously, it doesn't matter how long or short your sentence is if it's &lt;em&gt;unintelligible&lt;/em&gt; &amp;mdash; your own word. If your reader can't understand you, then you need to edit until you can be understood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a place for dreamy, lyrical, poetic writing. But even poetry has to be broken up occasionally with short phrases, or the inner ear gets exhausted and the brain can't follow a thought across an entire paragraph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you've spilled your pasta on the page, make a copy of it. (I suggest a copy so that you don't feel like like you're butchering your beautiful work. It's still there, on the previous page.) As an editing exercise, in your duplicate, take every sentence and cut it into two or three smaller sentences. Do it just to prove you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you've done that 10 times to 10 different passages, go back to your originals and put the short versions side by side. See if you can weave them together: long long short, long short short, long short. Listen for the rhythm of the sentences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Read your work out loud.&lt;/em&gt; This is important. If you find yourself struggling to keep the melody of the sentence coherent, line after line, your sentences are too long. Throw in a shortie to break it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-11-20T13:37:06.920" LastActivityDate="2016-11-20T13:37:06.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25216" CreationDate="2016-11-16T22:24:59.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if the real problem isn't that you're worried about being egotistical, but instead what you're feeling is maybe a bit of impostor syndrome mixed with your friends and teachers being overly enthusiastic with their praise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a terrible feeling to receive higher praise that you feel you've warranted, causing you to feel that friends, teachers, parents, or whoever have the expectation for you to achieve greatness.  They see the great writer that you'll be in the future, when you see yourself as just a kid who likes to write but maybe actually wants to be a programmer or a pilot or something else.  You feel locked into their vision of your future rather than being able to choose for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what do you do about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First - learn from your mistakes.  Sometimes your friends aren't actually the best people to share your work with.  You don't have to hide it from them or anything, but it sounds like it might be good in this case to just say thanks and then let the matter drop and don't bring it up with them again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second - pick who you're going to share it with carefully.  Share it with another writer or a good editor who will give you actual critical praise and advice rather than blanket, &quot;You're the BESTEST!&quot; praise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third - don't sell yourself short.  If you've finished a novel, send it out and see what happens.  You're not going to learn anything by finishing the thing and then sitting on it.  You'll likely get lots of rejections, because that's the way it works, but mixed in with those rejections, you'll probably get some good advice on how to make your writing better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally - watch other people that are in the same boat.  I've been around a number of famousish people and watched them interact with people who are fans, and the really big famous people have this little invisible wall between them and a fan that doesn't exist when they meet someone who treats them like a real person.  Douglas Adams for one just looked completely exhausted by the whole fan thing.  You can have a friend, or you can have a fan... but I don't think that person can really be both.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, maybe that's something you can tell your friends:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Thanks for the praise, but lets change the subject.  I'd rather have you as a friend than a fan.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T22:24:59.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25250" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-17T09:49:24.210" Score="1" ViewCount="3943" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can a protagonist, being a writer himself, share a full short story he has written with the readers within a short story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the techniques he can use to separate the frame story from the written work and vice versa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a wordy short story, roughly 8,000 to 10,000 words&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I prefer the writer sharing the short story with the reader directly. First person narrative&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can a character read a written work within a story? Third person omniscient narrative&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21564" LastEditorUserId="10099" LastEditDate="2016-11-18T20:00:33.577" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T20:00:33.577" Title="How do I write a story within a story?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25250" CreationDate="2016-11-17T10:44:23.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, that would depend how long this short story is. But to me, the first idea that comes to mind is to show this short story by having a character actually reading it, perhaps within the framework of your author having asked for some feedback from a friend or even his publisher. Either that or make it your first chapter showing the issues he has with it (assuming there are any) perhaps by using an opening paragraph like describing what the book means to him and asking the reader what they think of it before showing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22178" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T10:44:23.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25265" CreationDate="2016-11-17T12:56:20.167" Score="6" ViewCount="584" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always read that good writers shouldn't use similitudes and metaphors.&#xA;Also, a writer shouldn't use too many descriptions.&#xA;Then, I read Raymond Chandler and my little stupid world of securities went down. He wrote with similitudes, he described places in a pedantic way etc. etc.&#xA;So, what is a good writing &quot;habit&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22255" LastEditorUserId="10703" LastEditDate="2016-11-18T06:13:39.617" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T22:21:58.590" Title="What are &quot;good&quot; writing habits?" Tags="|creative-writing|habits|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25252" CreationDate="2016-11-17T13:13:04.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a huge market for simple rules like this. There is a huge appetite for rules and formulas to make writing simple and easy. Whenever there is a huge market for anything, someone steps forward to supply that market, regardless of whether there is any merit to the product they are selling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general term for this is snake oil. Where there is illness, there is demand for a cure. Where there is a demand for a cure, someone will supply a cure, regardless of whether the cure is actually effective. Snake oil. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is not simple or easy. All the simple prohibitions of the writing teachers are snake oil. They exist because people demanded simple answer even when there aren't any. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is the just about any device or technique can work if done well. And all devices and techniques are hard to do well. Any of these writing bromides can be disproven by pointing to a great writer who uses the prohibited technique brilliantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no shortcuts. The snake oil does not work. Writing is hard. You need to read voluminously, widely, and with attention. And you need to write with deliberation, honesty, and diligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T13:13:04.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25250" CreationDate="2016-11-17T13:16:32.633" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best answer to questions of this kind is to read brilliant examples of the technique from great writers. In this case the preeminent example is probably Joseph Conrad's &lt;em&gt;Heart of Darkness&lt;/em&gt; (the book on which &lt;em&gt;Apocalypse Now&lt;/em&gt; was based). Technically, the method here is storytelling (outloud to a group of sailors) rather than writing, but the principle of the frame is the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T13:16:32.633" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25250" CreationDate="2016-11-17T14:32:17.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is somewhere around, like what mbakeranalecta and White S. wrote: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A small story can be the same like everyday life short stories. Your protagonist may pick up a &lt;strong&gt;diary&lt;/strong&gt; or browse a &lt;strong&gt;blog&lt;/strong&gt; and read the log of a day or part of it, or getting involved in a &lt;strong&gt;letter&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;report&lt;/strong&gt;. He can do research to look for specific sources or to confirm hypothesis, and so the details will become important.&#xA;However I do not know much about your story, I would suggest to avoid turning to &quot;reading a book-like thing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The separation will be done by you, setting the atmosphere, maybe keeping a suspense with time-to-time throwing in the thoughts or feelings of the protagonist, maybe getting a conclusion at the end (as a debrief for the reader).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21898" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T14:32:17.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25257" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-17T16:24:37.540" Score="1" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a short story (non-fiction) that I would like to have published, not self published.  This is my first venture into the literature field; do I need an agent?  Or can I directly submit my work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22257" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-11-17T22:19:28.327" LastActivityDate="2016-12-17T22:51:29.177" Title="How do I get a short story published?" Tags="|short-story|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25258" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-17T20:51:21.157" Score="2" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a copyright case, documents were released with portions redacted.  The redaction was poorly done. Would it be generally considered ethical in most legitimate news organizations for a journalist to use this information in a report? It doesn't concern a minor or victim. The issue is that it could be embarrassing for one of the parties and may impact their ability to do business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note-- The original text is trivially accessible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22263" LastEditorUserId="22263" LastEditDate="2016-12-07T20:30:36.843" LastActivityDate="2018-03-26T19:30:48.803" Title="Ethics of using poorly-redacted information in public documents" Tags="|journalism|ethics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25257" CreationDate="2016-11-17T22:13:27.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had a couple short stories published in literary journals. I'd suggest you submit your story to a few of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To choose which ones to submit to, look at story collections that you like. They usually print lists of journals where the stories have been previously published. So make your own list of journals where your favorite authors have been published. Then get a recent copy of those journals and read through, to make sure that your story will be a good fit for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then follow their submission procedures closely. These days most journals are okay with you submitting to multiple places at once, as long as you withdraw your piece after it's been accepted someplace else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prepare to collect quite a few rejection letters. (Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bretanthonyjohnston.com/extras/doc_onrejection.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an entertaining essay about rejection&lt;/a&gt; written by one of my old teachers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My stories are fiction, but there are plenty of journals that publish non-fiction. The same process applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T22:13:27.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25250" CreationDate="2016-11-18T03:08:58.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is your idea like Russian nested &quot;Matrushka&quot; dolls, a story within a story within a story?  If so, it seems to me that the recent movie &quot;In the Heart of the Sea&quot;, a story about James Fennimore Cooper, the Nantucket whaler &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Essex&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, its captain and crew, the great white whale, and the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Essex&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;'s survivors, is put together like those Matrushka dolls, and seems to me to provide a good example of what you seem to me to be proposing.  Consider &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, the screenwriter of the film as the outer protagonist relating the story of his protagonist James Fennimore Cooper relating the story of how &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; came to write 'Moby Dick', his story being from an outer protagonist relating the core story related &lt;em&gt;by another&lt;/em&gt;, a third and final, inner protagonist.  It is the third protagonist's story that contains the core/&lt;em&gt;complete&lt;/em&gt; story that the screenwriter (you, if you will) has put together and has slowly revealed in the movie.  However, you can also put &lt;em&gt;yourself&lt;/em&gt; in the place of the screenwriter's James Fennimore Cooper, and relate (in Cooper's words, so to speak) the story told to him by the sole surviving member of the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Essex&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;'s ill-fated crew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22266" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T03:08:58.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25215" CreationDate="2016-11-18T03:22:13.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;Raspberry Moon&quot; needs to be explained prior to the quote--probably as dialogue, but possibly as part of a third- person omniscient information dump. It is absolutely wrong to put parentheses within the quote. In newspapers and such, parenthetical remarks from the editor are placed in brackets [ ]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it would be amateur to do so, one could follow the quote with: &lt;em&gt;And Barney asked, &quot;What's a Raspberry Moon?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T03:22:13.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25252" CreationDate="2016-11-18T07:28:18.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The original answer is right that there is no one single right answer.  But here are a few tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid using the passive voice &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailywritingtips.com/active-voice/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in favour of the active voice&lt;/a&gt; as much as you can.  You will not believe how much this will improve your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Brevity is the soul of wit.  Short, terse sentences carry a lot more power than long sentences with many commas.  Quality over quantity.  In high school you often learn how to add more complexity to your writing, while in University you will learn how to undo that.  Every word written should be necessary towards communicating &lt;em&gt;something.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be merciless with filler words. Remove them. It's a crutch.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vocabulary is diverse, so use it. That girl was not pretty, she was &lt;em&gt;stunning.&lt;/em&gt;  A thesaurus is your friend, but don't go overboard.  Pick the right word for the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Think of writing as a form of poetry.  A poem is writing converted into art.  Poems have a cadence that's naturally pleasing.  Mimic this in your writing, making liberal use of alliterations, repetition and other techniques to make your writing pop.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22268" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T07:28:18.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25252" CreationDate="2016-11-18T12:15:34.463" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to answer this from a different point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you ask for, and what many inexperienced artists crave, is a secret or formula they can follow to create outstanding art. They read how-to-write/draw/whatever books, ask in online forums, and live with the apprehension of never learning that secret formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is, there is no secret formula behind artistic success. There is no how-to that will invariably lead to success. But there is a well-known truth that nevertheless is constantly being ignored by most:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to learn how to write, all you have to do is write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems banal and lacking to those on the quest for the secret formula, but in fact it is all but lacking or banal. The simple truth is that &lt;em&gt;only when you write&lt;/em&gt; will you understand what you need to know. A story is such a complex thing that it is impossible to rationally understand how it works and to master its creation consciously. But every man and woman have a faculty that is extremely more powerful than conscious rational thinking, and it is this faculty that both appreciates art (in the consumer) and creates art (in the artist). It is your unconscious, intuition, or procedural knowledge, or whatever different schools of psychology may call it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a reader reads a story or watches a movie or looks at a painting, the vast majority of them are &quot;touched&quot;, but don't understand how this works. Every writer is first and foremost a reader. Long before we began writing novels or making movies, have we been reading, watching, and appreciating art. During these years of consuming art, have we subconsciously learned what a story is, which stories we find pleasing, and how they work. We may not be able to verbalize this knowledge, or not completely, but we can learn to actively use it in our own storytelling and creating of art: by practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we write stories or make art, what we do is try to re-create what we experiences when reading or appreciating art. At first, we usually fail. But when we keep trying, we slowly begin to understand, on a subconsious or intuitive level, what we need to do to generate better results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this, writing is like all the other procedural knowledge we have aquired. We don't know how we do it that we can walk, but we can, and if we look back, we may remember (or see in other children) how we learned it not through explanation and rational understanding, but through trying and &lt;em&gt;embodied&lt;/em&gt; understanding: we &quot;grasped&quot; it, in the literal sense – we &lt;em&gt;felt&lt;/em&gt;, how it worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While many writers claim that they know what they do, and some even give courses trying to teach you, their claim is wrong. The proof for this is that participants in those courses do not turn into good writers, and many fail permanently, never publishing a single work. What these writers tell you is maybe not completely useless, but it is not the secret formula to writing well. The secret formula to writing well, if you want to call it that, is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write. And don't think about it too much. Just do it. And with practice, you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; get better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the only habit you have to learn is to sit down to write as often as you can. The recommendation – founded on psychological research into the habits of successful writers and into creativity and productivity – is writing &lt;strong&gt;every day&lt;/strong&gt; for between &lt;strong&gt;half an hour to four hours&lt;/strong&gt; (you need to write long enough to get into the flow and stop when you notice your quality is deteriorating).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is how Hemingway described his writing habits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Ernest Hemingway (1958). The Art of Fiction No. 21 (interviewed by George Plimpton), &lt;em&gt;Paris Review&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;18&lt;/em&gt;. Available online at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4825/the-art-of-fiction-no-21-ernest-hemingway&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4825/the-art-of-fiction-no-21-ernest-hemingway&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What he does is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stop writing while you still know what comes next (this will keep the story working in your subconscious mind during the day and night)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;begin early in the morning, before anything could distract you (thus you are full of ideas from the night and your mind is in your story)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;re-read what you have written (this gets you to the point where you left off and tunes you to what to write next)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write no longer than until noon (before noon are the most mentally productive hours for most humans)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write until you feel fulfilled, and don't begin to force yourself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T12:15:34.463" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25252" CreationDate="2016-11-18T16:30:52.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good writing habits depend on the style of writing you're involved in.  You'll find that the same author writing different materials could have different writing habits.  Depending on the kind of training the writer has and the self discipline it would take to play the part of the ______ writer, the writer can use similitudes or not, use metaphors or not, etc, etc.&#xA;I believe good writing habits come from two places, the training you got and the experience you acquire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21591" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T16:30:52.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25250" CreationDate="2016-11-18T19:00:05.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;First, a definition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are asking for is called a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;frame story&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Imagine your novel as a picture on a wall. The protagonist of your novel and his activities set the frame of the picture, the things that are happening outside. The short story he has written is the picture itself, the thing that happens inside the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Second, do research&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you what you're looking for, you can do some basic Google searches for &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&amp;amp;ion=1&amp;amp;espv=2&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8#q=how%20to%20write%20a%20frame%20story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to write a frame story&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; and get a more general answer to your question. Here are some good resources I found while browsing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://literarydevices.net/frame-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LiteraryDevices&lt;/a&gt; lists many good examples you can read for research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sophia.org/tutorials/frame-story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sophia.org&lt;/a&gt; has a tutorial with visual depictions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://writeonsisters.com/writing-craft/tips-crafting-frame-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WriteOnSisters&lt;/a&gt; suggests some tips you'll need to keep the story straight.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And on our very own Writers.SE, Paul A. Clayton wrote &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/16298/10099&quot;&gt;this great answer&lt;/a&gt; to a related question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are by no means the only good resources, simply the first three I found in a basic Internet search. Once you get a general overview of your problem, find some in-depth writing books that discuss it. Look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&amp;amp;ion=1&amp;amp;espv=2&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8#q=books%20about%20writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;great wealth of books on writing&lt;/a&gt; that exist. Pick some and read them, taking notes the whole time. This should be done concurrently with my next step...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Third, read like a writer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key step is finding literary works that display the technique you'd like to use and then reading them while taking notes on how they effectively accomplish it, exactly as Mbakeranalecta suggested. You can get many suggestions here and from the above links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not enough to just read the book. You have to read like a writer. Read it once, to enjoy it and to get a general feel for what happens. Then read it again. Take notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where is the frame story written? Where is the interior story written?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much space does the author develop for each part?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often do they switch between the two stories? At what points do they switch - at a climax? After resolutions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What literary techniques do they use to mark the difference between the two stories? Do they use different perspectives, as you suggested using? Do they use different tenses (past vs present)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you love about their work? What do you wish they did differently?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself all these questions and more. Ask yourself what you need to know to reproduce this in your own work, and then find that information in the established literature. Read like a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fourth, write&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may seem an obvious step, but many new writers struggle with it. In order to be a writer, you have to actually write. It is essential to finish what you begin. Finishing your works will teach you far more than I ever can convey on this Internet forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will say that I like your idea to have the frame story in one perspective (in this case, first person limited) and the inner story in a different perspective (in this case, third person omniscient). I think this will do a great job of seperating the two stories from each other and, coupled with other literary techniques, should make it fairly easy for audiences to follow the transition. Other, more specific tips, you will have to discover for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10099" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T19:00:05.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25269" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25270" CreationDate="2016-11-18T20:13:15.547" Score="9" ViewCount="752" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this is a bit of a self-explanatory question to many people, but I just can't figure this out. &lt;em&gt;Tons&lt;/em&gt; of blogs made for writers, magazines, and other forms of media state that a debut author should not try submitting a manuscript of more than 100,000 words (or about 110,000 for fantasy). I don't think I've never seen anyone deny this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why do publishers not want to publish lengthy work from debut authors?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think the story I'm writing would work best as a long, single book, about 150,000 words in total. I feel like if I were to start a second book in the series, I'd have too little to fill it with. My work would also work better if it were self-contained in a single book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would I be able to get away with what I just described, as a debut author who has never been published?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-11-19T00:17:18.593" LastActivityDate="2019-05-31T20:20:34.920" Title="Why does word-count matter for a debut author?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|wordcount|publisher|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25269" CreationDate="2016-11-18T20:56:46.840" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I read this in the Sell Your Novel Toolkit, but I may have seen it elsewhere:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retail stores have limited space. Debut authors (except for a very limited few) have very limited shelf space. You might get 3 books on a shelf (300k words of paper). But you're only selling 2 books with 150k words, not 3. So all of a sudden the risk just went up for the retailer and publisher by quite a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One might argue that the readers themselves aren't willing to give a longer book a fair chance, but I'm unsure how true that is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22252" LastEditorUserId="22252" LastEditDate="2019-05-31T20:20:34.920" LastActivityDate="2019-05-31T20:20:34.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25246" CreationDate="2016-11-18T21:15:32.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot depends on the type of ebook. Is it fiction or nonfiction? Is it the first novel or the serial? Genre or non-genre? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing I would stress is getting reviews. The affordable methods include doing giveaways and using a service like &lt;a href=&quot;http://bookreviewrequest.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://bookreviewrequest.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing a no-budget campaign, I would put it up for sale and let your friends download free copies for 2 months or so and see if any are motivated to do reviews. Librarything also has a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.librarything.com/er_list.php?sort=quantity&amp;amp;program=giveaway&amp;amp;country=0&amp;amp;offeredby=all&amp;amp;batch=open&amp;amp;publisherid=0&amp;amp;media=ebooks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;decent member giveaway&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remain skeptical of web advertising, but Facebook allows enough targeting that it might be worth your while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to get to know the ebook discovery services (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://selfpublishingadvice.org/ebook-discovery-book-promo-services-review/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;), but keep in mind that the popularity/price of these services are a moving target; what was optimal one month may be overpriced the next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are publishing fiction, you should work on developing the author brand. Then write more! If nonfiction, you should look into keyword advertising (but don't overdo it!). You should do publicity for the ebook in several waves over several months. These are some thoughts for getting started. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T21:15:32.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25272" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25273" CreationDate="2016-11-18T22:47:02.660" Score="1" ViewCount="356" Body="&lt;p&gt;To provide a little background, I'm writing a novel set in a fantasy world, within which there are multiple languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm applying the rule that any speech the viewpoint character (I'm using subjective third person, by the way) is able to immediately understand is rendered as English, and everything else is written in the original language (as he would hear it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble is that some characters speak a language that is very similar to the viewpoint character's own language. It's not close enough that he'd understand every word, but he could probably get a rough idea of what they mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how can I convey this (in the sense of putting the reader in the character's head) as clearly and simply as possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2018-04-04T10:56:31.927" Title="Writing in English, from the viewpoint of a non-English-speaking character, how can I convey a language very similar to the character's own?" Tags="|style|language|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25272" CreationDate="2016-11-18T22:58:36.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two methods I can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The character says or thinks what he's understood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So you want me to go to the hut in the forest and kill the wizard?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He listened as the elders discussed the situation. &lt;em&gt;Do they really want me to go into the Black Forest and take out the sorcerer who's cursed the whole kingdom?&lt;/em&gt; He wasn't sure if he was up for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The narration summarizes what the character thinks he's understood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The elders spoke for a while. He couldn't follow the entire conversation, but he gathered that they wanted him to go into the great forest beyond the village and either incapacitate or kill the sorcerer who had cursed the kingdom. He wasn't sure if he was up for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T22:58:36.570" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25238" CreationDate="2016-11-19T01:44:08.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I like to think of details as being filtered through some character's perception, and revealing something about the character's relation to the world at that particular moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Done right, this can reveal character, give a sense of the character's surroundings, and progress the plot (since the details the character notices can reveal that character's intentions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, what bothers me is when a writer starts describing things that would either be so commonplace or so irrelevant to the viewpoint character that they wouldn't consciously notice them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, this is probably a matter of opinion to some extent. Different readers will almost certainly have different ideas about how much (and what kind of) description they're OK with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2016-11-19T01:44:08.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25269" CreationDate="2016-11-19T12:08:06.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason why is economics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do I, as a publisher, want to take a risk on an an unknown author who has written a 150,000 word book? That's money we'll be spending without guarantee of a return, and less books we'll be able to stack on a bookshelf. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can take that risk if your work seems absolutely brilliant and destined for greatness, but that's not an easy thing to predict. Economically speaking, best to hedge my bets by taking shorter works for new authors and going big only with authors you know will give you a good return-on-investment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22284" LastActivityDate="2016-11-19T12:08:06.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25272" CreationDate="2016-11-19T16:37:46.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cheap and dirty trick which comes to mind is to take a phrase in English and replace all the words, or at least most of the keywords with made-up English-sounding (or even not English-sounding ones). It does require a certain level of knowledge of the language, but I think it is manageable with the help of a spell-checker—to make sure the made-up words do not actually mean something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://aliceinwonderland.wikia.com/wiki/Jabberwocky&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves&#xA;  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;&#xA;  All mimsy were the borogoves,&#xA;  And the mome raths outgrabe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2016-11-19T17:41:50.053" LastActivityDate="2016-11-19T17:41:50.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25280" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="34542" CreationDate="2016-11-19T21:09:55.533" Score="2" ViewCount="1033" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using Scrivener for Windows (latest version). I set out to read my entire novel in Scrivenings mode. However, the text is a bit small for easy reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see a Zoom toolbar at the bottom of the screen. It currently says 135%. The size of the text does not change when I change the zoom using that toolbar. &quot;View / Zoom / Zoom In&quot; also does not change the display size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way to get Scrivenings mode to display larger without changing the actual font?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-18T21:15:07.350" LastActivityDate="2018-03-23T18:03:17.360" Title="How to zoom text in Scrivenings mode without changing the actual font?" Tags="|software|tools|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25284" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25285" CreationDate="2016-11-20T12:03:51.177" Score="1" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, so I've decided now is my personal time to shine! I have thought of a great new word, and want to add it to the dictionary. Theoretically, if enough people read my book and see this word in it, and people use it, then a lexicologist might consider making it a real word. Here's the word I've decided to make:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Elluient&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Willing to be obedient for the sake of one's own gain (a final outcome, a reward, etc.).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my book, how would I use this word? I think that is quite self-explanatory - I can just use it in dialogue to describe one character as elluient. However...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How can I include the definition of my brand new word? Would I include it in the narrative? How would I do this?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T22:24:01.043" Title="How to add a new word to the dictionary" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|description|narrative|dictionary|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25284" CreationDate="2016-11-20T16:24:43.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can just use it. Children learn most words by their usage, not explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have one character ask what the other meant with that word (&quot;What's elluient?&quot;) and that character explain it (&quot;Elluient is if you are obedient for your own gain.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have the narrator explain it. How you do that is up to your creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Words for that meaning already exist: subservient, submissive, obsequious, servile, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-11-20T16:24:43.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25298" CreationDate="2016-11-20T19:18:19.453" Score="4" ViewCount="1394" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs,&quot; said Stephen King. He went on to explain that they should be used sparingly, not as a crutch to avoid writing a more descriptive sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, I find a much more colorful way to express myself when editing out an -ly word. Other times, I find myself avoiding them by transforming sentences in a straightforward manner, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The two silently admired Jupiter&quot; =&gt; &quot;The two admired Jupiter in silence.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;, she said wryly&quot; =&gt; &quot;, she said with a wry grin.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this exercise improve my writing, or is it just as lazy as the original -ly adverb?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice for when that rich description fails to materialize in my mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T13:48:15.063" Title="Avoiding -ly Words" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25286" CreationDate="2016-11-20T19:30:39.650" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Saying that you should use adverbs sparingly is silly. You should use adverbs, and every other part of speech, appropriately. If adverbs are less frequently appropriate that other parts of speech, then they will occur less frequently in good prose as a consequence. But this will not happen because of the writer consciously avoiding adverbs. It will happen because the writer has a good sense of style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Removing adverbs will never turn a bad passage into a good passage. Write with the whole language at once, listen closely to the effect your words have, and edit out those words that do not add to the effect you are creating, regardless of what part of speech they belong to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-20T19:30:39.650" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25290" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-21T03:35:19.427" Score="2" ViewCount="465" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm well on my way to 50k but I feel like my story has not plot and is quite bad.  I read somewhere that NaNo is awful for quality of writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(How) can I improve the quality of writing during NaNoWriMo?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22305" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T19:04:23.483" Title="Is NaNoWriMo necessarily a good thing?" Tags="|creative-writing|nanowrimo|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25291" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25297" CreationDate="2016-11-21T06:34:12.170" Score="1" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I want to know about whether or not it's okay to start at a point that gives a little bit away. In my story, the main character gets captured and that's the point I want to start at and then flashback. Is this okay, considering you then can learn why she gets captured and don't know what will happen as a result of it, or does it lessen the tension of the rest of the story because you know she is going to be captured?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22306" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T13:33:52.567" Title="Starting In The Middle And Flashing Back" Tags="|novel|flashback|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3301" CreationDate="2016-11-21T10:25:10.793" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing most publishers tend to prefer three # centred on the page after two clear spaces between text. These are the ones I use frequently in my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22307" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T10:25:10.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25291" CreationDate="2016-11-21T10:41:12.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's completely fine. This technqiue is known as &lt;em&gt;in medias res,&lt;/em&gt; &quot;in the middle of things.&quot; If you've written it correctly, it shouldn't lessen the tension because we should be invested in the character and now we want to know how she got into that mess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T10:41:12.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25290" CreationDate="2016-11-21T10:45:29.127" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are following the daily wordcount rules, NaNoWriMo is explicitly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; about quality. It's about committing to getting stuff on paper so you can work with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So many of us start a novel and never finish it, or never start it at all. Being part of the NaNoWriMo sprint gives you a concrete goal and a community to cheer you on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is, in fact, &lt;em&gt;nothing wrong&lt;/em&gt; with having a crappy first draft. Most first drafts &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; crap. A first draft which you've written by aiming for a word count is very likely going to be a little extra crappy. &lt;em&gt;This is fine.&lt;/em&gt; You now have your words on paper. You can see how your ideas did and didn't work. You have clay to make bricks with. You can throw out whole chapers and rewrite them because you saw how it didn't work the first time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop worrying about &quot;This is bad.&quot; Focus on &quot;this is getting finished.&quot; You can edit at leisure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T10:45:29.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25290" CreationDate="2016-11-21T12:05:59.253" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to understand what NaNoWriMo can and can't do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way, NaNoWriMo is all about quantity, and not at all about quality. That's &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; important, because quantity is something a lot of writers really struggle with - sometimes without even realizing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of NaNoWriMo's big goals are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get yourself into the habit of writing consistently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demonstrate to yourself that you're able to write, and write a lot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get yourself used to the fact that not all your writing is good, and &lt;strong&gt;don't let that block you from writing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Produce a substantial body of &lt;em&gt;unpolished&lt;/em&gt; work, that you can later edit, rework, or rewrite entirely into a much-improved second draft.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the goals NaNoWriMo can offer you. If these are areas you want to work on, then NaNoWriMo is a great way to that (and to enjoy a ton of community support and encouragement while you're at it!). If that's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; where you're having difficulty, if those &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; areas you want to spend effort to improve, then NaNoWriMo probably isn't the right tool for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T12:05:59.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25291" CreationDate="2016-11-21T13:33:52.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tension within a story does not depend on what the reader knows or does not know. It depends on how much peril the character feels and how much we sympathize with their feelings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the movie Apollo 13. We know exactly what happens because it is based on a real incident. Yet we feel tremendous tension as the crew struggles to find a way back to Earth. The tension clearly does not come from the viewer's ignorance, but from their sympathy with the crew and their colleagues and families who did not know how things were going to come out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, of course, the same is true of any book that we read for the second time. No part of our pleasure on second reading can come from our ignorance of what happens, and yet we still feel tension when the characters are in a tense situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It follows that the purpose of beginning with a flash forward is to engage the sympathy of the reader for the character. You do it because you believe that this part of their story will engage the reader's sympathy better than starting at the beginning. It can also be used to add a sense of irony to a story, in that the reader now understands the consequences of the character's actions better than the character does at the time (which can be used to generate a kind of tension).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T13:33:52.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25286" CreationDate="2016-11-21T13:48:15.063" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difficulty with adverbs falls to the familiar saw about &quot;show, don't tell&quot;: If the adverb is &lt;em&gt;instructing the reader how to interpret the action&lt;/em&gt;, the implication is that the description itself is weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;I'm ready to go,&quot; he said.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;I'm ready to go,&quot; he said mischievously.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;I'm ready to go,&quot; he said mournfully.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These three lines read very differently from each other, even though only the adverb is changed. And the reason they read differently from each other is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; because they describe different things, but rather because the reader is &lt;em&gt;explicitly told&lt;/em&gt; how to interpret each one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with relying on adverbs, then, is the problem of &lt;em&gt;telling&lt;/em&gt; your readers how to feel rather than actually creating that emotion in them; the problem of &lt;em&gt;telling&lt;/em&gt; your readers how a moment or a glance should be understood, rather than portraying that snippet in a way where they, themselves, would understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At its worst, you can have the reader feel that he's being implored to think of the characters as being heroic and heinous and hilarious and horrific, without the text ever actually &lt;em&gt;showing&lt;/em&gt; any of those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, swapping &lt;code&gt;she said wryly&lt;/code&gt; for &lt;code&gt;she said with a wry grin&lt;/code&gt; is no substantial improvement; you're still simply cuing us how to understand the statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some alternatives where the difference is much greater:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the text being spoken, so the wryness is self-evident and doesn't need to be brought additional attention to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring the wry expression to life - instead of just saying that it's &quot;wry&quot;, tell us that it's the same grin she makes when her baby soils itself, or that she's just barely keeping from cracking up. Something that makes the expression vivid and concrete.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring the &lt;em&gt;situation&lt;/em&gt; to life - tell us what the use of wryness means to the speaker, or the viewpoint character. &quot;It took me a split-second to realize she was joking&quot;; &quot;I know she didn't mean to sound mocking, but it grated on me anyway.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, though, &quot;telling vs. showing&quot; is a constant tradeoff, a balance, not something to always decide in the same way. &lt;strong&gt;In plenty of cases, using an adverb is a simple, effective way of communicating something.&lt;/strong&gt; It's not &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; to sometimes use adverbs; what's wrong is to use them as a replacement for vivid descriptions (or in addition to better descriptions, in which case they're just unnecessary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quick checklist you can use to consider any particular adverb use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If I take the adverb out, does the line still work?&lt;/strong&gt; If yes, it's unnecessary; cut it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can I rewrite the line so as to eliminate the &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; for the adverb?&lt;/strong&gt; If yes, that's likely to be better, crisper. &quot;Yell,&quot; instead of &quot;say loudly&quot;; say something actually wry, instead of saying a colorless line &quot;wryly.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does the adverb get across a clear image?&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes adverbs are an integral part of the language. &quot;Walking briskly&quot; has a very distinct feel to it, in a way that &quot;walking,&quot; jogging,&quot; and &quot;perambulating&quot; don't, and also different than other things one might do &quot;briskly.&quot; &quot;Walking briskly&quot; is kind of it's own thing. It's very reasonable to use adverbs this way -- the only concern is that such phrases are fairly likely to be cliches, so in that sense, they shouldn't be overused.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it important for me to describe this vividly?&lt;/strong&gt; If yes, then this is a case where you want to show rather than tell; this is not the place for an adverb.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have I been relying on adverbs a lot to get across tone and atmosphere?&lt;/strong&gt; If so, that &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be an issue with your writing style, and you might want to pay attention and see if you can improve in the next draft.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T13:48:15.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25290" CreationDate="2016-11-21T13:48:18.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily, no. In fact, probably not. NaNoWriMo puts an emphasis on words, and on getting words down on paper. But words are merely a vehicle. What we call &quot;writing&quot; is actually about storytelling, not grammar and vocabulary. The relationship between words and story seems to be different for different writers. If the discipline of producing words has the effect of pulling story out of you, then NaNoWriMo may have some merit for you. But it is equally possible that the demand to produce words may cause your mind to disengage the story engine and simply start churning words. In that case, it is a waste of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories seem to flow out of some people as easily as breathing. They may lack nothing but the discipline and craft to write them down. For others, words may come naturally, but crafting story is a hard slog. Some seem to benefit from putting writing aside and building story as an outline or plan. Others can only capture story through words, but need to wait for story to come to them before they can write. Still others (the greatest number alas) have neither story nor art in them and can only spew words. Personally I can see NaNoWriMo being effective only for the first and last groups. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story is the point, though, and if NaNoWriMo is not pulling story out of you, I would say stop and wait until you have a story before you write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-11-21T19:04:23.483" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T19:04:23.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25311" CreationDate="2016-11-21T14:36:51.107" Score="3" ViewCount="858" Body="&lt;p&gt;English is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VkjDSxBVqw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full of homophones&lt;/a&gt; that can cause confusion when speaking, but if the two similar sounding words are spelled differently they can be clarified as soon as they are written down. However, this causes an issue when attempting to &lt;em&gt;deliberately&lt;/em&gt; write about someone hearing the incorrect words, because as soon as they are put onto the page Schrodinger's box is opened and the reader knows exactly which version is actually being said aloud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a limited perspective, it can be written as the POV character hears the words, but I feel that as soon as the misunderstanding is revealed it can completely jar the reader as they realize that they have deliberately been misled. For example, written from the perspective of the shopkeeper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A man entered the shop and approached the counter, &amp;quot;good day sir, I would like four candles please.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Of course, not a problem,&amp;quot; the shopkeeper fetched four candles from the shelf and placed them on the counter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No, I asked for &lt;em&gt;fork handles&lt;/em&gt;. Handles for forks.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as the reader sees this they will realize that, whilst the listener could have easily misinterpreted the speaker accidentally, the writer purposefully decided to choose the opposite way to write it than was intended by the speaker, which means that the reader doesn't get the same chance to have their own interpretation of the phrase spoken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did think about the possibility of sewing an element of doubt into the writing, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A man entered the shop and approached the counter, &amp;quot;good day sir, I would like four candles please.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Of course, not a problem,&amp;quot; the shopkeeper was quite sure that he had heard the customer correctly, so he went to fetch four candles from the shelf, and then placed them on the counter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No, I asked for &lt;em&gt;fork handles&lt;/em&gt;. Handles for forks.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue with this is that as soon as the writing focuses on the opportunity for the character to misinterpret what he hears, it almost certainly means that he &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; heard incorrectly. If he hadn't misheard, there would be no reason for the writer to mention it, which means the surprise is taken from the reader when it is revealed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any good way to write down a homophone that still leaves the correct (and incorrect) interpretation open to the reader?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T20:46:13.190" Title="How to write a character misinterpreting Four Candles as Fork Handles" Tags="|word-choice|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25301" CreationDate="2016-11-21T15:09:01.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fork handles sketch was one of the most brilliant things The Two Ronnies ever did. And it depends for its success not simply on homophones, but on the manipulation of point of view. You can't write down a homophone (by definition, they are things that sound alike but are not written alike). But you can manipulate point of view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could do it by reporting what Ronnie Corbett hears in the sketch (the conversation from his POV), and Ronnie Barker's response when he puts those things on the counter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could do it by reporting what Ronnie Barker says (the conversation from his POV) and the things that Ronnie Corbett puts on the counter in response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could do it by putting the story in a frame and having either character relate the incident to his friends in the pub afterwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T15:09:01.513" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25301" CreationDate="2016-11-21T15:29:21.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the particular instance, for the joke to work Ronnie C had to be speaking in a certain accent for Ronnie B to misunderstand him, because 'four candles' and 'fork handles' are not &lt;em&gt;generally&lt;/em&gt; homophonic. So you have to make sure the 'h' is dropped and that the accent doesn't differentiate the 'fou' and 'for' as Ronnie c's native accent would.&#xA;&lt;Br&gt;So for &lt;strong&gt;this instance&lt;/strong&gt; you would have to devise a way of writing the words phonetically which also disguised the spelling.&#xA;IPA is probably the way to go, but I'm not versed in it so am falling back on some random googling to suggest that if:&lt;Br&gt; Fork Handle is '&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;fɔːk ˈhand(ə)l&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;'&lt;br&gt;&#xA;and &lt;Br&gt;Four candles is '&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;fɔːˈkand(ə)l&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;'&lt;Br&gt;&lt;Br&gt; then perhaps you can run them together to something like '&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;fɔːkˈand(ə)l&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19924" LastEditorUserId="19924" LastEditDate="2016-11-21T17:07:33.970" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T17:07:33.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25305" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-21T16:50:03.553" Score="1" ViewCount="196" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the book &lt;em&gt;What If?&lt;/em&gt;, the author usually writes the units out as &lt;em&gt;kilometer, atmosphere, megawatt&lt;/em&gt; instead of &lt;em&gt;km, atm, MW&lt;/em&gt;. However, he does use the symbols in the drawings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jJ2Lg.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jJ2Lg.png&quot; alt=&quot;&amp;quot;indestructible&amp;quot; hair dryer with different values in &amp;quot;W&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;kW&amp;quot;, etc.&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one line, both &lt;em&gt;mm&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;millimeter&lt;/em&gt; are even used together:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core of a lightning bolt is a few centimeters in diameter. A bullet fired from an AK-47 is about 26 &lt;em&gt;mm&lt;/em&gt; long and moves at about 700 &lt;em&gt;millimeters&lt;/em&gt; every millisecond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes me confused because I can't find a reason to not use the SI symbols. I guess the reason is similar to writing numbers in words when doing so doesn't look silly for a better reading-flow-feeling. But in the above example, I can't explain why the first number should use &lt;em&gt;mm&lt;/em&gt; while the second one should use &lt;em&gt;millimeter&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a general rule for writing out the unit instead of its SI symbol?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11428" LastEditorUserId="57111" LastEditDate="2023-04-26T07:14:13.807" LastActivityDate="2023-04-26T07:14:13.807" Title="When to not use SI symbols for units?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25306" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25307" CreationDate="2016-11-21T17:15:22.227" Score="4" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of planning a story right now, without the intention of sharing it it with others, but I would like it to be comprehensible if I do. It's set in the 1880s and is formatted like a journal which belongs to a doctor, and there would be some words used that people now might not be familiar with. Should I replace these with their modern counterparts, or is it okay to use the period-correct version? If the latter, would it interesting and useful to include annotations (say, as if someone had later found the journal)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22314" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2018-07-23T09:06:44.860" LastActivityDate="2018-07-23T09:06:44.860" Title="Appropriate use of outdated vocabulary and terms?" Tags="|style|vocabulary|voice|historical-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25306" CreationDate="2016-11-21T17:40:06.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really comes down to style and the backstory for your journal. If it's supposed to have sat unread in a drawer for 140 years, nobody would have been able to annotate it; if it's been an object of scholarly study throughout that time, there'll be endless rewrites and examinations of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For myself, if I were reading a piece of fiction that was set in a certain time and written by a person of that time, unless it would be totally unreadable without translation (say, written in Old English or similar), I would prefer to see the unusual words exactly as they were written and look them up myself if I'm confused. Adding annotations to clarify feels rather cheap to me, and feels as though the audience is being patronised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also severely dates the work, because if somebody's reading it in twenty years and finds that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; old words have been annotated but others haven't, it feels less like it was written 140 years ago, more like it was written twenty years ago. For example, if I was reading a book which noted that &quot;Gay&quot; simply meant 'happy' and not 'homosexual', I wouldn't be thinking &quot;Ah, thanks for sharing that&quot;, I'd be thinking &quot;Oh, this was annotated ten years ago before 'gay' became a general expression of dislike&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22241" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T17:40:06.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24929" CreationDate="2016-11-21T17:48:16.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did some quick research on &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/09/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Owl&lt;/a&gt; and couldn't find any reference to citing an explanatory endnote or footnote in their material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I was able to find someone's unverified explanation &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/486994-english-help-how-do-i-cite-a-footnote&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are citing a piece of information contained in a long discursive footnote such as you find in many academic books, just use a standard footnote format in your paper, mention the page number on which the information appears, and after the page number, write the number of the footnote from the book you are citing, e.g., &amp;quot;489, note 37.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warren Williams, A Student's Guide to Psychology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990) 489, note 37.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21119" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T17:48:16.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25306" CreationDate="2016-11-21T19:02:03.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are after verity, you have far more to worry about than vocabulary. In the nineteenth century the whole style of writing was different. Paragraphs and sentences were much longer than we typically use today and the overall tone was far more formal. Language usage was far more of a marker of class than it is today. (Many of our grammatical shibboleths that are slowly dying out stem from the desire in that period to clearly delineate the speech and writing of the upper classes from that of the lower.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But stories are always written for a modern audience. Setting a story in the past (or in space, or in wonderland) is simply a device for creating the right stage on which to tell your story. Even those in the historical fiction community who scream blue murder about the wrong number of buttons on a lady's glove don't bat an eyelash as monstrously anachronous speech, opinions, or actions. Almost no historical novelist, for instance, make any attempt to portray the religious or class attitudes that would be common to ordinary people of a given period, except as marks of villainy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, your doctor's journal is a device for telling a story to a modern audience, and it only needs as much faithfulness to the period as is required to tell the story you want to tell. Too much will do as much harm to verisimilitude as too little, by distracting the reader from the story. But exactly how much you need to do really depends on the story you are trying to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T19:02:03.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25310" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-21T20:11:47.433" Score="1" ViewCount="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife and I are working on a book that will contain photographs of paintings that were exhibited, with owner permission, in shows hung by wife or obtained from other photographs. All of the works are by the same artist.  She is not doing the book for profit. It is purely a public service to help preserve and increase local knowledge concerning a local self-taught artist who died in 1982.  My wife has a record of the owners of all the works.  However, many of them are deceased.  If she publishes photos of the paintings in her book, with attribution to the last known owner, but does not have written permission to do so, what is her liability exposure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22315" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T02:15:04.553" Title="Publishing images of paintings" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25301" CreationDate="2016-11-21T20:33:42.397" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be minimalist, and write what an outside observer would hear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that even in the Fork 'Andles sketch, Ronnie B. is saying very little. He's not having a long conversation that would help us get a handle on his accent; he's just grunting the things he needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Telling this from Ronnie C's perspective, you wouldn't even allow for the possibility of mishearing until later in the text. Something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He unfolded a grubby piece of paper and squinted at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Fou' candles,&amp;quot; he said in a rough workers accent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Four candles?&amp;quot; I confirmed, turning to gather the requested items. I set the candles on the counter and said &amp;quot;There you are. Four candles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man just stared at them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Nah, fou' candles. 'Andles fer forks.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Fork handles&lt;/em&gt; he meant. Stupid blighter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, with the man's accent more firmly fixed, we can play with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Got any ose?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ose&lt;/em&gt;? I took a moment to parse that through his silly accent, with its dropped aitches, added in the fork handles, and realised what he meant. &lt;em&gt;Hoes&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gardening tools were on the other side of the shop. I set a fine hoe down in front of him, and he gave it a blank stare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No, ose.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh, &lt;em&gt;hose&lt;/em&gt;! I thought you meant &lt;em&gt;hoes&lt;/em&gt;. Y'mean hose y' should've said that...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I collected a reel of garden hose and dropped it in front of him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No, ose.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was my turn to stare blankly. &amp;quot;Well what do...oh, you mean hose, panty hose!&amp;quot; Luckily we did have a pack of tights nearby. I grabbed it and brought it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No, ose, ose. O's for the gate, &lt;em&gt;mon repose&lt;/em&gt;. Le'er O's.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22241" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T20:46:13.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25312" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-21T21:04:40.080" Score="0" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just been struggling recently with this doubt that I could never think of ideas I've seen written on my own. If that sounds confusing to you, you aren't the only one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I could sit down and be inspired by something another author wrote and write something in the same vein. That's not the issue. It's that now I've seen them, I can never have the idea off my own back. And that bothers me because I cannot take that back. It's done, it's fixed. And I can never know if I would have thought of it myself or not. Anytime I think of anything similar, it's just going to be based on what I read and not from my own creativity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it's neurotic but has anyone else been in this position? I need some clarity on this, an external viewpoint you might say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22178" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T13:28:38.020" Title="As a writer, should I be upset because I couldn't think of an idea?" Tags="|writers-block|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25310" CreationDate="2016-11-21T21:48:26.257" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a laymans standpoint, I really don't see a problem with it. Firstly, you aren't making any profit from it, so the owners of the pictures can't exactly be losing out on this deal can they? Secondly, lots of books use photographs from other authors. As long as they are properly attributed who is to argue? I see it the same as a quote really. You can quote another author freely as long as it is clearly a quote. So why shouldn't the same apply to pictures? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are seriously concerned, perhaps contacting a publisher would give you clarity on this? I know that's not much but I hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22178" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T21:48:26.257" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25310" CreationDate="2016-11-22T01:47:59.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless the copyright protection period has expired, those works are copyright and if you use them without permission, you could be sued. Copyrights are property and are part of the estate of a deceased person. The copyright holders are the heirs. Any publisher you approach is going to insist on your getting copyright releases for those works. Also note that the photograph of a painting is a copyrighted work in its own right, even if the original painting is out of copyright. IANAL, however. If you are concerned about liability, consult a qualified copyright lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T01:47:59.437" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25316" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25317" CreationDate="2016-11-22T02:17:22.123" Score="4" ViewCount="757" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a plotter. I develop and plan my novels and characters well before I write them. When it comes to character development, I make sure that my characters (or at least the central ones) are people that the reader wants to read about. I make them people the reader will find interesting, and will cheer on past the end of the book. I achieve this by giving them details (certain traits, detailed and central inner conflicts, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently read an excerpt of a novel. The excerpt had a profound sense of character. The character felt like a real person, even though I was reading an excerpt and knew nothing about that character. The emotions, thoughts, and actions all just felt &lt;em&gt;authentic&lt;/em&gt;. I can't really say why. That's why I'm asking this question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this is referred to as a &lt;strong&gt;sense of character&lt;/strong&gt;: that undefinable &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; which just makes characters seem real. I'm not always missing this sense of character in my novels. Not by a long shot. Sometimes a character falls flat though, and I'd like to know what I can do about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I create a sense of character?&lt;/strong&gt; Being a plotter, I'd obviously prefer a formula, a process that I can follow. I realize this might not be the case however. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: This question can easily be subjective, so please do not answer with just the opinion of one person. That method might not (and probably will not) work for everyone. I'd like methods that work for a wide variety of people.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T13:17:39.057" Title="Best Practices for Getting a Sense of Character" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25316" CreationDate="2016-11-22T06:21:30.497" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plotting out a novel is a wonderful way to prepare for writing.  It helps an author identify which thoughts, events and scenes are needed and which are not.  When significant effort is invested into plot development, tremendous amounts of time can be saved during writing.  Scenes which seemed necessary during early contemplation don't have to be written at all, if they've been eliminated during the plotting process.  Plotting is therefore a method which optomizes the writing experience; minimizing the total number of words which must eventually be written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Charcter development is the exact opposite.  Characters are organic.  They only grow through experience and exercise.  For characters living in a literary world, that growth comes in the form of written words (lots of written words).  Ten to Twenty &amp;quot;never-to-be-published&amp;quot; pages, containing a freeform written monologue in a character's voice, will give you a real idea of who they are, what they value, and how they use words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your plot may help you realize who each of your characters need to be (for the sake of your story), but you will only discover who they are, by letting them rule your writing hand for a while.  &amp;quot;Become Them&amp;quot; and let them write.  Only by imagining the world as they might see it, can you truely figure out how each of your characters fit into the world that you are creating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my formula...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I usually extract a list of characters from my plot and sort them by importance.  &amp;quot;Main Characters&amp;quot; will get the most development time.  &amp;quot;Supporting Characters&amp;quot; will get a little less, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I then chart out which characters know each other, using colored arrows to summarize their opinion of or affinity to each other.  A red arrow from Joe to Bill means that Joe hates Bill.  The yellow arrow from Bill to Joe suggests that Bill is unaware of Joe's antipathy and only distrusts Joe but doesn't hate hime.  The colors are arbitrary and I often scribble notes along the arrow's length to capture more complex emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will then write up a short 3rd party summary of each character, using omnipotent view. Sometimes I use a character profile form for this, to capture each character's occupation, wealth, posessions, etc.  These are trivial facts but they set some ground rules which will later be followed by the characters, when each of their turns come to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I hand over the metaphoric pen and let one of the characters start to speak.  I start a new word document for each character and try to keep the writing in that document to one character's voice, staying strictly in first person point of view.  The characters usually start by introducing themselves and then babble on about anything which they choose.  Sometimes they talk about other characters.  Sometimes they share stories from their past.  This can be very surprising and instructive to me, the author.  I let them continue until they either run out of things to say, or until something strange happens.  After each character leaves the stage, another takes its place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strange things happen a lot during these free form dialogs.  Other characters may walk out on stage and start discussing the current subject with the speaker.  Sometimes there are arguments.  Tears are a good sign that things are getting real.  Laughter is too, to a lesser extent.  Late in the process, pairs of characters sometimes fall into a smooth banter with each other, playing off of the other's word choice and style.  Through out these events, I try to stay in the original speaker's POV.  In this way, their private thoughts and responses can be captured, along side their public words.  Later, writing the same scene from the other character's POV can be very really illuminate what was really happening on that stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to capture who each of these characters are...  Their thoughts in their words, spoken with their particular subtlety or style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pages generated during these monologues are never included in the final novel directly, but I often go back and re-read them just before bringing a particular character on stage.  It is helpful to remind myself of who they are and how they speak.  All of it helps me to make them real when they finally get to visit the to-be-published page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T06:21:30.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25312" CreationDate="2016-11-22T06:44:34.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolute originality is a myth.  Everything that can be written has its roots in something that was written before.  Unless you have spent your entire life isolated from the works of every writer who ever lived, your works will parallel and build upon everything you have read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolute originality is also unavoidable.  No idea is so simple or obvious that it can't become original and unique just by being spoken in your voice or written in your style.  You couldn't exactly clone the writing of another if you tried, so stop worrying about doing it by accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original ideas are in limited supply.  The big, story sized ones have each been beaten into the ground by thousands of authors who chose them before you came along.  Choose any one of them and then add originality through your characters, their thoughts and through the perspective of your POV character or narrator.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell an old story in new way and the story is no longer old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="11221" LastEditDate="2016-11-22T13:03:40.347" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T13:03:40.347" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25319" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-22T08:50:18.007" Score="2" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would try to write something as Crime-Detective Story. I'm a beginner of this genre and the first obstacle I find is the &quot;idea&quot; of a crime.&#xA;I mean, I don't know how to model a crime to make it interesting and to make it able to involve readers.&#xA;Actually, I have a small idea but I have difficulties to make it a not ordinary crime-case.&#xA;Do you have any advice or technique that can help me in this strange creative process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22255" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T10:28:39.297" Title="how to elaborate a crime case" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|ideas|crime|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-11-24T18:18:57.580" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25319" CreationDate="2016-11-22T09:24:10.307" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience of writing crime stories, I've found what works best for me is to have the crime solution the work backwards to the crime.  This allows me to make sure all the necessary clues are in place throughout the book to let the reader solve the crime along with the person investigating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also rule one in S.S. Van Dine's 20 rules for writing detective stories, published 1928 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/vandine.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/vandine.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I struggle to do it the other way (by starting with the crime) because then it feels to me like I'm forcing the clues to be placed and trying to avoid the dreaded &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina&lt;/a&gt; for the detective to solve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T09:24:10.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25319" CreationDate="2016-11-22T10:28:39.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm actually inclined to think that knowing the solution (i.e. planting clues) before knowing the crime, and knowing the crime before the knowing the solution are both imperfect methods, since neither are &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; the thing that the reader is interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly suspect that what people like about detective stories isn't so much the answer, or the details of the crime, as it is the relationship between the clues and the answer. People like trying to guess, and they like it even better when they feel like they &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; have guessed (because it all makes perfect sense, in retrospect), but didn't, because the writer constructed the story so cleverly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice, then, is to first work out the sort of reasoning that the character(s) will use to solve the crime. Think about the sort of logic that detectives use (in stories, at least; though probably in real life too): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inference&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inference&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have this, you can begin to structure the plot. If C can be concluded from A and B, and F can be concluded from D and E, you just have to make sure F is something that the character's can work out the crime from, and A, B and D are things that they can find out over the course of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think once you have an approximate structure of this sort in place, filling in your As and Bs and so on is much easier, and the advantage of doing it this way is that the clues can easily be things that the characters are able (or even likely) to find, and don't need to seem too improbable or convenient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T10:28:39.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25312" CreationDate="2016-11-22T10:59:34.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inspiration is inspiration and it comes in many forms.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I go on holiday to a nice sunny place and see, first hand, the 'story' of poor local people trying to survive by competing for the tourist dollars that come each year.  I may use that as inspiration for a story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of going away I could holiday at home and a read a book ( or watch a documentary) about poor local people trying to survive by competing for the tourist dollars that come each year.  I may use that as inspiration for a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as I'm telling my story and it's interesting enough for people to want to read it does it matter which of the two scenarios above were the inspiration?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21127" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T10:59:34.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25325" CreationDate="2016-11-22T13:04:49.700" Score="2" ViewCount="1265" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good evening,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of writing a small research paper for my college and im facing the following dilemma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my sources has a typo. More specifically instead of the word &quot;Christians&quot; the author wrote &quot;christians&quot; (lowercase C) which is wrong. Should i correct it or should i leave it as is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that this is a minor mistake but in the future i will probably come across many other typos like this one and i would like to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. Im using MLA 8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22321" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T20:26:56.297" Title="Typo correction when citing an external source" Tags="|citations|mla|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25316" CreationDate="2016-11-22T13:17:39.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is important to remember that fiction is not primarily a matter or invention but of observation. You are not creating new stories or new characters, you are discovering story and character in nature and sharing them through storytelling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you discover character in nature, then your reader can recognize character in your stories because they too have observed character all their lives. Then it only takes a few brushstrokes to establish character vividly because you are relying almost entirely on the reader's recognition and memory. Pull out the right poignant and telling detail to evoke the memory of character and your reader immediately has a fond and vivid reaction based on people they have known of similar character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost any book would suffice to illustrate this, but take the opening dialogue of Pride and Prejudice and see how deftly the character of Mr Bennet is established by his gentle teasing of Mrs Bennet as she tries to persuade him to all on their new neighbour. In a few words, Mr. Bennet stands before us whole because we remember such affectionate teasing between man and wife (or between parent and child, or between siblings or friends). We know that guy. We remember him. You create a sense of character through an appeal to memory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is true across the board. Storytelling works through the invocation of memory. It does not create new sensations or emotions; it recalls to mind sensations and emotions that the reader has already had. If it builds new landscapes, it does so using pieces of the old. If it is truly skillful, it refines and concentrates  sensations and emotions it a way that may feel new or more vivid than life, but it is all life recalled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also, by the way, why we have to keep retelling the old stories: to recast them the the framework of memory of a new generation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T13:17:39.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25323" CreationDate="2016-11-22T13:19:28.063" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The usual convention is to quote the source as is but add &quot;(sic)&quot; after the incorrect word to indicate that the error is in the source and is not a transcription error. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;christians (sic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T13:19:28.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25312" CreationDate="2016-11-22T13:28:38.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fiction is based on observation, not invention. The same stories are told over and over again because the same stories are lived over and over again. If new writers repeat the stories of old writers it is not because they copied them from the old writers, but because both the old writer and the new observed the same stories playing out in the lives of the people around them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer's job is to refine and highlight the key points of story. If a story works for you it works through recall. A good writer makes you see the world more vividly. Having seen the world more vividly, you are better prepared to write yourself. Your debt to the writers you have read is not that you steal their invention but that their observation has sharpened your own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We endlessly retell the old stories because those are the stories there are, and because there is apparently an endless appetite for the old stories told in new ways. What we prize is not the great inventors of stories (for there are none). What we prize is the great tellers of stories. Take the oldest, most trite, most obvious story in the world and tell it with extraordinary verve, sympathy, and insight, and the world will beat a path to your door. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T13:28:38.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25306" CreationDate="2016-11-22T17:45:42.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes use archaic words but tell the reader the meaning in the same way a newspaper defines words the lower vocabulary reader might not understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example. &quot;Did you do the task I set eow?&quot; &quot;Yes, Lady. It is done.&quot; &#xA;or: The percolator coffee maker sat on the stove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can tell that eow is 'you' just by the way it is written. I do caution you in over-used of dialect or different language. If you can't read it aloud seamlessly, then it isn't worth having it in the story.&#xA; &lt;em&gt;Percolator&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;coffee maker&lt;/em&gt; are almost the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22325" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T17:45:42.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25246" CreationDate="2016-11-22T18:22:11.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't overlook the power of the Internet. While it's not a sure fire thing on its own, I've created a lot of interest for my writing simply by creating a few online writing blogs and doing a few posts a week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a good first step, I would check out writing blogs on Google, see what sites people are using and which ones you like the look of. Wordpress was where I started out and you could do far worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22178" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T18:22:11.157" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25252" CreationDate="2016-11-22T22:21:58.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a reading point of view, I want as much description as necessary for me to understand. If your protagonist is a prisoner, is the environment dirty or cold or grey or harsh, or is it soft and bright? I want to see it so that I can paint in the rest of the details for myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, I do the same. If it is important that the prisoner is wearing orange, I'd tell the reader. I would not tell you anything that wasn't critical to the story, other than to let you know my character is tall and muscular because their role is as an enforcer in a gang; or they are petite and frightened and trying to remain unnoticed. If it is important to know their hair colour or race, put it into the story rather than describing the individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey Red, move your fat ass.&quot; Rather than; The redhead moved because the huge, muscular, enforcer walked into the cafeteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22325" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T22:21:58.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21029" CreationDate="2016-11-23T00:13:02.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of the time, the answer is to cut this sort of thing out. That's because a lot of the time, things like this really only serve to fill space (or are there because the writer was afraid - for whatever reason - to leave the character unattended) and don't add anything to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judging from what you describe in your question, I don't think that's the case here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? Because you have already hinted at two functions this description can serve in the story: firstly, to set up details that will be relevant later on; secondly, to give a sense of what the character is feeling as she moves to her new town.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I get the impression that you feel the first of these two functions is fairly well fulfilled by what you've written, so, assuming I'm right (and if I am, that you are), I think the problem is probably with the second function the passage could (and arguably should) be serving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend going back through this description - editing or re-writing as required - paying particular attention to the emotion that your character is feeling, her state of mind, and the sort of things she would notice and attach significance to while making the transition from her old home to her new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if you can pin that down, the section won't feel extraneous. Instead, it'll be an integral part of how the story conveys the character's internal journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T00:13:02.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18158" CreationDate="2016-11-23T03:40:03.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr Salinger's approach shadowed over Maria, who was more than ready to&#xA;  shake him for answers. She'd waited over two hours of silence and&#xA;  growing dread for anything on Dad. But when the man hesitated and the&#xA;  lines on his face deepened, she froze in her tracks. Yet, she heard&#xA;  herself ask, &quot;Is he...&quot; Then the words sunk down into her chest at the&#xA;  pitiful shake of his head. The &quot;I'm sorry&quot; that followed choked her&#xA;  breath from her lungs, and suddenly he towered over her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What did he say? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She clutched at the gold cross hanging from the chain. It pressed&#xA;  white-hot against her skin. Each gasp tore down her throat and her&#xA;  mind raced even as she lost herself in the storm. But Dad was just&#xA;  fine last night! Didn't Salinger see it? Didn't he see Dad eager to&#xA;  get up and go? She watched the game with him, laughed when he spilled&#xA;  Ginger-ale at a touchdown of his favorite team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No. He couldn't be gone. Not when he promised her he'd fight, dammit!&#xA;  She pounded the cold floor. Hissed a breath through clenched teeth.&#xA;  But the strength left her, even as she attempted to stand. Her throat&#xA;  held back something between a sob and a shout. She had to see him.&#xA;  Through the blur of motion and color she followed the doctor. She&#xA;  would see him. And say goodbye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(what you want to do is basically set the scene and describe the event in your character's view point. Use enough detail to convey what's going on without going too detailed. Hope this helps.)) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22329" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2016-11-24T12:19:19.760" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T12:19:19.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25335" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32248" CreationDate="2016-11-23T13:11:38.997" Score="11" ViewCount="12374" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am authoring a single author paper. Usually when referring to oneself in a paper, 'we' is used. In single author papers I found both 'we' and 'I' (e.g., 'here we/I report xyz').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one is stylistically better? To me 'we' seems odd when I read a single author paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22332" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-01-04T18:43:13.093" LastActivityDate="2023-06-30T14:36:43.913" Title="Single author scientific paper, 'we' or 'I'?" Tags="|style|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25246" CreationDate="2016-11-23T17:37:48.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are so many different things that you could do, but finding the one that works best for your specific book will take a lot of trial and error. Some things work, and some things don't, but you need to be willing to make the effort in order to make the sales. Can it be done? Sure! Over the past three years I have earned enough money from my writing to be able to retire early and now write full time. It's been over a year since I retired, and I earn enough to make a living with just my writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no way that anyone can tell you exactly what will work for just your book, because every book is different. Ultimately, only you can decide what works and how much effort you're willing to put into it. My recommendation would be to spend time researching what has worked for other authors, and the best way to do that is to spend time on a writer's forum where they discuss such things. My long time favorite is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kboards.com/index.php?board=60.0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writer's Café&lt;/a&gt; at Kindleboards. You will find several threads there where authors discuss different strategies they have tried and discuss what worked, why they think it worked, and what they had to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another place to consider is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.librarything.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LibraryThing&lt;/a&gt;, which is an online community for book readers. They allow you to give away free copies of your book, print or digital, and request that the recipients provide you with a review of the book once they've read it. Reviews go a long way towards selling books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have only one book to sell, you may find it more difficult to gather a following. If your book lends itself to a series, try writing more books. The n you can pursue strategies where you give away the first book for free in order to spark interest, and that in turn will encourage people to buy and read the follow-up books. The bigger your gathering, the bigger the sales. Write a really good book, and it will get you attention. Write several really good books, and they will get you sales. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your success with self-publishing depends on you. If you just write and publish and then do nothing, you will sell nothing. You have to be willing to put in the time needed to research different processes and find what works best for you. It's not easy, and it does take time, but it can be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T17:37:48.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25337" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-23T18:15:20.400" Score="1" ViewCount="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;So the annual play at my university is coming up and i wanted it to be on a novel i recently read. I'm ready to adopt it but the thing is that i wanted to know if i might encounter any trouble with the author. I've read the book top to bottom and found no warnings against my idea. I even searched her website but found no warning. Would i still face any restriction if i write a playscript and let it be produced by the university. I'd mention her name and give full credits of the inspiration to her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22336" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T19:00:51.033" Title="Restrictions On Producing A Playscript" Tags="|copyright|legal|marketing|playwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25337" CreationDate="2016-11-23T19:00:51.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copyright law covers the creation of derivative works. This is important to authors. For instance, if someone wants to make a movie of a novel, they have to pay the author for a license to create a derivative work. So, you need permission from the copyright holder to create a play based on a book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also recognized that they may be reluctant to give permission for less than the full potential value of such an adaptation, since it would diminish their chances of selling the play adaptation rights again. Thus is may not matter that you are not intending to make money off your adaptation yourself. But ask them, because it is up to them what rights they will license. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IANAL, so consult competent counsel to be sure. More information here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T19:00:51.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25343" CreationDate="2016-11-23T22:54:03.837" Score="0" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an extract from a book I am currently reading, the author escapes me at this minute, but i will update.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;OFTEN IN ACTUAL LIFE, and not infrequently in the myths and the popular &#xA;tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; &#xA;for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is in relation to the authors use of double negatives. For example he says, &lt;code&gt;not infrequently&lt;/code&gt;. Is it better practice here to write &lt;code&gt;frequently&lt;/code&gt; e.g. &lt;code&gt;&#xA;OFTEN IN ACTUAL LIFE, and frequently in the myths and the popular tales,...&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is this a question of style? What are people thoughts on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;as per @Thomas Myron comment &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;BELOW IS FOR MY REFERENCE, ABOVE HERE IS MY QUESTION&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is probably more to this senctence than i am getting. If I break this whole sentence down further to try and understand it better&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;part1: this part could be written on its own&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;OFTEN IN ACTUAL LIFE, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; &#xA;for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;part 2: and this &#xA;    and not infrequently in the myths and the popular &#xA;        tales&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So correct me if I am wrong but this is what he is saying in my own words: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Often in actual life and frequently in the myths and the popular tales,&#xA;we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; &#xA;for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is my words of what he says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Often in actual life and frequently in the myths and the popular tales,&#xA;we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; &#xA;for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there is his way: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;OFTEN IN ACTUAL LIFE, and not infrequently in the myths and the popular &#xA;tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; &#xA;for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would anyone care to comment on the difference and which one is better(or easier to understand). Is it just a different style? Or is it just me and my english is not the best i.e. I have to write it down more simpler? Would appreciae peoples thoughts. I mean is the author consciously doing this or  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22338" LastEditorUserId="22338" LastEditDate="2016-11-24T01:51:20.127" LastActivityDate="2016-11-27T07:02:07.443" Title="using double negatives and sentence structure" Tags="|style|structure|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25339" CreationDate="2016-11-24T00:36:56.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;not infrequently&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is not a double negative, (ok, it might be) but it does convey an exact meaning, even in slightly convoluted way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't have nothing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is a textbook double negative, where one part of the statement cancels the other one, basically leading to the exact opposite meaning: &quot;I have something&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of former is the matter of style, the latter is grammatically wrong. Or semantically. Or just bad English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2016-11-24T12:38:59.743" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T12:38:59.743" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2016-11-24T02:00:13.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I choose my names based on 3 things.&#xA;Rarity: How common or uncommon the name is depending on genre and timezone of the story&#xA;Meaning: What the name's personality(cause they have personalities), definition, and region/origin is.&#xA;Gender: Of course I don't even have to explain this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21424" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T02:00:13.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25339" CreationDate="2016-11-24T02:23:03.257" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Not infrequently&lt;/code&gt; is a double negative, and is therefore technically grammatically incorrect. &lt;code&gt;Not&lt;/code&gt; is obviously the first negative. The prefix &lt;code&gt;in-&lt;/code&gt; is considered to be negative, as it means &lt;code&gt;not&lt;/code&gt;. The same holds true for similar prefixes, such as &lt;code&gt;im-&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;un-&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, a negative prefix is far less obvious than a whole negative word. Authors will sometimes use the style you have found. It is likely that the author you are reading is just trying to sound more eloquent by adding more words with more syllables. It's a matter of taste and personal style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T02:23:03.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25339" CreationDate="2016-11-24T04:14:17.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;English is not a programming language and negatives are not minus signs. They do not automatically cancel each other out. Double negatives are idioms and, depending on context, the second negative may cancel, weaken, or strengthen the first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;not infrequently&lt;/code&gt; is a case where the second negative weakens the first but does not cancel it out. &lt;code&gt;not infrequently&lt;/code&gt; does not mean &lt;code&gt;frequently&lt;/code&gt;, it means something between &lt;code&gt;frequently&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;infrequently&lt;/code&gt;, so &lt;code&gt;occasionally&lt;/code&gt; might be a good interpretation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare this to a sentence like &lt;code&gt;I am not unfamiliar with copyright law.&lt;/code&gt; Here the speaker is saying that they know something about copyright law, but they don't want to claim to be an expert. If you said, &lt;code&gt;I am familiar with copyright law&lt;/code&gt;, that would imply that you are an expert. If you said &lt;code&gt;I am unfamiliar with copyright law&lt;/code&gt;, that would imply that you knew nothing about it. &lt;code&gt;I am not unfamiliar with copyright law&lt;/code&gt; means that I know a fair bit about it, but I don't claim to know all the ins and outs and details. It say, &quot;I can give you general information, but don't mistake my word for professional advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it can also be used ironically. If Mark Zuckerberg tells you that he is &lt;code&gt;not unfamiliar with social media&lt;/code&gt;, he would of course mean that he is perhaps the world's greatest expert on the subject. Here the second negative not merely cancels the first but overshoots, emphasising the positive rather than the negative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;I don't have nothing&lt;/code&gt; is a common idiom (and in no way grammatically incorrect). It, and similar formulations, are a case of the second negative reinforcing the first. &lt;code&gt;I don't have nothing&lt;/code&gt; may be semantically identical to &lt;code&gt;I have nothing&lt;/code&gt;, but it has an additional emotional overtone, giving further emphasis to the speaker's destitution, and expressing their despair over it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this can also be to express disinterest or indifference to a subject. &quot;What's your take on the decline of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives?&quot; &quot;I don't got nothing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;not infrequently in the myths and the popular tales&lt;/code&gt; is a case of the second negative softening the first. Therefore it very specifically does not mean that the call unanswered occurs frequently in the myths. It is, however, denying that that is is rare. In short, it is equivalent to &lt;code&gt;occasionally&lt;/code&gt;. It is saying that a sufficient number of cases of it can be found to support the writer's point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another use of the the double negative can be to separate two meanings that might otherwise be read as one. For instance, &lt;code&gt;I am not unappreciative of the party you threw for me&lt;/code&gt; means that the speaker appreciates that you thought of them and wanted to throw them a party, but that they did not enjoy the party itself and would rather you did not throw them one in the future. Compare this to &lt;code&gt;I appreciated the party&lt;/code&gt;, which would imply I liked the party itself, and &lt;code&gt;I did not appreciate the party&lt;/code&gt; which would imply that you are not grateful for the thought and the effort that went into it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Double negatives, are, in short, and instrument of nuance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are never ungrammatical because they are a matter of semantics, not grammar. But their semantics is not that of simple or uniform negation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T04:14:17.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25344" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25352" CreationDate="2016-11-24T10:31:55.853" Score="2" ViewCount="1730" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question may be related with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/2404/17968&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;. I come to the direct point. I am confused with the usage of bullet points. Is is necessary to capitalize the first letter in each bullet point? Also, is it necessary to put full-stop at the end of a bullet point? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17968" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T07:02:20.497" Title="Using capital letters and full-stop in bullet points" Tags="|style|editing|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25344" CreationDate="2016-11-24T12:18:58.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is purely a matter of style. It depends on where the writing is being published and what the content is. House style will usually dictate if you use periods/full stops at the end of bullet points which are not sentences, if you are allowed to use commas or prohibited from using them, if you should or should not use capital letters, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer capital letters to start bullets and periods for full sentences but not fragments, but that's just my aesthetic choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T12:18:58.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25347" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-24T13:12:43.367" Score="3" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;What genre best describes my novel about the life of a character whose entirely fictional history includes many realistically humorous interludes as well as some serious, even tragic incidents? It begins with his birth in 1968 and finishes when he is in late middle age in approximately contemporary times.There is nothing autobiographical about it, I hasten to add.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22340" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-11-24T14:42:46.427" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T22:31:10.223" Title="My book doesn't seem to fall into a clear genre" Tags="|genre|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25347" CreationDate="2016-11-24T14:58:21.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Genres are literary ghettos. They are places where people with particular and highly specific tastes (cosy mysteries, sword and sorcery, horse stories) can be assure that they get what they paid for and just what they paid for. Not all fiction belongs in these ghettos. Much of it serves an audience with more catholic tastes who are willing to try different things (which does not exclude them visiting the genre ghettos from time to time). They do not demand that every book they read must contain one wizard and at least 15 elves, 6 dwarves, a magic sword, and one plucky heroine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a book does not fall into an obvious genre ghetto, that simply means it is mainstream in its appeal, or at least is meant to be. The term for that (unsurprisingly) is &quot;mainstream&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T14:58:21.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25349" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25350" CreationDate="2016-11-24T17:31:14.203" Score="2" ViewCount="265" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a fiction. I start in first person(I) and then because I had to describe emotions of other characters simultaneously I switched to third person, (referring as she, they or the name of character). The story keeps switching in first and third person so that the reader can get the personal view of different character. Is it acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22344" LastEditorUserId="22344" LastEditDate="2016-11-29T05:04:37.100" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T05:04:37.100" Title="Writing a fiction in first and third person. is that acceptable?" Tags="|fiction|style|novel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25349" CreationDate="2016-11-24T17:50:53.967" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anything is acceptable if you make it work. For an example of a book that makes this work (brilliantly) see Cormac McCarthy's &lt;em&gt;No Country for Old Men&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But any change in narrative style calls attention to itself and therefore has to be handled with care and skill. It may be more acceptable to the reader of a literary novel like &lt;em&gt;No Country for Old Men&lt;/em&gt; than of a genre fantasy or romance, for instance, where the reader is often just in it for the yarn and is not interested in, or appreciative of, literary effects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if you are doing it because you are a beginner struggling with narrative technique, it likely is not going to work and you would be better advised to pick one narrative method and stick to it. If you are a skilled author experimenting with different narrative methods to achieve a literary effect, you may be able to pull it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We should also note that even in books that are ostensibly told from a first-person stream of consciousness point of view, the author can get away occasionally with telling us things about how other characters think or feel that would not be obvious to the narrator character in the moment. Jack Kerouac does this several times in &lt;em&gt;On the Road&lt;/em&gt;. This is not necessarily jarring to the reader if it supplies information that is necessary or appropriate in the moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't feel that you have to comply with the current fashion for first person narrative. It is faddish among writers at the moment, but difficult and limiting. Third person is the natural narrative voice of the world's literature. If you are uncomfortable in the straightjacket of first person, write in third.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T17:50:53.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16966" CreationDate="2016-11-24T23:29:03.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not an ethical question. It is a legal question. Ethics deals with professional conduct over and above what is required by law. Copyright is a matter of law, not ethics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular case, however, it is also a matter of contracts. You should be negotiating a licence to use their content as part of your purchase agreement with them, and you should also be negotiating for access to their source files so that you can reuse them more easily. Ideally, you should negotiate for an ongoing window into their docs process so that you always get the latest content from them to include in your docs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T23:29:03.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25344" CreationDate="2016-11-25T07:02:20.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bullet points signify a list. A list can be anything from full sentences to single words. Here are three examples that are all correct:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1 - sentences&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many things we must do today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have to get up.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have to eat breakfast.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have to brush our teeth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2 - phrases, punctuated&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many things we must do today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get up,&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;eat breakfast, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;brush our teeth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;3 - phrases, not punctuated&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many things we must do today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get up&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;eat breakfast&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;brush our teeth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I prefer versions 1 and 2. Punctuating a bulleted list as it would be punctuated in running text makes its syntactic structure apparent and helps the reader follow your argument in their mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to think of the bulleted list as the &amp;quot;folded out&amp;quot; version of running text. For example 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many things we must do today: We have to get up. We have to eat breakfast. We have to brush out teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and for example 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many things we must do today: get up, eat breakfast, and brush our teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure your list actually makes sense and adds clarity. Outside of PowerPoint presentations, bulleted lists are often unnecessary and put visual emphasis on the wrong parts of your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T07:02:20.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25353" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26911" CreationDate="2016-11-25T15:39:02.083" Score="3" ViewCount="1610" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was finally able to change from US English spelling to Canadian spelling, but my biggest problem is with grammar. I have tried to enable a grammar tool, but can't find one I trust. It would be wonderful if the darn program included a grammar tool of its own. Heck, even Word does that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22325" LastActivityDate="2017-02-24T19:33:33.873" Title="Does anyone know a safe and reliable grammar add-on for Scrivener?" Tags="|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25029" CreationDate="2016-11-25T21:20:22.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons both protagonists and antagonists in print and media have sidekicks is to minimize narrative information dumps in favor of dialogue. Or occasionally, like Smeagol in &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;, the maniac has an alterego and talks to himself. A minion, an underling, an apostle. Consider the case from the Bible: Jesus, in some circles otherwise known as God, goes to the Temple to argue with the Pharisees. He could simply state 10 ways to do things this way or that way, but the Pharisees are used as a tool to give a powerful message via dialogue, rather than speaking up to the stars which would have the effect of a lamentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally in literature one hesitates if not avoids the use of a tool for a single purpose--it looks contrived--but in a &quot;short story&quot; such as a video game intro, I think a second character could be added for nefarious conversations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T21:20:22.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25355" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-25T21:24:43.467" Score="1" ViewCount="234" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am copyediting and doing layout on a play that includes a few plays on words and intentional misspellings. At first glance they  read like typos. I am wondering if the convention is that I should be styling them differently (as I would, for example, for words in another language), or if it's best to leave it to the reader to trust that the &quot;mistake&quot; was intentional. For example, a line includes the phrase &quot;next of skin&quot; instead of &quot;next of kin&quot;. I hate the idea that a reader would wonder if that was on purpose. Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22354" LastActivityDate="2016-11-27T16:03:23.447" Title="Style when intentionally misspelling?" Tags="|style|editing|formatting|proofreading|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25356" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25372" CreationDate="2016-11-25T22:05:03.400" Score="3" ViewCount="407" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is an easy way to create a detailed character profile for a short story? I'm new to this Stack Exchange, and need help creating an organized character profile, with the information I have on my character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22355" LastActivityDate="2022-02-04T16:05:22.280" Title="What is an easy way to create a detailed character profile for a short story?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|characters|character-development|short-story|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25356" CreationDate="2016-11-25T22:16:29.497" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no One Correct Way. You can have a list of attributes as if you were creating a D&amp;amp;D character. You can jot down notes so you have guidance for the important parts of your story. You can use one of the email or tumblr questionnaires which circulate from time to time and answer it from the perspective of your character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, a profile is whatever helps you to create your character as a rounded, living person in your head so you can figure out what that person would do and say. The form of that is whatever works for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T22:16:29.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25355" CreationDate="2016-11-25T22:19:41.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as there are enough evidence and context clues around the phrases, I would trust the reader with figuring out them. If not, it's probably best to restyle them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22355" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T22:19:41.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25347" CreationDate="2016-11-25T22:31:10.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would consider that Realistic Fiction. Realistic Fiction is where everything is fictional, but could happen in real life, hence the name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Realistic fiction typically involves a story whose basic setting (time and location in the world) is real and whose events could feasibly happen in that real-world setting.&quot; -&lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22355" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T22:31:10.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25339" CreationDate="2016-11-26T03:40:38.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Thomas I agree.It indeed is matter of personal taste and style either to sound eloquent or to lay emphasis on what is being said.&#xA;'I don't have nothing', had me confused but re-reading it over and over it can mean that the author is trying to lay stress on the fact as-&#xA;'I don't have anything and&#xA;'I 've got nothing'. Combining these sentences we get: 'I DON'T HAVE NOTHING'.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22344" LastEditorUserId="22344" LastEditDate="2016-11-27T07:02:07.443" LastActivityDate="2016-11-27T07:02:07.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25029" CreationDate="2016-11-26T15:52:03.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like you are describing a literary device known as Deus Ex Machina (The God in the Machine). It is a device use to get an author out of a plot hole for which there is no satisfactory resolution. The term originates from the Greek theatre in which plays would sometimes be resolved by a god lowered to stage on a crane to put all things to rights. (Thus the god in the machine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with Deus Ex Machina is that is it a completely unsatisfying ending. Insofar as a video game follows the rules of story (and I have no idea to what extent this is the case), it will be an unsatisfactory ending for a game as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most basic lessons of storytelling is that you cannot write your way out of a broken story. If the story does not work, no trick of words is going to make it work. You say &quot;This programmer is corrupt and has secretly controlled said world through war and other misdirections because... no good reason really. He's a maniac.&quot; So not only is there a god in the machine, the god is mad and acts for no good reason. That strikes me as a simply untenable story element. There is no way to enact a satisfactory hero's journey and bring it to a satisfactory conclusion in a setup like that. I don't see any way that words can explain it away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are examples in literature of heros railing against the injustice, even madness, of the Gods. But they don't usually win. And I have no idea how portray this in a video game where all the player has to work with are actions, and actions are clearly futile if the game is programmed by a mad god with no purpose. In literature you can write a tragedy where the hero is undone by a fatal flaw or simply the malice or indifference of the universe. But I cannot see how the concept of tragedy can apply to a video game. Surely there has to be a way to win. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The malevolent god conceit can also be played for laughs, as in the Daffy Duck cartoon where the artist keeps changing the scenery and Daffy keeps complaining about it until it is finally revealed the the artist is Bugs Bunny. But in this case the fourth wall falls in the first ten seconds and the entire humor of the thing lies in Daffy's protests. This is farce, and again, there is no way to win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if the concept is untenable, and it sounds like it is, there is no way to explain your way out of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-26T15:52:03.087" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25029" CreationDate="2016-11-27T00:11:28.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My best advice is to play &lt;em&gt;Danganronpa 2.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;(Spoiler alert)&lt;/strong&gt; It's a game within a game, and it pretty much covers what you're trying to go for, if I read your post correctly. The characters make references to the 4th wall throughout the story as comedic relief (&quot;Stop acting like we're in a video game or something!&quot;)... and then, at the end, everyone learns that they're &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; in a video game. Not the game the player is playing, of course, but a game within the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe your question boils down to &quot;How can I reveal the villain as the programmer of the game without making it confusing?&quot; Unfortunately, I can't write the scene for you, nor can I give you any specific advice since I don't know much about your game. Knowing how to write a scene like that requires detailed knowledge of the game thus far. What I &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; tell you, though, is that simply saying that the villain is the programmer can work fine. Make the villain prove that he is the programmer by exercising some of his powers. Then it becomes clear to both the other characters and to the real-life player that the 4th wall jokes were really foreshadowing the big reveal (as was the case in &lt;em&gt;Danganronpa 2&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I honestly wouldn't worry about the real-life player getting confused. As long as your villain character is an actual character within your game and not a real-life person inserted into the game, it will be clear to real-life players that the villain programmed the game within the game. He is still a video game character to &lt;em&gt;us,&lt;/em&gt; the real people in the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastActivityDate="2016-11-27T00:11:28.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25356" CreationDate="2016-11-27T04:01:42.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the essential things you need to know about that person in the way they look, what they do currently, and what drives them. Create a dossier of those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do this for every major character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, start writing. And watch how much of the stuff you wrote down changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22261" LastActivityDate="2016-11-27T04:01:42.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25356" CreationDate="2016-11-27T08:02:51.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I create an Excel file where each column is a character and each row is a character trait. It looks something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;           John                       Bob&#xA;age        14                         53&#xA;occupation pupil                      retired astronaut&#xA;           wants to be an astronaut&#xA;lives      with his mom and sister    alone&#xA;develop.   misses his dad, depressed; misses his wife, suicidal;&#xA;           sees the sadness in Bob;   compassion for sad little John;&#xA;           sets his mom on Bob =&amp;gt;     takes care of John =&amp;gt;&#xA;           finds purpose              finds new meaning in being&#xA;           in learning astrophysics;  Bob's replacement father;&#xA;           ...                        slowly accepts the love;&#xA;                                      John's mom offers him&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you put in there will depend on what story you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to use a spreadsheet program for this, because I can add in rows wherever I want them and move both columns and rows around as I like. The organization in rows and columns gives me a clear comparison between characters and helps me to make them distinct from each other or relate them to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also create development rows to show how the development of different characters relates to each other, that is, how the development of one character during the story is an &quot;answer&quot; to the development of another character. I quickly made up an example above to show the idea; it is a bit more refined in a real characters file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not forget backstory. Personally, I don't go very far with backstory. I don't write the interviews or short narrative pieces that are often recommended to discover a character's backstory. I find that that puts the wrong focus and makes me want to write more backstory into the story than is good for that story. Therefore, I only develop the backstory as far as it is relevant to my story, the rest I leave intentionally blank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Excel file is something I keep on working on while I develop and then write the story, always changing, adding, or deleting things as my conception of my characters changes in the process of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-11-27T08:13:53.940" LastActivityDate="2016-11-27T08:13:53.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25355" CreationDate="2016-11-27T16:03:23.447" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a whole section in Godel Escher Bach on this precise topic (a dialogue where it is suggested that a small numbers of pages left in the book is a signal that informs the reader that the work is almost over and so other means can be tried, like voluntary disseminations of typos and apelling erors, uich of curse happen in de seim dialog. Aighly recomended book. End so, the and od the book or of the message is not inferred by it's lengt).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22371" LastActivityDate="2016-11-27T16:03:23.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25356" CreationDate="2016-11-27T18:10:34.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, first off it depends on what your genre is. You will always have a genre with a short story, or any story. So if its along the line of romance, or love, you want to have some intake on past relationships, mention a name or two. Or put in some info about the character that would motivate to the plot. If its just a narrative, with a plot, not so much with a certain genre of fantasy, or myth, or realistic fiction, then the character development will be a lot easier. So name his/her name obviously. Not so much appearances, because, as well as the reader will want to imagine the character, the reader wants some information to help your story balance. But if your story is set on how the chracter looks, than its a good idea to mention it. Then use starter phrases such as, &quot;I am a very ... person.&quot; If its in first person or, &quot;SoandSo does ... for this reason.&quot; Make sure it's efficient for your story. I hope this helps in anyway. I am still learning the basics in writing myself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22372" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-11-27T18:20:57.483" LastActivityDate="2016-11-27T18:20:57.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25356" CreationDate="2016-11-28T03:00:22.087" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best ways I ever saw was with those for-entertainment-only personality quizzes; such as &quot;What Disney Princess/Prince are you?&quot; or &quot;What's your Myer's Brigg's personality designation.&quot; Usually, these quizzes have about 20 questions associated with them, so they don't take that long. The key is to answer each question as &lt;em&gt;your character&lt;/em&gt; would. This will result in a tidy character description that reflects the internal workings of the person. For appearance, simply pull a pic from online, or a magazine. For family/friend/occupation, add this information as necessary for the story, and to give you, the writer, the sense your character is a complete person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, identify all the conflicts in this characters life. Spend a little time on this and try to be original. Perhaps his boss is his best friend, but he's uncomfortable with his landlady because she's always hitting on him.  Whatever conflicts he has (even separate from the major one the story is about), these are what will serve to bring your character to life.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22379" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T03:00:22.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23509" CreationDate="2016-11-28T04:15:38.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me that you are effectively describing two stories told in parallel with one story being effected by the other. As the effect is one way (in your description) what you really have is a pair of stories one being the sequel to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dual plot aka dual narrative is probably about the right label. To be honest don't be over concerned with what the technique you are using is called so much as how well ou apply it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I do not use the snowflake method (as such), knowing that you have two stories might make it easier to see how one fits with the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to plan two entire 3-act stories or treat it as one long six act story which you will fold back into itself (1 &amp;amp; 4, 2 &amp;amp; 5, 3 &amp;amp; 6) to tell a single 3-act story (with two narratives). Whichever way you do it, you will want to plan the past and the future at the same time. Although in the narrative the past affects the future but not the other way around this is not the case in planning a story. At the planning stage if the motivation does not fit with the outcome there is nothing stopping you working backwards to change the source of the motivation so for you as a plotter the future can indeed effect the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while in the form you want to present the story it might seem like two plots at once what you have is really not so different from one plot with flash forwards/backs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than being mindful of any act structure (1 &amp;amp; 4, 2 &amp;amp; 5, 3 &amp;amp; 6), any technique you would use to plan a single plot would, therefore, apply to this plot too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T04:15:38.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24936" CreationDate="2016-11-28T04:30:29.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is: don't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The longer answer is: don't worry about it until the first and second draft are done and then don't worry about it because it is either a plot or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is that it is very hard to gauge what the readers will pick up on. Some readers will pick up on your more subtle plots and others will miss them, this is healthy and normal. Don't underestimate readers - they will notice stuff you missed and miss stuff that you are justly proud of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While writing the only question should be &quot;am I telling the story?&quot; After the story is written a really good writer's group or some trusted beta readers that you can interrogate about what they got out of it can help you gauge what readers might be able to pick up on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a subplot intersects the main plot and feels contrived to you then there &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be a problem which you can fix in the next draft. However, if this is not happening - if you, as a writer, can follow the plots - then everything is actually fine and this is all just a mild case of imposter syndrome trying to derail you. The best cure is to not worry and get on with what you do best - telling your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are a lot of truly minor sub-sub-&lt;em&gt;sub&lt;/em&gt;-plots then what you really have are details with ideas above their station (so don't worry about it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have sub-plots that don't matter and have no bearing on the story what you may have is filler. You might end up removing that in later drafts but don't worry for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your sub-plots are just really subtle then what you have are interlinked events that the reader might not see coming until it arrives. Congratulations you have written a great story (so don't worry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said at the start: In short, try not to worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T04:30:29.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25375" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25379" CreationDate="2016-11-28T05:51:00.340" Score="5" ViewCount="322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a being with a name.  I capitalize its name when I mention it.  But mostly, I refer to it as &quot;it&quot;.  I use &quot;it&quot; a lot in dialogue, as characters talk about this being.  Should I capitalize &quot;it&quot;, in these cases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13268" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T10:19:26.593" Title="Capitalize 'it' when referring to a strange being?" Tags="|grammar|capitalization|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24729" CreationDate="2016-11-28T06:26:59.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I kinda agree - it's a little jarring, even if it is only meant to be a verb, not a curse word. My personal opinion, a word that reflects the world specifically might be a better choice here, creatively speaking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, something to consider: your intended audience. If you intend this for a YA audience, it really should be changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22379" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T06:26:59.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25375" CreationDate="2016-11-28T12:49:20.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends. If you are speaking about the creature as a generic item in a sentence:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I watched as &lt;strong&gt;it&lt;/strong&gt; ordered a Happy Meal,&quot; my friend told me.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then you would keep it lowercase:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, though, &quot;It&quot; was an alternative name for the creature, you &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; capitalize:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Godzilla&lt;/strong&gt; was so disgusting that we felt that referring to it by name would give it undue humanity, so we decided to simply refer to it as &quot;It&quot; from now on.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; Some weeks later, my friend told me, &quot;I watched as &lt;strong&gt;It&lt;/strong&gt; ordered a Happy Meal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18990" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T12:49:20.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25375" CreationDate="2016-11-28T13:06:07.537" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Capitalizing a pronoun gives it proper noun status or deity status. So writing &lt;em&gt;It&lt;/em&gt; means either that the thing's name is literally It, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1501156683&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stephen King's monster&lt;/a&gt;, or you're referring to a god the way the Abrahamic religions refer to Yahweh as &lt;em&gt;Him&lt;/em&gt; even in the middle of a sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, if the creature has an actual name, like Gormenghast or Voldemort or Donnie, use either the name or the third-person-neutral pronoun &lt;em&gt;it,&lt;/em&gt; lowercase. If the creature had a gender, you'd have no problem referring to &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;she,&lt;/em&gt; right? So &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt; is no different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T13:06:07.537" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6977" CreationDate="2016-11-28T15:26:41.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jill found a box of mints she liked, and took them off the shelf. She&#xA;  walked up to the cashier. &quot;How much are these mints?&quot; she asked,&#xA;  holding up the box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Two fifty,&quot; replied the cashier. Jill handed him the money, took the&#xA;  mints, and left the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first paragraph, yes, your second, no. Some persons are saying that it's somehow confusing to separate the dialogue from the actions of another person, but that indicates, to me, a fundamental lack of cognizance of how the English language is used. A new speaker is always on his own paragraph, and then if someone else does actions thereafter, there is a new paragraph.  There is no &quot;pause&quot; because this is just how the language is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22382" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T15:26:41.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24288" CreationDate="2016-11-28T16:28:13.140" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Older fantasy definitely used this. More and more, the fantasy that is being released is a re-imagining of mundane old Earth with a secret-society-magic-supernatural layered on top of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key, I found in most novels of this sort is to be creative with the mode of entry into the magical world. In each of the HP novels, and the Chronicles of Narnia and other similar stories, entry into the world was a little different each time, a variation on the theme of being whisked away. The mode of entry should also have an impact on the story. One story I read involved someone entering the alternate by being thrown out of their car when it crashed, another was when a person got shot in the head;and each of these entries figured into the conclusion of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22379" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T16:28:13.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25382" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-28T18:31:37.917" Score="0" ViewCount="182" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished the first of a series of children's books and ready to sell.  How does one sell their book without giving up all rights to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22385" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T19:43:22.940" Title="How to sell books without giving up rights to my manuscript" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2016-12-01T09:05:08.990" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25382" CreationDate="2016-11-28T19:01:55.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's what a contract does. You, and ideally your agent, negotiate a contract with a publisher. The contract specifies what rights you are allowing the publisher to have in exchange for distribution and printing, and how the exchange of money works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T19:01:55.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1742" CreationDate="2016-11-28T23:19:30.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;A Clockwork Orange&quot;, though making up a language that is hybrid of English and Russian --- has a glossary at the end of the book. I'm tinkering with that idea. An e-book would allow the reader to link back and forth between the language spoken and it's translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22388" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T23:19:30.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25382" CreationDate="2016-11-29T03:17:30.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key question is how long do you grant publishing rights. You should set some kind of limit and some kind of process for rights to revert. Any legitimate publisher will spell that out in the contract (and might even specify early termination clauses). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll warn you though, publishers hold a lot of cards and might just present a take-it-or-leave it contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing a series, you might have to give up a lot on the first volume or two and then negotiate later for better terms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing. You might be talking about not selling digital rights or movie/TV rights. That's possible, but that might cause publishers to balk at your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better way to negotiate that might be to require final approval when negotiating movie rights. (Typically though, if a publisher can get something in other mediums, that's a good thing for the author in more ways than one). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T03:17:30.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25388" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25390" CreationDate="2016-11-29T09:40:20.807" Score="2" ViewCount="616" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;You have to excite yourself to excite others&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting with this quote, that I listened to a conference, I really would know the &lt;em&gt;&quot;magic formula&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (even I imagin there isn't) to excite readers with your stories and writings.&#xA;I know, I have to write, to exercise, and to try, try, try...&#xA;But, is everything closed in the experience?&#xA;I mean, is there a path, that I can follow, to improve my writes, my stories and my thinking?&#xA;Yesterday I saw True Detective (Season 1) and I remained literally shocked about its plot. I know, screenwriters are usually good writers and they are able to excite people (with twists), but how do they reach this level? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22255" LastEditorUserId="22255" LastEditDate="2016-11-29T10:15:16.100" LastActivityDate="2016-11-30T10:13:26.383" Title="How to excite readers" Tags="|style|creative-writing|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25388" CreationDate="2016-11-29T10:40:25.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope I am not making an inappropriate advertisement but I recently took a course in LinkedIn &quot;Writing Fundamentals: The Craft of Story&quot;. It is a Lynda course and I believe it answers exactly your question in a very easy and structured way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise I should say that the most valid tip would be to follow the next requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a theme (convey message about human relations);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a logically causal relation between events;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leave only the events that bring something to the story;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Know what your reader knows (The fact that you are aware of your story doesn't mean the reader is too. Make sure to show the reader everything they need to know.);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show don't tell;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have interesting characters;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have character development arc;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create conflicts and resolutions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow the rule &quot;What can go wrong, must&quot;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure to put stakes, the protagonist should have a lot to loose if they fail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Etc.;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are only basic tips how to excite the reader. The list is to be continued. I believe in order to excite them, make sure that the reader cares about your protagonist, then have no mercy on him/her - put him/her through the worst you can thing. Meanwhile create dramatic conflicts and resolutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastEditorUserId="21243" LastEditDate="2016-11-30T10:13:26.383" LastActivityDate="2016-11-30T10:13:26.383" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25388" CreationDate="2016-11-29T13:44:55.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excite is the wrong thing to focus on. The real key to successful storytelling is to engage the reader. There are no car chases or gun fights in Pride and Prejudice. It is a story of a courtship, decorously told. And yet is is probably the single most durable and popular novel ever written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no magic formula. It is all about creating an experience for the reader that rings true and engages their sympathy and interest. It is about taking the dross of everyday life, running it through a juicer, and then rendering down the juice into something rich and piquant and wonderful. It is life focused, sweetened, and purified. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writing bromides are attempts to capture aspects of this, but none of them is either sufficient or necessary in themselves. Any technique that focuses, sweetens, and purifies life to produce something engaging and true will work for readers. It is a product of sensibility, attention, and refinement. There is no formula for it, in the sense that you cannot achieve it by technique alone. To be able to do it well, you have to change who you are, develop your sensibilities, sharpen your observation, and refine your craft. You have to learn to think and see and express yourself like a writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing exceptional about this. Many crafts cannot be reduced to formulas. They require immersion and they change who you are, how you see the world. They rewire your brain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first and most essential component of becoming a writer seems to be to live your life (your whole life) with a particular kind of attention. You cannot refine life down to its essence until you train your eye to tell the gold from the dross. Some people, it seems, develop this habit of attention very early in life. Perhaps they are even born with it. The rest of us have to work on it, and it can be very hard work. But develop your powers of attention, and the words, and the order and selection of words, will come. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-11-29T21:51:10.410" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T21:51:10.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25393" CreationDate="2016-11-29T14:40:47.103" Score="0" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a story I use the Japanese words &lt;em&gt;konnichiwa&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;kawaii&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;Konnichiwa!&lt;/em&gt;&quot; greeted a voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Wanna cuddle with a cutie for a couple of minutes?&quot; She beamed a &#xA;  kittenish &lt;em&gt;kawaii&lt;/em&gt; smile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought most people would understand these, so I didn't add a translation. Instead, I added verbs and adjectives that hint to their meaning a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a right approach? If not, what's a better alternative? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T16:13:28.407" Title="How to present common foreign words in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-12-01T09:06:03.860" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25391" CreationDate="2016-11-29T16:13:28.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, whatever you do, don't convolute the the sentences around those words. Voices don't greet. People greet. &lt;code&gt;&quot;Konnichiwa!&quot; greeted a voice.&lt;/code&gt; is grating and unnatural. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are at least four things you can do that will not sound artificial and grating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just use the word. People can deduce the meaning from context or look it up if they don't get it. &lt;code&gt;&quot;Konnichiwa!&quot; a voice said.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Translate the word and tell us what the original language was: &lt;code&gt;&quot;Hello&quot; a voice said in Japanese.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Establish the use of formatting, such as italics, as an indication of the use of Japanese. Then use the English word in italics for all Japanese conversation from then one: &quot;&lt;em&gt;Hello!&lt;/em&gt;&quot; a voice said in Japanese. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use the Japanese word and provide the translation: &lt;code&gt;&quot;Konnichiwa!&quot; a voice said. Konnichiwa is hello in Japanese.&lt;/code&gt; You are telling a story and there is absolutely nothing wrong with explaining things like this to the reader occasionally. Obviously this does not work for extended conversations in the foreign languages. Only option 3 really works for that. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T16:13:28.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25394" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25399" CreationDate="2016-11-29T17:06:52.670" Score="0" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanna start writing in English and I have a few stories in Russian. What's my best choice? Is it to rewrite those stories in English with very many mistakes or to start something new and learn?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22319" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T22:35:45.160" Title="A non-native writing in English" Tags="|translation|writer|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2016-11-30T10:00:26.630" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25394" CreationDate="2016-11-29T18:49:03.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are comfortable with your storytelling skills and quality of your writing in your native language, but you want to expand your language horizon, I would suggest first to try translating a story you already have finished and consider well-written. This way you can concentrate on the translation and not the plot/characters, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for should you do it or not, it is for you and you only to decide, and for the time to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only praise you for challenging yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T18:49:03.767" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25382" CreationDate="2016-11-29T19:43:22.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditionally, your rights revert to you after a specified period of time when the book is out of print. However, be cautious!  In recent times, publishers have been able to circumvent this by placing books into &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/15999/getting-my-rights-back&quot;&gt;perpetual &quot;print-on-demand&quot; limbo&lt;/a&gt;.  If you don't want that to happen to your book, make sure you cover it in your contract.  That's one of the main reasons it's good to have an agent, even if you can sell your book yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you may be putting the cart ahead of the horse.  Most writers face their biggest hurdle in getting someone interested in publishing their book, not in protecting their rights to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T19:43:22.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25388" CreationDate="2016-11-29T20:42:50.047" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contrary to the accepted answer I believe there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a magic formula to writing &lt;em&gt;exciting&lt;/em&gt; fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's conflict and how your characters react to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of other aspects such as &quot;show don't tell&quot; where instead of saying &quot;the air was cold&quot; you say something like &quot;Mary pulled her coat tight to protect her from the icy wind&quot; (ie show how character reacts and feels to things rather than just referring to the things). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this and other things such as stake are auxiliary. How your character reacts to conflict reveals all this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything comes down to character development, which comes from how your characters react to adversity and conflict. They need to be pushed and challenged, and their reactions develop their character. This conflict and character reaction is what will excite your reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend the book Immediate Fiction, which breaks down these concepts perfectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22397" LastEditorUserId="22397" LastEditDate="2016-11-30T00:48:40.360" LastActivityDate="2016-11-30T00:48:40.360" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25394" CreationDate="2016-11-29T22:35:45.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing in a language other than your native one is hard (so is writing in your native language but this is usually harder). On the other hand storytelling is storytelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are just practicing the question is what are you practicing. If you want to translate then translate, if you want to tell stories then tell a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a saleable story you can either hire a translator (expensive), do your own translation (hard), Tell a well written story (hard), or tell a poorly written but well told story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When deciding between the last two the question is do you want to hide your foreign language roots or exaggerate them and the answer will depend on the story you want to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T22:35:45.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25084" CreationDate="2016-11-29T23:31:12.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this was asked out of simple curiosity, but there are deeper implications to your question than might be initially apparent. The difference between these manuscripts are meant to reflect the differences in the cultures they are being marketed to. The same rough draft is sent through a review process by two different editors, a UK editor, and a US editor. While the changes shouldn't be that extensive, future sociologists could look back on those differences, and examine the slight (or even significant) differences between the US culture of this era, and the UK culture of this era. Imagine what a UK version of Uncle Tom's Cabin would be like if it were prepared today for publication in the UK, and how different  that version would be from a version prepared at the time the book was originally published, and you'll have an idea of the kinds of differences I mean. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22379" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T23:31:12.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8345" CreationDate="2016-11-30T11:31:12.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you guys like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was filled with trepidation. My heart was thumping so loud that I was sure everyone around me could hear it. In front of me, I could see my instructor’s mouth moving,  words flying past my head. There was just one question popping up in my mind. What did I do to deserve this? In my logical mind I knew the water was calm, but my imagination was running wild, with rough waves tumbling angrily, pounding the shores. Also, with abundant mountains all around me, It felt like I was being cornered and trapped, with nowhere to go. A familiar voice woke me up from my reverie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22404" LastActivityDate="2016-11-30T11:31:12.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-30T15:31:42.383" Score="3" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to put the following code in an article that is written in AP Style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;puts 'Hello, world!'&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I do this? If I were to put the code (C++, Ruby, whatever) in an article that was written in a newspaper, how would I write it? Is the entire thing surrounded by quotes, brackets, etc? How do you deal with line breaks? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't find any help in &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0465082998&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22392" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-03-08T16:33:57.230" LastActivityDate="2018-03-30T08:09:57.853" Title="How to quote programming code in AP Style?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|journalism|ap-style|programming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24871" CreationDate="2016-11-30T19:49:36.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know anything about any software, so this will focus on the Snowflake Method part of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; is my favorite description of the Snowflake Method.  Here's what it says on step three:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For each of your major characters, take an hour and write a one-page summary sheet that tells:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The character’s name&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The character’s motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The character’s goal (what does he/she want concretely?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The character’s conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The character’s epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she&#xA;  change?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it says on the site, this is just a rough draft; later, as you write, you can easily change any and all of these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This stage helps you a lot while writing your novel, and doesn't take long.  By now you should have a general idea of what you'll be writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16671" LastActivityDate="2016-11-30T19:49:36.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12918" CreationDate="2016-12-01T08:50:57.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've published a few books with createspace. I do the formatting myself, so the cost is only when I order a proof or the printed books. The only setback is because I'm from another country so the shipping charge is costly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22419" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T08:50:57.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1957" CreationDate="2016-12-01T10:05:39.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's unclear what kind of book you feel comfortable writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first suggestion (for nonfiction) is to pick a niche subject that nobody knows about and which people might want to search out by subject matter. Of course, that involves identifying worthy subjects to study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fiction, it's going to require a lot more work to differentiate your writing, but the idea of trying to create and dominate a niche is a sound one. To use an absurd (and slightly offensive) example, check out the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.com/Chuck-Tingle/e/B00SF2MTYK&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fiction for Chuck Tingle&lt;/a&gt;. He's a hack, but a very clever (and funny) one, but he delivers what he promises -- naughty, funny short gay fiction with a scandalous title and cover art. &lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; I wish to make it clear that I don't endorse Tingle's fiction -- it probably stinks -- but he's making good money  writing short ebooks. Surely one should aim higher;  dominating a niche doesn't guarantee literary or commercial success, but it's a decent strategy for starting out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fiction, the key is publishing frequently enough to build an audience.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T10:05:39.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25375" CreationDate="2016-12-01T10:19:26.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Loren Ipsum about It as a personal pronoun, but I did have a little more to add. If you are looking for a way to keep dialogue and other description from being confusing, I would recommend a judicious use of italics. This wouldn't be necessary all of the time, but only so the readers would know the difference between &lt;em&gt;it,&lt;/em&gt; the monster and it/its/it's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22379" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T10:19:26.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25412" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25414" CreationDate="2016-12-01T10:20:13.463" Score="0" ViewCount="859" Body="&lt;p&gt;How good is it to use script-style conversations in stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;New Hampshire, 2144, Beside a sign at Bulgart st.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James: Please, Robert, I don't have time to discuss this. You must&#xA;  hand over those documents!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Robert: I'm not giving away the only evidence to the death of my wife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James: You realize they'll be over in time and I won't be able to help&#xA;  you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Robert: It is my job alone to find out who's behind this. You really&#xA;  can't understand!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Robert hears a car approaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James: You need to run, now!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Robert says, &quot;Thank you, friend&quot; and quickly runs towards the closest&#xA;  building. He hears, behind him, the car stop. Two agents rush out of&#xA;  the car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22319" LastActivityDate="2022-06-05T00:05:13.003" Title="Script-style conversations in a book" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25412" CreationDate="2016-12-01T10:26:25.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Either&lt;/em&gt; you're writing a prose piece &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; you're writing a screenplay. Don't do both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing some advanced stuff with formatting trying to represent different kinds of media (radio transcripts, chat logs), you might be able to have speaker tags the way you do above, but not ploppped down in the middle of a regular paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T10:26:25.503" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25412" CreationDate="2016-12-01T13:49:02.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You certainly can. You can do anything that works. Melville does something very like this at one point in Moby Dick, so there is good precedent for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, why are you doing it? Why break convention? Any time you break convention, you call attention to what you are doing. When you follow convention, you text tends to become transparent and the reader simply sees that scene you are creating. When you break convention, you call attention back to the text itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly writers who break convention. Cormac McCarthy does not use quotation marks. I have no idea why, but I notice that fact that he does this, which makes me more conscious of the text. This might be why he does it, since his text is very deliberately poetic. (Again, it may simply be because he is Cormac McCarthy and he can do what he likes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a script format like this seems to add a kind of staccato tone to the dialog, as if it is spit back and forth rapidly. But that's how it strikes me. It may strike others differently. Being unconventional, it does not come with any guarantee of how different readers will interpret it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, though, as an author you are entitled to literary innovation. It may be worth it if it produces some worthwhile effect for your intended audience. But be aware that it will almost certainly rub some people the wrong way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T13:49:02.610" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25412" CreationDate="2016-12-02T03:53:38.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not unheard of to do this, but I wouldn't recommend doing it at the beginning of your book. Give the readers time to get to know the characters, then you can cut to a kind of short-hand between the characters. The reader should always be able to follow what is going on in the dialogue; if it's confusing, you failed them in the writing of the story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything else in a novel should be like a novel.  Screenplays are written for directors and actors to bring to life. A typical book reader wants you to paint an experience in their mind, which they can't get from watching TV or reading a screenplay. If you wanted to short-hand your first draft via a screen play method, that would be fine, as long as you go back and fill in the details to give book lovers what they expect from a book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22379" LastEditorUserId="22319" LastEditDate="2016-12-02T13:38:59.213" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T13:38:59.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25203" CreationDate="2016-12-02T12:56:40.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new here and to writing fiction, but I'll still venture an opinion: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers grok fiction; they understand fictional premises like magic.  But use it sparingly; a good story has to be plausible and internally self-consistent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think Lewis Carrol gave us a good way of gauging this.  Six impossible things as an upper limit, probably fewer for those of us just getting our sea legs in fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Alice laughed: &quot;There's no use trying,&quot; she said; &quot;one can't believe&#xA;  impossible things.&quot; &quot;I daresay you haven't had much practice,&quot; said&#xA;  the Queen. &quot;When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a&#xA;  day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things&#xA;  before breakfast.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22438" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T12:56:40.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25203" CreationDate="2016-12-02T13:10:33.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would just like to add what Aristotle said regarding the realism. He said: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said that realism or the possibility something to happen is important but what is most important is the probability it to happen in a story. This means that you can write any kind of reality deviations as long as they are probable in the reality of the story.&#xA;You can search more on this online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T13:10:33.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24864" CreationDate="2016-12-02T13:23:22.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Done well, this can work -- but getting it to work well is tricky (as I'm finding.)  IMHO, one of the trickiest aspects is to &lt;strong&gt;provide a plausible reason that both big changes (tech dies; magic appears) happen at the same time.  Why did those both happen?&lt;/strong&gt;  Did something science-y/technical in a lab somewhere cause a world-wide (or universe-wide?) change?  Have the stars finally aligned just right to awaken Lovecraftian Old Ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In science, &#xA;“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” (--Carl Sagan.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fiction, we have more wiggle room than that, but your readers will want an explanation that makes sense (to them), within the premises of your story.  The setup/world design needs care, so your readers will buy into your reason why guns, cellphones and cars (for instance) no longer work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A previous answerer/commenter mentioned Steven Stirling's Emberverse series (there are two loosely-linked sets of novels.)  If you haven't read &lt;em&gt;Dies the Fire&lt;/em&gt;, IMHO you're in for a &lt;em&gt;treat&lt;/em&gt;!  That said, I found his explanation a bit troubling.  His unseen &quot;alien space bats&quot; did this to earth, but we don't know anything about why they bothered.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Give the readers a plausible reason for the change&lt;/strong&gt;, and you've got a great starting canvas to work on.  Lots of problems/conflicts both from the old ways no longer working and the new (or even Older, if you will) ways coming back and mucking things up for your characters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S:  I've seen a few questions about this basic idea on the worldbuilding stackexchange and they've been allowed if posed narrowly enough that people can answer; come see!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22438" LastEditorUserId="22438" LastEditDate="2016-12-02T13:38:21.793" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T13:38:21.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25424" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25429" CreationDate="2016-12-02T13:51:08.547" Score="1" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reading daily crime stories in newspapers, just to have an idea to write a detective story. But the crimes I read about aren't helpful to create a plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, they are really boring and all the same. I don't have that kind of mind able to build something around a &quot;normal&quot; crime. How can I use real life crime to come up with ideas for writing a detective crime plot? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22255" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-25T14:51:03.283" LastActivityDate="2019-05-25T14:51:03.283" Title="How to extrapolate a spectacular crime from everyday ones" Tags="|plot|research|brainstorming|crime|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25424" CreationDate="2016-12-02T14:12:18.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked as a police inspector for some time and I can tell that there is no normal crime. When you start exploring the motives and the criminal's psychology it becomes very interesting. I'd suggest that you try learning as much as you can about the specific crime because the most important things are in the details.&#xA;I think what will make an interesting story is what makes an interesting story from everything - answer the question Why about everything. And when facts end, start with your imagination.&#xA;I am not interested in writing criminal stories but I'd suggest that you try going below the publications, maybe even try to experience things first hand like visiting crime scenes and feeling the locations, knowing people from the same social groups your characters are etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T14:12:18.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24864" CreationDate="2016-12-02T14:14:29.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may take a look at &quot;The daughters of the Dragons&quot; (Die Töchter des Drachen) by Wolfgang Hohlbein.&#xA;While it is a fantasy story, with dragons and magic it is after a third of the book revealed it takes place in a future version of earth, after it was once destroyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is your world, if you want swords and magic in your world, then let there be swords and magic in your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magic, for example, may be the result of a genetic mutation caused by nuclear fallout after the big war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22409" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T14:14:29.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24993" CreationDate="2016-12-02T16:11:01.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider what happens to Numbers when he is alone.&#xA;Does he maintain the last personality he spoke with?  Or lose all personality whatsoever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the former, then he needs to avoid interacting with weaklings, or else he would become dumb, stupid, weak.  When this happens, especially on accident, he needs to becoming frustrated, because it's hindering him -- he may have trouble getting back to a stronger/smarter character because he can no longer plot with ease.  Allowing the readers to see this can help them understand his drive and his character switch, and allow it to seem natural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he loses all personality, then you have to figure out what this lack of personality is.  A single-minded drive to become stronger?  Is he trying to achieve some overarching goal, for which he needs to be stronger?  Portraying this can help your readers see him as an antagonist, and to find his character changes believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps he has the ability to choose who he's mimicking, and whether he's going to switch characters (Which will give you the ability to point out WHY he's choosing to switch characters, and allow it to be believable to the reader, because he's probably going to maintain the best/smartest/strongest character during all normal scenes instead of switching).  If not, and he's always imitating someone in the room, he's going to need to constantly be around a strong character that he wants to emulate -- who would be more likely to be an antagonist than Numbers, and who could chide Numbers as your typical Big Bad would a lackey for mimicking him.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22439" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T16:11:01.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25431" CreationDate="2016-12-02T20:15:25.707" Score="7" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;In novels which contain a constructed language (conlang), there are areas where the rules of pronunciation can be specified. These areas have the disadvantage of either being before the story and rapidly boring the reader (preface/prologue), or being after the story and likely being overlooked until the story has been read (epilogue/glossary). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other option is of course to infodump the rules of pronunciation somewhere within the story itself. I have discovered that there are those who believe infodumping is not a bad thing, so I will simply suggest that the majority of writers and readers will wish to avoid it. I am one of those writers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other option is to somehow include it in the story in a natural way, so that it doesn't feel forced, and the reader learns the pronunciation without even realizing he is learning grammatical rules of a language that does not exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I do this?&lt;/strong&gt; Obviously methods will change from story to story, but is there perhaps a general method that can be used? (Assume that we do not have access to the familiar non-native-speaker-who-needs-to-be-educated scenario.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current work, I have a language where the letter 'h' is silent. I am using it to separate vowel sounds, rather than an apostrophe. So something like &lt;code&gt;Ga'ino'i&lt;/code&gt; becomes &lt;code&gt;Gahinohi&lt;/code&gt;. It looks far better. The reader will of course pronounce it &lt;code&gt;Ga-HEE-no-hee&lt;/code&gt;, or something similar. How can I inform him, within the body of the novel itself, that all 'h's are silent? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T18:23:53.983" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T18:41:34.327" Title="How to Explain the Pronunciation of a Conlang Within the Text of the Novel" Tags="|style|language|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25424" CreationDate="2016-12-02T20:17:33.247" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A crime written in the newspaper is largely boring. Someone stole something, killed someone, the more interesting parts of the crime are hardly written in public papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to write good crime story, make it irregular, give it something new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is the body found?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of Kathy Reichs books she's part of a team investigating on an airplane crash. During their work, Tempe Brennan (the main actor) figures out, that there were more bones on the crash site, than there were people on the plane.&#xA;In another book (yes, I read a lot Temperance Brennan books) she's part of a crew investigating an old grave in a graveyard. A nun should be blessed, and Tempe was to verify, it was the correct corpse. It was not, of course. But who was it then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the circumstances of the crime?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crimes consist of at least two persons. A victim and a criminal. They have social connections. Where are they from? What do they do for a living? Hobbies? Are they related? Were they colleagues? If so, were they working on something spectecular? Did their kids join the same school and the victims childs bullied the criminals child, so the criminal took revenge?&#xA;One of my detectives (if I ever finish a story) is about to investigate a murder with a semi religious background. Descripe in your story the religion, if it's more than the regular sunday morning prayer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How was the crime performed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single bullet to the head will work for a TV show, but it'll get boring after a while. There are a billion ways to kill a person. Make it a serial killer.&#xA;Or make it a nearly impossible theft, if you're not into killing person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to the detective. He's not the average suit and tie type.&#xA;Give him quirks. I love Tim Roth in &quot;Lie to me&quot;. He's a magnificent character.&#xA;Take a look at Hercule Poirot. Or Tempe Brennan and her partner Andy Ryan (if i remember correctly).&#xA;He doesn't need to have superpowers. He just has to be a not so very normal type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, take a look at other crime authors. Read some of them, figure out, why the victim is not just a dead body, the criminal not just a mad man with a gun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good crime story comes to life with the things that are not written in the newspaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alex&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22409" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T20:17:33.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24993" CreationDate="2016-12-02T20:40:29.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Lampshade it&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have your other characters comment on how strange and unreal Numbers is, and how they never know what to expect from him because his personality shifts so radically all the time. Your characters probably don't know what to expect from him from moment to moment; perhaps one character always sees another in Numbers' behaviour. In short, let your audience know that yes, this is deliberate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Keep some things consistent&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Numbers is an antagonist, presumably he has some kind of goal he's trying to achieve with his interactions with the protagonists. Keep this goal in mind whenever you're writing him, and have him always progressing towards it. If he's trying to seduce one of your other characters, have him always put the moves on them, just different come-ons based on who he's mimicking. If he's stealing materials to make his doomsday weapon, have his methods for getting each item match the way whoever he is mimicking would do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give him a noticeable accent or dialect, one that's stronger or weaker depending on who he's mimicking, but always there (perhaps 'e always drops 'is aitches). Give him a verbal of physical tic that always comes through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, give him a core, and just change things around that core to match others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22241" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T20:40:29.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25428" CreationDate="2016-12-02T21:39:10.577" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a non-native or non-fluent cabbagehead character (and they're &lt;em&gt;awfully&lt;/em&gt; useful; I don't know why you're hobbling yourself like that), then another reasonable course of action is to have someone who speaks the language badly and has to be corrected. A child learning how to speak/read or someone who is severely undereducated might work. Then your problem is that the adult or more learned characters are constantly correcting the other one, and may come off as arrogant or know-it-alls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T21:39:10.577" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25428" CreationDate="2016-12-02T22:37:29.053" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're stuck with characters that all know how to spell/speak the language, this could be done when words are being transcribed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if Gahinohi is a name, he could be making reservations at an inn or a restaurant (or signing in at a DMV).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Who should I make the reservation for?&quot; the server asked, fiddling around and trying to find where she'd dropped her pen.&lt;br&gt;  &quot;Myron Gahinohi.&quot;&lt;br&gt; She found the pen and started scribbling.  &quot;Table of five,&quot; she muttered, writing almost unbearably slowly, &quot;Six thirty...for Martin-&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;Myron&quot;&lt;br&gt; &quot;Myron...&quot; she trailed off, having clearly forgotten my name.&lt;br&gt; &quot;Ga.&quot;  I waited for her to write before even bothering to continue.  &quot;Ino.  I.&quot;&lt;br&gt;She capped the pen and read back to me &quot;Table of five, six-thirty for Myron Gahinohi.  Got it.  We'll see you then.&quot;&lt;br&gt;  Hopefully she won't have to write anything down at that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22441" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T22:37:29.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24993" CreationDate="2016-12-03T03:06:49.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that one of the important things about a character like this is that there has to be some kind of consistency. You can have the wild mood-swings depending on who he is interacting with, but I think there needs to be some kind of base-line, something which tells (or even just hints) that this character has some standard of behavior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an interesting idea, but it begs the question - &quot;What happens when he is not around other people?&quot; If I understand the character correctly, he consistently imitates anyone he is interacting with. The problem that occurs with this is that when he's NOT around other people, he has to behave in some way, even if it's sitting in a chair, staring at the wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the audience never sees him by himself, or doesn't see much of him at all, you as the author should have a good idea of how he behaves in many different situations. In this way, you have a greater understanding of him, and this will inform you about why he behaves the way he does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21581" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T03:06:49.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24864" CreationDate="2016-12-03T07:08:20.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Viability? Validity?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You're ideas are totally fine.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously, as a reader I would have no idea with a disaster turning us all into cool, fantasy characters, ready to go and... Be fantasy characters. In fact, it'd be pretty  cool if that actually happened. However, I think I'd like to add these notes to the slew of answers this question has accumulated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is arguably harder to write about something like this, because it's hard to make the public realistically react.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They probably &lt;em&gt;wouldn't&lt;/em&gt; think 'yay!', rather... Something else. One reason it's hard to make this sort of stuff believable is because the public would react so strangely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is arguably harder to write about something like this, because the change happens &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; the book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's just &lt;strong&gt;so&lt;/strong&gt; hard to make this realistic and believable. It's miles easier to just have the change happen before the book (create a prologue perhaps) or have no change at all. In fact, yeah, I think you could have a prologue saying the change then the book. It's a bit hard to write about the characters adapting because it's just... It's just so weird.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There's no problems with these ideas, they might be a bit hard to write about.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other's may disagree, but in my experience, doing things like this is &lt;em&gt;tough&lt;/em&gt;. So I wish you luck. You're ideas are doable and viable, and I'd love to hear how they turn out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T07:08:20.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18833" CreationDate="2016-12-03T16:53:52.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we start with the premise that character and feeling are supposed to be at the heart of a story, it follows that the description of setting is not separate, but it related to character and feeling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Man people have a profound love of place that deeply affects their character and motivations. Descriptions of place therefore have a key story role for any character with that love of place. And since when we read a book we are also entering into a relationship with the author, we can also enter into and appreciate the author's love of place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Love of place shines through in the works of many authors. It is notable in Steinbeck, who almost always begins with descriptions of place. It is there in the works of mystery writers like Tony Hillerman and Craig Johnson. Description of place is as much key to the enjoyment of their books as the description of realy big weapon systems is to Tom Clancey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Love of place can even come across in fantasy, where the Shire or Hogwarts castle are lovingly described. Love of place is a key elements of those books as well, and a key motivation for the characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to describing place, therefore, is to focus on those aspects of place that create affection (or revulsion, for that matter) in the character. Describe it, in other words, through loving eyes. (And if the character hates a place, this is in proportion to its failure to be the kind of place they love, so love is still the key.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T16:53:52.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18833" CreationDate="2016-12-03T17:06:40.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO, one good way to create feeling is to elicit sensory memories in the reader of place(s) they've been or vividly imagined that are like your setting.  I say elicit, because there's always the show vs. tell way of conveying those.  Don't limit yourself to the visual; consider hot/cold, humid/dry, quiet/noisy (what &lt;em&gt;kinds&lt;/em&gt; of noises), smells, tastes, tactile if it works in your narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In SF and Fantasy, the author &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Vance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Vance&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Jack Vance was a past master of this; suggest you take a look at some of his writing if you can.  Wonderfully vivid!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22438" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T17:06:40.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25203" CreationDate="2016-12-03T17:19:04.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Must it be realistic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, but you must keep a good explanation why things are the way they are especially if they don't fit in our day to day pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&#xA;Take a walk in Khazad Dûm (aka Moria). It was build by Dwarfs somewhen back in time. Dwarfs are not the tallest, but still Khazad Dûm has some really really big caverns and hallways.&#xA;Question: Why.&#xA;When Khazad Dûm was build the mountains the dwarfs found some large caves and made them their home.&#xA;Or, if you prefer a more Pratchettarian approach:&#xA;The dwarfs of Khazad Dûm were afraid of low ceilings, because they always bumped their had at the doorways.&#xA;These are good explanations for something that doesn't match the expected pattern. There won't be an explanation necessary why the houses in Bree are the size they are, because they're standard sized houses for humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT be careful.&#xA;If your story focuses on something special, like your story is a medieval Tom Clancy story, then you'd have to be pretty precise on your descriptions, because the readers will expect a very detailed and consistent description of your weaponry. You won't be able to wield your 2 handed, 8 pound steel sword like a very lightweight Japanese katana&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22409" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T17:19:04.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-03T18:11:42.867" Score="-1" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the following sentence that I am thinking of using as headline `&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shop online. Locally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;`&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am not sure if this headline connects well with it sub-headline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pick up the goods you can't get anywhere else in the places you go&#xA;  everyday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, my question is, is the headline clear, grammar-free, persuasive, and does it connect well with its follow-up sentence, the subheadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance, and for any clarification, let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15452" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T20:42:15.760" Title="How to write a short, and persuasive headline?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|technique|structure|word-choice|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-12-06T11:34:57.217" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25440" CreationDate="2016-12-03T20:42:15.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, &lt;strong&gt;this is really good.&lt;/strong&gt; If I were to see this headline, I'd like it. It's good because it tells me what it's about - online shopping - before going into the subheading gives me a bit of extra detail. Your grammar is absolutely fine. I wouldn't call this &lt;em&gt;persuasive&lt;/em&gt; though, as headlines aren't meant to persuade, &lt;strong&gt;they are made to attract.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering you asked in the title how to write a short and good headline, I'd like to point this out. Humans &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; groups of three, it's a magic number in the world of advertising. I bet if you watched a random advert you'd see some &lt;em&gt;triadic structure&lt;/em&gt; (use of that magic number three). To use triadic structure and improve your headline, you could try something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shop online. Quickly. Easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also uses two adverbs with connotations of convenience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped you :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T20:42:15.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25442" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-04T02:38:12.987" Score="0" ViewCount="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;An academic paper is referred to as using the authors name and publication year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smith (2008) studied the property of blah-blah&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smith and Johnson (2013)'s article investigated blah-blah&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Johnson et al.(2009)'s paper studies blah-blah&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here I wonder what is the correct spacing between the name(s) and year (in the parenthesis) and between year and &quot;'s&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In #1. putting a space between Smith and (2008) looks natural,&#xA;but in #2, it is weird because there is a space between Johnson and &quot;'s&quot;.&#xA;(Without (2013), it becomes &quot;Johnson 's&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any clear rule or common practice for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22453" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T00:08:46.273" Title="Correct spacing for &quot;Smith et al. (2008)&quot;" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25442" CreationDate="2016-12-04T05:14:37.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure, but with correct grammar, I'm fairly sure it would be this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smith and Johnson's (2013) article investigated blah-blah&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22355" LastActivityDate="2016-12-04T05:14:37.710" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25444" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-04T05:24:56.747" Score="1" ViewCount="3740" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a book right now, and I want to add something that the reader really has to search for, such as symbolism or motifs. What are some ways to implement those, or such like it, into any type of writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22355" LastActivityDate="2016-12-08T18:29:27.030" Title="What are some ways of adding deeper meanings to writing?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|symbolism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25445" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32840" CreationDate="2016-12-04T07:52:04.280" Score="5" ViewCount="1323" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been writing my first project that I intend for publication, and as with older projects, I have been bouncing ideas off of people here and there when I am in a creative rut. But how much help does a person need to give me before I have to consider them a co-author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sitting down with these people and actively writing with them, it's more like generic advice. Things like sample questions to ask one's self about new characters in order to make them well-rounded and define motivations, or their feelings of interest based around the general plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that since I have only just started writing, and really haven't gotten stuck-in to the meaty bits, that there might come a time when I start asking people for help that should constitute a credit. I am not opposed to having a co-author(s), but I would like to know if there is any hard and fast rule about how much input one needs to have to be considered as a co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8351" LastEditorUserId="28322" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T08:20:03.877" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T08:20:03.877" Title="What constitutes a co-author credit?" Tags="|collaboration|authorship|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25444" CreationDate="2016-12-04T13:05:17.367" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh Dear, no. That is not how it works. You should always make your work as clear to the reader as you possibly can. If your use a symbol or a metaphor, it should be to make your meaning clearer, not more obscure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I know that in school your English teacher told you that there were deeper meanings hidden in the text and expressed through metaphors etc. etc. That was bunk. The reason we have to study the metaphors used in the literature of the past is that all stories are told by reference to other stories -- stories the reader knows. When the original author wrote those works, the stories they referred to were familiar to the audience of their day. But those stories are not so familiar to us today, and so we need to study up on those stories in order to understand the reference the author was making to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most frequent and obvious examples of this are biblical allusions. When Shakespeare wrote, his audiences would have been thoroughly familiar with the bible. Most modern audiences are not, and so they need to have the bible stories that Shakespeare refers to explained to them before they can understand his meaning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that some of the early moderns indulged in highly obscure references that few of their own time would understand. They were rewarded appropriately: very few people read them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also true that some of the things that authors want to say are difficult to express, and that they have to be approached not by simple statements but by the juxtaposition of many ideas and images. We may not all readily understand these ideas because they are inherently difficult to understand, but if the author is any good they have done their very best to make their meaning clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, whatever it is you are trying to say, say is as clearly and as simply as you can. Don't use a metaphor or a symbol unless that metaphor or symbol is the clearest way to accurately express the thing you are trying to say. And if the thing you are trying to say is a simple straightforward thing that you can express in a simple essay, write a simple essay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-04T13:05:17.367" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25305" CreationDate="2016-12-04T18:02:02.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important thing (at least, in almost all circumstances) is consistency. Most of the time, as long as you're consistent, you'll be forgiven for whatever choice you make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing in a particular context, and other people writing in that context write the units in a certain way, do that. If you know of some specific reason why a certain choice is wiser or more appropriate than another, do that. Otherwise, just take your pick and be consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What if?&quot; is essentially a comedy book (or at least, due to its association with a well known humorous web-comic, comes with some expectation of comedic content), so it's very possible the writer is being deliberately inconsistent for comedic effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also possible is that the writer and editor both simply missed it. It happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastEditorUserId="22280" LastEditDate="2016-12-05T08:08:06.123" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T08:08:06.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25305" CreationDate="2016-12-04T20:58:07.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to know the &lt;em&gt;standard&lt;/em&gt; way {1}, see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/pdf/sp811.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/pdf/sp811.pdf&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;gives the rules, including capitalization and abbreviations.&#xA;{1} NIST was formerly the National Bureau of &lt;em&gt;Standards&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22438" LastActivityDate="2016-12-04T20:58:07.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25442" CreationDate="2016-12-05T00:08:46.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's an annoying construction to punctuate, I agree. You might try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smith and Johnson's article (2013) investigated blah blah&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article from Smith and Johnson (2013) investigated blah blah&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper from Johnson et al. (2013) investigated blah blah&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note the space between &lt;em&gt;al.&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;2013.&lt;/em&gt; The &lt;em&gt;al.&lt;/em&gt; is short for &lt;em&gt;alia,&lt;/em&gt; meaning &amp;quot;others.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I wouldn't put the apostrophe-S after the year in parens. It looks too weird. Reword until you get the year and possessive apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T00:08:46.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25459" CreationDate="2016-12-05T18:29:30.927" Score="0" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;For instance we are speaking of one time and then when we finish we speak of a moment that preceded, i.e.&lt;strong&gt;Ten hours before that&lt;/strong&gt;. Or we are speaking about people in a facility and then we change to &lt;strong&gt;Later that day in a bar&lt;/strong&gt; how to correctly imply these changes? How to write them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22319" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:48:12.643" Title="How to better imply time and place changes?" Tags="|viewpoint|flow|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25450" CreationDate="2016-12-05T19:03:16.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is probably more of a question about transitions than anything.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I often wondered about this myself (and I'm assuming you are talking about this in context of fiction writing to make it seem real).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I read the book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qEWv3K&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Make Your Words Work, by Gary Provost (amazon link)&lt;/a&gt; and it cleared it all up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, he explained it simply.  Suppose you read a story and two characters are bidding each other goodbye. Then you come upon the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'***** &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Later that day at the cafe, Barry heard a gunshot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see? It's really as simple as that.&#xA;Suppose you want it to be a specific time, that's ok.  Readers are smart enough to follow it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some books do use the asterisk in between these transitions also to show the reader that it's two different scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'***&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At 10:05pm Barry startled from where he had fallen asleep on the&#xA;  couch. The TV was blaring, but he had distinctly heard a gunshot&#xA;  outside his door.  Directly outside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your readers will understand it well enough.  Readers are smart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T14:48:12.643" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:48:12.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25450" CreationDate="2016-12-05T19:08:55.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are countless ways to announce a flashback (ten hours before) and denote time passing (later that day), it all depends on the genre and your personal stylistic preferences and none of them are either correct or wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, what you are managing is a scene change, and the time can go in any direction, depending on how you are telling the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is common in many action TV series to start an episode with an action scene, and then display a clear subtitle (ten hours before) and return to the events which led to what was shown first, and I have seen that technique applied to writing, where the scenes are time-stamped to enforce the sense of urgency and convey the importance of time, being an element of the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing a more relaxed-paced piece, your character can just reflect on what s/he saw or was thinking some time ago, maybe even without an explicit scene break, just say something like &quot;her thoughts returned to the events of this morning&quot; and keep going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The passing of time is even easier: every scene break implies a change of some sort, whether scenery, point of view, or time, so start a new scene and work in the time reference in a natural and unobtrusive way, say &quot;I can't believe it's six already, I have to go...&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is all up to you. If you are looking for actual words to use in any particular case, this is not a right place to ask your question, you would be better off consulting with your writing group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2016-12-05T19:16:26.187" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T19:16:26.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25444" CreationDate="2016-12-05T19:24:16.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use symbols and motifs. This sounds very obvious, but like all literary techniques, if done well it works. It could be the use of the colour red. It could be the mention of a poetic work. It could be the constant use of metaphors connected with the sea. Think of the symbols and motifs and then insert them at appropriate places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T19:24:16.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25454" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25471" CreationDate="2016-12-05T23:11:30.533" Score="2" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story I'm writing begins with the main character in an unusual and demanding situation. For various reasons, this situation causes him to behave in ways that are quite different to how we see him act for the rest of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if this were happening later in the story, I'd simply establish what has changed and why it's unusual for him, and provided I'd characterised him right, his unusual (for him) behaviour would seem natural and appropriate, given the change of circumstance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My trouble is, since the character is going back to far more familiar conditions, and isn't self-aware enough to think about or acknowledge this fact (at least, not without prompting from another character), many of the usual tricks I would use to show that his relationship to his environment has changed will be unavailable to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How then do I flag up the relevant changes, such that the character's behaviour doesn't seem arbitrary to the reader, without &quot;breaking character&quot; (in the sense of revealing things from the character's perspective that the character himself would pay no attention to)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2016-12-24T02:24:55.617" Title="A character's behaviour changes when returning to more familiar conditions. How should I attempt justify this change to the reader?" Tags="|characters|character-development|viewpoint|audience|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25455" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-06T00:41:38.537" Score="15" ViewCount="15812" Body="&lt;p&gt;When 2 or more characters speak in unison you can generally do something like this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;awwwww, she's so cute!&quot; the girls said in unison in near perfect harmony&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but what about when the line is only slightly different&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Person 1: but i'm not...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Person 2: but she's not...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would this be written?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="21591" LastEditDate="2016-12-06T19:03:43.150" LastActivityDate="2018-10-28T07:23:04.167" Title="How do you write 2 or more characters saying almost the same thing in unison" Tags="|creative-writing|dialogue|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25455" CreationDate="2016-12-06T01:22:09.390" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen it written on the same line in defiance of the &quot;new speaker, new paragraph&quot; rule:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And is this your girlfriend?&quot; Mom asked. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  &quot;No, I'm not — &quot; &quot;Absolutely not — &quot; we both protested immediately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T01:22:09.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25455" CreationDate="2016-12-06T03:52:36.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't. That is a TV thing. The page is not the screen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you tell a story in each medium is an artifice. You are never reproducing all the elements of real conversation, all the halts and tics and repetitions, and all the banalities of everyday speech would be catastrophically boring on the page or on screen. So you create a stylized dialogue, and you use the stylistic tropes of the medium you are writing for. People interrupting and talking over each other works on the screen. It does not work on the page. It just requires too much stage direction, which distracts from the dialogue itself, and the reader does not experience the dialogue as overlapping because on the page the reader can only receive a single stream of words at a time. You just can't reproduce the effect that this would have on screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you stylize the conversation in some other way for the page. This can include dialogues that the reader can read but would be very difficult for an actor to say. (Harrison Ford is famously supposed to have complained to George Lucas &quot;You can write this s***, but you can't say this s***&quot; (or words to this effect).) The screen is not the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So come up with an alternate approach to the dialogue that gets the same message across about character and motivation without having people talk over each other. There are always multiple ways to get the character of a conversation across. You need to choose one that works best in your chosen medium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T03:52:36.697" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25450" CreationDate="2016-12-06T04:04:55.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to convey time is with signposts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She buried her head in the pillow as she smacked the alarm clock for the third time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He fumbled with his key in the lock, glowering at the burnt-out porch light.  &amp;quot;Gotta remember to fix that before leaving for work tomorrow,&amp;quot; he muttered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over dinner she shared the news of her promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Are you coming to bed?&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;In a minute -- just want to catch the weather report,&amp;quot; he said as he glanced at the TV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The kids bounded from the school bus and ran for the playground.  Homework could wait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't know exactly when she gets up in the morning or school gets out or they have dinner, but you usually don't need an exact time.  If you need to be more specific, you can work it in without resorting to outright narration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blare of the Rolling Stones jolted her out of her dream.  6:00 already?  Not ready to face the day, she reached over and smacked the snooze alarm.  Take that, Mick Jagger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He quickly cleared the lunch dishes.  He was cutting it close; the kickoff was at 1:30 and the guys would be here any minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The minute hand crawled ever so slowly toward the 12.  Two more minutes... one more... at last!  3:00 brought the anticipated bell and the stampede from the classroom.  &amp;quot;Don't forget to read chapter 3!&amp;quot;  Mr. Davis sighed, knowing his reminder had fallen on deaf ears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been talking about time, but you can handle changes of place in a similar way.  You don't need to say &amp;quot;they're at a bar&amp;quot; if you can imply it -- the pitcher of beer, the conversation with the bartender, the noisy crowd watching the game on several TVs while munching pretzels... show, don't tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T04:04:55.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25461" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-06T09:31:12.067" Score="4" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from the obvious solutions like MS Word, there are many systems that accept the simple (plain) text along with formatting markup. Some of these like &lt;a href=&quot;http://orgmode.org/worg/exporters/ox-groff.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Groff&lt;/a&gt; are historical, but others like &lt;a href=&quot;http://asciidoctor.org/docs/what-is-asciidoc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AsciiDoc&lt;/a&gt; are rather new and in active developoment. If you do not do much more than dividing into chapters, the markup itself seems trivial to learn. I used them for technical documentation at work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proponents of these systems say that writing just plain text allows to concentrate on the text itself, not formatting and presentation that a &quot;user friendly&quot; editor immediately requires from the first word. Also, there are multiple versioning tools that would work well with plain texts but not with the binary files of the usual text exitor. These tools, normally used by software engineers, allow to compare past and current versions side by side, create and merge branches and things the like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of these potential advantages, I started to think about using one of such systems for my creative writing projects. To help me with this decision, I would like to know if any notable writers have used such systems recently, or if there are any notable pieces initially written using them (by the original author, not by the technician in the process of preparing the publication). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22465" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T12:54:53.020" Title="Should I use the plain text typesetting system for my creative texts?" Tags="|tools|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25461" CreationDate="2016-12-06T10:15:03.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a visual person, and although written text is often thought to be no more than a visual encoding of verbal thought, to me the visual aspect of reading is an important factor when I compose my narrative: text does not just have to &quot;sound right&quot; – which is why I read aloud or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;subvocalize&lt;/a&gt; while I write –, it also has a &lt;strong&gt;visual rhythm&lt;/strong&gt; that must &quot;look right&quot; to be pleasant and effortless to read. To control the visual aspect of writing, I need to see the text that I write in a &quot;print-like&quot; representation – not exactly, but in some relevant basic aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one kind of markup that you will most likely need for creative writing: &lt;em&gt;italics&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly you can use some kind of plain text markup to signify cursive text, such as asterisks (&lt;code&gt;*italic*&lt;/code&gt;) or underscores (&lt;code&gt;_italic_&lt;/code&gt;) or HTML tags (&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;italic&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;), but having to type these is cumbersome and replacing them later is error prone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also need to indent my first lines, have some white page margins around my text, and a line length of around 60 characters. These help the reader to orient herself in what would otherwise be an unbroken wall of text, and just like the reader I too need them to not get visually lost while I write. Some plain text editors allow such changes to the layout of their editor window, others don't. The size of the margins (I use the word processor's default) and indentation (I use 1 em) are irrelevant, and I don't waste time with finetuning these, but they have to be there for me to help me &quot;see&quot; the text I want to write in my mind's eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some other visuals that I need (such as an easily readable, non-monospaced font), but italics are the one basic need that makes all plain text editors unusable for me. I tried, but the forced plainness feels unnatural and is an obstacle to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try, if it works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An afterthought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No editor &quot;requires&quot; that your format your text. You can type plain text in Microsoft Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-12-07T11:04:11.507" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T11:04:11.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25455" CreationDate="2016-12-06T10:19:09.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not always necessary to actually write down exactly what they're saying. It might be simpler to simply describe that they spoke at the same time, and their general tone, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They both blurted out their protestations, each of them trying to be the one to deny first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can then be followed by each of them saying their own line of dialogue, once it has been established that they're trying to say it at the same time, although it may not be required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T10:19:09.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="113" CreationDate="2016-12-06T10:25:00.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to write on paper first &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; it's more difficult to edit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write on paper when I'm away from my computer (and the most significant advantage of paper, of course, is that it's possible to bring it pretty much anywhere - I've even been known to write in the bath, on occassion, which I'd never dare do with a laptop, but I digress...). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In-between writing on the paper and getting a chance to type it up, I have a period of reflection, wherein it's not really practical to make any major changes to what I've written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I consider what I've written from memory, sometimes I have to re-read it, sometimes a little of both, but the end result is the same. By the time I come to type it up, I already have a fair idea what's wrong with it and where, and what I type up is almost always a significantly improved version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not this approach will work for you, of course, is a different matter. As can be seen from the other answers, this is a very personal thing, and you'll find the normal workflow from one person to the next may differ drastically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T10:25:00.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="113" CreationDate="2016-12-06T13:43:26.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can use paper just to point some ideas. I mean, PC is usefull today, especially in writing. Ex: you can fix something without effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22255" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T13:43:26.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-06T15:47:34.280" Score="3" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;I published two books with a publishing company, and I was wondering whether I could publish my next one with a different one. Can I?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22482" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-12-06T22:33:23.873" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T22:33:23.873" Title="Can I publish a book under one company when I have published a book under another?" Tags="|publishing|publisher|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25467" CreationDate="2016-12-06T15:56:09.977" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you don't have a contract specifying that your next N books must be with Copmany A, there's no reason you can't go with Company B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean that you self-published and want to change the imprint, you can do that too; just talk to your accountant to make sure you aren't garbling things for tax purposes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T15:56:09.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20720" CreationDate="2016-12-06T16:37:20.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked as senior technical editor for 16 years for three major telecom companies (all based outside the U.S.) that had adopted English as their corporate language for all documentation; all the writers wrote in English. I always made a point of showing the writers how to enter the correct punctuation characters. Since typewriters were not an issue, we never used two or three hyphens in place of an en or em dash. Since the en dash is almost always used to show a range of numbers or connect non-hyphenated terminology, an en dash would never replace the em dash. Because there are many technical terms that are hyphenated, we all agreed that a space before and after the em dash clearly distinguished from hyphens in general and tended to increase readability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22484" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T16:37:20.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25455" CreationDate="2016-12-06T17:54:26.203" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Generalise&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I ignored their spluttered protests&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works fine when it doesn't really matter what they're saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Share a dialogue line&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I said, &lt;em&gt;Do you get me&lt;/em&gt;?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sir, yes, sir!&quot; they shouted in unison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. If the meaning of each is necessary, call it out.*&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use separate dialogue lines, but indicate in the narration that they spoke at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you two married?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Of course not!&quot; I said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yes, for ages!&quot; Marie said at the same time. A puzzled frown creased the big man's brow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Try to avoid this construction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, as others have said, this is a spoken word trope. It rarely or never happens in real life, so there's no need to try to pull it into written dialogue either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22241" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T17:54:26.203" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25454" CreationDate="2016-12-06T23:09:20.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm new to this site, and not completely familiar with the finer points of etiquette, here, so please do let me know if this (answering my own question) isn't considered the right way to go about this sort of thing.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've given this problem more thought, and I believe I've found a nice solution (which isn't say I'm not still open to other suggestions, mind you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the answer is to introduce a common element to both. If I have the character encounter a specific and recognisable stimulus in both parts of the story, and his reactions are noticeably different, I think that should be sufficient to signal that there has been a shift in how he is responding to his surroundings, and should draw the attention of any reader who notices it to the corresponding differences in his situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T23:09:20.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25454" CreationDate="2016-12-06T23:50:47.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If he's not aware that he's back in a familiar environment, then why would his behavior change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe what you might try is having the character act the same way even though the environment changes, and then have something occur where due to him acting like he is in the unfamiliar environment would either seem extremely out of of character to the other people in this familiar environment, or would cause  him to &quot;snap out of it&quot; and return to his normal behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex: If a typical high school student finds themself transported to the realm of Star Wars as a Jedi-in-training, then they would probably freak out a little bit. If, however, they were later transported back to their native realm as a high school student, they might try to use the force to laughable results, prompting one of their fellow students to ask them what in their right mind they are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10703" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T23:50:47.853" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25474" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-07T05:13:19.320" Score="3" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering about developing a plot that spans the life of a character&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22490" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T12:30:49.133" Title="Are there books that take you through a character's entire life?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2016-12-07T13:08:05.900" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25474" CreationDate="2016-12-07T11:40:53.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are writings that cover the complete life of the single person, like &lt;em&gt;North American Indian&lt;/em&gt; novels by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, for instance, &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; history by Joanne &quot;Jo&quot; Rowling probably should also count. Due many events they often span over multiple books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also notable single books about the complete life of a non human character, like &lt;em&gt;Cowboy Horse&lt;/em&gt; by by David R. Stoecklein or &lt;em&gt;White Fang&lt;/em&gt; by Jack London. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22465" LastEditorUserId="22465" LastEditDate="2016-12-07T12:30:49.133" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T12:30:49.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25412" CreationDate="2016-12-07T12:06:17.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the crux of it is that &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; you do that breaks convention will make your writing more difficult to read. That isn't to say you shouldn't do it, by the way (several of my favourite books take &lt;em&gt;serious&lt;/em&gt; liberties with style and formatting), but it must be worth the effort. If a reader would be able to get everything they could possibly get from your writing, for less effort, if you used conventional formatting, they'll be (understandably) frustrated if you don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not - if your choice adds something, and the effort is worth the reader's while - your only difficulty is convincing them to put the effort in in the first place. Once they do, they'll be glad they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with all such things, though, it's ultimately a matter of taste. There are people who think anything &quot;conventional&quot; is bland and unadventurous, and wouldn't be seen dead reading mainstream fiction (or using the phrase &quot;wouldn't be seen dead&quot;). There are also people who think anything &quot;unconventional&quot; is a pointless attempt to seem clever, and that mainstream fiction is mainstream because it's &lt;em&gt;just better&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, I think both of these positions are ridiculous, but that's beside the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T12:06:17.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25461" CreationDate="2016-12-07T14:46:08.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it's not a part of your question per se, there is one place where you absolutely need to use plain text if you hope to publish traditionally: submitting to literary agents. Most, maybe 80%, require pasting in 1,000-10,000 words of plain text after the body of your query letter. I'm not sure why, but that's the way it is. Italics go in CAPS, and all font sizes will appear as 12 point Courier (I think). Illustrations are not possible in the plain-text query, and my experience is if the agent wants to further deal with you, they will want originals mailed to them to put in a format they feel is best for each individual publishing house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can save documents in MS Word twice, one in plain text. Review the plain text document before submitting, as Word sometimes gets confused if you are writing as a .doc, and you'll have to change italics to CAPS &quot;by hand.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-12-07T15:08:12.517" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T15:08:12.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25478" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-07T15:55:17.187" Score="4" ViewCount="1122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a primary source whose editor often has editorial comments in his footnotes. There are occasions when I would like to quote these remarks, but I cannot understand how to correctly do this from my Chicago Manual. How do I do this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, my reference Book has two column pages and begins each footnote series at the end of each column on each page. This situation further complicates my dealing with the first question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, this reference book is the &lt;em&gt;Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series,&lt;/em&gt; Vol. 8 of 11 volumes. I know that it can be abbreviated, NPNF with a superscript 2, space, and the number indicating the volume followed by the page number (i.e. NPNF&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; 8:56). I believe this is preceded by the author and the italicized Main Title of the section I am referring to, but where do I include the document title and footnote information? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="jonjohn447" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2017-03-08T12:21:05.327" LastActivityDate="2017-10-04T14:54:59.433" Title="Citing a footnote" Tags="|style|footnotes|chicago-manual-of-style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25478" CreationDate="2016-12-07T21:14:10.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where do you want to publish what you write? An academic institution will have a completely different set of standards to a fanzine page. I would have thought that giving the editor's name, the publication, date, page numbers, publisher, place of publication and edition,  and just saying it was the editor's comment would be appropriate, although I don't know the details of the Chicago style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't see how having two columns complicates the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a text has a standard abbreviation, use that form. However, if necessary, explain it the first time it is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T21:14:10.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25478" CreationDate="2016-12-08T02:04:15.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, citations refer to the physical page on which the cited content appears. They do not narrow it down to a logical part of the document that appears on that page. Cite the page on which the citation in question occurs. I have never heard of any style guide that does anything other than this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception, of course, is citations of works that have numbered paragraphs. In that case, you cite the numbered paragraph. I'm not sure if the conventions of such documents allow for footnotes, but that would seem odd. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-08T02:04:15.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25444" CreationDate="2016-12-08T18:29:27.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to add deep meaning is to make your writing real and relevant. There is no secret element to make your work seem edgy and subtextual. Just make your story brutal and smart. That will give all the meaning you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22513" LastActivityDate="2016-12-08T18:29:27.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25485" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25487" CreationDate="2016-12-08T19:57:41.400" Score="1" ViewCount="393" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of websites and forums that offer help to writers online - including stack exchange. I've started writing several books, but haven't completed any of them. I believe that my story ideas are unique and interesting, and think it would be worthwhile to seek help from fellow writers online. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it safe to share details of my stories without worrying that some other writers, desperate for an idea might steal them? Is anything I post online legally my property, or am I consciously giving away ideas to other people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this might sound a little paranoid, but my books (though not finished) are personal treasures to me and I would be aghast to see someone else run off with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22514" LastActivityDate="2016-12-08T21:40:25.540" Title="Should I be worried about sharing story ideas online?" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-12-21T15:04:27.333" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25486" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-08T20:26:48.203" Score="1" ViewCount="681" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a footnote in an annotated novel I'm reading, and I want to use what's said in that footnote in my essay. I'm not sure how to cite the footnote within my essay, and on my works cited page. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Here's what the footnote says if that helps: See G.M.S. Chivers, &lt;em&gt;A Pocket Companion to French and English Dancing&lt;/em&gt; (London, 1821): &quot;quote that I'm using&quot; (36).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22515" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T10:08:01.713" Title="Citing footnote in mla" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25485" CreationDate="2016-12-08T21:40:25.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article might be of interest:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Protect-Your-Written-Ideas-and-Stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.wikihow.com/Protect-Your-Written-Ideas-and-Stories&lt;/a&gt;; quote below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act, “In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated or embodied in such work.”&#xA;  This means that according to the law, you cannot copyright an idea or concept. You can attempt to sue someone for “idea misappropriation” if you believe they have stolen your idea or concept, but this can be difficult to prove in court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is more if you follow the link provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like there is no guarantee that your story ideas can be reliably protected; you just have to choose with whom to share them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I must note that no idea, no matter how fresh it might be, guarantees that the story (either based on the original or stolen idea) is going to be good. Devil is in the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-12-08T21:40:25.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-09T01:41:33.027" Score="1" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm writing a short story for literature and I have come upon an odd spot in my story where I need to introduce a new character, but I got to end a fight scene first. I had been doing some research on writing scenes with physical/dialectical conflict, but I'm trying to end it so I can move on. Any suggestions? Help? If you need a sample of the scene, I'll gladly submit some&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22516" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T23:28:01.577" Title="How should I move on after writing a fight scene and trying to introduce a new (but mentioned) character?" Tags="|creative-writing|short-story|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-12-16T18:50:47.903" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25491" CreationDate="2016-12-09T02:36:10.683" Score="4" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the middle of writing a crime/thriller book on Microsoft Word 2010. But after writing it, do I have to make a front page cover? Or does the publisher do it for you? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22517" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-12-09T06:40:58.640" LastActivityDate="2020-05-20T01:01:19.040" Title="Who Makes the Front Page Cover for a Novel?" Tags="|novel|pages|crime|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25486" CreationDate="2016-12-09T07:28:09.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MLA, you cite the page as you normally would and add &quot;n&quot; and the number of the footnote, e.g. &quot;Smith 123n6&quot; for footnote number 6 on page 123.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/18/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/18/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T07:28:09.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25489" CreationDate="2016-12-09T07:49:21.210" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you are a major bestselling author – such as J. K. Rowling or the president of the US – and have the power to take your cash-cow-book to another publisher if the present one does not comply with your wishes, the publisher will decide the cover. Some publishers allow their authors to have a word in cover design, but many don't – and most intelligent authors do not try to meddle in what they don't understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cover is probably the single most important factor in book sales, and no professional publisher would allow an amateur such as an author to decide such a critical success factor. Big publishers have a marketing and an art department, smaller publishers hire experts, who come up with a marketing strategy for a book and a fitting design concept for the book cover. When these have been discussed with the editorial and sales department (and maybe the author), a designer (or painter) is hired to execute the idea. An art director will oversee the design process. The designer will suggest a handfull of layouts to the art director who will chose one and ask for certain changes. Then the designer creates the cover. This will then be presented to the marketing, sales, and editorial departments, who will usually agree to use it, but sometimes hire another designer to create a better one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worked in the PR department of a big publishing house and witnessed this process first hand. Different publishers will do some things differently, but the basic procedure will be similar to what I have described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T07:49:21.210" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25488" CreationDate="2016-12-09T08:00:57.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basic question here is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How do your write anything at all?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer is always the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Write it. Read how it &lt;em&gt;feels&lt;/em&gt;. Rewrite it.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;fundament&lt;/strong&gt; for your novel, short story, play, comic, computer game, or whatever &lt;strong&gt;is a story&lt;/strong&gt;. Each and every story has a rhythm. This is sometimes called plot, or story arc, or whatever. I like the term &lt;strong&gt;rhythm&lt;/strong&gt;, because it implies that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;a person who reads a lot will have developed a sense for that rhythm&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you read a story (or watch a movie or whatever) you will &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; whether the story flows like it should or feels awkward or confusing or bumpy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So all you need to do to know how to write is to &lt;strong&gt;write whatever comes to your mind&lt;/strong&gt; and then &lt;strong&gt;read what you have written&lt;/strong&gt;. You will have a clear understanding of what you need to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have that feeling, you will need to write more, until you develop that story sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T08:00:57.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25461" CreationDate="2016-12-09T12:54:53.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a proxy for writers using markup languages,  we can take writers using an editor like Emacs l, which includes at the very least Neal Stephenson, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/3v0spw/what_novels_have_been_written_with_emacs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We should remember that wordprocessors that include display of font, layout, etc. are a recent invention. In the past of typewritten and handwritten manuscripts the relationship between the written and printed page was much closer to that between markup and printed than a word document and printed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even today, there is rarely a neat correspondence between what is displayed in the writers word processor and what gets printed: publishers may set margins, fonts, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think there's no necessity to using a word processor. Why might you want to anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Word processors are ubiquitous. Most everyone can open a doc or an rtf file and most publishers can handle these.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learning a mark up takes time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Word processors frequently come with other features (ability to add annotations, versioning, collaborative editing, bibliography management) that are nice to have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I think it's reasonable and more productive to use plain markup &lt;em&gt;if you are already familiar with the format and are comfortable working with plain text&lt;/em&gt;. Here are some advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Text editors like Emacs or Vi offer more efficient editing than word processors generally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plain text is even more ubiquitous: every computer of whatever capacity or operating system is capable of opening and editing a plain text file in a decent editor. Not every computer has the latest word processor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most markup formats can publish easily to a variety of output formats, so you can get a PDF or a word doc if you need it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tooling around plain text is incredible, if you are already comfortable with it. Versioning in particular is solved by mature tools like Git and plain text has good stories for keeping your work organized (you can split say chapters into separate files and compile then together with a simple program).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For certain uses, like documents that include mathematical notation or inline source code, the plain text setting is just orders of magnitude nicer than any word processor I have come across.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally do both technical and creative writing in markup (usually Pandoc's Markdown) and vastly prefer it, but I also am familiar with all the tools that make that experience nice. I don't think it's something I'd recommend to people not so familiar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22522" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T12:54:53.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25495" CreationDate="2016-12-09T16:03:09.583" Score="14" ViewCount="2599" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to read across a variety of authors, genres, and publication dates. Whenever I sit down to write something of my own immediately after marathoning a book or series, I tend to unconsciously use words, grammar, or style reminiscent of whomever I was just reading, since the “rhythm” of the text gets stuck in my head (for lack of a better way to phrase it). If I do this enough times on a single piece of work, it causes it upon reread to sound like a weird, jumpy mishmash of--for example--Tolkien, Christie, and Snicket. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not exactly the goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that taking inspiration from better writers than me is a good thing, but how do I stop accidentally imitating them? I like writing/being able to write in different styles, so I don't want to force myself into a single &quot;voice&quot; for everything I create, and I worry that being constantly conscious of or checking where my phrasing is coming from (and etc) will break my flow. However, I'd rather be consistent &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; pieces, and to not just copy, as unintentional as it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some tips to solve or mitigate this issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22525" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-12-09T20:43:12.730" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T09:14:52.853" Title="How do I stop my writing sounding like a bad imitation of whatever author I've just been reading?" Tags="|style|technique|inspiration|voice|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25494" CreationDate="2016-12-09T16:29:21.350" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing you should do is look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/17527/10394&quot;&gt;answer to this question&lt;/a&gt;. Then realize that this is not an issue, but something that you can use greatly to your advantage. However, you still have the problem of not having your own style. I will address that below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a natural mimic as well. When I started out writing, I wrote like whatever I read. I was writing and reading frequently enough and at the same time, so that my style eventually &lt;em&gt;became&lt;/em&gt; a collection of different mimics. Or so I thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a mimic, you are going to adopt the style of several authors into your own style. This is just how it works. But as an individual person with a distinct personality and life, those styles are also going to be shaded over by your own experiences and beliefs. This is also how it works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As my writing style solidified, I found that it was slipping into a different groove. There were elements taken from C. S. Lewis and Edith Nesbit, along with Eoin Colfer and G. A. Henty. But there was something else in there, something that was purely me. That something wasn't my style. But it was what made my collection of mimicked styles &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the second thing you need to realize is that 'your style' is a collection; a collection of mimicked styles from authors you love, coupled with who you are. This style will emerge naturally, as long as you just keep writing, and don't worry about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, there is an exercise you can do to bring your own unique style closer to the forefront of your writing. The first step is to stop reading, at least for a little while. Take a month off, and at the end of that month (don't start reading!) write. (As a writer, you should never stop reading entirely. A month is okay.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second step is what you write. Don't write just anything. Write something you really believe in. Find a topic that is close to you, some position you would defend if it was questioned by someone else. Do you have something you genuinely believe other people need to know? Good. Write about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why am I doing this? By writing about what you believe in deeply, you're pulling from who you are. You're pulling from &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; experiences, what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; know, and how &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; feel. Coupled with having not read a book recently, you will be unable to stop your own style from pouring out. Then, later, whenever you want to write in your own style, simply re-read what you wrote, and use your mimicry to your advantage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that this will only work if your style is not yet solidified. If it is, your style has become a part of you and you will write that way no matter what. This is a good thing though, as it means what you read will no longer cause your writing to fluctuate quite so drastically. You can still mimic if you focus on trying to, so you haven't lost that ability either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T16:29:21.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25496" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-09T16:59:35.643" Score="2" ViewCount="1497" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many scientists obtain papers in electronic format and read them on a computer, tablet, or mobile phone screen. In print, a two column layout looks great and is easier to read than a broad single column, but on any electronic device navigating over two columns is difficult and irritating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when I layout my own paper, should I lay it out in one or two columns?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22526" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-12-11T10:38:38.560" LastActivityDate="2016-12-12T18:19:38.310" Title="Should I layout my academic paper in one or two columns?" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25494" CreationDate="2016-12-09T18:08:11.677" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To write fluently, you have to have a ready of flow of language at your command, and that will come from all you have heard and read. If you binge read one author, their language will invariable be what is flowing in your head for a while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to developing your own tone is not isolation from influences but variety. Don't binge read anybody. (That may suit you as a reader, but you have to start reading like a writer if you want to be one.) Read widely and deeply, and make the classics a significant portion of your diet. You are not likely to slip into writing like Dickens or Conrad, but they will broaden your pallet of language, making you less susceptible to accidental pastiche. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure the you regularly include writers whose style is very different from your own. If your prose is naturally spare, read Steinbeck and Dickens. If your prose is naturally ornate, read Hemingway or McCarthy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all these voices running through your head you will not be overly influenced by any one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is only a secondary benefit for wide and attentive reading for a writer. No one can master a craft without first (and continually) immersing themselves in the work of its masters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T18:08:11.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25504" CreationDate="2016-12-08T17:07:41.750" Score="6" ViewCount="463" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking about inserting some deep engineering concepts in my sci-fi&#xA;story, but I'm not sure how to do this without excluding the general public from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example: I want to describe the creation of a radio transmitter by a character. If I write something like the following, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;he makes a primitive antenna with the wire he'd gathered and with&#xA;  another wire as an inductor connected in series with a capacitor&#xA;  removed from the ship's remains, voilá. Despite the high noise it&#xA;  worked. Barely, but enough.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is it easy to understand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to know is this: Which is the better way to make the reader understand it without demanding any previous specific knowledge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22540" OwnerDisplayName="Vitor Andrade" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-12-13T19:07:09.130" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T19:07:09.130" Title="Electrical engineering concepts in sci-fi" Tags="|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25488" CreationDate="2016-12-09T23:28:01.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Might be a rather simplistic answer but why not just knock this soon to be newly mentioned character out and move things on to him waking up? If there is going to be a fight, that's certainly not an unexpected outcome. It certainly allows for a quick switch to his perspective and to maybe explain this fight from his perspective. If that is the angle you are going for of course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22178" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T23:28:01.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25494" CreationDate="2016-12-09T23:53:38.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not say this is an issue, but after reading a book take a 15 minute break and give your mind a rest. Try to focus not on their writing style, but yours. Something you could give a shot at is not using words such as &quot;musn't&quot; or &quot;thee&quot; if you do that already. A lot of authors do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22530" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T23:53:38.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25502" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-10T12:38:54.753" Score="5" ViewCount="949" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/407/how-to-go-about-breaking-up-a-looooong-ya-story&quot;&gt;Related&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My book was never meant to be a series, so I'm genuinely uncertain on what to do. I only really write completely self-contained things&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've really been having a great time writing lately. On my latest masterpiece - book sorry - I've  hit &lt;em&gt;70,000&lt;/em&gt; words! Wow! It's about time the character's lives began to intercollide, and things begin to get exciting. However... I thought that by 90,000 words I would have finished my whole book. &lt;strong&gt;I underestimated myself.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I edit as I go through quite a lot, I've cut off a huge amount of words, and maximised my usage of language to get off even more words but... It's still just going to be so long &lt;em&gt;because the story cannot be told unless it has time to develop.&lt;/em&gt; I can't really take off anymore words because the plot would be ruined. So... I've come to the resolve that &lt;strong&gt;I need to create a series!&lt;/strong&gt; Exciting!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When is an appropriate time to cut off with my novel, and turn it into a series?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen everything. I really have. Sometimes, a ship has sunk. Sometimes, the character has just smiled. Sometimes, the sexy girl has died. Sometimes, the wimp has finally died. Sometimes, the girl who dressed as a boy has been found out. Sometimes, Eragon has killed the shade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you decide what kind of way to end your first book? How do you think of a way that will keep the reader reading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty fortunate actually to have hit this word count just as the character's lives begin to collide, but I have a few options on how I can end it. How do I pick the right one? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, Eragon killing the shade didn't make me care at all. I just didn't care. When the girl was found out I didn't care. When the little girl's dad died, I cried. When, oh my god terrible, the children got sucked into a portal... I... didn't care. How can I make a cliffhanger worthy of ending a book and not a chapter? How can I create one my reader will care about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does it matter if your cliffhanger doesn't carry over into the next novel? Does your cliffhanger have to have a huge impact on the next one in the series?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My English teacher told me that most novels are only 55,000 words. I seriously don't believe her because I write my novels on a size 9.5 font, and by 55,000 words I've only done about 130 pages. So, here's a bonus question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is 80-85,000 words a wise time to be finishing the first book in my brand new series? Because I'm a non-published author, is it futile to try and write a series as my debut into the fantasy genre?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-12-11T10:48:25.290" Title="How to split up a book into a series?" Tags="|fiction|technique|wordcount|series|cliches|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25503" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-10T16:58:27.043" Score="2" ViewCount="926" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using Google Docs to both write a story and to create a dictionary of sorts for ease of writing. I'm trying to figure out a way that I can either have a word suggestion box pop up on Google Docs with the list of words I have in my descriptive word dictionary, or I'd like to know of a note-like program where I can organize all the words in the descriptive word dictionary I've created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word suggestion box comes to mind because there are coding programs that suggest different words for different commands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interactive notes comes up because I'm used to creating folders upon folders in my computer and think that organizing the words with such a system would be very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22539" LastEditorUserId="47470" LastEditDate="2021-03-31T03:01:42.200" LastActivityDate="2021-03-31T03:01:42.200" Title="Way to create an interactive dictionary for Google Docs?" Tags="|software|organization|dictionary|google-docs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25498" CreationDate="2016-12-10T17:10:03.253" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your description is fine at that level of detail. As it happens, I do pretty much understand it. But it would not stop me appreciating the story if I scarcely understood the technical aspects at all, so long as I understand what his success or failure in building a radio means for the character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case it is clear that the character is marooned. He is cannibalizing the remains of the ship to send a message so that he can be rescued. We understand that he is in peril but rescue is possible. We understand that he has some technical knowledge and is a resourceful person who does not give in to despair, making us inclined to admire him. &lt;em&gt;These&lt;/em&gt; are the things that 100% of the readers must understand to make them care what happens next.  So long as you achieve that, it doesn't matter that a much smaller percentage of your readers will be able to remember from college what a capacitor is, and a smaller percentage still would be able to check whether your description is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give an example from a field of knowledge I scarcely understand at all. I have read all of C.S. Forester's stories featuring Horatio Hornblower, an officer in the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars, several times over. I still have only a hazy idea what a mizzen mast is or the difference between a sloop and a frigate. But I have confidence that Forester did know. It &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; matter that the author gets it right: an author writing about a subject that they have researched well writes with confidence, and that confidence is picked up by the reader and makes them believe in the story. But it matters much less whether the author has fully transferred their technical knowledge to to the reader. The important thing is that the practical and emotional consequences of technical facts are conveyed. I could be gripped by every stage of a lengthy description of the manoeuvres of a sailing ship in a storm or in battle because the survival of characters I cared about depended on their doing these difficult manoeuvres successfully. It doesn't have to be life or death; I have often been fascinated by stories about the process of scientific discovery, but to fully awaken my sense of wonder I needed a human being in the story to be feeling that wonder too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could, if you wanted, write a lot more about your character building that radio. How exactly did he &quot;gather wire&quot; and find those components?  Don't make it easy for him! Maybe he suffered agonizing frustration when he realized that the tools that would have made the job easy were out of his reach under tons of wreckage. Perhaps he had to improvise a lever from scrap metal to open a panel, cutting his hands, only to find that the component he had thought he could use was smashed and he would have to do it all again. Maybe he had to crawl past the dead bodies of his crewmates to get into the ship at all. If you want to add more technical details (What diameter wire? What was that capacitor originally being used for?), feel free, that's what readers come to science fiction for, but make sure that you intersperse every technical fact with an emotional fact (&quot;If this doesn't work I'm done for&quot;) about characters the reader cares about.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aim for something like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IACjOvyx5hs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this scene from the 1965 film &lt;em&gt;The Flight of the Phoenix&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Few people know exactly how a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffman_engine_starter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Coffman engine starter cartridge&lt;/a&gt; works, they just know that they are crucial and the castaways have a limited supply of them. Everybody understands what a tense moment it is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_of_the_Phoenix_(1965_film)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;when&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dorfmann panics when four cartridges fail to start the engine and&#xA;  Towns wants to use one of the remaining three cartridges just to clear&#xA;  the engine's cylinders. Dorfmann objects, but Towns ignores him and&#xA;  fires one cartridge with the ignition off. The next cartridge&#xA;  succeeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2016-12-10T17:10:03.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25502" CreationDate="2016-12-10T17:45:35.407" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;55K words is a novella; your teacher is wrong there. 80K to 85K is a good book length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story will require two books (or however many), &lt;em&gt;finish them all&lt;/em&gt; before shopping the first one to an agent. Explain in the cover letter that it's a &lt;em&gt;completed&lt;/em&gt; series. Agents may balk at an open-ended cliffhanger from a novice, but if you say that the two/three/etc. books are already done, that shows a) that you have the drive to complete several books and b) if the agent wants to buy the series, the publisher won't have to worry about whether you'll be able to complete the story and if you'll leave readers/accountants hanging. &lt;em&gt;::cough::George R.R. Martin::cough::)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A break point should be the end of an Act if your overal series is broken into three/four/five acts. Whether that's a huge &quot;no questions are answered&quot; cliffhanger or just a pause point in a larger tale depends on your story. The Harry Potter series is a set of seven books which have seven clear separate stories, each with a beginning/middle/end, which are also part of a larger story. But the Belgariad is one story told in five volumes, and each book ends on some kind of cliffhanger &amp;mdash; I think book 3 literally ends in the middle of a scene as the heroes are captured and led off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting your reader to care is no different in a book-ending cliffhanger than a chapter end. Either your reader is invested or not. Either you care about the character's fate or not. I put down the Fablehaven series at the end of book 2 of 5 because I absolutely did. not. care. if these two stupid children lived or died or succeeded or failed. I also stopped reading the Gregor the Overlander series at the beginning of book 4 of 5 because I cared too much; the heroes were being seduced by a dictator/fascist/tyrannical man-child, and I read to &lt;em&gt;escape&lt;/em&gt; reality, thanks. But I'm desperate to pick up the next Rick Riordan series because I adored Percy Jackson and his friends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-10T17:45:35.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25494" CreationDate="2016-12-11T10:31:55.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many authors avoid reading – or reading anything even remotely related to what they write – while they are writing, to avoid being influenced by the ideas and style of other writers. My recommendation would be to &lt;strong&gt;abstain from reading in your own and related genres while you write&lt;/strong&gt;, because it is near to impossible not to be influenced by what you read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, I consciously read authors whose &lt;em&gt;language&lt;/em&gt; I want to influence my own while I write. Usually these are classic authors who do not write genre fiction (as I do), so there is no danger of taking anything but language from these examples. If you want to read while you write – and writing a novel can take a long time, so not reading anything at all might not be how you want to live during those months –, consider non-fiction, classics, or complementary genres (such as reading horror when writing love stories).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-12-11T10:31:55.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25502" CreationDate="2016-12-11T10:48:25.290" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at the graphic in my answer to this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/24092/use-of-separating-fiction-into-parts/24138#24138&quot;&gt;Use of Separating Fiction into &amp;quot;Parts?&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; You can think of any story – no matter whether told as a short story, novel, or novel series – as arcs within arcs within arcs. You can think of a series as an even bigger arc on which the arcs of the individual novels form &quot;bumps&quot;. Turning a too-long novel into a series is therefore very easy: just cut the novel at the parts, and you have a series of novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answers to all your other questions follow from that idea of nested arcs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2016-12-11T10:48:25.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25511" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-11T16:15:47.847" Score="0" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a CreateSpace-Assigned ISBN but I want to publish a collection of my books that are currently on CreateSpace through another publisher using a different title but some of the same material?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22546" LastEditorUserId="2343" LastEditDate="2016-12-12T00:46:03.380" LastActivityDate="2016-12-12T00:46:03.380" Title="I have a CreateSpace ISBN but want to Publish a New Edition through another Publisher" Tags="|self-publishing|isbn|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-12-16T18:49:01.103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25511" CreationDate="2016-12-12T00:42:56.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will have to have a new ISBN for the new edition. Every edition or variation of a book must have its own unique ISBN. If you publish an e-book, print, and audio version, then each of those will have their own ISBNs. Also, if you publish the exact same e-book on different platforms, such as Kindle and Nook, you will need a separate ISBN for each platform. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2343" LastActivityDate="2016-12-12T00:42:56.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25513" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25561" CreationDate="2016-12-12T10:34:53.737" Score="5" ViewCount="431" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am quoting Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, who is in turn quoting Rene Girard. Here is the sentence in question that I am quoting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monsters are never created &lt;em&gt;ex nihilo,&lt;/em&gt; but through a process of fragmentation and recombination in which elements are extracted &quot;from various forms&quot; (including -- indeed, especially -- marginalized social groups) and then assembled as the monster, &quot;which can then claim an independent identity.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question One.&lt;/strong&gt; What should my in-text citation look like after this quote? I have been using an author-page format, like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Furthermore, he &quot;sprouts two heads&quot; (Cohen 11).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question Two.&lt;/strong&gt; What should I do f I want to quote &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; Girard's parts from Cohen but don't have access to Girard's original text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" OwnerDisplayName="Summer" LastActivityDate="2016-12-17T19:30:03.627" Title="MLA: How do I add an in-text citation when I'm quoting a quote that has a quote?" Tags="|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25496" CreationDate="2016-12-12T18:19:38.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishers have traditionally used 2 column layout for printed articles. These have then been turned into pdfs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, nowadays, some things only appear electronically. However, you, me and most of the rest of the world find them hard to read even if using a large computer screen. Reading them on things like phones is difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore it makes sense to lay out your work in the most readable form. Why you would publish it in two columns is beyond me. Make it easy for the reader and then they are more likely to read, and cite, your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In answer to a comment: there are various pdf editors. However, I haven't found one that will accurately edit a pdf it didn't create unless the layout is very simple e.g. no header or footer, no page number, no title, only one column, etc. I usually find it is quicker to turn them into text and re-format, or just re-type the whole thing (something I do quite regularly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2016-12-12T18:19:38.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25515" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-12T23:20:52.883" Score="1" ViewCount="999" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team uses MadCap Flare to produce a large body of documentation (thousands of topics).  The source is &quot;Flare HTML&quot;, HTML with some Flare additions (for variables, admonitions, snippets, and so on).  We use CSS to style the HTML to our tastes.  We use the build tool that comes with Flare to produce the output, controlled by scripts that do some preprocessing (like making sure TOC entries are updated when topic headings change).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We would prefer to use a semantic markup language, like DocBook XML or DITA XML, instead of pure HTML.  Semantic markup would solve a number of writing problems for us.  But we've found no way to do this in Flare, and our writers are very attached to the tool, working directly with the Flare GUI almost exclusively.  Some of our users have expert-level knowledge of Flare; for this and other reasons,&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; changing tools would be very difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to use Flare with a semantic markup language, preserving the benefits of using the Flare GUI so the experience for our writers will be about the same as it is now?  HTML is &quot;baked in&quot; to Flare; can we bake in DocBook or DITA instead?  (Baking in a small subset of the DocBook spec would be fine; when I've used DocBook I probably only used 20-25 of the 400 elements in the schema.  I'm less familiar with DITA.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that for the build we'd have to add a transformation step, to turn the semantic markup into HTML before feeding it to the Flare build.  (That seems easier than making the Flare build understand a different schema, anyway.)  That's workable (we script this build anyway), though improvements on that would be welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our primary output is HTML, but we also produce PDF, where the formatting sometimes ends up being kind of messy.  We can't ditch the PDF entirely yet, so a solution to this problem needs to account for PDF too.  Our HTML requirement is &quot;looks good&quot; and our PDF requirement is &quot;doesn't break&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Other reasons: (a) no budget; (b) this is the preferred corporate tool (so politics); (c) this team has already changed tools once, about 3-4 years ago I think, and every now and then we still bump into suboptimal artifacts of that change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-12-13T03:36:45.840" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T23:23:18.993" Title="Can we use MadCap Flare with semantic markup?" Tags="|technical-writing|tools|software|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25515" CreationDate="2016-12-13T00:33:11.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure that the answer at the technical level is no. But this is really a question that needs to be addressed another level up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing about structured writing is that it factors out certain aspects of the final publication, which then have to be factored back in by algorithms when it comes time to publish. The reason for factoring these things out is so that you can apply different algorithms to produce different kinds of outputs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different structured writing systems factor out different elements of a publication, and thus support different types of algorithms for producing different types of content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, for the algorithms to work reliably, the writers have to get the structures correct. An editor with a fixed format like Word, FrameMaker, of Flare bakes the structures of those languages, and their representation, into the GUI. The GUI is based on the structures of those languages, and it will not fit other languages that have different structures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DocBook and DITA, therefore, require different interfaces that expose their structures to the writer. Adopting a different language means adopting a different interface. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, DITA and DocBook are big complicated languages. You can build interfaces for them that only support a small portion of the structures that the full languages support. These may be easier to use, but they don't support all the features of the language. You can think of these interfaces as being related to DITA and DocBook the way MarkDown is related to HTML. Markdown is much easier to write than HTML, but it does not support more than a fraction of the HTML language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost any writing formats in existence can be converted to DocBook. The result will be a valid DocBook document, but it won't take advantage of all the features of DocBook. Converting other formats to DITA is harder because of the topic architecture. But even where it works and produces a valid DITA file, it will not take advantage of all the features of DITA. Flare content could probably be converted to either DocBook or DITA, but the content would only contain those structures that are supported by the Flare interface. You would not get the full capability of Flare or DITA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, both DITA and DocBook support creating content structures that can be manipulates with a range of algorithms. But if your tool does not support the creation of the structures that those algorithms require, you won't be able to run them successfully, even if your source file is technically in DITA or DocBook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you have to work back from the algorithms you want to run on your content. The algorithms you want to run require certain content structures to run reliably. So you have to choose a language that supports those structures, and then you have to choose a tool that lets authors create those structures clearly and easily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the tool you are using now does not support the algorithms you want to run, chances are it will not support the creation of the structures you need to run those algorithms. You need a tool that fits the format that supports the algorithms you want to run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T00:33:11.537" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25517" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-13T00:54:36.263" Score="1" ViewCount="685" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm confused about proper punctuation, spacing, and capitalization when a character is speaking and is interrupted by actions without continuing dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Maybe we could—&quot; My phone rang.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Maybe we could—&quot; The dog started barking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Maybe we could—&quot; He raised his hand to silence me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Maybe we could—&quot; Was that a scream?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it correct to capitalize My, The, He and Was?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also,   when another person is speaking and is interrupted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This is one of the best—&quot; She was interrupted by Danny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This is one of the best—&quot; She didn't finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This is one of the best—&quot; Started Jim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it correct to capitalize She and Started?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22535" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T18:08:37.383" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T20:43:42.430" Title="Capitalization after interrupted dialogue" Tags="|dialogue|punctuation|capitalization|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25518" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-13T01:13:31.230" Score="4" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story which starts with the birth of the MC; the scene just shows the parents talking with the doctor. The MC enters the picture in third person limited in the following scene (and the POV continues throughout the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this still third person limited? Or it's third person omniscient at first and then I have to change the POV to third person limited with a scene break?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T14:44:15.487" Title="Can you use third person limited in a story that begins before the MC is born?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25518" CreationDate="2016-12-13T03:41:25.917" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Third person omniscient and third person limited are analytical categories. They are terms you use if you want to dissect the use of POV in a piece. Don't take them for rules about what you have to do, and don't think you have to even be able to describe what you end up doing in those terms. The fact of the matter is that writers switch POV all the time, and that in many cases it is not clear what analytical category POV even belongs to. (Third person omniscient, for instance, can see everything that third person limited can, so it is not always clear which is being used unless the narrative clearly steps outside of limited.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do what works for your story. If it seems natural to you and to readers it is fine, even if you can't categorize it exactly, and even if analysis says it is inconsistent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T03:41:25.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25517" CreationDate="2016-12-13T03:45:38.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has nothing to do with who spoke or who interrupted. It only has to do with what is a sentence. Speech tags are part of the same sentence as the dialog the report. Separate actions occurring after the speech are separate sentences. Only the last of your examples is a speech tag, though an awkward one. The rest are separate sentences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T03:45:38.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25335" CreationDate="2016-12-13T05:29:49.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are the only one behind the research and the writing behind the paper, I is a singular term and should therefore should be used instead of we. There is no &quot;we&quot; behind the paper if there was only one person masterminding the project. Although, If this was a formal Scientific paper, It Usually is incorrect to refer to ones self during the script; the point is to present your point, not the fact that you found it(although if you found something completely unique and incredibly interesting, by all means, announce the fact of your hand behind the discovery-outside of the paper.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22557" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T05:29:49.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25522" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-13T08:54:57.117" Score="3" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have come across some documents (not publicly viewable) that state that footnotes (for the purposes of adding further information) are not permitted in an academic text writen using in-text citations. This seems nonsense to me and I strongly suspect it is a misunderstanding that has solidified into a rule in this particular academic sidestreet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could anybody point me toward a reputable source (or at least a definitive example) indicating either way on the issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22558" LastActivityDate="2017-09-12T07:20:40.863" Title="Footnotes when using in-text citation style" Tags="|citations|footnotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25522" CreationDate="2016-12-13T13:26:35.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fallacy here is the idea that there are general rules at all. There are no general rules about what is allowed in an academic paper, or any other kind of writing. There are specific style guides -- some public, some specific to a particular institution or publication -- and their rules cover the particular institution or publication that publishes or ascribes to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the only requirements that you should worry about are those imposed by the particular publication or institution you are writing for, and those rules should be contained in a particular style guide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If two style guides differ on some rule, this is not a disagreement, it is merely a difference. If two soldiers from different armies exchanged clothes, then both their respective commanders would consider them to be out of uniform. But if they met a soldier of a different army in the uniform of that army, they would not consider them to be out of uniform, even though the uniform they were wearing was different from their own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T13:26:35.220" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5292" CreationDate="2016-12-13T13:41:25.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fiction (which takes place in a universe much neater than our own), a change of name almost always indicates a change of status. Thus when Strider becomes Aragorn his status changes from vagabond to king. How a character responds to the change of name, therefore, is a signal of how they respond to the change of status. Failure to change would indicate either a refusal to acknowledge the change of status or a claim to an intimacy that supersedes those of status, like members of the royal family calling the queen Lillibet or Grandma, or a claim to superior status that does not require you to acknowledge the new status. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how your characters handle the new name indicates whether or not, and in what way, they acknowledge and accept the character's new status. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T13:41:25.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25518" CreationDate="2016-12-13T14:44:15.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start the story in the third person &quot;cinematic&quot; (no head-dipping), and then switch to the third person limited after a scene or chapter break, just as you plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third person omniscient will work for the beginning, too, but is arguably harder to make sound natural than any other flavors of that POV, this is why it is relatively less popular in modern writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers do switch POV within one scene more often than not—I am not a fan of that technique—it is eventually a matter of style and personal preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T14:44:15.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25494" CreationDate="2016-12-13T18:37:19.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write your first draft however you can get through it. Mix voices and influences, ignore errors, whatever. Consider your first draft something of a big creative experiment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smoothing out the voice of the piece happens in revision. (Lots of other things are tweaked in revision too: errors, point of view, scene ordering, etc.) Good readers will help with this by flagging spots where voice sounds inconsistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T18:37:19.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25494" CreationDate="2016-12-13T23:30:09.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I might suggest an exercise to help with this, if you want to work on developing your own unique style. You could try this for a sentence, a paragraph, or a couple of paragraphs or pages. It would probably be best to try a paragraph at a time to start with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by writing a sentence (or taking one that you've already written) look at it, and decide what the essence of the sentence is. The key here is that you'll be working with the &lt;em&gt;idea&lt;/em&gt; that you want to communicate in each sentence, paragraph, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you have your first sentence in front of you. Now go back and write it again, but try writing the same thing in a different way. You might do this by using a different choice or words, varying how long and short your sentences are, or by changing the structure. Here's an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;With a glance over his shoulder, James stepped across the room.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not bad, but not necessarily very interesting. How can we shake things up a bit to catch the reader's eye? The first thing you might try is to change the structure of the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;James stepped across the room, glancing over his shoulder.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that by switching the halves of the sentence, the idea that James is moving is emphasized by putting that idea first. Also, using the word &lt;em&gt;glancing&lt;/em&gt; as opposed to &lt;em&gt;with a glance&lt;/em&gt; emphasizes the idea that the action is in progress. It suggests motion and that he has just done this, or is in the middle of doing it. &#xA;If you want to emphasize his glance over his shoulder or if that is more important than his moving across the room, we could leave that in the first half instead of switching things around. &#xA;Now what if 'stepped' doesn't communicated the right idea? It's not specific enough, or James, in your mind, is upset or nervous? If we use a different word, we might be able to give the reader a different picture of what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;James hurried across the room, glancing over his shoulder.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this is a bit more interesting. The word &quot;hurried&quot; gives the reader an idea of nervous energy. 'Stepping' is apparently not fast enough for James, so he &lt;em&gt;hurries&lt;/em&gt; across the room. Notice how one word can change the entire feeling of a sentence. There are always ideas that your reader will take from your writing beyond what is stated simply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that this advice might sound basic, but the choice of words can be very effective in putting a particular idea in the reader's mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21581" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T23:30:09.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25532" CreationDate="2016-12-14T01:12:23.317" Score="1" ViewCount="5514" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a revision of my novel and noticed that I mark the passage of a very brief time, of a hesitation, using a small number of descriptions that become repetitive, e.g. variations of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;for a heartbeat or two&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he breathed in, held the air, and let it out&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What strategies can I use to find fresh ways to convey a brief hesitation or pause in action or dialog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastActivityDate="2016-12-14T08:54:29.787" Title="Showing a Brief Hesitation" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25531" CreationDate="2016-12-14T01:33:55.370" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A character who hesitates is probably thinking about something. Maybe deliberating about the wisdom or consequences of the action. Weighing risks. Deliberating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're in the hesitating character's POV, write what the character is thinking and feeling that causes the hesitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're in another character's POV, write the POV character's reaction to observing the hesitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-12-14T01:33:55.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25533" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-14T01:54:45.000" Score="1" ViewCount="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that this website isn&lt;code&gt;t meant for editing, but my story is a little personal and I was hoping to remain anonymous. This is just a rough draft that might be a little hard to read. The goal is to write a narrative essay which answers the prompt of &quot;how a positive connection with an older generation can enrich our lives&quot;. I haven&lt;/code&gt;t written alot of narratives before, so I`m concerned about the structure. My story is about dealing with OCD and how the artist Tupac Shakur helped me with this. I know that might not make sense, but Tupac knew quite a lot about the world around him and spoke about issues in the world in his songs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember in the past when I was living under the rule of dictator in my head. OCD, a mental illness is what doctors would call this dictator. They explained that it caused constant anxiety over something that was pointless to worry about in the first place. To me this was the dictator`s propaganda. At one particular point in time I remember him explaining “That I must “I must go to postsecondary to pursue a complicated mathematical career”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is when things started to get out of hand. Weekend nights were spent close to my textbook and a can of Dr. Pepper to keep me a wake. Ridiculous rituals became habits like avoiding paint, tuna, soccer headers or anything that could possibly affect my mental acuity, which as OCD put it “Would derail me from my job path”. Any job in the trades field was sin to think about. After months of listening to OCD it left me feeling like a worn out drug addict. My body weak and used up, my mind tired but hungry for another hit of OCD. Another hit for a small dosage of satisfaction, which in the end would kill me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Tupac were alive today he would have been 40 years old, but at 25 he had experienced a lot and knew a lot about the world around him.The song, staring through my rearview, explains how simple life really is but how we as humans overcomplicate it. As the song progressed it was at the point when he explains “See when I&lt;code&gt;m staring at my rear view I see the world behind me. Once you get and understanding of how the game works then the world isn&lt;/code&gt;t no trick no more. The world is just a game to be played. Just gotta put our mind to it and do it. This single quote showed how ridiculous the belief Ocd led me to believe was. The society that we humans designed is a game with simple rules, one of them being you must pay rent. No one cares of how you pay pay rent the most important thing is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22568" LastActivityDate="2016-12-14T01:54:45.000" Title="Help with editing my narrative story." Tags="|editing|narrative|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-12-14T17:26:48.880" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25531" CreationDate="2016-12-14T04:01:22.377" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have so many pauses that you feel the need to vary how you describe them, chances are that the reason it feels repetitive is that you are reaching for the same device too many times, not that you are always describing it the same way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason could be that you have fallen into the trap of TV writing -- writing a scene as you imagine it would be acted on TV. But this never works. The screen is a synchronous medium. A scene happens in real time and there are usually several things going on at once -- one actor is reacting while another is speaking while other things are happening in the background. A pause is a dramatic device that an actor can use to good effect because it takes real time on screen. The viewer has to wait on the pause (though they may have other stuff to look at while it goes on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book, by contrast, is asynchronous. A scene unfolds at the pace that the reader reads, not the pace that the action occurs, and if there are multiple things going on simultaneously, the reader reads them one by one out of time sequence. A pause is generally not dramatic because it takes no more time than it takes to read the words. There may be times when it is appropriate to say that a character paused, but if you go to that well very often it is just going to sound repetitive and eventually silly, because it simply does not have the effect in a book that it has on the screen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Book storytelling is not screen storytelling written down. It is a very different art form with very different strengths and weaknesses. Things like pause, which take up actual time, have a high impact in a synchronous media. They are weak in an asynchronous media. There are other ways to show hesitation on the page -- you can show it in non-committal or evasive speech for instance. You should use the tools that your chosen medium provides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't expect that finding different ways to phrase things that are not working is suddenly going to make them work. The magic is not in the phrasing, but in the correct juxtaposition of story elements. The correct juxtaposition of story elements to achieve a specific effect is different between media. You have to use the right storytelling techniques for the media you are working in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-12-14T04:24:48.753" LastActivityDate="2016-12-14T04:24:48.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25531" CreationDate="2016-12-14T08:54:29.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;h3&gt;1. Punctuation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expected:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a revision of my novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pause:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working. On a revision of my novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other pauses: &lt;code&gt;; : , –&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2. Layout / Whitespace&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expected:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a revision of my novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pause:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;                     on a revision of my novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can only do this once in a book, unless you use experimental layout throughout. You also have to be careful not make this look like an editing error. I used something like this once when the protagonist first saw his love interest – the impact on him was such that even the narration stopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;3. Description&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Describe what happens while your character hesitates.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expected:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a revision of my novel and noticed that I mark the passage ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pause:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a revision of my novel when my fingers stop typing, my eyes unfocus, my body relaxes, and my gaze slowly floats upward and out the window. Photons still hit my eyes and sound waves break on my eardrum, but these sensations don't register in my mind. I am still and empty, not thinking, with the world passing through me as if I had disappeared. Time passes. Then my gaze focusses outward again, I see the sun on the leaves outside, then look back down to my laptop. I notice that I mark the passage ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-12-14T08:54:29.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25536" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25543" CreationDate="2016-12-14T19:37:21.930" Score="3" ViewCount="3552" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe writing in the first person gets the reader closer to the character. As far as I know, this is generally accepted as true. That's not all there is to character development, certainly, but it gets the reader in a better &lt;em&gt;mind-set&lt;/em&gt; for 'closeness' with the character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The novel I am currently writing has a PoV who is not the protagonist. I am considering writing the PoV in first person, which I think would sound really good for the novel, but I'm wondering if this is going to remove the reader's focus from the protagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to keep the reader's focus on the protagonist, largely because the PoV, in her current state, would not make a very good one. She is selfish, sometimes without even knowing it, and would almost certainly inspire thoughts of boredom or even anger in the reader if she was who the novel is about. But she's not. The novel is about the protagonist. I feel like I've made this distinction, and there is no threat of alienating the reader through my PoV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless I write in the first person. Will writing the PoV in the first person draw my reader closer to her, away from the protagonist, and therefore further in general from the novel? It's my personal opinion that I can write in the first person and still keep the focus on the protagonist, but I want to make sure I'm not walking into a trap here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a duplicate of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/18205/do-i-have-to-write-my-book-in-the-main-characters-pov&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;. The question isn't whether I can split the PoV and the protagonist. I know I can do that. This question deals with using the first person for that PoV, given that it is (generally) accepted that first person PoV draws the reader closer to the character, and the story is about the protagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To future viewers: Choosing the answer was a toss-up between Mike C. Ford and WolfeFan; they both have excellent answers. I would also recommend that you look at what's answer. It has some interesting insights which could prove useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-12-16T17:58:55.717" Title="First Person when the PoV is not the Protagonist?" Tags="|fiction|viewpoint|readers|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25536" CreationDate="2016-12-14T20:04:20.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you are incorrect. If anything, writing in the first person distances you from the character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, consider the characters from fiction that you feel like you know well. Harry Potter? Oliver Twist? Frodo Baggins? All described in third person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, consider the actual effect of first person narrative. A story told in the first person is one in which the protagonist never enters the frame. (Note that it is incredibly rare for a movie or TV show to be shot in first person, except for the odd effect shot, like looking through binoculars or down the barrel of a gun.) That creates distance from the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, consider that this technique ensures that we only know of the narrator what they choose to tell of themselves. It is an axiom of fiction that everybody lies. A first person narrator is telling their side of the story. They are putting their best foot forward. This creates a guardedness in the reader, the same kind of guardedness they would have with anyone telling them a story in real life. A story becomes hearsay. The reader does not see it for themselves but hears a report of it from a participant. This create a huge amount of distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, people are often (some would say always) a mystery to themselves. We don't just lie to others, we lie to ourselves. And we often do not understand the real reasons that we do things. As EM Forster pointed out, the unique privilege of the novelist is to see into the soul of the character, to know things about the character that the character does not know about themselves. An omniscient narrator can get closer to a character than they are to themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A first person narrator, then, is actually a device for creating distance, not intimacy. Creating narrative distance can be a powerful tool. There are numerous examples of this in literature, including many in which the narrator is not the protagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example of this is Bernard Corwall's Arthurian series in which the narrator is one of Arthur's retainers. Not only is it told first person by someone not the hero, it is told as recollected in old age, creating further distance. The effect of this is to preserve the mythic sense of Arthur, and effect that would be lost if Arthur were the narrator. What we get is a memory of Arthur, not an experience of Arthur, and the difference that makes is huge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Distance, and the manipulation of distance, are some of the most important tools in the writer's toolbox. Creating closeness to the character is not always what you want, therefore. And if it is what you want, third person omniscient will let you get far more intimate with a character than first person, because third person omniscient can see everything the character can see, and whole lot more, including the stuff that the character would lie to themselves and others about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-12-15T12:49:45.967" LastActivityDate="2016-12-15T12:49:45.967" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25536" CreationDate="2016-12-14T21:35:27.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please go ahead and write this character's scenes in first person. You clearly already want to do this. Even if you decide not to take this approach in your final draft, you will deepen your understanding of the character - and this depth will show in the story's final form, whatever form that may take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing this character in first person will, in fact, draw readers closer to her. That's inevitable. This doesn't mean that your protagonist will suffer from lack of attention. Rather, it gives you some interesting opportunities to develop the protagonist. For example, you can show the protagonist's strengths in comparison to the more flawed PoV character, with the bonus of easily maintaining sympathy for the flawed character. You can allow the readers to learn rumors/lies about the protagonist, and wonder how true they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16610" LastActivityDate="2016-12-14T21:35:27.860" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25539" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-15T02:49:51.983" Score="1" ViewCount="284" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a step-father is texting his step daughter and he writes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maybe your &quot;dad&quot; can step up and take the dog &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's meant by putting quotation marks around the word &quot;dad&quot;?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22580" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-12-16T04:24:13.557" LastActivityDate="2016-12-16T04:24:13.557" Title="Why use quotes on the word &quot;Dad&quot; when talking to someone?" Tags="|technique|punctuation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-12-21T14:47:22.177" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25539" CreationDate="2016-12-15T09:36:19.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between a dad and a dad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your quote comes from the step father, so it is likely that he (and possibly his step daughter too) only see the other dad as the biological producer, but not as father as it is in a family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Placing dad in &quot;&quot; is a debasement from father as part of the family to father as the producer of a child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22409" LastActivityDate="2016-12-15T09:36:19.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25541" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-15T10:50:32.327" Score="2" ViewCount="564" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently co-writing a novel. It is written one chapter in Greek and one chapter in English. We are planning to translate the whole text in both languages, and when we are finished there will be two books in two languages: The one manuscript will be a translation of the other. There will be no exact original and no exact translation or &quot;true&quot; original source because the book has been written in both Greek and English from the start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My co-author and I were wondering how that novel will be published in both languages by different publishers (a local and an international one). If anyone could give us any information, it would be really helpful. In particular, how will copyrights be handled? What other problems might this cause?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22583" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-12-16T18:44:41.173" LastActivityDate="2016-12-16T18:44:41.173" Title="How do publishers handle bilingual novels?" Tags="|publishing|novel|copyright|translation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25165" CreationDate="2016-12-15T11:17:04.397" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question of censorship is usually very sensitive, and sometimes lack of censure can significantly change your appearance. I would rather you not use a clear form of the word &quot;fuckin'&quot;. There are more polite versions that transport the same emotions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22283" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-12-15T12:52:57.083" LastActivityDate="2016-12-15T12:52:57.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25536" CreationDate="2016-12-15T12:03:10.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on the novel that you want to write. I think the issue isn't with the &lt;em&gt;distance&lt;/em&gt; from the protagonist by having the POV character as a secondary character, but rather that you will struggle to attain &lt;em&gt;depth&lt;/em&gt; in the protagonist with this method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the protagonist is relatable, or interesting, or complex, then the reader will empathize with them and want to get to know them better if they are written well. Some of my favorite characters in conventional POV = protagonist stories are the side characters, and I finish reading wishing that the story was actually about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the reader can feel like they are close to the non-POV character, but without being in their head it's impossible to know everything that is going on with them. Unless they communicate everything to the POV character/ reader, it will be impossible to know who they truly are, or how they see themselves. The reader will only ever experience the story and other characters through a filter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this can be used very effectively as a method of character development (perhaps the POV character thinks the protagonist is a hero, whilst the protagonist believes s/he is a fraud and has just gotten lucky so far), but at the very least it limits the ways in which we can understand the protagonist further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately you aren't writing a story about the protagonist if you choose to use this method. You are writing about their &lt;em&gt;adventures&lt;/em&gt;, but the story is about how the POV character &lt;em&gt;experiences&lt;/em&gt; those adventures, and their relationship together. It is a fundamentally different type of story for the reader, and offers both opportunities and limitations for developing the narrative and characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-12-15T17:59:59.280" LastActivityDate="2016-12-15T17:59:59.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25536" CreationDate="2016-12-15T12:48:47.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You write that you believe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;writing in the first person gets the reader closer to the character. As far as I know, this is generally accepted as true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What brings a reader closer to a character is &lt;strong&gt;narrative perspective&lt;/strong&gt;, not grammatical person. Third person narration is the standard in Western fiction. Readers are used to this convention and do not perceive it as signifying an outside perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Narrative perspective has nothing to do with grammar. You bring a reader &quot;in line&quot; with the experience of a character by narrating that experience in a manner that evokes a similar experience in the reader. This can be done in both first and third person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First person, as Mark Baker has elaborated, &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; come with a more subjective perspective and include misperceptions, lies, and other deviations from the objectivity that we commonly associate with the &quot;third person omniscient narrator&quot;, but there are third person narrators that lie to the reader and first person narrators that manage an objective view on &quot;themselves&quot;. As you note, I put &lt;em&gt;themselves&lt;/em&gt; in quotation marks, because &lt;strong&gt;we must never confuse the narrator with the character&lt;/strong&gt;. The narrator is a literary device and it – not he or she – is always distinct from the protagonist, as well as the author, no matter how much the narrator takes on one or the other perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, you must keep three concepts apart:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the author&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the protagonist (or any other character)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the narrator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The narrator is the device with which you guide the experience of the reader. The narrator has several dimensions, of which the following are a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;interiority vs exteriority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;grammatical person&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;subjectivity (and lies) vs objectivity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;showing vs telling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;present tense vs past tense&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;description vs action vs dialog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;standard literary language vs personal voice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no clear correlation between one extreme on any one of these dimensions and a reader's closeness to a character. Rather, they all combine to create an overall effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, let's consider your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third person narrator is &lt;em&gt;neutral&lt;/em&gt;. A third person narrator may stick to the perspective of one character or switch between those of several characters or even leave all characters and describe places or events without people. For example, in a story, the narrator may describe what goes on while all the characters are asleep: &lt;code&gt;The sun came up. The birds started to sing. Finally John awoke.&lt;/code&gt; Here, the first two sentences are &quot;free of character&quot;, impersonal. There is no one there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A first person narrator, on the other hand, clearly posits a character: there is &quot;someone&quot; there, and as readers we naturally focus as much attention on that character as the first person pronouns suggest that we do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there you have your answer. A first person narrator can bring themselves to the attention of the reader or avoid that attention, simply by how much they talk about themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at this example, where I narrate a visit to the dentist with my son:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I went to the dentist with my son. On our way to the dentist, I could see that my son was apprehensive. As we got there, the dentist shook my hand, then greeted my son. I was worried, but I saw how my son relaxed, when the friendly dentist smiled at him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, you, as a reader, will be confused about who the story is about: me or my son. Now compare this with another first person narration of the same events:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I went to the dentist with my son. My son was aprehensive and quiet on the bus, but when he saw the relaxed manner of the dentist and the dentist shook his hand with a big smile, he was no longer afraid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, &quot;I&quot; am there, and you don't forget that I am, but I quickly step back and allow my son center stage. I can take this to an extreme, like Defoe in &lt;em&gt;Robinson Crusoe&lt;/em&gt;, and appear only in the framing narrative. Or I can be a companion or side kick or the antagonist or another character with a more or less important role and continually take part in the story, and still not push myself before the third person protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I&quot;, the first person narrator, can even do all that the third person narrator can, and narrate events that I did not witness. A &lt;strong&gt;first person omniscient&lt;/strong&gt; narrator can be motivated (e.g. the protagonist later tells him what happened while he was elsewhere), or remain unexplained. Again, I want to remind you that the narrator is not a person but a device, and that readers will go with a first person omniscient narrator if that narrator &lt;strong&gt;is consistent&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;makes sense&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-12-15T12:48:47.107" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25541" CreationDate="2016-12-15T12:51:13.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you sell a novel to a publisher, you sell them specific right to publish in certain languages and certain countries. Whatever rights you don't sell, you retain and can sell to someone else. Usually publishers want to buy all rights, and usually writers want to sell only limited rights, since they can make more money by selling the rights individually in different countries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the writer is very famous or has a very good agent, they probably lose this argument with the publisher and sell all rights. This means they get less money for what are called &quot;secondary&quot; rights -- translations and sales in other countries. So it matters where you sell the primary rights. A lot of Canadian authors, for instance, end up earning less money on their Canadian sales because their American publisher considers Canadian right to be secondary and takes their cut of the profits. So the calculation becomes, do I sell primary rights in Canada, where, as a Canadian I may sell more books, or do I sell primary rights in the US which is a market 10 times the size? You might have the same dilemma between Greek and English markets as primary and secondary. But you shouldn't take the above as gospel. It is based on hearsay and could be out of date. You should consult a good agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that the fact that you wrote half in English and half in Greek might be a point that the publicity department might want to use for promotional purposes, but otherwise isn't going to make any difference. The only exception might be that if the book becomes very famous, or becomes of academic interest, then at some point in the future the publisher might think about doing a dual language edition. Maybe a small Greek literary publisher might be interested in doing a dual language edition right off the bat, but that would appeal to a very small market. Then again, you can never quite tell when a novelty item, like a novel written in two languages, will appeal to the public's imagination, so who knows.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-15T12:51:13.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25539" CreationDate="2016-12-15T19:38:24.210" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because he is &lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt; quoting her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably, if we can read way too far into this, our stepfather feels that he fills the role of a father in his stepdaughter's life. He presumably provides for her, spends time with her, sees to her needs, perhaps goes to school plays and parent-teacher conferences, signs permission forms...all the things that a dad does. However, she does not grant him the affectionate and intimate title of Dad - she reserves that title for her biological father, who our offended stepfather feels does not deserve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus when she is upset with him for not doing something for her - apparently he refused to walk the dog - he uses her own words to refer to a person who he knows will not put himself out for her, offset with quotes to show that it's not &lt;em&gt;him&lt;/em&gt; who calls this person her dad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same can be done with other titles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His Holiness, the Pope - indicates that the Pope is holy - vs His &amp;quot;Holiness&amp;quot;, the Pope - indicates that the Pope &lt;em&gt;says&lt;/em&gt; he's holy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;President Donald Trump - indicates that Donald Trump is President - vs &amp;quot;President&amp;quot; Donald Trump - indicates that Donald Trump is not &lt;em&gt;acting&lt;/em&gt; like a president, whatever he says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22241" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-12-15T19:38:24.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25539" CreationDate="2016-12-15T19:54:48.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any word with quotation marks around it which is not a direction quotation implies the word is false or the statement is not wholly true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's freezing outside and I go out, I might say that I'm entering the &quot;freezer.&quot; I'm not saying I'm literally entering a freezer, but that the outdoors is similar to a freezer in terms of the temperature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if a step-father says to his step-daughter that her &quot;dad&quot; could take care of the dog, he's subtly showing his opinion that her &quot;dad&quot; isn't acting like one. Or, while being her biological father, no longer fills that role for her. Depending on the context, there are several meanings which could be implied, but they all have the same general flavor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-12-15T19:54:48.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25548" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-15T23:44:09.220" Score="3" ViewCount="464" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me open by saying that I wasn't entirely sure how to ask this question and stay on topic. This is my best attempt. I do believe this question will help other writers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an author, I want to read a lot. I don't want to read just anything though. There's some content I don't want. Beyond that, I obviously don't want to read books that are poor examples of characterization, plotting, stakes, etc. Then there's the vague 'well written' requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the obvious desire to not read poorly done works, I mimic what I read to a high degree. I can control my mimicry to a certain extent, but I don't want to have bad writing in the back of my mind while I am creating my future bestsellers. (What? Optimism is good.) It should be noted that I see my mimicry as a useful ability, and not something to be gotten rid of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This mindset on reading has given rise to the situation I now find myself in: reading the same small collection of excellently written books over and over. I feel like I need to expand my horizons without damaging my writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; Do not confuse the question. I'm not looking for writing I can mimic. I'm simply looking for examples of good writing. The main goal is simply to &lt;em&gt;not have bad writing in my head while I write.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The problem:&lt;/strong&gt; Doing this is easier said than done. I've found plenty of passionate recommendations on this site alone, but they always seem to be followed by equally passionate criticisms of the same book. I've tried searching for the novel equivalent of the iMDB, and I've found a few results, but these websites usually have only half or fewer of the books I look up. Wikipedia gives the plot and isn't really the best place for discerning the level of writing of a particular novel. For a time I watched the NYT Bestsellers List, but I quickly discovered that a lot of what I considered 'low quality' writing was on that list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The question:&lt;/strong&gt; What can I do? How can I locate novels that are known for being well done? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Obviously a lot depends on my definition of 'well done,' so I'm mainly looking for a breakdown of novels, without revealing the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2016-12-16T17:47:57.517" LastActivityDate="2016-12-19T18:09:41.500" Title="How Can I Reliably Find Well Written Novels?" Tags="|novel|resources|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25548" CreationDate="2016-12-16T00:21:49.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably the best filter of all is age. Any book that is still around 50 years after is was written is probably around because it is well written. Recent books get liked for all sorts of reasons other than being well written. They express a popular political or social prejudice. They ride on the coattails of a current craze. Their authors was once on a TV show. Oprah liked them. All this stuff fades away with time and you are left with the stuff that remains in circulation because it is good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some anomalies, of course. Kipling is the biggest one that occurs to me at the moment. He is one of the greats of English literature and an writer can learn a huge amount from reading him. But he is branded as a voice of colonialism, though anyone who bothers to read Recessional or The White Man's Burden all the way to the end should see that some nuance should be applied to that interpretation. Anyway, todays particularly harsh political filters may diminish the stature of some of the greats of the past, but even they stand out from the forgotten masses of authors of their age. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-16T00:21:49.173" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25550" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-16T00:35:11.037" Score="1" ViewCount="596" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a short story as an English major work whilst at high school, one that was part of my final testing for graduating so it was submitted to the Government of Education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I wanted to rework this and publish it as a short novel, would I have issues with self-plagarism? Or not because it technically hasn't been previously published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22590" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T16:22:24.687" Title="Publishing old school assignments - self-plagarism?" Tags="|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25548" CreationDate="2016-12-16T10:55:18.380" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem is not merely that you want &quot;novels which are well-done.&quot; You want &lt;em&gt;writing styles you feel safe reading because you would feel happy imitating them.&lt;/em&gt; You are asking someone else, someone who isn't you, to curate a list of source material for your creative output. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no way an anonymous or aggregate online source is going to be able to accomplish that for you. You need to sit down with a human being and present a list of novels and writers you appreciated, and why you liked them. Then that person might have a chance of assembling a list for you. We here can give you all manner of criteria (sales volume, age, notoriety, usage in schools) and they will all be useless if those particular works don't fit your personal vision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to try a librarian, or several librarians. You want to find a human being who is really well-read over many genres and talk to that person or people to ask them &quot;I like X and Y and Z because of 1 and 2 and 3. What other writers and novels &lt;em&gt;of that caliber&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;with those qualities&lt;/em&gt; can you suggest?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-16T10:55:18.380" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25550" CreationDate="2016-12-16T17:06:52.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what rules might apply where you are (Government of Education makes me think not the US so keep in mind I'm talking from the perspective of the US). As far as I know, you are okay. You are the writer. You don't sign over any rights to the work when you submit something as a school assignment. Only if you wrote it as a work-for-hire or assigned rights over to someone else would I see any problem with you publishing it. Except for those cases, you wrote it, it's yours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in those other cases, it wouldn't be plagiarism (because you are still the author) but it could be copyright infringement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-12-16T17:06:52.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25554" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25562" CreationDate="2016-12-16T18:41:27.407" Score="6" ViewCount="1791" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the problem areas that I face while writing my novel is that I often get stuck when writing descriptions. I do well when writing action sequences, when writing dialogues, when showing character interactions but when it comes to describing the surroundings, I simply am not able to do it. I mean, I can paint a picture in my head but it just does not translate the same to the paper. It misses the richness, the vividness that I want. And even when I force myself, the end product comes out looking visibly bad. I find myself using the same phrases again and again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For e.g., If I'm trying to describe a palace, in my head I can see its white walls, how it shines in the moonlight, its entire awe inspiring structure but when I put it to paper, it just does not evoke the same reaction. It just feels as if it is missing something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking to make my descriptions more rich and vivid and immersive to the reader. So what can I do to improve my ability to write descriptions ? Maybe any online resources or some recommended books ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had a look at these questions -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7664/improving-techniques-independently-description&quot;&gt;Improving techniques independently: Description&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/16737/any-helpful-tips-on-how-to-better-use-description-in-my-writing&quot;&gt;Any helpful tips on how to, better use description in my writing?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and also taken a look at Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. While they deal with theories to use (5 senses approach, etc.), what I am looking for is a more practical approach with practical tips and examples reflecting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: I'm clarifying my question in response to Laurem Ipsum's question -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, when I say &quot;a practical approach&quot;, I mean it in the sense of an  example oriented approach and not in the sense of feasibility (I should have said practical-oriented)...for e.g. starting with a scenario and making it better with each tip so that I can actually see the tip in action, something like that (I know it might be a tall order, but doesn't hurt to ask :))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, The issue I've is not with the visualisation (as is in the five senses approach), In any scene - I can observe the scene with all my senses but when i try to put it in on paper, I am not able to make it as immersive as it is in my head. My beta readers do not walk away with the same impression that I've in my mind. I understand that people interpret differently and I do not want to force every scene but in certain scenes, I want to create an experience the readers want to be immersed in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at the below excerpt from an Ashok Banker book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Through a shroud of torrential rain, glimpsed darkly. Upon a grassy,&#xA;  green mound in the centre of a clearing in the heart of a jungle named&#xA;  Janasthana. Motionless as a redstone statue, rain sluicing off the&#xA;  hardened planes of his body, he stood, one dark shadow amidst many.&#xA;  The sinuous curve of a longbow was welded to his silhouette; rain ran&#xA;  down the length of a longsword hanging by a thongbelt at his slender&#xA;  waist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The clearing was a rough oval some five hundred feet long and two&#xA;  hundred feet wide: broadest in the north, narrowing in the centre and&#xA;  tapering into thorny undergrowth at the southern end. It broke the&#xA;  dense continuity of the ancient jungle with shocking abruptness, like&#xA;  a footprint left by a giant in millennia past—or a deva. The treeline&#xA;  sheered off raggedly at its periphery, trees leaning inwards drunkenly&#xA;  like a ragged ring of bhang-sodden revellers on a feast day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... (Some Text Removed)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whether you believed the legend or not, it was a&#xA;  good spot to make a stand against a horde of rakshasas. A desperate,&#xA;  outnumbered, outmatched, last stand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rain fell steadily, speaking a thousand tongues. It shirred like&#xA;  an angry cobra upon the large fronds of plantain and papaya trees,&#xA;  rattled like hailstones on the hollow worm-corrupted length of a&#xA;  rotten trunk. At the northernmost edge of the clearing, atop a very&#xA;  tall oak tree, concealed from the eyes of the mortals below, a simian&#xA;  creature squatted on a sturdy branch. From time to time, he shifted&#xA;  slightly, always keeping the mortal warrior below clearly in view. He&#xA;  hugged the trunk beside him with spindly yet strong arms. Even had the&#xA;  rain not cloaked the upper branches in a fine mist-like haze, the&#xA;  canopy of newly-grown spring foliage was dense enough to mask his&#xA;  presence from those below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text maybe a bit purple for some but it allows me to visualise the whole thing exactly as it is described. I'm completely immersed in this. This is what I want for my readers. I want my text to extract an image out of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-12-17T15:55:06.047" Title="How to develop a more vivid and descriptive writing style" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25548" CreationDate="2016-12-16T18:47:59.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't want well-written novels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read many novels that are either classics or have gotten much praise in major newspapers (such as the New York Times), and when I read them I could appreciate that they were well-crafted and &quot;good&quot;, yet they did not resonate with me. Their content held no interest for me or their language didn't please me or both. Or I enjoyed them but do not want to write in that style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you want, are novels that are well-written &lt;em&gt;by your standards or taste&lt;/em&gt;. And to find those, you must read them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding novels that have a language that you want to emulate is incredibly easy. Go to a library or book store, start at one end of the shelf, pick the first book, and start reading. If you like what you read, sit down and read a chapter. If it fits your style, buy it or lend it and read it. If you don't like it, put it back and look in the next book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you should probably let go of the idea that you will find one or a few books that you can &quot;mimick&quot; to create your own style. I have really read a lot, but my own writing is different from most everything that I have ever read. I don't mean to say that my writing is better or positively unique. It is idiosyncratic. Like the shape of my body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't expect too much from your search, and don't go on an endless quest for the ideal example for you. Instead, find books that &lt;em&gt;come close&lt;/em&gt; to where you aim and thus &quot;encircle&quot; your goal. Let other people's writing inspire you, maybe give you some ideas, and then write and write and write. Good examples shape and sharpen your linguistic sensibility, but you need to go beyond what exists and experiment to find your own voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-12-17T09:17:30.433" LastActivityDate="2016-12-17T09:17:30.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25548" CreationDate="2016-12-16T19:05:24.443" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading broadly is one of the best things a writer can do, aside from writing a lot, but reading only what you consider good writing is somewhat limiting. Books that have issues have a lot to teach you, too. If you avoid issues you're shortchanging your education as a writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you keep finding yourself writing in a pastiche of the styles you've read, perhaps the problem isn't that you need to tightly control your input but you need to become aware of why this is happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding why you have the impulse to pay homage to writing you admire will allow you to use this talent (and it is a talent) in a way that services your own personal stylistic goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2016-12-16T19:05:24.443" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25557" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27153" CreationDate="2016-12-16T22:49:59.573" Score="2" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;My teacher is making us do MLA and I don't like how intrusive to my writing it is to have to cite a long article title. For example, in my last essay, we were required to use The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a source, so when quoting it, it looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The quick brown fox...&quot;(The Universal Declaration of Human Rights). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see lots of research papers online cited with just a simple one character footnote. In my current essay, I need to cite an article called &quot;Weird Negative Effects of Social Media on Your Brain&quot; and I would greatly prefer not to write the whole article name when citing it.  Is there any more convenient way to cite sources without having such a long title (like writing the first letter of each word to make an acronym) or is this required to be proper MLA formatting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22594" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-08T12:12:59.527" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T12:13:57.497" Title="Is there a way to cite sources without the full name, for example by using an acronym, in MLA format?" Tags="|citations|mla|acronyms|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25548" CreationDate="2016-12-17T07:23:38.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Forget looking for your list among the bookstores and libraries.  They contain legions of pretty book covers, but within those covers hides the full spectrum of writing qualities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look instead within the books you have already read.  Think back across your history of reading and try to remember the times when an author brought you to tears or made you laugh.  Go find those books (even if you have to buy them again) and find the sections which touched you.  Then read backwards through that work until you find the point where the author's spell began.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very rarely does a single paragraph or phrase snare a reader's soul.  When we think of the phrase &quot;well written&quot;, we tend to think of good grammar, sympathetic characters and catchy dialogue as the necessary components.  They are all important to one degree or another, but the real magic of great writing is more complicated than any of that.  It is a process in which the author earns the reader's trust, then uses that trust to take them on a journey which is more than just words on a page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have even one book in your reading history, which has demonstrated that kind of artistry, then your list is as long as it has to be.  Go back to that great novel, and study it until you learn how the magic is done.  With that knowledge properly understood, you will finally have something worth mimicking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One trick that I have found helpful is to read with a pen nearby.  When an author does something right during my nightly reading time, I make note of it.  After I am done for the night, I go back and scribble some notes either in the appropriate page's margin or on a separate piece of paper.  Then when I am done with a book, I add it to my reading journal.  I make note of its strengths and weaknesses, focusing on its style and structure more than on its story line.  I also leave some blank space after those notes so that as the memory of the book matures in my mind, I can come back and add further comments.  It is amazing how a lousy read sometimes sticks my memory and slowly convinces me that I actually liked and enjoyed it.  Whenever that happens, I always take notes on such special magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, even garbage/pulp, genre-slop fiction can contain note-worthy gems.  If you limit your reading list to only the highest quality material, you will miss out on the many wonderful lessons which are hidden in the dregs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-12-17T07:23:38.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-17T08:37:04.030" Score="1" ViewCount="8328" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of editing my novel, and realized that it would be much better when narrated in third person. i was a much better person when it comes to writing in third person. Is there a good way to transfer from third to first person? Should I do it? Or is rewriting the only way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22598" LastActivityDate="2020-02-25T17:54:05.110" Title="Transfer from first person to third person" Tags="|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25554" CreationDate="2016-12-17T09:40:06.203" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a reader, &lt;strong&gt;I prefer novels with very little description&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the protagonist is on a spaceship, just say &quot;spaceship&quot;, and my mind will imagine what it looks like. If your protagonist meets a beautiful woman, just say &quot;beautiful woman&quot;, and my mind will imagine a woman that &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; find beautiful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;strong&gt;freedom to imagine the fictional world&lt;/strong&gt; is what makes reading fun for me. If you describe the spaceship in detail, I will get bored and may even abandon your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your own frustrating experience with trying to write good descriptions is already telling you what to do: don't write descriptions. &lt;strong&gt;Provide the minimum detail that is necessary for your story, and leave out all the rest.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10992/how-to-show-that-something-is-different-than-in-real-life/10993#10993&quot;&gt;my answer here&lt;/a&gt; for some ideas on how to smoothly incorporate description into the action instead of breaking the rhythm of your narrative and boring your readers with purely descriptive passages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;My beta readers do not walk away with the same impression that I've in my mind.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something you cannot overcome. Different people experience &lt;em&gt;the same reality&lt;/em&gt; in different ways. So certainly your writing will always mean different things to different readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your aim is to create the same image in the minds of all your readers, your life will hold nothing but disappointment for you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The rain fell steadily, speaking a thousand tongues. It shirred like an angry cobra upon the large fronds of plantain and papaya trees, rattled like hailstones on the hollow worm-corrupted length of a rotten trunk.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is how you want to write, then write like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the difficulty for you here is that you think of that passage as &lt;em&gt;description&lt;/em&gt;, while the author wrote it as action. The weather, or more specifically the rain, is the protagonist in the first part of that last paragraph, and the writer wrote what the rain does like he would write what a human protagonist does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of description as action. What happens? What is the chronology of the &quot;descriptive events&quot;? If it is weather you describe, how does the weather move and develop? If you describe a room, how does the gaze move over the objects in it (scanning left to right, following the protagonist from the door to the window, zooming in on some object from a general wide view, zooming out from some limited awareness to understanding where you are, ...)? What does the description build up to, what follows from it, how does it affect the human protagonist(s) or other elements in the story? Thinking of description as action will give you an outline or structure for your description that you can then flesh out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, the description moves from the rain, to how the rain interacts with the trees, to a specific tree, to a creature on that tree, to the relation of that creature to &quot;those below&quot; (who do not see it, because the rain and tree hide it). The rain gives mood (violence, nature) to the scene and to the creature. Because the creature is undescribed, the mood and character of the weather &quot;rubs off&quot; or &quot;bleeds into&quot; the creature, making it appear as a personification of the rain and the forest. The description here has the purpose of making the creature appear as some powerful natural force, like the weather.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your description has no narrative purpose other than to show what something looks like, delete it. Everything in your story must serve that story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-12-17T12:06:14.290" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25513" CreationDate="2016-12-17T10:31:33.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;h1&gt;1. Citing sources that contain citations&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your first scenario, you do not cite Girard. You are citing Cohen who just happens to use Girard to make his argument. Your text is about Cohen, so cite Cohen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cohen argues that monsters represent social prejudices: &amp;quot;Monsters are never created &lt;em&gt;ex nihilo&lt;/em&gt;, but through a process of fragmentation and recombination in which elements are extracted 'from various forms' (including – indeed, especially – marginalized social groups) and then assembled as the monster, 'which can then claim an independent identity.' (Girard 123)&amp;quot; (Cohen 456)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I included the source as it was given in Cohen's text (&lt;code&gt;(Girard 123)&lt;/code&gt;). I made this up, as I don't know how Cohen acknowledged Girard, but you need to present Cohen's passage &lt;em&gt;exactly as it was printed&lt;/em&gt;, including footnote numbers or parenthetical citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Cohen does not acknowledge Girard in the passage you cite, then I would either mention him in text (see example below), in a footnote, or in a brief parenthetical comment, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;...&amp;quot; (Cohen 456, citing Girard 123)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also made up the part about Cohen and social precudices to illustrate that what you cite is Cohen's &lt;em&gt;interpretation&lt;/em&gt; of Girard, not Girard. So even if your text is about Girard, your citation is about Cohen!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example for this kind of citation from page 175 of &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lit-verlag.de/isbn/3-643-80185-2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Transitions and Dissolving Boundaries in the Fantastic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pbjJK.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pbjJK.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;List Girard in your bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2. Citing indirect sources&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your second scenario, you cite Girard, whose original text is unavailable to you and who you can only read indiretly, through Cohen. Your text is about Girard, so cite Girard as quoted in Cohen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;...&amp;quot; (Girard 123, qtd. in Cohen 456)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Cohen does not specify the page number from Girard, leave it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, both the direct and indirect sources must be listed in your bibliography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-12-17T19:30:03.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25554" CreationDate="2016-12-17T15:55:06.047" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with description is that description is the wrong word for it. The right word is evocation. You are looking to evoke a response in the reader which brings a sense of place flooding into their minds. You can't build it for them; you don't have the materials. You have to pull it out out of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our revels now are ended. These our actors,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  As I foretold you, were all spirits and&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Are melted into air, into thin air:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The solemn temples, the great globe itself,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Leave not a rack behind.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples&quot; is not exactly a passage rich in detail, but it powerfully evokes an image. &quot;cloud-capped&quot; towers is a particularly economical way of suggesting not only great height but a kind of misty insubstantiality. But the words don't work as well when quoted in isolation from the larger passage. The preceding lines are not themselves description, but they set the mood in which the descriptive passage evokes images from the reader. As in so much of writing, it is mostly about the set up. Do the setup right, and the effect itself can be summoned with a few quite ordinary words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The passage you quote is quite lurid and overwritten, though that may be a deliberate attempt to summon the ghost of Edgar Rice Burroughs. But much of its effect it achieved by evocative rather than descriptive language. It is weakest when it is being descriptive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The clearing was a rough oval some five hundred feet long and two&#xA;  hundred feet wide: broadest in the north, narrowing in the centre and&#xA;  tapering into thorny undergrowth at the southern end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is strongest when it is being evocative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;rain ran down the length of a longsword hanging by a thongbelt at his&#xA;  slender waist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the focus on a particular detail immediately evokes the wider picture in the reader's mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you are right on the money when you say, &quot;I want my text to extract an image out of the reader.&quot; It is always about building an image by evoking images that are already in the reader's mind. To do that, you have to focus on two things: the evocative detail, and the setup that allows the evocative detail to work as it should. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-17T15:55:06.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25563" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25568" CreationDate="2016-12-17T16:55:40.577" Score="6" ViewCount="639" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm getting close to writing my first novel (plotter here - I develop the book first), but I do not yet have names for my main characters. I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/138/how-to-name-the-characters-of-your-story&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, which helped me in that area, but now that I'm starting to find names, I have another question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A comment on that question said that names (specifically fantasy names) should not start with the same letter, or the reader will confuse the characters. That's obviously the comment author's opinion, but it got me wondering: are there rules or guidelines I should be aware of when naming characters? I'm thinking specifically of fantasy or sci-fi works, where the names will be largely unfamiliar, but this question can apply to any genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there rules/guidelines for naming characters?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; And before someone asks, no, this is not a duplicate of the above linked question. That question deals largely with &lt;em&gt;discovering&lt;/em&gt; names, and answers can and do include such things as brainstorming, translating, and name generators. This question deals with finding the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; name. Once I have a list of names that sound half way decent, I want to make sure I get the right one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overlap:&lt;/strong&gt; That being said, there is some overlap. Strategies discussed in this question might (and probably will) be useful in finding names. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T15:08:58.203" Title="What pitfalls and guidelines are good to know when picking character names?" Tags="|fiction|naming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25559" CreationDate="2016-12-17T17:57:35.080" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Third person is not just a grammatical category, it is the whole angle of attack on the subject matter. Most particularly, the third person brings the protagonist into the frame (assuming, of course, that your narrator is your protagonist, which is usually the case when people start off in first person and then find it doesn't work). Bringing the protagonist into the frame -- making them a subject of examination, rather than the conduit for a second-hand examination of other subjects, changes the entire shape of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite its popularity among aspiring writers (where it is much more common than in published works), first person is difficult. It is a cramped perspective, and one that is not natural to traditional storytelling. The fact that you have realized that it is not working for you is an indication that you have realized how cramped and confining it can be. So yes, take off the shackles. But you do have to realize that you are going to have to substantially rewrite and rework your shackled text, and that the changes you are going to have to make are probably at the block structure level, not just the textual level.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-12-18T05:11:15.813" LastActivityDate="2016-12-18T05:11:15.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25548" CreationDate="2016-12-17T18:28:13.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only you know what books are good and not. Having someone else tell you will limit your experience of literature. (And obviously your ability as a writer!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't take a risk and pick up books you might not like, that too will limit your experience/ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not like the book, you can always put it aside!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not know today if a book you're reading is good or bad, that's probably a sign you need to read more. And more diverse literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get a library card.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick up books that seems interesting. Start reading them. Abandon those you don't like. If you're not stuck in a &quot;total hole&quot; your local library should have (or be able to take home) more books than you can ever read, even if you abandon 90% of them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastEditorUserId="10826" LastEditDate="2016-12-17T20:53:17.280" LastActivityDate="2016-12-17T20:53:17.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25566" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25569" CreationDate="2016-12-17T20:12:41.107" Score="2" ViewCount="560" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I'm nearing the conclusion of a novel, and I just realized that 70,000 words in, I've never told the readers where the characters live. Now, this is may seem like a rather trivial detail, and if after developing the story for so long and never mentioning it, it probably bears no consequence for the readers, because the story probably can take place anywhere, but that isn't the case. &#xA;Right now, the characters are trying to locate a person from their hometown, while they're in Hawaii. But, this person is using an alias, so by way of description, I say this to show that the characters have no doubt that this is the person they are trying to find:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ms. Lawrence finally gets a current location for a Craig Melbourne – apparently, Dr. Greg was working under an alias – who frequents a Family Psychiatry in __________, Pennsylvania – the practice Mrs. Mayes and the Parkersons confirmed they’d brought their kids to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to put the name of a city there. I was going to put Lakewood Pennsylvania, but being this far into the novel, I don't want to have to go back and change any details that may not fit for a story taking place in Lakewood. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;If I've already established that the town the characters live in is three hours away from a camp in northern New York, would it be correct for me to make up a generic town name?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2016-12-23T16:32:18.983" Title="Inventing a fictional town in a real geographic location" Tags="|description|planning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25563" CreationDate="2016-12-17T20:26:11.240" Score="11" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Distinctness&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you create characters for a novel, it may help you to think like an animator creating characters for a cartoon: you want them to be distinct from each other not only in behavior, but also in appearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a movie with real actors, distinctness comes from the distinct faces that humans have. In a cartoon, where the faces of the characters don't have the detail of real humans, the simplified features are exaggerated: one character has a very long face, another a very round one; one character has a long nose, another a protruding chin; and so on. As we don't always see a character's face, and want the character to be recognizable easily even from afar or in fast paced action, we also give them different colors and a distinct silhouette:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xd75q.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xd75q.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Example by Mike Corriero from &lt;a href=&quot;http://characterdesignnotes.blogspot.com/2011/03/use-of-silhouettes-in-concept-design.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The use of Silhouettes in Concept Design&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a novel, the reader cannot see the character. And even if you describe the outward appearance of your characert, you don't repeat that description every time that character is mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;In a novel, the &amp;quot;face&amp;quot; of a character is his name.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your readers can only tell John and Bob apart by their names. So make their names distinct enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what is disctinct enough? Certainly Henry and John are distinct enough and no one will confuse those two characters. John and Joan will probably be distinct because those names strongly suggest different genders, although readers may interpret the similarity in their names as signifying some kind of relation between these characters. Such a relation will be expected when your character names are variations of each other, as in Henriette and Henrietta. The similarity between these names must be motivated or it will be irritating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarity can lie in all parts of a name: the first letter (Henry &amp;amp; Horton), the vowels (John &amp;amp; Rob), the &amp;quot;rhyme&amp;quot; (Francine &amp;amp; Janine), and so on. Similarity is also relative: When you have only two characters in your short story, Ben and Rob will appear distinct enough, but in a novel with Hector, Fyodor, Maximilian, Wulfram, and Mordecai, the shortness, commonality, and similar sounds (&amp;quot;b&amp;quot;) will make Ben and Rob appear quite related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I try to make the names of my protagonists and main side characters as distinct from each other as possible. I even try to make them distinct from place names in the same novel – I don't send Allen to Alaska, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, you shouldn't worry too much about similarities when they become too hard to avoid. If you have more characters than letters in the alphabet, they cannot all begin with their own letter. If you write a historical novel, you must use the names that people had, even if they had the same names. And so on. So I try for distinctness, but if other things become more important, some similarity doesn't give me gray hair, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Meaning&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I find more important than distinctness, which usually is not difficult to achieve, is a name's meaning. And with meaning I don't mean the etymology of a name. Most readers will not know the etymologic meaning of most names, and if you make up names for a fantasy novel, that name will be etymologically meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But names &lt;em&gt;suggest&lt;/em&gt; personal traits to us. For example, certain names – and names with certain elements such as a specific ending – are predominantly given to people of a certain gender and therefore suggest a certain gender when we read it. Most people in the US will think that John is a man and Sarah is a woman. In some cultures, names that end in &amp;quot;-a&amp;quot; are mostly female.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gender is one meaning that names convey, age is another. Different names are popular at different times, and therefore different names are more common among people of different ages. Old-fashioned names, that were popular fifty years ago, will make readers think of people of middle age; names from a hundred years ago will make people think of old people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While gender and age of a name are easy to research, there are other meanings that are more difficult to grasp. Marketers have researched the meaning of the sounds that they use to make up brand names; psychologists have researched how certain personal names suggest attractiveness, intelligence, wealth, humor, and other personal traits. This research is, as yet, in its beginning stages and very limited. Only a small selection of names has been studied, and only a small variety of traits; studies on the meaning of sound yield contradictory results for all but a small number of phonemes. But some people, for example the writer Ursula Le Guin, have a natural talent to &amp;quot;hear&amp;quot; this meaning and find names that fit their characters like a glove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot recommend a fail-safe strategy to find character names with a fitting meaning, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/138/how-to-name-the-characters-of-your-story&quot;&gt;the question you link to&lt;/a&gt; has a lot of information on this aspect of naming and I strongly suggest that you consider it carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Literary Usage&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to avoid giving your characters names that have been used in other novels, especially if those names are rare or made up. Frodo is taboo, as is Harry Potter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other names appear to represent the stereotypical heroine, and many authors use a variation of them. For example, the name Katherine and its many variations and close relatives are given to such a large number of YA protagonists and movie heroines that it has become empty and meaningless. &lt;a href=&quot;http://io9.gizmodo.com/5977781/these-character-names-should-be-banned-forever&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some&lt;/a&gt; recommend to avoid Kate, Kay, Kathleen, Caitlin, Cathy, Cat, and so on for that reason; I think it makes that name a wonderfully neutral placeholder that facilitates reader identification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Studies&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is a list of some studies on sound and meaning in (English) brand names. Some of these articles may be paywalled, but may be accessible from a university library through their subscription. This list is the result of a very quick search I did when brainstorming the names for my last book and probably nowhere near exhaustive. But it may give you an idea what to look for and where to start. Use Google Scholar's &amp;quot;Similar Articles&amp;quot; link (below each search result) and the terminology in these articles to find related articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Klink, R. R. (2000). Creating brand names with meaning: The use of sound symbolism. &lt;em&gt;Marketing Letters&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;11&lt;/em&gt;(1), 5-20.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Klink, R. R. (2003). Creating meaningful brands: The relationship between brand name and brand mark. &lt;em&gt;Marketing Letters&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;14&lt;/em&gt;(3), 143-157.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lowrey, T. M., &amp;amp; Shrum, L. J. (2007). Phonetic symbolism and brand name preference. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Consumer Research&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;34&lt;/em&gt;(3), 406-414.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lowrey, T. M., Shrum, L. J., &amp;amp; Dubitsky, T. M. (2003). The relation between brand-name linguistic characteristics and brand-name memory. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Advertising&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;32&lt;/em&gt;(3), 7-17.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wichmann, S., Holman, E. W., &amp;amp; Brown, C. H. (2010). Sound symbolism in basic vocabulary. &lt;em&gt;Entropy&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;12&lt;/em&gt;(4), 844-858.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yorkston, E., &amp;amp; De Mello, G. E. (2005). Linguistic gender marking and categorization. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Consumer Research&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;32&lt;/em&gt;(2), 224-234.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yorkston, E., &amp;amp; Menon, G. (2004). A sound idea: Phonetic effects of brand names on consumer judgments. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Consumer Research&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;31&lt;/em&gt;(1), 43-51.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The literature I have on the &amp;quot;name-valence&amp;quot; or subjective perception of personal names all used German samples, because that is my target audience, and may not be useful to you. Try searching for something like &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=attractiveness%20names&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;attractiveness names&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=personality%20names&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;personality names&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; on Google Scholar and again use the &amp;quot;Similar Articles&amp;quot; links and the terminology and bibliography in the articles you find, to find more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-12-18T16:41:27.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25566" CreationDate="2016-12-17T21:32:12.663" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer will depend on the size of the town. Even locals will not know the names of all villages around them, but beyond a certain size, everyone familiar with the area – and in Pennsylvania that's quite a few – will notice that the town does not exist. I would be irritated by that, if I had read the greater part of a novel imagining it taking place in some specific real city. I think that fictional towns need to be introduced and cannot just appear half way into the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would either use Lakewood and make the corrections necessary, or avoid any reference to any specific place. I don't see why you cannot write something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ms. Lawrence finally gets a current location for a Craig Melbourne – apparently, Dr. Greg was working under an alias – who frequents a Family Psychiatry close to Greg's last address – the practice Mrs. Mayes and the Parkersons confirmed they’d brought their kids to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also many movies and novels where the characters say something like: &quot;... some town in Pennsylvania ...&quot;, when they aren't themselves familiar with the place, and when another character asks for the name, the author writes: &quot;John told Bob the town's name, and Bob got into the car to pick up Sarah.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-12-23T16:32:18.983" LastActivityDate="2016-12-23T16:32:18.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25570" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25586" CreationDate="2016-12-17T22:26:20.973" Score="0" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to sell a printed book on Amazon but I simply can't pass the &quot;Scale&quot; step in the Previewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've uploaded the book and the cover (PDF files), then I enter into the Previewer and I get this error window:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You chose 6.14&quot; x 9.21&quot; but your file is 6.0833&quot; x 9.0833&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You have one option(s) to auto-fix your file&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Page Scaling&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each page of your uploaded file will be scaled to match your book trim&#xA;  size. Your page count will not change. If the trim size is a&#xA;  different shape than your file, additional blank space may appear at&#xA;  the bottom of each page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I click the &quot;Page Scaling&quot; button (a square) but (after waiting for &quot;Loading..&quot;) nothing happens. My book remains unscaled, and it doesn't allow me to push the button &quot;Approve&quot; (at the bottom of the page).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also got an &quot;Auto-fix Trim Size&quot; button at the bottom left of the page, and when I push it, it opens again the window with the error above. Again I click on the &quot;Page Scaling&quot; and again, nothing happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I can't publish my book. When I exit the PrintPreviewer, I get this message &quot;It looks like you've made some changes to your manuscript or book cover. Please preview and approve these changes before continuing.&quot; And when I push &quot;Save and Continue&quot;, I get the error &quot;Please preview and approve your book&quot; so I'm stuck at &quot;Paperback Content&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've sent a message to Amazon (Help - Contact Us) and I got no answer. Is there any other way I can scale my book so Amazon will accept it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22603" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T01:09:58.780" Title="Amazon's CreateSpace doesn't scale my book" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-12-21T14:48:06.997" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25572" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25610" CreationDate="2016-12-18T05:37:03.740" Score="2" ViewCount="339" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to write a background research paper on a science fair experiment, but it needs to be formatted in MLA. I looked up some examples of a MLA essay and research paper but there seems to be something that bothers me. At the end of some bit of information or a sentence there seems to be a small word in parenthesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Batteries don't perform as well in low temperatures.(Best Batteries 71) &amp;lt;-----!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw this in most of the references I found. There seems to be a similarly worded citation at the end of the paper so I assume that it is telling the reader where the information before the parenthesis came from, but I do not know for sure. If I am correct then is it alright(or uncommon)to cite definitions and how should I note the definition at the end of the sentence? I am not sure about anything because this is my first time writing a MLA formatted paper. I hope you can help me a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21424" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T14:57:39.800" Title="MLA Background Research Paper: Noting a citation in the text?" Tags="|technical-writing|academic-writing|citations|research|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9392" CreationDate="2016-12-18T17:36:32.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make the situation, in which Shadow discovers Cherry, unmistakeably the same as the one in which Nicene was left at the end of part one. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Part 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&#xA;  Nicene is clubbed on the head in a dark alley behind the king's palace and falls unconscious between the green dust bins of the king.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Part 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Part 3&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shadow discovered the woman in a dark alley behind the king's palace, where she was lying onconscious between the green dust bins of the king, a bloody wound showing where she had been clubbed on her head. When he asked her who she was, the woman hesitated briefly, as if trying to judge if she could trust him, and then told him: &quot;My name is Cherry.&quot; He didn't know if that was her real name, but he didn't care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm overdoing it in this example, using the exact same words and having Shadow wonder about her name (suggesting to the reader to think about the name, too). In a less blatant way, this is what I have seen other authors do quite often. It is the typical technique to pick up the action from a previous chapter in a novel with multiple viewpoints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-12-18T17:36:32.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25563" CreationDate="2016-12-19T09:42:37.383" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another way to answer this question is to talk about the manner of introducing names within fiction.  What is the most effective and memorable way to introduce these names? Here are some questions to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you introducing these characters through dialogue or prose descriptions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the narrative structure offer an opportunity to introduce each character one at a time? Or are you beginning at a &quot;crowd&quot; scene?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you expecting the audience to encounter written prose (or perhaps hear the story be read aloud? )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the intended effect of introducing people to disorient the reader -- or to provide clarity? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are you using to differentiate characters -- at least initially? Physical appearance? Context upon first meeting? Attitude expressed through dialogue? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that the author should simplify this presentation to make it easier for the reader to tell the difference. But there are several examples which run against my rule: &lt;em&gt;Absalom, Absalom&lt;/em&gt; -- which is intentionally disorienting -- and crowd scenes -- which run quickly through lots of characters -- before returning to each character individually later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fiction with chapters, it seems easier to limit introduction of character to 2 or 3 per chapter, but that is often impractical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also external descriptions (and even descriptions of a character's history) may slow down the narrative too much.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would tie this question to 2 other questions: 1)how omniscient/intrusive do you want the narration to be, and  2)does the book structure lend itself to a sequence of exposition scenes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Jack Matthews wrote in the linked essay above, the sound of the words (and the historical context) imbue meaning to the name. With sci fi and other genre, names can have a secondary purpose of conveying a sense of a different culture or world -- I'm thinking of Ursula LeGuin's &lt;em&gt;Left Hand of Darkness&lt;/em&gt; where the names are strange/long/unlike what Terrans are used to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="7968" LastEditDate="2016-12-19T09:48:05.130" LastActivityDate="2016-12-19T09:48:05.130" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25576" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25585" CreationDate="2016-12-19T11:04:29.223" Score="0" ViewCount="225" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written poems and short stories and want to publish somewhere. but I am not aware about how to publish it so that it can reach to max people. Please suggest a way to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks.!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22616" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-17T02:49:42.050" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T02:49:42.050" Title="How and where to publish my first poem / story?" Tags="|publishing|poetry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2016-12-21T03:50:25.703" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25577" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25584" CreationDate="2016-12-19T14:52:11.293" Score="15" ViewCount="1545" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, English once used 'you' as the second person plural (equivalent to 'vous' and 'vós') and 'thou' as the second person singular (equivalent to 'tu'). When talking to a person in a higher position, one would use the polite 'you' rather than the informal 'thou'. Nevertheless, as time went by, the polite 'you' (nearly) erased 'thou' from existence and became a simple form of treatment without distinction between formal and informal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm attempting to translate a historical novel set in medieval times. The use of the formal/polite 'vous'/'vós' often gives subtle but important cues for the plot, therefore I decided the simplest way of maintaining these cues would be to use 'thou' and 'you'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically speaking, 'thou'='tu' and 'you'='vous'/'vós'. However, usage has caused modern speakers (I believe) to see 'thou' as more formal than 'you'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I then translate 'vous'/'vós' as 'thou' and 'tu' as 'you'? And would that suffice to transmit to the English readers the aforementioned cues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-15T15:24:47.163" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T15:24:47.163" Title="Historical Fiction: using you and thou" Tags="|word-choice|language|translation|historical-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25577" CreationDate="2016-12-19T15:04:26.887" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...usage has caused modern speakers (I believe) to see 'thou' as more formal than 'you'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think so. It is not &lt;em&gt;more formal&lt;/em&gt;, if anything, it is archaic, or literary, or both, but you definitely should not switch the actual single/plural meaning of the words, that would be very confusing. I suggest  to use &lt;em&gt;ye&lt;/em&gt; for the plural of &lt;em&gt;thou&lt;/em&gt; to equalize the impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2016-12-19T15:04:26.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25579" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-19T16:57:21.427" Score="1" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a short-story about 10 players in a post-apocalyptic zombies game show, split between teams, the last survivor wins. I already have the rules, the challenges and some characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I want to write it without any hero, and telling the story from the POV of all the players just like a reality game show. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is that possible? if yes how can I proceed?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16427" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T01:10:02.600" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T13:00:54.350" Title="Writing a story with 10 POV characters (about a reality game show)" Tags="|creative-writing|short-story|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25579" CreationDate="2016-12-19T17:23:49.017" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're describing an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensemble_cast&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ensemble cast&lt;/a&gt;, where there are several key characters but no single main character.  While the page I linked to talks about TV/movies, the same applies to written works.  The style is not at all uncommon in, at least, science-fiction novels (what I mostly read).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To proceed, start writing. :-)  Some writers divide up chapters by point-of-view characters (for example, Jo Walton's &lt;em&gt;The Just City&lt;/em&gt;, Cixin Liu's &lt;em&gt;Three Body Problem&lt;/em&gt;).  Others divide up chapters by locale/subplot, with several active key characters being shown in each (for example, Eric Flynn's &lt;em&gt;1632&lt;/em&gt; series, Hugh Howey's &lt;em&gt;Wool&lt;/em&gt; series).  Make sure your readers always know where the are, story-wise, and you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-12-19T17:23:49.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25579" CreationDate="2016-12-19T17:27:36.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As yet, you have a setting, but no story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story can be thought of as something intruding into the live of a person and forcing that person to act. The change brought about by the intrusion generates a goal in the protagonist, and the story tells how he works towards and reaches that goal – or fails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story can have one or more protagonists, but it must have one. The protagonist is who the reader cares about and whose success or failure he takes interest in. Without a protagonist, there is no story, only description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A novel may have several protagonists all partaking in the same story, or it may have several unrelated storylines. If you write your story as the story of the Game and all participants are protagonists of the story of the game, or if you write your story as different people experiencing completely unrelated things in the context of that game, is up to you, but you need to come up with either a single story with multiple protagonists, or an individual story for each of your protagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the story about? It is not about a game. It is about the goals of the participants, the reasons behind those goals, what they have to give up or how they have to change to achieve those goals, and how they fail or succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-12-19T17:27:36.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25579" CreationDate="2016-12-19T17:37:44.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I personally dislike narratives with multiple POVs, it's a fairly common technique.  Speaking as a reader, the obstacles you would need to overcome in order to reach me are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keeping it from becoming confusing --it can be hard to keep a&#xA;large cast of characters straight, even with one POV. You're&#xA;multiplying the problem with many. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoiding meaningless repetition&#xA;--with multiple points of view, you'll probably be hitting the same events multiple times.  The trick will to be to make sure there's&#xA;something new and interesting each time you see the same event over.&#xA;The classic movie&#xA;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rashamon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; centers entirely around this technique.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making it worthwhile --ten POV&#xA;characters &lt;em&gt;sounds&lt;/em&gt; like a recipe for lots of filler.  If you want&#xA;to do it, you'll need to give them each enough of a distinctive&#xA;voice and compelling POV in order to make it all seem&#xA;worth it to the reader.  Nothing is worse than multiple POV where you can't keep track of whose POV you're seeing through at any given moment (or worse, don't care).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're setting yourself up for a tough challenge.  But sometimes the best work comes from accepting a tough challenge and exceeding all expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-12-19T17:37:44.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25548" CreationDate="2016-12-19T18:09:41.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Samuel Delany claims that it's nearly impossible to write a book better than the books you read, so from that point of view, I understand your question.  On the other hand, no book is perfect, and sometimes an otherwise poorly written book can have some extraordinarily good feature that makes up the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've generally found the &quot;great classics&quot; to be a mixed bag, but they can be a good place to start, because when they're good, they are generally &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; good.  The truly great ones tend to stay fresh and current, even when they are hundreds of years old.  If you haven't read your way through a &quot;great books&quot; list, I would start there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more recent works, your best bet is to find a critic (or a few) whose tastes you respect. Many authors are passionate about promoting work that speaks to them.  I've found many good books by following the recommendations of authors I like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2016-12-19T18:09:41.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25577" CreationDate="2016-12-19T18:25:07.560" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Lew: If you use an archaic form, use it correctly. Singular: thou/þou, plural: ye/ȝe (use either thorn and yogh &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; &quot;th&quot; and &quot;y&quot;, don't mix them up!). If you use these archaic forms, explain them in a preface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my recommendation is to not use these achaic forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Thou&quot; and &quot;ye&quot; will be a constant irritation to contemporary English readers and an obstacle to immersion. If you use them, you force your readers' attention on an aspect of the book that readers of the French original do not notice at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are translating a novel from French to contemporary English, not from French to Middle English, so you should use contemporary English. There will be many other words and expressions that you cannot translate literally but have to translate by using different construction or a paraphrase. This is one of those cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do other translators handle the difference between singular and plural pronoun, between familiar and polite address? How do native speakers of English address a higher ranking individual in a formal manner? They all manage without reverting to Middle English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many possibilities to convey formality versus informality without reverting to archaic pronouns. Instead of opposing &quot;Thou, Madame&quot; to &quot;Ye, Madame&quot;, you could use more or less formal versions of the title. One character might say &quot;You, Madame&quot;, the other &quot;You, Joan&quot;, that is, one uses the name, which will be considered familiar, the other the title, which is more formal and polite. Or you can use &quot;Madame&quot; in opposition to &quot;Mistress&quot; or &quot;Milady&quot; (or whatever other titles where used back then – do some research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, the usage is discussed among the characters in the novel, so there is no danger that the readers will miss it. If a character in the French original says something like &quot;Why do you say 'thou'? That is impolite!&quot;, let him say &quot;Why do you say 'Joan'? That is impolite!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T05:41:31.950" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T05:41:31.950" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25576" CreationDate="2016-12-20T01:01:44.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google literary magazines. There are some online but your best bet is to look for ones in your own country or close by as they like local flavour. They often pay out as well if they pick your poem or short story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anthologies is the next best bet. Either gather together a few of your own poems and short stories and publish them as an Anthology or see if there are other writers interested in putting together an Anthology together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't mind giving them away free then there are also sites that publish e-stories and e-poems. Best to find one that suits your writing. Like Wattpad if you are writing teenage fiction. There is a place for every kind of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22620" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T01:01:44.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25570" CreationDate="2016-12-20T01:09:58.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use createspace. I suggest that you first change your print size to 6inch by 9inch and then you shouldn't have any trouble. But createspace does have a very useful forum where you can ask stuff or just go onto the kdp community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22620" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T01:09:58.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25587" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32758" CreationDate="2016-12-20T01:22:57.150" Score="3" ViewCount="333" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doxygen.nl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doxygen&lt;/a&gt; to generate API (reference) documentation for our code.  We have a small Java API and a large C++ API.  The usual tool of choice for Java APIs is Javadoc, but doxygen can do both and we have decided to use a single tool for both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Javadoc you can add an overview for any package by adding a specially-named file to the source code.  Javadoc then shows this overview, with as much documentation as you care to include, along with the documentation for the individual classes.  Package overviews are useful for explaining how groups of related classes are intended to be used together, and can include diagrams, examples, and more.  Because they're part of the Javadoc build, they can link to individual classes (or methods or other members).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I do the equivalent in doxygen, for both Java packages and C++ namespaces (which we use &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/a/2108209/922300&quot;&gt;kind of like packages&lt;/a&gt;)?  I know I can edit the main page, which functions as an overview of the entire API, but I want to distribute the documentation more.  I don't want one overview page; I want one overview page per logical code partition, and I want that overview to be in the same directory as the code (where it'll be more likely to be kept up to date).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to do this with doxygen, or am I going to have to write my own tools to add files to the doxygen output?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="35705" LastEditDate="2018-12-26T16:43:33.410" LastActivityDate="2018-12-26T16:43:33.410" Title="How can I publish package overviews (Java) or namespace overviews (C++) using Doxygen?" Tags="|technical-writing|software|tools|api-documentation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25577" CreationDate="2016-12-20T02:56:38.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it was me, I'd distinguish by using &quot;you all&quot; for the plural form, which is &lt;em&gt;a more modern way to do it&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I happen to live in a dialect area where &quot;you all&quot; is very common, so others might find that odd. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could pick whichever one of the below second-person plurals most strikes your fancy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eHwxH.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eHwxH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18598" LastEditorUserId="18598" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T03:02:05.527" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T03:02:05.527" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25591" CreationDate="2016-12-20T03:41:37.353" Score="2" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on one of the final scenes of my novel. The President is a kind, intelligent, fatherly man. Sara is a high-ranking NSA official and has been through months of intense pressure that has finally been released. The President took some political risk to rescue one of her assets because he believed it was the right thing to do. She breaks down and hugs the man. In this bit of dialog, I want to make it plain that this is in no way sexual. My attempt is bolded but feels unsatisfying. What strategies can I use to prevent the reader from misinterpreting the hug?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The corners of Sara’s mouth turned up. She pressed her lips tight but it was no use. She broke into a delighted smile. Her cheeks pressed up and her eyes watered. Months of weariness gave way to overwhelming joy. Warm drops rolled over her cheeks. She thrust her arms out and pulled the President toward her, &lt;strong&gt;one human being sharing a powerful moment with another&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sara Wells, level-headed Deputy Director of the National Intelligence Agency, had just hugged the President of the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And he hugged her back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T13:11:25.230" Title="Succinctly indicate that an emotional hug is not sexual" Tags="|technique|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25589" CreationDate="2016-12-20T06:36:52.923" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are going about this a little wrong, rather than trying to stress how nuh-uh not sexual the hug is (and the high schooler in all of us knows how well that strategy works) just let it be a plain if emotionally ladened bit of contact and readers won't dive too deep into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your readers have been paying any attention they should have already an understanding of the relation between these characters and will be willing to accept the relationship continuing to be nonsexual without the author having to draw any attention to the fact &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22522" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T06:36:52.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25589" CreationDate="2016-12-20T13:11:25.230" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As always in literature, it is all about the setup. In literature as in life, we interpret actions as our previous experience has led us to interpret them. If you want a reader to react to something in a particular way, you set up their expectations such that when the event occurs, they naturally interpret it in the way that you intend. In the case of this hug, therefore, the reader will interpret it based on all the previous interactions they have seen between these two characters. If there have been signs of building sexual tension, they will see it as sexual. If there have been signs of mutual respect and friendship, they will interpret it that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it will also depend on how both these characters have interacted with other people in the story, all of which tells us how they typically behave and what their behavior means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a climactic moment in your story, and so it must be the moment to which the whole story has been leading in some way. It is not in how you write this scene, but in how you write the entire novel. Indeed, if you wrote this scene in a way that is inconsistent with the whole of the novel preceding it, people would not believe the scene, not matter how you told it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T13:11:25.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25593" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25594" CreationDate="2016-12-20T14:45:11.070" Score="4" ViewCount="800" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, what's the difference between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She closed her eyes and thought about her life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was so confident and handsome women circled him like vultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Closing her eyes, she&#xA;thought about her life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being so confident and handsome, women circled him like vultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mainly, what effect they cause in the reader? When to use the former and when to use the latter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T21:22:03.297" Title="Turning normal phrases into gerund phrases: What's the effect in the reader?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|structure|grammar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25593" CreationDate="2016-12-20T15:17:29.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gerund phrases describe continuous or ongoing action, or action that happens at the same time as another action. Past-tense verbs generally describe a completed action, or a sequence of actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Closing her eyes, she thought about her life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that she's thinking at the same time as she closes her eyes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She closed her eyes and thought about her life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First she closes her eyes. Then she thinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not so much an &quot;effect&quot; as it is &quot;describing actions in the order they occur.&quot; &#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your second example, you have two problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;em&gt;Being so confident and handsome&lt;/em&gt; is more of an adjective phrase. &lt;em&gt;Being&lt;/em&gt; is not acting as a gerund there. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;2) You have a dangling participle. The subject of first clause is &quot;him,&quot; but the subject of the second clause is &quot;women.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should properly read &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Being so confident and handsome, he drew women to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(separately, vultures surround dead, rotting things to eat them... is that the image you were going for? Because seriously, eww. Is he a handsome, confident zombie?)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T15:17:29.137" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25593" CreationDate="2016-12-20T21:22:03.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While Lauren is correct about the grammatical difference, the actual impact on the reader is virtually nil. It isn't at this level that texts have impact on readers. The levels on which text chiefly impact readers are images and stories. Worrying about the difference between two grammatical structures that present the same image or tell the same story is largely a waste of time. An editor may decide to tweak it at some point in the publications process, but it is not going to make or break a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is definitely a problem with the image, as Lauren points out. Vultures circle the weak and dying, not the healthy and strong. This is the sort of trouble you can run into when you think and write in stock phrases. They don't always go together to create compelling and evocative images. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even this would be forgiven though, if the larger story were compelling. Again, if the story is compelling, these are things an editor will fix. If you are worried about the effect on the reader, focus your attention on the bigger picture, the things that actually affect the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T21:22:03.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25598" CreationDate="2016-12-20T22:52:09.633" Score="2" ViewCount="519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been trying to write a book that takes place somewhere in America, maybe New York, Chicago, or another large city. But the problem is, I live in Hawaii and have never been to a city that large. How should I go about writing about the city? Also, in Hawaii, we use a lot of slang words for talking to people or about things, (for example: we say slippers instead of flip flops) would it mean I would have to start using a different vocabulary for the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22630" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T20:07:36.273" Title="Describing big cities and using slang words while writing" Tags="|creative-writing|setting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-12-21T21:52:48.347" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25597" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25599" CreationDate="2016-12-20T23:11:34.687" Score="1" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a section which uses an onomatopoeia but I can write it in 2 ways&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The onomatopoeia &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; source action is implied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;you do realize that she's the personification of the tome. your processing your love for a inanimate object&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*SLAP!*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it was an instant response with total disregard to the possible repercussion, it was all Hayate could do short from wanting to ring Nevulis's neck &amp;quot;I won't have you talk about her like that. Reinforce is alive! could an inanimate object be the father of our daughter!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The onomatopoeia &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;after&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; source action is implied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;you do realize that she's the personification of the tome. your processing your love for a inanimate object&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hayate's rage boiled over. without thinking, ignoring the possible repercussions from Nevulis her hand rose and...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*SLAP!*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I won't have you talk about her like that. Reinforce is alive! could an inanimate object be the father of our daughter!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases it's implied that the slap has come from Hayate striking Nevulis in anger from her comment. I am wondering which is generally more accepted, the onomatopoeia coming before or after the source action is implied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user12726" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T03:50:59.347" Title="Generally would an onomatopoeia come before or after the source action is implied" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25596" CreationDate="2016-12-20T23:15:05.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want your story to sound authentic, you must learn and use the slang of the city(ies) in question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt; had a fascinating dialect quiz a few years ago, and the author just put out a book called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0544703391&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Speaking American.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; I haven't read it, but it sounds like a good place for you to start to grasp how regional dialects differ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, you'll have to travel or spend a lot of time speaking with locals to get the flavor of local language. You may get some from documentaries or news, but real people will give you the best results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to describe the city properly, same thing: travel or start researching films/documentaries. If you are writing about a real place, you have to experience it to write about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T23:15:05.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25597" CreationDate="2016-12-20T23:33:31.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, that is not an onomatopoeia. A slap does not sound like the word slap. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, this technique is ineffective either way. You can't turn up the volume in prose using caps and asterisks. Nor can you do sound effects. This is the page, not the screen. All words are read as the same speed and volume. To make any moment dramatic or surprising, you have to set it up properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T23:33:31.417" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25596" CreationDate="2016-12-20T23:42:03.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It very much depends on why it is New York or Chicago. Do you want the specific flavor of the city? Do you want locals to find your portrayal convincing? If so, Lauren is right. But if the particular flavor of the city is not important, you may be better off treating it as generic American city. There is more that is generic about North American cities than the is particular about them, so this is much easier to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T23:42:03.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25601" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25605" CreationDate="2016-12-21T01:24:17.200" Score="3" ViewCount="400" Body="&lt;p&gt;At first I was going to tell my story told from my main character's point of view, but now I'm wondering if I should make it coming from the point of view of a third-person narrator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted the main character to display her thoughts and emotions to the reader, but I also wanted the reader to experience scenes with other characters without the main character knowing. The only way I can think to do this is to have it come from a third-person narrative point of view. What are my options? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22630" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-12-21T07:35:43.120" LastActivityDate="2016-12-26T04:12:50.060" Title="Options for point of view in a story" Tags="|characters|viewpoint|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25601" CreationDate="2016-12-21T01:55:22.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's perfectly okay to have multiple viewpoint characters in a single story, as long as readers always know whose viewpoint they're in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The safest way approach is to use only one viewpoint character within each scene. If you want a new viewpoint character, finish the current scene, and start a new scene with a new viewpoint character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of switching scenes is that readers understand that each scene break represents a change of some kind (to a new time, place, or viewpoint character).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you start each scene by making it clear to the reader which viewpoint they're in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to switch viewpoint characters &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; a scene. But it's very easy to confuse readers. For this to work, you have to be very good at helping the reader follow the viewpoint switches. It's rare for writers to do this well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T01:55:22.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25601" CreationDate="2016-12-21T03:38:45.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not go with third person semi-omniscient? That makes jumping from characters much easier and you can still have their thoughts etc. I prefer reading this but it also depends on your audience and your purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22632" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T03:38:45.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25601" CreationDate="2016-12-21T04:04:41.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me like you want to assemble your story from the perspective of each player.  Rather like if someone were to have access to the diaries or personal notes from each of them?  If so, then there isn't any need for an omniscient narrative voice — correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to present the story from the confines of multiple, limited perspectives, then it is best to have strong breaks between those perspectives.  You will probably want them on separate pages, and you may wish to consider the judicious use of headers which convey or confirm the identity of the proceeding perspective.  Something like a prefix or suffix to the chapter titles, if you are naming chapters, and if you can do so in a way which doesn't degenerate into background noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22633" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T04:04:41.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25601" CreationDate="2016-12-21T05:07:01.847" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, don't confuse point of view with person. You can write in the third person and still tell the story from one character's point of view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, third person is the normal mode of storytelling. All this stuff about limited vs. omniscient is largely a distraction. It is an analytical scheme used to classify the POV at various points of a story. Unfortunately what tends to happens with analytical categories it that people tend to turn them into prescriptions, and then they become puritanical about them and start insisting that a work must be in a single category from beginning to end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all bunk, and you would be well served to forget all about it and just write your story in the third person in the way that seem most natural to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes when a story is not working, an analysis of the story may reveal that the way POV is used in that particular story is not working, and those categories might be useful for describing what is going wrong. But in no way does that mean that every story that uses POV in the same way will not work, or that any general rules for what you must do with POV can be derived from the failure of POV in one particular work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fill your head with your story and write it down as it comes to you. Until you have real mastery of story craft, don't mess with any fancy literary techniques, or mess with restricted persons or POV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T05:07:01.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25597" CreationDate="2016-12-21T07:30:53.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't a comic strip, it's prose. Written this way, the slap seems cartoony. I'd much rather you describe the action than simply recite the sound it makes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T07:30:53.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25601" CreationDate="2016-12-21T08:49:08.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mark Baker has a great answer, but to add.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapters, sections and paragraphs can be used to jump between POV, and the narrators. I personally think that these can be used, but there is a risk of a mess. Chapters are fairly easy jumping points, because those are the most concrete. The readers accept time jumps and completely different scenes, when the chapter is changed. They are low risk place to make such jumps. With more careful planning you can go deeper to the levels of text, possibly even to within sentence jumps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;STOP&quot;, but the enemies do not stop; because they already surrounded him, which he was not aware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such sentence makes sense, but it is tricky to make an easily understood story written this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22635" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T08:49:08.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25596" CreationDate="2016-12-21T14:17:44.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're having trouble making the city slang sound natural, or if you can't completely suppress your island slang in your narrative, you could always make your POV character a Hawaiian, visiting the city for the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T14:17:44.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25596" CreationDate="2016-12-21T14:46:40.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write what you know, or you will be risking to be ridiculed (and deservingly so) by the people who do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the location is important to your story, do your research (preferably in person). New York, Chicago, San-Francisco are all big cities, but they are extremely different from one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the slang--Lauren Ipsum is absolutely right--you better get things right, before new yorkers stone you alive for mispronouncing Greenwich Village or Houston St. (OK, you can get away with pronunciation, using only written words, but you get the drift...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2016-12-21T20:07:36.273" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T20:07:36.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25572" CreationDate="2016-12-21T14:57:39.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have understood correctly. From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Purdue Online Writing Lab&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In MLA style, referring to the works of others in your text is done by using what is known as &lt;strong&gt;parenthetical citation&lt;/strong&gt;. This method involves placing relevant source information in parentheses after a quote or a paraphrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They give an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Wordsworth stated that Romantic poetry was marked by a &quot;spontaneous&#xA;  overflow of powerful feelings&quot; (263).&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Romantic poetry is characterized by the &quot;spontaneous overflow of&#xA;  powerful feelings&quot; (Wordsworth 263).&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both citations in the examples above, (263) and (Wordsworth 263), tell&#xA;  readers that the information in the sentence can be located on page&#xA;  263 of a work by an author named Wordsworth. If readers want more&#xA;  information about this source, they can turn to the Works Cited page,&#xA;  where, under the name of Wordsworth, they would find the following&#xA;  information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads. London: Oxford UP, 1967.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MLA has an extensive system for providing citations that are clear and well-defined; you really need to &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/675/01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dig into the details&lt;/a&gt; and get a better sense of what's expected of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T14:57:39.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24678" CreationDate="2016-12-21T15:56:03.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just get the first draft out. Don't mind the tenses for now( this'll be hard but just do it).  Then wait a few months and reread it. I bet you'll be able to solve the problems more easily. &#xA;As for the above text, there nothing wrong with going with the present tense. I've read many good books written in the present tense. Just remember to be consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22641" LastEditorUserId="22641" LastEditDate="2016-12-21T16:01:03.830" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T16:01:03.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-21T16:41:51.350" Score="7" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;The more I research places to hire an editor, the deeper the rabbit hole goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see that previous responses to this question are either, &quot;Ask friends and family for a reference&quot; (I'll pass),or &quot;Search the internet&quot; (thanks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I've found professional editor associations, however searching through the bios on these sites is uninspiring and feels like a roll of the dice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also fancier freelance websites such as reedsy.com and bibliocruch.com, but I don't have any experience with these to know the difference or who is on the other side of these websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given these two options, what have been your experience? &#xA;Is there a better third option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks very much!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22642" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-12-22T14:55:10.330" LastActivityDate="2016-12-31T18:50:26.737" Title="Where are the best places to hire good editors?" Tags="|editing|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2016-12-21T19:48:18.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I liked some of the answers above, but I also want to through some ideas on the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already have build your character (profession, background, psychosynthesis, etc, etc) and don't want something like Bilbo etc, try to find a name that shows all the aspects of it's character. For example the name Alexander mean the one who defeats the other men (his enemies), the strong man and fighter till the end. &#xA;Another idea would be to give names of historical/iconic persons, ex: Fidel, or Pablo, or whatever you like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good naming and good stories!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22645" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T19:48:18.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25614" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-21T19:53:51.700" Score="3" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;In writing in general, there are discovery writers and outliners, planners vs. pantsers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very curious to know how screenwriters create screenplays. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do writers start with a basic plot and then add the scenes and arrange them, expanding on the plan? Or do they have a very very tiny basic plot and write the scenes in a more freestyle way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is planning/discovery significantly different when the goal is a screenplay instead of a short story or novel?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason I wonder about this is that a screenplay is meant as a collaborative tool, while a novel/short-story is the finished product.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is more planning needed if more people will be involved, and because the goal is a fixed amount of pages/minutes? Or can you &quot;pants&quot; it, and then use the editing/collaboration time to bring things into focus? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22645" LastEditorUserId="36670" LastEditDate="2019-03-25T17:21:09.757" LastActivityDate="2021-02-09T17:20:36.610" Title="Do screenplay writers work by an established plot, or do they improvise without one?" Tags="|screenwriting|outline|script|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25614" CreationDate="2016-12-21T20:17:03.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does not matter what you write, or in what format or genre--you tend to be either more of a plotter or more of a discovery writer. It is never only one or another, but rather a combination of both. The percentage, however, is different for each and every one of us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2016-12-21T21:42:30.393" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T21:42:30.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25612" CreationDate="2016-12-21T21:41:12.033" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check your area for an in-person writing group or critique circle.  Start attending regularly and assisting others from your strengths.  Get to know the writing styles of the other writers in your group, but also listen to how they critique the works of others.  In almost every group, you will find one or more grammar gurus, a handful of walking thesaurus(es)/thesauri, and if your lucky, a creative thinker, gifted in plot development and word flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know what is available in your group, take the most gifted aside and offer them money to edit your work.  Depending on your own strengths, you could possibly barter your skills applied to their works in return for their services on yours.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you put in a little effort in your local community, you may find the quality editing talent that you are looking for, among your fellow writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="11221" LastEditDate="2016-12-22T14:32:53.060" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T14:32:53.060" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25614" CreationDate="2016-12-21T21:50:07.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether to outline a story thoroughly or not at all is a question that's been asked for a long time. But some general information may help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing on your own, you can write however you like. There's no reason you can't just start typing a screenplay and, when you're done, edit what you've written into shape. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of advantages to outlining. You'll get a more cohesive script in the end and you'll work more efficiently. While some writers are able to outline every detail and only then write, others find this to be a bit of a straitjacket. There is no single method that applies to all writers, and you'll have to find the answer that best suits you by trial and error. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T21:50:07.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2016-12-22T00:30:43.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just made the switch a couple of weeks ago. I am typing a bit faster now. I avereged 69 wpm on QWERTZ and I am at about 57 on Dvorak. Switching to Dvorak can be challeging but it gets easy pretty fast. One thing that helped me switch was getting stickers for my keyboard s. They were about 3$ per sticker set and went on top of the normal qwerty layout but were clear with the letter or symbol in the bottom right corner. It was nice because it made it easy to see both dvorak and QWERTZ but not stint my progress. I like it so far and I think Ill stick with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22649" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T00:30:43.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2016-12-22T06:20:07.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, I figure out the background of the character. After I come up with the characters backstory, personality, and such, then I research for names that have meanings that correspond with who the character is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, it helps to go in depth and see about creating an ethnic background for my character. This usually helps narrow things down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, I also find it easy to build a character &lt;em&gt;based&lt;/em&gt; on a name. Creating a character around the meaning of their name can sometimes save me a lot of grief. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22650" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T06:20:07.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25579" CreationDate="2016-12-22T13:00:54.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's possible, though may be confusing to the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One cheap but efficient technique is to name sections/chapters after the 'current protagonist', simply give each a title which is the name of the current POV. You'll still need some kind of binder to present who is who, but you can proceed normally afterwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't fear to break time and location continuity; instead of repeating the same event, skip between events, retell them from different POV only as they really differ a lot between POVs. And again - don't confuse the reader. Place and time at the header of the section is another cheap but efficient trick to keep track of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T13:00:54.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25559" CreationDate="2016-12-22T13:13:14.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need to transform existing text, you must rewrite. No way around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to shift the perspective mid-way through, it's easier. It requires a &quot;zoom out&quot; transition of story-within-story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I breathed hard, bleeding from many scratches, my hand broken, hanging limply, but I was drunk with elation in my victory. I did it, against all odds, I prevailed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Good job, Frank.&quot; Lee tapped my back. &quot;We've shown them!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;* * *&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And what then, grandpa?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Frank leaned in his armchair, exposing the old bones to the warmth of the fireplace. He peered out of the window onto the impeccable garden of the daycare center. He smiled at Lisa, his little sunshine at the dusk of his life. &quot;This, my dear granddaughter, is a story for...&quot; - but he didn't finish. The door to his room burst open, and a grizzled, tan man in a tattered dark jacket burst in. Frank's face brightened in a smile. &quot;Lee! It's been ages!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No time for that, Frank! They need us!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T13:13:14.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25612" CreationDate="2016-12-22T15:23:22.267" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you need to decide if you are looking for someone to fix your story, someone to fix your language, or someone to fix your typos. These are very different things requiring very different skills, and probably very different levels of compensation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you need to understand where people advertising themselves as editors come from. I know of four paths, but there may be more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Freelance writers and aspiring novelists who can't make a living at it who hang out a shingle as an editor. They may offer any of the above services, but there is no reason to think most of these people are any good. They might be, but it is not the thing they really want to be doing. If their website also lists a number of self published novels, then this is who you are dealing with. Unless they can give you a reference to a client who went on to successful publication after using their services, beware. A local critique group is a good place to find and evaluate these people. Almost every critique group has one, usually the founder/leader of the group. If you find their critiques valuable, that is an indication of what kind of editor they would be.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Professional editors. These people never wanted to be writers, they wanted to be editors. They probably belong to an editors association and they can usually show you a list of professional clients (that is, commercial or government clients, rather than aspiring self published novelists). They should be pretty reliable for language edits and typos, but their main focus is nonfiction and there is no guarantee that they have any sense of story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Former book editors. They used to work as editors in the publishing industry. Maybe they got laid off or quit because their spouse moved, or to spend time with their kids. They should know story (unless they got fired by a publishing house for not knowing story). They may or may not be willing to do language and typo edits, but if not they probably know someone who does. The good ones should be able to point to successful books they worked on, and they probably maintain ongoing relationships with people in the trade.   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Numbskulls who know nothing about anything other than how to post an ad on a freelancing site. You can tell these easily because they are cheap. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware of any editor who is just warm and supporting and encouraging. You are probably just paying them to complement you. Find an editor who makes you cry, not because they are being cruel on purpose, but because of how hard they are making you work. They might just make you better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-12-22T19:38:09.793" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T19:38:09.793" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25165" CreationDate="2016-12-22T18:27:10.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on your teacher, your school and its rules and code of conduct, and the expectations of the class and assignment. For example, you'd be more likely to be OK with leaving it in plaintext if you were taking an honors course. If the book was assigned (though it sounds like it was not) then it would also be more likely to be OK with leaving it in plaintext. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, the two most important things are &quot;How good of a student are you?&quot; and &quot;How good of a relationship do you have with the teacher?&quot; When I was in school, I got away with a lot of shit like that by being a good student and keeping a good relationship with my teachers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21750" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T18:27:10.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25566" CreationDate="2016-12-22T19:50:56.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would not worry &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt; about any discrepancy between your fictional Lakewood and the real place.  Remember Joseph Heller's disclaimer at the very start of his novel &lt;em&gt;Catch-22&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The island of Pianosa lies in the Mediterranean Sea eight miles south of Elba. It is very small and obviously could not accommodate all of the actions described. Like the setting of this novel, the characters, too, are fictitious&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T19:50:56.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25454" CreationDate="2016-12-24T02:24:55.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty new to this site, but the first thing that came to my mind: are there any inside jokes or something like that? Something that only familiar things/people can make the character do? Or maybe you could be like 'I don't know how, but I feel like I've done this before...I dismiss that thought and--' or close to that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22674" LastActivityDate="2016-12-24T02:24:55.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25762" CreationDate="2016-12-24T03:58:25.210" Score="4" ViewCount="475" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, so I have a character, Jack, and I don't know how to get him on the &quot;back again&quot; path. You know, when you move past what happened? Get happier? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My character has suffered a series of traumatic, personal events. Now he has to cope with the aftermath, plus new responsibilities, guilt he places on himself, blame placed on him by others, and he's worried about more traumas happening in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am seriously stuck, I don't know how to fix what I've done. How should I go about trying to keep him mentally stable even? How on Earth do I fix this?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and not only that but...That's not the main plot of the story. My story has many intertwined plots all in one big ball...So I can't focus ONLY on this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22674" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2016-12-24T14:17:33.190" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T20:48:36.340" Title="How to get the &quot;back again&quot; part after horrible experience?" Tags="|fiction|characters|plot|character-development|structure|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2016-12-24T08:38:33.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am actually in the progress of writing a Sci-fi/Fantasy novel series myself. I did have the same question concerning the topic before finally finding the full motivation. I say combining the two genres is possible and it might even come out amazing if you know how to combine them. There are great examples of what these two genres could bring when they're combined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Final Fantasy.&lt;/strong&gt; One of my favorite series ever, even though it's a game/movie series. It's amazing, and although some of the endings were unsatisfying, this series is a great example of a Sci-fi/Fantasy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avatar&lt;/strong&gt; Another great example, with  great descriptions of the technology and fantasy landscapes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Star Wars&lt;/strong&gt; It can also be categorized as a Sci-fi/Fantasy considering all of the technology used, like the Millenium Falcon and the unrealistic elements that can't be defined by science like The Force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the one thing that made me write this genre was the fact that i'm writing this for myself, and hopefully other people would like it. So check your goal first, if you're aiming on some audiences, you should do some research on what kind readers you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22677" LastActivityDate="2016-12-24T08:38:33.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25631" CreationDate="2016-12-24T14:21:51.433" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to write sensitively and authentically about personal trauma, you have pretty much two choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Endure it yourself. I don't recommend choosing to undergo this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to other people who have endured trauma, or possibly people who counsel trauma victims. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating a real, rounded character who has suffered and then learned to adapt and grow past the pain requires lengthy, detailed observation of the human spirit. If you can't do this from the inside, you must do it from the outside, and if you can't do it at all, write something else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please don't write a story about someone who suffers terrible things and then brushes it off and all is well at the end. It reads as cheap and phony and offends people who really have suffered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-24T14:21:51.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25634" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-24T16:17:59.307" Score="2" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was editing a friend's story and I ran into a problem. A character wrote a letter to her friend but inside the letter there was a dialogue (quoting her parents) inserted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I tried to change their mind and made every excuse I could come up with but they said, “You must do this, there will be no argument.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there are many ways to express the same thought, but the problem was the punctuation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dialogue tag (if it can even be called that in this case) is way too long, but in a way it could be valid. So is inserting the dialogue with the normal convention as shown in the sample okay? Or can you put a colon after the dialogue tag and insert the dialogue in a new paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I tried to change their mind and made every possible excuse I could come up with, but all they said was:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;You must do this. There will be no argument.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of this being a letter, can the above correction (if it is correct) be used in appropriate scenarios?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22678" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T15:27:36.787" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T15:27:36.787" Title="Punctuation issue quoting dialogue" Tags="|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-24T22:45:37.127" Score="5" ViewCount="1890" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to identify content of a document based on the date it was typed in Office Writer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Mark Baker - yes that is my question. I did find a revision option under file. If you choose it, in the next window you can configure the document to save previous versions. But that is not what I am after. I am looking for a functionality similar to what you get if you turn on tracking in word. I like to know if there is a way to see all the changes I made to a file yesterday for instance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Joe - Track changes would work for what I need, but I did not turn it on. Even a daily tracking of modifications would work for me. As for Git, I do have Git installed. I am not familiar with all the features, and this may be a good opportunity to learn it. Do you know if I can use Git to track the different versions of a document and keep the file on my own machine? That would work for me. Let me make sure I understand what you are suggesting regarding the compare files functionality of the writer. You mean if I used Git or some other VCS to track different versions of file, I should then use compare files to see the delta because .odt files have meta-data? I do not follow why I would see one whole file, and where I would see it. I really appreciate the last post; that looks more like what I was after. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22680" LastEditorUserId="22680" LastEditDate="2016-12-28T15:30:54.113" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T00:32:54.210" Title="Is there a revision functionality in LibreOffice Writer?" Tags="|revision|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25634" CreationDate="2016-12-25T00:49:28.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Either one is okay. The second one is more emphatic, and I would only put it on a new line if there was a whole speech (that is, not for one sentence). But there's nothing wrong with the punctuation of either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-25T00:49:28.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25638" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25639" CreationDate="2016-12-25T10:21:51.573" Score="9" ViewCount="1019" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was asking myself this question while writing a novel that don't imply any death or even really dramatic event !&#xA;The novel tells about the main character's strugglings and conflictuous relationships, but death never occurs in the story !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a story like this be taken seriously and don't be considered too lightweight from a dramatic point of view ? &#xA;And, in a general way, do you know a great novel that don't involve death of any of its characters ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-24T01:14:25.267" LastActivityDate="2019-06-24T01:14:25.267" Title="Can a novel without any death be taken seriously?" Tags="|characters|plot|theme|death|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25638" CreationDate="2016-12-25T15:07:17.167" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Three words: Pride and Prejudice&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We could name many others, but P&amp;amp;P is by most reckonings, one of the finest novels ever written, and it is not about death. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is easy to see why the question might occur to someone. Every story needs stakes. Does it not follow that the higher the stakes the more serious the novel? And isn't death the highest of stakes? Does it not follow that a serious novel must be about death? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, it does not. Consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, in the Western tradition at least, death is not the highest stakes. Traditionally we have placed a number of moral factors above death: dishonor, impurity, apostasy. And even among modern atheists, autonomy is placed above death (which is why there is a movement for assisted suicide).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, death is, in a sense, not high stakes at all, because death is inevitable. We might risk death for all sorts of things, for adventure, for fame, for glory, for wealth, because these things are not inevitable. The desire for these things, even for simple married love, may be greater than our fear of death, and indeed, in many novels, the threat of death is a mere complication in the quest for some less certain goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, the seriousness of a novel is not judged by how high the stakes are, but by how seriously and perceptively it explores the human condition. Pride and Prejudice is a romance novel. Pare it down to a plot summary and it will sound like any Harlequin Historical. But is stands among the immortals of literature because of its exquisite insight, and the brilliance of its telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, while a novel must have stakes, stakes are merely scaffolding. Stakes create story shape. The scale of the story they create does not matter, what matters is the shape. The real seriousness and merit of a work lies in the telling and in the perception of the human condition hung upon the framework of that story shape. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-07-26T09:58:18.200" LastActivityDate="2017-07-26T09:58:18.200" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25640" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-26T01:34:17.647" Score="3" ViewCount="1063" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realise people like me are probably many, i.e., amateurs who want to write a book and then get frustrated by having to learn all this very intricate grammar just to please the odd poindexter who may read their book. Especially these days with grammar on the decline, it seems those who can even identify good grammar are very scarce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do many people even care about &quot;good&quot; grammar in novels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22686" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-12-27T05:36:31.523" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T16:50:29.147" Title="Do many people even care about &quot;good&quot; grammar in novels?" Tags="|grammar|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25641" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25647" CreationDate="2016-12-26T01:49:21.087" Score="2" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may seem like an odd question, and perhaps I am over analyzing this a bit too much, as I usually do when it comes to my writing, but here is my concern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The novel I'm writing is in its last chapter, I know exactly what's going to happen, how it's going to end, etc. but I wrote it in 3rd person omniscient with occasional 3rd person limited for zooming in. &lt;strong&gt;If I started the novel in one character's POV (in 3rd person limited), will the novel feel disconnected if I end it in another character's POV or in omniscient?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not quite sure if this matters one way or another, but I just thought I'd put the question out there in case anyone could provide an answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastEditorUserId="18418" LastEditDate="2016-12-26T02:11:48.990" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T03:25:51.583" Title="Do you need to end a story with the same perspective you start with?" Tags="|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25640" CreationDate="2016-12-26T02:08:24.390" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;People do care about good grammar in novels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand what you mean about the &quot;intricate details&quot; if you're referring to the oxford comma and grammar rules of that nature that even many editors won't really pay attention to. But, basic rules of grammar apply, unless you have a specific reason to throw those window. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your character doesn't speak English well, you might use less grammar in his dialogue. Or, if you're writing about an entire civilization of people that never learned proper English, you may not want to use as much grammar, especially if your narrator is a person of the civilization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, outside of cases like those, the rules of grammar do apply. This article may provide some insight: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://simplewriting.org/does-grammar-matter/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://simplewriting.org/does-grammar-matter/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one may also be of assistance, though it argues the contrary: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/general/why-i-dont-care-about-grammar-and-why-you-should-stop-worrying&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/general/why-i-dont-care-about-grammar-and-why-you-should-stop-worrying&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The way I've always been taught, and the way I've come to understand grammar, is that you must learn the rules before you can break them.&lt;/strong&gt; And, if you break them too much, as I've learned the hard way, people can't understand your writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no, novels aren't expected to be written in MLA or APA format, but they are expected to be coherent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2016-12-26T02:08:24.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25641" CreationDate="2016-12-26T03:46:43.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think so, it's really a matter of how you worked it together. If you're able to make it good while switching between that, then it can make sense that you do that. If you can only stay in on POV because you can't switch without making it confusing, then I wouldn't do that. It's just a matter of what your style is. So if you want to do that and you can pull it off, sure, go for it, you have nothing to lose. It's really up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22674" LastActivityDate="2016-12-26T03:46:43.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25640" CreationDate="2016-12-26T03:59:46.647" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;RE Lavender is right, just look at wattpad. I've seen tons of books with no grammatical sense whatsoever, and I have to stop what I'm reading to re-read it and try to figure out what it's supposed to mean. Commas aren't that bad, but spelling, punctuation, a lack of vocabulary, and all the rest can really affect the reading experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an exception for non-English or English as their second language people, like Lavender said, and also younger people. Like a three year old might say, &quot;why me have to sleep? I no tired.&quot; And nobody will question that, it's normal. There are some people who pay close attention to grammar in books (like me) and will literally stop reading to stare at the mistake (like me, I got mad because there was no comma) but other people won't notice the TINY mistakes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22674" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-12-27T05:30:17.917" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T05:30:17.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25601" CreationDate="2016-12-26T04:12:50.060" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do the same thing as you, there's a simple solution. When you want to change viewpoints, just do. &#xA; ----(character)----&lt;br&gt;&#xA; and then everyone knows that it's from that characters perspective&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22674" LastActivityDate="2016-12-26T04:12:50.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25640" CreationDate="2016-12-26T06:39:25.297" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to make a distinction between good grammar and what we might call the grammar of the good. Or perhaps I should say between grammar and the grammar of the good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grammar is the mechanics of how language works. Every comprehensible sentence is comprehensible because of grammar. Either your language works -- conveys meaning to a reader -- or it does not. You cannot make yourself understood at all without grammar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is &quot;Grammar&quot;, which is the study of how grammar works, and an attempt to define its operation, which, it turns out, we don't completely understand. You don't need to know anything at all about the study of Grammar in order to speak or write with grammar. In fact, grammar has to come before Grammar because you need grammar to understand anything that is said about Grammar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is the grammar of the good, which is a set of prescriptions, nominally derived from Grammar, ostensibly for the purpose of teaching people better grammar, but with the larger purpose of separating the speech of the educated from the speech of the uneducated so as to create effective barriers to social mobility. The grammar of the good contains all kinds of rules that have no justification in actual grammar, or in Grammar. Some of them even come from other languages. But just as with Grammar, you don't need to know the grammar of the good in order to write a compelling story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you do need to do is to become as fluent in written English as you are in spoken English. The two are substantially different. To become fluent in written English you are going to need to read and write it about as much as you had to speak and hear spoken English to become fluent in it. Which means a lot. Lots of adults just aren't there simply because they have not done enough practice to be fluent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, while the lack of fluency is written English can manifest itself in a number of different ways, most of which are not actually grammatical, people who don't have a vocabulary for talking about these flaws will fall back of calling them &quot;bad grammar&quot;. Unfortunately, this leads many to suppose that you have to go learn Grammar and conform to the grammar of the good in order to write well. This does not work terribly well, however, if for no other reason than that most of the faults people are complaining about are not actually grammatical, but are matters of convention, style, usage, or other things. Reading good books will do more to improve your fluency than reading Grammar books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the gatekeepers of the publishing world number themselves among the good. While a few have the good sense to know that a great story does not always come across the transom in the grammar of the good, many of them will use it as their first filter. If it is not in the grammar of the good, they won't read far enough to find out if is a great story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if the do find a great story that is not written using the grammar of the good, they will insist on editing it into the grammar of the good before they will publish it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, while you don't need to master the grammar of the good in order to write a compelling story, you almost certainly need to present your story in the grammar of the good in order to get it published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the upside, since the vast majority of (professionally) published work is published in the grammar of the good, if you read and write enough to become fluent in written English, you will have picked up both grammar and the grammar of the good by osmosis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that you won't ever be criticized, since the grammar of the good is being constantly reshaped by the social mobility that it is designed to resist. Thus most of the latinate rules (no split infinitives, no ending a sentence with a preposition) which were the frontier of the grammar of the good fifty years ago are now mere ruins to be gawked at by tourists, while whole new prescriptions have grown up around things like pronouns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is the writing life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-12-27T01:29:02.687" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T01:29:02.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25641" CreationDate="2016-12-26T07:05:00.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. A story stands or falls on the completion of the story arc. POV is simply about camera angles. You choose the camera angle that best frames the part of the story you are telling at the moment. There is no obligation to end on the same camera angle that you opened with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be an obsessive focus on POV in many questions here at the moment. I think it is important to stress that POV is simply a narrative device. It does not determine the shape of the story, nor the reader's sympathy with the protagonist of the story. Nor is there any obligation to tell an entire story from a single POV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the only real reason to give a writer any such advice would be if you thought they were not yet a sufficiently skilled writer to manipulate POV successfully, like telling a fledgeling composer not to change time signatures in the middle of a piece. But the point of such advice should only be to suggest that they master the basics before they move on to advanced techniques. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-12-28T03:25:51.583" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T03:25:51.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25648" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-26T13:55:30.037" Score="9" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a former Molecular Biologist and also worked for years as an ICU nurse. I personally liked Crichton's style of writing about science/medical mishaps but found his presentation of science/medical facts was appallingly minimal. Most of his scenarios were simply fiction on the same level with Stephen King; scary but not realistic. I am working on the second draft of my novel about the accidental release of a virus during a clinical trial and want to use actual facts but fear being too pedantic. Do most agents/editors/publishers  prefer a simple gloss over or even exaggeration of science? Is it acceptable to engage my readers and educate them on science concepts using a character who actually presents details in the manner of a real scientist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="22690" LastEditDate="2016-12-26T17:55:49.437" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T05:57:25.790" Title="How much science/medical detail is too much?" Tags="|novel|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25648" CreationDate="2016-12-26T14:19:01.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To a certain extent it will depend on your audience, but I think the answer is not &quot;worry about too much detail&quot; but &quot;worry about making it comprehensible to the lay person.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is dependent on real, critical medical details, then you have to include them and make them realistic. But if the story is also dependent on high-level medical jargon which people who aren't trained won't understand, then the first thing you have to do is explain it to the rest of us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I'm reading &lt;em&gt;The Imitation Game,&lt;/em&gt; the Alan Turing bio by Andrew Hodges. What Turing and Bletchey's boffins did to break the Nazis' coded messages by beating the Engima machines took some of the most brilliant mathematical minds of the 20th century. Hodges stops the biography to spend 10 pages or so slowly, carefuly explaining, with lots of diagrams, how the Enigma machine worked and how the English codebreakers thought about it and unravelled it with their Bombes (derived from the Polish analysts who gave it to them). I'm not very mathematically inclined so I'm only getting about 85% of it, but that's 75% more than I would have grasped on my own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in any case, once Hodges lays out how the machines worked and how they were cracked, he moves on to summarizing. &quot;The Nazis added a fourth rotor, meaning what was previously cracked in two hours now took a week.&quot; He doesn't have to go through all the jargon again; he just explains the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what you should aim for in your medical book. If you have to invent a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/search?q=cabbagehead&quot;&gt;cabbagehead character&lt;/a&gt; for your initial explanation, that's fine. Once you've taught your lay audience what the jargon means, then you can have your scientists speaking pretty much in jargon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's very advanced terminology, a glossary at the end wouldn't hurt either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2016-12-26T14:19:01.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25648" CreationDate="2016-12-26T14:25:33.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not that it's not acceptable, it's that it is orthogonal. What editors care about is compelling stories in the current taste. There is nothing to say that cannot include scientific detail. That is certainly something that there is a modern taste for. As Emily Gilmore once said, &quot;I don't watch television. I'm not interested in forensics.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in a story, everything exists in story world and exists to support story. Story world in both neater and more chaotic than our world. Wounds heal faster. Psychological trauma that would reduce people in our world to gibbering madness, is brushed off with kiss or a beer in story world. Problems that in our world would be solved by a phone call can bring story world to the brink of chaos. There is truly no such thing as realistic fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That does not mean that story world science can never correspond to our science. Story world needs anchor points in our world so that people can find their bearings and learn the rules. Those touch points can be scientific just as well as anything else. But whatever story world copies from our world still has to obey the overall rules of story world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crichton is a good example of anchoring story world science in real world science, as he did in Jurassic Park. There are insects from that era, and even bits of dinosaur, complete with feathers, preserved in amber. But that is just the anchor. From there, story science takes over: neater, simpler, and at the same time more chaotic. Because this is story world, and in story world, story rules apply. Break story rules and you break story world. Break story world and you break story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you write a story world in which story science corresponds 100% to actual science? Maybe. But your story will still have to obey story rules or it will read not like a story but like a painfully awkward textbook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most important rules of story is that you must not introduce any more background than the reader needs to follow the story, and you must not introduce it any sooner than the reader feels they need it. This means no more science than the story requires, no sooner than it is required -- whether that be real science or story science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like most other story rules, though, this is overridden by the highest rule of story world, which is that anything truly compelling works. The question then becomes, who is it truly compelling for, and how do I find them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story is the one thing that is truly compelling for everyone, but careers have been made on being compelling about other things to the right audience at the right time. Though when it comes to science, I think the question becomes, if you can be truly compelling about science, why do you need fiction as a vehicle? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your aim is to hide the bitter pill of knowledge in a spoonful of fictiony jam, you should know that that pretty much never works. The kid eats the jam and spits out the pill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-26T14:25:33.877" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25641" CreationDate="2016-12-26T16:22:26.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's a matter of style.  I think of examples of both situations your describe.  There's an audience for both I think.  I might be someone who does not like discontinuity and would go home unsatisfied still looking for some closure while someone else would be entertained and that's it.  I think that if you write something you yourself are satisfied with then you'll be able to 'sell' your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21591" LastActivityDate="2016-12-26T16:22:26.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25648" CreationDate="2016-12-26T17:40:43.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I&amp;nbsp;think a better example of &quot;what the people want&quot; would be Tom Clancy. His research, whether it be military, medical, or engineering is meticulous, and its presentation is thorough. He's not afraid to spend thousands of words on intro explanation. But he's Tom Clancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to start with too much detail and use beta readers to help edit out the superfluous or simply too technical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out a season of &lt;em&gt;ER&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;House&lt;/em&gt;. They use a lot of jargon. The audience is either medical professionals who get it or lay fans who do their best to keep up. These writers won Emmys year after year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what about Melville's &lt;em&gt;Moby Dick&lt;/em&gt;? At least a 100 pages of sailing, ship building, and whaling industry jargon included in what is still considered a classic. Technical can work; it just has to be done well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minimize the use of drug names. Unless you're saying something bad about the drug, use brand names—with certain exceptions: lithium, digoxin, maybe a few others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2016-12-28T05:57:25.790" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T05:57:25.790" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25653" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25675" CreationDate="2016-12-26T18:37:16.717" Score="3" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I studied writing in depth before ever seriously trying it myself. I read a lot, and I looked at reputable books on the subject. Over the years, I combined what I knew into a formula which I then honed and perfected through years of trial-and-error. Now that I have that formula more or less in its final form, I want to share my knowledge with other writers who are where I was several years ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to do this would be to have a website where I can have a community of budding writers. I would of course show them what I know and open it to discussion, but I'd also like to host contests (free and paid), and offer them opportunities to get started with agents and publishers, through my own connections (I myself am not yet published, so that will obviously come later). Having a community like this has always been my dream. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find it, but I remember reading somewhere (on this site if memory serves) that a publisher will want to create and own a website for the author and his book. It makes sense, as he then has a target he can point readers to, which most likely sends them to other books from the same publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? And if it is, will there be a problem with me having my own site already/wanting to create one in the future? Will the publisher somehow own the rights so that I can't create my website, or he will own it if I do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T19:43:49.260" Title="Can I Have My Own Website Separate of My Publisher?" Tags="|publishing|websites|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25653" CreationDate="2016-12-26T19:07:29.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The nice thing about websites is that there can be more than one.  Publishers, being publishers, want to promote their books, which will of course include on the web, but that doesn't mean you can't.  Subject to the terms of any specific contract, and the specific promotional language/messaging they want to use for your book, you can promote your book beyond the publisher's site.  And I've never heard of a publisher trying to shut down a personal web site, like a blog.  If you start blogging bad things about the publisher they might object, but that's different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one example of a pattern I've seen from several authors.  (Disclosure: this author is a friend.)  For the book &lt;em&gt;I Remember the Future&lt;/em&gt;, the publisher (Apex Publications) has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apexbookcompany.com/products/i-remember-the-future-the-award-nominated-stories-of-michael-a-burstein&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a product page&lt;/a&gt;, and the author (Michael Burstein) also has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mabfan.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a page on his personal site&lt;/a&gt; (he's written other stuff too) and a personal blog.  Each of those sites links to the other, so the publisher clearly doesn't have a problem with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another example from a larger publisher.  Baen Books has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baen.com/author_links&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;page on its site&lt;/a&gt; with links to the personal (or sometimes fan) web sites of all of their authors who have them.  It's not a short list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These examples are drawn from SF&amp;amp;F publishers in North America.  I don't have reasons to believe that publishers in other genres would be significantly different in this regard, but you should do some searching in the genres or with the publishers you're interested in to see what you can find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-12-26T19:07:29.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25655" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25657" CreationDate="2016-12-26T20:51:52.400" Score="3" ViewCount="694" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some reason, I can only seem to get in the &quot;zone&quot; at night time. Like 9:30pm and past that. Whenever I try to write during the day, I can't get myself to write something that's actually good, or even be able to stay focused. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I only write at night, I'm also often fighting to stay awake, and I make many grammatical mistakes that I have to fix in the morning. But there's also a plus for writing at night, my ADHD meds are more worn off, and I can imagine better ideas.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it a bad habit? Should I try to somehow quit doing it? Importantly, how might this affect my writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22674" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-12-27T05:22:49.180" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T15:37:15.643" Title="Is it a bad habit to only write at night?" Tags="|discipline|habits|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25656" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-26T20:52:31.777" Score="3" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have compiled specific Scriptures on a particular subject and am going to publish it on Amazon.com.  I personally wrote a short introduction.  Do I have to list my book as public domain or do I retain all the rights for publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22693" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-12-27T20:09:21.650" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T20:09:21.650" Title="What rights can I claim for a book that compiles selected bible passages?" Tags="|publishing|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25655" CreationDate="2016-12-26T23:32:57.927" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You found a time when you can write. Why on earth would you want to break that habit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fix your grammatical errors in the morning. Get your ideas on paper when the Muse wants you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-26T23:32:57.927" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25655" CreationDate="2016-12-27T02:47:49.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If writing is all you want to do with your life, then what you do is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, you need to study, go to school, or perform a job, then your night time writing may cause you to be tired or otherwise dysfunctional in relation to your duties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.de/search?q=night%20shift%20social%20life&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It may also be detrimental to your social life&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are awake during the night, you will need to sleep during the day. That is not healthy. You miss a lot of sun light (which your body needs to create certain chemicals), and you disrupt your body's normal diurnal cycle. The body heals and grows during night sleep. To name just one example, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201304/sunlight-and-adhd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;working at night increases your ADHD symptoms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-12-27T15:37:15.643" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T15:37:15.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25656" CreationDate="2016-12-27T03:27:11.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL but, as an anthologist, you automatically own a copyright on the anthology -- not on the passages themselves, but on the particular collection and arrangement of those passages you have made. The anthology is new and original work even if the pieces in it are not. This is true regardless of whether the translation you used was public domain or is licenced from the copyright holder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you may have a different problem. It seems that Amazon does not accept books with public domain content into the kindle store, per this author's post and the links it contains to amazon's rules. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/mariaealexander/posts/303554153087452&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.facebook.com/mariaealexander/posts/303554153087452&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes sense. People repackaging public domain material and reselling it has been a significant usability and customer experience problem for Amazon in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T03:27:11.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25664" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25665" CreationDate="2016-12-27T11:17:53.500" Score="-1" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have tried to write a couple of stories, but all of them sounded like a two-year-old wrote them (no offence to two-year-olds).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My grammar and spelling are pretty good, but the &lt;strong&gt;big&lt;/strong&gt; problem is that my plots sound super dumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help in any way you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22704" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T16:34:54.770" Title="How can I get inspired to write a story, without any experience beforehand?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25664" CreationDate="2016-12-27T13:48:45.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't have an idea for a story, you can retell an existing one. There are a few ways to do this. One is to take a song that tells a story (a lot of folk songs and ballads are small stories) and rewrite it as a short story. Obviously this will require you to flesh the story out with additional detail and atmosphere, all of which is good practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also retell a folktale or myth.  You can do this in various ways: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a straight retelling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;retelling an adult tale for children&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;retelling a children's tale for adults&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;changing the setting or time period&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;changing the ending from comic to tragic or tragic to comic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a number of stories based on the Child Ballads (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Ballads&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Ballads&lt;/a&gt;) that ended up getting published. The best of them, a work I am still proud of, was a retelling in the modern day that changed the ending from comic to tragic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, there are no new stories. We are all just retelling the old tales to suit new tastes. (Nice, because it means we will never run out of stuff to write.) The art and the artifice are all in the telling. So there is no shame in looking to old tellings for inspiration for new tellings. After all, it worked for Shakespeare.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, don't do anything that infringes anyone's copyrights. And remember, the art is in the telling. You are borrowing old bones, but you are giving them new flesh, and the new flesh should be all yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T13:48:45.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25664" CreationDate="2016-12-27T16:34:54.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading is a huge writing-improvement technique. Read a lot. Pay attention to how your favorite writers handle plot, character, dialog, everything. Try things out that you've seen. Copy stuff. Make it your own. And keep reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T16:34:54.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25640" CreationDate="2016-12-27T16:42:59.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bad grammar makes a piece of writing look amateurish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But keep in mind that your own unpublished, unreviewed work is allowed to be unpolished. (Some would even encourage working your first couple drafts in an unpolished state.) The piece will be revised and proofed, maybe several times, by you and your readers before it's published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't sweat it too much. Just write, and clean it up in revision. But do clean it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T16:42:59.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25640" CreationDate="2016-12-27T16:50:29.147" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on the audience.  There are plenty of books out there with mediocre grammar and a very vernacular type of writing.  If you know your audience and you know you want to cater to your audience then you should be able to write.  You can find out the easy way.  Write something you think would entertain someone.  Let them read it and then ask for feedback.  You don't have to be a researcher to do this with surveys and polls.  One or two readers would give you great feedback for this kind of question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21591" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T16:50:29.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25670" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25672" CreationDate="2016-12-27T17:06:04.250" Score="3" ViewCount="366" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I legitimately don't know the answer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I said something a little silly today, and was told I was incorrect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Writing requires &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; skill. You basically just have to write down what you're seeing in your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was told I was incorrect and writing required many skills, and was not a thing that required no skill at all. However, the person I was chatting to had to go, so I was briskly finished with all of that senseless talk and trotted off to stack exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why did I trot off to stack exchange? I want to know what kinds of &lt;em&gt;skills&lt;/em&gt; writing requires. When I'm writing, I write what I see in my head and it tends to be pretty good. To me, that requires 0 skill whatsoever and is basic enough for an &lt;em&gt;idiot&lt;/em&gt; like myself to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can creative writing require skill when it's generally just writing down your ideas? You're often going to be doing it in your native language too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T18:06:11.167" Title="What kinds of skill does writing require?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|technique|novel|book|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25670" CreationDate="2016-12-27T17:53:16.500" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Write what you see in your head&quot;? That first takes &lt;strong&gt;observational skills.&lt;/strong&gt; What are you seeing? Are you seeing all of it? Are you also listening, smelling, tasting, feeling? Are you observing your (or the character's) heart rate, blood pressure, nausea, backache, muscle fatigue, excitement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That all takes &lt;strong&gt;descriptive skills.&lt;/strong&gt; Can you use words to capture all those observations and sensations in a way which reproduces them for your reader? &quot;I was cold and sad&quot; is a description, but so is &quot;The raw December wind blew through the Arthur-shaped hole in my soul and left me numb, only a dull ache remaining where my heart used to be.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The words need &lt;strong&gt;semantic skills.&lt;/strong&gt; Grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, turns of phrase. If you can't form a coherent sentence, nobody will understand you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, you need a story to tell, so you need &lt;strong&gt;plotting skills.&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;The cat sat on the mat&quot; is not a story. &quot;The cat sat on the other cat's mat&quot; is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your plots need people (loosely &amp;mdash; anything sentient, so intelligent animals, machines, nonhumans, et cetera), so you need &lt;strong&gt;characterizing skills.&lt;/strong&gt; Are the characters rounded, real, believable, flawed, interesting? Do we root for them? Do we care? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once everything is down on paper, you have to make sure that other people are getting the effect you want. That requires &lt;strong&gt;editing skills.&lt;/strong&gt; You have to be willing to accept and use criticism to make your work better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically, your correspondent is absolutely right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-12-28T07:41:14.353" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T07:41:14.353" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25670" CreationDate="2016-12-27T18:39:21.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing, like any narrative art, requires three things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All the &lt;strong&gt;skills&lt;/strong&gt; that Lauren Ipsum lists in her answer. These skills can be trained through diligent practice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Diligence and tenacity&lt;/strong&gt;. To learn the necessary skills and to overcome the countless obstacles in the path of any artist, you must to have indomitable willpower. This personality trait is partly inherited, partly learned during childhood, and can be acquired during adulthood only with immense effort.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Imagination&lt;/strong&gt;. This is an aspect of intelligence and appears to be mostly hereditary. Like intelligence, it can be changed only slightly. If you don't have imagination, you might want to seek another career.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T18:39:21.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25670" CreationDate="2016-12-27T18:40:44.130" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the hidden question here is, does writing require teachable skills. Of course writing requires skills. You have to be able to make marks on paper with a stick, etc. The real question seems to be, does it require skills you can't just pick up by living life. Do you have to specifically study writing skills in order to be a writer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really a question about what type of skill writing is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a skill like walking, for instance? We don't teach our kids to walk. (They don't have enough language to take instruction anyway.) Kids teach themselves to walk. They learn by trying to improve their ability to get from A to B. Some of the intermediate means they discover in the process are pretty funny, before they finally figure out walking. Walking is learnable, but not teachable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skills like this are tacit skills. Even after we learn them, we cannot fully express how we do them in words. The body has learned, but not the part of the body that knows how to translate what it knows into words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are skills like how to ride a bicycle. We teach our kids to ride bikes. We can write down a pretty good description of how to ride a bike. Still, there are parts of bike riding that are still tacit. Even with the best instruction, you still need to fall off a few time before you get comfortable and secure. Bike riding if partly teachable. But people can also figure it out for themselves. It is wholly learnable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is installing a home theatre system. This is a fully teachable skill. A manual can tell you how to attach all the wires in the right places and if you pay attention, and the manual is correct, you can complete the task successfully the first time. This is a fully teachable task but is not really learnable. You need the information in the manual.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what about writing. I think we should class it as fully learnable and partially teachable. To say that it is only partially teachable is to say that it is partly tacit. There is part of writing -- or at least of writing well -- that we don't know how to express or explain in words. (Ironic? Sure. But remember that language itself is like this. We don't have a complete understanding of how it works.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is it fully learnable? Because writing is all surface. You can see 100% of what the writer has done. Every part of the technique is there on the page to be learned, even if we can't put what we are learning into words (just like walking). In this sense, it does not require any teachable skills. You could learn it all tacitly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, like riding a bike, a good deal of it is also teachable. When we teach skills we break them down and give them names and you can then list specific skills you can learn. In this sense a &quot;skill&quot; is an artefact, something we have captured and defined so we can teach it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since writing can be learned entirely tacitly, it does not require any &quot;skills&quot; in the sense of these captured and defined teachable skills. It can be done based entirely on tacit skills, at least in principle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, in practice you are likely to make much more progress if you learn the genuine teachable skills. The trick is to tell the true teachable skill from all the silly rules out there masquerading as writing skills. And you also do have to remember that writing is not wholly teachable. There are tacit elements to it that you only learn by reading and writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-12-27T19:22:00.883" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T19:22:00.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25653" CreationDate="2016-12-27T19:43:49.260" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, many publishers seem to prefer perspective authors to have a web site and a following they can point to, as well as other social media. It's called building a platform. It all helps build publicity for the book, which is something you and your publisher would both want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T19:43:49.260" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25676" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25793" CreationDate="2016-12-27T21:23:43.440" Score="15" ViewCount="3560" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that successful detective stories are, nearly always, not written in the point of view of the detective himself. The protagonist (i.e. the ingenious detective at the heart of the story) is usually referred to by his sidekick or one of his closest friends. Does it have anything to do with spoiling the suspense gradually building up? Or is it that revealing the detective's thoughts would give us a deeper insight into the mystery? Most probably, this makes for a better and a more tension-packed climax. Is this why we always get to know the fascinating details of the mystery at the very end? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just why exactly aren't more detective stories written in the point of view of the protagonist?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22250" LastEditorUserId="22250" LastEditDate="2018-07-23T12:54:38.190" LastActivityDate="2018-07-23T15:58:27.773" Title="Why aren't detective stories written in the protagonist's POV?" Tags="|fiction|mystery|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25676" CreationDate="2016-12-27T22:15:37.357" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one can know the writer's reasons but themselves, but I would point out a couple of things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the detective is the star of of the show, you want them in frame. When you see a scene from a character's POV, you see what they see, you don't see them. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The natural way in which you get to know someone is not from inside their head, but from the outside. The omniscient POV is the normal and natural POV of western literature because it allows the reader to see the character both from the outside and from the inside. Both the cinematic POV and the close POV close one of those windows. Thus the both tell you less, not more, about the character. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As you point out, any story which follows the trope of the big reveal depends on the detective knowing things that the reader does not know. That is hard to do if the detective is the POV character.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An interesting example of when the Detective is not only the POV character but the first person narrator are the Longmire mysteries. What is interesting in this case is that Longmire is a taciturn and unknowable man. Using him as narrator allows the author, Craig Johnson, to limit what the reader can see or know of Longmire. It also allows him to frame the secondary characters, and the Wyoming setting, which is very much a star of the books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth pointing out in this connection that the detective is not always the focus of a mystery. A mystery can also focus on the character of the criminal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;POV is a camera angle, and where you place the camera determines where the focus lies. But you don't place the camera on the thing you want to focus on, you place it opposite to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-01T18:44:14.887" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T18:44:14.887" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25679" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-28T05:29:19.297" Score="4" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing I've found that I have trouble describing ordinary things. For instance if I want to describe a chair I'll spend lots of time hunting down resources like this &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jmedP.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;chair diagram&lt;/a&gt;, using google searches like 'chair anatomy'. This usually turns up very few results, or results with unusable poor image quality. Sometimes I find nothing at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone recommend a resource for helping with this? Specifically a search engine for labeled schematics or drawings, like in the link?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22715" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2023-04-26T19:19:58.970" LastActivityDate="2023-04-28T14:27:59.643" Title="Need resources to assist with describing ordinary things" Tags="|resources|description|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2016-12-28T05:50:11.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The superiority of Dvorak keyboards has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard#Controversies_and_criticism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;largely reputiated&lt;/a&gt; in the last 20 years.  The old original study was flawed in that Dvorak experts were self-selected and motivated to learn and practice, and it was promotional material not peer reviewed study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A “modern” keyboard is ergonomic in terms of finger strength and motion range, and doesn’t have the same issues as pre-electric keyboards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get the same benefit by getting a &lt;strong&gt;high-quality&lt;/strong&gt; conventional keyboard with switches that have the desired mechanical feedback and don’t wiggle (&lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a flat laptop-style keyboard); and &lt;em&gt;practice&lt;/em&gt; and drill your typing as if you were a beginner again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s best if you can’t see the keys at all.  Either make an open-sided box to cover it, or go for the &lt;em&gt;Das Keyboard&lt;/em&gt; unmarked keys &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dlugosz.com/zeta/?p=66&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;like I did&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a typing tutor program that identifies your weak points and adjusts to practice that more, you will bet as fast as you can be. This is the real thing that makes the difference. You can do that with a conventional layout and don’t have to use a different layout to “learn again”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s the practice and motivation that makes the improvement, &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; the different layout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastEditorUserId="14898" LastEditDate="2017-02-05T08:45:51.217" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T08:45:51.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25634" CreationDate="2016-12-28T06:10:56.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a similar issue on a stack exchange site, quoting something that itself contained quotes. I went with the (unusual for English) «French quotes» for the inline message quotation, and like the effect so much that it’s become a matter of style for me here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, I would think that it ought to be not an inline quote but a block quote.  Then the punctuation of the letter itself can be unchanged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not change &lt;em&gt;the letter&lt;/em&gt; so that it is nicer to quote, if that would have been unnatural in writing a normal letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You corrected the letter-writer’s punctuation (was a comma splice) but I don’t think the original letter writer would break out the quote like that, unless it was long enough to be a blockquote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T06:10:56.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25679" CreationDate="2016-12-28T06:27:43.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you lack is not an outside resource such as a book or website, but an inside resource: active vocabulary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Passive vocabulary is your ability to understand words that you encounter in spoken or written language. Active vocabulary is your ability to use words to express thoughts. Everyone has a larger passive than active vocabulary: you understand most of what you hear or read without having to look up words in a dictionary, but you often find yourself not having quite the right word to say what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Active vocabulary can be trained. The more you speak and write and try to come up with words to describe what you see or express what you think, the more words will become active.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So just keep writing and with time your ability to find the right word will grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T06:27:43.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25683" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-28T13:07:11.803" Score="6" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I write, I find some obstacles in forming well-structured ideas and my writing does not sound natural because of overusing connectors.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;How can I overcome this issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22719" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-12-28T20:20:19.527" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T19:46:07.740" Title="How can I write well-structured ideas without overusing connectors such as &quot;moreover&quot; and &quot;in addition to&quot;" Tags="|structure|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25689" CreationDate="2016-12-28T13:35:30.407" Score="13" ViewCount="1120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in no way a writer. It's something I've always wanted to do, but could never build up the courage to actually start. Every time I think about writing, I think about the end result and how I am not a good writer. This process circles through my head until I come to the conclusion that I shouldn't write at all if my final product is going to suck. I have no real experience writing seriously (outside of school projects/poetry classes). I have a lot of stories that I want to get out of my head and put down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could anyone give me any suggestions? Maybe something about your writing process or how you got over something similar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22708" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T22:25:15.900" Title="Any suggestions for a new writer?" Tags="|creative-writing|screenwriting|writers-block|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25550" CreationDate="2016-12-28T13:53:10.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of self-plagiarism is ridiculous. Cause even Daniel Keez wrote the hole book using his published article.&#xA;But there is even &lt;a href=&quot;https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/92785/file-5414624-pdf/media/ith-selfplagiarism-whitepaper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;THE ETHICS OF&#xA;SELF-PLAGIARISM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22720" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T13:53:10.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25684" CreationDate="2016-12-28T14:21:14.217" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's be blunt: your initial efforts will suck. That's because &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; writer's initial efforts suck. Stephen King? Sucked. JK Rowling? Sucked. Octavia Butler? Sucked. Shakespeare? Suckethed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your goal is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to write something perfect. Your goal is to &lt;em&gt;get it down on paper.&lt;/em&gt; Once it's on paper, then you can edit it, repeatedly, until it &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; suck. But &lt;strong&gt;you cannot edit a blank page.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So go ahead and get your stories out of your head. You don't have to show them to anyone. The grammar can be terrible, you can have lots of &quot;TK he gets from here to there,&quot; your characters can all be Mary Sues, it &lt;em&gt;doesn't matter.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write. Just write for the sheer joy of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, you can go back and make it better. Later, you can go ask for help from beta readers and editors and &lt;em&gt;learn&lt;/em&gt; how to make it better. You can &lt;em&gt;learn&lt;/em&gt; how to make the end result great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's no end result if there's no beginning. Go forth and write without worry or shame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T14:21:14.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25684" CreationDate="2016-12-28T15:19:12.217" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say that you wanted to become a circus performer. You want your act to be juggling flaming batons blindfolded while riding a unicycle on a tightrope over a tiger cage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You recognize that your first attempt to do any of these things, let alone do them all together, is going to suck. So what do you do? You go away and you practice each element separately. You watch other performers to learn their technique. Maybe you go to circus school. And you practice, practice, practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each of the skills in your act you will hit a plateau where you will get discouraged. If you really want to be a circus performer, you will persevere and eventually start improving again. If not, you will quit and do something else. That's fine. We all have to test our resolve to know how much we really want something. Maybe you will decide to be an accountant but you will put on a clown suit and juggle rubber balls for children's parties on the weekends. That is fine too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day, if you work long enough and hard enough, you will ride your unicycle blindfold across a pit of tigers while juggling flaming batons and the crowd will go wild. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning to write it like that too. It looks easy, but then, the great circus performers make it look easy. But a writer had to build a world, create characters, paint a scene, tell a story, expound a theme, and charm the reader with beauty all in a single string of words. It is at least as complicated and difficult a task as riding a unicycle blindfold over a pit of tigers while juggling flaming batons. It takes as long to learn. There will be plateaus that test your resolve. Most who try never get good enough to wow the crowd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have discovered that it's hard. It is not just hard for you. It is hard for everyone. The question is, how much do you want it? How hard are you willing to work to get it? How afraid are you of heights, or fire, or tigers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestions? Like any complex and difficult skill, start with something small and simple. Practice till you get good. Add something else. And study the masters. Study them all the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-12-28T18:39:41.220" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T18:39:41.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25684" CreationDate="2016-12-28T16:46:22.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I learned is that the writing process is something very subjective and what can work for me could not work for you and viceversa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the most important thing (especially if you are a beginner) is to &lt;strong&gt;shut down your inner critic&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should write without questioning how good can be. Just let it flow. &#xA;You have to discover your voice and your style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't expect to have a gold bar if you are not ready to get your hands dirty collecting the nuggets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a time to write and there's a time to judge ;) don't mix them up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4018" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T16:46:22.370" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25635" CreationDate="2016-12-28T17:27:45.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A program can only show you information that it records as part of its file format (metadata). If LibreOffice records the data on which date  each line is written as part of the normal file format, then, in theory, it could show it to you. And if it didn't show it to you in the interface, you could open up the ODT file (it's a zipped set of XML files) and see for yourself. But it is vanishingly unlikely that it records that information when review changes is turned off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GIT is a version control system. It records the differences in a file each time you check that file in. So it can tell you the difference between a file on any two dates. Which means it can tell you all the changes that were made to a file on any given date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that does not actually tell you what day the changes were made in the file. It tells you what day the changes were checked into the GIT repository. In other words, it does not tell you what you wrote yesterday; it tells you what you checked in yesterday. If you make it a habit to check in at the end of every work day, then what you checked in yesterday is the same as what you wrote yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this may not work with LibreOffice files because LibreOffice files are binary files and GIT is designed to work with text files. If you check in binary files, it won't store the differences, it just stores a new copy of the whole files. It is possible that there might be an ODT plugin for GIT that would allows it to unzip the file and store the differences of the XML files inside, but that could get complicated to manage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did have complete versions of the files from different days, however, you could always use the compare version feature of LibreOffice to tell you the difference between them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-12-28T23:17:25.503" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T23:17:25.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25717" CreationDate="2016-12-28T18:54:19.323" Score="4" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I've recently found my inner writer, I'm still learning the basics. I know that there is a standard screenplay / script format that should be followed when doing one. Would it be better to write freely in, say, my notebook / on my computer, or jump right into the standard screenplay format? Not looking for a debate, just looking for some advice from more experienced writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks, guys!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22708" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T18:23:14.150" Title="Is it better to jump right into the screenwriting format or start with freewriting in a notebook/on the computer?" Tags="|screenwriting|learning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25679" CreationDate="2016-12-28T20:28:15.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think @what's answer is great. I would add that you may be looking to add a greater level of detail than is needed, in some cases. For example, if my character walks into a room and I want to describe the chair she sits in, I may say something like &quot;The leather chair was worn down and comfortable, the imprints of many previous butts making the cushion soft.&quot; I might just say &quot;She sat on the old leather chair.&quot; I'm not likely to need to have the correct name for the back or arm or leg or the nails that hold it all together, unless the character is then going to pick up a chair and brain someone with it (and I don't want someone picking up a chair twice their weight unless that has meaning) or take it apart to use the nail to pick a lock. If I do, then I'll research what the parts of the chair are called. It's important to strike a balance in the level of detail, as well as many other aspects of description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T20:28:15.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25684" CreationDate="2016-12-28T22:25:15.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a classic case of &lt;a href=&quot;https://thanetcreativewriters.wordpress.com/2016/12/19/dont-let-imposter-syndrome-stop-you/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Imposter Syndrome&lt;/a&gt;. At Thanet Creative Writers (a local community of writers I started where I live) I noticed that this seems to be a problem for many beginner writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only consistent solution has been to actually start writing and not worry about the outcome. Without fail, anything you wrote will seem poor when compared with anything else you wrote more recently. That just seems to be a fact of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of an indicator of raw skill, this self-doubt (sometimes named the &lt;strong&gt;Inner Critic&lt;/strong&gt;) seems to be largely positive. It stems, as far as I can tell, from an awareness of what you do not know. That awareness stops you thinking that you are the best writer since Shakespeare and thus allows you to develop your skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not a universal rule by any stretch of the imagination, but there does seem to be something like an inverse correlation between ability and self-confidence when it comes to writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In general:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't compare yourself to other writers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Silence the Inner Critic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't try to produce perfection as perfection is a myth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write first, edit later&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are a writer if you write&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T22:25:15.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25676" CreationDate="2016-12-29T06:21:16.800" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are examples of mystery stories where things are told from the protagonist's point of view. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://bookriot.com/2016/06/01/pov-in-detective-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; for more, I've cut pasted the pertinent information below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1st person, narrator is the detective Philip Marlowe books by Raymond&#xA;  Chandler&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dave Robicheaux novels by James Lee Burke&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Spenser novels by Robert B. Parker&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eric Carter novels by Stephen Blackwood&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cal MacDonald novels by Steve Niles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dresden Files by Jim Butcher Kinsey Millhone “Alphabet” books by Sue&#xA;  Grafton (though apparently late in the series multiple POVs are used)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alex Cross novels by James Patterson&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Easy Rawlins novels by Walter Mosley&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not Sherlock Holmes and others like, because we must be wowed by his prowess and that's harder to achieve when we are in his head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cozy-mystery.com/blog/first-person-narrator-perspective-in-cozy-mysteries.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This link explains why&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few observations: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The (very few) female detectives are mostly third person stories.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first-person narrator who is not the detective seems to have&#xA;been a contained trend, in that Stout and Christie both copied Doyle&#xA;(who copied Edgar Allan Poe).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seriously, where are the ladies? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastEditorUserId="22250" LastEditDate="2017-01-02T18:39:20.703" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T18:39:20.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25698" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-29T09:24:25.797" Score="1" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A funny thing happened to me recently, which I would like to share with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First, let me say the private English school I'm studying at is called SPEAK UP. &#xA;  A couple of days ago, one of our teachers invited us to a pub quiz. You may ask &quot;what is a pub quiz?&quot;. Well, a pub quiz is held in a pub or bar. The participants split into teams, and a person, called quizmaster, asks them questions. The quiz consists of several rounds. Each team is supposed to write their answers on a paper and match them with the other teams at the end of each round. They are awarded some points for the correct answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anyways, I was late, so when I got to the pub, the students had already settled down and the teacher was asking one of the students a question. I approached the teacher from the back and said 'hello' to everybody. The teacher stopped reading, turned back and started looking at me in amusement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm Roger&quot; - I said because not everybody knew me. A girl asked out loud: &quot;Are you going to speak up?&quot;. I quickly responded: &quot;Yes, I go&quot;. The girl, without paying any attention to me, repeated &quot;Are you going to finish the question?&quot;. Oh! I then realized she was talking to the teacher all this time. (Such audacity!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You know, I felt quite embarrassed, but I kept a poker face and just joined one of the teams to play the quiz with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a pun in this story. I want to convey the pun in an indirect way, so that the reader finds it by own self and laughs at it. Again, I want to make it certain the reader will get the pun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the girl's questions are just too rude and they might seem unbelievable to the reader. How can I work on that part?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please guide me to make the writing smooth, succinct, laughable and believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14282" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-17T01:25:53.003" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T01:25:53.003" Title="How to use pun in this story" Tags="|style|character-development|humor|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2016-12-29T20:27:31.993" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25700" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25707" CreationDate="2016-12-29T09:59:14.147" Score="3" ViewCount="1849" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a sci-fi novella about a scientist named Steves living in the 24th century. I'm mostly using the typical past tense to narrate the incidents happening to the protagonist. Whenever I'm talking about things in general though, I tend to switch the tense to present. And all the while, I'm writing a book which is set in the future!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this appropriate? I also feel that I'm using my tenses wrongly at times. This is my first draft, by the way. Mistakes ought to be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sample of the piece:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was stuck. Simply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The shutters had closed. There was no escape. The robots on guard&#xA;  would never let anything, or anyone for that matter, in or out of the&#xA;  room. Even a tiny mouse cannot escape it. This wasn’t a possibility by&#xA;  the way, since the place was super hygienic. Not a single speck of&#xA;  dust lay on its shiny, polished floor. The room was adequately taken&#xA;  care of. Or I better say, excessively so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Steves couldn’t believe his eyes. The shutters had had closed. His&#xA;  heart sank. He was fuming by now. Why the heck did he agree to take&#xA;  the responsibility of managing the MAINS ROOM?  He knew he still&#xA;  wasn’t that qualified to handle that flaming room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DOOM’S ROOM more like, Steves muttered to himself with a chilly smile.&#xA;  He was given to play with words. And with science, which was exactly&#xA;  why he was here. He is one of the scientists at Revolution Tech (RT) –&#xA;  the leading innovative tech research institute of the 24th century. It&#xA;  has been founded on  January 1, 2301–the very beginning of a new era of&#xA;  science and technology–with the mission to conquer every impossibility&#xA;  and make brilliant scientific discoveries that will change our world&#xA;  forever. (And I dare say they have been quite successful.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Steves is a young, talented and dedicated scientist. He’s fairly new&#xA;  here; it's barely his first year at RT. Nevertheless, it hasn’t&#xA;  taken him much time to blend in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the narrator is telling the story 1 year later and things are pretty much the same, could I still use present tense in some places?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22250" LastEditorUserId="22250" LastEditDate="2018-08-24T16:18:14.460" LastActivityDate="2018-08-24T16:18:14.460" Title="Use of past tense in a book about the future" Tags="|science-fiction|tenses|novella|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-29T11:50:23.467" Score="3" ViewCount="1583" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the vast majority of fantasy novels, the characters' names are somewhat original (Bilbo, Kvothe, Daenerys, Pug and so on). Some authors use special naming convention, like Robin Hobb who uses a quality for name (Shrewd Farseer) in the Farseer Trilogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see mainly two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an elf named Legolas is way more charismatic than his cousin named Kevin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it gives an exotic touch, because magic isn't enough exotic by itself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other reasons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fantasy in a medieval-europe like world, is there really a need to be so original? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22740" LastEditorUserId="18418" LastEditDate="2016-12-29T18:05:27.593" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T19:08:38.710" Title="Why are names in fantasy novels often &quot;original&quot;?" Tags="|naming|setting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25701" CreationDate="2016-12-29T12:28:02.327" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &quot;striving for originality&quot; is a key reason, but to that end it's fair to say that 99% of fantasy novels aren't set in this world (earth and it's various countries) they're set in their own mythical, fantastical world and thus, along with religion(s), commerce and monetary systems, social hierarchy and class structure, geography, weather, clothing, traditions and much more, the naming conventions for people and places would be different from our own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22742" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T12:28:02.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25670" CreationDate="2016-12-29T12:57:36.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even bad writing requires skills. I read my earlier efforts and think how badly I suck, so I edit and move on. Often, I return to revise my revisions only to wonder why I had changed my initial draft because my revision sucked worse than the original. I finally decided writing is like a bucket of sand. You hand the bucket to an agent and they pour out mainly grit. But, just as they were going to toss the bucket back at you, a small precious stone is spotted amidst the silicon grains. The agent pours another handful of sand and spots a small emerald. And again, now a ruby. He looks you in the eye as he hands you back your bucket and says, &quot;You are right, you do generally suck; but not always. Your problem isn't that you are a bad writer, it is that you are inconsistently a bad writer, occasionally you produce a gem. So, go through that bucket and get rid as much sand as you can and work hard to add a few more precious stones and we can talk again.&quot; Writing is like prospecting in your mind; and prospecting is back breaking tedious work that produces damn little for hours of effort. But, occasionally a few miners stumble onto the mother lode. That is what keeps most of us digging through sand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T12:57:36.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25700" CreationDate="2016-12-29T13:00:08.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you can't randomly switch to the present tense like that. You are telling your story in past tense, even if you're talking about the future relative to us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;News stories can switch to the present tense for the general because they are reporting on facts which are relative to the moment you're reading them: &lt;em&gt;Shannon Faulkner enrolled in the Citadel yesterday, becoming the first female cadet. She deleted all references to gender on her transcript, so the school did not know she is a woman.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change everything in your story to past tense. You can have some present tense in dialogue, of course, but not narration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T13:00:08.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10791" CreationDate="2016-12-29T13:13:17.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually recommend not going overboard on questions when coaching writers. The narrative standpoint is, after all, authoritarian. It is just as easy, and less wishy-washy, to convert them to statements. Problems with questions lurk, like: the reader may answer incorrectly,  or there may be more ways to round out the question as a statement with details the questions mean to imply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions go well in dialogue. Think of a well-known novelist who narrates with a lot of questions. I can't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22744" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T13:13:17.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25706" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25708" CreationDate="2016-12-29T13:15:08.530" Score="31" ViewCount="5942" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write primarily science, which I readily admit can be very bland. On occasion I read fiction, but have found over the years that my tastes have changed considerably. Overly descriptive scenes leave me wanting &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt;; I don't read many newer novels because they spend way too many pages describing things instead of developing and telling an intriguing plot with twists and turns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If show was so great, wouldn't there be &quot;storyshowers&quot; instead of storytellers? Storytelling is a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; old tradition and is the basis of screenwriting. I am less interested in wordsmithing than in spinning an interesting yarn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, why do so many veteran writers hammer beginners like me to &quot;show, not tell&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-07T08:54:43.043" LastActivityDate="2018-05-17T19:34:18.530" Title="Why are writers so hung up on &quot;show versus tell&quot;?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|showing-telling|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25700" CreationDate="2016-12-29T13:26:40.490" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The tense used in a story is relative to the temporal POV (point of view) of the narrator, not to the actual calendar date. The modern novel arises from traditional storytelling, meaning that the default temporal POV is that you are telling a story about things that happened before the story is told. So even though your story is set in the future, the temporal POV is after the events of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is possible that parts of the story may be in the present relative to the temporal POV (universal or unchanging things, things in a frame) or in the future relative to the temporal POV (prophecy). In which case, they should be related in the appropriate tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unchanging features are an interesting case. Statements about them are true in the present as much as in the past when they impinged on the events of the story. Thus statements about them in the past or present tense would be equally valid. The convention is to refer to them in the past in storytelling. Referring to them in the present might make sense if the story were in a frame that was contemporary to the storyteller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When characters speak, of course, they speak in their own temporal POV, which is  different from the narrator's temporal POV. (Characters speak in their present, not the narrator's present.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a technique in which a story is told in present tense, meaning that the temporal POV is contemporary to the story as it unfolds. This can be used to create a kind of jittery or fragile feeling, or a sense of inevitability or doom -- the events are unfolding before your eyes yet you are unable to intervene or stop them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as it is possible to change spacial POV in the middle of a story, it is possible to change temporal POV. However, this is much trickier and will likely just get you into trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-12-29T13:45:38.263" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T13:45:38.263" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25706" CreationDate="2016-12-29T13:41:06.733" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Show vs tell is an overblown and misunderstood idea imported into fiction writing from screenwriting. It was originally coined to train novelists to write for the screen. (You can see how novel-like the storytelling was in many early movies. The screen had to struggle to find its own storytelling style, and &quot;show, don't tell&quot; was the watchword of that emerging style.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories, as you say, are told. The novelist does not have any of the visual and auditory tools of the filmmaker. They only have words, and words are the tools of telling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is entirely orthogonal to the issue of description. The amount of description in a story is determined by the importance of setting and of mood to the story being told. What you want is a story that is action oriented rather than, say, oriented to character or place. Many advocates of the &quot;show don't tell&quot; approach actually mean something very similar to this, as they advocate for a style that is almost all dialogue and action sequences.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: As to &quot;why do so many veteran writers hammer beginners like me to 'Show, not tell.'?&quot; -- Because most writers (not to mention editors and agents) are not trained in the tools of literary analysis, and generally they are not willing to put the work in to deeply analyse your stuff, so they reach for the great catch all: show don't tell. What should you take this to mean? 95% of the time it simply means that your writing is dull. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="25988" LastEditDate="2018-05-17T19:34:18.530" LastActivityDate="2018-05-17T19:34:18.530" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25701" CreationDate="2016-12-29T13:52:47.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Names are part of language. However, they are normally not translated. A Frenchman named Pierre is not referred to as Peter in English, he keeps the French version of his name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We presume that English is not the lingua franca of a fantasy world. Or rather, it would be a very specific kind of fantasy in which it were. But the story is told in English. It follows that the names of characters in the fantasy world would be in their own language, and since names are not translated, the original form of the name in the fantasy world will be used in the English telling of the story (perhaps transliterated in English characters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T13:52:47.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="525" CreationDate="2016-12-29T14:05:34.010" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;By far the best way to find an agent is to go to a writer's conference and pitch to as many of the agents in attendance as you can. This not only pretty much guarantees that the agents are legit (they have been vetted by the conference organizers) it also gets you to the top of their reading pile if they request material from you. From the agent's POV, writers who spend the time and money to attend conferences are much more serious about their craft than hundreds whose send their manuscripts in the mail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A shady agent, on the other hand, will probably prefer to keep their victims at arms length. The last thing most frauds want to do is to meet you face to face. A fraud with the brass to con you to your face is probably going to go after bigger fish than aspiring writers. There is only so much money you can con out of gullible writers; it is a volume business and the last thing you would want to do is spend the time and money on attending a conference where you con only can a few marks and have to look them in the eye while you do it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-12-29T15:57:41.473" LastActivityDate="2017-12-29T15:57:41.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25706" CreationDate="2016-12-29T14:17:08.433" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are confused about what's being &lt;em&gt;shown&lt;/em&gt;. &quot;Show, don't tell&quot; means &quot;show us that the hero is confused by describing the look on his face and how he stutters and drops things&quot; rather than saying in narration &quot;He was confused.&quot; It doesn't mean &quot;don't describe the room he's in.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't like a lot of scenery being described, there's nothing wrong with that preference. As Mark Baker correctly notes, there are stories focused on the place and those focused on the action. If you'd rather get into the action and not worry about a moody setting, that's just your cup of tea. Don't read books which have the background and location as a major plot point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T14:17:08.433" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25550" CreationDate="2016-12-29T16:01:27.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue of &lt;a href=&quot;http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&amp;amp;pageid=icb.page342054&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;plagiarism&lt;/a&gt; is mainly concerned with misrepresenting the nature or source of the written work that you are publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most well-known, &quot;archetypical&quot; type of plagiarism is using someone else's ideas in your writing and not citing the source, which may mislead readers into giving you the credit for these ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another type of plagiarism is using the same wording as your source, but not clearly indicating this via quotation marks or other quotation devices, which may mislead readers into giving you the credit for coming up with this wording.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of &quot;self-plagiarism&quot; is more complicated, but it mainly refers to an academic concept. In many cases, when you submit a writing assignment for an academic course, or to an academic journal, there is an implication that you are submitting new work. If you re-use some of your own old work without making it clear that that's what you're doing, it might look like you're trying to mislead your instructor or publisher into thinking they're getting new work when they really aren't, and you may get in trouble for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing that can be connected to the issue of &quot;self-plagiarism&quot; is copyright infringement, as Terri Simon noted. I can't say for sure without knowing the details, but I would be very surprised if you didn't retain all copyright to work that you did as a student. Generally copyright is only an issue if you signed over the rights to your older work to some publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing a novel or other work of fiction is not like publishing a paper in a journal, or submitting a writing assignment for a course. When you publish a work of fiction, there is no implication that you are presenting new ideas or ideas that you came up with yourself (many authors re-use the ideas of previous authors without giving any explicit attribution, or re-use ideas from their earlier work), so you shouldn't worry about this type of plagiarism. The wording is your own, so you're not misrepresenting someone else's wording as your own. I would think that you own copyright to the wording, so that shouldn't be an issue, as I said earlier. The only way I can see this being an issue is if the publisher for some reason finds it important for what they publish to have completely new wording, but I can't imagine why they would care. To make sure this isn't an issue, you should simply ask your publisher if what you're doing is OK. If you're self-publishing, that obviously wouldn't be an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13235" LastEditorUserId="13235" LastEditDate="2016-12-29T16:14:03.543" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T16:14:03.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25701" CreationDate="2016-12-29T16:36:32.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's necessarily motivated by a desire to have &quot;charismatic&quot; or &quot;exotic&quot; sounding names, as much as a desire to avoid having names that sound incongruous with the fantastic environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much fantasy is set in a different universe from our own. The culture depicted is usually at least somewhat different from any real-life culture. And we expect people in different cultures to have different names. When we translate a text describing something that happened in another culture, we usually don't translate names, we just transliterate or transcribe them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same applies to historical fiction like &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clan_of_the_Cave_Bear&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Clan of the Cave Bear&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. We know that names like &quot;Henry&quot; and &quot;Alice&quot; are associated with particular modern real-world cultures, so it would be weird to encounter them in Paleolithic Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, some fantasy has cultures that are very obviously modeled on real-life cultures, and in that case using real-life names is not that jarring. You mentioned &quot;Daenerys&quot;, but George R. R. Martin actually uses a lot of names that are clearly based on real-life European names like &quot;Eddard&quot;, &quot;Catelyn&quot;, &quot;Brandon&quot; etc. This works since the culture they live in is clearly based on medieval European cultures. Martin seems to like to use unusual spellings, but I don't think this is really necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13235" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T16:36:32.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25706" CreationDate="2016-12-29T16:53:58.277" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Show don't tell,&quot; as a three-word directive, is pithy and simplistic. But it's used because it's one of the fundamentals of writing well, and one of the things new writers understand least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Lauren says,&quot;showing&quot; doesn't entail endless description of minutiae, or attempting to convey a cinematic level of visual detail using text alone. What is means is that reading a book is something you &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt; - and an author doesn't provide an experience by &lt;em&gt;telling&lt;/em&gt; readers what to think or feel. You do it by &lt;em&gt;showing&lt;/em&gt; -- by creating things that will provoke readers to thoughts and feelings in response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could reformulate this as &quot;demonstrate, don't dictate.&quot; Saying &lt;em&gt;Bob is a funny guy&lt;/em&gt; does not make the reader laugh. Saying &lt;em&gt;Alice had a mysterious smile&lt;/em&gt; does little to convey mystery. Saying &lt;em&gt;Grizelda was a very sympathetic protagonist, and then something very exciting happened to her&lt;/em&gt; is a very poor story indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of nuance to &quot;show, don't tell,&quot; and it's certainly a guideline that can be misunderstood or abused. (The idea that you should &quot;show, don't tell&quot; for &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; is a common misinterpretation; knowing &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; to show and why is an important skill.) But, this question isn't asking for a full explanation of &quot;show, don't tell,&quot; it's asking why it's such popular advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the answer is, &lt;strong&gt;because it's one of the major things beginners get wrong.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The art of writing is so much more than getting words out on the page, or transcribing the outline of a plot. It's the difference between having scenes, characters, and plot twists, that you're just assuming the reader will be willing to wade through -- and creating scenes that are vivid, characters you want to spend time with, plot twists that have real emotional impact. Beginner writers make this mistake all the time - &lt;strong&gt;they write something because &quot;that's what happens in the story,&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; but they forget to craft the way in which the reader will receive and experience it. This is the fundamental error: to assume that because the author has written it, the reader will experience it, believe it, enjoy it, in the way the author intended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &quot;show, don't tell,&quot; when used correctly, is shorthand for &quot;you have described this thing as a fact; you have described this event as occurring; but you have not made it interesting, emotional, intriguing, or impactful, in a place where you should have.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason it's so popular is because it's kind of a catch-all for an emotional effect that's &lt;em&gt;missing&lt;/em&gt;. Explaining that something is missing is generally tricky - it's hard to explain &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; is missing, and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it is necessary. But more to the point, other criticisms, which deal with something &lt;em&gt;included&lt;/em&gt; which is done poorly, are simply much more direct -- so they never become pithy sayings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Brenda is a really boring character&quot; or &quot;I don't believe anybody would act this way&quot; or &quot;I saw that plot twist a mile off&quot; or &quot;This has been done a million times by better writers than you&quot; are all common critiques for beginners too, but they're never going to become snappy aphorisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, when the problem is not &quot;&lt;em&gt;This&lt;/em&gt; is wrong&quot;, but rather &quot;something's missing,&quot; then you get a refrain that's in common use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point I'm making here is: &quot;show don't tell&quot; is hardly the  only tool in writing teachers' arsenal; it just stands out disproportionately, because it's a single solution/guideline for many, many unrelated issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, &quot;show, don't tell&quot; is sometimes used incorrectly. And the fact that it's such popular, well-known advice makes it, well, better-known, more often discussed, and more frequently misused. But there is a strong core to the principle, and good reason for its popularity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2016-12-31T22:39:35.967" LastActivityDate="2016-12-31T22:39:35.967" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25692" CreationDate="2016-12-29T18:23:14.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aim for your aim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screenwriting is a complex process and has many aspects. If you are outlining or researching, you certainly don't need to write in a specific format. But if you attempt the script itself, there really is no reason not to write in the standard screenplay format. On the contrary, forcing yourself to write within the limits of that format will help you think of your story in the right way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, separating dialog from action forces you to write only dialog and action – and keep description (which is usually not part of a screenwriter's job) to a bare minimum. If you wrote freeform, you might be tempted to write what comes to your mind but is not part of a movie screenplay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That you are not yet completely familiar with the screenplay format and find keeping to it difficult does not matter. Your first screenplay need not be perfect. Dare to make mistakes. If you avoid making them by writing freeform, you avoid learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T18:23:14.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25718" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-29T18:45:44.400" Score="2" ViewCount="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot think of any sentence where the word &quot;both&quot; is not dead-weight.  Can you help me understand when it is and is not appropriate to include &quot;both&quot; when proceeding a list of two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;However, both Tom and Laura were upset about the price being charged for admission.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22755" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T18:58:22.173" Title="When to introduce a list of two with the word &quot;both&quot;" Tags="|word-choice|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25718" CreationDate="2016-12-29T18:58:22.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Both&quot; can act as emphasis when one of the two is unexpected.  In this usage, the unexpected one is placed second.  For example, consider the difference between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tom and his manager thought the customer complaint was invalid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both Tom and his manager thought the customer complaint was invalid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one tells you two people felt that way; the second, on the other hand, tells you that Tom's manager backed him up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes words that are syntactically superfluous add semantic meaning.  In the previous paragraph, &quot;on the other hand&quot; isn't strictly required, but it signals that I'm about to give a contrasting view.  To signal a corroborating view, I might have used the form &quot;X, and further, Y&quot;.  Strictly speaking you only need to know X and Y, but the additional words supply nuance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's only important to report the facts, go ahead and drop the extra words.  If you're trying to signal something more, use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T18:58:22.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25701" CreationDate="2016-12-29T19:08:38.710" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, most fantasy is set in a different environment, where the non-English-speaking inhabitants have different cultural and linguistic norms.  So it's only natural to want to convey that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think there's another reason.  If I name my characters &quot;Bob&quot; or &quot;Pocahantus&quot; or &quot;Chun Li&quot;, you form associations -- you see those characters a certain way because of your &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; cultural context.  Since that's probably not the context of my world, that makes my job harder -- you, the reader, now have certain assumptions that I need to overcome.  If I name my characters &quot;Xilg&quot; or &quot;Z'lin&quot; or &quot;Loohrun97&quot;, you don't have those assumptions.  I might have &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; problems (names shouldn't look like I just mashed the keyboard; what's the linguistic basis for them?), but at least you probably won't make Earth-based assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T19:08:38.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25722" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-29T21:12:17.423" Score="5" ViewCount="661" Body="&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Woohoo! The time has come, my &lt;em&gt;first book of a trilogy&lt;/em&gt; is one chapter away from finishing. I've done a little editing as I go, clearing up the bad chapters, but haven't properly gone through the whole thing or anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I saw &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3513/write-to-the-finish-or-edit-as-you-go&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, an interesting question, but I'm thinking about not one book... a trilogy. Or a series of any length, really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I was wondering whether I should write the entire series first then edit or write one book, edit that to perfection, then the second one, edit that to perfection, so on and so on. I'm beginning to lean towards writing the entire series, because I'll have the entire thing to work with, but I'm really on the fence right now. I just can't decide, this is an impossibly tricky dilemma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I write my books and edit them one by one. For example, I write the first book, perfect it, write the second book, perfect it, so on and so forth. Or, should I write all the books (without editing them) and then perfect the complete work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2019-02-20T16:05:18.783" Title="Do I write the entire series and edit, or edit the books as I go?" Tags="|fiction|editing|series|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25722" CreationDate="2016-12-29T22:01:35.880" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I would do the the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write them all. Get all your first drafts done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review them all. Get to a decent second or third draft on all three.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send your first book to an editor. When the editor gives that back,&#xA;review the edits while the editor works on the second. Do the same&#xA;with books 2 and 3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When all three have been reviewed, you can make a round or three of&#xA;changes. If necessary, return them to the editor; lather, rinse,&#xA;repeat as needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then do your polishing draft on all three.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't polish the first one and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; do the second/third, because all three books should be interconnected. Ideally you will introduce items in book 1 which are echoed in 2 and pay off in 3. You may come up with an idea as you are doing draft 4 of book 2 and realize you need to lay pipe in book 1, and if book 1 is polished that's going to be difficult and annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wouldn't polish the first half of your book while the back half is in really rough shape, right? Treat your trilogy the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T22:01:35.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25730" CreationDate="2016-12-29T22:19:17.690" Score="12" ViewCount="3480" Body="&lt;p&gt;I struggle with writing an awful lot and would like to improve. One of my main problems (and the reason why writing seems to take me a very long time) is that I seem to be unable to write in shorter sentences and my sentences become very convoluted. It seems as if I always start writing from the 'end' of a sentence rather than building up to the main point. For example, I am currently writing a report on a scientific experiment I conducted, and I found myself writing the following sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considering the likely greatest source of error, had there not have been time constraints that made it not possible to take measurements by increasing the thermal emf temperature slightly, allowing the temperature of thermocouple and thermistor system to equilibrate, before increasing the temperature again, it would certainly have been a better idea to use these slow increases in temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is just very convoluted, not clear, and I don't think it even makes grammatical sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be grateful to know if there are any techniques one can use, or exercises to do, that would help someone to get in the habit of writing in shorter sentences, writing more clearly, and writing faster. I am grouping these together here because I think they often (though definitely not always) come together as one problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22759" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2016-12-31T17:55:44.843" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T22:31:15.510" Title="How to write more clearly and with shorter sentences?" Tags="|style|technique|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25725" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-29T22:20:26.703" Score="4" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example the book Eragon by Paolini, and Magic Kingdom by Terry Brooks.  These both have lots of description.  To me that means lots of showing and less telling.  Other books don't seem to have that much description.  Some Sci-Fi has this as well, Jurassic Park, &amp;amp; Chrichton's other books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've downloaded lots of samples from Amazon and these (same genres) have more telling than showing or what I am calling description.  These authors aren't as big, maybe they have 100 reviews.  On the other hand, Old Man's War didn't have a lot of description in it either, compared to someone like Brooks, and it is very popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these just different styles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:  This question is useful, but not the same, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/25554/how-to-develop-a-more-vivid-and-descriptive-writing-style&quot;&gt;How to develop a more vivid and descriptive writing style&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:  Based on what's link, I had this thought:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it requires a camera and an actor to communicate a scene and &lt;em&gt;feeling&lt;/em&gt; in a movie, then you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to show it. We rely on the actors in film to show us how they feel to make it real, whether it is facial expressions, voice tone, or something else. Some actors are better at it than others. The amateur actor tells more than she shows and most times it doesn't make for a good story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of us have tried to explain a scene in a movie to a person who didn't it.  It's difficult.  They have to see it, even though you just told it.  &quot;You have to see it&quot; sounds better than saying to someone, &quot;They have to show it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T21:25:05.103" Title="Do Epic Fantasy and Sci-Fi books have inherently more descriptive language?" Tags="|style|fantasy|description|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25725" CreationDate="2016-12-29T22:35:50.163" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fantasy and science fiction books have a major additional task that other genres can avoid if they wish: worldbuilding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story of any genre &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; devote a lot of attention to description and detail, but it isn't a necessity dictated by the choice of genre. But SF and fantasy, as a rule, &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to establish a new world. They &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to explain how their setting works, how the world functions, how their premise has made the story's reality different from our own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if 99% of the world &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; mundane, and exactly like our own, the fact that it's in the SF/fantasy genre means readers are coming &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; assuming that most aspects of the real world carry over to the story. You &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to give the readers grounding, let them know where they're landed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, there are &lt;em&gt;incredible&lt;/em&gt; varieties in style. Plenty of genres, like romance and thrillers and &lt;em&gt;certainly&lt;/em&gt; travelogues, will leap at the opportunity to explore a strange or unusual location. And plenty of SF/fantasy writers are sparse and lean, establishing the setting in a very minimal way and leaving it at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line is, yes, there's good reason for fantasy and science fiction to devote extra attention to description. But, if you look, you'll find that pretty much any combination imaginable can be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T22:35:50.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25724" CreationDate="2016-12-29T23:07:45.320" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Syntactic convolution is the result of nesting to many, too long, or too complicated sentences into other sentences. To untangle the convolution, simply take the structure apart. Form individual sentences. Reconnect them in sequence. Use repetition, pronouns, or sentence connectors to connect them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Original&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the likely greatest source of error, had there not have been time constraints that made it not possible to take measurements by increasing the thermal emf temperature slightly, allowing the temperature of thermocouple and thermistor system to equilibrate, before increasing the temperature again, it would certainly have been a better idea to use these slow increases in temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Parts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Frame 1:&lt;/em&gt; The likely greatest source of error is ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Insert 1:&lt;/em&gt; Time constraints made it impossible to take measurements by increasing the thermal EMF temperature slightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Insert 2:&lt;/em&gt; Increasing the thermal EMF temperature slightly would have allowed the temperature of the thermocouple and thermistor system to equilibrate, before increasing the temperature again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Frame 2:&lt;/em&gt; It would certainly have been a better idea to use these slow increases in temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sequence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time constraints made it impossible to take measurements by increasing the thermal EMF temperature slightly. Not taking these measurements is likely the greatest source of error. It would certainly have been a better idea to use slow increased in temperature. Slow increases in temperature would have allowed the temperature of thermocouple and thermistor system to equilibrate, before increasing the temperature again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reconnected&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time constraints have made it impossible to take measurements by increasing the thermal EMF temperature slightly. This is likely the greatest source of error. It would certainly have been a better idea to use slow increased in temperature, because these would have allowed the temperature of thermocouple and thermistor system to equilibrate, before increasing the temperature again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is still inelegant, but I don't understand the context of this passage and do not know what you want to say, so that is where I must stop. I'm sure you can polish this further. Also, you might want to choose a different sequence, depending on how this passage connects to what surrounds it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T19:44:03.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25725" CreationDate="2016-12-29T23:21:13.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Standback, but his answer is not generally true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this time and age, most readers of Fantasy and Science Fiction have seen so many Science Fiction and Fantasy movies that their minds are full of images of spaceships and dragons. You can expect the average person to be just as familiar with the inside of a spaceship or the physique of a dragon, as with the Eiffel Tower. And just as you do not have to describe the Eiffel Tower in a novel but can simply refer to it by name, because of this &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonsense_knowledge_(artificial_intelligence)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;common knowledge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; about Science Fiction and Fantasy worlds that your readers bring to your books, you no longer have to describe the common elements of fantastic stories, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can write &quot;dragon&quot;, just as you write &quot;dog&quot;, and you can write &quot;spaceship&quot;, just as you write &quot;car&quot;. Only if you want your readers to think of a particular type of dragon, dog, spaceship, or car, do you need to go into more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have even argued multiple times before, that you should not stifle the imagination of your readers by prescribing how they should imagine the elements of your tale. Allow them to imagine your horrors in just the way they find most horrible, allow them to &lt;strong&gt;project themselves&lt;/strong&gt; into your narrative, and you will satisfy them the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep descriptions to a bare minimum. I skip them, anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T23:21:13.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25724" CreationDate="2016-12-29T23:50:07.657" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sentence that gets away from you is almost always the result of starting in the wrong place. Look at the first clause in your sentence. Everything that follows has to align with that clause, both semantically and syntactically. If it starts off in the wrong place, it is going to require and long and convoluted construction to get to the last clause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes a sentence like this difficult is actually not so much its length, as that none of what it is saying makes sense except in the context of what it says last. So look at the last clause of the sentence. This is where it was trying to get to, when it started from the wrong place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the right place to start from to get to where the sentence is actually going? In a surprisingly large number of cases, the right place to start is actually with what you have said in the final clause. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the statement you make in the final clause requires some supporting detail. That's okay. There is nothing that says that the support detail has to come first. In fact, I don't care about the supporting detail until I know what it is supporting. So start with the plain statement of what you want to say as a simple sentence. Then write other sentences that supply the supporting detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this, in fact, is the classic definition of a paragraph. When a sentence gets as long as a paragraph, it is often because it is trying to do the job of a paragraph. So make it a paragraph. Find the central idea and lead with it. Then supply the supporting detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-12-30T06:55:45.780" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T06:55:45.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25731" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-30T00:11:54.147" Score="1" ViewCount="2011" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to write a good story without any dialogue? I'm working on a short story, and trying to keep it within 2000 words, but preferably 1000-1500 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to write it as if the narrator is writing a manifesto/memoir stating his life experience, and his organizations purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T14:12:12.973" Title="1st person story with no dialogue?" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|narrative|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2016-12-31T17:52:29.080" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25724" CreationDate="2016-12-30T00:20:31.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to try giving you some advice, without using a lot of English Major jargon, because even as an English Major myself, jargon confuses me at times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do is write the sentence out. After that, I look to see how many commas I have, and replace each comma, with a period. If it doesn't make sense, add, or remove a few more words until it becomes a shorter sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T00:20:31.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25724" CreationDate="2016-12-30T05:02:58.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might find the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hemingwayapp.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hemingway App&lt;/a&gt; useful. From the description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The app highlights long, complex sentences and common errors; if you see a yellow sentence, shorten or split it. If you see a red highlight, your sentence is so dense and complicated that your readers will get lost trying to follow&#xA;its meandering, splitting logic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You paste in your text and it'll guide you make it better by highlighting long or hard-to-read sentences, words with simpler alternatives, adverbs (*), and passive voice. If you clean up all these things, you'll be in a much better place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*) Also follow Stephen King's advice on adverbs: kill them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22764" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2016-12-31T07:07:30.767" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25736" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25740" CreationDate="2016-12-30T06:19:42.690" Score="6" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;The American standard is to use double quotation marks (&quot;example&quot;) and the British standard is to use single quotation marks ('example'). Style guides insist that you should be consistent regarding which mark you use, regardless of circumstance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether or not it is acceptable to use the alternate quotation mark to denote something that &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a quote, but is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, as a kind of joke, I wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Of course I know,' he probably would have said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;he&quot; is an animal, incapable of speech. I know that readers sometimes jump from quotation to quotation, ignoring attributions, so I used single quotation marks to make it more obvious that he wasn't &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; saying those words. Is this acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks, everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22765" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-10T00:53:38.750" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T00:53:38.750" Title="Using alternate quotation marks for 'scare quotes.'" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|formatting|punctuation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25736" CreationDate="2016-12-30T07:01:24.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fiction, quotation marks signify verbal utterances. If something is not said, do not put it in quotation marks, because that would confuse readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can put thoughts in italics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Who are you?&quot; she asked.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;That's none of your business,&lt;/em&gt; he thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reflections on actual or potential utterances – that is, the narrator or a character thinking about what someone has said or might have said – remain without markup:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Who are you?&quot; she asked.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  That's none of your business, John might have said, had he been less afraid of Joan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-12-30T09:00:41.057" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T09:00:41.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-30T07:34:38.617" Score="3" ViewCount="1365" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to confess that I find Strunk &amp;amp; White's &quot;The Elements of Style&quot; to be a very tedious read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone recommend an alternative title that covers similar ground?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22768" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T07:46:00.933" Title="Alternative to Strunk &amp; White?" Tags="|style|grammar|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25736" CreationDate="2016-12-30T13:34:47.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an example of direct quoted thought, which is a construct that only occurs in fiction. (Actually, direct quoted putative thought, but that is beside the point.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do seem to recall seeing cases of single quotes being used to denote direct quoted thought, but I think what is right that the more common convention is to use italics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind though that your typical reader has no idea what the convention for this is, which means that there is not a lot of benefit in sticking to the convention. Out here on the borders of of usage, you have some liberty to be innovative with the conventions you use. For instance, maybe you are already using italics for speech in a different language, so now you need something else for direct quoted thought. No one is going to send you to the literary penalty box for an innovative convention, as long as you make it clear in context what that convention means (which you do here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are published professionally, you editor will change it to suit their house or personal style, in which case there is not a lot of point worrying about it. If you are self publishing, on not writing for publication, then you are captain of your own ship; do whatever you want as long as you make it clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2016-12-30T13:39:53.393" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T13:39:53.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25738" CreationDate="2016-12-30T13:59:24.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not have thought S&amp;amp;W was long enough to be tedious, but it is certainly dry. A considerably more lively, and longer, and, I think, better book is Sir Ernest Gowers &lt;em&gt;The Complete Plain Words&lt;/em&gt;. Livelier still, and much much shorter, is George Orwell's &lt;em&gt;Politics and the English Language&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T13:59:24.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25731" CreationDate="2016-12-30T14:12:12.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, of course it is. What you are describing is merely a story in which nobody speaks. Since it is perfectly possible to have a story in which a character is alone the entire time, why would it be a problem that there is no dialog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialog is just the recording of a particular action: speech. You might as well ask if you can write a good story in which nobody eats or sleeps or fights or makes love or falls out of a tree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a story has story shape and is well told on a serious theme, it will be a good story, regardless of which actions characters take in the course of it. (Serious here does not mean not funny. It means takes the depiction of the human condition seriously, which can sometimes be very funny.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T14:12:12.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25706" CreationDate="2016-12-30T15:05:14.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're getting confused on what the 'expert writers' mean. Showing is integral to storytelling. Otherwise, there may be no story. For example, instead of saying 'Joe went to the store and bought some things.', you can write, 'Joe clumsily gathered the week's provisions, feeling a pang at the loss of the smooth coins.' This shows that he was poor. This also makes his actions clear. See? The plot is moved forward in one sentence. This sage advice does NOT mean excessive description or use of modifiers, but instead consideration for the character's demeanor and &lt;strong&gt;important&lt;/strong&gt; details. Who cares if Joe was wearing brown leather boots from Kansas? All we need is the relevant info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22779" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T15:05:14.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25706" CreationDate="2016-12-30T15:40:32.867" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason writers are hung up on &quot;show, don't tell&quot; is that readers are also hung up on it. You have to keep readers' attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human storytelling is as old as the species, and it derives its popularity from our wanting to get into others' heads. That means we need an opportunity to practise inferential skills that are crucial in real-world interactions. &quot;He was sad&quot; or &quot;she was clever&quot; doesn't let us do that, because in real life you know such things from body language and behaviour, not being told the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why describing a person's feelings and personality is so different from describing a person, thing or place's appearance. Telling us such details does for us in the story what our eyes would do in real life. But our interest in empathising and sympathising with other people, including fictional ones, isn't contingent on knowing the colour of the wallpaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22216" LastEditorUserId="22216" LastEditDate="2018-05-17T18:05:18.497" LastActivityDate="2018-05-17T18:05:18.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25745" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-30T16:45:45.223" Score="1" ViewCount="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a classification in my article and the editor after checking said:&#xA;'Cite the classifications in tabular format with appropriate table number and caption'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what is the meaning of &quot;cite the classifications in the tabular format&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know how to cite the classification but what is meant by ' cite in the tabular format'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22671" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T16:45:45.223" Title="What is the meaning of this?" Tags="|grammar|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-01-16T17:54:14.597" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7363" CreationDate="2016-12-30T17:04:06.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize I'm responding to an old question, but I just encountered this and the version of Scrivener I'm using (sorry, I'll have to check which that is) has a template for non-fiction. It recommends doing chapters as folders and subsections as pages. I don't know how well this works, as I've just started, but it is Scrivener's suggested method. It probably helps enforce using correct formatting (&quot;header&quot; rather than &quot;bold&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T17:04:06.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25706" CreationDate="2016-12-30T18:44:39.027" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is fashionable to attack this dictum: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/why-show-dont-tell-is-the-great-lie-of-writing-workshops&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/why-show-dont-tell-is-the-great-lie-of-writing-workshops&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another equally frustrating catch phrase, &quot;On-the-nose&quot;. I hear this one more when discussing dialogue, but it comes to mean the same thing: it describes prose that lacks subtlety, originality, and texture. It comes down to this: say one thing and mean another so you get to say two things at once, leading to economy of writing and a puzzle for the reader to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has to do with particularity. If she is pretty, how is she pretty unlike any other woman? If he is awkward, how does he display his awkwardness that sets him apart from all other awkward people that have ever lived? And having described this, are there hints of mood, of theme, or foreshadowing, or some other purpose being served? Can I make the reader feel like they are really there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The utility of this rule is great. The first time it was explained to me, I intuitively understood &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; about what it meant and could begin to rectify my poor style, at least in small ways. Showing &lt;em&gt;expertly&lt;/em&gt; requires the mastery of many techniques and the refinement of the critic's eye, but showing &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; is something even a novice can begin to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22785" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T18:44:39.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10875" CreationDate="2016-12-30T19:06:10.430" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read the classics. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read poetry. Force yourself. I didn't want to, but it helped a lot. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Diagram your sentences. Not literally, but in your head. Using the same sentence structure over and over gets dull. When you spot this, you can correct it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Adjust sentence length to pace. In an action scene, use progressively shorter sentences. Also, when making a big point at the end of a passage, a short, pithy sentence packs more emotional weight.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Put cause before effect. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid passive voice. Rephrase so that most actions spell out the actor. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Study the use of scene and sequel to improve flow and show how a character makes and alters plans in response to events, improving the illusion of agency. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://writershelpingwriters.net/2015/01/writing-patterns-fiction-scene-sequel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://writershelpingwriters.net/2015/01/writing-patterns-fiction-scene-sequel/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A scene has the following pattern:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goal—what the character wants. Must be clearly definable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conflict—series of obstacles that keep the character from the goal     &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disaster—makes the character fail to get the goal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a sequel has the following pattern:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reaction—emotional follow through of the disaster.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dilemma—a situation with no good options&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decision—character makes a choice (which sets up   the new goal).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story is a string of pearls: scene-sequel-scene-sequel-scene... This is the fine structure, smaller than 3-Act or 4-Act or Hero's Journey, the coarse structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;8&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conflict, conflict, conflict. When one character asks a question, will the other person tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Or will they leave out details, fudge, forget, misremember, alter, lie, exaggerate, flat out refuse without payment?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22785" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T19:06:10.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15929" CreationDate="2016-12-30T19:24:31.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;POV is powerful. If you drop into close third-person, you can color how you describe the scenery and how other characters are acting to show the state of mind of a character. The key word is projection. To an angry man, every word is a trigger word, every accidental trespass an intentional slight, every malfunctioning appliance a sign that God is out to get him. Use overloaded adjectives and violent metaphors to describe people and things around the man, but they are only a projection of what is going on inside him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22785" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T19:24:31.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15929" CreationDate="2016-12-30T19:44:51.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is a good example of why show don't tell is bad advice. It results in all sorts of silly overblown and tedious writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give them evidence, let them infer is getting a little closer to the mark, but it still runs afoul of the basic writing rule which is to be a clear and direct as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real key here is to consider how we experience the emotions of others. The anger of strangers is mostly annoying. It might be a little bit frightening if they are violent, but otherwise it does not move us. The anger of those we know, on the other hand, engages our sympathy. We feel the sharpness and anguish of their anger because we know why they are angry, what they had hoped for and what they have lost. We fear for them, of for those they might harm, because we are invested in the story and its outcomes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our reaction to the anger of a character, therefore, is not based on the immediate description of that anger. Florid description of physical symptoms of their anger will be merely annoying unless they give us a reason to fear for their health of conduct (which we only do if we are invested in the story). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But set it up right, make us love or hate the character, make us understand what they love and value, and then show the betrayal that robs them of that thing, and you hardly have to describe their anger at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When words fall flat it is almost always because the thing they describe has not been set up properly. No amount of florid detail, no piling on of evidence from which to infer the emotion, makes any difference at that point. It is simply too late. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The storyteller achieves their effects through the power of story, not through the force of language. &quot;Show don't tell&quot; deceives us into thinking we can solve story problems with tricks of language. The play's the thing in which we catch the conscience of the king. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T19:44:51.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25751" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25752" CreationDate="2016-12-30T19:47:35.977" Score="5" ViewCount="277" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a reader, I have found that when I disagree with an author's views or actions, this has influenced me not to buy their books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an author, I therefore wonder whether readers generally view the work as completely independent from the author's personal views? And what if the book is semi-autobiographical? Do readers see the author as part-and-parcel with the book as it tells much about its creator?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22788" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2016-12-30T20:32:19.413" LastActivityDate="2016-12-31T16:33:35.660" Title="Impact of views about author on buying book" Tags="|book|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25751" CreationDate="2016-12-30T20:21:37.650" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joanne Rowling has famously hidden her gender behind male-seeming initials to meet reader expectations. We don't know how &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; would have sold if it would have been published under Joanne's real name instead of &quot;J. K.&quot;, but I have stopped reading books by a few authors, because I disagree with their political views or find their online behaviour obnoxious. I have also picked up books in bookstores because the names of the authors attracted me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of that is merely anecdotal, but studies find that many readers react in a similar way to the &quot;persona&quot; of the author. For example, Michelle Goldsmith (2016) has conducted a survey of 396 readers and writers of speculative fiction, in which she found that &quot;factors such as an author's persona, online behaviour, &lt;strong&gt;political or social views&lt;/strong&gt;, and role in prominent genre controversies can have significant impacts on readers’ reception of their work, both explicitly and implicitly&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author's &quot;persona&quot; can be thought of as a reader's (or potential buyer's) idea or mental image of what kind of person the author is. Readers buy fiction to satisfy needs, and if the author &quot;looks&quot; as if he or she can satisfy that need, the impulse to buy their book is that much greater. Aspects that have been shown to influence buying behaviour are physical attractiveness (pretty women sell more books than unattractive women), expertise (think of the attorney Grisham writing legal thrillers, but expertise is most important in non-fiction), generosity, and friendliness, among others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T20:21:37.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25706" CreationDate="2016-12-30T21:14:18.500" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In linguistics there is a powerful duality of syntax and semantics.  Syntax is what you wrote (as in the literal words and characters written in black ink on the paper), while semantics covers what you meant by those words.  It's well recognized that the world of semantics is far richer than the syntaxes we apply to capture them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A writer must understand that different people have different meanings behind words.  &quot;Clever&quot; may be seen a synonym for &quot;witty,&quot; but people typically associate different meanings to those words.  If you stick too close to what words mean to you when writing a story (staying too close to the syntax), you can write content which feels empty and dry to someone who associates different semantics with the same words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what's a writer to do?  After all, their medium is little black splotchets on pieces of paper.  &quot;Show don't tell&quot; seeks to capture the art of semantics in three short words.  The art of writing is being able to reach out into a reader's mind and paint with their images, which are always more vibrant than the images you supply in black and white.  &quot;Show don't tell&quot; encourages a writer to step beyond the syntax of language and to try to toy with the semantics behind the language.  It is truly an art, but who hasn't appreciated the art which brings forth the tired worn face of the patriarch as he dons his battle armor one last time, or the innocent eyes of a girl falling into her first love.  The beautiful artistry of those scenes is not captured in the syntax of my words, but in the ability of the writer to paint the scenes in our heads, using our own emotions to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14106" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T21:14:18.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25751" CreationDate="2016-12-30T21:14:43.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seem to be three different parts to this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does the author's public reputation affect the sales of books?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do the view expressed in a book affect the sales of the book?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do the private views of an author who is not otherwise a public figure affect the sales of books if they become know?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to the first is clearly yes. Public notoriety is good for sales. Hatred is not an author's biggest enemy, indifference is. If you are hated by some and loved by others you will sell a lot of books to those who love you, and quite a few to those who hate you. You won't sell any to those who are indifferent to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to the second is more complex. Steinbeck was roundly condemned for the socialist overtones of The Grape of Wrath, but it was a huge best seller, largely because of the huge emotional power of the story. Even if you don't agree with his politics, you will have a hard time not being moved by the novel. And the novel is not a political screed. Many of Dickens works were full of social protest, but they are still beloved for the characters and storytelling long after the injustices they protested were gone. A great book, in other words, can rise above its politics and be beloved by friends and foes alike. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for people who are lesser artists, or whose work is more overtly political, you can expect that few who disagree with you will read you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third case is obviously more rare, but there are cases in which it becomes known that a beloved author had unfashionable political views. It is not clear to me that this really as much effect. Most people are not really moved to punish people merely for holding a different view from their own, though you would have a hard time telling it from the TV some days. I suspect that when these stories pop up from time to time, they probably do the author more good than harm, simply by reminding people that they exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall though, I think any concern about offending the reader is probably misplaced, unless you are so far out on a limb that your views will offend everyone. Ask Donald Trump how much he cared about offending the professional offence takes of the world. You don't need to win over the entire world. If 5% of the reading public buys your book, you will be very rich. Offending 95% of the reading public is a small price to pay if it means that 5% actually hear your name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T21:14:43.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25751" CreationDate="2016-12-30T21:23:29.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think an author's personal stance can absolutely be a deal-breaker. I won't buy or read anything more from Orson Scott Card now that I know about his raging homophobia. It would be an endorsement of his views. (So this would be a counter-example to @MarkBaker's third point.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could never completely separate an artist and his/her art, if for no other reason than money talks. It's the same reason I won't shop at certain stores: I'm expressing my positions with my wallet. I won't have anything more to do with Woody Allen, OJ Simpson, or Roman Polanski for similar reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the book is semi-autobiographical, it's even more of a reason to join artist to work and to consider both when making the decision to read/watch/listen etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you as a writer are concerned about your personal views offending your audience, well, have the courage of your convictions. If you really believe whatever it is, there will be those who agree with you and those who don't. Your compatriots will buy your book and your detractors won't. There's no way to say which side is bigger without knowing the controversy in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T21:23:29.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2300" CreationDate="2016-12-30T23:41:12.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm late to answering this question, however I'm going to answer it anyway in case anybody else comes across this question and reads my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like everybody on this post says, generally I'd go with 1000 words, or whatever you're comfortable with. I'm just beginning a first draft, and I go at 1200 words per hour, generally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I disagree with some people on this question. Writing faster doesn't come naturally. If you want to write faster than you're writing now, or you feel you're writing too slow, I recommend these methods which have basically doubled my writing speed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Music: Not the songs most people generally listen to, but instrumental and classic. It's been scientifically proven that if you listen to this while writing, you're writing speed and productivity will vastly improve.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Outline: Always outline before you work. Even if you're a pantser, you should still try to have some idea of where your scene is going.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Time: Don't write for two hours straight. What works for me is writing in 25 minute increments, with a 5 minute break in between where you can get a snack or whatnot. (Do as many of these 25 minute sessions as you want. Generally I do two, and then if I have time I'll do another one, or another couple.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you found my answer helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22791" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T23:41:12.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2016-12-31T00:10:55.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how much time you have and also depends on knowing what you write. I am currently writing a novel that is currently about 104,000 words and it took me 63 days to write that many words. I wote this while only balancing college. However, I knew what I wanted to write before I started writing which allowed me to write faster because I wrote a detailed outline. My previous draft was 113K but took me longer to write because I was just creating things at the top of my head. My new draft I suspect will hit at 120K or more.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22793" LastActivityDate="2016-12-31T00:10:55.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25759" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25829" CreationDate="2016-12-31T11:48:59.620" Score="-2" ViewCount="1345" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the current trends in literary short fiction? which literary school, movement rules the contemporary short story now? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Symbolism, magical realism, surrealism, post modernism or any other literary movement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, is symbolism still relevant in literary fiction short stories in the second decade of the twenty first century?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21564" LastEditorUserId="21564" LastEditDate="2016-12-31T19:47:48.293" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T22:35:15.477" Title="What is trending in literary-fiction short stories?" Tags="|short-story|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25751" CreationDate="2016-12-31T15:59:32.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A published book should be a totally independent entity from its creator. &#xA;However, as humans we can have a hard time to separate the authors’ views from his produced works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For books where the author expresses his personal views, then yes a book could be judged in concert with the author stance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example Marion Zimmer Bradley, is a militant gay pagan feminist. That view is expressed in most of her books. If you are offended by her personal, sexual, political, or religious views, I can understand not reading her on that basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lauren Ipsum: &quot;I won't buy or read anything more from Orson Scott Card now that I know about his raging homophobia.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Orson Scott Card on the other hand, whatever his personal views, I don’t recall them being in his books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What changed before and after, knowing some private thing about him, was his book altered, why should your perception of the author affect the books worth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, for Americans of his generation &quot;raging homophobia&quot; was the norm, and still is in most of traditional America. Europe isn't that different, look at how Alan Turing was treated, for the crime ofbeing gay, by England.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Banning his books on that basis would be to say that since all European classic authors were raging anti-Semites, which was the normal accepted view at the time, all the literature before 1950’s should be banned.  A variant is that all early American books should be censured as their authors accepted slavery as a matter of fact. There are countless variations; Greek classics should be banned because the authors liked to sodomize teenagers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That position is obviously absurd. Now saying banning books that directly portray strong anti-Semite ideas like Dickens’s Oliver Twist, yes, I believe that people, children at least, should not be exposed to that filth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see some people giving a pass to the classics because that was in the past…and that modern authors alone are concerned, because “they should know better”. I think that’s non-sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After WW2 many authors found their books banned or censured because they were &quot;Nazi sympathizers&quot;…I find that hypocritical, in the early days most of Europe, including the British,  and the western world in general, had strong anti-Semitic views, and were all Nazi sympathizers to some degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take Leni Riefenstahl, her earily beautiful work had nothing to do with Nazi ideas, but she was an official party cinematographer and shot the Olympics which were used for Nazi propaganda. We wastedl one of the strongest visual artist of the 20 century because she was ostracized, marginalized, black-booked because of the association, and ended up shooting minor things in Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2016-12-31T16:33:35.660" LastActivityDate="2016-12-31T16:33:35.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25631" CreationDate="2016-12-31T16:35:08.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your Character needs to have something good happen to him to pull him out of the depression? Characters usually achieve small goals and have some good stuff reward them while they are on their journey and running into obstacles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22801" LastActivityDate="2016-12-31T16:35:08.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21261" CreationDate="2016-12-31T17:05:10.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends whether the question refers to e-books or paperbacks. The problem for Canadians using the .com KDP application for a paperback version of their e-book is that it gets printed in the USA. Canadian purchasers have to pay shipping costs and import duty. A Canadian KDP application for paperbacks has just been announced (December 7 2016) so presumably that will solve the purchase problem for Canadian purchasers. US purchasers still able to buy in the US. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22802" LastActivityDate="2016-12-31T17:05:10.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25764" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25773" CreationDate="2016-12-31T17:51:53.017" Score="5" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm searching to improve the way I write, and so I started to create just scenes, for example a battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea as it is not integrated in a well-established story ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22803" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T05:49:21.897" Title="Is writing only scenes a good way to earn writing skills?" Tags="|learning|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25612" CreationDate="2016-12-31T18:50:26.737" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of talented people on Fiverr.com who can do editing. Trying to find the truly talented ones who fit your requirements can be time consuming and can be quite a trial and error process. It can also become quite expensive, but it's certainly worth a look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22801" LastActivityDate="2016-12-31T18:50:26.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25766" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26087" CreationDate="2016-12-31T21:40:10.007" Score="13" ViewCount="1746" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am surprised by the vehemence of many writers' objection to said-bookisms -- the practice of using a verb other than &quot;said&quot; or &quot;asked&quot; in order to convey dialog. Writers are told you can't hiss an entire sentence nor laugh one either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like this is crippling writers in terms of semantics and inflection. Semantically, 'said' is a verb now primarily used as a placemarker to identify the speaker. Yet it doesn't add any inflection to what is written. We are told to contort our natural dialogue so the reader can understand what is written, in order to work around the need for nonstandard dialogue tags. Alternatively, we are urged to use of a never ending stream of 'said' or 'asked' because they are invisible to the readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than Groupthink and 'because Stephen King doesn't like them,’ how did bookisms fall so far out of favor in current writing? Why did great writers of the past have no trouble using them, but today they are viewed as a sign of an amateur writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-01-15T21:52:02.540" LastActivityDate="2022-02-05T07:22:16.887" Title="Why is there such strong objection to the use of said-bookisms?" Tags="|technique|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25768" CreationDate="2017-01-01T05:49:31.627" Score="6" ViewCount="502" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read showing in stories with people, they describe facial expressions for showing (among other things).  What can a writer use in an animal fantasy?  I'm sure it depends on the animal, but aside from a mouse or rat, try a bird, how do you show what the animal is doing, thinking, etc., without making them simply a human dressed up in a rat or animal costume.  Sure, you can name things the animal does like a cat that &quot;padded&quot; up the road, instead of running up the road.  But soon or later you run out of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I do showing the animal's feelings, &lt;em&gt;as an animal&lt;/em&gt;, when they don't have near the facial expressions and other mannerisms humans do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:  Sorry I forgot to put the animal:  Birds&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastEditorUserId="289" LastEditDate="2017-01-02T02:38:29.527" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T02:38:29.527" Title="How do you use showing in animal fantasy?" Tags="|description|showing-telling|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25767" CreationDate="2017-01-01T13:15:56.863" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your animals are anthropomorphized, you can come pretty close to describing human-level expressions, depending on the animal in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your animals are not sentient, you have to study the animal in question to be able to describe its body language. I've had cats my entire life, so I can describe feline facial expressions (eye movements, pupil widening, sniffing, flehmening, ear movements), vocalizations (meows, chattering, purring, growling), and other body language (posture, stalking, stillness, creeping, butt-waggling, tail lashing, happy tail, kneading, wrestling, swatting, use of claws) in great detail to show what a particular cat is thinking or feeling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T13:15:56.863" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24753" CreationDate="2017-01-01T13:25:07.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to break up an event and reveal parts of it as the book goes along. It keeps the reader interested because you are giving them a different piece of the puzzle each time, without repeating yourself and making them bored. Even if it's not a mystery, the reader will feel like they are getting closer to finding out the truth by themselves before they reach the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course the usual ways: the character can be driving somewhere and his mind goes back to that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps you can mention it in dialog between two characters. If it's a small secret that you want to remind the reader about, you can use another character who is either about to find out the secret, or who already knows the secret and now confronts or black mails the character with the secret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding this example: Remember the X 10 years ago? That's what caused this Y to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you need to go through your book and put more details about the &quot;X&quot; event - reveal a few slight details throughout the book leading up to &quot;Y&quot;. I have this exact scenario in a book I am working on. A fire that destroys a horse stable in the prologue comes back to haunt three of my characters later in the book. But in the meantime, the characters never completely forget that fire because it caused each one of them to make promises to themselves. And while they are running around the story trying to achieve their goals, those promises are constantly being tested, and they are occasionally remembering the consequences of that fire. What the reader doesn't know, is that one of them started that fire by accident. In the beginning two of the other characters also don't know that one of them started it. Slowly the secret starts to come out and they blame each other, until the final truth is revealed. - I've deviated a bit, but my point is - maybe you need to re-look at the way you have structured some of your book - are there small clues or hints or reminders you can throw in through out the book to keep this detail in the readers mind, rather than suddenly spring it up again later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people don't remember small details - I'm one of those people because I sometimes put a book down for months before I pick it up again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then some people do remember the tiniest details. I think you also need to think about your potential readers and find a balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22801" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T13:25:07.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25764" CreationDate="2017-01-01T15:29:22.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's a great exercise to strengthen your writing skills. You can focus on one thing to improve &amp;mdash; descriptions, or characterization, or pacing, or sentence structure &amp;mdash; and just focus on that, instead of worrying about how it fits into the overall scheme of your book. There's no pressure to adhere to anything fore or aft in a story, so you have complete freedom to take the scene wherever you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I've recommended this technique elsewhere on this board to help &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/25013/what-can-i-do-to-familiarize-myself-with-my-characters/25014#25014&quot;&gt;work on learning your characters.&lt;/a&gt; Adapt it for anything you need. Or for the pleasure of writing short scenes. If you write enough with the same elements (same people, same setting), you might find a story emerging. Or not. No writing is wasted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T15:29:22.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25764" CreationDate="2017-01-01T15:37:03.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like a great idea.  Are you serious about writing a 'well-established story'?  If you are practicing and learning, I don't see the problem in using your idea.  You may also benefit in writing a bunch of short stories or scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21591" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T15:37:03.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25767" CreationDate="2017-01-01T15:44:03.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an example to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peter was most dreadfully frightened; he rushed all over the garden,&#xA;  for he had forgotten the way back to the gate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you may be thinking that this example can't possibly be any good since it tells the reader that Peter was frightened, rather than showing his whiskers twitch or something. Because you always always always have to show, right? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thing is, of course, that this is a line from one of the most famous and best loved animal fables of all time, Beatrix Potter's &lt;em&gt;The Tale of Peter Rabbit&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do we reconcile the writing class bromide &quot;show, don't tell&quot; against the work of a great writer? Well, let's look at how Potter handles Peter's emotions in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story begins with Mrs Rabbit telling her children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don't go into Mr.&#xA;  McGregor's garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a&#xA;  pie by Mrs. McGregor.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then Peter sneaks into the garden and accidentally bumps into Mr McGregor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. McGregor was on his hands and knees planting out young cabbages,&#xA;  but he jumped up and ran after Peter, waving a rake and calling out,&#xA;  'Stop thief!'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peter is being chased by a rake-wielding man who put his father in a pie. At this point, the reader knows very well that Peter is frightened. They are frightened for him as well. They don't need to be shown it from his facial expressions. All Potter needs to do is acknowledge it and get on with the story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peter was most dreadfully frightened; he rushed all over the garden,&#xA;  for he had forgotten the way back to the gate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, therefore, it is not about naming the emotion vs showing outward manifestations of the emotion, it is about telling a story that produces the emotion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something to note here in particular is that while this is a story written for young children, Potter does not shy away from the possibility of death. She tells us (yes, tells) right off the bat that Peter's father was killed and put in a pie by the McGregors. This signals us that this is a story in which death is a real possibility. Peter could very easily end up in a pie like his father. And this is what sets up the fear reaction for the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no big emotive language here. Mrs. Rabbit's speech is both matter of fact and oblique: &quot;he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.&quot; It is the substance of what is said that is crucial to the story, not the language that is used. In fact, the matter-of-factness of Mrs. Rabbit's speech only adds to the effect. Death is not only possible, among rabbits it is routine.  Peter could really die. And we know this not because of a great histrionic speech but because of a simple bit of family history.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a better bromide than &quot;show don't tell&quot;, one that holds up better when we look at it in the light of the greats, this is the one I would suggest: &quot;Do it with story, not with language.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if someone critiquing your story tells you at any point that you should show, not tell something, take that to mean that you have not set the incident up properly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T15:44:03.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25764" CreationDate="2017-01-01T16:10:30.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be careful. Yes, there is much to be said for learning a complex skill by practicing in parts. But there is a real and pervasive danger of getting caught up in language when you should be focusing on story. As Robert McKee points out, it is easy for writers for fall in love with individual scenes and be unwilling to throw them away when they don't fit the story they are supposed to be telling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hardest skill to learn, and that thing that will make all the difference to your career as a writer, is story. To practice scenes apart from stories may therefore be to focus your effort in the place it is going to do the least good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there is another trap here as well. The best way to achieve any effect in a novel -- to produce any emotion or reaction in the reader -- is through story. If you work on scenes divorced from story, you deprive yourself of this means of producing an effect, and this may lead you to try to hard to produce the effect in other ways, such as by florid language or an over-emphasis on describing how people feel or react to things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is story that will make or break you. Figure our story and the scenes will come naturally enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-02T05:49:21.897" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T05:49:21.897" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24753" CreationDate="2017-01-01T16:16:19.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Storytelling is about sequencing. If you have a big gap between a detail and major events that depend on that detail, that means you have got the sequencing wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a pervasive problem in writing. Most of the impact lies in how the story unfolds. But often we have put months of work into creating a story in a particular sequence, only to find that some effect that we want is not working. We don't want to redo the entire sequence of the novel so that the effect is produced naturally, so we look for some local way of pulling it off, some trick of language or some way to sneak something in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps there are occasions where we have no choice but to resort to these cheats. But the real answer is almost always that you have got the sequencing wrong, and the only fix that is really going to work is to go back and fix the sequencing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T16:16:19.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25766" CreationDate="2017-01-01T16:34:22.937" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a pervasive misunderstanding today about how language works. It is, in its operation, heavily symbolic and analogical. Can a fever rage? Of course it can. Language is naturally analogical, and far more deeply analogical than most people realize when they are claiming things like &quot;technically, a fever can't rage&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it is deeply analogical and symbolic, language is also deeply prone to ambiguity, and the way we resolve ambiguity is by reference to story. A statement that has many possible interpretations is interpreted in a particular way because of the story, and the story domain, in which it is embedded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sometimes creates a difficulty for science writing because it is embedded in a story domain (science) with which readers are not necessarily familiar. Writers attempt to pin words down mechanically to a single denotation. This exercise leads them to imagine that language actually works this way -- that it works like a programming language in which each term has a single denotation and every expression is formally disambiguated by its grammar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a false view of language but it leads to the development of simple rules for writing. People love simple rules, even if they are wrong. They will cling to them with surprising ferocity, despite repeated illustrations that they are wrong. They will not give up one simple rule unless they are provided with another equally simple rule to replace it. And in a case where the truth is much more complex and difficult than the simple rules, it is almost impossible to wean people off the simple rules, no matter how often they fail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same it true at a larger scale as well. Writing is incredibly difficult and complex. People want simple rules like &quot;show, don't tell&quot;. No matter how often you demonstrate, by reference to the works of great writers, that these simple rules don't work, it does not matter. People will not give up one simple rules unless you replace it with another. But writing is too complex to be captured in simple rules. So we continually see new simple ideas about things like speech tags become part of the writing school gospel from time to time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can we demonstrate the fallacy of such rules by reference to the works of great writers. Sure we can. Will it make any difference? No.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T16:34:22.937" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25767" CreationDate="2017-01-01T16:53:44.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am assuming your animals have a world of thier own. They see humans as &quot;others&quot;.(i.e They dont speak human tingue or interact with humans like humans do)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, let me tell you how not to write animal fantasies. Google &quot;Champak&quot;, a popular indian comic book series. This series is based solely on animal characters. They own houses and drive cars! This level of detail is fine, if your books are for children below 5 years of age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Animals have as much feelings as humans do. The way they show their feelings is different from animal to animal. And the loudness with which they show their feelings also depends on the species. Some species are very extroverted (Dogs, dolphins, crows); some are more to themselves (Cats, Eagles). I am not considering how a dog behaves with a human, but only how dogs behave among other animals/ other dogs. Animals can have a different view of the world. A whole new, wierd and upside down world. consider the following lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Proud Dog:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jack, the Sheriff's Doberman was a proud chap, his tail always stiff with ego. (Like a man's face can be red with anger) He never looked down; everything was beneath his status and height. He loved the sheriff, but had rather little respect for other officers, even the ones superior to the sheriff. He had formed a very low opinion for them, seeing his master always gave them tea and cookies when they came. He felt his master owns them too! (A dog too can have prejudice. And a Dog can interpret feeling in a very weird way! So do some humans).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16656" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T16:53:44.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25764" CreationDate="2017-01-01T17:22:21.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Every sentence written, is a step towards perfection, If there exists perfection, in this all so imperfect world.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing scenes and non related dialogue chains can be good practice if you keep in mind its merits and limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make your writing crisp.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;improve your ability to simplify language enabling the reader to focus on your story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;help picture the details of a scene and paint a mental picture as you write.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help keep said mental picture consistent between scenes. (You do not want readers confusing a mistake as an element of plot)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a discipline in you to write a little, every day. But discipline in writing pieces of unrelated text, won’t help much with working on a single plot for a long period of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It won’t:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve you story telling skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve your ability to expand a plot to various sub plots and parallel stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help you build characters. Character develops from the first paragraph and end with the final period in your book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give you the discipline required to finish a book draft. It's easy to start a book, and really very difficult to finish one (Even the first draft!).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16656" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T17:22:21.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25676" CreationDate="2017-01-01T18:28:02.397" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Saw your name on Mathematics Meta, and this question as a top network post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Reacher novels by Lee Child are typically from Reacher's point of view. He may or may not narrate (first person), usually not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is interesting is that someone followed Child around for months while &lt;em&gt;Make Me&lt;/em&gt; was written. The resulting book is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529959/reacher-said-nothing-by-andy-martin/9781101965450/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reacher Said Nothing&lt;/a&gt; by Andy Martin. Quite revealing on the types of decisions Child makes. Sometimes Martin invokes theories of literary criticism or philosophy that are unfamiliar to me. I just read through those, i did not look them up for more detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An amusing bit: in &lt;em&gt;Make Me&lt;/em&gt; there are several occurrences of the sentence Reacher said nothing. There is also, at least, one occurrence of Reacher said, &quot;Nothing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22814" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T18:28:02.397" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25764" CreationDate="2017-01-01T18:51:03.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think everyone else has &lt;strong&gt;excellent&lt;/strong&gt; answers. However, I would like to add my thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Try to write down the story behind it&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a scene has the most power when it is affected by things. It isn't just 'being a scene', there are things that led to it, things that are affected by it. And what I guarantee, is that when you are writing, your brain will make those extra little strands of story &lt;em&gt;to make the individual scene make sense.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to try writing single scenes too, I thought they were pretty exciting. However, I was quick to discover that they weren't befitting me as a writer. As Mark Baker said in his answer, I became attached to some scenes I was writing and bursting to include them in a book where that sort of thing wouldn't make sense. Furthermore, I wasn't practicing all the skills I could be practicing. I wasn't practicing storytelling, which is argueably the most important part of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I felt much better when I was creating &lt;em&gt;short stories&lt;/em&gt; of &lt;em&gt;1000-3000&lt;/em&gt; words to put my scene in. This will allow you to practice more skills, as well as get a feel for how the scene interlinks with the larger work. It's all well and good being able to describe a single scene well, but ultimately the larger work is what matters and especially the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give the scene more meaning by making it more than just a scene. Put it in a very small short story to host it. This will also help you develop storytelling skills.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid becoming attached to a scene.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try writing short stories rather than just scenes, because they are better for building up to being able to write a novel. Unless you are just attempting to become a writer who can describe things, you need to write stories.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote many short stories before trying to write entire novels and they &lt;em&gt;did help me&lt;/em&gt;. They helped me &lt;strong&gt;much&lt;/strong&gt; more than when I was writing scenes, and I was more entertained by writing them too. So I would say in your case, try writing a few short stories and see how it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T18:51:03.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25780" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-01T19:01:22.033" Score="10" ViewCount="1175" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I really didn't know how to title this question. Anyway, the background. I was sitting around in front of the plan for the second book of my trilogy. Woohoo! I finished the first one yesterday on new years eve, so I'll be able to say that that entire book is what I spent a lot of 2016 on. I was preparing my masterplan, my ultimate gallery of ideas. However, then the deathly thought crossed my mind...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What if what I'm writing will never be read? I might not get it published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, &lt;em&gt;I know in my heart&lt;/em&gt; that I am going to get published and I promise I will with every inch of my being. However, I know that it's difficult. So, I came up with a battle plan. I'm aiming to get a huge army of followers, we'll barge into the publisher and... No...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided it might help me get published if I had a few people supporting me and my book was anticipated by 'the public'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I start a blog, or whatever else I might want to start to gain followers, will that help me get published? Is it worth getting people to support my writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't need people to praise me so I can keep going. I know that my writing is proper, &lt;strike&gt;professional&lt;/strike&gt;... No, not professional, that just sounds egotistical. I know my writing is good, I know in my heart that I'm going to get published one day. I never run out of ideas or joy I derive from doing the work or anything, so I'm not looking at this in a praise-driven and inspiration-driven perspective. I'm looking at it in a marketing perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blogging is getting old anyway. Is there an alternative to blogging that's just as good? Maybe I'll start a youtube channel or something, and teach about writing on there, get followers. You never know, it might work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-01-01T19:39:05.197" LastActivityDate="2020-04-20T13:23:14.257" Title="Will it help you to get published if you have a lot of followers of your writing?" Tags="|publishing|marketing|blog|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25780" CreationDate="2017-01-01T19:38:24.983" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have supporters following your blog, you might be able to argue that you have an audience who will buy your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to be meaningful to an agent and therefore a publisher, your audience has to be in the thousands at the least, and even better, have already paid for some of your stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you can sell 10K copies of a self-published e-book, or several e-books, that will likely have more of an impact than 10K notes over 500 blog posts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(on a separate note: merciful Freya, don't confuse writing and video. I read a &lt;em&gt;hell&lt;/em&gt; of a lot faster than most people talk. I don't have five minutes to commit to your video. I can read your page in 20 seconds, and share it in less than that. I rarely share video links. Ain't nobody got time for that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T19:38:24.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25780" CreationDate="2017-01-01T19:39:56.107" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A blog can definitely build an audience for a book, and the existence of that audience can definitely help sell the book to a publisher, and afterwards the blog can help sell the book to the public. That is exactly how I did it with my book &lt;em&gt;Every Page is Page One&lt;/em&gt;, which is a book about writing for the Web, largely for technical writers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But whether it works for fiction is a different matter. My Every Page is Page One blog (which is still going) is about the same subject at the book. A novelists blog, on the other hand, is not usually about the same thing as their novel. They are often very dull things repeating standard grammatical and writing school advice. There are thousands of them, and they are, for the most part, deadly dull, and almost certainly doing nothing to help sell books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing about my blog is that it is a niche blog in a technical non-fiction area. That means that although the audience is not that big, the conversion rate is pretty high. A lot of people who read my blog also buy the book. I don't see how a fiction writer carves out a niche like that or achieves that kind of conversion rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I am not sure any of it matters. While there are probably more people writing novels than reading them these days, the fact remains that gifted storytellers remain rare, and publishers are eager to find them. Show them that you can tell a ripping yarn, and you don't have to bring an audience with you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T19:39:56.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25780" CreationDate="2017-01-01T20:55:09.107" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are asking about is called &quot;platform&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a writer of non-fiction, platform is essential for getting published. Getting non-fiction published without massive platform is almost impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a writer of fiction, though, platform is almost irrelevant. Fiction is not sold through being part of a community, but through marketing. If your book is good, it will get picked up by a publisher. Having a platfrom will help, but not having one won't be a deal breaker for fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only if you want to self-publish your fiction do you need to build your own marketing channels through your writer platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google &quot;platform&quot; and &quot;writer&quot; to learn more. There are some good books out on what platform is, who needs it, and how to build it. There is also a lot of hype by people who want to sell you their books or services (e.g. Michael Hyatt), so be careful what you believe. The above advice, that you don't need platform for fiction, comes from the book &lt;em&gt;Create Your Writer Platform&lt;/em&gt; by Chuck Sambuchino. The fact that he tells me that I don't need him, makes me believe him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T20:55:09.107" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25724" CreationDate="2017-01-01T21:35:54.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way I know of to improve this technique is to study writers who have mastered the technique in question.  In your case, it might help to read published papers (ideally on a similar topic) to understand how other writers communicate their findings.  Reading is often the best way to hone craft.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience, I find that using simple and compound sentences works best to communicate complex ideas effectively, as well as ensuring that I understand the material I am writing about.  Often times, when I don't understand the material enough, my writing becomes convoluted in an attempt to mask this deficiency.  So, I always ask myself what I want the reader to know.  In your case, what about this error is pertinent for the audience?  Answer questions like this in bullet form.  Then, combine these points effectively into clear sentences.  I find that this process isolates the main ideas and gets rid of the &quot;fluff&quot; that simply does not need to be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22815" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T21:35:54.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25785" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-01T21:50:39.273" Score="5" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I emailed the manuscript and everything the guidelines said, and then realised the next morning I forgot to attatch the synopsis with it. I looked over the guidelines while I did the email. This is my first time submitting a manuscript to a publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm new at this, and I don't know when I should resend it. They allow the first week of each month to submit. If I don't get a response within three months, it means they won't go forward with it. Should I wait until then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22818" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-03T13:42:19.613" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T13:42:19.613" Title="Should I send my manuscript again if I forgot the synopsis after sending it to a publisher?" Tags="|email|publisher|submitting-work|synopsis|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25785" CreationDate="2017-01-01T22:01:46.943" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The publisher essentially wants to know two things about you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can you tell a good story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can you behave professionally and deliver on your commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Omitting the summary obviously reflects badly on the second point. Following up promptly to correct the mistake mitigates the problem as best you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you resend, resend the whole package. Don't expect that they are going to dig through their whole slush pile to find your first mail to add a synopsis to it. Send them a complete correct package with a note explaining and telling them to throw your original mail away.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-01T23:16:00.173" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T23:16:00.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25767" CreationDate="2017-01-02T01:52:41.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a big fan of doing field research when it comes to my writing. For humans this is nearly free; I just ride the bus, go to lots of public buildings, and people watch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't mention what type of animals you're writing about, and many people are suggesting they be anthropomorphic, but if you want them to be regular animals I'd suggest watching that animal in a controlled environment if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to the zoo, the aquarium, a farm that gives tours, volunteer at the animal shelter, visit an exotic animal rehabilitation center. If it's impossible for you to get out, and observe these animals, you could always watch a bunch of animal documentaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that what I'm suggesting may not exactly be orthodox, but in my experience sometimes doing research that gets me away from the computer really helps get the creative juices flowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T01:52:41.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25788" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-02T07:23:03.440" Score="0" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm talking about books on specific academic topic, e.g. history of the Aztecs before colonialism, which are published by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_press&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;university presses&lt;/a&gt; like the Oxford University Press. How expert are the editors of such books? Can we count on them to ensure that authors don't misrepresent their sources, or don't make statements that are known by experts in that specific area to be clearly false? Or is their expertise really minimal and we must only trust on the authors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22822" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T10:57:52.023" Title="Academic books published by university presses: How much expertise do the editors have?" Tags="|publishing|editing|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25788" CreationDate="2017-01-02T10:44:00.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The procedure (and quality) of contributions to an academic anthology will differ with the type of collection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some books collect the written versions of presentations held at symposia. Everyone who was invited to speak at the symposium will be published in the book, and there is no screening for the printed publication. So if you manage to fake yourself into a congress, whatever you presented there will make it into print. This is understood by readers of an anthology documenting a symposium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other anthologies collect articles that were written specifically for that publication and on invitation by the editor. For example, a group of scholars may want to document the state of their field and will invite other scholars in their field to write about their research. These other scholars will be people the editors know, often personally, and they are of course intimately familiar with the reasearch of those scholars (or they wouldn't invite them to contribute). Scholars aren't usually chosen because they all agree on the matter, and often there is some intense dissent in these anthologies (which is a good sign for the neutrality of the editors). In an invitation-only anthology you can be sure that the editors carefully read all the submissions and, if necessary, ask for revisions or even reject a submission, if it doesn't meet their requirements. Certainly not all editors have the same level of expertise, and the overall quality of the publication will depend on the quality of the editors, just as in a journal, not all of which have the same level of quality, either. If you are an insider in a field, you will know whom you can trust and whose publications – anthologies and journals – you have to be wary of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, some anthologies are handbooks or teaching textbooks of a field. These will have the most careful editing process, as they are meant to reflect on the reputation of the editors. Usually in these books the editors have a concept regarding structure and content and the contributing authors have to subordinate to this. Often the authors are recruited from the editor's research partners or research team. The quality of these books depends totally on the editors, but is usually very high. Textbooks can be bad, of course, but you can usually trust their content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how &lt;em&gt;editors&lt;/em&gt; are chosen, there are two ways a scholar can become an editor: either he or she comes up with an idea and approaches a publisher; or a publisher has an idea and approaches a scholar. In both cases, the publisher will attempt to recruit an editor who has a high level of reputation and expertise in their field. Often the publishers have series editors who are themselves experts and familiar with the researchers of their field. Since success as an academic publisher depends on the respect and acceptance of their audience, that is, the scholars of a given field, publishers will do everything in their power to select editors that turn out quality work. Publishing books that turn out to misrepresent a science will mean the death of a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all you can generally be sure that editors of academic anthologies (and journals) know their field and try their best to present good information to their readers. Nevertheless mistakes happen, and there are black sheep, so you should read with a critical mind and, if possible, check critical information agains other publications or, if you can access it, the original data. This is, of course, how you should always read, as a scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-01-02T10:57:52.023" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T10:57:52.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25790" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-02T12:49:27.063" Score="4" ViewCount="327" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a book that I think is interesting and action packed - a traumatic scene begins right in the prologue, but chapter one is a bit slow while I introduce characters, the setting, and weave history of the time into the beginning of the plot. Chapter two and the rest of the book are almost non-stop action, secrets and mystery - in essence much more fascinating reading than Chapter one. But make no mistake, the slow scenes in Chapter one are essential because they begin events for the rest of the story, and give the reader an idea of the psychology of the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that different agents have different requirements for the length of the text to be submitted initially. My question is: when it comes time to submit this manuscript to an agent (very soon), can I include the Prologue, a small portion of chapter one (with a note that some stuff has been clipped) - (also making sure that I've clipped it at a place which doesn't leave the agent hanging - a place that could be a chapter break) and then also include the beginning of chapter two which launches back into action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for doing this is to peak their interest. I'm kinda thinking that a ruthless agent won't really bother with my script if I submit the Prologue and Chapter one without anymore of the script. In addition to the above, do you think that a submission with a Prologue, Part of Chatper one and the beginning of Chapter two will be confusing for the agent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically is it ok for anyone to carefully select certain parts of their manuscript to submit as long as they are careful that it won't confuse the agent and it makes logical sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22801" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-03T13:44:57.670" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T13:44:57.670" Title="How much and which parts of a manuscript should I submit to an agent?" Tags="|publishing|agent|submitting-work|conventions|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25790" CreationDate="2017-01-02T13:39:02.520" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You submit what their submission guidelines tell you to submit, nothing more, nothing less, nothing different. If you don't follow the guidelines, they won't even look at you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the guidelines will always, always, always, want the first chapter if they want any chapters at all. No agent, no editor, no reader, is going to plow through a boring first chapter to get to the good stuff. Agents are in the business of making a living by selling books. They have no interest in representing books that won't sell. Books with boring first chapters don't sell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing you can do, to have any hope of getting an agent interesting in representing you, is to rewrite your first chapter so it is interesting. You may think that chapter one is full of essential stuff that you need to establish first in order to get to the good stuff. But that is not how storytelling works. You have not learned to be a storyteller until you have learned to establish the background as you need to while keeping the story interesting at all times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-02T16:34:54.070" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T16:34:54.070" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25683" CreationDate="2017-01-02T17:57:58.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can vary your sentence structure to include other common constructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your basic structure is &lt;em&gt;Idea1; adverb, idea2.&lt;/em&gt; Because of your propensity for this construction, I wouldn't suggest, but certainly could do, &lt;em&gt;Idea1. Adverb clause, idea2.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reactive agent was &lt;strong&gt;not only&lt;/strong&gt; stable in its pH &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; did not increase the molality of the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, &lt;strong&gt;either&lt;/strong&gt; the left kidney receivers more blood flow in comparison to the right &lt;strong&gt;or&lt;/strong&gt; the receptors on the left kidney are more sensitive to local growth factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If&lt;/strong&gt; the rat brain's endogenous opiate system is activated, &lt;strong&gt;then&lt;/strong&gt; we see increased amounts of endomorphin 1 in its bloodstream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cosmic radiation is necessary for the phenomenon known as &lt;em&gt;Northern Lights&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;because&lt;/strong&gt; it creates cosmic dust in the atmosphere, &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; it excites the molecules into the visible spectrum in scintillating patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2017-01-02T18:22:55.413" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T18:22:55.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25676" CreationDate="2017-01-02T19:06:05.090" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;One reason is to maintain suspense. A big part of the attraction of the detective genre is for the reader to try to work out for themselves what is happening with varying degrees of assistance from the writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If written from the perspective of the detective then the reader has access to all their observations, theories, intuitions and suspicions. Having a third party perspective allows the writer to control the flow of this information. Equally the detective is the readers window on the mystery and often the thought process of the detective is as much a mystery as the crime itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A clear example of this is the Sherlock Holmes stories where it is often hinted that Holmes has some pretty clear ideas of what it is going on from an early stage but by using Watson as the narrative perspective the pacing at which the real story unfolds can be controlled. Indeed this is directly mentioned in many of the stories. This certainly tends to be the case for the more cerebral style of detective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in another answer the 'noir' style where the protagonists tend to be more men of action caught up in events generally are written in 1st person. As an aside some of the Diskworld books based around the Sam Vimes character (especially &lt;em&gt;Night Watch&lt;/em&gt;) provide an interesting dissection of this style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a recurring thing in Agatha Christie books where the detective is privy to some piece of obscure but highly pertinent piece of information and the 'clues' are more character based than factual, at least for the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely the author may want the reader to have information that the detective can't have especially in the 'thriller' style were the plot is driven by the conflict between the protagonist and antagonist eg &lt;em&gt;Silence of the Lambs&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19238" LastEditorUserId="19238" LastEditDate="2018-07-19T18:24:19.360" LastActivityDate="2018-07-19T18:24:19.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25794" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25887" CreationDate="2017-01-02T19:20:57.677" Score="11" ViewCount="3155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm only 12, and I've been writing seriously since last year. I tried writing a novel before (I wrote only 5 chapters; I gave up later due to time constraints). I've written a couple of short stories, which have generally received positive feedback. I also do free verse poetry, usually melancholic in nature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At current, I'm working on a sci-fi novella about a scientist living in the 24th century. Sci-fi is not my cup of tea, as I've soon realised. It's beginning to seem too hard for me to weave a coherent and credible storyline. After a certain point, plot holes start appearing. Sometimes I let my imagination fly out of control and write silly stuff. Now, I don't want to make a  blend of fantasy and sci-fi. The story should be able to be paint a picture of the future that will appear reasonable enough to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is taking the enjoyment out of writing for me, but something at the back of my mind is telling me to try hard no matter what. I can't bring myself to drop this idea.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm quite comfortable with writing thrillers and feel-good stories. But it's important for me to try different things. Without change, life would be pretty dull. This is why I thought of writing a science-fiction piece in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My ideas for the story are really good (I think), and a good sci-fi writer could make a very good book out of them. However, writing about the future is too troublesome for me. Should I quit trying or try hard no matter what? Is it even worth trying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22250" LastEditorUserId="22250" LastEditDate="2018-05-22T20:07:33.543" LastActivityDate="2018-05-22T21:49:23.450" Title="I'm not enjoying my attempt at a science-fiction novella; should I continue?" Tags="|science-fiction|process|discipline|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25794" CreationDate="2017-01-02T19:41:46.300" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Longform storytelling (which is what a novel or novella is) is very very difficult. It is also only tangentially related to writing. You can be good at writing and know nothing about longform storytelling. It is rather like the difference between painting a house and painting a mural. You need all the same understanding and skill with paints and brushes to paint a house as to paint a mural, but the mural is much more difficult because it requires an artist's eye for design, color, and story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very few people are natural storytellers and just seem to be able to tell stories, even longform stories, effortlessly. But they are very rare. Most of us have to work at it and study it for a long time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is a lot of work and it will take a lot of time and dedication to get there, which is pretty much like anything else worth doing in your life. But, like all the arts, there is the added problem that merely doing the work and the study and putting in the time is no guarantee that you will ever make any money doing it. In fact, odds are that you won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, like anything else, it comes down to how much you want it. If you thought it was going to be easy, it's not. If you are still up for it knowing how hard it is going to be, if it is so important to you that no amount of discouragement and rejection is going to stop you, then plow on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-02T20:19:09.493" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T20:19:09.493" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25794" CreationDate="2017-01-02T20:38:44.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I get the struggles, believe me. I'm only a few years older than you, but I started writing when was a few years younger. I write sci-fi as well and depending on how out there the story is, it can be difficult. The best advice I can give to you is to experiment. If sci-fi isn't your cup of tea, then figure out what is. Incorporate that into your sci-fi piece. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a similar problem with realistic fiction. What I did was incorporate my strength - science-fiction into any realistic fiction work I had. I ended up with quite a few manuscripts I'm really proud of. Perhaps you can consider doing that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Everything is worth trying, I would never suggest giving up.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Though if you do decide you're not ready to write a sci-fi novel (which is perfectly okay, even for writers with much more experience than we do) switch to another genre. Find your comfort zone, and if you decide to pursue this, work your strengths into it.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, if it's so difficult that it is taking the enjoyment out of writing for you, then why do it? And as Mark Baker said, writing novels is difficult. It takes a lot of time and effort. Don't beat yourself up if you decide to drop the idea, though the excerpt you provided is well-written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T20:38:44.537" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25797" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-02T20:58:13.010" Score="2" ViewCount="847" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wasn't entirely sure how to phrase this in the question box, so it may seem like a duplicate. But, I did look at these questions (&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1449/what-are-the-tricks-to-avoid-repetition-in-writing&quot;&gt;What are the tricks to avoid repetition in writing?&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6642/how-to-avoid-repetitive-sentence-structure&quot;&gt;How to avoid repetitive sentence structure?&lt;/a&gt;) and didn't find the answer to my question. What I want to know is &lt;strong&gt;What can you do to stop using the same words over and over again in dialogue and narration?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allow me to elaborate. I'm in the process of editing a 50k word manuscript, and I realized by using the navigation pane that there are certain words that appear multiple times in each chapter, sometimes per page. They are sort of filler words but removing them would change the structure and meaning of the sentence. I frequently use words like: wait, just, actually, even, definitely, only. These are not the kinds of words you can easily replace with a synonym. &lt;strong&gt;How do I stop using them so much?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if it's my speech patterns influencing my writing, or if I simply need to find a better way to say things. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T17:13:26.930" Title="Ways to avoid repetition of &quot;filler&quot; words in writing?" Tags="|style|editing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25797" CreationDate="2017-01-02T21:14:32.820" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone has their pet phrases and turns of phrase. That in itself does not matter much. What matters is whether you are expressing repetitive or monotonous ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can go in and insert synonyms for words you use frequently, but if the real problem is that your ideas are repetitive, that is just lipstick on a pig. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the ideas are original and not repetitive, it really does not matter if certain words are being used frequently. People are not reading you for your words, but for your idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If repetitive words are a symptom or repetitive ideas, then focus on fixing the ideas. If the ideas are fine, don't worry too much about the words. It is better to use the plainest and most natural word for an idea than it is to make your prose purple with needless variation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is part of a bigger pattern, by the way. Words are the canary in the coal mine. They are often the first indication that something is wrong structurally. Too many people get hung up on trying to fix the words, but no amount of tinkering with language will fix a structural problem. People would waste a lot less time and effort if they looked for the structural problems first instead of last. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T21:14:32.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25797" CreationDate="2017-01-02T21:28:32.167" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see several possibilities here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about it. Perhaps your &quot;overuse&quot; of these words is simply part of your style. Or perhaps it isn't overuse at all. Ask a few good readers to read your story and give you feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make a list of the words you're concerned about. After you finish a first draft, search for each word. Make a conscious decision what to do about it (delete the word, leave the sentence alone, rewrite the sentence to make the word unnecessary). Make notes about how you decide which to retain, which to remove, and which to revise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here's an experiment. Take a section of something you've written. Maybe 500–1000 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a copy of the section. Edit the copy to remove &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; instance of the trouble words, rewriting as necessary to make the sentences meaningful without the trouble words. When you're done, make notes about the kinds of revising you had to do to eliminate the trouble words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make another copy. Edit it to insert even &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; uses of the trouble words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read through the three versions, making notes about your reactions to the different styles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rewrite the original, using everything you've learned from these edits and your reactions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another experiment. For the next two weeks, when you finish each writing session, search for the trouble words and eliminate them, revising as necessary. After two weeks, go back and restore the ones you really want to restore. Make notes about how you decide which ones to restore and which ones to omit. This tells you about your personal style.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider how you could use these words to characterize your characters. What kind of character would overuse &quot;actually&quot; in conversation? What kind of character would overuse &quot;actually&quot; in private thoughts or narration? What other words might a given character overuse?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T21:28:32.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25794" CreationDate="2017-01-02T21:52:48.770" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most important methods to develop your skill and find your personal voice is &lt;strong&gt;experimentation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are doing, is experimenting with different genres, and I hope you also try out different narrative voices, different linguistic registers, different plot structures and character constellations. Writing is like any art. A young actor will experiment with different ways of showing emotion. An aspiring painter will try out different mediums. A student of music will learn different instruments and compose in different musical styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But experimenting does not mean that you have to walk every path to its end. You should consider them all – and try those that attract you –, but you will usually notice quite immediately, what feels liberating to do, and what feels stifling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write in any style or genre only as long as you feel that it &quot;gives you something&quot;. Struggling to finish something can be a learning process, or a waste of time. But only you can know which is which for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware of how you feel with what you do and &lt;strong&gt;trust your intuition&lt;/strong&gt;. And be ready and willing to take some time to reach the first goal of your first publication. The less desperately you aim for that goal, the easier it is to achieve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T21:52:48.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25811" CreationDate="2017-01-03T01:18:27.027" Score="3" ViewCount="640" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, should I italicize words like &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negging&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;neg&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Kino&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;kino&lt;/a&gt;? Words created by the pick-up artists/seduction community? (I'm writing a novel where I use these words.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-01-04T03:20:00.267" LastActivityDate="2017-10-20T00:13:05.970" Title="Should I italicize neologisms created by communities?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|novel|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25794" CreationDate="2017-01-03T03:18:55.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be a planner and gardener. Get raw ideas and put them in a note-taking program, I used to do it on 3x5 cards. But sooner or later you have to organize them, and shuffle them around to get an idea of a structural flow and find what is missing in the plot. You will find that you move stuff around a lot. That is ok. Just keep the ideas flowing, and put them on paper so you don't lose them. Also, it is important to set aside a specific time every day to do this. I do most of my raw writing now drinking my morning coffee, while doing my daily walk talking into my cell phone or waking up in the middle of the night. Good Luck &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22840" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T03:18:55.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25794" CreationDate="2017-01-03T03:53:37.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many successful genre-bending stories are essentially one type of story in the setting of another.  For instance, the original &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; is a fairy tale in space, and the early Harry Potter books are detective stories with a fantasy setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you enjoy writing thrillers, but want to try sci-fi, why not write a thriller set in space?  Many thrillers are borderline sci-fi (or fantasy) anyway.  If you're still getting hung up on the details, try a near-future sci-fi (essentially the present, with some new, not-yet-existing technology thrown in).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T03:53:37.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25794" CreationDate="2017-01-03T06:28:05.433" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the same really. I'm scared of sci-fi books, really scared of them, because they always depict a horrible dark future which isn't the kind of future I want. But that's not the point of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question 1&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I quit trying or try hard no matter what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mustn't give up. I'm only a few years older than you, but I've written every day for at least three or four years. It's so important to get the practice and know what you're doing. By trying hard and practicing in that way &lt;em&gt;you will eventually get better and have good work&lt;/em&gt;. You must not quit because eventually you will create good work. If I were you, I would join a site like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt;, where you can get some really nasty and good feedback. That was a site which really helped me improve my writing and learn where I was going wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was going wrong in the following areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I did shopping list descriptions. Loads of them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I was too exaggerated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it didn't make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the critics there were able to point them out, I was able to home in on them and improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question 2&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it even worth trying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. It is worth trying because you can get amaranthine enjoyment out of writing. It will never be something effortless but because of that you can derive so much satisfaction when you finish some industry-standard work on a short story or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What you should really do&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is what I think you really should be doing. Firstly, you need to practice the areas you're weak at. Find those out from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt;. However, I should point out that to be able to make the most of the feedback on there, you need to realise that you're writing isn't actually very good. To the critics on there writing is never 'good' because there's so many improvements. Then, after going there you need to do what is called editing. This answers all of your doubts and erases all of your worries. It is a dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You don't think your writing is good because it is unedited. With proper time and care, it will turn from being something very bad into something &lt;strong&gt;magnificent&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think you need any fancy writing programs or tutorials to be a good writer. You just need patience, time and dedication. After all, a blacksmith doesn't forge the shape of a sword and then give it to a warrior, he sharpens the edges and carves it into shape. The original piece of writing you do - known as the first draft - is forging the shape of the blade. The refining, sharpening, shaping, is the editing, where the blade goes from a bulky blunt object to a razor sharp stunner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good luck!!!!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt; to pinpoint the areas you're weak at. Really hammer down on those areas and get them good.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't stop writing. Know that in the end, with proper time, editing and dedication, you will have an amazing finished product.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Practice by writing more short stories. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try putting &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;constraints&lt;/a&gt; on your writing/poetry (doing things like lipograms can help your active vocabulary).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to explain. I was the same, really. I never thought anything I did was good before I discovered the holy grail of editing. It actually is the holy grail. You really just have to know that in the end, your finished product is going to be great. You musn't stop at the beginning. Seriously, the phase where you actually write the book is the &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-01-03T21:22:47.520" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T21:22:47.520" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25803" CreationDate="2017-01-03T06:34:51.717" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's entirely stylistic. In certain books neologisms will not be italicized, in others they will be. It's important to stick to it though and not change what you're doing. If you italicize one, be sure to italicize the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of most books I've read, they haven't actually been italicized, so perhaps you could go with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T06:34:51.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25803" CreationDate="2017-01-03T11:14:07.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I might italicize them the first time, in narration, to emphasize that they are neologisms, and then have a definition immediately afterwards. Once you've defined the term, though, you don't have to italicize it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T11:14:07.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25794" CreationDate="2017-01-03T11:57:00.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a scientist in the midst of his first science techno-thriller novel, I can relate completely. But, take heart; for even in the future, humans still act like humans. They have the same emotions and drives. What about non-humans like robots? Since they don't exist today other than crude shadows of what is portrayed by most fiction, your view of how they act and how humans interact with them is just as valid as any Sci-Fi writer. After all, it is your novel. Don't be intimidated by futurists, they are nearly always wrong. The real focus of the future isn't so much on technology but how humans react to new technology. If you want to know how your great-great-grand kids will view modern tech, buy a new hot gizmo and see how long it takes for you to learn it and incorporate it into your daily life. Here is a link to my own alt history/near future dystopian novel. &lt;a href=&quot;https://spark.adobe.com/page/wRjql/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://spark.adobe.com/page/wRjql/&lt;/a&gt; As Mark Baker said, &quot;Longform storytelling (which is what a novel or novella is) is very very difficult.&quot;  I have been working on my novel for 4 years and it still seems pitiful but the research is fun and learning how to improve my own writing is worth it. If an old guy five times your age can enter these waters, so can you. Jumping into the water is fine but watch out for the sharks! And be sure to take time from writing to go outside and play with your friends, you are only a kid once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="22250" LastEditDate="2017-01-03T17:56:56.467" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T17:56:56.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25815" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25817" CreationDate="2017-01-03T13:36:53.530" Score="5" ViewCount="1661" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the novel I am writing, the story is told present tense and first person. The themes of the story present some unique points to the style, but something I have noticed as a write the first few chapters, it seems to lack the word THE. Which made me wonder, is it even possible to write a novel the completely lacks the most common word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14853" LastActivityDate="2023-11-04T22:29:44.127" Title="Would it be possible to write a novel without using the word &quot;The&quot;?" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25815" CreationDate="2017-01-03T14:08:19.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, someone &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wrote a book without using the letter E&lt;/a&gt;, so by default &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; wasn't used. (according to Wiki, it does slip in three times. Very hard to avoid. Plus technically it's on the cover.) Whether the book is any good is an exercise left to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose it would be fun to do as a challenge, but then the challenge is &quot;avoiding the letter&quot; and not &quot;telling the best story possible using the best words for the job.&quot; So it depends on what you want to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T14:08:19.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25815" CreationDate="2017-01-03T15:40:03.390" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're talking about what is called &lt;strong&gt;constrained writing.&lt;/strong&gt; Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia Link&lt;/a&gt;. Constrained writing is where you purposefully constrain yourselves by not allowing yourself to do certain things. For example, Lauren Ipsum's example in her answer of &lt;em&gt;writing a book without using E&lt;/em&gt; is what is called a &lt;strong&gt;lipogram.&lt;/strong&gt; This is where a certain letter of the alphabet (or couple!) are not used during a piece of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These techniques of constrained writing are often used in poetry, though they can slip everywhere. Lauren's answer features a book which I was going to include in my answer, but I wasn't here first. That book is proof that a lipogram can be achieved in a very long piece of work. In fact, I remember that a year ago in my England class we were tasked to rewrite the entire first page of &lt;em&gt;nineteen-eighty-four&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;em&gt;George Orwell&lt;/em&gt; without using the letter E.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's certainly possible. Omitting 'the' would be a form of constrained writing. If you're trying to do this... well, good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="15545" LastEditDate="2017-01-03T18:56:46.187" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T18:56:46.187" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25797" CreationDate="2017-01-03T17:13:26.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mention that you don't think that your problem words can easily be replaced with synonyms. Maybe not &quot;easily&quot; but I think the exercise of trying to substitute synonyms may aid your understanding if why you are using them. For example, look at your use of the word &quot;just&quot; and determine if you mean &quot;merely&quot; or &quot;solely&quot; or some other phrase. It may be a larger issue, as @Mark Baker suggested, or it may be a need for a more precise use of vocabulary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T17:13:26.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25819" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-03T18:27:38.797" Score="33" ViewCount="4002" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a novel about [something or other] and now I wonder if it is possible to do [this or that].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-18T11:19:11.183" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T11:19:11.183" Title="Writing a novel, can I do [this or that]?" Tags="|novel|process|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25819" CreationDate="2017-01-03T18:28:24.670" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can write anything you please.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T18:28:24.670" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25819" CreationDate="2017-01-03T18:42:40.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, why not? Get it on paper, kick it around a bit, and then hand it off to an editor to see if it worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T18:42:40.747" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25819" CreationDate="2017-01-03T18:46:07.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd be surprised if it was impossible to write something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've just got to &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; it. See how it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T18:46:07.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25819" CreationDate="2017-01-03T18:58:07.500" Score="24" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;GLENDOWER &#xA;I can call spirits from the vasty deep. &#xA;&#xA;HOTSPUR &#xA;Why, so can I, or so can any man; &#xA;But will they come when you do call for them?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Henry IV, part 1 | Act 3, Scene 1 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, &quot;Can I do ...&quot; is always the wrong question. &quot;Will anyone want to read ...&quot; is the right question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you can't think of a dozen widely read books where the author does [something or other] then the answer is no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Storytelling is the most ancient of arts. It neither needs nor rewards innovation. It is all about excellence of execution. If you are spending your time and energy on anything else, you are wasting your time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-04T18:23:38.753" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T18:23:38.753" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25819" CreationDate="2017-01-03T19:19:05.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You &lt;strong&gt;may&lt;/strong&gt; write a novel.  I'm not sure if you can or will though. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do write a novel -- a fiction of an acceptable length to be considered a novel -- no one truly has the authority to tell you it is wrong or bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a novel is anything fiction of a certain length that someone considers a novel.  So if you'll simply consider it a novel yourself, you will be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, if it's &lt;strong&gt;really out there&lt;/strong&gt; but a publisher picks it up then you can say you've created &lt;em&gt;art&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2p8ObsI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski - amazon link&lt;/a&gt; :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T14:46:03.257" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:46:03.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25815" CreationDate="2017-01-03T19:33:18.997" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&#xA;It is entirely impossible to write a novel without using the word 'the'.&#xA;I cannot even write that previous sentence without using that word, so I can say unequivocally that it is completely 100% impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm attempting to balance the answers here since so many (incorrectly) believe it is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Little-known fact:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ernest Hemingway attempted to do this very thing when he wrote, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pwZ5Lz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Old Man &amp;amp; The Sea -- amazon link&lt;/a&gt; (originally titled : Old Man &amp;amp; Sea) and he failed.&#xA;He used the word 'the' only 17 times in the entire book.  Read it and see.&#xA;Astonishing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Very Difficult, But I Just Completed It&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Discombobulated&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I recently finished an entire novel without using the word discombobulated and I'm quite proud.  98.3% of all novels include the word discombobulated, just as this very post does.  It was difficult to write this post without using the word so I went ahead and did so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:47:06.267" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25706" CreationDate="2017-01-03T20:10:45.207" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overly descriptive scenes leave me wanting less; I don't read many&#xA;  newer novels because they spend way too many pages describing things&#xA;  instead of developing and telling an intriguing plot with twists and&#xA;  turns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overly descriptive scenes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those overly descriptive scenes are the &quot;tell&quot; that the &lt;em&gt;show don't tell&lt;/em&gt; phrase is talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show Don't Tell&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;bad / tell:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He felt sad that he had been rejected by the beautiful woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author has told you how he felt. He has not allowed the character to act it out before you to expose the story to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;better / show:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stanley looked up at the beautiful red-head standing in front of him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Would...would...would you like to go out for a drink, Margaret?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Margaret wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something bad. &quot;Uh,&#xA;  you're just not my type, Stanley.&quot; She scurried over to the office&#xA;  printer and fumbled with its buttons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stanley let his shoulders fall and he slouched over as he scuffled&#xA;  back to his desk. He sat down in his chair and dropped his head to his&#xA;  desk and sniffed as a tear formed in his eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use more &lt;strong&gt;exposition&lt;/strong&gt; -- describing things as they happen in front of the reader&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;than you use &lt;strong&gt;narrative&lt;/strong&gt; -- telling the reader what happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, what you want is more exposition -- more seeing it played out in front of you and less narrative -- less of the author telling you something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T20:10:45.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25819" CreationDate="2017-01-03T21:30:45.160" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;You almost certainly can. At very least, if this is a project that appeals to you, then you can try, and see how it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been stories and novels written in second-person future tense, written without the letter 'e', written in the form of a series of exercise and relaxation tapes, written from the viewpoint of a sentient pregnancy test. &lt;strong&gt;There is probably &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; quite so outlandish or restrictive that it could not &lt;em&gt;possibly&lt;/em&gt; be written well.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is not &quot;Can it be done.&quot; The questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why do you want to?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it worth the effort?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What will you do to make it work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why do you want to?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few main reasons to try to do something very unusual:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because you want an unusual result.&lt;/strong&gt; That's fine. This means you're experimenting, and deliberately creating something odd. The question isn't &quot;can it be done,&quot; it's an experiment. It may not work out, or the unusual result may not turn out to be a good piece of fiction -- but you're not going to write unusual fiction without spending some time writing weird stuff and seeing what works.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because it sounds like a challenge.&lt;/strong&gt; That's fine. Just bear in mind that the fact that something is challenging to write, doesn't mean it's interesting to read. Try it, see if it gets your creative juices flowing or if the challenge is enjoyable to you, and if it's not doing that, you can stop.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because it's necessary for the specific story you want to tell.&lt;/strong&gt; These can be very challenging to write, but what helps is that you have a specific goal in mind. Knowing where you're headed goes a long way towards helping you overcome the difficulties you've taken on; it gives you a way to constantly check yourself, see that the story is doing what you want it to be doing, even if what you want it to be doing is fairly unusual.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is it worth the effort?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you're trying to do [this or that], you can make up your mind on whether it's actually worth your time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing it just because it sounds hard, &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are the sole arbiter of how hard you want your writing to be, and how hard for &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; doing [this or that] actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is some huge constraint imposed by your story, you're the only one who really understands what it is you're trying to accomplish, and how the story might work even under such constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What will you do to make it work?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is going to be the really tough one. Because you've made up your mind, made your choice, and now you're trying to write something &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK. That's fine. It's a hard problem. Maybe you've cut yourself off from some easy answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, deal with &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; difficulties, concrete individual phrases or characters or plot points you can grapple with. Don't leave it at &quot;Doing [this-or-that] sounds hard&quot;. It's not a yes/no question; it's a series of &quot;How do I solve &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt;?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Does it work?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the time, there's no real way to tell if you're doing well until you're &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's when you can look at the story or the novel as a whole, and see if, &lt;em&gt;as a whole&lt;/em&gt;, you've managed to make the hard thing work well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can look at it. Beta readers can look at it. You can get meaningful feedback and opinions, based on &lt;em&gt;how well you did the hard thing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then you can adjust. If you didn't get it right, maybe with the entire thing in hand, you can tweak and edit now so that it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; work. Or, maybe now you come to the conclusion that you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; know how to make it work. That's fine too; plenty of stories and books come out poorly, even the ones that weren't Herculean tasks. &lt;strong&gt;Having written something that doesn't work is not a failure&lt;/strong&gt;, unless you're already under contract. You stretched yourself; you tried something new; you experimented. That's how you get better, and find interesting stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that, I think, is as close to an answer as you'll get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing is impossible to write. Lots of things are hard to write. (Almost anything, really.) You may or may not have the skill, at this point, to write something really difficult that you want to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weigh your options. Be aware of the choices you are making. Accept that some of writing is experimenting, and it's absolutely fine if plenty of it doesn't come out very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And good luck. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T21:30:45.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25759" CreationDate="2017-01-03T22:35:15.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that there are two questions here pertaining to short term &quot;current trends&quot; which may or may not feed into a longer term &quot;literary movement&quot;.  A literary movement is generally greater than any short fiction fashions and could span decades if not centuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trends&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For year on year trends there are several statistical sources, my personal goto guide being:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Writers-Artists-Yearbook-2016-Alysoun/dp/1472907078/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&amp;amp;psc=1&amp;amp;refRID=F889QAH7CQZ0V0R67DHV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Writers and Artists Yearbook 2016&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tom Tivnan writes on &quot;News, views and trends in book publishing&quot; that 7/10 top sellers for 2014 were in the YA genre, helped by films.  Examples given include The Maze Runner, The Fault in our Stars and Divergent.  Examples not given but n previous top seller lists would be Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and The Hunger Games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not specifically mentioned but implied are the themes of &quot;urban fantasy&quot;, &quot;post apocalyptic&quot; and &quot;revolutionary&quot;.  Not forgetting of course the frequent, recent occurance of vampires, zombies and werewolves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Literary movement&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an exact definition of the current literary movement, we may have to wait 50 years or so, since this is often defined after the event.  The nearest movements that summarize the current short term trends would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Magical Realism (magic appearing in realistic circumstances)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stridentism (social revolution)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transrealism (mixture of fantasy and sci-fi)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also heard 'post postmodernism' applied to the literary movement of the last century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Symbolism&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, is symbolism still relevant? Well yes of course it is, creative expression is still relevant and used and will continue to be so as long as there are writers and artists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Symbolism may have caught fire in 1800s France but is still very much alive today. For example, the fact that Harry Potter had a lightening scar could be considered symbolism or Katniss's Mockingjay pin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In decades to come, literary critics may combine the trends (should they continue) into a new literary movement called &quot;Symbolic Magical Postapocalytic Trans Unrealism - with zombies&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19191" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T22:35:15.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25706" CreationDate="2017-01-03T23:47:49.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The crux of the matter is that when people read something - especially fiction - they are constructing in their minds a small world in which the story takes place and they are, to some degree, placing themselves in that world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you interact with the real world, there's almost never a narrator explaining it to you (unless you're on a tour bus). You see things and actions and they elicit feelings and opinions from past experiences - in you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A work of fiction needs to work the same way to engage the reader and tap into all their past experience by letting them &quot;parse&quot;, analyse, and experience the data themselves and then feel whatever that brings up in them - as if they are there witnessing real events and responding to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just telling them skips almost all of that. Then, they're just reading your opinion of what the story means. They're interfacing with your mind, not with the story itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, sometimes things do need to be explained, so there will always be a place for &quot;tell&quot;. It's just not usually the place where the action and feelings are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2821" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T23:47:49.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25803" CreationDate="2017-01-04T02:30:18.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is definitely a style question, where there's no one right answer. The only way I can see to answer it, aside from giving my own opinion, is to refer to the only experts possible in this type of work: authors themselves. Let's grab my current favorite book and find out what it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0316229296&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It moves a lot, this land. Like an old man lying restlessly abed it heaves and sighs, puckers and farts, yawns and swallows. Naturally this land's people have named it &lt;em&gt;the Stillness.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note italics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The end begins in a city: the oldest, largest, and most magnificent living city in the world. The city is called Yumenes, and once it was the heart of an empire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note plaintext. But these are proper nouns. She uses a lot of complex words, but most of them seem to exist already, just not in common usage. Let's look at the next created word she uses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's a group of young women walking along one of the asphalt paths below; the hill is in a park much beloved by the city's residents. (&lt;em&gt;Keep green land within the walls,&lt;/em&gt; advises stonelore, but in most communities the land is fallow-planted with legumes and other soil-enriching crops. Only in Yumenes is greenland sculpted into prettiness.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your attention might be drawn by &quot;green land&quot;, but it's an obvious and simple combination of &quot;green land&quot;, from the previous sentence, and hardly needs explaining. No, the unique word here is &quot;stonelore&quot;. Slipped right in there where you'd hardly notice. She's italicized the advice, but not the word itself. Let's look at the rest of this paragraph to finish our study of this book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The women laugh at something one of them has said, and the sound wafts up to the man on a passing breeze. He closes his eyes and savors the faint tremolo of their voices, the fainter reverberation of their footsteps like the wingbeats of butterflies against their sessapinae. He can't sess all seven million residents of the city, mind you; he's good, but he's not that good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here we have two coined words: &quot;sessapinae&quot;, and &quot;sess&quot;. Like &quot;stonelore&quot;, both are blended into the text naturally, so you'd hardly notice them. Also, you can immediately guess that they're related to each other, although one is used as a noun and the other as a verb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While she does a bit of clarifying for &quot;stonelore&quot; later in this passage, you don't fully understand what is meant by &quot;sess&quot; until a third of the way into the book, and what the &quot;sessapinae&quot; is exactly takes still longer. But she uses the terms fluidly and naturally, such that you are able to follow even if you don' fully understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for this selection, we have only one unique word italicied: &lt;em&gt;the Stillness&lt;/em&gt;. This serves the purpose of isolating the word itself from its meanings, focusing your attention on the irony of naming a seismically active land Stillness. The other words are treated naturally, as part of the text, and you're expected to derive the meaning as you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Therefore&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I had intended to skim some other books, but I got tired and anyway the evidence bears up my initial impression. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/031624662X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ancillary Justice&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0545417805&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Summer Prince&lt;/a&gt; both have a plethora of neologisms, if you want to do further research.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; use italics if you want the word to stand apart from the text. If you want to draw attention to it as a word, if you want to highlight that it's strange in some way, or if you don't want your audience internalizing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt; use italics if you want the word to flow naturally. If you want it to blend in with the text, if you want the audience to figure out what it means on their own, or if you want to make it part of your reader's natural lingo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the real answer is, &lt;strong&gt;what do you want?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10099" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T02:30:18.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25833" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-04T03:42:08.470" Score="5" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a CV, and I want to get feedback on it. I want to know I haven't made any mistakes, and that it's as good as I can make it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't know where to find such a service; what to expect from somebody I hire; how to find somebody I can trust to do a good job; and what to expect in terms of budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I go about this? Where should I be looking, and what should I be looking for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22857" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-01-04T11:46:35.093" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T18:57:20.277" Title="How do I find somebody to review my CV?" Tags="|resources|criticism|resume|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25834" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-04T12:01:41.810" Score="4" ViewCount="327" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder, when I hear JFK, Obama, Lincoln, Gandhi, Modi. The sentences, phrases in their speeches are so impressive. The content of their speeches are wonderful. I desire to be a successful orator but I cannot even imagine to speak that much effective content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want your help in learning - how can I write my speeches with such powerful contents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22858" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-01-04T15:49:39.463" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T20:33:26.667" Title="How do speech writers find the contents that make their speeches so impressive?" Tags="|style|concept|learning|speechwriting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14692" CreationDate="2017-01-04T12:11:24.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Abstract&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An abstract can be defined as a summary of the information in a&#xA;document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should not exceed 250 words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should be written in one paragraph.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should be written in the past tense as it refers to work&#xA;done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Long words should be followed by its abbreviation which&#xA;would be used through out the abstract and paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should not cite any references (except in rare cases)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should never give any information or conclusion that is not&#xA;stated in the paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must be accurate with respect to figures quoted in the main&#xA;text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Introduction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should present the nature and scope of the problem investigated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review the pertinent literature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;State the method of investigation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;State the principal results of the investigation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;State the principal conclusion(s) suggested by the results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22866" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-01-04T13:41:33.597" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T13:41:33.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25836" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-04T12:20:20.790" Score="0" ViewCount="509" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are the examples. The first version is the simile and the second the metaphor (I'm not sure, though, what kind it is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We faced away from each other awkwardly, as if we were on the first&#xA;  date we never had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We faced away from each other awkwardly, portraying the first date we&#xA;  never had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My past rejection, his present sweetheart, my future surgery, all that&#xA;  swelled up inside me until I burst like a water balloon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My past rejection, his present sweetheart, my future surgery, all that&#xA;  swelled up inside me until I burst into tears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He held my hand and examined it, as though wanting to read our future in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He held my palm and examined it, perhaps wanting to read our future in it. (All right, this one isn't a metaphor. Not sure what it is.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the metaphoric version of the sentences superior to their similian (just made up this word) counterparts? Why or why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastEditorUserId="22391" LastEditDate="2017-01-04T12:27:27.877" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T13:27:24.843" Title="Are metaphors superior to similes in the following cases?" Tags="|creative-writing|metaphor|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-01-04T13:30:56.870" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25836" CreationDate="2017-01-04T13:01:22.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your examples of metaphors aren't actually metaphors. They are straight descriptions of what's happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a slightly modified form of the second example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My past rejection, his present sweetheart, my future surgery, all that made me burst like a water balloon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you would like to write this as a metaphor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My past rejection, his present sweetheart, my future surgery, all that made my hull burst and my water flow all over the place.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Metaphors read as if they describe something which is actually happening. But what the metaphor describes doesn't happen. It's just a symbol for what is really happening. But this example doesn't make sense at all, does it? That's because you are reading it out of context. But if you provide enough context, for example by establishing a &quot;feeling like a balloon&quot; metaphor earlier (for example by repeatedly using it in form of a simile), this sentence would make sense to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we learn from this is that similes are &quot;metaphors lite&quot;. By adding &quot;like a&quot; or &quot;as if&quot; in front of a metaphor, we prepare the reader that what comes next is not to be taken literal. This remove the necessity to provide the context which is necessary to recognize the metaphor as what it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2017-01-04T13:27:24.843" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T13:27:24.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25836" CreationDate="2017-01-04T13:13:54.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We faced away from each other awkwardly, as if we were on the first date we never had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hypothetical or conditional, not a metaphor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We faced away from each other awkwardly, portraying the first date we never had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What you want is:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We faced away from each other awkwardly, two shy teenagers on the first date we never had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My past rejection, his present sweetheart, my future surgery, all that swelled up inside me until I burst like a water balloon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That's a simile. Great!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My past rejection, his present sweetheart, my future surgery, all that swelled up inside me until I burst into tears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figurative language leading to a description. You can physically &quot;burst into tears.&quot; The people and events are not physically inside you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He held my hand and examined it, as though wanting to read our future in it.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  He held my palm and examined it, perhaps wanting to read our future in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these are the narrator projecting or wondering what the other person is thinking. Not figurative or metaphorical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;simile&lt;/em&gt; always uses &quot;like&quot; or &quot;as&quot;: &quot;The rustling of the branches was like trees whispering to each other.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;metaphor&lt;/em&gt; uses symbolism. It's something which can't be literal: &quot;Their hissing gossip was the rustle of tree branches: indistinct, indecipherable, far above my head.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as which is &quot;superior,&quot; that's mostly a matter of word choice and flow. I think your similes are better here, but a metaphor might be better elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T13:13:54.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25834" CreationDate="2017-01-04T15:45:01.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer that, you've got to learn to read like a writer. (Or, in this case, like an orator.) You can study these speeches that impress you to find the answer to that question and to improve your own speeches. Don't just listen to them and be impressed, but analyse them. Take them apart. &lt;em&gt;What&lt;/em&gt; are the orators saying? &lt;em&gt;How&lt;/em&gt; are they saying it? How can you do that in your own speeches? Here is a very simple example to illustrate what I mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mormon.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;my church&lt;/a&gt;, we don't have a pastor who preaches every week. Instead, members of the church are asked to talk on various topics each week. This gives us a lot of practice giving speeches, but most of the speeches (or &quot;talks&quot;, we call them) aren't very good. This is to be expected, because we're just ordinary people, and we haven't all studied how to be a good speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lds.org/general-conference?lang=eng&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;twice a year&lt;/a&gt;, we have the opportunity to listen to the leaders of our church speak to us. These people travel the world, speaking to all the members of the church, and spend a lot of time learning how to be good speakers. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/04/lord-i-believe?lang=eng&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some of them&lt;/a&gt; are particularly powerful speakers that draw more than a usual amount of attention. I paid attention to how these people give their speeches to find out what I can do to make my talks more powerful when I'm asked to give one in church.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They always look directly at the audience. They're not looking down at a piece of paper to remind them what to say. Obama has his teleprompter, but I don't have that, so in order to mimic this I need to memorize my talks beforehand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They always speak firmly and clearly, with a strong, loud voice. Some of the older speakers have trouble as their health deteriorates, but the best speakers are ones where you never have to wonder what they just said. Many of the ordinary church members mumble, or tend to slur their words together, especially if they're nervous. This takes away from the power of their message.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don't rush. They take their time. They pause frequently, and allow the audience time to absorb their words. It's easy to rush through what you have to say so you can get it over with quickly, but this prevents your audience from really understanding what you have to say.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They get straight to the point. Most of the talks at an ordinary church service begin with &quot;Hello, my name is XYZ, and I was asked to give this talk...&quot; Half of them ramble on past that point, saying things like &quot;I don't want to give a talk but I will anyway&quot;, and even when they do get around to actually talking they'll begin with something trite or overdone, like &quot;the dictionary definition of TOPIC is...&quot;. None of the conference speakers do that. They assume you know their name (because it's written on the program) and that you want to hear what they have to say. They just jump right into their topic, usually opening with a story or other engaging remark.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as content, since I'm using religious material, I'm not sure how much of it will be applicable to you. But you'll notice that the very best speakers don't just cover the basics. They assume you have a basic understanding of the subject material and go beyond that, to expound on something new or even just to reiterate what you already knew in a new and different way. And you'd be surprised how much of a difference taking the steps I outlined above would make. Even if the speech you're delivering isn't earth-shattering-ly awesome, delivering it in a confident, persuasive manner will make a world of difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I said, this is basic stuff. I can't help you with the more complex stuff. To do that, you'll have to do what I said in the first paragraph: read like an orator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10099" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T15:45:01.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25834" CreationDate="2017-01-04T15:45:29.220" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with what's comment. There are certain techniques used in these speeches that help convey meaning. I'm going to use Martin Luther King's &lt;em&gt;I had a dream&lt;/em&gt; speech in my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What kinds of techniques are used which make a speech powerful?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at a few of these speeches you can see a few common &lt;a href=&quot;http://literary-devices.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;literary techniques or devices&lt;/a&gt; that are used. For example, in Martin Luther King's speech there was constant repetition of the idea of a &lt;em&gt;dream&lt;/em&gt;. Furthermore, King uses &lt;strong&gt;fact&lt;/strong&gt;, referring to places in his speech. For example, he mentions freedom ringing from the molehills in Mississippi. King also uses techniques of &lt;strong&gt;hyperbole&lt;/strong&gt;; he includes lots of 'all' and 'every' in his speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty more literary devices used in speeches that add effect. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alliteration. Repetition of a certain sound at the start of a word&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Triadic Structure (Rule of Three). Human's love things in three, and triadic structure embodies this. It's where you have some fantastic, powerful and glorious adjectives or anything else in a group of three.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Flattery and insult. This is great because it is a way to &lt;strong&gt;include the audience&lt;/strong&gt;, something important in these types of speeches.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;There are certain traits which affect this.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having good techniques in your work isn't the only thing that is going to make it strong. You can have as many statistics, tradic structures and alliterations as you want, but none of that will matter unless you have the gut to give it your all. Notice something about all of the people you mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They are all charismatic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They are all trying to 'lead' something forth in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They are all &lt;strong&gt;looking at their audience&lt;/strong&gt;, speaking &lt;strong&gt;loudly and clearly&lt;/strong&gt; as well as &lt;strong&gt;making their points clear.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They made the content in their speeches absolutely wondrous by really going for what they believed in. They would look at their audiences, rather than at a piece of paper, addressing them directly. They would speak loudly, clearly and broadly so all could hear. They would utilise their natural leadership and charisma to inspire through language. They primarily really made themselves understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being able to orate like these people is more than being abler to write well, although that is a huge contributing factor. If you are able to write a speech with good structure and meaning, that's alright. However, the person who can perform that speech in a charismatic and bold way are leagues ahead of the people who can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Speak boldly and clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have leadership, a clear goal and passion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write well and structure well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I'll add this. Their speeches all have a common, shared idea: not trying, doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T15:45:29.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25834" CreationDate="2017-01-04T18:11:12.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start by making a distinction between a good speechwriter and a good speaker. Ted Sorensen explains it very well in this essay on Smithsonian.com. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ted-sorensen-on-abraham-lincoln-a-man-of-his-words-12048177/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ted-sorensen-on-abraham-lincoln-a-man-of-his-words-12048177/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lincoln was a better speechwriter than speaker. Normally, the success&#xA;  of a speech depends in considerable part on the speaker's voice and&#xA;  presence. The best speeches of John F. Kennedy benefited from his&#xA;  platform presence, his poise, personality, good looks and strong&#xA;  voice. ... Democratic&#xA;  Party leaders not attending the 1896 National Convention at which&#xA;  Bryan delivered his &quot;Cross of Gold&quot; speech, and thus not carried away&#xA;  by the power of his presence, later could not understand his&#xA;  nomination on the basis of what they merely read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obama is a case in point. He has a captivating presence at the podium, but for the life of me I can't think of one noble or memorable thing he said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I think we see as common features of the great speechwriters -- Lincoln, Kennedy, Churchill -- are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Big bold concrete ideas -- send a man to the moon.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Simple concrete language -- &quot;The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.&quot; &quot;I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A sense of time and place. Churchill's &quot;blood, toil, tears, and sweat speech,&quot; or &quot;fight them on the beaches and in the hedgerows&quot; are powerful in a nation facing imminent invasion. They would sound silly if the chief concern of the day were controlling inflation, for instance. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the last is perhaps the most important. We could debate whether great speeches create great moments or if great moments create great speeches, but I think they really come from a great speechwriter recognizing the greatness of the moment as it emerges and responding to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T18:11:12.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24978" CreationDate="2017-01-04T18:47:42.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;All I can offer you is an example of what I've seen done. I don't know the industry standard for such things, and your journal can follow whatever practices it wants. This is just what my newspaper did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I worked on &lt;a href=&quot;http://byuiscroll.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a student-run newspaper&lt;/a&gt; in college, the editorial was always published with a statement at the bottom reading something like &quot;&lt;em&gt;This topic was approved by a 6-1 vote of the editorial board.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; The editorial itself was usually written by a specific editor, chosen for that publication, and their name was attached to it as well. If there was a significant dissenting vote, a dissenting editor was chosen to write a short piece explaining their stance at the bottom of the article. The dissenting opinion usually omitted the name of the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only example of this I was able to find from my student newspaper is &lt;a href=&quot;http://byuiscroll.org/freedom-begins-with-minor-liberties/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; from 2013, about freedom of speech. I'm sure there's a more recent version, and it's entirely possible that their practices have changed in the intervening years, but searching for stuff on their website is hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10099" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T18:47:42.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24978" CreationDate="2017-01-04T19:36:44.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This does strike me as a general ethical question. A publication represents an interest which sponsors its publication. A journalist who accepts employment at that publication is working for hire to perform services for the interest that owns the paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interest is entitled to create an organ that represents its own views, an organ that represents a consensus view but also publishes a dissenting view, an organ that represents a consensus view without dissent, or an organ that published multiple views. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these things are unethical. A journalist who does not feel that they can work for an interest whose publication does not allow them to express their own opinions, or to conform to and support a consensus opinion would seem to have an ethical obligation to resign. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone (more or less) has to right to publish their own views at their own expense. No one has to right to have their views published by someone else at the other party's expense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T19:36:44.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-04T19:55:25.053" Score="2" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I recently had my first ever issue with the spelling of places in my novel. Someone pronounced a rather illustrious city, Ethil, incorrectly. Ethil is not pronounced with a 'f' sound as in 'fill', it is pronounced with a 'th' sound as in 'the' or '&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;þorn&lt;/a&gt;'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, removing  þ from the alphabet was a total mistake. It is an absolutely necessary letter and I am deeply upset that such a useful letter fell out of use. 'Th' has about 500 pronunciations anyway, so  þ would be a good letter to help differentiate between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I write Ethil or Eþil?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I campaign hard enough or start using þ in my everyday life, will þ - the most useful letter - once again become a letter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used my own story as an example, however, this encompasses anybody's story where they might want to use weird letters, like æ for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will the average reader know how to pronounce these letters? How can you help a reader know which sound a combination of letters or letter makes if it has a lot of pronunciations, like 'th'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T21:39:47.657" Title="If I write a word with a letter that isn't used, will I confuse my reader?" Tags="|readers|letter|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25846" CreationDate="2017-01-04T20:05:23.390" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pronunciation is part of aural speech and cannot be wholly derived from the written form of languages, at least not in English. There are thousands of real place names that people pronounce differently. If you are going to make up place names in a written work that no one will ever hear pronounced, then different people are going to pronounce them in different ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bringing back old letters is not going to happen and using them will not fix your pronunciation issues. There is a formal notation for writing down actual pronunciation, but it is unreadable to those not trained in it. Nothing else is precise and one more letter would not make it so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the real question is, why do you care? What does it matter if some people pronounce your made up words differently from what you imagined? Do they enjoy the story less as a result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really do care, I think you have two options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide a pronunciation key for the names in your book.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create names whose default pronunciation matches what you have in your head. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T20:05:23.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25834" CreationDate="2017-01-04T20:33:26.667" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone who has posted here has emphasized some good points. Here are my additional two cents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your basic question reads as having two parts: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delivery  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Content&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a teacher, I can tell you that the two things that make for a strong speech are confidence and expression. Expression comes through practice. Take someone else's words and practice saying them for a camera then watch them. Make notes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you like about the way you speak when content is not an&#xA;issue? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What needs improvement?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work on the same speech until you deliver it effectively. Look for opportunities to speak in front of an audience, even a small one. Community theater, poetry slams, improv classes are all places to work on your public speaking.The second issue is confidence. Some confidence will come from practice. However, most people still give the best speeches about material they know well because when you have a strong understanding of a subject and its content, you are not tied to your written notes. The woodeness of a read speech is difficult to overcome. Outlines can keep you on point and give you the flexibility of improvisation. If a specific phrasing is important you can always add it to your outline. A speech is different than either a play or a paper because its intention is generally to inspire. When you give a speech, people are looking to you as an authority. When you are either not inspired in your expression or you lack confidence, you do not appear authoritative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of us give public talks not as speeches but as presentations of research in class, or at conferences for work. The remarks above apply to these scenarios as well. When speaking in these scenarios, however, I have a few additional suggestions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the font of your typed notes large, 14pt or greater so its easy to read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insert slide changes into your paper like this: &lt;strong&gt;(Slide 1)&lt;/strong&gt; Bold and in parentheses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limit text on your slides, key phrases only. Audiences don't want&#xA;to read your speech.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use lots of images.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a black background for your slides instead of themes. Black looks&#xA;like a movie theater, easy on the eyes, neutral, doesn't distract in&#xA;any way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my third point, presentation. If you are prepared and everything works--you don't lose your place, you don't distract the audience (by sniffing into the microphone for example), your audience hasn't already read your ideas before you say them--people will notice the preparedness and you will feel ready. It's like a fine dinner. When it looks pretty on the plate we are ready for it to taste good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22002" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T20:33:26.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25849" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25852" CreationDate="2017-01-04T21:01:05.353" Score="3" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to write a lot when I was younger, and I like to think that I was even decent at it. It's been years since I've tried to write anything other than code, though. I'm quite out of practice, and have found that my writing is very unstructured and chaotic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to blog posts, or journal entries, is it alright for them to be completely informal, and lacking of any real paragraphical structure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of this can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://nickdugger-blog.azurewebsites.net/this-world-is-small-after-all/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22873" LastEditorUserId="22873" LastEditDate="2017-01-04T21:14:19.343" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T13:21:04.710" Title="Style-less writing -- Lack of real structure for blog article" Tags="|style|structure|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25849" CreationDate="2017-01-04T21:17:44.030" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that experiment you did back in grade school with the iron filings and the magnet. I think that is a good illustration of how a good piece of writing works. It is not that everything lines up neatly in rows and columns like a database or a spreadsheet. And it is not that all the elements are aligned in the same direction. It is that when you step back and look at the larger pattern, a structure emerges that forms a whole, a unity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is what you should be trying to achieve when you write. You may come at the same idea from different angles and with different techniques, but in the end it all flows together towards a central point of idea, like the iron filings, though they individually point in different directions, all forming part of a harmonious pattern around the head of the magnet, which, taken together, tells you something important about the nature of magnetic fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That what good writing is, a collection of ideas and images that cluster round a central point and illustrate its nature, its shape, and its importance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without that, a reader will get to the end of your post (if they get to the end) and not know what they have read. But they probably won't get to the end because they will sense long before that that these pieces are not aligning in any intelligible pattern and will stop reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is the other part of good structure in a text: it has to reveal itself progressively, not just at the end when all is finished, both because the reader will get bored if they do not see a structured developing, and because the reader cannot keep all the elements of a structure in their head as they read, waiting for it all to come together at the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a big part of the reason for the classical basic structure that says, first tell them what you are going to say, then say it, then tell them what you have said. It is all about making sure that the reader can see the structure emerging as they read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, structure is essential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-16T13:21:04.710" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T13:21:04.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25725" CreationDate="2017-01-04T21:25:05.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I agree with Standback, but his answer is not generally true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meaning of the quote above escapes me. Besides, I happen actually to agree with Standback. The building of a unique world would add color to your story (which should, of course, come first, setting being secondary and all), even if you deploy all the existing cliche elements, like FTL travel, spaceships, dragons, witches, elves, dwarves, vampires, zombies and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, the level of the details you throw at your reader is up to you and you only, but if you skip them completely, you are risking that your audience will have a different picture in their mind than you are trying to paint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T21:25:05.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25849" CreationDate="2017-01-04T21:30:32.680" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a word for the kind of &quot;structureless&quot; writing you employ, it is the French word &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_(Montaigne)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;essai&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. An &lt;em&gt;essai&lt;/em&gt; is quite the opposite of what English-speaking pupils learn to produce for their teachers, despite the fact that the name of the English school essay is derived from the French form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the English essay has a prescribed structure, a clear topic, and must be concise, precise, and to the point, the French &lt;em&gt;essai&lt;/em&gt; follows the (apparently) aimless meandering of the writer's mind. An &lt;em&gt;essai&lt;/em&gt;, as the name implies&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, is an attempt at self-reflection, an attempt to encircle a topic to uncover its truth. As such, it is only seemingly aimless, much like the convoluted path of a person searching the woods for a lost key: purposeful, yet disorganized. But no, that is not true. The &lt;em&gt;essai&lt;/em&gt; reflects the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_Association#Psychology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;chain of associations&lt;/a&gt; of the writer, and as such brings to light the order of his or her mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;inventor&quot;, if you so will, of the &lt;em&gt;essai&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Montaigne&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michel de Montaigne&lt;/a&gt;, and you might enjoy reading one or two of his &lt;em&gt;essais&lt;/em&gt; to see what he did. For a famous contemporary, look at John Scalzi's &lt;a href=&quot;http://whatever.scalzi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;strong&gt;essai&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;french&lt;/em&gt; trial, attempt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T21:30:32.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25846" CreationDate="2017-01-04T21:39:47.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using þ in a story will not bring it back as a letter in English. So keep that in mind if you decide to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether an average reader will know how to pronounce these letters, the answer is not really. In fact, some people have seen thorns in older texts, especially those using blackletter, and mistaken them for y's, which is why some people trying to give an establishment an older feel will use &quot;ye olde&quot; in the name or description and believe the pronunciation to be &lt;code&gt;/ji:/&lt;/code&gt; instead of &lt;code&gt;/ðeː/&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in an appendix or other pronunciation key will help accurately portray how the words are pronounced (see the last sentence of the prior paragraph for an example). The IPA is the best way for conveying pronunciation. However, the average reader does not know the IPA. So using the IPA will not help most readers, which means relying on a less precise system to convey pronunciation if you want to have the pronunciation guide be accessible to a wider audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, personally, have used thorn, eth, ash, and ø in my stories, but I don't expect most of my readers to be able to pronounce the words containing those letters properly. In fact, I have one character mispronounce Friðuswiþ's name several times to the point of her agreeing to have him call her Frith. I include this in the story because the main character, like the reader, comes from a different culture and is not used to the pronunciation of Friðuswiþ's language; by doing this I let the reader know it is fine if they don't know how to pronounce her name, as not even the main character can figure it out at first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13618" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T21:39:47.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25854" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25863" CreationDate="2017-01-04T21:42:09.810" Score="16" ViewCount="1751" Body="&lt;p&gt;I run a critiquing group once a month and I've had several of my members say they aren't sure how to tell when their work is ready for critique. I'll be covering this in a workshop tomorrow night, but I figured I'd toss the question to you guys as well. How do you know when your work is ready for critique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I don't expect anyone to be submitting perfect, polished, ready-to-publish pieces (say that five times fast). It's fine if they still need some work; if they didn't, what am I critiquing it for? But where's the line between the first draft and ready for critique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I compiled most of these answers into a single document and presented it to my critique group as a workshop. We had a good conversation and I think we all learned a lot. Thank you! If you're interested, the document (and some subsequent notes) can be viewed &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dropbox.com/s/f6r9j0pum4tfymm/How%20do%20I%20know%20when%20my%20work%20is%20ready%20for%20critique.docx?dl=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10099" LastEditorUserId="10099" LastEditDate="2017-01-06T22:30:44.147" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T22:30:44.147" Title="How do I know when my work is ready for critique?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25854" CreationDate="2017-01-04T22:02:10.010" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not so much about the work being ready for critique as about the writer not being able to make it any better without an outside critique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a beginning writer, or a poor reader, who can not see the faults in their work needs a critique at the point when the story is in a much weaker form than a more experienced writer, or good reader, who can make their story much better before they need the help of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it is ready for critique when you can't make it any better yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the hidden fear behind that question is often that people won't like the piece. The writer is showing their work to their first ever audience and they desperately want it to be liked. This is natural, but it misses the point of getting a critique. The point of a critique is to find out what is wrong with a piece, not to receive praise for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A successful critique is not one in which everyone loves the piece. A successful critique in one which that you to realize what is wrong with the piece. If all you are getting from a critique group is praise then you are not in a critique group, you are in a mutual admiration society, which may be good for your ego but is certainly going to be bad for your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't come away from a critique group meeting with a new appreciation for what is wrong with your work, you are wasting your time. This does not, by any means, mean that every criticism you receive is correct. Many of them will be completely bogus. The point is not that you hear people describe the faults of your work, but that you see them yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Critique is not proofreading. It is not about your grammar, syntax, and spelling. It is about your story. You are looking for a response from your readers are readers of stories. Your MS is not ready for critique until all the mechanical issues with the text are dealt with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-05T00:06:04.903" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T00:06:04.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25854" CreationDate="2017-01-04T22:10:28.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A wise teacher told me that any critique has to come with instructions for the reader. Do you want me to give you a high-level review to make sure you're on a good track? Do you want a sentence-level proofing to check for grammar and spelling? Do you want to just be told you're brilliant with no other critique? (I've asked for this on pieces that I don't want to mess with anymore.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your question, I'd say that a piece can be critiqued at any point, whether it's a final draft or a first draft or a smattering of scenes in search of a plot. Though it depends on your group and your intentions for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T22:10:28.410" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25857" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25858" CreationDate="2017-01-04T23:23:29.407" Score="4" ViewCount="442" Body="&lt;p&gt;At first glance, the question may be subjective, but let me provide a specific example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story I'm self-editing takes place in a present-day small Virginia town. At present, the town is being haunted, in a sense, by a creature. A few weeks before the story took place, a curfew was initiated. After five'o'clock, everyone pretty much stays inside, locked in their storm cellars. In the first chapter of the story, the town is put under what could be considered martial law, where only law enforcement is permitted to leave. Now, they only really leave to eat, shower, go to the bathroom, etc. So, they haven't had much contact with other families. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With modern technology, looking back, I realize it may seem dated that everyone hasn't kept in touch via cell phone, email, FaceTime and facebook, especially since the narrator describes how close-knit the town used to be on multiple occasions. My question: &lt;strong&gt;Should I come up with an explanation for this phenomenon, or leave it to the readers to hypothesize on that themselves?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;In a general sense, how many questions should authors answer for the readers?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Just to clarify, this is not an issue of a plot hole. The book is set in an area so remote that they don't have cable lines, fiber optic lines, etc, and their so far from the nearest cell tower they do not get reception. I'm asking whether or not this needs to be explained, or if the readers can infer that)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And I did look around for the answer to this on writers, including this question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/9505/18418&quot;&gt;When do I explain my created world scenario in a prologue vs. letting it unfold in the story?&lt;/a&gt;, and at a few websites including this post &lt;a href=&quot;https://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/too-much-detail/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/too-much-detail/&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-07-26T19:08:31.980" Title="How do I decide whether to answer questions, or leave them unexplained?" Tags="|style|novel|exposition|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25857" CreationDate="2017-01-05T02:21:30.423" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need to -- and shouldn't try to -- explain every detail of every bit of background you've come up with.   If your writing says &quot;I had to do lots of research to write this so I'm going to make you read it&quot;, it's getting in the way of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, you need to address anything that's reasonably going to interfere with suspension of disbelief.  If your story's setting is going to have readers reasonably expecting cell phones and Internet services, you can't just ignore them and assume no one will notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the trick, though: &lt;em&gt;addressing&lt;/em&gt; it isn't the same thing as &lt;em&gt;providing a detailed explanation for it&lt;/em&gt;.  Will it suffice, in your story, to have some character refer to those times in a bit of dialogue?  It could even be a time reference -- &quot;back when the 'net worked, we'd spend our evenings reading Facebook instead of actual books&quot;.  You don't have to explain all the details of how the haunters fried all the cell towers and reprogrammed all the routers or whatever, if it doesn't help your story.  Just assure the reader that you haven't missed a glaring hole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your plot element is particularly implausible, you're not doomed.  There's a technique called &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lampshading&lt;/a&gt; (warning: TVTropes link) with which you acknowledge it in the story and then move on.  It doesn't sound like that's your situation here, but I mention it in case you have other issues to address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T02:21:30.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25857" CreationDate="2017-01-05T02:30:57.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you mention, this question is somewhat subjective which is why there won't be a hard number that somebody can provide and that will turn out to be the correct answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, writing itself can be considered subjective: You are providing the reader with a planned (to certain extent) experience. As a writer, you are the one who makes the decision regarding the impressions and the messages you want to leave your readers with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, if you are planning to leave it to your readers to hypothesize on an aspect of your story, you could try to envision what kind of discussions would spark in your fan communities and where they could start off. This way you can provide enough elements in order to increase the enjoyment of their community when the conversations take place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example for setting up elements to spark conversations that have defined a work of fiction would be the ending of Inception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very good work of fiction that might provide you guidance on what you are trying to achieve is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higurashi_When_They_Cry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Higurashi (When They Cry)&lt;/a&gt;. This particular story takes place in a close-knit community with something &quot;&lt;em&gt;off&lt;/em&gt;&quot; under the surface and an element of an entity haunting it. You can use it as a study on how much can be revealed to the audience and the questions that remain to be answered. If you are to watch the series as research material, be aware that it operates under a concept in which reality is &quot;&lt;em&gt;reset&lt;/em&gt;&quot; on every arc (Every few episodes you will find yourself back to the beginning, as if you were watching &quot;&lt;em&gt;Groundhog day: The series&lt;/em&gt;&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After analyzing both of these examples you can see how preparation is really important for leaving readers with open questions, if that is part of the experience you are attempting to provide. Assuming this might be something you are interested in, you could make the fact that the community is not using modern technology to keep in touch as an element in your story, akin to a conspiracy that could tie-in things together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you don't perform enough planning you might risk the readers to feel that there were loose ends which have ruined their experience. This goes back to what you are trying to achieve, with your intentions with your own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, if you make the decision to reveal all at the end, that is fine, too. This, again, depends on the experience you would like to provide your readers. The study of the series above will also allow you to gauge how to balance how much you want to reveal (The series continues until all mysteries are revealed and then you can see how it fares once everything is revealed which changes the experience of the audience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, for another work of fiction that you could take a look on to see how elements that don't make sense (like a protagonist not having a cellphone) are tied in to the fabric of the story would be the first season of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood-C&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blood-C&lt;/a&gt;. Beware, Blood-C is a horror story that can be very brutal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22877" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T02:30:57.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25854" CreationDate="2017-01-05T02:53:06.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The experience of a writer dictates their ability to gauge when they are ready to be critiqued and when they are not. This means that beginners, should try to get critiqued as soon and often as possible, since that will help them learn what they lack quickly and also about the process to get feedback, specially when they are ready for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is an exception to this rule of thumb: When you feel that your experience grants you immunity to criticism then you are back to the starting point. You need to be critiqued as soon and often as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, receiving critique is not the same as proof-reading. At the beginning, there will be instances when the aspiring writers will have to be reminded of that and there will be some when that's all that they will get (a proof-reading) which will prompt them to challenge themselves to improve their mastery of their language in order to thrive in the craft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22877" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T02:53:06.350" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25857" CreationDate="2017-01-05T05:20:38.217" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of this depends on where the focus is. If it is a psychological piece, the focus is on the psychology and inconsistencies in the use of technology won't matter much. If it is a love story, dito. But if it is a technical how do we get out of this mess story, then the focus is on the tech, and an inconsistency is likely to be noticed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the problem is that if you are calling attention to the tech, you are calling attention to the inconsistencies in the tech. Part of it is that if the resolution depends on tech and you are inconsistent about it, it feels like a cheat, or even a deus ex machina. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there are definitely techniques that will let you paper over the cracks, but you have to think carefully about how the crack affects the main story arc or theme of the piece. In stories as in life, whether you notice a crack, and how much you worry about it, depends on whether it is in you line of site, and whether it threatens anything you care about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T05:20:38.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25854" CreationDate="2017-01-05T06:19:33.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone else has great answers, but I'm eager to add my thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How do you know if you're ready?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two major factors which I think tie into being ready for criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You think you're crafted of diamonds and your ink is molten gold.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that if you think your writing is some of the best around when it hasn't been looked over by another, you're wrong. You need to be criticised and have other people look at your work because they might have different beliefs to you. One of my favourite parts about English Literature is hearing &lt;strong&gt;other people's interpretations&lt;/strong&gt;. It's essential to hear other people's interpretations of your work rather than your own all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You  can't see what's wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once again, it's the same as the last one. If you physically think your work is perfect but still haven't got it critiqued, you need it critiqued. It's all about &lt;strong&gt;hearing other people's interpretations.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before you do final edits and polishes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I do whenever I write anything. Even if it's a short story that I'm never going to publish, I edit it several times and give it to someone who can critique me. It's good practice. I think the best time to give your work to someone to critique, in my experience, is &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the final edits. With what you learn from the critique, you are able to apply that in your work and improve it as much as possible in the final revisions of the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How do you know if you're not ready?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are grammar issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a huge one for me. I have been asked to look over people's work before, and within  the first 500 words there's at least one spelling mistake/grammar mistake. Comma splicing can be &lt;strong&gt;a very big issue if you do not identify it.&lt;/strong&gt; When you actually do try and get published, if you have issues with grammar and spelling you're going to be put to the side. If you're trying to get critiqued, you don't want to critique to revolve around your grammar and spelling, rather the writing. It's so important to get rid of as many issues like these as you can to get the most out of your critique. Removing grammar and spelling issues also assists in getting your meaning across clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You haven't edited.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is quite self-explanatory and ties into the last one. If your work is unedited it will be of exceptionally low quality and unable to impress anyone. There will probably be ten thousand comma splices, five hundred spelling typos, six hundred little places where it loses flow. Also, if you're wondering why I comment on spliced commas, I have an issue with them so I have to pay &lt;em&gt;immense&lt;/em&gt; amounts of attention to them during editing stages to make sure I haven't a single one in the finished product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting critiques can be really exciting because you're able to hear other people's interpretations of your work. If you think your work is gold without any critiques, then you're wrong. It only appeals to you and not others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T06:19:33.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10875" CreationDate="2017-01-05T10:28:20.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;PhD in Physics here and I'm just the same as you. I'll tell you what worked for me that I think will work for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write an action (or pivotal) scene from the middle of your novel. Don't worry about characterisation or world-building, just write the scene as if you'd already written half the book. Then continue until you have a complete chapter that concludes the sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best cure for overthinking writing is to write without thinking. Start with a cool concept and then write the scene, letting your imagination take you in unexpected directions. You don't have to keep what you write, but it's a useful warm up exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps, good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21966" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T10:28:20.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25857" CreationDate="2017-01-05T10:34:46.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are easy solutions that require only minor changes to what you have written. Maybe there is no wireless network in the cellars because of the thick concrete walls of the bunkers and no one thought of installing a fibre optic cable to a storm shelter they thought they would spend no longer than a stormy night in. Maybe the creature inadvertently knocked over the cell tower of this remote town or sat on the fibre optic network node. Maybe there is no electricity (the beast stumbled over the overhead transmission line) and cell phone batteries cannot be recharged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in fact I notice that many contemporary novels are written as if the characters lived twenty years ago. Many authors completely ignore the fact that (young) people today are more or less constantly online and much of their social lives takes place over social media. While this corresponds to my personal experience (I am old and grew up before mobile phones) and lifestyle (I don't have WhatsApp), I still notice the discrepancy between the kids in books and the kids on the bus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this discrepancy is a result of the fact that many authors write not out of their personal experience in present day society, but from the background of their reading experience of books written before the advent of mobile devices and social media. Their books don't take place in the present, but in &lt;em&gt;literary history&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So maybe you really need to snap out of that funk and rethink your story to make it relevant to the lives of readers today.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could say that what you write is fantasy and that you &lt;em&gt;aren't writing about the real word anyway&lt;/em&gt;. Just as you don't need to come up with a scientifically waterproof explanation how that creature could appear in our reality, you can equally easily have the inhabitants of your &lt;em&gt;fictional world&lt;/em&gt; not use social media. While that would be implausible in a YA high school romance, no one will wonder about it in an urban horror story. Because, they too live in the timeless world of their reading experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-01-05T10:45:20.080" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T10:45:20.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10875" CreationDate="2017-01-05T10:43:54.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most aspiring writers attempt to create an exact copy of what they see in their minds. When they write about a character, they feel they need to describe them down to the color of their body hair. But readers find this boring and stifling. A book is much more fun to read, if a reader can project his or her own imagination of a character or place or even the details of the action into a story. The most popular stories are those that narrate that &quot;King John rode up to the castle and raised his banner&quot;, instead of describing the weather, the bad road, the architecture, the colors of the clothing and flags, the facial expression of the horse, and so on. People want characters in novels to &lt;em&gt;act&lt;/em&gt; and to &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt;. You certainly do need to provide some minimal sense of place and time and atmosphere, but I think, given your problem, that you could profit from reducing description and background to the absolute bare minimum for some time, and only begin to add it in once you find that you no longer get lost in an overabundance of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T10:43:54.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25857" CreationDate="2017-01-05T15:00:10.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; on this: it is not difficult to come up with a plausible explanation of why the town is deprived of the Internet and mobile communications (remember the movie &lt;em&gt;Panic Room&lt;/em&gt;? They made a point of poor cell reception in the bunker, resulting in several dramatic scenes, where the heroine was trying to establish a contact with outside world), and do blame it on the monster (maybe it even has electromagnetic qualities which cause cell and WiFi interference).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you set up your story in modern day Virginia, you should address the lack of modern ways to communicate. Otherwise, you are weakening your suspension of disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then write a gory scene where someone is killed while trying to get to the only working landline payphone to call another character--have fun with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T15:00:10.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25857" CreationDate="2017-01-05T17:37:40.633" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general answer to your question is that you should address questions if leaving them unanswered will interfere with readers' appreciation of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular case, it might make it hard to suspend disbelief for readers, so you should address it.  It would be one thing if you were leaving technology out for the whole story --readers might come to accept that as a kind of alternate reality --but since your conclusion requires it, you need to make sure its sudden appearance in your story doesn't call unwanted attention to itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2017-01-06T20:15:43.070" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T20:15:43.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25870" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-05T17:40:19.820" Score="2" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any authors who went down in history as &quot;masters of descriptions&quot; (either of characters or of locations) or similar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are many different aspects one can use to regard a writer as remarkable in this aspect, be it for very specific reasons (for example, an author well-known for highly creative metaphors or picturesque vocabulary) or simply for sheer excellence in being engaging or as accurate as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the focus here is a more didactic one, i.e. reading particular works and learning from them (than coming to a verdict about who's best), I'm looking either for an answer considering some of these aspects separately, or, alternatively, one naming writers renowned for masterfully combining several of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22884" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-01-05T21:08:03.107" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T21:08:03.107" Title="Who are the most instructive authors to read to improve one's description skills?" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2017-01-08T11:06:01.393" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8562" CreationDate="2017-01-05T18:02:00.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the impression that when someone  beckon you with their index finger in a hook repeatedly moving it facing him ( the gesturer) , it draws an insult to the person who is receiving the  message or prompt. It would be  definitely more polite for the person to beckon the other person's  attention by going near the person and walk side by side with him to escort him to the reception area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am saying this, because  it happened to me at a Doctor's clinic. The staff already called my name, and I stood up. When she saw me stood up and knew it was me as I was walking closer to her, she raise her index finger repeatedly moving it facing her beckoning me to 'come here'. It felt rude to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22885" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-01-05T21:06:18.497" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T21:06:18.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25876" CreationDate="2017-01-05T18:15:05.360" Score="4" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a good website/blog/forum for posting questions that are technically off-topic for this website. I am looking for something that would allow me to post about story-based things, such as, &quot;Would it makes sense for a character to X if he is in X situation?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stack Exchange is more of a direct question-answer site, for example, &quot;What is a short story?&quot; is something you could ask here but &lt;strong&gt;I'm looking for a place to post questions about things in my story/get feedback/give feedback.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22708" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-06-16T02:43:59.513" LastActivityDate="2019-06-16T02:43:59.513" Title="What is an appropriate forum for asking off-topic, story-based questions?" Tags="|tools|resources|feedback|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25870" CreationDate="2017-01-05T18:21:31.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Evelyn Waugh and John Steinbeck would be excellent places to start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But while there are no doubt many ways to excel at description, metaphors, broad vocabulary, and figures of speech are not any of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great description is not about flowery language, it is about highlighting the telling detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus Waugh, in chapter one of Brideshead Revisited:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years&#xA;  ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with&#xA;  meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing fancy here, just the absolute right details to call the kind of day to mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, also, Steinbeck in chapter 1 of Cannery Row:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lee Chong's grocery, while not a model of neatness, was a miracle of&#xA;  supply. It was small and crowded but within it single room a man could&#xA;  find everything he needed or wanted to live and be happy---clothes,&#xA;  food, both fresh and canned, liquor, tobacco, fishing equipment,&#xA;  machinery, boats, cordage, caps, pork chops. You could buy at Lee&#xA;  Chong's a pair of slippers, a silk kimono, a quarter pint of whiskey&#xA;  and a cigar. You could work out combinations to fit almost any mood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, no fancy technique, just a brilliant eye for the right detail to bring the whole scene to life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T18:21:31.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25870" CreationDate="2017-01-05T18:32:27.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go with Shakespeare. His imagery is &lt;strong&gt;unparralleled.&lt;/strong&gt; Here is the Act One, Scene 2 from the start of &lt;em&gt;Macbeth&lt;/em&gt;, a play by him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doubtful it stood,&#xA;  As two spent swimmers that do cling together&#xA;  And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald—&#xA;  Worthy to be a rebel, for to that&#xA;  The multiplying villanies of nature&#xA;  Do swarm upon him—from the Western Isles&#xA;  Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied,&#xA;  And fortune, on his damnèd quarrel smiling,&#xA;  Showed like a rebel’s whore. But all’s too weak,&#xA;  For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name—&#xA;  Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,&#xA;  Which smoked with bloody execution,&#xA;  Like valor’s minion carved out his passage&#xA;  Till he faced the slave;&#xA;  Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,&#xA;  Till he unseamed him from the nave to th' chops,&#xA;  And fixed his head upon our battlements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sergeant says that. There is so much description, imagery and grandeur in this work. Look at the quote &lt;em&gt;which smoked with bloody execution.&lt;/em&gt; His blade is smoking with execution!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you might want to look at Tolkien too. Tolkien was &lt;em&gt;obsessed&lt;/em&gt; with old sounding and cool language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail is a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's from smaug, in the hobbit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These writers have great imagery that you should read and look at. You'll notice some patterns between them, if you're observant. If you liked the sound of the work of these writers, you should try them out and give their work a read! However, they are very famous and I suppose you already will have read some of their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope other people can post other skilled authors to this answer and add to what we've already amassed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T18:32:27.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25854" CreationDate="2017-01-05T19:06:45.367" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of these answers are wonderful for determining when a work itself is ready for critique, but I think an additional metric should be added: &lt;strong&gt;Am &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; ready to receive criticism?&lt;/strong&gt; If receiving negative feedback on this work would enrage you or make you burst into tears, you are not ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this is most often a problem for new writers and writers who are writing based on real experiences, but I will sometimes have issues with this myself if I'm having an &quot;this sucks, therefore I suck&quot; kind of day, or with my poetry, which I use as an emotional outlet. Sometimes I just need a day or so worth of distance before I'm ready to let someone else touch my work, even after taking time to edit and polish it as much as I can on my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ask yourself how you would respond to truly biting criticism. &lt;strong&gt;If your first instinct involves refusing to change anything at all &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; scrapping everything, you probably need to create some emotional distance from your writing before you are ready for a critique.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22887" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T19:06:45.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25872" CreationDate="2017-01-05T19:44:58.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/default.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scribophile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure there are others, but they are all based on the same principle: to get critique, one should give critique first (it is a good practice too, helps to see flaws in your own work), it's only fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just want to chat about writing in general, they do have forums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T19:44:58.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25854" CreationDate="2017-01-05T19:45:22.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different types of critique/editing, and different benchmarks for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;strong&gt;content editing,&lt;/strong&gt; which can be more easily called critique, which deals with the actual story. Then there is &lt;strong&gt;line editing,&lt;/strong&gt; also called proofreading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should first do your own line editing or proofreading to make the story as clean and legible as possible. A first draft can be rough, but it shouldn't be incoherent. That means spellchecking, correcting grammar, and generally correcting punctuation. If you know you have a problem with, say, comma splices, it's fair to ask someone to look over your manuscript just for syntax errors so that you can reach the next level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That level is content editing, or critique. Your manuscript is ready for the story to be discussed when you feel like you really can't improve it any more without outside opinions, or in the case of a first draft when you're just sick of looking at it and you need to hand it off already. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working one-on-one with a regular editor (that is, someone who looks at your writing regularly), it's okay for a first draft to have chunks of TK scenes &amp;mdash; spots where you say &quot;John waits for Mary in the aquarium with a loaded gun, she shows up and makes threats, and eventually he has to shoot her&quot; and then take up from the next scene. That tells your editor what you want to accomplish even if you're not there yet. I wouldn't recommend this if it's your first time working with this person, or to do this with a larger group unless the group is okay with that kind of hole. But generally, you should have a complete, reasonably clean draft to present for content critique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T19:45:22.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25724" CreationDate="2017-01-05T22:31:15.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider writing using &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://vanemden.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/ventilated-prose/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;ventilated prose&quot;&gt;ventilated prose&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Separate grammatically coherent units (mental mouthfuls) into their own lines. This helps in a number of ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6007" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T22:31:15.510" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25880" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-06T01:03:04.883" Score="0" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, lets say you were to submit a draft to a publisher that is an obvious ripoff of an existing, popular series (like LOTR). Popular view is that an editor or whoever is in charge of reading drafts rejects it for obvious reasons and it never gets published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But obviously some obvious ripoffs do get published. How does this happen? Doesnt an editor get involved at some stage of the process and go &quot;hey, wait a minute, this is obviously a ripoff of another book, you can't do this.&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eragon is probably the most famous example. How did an editor not point out the issues with it? And I just read the wiki article for &quot;The Sword of Shannara&quot; and the introduction scene for that is lifted straight out of LOTR. Again, how did an editor not notice this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And furthermore, how do these publishers (and their authors) avoid getting sued for plagiarism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22893" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T01:36:17.017" Title="How do western publishers react to drafts that are obviously ripoffs of an existing work?" Tags="|publishing|editing|publisher|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2017-01-06T18:57:00.083" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25880" CreationDate="2017-01-06T01:36:17.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neither of your examples are examples of plagiarism.&#xA;Thankfully there is far more leeway in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Titles Not Protected By Copyright&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, did you know that titles are not protected by copyright?&#xA;That means that you can actually write a book named Lord of the Rings also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, characters do fall under copyright protection so you wouldn't be able to write a book named, Harry Potter &amp;amp; The Chamber of Secrets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chamber of Secrets is fine, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At An Abstract Level, All Fantasy Novels Are the Same&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider the fact that many fantasy novels are the same.&#xA;Thank goodness no one can protect all stories that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;have a short character (Bilbo) who begins a mysterious journey with a&#xA;  wizard and ends up fighting a dragon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about how few fantasy novels there would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eragon?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I've read Eragon and I'm not sure what book you think it is ripping off. It's obviously, not obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sentences, characters (to a certain extent) are protected.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But think about this too, even with characters there has to be some leniency otherwise James Bond would be the one and only spy novel you'd ever get to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many authors are inspired by other novels (positively and negatively) to write their own novels and it really isn't a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mona Lisa: Only Portrait of a Woman&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about art?  What if the Mona Lisa were the only &quot;portrait of an interesting woman&quot; that was allowed to be painted?  That'd be quite terrible too wouldn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the deal: write your novel.  Write your character and story and if it comes out of you, it may look a bit like another author's stuff, but it won't be.  It will just be you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T01:36:17.017" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25883" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25894" CreationDate="2017-01-06T02:48:16.233" Score="1" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a recent &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25847/13494&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;pronunciation key&quot; was mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to provide a pronunciation key in my book.  It would be about half a page.  Where should I put it?  I'm concerned that if I put it at the end, people won't notice it, and will get ingrained in their mispronunciation of certain key names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2017-01-07T03:36:36.787" Title="Where to put a pronunciation key?" Tags="|formatting|memoir|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25884" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25888" CreationDate="2017-01-06T02:52:54.927" Score="2" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;A relative (who is no longer living) wrote a number of autobiographical pieces which I would like to publish in a book.  They're very good but they need a fair amount of editing.  I would like to include some chapters written by myself, that would supplement the relative's memories.  How to I put my name on the cover and title page?  If I were only writing one chapter, I could call that an epilogue and say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Title&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;by Relative&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;edited and with an epilogue by Aparente&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this won't work if I contribute three or four chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T11:09:03.787" Title="Editing a memoir" Tags="|editing|authorship|memoir|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25905" CreationDate="2017-01-06T02:57:31.843" Score="3" ViewCount="429" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to self-publish a book with a binding that allows for the book to stay open if you put it down on a desk.  What would be an affordable way of accomplishing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you need to know the size of the book in order to answer this.  8 by 11 would be too big, but the standard paperback would be too small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T01:44:25.940" Title="Recommend binding for book to stay open" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25886" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25890" CreationDate="2017-01-06T03:01:53.230" Score="4" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;When my book is ready to give to some volunteer readers/reviewers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose some of the reviewers want a hard copy.  What's the best way to prepare the hard copy for them?  Is this the same as the best way to prepare a manuscript to send to an agent or publisher?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-19T08:36:28.780" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T08:36:28.780" Title="How to prepare a manuscript for submission?" Tags="|agent|publisher|reviews|printing|beta-readers|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25794" CreationDate="2017-01-06T05:02:49.640" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that your creative time is valuable and rare. If you're having trouble thinking of something, there may be a deeper flaw which you only realized after starting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure it's possible to write yourself out of a flawed story premise. I've done it several times with amazing success. But you have to prioritize your projects and make sure you're not wasting too much precious time on a project that you only feel lukewarm about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Believe me, if a story idea is interesting or compelling enough, it will continue to dog you until you get it done. There is no shame in putting off projects indefinitely as long as you don't make a habit of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A personal aside: I am in the middle of two short stories which have some flawed premise/structure which make it very hard to shape well. I'm applying myself to both stories, but I feel the gnawing appeal of other new projects.  As a 51 year old, it is hard to walk away from a flawed story idea -- and sometimes there is value in completing it because you may discover possibilities about the idea which you hadn't realize it had. All this time while I'm working on it, I'm thinking about other projects I should be working on whose narratives would flow more naturally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it another way, teenagers have brilliant story ideas but have limited understanding of the mechanics of narrative and how to avoid overdone tropes. Older writers don't have half  as many brilliant ideas, but have a better b.s. detector and are more comfortable using language to create complex and original narratives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="7968" LastEditDate="2017-01-06T05:10:55.630" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T05:10:55.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25884" CreationDate="2017-01-06T05:20:10.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, it depends on the nature of the project and  your contributions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I wouldn't list yourself as an editor; just explain it in the preface. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try: (Additional) Background and commentary by aparente001. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T05:20:10.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25884" CreationDate="2017-01-06T05:56:53.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember reading a book called &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Monster_Calls&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;A Monster Calls&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, which had the same thing going on. The original idea was from Siobhan Dowd, but she died, and the book was completed by Patrick Ness. I would do something similar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Originally written by X. Completed by Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have an afterword detailing the writing of the novel, and the parts you contributed to as well as edited to make the 'completion' more clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T05:56:53.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25886" CreationDate="2017-01-06T06:03:56.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So firstly, printing actual copies of your book to give to &lt;strong&gt;beta readers&lt;/strong&gt; is a really bad idea. It costs loads of money when they could be reading it on the internet.  When you are actually submitting to an agent or publisher, I would also highly recommend doing it electronically as that helps things go faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're absolutely sure that you need to print copies to give to beta readers, then here's some &lt;strong&gt;print-on-demand&lt;/strong&gt; companies you might want to look at. A print-on-demand company is exactly what it sounds like; it prints on demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.epubli.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.epubli.co.uk/&lt;/a&gt; - Great and cheap EU company. I've used it several times in the past and it's reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.printondemand-worldwide.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.printondemand-worldwide.com/&lt;/a&gt; - Never used.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blurb.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.blurb.com/&lt;/a&gt; - meant to be good but I've still not ever thought about using it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a salesman of any of these companies, I'm just pointing them out. However, I will forewarn you that actually printing copies of your book costs quite a lot of money if you're just going to give it to a few people. Whenever I've printed my work into a book, I've only done it for novelty purposes.  Whenever I've wished to have beta readers, I've always given them the book electronically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T06:03:56.097" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25885" CreationDate="2017-01-06T06:09:19.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't really have many options, I think. If you print a book then when it comes out of the printer, the pages will want to close unless it has gone through a lot of wear and tear in the past. What I'd try, for keeping the book open, would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allionprinting.com/wordpress/images/wireo2.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wire Bindings or Wire-O Bindings&lt;/a&gt;, as others call them. They sound about right for the dimensions of your book, but they won't really assist in making it look like a 'book'. They'll more make it look like an organiser or notebook, so be warned of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head, they're the only things that can keep the book open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T06:09:19.667" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25883" CreationDate="2017-01-06T06:11:40.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the back. People will notice it if it's at the back, I'm sure they will. Normally, lists of characters are at the back of the book, lists of pronunciations are at the back, and general information is at the back or in an afterword.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have them at the front, if you pleased. It's really up to you. But, alas, I think it was user Mark Baker who said to me: 'why does it matter if the name is mispronounced?'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T06:11:40.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25884" CreationDate="2017-01-06T11:09:03.787" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;you could try &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Title&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;by Relative&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with Aparente&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I have also seen &quot;as told to,&quot; which to me means the person in question sat for multiple interviews and the writer collated and wrote everything down in first person even though it wasn't the writer's story.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T11:09:03.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25883" CreationDate="2017-01-06T11:12:11.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't object to a half-page of pronounciation key at the front as part of the front matter. A six-page listing of characters, main houses, a glossary, etc. would be too much, but &quot;Here's a quick rundown of how to say everything&quot; before I start would be much appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T11:12:11.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25895" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-06T15:08:01.960" Score="2" ViewCount="4087" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was taught around the age of 10 to always avoid the word &quot;got&quot;. I was told that it's always possible to rephrase a sentence so as to not use it. I followed this advice fairly unthinkingly, but now that I come to look at it, this isn't so universal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still think it's an ugly word and avoid it where I can, but is this a correct way to think? Is there any consensus on the word &quot;got&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6662" OwnerDisplayName="Ben Parsons" LastEditorUserId="47470" LastEditDate="2021-03-15T19:01:38.730" LastActivityDate="2023-07-03T15:46:14.380" Title="Is there any stylistic reason to avoid the word &quot;got&quot;?" Tags="|style|word-choice|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25895" CreationDate="2017-01-06T15:28:40.570" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the context. It can be casual, but it's the correct past tense of &quot;to get.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I got sick.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  I got a book for my birthday.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  I got there in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perfectly correct, if slightly casual. You could rewrite to &quot;I became sick, I received a book, I arrived in time,&quot; but you'd start to come off as needlessly formal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to a falling baseball:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I got it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; say &quot;I have it!&quot; or &quot;I'll get it!&quot; but on the field nobody cares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I got no idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slang. Comprehensible, but technically wrong; it should be &quot;I have no idea.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T15:28:40.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24884" CreationDate="2017-01-06T15:59:25.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An advantage of numbering by chapter is that when deleting/adding/moving figures, renumbering (if not automatic) is required only for the rest of the chapter, not book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22905" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T15:59:25.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25550" CreationDate="2017-01-06T16:22:24.687" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Self-plagiarism&quot; means doing the work once and getting credit twice: using the same paper in two classes and getting credit twice, or academics padding their publication list.&#xA;Bear in mind that it is very common to publish a PhD dissertation as articles (science) or a book (humanities); and this seems closer to your case than the situations I mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22905" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T16:22:24.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22100" CreationDate="2017-01-06T16:26:12.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A useful question to ask is: do you want the reader to understand where this is coming from? With pastiche you do, with plagiarism you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22905" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T16:26:12.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21431" CreationDate="2017-01-06T16:35:53.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mike.C.Ford writes: &quot;I would suggest that you cite the original source&quot;. Seemingly sensible of course. But as OP wonders, &quot;are all articles out there personal experience only?&quot; Sometimes you see the same idea or even wording in several places (especially on the internet where everything is treated as public domain and authorless). It can be hard to tell what the &quot;original source&quot; is. Giving credit where it is due also means not giving it where it is not, and this can be tricky. So you may have to do some sleuth work to get to the truly original source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22905" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T16:35:53.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25895" CreationDate="2017-01-06T16:38:54.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;English is a development of Anglo Saxon and old Norse with many borrowings from Latin, mostly via Norman French, thanks to the Norman conquest of 1066. For a long time after the conquest, the nobility spoke French and the peasantry spoke Anglo Saxon. This is the reason our names for animals on the hoof are Saxon (cow, pig) and for animals on the plate are French (beef, pork). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For centuries after English became the language of the upper crust as well as the lower, a more &quot;gentile&quot; English was maintained as a form of class distinction. This is why polite English grammar had so many rules based on Latin grammar (can't split an infinitive, can't end a sentence with a proposition). Among those who want to distinguish themselves from the rough and uneducated classes, many of these pro-latinate prejudices remain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the 20th century there was a significant movement which condemned the latinate approach as pretentious and urged the use of plain Anglo Saxon words whenever possible. Thus George Orwell in &lt;em&gt;Politics and the English Language&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological&#xA;  writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek&#xA;  words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like&#xA;  expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine,&#xA;  subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their&#xA;  Anglo-Saxon numbers(1). The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena,&#xA;  hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad&#xA;  dog, White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words translated from&#xA;  Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word&#xA;  is to use Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where&#xA;  necessary, the size formation. It is often easier to make up words of&#xA;  this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary&#xA;  and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's&#xA;  meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and&#xA;  vagueness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his brief set of rules for writing good English (the best style guide out there, IMHO) Orwell also said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Never use a long word where a short one will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, &quot;got&quot; is good plain English usage, and it is pretentious and elitist to use a longer word where &quot;got&quot; will do. Of course, there are lots of pretentious and elitist people in positions of authority and judgement, so you must decide when to stand for the good plain English of the common people and when to trim your sails to the wind that blows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T16:38:54.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10962" CreationDate="2017-01-06T16:44:29.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;These softwares work by comparing strings of n words in your work to strings of n words in works in their database. Last time I checked (literally), they did not account for synonyms (which would be pretty hard to do), so they incite students to paraphrase (gratuitously) rather than just copy. (Why this is of educational value is beyond me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22905" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T16:44:29.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21431" CreationDate="2017-01-06T16:51:39.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While ethically correct, giving credit and creating links to other sites would be antithetical to the aims of a content marketing blog, which is to attract potential customers to a site and to demonstrate the expertise of the company. So linking to other sites as the source of information would defeat both aims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there is no copyright on ideas. If you can write new copy about how to do handyman work based on what you have read about handyman work you are not violating copyright or committing plagiarism. It probably won't be very good copy, if you don't understand the topic you are writing about, but if the copy itself is original (however unoriginal the ideas may be), it is not plagiarism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T16:51:39.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25904" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25906" CreationDate="2017-01-06T18:35:17.087" Score="2" ViewCount="1084" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to talk about a fiction book I'm working on but can't find what to call the intro. A 'foreword' is generally written by someone other than the author, and I read that an 'introduction' is used for non-fiction books. I heard about a 'preface', but I'm not sure if that's what I should use. What word can I use for an introduction to a fiction book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22908" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2021-05-24T15:28:33.957" LastActivityDate="2021-05-24T15:28:33.957" Title="What word can I use for an introduction to a fiction book?" Tags="|introduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25885" CreationDate="2017-01-06T19:16:55.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally there is one called Perfect Bound which is a lay flat binding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CreateSpace.com (selfpublishing arm of Amazon) uses this and I've had good results with those books laying flat and being longlasting.&#xA;I write technical books and my book &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qF6rtX&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Launch Your Android App - amazon link&lt;/a&gt; is published by CreateSpace and available in that format and it does indeed lie flat.&#xA;See more about Perfect Bound binding at createspace : &lt;a href=&quot;https://forums.createspace.com/en/community/thread/7810&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://forums.createspace.com/en/community/thread/7810&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also to see the numerous sizes that you can publish your book in at CreateSpace, check out : &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/InteriorPDF.jsp?sitesearch_query=interior%20sizes&amp;amp;sitesearch_type=SITE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/InteriorPDF.jsp?sitesearch_query=interior%20sizes&amp;amp;sitesearch_type=SITE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;O'Reilly Technical books uses a special version of Perfect Bound called RepKover, which they believe makes the books lie flat even better.&#xA;See more at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oreilly.com/pub/pr/1149&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.oreilly.com/pub/pr/1149&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T14:44:54.913" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:44:54.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25904" CreationDate="2017-01-06T19:16:56.937" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two words which come to mind for me are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prologue (or prolog) - &lt;em&gt;would work especially well if writing an epilogue&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prelude&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another word which &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be used is preamble, but I don't think that would work as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely to annotating the introduction, you could always put it at the beginning &lt;em&gt;and not call it anything&lt;/em&gt;. If the chapters are annotated in some way, either by number or name, leaving your introduction separate without a name will distinguish it from the book itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22808" LastEditorUserId="22808" LastEditDate="2017-01-06T21:03:38.587" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T21:03:38.587" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-07T00:57:21.260" Score="7" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read an earlier &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/17771/published-with-no-contract/&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; on the same/similar topic with interest. I also read author's guild of America &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/authors-keep-your-copyrights-you-earned-them/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sharing&lt;/a&gt; to authors to keep the copyright with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is much easier to get Music Recording companies shenanigans or Movie Studios on the web where they cheated actors, singers, song-writers etc. of their valid contractual agreements.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book publishers, on the other hand seem to have a good life under the radar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been any famous/in-famous cases about Publishers arm-twisting fiction authors and denying them the fruitful rights or is life much more wonderful for authors than before ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22915" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2018-04-02T23:59:40.077" Title="Are there any well-known fiction author-publisher fights about royalty and copyright retention?" Tags="|copyright|publisher|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25910" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-07T04:01:20.573" Score="4" ViewCount="296" Body="&lt;p&gt;A relative (who is no longer living) wrote a number of autobiographical pieces which I would like to publish in a book. I would like to include four or five chapters written by myself, that would supplement the relative's memories. In addition, some chapters will require a small amount of text written by me, usually at either the beginning or the end of the chapter.  By &quot;small,&quot; I mean half a page or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I distinguish between the two voices?  I was thinking that for a short bit inside a chapter, I could use italics, or the dreaded footnote.  But I don't want to use italics for a whole chapter.  I don't want to have to use my first name in the chapter title three or four times.  That would be embarrassing.  (My chapters mostly come at the end of the book, but there's one that comes in the middle.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T04:04:05.767" Title="How to distinguish two different voices in one book?" Tags="|formatting|memoir|voice|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25911" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-07T05:48:59.823" Score="1" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I pointed to the stool next to his. “Mind if I sit here?” &lt;strong&gt;A bold woman&#xA;  was a rarity. As the rule said, “Always be the exception, never&#xA;  the rule.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My trick was working well with him. &lt;strong&gt;Women needed to feel loved, men&#xA;  loved to feel needed.&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;But I always make mistakes like this. I'm so&#xA;  dumb.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, there are statements that apply to the present mingled with narration in the past tense. Should the former be written in the past tense or present tense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastActivityDate="2017-01-07T08:01:13.117" Title="Should the following statements be written in the past or present tense?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25911" CreationDate="2017-01-07T07:10:53.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, there is no grammatical mandate regarding the tense of the events of the story and the commentary.  This question is one of stylistic strategy, so there isn't exactly a right or wrong answer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I would recommend writing the bolded segments in the present tense, as the commentary comes off more powerfully; as it is currently, in the past tense, it sort of awkwardly teeters between the events of the story and a more timeless commentary on human nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose one consideration would be who is making the bolded statements. Is it the main character breaking away from her (or his) recounting of the story to comment to the reader or is the character narrator thinking these as thoughts in the past—while the events are taking place? Is it the author making these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would only make sense to keep the commentary past tense if it is being made or thought during the events, or if the narrator him/herself is recalling this story in the past (rare, but certainly a possibility).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22917" LastEditorUserId="22917" LastEditDate="2017-01-07T07:22:49.830" LastActivityDate="2017-01-07T07:22:49.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25911" CreationDate="2017-01-07T08:01:13.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may help you choose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you use past tense, I'm likely to read them as thoughts you had during the events of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you use present tense, I'm likely to read them as thoughts you are having as you tell the story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-01-07T08:01:13.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25910" CreationDate="2017-01-07T13:19:13.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Set off your part with some kind of identifier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Aparente Smith:&lt;/b&gt; About two months passed where Joan didn't write in her diary. We can guess that she continued in her job, since the next entry picks up with another lament about her coworker David.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a chapter head, I'd be fine with reading &lt;b&gt;Aparente Smith: Interlude&lt;/b&gt; or something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hear you about one paragraph vs. an entire chapter of italics, and I have to agree. A little is okay, but pages and pages becomes exhausting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-07T13:19:13.887" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9066" CreationDate="2017-01-07T15:11:01.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For those of us who write and publish poetry this is a serious question. I came looking for 'what do people usually do' because I'm trying to set up a poetry book manuscript in Scrivener. 'Ask your publisher' is a good answer if you have one lined up!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Fortiter that it makes more sense to make each stanza a paragraph and use paragraph spacing to separate them. I used to do it that way -- but I found that sometimes my stanza breaks got lost in translation, especially on web magazines, so I have gone back to making each line a paragraph and indicating stanza breaks by blank lines, because that, clumsy as it is, makes it absolutely clear what's going on. It's worth remembering that much poetry publishing is done by amateurs with limited typesetting skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another difficulty is that if there are really long lines that create a turnover (ie, wrap onto the following line -- think Walt Whitman!) you will probably want hanging indents for just those lines. The easiest way to to do that is to make the line a paragraph so you can manipulate the left indent and first-line indent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22920" LastActivityDate="2017-01-07T15:11:01.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25918" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26210" CreationDate="2017-01-07T19:22:25.697" Score="1" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to self-publish a book and sell it through Amazon, and also make it available in a variety of electronic formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently bought a book for $35 as an electronic download from the author's own website.  It was a great book, about exactly what I was interested in.  There were a few imperfections in the formatting, but I didn't mind because I was devouring the content.  It was a simple pdf, with letter-sized pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shall I do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would that mean I would have to have two versions of my book, one with 6 x 9 inch pages, and one with letter-sized pages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is there some way of making a pdf from a 6 x 9 inch Word file?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not bother printing out the $35 book I downloaded.  I just read it on my computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T03:13:22.260" Title="Format for electronic download sales: letter sized pdf okay?" Tags="|formatting|self-publishing|electronic-publishing|microsoft-word|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25919" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-07T23:22:51.343" Score="5" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/2194/13494&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; was asked in 2011: Do editors still expect Courier font in book submissions for publication?  A couple people said they found a monospace font helpful to have space to insert editing symbols.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, with more and more submitting being done electronically, does font matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T15:21:50.950" Title="Has standard manuscript format changed since 2011?" Tags="|editing|formatting|publisher|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25920" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25926" CreationDate="2017-01-08T02:54:02.073" Score="1" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;If description displays emotion, but they cant feel certain emotion, then what is a way one can write that without creating too boring of a piece and still display what they are going through?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21099" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T13:33:47.260" Title="How can a first person POV be written if they are emotionless for a period of time?" Tags="|creative-writing|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25921" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25922" CreationDate="2017-01-08T02:55:04.240" Score="5" ViewCount="686" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always felt that my writing is very sequential. It's a chain of events. This happens, then this happens, then this happens, and so on. Not to say that the events are boring, but I just always felt that something was missing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe I've found what that something is: twists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a plotter, which means I outline my story extensively before I start to write it. I have a process that I use to create the outline, which focuses on all the parts I need, like character development and stakes, plus all the rest. One thing it does not focus on is twists. I guess twists somehow never came up when I was studying how to write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know what a twist is, and more or less how to include one. What I need now is practice doing so. I want to get into the habit of writing and creating my outlines with twists baked in. I want to start thinking of my novels with some misdirection in mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do to get in that mindset, so that including twists in my novels and outlines becomes a habit? Should I just start writing short stories (not for publishing) and focus on twists? Or is there some sort of exercise that I can do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2018-03-10T11:53:40.130" Title="How can I get in the Habit of Writing with Twists?" Tags="|fiction|plot|outline|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25921" CreationDate="2017-01-08T05:01:19.103" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll first refer you to my answer to this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/24551/how-to-determine-whether-or-not-a-plot-twist-is-needed&quot;&gt;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/24551/how-to-determine-whether-or-not-a-plot-twist-is-needed&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I will point out an implication of that answer: a plot twist is a twist back to the story arc. In its essence, a plot twist occurs when a story that seemed to be going in one direction is suddenly revealed to be going in another direction. But that other direction is the direction the story was really going all along. A plot twist is not a story veering off course, but a story veering back on course; a story that seemed to be going wrong suddenly turning and going right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question with a plot twist is not how to turn off the story line, but how to drift off it so that you are then in a position to turn back onto it. For this to seem genuine and satisfying both storylines have to seem plausible, but the true storyline has to be the one that is finally the more satisfying. (By no means does this mean happier.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To deliberately concoct a plot twist, therefore, (and I by no means believe that they are necessary to make a story interesting) you have to dream up two storylines both of which are plausible extensions of the the same set of events. This implies that (for a plotter, at least) they are planned from the very beginning. When the plot twist comes, it should seem to the reader like a better, more satisfying interpretation of the events that have come before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if a plot is the instantiation of a story arc, what you need for a plot twist is a single plot that is apparently instantiating one story arc but is later, by some &quot;twist&quot; of events, revealed to be instantiating another story arc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this sense, it is not really the plot that has twisted at all. The plot is still a sequence of events, which is all a plot can ever be. It is that readers interpret the events of a plot as instantiating a story arc and expect that story arc to continue. The twist occurs when an event occurs that is incompatible with the story arc the reader has intuited and forces them to intuit a new story arc. The twist is not in the events, but in the reader's interpretation of the events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the twist does not occur unless the reader intuits the false story arc rather than the true one. So you need a series of events that very clearly point in the direction of the false story arc, which still making perfect sense as part of the true story arc once the event that forces the change of interpretation occurs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have ever said of some event in a story, &quot;Well, I saw that coming,&quot; you have witnessed a case where you as the reader were not deceived by the false story arc the writer was setting up, but saw all along what the real arc was going to be, and were therefore not surprised at all by the &quot;twist&quot; that put the story back on course. If the selling of the false story line fails, the &quot;twist&quot; goes from being the least predictable event of the story to the most predictable. Like everything else in storytelling, it is all in the setup. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a plotter's point of view, then, it would seem that you need to plan your plots with these two interpretations in mind, making sure that the false is the easier interpretation, but that the true is the more satisfying interpretation of the whole once the clarifying event has occurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2018-03-10T11:53:40.130" LastActivityDate="2018-03-10T11:53:40.130" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25923" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-08T05:45:38.470" Score="3" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does including your age, if you are a young author, give you a disadvantage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21099" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T07:31:22.063" Title="Is it better to disclude your age when submitting to a publisher if you are young?" Tags="|publishing|publisher|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25923" CreationDate="2017-01-08T07:31:22.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishers select manuscripts by two factors: quality of the writing and marketability of the author. President Obama can write a very bad book and it will become a bestseller. He is a most marketable author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a teenager (or even younger) is a strong point in marketability. There are many examples of fair to good books that became bestsellers simply because their authors were around 15 when they wrote them. A recent US-American example is &lt;em&gt;Eragon&lt;/em&gt; by Christopher Paolini, which has been reviewed as a mediocre book but topped the international bestseller lists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Young age in fact gives you an advantage.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T07:31:22.063" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25925" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25940" CreationDate="2017-01-08T12:16:13.870" Score="5" ViewCount="2621" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was having a discussion over coffee with an aspiring author friend of mine and we had an interestingly productive but annoying argument about in-novel crushes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said that he had never had romantic feelings for a character in a novel and that he never would because that would be technically impossible. That you can't fancy a character that you can't see and because they aren't real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly objected to this for many reasons (which I listed until he rolled his eyes and conceded the point out of boredom) and personally have fallen in love with fictional characters many times, perhaps more intensely than real people. I have had romantic crushes on fictional characters and have a weakness for omnipotent alpha males, vampires, werewolves and all sorts of impossible-don't-exist-in-real-life types. Mostly strong, dark and troubled characters. Pretty classic really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really different for men and women? Do men ever fall in love with characters from novels? If men fall in love with fictional characters, what examples are there? I can't think of a single case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I mean &quot;fall in love&quot; in the form of romantic, sensual or desirable, not &quot;fall in love&quot; in the sense of &quot;really liking the character and being upset if they die, or &quot;fall in love&quot; in the sense that &quot;I really love the new iPhone&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19191" LastEditorUserId="19191" LastEditDate="2017-01-08T14:28:56.773" LastActivityDate="2024-03-21T15:24:13.297" Title="Do men fall &quot;in love&quot; (romantic, sensual or desire) with fictional characters?" Tags="|fiction|novel|characters|character-development|romance|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25920" CreationDate="2017-01-08T12:34:41.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;description displays emotion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a sound piece of basic advice given to authors.  It is correct, but by no means literal. For example &quot;the trees blocked out the dark sky and the shadows merged to a single carpet of darkness&quot; displays more emotion than &quot;the forest was dark&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;lack of description&lt;/strong&gt; does not imply &lt;strong&gt;lack of emotion&lt;/strong&gt;.  The sky could still be gloomy, regardless of the emotions that the protagonist is, or is not experiencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, forget this particular piece of advice and instead ask yourself how to relay lack of emotion. Find something that you are neutral about, like a new and improved version of your sister's shampoo. Find something that you have no opinion or emotion about whatsoever and think about how to write the story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &quot;she looked at the gaudy January sale rack with a flat expression, she turned away without really acknowledging any of the offers&quot; or &quot;she watched his rant with just a slight raising of her perfectly plucked left eyebrow, she patiently waited until his fury began to wain&quot;. Plenty of description, flat emotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So think lack of interest/reaction, not lack of description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19191" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-01-08T13:33:47.260" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T13:33:47.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25921" CreationDate="2017-01-08T13:15:15.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As above, but with the addition of an &lt;strong&gt;exercise&lt;/strong&gt; I often perform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see the basic, linear story as a piece of string, then as I edit, I look for opportunities to introduce misdirection, diversion or distraction. If there is a situation where a misunderstanding or miscommunication can occur, then I weave in an additional sub-story around the main story, re-asserting itself at regular intervals.  Once the main plot string has been woven into a rope, the &lt;em&gt;twists&lt;/em&gt; occur naturally as the readers attention jumps from one string to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19191" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T13:15:15.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25928" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-08T13:43:22.053" Score="5" ViewCount="818" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently been researching and discussing &lt;strong&gt;characters and character roles&lt;/strong&gt;, mostly off the back of feedback on a romance story that described the &quot;love interest&quot; (if that is the correct literary term?) of my protagonist as &quot;flat, uninteresting, where no one would care if they lived or died, death would be better because they wouldn't be so boring&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst I understand that &quot;character roles&quot; in fiction are quite prescriptive and that following the rules verbatim yields a technically accurate and flat story, I also understand that you have to know the rules before you can break them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So after a heated debate on love interests in novels, I would like to know if there any literary guidance for creating a &quot;love interest&quot;? Is it different for &lt;em&gt;male, female, bi-sexual, British, American, young, old&lt;/em&gt; etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the guidance, are there any stereotypes other than &quot;tall, dark and handsome&quot;?  For example, it's widely accepted in the western market that the male love interest is strong, dark and mysterious, including a long list of examples such as Edward Cullen, Tony Stark, Mr Darcy, any Hugh Jackman character and that 50 shades of grey mush that I actually can't stand but can't deny the reception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, this is borderline cliché, there must be more love interests out there over and about &quot;tall, dark and handsome&quot; right? If so what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19191" LastEditorUserId="19191" LastEditDate="2017-01-08T14:28:03.690" LastActivityDate="2023-01-09T19:27:14.287" Title="Characterization: is there any guidance for writing &quot;the romantic interest&quot;?" Tags="|fiction|novel|characters|character-development|romance|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25925" CreationDate="2017-01-08T13:45:00.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to think of the process of writing a novel as follows: Invent a bunch of characters. Spend time with them until you fall in love. Then torture them to the brink of madness. The redeem or condemn them as you choose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me very difficult to read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe without falling in love with Lucy, LOTR without falling in love with Sam, Brideshead Revisited without falling in love with Sebastian, or The Power and the Glory without falling in love with the whiskey priest. Love seems indispensible from full engagement with these characters and their stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you seem to be talking about something different. You seen to be talking about romantic love, and perhaps more specifically about erotic love. And on that score I am not so sure. Erotic love inherently seeks a consummation that no page can provide. (Mere pronography evokes lust at best.) Clearly one can crush on an actor or actress in a movie or TV show, but can one similarly crush on a character on the page? I'm not convinced. I think our love for characters is closer to friendship than to eros. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Since the question has been edited significantly since I wrote the above answer, I will add this. The erotic impulse is founded in the lower brain's assessment of reproductive fitness. Men and women play very different roles in reproduction, and thus they look at very different qualities in making a reproductive assessment. The male assessment is clearly far more visual than the female. But also, the male satisfaction is far more fleeting than the female. The female assessment of reproductive fitness seeks a mate who will protect and provide for the young. Constancy is part of fantasy for the female in a way it is not for the male. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, males assess other males, and females assess other females, as potential reproductive rivals. So men and women are naturally repelled by each other's pornography. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is at the biological level, of course. Our responses are quite different at the social level. But the pornographic and quasi-pornographic is pitched to the biological response. And therein lies the difference between Pride and Prejudice and 50 Shades of Gray. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-08T14:51:48.767" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T14:51:48.767" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25928" CreationDate="2017-01-08T14:03:25.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you sure that that criticism came from someone who actually likes romance novels? I ask because &quot;flat, uninteresting and no one would care if they lived or died, death would be better because they wouldn't bore me so much&quot; seems to describe every character in a genre romance novel to anyone who is not  a reader of romance novels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole definition of genre, it seems to me, is that is accepts without question or establishment, a set of propositions about character, setting, and plot. In essence that it guarantees the reader certain things and in exchange asks the reader to take certain things as read so that it can get on with delivering the goods with messing about. The result is that it provides a very quick and easy fix to those addicted to its particular formula, and that it bores the rest of the reading public to tears. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you were showing formula romance to someone who is not an addict of formula romance, &quot;flat, uninteresting and no one would care if they lived or died, death would be better because they wouldn't bore me so much&quot; is pretty much exactly the response you should expect, just as it would be with formula fantasy, for instance, to someone who is not an addict of the genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a mainstream character, on the other hand, the rule seems pretty simple. This is a real person who falls in love. We fall in love because we are incomplete, lonely, afraid, and desperately in need of physical and emotional support. Lovers are not (as the erotic fantasy would have us) two strong brilliant independent people coming together for mutual erotic satisfaction. We  need someone because we are desperately lonely and sad when we are alone. Love is loneliness responding to loneliness. It is the particular quality of a character's loneliness that evokes our sympathy and our hope, and which engage us in their matrimonial prospects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T14:03:25.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25932" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25934" CreationDate="2017-01-08T15:19:50.277" Score="3" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got an idea for a short story recently following a traumatized boy who has developed antisocial tendencies and lack of empathy, and ends up in a psych ward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want this protagonist to have a meaningful story arc, involving some change. The obvious change would be to make him begin to care for people, though I think this is unrealistic and impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, anybody have any recommendations for making an inherently flawed character a bit more dynamic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21546" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T14:56:33.050" Title="Dynamic characterization: How do you show development/change in an inherently flawed character, like a psychopath?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25932" CreationDate="2017-01-08T15:31:27.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Robert McKee maintains that people don't change, and that a story arc is not about them changing, but about showing how far they will go. A story arc, per McKee, consists of a character with a desire meeting a series of increasingly difficult challenges to that desire until they are pushed to the edge of their capability and we (and perhaps they) discover who they really are. They don't change, but their true nature is revealed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I agree with McKee on this, but I do think he points out something important about the nature of story. In some sense, at least, it is an exploration of the character by the application of increasing shocks to their system. Revelation may be sufficient payoff, rather than change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T15:31:27.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25932" CreationDate="2017-01-08T15:50:07.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, brilliant and realistic idea. Trauma, especially in childhood, has severe effects that last well into adult hood.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some Recommendations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diagnose your character.  &quot;antisocial tendencies and lack of empathy&quot;&#xA;is very broad and a condition is rarely this simple.  For example,&#xA;repeated childhood abuse from which fight/flight is not possible,&#xA;can manifest in a freeze response. Making the patient unable to&#xA;respond with empathy, or in fact respond at all.  Not because they don't want to, but because of lack of empathy but because they have emotionally shut down.  Understanding the root of the problem makes it easier to imagine what changes would realistically occur.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research. As hard as it is, research childhood trauma and PTSD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show the change. &lt;em&gt;&quot;starting to care about someone&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is a bit much, often if&#xA;victims have shutdown to that extent then results are painful and slow. what about something more subtle, for example, they &lt;strong&gt;hit someone&lt;/strong&gt;.  Whilst this might not seem like &quot;caring&quot;, it is a response.&#xA;Another alternative would be &lt;strong&gt;to apologize&lt;/strong&gt;, again, not cliche or&#xA;obvious, but a small sign of change.  Another alternative would be&#xA;interaction with an object or animal, do they &lt;strong&gt;feed a cat&lt;/strong&gt; where before&#xA;they would kick it? What about answering a phone that they would normally ignore?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check spelling and grammar. Incorrect spelling and grammar can detract from what could be a very powerful story, so get help in this area.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conclude the change.  Where does their journey end?  Obviously&#xA;&quot;completely normal&quot; is a stretch, but do they end up being able to keep&#xA;a dog?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; There is a lot of interesting insights here in the heart wrenching blog &quot;How to Live on Earth When You Were Raised in Hell&quot;, (which incidentally would be an awesome title for a novel or short story...). Also interesting psychological insight into &quot;polyvagal theory&quot; where if there is no option to run/fight then your brain shuts down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://healwritenow.com/live-earth-raised-hell/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trauma survivors blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19191" LastEditorUserId="19191" LastEditDate="2017-01-09T14:21:27.457" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T14:21:27.457" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25921" CreationDate="2017-01-08T20:57:26.430" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will assume you know how to generate twists. But I want to offer a particular technique so I can refer to it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wilhelm’s Law:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Throw away your first three ideas.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This comes from SF/mystery writer and editor Kate Wilhelm. The thinking behind Wilhelm’s Law is this: Your first idea will be obvious to most readers. Your second will be less obvious, but many readers will anticipate it. A few readers will anticipate your third idea. Your fourth idea will be one that very few people expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I don’t know if 4 is always the magic number. But the more readily you think of an idea, the more readily a reader will think of it too. So throw out ideas until you get to one that surprises you. And maybe throw that one out ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ways to Practice&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outline a short story in the usual way. Write the story. Throw out the climax. Given what you’ve learned about the characters and the story while writing, create a new twist to replace the climax you wrote.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outline a short story in your usual way. Write the story, but stop just before the climax.  Given what you’ve learned about the characters and the story while writing, create a new twist to replace the climax you outlined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outline a short story in the usual way. Before you begin writing, throw out the climax. Create a new twist to replace the one you outlined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Begin a short story without outlining it. Put a character in a setting. Give the character a problem. Write the next sentence, then the next, then the next. Focus on how the character attempts to solve the problem, how each attempt leaves things worse than before, and how the character reacts as things get worse. Just before you write each attempt, each “things get worse,” and each reaction, apply Wilhelm’s Law. Repeat until you are satisfied with the twist(s) in the story, or until the story is done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a story in your usual way. At any moment, apply Wilhelm's Law to decide what happens next.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For any of these practice methods, allow yourself the freedom to add, delete, or change anything earlier in the story, to support the twist you've written. (This one is hard for me. I tend to get committed to what I've written.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on learning.&lt;/strong&gt; Some of these practice stories will be pretty good. Some will be too twisty. But you will get better at twisting. Focus on learning where and how to twist things. Then apply what you’ve learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With practice, you will begin to recognize when you're at a point where a twist might help, and you'll know how to create twists more quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can practice something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T20:57:26.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25936" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25938" CreationDate="2017-01-08T21:04:14.740" Score="7" ViewCount="803" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example the scene takes place in the future and the year is 24,356. Would it be written as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The year is 24356,&quot; said Bob&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The year is twenty-four thousand, three hundred and fifty-six,&quot; said Bob.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the correct way to express such a large number in a dialogue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18989" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-01-08T23:57:00.903" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T06:37:13.523" Title="Expressing large numbers in dialogue?" Tags="|dialogue|numerals|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25925" CreationDate="2017-01-08T21:24:19.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The good-girl-bad-boy thing has always bothered me philosophically. Yet, this scenario fulfills itself endlessly in real life. Perhaps it is a benefit to the OP she exercises this part of her psychology in a fantasy as opposed to an abusive relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men have other problems.  Don't get me wromg, there's lots of other problems. Chief among them is the over-reliance on comeliness to develop global feelings of love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the curiosities many people have is if there is a difference between &quot;love&quot; and &quot;in love with ,&quot; and where &lt;em&gt;desire&lt;/em&gt; fits into the equation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love lots of characters, think about them, even dream about them. But I've never felt desire or lust, even after spending dozens of hours (or hundreds of hours in my own work). I don't think I'm special--a pretty average dude, actually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've avoided porn for several years now for my own reasons, but there was no question of images producing desire and lust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it &lt;em&gt;Men Are From Mars, and Women Are From Venus&lt;/em&gt;? Does attraction and desire follow love or in-love more often in one gender? What about the inverse: Does love or in-love follow attraction and desire more often in one gender?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have these sociological answers for you. However, I can tell you women purchase 90% of the print books listed as Romance in the US. I'm not sure what conclusion I can globally draw from this. But I (personally) agree with your friend: &lt;strong&gt;Dudes may love characters from their books, but they don't &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; their characters&lt;/strong&gt;. I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2017-01-17T04:20:06.583" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T04:20:06.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25936" CreationDate="2017-01-08T23:00:14.470" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Digits tend to be read faster and are less important. Spelling out numbers takes longer to read and are emphasized. So there are two things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) How do people think of dates?&lt;/strong&gt; Do you think of this year as &quot;twenty seventeen&quot; or &quot;two thousand seventeen&quot;? Was Bill Clinton president in the &quot;nineteen-nineties&quot; or the &quot;one thousand nine hundred nineties&quot;? Use the intuitive phrasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) How much emphasis do you need to put on the date?&lt;/strong&gt; If they're jumping forward a few hundred years, then you can use digits, because it's close enough to be relatable: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The date appears to be late April 2432,&quot; she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they've advanced several thousand years, then spelling it out will underscore just how far ahead they are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She looked at her screen in astonishment. &quot;According to these readings, it's approximately the year twenty-four thousand, three hundred fifty-six.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T23:00:14.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25925" CreationDate="2017-01-09T06:41:34.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written lots of sexy/romance/erotica stories, and I have created lots of compelling female characters that I have fallen in love with (and hate with, etc). I think many of my readers have done so too.  This is a genre that generally begs for such a response -- and it's challenging to make a character within that genre who is not a cliche or stereotype. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last 30 or so years I think people are more inclined to fall in love with a TV or movie character than a character from a book. (The last book character I have fallen in love is Scarlett O'Hara!). In today's world, literary works tend to appeal more to people's intellectual side than to their emotional side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me add that I WISH I fell in love with more female characters I read about. But I tend to read very odd things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T06:41:34.163" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25925" CreationDate="2017-01-09T09:08:38.453" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can men fall in love with characters in novels? Of course they can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men and women fall in love with fictional characters of all kind. Think of the teen girl pining after a boy group, or the teen boy pining after a Playboy centerfold. Both are &quot;in love&quot; with – that is, they feel romantic and sexual interest for – a fiction. Because, of course, those media images are not real people, but a fiction created exactly for that purpose: that teen girls and boys fall in love with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some gender bias in what kind of fictitious character men and women fall in love with, with men preferring visual depictions of sexy women and women preferring narrative deptictions of strong, successful, and able men. Because of that preferrence, men fall in love more with characters in visual media, while women are more susceptible to literary characters (&lt;em&gt;Shades of Grey&lt;/em&gt;) and celebrities (such as movie and music stars).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But not all men (nor women) are the same, and just as there are women who consume visual pornography, there are men who like to read, and some of them fall in love with characters in novels. I am an example of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During puberty, I very much wanted a girlfriend, but did not have the courage to approach any girl. I was so afraid of being rejected, that my default type of &quot;relationship&quot; became pining for girls from afar. I spent long afternoons imagining stories of how I would get to know and then interact with the girl I had a crush on. Those were stories similar to what I read: adventure stories, mostly, in the vein of Edith Blyton's &lt;em&gt;Famous Five&lt;/em&gt;. In my daydreaming, I was the boy with the dangerous secret, and somehow that secret got me together with the girl – although my imangination never managed to go that far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was around fourteen or fifteen, I began to read the novels of C. J. Cherryh. If you are familiar with the work of that author you will know that her early novels are full of some subliminal erotic or romantic tension that never leads to any kind of relationship and is in fact never named by the author or voiced by her characters. Then, in the &lt;em&gt;Morgaine&lt;/em&gt; cycle, it becomes the overt structure of the narrative: the male protagonist falls in love with the elf-like warrior woman who forces him to serve as her knight. At first he serves her, because he must, but later, after she would have set him free, he continues to serve her out of love. A love that she does not feel and does not answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That relationship was such an exact image of what I felt for the girls in my life, that I fell in love with Morgaine, the female lead of the novels. And with her author, in turn. At that time I knew nothing about C. J. Cherryh, except that her name indicated a woman. I had never read an interview with her or seen a photograph of her. But I felt for her something of what I felt through her writing. Eventually I wrote a letter to her – that was before email, so I wrote on paper and by hand –, and actually received a very kind and friendly reply (which, although I didn't voice my feelings and she didn't address them, healed me of my crush – probably because her answer made me realize that she was actually a person apart from myself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still have the &lt;em&gt;Morgaine&lt;/em&gt; novels in my shelf, but haven't read them in about thirty years. Today, I find the kind of relationship they depict self-abusive and prefer women who are approachable, both by being physically present and through their open behaviour. Nevertheless, when I look at those books, I still feel an echo of my past desire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also had vague crushes on almost every female protagonist or love interest in all the books I have read. In fact, I would go so far as to say that any man who reads erotic or romantic stories, feels something erotic or romantic for the female characters in those novels. If he didn't feel sexual desire or romantic interest for those characters, he wouldn't read that kind of book. Because &lt;strong&gt;that is the purpose of reading fiction: to experience what the protagonists experience&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-01-09T14:09:06.570" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T14:09:06.570" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25941" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-09T10:05:08.520" Score="4" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’d like to post some writing on my own website, and not lose sellability.  It may be a portion of something that eventually gets sold to a magazine or somesuch.  But many times I don’t mind letting others build on the ideas, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard of the Creative Commons licence, which is available in several options. But are there others more directly suitable for this kind of media?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are others doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T14:56:28.987" Title="Which canned Licence to use when posting short fiction?" Tags="|publishing|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25936" CreationDate="2017-01-09T10:21:19.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dialog is what people say. If you write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The year is 24356,&quot; said Bob.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read that as &lt;code&gt;&quot;The year is two four three five six,&quot; said Bob.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want Bob to say &lt;code&gt;twenty-four thousand three hundred fifty-six&lt;/code&gt;, write it like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that awkward to read and write, then maybe your characters would, too, and they wouldn't actually say the year like that. Think of how people say years in real life. Do they always say the full thousands? No. If you asked me, when I was born, I would say something like &lt;code&gt;eighty-nine&lt;/code&gt;, not &lt;code&gt;nineteen hundred eighty-nine&lt;/code&gt;. That kind of relative date is completely sufficient, because you know what century we are in and that I cannot possibly be born in 1889. Or if I were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would the characters in your book behave differently? Their long awkward dates would make it extremely likely that they would use &lt;em&gt;relative dates&lt;/em&gt;. Bob, in your example, would say something like &lt;code&gt;&quot;The year is fifty-six.&quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to writing numbers, there is a difference between fiction and non-fiction. The purpose of non-fiction is to convey information. In non-fiction, numbers are written in whichever way they are most easily understood. Therefore, long numbers are written as numerals and structured with dots (25.356).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of fiction is to depict a world and evoke emotions. &lt;strong&gt;In fiction, numbers are written in the way that they appear in the world.&lt;/strong&gt; A number that a character says is written as a word, because we cannot speak numerals. A number that a character sees written is written as the character sees it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;John followed the hallway until he came to room number four. Or rather, where he thought room number four should be. Because there was a big yellow 5 painted on the fourth door.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&quot;Five,&quot; John mused. &quot;Now where is four?&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;He turned around. And there he saw it. 4. Number four was on the other side of the hallway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a note.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it extremely unlikely that people in twenty-five thousand years will still count time following conventions of a long dead culture. Other things will be more relevant to them than the birth of a religious figure they no longer believe in. Just as there have been countless calendars in human history, people in the far future will have their own reckoning of time. In Thailand, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Year_in_other_calendars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the current year&lt;/a&gt; is 2560.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-01-09T17:05:13.373" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T17:05:13.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25941" CreationDate="2017-01-09T14:56:28.987" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need to licence content to post it on your website. Post it, stick a copyright notice on it, and it remains yours and you can sell it any time you want. A license only comes into effect if you want to give people permission to post it on their sites or include it in their books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While retaining copyright retains your right to sell, that is not the same thing as not compromising the salability of your piece. Publications typically want to buy first publication right or all rights. If you have already published your content, first publication rights have already been exercised and they may not be interested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, of course, if you build a huge audience by giving your content away, that might interest a publisher, because a built-in audience is built in sales. If your work is nonfiction and you don't have either top-flight credentials or an existing audience (what the trade calls a &quot;platform&quot;) this may be your only way to interest a publisher. I sold a nonfiction book on the strength of my blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again, if you publish your content and don't build a huge audience, the publisher may take that as evidence that there is no audience for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the impact of what you are planning to do on your ability to sell you content is much more complex than any licensing issue. You need to think through your sales strategy for the content and make sure anything you do online is supporting, not detracting from, that sales strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T14:56:28.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25932" CreationDate="2017-01-09T14:56:33.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the character is drawn starkly enough, even very small changes can be very noticeable.  The best example I know of is in Nabokov's &lt;em&gt;Lolita&lt;/em&gt;.  The narrator is an unrepentant molester, who is basically wholly focused on his own wants and needs.  Late in the novel, he gains what amounts to a single moment of clarity where he senses, no matter how dimly, that what he has done is wrong.  It's a significant moment because of how completely selfish he has been up to that moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also compare the main character in &lt;em&gt;Remains of the Day&lt;/em&gt;.  Although not at all sociopathic, he is very emotionally constrained.  On the surface, not much happens in his life, but the writer gradually helps you understand that he has strong emotional attachments of which even he himself is unaware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T14:56:33.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25921" CreationDate="2017-01-09T15:10:14.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think about it, the majority of stories ever have twists for the characters, they're just not always the ones that the story is about. In a classic hero's journey, the villain usually has grand plans to take over the world or some such, and everything is going smoothly, and suddenly some upstart shows up at the end to finish them and ruin their plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the villain, this is a massive twist. They were fully planning on being successful in their evil scheme, expecting that their minions would sort out anyone who tried to prevent that, but at the last second they discover there is a chosen one or a magical artifact that can actually stop them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a twist happens to the protagonist of a story, it's usually an antagonist simply doing this same thing to them: they had expectations of how their story was going to end, but someone else had other ideas. But, as they're the protagonist, they live to fight another day and come back to fight the villain again, and this time win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in order to write a twist for a protagonist, you need something else that is going to derail their story. This will usually be a side character's normal straightforward storyline where nothing goes wrong, they just cause problems from the point of view of the protagonist. This side character can be the antagonist, or someone who provides some information, or even an inanimate object like a statue or a note, but whilst their story is straightforward, it causes problems for the story the reader is experiencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So rather than practice what twists you can put in for your character, think about how they may have somehow suddenly affected the personal story of other characters, and the twists that they might be experiencing. This should help to think about how other side characters can affect the story that you are writing in order to create a twist that the protagonist, and the reader, didn't see coming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a plotter is very useful for this, because it allows you to plot the entire storyline for a potentially minor character, see where it intersects with the main narrative, and see the effects that it has to the twist the story from its original linear plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="13149" LastEditDate="2017-01-09T16:52:09.410" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T16:52:09.410" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25946" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25955" CreationDate="2017-01-09T15:54:04.633" Score="6" ViewCount="3994" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to use more action tags to supplement the 'He said. He asked.' dialog tags. But, now I have read several blogs suggesting although 'said' is invisible and can be sprinkled as liberally as desired, the same thing can't be stated about 'as'. Apparently use of 'as' is the sign of a weak or amateur writer. I guess the conjunction function of 'as' has a numerical limit. Weak writing seems to be similar to porn,'you know it when you see it'. At what point does 'as' become a distraction in fictional novel writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-feel-about-using-the-word-as-when-writing-fictional-novels&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-feel-about-using-the-word-as-when-writing-fictional-novels&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailywritingtips.com/overloading-while/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.dailywritingtips.com/overloading-while/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.proofreadnow.com/blog/bid/35986/While-Don-t-Overuse-It&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.proofreadnow.com/blog/bid/35986/While-Don-t-Overuse-It&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jenspenden.com/2015/08/12/jens-editing-tips-kiss-your-ass-goodbye/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://jenspenden.com/2015/08/12/jens-editing-tips-kiss-your-ass-goodbye/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-01-10T13:57:27.760" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T07:48:56.637" Title="Am I guilty of bad 'as' writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25946" CreationDate="2017-01-09T16:10:15.733" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Don't listen to them&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are very few rules to writing and good writers know how to break them. Someone saying 'don't use as much' is totally wrong. They just are. In your prose, 'as' will be used exactly when it is needed. It is very hard to overuse a word which is &lt;strong&gt;very common in the English language.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the day passed, Robert slowly became more tired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't write that without as. Here's another example of a sentence with as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just as I was ensnared, the lights turned off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously these sentences are missing flair and brilliance, but they are not wrong sentences. They could be used in writing without problem. What you can see in their articles is that 'as' is completely bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I believe you should think:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An amateur writer uses a single connective, like as, whereas an excellent writer uses a huge range of connectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't listen to the articles. They've probably never written a book. Write what you want and how you want.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're only using 'as' that's bad. Be sure to use a range of conjunctions/connectives.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T16:10:15.733" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25946" CreationDate="2017-01-09T16:12:15.220" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Weak writing is never in the individual word choices. This is the biggest trap in all of writing. Strong writing says interesting things. Weak writing says boring things. Strong writing comes from writers who understand what makes writing interesting. (It's not more explosions.) Weak writing comes from writers who don't understand what makes writing interesting. Fixating on questions like whether or not you should use 'as' as a conjunction, or what kind of dialog tags you should use, is just keeping you from learning how to make writing interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes writing interesting is what you say about the subject matter, and the way you focus the reader's attention on what is important about the subject matter. Focus on that. The rest will come to you with time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With reference to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writing.stackexchange.com/a/25955/23159&quot;&gt;@what's answer&lt;/a&gt;, here is how Picasso drew eyes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uVBnC.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uVBnC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;picture from Picasso to illustrate how the eyes are drawn&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2019-03-28T07:48:56.637" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T07:48:56.637" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25928" CreationDate="2017-01-09T17:36:07.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a critic says that one of your characters would be better off dead, because they are so boring, I have the impression that this person's interest is not an impartial review or to help you develop your writing skills, but to put you down. Disregard anything that person says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are different. For that reason, you cannot create a love interest that everyone will find attractive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to physical apperance, one trick I like as a reader and employ as a writer is to describe your love interest as little as possible. If you write that the love interest is tall, dark haired, and muscular, those that prefer normal-sized blond men with a cuddly belly will find him unattractive. But if you write that &quot;he was strikingly handsome&quot;, everyone can project their own fantasies onto that blank and fall in love with their own imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is a strength of writing as opposed to movies: that everyone can imagine the love interest however they like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, sometimes your story requires specific traits, but keep them as general as possible and only describe as much detail as you must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this trick, you can keep the appearance of a character largely unspecified. But when it comes to his or her behavior, you must narrate it. And since attraction is not only to a person's appearance but to their behavior as well, here you cannot but dissapoint some of your readers. If a love interest is a macho, some will find that exciting, while others will be turned off. And the same goes for any kind of behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore the first rule, when you want to write an attractive character, is to write him or her however &lt;em&gt;your protagonist&lt;/em&gt; would find it attractive. That way your story is logical and that is half your rent. The other half is simply pleasing yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to write a man who acts in a way that female readers are attracted to, write him so that you are attracted to him. And it doesn't matter if you are a man or a woman, gay or straight. Always – within the confines set by the requirements of your plot and the character of your protagonist – write the love interest so that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; feel attracted to how they behave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, what you do is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get in tune with yourself; stop rationalizing and feel who you are and how you are in this world; trust your emotions and your intuition; &lt;strong&gt;be yourself&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get in tune with your story and its protagonist; know the setting, what must happen, and who the person is that goes through it; &lt;strong&gt;become that person in that world&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;observe what goes on&lt;/strong&gt; and write it down&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;rewrite and polish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This, of course, is what you always do when you write. There is no difference between writing the love interest and writing anything else.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your writing makes you feel what you want your readers to feel, then what you have written is good. It may lack some grammatical fine-tuning or stylistic polish, but the basic form is correct. &lt;strong&gt;Ignore what those say who are not your target audience.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T17:36:07.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25921" CreationDate="2017-01-09T19:30:02.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, the key to a plot twist is whether it makes &quot;emotional sense.&quot;  If people feel like your character has earned their success, then plot twists will seem extraneous.  If they feel like your character needs to do more work to gain their ending, then the plot twist works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the &lt;em&gt;Wizard of Oz&lt;/em&gt; --the ending has what seems like a very odd series of plot twists.  After overcoming some huge obstacles, Dorothy first discovers that the super-powerful wizard handing out her happy ending is a fraud, and then unexpectedly misses out even on his more mundane solution to her problem.  But &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; it turns out she can get home under her own power, and could have done so all along.  Logically, it's kind of a mess, and in theory, the magic shoes should read as a &lt;em&gt;deus ex machina&lt;/em&gt;.  But emotionally, we feel both that she's bought and paid for her happy ending, and also that the last thing she needed to learn was to rely on herself.  So the ending works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T19:30:02.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25928" CreationDate="2017-01-09T19:41:54.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually if the love interest is uninteresting, it's because the author isn't very interested in him or her as a character.  There's any number of (often quite successful) books and movies where the love interest is basically a symbol, or a object, or plays a functional role in the story but doesn't have any inner life of his or her own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that going down an enumerated list of &quot;attractive&quot; traits is exactly the wrong way to solve this --if it needs to be solved.  It may be that your story doesn't required a fully realized love interest for one reason or another.  But if that's not the case, you need to create a character you actually find interesting --and NOT just because that person matches your own mental list of for a dream girl or boy.  An interesting love interest would be interesting even if he or she wasn't the love interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the love interest in &lt;em&gt;Almost Famous&lt;/em&gt;.  What makes her compelling is that she has her own story arc, even including a love interest of her own (that is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the main character).  Her story basically stands alone without his.  That's a lot of what makes her so attractive to the main character (a thinly disguised stand-in for the writer) and in turn to us, the viewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2017-01-09T19:49:30.793" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T19:49:30.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25936" CreationDate="2017-01-10T06:37:13.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;i feel that in a dialogue nobody will say &quot;The year is 24356,&quot; maybe they will say &quot;it's 56&quot;, &quot;we are in 56&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also such a large number for readers that are not used to it, makes almost no sense, it is just a random number, that's why most writers use something like &quot;year 1405, new galatic era&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you want to emphasise the distance from the present, use &quot;24th millenium&quot;, or &quot;24th millenium, 400th century&quot;, &quot;24.4 millenium&quot;, and then later the more precise &quot;24356&quot; or better for accentuating the date, &quot;August 9, 24356&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T06:37:13.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25738" CreationDate="2017-01-10T06:47:02.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At the base there are &quot;formating&quot; guides, the driest of them all, like the Associated Press Style, Chicago Manual of Style, MLA handbook....&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;S&amp;amp;W is sometimes listed under the former category, but it is more a writing philosophy, a stylistic statement. Yes, it can be tedious in parts, but it is well worth it. The gist of it is to be effective with your writing.&#xA;For more visual learners there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/elements-of-style-illustrated-william-strunk/1007727661?ean=9781594200694&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;The Elements of Style - Illustrated&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then there are writing guides like: &quot;On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser&quot;. Here is a link to some of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jerryjenkins.com/best-books-on-writing/=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;best books on writing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11110" LastEditorUserId="11110" LastEditDate="2017-01-16T17:09:33.737" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T17:09:33.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25946" CreationDate="2017-01-10T09:36:46.837" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answers by Daniel Cann and Mark Baker give great advice. Nevertheless I want to add a different angle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To better understand what the question is about, let us look at some drawings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/w7Pm3.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/w7Pm3.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to judge someone's ability to draw (and, in turn, the quality of their drawings), you can divide that ability into two aspects: the ability to correctly capture the anatomy or shape of the object they want to draw, and the elegance or fluidity of their linework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which drawings you like best will of course be a matter of taste, but for a majority of the general public the fluent linework will look more pleasing than the scrawly linework – independent of their anatomic correctness. The fluent incorrect eye is a typical manga or anime eye, and I think the commercial success of manga and anime is undisputed. The fluent correct eye is a typical Western comic eyes, and again this style has proven its commercial effectiveness. The scrawly correct eye represents some styles of high art and has a certain appeal, but it certainly doesn't compete with the two fluent eyes when it comes to market share and financial gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing, like drawing, can be judged (among other dimensions) by two factors. Anatomical correctness in drawing corresponds to narrative &amp;quot;veracity&amp;quot; in writing, that is, how &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; a story feels to a reader, how well-told it is, how interesting. This is the level of plot and characterization. The elegance and fluidity of the linework correspond to the elegance and fluid rhythm of the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And just like in drawing, well-formed sentences that read easily and do not &amp;quot;hinder&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;irritate&amp;quot; the reader are the strongest factor for literary commercial success. There are many books on the bestseller lists that have irritating plot holes, flat cardboard characters, and no suspense whatsoever (that is, they are &amp;quot;anatomically incorrect&amp;quot;), but they are all written in a fluent language. On the other hand, there is not a single example of a great story written in clumsy language (that is, what corresponds to the scrawly but correct drawing) that has been professionally published. Many self-published books fall into this category, but none of them have sold beyond the small circle of the author's friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this observation we can conclude that the first and most important success factor for an author is his or her ability to write in what readers (and editors) perceive as a fluent, unobtrusive, standard literary style. If you want to write in any other style – for example, if you want to mimic spoken language, verbal thought, or internet slang –, you need to be an accomplished master of that style, otherwise your writing will not appeal to most readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, English is not my mother tongue, and I cannot judge whether or not you need to avoid &amp;quot;as&amp;quot; in standard literary style, but I will answer your question as if it were a problem and use it to illustrate my solution. &lt;em&gt;In my own writing, I generally trust myself when my writing feels wrong.&lt;/em&gt; If – to use your example – I feel that there are too many &amp;quot;as's&amp;quot; in my writing, then very likely there are. If only to someone with my sense of language. And if others agree and write blog posts about it, as, again, in your case, then I don't ignore that hunch but try to rephrase my writing until it has a pleasant rhythm and flows smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, what I need to do is break out of my first idea of that sentence and say the same thing in another way. If my idiosnycratic linguistic habits lead me to think of every relation in terms of &amp;quot;as&amp;quot;, then I force myself to find another way of saying what I want to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I want to write (using Daniel's example) –&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the day passed, Robert slowly became more tired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– I simply try out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The day passed. Robert became more tired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The day passed, and Robert became more tried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In tiring slowness the sun sank toward the horizon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on. Sometimes it is necessary to change the sentences before or after the one in question to find an elegant solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem in writing can again best be understood by looking at drawing. Drawing anatomically correct requires &amp;quot;seeing without understanding&amp;quot;. If you are interested in this aspect of drawing, Betty Edwards' &lt;em&gt;Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain&lt;/em&gt; provides a perfect introduction. I will ignore this aspect, because the present question is about what corresponds to the the fluidity of the linework. Drawing fluently requires movements that the average person is not used to. Because people use their hands to tie shoes, guide a spoon to their mouths, or draw lettershapes, when they attempt to draw a correct visual depiction of something, their movements are clumsy and angular, resulting in scrawly lines. Similarly, in their everyday lives, people use language to talk to other people, to write academic journal articles or PowerPoint presentations, or to answer questions on Stack Exchange. When they attempt to write a narrative, they are not used to the different syntactic structures and the different vocabulary, and their writing feels clumsy and inelegant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a great interview with comic artist Travis Charest in which he explains how his drawings become stiff and dead if he does not draw for a couple of days. His perfectionism is extremely high, and what he draws after a week-long hiatus is still far beyond what other, lesser comic artists are capable of, but the principle still holds: Unless you are a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; experienced writer, that is, someone who has been writing more or less every day for many years, written language will not come easily to you. It is your non-literary everyday use of language that is an obstacle to elegant writing. And while Mark Baker is right in that with time and practice your writing will get better, you may want to polish what you write now, and not wait for your linguistic ability to slowly grow with your narrative ability, as he suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T11:44:23.257" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25956" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-10T10:28:38.547" Score="16" ViewCount="5068" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a constant struggling point of mine. Most of my settings take place in fictional worlds often inspired by various parts of human history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, one of my stories is located in an Ancient Egypt inspired world. (&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; : My setting is only &lt;em&gt;based&lt;/em&gt; on Ancient Egypt and the clothing is not accurate to what it really was like back then. My characters wear anachronistic clothes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these worlds I am creating, people, well, obviously, wear clothes. Although description is far from being one of my writing strengths (I avoid this weakness by making it part of my style that I don't describe much), I almost always picture very clearly in my head the characters and the way they dress up. In fact, as I am not so bad at drawing, I even use to draw them and their outfits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, well, I can't — and it would be stupid to try — &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; avoid describing things. Sometimes, it really is important to explain the reader some details he cannot invent by himself. While just writing descriptions is a little problem in itself for me, the worst part of it is describing outfits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Words like &lt;em&gt;t-shirt&lt;/em&gt;, for instance seem really out of place in fictional and not futuristic worlds, like the Egyptian one I mentioned above. But when what my character wears is basically a t-shirt, how do I describe it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I have to mention that I write in French and we use the English words &lt;em&gt;t-shirt&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;shorts&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;sneakers&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;pullover&lt;/em&gt; as is, which seems even wronger when used in fictional worlds.  But not only English words cause me problems: scarf, for example, for which we have a French word, seems out of place when describing a long piece of cloth the character is wearing around his neck, but not to keep him warm (when in the Egyptian setting it is even worse). Even &lt;em&gt;trousers&lt;/em&gt; is weird in some settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A trick I often use for lack of a better way is to blandly refer to clothes with very generic words like &lt;em&gt;haut&lt;/em&gt; (French for &lt;em&gt;top&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was wearing a white top and a long piece of cloth around his neck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the above example. It is really generic and doesn't tell me much about, for instance, the length of the sleeves of the said top. Or basically anything about it. Moreover, if I have to describe several characters' outfits at once, it quickly becomes boring and makes it harder for the reader to see the characters in their mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Character1] was wearing a dark blue top and a long bottom&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. [Character2], however, had a long piece of cloth around his neck and a red top with long sleeves. His bottom&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; was short and stopped just above his knees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Not sure this word can be used in this context in English. Sorry if not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where I could have just said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Character1] was wearing a dark blue t-shirt and and a pair of trousers. [Character2], however, had a scarf around his neck, a red pullover and was wearing shorts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Dumb example with dumb clothing)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, this is it. I'm sure there is no best way but I'd like to know what techniques you employ to describe clothes similar to ours in fictional words where the modern words we use seem out of place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing in French but I believe the problem is quite the same, although even worse in my case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user19124" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-11-26T20:41:46.830" Title="How to refer to clothes without modern words ? (e.g: t-shirt)" Tags="|fiction|description|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25956" CreationDate="2017-01-10T10:41:02.020" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you need to do is research the proper terms for those clothing items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to a university library and browse books on the history of clothing or books on the archaeology of the time you are writing about and see what the experts call them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are lucky, there is something like an illustrated dictionary. Here is one in German: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.de/Bildw%C3%B6rterbuch-Kleidung-R%C3%BCstung-Harry-K%C3%BChnel/dp/3520453010/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bildwörterbuch der Kleidung und Rüstung&lt;/a&gt; [Illustrated Dictionary of Clothing and Armor]. I have it, and it is brilliant. Maybe something like this exists in French.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-01-15T15:55:23.423" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T15:55:23.423" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25956" CreationDate="2017-01-10T10:41:33.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this is &quot;do your research.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing about Ancient Egypt, you start by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=clothes+in+ancient+egypt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Googling &quot;clothes in Ancient Egypt.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; If you're really serious, you find books about Ancient Egypt and go to museums to study what's been unearthed, written, and saved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your paucity of imagination is remedied by cracking open a book. That will tell you the terms you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T10:41:33.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25925" CreationDate="2017-01-10T11:02:02.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about 'falling in love', but as a teenager I used to eagerly anticipate any mention of Elayne in the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I was definitely infatuated with her character, especially when written from the perspective of other characters (so you could see her cutesy mannerisms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A gorgeous, young, intelligent mage who just happens to be a beloved princess and a passionate redhead to boot!? She was expertly designed to be incredibly attractive to males of my age group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21966" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T11:02:02.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25956" CreationDate="2017-01-10T14:39:01.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were writing about someone in a historical/fantastic setting, and I wanted to indicate he was wearing a t-shirt, I'd call it a &quot;tunic.&quot;  It's a relatively well-understood word that sounds old-fashioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is that for your purposes, the word doesn't need to be either one-hundred percent accurate to the era or to the item of clothing, it just needs to sound old, and give a general indication of what you're talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Character1] was wearing a dark blue tunic and long pantaloons. [Character2], however, had a long pashmina around his neck and a red outer garment with long sleeves over his short breeches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2017-01-10T14:45:02.077" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T14:45:02.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25956" CreationDate="2017-01-10T14:45:55.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the fashion is important to your secondary world story, make up some terms for the outfits and describe then throughout the narrative as part of the worldbuilding, while using more generic ones, like &lt;em&gt;sandals&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;robes&lt;/em&gt;, without explanation. The level of detail is up to you, and you do not have to drench the reader in a precise description of how the hem of someone's &lt;em&gt;qwerty&lt;/em&gt; was trimmed, but if you say that it &quot;billowed behind her like a maroon cloud, barely touching the floor&quot; you will be building a more or less sufficient image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had once to describe what would be an equivalent to a kimono in my world (a martial artist agreed to give a hand combat lesson to another character) and ended up sending a servant into town to buy something resembling &quot;a baker or miller pants and shirt, but wide enough not to restrict movements&quot;, etc., but the scene allowed to play with it on several different levels, so I had my fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing not to do: use modern or very culture-specific terms, like &lt;em&gt;trenchcoat&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;sombrero&lt;/em&gt; :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T14:45:55.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25956" CreationDate="2017-01-10T14:51:51.913" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why does it matter what they are wearing? Are you telling me the colours so that I will know one character has more money or status than another? Was prepared for the place they are going to (eg it's dusty and they brought the thing to wrap around their face)? Is a member of a particular occupation, family, or religion? Is there going to be a scene where someone is attacked or rescued and the neck cloth is super relevant, so this is kind of Chekov's scarf? Are you telling me from the point of view of the fish-out-of-water protagonist who doesn't know what the thing is called, or a longtime resident who also owns and wears the same item? There has to be a reason for telling me. Once there is, the sentence will come much easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alex pulled the dustcloth tighter around his face as the wind rose. Once again he felt grateful for the advice from Sam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alex glared at the new arrival. His dark blue clothes, untouched by dust or time it seemed, announced his heritage to all. Once again Alex burned with shame at how short his own top was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also make up words, introduce them in context once (&amp;quot;Alex pulled the matiyah over his head and made sure the sleeves were not twisted, then tucked it into his belt&amp;quot;) and then just use the word later at will. This lets you be subtler (&amp;quot;the newcomer's dark blue matiyah seemed far too expensive for a trip like this&amp;quot;) when you mention it in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15601" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T14:51:51.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25963" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-10T15:59:02.813" Score="2" ViewCount="1740" Body="&lt;p&gt;My story is bilingual Spanish and English, revolving around an emperor and his lover. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main character is royalty and it is fitting for him to have a long name, but he transitions from one title to the next in the story. At first he is the royal crown prince (Su Alteza Real in Spanish), then he gains the title His Majesty the Emperor (Su Majestad el Emperador). His name is Don Luis Maria de Juan León, with Don being like Mister in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how do I properly introduce him and not confuse the audience with his names?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His wife refers to him as Luisma which is a nickname from his first two names. While his soldiers and lover will refer to him as Don Luis and Luis, respectively. Whereas he is titled and is also mentioned by his title in formal situations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, his wife is humorously named Luisa because they are both popular names in their era. Her name is meant to cause confusion at certain times and some soldiers mention the similarity and confusion in their names. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22944" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-01-10T16:10:05.420" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T17:27:35.097" Title="Characters with very long names or titles" Tags="|naming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25963" CreationDate="2017-01-10T16:18:49.707" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When he is introduced in the story, and when he receives a new title, give the full title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he's being introduced when he walks into an important event or a throne room, it's contextually appropriate for other characters to give all his names and titles: &lt;em&gt;His Majesty the Emperor Don Luis Maria de Juan León.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he's trying to impress someone in a genital-waving contest, he can announce (or have someone else announce) all his names, titles, and nicknames. For example, &lt;em&gt;Daenerys Targaryen, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Stormborn, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons, the Unburnt, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea.&lt;/em&gt; Don't overdo this or you'll end up boring the reader, or conversely if you overdo it on purpose the other characters can start adding gag titles like &lt;em&gt;Lover of Bacon, Rewinder of VCR Tapes, Spiller of Mojitos,&lt;/em&gt; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your character doesn't think of &lt;em&gt;himself&lt;/em&gt; by those lengthy names. He thinks of himself as Luis, or maybe Luisma if he thinks his wife's nickname is adorable. So in your narration he's &lt;em&gt;Luis,&lt;/em&gt; and the other characters can address him as &lt;em&gt;Don Luis&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Luisma&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Papí&lt;/em&gt; or whatever depending on who's speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T16:18:49.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25963" CreationDate="2017-01-10T17:27:35.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how you introduce him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A convenient way is to set up a prologue where other characters are speaking of the emperor, and to emphasize on his status for either awe or irony, would make use of his full title. This would also be useful to start setting up the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T17:27:35.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25921" CreationDate="2017-01-10T17:38:02.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would describe it as a pendulum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't focus on the twist, so much as the build ; if something has to happen, hint at the opposite direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right before a major event, write as though your characters were entering a peaceful routine. &#xA;If the resolution is coming, give every signal that everything is screwed. &#xA;Underline bonds, friendship and complicity on the eve of betrayal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key in the twist is contrast. There's little else you need to master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T17:38:02.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25857" CreationDate="2017-01-10T17:42:00.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question I would ask is, is the reader likelier to deduce the answer by himself, or label the missing information as a plothole and not even bother? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't sure, then it won't hurt to make a very rapid mention, just to warn that no, this isn't something you just forgot to think of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T17:42:00.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25895" CreationDate="2017-01-10T17:45:17.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Got may be an overused word, but never ban any word from your vocabulary entirely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use it sparingly; favor the alternatives when they exist, but don't miss out on the expressions (&quot;you have &lt;em&gt;got&lt;/em&gt; to be kidding me&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T17:45:17.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25969" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25978" CreationDate="2017-01-10T18:01:38.703" Score="6" ViewCount="377" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I first tried writing fantasy - a long long time ago - I wrote a book that was meant to be really serious and intense. However, I wrote it in a way where the characters joked around, and had more fun than they should have been having in a really dire situation. The whole thing turned into more of a comedic piece rather than being serious fantasy, and lost the atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My new &lt;strike&gt;masterpiece&lt;/strike&gt; trilogy is an epic. I've kept it super serious and to the point, and it's gone &lt;strong&gt;really really really really&lt;/strong&gt; well. I'm infinitely happy. However, upon beginning book two, which I started 4 days ago, I have started slipping back into old habits. The characters keep making jokes, and generally enjoying themselves even despite the fact that their home has just been destroyed. I've gone through and edited some of the the humour out and have kept a bit more of the atmosphere of loss and mourning, but I came up with this question while doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's get right to it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much humour can you have before you lose the serious, intense atmosphere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it right to include humour when something absolutely &lt;strong&gt;grievous&lt;/strong&gt; is going on in the character's lives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel as if I've got a good grip of it at the minute. I know what is silly and I should edit out, and what I should keep. However, this question does intrigue me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T21:39:31.907" Title="How much humour can you afford to have before losing a serious atmosphere?" Tags="|fiction|editing|fantasy|humor|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25986" CreationDate="2017-01-10T18:20:08.997" Score="1" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;Few days ago, I saw some sites (forgot the URL's) where you give a fiction or non-fiction piece, if they publish it, the copyright rests with them for 6 months (limited time) and then revert it back to the author. I have seen this in very few sites, could anybody enlighten me or share any web-sites where they have seen it like that.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22915" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T03:36:20.980" Title="Sites which return copyright to the author after sometime" Tags="|copyright|websites|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25956" CreationDate="2017-01-10T18:28:02.310" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several people have said that you should look into the historical names for clothing. However, as you pointed out on what's answer, a name that the reader is not familiar with can confuse him. This has happened to me plenty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two things that you can do here, both of which I would recommend:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe the function of the clothing &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Equate the look of the clothing with something in your setting that looks similar. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Describe the function.&lt;/strong&gt; The first thing is to stop relying on already-made terms. Pants, shirt, sweater... as you have pointed out, all have a futuristic feel. As what mentioned, you can use terms not tied to time, such as 'shoe' or 'loincloth'. But better yet, do not use any terms at all. Describe the clothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know you said that description is not your strong suit, but you're going to have to do it. Describe the clothing and its function. Then you can call it whatever you want: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He wore a &lt;em&gt;veldera&lt;/em&gt;, a long piece of cloth draped over his shoulders, wrapped about his chest twice, and secured with a rope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing you can do is to &lt;strong&gt;equate&lt;/strong&gt; the clothing with something that looks similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It gave him the distinct appearance of a mummy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also combine these two methods, and describe the function by equating it with something else: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;lator&lt;/em&gt; was made from rough wool, giving the wearer the look and feel of an elderly sheep. It fit snugly about the chest, with long sleeves that covered the arms, and was said to be as warm as the skin of a bear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the above could easily be used to describe a rough woolen sweater. Case in point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helped! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-01-10T19:56:18.430" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T19:56:18.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25973" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2017-01-10T19:32:21.287" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-01-10T19:32:21.287" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T19:32:21.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25974" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2017-01-10T19:32:21.287" Score="0" Body="Writing specifically intended to be spoken to others in a group to inform or inspire action. " OwnerUserId="22915" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-01-10T22:05:02.867" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T22:05:02.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25975" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2017-01-10T19:34:59.120" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-01-10T19:34:59.120" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T19:34:59.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25976" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2017-01-10T19:34:59.120" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-01-10T19:34:59.120" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T19:34:59.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25969" CreationDate="2017-01-10T20:23:28.633" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any creature that can foresee its own death must learn to laugh or go mad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it is a mistake to think that humor is the opposite of seriousness. Humor is the way humans deal with the essential grimness of our lives and their inevitable ends. A serious work that is lacking humor is in some sense missing this essential component of how humans react in serious situations to keep themselves sane. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opposite of serious is light. You can be light without being humorous. Lightness is essentially the simple avoidance of the grimness of life. It is a way of dealing with the sadness of things by simply refusing to look at them. It is, in many ways, easier to be light if you avoid humor, because humor is always about the absurd, and human absurdity is in some way always about how we pretend we are not all going to grow old, get sick, and die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible to be light in dealing with death. This is what the cosy mystery, the Murder She Wrote kind of show does. They present death merely as a puzzle to be solved, separate from its awfulness, it's heartbreak, and its waste.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humor can be grim. Much of the best humor is very grim. The key is that when you use humor in a serious story, it be serious humor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing seriously is hard -- mentally and emotionally hard as well as artistically difficult. It is possible that you are catching yourself writing something light because that is easier and less traumatizing. In which case, cutting the jokes is not going to make it serious. You will need to rethink the whole piece in a more serious vein. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible that you are throwing in light jokes in a serious piece, in which case the fix would be to make the jokes serious rather than light (meaning the the joke accepts and acknowledges the grimness and absurdity of human life rather than avoiding it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-03-07T21:39:31.907" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T21:39:31.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25979" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25980" CreationDate="2017-01-10T21:27:09.317" Score="2" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got couple of &lt;a href=&quot;https://jenniferonwriting.blogspot.in/2008/05/all-about-print-runs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;good&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/the-new-world-of-publishing-what-is-a-print-run-grandpa/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;definitions&lt;/a&gt; of the traditional Print run. One of the disturbing things mentioned in one of the definitions that many a times 50 percent of them are destroyed. How it was destroyed is not known but if it has anything to do with burning of books or something, bad for everybody. I am surprised if that used to be the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I come from India and here for most people one big source of fiction books has been something called booksbyweight &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/Booksbyweight/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.facebook.com/Booksbyweight/&lt;/a&gt; . This is very popular with millennials who go to discover new authors, new genres at very low cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this is good for the seller and probably a bit for Publishers, are authors compensated for it ? I would also ask what authors think of it.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22915" LastActivityDate="2019-08-18T15:47:22.087" Title="Print runs, unsold books, books by weight and do authors get some compensation for unsold?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25979" CreationDate="2017-01-10T22:05:34.640" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Booksbyweight appears to be simply a used bookstore with a bulk pricing model. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the paper world the economic model for books is that the publisher sells copies. The copy then belongs to the person who bought it. They can resell it to whoever they want, including used book stores. The author and publisher receive no further compensation when a book is resold. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, authors and publishers don't receive any compensation when their books are lent out by libraries either, though there are now public lending right payments in some countries. (Pretty small, I believe.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The model for the digital world is very different. The publisher licenses a right to view individual volumes in a digital library. You can view the copies you license on multiple devices, but you cannot resell the book after you have finished it. There is no used market for e-books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another model that is emerging (pioneered by O'Reilley for technical books) is that you subscribe to an entire library of books for an annual fee. The publisher and author than get a cut from the library when their book is actually read. In fact, they get paid by how many pages are read, so you get less if someone reads a chapter and abandons it than if they read all the way to the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the latter model may actually be the fairest model of all to writers and publishers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T22:05:34.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25956" CreationDate="2017-01-10T22:49:28.017" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your options are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use modern terms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use antquated terms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use generic terms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use invented terms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really think about it, that's all you have to work with.  However, there's a wide palette of ways to mix and match these approaches to add flavor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be to research the correct term for the historical dress.  Once you have the most precise historical equivalent you can find, ask yourself &quot;is this good enough?&quot;  If it is, then great!  If it isn't, then its time for you to invent a term for your particular gear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have this term, treat it somewhat like you would a character.  You'd never assume that the reader knows that Alice is a curious sort of girl, why assume they know that a Shalwar Kameez* is a type of loose trouser?  Teach them the ways of your clothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a great opportunity for that overused phrase: show don't tell.  You don't have to give a definition for every clothing word you use.  Instead, show them.  At some point, when your character is wearing Shalwar Kameez, and spills wine, say he spilled wine on his trousers.  Back and forth utilization of the proper name, generic terms, and description will build up the nature of the clothing industry in your world almost for free!  It's how we learn the meaning of words when we are children, and it works at any age!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;* I chose this particular article of clothing simply because its a name that is not typically known in Western cultures.  I, myself had to &lt;a href=&quot;http://islam.about.com/od/dress/tp/clothing-glossary.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;look it up&lt;/a&gt;, so if I actually got this clothing term wrong, my apologies!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14106" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T22:49:28.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19581" CreationDate="2017-01-10T22:53:02.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the thing. You don't write to be admired. You write because there is something burning inside you to be said. The question to your friends is not, do you like it? Do you think it's good? Did I do a good job? The question is, do you get it yet? Do you understand what I am saying? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, that does not mean there is anything wrong with you. I just means you have not learned enough about writing and storytelling yet to get your message across. Yes, you may feel frustrated that you have not managed to get your idea across to them yet. But that is beside the point. The point is that the thing inside you is still burning to be said, so time to get to work and figure out how to say it. Because if you are really going to be a writer, it will keep burning until you actually get people to hear it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there isn't something inside you burning to be said, though, don't write. Or at least, don't write for the public. Writing is not an efficient means to get people to like you or admire you. In fact, it is a lonely profession. If you want an artistic accomplishment that will help your social life, learn to play the guitar. Everyone loves a musician. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't write. It is a stupid way to make a living and a stupid way to have a social life. Don't write unless the thing burning in your head to be said cannot be snuffed out in any other way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you can't snuff it out in any other way, then it does not matter what your friends think of you. It only matters that they hear you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T22:53:02.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25970" CreationDate="2017-01-11T03:36:20.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since @shirish and I had quite a back and forth in chat, I'm going to summarize the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OP does refer to sites where you submit your work and publication is determined by an editorial staff. It does not refer to sites where you just post your writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommended he avoid sites which either ask for all rights that they then return to you after some given amount of time or want to enforce a Creative Commons license on your writing. IMO, most reputable journals will ask for first time rights of some sort, with rights reverting to the author upon publication. Many will ask for the right to reprint. Also, many will include the information on rights on their website under Submissions or Guidelines. For an example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bellaonline.com/review/submissions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bellaonline.com/review/submissions/&lt;/a&gt; Mused is an online journal which has published several of my poems and has a Rights section clearly given on their Submission page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between copyright and the rights assigned to a publication. The author has the copyright but assigns certain rights to the publication. In the example in the link above, they ask for first time worldwide rights, which revert to the author upon publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe there are many journals out there which are clear about this kind of information. Rather than attempt to provide a list, which is both off-topic and a hefty job, I made two recommendations. One is duotrope.com, which has an extensive database of writing markets. The other is Writer's Digest's marketing guides. When cost is a factor, it is sometimes possible to find the marketing guides at a library. With both Duotrope and the guides, I recommend going to the journal's website to view their current guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T03:36:20.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10006" CreationDate="2017-01-11T07:25:29.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This, from my publisher in Palo Alto, CA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paintings: pre-1906 = public domain&#xA;...and given I worked with my publisher 8 times over a 3 year period, therefore got to know her/legal, inside and out...take it to the bank, and minus everyone else's whereases and therefores. So,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pollock's work? NOOOOO!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benton's work? NOOOOO!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reconstruction-era woodcuts? Go nuts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like that. Use The Great SF Earthquake, as your fault line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22953" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T07:25:29.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25989" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25993" CreationDate="2017-01-11T09:01:34.763" Score="0" ViewCount="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a long-form non-fiction piece that details the events of a young man's life from many different perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have quotes from him, his family, and his friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some ways I can accurately and honestly dramatize what they told me, without transcribing their words? What if they provided very little experiential detail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22954" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T15:32:06.650" Title="Best Way to Depict the Content of Sources' Quotes" Tags="|style|creative-writing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25910" CreationDate="2017-01-11T11:45:53.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's possible to make the difference apparent without spelling everything out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, supposing the reader knows what your relative's name is, if you start your chapters by mentioning him on the third person, the reader will understand the narrator had changed. To flow back to the main text, hint at what's coming next, and put a clear separation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a need to use &quot;I&quot; in your chapters, or can you manage entirely without? If you focus on explanation text, you can remove yourself from the chapter entirely; write not as yourself, but as an anonymous observer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14470" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T11:45:53.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25956" CreationDate="2017-01-11T14:57:34.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I personally experienced is that describing things is not only often the only way to go (Parts of my own story are written in perspective of the main protagonist and as she's no botanist or herb woman she simply doesn't know a flower to be an arnica, so I'll have to describe it at least rudimentarily) it is the one tool to greatly enhance the experience of reading your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good thing about describing things is you decide its level. You don't have to go all Tolkien and throw down pages of nothing but detailed descriptions, you can give the reader the freedom to imagine things by himself, just describe detailed enough to give the right overall image. &lt;em&gt;Tattered&lt;/em&gt; is fine enough, only mention the trouser's holes on the knees if the context actually requires it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On that note I advise you not only to describe, but rather to include the description into an interaction. There already is a huge difference between&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even if Jeremy was no beauty, his eyes were nuanced in an intriguingly deep blue color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Intrigued by the remarkably intense colour she tried to sneak a shy glance into Jeremy's deep blue eyes whenever she got the chance to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;It gets even better when you enhance the description with figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pleasant shivers of cold wet water ran down her spine whenever a shy glance gave her the chance to dive into Jeremy's deep ocean blue eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Luckily I'm German and our language, formed for centuries in the former land of poets and thinkers, is basically made for figurative speech but with a little more effort it's nearly as easily possible in English.&lt;/strike&gt; If you lack the words or depictions I advise you to read, a lot. If writing fascinates you, you'll get the knack sooner or later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In matters of clothing (I feel free to use Thomas Myron's example) this could be something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He felt like something in his clothing was off, so he fiddled with the fabric's drape on his shoulders and its dual wrapping about his chest and tightened the rope at his waist, which failed in fixing the cloth so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22959" LastEditorUserId="22959" LastEditDate="2017-01-11T15:56:58.543" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T15:56:58.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25989" CreationDate="2017-01-11T15:16:42.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One option is to fictionalize your narrative, such as...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the last six months, I've interviewed some of the people who were involved in the young man's life.  In reviewing their contributions, I like to imagine them all sitting together in a room and discussing their insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mary is the subject's older sister, an advertising executive living in New York.  &quot;He was always a shy child.  I remember trying to include him in social events, but he almost always stayed home.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bill is quick to contradict his sister.  &quot;I wasn't shy.  I just didn't like your friends.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can almost hear the siblings' discourse even though, of course, I met with each of them separately.  My imaginary meeting really gets interesting when Bill's mother, Susan enters the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;By creating a fictional encounter, you get to leverage the rich tool set of &quot;He said&quot; and &quot;She said&quot; alternatives to craft an information rich narrative, which accurately integrates your non-fiction quotes, with fictional (but fact based) responses from Bill (the subject) and yourself (the narrator).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T15:16:42.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25989" CreationDate="2017-01-11T15:32:06.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no best way. The way you choose must come from your artistic vision and the demands of the story as you see it. Between the two, you must employ your creativity to find a form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biographies can be anything from a commented edition of original documents (in your case, the verbatim transcription of the interviews) to a fictionalized story large parts of which are made up and have never happened like they are told at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could go to a library and look through some (recent) biographies or view some documentary movies to inspire you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T15:32:06.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25994" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25999" CreationDate="2017-01-11T15:45:09.753" Score="6" ViewCount="1176" Body="&lt;p&gt;Worldbuilding chat has pointed me to this stack because it's less about defining the technology and more about how to express these definitions in a relatable and realistic way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pretty frequent occurrence when working with fictional technology is that when describing what the tech does and how it works, the author messes up the scale of the underlying technology or what it is capable of. This can happen in multiple ways (all examples are purely fictional):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author describes near future technology with ludicrous numbers, which actually are on the other end of the power bell curve. the author may, in 2001 describe a computer in the 2050s whose power is actually closer to something from the 2020s. The opposite also happens: the components from the machine actually are much stronger than what's possible at the time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author describes a machine that actually is woefully underpowered for what it is said to be capable of. For example, blowing up a meteor the size of Texas with a nuke buried 800 feet deep.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author describes a machine that actually has much more energy than needed for the job. They mention &quot;a 1 Kt bomb, big enough to destroy the empire State building&quot;, but such a bomb would actually take out everything 5 blocks around the empire state building as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author has a concept that's scaled well at the time it's introduced to the story, but when used later on, it either scales poorly or not at all. An example would be a martial artist taking of weighted clothing as a powerup, but he keeps doing it even when he's not even hindered by the clothes anymore.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I'm talking about purely numerical issues with scaling, not the technology itself becoming outdated because new tech is invented. I'm not talking about &quot;cassete recorders in space&quot;, I'm talking about &quot;A spaceship to the moon with the power of a bottle rocket&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you already have your technology worked out concerning what it has to do, how do you go about describing the tech to a reader without pulling potentially knowledgeable readers out of the story when your numbers don't add up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6845" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T19:16:19.097" Title="How can I describe technology while avoiding problems with scaling?" Tags="|description|exposition|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25994" CreationDate="2017-01-11T15:58:20.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've worked out the tech, why haven't you worked out the scale? Isn't that part of &quot;working out the tech&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just coming up with the idea of &quot;a rocket that goes to the moon&quot; isn't sufficient. You have to come up with &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; it goes to the moon. If your story is meant to be realistic, then you have to do enough hard-science research to determine how a rocket could actually get to the moon. You need to understand thrust, weight, the layers of the atmosphere, velocity vs. vacuum, orbits, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is fantasy (relying on magic, for example), then you still have to cover the mechanics of getting to the moon, and your magical system has to be logical to a certain extent. (This is what I call the &lt;em&gt;Heroes&lt;/em&gt; Power Conundrum. The show &lt;em&gt;Heroes&lt;/em&gt; had people developing abilities like being able to heal from any wound, or flying, or turning invisible. But those gifts never seemed to require &lt;em&gt;power&lt;/em&gt;. If the cheerleader grew back a toe, the energy to create that toe had to &lt;em&gt;come&lt;/em&gt; from somewhere. She should have been constantly eating cheeseburgers to fuel her healing.) So just &quot;casting a spell to put the rocket on the moon&quot; is insufficient. You have to establish how such a spell is learned or created, where the magic comes from, who can use it, if there's backlash, et cetera. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is, to avoid problems with scaling, figure out how the tech would really work, or as close to it as possible. If you put a bomb in a building, do research on how much C4 you need to take out a building of that size, or how much more damage your chosen amount of C4 would do. And so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T15:58:20.980" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25994" CreationDate="2017-01-11T16:18:16.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter. The tech is a McGuffin. It's a device to drive the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entire plot of Casablanca revolves around a pair of passes that cannot be revoked by the local Nazi authorities. The passes are a McGuffin. They are absurd on the face of it. Of course any such passes could be cancelled by the local Nazi authorities. &quot;Yes, Obergruppenfuhrer, I knew they were enemy spies wanted by the Reich, but they had magic tickets so of course I had to let them get on the plane.&quot; Right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tech in Star Trek? All technical problems are solved by reversing the polarity of blah blah blah. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tech in Dr Who? Make it up as you go along and change your mind half way through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter. What matters is that you tell a good story. What makes a good story is not that it is technically plausible. So many stories could be so much more easily and safely resolved by another quite obvious course of action, or simply by a character asking an obvious question. What makes a good story is that it is emotionally true and that it brings the protagonist to a point of moral or emotional crisis that is resolved in a satisfying way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there will always be people who nitpick the details. There is a rather entertaining series on youtube that picks holes in every major movie. The point being that these are major movies that told compelling stories and made millions at the box office. Their tech, and often their plots, make no sense, and is utterly lacking in scale. No one cares. They want to watch men in capes bash each other while having deep philosophical discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nitpicking the details is a sport for some people. It is part of how they enjoy a story. If there were no nits to pick, they would enjoy it less, not more. (Think about Amy's deconstruction of one of the Indiana Jones movies on Big Bang Theory in which she showed that Indy's actions made no difference to the outcome of the plot. That was fun. I but a whole bunch of people went out and rented it again just to see if she was right. Ka-ching. &quot;Thanks for the residuals&quot; say the screenwriters. )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter. The tech is a McGuffin. Focus on telling a good story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T16:18:16.667" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25994" CreationDate="2017-01-11T16:40:18.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For hard SF the answer by Lauren Ipsum is correct. For space opera, the answer by Mark Baker is correct. Also, the first sentence of each answer is sufficient, you can skip the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T16:40:18.353" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25998" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-11T19:11:35.910" Score="5" ViewCount="402" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've now reached 10,000 words on the second book in my trilogy. Wow, goals. I have &lt;strong&gt;just&lt;/strong&gt; got to the first major plot point which basically spells out the relationship between two characters which will drastically effect the plot of book two. However, what did I spend this 10,000 words messing around on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided that considering &lt;em&gt;loads&lt;/em&gt; of new characters are being introduced in book two I would try and implement more interactions between characters early on and spell out the themes that would be going on later in the novel. Hence, most of these 10,000 words is the characters faffing around, talking and generally preparing or recuperating from something that has happened. For example, three characters have been arguing about might and praising the King's might. The guy praising the King's might gets called a coward for relying on the King entirely, and then there is a ton of incorrect blather that he spouts from his mouth. The other character then foreshadows something that will happen next chapter that is in their POV, by saying something like &quot;Prove your not a coward by showing your might to (unnamed)&quot;. I've forgotten exactly what it was, it foreshadows though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major plot point in book 2 has not been yet established by book two. It probably won't be fully established until a while later after I've 'set things up' so it all runs smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it okay to introduce your major plot point late?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T01:32:08.543" Title="Do you need to have your major plot point established in the first few chapters?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|plot|character-development|pacing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25994" CreationDate="2017-01-11T19:16:19.097" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;One good trick is to choose a point of view characters who is at the low end of technical competence.  That way your other characters will talk down to them (and the reader), avoiding technical descriptions which involve numeric and scientific details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cub reporter, the ship's recreation officer, or a hobbit from a backwards and far-off land...  these are all great point of view characters who can work their way into the action without ever having to really understand what is going on or how things work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The weapons chief paused, obviously calculating the explosive force needed to vaporize an asteroid of our target's size and density.  I watched her lips moving as she silently did the heavy math.   Then, realizing that I was waiting for an answer and recognizing the kind of answer I was looking for, she paused, smiled, and said,  &quot;It will have to be a really big bomb, but we can do it.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T19:16:19.097" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25956" CreationDate="2017-01-11T19:45:21.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you check out the Dark Tower series, you can see how Stephen King tackles this in his imaginary world.  Made-up terms get woven into the narrative, usually used in a context that explains its meaning.  Or the narrator will come right out and explain its meaning to another character.  I guess the same would be true for Harry Potter but I haven't read any of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22964" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T19:45:21.653" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-11T20:17:34.470" Score="1" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;Umm... The main cause the Publishers give more often than not is, the book was not successful to warrant a second run and hence it's out of print or 'it's just old'. I just read this &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/15999/getting-my-rights-back&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; which claims there may be other motivating factors for a publisher to not print and still try to hold over rights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other such factors which Publishers use or could use to not give royalty payments to authors as well as not let public know about authors or their books ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22915" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T09:03:28.543" Title="'Out of print' not profitable or holding rights indefinitely by a Publisher?" Tags="|publishing|copyright|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26003" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-12T01:31:32.847" Score="2" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say, I mention the following equation in a novel/short story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Direct Cost / (100 - Desired Profit)) * 100&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I format that in narration? In capital letters? Italics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First variable to tackle: Direct Cost/&lt;em&gt;direct cost&lt;/em&gt; or Direct Material Cost/&lt;em&gt;direct material cost&lt;/em&gt;. What&#xA;  was the raw material of her body?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At last. Anna had calculated the Direct Cost/&lt;em&gt;direct cost&lt;/em&gt;. Now she had to deal with the Desired Profit/&lt;em&gt;desired profit&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T12:18:45.630" Title="How should formula variables be formatted in narration?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10006" CreationDate="2017-01-12T03:18:56.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US for paintings made before 1978,   the date of public domain depends on the first date when ANY likeness of the painting was published.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain#Artworks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain#Artworks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Published&quot; has been defined in several ways. Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain#Artworks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;good wikipedia summary&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To show that a work was published, one could look for printed works that contained reproductions of the artwork: art prints, art books, a catalogue raisonné of the artist's works, exhibition catalogs, and so on (although it is not clear when publishing a thumbnail constitutes publication of the original work). Reasonable effort should be made to find the earliest publication. If any is found from before 1923, that's good enough and the work is in the public domain. Remember, though, that &quot;publication&quot; means &quot;lawful publication&quot;, which implies the consent of the author of the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that once a painting is in the public domain in the US, any photographs of this same painting published later on would still be public domain -- because such a photograph would be slavish reproduction of the original. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For graphic works produced after 1978, different rules apply. Generally it falls into the public domain 70 years after the painter's death. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final thought. Wikimedia Commons (and wikipedia) are very thorough about clearing images on its websites. Generally any image you find on these sites will have correct labeling about copyright/public domain status.  Sometimes the labeling will leave as ambiguous whether it's in the public domain in the USA though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="7968" LastEditDate="2017-01-12T03:29:45.313" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T03:29:45.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26001" CreationDate="2017-01-12T04:12:09.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot foresee a legal reason for a publisher to withhold royalty payments contrary to what is stated in the publishing contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &quot;not let [the] public know about [other] authors or their books&quot; there are times when a publisher will chose to suppress a contracted author's work in order to promote another contracted author (or his work) --usually one that has a good sales record or seen to have a better marketing/sales potential-- that is similar to or might otherwise be negatively impacted if the other author's work were promoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22924" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T04:12:09.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26003" CreationDate="2017-01-12T04:12:26.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't mention it. Seriously, don't mention it. No one wants to read a short story or a novel with equations in it. Tell us that your character calculated the result if it is really central to your story arc, but seriously do not put the actual equation into the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing about the equation itself, then a short story or novel is the wrong vehicle to use. Novels are not about the solution, they are about the challenge and the danger of finding the solution, the obstacles faced and overcome, the pain that drives the hero to find the solution, the hopes and fears of the people who depend on the solution, anything and everything but how the solution actually works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T04:12:26.373" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26007" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26009" CreationDate="2017-01-12T05:14:24.163" Score="5" ViewCount="1135" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written both professionally and on an amateur level for several years. A lot of it basically fell into my lap, and it hasn't been my primary profession for a couple of years now. I have some projects now that I'm interested in and working on in my off time, but I've noticed that a lot of my side projects quickly descend into metafiction. That's something I love when used by great writers, but I find it pretty off-putting in texts on the level I'm producing. It's certainly not something I'm interested in doing nearly as often as I do. Most of it just ends up in the bin on the first editing pass. The issue is that it sucks up valuable writing time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been trying to stop it and redirect but that can derail me and make me lose momentum. Writing through it occasionally helps, but it can also end up just kind of spiraling. Does anyone has any advice for working on reducing or mitigating this sort of self-indulgent tendency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22972" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T07:31:49.613" Title="Curbing Self-Indulgent Writing" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26007" CreationDate="2017-01-12T06:07:19.000" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in the flow, don't stop the flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this kind of writing is part of your imagination, and blocking it will block your imagination and leave you unable to write at all becauee your mind is busy with this thought and will try to &quot;help&quot; you not to forget it. So just write it out of your system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can bring yourself to do the deviations in a more quick and sketchy manner and not tidy them up so thoroughly, or even just note them down in a few words so you &quot;don't forget them and can work them out later&quot;. This will give your mind a feeling that this thought was taken care of, so you can let it go and turn to other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write I always have a separate file open into which I write everything that has nothing to do with the story I am writing. Later, when I'm done for the day, I sort through this file. What I actually need to take care of (like notes about who I want to call) is extracted onto my to-do list, and ideas and general thoughts go into my archive (a folder with plain text files). Sometimes I browse this archive on the search for inspiration, but mostly it just gets deleted every few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T06:07:19.000" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26007" CreationDate="2017-01-12T06:23:51.383" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is writing and there is storytelling. Writing is about the words. Storytelling is about the event, the people, the sights, sounds, smells, tragedies, joys, births, deaths, surprises, victories, and defeats. Writing does not matter except as a vehicle for telling the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very easy to feel productive by sitting down and churning out words. There are many writers who will tell you to just sit down and let the words flow and edit out all the bits that are not story later. I think that may work for the natural storytellers, the ones that don't have to work much on story because it just naturally flows out of them. But I'm guessing that if you find yourself descending into metafiction, you are not one of those, you are someone like me who needs to work harder on story. Metafiction is all about playing with the words and the conventions and the mechanisms of storytelling, rather than with story itself. It is a symptom of focusing on words rather than story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would suggest focusing on story, on fully imagining a scene before you write it down. This is still about working in a disciplined fashion, about applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. But it is not about producing words. It is about inventing stories. So sit down and invent stories. Work your imagination till each scene is fully formed, until you can see each character's eyes move and feel their breath on your cheek. Then write down what you see.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one can say for sure what discipline will work for you. But it is pretty clear to me that for wordy types, sitting down and simply spinning out words is a way to fool yourself into thinking you are working while really avoiding the hard works of invention. An accumulation of useless words, particularly clever words, seem to me a sure sign of a mind focused on the wrong objective. (And I have produced a lot of them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let go of the words. Live the story. Then write what you have seen.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T06:23:51.383" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25979" CreationDate="2017-01-12T08:55:37.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another possible route to market for books unsold by the publisher is that they get remaindered, which means that unsold stock is sold cheaply and in bulk to merchants who will try to sell on through bulk discounters, possibly in third world countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the publisher, the alternative is often to pay storage fees at a distributor or pay for the books to be pulped. Pulping often involves book materials being put to &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/3330245.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;uses that you wouldn't guess at&lt;/a&gt;, incidentally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is unlikely to be a royalty payment for the author for such sales, as they are often below the sunk cost of the product (printing, distribution, storage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;eBook sales to libraries are often at a considerably higher price than retail. Bearing in mind that an eBook with an official retail price of £25 can sell to a retailer for half of that, it might be sold to a library with a &quot;30 simultaneous borrowers&quot; agreement for a high multiple of £25. I've seen multiples ranging from x2 to x20, and library prices of over GBP 1,000 for an eBook (of which an author would get their contractual royalty share, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T08:55:37.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26001" CreationDate="2017-01-12T09:03:28.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One reason for not paying royalties on the sale of a product might be that the returns policy allows retailers to hold the stock in a warehouse or (worse still) a store, and then just send it back for a full refund.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certain retailers have been notorious for this in the past, and the publisher may be reluctant to pay out full royalties if they know that 50% of the stock is going to come back and have to be pulped (and incur extra shipping and handling fees). They may hold a &quot;reserve against returns&quot; that reduces to zero when the sales are final.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative is to pay out royalties, and then ask for them back a year later -- rather uncomfortable for everyone concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T09:03:28.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26012" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26027" CreationDate="2017-01-12T13:34:21.790" Score="15" ViewCount="2895" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before I started writing my fantasy story (80,000 words so far) I had a pretty strong outline prepared. Within the structure of my plot, I wrote relatively organically and my characters started to develop their personalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One character in particular (a traumatised fifteen year old girl) grew a very different personality than I'd initially designed her and I'm very proud of the result. There is now a ripple effect whereby a lot of my plot no longer makes sense in light of these character changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that my initial plot was quite basic (and perhaps not very interesting), I'm faced with a decision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I salvage my work by adapting the story around my evolved characters, or start again and write a different story and include the best elements from this first attempt?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, does anyone have any general advice for this kind of situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21966" LastEditorUserId="21966" LastEditDate="2017-01-12T14:10:50.647" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T10:16:00.683" Title="How to get a derailed book back on track?" Tags="|novel|characters|plot|character-development|fantasy|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26012" CreationDate="2017-01-12T13:47:47.967" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may be discovering the difference between a plot and a story. A plot is a series of events. A story is an arc of rising tension followed by a resolution. Events intervene in the lives of characters to drive the rise in tension, but the tension itself comes from the characters, who they are, what they want, and what they are willing to do to get it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is often quite easy to come up with a detailed outline of a plot without putting any real thought into the arc of the story. When that happens, the result will either be a flat story, or, as in your case, you will begin to discover who the characters are, and therefore what the sources of tension are, as you write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point, the sequence of events that you have outlined will almost certainly not be the sequence of interventions you need to drive the tension of your story. Why would they be? They were not designed for that purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outlining a story is much harder work than outlining a plot, and it is often hard to tell the difference. But a plot outline without a very firm idea of the story arc whose tension the plot is driving, simply isn't going to hold up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, on this occasion and in general my advice is the same: find your story arc. Find the tension that drives the story. Then write a plot to fit. Whether you can outline your story arc before you begin or whether you have to start writing your characters in order to figure out what tension drives them, is something you may need to discover for yourself. There are specific techniques for mapping the rising tension of a story arc, for mapping out the two-steps-forward-one-step-back structure of many plots. Different approaches are likely to work for different people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do though, always remember that plot is the servant of story and until you understand the tension the drive the story arc, you don't know what your story is yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T13:47:47.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26012" CreationDate="2017-01-12T14:14:35.333" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Always work around your characters.  They're what drives the story forward, not your plot.  Without interesting characters, you've just got a series of events happening one after the other which wouldn't make for a very good book at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once had a character I wanted to go to a specific location.  She didn't want to go.  There was no reason I could think of for her to be there other than I wanted her to.  Later, I changed it to be that she heard about what happened at that location and it gave her the anger and drive she needed to progress without her ever stepping foot near the place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Listen to your characters.  Don't try to make them do anything they don't want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T14:14:35.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26007" CreationDate="2017-01-12T16:50:22.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are writing and producing something, it's best not to squelch the process (as @what has stated). What I will say is it may be something which is not easily overcome &lt;em&gt;and you may not want to overcome it&lt;/em&gt;. You will, however, want to limit it (which I guess is the basis of your question). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion to you is to set yourself either a certain time of the day for this or perhaps one single day out of the week. This will let the creativeness continue without stopping things up. If an hour in the morning will get it out of your system, then set that time aside to have at it. This may help get &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of your creative juices flowing while still being able to follow it up with a very productive rest of the day. This would require a lot of discipline, but is very doable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My alternative to this is to set an entire day in the week aside. It may be a little easier of a stop point in the writing to transition from being self-indulgent to getting proper work done. You are limited by your own biological rhythms. Sleep tends to do its thing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, I would highly suggest you not throw these episodes in the trash. Keep them around in the &lt;em&gt;slush file&lt;/em&gt; (as @LaurenIpsum so aptly called it) to be reviewed later. You may find useful parts/pieces which can provide great story lines or ideas for later on. I often find when going over previous work new ideas come to mind. I usually think the work I'm reading is crap, but new ideas can still flow from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work is work, whether self-indulgent or not. You've spent the time on it already. Hard drive storage (or even a thumb drive) is very cheap. Keeping these episodes on hand is never a bad thing. At the very least it can show your future self what not to be doing. Throwing work away is throwing your valuable time away. Not keeping it, whether the work is good or bad, is a complete waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22808" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-01-12T20:30:54.043" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T20:30:54.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-12T18:16:30.547" Score="5" ViewCount="2279" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am new to the site, so please let me know if I'm not following proper format or etiquette.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am beginning a story (only 4,000 words so far).&#xA;I am having trouble adding in characters that can be developed, because the protagonist doesn't really have friends, just people she smokes with, and she isn't close with her family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The loneliness she feels and the amounts of time she spends lost in her head are integral to the story, but are making it hard for me to add other characters that I can develop past being two-dimensional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22982" LastEditorUserId="22982" LastEditDate="2017-01-12T18:29:26.070" LastActivityDate="2020-11-20T12:52:09.370" Title="How do I add more characters into my story?" Tags="|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26017" CreationDate="2017-01-12T18:32:53.320" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you writing this in first person? The choice of first person is the cause of many writing woes because it is a POV that essentially puts the writer in a box. If you are writing first person and your protagonist is withdrawn and friendless, any people she meets are going to be two dimensional to her, and thus two dimensional to the reader as well, since the reader can only see them through her eyes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this might be a legitimate way to tell her story. The characters do not become three dimensional to us until she reaches some epiphany and they become three dimensional to her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if that is not what you want to do, then write in the third person. The difficulty goes away at once because not you can turn the narrator's focus, and thus the reader's attention, to the secondary characters and make them as lively and well rounded as you like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Half the help-I'm-stuck questions on this site come down to the author having made choices about POV that don't fit with the story they are trying to tell, so I am guessing that is the case here too. If not, please clarify your question and I will update the answer accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T18:32:53.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26017" CreationDate="2017-01-12T18:34:12.657" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who is your character forced to interact with?&lt;/strong&gt; If your character needs to go to work or school, then you have a whole host of potential characters. Even if you're sticking to your character's perspective very tightly, there are likely people that she sees every day who grow and change around her. If this smoking is the kind that takes place outside, then she likely sees the same people passing by regularly. If she doesn't have to go to work, where is her money coming from? If it's from somebody she knew who passed, memories may play an important role in her life. If she's on the dole (literally or figuratively), she has to interact with government workers or other patrons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does your character cope with not knowing people?&lt;/strong&gt; If the character's really in pretty total isolation, she would likely find ways to add characters to her own life. I can't say whether they'd be two-dimensional or not, though. If your character has pets, maybe she's anthropomorphizing them. If your character watches a lot of TV, she may be developing relationships with regular protagonists, newscasters, and so on. She may have imaginary friends. She may have conversations with and imagine the lives of people she knows or used to know in her head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does having more well-rounded characters actually make sense?&lt;/strong&gt; Finally, if none of those people really have an impact on your character in a way that works, maybe that's important. It's possible that your story needs to explore what happens when somebody is deprived of real human contact of any kind of depth or when they reduce those around them to caricatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22975" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T18:34:12.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26007" CreationDate="2017-01-12T21:18:28.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not that this is a huge issue ('containing multitudes' and all that...) but I couldn't help but notice that your question seems to contradict itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I have some projects now &lt;strong&gt;that I'm interested in&lt;/strong&gt; and working on in&#xA;  my off time, but I've noticed that a lot of my side projects quickly&#xA;  descend into metafiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then continue with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's certainly &lt;strong&gt;not something I'm&#xA;  interested in doing&lt;/strong&gt; nearly as often as I do.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like some other answers on here have suggested, if you are interested in what you are producing then just go for it. When you find yourself &quot;spiraling out&quot; it may be a sign to take a break and reevaluate or work on something else. Notably, you seem very aware of your creative state while writing which is a major strength. Naturally, you will want to Listen to those thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to consider reframing your concept of 'worthwhile writing' versus writing that &quot;sucks up valuable writing time&quot;. I am of the school of thought that all writing that you find interesting in the moment is 'worthwhile'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get the sense that you think this type of writing is not worthwhile because it is not at the level that you would like, but it also sounds like you are writing in a different vein than you have in the past and, ostensibly, you are learning. Much like how a professional basketball player who suddenly starts playing baseball on the side will not immediately be playing at a professional level, they may enjoy it more than playing basketball and will likely advance quickly in skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would posit that your anxiety is partly due to being in a 'discovery process', i.e. where you are working in unfamiliar territory and cannot immediately see where you will end up. We can't always tell where something is going to lead, and that can be anxiety provoking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But writing at its best is an intellectual activity and thus fraught with trial, error and failure. You seem worried about failing, but failure is an important part of the process and can often be a precursor to some of the best work. Surely you have experienced this in your work before and only you can determine whether this is the case or not. If it is then there is one more argument for sticking with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One work that comes to mind and may have some bearing on your question is something like James Joyce's 'Finnegan's Wake' which is about the most self-indulgent work imaginable (and one that ate up seventeen years of the man's writing career...). It is also considered by some to be one of the most important works' of the twentieth century. YMMV&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N.B. I would argue for erring on the side of sticking with it and seeing where it takes you. Inevitably you will find your level of skill in writing metafiction improving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22985" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T21:18:28.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26021" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-12T21:21:46.233" Score="4" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;With 5000+ markets what strategies and tactics have you found useful to pinpoint your submissions and find new markets to publish your work more efficiently than Duotrope's basic search function?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22985" LastEditorUserId="22985" LastEditDate="2017-01-13T19:57:38.837" LastActivityDate="2017-07-10T15:32:42.597" Title="How do you find new venues to publish your work?" Tags="|creative-writing|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25998" CreationDate="2017-01-12T21:42:39.710" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no rules in writing. Full stop. There is nothing that you need to do or need not do at any point of your work unless you feel that it is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting published is a slightly different story, but this is a question about writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write how you want, when you want, and cause the elements of your work to develop solely as you see fit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So long as you are writing then you are succeeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most (I would say all) of the truly great writing is the world is found in works that bend, break, and flaunt the common rules of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write how you desire you will not always succeed, but when you do succeed you will do so wildly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: No.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22985" LastEditorUserId="22985" LastEditDate="2017-05-02T19:24:34.953" LastActivityDate="2017-05-02T19:24:34.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26012" CreationDate="2017-01-12T22:05:35.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have been doing writing for a while you soon come to the realization that the characters take on their own life and drive the story. All good books are driven not by the story line but rather the characters. By all means allow the characters to become true and real and take you where they may. You imbue characters with true and lifelike personalities subconsciously and thus eliminate the possibility of a contrived and artificially sounding plot. Furthermore, the reader identifies easier with a character whom is fully dimensional rather than a scripted actor in a storyline. The very best part of this is that you are along for the ride and cant wait to see how the story ends!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22986" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T22:05:35.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25910" CreationDate="2017-01-12T22:24:35.917" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very simple. Put the lesser voice in bold or italic font. The reader will perceive this as a different voice. You may also preface the entire passage with an identifier i.e. Joe; Twas brillig and the slithy toves&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22987" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T22:24:35.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26007" CreationDate="2017-01-12T23:39:25.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At some point, all fiction becomes self-conscious; not a big deal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important question is: does the narrative and story flow well and easily? Is it lively? Are you getting your point across? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can delete the self-indulgent stuff during edit. Or you may decide during editing that it is the most important part of the story! Don't worry about that; just be entertaining/witty/profound... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I typically find that  the break-the-form/reflexive fiction/self-consciousness drops out naturally  during edit stage of its own heaviness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as wasting time, it's all a matter of degree and perspective. I tend to wonder if every time I sit to write something I am wasting my time. Nothing new about that! I sometimes do clean rough drafts, but sometimes my rough drafts contain a lot of wild stuff that I know is not going to remain. (I just don't know until I've finished the rough draft which wild stuff belongs in the final version). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T23:39:25.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25998" CreationDate="2017-01-13T00:23:09.530" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look ... I'm going to second most of what smoss321 said. Write the book. Don't worry about this stuff until revisions. That's what's most important.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it sounds (since you're asking about plot points) you could use some macro perspective. You mentioned you are writing a trilogy. Trilogies are, by definition, a single story broken into three episodes ... but it is a single story. So, you're in the process of writing the &quot;middle&quot; of the story (and, as we all know, the middles are often the most difficult).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few things from your post which would concern me, &lt;strong&gt;if the book was finished&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Loads&lt;/em&gt; of characters appearing at the beginning of book two sends up a red flag (of course, without knowing more about why, it's difficult to speculate). Mostly (from what little information we have), &lt;em&gt;loads&lt;/em&gt; of characters makes me think you aren't beginning book two where book one left off (unless, of course, you killed off all the characters in book one). This is doubly true when combined with &lt;em&gt;a ton of blather&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;faffing about&lt;/em&gt;. This makes me believe even you are seeing there is too much &quot;fluff&quot; in the beginning of your story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if, by plot point, you are referring to those pesky moments in an outline story structure advocates discuss (I'm one of those, by the way) ... assuming the wordcount goal for your novel is the standard 100,000 words, then by 10,000 words you should have the plot's Hook firmly established. (&quot;You're a wizard, Harry.&quot; or &quot;I volunteer as tribute!&quot;).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But these things ... these plot points ... they're locations in your story are just guidelines. 10% for your hook doesn't mean it needs to be precisely at the 10,000 work mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;THE MOST IMPORTANT THING&lt;/strong&gt;: Don't worry about this stuff right now. Unless you are an in-depth and intense outliner (which I am), write the draft and take care of these kinds of revisions later (which I also do). It will cost you nothing but time to allow your character to do what they want during this first drafting experience, so long as you go back through when its finished and cull the unnecessary during revisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22989" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T00:23:09.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26012" CreationDate="2017-01-13T00:28:39.553" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, it's only when characters start making demands of their own that I can really start to think of them as people, and only when these demands begin to have consequences within the world of the story that I begin to really care about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your problem (though please correct me if I'm wrong) is that you didn't anticipate this. You expected to have complete control over your characters, and outlined the plot under the assumption you could twist them to fit it. Now your characters have grown into themselves, and your plot has to change to accommodate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I salvage my work by adapting the story around my evolved&#xA;  characters, or start again and write a different story and include the&#xA;  best elements from this first attempt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key question, I think, is whether the fundamental nature of your story has to change. If your story is based around the most central and immutable aspects of your characters' personalities, it shouldn't matter. You may have to revise a few ideas, and adjust the flow of the narrative, but you should be just fine. You can modify your plot, but keep the essence of the story (and perhaps most of the scenes you've already written) roughly intact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is built on the less fundamental aspects of your characters' personalities, the sort of things that may change as characters become better realized, then I think you may need to make much deeper changes. If the essential form of your story doesn't flow naturally from its characters, from their fundamental nature and the actions it drives them to take, then (at least, if I'm right about the type of story you're trying to write) you might well have problems anyway, regardless of whether their non-essential nature has changed or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T00:28:39.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8130" CreationDate="2017-01-13T01:43:34.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I first begin writing a novel, I sketch out a broad outline that is separated into three acts, each which is about five sentences long. I then provide one sentence scenes until the end/middle of the first act. After that, I begin outlining in detail - each scene is expanded to a paragraph, sometimes a couple notebook pages. However, I only do this extensive outlining when I am about to write a scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a 'right' way to outline - my method works just fine for me, and other people have methods that work just fine for them... but I don't think that's the answer you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would do is always make a general outline. As long as you have that, and as long as you have a description of each scene, it doesn't matter how detailed you are or which scenes - whether ones in the far or near future - you detail the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22791" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T01:43:34.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25998" CreationDate="2017-01-13T01:49:08.857" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I beg to dissent with other answers here so far. Yes, everything will become clear only after the book draft is finished, but the important question is &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; the draft would be finished. It would be pity to see 10,000 words go to waste, so it's quite a valid question to check if you are on a right track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it's all right to spend 10,000 words to set up the stage - but only if the stage looks intriguing enough to the reader. For example, your new characters may be doing nothing, but reader may already see looming conflicts and anticipate plot developments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this is all good only if you don't have any cliffhangers from book 1 that begged for action. In such case a reader would be eager to see plot development rather than &quot;faffing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T01:49:08.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26012" CreationDate="2017-01-13T03:26:12.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't forget that a valuable part of character is tension. People don't &quot;make sense&quot; most of the time, and neither does every character have to. (Recently, I had a grad student friend who's in the country as a refugee from Russia on the basis of his homosexuality ask on social media for a ride to the border to meet his young husband, who was refusing to submit a refugee status claim lest it damage his professional prospects; the call was answered by a gay priest-in-training he had never met before. Talk about a situation making sense -- but how interesting!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, of course, the moment you feel you have to &quot;force&quot; something (and not just work hard at it), then, as the other answerers have noted, you should probably listen to your instincts and ensure your characters are doing what feels natural to them, inconsistencies and all. Otherwise it feels contrived, which is a price not worth paying for the sake of plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22991" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T03:26:12.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26031" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-13T07:57:40.217" Score="4" ViewCount="646" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a short story in which the story's climax revolves around the protagonist making and carrying out a decision to take action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have come to realise that the decision I originally set up is a win-win situation for the protagonist – there is a downside to the decision, but it's not personal to the protagonist, which drains out the tension and makes the protagonist's choice too easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to raise the stakes and make it a genuinely difficult decision for the character. I have some ideas about sacrifices that this decision would force on the character, but I would like to get some tips and insights on raising the stakes and heightening the reader's interest in the decision. Any resources on the topic or examples of short fiction that does this well would be very much appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22034" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-09T19:03:05.307" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T19:03:05.307" Title="How can I raise the stakes and make a character's decision compelling?" Tags="|fiction|short-story|stakes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26045" CreationDate="2017-01-13T08:02:41.210" Score="3" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story I'm currently writing is a framed story where a recurring-depression-suffering writer that lost his wife [killed] in a war tells his life story in a symbolical fantasy world. Throughout the story, he doesn't just show the sub-story protagonist having his wife killed, but also going into a journey to revive her, how was his relation to her since they met for the first time, along with a symbolically precise view of how the writer feels when with his depression. He would also have the option to go in another journey to either revenge his wife's death or just &quot;take measures&quot; in some way. It would also show the moments before, during and after the moment when the writer lost his wife (in the &quot;real&quot; world).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the story has 5 big subjects in the same story: the writer's life, the writer's relation (romance) with his wife, the writer's wishes (the sub-story protagonist's two journeys), &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; the writer's depression, in which all five will be written in depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I ask: &lt;strong&gt;is a single story, having 5 deep subjects, &quot;too crowded&quot; or &quot;too unfocused&quot;? If yes, is it that bad?&lt;/strong&gt; Because if I remove his romance, there wouldn't be a reason for the public to care for his wife; if I remove his life, the setting would be shallow; if I remove his depression symbolism, it would be a great opportunity lost and would yank a very good big content from the story; if I remove his wishes, the story would end just after he loses his wife. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in this case, what would you guys say about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastEditorUserId="14490" LastEditDate="2017-01-14T17:49:37.007" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T17:49:37.007" Title="How many subjects in the same story is &quot;too many&quot;? And is it too bad?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25067" CreationDate="2017-01-13T08:11:32.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing Excuses podcast&lt;/a&gt; offers a lot of tips and discussion on specific aspects of the writing craft. It's mainly geared towards writers of sci-fi/fantasy, but includes plenty of advice that is general enough to be useful to writers of any genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 11 (and counting) seasons' worth of podcasts at this point, so if you hunt around you will almost definitely find some great pointers on craft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22034" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T08:11:32.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26032" CreationDate="2017-01-13T08:36:16.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the 5 subjects are tightly related aspects of a single, complex character. It's hard to tell from a summary, but it sounds rich and cohesive to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T08:36:16.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26032" CreationDate="2017-01-13T09:44:39.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agreeing with @Dale, I was already hooked on your plot or idea, and to me the complexity and interwovenness could make the entire thing come together in a great way, if executed in a manner that doesn't confuse the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself have not read &lt;em&gt;many books&lt;/em&gt;, but I think this would make for a story that many could relate to. And the multiple 'deep subjects' is logical for the way we live our lives and create dream-scenarios or alternative paths in our real or imaginary lives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say go! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T09:44:39.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26012" CreationDate="2017-01-13T10:16:00.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, I apologize for posting this as an answer, but since my rep is not yet developed, that is all I can do as of this moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I may not yet be fully familiar with &quot;they way things work around here&quot;, so maybe this is not appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I simply wanted to state my gratitude to the answers to this question. I am a &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; new author/writer (4000 words, first book) and I too have struggled a bit with the 'characters and their story/natural flow vs plot-outline' and I found these answers and their points absolutely inspirational. I am not exaggerating when I say that I almost teared up from excitement and motivation. I am sure that the struggle doesn't simply go away to never reappear, but this all makes the struggle meaningful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T10:16:00.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24673" CreationDate="2017-01-13T11:46:06.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The readers must not be surprised by it.  The marketing for the second book must make it clear what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just say &quot;The long-awaited sequel to Book 1&quot;, people will buy Book 2, but feel cheated and will never buy Books 3 and 4. (And your other books outside this series)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you say &quot;The adventures for Y, set in the same world as Book 1&quot;, people will know what is going on.  Somewhat fewer people will buy Book 2, but they will not feel cheated and will probably continue to buy Books 3 and 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, people will want to know what happened to the original protagonist after the end of Book 1.  You should cover some of that between the action of the new book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It helps a lot if the new protagonist has a significant role in the first book, to make readers care about their story.  That way you can drop the &quot;Set in the same world&quot; part since everybody understands that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You gave an example of a family saga, where the new protagonist is just a baby in the first book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that particular case, you can prime the readers to be interested in the next book by having the parents think about &quot;How is the world going to be when Junior grows up?&quot;  Having them worry about this, you also make the readers worry about it... and then there is a new book just about that, how nice!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15500" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T11:46:06.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25631" CreationDate="2017-01-13T13:49:48.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR: You don't have to focus heavily on the trauma, just drop enough hints that Jack is dealing with it (or is haunted by it) when the plot isn't progressing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself if you really need to set your character 'back again' at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone who hit a wall of depression and anxiety in their late teenage years, I can tell you that the feeling never fully abated. People, like me, who experience deep depression/anxiety will probably tell you that it never truly goes away. It lurks, waiting to reemerge when you're most vulnerable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I learned that it was fruitless to 'cure' myself from feeling horrible. No amount of good things nor the highest of highs will ever stop the inevitable lows, however depression/anxiety can be very manageable with the right attitude. Nobody at work, nor many of my closest friends know that I'm like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does this relate to Jack? Well maybe Jack will forever be changed by this event and his daily struggle with dark thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now he has to cope with the aftermath, plus new responsibilities, guilt he places on himself, blame placed on him by others, and he's worried about more traumas happening in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, that sounds like a deep and very interesting character. It makes him real. People can be quite resilient - Jack can continue to function normally from the perspective of others, but maybe since the trauma he hates to be alone? Or suffers nightmares? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally disagree with the other answer. Real people don't just get happier after trauma. &lt;em&gt;Good things happening don't cancel out the bad things.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21966" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T13:49:48.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24673" CreationDate="2017-01-13T14:01:28.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the classic model of a story, the protagonist pursues their desire to the limits of their endurance, concluding in some profound change or revelation (depending on whether you think people can change). In some sense, this drains the character of story potential. They have either achieved their desire or been defeated in their attempt. If they have achieved their desire, there is no basis for another story arc. (Or it must be a lesser arc with a lesser objective.) If they have failed, there is no logical trying again, because they have already tried to the limits of their endurance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the classic character arc has been accomplished, therefore, and you want to tell another story in the same world, it makes sense that you should change protagonist. New protagonist equals new arc. The previous protagonist can play a new role in the new story: wise man instead of hero, perhaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative is that you are telling one story across multiple books. LOTR consists of six books in three volumes, but it is one story arc. A change of protagonist would be out of the question here because the original arc is not complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another pattern we see in serials is that each episode is a different person's story arc in which the recurring hero plays a role. The hero's story potential is never exhausted because they are never actually the protagonist of the story arc. Or, there is a story arc for the hero but it is told very slowly through their participation in the story arcs of a new secondary character each time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet another alternative is the maturation angle. In a maturation plot, the protagonist grows up as a result of the story arc. But there are multiple stage of growing up. Each arc can achieve push them to the limit of their endurance for their current level of maturity, forcing them to accomplish the next stage of growing up. But there is still more growing up to do, so there is still story potential remaining even after they are pushed to the limit of endurance in the last round of maturation. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a classic example of this. It also shows its limits. There is only so much growing up that a person can do, after which there is no maturation stories left to tell. Lewis has to switch protagonists in the Narnia chronicles as his characters grow up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T14:01:28.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26007" CreationDate="2017-01-13T14:01:56.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mention that you don't enjoy metafiction on the level you write at, but that you love it when &quot;used by great writers&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the first thing to consider is what you think makes these &quot;great writers&quot; so great. What is it about the way they do metafiction that makes it work so well, where other writers' attempts fall flat for you? This is a very personal thing, I suppose, and requires introspection on your part, but to help you along, here's what I think:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think all great works of metafiction have three key features in common:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1 -&lt;/strong&gt; They have some kind of more straighforward (i.e. non-meta) idea at their core which comes - or else is so expertly crafted that it appears to come - from a place of sincere passion and interest on the part of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2 -&lt;/strong&gt; This idea, or the author's particular angle on it, is &lt;em&gt;best expressed&lt;/em&gt; in a self-referential way, wherein the structure of the story takes on aspects of the theme and embodies them. I like to think of this like a hall of mirrors, wherein the narrative self-reference allows the reader to become completely immersed in the ideas (for example, the narrator's obsession in Pale Fire, the themes of painful self awareness and media addiction in Infinite Jest).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3 -&lt;/strong&gt; Some kind of emotional or thematic progression throughout (as, I think, should be expected of any fiction, and no amount of formal experimentation, stylistic flair or technical brillance can replace it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, of course you don't have to write metafiction of this or any  other sort, but I feel like identifying the things that really appeal to you about certain kinds of writing can help you to understand why you're struggling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect you haven't quite worked out what it is you want your writing to be (or to be about), and you're using the techniques of metafiction as a way to get around that fact. Solve &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; problem, and the appropriate form will stem naturally from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T14:01:56.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26031" CreationDate="2017-01-13T14:20:07.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Humans are not distinctly rational or logical.  If your characters were vulcan from the Star Trek universe, their devotion to logic might shield them from some emotional backlash of their decision's down side.  ...but they are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making a decision which affects the outside world, comes with the potential for negative consequences for the decision maker, even when no direct cause is visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your protagonist is a moral person, guilt over the damage they have done to others may haunt them.  The memory of a previous decision's consequences to strangers may haunt them, even before the new decision is made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the protagonist is a loving person, horrific anguish can rise from causing harm to someone they love.  Love is recursive, so the harm may jump through multiple hearts before reaching your protagonist. If the decision harms the spouse of your protagonist's lover's brother and the brother suicides over that loss, both your protagonist and their lover are in for more anguish than their relationship can possibly survive.  If the brother is already in a precarious emotional state before the action, fear might prey upon the protagonist, even before the decision is made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ego plays into these kinds of situations as well.  If your protagonist prides themselves on some attribute or strength of character; and if the choice which is to be made would contradict that beneficial self image, nebulous hesitation and anxiety may precede that actual decision.  This anxiety may seem to have no source as the story starts, but slowly clarify as the decision approaches, possibly adding a powerful subplot to your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick to any of these possibilities involves the subtlety of their insertion into your story.  You can't just tell the reader that something emotional is going on.  Emotions, especially complex emotions are one of the places where a delicate writing hand can weave magic.  &quot;Show, don't tell&quot; is never more true than here.  It is okay if some of your readers don't understand why your protagonist is disturbed by the choice, as long as the rest of your readers are carefully guided to a place where they can understand and relate to how complex and perplexing it can be to live in our world where decisions often affect and harm others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="11221" LastEditDate="2017-01-13T18:16:02.477" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T18:16:02.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26031" CreationDate="2017-01-13T14:38:23.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you rightly perceive, this is about sacrifice. It is about loss. It is about how much the character is willing to bleed for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The implication of this is that much of the story has to be dedicated to making it very clear how much bleeding would be involved for the character in this situation. It is why so many quest stories spend so much time at the beginning on the joys of home. Think the beginning of LOTR and how much time it spends on establishing Fordo's love of the Shire. Think about how much time the Spriderman movies spend on the romance with MJ before Spidy has to choose between her an a bus full of children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stakes are not established in the moment. The whole of the story before the climax are spent establishing the stakes, so that in the moment the reader knows exactly what the decision will cost the protagonist, just how much they are going to have to bleed for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T14:38:23.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26044" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-13T16:58:00.440" Score="1" ViewCount="3964" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I have done a lot of research I still do not know if I can use a real secondary school in my book. Can I do this? Are there precautions I can take if I do? What are my options? Should I contact the school and ask?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22999" LastEditorUserId="22999" LastEditDate="2017-01-15T19:11:38.060" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T04:49:04.463" Title="Can I use a real secondary school for my book?" Tags="|novel|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26032" CreationDate="2017-01-13T17:20:37.547" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can have as many subjects as you like; you can only have one story arc. Or, at least, you can only have one story arc per character. Do all of these aspects of the protagonist's life contribute to the story arc? Do they inform his desire or frustrate his achievement of his desire? If yes, do they do so in a fashion that builds the overall arc of tension? It's not about how many pieces you have, it is about how well they are coordinated to create a satisfying story arc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T17:20:37.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26046" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26050" CreationDate="2017-01-13T20:53:17.010" Score="3" ViewCount="445" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have previously mentioned in other posts that I was a molecular biologist and ICU nurse. Sadly, that means I am bedeviled with a double dose of bad writing habits: academese and medicalese. Just write simply may be the response of many to this post. But, this is a real and possibly incurable condition: &lt;a href=&quot;http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/why_academics_stink_at_writing.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/why_academics_stink_at_writing.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet others suggest scientists are naturals at storytelling since we make a living translating raw data into a narrative designed to convince others:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://venpopov.com/2017/01/09/all-scientists-should-be-storytellers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://venpopov.com/2017/01/09/all-scientists-should-be-storytellers/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely, this isn't a universal issue, Crichton was after all both an academic and a medical doctor. I must admit I was surprised to discover why I was never impressed by his presentation of science; it seemed way to simplified or even wrong to be written by a Harvard trained medical doctor.The reason it isn't good science is because Crichton actually didn't initially write the Andromeda Strain in its final version. His editor, Robert Gottlieb, rejected the story and made Crichton rewrite the story several times until it suited Gottlieb's taste. Here is what Crichton stated about the editing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;When I sent Bob a draft of The Andromeda Strain—the first book I did for him—in 1968 he said he would publish it if I would agree to completely rewrite it. I gulped and said OK. He gave me his feelings about what had to happen on the phone, in about twenty minutes. He was very quick. Anyway, I rewrote it completely. He called me up and said, Well, this is good, now you only have to rewrite half of it. Again, he told me what needed to happen—for the book to begin in what was then the middle, and fill in the material from the beginning sometime later on.&#xA;  Finally we had the manuscript in some kind of shape. I was just completely exhausted. He said to me, Dear boy, you’ve got this ending backwards. (He’s married to an actress, and he has a very theatrical manner. He calls me “dear boy,” like an English actor might do.) I don’t remember exactly the way it was, but I had it so that one of the characters was supposed to turn on a nuclear device, and there was suspense about whether or not that would happen. Bob said, No, no, the switch has to turn itself on automatically, and the character has to turn it off. He was absolutely right. That was the first time I understood that when there is something wrong in writing, the chances are that there is either too much of it, too little of it, or that it is in some way backwards.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1760/robert-gottlieb-the-art-of-editing-no-1-robert-gottlieb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1760/robert-gottlieb-the-art-of-editing-no-1-robert-gottlieb&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My novel is a fictional piece but I am presenting real science. The first few chapters teach actual science principles that will be used throughout the book, hopefully in a clear, concise format. But, writers HATE to delete their hard-crafted passages. Most of us cannot afford a New York City editor. How are we to know what sections most readers skip and therefore are best deleted to maintain the rapid pace needed in a thriller?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="22808" LastEditDate="2017-01-16T13:59:12.553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T13:59:12.553" Title="To Cut or not to Cut, that is the Question" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26046" CreationDate="2017-01-13T21:20:59.667" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are either presenting real science principles or you are writing a novel. You can't do both. You might as well say that you are presenting a symphony concert but first you are starting off with a monster truck rally. It's not the same audience. Even if there is a crossover between the two audiences, people who like both symphonies and monster trucks, they don't want them in the same venue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what Creighton is saying in the piece you quote. People do not read the Andromeda strain because they are interested in the science, but because they have an instinctive fear of contagion. It isn't the presentation of the science that matters in such a story, it is the manipulation of fear and hope. If you use technical details it is either to evoke fear or to evoke hope. You use whatever details do that best, regardless of whether they are correct science or not. Correct science is usually full of caveats and complexities that leave people feeling confused rather than afraid or hopeful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole anti-vaccination brigade demonstrate this basic psychology. They need a clearly delineated enemy in which to repose the fear that every parent has for their children's health, and they need one that they can clearly and definitively do something about. Doing something, like refusing vaccinations, gives them a sense of being the hero of the story of their children's lives. Real science muddies that clear and simple heroic storyline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is the problem with real science in novel. Real science is hard to reconcile with clear storylines. That is what Creighton had to learn to deal with and that is what you will have to learn to deal with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how you cut: If it does not create a clear and well defined threat that corresponds to people's native fears for themselves and their families, or solve such a threat in a clear and well defined way, cut it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are writing a novel. A novel is a piece of artifice that corresponds to a particular emotional need in the human heart. Politics, history, mythology, science, etc all provide elements you can borrow and bend to lend verisimilitude to a story, to provide McGuffins when you need them, and to create obstacles to the hero's journey. And that is all they do. A novel is not a textbook. Cut anything is is not contributing to the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or write a text book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T21:20:59.667" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26046" CreationDate="2017-01-13T21:42:12.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to write a book that will be turned into a blockbuster movie, your book must be readable by the middle two thirds of the normal distribution of intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure that as a scientist you understand that if you want to reach the major part of a population, that part will include readers that are unable to follow complicated science. That is simple statistics. Those with an academic education make up about a quarter of the population. The largest market share lies between an IQ of 85 and 115. Those of &quot;average intelligence&quot;. That's two standard deviations around the mean, or 68% of the population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For these people, who, in school, have proven their limited text comprehension, your writing must be extremely simple and incomplicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even &quot;hard SF&quot; usually doesn't go very far with the science. Narrative fiction that presents more than some superficial scientific concepts is extremely rare. I know of only two authors who manage to narrate stories that show interesting characters who are motivated by science that is presented in (some) detail. One is Stanislaw Lem, for example in his novel &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Investigation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Investigation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. The other is Kim Stanley Robinson, for example in his &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_Signs_of_Rain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science in the Capital&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; trilogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T21:42:12.033" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26046" CreationDate="2017-01-14T00:26:25.960" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My general heuristic (which I learned from Dean Wesley Smith): &lt;strong&gt;Nothing gets to the reader except through a POV character.&lt;/strong&gt; Especially through a POV character's opinions and attitudes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I want to get some detail or idea to the reader, I give a POV character a reason to notice it. Even better: Pay attention to it. Even better: Have an opinion about it or an attitude toward it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If no character would attend to a given detail, then it &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; doesn't affect the story. If it doesn't affect the story, I strongly question whether to put it into the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, a detail &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; affect characters, even if the characters don't know it. And a detail &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; affect the reader's experience of the story, even if no character ever notices it. See my note about omniscient POV below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days, I don't often have to cut things that don't fit my heuristic, because I focus on the POV character while I write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I write something the character doesn't notice, or doesn't linger on, or doesn't care about one way or another, I either cut it or give the character a reason to notice it, attend to it, react to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing an omniscient POV, you could think of the omniscient narrator as the POV character, so the reader experiences the story and its world through the narrator's observations, attention, and attitudes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T00:26:25.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26046" CreationDate="2017-01-14T03:06:29.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can intersperse non-fictional material in a book, but it would be helpful if you could start with something that engages your reader with your characters first.  I think your book will be more satisfying to you if you can implement your vision for it -- with perhaps some revision -- rather than just scrapping it in order to appeal to a wider audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples: Barbara Kingsolver, &lt;em&gt;A Walk in the Woods&lt;/em&gt; by Bill Bryson, and narrative non-fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to offer an optional short summary of each chapter of scientific explanation for those who are already familiar with your branch of science, or for those who don't mind having a hazy idea of the science involved.  (They might come back and read the details a little later!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And Lauren is right, you will need to try it out on some beta readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T03:06:29.383" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26051" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-14T03:15:49.663" Score="2" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a persuasive argument in rebuttal of a specific document.  I'm tired of the word &quot;distortion,&quot; and this time I want to say it with a simile.  Please help me find a good simile for this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Context: the document I'm rebutting states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The court determined that Student B exhibited adverse educational impact because notwithstanding her passing grades, during her final year at School #1, her symptoms were sufficiently severe that she was unable to attend public high school at all and required homebound instruction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The distortion is in the word &quot;passing.&quot;  Student B was actually earning all A's and B's.  But the author of the document finds it expedient to call the grades &quot;passing&quot; because elsewhere in the document she argues that Student A did not experience a significant academic decline when he went from a 3.8 gpa to a 2.2.  So she harps on the fact that although Student A's grades have been declining, he is still passing his courses... and therefore should be found ineligible for special education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, after quoting the specific passage from the court decision about the &quot;A's and B's,&quot; I want to say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Calling such grades “passing” is like ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and that's where I need a good simile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T14:55:22.120" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T14:55:22.120" Title="I need a good simile to demonstrate a distortion of the facts" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-01-14T17:01:41.230" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26051" CreationDate="2017-01-14T04:08:19.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing to remember if using a simile here is that, while As and Bs are indeed good grades, they are not unprecedented. The danger is that the simile could stray into hyperbole, such as &quot;like saying Mozart had a reasonable understanding of music.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend using a down-to-earth simile such as &quot;like calling the Employee of the Month's job performance 'adequate'.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22936" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T04:08:19.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26051" CreationDate="2017-01-14T06:59:37.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simile&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;em&gt;compare-to using &quot;like&quot; or &quot;as&quot; (kinda tired but I suppose this is a &lt;strong&gt;noun&lt;/strong&gt;...)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Like Harvey Levin with a side-boob shot&quot;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Lets use your ex. as template....&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Calling such grades passing is like calling a 'California Roll-though' a legal traffic maneuver.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Calling such grades passing is like calling &lt;strong&gt;Business Math&lt;/strong&gt; legit.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Calling such grades passing is like calling is like calling a violent crime-scene a 'spot of blood here and there.'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Calling such grades passing is like calling Jimi Hendrix an &lt;em&gt;average&lt;/em&gt; guitar player.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Calling such grades passing is like calling [Mr. X[ the best art teacher in the entire district.&quot; &lt;em&gt;[Mr. X obviously sucks hard b@ll$$]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Calling such grades passing is like calling that mangled SUV out front [the one they use to scare us straight once a year - complete with blood and unwashed brain matter] &lt;em&gt;&quot;in good taste.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;...and as I wind down...a touch of unverifiable abstract editorial...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Calling such grades passing is like calling Hemingway's writing technique anything more than &quot;typing.&quot; (as contrast - try &lt;strong&gt;F. Scott Fitzgerald&lt;/strong&gt; on for size).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hope this....[j/k] ...confuses you ;) - Tap&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T06:59:37.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26044" CreationDate="2017-01-14T07:01:23.017" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use a real secondary school. However, there are advantages and disadvantages to be aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Advantages&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are able to visit your setting and take notes on various details that can help bring the setting to life for the readers. These details do not need to be limited to the physical setting, but can also include notable incidents (in the eyes of the narrator/viewpoint character, of course) that occurred at the school or people who attended/worked at the school. If it's a school you've attended or are attending, then you are also able to draw on your own experiences there. Using an actual secondary school can also help make your details more concrete, as you might be more aware of specific details to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Disadvantages&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because you are using an actual place, people will be able to know when you adjust details to tell a better story or get details wrong. And these details people will nitpick over will include not just the depiction of the setting, but also the events and people described in the story. Depending on the school, you might find a treasure trove of information to use as setting and character research for the time period the story takes place in or you might find little to nothing at all. Plus, you may find yourself feeling constrained in what you can write about as you include actual people and events related to the school. You'll also have to be careful in your depictions, as presenting too negative a depiction of the school or actual people could be construed as libel. While &lt;a href=&quot;http://helensedwick.com/how-to-use-real-people-in-your-writing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; talks about the risks of using real people, some of what it says is applicable to writing about real places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion for a fictional story would be to take the secondary school you have in mind and use it as an inspiration for a fictional secondary school you create. This allows you to make use of the advantages of having a real location while avoiding most of the disadvantages. Be sure to adequately change the names and possibly use a disclaimer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion for a nonfiction story would be to use the secondary school as a setting if it is important to the story being told. And be thorough in your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13618" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T07:01:23.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10062" CreationDate="2017-01-14T08:04:28.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a transcriber for various media outlets; in radio (every media conglomerate has their own style-sheet - use theirs - ans always default to AP; but for startups and those lacking SOPs for trascripted audio....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most new/talk/shock-jock (shockshockshockshock.....) and laaaaaame political talk shows script like this....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[im the call screener and dont have to write this out, if the host even needs it...back in the day (early 2000s...we'd just let Adobe CoolEdit run...if anything interesting happened; we taped it; transcribed it; and put it on the wire...I dont wish to put my fmr media company on blast but if I uploaded multimedia, audio or text to &quot;Chicago&quot; any station affiliate could use it ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[call screener me - note how many f#c7s I give] KABC...what do you want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[caller] HI! I wanted to talk to Paul about all these meddling college kids messing up our town and lowering property values...I pay taxes and I'm goddamn sick of [click!]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs] line 2 you wanna talk to Paul?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[caller] yes ...my cat Mr. Snoogums ran up the old pine tree on Los Osos again; I tried 911, then the dispatch....no one will take my call??? Also I wanted to weigh in my [racism] against Obama....]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs]click! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs]line 3 you wanna talk to Paul about TODAY'S TOPIC? Should the city council be allowed to shut down the biggest Mardi Gras west of the real one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[caller]Hello? Hi? Can-an anyone hear-er-e-r me-e-e-e? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs]turn your phone down sir...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[caller] is that better-er-er-er? can you-ou-u hear-ear-r me-e-e...????&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs] click!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs]line 4 - anything useful to add line 4? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[caller] My name is General Johnson Boddington. &#xA;I was a light colonel over a hot LZ in the 'nam....let me tell you &#xA;....you young piece of s--- .... am I on with Paul????&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs]no - this is the screener; and you never will be if you pop off like that again. Now explain to me what you'd like to say to our host ... use polite company speech &lt;em&gt;please man!!!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[caller] apologies young man...were I to spout off like that....my CO would &lt;em&gt;&quot;make me kiss the gunner's daughter&quot;&lt;/em&gt;...and there's no buts about that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[host] Chris; do we have any &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;legit&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; callers &lt;em&gt;or are you just pullin it back there?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs-me] well - it's a bit of both ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs -typed only to host] vamp for a min. I gotta vet line 4. [no reply host gets it]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs to caller] ok, I need you to spell, pronounce, append or include any special titles; ill repeat it back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[caller] you can call me General Boddington&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs] and what branch of the armed the armed services did you serve?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[caller] The United States Army Air Corps ... and let me tell you this ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cutting him off - cs] Division? Battalion? MOS? (verify caller isn't completely full of shit)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[caller] The 336th; 2nd Battalion; I was a bombardier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs] decorations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[caller] what is this 20 questions? ok...I've got a bronze star and a unit&#xA;citation for victory in Panama. My MOS is ELINT (that checks) I wanna talk about this weird light we saw over Vandenberg AFB last night ..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs to host] Paul we've got General Boddington; he wants to weigh in on the blue bluish-green sphere we saw shoot across Vandenberg last night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Paul-host] line 4 your on the air...... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Paul-host] line 4 your on the air...... [severely annoyed]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Paul-host] God-[cs dumps out]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs] Paul I had to to dump the GD you know what ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Caller] Well-elll-ell-el-ll-l I-i-i-i wanted-ed-ed-d to-to-o-o-o&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs] Caller I'll ask you once more...turn the radio down....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Caller] My bad...Linda can you turn the...yeah-- the...no ...right there...turn the...good Christ...LINDA!!! &lt;em&gt;crashing noise&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;female scream&lt;/em&gt;.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[host] is everything ok?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[woman grabs phone] yes...we fine...ya see...the General gets very angry when I fail to carry out simple instructions.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[host] That sounded bad though; is anyone hurt? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[female] no....we-we fine....the General just needs to take his medicine...there there...lie down...youse a good boy...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[caller] baby want medicine in bottle....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[female] little formula for baby??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[caller] yes use the sippy cup....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[female] get ready here comes the milk.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs] click! sorry bout that Paul&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;****hysterical laughter from cs, boardop &amp;amp; host...cs lays down a bed of &quot;Feels so Good&quot; by Chuck Mangione to drown out uncontrollable laughter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[CPU] clicks over to local news/traffic, ads, weather, public service announcements, network news....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[cs &amp;amp; host] tag show with apologies; jokes; teasers for tomorrow...bed is &quot;Africa&quot; by Toto; overlaid with credits, outtro, station ID, then Rush Limbaugh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Credit to &lt;a href=&quot;http://philhendrieshow.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Phil Hendrie&lt;/a&gt; and talk show callers from Tampa to San Luis Obispo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T08:04:28.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25794" CreationDate="2017-01-14T08:37:55.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When new at something difficult (let's use playing an instrument, painting and prose as examples)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Any creative tool takes years of daily practice before it becomes &quot;fun&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For me; percussion performance still sucks but it's on my bucket list to change that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prose is not my strong suit; &lt;em&gt;editing is.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of natural talent, in the case of music performance and editing/proofreading....same for painting and creative writing; &lt;em&gt;it's all about practice&lt;/em&gt;. Creating &amp;amp; jamming on a trumpet, trombone, drums, midi, euphonium, baritone bugle and mellophone bugle...&lt;em&gt;it comes easy.&lt;/em&gt; Editing the work of my peers as well-&lt;em&gt;-easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put a pair of sticks in my hand though? Or task me to paint a line of &quot;happy trees&quot;? -- &lt;strong&gt;I STINK.&lt;/strong&gt; I'm a mediocre drummer at best (this will change over time) and my skills with acryllics are laughable (less likely to change 'cuz I prefer to draw using pencil/pen media; nor do I picture a future that features &quot;plants - a study; acryllic on easel by cwelke&quot; Though I'd love to paint &quot;happy trees&quot; I have little inclination and even less drive to put the work in. I write, I edit, I draw [using pencils &amp;amp; ink], I do maths; I write code, solve MIS problems, tutor, date once or twice a year and get a laugh about half that rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are just a youngster; your mind &amp;amp; body need time to figure what they like to do; what they DO do; what they dislike...and what they simply WILL NOT do. Resist the tempation to box youself in or out of any creative skill until at least your mid-20s. I'm pushing 40; as you can see I have a clear picture of my capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;--&gt; Only give up if sci-fi novella-composition brings you no reason to smile whatsoever. Is it the subject matter? Or is it the 70ish page length that gets ya? Test this by writing a crime novella; or sci-fi short story&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15292" LastEditorUserId="15292" LastEditDate="2017-01-16T17:30:59.417" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T17:30:59.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26057" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26060" CreationDate="2017-01-14T08:55:36.247" Score="3" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, long ago in my writing I wrote a chapter where a book housing a specific missing chapter was found in a treasury. As you can tell, it's super ultra convenient to just have it in the treasury all along and skip out about 10,000 words that I decided to edit out after writing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a chapter to the writing yesterday morning but deleted all of it yesterday and replaced it with something else. Why? Because I was making something else really conveniently found in a treasury. I decided that considering I already used the convenient treasury find, I would make the characters go on the  mission I planned for book 1 to get the important plot item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it bad writing to say, have an event that is repeated? For my example, having something found in a treasury, and then having something else later found in a treasury?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T22:31:01.933" Title="Is it good to repeat the same form of event?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|planning|scene|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26058" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-14T09:30:04.523" Score="5" ViewCount="716" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've planned the chapter I'll write tomorrow. It features a &lt;strong&gt;bandit ambush!&lt;/strong&gt; That's so exciting! Wow! The sickly scent of blood, the glistening blades and powerless enemies. They are nothing compared to my godly knight who is so skilled with a sword she can slice asunder the shaft of an arrow. Here's my characters mission plan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We're getting tired on the road. There's a building up ahead, maybe we should go and spend the night there because it's snowy. But, it's filled with people from the  &lt;em&gt;Black Cross&lt;/em&gt; bandit gang or something. We're going to need to clear it out, face the bandits, and fight valorously. Luckily, we have the young lady who is able to cut arrows in half on our side. Automatic victory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is, they dash in and wreck the fort the bandits are staying in. Compared to the combined tactics and communication of our heroes, they are naught. So, the plan will be successful without any issues, and they will successfully clear out the bandits. Furthermore, my godly knight will have another time to shine, where she mercilessly shall sever an enemy's head from their shoulders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it really cliche to have an ambush?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it a good idea to make the adventure a little more interesting by having the occasional battle?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-03-24T21:58:09.630" LastActivityDate="2019-03-25T12:28:42.290" Title="Is a bandit ambush a fatal, cliche mistake?" Tags="|fantasy|cliches|combat|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26057" CreationDate="2017-01-14T11:49:14.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a little convenient, but you can get around that a few ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Hang a lampshade on it. That is, have the characters point out that they found that other MacGuffin at the treasury too, and what &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; did the king hide in here? Good grief, is that Amelia Earhart's luggage? Turns out the king was a huge collector, and hoarder, of ancient and valuable MacGuffins. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Your bad guy hid item number 1 in the the treasury. It took a long time to find and it was hard for the heroes to get in and out safely. Where's the last place your heroes would think to look for &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; item, your bad guy thinks? Back in the dang treasury! So he does it on purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T11:49:14.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26057" CreationDate="2017-01-14T12:49:10.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can get away with it, using an approach such as Lauren suggests, with one important caveat. You need to make sure that the stakes are higher than last time. If you have not raised the stakes, it is going to seem like a skipping record, the same passage repeating over and over again. (Does the metaphor of the skipping record still work these days? Old vinyl LPs could get a scratch in them that would make the needle skip back into the previous groove so that the same section of music played again and again.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that a story arc is about rising tension. If your crew is going around collecting items, the tension needs to rise for each item they collect. There are lots of ways for it to rise, but if it does not, the reader will just feel they are being told the same incident over and over even if they details are different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can even work the back to the treasury angle to your advantage here, since the assumption that the item can't also be there can be an additional distraction that keeps the tension rising. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T12:49:10.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26058" CreationDate="2017-01-14T12:55:01.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If they can't possibly lose, it is not a battle, it is a spot of exercise. There is nothing exciting about a bandit ambush if the bandits have no chance. Certainly going to win and do is not exciting. Probably going to lose and don't is exciting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T12:55:01.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26058" CreationDate="2017-01-14T13:51:20.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am with Mark Baker on this one. Looks like you have already established the level of competence of your character, so showing it again would be redundant and would likely annoy me as a reader.&#xA;What you can use the situation like this for is to introduce a twist of sorts—your good guys win (of course), but someone gets hurt, and can't walk or ride for a while—or show a previously hidden character trait—she suddenly shows mercy, or the opposite, etc.&#xA;The idea is: do not repeat yourself, it makes your story boring, even with the full of action fight scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T13:51:20.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25631" CreationDate="2017-01-14T16:15:44.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;tl;dr &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find myself wanting more detail in the question.  &quot;Lauren Ipsum&quot; says that it is inappropriate to give story-specific detail, but you could still say, for instance, whether or not the items in the “series of traumatic, personal events”  are of the same type.  …Also whether or not the guilt and blame are justified — although the feeling is that they are not.  (I take it that the fear of future “traumas” is rational.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find myself getting vague memories of characters, in movies, who have a dark (evil) or pathological [usually both, conflated, I venture] inner motive, and who normally appear &quot;normal&quot; to other persons.  The point there is that it sounds as though you do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; want to go in that direction.  (The ulterior motive is the important one, in such cases.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I second “Rapscallion” ’s statement that one is not unaffected by traumatic events.  There is the point that one is generally able to come across as “normal”.  (This is informed by the simple fact that things such as friends, sunlight and activity do make one feel better, directly and immediately.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;/tl;dr&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a “quick-and-dirty” fix available, if you need it:  appearing to be “normal” can be a “survival” trait.  That is… however badly one might have been affected by something, such as to cause (or strongly dispose) one to pertinent emotions or behaviour… this can be astonishingly over-ridden, where the detail of a situation triggers an (irrational and subconscious) belief that some particular behaviour (“normal” or otherwise) can protect one from a feared hurt.  A simple example is an injured animal; in the presence of a predator, an injured animal will behave as much as possible as though it is not injured.  The parallel with a human being in a social situation is fairly straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23008" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T16:15:44.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26058" CreationDate="2017-01-14T17:59:02.260" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I see it, there are three possible uses for such a scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You show the skill of your protagonist because you need your reader to know it later. Just saying that your knight is skilled is not sufficient, you need to prove it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is like the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3pAAR5TAt0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bus fight scene&lt;/a&gt; at the beginning of the movie &lt;em&gt;The Specialist&lt;/em&gt;, where before the fight starts we know that the character played by Sylvester Stalone will beat the ruffians' asses, but the scene is there to show just how effortlessly Stalone puts them out. Also, he &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PetTheDog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pets the dog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michael J. Sullivan uses a bandit ambush in this way at the beginning of &lt;em&gt;Theft of Swords&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy fiction isn't always as plot driven as thrillers. In some books, some scenes are there only to allow the reader to spend more time exploring the fictional world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tom Bombadil at the beginning of the &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; serves no purpose regarding the main plot. We learn nothing about the characters, or the background of their quest. This scene is just there because the &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; is about experiencing a world.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While the ambush fails predictably, &lt;em&gt;something else&lt;/em&gt; happens during it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it was me writing that book, then one of the knight's companions would be all sexed up from the violence and they would all hump each other afterwards ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did I say three? Here's another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the tongue-in-cheek style of your question is any indication then your novel might have a humorous touch. If that is so, repetition and meaningless events might be part of the humor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-02-05T19:23:50.423" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T19:23:50.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26058" CreationDate="2017-01-14T18:32:12.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If cliches were a mistake they wouldn't be cliches.  Depending on what your goal is, what you want from your work and what your definition of success the cliche might help you get the results you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21591" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T18:32:12.453" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25631" CreationDate="2017-01-14T22:09:31.587" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short of it: &lt;strong&gt;Your character needs a way to find hope.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, you can skim over the entire process and let readers assume that your character’s figuring things out. But in my opinion, if the trauma was a major driver of your plot, so should your character’s recovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a fairly extensive background in dealing with mental illness, and there is one recurring pattern. People who suffer from (major) depression often use phrases such as, “What’s the point?” because they have lost all hope for the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point (through therapy, or otherwise), they find someone (or something) they can relate to who has endured the same struggle, but who has already progressed past that obstacle (without necessarily being “cured”). This shows them that they are not alone in this struggle, and that yes, those hardships can be overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one reason group therapy and support groups are so powerful for survivors of trauma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But just as when trying to help a depressed friend, the last thing you want to write is on-the-nose dialogue where some know-it-all serves the main character with a solution on a silver platter. “You MUST do this if you’re going to get better,” or “Look at all the people who have it worse than you.” And magically, your main character sees the light, bounces back up, and all is well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More people than you think suffer from mental illness. I can guarantee you, reading such dialogue is going to piss them off. That’s not how things work in the real world. The answer must feel self-generated. So your character needs to undergo the same process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have various secondary characters, or mere circumstance, (inconspicuously) present them with clues. Then let your protagonist figure it out on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the novel I’m writing, I put my protagonist through such an ordeal, by making her lose everything. I follow up with one single nihilistic chapter, but pretty quickly her best friend comes to the rescue (you don't want to bash your reader over the head with how desperate your character is getting, because reading that sort of thing gets old quickly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned earlier, the best friend doesn’t offer solutions, only support. Just like in the real world, the first thing you offer is support, not solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, depression isn't cured overnight. So she starts to bounce back, then crashes again. What the friend’s intervention did accomplish however, was getting the protagonist out of her inertia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Support is what gives us the strength to get back on our feet.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She decides to return to the town where she lost everything, in hopes of figuring things out. There, she bumps into a guy she despises, but because he’s trying to apologize for his behavior leading up to her traumatic event, she listens to what he has to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somehow, HE went from being a deadbeat to someone who now has a firm grip on his own life. She determines that the reason he used to be such a jerk was he went through trauma of his own for years. Then the event that caused HER trauma was apparently a wakeup call for HIM. In a roundabout way, she recognizes a bit of herself in him. She realizes they’re rather similar, except he has now progressed beyond that stage of his life, even though no one ever expected him to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relating to his struggle is what gives her hope and ultimately sets her on the path to recovery.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a major theme of my novel, so I devote several chapters to it. Since this subplot isn’t central to your story, obviously you’ll need to adjust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, I think it is important to depict the ups and downs of the healing process, because that is what real people with depression experience every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine your character will go on with their life, with that trauma constantly in the back of their mind. It might impede everything else they do, but little by little, clues will show up in everyday events that help them connect the dots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hope is what allows us to move forward in the face of overwhelming odds.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2686" LastEditorDisplayName="user2686" LastEditDate="2017-01-15T20:48:36.340" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T20:48:36.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8694" CreationDate="2017-01-15T01:09:35.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia articles are available under the CC BY-SA license. If you reproduce the entire article within a larger work, you must credit the authors (which is typically done with a link to the article's &quot;view history&quot; page; see the &lt;a href=&quot;https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia terms of use&lt;/a&gt; for more info. This is the &quot;BY&quot; (or &quot;attribution&quot;) component of the requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're quoting an entire article within a larger work, you're not creating a &quot;derivative work,&quot; so the &quot;SA&quot; (or &quot;share alike&quot;) requirement does not apply. You can keep your book, overall, under full copyright, or apply any license you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22955" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T01:09:35.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26070" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26080" CreationDate="2017-01-15T02:55:05.073" Score="8" ViewCount="1320" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an idea I'm working on, where there's a huge backstory that I'm not sure how to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my particular case, the backstory and main story are these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The backstory&lt;/strong&gt; begins as stereotypical “Hero” plotline, whereas a boy starts from nothing, gains companions, and goes to save the world. However, his seven companions betray him at the climax of the story where they defeat the clichéd villain that is the source of all evil in the world, who turns out to be a construct designed by his seven “companions” to gain the rest of humanities trust, requiring someone blinded by justice to act as their mask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The &quot;main&quot; story begins two thousand years later,&lt;/strong&gt; with this protagonist somehow being resurrected. His history has turned him cold, and he directly avoids the path of a hero – attempting to avoid those similar to his previous seven companions and eventually to him being the one to betray his companions themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m currently conflicted between three different ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Creating an entire book or half of a book, playing out the backstory, the hero’s constructed ‘fake’ journey, as a sort of ‘Volume 0’&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Summarizing the backstory in a prologue (Yes, I know. ‘ugh’), where I feel I can quickly juxtapose the &quot;heroism&quot; of the story with the pain and shock the protagonist feels at his betrayal. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Skipping the backstory, beginning the story with the protagonist having no memories, and building the world and his memories fresh.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary advantage of the first idea is that I don’t believe it’s been done before, and it's a dramatic, effective story. However, since the primary story I want to tell is a very different thing - it revolves more around creating a nation and the intrinsic business, economic, and technological sides of it, which is all very different from the betrayal arc – I’m unsure if it would throw the readers off too much, or bore the readers with a semi clichéd story at the start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This issue is slightly patched in the second idea, as it’s far shorter; however I don’t know if the readers would be emotionally attached enough to the companions to feel the weight of a betrayal, where the readers wouldn’t relate fully to the main character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the third option however, while it would seem the most relatable and allow me to jump to the bulk of the nation building, I fear that simply jumping into the story may seem again clichéd and also confuse the reader not making them emotionally attached enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, one option I could potentially create is simply writing option 1 for my own reference, using option 2 alongside option 3 to deepen the story, and perhaps release option 1 for further backstory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I’m wondering if there is any other cases similar to this, or at least similar to option 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="23013" LastEditDate="2017-02-03T18:58:57.610" LastActivityDate="2017-09-28T18:30:22.017" Title="How do I handle a backstory big enough to be a story of its own?" Tags="|fiction|plot|fantasy|structure|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26071" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-15T10:33:36.337" Score="5" ViewCount="1110" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once upon a time I published a book via what you could call a vanity publisher. I paid money for the full process including book design etc. The ISBN is in their name. I was delighted by the high standard of the finished product, but not at all happy with the price they sold it at. I was an unknown author/first book - yet readers were expected to pay more for my book than from someone with a known reputation. I have also had to beg for royalty payments - now overdue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have now written a sequel as part of a series and want to recover my book back. I have purchased my own ISBN's and want to revert this book into something I fully own. Despite them sending me the final PDF - I also retained the final Word doc and I have the book design. It wouldn't take much for me to write a 2nd edition &amp;amp; upload on Clearspace, but not sure if this breaks some rules. Has anyone done this before or been in a similar situation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23015" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-15T15:58:05.107" LastActivityDate="2021-02-16T17:43:54.457" Title="Vanity publishers - authors who have paid for a service- what are our rights?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26070" CreationDate="2017-01-15T11:07:55.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Don't worry&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the idea &lt;strong&gt;appeals to &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, then go ahead and do it. There will be no issues as long as you write well. Out of the three options, choose the one you like the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I just say, you can't just make them 'betray' them just like that. It needs to be foreshadowed, machinated, built up and calculated to have the best effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure this idea would be thrilling to read!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T11:07:55.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26071" CreationDate="2017-01-15T13:22:04.190" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a copyright question, it is a contract question. You signed a contract with them. The terms of the contract tell you what you can and can't do. No one here can tell you what your contract says. Find it and read it. If you are uncertain how to interpret it, ask a lawyer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T13:22:04.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26070" CreationDate="2017-01-15T13:35:13.130" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the question you are really asking is, is the backstory the story you want to tell, or is it simply a fable on which the real story is based. None of us can answer that for you. If I had to guess, though, it sounds from the way you ask the question like you regard it as a fable that sets up the story you want to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So then the question becomes, when does the reader of the main story want to know the fable? The general rule of backstory is you only tell as much of it as you need to and only when the reader can't go on without it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, because a fable is a story in its own right, and can be told very briefly, you can lead with it. A good example of this is the way Alan Garner tells the Legend of Alderley in &lt;em&gt;The Weirdstone of Brisingamen&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing about a legend, though, it that it is not a character piece. It is a kind of myth. It can be told briefly because our sympathy is not with any one character, but with some mythic hope or peril. Thus the Legend of Alderley is about a company of pure knights in enchanted sleep under a hill until the time when they are needed to save England from final corruption. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your backstory seems to have the elements of legend, so this same approach seems workable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-09-28T16:36:10.050" LastActivityDate="2017-09-28T16:36:10.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26070" CreationDate="2017-01-15T13:42:49.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd be fine with your backstory as a standalone novella which functions as a prequel to your main story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harry Connolly did this with his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harryjconnolly.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Twenty Palaces&lt;/a&gt; series. There's a main trilogy, and then a prequel novel about how the main character came to be where he was at the start of the trilogy. The prequel is helpful but not necessary to understand the trilogy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read the Chronicles of Narnia in internal chronological order rather than publication order, &lt;em&gt;The Magician's Nephew&lt;/em&gt; is the first book and deals with the creation of Narnia. It's set before &lt;em&gt;The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe&lt;/em&gt; (and the other five books). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Rama&lt;/em&gt; series by Arthur C. Clarke is similar but not precisely identical. The first book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553287893&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rendezvous with Rama&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, sets up the arrival of the spaceship &lt;em&gt;Rama&lt;/em&gt; at Earth. The next three in the series center on the adventures of one family who are (I think &amp;mdash; it's been a while) mentioned in the first book, and they are set several decades later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T13:42:49.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-15T13:43:18.843" Score="0" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;A search finds no words to the copyrighted song title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23016" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T19:58:28.427" Title="Adding words to an instrumental only piano piece. Can I perform the song as my own?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26077" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-15T15:23:45.700" Score="1" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel that contains spy elements. Although the plot is based in the near future, it alludes to recent past historical events. Specifically, it discusses the 1985 'Year of the Spy' and its implications. Mole hunts resulted in the arrest of many of our own officials and case officers. Both the CIA and FBI had been infiltrated at the highest levels by double agents. Deep moles sacrificed lower placed agents in order to continue their treacherous usefulness to the Soviet Union. I discuss one in particular, Edward Lee Howard, who is the only known American to work for both the CIA and KGB. His defection to Russia and mysterious death are themselves worthy of a novel. At one point, Clinton planned to have the CIA abduct him using an editor, who was also a CIA analyst, help Howard prepare his own biography that was later published. Howard was reported to have died in 2002 in Russia under very mysterious circumstances but his body was never recovered. Are their any legal restrictions in mentioning famous historical persons or is the author forced to fictional the name and actual historical facts to prevent being sued?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985:_The_Year_of_the_Spy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985:_The_Year_of_the_Spy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lee_Howard&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lee_Howard&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://muse.jhu.edu/book/41073&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://muse.jhu.edu/book/41073&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-01-16T18:04:42.793" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T18:04:42.793" Title="Are there any legal restrictions on using the actual names of famous people in a historical novel?" Tags="|characters|legal|historical|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26077" CreationDate="2017-01-15T18:11:57.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very good editor friend gave me this link and she is very attuned to issues of this type:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and-quandaries/legal-questions/is-it-ok-to-write-a-fictional-story-about-a-historical-character&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and-quandaries/legal-questions/is-it-ok-to-write-a-fictional-story-about-a-historical-character&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a summation if you don't care to follow the link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You can write about historical people because the two main legal areas you need to worry about when writing about real people—defamation of character and invasion of privacy—only apply to living people,” Cook says. “The deceased’s heirs cannot sue under those causes of action either.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="22808" LastEditDate="2017-01-15T23:47:24.903" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T23:47:24.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26071" CreationDate="2017-01-15T18:27:45.790" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vanity presses make money from authors, not from selling copies, so there's at least a decent chance you've kept or can get back your copyright. Unfortunately, if you didn't study your contract to begin with, and they've proven so very poor, they're probably optimized mostly to wring more money out of you :-/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to check your contract to look for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who owns copyright.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who owns the book design,&lt;/strong&gt; which is different from who owns copyright over the text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rights reversion or contract termination,&lt;/strong&gt; which are the procedures to get back copyright from them if you've sold it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(I have also found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fictionfactor.com/self/vanity.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reference&lt;/a&gt; to an abhorrent practice where they don't claim copyright, but &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; stipulate that &quot;that &quot;Author agrees that 1st Books indefinitely will retain possession of the materials submitted by Author to 1st Books and used to format the Work.&quot; i.e., your manuscript. I am not a lawyer and don't know if such terms can be challenged or interpreted more reasonably.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should, at least, help you know where you stand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing that can be very helpful is to search Google for stories of others in the same situation, with the same publisher. Try googling &quot;[publisher name] scam&quot;. You might find others who have already dealt with this successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T18:27:45.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26070" CreationDate="2017-01-15T20:21:05.877" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The questions you need to answer are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What story do I want to tell?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What elements do I need to have available to tell it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to tell your backstory, &lt;em&gt;and it stands alone&lt;/em&gt;, then you have the first book of a series, with the second book picking up some time later.  This is a common approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the fact that you described it as your backstory, and not as (say) the first story you want to tell, makes me suspect you're falling into the trap of believing that you need to tell your whole backstory so your readers can understand your main story.  That's not the case at all.  You can tell your main story and drop in &lt;em&gt;references&lt;/em&gt; to the backstory without fully telling it.  Your character can have memories (which he might be trying to suppress, creating internal conflict), or he could encounter other reminders -- other people who know or were there, artifacts, corrupted retellings of the events (think &quot;game of telephone&quot; times two millennia), etc.  If writing your backstory isn't your primary goal, or if you don't think it will hold readers' attention as a first book, then try this approach instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach is to just tell your main story, and if you later want to tell the backstory you can write a &lt;em&gt;prequel&lt;/em&gt;.  Especially if your main story is the one most likely to attract new readers, this approach can help you lead strong and then fill in more for readers who've already decided they're interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also combine approaches.  I recently read a series with an unusual sequencing that worked.  The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(series)&quot;&gt;Silo series&lt;/a&gt; by Hugh Howey began as a single novella set in a dystopian future.  How we got there is not addressed.  The story is a stand-alone work.  The author, who didn't initially plan to write a whole series, then wrote several more novellas that progressed from that point, and those stories contained ample hints about the history with a big reveal that would, on its own, be satisfying had the series ended there.  Then he wrote the prequels.  And, finally, he wrote one story set after the events of all the previous ones that tied it all together.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to recount your events in the order in which they happened.  Tell the stories you want to tell, and give your readers the information they need in order to follow and care about the story you're telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T20:21:05.877" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26081" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-15T20:35:15.883" Score="1" ViewCount="6801" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my newest story, the protagonist gets bullied constantly, and I'm planning for him to be driven to suicide later on the the story. But, I'm completely stuck on how to write a realistic scene, which fosters feelings of horror throughout. I want it to be violent, and almost too disturbing to read. It's going to be written in 3rd person, so I want to also get into the bully's head, show why he's bullying the protagonist and what he gets out of the way he treats him. I want to avoid typical cliches that some aspiring writers display, such as having the bully only torment the protagonist because they get a thrill out of it or just because they're malicious. But, my story is filled with those cliches. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any tips or examples? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23019" LastEditorUserId="23019" LastEditDate="2017-01-20T01:54:41.023" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T01:54:41.023" Title="How to Write a Bullying Scene?" Tags="|characters|book|scene|cliches|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-01-16T17:51:01.277" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26070" CreationDate="2017-01-15T20:37:56.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of all the &quot;main&quot; stories (especially those that were made into movies) that became very popular and were followed by prequels.  The prequels were justified, in most cases, because only glimpses and hints of the &quot;backstory&quot; were made during the telling of the &quot;main&quot; story.  This, in no way, detracted from the readers' enjoyment of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Star Wars&quot; franchise is a perfect example of a &quot;main story&quot;, &quot;Star Wars: The Adventures of Luke Skywalker&quot;(pub. Ballantine, 1st ed. 1976) (aka. &quot;Star Wars, ep.IV: A New Hope&quot;), being written in such a way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22924" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T20:37:56.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26017" CreationDate="2017-01-15T20:58:38.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have parts of the story be in the point of view of characters you add, not just your main character. This way, you can show how the character thinks as well as act, and you can expand upon your current characters by having the added character express their opinion of them, whether in thoughts or aloud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23019" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T20:58:38.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26057" CreationDate="2017-01-15T22:31:01.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I didn't completely understand your problem description... but I think you're talking about repeating a certain plot element in a new book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout feature certain elements that get repeated.  But there's a different twist each time.  The new twist keeps it interesting, but there's something very soothing about the elements recurring from one book to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T22:31:01.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26085" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-15T22:38:13.070" Score="5" ViewCount="4915" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure whether this is the stackexchange website for this, but I'm in the process of writing a play for a competition. The main character often has asides (where she expresses an idea or thought to the audience directly without the other characters hearing her). I'm not sure how to exactly to insert/present these. Any insight on the matter could be helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By means of example:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AL &#xA;  (Rolls eyes)&#xA;   I still don’t trust you, or your story. But, follow me. &#xA;  (Starts walking towards the stairwell) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CANDI &#xA;  (Aside) &#xA;  That was easier than I thought. My dad always says that the hardest part is getting your enemies to let you in. But, I’m already half way there. The only one that’s suspicious of me now is Al, but I can handle him. I sense he’s already loosening up. Something tells me choosing allies is going to pose a greater challenge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AL &#xA;  (Calls over his shoulder) &#xA;  If you don’t want to come, I have no problem telling Caster you lost interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this the correct way to present an aside? If not, what is the proper way to do that to avoid the audience's confusion?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastActivityDate="2021-08-02T07:53:43.997" Title="How to present asides in play writing?" Tags="|screenwriting|script|playwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26070" CreationDate="2017-01-15T22:41:19.877" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understood your question correctly, there is a fourth option:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell the main story, with small sections referring back to parts of the backstory as needed, peppered wherever it makes sense in your main story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As preparation for doing this, you would make a careful outline of the backstory for your own use, but you would not flesh it out with lots of verbiage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to go back and make a separate book about the backstory later... but you don't have to make a decision set in stone at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you tell your main story, keep things moving, without getting too involved in tangents about the backstory.  If you wish, you may even confine yourself to making hints about the backstory without fleshing things out very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't choose for you among the options.  But as a reader, I can say that it can be fun to read about a character who is not a completely open book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T22:41:19.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25766" CreationDate="2017-01-15T22:47:36.343" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing first: &lt;strong&gt;Avoiding said-bookisms is a guideline, not a rule.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers use said-bookisms all the time, precisely for the reasons you note. They're useful. Sometimes, they're the simplest, clearest way to get something across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem isn't use. It's abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple issues which are &lt;em&gt;common&lt;/em&gt; with said-bookisms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using a said-bookism to force a reader into an unlikely, unsupported interpretation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I've been going over your tax returns,&quot; she purred. &quot;It seems you've been claiming some awfully large deductions. But,&quot; she sulked, &quot;I noticed you asked for a filing extension, as well.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a classic telling-rather-than-showing. What we're &lt;em&gt;shown&lt;/em&gt; is somebody talking about tax returns, but we're &lt;em&gt;told&lt;/em&gt; that we're meant to interpret it in a flirty, sexual manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? What gives us that impression? The author doesn't tell us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, that's absolutely fine. Sometimes, that's all that's needed. Sometimes, that's exactly what the author is aiming for. But (a) the more justification it needs, the less fine this kind of use it; it makes the dialogue tags feel arbitrary. And (b) if an author leans on this tool &lt;em&gt;too heavily&lt;/em&gt;, then they wind up never showing &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt;, just telling us how to interpret &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine, not one line of dialogue, but a whole scene of sexy tax returns. Imagine that besides the said-bookisms, there's no other description of flirting, of responses, of reactions -- just two people, going about their day, discussing really boring stuff, &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; being given lots of sexy dialogue tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may sound ridiculous or extreme to you. But it's a painfully common error. Particularly when writers are establishing character, they can tend to just add descriptive dialogue tags to everything that character says -- in their minds, that character is now &quot;acting&quot; &quot;correctly,&quot; because he's saying everything &quot;the right way&quot; -- and never actually demonstrate his character in a way the readers can see for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using said-bookisms in a misguided attempt to avoid repeating the word 'said'.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This is urgently important,&quot; she growled at him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Is it really?&quot; he whined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It absolutely is,&quot; she affirmed. &quot;So sit down and shut up,&quot; she commanded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers aren't even close to &quot;I want a word here with just the right inflection and connotation.&quot; Some writers are -- or, in previous generations, have been -- more at the stage of &quot;Oh no, I can't write 'Bob said' here, I've written 'said' three times on this page alone!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeating obtrusive words is a problem. Some writers, particularly beginning writers, don't realize that &quot;said&quot; is not an obtrusive word. &quot;Said&quot; &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be used over and over, whenever you are trying to express no concept more complicated than &quot;this person said this line.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If writers do not realize this, they can find themselves hunting for words that are &lt;em&gt;less good&lt;/em&gt; than &quot;said&quot;, that carry connotations they do not want, merely for the purpose of not repeating &quot;said&quot; too often. Instead, the constant need to use unusual words to express the simple &quot;said&quot;, becomes extremely obtrusive and annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the origin of the term &quot;said bookisms&quot; -- there used to be &quot;said books,&quot; full of dialogue tags, &quot;she grumbled,&quot; &quot;he sang,&quot; &quot;they demanded.&quot; As you can imagine, writers who needed a book to hunt for words to  express that &lt;em&gt;yet again&lt;/em&gt; a line of dialogue has occurred, are probably not producing top-notch fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using said-bookisms which are jarring to the reader.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, I am rather pleased to announce my betrothal and upcoming nuptials to my dear, darling Felicia,&quot; he snapped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, I'm just so happy for you,&quot; she ejaculated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some said-bookisms just aren't expressing what you mean them to. Some readers will be genuinely jarred at a person &quot;smiling&quot; a line of dialogue, or &quot;hissing&quot; a line with no sibilants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is subjective; lots of readers won't mind. Of course, any writer can write some phrasing that grates on some readers &lt;em&gt;anywhere&lt;/em&gt;, not only when writing said-bookisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But said-bookisms are particularly suspect, because, well, if you're describing somebody &lt;em&gt;saying&lt;/em&gt; something, you kind of need a good reason to depart from plain old &quot;said,&quot; and you need to do a good job departing from it. Your own connotations and inflections &lt;em&gt;may not be commonly shared&lt;/em&gt;, and you run the risk of ruffling at least some portion of your readers if you say &quot;Well OK but I don't mean she &lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt; hissed,&quot; or whatnot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again -- a writer using said-bookisms out of desperation, is going to stumble on this much more than a writer using a said-bookism because it's the exact phrase that's appropriate here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: said-bookisms have many pitfalls, and are often entirely unnecessary and distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of that is to say you can't use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It just means you need to &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; the pitfalls, and when you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; want to use a said-bookisms, make sure none of the pitfalls applies to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T22:47:36.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26088" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-16T00:19:32.260" Score="0" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for best practices (or references to such) for using interviews to collect information for a non-fiction book. I've done some searching on surveys and non-fiction books but have only hit things where surveys are suggested as a means of research. I have a good idea of the how to find the appropriate people to respond to the survey. I'm looking for guidelines on such things as a good number of questions to ask (how much becomes too much?), is it better to do this electronically (like Survey Monkey) or by email or by print?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these should be broken into multiple questions, let me know, but I'm starting with one question because I'm wondering if there is an industry standard or guidelines somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T14:31:50.907" Title="Looking for best practices on using surveys to gather information for a non-fiction book" Tags="|non-fiction|research|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26089" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-16T00:40:17.357" Score="3" ViewCount="6320" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am attempting to locate a dictionary that will allow me to translate words into Aklo, a fictional language used by writers such as Lovecraft. Where could I find such a thing? If a dictionary doesn't exist, are there other resources that can help me? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Aklo is a fictional language used by &lt;a href=&quot;http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Aklo_language&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;multiple authors&lt;/a&gt;, which is why I felt it proper to ask this here on Writers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16245" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2018-10-17T07:44:25.140" LastActivityDate="2019-07-02T05:21:20.117" Title="Where can I find a dictionary for the Aklo fictional language?" Tags="|resources|translation|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26085" CreationDate="2017-01-16T04:28:54.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a playwright and don't have experience in that genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I did format a play anthology for an ebook recently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The convention that I noticed was to put  in parenthesis immediately after the speaker's name any short description of how the line ought to be delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I indicated stage directions (i.e., movement, props, etc) on a separate line in parenthesis -- centered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But sometimes I broke these rules a bit. For example, when the manner of delivery changes midspeech, I indicate it in parenthesis after the sentence in the same paragraph where this happens. Also, if there was a quick gesture between sentences,  (i.e., &lt;strong&gt;holds up sword&lt;/strong&gt;) I sometimes just ran it in the same paragraph of dialogue.  I don't start a separate paragraph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes if there's a distinct narrative break in the speech or a dramatic pause, I will put the break in a separate paragraph -- and occasionally put the stage direction, description of manner of speech in a separate paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one play, I made a separate paragraph with the stage direction &lt;strong&gt;(beat)&lt;/strong&gt; within a  very long dramatic dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a hard and fast rule (unlike screenplay writing for instance). It might be helpful though to see how Project Gutenberg formats their plays. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples of how PG formats their plays. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gutenberg.org/files/844/844-h/844-h.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.gutenberg.org/files/844/844-h/844-h.htm&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10623/10623-h/10623-h.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10623/10623-h/10623-h.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T04:28:54.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26044" CreationDate="2017-01-16T04:49:04.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know the reason why you want to use the name of the real place (unless it's such a famous place that not doing so would seem strange). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you should be sure to include a prominent disclaimer on the title page that it is a work of fiction and any resemblances are entirely coincidental. (You may be subject to invasion of privacy lawsuits if someone can demonstrate that you based it on a real event at that school). If you are doubly-paranoid, you could include an additional note --&quot;obviously, the school here is a real school, but none of the events actually happened as described.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds possibly like you want to have the best of both worlds. You want to use the inside information about the school to provide verisimilitude  while at the same time you want to deny that it is based on reality. Or: you want to use a well-known school as a way to draw attention to your work while not wanting to say anything truthful about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have encountered the issue in a significantly smaller way. I mentioned characters as attending two or three universities that I knew fairly well (although I had only attended one). I needed a concrete name of a university rather than just making one up -- also, I needed the university to be tied to a specific city which was the setting for my story.  At the same time, my story is very obscure -- nobody would find it, and the setting itself wasn't that crucial to the story. Also, these were short narratives. If I were writing a longer narrative, I would carefully consider whether I wanted to use a real university in a particular city, or whether I wanted to disguise it somehow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, my advice would be to ask whether it would be easy or likely for a potential reader to misunderstand the aim of the literary work or to interpret the plot as having to do with an actual school. Also, would people find these references to be inflammatory or offensive? Is there a possibility that the events in the novel could come true at some later point -- and provide notoriety to the book? If you describe a murder at a school, and then 5 years a murder takes place at the school with similarities to the fictional murder, that would complicate your life. What if someone read the book and staged a copycat killing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, one of the universities I used in a story was a university I despised -- and I portrayed it somewhat negatively in the story. On the other hand, I don't think most readers would think that the author was criticizing the university -- even if the character didn't like it for some reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I would generally not contact the school for permission. That sounds a little too creepy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T04:49:04.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26092" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26110" CreationDate="2017-01-16T04:56:29.380" Score="5" ViewCount="1442" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm particularly interested in this in the context of a new novelist.  Are subplots necessary for a successful, good story?  Do most novels have them?  I'm not sure I fully understand how to write a subplot and the main plot and have them all be pertinent to the ending.  I don't want to write a subplot just for the sake of saying I have one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="289" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T15:43:31.050" Title="Are subplots necessary for a successful story?" Tags="|plot|subplot|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26093" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-16T05:19:44.410" Score="20" ViewCount="7784" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing a One Piece fan fiction to improve my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I foolishly decided to write it in first person and now I kinda want to change it to third person - but I'm already 97 pages into the book. Should I do it? This is the first piece of long-ish writing that I've done so i may just be crazy or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During a break I took from from that book, I worked on a different story, written in third person, and I think I liked it better. Now I want to redo pretty much the entire beginning and change the POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21673" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-01-17T07:22:52.047" LastActivityDate="2018-04-04T06:57:27.710" Title="I have 97 pages in my book draft. Is it too late to swap to third person from first?" Tags="|fiction|style|creative-writing|viewpoint|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26093" CreationDate="2017-01-16T05:43:18.473" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a substantial bit of revision. It can definitely be done, but the question is if that's what you want to prioritize right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During a first draft, there will be a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of things you'll want to go back and fix. The problem is, go back for enough of them, and you'll stop making any progress at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my first suggestion would be: &lt;strong&gt;don't go back &lt;em&gt;yet&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Save the revision for later, when you've got a first draft, and you can do all the revising at once. You might wind up needing to rewrite 10 or 20 pages or more, and then any time spent revising those will have been a total waste! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, soldier on. In first person or in third? Well, my second suggestion is &lt;strong&gt;make a decision by trying it out&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, write the next 5-10 pages in third person; see how that works for this story, and if you're getting the effect you want. Second, revise 5-10 older pages from first person to third, to get a sense of how much effort &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will give you a good sampling of what you're choosing between. Once you've done that, make a decision (one way or another) and stick to that going forward. &lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt; you choose to make the switch, that's absolutely fine; keep writing in third person from here on, and &lt;em&gt;after you're done&lt;/em&gt; go back and revise the earlier pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing means revision. Lots and lots of revision. Accept it; embrace it; and manage it as wisely as you can :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T05:43:18.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26093" CreationDate="2017-01-16T08:13:56.177" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer is No, it's never too late. The question is: how much will it cost in terms of time and effort? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the fact that, as you say, this is your &quot;first piece&quot; and you write it to improve your writing, I would give you two suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) you can start from scratch, and go back 97 pages and start from 0. It is a big effort, but it is a great practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) still better, stick to your decision: trust your first instinct and go ahead. When the story is done, you can decide what to do with it: maybe it works, or maybe it will need a total rewriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important question you have to ask is: why do you think changing Point of View matters? What advantages can it bring? Maybe you realize that it's just a momentary whim, and there is no really objective reason to go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T08:13:56.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26096" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26098" CreationDate="2017-01-16T09:40:40.063" Score="1" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I'm sorry if I end up being too vague in my question, but it's really hard for me to express exactly what is the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was watching a video of a walkthrough of a game (Drakengard) and listening to the story, when then I remember one of the stories I'm writing, which is of a similar type of fantasy (kingdoms, wars, sword fights, a practice similar to magic, etc.), and I started comparing such game's story, to mine. Then I concluded that my story works in a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; different way than how it's almost always seen in other works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't know if being &lt;em&gt;so different&lt;/em&gt; as I concluded, is a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; thing, as in it's an original/new story that would standout from the &quot;more of the same&quot; type of stories of the genre, by one the main characteristics be being so different, or if it's a &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; thing, as in it's so different than other works because I'm doing it the wrong way (i.e. doing in a way that doesn't work, that anyone with a greater knowledge in writing don't do that because they know that the way my story works isn't effective/good, or just that it isn't how stuff really works, etc.), or if it's just... &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt;, neither better nor worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't cite examples from my story as it would be necessary to post here the entire story to understand &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; what I'm trying to say, but what I can say is that the world, although it's based/inspired on the real world's medieval period and most of the story works realistically, the way the world/people functions is just &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt;, sometimes seeming that it's not even fiction, because it doesn't work like it would in a fiction (something like that). The people, kingdoms, etc., seem to not &quot;act&quot; in a fiction-like way, but instead, in a &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; way, but not in a &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; way, maybe realistically, or just...  &quot;different&quot;. It works in a way that's just not like how it works in the other stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; maybe there's 3 possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's just bad writing (likely);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's just my world view that is different (likely);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's different because it's original (unlikely, although not impossible).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm afraid to keep it that way, and I don't know if I take the risk or if I follow the way the other works do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T13:49:57.037" Title="Do it your own way or inspire in already done ways?" Tags="|fiction|originality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25766" CreationDate="2017-01-16T13:20:53.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I missed it, but the other answers don't explain the main reason to use 'said' almost exclusively:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Speed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialogue in real life is fluid and a lot of words/information can be exchanged in a very short period of time. Conversely, written dialogue eats up space on the page even for very short exchanges. The solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make the dialogue tags as basic as possible so they're almost invisible. Use the barest minimum number of tags so that readers can experience the dialogue at a more authentic-feeling speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also important to have a character's actions feel authentic. If two characters speak and length and then suddenly there is a 'she said suggestively', then I would be disappointed. To me, it feels like lazy writing because the author is attempting to achieve something using a single word or short phrase. As a reader, I would much rather witness the characters moving closer, shuffling awkwardly, breathing shallowly etc. to convey their flirtations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21966" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T13:20:53.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26096" CreationDate="2017-01-16T13:49:57.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Human being have a inbred psychological need for stories. Like all our other needs, there are specific receptors that have to be matched for the need to be satisfied. If the body does not recognize a story as story, it will reject it. We can't change the reader's need for story, anymore than we can change their need for food or approval or warmth or oxygen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, people crave variety in their stories, as they do in their food, but only up to a point. What people are looking for is often best described as the same only different. That is actually what makes writing such a challenge. The same is easy, which is why it is relatively easy to churn out genre fiction. Different is easy, but it doesn't appeal to most tastes. The same only different is the tough one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the same problem a chef in a restaurant has. The food they serve has to be be exotic yet familiar. Exciting yet comforting. Compare 50 restaurant menus and you will find they are mostly very similar in what they offer, but with variations on the theme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your different approach is just different, it probably won't work, but if it is the same only different, it may be just what people are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T13:49:57.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26093" CreationDate="2017-01-16T14:05:22.517" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written the first draft of my current novel in past tense. Now, while I write the second draft, I change it to present tense. It's quite a lot of work, as I have to touch every single sentence and sometimes change the syntactic structure, but at the same time it's much less work than filling the plot holes, smoothing the logical structure, adding in more background, deleting deviations, and generally polishing the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think that your book needs to be told from a different viewpoint, don't shy away from the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;But I wouldn't change it &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Switch to third person now, but do not go back to edit what you have already written.&lt;/strong&gt; Instead, finish your book, and then change the viewpoint of the beginning &lt;em&gt;when you do all the other revisions&lt;/em&gt;. That way, you &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26008/5645&quot;&gt;stay in the flow&lt;/a&gt; now – and you save yourself a lot of work. Because very likely, once you have reached the end and seen the whole story, you will want to rephrase or even delete passages that you would have painstakingly changed to third person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T14:12:02.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26093" CreationDate="2017-01-16T14:17:31.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is never too late to change from first person to third. Writing in first person is almost always a bad idea. It is a confining suffocating point of view. When it does work, it is usually as a frame or a covert form or omniscient. But those are not techniques for beginners to mess with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change it. Change it now. Thank your stars you have come to your senses before you did more damage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And don't listen to the people saying that now is the wrong time to change, that you should finish your story first. A story is a rising arc of tension. That tension is created by the manner of telling every bit as much as it is created by the incidents of the plot. There are seven plots in all of fiction (the numbers vary, but they are all small). Everything lies in the telling. And third person is the right voice for telling the vast majority of stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T14:17:31.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26088" CreationDate="2017-01-16T14:31:50.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a psychologist, and part of my job is trying to find out things from people, or what we call &quot;research&quot;. Mostly this involves standardized experiments, but sometimes, when we want to start something new that we have no experience with, or when we find that our approach didn't work and we need to get a better idea about what the problem actually is, we just talk to people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step is always a lot of brainstoming and navel-gazing, and if we are lucky this give us some ideas for what we might ask people, but sometimes we just find &quot;samples&quot; of people who do or have what we want to study and talk to them like you would talk to your wife about her day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if we want to study the eating behavior of overweight people, we get a few overwheight people and just ask them what they consciously know of their own eating behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During these conversations, we will notice certain things (what all overwheight people from our small sample do) or have ideas (what we forgot to ask), and slowly we come up with a list of questions that we think might narrow the problem down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we find another small sample and ask them our questions, besides talking to them freely and listening to anything they might want to tell us on top of our questions. This is called a &quot;semi-structured interview&quot;. It has some questions that we want addressed, but it is also open for things that come up that we didn't anticipate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then we either refine our interview questions or begin to create the first draft of your &quot;instrument&quot;, which might be a questionnaire or an experiment or whatever. This goes beyond what you want to do and is rather complicated, but the above first steps are something you might try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;talk to a small (two or three) sample of the people you are interested in&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;notice recurring topics and ideas you have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a list of interview questions from that (so you don't forget them and ask everyone a core of the same questions, so that you can &lt;em&gt;compare&lt;/em&gt; the answers and make sure that what one person says actually has to do with the thing you study and is not an individual occurance unrelated to your research)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;interview (and talk to) other people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;refine your semi-structured interview thingy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;talk to more people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write your book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T14:31:50.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26081" CreationDate="2017-01-16T15:29:24.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend watching 'A Girl like Her' which is a documentary style film about some vicious bullying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might give you some ideas for the actual content of the scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing wise, it's the same as writing anything else really: show, don't tell, describe physical details, be specific rather than vague. Give moment by moment description of important parts, don't summarise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could follow the Motivation &gt; Reaction sequence as well, which goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Motivation:&#xA;Sally grabbed Ambrose's tie and yanked it downwards. (an external action)&#xA;Reaction:&#xA;Ambrose's neck felt like it was going to snap (feeling), he staggered forward a few steps to avoid falling (reflex), then glared at Sally.&#xA;&quot;Let go,&quot; he pleaded. (rational action and speech).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about that here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/writing-the-perfect-scene/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/writing-the-perfect-scene/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Or here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/motivation-reaction-units&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/motivation-reaction-units&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might add that the topic you want to write about - bullying and suicide - is quite a sensitive one, and if you haven't experienced bullying yourself, you should approach it with care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T15:29:24.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5940" CreationDate="2017-01-16T15:41:21.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also follow the Scene Sequel structure, and have encountered the same issues as you describe. This is how I've dealt with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing I did was rename them Heads and Tails, because I found the original terminology so awkward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a head is where there is a goal, conflict and disaster, and a tail is where there is the reaction, dilemma, decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, I decided that heads and tails do not necessarily need to exactly line up with scenes. A Tail might be no more than a few sentences at the end of a scene. Also, a single Head might go on for several scenes, as the protagonist keeps meeting more and more obstacles before the final disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly - don't forget that sometimes you might have an 'incident' this is a scene where the protagonist wants to do something, and they do it. No disaster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your example in particular, it doesn't sound like the person deciding to be resigned to dying quite fits in any case. I've broken it down a bit more and it looks like this to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disaster - will be executed &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reaction - resignation  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dilemma - fight    back or just let it happen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decision (goal) - just let it happen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(by the way, this isn't a great goal because it's not pro-active, but let's ignore that for now)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goal - allow self to be executed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conflict - superior changes mind&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means we're currently about to see the protagonist's disaster - which must be 'not being executed' in order to thwart their goal. It's a bit odd, but that's how it follows through to me...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T15:41:21.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26104" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26106" CreationDate="2017-01-16T17:11:59.597" Score="3" ViewCount="741" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might sound like a silly question, I know, but something someone said to me today has made me concerned that my book sounds childish and nonsensical. Apparently: &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;having a woman who burns people at the stake, cuts off heads and betrays is too childish for people to take her seriously.&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my book, I've got men with excessively feminine names and attributes as well as plenty of women who are clad in full iron armour and won't hesitate to chop off someone's head. I know that in those times women were (and still are, in some perspectives) discriminated against, would be 'owned' by the husband and &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; not on the front lines during war. I learnt that during history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm scared that because I have so many women who go around cutting open arrows, assassinating kings, and not playing the stereotypical role of a woman in those times my book will appear like it's written by someone negligent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it matter if you break gender stereotypes? Of the present day, or at the 'time your book is set in'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do many readers not expect for example, the things I mentioned above? Would they think my writing is childish if I broke stereotypical gender roles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-04-25T17:12:53.737" Title="What kind of an effect does breaking gender roles/stereotypes have in fiction?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|cliches|gender|archetypes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26104" CreationDate="2017-01-16T18:02:06.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;People write many less believable things than women with swords and armor or feminine men. Write whatever you want to. No matter what it turns out to be, the real work is creating a seamless, fictional dream that will pull your reader in rather than have them spending half the novel saying &quot;That's unrealistic.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/25819/writing-a-novel-can-i-do-this-or-that&quot;&gt;Writing a novel, can I do [this or that]?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14560" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2018-04-25T14:39:10.720" LastActivityDate="2018-04-25T14:39:10.720" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26104" CreationDate="2017-01-16T18:03:31.137" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think of your book as a &quot;serious&quot; historical fiction, then your concerns are well-founded. But if you are writing &quot;historical fantasy&quot;, you are free to do anything you want, as long as the book is good. You can't make your book serious in the sense of &quot;historically accurate&quot;, but I see no problem having it serious as &quot;deep and thought provoking&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T18:03:31.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26076" CreationDate="2017-01-16T18:46:52.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The copyright holder retains copyright to the music, and your adding words doesn't change that. You can perform it privately under limited circumstances (e.g., for friends without payment), but if you perform it publicly or for money then the same copyright restrictions apply to your setting as to the original piece. In fact, the restrictions may be stronger, because the &quot;automatic license&quot; provision may not apply after you've added words. There is a parody exception if your words comment on the song, but it's very limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23037" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T18:46:52.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26092" CreationDate="2017-01-16T19:14:35.680" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have two characters who talk to each other about something other than the main plot of your story? If so, you have something to build a subplot on. If you don't, is your plot so all encompassing that two people in that situation would never talk about anything else? Have your characters all known each other for a long time? Wouldn't they then already have a relationship built up outside of the main plot and those relationships can be part of a subplot. If your characters have all just met, they are coming together in a tense situation and will want to know something about each other (such as, &quot;will I be able to trust him at my back when we are in a tight situation?&quot;). Don't think of subplots as just ways to make the book longer. You are developing character and adding texture to what is happening, perhaps, if you want, even giving you something that will lead to a sequel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all just my opinion, but the one novel I wrote and finished sucked, in part because I had no subplots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T19:14:35.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26076" CreationDate="2017-01-16T19:58:28.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Melodies are copyrightable. You probably can not legally use the melody without permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chord progressions are not copyrightable. You may use chord progressions freely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a piano piece, the distinction between melody and chord progression may not be easy to determine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, check with a copyright attorney. &lt;em&gt;The Copyright Handbook&lt;/em&gt; by Nolo Press may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T19:58:28.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26112" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-16T21:05:59.077" Score="9" ViewCount="1124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a plotter, meaning I plan and develop my books before ever writing the first draft. I've given a good deal of thought to character, stakes, and the other parts of novel creation, and I feel like I have a solid understanding of those areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same can't be said for the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think I create bad plots. My readers (I've written several small fan fiction pieces) seem to agree with me. I do think my plots could be better, a lot more interesting, and add a lot more to the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some ideas of what I can do to add to my plots, but I still feel like I'm missing the large picture. I have &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; of the parts, but I'm not sure if I have &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the parts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has led me to ask the question: &lt;strong&gt;What constitutes a great plot?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it twists that you never saw coming? Is it a complicated web that becomes clear only at the end? Is it something else I haven't identified yet? What makes a plot great? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt; This question is not a duplicate of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/20718/how-can-i-create-an-inter-connected-plot-across-a-series&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;. That question deals with creating a connected plot across a series of books. This question deals with simply creating a great plot, connected or not, whether for a series or a single novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-02-18T16:33:42.053" Title="How Can I Make a Great Plot?" Tags="|fiction|plot|planning|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25766" CreationDate="2017-01-16T22:53:07.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are specifically asking about the objection to bookisms. It's certainly &lt;em&gt;en vogue&lt;/em&gt; for the last twenty years or so to eliminate bookisms. I'm older, so perhaps I'm stubborn in my efforts to responsibly use them. Here are some of the arguments I've heard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It slows readers down by bringing attention to the dialogue tag rather than the dialogue.&lt;/strong&gt; But consider the example &lt;em&gt;Josh said, &quot;Look out for that truck!&quot;&lt;/em&gt; What the reader &quot;hears&quot; is &lt;em&gt;Look out for that TRUCK.&lt;/em&gt; However, if you write &lt;em&gt;Josh screamed, &quot;Look out for that truck!&quot;&lt;/em&gt; then the reader hears &lt;em&gt;LOOK OUT FOR THAT TRUCK&lt;/em&gt; which more approximates what the writer wants.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Readers don't notice the monotony of &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a good point. But agents and editors will tell you to make every word count. If you use &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt; 500 times in a 80,000 word novel ... &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writers can't find commercial success with bookisms.&lt;/strong&gt; David Baldacci wrote 10 straight bestsellers. 10 straight! 6 were number 1s. One of the differences? That's right, more bookisms in the number 1s. It gives the word &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt; an adverbial quality, heightening the suspense when done right.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When done right? How are we as writers to know. It's just easier to use &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Any serious attempt at a commercial publication should include a beta reader group. There is ALWAYS someone in a writers' group who's a bookism hound. If the hound doesn't notice, the rabbit is pretty safe.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's time-consuming to consider your dialogue tags&lt;/strong&gt;. Yeah, but it's more time consuming when your book sucks, and you have to start over. You &lt;em&gt;should be&lt;/em&gt; considering every word and rearranging sentences to avoid tags a good percentage of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T22:53:07.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26114" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-16T23:54:23.747" Score="8" ViewCount="773" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm concerned about what Amazon will allow since their guidelines are so vague, or in the case of what I am writing, a gray area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the stories I'm writing, human beings are transformed into sentient animals, half-animals, or objects. In several instances normal human beings have sexual relations with these transformed people and I don't leave it vague at all. In addition to that there are mythical creatures like Sphinxes, centaurs, werewolves, and such that have sexual relationships with normal humans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen works for sale on Amazon that seem to have these kinds of elements, but there is a difference between what is allowed, and what people have managed to sneak through. I have other works for sale and I don't want to be banned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is a weird question. I'm currently writing an anthology of twisted versions of well-known fairytales, myths, and fantasy stories. I'm exploring all the bizarre elements of how their worlds work and what would happen if we followed those bizarre elements logically to such a far degree that the situation is utterly insane, particularly how the romantic relationships and sex lives of the characters are changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Greek mythology Zeus appeared as a swan and seduced a woman, for example. In a graphic retelling of that myth is a sentient god-being who becomes an animal for seduction considered bestiality? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really don't want to tone those parts down too much because they set up great sequences with couples counseling later, and making them too vague ruins what I explore in those parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any concrete and clear do's and don'ts to approaching these situations? What can I do to comply best without destroying the experience and intent of the stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thanks in advance for any help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23043" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T16:14:43.983" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T16:14:43.983" Title="Would Amazon allow sex between transformed humans (animal/object) with normal humans" Tags="|fantasy|self-publishing|amazon|sex|mythology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26093" CreationDate="2017-01-17T00:17:49.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Change it now. Do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working from a copy, start by searching the text for &quot;I&quot; and &quot;me&quot; and &quot;my&quot; words. Edit as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an important difference: &quot;I&quot; know everything about myself, and not much about anyone else. But the third-person author does not know everything about the main character, and knows a lot about others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is regarding scope of knowledge. A related issue is whether the narrator is telling the truth. A first-person narrator is truthful, or lying, or exaggerating, or mistaken. A third-person narrator is either truthful or uninformed. A first-person narrator cannot talk about something beyond direct experience. A third-person narrator may do that, although sometimes a third-person narrator only describes what the main character would be expected to know. Yes, there are gradations and exceptions, but those are useful guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First-person narration is quite useful when the narrator is exaggerating. A first-person narrator can say, &quot;I walked into the bar, and all the patrons looked like bums from low end of town. The beer was swill, and the barmaid reminded me of the girl who dumped me in tenth grade.&quot; A third-person narrator wouldn't write that, not even using &quot;he&quot; or &quot;she.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23045" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T00:17:49.520" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19147" CreationDate="2017-01-17T03:25:55.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was about to suggest Medium, but since it's already proposed by @Lehi, here is another place to share your thought: &lt;a href=&quot;http://thoughtcatalog.com/submissions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thought Catalog&lt;/a&gt; an independent digital magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23048" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T03:25:55.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25910" CreationDate="2017-01-17T03:52:46.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides the obvious solution of using an explicit identifier, you can play on the visual aspect subtly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It hadn't to be so too IN YOUR FACE as you name it, because, other than &lt;strong&gt;the bold&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;em&gt;italic&lt;/em&gt;, you could play with the multiple shad of gray. use different fon, or change the background slightly, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader eye Will catch the variation, and if you use an observable change of ton that they could associate with it, and give them a hint the first time. I think you'll be able to make them feel it without a lot of additional effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;I suggest to go with a hand &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fontspace.com/category/handwriting?p=5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;handwriting font&lt;/a&gt; for your personal entries, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fontspace.com/reference-type-foundry/aspire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;aspire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23048" LastEditorUserId="23048" LastEditDate="2017-01-17T04:04:05.767" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T04:04:05.767" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26007" CreationDate="2017-01-17T07:31:49.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find your post very interesting, but see two possible questions in it. For convenience let me call them a question of &lt;em&gt;willpower&lt;/em&gt; vs. &lt;em&gt;discrimination&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to &lt;em&gt;willpower&lt;/em&gt;, the question may go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I know primary fiction (for the lack of any better word), and I know metafiction.  I want the one and not the other.  The trouble is that I get distracted, lured away by the meta thing. My problem can be assimilated to wanting to do the homework, but ending up at a nightclub.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your word &lt;em&gt;self-indulgent&lt;/em&gt; suggests this question.  To this general thought on motivation, discipline etc. may be highly relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to &lt;em&gt;discrimination&lt;/em&gt;, the question may go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want the one, not the other. I am on my guard and would never willingly give way to temptation. But by and by I find myself doing metafiction.  My problem may be assimilated to wanting to practice classical piano, but sliding into jazz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The expression &lt;em&gt;descend into metafiction&lt;/em&gt; suggests this. To this, writing-specific ideas may be relevant, e.g. on what makes something primary or meta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No doubt, there may be elements of both in your situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be that as it may, I like your question very much.  I think making it concrete with an example may be very productive.  That is, you would show us (describe) one of your projects in its original conception and after its &quot;descent&quot;--with any intervening stages you'd like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine a number of responses to that.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The project stayed primary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The project started out meta.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The thing went meta, but thus became a distinct second project, with its own promises.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, going meta was bad for it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question assumes this fourth outcome?  Well maybe not; you simply want the one thing, and not the other, and there is no arguing with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway thanks for your post, and if you amend it with an example please leave a comment to my answer so I may know to come back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23051" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T07:31:49.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26124" CreationDate="2017-01-17T09:34:48.220" Score="1" ViewCount="699" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a fantasy story I'm writing which takes place in the medieval period. Let's take the hero (the protagonist) as a starting point of example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hero born and lives in a peasant village. The midwife that assisted in his birth is well known in the village he lives and neighbor villages. His mother died on his birth. In most stories, the fact that he would need a wet nurse to be able to live is simply ignored. But not &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; hero. He really had a wet nurse, and she appears in a few scenes. But she's not a random woman, she's his since-childhood friend's mother. The hero and his mother are well known by most of his continent. His mother because she had a very special characteristic very esteemed by the world's people, and the hero inherited it. A specific character was a big fan, since childhood, of the hero's mother and such character also knows the hero. The villain is the hero's father cousin and he also has that special characteristic, because they are part of the same genealogical tree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, with this brief summary of some of the characteristics, the story &quot;reminds&quot; that people are born, reproduce, die, newly-born humans are dependent, everyone has or had parents, everyone has a genealogy, and everything has a beginning, including people's life. But it's a very different take from the other stories, that most seem to just ignore all that and just tells something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;— Hey, reader/viewer/player! Meet the hero.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  — Hi, hero!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  — This hero will go into a journey to reach and accomplish a goal.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  — Well, OK...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  — And these are people he never knew that exist but that will in someway be important for the story (or maybe not), and in the end they all will be friends for all life.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  — That is one moving story!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  — Let's see how he goes through it!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  — Yay!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, the Law of Conservation of Detail plays some roles here, but is it me that flesh things out &quot;too much&quot;, or is that the other stories are much more scoped and &quot;to the point&quot;? Or is it because the public don't want realism or &quot;over-fleshing out&quot;, they just want a story, so all realism has to be yanked from the story and just leave the &quot;good parts&quot;? For me, the more deep, fleshed out and realistic are the characters, world, etc., the better, even in a fantasy setting. But is there a moment when telling a character's life and world with realism is a bad idea and ignoring some aspects is a better option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T16:40:38.833" Title="When realistically portraying the characters' life is a bad thing?" Tags="|fiction|technique|fantasy|realism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26093" CreationDate="2017-01-17T11:01:05.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well my suggestion would be don't edit entire story. Goto first page... Do some edits like story told by third person till whatever you wrote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Third person says &quot;97 pages&quot; &#xA;  From 97 wrote how you wanted to write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23057" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T11:01:05.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26093" CreationDate="2017-01-17T11:54:04.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I shall go against the current.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every person has a different approach to writing. For instance, I tend to draw a generalist plot (often a diagram of ideas and main events) first, then I start writing and, as the characters grow and gain flesh, and as I come to understand the characters and their motivations better, the general plot becomes more detailed (sometimes it is even changed and adjusted to the ideas that popped up as the writing proggressed). If, for some reason, I become disappointed with how I wrote some events or chapters, my motivation drops. I must go back and fix the problem or I'll go into an angsty writer block. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the OP feels that he's so unhappy with the POV that it keeps him from moving on, then I would strongly advice to go back and revise. First, though, as I commented above, make sure you want to change the POV for the right reasons. A first person POV is not easy (and yet, when well used, even if only for certain chapters, it can be brilliant), but if one doesn't practice it, one will never get a hang of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I know my advice goes against the grain. I know that, for most people, re-reading and re-editing written chapters (searching for that ever elusive perfection) is a way of not writing more chapters. But a writer must take all types of advice to heart, understand where they're coming from, and choose their own path. My written chapters are usually not rough drafts; they're as close to the finished product as I can. That does not meant that, if something happens that requires foreshadowing, I cannot go back and add the necessary foreshadowing or hints or whatever to make sure everything flows as it should. It also doesn't mean that I am not able to go back and get rid of whole chapters if I feel they're really not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you have all the right reasons to change POV, think about how you write and what makes you feel comfortable: are you able to carry on with an entirely new voice, causing a break with what was previous written? Then do so. Do you feel like the not-fixed chapters are holding you back? Then rewrite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last point: will rewriting everything now give you new insight into the characters, thus changing how you write them and how they react to events? If the answer is yes, go back and rewrite now. If you keep on writing only to later realise that no, A would never have said that and, therefore, event C should never have happened the way it did... that can be more time consuming and frustration inducing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, whatever you do, make sure it's for the right reason and that your 'creativity-productivity' is comfortable with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T11:54:04.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26093" CreationDate="2017-01-17T12:03:56.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which would you regret not doing more? Do that one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think you will eventually revise it, the sooner you start the better. But if your writing is flowing, then it's probably best to continue as is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user22707" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T12:03:56.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26112" CreationDate="2017-01-17T12:50:23.237" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are so many different plots that can be written. The majority of them can be narrowed down to even more broad terms until every story is just a variation of around a dozen different types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There probably isn't a definitive answer for 'what makes a good plot', because I've read almost identical stories done both badly and well. There are a great many different ways the same plot can be written, so ultimately the plot will not matter in the grand scheme of the quality of a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is that &lt;strong&gt;you, the author&lt;/strong&gt;, understands and knows what you want the plot to be. To understand from the beginning where the story is going, and write the story from beginning to end. The story is a journey, after all, and not the destination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I feel like there is nothing worse than reading a book and having it flip from what I expected it to be to something else. This isn't to do with having a twist in the story, but more to do with the author trying so diligently to avoid the reader guessing the plot twist that they write one story, get to the twist, then begin writing something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good twists come from when the writer writes the book in a way that the story is progressing towards a twist, and then the story continues afterwards. Bad ones come from setting up the story specifically in order have the twist in, and then the story changes so monumentally it feels as if it becomes a different book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can happen without twists as well. Sometimes writers will begin writing a certain plot, then part-way through things just change for seemingly no reason and it feels as if the story is two different entities put into a single stack of paper. As the author it's important to go back and ensure that if the book does develop and change over time, the earlier part of the book that is already written is also adapted in order to fit the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So overall, a plot is really defined by its &lt;strong&gt;consistency&lt;/strong&gt;. The story that the reader begins needs to be the story that is finished at the end, whether that's over a single book, three, or even seven. Even if the plot starts off as an &lt;em&gt;overcoming the monster&lt;/em&gt; plot and changes into a &lt;em&gt;tragedy&lt;/em&gt; two-thirds of the way through, it's important that this is reflected in the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/24588/can-you-mix-readers-of-fantasy-and-sci-fi/24594#24594&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; to your own question about mixing two different genres and ensuring the reader understood what they were reading from the start. The same applies with the plot: if it does have a twist and turns the plot on its head, there needs to be hints dropped in near the beginning so that the reader is not completely blindsided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even just having a single straightforward plot from beginning to end, it's important that the same story is continued throughout. I'd go as far as to say that the defining thing that separates good from bad stories is how well the writer focuses on writing the same piece of work consistently from beginning to end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: this will also apply to 'sub-plots'. Whilst two parallel plots can be developing within the scope of the same story simultaneously, their strength individually will rely on them remaining the same from beginning to end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T12:50:23.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26119" CreationDate="2017-01-17T14:47:05.353" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When realistically portraying the characters' life is a bad thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring the context for now, I'd say the answer is: when the writer is portraying every day life for its sake rather than to advance the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I prefer stories (whatever the genre) where every day life (contemporary or not) comes into play. It's a great way to give a taste of the times, cultures and the personality of your characters. Sometimes, though, the writer can become engrossed in those little things, especially when accidentally showing off all the research they've made for the historical novel or all the cool stuff they invented for their fantasy world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To focus on real life details for its sake can ruin the story; to use those details to flesh out the story's characters should help to create compelling characters and worlds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...it's a very different take from the other stories, that most seem to just ignore all that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The examples you give are mostly 'coming of age' stories, where the protagonist is thrown out of their childhood home and forced to find themselves while completing a quest. Usually elsewhere. Therefore, the protagonist puts the past behind them and focuses on the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, 'coming of age' while going on a quest is not my cup of tea. I prefer to see protagonists 'come of age' by learning to see their childhood world through more mature, wiser eyes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your story, it seems to me, the 'quest' (although it sounds more like a challenge than a true quest) is set within that childhood world and requires the protagonist to see the people he knows and loves (or hates) with different eyes in order to become a grown man. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, using everyday activities in order to bring these characters and their village to life seems to be essential to create a compelling read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the story &quot;reminds&quot; that people are born, reproduce, die, newly-born humans are dependent, everyone has or had parents, everyone has a genealogy, and everything has a beginning, including people's life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, &quot;realistically portraying the characters' lives&quot; means portraying every day activities and common (or uncommon) relationships. If your concern lies with creating a realistic village where everyone knows eachother and their lives and their family's lives... well, it wouldn't feel like a true village if you didn't somehow give that idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your concern lies with how much to write about it, my advice is to not use info-dumps but rather create the feel of a place where everyone knows everyone by having people commonly refer to family connections or, for example, to that woman who's the second cousin of your great-aunt (the one that married the butcher in the neighbouring village) and whose husband has a white mule which he bought from your neighbour's son. It makes no difference who those people are, but anyone who lives in a small town will immediatelly know what type of place this is. A place where you cannot forget all the little bonds, whether of love, blood, or hate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T14:47:05.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26112" CreationDate="2017-01-17T14:59:47.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is quite complex and one that has stupefied many a writer.  Remember that to come up with a great plot you must be willing to put the work that comes with having a final draft that is a great plot.  I believe, above all else, that having a great plot is not something you can work on.  It will be something you can work on maybe for the rest of your life.  A great plot is like a goal in life.  If you ever achieve your goal you may relish the days you worked in achieving that goal.  All that said, from the description of your quetsion it looks like you're already well on your way to a great plot so keep at it and good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21591" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T14:59:47.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2887" CreationDate="2017-01-17T14:59:59.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Late comer to the party but... how about swapping stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually have two or three ideas for stories - often completely different genres and all. One month, I can be totally obsessed over one of them and then the inspiration just disappears. When that happens, I turn to another story. The inspiration can then hold on for one or six months before I need to swap to a different story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The break between the novels also helps me to get some distance from story and characters. That makes it easier, once I come back, to spot scenes and chapters that need improving (or throwing away) as well as to see the characters in new, refreshing and inspiring ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added bonus: no story is abandoned. It's just waiting in the backburner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T14:59:59.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26092" CreationDate="2017-01-17T16:38:04.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While Terri Simon makes a great point, I'd like to add my two cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that sometimes the protagonists can become all too important in a story (especially in a romance). Their dramas will be always upfront and their lives will become a claustrophobic bubble (at least for me). If there are secondary characters going through difficulties, one can use that as a subplot to bring diversity of people and problems and to burst that bubble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the hero is going through a breakup and is focused on that personal tragedy. Then a friend phones him and asks for his help finding a job because the company he was working for went bankrupt and he can't even afford next month's rent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two important pieces of advice:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;don't create a subplot for one scene and forget about it. So the friend is looking for a job. Maybe next chapter he can text the protagonist saying he got a job and, four chapters later, maybe they're talking at a bar and the friend comments how losing his job was the best thing that happened: he's so much better now. The mentions only take a few moments, but it will help to create an illusion of a world outside the protagonists' immediate needs, feelings and actions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I believe there are two types of subplot:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2.1 the type that gives a notion of a wider world and social networking but doesn't really impact how the main plot evolves but helps fleshing out characters and world;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2.2 and the type that does affect how the main plot evolves (maybe the protagonist meets their soulmate while helping his friend)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T16:38:04.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26119" CreationDate="2017-01-17T16:40:38.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Realism is not a bad thing. It is necessary for creating believable characters, settings and situations. It is the level and the amount of detail you choose to display which can work for your story or against it; however, there is no recipe for how many words per chapter one can safely spend describing things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your princess might be precious as a dainty flower, but if she has too much mead during royal dinner, she will end up throwing up in a privy, likely assisted by her body maid. The question is whether you choose to show it, mention it, or ignore it, and the choice is yours and yours only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T16:40:38.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26129" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26137" CreationDate="2017-01-17T17:16:21.350" Score="5" ViewCount="3044" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to use alliteration a lot. This is an example from a story I'm writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Let me get this straight,&quot; Aru said, sliding on her dress. She always&#xA;  felt frosty after failed fornication. &quot;You're giving me two thousand&#xA;  yen because you couldn't get it up?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It wasn't &lt;em&gt;suddenly&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; Aru sipped her Americano. Its bitterness&#xA;  formed a frown on her forehead. &quot;Have you seen the movie Pretty&#xA;  Woman?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aru dashed out of Yuuto's apartment and returned to hers in Ginza.&#xA;  There, sipping a can of beer on her couch, she chewed over her new career&#xA;  path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will this be distracting for the reader? Maybe readers don't care so much about alliteration? Maybe I should focus on finding the right verbs, similes, and metaphors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="22074" LastEditDate="2017-01-31T20:07:20.380" LastActivityDate="2020-10-07T18:36:09.387" Title="Is alliteration distracting and not very valuable/interesting for the reader?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|figures-of-speech|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26129" CreationDate="2017-01-17T17:39:16.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The word choices you make have to work for your story. An alliteration is a tool, like a rhyme, and if you use it without a purpose, it will sound strange and unnatural, if not jarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you use them? To show off your eloquence? To set the tone of your prose? To illustrate personal quirks of a character (not the case in the excerpt given, just in general)? How does it help your storytelling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P. S. I am reasonably sure, though, that a certain number of your readers might not even notice it. :-) For me &lt;em&gt;&quot;sipping a beer can in her couch&quot;&lt;/em&gt; hints at a slightly bigger problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T17:39:16.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26129" CreationDate="2017-01-17T19:40:08.120" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I definitely noticed the alliterations. They stood out, and were frankly jarring. If you were writing poetry, or prose which is echoing poetry, I'd tell you to go for it, but if your point is to tell a story, then using poetic tools may get in the way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the joy of poetry is the sound of the words and how they play against each other visually and aurally. One of my favorite examples of this is from Pope's &lt;em&gt;Essay on Criticism&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These Equal Syllables alone require,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  Tho' oft the Ear the open Vowels tire,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  While Expletives their feeble Aid do join,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lines 1, 2, and 4 are actually demonstrating the effects he's describing. The last line &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; dull and plodding because all the syllables and stresses are the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do this in prose, it can impede the storytelling. The dual meaning of &lt;em&gt;frosty&lt;/em&gt; is great; you can do plenty of that. But when you tack on more Fs, now I'm looking at all the Fs and not paying attention to the &lt;em&gt;meaning&lt;/em&gt; of the words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't say it would always be in the way &amp;mdash; if you were writing something whimsical and funny, where the prose is deliberately silly, you could probably get away with it. But that's because the tone of the entire book would be playful, allowing the reader the freedom to consider the sounds of the words along with the meaning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a regular book, though? No, not superior. Showing off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T19:40:08.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26129" CreationDate="2017-01-17T20:08:52.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that here, this almost abnegates the purpose and effectiveness of the technique. In prose, it just doesn't work because it sounds a bit silly. I also can't really think of a reason to use it in prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two places where you would most likely use it are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any form of poetry&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Persuasive writing&lt;/em&gt; (it's a great persuasive technique)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think, due to my response while reading it as a reader, that my attention was diverted &lt;strong&gt;away from the story&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;to the alliteration.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a massive red flag and &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; what you should aim for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, you shouldn't use this technique in books much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T20:08:52.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26092" CreationDate="2017-01-17T20:17:28.923" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A tree doesn't just have a trunk. It has branches too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll use life as an example too because it works well. In life, your 'main plot' is say, doing well in that job interview you have coming up. Your 'subplot' or 'side plot' are all the things you have next or beside that which you are also doing. It is inevitable, that if you are going to create something with &lt;em&gt;depth&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;a sense of realism&lt;/em&gt; that it will have more than just one main plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from that, subplots are great for the following things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developing a character(s)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Boosting the main plot, helping it develop in some cases&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Creating more depth by adding more layers to the story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@SaraCosta also made a &lt;strong&gt;brilliant&lt;/strong&gt; point about two common types of subplots. One that gives a notion of social networking in the world, and one which can impact the main plot. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a job interview coming up. &amp;lt;- main plot&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My friend organised to hang out, etc etc. &amp;lt;- sub plot&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of that I missed the interview. &amp;lt;- effect on main plot&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main plot can &lt;strong&gt;still be developing&lt;/strong&gt; meanwhile this subplot can end having an effect on the main plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion I believe that to write a successful story, subplots are &lt;strong&gt;definitely&lt;/strong&gt; necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T20:17:28.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26112" CreationDate="2017-01-17T20:33:49.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;What makes a great plot?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't a formula for a great plot. Rather, it is a mixture of many factors combined. I would say the primary one is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pacing, buildup and calculation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reader, I have always been amazed by things like foreshadowing and pacing, buildup as well that leads to an amazing twist or moment. When these are timed well, designed and &lt;strong&gt;fit&lt;/strong&gt; they absolutely awe me. And if you can't tell, this is something that happens in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I began with that previous point to lead to this. I believe the best plots are things which resemble actual life, actual problems and actual things. For example, in &lt;strong&gt;nobody's life&lt;/strong&gt; there is absolute happiness 100% of the time. It's just not how it works. There are twists, turns, thrills. It's the same with a plot, in honesty. Without the twists and turns, the thrills that create the excitement in our lives, there wouldn't be a lot to worry, to think about. The best plots are the ones with twists and turns, &lt;strong&gt;uncertainty of where it will go&lt;/strong&gt;, keeping the reader on the edge of their seat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned a complicated web. I would say that that is actually a bad thing. Over complicating the plot in unnecessary ways can just make the reader confused - which I have experienced in pieces I've read in the past. The 'complicated web' is actually something I think is created by &lt;strong&gt;uncertainty&lt;/strong&gt;. It appears complicated, like a web of traps and pitfalls, because there is so much uncertainty and unsureness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How can I make a great plot?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, let's get this out of the way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't be afraid to take inspiration.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm writing is heavily inspired by four different things, with highlights from a million other things that have all influenced my novel. Don't be afraid to take inspiration because no matter what, you're idea won't be original because there's 7 billion human minds on this Earth who all have an imagination and likely have already thought of the idea. Secondly, inspiration is &lt;em&gt;very helpful.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do the 'sorting out jumbled ideas' technique.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your sleep have you had loads of great snippets of story? Well, I have that all the time. The common case is to have &lt;em&gt;lots of random ideas or scenes&lt;/em&gt;. To create a plot from these ideas, you should get out a big sheet of A3 paper and write out all the ideas all over it in big, crazy writing so you can see it easily. Then, you can try and look over those ideas, turning them into one cohesive idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to do that that has worked for me is to try and categorise them, putting the thoughts from one idea and plugging that into another. For example, a person that appeared in one thought, you would put that person in a different thought, etc, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T20:33:49.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26092" CreationDate="2017-01-17T22:49:01.217" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book &lt;em&gt;Invisible Ink&lt;/em&gt; by Brian McDonald helped me with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very first sentence is, &lt;em&gt;I don't like the term subplot; I think it confuses people&lt;/em&gt;. He prefers referring to them as &quot;supporting plots&quot; (rather than &quot;Subordinate Plots&quot;) as they &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; exist only to support the main plot of your story. Not to add &quot;depth&quot; to the world or anything as benign as that (you should be doing that anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a story where the Main Character (MC) has fallen for a woman and will do anything to win her over; a point of conflict might be that the woman has another man who wants her. A pertinent subplot might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have the other guy be an outwardly charming bad guy; the MC wants to unmask him, in the process we learn more about his character and how &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; he is in comparison to the villainous swine.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have the other guy be a good guy; the MC realises his faults compared to him, and betters himself, which the girl notices. We now have more character development and root for the MC to woo the girl more; we've seen him overcome harsh realities of his personality.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of that... you don't need supporting plots coming out your ears just to elevate your main plot. Unless you've got a sprawling multi-book series then you can't afford to have dozens of offshooting mini-stories that you can't wrap up before or during the end of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to be concise; summarise what your character &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt; (or what the plot is), is there any other kind of story you can bring in to play that will &lt;em&gt;elevate&lt;/em&gt; that main point while not appearing out of the blue for the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23065" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T22:49:01.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26031" CreationDate="2017-01-18T00:30:58.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories, either written or on film, get boring when logic dictates what does and does not happen. We don't empathise with logic, we empathise with the human elements of choice, namely strong emotions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We see someone cry, we get upset. We see someone kills the dog left to you as a gift from your dying wife (John Wick plot)-- just fuck 'em up mate. All of 'em. Now. Go.... and then we get pulled along as the story kicks in, learning more about the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have come to realise that the decision I originally set up is a win-win situation for the protagonist – there is a downside to the decision, but it's not personal to the protagonist, which drains out the tension and makes the protagonist's choice too easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall the phrase, &lt;em&gt;&quot;If there's something wrong with the third act, it's really with the first act.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The decision I originally set up is a win-win for the protag&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's where your &quot;first act&quot; problem is; this is relevant to short stories too, the advice is targetted to the telling of a story no matter it's length. Don't show the reader logic, show them emotion. Show them the character &lt;em&gt;MUST&lt;/em&gt; commit to an action --any action--.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision you speak of, is there any conflict you can introduce that makes it -seemingly- impossible? Any further obstacle the protag must get through so he can commit to the Decision? Why is it your protag who has to make the decision in any case? If the decision is in itself mundane we'd wonder why no one else thought of that, especially as you said it makes the choice easy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to read about Bjorn StrongMoral. He's a curious character thrust into XYZ circumstances (conflict arises). The stakes --somehow-- become personal: he MUST do X or else Y or even Z could happen! But Mr StrongMoral cannot even do X, he must suffer lowercase y's and z's even to achieve it, but by jove he does and at great cost God rest him... Good old Bjorn StrongMoral etc etc... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just try to enthuse asense of urgency and agency so we know where we're going, why we're going that, and what the stakes are if we don't make it. But THIS is the story about the guy that did...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;There is a downside... but it's not personal to the protag.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are instances of characters being more observer than operator within conflicts, however in my experience they tend to be more philosophical, using the conflict(s) as a means to introduce new introspective concepts. If it's not personal to the protag, maybe you have the wrong protagonist for this particular conflict, can you change it to anyone else? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you need to elevate the level at which the story operates; instead of a drama whose impact affects only a village, it will impact millions of lives and cause irrecoverable harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.&lt;em&gt;...and makes the protagonist's choice too easy.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That prospect does not make for a rivetting story. However, it may be that you are underestimating your story. Try getting a beta-reader or pay someone to edit your work. They may be able to spot glaring mistakes. When they're done ask them questions for further feedback? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23065" LastEditorUserId="23065" LastEditDate="2017-01-18T00:39:26.567" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T00:39:26.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26129" CreationDate="2017-01-18T01:09:20.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of your responses to a comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For me, alliteration has the same function as a simile or a metaphor; makes the prose &quot;livelier&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless whether the prose is &quot;lively&quot; or not, people will still think it jarring or too &quot;purpley&quot; or have no reason to be included. Alliteration, in particular, is a fairly blunt tool. It stands out. It can be used comedically; in Harry Potter there are characters who, by dint of the impishness of the magical world in general, &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be called &quot;Quirinus Quirrell&quot; and we just titter sensibly at another funny alliteration in this strange new world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that sort of thing seems like it &quot;fits&quot; your world as and can be consistently introduced to induce a particular effect (like with HP the strangeness of the alliteration stands out, it's &lt;em&gt;meant&lt;/em&gt; to)... then by all means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But many, many people will notice it. I wouldn't recommend it, and focusing on it might lead you to sloppy descriptions where you're just wondering &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; words fit together comma after comma, when there may be more appropriate ways to display imagery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She always felt frosty after failed fornication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It stands out &lt;em&gt;sharply&lt;/em&gt;. If I read this I would re-read it. Probably multiple times. It's tongue-trippy in a way that I will always notice. Four out of five words start with &quot;f&quot;, the &quot;after&quot; has a distinctive &quot;f&quot; sound. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like that sentence which is just the word &quot;buffalo&quot; and because of some strange magic it makes sense if you twist every definition of the word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unrequested help, but something I noticed with your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems the &quot;Aru&quot; character is the Main Character. I began writing almost always starting a paragraph with He, or She, or the character's name, or They, or It. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this everywhere I looked in my writing. Once I started looking specifically it appeared everywhere. And before I noticed, I was blind to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's invisible when you're writing; of course, why &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt; I start the paragraphs with something like that? I want the reader to follow the character exactly. However we're in the character's head already (usually), so adding He and She and Aru just takes over paragraphs that could be more concisely written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below is where I first came across this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6642/how-to-avoid-repetitive-sentence-structure&quot;&gt;How to avoid repetitive sentence structure?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23065" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T01:09:20.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26112" CreationDate="2017-01-18T06:46:15.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A great plot is a plot that can engage the readers from start to finish. It has nothing to do with the twists according to my thinking. Again this depends on the audience you are writing for. &#xA;The flow of the plot should be consistent and it should be moving forward and it should not have elements that are just added to drag the plot. These things or characters should help the move plot forward, it should be logical. &#xA;The reader should not feel that bored. Even if its a simple straight forward plot, it should be engaging, there is no one formula to come up with a great plot, its hard work, you may need to tinker with it a few times before you can come up with a solid chapter without any loose ends. Your plot should be able draw your audience in line with your thoughts. Best way to write is place yourself in the characters that you write about and see if you would sound good with those dialogues. Does the dialogue sounds good, can it be made better, does it sounds humorous, does it deliver the intended punch. Most of all the flow should be logical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23072" LastEditorUserId="23072" LastEditDate="2017-01-18T09:13:39.190" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T09:13:39.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25738" CreationDate="2017-01-18T07:46:00.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steven Pinker's &lt;em&gt;The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century&lt;/em&gt; appreciates the strengths and weaknesses of Strunk and White, explains its history and tries to provide a more diverse kind of help for writers. Its longest chapter, which is over 100 pages, discusses the &quot;rules&quot; of word choices, but the rest of the book talks about other important aspects of writing (especially when the reader needs to learn, e.g. in non-fiction or stories with heavy worldbuilding).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mark Forsyth's &lt;em&gt;The Elements of Eloquence: How To Turn the Perfect English Phrase&lt;/em&gt; discusses dozens of writing techniques that have been useful for centuries. Occasionally, it argues some &quot;ungrammatical&quot; constructions are worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22216" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T07:46:00.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26070" CreationDate="2017-01-18T09:34:51.523" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the third option as there are chances for writing interesting events/interactions with the elements of the story to reveal the past and then move on to the main plot. With each interaction you get certain information, which can be pieced together to get the complete picture. It’s like trying to put together pieces of broken glass together, as you find pieces you fit them, but not always you will get the correct piece to fit, you have to pick the right piece or search for the right one, but you won't discard the piece found because it not needed right now, you'll keep it aside so that it can be used later. Once you get all the pieces you can stick the glass together. I hope this is helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23072" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T09:34:51.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26141" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26379" CreationDate="2017-01-18T11:10:08.920" Score="2" ViewCount="346" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing in the first person, how do you visually describe details of a specific object, such as words written on a piece of paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take this for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What was his name? That's something he never bothered with before - something completely irrelevant to him over the past few days. He looked around the room for ideas, his eyes landing on a scrap of paper half torn vertically with rough handwritten letters, the second halves of the words showing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Ress.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'En.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I - my name is Ressen.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The primary issues&lt;/strong&gt; with this is that is that I want to reveal a piece of information, primarily the letters 'Ress' and 'En' that appear above and below each other respectively. However, I'm unsure of the correct way to format this. I have seen that some authors center the text that they are aiming to convey through an image of the paper that's ripped, with the text inside of it. However, I also see some authors do what I have included in my example, and others centering it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some kind of universal method to do something like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T20:23:55.143" Title="How do you describe details of an object visually?" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26114" CreationDate="2017-01-18T15:37:56.983" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A2TOZW0SV7IR1U&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon's content guidelines&lt;/a&gt; are notoriously nonspecific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Offensive Content&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume there are multiple reasons for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Offensive material is hard to narrow down to a set of well-defined guidelines (your question demonstrates an edge case for a seemingly-simple &quot;no bestiality&quot; rule). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They probably do most/all of their removal/banning by algorithm, so they might not even have a good, human-understandable definition to give you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have legal obligations and concerns, which means that being able to remove &lt;em&gt;whatever&lt;/em&gt; might cause problems can take precedence over being transparent to authors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been multiple cases of Amazon suddenly &quot;cracking down&quot; on erotica, or changing the guidelines - the ones I recall were in &lt;a href=&quot;http://jakonrath.blogspot.co.il/2011/01/guest-post-by-selena-kitt-part-2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2011&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://accrispin.blogspot.co.il/2013/10/thoughts-on-great-erotica-panic-of-2013.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2013&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, any answer here is going to be guesswork, and might be subject to change with no warning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fantastical creatures seem to be accepted as not treading on bestiality. There's certainly no dearth of werewolf erotica titles, and other shapeshifters as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As far as I can tell (though I am no expert), Amazon is unlikely to ban you -- if they do anything, it will be to remove your book. At which point you can make modifications (e.g. remove the chapter with the swan...), and re-upload.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own very quick skim of the internet has uncovered a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00U9UD9TA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2013 guide to Amazon's content guidelines for erotica authors&lt;/a&gt;, as well as recommendations to seek and join a good erotica-writer forum, which will have the expertise you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find better, fuller, answers then this, it'd be great if you came back and filled us in :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="13494" LastEditDate="2017-01-20T12:12:12.077" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T12:12:12.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26146" CreationDate="2017-01-18T16:35:26.540" Score="3" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the rules of good writing is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing&quot;&gt;show, don't tell&lt;/a&gt; rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to create a realistic fantasy world, so I've thought about details like astronomy, geography and so on. For instance, this world has a &lt;strong&gt;lighter gravity than Earth&lt;/strong&gt;, which allows flying heavy animals and living on higher mountain tops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how could I show this for the readers &lt;strong&gt;without telling them&lt;/strong&gt;? And without referring to Earth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11352" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T18:35:00.133" Title="How to present details about the setting in a fantasy world without telling?" Tags="|creative-writing|fantasy|showing-telling|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2017-01-19T13:05:02.810" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26145" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-18T16:35:58.433" Score="4" ViewCount="5670" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a prologue I'm working on right now, however, I want to add an introduction as well. What I mean is that I want to write about why and how I created the story (an introduction), but I want some backstory (the prologue, what the character was doing before the official story happened, from their perspective). Is it okay to add the two together, or should I ditch the introduction and stick with the prologue, or vice versa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22908" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-01-18T16:44:05.173" LastActivityDate="2023-08-27T15:13:07.837" Title="Can I have both a prologue and an introduction in my book?" Tags="|introduction|prologues|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26144" CreationDate="2017-01-18T16:51:17.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The people in your story might not know anything about Earth, but your readers do.  You can show lighter gravity by describing things that couldn't happen on Earth -- a person out for a jog bounding high enough to brush tree branches, somebody casually carrying an anvil under one arm (this depends on whether your low-grav folks have lost strength, of course), a game of something like basketball where the basket height is several times the height of the players &quot;to make it a little challenging&quot;, and so on.  What you describe has to seem perfectly natural to your characters (from their point of view gravity is normal), but has to stand out as unusual to your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same approach works for other variations -- a casual reference to the second moon rising, to the blue-white glow of the sun, to the scraggly purple brush in the forests of blue-leafed trees, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Showing means describing and letting the reader draw the conclusions you want him to draw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T16:51:17.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26145" CreationDate="2017-01-18T16:53:48.223" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You absolutely can have both an introduction and a prologue. Both are concepts which are well-familiar to readers; they will not be confused by it. If you do have both, the Introduction comes first, before any of the fiction begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's any cause for concern, it's of wearying the reader before they get to the &quot;real&quot; story. You're basically suggesting that readers go through two &quot;reading experiences&quot; before they start your &quot;actual&quot; book. First impressions matter, readers set books down quickly, so anything &quot;extra&quot; you add to the beginning of the book, &lt;em&gt;needs&lt;/em&gt; to be engaging and draw the reader in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think that's really your main consideration here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the Introduction draw readers in? If no, consider making it an afterward instead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the Prologue draw readers in? If no, consider skipping it, or rewriting it, or weaving the same information in later in the book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not sure whether your Introduction and Prologue are engaging enough, well, that's the kind of thing Beta Readers are fantastic for :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T16:53:48.223" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26144" CreationDate="2017-01-18T18:35:00.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure, how lower gravity would allow people live higher up a mountain (it is not gravity, it is a lack of oxygen which limits the habitability in that dimension, and the lower the gravity is, the less atmosphere the planet is able to detain, but I am not a physicist, and could be mistaken), but in a different gravity world both flora and fauna would adapt to it--this might be a question for the worldbuilding exchange--the trees would likely grow higher, and yes, larger animals would be able to fly, like dragons and pegasi (is that a correct plural for Pegasys?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is for you to decide if the strength of humans and ordinary animals would be scaled down proportionally, and that would dictate the way how to show it throughout the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it definitely has to be showing, not telling--mention the trees, touching the clouds, a bird-of-prey with a six-foot wingspan, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, it is your story and not the gravity which makes the reader interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T18:35:00.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26150" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-18T19:56:03.793" Score="2" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;a huge amount of the books I read&lt;/em&gt; the author has coined a little term to help them describe something, or an onomatopoeia. Like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kindish (adding -ish to the end of a existing word)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Elfness (adding -ness to the end of an existing (race name) word)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hobbit-like (very common. Adding a dash and then 'like')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are probably others which I can't think of right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see this all the time in the texts I look at. I obviously still know what they mean, and it has quite a good effect in the writing. I like it, to be honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To what extent can this be done before you fail to be understood?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When is an appropriate time to use this technique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm planning on coining a bit of a term: 'tonitrious'. I want to make a madman use this while enjoying the lightning and thunder way too much. I just turned &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tonitrus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tonitrus&lt;/a&gt; an adjective. I think having  this crazy word that originated from Latin gives a weird, &lt;strike&gt;lunatic(ish/-like, haha)&lt;/strike&gt; maddening feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;seriously&lt;/strong&gt; doubt that my readers, considering my target audience is 13-16 will have heard of 'tonitrus'. It's pretty funny actually, because I'm in that age range. However, I know for a fact that other people won't know it. Do you think I'll get away with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh, deafening sky! Tonitrious night!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the kind of way I might use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T20:32:52.273" Title="Suffixing words with -ness, -ish, -like, and others" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|word-choice|clarity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26151" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26175" CreationDate="2017-01-18T20:17:51.417" Score="2" ViewCount="448" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see any analytical literature about the usefulness of red herrings as a TV trope. What are some reasons to use them? I'm assuming there's more to it than just bored writers trying to amuse themselves to the detriment of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one I can think of is - generally you build anticipation in a plot by making the viewer/reader subconsciously establish a pattern through repeated exposure to consistent cause and effect. Then to evoke a dramatic / emotional shock you mislead them by giving a cause that fails to provide the anticipated effect. Moreover, you leave the viewer anxious about the climax by sewing a seed of doubt that the effect is not a foregone conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the basic intention? Or are their others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: I create a highlights video of soccer matches where my favorite team keeps starting a match badly conceding goals, but always makes a comeback and wins each game. Then just as it's getting predictable, you throw a red herring in by showing highlights of a match where they fail to make a comeback and the viewer is jarred with disappointment. Subsequent match highlights will then keep the viewer on edge by not knowing which way the next one will go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13987" LastEditorUserId="13987" LastEditDate="2017-01-18T23:45:18.127" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T00:22:53.663" Title="Reasons to use &quot;red herrings&quot;?" Tags="|screenwriting|tropes|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26150" CreationDate="2017-01-18T20:32:52.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The extent to which you can do this varies depending on your audience, but generally, I wouldn't do it with a thoroughly unknown word. &lt;em&gt;Tonitrus&lt;/em&gt; is an excellent example. Great word, means what you need it to mean, but in itself it's already so rare that your readers will have to look it up. If you are then coining an adjective on top of it, you're going to lose people entirely, because you &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; look that one up. So yes, create new words, but base them on familiar stems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping that in mind, I wouldn't overdo it in any one story, but go ahead and use it when you think it works. As long as your base word is understandable, make your new adjectives where necessary. Just check with your beta readers to make sure you're not too heavy-handed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T20:32:52.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26151" CreationDate="2017-01-18T20:48:02.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand you right, you describe a plot progression as &quot;normal outcome - red herring - unexpected outcome&quot;. I see &quot;red herring&quot; as a very popular plot device without any &quot;normal outcome&quot; prelude. For example, the movie &quot;Usual Suspects&quot; is one big red herring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T20:48:02.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21623" CreationDate="2017-01-18T21:12:48.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sure to ruffle some feathers but... Zingifer, this whole 'men don't cry', 'men don't show feelings', 'men react aggressively', 'men whatever-you-will', this is all &lt;em&gt;beep&lt;/em&gt;. It is societal, not biological. Men do feel, and it's not just anger and aggresivity. Unless, of course, you're a sociopath. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a woman, so people may feel free to ignore what I'm about to say, but men do cry, men do feel crippling sadness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My father is in his 70s. He is an old-fashioned man. He's not sentimental, he does not show emotions, and if life gets tough... be a man. (And if you happen to be a woman, then be a woman: suck it in and do your best.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, he has (in the protection of his home, with only his closer family present) admitted that yes, he cried. When he was younger, he spent six months at a time working far from home and family, in a different country, in difficult life conditions. He is a social, family-centered man. He missed his family and friends dreadfully and yes, he was sad. He did not mention anger, just deep longing for and sadness. Although, obviously, he hid those feelings (because it is not becoming for a man to show such sensitive, weak feelings). He also cried in the shower many, many times. Because no one can distinguish the water from the tears, and if your eyes are red, blame it on the shampoo. And if by any chance someone notices you're taking longer than you should... well, your muscles were particularly sore and the hot water helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My father is now undergoing a difficult stage in his life. He's been through the anger and denial, and he's been through despair and depression. It's a 'marathon' he's undergoing; he has good days, when he forces himself to suck it in and do his best, and he has bad days, when he can't force himself do do anything. Like I said, it's a marathon. He's made peace with the fact that slumping down for a day does not make him less of a man. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But let me tell you something as a woman who is not in the least prone to violence or aggressivity: when life puts you in a position where you cannot show your sadness, or even just finer feelings (meaning delicate, sensitive, weak), for a long period of time (as has happened to me for professional reasons), anger does show up. If you spend enough time bottling down sadness (my experience was mostly sadness, even if it wasn't the only 'finer feeling' I was swallowing), resentment grows and you start having slightly more violent reactions. In my case, throwing things at walls (not people, didn't get that far). So maybe (just maybe) all the 'natural' angry reactions of men are just a reaction to a lifetime of forcing sadness and other 'weak feelings' down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PS:&lt;/strong&gt; I think it shows that I have a really strong pet peeve against the terms 'feminine' or 'manly' feelings. Feelings are feelings; they may be more sensitive or more violent. And yes, I know that testosterone is a male hormone that prompts aggressivity. But the fact is, women have testosterone too (although in lower levels) and I assure you that a lot of women would be as aggressive (or more) than some men if societal rules had not taught them (us) to force it down. So it's ok for a woman to cry, whether it's sadness or anger, but not punch something. Men, though, should go out and punch something, whether it's anger or sadness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PPS:&lt;/strong&gt; In the European Middle Ages (I'm particularly familiar with the 14th century), a well-educated noble man should be a fierce warrior and a sensitive courtier, capable of shedding tears in public (for the right reasons, obviously).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;People come in all shapes and feelings. My father is my prime example here: tough it out, show no weakness. Keyword: show. He has never once said a man cannot &lt;strong&gt;feel&lt;/strong&gt; sadness, even to the point of becoming powerless and incapable of action. What he has said is that a person (man or woman) cannot give in to those feelings (and a man should not even show them). But the feelings are there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, rant almost over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for anything that might have gone over a line somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing on your character now... All I can say is that yes, many people will expect your characters to correspond to the stereotype, and some stereotypes are easier forgotten than others. Men having control over their feelings, especially weak ones like sadness, &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a turn on (in more ways than one) and a stereotype that is not easily kicked out. I suggest that you balance moments of despair and giving in (which equates defeat) with an effort to overcome it all (and being successful), which doesn't mean refusing to acknowledge sensitivity in general. There's a reason why (a lot of) women love seeing a big, strong man being affectionate with a baby or a puppy. Men that are sensitive are attractive, just don't wallow; that is not attractive. Keep that in mind for your character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, like my father might say, it's not about being a man or a woman, it's about overcoming your weaknesses. Okay, so he got a blow, several! Slump down, cry it out in private, then get up and do something, whether it's fighting against the situation or washing your hands of it and moving on to something else worthier of your character's efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I truly believe that a character fighting to be successful, even if there are moments of despair, is always a worthy character. This is true of male and female characters: I cannot stand those wretched female creatures that wallow in despair and are unable to act. Most women I know are strong people that face adversity with a steady head, even if they cry themselves to sleep every night. In contrast, most female characters are cardboard weaklings, just like most male characters are cardboard supermen. I find neither attractive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T21:12:48.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8231" CreationDate="2017-01-18T21:32:28.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;this URL seems to answer the title question:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writing-world.com/rights/rights.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.writing-world.com/rights/rights.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In granting/selling your First Electronic Rights to PublisherX, that means you send them a copy, and wait for them to publish it before you submit it to anywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, Let's say PublisherX and PublisherY, both only want submissions that grant them First Electronic Rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, you already sent it to PubX.  You need to wait to see if they accept it before sending to PubY.  If PubX rejects it, then you can submit it to PubY because they are now the &quot;first&quot; to possibly publish it.  If PubX accepts it, you MAY NOT sell it to anybody else as First, because they aren't the first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this, because a site I am considering sending a submission to only accepts First Electronic Rights/First Printed Rights.  Meaning that I can't simul-submit, and if they did accept and I found somebody else with the same deal, that story would not qualify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is, you still own your story.  You can self-publish it later or build an anthology or something.  You just have to understand that First rights is a big deal to what you can re-sell it as.  Only one publisher can have First Rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23087" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T21:32:28.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26156" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-18T22:16:00.693" Score="2" ViewCount="2128" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I cite a short story if there is only one page? Do I just write &quot;example&quot;(1)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23088" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-01-22T17:35:37.957" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T19:27:56.737" Title="How do I cite a short story if there is only one page?" Tags="|citations|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26151" CreationDate="2017-01-18T23:36:45.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To expand on @Alexander's answer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me a red herring has always been a clue that diverts the reader's attention. It's most popular, I believe, in detective stories, where the red herring will point at one person as the criminal only to have the real criminal revealed later on. Thus, it makes the outcome less predictable. Before learning of the correct term for the technique, I use to think of it as &quot;throwing sand to the readers's eyes&quot; (literal translation of a Portuguese saying) because the objective was to keep the reader from seeing the (fictional) 'reality'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T23:36:45.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26129" CreationDate="2017-01-18T23:55:05.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a great fan of alliteration in prose. But it absolutely must be well done and used sparingly. I use it to strengthen an idea and very rarely on more than two words in a row. Never through an entire sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do write mostly in Portuguese, though, which has slightly different reactions to certain figures of speech, but I also use this technique in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance &quot;the morning sun rose mournfully&quot; has two words that alliterate and are not too close together, but what idea or feeling is it really strengthening? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The sea breeze brought the memories of long forgotten summers.&quot; The vocalic sounds of 'sea breeze' and the consonantic 'br' of 'breeze brought' show that if you repeat different sounds just twice you can create pleasant alliterations that don't jar. The 'ee' sound can intensify the feel of the 'sea', while the 'br' sounds can unite the breeze and its function of bringing memories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, you cannot fall back onto alliterations relentlessly, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T23:55:05.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26167" CreationDate="2017-01-19T00:07:38.337" Score="12" ViewCount="5758" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've kept diaries all my life and now have over 100...which I've recently started turning into an autobiography - where some of the original diary quotes are included along with the new text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I belong to a local writers group, most of whom are well into their 70's &amp;amp; have led much more 'normal' lives than myself. Today I received their feedback on my first chapter. They seemed fascinated by the content but the general consensus was that, because I'm not famous and &quot;nobody buys memoirs of anyone who's not&quot;, it might be better if I wrote it as a novel - though still writing it in the first person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had quite an unusual life involving a great deal of travelling and (in my 20's) was socialising with several notorious rock musicians as well as getting caught up in some rather nefarious activities. I definitely dont have to fictionalise anything! I only discovered this website by googling the query of possible conviction for misdeeds I committed 40 years ago (which were never uncovered) by writing about them now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I was wondering:&#xA;1. If others on here shared the same view that memoirs, by unknowns, are not a suitable genre for first time writers? &#xA;2. The question of admitting to crimes (drugs imparticularly...and more than just smoking some weed!) being liable to prosecution - or possible barring from the foreign countries where those crimes were committed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS I'm now 65 &amp;amp; was only naughty in the 1970's!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23089" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-01-19T00:11:18.850" LastActivityDate="2020-02-22T04:24:24.273" Title="My autobiography is exciting, but I'm an unknown. Should I make it a novel instead?" Tags="|novel|legal|biography|memoir|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26159" CreationDate="2017-01-19T01:16:55.630" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an additional possibility to consider: Get yourself better known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submit some of the episodes of your story to widely circulated magazines, especially magazines that serve the audience you want to reach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact writers and reporters for national and local media outlets (magazines, newspapers, TV, websites) to see if they're interested in your story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish some of the episodes yourself, either on your own website or someone else's platform, such as Medium.com, YouTube, …&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other ideas I haven't thought of…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T01:16:55.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26163" CreationDate="2017-01-19T01:41:13.370" Score="5" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this may not be the best place to ask this, since it's for a game, but the game is very story driven, so I thought it would be reasonable to ask this on the writers stack exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is far from complete - I don't usually write stories for my games, so I'm unsure of how to start. I already have TONS of notes... for the plot, scenes, characters, setting, dialog snippets, all sorts of things, but I'm having trouble bringing it all together to plan for the game it was made for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I structure the story? Would it make sense to write it out like a book, so everybody on the team knows exactly what the story is about? Or should it be more concise and to the point? What would help best when we start working on the actual game?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the game itself: It's an RPG Maker type of video game inspired by games from the Corpse Party series, which also first started from an RPG Maker game. It even has a similair setup, with a group of people trapped in a haunted place, but with a twist on how time works in that haunted place, leading to interesting situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23083" LastEditorDisplayName="user23083" LastEditDate="2017-01-20T07:53:04.967" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T07:53:04.967" Title="What format/platform/structure is good for writing for a video game?" Tags="|structure|videogame|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26164" CreationDate="2017-01-19T02:34:55.370" Score="3" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mary had never concealed Marcos as though he were an (ugly)&#xA;  scar. No, far from that. She'd always exhibited him around like a sexy&#xA;  birthmark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the word &lt;em&gt;ugly&lt;/em&gt; is unnecessary here, since a scar is assumed to be ugly. A birthmark, on the other hand could be either ugly or beautiful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reason to use &lt;em&gt;ugly&lt;/em&gt;, in my opinion, would be to keep things symmetrical (ugly scar, sexy birthmark).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the best option in these cases? Symmetry or simplicity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-01-19T08:16:27.763" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T18:25:34.850" Title="What is better for prose: symmetry or simplicity?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26161" CreationDate="2017-01-19T02:54:40.063" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since it is for a video game, you should have a story. In fact, I'd finish the story completely, if for no other reason than for your peace of mind. That is, so you know inherently exactly what's going on. That doesn't mean the story as a whole would get published, but only parts you need to. It would mean, however, you and the team know exactly what you want everything to be. You'll all be lock step in the process with a lot less guessing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd want to have the story complete before you start working on making the game, that way you'll know what elements you'll need to work on and for what. Once the story is written, it'll help everyone on the team understand the direction and flow of the game itself. Once the story is done and everyone has a good understanding of it, they'll have a better feel for the imagery of the game and how it should look. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for where to start ... the best place to start &lt;em&gt;is at the beginning&lt;/em&gt;. If you have the storyline worked out, it has to have a place to start already. I'd also assume you already understand the how it's going to end. Put your notes in chronological order of the story, then see what develops. If your notes are as complete as you believe they are, I'd bet once you get them in order, the story itself will flow fairly easily ... it'll be done before you know it. It may, as they say, even &lt;em&gt;write itself&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22808" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T02:54:40.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26162" CreationDate="2017-01-19T06:26:46.190" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You're thinking too deeply&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're going &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; too far into this. I wouldn't say 'lack of unnecessary elements', rather 'description'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In writing, there is no symmetry on the page. Two nouns both having adjectives doesn't necessarily create symmetry. You should know the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only have necessary descriptions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you stick to that you'll be fine. For example, if you think the scar doesn't need to be described as ugly, don't describe it as ugly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, you can get away with skipping loads of descriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T06:26:46.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26161" CreationDate="2017-01-19T06:32:20.437" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The structure and complexity depends how intense and deep you want the story to be. However, when planning you &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; know the following thing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ending.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For when you start work, the &lt;em&gt;key&lt;/em&gt; to working effectively in a game design team and getting to a solid end is knowing what the ending is. You need to know where the story is going and how it is going to end to ensure that you all do not disagree on things halfway through and everything goes smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that you were  having trouble bringing all these ideas together. I'd like to share a method which works for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said you had lots of random dialogue snippets, etc. You need to get out a huge sheet of paper, and write those all down onto it in a mind-map. Then, you can have all those muddled ideas out of your head and in one place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all the ideas on the paper, it's much easier to organise them. You should firstly eliminate bad ideas and keep the good ones, eventually drawing them together and making a story out of them. Categorise them and try and &lt;strong&gt;mold one idea into another&lt;/strong&gt;. Trust me, it works!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, you might have an epiphany. I had an epiphany halfway through writing down my ideas, and then I had my entire story sorted. I just had to write it down before I forgtot the slew of ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T06:32:20.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26162" CreationDate="2017-01-19T07:52:48.313" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, simplicity and clarity come first as a priorities in writing, especially narrative prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally love symmetry, redundancy and I naturally use plenty of adjectives for each noun I write. Sometimes even &lt;em&gt;couples&lt;/em&gt; of adjectives (ugly and nasty scar, meek and pretty face, etc.). But &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; love it - that doesn't mean it always works, or that it's necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question you ask is: does it work? Is it necessary? Are you going for rhythm and musicality, or for effectiveness? If stylistic symmetry has a purpose in your story (your character is a perfectionist, an abstract thinker, an obsessive, etc.) then make your prose sound like that. If redundant descriptions make sense in your prose (ugliness is a feature trait and you need to stress it out as much as you can) then make your prose sound like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't need it other than &quot;it just sounds right&quot;, then take it out. Your editor will in any case, I guess ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T07:52:48.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26159" CreationDate="2017-01-19T08:29:11.310" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two factors that sell an (auto)biography: fame and relevance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Auto)biographies by famous persons sell because everyone wants to know what their lives were (or are) like. We, the common people, want to know how rich, famous, or talented people live. The (auto)biography of a celebrity will sell, even if that person has a completely common and boring life. Because even that is an insight that tickles our curiosity. How can they live a normal life, if their circumstances are so exceptional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Auto)biographies by unknown persons sell because the &quot;protagonist&quot; led an exceptional life or because his life exemplifies the average life. Anne Frank was a very normal, completely unknown girl. Yet her autobiography has become a bestseller because her life was both tragic and an example by which we can understand the lives of many similarly normal people at that time. Today, of course, Anne Frank is &quot;famous&quot;, if you want, but &lt;em&gt;only through her autobiography&lt;/em&gt;. It is her autobiography that made her famous! That Anne Frank never intended to publish her diaries adds to the veracity of her writings and makes reading them even more heartbreaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with the advice of Dale. If you are a common person and your life was average, you cannot make yourself famous and then sell your autobiography off that fame. And if your life was interesting enough to make you famous through the strategies outlined by Dale, it will sell without that effort, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go to a bookstore and look at the biographies section, that will be misleading because the books there are often limited to famous people. But in the novels or social/political sections, there are many (auto)biographies of people that somehow exemplify the circumstances we live in. There are many (auto)biographies by or about women who escaped oppression in islamic states, for example. These are common, average women who were completely unknown before they published their books, but they have become both an inspiration to women in similar circumstances and have helped outsiders understand the situation in their countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you are unknown, but you can manage to make your life relevant to a wider public, either because your life was exceptional, or because your life exemplifies something that people are struggling to understand, then your book will sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one type of autobiography that seems to profit from novellisation, and that is the &quot;normal&quot; life of a member of some fringe group or subculture. A good example is &lt;em&gt;Fight Club&lt;/em&gt;, which fictionalizes the experiences of the author. Other examples are books about drug addicts and criminals, but also musicians or teenagers. The authors of these books are people whose lives are not normal or average from the perspective of the wider audience, but are normal and average within the community they are a part of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T08:29:11.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10375" CreationDate="2017-01-19T13:37:51.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract:&lt;/strong&gt; A brief summary of the article&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Introduction:&lt;/strong&gt; Provides a background and context to the contents of the article&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your abstract is not really an abstract, it's a part of an introduction. An abstract would include background, your argument(s) and conclusion(s) in summary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For science, the abstract would compress the introduction, method, conclusion and evaluation into a few lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21966" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T13:37:51.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26151" CreationDate="2017-01-19T13:51:39.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, there is a right way and a wrong way to include red herrings or twists in a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The wrong way&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suddenly subvert the reader's expectations with a plot twist AKA &quot;the rug-pull&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting, I would consider that the example given above (the film &quot;The Usual Suspects&quot;) is an example of a &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; twist. Very few (if any) details in the 'reveal' sequence at the end are actually noticeable by viewers during the course of the movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The right way&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developing the plot such that multiple endings are plausible before the red herrings are removed and the reader is left with the 'real' ending. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, I can't think of a better example than the first &quot;Mission Impossible&quot; movie with Tom Cruise. As the film progresses and the protagonist reveals more information, he re-visits his memories to theorise and subsequently eliminate different possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To more directly address the question: building up multiple plausible endings before picking one is incredibly satisfying to read and write. Savvy readers may attempt to guess the correct ending and feel rewarded and satisfied by the story's conclusion. Other readers will just enjoy the ride, but will still greatly appreciate how the set of possible endings will narrow as the story approaches the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21966" LastEditorUserId="21966" LastEditDate="2017-01-19T13:56:45.107" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T13:56:45.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26141" CreationDate="2017-01-19T16:17:53.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the more common methods I've come across is to actually put the intended writing, within your writing and call it out specially by indenting it and or italicizing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What was his name? That's something he never bothered with before - something completely irrelevant to him over the past few days. He looked around the room for ideas, his eyes landing on a scrap of paper half torn vertically with rough handwritten letters, the second halves of the words showing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ress.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;En.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Please find the enclosed heating bill....&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes! That must be it, his name must be Ressen.  Why his name was on two lines instead of one, made no difference, he had a name and that was what mattered for the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen several different formats for this with some combination of bold, italicize, indentation, and/or even putting an actual picture of the torn piece of paper you're describing within the written text.  As per a &quot;standard&quot; format, I've not seen any universal one for all forms of writing.  Maybe choose what makes sense for the medium you're writing in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23097" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T16:17:53.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-19T19:56:15.810" Score="2" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an idea for a novel that is told from two, first person viewpoints. One of these viewpoints would be Character 1's and take place in her past, and the other viewpoint would be Character 2's, which would take place in the present as Character 2 falls for Character 1. I would love some feedback on whether or not this plot would be weirdly constructed or difficult to follow. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23101" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-01-20T07:22:58.943" LastActivityDate="2019-09-06T18:03:20.023" Title="Is it practical to write a novel with two viewpoints and written from different points in time?" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|plot|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21974" CreationDate="2017-01-20T00:16:53.340" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It makes no difference to the reader. Or if it does, they will probably prefer the less formal. It makes a difference to some companies, but most are discovering that a more informal style makes them seem less stuffy and more approachable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that a &quot;formal&quot; style was more appropriate for technical communication has two roots. One is in the entirely appropriate desire that technical communication should be precise. The other is in the use of language as a form of class distinction, in which certain forms are used to distinguish the speech of the educated from that of the uneducated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter is largely moribund among the general population, but still popular with a class of editor and grammar fiends, for more or less the old reasons: as a mark of distinction, to set themselves apart from the hoipoloi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concern with precision is as relevant as ever, but there is an increasing recognition that a formal precision that is not actually expressed in the language of the reader does nothing to lead the common reader to correct action. In any case, contractions do nothing to reduce precision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T00:16:53.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26151" CreationDate="2017-01-20T00:22:53.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you quite have the sense of what a red herring is. It really isn't a general plot device. It is more a specific technique in a puzzle kind of plot, such as a who-done-it mystery. It is something that suggest, and leads the reader to believe, that the gardener did it, when in fact it was the butler who it. The entire plot around the gardener is than the red herring. What you are describing seems to be more generally a technique of maintaining suspense of the will-they, won't they variety. There is no red herring involved in your treatment of the soccer matches. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T00:22:53.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26172" CreationDate="2017-01-20T00:28:09.253" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it can be done. But I would think twice about it. A novel should be about telling a story. It should not be about seeing if you can pull off an unconventional storytelling technique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People read novel for stories, not for technique. Generally speaking you should use the most straightforward and conventional technique that you can to tell the story you want to tell. Only if you can't tell you story effectively using a conventional approach should you use an alternative technique, and then only to the extent needed to tell the story, never for the sake of the technique itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many aspiring novelists get obsessed with technique and with the felt need to do something original. These are traps for the unwary. This is not what people want. They want stories. They want good stories honestly and plainly told. Focus on that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-22T18:39:43.050" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T18:39:43.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21623" CreationDate="2017-01-20T01:03:12.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Men do cry, but they are always ashamed of themselves for doing so. They weep, therefore, only when the struggle not to weep is unwinnable. If a male character is coming across as unrealistic when weeping, therefore, it may well be either because it is not convincing that that character could not hold back the tears, or it does not seem that he is trying to do this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm speculating here, but I would suggest that there are probably good evolutionary reasons for this. Tears obscure vision. A warrior or a hunter with tears in their eyes cannot see their enemy or their prey properly, which is likely to have serious consequences. Men have all the same emotions as women, but it is the man's duty to guard, and he who guards must keep his eyes clear. The very short time in which society has passed the duty to guard from every adult male to the police has not obliterated this very basic social and, I suspect, biological imperative of the male. A weeping man is a useless man, a man who cannot fulfill his duty, and one who thus earns the contempt of other men. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, men still weep, but only in the context of all that it means to them socially and biologically to keep their eyes clear. Write it that way and I think most readers will accept it. Neglect this aspect of it and I think it will always seem wrong, even to those who cannot articulate why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T01:03:12.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26112" CreationDate="2017-01-20T05:35:31.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Analyze some books you found particularly satisfying.  This will help you identify what works well for you as a good plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T05:35:31.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26172" CreationDate="2017-01-20T05:47:27.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It had been done before, and it had been done well. The juxtaposition of the two contrasting viewpoints can be challenging to pull off (regardless of the specifics: first person, third limited, etc.), but it has its rewards also. Give it a try, I am a fan already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T05:47:27.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26181" CreationDate="2017-01-20T07:30:14.853" Score="1" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example from my writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aru smiled back at him and at his thought. “I think there’s no need to&#xA;  find him.” So what if Ichi wasn't a prime number? Their hearts&#xA;  combined would produce a &lt;strong&gt;one, one&lt;/strong&gt; that might make her&#xA;  infinitely happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to do in cases where you have awkward pronoun repetition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastEditorUserId="22391" LastEditDate="2017-01-21T04:26:56.050" LastActivityDate="2017-01-21T04:26:56.050" Title="How to deal with awkward pronoun repetition?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26180" CreationDate="2017-01-20T09:12:59.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with the repetition in this case. It emphasizes the important information in a pleasant manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to avoid repetition of words, what you can do is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;rephrase&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;your sentence(s). How to rephrase will depend on the given situation, and asking for and giving help rephrasing passages is off topic on this site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T09:12:59.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26187" CreationDate="2017-01-20T11:17:04.267" Score="9" ViewCount="1119" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the BBC &lt;em&gt;Sherlock&lt;/em&gt; fandom there are many lively discussions about how a lot of the story takes place in &lt;em&gt;subtext&lt;/em&gt;: Person C is a &quot;mirror&quot; for Protagonist A, water symbolizes emotions, drinking tea means X and drinking coffee means Y, the phone represents the heart, and so on. Writer William Goldman has a set of &quot;writing commandments,&quot; one of them being &quot;don't always write 'on the nose' &amp;mdash; actions should have more than one meaning.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when writing a story, at what point do you plan for these items? Writing one plot with a few twists and subplots is already complicated. How do you insert mirrors, symbols, and subtext? Do you have a separate thread in your mindmap or outline alongside the main thread in the outline form? Write the whole thing and work in the subtext in the third draft? Is there a particular point in the process when it's easier? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-27T08:22:06.417" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T08:22:06.417" Title="Where in the writing process do you work in subtext?" Tags="|technique|plot|planning|process|subtext|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26182" CreationDate="2017-01-20T11:39:28.527" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I studied literature at university. We spent a lot of time extracting meaning from texts, and some time on understanding the process of writers. From what I learned there, I can assure you that the overwhelming amount of meaning found in literature (or any other art) is a projection on the part of the person analyzing the text. What meaning there is, usually is not inserted by the author in a conscious process. Much of classic literature wasn't constructed as much as &quot;conceived&quot; and created out of intuition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subtext is a non-explicit, if you want, &lt;em&gt;repressed&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; meaning below the surface of the events unfolding in the plot. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subtext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Merriam-Webster&lt;/a&gt; defines subtext as &quot;the implicit or metaphorical meaning (as of a literary text)&quot;; the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/193161&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oxford English Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; defines subtext as &quot;[a]n underlying and often distinct theme in a conversation, piece of writing, etc.&quot;. Plot is the Hulk smashing military machines, subtext is the sexual confusion and social fear of teenage boys. Plot is the queen attempting to kill Snow White, subtext is the fear of women growing old and losing their (sexual) power to younger women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subtext, as I understand it, is always visceral. Subtext is what is wrong with society at the time a work of art is created. And that is something, that most artists don't fully grasp themselves. But some artists live in a special place in their society, a place where the truth about their environment is &lt;em&gt;lived&lt;/em&gt;, and they write (or paint or whatever) out of that experiences and, without understanding the full extent of their own exemplary position, put the truth of their lives into their art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those small parts of meaning that are in fact consciously constructed into texts are inserted at all points in the writing process. They can be part of the outlining (where a writer might plan different throughlines, some of which can be throughlines of motifs, character relations, etc. and don't need to be single-character throughlines) or the meanings can be added in as a second layer of text during the revision process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding subtext (or meaning) during the revision process has the advantage that you know what kind of text you have and that the finished text will inspire you and give you ideas how you can &quot;enrich&quot; it. Planning subtext beforehand will restrict your writing even more than just planning the basic plot, and many writers find that they need or want to deviate from their planned plot as the story logic drives them elsewhere. So the more restriction you have, the more you might feel stifled by your planning, but that will depend on the kind of writer you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't intentionally create meaning in the sense that I want to convey a message. The meaning that my texts have for me comes from them feeling &quot;right&quot;. If any reader finds more meaning in them, then that is because I managed to &lt;strong&gt;create a reading experience that is emotionally rich and at the same time open and vague enough to provide enough of a projection surface for their own views, feelings, and experiences.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then, a tv series like &lt;em&gt;Sherlock Holmes&lt;/em&gt; or a Hollywood movie is not a piece of art with a single vision behind it. It is written, revised, cut, and edited by a host of people, and the process is much more rational and conscious than that of a lone author writing a novel. In movies and tv series, which often do not have any depth or meaning at all, the &quot;subtext&quot; is a conscious design effort much like the production of industrial foods, where ingredients are added that are known to be addictive. What fans call &quot;subtext&quot; in &lt;em&gt;Sherlock Holmes&lt;/em&gt; is nothing but film makers understanding the psychology of the audience and adding in these little meaningless riddles that the viewers can &quot;uncover&quot;. Because, after all, what does it mean that water symbolizes emotions? Nothing. The water symbolizes emotions because we have all read in women's magazines that water symbolizes emotions, and that is why the film makers put the water there: so that readers of women's magazines can find symbols for emotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-01-23T08:20:35.907" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T08:20:35.907" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26182" CreationDate="2017-01-20T14:45:17.807" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I think we need to make a distinction here between what we might call Easter eggs -- little in jokes of the sort of which Stephen Moffat and his cronies are particularly fond. Sherlock and Dr. Who are full of these, and they encourage the fandom to go looking for more, finding many were I am sure none were intended. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all quite different from subtext, which is the broader intention of the text. Thus in &lt;em&gt;Oliver Twist&lt;/em&gt;, the subtext is a condemnation of the workhouse system. In &lt;em&gt;The Once and Future King&lt;/em&gt; (I'm with Lin Carter in regarding this, not LOTR, as the greatest fantasy novel of the 20th century) Merlyn educates the Wart by turning him into various animals where he learns about their various social systems, from the totalitarian thought control of the ant colony to the libertarianism of the wild geese. Each one of these stories has a subtext about the nature of human societies. There is also a progression in them in which the Wart's future as King Arthur, and the trials of his office are foreshadowed. They combine fancy and delight with a growing weight of responsibility and doom. All this is subtext beneath simple animal fables. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big difference between Easter eggs and subtext is that Easter eggs are smaller than the story while the subtext is larger than the story. An Easter egg can be added or subtracted from a story without changing it fundamentally. But with a subtext, the story exists at all only to support and express the subtext. The subtext is why you write the story in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relationship between story and subtext is, I think, one of the most important ones in literature. Nominally, the subtext could be expressed in an essay. It is an argument about politics or philosophy or psychology or theology or metaphysics and can be argued plainly as such. Why do we then cloth our subtext in story? Because by doing so we humanize the argument. At the political level, we feel sympathy for Oliver Twist in a way we do not feel sympathy for a statistic. At a philosophical level, TH White can express the contrast of the beauty and inexpressible kindness of the world with its limitless cruelty and the futility of even the most virtuous and well meaning striving, in far more concrete and moving terms through the career, loves, and doom of Arthur, in a way no mere essay could ever capture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, subtext first, then text, then Easter eggs. Or, to put it another way, if a novel were a cupcake, the cake is the subtext, the structure which holds everything up, the icing it the text, the story, which attracts the eye, and the Easter eggs are the sprinkles on top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not every story has a subtext, of course. Many are no more than a yarn, and there is nothing wrong with a yarn. Many other works strive to have a subtext but fail to keep it sub. It bursts out in little aggrieved essays or didactic passages which both bore and spoil the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other important thing about subtexts is that they are not hidden. Yes, the author must be careful not to have them break out and become super-textual, but at the same time, they are not trying to conceal their meaning or intent. They are saying what the want to say as clearly as they can (or as clearly as the prevailing censorship regime will let them) while maintaining the clothing of story on which the engagement of human sympathy depends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason we have to explain subtext to students of literature today is not that the authors were hiding their subtext, but that the modern student of literature is not familiar with either the specific conditions or the time and place in which the author wrote, nor with the stories and the allusions which the author used to express their meaning as clearly as they could to their contemporaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Easter eggs, on the other hand, are intentionally hidden as part of game the author is playing with the reader, challenging them to prove they are as clever as the author is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T14:45:17.807" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26112" CreationDate="2017-01-20T14:58:58.310" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no great plots. There are great stories and there are lousy stories. Great stories and lousy stories can have exactly the same plot. The soundness of a story lies in the rising tension of the story arc. The greatness of a story lies in the telling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, I think, different kinds of great story. There is the story whose greatness lies in it high moral seriousness (like The Brothers Karamazov, Heart of Darkness, or King Lear) and there are stories whose greatness lies in their high comedy (such as Much Ado about Nothing, Jeeves and Wooster, or Pickwick Papers). But it is never in the plotting, always in the realization, in the perception of the human condition and the deftness in which it is told. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a plotter may give you a sound foundation for the mechanics of telling a story, but it is never going to bring you to greatness in itself. It is in the agonizing businesses of seeing and recording the fate of your characters in all its grittiness and pathos that you will find greatness or fall short of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Art is blood, toil, tears, and sweat. Art is pain and madness and unbearable joy. None of this is ever found in the outline, it cannot reside or be discovered anywhere but in the making of the full text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T14:58:58.310" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26114" CreationDate="2017-01-20T15:29:26.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Amazon isn't going to clarify their policy anytime soon -- nor make it consistent -- unless a Court or their customers force them to.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of something they carry with a cat-derived 'underperson' who is essentially a programmed-by-genetics sex worker, Cordwainer Smith's celebrated story, 'The Ballad of Lost C'Mell': &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00NBAVZOG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.amazon.com/Norstrilia-prequel-Ballad-Lost-CMell-ebook/dp/B00NBAVZOG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1484924790&amp;amp;sr=1-1&amp;amp;keywords=the+ballad+of+lost+C%27mell&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; mileage may vary greatly!  And/or Amazon might suddenly decide to ban all works by this writer.  We won't know until they do -- or don't -- or change their minds yet again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, what Amazon is really doing is deciding (perhaps entirely automatically/algorithmically) to carry your book based on what they think it will do to their bottom line, including brand/reputational/traffic damage.  What they're doing is estimating whether publishing your story (including its elements that may hurt sales, customer traffic or their perceived value of their own brand, rightly or wrongly, now or in the future) worth the risk of selling it.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If -- for any reason (including changing tastes) -- Amazon thinks publishing your book will hurt their eventual/overall bottom line, they will likely find a reason to decline.  Their stated reason (if any) may well be more dictated by what's legally allowable than by their actual decision-making process.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22438" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T15:29:26.257" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26182" CreationDate="2017-01-20T16:21:55.313" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a lot of subtext inserted into fiction is when it represents something that the writer wishes to portray, but cannot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of the examples of Sherlock, like the phone of Irene Adler representing her heart, she is shown throughout the episode to be incredibly heartless and unemotional. She works for Moriarty, and targets indiscriminately using her 'talents' in order to gain money and power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, had she truly been this way, then the ending would not nearly have worked so well (or even made sense at all), with the reveal that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;she was in love with Sherlock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Removing the representation removes the significant subtext needed to show the difference between what the characters believe is happening, and what is really trying to be portrayed in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with having to represent her character as cold throughout the episode, and needing to show her as vulnerable and in love later, the phone is the bridge between the two. The phone was the way to show that even though she thought she had all of the power in the relationship,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;she had given her heart to Sherlock long before, and his name was literally the key to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the same with water representing emotion: if emotion is present in the story then there isn't anything else that needs to represent it. People being &quot;mirrors&quot; to other characters focuses the audiences on a particular aspect of the character that cannot be overtly shown without simply coming out and saying &quot;hey, look at this!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the author wants to represent that two childhood friends are growing apart throughout a story as they get older, but wants the characters to &lt;em&gt;believe&lt;/em&gt; that they are as close as they ever were, then they can insert a tree house into the story that they played in as children, but falls into disrepair over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then when they eventually fall out, the reader isn't completely shocked at the fact they went from best friends to indifference: they instinctively understand that they have been growing apart for years and the climax was just the straw that broke the camels back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think later drafts might be better to insert such symbols or subtextual metaphors, so that whatever is needed to be represented is fully fleshed out and a suitable choice can be made to represent the missing link within the narrative. Possibly the best time would be after beta readers can give feedback, so that anything that they feel was not very well established can be worked upon with something that is not overtly part of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="13149" LastEditDate="2017-01-23T09:49:02.100" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T09:49:02.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26182" CreationDate="2017-01-20T17:24:46.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who is a big fan of subtext, I find it can be a trap for me, in that I get too obsessed with it, to the point where it hurts the surface text.  And I agree with &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; that a lot of the subtext in good writing enters organically, without the writer's conscious effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But with that said, adding a judicious amount of subtext can be a great way to expand the depth of a piece of writing.  Here are a couple ways I've seen it used effectively:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To explore or reveal parts of a character's mental state, particularly when the character is not conscious of those things.  For instance, subtext in dialog and/or description can be used to foreshadow a love affair, or build sexual tension.  This is especially helpful when you don't want to be too &quot;on the nose&quot; as Goldman said.  In real life, people are often unaware of these things, or circumspect about referring to them, so it's realistic for your characters to be as well.  I saw a great example of this recently in the HBO show &quot;Insecure.&quot;  Several of the show's main characters went to see a hip-hop gospel play called &quot;The Last Suppa.&quot;  The show-within-a-show was played for laughs, and very entertaining, but the theme of Judas betraying Christ doubled as a callback to the main character's guilt about having cheated on her boyfriend.  The subtext was all in her reactions to the material.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Subtext can also ground your story in a larger context.  For instance, &lt;em&gt;Cabaret&lt;/em&gt; is the story of a young man living in a foreign country, falling in love with an actress, and exploring his sexuality.  But the context is that the foreign country is Germany just prior to WWII.  The main story stands on its own, but the subtext adds depth and significance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T17:24:46.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26112" CreationDate="2017-01-20T19:01:26.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just wanted to add something. Part of a satisfying plot is escalation of tension. Escalation of tension even applies to low-drama pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some describe this as a try-fail cycle, as in try to resolve a problem, fail, which results in the problem getting worse or more complicated, and then try again. There is no rule for how many times the resolution attempt should fail. Some do suggest that less than three attempts seems to suggest the problem was not very hard and therefore not a big deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One pattern I see in really satisfying plots is this: There is a problem yielding an unthinkable outcome. The try-fail cycle continues until the unthinkable thing happens, expanding the problem. This bigger problem is what's ultimately resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12987" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T19:01:26.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26191" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-20T23:33:12.363" Score="6" ViewCount="1129" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this question about creating subtext, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writing.stackexchange.com/q/26182/23159&quot;&gt;Where in the writing process do you work in subtext?&lt;/a&gt;, the question of what the word subtext means was raised. This question is to address this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as all good writers know, there are not enough words to go round for all the things we want to say, and thus the same word can get used for several different things, so the purpose of this question is not to create one definition to banish all other meanings, but to create the opportunity to clearly delineate the various possible meanings so that we can have a discussion about various kinds of subtext without confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-26T11:54:06.663" LastActivityDate="2018-04-26T18:02:27.087" Title="What is subtext?" Tags="|technique|terminology|subtext|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26191" CreationDate="2017-01-20T23:33:12.363" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term &quot;subtext&quot; seems to be used for a least four things each of which is distinct, and only two of which I will suggest are on topic for this site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is used as a catchall for literary devices such as symbolism, metaphor, etc. This, I would suggest, is just a mistake. Literary devices are a way of telling a story, of creating an image in the reader's mind that relates to the primary story. They are not in themselves subtext, even though they may contribute to the development and expression of a subtext where one exists.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A subtext is a broader meaning designed and intended by the author are part of the design of the work. Thus &lt;em&gt;Oliver Twist&lt;/em&gt; is a story about a particular boy, but is also a condemnation of the English workhouse system of the time. This criticism is never explicit -- it is sub-textual. Deliberate subtext is on topic here because it is concerned with the writer's attempt to communicate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Subtext&quot; is used by critics to describe meanings that they believe are created by the writer unintentionally, but which show through in the work, presumably because of some unresolved psychological issue. While I personally consider such readings bogus and the presumption that the critic knows more about what the author means that the author does unsupportable arrogant, this type of subtext is off topic here anyway as it is a question about an existing literary work. Literary works may be cited as examples to help the author deliberately create meaning, but discussion for other purposes belongs elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Subtext&quot; is used by another set of critics to describe the meanings that the reader reads into the text that were not intended by the author. This seems an inappropriate use of the word to me, since the meaning is not under the text but behind the readers eye, but again questions relating to his type of subtext should be off topic here, since they don't relate to the author's intention. (Conceivably examples of misreadings of a text could be on topic here as a way to warn writers of the ways in which they may fail to get their meaning across.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For purposes of this site, I suggest, the word &quot;subtext&quot; should primarily be taken to refer to the writers deliberate intention and attempt to create a broader meaning behind the individual incidents of a story, since the discussion of other meanings of the term would be off-topic here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-22T14:04:07.870" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T14:04:07.870" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26145" CreationDate="2017-01-21T01:24:38.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is fiction, and you are unknown, &lt;strong&gt;your book should start with Chapter 1&lt;/strong&gt;. No matter how clever you are, readers don't really give a rip about your process. Just start the story the best you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prologues are common in certain genres like fantasy. You're far more likely to get readers who skip them compared to ones who get excited about reading the prologue. And an introduction? When you have a few bestsellers to your name, your loving audience will eat that stuff up; but until you've got bestsellers, introductions are for tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2017-01-21T01:24:38.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26092" CreationDate="2017-01-21T05:50:58.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a story, you always have an overarching goal for the protagonist. The question you need to ask yourself is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did they reach that goal?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The terms Cause and Effect can play heavily in developing a gripping story that doesn't just move from point A to point B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is about a protagonist wanting to defeat an antagonist, it would be stale and a waste of effort to elaborate the background of a character, flesh out the world, and then just have the 'hero' instantly defeat the antagonist. &lt;em&gt;Think about what else goes on in this world&lt;/em&gt;, make the story take place in a diverse and realistic environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a world plagued with dragons that the populace fears?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there social groups that dislike another group?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do the companions of the protagonist have any dark background or relations with a syndicate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there some reason that a certain rare commodity has suddenly become plentiful?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you think of some events that may take place in your world, &lt;strong&gt;link it with your protagonist's overarching goal.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could the dragons that the characters meet be driven out their home by the antagonist causing them to distrust humans? Could these dragons know a secret way into the antagonist's impenetrable lair?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the protagonist learn about the past of the discriminated social group, and learn of the antagonist's connection with it? Can he use this as a way to peacefully neutralize the antagonist at the climax of the story?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the companions hiding something that will be relevant in other parts of the story? Why are they not revealing it? When they do reveal it, does it harm or help the protagonist at his most crucial moment? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could the commodity be inflated by the antagonist to perform some evil deed in the world? Could it be originally played off as some interesting product - or improvement of society but actually later be revealed to help the antagonist's ideals? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember that no matter if your world is a steampunk dystopia, the depths of outer space, or even a modern rendition of your hometown, there are things that are happening that aren't just related to defeating the antagonist that you require to flesh your world out more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="23013" LastEditDate="2017-01-24T15:43:31.050" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T15:43:31.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26156" CreationDate="2017-01-21T06:38:02.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Citing depends heavily on the format you're citing it in&lt;/strong&gt;. I would highly recommend looking for any citation guidelines for whatever you're writing first, or &lt;em&gt;ask someone if there is a certain format&lt;/em&gt;. MLA is very commonly accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.easybib.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Easybib&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to your question, it seems fairly vague - however remember that citations are to allow readers to reference more information in relation to your subject matter you're speaking about. That's something that many educational systems fail to emphasize, causing students to assume that it's simply 'just there because.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you can cite the article well enough that someone can find it if they wanted to search for it, then it should be fine. These tips are assuming you're writing this for an academic article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, if I was to cite a piece of work I would have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;[Quote from text]&amp;quot; (Brode, 2005)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and in the appendix or bibliography have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brode, Douglas. Multiculturalism and the Mouse: Race and Sex in Disney Entertainment. Austin: U of Texas, 2005. Web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you can also do it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;[Quote from text]&amp;quot; (1.1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1.1) England, Dawn Elizabeth, Lara Descartes, and Melissa A. Collier-Meek. &amp;quot;Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses.&amp;quot; Sex Roles 64.7-8 (2011): 555-67. Web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or even use footnotes, however, &lt;em&gt;remember that certain institutions and examiners may have certain restrictions on formatting.&lt;/em&gt; I used MLA formatting for the examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-21T06:38:02.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26197" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-21T16:24:55.763" Score="9" ViewCount="784" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to do a sequel, though for this question I'm only interested in one...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Post Hero's Journey/Apotheosis-Story.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lacking a proper name for this narrative frame work &quot;PHJ&quot; is what I've taken to calling it; there may very well be a proper name for it, but I certainly don't know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed a shared struckture by a number of sequels, sequels that each spring off [a completed Hero's Journey][1].  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kung Fu Panda 2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iron Man 2&amp;amp;3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capitan America 2&amp;amp;3 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second half of the anime series Tegena Topa Gurren Lagan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The last two books in the Mistborn series.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Halo 4.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While similar to the Hero's Journey, the&quot;PHJ&quot; has a different emotional energy.&#xA;If the Hero's Journey is about Birth(starting with the Inciting Incident) and growth to adulthood. Then the &quot;PHJ&quot; is about adult life and eventual death; the death may be figurative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone seen a...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write up of a continuation to the Hero's Journey.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of the plot points,story-beats, that are considered essential to a sequel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write up of the plot points in any of the media that I've listed as examples of the &quot;PHJ&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12922" LastEditorUserId="12922" LastEditDate="2017-01-27T22:29:22.063" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T10:38:58.903" Title="What are the steps/plot-points of the Sequel Story?" Tags="|creative-writing|structure|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26197" CreationDate="2017-01-21T16:53:01.320" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would challenge your assertion that the journey is a metaphor for maturation. In today's highly (one might almost say pathologically) individualistic society we do tend to think that the story is all about me: the hero is heroic for the hero's own sake. But the classic hero's journey is not about the hero acting for the hero's sake, but the hero acting for the sake of the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hero leaves the community (in some cases is exiled from the community) and faces various ordeals to win a boon for the sake of the community, after which they are welcomed back into the community (or, in the tragic version, cannot return).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is then a complete arc. The hero is reintegrated into the community and the community itself is safe. And they all lived happily ever after.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or at least until there is another threat and the hero is called upon once again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in fact the super-hero movies all follow this formula. X-Men, Ghostbusters, Spiderman, all begin with exile and end with acceptance and reintegration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a maturation plot. It is an exile and return plot. The maturation plot may be a subtype, in the sense that the immature are, to one extent or another, exiled, and must demonstrate maturity to be welcomed back. The teenage years are years of exile. But there is no post-return plot, other than to be exiled again, which is then a repetition of the hero's journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a tribal species, exile is our greatest threat and our greatest fear, loneliness our greatest agony. To be unwelcome around the fire is to be cast out into the wilderness, to the cold, the dark, and the wolves. Those who are cast out, and those who voluntarily leave for the sake of the tribe, share a common consummation: the return. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-21T17:30:21.897" LastActivityDate="2017-01-21T17:30:21.897" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="55529" CreationDate="2017-01-21T17:00:31.037" Score="3" ViewCount="1390" Body="&lt;p&gt;When compiling, i'm given 4 options for text separators, in the &quot;separators&quot; tab.  What I &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to do, is have 2 carriage returns, a line with 4 asterisks, then 2 carriage returns, between each text document within a folder.  This is how every book I buy seems to be formatted.  However, none of the options in the &quot;separators&quot; section allow multiple carriage returns.  Does anyone know how to accomplish this in scrivener?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 4 options for a text separator in the &quot;separators&quot; section are:  single return, empty line, page break, or custom (which allows only a single line of text).  Is there maybe a placeholder tag for a carriage return?  The &quot;custom&quot; option allows placeholder tags, but I can't find one for a carriage return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23120" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-02-23T03:46:55.170" LastActivityDate="2022-10-19T21:40:39.273" Title="How to add multiple carriage returns between documents in Scrivener?" Tags="|formatting|tools|scrivener|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25895" CreationDate="2017-01-21T22:40:01.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not the word itself, no, but many of its modern uses, surely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got no idea&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have got to be kidding me&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;are fine examples of how never to use ‘got’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘I got no idea’ is hardly slang. it’s just a common mistake but still and only, a mistake. You might try to defend it with the plea that since the user can’t understand the difference, it can’t be a deliberate mistake and must therefor be no mistake at all, but would you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'You have &lt;em&gt;got&lt;/em&gt; to be kidding me' isn't correct; a fine example of how 'have' and 'got' and have got' confuse people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'You &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to be kidding me' is correct but yes, most people don't care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got sick&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got a book&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got there in time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;have always been correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got by until long after 10 on hearing alone and yes, ‘got’ frequently got my goat. It seemed ugly but why wasn’t obvious, until I found Fowler’s &lt;em&gt;The King’s English&lt;/em&gt;. Even in 1908 that tome lamented how often ‘got’ was getting misused. Fowler quotes RG White: ‘… got, having been by custom poorly substituted for gat, so that we say He got away, instead of He gat away, many persons abbreviate gotten into got, saying He had got, for He had gotten.’ Is it surprising that after 100 years we get ‘He got’ from a further mutation of ‘He had got?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘I got the ball’ isn’t wrong; it just doesn’t mean ‘I have it’ but rather ‘I caught it.’ It often sounds clumsy but it isn’t wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘I’ve got the ball’ might be a mistake for ‘I have the ball’ or - although that’s now pretty-much universally heard as archaic - for ’I’ve gotten the ball’. Either way I think the best defence for ‘I’ve got the ball’ is as an idiomatic mistake, not a neutral development of the language, however natural…though let’s come back to that in another 100 years!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘Have you got a clue?’ is not the same as ‘Do you have a clue?’ It’s at best unclear and if it really worked, it should mean ‘Have you found…’ not ‘Do you possess…’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23124" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-21T22:40:01.760" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26197" CreationDate="2017-01-22T13:59:21.863" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me approach this another way. The idea of a maturation plot occurs in more than one of the various schemas for classifying plots by type. Those schemas divide plots into multiple types, but there are different numbers of types in each. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heros's journey, on the other hand is not part of a classification schema for plots, it is proposed as the archetype of all plots. If we accept this as true, then all of the plot types in the various plot classification schemas, including the maturation plot, are all hero's journey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if someone proposes that all hero's journey plots are maturation plots, they are saying one of two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All plots are maturation plots, since the hero's journey is a maturation plot and is the archetype of all plots. Therefore there are no other types of plot other than maturation, and therefore the answer to your question is no.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are various types of plots, maturation is one of them, and the hero's journey is a maturation plot, therefore the hero's journey is not the archtype of all plots but just another name for the maturation plot. In that case, the answer to your question is to choose one of the plot typing schemas that includes the maturation plot and pick from all the other types it offers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is, of course, a third alternative, which is that John Truby is wrong and the hero's journey is the archetype of all plots and the maturation plot is only one type of hero's journey. One test for this would be to decide if the instances of post-hero's-journey plots that you cite actually fit the hero's journey archetype or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not familiar with all of them, but Iron Man 2 certainly seems to fit the hero's journey, though perhaps with an incomplete arc. It begins with Stark the hero of the community but facing the ultimate exile of death because the suit is poisoning him. Then comes the call to adventure when he is attacked by Vanco. The wise man appears in the form of Fury. Stark receives a gift that makes his quest possible--his father's reactor plans. He undergoes an ordeal and saves the community. But the arc in incomplete in the sense that he is left exiled from Shield. This is to set up the following films, of course. But it is absolutely classic hero's journey stuff. So, not post hero's journey at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the issue here may also be what we mean by maturation. In a classical tribal society, maturity had a clear definition. You were mature when you were ready to take on adult responsibilities within the community. But in a society so individualistic that few people regard themselves as having any responsibility at all to the community, the definition of mature is hard to define, and we do see many adults living what are essentially extended childhoods. In such a society, it would be easy enough to define all personal development as maturation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you do that, then all plots do indeed become maturation plots (unless you ascribe the McKee's assertion that people don't change and that a story reveals character rather then changing it). But if that is the case, you are not redefining the hero's journey or any of the common plot classification schemas, you are simply redefining maturation. And if that is what you are doing, then the answer to your question is again no, since there are no plots that are not maturation plots. (This is clearly not what you are saying, but it is part of trying to account for the view that you ascribe to John Truby.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T13:59:21.863" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26172" CreationDate="2017-01-22T18:21:31.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds a lot like the way the movie &quot;The Lake House&quot; works? If you haven't watched it, I would suggest you do. Although the movie is done quite well to begin with, it gets rather complicated toward the end, and I somehow always manage to get confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you can achieve almost anything in writing, but you need to really go slow and think carefully about how to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22801" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T18:21:31.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26162" CreationDate="2017-01-22T18:25:34.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally think that the word &quot;ugly&quot; is necessary in the example above. I know a lot of people who think scars are cool - unless they are ugly. In which case you generally want to hide them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22801" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T18:25:34.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26159" CreationDate="2017-01-22T18:40:16.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion is to try sell it to an agent as an Autobiography first - but make the back cover matter interesting - so that someone who picks it up and reads the cover - even though they don't know you, suddenly wants to buy the book to find out more. If you fail to get an agent after a few months of trying - turn it into a novel and try that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe in doing things in a way that you can reverse them - if you do it as a novel first, you can almost never go back to doing it as an autobiography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22801" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T18:40:16.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25833" CreationDate="2017-01-22T18:57:20.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiverr.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.fiverr.com&lt;/a&gt; - but make sure you check out a few people before you hire anyone. Also make sure that the person uses correct English in their profile or you are just hiring someone who has no clue!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22801" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T18:57:20.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25918" CreationDate="2017-01-22T19:13:57.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amazon have very specific requirements for formatting books that are published through KDP. (Kindle). Take a look at the guidelines here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A17W8UM0MMSQX6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A17W8UM0MMSQX6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22801" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T19:13:57.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25918" CreationDate="2017-01-22T22:30:02.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(SE has a separate section for ebook questions: &lt;a href=&quot;https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/&lt;/a&gt; ) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot sell PDFs on Amazon. You need to make the ebook an epub or .mobi file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 6x9 format you speak of is probably based on an epub file which can be viewable in any size or dimension using reflowable text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already have an audience for your ebook, one option might be to sell the PDF directly using a paypal link. Or you might use a service like Scribd or Payloadz or a service listed here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/Digital-Publishing-What-is-the-simplest-way-to-sell-single-PDFs-online&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.quora.com/Digital-Publishing-What-is-the-simplest-way-to-sell-single-PDFs-online&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another easy option is to pay someone to format the ebook for amazon and other places (it would cost in the 250-400$ range). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to purchase a one month subscription to Adobe InDesign and create a PDF and export it to epub/mobi files.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Believe it or not, publishing simultaneously in a print-ready format and ebook format is a technical challenge, and nobody has really found an ideal solution yet. I personally really like the PDF solution because so many people have tablets to read things on. But PDFs don't work on phones or smaller devices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T13:00:05.683" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T03:13:22.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26233" CreationDate="2017-01-23T05:06:58.217" Score="21" ViewCount="9777" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read a few amateur stories online and sometimes the author will include so much detail that the reader gets a little bored or distracted and forgets what the actual story is talking about. How do I know whether I am using too much, not enough, or the right amount of detail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22630" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-01-23T12:36:37.533" LastActivityDate="2020-07-25T00:41:16.597" Title="How much detail is too much?" Tags="|word-choice|description|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21623" CreationDate="2017-01-23T05:25:10.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a woman so some of my personal opinions or view points may differ from others but I can understand why some of your male readers might not think that this is believable for a male character to cry or be emotional because  a lot of times (and just from my own personal experience) men like to view themselves as tough and strong and that crying is only for women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a woman, I do not like stereotyping between men and women because we are capable of doing the exact same things and feeling the exact same emotions although the way we feel it may be different but that is to be expected from anybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself enjoy reading a scene when a seemingly tough or emotionless man starts to get emotional or tears up because it shows to the reader that this character does actually have feelings and it adds to their personality that they try to keep up a strong composure among other people but sometimes can’t handle it on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a lie to say that men do not cry or get super emotional because I have seen close male friends of mine get broken up about something. So it isn’t that men do not cry, it is just that they try not to show it as often so you are right to make your character not cry in front of other characters and only when he is alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is best to make sure you do not write about the male character crying a lot because only then does it get unrealistic. The scene would be more powerful and make the reader feel more emotional if he rarely cried or got like this because once you start making the character sound like he cries a lot, that is when readers start to assume this is a weak man who cries whenever he is sad or upset. As long as the situation seems appropriate for someone to cry would it be alright. I’m sure any man would start crying if he found out his wife were having an affair so the situation can change a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22630" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T05:25:10.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26213" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-23T05:48:34.310" Score="3" ViewCount="3506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story about fictional beings who have the power of the four elements. Only very few, very rare people posses the power of all four elements while most only have one. My main character is going to be one of those who have the powers of all the elements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, I don't want people to read this and think I stole the idea off of the old animated Nickelodeon series, Avatar, which honestly, I rarely watched. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22630" LastEditorUserId="13494" LastEditDate="2017-01-24T10:48:34.837" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T17:29:35.230" Title="What if my story seems too similar to a particular movie?" Tags="|creative-writing|characters|plot|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26211" CreationDate="2017-01-23T06:17:34.743" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;You said it yourself. When the reader cannot concentrate on the story because there are so many adjectives and adverbs, and other details and flourishes. Get other people to read your writing, and they will be able to easily comment on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are also falling into having too much detail if every other word is an adjective or adverb. If you're describing every noun or verb with them, &lt;strong&gt;stop it.&lt;/strong&gt; It's really bad and will lead to the thing I said above. Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I furiously knocked on the brown oak door, and impatiently waited for my annoying brother to finally arrive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sentence is a little extreme but I have seen things like it in the past. There are many things which would be implied by the story (even though we don't have a 'story' in this example). We can pick out some unnecessary descriptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The brother is annoying. We don't need to describe that because the protagonist would only be furiously knocking on the door if the brother had been doing something bad/annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The brown oak door. This is really unnecessary. I don't need to be reminded of what a door looks like, it's one of those things you can leave for the reader to imagine. However, if there's a special door, you can describe it. For example, a door with spikes on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Impatiently and finally. Impatiently is already implied, and if you wanted to further show this, you could perhaps write another sentence about him doing something impatient. Finally is just completely unnecessary and you don't really need it. It adds an extra not-needed adverb to the sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the amount of detail depends on the author though. It's very difficult to know if you're using too little or too much. So what I would advise is: use your peers to your advantage! Go onto a site like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/&quot;&gt;Critique Circle&lt;/a&gt; and get it critiqued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T06:17:34.743" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26213" CreationDate="2017-01-23T06:21:15.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel that yes, there is a very close resemblance to &lt;em&gt;Avatar: The Last Airbender&lt;/em&gt;. However, I could also name several books in which the idea of elemental magic is used. All of them are different, so if you can make yours different, it will be fine. Perhaps you could change:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The setting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The ideas/story goal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The 'nation' thing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among other things from the film.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, so many people use elemental magic that there's no way the creators of Avatar could possibly find the time to sue them (even if they could). &lt;strong&gt;It's fine. People won't think you stole the idea because the 'four elements' thing is one from very ancient civilizations.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T06:21:15.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26216" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-23T08:08:52.673" Score="0" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing three different stories. I didn't start this on purpose, because I knew it would be very difficult to keep up, but I couldn't help it and kept getting different great ideas that would fit in different stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've narrowed it down to three main stories that I've been working on. I want to narrow it to only one but I have a hard time choosing only one story to think about because I love them all. This is why I'm not able to finish one story because I keep jumping to the next ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do to keep focused on one story at a time?&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22630" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T16:55:05.540" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T16:55:05.540" Title="I have a hard time staying focused on a single novel" Tags="|creative-writing|psychology-of-writing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-01-25T08:32:11.270" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26211" CreationDate="2017-01-23T09:07:59.663" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26214/18298&quot;&gt;Daniel's answer&lt;/a&gt; is good, but I have an additional &quot;yardstick&quot; which may be helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of art, of &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; art form, is inviting the &lt;em&gt;audience&lt;/em&gt; to contribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's even been said this is what &lt;em&gt;makes&lt;/em&gt; it art: A return contribution is invited.  You supply something yourself as an audience or reader, rather than just having the words flow in at you without you yourself participating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you describe every tiny detail to such a degree that &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; is left to the imagination, you wind up with a court deposition, not a story.  There's not going to be a great deal of interest, because the reader will not be invited to &lt;em&gt;participate&lt;/em&gt; and use his imagination to fill in gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you consider carefully, you'll likely find that any story which really &quot;pulled you in&quot; was one in which you were actively participating in imagining the details and filling in &quot;how it would have been,&quot; rather than one in which you were slavishly noting every last exhaustive detail directly from the author's description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other things besides physical descriptions can be left to the imagination too, of course.  You need to provide enough detail to spur your reader's imagination to fill in the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something which goes along with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't use description to make your reader's imagination &lt;em&gt;wrong.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you introduce a character and keep him doing things and saying things for several chapters before you happen to mention that he has very dark skin and pale blonde hair, you are very likely to throw your reader out of the story.  She will have come up with her &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; mental picture of how this character looks by then, and the description, coming so late, will make her feel that she &quot;got it wrong.&quot;  Really, the author is at fault for such a jolt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Physical descriptions are a good thing to include, just don't stop the flow of the story to include them.  Don't stop the &lt;em&gt;action.&lt;/em&gt;  It's not &lt;em&gt;vital&lt;/em&gt; that your readers envision every detail just exactly the same way you do.  Include enough that they get a colorful (vivid, evocative) picture of the events you depict—fully fleshed out by their own imagination, which you've coaxed into action with your masterful use of descriptive words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18298" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T09:07:59.663" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26213" CreationDate="2017-01-23T10:29:59.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are so many stories about people possessing the power of the elements, that there is no danger of yours seeming like a rip-off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do to help your story to become even more different, is &lt;strong&gt;not read anything similar while you work on it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many writers avoid reading their own genre while they write. If you write crime fiction or fantasy or romance, don't read crime fiction or fantasy or romande while you develop your story or write it, or what you read will mix up in your head with your own (related) ideas and what you write will be a mix of your reading matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you work on your story, read what you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to influence your writing. Read classics with great language to influence your style. Read psychology to influence your character development. Watch documentaries to influence your worldbuilding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or read something completely unrelated, so you can relax from your story for a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But most of all: Don't worry. Many writers made lots of money writing rip offs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T10:29:59.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26211" CreationDate="2017-01-23T11:36:18.723" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the existing answers are helpful, they don't address what seems to me the crux of this question. The answers will change depending on what you are writing, for which audience and what effect do you hope to achieve?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I primarily write journalism. The idea is to engage the reader quickly and carry them through to the end of the article. As a general rule it is good to keep descriptive writing to a minimum since it reduces the punchiness and impact of the work. Better instead to pluck a few well-chosen metaphors to help the reader relate what you're describing quickly and easily to their own experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet even this is subject to change depending on circumstance. A print article is generally subject to a draconian word count and you must be even more sparing with your descriptions. On the other hand if the feature is emotive in nature or is describing an external narrative, you will need to spend some time scene-setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast this to the opening sentence of Cormac McCarthy's novel Suttree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the&#xA;  streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now&#xA;  when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in&#xA;  alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in&#xA;  the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled&#xA;  corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors&#xA;  no soul shall walk save you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is grandiose to the point of impenetrability. If I tried anything like that, my editors would tear it apart and never employ me again. It's also way beyond the level other answers are suggesting you should take descriptive writing. Yet I find it an extraordinary scene-setter, brilliant in its eloquence. It works because it's well structured and because in the context of the work of a heavyweight novelist, we might expect such constructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: your yardstick for measure whether you've got &quot;too much&quot; description depends entirely on the effect you're trying to achieve and your skill at building descriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6371" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T11:36:18.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26211" CreationDate="2017-01-23T12:56:29.433" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer this question you have to consider the purpose of detail. The purpose of detail is to refine the picture in the reader's head. Readers pull images from their own stock of experiences to build a picture of what they are reading. Each detail you add refines the selection of images they make. If you say &quot;bus&quot; they select an image of the kind of bus they are most familiar with. If you say &quot;red double-decker bus&quot; they probably select an image of a London bus, unless they live in another city with red double-decker buses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image in the reader's head will probably never match the image in your head perfectly, unless you have had the exact same experience. The question is, how close do I need the image in the reader's head to be to the image in my head for them to receive the story, its mood and texture as well as its plot, in the way I intend. You add detail until you think the reader's image will be close enough to your own for story purposes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with those who say you should leave something to the reader's imagination. That's moot. It all comes from the reader's imagination. You job is to direct that imagination into the right channels so that the reader receives the experience you are attempting to create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A closely related question is, how closely do you paint each scene and each object in a scene. The more you refine an image, the more important you make that image. Don't make any image more important in a scene than it is in the story, or you will divert the reader's attention away from what matters in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it is really more about finding the right detail than it is about the amount of detail. Think of it like a database query on the user's stock of experiences. Certain details will pull up certain images whole and intact. A swastika armband may be the only detail you need to pull up the image of a Nazi soldier, for instance. This is what is often called the telling detail, and finding the telling detail is far more important than how much detail you provide. The telling detail can not only pull out a particular object but the entire scene, the entire time and place to which that object belongs. Thus the red double-decker evokes London, the swastika armband evokes Nazi Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, be wary of details that seem contradictory or are hard to integrate. Adding one more term to a database query can turn it from retrieving a very precise image to returning no data at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T12:56:29.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26213" CreationDate="2017-01-23T14:01:22.687" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll approach this from a different angle than the two great answers already here. Let's assume that yes, your story is too similar to an existing, fairly well-known property. How do you &lt;em&gt;fix&lt;/em&gt; that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Address the root cause.&lt;/strong&gt; Figure out the story you're trying to tell, and how your similar aspects tell that story. Do you like the idea of balancing pairs of forces? The idea that nature exists in sets of four? Playing with the four ancient elements? Figure out what part appeals to you — get down to the nub of the thing. Could you instead use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism&quot;&gt;Four Humours?&lt;/a&gt; The four winds? Name your power aspects after the four suits in a deck of cards? (and not everyone uses the same deck. French and American decks are hearts/diamonds/clubs/spades, Italian and Spanish decks are cups/coins/cudgels/swords, Swiss-German decks are roses/bells/acorns/shields.) Invent your own suits from an in-universe deck and have the characters use the suits as nicknames for the powers? Use Tarot cards with major and minor houses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Rework the problem symptoms.&lt;/strong&gt; If your problem is that you have four Powers, and one person has All Four Powers, well, why? What's the story you're trying to tell about this person? Does it have to be one person with all four powers? Could you have a gang of four or a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveManBand&quot;&gt;Five-Person Band&lt;/a&gt; (WARNING: TV TROPES LINK) working in tandem? Could the powers be in artifacts and the character has to collect a series of MacGuffins instead of having innate abilities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can obviously be altered to fit whatever your specific issues are. My point is, if your reader radar is redlining into Fanfic, and you don't want to write fanfic, you need to find the heart of your story first and then work outward from that. If your story is so closely bound up with the original property that you can't separate it, then go ahead and write the fanfic, or the pastiche. The writing will be practice and you can tell some other story once this one is out of your system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-01-23T14:06:34.393" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T14:06:34.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26222" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26224" CreationDate="2017-01-23T14:07:17.723" Score="0" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I change the font in Scrivener's interface? I don't care for the current one and I would like to change it to  Times New Roman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23145" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-01-23T14:42:14.130" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T16:28:17.463" Title="Change Font in Scrivener" Tags="|software|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26213" CreationDate="2017-01-23T14:20:36.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no original plots left. There are no myths that have not been mined and exploited a hundred times over. And coming up with a new mythos is nigh impossible because the elements of myth are elemental -- they speak very deeply to basic human hopes and fears and so even the ancient myths we have from all over the world are broadly similar to each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The success of a story lies not in the plot, or the myth is borrows from, but in the telling. The old stories need to be constantly retold for a new audience, an audience whose minds are stocked with different experiences, education, and prejudices from their parents. You tell the old stories, explore the old myths, but you do it for a new generation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither JRR Tolkien of J.K. Rowling created a new mythos. They gleaned, sorted, and retold old ones. If they seemed original to millions, it was because it was the first time they had encountered them. Tolkien and Rowling tool old myths and old tropes and retold them for a new generation of readers to whom the older tellings would have been much less accessible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T14:20:36.270" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26222" CreationDate="2017-01-23T14:52:43.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To change the font of the application interface in the &lt;strong&gt;Windows&lt;/strong&gt; version of the application:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tools &gt; Options &gt; Appearance &gt; Fonts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;Mac&lt;/strong&gt; version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrivener &gt; Preferences... &gt; Appearance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For changing the default font and other editor's options please refer to the link in the @what's comment to your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-01-24T16:28:17.463" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T16:28:17.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26200" CreationDate="2017-01-23T15:49:27.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I achieve a similar effect by using &quot;custom&quot; text separator option (insert your four asterisks there) and adding the necessary number of blank lines (filled with a couple of spaces, otherwise they might be ignored while compiling) at the beginning and at the end of each &quot;scrivening&quot; (text chunk).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not ideal, but works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-01-23T20:54:40.320" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T20:54:40.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26216" CreationDate="2017-01-23T16:16:42.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here are some ideas:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List all of your ideas down, and gather the best points from all of them, consider what you think is most interesting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gather all of your favorite ideas and write them into one novel or a series that can encompass all your ideas (or the best ones)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invest heavily into your characters, imagine their lives and intricacies. Make them your friends, and imagine living inside of your world that you have created!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember you're mostly writing for yourself - so if you're switching ideas a lot, you could write short stories instead to practice endings. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T16:16:42.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26235" CreationDate="2017-01-23T17:15:03.217" Score="4" ViewCount="781" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a software developer, I often find myself writing my own technical documentation and user guides.  How much detail should be put into this documentation?  When is it too much detail? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm stuck on a user simply being able to follow a linear A-&gt;B process, vs. material that will teach the user how to use the software in a manner that will enable them to handle many errors or process deviations on their own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23156" OwnerDisplayName="Jon Milliken" LastEditorUserId="23156" LastEditDate="2017-01-24T16:10:06.440" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T16:10:06.440" Title="How much detail when writing technical documentation?" Tags="|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26228" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-23T17:43:13.483" Score="1" ViewCount="640" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a novel that has A) a lot of graphic Male/Female sex and B) a plot involving a mystery that takes place, and is solved, in the Czech Republic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are really about the category in which this would fall since I cannot find anything out there like it with a point-of-view of an American male that is basically experiencing a world where suddenly he engages successfully, in many realistic sexual experiences. The problem, one which worries me greatly, is that the character might come across a too much of a mysogynist. The main character is bumbling at the beginning, please note, and perhaps not a nice guy any longer at the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it seems that erotica is mostly read by women, so I wonder how to target a male audience (In the USA, UK, Australia). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any advice. &#xA;Lee Relt&#xA;American/Czech in Prague&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23150" LastActivityDate="2019-12-04T15:19:06.440" Title="Categorization of this type of Erotica?" Tags="|erotica|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26227" CreationDate="2017-01-23T17:47:19.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just enough for your target audience to be able to use your product or duplicate your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing for professionals, you do not have to explain the difference between click and double-click. If you are writing for consumers, you might :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T17:47:19.850" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26230" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26244" CreationDate="2017-01-23T17:50:22.913" Score="0" ViewCount="2908" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just want to &lt;strong&gt;mention&lt;/strong&gt; a picture/table in my text in &lt;strong&gt;APA style&lt;/strong&gt;, without using the image in my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think of something similar as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page and Brim (2016) show in Figure 99 &quot;Description of Figure&quot; that ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What different ways of &lt;strong&gt;mentioning&lt;/strong&gt; figures/tables are allowed in APA style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the following for example allowed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Page and Brim (2016) show in Figure 99 &quot;Description of Figure&quot; that ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure 99: &quot;Description of Figure&quot; in/of? Page and Brim (2016) shows ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure 99: &quot;Description of Figure&quot; contained in? Page and Brim (2016) shows ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The structure is illustrated in Figure 99: Description of Figure (Page &amp;amp; Brim, 2016).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure 99: &quot;Description of Figure&quot; (Page &amp;amp; Brim, 2016) illustrates ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And how about the quote symbols (&quot;...&quot;) for the title of the image, should they be used, or should this text be italic? One could get confused whether the number of a figure references a figure within this paper or not, right? Should a colon (&quot;:&quot;) be used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other allowed ways?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have literally no clue what is right and I could not find any specific information about that in the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21071" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T04:59:19.547" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T16:58:04.403" Title="How to properly reference a figure or table from another paper in APA style without copying the image?" Tags="|academic-writing|citations|punctuation|apa|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26227" CreationDate="2017-01-23T17:53:30.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The acid test is this: Will the reader behave differently if they know this? If not, leave it out. The aim of user documentation is to enable the user to act correctly. Any detail that does not contribute to correct action slows the reader down and may reduce their confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T17:53:30.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26227" CreationDate="2017-01-23T18:13:16.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on who your target audience is and what the purpose is. If you are writing for uneducated users who just need to be able to use the product, keep details to the very minimum. Clear, logical steps that allow tasks to be completed is what's needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, you want your user to understand how the product works so that they can use it more creatively, give more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider what some documentation does: What is needed for general consumption is the normal text, but there are specially labelled 'expert' sections -- read them if you need or want to. Alternatively, provide an introductory tutorial and then detailed technical information for people who want to do more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T18:13:16.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26211" CreationDate="2017-01-23T18:40:59.470" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the answers on here are adequate, however, I do not feel that they get straight to the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;How much detail is too much?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read a few amateur stories online and sometimes the author will include so much detail that the reader gets a little bored or distracted and forgets what the actual story is talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have answered your own question:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Q&lt;/strong&gt;: How much detail is too much?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt;: When the reader gets a little bored or distracted and forgets what the actual story is talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The details in a &amp;quot;fully expressed medium of text&amp;quot; (that is, a sentence, paragraph, article, book, or voluminous/episodic series) greatly influence attention. The center of attention is &lt;em&gt;the focus&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Superfluous details&lt;/em&gt; are details that divert attention away from the focus. Consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was dropped off at the usual bus stop that I attend every morning. It is a short stretch of concrete road with green signs, and four houses. There are two houses on each side. Each house is white. The lawns varied in shades of green and brown (it was early fall). When the bus finally arrived, I hopped on. Silence was in the cold air of the bus as students stared at their phones and closed their minds off from the real world to escape into the fantasy of the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The focus of this paragraph is getting on the bus, but yet, all the detail is focusing on the surrounding environment of the bus stop, before abruptly transitioning to hopping on the bus which appeared out of no where.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Necessary details&lt;/em&gt; are consistent with the focus. Consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came to this large, two-story house with overarching balconies and elegant columns. It was old—very old. I burst open the dusty, wooden double-doors that entered into the house. The room was dark, and had a musty, century-old odor to it. The black and white checkered tile pattern on the floor was heavily worn and coarse. The chandelier dangled askew. This was, no doubt, a dance hall, which told the story of a time long forgotten, when people twirled and danced to a merry tune.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The details in this paragraph dictate that the focus is an old house which had many ballroom-style dances. Every detail describes the age of this house, and the purpose is to give imagery of what the house looks like, and what the ambient atmosphere projects. Without these details, this would be a dull paragraph, and the actual &lt;em&gt;lack&lt;/em&gt; of detail would bore and distract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detail is of course only one element of influence for the audience's attention, but it is clearly displayed that it does have a great impact on attention. The detail determines the focus,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;so how much detail is too much?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;When the details shift attention away from the center of attention.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23147" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T18:40:59.470" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26216" CreationDate="2017-01-23T20:42:21.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a similar problem... or not. (I mean it's not a problem for me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing five stories at the moment, but I focus on one at a time. For instance, I can write chapters for one story for six to twelve months. At that time, I typically start getting bored so I change to another story and focus on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, I avoid getting fed up with a story and I'm much more productive as, when I refocus on a story, I have a fresh overview and can feel excited about working on it. One of those stories is currently reaching 120,000 words (nearly finished).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course that's how &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; mind works and it &lt;em&gt;does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; stop me from finishing my tales&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly advise you to follow @what's suggestion (in the comments) of creating a 'slush file' to jot down ideas for other stories, and do not take longer than 1-2 hours jotting those ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get too excited with a new idea, it may be best to shelf the story you're working on and try to focus on that new idea for at least three months. Any less than that and you can't fully immerse yourself in your fictional world and characters (which will turn out cardboard-like).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't focus on one idea at a time for less than three months... you've got a serious problem. You need to stop and analyse what is going on: why can't you focus? Is it the story? The characters? Do you have a terribly short attention-span? Whatever it is, identify it and work on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T20:42:21.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26227" CreationDate="2017-01-23T20:47:17.390" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on who your readers are and what they are trying to do with the information.  Documentation about the same product could have very different levels/types of detail depending on whether you are writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Task-oriented end-user documentation, where the focus should be on &lt;em&gt;how to use it&lt;/em&gt;, ideally with some &lt;em&gt;examples&lt;/em&gt;.  This type of documentation might cover only common cases, and people often read it linearly.  Example: user-level documentation for an email client that tells you how to send, read, format, categorize, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reference user documentation, where the focus should be on covering all the cases, but still only in ways that affect how a user uses it.  People usually jump into reference documentation to look up something specific and haven't necessarily read any of the rest of it.  Example: documentation of all of the options and settings in that email client, or Unix man pages, or API documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Installation, configuration, or integration specifications for system administrators, systems engineers, and similar people.  These people are users too, but they are not &lt;em&gt;end-users&lt;/em&gt; and they are more likely to be concerned with questions like: What demands does this product place on my network?  How do I integrate this with my single-sign-on security?  How do I get usage reports?  Example: documentation for an email server in an enterprise environment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Specifications of various sorts, where the audience is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; users but other people who interact with your feature: other developers, testers, an enterprise customer's technical reviewers, product managers, and so on.  Those different types of users have different needs when it comes to details.  (I've grouped specifications into one bullet point here, but there are several types here.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Deep-dive internal documentation for your coworkers so they could take over your code if you got hit by a bus.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more, but I hope these examples illustrate the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing documentation, you need to ask yourself: &quot;what do my readers need to know?&quot; and, by extension, &quot;what &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; my readers need to know?&quot;.  In order to do that, you need to have some idea of who your readers are and what they are trying to accomplish.  Why are they reading your documentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer that, and you'll have a good idea of how much detail to supply.  But if you still can't tell, ask for peer reviews early so you can recalibrate if you need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T20:47:17.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26213" CreationDate="2017-01-23T23:04:45.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether or not people will accuse you of stealing ideas from Avatar depends largely on what you do with those ideas.  So long as you implement the ideas differently, you'll be okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My character is from another planet (his home planet blew up).  He crash landed on Earth when he was a baby, and was subsequently raised&#xA;  on Earth.  Although he's an alien, he looks completely human and no&#xA;  one looks twice at him; until he uses his super strength and speed and&#xA;  starts flying around.  Fortunately, he uses his powers for good.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I talking about &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Superman&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goku&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Goku&lt;/a&gt;?  They have the exact same character premise, but two different stories.  Their stories are sufficiently different enough that neither one is seen as a copycat of the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, Avatar is hardly unique.  In the anime &lt;em&gt;Naruto&lt;/em&gt;, most ninjas can only use one or two elemental forces; it is rare for a ninja to able to use all of them.  Again, same premise, two different stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23148" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T23:04:45.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26216" CreationDate="2017-01-24T01:15:27.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask someone else to pick the one that you should work on. Right before they tell you, you should know which you want to work on. Then, somehow, prevent yourself from being able to work on the other two, maybe give the files to that other person, and instruct them not to give them back until you have finished the one you choose. Repeat the process between the two left. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23163" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T01:15:27.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26238" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26239" CreationDate="2017-01-24T04:19:19.357" Score="11" ViewCount="2794" Body="&lt;p&gt;When thinking about scenes and story ideas, I can't help but picture something playing out as a movie. It's so much easier to &lt;em&gt;picture&lt;/em&gt; someone moving and doing things than to actually &lt;em&gt;describe&lt;/em&gt; what they are doing and write about it. I understand that this would make it easier for me to grasp what is happening in the story but my reader will not see what I see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I stop viewing my writing as a film or how can I put the scene I picture in my head into words that make sense on a page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22630" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T11:40:44.237" Title="How to stop viewing your story as a film" Tags="|creative-writing|screenwriting|description|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26238" CreationDate="2017-01-24T05:41:23.150" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A key feature of written fiction is that we're not limited to two senses (sight and sound) the way film is. We writers can give the reader access to three additional senses, plus the internal experience of the viewpoint characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So practice writing all five senses, and practice writing viewpoint characters' internal experience. Thoughts, feelings, interpretations, internal conflicts and debates, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some great ways to practice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Observe something, and write what you observe. Focus on the five senses. If a thing you're observing doesn't offer all five senses, that's okay. Later you can find something for those senses, and describe that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Observe something that you feel some internal reaction to. It need not be a strong reaction, but try a variety of reactions. Write what you're observing, and your reactions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After you've read something that you really enjoy, go back and make notes about how the writer gave you insight into the characters' experiences through their senses and internal reactions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring all of that to your fiction. When you write, in addition to whatever you would normally write, also write what the viewpoint characters see, hear, smell, feel, and taste. Write their reactions and opinions of those things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T05:41:23.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26238" CreationDate="2017-01-24T05:55:09.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conveying your ideas through written words is like carrying on a dialogue with someone through old-fashioned letters, or through email.  Notice that the classic big authors received and wrote a lot of letters.  You can get quick feedback about the understandability and impact of your written words through individual correspondence with people and through online discussions, for example at StackExchange.  All of this will give you practice and training.  It will convince you in a visceral way that putting together your words in a thoughtful way makes a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T05:55:09.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26227" CreationDate="2017-01-24T06:05:36.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're working in a group, check the level of detail of existing documentation, and ask for guidance from your group leader, or a co-worker who seems to know what's what.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Picture an imaginary reader.  Write a description of this ideal reader -- why is s/he reading your documentation, and what does s/he hope to get out of it?  For example, you need to have clear in your mind whether the reader wants to simply &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; your software, or whether s/he wants to be able to &lt;em&gt;modify&lt;/em&gt; it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could provide two levels of detail.  Analogy 1: Newspaper articles start with the very short version of the story, and then tell the longer version.  Analogy 2: Eurogames often come with a short quick-start sheet, which skips the motivation and lovely prose, and just gives you a quick rundown of the set-up (preparation for play) and a bulleted list of the mechanics.  A longer booklet can provide the story behind the game, a slow introduction to the pieces, tiles, etc. that one manipulates, notes about strategy and variants, and fine points about rules, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that an editor writes to you and asks what the purpose of your article is, and why you took the approach you took.  Write back to this imaginary editor.  You'll probably find that writing about what you're trying to accomplish with your writing will help bring the project into better focus.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T06:05:36.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26216" CreationDate="2017-01-24T06:15:30.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I keep getting different great ideas that would fit in different stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may jot down the idea when it occurs to you, along with a note about which story you'd like to add it to.  Jotting something down doesn't take much time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resist the urge to figure out &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; in the other story it should go, and how to adjust things in the other story to accommodation the addition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then get back to your goal for the day (or the week, month, or whatever).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set yourself a goal and a reward for meeting the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T06:15:30.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26238" CreationDate="2017-01-24T08:24:21.650" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to suggest a different approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cinematic writing, sometimes called cinematic narration, has been a conscious technique in literature since the invention of photography. Writers of nineteenth century poetic realism such as Theodor Storm have attempted to emulate the photographic gaze in their novels and created a style that is called &lt;em&gt;pré cinéma&lt;/em&gt;, because it anticipated cinematic patterns of perception before cinema was invented. Writers of the 1920s Spanish avant-garde such as Azorín and writers of the French post-avant-garde such as Patrick Deville or Jean-Philippe Toussaint have used the &quot;eye of the camera&quot; with its outside view of characters and its objective gaze, the hard cuts of film editing, and other filmic elements as a stylistic device in their writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe, instead of seeing your cinematic imagination as an obstacle to your writing, you can use it to create your own, distinct style of writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to write &quot;non-cinematically&quot;, what may help you is to &lt;strong&gt;be in your story&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; your story unfold like a movie, then you have something of a detached, outside view of events. You &lt;em&gt;look on&lt;/em&gt; while things happen to &lt;em&gt;someone else&lt;/em&gt;. What you can do is try to imagine that it is you, who is acting or who things are happening to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I draw, there is a simple technique that better helps me grasp the anatomy of a pose: I get into the pose myself. That may seem counter-intuitive, as I need to &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; to know how to draw a figure, but that is not true. To draw a person in a certain pose, I need to &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt; that pose. And there is no better way to understand it than to take up that pose yourself. If I do, I can &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; how the different parts of my body relate to each other, and in some way that I cannot explain I then know what it looks like and how I need to draw it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe writing is not exactly similar, and you certainly cannot jump in front of a car to know what it means to get hit by one, but you can mentally aproximate that experience. The first thing I do is &lt;em&gt;move&lt;/em&gt;. When I walk, or even stand, I can better &lt;em&gt;think with my body&lt;/em&gt;. The memory of my physical experiences is activated, when my body is active, while it is often unreachable when I just sit there and think. The second thing is speaking, even subvocally, the dialog that is being said, and, as best as I can and my circumstances allow, to act out what my characters do. I write in the university library, and sometimes one of the students glances at me strangely because I make grimaces as if I had Tourette, but it helps. Sometimes I get up and do what looks like Tai Chi in the staircase. But even if you cannot physically act out what happens in your novel, you can try to the best of your ability to imagine what it would be like if you were there. Draw on your past experiences. Everyone has been afraid, jumped from something, felt the rain, and so on. Translate and exaggerate that to terror, falling from a roof, drowning in a storm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, &lt;strong&gt;take your time&lt;/strong&gt; with every scene and, before you write it, try to mentally be in that place and feel what being there would be like. Pause your movie, if you want, until you are in it, and then play it in slow motion. Be aware, with all your senses, what being in the movie is like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-01-24T11:40:44.237" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T11:40:44.237" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26230" CreationDate="2017-01-24T08:42:52.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't cite figures, you cite &lt;em&gt;research&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not matter whether the information you refer to is given in text, in a table, or in a figure. A reader of your article who wants to look at the source that you cited will find the information regardless of where in that source it was presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Page and Brim (2016) – whose article I have no read – might report some mean of their data in text, in a table, or in a figure. For a reader of your article it will be irrelevant where the mean was reported, all they want to know is what article you found it in, if you discuss it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So cite Page and Brim (2016) as you would cite them if the information was given in text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would only refer to an illustration if the fact that it was an illustration was somehow important to your argument. I cannot think of such a situation, so I am making one up: Maybe your article discusses coloring barplots, and you think that the red bars in Page and Brim (2016) are very good. Then mention the number of the figure in any way that you want. There is no rule for that. Usually, figures are either cited (that is, they are included in your text) or not mentioned at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T08:42:52.487" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26238" CreationDate="2017-01-24T10:53:23.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do the same thing, picturing how the scenes in my novel will progress as if it were through the lens of a camera. This means that when it comes to actually write the story, much of what goes onto the page is entirely different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing that I always keep in my mind is that a movie director is very much like a writer: they are telling a story, they just have a different medium with which to tell it. Nothing ends up on their camera by accident, just as nothing ends up on the page by accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when you're picturing the story developing in your mind as if it's on a screen, try to think &lt;em&gt;what it is exactly&lt;/em&gt; that you're trying to portray on that screen. Then rather than describing the actions as you imagined them, write down how to get that same message across. It might be completely different to how you imagined it initially, but it will probably work better than simply describing what would be on a screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also important to remember that filming something is much easier to do &quot;show, don't tell&quot; than in writing, for the obvious reason that they are literally showing what is happening. However, writing has the advantage of not needing to give all of the exposition or motivation through dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So try to write to the strengths of the written format, whilst keeping in mind that you don't have the luxury of being able to describe everything in detail without boring your reader or overloading them with description. Just as every detail on a screen has a specific purpose, so does every word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T10:53:23.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26182" CreationDate="2017-01-24T12:46:18.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to try an answer that overlooks the contentious term 'subtext'. Regardless of its meaning (or meanings) in literary theory, the truth is most amateur writers (in the sense of writers who write for the love of it and discover the techniques as they go in order to perfect their craft) misunderstand a lot of literary terms. I studied literature and remember quite a few terms which were difficult to grasp correctly even with the teachers explaining them and correcting faulty interpretations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So when writing a story, at what point do you plan for these items [mirrors, symbols, and subtext]? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you have a separate thread in your mindmap or outline alongside the main thread in the outline form? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Write the whole thing and work in the subtext in the third draft? Is there a particular point in the process when it's easier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, it depends. If you're writing literature (with the elitistic capital L), it should be mostly already part of the plot, with the characters representing something bigger than them and every word and action being carefully thought out to create the right impression. I'll assume that is not what you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have a story with the plot, subplots and characters fleshed out and ready to navigate the action. But you want to make all this deeper; you want to shine a subtle light on a less visible personality trait (because the villain is tragically in love and refuses to acknowledge it while the hero is hiding from the reader and the narrator how dark his heart truly is). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have two ways to go about it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you're a planner, go back to the plot and decide where you can drop little hints and what is the nature of those hints. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want the plot to represent politics, moral values, human growth? If so, make sure the plot conveys these ideas without contradiction (unless that is the point of your tale) and perhaps not too obviously. If you want your hero to be the spiritual saviour of a community, don't have him die on a cross in order to do so. Subtlety is the key word here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to jab a criticism somewhere along the story but not have the story be all about that criticism? Work it into a subplot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to use universal symbols (e.g. the red rose as symbol of love) or do you want to create your own symbols, which will stand as such only for this text (e.g. the oak leaf as a symbol of love because it reminds the character of when he met/lost/whatever the love of his life)? If the latter, decide how that symbol came into existence within the tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to use a wealth of these items and create a highly symbolic, metaphorical tale? Be careful. Personally, I find that works better in extremely well crafted Literary works. If that is not what you want, then, again, plan how many of those items will be used per chapter on average and balance their levels of subtlety. Be particularly careful to not use these items as themselves but weave them into the plot and actions in a way that they will almost be invisible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are not a planner, play it by ear. That's mostly my case. I have a generally vague plan and then discover these things as I go. If, say, I notice that my subplot could be used to criticise whatever, then I may stop to revise it and make sure it fits with the criticism I'm aiming for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May I give an example of a historical novel (a telling of real people and events which have a lot of unknown gaps in the history books) I'm working on with examples for 'non-planners'? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scene: There is one high-noble woman that is dealing with the fact her marriage has been annuled and she's now a hostage locked in her chamber. She is thinking of her father, condemned as a traitor, and wondering what fate will the daughter of a traitor have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thought process: Traitor! Who is the biggest traitor of all? Let's have her sit by a tapestry which is a tryptic with the crucification in the middle and Judas hanged on one lateral. Ah! At the time, the crucification scene showed the Virgin Mary fainting by the cross. So let's have the character sit at the feet of Christ (because she is the pawn whose father will sacrifice quite a few times to reach his goals) and let's have her think of the scene while praying for Christ's and &lt;em&gt;his mother&lt;/em&gt;'s intersection. In later chapters we can now learn the character's mother (who had a long attested history of depression associated to health problems) did die shortly after this blow to her daughter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plot points:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1. the noblewoman goes out with a hunting party to hunt water fowls to advance a certain plot point.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2. the nobleowoman will later have her husband be involved with a court lady nicknamed 'egret neck' (it sounds much nicer in the original language)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3. the noblewoman's maid will try to avenge her cheated lady&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thought process:&#xA;They're out hunting egrets already! Let's have a subplot where the maid kills an egret to avenge a slight towards her lady (it killed the lady's hawk; egret's were known to do that). This will foreshadow the 'egret neck' lady (who, spoiler ahead, does end up being killed) and show the reader how this maid is so loyal to her lady that she will avenge her even when petty slights are involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attention:&#xA;This approach is messy and can require going back and forth to introduce, change or cross out items and scenes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T12:46:18.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26247" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26251" CreationDate="2017-01-24T16:11:50.267" Score="6" ViewCount="3956" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bit of an issue coming up with good names for my characters. So what I usually do is give each character an abbreviation or some sort of nickname as a placeholder while I'm writing my story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way in Scrivener to define the name of your character just once and have it update anywhere? For example...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;{Char1} went to school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I define &quot;Char1&quot; as Joe, the above sentence will automatically be turned to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joe went to school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23083" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-01-24T17:16:33.817" LastActivityDate="2022-05-13T18:03:51.537" Title="Scrivener: Write character names once, update everywhere?" Tags="|scrivener|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26248" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2017-01-24T16:52:06.440" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-01-24T16:52:06.440" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T16:52:06.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26249" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2017-01-24T16:52:06.440" Score="0" Body="Scrivener is a word-processing program and outliner designed for authors. Use this tag if you have questions about the use of this software." OwnerDisplayName="user23083" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-01-24T17:15:45.447" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T17:15:45.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26247" CreationDate="2017-01-24T17:09:08.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrivener provides a set of pre-defined placeholder tags (&lt;a href=&quot;https://scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb/windows/placeholder-tags-list&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb/windows/placeholder-tags-list&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;which are automatically rendered as text and numbers during compilation. Custom placeholder tags are not supported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would you want to write in such an unnatural way, using code chunks instead of names? It looks jarring and will make it hard to read and edit, for it breaks the natural flow of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about just call him Joe, then do a Project Replace if you change your mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T17:09:08.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26247" CreationDate="2017-01-24T17:11:19.733" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you can directly create your own custom placeholders in Scrivener. As far as I know, you can do three things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1. Use the existing placeholder tags&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you click on &lt;code&gt;Help &amp;gt; Placeholder Tags List…&lt;/code&gt; you can see a list of predefined tags that you can insert into your document and that will get replaced by the appropriate information when you compile your finished document. The information that most of these placeholder tags get replaced by cannot be changed by you (e.g. the current page number), but others are replaced by information that you enter. For example you can use the project title tag as the name of one character, and the author's surname tag as the name of another. You can define five tags under &lt;code&gt;Project &amp;gt; Meta-Data Settings &amp;gt; Project Properties&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2. Define automatic replacements when you compile&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you compile your final document, you have the option to define character strings and what you want them to get replaced by under &lt;code&gt;Compile &amp;gt; All Options &amp;gt; Replacements &amp;gt; Project Replacements&lt;/code&gt;. Here you can define replacements similar to a normal search &amp;amp; replace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;3. Manually search and replace.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under &lt;code&gt;Edit &amp;gt; Find &amp;gt; Project Replace…&lt;/code&gt; you can perform a manual search and replace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be careful.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some names are embedded grammatically different than others. For example, if you replace &amp;quot;John&amp;quot; in &amp;quot;John's&amp;quot; by &amp;quot;James&amp;quot;, the outcome will not be what you expect. For cases like this, the third, manual option is the safest, as it allows you to find all instances of a name automatically, but authorize replacements on an individual basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T17:11:19.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26259" CreationDate="2017-01-24T17:27:26.277" Score="1" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two examples to illustrate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It wasn’t suddenly.” Aru sipped her Americano. She bought it because&#xA;  it cost ¥499, and she loved prime numbers. They were unique.&#xA;  Unbreakable. “Have you seen the movie Pretty Woman?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Let me get this straight.” Ichi was the guy who had recently joined&#xA;  Aru’s car dealership. Also the guy who had recently confessed his love&#xA;  to her. “You suddenly decided to quit your job as an accountant—to&#xA;  pursue a career as a sex worker?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the be distracting for the reader? What to do in cases like this? Put the action tags at the beginning of the dialogue? At the end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T20:07:04.677" Title="Is it bad/distracting to place long action tags between dialogue?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26213" CreationDate="2017-01-24T17:29:35.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're story exceeds genre, becomes more than the sum of its parts, then it is original, regardless of how similar it may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm reading a story, I'm not comparing it to all the stories I've ever read: I'm reading &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;plot&quot; that you say is similar is barely relevant. There will be thousands of stories written similar to it before 2100. Just focus on making your story the best it can be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do justice to your world, and aren't just pinching convenient plot points from similar media and hobbling them amateurely together, then I think you'll be pleased with the result and others will be too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23065" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T17:29:35.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26254" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26258" CreationDate="2017-01-24T17:35:04.147" Score="4" ViewCount="1102" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some tips you would recommend to immediately attract a reader, or make the story interesting enough to continue reading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if there are any specific techniques or ways that you can create interest in a multitude of different situations so it wouldn't matter if the world is shrouded in mystery and unexplained, or 'info-dumped', although the techniques can relate to these specifics if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T20:36:01.243" Title="Tips on engaging the audience in the first chapter?" Tags="|creative-writing|non-fiction|audience|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26254" CreationDate="2017-01-24T18:12:54.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create engaging characters and put them in situations with high stakes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characters in your first chapter (or prologue) don't even have to be main characters. They don't even have to &lt;em&gt;survive&lt;/em&gt; to the next chapter. But we have to care about them, and we have to want to find out what happens next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also counts for villains: If you create a villain who commits a terrible act in the first chapter, we'll keep reading to make sure the villain gets punished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T18:12:54.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26254" CreationDate="2017-01-24T19:38:34.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple ways to engage the reader. Your first page should be the &quot;hook&quot;, the essence of what to expect of your book. But how to do it, it really depends on the nature of your book, because you first page should be highly relevant to the rest of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you consider interesting and unusual characters the strongest part of your book, introduce them right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book has high-octane action, start with the action sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book is about human relationships, start with description of thought and feelings of your character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book is about a mystery, you can show this mystery right away or, at first, present another small, &quot;teaser&quot; mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book contains philosophy and deep thoughts, give reader a small, but interesting problem to chew on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think if your book can benefit from a prologue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next is my personal opinion which can be wrong. Many books start with slow-pacing descriptions of the opening scene. Don't do that unless you are absolutely sure. It's overly common and works well only if the prose is really good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T19:38:34.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26261" CreationDate="2017-01-24T20:03:37.907" Score="5" ViewCount="7090" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;By the time I am nearing the end of a story, the first part will have been reread and altered and corrected at least one hundred and fifty times. I am suspicious of both facility and speed. Good writing is essentially rewriting. I am positive of this.&amp;quot; — Roald Dahl&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, I am not quite this bad but it does have me wondering about how many times a novel is generally rewritten until it is suitable for submitting. This author even has a formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;vomit draft - let it fly baby&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story arc pass - main story subplots - overall structure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MC &amp;amp; supporting character arcs - including character development &amp;amp; embellishment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;grammar/punctuation pass &amp;amp; bad habit pass (adverbs/tense/sentence variety/word choice)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;7&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hard copy read - make corrections&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kindle read - make corrections&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OUT TO BETAS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;9&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Including Beta notes pass&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Holistic read - wearing my audience hat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Corrections from Holistic read&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QUERY TIME&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;a href=&quot;http://allwritefictionadvice.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-many-rewrites-is-too-many.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another writer cautions&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, redrafting will just spoil the novel - there is a danger that the story you set out to write ends up so ‘surgically’ enhanced that it no longer resembles the original story – the intrinsic core of the story has been lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;a href=&quot;http://paranormalpointofview.blogspot.ca/2011/11/how-many-drafts-does-it-take-to-get-to.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;are entire blogs&lt;/a&gt; dedicated to this question.&#xA;Frankly, dozens of times seems overdone. Perfect isn't feasible unless you are &lt;a href=&quot;http://hollylisle.com/one-pass-manuscript-revision-from-first-draft-to-last-in-one-cycle/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this blogger&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But dozens isn't practical, especially given my advanced age. Aside from as many as it takes to find a publisher, does any one know the MEAN &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.karenwoodward.org/2012/12/how-many-drafts-does-it-take-to-write.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;number of drafts for a novel&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2021-06-04T07:42:07.467" Title="How many rewrites should a writer expect for a novel?" Tags="|novel|editing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26254" CreationDate="2017-01-24T20:05:55.710" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let us break down &amp;quot;first chapter&amp;quot; a bit and look at how readers try to fathom a book, after the title and cover have made them pick it up and the blurb intrigued them to open it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When readers face a purchase decision in a bookstore, they don't read the first chapter and then decide. Their decision comes in steps, and the book must pass each of these thresholds, or it will be returned to the shelf unread. Let us look at each of these in turn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The outside of the book&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although you didn't ask for it, I want to briefly mention the outside of the book, too, so we better understand what you must provide on the &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cover, title, author name (!), and blurb each must &lt;em&gt;clearly&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;attractively&lt;/em&gt; communicate to the target audience that the book contains what that target audience seeks. The target audience seeks a genre (e.g. romance), certain character types (e.g. the broken male love interest), certain settings, and certain plot elements (e.g. the love triangle).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hook starts on the outside of the book, and what you call the &amp;quot;first chapter&amp;quot; only deepens it. For you, as a writer, this means that you must develop an &lt;strong&gt;intriguing premise&lt;/strong&gt;, for that is what the book's outside communicates (and what the cover illustrator and blurb writing marketing department need from you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The first sentence (or two)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a reader opens a book in a bookstore, the first thing they look at is the first sentence. In a well-crafted book, the first sentence contains the theme, that is, in what way the story is relevant to the life and person of the reader. Let us look at an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ally Condie's novel &lt;em&gt;Atlantia&lt;/em&gt; – which happens to be the top-most book on my pile of books to read – opens with this sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My twin sister, Bay, and I pass underneath the brown-and-turquoise banners hanging from the ceiling of the temple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this first sentence we learn that the book is about sisters and how their relationship is affected by the traditions of their society. It is a fantasy novel, and its premise is how a teenage girl living in a colony of humans that has survived the apocalypse underwater uncovers &amp;quot;the mysterious history of her own family, and the Divide that created [the colony,] Atlantia&amp;quot;, but the theme of the book is sisterhood. It ends with: &amp;quot;We are sisters, and we did not drown.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The first page&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When readers are hooked by the first sentence, they read (or skim) the first page. The first page establishes the setting and the character of the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The first few pages&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reader finds the first page interesting, they read (or skim) the next few pages to get a general idea of the obstacles the protagonist has to face or what task he is given or what else &lt;em&gt;drives the plot&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The rest of the book&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the rest of the book may be part of &amp;quot;the first chapter&amp;quot;, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the outside and the first few pages appeal to the reader, the reader will either buy the book, read on, or check other places in the book. What I do, for example, is find examples of dialog. Many good books are ruined, for me, by unnatural dialog. I always make sure the writer can write good spoken language, before I buy a book. Others will look for other things. As a teenager I wanted a sex scene, so I looked for that and whether it was well done (by my standards).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;how to engage the audience,&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;there is no general answer to that. Different audiences want different things, and what engages one person repels another. I cannot for the life of me read Terry Pratchett, his writing makes my face sag with unfunniness, while others find him addictively hilarious. A high stakes novel needs the stakes (death!) in the first sentence, a romance needs a spark of sexual attraction, a hard science fiction novel needs an intriguing idea, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use the guide I have created and look at how novels in the genre you are writing fill these places – the first sentence, the first page, the first few pages –, you will, I am sure, understand how they hook their target audience (you!) and from that understanding be able to emulate their approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of great advice on the web on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/7-ways-to-create-a-killer-opening-line-for-your-novel&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;how to create a killer opening line for your novel&lt;/a&gt;, but what has really helped me the most was the idea that &lt;strong&gt;the first sentence contains the theme of the novel&lt;/strong&gt; and that the theme must be what my target audience is struggling with or desires or fears – that is, most intensely feels about – in their lives. Finding this theme in your own writing helps you greatly with identifying &lt;em&gt;who you are writing for&lt;/em&gt; and building a strong thematic backbone for your plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T20:36:01.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26252" CreationDate="2017-01-24T20:07:04.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;It Depends&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will it be distracting for the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I can't not comment on the following: there are immense amounts of telling in this piece. I feel that the sense of 'bad' writing being created here isn't actually formed by the action tags, rather the telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She bought it because it cost ¥499, and she loved prime numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That specifically, and all of your other action tags are telling me things. Each one &lt;strong&gt;tells&lt;/strong&gt; me information that could be &lt;strong&gt;shown&lt;/strong&gt; in a more interesting way. It seems boring and bad because you're just telling me the information in such a plain form. I won't write for you, instead I'll give you the golden advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show. Don't tell.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll actually give a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; primitive example of what showing could be like for the above quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aru beamed at the price tag: ¥499. A prime number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's obvious that she beams at the price tag because of the prime number. Rather than telling the reader that she loves prime numbers, you're showing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Action Tags&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be entirely honest, I think you can leave them where they are in the sentence. However, perhaps you could add some indication as to how they are speaking. Here's a thought:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It wasn’t suddenly,” Aru spluttered outwards through a sip of her Americano.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would be good to do something like this because it helps more easily lead into the action tags. In your work it felt a little abrupt. It is almost as if something is going on, and then a fatal error has occurred and you have randomly decided to give me information. It doesn't flow, and I think this could help it flow more easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T20:07:04.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26257" CreationDate="2017-01-24T20:40:00.683" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there can be an answer for this. I don't think you can even have an answer for a given writer. Mercedes Lackey rewrote her first trilogy seventeen times, but now she churns out books every year or so. (whether they are any good is a different question.) Barbara Cartland wrote over 700 books in her lifetime, Isaac Asimov over 500 in his, and George R.R. Martin has been struggling with &lt;em&gt;Winds of Winter&lt;/em&gt; since the Truman administration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A first book or series is going to go through many cycles. Once you get better at writing and editing, and particularly if you're writing a series with familiar characters, you will likely go much faster and need fewer rounds. You can track your own work, but I think it should be only for your own benchmarking purposes. The book is done when it's done, and not before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T20:40:00.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26257" CreationDate="2017-01-24T21:10:13.973" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There really is no general answer to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are writers who publish their first drafts and make a lot of money with high volume output, while others polish their books endlessly and achieve high literary fame. Then there are writers who do either and manage neither.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Famous examples for heavy rewriting include Leo Tolstoy, who rewrote the whole of &lt;em&gt;War and Peace&lt;/em&gt; seven times, Robert Musil who worked on &lt;em&gt;The Man Without Qualities&lt;/em&gt; for twenty-one years and left it unfinished when he died, and Ernest Hemingway, who wrote 47 different endings for &lt;em&gt;A Farewell in Arms&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example for high output first drafts is Elle Casey. Research her, its interesting. She publishes about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ellecasey.com/publishing-schedule/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one novel per month&lt;/a&gt;, sometimes two. She also blogs heavily about her process, and I have learned a lot from her, although I don't (yet) emulate her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you must do, depends on what kind of person you are and what goals you have. You will find your ideal process through experimentation and self-reflection. Are you happy with self-publishing the verbal ejaculate of your imagination? Or do you need the New York Review of Books to discuss your work of art? Can you manage one book per month? That seems like a lot, but can you manage even one single complete rewrite?!? I find it almost unbearably difficult. Try both for yourself and find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T21:10:13.973" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26257" CreationDate="2017-01-25T00:31:59.167" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in writing to make money, it doesn't pay to rewrite. If you rewrite half as much you can output twice as many books per unit of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, some people will play the &quot;quality&quot; card. But quality of writing comes from talent, not from rewriting. Iron won't become steel no matter how much you pound at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only time it makes rational sense to rewrite is if your work derailed from your original idea halfway through and you want to rewrite the first act to match the second and third acts. In this case, you can minimize waste by keeping the discarded half so you can write an appropriate ending later and release another book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23180" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T00:31:59.167" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26264" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-25T02:03:11.340" Score="0" ViewCount="5370" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently trying to write a story, I already have a rough outline of the plot. But the only thing that's holding me back from moving forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prolouge involves the main character waking up to find his father coughing up blood in the toiler (don't ask). We later find out (Chapter 1) that the main character's father has developed Super Cancer (it's a fantasy story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: You know when someone wakes up? well I need to translate that into a firt person POV &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22914" LastEditorUserId="22914" LastEditDate="2017-01-25T02:15:02.690" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T08:09:06.710" Title="How to wake up a character from a first person perspective?" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-01-25T08:30:58.383" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26264" CreationDate="2017-01-25T05:21:29.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't usually write in first person POV so, I'm only giving a suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what you can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could write a short description of a dream that character is having to start off. Then wake up the character by breaking that dream. (Something like the dream world fading or crumbling down. Depends on what kind of sleeper your character is.) I'm suggesting this because I think to it'll be somewhat interesting way to start a prologue and you can even show something about him or add some foreshadowing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23187" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-01-25T08:02:01.540" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T08:02:01.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26264" CreationDate="2017-01-25T08:01:04.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually it does not matter what you want to write, because the problem and solution are always the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is holding you back is not that you do not know how to write a character waking up in first person, or not that alone, but that you are not used to writing. You feel like a person that steps on a diving tower for the first time and finds that from up there the water looks very far away. You hesitate, because you are afraid of failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the first thing you need to do is &quot;lower that diving board&quot;. You must make writing something normal and unremarkable, like brushing your teeth. And how do you do that? By making it a habit. I have gone into making writing a habit in three other answers of mine. Look at them: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10254/5645&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10559/5645&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12216/5645&quot;&gt;three&lt;/a&gt;. In short, to be able to write that beginning, you need to &lt;strong&gt;write regularly&lt;/strong&gt; for some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think that, well, you are &lt;em&gt;trying&lt;/em&gt; to write regularly but are stuck on the beginning, then I suggest that you &lt;strong&gt;write anything at all&lt;/strong&gt;. The high diver doesn't begin from ten meters, but from the side of the pool. Only when he is used to jumping in the water from the side of the pool does he get up on the one meter board. Do the same. Write anything at all. Whatever you have in your mind. Every day. And even once you are used to writing regularly, you might not want to dive right in on most days. Sportsmen don't begin their training by breaking a world record, but by warming up. Draughtsmen don't begin their workday by pencilling a wonderful artwork, but by doing warmups. Many writers warm up by just writing down whatever comes to their minds. After fifteen to thirty minutes you will find that your thoughts are beginning to take shape, that your words flow more easily, and that you are ready to write in earnest. Begin your days work then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, do not be afraid of failure, or, in other words, don't expect too much from your first attempt at writing a novel (or other story). Writing is something that you must learn, like any other skill. If you expect your first attempt to be perfect, you will never write that beginning, because you will never feel ready for it. What I suggest you do is write that first scene in any way at all. &lt;strong&gt;It does not matter if it is well written or not, it only matters that you write it and keep writing.&lt;/strong&gt; You can come back and revise it one you have it on paper or you can throw it away and write the next novel. It really doesn't matter, because &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/15904/5645&quot;&gt;you have about 10,000 hours of writing to do&lt;/a&gt; before you get published anyway, so you better start and stop hesitating now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you are in the right frame of mind and ready to begin, lets pause for a moment and look at what you might actually do to make that first scene as good as you can. So how &lt;em&gt;do you&lt;/em&gt; write someone waking up from the first person perspective? That's quite easy and simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you do is remember how waking up feels for you, and write that down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, that's all. You have woken up countless times in your life, and you are an expert at waking up. All you need to do is write down how you experience that. Easy as pie. What is the first sensation? The first thought? Are you fully conscious and ready to jump on an unbroken horse, or are you befuddled and need a gallon of coffee before you can even open your eyes to the painfully bright light from your bedside clock? Do you wake up from the sound of your dad coughing up blood, or do you discover the blood smears when you want to brush your teeth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just write it down in any way at all. Then either rewrite it, or write on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T08:09:06.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26268" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26272" CreationDate="2017-01-25T09:01:00.227" Score="4" ViewCount="3405" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the story I'm writing, the protagonist writes a representational story about himself and about the fulfillment of his wish impossible in his reality. Such wish is the sub-protagonist's main goal, and it's set still at the beginning, and the rest of the story is just the sub-protagonist's journey to accomplish it. And that's it, no gotchas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm not sure if it'll be a good idea to leave it so predictable and unsurprising. I mean, of course that achieving such goal have some conditions he has to endure, but in the end, his goal is still accomplished, no matter what, and he knows such conditions since the beginning and goes into the journey with that in mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I know from the other works I use as reference, when there's a solid goal since the beginning, taking the whole story to be achieved, there's always a plot twist (usually several) affecting such goal, and in the end, the goal is achieved, but in a way never known before in the story, and a lot changes after those twists. But in my case, I can't do much, as the sub-story is the protagonist's wish fulfillment, and it would make no sense for him to make the sub-protagonist fail in his journey, and the reader would read all the story just to find out that the sub-protagonist fails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So my question is:&lt;/strong&gt; is it &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; necessary for a story to have plot twists to be considered a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; story? Or a story without them has to be executed with great mastery to not get bad impressions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastEditorUserId="14490" LastEditDate="2017-01-28T04:45:29.580" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T04:45:29.580" Title="Are plot twists always necessary for a good story?" Tags="|fiction|novel|goal|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-25T15:34:40.240" Score="0" ViewCount="868" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing a lab report for a general physics course, and for a written portion I have to describe the motion of an object given by a position vs time graph. How do I stretch this into a 1/2-page single-spaced paragraph? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23195" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T17:24:10.623" Title="How to write a paragraph describing motion?" Tags="|science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-01-25T19:01:31.020" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23509" CreationDate="2017-01-25T15:45:14.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I adore the snowflake method and don't see any reason you can't use it to write your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First point - What is dual plot?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I'm not sure there is such a thing as 'dual plot'. The plot is the main storyline - where the key character starts, the trials they go through, and the resolution. It's common for stories to have more than one of these, often applying to supporting characters, and they would be considered sub-plots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dual narrative is where you have two key characters telling the story (or perhaps the same character at different times in their life).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second point - Is your story dual anything?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;What you're describing doesn't sound like either multiple plots or even multiple narratives. You're simply describing multiple settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plot isn't dictated by the locations of the story, even if they are in different worlds. Two settings do not equal two plots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third point - can you use the snowflake method?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A resounding yes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would say that you need to focus on the main protagonist and their journey - how they change, what their goals and obstacles are. This is where your premise, story skeleton and eventual fully formed plot will come from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The locations and settings are a backdrop and stage for that, however intrinsic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably you've started with a premise and got stumped at the location part of it, in which case I would call the location 'across two worlds' or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.novel-software.com/blog?article=a-character-driven-hero%27s-journey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Character Driven Hero's Journey&lt;/a&gt; in conjunction with the Snowflake method to help get to grips with where your plot comes from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T15:45:14.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26268" CreationDate="2017-01-25T16:07:59.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nothing is 'always necessary' in writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's about what you want to write, and - if it's important to you - what people want to read. And people are strange and various, so you will probably find someone who will enjoy reading what you've written, whatever it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there will probably be a good deal of people who will like it for the fact that it doesn't follow conventions, that they may be tired of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, having said that, most stories have twists for a reason - and that's because the majority of people will find them more interesting and satisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's a problem if the goal is achieved, though the character finding out that what they wanted all along isn't actually what's going to make them happy is often key to a fulfilling story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you say, it's the journey and the challenges on the way that make the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, there are many stories where the original story goal is achieved. The only problem is if the protagonist achieves everything they set out to do without any conflict or obstacles appearing at all. That might feel a bit odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, going back to your question, I think you can do anything if you do it with enough mastery, so not having plot twists is certainly possible in a good story. Just more difficult to pull off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T16:07:59.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-25T17:02:20.127" Score="1" ViewCount="999" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know its okay to leave it as &quot;that that's why&quot; but it sounds awkward. This is the sentence &quot;It is very possible that since the armadillidium are not exposed to processed alcohol based scents daily that that is why they showed the preference the did&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23196" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T18:00:18.733" Title="How can I rephrase that that?" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2017-01-25T18:58:35.843" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26273" CreationDate="2017-01-25T17:18:10.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common problem I face as well. Sometimes there's nothing you can do about it, and have to leave two &lt;code&gt;that&lt;/code&gt;'s together. But usually, you can fix it by using the following rule: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Replace a 'that' with what it refers to.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any sentence with two &lt;code&gt;that&lt;/code&gt;'s, at least one of them is acting in place of another word or phrase. For example, let's break down your sentence. The first &lt;code&gt;that&lt;/code&gt; is not referring to another word, but the second one is. It's referring to the &lt;code&gt;armadillidium are not exposed to processed alcohol based scents daily&lt;/code&gt; part. You could just repeat that phrase in place of the &lt;code&gt;that&lt;/code&gt;, but that would sound even more awkward. So what you can do is use a different word to refer to the phrase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is very possible that since the armadillidium are not exposed to processed alcohol based scents daily that &lt;strong&gt;because of this&lt;/strong&gt; they showed the preference they did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example would be in my previous paragraph. I write: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You could just repeat that phrase in place of the &lt;code&gt;that&lt;/code&gt;, but that would sound even more awkward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could replace the second that with what it refers to: repetition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You could just repeat that phrase in place of the &lt;code&gt;that&lt;/code&gt;, but &lt;strong&gt;doing so&lt;/strong&gt; would sound even more awkward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes some practice, and you can't do this to every &lt;code&gt;that&lt;/code&gt; you will encounter. You can do it to most though, and your writing will benefit for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aside:&lt;/em&gt; Just correcting grammar as I go: Don't forget the period at the end of the sentence, and I believe you want the second to last word to be &lt;code&gt;they&lt;/code&gt;, not &lt;code&gt;the&lt;/code&gt;. Also the tenses in your sentence shift. It starts out in present, and ends up in past. You might want to tweak it to be one or the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-01-25T18:00:18.733" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T18:00:18.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26270" CreationDate="2017-01-25T17:24:10.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the graph shows each distinct position along a time line, you can focus your written description on the trends exposed by the graph.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the graph above clearly reveals, the position of the widget rose sharply over the first half of the procedure, then leveled off for most of the remaining time.  There are two distinct exceptions to this general trend.  At 4:32, the widget reversed its sharp incline for 15 seconds and at 4:45, it plummeted for 10 seconds following nearly 4 minutes of stability.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, you can explore the causes of the unexpected values and the causes of the originally identified general trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T17:24:10.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26268" CreationDate="2017-01-25T19:15:50.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me offer an analogy - are track loops necessary for a good amusement thrill ride? Generally speaking, they are not necessary, but they are making the ride more... thrilling. On the other hand, a good thrill ride would likely have loops, but it's not the number and size of them that makes the ride good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, put twists in your story, but don't add twists just for the sake of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastEditorUserId="22990" LastEditDate="2017-01-25T23:18:03.143" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T23:18:03.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26268" CreationDate="2017-01-25T19:21:35.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say no. You don't need plot twists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you might get them anyway. Let me explain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your characters should show some kind of change. At least your protagonist. Or, if he does not change, he should change his world somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And those characters that change should have goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, should your antagonist, although it's usually not a good idea to have an antagonist that changes -- it may reduce the protagonists win/loss if the antagonist suddenly comes over to his side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characters' goals should be hard to reach because they are being thwarted by the antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is often because the antagonist has the same goal as the protagonist: find the treasure, win the competition, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can build suspense by making the reader ask about your protagonist: how on earth is he going to make it out of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist's goal needs to be hard to reach, but not impossible. And it needs to be valuable to the protagonist, and the reader needs to understand why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, you need to have an evil streak when it comes to your characters and how hard you make it for them to reach their goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers love to fear for their characters lives or success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, once you've piled on with hard obstacles and powerful foes the fact that the character does manage to reach his goal might just come as a huge twist in the end anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, beware of &quot;Deus ex Machina&quot;-effects. The problems and obstacles should be &lt;em&gt;hard&lt;/em&gt; to overcome, but not so impossible you need to bring in &quot;the gods&quot; to save your protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it your story has a narrator. Even he has to be just as good a storyteller as you are, and he cannot give away the end too soon, even if he knows it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also be able to pull a &quot;Braveheart&quot; on the reader, not giving away who the narrator is until the very end...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important part isn't, however, if you have twists or not. The important part is that you have engaged readers, and you get that by making them feel -- fear, suspense, joy, dread, angst...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goals and obstacles are one great way to take a seemingly straight-from-A-to-B-story and make it into a nail biter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T19:21:35.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2381" CreationDate="2017-01-25T19:34:11.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think most of the answers here are missing something important. It is not about credibility (Wikipedia is as credible as most sources, which is to say that it contains a certain number of errors and omissions, just like everything else). It is about traceability. What matters when you cite a source in an academic paper is that you provide tracability for your assertions. Everything is supposed to be traceable back to the original research so that if someone has doubts about the assertions in support of your conclusions, they can trace it back to your original sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Wikipedia, by its own rules, is not a source of original research. Every assertion in Wikipedia is itself supposed to be traceable back to the original research. So citing Wikipedia has no traceability value. It does not get the scholar any nearer to the original source of the information that you are asserting in support of your conclusions. That is why it is not appropriate to cite Wikipedia in an academic paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside of the academic world, there are generally no such traceability requirements and so citing wikipedia as a convenient source of additional information on a topic makes perfect sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T19:34:11.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26257" CreationDate="2017-01-25T19:57:33.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is not one answer, as others have said. But I would suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How many rewrites it takes to make a competent writer is a very different question from how many rewrites it takes for a competent writer to write a new book. Writing is a difficult craft and you should expect to have to do a lot of rewriting before you get good at it. That might mean rewriting the first book 20 times before you are good enough to make it good, or it could mean rewriting four books 5 times each before the fourth one is good. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should rewrite if you can see something wrong with a book and a way to make it better. Once you can't make it better, give it to someone else to read and listen to what they tell you is wrong with it (but not how they tell you to fix it). If you can now see what is wrong with it and a way to fix it, repeat the process. Once you can't see how to make it better, no matter what your beta readers say (good or bad), submit it. Or, if you still feel it is not good enough to submit, but can't tell how to make it better, stick it in a drawer and take it out next year.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A book can fail at multiple levels. Story problems cannot be fixed by fiddling with the prose. In fact, fiddling with the prose seldom fixes anything (which is why you should ignore all the suggestions from your beta readers). Good storytelling is about how the arc of the story works out and whether it maintains tension and provides a satisfying release. It is about how you set up the reader's expectations and how you pay off those expectations. Some writers spend countless rewrites trying to fix failures of tension or excitement with more and more overwrought prose when the real problem is that the events are simply not set up properly to create tension or excitement. Recasting the story is usually what makes a book work, no rewriting the prose. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T19:57:33.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26281" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-25T20:07:00.330" Score="5" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you make a character that isn't your own race  or ethnic background, you have to research things, in order to avoid misrepresentation. But, what must you research about a given ethnic group? How much information is required as a base minimum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23199" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T11:31:41.777" Title="Writing a character that does not share your ethnic background?" Tags="|character-development|research|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26282" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26283" CreationDate="2017-01-25T20:18:44.067" Score="23" ViewCount="9654" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I am still in the primitive stages of creating my own world and story, if I even do it that is.  I am still trying to get a feel for where I want to go with it.  The biggest issue would be that, my world would be heavily influenced from novels like &lt;em&gt;Lord of The Rings&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Redwall&lt;/em&gt; (children's series similar to &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; with personification of animals), &lt;em&gt;Shannara&lt;/em&gt; series, and so on.  These are stories I grew up with and loved.  This would also mean that, my story would be very cookie cutter fantasy.  You can apply various elements from across literature works, but they will have a familiar feel due to the fact that the story wouldn't be &amp;quot;original&amp;quot; as the influence would be pretty evident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Would having a cookie cutter story be okay?  We see this recipe often repeated in anime where the story has a similar feel and an expected outcome with similar character personalities.  It seems to work in anime as many of these shows are popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because stories and books for that matter seem to be on the decline as more and more visual media becomes available, would I need surprise elements or twists that are otherwise unexpected from the said genre in hopes that the story would be read and not passed over as &amp;quot;another one of these&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Would creating a story that ends with the enemy winning be something interesting to others?  Let's face it, if a more realistic version of LOTR was created, chances are, middle earth would be ruled by Sauron right now.  I for one, would love to read a follow up novel about a world ruled by orcs.  Would a story that ended with the &amp;quot;bad side&amp;quot; winning be a desirable fresh outcome that people would read?  The anime Attack on Titan is heavily popular.  This story is depressing, hopeless, many main characters die, and humanity is losing the fight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope these questions are not too opinion based as I am more interested to see if such a world would be desirable by an audience.  What literature works would fall into a dark fantasy?  Game of Thrones would be the closest body of work, however it still isn't quite the tone I am looking for.  Would this be too niche?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if I would alienate the fantasy reader because it would be a different expected outcome.  Take Star Wars for example.  I personally was kind of put off with Rogue One for deviating too far from the Star Wars theme and plot.  Many people do not feel this way, but I personally did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;quot;If you yourself aren't going to buy into the world you're creating, you can cast-iron guarantee no-one else will.&amp;quot;  Let me clarify something that I have been seeing popping up in responses.  It isn't that I am not passionate enough about my idea or that I am not 100% sold on the idea, it's that I am writing for others and not myself.  You can be 100% passionate about the earth being flat and you believe it to your core, but that doesn't mean I am going to listen to you just because you are passionate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just wanted to say WOW.  The feedback and offering of help and good research materials (books to read) has been more than I ever hoped to have received.  I really appreciate everyone's positive critique that gave me a TON of thoughts to ponder over.  It probably is pretty evident that this is my first attempt at writing a non academic piece of work so that is also why I am a bit nervous/hesitant.  So thank you to everyone who offered advice and will provide any future insight after this edit.  It is greatly appreciated and it gives me more confidence that I should further pursue this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="44281" LastEditDate="2021-01-23T18:33:55.497" LastActivityDate="2021-01-23T19:57:49.707" Title="Creating a story in which the hero(es) lose" Tags="|fiction|plot|audience|tone|" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2021-01-25T07:02:54.983" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26282" CreationDate="2017-01-25T20:43:31.990" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, consider the term cookie cutter. Now imagine that you love cookies and you want to go into the cookie business. Which do you think would be the best strategy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bring out a totally original line of rhubarb and pickle cookies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bring out a line of exceptionally well made chocolate chip cookies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like you, there are millions or readers who grew up reading these stories and want to read more. At the same time, of course, there are thousands of people trying to write these stories. So, there is a definite demand for these types of stories. And there are a lot of, frankly, pretty lousy attempts to write them. So if you want to be in this market, learn to write this sort of story really well so you stand out above the crowd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, you need to learn to be really good. Because frankly, if you want to sell rhubarb and pickle cookies, you are going to have to make them really really good rhubarb and pickle cookies, because no one want a mediocre rhubarb and pickle cookie. But lots of people want a really good chocolate chip cookie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T20:43:31.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26281" CreationDate="2017-01-25T20:43:58.893" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on what you want to do with their character?  Is it modern day?  Post modern? something from the past? Does this character eat at all in your story?  What type of things would this character do that would need to have cultural influence?  Are they Asian doing a kung fu tournament with family and cultural influence/pressure to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the setting? Location?  Is this inner city New York where an Afican-American teenager will mostly be playing basketball?  Or is this in the streets of Brazil where that same teenager is now playing soccer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, you need to think about what culture specific topics may be needed.  If your character is going to have implied meals (whereas you specifically write about the character eating), looking up something like what do African tribal people eat for breakfast won't help the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;How&quot; much will be enough is up to you on how much does the culture of the character play in the story.  They may just be a hispanic male from Mexico but otherwise do everything a Caucasian does and doesn't eat Mexican food but instead enjoys a good burger.  Heck, I have Italian ancestry and I don't like Italian food! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T20:43:58.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26281" CreationDate="2017-01-25T20:49:09.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nothing. Everything. In the end, fiction is not about what you have researched, it is about what you have lived. Of course, writers of historicals or space operas have not actually lived in those environments, but thematically and in terms of their characters, they are a reflection of lived experience. I am not sure you can get the essence and the authenticity of a character from research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T20:49:09.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26282" CreationDate="2017-01-25T21:21:11.287" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;warning: TV Tropes links ahead&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Downer endings are okay&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing inherently wrong - or, to be honest, all that original - with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DownerEnding&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;downer ending&lt;/a&gt;. Stories where the villains win, or the heroes only win Pyrrhic victories, are really pretty common. As long as your story is compelling, and the villain's victory is more than just &amp;quot;They had more troops, so they steamrollered the good guys&amp;quot;, it can be done. HOWEVER...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't tell a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such stories can also be difficult to pull off. If you go too far into downer territory, you risk alienating your audience with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShootTheShaggyDog&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shoot the Shaggy Dog story&lt;/a&gt;, where your readers end the story thinking &amp;quot;Well, what was the point of that??&amp;quot; You just spent a dozen hours with a group of people, got to know them, got to like them, rooted for their victory...then they all got squashed like bugs. Why on earth would I want to read a story like that??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm going to declare some bias here and say that I &lt;strong&gt;hate&lt;/strong&gt; downer ending stories, in large part because, no offence, mediocre writers tend to use a downer ending to disguise the fact that they have nothing new to say. Despite being a massive sci-fi and fantasy junkie, I don't watch &lt;em&gt;The Expanse&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt;, because I'm sick of the bleakness that's infesting those genres at the moment. So in fact, you're as likely to lose readers as you are to gain them by writing a downer ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;If you don't believe it, you won't write it well&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the most important part. You can't write a novel by following a checklist; there's no magic formula for success. You need to have a story you want to tell, a message you want to get across, or your story just isn't going to work, you're going to be miserable writing it, and your readers are going to be miserable reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropesAreTools&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tropes Are Not Bad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Terry Pratchett put it, &amp;quot;The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.&amp;quot; There's nothing wrong with telling a derivative story. Hell, &lt;em&gt;William Shakespeare&lt;/em&gt; was telling derivative stories. As long as the story you tell is imaginative and interesting, there's nothing wrong with telling it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best fantasy series out there is the &lt;em&gt;Belgariad&lt;/em&gt;, by David Eddings. The characters are fresh and lively and leap off the page at you as you read. The plot is also &lt;em&gt;deliberately&lt;/em&gt; incredibly derivative - and it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, you've got to tell the story that's in your mind. If the heroes fail because of their own faults and weaknesses, that's a powerful message to send, and it's a story worth telling. But if your heroes fail because Sauron simply has more orcs and he steamrollers them before Frodo even reaches Mordor, that's an anticlimax. It's a bad story, and there's no reason to tell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22241" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T21:26:18.323" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26282" CreationDate="2017-01-25T21:34:49.777" Score="17" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I for one, would love to read a follow up novel about a world ruled by orcs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let me ask you this: Why not write that book instead? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, why not make the orcs the heroes of &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could the orcs be in rebellion against your Sauron character? Could&#xA;they be done with the entire thing and just want to wrap up the war&#xA;so they can go home to their orc families? Could they be bored and&#xA;just want to go home and watch &lt;em&gt;Dancing with the Nazgûl&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there band-geek orcs and slacker orcs and intellectual orcs and&#xA;middle-manager orcs? Are there anal-retentive orcs and messy eater&#xA;orcs and orcs who have an allergy to bonefish?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a rivalry between different tribes of orcs like sports team&#xA;fans? Is there a racial rivalry which is more serious? Is there a&#xA;rivalry between orcs and Uruk-Hai?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure out what fascinates you here. Is it that the Good Guys always win and you're curious about what happens if the Bad Guys win? Have you read any of the myriad post-apocalyptic dystopian YA series currently in vogue? Are those not appealing because the Good Guys still find a way to win? Do you think that exploring the other side of the story is inherently more interesting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree entirely with @Werrf that Downer Endings Suck for the most part, so don't do that. If your orcs are the bad guys and they lose at the end, that's okay, because you can show that even though they are rounded characters, they are still the bad guys and they should lose. Or reverse it and the Good Guys lose because they are in fact not as Good as Tolkien would have it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T21:34:49.777" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26288" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-25T23:12:00.843" Score="0" ViewCount="2082" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is well known that the postmodern novels often use citations and references to other cultural objects, first of all to the other novels. Sometimes it is necessary to read several of them in order to understand the majority of senses in a particular chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you think how many books should the postmodern author read and how culturally spacious his mind should be in order to write state of the art literature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23203" LastEditorUserId="10099" LastEditDate="2017-02-02T01:06:16.597" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T09:54:09.083" Title="How many books should writers read?" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|citations|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26288" CreationDate="2017-01-25T23:38:02.583" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite honestly, if you do not read widely and voraciously, you have no business trying to be a writer. To do otherwise would be like a chef who only ate once a week and only at McDonald's. It would be like a actor who hardly went to the theater or a ball player who never went to a ball game. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I do want to stress widely here. There seem to be many people who only every read in one narrow genre and expect to be able to write in that genre. I don't think that is going to work. You need a wider view in order to understand what writing is. And if you had the kind of love of stories and the kind of love of language that it takes to be a writer, you would never be content to confine your reading to a single genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now as to the amount of preening erudition a post-modern author is expected to do to be accepted in the post-modern author's club, I can't really say. Probably a lot. Post modernism is a conceit, and I suppose that conceitedness is essential to produce it, but I suspect that if that conceit does not come naturally to you, it is probably impossible to fake it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T23:38:02.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26282" CreationDate="2017-01-25T23:45:21.653" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fiction there are protagonists, the characters that the writer wants the readers to identify with, and antagonists, the characters who have opposing goals and seek to stop the protagonists from achieving their goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also heroes and villains in many works of fiction. Heroes tend to be noble and heroic and good and villains tend to be evil.  And there are many variations of heroes and villains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine a story here a child tries to get cookies from the cookie jar without permission and the mother tries to prevent it.  It would be equally easy to write a version with the child the protagonist and the mother the antagonist or the mother the protagonist and the child the antagonist.  But it would be kind of hard to convince most audiences that either was a hero or a villain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now imagine a history book or article written by a modern professional historian.  It might describe a conflict of some sort between different leaders and/or groups.  But according to the dispassionate tone of most modern historical works it would try to determine causes and effects and motivations and describe the events accurately but not describe anyone as being a hero or a villain.  Most modern history works can have protagonists or antagonists but rarely have heroes and villains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if someone has an ethical code and reads a modern history they can form opinions about where on the scale between total good and total evil various historical characters were based on their actions.  If good and evil are real, certainly every person who ever lived had some type of good/evil score, even though we might not have enough information to estimate that score very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course historical fiction based on historical events is quite common.   And it is common for the protagonists and antagonists to be depicted as noble heroes and evil villains in historical fiction. And in different orks of historical fiction different sides in a historical conflict are depicted as the heroes or the villains.  In one version of history side A are the heroes and side B are the villains and in another version side A are the villains and side B are the heroes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there are only about three possible outcomes in a conflict, a victory for side A and defeat for side B, or a draw, or a victory for side B and defeat for Side A, and since people disagree about whether side A or side B was the heroes, there are many people who claim that the losing side in various historical conflicts were the heroes and the winners were the villains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost everybody believes that in real life the villains sometimes win and the heroes sometimes lose, and can point to historical examples where in their opinion the villains won and the heroes lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it certainly shouldn't be hard for you to find historical models for fictional fantasy stories were the heroes lose and the villains win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may point out that &lt;em&gt;The Hobbit&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;The Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; have more or less happy endings - though marred by various losses - but in most of Tolkien's other Middle-earth stories the heroes and/or protagonists lose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23204" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T23:45:21.653" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26282" CreationDate="2017-01-26T00:00:32.363" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Saving Private Ryan is probably the best example I know of a well-received movie where all the protagonists died. Looking at it, its pretty clear that it got away with this because their deaths were an integral part of the narrative (the final scene pretty much beat this into the audience's head). The movie was &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; sacrifice, so the character's sacrifice was clearly the entire point. That you lost everyone you cared about was in fact the entire point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Novels are much more apt to have disappointing (to the audience) losses, deaths, and even endings. As a reader, I do tend to really hate those while they are occurring. However, if they can be made meaningful, that swings things 180 degrees (for me at least). The best example of this I can provide is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deed_of_Paksenarrion&quot;&gt;Paskenarion Series&lt;/a&gt;. The third book in particular &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17316.Oath_of_Gold&quot;&gt;Oath of Gold&lt;/a&gt;, had the character losing &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; she'd worked in the first two books to achieve, followed by multiple chapters of abandonment, abuse and depression that were really difficult to read. But by the end you realize that, while not what she was, she was in many ways far better &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; she'd had that experience. This put it up in my top 3 personal choice as best works of fiction of all time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess what I'm saying here is that if you need to do that to a character, go ahead and do it. But don't do it maliciously or flippantly. There needs to ultimately be a meaning in there worth the price we pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18598" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T00:00:32.363" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26293" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-26T00:53:45.780" Score="7" ViewCount="2922" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not believe I came up with the concept of urgency in a main conflict, but I cannot find the original source, so I will just define it here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I create and develop a main conflict (I am a plotter, meaning I plan out my novel prior to writing them), I make sure it has several key traits. One of those traits is urgency; that is, the thing keeping the protagonist from sitting around twiddling their thumbs because they have all the time in the world to solve the main conflict. With urgency in place, they do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have all the time in the world. They should, in fact, have very little time indeed, if any at all. This pressures them to solve the main problem/conflict, and that pressure in turn generates additional tension for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe every main conflict should have at least some amount of urgency, some reason that the character has to solve it &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;later&lt;/em&gt;. Whether or not this is true, &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;is not the question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. The question is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Are there any methods/formulas/conventions/common practices for creating urgency? I frequently find myself stuck trying to create urgency, and this has led me to wonder if there are some conventions for creating it that I am not aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt; I'm not looking for how to write urgency. I'm looking for what &lt;em&gt;causes&lt;/em&gt; that urgency. It take many forms, so I'm looking for a formula or common practice that will enable me to easily add urgency to any situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of urgency:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main Problem: The bomb must be defused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Urgency: The bomb is activated, and the timer is going down. The bomb has to be defused NOW!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main Problem: We need to find a way out of the maze.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Urgency: ...And we're being chased by monsters. We need to get out NOW!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one with a more traditional &lt;em&gt;conflict&lt;/em&gt; rather than simply a passing &lt;em&gt;problem&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main Conflict: Joe needs to find a way to tell Jim he's sorry for what happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Urgency: Jim is leaving the country in a week. Joe has to find a way to tell him soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google searches for 'urgency' yield either nothing, or articles that use the term 'urgency' in place of 'conflict.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2021-02-05T23:32:10.887" Title="What are some conventions for creating a sense of urgency?" Tags="|planning|conflict|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26294" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-26T00:57:12.493" Score="3" ViewCount="451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an idea that I think will work pretty well as anime, not only that, it will also throw a few quite significant twists to the character tropes and common plot-lines of anime. (I will not outline the detail of the idea because I don't think it matters that much.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am bad at drawing, so I am considering writing out the story as a full-fledged novel. For all intents and purposes, consider this task to be the complete translation of an anime story into traditional fantasy fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of difficulty may I encounter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19055" LastActivityDate="2018-04-05T07:22:49.203" Title="What are the difficulties in &quot;translating&quot; an anime story into novel?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|medium|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26296" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-26T02:25:29.340" Score="2" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that story I mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/26264/how-to-wake-up-a-character-from-a-first-person-perspective&quot;&gt;my previous question&lt;/a&gt;? Yeah, well one of the characters in it is gay (one of the main characters). But the problem is... They don't KNOW that they're gay until they meet this particular person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But until they meet that person... How do I subtly hint that a character is gay without revealing that they're actually gay? (And all within a first person POV.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22914" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T15:28:55.597" Title="How to write a gay character from a first person perspective (Twist: The person doesn't know that they're gay!)" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26294" CreationDate="2017-01-26T02:34:17.553" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think it will work best as anime, write it as anime.  Even if you can't draw, there are plenty of illustrators who can't write, and you could make a good team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you don't want to do that, here are some difficulties you may encounter in adapting anime to novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it all comes down to that one great standby &quot;show don't tell.&quot;  In graphic novels of any kind, showing is easy--just put it in the picture and voila, it's shown.  But in a novel, you have to stop and write about things.  For one frame, one still shot that readers flip by in normal anime, you would have to dedicate a paragraph of solid description, or skip over important details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, when writing a graphic novel, you don't get the chance to really get inside the character's head unless they sit down and start rattling all their feelings, which should never happen.  In a novel, though, the character's feelings and thoughts play a big role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graphic novels translated literally make for very dry prose because their only content is dialogue and action.  To make this into a novel, you have to spice things up a bit; add some intrigue, some character development, a point of view.  You need to really write the writing, not just the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And remember: don't write it as an adaptation of an anime story, write it as a true novel, because that's what you want it to be like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16671" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T02:34:17.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26294" CreationDate="2017-01-26T05:40:16.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose one could also consider the difference in the user experience of watching anime versus reading a novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watching anime is somewhat &quot;passive&quot; in that most of the details are directly apparent -- little is left to the imagination (in more ways than one). In a novel however, you have to achieve a balance between the flow of the writing and the details; you have to give enough for the reader to digest, without giving them so much that it bogs things down. Reading is more &quot;active&quot; because it asks the reader to engage and use their imagination to color in the lines laid out by the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way, what you are trying to do is to take that part of your story that does not rely on visual details -- delivering the &quot;essence&quot; of the anime, so to speak. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As suggested by @CHEESE, you would do well in considering how to expand characterization and character thoughts / feelings when translating it into written form (Without a face to read, a reader is less capable of empathizing with the character).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23210" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T05:40:16.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26296" CreationDate="2017-01-26T09:32:26.797" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As in many such cases, the answer is to &lt;strong&gt;do your research&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speak with people who are gay, and ask them the questions you need. &quot;How did your understanding that you're gay form?&quot; &quot;Was there anything that you later understood, oh, that was actually because I'm gay, that you didn't realize at the time?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask nicely, and listen, and take what they say to heart. This is personal, intimate stuff for them. Understand that they may reveal some of your assumptions as flawed -- for example, they might dismiss or dislike the idea of realizing homosexuality in response to meeting one specific person -- and that they may wind up not liking your book (because &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; advisers and beta readers are not guaranteed to like your final product, and again, it's a sensitive topic, so tensions can be high).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately it's on you to figure out how to portray your character, his personality, and his process. If it's in an area you don't know really well, then &lt;strong&gt;doing your research&lt;/strong&gt; is the way to go. Other people can't give you the final details and approach that you'll choose to go with; you need to understand it well enough to be able to choose those yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T09:32:26.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26282" CreationDate="2017-01-26T11:02:00.173" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one seems to be addressing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would creating a story that ends with the enemy winning be something interesting to others?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you telling a “big picture” story, or human (orc, dwarf, elf, whatever) interest story? And why can’t it be both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the enemy winning as a backdrop. Maybe not &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_in_the_Time_of_Cholera&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Love in The Time of Cholera&lt;/a&gt;, but isn’t &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind_%28novel%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gone with the Wind&lt;/a&gt; the classic example of the enemy winning, but everyone enjoying the book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the enduring appeal of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Young_Girl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anne Frank's diary&lt;/a&gt;, which hardly has a happy ending. Nor, really, do the fictional works &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Handmaiden's Tale&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Canticle for Leibowitz&lt;/a&gt;, both told many years (centuries) after the death of the main protagonist. In all, the “enemy” wins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you are telling an adversarial story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, more importantly, you speak of a series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The James Bond novels were never a series, because Bond always won (yawn).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An adversarial series provides you the scope to flip/flop and reverse the tides of fortune.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think Cliff Hanger Ending. Think “it’s always darkest before the dawn” as the ending of each book. When people hear that the next has been published they will flock to buy it, to discover how the protagonist is going to “get out of that”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer to 3) is a resounding &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23212" LastEditorUserId="23212" LastEditDate="2021-01-23T19:57:49.707" LastActivityDate="2021-01-23T19:57:49.707" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26281" CreationDate="2017-01-26T11:31:41.777" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add a few more questions to @ggiaquin's answer, because how much and how little research does depend on a lot of things, and you can never ask enough questions to get to the bottom of what exactly you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is your character a main or secondary character? If it's the former, greater research is obviously required. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the character living within a comunnity of their own ethnic background or with a community of a different ethnic background? If the latter, is it sensitive or even hostile to the character's ethny, or does the community simply ignore it? Do keep in mind that if it's the first case, most people will live their traditions as something natural and won't even notice them. If it's the second case, most likely there are traditions the character will miss (even if you boil it down to missing one ingredient that isn't easy to find at supermarkets). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is your character a traditionalist (attached to their cultural traditions), a modernist (forget traditions, follow the most up-to-date trends) or something in-between (a British person drinking tea compulsively even though they frown upon anything that is conservative and 'British' as old-fashioned)? If it's the second, forget most of the research and treat them as a regular westerner (I'm assuming this tale is set in the western world). If it's the first case, do a very detailed research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Word of caution:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Avoid sticking to stereotypes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm extremely fond of my own ethnic traditions, from music to food. Nevertheless, there is some typical food stuff I hate. For instance, olives and grilled sardine. Every Portuguese likes olives and grilled sardines (stereotype here). I don't like them. I know quite a lot of people who also don't like one or the other. Anyway, my father will sometimes say 'you're not Portuguese' (in jest) because of it. Think if your character has a dislike for something typical and decide if their family accept it well (in jest, like my father) or if they insist that the character must like it and therefore criticise them relentlessly (maybe even with insults). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, decide if the character would like to like something they don't. For instance, I love the smell of sardine and to see a grilled sardine dripping its juicy fat onto the bread... I really wish I liked it. It looks delicious! My stomach still insists in disagreeing with my eyes and nose though. Or perhaps the character feels left out, like they can't fit in, due to that 'flaw'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, even if you choose to have a traditionalist, remember that traditions are felt and lived differently from place to place and even from family to family. It's part of the Portuguese tradition to eat boiled cod and cabbage on Christmas Eve. I know some very few who also add chickpeas. I know some who, even though they follow every other tradition, avoid the cod because a child (or themselves) doesn't like it. Or they have two dishes: cod for the ones who want it and something else for who doesn't like cod.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom Line&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest thing will probably be to talk to someone from the ethnic background you want (write down a long list of everyday stuff to ask, if need be), though they'll probably look at you funny about stuff that they find obvious so why are you even asking about it. Like bacon. In Portugal the word 'bacon' refers to something that has been thoroughly cured through smoking so it doesn't require cooking. When I told an American friend I loved bacon sandwiches, he asked how I cooked it. I made a face and said 'I don't cook it. No one does.' He looked at me like I was an alien: 'you eat bacon raw?' I couldn't get his horror until he showed me what he calls 'bacon'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't talk to anyone, then I suggest an approach in three steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read about traditional food, music, literature, etc. If possible, experience it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read blogs (or books or articles) written by people of the required ethnic background while they were living elsewhere. I've read some very funny stuff written by students in foreign countries (even if the language is the same). I also remember one where the student had just gone to a 'foreign' state. Very eye-opening.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once you got a feel for the ethnic cultural background you chose, decide which traditions your character will like, dislike or not care about. Or, inversely, just pick one or two traditions the character adheres to, consciously or unconsciously. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm using the term 'tradition' very, very losely in order to encompass almost anything that is typical to a community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T11:31:41.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26302" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-26T12:39:23.050" Score="0" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to summarize an entire book only in a single book review, when I want to have the ability of navigating through it later in my life, as a way of revising/going back for the data I took into me. I am thinking to write review on every chapter of a book or certain chapters together, depending on the density of content. Is it allowed to do that? Would there be any problem considering legal rules?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18252" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T14:17:09.177" Title="Is it allowed to write a review on every chapter of a book?" Tags="|book|reviews|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26303" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-26T13:29:03.023" Score="0" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a genre that could be called &quot;Safe Thriller&quot;? It seems that all thriller novels are R rated. A PG rated thriller could still be engaging and serious without gross content. Similar to a &quot;Cozy Mystery&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23181" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T18:43:54.153" Title="Thriller sub-genre" Tags="|fiction|genre|thriller|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26282" CreationDate="2017-01-26T13:35:12.987" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need to ask &quot;would this be desirable?&quot; then I suggest you probably shouldn't write it.  If you yourself aren't going to buy into the world you're creating, you can cast-iron guarantee no-one else will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need surprise endings or twists.  You just need a good story that you believe in, told well.  &quot;Sword of Shannara&quot; was endlessly derivative of Tolkein - but Brooks had enough that was genuinely Brooks to make it work, and of course it led to &quot;Elfstones&quot; which was stunning.  (The less said about &quot;Wishsong&quot; and everything since, the better; self-plagiarism is a dead end, because your original ideas went into the original version.)  Conversely &quot;Thomas Covenant&quot; is basically the anti-Narnia - equally clearly derivative of CS Lewis, but flipped 180 degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many ways, the &lt;em&gt;advantage&lt;/em&gt; of kicking off Tolkein is that whilst his worldbuilding was pretty good, he was really bad at writing dialogue and characters, and some of his plotting was a bit shaky too.  Brooks's innovation was to retell LotR with a believable set of characters and a writing style that wasn't a pastiche of Beowulf.  You do need to have something original to say though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 80s had a lot going on with fantasy kicking away from its origins just retelling the same story.  As well as your other call-outs, you should look at David Eddings, Tad Williams, Ursula LeGuin and Raymond Feist.  You should also be aware of things like Dragonlance as the ultimate stereotypes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reaction from there has been to go &quot;realistic&quot;.  Apart from GoT, some other authors to look into for this are Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch and Steven Erikson.  If you need examples for modern fantasy, these are some of the go-to guys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19742" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T13:35:12.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26303" CreationDate="2017-01-26T14:11:02.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the sort of question you can best answer with a stroll down to your local bookstore. But consider: thrills come from danger. You need to be strapped in to ride the roller coaster. A book let's you take a thrill ride with the safety harness off. The roller coaster is probably the preferred source of safe thrills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T14:11:02.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26302" CreationDate="2017-01-26T14:17:09.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, quotation for purposes of criticism is an allowed use under copyright law. That does not necessarily mean all quotation in a review is permitted usage, though. You should make sure it is genuinely done for the sake of critique. But IANAL and there are plenty of better resources on permitted use available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T14:17:09.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26303" CreationDate="2017-01-26T18:19:09.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Goosebumps would probably be your closest bet to what you are looking for.  It is children/teen series that does a PG horror/thriller story.  I use to read them a ton growing up and I hate horror or thrillers for that matter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-01-26T18:43:54.153" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T18:43:54.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26293" CreationDate="2017-01-26T18:31:14.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, urgency is about setting the right environment, tone, mood, feel.  It's about how you describe their actions.  Are they moving around the maze quickly? Or do they stumble into walls as they scurry about desperate to find a way out.  Are they constantly looking at watches while the time ticks closer and closer to inevitable doom or do you assert that they need to hurry but then never have them be time conscious?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it comes down to word choice.  What would YOU do if you were in a hurry in that situation?  Take those actions, take those thoughts, and put them to words.  Do people around them become a blur in their rush?  Does hearing the monsters roar in the distance make their hearts jump and skip a beat as their tired legs find renewed energy to push on, desperate to escape?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; OP is looking for ideas on how to create the situations that would require urgency and not how to create urgency as in the actual action of urgency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-01-26T20:35:28.673" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T20:35:28.673" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26311" CreationDate="2017-01-26T19:07:40.443" Score="1" ViewCount="603" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is my first actual question, so I apologize in advance if I include something that is not suited for the forum, or if this is a duplicate of an existing west - though I DID try to find one that suits my case, without luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the situation: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a sci-fi story (only very little &quot;fi&quot;), that takes place in our time. I have a lot of characters &quot;sketched out&quot; already, and for a long time I felt that a certain one of these was the protagonist. This person is &quot;randomly&quot; pulled into the story (with a reasonable explanation within the universe), and ends up being a vital piece in an existing puzzle in the story.. However - and I realize that this may be solved by simply writing MORE - so far he's not very active in the plot... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a rather detailed outline for approximately 70-80% of the story, but have only written about 5-10%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In very short, the start of the story, and the way the &quot;main&quot; characters are connected, is as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a certain &quot;society&quot;, that consists of ordinary people who have achieved knowledge about certain things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Peter&lt;/strong&gt; (part of the society, young) has been kidnapped (which he is unaware of at first - makes sense in the story) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adrian&lt;/strong&gt; doesn't know Peter (or even anyone Peter knows), but obtains information from Peter (without knowing it at first)in a way that makes him valuable to the the other people connected to Peter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cleo&lt;/strong&gt; (part of the society, but very young) is a Peter's niece, and meets Adrian &quot;randomly&quot; because of the information that he's now in possession of.. This information then pulls Adrian into the &quot;society&quot;, which of course changes Adrian's life for good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I have always thought of Adrian as the Protagonist, since hi's story is the one that makes the most sense in the way I want to reveal this &quot;society&quot;, however I have heard that a protagonist is not the protagonist unless he actually consciously makes decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adrian WILL make decisions, but it's gonna take a while into the story... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cleo undergoes a very interesting development during the story, and could potentially be the protagonist of a sequel, but I don't think it makes sense (so far) that she is the protagonist of this one... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm counting on Adrian and Cleo getting very close, and &quot;sharing the adventure to save Peter&quot;(just one part of the story of course), so I'm thinking that there may be more than one protagonist, but for the sake of my current point.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Important note: I'm writing in the third person (I'm unsure if the terms omniscient is correct here, but I know what each of these characters are thinking and feeling), starting with Peter, then introducing Adrian and lastly introducing Cleo. They each get one of the first three chapters (if all goes according to plan). SO far I've written the first (Peter's) chapter, and some of the second (Adrian's) chapter. &#xA;Also; knowing what different people think and feel is crucial to the story, since this i strongly connected to what the society is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actual question: How do I know who is actually my main character of the story?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will it reveal itself to me? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I simply trust my gut/original idea, or should I actively work on giving more influence in the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2017-01-26T19:18:31.943" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T00:01:04.373" Title="How do I know who's my protagonist? EARLY in writing process (maybe complicated, maybe not)" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26309" CreationDate="2017-01-26T20:20:00.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, I have to talk about the difference between a plot and a story. A plot is a sequence of events that happen. A story is an arc of rising tension leading to a resolution. (These terms are sometimes defined differently, and even exactly the opposite, but that is what I am using them to mean here.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have a plot about Joe going to work. He catches bus A, then transfers to bus B. At work he talks to Dave who suggests he take bus C and transfer to bus D. The next day Joe tries it and finds it gets him to work five minutes faster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a plot. It has events. It even has a problem and a solution. But it is not a story. It is not a story because we have no emotional investment in Joe getting to work five minutes early, and Joe had nothing at stake in his decision to follow Dave's advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story requires that Joe wants something, that it is important to him, and that it is difficult for him to get it. We have to sympathize with his desire (not approve, necessarily, but recognize it as a human desire, and Joe as a human person, and become engaged with his struggle). The question then becomes, how far will Joe go to get the thing he desires. When something frustrates his desire, will he give up or try again? Just how much is he willing to do, willing to sacrifice, to get what he wants? How much is he willing to bleed? And in the end, either he gets his desire, or he doesn't, or he learns the futility of his desire and achieve something more worth having. An arc of rising tension followed by release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plot puts flesh on the bones of this story structure. But the story is the story of a person. The person whose story is the main arc of you novel is your protagonist, though there may be other characters with their own arcs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you have a plot but you don't know who your protagonist is, then you don't have a story yet. And since story is the master of plot, and plot must bend itself to the demands of story to create an arch of rising tension and a satisfying resolution around the desire of a character, you need to figure out your story and your protagonist before you get too far down the road of defining you plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The heart of every story is X wants Y and can't have it because of Z. Find those elements and you have your story, and once you have your story, you know who your protagonist is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T20:20:00.610" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26296" CreationDate="2017-01-26T21:29:30.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My take on this: subtly hinting is a difficult thing to get right in this situation, mainly because you will be working in a verbal medium where you will literally have to spell out what the character feels. It sounds like what you want is to add foreshadowing, so the reader thinks 'oh yeah, that makes sense now!' That would be a challenge in this particular situation, but maybe I can offer you some food for thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To illustrate what I mean when I call it a challenge, here's a little example (and I'm just going to go with a young man as the character here for the purposes of my example, even though you don't specify): imagine you try to hint about a character's feelings by having them say 'When I turned around and saw that John had come to the party too, my stomach seemed to fill with butterflies – happy butterflies.' (I didn't claim that this was going to be a particularly &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; example…) Or 'John wasn't really my friend, but I always felt really drawn to him'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real life, a person may not immediately equate 'happy butterfly feelings' with 'I have a crush on this person' because our feelings (and stomachs) do inexplicable things all the time. To a real person, the happy-butterfly sensation could, for example, go mostly unnoticed in a wave of other things they're feeling (maybe they're a bit nervous about the party anyway because they know an enemy of theirs will be there, maybe they're excited because they managed to sneak out of the house without their parents noticing, maybe they're feeling unwell after a dodgy kebab), or they might interpret their feelings as simply being glad to see a familiar face, particularly if they're not enjoying the party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But because you have to verbalise it, the meaning of these happy butterflies is blindingly obvious to the reader, who may very well consider your character clueless for not getting that same meaning - unless you mislead the reader into suspecting another logical reason for the character's reactions/emotions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to mislead the reader? Here are some ideas. Maybe when the character's friends (again, let's pretend the character is a young man) start talking about how hot some girl is, or about their various fantasies, the protagonist gets bored and wanders off. He just feels this conversation isn't really for him. He has no enthusiasm for the topic. 'The guys were boring the crap out of me – couldn't they just give the freaking Cindy thing a rest? It's not like there weren't plenty of other things they could talk about.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are other things going on in the story, the reader could well believe that the character is simply too preoccupied with those events to be interested in trivial matters, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe you could indeed use the 'happy butterflies' feeling, but the protagonist &lt;em&gt;thinks&lt;/em&gt; they're happy for some reason other than having a crush on John (e.g. because they thought John was dead and were freaked out about it, or because they know John has the cure for the super-cancer that they have desperately been searching for (yes, I checked out your other question!)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That type of approach could 'hide' the protagonist's feelings from both him/herself and the reader, making the 'reveal' work as an 'Oh yeah, of course!' moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22034" LastEditorUserId="22034" LastEditDate="2017-01-26T21:34:57.527" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T21:34:57.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26288" CreationDate="2017-01-26T21:29:47.047" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no postmodern canon that you have to work through to be able to participate in postmodern intellectual and artistic discourse. If you want to create postmodern art (which is always at the same time theory) then that desire will drive you to follow the intertextual references in the texts you read. For a postmodern author, there is no end to the web of references, so there is no end to what you might read, except your own disinterest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T21:29:47.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26282" CreationDate="2017-01-26T22:01:21.470" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would creating a story that ends with the enemy winning be something interesting to others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your book is the story of your protagonist. That protagonist may win or lose in the end, but the focus must be on him or her, because that is the person the reader cares about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly, when the protagonist loses, then the antagonist wins. But a story that ends with the protagonist losing is not the same as a story that ends with the antagonist winning. In a story that ends with the antagonist winning the focus of the narrative shifts from the protagonist to the antagonist. And that is something that readers don't want to read. That is a form of betrayal. What you do is tell the reader that the protagonist that they have identified with and hoped for is actually a loser and that they were fools to root for him and that you have decided to degrade him to a side character and replace him with the person that made the hero's life a misery. Some readers will love a story in which the protagonist does not win. But the focus must remain on the protagonist and what that failure means to him and not shift away from what would give that failur meaning. So, to answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating a story that ends with the hero losing would be interesting to others. But creating a story that ends with the enemy winning would not be interesting to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you understand the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T22:01:21.470" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26288" CreationDate="2017-01-26T23:48:53.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't disagree with any of the sentiments mentioned here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as a 51 year old writer, I frequently have to choose between spending my time to read books or to write stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually I opt to use the time for writing  stories even if it means severely curtailing my reading time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But everything is relative; I just think that being able to point to the number of books you have read is an empty brag. Read deeply and intensely, but don't worry about how many (or how few) books you have read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe at the age of 25 or 30 I felt differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you incorporate this background in literature of course depends on the subject matter and literary approach. That said, I am  partial to books that show an awareness of other literary works (i.e., the postmodernist stuff).  But ultimately there are so many books out there -- you shouldn't expect even a well-read critic to catch a lot of the references.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T23:48:53.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26282" CreationDate="2017-01-26T23:51:44.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In classical drama, a story in which the hero loses is a tragedy. If he wins, it is a comedy. The ideal tragic hero is a great man, with great power, but not perfect. He drives the action, which changes his fortune from good to bad. The tragic flaw in his character, along with fate and destiny, bring about his downfall. He suffers a reversal, where his actions cause the opposite of what he intended. He also has a sudden revelation, unexpected knowledge or insight, which shocks the audience along with him. The reader/audience should feel pity or fear as their tragic hero is crushed. This was first defined by Aristotle, the ancient Greek, plot twists included. The ancient Greeks were more interested in plot than in psychology. Shakespeare followed those ancient rules, but liked character flaws more. You may have studied Shakespeare's Macbeth, Hamlet, or Julius Caesar. All three of these plays include the fantasy element of ghosts, plus Macbeth has witches. Macbeth was a tragic hero, who was killed in the end. He was fairly evil -- his tragic flaw (shared with his wife) was big ambition, with a small conscience. Prince Hamlet likewise had a tragic flaw -- he knew that evil was afoot, but didn't act on it. He died in the end, but so did his enemy, and everybody else. In Julius Caesar, the noble Brutus was the tragic hero, an idealist who trusted his friend Cassius when he shouldn't have -- Cassius advised him to kill Caesar. Brutus' army was defeated, and he committed suicide. Brutus was the champion of Rome's republican democracy. He wanted to save Rome from dictatorship; instead, the dictator's nephew would end the republic, and become emperor. Tragic!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23225" LastEditorUserId="23225" LastEditDate="2017-01-27T00:16:45.147" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T00:16:45.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26309" CreationDate="2017-01-26T23:53:56.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I can be as technical as other writers about this. I (hope I) know the theory, but I'm more of an organic writer. So let me explain what works for me. (and please forgive me if Mark Baker took some of this already)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist is the person the reader needs to care about. If you want a low risk, fluffy story, then it could be this middle school girl aching for her crush to see her. Why does the audience care? Because her struggle is relatable. It may not be as epic as saving the world, but to a fourteen year old girl, living in a no-name town in the middle of nowhere where nothing exciting ever happens, this IS the whole world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example. High fantasy setting, our heroes are on an epic quest to 'save the world' from... who cares, Gargamel! Each of these heroes is the 'protagonist', and yet different readers will care about each differently. Maybe one of them is the 'cute one', another the rebel, yet another reminds them of this girl they met at a diner that one time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether world-shakingly epic, or just an adolescent crush, it's the writer's job to make the readers care, to make them want to invest in the wellbeing of one (or more) fictional people that they know is fictional. No matter the stakes, they need to feel important to the protagonist, and because the reader cares about said protagonist, they will care by extension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two examples to show my point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A girl finds herself in a cage. It's pitch black around her. All she feels is the chilly, stagnant air around her, and cold bars beneath her. She's in a cage, but she cannot see well enough to know for sure. She doesn't know how she got there, or even where she is. She breathes in deep, to calm her nerves (and not vomit from said nerves) and she smells blood. And gore. And...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't know much about this girl. But we know she must be panicking -- who wouldn't panic in this situation. The protagonist, here, is simply the lens through which the write showcases the fear and panic and helplessness of a situation that could happen to 'anyone'. The stakes aren't too high &lt;em&gt;yet&lt;/em&gt;, but the tension is. It won't take much to make this scene the opening to a horror story, or a grand escape. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He stands at the foot of the hole. A hole, he knows, will soon be filled with his mother's casket. He doesn't know what to think, to believe... to feel. He hears footsteps crunching the dirt and pebbles behind him, six pairs. His father pulls him out of the way, unintentionally turning him to find six of his cousins as they carry the lacquered mahogany encasing the only woman he's ever loved. The only woman he will ever love. &quot;Don't worry, momma. I won't be long,&quot; he murmurs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you tell I like heavy scenes? I place both protagonists in danger. One from the world she finds herself in, the other from himself and the grief he just can't cope with. The reader doesn't need to lose their mother to empathise with this kid. In neither case do we learn a lot of the protagonist. Too little words to really sculpt them. But in both cases, the stakes are clear: life or death. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps ^_^&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21105" LastEditorUserId="21105" LastEditDate="2017-01-27T00:01:04.373" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T00:01:04.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26296" CreationDate="2017-01-27T00:25:40.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmm. This is a bag of cats that you need to handle with extreme care. Not any more than any other 'finding myself' story, but... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alright. A few things that come to mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have the protagonist be in a relationship with a girl. The protagonist is obviously close with his girlfriend, and they act like best friends. But he never seems to feel anything romantic for her, and he just can't make sense of it. They kiss, they make out, but it just doesn't affect him like his friends tell him it would affect them. He thinks something is wrong with him, &quot;Why is this only happening to me?&quot; This doesn't need to happen in teens, or even early twenties. People I know didn't figure it out until well into their thirties, because they just never talked about it -- they came from strict and orthodox families, very religious. They married because &quot;that's what men do, marry a woman and settle down to start a family&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another approach is every time the protagonist sees his crush, have him looking at a group, or certain individuals. &quot;The popular kids&quot;, or &quot;the nerds&quot;, or &quot;his classmates&quot;, or &quot;his colleagues&quot;. Whatever flavour you favour. This way, the reader doesn't know which one, but knows it's one of them. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps this is the protagonist's first crush. He doesn't understand what's going on, or even identifies the butterflies. He just feels happier around this one person. They make him smile, laugh, forget the things that usually bog him down. Could be a beautiful friendship, and maybe the protagonist thinks so, too. That is, until he start daydreaming bout his buddy. Until recurring dreams of them standing at the alter. Until, during a game of football, his buddy and him take a tumble and one lands on the other. The sparks are suddenly electric, the urge to taste his lips consumes him -- whether he understands this is irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps ^_^&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21105" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T00:25:40.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26282" CreationDate="2017-01-27T00:36:10.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on your comments, you want the Hollywood three act structure. Act one: introductions, the protagonist tries to solve the initial problem. Act two: Hah! The first problem was nothing compared to what comes next, OMG, this problem is stupendous, the protagonist is totally inadequate to solve it, everything falls apart, and the protagonist staggers into the wilderness. This is the longest act. Act three, the shortest act: just as all seems lost, the protagonist reaches deep down, develops hidden strength, and emerges triumphant. The End, yay!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23225" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T00:36:10.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="816" CreationDate="2017-01-27T00:52:12.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, if based on popular copyrighted works written in the past 90 years, it's FanFiction, and must be totally non-profit, unless the owner of the original work gives you a contract. If your FanFic is wildly popular, then do what E. L. James did -- write a new book, the same thing really, but change the names, and set them in a different world -- her &lt;em&gt;Twilight&lt;/em&gt; FanFic became &lt;em&gt;Fifty Shades of Grey&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23225" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T00:52:12.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26294" CreationDate="2017-01-27T00:55:30.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sure I'm going to be stating the obvious quite a bit, but meh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In anime, or any visual art, the world shows itself. You cannot monologue and tell the motivation, you need to show through visual action. Subtleties can be places all over the place to set the tone. And the viewer is pretty much a 'fly on the wall'. You need to put enough of the right kinds of action to keep your core audience happy, and to attract newbies to the stands. You &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; tell what's going on, you need to show it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds like how people profess they write, doesn't it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3JUlZS4Pxic/VXWKiDF77LI/AAAAAAAACYg/SJYNd3fJDVc/s1600/rasengan%2Bboruto%2Buzumaki.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3JUlZS4Pxic/VXWKiDF77LI/AAAAAAAACYg/SJYNd3fJDVc/s1600/rasengan%2Bboruto%2Buzumaki.png&quot; alt=&quot;Naruto scene&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except, it isn't. When you draw, you see the same thing someone else sees. Sure, your focus might be somewhere else, but you're getting in the same image. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing, all you have is words. With these words, you must sculpt the world in which the magic happens. You cannot subtly hint at something with a 'screenshot' that hides the clues. You need to show something with words and keep the reader guessing the hard way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, writers have tools anime and visual artists never get: Emotions, Feelings, thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of showing anger in facial expression, a writer describes it. A downward curl in the lip, an upwards tug in the cheek. Balled fists, a razor sharp glare. A burning fury within our beloved hero, one which is struggled against to not make things worse. Perhaps a queasy feeling in her stomach, as she sits next to the boy she's secretly in love with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And perhaps most importantly, the difference in word choice. It isn't as pronounced in any visual art, because words are less than 20% of communication. Now, words are 100%, it's literally all you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So compare:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She shuffled her feet, drudged through the class, and slumped into her seat. &quot;G'mornin',&quot; she grumbles, rubbing the back of her hand against her eye.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She bounced through the crowd, making a beeline for her seat. She's wearing the hugest grin ever! Her eyes dart to and fro, taking in rays of light as they bounce off the happy people around her. &quot;Good morning, everyone!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She hums a catchy tune, a song she heard on the radio that just got stuck. The buzzing crowd she finds herself in drowns it out, but she doesn't mind. She passes her classmates, making her way to her seat, right beside Mina. &quot;Someone's in a good mood,&quot; Mina grumbles, glaring at her. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The words used set the tone. Descriptive language colours the picture, and can make or break your scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps ^_^&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21105" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:45.450" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T00:55:30.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26324" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-27T03:52:48.687" Score="2" ViewCount="646" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have four friends who all have roles to play in my novel. Person A is why things start to happen to the whole group. Person B has protected person A his whole life but A never knew. Person C betrays the group later in the book and person D is currently betraying his friends but he doesn't know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapters in my book will be separated by whose view it is. &#xA;I will demonstrate how i want to have it play out in my book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 1 character A&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 2 character B&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 3 character C&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 4 character D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 5 character A&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 6 character A&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 7 character B&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two perspectives that are most important are person A and B so i can't get rid of theirs, but i feel as if i leave the other friends out people will see them as not important enough. How can i show all four perspectives without confusing or overwhelming my readers with the switches?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23232" OwnerDisplayName="icefire" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-01-27T04:20:48.577" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T21:06:12.747" Title="Should i have four points of view for my novel?" Tags="|fiction|structure|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26324" CreationDate="2017-01-27T04:18:39.233" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;That depends on two things. First is your audience. As a general rule, YA (Young Adult) books should not have multiple PoVs (Points of View), because the reader typically would be between 12-14 years of age and many cannot wrap their brains around the switching PoV. Some can pull it off, like in 3rd person naratives, but it's harder to do, and even harder to market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Adult novels, this is far more common. In fact, many adult readers enjoy the switching PoV because it offers a fresh perspective. Not all, so don't get it twisted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, like with all things, it depends on your skill as a writer. If you feel you can pull it off well, you can even write for children with multiple PoVs. It all depends on how well you know your target audience, and how well you can pull it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21105" OwnerDisplayName="Fayth85" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T04:18:39.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26324" CreationDate="2017-01-27T14:15:32.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Point Of View is nothing more than a perspective angle at which you show your story to your readers. It is for you to decide whether you need more than one, and which flavor of the POV to pick–first person, third person, etc. Ultimately it is your story which should factor into your choice and any so-called rule e.g. &quot;do-not-use-more-than-three-POVs-ever&quot;, just like any other canned writing recipe (&quot;show-not-tell&quot;, &quot;never-diversify-dialog-tags&quot;, &quot;if-your-first-novel-is-longer-than-100,000-words-you-are-doomed&quot;, etc.) is nothing more than a suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chefs do not cook by someone else's recipes. Line cooks do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the events in your story require being viewed from different angles, you have to provide those angles; even if all of your characters are in the same room all the time, each person's reaction to the same situation will be different, based on their background and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way of dealing with that would be telling the story from a single omniscient point of view, where you know what everyone thinks and feels, but it often results in a less personal feeling of the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The choice is always yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T14:15:32.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26324" CreationDate="2017-01-27T14:32:20.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To decide how many points of view (POVs) you can handle, you need to take into account the demands a new POV makes on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Each POV needs character and voice.&lt;/strong&gt; When you have more than one or two POVs, then it's important that each one of the characters feels recognizable and distinct, with his own personality and voice that shines through everything they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't manage this kind of richness, then multiple POVs draw attention to their sameness or dullness. If you've got good voice for &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; characters but not others, readers may enjoy some POVs and find others dull, or feel some of the POVs are a distraction from the &quot;real&quot; story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Every POV needs their own plot arc.&lt;/strong&gt; It's pretty much assumed that if a character has a POV, that's because their own goals and actions make a plot arc of their own. (It's &lt;em&gt;hard&lt;/em&gt; to follow along with a character who &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; feel like they've got a story, like they've got an arc that's headed somewhere.) So, more POVs means your story is going to be more complicated and multithreaded than one with fewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keeping readers engaged with multiple POVs is harder.&lt;/strong&gt; The more POVs you have, the longer &lt;em&gt;gap&lt;/em&gt; you have between one and the other. Four POVs is likely to mean a four-chapter gap between one POV's chapter, and his next one. That can be hard to follow, or just feel choppy and disjointed. To accomplish this, you need to do really good work weaving the various POVs together, so the reader feels like all the arcs are moving forwards all the time -- or do some other authorial juggling to make the structure work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast to all these, multiple POVs can be a way to make your story richer, more varied, more colorful. It can make it &lt;em&gt;bigger&lt;/em&gt;, with more characters who are truly key and get screentime. It can also let you tell stories with knowledge differences between the characters -- like the examples you give, of B helping A without A's knowledge. or C betraying the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the considerations you need to weigh against each other. Ultimately, you need to decide whether the added richness is worth the extra complexity, and whether you have enough material to sustain a multi-POV book for its entire length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option that &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be appropriate is using omniscient POV -- where you don't have any one POV character, but instead a single omniscient, omnipresent narrator voice, who can dip in and out of &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the characters' POVs and knowledge at will. This has its own challenges (particularly, it's not very popular these days), but it effectively lets you skip between POVs constantly, and might be a good solution to the problem you're facing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T14:32:20.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26296" CreationDate="2017-01-27T15:28:55.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write it the same way you would write any character feeling an immediate attraction to any other character. Only make gender an issue if it's relevant to the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21966" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T15:28:55.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26294" CreationDate="2017-01-27T17:52:16.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have enough reputation to comment, but in response to the conversation with CHEESE, I would suggest reading/watching the beginning of Bakuman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It involves a young mangaka and a writer who work together, and does explain what the mangaka expects from the writer.  They go through a few methods, involving the writer simply writing a story and presenting it to the mangaka, then making names (sketches with appropriate panels but he used stick-figures, since he couldn't draw) and at one point just writing out the names to leave the general flow of the art to the mangaka.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will, of course, be differences even between manga and anime that follow each other very closely.  For example, the importance of movement in an anime is something that can't always be perfectly conveyed in manga or writing.  But if you're unfamiliar with the process, and this is the route you want to go with your story, I think it would be worth your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22441" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T17:52:16.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26331" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26333" CreationDate="2017-01-27T19:10:53.177" Score="1" ViewCount="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a predominant accepted style for citing online? The reason I ask is because some styles use underlining, but underlining online should only be used for links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear - the &lt;em&gt;source&lt;/em&gt; I'm citing can be a book or a magazine or an article. The &lt;em&gt;place&lt;/em&gt; I'm putting the citation for people to see is on a website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23239" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T20:02:32.267" Title="Online citation style" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26282" CreationDate="2017-01-27T19:18:49.377" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard many times &quot;there are only x number of stories,&quot; (sometimes as low as 4) just told in different ways with different characters. Right off the top of my head, I think of Rocky (yes, Sylvester Stallone as a boxer Rocky) as one of the best &quot;the hero loses&quot; stories. What makes the story in this case is the seemingly insurmountable odds against not only winning but failing miserably, the character development, and the process by which the hero gets to where he ends up, even when and though he loses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you can tell this kind of story in any genre and have a &quot;winner&quot; of a story, if you tell it well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23240" LastEditorUserId="23240" LastEditDate="2017-01-27T19:57:50.037" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T19:57:50.037" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26331" CreationDate="2017-01-27T19:43:55.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being that this is for a website, I am not sure as to what kind of information you are looking to post.  In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lib.vt.edu/find/citation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;site&lt;/a&gt; you will find a list of all the styles of citation that can be used.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/08/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Academically&lt;/a&gt;, MLA and APA are the 2 main ones used, but if this is for technical purposes such as medical or electronic research, they have their own citations.  It is hard to tell you which style without knowing the content and context to which the information is being presented, however, the first link should provide you a list with all formats so you can pick which one you would feel is best.  If you feel that MLA or APA are the styles you want to use, there are plenty of websites that will generate the citation for you.  You just need to enter in the adequate information.  A popular site widely used would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-website&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CitationMachine&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the main question though, the style isn't related to the &lt;em&gt;place&lt;/em&gt; you  are writing, but rather the &lt;em&gt;type&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;style&lt;/em&gt; of writing you are trying to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;commonly online, I have found the quotes to be numbered off with subscript or superscript and then at the bottom associate that number to the reference link.  Not sure if that falls under one of those styles but that is just a personal observation of online references used.  However, to also point out, there is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://plagiarism.arts.cornell.edu/tutorial/logistics3.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;difference&lt;/a&gt; between references, and citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-01-27T20:02:32.267" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T20:02:32.267" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26282" CreationDate="2017-01-27T22:14:59.253" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider these possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The hero achieves what he desires, and what he desires is good.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The hero does not achieve what he desires, but what he does get is better, because he desired wrong. (Think of the movie &quot;Stardust&quot;, where Tristam loses the annoyingly selfish girl he loves but finds a better woman to marry.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The hero achieves what he desires, and it causes him or others harm, because he desired wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The hero does not achieve what he desires, and what he desired was good.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outcomes 1 and 4 are the typical endings, true victory and true defeat. Outcome 2 is the personal growth story: you lose but end up a better person for it. Outcome 3 is the negative ironic ending. My first novel was an outcome 3, because the hero's victory is hollow: what he gets he can't keep and it leads to crisis and loss in the next book in my series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have more options than you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22785" LastEditorUserId="22785" LastEditDate="2017-01-27T22:43:54.763" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T22:43:54.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26335" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26342" CreationDate="2017-01-28T00:55:54.973" Score="3" ViewCount="186" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started a book about 2 years ago, got about halfway through, and then got sidetracked. I know this is a typically bad habit of novelists... Fortunately, the book idea that distracted me made it to the finish line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I want to return to the first book, but the energy of the book I carried around in my head has disappeared. I have to get to know the characters all over again. I do want to write this story, and I've had a lot of cool ideas over the last 18 months I want to incorporate. Also, I think I'm a better writer now than two years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, should I start over at page 1 and rewrite the story using my first draft perhaps as a guide but basically rewrite everything, or should I open my chapter files and edit them as needed knowing there will be some massive makeovers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T13:07:39.767" Title="Resurrecting a story: Rewrite or Edit?" Tags="|editing|revision|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26335" CreationDate="2017-01-28T01:29:10.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rewrite it.  If you feel you're a better writer now, two years later, you'll waste too much time editing and fiddling around trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.  Don't be afraid to toss something in the trash and retry the idea with a new perspective and voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was in a similar situation with an old completed novel and decided to just &quot;fix&quot; what already existed.  Ended up cutting half the book and it changed so much I might as well have rewritten it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23243" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T01:29:10.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26335" CreationDate="2017-01-28T02:01:10.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't rewrite it if you don't have to.  Perhaps you could start by reading your existing draft and making notes, perhaps in the form of an outline, as you go along.  If you didn't leave yourself an outline of the second half before you set it aside, then it might be helpful to make an outline before digging in to writing the second half.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might even want to experiment with leaving a gap of time between the first half and the second half.  It could be rather fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you find that a rewrite is necessary, that's okay too.  But at this stage it might be helpful to crank out some sort of draft of the second half before getting too involved in making improvements to the first half.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T02:01:10.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26338" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-28T02:10:06.607" Score="6" ViewCount="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm drafting a resume for a job opportunity &amp;amp; would love recommendations on a formatting issue. My resume has many bullet points and some tables. However, I'm challenged by online job applications where I can't submit my resume directly but rather must copy it into the employer's online job application. Basically, I end up with a text-only situation where my resume loses all its nice formatting (including my bullet points and tables). I've tried copying in various symbols from MS Word but they get turned into square characters. To cope with the loss of the bullets, I try to recreate the outline like this:&#xA;&quot;A. Raised $500,000 per year&#xA;B. Guided project management team&#xA;C. Reported on revenue and projected future trends&#xA;D. Etc.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, I might just use a long list: &quot;Raised $500,000 per year, guided project management team, reported on revenue and projected future trends, etc.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no solutions for the lost tables other than long lists. If I try to use the tab button, I just get sent to a different field. If I try to use manual spacing, I find the result messy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think both formats lack aesthetic appeal. Is there a way to use symbols similar to bullets in these text-only online resumes? Are there techniques for preserving tables in some manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23246" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T05:34:54.527" Title="Need recommendation re: online resume format" Tags="|formatting|business-writing|resume|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26338" CreationDate="2017-01-28T02:49:25.617" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pretend you are writing an email, and that the recipient will read it as plain text.  &quot;To put spacing between sections, hit 'enter' instead of using the space bar.... To highlight subheadings, use all caps. In lieu of bullet points, use &quot;-&quot; or &quot;*&quot; characters&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://work.chron.com/format-resume-online-applications-27842.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Format a Resume for Online Applications&lt;/a&gt;).  (You can also use &quot;+&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See if you can find an email address or fax number for the recruiter or HR person, so you can fax or attach the formatted pdf version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastEditorUserId="13494" LastEditDate="2017-01-28T18:42:55.570" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T18:42:55.570" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26362" CreationDate="2017-01-28T07:13:03.193" Score="2" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Capitalization in a text has been something heavily debated in the writing community due to its nature as being preference based, and finding a hard set answer is fairly difficult. However, should capitalization be used for emphasis as part of a character's tone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume a character is based purely around a definite, harsh and painful to listen to voice, in a situation where simple text would seem too mundane. Take these examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'VE DONE?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Versus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The androgynous voice grew harsh, as if scraping his mind. &quot;Do you understand what you've done?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the character solely speaks in a tone that is harsh, would it be viable to use capitalization as emphasis or should you resort to describing it beforehand and using normal text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-01-31T05:46:05.960" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T05:46:05.960" Title="Should capitalization be used for emphasis for a character's tone?" Tags="|style|formatting|capitalization|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26341" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26347" CreationDate="2017-01-28T07:49:44.717" Score="5" ViewCount="769" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just as I heard from various sources, a plot has to start with what the reader will find through most of it. And that's what I did, the first scene shown is the main event that triggers the story. Such scene includes action, romance, drama and violence, basically just what is seen throughout the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, after that scene, there's a chunk of significant size of the story showing 1 or 2 years before that event, to flesh out the protagonist and other characters, and explain the setting and why and how the starting scene happened. Only after all this backstory (some pages) is that the story really begins. But the reader, at this point, now knows who the protagonist is, what are his motivations and how important is the journey to reach his goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But by doing that, would the readers get bored and want the story to start off already? Of course, such backstory is not just boring backstory, it has romance, action, drama, just like the starting scene, but it's not short. Maybe I could break it down into smaller chunks and show them in flashbacks. However, there are already two other subjects that are shown through flashbacks, and probably the reader would get annoyed by the plot going back and forth so many times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what I ask is: would there be any problem if I leave it this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-01-31T05:45:51.290" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T16:04:21.157" Title="A long backstory right at the beginning" Tags="|plot|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26335" CreationDate="2017-01-28T10:09:05.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should fathom your own feelings about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the answer would depend on how I felt what I had written before and what didn't work for me then. If that first attempts was inherently flawed, I would &lt;strong&gt;not reread it&lt;/strong&gt; (so as not to get pulled into that frame of mind again) and write everything anew from what I have in my head. In the meantime that story will have developed in your mind, and you want to write that new form, not be hampered by the old one. If on the other hand you still feel what you did then was great, then rewrite and expand. But that will be difficult. From my own experience, rewriting is the most difficult thing in writing at all, because you will have to make things work that didn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you feel about your old story? Follow your gut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T10:09:05.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26340" CreationDate="2017-01-28T11:41:02.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All caps has come to mean &lt;em&gt;shouting.&lt;/em&gt; You can have a voice which is harsh but not loud. So no, I wouldn't use all caps to mean something which is difficult to listen to. Describe it as &quot;harsh&quot; and let your readers imagine what that sounds like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T11:41:02.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26341" CreationDate="2017-01-28T11:42:13.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a Your Mileage May Vary question. There's no way for us to say if it's boring wthout reading it. Write your book, polish it, hand it to a beta reader, and ask if your backstory is boring or engaging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T11:42:13.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26341" CreationDate="2017-01-28T11:48:35.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to handle that. Almost too many, to be honest. I can't tell you which to pick, or if the way you are currently doing it is right or wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;It all depends on your skill as a writer!&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And more importantly, this is why you need beta readers. They can tell you if you are boring your readers to death, or if these flashbacks are super enticing and you shouldn't change a letter to any of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some alternatives that might fit your narrative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alternating chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consider alternating between the story and the flashbacks. Even if the flashback chapters are shorter, this is one tool it takes a master writer to craft just right. One example, from Sydney Sheldon, is to give the protagonist a reason to care about these flashbacks. He had his protagonist reading her grandfather's journal, detailing his life during and after World War II, and what Jews went through during this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;'Dream sequences'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is quite common, and a tool I come across sparingly. More common in fantasy settings, likely with characters with 'the sight'. Or perhaps just a narrative tool to flesh out a stoic character, recalling his past and rounding him out and why he's such a stick in the mud now (mostly I find this type with 'army dude' and it usually involves his wife leaving him for some stupid superficial reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;'Cooldown interjection'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You never want to overload your reader with tension. Because if your scenes are visceral, they will feel the tension in their own body, and may become stressed by your work. Though this only applies to some heavy scenes, not all, it is something to be mindful of. So how to lower the tension without breaking it all to pieces? Let's say your protagonist is in a warzone, and there is no way out. A 'one-way ticket', as it were. Well, in moments of relative peace, let the character think back, give him something to be hopeful for; a loved one that's on his mind (a lover, child, brother, best friend that's too much of a wimp to join the army), and just like anyone would do to self-soothe, insert these flashbacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can come up with a dozen other options, but these are what I can come up with off the top of my head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21105" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T11:48:35.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26346" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-28T12:14:27.313" Score="1" ViewCount="47" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We built a bridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We construct a bridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any difference between &amp;quot;bulid &amp;quot;and &amp;quot;construct&amp;quot; in this sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T12:14:27.313" Title="build or construct in a sentence" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-01-28T17:44:04.210" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26341" CreationDate="2017-01-28T13:56:13.643" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every story has a bootstrapping problem. You have to establish characters, a world (fantasy or not), a problem or desire, and the obstacles to that problem or desire, and the story cannot really get going until all of that is done. Starting with action is not particularly effective in itself because action is not interesting unless you care about the character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there is far too much emphasis given in advice to writers about the sequencing of things in early chapters. Sequencing alone does not solve the problem. What I think you have to do in early chapters, in order to keep the reader going until all the elements of story are in place, is to maintain promise. Whatever you start with, you have to execute it in such a way that the reader sees promise in it, and wants to read on to see that promise fulfilled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can find examples of promise filled openings that start with every kind of device, from character to world-building to action. You can find countless examples that start with all these devices that have no promise at all. It is not that any one of these devices is inherently superior, inherently has any more promise, than another. It is that whichever the writer chooses, it is executed it in a way that has promise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is promise? It may be different things for different readers. It is probably quite different for a hard SF fan than it is for me. But whatever its subject matter, I think all promise has one common ingredient, and that is a sense of reality, of grittiness, of three-dimensionality. If it starts with people, you immediately feel them as people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the opening of Pride and Prejudice, which opens on two secondary characters, you get an immediate sense of affection between the Bennetts from Mr. Bennett's affectionate teasing of his wife. It all seems real. It is full or promise. You are in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the opening of the first Harry Potter book we get an extensive and highly exaggerated description of Privet Lane and its inhabitants. (A secondary setting peopled by tertiary characters.) The promise here seems to lie in the wit of the telling and also in a recognition of the kind of place and people that are being satirized. Again, we are in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every Steinbeck novel starts with a lengthy description of place, and by about the middle of page two you are ready to call your real estate agent, put your house on the market, and move to wherever he is describing, because it seems so much richer and brighter and livelier than where you live. It is full of promise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, we need to pull the reader in, we need to provide promise, but promise is not found in any particular sequencing of the elements of story that have to be introduced -- it is found in lucidity of the telling, in the writer's ability to make us feel we are somewhere real, however fantastical it might be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-19T16:04:21.157" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T16:04:21.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26340" CreationDate="2017-01-28T14:05:32.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neither of the above. You can't act a scene in prose. Nor can you describe your way into a reaction. What you have to do to get the reader to have a reaction to events it to set them up properly so that they have the reaction you are looking for when the plain words are delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want &quot;Do you understand what you have done&quot; to fall with great portent and gravitas upon the reader's mind, then you need to have spent the previous couple of pages setting things up so that we know exactly who the players are and exactly what the tension is between them, and exactly what the stakes are so that when the words, &quot;Do you understand what you have done&quot; are uttered, we only need to hear them to know how they are delivered and how the person they are spoken to receives them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In literature, we have no actors, no sets, not lights, no music, no sound effects. We only have words. And the way we create effects with words is through carefully constructing the scene so that the moment of payoff is triggered by a few simple words. Because it must always be triggered, never created by a crescendo of light and sound, because we don't have these things. The effect is all in the setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T14:05:32.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26324" CreationDate="2017-01-28T14:20:03.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Point of view is nothing more than it says it is. The place where the story is viewed from. In movie terms, it is the position of the camera. To have a single POV is equivalent to shooting an entire movie from a single camera angle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a constraining thing to do. Generally it is easier to show different parts of the story from different points of view, just as it is easier to shoot a movie from different camera angles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't confuse POV with character, and don't assume that the POV is at the center of the action. Again, POV is a camera angle, and the camera angle is opposite to the center of action, shooting the action. The POV is thus opposite to the thing you want to focus attention on in the scene. (This is why first person narration is such a difficult form, and why, contrary to popular belief among aspiring writers, it does not create more intimacy with the character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you locate the POV in a character, of course, you have an additional complexity to deal with, which is that you are not only seeing the scene through their eyes, but interpreting it thought their desires and experiences. In some senses, this is a dual POV, like a split screen with one view on the action and one view on the character's reaction to the action. This creates a tension between the action you are showing and the character's interpretation of that action. This can be a powerful narrative technique, but it is more difficult to pull off than a more straightforward neutral POV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, have as many POVs as it takes to tell you story, but if you get into the POV of a character with a stake in the outcome of the scene they are witnessing, think through very carefully how the dynamics of what they are seeing and how they are reacting coordinate to create the effect you want for the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T14:20:03.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26338" CreationDate="2017-01-28T14:33:20.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sad truth is that today, resumes are read by machines. Machines don't care about aesthetics. In fact, machines can be confused by the characters you insert to achieve aesthetic effect. If humans do read your resume, chances are that the submission system will have mangled the text so that your attempt at aesthetics will simply make the resume hard to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise you to make your resume as plain and straightforward as you can to maximize the chances that the machine will read it correctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a separate formatted copy handy for times when you know that it will actually be read by a human, not a machine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T14:33:20.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24009" CreationDate="2017-01-28T14:41:30.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to maximize the success of your book, seek professional publication. Being successful with self publishing is like being successful playing the lottery. Even those who win small prizes now and then pay out more than they take in, and the real jackpots are incredibly rare. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is you actually manage to raise money for self publishing on Kickstarter, do let us know, because, frankly, I assume that is impossible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T14:41:30.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26352" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26361" CreationDate="2017-01-28T14:07:55.513" Score="4" ViewCount="894" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, how would I reference &lt;em&gt;Elizabeth-Charlotte of Bavaria, Princess Palatine, Duchess of Orleans&lt;/em&gt; (all being one single person and their attributes)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a common practice for royal names in modern language or is that just a thing of the past?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" OwnerDisplayName="ionree" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-02-10T01:51:37.677" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T01:51:37.677" Title="How do I cite royal names with their titles in MLA?" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26353" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-28T15:18:55.773" Score="11" ViewCount="1392" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm writing a story and the setting is that there are two worlds: the world of humans and the world of (insert species name here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm wondering if it's okay to use the terms/words &quot;people,&quot; &quot;man,&quot; &quot;woman,&quot; and &quot;person&quot; even though the character from that different world is not human? Or should I create a term specifically for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: In that different world, while they know about humans, they don't think humans actually exist. It's just like a legend to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23251" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-16T01:30:47.687" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T00:40:33.080" Title="Should I use the terms &quot;people&quot; &quot;person&quot; &quot;man&quot; and &quot;woman&quot; in fantasy setting?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|word-choice|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26353" CreationDate="2017-01-28T15:41:48.470" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can just have the humans call each other He, She, Person, People.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other species' then have their own variations of those words. I assume, in your work, that the two species eventually meet up. You can then have the humans do something like the below to teach the reader more about the alien species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;At dawn we were woken by who we assumed was our guide ... we learned our guide was a 'he' due to the scarcity of his clothing, and though we met others of his species we never saw what could be considered a female ... over the weeks working with our guide we began sharing bits and pieces of our language and culture.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I introduced myself as Jack and my partner as Wendy, our guide slapped his chest hard and emitted a sound like &quot;A'chug'nuz&quot;, though the 'nuz' sound was beyond the abilities of our body to pronounce. The guide responded to &quot;Achug&quot; and took no offense at our no-doubt butchering of his name. We were overwhelmed with relief that the Achug was intelligent - he immediately grasped that we were interested in his world and readily, even enthusiastically, pointed out things and spat their names out in his brutal language, sometimes giving a brief demonstration of how such things were used.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... you get the idea. You slowly but surely feed the audience bits and pieces of the other species' way of thinking and their culture and their language. If the language is foreign then you, as the author, decide what the aliens call each other and simplify it for the reader. This, I think,  reduces the likelihood of grotesque infodumps which could be provided to the reader in a more immersive manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: short answer: You CAN use he, she, they, people, person in reference to the alien species. Achug is a &quot;He&quot;, if their are females they are &quot;She&quot; or &quot;Her&quot;, a collective of individuals is a &quot;They&quot; or &quot;Us&quot; or &quot;We&quot;. They may call themselves something like &quot;A'Tirkma&quot; which you can simplify to &quot;Aturk&quot; and then call the species &quot;Aturks&quot;. &quot;Man&quot; and &quot;Woman&quot; are more human designations so I would recommend finding something else to call your alien species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23065" LastEditorUserId="23065" LastEditDate="2017-01-28T16:52:34.830" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T16:52:34.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26288" CreationDate="2017-01-28T16:13:21.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an age in which the sheer volume of content being produced is overwhelming, I don't think it's possible for a reader to &quot;get&quot; every reference you'd want to make. It's a similar issue in TV and movies -- sometimes, Saturday Night Live does a parody of something I've never seen. We're a long way from the days in which we had three channels and a handful of major publishing houses, so everyone watched and read the same things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would suggest, similar to one of the other answers, that reading a LOT is never a bad thing. And get outside your comfort zone from time to time. I do nonfiction, and I'll occasionally grab a novel just to see a different approach to writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think anything you read would be inherently bad. Even if you pick up a trashy novel or poorly researched political polemic, you'll see a few things that work and some that don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23254" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T16:13:21.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26353" CreationDate="2017-01-28T17:48:57.097" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of how you talk about other species in reality. There are no &quot;women&quot; or &quot;men&quot; among dogs, chicken, or ants. The words &quot;man&quot; and &quot;woman&quot; specifically denote human males and females.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are other terms that we use. We have specific &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animal_names&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;names for the males and females of certain domestic and game animals&lt;/a&gt;. For other animals, such as eagles, we simply use the gender terms themselves and speak of a &quot;male (eagle)&quot; or &quot;female (eagle)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, when using words for representatives of a gender, we distinguish between humans and non-humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore I think that when we meet an intelligent alien species, the terms that we will use to refer to their genders will depend on how we perceive them. If we feel that they are in some basic way similar to us and that we can live together with them equally in the same society – that, in other words, they are fundamentally &quot;human&quot; in a non-biological sense –, then we would eventually share a common language and speak of each other's genders using the same terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, we felt that the aliens were completely unlike us and their society was so different from ours that integration was impossible – that they are &quot;non-humans&quot; –, then we would either use the terms that the aliens used for their genders, or a translation of those terms (if the language was unpronouncable to us), or create our own terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Insect genders are often called by their function. Bees, for example, are not called &quot;males&quot; and &quot;females&quot;, but &quot;workers&quot;, &quot;drones&quot;, and so on. &lt;strong&gt;If the insects in your novel fall in the &quot;unlike us&quot;-category, they might be given names dependent on their function, instead of their chromosomes.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given how some people do not perceive certain other humans as human and deny them the terms reserved for humans – for example, calling dark-skinned people &quot;nigger&quot; instead of &quot;person&quot; –, I am sure that even if much of humanity accepted the human-like aliens as peers, there would be many who would not see them that way and use derogatory words. Which words would aquire this racist, or rather &quot;alienist&quot;, meaning, I don't know. Maybe it would be terms from the list of words we use to refer to animals, or we would use typical names, just like male Jews are sometimes referred to as &quot;Abie&quot; and male Italians as &quot;Guidos&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T17:48:57.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26353" CreationDate="2017-01-28T18:14:02.873" Score="15" Body="&lt;h1&gt;It's a translation.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take this to the logical extreme. Your story is set in a different planet. Your story is likely not written in English. The people in your world who would have told this story would not have used any of the same words you're using, because they probably don't speak English, and even if they do, it's probably about as similar to our English as Old English is to the modern kind. (Which is to say, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-among-Old-English-Middle-English-Early-Modern-English-and-Modern-English&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;not at all&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you're not publishing there. You're publishing here. And that means that whatever language these people use to talk about their experiences, you need to make understandable to readers today. In effect, you're publishing a translation of the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the process of this &amp;quot;translation&amp;quot;, you should use words and phrases that your readers are familiar with. If the aliens have three genders instead of two, or one gender, or engage in a weird practice called &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.depauw.edu/aevans_web/HONR101-02/WebPages/Spring2006/Kieschnick(Joanna)/sexualnature.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;kemmer&lt;/a&gt; (see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2kewiJO&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Left Hand of Darkness&lt;/a&gt;), then you might need to create words to describe these peculiarities. But to prevent from alienating your readers, you should attempt to &amp;quot;translate&amp;quot; as much as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2kF7JX1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ancillary Justice&lt;/a&gt; does a pretty good job at presenting the spoken language as non-English, and it's the only example I can think of off-hand where non-humans are main characters. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2kF6PcX&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Summer Prince&lt;/a&gt; the characters just use non-translatable words as they are, and the readers figure it out as they go. The last example I'd use of books that use coined words is &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2kFaWpr&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Fifth Season&lt;/a&gt;, which only uses them to describe elements of the magic system that are unique to the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these books use as many ordinary words as possible. Unless using a neologism is absolutely crucial, you should prefer the ordinary English translation. Don't just go for unique words to emphasize how unique your story is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WuYis.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WuYis.png&quot; alt=&quot;Relevant XKCD&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;https://xkcd.com/483/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;XKCD Source&lt;/a&gt;) You don't want to risk losing your readers over nonessential neologisms. Save it for things that are crucial to the reader's understanding of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Side Note&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But what's crucial?&amp;quot; you ask. &amp;quot;How do I tell?&amp;quot; I don't actually have an answer for that. It depends on your aliens, on the kind of story you're trying to tell, and on just how different the thing is from what we're used to. Even if the alien's telepathy is central to the plot, we already have a word for that: telepathy. There's very little good reason to go around calling it &lt;em&gt;squillian&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10099" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T18:14:02.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26359" CreationDate="2017-01-28T18:30:29.780" Score="7" ViewCount="443" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question was asked by a member of my critique group at the beginning of the month and I've been stewing over it for a while now. I still don't have any better ideas, so I'm turning to you. How can a writer separate their emotions from the content of their work? How can you tell &quot;yes, this is good&quot; or &quot;okay, this needs work&quot; without having to rely on your personal opinions, which might be heavily skewed by the fact that you wrote it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit to add:&lt;/em&gt; As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/26/neil-fein&quot;&gt;Neil Fein&lt;/a&gt; points out, answers should focus on the different techniques available to writers and the benefits and drawbacks of each, rather than &quot;well, this works for me.&quot; A single &quot;this works for me&quot; solution could be valuable, if it details how to go about the process and the benefits and drawbacks involved, but answers looking at multiple possibilities are more likely to be selected as &quot;best.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10099" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T13:52:44.010" Title="How do I gain sufficient emotional distance from my work to edit it?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26358" CreationDate="2017-01-28T20:18:46.360" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different methods have been suggested for &lt;em&gt;copy&lt;/em&gt;editing, that is, for finding spelling and grammar mistakes (such as printing text instead of copyediting at a screen, using a different font, reading backwards from the end of the text, and so on), but to my knowledge only one method helps in distancing yourself from the &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt; of your writing and seeing it in a detached manner and that is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;time&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(as Neil Fein has already noted), but in combination with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;distraction&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brandon Sanderson explains this method and his procedure in one of the videos from his writing class (&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/nKHLuGyjRi8?t=390&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;watch from 6:30 to 9:14&lt;/a&gt; ), and it is what all the professional writers do that I know of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finish a novel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;put it away&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;write the next novel&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;put the next novel away&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;read and edit the first novel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process becomes a bit more complex when you have a previous novel in the works and the one before that returns from the editor with recommendations (or demands) for edits and you also need to outline the project after the next one and so on, but the basic prodedure remains the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;let your writing rest while you work on other projects&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finish a novel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;s&gt;put it away&lt;/s&gt; send it to your alpha readers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[write, outline, edit, research etc. your &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; projects]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;put the other projects away&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;read and edit the first novel and work in the feedback from your alpha readers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;submit the novel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important part is that you &lt;strong&gt;work on something else&lt;/strong&gt;. It is the distraction that will distance yourself from your work, not the time alone. If you just wait for six months, then your project will have been churning on in your mind and you are still emotionally involved in it. There may be some distance in that you have forgotten some details, but it is still and always at the top of your mind, just like going home doesn't destress you from problems at your job, but watching tv will: tv fills your mind with something, so that while you watch you cannot think of what worries you about your job. Similarly, if you have to &amp;quot;get into&amp;quot; another project with your imagination and emotion, then there is no place in your mind for another one and when you return to the first one you will clearly see all its shortcomings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And: If you make your project only one, by implication: not so important, project in a life-long series of projects, then you gain the right professional perspective and &amp;quot;killing your darlings&amp;quot; will no longer be so difficult. Because, if you work on one project at a time, that project will feel like it defines you, that &lt;em&gt;you are your writing&lt;/em&gt;, and criticism of your work will feel like criticism of you. But if you have to switch projects like any other worker moves from one comission to another, then you are no longer what you write but a writer and both progress and criticism become much easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T12:47:07.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26358" CreationDate="2017-01-28T20:52:29.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can you tell whether &quot;yes, this is good&quot; or &quot;okay, this needs work&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are objective artistic judgments. Emotional distance from the work is certainly part of what you need to make them about your own work, but you also need artistic detachment. What I see very consistently is that the better a writer is, the better the stuff they are reading. Some of the best writing teachers stress this as well. (See, for instance, &lt;em&gt;Reading like a Writer&lt;/em&gt; by Francine Prose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel your judgement is impaired by your closeness to the work, get some emotional and artistic distance but putting it away and setting yourself a course of reading. Read the stuff you love, but not stuff similar to what you are writing. Read the classics. Read for several genre's. Read as intensively as your schedule with allow. Give yourself time to find your love of literature in the books you are reading. This is the basis of your emotional connection to your own work, so this re-grounds you emotionally in the wider world of books that you love. And exposing yourself to the work of a diverse set of good writers clears your pallet, artistically, and give you an objective standard of art against which to judge your own work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After immersing yourself in five or six good books, or more, to the point where you feel refreshed and rededicated to your art, pull your book out of the drawer. It probably isn't going to stand very well in comparison to the books you have been reading, and the differences will be obvious to you. But do this enough time and you may get to the point where you pull it out and find it still stands up. That is when it is ready to submit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the approach of writing something else to give you a time gap on your first work doubtless give you some emotional distance, it does not give you an better artistic perspective. When it comes out of the drawer, you will still be comparing you to you, and that is not really the kind of artistic or emotional detachment that you need and will get from a concerted program of reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-01-29T12:08:52.283" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T12:08:52.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26352" CreationDate="2017-01-28T21:33:13.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finding the correct form of the name of a historic person can be difficult and might involve some research. I am no expert, but in the case of your example the German National Library lists her publications under the name &lt;a href=&quot;https://portal.dnb.de/opac.htm?method=simpleSearch&amp;amp;cqlMode=true&amp;amp;reset=true&amp;amp;referrerPosition=0&amp;amp;query=idn%3D118529935&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Orléans, Elisabeth Charlotte d'&lt;/a&gt;, the Libary of Congress lists her as &lt;a href=&quot;https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchArg=Orle%CC%81ans,%20Charlotte-Elisabeth,%20duchesse%20d%27,%201652-1722.&amp;amp;searchCode=NAME%2B&amp;amp;searchType=1&amp;amp;recCount=25&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Orléans, Charlotte-Elisabeth, duchesse d', 1652-1722&lt;/a&gt;, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France as &lt;a href=&quot;http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb11918198t&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Orléans, Charlotte Elisabeth de Bavière (1652-1722 ; duchesse d')&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-01-28T21:41:33.173" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T21:41:33.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26340" CreationDate="2017-01-28T21:56:10.803" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot directly represent the voice of a character in fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume you used all caps to represent a &quot;harsh and painful to listen to voice&quot;. What then would normal capitalization mean? That all other voices sound pleasant? Or that they all sound the same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a character to have a special voice, you &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;describe&lt;/em&gt; their voice&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as whispering isn't represented by smaller or lighter letters but by describing that a character whispers –&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Bla bla,&quot; John whispered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– the character of the voice is described in the surrounding text and not emulated through typography:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Bla bla,&quot; John said, his harsh voice painful to listen to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T21:56:10.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2300" CreationDate="2017-01-28T22:29:26.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this is an old post, but I just wanted to share from my own experience. I was actually trying to see if I'm a slow writer, having just finished a craze(wrote for 9 hours with only a few 2-3 minute breaks) which I usually don't do and didn't intend on before I sat down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I definitely agree with Olivia about the music, I have a &quot;creative&quot; music folder I listen to whenever I write or paint, if I want to be creative but need a push I just need to put the right music on and ideas a streaming through like someone just broke down the dam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't push yourself, but try and get into a rythm, write 20 minutes a few days a week if you're new to writing. If you're midway through a novel and feel good about it, set yourself a goal, like 2000 words per day or 2 hours per day. That's how I, despite a full time job, did a decent first draft in just under 3 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Train yourself in not reading back constantly, only look at what you've already got down if you forgot someones eye colour or what not, do NOT correct before you're done with the draft. This is what slows people down the most, even if they think they don't do it, they usually do. I've gotten more and more aware of myself doing this and have finally reached a point where I realise straight away and stop myself.&#xA;Basically it's a very subjective thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I write 500 wph, other times like today, I was at a whopping 1400 wph, it really depends on your mood as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23261" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T22:29:26.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26358" CreationDate="2017-01-28T22:38:48.277" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beyond &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;cleansing your brain-palate,&lt;/em&gt; which others have noted here, I found that being a little &quot;off&quot; helps me, oddly enough. A little sleepy (like foregoing my morning coffee), a little hyper (several extra cups of coffee), working in somebody else's house, working on somebody else's machine. Change something about your usual environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you essentially want is not to be re-writing the story in your head as you go along reading it. You want to read it with an editor's or outsider's eye. Time and distraction accomplish a lot of this, but so can altering your mental state slightly. Obviously you don't want to be impaired, because that prevents you from accomplishing anything, but &quot;a jump to the left&quot; is what you're aiming for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T22:38:48.277" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18506" CreationDate="2017-01-29T09:29:21.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel very strongly you should not use any style to set the darkness off. Let your writing create the feeling for the reader that the darkness is more than just a figurative incidental lack of light. Allow the reader to give the darkness an identity, or even a persona, on their own. It will become a much more powerful entity that way. I second Dale’s aversion to “emphasis-by-formatting” and Crumbs’ idea of having a transitional event whereafter the darkness become the Darkness (if your narrative goes way). Hope your writing is coming along well!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21083" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T09:29:21.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26366" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-29T09:31:27.850" Score="2" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it (*sniff) or (/sniff)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m reminiscing nostalgically on a personal blog and I want to insert an onomatopoeic sniff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My days spent raiding dungeons in Hibernia are long over (/sniff) but …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want the reader to know that I actually audibly sniffed a nostalgic sniff as I wrote that. I know there are no rules. I want to know what common conventions are out there and where they come from. I also feel that I am out of touch with what the younger cool kids are doing these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(/sniff)&lt;/strong&gt; This looks like an “emote” command common in (older?) online RPGs. I used to use this one a lot but refrain these days as the style choice is one only appreciated by a certain subculture of online gamers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(*sniff)&lt;/strong&gt; I have seen this style before. I don’t know where it came from but it looks a bit like a comment in computer code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(sniff)&lt;/strong&gt; Just putting the onomatopoeia in brackets seems a little unimaginative.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other popularly recognised styles for inserting onomatopoeia out there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21083" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-01-29T22:28:45.353" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T22:28:45.353" Title="How many common conventions exist for inserting sounds made by the author?" Tags="|style|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26367" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-29T09:57:32.247" Score="8" ViewCount="763" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing Fantasy, Historical Novels, or even Science Fiction - language patterns and terms are incredibly different back then (or in the future), then we have now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you properly convey an idea that &lt;em&gt;doesn't exist&lt;/em&gt;, for example, the word &lt;strong&gt;psychology&lt;/strong&gt;, in such a setting? For example, a character understands the general gist of it - and you can explain it, but how can you summarize it without having to explain it every time? Should you invent a new word for it - or use the modern rendition of the word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same applies to things such as inventions; &lt;em&gt;assume a plot is set in the dark ages&lt;/em&gt;, and an invention for communication through the use of 'magic' is created. Should it be referenced to using a new word, or would it be better to use common words such as 'calling' and 'reception' that the reader would understand better, but may not make sense in the world itself? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason I have this conundrum is also because our language has an incredibly rich history, with words such as Psychology having links to greek with historical impacts that influenced its reasoning. It seems wrong to have a character suddenly come up with a word that is in our society, but seems to have appeared from no where in theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="23013" LastEditDate="2017-01-29T10:05:11.427" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T18:30:10.000" Title="How do you convey a term or idea that exists in the modern world, but not in the setting of the story?" Tags="|style|creative-writing|fantasy|word-choice|language|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26366" CreationDate="2017-01-29T10:18:34.173" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I have seen is not &lt;code&gt;*sniff&lt;/code&gt;, but &lt;code&gt;*sniff*&lt;/code&gt;, which, I believe, comes from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Markdown&lt;/a&gt; (which is &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/editing-help&quot;&gt;used on this site&lt;/a&gt; as well), where text framed by asterisks is rendered as &lt;em&gt;italic&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other common markup for onomatopoeia is, in fact, italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it, the conventions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How sad. &lt;em&gt;Sniff.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;How sad. *sniff*&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never seen &lt;code&gt;*sniff*&lt;/code&gt; in print and would use it online only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:40:35.973" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T10:18:34.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26367" CreationDate="2017-01-29T10:33:19.383" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is certainly an interesting question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What many authors get away with&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read books with a mixture of both things you described. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;My arrow shot like a bullet.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've forgotten which book it's from, but I read it. Obviously, this is a fantasy book and bullets wouldn't exist. However, the author got away with it. As an avid, voracious fantasy reader, I had no problems with this. I kept reading without really thinking about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other authors have got away with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Haven't you heard of the brain-teller come here as of late?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just made that on the spot. Brain-teller here is (fairly obviously) referring to someone with telepathic capabilities or someone who is able to use strange things to do with the mind. The trick with inventing a new term is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make it fairly obvious what the term means. Create it from words that &lt;strong&gt;already exist&lt;/strong&gt; in the English language.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't give a definition for the term in your narrative. The definition should be implied or be obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean by that, is don't set aside a few sentences to describe what the term means. That is a mistake, because it &lt;em&gt;diverts the reader's attention from the story and to the word.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What you need to keep in mind&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to keep in mind that there is a difference between writing a fantasy book, and pretending you speak Old English. Your target audience lives in the present day, so it's best to use terms &lt;em&gt;they will understand&lt;/em&gt;. The point of the story is to keep the reader's focus on the story and not the word you're trying to define. That's why I think it's best to use modern language in situations where using more old-style language can't give obvious meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are deciding to coin a little term, make it obvious what it means either through the term itself or through the context. Basically, don't tell me what the definition is, show it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The man started reading that guys mind. &quot;A brain-teller,&quot; said Character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that you need to ensure that the reader's attention stays on the story. Remember that while using old-style language can create immersion, it is best not to confuse the reader as you are writing for a modern audience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T10:33:19.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26367" CreationDate="2017-01-29T10:33:31.980" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your narrator is distinct from your protagonists, that is, if your narrator &lt;em&gt;looks back in time&lt;/em&gt; and narrates from a perspective contemporary with your readers, you may well use the language of today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lord John, although a man of politics and war, was also interested in what later scholars would have called the psychology of his subjects and studied their behavior attentively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your narrator is a protagonist or uses a voice contemporary with your story, I would use a brief definition for historically later concepts, such as psychology. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lord John was interested in the psychology of women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;becomes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lord John liked to study the behavior and emotions of women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book is set after the term was first used in its current meaning, then you may use it. For example, &lt;em&gt;psychology&lt;/em&gt; was first used with the meaning &quot;the study of human behavior and emotions&quot; in the late 15th century. As Latin was the lingua franca of learning at that age, you might want to use an (italicized) Latin verson of the term, or the language that your protagonists would have spoken. Here is an example for a 16th century French nobleman:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Duke of Orleans liked to study the &lt;em&gt;psichologie&lt;/em&gt; of his subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For details surrounding inventions the same rule would apply. If the word that we use today (e.g. &quot;calling&quot; someone on the telephone) had the same meaning at the time of your story (e.g. &quot;calling&quot; someone who is far away), then using it will not cause an anachronism:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mage called the knight and spoke to him through his magic. The knight recieved the mage's call while he was saddling his horse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word &quot;reception&quot; on the other hand, did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have the meaning of hearing a call or receiving a letter, because signal theory and the concept of &quot;receiving information&quot; is a 20th century invention, so &quot;reception&quot; smacks of modern times to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-01-29T10:41:09.853" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T10:41:09.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26197" CreationDate="2017-01-29T10:38:58.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay... there are a few things that need to be said about the Hero's Journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it is not a writing tool, it is an analysis tool, hence its inherent ambiguity. If you're trying to write a HJ story, you're doing it wrong. You're really thinking about the Writer's Journey or the Hollywood Formula. HJ is not paint by numbers, contrary to popular belief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, there is no Post HJ story. There is merely one HJ followed by another. The Call is a problem that needs solving. The Elixer and the Master of Both Worlds is the solution and its application. If a story ends on Apotheosis, it is either incomplete or is really a Return. Both the solution and its application can outlive the one who discovers it. And failure is always an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, Gurren Lagann is a Reconstruction of a Deconstruction of a time honored story structure common to Japanese Anime. The Gaint Robot Story popularized by Gundam, parodied by Macross, and Deconstructed by Evangelion. In all its forms, it is classic HJ, including the Master bit where the hero leaves his power behind to return to a normal life; or become his true self, ala OO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, the HJ takes different forms depending on one's social setting and age. The fact that death is more probable as one gets older doesn't mean there's any more inherent Apotheosis, or that the story can end prematurely without being poorly written. The fact that most HJ stories deal with maturity speaks more of its typical Target Audience rather than its intent or structure. The fact that the &quot;Post&quot; HJ story appears when ending a series speaks more of the intent of the author than the intent of the tool, and is often yet another case of Raising the Stakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23265" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T10:38:58.903" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26366" CreationDate="2017-01-29T10:39:39.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add some information in addition to what's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, it is commonplace to use italics to convey onomatopoeic sounds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rock fell down with a &lt;em&gt;crash&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With a deafening &lt;em&gt;whack&lt;/em&gt;, the saucepan man was hit over the head by his saucepan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I wouldn't use it for &lt;strong&gt;verbs&lt;/strong&gt; that imply &lt;strong&gt;sound.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The saucepan man grunted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The saucepan man was cold, and he sniffed every two seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise you not to use things like *sniff or (sniff) because you are writing a blog, and not chatting in an online game :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="15545" LastEditDate="2017-01-29T11:58:49.363" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T11:58:49.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26294" CreationDate="2017-01-29T11:03:45.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Novels that are not Graphic Novels have only two forms of communication: Dialogue and Description. Anime has Video and Audio. Any communication not shared between two forms of Media is a potential loss of information. In some situations a description fails to represent a visual image accurately without adding or removing detail. This is common to Voice Acting as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're really asking is what makes an Adaptation consistent or inconsistent, as good or better than. And that depends entirely on the work being adapted. Sometimes the best answer is to leave it be, whereas some works don't really leverage the distinctions of their Mediam and were always better off elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23265" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T11:03:45.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26335" CreationDate="2017-01-29T13:07:39.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sensing two structural problems. So let's tackle those first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For any story you work on, you should have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An outline of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In your outline, you should know, chapter by chapter, what is going on. This can be as detailed or as vague as you want, but to your eyes it should be a play-by-play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Character bios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every character that appears (though more detailed for protagonists and somewhat less for main supporting characters) should be described. Their personality (psychology), their look (biology), their flaws, and their strengths. Everything should be described, even if it's as simple as (looks like 'Neo' from the Matrix).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A reference bible!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Building on the previous point, you should have some kind of documentation describing everything in your book. From the scene locations, to the items being used. This can be as vague as &quot;Scene location: rural America&quot;, to as detailed as &quot;Three mahogany trees lined up in the back yard, interspersed with herbs and vegetable gardens&quot;. The more fantastical the setting (ie. Sci-Fi, Fantasy, or even historically accurate) the more accurate you need to be with your details. So if you describe or refer to something in your book, you need to get the details right every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, having said that. I would have to agree with the other answer(er)s, mostly. If you feel you've improved as a writer, then rewriting might make more sense. If you feel the story itself can improve with a rewrite, then this shouldn't be a discussion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Don't toss the old, though! Keep it as reference material.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21105" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T13:07:39.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24915" CreationDate="2017-01-29T13:55:27.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well I would say that you should make people want to read the book.Normally I would say follow your instinct but if that would make people not want to read it then I say listen to the public. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22999" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T13:55:27.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-29T19:09:33.467" Score="16" ViewCount="1981" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently noticed in my latest &lt;strike&gt;masterpiece&lt;/strike&gt; novel there is quite a lot of things happening by chance. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main character just happens to pass by an old, frail warrior who can direct him to where he needs to go to advance the plot. He meets this warrior while being unable to sleep and wanting to go and do something, get some exercise and air to help sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I can totally identify with my main character. If you need to go to bed and you won't sleep, the best way to get yourself to sleep is to tire yourself so much you can't do anything &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; sleep. In a &lt;strong&gt;huge amount&lt;/strong&gt; of my works there is a common theme of my characters being unable to sleep, going out for a stroll and discovering something &lt;strong&gt;jolly spiffing!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two assassins sent out to become Kingkillers just happen to pass by a very important plot item in the middle of the road. Wow, a chart of everyone who has ever sinned! It's totally normal to just find that lying around, totally not unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well actually with that one the reasons the Chart of Sinners is there is actually very extensive. It's got a reason for how it's just lying on the pavement (not a stupid backstory, it's a disaster that actually happens within the book) but I was wondering if it was bad storytelling to just have them come across it, just like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aiming not to limit this question to just my story, so here we go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it bad storytelling to have something notable to the plot happen by complete chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should everything have a really good reason for being that way? Should nothing happen by chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to add to my examples. That Chart of Sinners could have appeared at &lt;strong&gt;any location in the entire world&lt;/strong&gt;. The place it was located was 100% random for a very good, plot centric reason.I still see that as chance though. It was total chance that the assassins would have come across it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add a little note about my thing where the guy just happens to come across a character important to the development of the plot show up at completely a random time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it bad to have something that opens a &lt;strong&gt;massive&lt;/strong&gt; plot point gateway happen totally by chance? For example, my guy discovering a frail warrior who knows how to get somewhere which will advance the plot (though the frail warrior kills himself a few minutes after meeting him due to grief).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-06-06T17:51:28.587" Title="Is it bad storytelling to have things happen by complete chance?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|plot|structure|cliches|" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26377" CreationDate="2017-01-29T19:25:21.550" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chance is important and storytellers rely on it. However, too much chance and the audience just doesn't believe it. If it seems too coincidental, it probably is. As a reader I must believe that something is possible or even probable. Otherwise, there is a suspension of disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the idea of fate is used to mitigate straight chance -- you are the seventh son of a seventh son and therefore you are heir to the amulet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T19:25:21.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26141" CreationDate="2017-01-29T20:23:55.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to hide information, you could always do this though an image. I've seen authors of mystery novels use inserts centered on the page that are designed to look like letters. In terms of publishing, it shouldn't be an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example of this is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8aipGztveR0/Ua9lGofCngI/AAAAAAAAACI/f5Gzao2k6os/s1600/instructions+ember.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Book of Ember&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23270" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T20:23:55.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24851" CreationDate="2017-01-29T23:00:26.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The style I see most often in technical writing is that UI labels, like the names of menus, are bold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;strong&gt;File&lt;/strong&gt; menu, choose &lt;strong&gt;Save&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Click the &lt;strong&gt;Submit&lt;/strong&gt; button.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Variable text is usually italic, but this comes up more for command-line interfaces than GUIs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;git checkout -b &lt;em&gt;branch-name&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In writing about a GUI you're more likely to &lt;em&gt;describe&lt;/em&gt; what's needed, which doesn't require styling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;Path&lt;/strong&gt; field, type the name of the top-level directory for the new project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Microsoft Style Guide calls for bold for GUI labels and italics for variables, as I've used them here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T23:00:26.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26377" CreationDate="2017-01-29T23:09:29.780" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @S.Mitchell about chance being a major part of authorship in writing. It's &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; things can happen by chance. If it didn't happen at all, then what kind of writing would that be? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it more believable, you need to cleverly introduce the plot point. You state the &quot;Chart of Sinners&quot; is found in the middle of the road. Sure, this could happen ... but what are the chances this chart would remain in the middle of the road for any length of time without someone else noticing it? Or maybe being in the middle of the road it would get trampled and destroyed before it is noticed by the two assassins. If you plan your &quot;chance&quot; things better, it doesn't look as though it was done by chance, but more by design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you introduce the plot point, do it by subtlety. If you are subtle in how you introduce it, the reader may understand it will be important later on in the writing, but you won't be giving anything away. Then when you get to the point where the point is made, the reader has the &quot;ah-ha&quot; moment where they realize it, which makes the story that much richer and draws them in further. There is a fine line, however, between making it too subtle and stuffing it down the reader's throat. If you make it too subtle, the reader won't pick up on it, so the chance for the &quot;ah-ha&quot; moment is lost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major point here is if you plan the &quot;chance happening&quot; it won't bother the reader so much when they are reading it. You can get away with it far more readily and the reader will enjoy it all the more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22808" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T23:09:29.780" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26377" CreationDate="2017-01-30T00:36:27.910" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, it's important that the outcome&amp;thinsp;—&amp;thinsp;good or bad&amp;thinsp;—&amp;thinsp;follow from the main character's actions. If the outcome is determined by chance or randomness or coincidence, it's less likely to feel satisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a certain amount of coincidence is fine if it complicates the main character's problems. But even there, an abundance of chance can make the story feel arbitrary. (Sometimes you can make arbitrariness work, if the character's response to the arbitrariness illustrates something coherent about the character.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My general rule of thumb: &lt;strong&gt;Coincidence can make things worse for the main character, but never better.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-01-30T07:52:46.340" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T07:52:46.340" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26377" CreationDate="2017-01-30T01:29:17.773" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Complete&lt;/em&gt; chance? Yes. That's a form of &lt;em&gt;deus ex machina,&lt;/em&gt; where something outside the hero/ine's actions swoops in at the end to save the day. If something arbitrary outside the plot advances it without the hero's actions, that's poor storytelling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you fix that? You already did:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well actually with that one the reasons the Chart of Sinners is there is actually very extensive. It's got a reason for how it's just lying on the pavement (not a stupid backstory, it's a disaster that actually happens within the book) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then make sure that the reader &lt;em&gt;learns&lt;/em&gt; those reasons. My instinct would be to say &quot;do it by the midpoint of the book,&quot; unless there's a plot-related reason why you need to wait until near the end to reveal it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &quot;just happens to encounter Old Wise Dude,&quot; and similar Oh Gosh Coincidences, do the same thing: &lt;em&gt;create&lt;/em&gt; a reason or backstory. The Old Wise Dude was told a prophecy in his youth that he needed to be in that spot on that day. The MacGuffin is sent to the hero by someone whom the hero doesn't encounter until the one-third point. The heroine's parents have been in touch with the headmistress of the mage school since she was born, and the headmistress has just been waiting for her Nth birthday to send an acceptance letter. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside forces can act to present the hero with the opportunity to kick off the plot, and make it &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; like chance, but the reader has to learn later that it was in fact engineered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T01:29:17.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26377" CreationDate="2017-01-30T03:08:19.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing inherently wrong with chance occurrences, in my opinion.  Coincidences happen frequently in real life, after all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, what happens by chance shouldn't necessarily be dictated by chance.  I believe it's the individual writer's obligation to decide how to deal with this.  Some important plot elements, for example, might follow from a chain of logical consequences.  This won't be some dictated by chance, but guided by a series of deductions based on prior events.  As one commenter said, there should be a degree of subtlety here.  But, some events might naturally be attributed to chance.  Somebody might be &quot;the chosen one&quot; simply because this person was in the right place at the right time.  There might be a reason for this - you might decide that there's no special reason for the protagonist to fulfill the obligation set forth upon him other than his presence in a specific location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about plot events in this way, I believe you'll find a balance between coincidence and consequence.  If you find too many things occurring by chance, it might be time to think about your story progression and analyze the story's chain of events.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22815" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T03:08:19.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26377" CreationDate="2017-01-30T06:54:23.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Things happen by chance all the time in the real world. It is perfectly acceptable to make even a key plot element be due to chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, your world should not be totally driven by chance occurrences. At some point, such a world fails to validate the choices of the protagonist. The reader may start to wonder why the protagonist would deliberately attempt any undertaking when the results clearly don't come from planning and forethought but from chance alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23180" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T06:54:23.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26377" CreationDate="2017-01-30T14:08:55.997" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you kidding me? Things are &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; just happening by chance. Not in the real world. What we commonly refer to as &lt;em&gt;coincidence&lt;/em&gt;, is a result of a sequence of events of which we are either not aware, or too lazy to think hard enough to figure out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the owner of your world, you have the luxury of &lt;em&gt;knowing everything you wish to know&lt;/em&gt;, simply because you invented it. Whether to simply show what led to something happening, present that chain of events as a dramatic revelation, or let the reader figure it out by themselves is up to you, but as the author, you must know the logic behind the events in your story, otherwise (as it was stated many times on this page) the readers will eventually start questioning the quality of the fabric of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T14:08:55.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26377" CreationDate="2017-01-30T16:01:44.573" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&#xA;Actions in a novel are always the result of a character's choice and a manifestation of his will. Also, his actions should be &quot;necessary&quot; and compelled, i.e. he should not have other options. The fact that he accidentally meets a frail warrior is not bad per se, but it's extremely weak: why would he pay attention to him in the first place? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;External causes too are the result of external forces. The ultimate force may be Destiny, or Fate, or God, but there should always be a chain of consequences in place. Even if your story is about randomness and casual events, that should be clearly stated as a main legit force acting in your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T16:01:44.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26324" CreationDate="2017-01-30T21:06:12.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't a full answer, just some thoughts and ideas that may help you make a decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, I often use different PoVs when writing. Do keep in mind that I prefer narrators that are limited to the knowledge (and only have mind access) to one single character. In that sense, adding chapters with different PoVs is useful because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It allows the reader to learn things the character has no knowledge about  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Better understand the personality and motivations of other characters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I typically have one or two main characters (A and B) and several secundary (C, D, E, F). Let's imagine one main character for an example. I can have chapters that go: A - A - C - A - D - A - A - D - A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I particularly enjoy setting a secondary character as bitchy and then getting inside their mind and revealing their human motivation, thus making them less bitchy while cutting down on the righteousness of the main character. (Because, let's face it, we often see people around us almost as evil antagonists when in reality they believe they've got lots of good reasons to get on our case. And sometimes they actually do.) It's also a good way of explaining misunderstandings (A talks to B on the phone in one chapter, then in the next C is telling D about this conversation he overheard and what he concluded was happening).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also a great strategy to create tension if you have two or three characters running around eachother to achieve something (e.g. A is having second thoughts about going out with B, C is getting ready to break into A's house, B is eagerly getting ready for the date when A phones to call it off (cue reaction), C approaches the house, ...). Although in this case, short chapters or sections within a chapter work best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I do is have lots of people be present for certain plot points so then I have to decide which character PoV would most benefit the reader. Sometimes I'll have an event start with a character's PoV then create a pause that allows me to skip to another character PoV. Each are experiencing the same event but can give wildly different interpretations (say: A is a romantic girl loving her sweet sixteen party and the attention her soon-to-be boyfriend (let's call him B) is lavishing on her; while C, apparently partying normally with his friends, is cynically seeing B making cold moves to seduce A. Later on we may even find out B is honestly fond of A.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your description, I get the impression A and B are the protagonists and C and D can make do with less time under the limelight. I wouldn't start off with four chapters, four PoVs. I'd try to have A - A - B or A - B - B. This would avoid the dizzying effect of getting inside a new character with every chapter. It also allows the reader to settle before jumping to other PoVs. That way you have the basic PoV you always come back to and the others that pop up are just 'voices on the side', if you will. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what, do make sure their voices &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; clearly different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T21:06:12.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26377" CreationDate="2017-01-30T22:22:43.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deus ex machina means &quot;god from the machine&quot; which to my knowledge historically comes from ancient plays where the conflict was resolved by the lowering of a deity from an apparatus to save the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Audiences hated it then, they still hate it now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few pointers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;good things can't just happen by chance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if a good thing happens by chance... (if it's too good to be true...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bad things &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; happen by chance, additional conflict against the MC elevates the story (to an extent)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;characters can &quot;award&quot; themselves a good thing to happen to them by prior work to achieve it, at least that way we're like &quot;well his work earlier paid off...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;small positive things can happen by chance, your characters can make that small thing roll until it becomes a big positive thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23065" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T22:22:43.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26377" CreationDate="2017-01-30T22:59:00.377" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To have everything happen by compete luck or chance would be a bit off putting for the skeptical.  Instead of assassins happen to randomly find the list, maybe they were tailing the list while it was in transit and due to the said accident, happened to be laying in the road.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things need to happen for a reason.  Everything has a reason behind it, even if it isn't known at the time.  Something causes something to be in that place at that moment.  One of my favorite quotes &lt;em&gt;&quot;Fortune favors the prepared mind.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; - Dr. Louis Pasteur.  This is very profound because to many people, those who have good luck seem to just have everything handed to them by luck or chance.  In reality, this person spent many hours preparing and placing themselves in the right moment at the right time that would ultimately maximize their chances of something desired to happen.  So good fortune, in turn, follows those who are prepared for it to happen.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to look at it would be dating.  If a guy or girl for that matter, put themselves in a place where every weekend they are constantly meeting singles, they will eventually find someone to go out with.  As an outsider, you may have never seen this guy before and wonder how people can just go out and get a date like it is so easy.  In actuality, this guy or girl has been going to various events every weekend for a year learning how to properly interact so that when the right chance came, he/she was able to take it.  Though it looked like random chance to you, they put in a lot of work for that moment to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the meeting of the frail warrior was a bit of chance.  However, if this character happens to always go for a nightly stroll to help him sleep at the same time, then one night notices this warrior sitting by a tree, it would no longer be skeptical as this walk wasn't by chance but rather out of habit.  He was prepared for this moment because it was a walk he did nightly that maximized his chances of meeting people whom he would have never met had he never gone on this nightly walk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point being, there is the ability to add random chance, but it would be calculated random chance in that, the meetings were random but out of preparation for the random meeting/event to happen.  If you are trying to please the skeptics, there needs to be a reasoning and not just fairy tale hand waving coincidence.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T22:59:00.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26392" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-30T23:06:34.377" Score="10" ViewCount="932" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm less than ten thousand words into a piece of fanfiction I'm writing, and I have significantly more than that in notes. Such areas covered in separate documents are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General world-building, environmental/culture aspects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General character notes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General conflict&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First attempt at combining notes for general reference&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Timeline of events - YEAR | MONTH | DATE | TIME&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specific conflict (grooming of MC by another character, key moments, revelations etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Another&lt;/em&gt; attempt at combining notes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worst still, I am constantly taking notes and find myself fighting the desire to spawn another hellish document for other aspects of my story. The world I'm writing for (Harry Potter) is so vast and unexplored that I could spawn novels from tangents of my main story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have pruned my notes. I know the key point of my story, what I want to achieve, what I want the reader to take away - but the notes are unwieldy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you any tips on how I can manage these things? So far I'm writing in Notepad for general note taking and transferring that to MS Word organised notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any help you can provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23065" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T17:58:56.847" Title="How to manage extensive notes?" Tags="|creative-writing|fantasy|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26392" CreationDate="2017-01-30T23:16:10.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, I love folders.  I can't get enough of em.  I would create a folder titled WritingProjects, and then within create a folder called FanFiction.  Within there, what ever the overall project name you want for your individual project.  Within those project folders you can create separate folders such as World building, Characters, Plot, what ever note categories you may have for this specific project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would now allow you to more easily go to the desired notes without having to sift through 20 documents of world building to get to the 1 you need for character.  You can just go right to the character.  Even better, you can have multiple instances of file explorer open so that you can have all 3 folders open at once and just switch to the folder you need.  As you work through the story, you can combine documents, even delete documents as they are no longer needed.    Maybe even create a new folder for documents that are no longer needed but instead of deleting it and losing those notes, you have them archived just in case you realized, you actually did need something still.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, I personally love folders.  You know that when you open up the world building folder, everything in there will be related to world building.  Of course, if you need to further sub categorize, you can create folders as needed.  Say within world building you have a folder for environment, one for culture, one for animals/plants and so on.  Just depends on how organized/OCD you want to get with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be honest, this might seem like a hassle to some with having so many folders to go in and out of, but this is how my brain works the best when it comes to organizing.  I compartmentalize everything down to pretty specific categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-01-30T23:23:22.373" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T23:23:22.373" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26392" CreationDate="2017-01-30T23:24:19.050" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a combination of tools:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;for timelines, I use &lt;strong&gt;Aeon Timeline&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It's a paid software but it works well and there are developments still being wrought which should make it even better. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;for organising ideas, networks, processes, hierarchies and confusing relationships between characters, I use &lt;strong&gt;yEd&lt;/strong&gt; (freeware).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;for organising family trees and large bodies of people which connect either by blood or not throughout several generations, I use &lt;strong&gt;Gramps&lt;/strong&gt; (freeware; powerful genealogy software).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;for creating maps (of countries, cities, streets, houses... even scenes, to keep track of who is where), I use &lt;strong&gt;CC3&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It's a paid bunch of software products. Worthwhile if you need to visualise what you're writing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;for organising notes in almost a wiki-like fashion and bring together all my info and notes (including images exported from the previous software programmes), I use &lt;strong&gt;Realm Works&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It's a software programme and online service mostly directed at RPG players, but I've been using it to keep my novels (historical fiction, with a crazy amount of people, plots, locations, specific objects, maps, terminology... all the while having to keep track of what is attestedly historical, likely historical, long time legend and my own decisions). I don't know how I'd manage without it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also easy to import word and pdf stuff into this huge database, which allows for linking anything you wish and establish relationships between characters. One weak point is that you can't print anything out of it just yet, but it's a work in process. They'll get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T23:24:19.050" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18591" CreationDate="2017-01-31T00:00:51.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am 10 years old and I have published my own book. Not saying that has anything to do with you but I am saying you do have the possibility:) My novel is called &quot;The Twelfth Birthday&quot; just in case you want to look it up. Believe in yourself. Your age has nothing to do with doing what you love:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23283" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T00:00:51.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18502" CreationDate="2017-01-31T00:58:47.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrivener has a feature, called Scratch Pad:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mac version: Window &gt; Show Scratch Pad.&#xA;Windows version: Tools &gt; Scratch Pad&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a stand-alone repository of text notes, shared between the projects, which you can send to any of them: import as a subdocument or attach to any existing document of the selected project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-01-31T13:59:14.450" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T13:59:14.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26377" CreationDate="2017-01-31T01:56:58.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, the question is &quot;How much chance can we have in a book without losing a sense of reality?&quot; (And yes, even a most imaginative fantasy book can be perceived as totally realistic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can leave very much to a chance if your book is humorous or surreal, but for a realistic plot development, there are certain limits. In a &quot;serious&quot; fantasy, every chance encounter should have some kind of serious explanation. On the other hand, in a fairy tale it's perfectly normal for a protagonist to meet people, magical creatures and find artifacts that will turn out to be instrumental in his/her quest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would say, you should either cut down (or explain) some chance encounters, or make it clear to the reader from the very beginning of your book that anything may (and will) happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T01:56:58.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26392" CreationDate="2017-01-31T02:33:19.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone else has thrown in their two bits, so I'm going to try mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I completely understand the problem of too much notes (currently I have over fifty documents detailing different notes and like three pages of the fic itself. World-building/exploring before narrative, but I digress) and I have to agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26393/10703&quot;&gt;ggiaquin&lt;/a&gt; that folders will help with this quite a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one thing that I consider to be my saving grace in the almost year of note building that I have completed, is having a single master reference document. This document lists off all of your other docs in a Bullet List fashion. The bullets can show your folders and your documents so you know what documents are where and what each of them entail. Here's an example from my Master doc (I omitted the contents of the Picture References folders because that's a lot of bullets):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fucOX.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fucOX.png&quot; alt=&quot;Because formatting the text proper is hard&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, like shown in the picture. Google docs helps keep everything in one place and you can access it anywhere (also, much less fallible than a USB).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T02:33:19.387" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18185" CreationDate="2017-01-31T02:56:59.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fictionpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FictionPress&lt;/a&gt;. It has rules against how 'smutty' something can be so things aren't supposed to get too steamy, and it redirects any fan-fiction to the sister site &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fanfiction.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FanFiction.net&lt;/a&gt; keeping FictionPress (mostly) fan-fiction free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23286" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T02:56:59.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26403" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-31T03:50:06.270" Score="1" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in writing essays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read Emerson's essays, I see that he has a unique style of writing. The quality of prose is consistently maintained across the essays. I write very pedestrian prose. Though I am able to convey ideas, the beauty of expression and the literary flourish is missing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) What is the best way to improve the quality of my prose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If the answer to the above question is to read a lot of essays, how should I read them? Should I read actively, dissecting every sentence, and analysing it? Or should I just read and expect it do wonders to my writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23288" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-01-31T21:49:05.633" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T18:18:16.173" Title="How do I develop my skill at writing essays?" Tags="|creative-writing|non-fiction|essay|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26403" CreationDate="2017-01-31T05:15:59.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) If the answer to the above question is to read a lot of essays, how should I read them? Should I read actively, dissecting every sentence, and analysing it? Or should I just read and expect it do wonders to my writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both, I should say. First read just for your enjoyment. Afterwards analyse the whole and dissect a few sentences (every single one seems a bit excessive). Make sure to look for what you particularly enjoy in the essay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then read your own essays and identify what you like and dislike about them. See how they compare to the ones you enjoy: use of figures of speech, organisation of ideas, etc. Note that you shouldn't be trying to immitate the master, as you compare your work to his, but to see how both use the techniques above. It is important to you find your own voice and style, but that does not mean you cannot learn techniques from this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) What is the best way to improve the quality of my prose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read and analyse what you've read. But mostly read. A lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T05:15:59.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-31T06:20:05.290" Score="2" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;NOTE: I've heavily rephrased the original question in a last attempt to clarify it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background to the question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While studying Portuguese literature in secondary school, one learns several rhetorical devices, which include figures of speech and other devices. Within these 'other devices', one learns the 'double adverbiation' and the 'triple adverbiation' (to my knowledge, the term 'adverbiation' doesn't exist in English). These devices consist in using two / three adverbs in a row. The phrase typically includes an asyndeton and can further include a gradation. It was famously used by the Portuguese writer Eça de Queirós, in the 19th century, and it is yet to lose its rhetorical punch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When students are requested to write short fictional or non-fictional texts, they are often encouraged (if they have a good teacher) to use at least a few rhetorical devices, whether figures or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of the double and triple adverbiation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John breathed deeply, voluptuosly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Annabel smiled rigidly, frigidly, listlessly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personaly use adverbiation while writing in Portuguese. When I started writing in English, I found the triple adverbiation sounded odd, but kept using the double one. My beta at the time (no literature studies or knowledge of rhetorical devices besides the eventual 'comparison' and 'repetition of x') told me straight off not to use two adverbs in a row (and added the clichéd 'avoid adverbs as much as possible'). She said it would always sound wrong to have two -ly ending adverbs put together. Point taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I may write...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Annabel speared the meat, fast and relentlessly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But never...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Annabel speared the meat, quickly and relentlessly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another curiosity is that when I do use double adverbiation in English, the asyndeton often seems to disrupt the rhythm of the phrase, whereas it would strengthen the rhythm of a Portuguese sentence. So, again, the double adverbiation, when used in English, has different characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of non-native English speakers who try their hand at writing a novel in English. Assuming that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they have a good control over rhetorical devices as they learnt them in their native language&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they are fluent speakers of English (even if some idioms and some advanced vocabulary may still elude them)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they consciously use rhetorical devices in their English writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there at least one specific rhetorical device in any language other than Portuguese that is not (usually) used in the English language?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not looking for solutions, since solutions are simply to, first, be aware of the pitfall and, secondly, get an &lt;em&gt;English&lt;/em&gt; book explaining rhetorical devices and go through each one of them analysing the examples to see how they are similar and/or different to one's native language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am looking for is at least one example as the triple adverbiation from other languages that not Portuguese so that I can use them in my 'writers' group' in order to widen one's cultural horizons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T14:48:57.607" Title="Language specific rhetorical devices and their influence on non-English native writers" Tags="|style|figures-of-speech|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="21" ClosedDate="2017-02-02T09:37:58.230" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26392" CreationDate="2017-01-31T17:00:01.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try OneNote by Microsoft. As far as I know it is free. I use it to collect together a large number of notes for work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You open a new notebook and give a section a heading. For each section you then add as many pages as you want. Pages can be any length. For me, it is a really clear way to organise things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can sync your notebooks across various devices, though I prefer just one copy on my memory stick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cut and paste something from the internet, the address is automatically included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various other features, but I don't need to use them.&#xA;Formatting is a little limited because you can't use tabs, etc. (they automatically make tables), but of course things like bold are easily accessible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T17:00:01.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26409" CreationDate="2017-01-31T19:00:47.507" Score="6" ViewCount="1297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been doing some research into twists, and after not knowing how to create one, I'm starting to get a handle on them. Unfortunately, now I'm at the other end of the spectrum, and wondering if I can have too &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; twists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt; To understand where I'm coming from, you have to know that I plan and develop my novels &lt;em&gt;extensively&lt;/em&gt; before writing a single word. I know every little turn of the plot, every scene down to the dialogue said. &lt;em&gt;Then&lt;/em&gt; I write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating novels this way allows me to look at the whole plot at once. Mark Baker's (now displayed as 'user16226') answer on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/25921/how-can-i-get-in-the-habit-of-writing-with-twists&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; has introduced me to the concept of drifting off course so that I can &lt;em&gt;twist&lt;/em&gt; back to the story. This means I just look at what I need for the story, then find a way to drift away from it so that I can twist to it. Yes! Twists abound!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm now realizing that doing that is going to yield a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of twists, and I'm wondering if there is any problem with that. I want very much to simply say that the more twists the better, and here's why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently finished reading the &lt;em&gt;SYLO Chronicles&lt;/em&gt;, by D. J. MacHale. Excellent books, if a little lacking in the area of character development. What made them so great though was the unending twists. The entire setting was a mystery, and every chapter something changes, either making less sense, or making more sense in the wrong direction. Even the final chapter, after the main conflict was all over, was a twist simply through the writing (you'll have to read it; I won't spoil it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, I loved those books. Nothing was certain, there were twists everywhere, and I loved it. However, I realize that might not apply to all people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Is there anything wrong with including a large number of twists? I realize twists aren't for everybody. I know that. What I'm wondering is if there are any actual red flags concerning the number of twists to include.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="44381" LastEditDate="2020-10-23T17:21:26.577" LastActivityDate="2020-10-23T17:21:26.577" Title="Is including a large number of twists a bad thing?" Tags="|fiction|plot|planning|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26407" CreationDate="2017-01-31T19:15:29.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Simple answer. If it makes sense to the reader and people want to read on, do what you want with the plot. Twists can add a great deal to a novel. If you can keep thinking of them and the reader believes in them, include them. Of course people have different preferences, but does a reader want to know exactly what is going to happen, or does he/she want to be surprised?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T19:15:29.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26407" CreationDate="2017-01-31T20:29:33.560" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Readers of popular fiction (usually) want a clear protagonist, a clear goal, and a clear path of the protagonist to that goal. Readers also want the protagonist to struggle for his goal, so that when he achieves it, this achievement will feel deserved and satisfying to the reader. The purpose of twists is to increase the hero's struggle, to raise the suspense, and to make the story generally less predictable and boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So twists are a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when the protagonist no longer progresses towards his goal but is stuck in an endless succession of twists that keep him from achieving anything at all; or when we read more about the characters that cause the twists than about who we thought was the protagonist; or when we no longer know what end the novel aims for – then you are overdoing it with twists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, every twist must only distract the hero for a certain time and then help him forward. After a twist, the hero mustn't return to where he was before, but &quot;solving&quot; or &quot;overcoming&quot; the twist must provide him with a means to progress, either toward his goal or in his development as a person (which in turn helps him toward his goal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I assume you write popular fiction for my answer. In literary or experimental writing there are no rules or conventions.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T20:29:33.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26403" CreationDate="2017-01-31T20:33:52.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is the same to all questions about improving your craft, and that is: &lt;strong&gt;Practice.&lt;/strong&gt; Reading won't make you a good author, only writing will. What you should do is &lt;em&gt;analyse and dissect your own mistakes&lt;/em&gt; and do better next time. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Write.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T20:33:52.017" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26411" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26414" CreationDate="2017-01-31T22:08:51.993" Score="4" ViewCount="30320" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the story I'm writing, I want to include a character who is a free radical. At some points she helps the main group and at some points she hinders them. She may even end up joining the main group if events lead to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, since she isn't really entirely an antagonist nor a protagonist, is there a third category that she would fall in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10703" LastActivityDate="2022-02-22T17:12:00.350" Title="What do you call someone who is neither/both an antagonist and a protagonist?" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26377" CreationDate="2017-01-31T22:23:31.317" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;At extremes: yes, relying on &quot;chance&quot; as a plot device can be very unsatisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader knows that &quot;chance&quot; isn't really a matter of luck; instead, it's the author manipulating events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader also knows they need to suspend disbelief -- so some level of luck and happenstance and implausibility is to be expected. But too &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; of it, or having chance play too central a role, and the story can feel arbitrary, forced, and unsatisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Chance as premise is fine; chance as plot development is trickier.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, chance &lt;em&gt;as part of the story premise&lt;/em&gt; is not a major issue. A chance occurrence as an inciting event is fine -- a lot of stories get their start when chance events shake up &quot;what was &lt;em&gt;supposed&lt;/em&gt; to happen.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider, for example, &lt;em&gt;A Wizard Of Oz&lt;/em&gt;. Dorothy and her house &lt;em&gt;just happen&lt;/em&gt; to be swept up in a hurricane and dropped on the Wicked Witch of the East. That's the event that gets the whole story going. But imagine what a dull story it would be if she got all the way up to the Wicked Witch of the West, and right when she got there, a hurricane &lt;em&gt;just happened&lt;/em&gt; to drop a house on &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; witch as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's precisely the same coincidence. Same event. Same level of plausibility. But as a premise, it works just fine; while as a development mid-story, it just stops the story's momentum and feels arbitrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When something &lt;em&gt;looks&lt;/em&gt; implausible, but is justified, acknowledge its implausibility.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you have some information management to do -- something &lt;em&gt;seems&lt;/em&gt; like an unlikely coincidence, but actually it's got a perfectly reasonable justification. The problem is, from the POV of the character the coincidence is happening to, &lt;em&gt;they don't know&lt;/em&gt; that there's a good reason. That makes it hard to win reader trust -- even if it's just &quot;Trust me, there's a good explanation for this, which you'll discover later on.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that can help is to &lt;em&gt;acknowledge&lt;/em&gt; the implausibility as a conundrum to be solved. Sometimes it's important to signal to the reader &quot;Yes, this &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; weird, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; implausible. Don't worry; it'll make sense later. I'm not just careless or messing with you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turn the implausibility (which the reader might be annoyed at) into a mystery (which the reader is looking forward to seeing solved), and you'll have an easier time with this category of &quot;coincidences.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Chance is better for complications than it is for solutions.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, it's easier to accept coincidences that make things &lt;em&gt;harder&lt;/em&gt; and more complicated, than coincidences that make things easier and more straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it's because we feel the author is making life easy on themselves, sparing themselves from tighter plotting. Maybe it's because we believe in Murphy's Law, whereas miraculous boons and solutions rarely fall into our laps. But it's a helpful tool. It might &lt;em&gt;technically&lt;/em&gt; be a coincidence, but if you can make it feel like a moment of &quot;I &lt;em&gt;KNEW&lt;/em&gt; something was going to go wrong,&quot; or &quot;Uh oh, that's going to MESS THINGS UP,&quot; you can often ride that feeling of &quot;narrative correctness&quot; and the implausibility will be excused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flip side of this is, &lt;em&gt;avoid&lt;/em&gt; letting &lt;em&gt;solutions&lt;/em&gt; occur by happenstance. The dramatic arc before a solution is one of tension -- &quot;how are they going to get off this; how are they gonna pull this one off?&quot; Coincidence is an extremely unsatisfying resolution to that tension; avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Chance can be made less implausible by groundwork and foreshadowing.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the &quot;easy&quot; answer to a criticism of implausible coincidence is &quot;Don't do it,&quot; very often this is solvable. If you can shore up your coincidence and make it feel less coincidental, more a natural consequence of preceding events, the problem often goes away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do groundwork by setting things in motion &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the coincidence happens. You set down a trail of dominoes leading to your coincidence, and knock the first one over &lt;em&gt;early&lt;/em&gt; in the story; now it's part of the premise and the coincidence feels minor and unremarkable. But then you have another consequence follow, and another -- these feel perfectly plausible, not coincidental at all -- until finally you arrive at the coincidence you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; wanted, and it flows flawlessly from what you've already set up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foreshadowing is very similar, but it's more in hints and narrative conventions than in concrete facts. Start making the reader &lt;em&gt;suspect&lt;/em&gt; that something is going to be complicated, or that a miraculous solution is close at hand, if only they knew what it is. Hint that someone may do something rash, or have unexpected resources, or be doomed to a tragic death. &lt;em&gt;Whatever&lt;/em&gt; it is that you foreshadow, it makes the coincidence feel like something that was a long time coming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. All the best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2018-06-03T06:03:50.013" LastActivityDate="2018-06-03T06:03:50.013" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26377" CreationDate="2017-01-31T22:44:27.730" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Life is full of chance occurrences. In many ways, though, our appetite for story is based on our appetite for a more logical, predictable world than we actually live in. We want stories to have the logic that the real world does not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But chance can be made logical simply by foreshadowing. If a picnic is going to be ruined by rain at a critical moment, the reader does not feel cheated by this chance occurrence if earlier a character observed clouds on the horizon or heard a weather forecast predicting a chance of rain. A gun that jams at the critical juncture does not make the reader feel cheated if previously characters have discussed how this gun jams sometimes or a character is scolded for not cleaning their gun properly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once saw Bernard Cornwell speaking at the Historical Novel Society Conference and he talked about going back and putting doors in wall. If we was going to have Sharpe run down an alley and escape the French through the back door of a tavern, he had to go back and have him walk through that door a few chapter's earlier. Without the foreshadowing, it is dumb luck. With the foreshadowing, it is part of the world and therefore legitimate when it comes in handy for escape. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is obviously possible to take this too far, or to use it too often. And it is obviously unsatisfactory if luck, no matter how foreshadowed, gets the protagonist out of having to face their moment of moral crisis. They have to face it, for that it the heart of the story arc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on the other hand, in order to force the protagonist towards that moment, it is often necessary to herd them into a box canyon through a series of accidents, because in real life they would naturally find ways to avoid the climactic moment. Chance, then, is how you bring your protagonist, kicking and screaming, to their moment of truth. And as long as the chance (good or bad) that brings them there is appropriately foreshadowed, the reader will not feel you have cheated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T22:44:27.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26411" CreationDate="2017-01-31T22:47:26.310" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In classical theory, this character is known as the trickster. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster&lt;/a&gt; They are the chaotic character. They create problem for the protagonist because they cannot be relied on, but nor are the necessarily an enemy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T22:47:26.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26405" CreationDate="2017-01-31T23:04:32.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;English does not have an allergy to adverbs. Bad writing teachers sometimes tell their students not to use adverbs, perhaps because they are not skilled enough to teach them to use them well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different cultures go through different stylistic periods. These are cultural phenomena more than linguistic. It is hard to say whether the difference you perceive between English and Portuguese is a linguistic one, a stylistic one, or perhaps simply one of idiom. Very often what readers identify as clumsy constructions as simply unidiomatic. They don't point to a general rule about such construction in general, only to the principle that one should write idiomatically. Idiom is one of the hardest things to learn in a language, so writing in a second language may well be not idiomatic even when it is completely fluent in every other way.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, we should be very hesitant to add to the current stock of prohibitions in the lists of advice given to English writers. Most of the stupid things said about writing are simplistic prohibitions, every one of which can be disproven by examples from great writers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, you have to gain idiomatic fluency in both the language and culture you are writing for, and no list of simplistic prohibitions is going to get you there. It is not about memorizing a list of what not to do, but about developing an innate sense of what to do. That only comes through immersion in the culture and an attentive reading of its literature.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T23:04:32.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26416" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26418" CreationDate="2017-02-01T00:36:19.217" Score="2" ViewCount="307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read some sources say you never start a sentence with a conjunction, other sources say it is acceptable. and in some cases better. So can you start a sentence with the word &quot;But&quot; and if so, when is it acceptable?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18989" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T01:59:40.723" Title="Is it acceptable to start a sentence with the word &quot;But&quot;" Tags="|grammar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26416" CreationDate="2017-02-01T00:53:28.823" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sticking to the technical grammar definition, a conjunction is a word that connects two phrases within the same sentence. If you start a sentence with a conjunction, one of the phrases is in a different sentence. Therefore the conjunction is uneeded, and it is improper grammar to begin a sentence with one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HOWEVER:&lt;/strong&gt; do not let the rules of grammar hinder your writing. Let them help it only. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plenty of writers will start a sentence with a conjunction, as well as do a multitude of other 'grammatically incorrect' things. They can do this because it comes down to writer preference. If you feel you can get across what you are trying to say if you deviate from the rules of grammar, do it. If not, then don't. Point in case. I used a double negative in that last sentence. The word 'uneeded' above is actually not a word at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of whether you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; start a sentence with a conjunction is entirely up to you, and how you think it sounds. I've found it to be fine within a chapter. When it gets jarring for me is when a &lt;em&gt;chapter&lt;/em&gt; is begun with a conjunction. However, you might not feel this way. It's writer preference; do whatever sounds best to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T00:53:28.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26416" CreationDate="2017-02-01T01:59:40.723" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the Chicago Manual of Style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as 'and', 'but', or 'so'. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But only do this for emphasis. And not all the time. So it doesn't get old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23180" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T01:59:40.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26392" CreationDate="2017-02-01T02:44:43.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt; is a great piece of software that keeps track of all your writing, notes, and images. It's definitely a matter of preference but I really like using it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23299" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T02:44:43.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25919" CreationDate="2017-02-01T02:53:37.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nowadays, with more and more submitting being done electronically, does font matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the file format. It's much harder to change the font on a PDF than on a Word document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, work with a tool that makes it easy to produce output with different fonts for submitting to editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, unless you've already found success in the marketplace, avoid typographic gimmicks like The Mouse's Tale in Alice in Wonderland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23180" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T02:53:37.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26421" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-01T03:38:06.953" Score="3" ViewCount="1466" Body="&lt;p&gt;My school is doing a romance writing competition in which there are no cliches allowed - but that is the only way I know to write romance. I mean, I haven't read a single book that hasn't had a bit of cliche. How are you supposed to make a romance novel without it having cliche parts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23303" LastEditorUserId="40124" LastEditorDisplayName="user14025" LastEditDate="2022-10-21T06:15:24.217" LastActivityDate="2022-10-24T17:31:33.900" Title="Romance without cliche?" Tags="|romance|cliches|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26392" CreationDate="2017-02-01T04:04:42.793" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out Ulyssess.  Easier but just as powerful as Scrivener IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23304" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T04:04:42.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-01T05:14:34.057" Score="5" ViewCount="440" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen that sometimes an author will have one website with a lot of content and a separate website that does nothing but offer the book(s) for sale.  What are the advantages of this approach?  What are the advantages of having only one website, and offering the book for sale directly on that website (which would have supporting articles, perhaps some unrelated content, perhaps some interactive features, more detail about the author, and perhaps some sections from the book(s) to whet the reader's appetite)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T17:45:59.823" Title="Should an author have one website or two?" Tags="|marketing|blog|websites|sales|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26423" CreationDate="2017-02-01T05:54:22.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often the author website is the author's own, managed by themselves. It is a place where the author blogs their private opinion, portraits themselves as a person, often with a glimpse into their private lives, and presents their œuvre. Even when the author website is managed by the publisher, the purpose of the author website is to provide a hub for all information surrounding an author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book websites are part of the publisher's marketing strategy for that book. They often have a crunch page to convert visits to sales. Everything on a book website is designed to make the visitor click the buy button.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T05:54:22.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26392" CreationDate="2017-02-01T13:02:30.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using online folders of Google docs and spreadsheets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pro: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No cost,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accessible almost anywhere,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;easily searched&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;easily shared (read only, comments, or fully editable)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;exports to many formats (including eBook.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Con:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not really designed for novel-length works (gets slow for me at 30+ pages)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22438" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T13:02:30.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26421" CreationDate="2017-02-01T13:06:08.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a bit of a tough assignment, because there is no precise definition of a cliche. But you may find the advice of George Orwell in his essay &quot;Politics and the English Language&quot; useful. It's not about writing romance, obviously, but it is about avoiding cliche. Lazy writers, Orwell contends, write by stringing together familiar phrases that are rattling around in their heads. Often the result is opaque and frequently it is illogical as well. A good writer thinks through what they say, gets a clear picture in their mind, and then writes down what they see in their head in plain language. Thus they are describing things fully seen, not regurgitating word soup. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-19T15:53:30.017" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T15:53:30.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26423" CreationDate="2017-02-01T13:11:11.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have four. I now profoundly wish I only had one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of a &quot;site&quot; is now becoming moribund anyway. The essence of a &quot;site&quot; is a home page, but the importance of the home page is diminishing every year simply because, across the board, home pages get less and less traffic each year. People navigate the web using search and by following links in social media. No one types a URL into a browser anymore. Thus people go straight to the page of interest, not to the &quot;site&quot;. Having multiple sites, therefore, is just a maintenance headache and expense that is unlikely to do you any good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T13:11:11.750" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26421" CreationDate="2017-02-01T14:53:03.450" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that you haven't given us a lot of the givens... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Not&lt;/em&gt; every romance is clich&amp;eacute;. There are formulas, to be sure (c.f. Harlequin, Nicholas Sparks, Lifetime), but just because the tropes are heavily used doesn't mean you have to use them, or that they have to feel worn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: Pick up the nearest romance book and start making a list of the clich&amp;eacute;s. I don't have one to hand, so I'm just going to start riffing off the top of my head. These won't all necessarily be in the same story: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Man and woman&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meet cute&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Love at first sight&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hate at first sight&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mistaken identity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pretend relationship for the benefit of a third party&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Physical Mary Sue characteristics (heart-shaped face, vividly colored&#xA;eyes, perfect physique [particularly without any effort like constant&#xA;dieting or exercise], flowing/tousled hair)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Person A is normally eloquent and intelligent but gets stupidly&#xA;tongue-tied in the presence of Love Interest Person B&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sassy Black/Gay Best Friend&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get the idea. So write down everything you can see in this romance in your hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then make an effort to write something which &lt;em&gt;avoids&lt;/em&gt; as many of those as possible. Make it a same-sex slow burn. Have no jealous exes or disapproving parents. Create normal, rounded friends. Describe ordinary-looking people. And so on. &lt;em&gt;Brokeback Mountain&lt;/em&gt; is a heartbreakingly beautiful romance which I wouldn't describe as &lt;em&gt;clich&amp;eacute;d&lt;/em&gt;, even if it has &quot;love at first sight&quot; and &quot;disapproving society&quot; because it's fresh and uniquely done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're worried about clich&amp;eacute;s, don't write them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T14:53:03.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26421" CreationDate="2017-02-01T15:03:18.980" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good way to avoid cliche in romance is to choose unusual characters as participants in the romance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The love poetry shared between a pair of nuclear physicists could be very romantic without being at all cliche.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Escaped prisoners on the run from the Law might fall in love during a high tension cat-and-mouse pursuit, leading to frenzied encounters peppered with the risk of capture and betrayal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no rule that says that romance needs to involve humans.  Try writing a canine or feline (or god-forbid, a mixed canine feline) relationship.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking from traditional two person pairings and three person love-triangles can also be useful for avoiding cliche.  A happy quintet would be ripe with odd geometries and opportunities for entertaining miscommunication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply stated, if you don't want it to be cliche, make it strange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T15:03:18.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25919" CreationDate="2017-02-01T15:21:50.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The agent or publisher will post instructions on its submission website. This has not changed. Typically, they will read your query in plain text, so it doesn't really matter what font you use as long as it can be converted to plain text. Once you get past the query phase, the instructions you receive will be explicit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T15:21:50.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26392" CreationDate="2017-02-01T17:58:56.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Love all the answers above. I rely on Scrivener for poetry, short stories, longer works, blog entries and other factual writing. Also Aeon Timeline, OneNote and others mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I have found useful for organisation are wikis. There are various wiki host services but you can also use one of the personal wiki solutions. Basically this is a single file held on your own computer which runs using javascript in your browser. The one I've used before is &lt;a href=&quot;http://tiddlywiki.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TiddlyWiki&lt;/a&gt;. It is brilliant for creating ad hoc documents simply by creating a wikiword in another document (I say 'document' but mean sub-documents of the one file). You can organise as you wish. Check it out. (Caveat: not used it for some years and it looks to have changed but would assume for the better.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23277" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T17:58:56.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26403" CreationDate="2017-02-01T18:18:16.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice is to write often and read critically across genres.  When I say critically, I mean that you should read to understand the author's syntax, tone, diction, use of figurative language...the list goes on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I like to believe that one's writing style is intrinsically unique, and so the purpose of this should be to allow your writing to become more nuanced, not to write exactly like them.  Here is something for you to try.  One exercise that can help embody the mind of another writer is to write on a topic in his or her style; emulate the style completely by copying the syntax and word choice precisely.  Pick a piece that you're currently interested in, and use that piece as your source material.  It will probably feel foreign to you, which is the point: while it'll help you to understand the writer that you're interested in, you won't magically begin to write like that author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, you should, through the process, see your own style come forth as you begin to modify the prose with your own flair, as will undoubtedly happen when you read something that feels forced and stilted.  I'd call that your emerging style, and it will become crucial as you begin to write your own essays.  You shouldn't want to be someone else, but by trying to, you might find what makes you &quot;you&quot; as you discover the aspects of their style you like and the aspects you dislike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22815" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T18:18:16.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26367" CreationDate="2017-02-01T18:30:10.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading a lot of SF, I've seen two broad approaches: introduce new terms sporadically and with enough context that the reader gets it immediately; or, use the new terms as if they were fully understood and just push on. To go with the latter, though, you have to have a hugely compelling narrative and style that grabs the reader and keeps them reading (thinking China Mieville, Ann Leckie) until they've grasped how the new terminology works in the world you've built.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For historical fiction, the only answer is research. You need to know the terms for all the artefacts in your work and get their usage right (historically right or right within the narrative where the historical record is incomplete): thinking here of Patrick O'Brien and Nicola Griffith.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With fantasy, I'd say you can make up what you want pretty much :) kidding! If it is Pratchett style, where you are representing our own world in a fantasy setting, you make up words that are obvious equivalents, like &lt;em&gt;headology&lt;/em&gt; for &lt;em&gt;psychology&lt;/em&gt;. If more high fantasy, go with introducing terms in context but I'd be pretty circumspect about doing this. Think like a translator: you need to write in English for a modern audience but with enough flavour of the foreign language to make it exotic and believable without it being turgid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23277" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T18:30:10.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25683" CreationDate="2017-02-01T19:46:07.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;moreover&quot; and &quot;in addition to&quot; are the kind of connectors that occur to us when we think of another idea as we are writing. It often happens that as you are writing one idea in support of a point, another one pops into your head, and then another one. In the urgency to get them down before they fly our of you head, you end up tacking them onto your existing paragraph or sentence structure with connectors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is fine for making sure that you record these points before you loose them. But now you have a paragraph structure that was designed to support one point that in now supporting three points strung together with connectors. The way you fix this is to re-architect the paragraph to support three points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be as simple as beginning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blah blah blah for each of the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Blah&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Blah blah&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Blather blather blather&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the solution is to go back and create the structure you would have created in the first place if you had realized you were going to have this many points to make when you started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T19:46:07.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26436" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26438" CreationDate="2017-02-01T20:47:03.610" Score="9" ViewCount="451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a novel that involves folklore/mythological creatures from mainly the Norse and Scandinavian myths, but in the world of the novel, there exists beings from all cultures. I wish to write it in English, leading to some problems with what to call the creatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some creatures are easier than other. Valkyria, for example, could just be translated to Valkyrie and everything would still be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But beings such as the Bäckahäst would cause some trouble here. The common translation into English here is Kelpie, but to me, Bäckahäst and Kelpie are two &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; beings, one from Norse folklore and one from Scottish. So to translate Bäckahäst into Kelpie would be adding more confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But keeping &quot;Bäckahäst&quot; as the name also causes some questions for me. Namely, how to add grammar stuff to it. The Swedish way to put Bäckahäst into plural would be to add &lt;em&gt;&quot;-ar&quot;&lt;/em&gt; at the end of the word (Bäckahäst&lt;em&gt;ar&lt;/em&gt;), but the English way is to add &lt;em&gt;&quot;-s&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the English version seems to me like the logical way, but it makes the inner me&amp;mdash;reading the word the Swedish way&amp;mdash;cringe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any tips on how to do this &quot;right&quot;? Or is the most important to be consistent throughout it all? Or should I just use Kelpie and skip the problem? Maybe go with my own word for each being?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pro and cons for the different ways would be appreciated too. Have been trying to decide on this for way too long, and pretty much keep jumping between them all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23309" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-15T01:16:07.130" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T01:16:07.130" Title="Naming non-English folklore creatures" Tags="|fantasy|language|naming|translation|mythology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26436" CreationDate="2017-02-01T21:01:20.777" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like the &lt;em&gt;-ar&lt;/em&gt; plural, and I think you should keep it regardless. You don't always have to obey the rules of English if your original word isn't. English is rife with &lt;em&gt;loan words&lt;/em&gt; from other languages, so there's plenty of precedent. Look at &lt;em&gt;cherub&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;cherubim&lt;/em&gt; (the correct plural, I believe from Hebrew). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the translation, do what works for your story. If your Bäckahäst is more of a selkie than a kelpie, then that's how you should treat and translate it. You can even have a character mistranslate Bäckahäst as &quot;kelpie&quot; and be corrected, so the reader knows you're doing it on purpose.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter which way you go, be consistent. If you use &lt;em&gt;-ar&lt;/em&gt; for one Scandinavian plural, use it for all of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T21:01:20.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26440" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26441" CreationDate="2017-02-01T22:51:55.017" Score="2" ViewCount="432" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets say you had two folders in your Research folder and you want a file to be &quot;shared&quot; or linked between folders: the file appears in both folders, but editing one file also changes the other file, since they are the same file, just being linked to from different folders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is something like that possible in Scrivener?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23083" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T23:49:23.540" Title="Scrivener: link files to different folders?" Tags="|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26440" CreationDate="2017-02-01T23:49:23.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't share a single item across multiple folders. But perhaps you could use collections to create the kind of organization you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add any item to any number of collections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also create a Saved Search collection that will dynamically update to include any item that satisfies its search criteria. Then you can use keywords or other features to move items in and out of the dynamic collection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T23:49:23.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26442" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26443" CreationDate="2017-02-02T00:19:11.537" Score="2" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just have a few queries regarding dialogue in a novel, especially if there are several lines of dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When two characters are talking, does each line of speech go on a separate line or can they simply follow after each other?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can a normal sentence follow after a line of speech or would it have to start on a new line?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When a new character is first mentioned in a line of speech, is it acceptable to then quickly give a brief description of the character in a sentence before the next line of speech continues the dialogue between the characters?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18989" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T05:40:22.490" Title="Queries regarding dialogue structure?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26442" CreationDate="2017-02-02T05:40:22.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has everything to do with your style. How writers structure dialogue varies greatly. However I'll give you a few guidelines that I have observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is easier to read if there is a line break between one character talking and the next.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A normal sentence can definitely follow a line of speech. This can be very handy for describing the character's body language for instance. In this case it would directly relate to the speech just written, and help prepare for the next character's reaction which would be started on a new line as a new part, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would say yes, but be careful to keep it brief so that your reader does not get lost in facts and history while they are trying to keep up with a conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14025" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T05:40:22.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26444" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-02T08:40:04.140" Score="3" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I create an impossible choice for my protagonist? I want to place him in a painful dilemma, and I'm having trouble making the choice feel truly impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I'm writing a scene where store owner Ed learns of an upcoming sting operation at his store. Ed is friends with both the cop running the operation, and the customer who's the intended target, so I thought that could be developed into a good flashpoint, torn between two friends and dangerous circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, it's not really &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; awful a situation. He has an easy option -- alerting the customer and canceling the drug deal -- that may be unpleasant (e.g. his cop friend is embarrassed in front of his captain; the drugs stay on the streets), but is still &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; better than the worst-case scenario -- a friend going to jail, and his store made famous as a location for drug dealings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I take a scenario that's unpleasant, but has a good answer, and turn it into a really awful, painful, sadistic decision the protagonist has to make?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21769" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2017-02-02T17:54:46.810" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T03:54:41.383" Title="How to make a choice more sadistic?" Tags="|fiction|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26288" CreationDate="2017-02-02T09:54:09.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess I'm going to disagree with the others as my opinion is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read as much as you need to. When you are happy with the ideas you've developed for a story, stop reading and start writing.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My stance may be a little controversial, but it suits me fine. When I read a lot, I find that it strongly steers my writing and my imagination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I read a book with a great romance, I'm easily tempted to put a romance into one of my stories. When I read yet another terrible fantasy book then I want to take my story and plonk it into a modern or sci-fi setting (which is actually what I did).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to limit the amount that I read or else I'd never finish a book. Worse, I could finish writing a book that ends up being a mish-mash of ideas I've accumulated from my reading. I would hate to finish a novel only for it to be extremely derivative, and &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; feels derivative to me when I read widely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building upon the previous advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take inspiration from sources outside literature.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single lyric from a song is often enough to spark my imagination into overdrive. Sometimes it can be the view out of my window, or something I've seen in the news. Personally, I find non-written media to be far more valuable as sources of inspiration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: These are techniques that work for me but obviously YMMV. Reading widely is generally recommended for the more disciplined author.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21966" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T09:54:09.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26446" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-02T10:51:59.487" Score="1" ViewCount="533" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can someone give me ideas to describe my POV character to my reader when I am writing in First Person. I ask this because it's unnatural for a character to describe their appearance in their mind. I mean I can use certain tricks - like she looked into the mirror and noticed that (add some facial features here), or (describe frizzy hair misbehaving). What other ideas are there to do this so that the reader gets a bit of an idea of the physical appearance of the character - without it seeming unnatural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22801" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T21:46:25.753" Title="How to describe a character when writing in First Person" Tags="|characters|description|pov|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-02-08T00:13:48.380" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26444" CreationDate="2017-02-02T13:16:01.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Few realistic choices are that hard in themselves. What makes them hard is history. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Spiderman save Mary Jane or a bus load of schoolkids? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Easy, save the school kids. The needs of the many, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But wait, Spiderman is in love with MJ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, but still, 30 kids on that bus...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But wait, Peter Parker has been in love with MJ for years. He has pined for her as she has dated bullies with fast cars. Finally after years of pain and waiting he has won her over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now the decision is much harder to make, is felt much more deeply, both by that character and by the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All effects in fiction are created by the right setup, not by how you tell it in the moment, but by everything that has gone before that brings the protagonist to this moment of truth. Reflect on just how long the movie spent on setting up Peter loves MJ before putting him on that bridge with the bus in one hand and MJ in the other. It is all about setting up just how gut wrenching that moment is going to be for him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-03T03:54:41.383" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T03:54:41.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26444" CreationDate="2017-02-02T14:39:02.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Increase the stakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither outcome is really that bad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Siding with the cop: Drug dealer going to jail? But he is a criminal, so he had it coming. Shop known as dealing location? Will keep him in the public conscience for about a week, then business as usual. Personal consequences for Ed? Dealer doesn't need to know that Ed cooperated with the police, so there are none. Dealer might swear vengeance, but is in prison for at least a few years, so plenty of time to worry about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Siding with the drug dealer: Slight embarrassment, but the cop will get another chance to bust the dealer. Personal consequences for Ed? Cop doesn't need to know it was Ed's fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To increase the stakes in this situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase the stakes for Ed.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design the circumstances to make it impossible for either side to not realize that Ed is at fault. If Ed sides with the dealer, he himself has to face legal charges for aiding a criminal. If Ed sides with the cop, he risks getting murdered by a drug cartel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ramp up the closeness between Ed and the two characters. Sell to the audience that he has a very close (more than friends) personal relation with both.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe Ed is a poster-child for some movement against drugs and him being associated with drug dealers would destroy that? Maybe Ed also has a criminal career and being known as a snitch would harm his underworld reputation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build up both &lt;em&gt;cop&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;dealer&lt;/em&gt; as sympathetic characters who have high stakes in the outcome of this situation. &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the cop you need some explanation why he &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; succeed in this sting operation or suffer far more serious consequences than just getting yelled at by the chief. The consequences for him must be at least as bad as spending a few years in prison.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The seriousness of consequences for the drug dealer are clear (prison), but you need to sell that character to the audience as someone who really doesn't deserve that. Find some morally justified explanation why he has to deal drugs or why he must not go to prison.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the whole situation of having a conflict between cop and dealer worse. Maybe there is some reason why these two characters must get along well with each other? Them being pitted against each other due to their &quot;professional conflicts of interest&quot; is bad, no matter who of them wins.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2017-02-02T15:13:59.547" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T15:13:59.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26449" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-02T16:59:53.363" Score="1" ViewCount="499" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are alliteration and &lt;a href=&quot;http://literarydevices.net/dissonance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dissonance&lt;/a&gt; considered mutually exclusive? My understanding is that alliteration means repetition of consonant sounds to make text flow more harmoniously, while dissonance means a combination of words that disrupts harmony. But what about a phrase like &quot;Sweetly, slimily, and softly&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this seems both alliterative and dissonant, and I can't quite put my finger on what effect this has. Am I misunderstanding something about the concepts of alliteration and dissonance? Or is there another term for this kind of literary device?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="526" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-02-03T13:44:46.790" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T13:44:46.790" Title="Mixing dissonance and alliteration?" Tags="|technique|flow|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26446" CreationDate="2017-02-02T17:16:01.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We don't need mirrors to see our own body right?  We can look down and see how we look with our own eyes.  It could be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I looked down, fatigued and tired from my training.  &quot;heh&quot; I chuckle to myself, &quot;I guess the old man and his training is paying off after all&quot;  I observe as I notice my chest and arms are much more defined now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be something along the same thoughts of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He swings his sword at me and my body instantly knew what to do.  My shield arm raises in defense easily blocking the attack.  My arms are strong from years of harsh labor and training.  My attacker was only able to realize this after the cloak fell off my body.  He picked the wrong person to steal from.  A lesson that he is about to learn the hard way.   My thick powerful legs dig into the dirt, redirecting his blow with my shield. My right arm strikes the opening created on his left side knocking him to the floor in one effortless swing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to sit there and do a look over in a mirror.  A person can observe their appearance through other means whether by self observation (without mirrors or lakes) or through declaration of what the body has done.  Forgive me for any issues with my samples.  I made these up off the top of my head while I am on a break at work XD&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T17:16:01.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26451" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-02T17:20:10.190" Score="3" ViewCount="5049" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrivener, is there any way to get the page numbers to start only at the beginning of the manuscript? I have my formatting so that they don't display in the front matter, but when the page number displays on the first page of the actual story, it's &quot;5&quot; or &quot;6&quot; or whatever page it is in the PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way I can reset the number to &quot;1&quot; at the first page of the story? Or, to put it another way, is there any way for me to have the page number ignore the front matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23319" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-22T17:05:50.923" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T17:05:50.923" Title="Reset page numbers in Scrivener" Tags="|scrivener|pages|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26449" CreationDate="2017-02-02T17:41:10.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alliteration is the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of consecutive words. It is not limited to consonants, and there is nothing in the definition that speaks to its purpose or effect. So, there is no conflict between the terms. You can be both alliterative and dissonant if you want to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T17:41:10.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26454" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-02T18:57:46.867" Score="2" ViewCount="1463" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a prose that depicts a sexual act that I feel readers should be uncomfortable with. I'll spare you the details, but the short version is that the main character is turned on by a violent act they just committed. I'm afraid that due to various cultural influences (video games, action movies), the reader might need some extra hints that this is supposed to be a bad thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a bit more detail: this is a work of interactive fiction and if the reader gets to this part of the story, it means they've chosen to do something violent, which I hope to punish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's a good strategy for ensuring the reader is made uncomfortable by this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="526" LastEditorUserId="526" LastEditDate="2017-02-02T19:20:15.023" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T21:26:38.300" Title="What are general strategies for making the reader uncomfortable with something they might not naturally be uncomfortable with?" Tags="|fiction|theme|erotica|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26454" CreationDate="2017-02-02T20:41:35.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You assume that, video games, movies, and other media have desensitized people to the point that something horrendous would be &quot;normal&quot;.  The description would also have to be pretty well done.  The more in-depth you describe the situation/event, the more the reader can &quot;feel&quot; the scene.  Do you set the right tone? the right mood? do you describe the environment and the actions?  How do yo describe the actions?  Do you talk about the MC's thoughts as they are going through the scene?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, if you need to provide &quot;extra hints&quot;, you didn't describe the situation well enough.  Take something as stupid as a doll.  No one is scared of a doll.  But with the right tone, the right description, the right actions applied to the doll and all of a sudden we have stories like chuckie and saw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make the reader uncomfortable would mean that you also need to make the MC uncomfortable with their emotions.  Most people when they read a good story put themselves as part of the scene, as part of the MC.  Make people FEEL that animalistic/predatory urge, that raw emotion deep down.  Bring it out of the reader so that they feel just like the MC as their morality and self values will automatically create the feeling you are looking for.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People know that violent acts are intrinsically wrong when it is not out of the necessity to survive.  Anyone who feels otherwise have chemical imbalances.  You don't need to tell people that killing someone else is wrong.  Everyone knows it is no matter how &quot;desensitized&quot; you may think society is.  That is why murder is a crime globally and not based on social/cultural influence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you don't need to TELL the reader this is wrong nor do you need to drop hints.  You just need to describe the scene with enough detail, tone, mannerisms, and MC thoughts/feelings that they will feel uncomfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having sex with a dead body is weird but simply stating he had sex with a body he just killed won't make anyone uncomfortable.  Describe it, in detail.  Describe the sounds the body makes, any excretion of body fluid as he does his things.  Use your imagination to bring the scene to life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T20:41:35.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="473" CreationDate="2017-02-02T20:55:55.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a late answer and completely against the current but, for me, touch typing is not important at all. When I'm typing, I'm not looking at the screen, I'm looking at the keyboard. When I press the keys quickly (using an average of 3 fingers from each hand), I'm almost forming the words inside my mind. Sometimes, I can even tell when I've misspelt something and backtrack. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, though, I can write in this way as fast as my creative mind requires (which really is as fast as I need my typing to be). And that's really what matters: if you feel you can't type as fast as you need, try the method. But if you can think and type it down... forget about it. The fact that one can't type crazy fast, in my opinion, also gives the mind a bit more time to choose the right words and sentences. Which is a moot point if you're just transferring manual notes onto the computer. Speed is more important then, I suppose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T20:55:55.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26449" CreationDate="2017-02-02T21:17:07.760" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, an alliteration is not a repetition of consonants, as Jason Baker has written, nor is it the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of consecutive words, as Mark Baker has written, but &lt;strong&gt;an alliteration is the repetition of the same sound (not letter) at the beginning of the stressed stem syllables of words (consecutive or not)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;s&lt;/strong&gt;ilken &lt;strong&gt;s&lt;/strong&gt;ad un&lt;strong&gt;c&lt;/strong&gt;ertain&quot; (three /s/) in Edgar Allen Poe's &lt;em&gt;The Raven&lt;/em&gt; is an alliteration, despite the &quot;c&quot; being a different letter and not at the beginning of the word, and &quot;I have &lt;strong&gt;st&lt;/strong&gt;ood &lt;strong&gt;st&lt;/strong&gt;ill and &lt;strong&gt;st&lt;/strong&gt;opped the sound of feet&quot; (three /st/) in Robert Frost's &lt;em&gt;Acquainted with the Night&lt;/em&gt; is an alliteration as well, despite the non-alliterating &quot;and&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example by Robert Frost also shows that to say that an alliteration is the first &lt;em&gt;sound&lt;/em&gt; in the stressed stem syllable is not quite correct, because it is the &lt;strong&gt;onset&lt;/strong&gt; of that syllable. The onset is the first consonant &lt;strong&gt;or group of consonants&lt;/strong&gt; (an onset cluster). (If the syllable starts with a vowel that is a &quot;null onset&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that explains part of the dissonance in your example. &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Sw&lt;/strong&gt;eetly &lt;strong&gt;sl&lt;/strong&gt;imily**, and &lt;strong&gt;so&lt;/strong&gt;ftly&quot; is not an alliteration, or not a pure alliteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other part of the dissonance comes from &quot;slimily&quot; having three syllables and breaking the rhythm of the sequence. &quot;Sweetly, softly, and slimily&quot; flows a bit better, maybe, but the alliteration is still broken and incomplete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-02-03T06:12:09.960" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T06:12:09.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26454" CreationDate="2017-02-02T21:26:38.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;People are different, and some people enjoy violent, sadistic, and non-consensual sex. Whatever you write, there will be someone who gets turned on by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good way to make the average reader feel uncomfortable is to avoid explicit and gratuitous violence and instead show the anguish of the victim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Violent pornography such as brutal BDSM is fun for non-sadists only as long as both parties are visibly turned on and enjoy the practice. Once the submissive obviously suffers from the violence – not just physically, but emotionally and mentally as well –, that takes the fun out of the kink for most people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T21:26:38.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="473" CreationDate="2017-02-02T21:39:17.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to finger pick all the time.  I also use to stare at the keyboard trying to type.  Now, I touch type almost as fast as the thoughts enter my mind.  Sometimes, I need to stop and edit the words because I screw up; but having spent 90% of my time at a PC for the last 10 years, I have learned how to type really really well.  As Some pointed out, speed isn't always the optimal solution.  You just need to type as fast as you can without it feeling like you are spending too much time trying to find the right key or being hindered having to think about what you are doing on the keyboard.  This just takes practice, regardless of your typing methods.  For the longest time, I needed to look at the keyboard.  Now, I can virtually type blind.  I can close my eyes and write this sentence without issues.  I can look off at a piece of paper and type what it says without issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You just need to practice/type well enough so that typing no longer significantly hinders you from getting your ideas out and onto the PC.  Some people type at 50 wpm.  There are others like me who can type at 90+ wpm (with accuracy as I am sure someone will bring in that argument).  To me, I think fast, a... hyper thinker.  Everything I do is done quickly whether it is tests or typing, thinking, over-thinking.  That's just who I am.  Others enjoy the slow roll.  The ability to take and type slowly so that their ideas are able to be constructed and reflected before they may get to the point of needing them to be typed.  Neither are the right answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless if you are writing a 2 page essay or a 400 page book, if you don't have the ideas in your head, the words won't come.  Obviously if there are no words, you can take 10 minutes to write one word and you will still be stuck writing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a good writer comes from what is between the ears, not attached to the wrists.  Everyone has their own technique.  Sara stated she uses 3 fingers to type.  I have never seen someone type with just 3 fingers from each hand but that doesn't mean because she does it, she is a bad writer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T21:39:17.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26446" CreationDate="2017-02-02T21:46:25.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give the character a reason to think about a few key attributes of her appearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If she's has some general attitude toward the attribute (pride, self-consciousness, …), create a situation where she experiences that attitude in the moment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a situation where the attribute helps or hinders something she is trying to accomplish.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put the attribute into contrast with someone or something. Her height vs someone else's.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give her a choice to make where the attribute is a factor.  Her skin tone vs color of apparel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have another character comment on the attribute.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For any of these choices, try to create a situation in which the character not only thinks about the attribute, but feels some emotion about it, or (perhaps better) has some persistent attitude about it. The emotion and attitude help the reader not only to picture the character, but to &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt; her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T21:46:25.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26461" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26462" CreationDate="2017-02-02T22:11:24.427" Score="2" ViewCount="783" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've come to the recent conclusion that my writing lacks conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This problem is especially hard for me because I don't like conflict in my own personal life, and am the type who doesn't usually start conflicts and when faced with one, generally just yields so that it will end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I think I've probably projected this onto my characters a bit - they don't usually get in arguments or disagreements which leaves the whole book with a monotonous tone that really needs fixing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any way to know &lt;strong&gt;when&lt;/strong&gt; conflict should happen, so it doesn't feel too sparse or conversely over burdened with drama.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why&lt;/strong&gt; should conflict happen? Is there a trick or formula to creating conflict?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once I've figured out when and why, are there any rules to &lt;strong&gt;actually writing it&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4975" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T03:47:59.277" Title="Why/when should character conflict happen and how do I write it?" Tags="|characters|conflict|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26461" CreationDate="2017-02-02T22:51:22.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good question. I say so because I too struggle with this, for similar reasons. Even as a kid I would always feel frustrated when characters would argue and, even worse, split up because of these conflicts. Why can't they just talk it out and get along? I would ask. When the tension finally got relieved, so was I.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even now, as an adult, I find it difficult to write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll start with the second bullet - why does it happen? Here are four reasons I find helpful in generating it in my own writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limited &quot;resources&quot; - when a resource is limited, people will argue and fight over it. Don't let yourself focus on the obvious, like limited food. Think more abstractly - limited time will cause different people to act differently (&quot;John thought to himself, 'I only live once, I'm not gonna miss the opportunity to go on this adventure.' Jane, his girlfriend saw him go out the door and felt deserted. All she wanted was to marry him and raise a family&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pressure &amp;amp; different thresholds - different people have different thresholds for certain kinds of pressures. One person might crack under pressure while the other not, thinking that the first is overreacting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;History - similar to the previous bullet, as a motivating factor for it, a characters history guides their decisions. Imagine two people sharing a prison cell, one who has been in prison a dozen times, the other for the first time. One might feel an urge to attempt escape, the other prefer to wait for the trial (which wants which? you decide...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, and this is the deeper one, people have very different viewpoints and appreciate different traits. Does your character act from their gut, by instinct, or is he more cerebral?  (see here for some ideas on this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.personalitypage.com/html/four-prefs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.personalitypage.com/html/four-prefs.html&lt;/a&gt;) An old wizard might value taking time to work things out in his head before acting, seeing an immediate response as rash. His young female apprentice might see such behavior as boring, uninspired and instead seek more immediate action. Neither is wrong - both traits are important, some just work better in some situations. But the conflict is born from the different instincts people have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding how often it should happen - I don't have a formula. I think eventually you need to allow the conflict to drive both the growth of the characters and the progression of the story. There is no point in adding conflict for its own sake. What I've found in my writing is that whenever I add conflict, great things happen, new avenues for my plot open up (I'm a discovery writer), the characters change and grow, and I can leverage that one bit of conflict for a chapter or two without any need for more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally - I think the tricky part in actually writing it is that you will usually have to choose one character as your viewpoint character for that scene, and for him/her you can describe their feelings and thoughts. The question is how to (a) show what the other side is thinking and feeling, and (b) how the viewpoint character interprets it. Does he/she understand the conflict for what it is, or are they confused, seeing only their own side? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One trick you could use that might help - write only the dialog and raw action between them, and then add the viewpoint emotions. I find that focusing on the externals first helps me focus the scene and make it feel more intense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22348" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T22:51:22.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26461" CreationDate="2017-02-02T22:52:06.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;conflict is always created when 2 people have a difference of opinions.  There is no magical formula or &quot;trick&quot;.  It's a natural part of life and society.  To be without conflict means nothing grows, nothing improves.  Everything stays status quo because no one has an issue with the way things are.  Conflict is easy to generate.... 2 girls like the same guy, 2 guys like the same girl.  10 people are trying to get accepted for a job that has 1 opening.  Competition brings out conflict.  A teenager has to choose between sneaking out to go to a friend's party or staying home as their parents instructed.  Again conflict within 1 person is created.  Do you choose pasta or chow mein?  again an internal conflict is created.  It is hard to give advice without knowing your story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to think about what is the overall goal of the story.  I hate watching sitcoms/tv  because they lack a broad story but rather each episode is a story separate from each other (for the most part) without an ending until the producers decide to take them off air.  Is your goal that the MC get's accepted into a top college?  Then maybe MC struggles in a critical class needed to be accepted or they don't have enough life experiences like in the movie 21.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflict doesn't always mean a fight but rather a road block that hinders MC from getting to the main goal.  Maybe MC wants to play basketball but is not good enough to make the team.  They have to practice to be good enough.  Maybe along the way in that story, they get a BF or GF who distracts them from their practicing which creates a side conflict and they have to choose between them or practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get creative, think of the goal or objective of the story and then think about all the things that could prevent the MC from achieving that goal.  These conflicts can still easily fit into your &quot;no fighting&quot; mentality.  You just have to approach from a different definition of conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-02-02T22:57:34.163" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T22:57:34.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26444" CreationDate="2017-02-03T02:05:15.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The toughest dilemmas I have faced are the ones where I spin my wheels, going around and around because of doubt.  So you have to set it up in such a way that there is no satisfactory choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The common approach to the situation you described in your pre-edit question is for Ed to be highly motivated for the sting operation to take place, in order to catch someone Ed truly loathes; but at the last minute he discovers that his younger brother or childhood friend is going to go down with the big bad guy if the sting operation proceeds as planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could have the police officer getting credit for the sting operation be a hypocrite who will personally benefit.  This would give you some Chandleresque bitterness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T02:05:15.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26465" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26475" CreationDate="2017-02-03T02:55:42.680" Score="3" ViewCount="775" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some ways to increase the romance between two stubborn, but very different characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23328" LastEditorUserId="23328" LastEditDate="2017-02-03T03:09:02.323" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T19:12:55.443" Title="How can I gradually grow the romance between the two main characters?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|character-development|romance|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-02-09T00:31:04.207" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26466" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-03T03:24:43.027" Score="1" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;To provide an example of my question, consider how certain beings are carried over to different authors. Hastur was made by Ambrose Bierce, and referenced by Lovecraft, and used by August Derleth. In each reference the being is somewhat different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a story I'm working on, I have noted relative similarity between a being I've been working on and a being in the Cthulhu Mythos, one referenced mainly by Lin Carter, Scott Aniolowski, Lovecraft, and E. Hoffman Price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to know if identifying the two creations as the same being would infringe too far into the territory of its original creator. I would &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be claiming it as my own and nobody else's, for it already has a certain name, and by using that name I hope to maintain that it was not my original idea. I would consider it expanding on something that already existed, but was described in little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16245" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T15:12:34.760" Title="At what point is one stealing from Lovecraftian fiction?" Tags="|copyright|naming|ideas|authorship|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26461" CreationDate="2017-02-03T03:47:59.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conflict in a story arises from desire. The basic structure of any story is that the protagonist has a desire and there are forces or people who oppose their attaining that desire. The story proceeds as they attempt to fulfil that desire and face increasing obstacles leading to a moment of truth in which we discover just what they are willing to do to attain that desire, what they are willing to give up, how much they are willing to bleed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes that desire is for something they don't have. Sometimes it is to retain something they do have that someone wants to take away from them. Sometimes in the course of the story they come to understand that something else matters more to them than the thing they thought was their greatest desire. But the basic arc of a story is formed by their desire, the things that stand in the way of that desire, and what they will do (or not do) to attain that desire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflict comes from the forces that stand in the way of the protagonist attaining their desire. Conflict also comes when the protagonist must decide what they are willing to do to attain that desire, and the changes that may bring to their relationship with others. Conflict is not an incidental to spice up a story, therefore. It is of the essence of story. If there is no conflict there is no story because there is either no desire or nothing stands in the way of that desire -- or at least nothing that challenges the protagonist to stretch themselves to the limit to attain that desire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time this means that you don't have to do a thing to create conflict in you story. If you have the basic elements of story: the desire, the forces that oppose that desire, and the character of the protagonist who pursues that desire, conflict will inevitably fall out of character's pursuit of their desire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple characters may have their own story arcs, and sometimes the conflict may arise from the interference of one character's pursuit of their desire with another character's pursuit of their own desire. Multiple intersecting story arcs are often the sources of conflict in a complex work, but the basic formula is always the same: desire creates conflict between the protagonist and the forces that oppose their desire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to your specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way to know when conflict should happen, so it doesn't feel too sparse or conversely over burdened with drama? -- Yes, conflict is the result of desire. Establish what your hero's desire is and what forces oppose that desire. Then start them on the quest to achieve that desire. The result is conflict. (At each step in the story, the hero will logically try the least costly thing they think might work, so conflict escalates through the story as they try more and more costly things, culminating in the highest cost they are willing to pay.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why should conflict happen? Is there a trick or formula to creating conflict? -- Yes, conflict is a result of desire and its frustrations. Find the desire. Find the reasons why that desire cannot be achieved. Bingo. You have conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once I've figured out when and why, are there any rules to actually writing it? -- No, conflict is a natural consequence of a hero pursuing their desire in the face of opposition. Find the desire, find the opposing forces, and march your hero forward. Given that your protagonist wants X, and given who they are, and given the the antagonist wants Y, which is incompatible with the protagonist attaining X, and given who the antagonist is, what does each of them do next. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T03:47:59.277" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26468" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-03T08:59:42.737" Score="19" ViewCount="6574" Body="&lt;p&gt;When we speak, there are often small pauses between syntactic units such as sentences. In writing, these pauses are signified by punctuation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can come if you want. (without pause)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can come, if you want. (with brief pause)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can come. If you want. (with longer pause)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But sometimes we briefly hesitate in the middle of syntactic units, for example, when we hesitate to utter a word that the listener might find objectionable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This man, this (pause) &lt;em&gt;monster&lt;/em&gt;, has done something despicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can italicize such a word, as I have done, to show an emphasis. But that emphasis does not necessarily imply a pause:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This man, this &lt;em&gt;monster&lt;/em&gt;, has done something despicable. (emphasis, but no pause)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This man, this...monster...has done something despicable. (pause, but no emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the last example shows why using an ellipsis to signify a pause may be confusing. A reader, who does not know what I want to say, may wonder whether I have left out words before and after &amp;quot;monster&amp;quot;, or if I mean that the speaker is trailing off twice, creating two longish pauses. The last example may look to a reader more like two broken off sentences instead of one sentence with two pauses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This man, this... What a monster... He has done something despicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A full stop has been better used to create unmistakeable pauses in unconventional places:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to tell you one last time: Go. Home. Now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a full stop is too strong a disruption in some cases. Usually, because we lack a specific symbol for a brief hesitation, we describe it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This man, this -- I briefly hesitate -- this &lt;em&gt;monster&lt;/em&gt;, has done something despicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, this inserted description is not exactly the same as a brief hesitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;how can I &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; a brief hesitation&lt;/strong&gt;, for example surrounding the word &amp;quot;boy&amp;quot; in the following example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was expecting the president to be a middle aged man and then this (hesitation) boy (hesitation) comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have thought about this problem in my answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/25531/showing-a-brief-hesitation&quot;&gt;a related question&lt;/a&gt;, but that question itself is broader than my current problem and can be easily solved through description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2020-08-20T09:22:27.310" Title="How to show a brief hesitation around a word" Tags="|description|punctuation|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26466" CreationDate="2017-02-03T09:05:29.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you feel uncomfortable with the similarity and think that you are stealing, then you are stealing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not matter whether what you do is legal or not, you will always feel less of a man for not coming up with your own idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do whatever it takes that you can honestly feel proud of yourself instead of a failure and hack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T09:05:29.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26468" CreationDate="2017-02-03T10:38:17.817" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Use the ellispses and emphasis, and tighten up the spaces.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This man, this...&lt;em&gt;monster&lt;/em&gt;...has done something despicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no typesetting reason to have spaces on both sides of those ellipses, particularly since you &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; removing words. Plus you're writing fiction, and the use of ellipses for removed text is only in non-fiction quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Add a little narration. Combine with other punctuation to convey the aural effect you want.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the speaker is trailing off:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This man, this...&quot; His face twisted in disgust. &quot;this &lt;em&gt;monster&lt;/em&gt; has done something despicable.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the speaker stops sharply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This man, this &amp;mdash;&quot; He shivered in atavistic fear. &quot; &amp;mdash; &lt;em&gt;monster&lt;/em&gt; has done something despicable.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The few words of narration cause the reader's internal ear to stop playing dialogue and briefly play narration, which causes a break, if that makes sense. Also, the narration places another small action between the halves of the sentence, and that action happens in the pause you're trying to create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T10:38:17.817" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26468" CreationDate="2017-02-03T10:47:42.540" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how others read, but when I saw&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This man, this &lt;em&gt;monster&lt;/em&gt;, has done something despicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did pause before the word &lt;em&gt;monster&lt;/em&gt;. I read, in my head, as I speak, and the need for emphasis requires a pause to get the mouth into the right shape to punch the word out. So, I'd stick with italics in that case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the case&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was expecting the president to be a middle aged man and then this &lt;em&gt;boy&lt;/em&gt; comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're looking at using the pause to indicate surprise, but in this case the fact that the president is a boy is surprise itself. I'd leave the emphasis off and let the word itself do its job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need the pause to indicate a reluctance to utter a certain term, one which the reader, or listeners in the scene, might take exception to, why not em-dashes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was expecting the president to be a middle aged man and then this -- doll -- comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;though I think these are more than &lt;em&gt;brief&lt;/em&gt; pauses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a definitive answer, just my own opinions and usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23277" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T10:47:42.540" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26468" CreationDate="2017-02-03T11:09:41.647" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any well established method for doing this, and after a little searching I've come to suspect that there probably isn't one (though somebody else is free to correct me if I'm wrong).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this in mind, I think what you need to do is to try to exploit the reactions you expect people to have to the examples you suggested, and play these off against each other. Ultimately, I think, this is what all grammar is about: using the relationship between people's responses to things to convey meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Italics, then, as in &lt;strong&gt;&quot;I was expecting the president to be a middle aged man and then this &lt;em&gt;boy&lt;/em&gt; comes in&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, gives the impression that the word is important and that it stands alone, but can also come off as somewhat forceful and confident, and therefore doesn't suggest the hesitation that you're hoping to convey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using ellipsis, as in &lt;strong&gt;&quot;I was expecting the president to be a middle aged man and then this... boy... comes in&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; could suggest hesitation, but it can also suggest (as you say) that something has been omitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Play them off against each other, however - &lt;strong&gt;&quot;I was expecting the president to be a middle aged man and then this... &lt;em&gt;boy&lt;/em&gt;... comes in&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, and these two effects seem to cancel each other out. It no longer looks (to my eye, at least) as if &quot;boy&quot; is part of a larger, truncated phrase, because the italics flag it up as of unique, standalone importance. The ellipsis, in turn, makes it clear that this the speaker didn't stride confidently into the word either. I think this is the effect you're after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T11:09:41.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26468" CreationDate="2017-02-03T11:37:29.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is a variation on my answer to the question you linked to: In prose, you cannot act out dialogue. Prose is recieved by the reader asynchronously. Things that take minutes can sometimes be read in seconds. Things that occur instantly or at the same time may take minutes to describe. Dialogue is not heard as it is spoken, with pauses and changes of pace and emphasis. It is read as prose, which it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is only in very recent works that you find authors frequently trying to act out dialogue through punctuation or elaborate dialogue tags. I suspect it is movie influence. They are imagining who will play their characters in the movie version that will make them rich and they are trying to reproduce in print the way they imagine that actor delivering that line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is not how authors have classically written dialogue. Instead, they have used entirely different devices to change the tone and emphasis of a speech to achieve the effect they want. They have added adjectives to add emphasis or changed word order to make the stress fall where they want it. They have use metaphor and symbol to evoke emotional responses. They have used alliteration and dissonance to emphasis particular ideas or passages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is well established that fictional dialogue is not real speech, and that real speech would be as difficult to read as fictional dialogue would be to speak in casual conversation. Movie dialogue is different as well (see Harrison Ford's well known complaints the George Lucas' dialog was impossible to deliver). Real speech on screen would be even more tedious than it is in real life. But movie dialog is not novel dialogue either, because it needs to leave space for the actor to act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my answer is that you don't show hesitation. That you should not use hesitation as a device in dialogue at all -- or only very sparingly if you must -- but that you should recast you dialogue so that the emphasis you wish to create with the pause is created by some other means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T11:37:29.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26465" CreationDate="2017-02-03T12:08:29.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;They could tease each other, and outside people, and maybe the characters themselves, might think they don't fit well together. Behind the unfriendliness and envy they could feel some devotion. They try to compete with each other. After a while they start to copy behavior. Later, one of the persons can solve a mishap only with the help from the other person. Now the teasing changes to open devotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23333" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-02-03T12:43:56.320" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T12:43:56.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26465" CreationDate="2017-02-03T13:20:16.180" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best advice I've ever heard about building romantic/sexual tension is to start it from the get-go. The moment your characters meet, there should be a certain je ne sais quoi that unconsciously pulls them towards each other. Even if they are stubborn or in denial about their feelings, people in general have a way of revealing their true emotions without even realizing it. A touch here, a teasing comment there, a moment of absolute forgetfulness when your heroine stops to notice the hero's hair blowing in the wind... Little things like this should snowball throughout the story until neither character can deny their attraction any longer. Just be sure to take it at your characters' pace, and remember that a good love story is one that grows organically between your hero and heroine :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23271" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T13:20:16.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26476" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26489" CreationDate="2017-02-03T13:52:40.117" Score="0" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an example from my own writing (this is a first draft so there might be errors):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Turn for Kazuo's eyeballs. I take them to the table, but I don't eat&#xA;  them immediately. I look at them looking back at me. Like they always&#xA;  did. When I ate, when I slept, right the second I woke up. &lt;strong&gt;A rare&#xA;  sight. Especially between old couples. Most of the time, the two&#xA;  people are squinting at their phones, glancing around the table, like&#xA;  strangers forced to stick together. You'd think rejection can only&#xA;  occur before a relationship. Not necessarily.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So when Kazuo kept looking at me as often after seven years of relationship, I&#xA;  had to ask him why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the &lt;strong&gt;bolded&lt;/strong&gt; section slightly diverts from the first paragraph. (It stops talking about Kazuo and enters to a more general topic.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a bad idea? Does it make the writing look messy/disorganized? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="1544" LastEditDate="2017-02-03T14:01:32.083" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T04:22:32.913" Title="Is it bad to divert from the topic in a paragraph and continue in the next?" Tags="|style|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26358" CreationDate="2017-02-03T13:52:44.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are various ways to do this, and they're all to some extent personal. They're personal because they have to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have to be because the essential goal here is to be someone else, a different &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; to the one that wrote the writing in the first place. To do this, you have to know how to deal with the first-draft-writer version of yourself, you have to know what other versions of yourself exist, and how to bring them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why I think there can never be a universally applicable answer to this question. It all depends on who you're dealing with when you're dealing with &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice is to experiment. Find the ritual that works for you. Like any ritual, it doesn't have to matter so much what you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt;. You just have to - one way or another - cause a change in yourself, to find a way to summon the versions of yourself that can't - or simply refuse - to appear on command.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few examples of the sort of things that you could try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Doing all of your writing in one place, and your editing in another.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Playing music while you write, but not while you edit (or vice versa).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Writing in the morning, editing in the evening (or vice versa).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Printing off your work so that you can't edit it, annotating the printout, then making edits based on your annotations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Writing by hand, then editing on a computer (it's probably irrelevant, since we're talking about you here, but for what it's worth, this is the one that works best for me).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finding an activity (going to parties, playing a sport, watching films, meditating) which alters your mood in a significant way, and editing immediately afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pretending you're someone else while you edit. Perhaps someone who has enjoyed previous writing by you and is about to read your new stuff with a critical (but not entirely unsympathetic) eye.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Leaving a set amount of time before editing (as others have suggested). Of course, this could easily be combined with one or more of the others.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Writing in one font, editing in another.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T13:52:44.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26476" CreationDate="2017-02-03T14:09:45.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is messy/disorganized a bad thing here?  This writing sample is first person narration.  It is not supposed to be grammatically or stylistically perfect.  It is supposed to represent how this particular narrator would tell their tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to answer your question, for the sake of other non-narrative paragraphs, yes... rambling within a single paragraph is a bad idea.  A composition's structure (including its paragraph breaks) should organize it concepts such that the reader receives the bulk of the conveyed information without disorder or distraction.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A carriage return before the bold text begins and a verb for that first bold sentence would improve the organization of this writing if it were not a narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T14:09:45.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26451" CreationDate="2017-02-03T15:01:00.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Compile settings &gt; All Options &gt; Page Settings &gt; First Pages, set &quot;Start regular header and footer on:&quot; to &quot;Automatic&quot;, and uncheck &quot;Page numbers count first pages&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will set the normal headers and footers to start after the front matter and only begin page counts then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23319" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T15:01:00.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26466" CreationDate="2017-02-03T15:12:34.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_H._P._Lovecraft&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, all of the H.P. Lovecraft's writings which were published during his lifetime are now in the public domain.  As such, there should be no legal/copyright issues arising from your use of that material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;derivative works&lt;/a&gt; are guilty of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;plagiarism&lt;/a&gt;, is a bigger question and the internet is full of carefully worded, non-legally-binding (i.e. IMHO) articles on the subject.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/blog/2010/06/09/fiction-writing-and-plagiarism/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a good example of one of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would personally build upon the &quot;proper citation&quot; aspect of fair use, if I wanted to reference a Cthulhu creature in something I wrote.  I would make sure that the reader knows where the idea for the creature came from.  In a fictional setting, how I handled it would be based on the answer to the following question?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did H.P. Lovecraft live and publish books in my fictional universe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he did, then I would have one of my characters be an H.P. Lovecraft fan and have him exclaim upon first encounter with an Old God (or more survivably, an Old God's minion), &quot;Hey, that reminds me of something from one of my favorite books by H.P. Lovecraft!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Lovecraft did not exist in my fictional universe, then since I was borrowing one of his creations, I would borrow all of his creations.  That means that every character and event from his writing would somehow be a true event (or psychotic person's raving) in my universe's history.  Now, a journal by Francis Wayland Thurston, (the narrator of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Call_of_Cthulhu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Call of Cthulhu&lt;/a&gt;) would find its way into one of my character's hands.  In this case, my making an honest attempt to give proper attribution will hopefully be enough to keep the plagiarism police, flamers and critics away from my door.  (Sort of like leaving an I.O.U. in place of the $20 you stole out of Dad's wallet.  It may still be stealing, but the chance of getting punished for it is greatly reduced.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last point I would offer on this subject is the need to make your work additive to the whole of Lovecraft's world.  Don't just borrow his characters and creatures for an uneventful stroll.  That is worse than plagiarism.  It's boring!  Do something creative with these borrowed creations.  Reveal something blood chilling about their eldritch nature, or about humanity's origins in relation to the Old Gods, or about how our new technology stacks up against their old lore.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't just write another H.P. Lovecraft story.  Build upon Lovecraft's world!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T15:12:34.760" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26468" CreationDate="2017-02-03T15:36:49.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Delays like that are often used in conveying dialog or poetry.&#xA;I've seen periods used before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I. Am. The king of texting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This man, this. What a monster. He has done something despicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Italics is used to denote saying the word differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You kissed &lt;em&gt;her&lt;/em&gt;?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23338" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T18:29:43.633" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26482" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-03T17:16:29.757" Score="19" ViewCount="3328" Body="&lt;p&gt;Got advised on Worldbuilding’s Sandbox to post here, so here I am.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t even know if the word “alien” applies here because to the eyes of the characters, those animals and plants won’t be alien at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m thinking about creating an unique flora/fauna for the world I designed, but can’t find a way to describe the plants/animals without being boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think: a fantasy writer who uses Earth flora/fauna can just say “wolf” and every reader will know what he’s talking about. Maybe if there are fantastical creatures alongside common animals he can describe them, but them only, and it will not bore the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, think about creating everything from scratch. The people of my world know what the animal I need to describe is. After all, the flying scaled green creature who produces a frightening and powerful screech is as common for them as a cow is for us. There is no way to describe it to the reader in the eyes of the character without sounding too expositional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are people who can shapeshift into animals in the story. Their entire society values, religion and symbology are deeply connected to animals. It’ll be quite a trick to explain that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do not plan to go berserk. The fictional plants/animals will most likely follow the structure of Earth biology in the sense that they will be divided into trees, grasses, reptiles, mammals, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I won’t write a biology book. Only the animals and plants important to the story will be described.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is not a story of Earth humans interacting with an alien world. The story is set on the fictional world and narrated in the eyes of that world’s natives.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Movies and games have it way easier since they can simply show and not tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all that in mind, how can I describe the plants and animals unique to the world I created without sounding forcibly expositional? Maybe this won’t work as a book after all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23306" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T12:35:50.623" Title="How to introduce alien flora/fauna without turning the fiction into a biology book?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|fantasy|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26483" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26484" CreationDate="2017-02-03T17:42:39.117" Score="2" ViewCount="2151" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some good ways to describe the looks of a new character presented in a story? I generally mention eye and hair color, physical build and maybe if they have facial hair or not. But to me it seems a bit boring to use the same style of description each time. What are some other various ways of describing new characters without giving too much detail that the reader may lose track of what is going on in the story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18989" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T05:22:26.390" Title="Ways of describing new characters?" Tags="|characters|description|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26483" CreationDate="2017-02-03T17:49:49.953" Score="7" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clothes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smell (cologne/perfume, the scents that may be in clothing or hair)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Body language (swagger, creep, stroll, cringing, stride)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attitude (businesslike, flirtatious, bored, scared, tired)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Voice (tone, volume, accent, husky/smooth, high/low, speech&#xA;impediment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Age&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Race&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Species if it's a SF/F story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want practice, turn on the TV at random and pick someone. Describe that person. Flip the channel and do it again. Do it 10 times. Do it twice a day. Make a point of using a different characteristic to lead with for each description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T17:49:49.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26482" CreationDate="2017-02-03T17:56:08.630" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's just scene-setting. Your main character gets up in the morning and goes out onto her balcony to enjoy the morning while her caffeine is brewing, and she contemplates all the plants in her garden. As her eyes linger over each, describe them briefly, maybe with little stories about why she likes it or when she planted it or how hard it is to cultivate it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then she goes to work, and her buddy tells her about the crazy thing his pet TKTK did, and in doing so describes it. (&quot;So Rex got into the kibble, and his head is stuck in the bag. I pull it off and there's kibble all under his scales, and of course the purple kibble looks awful against the green, and then he screeches because the kids startled him and the window shattered!&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a character shapeshifts, it's perfectly fair to use that as a moment to describe the new animal shape your character has. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drop in the description when the item comes up, show us through the eyes of one of your characters, and don't overdo it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T17:56:08.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26482" CreationDate="2017-02-03T19:04:43.240" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sentence where you explain the following is your way into how it should be done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The story is set on the fictional world and narrated in the eyes of&#xA;  that world’s natives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, think about how people tell stories on Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose your friend is going to tell you about a car wreck he just saw right outside before coming into your house.  One of the parts of the story is that the driver of one car flew through the windshield.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, might your friend tell the story and then say something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was a terrible wreck.  Your front lawn is a beautiful shade of&#xA;  green and I love the native lilies you have growing in the front&#xA;  flower bed. The stamens on those lilies are quite interesting.  If you&#xA;  look closely you can see each fleck of pollen within the flower bloom.&#xA;  The driver of the Camry went straight through the windshield. She was&#xA;  a bloody mess.  The red blood stood in stark contrast to your lovely&#xA;  front lawn.  However, it almost matched those red lilies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you were writing a non-fiction story about flora and fauna, would you include the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was staring at the beauty of the inner leaves of the lily blossom&#xA;  when a car smacked into a pole in front of our house.  A woman flew&#xA;  through the windshield and landed in the flower bed.  Her body smashed&#xA;  the flowers flat and I was quite annoyed. I pushed her body to the&#xA;  side and continued my examination of the lilies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Point&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Focus on the story you are telling.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some alien in your story ends up crushing the leaves of an exotic plant to make a poison to kill another character, then show me the plant as the character gathers it and crushes the leaves.  Otherwise, leave it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For it seems, that aliens tell the same stories we on Earth tell: ones that are relevant to the context. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When people drone on about things that are not in context, we call them bores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-02-10T14:56:14.023" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T14:56:14.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26465" CreationDate="2017-02-03T19:12:55.443" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Romance in books is as diverse as real life, there's no one way about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try imagining your question in terms of a vacation, you can go on a lot of vacations, all vacations are different, you can go to the same vacation but experience it differently, and you can have different ways of experiencing or going to that vacation in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character bonding typically occurs when there's a reason for it however, I would highly suggest against just throwing two characters together just for the hell of it - unless you're writing fanfiction or a romance - however even in these cases, romance has an objective that leads the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the end goal of the protagonist? Do they want to save the world like James Bond? Do they want to rediscover themselves? Or is the objective just to 'get the girl/guy'?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How would these two characters being in a relationship help the protagonist in reaching their goal? Remember that the story you're writing needs to be focused on this goal, not following it leads to tangents or confusion with the audience, if the romance doesn't add anything, it might be better off not having it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically by answering these two, you will find that you can come up with a reason to have a romance in the first place, which is something a lot of authors forget - plugging romance 'just because'. If the character is looking to save the world, the reasoning behind having that relationship is that she has some secret key to solving his problem. If the character is struggling with anxiety, then perhaps the romance revolves around trying to break this anxiety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you solve the core root of the romance, you will be able to figure out a path. When writing, I find its better to pick two points and draw a line (that can go everywhere as long as they meet up) rather than draw a single point, and try to find a point to stop at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T19:12:55.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2017-02-03T19:43:13.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am always curious about efficiency, so I tried switching to Dvorak about four years ago. Here are some notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I didn't switch the keys since I knew I would be working on multiple keyboards; instead I printed out a cheat sheet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It took me about 3-4 weeks to get up to Qwerty speed (60-65 wpm for me). The first week I was a painful 10 wpm.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then I surpassed my speed and now have visited 75 wpm.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The weirdest thing that I wish Dvorak had done differently is putting all the vowels right next to each other. I still mix them up sometimes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I know the guy's tests were dubious, but that doesn't mean his system was.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is lots of debate about this: some people say Dvorak absolutely makes you go faster, others think it's psychological. For my part, I tried to be very open-minded about it and just see what happened, and I did go faster. That's about as much as I can argue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also don't believe that Qwerty was literally made to slow you down. You see all sorts of conflicting views about this as well. My best analysis says that it's a myth that Qwerty was designed to slow you down (though it was made to alternate left and right hands).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'll also mention, while I'm at it, that I believe that neither Qwerty nor Dvorak is right for devices, because they are both ten-finger systems, whereas devices don't work that way. Which is why we developed Modality typing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everything else said, though, I'm definitely a Dvorak supporter. Not a huge evangelist, though I do talk about it here and there (like here, for instance).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, hopefully that helps muddy the waters for you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23342" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T19:43:13.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26476" CreationDate="2017-02-03T19:48:01.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To clarify and follow up on Henry Taylor's answer;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you are writing in the first person, your writing is reflective of your character's mind. Is your character naturally clumsy, or is he straight minded and strategic? Did they just have a shocking experience and are now confused, and how do they deal with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're writing a character that tediously elaborates on every single tiny detail, perhaps this writing style would work, conveying how they constantly switch between ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe your character has two different personalities that argue back and forth, or one side is more analytical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an exercise, try to imagine writing in the first person as telling yourself what's going on. Think of you being in your character's situation. Maybe your character is currently sprinting away from a pursuer, panicked and in shock - and notices a small detail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I matched each footstep that thudded down the alley behind me with two of mine. This couldn't end like this, could it? The glowing neon sign above me advertised a writers convention. Heh - if only I could be sitting at home reading a book with a hot cuppa in my hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps try to create a more emphasized link between the two events? I used a neon sign in my example to anchor the current state of the character running with his mind wanting to sit reading a book. I've reformatted it here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I was slightly confused at the context of this piece, I had thought that he was eating Kazuo's eyes but soon realized that he was eating something that you hadn't mentioned in this paragraph.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Turning, I looked directly at Kazuo. About to bite into a [donut] that I had just grabbed from the table, I was forced to stop. Our eyes met and I just watched as his pupils stared back at me like they always did. Whenever I ate or slept, they would just look at me with that pathetic look*. His burning intention was a rare sight even between old couples. Most of the time, a couple simply squint at their phones, glancing around their table like two strangers forced to sit together. [Unsure about where the rejection bit plays into this?]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Note: I have no idea what kind of character Kazuo is so I just suggested this to allow for more emphasis of the situation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T19:48:01.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26483" CreationDate="2017-02-03T20:12:01.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I dislike police lineup style listings for characters. After all, who wants to read blocks of text telling you about every intrinsic detail about a character in an almost list-like format? Most of it will be irrelevant anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following example* is something that I barely pass off as 'okay':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Towering like a giant at 6'5&amp;quot; John stood in the metro wearing a pair of stinking Denim Jeans topped off with his favorite Metallica T-shirt. Having slouched against guard rail - evidently after a hard day's work, he didn't care if the white-collared busybodies around him moved away because of the putrid smell that radiated from his body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He looked completely out of place, a blonde caucasian male that looked like he had barely broken 30 in the middle of a crowd of Asian businessmen, however, he had some place to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Excuse me.&amp;quot; His gruff voice scared those standing in front of the doorway as the metro came to a stop in one of the flashiest districts in town.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Note I used Lauren Ipsum's list as a checklist for ideas here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you notice what I did here? Instead of going ahead, listing off one by one details about a person - I resorted to revealing information that was necessary for leading on the story. Does John have Blue eyes? What kind of Jeans is he wearing? Does he have a beard? What is his job? You can leave all of that up to the character's imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you define a character, remember that the audience only needs information that is necessary for driving the plot, and can assume the rest. In this example, his clothing and out of place appearance creates mystery and gets the reader wanting to know &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; John is in Asia, and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; he is in such a place. His height and his appearance shown here instantly makes the audience assume things, he's most likely a manual worker or blue collared worker based on his opinions towards white collars he likes Metallica, and is instantly portrayed as someone that is strong based on his voice and height.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why don't I like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it plainly, it's still a list and a lot of it could be interpreted in other ways. Him being caucasian could be told through him standing out in a crowd of Asians based on his ethnicity, perhaps his height could be subjugated through this same comparison. If it is absolutely necessary that the character's hair style is told to the audience for example for a reoccurring joke that plays later on, or for some reason he joins a 'Afro club', then sure you can tell that directly. However, you could also introduce him as being a proud member of the Afro Club and that instantly conveys to the audience that your character has an Afro. The same thing applies to appearances, it's highly unlikely that your audience will remember every single detail about a character's face - unless your character has something unique like they look middle eastern and that will help them get into a terrorist camp - it's completely unnecessary to go into details and is just plain bulky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: In the case of presenting characters midway in a story this is very important, as you don't want to go: &amp;quot;The [gender of person] standing before him had [haircolor and style] and was dressed in [clothes] with [eye color].&amp;quot; Hinting at the character's description is far more effective, and helps the audience remember. If some character is very affluent about his Afro Club and other characters joke about him being in it a lot, you will instantly remember this charcter has an afro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T20:12:01.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26468" CreationDate="2017-02-03T20:43:24.793" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having read the answers provided beforehand, I want to add one more example that could be used: Repetition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This man, this... this monster, has done something despicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was expecting the president to be a middle-aged man and then this... this boy comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find it awkward to read if a long pause comes between a noun and its verb/adjectives as naturally, we can relate actions and descriptions with an anchoring noun since you already know that you're describing something If you are able to say &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this case does work if you want the character to quickly think of a lie that they want to attach to something, e.g. they say an object - realize they need to lie about it and therefore pause, giving a subtle hint about this, or if its part of their characterization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T20:43:24.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26482" CreationDate="2017-02-03T23:38:52.253" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Watson&lt;/strong&gt; might help you in this case. It is a character archetype which allows the writer to describe things which otherwise would be obvious to the main characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you want to describe plants or animals which are unfamiliar to the reader but very familiar to the characters in the story, introduce a clueless character who isn't familiar with them, because of coming from another country with a different climate, or having grown up in a very protected environment. Think about a city kid going into the wilderness for the first time. Of course, this still doesn't allow you to get away with a biology book style description, but might lessen the oddness of it if done with moderation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why many war movies have a clueless civilian, science fiction stories have a clueless non-scientist, expedition and survivor stories have a clueless beginner, they all provide an opportunity for the professionals of the setting to describe and explain things to the audience on a simpler level, something they would never do if they were only among themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you might need an outsider, a naive newcomer. Not necessarily from another planet, it's enough to be from another environment, or with a lack of education about the things you want to describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19704" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T23:38:52.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26482" CreationDate="2017-02-04T00:00:44.743" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything is boring unless it has a function in the story. It it is irrelevant, it is boring. There is nothing you can do with language to make irrelevant stuff not be boring. Conversely, if something is relevant to the story, then it is interesting. Describing it beautifully may be icing on the cake, but it is its function in the story that makes it interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantastical creatures and fantastical fauna need a story reason for being fantastical. Their fantasticality is irrelevant unless it plays a role in the story, and therefore boring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your descriptions of your flora and fauna are boring it is not because you are describing them wrong. It is either because they are gratuitously fantastical in a way that is irrelevant to the story or because you are describing them at a time that they are not relevant to the story or in a way that does not make their relevance to the story clear. Connect them to the story and they will not be boring. (Unless the story is boring, of course, but that is another problem.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything that Lauren says in her answer is perfectly valid, but only as long as these things are relevant to the story. What is the story reason that your character gets up and contemplates the strangeness of her garden? What it the story reason for the fantastical beast she transforms into? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these things are connected to the story then the logic of the story will drive you to reveal them at the appropriate time. If they are not connected to the story than introducing them in the way Lauren suggests will be boring because they are irrelevant and irrelevant = boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-04T05:33:53.130" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T05:33:53.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26495" CreationDate="2017-02-04T02:37:35.980" Score="3" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a story that alternates perspectives between the hero and heroine every other chapter. I have gotten a lot of work done with the heroine's chapters, but I have been trouble writing for the hero's perspective. The hero is a young, wealthy business owner who has had his fair share of women and comes off as arrogant and over confident, but is actually a good guy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been hard for me to look inside the mind of a player. I don't want to make him seem like an antagonist but I still want to keep his cockiness there as I'm writing his thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some ways to convey his personality through his thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23328" LastEditorUserId="23328" LastEditDate="2017-02-04T03:22:14.840" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T14:47:19.777" Title="How to write from a rich &quot;bad boy's&quot; perspective?" Tags="|technique|character-development|grammatical-person|romance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26494" CreationDate="2017-02-04T04:45:52.383" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to write from his perspective would be to emphasize the way what he &lt;em&gt;means&lt;/em&gt; is quite different from the way people &lt;em&gt;perceive&lt;/em&gt; him, so as to show that his 'bad boy' nature is, in fact, a misconception of his character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few ways of doing this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Implied through action:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Confident people tend to take the lead without&#xA;  really thinking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example: say he's part of a group eating dinner&#xA;  and he instantly sits at the head of the table. This could be totally&#xA;  subconscious, but others see it as him being 'full of himself' because&#xA;  'he didn't even ask!'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another example might be him deciding which restaurant to go to by himself because he feels like Chinese food, without realizing that one of the people in the group is allergic/doesn't like Chinese, making him seem inconsiderate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Part of the way confidence can be misconstrued&#xA;  as arrogance is due to the way confident people are used to taking the&#xA;  lead and doing what they want - the assumption being, that if someone&#xA;  else wanted it, they'd have done it first or speak up - without&#xA;  realizing that introverts/timid people would have a very hard time&#xA;  doing it, and might just label the confident person as selfish for not asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there's option two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Implied through dialogue:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Confident people tend to speak in a manner that leaves less room for being contradicted or denied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Asking leading questions that imply you've already said yes to a different topic is a very confident manner of speaking - it makes it seem like the speaker doesn't believe for a &lt;em&gt;second&lt;/em&gt; there was a chance of the word 'no' (and maybe he really does believe that!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that this is a common pickup artist tactic, which I think is an excellent topic of research when trying to write confident characters - their mannerisms might be especially helpful with writing a convincing playboy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Example: &quot;Hey, Jessica, what's better for you - Saturday or Sunday?&quot; Will asked, tapping her on the shoulder to get her attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Jessica turned around. &quot;Saturday... um, for what?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;Our date.&quot; Will grinned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another way of showing this is saying questions as statements, like flipping money at someone and saying 'get me a mocha latte.' - this could be a carried over from being a business man used to ordering around his secretary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even more ideas - apologizing can be seen as weak, especially if done too often, and so your character subconsciously avoids it by opting for other phrases - instead of &quot;Sorry I'm late.&quot; he might say &quot;Thanks for waiting.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and lastly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Implied through thought:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Confident people tend to think in a way where failure &lt;strong&gt;isn't an option.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Instead of thinking &lt;em&gt;Will Jessica say yes if I ask her out?&lt;/em&gt; he might&#xA;  think &lt;em&gt;I should take Jessica to [insert restaurant here] on our date.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  as though she already said yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or if there's rumors of a promotion in his company, he might think &lt;em&gt;I&#xA;  hope my new office has windows.&lt;/em&gt; because he just assumes he'll be&#xA;  chosen due to being more competent than his co-workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That being said, having him be utterly unshakable would get boring&#xA;  quick - you should still have a couple moments/things in the story&#xA;  which make him crumple - lets say he can't stand up to his mother for the&#xA;  life of him, and docilely does everything she says even if he hates&#xA;  it, or say, he gets really shaken when he discovers that one of his&#xA;  girlfriends cheated on &lt;em&gt;him&lt;/em&gt; for once, or the promotion went to&#xA;  someone who he thought he was better than in every way, ect. ect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moments of weakness is what makes even the strongest characters seem&#xA;  human!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last additional thought - confidence is a virtue people love, and a over-confidence (and womanizing) is a pretty likable flaw in fiction - it seems unlikely to me that the readers might see him as an antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4975" LastEditorUserId="4975" LastEditDate="2017-02-04T18:43:02.543" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T18:43:02.543" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26482" CreationDate="2017-02-04T09:40:29.503" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I won't repeat &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10992/how-to-show-that-something-is-different-than-in-real-life/10993#10993&quot;&gt;my answer to this related question&lt;/a&gt; here, but instead briefly remind you that &lt;strong&gt;writing about an alien world is exactly like writing about the real world&lt;/strong&gt;. You are stuck on the idea that your readers know nothing about this alien world that you made up, but that they are intimately familiar with this world we live in. But that is not true. Do you know how the school system in France works? Do you know what the current fashion in clothes, music, and food is in Turkmenistan? Do you understand the laws and political system in Burkina Faso? I could go on and on like this, but you get the idea: You can read a book written by an author from Chile or Finnland for a Chilean or Finnish audience and &lt;em&gt;get it&lt;/em&gt; without knowing all the plants and animals that live there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because people are the same everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you are writing about &lt;em&gt;aliens&lt;/em&gt; and you might want them to be different from humans, but for the story to have any relevance for your human readers at all, there must be some similarity, some kinship, something that the readers can relate to in the psychology of those aliens, and that will be the essential core of your story, the premise that drives the plot. &lt;strong&gt;Everything else is just there like spices to tickle your reader's mind.&lt;/strong&gt; It is completely unimportant to your story whether that plant is blue or red, so you can&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;leave all that detail away.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just tell your story as if your readers where from that alien culture and intimately familiar with it. If the story works for an alien reader, it will work just as well for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T09:40:29.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26497" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26499" CreationDate="2017-02-04T15:29:24.327" Score="5" ViewCount="6878" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a similar question as the one asked in &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/21742/how-to-write-montages-in-prose-fantasy-novel&quot;&gt;'How to write montages in prose? (fantasy novel)'&lt;/a&gt; however, there has been no answer in this and it is far too general. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question I wish to ask is; &lt;strong&gt;Are there any specific techniques that you can use to write a montage, or a short sequence of events that take place over a period of time, in a novel?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, how would you write a piece of fiction that skims over a period of time but has scattered pieces of important information that is necessary for the future of the plot, may it be in the form of a work montage, training montage, or just an acceleration in time that would be too tedious to explain in detail due to repetition, but still have &lt;em&gt;significant events that occur&lt;/em&gt; that are out of place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;To elaborate more on my specific issue; one of my characters is residing in a village to raise funds - and during this period, he sees injustices performed on villagers such as unfair extortion of taxes, bullying by more powerful beings, etc. How would I be able to string these in, as I don't want to include tedious events such as him going around helping out with farming, learning how to hunt, etc.? I've been considering including short chapters only a few paragraphs long in a sort of diary format, however I don't feel as if this would fit the third person style of writing I'm going for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2023-02-02T12:12:49.970" Title="Writing Montage in Novels" Tags="|fiction|technique|novel|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26502" CreationDate="2017-02-04T16:26:53.487" Score="0" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have enough expertise, but, I have a very good plot in my mind. A psychological thriller kind of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the easiest and affordable thing I can do to get it written?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23354" LastEditorDisplayName="user23354" LastEditDate="2017-02-04T19:07:37.077" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T20:34:23.280" Title="How can I write a novel?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-02-04T21:00:38.890" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26497" CreationDate="2017-02-04T16:28:10.320" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really think people are much too obsessed with not telling. Many of the novels I enjoy most, tell. Lots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have, for example, a group of characters recovering from a fight, just friggin' say so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the next three weeks we stayed in camp and recovered from our wounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, please don't show me three weeks of recovering! I don't want to know what they ate and whether they brushed their teeth. Make it one sentence and be done with it. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re: Your edit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If something happens during the three weeks, you summarize (&quot;tell&quot;) the week until that something happens, then narrate what happens as expansively as you do the rest of your novel (&quot;show&quot;) and then summarize the remainder again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way: You constantly summarize uninteresting periods of time, but you probably don't notice it yourself. For example, when your characters are sleeping you don't &quot;show&quot; that but simply leave it out: &lt;code&gt;The next morning...&lt;/code&gt;. But if a character wakes up during the night you continue your narrative in the middle of the night in stead of the next morning: &lt;code&gt;I woke up around midnight...&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your problem, as I see it, is that you think of that long period in your novel as a whole that you want to summarize, but have some things happening during this &quot;summary&quot; that you want to show in more detail, but don't know how. The solution is to stop thinking of the whole period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your think:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;--------------long period of time------------------&#xA;    event A                           event B&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should think:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;---period A---event A---period B---event B---period C---&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you have is not one long period that you summarize and have to break out of, but a normal narrative with three unimportant periods (like nights) that you summarize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the next three weeks we stayed in camp and recovered from our wounds. In the second week, one morning John was torn from his lazy revery by... The next week all was quiet again, until finally everyone was healed and itching to fight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your characters &lt;em&gt;do not act&lt;/em&gt; (that is, do not break their inactivity) but only &lt;em&gt;observe&lt;/em&gt; certain things, then you don't need to break your summary (&quot;telling&quot;) and can simply tell what they saw:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the next three weeks we stayed in camp and recovered from our wounds. During that time we saw the villagers raise unfair taxes and many other injustices, and they all served to steel our resolve to overcome Lord Dark. So when we were finally healed and ready to fight again, we...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is just a quick example, and you can go into much more detail in such a summary. There is nothing wrong with a few paragraphs of it. That's no different than taking some time to describe the setting or to provide a character's backstory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-02-05T15:58:09.743" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T15:58:09.743" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26482" CreationDate="2017-02-04T18:18:29.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can get hung up on this myself and always have to remind myself that physical descriptions are not all that can be used to make the 'alien' more real. Plants and animals have social and cultural roles. Integrating these creatures and plants into the societies and cultures you create allows you to add depth without just listing adjectives or relying on comparisons to things that don't exist in your world. Nicknames also work nicely. They can denote characterisitcs without expressly laying them out. 'Nightstalkers' conjures up a certain feeling all on its own without any other descriptors. Gives you a nice platform to work from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23355" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T18:18:29.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26746" CreationDate="2017-02-04T20:01:38.893" Score="2" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to set top and bottom margins to ZERO in Scrivenings mode so that I do not have big spaces between documents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23318" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T17:07:54.307" Title="How can I set top and bottom margins to ZERO in Scrivenings mode between documents?" Tags="|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26498" CreationDate="2017-02-04T20:34:23.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The beauty of writing is that you don't actually need to spend any money. You clearly have a computer because you posted this question, so you probably have  microsoft word. Use that to write it. For planning, either do it on the computer or get out some paper and plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expertise will come with practice. The &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; way to write a good novel is practice. There are certain &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/761/the-rules-of-writing&quot;&gt;'rules'&lt;/a&gt; which you can follow, but they will only help you to a degree. Many things come with practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In honesty, I believe this question is pointless and the answer is obvious.To write a novel you have to write a novel. It's just like answering a maths problem. You've just got to answer it. It doesn't require a big investment, it just requires belief and dedication. You've got to persevere through doubts, and just write. That's the only answer. Just write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to write, or you're uninterested in consistently writing and finishing it, then I don't think you're the type of person to be writing a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You've just got to write. There's infinite amounts of advise to be given, but all will be futile if you don't write.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T20:34:23.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19419" CreationDate="2017-02-04T21:19:43.180" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to understand what NaNoWriMo is, and what it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things that it is, is a powerful demonstration that &lt;strong&gt;yes, it is possible&lt;/strong&gt;. If you write your words every day, they &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; add up. If you stick at it, you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; reach novel-length. If you let the words flow, &lt;em&gt;they will come&lt;/em&gt;, even if they won't all be perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be a liberating experience. Liberating, because it's a vivid demonstration that writing a novel is an attainable goal. And liberating, because in order to get that kind of wordcount (particularly for a relative novice), you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to let go of your inhibitions, of your self-doubt, of your internal critic and editor, and allow yourself to write for &lt;em&gt;length&lt;/em&gt;, rather than perfection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's one of the huge stumbling blocks that beginners have -- they want to be writing fantastic, exhilarating prose (like the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309485-nobody-tells-this-to-people-who-are-beginners-i-wish&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;stories they love so much!&lt;/a&gt;), but they don't know that prose underwent multiple drafts, that those writers had years of experience, that those authors might have a trunkload of unpublished novels. Writing for length short-circuits that -- and so NaNoWriMo gives you a quick way to build up bulk, which may not be a finished product, but it can be a lot easier to work with than a blank page!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, NaNoWriMo &lt;strong&gt;isn't&lt;/strong&gt; a quick path to producing excellent fiction. That novel is a first draft -- and often, it's a first draft that was very rushed, by a beginning writer, without even much of a sense of direction. There's no reason to expect it to be very good -- not until you start editing and rewriting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary: NaNoWriMo's quick, quick writing is totally doable, but you need to understand that the product will be a quick first draft, not a polished product. A quick first draft can be a &lt;strong&gt;huge&lt;/strong&gt; thing for a writer, and I wouldn't dismiss it in a hurry -- but if, for whatever reason, that isn't what you want right now, then NaNoWriMo may not be for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(More broadly speaking, there are certainly some authors who write very quickly, and that works for them well professionally. Whether or not you're one of these is something you'll have to discover for yourself :) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T21:19:43.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26504" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-05T01:49:24.453" Score="0" ViewCount="357" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've started to notice that I do a lot more writing at night, with my lights off. When I write with a light on, I get a slight migraine, and I'm not sure why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do different lighting conditions affect how people write, and am I the only one who writes better with the lights off?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-02-23T03:47:06.647" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T03:47:06.647" Title="Do light conditions affect writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|tools|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2017-02-23T09:16:57.130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26468" CreationDate="2017-02-05T03:27:50.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I certainly like Lauren's answer, among others. But nobody has spoken specifically to dialogue, so I thought I'd add a bit to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With narration, I don't like to add pauses in general, but a first-person story would be different, I suppose. With dialogue, you want the reader to read with the same rhythm, if not the same pace, as the way your writer's mind sees it happening in order keep the reader maximally enthralled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pauses in conversation can be solved by using a &lt;strong&gt;dialogue tag&lt;/strong&gt; where you want the pause&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Johnny!&quot; Billy hollered, &quot;your ma says you gotta come home!&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;And I was doing the same thing over and over and over again,&quot; Bob said, taking a drag off his cigarette, &quot;and I was, like, What's going on?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;As it turns out,&quot; Henry said, &quot;the wind &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; coming from the east!&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to use a filler like &lt;strong&gt;hmm&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;uh huh&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;,well,&lt;/strong&gt; and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;We were, you know, happy to see each other, but ...&quot; Marie trailed off. &quot;Eventually we just had to accept reality.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;It's going to be, well, a tough victory, but maybe--just maybe--if we're really lucky...&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sky said, &quot;This is great, hmm, pasta. It's pasta, right?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T03:27:50.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1093" CreationDate="2017-02-05T08:32:26.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dvorak is a bit outdated, and not all the assumptions he made have proven correct over time (such as penalties for same hand). For a more modern take, which favors same hand inward rolls, look at &lt;strong&gt;Colemak&lt;/strong&gt; . It is absolutely worth the effort to learn either as an improvement over qwerty, but if you're going to go to this amount of trouble you might as well get rid of a few other issues sorted, such as the staggered key layout. Keyboards like the kinesis advantage (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/&lt;/a&gt;) have the keys arranged in a grid, and combined with colemak have totally revolutionized typing for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One big advantage with using an alternate keyboard that I've found is that I never lost any qwerty skills. I use qwerty at home, and colemak on my kinesis keyboard at work. The physical differences appears to have separated the muscle memory into two entirely different skills which don't collide. A bit like learning piano playing not causing you to lose typing skills, maybe, because it feels different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it took me about a week or two to get started properly with the layout, and about 6-8 weeks to come up to a useful speed. After 6 months I'd become a bit better than my qwerty best but seem to have stopped getting faster (been using colemak several years now). however, I notice a MASSIVE improvement in comfort, which was worth the change all by itself. There is an enjoyable slickness to colemak which has to be experienced. Some people have gone on to incredible speeds with colemak, sadly I'm not one of them and topped out at around 80-90wpm, but the comfort factor alone never caused me to regret the switch, not once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23364" LastEditorUserId="23364" LastEditDate="2017-02-05T08:49:07.603" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T08:49:07.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26509" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26511" CreationDate="2017-02-05T16:01:04.640" Score="49" ViewCount="7981" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gosh, I really think I'm quite clever sometimes. But what about those situations where the readers (audience) can be told, and they feel completely satiated and entertained by not going into the nuts and bolts. There are tons of examples: How about all the James Bond gadgets? Especially the fireball-shooting pen (&lt;em&gt;Never Say Never Again&lt;/em&gt;, I think). And then there's the opposite, like the information dump from Morpheus to Neo in &lt;em&gt;The Matrix&lt;/em&gt;. I ate them both up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? What made me want to know everything in one situation but tune out the rational part of my brain in others? &lt;strong&gt;More importantly, how do I know when to keep world-building explanations short versus totally geeking-out?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I believe this is a writers question rather than a world builders since I'm not asking HOW to build a world.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2017-02-06T00:29:07.940" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T15:28:58.560" Title="&quot;The flux capacitor--it's what makes time travel possible.&quot; When to keep world-building explanations short" Tags="|world-building|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26509" CreationDate="2017-02-05T16:28:40.790" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a Your Mileage May Vary situation, but I think there are two good rules of thumb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Explain only as much as you need for the story to make sense.&lt;/strong&gt; This will vary depending on your audience, but roughly, anything specialized to your world or your story will need a minimum of explanation. Your readers are, at a baseline, familiar with 2017 (today's) technology. Anything set after that (or before it) will need to be accounted for. Today, if Person A wants to contact Person B, s/he pulls a cell phone out of his/her pocket. In 1942, you had to find a physical phone. In 1895, you had to send a telegram or a letter. In 2060, we might have data transmission chips in our heads, so you only have to think the message. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to explain what the chip is, and that a message sent from one chip to another is called a shunt, or shunting. What you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; need to do is explain is how the chip actually works. You have to establish that your character has a chip which can send and receive, you need to run through the procedure of &lt;em&gt;Activate Chip &amp;mdash; New Message &amp;mdash; Address Book &amp;mdash; Compose &amp;mdash; Send&lt;/em&gt; or however it works the first time, and then that's it. Don't belabor the details. After that, it's &quot;Betty sent a quick shunt to Carl about dinner. He shunted back &lt;em&gt;//sure, sounds fine//&lt;/em&gt;, so she made the reservation for eight.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Explain only what matters for the story.&lt;/strong&gt; Your alien city may have a magnificent monorail circling it, and in your worldbuilding backstory you had a whole two-year political fight about getting the permits and securing the space and protests and jobs and pollution and people buying and selling land and so forth, but if the only time the character sees the monorail is on approach... you don't need to tell the reader any of the backstory. It's not relevant. The only details you need to share are the ones which affect plot and character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T16:28:40.790" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26509" CreationDate="2017-02-05T16:31:16.313" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are two basic reasons for describing anything in fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is to give sensual pleasure in its own right. There are all sorts of sensual pleasures that prose might convey, from the erotic to the gastronomic to the social. Tom Clancy's loving descriptions of really big machines with really big guns are designed to titillate those of certain tastes. The depiction of suffering and injustice in the works of more liberal minded authors is designed to give a frisson of self-righteousness to the reader. Harry Potter depends heavily on the child's pleasure in the fantasy of being special and powerful, of being rewarded for extraordinary gifts where others would be scolded and sent to bed.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sensual appeal can be very strong, but it is also very individual. What entrances one reader will repulse another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other reason for description in literature is to support story. This is about what we need to know to follow the story and to feel fully immersed in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason backstory dumps are so often a problem for writers is that they often come before the reader cares about them. Unless they are well enough written to give sensual pleasure, and the reader is receptive to that particular brand of sensual pleasure, then the description is tedious if it is not relevant to the story as the reader is currently experiencing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to the Future is a fish out of water story. How the flux capacitor works is not story relevant, and would not give sensual pleasure to most of the intended audience, so it is not detailed in the movie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Matrix is a much more philosophical movie. It deals with the ancient philosophical question of how we can know if anything is real. Contemplating this question gives us the pleasure of feeling clever and feeling superior to the lesser minds who go around blissfully believing everything they see. It is also relevant to the story at the point it is given (as best I remember) because Neo needs to know the nature of the thing he is fighting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-06T00:48:47.440" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T00:48:47.440" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26509" CreationDate="2017-02-05T18:18:52.073" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you build on it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the device is something your story needs, but doesn't need to dwell on; sometimes the story revolves around it as a central conceit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's take the power requirements of the flux capacitor in Back To The Future. The plot arc of the first film revolves around its staggering requirements -- the uranium leads to Doc getting shot in 1985, strands Marty in 1955 with only one shot at returning to his own timeline via a lightning strike. So much information, which is directly driving the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the sequel, it's completely resolved -- Mr. Fusion provides all the power the flux capacitor needs; briefly displayed occasionally but otherwise entirely irrelevant and no longer requiring the audience's attention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We need to know about the power requirements to comprehend the plot and the issues are front and centre, brought up early, foreshadowed; but when it is no longer plot relevant we place a fig-leaf over it and no longer draw attention to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explaining the limitations and requirements of your time-travel solution are critical, especially if you want to play with them later; 88 mph is established early  on, and only really becomes relevant in episode 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23369" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T18:18:52.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26513" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26598" CreationDate="2017-02-05T18:23:53.173" Score="10" ViewCount="809" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story I'm writing is in English, but it's set in a constructed world with a range of different languages. The general conceit is that anything the viewpoint character (of which there's more than one, with more than one language) understands is portrayed in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble with this is that many of my characters speak in a fairly informal way (in a &quot;less formal register&quot; of their own languages). Intuitively, I've represented this through the use of somewhat informal English. So, these characters say things like 'y'know?' and 'alright', and 'yeah'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These phrases are also used in different ways by different characters, helping (I hope) to give a clearer picture of the sort of people these characters are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that these specific phrases are unlikely to be directly translatable in the fictional language, and so by using them in the &quot;translated&quot; final text, I'm misrepresenting what my characters &quot;actually&quot; said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also find it a little jarring when English idioms turn up in translated versions of non-English novels. I find myself diverted into trying to guess what the original phrase was, and my immersion in the story is broken. I'm concerned that my fictional translations will have a similar effect on the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm torn, then, between using phrases which break realism (but add nuance to the characters and how they relate to their culture) and not using these phrases (and losing those nuances).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility I've considered is to do direct translations of the phrases they would more likely have used, but since these will only be meaningful when the reader is already familiar with them, I'm concerned that I'll need to do a lot of setting up (and the reader will have to do a lot of adjusting) before this can even begin to express the subtleties that the English equivalents can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these my only three choices? If so, are they really as problematic as I think they are, or am I overthinking this? If not, what should I do instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T03:56:43.087" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T03:56:43.087" Title="How can I keep my dialogue nuanced and informal without breaking the illusion that the story is a translation (from a fictional language)?" Tags="|dialogue|fantasy|translation|language|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26515" CreationDate="2017-02-05T19:51:59.403" Score="2" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on some guidelines for localization of a computer program.&#xA;We recently added descriptions to most of the settings, and most of the labels are user contributed and in many cases awful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example, we have a Settings menu with a &quot;Saving&quot; submenu&#xA;This Saving submenu has settings that affect how user-data is saved, for example sorting user data in folders, save data automatically, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The descrption for &quot;Saving&quot; reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Change settings for the saving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is horrible in my opinion. I'd like to establish some general localization guidelines for our project so I'd like some feedback on what these guidelines should look like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would change that into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Change settings related to save operations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it might sound too technical and it doesn't really describe anything.&#xA;Maybe a better idea would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Change settings related to save operations like folder organization, auto-save intervals, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think using an adequate tense and voice would be a great start for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I thought I should add a picture to describe the problem better&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O4Kdq.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O4Kdq.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23370" LastEditorUserId="23370" LastEditDate="2017-02-05T20:38:31.883" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T21:50:28.003" Title="What's the best way to describe what an option does in a program?" Tags="|software|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26514" CreationDate="2017-02-05T20:34:15.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is actually not a lot of point in describing what an option does, per se. What you should really focus on in both technical communication and interface design is what do you enable to user to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to enable the user to react correctly. So the first question is, given you user base, do any of these descriptions do anything to help the user act correctly that the label &quot;Saving&quot; does not already do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure the answer to that question is no for the examples given. By the time the user has worked out that they need to be in the setting menu, they probably understand what &quot;Saving&quot; means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some users, you may need to tell them how to organize their work in folders, etc. But that probably does not belong in a description of the setting menu because it is probably aimed at people who don't intuitively think, &quot;I bet I can adjust the default save location in the setting menu!&quot; Unless something thinks that way, they are not going to find that information in a description of the setting menu (except maybe by using search, if they happen to pick the right terms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other question to ask about documenting this setting per se is, are there things that a user who has got this far may not be able to do without more information? If there are, then that might be the stuff to document here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the answer to these questions, though, documentation that does not add anything to what the UI is already saying (for the anticipated audience) is pretty pointless. UI design is a form of technical communication. Unfortunately, there is far too much documentation out there that simply repeats what the UI is saying. It covers everything you could learn from the UI without its help, and nothing you could not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: In other words, there is on one right way to describe what a option does. The right way is to tell users what they need to know in order to act correctly and that will depend on many factors: who the reader is, what they are trying to accomplish, how complex or obscure the option is, and how effective the UI is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key question is always, what is the user trying to do, and what to they need to know (that they don't already know, and can't tell from the UI) in order to get that done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-05T21:50:28.003" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T21:50:28.003" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26516" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-05T23:01:47.237" Score="0" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a novel and trying to develop a character using the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagram_of_Personality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Enneagram of Personality&lt;/a&gt; model. Is it acceptable to combine more than one enneagram type for a single character ? I understand that a story might be deemed &quot;acceptable&quot; if the readers enjoy it, but as a technique of character development, does such combining of enneagram types hinder or bolster the process ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23374" LastEditorUserId="23374" LastEditDate="2017-02-05T23:52:38.247" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T09:55:24.917" Title="Using more than one enneagram types when developing a character for a novel?" Tags="|novel|character-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26516" CreationDate="2017-02-06T00:25:03.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most stories are not psychological studies, and even those that are are not necessarily accurate. Indeed, many story characters undergo far more trauma than most ordinary people could ever psychologically endure. (What characters in you average police drama would not be invalided out with PTSD after the first season in real life?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, stories are a response to a deep psychological need in human beings. We need stories to make sense of our lives in a universe which does not seem to make much sense at all. If you take a religious view of the universe, there is indeed a overarching story to the universe and to our lives in it. If you do not, then the universe is essentially random, and so are our lives. But the idea of random lives lives in a random cosmos is psychologically intolerable to most of us, and even for the religious believe, we want constant reinforcement of the idea that the universe does indeed make sense despite the randomness of our actual lives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories exist in a universe that is much neater and more logical than the universe that we actually live in, at least on the scale of ordinary human lives. Characters inhabit that more orderly and more just universe. Their psychology is therefore not the psychology of real human beings but the psychology that we want human beings to have in the more logical and just universe that we like to pretend we live in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, character development is not about constructing psychologically accurate personalities, but about constructing satisfactory inhabitants of story world, characters that make us feel the universe is a little less crazy, a little less indifferent, a little less unjust than it really is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basis of character in story is desire, and what the character is willing to do to achieve that desire. This fits a character into their story arc, which consists of repeated attempts to achieve a desire, each of which is rebuffed by some opposing force, until we reach the climax in which we discover just how far the character is willing to go, just how much they are willing to bleed, to achieve their desire. The crux of most stories, and therefore or most characters, is thus moral rather than psychological. (Whether you believe we are free actors or not, we all want to believe that we are, and most stories come down to a moral choice of some sort.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while characters are no unconnected to real psychology, the shape of a character arc, and the demand of the psychology of the reader for a satisfactory story arc, are the real driving forces behind the creation of a character. No psychological theory, therefore, really gets to the heart of character creation (unless it is the psychology of the reader). It is story rules, not psychological categories, that will determine if you characters are compelling ot the reader or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T00:25:03.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26504" CreationDate="2017-02-06T00:54:46.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if this question belongs on this site, however:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychologically for introverts, night time is a period of isolation due to silence and the fact that you have the reassurance of light (your computer screen) against our natural fear of darkness. Also, as light doesn't fluctuate like it does in the day - some people find it easier to concentrate. It varies from person to person, however working at night may allow you to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Focus better&lt;/em&gt; due to the lack of distractions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Have more time to think&lt;/em&gt;, as you're not noticing the natural shift in time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Concentrate more&lt;/em&gt; due to the only visible objects being your screen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I prefer writing at night due to these reasons - however be warned that due to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-has-a-dark-side&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'blue light syndrome'&lt;/a&gt; it may not be very healthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T00:54:46.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26513" CreationDate="2017-02-06T01:10:35.093" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing fantasy or any form of fiction that exists in a world vastly different from ours, try to imagine the text you're writing as a translation. Yes, even for your own main character. Remember that you're writing in the perspective of your main character. If your character can't understand something, then the reader shouldn't either, unless you're going for an omnipresent narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to differentiate each language, add certain quirks that we can relate to other languages in our world. For example, if you're writing for an audience of Americans, a foreign language can use stereotypes London-English, using terms such as &lt;em&gt;'Oi'&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;'Ey?'&lt;/em&gt; scattered to vary the language. You can also study certain language patterns done by various English dialects or how different cultures speak English. For example, a first language Chinese speaking person will have a widely different speech pattern than a native English speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if a character is speaking another language - you should keep in mind that the Main Character needs to be able to understand it. Since this is a translation, you can use quirks or simply introduce that the character is speaking a different language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing he heard when he entered the bar was the distinctive dialect of a Native Klangton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oi, what do ya think yer doing with that?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the Main Character has an understanding of the text, assume it was translated in the process - like a biography of the events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T01:10:35.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26058" CreationDate="2017-02-06T01:18:04.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does your ambush have a purpose in driving the goal of the protagonists, or create new information for the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Action shouldn't be there just to 'be' there. You could be introducing a new secret weapon that these bandits got ahold of, a new faction that appeared that poses a threat or makes a lead towards the protagonist's goal, or it could be that they are just there to display how much the protagonist has improved after a training session or learning a new power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story won't be interesting if you just have mindless battles that just get in the way of the protagonists. Like you've probably heard by now, &lt;em&gt;Everything&lt;/em&gt; has been done before, however, it depends on how &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; take advantage of it for advancing your story. You can have a cliche such as the main character being a chosen one that's bullied by others, but as long as you can make it interesting and lead in your story in a unique way - the readers won't care. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T01:18:04.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26533" CreationDate="2017-02-06T01:55:39.020" Score="9" ViewCount="574" Body="&lt;p&gt;It dawned on me the other day, after struggling through a fight scene, that I am lost when it comes to writing action. I usually write slower, dialogue-heavy scenes, and I have become used to taking my time with the prose. How can I convey the urgency, speed, and emotional stakes that come with a fight scene? How do I paint a vivid picture of it without getting bogged down in the details? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23271" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-01-03T20:00:30.557" LastActivityDate="2022-01-03T20:00:30.557" Title="How to write a good fight/action scene?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|style|novel|combat|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26524" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26526" CreationDate="2017-02-06T02:26:28.303" Score="5" ViewCount="523" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a character who has a tendency towards &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malapropism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;malapropism&lt;/a&gt; but I find that in every sentence she speaks I am re-reading it and finding words to replace. ie. (&lt;strong&gt;actual&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;em&gt;translation&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Inquisition, should we dispute a miko for this? If their mummy can provide a guessing the moral of the heights will be increased.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;em&gt;Inquiry, should we recruit a miko for this? If their kami can provide a blessing the moral of the knights will be increased.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Keep moving to your assigned vocations and repair the final push.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;em&gt;Keep moving to your assigned locations and prepare the final push.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;If you persist I'll have the sane as our dandy, with less built.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;em&gt;If you insist I'll have the same as our lady, with less milk.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when I re-read them I am thinking whether I am forcing it too much rather than making it seem natural for the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you write dialog for a character with malapropism without it seeming forced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-01-11T12:22:58.607" LastActivityDate="2018-01-11T12:22:58.607" Title="How do you write dialog for a character with malapropism without it seeming forced?" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26524" CreationDate="2017-02-06T02:54:51.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this a comedic story or a straightforward/dramatic one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a comedic story, then just run with it, because everything is supposed to be exaggerated. Your characters may not even have to note the malaprops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a straightforward one, then the other characters should notice the slips. If your character speaks &lt;em&gt;frequently&lt;/em&gt; in malaprops, you may be editing them out because you subsconsciously know that it's a weird way to speak, and your other characters are behaving as though it's not happening &amp;mdash; which doesn't work for a non-comedic story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get away with more of this in a dramatic story if English (or whatever you're writing in) is not Mr. Malaprop's first language. You might possibly also be able to do it if Mr. Malaprop himself is aware of it because it happens when he's very nervous (or something similar) and can't stop himself. Then it becomes character development: he knows it's happening, he knows how it sounds, but he can't fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T02:54:51.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26524" CreationDate="2017-02-06T02:59:06.677" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think it sounds forced, it's probably forced. Try reading your writing out loud to yourself - it can really help you find knots in the flow of dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts on how to fix this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The words you're replacing them with don't seem similar enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.e, milk into built is a &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; far stretch to me. Inquisition to inquiry, too - since the syllables don't match. (As best I can tell, all the examples of malapropism I've seen had words of similar lengths.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Too many per a sentence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm saying this because - without the translations - I can't make heads or tails of what the sentences are supposed to mean. Most examples of real malapropism seem so &lt;em&gt;close&lt;/em&gt; to being right that it often takes me a moment to spot the wrong word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smaller, common words shouldn't be swapped.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, looking at real-world examples, it usually seems like everything else in the sentence is fine other than one or two 'trouble' words - words that are either complicated, or harder to pronounce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If you persist i'll have the &lt;strong&gt;sane&lt;/strong&gt; as our dandy, with less built&quot; - if&#xA;  you insist i'll have the same as our lady, with less milk&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like same wouldn't be a word she'd replace, as those aren't the words one usually has to 'think' over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, after writing her sentences I'd keeping reading them over to yourself  and editing and reading again until you think it sounds natural - in fact, saying the sentence normally and seeing if there are any words you trip or hesitate over might help you find words to replace that you previously hadn't thought of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fun fact: as a child I always said Jurassic instead of drastic because I thought it was supposed to be pronounced dur-astic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4975" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T02:59:06.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26476" CreationDate="2017-02-06T04:22:32.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're confusing being organized in persuasive or technical writing, where it's important to stick to the topic sentence, with creative writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I wish you had given us a less yucky, less confusing example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T04:22:32.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26482" CreationDate="2017-02-06T04:33:09.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is another option, and that is to go ahead and describe, describe, describe.  A beautifully written natural history book or article is a pleasure to read.  Here is some inspiration to help you prepare for this approach: the Best of Natural History &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrv7r/episodes/downloads&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;podcasts&lt;/a&gt;, Saving Species and Would You Eat an Alien? from the BBC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you need not necessarily hesitate to describe your alien world's natural history on an as needed basis, as the book unfolds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people of my world know what the animal I need to describe is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your narrator need not write to an imaginary audience &lt;em&gt;of that world&lt;/em&gt;.  You may imagine that your narrator is bicultural -- comfortable in that world, and comfortable enough in ours, to be able to discern for which plants, animals, concepts and customs will need a little help in following along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T14:32:13.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26483" CreationDate="2017-02-06T04:40:13.927" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it would help if you had an image or a spreadsheet-style description of each character handy.  Then you could dribble out bits of description as things are unfolding.  For example, when introduced, perhaps all we know is that M is the protagonist's sister.  But as things develop, maybe we'll find out she has bangs that need trimming, and she often blows at them; she's tall and awkward; when she's thinking hard about something, she (fill in the blank).  And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can have the protagonist notice something about a character.  For example: J noticed, for the umpteenth time, how his sister's ears seemed to become even more pointy and quirky when she was in an uncomfortable social situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T04:40:13.927" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26483" CreationDate="2017-02-06T05:22:26.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reader is going to form an image of a character or a scene by putting together bits from their own experience. They do this based on the clues you give them, but they use those clues to select from their own repository of images. The key, therefore, is to give them the clues that matter, that will shape the image they form to fit the story you want to tell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes this means vital statistics. Often, though, it is more a matter of the telling detail, the small thing that pulls the right sort of image from the reader's stock of imagery. Maybe is is white teeth and a short skirt; maybe it is a tweed jacket and a half empty bottle of gin; maybe it is spurs and a hat pulled low over the forehead; maybe is it plastic glasses and a sweater vest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of those details are enough to recreate the character exactly as you see them, but that is almost impossible to do. For most characters they are enough to place them, to tell at a glance what kind of person they are. The rest you fill in with behavior or speech rather than details of appearance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the details of appearance matter much more. I am thinking of the description of Merlin in The Sword in the Stone, which is highly detailed and specific -- far more so than that of any other character. The only other description that comes close is that of King Pellinore as Wart first encounters him in the woods, but that description has more to do with establishing Wart's reaction to the knight than it has to do with the appearance of the knight himself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, too, characters behave or dress in a way that is designed to make people notice something in particular about them. They are creating a bullseye, a trap for the eye, and what they want you to look at tells you more than what they look like, it tells you what they want you to see, and what they want to hide from you. Those are the most telling details for a character, but they can be very different details for different characters. Find what they are trying to show and what they are trying to hide and focus your description on that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, don't describe for the sake of describing; describe for story effect. Describe just enough to pull the right sort of image from the reader's stock of images, or to portray the protagonist's reaction to a character when they encounter them. Describe for emotional response and for recognition of type. If you do this, your descriptions will not seem repetitive or boring -- unless the characters themselves are repetitive or boring.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T05:22:26.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26497" CreationDate="2017-02-06T05:29:35.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are drawing a house, and you want to convey a sense of the texture and detail of the building material used, you can draw three bricks in the middle of an expanse of wall.  You don't have to draw all the bricks in the whole wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick out the bricks you want to draw; talk about them.  You can situate them in time rather vaguely.  You don't have to spread the events or incidents out uniformly.  In other words, you don't have to put one incident in the first week, the second in the second, etc.  Some possible adverbs are: During this time, as time wore on, one day, one morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A totally different possible approach is to have separators between vignettes.  The separator could be a chunk of blank space, or a little squiggle or other symbol.  I've seen whole books written this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you don't want to use this approach in your final version, you could at least use it for your first draft.  Once you've written the vignettes as separate sections, it may be easier to connect them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T05:29:35.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26523" CreationDate="2017-02-06T05:33:13.940" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Action shouldn't be something that you just throw around unless you're writing a mindless slaughter fest, rather it should be used as a motive to insert new information, may it be how much the protagonist has improved after learning a new ability, understanding more about the world (a new faction, a fighting style, etc.), or resolving/introducing a conflict or issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some guidelines to write action around a goal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider what significance this form of action will have in advancing the goal of the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is your protagonist meeting a new character that will play a significant role in the future, introducing a new conflict?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is your protagonist testing the new abilities or skills they have learned?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is your protagonist going to learn more about the world? Is a new faction going to be introduced? Is there a social group that is mistreated?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider how you will best introduce these ideas in the form of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the protagonist meet a rival that has some kind of vendetta? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will you have a group of bullies that come along to beat on the protagonist, where he can show off his skills?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the protagonist showing his altruistic side by defending a caravan being attacked?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Plan out the action in a 3 act structure (Inciting incident introducing opponent -&gt; Plot Twist in Favor of antagonist -&gt; climax and resolve) to resolve the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write it, keeping it mind the main objective that you want to overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some tips for making action exciting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the 3 Act Structure. Suprisingly, a lot of people neglect this, opting to create stale conflicts where either the hero always wins without any fear of loss, or the hero is constantly losing. If you use the 3 act structure consider giving the antagonist an upper hand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create natural movement. Stand up, play out movements yourself. This is surprisingly effective if you want to feel out the emotions and movements, feel free to throw yourself around and feel the impacts of each punch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't do word by word descriptions of each action. No one wants to read about every single movement from your characters footsteps to the movement of their hair. If you define a move or action once in detail, you can just use the name of the move to describe it in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't dumb-down the action too much. The stereotype of anime style fights is that they 'call out their moves' before using them. This is a lazy attempt at simplifying action.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feel free to use natural troughs during action or tell out the story during pauses. After a lot of fighting, people need to rest. So does the audience. Slow down the pace sometimes, and don't make everything travel at supersonic speed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T05:33:13.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26523" CreationDate="2017-02-06T05:40:10.163" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Setup. Setup. Setup. You can't force the pace in prose. Prose is always asynchronous with action because it takes more words to describe some things and actions than others, and because you can't control the pace as which the reader reads. The way you create an effect is fiction is by building up the tension of a scene to a fever pitch so that when the fight itself breaks out, the reader already feels the tension, feels the emotional stakes. And because this is a moment of emotional release, it comes quickly. Not much actually needs to be said of the fight itself most of the time, unless something else is happening other that the exchange of blows. (Some fight scenes are more dialog than action -- Bernard Cornwell's work provides many good examples of this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this is how fights work in real life as well. People don't just start thumping each other out of the blue. There is a buildup of tension between them. Insults, threats, a staredown, maybe some shoving. Point is, both have to get to the point of blood boiling before a punch is thrown. It is the tension that makes the fight, both in life and in fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T05:40:10.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25478" CreationDate="2017-02-06T05:49:53.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Citations in footnotes should always appear in the same page that that superscript appears in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using Google Docs, there is an automatic footer and superscript button, ctrl+alt+f or insert -&gt; footnote. It will place a superscript where your selection is, and place a footnote that will dynamically move based on which page it is located. It is also automatically numbered, and will change in order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T05:49:53.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26537" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26544" CreationDate="2017-02-06T09:01:54.973" Score="4" ViewCount="663" Body="&lt;p&gt;The backstory of my five main characters involves a lot of death...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist, who has two adopted daughters and raises them alone, lost both his parents and doesn't even remember them (part of a curse), lost his sister, who died giving birth to one of his adopted daughters (I say daughter here and not niece because neither the protagonist nor the sister knew they were siblings), the real father doesn't want to know anything about her, and the other adopted daughter came from an orphanage (it's assumed her parents died as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the first three main characters and already I have a death toll of five. The other two characters, two brothers, lost a young brother very early on and during the course of the game, both their parents are brutally murdered. So that brings the death toll to eight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I don't really have a problem using death in my story (as you can plainly see), but at this point, I'm beginning to think I use death too much. My game is actually a horror game with lots of characters dying already (explosive decompression is involved at some point), but even then, should I cut down on the deaths in the backstories of my MAIN characters? Would it feel forced to use death a lot for the main characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23083" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-16T01:30:05.947" LastActivityDate="2019-06-16T01:30:05.947" Title="Too much death in character backstories? Even in a horror game?" Tags="|characters|character-development|videogame|backstory|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26516" CreationDate="2017-02-06T09:55:24.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no one-size-fits-all solution to writing. Every writer is different, and you have to find out what works for you. Your learn to write through experimentation. The only thing that will hinder you is if you expect following advice from anonymous users on the internet will make you a good writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;you know&lt;/em&gt; what you need to do&lt;/strong&gt;. Trust your gut. If a combination of different enneagrams seems like it solves your current writing problem, then it probably does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Just try it. And incorporate your experiences when you write your next novel.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T09:55:24.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26523" CreationDate="2017-02-06T10:06:15.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;1.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would love to read a slow-paced fight scene. There really is no reason why the reader must be as stressed and confused as the fighter. You create art, and art is a translation of reality into a new experience. If I, as a reader, wanted to experience a fight, I would get into one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think slow motion fight scenes in movies. Speed is not everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want speed, try to get into the emotions and mindset of the fighter. Leave the observer position and &lt;strong&gt;live the fight&lt;/strong&gt;. It may help you to act out some of the movements, or get some related experiences. Do an introduction into some martial art, or simply go running through the woods. Incorporate the perceptions and emotions from these experiences, but generally, it is all about the power of your imagination. Be in your story and write from your &amp;quot;live&amp;quot; experience of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;3.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rewrite. Edit out adjectives, descriptions, and leave only brief emotions and fast actions. Text can also be accelerated by replacing full stops with commas and connecting sentences with &amp;quot;and&amp;quot; and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get up. I take my jacket and put it on. As I look around, I see John coming towards me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Faster:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get up, take my jacket, put it on, and look around, seeing John come towards me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not perfect, and certainly not fitting for that scene, but I hope you can feel the hectic rhythm in that example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T10:06:15.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26537" CreationDate="2017-02-06T10:22:17.740" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If death is &quot;normal&quot; in the backstories of the characters, then death loses its power for the reader in your main story. If people die left and right every few paragraphs, then you expect death to happen to everyone. It is no longer the ultimate fear, but more like a running gag (think of Kenny getting killed in every episode of South Park).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Horror is most intense if it intrudes into normal life. Living in war-torn Syria is certainly horrible, but hearing about yet another death there on the news no longer has much of an effect on most viewers in the US. Living in the US, on the other hand, can be quite idyllic, and hearing of a violent death in their US neighborhood will freak many people out. Horror is achieved more easily through contrast than through permanent blood and gore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there is a fashion for &quot;dark&quot; fiction where everyone is broken and lives in continuous horror. If that is what you aim for, then you basically &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; everyone's family to have died a violent death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T10:22:17.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26509" CreationDate="2017-02-06T11:48:11.117" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You really should only explain something if it helps define the purpose of your story. Remember that the story is a piece of art, and as such it is to convey a feeling (or set of feelings) to the audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things can change based on perspective. For example, in first person, Mark may go on and on about the &quot;legs on that girl&quot;, because your trying to get the audience to understand that Mark is a &quot;legs man&quot; and a bit of &quot;dog&quot;.  In third person, you may only mention that Mark was staring at &quot;that girls legs&quot; for what seemed like hours. There's no reason to go into detail. In both cases, you got the point across. The &quot;girl&quot; and her legs may not even be a plot point beyond setting up &quot;Mark&quot; and his state of mind and attitudes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is often a desire to &quot;geek out&quot; on explanations. But it generally doesn't help the story too much. A famous example would be Star Wars and &quot;midichlorians&quot;. We watched and loved the first three movies, with out knowing anything about midichlorians. &quot;The force&quot; was just a thing that did stuff. In episode 1, when it was explained into the story, it kinda sucked, it was a disappointment. It wasn't needed, and the story would have been better off (though some may disagree) if Qui Gon Jinn just said &quot;The force is unusually strong with this one&quot; and moved on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the &quot;dump&quot; from The Matrix, helped set up the plot. It explained that the world was not what it seems, and that humans are D-Cell batteries. That &quot;the machines&quot; are the enemies. All important parts. By contrast the &quot;Architect Speech&quot; is often thought of as one of the worst parts of the trilogy. We were much happier when Neo just did awesome action things, without having to get into the mechanics of why. Agent Smith was Neo's enemy, that was good enough, we didn't need more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In The Wheel of Time Series, there is &quot;The one power&quot;, we don't know how it works. It comes from the &quot;good guys&quot; part of the &quot;source&quot;. We know there is a Male part, and a Female part. We know about differences between  both parts. But we never really get the full picture. The glimpses we do get either further the plot (Men go crazy, Women don't. Rand has to teach him-self, kinda.) or serve to highlight one of the main themes of the story (Men and women are different).  By that same token, I don't remember there being a sex scene with Matt in the entire series (maybe with the queen, but I don't think so),  but you certainly know he likes the ladies, and likes getting into trouble with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the point is, unless your are making a point, or furthering a plot. Let the magic be magic. No one know how Harry Potter magic works other then is has something to do with wands some times, or words other times, and either you got it or you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23386" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T11:48:11.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26494" CreationDate="2017-02-06T14:47:19.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just heard a Fresh Air podcast yesterday about this.  (I'm a bit behind in my listening.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2016/09/29/495931508/in-youre-the-worst-even-the-most-flawed-characters-find-love&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;In 'You're The Worst,' Even The Most Flawed Characters Find Love&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer talks about using side characters to criticize the self-centeredness of their friends, the protagonists.  I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://play.podtrac.com/npr-381444908/npr.mc.tritondigital.com/NPR_381444908/media/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/381444908/495968957/npr_495968957.mp3?orgId=1&amp;amp;d=2994&amp;amp;p=381444908&amp;amp;story=495968957&amp;amp;t=podcast&amp;amp;e=495968957&amp;amp;siteplayer=true&amp;amp;dl=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;listening&lt;/em&gt; to the podcast&lt;/a&gt; rather than reading the transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You might or might not also like to watch the program itself.  I haven't.  Also I'm not sure if that would limit your thinking.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T14:47:19.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26537" CreationDate="2017-02-06T15:04:26.017" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would write this as a comment to @What's answer, but I don't have enough points for that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will focus on two things when trying to answer your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The first:&lt;/strong&gt; Agreeing with @What; contrast is crucial if death in itself should still be horrifying. Since there is a lot of death already, the focus of the reader's/protagonist's fear should not be on death itself, but something related to it which makes it different from &quot;the previous deaths&quot;... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The second:&lt;/strong&gt; This is something that could help with the first.. What are we actually afraid of?&quot;. The  &quot;holy shit... this could happen to my daughters&quot; is an important point. Especially since death is &quot;normal&quot; in this dimension. @What makes a brilliant point comparing death in Syria and the U.S., and I will take this example even further. Yes, we usually think &quot;Oh my, that's terrible!&quot; when we hear tragic news, BUT generally people don't actually CARE unless they have a direct link (social, cultural, geological) to the people involved. If we &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; fear the death of his daughters, we &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; care about them intimately. In order for us to believe or share the fear that the protagonist feels or develops, it must be natural to feel sincere empathy for them, even within the murder dimension. I believe character development is absolutely crucial for this. When we care for the characters there WILL be a contrast between their possible deaths and the deaths of &quot;strangers&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know the structure of your plot (and it may be irrelevant) but we must know and care for the people involved, in order to fear their deaths. After all, I don't walk around fearing that a stranger will be hit by lightning or hit by a car. I fear that my friends and family will. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2017-02-06T17:11:47.783" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T17:11:47.783" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26545" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26549" CreationDate="2017-02-06T15:24:18.793" Score="3" ViewCount="970" Body="&lt;p&gt;In scientific papers (in my case it's usually in computer science) it seems to me that some techniques which help in explaining concepts and technology are not used that much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example a metaphor often helps one to understand abstract concepts. Not the most useful example but something like &quot;Monads are like burritos, they are not plain, but something wrapped in something else&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another such technique would be explaining a specific (and simple) case of something - and maybe a second and third case - only to reveal later on &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; they are actually specific cases of. By successfully following the simple examples and seeing what they have in common, it is then easier to get an intuition about what the abstraction is all about. As a bonus, it might also make  studying the material more enjoyable because it just seems easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I don't remember reading stuff like that all too often in scientific papers, but I often find them in online tutorials, blogs and such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is their use generally discouraged, and if so why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might be wrong in at least two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These &quot;tricks&quot; are used. I just don't see them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have a disadvantage I did not think of. I just think they can be very beneficial, and the extra time spent reading is often worth it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the online book &lt;a href=&quot;http://learnyouahaskell.com/chapters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!&lt;/a&gt; does most of the things I mean. It also includes some jokes and funny drawings which are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; what I'm talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23390" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T18:10:41.033" Title="Metaphors and other &quot;tricks&quot; in scientific papers" Tags="|technical-writing|science|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21809" CreationDate="2017-02-06T16:06:33.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only case I can think of in which the reveal would be a big deal is something like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Person A is connected to person B &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Person B is connected to person C&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Person B tells person A about person C without mentioning the name of that person. The situation between person B and C (which person B tells person A) is intimate/extreme/personal/secret, for instance a romantic affaire with explicit details and stories or something illegal, which would have great consequences to the people close to person C should they find out. This could also be health-related, confidentiality-related and the list goes on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point of sudden reveal: PERSON A IS ACTUALLY INTIMATELY CONNECTED TO PERSON C, making the entire situation suddenly dramatic compared to &quot;before knowing&quot;: &#xA;Example 1: B is having sex with C. C is A's sister, brother, whatever. &#xA;Example 2: B explains partying with C. A is C's therapist and knows he/she is under-age. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Another example could be B referring to C as &quot;the hero&quot;, with A suddenly realizing that B is talking about his nemesis (C). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope my point is obvious by now.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T16:06:33.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26545" CreationDate="2017-02-06T16:30:04.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academic publications have their own individual styles and the ones that I have read (few it must be admitted, when it comes to computer science) generally discourage the use of things like metaphors and other figures of speech, such as hyperbole, similes and understatement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason for this is, I think, is that these things don't cross cultures and language translation very well. For example, I don't what a burrito is. Someone who is a native speaker of Japanese can have more trouble understanding figurative language written in English than someone from say America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, popular science journals, even quite technical ones do include articles that use these techniques because they can be very useful for communicating clearly. Figurative language, used well, can make ideas and concepts clearer. For example, I still remember an article I read in the 1980s about computer processors and the whole thing was framed in term of magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T16:30:04.387" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26523" CreationDate="2017-02-06T16:40:08.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anthony Horowitz uses the following techniques which can work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Short sentences, including minor sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The historic present tense in past tense writing -- use very sparingly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Similes, metaphors and personification that make the action more vivid.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions: 'How long had it been? Thirty seconds? A minute?' These add a lot of tension because it seems like the character doesn't know the answer and so of course the reader doesn't know.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T16:40:08.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26545" CreationDate="2017-02-06T16:45:16.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two aspects to writing style: there is what does the best job of explaining a concept, and there are the shibboleths that determine if a certain group is going to accept the document. Unfortunately, when submitting a document for publication, you have to consider both how stylistic decisions affect comprehension and what shibboleths affect publishing decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of analogies to explain concepts is great for comprehension. Their use is not a &quot;trick&quot;. It is standard practice for effective exposition. All good popular science that I have seen uses analogies for effective exposition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the academic profession is plagued with shibboleths. One very common shibboleths is that works should not be &quot;popular&quot; in orientation or style. They are supposed to talk only to the in crowd. Being incomprehensible to the general public is a sign that you are a member of the academic club, that you have paid your dues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Might the use of analogies to explain concepts make your paper sound too &quot;popular&quot; for an academic journal? Maybe. Such prejudices are not universal, nor are they consistent. As with any other publication, it pays to spend some time to get a feel for the tone of the publication you want to submit too. If other papers in that publication use the same devices, you should be fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason that you may find few uses of analogy in scientific paper is a cognitive bias called &quot;the curse of knowledge&quot;. The curse of knowledge is a bias which makes it difficult for us to understand how other people could possible not understand a concept once we understand it ourselves. Even if we learn a concept ourselves by way of analogies, once it has clicked in our brains, we recall it by its formal name alone, and it ceases to occur to use that anyone might need the same analogy we learned from in order to understand the point. Indeed, the analogy can now seem an unnecessary circumlocution that simply slows down explanation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone suffering from the curse of knowledge is unlikely to turn to an analogy to explain something because it is unlikely that it will occur to them that it needs to be explained. The lack of analogies in many scientific papers may therefore be due purely to the curse of knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good popular science writers may simply be those who still recognize when a concept needs to be explained (even when they have internalized it themselves) and can come up with an appropriate analogy to explain it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have to suppress you analogies to pass the shibboleths of the journal you are submitting to, therefore, the apt use of analogies to explain key concepts in your paper is a very good thing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-11T15:08:16.920" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T15:08:16.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26550" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-06T17:42:47.690" Score="9" ViewCount="2845" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I see a lot of questions on the site &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/26482/how-to-introduce-alien-flora-fauna-without-turning-the-fiction-into-a-biology-bo&quot;&gt;like this&lt;/a&gt;. They're all about deeply explaining worldbuilding and stuff, doing all of that explaining type of thing. Normally, I just skip that. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My 'magic' system works by calling upon the power of the ancient tales and old gods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's literally all I've said about it. I didn't really want to waste words on going in-depth because there isn't that much to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only details necessary to the story are mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I know this one is going to be particularly frowned upon, but I'm really big on not confusing the reader. I &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; mention things about the world when they have to be. Of course I have a big, sprawling worldbuilded idea in my head, but I don't want all of that to spill onto the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems different with a lot of people. Many questions asked on this site are about really in-depth, intense worldbuilding. It all seems so unnecessary to me. For &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/26509/the-flux-capacitor-its-what-makes-time-travel-possible-when-to-keep-world-b&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; I think I'd just have the thing work and mainly show the reader how it worked through dialogue (if I really had to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few questions which tie into each other:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to include tons of worldbuilding details?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will a reader just 'accept' that something works, or require an explanation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, my magic system is a great example of that. There is no explanation for why you can draw upon the power of the ancients &lt;strong&gt;it just happens.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T23:33:18.820" Title="Is it bad not to explain things?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|technique|world-building|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26550" CreationDate="2017-02-06T17:55:21.830" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;My only objection to It Just Happens is when you overload the suspension of disbelief. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can draw on the power of the ancients for magic? great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can draw on said power for flight, telekinesis, telepathy, physical transmogrification, healing, fighting, blasting fireballs, warding off someone else's fireballs, wayfinding, animal telepathy, and mixing the perfect Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster... all at once? by the same person? without paying a price? Now I'm going to need an explanation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as long as you don't strain your minimalist explanation with maximalist results, you should be okay. Each person can do one thing at a time, or maybe each person can only tap one kind of magic: sure. That's reasonable. You don't need to go into details about how you contact the gods or which gods bestow which power etc. It's when It Just Happens becomes Dei Ex Machinae Happens that you need to prop up the Dei with worldbuilding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-02-08T19:55:42.923" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T19:55:42.923" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26550" CreationDate="2017-02-06T18:07:55.167" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well obviously there is a subjective element, but I would say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to include tons of world-building details?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will a reader just 'accept' that something works, or require an&#xA;  explanation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/26509/the-flux-capacitor-its-what-makes-time-travel-possible-when-to-keep-world-b&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; you quoted has some very good points, include world-building details to either &quot;give sensual pleasure in its own right&quot; or &quot;support the story&quot;.  To the first point, &quot;supporting the story&quot; and &quot;including tons of world-building details&quot; are very different.  It almost sounds like you see world-building details as laborious, you use the term &quot;waste words&quot;.  This is not the case at all, the world-building details are a transportation mechanism.  To take the reader out of his/her own life into your world.  The world-building details are the vehicle.  This isn't a text book, this is an assist, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the elements that fire the imagination. Also, having the world in your head is meaningless unless you can find a way to build your world on the page.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, it is not necessary to &quot;include tons of world-building details&quot;, especially boring text book descriptions, but it is necessary to &lt;strong&gt;include the correct details&lt;/strong&gt; that will transport your reader into your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the second point, will the reader just accept?  Unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My 'magic' system works by calling upon the power of the ancient tales and old gods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I read this with no explanation then I would dismiss it as trivial, there is no punch to the statement, it is meaningless.  If it is a &quot;magic system&quot; then a system implies &quot;a set of things working together&quot;, what things?  How does the system call upon old stories?  and if I called upon old stories then how does that help me?  What do you mean old gods?  Like gods with zimmer frames?  None of it makes any sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several ways forward, either don't try to explain it, if detail is unnecessary then leave it out, simply say &quot;she has magic&quot; or &quot;she has the same flavour of magic as her mother before her&quot;.  If it is necessary to explain it then take the time to think it through, were the &quot;old gods&quot; her ancestors?  Did the old tales inspire her?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If readers wanted shallow face-value statements then they read magazines or newspapers, if they want some escapism then they need to be immersed in the world and understand the origin or nature of their powers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19191" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T18:07:55.167" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26545" CreationDate="2017-02-06T18:14:00.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;2.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one fundamental rule in scientific writing is &lt;strong&gt;clarity&lt;/strong&gt;. Analogies, metaphors, and other figures of speech are never clear in their meaning but open to interpretation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I say, for example, that a cell in biology is &amp;quot;like a power plant that burns fuel to gain energy&amp;quot; then that analogy will give you a completely wrong picture of what goes on in a cell. Some metaphors and analogies have even stifled scientific progress for decades, such as the view of the human psyche as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://metaphors.iath.virginia.edu/metaphors/24583&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;steam engine&lt;/a&gt; (Freud) or as a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;computer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;1.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that reason, reputable scientists avoid the use of analogies and metaphors and reputable journals discourage them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science instead uses its scientific terminology and requires the reader to make the effort and work for their understanding. Science is not for the mentally lazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figures of speech are closely related to clichés. Like metaphors and similes, figures of speech provide a writer with a colourful or forceful means to draw attention to a particular point but should be avoided in academic writing. (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/studyskills/studyskills/aswhattoavoid.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;What to avoid in formal writing&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T19:39:42.607" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21929" CreationDate="2017-02-06T20:21:29.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might belong more in &quot;The Workplace&quot;.  If you're looking to review the &quot;bigger picture&quot; the first question that should be answered is why this letter is needed in the first place.  Is HR asking for this letter?  If the employee is providing this without prompt, this might end badly for the employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things to keep in mind when creating a letter like this.  Why was this a separate stipend in the first place?  Adding this responsibility to the employee's core job responsibilities may mean that HR would have to rework the job title and expectations of someone in that role.  Depending on the size of your company, this could be a huge undertaking.  HR and/or the manager may want to avoid this, as it requires quite a bit of work.  Companies generally spend a long time calibrating job titles/roles/responsibilities to ensure they are fair and accurate against industry/market standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're truly just looking for a form letter to follow for something like this, unfortunately that might be considered opinion based as the only person/people who would truly know what works best for your company, would be HR.  In all actuality you should interface with them regarding this request, prior to submitting anything.  If you already have and they stated that it was simply up to you/the employee to come up with something, following a &quot;request for a raise&quot; template might be best.  In all actuality that is exactly what is being requested.  You may call it a stipend right now, but from a manager's point of view, it's really a non-title based raise, similar to a merit increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this was asked 05/2016, I would be curious at the outcome of this letter.  Was the employee successful in adding this to their role/salary or was the task kept as a stipend?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final note, a task that is supplemented by a stipend is easier to transfer from employee to employee regardless of role.  Whereas something that is inherent to a role will have to be considered when hiring future employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23097" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T20:21:29.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26550" CreationDate="2017-02-06T21:36:03.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to include tons of worldbuilding details?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's never necessary to include details. But details are everything in a story, so they are necessary in a general sense. That is, it's necessary to have some details, but it doesn't matter what kind of details they are as long as they keep the reader interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will a reader just 'accept' that something works, or require an explanation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader will accept anything that looks like it moves your story forward. If it isn't clearly connected to the plot, readers will wonder why they are reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23180" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T21:36:03.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26550" CreationDate="2017-02-06T22:09:16.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The audience that actually cares about worldbuilding is pretty small. Most people who read LOTR, for example, don't care a fig about the whole legendarium. They only care about the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most stories with magic in them are very indefinite about how the magic works and what the limits of a character's magical abilities are. And, in fact, the same could be said of physical abilities. One sees this particularly with superheroes, whose abilities seem to be adjusted to the crisis of the moment rather than being consistent across a movie or series. But it is often true of ordinary human abilities in stories that depend on physical feats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is true, why does it not all seem like cheating? Why is the suspension of disbelief (or, to use Tolkien's phrase, the reader's acceptance of the sub-created world) not violated by these inconsistencies and the general lack of definition of capabilities? Because, in the end, stories are moral. They are not about solving technical problems, they are about facing moral dilemmas, about seeing how much the protagonist is willing the bleed in pursuit of their goal. They are about moral transformation or moral revelation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question as the heart of every story, therefore, is not, how will they get out of this, but, what are they willing to give up to get out of this. We want to see the price paid. We do not feel cheated by the use of powers otherwise unsuspected or unexplained, as long as the moral order of the story is not violated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if new or unexplained powers are used to get the character out of a moral dilemma, that is a very different matter. That is a cheat. That is deus ex machina. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to explain things, therefore, unless they create a moral question in the story, and you don't have to worry about things that just happen as long as they do not violate the moral order of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may, of course, be other reason why you may want to explain them anyway, and they may or may not change the audience for your story, but your obligation is to the moral consistency of your story, not the mechanical consistency of your invented world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-07T05:52:12.607" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T05:52:12.607" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4394" CreationDate="2017-02-06T22:38:54.717" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One other thing is that if you decide to use slang words, look them up on urban dictionary (it's an online descriptive dictionary). This will give you a decent slice of the ways the word is used, and connotations it carries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23331" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T22:38:54.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-06T23:02:01.317" Score="2" ViewCount="735" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will supply you with some character information and some context for my specific project, though I'm thinking my question could be relevant for almost any story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing a story involving with a &quot;bad boy&quot; main character &quot;&lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; (hero) and a female character &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Y&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; (to-be heroine). I have a clear idea of the hero and his place in society: Very wealthy for his age (inherited fathers company). Perceived as somewhat of a womanizer, In my opinion he's misunderstood. I plan for the two characters to fall in love at a later point in the story. Before that however, I want the hero to go through some challenges/struggles before eventually ending up with the heroine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of now, there are some &quot;romantic&quot; issues: &quot;&lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; has an affaire with B, B is separated from C, C is interested in &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Y&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Y&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; is also being charmed by ex-boyfriend E.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the romantic issues, I'm having trouble coming up with challenges/issues that make sense for the hero to go through/solve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So; I am not looking for answers regarding my specific plot, but rather a broader answer to the question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I figure out what challenges fit a character?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23328" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2017-02-09T13:55:46.733" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T13:55:46.733" Title="How do I figure out what &quot;challenges/issues&quot; my character could encounter/go through?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|character-development|dramatic-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ClosedDate="2017-02-07T08:22:42.830" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26559" CreationDate="2017-02-06T23:58:43.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Anne Lamott would say, we all have our own &quot;mental illnesses&quot;, and they usually stem from our experiences. If your hero is a &quot;bad boy&quot; who inherited a bunch of money, has a company, and who seems to have a thing for the secretary, consider how these aspects of his life came to be: If he inherited money from his father, would that affect him positively or negatively? Would he invest carefully, or blow it all on his wants rather than his needs? Would he take responsibility, or dodge it and thus incur the wrath of others? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going further into his past, you can consider how his childhood caused certain &quot;bad boy&quot; problems in his adult life. If his dad was off making money, did he have time for his son? Did the son (ie. your hero) begin to act out to get Dad's attention? Did that carry over into his adult life? I find that character's internal issues usually create external problems for them. If you let your bad boy hero act the fool, he might get into trouble with someone else and, by consequence, help the story progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23271" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T23:58:43.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16973" CreationDate="2017-02-06T23:58:46.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Scribophile, Critique Circle is also a good site. The majority of users there are friendly and people are always happy to help. Another option is youwriteon.com, which I have not tried but have heard a lot of good things about. I could not find a site with a focus on ESL writers, but both Scribophile and Critique Circle are definitely good places to try out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23331" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T23:58:46.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26559" CreationDate="2017-02-07T00:19:35.927" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basic shape of any character's story arc is that they want something and there are forces that make it difficult for them to get it. They try the least expensive thing they can to achieve their desire, and are rebuffed. They then try the next least expensive thing and are rebuffed again. This repeats until we get to the climax where we discover just how much they are willing to give -- how much they are willing to bleed -- to achieve their desire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issues that a character goes through are therefore driven by their desire. They are all about their attempt to get what they want and the things that prevent them from getting it. So the first question you have to ask yourself is, what does my character want? What is the desire that drives him towards the climax of this story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T00:19:35.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26550" CreationDate="2017-02-07T03:04:04.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question, Daniel. Two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;1.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Superstitions in real life aren't usually motivated through an explanation of how they work.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The red haired girl is a witch not because red hair has some kind of magic power – which of course it doesn't – but because red hair is rare (in continental Europe) and marks the girl as different. The principle here is unfamiliarity. The horn of the rhinoceros doesn't heal impotence because it contains a substance that causes erection – which it doesn't – but because it looks like an erect penis. The principle here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.jrank.org/pages/10051/Magic-Role-Analogy-Metaphor.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;analogy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pseudo-scientific explanations for magical superstitions have been attempted during the proto-scientific transition phase from superstition to science (e.g. alchemy and astrology), especially in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and &lt;strong&gt;proven to be wrong&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a novel is set in the Renaissance, then providing such a pseudo-scientific &amp;quot;system&amp;quot; of magic is fitting. An example are the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86gypt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Æegypt&lt;/a&gt; novels of John Crowley. But if your novel doesn't deal with proto-science, but &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; magic, then &lt;strong&gt;any explanation of magic would contradict the basic principle of magic, namely that it is &amp;quot;magical&amp;quot;.&lt;/strong&gt; Scientific thinking on the part of the author contradicts &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;magical thinking&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; on the part of the characters and makes them unbelievable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reader may be willing to believe that a sorcerer can call down lightning (without explanation), because that is what sorcerers can do, but once you start to elaborate on how adepts spend years training the electrical impulses in their axons until those are strong enough to create lightning, then many readers will stop reading in exasperation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take this even further, &lt;strong&gt;most people have no idea how a computer works, and yet they can use it.&lt;/strong&gt; To the majority, medication works because the doctor says it does. Cooking makes stuff edible &lt;em&gt;because it does&lt;/em&gt;. Foreigners are terrorists because they look like they must be. &lt;strong&gt;People have no idea how the world works but take it at face value.&lt;/strong&gt; Why in heaven's name would you provide explanations in a novel that people aren't interested in in their real lives?!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People that are interested in explanations read non-fiction.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If your focus is on the story, the question of how much description to include never arises.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean that there mustn't be any description in narrative fiction. And it also doesn't mean that all description must serve the plot. Some stories, for example those that are read for taking the reader to exotic or alien places, rely on sometimes extensive description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What my statement means is that &lt;strong&gt;you should know what story you&#xA;write&lt;/strong&gt; and whether &lt;em&gt;place is a protagonist&lt;/em&gt; in that narrative – or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T07:46:07.563" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26564" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-07T04:45:31.977" Score="2" ViewCount="1092" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen this in visual media, but not really in written media so I am sort of at a loss as to how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am writing a first person narrative where the main character is almost constantly in his own head. In fact some 75% to 90% of the narrative is in the narrator's head if it isn't dialogue. And the narrator thinks a lot during conversation. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So what are you thinking about?&quot; she asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And there it was. The loaded question. It was the question she always&#xA;  asked me during any lull in conversation. It always made me super&#xA;  uncomfortable and she knew that. Oh gods she's looking at me. Quick&#xA;  think of an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I love you.&quot; I said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this is a decent example of the dialogue. The idea is that it is entirely first person driven. My question is: how can I convey a narrator that questions himself constantly in conversation without breaking the flow of the dialogue? Do I interject the internal monologue in the middle of the dialogue or is there some other method that I am not realizing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: the internal monologues are a device to convey the narrator's character and mental inclinations so it would be hard to get away from them entirely in the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13430" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T11:07:55.327" Title="Internal dialogue with a quick thinking first person narrator" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|dialogue|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4394" CreationDate="2017-02-07T06:01:27.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dialogue is not realistic. Human being speak very tediously and brokenly. What makes dialogue authentic is not the vocabulary or diction but the motivation. What does this person say, based on who they are, what they want, what they are trying to conceal, and what they want people to think of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not that you can't convey certain elements of the tone of realistic speech, but it will only be certain notes, just enough to call realistic speech patterns to the reader's mind. What is far more important is to remember that every character presents a mask to the other characters, and their speech is designed to maintain that mask. What they choose to say, not how they say it, is the real key to authentic dialogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-07T14:16:36.210" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T14:16:36.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26585" CreationDate="2017-02-07T08:08:57.317" Score="2" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a person wants to build a tech startup, he or she can increase the odds of success, if they move to a place with lots of like-minded people (e. g. Silicon Valley, Israel, London, Berlin). That way they surround themselves with people, with whom they can exchange ideas and who have similar goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering what such place for writers could be. Imagine some non-native English speaker wanted to become as good a fiction writer as possible, and willing to move to another place for that purpose. What are places with a high concentration of resources that can help you become a better writer? Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Please don't reply &quot;England&quot; -- I'd like to have a more precise location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23411" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T18:29:12.217" Title="What's the Silicon Valley of English language fiction writing?" Tags="|career|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4394" CreationDate="2017-02-07T09:29:19.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although these are useful suggestions and answers, I believe @MarkBaker's answer is key. I'm 26 with 3 younger siblings (very much in touch with my childish side) and I believe that there are 4 important sides to this issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.&lt;/strong&gt; The &quot;dialogue is not realistic&quot;, which is nicely summed up by @Mark Baker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2.&lt;/strong&gt; Understanding how slang develops is as crucial for imitating or representing it authentically. Different groups of people will develop and use slang that follows patterns that may be unique within each group, and not necessarily conscious (at least to begin with). These patterns may make sense in a certain language (in France some use &lt;strong&gt;verlan&lt;/strong&gt; : &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan&lt;/a&gt; which follows a mapped out pattern) Translating the french verlan into English, Danish, German etc. would probably not make sense. Sure, you would end up with &quot;weird words&quot; that could keep the definition from the original language, but it wouldn't make sense the way it used to. I'm not saying it has to, I'm simply saying that understanding the language and its rules may be crucial to why that specific slang is used. Looking up slang in the Urban Dictionary as mentioned here can be useful, but you still risk using 'established slang' in a way that isn't authentic to the reader (or isn't relatable to a certain group of readers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3.&lt;/strong&gt; Understanding &quot;why&quot; slang develops. Of course language changes over time, but I will focus on a social value of slang. I believe the use of slang is a natural part of young people's process of finding themselves and their place in society (sorry, no sources at this moment). Establishing in-group/out-group relations can be done almost entirely with language use. It may be more relevant to focus on &quot;the average young adult attitude/state of mind&quot; than the exact use of words by any specific group of young people (unless you are actively representing a certain group). Slang can be utilized to a point where even if you recorded a group og people talking, chances are you wouldn't even know what to make of it. Two different groups of young people may be completely unaware of the definitions and uses of slang in the other group. I know most people would understand only about half of the things that my friends and I say - when together. Within my group of friends we have more than 20 words for everyday feelings, events, types of people, actions and so on, and the connection between the words used and the definition it not obvious to out-group individuals, of course. I say 'of course' because we value the fact that we can use these words around the subject of our communication without compromising ourselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4&lt;/strong&gt; For every word or family of slang words there are people that develop the slang and people that simply adopt it. This is a tricky balance and something that may be worth keeping in mind. &lt;strong&gt;Who&lt;/strong&gt; says &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; is NEVER without importance. I will give two examples the clarify, the second in particular being based on personal experience: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A: A student in a classroom discusses something &quot;cool&quot; with a another student. The teacher overhears this discussion and joins in using slang he has heard them use before: &quot;Yeah, that dude has so much swag, it's cray-cray!&quot; &#xA;The students will probably (consciously or subconsciously) react in two ways going forward: 1: &quot;Wow, our teacher understands us. Respect!&quot; (not usual). 2. Wow, our teacher uses &quot;swag&quot; and &quot;cray-cray&quot;. Now those terms are lame!&quot;. Don't underestimate the effect of slang becoming mainstream. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;B: Two friends use &quot;a new word&quot; or expression within their larger group of friends and one not-as-close friend becomes obsessed with the new word. If this not-so-close friend is considered less &quot;alpha&quot; or less respected, he alone can &quot;ruin&quot; the new expression. This can be either because of over-use (yes, use of slang also has an internal balance) or because that word is now connected to that individual (and the people he represents), which in this case makes it &quot;less cool&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could try a different approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Create your own slang for the group of young adults.&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Do this based on your (current or in-development) understanding of the &quot;how&quot; and &quot;why&quot; for slang development. Yes, you risk dating your work by basing some of the slang on interests within the group that are &quot;modern&quot;, but a lot of slang is timeless. The origin of the slang may be obviously dated, but in my opinion that doesn't necessarily date your work. &#xA;Test how readers react to it, especially young adults. If done authentically, I predict they will relate to the group even if they use completely different slang from the readers own group.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2017-02-13T16:48:11.890" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T16:48:11.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26564" CreationDate="2017-02-07T10:04:10.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your example portrays a person in a way we can relate to. Whether this internal monologue is fast or not may depend on who reads it and at what speed that happens, but you could use the reactions of the people involved to indicate that he doesn't linger before answering. You can also give him thoughts like &quot;wow, it's like they have no idea how much I consider before answering their stupids question.. It's like time passes slower for them, since they don't notice.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I don't know your character or the plot/theme and so on, so I have no idea if such a thought is suitable for your story, but there are many ways of saying something important indirectly. &#xA;BTW I liked your example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T10:04:10.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26564" CreationDate="2017-02-07T11:07:55.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's not &lt;em&gt;incorrect&lt;/em&gt; per se, as a reader I'd likely dislike your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect of so much internal monologue is a glacial pace of the actual story progression. Unless the internal monologue actually makes good revelations and discoveries, it will quickly develop into a story pacing problem. While the problem of &lt;em&gt;perception&lt;/em&gt; of the pauses &lt;em&gt;in the story world&lt;/em&gt; can be reduced with writing techniques, this does nothing about &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; pauses this forces upon the reader in the real time, between they get to morsels of actual progression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are readers who like this style. But they are not numerous. Huge majority will just get bored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And since this is simultaneously the narrator and the protagonist, and it's an inherent trait of his character, it's pretty much unavoidable in this combination. If I were you, I'd rethink that entire setup. You're just digging yourself into a hole and making your life as a writer unreasonably difficult, because getting &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; setup right, without boring majority of readers half to death, you'll have to expend extraordinary effort to make each paragraph worthwhile. &quot;I have this, here, spoon, and this, here, field. And I want to plow it with this spoon. How can I do this most efficiently?&quot; Get a goddamned plow instead!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T11:07:55.327" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26550" CreationDate="2017-02-07T11:48:22.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Worldbuilding is not directly for the benefit of the reader&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building a world which makes sense is not primarily done so that you can explain this world to your reader but so that you can build stories in it that are internally coherent. If &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; understand how magic works underneath you can present it in a consistent fashion and write stories involving it that make internal sense. Some of this worldbuilding will be explained in your story to the reader but most of it will simply inform your writing and is revealed to your reader only in the consistency and coherency of the overall plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, of course, some people can write stories which appear to make sense and be internally coherent without doing this kind of worldbuilding but many writers find that it helps them write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4624" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T11:48:22.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26509" CreationDate="2017-02-07T14:31:43.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel like the conciseness of the explanation of the Flux Capacitor was to point out both characters' personalities and the mysterious nature of the device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here we have Marty, who really doesn't have much of a head for science, despite hanging out with the town's resident mad scientist. Then we have Doc, who is established as an unstable, but more importantly, misunderstood scientific genius.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And lastly we have the Flux Capacitor, a device which did not emerge from carefully-developed theory but from head trauma. While Doc presumably spent a lot of time developing the device in the thirty years between his rather appropriate clock-hanging accident and the completion of the Time Machine, it would seem the basic theory came from the head trauma. As with many time travel stories, the time travel mechanic is mysterious in nature and almost feels brought about by destiny itself (which is a theme in the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was important for Doc's explanation of the Flux Capacitor to be unsatisfactorily brief in order to accomplish all of those goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marty doesn't really care how it works, and wouldn't understand if Doc tried. Hence his not asking for further clarification.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doc remains misunderstood, as we aren't allowed to see any line of reasoning that brought him to the invention of the Flux Capacitor. In fact, there is no line of reasoning, which confirms the suspicions of the principal, Mr. Strickland.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Flux Capacitor remains a mysterious device resulting from a freak happenstance rather than something rational that the audience can understand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare and contrast with a scene from &lt;em&gt;Batman Begins:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lucius Fox:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;[Bruce Wayne is recovering after being poisoned by Scarecrow]&lt;/em&gt; I analyzed your blood, isolating the receptor compounds and the protein-based catalyst.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Bruce Wayne:&lt;/strong&gt; Am I meant to understand any of that?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Lucius Fox:&lt;/strong&gt; Not at all, I just wanted you to know how hard it was. Bottom line, I synthesized an antidote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This scene also accomplishes the goal of making Fox's procedure sound beyond comprehension, but establishes Fox as extremely rational and competent instead of unstable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Think about what it means for the explanation to exist, what it means for a character to say it, and what it means for other characters to hear/react to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18519" LastEditorUserId="18519" LastEditDate="2017-02-07T15:28:58.560" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T15:28:58.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26596" CreationDate="2017-02-07T16:19:55.437" Score="1" ViewCount="847" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an email to a group of people, and I don't know how to cleanly indicate that:&#xA;(A) It is primarily for two of those people (the others are receiving the mail as an FYI)&#xA;(B) I need a response from at least one of the primary two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically I would address it to a main user:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi (User1),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(request of info)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(signature)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case I need the feedback from two users, and I'm not sure how to group both of them together. Particularly, I'm not sure how to group them together &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; make clear that I'm expecting a response from at least one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23422" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T21:46:08.363" Title="How do I address email to a group of people, and indicate who should reply?" Tags="|email|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26524" CreationDate="2017-02-07T17:29:20.660" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing that bothers me in the examples given is that the misworded phrases, quite frankly, make no sense, at least to me. If the translation was not provided, I would never guess, that &lt;em&gt;dandy&lt;/em&gt; means &lt;em&gt;lady&lt;/em&gt; (the word having exactly the opposite meaning), and &lt;em&gt;built&lt;/em&gt; is a substitute for &lt;em&gt;milk&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you call milk &lt;em&gt;silk&lt;/em&gt;, it would not help, because the phrase is so laden with senseless malaprops, that is starting to sound like a jargon or code, which the reader does not know, and do not understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And people tend not to read things they do not understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order for intentional word substitution to work, it must be clear for the reader, what was the correct word that got butchered. Then it might even have some primitive comic effect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alrighty, folks, let's excrement with this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or (this one is from real 2.5-year-old art student):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are two kinds of paintings: extract and reallipstick!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a character who talks code undecipherable by anyone but the author is precarious unless that is the whole point of the story (there are mental disorders which make people speak in a similar manner), and he is a key witness to a murder case, whom no one understands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T17:29:20.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26576" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-07T17:30:41.813" Score="23" ViewCount="4399" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a tendency to write text that's on the &quot;beige&quot; side. I think it's the engineer in me that tends to write text that's very straightforward and strictly factual. To a certain degree, that's good, but I feel like my writing can use more &quot;color&quot; sometimes to make it more interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some good ways to provide &quot;texture&quot; to such writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="526" LastActivityDate="2017-07-10T06:02:02.503" Title="How do I improve &quot;beige&quot; text?" Tags="|prose|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26576" CreationDate="2017-02-07T17:39:05.043" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't focus on vocabulary. It is very hard to change your vocabulary and the only real and natural way to do it is by extensive reading. Any attempt to artificially liven up your prose with exotic vocabulary is only going to sound forced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather, focus on what you write about. The real texture of writing comes from what is written about, not from how it is written. Great fiction is, above all else, finely observed. It opens your eyes because the author had their eyes open. Observation, not diction, is the key to lively writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T17:39:05.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26576" CreationDate="2017-02-07T17:54:20.260" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Further to Mark Baker's excellent answer: If you want your writing to be more colorful, practice observing and recording colorful things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't necessary mean literal color, although that's not a bad thing either, but to take regular, scheduled time to observe people, actions, sensations, scenery, feelings, sounds, smells, et cetera and then write them down with as much detail as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basic examples to get you started:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Walk barefoot in your yard for a good 15 to 30 minutes. Write down all the sensations. Note how your gait, posture, and stride change. Do different kinds of grass feel different? Can you tell if the ground is dry? Is the grass under a tree a lot cooler than that in the sun? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe lunch. Not just &quot;a ham and cheese sandwich,&quot; but discuss&#xA;what kind of ham, the fragrance, the color, the type of cheese, the&#xA;condiments, the fixings, the bread. Notice the height of it. Is it&#xA;pre-packaged cold cuts on Wonder Bread or a Boar's Head Dagwood&#xA;special? Is the tomato winter-pale or heirloom?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a bakery. Sit in the corner for half an hour and describe the&#xA;&lt;em&gt;sounds.&lt;/em&gt; Not the amazing smells, but the noises: the coffee machine, the servers yelling, people ordering, the jingle of the bells over&#xA;the door.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Record a sunset. You don't have to be poetic if that's not your&#xA;thing, but you can describe how the colors shift as the sun goes&#xA;lower in the sky, how clouds are afffected, how the rays of the light&#xA;slant, how the air is cooling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a perfume counter and test different fragrances. Do they smell&#xA;the same on your wrist as your elbow? Do different fragrances work&#xA;well together? Does perfume oil last longer than an alcohol-based&#xA;spray? Do you find that aquatics appeal to you but patchouli makes you&#xA;gag?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't suggest you injure yourself, but if you do get banged up, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7460/effective-techniques-for-describing-pain&quot;&gt;pay attention&lt;/a&gt; and try to remember how it felt so you can write it down later. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to become accustomed to seeing beyond the practical recitation of facts to noting details. The detals are what will add &quot;color,&quot; or interest, to your writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T17:54:20.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26576" CreationDate="2017-02-07T19:07:38.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, find a balance between reading widely to observe the styles of other audiences and observing the world with your senses active.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also like to add that the detail you give depends on the audience.  Are you looking to write creative pieces, or improving your technical writing?  I'd argue that the genre of writing dictates the level of detail you want to give.  If you're writing, for example, a piece for intelligent layman, you'd write differently than, say, for experts in the field.  To give an example, consider a popular book on infinity versus a textbook on ZFC axiomatic set theory.  This is an extreme example, but I think it demonstrates the difference in style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to that note, consider textbooks that you've read for courses that you've taken in the past.  Each author, I'm sure, injects his or her own personality into the writing.  Sometimes it can be helpful to offer a moment of levity when dealing with a heavy or complex topic.  Also consider how description can provide an analogy for dealing with an abstract or highly technical concept.  Being forced to describe these topics in an intuitive, everyday prose, I believe you'll see your vocabulary and style morph to suit that purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can apply these same ideas to creative writing, too.  With creative writing, the language will admittedly be more flowery (at least most of the time), but the same strategies can be useful for conveying abstract ideas in a concrete manner filled with sensory detail.  As you'll find, these skills transfer between any genre of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22815" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T19:07:38.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26580" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-07T19:43:57.980" Score="3" ViewCount="452" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've really enjoyed the CW's show &lt;em&gt;The Flash&lt;/em&gt; ever since it came out, but they recently did something that kind of feels like a mistake on the writers' part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those unfamiliar with the show, Barry Allen, the titular Flash, is a superhero whose powers include the (somewhat hard-to-control) ability to travel through time.  He recently had an experience in which, for the first time in the series, he briefly ended up a few months in the future, and witnessed a catastrophic event taking place.  Now he wants to stop it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where the writers did something very clever, but also kind of dumb: while in the future, he observed a news report playing on a TV screen in a store window, with an anchor talking about something and various other headlines scrolling along in a news ticker at the bottom of the screen.  Now he knows things that are going to happen in the next few months, and he thinks that if he can change some of them, he might be able to head off the disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is clever, as it gives the viewers a bit of a &quot;teaser&quot; look at what's in store later on in the season.  But it also seems a bit odd, because &lt;em&gt;every one of those headlines was about something The Flash would be involved in in some way.&lt;/em&gt;  Barry lives in a major city.  Surely there are other newsworthy events going on that have nothing at all to do with him, right?  But no one on the news broadcast was talking about them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That makes me wonder.  Are there any techniques to be aware of to avoid this pitfall?  How would I write a character who is genuinely influential and important to the world around him, without it coming across like he's the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; interesting person in the world and everything else revolves around his actions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1933" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T12:30:01.750" Title="How to keep the protagonist from being the only interesting person in the world?" Tags="|characters|world-building|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26524" CreationDate="2017-02-07T19:50:48.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would help, I think, if there were some pattern to the missteps.  My wife, for instance, often says the opposite of what she really means.  Another real-life pattern is &quot;spoonerism&quot; where the first letters of two words are transposed: &quot;Dine-and-fandy&quot; instead of &quot;fine-and-dandy.&quot;  Then there's what we might call &quot;Tourette's lite&quot; where the person accidentally inserts inappropriate words into inoffensive sentences --this can have an actual psychological role in the case of a very repressed person.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think anyone just swaps out random wrong words --and it makes it impossible to understand.  With some pattern, realistic or not, the reader has a hope of figuring it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T19:50:48.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26576" CreationDate="2017-02-07T20:06:20.260" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a similar Engineer type, and I have recently found out about pretty simple writing tools. Or, at least people told me they were elementary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The texture of your content is very important, and there are elements beyond the vocabulary that make writing more beautiful. Key components of the &quot;texture&quot; I believe you are looking for include the variance of grammatical structure and eventually a sense of suspense and reveal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richard Muller speaks of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/How-does-Richard-Muller-write-all-these-beautiful-long-answers-without-any-cut-in-the-thought-flow/answer/Richard-Muller-3?srid=eCkD&quot;&gt;these changes&lt;/a&gt; you can make, also from the point of view of a physicist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice (and Muller speaks to it) is to read what you like, and then &lt;em&gt;really read&lt;/em&gt; what you like. Pull it apart and find out why you like it. That's how we build new tools; read and learn. Participate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23426" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T20:06:20.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26580" CreationDate="2017-02-07T22:24:25.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several different techniques I've seen used in books/shows that usually help to alleviate this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A side story arc.  Barry may be the main character and the major events may surround him, but the foreshadowing on the news report may not just report the main event.  The news could show something that may be a side event that Barry may only briefly address.  Does Barry really like baseball?  A news article talking about X team won X game, would still be relevant to the main character but help make the world as a whole seem bigger.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Supporting characters are traditionally used to provide context/depth.  I haven't watched any of the Flash, but Barry should have some supporting characters that help him out.  These characters or their interests could be affected by whatever major even is happening.  Focusing on how they're affected by this event might give the story a bit more depth, even if we're just seeing their reaction. (Think about The Avengers Age of Ultron, when Tony Stark sees ALL his dead team members, that was a lot more powerful than just Tony seeing the world being attacked.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Filler information.  In literature with a lot of foreshadowing (&lt;em&gt;Wheel of Time&lt;/em&gt; I'm looking at you), not every event shown will take place.  Some may take place but not as expected.  It would be more effective and believable to include some additional stories that didn't touch the main character, even if they were just playing in the background as he is trying to cope with the implications of the major event.  These events, while they may not be important, would show the audience that while Barry is important, he's not the only thing in the world.  A great example of this can be found in the movie &lt;em&gt;Paycheck&lt;/em&gt;, with a similar premise.  While part of the vision of the main character focuses on the end of the world, many events that don't necessarily lead to that are shown, to help focus the attention on the end of the world event.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23097" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-02-07T23:12:14.003" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T23:12:14.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26567" CreationDate="2017-02-07T23:01:09.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned already, writing tends to be a task suited for solitude.  Now, while it's not necessarily the &quot;Silicon Valley&quot; of writing, one of the main things I see most Fiction and Non-Fiction writers have in common is military experience.  Many writers I've met started writing while they were in the Military and many of them weren't necessarily writing about their military experience.  Tangentially, many writers were military brats or came from military families.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I attribute this to a couple key factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time.  While in the military there is a tremendous amount of &quot;Down-time&quot; where there isn't much to do.  Standing post, cleaning equipment, being in formation, are all activities where there is plenty of time to think and observe.  Since military members have all basic necessities taken care of, ie, food, water, housing, clothing, there's not much else to worry about, so there's no real need for a second job or anything like that.  Free time is actually free time, unless you're overseas, then free time can be more &quot;sit around and wait&quot; time.  All this leads to an abundance of time which people can devote to writing, if they desire.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experience. Having spend 4 years as a infantry Marine, I can honestly say that I've experienced a great many things that most people haven't.  From relationship drama of people getting cheated on, to people dying, to hiking through dense jungle, to being in firefights, to overt racism, all these experiences were things that I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to see/do if I hadn't joined the military.  These experiences translate directly to writing, whether someone is writing Fiction or Non-Fiction.  Not all these experiences were necessarily positive or &quot;fun&quot;, but depending on what you're looking to write, you won't find a place to gather a collection of adventures/stories better than the military.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diversity.  This more ties into the above &quot;Experience&quot; but people of all walks of life join the military.  If you're looking to write about our world or a fictional one, you'll need to explore this diversity, in some way, to create well rounded and believable characters.  Some people get this diversity by observing the people around them.  &quot;People watching&quot; does provide a great benefit to most writers and can help them create characters and/or interactions.  The military is a collection of people from all walks of life and vastly different socio-economic backgrounds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aforementioned New York, specifically at coffee shops, would be the next best place and the most likely place to run into other writers with similar goals.  However, I would expect most of these writers to be &quot;aspiring&quot; writers who may not provide the best platform to share ideas or improve your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Green has a youtube channel(vlogbrothers) where he addresses this type of question indirectly a few times.  Can't find the exact video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23097" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T23:01:09.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26567" CreationDate="2017-02-07T23:17:15.600" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;London and New York are indisputable the places where English language publishing takes place. Traditionally, therefore, they were the places you needed to be to get the attention of a publisher. But while personal relationships still help, it would seem that there are far more avenues now than being invited to the right dinner party by the right hostess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which leaves us with the question of whether the company of other writers is needed to make you a better writer. Certainly, the company of other writers is pleasant to writers. I wish I lived in a place where it was possible to go have a drink with like-minded writers on a regular basis. (Like-minded is the hard part.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But would it actually make me a better writer? Much as I have valued, or at least enjoyed, the experience of writing classes and critique groups in the past, and as much as if I were granted one trip in the Tardis I would choose to go to the Bird and Baby for an Inklings meeting, I am less and less convinced that any of this actually makes me any better. I think you learn to write by reading with attention, but that fundamentally you learn to become a writer by learning to see -- by paying the proper kind of attention to the world around you, to its texture, to the particular difficulties of human life and human relations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And those things you can do anywhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, to put it another way, writing is participation in a conversation extended through time and through space. It gets is particular character not from presence but from distance. It is not only a lonely profession, loneliness, and the yearning of the lonely spirit across the gaps of time and distance, may be of its essence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or that maybe a piece of romantic puffery and fiction may not be any different really from marketing writing, in which case, iron sharpens iron, and if you want to excel, get you to the place where iron meets iron, which is London and New York. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-08T18:29:12.217" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T18:29:12.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26580" CreationDate="2017-02-07T23:19:13.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;@bhilgert's answer is on the mouche but, if I may be so bold, I'll add a 4th point: my favourite technique for keeping characters from becoming too self-absorbed is to use random little things that mean nothing to the said character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting with the news, I do like to have my characters glance at TV and lazily notice some news that will soon be forgotten as unimportant. Or dismissed with an off-handed comment such as 'people really should be more careful driving' in reaction to a big accident. Or (something I do in real life) listen to the news on the radio hoping to hear a particular information (like traffic) while really not registering any of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else I enjoy is to have characters sit (or stand) and wait for whomever and then have them glance about and notice a random action from anyone who may be around. Try people watching in your everyday life and notice little things people do that may or may not show a glimpse of their own daily dramas... or boredom. Then pick one or two to give the scenes in your tales a sense of realistic randomness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's important not to overdo it. I only used this technique more intensely once, but I did want to convey the character's insecurities, feeling that she was less important than those around. I felt that the 'white noise' I created that way really brought her self-loathe home, as if she were putting herself below even the most trivial of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="22074" LastEditDate="2017-02-08T00:14:41.227" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T00:14:41.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26580" CreationDate="2017-02-07T23:31:35.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every character had an arc. This does not mean that every character has their own subplot in your novel. But it means that they are driven in the same way that your hero is driven: they want something and they are exploring just how far they are willing to go to get it. You may not follow their arc, but they are on it, and the fact that they are on it drives everything that they do. Even the people that are on the protagonist's side have their own desires, their own arc, and therefore a limit to their loyalty and subservience to the hero. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consequence of this is that there are other things going on in the world. Everything that happens in a world, no matter how incidental it may be to your story, is the result of someone pursuing a desire. If you forget that, the rest of the cast, major and minor, become mere drones and satellites to the hero, and the story falls apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you used a TV example, I'll propose another one. In the TV show Suits, every scene is an argument, a confrontation. There is literally no let up at all. Lovers argue. Friends argue. Colleagues argue. Rival argue. In every scene it is perfectly clear what each person wants, and how the desires of the two bring them into conflict. Even two characters who are declaring their love and devotion to each other, do it in the form of an argument. A scene may end in tears and reconciliation, but every scene start with burning cheeks and glaring eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone has a desire, everyone had an agenda, and everyone is pursuing that agenda, and therefore whatever is in the foreground of any scene, there are a half dozen other things going on in the background.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-11T12:30:01.750" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T12:30:01.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26574" CreationDate="2017-02-08T00:19:14.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greetings,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To whom it may concern, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Hi' works. What you intend to convey should be dealt through the body of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T00:19:14.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7897" CreationDate="2017-02-08T04:38:03.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grammarly was the best I found for college papers. Double checking is always in your best interest. I do know it saved me tons of time on a deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23437" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T04:38:03.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26580" CreationDate="2017-02-08T07:49:21.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What makes non-protagonist characters interesting to the reader is that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;they are interesting to the protagonist.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Characters that affect the protagonist will be integrated into the protagonists actions and emotions and become well-developed by default. That is, if you write your protagonist well, all other characters will automatically follow from that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interest of the reader is nothing but a mirror image of the interest of the protagonist. If you want other characters to become interesting for the reader, make them interesting for the protagonist. If he doesn't care, why should the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T07:49:21.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26576" CreationDate="2017-02-08T08:01:30.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the current answers are part of the problem that you have: they provide a cognitive approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When your writing lacks &amp;quot;color&amp;quot; it lacks emotion. You cannot &lt;em&gt;analyse&lt;/em&gt; other texts and &lt;em&gt;consciously construct&lt;/em&gt; your own writing based on the results of that analysis to contain emotion. You cannot &lt;em&gt;follow certain rules&lt;/em&gt; to create emotion. The result would be fake emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Colorful, that is, emotional writing comes from the authors &lt;strong&gt;feeling&lt;/strong&gt; something about what they write about. Colorful writers remember how they felt in similar situations or simply imagine how they would feel in place of the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is like speaking in this respect. If someone tells something that he does not care about, his voice will be flat and emotionless. If someone tells something that excited him, that is, something that made him angry, afraid, or happy, then his voice – and his choice of words – will reflect those emotions and his narration will become colorful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what you need to do is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;feel.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You write that it is &amp;quot;the engineer in you&amp;quot; that causes you to write beige text. I think it is not your professional training that influences your writing but rather that you have chosen your profession to fit your personality. Maybe you belong to that half of the population that does not emote so strongly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is so, then attempting to write more colorful may turn out to become impossible to achieve for you, because you simply don't work that way. You believe that you must write colorful prose, but you really don't have to. There are good and successful writers, like for example Stanisław Lem, who have built a career on writing intellectual, even-minded fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So instead of trying to write more colorful – which just might not be for you (but I don't know and you might have to try to find out) – you could instead&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;make that &amp;quot;engineer&amp;quot; perception your trademark and evolve it.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T08:12:18.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26580" CreationDate="2017-02-08T09:03:57.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since this question is about a TV series, I think another serial might be a worthy contrast, namely the Manga/Anime series One Piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, the common wisdom is to have your hero be the most interesting character in your story. One Piece ignores that wisdom for most of its story. Every character Luffy runs into, whether they join him or not, has a complex history and personality, even more so than him. Luffy's entire character is defined less by who he is and more by how he responds to the situation around him, and how he manages to save the unsaveable, by sheer force of will. As such, the story manages to keep the World more interesting than the protagonist, by using the World to define him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MICE Quotient defines the Milieu Story in this very way, and it includes many classic adventure stories and TV series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, The Flash is a Character Story, about the titular Flash. It isn't Flash and his Superfriends, or The Speed Force. So if the spotlight ends up only on him, it may be less of a flaw and more of the show's intent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23265" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T09:03:57.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22238" CreationDate="2017-02-08T10:01:51.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, there are two ways of deeply developing a character for a character driven story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you already have an idea for who the character is (say she's a housewife dealing with 'empty nest syndrome'), then you can write a short, or long, text describing what she does on an average day. Focus on how she does her tasks and any thoughts/reactions she might have. The aim is not for it to have a plot or for the text to be usable later on, it's just for you to get to know her. You can write one such 'day in the life' for before and after her children leave the house, for a week day, a weekend day and a festive day. This allows you to discover the character as you write, from how she feels about her husband to what she has in the fridge and whether she follows recipes or makes recipes up when looking at what's in the fridge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whether you have an idea of who she is or not, you can cook up a list of questions to fill in. Include the obvious name, age, date and place of birth, favourite stuff (colour, food, drink, music, ...), stuff she hates, pet peeves... Very importantly, think back to when this now adult character was a child and a teenager: what did she want from life then? Name favourite and least favourite subjects, games, music... see how she changed and matured as she grew. You can add zodiacal and chinese signs, a quote that defines her, a Christian virtue and vice (but don't let those two rule her soul). Add family members and friends and how she feels about them. Decide what she has in the fridge and on her bedside table, inside her handbag, what type of clothes she wears. How she met her husband, problems her children have and had (because Johnny wanted to be spiderman and decided to jump from the balcony or because Janey's labour was a breeze compared to Joey's, who incidentally turned out to be a bully in primary school) and how she deals / dealt with them. All of these should tell you a little bit about her and help you to create a fully fleshed character. Of course you don't have to fill in a six page quiz; you can just glance at the questions and answer the ones that catch your fancy and imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest there is a variation of point 1: start your story with the plot you have in mind (and by plot I include even the vague feels abandoned and useless - struggles to find a solution - solution creates havoc in family life - deal with that - new life). As you progress, discover who she is. Once you really know her (half way through the novel), go back and adjust any out of character actions and reactions. Carry on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: I mention go back as soon as you know your character because, in a character driven novel, every thought, reaction and action can change the essence of the novel immensely, so I think it's essential not to risk out of character moments anywhere and, when you notice one, you should immediately fix it. The emotions and reactions of the character define and drive the plot. Get one wrong, and the plot starts going in the wrong direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T10:01:51.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26576" CreationDate="2017-02-08T13:56:57.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say don't.  If your natural thought processes are as black-and-white as a line drawing of a plan view of a P-38 Lightning and your writing as concise, then don't mess about trying to dilute your unadorned thoughts with the useless ornaments of prose and analogy.  For an example of a writer who did not indulge in much description nor fluffy character development, try looking at the first &quot;Foundation&quot; book by I.Asimov.  His career is proof that plainspeak can ascend to literary acclaim, so trying to emulate a romantic poet is unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your thought processes really were &quot;beige&quot; then you'd probably be in a customer service team, and not in engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23442" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T13:56:57.963" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22238" CreationDate="2017-02-08T15:45:50.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never been entirely sure what the distinction between plot driven and character driven is supposed to mean. Story is the intersection of character and event. Character without events is psychology. Events without character is history. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the definitions of the concept I have read are really definitive and they don't really seen to agree with each other. The nearest distinction I can find that might fit is between a story that primarily give the pleasure of vicarious experience (being a policeman or a cowboy or an astronaut) and the pleasure of meeting a person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story whose principle aim is to give the vicarious pleasure of imagining oneself a policeman needs characters, because policemen meet characters: the partner, the captain, the villain, the mentor, the pretty girl who is not all she seems. We have met these characters before, and we will meet them again. And again. And again. These characters are archetypes and you can follow a template to generate instance of the archetype. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in a story whose principle aim is to introduce you to a person, that person is not an instance of an archetype, generated to fill a role in a plot. They are a person. You don't invent people. You observe them. The drive to create a &quot;character driven&quot; story, if this is what the concept means, comes from an encounter with, and observation of, that person. This is not to say that such a character is a literal portrait of a single individual. Sometimes they are an amalgam of several people. But the point remains that observation, not invention, not a formula, are what drives their creation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T15:45:50.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26574" CreationDate="2017-02-08T16:31:16.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR;&lt;/strong&gt; This can be easily fixed by saying Hi user1 and user2!  Proper usage of the To:, CC:, and BCC:, can also help signal whose attention you are trying to get.  Whether you say good morning user1 and user2 or hi is up to you but there is nothing wrong in putting both their names there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is a bit of a hard one to answer without understanding the relationship of the group.  Is this school or work?  I assume a workplace but if that is the case, are they co-workers? Management?  Subordinates? I always try to choose wordings that best target my audience.  To whom it may concern is a popular choice but comes off as a bit distant.  To me, that is typically used when sending a letter to a business and not sure who would be the one receiving it.  Good morning, and so on as Thomo said in his comment is usually one of the best ways to be polite and professional and one of my favorites to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am slightly thrown off though because you are looking for feedback from 2 specific people in hopes 1 would reply.  Not sure how a change of greeting would signal someone you want them to reply.  The best most direct way for this usually found in e-mails is directly asking for it in the body.  Or you can simply say Hi bob and jenny! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how you provide the grouping of recipients helps out a lot too in determining feedback.  Are the 2 users you want feedback from both in the To: section?  Users in this section know that this email is directed TO them and not simply added for FYI.  in the CC: section people here usually know they are added in for the FYI with the ability to chip in should they feel the need to.  the BCC: is where you add people like management or uppers who you want to see the email and everyone who was attached so that they can stay informed without possibly freaking out the main audience that management is also in on the email and they can respond with honesty instead of what they think management wants them to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-02-08T16:37:41.993" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T16:37:41.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26513" CreationDate="2017-02-08T17:00:12.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an American English speaker, I have a few friends who speak New Zealand English, British English, and Scottish English.  For the most part, we can talk easily without issues but every once in a while, they will say a phrase or a sequence of words that I just go... eh.. WHAT?  I will ask them to rephrase what they just said and they will clarify, some times the clarification helps other times I am still lost.  Point being that, certain phrases that are cultural specific won't be understood by the other.  You could turn it into a comedy and make them joke at each others &quot;weird way of saying certain phrases&quot; or you can make them curious about cross cultural things and learn about each others sayings.  We have many chinese proverbs in the english culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T17:00:12.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26513" CreationDate="2017-02-08T18:48:55.780" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, you want your choices to call as little attention to themselves as possible.  The best way to do that, under the circumstances, is probably just to &quot;dial it back.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, write the bulk of the story in &quot;vanilla&quot; English, and then sprinkle a few invented terms and/or idioms in, to show it's not &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; English, and a few slang terms, or instances of deliberately poor grammar, to show it's informal.  If you hint at these things, your reader will fill in the rest automatically, as opposed to if you hit them over the head with it in every sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theory behind this is to remember that the actual word choice is just an avenue to conveying the meaning, and that realism isn't a matter of duplicating reality, but simulating it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T18:48:55.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6456" CreationDate="2017-02-08T20:51:06.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting question and which I find very pertinent. As the OP said, there are two options: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. to choose a real town&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works best if you know the place very well or, alternatively, if you can visit the town regularly. It's still a good idea to study some maps and have an idea of traffic and such. If you can't visit the town, try a virtual tour on Google maps (navigating the photos as if you were driving up and down the streets) and study maps, listen to the local radio to get a feel of traffic, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can still invent businesses and even streets, or you can have your characters visit real restaurants and live in a specific house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, this is my favourite approach. Nevertheless, I sometimes invent a house, a street or the occasional business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- your readers know you take details seriously and that you respect facts&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- there's the thrill (for the writer and the reader) of knowing you can go to that town and trace the characters' movements&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- you still have the freedom to invent a bit (but do write a note somewhere to inform the readers)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- works best if you want to set the events in a big, famous city... or if you're using a very small place (like your neighbouring village), since it's easier to research it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disadvantages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- it's a lot of hard work&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- it's a bad idea to have negative events happen in real businesses (e.g. a hotel room poorly cleaned, rude waiting staff at a restaurant, ...)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- if you can't visit the place, you risk portraying it wrongly&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- it's a lot of hard work  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. to invent a town&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have better things to do than spending your time researching, invent a town. However, if you're aiming to set the story in a big famous city, inventing one isn't usually the best option. Even if you're going overboard and creating an extra county, province, state or even country, you still should mention real places in the neighbourhood of your invented town. It will help to ground your invented town in a real country/state rather than in a 'once upon a time' kind of setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still advise to plan the town in as much (or as little) detail as necessary. E.g. shade off an area for the rich neighbourhood without bothering to map out streets, and detail the businesses lining the main street which your characters will often walk up and down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- works best for small to average towns&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- you don't need to worry about research&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- you can invent details for the town as you need them instead of planning the whole thing from the beginning&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- greater flexibility  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disadvantages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- it's easy to lose track of details and give contradicting descriptions, so one really must invest in a map, even if only to draw it as the story advances and more places are invented&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- ... there's no thrill of dealing with real places where one can actually follow the characters' movements? At least for me, that's a disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also mention&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the actual laws in force in that country&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, that does require more detailed research. There's no way around it, I'm afraid. I suggest choosing a country that is easy to research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T20:51:06.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26600" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-08T21:34:17.010" Score="0" ViewCount="3653" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that generally businesses in Australia need an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Business_Number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Australian Business Number (ABN)&lt;/a&gt; for tax reasons. I recall reading somewhere (not sure if it was here or another site) that by self-publishing you're entering into a business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am wondering, if you were to self-publish do you need an ABN? Would this be different if you used Amazon's services to sell the book instead of buying the ISBN, formatting the Book and selling it yourself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-11T05:15:09.840" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T05:15:09.840" Title="Would an Australian need an ABN for self-publishing a book?" Tags="|self-publishing|legal|amazon|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26513" CreationDate="2017-02-08T21:47:23.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what Chris Sunami said, I would point out that a scene is a lens, not a window. A great scene works by focusing your attention on just one thing. You can have many different things going on in a story, but in each scene you want the focus to be on just one thing. All you have is words, and words line up one after another. There is no foreground background in prose. If you try to have multiple things going on at once, what the reader actually receives is a narrative full of context switches. The effect is not rich, it is distracting. It does not immerse the reader, it expels them from the scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any tricks of language in a passage of dialogue, therefore, draw attention away from what is being said. In some cases, they may be part and parcel of what is actually being said. How certain characters speak is indivisible from how you interpret what they are saying. But there is a limit to what you can convey synchronously through a single stream of prose. A light touch is essential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, as I seem to keep saying a lot, setup is essential. Because you can only describe one thing at a time, any complexity in the reader's reception of a scene depends on the setup you have done. If a character's diction has to be decoded in a particular scene, make sure that you have decoded it already so that the reader recognizes it in content rather than being distracted by having to decode it in the moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T21:47:23.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26513" CreationDate="2017-02-08T22:16:16.190" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Translator's footnote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;* [Translator's note]: Dargo was using a heavy Tuvelarian accent, characteristic to the small, isolated rural settlements of Tuvelar. To reflect this, I'm using the Texan country accent in my translation, considering many cultural parallels between the two regions.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T22:16:16.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26600" CreationDate="2017-02-08T22:37:31.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this is the right SE for this question, and standard IANAL disclaimer here (followed by I Am Not An Accountant), however, I am Australian and do have my own ABN (so that may help?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends entirely on your business structure. If you are directly engaged in providing a product or service to someone then yes, you are required to have an ABN and register for GST.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://abr.gov.au/For-Business,-Super-funds---Charities/Applying-for-an-ABN/ABN-entitlement/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Australian Business Register website&lt;/a&gt; covers the basics of what the requirements are for an ABN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plus side, though, is that &lt;a href=&quot;https://abr.gov.au/For-Business,-Super-funds---Charities/Applying-for-an-ABN/Apply-for-an-ABN/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;applying for one&lt;/a&gt; is free, fairly easy and relatively quick (well, as quick and easy as any dealings with the Australian government are).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something to also bear in mind is that as part of your tax return, you do need to specify if part of your income stems from royalties associated with books, music etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefits of using a platform like Amazon or any of the other self-publishing (or even traditional publishing) organisations is that you, directly, do not require an ABN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, keep in mind that if you do decide to get an ABN, and set yourself as a sole trader (in a similar fashion to say, a photographer), you will be able to claim expenses related to your business of writing. Things like equipment, a percentage of power and data etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the biggest advice (and really, the only) is to talk to an accountant. A good accountant will help you set things up correctly, and so that it has a minimal impact, financially, on you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T22:37:31.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4394" CreationDate="2017-02-08T23:22:36.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A tad late to the party but seems like this post had some activity and I wanted to throw in my own two cents on the matter being a young adult(28).  I actually really hate when anime/books/movies try to throw in &quot;hip&quot; and &quot;current&quot; language.  This one show I am currently watching uses a ton of young slang and it really takes away any meaningful dialog because you have a hard time taking what the character says seriously.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is more annoying than anything else.  What do people always say about youth?  Full of energy and passion right?  So make the dialog energetic.  Use less big words.  Don't focus so much on the flavor of the month phrases because they are constantly changing.  The internet/facebook/instagram has made phrases and words really famous then die out before anyone realizes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T23:22:36.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6456" CreationDate="2017-02-08T23:44:05.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I enjoy is seeing real cities in a fantasy world.  Some argue that you have to be careful of how you portray the city in terms of local business but that isn't 100% accurate.  Depending on how realistic you chose to be, you could just use the city name, even a little culture influence (NYC for example is a bit different than say Paris).  This way you get both of creating and using an existing city.  Think Gotham City in Batman only the roles are slightly reversed.  It is modeled after Chicago though the city name and local businesses are all changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just depends how realistic you want to be with it.  Is the character walking down the street describing shops as they scan the scene?  Might be better then to make up a city because you would have a hard time being able to explain that if you haven't seen it first hand.  Yes we have google maps with street view but that doesn't provide the feel of the area like you could if you were familiar with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T23:44:05.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26606" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-09T10:25:02.120" Score="4" ViewCount="1949" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to decide whether to choose a trim size of 5.25 x 8&quot; or 6 x 9&quot; for my 100,000 word fantasy novel. I was leaning towards 5.25 x 8. My novel is a Kindle e-book and I'm looking at converting it to paperback with Createspace. Presumably a larger trim means less pages which may mean a slightly cheaper printing cost?  Many thanks in advance for your thoughts. :)   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23452" LastActivityDate="2017-09-18T14:44:12.980" Title="Which trim size for a fantasy novel?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26609" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-09T15:55:56.927" Score="4" ViewCount="15017" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been going round in ever decreasing circles over the setting up of the margins for my novel, which I hope to publish with &lt;em&gt;Createspace&lt;/em&gt;. I know what the Top, Bottom, and Outside margins should be, but I have come upon a problem with the Inside margin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Inside margin is based on page count, and I don't know how to be sure of my page count. The word count for my book is 90,929. I think, from what I've read, is that my book would be about 400 pages. The trouble is that the given dimension for the inside margin changes at 400 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;151-400 pgs: 1.905cm (0.75&quot;)&#xA;401-600 pgs: 2.2225cm (0.875&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do I just guess that it's a bit over or a bit under 400 pages? And what if I get it wrong? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23452" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-22T09:02:25.933" LastActivityDate="2018-05-01T02:37:49.823" Title="How should I set the inside margin for my 5x8&quot; book with Createspace?" Tags="|formatting|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7897" CreationDate="2017-02-09T17:05:18.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you're thinking that grammar-checking software will help you with your typos and grammar mistakes, think again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is precisely what grammar-checking software does. None of them are perfect, but I favor &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.grammarly.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Grammarly&lt;/a&gt; (as well as a few other people clearly). You have to pay for the premium features, but the subscription is not outrageously expensive (currently $5.83 / month for the first year, $11.66 for the years after).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T17:05:18.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-09T17:16:12.560" Score="4" ViewCount="968" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write mostly fictions. However, I am an apathetic-type narcissist, which means I cannot understand other people's feelings and thoughts easily, if at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, all my characters who are not modeled based on myself are dreadfully unconvincing, and even I notice how improbable their motivations and actions are sometimes. However, characters who are built to resemble myself seem pretty well-developed and both reasonable and conflicted in interesting ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from trying to improve my understanding of others, is there any way I can use narcissism productively in writing beside the character construction of the protagonist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19055" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T22:24:59.790" Title="How to use narcissism productively in writing?" Tags="|fiction|characters|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26611" CreationDate="2017-02-09T18:03:08.440" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely. Write everything from the first-person POV, and state clearly that you do not give a damn about others (that is actually going to be my next writing endeavor), then write a prequel, in which you are five-year-old and describe in details what in the world your parents did to you to make you this way. Then a sequel...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just kidding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actions of other people are based on logical choice more often than on pure feelings and unhinged emotions. Most people I know would back away from the edge of the rooftop, altruists and sociopaths alike. No one wants to be cold, hungry, and sick, and most of us want to get published and be held in highest regard for our efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the feelings, you do not have to relate to them to understand them and their origin. You might not share an unconditional love which your crazy cat-lady neighbor exhibits for her 50 stinky cats, but surely there is something you treasure (not necessarily of a feline origin), so you can extrapolate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observe other people in real life, try to understand why they do things they do, even if you think you cannot be sympathetic and compassionate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use logic. Many people do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-02-09T19:57:06.527" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T19:57:06.527" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26611" CreationDate="2017-02-09T18:06:46.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;People, I find, write best about what feels familiar to them.  I can't relate to your personality, but given the details provided, it might be hard to get to know to know the motivations of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advice I normally give is to read authors who write characters similar to how you structure your own, while noting their development and motivations.  This, coupled with an intimate understanding of your own characters (through, perhaps ostensibly trite and cliched, writing exercises provided on many writing websites) is usually adequate in creating dynamic characters with clear, tangible desires.  In your situation, perhaps staying true to your intuitions is best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about, for example, how narcissism causes one to view others.  This could be important in how your protagonist characterizes other characters.  Narcissism could be used, for example, to call into question the way the protagonist views other characters, or how other characters view the protagonist.  Are others in your stories narcissists, or do they loathe them?  What I'm trying to suggest here is that you might utilize the protagonist's narcissism as a framing device.  It'll depend on the point-of-view of the story.  Seems obvious, but it is difficult to master&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An exercise, as the previous answerer noted, involves observing people and writing your thoughts/impressions/structuring a scene involving these characters and their interactions.  The way you describe others might give insight into how your protagonist views others.  Hopefully this gives you some direction!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22815" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T18:06:46.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26614" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-09T18:51:59.390" Score="1" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;A Pocket Style Manual, 7th ed.&lt;/em&gt;, it says that, although MLA doesn't require a title page, you need to have a header with you name, instructor's name, course title, and the date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Title and identification&lt;/strong&gt;   MLA does not require a title page. On the first page of your paper, place your name, your instructor's name, the course title, and the date on separate lines against the left margin. Then center your title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(p. 167)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my paper currently, I have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[My Name]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Instructor's Name]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Course Number]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Date]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the order matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23397" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T19:28:04.833" Title="Does order matter in an MLA7 header" Tags="|academic-writing|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26614" CreationDate="2017-02-09T19:28:04.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the order matters.  Yes, I do believe it's trivial, but I've been enforced on that particular order, and I've encouraged others to stick to the order.  All in all, though, it honestly depends on the temperament of the teacher or professor in question.  I certainly wouldn't deduct major points for the heading being slightly out of order, but others are sticklers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also assuming you're asking here because you need to turn in an assignment for a class.  Please correct me if this assumption is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22815" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T19:28:04.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26611" CreationDate="2017-02-09T20:08:33.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get rid of all those characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write novels that only have two characters: the protagonist and his love interest. The protagonist is me, the love interest is not a person but a function of the plot and provides the protagonist with both a motivation for action and an occasion to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All other personell is just part of the setting and rarely gets more than a sentence or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T20:08:33.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26611" CreationDate="2017-02-09T20:38:07.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really doubt that you can. Literature rests fundamentally on the sympathetic observation of human life. Whether you are writing literature or pulp, your success depends on creating convincing characters and without the power of sympathetic observation, I don't see how you achieve that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is in many ways an odd vocation. It requires a high degree of sympathetic observation of human life, and yet its practical demands include long periods of solitary work. A writer must have great sympathy with and keen observation of human beings but also be comfortable with long periods of reflective solitude. Few writers are extroverts. They could not abide the solitude. And yet the writer much have the sympathy and sensitivity of an extrovert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing, in short, requires a life live inwardly with a gaze directly outwardly. But narcissism seems to be the exact opposite of this: a life lived outwardly with a gaze directed inwardly. It seems the least apt starting point imaginable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T20:38:07.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26618" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26636" CreationDate="2017-02-09T20:56:39.777" Score="5" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Japanese poetry like haiku or tanka, the form is based on the number of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_(linguistics)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'on'&lt;/a&gt; units per segment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that most people who use the format in English usually use syllables, though I've never thought that was very elegant.  I've thought about using morae, slightly different from English syllables, but then I get people getting confused because they're used to identifying the formats with the number of syllables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is using syllables the generally accepted 'proper' way to write English haiku or tanka?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8201" LastEditorUserId="23461" LastEditDate="2017-02-14T13:08:19.730" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T19:27:58.447" Title="Is using syllables the generally accepted 'proper' way to write English haiku or tanka?" Tags="|poetry|haiku|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26524" CreationDate="2017-02-09T21:15:06.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is: &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; write the dialogue with malapropism.  Write all her dialogue (initially) just as normal as the other speakers, with one exception--when you're plotting it out, select a couple of 'hinge' parts of the story where her malapropism is going to have a definite effect on the plot.  (As with any hook, don't overuse this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, if you think you need more cases of it, figure out how regularly her malapropism is going to show up.  Go through all of her dialogue and roll a die (or whatever) on every sentence to see if she screws up a word.  If she does, change up a word, but also make sure you change the rest of the dialogue to ensure that the reader understands what's going on--maybe have the narrator's text make the meaning clear, or have one of the other characters correct her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something that could easily throw the reader off, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8201" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T21:15:06.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26228" CreationDate="2017-02-09T22:48:59.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you looking for a genre?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the plot focuses on a mystery, then it would probably find a good place in the Mystery genre.  As far as mainstream genres in the American market, Romance is probably the closest to erotica, but, as you note, that is mainly focused towards women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8201" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T22:48:59.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26622" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-10T02:12:54.603" Score="3" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi I'm new here and obviously I'm also just a beginner in writing a story. Actually, I'm gonna try to write a fictional story. So I will just ask if how do you start writing a story? Of course, this is more specific. MS Word? Notes? Can you give me an example where do you start? It'll help me a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE: I'm just new here so I'll understand if Downvotes started to score down this post, but please leave a comment if you want to improve my question especially if this is off-topic. Or you can also edit the question if you want. Thanks guys!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23454" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T18:03:33.870" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T18:03:33.870" Title="I need recommendations for what software can I use in writing my first story" Tags="|short-story|science-fiction|microsoft-word|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-02-10T19:34:29.170" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26623" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26651" CreationDate="2017-02-10T02:39:45.750" Score="9" ViewCount="60260" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of making a book of poetry and was wondering how many poems do I need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23461" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-28T06:28:59.667" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T06:28:59.667" Title="How many poems are in an average book of poems?" Tags="|book|poetry|pages|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26623" CreationDate="2017-02-10T03:17:05.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a stylistic choice, as it varies depending on the length of your poems, or simply just how many you would like to add.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically books of poems with 1 page per poem are around 25-30 pages long, however I have seen books that are longer than 50 poems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T03:17:05.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26625" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-10T03:19:02.900" Score="1" ViewCount="3009" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand the ISBN correctly, if I as a publisher, created a Spanish translation here in the US, but was also selling it in, say, Brazil, do I need a separate ISBN issued from Brazil where the printing may occur, or do I just use a number I already own and assign it the translated version only? The physical place of printing the book doesn't matter? Can a 'joint' venture with a foreign publisher remedy the issue of being able to sell it in that country?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23463" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T21:26:16.373" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T21:26:16.373" Title="ISBN and international translations for sale in another country" Tags="|translation|isbn|sales|international|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26623" CreationDate="2017-02-10T03:25:33.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you self pub, places such as Amazon will print a book as low as 24 pages, so if your poetry is an epic poem it can be almost 1 book itself, say like Beowolf. Font size and how you typset it also play a role. If this is for commercial or your own use? I would at least think 3 poems filling 24 pages is small, but doable. They are called booklets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23463" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T03:25:33.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26622" CreationDate="2017-02-10T03:27:36.370" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the best writing tools out there are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Microsoft Word&lt;/strong&gt;, an all-purpose writing tool that can be used for drafts, notes, or final formatting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrivener&lt;/strong&gt;, a drafting tool that is used to efficiently create your initial draft using an in-depth set of tools for taking down ideas and quickly accessing them as well as plan your story easily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Google Docs&lt;/strong&gt;, a free tool that can be used for not only notes but act as a drafting tool with automatic cloud saving. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of starting to write, the following steps may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide on an idea that you want to write about. Is it fantasy? Sci-fi? Historical? What era is it set in? What will the world be like? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out what your protagonist's aim is. Do they want to avenge a death? Do they want to solve a mystery? Do they want to save the world?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flesh your ideas, world, and characters out and make connections between them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start writing!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't worry about what you can or can't do, it depends on how you do it and if you can do it effectively to reach the message or idea you want to convey.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set alongside some time every day to write, maybe 1-2 hours a day to get into a habit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep a notepad or document to jot down any sudden inspirations you have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read, read, and keep reading for inspiration and other ideas. Don't worry, almost everything has been done before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T03:27:36.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4937" CreationDate="2017-02-10T03:32:48.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Officially, you should have a new ISBN number for every version of your book, including dimension sizes. the only exception is for minor grammatical, spelling, punctuation and minor editing purposes. If there is a change in a character's name or more than 5 paragraphs in the whole story are altered, it is considered a new Edition and needs a new number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23463" LastEditorUserId="23013" LastEditDate="2017-02-10T10:57:35.983" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T10:57:35.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26629" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-10T06:02:03.433" Score="1" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;h2&gt;I'm definitely poor at English and I always have grammatical errors.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After posting a question about what apps can I use to start writing my stories, I searched in this site if how can I improve my grammar, and I came across to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2954/do-you-have-to-be-good-at-grammar-to-get-published&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English is not really my first language, but I'm desperate to write an English story. But the only problem is, I'm not really so good at English, but that doesn't mean I gave up on my goal. I still want to write an English science-fiction book, but I'm having issues with my grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there something you can recommend me of how can I improve my grammar? Especially that I'm prone to grammatical errors, I still want to find something that can help me without so much cost. You can even recommend to me if there's a software or app that I can use? Thank you for the help.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23454" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-16T01:29:20.193" LastActivityDate="2019-06-16T01:29:20.193" Title="Is there a way to improve my grammar without so much cost?" Tags="|language|grammar|learning|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2017-02-11T20:07:46.747" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26622" CreationDate="2017-02-10T06:18:34.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evernote&lt;/strong&gt; is also quite easy to use, especially if you have different documents (world building, characters, plot, backstory, actual story, etc.) and want to keep them together. It uses 'notebooks' which can then keep those different documents in the same place. It is also &lt;strong&gt;free&lt;/strong&gt; and works on-line (in-browser, app, mac/pc-software and synced between devices) and offline as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've switched from Google Docs to Evernote because Google Docs has no offline function (on Mac/Pc) and because I have a lot of different documents like mentioned above. Furthermore, and I may particularly picky here, the actual software runs smoothly, which means a lot to me for some reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does however NOT help you with a logical format like Scrivener does, but it is a good place to start since it is free and keeps things manageable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that &lt;strong&gt;There are no rules&lt;/strong&gt;, in creative writing. There are guidelines and expectations for different genres, but you don't HAVE to follow all of them or fulfill exact criteria for your work to be accepted. Some genres may be less forgiving than others, but if you want to write about X in &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; way, do it &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; way. Don't force an unnatural style or language into your work. It will not be authentic, and authenticity is more important than fancy language. &lt;strong&gt;You can't please everyone, but if you find something interesting, others will too.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Warning, personal (in)experience incoming:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm aware this might make me unpopular among some of the more experienced reader/writers here: &#xA;I don't believe you HAVE to read a lot to be able to write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me explain. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;I am in no way saying that you shouldn't read&lt;/strong&gt; or that it doesn't help improve your understanding of language use, genres, structure, vocabulary and so on. By all means, if you read and enjoy it, do it! I am however saying that you can capture a reader without having read a lot yourself, if your writing style is interesting and if your story is captivating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my own situation: As a kid, I had trouble reading for more than 5 minutes without almost falling asleep, and as a result I never developed a habit of reading. I also read quite slowly today. I have read probably a small percentage compared to most of the people on this site, but that doesn't stop me from creating a world that people find fascinating, and so far I've received (surprisingly) good feedback for my writing. I don't mean to come off as arrogant and disrespectful to the world of writing or the people on this site, and I'm not saying that I am or will ever be a great writer, but then again I am not motivated by the thought of becoming a world-wide best-seller. Sure, that would be fantastic, but I write what I write because I've thought, brainstormed, discussed, dreamed and felt passionate about this project to a point where I simply can't NOT do it now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I feel unsure about many areas of my project that I may have been less unsure of had I read more, but passion kills experience most days.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main point of this: &lt;strong&gt;There's no reason to postpone your own work until you've read x amount of books. If your passion is there, go with it.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this site and its users are awesome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck with your writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2017-02-10T07:04:45.553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T07:04:45.553" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26629" CreationDate="2017-02-10T06:23:49.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would highly recommend today's high end grammar-checkers (like grammarly which I see 5000 adverts every day for). However, I feel I should make this point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Those spell checkers are useless if you don't understand grammar yourself.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to understand grammar to make the best use of them. Without an understanding of grammar, they're pretty much useless. They're for checking errors you missed and not for fully fixing incredibly incorrect sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need a degree in English grammar to be a writer. Here's what I did. I followed a grammar course online, looked at grammar resources, and identified my own errors. The best way to get good grammar in writing (in my opinion) is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get an understanding of grammar. &lt;a href=&quot;https://alison.com/courses/English-Grammar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This was the top search result I got&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using your new understanding, identify your problem areas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Really hammer down on those areas to ensure that in your next piece of work, you don't make the same mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When editing, carefully look for &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; grammar mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T06:23:49.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26625" CreationDate="2017-02-10T08:20:13.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I understand, ISBN is released by your national agency. So if you are a publisher in Brazil, it is released by Brazil, regardless of the language. If you sell and ship your books across the world, they retain your ISBN number. But if you are a large publishing house with different administrative branches in different countries, then each of them might have their own ISBN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Useful resources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.isbn-international.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.isbn-international.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=36563&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=36563&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T08:20:13.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26622" CreationDate="2017-02-10T09:25:22.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For collecting facts on my world, persons, places, organisations I also use SimpleMind, an Android app. It gives you a fast overview over the world, and you can add and remove features pretty good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And since it is an mobile app, I can write my stuff down wherever I am, without the need for my laptop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more detailed descriptions and drafting I use Scrivener (there are others, but they're worse) and the final writing is done with Libre Office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22409" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T09:25:22.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26629" CreationDate="2017-02-10T11:05:12.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly? Just write a lot and have someone ruthlessly criticise your grammar, with explanations of where you went wrong and why. There are a few suitable subs on Reddit where people (like me, who spends a lot of time on /r/fantasywriters) offer critiques for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Try these..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/writers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.reddit.com/r/writers&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/destructivereaders&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.reddit.com/r/destructivereaders&lt;/a&gt;  (probably your best bet)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/fantasywriters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.reddit.com/r/fantasywriters&lt;/a&gt; (sci-fi and fantasy overlap so you should be good to post here)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/shutupandwrite&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.reddit.com/r/shutupandwrite&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21966" LastEditorUserId="21966" LastEditDate="2017-02-13T14:31:32.913" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T14:31:32.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26629" CreationDate="2017-02-10T11:23:00.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may try out Scribophile -- a community, where people review the texts of each other (costs USD 9,-- per month).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6696" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T11:23:00.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26618" CreationDate="2017-02-10T11:24:42.730" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think morae are a useful concept to understand Modern English phonology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, while a diphtong such as [aʊ̯] in &lt;em&gt;loud&lt;/em&gt; /laʊ̯d/ may be thought of as two morae, you almost always speak it as one continually changing diphthong (/laʊ̯d/), with the /ʊ̯/ as a non-syllabic glide, not as two distinct vowels (/laʊd/). (Similarly for long vowels: &lt;em&gt;boot&lt;/em&gt; /buːt/, not &lt;em&gt;bo-ot&lt;/em&gt; /buut/.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, what people &lt;em&gt;hear&lt;/em&gt; (in English) are syllables, therefore using syllables to build a rhythm will result in a more natural speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T11:24:42.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26625" CreationDate="2017-02-10T11:39:10.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An ISBN identifies a publication. Every edition of a book must have a different ISBN. For example, the hardcover edition, the trade paperback, the mass market paperback, the ebook, and the audiobook, all have a different ISBN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A translation, of course, is a different publication. But any edition can be sold worldwide. When I go to a bookstore in France and buy a book that was published (in English) in the US, that book (which was perhaps shipped from the US) will carry the same ISBN as it would if it were sold in the US. The fact that a book is shipped to and sold in another country does not make it a different publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the ISBN, it also does not matter where a book is printed. Many books sold in one country in Europe have been printed in another country in Europe, where printing was cheaper. There may or may not be a note saying where the book was printed, and different print runs of the same book may be printed in different countries, but they still carry the same ISBN if they are the same edition of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In your case, your book will be published wherever your publishing house has its legal address.&lt;/strong&gt; This may be the US or Brazil or elsewhere. This book, with the ISBN number of the country of your publishing house, will then be sold in the US and in Brazil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only if your publishing house has a &lt;em&gt;subsidiary&lt;/em&gt; in both the US and Brazil, and each subsidiary publishes its own edition of this book, will those two editions have different ISBNs. And they will have different ISBNs even when the books are absolutely identical except for the address given on the copyright page. They will also have different ISBNs if they are printed by the same pinter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T11:39:10.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26638" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26653" CreationDate="2017-02-10T12:32:06.620" Score="1" ViewCount="934" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I have a quote that has double quotation marks inside it.  Would I leave those in? Or replace them with single quotes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Carolyn Gregoire’s article “What Your 'Life Story' Really Says About You”, she points out that “studies have found that &quot;realistic optimists&quot; . . . may be happier and more successful that strict optimists or pessimists.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the phrase &quot;realistic optimists&quot; is in the source within quotes, and the rest of that is just a quote of the source.  Note that the &quot;realistic optimists&quot; part is still the same person talking, per se, with quotes around it because it's strange language (I presume).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's something MLA has to say about this, I'd be happy to know. Otherwise, just best practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23397" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-10T14:10:36.707" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T15:25:00.563" Title="&quot;Quote&quot; within a quote MLA" Tags="|academic-writing|punctuation|mla|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26639" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-06T16:08:51.507" Score="4" ViewCount="352" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to refer to different subpages of a website in text while only citing its main directory in the works cited?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the hypothetical webpage, &lt;em&gt;www.example.com&lt;/em&gt;, has the following hierarchy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;www.example.com/&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;/sub1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;/sub2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;/sub3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ordinarily, it would be cited in the &lt;em&gt;works cited&lt;/em&gt; like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Doe, John, et al. “Webpage Title.”&#xA;        http://www.example.com/main/sub1&#xA;&#xA;    Doe, John, et al. “Webpage Title.”&#xA;        http://www.example.com/main/sub2&#xA;&#xA;    Doe, John, et al. “Webpage Title.”&#xA;        http://www.example.com/main/sub3&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, would this be a legal &lt;em&gt;works cited&lt;/em&gt; citation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Doe, John, et al. “Webpage Title.”&#xA;        http://www.example.com/main/&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following, would this be a legal &lt;em&gt;in text&lt;/em&gt; citation for a subpage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do&#xA;    eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua (Doe /sub1).&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23456" OwnerDisplayName="Arc" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-21T10:06:21.087" LastActivityDate="2018-03-21T17:57:12.947" Title="MLA8 Refer to Multiple Subpages with One Citation" Tags="|citations|academic-writing|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26622" CreationDate="2017-02-10T14:10:51.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tl;dr: The best way to start writing a story is to &lt;em&gt;start writing a story!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process is different for every writer, so I would first ask you this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you usually plan any task that you have to do?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. Your house needs cleaning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you just roll up your sleeves and tackle the first thing you see?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you instead put your laundry in the washing machine, because that&#xA;will take time to complete and you could tidy your room in the&#xA;meanwhile?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have a system of first clearing clutter from surfaces, then&#xA;cleaning the surfaces themselves before finally working on the&#xA;floors, because that seems the most logical approach?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My personal recommendation is to do the absolute minimum level of preparation before you can start writing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get used to the idea that the first story you write won't be great quality, no matter what your skill level is. You're going to go back and heavily edit your work anyway so don't sweat the mistakes or the sloppiness. Additionally, don't worry too much about the research or the word processor you're using - just get straight into writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust me when I say that you'll work out all the other details as you write. Conversely, you &lt;em&gt;won't&lt;/em&gt; produce anything if you spend all your time planning and not writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21966" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T14:10:51.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26641" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26643" CreationDate="2017-02-10T14:11:27.897" Score="2" ViewCount="230" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all have read about the huge successes of self published authors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2015/04/17/mark-dawson-made-750000-from-self-published-amazon-books/#611bdb2a35e3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon Pays $450,000 A Year To This Self-Published Writer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremygreenfield/2013/03/20/the-fast-track-to-making-a-million-dollars-from-writing-books/#45bcb4641709&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Fast-Track to Making a Million Dollars From Writing Books&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most writers seem to quietly slave away at their manuscripts hoping to hone their skills to create the next blockbuster or Pulitzer. I do wonder about the quality of most self-published works I have read but frankly, I have also read a lot of drivel published by reputable agencies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://goodereader.com/blog/commentary/self-published-authors-are-destroying-literature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Self-Published Authors Are Destroying Literature&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://old.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/306zia/is_selfpublished_fiction_really_that_bad/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is self-published fiction really that bad?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One blog by a reputable journalist succinctly sums up the entire mood: &lt;em&gt;Probably the single most readily identifiable, potentially crippling difficulty the entire self-publishing community has faced is the fact that much of its output — not all but a lot — is rife with poor quality.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://thoughtcatalog.com/porter-anderson/2014/12/self-publishing-and-the-quality-question-its-called-rigor/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Self-Publishing And ‘The Quality Question’: It’s Called Rigor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Is an author's time best spent on revising drafts and studying the trade to improve their skills or simply say 'good enough' and risk the stigma of self-publishing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-05-01T16:07:46.213" LastActivityDate="2021-05-03T19:37:34.970" Title="Does spending time on Self-Publishing take away from improving my writing skills?" Tags="|creative-writing|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-10T14:38:25.483" Score="3" ViewCount="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My novel &quot;A Chase After the Wind&quot; was published by America Star Books and sold a few copies but they never marketed the book unless I paid them to do so. I did once but it did not result in any sales&lt;/em&gt;. On Feburary 7, they ended my contract&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;I am informing you that, under Par. 22 of our agreement, we are discontinuing the publication of your book A Chase After the Wind as of this day&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Can I revise the manuscript, change the title and submit it to new publishers. Do I have to tell the other publishers that it was once published by America Star publishers?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23470" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-02-10T15:30:57.557" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T15:30:57.557" Title="resubmitting a manuscript after publication cessation" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26641" CreationDate="2017-02-10T14:47:34.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publishers are in the book marketing business. Their job is to figure out which books will sell and how to sell them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three reasons why a publisher may reject a book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not good enough to sell&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is not a big enough market to sell it to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don't have the knowledge/channel to sell it to its target market&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before the Web, the only way to make money selling books was to make reasonably high sales to a reasonably well defined market in a reasonably short period of time. Otherwise warehousing and distribution costs would exceed any reasonable expectation of profits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Web changed that equation by reducing warehousing and distribution costs to near zero. This has given rise to a phenomenon known as the long tail. There have been several studies looking at how the long tail has affected Amazon's business model. The long tail is the vast collection of goods which individually sell only a few copies a year, but collectively add up to a huge amount of business. Apparently the long tail accounts for half of Amazon's business (but don't quote me on that). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long tail can't exist in the bricks and mortar world because of carrying costs. It tends not to work for traditional publishers and record companies either because of the high fixed costs of publication. But it has revolutionized independent music, allowing thousands of bands to build small followings. Not enough to make them stars, but maybe enough to live on, or at least generate a decent amount of mad money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self publishing today, therefore, is not the same as self publishing in the age of paper. It is about getting access to the long tail for niche works -- works that will sell slowly to a specialized audience that a traditional publisher would not know how to reach or could not afford to address due to low volumes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing a long tail work, and if you write it well, and if you have a platform to promote it, you can probably make some change with self publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is not what the vast bulk of self published work is. The vast bulk of self published work is work that is entirely mainstream in its intent that the writer either could not make good enough to sell to a mainstream publisher, or just happened to be in an oversubscribed genre that is not selling well at the moment. The wide sargasso sea of this stuff is not making anybody but Amazon any money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally, of course, some work that the traditional publishing world did not think would sell, breaks out of the long tail and becomes a big success. It is very very rare, but it happens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may also be a few in the wide sargasso sea that are eeking out some cash through sheer volume and grit, but unless you can match their energy and gall, that is not a road you can easily go down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address your question, therefore, the right approach it to find the right market for your work based on its intended audience. If that market is the market served by traditional publishers, then that is the right route to take and you need to keep working on it until it is good enough to sell (or until some event occurs that increased demand for work in that genre). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is addressed to a long tail kind of audience, either find an appropriate niche publisher or go the self publishing route because a traditional publisher is not going to publish it no matter how brilliant it is. But don't go this route as a way to stop short of making the book the best it can be. A book has to be better to sell in the long tail market because it does not have the imprimatur of a major publishing house to recommend it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="13494" LastEditDate="2017-02-11T12:30:47.977" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T12:30:47.977" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26642" CreationDate="2017-02-10T14:49:13.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.  If you're submitting something for republication, always disclose the history of the work.  Also, make sure you review the contract you had with the original publisher to ensure you know what rights you still have, and what rights they still have.  The original publisher may still retain some rights to publish the book, even though they have discontinued publishing it for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8201" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T14:49:13.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26629" CreationDate="2017-02-10T15:33:49.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry, there is no magical app or button or program which will fix your grammar. If you want to learn how to write better, in any language, the only solution is to practice, have your mistakes corrected by someone else, and then practice some more. Any computerized solution which fixes your mistakes is only feeding you fish — it's not teaching you how to fish for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T15:33:49.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26641" CreationDate="2017-02-10T15:49:03.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer: I don't have any personal experience with self-publication.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I read around the internet, self-published authors describe their job as 10% writer and 90% publicist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be successful at self-publication, prepare to spend a &lt;strong&gt;lot&lt;/strong&gt; of your time and effort in getting your work noticed. This means tours, giveaways, promotions and &lt;strong&gt;heavy&lt;/strong&gt; use of social media. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That doesn't leave a whole lot of time left for writing your actual products, let alone spending time researching, experimenting or otherwise honing your craft.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, this line really stuck out to me: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;say 'good enough' and risk the stigma of self-publishing?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arguably, this is a major contributing factor for self-publishing having a relatively poor reputation. In my opinion, no author should ever say &quot;it's good enough for self-publishing&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an author, your reputation is the key to your survival. It takes a huge amount of effort and time to earn a good reputation and a loyal customer base, why risk it all by throwing out a book that's simply &quot;good enough&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21966" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T15:49:03.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26647" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-10T16:41:24.917" Score="3" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written lyrics to which I would like to have music put to. What's the safest and most advantageous way to copyright the lyrics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23472" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T17:17:54.413" Title="Copyright Lyrics to Songs" Tags="|copyright|poetry|money|lyrics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26622" CreationDate="2017-02-10T16:46:09.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never been a planner.  I hated writing outlines, plot charts, doing diagrams and what ever other tricks teachers made us do in school.  I found it to be a complete waste of time for myself.  I just wanted to start.  I do my best work when I just write.  Let the flow of thought and words come out.  I don't know what it is that I want to write, but I will know it when I write it.  I know the goal, I know the topic I want to do, but the actual writing of the piece is a journey that I go on myself and discover the story as I create it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T16:46:09.677" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26647" CreationDate="2017-02-10T16:47:15.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in the US, your lyrics were copyrighted the moment you put them on paper.  (I can't speak for other countries.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to register your copyright in the US to make it easier to protect your rights, go to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.copyright.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.copyright.gov/&lt;/a&gt; .  They have instructions on doing it there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8201" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T16:47:15.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26647" CreationDate="2017-02-10T17:17:54.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to what Adam Stated, it is also important to have the lyrics dated.  One of the first things we were taught when I was in engineering was to date all of our design plans in our notebook so that if someone where to bring us to court over copyright issues, you have at least more evidence in your favor that this was your original work and done before them.  It would also be better to hand write because a date can be easily changed without notice on a word doc.  On a piece of paper, there would be an erase mark or white out used in the date section which would raise speculation to the authenticity of the changed date (and with removal of the white out you can see the original date as it would leave an ink trace or lead trace even if it was erased).  Not that this link provides how to copyright, but it may be an interesting read about what happens when a song goes to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-do-i-avoid-copyright-infringement-songwriter-david-clark&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;trial&lt;/a&gt; for copyright issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T17:17:54.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26623" CreationDate="2017-02-10T17:21:57.437" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Books under 50 pages, particularly if they are saddle stapled or bound in some similar style, are generally referred to as chapbooks. Based on what I've seen of publishers requirements for submissions, these are generally in the 16 to 44 page range (my estimate, not official). Many poets, especially new and emerging, publish chapbooks first. Longer (&quot;full length&quot;) poetry books are usually perfect bound and can range from 60 pages upwards. Notice that I am using pages rather than number of poems. It is one poem per page, but if your work is longer, a poem may take multiple pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend buying a few books of the type you like to get some ideas of how large a compilation you want to make and, if you are publishing it yourself, what type of binding, paper stock, etc. you like for your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T17:21:57.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14586" CreationDate="2017-02-10T18:57:49.077" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing is definitely a craft, and as a craft it definitely has technique, and technique can be described and taught. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is also all surface. There is nothing hidden underneath. All the techniques that an author uses are there on display, and so you can figure them out for yourself by reading with attention. You don't need the classes or the books, but they may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the real question is not whether writing is a craft. It clearly is. The question is, is there an element to successful writing that is not craft? And I think it is pretty clear that there is. That element is seeing. A great writer, in the end, is someone who has seen something that the rest of us have not seen, and has the writing skills to show it to us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read a lot of work by aspiring authors and very few of them lacked adequate writing skills. They simply had not seen anything worth telling. Their stories were not told badly, they just had nothing to tell. This, it seems to me is the limit of writing classes, critique groups, and sites like this. They may improve your writing technique, but they can't teach you to see.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the writing books may not be bogus, exactly, though some of them surely are, but they may not be enough, because they can only teach you technique and technique is not enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T18:57:49.077" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26638" CreationDate="2017-02-10T19:23:53.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why would MLA violate standard typesetting rules? In American English, quoted material nested inside double quotes uses single quotes. (In British English it's the reverse: single quotes on the outside, double on the inside.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Carolyn Gregoire’s article “What Your 'Life Story' Really Says About You,” she points out that “studies have found that 'realistic optimists'...may be happier and more successful that strict optimists or pessimists.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases (please note the nested single quotes in the article name), the single quotes are understood to be material which was in double quotes in the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T19:23:53.260" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26611" CreationDate="2017-02-10T22:24:59.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered using your narcissism to its fullest extent and writing a thriller novel from the psychopaths perspective. The  'protagonist' could be like the Dexter character on TV. He doesn't seem very empathic nor do others find him all that nice, but who cares. He had a hit show (I personally never saw it) so obviously not all protagonists have to be heroes. Professor Moriarty is another great example of a narcissist who in my opinion was more interesting than even Holmes. Why change what is natural for you, embellish it and good luck. Literature needs more bastards we all hate, way too many cardboard heroes already. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T22:24:59.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26655" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-10T22:26:22.093" Score="3" ViewCount="1909" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on outlining a novel and would like to start a first draft but I can't decide on any of the endless amounts of writing software available. What's the best place to start? Text editors? Word processors? Pro writing software? Any suggestions would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23101" LastEditorUserId="23101" LastEditDate="2017-02-12T06:51:24.953" LastActivityDate="2017-08-31T08:49:05.593" Title="Which program should I use to write the first draft of my novel?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|novel|formatting|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2017-08-30T22:00:50.953" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26655" CreationDate="2017-02-10T22:39:05.800" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best tool to use for writing when you're starting out is, simply, whatever you feel comfortable writing with.  The delay involved in learning a new tool is only going to interfere with the process of getting words on the page.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the tool(s) you are most familiar with are too expensive or otherwise unavailable, here's a link to Wikipedia's category on free word processing tools: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_word_processors&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_word_processors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8201" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T22:39:05.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26550" CreationDate="2017-02-10T23:33:18.820" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always enjoyed the works of Fritz Leiber, especially Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. He filled his world with the usual assortment of Medieval things and magic relics but focused primarily on his wonderful characters and their interaction with the denizens of his mythical land of Nehwon. His stories were hilarious and continue to inspire others including Terry Pratchett&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Weasel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Weasel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their misdeeds and ribald revelry are just as engaging today as they were in my youth. I would suggest your picking up a copy to see how they basically assume magic exists then abuse the hell out of it and others in their search for fun and adventure. And I must say they are long overdue for a great movie.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://observationdeck.kinja.com/why-fafhrd-and-the-gray-mouser-should-be-the-next-game-1773752445&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://observationdeck.kinja.com/why-fafhrd-and-the-gray-mouser-should-be-the-next-game-1773752445&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/FafhrdAndTheGrayMouser&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/FafhrdAndTheGrayMouser&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/3sg842/lean_times_in_lankhmar_fritz_leibers_fafhrd_and/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/3sg842/lean_times_in_lankhmar_fritz_leibers_fafhrd_and/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T23:33:18.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26659" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26663" CreationDate="2017-02-11T01:27:28.857" Score="7" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a somewhat depressive story that has no comic reliefs and no happy scenes/moments (except the ending and one or two in the beginning). The only scenes that aren't sad or negative are the romantic scenes (although it becomes sad when the reader knows the story around it), the action scenes and the neutral ones (neither sad, nor happy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I feel that leaving it that way would be so depressive that the reader would become overwhelmed and put it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, can a depressive story still be completable without reliefs, or are they &lt;em&gt;necessary&lt;/em&gt; for a good story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T08:25:22.997" Title="Is it needed to add breaks in a depressive story?" Tags="|fiction|technique|plot|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26659" CreationDate="2017-02-11T01:57:37.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it all depends on your idea of the book. If you want your book to be depressing all the way, then you are good, and your story can be a very good one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I personally don't appreciate books like that. To me, a book should have both up and down moments. Even if your characters are (for example)  locked at Nazi concentration camp, there must be something that brightens their day. It could be memories, or plans that they know never going to be fulfilled, or bright bird sitting on a tree - anything would help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T01:57:37.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26655" CreationDate="2017-02-11T02:19:12.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the best writing tools for the first draft are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Microsoft Word&lt;/strong&gt;, an all-purpose writing tool that can be used for drafts, notes, or final formatting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrivener&lt;/strong&gt;, a drafting tool that is used to efficiently create your initial draft using an in-depth set of tools for taking down ideas and quickly accessing them as well as plan your story easily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Google Docs&lt;/strong&gt;, a free tool that can be used for not only notes but act as a drafting tool with automatic cloud saving. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find Google Docs is almost 100% the best choice for a free writing software, with dozens of plugins that you can find online for it. However, I've begun to grow the habit of using Scrivener to become more efficient in my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T02:19:12.117" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26655" CreationDate="2017-02-11T02:36:55.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm adding an answer here that is posted on a question that will probably soon be removed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evernote&lt;/strong&gt; is also easy to use, especially if you have different documents (world building, characters, plot, backstory, actual story, etc.) and want to keep them together. It uses 'notebooks' which can then keep those different documents in the same place. It is also free and works on-line (in-browser, app, mac/pc-software and synced between devices) and offline as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've switched from Google Docs to Evernote because Google Docs has no offline function (on Mac/Pc)&lt;code&gt;Corrected, it does. see comments&lt;/code&gt; and because I have a lot of different documents like mentioned above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does however NOT help you with a logical format like Scrivener does, but it is a good place to start since it is free and keeps things manageable.&#xA;I like the additional fact that it runs very smoothly compared to word on Mac, but I may be particularly picky when it comes to this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2017-02-12T18:36:10.150" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T18:36:10.150" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26659" CreationDate="2017-02-11T04:15:09.257" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should make a very clear distinction between tragedy and futility. Classically literature has recognized both tragedy and comedy as essentially heroic forms. In a tragedy, the hero strives for a goal only to be overcome by opposing forces, or by their own fatal flaw, but still they strive, they follow the heroic path, they try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is &quot;comic relief&quot; in a tragedy, it is not really to lighten the mood. It is more of a counterpart, a form of irony. It is also very human. We do laugh in the face of danger and despair. As my mother's family liked to say, &quot;you have to laugh or you'd cry.&quot; But the reader does not really need relief in a true tragedy because there is still a heroic arc. Even the tragic hero, the doomed hero, strives as if there were hope, and there is a moral dignity in that that draws us in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The post moderns, however, indulge in something quite different: futility. The do not believe in the heroic hope, in the moral dignity of tragedy. For them life is simply futile, and so they write stories of futility, of unrelenting bleakness and cynicism. Can there be comic relief in such a story? I'm not sure. What would there be to laugh at? If there were comic elements, presumably they would be a comedy as cynical as the despair that drives the whole story. It might be comic, but would it provide relief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of these, tragedy and futility, is depressive? Both, perhaps, but in very different ways. In a tragedy we are depressed because hope was not fulfilled in a particular story arc. But this is not a denial of hope. It speaks to its uncertainty, not to it futility. One may come out of tragedy with hope, even with joy, and certainly with an affirmation of the dignity of the human spirit. But with futility there is none of this. Futility is inherently and fundamentally and comprehensively depressing. It discovers no hope, no dignity, no affirmation of anything except futility.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The depression of tragedy is relieved by its positive affirmations. The depression of futility is only confirmed by it lack of affirmations. Comedy, I think, can only corroborate the general effect of these two genres. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-11T04:35:54.000" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T04:35:54.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26659" CreationDate="2017-02-11T08:25:22.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please distinguish between writing for yourself (e.g. a journal) and writing for readers.  If you want to writ for readers, then imagine your target readers as you write, and communicate something to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first target readers were the members of my book club.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You just have to find an imaginary (or real) target reader that makes sense for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T08:25:22.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26665" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-11T08:33:20.540" Score="4" ViewCount="3351" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do my writing in MS Word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must incorporate some theater-like scenes into a book.  In the theater-like scenes, there will be three to five characters speaking lines.  Very, very occasionally a tiny bit of narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need different software, or maybe a Word plugin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2018-01-06T15:50:59.120" Title="Software for writing theater-like scenes" Tags="|software|playwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26666" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-11T08:51:29.860" Score="3" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write occasional guest blog posts for a special interest blog with a very large readership.  I don't get paid but that's okay, I have a strong interest in the special interest area, and it's very satisfying to share information in (cough) what I consider is a well written way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My hope is that this exposure will help spread the word about my book when it is finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't decided yet whether to submit to a publisher or self-publish.  If one submits to a publisher, what does one do about the fact that some of the material has already been published (in the blog)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The posts on this particular blog stick around for years, and continue to attract readers.  I know because comments continue to appear in a slow steady stream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking about making my own website, also, in which to re-publish (with permission, of course) the same posts, along with some additional material, most of which would be related to the book.  (For example, some appendices with related technical information that would not fit into the book, or that would be too tedious for the book, but which some readers would devour, as they are trying to figure some things out.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it still possible to submit to a publisher in these circumstances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T17:33:54.180" Title="Is it okay to publish some material in blog first, then incorporate into book?" Tags="|blog|publisher|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26629" CreationDate="2017-02-11T08:55:40.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In person would be great if you can find a class, or a person willing to help you.  Do not neglect to consider &lt;em&gt;auditing&lt;/em&gt; a class.  This is much cheaper than enrolling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A community college Writing Center would a great place to hang out and get help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the university in my town, there is a program for matching people up in language pairing.  For example, if you speak Farsi, you can help someone learning Farsi to practice, and that person would help you with your English.  If there is no program like this where you live, you can put up notices on bulletin boards, especially the public library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not neglect the option of free or low-cost English classes for English as a Second Language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could try your local Literacy Volunteers organization as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if you want remote interaction, English Language Learners StackExchange is the place for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T08:55:40.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26668" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26670" CreationDate="2017-02-11T09:46:47.287" Score="5" ViewCount="5910" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are the good in lyrics and poems, but what about prose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example from my own writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I fall to the ceramic floor, blood and bile dripping from my lips, my&#xA;  stomach full but my muscles lacking the slightest drop of energy. But&#xA;  that's all right. I don't have to move. I don't have to do anything.&#xA;  Because I'm happy. Because Kazuo and I will be one from now on. We&#xA;  will be &lt;strong&gt;together&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wholly. &lt;strong&gt;Forever&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastEditorUserId="22391" LastEditDate="2017-02-12T06:10:32.480" LastActivityDate="2018-05-25T16:15:21.507" Title="Are rhymes bad in prose?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|prose|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26669" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-11T11:30:38.843" Score="10" ViewCount="490" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a character working in a short-term temporary position in an organisation and refer to her doing the work using the usual UK word, 'temping'. Will this be understood by readers in the US and other English-speaking cultures? If not, is there an equivalent culture-neutral term or should I spell it out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23277" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-30T14:06:12.247" LastActivityDate="2019-05-30T14:06:12.247" Title="Is 'temping' a culture-specific term?" Tags="|language|international|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26668" CreationDate="2017-02-11T12:22:01.247" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;What rhymes? None stand out in that piece. Prose is full of words that rhyme with each other, but you only notice when they occur in the same rhythmic position, as they do in poetry. It takes rhythm to make rhyme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To demonstrate what I mean, since Neil disagrees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Old Mrs Smith went to the post office and sent her nephew letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two pairs of words that rhyme in this sentence. went/sent and letter/her. You are highly unlikely to notice either one of them because nothing calls your attention to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Old Mrs Smith to the post office went&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And to her nephew a letter she sent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put the same thought into verse, however, and the rhyme jumps out at you because the rhythm throws it in your face. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are all kinds of rhyming pairs scattered through ordinary prose. They don't surface as rhymes until something in the rhythm of the piece pairs them up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note some other pairs in this post that you did not notice reading it, and I did not notice writing it: surface/piece, notice/office, what/that/at, none/one, stand/and, words/kinds, with/Smith, other/either, highly/unlikely, nothing/rhyming/something/writing/reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-12T02:59:25.547" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T02:59:25.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26666" CreationDate="2017-02-11T12:27:11.933" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only possible, but better. Publishers want to know that there is a market for your work. The success of your blog posts proves that there is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is a catch. Under what contract did you write those guest posts? Did you assign copyright to the site or did you retain it. If you assigned copyright to them then you will need their permission to reproduce it in your book (and the publisher will ask to see that permission granted in writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T12:27:11.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26669" CreationDate="2017-02-11T12:51:55.650" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the word &quot;temping&quot; is culturally-specific, but not along national lines of culture.  An American with experience in corporate environments where temps are common would know the word.  A Brit without that corporate experience might not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, the word is pretty self-explanatory.  I would use it without hesitation in anything I wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T12:51:55.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26669" CreationDate="2017-02-11T13:06:13.843" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;All slang is culturally specific. The meaning of most of it can be figured out by context though. Certainly &quot;temping&quot; falls into that category. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But vocabulary recognition simply does not happen on a word by word basis. It happens in the context of the story being told. As kids, we pick up new words all the time, not from having them defined for us, but from hearing them used in context and seeing what they mean and how they are used. (This is why learning to speak a second language idiomatically from a book or in a classroom is so difficult. We don't get to see use in context.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make up entirely new slang and just use it in context and if you set the context right, the reader will pick up its meaning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T13:06:13.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7897" CreationDate="2017-02-11T16:25:19.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many grammar checking software tools out there. For example, grammarly, ginger, and unichecker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like grammarly the best, as it not only finds out the errors but also gives a detailed analysis in order to justify the mistake that needs rectification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23455" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-02-13T11:16:38.047" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T11:16:38.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26676" CreationDate="2017-02-11T17:09:45.590" Score="2" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifically, with some kind of psychological subject, and some theories and philosophies. &#xA;The book will have subjects people generally refer to as from people experienced in life, who have been through a lot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when someone who is say 50 years old, I assume people (and specifically publishers) would give it a fair shot and make a judgement on whats in it. This is my assumption, so please correct me if I am wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what if someone who is say 20 years old, wants to publish a book filled with &quot;life experience&quot; and advice you would suspect from someone older. How would publishers react to this? Would they give it a fair shot, or reject it because of the age of the author? &#xA;And would they also publish it like that, or would they prefer a 'older' pseudonym? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So to summarize my question:&#xA;Do publishers select manuscripts based on age? And if yes, how, why and with what criteria?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T01:56:00.487" Title="Does age matter if you want to publish a non fiction book?" Tags="|publishing|non-fiction|publisher|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26675" CreationDate="2017-02-11T17:30:39.620" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For non-fiction, publishers basically want two things. They want you to prove that you are qualified to write the book, and they want you to have a platform -- a bunch of people who already follow you or know about you would would be likely to buy the book and recommend it to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of a publisher rejecting an author based on age alone, and in today's youth-obsessed culture it does not seem likely. Age discrimination today is mostly directed to the old by the young, rather than the other way round. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a young person may have more trouble demonstrating that they are qualified to write a book, simply because they may not be as qualified. There is an obvious benefit in a book about life experience to have had more life experience. On the other hand, if Taylor Swift pitches a publisher a book about life experience they are going to take it because Taylor Swift has a platform. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mere age does not qualify anybody to write about psychology or philosophy. A publisher will be looking for actual credentials -- education and/or practical work experience. But a platform trumps everything. If you can build a huge audience blogging about your ideas on psychology and philosophy, even if they are completely half baked, someone will publish your book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, publishers are asking two questions (like most other businesses): Will it sell? And will it damage my brand? If they think it will sell and not damage their brand, they will sell it.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-12T19:44:51.447" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T19:44:51.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26666" CreationDate="2017-02-11T17:33:54.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @mark-baker has said, you need to check that you retain copyright, but also have the right to reproduce them elsewhere: you can retain copyright but not have the right to re-publish, even in a different medium, without permission. And this will be true whether you go to a publisher or self-publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a publisher produces well-respected books in your field, approach them and see if they are interested. If they are, not only will you know the book might be marketable but they may negotiate getting the rights to republish from the blog owner(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23277" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T17:33:54.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23247" CreationDate="2017-02-11T18:04:28.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Select the first scene by highlighting it (shift - click)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go down all the scenes you want to select. - &#xA;         **tip if there is too many it will lock up the Scrivner and the software will become unresponsive and then close itself; if that's the case delete your scenes in sections no more than maybe 50 at a time and empty trash after each selection has been deleted; this is after you reopen Scrivener). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go down to the final scene you want to delete hit shift and click this will highlight all the selected scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then let go of shift key, &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then click on the shift and delete button - this will move all scenes to the trash bin. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you haven't deleted anything you want and then right click your mouse and empty your trash.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had my laptop in my suitcase and when I got to the hotel discovered that the computer had inserted hundreds (if not thousands of empty scenes in my manuscript).  The above process worked and it took about a half an hour because I couldn't do it all at one time.  Hope that helps!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck,&#xA;Pam Pearsall &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23485" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T18:04:28.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26669" CreationDate="2017-02-11T19:45:52.443" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not be safe? Explain the term the first time you use it. E.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joan was working in a temporary position. She hated temping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like this doesn't feel strange to those that know the word, and it helps those who don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question, always, is who you write for. If you want to reach the widest possible audience, avoid jargon and slang, or explain it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, please, don't think that because a handful of other writers here on this site know or understand that word, the common reader will, too. If you want a useful answer to your question, you need to sample your target audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-02-11T19:50:59.897" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T19:50:59.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26680" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26744" CreationDate="2017-02-11T19:35:20.553" Score="5" ViewCount="7969" Body="&lt;p&gt;So there is a magic system in my novel, and I'm struggling to give each power its own name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each power is paired with another, and the names must sound similar, only with a twist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Criteria for a good naming system: Names should be confined to real words (but the meanings can be twisted), or very nearly real words, all being relatively uncommon (preferably with double meanings). What I'd really likeis for each word of a particular magic power should have a name similar to its pair, but distorted in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: Locksmiths might perform Locking and Blocking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples of pairs of powers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The act of creating a portal, which either increases the distance, or decreases it, and the act of creating a barrier. (Currently called Locksmiths, Locking and Blocking)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The act of transmuting materials, and the act of changing the shape of materials, provided that it is all made of roughly the same material. (Currently called Reformancers, Defining and Refining)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The act of changing your sight so you see physical objects as they are, without needing light (eliminates glare and shadows), and the act of changing your sight so you can see a person's inner qualities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The act of turning into an animal, and the act of making one's body take on characteristics of certain materials.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I go about coming up with all these names?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23486" OwnerDisplayName="Piomicron" LastEditorUserId="43118" LastEditDate="2021-01-06T22:27:14.120" LastActivityDate="2021-01-06T22:27:14.120" Title="How do I create a good naming system for the magic system in my Fantasy novel?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|naming|magic-system|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26668" CreationDate="2017-02-11T19:51:02.613" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are rhymes bad in prose? Sometimes yes, it depends on the prose and the rhyme and how it's used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Poetic devices like rhyming and alliteration &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be used in prose but it's not at all easy to do well. The rhymes here, &quot;together&quot; and &quot;forever&quot; are noticeable, and I think they do the piece a disservice. I'd simply remove the last two words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26670/26&quot;&gt;Mark's answer&lt;/a&gt;: Rhyme exists whether or not there's rhythm. It's just not nearly as noticeable in prose, and readers are seeing it out of context. (It's also worth noting that poetry doesn't have to rhyme.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've written a potentially powerful paragraph, but then end it with &quot;We will be together. / Wholly. Forever.&quot; All of a sudden we're getting into something that reads to me like something you'd put on a greeting card or that a high school kid would write in an awkward love poem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd just stick with words that move the story forward. The imagery here is powerful, there's no need to bookmark it with a rhyme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T19:51:02.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26680" CreationDate="2017-02-11T20:45:38.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, this question is relatively unclear, but I think I can answer it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to name a thing in that way, there's two simple steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think of words &lt;strong&gt;related&lt;/strong&gt; to your concept.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's think of blood. Let's say that the ability is having blood and being able to do things with blood. I'm going to think of a few words relating to blood:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Red, crimson, claret, life, vitals, lifeblood, heart, vein, ichor, liquid&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I've got that selection of words. Now we need to move onto the next step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think of a word to combine it with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a bit like how you came up with 'Locksmith'. I'm going to now brainstorm some words that can well describe the manipulation, movement and &lt;strong&gt;POWER&lt;/strong&gt; of blood!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sorcerer, magus, mage, manipulator, twister, brain, flow, telepathy, telekinesis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay so I think I've thought of something I like. I've thought of 'tell' which I think sounds nice with 'blood'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bloodtell, Bloodtold, Bloodteller, Bloodtenel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of all of those, I personally like &quot;Bloodteller&quot; the most because it uses an ~er ending showing that a Bloodteller is someone who does the act of blood-telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the process I would use to achieve what you are trying to do. It's all to do with brainstorming words &lt;em&gt;that are related to what you are trying to base it off.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one golden rule when it comes to naming:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not be afraid to use trial and error.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the only way you'll find an amazing name. Try different combinations of things, and see what you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T20:45:38.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26683" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26686" CreationDate="2017-02-11T21:00:52.177" Score="5" ViewCount="515" Body="&lt;p&gt;Programmers often collaborate over code by using pastebin. They drop sections of code for others to read and assist in improving or removing errors. Does anyone know if a similar app exists for writers? I have a Wattpad account but that focuses more on whole stories or serial chapters, not on portions of a story. Beta Readers prefer lengthy or competed manuscripts. Is there any app or service that reads only small sections of a novel to provide group feedback on readability, grammar or how interesting a concept is to readers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mark Baker was able to decipher my question despite its vagueness. He correctly pointed out Beta Readers read finalized or nearly finalized manuscripts, not snippets. Critique Partners will provide valuable insight into style, grammar and plots that I seek for drafts. My question is now revised to: Where would I find a good critique group or partner to provide critical analysis of drafts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="22690" LastEditDate="2017-02-12T13:11:59.673" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T23:35:53.043" Title="Where would I find a Critique Partner or Group?" Tags="|editing|beta-readers|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26683" CreationDate="2017-02-11T21:22:59.503" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://drive.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Docs&lt;/a&gt; is an extremely helpful tool for Beta reading, and is used by several writers of my acquaintance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It allows commenting on individual selections of text, so it's easy to comment on a particular snippet or section. (It also allows replying to comments, so people can discuss the comments or expand on them.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Viewers can make suggested edits, which the document-owner can accept or reject.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is extremely helpful that Google Docs can be shared with anybody with an email account; they don't need to belong or sign up to a service.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google Docs is high quality, easy to work with, and free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can easily create a Google Doc for the one specific section you want reviewed at the moment. (Merging multiple documents with different reviewers' comments is, alas, not really support in any way.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all under the assumption that you &lt;em&gt;already have&lt;/em&gt;, or can obtain on your own, a pool of beta readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can ask friends of yours to beta-read for you. They don't need to be writers themselves - you need &lt;em&gt;reactions&lt;/em&gt;, not writing advice. What &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; important is that you can trust them to be frank -- somebody saying nice things in order to be polite is no help at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing groups, online forums, critique circles, are all good places to find some friends willing to exchange critiques with you. Participate in the group structure for as long as you find it helpful, but also, &lt;em&gt;stay in touch&lt;/em&gt; with people whose feedback you find truly helpful -- a hand-picked group will always be better than a random collection of people on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, both &lt;strong&gt;feedback from random internet people&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;feedback on individual snippets of text, rather than complete works&lt;/strong&gt; are something you see much more with amateurs than with pros, or even more casual veterans. This isn't a knock on amateurs; it's simply the consequence of experience and ability:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A writer whose been active for a while has usually managed to build up a contact circle, including finding beta-readers they like and find helpful. That means the writer (and probably also the readers they're using) are likely to withdraw from the &quot;public&quot; pool of readers and critiquers. They've found a higher tier, where both the material and the feedback are on a higher level than the average you'll find on the &quot;public&quot; internet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Critiques and feedback are usually &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; helpful in full context. It's much &lt;em&gt;easier&lt;/em&gt; to see if a scene works, if you know the buildup that's gone into it. It's easier to answer &quot;Does this story work&quot; than &quot;Is this a good premise&quot; (usually: &quot;It might be, if the execution is good&quot;). And, experienced writers have already gotten in the habit of &lt;em&gt;completing drafts&lt;/em&gt; -- one of the biggest obstacles for beginners. So, they &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; full drafts to share, and completing a draft before requesting feedback is easier for them. For all these reasons, veteran writers usually &lt;em&gt;prefer&lt;/em&gt; feedback for a whole piece, than for one snippet -- and platforms aimed at snippets will generally have more of an amateur audience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the consequence of all this is that &lt;strong&gt;random feedback for random snippets of text is very likely to be of extremely low quality&lt;/strong&gt;. Which is why I'd be leery of seeking such a platform, even if some do exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; complete entire drafts, you can find &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/904/&quot;&gt;some good online options&lt;/a&gt; for critiques. But without even the bar of completing a story, I'd be much more wary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T07:51:42.913" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26685" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-12T00:33:27.763" Score="1" ViewCount="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an effort to overcome my writer's block, I've come up with an exercise, which I've pieced together from all the material I've read on dealing with writer's block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, now I am struggling with the exercise, and unable to complete it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Exercise&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easier to write an opinion or make a persuasive argument based on a given question. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The best way to keep healthy is to perform daily physical exercise. Do you agree or disagree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the exercise, &lt;strong&gt;take a set of quotes with a common theme,&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;write an essay responding to the quotes,&lt;/strong&gt; posing a question or a thesis based on them. (This is the writing aspect that I am trying to improve.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am finding this very tricky with multiple quotes. Most of the time I am hearing these quotes for the first time and when writing a timed piece without familiarity with the context, it is tough. Often the thesis and/or the content of the written argument is misleading. My writers block is also contributing to the difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am searching for materials that can help to understand and as rules/guidelines in generating a thesis out of a related set of quotes. So far I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/topic.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this.&lt;/a&gt; Possibly working-tips that could move me a step (at least a 1cm) from my writing struggle (writing the whole day but unable to construct a logical flow even for a short opinion piece with counter arguments and refutation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19330" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-02-13T11:30:57.013" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T11:30:57.013" Title="How to generate thesis or a question out of a quote/quotes?" Tags="|quotes|writers-block|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="19" ClosedDate="2017-02-12T08:00:03.230" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26683" CreationDate="2017-02-12T03:08:15.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it is wise to try to do this online. You have no idea who you is giving your the critique. Some people will just always be nice. Some will just always be nasty. You can't tell who are are dealing with if you don't meet them face to face. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want feedback, join a critique group or take a writing class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, at least as I have heard the term used, a beta reader is someone who reads the whole MS after it is finished and gives you feedback on the whole. At that point it should be polished enough that they are not stumbling over local details. Reading small pieces and giving feedback it generally called critiquing. That, at least, is how I have always heard the terms used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T03:08:15.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26687" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26690" CreationDate="2017-02-12T07:38:02.290" Score="3" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found two ways of formatting a script for a play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Character names go in the middle of the page, on a separate line.  Example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://filmschoolonline.com/sample_lessons/sample_script_page.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://filmschoolonline.com/sample_lessons/sample_script_page.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Character names go flush left, and then there's a tab to the dialogue.  Example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thewritersguide.co.uk/stageplay.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.thewritersguide.co.uk/stageplay.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that in both styles, the character name is given in all upper case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are these two styles called?  What's the difference in terms of how they are used currently?  How did we end up with two styles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question about format #2: Should the paragraphs have a hanging indent, or should the character names live alone in a column on the left, all by themselves?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T12:31:04.797" Title="What are these script formats called?" Tags="|formatting|playwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26688" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-12T08:00:22.560" Score="1" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does one go about finding and joining a critique group for &lt;strong&gt;nonfiction&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing two different non-fiction books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A collection of pieces written by a relative, collected and edited by me.  Some are essays, some are scientific articles reprinted from the original journals, some are memoirs, some are about history of music.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A combination of memoir and how-to guide for special education advocacy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like a sounding-board for these, but the typical fiction critique groups don't feel right. How do I find a critique group appropriate for my work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastEditorUserId="13494" LastEditDate="2017-02-13T18:47:18.567" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T19:28:34.487" Title="Approaches to finding critique group for creative nonfiction" Tags="|non-fiction|criticism|beta-readers|writing-groups|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26688" CreationDate="2017-02-12T08:06:56.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/dashboard/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scribophile&lt;/a&gt;. You critique other people's work and people critique yours. You can get 10 critiques in a month. The final product is very close as what you get with a professional editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T08:06:56.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26687" CreationDate="2017-02-12T12:31:04.797" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the first one is certainly a &quot;screenplay&quot;, and is the accepted standard for film and television (though sometimes television scripts are differentiated with &quot;teleplay&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one looks like a script for a play. I believe &quot;stage play&quot; is a fairly established term for contrasting the two, and that &quot;play script&quot; and &quot;theatre script&quot; are also reasonable terms to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the reason screenplays differ from stage plays is because they developed separately. Screenplays were not originally like stage plays at all. Early films were silent, and contained mostly action, whereas plays (since most actions are difficult to see) usually place a lot more emphasis on speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screenplays grew out of the unique requirements of film, and over time accumulated more features which made them more similar to stage plays. Nonetheless, subtle differences remain because the formats are different, and have subtly different requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Question about format #2: Should the paragraphs have a hanging indent, or should the character names live alone in a column on the left, all by themselves?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've actually seen both, so I'm not sure. I think the latter is more common, and generally more accepted these days. I'd suggest looking at some (recent) stage plays and seeing what they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T12:31:04.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26683" CreationDate="2017-02-12T13:43:41.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go and get Grammarly. I just recently installed it and it has worked beautifully. It is compatible with basically anything. In fact, I'm using it right now. I've used it in the poems that i am writing and it helped a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23461" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T13:43:41.943" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26655" CreationDate="2017-02-12T14:47:26.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use Grammarly. It has worked for me beautifully and when you install it on your browser it works for almost all of the typing you do. It's free too so you don't have to spend any money unless you get the Premium Version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23461" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T14:47:26.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26655" CreationDate="2017-02-12T14:53:44.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrivener is great in that it allows you to outline, storyboard, drag and drop and reposition chapters, notes, character profiles and all the elements you need to tell your story - safely in one place. It also makes publishing for Kindle and print relatively easy. There is a learning curve, but there are also plenty of helpful videos on YouTube. This is my personal experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23496" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T14:53:44.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26683" CreationDate="2017-02-12T20:19:35.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The good news is I found a great site on Goodreads that matches writers with people willing to be their critique partner:&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/18443955-searching-for-critique-partners&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/18443955-searching-for-critique-partners&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bad news is my partner is spot on about my novel I have worked on for 4 years and says it is well written but not really one that would catch most peoples interest. The science is a turn off especially since the novel begins in a lab with a scientist describing his invention. It takes 6 chapters before the invention creates havoc which in her opinion is way too long. She recommended starting off with action which requires dumping science, therefore my experiment of fusing science with a novel failed, just as Mark Baker predicted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, all is not lost. I found a great link on bad reviews and plan to follow their advice. &lt;a href=&quot;http://writerunboxed.com/2013/07/14/dealing-with-a-bad-review/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://writerunboxed.com/2013/07/14/dealing-with-a-bad-review/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately I have a fresh bottle of wine at home and a couple days off to enjoy my great granddaughter before I return to a blank word processor screen. I imagine most of you have already been there, but thanks again for the help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found WattPad may be useful if you don't mind posting your story in a serial format for others to read and provide their comments: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wattpad.com/story/99444658-viral-some-things-are-best-left-dead&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.wattpad.com/story/99444658-viral-some-things-are-best-left-dead&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="22690" LastEditDate="2017-02-12T23:35:53.043" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T23:35:53.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26696" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-12T20:53:45.703" Score="9" ViewCount="621" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live in a country that doesn't have English as its main language. I have two choices in writing, either write in my mother language or write in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why should or shouldn't I write in English?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first few thoughts were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do publishers often publish works that are not in that country's language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More people speak English, so one would assume you have a bigger audience in English. But, it is also logical that it is easier to connect to people in the same language and it will gain readers faster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, language skills are also an issue. What level of English would be acceptable (and editable) for publishers? Where would they draw the line and say, no, this is too awful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to publish a book in a country you don't live in, but it's an English-speaking country and so better suited for an English book? How do publishers address this? Do they pay attention to country when getting a manuscript?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, to summarize, I think it would be a good idea to generate a list of pros and cons so people thinking about writing in English instead of their main language can read it and make a better decision.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastEditorUserId="31505" LastEditDate="2018-06-16T19:35:41.307" LastActivityDate="2018-06-16T19:35:41.307" Title="What are the pros/cons of writing in English in a non-English country?" Tags="|publishing|language|publisher|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26697" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26698" CreationDate="2017-02-12T21:46:33.343" Score="2" ViewCount="420" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a character is referring back to dialogue (telling the story to the reader) and using the exact words, would you write... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then she said, &quot;I saw the body on the driveway.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I said to her, &quot;So why'd you step on it then?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then she said, &lt;em&gt;I saw the body on the driveway.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I said to her, &lt;em&gt;So why'd you step on it then?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find the answer anywhere, but think that since the dialogue isn't happening at the moment, it should be italicized for clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize it could be written without the exact words, but that's not what I'm looking to do. Also, this dialogue does not go on for any length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23498" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T23:49:34.293" Title="Quote or Italicize Prior Dialogue" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26697" CreationDate="2017-02-12T21:54:20.143" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a quotation so it goes in quotation marks. It is not the function of punctuation to indicate when a speech was uttered. If you need to make that clear, then you must do so in the text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-12T21:54:20.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26699" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26700" CreationDate="2017-02-13T00:47:17.883" Score="3" ViewCount="879" Body="&lt;p&gt;Describing the faces that people are making during a conversation can be difficult.  He nodded, she pursed her lips -- those are easy, but I'm talking about the more subtle expressions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of what I'm writing now, I'm trying to convey that pouty, pulled down corner-of-the-mouth expression that a person will get when they are expressing that they are surprised, but impressed.  In the interest of 'showing, not telling', I don't want to say, &quot;an expression that said, ‘Not bad’&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, &lt;strong&gt;is there any collected 'Dictionary of Facial Expressions' or other resource, online or in print?&lt;/strong&gt;  I feel that it would be very useful, since I run into this problem all the time, and I don't think I'm alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14026" LastActivityDate="2017-12-17T15:39:59.893" Title="Is there any resource available listing words for facial expressions?" Tags="|resources|description|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26699" CreationDate="2017-02-13T00:59:33.943" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you read with attention you will realize that there is very little of this in fiction. Actors can display all kinds of things with facial expression, which is why a script has to leave the actor room to work. But prose does not work that way. If you want a reader to know how a character is reacting to something they hear, you have basically three ways of doing it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tell the reader directly. There is a long and honorable tradition of this in literature ancient and modern. It is the author's privilege to know these things and to report them directly if this is the best way to move the story forward.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Express their feelings through their dialogue. Dialogue is not speech. Much is said in dialogue that is expressed in other ways in natural speech. Fictional dialog carries the burden that is carried by speech and action together in life or on the screen. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set things up so that the reader will automatically know how the character is going to react as soon as they hear the words spoken to them. As in life, an engaged reader anticipates how someone will react to things and gets there at the same time they do, if not before. Much of the effect of fiction is achieved through the right setup. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detailed descriptions of facial expressions are not going to work for most readers. They have to spend too much effort to reconstruct the emotion being hinted at by the expression. Prose and screen are fundamentally different media and they achieve their effects in fundamentally different ways.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-12-17T15:39:59.893" LastActivityDate="2017-12-17T15:39:59.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26675" CreationDate="2017-02-13T01:56:00.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Young people have a lot of unique experiences and insights into aspects of underground culture. Youth-oriented topics always have potential to sell. On the other hand, younger writers write flabbier prose and require more hand-holding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing companies would definitely take a chance on a book by a younger writer, but they have to factor into it the fact that the author's writing skills may not be fully developed and require editing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, some younger writers have been blogging for several years already and have enough writing practice to write clearly and succinctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking for myself, things I wrote in my youthful days were less organized, less focused. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, nowadays publishers are not publishing as many unknowns these days unless the author can demonstrate an ability to publish multiple works for a series. You may need to sell the series concept  more than the book itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T01:56:00.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26696" CreationDate="2017-02-13T06:01:41.370" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You should write in whatever language you are most comfortable with.&lt;/strong&gt; Personally, I find that one of the biggest downfalls in writing is worrying about your audience too much. You will eventually build everything around trying to appease your readers, making the story you're writing seem stale and boring to yourself. Or, you will lose yourself in fixing tiny unnecessary details to try to make a masterpiece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're deciding on what language you want to write in, consider these two questions;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are you most comfortable writing in?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What language do you read the most in?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experience in reading in a certain language will play heavily into how well you write, however I will still prioritise what you feel the most comfortable writing in. After all, if your writing is good enough to be read in one language - it can be easily translated to a multitude of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T06:01:41.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26696" CreationDate="2017-02-13T07:41:11.420" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you want to achieve with your writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One answer is to &lt;strong&gt;spread a universal&lt;/strong&gt; (useful to all people on Earth) message to as many people as possible. Then you can write in English.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to &lt;strong&gt;change your particular society&lt;/strong&gt;, then you can write in your mother tongue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you &lt;strong&gt;like a particular genre&lt;/strong&gt; and want to have fun writing in it, write in the language of the works you like most.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to write to &lt;strong&gt;have fun&lt;/strong&gt; (and you are not willing to work like a prisoner in a concentration camp to perfect your skills), write in whatever language you are most comfortable in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to write to &lt;strong&gt;preserve your language&lt;/strong&gt; from dying, then you can write in your mother tongue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to &lt;strong&gt;earn as much money as possible&lt;/strong&gt;, write in English.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to write &lt;strong&gt;poetry&lt;/strong&gt;, I'm not sure you have an option. There are several successful prose writers, who weren't native English speakers. I'm not sure there are any significant poets, who wrote in English and weren't native speakers (correct me, if I'm wrong).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If several of the aforementioned motives apply to you, you may write in both languages. There are skills (characterization, plotting, worldbuilding), which are language-agnostic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23411" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T07:41:11.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26655" CreationDate="2017-02-13T08:43:38.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use &lt;strong&gt;Microsoft Office Word&lt;/strong&gt;, that's even available online. Or you can use &lt;strong&gt;LibreOffice Writer&lt;/strong&gt;. And use &lt;strong&gt;Grammarly Software&lt;/strong&gt; for Grammar and Spelling check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23509" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T08:43:38.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7897" CreationDate="2017-02-13T08:46:35.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best is Grammarly. This is because their software is updated with all the latest rules regarding grammar. Grammarly even suggests changes to segments of sentences to help them read better. It also provides spelling changes and suggests the best words for replacing the more boring words in a sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23509" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2023-03-02T15:03:56.050" LastActivityDate="2023-03-02T15:03:56.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26699" CreationDate="2017-02-13T12:34:01.617" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are many resources that name facial expressions. A quick Google search will help you. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/10736128/In-pictures-Scientists-map-21-facial-expressions-and-emotions.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is some recent research&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But most readers will not know what you mean when you write that your character made, for example, an &quot;awed&quot; face. Do you? I don't. Because they will not be familiar with that naming system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do not use names for facial expressions in everyday life, therefore you should avoid them in your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The better option is to do exactly what you have done in your question: describe the most distinctive features of the facial expression and name the emotion that it expresses. This is perfectly fine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lucy looked at me with that pouty, pulled down corner-of-the-mouth expression that a person will get when they are expressing that they are surprised, but impressed. An expression that said, ‘Not bad.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T12:34:01.617" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26655" CreationDate="2017-02-13T16:56:53.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep it simple.  I've used Word mostly in the past but for my current novel I'm using Google Docs.  It's very handy because I often write on both Windows and Mac laptops, and this way I don't have to worry about having the right software on both machines.  If you have an internet connection and a web browser (who doesn't these days), you have the software ready for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Google Docs has super easy collaboration features, so you can share a doc with specific people and they can comment on it with suggestions etc.  We use Google stuff exclusively at my work and I don't miss Microsoft software at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, the offline functionality for Google Docs does work, and I always download a separate copy each day as a backup to my hard drive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23243" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T16:56:53.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26709" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26716" CreationDate="2017-02-13T18:16:03.687" Score="6" ViewCount="4366" Body="&lt;p&gt;I build websites. I've used a copywriter to provide the website copy, the client paid the writer directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I placed copyright signs on the site for the writer as requested. However, they have now fallen out with the business owner and have asked me to remove all their copy as they claim to own it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've researched this, but all I can see is that if the writer has been paid for their services, they can no longer claim ownership of the copy and it belongs to the business owner who paid for their services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the above true, is either party in a stronger legal position? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23515" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-02-14T04:47:43.833" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T22:42:25.330" Title="Who owns the copy if a copywriter provides copy as a paid service?" Tags="|copyright|websites|copywriting|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26696" CreationDate="2017-02-13T18:41:30.037" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are separate aspects to this question: writing, publishing and finding success as a writer. The answer would be different depending on which aspect we have in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is only about writing, then I agree with other answers - write in language that you like. If it's not your native language, there are many ways to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is about publishing, then English may not be a good choice for you. If you want to get published in your country, look around and see how many books in English by local authors are already published. Publishing in English-speaking country may be more fruitful, but then it's a whole new topic &quot;How do I find a publisher in different country&quot;. You can always spend some money and self-publish and/or e-publish, if you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is about finding success with readers, that's probably the most difficult one. First, in my opinion, you should love to write. If you don't love to write in your native language, then don't do it. Second is the quality of writing, and this is where native language normally has a big advantage. Should you go ahead and write in English, make sure you have a test audience that would read your writing and criticize you. Publishing will come third (see the paragraph above). And if all 3 steps are good, then you should find your success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T18:41:30.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26688" CreationDate="2017-02-13T19:28:34.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do think it is more difficult to find a critique group for non-fiction. All fiction has a common core: an interest in story. You can still usefully critique a piece that is outside of the genre's you usually read because there is still a story there, or should be. In fact, critiques from people outside of your accustomed genre are often particularly useful because they are not charmed by all of the genre trappings: they only see the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not like that for non-fiction. There is no common core. You need feedback from people who are actually interested in your field. That is much harder to find in a local critique group. It might be possible in a university town, but even then it may be hard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how well anonymous critique sites fit this problem either. They may have enough people registered to find a match for your subject, but how do you know that that is who you are getting. How do you know what axe they may have to grind? The other problem is that you will only get feedback from other people who are trying to write books. For non-fiction, particularly, you want feedback from people who are readers or practitioners in the field, not necessarily writers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a better way to get online feedback on non-fiction is to start a blog. That way you can open up your ideas to commentary from the whole community, not just other writers. This certainly worked for my on my last non-fiction book. The added benefit of this is that not only do you get feedback and discussion, you also build an audience for the book, which can in turn help sell the book to a publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T19:28:34.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26709" CreationDate="2017-02-13T19:48:19.453" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're in doubt about your legal obligations, find a copyright lawyer and get some professional advice.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8201" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T19:48:19.453" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26709" CreationDate="2017-02-13T19:48:26.457" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Bear in mind that I'm not a lawyer. This is my amateur understanding of U.S. copyright law.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client was foolish enough to purchase the text from the writer and not insist on a release, then the writer still owns the copyright to the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the writer was working as a salaried employee, then any material produced would be the property of the company. But if the writer is a contract worker, then the writer does indeed own the copyright until and unless it is explicitly released. The writer can release it for a duration, for a specific purpose, or not at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In graphic design, when you design something for a client, you write something in the contract explicitly releasing the copyright to the client so that the client can use the &lt;em&gt;finished work.&lt;/em&gt; If that finished work is a logo, the rights are unlimited. If the finished work is an illustration, the release might say &quot;You can publish it in your book, but you can't put it on a T-shirt and sell it.&quot; The client explicitly does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have the right to any comps or alternate designs which the client didn't use and didn't pay for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My &lt;em&gt;(again, not-a-lawyer)&lt;/em&gt; interpretation of copyright law is similar here. If the writer produced something, even if it was paid for, the writer owns the copyright until the writer releases said copyright. If the client didn't secure the intellectual property rights to the copy, that's not the writer's fault or problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-02-14T13:09:34.777" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T13:09:34.777" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26618" CreationDate="2017-02-14T00:13:04.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm utter bullocks at poetry, but I am learning Japanese. So allow me to (try and help by) describing how Japanese syllables work, and what Onji are meant to describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Japanese words are spoken in a vary per-syllable fashion, with grammar sometimes being the only thing used to define the bounds between words/sentences. Along with this, Japanese words can be composed of syllables that have been prolonged to take up roughly two normal syllables worth of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example, Tokyo(ときょ) is really written Toukyou(とうきょう), with the 'u's representing a prolonging of each syllable. Thus the word takes up four On rather then two, as Japanese speakers will take into account the proportional length of each syllable, not just how many there are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, Japanese syllables usually go consonant, vowel, unless it's a lone vowel or a lone 'n' sound. However, words like Nippon(にっぽん) can copy the consonant sound of a syllable and put it at the end of the one behind it, thus prolonging it and adding another On to the word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To-u-kyo-u takes up four On by prolonging each syllable's vowel sound.&#xA;Ni-p-po-n takes up four On by having consonants cap each syllable, thus prolonging them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Se-n-pa-i like the other two, takes up four On despite being two English syllables, as 'ai' is pronounced as one but would have it's pronunciation drawn out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ya, basically, I'd use English syllables. Haiku are uniquely Japanese in how they work, as Japanese has a focus on the length of each syllable in a way that English simply doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps, or at least was informative! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;This is a bad, yet still proper 5-7-5 Haiku written in Japanese. Notice how it doesn't read like one in English:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;先生が、&#xA;新しいなら、&#xA;いい俳句。&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sensei ga,&#xA;atarashī nara,&#xA;ī haiku.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(With master,&#xA;when it's new,&#xA;it's a good Haiku.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22133" LastEditorUserId="22133" LastEditDate="2017-02-14T01:02:48.280" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T01:02:48.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26669" CreationDate="2017-02-14T03:50:39.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have Temp Agencies in America, that, as their name implies, find temporary work for people. The people who work in temporary positions are referred to as &quot;temps.&quot; I first heard the word in ordinary conversation when a friend referred to an acquaintance as a temp. So I recognized the verb &quot;temping&quot; immediately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'd never heard &quot;temp&quot; used as a verb, so out of curiosity, I did a google search to see if &quot;temping&quot; as a verb occurs in American English. Yes, it does. Here's an American article that came up: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bestessaywriters.com/essay/the-temptations-of-temping/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bestessaywriters.com/essay/the-temptations-of-temping/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found &quot;temping&quot; in this online American dictionary: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/temp_2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/temp_2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Underneath the definition, the user can click on &quot;See the British English Definition&quot;, which in this case was the same as the American definition.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd say you're safe to use it for your American readers. Perhaps you can do a country-specific search to determine if it exists in other English-speaking countries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23520" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T03:50:39.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26709" CreationDate="2017-02-14T04:55:21.583" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In work-for-hire arrangements, the paying customer usually owns the copyright. It sounds like there was nothing in writing or any discussion about whether it was work-for-hire or simple use of the writer's text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without the terms stated explicitly, there is a lot of ambiguity. Some things to ask: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the author have a byline in this text? &#xA;Did the copyright statement say Copyright by John Smith or Copyright by ABC Company? &#xA;Was there any mention of exclusive use of the text? Was there discussion of time limits? &#xA;What country is this in? (Non-US countries have &quot;moral rights&quot; for the author but an equivalent doesn't exist in USA). &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the answer depends on whether this was a work for hire arrangement or whether the author retained copyright control but authorized a specific use to the client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out these links about work-for-hire arrangements in USA &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf&quot;&gt;https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the federal copyright doc: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A work created by an independent contractor can be a work made for hire only if (a) it falls within one of the nine categories of works listed in part 2 above and (b) there is a written agreement between parties specifying that the work is a work made for hire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I interpret that to mean that without a written agreement using the specific phrase &quot;work for hire&quot;, you have to assume that the author retains copyright and is granting use to the client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="7968" LastEditDate="2017-02-14T05:13:32.530" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T05:13:32.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26709" CreationDate="2017-02-14T07:59:16.510" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your business is with the client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell the writer to contact the client. Inform your client about the demands the writer made and ask him what he wants you to do, tell him that the risk is his. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do all this in email, not verbal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23521" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T07:59:16.510" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26709" CreationDate="2017-02-14T18:48:36.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've researched this, but all I can see is that if the writer has been paid for their services, they can no longer claim ownership of the copy and it belongs to the business owner who paid for their services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A writer owns the copyright to their work, unless it is specifically a &quot;work for hire&quot; which is a legal term, that only applies if there is a contract that specifically states it. It doesn't happen by accident.  So then what did the client buy?  There really is no telling without seeing the contract.  The grant could be vague like the business is allowed to use it, it could be specific and say the website could use it (in which case it would be illegal to print in a brochure).  Then there is the length of time the rights are granted, there could be specific time limits, or in perpetuity (forever). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my limited experience, freelance copywriters usually assign all rights in perpetuity to the client upon full payment. The copywriter will also retain the right to use the work for their portfolio. My guess would be if the client paid the copywriter in full then the client has all the rights to it.  You work for your client not the copywriter so unless you have some vested interest in keeping the copywriter happy, do what your client says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23537" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T18:48:36.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26738" CreationDate="2017-02-14T19:56:32.783" Score="4" ViewCount="2830" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that every case can be different, but it seems like there should be a standard split between the author and the illustrator of a children's book. Does anyone know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2020-08-18T01:09:43.913" Title="Standard split between author and illustrator of children's book" Tags="|publishing|children|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26725" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-14T20:52:07.570" Score="4" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a short story that has very little action that focuses mainly on the main character's development. I have tried outlining some of the major interactions with characters, the important moments in the beginning and end, and some other details I want in the story. I have a few of these scenes written up but am having trouble with the plot and making an outline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you make an outline for a short story that is very introspective and has very little action (especially when you already have some ideas fleshed out)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23539" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T19:39:18.140" Title="Short Story Outline Issues" Tags="|plot|character-development|short-story|outline|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26725" CreationDate="2017-02-14T21:14:14.833" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe some things that can help are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus On Scenes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories are really scenes played out in front of the reader.  This is really the show, don't tell axiom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What Is Your Point?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure you have a point (theme) so go ahead and summarize that point. Maybe something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;crime doesn't pay&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people who own cats are the best people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;shoes are an example of society's cruel overbearing pressure on people: go barefoot for freedom!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, suppose you are going with the last theme.&#xA;Now, show me a scene where the main character who is trying to free people from their shoes in action.&#xA;What does he do?  What does he say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope he doesn't just sit around in an empty apartment barefoot, thinking about the oppressed people of the world all day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What Do Scenes Do?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scenes should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;show a point in action&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;move the story forward&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;place character farther behind his goals - this builds tension and keeps readers reading&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 1&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA; Okay, so show your Anti-Shoe Hero and show him going to city hall and fighting for no-shoe laws to be placed in effect.&#xA; - Show main character get irate and get arrested (he's further behind)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He meets an ally in jail and they start a movement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he thinks he has a friend, but then learns the friend is a bit mentally off -- or is he?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get the picture?  Now move the story forward.  You can outline the entire story like this if you keep the requirements for scenes in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a way forward, instead of sitting and staring and thinking about what you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; write.&#xA;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T21:14:14.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26709" CreationDate="2017-02-14T21:53:14.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's imagine this goes to court. I'm not a lawyer, and I only have one extracurricular university course of IP law under my belt, but I do have logic. Here's what I think will happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, to summarize the argument:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The artist believes the contract was worded to &lt;em&gt;license&lt;/em&gt; the use of the copy on the website.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The website owner believes the contract was worded to &lt;em&gt;sell&lt;/em&gt; the rights to the copy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most direct course to resolution will be to reconstruct the verbal agreement and analyze its wording. If the terms of the verbal agreement are particularly clear, then nothing else matters. However, this is unlikely - even if both parties somehow agree on what the exact wording was, that wording is sure to be far from comprehensive or explicit. So we need to consider other evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I placed copyright signs on the site &lt;strong&gt;for the writer&lt;/strong&gt; as requested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're saying that the website's owner has permitted all of the writer's copy to be marked &quot;copyright [writer's name] 2017&quot; on the own website, then the writer will be able to point to this as evidence that the website's owner has acknowledged and failed to refute the writer's copyright while profiting from that copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The website owner will need a reasonable explanation for why they would mark the text as copyrighted to the author while profiting from the copy but then dispute that copyright when their business relationship changed. Since the website is easily accessible, and the owner has absolute power over its content,  &quot;ignorance&quot; seems to be their only excuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the website's owner might have some ammunition if it can be proven that a single fee was paid for the copy, with no stipulation on how long it could be used. A license ought to have a time or expiration element, e.g. &quot;you can use my copy for $30 per month&quot; or &quot;for $100 you can use my copy for a year&quot;. An indefinite license seems unusual, it either gives the copyright holder too much power (being able to terminate the license at will, e.g. after one day) or effectively amounts to sale of the copy (preventing the copyright holder from ever terminating the license), so it's not very good for business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the wording of the contract is too ambiguous, then the nature of the transaction is a strong indicator of the nature of the agreement. A single payment followed by a long period without payment is much more like the purchase of content rather than payment of licensing fees. A creative lawyer might be able to run with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23543" LastEditorUserId="23543" LastEditDate="2017-02-14T22:04:05.970" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T22:04:05.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26709" CreationDate="2017-02-14T22:42:25.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer. But in school I did have a class entitled &quot;engineering and the law&quot; taught jointly by a lawyer and an engineering prof. They said that if there is a contract, the owner is as specified in the contract (normally the client). If the contract doesn't address the issue, the copyright resides with the author. If the client paid the author, there is an implied permission to use the work in the context it was written for. The upshot would be that the author (in the absence of other contract provisions) can reuse the work in other contexts, cannot deprive the client of use in the intended context, and the client cannot use it in another context. As I understood it then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, you had best speak with a lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23544" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T22:42:25.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26697" CreationDate="2017-02-14T23:49:34.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a natural way of speaking. Think about when people tell a story about a conversation. Most people don't do direct quotes like that. Instead of  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And then she said, &quot;I saw the body on the driveway.&quot;&#xA;  And I said to her, &quot;So why'd you step on it then?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people would actually say &quot;She said she saw the body on the driveway, so I asked her why she stepped on it then?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you say that you do want exact wording, people quoting others, word for word, but folks don't do that unless a) what they are saying and the verbiage is very interesting b) they've been asked by someone else exactly what was was said. c) or they are pretty banal. d) It's a specific important memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're talking about a narrator, narrating a story in the past, or thinking back to it, it would be more like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I saw the body on the driveway,&quot; she had said to me, her eyes blank.&#xA;The shoeprint on his head was still visible, so I asked, &quot;Why'd you step on it then?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of something like it, if this is indeed the type of thing you are going for, in my own writing. It's long, to give it context. Basically, I've bolded anything that is a past rememberance. Notice that that I use &quot;had said&quot; and that I do use quote marks for what was said in the past. Hopefully that's clear to the reader. Different POV than what you're working with but I think the same applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“What story? What happened?” Belia asked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“A troll died, a paladin got a light, isn’t that enough?” Tremine cut in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Because of the best lie I’ve ever seen,” Mina said, launching into the tale. “The troll had thrown me, good thing the wall it threw me through was pretty soft---crumbled like bad pastry.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tremine had glanced over the top of the pack he’d been hiding behind in time to see Mina being thrown through one of the little ruined half walls, where she lie, still. He’d seen too that Aelia’s armor had been crumpled on one side, blood sprinkling the sand as she moved. One of Lek’s arms hung useless, no longer holding the extra axe. &lt;em&gt;Now,&lt;/em&gt; Tremine had thought, &lt;em&gt;now’s the time to run, before they fall&lt;/em&gt;. He ducked behind again, planning his route--the fastest way, with the most cover. He’d looked over again, to find that the fighter and the paladin were down. The troll meandered towards him, moving to block the entrance out. The wind was at Tremine’s back, and he’d wondered with a chill how good a sense of smell a troll had.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Everyone else was hurtin’ bad,” Mina continued, “so I played the frost lizard, so’s I could sneak potions to the rest.  ‘Fore I even knew, everyone was down, and the troll was walkin’ toward me, cut off our one way out, laughin’, like he knew I was fakin’.” &lt;strong&gt;Tremine had put the throaty, muscousy sound of the troll’s chuckle on his list of things he’d not like to hear twice, but he didn’t say so.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“And then I heard Tremine,” Mina said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“You want to kill me?” he had shouted, “Then I drop this! What would I lose?”&#xA;The savvy troll had encountered many an adventurer, and had recognized the object that the Tremine was holding aloft. An entire necklace of fireballs, with only a few balls missing. Fire hurt. Trolls were rarely indecisive, but this gave him pause.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T23:49:34.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26730" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-15T00:39:31.997" Score="4" ViewCount="2187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a fantasy/steampunk/horror novel, and I'm wondering if mixing different cultures is frowned upon. Specifically, my novel's setting is a mix of Italy, Ancient Rome, and Transalvania/Romania. The setting itself is based off of 19&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; century Italy, but the names, goverment structure, and empire resemble Ancient Rome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are vampire-like creatures (who can also control the elements), and the other language occasionally spoken (mostly for nicknames and cursing) is Romanian. The creatures are also very diverse. There are for example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sirens&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bean nighe's&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;headlsss horsemen (they're kind of like ringwraiths)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is mixing cultures okay, and if so, do you have any tips?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23545" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2018-04-28T22:13:52.883" LastActivityDate="2018-04-28T22:13:52.883" Title="Is mixing cultures for the setting of a fantasy story frowned upon?" Tags="|novel|fantasy|conventions|horror|steampunk|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26730" CreationDate="2017-02-15T02:02:43.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can definitely use cultural juxtaposition in your work. Readers will appreciate if it's done right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's take a look at &quot;Flintstones&quot; animation series, which mixes stone-age and modern culture. Although, strictly speaking, this mix does not make sense, the result is, by most accounts, very delightful. Contrasts between two cultures is seen as funny and intriguing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are many works of fiction where authors try to create a society that is a mix, but without much success. The common problem might be that those works are simply not interesting enough, and instead of intriguing, cultural juxtaposition becomes annoying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would say, as long as you don't get the reader bored, you can mix anything you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T02:02:43.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26730" CreationDate="2017-02-15T02:36:32.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are doing is called being original. It's not frowned upon; it's something most every writer strives for, especially with fantasy. The real challenge comes with making it believable. There a few questions on this very site, as well as other resources online, which can help you here. However, it all comes down to one very basic thing: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Details.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details create credibility. If you know the in's and out's of a thing, and that knowledge comes across in your writing, the reader will &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; that you know what you are talking about. That the thing being described is real, not just some hazy conjuration of your imagination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a disease that magically turns everyone into zombies. That's hard to take at face value, but if you know that the disease attacks the brain in a manner similar to rabies, but keeps its victims alive in order to use the human carrier to further spread the disease... then you're getting somewhere (seriously, rabies is a zombie-disease except it kills you). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean you drown them in details and technical terms. Using the example above, I &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; say that the disease secrets a special toxin which masks it from the body's T-cells or something, but I don't need to. As long as &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;, the author, know how it works, and &lt;em&gt;write like I know how it works,&lt;/em&gt; then that sense of knowledge will be in your writing, and the reader will pick up on it. A few terms maybe. Clarification here and there. Only what you need, nothing more. That's all it takes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take your example. You have Ancient Rome with vampires. The two generally don't mix in people's minds, so you'll have to clarify. Explain how this came to be. If it's always been this way, explain why. Did the vampires assimilate a culture similar to Ancient Rome and have now brought it here? Was the culture Ancient Rome, but the vampires have invaded and conquered? The answers will depend on your story, but the credibility will depend on the details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can help you further in the comments or edit if you need more help. Just let me know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T02:36:32.177" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26730" CreationDate="2017-02-15T07:57:57.130" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;We generally have an image in our minds of certain historical periods. This image is coherent, consistent, and harmonious. That is, the technology, culture, and social life are on a corresponding developmental level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem, when you mix what you call cultures is twofold. First, the image you create clashes with the image that we have of a historic situation. And this image that we have is very strong, because we have learned it in school and countless movies, books, and documentaries have reaffirmed it and added more detail. If you introduce something into a historic age that did not originally belong there, &lt;strong&gt;it will feel wrong&lt;/strong&gt;. If you handle the contradiction well, you may achieve wonderful humor, as in the &lt;em&gt;Flintstones&lt;/em&gt; example given by Alexander in his answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, historical situations are instable. History is a process of constant change. For example, there were no guns in the Middle Ages. When guns appeared in Europe, that meant the end not only of the knight, his armor, and medieval warfare, but also as a consequence the end of medieval courtly culture. When you introduce certain aspects of one culture into another, &lt;strong&gt;that culture will disappear&lt;/strong&gt;. We all know what Christian missionaries did to the now-extinct cultures of the world. If you handle this destructive potential well and make it a theme in your narrative thought experiment, as Mark Twain did when he introduced modern technology to the Middle Ages in &lt;em&gt;A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court&lt;/em&gt;, you may achieve an enlightening deconstruction of cultural stereotypes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The great danger in a naive combination of cultures is an unintended and unvoluntary humor, or in other words, that some aspects of your story will appear to the reader as laughably implausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are general thoughts, meant to be useful beyond the narrow scope of your own question. Whether or not Romanian vampires and nineteenth century Italy, or Italy and Roman government structure clash, you will have to answer yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I have a very strong sense of the &lt;em&gt;setting&lt;/em&gt; of certain elements of folklore and do not read books that &quot;abuse&quot; these cultural origins. Other readers will certainly be more open to fairies in spaceships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-02-15T16:00:51.257" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T16:00:51.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4394" CreationDate="2017-02-15T09:53:19.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Believable dialogue of any kind requires intimate familiarity. For example, if the writer is an adolescent, they can simply write as they speak. If the writer is the parent of adolescents, then they can attempt to write as their children speak. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is important to recognize that people not only speak differently at different ages and eras, but also in different regions and social circles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many writers will go to a public space and eavesdrop on actual conversations by real people, who are simillar to the characters they wish to depict in their stories. Buses, parks, cafes, and Starbucks are great areas for studying real life dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23549" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-02-15T16:04:15.363" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T16:04:15.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26730" CreationDate="2017-02-15T16:01:23.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see any issues with this.  You are taking things you like about different societies and mashing them together in a way that works.  It's refreshing when stories do this.  I watched an anime a few months ago where it had a modern Japanese army go through a portal and fight against fantasy based magic/sword users.  Of course they made it so the modern army was in control because guns and tanks are better than swords but it was still a culture clash that was refreshing and fun to watch.  It was a unique twist to the cliche of fantasy anime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it doesn't really matter on your &quot;mix&quot; that you try to do as long as it has a nice flow to it and seems seemless.  You picked things that are plausible as Vampires for what ever reason seem to be based out of Italy.  Romanian isn't that odd because of Transylvanian lore.  I think you picked the right elements to add together to make a good story that people won't scratch their heads on.  It would be totally different if you say, picked USA as the setting but chose to have everyone speak Russian.  They just don't work together or flow together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T16:01:23.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26724" CreationDate="2017-02-15T16:10:36.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The split is usually 50:50. In a picture book the illustrator may get 60:40.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T16:10:36.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26740" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26758" CreationDate="2017-02-15T17:23:31.133" Score="32" ViewCount="8444" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is currently a dearth of Asian American writers on U.S. library bookshelves, and those few authors who &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; Asian Americans tend to write about things associated with Asian culture. Think of Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Lisa See, etc. All books about China, growing up as a foreigner, and the likes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a very Asian name but grew up in the United States. I'm writing a YA novel set in the Midwest about a completely white protagonist, with no foreign elements. The closest cultural thing in the novel is the Fourth of July celebration with hot dogs and corn on the cob.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: if I'm trying to reach a wide teenage audience, would it make sense to adopt a pen name under something American, like Susan Brown? Teenagers especially tend to make snappy judgments, and may unconsciously think, &lt;em&gt;&quot;What would Li Ang Chang know about what the typical American teen goes through?&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Moreover, someone might pick up the book &lt;em&gt;expecting&lt;/em&gt; Chinese elements because of my name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this may contribute to the problem of low visibility of Asian American writers, so I would like to know your honest opinion on the best course of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23556" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-02-16T15:20:48.607" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T00:56:16.697" Title="Is it a bad idea to adopt an 'English' pen name as an Asian American writer to reach a wider audience?" Tags="|publishing|marketing|readers|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26740" CreationDate="2017-02-15T17:41:51.167" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;People adopt pen names for all sorts of reasons. George Orwell, Mark Twain, and John Cougar Melloncamp all had pen names for different reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realistically, there's no one that can answer this for you. And as you point out, this is a business decision. As such, you should probably be in contact with your publisher, agent, or business manager as the case may be. Likely involved would be market research, in particular some polling across your target demographic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You touched on the flip side of the coin - sacrificing the potential business in favor of making a personal statement. Low visibility is a one of those self-recurring feedback loops. People get pen names, so the next wave of authors said &quot;well pen names worked for them!&quot; so they do it too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I've never looked at a book and consciously thought &quot;Man, that looks like a good book. Oh, wait, it was written by a Swede. NEVER MIND!&quot; Then again, as we no doubt find in real life and in our stories, people are rather subconsciously racist and tend to keep to their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you need to first decide if this is a business decision or a personal decision. Only you can make that decision. Then you need to follow that up with the right people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1691" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T17:41:51.167" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26740" CreationDate="2017-02-15T17:44:51.380" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is merely my opinion as a YA(28) but I feel that you shouldn't have to worry about hiding who you are.  90% of the time I never even looked at the author's name of a book when picking one out at a library or at Barnes n Noble.  The cover art/title and the back of the book was usually what drew me into it.  If I found myself enjoying the book, I am going to try to look up the name so that I can see what else they wrote but again doesn't matter about the ethnicity of the name to me.  With that being said, I also think that... your opinion of youth today may be a little unfounded.  Yes there will be some that see an Asian name and say that, but the broad spectrum of people who pick up a book won't judge you because of your name.  It doesn't matter that you are Asian heritage because you are AMERICAN.  Also from personal opinion, I find it quite interesting when I see other cultures portray American life, especially in Anime as I find what they stereotype to be quite humorous.  Anime in general has really grown among the youth which should also help you with your culture fear of not being accepted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only real issue is... that someone may struggle to say your name or remember how to spell it when trying to go through an online book store or in person.  To change your name though out of fear of being discriminated I believe would not be correct.  It would be better to change it to make it an EASIER name or because it is your chance to write under an alias.  I have thought about making a pen name for myself but that is mostly because I thought it would be cool to have a name more easily pronounced that I can pick that would... dictate my writing personality.  My last name is pretty hardcore Italian and a lot of people butcher it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T17:44:51.380" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26740" CreationDate="2017-02-15T18:23:48.617" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think right now some publishers are looking for diversity, especially small presses. &lt;em&gt;Li Ang Chang&lt;/em&gt; might get a little farther than &lt;em&gt;Susan Brown,&lt;/em&gt; and probably quite a bit farther than &lt;em&gt;Joe Brown.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think you have a good point about being a positive representation of an Asian writer, particularly if you &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; writing about Asian culture. Make the point that you don't have to be stuck in a cultural ghetto &amp;mdash; your nationality shouldn't define what you write about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a reader's perspective, I'm going to look at a cover and a blurb first. The writer's name will only register insofar as I will check to see if it's someone I already know. If it's a good story, the writer's race/nationality/gender/age/orientation etc. is irrelevant to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@ggiaquin makes an excellent point about making sure whatever name you use is pronounceable and readable. If you feel like you might need to tweak your name to be a little easier to remember, that's fair enough. But I wouldn't erase your heritage. Bank on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T18:23:48.617" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26680" CreationDate="2017-02-15T20:37:50.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Let the characters in the story decide what to name magical things.&lt;/strong&gt;  Here's a process that I've used for naming magical things.  Maybe you will find it useful too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consider word origin.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research the etymology of normal words that could be used to describe the magic.  I've used  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wiktionary.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiktionary&lt;/a&gt; for this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create new terms or hybrid terms based on different components in the origin of those normal words.  Consider having some terms that are technical and others that are slang.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Apply environmental aspects.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the new terms or hybrid terms from step 1, and then think about the world and time era that the magic is used within.  Is it futuristic outer space, fantasy realm, medieval castles, present day suburbs?  Look for terms that are more appropriate for the place and time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create new terms that add in elements of the place and time.  I've written down word-pairs for this to see how things may come together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Listen to how it's used in conversation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a few situational paragraphs where the people or creatures in the story are talking about the magic, using the magic, and being affected by the magic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider its legacy.  Maybe the magic has been around for a long time and there are faerie tales that were told to the children about the magic.  As your characters start to talk about the magic, they'll probably use some colloquial terms for the magic.  Those terms may be something from step 1 or step 2, but maybe they'll call it something else so their child will relate to it during the bedtime story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider context.  How may one character secretly talk about the magic to another character?  Is the magic common or rare?  Maybe a regular word like &quot;lift&quot; would be the term that everyone uses for magical levitation, because the it's used in context so it's clear what is implied.  Many normal words are used to imply a similar action based on context, such as using the term drive in the context of vehicles or in the context of pc hardware or in the context of getting tasks done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the characters know what to call it based on the magic's history and usage --so everyone is familiar with what they're talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that a scientific method to come up with magic terminology can only take you so far --maybe providing good inspiration --but in the end, it seems that &lt;strong&gt;testing new terminology through contextual writing&lt;/strong&gt; may work the best for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18495" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T20:37:50.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25515" CreationDate="2017-02-15T23:23:18.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;DITA is one of the output options for Flare. You can create a new DITA target right alongside any HTML or PDF targets. We don't use it at my company, but I've played with it a bit to see how it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how extensively the DITA structure is supported. In my brief experiments, I've seen that madcap's &lt;strong&gt;keywords&lt;/strong&gt; are translated to &lt;strong&gt;indexterm&lt;/strong&gt; element tags in the DITA output. Variables are wrapped in &lt;strong&gt;ph&lt;/strong&gt; element tags with &lt;em&gt;conref&lt;/em&gt; attributes in the DITA output and a mcvars.dita file is included in the output's Resources folder. That file lists only the variables selected in the Flare Target file for the DITA Output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To illustrate, this is an small example of the DITA output from Flare:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;utf-8&quot;?&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC &quot;-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN&quot; &quot;topic.dtd&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;topic id=&quot;Get_Help&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;    &amp;lt;title&amp;gt;Get Help&amp;lt;/title&amp;gt;&#xA;    &amp;lt;body&amp;gt;&#xA;        &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;indexterm&amp;gt;Get Help&amp;lt;/indexterm&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;indexterm&amp;gt;Customer Service&amp;lt;/indexterm&amp;gt;Get Help&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&#xA;        &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&#xA;            &amp;lt;ph conref=&quot;Resources/mcvars.dita#mcvars/variableId2&quot; /&amp;gt; is committed to providing a variety of helpful resources to support your needs.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&#xA;        &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Online Help&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&#xA;        &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;From anywhere within &amp;lt;ph conref=&quot;Resources/mcvars.dita#mcvars/variableId1&quot; /&amp;gt;, click Help to browse our Online Help Center, where you'll find a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for quick answers to common questions.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&#xA;    &amp;lt;/body&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;/topic&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, for comparison, the same topic as seen in Flare's text editor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;utf-8&quot;?&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;html xmlns:MadCap=&quot;http://www.madcapsoftware.com/Schemas/MadCap.xsd&quot;&amp;gt;&#xA;    &amp;lt;head&amp;gt;&#xA;    &amp;lt;/head&amp;gt;&#xA;    &amp;lt;body&amp;gt;&#xA;        &amp;lt;h1 class=&quot;NewPage&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;MadCap:keyword term=&quot;Get Help;Customer Service&quot; /&amp;gt;Get Help&amp;lt;/h1&amp;gt;&#xA;        &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;MadCap:variable name=&quot;Text.Brand&quot; /&amp;gt; is committed to providing a variety of helpful resources to support your needs.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&#xA;        &amp;lt;h2&amp;gt;Online Help&amp;lt;/h2&amp;gt;&#xA;        &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;From anywhere within &amp;lt;MadCap:variable name=&quot;Text.AccountPage&quot; /&amp;gt;, click &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Help&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; to browse our Online Help Center, where you'll find a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for quick answers to common questions.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&#xA;    &amp;lt;/body&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;/html&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The output uses .ditamap and .dita filetypes and Madcap's &lt;a href=&quot;http://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare12/Content/DITA/About_DITA.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;help site&lt;/a&gt; for Flare makes note that you can't edit in the DITA structure natively:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As DITA takes on a bigger role in technical communication, more and&#xA;  more tools are becoming available to create this type of structured&#xA;  content. In this version, you cannot use Flare to edit DITA content&#xA;  natively. However, you can use a third-party tool (e.g., XMetal) to&#xA;  create your structured DITA files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, after doing a bit of research, I found this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13s_NkSg5pA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;youtube tutorial&lt;/a&gt; on how to create custom DITA elements by using the &lt;em&gt;mc-dita-type&lt;/em&gt; attribute on paragraph classes in Flare. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;p.Note&#xA;{&#xA;    background-image: url('../Images/Icons/noteicon.png');&#xA;    mc-auto-number-format: '{b}{color #9EB515}Note: {/color}{/b}';&#xA;    mc-dita-type: quicktest;&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After building the DITA output, that &lt;em&gt;mc-dita-type&lt;/em&gt; attribute becomes a &lt;strong&gt;quicktest&lt;/strong&gt; element tag in the topic file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conditions, however, do not work seem to in DITA output. Any text in the topic is included, regardless of condition tags used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10153" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T23:23:18.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26501" CreationDate="2017-02-15T23:36:29.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Preferences &gt; Formatting, under the &lt;em&gt;Scrivenings&lt;/em&gt; subsection, there's a checkbox called &quot;Separate Scrivenings with single line breaks.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On macOS, enabling that option reduces the distance between scrivenings to a single empty line. Folders are marked with a left margin bracket and an empty line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16278" LastEditorUserId="16278" LastEditDate="2017-03-03T00:17:57.680" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T00:17:57.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26740" CreationDate="2017-02-16T00:31:56.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The contents of your book is the same, no matter what name you use. I'll like or I won't. So I should buy it or I shouldn't, no matter what name you use. Therefore you should use the name that makes it most likely that I will buy your book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you said yourself, lots of people who would like the book won't buy it if you use the name &quot;Li Ang Chang&quot;. And many people who buy it based on the name will regret their purchase because it doesn't meet their expectations based on the author's name. Using a different name, well chosen, will increase sales and avoid buyer disappointment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23566" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T00:31:56.167" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26748" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-16T01:12:48.363" Score="4" ViewCount="8987" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could I get some pointer as how to NOT write a Self-Insert/Mary Sue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean: according to &lt;em&gt;Urban Dictionary&lt;/em&gt; a Self-Insert is &quot;A story in which the reader inserts himself or herself; this usually occurs within a fanfiction&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-Inserted Characters commonly have almost NO personality (In order to asist the reader in inserting their personality onto the Self-Insert character, an example of Self-Inserts include: JRPG Protagonists that don't speak, Kirito,Red from Pokemon, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Question: What are some general pointers that I could use in order to help prevent myself from writing a Self-Insert/Mary Sue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Yes, it IS possible to unintentionally write Self-Inserts/Mary Sue's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22914" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T16:11:35.483" Title="How to make sure that you don't end up writing a Self-Insert?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26749" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-16T02:29:41.100" Score="2" ViewCount="2049" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tried using the &quot;Search by example&quot; feature CSL tool (&lt;a href=&quot;http://editor.citationstyles.org/searchByExample/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://editor.citationstyles.org/searchByExample/&lt;/a&gt;) but couldn't find any exact matches. Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In-text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(DORMONT and HUBER, 2006)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DORMONT, B. &amp;amp; HUBER, H. 2006. Causes of Health Expenditure Growth: the Predominance of Changes in Medical Practices Over Population Ageing. ANNALES D’ÉCONOMIE ET DE STATISTIQUE, 188-217.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23492" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T13:55:34.833" Title="What style guide puts authors' names in all caps?" Tags="|citations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26748" CreationDate="2017-02-16T04:44:16.653" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I share your fear... I used to be a full blown &quot;Suethor&quot; in my teenage years, and I'll admit, I'm guilty of creating Mary Sues and Self-Inserts to this day. However, the more I practiced, the more I came to realize something: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All characters, especially main characters, are born with some degree of self-insertion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like original sin: We naturally write about people who are similar to us (and who may even be our avatars in our stories) because it's what we know. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is wrong, however, is when the author treats their Self-Insert like a spoiled child. You must give your characters fatal flaws, since it humanizes them, and it makes them less prone to the cringe-worthy perfection we all know as the Mary Sue. You must let your character make mistakes, say and do incorrect things, act contrary to what is best for him/her, and let him/her get into trouble for their actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads me to the other crucial step to avoiding Sues, in my opinion: You have to let the world you created continue to spin, regardless of what your character does. Even Chosen Ones and Saviours of the World can't defy certain &quot;rules&quot; of their universe, and if they do, they should be punished accordingly. It's all about striking a balance between the main character and his/her interactions with the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to sum it up, self-inserts are okay. Just make sure that the character is as realistic as you can make him/her, and don't let them get away with breaking The Rules without serious (or fair) repercussions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, there's also the issue of being obvious... I'm sure you know all this, but if you name a character after yourself, give him/her an appearance that is identical to yours, etc., you will have a blinking neon sign over your character that says &quot;I AM A BLATANT SELF INSERT AND I AM NOT EVEN GOING TO TRY TO HIDE IT!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck, and happy writing! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23271" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T04:44:16.653" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26740" CreationDate="2017-02-16T05:47:14.687" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe I've seen anyone else mention the &quot;intermediate&quot; option of Anglicizing your first name only, or equivalently picking a pen name that combines a typical English first name with an Asian last name. &quot;Li Ang&quot; could become &quot;Leanna&quot;, for example. (Or pick whatever strikes your fancy, but I do think &quot;Leanna Chang&quot; has a nice ring to it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I'm sure you know, many Asians who live in the US or other Anglophone countries go by an English name in day-to-day life. Children of Asian immigrants might even have their full legal name take this form. I would imagine that Americans would tend to see such a name and think of a second generation Asian American, someone who probably is in touch with their Asian cultural roots but nevertheless &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; American and who is also familiar with American culture. (I can't speak to how well this would carry over to England or Australia etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously you should look up some market research, consult with a publisher and marketing advisor, and all that. I'm just saying, be aware that a &quot;hybrid&quot; English+Asian name gives a different impression from a fully Asian or fully English name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3037" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T05:47:14.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26665" CreationDate="2017-02-16T13:12:55.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For what you want to do, script writing, you have several options, paying or free. &lt;BR&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;The best paying software truly specialized is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.finaldraft.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Final draft&lt;/a&gt; It is a quite old soft, very well planned and relatively easy to use, but come with a price. For what I know it was at a time a kind of de facto standard in the industry, if that means something.&lt;BR&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;The best free option I am aware of is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.celtx.com/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CeltX&lt;/a&gt; It is also quite an old software now, so you have a certain maturity. I use a pretty old version, never upgraded but when I was using it, it was a fairly decent free version of Final Draft (got some quirks here and there)&lt;BR&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;If you use either LibrOffice or OpenOffice you have a decent plugin &lt;a href=&quot;https://extensions.libreoffice.org/extensions/organon-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Organon&lt;/a&gt; that you can find useful.&lt;BR&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;You can also simply use &quot;template&quot; for Microsoft Word, LibrOffice and OpenOffice. They are that said generally more limited than Celtx or FinalDraft.&lt;BR&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;Remind that at the end of the day the tools you are using do not so much matter. What you want is the job done, if you have a pretty good enough mastery of Word doing a script template is a matter of 5 minutes. For writing a whole script (movie or theatre) Final draft/Celtx are certainly profitable but just for occasional stuff, Word is quite powerful. Here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awn.com/blog/how-turn-microsoft-word-terrific-screenwriting-program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;is&lt;/a&gt; a decent explanation of how to have some script writing function in Word. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21759" LastEditorDisplayName="user21759" LastEditDate="2017-02-17T13:11:05.160" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T13:11:05.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26725" CreationDate="2017-02-16T13:15:06.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In its purest form, a short story is a &lt;em&gt;single idea narrative&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole idea of a short story is to focus on the essential aspects of one single topic. There is always more that might be said in relation to any story, but that is not the point of a short story (which is, as its name implies, brevity and conciseness).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best practice, to my experience and observation, is to simply write the story, as Sara has suggested in her comment, and then &lt;strong&gt;delete everything&lt;/strong&gt; that distracts from the point you wish to make and waters down the story's impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-02-16T14:20:45.083" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T14:20:45.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26665" CreationDate="2017-02-16T13:19:11.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrivener&lt;/a&gt;. The key difference to Word is that it allows you to structure your text better. You can divide it in sections and move around, if you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started to use it for writing fiction, but now I tend to use it for other documents as well because that structuring makes my thinking clearer and faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also has scriptwriting features, but I haven't used them. You may want to download a free &lt;a href=&quot;http://literatureandlatte.com/trial.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;trial&lt;/a&gt; version and check them for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23411" LastEditorUserId="13494" LastEditDate="2017-02-16T21:31:28.717" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T21:31:28.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26749" CreationDate="2017-02-16T13:55:34.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge, this is a remnant of an old convention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In historic styles, the author name must be emphasized. Emphasis can be achieved through all or small caps, letter-spacing, italics, or bold face (in aproximate historic order). There are examples for all types of emphasis of author names in historic texts. Which style of emphasis was used was a convention of the (typographic) culture of the time as well as dictated by the contemporary limitations of the printing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Boldface is a more recent development and has replaced all caps and letter-spacing almost completely in printed texts. Those (house) styles that still emphasize the author name, usually use boldface today. Some university institutes still require all caps in master's or doctoral theses. Until about twenty years ago academic theses (and in fact many academic publications with a small print run) had to be typed on a typewriter, where capitalization is the only means of emphasis. The current requirement might come from the typewritten layout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, some book designers use all/small cap emphasis for aesthetic reasons and better readability. It is, as far as I know, no longer recommended in any style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T13:55:34.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26740" CreationDate="2017-02-16T15:20:02.773" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You needn't make that decision until you get an agent.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're quite right to identify this as a thorny situation, with strong considerations in both directions (and maybe additional options besides).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a strong preference one way or another, either way is certainly workable. But if you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt;, if you're willing to work either way depending on what improves your odds, then you might be better off leaving your options open -- until you'll be in a better position to make a decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, this is a question of &lt;strong&gt;branding&lt;/strong&gt;. Every author has a brand, whether they want one or not; yours may have some natural gravitation in a direction you're unhappy with. &lt;strong&gt;You will have an easier time once you know what kind of branding you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; want, than what kind you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not there yet, that's OK. You've got time, and in order to get to &quot;a wide teenage audience&quot;, you're going to need some steps along the way -- an agent; a publisher. These people will (hopefully) have the industry expertise, and the insight into your particular book and brand, to help you reach a decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A decent agent is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; going to be put off a book because of the author's name -- nor is a decent publisher. With them, you can make it in on the strength of your writing. Then -- when you've got some pros on your side, when you're starting to talk about branding and marketing -- that's when you really need to make decisions like &quot;what name will I publish under,&quot; and you'll also be in a pretty good place to make an informed decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are exceptions here. Reasons to make a decision right away could include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a strong preference one way or the other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want to start establishing a strong social-media presence even before you've started publishing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're writing short fiction, or are interested in small presses, or otherwise writing something that can get you published but without giving you an agent to consult.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also some other alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish under more than one name, if you have more than one &quot;type&quot; of fiction -- basically maintaining two distinct brands.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use your initials -- &quot;L.A. Chang&quot; is not false, but sounds less distinct. (It worked well for J.K. Rowling...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish under a name which is still Asian, but less obtrusively so. First-name &quot;common-English,&quot; last-name &quot;foreign&quot;  is something you see a fair amount of -- including the authors your cited in your own question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps, and all the best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T15:20:02.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26748" CreationDate="2017-02-16T15:35:35.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll suggest asking yourself a few questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I'm using 'it' to refer to the character to underline that characters are things we create rather than real people or their alter-egos. Unless you want it to be an alter-ego, obviously.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q1.&lt;/strong&gt; If the character turns out to resemble you physically, stop and give it a moment of thought. Why did you make it your twin? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A1.1&lt;/strong&gt; Because I want it to look like me. Wrong: change hair and eye colour, and height or weight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A1.2&lt;/strong&gt; Because I like characters that have that specific physical appearance. OK: try to change at least hair style or hair colour or height. Try to pass it off as a cousin rather than a twin of yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A1.3&lt;/strong&gt; No reason. It just happened that way. OK: decide if the story really needs that particular appearance and then change as much as you feel comfortable. Or go overboard and try to make it as different from you as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q2.&lt;/strong&gt; Does it have the same interests as you? The same hobbies? The same political/sports/literature/musical/etc likes?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A2.1&lt;/strong&gt; Don't bother to ask yourself why. In the best case scenario, you want to 'preach' something you believe in to your readers. If that's the case choose &lt;em&gt;one or two&lt;/em&gt; things you want to preach about and which correspond to your personal views. Get rid of the rest. Either don't mention those interests at all, or give it different tastes (not necessarily opposing tastes: if you don't like jazz, it doesn't have to love it; but say you love Madonna and it simply likes a few of her songs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A2.2&lt;/strong&gt; Worst case scenario: everything else. How to fix it? Make a list of your likes and dislikes. Then make a list of your character's likes and dislikes. Again, don't make it your opposite. But if you love basketball, maybe its father loves basketball and it only has a passing interest. Or it prefers netball. It's perfectly ok to have the character share some of your interests, but change it a bit... and some is definitely less than 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE:&lt;/strong&gt; If you have a particular hobby or interest, it's perfectly acceptable to maintain it. But don't let that hobby / interest dominate the story. Unless it is part of the plot, obviously. Like, you're a stamp collector and the character is obsessed with stamps. But do make sure it's a hobby/interest that helps the story move forward (or makes a statement about the character's personality) and doesn't simply show up because you think stamps are cool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q3.&lt;/strong&gt; Is it perfect? Worse: is it cutely flawed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A3.1&lt;/strong&gt; We all know a perfect character is irritating, to say the least, and must have flaws to be more human. But if the flaws are exagerated (it is so bad at cooking that entering a kitchen is a fire hazard) or cute (it is afraid of dogs and does the silliest things to keep them at bay), they are not real flaws. Talk to (or ask about) people that have that particular flaw. I can't cook, but it's basically because I don't like it so I do stuff with my mind elsewhere and try to take shortcuts that make the result less than appealing. And an actual fear of dogs is not cute; it's paralysing and mock-inducing (especially if kids / teenagers are involved, although adults can be just as bad). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A3.2&lt;/strong&gt; It has a serious flaw related with personality, say an apathic, brooding or emo behaviour. If it's exagerated, see above. If it only surfaces on some scenes... why? What triggers it? Is it to be cute or is it to excuse it of something? If, on the other hand, the behaviour is consistent... make sure those personality traits are there for a really good reason and it isn't just 'it has a really dark past that made it this way' because those personalities make cool characters. They don't. Cool characters may or may not have those traits, but the traits in themselves have no coolness factor associated to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A3.3&lt;/strong&gt; It has a real flaw that relates to the plot and a really good reason for it too (e.g. commitment phobic because of a traumatic experience involving his mother and a steady string of failed relationships). Is the character perfect in everything else? If no, cool; if yes, see below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A3.4&lt;/strong&gt; Yes, it's perfect. How can I fix it? Whether it's a self-insert or just an original character that stole the author's heart, MCs can easily become perfect. First rule: make sure it isn't the best or the worst at anything. And if the plot requires it to be the best/worst... make it &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; of the best/worst, not &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; best/worst of the best/worst. And if it must be the best/worst at one thing, then make it just ONE thing. Or, show that the character believes it is the best/worst at lots of things when in reality it isn't that good/bad. Or, show the characters' lover acting as if it is perfect but then show it isn't so, and that the rest of the cast has no illusion either. And remember, would you like a person that is perfect in &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt;thing? Neither would the supporting characters. Maybe its lover loves it for its (alleged) perfectness, everyone else will hate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q4.&lt;/strong&gt; Does it suffer injustices that everyone ignores until the moment it explodes and then everyone feels bad because yes, life is so unfair for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A4.1&lt;/strong&gt; Yes. Wrong: so maybe its parents should have asked it direct questions instead of ransacking its room for proof of whatever. So maybe it decides to run away from home because of the unfairness of it all and because nobody understands it. But lets pause for a moment, shall we? What did the parents see? A teenager that refuses to explain what is the matter. A teenager who may have started taking drugs. Maybe they even asked direct questions... or asked them in the wrong way further pushing it away. Maybe they want to understand but, not getting any explanations from it, look at the 'scary' teen world and can only imagine the worst scenarios. Maybe ransacking its room was actually a call for help: '&lt;em&gt;tell us what is wrong!&lt;/em&gt;'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is: what one thinks is unfair treatment may simply be the other party trying to help. Or maybe it wasn't unfair treatment at all; maybe it's just the consequences of poorly thought out actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q5.&lt;/strong&gt; Is the character 'magically' protected from consequences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A5.1&lt;/strong&gt; Yes. No preferencial treatment can ever be allowed! Unless, of course, there is a biased headmaster, but then its colleagues will make it feel the consequences of being the headmaster's pet. If it gets in trouble, it must suffer through, even if that means breaking an arm or even losing a leg (&lt;em&gt;How to train your dragon&lt;/em&gt; pulled it beautifully). Consequences are for everyone, whether it's catching a cold from not wearing a coat or getting shot from not wearing a vest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A5.2&lt;/strong&gt; Only the little things, like... clumsily breaking a bunch of glasses in a shop? No preferencial treatment can ever be allowed! Make it pay for the glasses. If it says the wrong thing, don't let the others brush it off with a laugh and a frown; if it blundered, someone is going to be offended and it must apologise. No exceptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q6.&lt;/strong&gt; Does the character always get what it wants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A6.1&lt;/strong&gt; Yes. Wrong: life doesn't always give us what we want no matter how much we work and sweat and hurt for it. Let it win some battles and lose others (meaningful battles, the others don't count). Let it win second prize rather than &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; what it wanted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A6.2&lt;/strong&gt; Yes, but it really suffers for it. Wrong: I've been there. I had the typical sociopath yielding to its lover. Sure, she got pounded (figuratively or not) before she got what she wanted, but she still got it. And then I stopped and thought about it. Why would he yield? Why wouldn't he just kill her rather than put up with her? (tip: if psychos are involved, love is not a good answer; make sure there's more to it) Obviously, he would have killed her. It was a clear case of 'author protection'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: It's ok to have a special character, but make sure it isn't a &lt;strong&gt;SPECIAL&lt;/strong&gt; one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T15:35:35.113" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26725" CreationDate="2017-02-16T15:36:03.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As What and Other's have stated, A short story drives home a point.  It doesn't have many subplots or other angles.  It's like a children's book in a way.  They are usually short and only a couple pages but they build to a goal of teaching a moral or lesson or virtue or what ever it is the goal of the story is.  So it start's out with an angry lonely monster who just wanted to make friends. by the end of the short story the angry lonely monster has friends and is happy because someone gave him a chance and that is all he needed.  Lesson of the story, give people a chance.  So if you think about the goals and the lesson you want to teach, as other's stated, you can just start writing it, redraft if you don't like it and look over it to make sure it really hits the point you want to make :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T15:36:03.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26748" CreationDate="2017-02-16T16:11:35.483" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Turn your gaze outward. A writer writes what they see. If your gaze is turned inward, you will write about yourself. If you are brutally honest with yourself, this may be revealing, but since we seldom are brutally honest with ourselves it is more likely to be a fantasy of yourself, or a form of personal wish fulfillment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all due respect to the other answers here, technique will not get you out of this. It's a vision thing. Whatever techniques you attempt, if you are looking at yourself you will only see yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only cure is to turn your gaze seriously and determinedly outwards. Look honestly at others. Try to see them dispassionately. (Seeing yourself dispassionately is fine too, but hard to pull off.) Focus on them and their lives and when you have seen enough to have gained some insight into their lives, write about that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that inward looking writing is not marketable. A fantasy of oneself is appealing (if well told) to other people with similar self-fantasies.  Tropes don't get named because they don't work, but because they do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you want to write more honest and objective literature,  turn your gaze outward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T16:11:35.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26740" CreationDate="2017-02-16T19:33:30.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you're ready to submit your manuscript, try submitting it a couple of times with your actual name, and a couple of times with a more mainstream pen name.  A non-scientific, albeit interesting, experiment!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are planning to run it past some beta readers first, you can do this experiment at that level too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do some experimenting as I suggested... please report back on your results!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T19:33:30.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26725" CreationDate="2017-02-16T19:39:18.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will need two documents open at the same time, one on the left, one on the right.  Let's say the manuscript in its current form is on the left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, on the right, jot down some notes about the first paragraph -- what's going on in this paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do that for each paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now close the manuscript and put your paragraph-by-paragraph analysis on the left, with a new blank document on the right.  This time, look at several lines at a time and describe what's going on in that group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Through this successive reduction process, you will end up with an outline of what you have already written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that after you have done this a few times, you will be motivated to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;next time make the outline before you begin writing the story.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is soo much easier that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T19:39:18.140" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26766" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26767" CreationDate="2017-02-16T20:36:16.817" Score="3" ViewCount="332" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/26748/how-to-make-sure-that-you-dont-end-up-writing-a-self-insert&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; being asked and it lead me to wonder something.... It seems that self inserting your.... person is not considered good practice or should be kept to a minimal.  So my question piggybacks off of the one linked with this in mind:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Would self Inserting be okay if it has influence from your life experience and stories and may even mimic elements of your life/past without making it blatantly obvious?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my story I have my main character based on a few factors... My online persona used in RPG games as well as elements/experiences of my personal life.  I am not rich by any means but I was born into a family that was not living paycheck to paycheck.  So my main character, I wanted him to be born of royalty which I am not.  My main character I would like to struggle in his youth with several aspects of his life like I have but in a fantasy aspect.  Say I had issues learning a particular instrument, my main character struggles to learn how to properly sword fight or refuses to do his studies.  One of the big plot points I want to hit is where the MC has a &quot;falling to earth&quot; and denounces the bloodline of his family/chooses to live a more simple life.  While I didn't run away or denounce my family, I didn't follow in my dad's foot steps like he wanted in an attempt at enjoying the more simple things that life has to offer.  So there are many similarities to my life, but I don't believe that if a friend were to read it, they would go, this story is about you.  I would mask it in a way that the events are twisted around to match the story rather than be a direct relation to things that happened in my life.  For one, I can't say that my character likes rock music because that simply doesn't go with the genre.  I can't say that my character likes pizza because again that wouldn't fit into the genre of high fantasy.  &lt;em&gt;So am I on the right track to using personal experience while masking it is about me or do I need to reconsider how I am going about this?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I saw someone write about how you need to be brutally honest with yourself.  For those that know me well, know that I am overly critical of myself.  I by no means want to glorify myself into a fantasy tale but rather use life experiences to interject into the story.  I have been through quite a lot in my life, and in some ways, more than what someone should for my age.  So I have experienced a lot, done a lot of self reflection, and have a lot to draw on for a well rounded character IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T23:54:55.557" Title="Self inserts that have influence from your life" Tags="|creative-writing|character-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26766" CreationDate="2017-02-16T20:51:15.850" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a difference between using elements of real life to help you shape a character and creating a Mary Sue. Drawing on reality, and autobiography, is fine, as long your characters — all of them — are rounded and realistic, with flaws and strengths. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is more than &quot;a knight in high fantasy can't have a fondness for rice balls and Van Halen.&quot; It means that your character has to have his or her own arc, motivation, backstory, and personality. It means s/he has to be wrong sometimes, and lose sometimes, before winning at the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're concerned, write your story and then do an editing pass where you just focus on fine-tuning that particular character to make sure he is himself and not you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T20:51:15.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26740" CreationDate="2017-02-16T21:17:08.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you writing in the genre of Asian-American literature, nor not? This is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing in that genre, and hope that your book will be selected for required reading in ethnic studies courses at colleges, then I advise you to keep an Asian surname. But don't be afraid to use &quot;Jack&quot; or &quot;Jill&quot; as your given name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your genre is something else, especially fiction, then use whatever name you like. I (a guy) sometimes write using a female name, if I think that is more consistent with the style of fiction than my real name. Not only that, &quot;she&quot; is a middle-aged Italian. I am neither. There are many examples of this in literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T21:17:08.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26766" CreationDate="2017-02-16T23:54:55.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides what @LaurenIpsum mentioned, one can also create a self-insert in order to deal with personal issues through writing, in a cathartic way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of self-insert can either go the way of wish-fulfilling (which can easily, although not always, slide into 'Mary Sue-ness'), where the character oversomes the issues, or it can go the way of accepting ones lot and flow with it (less likely to slide into 'Mary Sue-ness').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this scenario, you can either use an alter-ego or even write yourself straight into the story, creating a sort of alternative reality. For as long as the fictional world and cast is not bending itself to accomodate the self-insert's wishes, all should go well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T23:54:55.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26771" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-17T06:49:56.370" Score="4" ViewCount="296" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some internet marketing courses that teach you how to create break-even funnels for the product. &quot;Break-even&quot; means that for every dollar you buy ads for, you get at least one dollar in sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basic principle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You set up 3 different ads.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first one targets people who never saw your book. The ad itself doesn't sell anything but presents some information that may be interesting for the readers (e.g. a blog post). Note that the ad platform keeps track of people who clicked on the ad.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second ad is shown only to people who clicked on the first ad. There is another piece of content and a call to more serious action (like subscribing to your list). The ad platform again notices whenever a person clicked on that ad.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The third and last ad is where the sale happens. It is shown to people who clicked on both previous ads. It's here that you offer to buy the book (e.g., a collection of 3 short stories at 3 dollars each, which you can get for 7 dollars if you buy them all).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds good, but I'm not sure if it would work for books as well. As far as I know you can test the whole thing for 10 dollars per campaign until it works (generates more money in sales than you spend on advertising). Then you could theoretically pump money into it (yours and that of other people) to boost sales with predictable ROI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any resources with empirical data on how to build such funnels for short fiction (short stories or collections of up to 3 short stories)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6696" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-22T08:59:57.750" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T16:14:38.253" Title="How to build break-even funnels for short fiction?" Tags="|self-publishing|resources|marketing|money|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26775" CreationDate="2017-02-17T07:28:41.830" Score="15" ViewCount="5764" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a fantasy story I'm writing and several other fantasy ideas, which treats (in-depth or almost) some serious real life problems, such as diseases (mental or corporal), mental health degradation (like losing sanity), death, war, suffering, violence, sexual abuse and/or rape, prejudice, sickly envy, human being's cruelty and the horrors they are able to do/cause, etc. (all portrayed negatively). Of course, it's not all of these subjects in one single story, just 1-4 of them in each one, and the rest of the story is the story per se, and considering these stories are not dark fantasies, some of them include some lighter and relieving subjects. I like the habit I have of creating some stories with such heavy/dark subjects (not that that's exclusive to me only).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have doubts if that's a good idea after I heard that most of the readers who like the fantasy genre are escapists, i.e., they like to &lt;em&gt;escape&lt;/em&gt; from real life, not read &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; of that but with a fantasy setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a big problem and a dilemma, since I like fantasy settings due to the freedom they offer to shape and paint the world however I need or like, different from realistic settings, that requires to follow all of the real life's rules. And including such subjects is a characteristic I have, and I wouldn't like to amputate my story to please the readers, because then &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; would be the one displeased, as the story would end up not being what I initially wanted it to be, but I also don't want to limit the public to just a few readers, so I'd need in some way to please the reader, consequently displeasing myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the question is: &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Would it be a shot in the foot a fantasy to have such subjects? Would it really be a turn off for most of the fantasy readers if the fantasy have these bits of reality?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Just clarifying: these subjects are not just put there and that's it. Instead, they are treated in-depth accounting all the consequences and sufferings connected to these things. For example: fantasy wars have little weight per se (&quot;Wow, yet another fantasy war...  Such darkness!&quot;. No). But what about the impacts, the consequences of such war? What about the innocents brutally killed, and the lives destroyed because of mere territorial interests? Things like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-16T01:28:57.493" LastActivityDate="2019-06-16T01:28:57.493" Title="Serious real life problems in a fantasy?" Tags="|technique|fantasy|readers|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26772" CreationDate="2017-02-17T07:57:32.930" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I heard that most of the readers who like the fantasy genre are escapists, i.e., they like to escape from real life, not read more of that but with a fantasy setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such phrasing is an easy way to offend a fair share of fantasy readers ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a more serious note, tastes differ, and like in any genre, you have fantasy works that are pure entertainment, those that attempt to touch upon serious issues, and a whole field in between. Like, I suppose, in any genre, the 'lighter' prose may be more prevalent on the market, but there are many authors who successfully write about, as you called it 'real life problems' - look to Ursula LeGuin, Lois McMaster Bujold, or Orson Scott Card, off the top of my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23425" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T07:57:32.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26772" CreationDate="2017-02-17T08:50:56.203" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fantasy readers may indeed be looking for entertainment in a world that is different from their own. It does not mean, however, that fantasy world should be conflict free, or that those conflicts should follow established canons like fighting against a dark lord or eternal squabbling between dwarves and elves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question is actually not limited to fantasy, it's common for all popular genres - how do we create an entertaining story that touches a serious subject? First of all, I think, the author should make sure that the story is entertaining, and reader would be engaged until the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's start with an example of Jonathan Swift, whose &quot;Gulliver's Travels&quot; is, in my opinion, an iconic example of fantasy book dealing with the real life's issues. The key to its success is that those issues, while introduced throughout the book, never &quot;break the character&quot; of the story. Reader can either focus on comparison with real life, or completely lose himself in the story - each way of reading is possible, and each is rewarding in its own way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;J.R.R. Tolkien's &quot;Lord of the Rings&quot; is often thought of as an allegory for World War II, and even if the author himself denied that, nobody can deny that &quot;Lord of the Rings&quot; highlighted many serious issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you certainly can talk about serious issues, just make sure that they are a part of a story. Otherwise, those issues will be seen as a &quot;payload&quot; that was artificially attached to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T08:50:56.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26772" CreationDate="2017-02-17T09:38:38.600" Score="22" Body="&lt;h1&gt;1. Everyone takes a time out from real life every now and then. That is healthy behavior.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We only do it in different ways. President Obama did not think of foreign politics when he played basektball. Does that make playing basketball &amp;quot;escapist&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as normal everyday functioning is not hindered, the label &amp;quot;escapism&amp;quot; is not useful for a behavior. Reading fantasy is no more &amp;quot;escapist&amp;quot; than dancing, meditation, cooking, or any other activity that takes our minds away from our problems for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2. Fantasy does deal with real life issues.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy has its origins in utopian literature. The Romantic medieval revival was an implicit criticism of British industrialisation. Tolkien developed much of the &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; under the impression of the Second World War. Later writers have directly tackled such issues as homosexuality, open relationships, racism, sexual abuse, adolescence, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy is often idyllic or fascinated with intrigue and war, but other genres do not deal with real life issues more often. Much of crime fiction is simple suspense, much of science fiction is simple exoticism, much of romance fiction is simple love stories, and much of literary fiction is nothing but the excitement of watching other lives go wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you read outside the mainstream (in any genre), you will discover many intelligent observations and analyses of present day real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;3. As long as you satisfy genre conventions, you can &lt;em&gt;use them&lt;/em&gt; to tell any story you want.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers turn to fantasy expecting certain things. They want a medieval world, magic, and knights. If you supply these ingredients, you are free to &lt;em&gt;use these conventions&lt;/em&gt; to tell any story you want. There is no limit to what fantasy fiction might be about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T09:38:38.600" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26772" CreationDate="2017-02-17T14:32:26.553" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every story (I am talking about genre fiction, not high-end purple-prose literary exploits) needs a conflict. Any conflict, even in fantasy settings, needs to be believable, and allow your readers to relate to it, and the only way to achieve that is to base the events in your story on what happens in real life, or the extrapolation of those, with an optional involvement of magic, elves, knights, and so on--to appease your audience, for it is what that audience expects to find in a fantasy book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy as a genre is in fact often much more violent, then, for instance, romance. Your knights have them, swords, for a reason, and if they are just walking around and talking politely about the weather without hacking anyone to pieces, why bother to write (and read) about them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write the story you have, not the story &lt;em&gt;you think&lt;/em&gt; your audience expects from you. That is a proven recipe for failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T14:32:26.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26112" CreationDate="2017-02-17T14:54:40.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience as an avid fanfiction reader, what makes me dislike a piece of fiction is the writing, not the plot in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen many writers with amazing plot ideas, but without the writing skill to back it up. this is the biggest factor that makes me stop reading. Alternatively, i've seen quite generic plots, but because they were very well written i eagerly wait for more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if you want a more interesting plot all i can say is that you take care in the perception of the events taking place and ensure that the series in which the events of the story happen make sense. complicated webs are interesting on a broad scale, but can be frustrating and confusing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thing i want to mention (though i am not sure of its relevance to your question) is to ensure your characters are affected by the plot points in your story. The best feeling i've had when reading a piece of fiction was when near the end of the story, there was a brief mention on how the character had changed (from childish and acrobatic to more mature and serious). it was a very brief throwaway line, but it made me think back on how the character had grown and developed along the story, to the point where she was almost unrecognisable from the person she started off from. this change was not sudden, but caused by the many events within the story and it took until the very end before i even noticed how much she had changed. Simultaneously there have been instances where i have seen little to no character growth even along extremely personal plot points which i found extremely frustrating. therefore, in order for your plot points to impact the audience, you need to explore how the character is effected by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23597" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T14:54:40.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26772" CreationDate="2017-02-17T16:10:52.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just stop trying to make something marketable and write from your soul, all readers love that! The modern day consumer (especially consumers of books such as these) tend to be pretty smart and savvy; that is to say, readers will smell the stench of marketing analytics a mile away if you keep over-thinking things like this. I'm not saying you should not consider your markets, but in my opinion this sort of conundrum arises from the mind getting sort of tied in knots by worrying too much about these sorts of issues, which is easy to let happen in such a competitive arena. Just write from your soul my friend!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23598" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T16:10:52.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26740" CreationDate="2017-02-17T17:01:45.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Author of a book is extremely important. I totally agree that if you have a Chinese name usually people when they first look at your book could wonder if you are in a rut of only writing about China. It has nothing to do with being self conscious about being Chinese it is everything thing to do with perception. I associate certain writers with certain categories and I am dubious to buy a book if the author is of a particular nationality where I could get tired of repetition or prejudice or a chip on their shoulder that they write books like a carthasis because they have suffered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23601" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T17:01:45.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26782" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26784" CreationDate="2017-02-17T18:26:51.543" Score="11" ViewCount="1196" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've come across some answers and questions on this site which have gotten me thinking about re-readability. It isn't something that I think about much, but now that I consider it, I think it could be the difference between buying a book and simply checking it out of the library. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will skip over the debate on whether or not you want re-readability in your novel. Instead, I'd like to focus on the following question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you want your novel to be read multiple times, &lt;strong&gt;what can you do to make it re-readable?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it come down to some sort of plot technique? Perhaps something to do with the characters? Is it about hiding things that the reader discovers with every new read-through? What makes/can help a novel be re-readable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To future viewers: While I've marked Mark's answer, I would like to make sure you see the answer from SaberWriter as well. He has an excellent breakdown which should be quite useful when planning your novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-02-17T22:05:51.340" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:43:09.633" Title="What Can Ensure Re-Readability?" Tags="|fiction|technique|readers|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26782" CreationDate="2017-02-17T19:16:06.523" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A book can be a puzzle or it can be an experience. If it is an interesting puzzle, and you are the kind that likes puzzles, the puzzle may pull you through to the end. But once you reach the end, the puzzle is solved. There is no reason to read the puzzle again once you know the answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An experience, on the other hand, is enjoyable as a whole. If you have a profound experience reading a book, you will want to have that same experience again in the future. More specifically, you will from time to time wish to have that old experience again rather than some new experience that you might get from reading a new book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are all kinds of discrete techniques for making books that are puzzles. But I think that making books that are experiences is about overall excellence of execution. To date, at least, we have not managed to reduce all human accomplishment to repeatable techniques. Much still depends on tacit knowledge or what we might more vaguely call sensibility. One develops that sensibility, that capacity for excellence of execution, by immersion in the art. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But immersion in the art is not enough either. Lots of people have immersed themselves in the art and not emerged as artists. There is some other ingredient as well. The nearest I can come to naming it is vision. Where that comes from, I don't know. And I wish there was a way to tell if you have it or not, but I don't think there is. (I would really like to know if I have it so I could direct my energies appropriately.) But whatever it is, there is not anything that can be reduced to a repeatable technique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: This edit is to capture something that came up in comments to a answer that has since been deleted. We don't always want to reread a book that we thought was good, or even great. Often our reaction is that we want more of the same -- more by the same author, more with the same setting, more with the same theme. It is like going on a scenic drive. You may see a superb view, but you don't loop around endlessly looking at it over and over again. In most cases, you drive on looking for the next great view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why do we go back to certain places over and over? Why do we read certain books over and over? A great experience is part of it. We would not go back if it were a lousy experience. But why go back instead of looking for other similar experiences? This is part intuition and part guess, but I think the answer may be comfort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we seek adventure, we head outward, towards the new and unknown. But when we seek comfort, we head home, to the familiar. A well loved book is a kind of home, a place of comfort. Different books may be comforting to different people, just as different places are comforting to different people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a recipe for making a book comforting? I doubt there is. Comforting is not the same thing as comfortable. I have stayed in many comfortable hotel rooms, but none of them were comforting. Home is comforting. Certain books are our literary homes and we return to them for comfort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-18T04:40:52.707" LastActivityDate="2017-02-18T04:40:52.707" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26782" CreationDate="2017-02-17T19:24:19.847" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sentences that scan very well&lt;/strong&gt;. (Very easy to read but does not mean a simple story)  The scenes must play out on the &quot;movie-screen of my mind&quot;. I am no longer reading, but instead watching the action unfold before me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An extremely detailed plot&lt;/strong&gt; layers of plot which make the reader think about what is going on at the character level (how it effects characters involved) and how it impacts the over all story.  I mention this as detailed because I'm thinking about books I would want to read again.  I might want to read a book again because the plot is so interesting that I want to &quot;look&quot; at it again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;likable characters&lt;/strong&gt; (I do not like to watch shows with characters I don't like (unless they are the protagonists) and I definitely don't want to invest time in a story if I don't like the characters I'm reading about.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Characters who change&lt;/strong&gt; and transform as the story plays out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's pretty much it.  If you were to actually write your book with all of those, I'm sure that no matter what the genre you would have a best seller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, More Details&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course we could go into more detail, but get these as the foundation of your novel and you win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've come back to give some real examples of books I've read that meet the list above and are definitely books I'd like to read again (and have read more than once already.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qF242b&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Chocolate War (Robert Cormier)&lt;/a&gt; This book is so memorable and such fantastic writing and great characters.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qyFzNi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Outsiders (S. E. Hinton)&lt;/a&gt; Another fantastic and memorable book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qyZgUX&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Partner (John Grisham)&lt;/a&gt; I don't like all Grisham books but this one moves fast has great characters and smooth writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qEYBAy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Old Man &amp;amp; the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)&lt;/a&gt; One of my most disliked books of all time is by Hemingway, but this is one of the most memorable books I've read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2p5Gz9m&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Pigman (Paul Zindel)&lt;/a&gt; Odd and memorable with a great meaningful plot and great characters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't read those books, read them all immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="10723" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T14:43:09.633" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:43:09.633" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26740" CreationDate="2017-02-17T19:28:24.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems having an asian name was not greatly detrimental to the reception or sales of books written by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazuo_Ishiguro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kazuo Ishiguro&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;&quot;one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in the English-speaking world&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would rule that out as a strong reason for adopting a nom-de-plume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23602" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T19:28:24.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26782" CreationDate="2017-02-17T20:23:49.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One option is to add foreshadowing that readers don't notice on a first read, but can spot or appreciate on a second one. (This disagrees somewhat with another answer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22216" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T20:23:49.487" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26782" CreationDate="2017-02-17T20:51:14.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a lot of people are hitting it on the head with the whole experience vs mystery solved situation solved.  It's hard to watch something again after you know the mystery.  The suspense loses it's edge, and many of the tricks used to keep people reading to find out more will have been spent for a second go through.  In situations like this, you may want to look at something as Mark was saying about if you create a good mystery book, people will want to read more stories you did.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of a story, I can't say that I have re-read any book I have come across, but I have re-watched some movies Hundreds (literally) of times.  I would think that this is comparable because they both tell a story through a different medium.  There are plenty of movies that after watching it, I really didn't find any desire to watch again.  It was a good movie, but the experience wasn't one that when I see the title again, I go OOO that was good let me watch it again.  Movies that are rewatched bring you into their world and help you to experience a great tale.  I would think this sentiment applies too to books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, a story is a journey through someone's fantasy that they want to share with you (assuming it is a fantasy/fiction story).  If it's enjoyable, they will want to relive that fantasy over and over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T20:51:14.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26782" CreationDate="2017-02-17T23:21:24.030" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One aspect which has turned out to be really important to me lately: &lt;strong&gt;Stick the landing.&lt;/strong&gt; By this I mean that the ending of the book has to be satisfying — it has to work with the story as a whole. (That doesn't always mean a happy ending, by the way; &lt;em&gt;Brokeback Mountain&lt;/em&gt; is a deeply sad story, but the ending is appropriate.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Susan Cooper's &lt;em&gt;The Dark Is Rising&lt;/em&gt; sequence was really great until literally the last 20 pages or so. Over the five books the heroes assemble and have to decipher a riddle. When the event which the riddle foretells happens, it is &lt;em&gt;so&lt;/em&gt; completely mundane and anticlimactic that I actually dropped the book. It absolutely soured me on the whole series, and I'm sort of sorry I read it now. I won't read it again now that I know the macguffin is so ridiculous. It totally undercut the entire experience of the series. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for me, the overall experience of the book (c.f. Mark Baker's answer) has to work as a whole. If 90% of it is good but the ending fails, I won't re-read the book. (Now, separately, I &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; read series of books where I liked the first one, or few, but disliked the last book, and I've tossed the end book/s and kept and reread the one/s I liked.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T23:21:24.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26740" CreationDate="2017-02-18T01:45:48.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You make a good point about prejudices and I agree that it could impact your sales. To avoid &quot;What would Li Ang Chang know about what the typical American teen goes through?&quot; I would suggest a compromise. Instead of Li Ang Chang, perhaps use Lee Ann, Leanne or Lianne Chang. Obviously, you may choose any first name you like but if you keep your last name you won't deny your Chinese heritage and still appear more 'Americanized'. It could also help to avoid another situation you took issue with &quot;someone might pick up the book expecting Chinese elements because of my name.&quot; Much less likely with Liannne as a first name, especially in a book about American teens in the midwest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else to consider, the author's photo is often on the dust jacket and your photo with the caption 'Author, Susan Brown' would needlessly set off speculation as to &quot;Was she adopted?&quot; and other scenarios which again, would distract one from the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you won't &quot;contribute to the problem of low visibility of Asian American writers&quot;, as you stated in your query. The Asian American writers you referred to, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Amy&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Tan, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Maxine&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Hong Kingston and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lisa&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; See, all have American first names. In fact, even the surnames Tan and See are not obviously Asian either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23613" LastActivityDate="2017-02-18T01:45:48.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26794" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-18T03:22:30.310" Score="2" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to call my novel a techno-thriller but most readers stated they wanted to see more action in the very first chapter. At first I thought of complying, but then realized why would I reveal more about my characters or even the plot if I was writing suspense. Suspense is called suspense for a reason, you suspend aspects of the story that are revealed later. How soon does the classification of a work by genre effect readers expectation of events? Not all comedies begin as comedies. And the same can be said about horror or drama. What role does genre selection play in reader expectations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastActivityDate="2017-02-18T08:27:50.907" Title="How are opening chapter expectations affected by genre?" Tags="|fiction|genre|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26794" CreationDate="2017-02-18T04:59:02.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suspense is called suspense for a reason, you suspend aspects of the story that are revealed later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, that is not why suspense is called suspense. Suspense is a story that is suspenseful in itself. Something bad might happen and the characters don't know if it will or not. They try to prevent it, but they may fail. Some may live, some may die. They don't know, so, in the ordinary unfolding of the story, we don't know either. The author is not holding anything back, they are simply telling a suspenseful story in the order in which it occurs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deliberately holding back information from the reader in an attempt to create suspense in a story that is not naturally suspenseful usually fails. It creates annoyance, not suspense. (There are exceptions, but they are crafty exceptions, crafted so that the revelation pleases rather than disappoints. This is no easy thing to do.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this does not in any way mean that you have to start with action. If readers are asking for immediate action, that means that they are not engaged with the story, but it is not usually action that actually engages the reader in a story. They are engaged by an interesting setting, and interesting character, as sense that something may happen. The direct dive into action usually does not work because we do not yet care about any of the people the action is happening to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genre is a kind of promise to the reader that a story is going to give a certain kind of pleasure. (We should note that there are stories that are set in genre settings or concern genre events which are not part of the genre. Not every novel set west of the Mississippi is a western. Not every novel with a love story is a romance. A genre is a set of conventions that promise a certain quite specific kind of experience for a reader who does not want surprised and does not want to be disappointed. The opening of a genre novel needs to show that the author intends to abide by the conventions of the genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, though, the job of the opening is the same, regardless of genre. It has to engage. It has to initiate the reader into the place and people of the story in a way that promises that something interesting is going to happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-18T04:59:02.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26794" CreationDate="2017-02-18T07:53:54.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on the genre and on the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that thrillers and, generaly speaking, tales whose main focus is on action (whatever the genre the book actually falls in) are under greater pressure to kick off with action. Do note, however, that I say pressure, not obligation. Although many readers won't mind a slow start that slowly builds up in tension, it is easy to come across readers who may be considered, if I don't offend anyone, addicted to an adrenaline-filled reading experience and will both expect and demand the first chapter to start in that tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that romance may have similar expectations to a different degree in the sense that the book should open with a female character who is obviously 'ready' to meet her true love, one way (e.g. just ended a relationship or longs for one while not believing it may happen) or the other (e.g. believes to be in a good relationship which is shown from the start to be an unhealthy one or which will be abruptly interrupted by tragedy). This one seems to be more of an imposition than the action-packed first chapter, although I'm sure there are successful exceptions around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-02-18T07:53:54.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26112" CreationDate="2017-02-18T08:26:53.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What constitutes a great plot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plots come in all shapes, so it is difficult to identify common specific characteristics, as they must forcefully be vague to apply to all manners of plots&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, plots must have &lt;strong&gt;economy&lt;/strong&gt;. Whether the tale is nearly plotless or has so many threads it's labyrinthical, the author must find exactly what is too much or too little. I'm currently reading a book which has almost no plot and it works precisely because of its minimalistic approach, even if I usually prefer tales with several plot(s) and subplots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, there must be &lt;strong&gt;balance&lt;/strong&gt; between plot(s) and subplots, and between the various plot points. Each element must be stressed to the right point and one must tread carefully to make sure nothing overshines / undershines. Every element must work for itself and for all the others at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, there must be &lt;strong&gt;cohesion&lt;/strong&gt;. All the plot(s) and subplots must be perfectly connected, nothing to burst suddenly without the appropriate (subtle or not) foreshadowing or simply preparation of the 'stage' for the surprise burst. Every single plot point must join everything else seamlessly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not one of these three points take precedence, in my opinion, as they are all equally essential.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="22074" LastEditDate="2017-02-18T16:33:42.053" LastActivityDate="2017-02-18T16:33:42.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26794" CreationDate="2017-02-18T08:27:50.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I won't buy a book that doesn't clearly signal (on the cover, in the blurb, or within the first page) that it will deliver what I seek. Given the huge amount of books published every week, I no longer give books a chance to maybe turn out to be what I want. I buy those books where I'm sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are different ways to signal the kind of story you are going to tell. One of them is following genre conventions. That's the easiest way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to &quot;suspend&quot; some information, you must come up with other cues for your readers that won't give away the story but define the story &lt;em&gt;type&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Your publisher might disclose what you hide in the blurb to attract readers, so your strategy might not work.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-18T08:27:50.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26782" CreationDate="2017-02-18T13:20:29.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Engaging the reader's imagination, usually through building a complex world and characterization. Your plot happens the way your story describes it. Re-reading a plot usually gives nothing new to a reader unless they either forgot or missed details from the first reading of a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, even though characters perform the same actions when re-read, the motivations of why they performed those actions, especially actions that require difficult choices, depends on the characters personality and motivations. The motivations of characters are usually implied and not explicitly explained to the reader. They are instead implied by the actions those characters perform during the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a story is re-read, the reader, who has already built in their mind the scenery of your story, will pay more attention to non-obvious details of the story such as the motives or thoughts that a character may have, especially when the character makes make difficult decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During a re-read, your readers may consider why you chose to have the plot takes the path it does, why you have written a story in a particular style, what it would be like to actually live in the world you create, or what one of the characters in the story might do in a situation other than the ones you describe. These are all ways that allow a reader to use their imagination to more fully enjoy the re-reading of a story. Since they allow the reader to engage their imagination in a creative way, the re-read is also a more active form of reading than the initial read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write stories in a way that encourages readers to engage their imagination about your world, or to speculate about un-written details about the motivations, history, or personalities of your characters, you will also be encouraging readers to re-reading that story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I speculate that the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_McMaster_Bujold&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;authors that do this well&lt;/a&gt; create many more details than they actually reveal in their stories. This allows them to create worlds and characters that have hidden (unwritten) details, and they can then include subtle clues about those hidden details in their stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23625" LastEditorUserId="23625" LastEditDate="2017-02-18T13:40:54.077" LastActivityDate="2017-02-18T13:40:54.077" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26806" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-19T10:26:27.327" Score="6" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been wondering, is there any outlets available that allow you to publish a book online in a similar format as Webcomics? A sort of, 'Webnovel'? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any appropriate name for this, where you release a chapter every week or so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I've found a term that may be relevant: Serial Novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="23013" LastEditDate="2017-02-20T11:39:09.610" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T14:51:32.570" Title="Writing a story online" Tags="|creative-writing|publishing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26806" CreationDate="2017-02-19T15:29:04.747" Score="6" Body="&lt;h1&gt;It is called a blog.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many authors have serialized novels in their blogs, sometimes between other posts, sometimes on a blog dedicated to the novel alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before blog software existed, authors used to create a page on their website and add new chapters at the end. This is no longer common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you set up a blog, you have two options to sort the chapters or updates: from newest to oldest (so that visitors see what is new) or from oldest to newest (so that visitors can easily find the beginning), and some blog software allows the visitor to choose the sorting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to manage your own blog, there are also literary online magazines that publish many authors. The software behind this is usually also a blog software such as Wordpress. What magazines there are in your genre, language, and country, I do not know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T20:41:55.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1243" CreationDate="2017-02-19T18:48:01.093" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Late answer, but to anyone still reading this, a note from an occasional translator: Yes, it will 100% push your creative boundaries! The task of searching for the right way to say something, the realization that some things have to be reworded because there's no true equivalent, and the interesting work of entering someone else's head (and voice) to try to help them say what they wanted to say all yield lessons that are very applicable to your own writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether publishers will be able to see that connection I don't know. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22991" LastActivityDate="2017-02-19T18:48:01.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26806" CreationDate="2017-02-19T21:40:00.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wattpad works. It's a website that will allow you to publish online and read other users' books, too. That's what I use. I haven't actually heard of any other website like that...Hope I could help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23647" LastActivityDate="2017-02-19T21:40:00.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26811" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-19T21:53:38.560" Score="7" ViewCount="18808" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to say: &quot;Now I was on the plane with my best friend.&quot; But don't &quot;Now&quot; and &quot;was&quot; contradict each other? And I specifically want to phrase it this way because earlier on in my book I wrote: &quot;I loved to travel.....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have such a hard time with past tense writing and I realized it a few months ago. I had written a series all in past tense, but while reading through it, I realized it contained grammatical errors...specifically with past tense vs. present tense. I decided that I would write in present tense. So I went online trying to figure out why present tense was so scarce in writing. Was there an unspoken rule against it? Turns out present tense is super cliché. But I revised the first book in my series anyway, making sure it was completely in present tense. I'm working on the second one now, but I have this feeling that I want to go back into past tense. Only problem is, I can't write in past tense. I'm stuck and it's making me feel like my writing sucks and I should just stop altogether. Any tips?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23647" LastEditorUserId="10654" LastEditDate="2019-03-20T14:24:46.807" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T14:24:46.807" Title="Past tense writing troubles. Specifically the word &quot;Now&quot;" Tags="|tenses|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26811" CreationDate="2017-02-19T23:42:09.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two uses for &amp;quot;now&amp;quot;. One means the present moment, and it's hard to use in the past tense. I mean, you could write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You have to do it now,&amp;quot; I told her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I told her now was the time to act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But not&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I was on the plane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you can use phrases like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;at that time (if you have already set up the time period)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;once (or even once upon a time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 years ago&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in the spring of my 25th year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;shortly after my father died&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;several years before this trip&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on. If none of them fit, why do you want to start the sentence with &amp;quot;Now&amp;quot;? It's possible you want the second use for now, which is to start a sentence with it to get people's attention, or as part of some set phrases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now look here, young man, I expect you to obey me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now now, that's just too extreme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now and then I get lonely&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this is new!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can just keep these uses without worrying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15601" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-19T23:42:09.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26782" CreationDate="2017-02-20T00:18:29.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wit  can sure help. I've always enjoyed re-reading witty things like Candide, Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist, Kafka's Trial and Dorian Gray. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me push back at the question a bit. I don't think a novel needs to be re-readable but it should raise enough questions that you should want to explore the story more deeply another time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is just writing a rich story with lots of beautiful phrases and details. As an adult I may not catch every detail the first time around, but two or three years later, I will have forgotten most of the details -- it's almost like reading it for the first time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The great thing about reading a book you have already read is that you know it's going to be good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you read later, you don't have as much suspense, but you are in a perfect position to enjoy the language and narrative asides. Even when I am paying attention during the first read, I miss a lot of stuff, so a second read can make up for my initial sloppy reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an essayist and sometimes critic, I sometimes re-read things to write about them. But then again, I choose to write about literary works after deciding that it's good.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been times  I have approached works  later on and realized that my maturity and life experiences have changed the way I viewed the work and what viewpoints I identify with.  When I grew up, I loved the TV show &quot;All in the Family&quot; and thought Archie Bunker was such a ridiculous figure. Now that I am in my 50s, I find a lot of Archie's attitudes are not so ridiculous (even if he words them poorly). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it would help to bake into the story different points of view.(this could be an argument for 3rd person omniscient).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T00:18:29.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26815" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26825" CreationDate="2017-02-20T01:12:17.297" Score="7" ViewCount="899" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've seen this character archetype before: A character despises being born into a well-off family. (&quot;Well-off&quot; can range from rich-to-anywhere-on-the-middle-class-spectrum,  &lt;em&gt;regardless&lt;/em&gt; of whether or not their family has committed any atrocities against lower social/economic classes.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If successfully pulled off, the character will feel fresh, realistic, and open up the reader's mind to a whole new way of thinking. However... most characters within this archetype end up sounding like spoiled angsty brats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Question: How do I write this character archetype &lt;strong&gt;without&lt;/strong&gt; making the character seem like a spoiled, overprivileged brat? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22914" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-29T11:58:06.740" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T22:39:40.970" Title="How do you write a character that HATES being born into a well-off family?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26818" CreationDate="2017-02-20T03:52:20.973" Score="16" ViewCount="5863" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to make a story (with a plot and characters) that has no worldbuilding or explanations for events? Like whenever anything happened in the story there was no background or explanation behind it. It would be similar to things like &quot;The Call of Cthulhu&quot; or &quot;Alice's Adventures in Wonderland&quot;, except that not only would there be no explanation for many events, but there would also be a very obscure setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23650" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T11:58:43.147" Title="How feasible is it to write a story without any worldbuilding?" Tags="|world-building|" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12952" CreationDate="2017-02-20T04:12:27.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I arrived at your question from my query: should I use a CreateSpace ISBN? so my answer is not so much answering if having a CreateSpace ISBN will impact decisions about getting another ISBN, but it does shed light on another important consideration for allowing an entity other than yourself to contol the ISBN: metadata.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Metadata is how people will find your book while searching for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This mediashift article has a handy screenshot of the metadata you can enter on Bowker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You will have the opportunity to insert gobs of data here — title,&#xA;  author, description, number of pages, size, language, currency,&#xA;  copyright year, date of publication, contributors, category, title&#xA;  status (out of print, active, etc.) price, currency, and a photo of&#xA;  your book cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on to state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ability to control and edit the metadata for your book whenever&#xA;  necessary is a key reason you need to buy your own ISBN direct from&#xA;  Bowker and to not let an author services company buy it for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mediashift.org/2010/10/a-self-publishers-guide-to-metadata-for-books285/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://mediashift.org/2010/10/a-self-publishers-guide-to-metadata-for-books285/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the past 90 minutes of searching that I've done trying to educate myself, I haven't been able to find the definitive answer on the metadata you do control if you use CreateSpace's free ISBN. I'll have to report back, when I go through the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23652" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T04:12:27.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2017-02-20T04:27:34.457" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Possible?&quot; sure... sort of. I mean, everything that happens in your story is building the world. The characters themselves are products of whatever that world is, and a lot can and will be inferred by the types of people that they are. I guess the answer depends on &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you're asking this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're asking if you can get away with writing a story in a foreign setting without detailing what makes the setting unique beyond what the characters observe for themselves, then sure! That's easy enough, and the characters serve as an audience insert to exploring the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're asking if you can write a story where even &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; haven't considered why these things are happening the way they do... then yeah... but with the caveat that you'll need to pay more attention to the &quot;rules&quot; you're establishing as things &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; happen, otherwise you'll be in danger of distracting the reader when / if you start breaking those rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23653" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T04:27:34.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26815" CreationDate="2017-02-20T04:32:38.140" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give them a reason to despise their wealth. If they just flip a switch one day and decide that having money is the pits, the reader will have a hard time, not only relating to them, but &lt;em&gt;believing&lt;/em&gt; them. Which will give them that spoiled air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps they've seen the world outside of their little bubble (By choice... like maybe volunteering at a homeless shelter, or taking day labor work, or by circumstance... maybe they're in an accident while away from home / country and have to 'Rough it' to get back), and now they are having a hard time &lt;em&gt;relating&lt;/em&gt; to the lifestyle they've taken for granted before this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23653" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T04:32:38.140" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2017-02-20T06:30:10.343" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are proposing is very possible if your story is, actually, totally independent from its setting. What is important for it are characters, their dialogs and maybe their inner thoughts. Everything that is around is really irrelevant. The story can be set in a world with Lucy in the sky with diamonds, or on an empty stage - the surroundings are only a decoration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T06:30:10.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26811" CreationDate="2017-02-20T08:16:06.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Now' can be used with the past tense to create a sense of immediacy or to refere to a point in a series of events, akin to 'then'. The sentence you provide sounds perfectly correct to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check the 3rd and 4th meaning on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/now&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the free dictionary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On an afterthought, why do you claim you can't write in the past? It's far easier than doing it in the present and much more intuitive, not to say it usually yields better results. Is it because you keep changing to the present? Simply being aware of that problem, studying verb tenses (in order to fully understand them) and practising should be enough for you to overcome the difficulty and, at the same time, improving your writing style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T08:16:06.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2017-02-20T08:45:57.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written all of my stories and novels without any worldbuilding (or other planning or outlining) whatsoever. That is what &quot;pantsers&quot; or &quot;discovery writers&quot; do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not true that the setting remains obscure if you don't build the world beforehand. You just discover it while you write. My worlds read just as rich and convincing as anything you are used to. The difference is that my worldbuilding comes naturally and evolves from the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those writers who worldbuild before they write often find it difficult to integrate their worldbuilding into their narrative. When you discover the world in the course of discovering the story, &lt;strong&gt;the reading is an integrated experience because the writing was an integrated experience.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is much more fun for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In reply to a comment by Lauren Ipsum below:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now why and how does discovery writing lead to an integrated narrative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The discovery writer &lt;em&gt;uncovers&lt;/em&gt; the story and world that &lt;em&gt;lie within him or her&lt;/em&gt;. The logic of the narrative they tell is the logic of their identity, and any narrative they tell reflects their being: who they are in the essence of the personality, the experiences that have shaped them, and how they are situated and behave in the world. The discovery writers, if you want, taps into their intuition and allows their unconscious to shape the world they are telling of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And because the identity of (psychologically healthy) people is an integrated whole, the narrative of the discovery writer is an integrated whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your experience with discovery writing is different – if you find that you have to, in Lauren's words, &quot;stuff a skeleton&quot; into your story –, then you are not a discovery writer and should better plot and worldbuild beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-02-20T17:33:08.560" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T17:33:08.560" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26811" CreationDate="2017-02-20T09:10:46.777" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are confusing the grammatical tense of your narrative with your protagonist's perception of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grammatical tense does not signify time. Past tense does not mean that something happened in the past. You can tell of the future in past tense: &lt;code&gt;In the year 2354, a space ship was sent to Alpha Centauri.&lt;/code&gt; Past tense in fiction is a narrative convention that has no meaning. Or rather, past tense in fiction means that we have entered narrative time – past tense means: You are listening to a tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Past tense does not signify when events took place in relation to the time of the reading or writing of the narrative. Grammatical tense, in fiction, does not signify &lt;em&gt;absolute time&lt;/em&gt;. Only when you use two tenses in the same narrative, do the tenses signify &lt;em&gt;relative time,&lt;/em&gt; i.e., that one event happend before the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us look at an example. These two sentences mean exactly the same thing (in fiction):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a hole in the ground there lives a hobbit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both sentences mean that in that story a hobbit lives in a hole in the ground. Neither sentence means that the hobbit lives there today or lived there in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that we have established that grammatical tense has no (absolute) meaning in a narrative, we can understand that any explicit references to time are in relation to the present of the viewpoint character, usually the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the narrator says &amp;quot;now&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;yesterday&amp;quot;, that is in relation to where the story is at that moment. Here is another example from Tolkien:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Tookishness was wearing off, and he was not now quite so sure that he was going on any journey in the morning. As he lay in bed he could hear Thorin still ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;now&amp;quot; here means that while Bilbo had been enthusiastic to go on a journey with the dwarves during the preceding evening, &lt;em&gt;at that moment in the narrative&lt;/em&gt; he doubts it is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T09:10:46.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2017-02-20T09:47:25.157" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;One easy, cheap and workable approach to writing without worldbuilding is when the world is &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your story takes place at the White House, your protagonist is President Trump. Everyone knows all the rest. Just sketch out the events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another, harder - is to write apart from the setting. The events and conflicts are universal, essentially per Alexander's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're trying to do though, is very hard to do right - and very easy to get wrong. When the world is just a minimal sketch of weirdness surrounding the characters, but definitely interacts with them, you're at constant risk of introducing &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deus Ex Machina&lt;/a&gt; - a very bad tool, a total rock bottom when it comes to quality of prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your deus ex machina may come as immediate solution, contrivance or problem that was not foreshadowed, is not understandable to the reader, serves no other purpose than to advance the plot, and in effect your story becomes either a pulp of cheapest kind or a starts resembling milder forms of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophasia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Schizophasia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes a very skilled writer to pull it off - have the world with unexplainable mysteries, but still compelling, the sudden revelations spicing the story up instead of watering it down. Considering you're even asking this question, I'd suggest you take a more conservative approach. Just knowing that it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be done doesn't put you much closer to knowing &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to do it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2017-02-26T02:54:15.707" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T02:54:15.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26815" CreationDate="2017-02-20T10:55:32.680" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Show, don't tell&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply show the reason. A nice girlfriend leaving him after others started calling her gold-digger and money-whore. False friends who are there to mooch money and bask in glory of &quot;being pals with the rich guy&quot;. Getting accused of buying his way into &lt;em&gt;some elite group&lt;/em&gt; while he worked hard to get there. Getting blackmailed for money. Getting a close person killed through an expensive gift (sports car, paraglider). Parents expecting him to &quot;live up to his status and not mix with the rabble&quot; depriving him of actual friends and throwing him between vain idiots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally think of whatever curses the financial fortune can bring upon him, show them - then show his behavior afterwards - and then let the reader draw the conclusions without ever telling a word about his personal feelings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2017-02-20T13:00:29.410" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T13:00:29.410" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26782" CreationDate="2017-02-20T10:59:39.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll drop a very original approach to re-readability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_(Cort%C3%A1zar_novel)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hopscotch&lt;/a&gt; by Julio Cortázar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An author's note suggests that the book would best be read in one of two possible ways, either progressively from chapters 1 to 56 or by &quot;hopscotching&quot; through the entire set of 155 chapters according to a &quot;Table of Instructions&quot; designated by the author. Cortázar also leaves the reader the option of choosing a unique path through the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T10:59:39.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26827" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26828" CreationDate="2017-02-20T13:30:41.167" Score="1" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while ago I've read an article describing  several literary contests of prose (maybe poetry too, I'm not sure) with extreme limits of words (or even symbols). Limits were about less than 1000 words or even 100 words.&#xA;Looks like I've lost that article and can't simply google that contests without it.&#xA;So anyone who know something about this format please give any info you have - contest names, links, articles about such contests etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23659" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-02-20T15:25:20.137" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T21:43:27.670" Title="Where can I find contests for extremely short stories?" Tags="|contests|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26827" CreationDate="2017-02-20T14:17:31.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's most likely a flash fiction contest.  Flash fiction is generally limited to a certain amount of words or less, usually enough to make it a challenge to convey an interesting story.  If you google &quot;flash fiction contest&quot;, you'll likely find a number of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, Odyssey Con has their yearly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.odysseycon.org/contest/contest.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;OddContest&lt;/a&gt;, in which submissions are limited to 500 words or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8201" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T14:17:31.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26811" CreationDate="2017-02-20T15:19:26.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's how to fix your problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick up your grammar books. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hold them over a fire. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let go.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't write out of a grammar book. You can only write out of a fluent grasp of usage in the language you are writing in. In the case you cite, your grasp of English usage is clearly far ahead of your knowledge of grammar, so let go of the grammar and get on with your writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now I was on the plane with my best friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is fluent English usage. People say things like this all the time. That is all that matters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grammar is an attempt to reduce usage to a set of rules. There are multiple grammars and none of them succeeds entirely in reducing received usage to a set of rules. Often their attempts to do so rely on deciding that a word simply has two meanings rather than that it can be used in two different grammatical positions. This sort of thing makes grammatical systems work, but it is all artifice. And it is a complicated artifice that is difficult to learn in full. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with using grammar to improve your usage, but this can only take you so far. True fluency requires an ear for the way the language is spoken and written. If you are reasonably fluent, but have a hazy grasp of grammar, trying to write grammatically is going to make you write less fluently, not more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Yes, I know, people are often told to make sure their grammar is perfect before they submit for publications. That is because editors see hundreds of manuscripts that are not written in fluent idiomatic English. That may be because the writer just has no ear for language, or it may be because their natural fluency has been crippled by a half-digested grammar book or an incompetent English teacher. But if you have a good ear and write fluently and confidently, the editor will not object to your work, even if they quibble with an item of agreement here or there. But if you are not fluent, no amount of grammar is ever going to make you so.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T15:19:26.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2017-02-20T16:11:36.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your question is, can you set a story in an imaginary place without telling the reader that you have done so, the answer is yes, but the reader will not know that you have done so. The problem is, if any of the features of that imaginary place are necessary to the plot, then the plot will not make sense to the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if your question is, can you write a story in which the plot does not make sense to the reader because the reader does not have enough information about the setting to understand the plot, the answer is yes, but your readership is apt to be small. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your question is, having done all this worldbuilding, do I need to include all of in my story, then the answer is no. You should regard worldbuilding as a hobby entirely separate from storytelling. Story does not need worldbuilding, it needs setting. Setting performs a particular function in a story. It creates the stage in which the conflicts that drive the story make sense, and it provides the grittiness, the sense of reality, that makes the story seem real. You don't need or want any worldbuilding details that do not fulfil those purposes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T16:11:36.817" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2017-02-20T16:43:43.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;  Definitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sixwordstories.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Six word stories&lt;/a&gt; do it all the time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favorite, famous one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;For Sale:  Baby Shoes.  Never used.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23662" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T16:43:43.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2017-02-20T17:49:28.673" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not really. &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Worldbuilding&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; is much broader term than the question or most answers seem to assume. I ass-u-me that what is actually intended is to avoid doing any explicit &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_(narrative)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;exposition&lt;/a&gt; on the setting, so that the setting is either discovered implicitly as the story progresses or left obscured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is of course always possible. Anything that is important to the story can be revealed without exposition and anything that is not can be left obscured. It can be even argued that it is better to not use exposition, not because exposition itself is bad, but because not using it makes it easier to avoid useless information. Useless information is basically noise that distracts the reader from the story so avoiding it is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excess information can also make it harder maintain a sense of wonder or mystery about the setting, so in genres like fantasy or horror avoiding or minimizing exposition is doubly good. You can still give exposition about useless things, if you want to play mind games with the reader. But if you play mind games with the reader there really needs to be a good payback for the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside is that not giving excess information makes it easier to forget to include something that the reader actually needs to understand the story. You probably should have some way to verify whether your story is comprehensible if you want to avoid exposition. But making sure that what you write can be understood is always good, so this isn't really an extra burden to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastEditorUserId="11425" LastEditDate="2017-02-20T17:56:49.637" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T17:56:49.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2017-02-20T20:31:04.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Such a story with no worldbuilding or little has made some of the great stories of our time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;No Exit&quot; a French play by Jean-Paul Sartre is a great example of that. In a room with closed and locked doors and a cast of different characters, provides us with one thing about their world - wherever it is, they are trapped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make any difference if they are locked in a closet or jail cell? Or on a spaceship? That depends on the story. If the characters and plot make no reference to where they are, only about who they are and how they can get out, you have to do little to no world building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example is the American play &quot;A Walk In The Woods.&quot; I'm talking about the 1988 play by Lee Blessing about an American and Russian arms negotiator where their physical world is a park bench. Does it matter to the story whether they are sitting on a park bench or seated next to each other on an airplane? Or in a movie theater?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, you have a very limited world that plays no part in the story. I've seen this play done where the two characters sat on two chairs on an empty stage, devoid of anything else but two spot lights on them so we can see them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story on its own is powerful enough to keep an audience captivated, who cares where it is? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask someone who has seen &quot;No Exit&quot; and &quot;A Walk In The Woods&quot; and ask them about the physical setting of the world they were in. Most will not remember.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the world the was created by the character's dialog will be remembered, but that world did not exist except in the minds of the characters, and in both plays, each character viewed the world differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shows that sometimes, the world they are in is less important or not important at all to the story being told. And the story does not even have to define a world. A state of being, a state of existence is all that is required to write a gripping story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plays, which I have written several, are more about the character and the drama between them. The world is just another prop for the story, and props can change or not exist at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDITED 2/21/2017:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Since I don't have enough points to make comments on others' I read a comment about how writers are more interested in plot than worldbuildng. And this the key. While elements of the world the characters live in is part of the plot, you can take any story and put it in any world and it will work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Romeo &amp;amp; Juliet&quot; is a great example of this. The plot works well during Shakesphere's time, and it surely worked for Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as well as for Douglas Booth and Hailee Steinfeld.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in the modern city of Los Angeles, DeCaprio and Dane's speaking the King's English didn't violate what we associate with the modern world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When plot and characterization are done right, the world matters not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23667" LastEditorUserId="23667" LastEditDate="2017-02-21T21:41:51.617" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T21:41:51.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26806" CreationDate="2017-02-20T21:02:35.553" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fanfiction.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FanFiction&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fimfiction.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FimFiction&lt;/a&gt; (if it's set in someone else's work) or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fictionpress.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FictionPress&lt;/a&gt; if it's an original piece. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wattpad.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wattpad&lt;/a&gt; and a personal blog have been mentioned, but there are also the collection of &lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NaNoWriMo&lt;/a&gt; (National November Writer's Month) sites out there, and plenty of other sites available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, personally, use FanFiction to sharpen my writing skills and have people read my work. It's a very active site, and there are plenty of writers there willing to offer feedback. There is also a 'beta finder' of sorts, but I personally wouldn't use it (most never update their information, or simply never get back to you).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had quite a few writers trying to entice me to join them in the NaNoWriMo competitions, and as I understand it there are some groups that are super active and supportive within that circle. I have no personal experience there, so I will not act as if I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also Google Docs, where you can place the story online and share a link with whomever you want. I'm sure there are other more private options as well, but none I can think of off the top of my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that isn't what you're looking for, you might want to google around, see what other options there are. This is the internet, there's always another way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21105" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T21:02:35.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26827" CreationDate="2017-02-20T21:43:27.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a Yahoo Group called &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CRWROPPS-B/info;_ylc=X3oDMTJmc21oNXUyBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzE2NzA3NjcxBGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTE0Nzc2MARzZWMDdnRsBHNsawN2Z2hwBHN0aW1lAzE0ODcxNzgzMzc-&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CRWROPPS-B&lt;/a&gt; that distributes opportunities for writers, including flash and micro contests. Sign up for the email feed and you'll get tons of options. You'll have to go through the giant list occasionally to find what you're looking for, but you'll find what you're looking for there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T21:43:27.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26836" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26850" CreationDate="2017-02-20T21:48:30.360" Score="7" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;Three weeks ago, my manuscript was &quot;accepted&quot; by a publisher and a contract signed. I immediately notified every literary agency to which I'd sent a submission of the contract signing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manuscript was edited by the publishing company &amp;amp; returned to me with suggested changes. When I pushed back on a couple of the changes, the publisher terminated the contract citing personality differences while praising my manuscript. So, how do I approach those other literary agencies again? Would an email directly to the agent advising of the contract cancellation be appropriate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23670" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-02-21T04:13:04.550" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T18:30:34.850" Title="Can I resubmit a manuscript that has been rewritten and professionally edited?" Tags="|publishing|email|submitting-work|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-20T22:03:43.657" Score="2" ViewCount="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there an official or de facto standard for how to write a movie summarization for an encyclopedia, magazine, newspaper or other kind of media?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, are there widespread templates, recommendations or rules of thumb? Is there a difference to summarizations of books or stage plays? Which elements have to be included, which can stay unmentioned? Does the text have to have an internal division in which sequence to tell what? To what degree are additional trivia like infos about the playwright, actors, pop cultural meaning, influences, technical aspects or a personal statement worth mentioning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-06-29T15:37:55.393" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T15:47:01.487" Title="Is there a template for how to write a movie summarization?" Tags="|style|structure|non-fiction|magazines|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26838" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-20T22:46:39.453" Score="1" ViewCount="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I get a reader profile for a publishing category i.e. criminal justice, social justice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23671" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T22:46:39.453" Title="How can I get reader profiles?" Tags="|non-fiction|narrative|readers|audience|queries|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2017-02-21T14:58:10.093" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26839" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-21T07:00:16.153" Score="3" ViewCount="522" Body="&lt;p&gt;My brain is probably just broken, but it has a question.  It tends to invent odd scenarios that become quite interesting.  It also knows that the story will only be interesting to others if it has characters and they do stuff... but it doesn't want to do that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it seems like it would be interesting if a guy in jail was confessing to something he did as a kid that got him going down the wrong path, say... tricking Santa Claus into giving him a certain kind of present that he knew would slow Santa Down.  This enabled him to catch Santa, which was fun, but also got him into lots of trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems like a funny scenario.  But my brain doesn't really create characters very well, and even when it creates them, it doesn't have them do interesting things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Santa case, it might be funny if the kid took Santa hostage and made the reindeer do funny things.  But then Rudolph (with his nose so bright) pretends to be a police car outside, and the kid surrenders.  While my brain can see the scenario, it doesn't do well at inhabiting the scenario and seeing what characters are doing.  Don't even get me started on high-level story arcs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, if you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them.  So would my brain.  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23680" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2017-02-25T17:47:09.363" LastActivityDate="2017-02-25T17:47:09.363" Title="How do I turn a premise into a story?" Tags="|planning|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26839" CreationDate="2017-02-21T07:48:43.637" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This scenario seems to be character-based to me.&lt;/strong&gt; You may not yet have developed your characters &quot;fully&quot;, but that could come through actual writing and a bit of outlining. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that you have simply had an idea, but yet to &lt;em&gt;create&lt;/em&gt; it. Have you tried turning your &quot;odd scenarios&quot; into actual writing and not just summaries of &quot;a situation&quot;? It may help. For me, the characters create themselves when I write about them (it takes time) even if I &quot;sketched them&quot; somewhat differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may, as you write, naturally stumble upon background information about how/why the guy would end up wanting to hold santa hostage (childhood trauma, bad manners, loneliness?) and this, among other things, may shape your character going forward as well. How was he sentenced to go to prison? what was his trial like? Were there any trouble determining if an actual crime was committed based on the &quot;is santa real?&quot; question? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the mood you create, this could develop into a comedy or maybe a psychological thriller based on delusions - just brainstorming..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely, none of this will become clear to you until you actually write a part of the story. You can always remove parts of the story that you are unsatisfied with, but almost all writing helps your understanding of your characters and your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-02-21T10:22:47.097" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T10:22:47.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26841" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-21T10:15:37.453" Score="14" ViewCount="832" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a comment to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26822/5645&quot;&gt;an answer of mine&lt;/a&gt; Mark Baker has suggested that the common, dichotomous view of writers as either &amp;quot;plotters&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;pantsers&amp;quot; or something of both might not be complete and that there are other types of writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their extreme forms, plotters, or outliners, as they are sometimes called, construct the plot, develop the characters, and/or build their fictional world before they begin to write and during writing follow this preconceived plan, while pantsers, or discovery writers, simply sit down with no more than a seed of an idea or even no idea at all and let the story, characters, and world unfold in the process of writing. Most writers fall somewhere in between these two extremes, outlining or developing a bit and discovering the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But does this description cover all kinds of writers? Is it feasible, as I did, to group worldbuilders and plotters together, or are they fundamentally different in their approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What other kinds of writers are there besides plotters and pantsers?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Is there a better classification of writers that that dichotomous one?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I would appreciate answers that give real life examples of writers who have described their writing process, or that cite established sources such as scholars that have studied the writing process. Please do not post mere speculation or (only) your own experience in an answer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-04-24T13:04:33.313" Title="What other kinds of writers are there besides plotters and pantsers?" Tags="|process|terminology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26839" CreationDate="2017-02-21T13:05:11.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The part that is most obviously missing from what you describe is &quot;why?&quot; Character provides the why. But equally importantly, the why provides the character. A character is a person who would do this thing in this way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can start with the character and then ask yourself, what would this person do, given their character? Or you can start, as you have, with the action, and ask yourself why would someone do this thing in this way. Once you can answer that question, you have the core of your character. Once you have the core, you can fill in whatever detail you think appropriate that are consistent with that character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-23T12:31:15.447" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T12:31:15.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26839" CreationDate="2017-02-21T14:29:13.410" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;But my brain doesn't really create characters very well.&quot; Mine doesn't either. Try creating characters on the page instead of in your head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just write a scene where the kid does something. You might find that the kid does or says something that surprises you. The character now has a trait. Write another scene and keep that trait. See what emerges next. Rewrite a scene. Write a new one and introduce another character. Tweak the characters, their traits, needs, prejudices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is exploratory writing. Maybe none of this will make it into your final draft, but that's okay. You're discovering who your characters are at this point. This is the fun stuff. Enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T14:29:13.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2017-02-21T14:58:25.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;How feasible is it to write a story without any worldbuilding?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very.  As far as I can tell, world building in works of fiction is a modern phenomenon.  Alternate history stories are a great example of a genre that absolutely requires world building, but that genre was basically invented mid-20th century (The Man in the High Castle by PKD).  Lord of the Rings dates back to around that time, and is also an exemplary story full of world building.  But again, Tolkein is widely recognized as a pioneer in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most fiction takes place in our own world, and therefore requires little to no world building, as the world already exists, no need to be built.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19732" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T14:58:25.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2017-02-21T15:10:07.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might take a look at the book &quot;The Fractal Prince&quot; by Hannu Rajaniemi.  It's the second book of a sci-fi trilogy...  I happened to read it first, and found that it was really engaging in significant part because he never went out of his way to explain the workings of the world.  Things were described as if we already knew what they meant, and we had to infer their meanings from context.  Now, I'm sure not everyone would like that setup, but in that case I really did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22756" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T15:10:07.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26504" CreationDate="2017-02-21T17:22:01.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, migraines are a part of staring at a bright screen too long too often.  This wasn't an issue for me 10 years ago because most of my time was spent doing high school sports and only used a PC on the weekend for home work.  As I became more and more dependent on my PC for all my needs, my eyes started to deteriorate faster.  With website conventions forming to the google and apple motto of a clean professional look, more websites are going to the white background.  Top that off with looking at a white word document and having bright lights on around you, that strains the eyes quite a bit.....  I wouldn't suggest completely turning off the lights though as the screen brightness would definitely hurt the eyes more but I do agree that darker rooms/night time is where I typically write my best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A suggestion to help with the eyes is to get a pair of yellow computer glasses.  The yellow tint helps offset the white screens you see on a PC for hours and creates less strain on the eyes.  Less strain means less likely to get a headache.  This would help you write longer and concentrate on something other than your head hurting.  I would also suggest looking at the applications you use to switch to a dark theme.  For example, my programming software I use comes with a white page.  They have the option to change the theme so that the background turns black/dark grey and the colors of the words are changed so you can read them against a dark background.  There are also plugins in Chrome like TLV that you can toggle on and off to make websites like SE have a black background for easier reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so yes, I do believe that the conditions of lighting affects how well/long we can focus before getting a headache and proper protection of the eyes should be taken for long term computer usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T17:22:01.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-21T17:29:53.067" Score="0" ViewCount="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best time to write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write in the night, and am concerned for my health, because I'm missing the vitamin D of sunlight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23691" LastEditorUserId="15545" LastEditDate="2017-02-21T19:26:08.890" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T19:37:59.393" Title="What is the best time of day to write? Day or night?" Tags="|planning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-02-21T20:55:13.103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26836" CreationDate="2017-02-21T18:30:34.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure you review the terminated contract to make sure there aren't any conditions or effects that would linger after contract termination.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you do that, feel free to resubmit anywhere you like.  If it was one of the agencies you had previously sent a notice to, explaining that it had been accepted but not ultimately published would probably be a nice thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8201" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T18:30:34.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26851" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-21T18:51:19.303" Score="8" ViewCount="4475" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently brainstorming a fantasy story, and I love the idea of my main character, but I'm having a hard time pinning down who she is as a person. I know her backstory, her family, her abilities, even her job, but for the life of me I can't figure out what her goal is. I can't figure out what she wants out of her life, and I don't know how to solve my problem. Any suggestions would be super helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23694" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-08T20:14:49.497" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T20:14:49.497" Title="How can I figure out my main character's overall goal?" Tags="|characters|goal|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26853" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26855" CreationDate="2017-02-21T19:36:14.853" Score="1" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if anyone had any writing exercises that they use to help them get to know their characters better. I keep false-starting on my story because I have more of a hazy idea of who my main character is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23694" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T19:51:57.630" Title="Character Writing Exercises" Tags="|characters|character-development|exercises|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-02-21T23:45:35.320" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26849" CreationDate="2017-02-21T19:37:59.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;and welcome to Writers. As has been pointed out, this is likely a duplicate, but I will offer my opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of writing is done via &lt;em&gt;writer preference&lt;/em&gt;. This means it's up to you what works and what doesn't. This doesn't stand for all of writing, of course. There are rules which other people have discovered and which, after thorough exploration, have been accepted as generally true. Still, a lot of what is 'right' or not is decided via writer preference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When to write is one of those things. You should write whenever you feel you can turn out the best work. This goes for location as well. If you write best at night, then you should write at night. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if you're concerned about your vitamin D levels due to writing at night, that's an entirely separate issue. I am no doctor, but I would imagine low vitamin D levels would be easy to counter-act. Spend part of your day in the sun. Take a vitamin D supplement. If you are really concerned about it, ask your doctor. I'm sure he can point you in the right direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck with your endeavors! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T19:37:59.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26853" CreationDate="2017-02-21T19:51:57.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the simplest level you have to come up with name, age, job, physical characteristics, likes/dislikes, but you also need to have some idea of motivation, values and goals. Is this person someone who would buy flowers for both friends who has fallen out, or one who would take sides, for example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get students to have a clearer picture of their character I ask them to think of things such as, 'What is your favourite television programme?' and 'What is something you really hate?' Although it might seem strange: imagine you are your main character. What are you like? Write a job application. Fill in a dating site enrolment form. Write the wikipedia entry for your character. Write the description a best friend would provide to another person. Imagine the obituary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T19:51:57.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6750" CreationDate="2017-02-21T20:10:20.507" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's okay with Stephen King, it's okay with me.  I have proofread my book no less than ten times and I still find errors.  I'm not perfect and neither is anyone else.  I feel confident that most readers don't judge a book by its typos.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23698" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T20:10:20.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26851" CreationDate="2017-02-21T21:02:10.867" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a goal for your character... maybe you have made them too perfect?  A common theme to help provide character goals is to demonstrate character growth.  Give them a couple flaws.  Say that she is an elf and a really good magic user, but no one gives her a chance because she is female and she is not assertive enough to challenge people that tell her to go away.  In the end, the goal of the MC is usually the punch line of your story.  It's the lesson learned or will have to be learned in order to achieve the goal.  There may be many side goals or side plots that helps build the main goal, but ultimately, your character is trying to strive to achieve something.  World fame?  Is there an evil person in your story that is trying to do harm? What does the opposition look like?  What is it that they are trying to do to hinder your main character?  If you don't have an antagonist, maybe developing an antagonist's character will help you realize the goal of the MC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-02-21T23:41:37.973" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T23:41:37.973" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26851" CreationDate="2017-02-21T21:06:29.930" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may not need an overall goal. You may be able to discover this as you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try this: Give her a problem. Any problem will do. She will try to solve it. When she does, arrange for her to fail. And arrange for the failure to make things worse instead of better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When she tries again, arrange for that to fail, and to make things worse. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As she struggles with the worsening situation, you will learn more about who she is by the way she tries to solve the problem, and by her reactions to the failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to arrange for the failures to force her to choose between painful options. Maybe she can have only one of the things she wants, and choosing one means she cannot have the other. Or perhaps she must choose between two terrible options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As she chooses, you will learn more and more about what she cares about most deeply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point, arrange for things to worsen in a way that relates to her abilities or background or personality. As things get worse &lt;em&gt;because of who she is&lt;/em&gt;, she will have to confront who she is in order to make progress. As she learns who she is, you will too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can discover what she wants as you write. You don't necessarily need to know before you begin writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T21:06:29.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26851" CreationDate="2017-02-21T21:21:12.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story is driven by desire and that which stands in the way of achieving desire. If your character had a strong desire, she would have a goal. If she does not have a strong desire, that means she has everything she wants. Or at least she has everything she is willing to work hard to get. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's fine. Lots of stories start like that. And the answer is simple enough. Take something away from her, or threaten to: home, loved ones, etc. Bingo, now she has a goal: either to save them or to be revenged on those who took them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-02-21T23:42:33.657" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T23:42:33.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2017-02-21T23:37:30.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say it depends. The Jabberwocky used fictional objects, words, and creatures with no introduction and was a successful story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a professional, but I'd say typically stories have different strengths and weaknesses. Some books, like LotR, are dry, with massive world building, known as &quot;High Fantasy.&quot; The immersion is what makes them interesting. On the other hand, writing skill is what makes otherwise mundane books about everyday life interesting. Some books, as aforementioned, don't even need to build the world their in if they aren't in our world due to an interesting writing style, though this could be difficult to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is to get the message across that you wish to convey, and if you can do that in fewer words, I think people would enjoy this more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23700" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T23:37:30.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6750" CreationDate="2017-02-22T00:58:44.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to edit my own books frequently. But I publish ebooks -- which allows you to update the ebook file  if you find errors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With printed stuff, you really need a second pair of eyes to find typos. The risks are too great -- especially if you are paying for advance copies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, print-on-demand services (like Createspace) do allow you to update the manuscript after publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not confident of your quality control process, you might want to look into a distribution method which allows you to update the manuscript after publication date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly I worry more about typos than about inconsistent punctuation because one typo lowers a reader's confidence about the book's quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, technical books and manuals have to undergo additional vetting from an editor who does technical review-- because a mistake can result in bad information. At the same time, all technical publishers know that errata will occur and often have a web page on the company site listing issues and corrections. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A typical developer buys a programming book with the near certainty  that it will usually contain technical errors. But they don't sweat it as much because it will help them with general concepts, and generally they can spot the error -- even though it may not run properly. The typical developer wouldn't mind an occasional misspelled word as long as the code works or the technical knowledge is basically right.  Also, many IT books are out-of-date by the time they are published, making it all the more important to check for errata. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="7968" LastEditDate="2017-02-22T01:04:27.730" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T01:04:27.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26864" CreationDate="2017-02-22T04:15:39.597" Score="0" ViewCount="1071" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm making a story. I have a female superhero character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She live in normal Earth, without any combination of legends. She was a normal human in the past, but an experiment caused her to have superpowers. She can live both in water and land. But, her superpowers are optimal when used in water. Her superpowers are almost same like Aquaman's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need ideas for a villain for her to fight. I think, it's best if you come up with &lt;strong&gt;underwater villain&lt;/strong&gt; ideas. I have searched for &lt;strong&gt;Aquaman&lt;/strong&gt; as my reference. But, Aquaman is different with my superhero character, he is a human-Atlantean Hybrid, while mine is pure human. You can use another reference for your ideas, rather than Aquaman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please give detail villain ideas, including his/her &lt;strong&gt;origin, name, appearance, powers, and motives&lt;/strong&gt;. Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23705" LastEditorUserId="23705" LastEditDate="2017-02-22T04:24:16.370" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T07:28:46.577" Title="Villain Character Ideas" Tags="|characters|character-development|fantasy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2017-02-22T09:16:30.427" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26863" CreationDate="2017-02-22T07:24:59.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Founder of an underwater mining corporation.&lt;/strong&gt; They extract oil in a way similar to oil platforms, but they do it underwater and therefore don't care about safety requirements. Maybe they have giant submarines and if an accident happens, the submarine simply travels to a different location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some combination of oil company, drug cartel (illegal, hidden, and global) and casino ship (doesn't belong to any country).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your protagonist also lives in the water and the oil spills created by the corporation of the villain endanger her habitat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible start of the story: The corporation causes an oil spill comparable to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deepwater Horizon&lt;/a&gt; and it somehow touches the protagonist. But contrary to BP, the government can't punish it and that's why a person with superpowers is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6696" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T07:24:59.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26863" CreationDate="2017-02-22T07:28:46.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The evil twin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While your hero discovers she has an evil twin with similar powers and an economic knack who will take revenge on the humans for all they have done to the see.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;BBC - Big Bad Company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Underwater is full of resources and harvesting them threatens the&#xA;home of your superhero mermaid. The head of the company on the other&#xA;hand also is very generous to the public, so she just cannot go there&#xA;and kill him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ancient alien life. Ie Ie Cthulhu ftahgn!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22409" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T07:28:46.577" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26851" CreationDate="2017-02-22T09:28:54.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some very good answers here, but hopefully the following can work as an addition or substitute to certain elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a theory (someone else probably thought of it before me) that characters with a personality and traits similar to the writer can be difficult to create goals for. Is your character by any chance similar to or based on yourself to some degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are countless scenarios where a character's overall goal can be difficult to figure out, but for this I will focus on the scenario  mentioned above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, as @MarkBaker mentions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;your character has everything she wants&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or as @ggiaquin asks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;..maybe your character is too perfect?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that this character is in her comfort zone. We may not realize that the MC needs something, because she is placed in a context where she does well or is in balance. One way to create or figure out your MC's goal could be to &lt;strong&gt;pull her out of said comfort zone&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, this could be forced by some troublesome, threatening or painful experience or treatment which she then needs to act upon, but in my opinion it doesn't have to be that dramatic, unless of course 'dramatic' is what you are going for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to pull someone out of their comfort zone is to introduce them to something og someone new. She may get a new co-worker that actually asks questions about &quot;the routines&quot; or &quot;how one should behave&quot;, she may find that the street behind her house has an abandoned building with something intriguing about it. She may be brought to a friend's party only to realize that she knows no-one and has to mingle within a new social group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just examples off the top of my head, but think of scenarios where you would feel &quot;out of your comfort zone&quot;. Maybe introducing your MC to such experiences (based on your understanding of her) may reveal a new goal for her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A natural progression in the story could then be based on @DaleHartleyEmery's order of &quot;attempts and failures&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2017-02-22T09:36:17.857" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T09:36:17.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26699" CreationDate="2017-02-22T12:34:08.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, I have no talent at writing, so take the following advice while sucking on a large grain of salt...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read more fanfiction. Especially terrible ones. Now, analyze why it is bad. I know, it will hurt, but it will do you good in the end. Did you just read five pages describing eyebrows cocking (always one eyebrow), eyes widening and such? Keep reading till the blood pours out of your eyes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good. Your rehab from excess facial expressions is now hopefully done. No-one gives a flying f-- about those anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make them breathe, snort, chuckle, sigh, flush, slump, sit bolt upright, fidget with their earrings, bolt out the door to fetch the [plot device] they're super excited about showing... In other words, make them &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; stuff. Use voice tones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character slaps fist in open palm and grins. &quot;Damn right!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think stage play, how do glances move around, people standing up, skirting around/behind someone sitting on a chair, what happens in people's back, what they hear, what they don't see, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have other characters tell the reader, or have them do stuff that people would do when the character experiences the emotion you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can go all out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She poured the contents of her handbag over the coffee table, not even minding the lipsticks and tampons rolling away and falling onto her sidekicks' feet. It had to be there still! She sifted feverishly through faded receipts and [other crap that tells us about her character] and finally let out a victorious squeak as she picked up the plot device with trembling hands. It had been there all along! Yes, they were back on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Variant: &#xA;It had been there all along. They had walked and suffered all the way to Mordor and back with the quest item already in her bag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey, isn't that thingie Bill picked up back in the Shire?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She knew it. As usual. &quot;Bill, it's your fault again!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, make them do stuff, and bow to the power of the verb...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23711" LastEditorUserId="23711" LastEditDate="2017-02-22T12:51:37.850" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T12:51:37.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26851" CreationDate="2017-02-22T14:29:43.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thre is no such thing as an overall goal for a person (other than to be happy, blah, blah). Any person, whether a real one or a fictional character, has a slew of simultaneous goals, ranging from making it to the bathroom on a morning after a party the night before to a getting a multi-million government contract for developing a uberdrive for faster-than-light travel (now try to go to that meeting having a pounding hangover headache and land that job).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our goals change with everything the life and the Universe throw at us time after time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you might try is to explore, how your hero would react to a challenging situation. You say you know her abilities? Offer her something which she is not equipped to handle, and see what she does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She has a job? Fire her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She has a family? Kill them ruthlessly in a suspicious car crash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She has magic powers? Fire her, kill her family, and make her drink something on that party the night before, which negates her magic to the point that it might not come back at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then see what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are the creator and the owner of her Universe. If you want to know what her goals are, you can do whatever you wish to flush them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T14:29:43.793" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26882" CreationDate="2017-02-22T15:07:07.397" Score="12" ViewCount="4908" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am producing a comic in which a fictional language is frequently spoken. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This language (and which characters are able to speak it) is significant to the plot, so it's important that the reader knows when it (rather than English) is being spoken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's likely, though, that there will be scenes spoken entirely in this language, and since I obviously want these scenes to be understood by the reader, too, I'm not completely sure how I should handle this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, should I should fully translate the language in these cases (such that the &quot;original&quot; language is lost), as is the norm in written fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My gut reaction is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;, that the original form of language should be depicted alongside the translations in some way, so as to emphasise its significance and make clear which language is being used, but I'm finding it hard to justify this to myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose one argument is that comics don't have &quot;viewpoint characters&quot; in the same way that written fiction does, but I don't know how well this holds up to scrutiny. It's certainly very common for comics to present events through a particular character's perception. For example, if the protagonist is hallucinating, a lot of comics will show the hallucination rather than the reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably there must be a precedent for this sort of thing, but I don't remember ever reading a comic which featured a fictional (or even foreign) language in this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T16:48:40.447" LastActivityDate="2023-03-15T18:10:27.747" Title="How to handle translation of a language in a comic, while preserving a sense that the language is significant?" Tags="|translation|language|viewpoint|comics|constructed-language|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26870" CreationDate="2017-02-22T15:21:52.437" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have two choices that I can see, and which one you use will likely be dependent on the amount of foreign-language copy you have versus the amount of space you have in the panel to display it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Write the foreign language in the speech balloon with asterisks. The asterisks refer to a footnote at the bottom of the panel translating the text. I think this will be clunky and a little annoying, so unless there's some reason to display the foreign language in all the balloons, I don't recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Indicate in context or with an asterisk that the characters are speaking Foreign Language, and &lt;em&gt;within the balloon,&lt;/em&gt; the text is surrounded by «guillemets». &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has in fact been covered in a comment to a different question on this site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4815/how-does-one-present-spoken-dialogue-as-a-secondary-language-to-signed-speech&quot;&gt;How does one present spoken dialogue as a secondary language to signed speech?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a common punctuation for dialogue in a secondary language in comic books, usually with an asterisk to denote the language. – Joel Shea&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T15:21:52.437" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26872" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-22T15:42:16.207" Score="0" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had this question for a really long time. A lot of my work seems quite 'floaty' and 'old style' because I describe things in a very metaphorical and surreal way. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her eyes were made dull by the inclement sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have this obsession with describing eyes to be shinier than anything imaginable. I think this description is quite bad because of the word 'inclement', it just seems a bit old and unused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The horses galloped wearily through a river, barely being able to keep increasing their speed in tandem with (unnnamed's) kicks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Woohoo&lt;/em&gt; that's a way better description! Okay so I think this is a little metaphorical and old-style because I haven't just said that the horses were tired, rather I've created an extended sentence to describe the horses being unable to perform to how the rider wants them to. I don't know if this is &lt;strong&gt;showing not telling&lt;/strong&gt; or plainly &lt;strong&gt;bad and metaphorical description&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It howled at their ears, like a pack of wolves, and rushed in streams around their faces and skin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the best quote to describe what I mean. This sentence is referring to the wind. I'm not just saying 'the wind was loud, and fast', instead I'm using a simile and personification. The wind can't rush, and it doesn't howl. This style of description is reminiscent of some older-style works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short, the question is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it better to have metaphorical descriptions, or upfront ones that get the point across?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T16:38:58.107" Title="Is it best to make a description metaphorical, or upfront?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|technique|word-choice|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26879" CreationDate="2017-02-22T15:57:17.753" Score="1" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am familiar with the Monroe Motivated Sequence, which is used to persuade people to take an action. This may be utilized in a speech or a piece of writing. I am interested in learning about other frameworks and templates which make the outlining process easier within the realm of writing: informational, persuasive, or otherwise. If an infographic exists on any of these techniques, I would be delighted if someone can share this with us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23712" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T18:30:35.910" Title="I am familiar with the Monroe Motivated Sequence, which is used for speeches. What are some other frameworks which make the outlining process easier?" Tags="|planning|outline|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26872" CreationDate="2017-02-22T16:23:04.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no answer to this question. This isn't an either/or question, because either one can be appropriate, or inappropriate, depending on the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to write an action scene, you probably want to keep your descriptions short and to the point, to avoid bogging down your narrative. Compare&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;His gun was up in a moment and firing, three quick, precise shots, but Vader simply held up his hand, palm outward, and the bolts were absorbed harmlessly.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;His gun flashed into his hand as if through hyperspace, leaping almost of its own accord up into the firing stance, and three times he fired at the towering black Gargoyle, like the three trench runs with which they had crippled the monster's Death Machine. But the gargoyle extended a single ghastly appendage and absorbed the shots more easily than a black hole swallowing light...*&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is punchy, quick, gets the point across; the other is elaborate, slow, and takes forever to get where it's going.  On the other hand, if you're taking your time and setting a more contemplative mood, metaphor can be an incredibly powerful tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;She had grey eyes, brown hair, and wore a black t-shirt&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Her storm-grey eyes mirrored the overcast above, while her brown hair blended seamlessly with the muddy road beside us. Her head almost seemed to float above the deep black of her t-shirt, disconnected from the rest.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Her eyes, grey as the stormy sky, flashed and sparkled like the stream beside us, and her earthy brown hair flew in the wind, and the darkness of her t-shirt barely disguised the curves of her body.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any of these can work - it just depends what you're trying to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22241" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T16:23:04.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26872" CreationDate="2017-02-22T16:38:58.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is better to be a straightforward as possible in all descriptions. The aim is to form an image in the reader's mind, and the simplest language that does that is the language you should choose, since to do more risks the reader getting stuck in the thicket of words and not receiving the intended image. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason we sometimes use metaphorical language is that literal language does not always do a good job of evoking images in the human mind. For example, there are these famously bad lines from Wordsworth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not five yards from the mountain-path,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  This thorn you on your left espy;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And to the left, three yards beyond,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  You see a little muddy pond&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Of water, never dry,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I've measured it from side to side:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A set of dimensions hardly accomplishes the poetic purpose of calling an image or an emotion to the reader's mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we say that a bull was a big as an elephant, it is because giving the measurements of the bull in feet and inches would not convey to the reader the image of a really large bull. Comparing it to something imposingly big, like an elephant, however, immediately brings an image to the mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The danger with metaphorical writing, however, is that you can get drunk on the sound of the words and end up with purple prose. The thing about purple prose is that the reader receives it a prose: as a pretty sequence of words, not as an image. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is worth noting here that &quot;image&quot; in this context should not be interpreted simply as &quot;picture&quot;. I think we can create image of other things in prose: images of emotions, for instance. This is image in the sense of thing imagined, and we can imagine anything that we can experience. We can experience emotions, so we can create the image of an emotion. This is part of what give prose a wider dynamic range than video.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T16:38:58.107" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26877" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-22T16:57:50.723" Score="4" ViewCount="9650" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 'tilde' key, or (~) is commonly found in programming and in other languages to express repetition of characters, for example, 'Woooo!' would become 'Woo~!' and in Japanese text, the tilde is commonly used to portray a flirtatious mood. It can also be used to show approximation, e.g. '1~20'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any use of the tilde as punctuation in the English language? Would it be appropriate to use it to convey emotion, or express repetition or is there a certain use of the tilde other than approximation between two numbers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="40124" LastEditDate="2022-06-29T13:37:01.307" LastActivityDate="2022-06-29T14:22:35.480" Title="Is the tilde used in English?" Tags="|punctuation|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26877" CreationDate="2017-02-22T17:16:51.223" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other than indicating approximations for dates and numbers (e.g., ~100 CE), I am not aware of any commonly-recognized uses for the tilde.  If you use it for other purposes in a text, I'd recommend putting in extra context to make the meaning clear early on in the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8201" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T17:16:51.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26873" CreationDate="2017-02-22T18:30:35.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a great many systems for structuring the argument of a piece of writing. Each taking different approach to what to structure and how. Some to check out include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_mapping&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Information mapping&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hyperwrite.com/Articles/showarticle.aspx?id=85&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;STOP&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Information_Typing_Architecture&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DITA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism_(technical_communication)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Minimalism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Inverted pyramid&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition you should look at structured writing generally (you can check out my series on &lt;a href=&quot;https://techwhirl.com/series/structured-writing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Structured Writing&lt;/a&gt;, which will soon become a book). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you should notice that common template exist for expressing all kinds of content. Recipies, for instance, have a well known format that almost everyone follows, and the same is true for many other subjects. If you browse Wikipedia you will notice that there are common templates emerging for articles on all kinds of subjects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T18:30:35.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26870" CreationDate="2017-02-22T18:35:38.070" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is how it was handled in the Asterix comics. Specifically &lt;em&gt;Asterix and the Goths&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BOVwZ.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BOVwZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T18:35:38.070" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26877" CreationDate="2017-02-22T18:58:10.653" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The tilde symbol is commonly used for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Expressing approximations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mathematical and programming processes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It generally is never used in fiction and would probably confuse the reader because of that. However, it has more uses in other languages. In &lt;strong&gt;Chinese&lt;/strong&gt; with instant messaging stuff, sometimes you can put a little '~' on the end of your sentence to be cool, casual, and stuff, but that's not done in English. Also, the Chinese keyboard on your phone gives a lot of these crazy faces like ~\ (≧▽≦) /~ that use the tilde.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't use it in fiction unless you absolutely have to. It isn't used in the context of fiction and generally in English, only used for approximation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T18:58:10.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26870" CreationDate="2017-02-22T20:20:48.587" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has been handled a few ways in comics: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the text in word balloons be a translation of the original, with a footnote indicating &quot;translated from other-language-name&quot;. You can graphically remind the user of this as you go along by having the other language be in a different typeface, have the word balloons be a different color than usual, or a combination of the two. This is common in superhero comics. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leave the text in the original language, letting the reader figure out what's happening by context. This clearly takes longer and details will doubtless be lost, but it has the advantage of keeping the feel of the original language. (See the works of Alan Moore for a great example of this, in particular &quot;League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volume 2&quot; does this a lot.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a comic book, a graphic medium, and you don't have to choose! A little design work to leave extra room on the page and you can have both languages in the panels. It's possible to subtly overlap a word balloon in one language with a translation in English, a graphic cue to the reader that they can read the meaning in English while seeing the original language, either in full or in part. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T20:20:48.587" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6750" CreationDate="2017-02-22T23:04:04.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important thing about &quot;acceptability&quot; of errors is that they don't disrupt the reader.  That means that some errors weigh heavier than others, even if you have the same number of typos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider, for example, the fact that most Americans these days get &quot;you're&quot; vs. &quot;your&quot; drilled into their head during school.  It creates a bias towards the focus on these mistakes, and so I would guess that a lot more readers would notice the misuse in a sentence a lot quicker than the intentional singular use of the word 'head' earlier in this paragraph.  You should be cautious of these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, there's the pacing of the book itself.  If you're in the middle of a gripping action sequence, a light error will probably be completely skipped over by many readers even if they see it, because they're so engaged with the scene, but a hard error will probably stop them in their tracks and make them pause and re-read the whole sentence.  This disrupts the flow of your story and can really detract from the strength of a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the frequency of the error that occurs.&#xA;There was one book that had a silly typo -- let's say it was allusion instead of illusion (I'm going to remember what it is later).  The first time I noticed it, I gave a soft snort and continued reading, my opinion of the book generally unaltered.  Typos happen.  However, the author persisted to use the same word, maybe once every two chapters.  Every single time, they used the wrong word.  It drove me absolutely bonkers, because there was no particular reason for them to be using the word all the time in the first place.  I don't remember what book it was, and I actually enjoyed both the characters and the plot, but every time I open it up and get to that first typo I groan.  &lt;em&gt;This book again&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My general opinion is that as long as your typos are 'soft' and your book is 300 pages long, a reader can probably choose to ignore them if you have fewer than 30.  If the plot/characters aren't good, they probably won't bother.  On the other hand, if you only have 5 errors in a 300 page book, even though the reader may notice them, they won't remember them when thinking about the book as a whole.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hard errors probably will be remembered regardless, but if you only have one or two (and your book is otherwise well-written), your readers will probably choose to ignore them.  Just make sure they don't take place during critical scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22441" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T23:04:04.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26815" CreationDate="2017-02-22T23:20:45.043" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it's a lot more low-key.  Your main character may just not like how it makes them an outsider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going skiing with your family is fun, you have a good time, and then you come back to school and everyone's talking about their winter break.  So-and-so played a video game and you all laugh at their anecdote about a particularly gruesome death, your best friend stayed at their grandmother's and you all nod appropriately about how family is good in small doses.  When you talk about a spectacular fall on a black run, you can sort of see the disconnect in their brains.  They don't relate to you.  You are an outsider.  You seem like you're bragging, even though you're just trying to tell a funny story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Little things build up.  You discover your friends are uncomfortable inviting you to their house because it's smaller than yours.  They turn down a dinner invitation because they can't afford it, and suddenly you have to constantly question yourself every time you hang out.  Would it be appropriate to ask them to spend their money?  If you offer to pay for them, it hurts their pride, and creates another rift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you don't flaunt your wealth, and you're not oblivious to the real world, a coworker might resent you, because you didn't have to work through college.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your character doesn't need to be angry, they don't need to be angsty, they don't need to be spoiled.  They just need to be uncomfortable with the fact that they are more well off than the people around them.  Hesitate a second more whenever money comes up, not because they can't afford something, but because they can, and they aren't sure if they should or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22441" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T23:20:45.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26886" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-23T00:47:32.803" Score="3" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;If offered a percentage of profit for an ebook (e.g. after Amazon's cut), what is reasonable charge for proofreading a somewhat specialized non-fiction manuscript, written by someone whose first language is not English (to be fair neither is mine)? &#xA;I realize the answer will be 'it depends', but just wondering if asking for 10%-15% is too much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23721" LastActivityDate="2017-02-24T12:23:02.120" Title="What is a reasonable rate for proofreading a manuscript in terms of sales percentage?" Tags="|proofreading|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26886" CreationDate="2017-02-23T01:47:21.083" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If someone asked me to proofread in return for a percentage, I'd turn them down, because I'd want to be paid as soon as the work is done, and I wouldn't want how much I get paid to be dependent on sales of copies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you want to take them up on it, I guess you should first work out the flat fee you'd be willing to work for, then work backwards from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; is a reasonable estimate for number of copies the book is likely to seel, &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt; is the net profit on each copy of the book, and &lt;em&gt;s&lt;/em&gt; is the minimum sum you want to be paid, then the percentage you should ask for is &lt;em&gt;s / p * n * 100&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tricky bit is &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt;, as you can't know for sure, but you could look at sales figures for similar titles in that subject area and correlate it with sales of the author's previous titles, maybe? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="352" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T01:47:21.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26806" CreationDate="2017-02-23T14:51:32.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wattpad.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wattpad&lt;/a&gt; for posting samples and excerpts, but it is a dedicated writing sharing platform, which allows you post full-length works as well with no limits, and it is modern-looking, feature-rich, and free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want more control over your work (who sees it, can comment on it, etc.) you might want to explore a blog option per @what's suggestion. There are &lt;a href=&quot;https://wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;free options&lt;/a&gt; as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T14:51:32.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26891" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-23T14:55:44.777" Score="2" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one person describing the past behavior of another, who is absent, to two different people. One of the listeners knows the person who is being spoken about. It's just a long dialogue describing the history of that person.What that person did a long time back, to make the teller dislike that person. Do I let other people listening say something? Do I use a period in different places throughout and start a new paragraph in places throughout the dialogue?Though it is still about the same person? There are more than one hundred and fifty words in this entire paragraph. But it needs to be said. How do I make it readable and not just a 'run-on' sentence? Sincerely A..&#xA;,   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23730" LastEditorUserId="15545" LastEditDate="2017-02-23T16:26:45.983" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T17:00:54.043" Title="Extra long descriptive paragraph" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-02-25T18:11:24.443" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26870" CreationDate="2017-02-23T15:10:35.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another suggestion: use a heavily stylised phonetic language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most extreme example of this I've seen is in a novel rather than a comic, Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban. The entire book is written in a debased form of phonetic English invented by the author. It's readable by anyone that can speak English, but it's a hard slog. It feels very alien at first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out&#xA;  thru our eye hoals. May be you dont take no noatis of it only some&#xA;  times. Say you get woak up suddn in the middl of the nite. 1 minim&#xA;  youre a sleap and the nex youre on your feet with a spear in your&#xA;  han.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At times, things are given extremely unfamiliar names or translations that the reader needs to puzzle out. Again, most people will be able to work this stuff out, but it's a stretch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Spare the mending and tryl narrer&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experimenting and trial and error&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;the yellerboy stoan and the chard coal&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the sulphur and the charcoal &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Riddley Walker is quite a famous book, partly because of its inventive approach to language: searching online should reveal many further relevant examples and discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attempting something similar would likely be a fair amount of work, but the effort may pay off with you able to exactly what you want. Have a language that seems alien to an English speaker yet which is comprehensible and flexible enough for you to convey a rich variety of meanings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6371" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T15:10:35.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26891" CreationDate="2017-02-23T15:45:28.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Lauren pointed out, you have more than one question in your post. I will take a stab at one of them before the whole thing gets off-topic-ed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I use a period in different places throughout and start a new paragraph in places throughout the dialogue?Though it is still about the same person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. The common punctuation (in American English) is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Open a quotation&lt;/strong&gt;, then write, write, write, and write. You can break the speech up into sentences and use periods and any other punctuation marks (to avoid run-ons). When you feel that you need to start a new paragraph: &lt;strong&gt;do not close the quotation&lt;/strong&gt; (still the same person talking)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Open another quotation&lt;/strong&gt;, start a new paragraph and keep writing. You can do it as many times as you wish. When you are done with that person talking, &lt;strong&gt;close the quotation&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is, however, only for you to decide if you want to interrupt the monolog with tags or somebody else's remarks, turning it into a dialog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T17:00:54.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26891" CreationDate="2017-02-23T16:44:28.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to answer a generalist version of this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to deal with a rather long dialogue paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, you must decide if you really want to have a single person talking non-stop. Personally I don't advise it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, break it up and use one (or some) of the techniques below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can have the other people intervene with comments like 'Oh, dear! What did you do?' or 'I'd never speak to him again'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can have other people, outside the dialogue, interrupt with an accidental bump that'll cause a glass to spill and will force the group to move to a more quiet place. Or, if it's at a restaurant, let the waiter come in and the people either show they're not so interested by happily turning to the waiter, or show their interest by shooing the waiter with a 'we're not ready to order yet. We'll call you.'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the narrator is one of the listening people, you can interrupt the dialogue with their thoughts on particular events being mentioned, or maybe that one person has half his mind on the conversation and the other half is worried about his son who's gone to prom and he better not be drinking because he's supposed to be the designated driver for his friends.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By breaking up the long dialogue paragraph, you avoid boring the reader and get the chance to point at what else is going on, in the area or in the other characters' minds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T16:44:28.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26896" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26904" CreationDate="2017-02-24T01:24:55.690" Score="4" ViewCount="346" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I write answers to questions on the stack exchange network my end result is often quite lengthy. While length itself isn't a problem for me, sometimes my answers end up like &lt;a href=&quot;https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/95465/14848&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. This happens significantly more frequently than I'd like, and I'm never sure what to do when it does happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the long-answers work out fine, especially when I fall into a pattern that I'm comfortable with, such as an essay. However, when I don't naturally fall into a familiar structured writing format by feel as I write the post, it seems almost impossible for me to fix the problems through editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually I just leave a comment to the first person to point it out asking them for help breaking up the text walls, and usually they are willing to do so and that works out okay. However, I'd like to be able to fix these problems myself, though I'm not entirely sure why I struggle to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does one go about breaking up a text wall into a more easily digested format?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23736" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:45:51.913" LastActivityDate="2017-02-24T20:34:24.260" Title="How do I fix a text wall when I already have one?" Tags="|editing|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26896" CreationDate="2017-02-24T02:44:01.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing answers is heavily dependent on your writing style, however, a good method to use is to write a general introduction and soft answer to tell people glancing at answers if your answer is right for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summarize your answer briefly in a very short introduction sentence or paragraph.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simplify your introduction as much as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continue your detailed answer in the following paragraphs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're listing something, use bullet points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's a long answer, designate sections with headers. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In long essays, wrap up with a conclusion summarizing your key points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="23013" LastEditDate="2017-02-24T03:56:56.097" LastActivityDate="2017-02-24T03:56:56.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26898" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-24T03:32:29.103" Score="2" ViewCount="563" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently asked &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/26896/how-do-i-fix-a-text-wall-when-i-already-have-one&quot;&gt;a question&lt;/a&gt; about editing away text walls once I've already made the mistake of creating one, but it would probably be best not to have them in the first place.  What writing techniques should I use to avoid creating text walls when writing long answers in response to written questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, whatever I do will interfere minimally with the ability to generate content; if it's more work than just writing a text-wall-filled post and editing it afterwards it's probably not a good solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23736" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T04:00:30.267" Title="How do I avoid writing text walls in the first place?" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26899" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26906" CreationDate="2017-02-24T05:22:28.380" Score="21" ViewCount="7879" Body="&lt;p&gt;A comment on a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/26898/13494&quot;&gt;recent question of mine&lt;/a&gt; claims &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Right, so that's [large unformatted text blocks scaring off some readers in certain contexts is] a myth. This is how I know: Harry Potter. Big long books. Lots of text. Lots of readers. People come to SE for text. They are not scared of it. But they are information foragers. If your text does not have the scent of the information they are looking for they will quickly move on. Make sure your text is leading the reader the direction they want to go and is making steady progress. (But do keep your paragraphs short. Easier to read on screen.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was surprising to read.  Multiple people throughout my life who've been quite interested in the content of short, nonfiction pieces I've written have requested that I avoid 'text walls' in the future.  While the density on the page was not problematic for them once they actually read the piece, they had significantly delayed reading it because of the lack of paragraphing and other formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the so-called 'text wall' really a thing?  Is it true that in some contexts, large blocks of unformatted text can scare off readers before they start reading?  Or is there actually no such phenomenon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23736" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.217" LastActivityDate="2020-02-27T19:41:01.040" Title="Do 'text walls' scare off readers?" Tags="|formatting|readers|" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26899" CreationDate="2017-02-24T06:07:11.520" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost anything will scare off some readers in some contexts. That does not make them wrong things. It just makes the things that appeal to one person more than another. No work of art or communication should strive to appeal to anyone other than its natural audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone is looking for videos, text will scare them off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If people are looking for short easy answers, long answers will scare them off (even if a long answer is needed). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, there is a place for large blocks of text. If you are using a large block of text when a large block of text is appropriate, it is fine. It won't scare off someone who is looking for a substantial written answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is generally a good idea to break text into fairly short paragraphs, particularly on line. This seems to make text easier to read. The definition of a paragraph is fuzzy at best: &quot;a distinct section of a piece of writing, usually dealing with a single theme and indicated by a new line, indentation, or numbering.&quot; How big is a theme? Themes are fractal, bigger theme are made up of smaller themes. Paragraphs are therefore quite and arbitrary unit, and they have been getting steadily shorter over the last couple of centuries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you do need to be aware of, though, is information scent. Readers on the web have a wealth of sources available to them and this encourages them to make quick decisions about a page and move on quickly if it does not meet their needs. This means that you need to establish what is called &quot;information scent&quot;. Stack Exchange is full of information scent clues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions create information scent.  Upvotes create information scent. If a user is looking for a piece of code they can copy, code blocks create information scent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A block of text gets its information scent from its context and from its opening sentence. If the information scent continues to grow as the reader moves on, they will keep reading. If the information scent flags or is never established, they will stop. &#xA;A block of text may not have as strong an initial information scent as a video, a diagram, or a code block. This does not make text blocks scary, it just means it needs to do a good job of being focused and on target. If a block of text is the right vehicle for saying what needs to be said, then use a block of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are an advertiser, you might decide to use a picture or a video to try to grab the attention of an unmotivated reader. Unmotivated readers are not likely to be drawn to large blocks of text. This is probably where the idea of the &quot;text wall&quot; came from. But it turns out that long form content actually works better for content marketing purposes than pictures of kittens. Why? Because it attracts motivated readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A motivated reader is not scared by a block of text if there is a reasonable indication that that block of text contains the information they are looking for. There are different rules for essayist and novelists than there are for carnival barkers. We should not be dragged down to the lowest common denominator of communication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-24T06:07:11.520" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26898" CreationDate="2017-02-24T06:12:32.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are talking about the unread appearance of your writing; about whether your writing appeals to its readers before its first word has even been read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good!  Visual appeal is part of marketing and marketing is crucial for building a following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But why are you asking for writing techniques to handle a marketing issue?  Writing is about content and pace and style.  It's about what goes into the page, not what the page looks like.  Get the content right first and then come back and make it pretty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't do it the other way around.  If you make it pretty and then fix the contents, the addition or removal of words may mess up your pretty.  If you are trying to handle both content and pretty at the same time, then you are not investing enough attention on your content.  Outline your story, then find the right words for each scene and then, if you aren't already being dragged away by the idea for your next story...  go back and make it pretty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what techniques make the text pretty?   I only know one.  Add carriage returns!  Breaking text walls into short and varied paragraphs softens long dissertations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about grammar, or about the laws defining how many thoughts should go into each paragraph.  Nobody remembers those rules any more.  The only survivor from the age of grammatically correct writing is that we still hit the carriage return each time the speaker changes in a dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, you can pretty much do what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...Just like I have while writing this very pretty, un-wall-like answer.  Seven paragraphs of varying length, short ones up front, 3-5 lines each after the hook has been set, and short near the end to keep them reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it easy to read?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it appealing to look at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you have read it if it was still a Text Wall?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-02-26T04:00:30.267" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T04:00:30.267" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26870" CreationDate="2017-02-24T06:15:52.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd highly recommend simply italicizing and using a script-like font to differentiate between the special language and the common language. The first time this is done, you can denote the difference by using an asterisk note within the speech bubble itself, and then simply alternate between the italicized script and your normal font afterwards. This approach is used extensively by scanlation groups in translating comics, when the author uses a different language within the comic itself as a part of the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the common language of the Nihamo people. There is nothing special to see here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is the language of the Astralonian Royalty. We are rare and our people have been hunted for eons. Our language appears in a different font, but stackexchange does not allow use of different fonts.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your readers should be able to pick up on this quickly and easily, allowing them to distinguish between languages at a glance and readily understand any given dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23740" LastActivityDate="2017-02-24T06:15:52.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26899" CreationDate="2017-02-24T09:32:04.850" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe text-walls are highly subjective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/wall-of-text&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;One general definition&lt;/a&gt; calls it a large amount of text without breaks. But what is large? I'm quite certain that what a 19th century reader considered an average paragraph is often considered large today. On the other hand, one must consider the medium. What one considers a large paragraph online is very often acceptable on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once read a blog entry (which I've failed to track down) from a university teacher (American, if memory serves me right). He claimed that the more time he spent online, the less patience he had for long chunks of text. There is also a wide controversy about attention span and the nefarious (or not) effects of the digital world. There was even a claim that people's attention span had fallen below the attention span of a fish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I have noticed that, since I've started reading online news that favour extremely short paragraphs (think 1-2 sentences per paragraph), I have indeed become impatient with traditional paragraphs on news articles. Once I went so far as to think &quot;ugh, wall of text&quot;. But in fact, it wasn't; it was a well thought out text with far more information than what I'd been reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I accept rather long paragraphs in a book without any problems for as long as each one is a well-thought out unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to imply that the length of what one usually reads dictates what one considers appealing or boring (in terms of length).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: text-walls do exist. Text-walls will make a reader tune out and lose interest (though I wouldn't say it'll scare them). What leads a person to consider a given text a text-wall is subjective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid the problem, consider:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the medium (online begs for shorter paragraphs),  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the target-reader (book readers may have a longer definition of paragraph than people who read mostly online or who dislike reading, whether those paragraphs are online or not)  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the aim (to transmit specific information, a preferance for bullet points and naked, lonely facts is preferable; to create a more, let's call it rounded or contextualised information, go with more a traditional textual approach).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-02-24T09:32:04.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26896" CreationDate="2017-02-24T10:57:24.733" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Organize your copy into thoughts. Break when you have a new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paragraphs separate lengthy copy into smaller conceptual chunks. Each paragraph is supposed to be a new thought, more or less. When we were taught essay-writing in school, the format was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First paragraph: introduction (and thesis statement), where you &amp;quot;tell&#xA;'em what you're gonna tell 'em.&amp;quot; Sometimes the teacher was strict and insisted on three sentences which solely contained the points you wanted to make in each of the following three paragraphs of your essay.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second, third, fourth etc. paragraphs: the body of your essay. &lt;em&gt;Each&#xA;paragraph is one major point.&lt;/em&gt; Anything in that paragraph must support your point and only that point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last paragraph: conclusion, where you reiterate your major points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your question, you have a several thoughts packed into a single paragraph. It looks like everything supports your opening sentence, so the reader has to read &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; to understand your point. I would break it up something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write answers to questions on the stack exchange network my end result is often quite lengthy. While length itself isn't a problem for me, sometimes my answers end up like this. This happens significantly more frequently than I'd like, and I'm never sure what to do when it does happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the long-answers work out fine, especially when I fall into a pattern that I'm comfortable with, such as an essay. However, when I don't naturally fall into a familiar structured writing format by feel as I write the post, it seems almost impossible for me to fix the problems through editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually I just leave a comment to the first person to point it out asking them for help breaking up the text walls, and usually they are willing to do so and that works out okay. However, I'd like to be able to fix these problems myself, though I'm not entirely sure why I struggle to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does one go about breaking up a text wall into a more easily digested format?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-24T10:57:24.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26899" CreationDate="2017-02-24T10:59:52.473" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key word is unformatted. Harry Potter is a set of novels which have paragraphs, reported speech broken out into lines and so on - the normal readability aids. I also note that the Harry Potter books get thicker as the series goes on; it might not have taken off if the first book was Order of the Phoenix. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;wall of text&quot; is much less of an issue in book format than on screens, so long as the text has pagination and is a reasonable size. If you fill an A4 page with unformatted 6 point text nobody is going to read that either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is slightly separate from what's called an &quot;infodump&quot;, which is a chunk of background material that neither involves characters nor advances the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23745" LastActivityDate="2017-02-24T10:59:52.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26899" CreationDate="2017-02-24T11:55:25.767" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Harry Potter is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a wall of text. It uses line breaks, paragraphs, headings and chapters. That’s the opposite of a &quot;wall of text&quot;, which simply means &quot;a lot of text without formatting, line breaks, paragraphs or any typesetting whatsoever&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you properly format your answers, long answers are not bad in any form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with a short summary of your answer - bring the main point across in the first paragraph. Then use subsequent paragraphs to elaborate on that. Finish with a conclusion that brings you back to the start.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Use formatting &lt;em&gt;where appropriate&lt;/em&gt;. Do not &lt;strong&gt;overuse bolding&lt;/strong&gt;. Split your text in paragraphs. Use headlines or taglines where appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do all of the above, your answer will not be a wall of text. It will be easy to follow. People will be able to read your introduction and can then decide wether they will embark on reading further (through the parts of your answer where you elaborate) or if your answer doesn't apply / doesn't interest them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For comparsion, this is my own answer as a wall of text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Harry Potter is not a wall of text. It uses line breaks, paragraphs, headings and chapters. That’s the opposite of a &quot;wall of text&quot;, which simply means &quot;a lot of text without formatting, line breaks, paragraphs or any typesetting whatsoever&quot;. As long as you properly format your answers, long answers are not bad in any form. Start with a short summary of your answer - bring the main point across in the first paragraph. Then use subsequent paragraphs to elaborate on that. Finish with a conclusion that brings you back to the start. Use formatting where appropriate. Do not overuse bolding. Split your text in paragraphs. Use headlines or taglines where appropriate.If you do all of the above, your answer will not be a wall of text. It will be easy to follow. People will be able to read your introduction and can then decide wether they will embark on reading further (through the parts of your answer where you elaborate) or if your answer doesn't apply / doesn't interest them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, it’s much harder to read when not properly formatted. That’s what people critizise when they complain about &quot;walls of text&quot; (at least in the context of internet platforms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19713" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2020-02-21T22:50:39.030" LastActivityDate="2020-02-21T22:50:39.030" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26886" CreationDate="2017-02-24T12:23:02.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mostly wrote plays, and never, ever, have I given the proofreader a cut of the profits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They got .50 cents a page (a play is about 90-120 pages) and that back in the 80's was industry standard. I have heard novelists from some of my wrtiter's agents say they pay about $1 per page today (well, 5 years ago).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plays are a lot more difficult to get published, let alone produced. You have to workshop it first, which is doing first readings where the play is read in a monotone, make changes, then at subsequent readings, you need to find real actors to study the character and read the parts. Then you can see if the dialogue works. If your plot holds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, for me to get a group to do readings like that, I give the play to a community or regional playhouse, and let them put it on without royalties. This way, I get a director, and it goes from being just a set of readings to a dress rehearsal to an actual production. And that is when you stand in the back hoping the audience liked your play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After its first production, then you can get it published in one of the catalogs. I was a member of the Dramatist Guild for years, and by membership found it easier to get first and second readings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think that a proofreader does the same job as first reader, actor for each of your characters, and critiques more than just your grammar and spelling. They get into the roll of each character, and will identify any flaws and inconsistencies with your characters as it pertains to the storyline and plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also will go over the plot. I use the hero method of plotting for plays, as I only have 90 minutes to get my story across. But a novel can have so many subplots, a good proof reader will let you know what is working and what isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And sometimes, especially if you have an agent, they will insist on a second proof reading after you made the changes to your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I did in the theater when I had a play that was good, and this is done in independent movies with low budgets. You give your director, actors, even the sound and camera people equity into the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives them incentive to do the best job possible, because if they don't, they get smaller checks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see possibly paying a proofreader a piece of the action, but not at 15 percent. An agent will take at least that much, then your publisher (if you don't self publish) takes a huge cut. The deduct the cost of printing the book, and the distributors and retail sellers take cuts as well. Depending on your contract, your publisher and agent get their cut, and it can either be a percentage based on the retail price, or the net proceeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are things you need to know before you you decide whether to just pay the $380 to the proofreader, or cut them in for a small percentage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you do not type your manuscript yourself, services charge between .50 cents to $1.50 a page. But you should only use them when you are ready to send copies to publishers. They don't require a percentage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most authors I know whose books sell for $19.99 usually wind up with getting between $1.50 to $3.00 per sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why many self-publish. Even if you get a contract with a large publishing house, you will still have to hit the road to promote your book. Why not save a ton of money and publish the book under a publishing house you own? Then you can expand and publish the works of other writers and take a percentage from their sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your proofreader, like those who do workshop my play, will make or break your story before you even get your book published. It will mean the difference between getting $1.50 per book or $3.00.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: Even if you hire a proofreader, which is recommended, a publisher will hire their own proofreader. This is how important you proofreader is, because up until then, no one has seen your book. First impressions are everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23667" LastActivityDate="2017-02-24T12:23:02.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26909" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-24T17:19:56.840" Score="5" ViewCount="186" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a general concept for a science fiction novel.  I have a habit of looking for information from books and scholarly journal articles to help &quot;fill in the gaps&quot; with such ideas.  In the last few days, I have thought of &lt;a href=&quot;http://cmap.ihmc.us/docs/theory-of-concept-maps&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;concept mapping&lt;/a&gt; as a tool to accomplish this.  However, what I don't want to do is write a thesis.  I want to be rigorous to a point with concepts from scientific or philosophical literature, but I also want to be able to use a &quot;poetic license&quot; to lend my own interpretation of how concepts relate in relation to my story concept.  I am curious if other science fiction writer's use concept maps, and, if so, can they offer case studies?  Otherwise, would there be other examples of how science fiction writers do research besides concept maps as well?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9885" LastActivityDate="2017-02-24T23:00:28.977" Title="Case studies of the use of concept mapping in science fiction writing?" Tags="|technique|software|science-fiction|research|concept|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26909" CreationDate="2017-02-24T18:01:29.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't write Sci-fi, but I do write Fantasy and Historical Fiction and do tons of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually use concept mapping only for processes and relationships between characters, places or whatever. As for information from books and scholarly sources, I usually make detailed notes in a wiki fashion (I use a software for RPG GMs, Realm Works). When I get down to plotting or writing, I can easily go back to my notes for ideas or to remind myself of how things work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I want to take poetic licence on a certain topic, I usually add a snippet/paragraph where I register my take on the matter and how I intend to use it. For example, in one story I reference a jet that actually exists. I have a list of all the stats for that particular jet but I decided my heroes would make slight adjustements so I added my 'story stats' to the entry on the jet. That way, I can always keep track of reality and fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my historical fiction, I distinguish between historical events that are known, that are probable, that are suggested and that are invented by me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that concept mapping becomes less useful when they become too large, so I simply create several for specific points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT TO ANSWER QUESTIONS IN THE COMMENTS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realm Works, the software I use, allows users to create 'articles'. Let's say I've got an article for each character and place in my story. I can then write more or less detailed information concerning each character and place. This can include that character A was born in country Z (and the software can automatically create a link for that particular article) or a list of relationships to the other characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I work with hundreds of characters and I'm visual, I'll create a concept map (I use yEd for that) to visualise those relationships. Then I export it and insert it in the software as a 'smart map'. This means I can create pins that, once clicked, will take me to the article which holds all the information about that person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for research... I'm very particular about respecting historical data. Therefore, I can take notes of articles / thesis / whatever about a historical person, event, technology, etc and insert it as articles. So, when I decide that character B was in Battle P, a link will be created and, when writing, I can easily access all the known details. My research includes known technology (from making ink and dyes with details to ship building and diseases of the time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="22074" LastEditDate="2017-02-24T23:00:28.977" LastActivityDate="2017-02-24T23:00:28.977" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25353" CreationDate="2017-02-24T19:33:33.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://prowritingaid.com/en/App/Desktop&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ProWriting Aid&lt;/a&gt; works with Scrivener. I've used the grammar software mostly on MS Word and like it a lot. I have yet to try it on Scrivener because, at the moment, my Scrivener projects are not in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-02-24T19:33:33.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26841" CreationDate="2017-02-25T06:58:46.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can set yourself a problem and then set out to solve it.  Similar to how a modern composer might choose a 12 tone row and then start working with it.  When you do this, as you play with your row, you manipulate it and transform it.  For example, you might define certain characters or a certain conflict, and then put your characters on the chess board together and see what happens.  And let's remember that a place can also be a character.  Your plot can be subservient to figuring out, and demonstrating, who your characters are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can set yourself a goal, i.e. set up a milestone (that might end up being the midpoint or the endpoint, etc.) and then start writing towards it, either forwards or backwards or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have something in mind, such as a certain nostalgic feeling, or a feeling of magical realism, or a soothing feeling of keeping to a predefined formula (that is defined based on other elements besides just plot), or a certain type of silliness, or some stepping stones that you want to visit, etc., etc., and then try this and that to achieve what you're aiming for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could in principle set up a challenge for yourself of a certain prescribed omission.  Like a movie from a while back, whose name I can't remember, in which a main character never appeared in a scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could start with an unexpected combination of clichés and see where it gets you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are just a few ideas that occur to me about the infinite number of ways you can set out the elements you wish to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-02-25T06:58:46.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26913" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26916" CreationDate="2017-02-25T09:45:56.917" Score="6" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiction#Reality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wiki&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Realistic fiction typically involves a story whose basic setting (time and location in the world) is real and whose events could&#xA;  feasibly happen in that real-world setting.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really ambiguous definition. I have few questions regarding the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apart from basic time and location, what &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; entities are allowed during writing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Considering the definition, can most of the written TV soaps be termed as &quot;Realistic&quot; fiction?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should the tone of Narration be while writing &lt;em&gt;Realistic&lt;/em&gt; fiction?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22084" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-02-26T03:54:43.853" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T03:54:43.853" Title="To what extent 'Reality' be included while writing 'Realistic' Fiction literature?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|style|screenwriting|genre|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26915" CreationDate="2017-02-25T14:08:33.507" Score="5" ViewCount="643" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a story in which the characters must solve a mystery. It's a &quot;team-building exercise&quot; at school, in which they must work together. They are graded on how well they work together and whether they are able to solve the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exercise is a scavenger hunt where objects are hidden around the school. The teams must use their first clue to find an object which will serve as the second clue, etc. until they find the last clue and turn it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, I have no idea where to start. I can't think of good clues. How should I go about creating clues that will be fascinating and challenging?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23436" LastActivityDate="2017-02-25T14:21:49.860" Title="Creating clues for a mystery subplot" Tags="|technique|mystery|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26914" CreationDate="2017-02-25T14:21:49.860" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of your objects first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sit down and brainstorm a bunch of &lt;em&gt;things.&lt;/em&gt; Things which can be hidden reasonably well in a school. Things which might have thematic links to your characters, things which can advance the plot or character development, things which might be funny. You won't use all the things, but having a list will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have your list, you should give your items meaning. Just jot down notes: the ballet slipper means X to Jane (and Y to Dave); the toolbox will be used later by Tanika to get to the notebook which is important to John; the violin belongs to Sebastian. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have a list of items and meaning, start creating links. It might help here if you print out your list and literally cut out each item/note so you can shift things around on the table. See if a pattern emerges, or a plot. You can even sketch out a rough map of your school so you can trace the movements of the characters and see if that jogs anything (like they need to find item 3 in order for item 6 to make sense when they backtrack to the band room). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have items, meaning, order, and a rough plot, then you should have enough content (and context) to start sketching out clues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-25T14:21:49.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26913" CreationDate="2017-02-25T17:24:08.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience is with novels, as opposed to screenwriting, but I can give a general answer about the genre. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no inherent maximum or upper limit to amount or type of real entities that can be used within Realistic Fiction. For example, real-world companies, products, historical figures, etc. may exist in Realistic Fiction. However, for legal purposes, one should take care how any real-world persons, companies, or brands are portrayed. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, most. There have been some soaps/soap opera format shows that included some non-realistic or speculative elements, such as spirit possession, vampires, magic, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tone and genre are not necessarily dependent on each other. A written work may be humorous or dramatic in tone, for example, and still be realistic.   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23748" LastActivityDate="2017-02-25T17:24:08.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26899" CreationDate="2017-02-25T18:02:58.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Text wall&quot; is a term that describes &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-generated_content&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;user-generated content&lt;/a&gt; in internet forums or on social media sites that take longer to read than the average &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/humans-have-shorter-attention-span-than-goldfish-thanks-to-smart/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eight second attention span&lt;/a&gt; of internet users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The common reply to a &quot;text wall&quot; is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TL;DR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TL;DR&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. I never read more than the question title on this site and have never read any of Mark Baker's answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no such thing as a &quot;text wall&quot; in a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-25T18:02:58.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26899" CreationDate="2017-02-25T18:35:33.920" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two kinds of density of text.  It is common to find one author (e.g. Karl Marx) writing text that is dense in both senses, but let's tease the two types apart:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One way of making text dense is to write long, convoluted sentences that the reader has to go back over one or more times to figure out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another way is to have long paragraphs, perhaps spanning more than one page!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The extreme opposite to density type #2 is the &lt;em&gt;bulleted list&lt;/em&gt; -- think of how text is laid out in how-to books such as ____ &lt;em&gt;for Idiots&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have proposed an edit to your question that shows how I edit papers in the social sciences.  I try to honor the &lt;em&gt;idea&lt;/em&gt; the author is trying to get across, but make it so the reader can &quot;get&quot; it on the first pass.  I think that comparing your original version and the edited version may make it easier for you to understand what I'm saying about convoluted sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is surprising to me as I have had requests from multiple people throughout my life who seem quite interested in the content of something (short and non-fictional) I've written that I avoid text walls in the future as, while the various things were not problematic to read once they began, they significantly delayed reading it because of the (lack of) formatting and the correlated perceived density of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This was surprising to read. Multiple people throughout my life who've been quite interested in the content of short, nonfiction pieces I've written have requested that I avoid 'walls of text' in the future. While the density on the page was not problematic for them once they actually read the piece, they had significantly delayed reading it because of the lack of paragraphing and other formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My editor (my spouse) has helped me shorten and simplify my sentences over the years, &lt;em&gt;without sacrificing the complexity of my ideas&lt;/em&gt; by telling me regularly, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Think Hemingway.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastEditorUserId="13494" LastEditDate="2017-02-25T18:41:07.220" LastActivityDate="2017-02-25T18:41:07.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26668" CreationDate="2017-02-25T19:18:38.283" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rhyming in prose is neither inherently bad nor inherently good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the rhyming in some way adds to the story, then it's a good use.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the rhyming distracts the reader such that it detracts from the story, then it's not a good use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with other literary devices, used in moderation and with intention, rhyming can be used to give import to a particular line. &quot;We will be together. Forever.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too much can seem silly. &quot;I explained the strain sprain I received on the lane, again.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23748" LastActivityDate="2017-02-25T19:18:38.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26899" CreationDate="2017-02-25T23:01:05.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My own reaction is that yes, a &quot;wall of text&quot; puts me off, because I surmise that the writer is doing stream-of-consciousness, which is not my favorite. But that's just me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you go to a place such as Project Gutenberg, which has free online versions of many famous novels that are now in the public domain. Look at things you like, and observe the lengths of paragraphs. Understand that in the Nineteenth Century, whence much of the public domain literature originates, writers were more verbose than they are today. Taking that into account, ask yourself: Is this book hard to read? Is my attention wandering? Is it because the paragraphs are too long, or for some other reason?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you will know what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the famous opening of &quot;A Tale of Two Cities&quot; (It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, etc.) is longer than it needs to be, to make the point. But it is memorable and beautiful, and would suffer from being shortened. Yet not long thereafter, Dickens resorts to long paragraphs, and I feel myself dozing off... .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-02-25T23:01:05.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26913" CreationDate="2017-02-25T23:11:30.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All you need to do is ask yourself: If the reader accepts the basic non-realistic premise of the story, are there other elements that are hard to believe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your story is about a vampire, we accept a certain concept to go along with that. But if your vampire drives around the city at night in his Maserati at 100MPH, and somehow never manages to get a ticket, that is very hard to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are used to watching movies, videos, and television, where the episode must fit in a finite amount of time. Thus, things that would not normally happen quicky, do indeed happen quickly. If the character goes to a fast food restuarant to get a hamburger, she is always first in line. That is hard to believe, but needs to be done in a short show. However, in a book, you would neither waste prose having her wait, nor state the incredible luck she has every time she is hungry. The objective is to confine the non-realism to only that part the is inherently unrealistic (she is a space alien, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-02-25T23:11:30.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26922" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26923" CreationDate="2017-02-26T00:16:14.010" Score="1" ViewCount="318" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write a simple textbook on standard high-school level algebra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of what we know about the field, we have known it for centuries. So I'm fairly certain the majority, if not the entirety, of the material to be presented in the text will be part of the open domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, with that being said, it is &lt;em&gt;crucial&lt;/em&gt; to mention that I don't remember every single theorem from the field so I will have to consult other texts and resources for compiling the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question lies here. While the theorems may be read from other books, the knowledge is fairly general and well known. This is somewhat of a sticking point in Mathematics. If for example I want to talk about the precedence of the order of operations, it would unfeasible to trace back the development of this idea throughout history and all the notable mathematicians who have worked on it. This becomes more of a problem when I might have to cite texts/resources I've referenced for every trivial theorem. And then, there's also the issue about finding references for theorems and information that I feel is well known and can be considered &quot;general knowledge.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I deeply respect and honor giving everyone due credit for their hard work; I'm just unsure how this is commonly done and accepted for writing math textbooks. I want to have a completely fair yet manageable balance between citing information and actually writing the text itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm completely new to writing textbooks; though my education and work in the field of math has inspired me to help and contribute to what has meant so much to me in my life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am deeply grateful to anyone who can help guide me on this new endeavor. If there are other legal issues that I should know of, I would be delighted to hear about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I am new to this SE site, so I'm not sure exactly what tags will be appropriate here. So please feel free to edit my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23776" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-02-27T01:20:29.593" LastActivityDate="2022-05-25T17:18:45.233" Title="Math textbook - Crediting sources and copyright protection of source materials" Tags="|citations|copyright|legal|book|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26922" CreationDate="2017-02-26T00:43:52.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be helpful to know that recipes can't be copyrighted &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20181108082341/https://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Link&lt;/a&gt;  (so procedures by themselves are not copyrighted although you can't really copy blocks of wording).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also might help to know about which math titles are in the public domain and can be copied without any penalty. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Mathematics_(Bookshelf)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Mathematics_(Bookshelf)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(There might be others online, but Gutenberg usually does  a more thorough copyright investigation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that all you would need to do is to acknowledge books you referred to in a bibliography at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find this Quora question to be useful: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/If-someone-wants-to-use-math-problems-from-a-book-forum-or-math-competition-in-a-web-project-would-that-be-a-copyright-violation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Are math problems copyrighted?&lt;/a&gt; and this Stack Exchange one: &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1853/copyright-of-mathematical-formulas&quot;&gt;Copyright of mathematical formulas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally you could just summarize parts of books (for example) and as long as the organization of material  and phraseology is not  the same, you would have nothing to fear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I am not a lawyer, etc...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be more attentive to making the examples and illustrations unique and don't worry so much if the sequence of presentation resembles another work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2022-05-25T17:18:45.233" LastActivityDate="2022-05-25T17:18:45.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26899" CreationDate="2017-02-26T01:07:50.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I take this concept to the extreme .. and I think it may be due to some sort of condition ... my motivations have always been to keep things conversational and easy to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm personally accomplishing that goal, I'm sure opinion differs greatly on that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this question tricked my mind into creating &quot;imaginary walls&quot;, and thinking a lot of the answers and even the question looking &quot;blockish.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think walls of text ARE DEFINITELY &quot;a thing&quot;, and it should be mentioned that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;character / font / font size / line width / line spacing&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; can also create these walls ... combined of course with the number of lines in paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of my context is non-fiction, and it's a lot harder to keep people engaged when you cannot make things up haha.  So these &quot;walls&quot; become even more apparent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And some of my non-fiction is training and some of it marketing and sales.  The medium and context also play a part how text is formatted and structured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;THE FLOW&lt;/strong&gt;, so to speak :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One marketing &quot;cheat&quot; we love to use is to survey your audience, using a free survey service like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.surveymonkey.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;survey monkey&lt;/a&gt;.  Not sure if that is a possibility, but hearing from your readers will get it straight for the horses' mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go that route, bribe them with a free ebook or something to force their hands into responding, muhahaha.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Uh oh, are these paragraphs too long?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23594" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T01:07:50.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-26T02:06:04.727" Score="8" ViewCount="512" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently reading a historical fiction novel about the Second World War. The characters are German and the setting is Berlin. The author uses German words or short phrases almost routinely, without any accompanying English translation, without using italics, and without any attempt at context that would allow the reader to easily perceive the words' meaning. Words such as &quot;gnädige&quot;, &quot;Menschenkenntnis&quot; and &quot;elekrische Tram.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a more &quot;fluid&quot; method to give meaning to these words other than crudely following them with an English translation? Should such unfamiliar foreign words be avoided in the first place? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose the second question borders on opinion, but I'm hoping that someone can give me some examples of where an accomplished author has handled this problem adroitly, rather than simply stating the unfamiliar foreign word without translation or context and thereby leaving the reader scratching her head as to the word's meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11398" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-15T15:23:20.813" LastActivityDate="2021-12-30T13:11:07.957" Title="How does a novel writer explain the meaning of foreign words without giving the English translation?" Tags="|fiction|style|technique|language|translation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2017-02-26T03:16:20.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question needs to be rephrased. Of course it is possible to write a story without any world-building. Here are some examples: &lt;em&gt;War and Peace&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;em&gt;The Autobiography of Malcolm X&lt;/em&gt;. Almost everything Agatha Christie ever wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those books assume that the reader has the necessary cultural background because they were written for a readership of the time and place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question should not refer to a &quot;story&quot; (or novel), but specifically to a story set in a time and place that the reader would not immediately understand. Even so, we do understand concepts such as force, territory, empires, travel, hunger, competition, and many other concepts that do not require much elaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have access to them, have a look at the original StarTrek TV episodes form the 1960s, and note how the appearance of the characters, their interpersonal relationships, and their reactions to events are very 1960s. You can give the hippies a haircut and a uniform, and put them in a spaceship, but they're still hippies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T03:16:20.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26772" CreationDate="2017-02-26T05:36:42.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Escapist fiction can deal more or less directly or indirectly with real problems.  Western movies, for example, are highly escapist.  But take a look at &lt;em&gt;Pillars of the Sky&lt;/em&gt; (1956) a fairly little known Western. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2bmokk_1956-pillars-of-the-sky-jeff-chandler-ward-bond-michael-ansara-dorothy-malone-kent-andes-lee-marvin_shortfilms[1]&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2bmokk_1956-pillars-of-the-sky-jeff-chandler-ward-bond-michael-ansara-dorothy-malone-kent-andes-lee-marvin_shortfilms[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People speculate that if advanced aliens came to Earth our society would be changed drastically just like many societies on Earth have been revolutionized by contact with higher civilizations. H.G. Wells, in &lt;em&gt;The War of the Worlds&lt;/em&gt; (1897) directly compared the Martian invasion to European invasions of primitive societies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, almost everyone in the world is a member of the worldwide technological civilization, so nobody has to face how to react to much more advanced societies - until advanced aliens discover Earth in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;em&gt;Pillars of the Sky&lt;/em&gt; give some attention to the problems faced by American Indians dealing with a much more advanced society.  In one scene tribal leaders debate peace or war, with both sides making eloquent speeches and strong cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even an action filled genre movie can have aspects relevant to a real life problem that many humans faced in the past and all humans might face in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a high fantasy story could, like a western movie, depict a small stone age hunter gatherer tribal society facing contact and possible conflict with a much more advanced medieval society (like in the Caribbean in 1492), or perhaps a medieval fantasy kingdom facing contact and possible conflict with a 19th century industrialized society as a more or less prominent plot point, perhaps based on real such events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23780" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T05:36:42.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21719" CreationDate="2017-02-26T06:26:15.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course it is perfectly possible, and more or less probable depending on how different a fictional society is from the one you are familiar with, for a fictional character to be a husband and a father while still a young adult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly the character belongs to a higher social class and has been provided with a wife or concubine while very young, and thus has already started his family while the equivalent of a high school or college student. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a dramatic story tells how Abd al-Raham I (731-788) Emir of Cordoba, as a young Umayyad prince fleeing from the Abbasids in 750, was awoken from a nap, by his four-year-old son Sulayman (745-800) shouting &quot;The black flags!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23782" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T06:26:15.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3317" CreationDate="2017-02-26T08:05:35.167" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Long ago I read a story in a science fiction magazine that was not very much science fiction, if at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was justified as sort of a &quot;lost world&quot; story set about 25 miles from New York City among a reclusive mixed blood group the &quot;Jackson whites&quot; or Ramapough Mountain Indians.  It seemed like a perfectly realistic  and naturalistic story to me except that I didn't know how accurately the group was depicted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It as definitely what could be called a &quot;genre bending&quot; story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess that under some circumstances it would be possible to have a story published as fantasy that had as little fantasy as this story had science fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23783" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T08:05:35.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26931" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-26T09:08:39.087" Score="2" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a book that I want self publish. The book is complete (well I've completed 3 edits and I'm happy with it) so I can publish to a schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I want to self publish is to build an email list to support a crowd funding campaign related to the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is I'm not sure how to build the list.  I'd like to try asking people to sign up to get access to the complete book, or perhaps implement a points system where when people share or invite they earn new chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I started trying to put such a site together with wordpress, but wow, I'm amazed by how unstable wordpress is.  Every minor change you make breaks the plugins and I'm spending more time trying to keep it working than i am writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found sites focused on authors, however they focus on selling not on building a readership who I can interact with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any sites or services that help me build an email list related to my book?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional info&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to use kickstarter or indigogo for my campaign (probably kickstarter).  The book is a fun introduction to science for young girls and I believe there is a opportunity to launch a related product on kickstarter.  I'd like to have an email list ready to support that campaign.  So the campaign is for a physical product rather than for the book itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23836" LastEditorUserId="23836" LastEditDate="2017-03-14T07:31:24.193" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T07:31:24.193" Title="CMS or web service with points system" Tags="|marketing|email|readers|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26931" CreationDate="2017-02-26T11:36:54.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about Twitter/Facebook + Mailchimp. Use Twitter/Fb to build up the list of people interested in your book and in each tw/fb post, include a link to your Mailchimp signup page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23277" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T11:36:54.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2017-02-26T11:58:43.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure. This is totally possible. But I'm not sure what you mean by whether if it's feasible or not. A previous comment on the thread mentioned that it would work if the world 'is already known'. I totally agree with that. As a matter of fact I do believe that this method works both ways, ie, even if your story doesn't exuberate the vigor of character but there is rich depth in the world and its surroundings that result in events of its own it's possible to create a story of its own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23779" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T11:58:43.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26922" CreationDate="2017-02-26T12:02:24.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you pick up several maths textbooks you will see they don't have bibliographies or give credit. Unless you copy the text, examples or structure of another text book you don't need to reference anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one thing you need to consider very carefully is exactly who your book is aimed at. In the UK it needs to be aimed at a year group and an exam board. There is no such thing as a general textbook. As well, for twelve to sixteen year olds the book would have to cover more than algebra -- schools don't want to buy one for algebra, one for fractions, one for trigonometry, etc. Other countries may be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T12:02:24.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26935" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26937" CreationDate="2017-02-26T18:58:44.547" Score="2" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a book which has about 60 pages at the moment, not even to the halfway point of the story. What puzzles me is whether I'm using the right settings about margins and font pt, and that kind of stuff, so I'll list the settings I found on a website and I hope someone with a better experience can help me out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The margins are 1,90 cm lateral and 2,16 cm vertical. The font is a Bembo Std, 13 pt, 30 pt for the chapter title. The interline is same as the normal writing, 13 pt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23790" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-03T04:31:49.463" LastActivityDate="2019-05-03T04:31:49.463" Title="Book Format Shape" Tags="|formatting|book|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24588" CreationDate="2017-02-26T19:14:36.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a historical fact that &lt;em&gt;The Magazine of Fantasy&lt;/em&gt; started in 1949 changed its name to &lt;em&gt;The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction&lt;/em&gt; starting with the second issue and still uses the title today.  No doubt the proportions of fantasy and science fiction vary over the decades.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magazine_of_Fantasy_%26_Science_Fiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Magazine of Fantasy &amp;amp; Science Fiction - Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And take a look at the contents of &lt;em&gt;Fantastic Stories of the Imagination&lt;/em&gt; volume 13 # 4, April 1964.  I have a copy of that issue packed away somewhere and remember some of the stories in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cover story, &quot;Centipedes of Space&quot; is a space opera with a space fleet fighting an interstellar war.  But the plot depends on a rather metaphysical speculation.  &quot;The Rule of Names&quot; by Ursula K. Le Guin is an early Earthsea story with wizards and dragons.  And &quot;The Devil Came to our Valley&quot; by Fulton T. Grant, didn't seem to have any science fiction or fantasy elements, although it is described as sort of a &quot;lost race&quot; story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?58201&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fantastic Stories of Imagination, April 1964&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some more stories that mix science fiction and fantasy elements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Krull&lt;/em&gt; (1983) mixes sword and sorcery and alien invasion of the planet Krull. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Star Trek: Deep Space Nine&lt;/em&gt; mixes science fiction and space opera with the plotine of the protagonist becoming the emissary of the wormhole aliens/Prophets worshipped by the Bajorans and the Pagh wraiths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are &lt;em&gt;At the Mountains of Madness&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;The whisperer in darkness&quot;, and &quot;The Shadow out of Time&quot; fantasy, science fiction, mixed, or pure H.P. Lovecraft? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are countless millions of people alive today who use the products of science and technology and believe that science and technology work and also believe in various supernatural aspects of their religions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so there are many millions of people who believe that just as science fictional airplanes, computers, atomic bombs, trips to the Moon, etc. have come true, many even more advanced science fiction elements will become real in the future, and ho also believe in the reality of supernatural beings of various types.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some people who would believe, for example, that a story about a benevolent god assigning an angel-like being to secretly stop a mad dictator from starting World War Three and killing hundreds of millions of persons was perfectly plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reader can enjoy a fantasy story equally ell if it is set on a flat Earth that is the center of the universe or if it is set on a spherical Earth that is one of gazillions of of planets in the universe.  J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth is both a different times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a reader can believe that elves and dragons might exist alongside an ancient or medieval human society, he can believe they might continue to exist alongside an advanced star travelling human society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a religious reader can believe in science and technology existing in a world with the supernatural beings of his religion, he can accept a story in which science and technology exist in a world with fictional supernatural beings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is possible but not guaranteed for stories that mix science fiction and fantasy elements to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23791" LastEditorUserId="9888" LastEditDate="2017-02-27T00:59:40.990" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T00:59:40.990" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26935" CreationDate="2017-02-26T20:04:22.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no definite paper size to use for your book, margin size, or anything else similar because the publisher will almost always have a preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you're writing, I'd say do what you want that is comfortable for you while you're writing, because you can always change the paper size etc after your finish. Here's what I use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microsoft word. Paper size A5. Font Garamond size 11. Font DarkII for titles, size 28.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;If you are printing a copy for yourself (as a novelty)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sort out the paper sizes yourself. If you're using, for example, a &lt;strong&gt;print on demand&lt;/strong&gt; company, ensure that your manuscript fits to the paper sizes they're offering. Normally, what's on the page - like the margins - don't matter to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;If you're looking to get published&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to sort it out with your publisher. You should check what formatting your publisher likes and organise your manuscript accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T20:04:22.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26938" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26941" CreationDate="2017-02-26T20:19:01.903" Score="2" ViewCount="401" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I probably am wording this badly and that's why when I searched the site I didn't get an answer. So I was wondering, because the recent &lt;strike&gt;totally epic&lt;/strike&gt; chapter of my &lt;strike&gt;masterpiece&lt;/strike&gt; novel involved quite a lot of talking. Almost the entire chapter was talking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read I see a huge variety of description to talking ratios in books. For example, I know that in &lt;em&gt;Justin Cronin's&lt;/em&gt; work there is a lot more description in his talky chapters than say, &lt;em&gt;Stephen Donaldson.&lt;/em&gt; This is why I think this is a legitimate question and thing to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you balance the talking in a chapter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I'm writing with the philosophy that I &lt;strong&gt;should not&lt;/strong&gt; have things in blocks. For example, a block of description, a block of talking, a block of description. I am trying to spread out my description throughout the talking, in smaller bits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How should you balance the talking in a chapter evenly with description and action?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a certain ratio of dialogue:narrative that you should be using?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T21:37:47.863" Title="What is a good ratio of description/action to talking?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|dialogue|structure|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26939" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-26T20:35:20.147" Score="7" ViewCount="1213" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say the character has over the years grown to dislike humans because he had many negative experiences with them, and is disappointed in humanity itself. How does one write such a character without making him too edgy or unlikeable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16367" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-14T01:25:03.503" LastActivityDate="2019-06-15T07:14:29.377" Title="How does one write a misanthropic character likeable?" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26938" CreationDate="2017-02-26T21:04:26.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;General adivce: Instead of thinking in terms of ratios, think in terms of purpose. Have the narrator describe what characters would not naturally say. Have the characters say what the narrator would not naturally describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A literate narrator does not use colloquialisms, and does not hesitiate or become confused. Characters do, when they think or speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was another dreary winter day on the West Coast, with continual light rain and no sign of a break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Aw, bummer,&quot; he mumbled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that a character would not say, &quot;It is another dreary day, with continual light rain and no sign of a break.&quot; Nobody talks like that. And, no serious narrator would write, &quot;Aw, bummer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T21:04:26.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26938" CreationDate="2017-02-26T21:37:47.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really think you shouldn't overthink this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you want to ride your bike, do you plan beforehand the ratio of breathing to pedalling? I know I'm repeating myself here, and I also know that my view is not very popular with many members of this site, but in my thirty years of writing I have learned that (for me) writing is not declarative but &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_knowledge#Cognitive_psychology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;procedural knowledge&lt;/a&gt;. Writing hasn't been explained to me, and when I write I do not follow some set of rules. Writing is something that I have learned by doing it, something at which I have gradually gotten better, and when I do it now it comes as natural to me as walking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have been doing all my life – and what I think you would greatly profit from – is &lt;strong&gt;just write&lt;/strong&gt;. If you want to tell a story, write it (or outline it) as it comes to you. &lt;strong&gt;Do not judge your writing&lt;/strong&gt; (or outline). Trust that it will be the story that you need to write at that moment in your life, and that it will be the best story that you are currently capable of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then write your next novel or short story or whatever. And like the child learning to walk, you will eventually master the craft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will develop a &lt;em&gt;feeling&lt;/em&gt; for what you need to do at each moment in your story. Whether you need to write dialog now, or description. It will just feel right. And as Lauren has pointed out: it doesn't matter if other stories are told differently. This is &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; story. And it will find its own readers, who are different from the readers of those other books, or who will find something different in yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T21:37:47.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26899" CreationDate="2017-02-26T21:45:01.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Who wants to waste time on bad content?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regular consumers learn heuristics based on prior consumption.  For example, you probably enjoy the sight of your favorite food because you've had it before and know that it's good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers are content consumers.  After having consumed tons of content, they've acquired heuristics for estimating the quality of content before investing the effort to consume it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;And text walls stink&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Walls of text have a horrible stench.  They invoke memories of pointless rants, poorly formed reasoning, and unorganized trains of thought.  I'd guess that most of us read text walls at first when we were young, but after each bad experience, we became less and less inclined 'til we stop reading them altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, text walls will drive away users.  They're not really scared so much as they have better things to do.  The internet has no shortage of stuff to read; why waste time on something that, based on experience, seems likely to be of lower quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23793" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T22:04:08.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26939" CreationDate="2017-02-26T22:19:46.283" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll find a lot of good answers here: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2323/how-do-you-make-a-story-succeed-in-spite-of-an-unsympathetic-main-character&quot;&gt;How do you make a story succeed in spite of an unsympathetic main character?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of that: If your character is a misanthrope out of &lt;em&gt;disappointment,&lt;/em&gt; that's your hook. Disappointment means that the person once had hope. So you play on that past hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was he an optimist? A starry-eyed idealist? A romantic? A decent man who was taken advantage of? An ordinary bloke in an abusive relationship? A middle manager keeping his head down who watched fellow citizens vote a tyrant into power? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure out what broke his heart. Find a way to convey that backstory to your audience (not immediately — somewhere between one-third and two-thirds of the way). A cabbagehead, newbie, or Watson are some traditional vehicles for this kind of exposition; you can also do it via a third character or a flashback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, if he can retain some of that hope, even in flashes (think the grouch with a heart of gold), the reader can see that the misanthropy was situational, or earned, and that there's some good underneath which just needs uncovering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T22:19:46.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26944" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-26T22:53:35.223" Score="1" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have polished my first debut novel as a senior at university, and I have sent about thirty to fifty query letters to mostly literary agents in New York, and some in my home state in Florida. I originally wrote this idea as a screenplay before I realized that Hollywood doesn't make original movies for films anymore. There are all based off successful novels. My book is speculative fiction, and if you read or heard of John Milton's Paradise Lost then you'll certainly know where I'm writing about. It is a sort of modern version that has always existed in my imagination before I knew John Milton existed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book is about a tramp, deadbeat father facing the death of his two children as he cons his way into the corridors of finance turning himself into a smooth-talking banker left for death after a series of unfortunate events leads to the Stock Market Crash of 1929. As he mistakenly enters Heaven on the brink of collapse, he finds that a devilish prodigy has kidnapped his daughter as he searches for her in this cosmic paradise. While confronting his son’s rebellion joining a band of renegade angels into terrorism in this resilient tale of faith, and fatherhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What comes to mind when you read this logline? And, what genre do you think it's in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23794" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T11:06:13.383" Title="What Genre Is My Book Judging By My Logline?" Tags="|fiction|novel|genre|agent|queries|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26939" CreationDate="2017-02-27T01:18:50.397" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often what makes a misanthropic character likable to the audience is their sympathetic behavior or expertise in worldly matters. If the structure of your story does not have the time for (or does not aesthetically permit) that the misanthrope in question have an extensive backstory in which their lost hope, shattered dreams, and gradual metamorphosis into misanthrope is conveyed, then a good alternative might be to show how their misanthropy informs their expertise, and allows them to deal with the world in a more realistic and savvy way than other characters, who are are still weighed down by their sentimentality towards humanity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. House comes to mind. His misanthropy often makes him a better doctor, at the expense of his human relationships. It is hyperbole and might not translate into real life, but mental instability in exchange for heightened technical ability is a very old trope. It can be downplayed, played straight, or exaggerated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Downplayed: An unsociable, grumpy man is a good car mechanic due to his extensive time alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exaggerated: A sociopath's complete detachment from humanity, lack of empathy, and talent for manipulating the emotions of others make him the perfect political candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22605" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T01:18:50.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26926" CreationDate="2017-02-27T08:48:15.280" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fiction, I much prefer foreign words not to be in italics. Being foreign already makes them stand out, adding italics makes it even more distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also like to use well-known foreign words, like 'Dieu', 'nein', 'sayonara'... On the other hand, I speak two languages fluently, understand three other very well, and know basic words in another two. What I think is a well-known word may not be so for most people. To address this, I try to ask a variety of people and see if they think it's well-known. If they turn out not to be that famous, I treat them as general foreign and follow the methods below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These methods are based on context and translation. A few examples using a made up language so it'll work for anyone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. context only&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Juphtay, the young Martian who'd just arrived, was putting away some crates when one fell on his foot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Lert!&amp;quot; He yelped and glared at the crate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That must be an expletive of sorts. This approach works well only for expletives, insults or amorous words. Say...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jophtay held his wife and whispered 'nahrthnee' lovingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you use it in a clear context several times, you will be able to use them again and expect the reader to more or less remember their general idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. context with a little help from the narrator&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Juphtay was completely focused in his cooking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oun frags, aal frags...&amp;quot; he mumbled as the milk he poured into the measuring cup went from two centilitres to four centilitres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, you can tell he's speaking up the measures. This particular example is rather weak but you get the idea. This approach works best in situations where characters are so engrossed they're speaking their minds unwittingly as they do something, or they are following instructions and saying them out loud for themselves (at least I do that in real life) or to someone else. Say...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Nagty bwork un pleryith,&amp;quot; Jophtay said, and Anna quickly inserted the key in the little hole on the wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can get a bit mixed up with number 1 (context only).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. narrator translates for the reader&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Juphtay grumbled in his native martian against all the mosquitoes buzzing in the warm evening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Juphtay quickly wrote a message in a Martian shorthand his boss had invented. The human who was in charge of the warehouse was embezzling. Soon he'd have the necessary proof and he'd need a couple of agents to stand ready to assist him once he did get that evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works best if no one else is supposed to understand what's being said except for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. The whole dialogue is translated&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You really must be careful,&amp;quot; Jophtay told Anna in slow, careful Martian so the young human female could follow. &amp;quot;If these people realise you're spying them for me, they may attempt to kill you.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As number 3, essential information for the reader that must be passed on without doubts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5. Another character translates for the reader&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Through the character's thoughts...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Jophtay!&amp;quot; Anna crossed her arms as she stopped at the doorway. &amp;quot;What do you think you're doing?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Larm acht phatorney-up leertun!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anna glared at Jophtay. She knew full well he was just reading a magazine, that was the whole point! It was an English magazine and he wasn't supposed to show everyone around he could read in that particular language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or in direct speech...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Larm acht phatorney-up leertun,&amp;quot; Jophtay said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;So you're reading a magazine, so what? Everyone reads magazines.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or in indirect speech...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Larm acht phatorney-up leertun,&amp;quot; he said over the phone&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anna sighed and once more told him he shouldn't be reading magazines. He knew it was dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach works well if the foreign dialogue isn't very long or information heavy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are the ones I most use. If I can think of more I'll edit them in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oops, I overlooked the second question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should such unfamiliar foreign words be avoided in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personaly, I like the judicious use of foreign words. If a character is foreign, then dropping at least a few foreign words every now and then helps to create the right feel and image. As I said above, I'd rather they aren't in italics &lt;em&gt;in fiction&lt;/em&gt;, and I do dislike if they are abusively used (meaning dropped without any hint to meaning or even just general feel), but no, I don't think they should be avoided per se.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T10:51:14.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26944" CreationDate="2017-02-27T11:06:13.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, that's not a logline, that's a (somewhat confusing) description of the premise. No agent is going to take a second look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A log line or logline is a brief (usually one-sentence) summary of a&#xA;  television program, film, or book that states the central conflict of&#xA;  the story, often providing both a synopsis of the story's plot, and an&#xA;  emotional &quot;hook&quot; to stimulate interest. (Wikipedia)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But all that aside. Paranormal-ish. Christian probably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also your comments indicate you don't really understand how the film industry works. I strongly suggest you start listening to podcasts by people like John August, and reading blogs like &quot;The Bitter Script Reader&quot; and &quot;Go into the Story&quot;. Get yourself an education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's true that Hollywood takes on relatively few externally-sourced screenplays but the number is still in the hundreds per year. However the competition is so huge (50,000 scripts per year) your odds are very low. But they are made even lower by sending a query where you call that paragraph &quot;a logline&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the world of screenplays, just as in novel-writing, agents receive so many queries they use any excuse to reject. Newbie errors are a good choice because anyone who gets such fundamental things wrong probably hasn't written a good script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They know this from experience. Of course, there is the faint possibility they might miss a good script. Chances are they won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10521" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T11:06:13.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26948" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-27T13:32:36.763" Score="4" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a guy that runs a very successful punk/oi! record label in LA. He has asked me if I'd be interested in writing a series of books for him. 60,000 to 80,000 words per book in the series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am new to the lengthy writing game...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His offer is to pay $600 per book and %25 profit share after recoup.  With contract and all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a terrible deal... or? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23804" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-02-27T18:28:36.430" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T16:55:04.953" Title="Pay rate and terms for writing book series under contract" Tags="|creative-writing|money|novella|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26949" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-27T22:41:41.853" Score="2" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I'd like to say that I am as novice a writer as they come. My english is bad, and I've never ever written a fictional story beforehand. However, it's now been years since my mind first started randomly creating a story in my head, and I'd really like to try writing it down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since all of the elements of that story are nothing more than a jumbled mess of thoughts yet, I thought that I should best start by simply jotting down a basic timeline, character profile, and world setting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However: I'm already struggling to do something as simple as that. This time not (only) because I've never written before, but mainly because of an inconsistency in my story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It mainly is about the timeperiod the story is set in. Thing is: By only dreaming, and not really trying to put together a working story, I just took elements from all kinds of periods, and packed them together. In a real story, this would make no sense at all, especially given the type of objects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give more detail: My story is set on a continent of two states, who have been alternating between periods of war and &quot;cold war&quot;, since, like, forever. However, due to other aspects of the story (=personal life of the main character), I don't want the technologies of war to be up to date, at all. Instead, I'd really like it to be a war like a few 100 years back: Preferably with technologies like in the 1600'. Now, while this may all seem well, here comes the problem: I'd like the majority of the rest of the world to be evolved close to today's standards, and some other things even past that. In my mind, I had imagined great doctors with insanely advanced technology at their disposal, being able to go as far as to identify most diseases quickly, and even partly decipher one's unconscious thoughts (I will undoubtedly have to scrap the latter and replace it by some other way to let other characters know about the main characters past/fears, because it's just way too much bullshitery otherwise... No idea yet though). At least in major cities. I also wanted citizens to already live like in today's world, with smartphones, passenger airplanes, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, this makes absolutely no sense. I can't just make the warfare really old fashioned while keeping normal lives up to today's standards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did think about some ways of avoiding to have to change this, for example by implementing some kind of treaty banning modern arms because of too many casualties in previous wars, but that just seems, and actually is, as if I couldnt have come up with anything better. Anything else I come up with is even worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not even everything yet, though. While I want people in the cities to live our lives, I also want some small villages on the outskirts to live like at least 100 years ago: Providing for themselves, no fancy technologies, etc etc (those villages &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; already be about a dozen years older once the plot comes to the cities, but still.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, I have some major problems trying to sort out the period my story is set in. There's just so mich contradictory stuff. And I'm at my wits end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23811" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T17:17:23.193" Title="Starting writing + Resolving a conflict in my timeline" Tags="|plot|setting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2017-03-01T15:21:26.987" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26841" CreationDate="2017-02-28T03:48:44.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest we also have &lt;strong&gt;&quot;The Expander&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked for something other then &quot;Plotters&quot; or &quot;Pantsers&quot;.  I would venture to offer the &quot;Expander&quot;.  An author who writes notes and even entire unpublished stories about off screen characters that they never intend to do more than refer to in a few short throwaway lines. (Or sometimes mean to come back to but either struggle or fail utterly at the return)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 examples:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;David Eddings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He described his (&amp;amp; Leigh's) writing style quite a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He wrote several sweeping Fantasy epics - for the Young adult market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IIRC He described in the forward to one of his books &quot;The Rivan Codex&quot; that he wrote a significant backstory, fleshed out quite a lot of the basic plotline - but the characters went their own way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am suggesting is that one of the best writers of our age wrote a plot. Fleshed out some pretty significant backstory - and then found the story departed into a life of it's own.  Largely following the plot outline the author had set but deviating in some specific points. Sufficiently that the already written backstory in some parts was now incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another author I know - L E Moddessit - has stated he will sometimes write a backstory around a particular character who may never even appear directly in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JRR Tolkien is perhaps the most famous example - some of the notes he made have now been published as &quot;Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-earth&quot; along with some other volumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22837" LastEditorUserId="22837" LastEditDate="2018-04-24T12:55:56.443" LastActivityDate="2018-04-24T12:55:56.443" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26931" CreationDate="2017-02-28T08:03:29.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or simply create a Kickstarter? Many small businesses and various types of creative artists find their funding and audience through that site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, kickstarter is primarily focused on &lt;strong&gt;funding&lt;/strong&gt;, but you may be able to work around that part by setting it up correctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about the share-to-gain-content-part on kickstarter (but I find your approach interesting), however, there are multiple &quot;packages&quot; that the &quot;buyers&quot; can choose from... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thekingdomcomic/dusk-a-graphic-novel?ref=nav_search&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thekingdomcomic/dusk-a-graphic-novel?ref=nav_search&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could perhaps implement an alternative payment-method, using a third-party application? I have no experience with such, but it's likely that one exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T08:03:29.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26851" CreationDate="2017-02-28T09:03:13.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use what you (or people you know) wanted. When I had trouble with making a crush for my main character I friended one of my favorite authors on Facebook and asked her how she got the idea of the crush from my favorite trilogy by her and she said that he was based off of her crush from when she was in high school. So think of the main character as yourself or someone you know. It helps immensely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23814" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T09:03:13.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26949" CreationDate="2017-02-28T09:18:33.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;1&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our world today, not all people have access to the same technology. There are people who live in mud huts. There are people who cook on open fires. There are people who use stone age tools and hunt with wooden arrows. Such lifestyles are quickly disappearing, but they are still there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is perfectly valid that not everyone in your world has access to the same weapons or medical technology. We don't give atom bombs to the bushmen of Africa, so they fight with knifes and arrows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are commonly thought to be two kinds of writers, the plotter, who outlines the story before he writes it, and the discovery writer, who does not know the story and discovers it while he writes it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be a plotter, but sometimes it helps plotting if you allow yourself to &lt;em&gt;discover&lt;/em&gt; your plot – without writing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of constructing your story from your world, as you seem to try to do, you might just &amp;quot;forget&amp;quot; your worldbuilding for a while and take a few days to quickly jot down a rough outline of your story. Write something like a &amp;quot;summary&amp;quot; of your intended novel. You can then understand each sentence in that summary to represent a chapter in the novel you want to write and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;expand&lt;/em&gt; that outline and add the worldbuilding to fit the story, instead of the other way around&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T09:18:33.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26954" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26955" CreationDate="2017-02-28T10:54:43.507" Score="22" ViewCount="15790" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anyone explain in layman's terms, using simple terminology, what exactly is the difference between ISSN and ISBN? There are lots of links on the internet, but they are complicated and use legal terms, and don't explain the difference very well. What is the difference between the two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22084" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-02-28T20:36:32.713" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T09:27:34.963" Title="What is the difference between ISSN and ISBN?" Tags="|publishing|book|isbn|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26954" CreationDate="2017-02-28T11:34:12.970" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;The International Standard &lt;strong&gt;Book&lt;/strong&gt; Number (ISBN) identifies a single, &lt;em&gt;nonrecurring&lt;/em&gt; publication, such as a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The International Standard &lt;strong&gt;Serial&lt;/strong&gt; Number (ISSN) identifies a serial, &lt;em&gt;recurring&lt;/em&gt; publication, such as a monthly journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to give the clear and concise answer asked for in the question. But given the other answers and comments, I'd like to clarify some misunderstandings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word &quot;book&quot; does not have the same meaning for the publishing industry as for the general public. For a lay person, a book is defined by its appearance, e.g. the number of pages, the binding, and so on. For the book industry, on the other hand, a book is defined as a non-recurring publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISBNs can be assigned not only to what the lay person thinks of as a book, but also to audiobooks, ebooks, maps, software, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looseleaf_service&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;looseleaf services&lt;/a&gt;, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, what looks like a book to the lay person may in fact be an issue from a recurring publication such as a journal or a series of monographs and will carry an ISSN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-03-02T16:11:30.050" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T16:11:30.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26956" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-28T13:13:46.643" Score="1" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While inside the weatherbeaten maternity hut lit by a single candle,&#xA;  out of the dark shadow of its mother's womb, the most unusual child&#xA;  ever seen in the village was delivered; and while the child&#xA;  immediately crumbled to nothing but bones and the midwife meticulously&#xA;  assembled it again: the skull with a bottomless pit for the eyes and a&#xA;  nose made of shadows fitted above the spine which curved into the&#xA;  pelvis and into which the legs and feet were plugged, the ribs&#xA;  meticulously fixed to the vertebra and hands plugged into the scapula&#xA;  jutting out of the ribcage; clouds in the vague shape of flowers were&#xA;  covering the sky, glowing pink and filling the breeze with such&#xA;  unnatural fragrance that the villagers all gathered outside of their&#xA;  houses and gazed up at the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, I've been reading a lot of stories written in the style of stream-of-consciousness these days. So when I got to actually writing a little story for the college magazine, the best I could do was come up with this spaghetti sentence. Now, I don't want to lose the detail and the setting, and I also don't want to lose this sense of things happening in parallel, but at the same time ... This thing is huge! I myself get confused and lost when I try to read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is further amplified because I am not a native speaker and I don't know if the nuance is carried over to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would like to know if there is any way I can simplify this sentence without losing the style and the image that it paints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for any suggestion, comment or help that you give.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23815" LastEditorUserId="23815" LastEditDate="2017-03-07T15:20:21.983" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T15:20:21.983" Title="Can this sentence have the same detail and yet be simple to comprehend?" Tags="|fiction|style|clarity|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-03-01T04:00:54.303" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26956" CreationDate="2017-02-28T13:58:54.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a complex sentence, with a complex structure and many adjectives. I, for one, love a well-constructed long sentence, so I won't suggest breaking it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try doing what the midwife does: reconstruct it from its parts. Start with the basics: subject, verb, and object. Keep those clear as you fill in the details. Looks like you have three parts, separated by semicolons. Focus on making each of those clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had trouble understanding the start of the sentence, down to &quot;conceived.&quot; (You might want to say &quot;delivered&quot; instead. Conception is something else.) And, honestly, around &quot;the ribs&quot; I felt like skipping ahead to the third part of the sentence. Maybe shorten the middle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T13:58:54.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26956" CreationDate="2017-02-28T14:02:30.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;two thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) You don't need the &lt;em&gt;while X then Y&lt;/em&gt; structure to convey parallel events. Just list them one after another. It's implied that they're simultaneous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Separate your X and Y (the child's birth/crumbling/reassembly and the clouds). The stream of consciousness is a lot to track, the magical realism is a lot to process, and there are a lot of images to hold in your mind from one end of the sentence to the other. This should be at minimum two sentences: the first is from &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;ribcage,&lt;/em&gt; and the second is about the clouds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite lovely and I think you conveyed nuance well. But even the stream of consciousness can overflow its banks if you try to stuff too much into a sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T14:02:30.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26959" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26961" CreationDate="2017-02-28T14:21:03.323" Score="10" ViewCount="15350" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you define the differences between Tension, Suspense and Mystery in fiction writing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some resources says tension is how much you care about a character but I cannot imagine how it is possible that there is a great suspense but you don't care about the characters. Besides, there can be a tension -in terms of emotions- even without a particular character, no? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23318" LastActivityDate="2021-10-13T13:46:14.790" Title="What is the difference between Tension, Suspense and Mystery?" Tags="|fiction|mystery|suspense|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26954" CreationDate="2017-02-28T15:12:00.657" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;ISBN are used for books. ISSN are used for newspapers, magazines and such. The ISSN identifies the serial as a whole, this months issue has the same ISSN as last months, and all other months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23816" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T15:12:00.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26959" CreationDate="2017-02-28T15:19:22.800" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mystery:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;According to the dictionary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;anything kept secret, unexplained or unknown;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a person or thing that arouses curiosity or wonder;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the quality of being hidden, hard to understand, or puzzling:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we talk about mystery fiction, it usually means the plot is focused on solving a problem, typically a crime. However, the problem may be simply an unexplained phenomenon, not a crime and maybe not even a problem, just an event that piques one's (reader and character's, hopefully) curiosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for mystery within the story, just look at the dictionary definitions. Any plot or subplot point that pique's one's curiosity and requires some effort to understand. It can be a character's hidden backstory, a locked room in a house, a family event that everyone refuses to acknowledge, a downpour over the campfire while the rest of the field is dry (that's a real metereological phenomenon, by the way, but being both a wonder unknown to most people and puzzling even for those who study weather, it deserves to be counted as a mystery).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Suspense:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;According to the dictionary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a state of mental anxiety and uncertainty, as in awaiting a decision or outcome.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, it is an effect produced with a good plot and the right techniques. Mystery may help (in the sense of something unknown and unexplained) but only if there's a sense of danger related to it. Maybe a woman's newest boyfriend avoids talking about his past but, unless he has a fascination about knives, guns and excusing psychos, there's little reason to feel anxious. Unless you're the woman's parents, obviously, but that's 'parental anxiety' and has little bearing here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tension:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;According to the dictionary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;emotional strain, esp. intense suspense, anxiety, or nervousness;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a strained relationship between individuals, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first sight, seems almost the same as suspense, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Suspense and Tension:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This is mostly an empirical answer based on my personal experience as a writer, reader and student of literature (unfortunately, the classes didn't cover this particular topic). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suspense must have tension, but tension doesn't necessarily imply suspense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A strained relationship will have &lt;strong&gt;tension&lt;/strong&gt; (whether it's sexual or not). There is an emotional distress or struggle, for example, there is a deep longing for something/someone that one doesn't know how to obtain so they anxiously hunt (or wait) for it. If the writer does their job right, the tale will capture the reader's attention and will sail the growing tension, eager to see where it will go. There's pleasure surfing that wave of growing tension and little fear; it's a leisurely read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, it won't be &lt;strong&gt;suspense&lt;/strong&gt; until a notion of danger sips in. Maybe the relationship is leading someone into the grip of a murderous stalker or maybe one of the partners risks losing job, house, even family. Now the reader is surfing a mixed sea of pleasure and fear: will it end in tragedy or in a happy ending? The reader doesn't just want to see where it's going, the reader wants to know what is going to happen next, and they want it NOW. To put down the book is to prolong the agony of not knowing who will die (literally or figuratively).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It seems I just keep over-looking second questions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there can be a tension -in terms of emotions- even without a particular character, no? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the readers don't care for the character who is under stressful situations, they'll be less likely to feel the tension as their own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I can personally get gripped by suspense in a story even if I dislike the character. Of course I'm one of those who, if you can't guess how it'll end, then I'll want to know. And even if I hate a character, if everything else is well created, I'll be biting my fingernails to the bitter (or sweet) end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, it's more about the plot capturing the reader rather than the character. Furthermore, if the plot is poorly crafted, there's no sympathy for the character that will make me carry on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="22074" LastEditDate="2017-02-28T15:25:40.477" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T15:25:40.477" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26956" CreationDate="2017-02-28T16:57:31.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the word &quot;conceived&quot; is important later on in the story, try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;...unusual child ever conceived in the village was born, immediately crumbled into bones in the midwife's hands. Horrified, the midwife tried an ancient spell by assembling the pices of the the infant together ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something supernatural happened to the child, so the midwife, in many cultures are said to be able to do magic, so add that to the story. Now you can use the conception and the midwife's failed attempt as something evil that needs to be dealt with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23667" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T16:57:31.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26949" CreationDate="2017-02-28T17:11:40.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that this should be in Worldbuilders SE, but the answer to your problem is probably in changing the focus on what drives scientifical discoveries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our world, many technologies were developed for military reasons, but imagine people were focused on medicine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In parts of Italy, neighbouring towns would show-off their wealth by building these huge towers (for their time) and getting their hands on the best artists to decorate churches and cathedrals. In your world, perhaps having the best doctors is what makes civilisation evolve. Perhaps they do have all the necessary technology to develop killer weapons but they never thought of it because it's developing medicine and surgery techniques that gets you power and money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing on medicine might mean develop electricity and also machines to quickly transport people around. Creating a healthy lifestyle, without slaving with domestic chores, could be seen as a preventive for back problems. This would mean that 'machines that make life easy' would become an industry far more powerful than today's gun industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you'd have to make sure there are geographical and political reasons that play down the need for a war. Typically, war fills someone's pockets; if it doesn't benefit anyone, most governments would shy away from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="22074" LastEditDate="2017-02-28T17:17:23.193" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T17:17:23.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26948" CreationDate="2017-02-28T17:29:11.203" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's unclear if these books are ebook only, print only or both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's an ebook, then that's not a bad deal at all (especially if you are interested in the topic). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 600 is basically an advance. You said &quot;recoup.&quot; I understand that to mean that if revenues exceed 600, then you are entitled to 25% of earnings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With ebooks, very few people are being paid advances. I would insist on half up front, half upon completion (at minimum). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With printed versions, it's likely to take a significant while to earn your advance. (My guess is you won't get any). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 pieces of advice: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)Check to see how much in advertising and illustrations that the record label can include when recouping expenses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)Specify a date at which rights can revert back to you or the right to publish becomes nonexclusive. (10 years?) My guess is that the label is not as much interested in making a killing from publishing but simply providing helpful publicity for musicians; in that case, the label might not have a problem with nonexclusive use later on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3)Avoid a multibook contract if possible. You don't know how much of a time commitment it will be or whether it will sell splendidly. If anything there should be provisions for both parties to end the contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="7968" LastEditDate="2017-02-28T17:36:34.120" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T17:36:34.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26959" CreationDate="2017-02-28T17:49:53.713" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to say something about the Relationship between SUSPENSE and TENSION; as a subjective opinion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember my parents watching the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080516/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Changeling&lt;/a&gt; (1980) when I was in elementary school. I was so much curious about what was going on in that haunted house and who was that ghost called Joseph why he was trying to contact the lead character; and I really wanted to have an answer (to that MYSTERY)... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the fear was too much for me as a small kid so I could not resist (the TENSION) and I had to hide out of the living room. But my curiosity was too much that I forgot about anything else and put my ear to the door to listen the sounds from the movie to figure out what will happen next (a good SUSPENSE). I was trapped in a sort of tunnel and I could not postpone to go somewhere else and ask my parents later to learn what happens in the end of the movie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume, TENSION -if adjusted perfectly- reinforces the SUSPENSE to an extent where the emotional experience of the reader becomes so much satisfying that leads to get herself trapped voluntarily in a tunnel where all the channels are turned off to any other stimulus around but the story...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So (as of now) it seems to me that TENSION is one of the major BUILDING blocks of SUSPENSION. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23318" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T17:49:53.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26967" CreationDate="2017-02-28T18:05:49.603" Score="2" ViewCount="558" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a ten year time lapse between an event in my first chapter and the second chapter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first chapter has an event that takes place during the protagonist's teenage years that lays the foundation for the rest of the story, and the second chapter continues ten years after the event that took place in the first chapter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I let the readers know almost immediately that it is ten years later in the second chapter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some additional points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The protagonist does not appear in the second chapter as other characters are introduced in this one, so the solution from &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/19143/whats-the-most-natural-way-to-show-a-passage-of-time-between-the-prologue-and-c&quot;&gt;This similar question&lt;/a&gt; may not work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was no place to really mention the date in the first chapter so having a date mentioned in the second chapter may not work out either.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18989" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T23:10:24.067" Title="How to show time lapse between two chapters?" Tags="|structure|time-depiction|chapters|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26966" CreationDate="2017-02-28T18:35:09.547" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometime in the chapter's first sentence or paragraph, simply state that there has been a time jump, either by stating the difference (10 years later...) or by stating the new date (or both).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no biggie on this.  Stories do it all the time.  That's part of what the chapter separation is for--setting a new scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8201" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T18:35:09.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26948" CreationDate="2017-02-28T18:35:56.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this were a conventional commercial publisher that was in position to distribute the books widely it would be a very good deal. If it is a purely speculative venture by someone with no previous experience of the book trade, then it is probably not such a good deal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The deal between a publisher and a writers is based on what each brings to the table, and, like everything else, on scarcity. If the publisher is a major publishing house with an established reputation and distribution network, they bring a lot more to the deal than if it is someone outside the industry deciding to dabble for the first time. In other words, the experienced commercial publisher can sell a whole lot more books than the newcomer, which means they are offering the writer a much bigger paycheck, even if they are offering a lower cut on a per book basis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you as a writer should care about are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much am I getting paid overall. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much exposure am I getting (both because we write to be read and because the more exposure we get, the more books we sell).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A publisher who can't demonstrate the ability to sell a lot of books and get you a lot of exposure is therefore bringing less to the table and so needs to offer you a bigger cut of the sales they do make for it to constitute a good deal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it also depends on who else they can get to do the writing for them. There are many willing writers but few able ones. If they think you are one of the able ones, they should be willing to pay for that. (And if they are not, it means they don't think you are one of the able ones, or they can't tell the difference (or you are not one of the able ones).) Deals for the willing but not able are too low to live on, but people will still snap them up, so you just have to decide what you are willing to settle for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T18:35:56.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26956" CreationDate="2017-02-28T18:45:07.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would break that sentence down to something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The weatherbeaten maternity hut was lit by a single candle. Out of the dark shadow of its mother's womb, the most unusual child was born, and immediately crumbled to nothing but bones. The midwife meticulously reassembled the bones: the skull, with a bottomless pit for its eyes and a nose made of shadows, she fitted above the spine, which curved into the pelvis, into which the legs and feet were plugged, the ribs meticulously fixed to the vertebrae, and hands plugged into the scapula jutting out of the ribcage. Clouds in the vague shape of flowers were covering the sky, glowing pink and filling the breeze with such unnatural fragrance that the villagers all gathered outside of their houses and gazed up at the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T18:45:07.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26972" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-28T21:55:20.060" Score="3" ViewCount="599" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the past year, I have written down a number of ideas for novels. I have attempted to focus on a sole idea, and tried to write my novel based on this idea. However, I have far too many times found myself looking at other ideas, as a result moving on to write an entirely different novel. Whenever I do this, I end up deleting the previous novel and have gotten nowhere near finished. Even now, I am on the first chapter of my latest idea. I want to stick with this novel, but I can't get rid of the other ideas that threaten to replace my current idea? How can I fully remove them from my mind to ensure a finished work as soon as possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23823" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T16:54:21.000" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T22:21:49.847" Title="How do I get rid of my excess ideas?" Tags="|novel|ideas|psychology-of-writing|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26973" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26975" CreationDate="2017-02-28T22:18:51.277" Score="0" ViewCount="389" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a G-rated word that will serve as an alternative to &quot;Brown-Nosing.&quot;  I'm thinking that there is a word on par with &quot;flattering&quot; (but with a closer definition) and &quot;buttering up&quot; (though less tacky).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate any help.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23824" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T23:20:43.297" Title="Alternative to &quot;Brown-Nosing&quot;" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-03-02T02:43:30.017" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26972" CreationDate="2017-02-28T22:29:25.453" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep a notebook or a folder on your computer's hard drive, and do a brief plot outline of the new idea.  File that, and return to it after you're done with your current project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process of writing something down will often help to get it out of your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8201" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T22:29:25.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26973" CreationDate="2017-02-28T23:20:43.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;People who are &quot;brown-nosers&quot; are sycophants. The definition of 'brown nose' is to curry favour with someone, usually by acting very obsequiously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, depending on your audience, this could better be described as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sycophantic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fawning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ingratiating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;toadying&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;groveling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;crawling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bootlicking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first literary example that springs to mind is Grima Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings, have a look at how Tolkien models his behaviour and speech patterns, and how he describes him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T23:20:43.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26956" CreationDate="2017-03-01T00:51:15.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with a long sentence, but it should still be a sentence. Long sentences generally result from qualification and elaboration of a single point. But that is not what is happening in this sentence. Rather it is telling a sequence of events as the midwife reassembles the child. This is a paragraph knit together into a sentence with semicolons. But there is no good reason to run all these events together into a single sentence. Essentially, you should have periods where you have semicolons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T00:51:15.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26977" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-01T01:41:02.420" Score="14" ViewCount="661" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try having the name 'James Thompson'. It doesn't really sound like a name a professional writer would have, does it? Because I don't think so.&#xA;So here is my question: Should I have a pen name instead of my actual name for writing books? And if so, how do I create the perfect pen name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23827" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-01T02:05:56.387" LastActivityDate="2021-05-02T18:18:05.847" Title="Do I need a pen name? And how do I pick a good one?" Tags="|fiction|pseudonym|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26977" CreationDate="2017-03-01T02:05:10.370" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been through this. My real name sounds like I should write combat fiction. But I write something else. So, I picked a pseudonym that sounds right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: Do it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just be sure that the copyright can be identified with the real you. In my case, I put my real name in the copyright notice. No point in concealing it. But if you wish to conceal it, be absolutely sure that you personally can be identified as the real copyright holder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you pick a good one? Be natural. Ask yourself: Who would write that? In my case, it was an Italian-American female. I'm neither.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastEditorDisplayName="user23046" LastEditDate="2017-03-01T03:27:31.963" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T03:27:31.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26926" CreationDate="2017-03-01T05:58:00.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most simple solution is &lt;strong&gt;Using footnotes&lt;/strong&gt;. Why not just add a footnote to every foreign word, and make a page with translations in the back? That way it doesn't mess up the flow of the book, but people unfamiliar with the words can easily get the translation and thus still follow the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastEditorUserId="15601" LastEditDate="2021-12-30T13:11:07.957" LastActivityDate="2021-12-30T13:11:07.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26977" CreationDate="2017-03-01T09:41:36.483" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do keep in mind @RobtA's advise concerning copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also like to suggest that you look at what you write and decide what type of name fits. Take steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;language (English, Chinese, Spanish, etc)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1.1 decide whether to apply the same language to both first name and surname or use different languages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quantity of first names&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2.1 one or two (some languages with short names can make two desirable)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2.2 use initials only for first name (two first names could make this sound better)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gender (female, male, unisex)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3.1 initials work great to make a first name seem unisex&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;length&lt;br&gt;&#xA;4.1 decide if you'd rather have all names be long, short or a combination&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;common or not&lt;br&gt;&#xA;5.1 should they be common, uncommon, unique, have conventional or unconventional spelling, ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;meaning&lt;br&gt;&#xA;6.1 should they have an obvious meaning (Autumn), a hidden meaning (Sarah = &lt;em&gt;princess&lt;/em&gt;) or no meaning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sounds&lt;br&gt;&#xA;7.1 a strong sound (e.g. with p, b sounds) or a soft sound ( e.g. with s, l, sounds)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;7.2 abundance of consonants or vowels (Fred vs. Layla)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, start making a list of names and a list of surnames. Mark the ones you like, the ones you dislike and the ones that are ok. Erase the ones you don't like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you chose initials, it's easier, just check the alphabet (so much shorter) for the letters that have the right sound and feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start combining favourite first names and surnames, and then also mix some of the ok names/surnames. If you chose to have two first names, try first deciding which two go together before adding the surname to the mix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly suggest that you end up with half a dozen possible names, even if you fall in love with a particular combination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last stage: get a pool of people and tell them that you have a list of writers. One of those writers is famous for their [genre] books. Can you guess who is it? Or just get the pool to vote on their favourite. It works best if you ask this to 20-30 people rather that 2-3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T09:41:36.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26982" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26983" CreationDate="2017-03-01T10:07:31.133" Score="10" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing the built-in help for a command line program. The exact name is irrelevant, so let's use &lt;code&gt;foo&lt;/code&gt; as a placeholder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This utility can be called with some arguments (like &lt;code&gt;foo -v&lt;/code&gt;) or without any arguments at all (just &lt;code&gt;foo&lt;/code&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling with describing the no-argument call in the built-in help. (There's a common practice that the &lt;code&gt;-h&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;--help&lt;/code&gt; argument is used to print that help on the screen.)&#xA;A common output of &lt;code&gt;-h&lt;/code&gt; command looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;$ foo -h&#xA;foo [OPTIONS...]&#xA;&#xA;Do FOO in the most awesome way possible&#xA;&#xA;  -h --help           Show this help&#xA;  -v --version        Show package version&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the pattern for explaining arguments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  (short) (long)      Explanation&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The no-argument call doesn't fit in this pattern.&#xA;All these variants look quite unnatural:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  foo                 Do the FOO&#xA;                      Do the FOO&#xA;  (no arguments)      Do the FOO&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In search for examples I've looked at several utilities that have valid no-argument calls (e.g. &lt;code&gt;sh&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;bash&lt;/code&gt; and other shells, &lt;code&gt;systemctl&lt;/code&gt;), but none of them describe that in the &lt;code&gt;-h&lt;/code&gt; output. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question: what is the proper way of documenting the no-arguments call in the built-in help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I write something in the place of &lt;code&gt;(no arguments)&lt;/code&gt; above?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or should I explain that in a different place (where)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14004" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T18:33:34.750" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T18:33:34.750" Title="Documenting the no-args call of a command line program" Tags="|technical-writing|software-documentation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26982" CreationDate="2017-03-01T11:47:58.770" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Arguments modify the behavior of a program. Running it without arguments means you get is default, unmodified behavior. So the help should describe the default unmodified behavior first, in the body of the description. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;$ foo -h&#xA;foo [OPTIONS...]&#xA;&#xA;Foo does X. For example:&#xA;&#xA;   foo&#xA;&#xA;X happens.&#xA;&#xA;To make foo do Y, use the -y option. For example:&#xA;&#xA;   foo -y&#xA;&#xA;X happens with a shot of Y.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;Arguments:&#xA;&#xA;  -h --help           Show this help&#xA;  -v --version        Show package version&#xA;  -y                  Make Y happen&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T11:47:58.770" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26982" CreationDate="2017-03-01T13:13:01.803" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, your first line takes care of that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Do FOO in the most awesome way possible&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Square braces for &lt;code&gt;[OPTIONS]&lt;/code&gt; imply all options are optional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If arguments modify the behavior, give the default behavior in absence of an argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;-f filename     Perform FOO on file given, instead of standard input.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If parameters were not optional, you put them in &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;foo [OPTIONS] &amp;lt;URL&amp;gt;&#xA;&#xA;    Process FOO of the URL in the most awesome way possible.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, if this use is standard, but you may allow &lt;em&gt;exceptional&lt;/em&gt; use without the URL, you detail this in the last line, apart from the options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Called without arguments, foo displays this help, same as -h.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T13:13:01.803" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26972" CreationDate="2017-03-01T16:30:12.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One Choice Cuts You Off From All Others&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a common problem for authors since many writers begin writing because they are interested in a number of subjects.  However, spending a lot of time with one subject makes you feel as if you are ignoring all the others.&#xA;It's not completely true however, and that is why a notebook may help you with this -- to simply tell yourself that you'll get to those other ideas later, after you finish this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get To The Root of Your Distraction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may need to get to the root of the reasons that you are so distracted by other ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are a few reasons why this problem may occur&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your subconscious knows there is something flawed about the story you are writing and it's attempting to let you know, but you aren't picking up on it. This is not mean to sound mystical, but instead what I'm attempting to say is that our minds are amazing and are doing far more than we know.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is a subject that you really aren't interested in. It is possible that by the time you've written X number of words you've explored the subject to the level you find interesting and after that, there isn't much left.&#xA;The subject (or treatment) simply isn't enough to build a story around and by the time you've written some you lose interest. It is what it is.&#xA;Every Writer's Fear&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Every writer's fear is that s/he will spend long periods of time writing a novel that is completely worthless -- which no one wants to read and even the author believes is a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To beat this, you'll need to convince yourself that there is value in spending time with the subject at hand.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you convince yourself that the writing is valuable, even if it is only valuable to you?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another entry I wrote here at SO writers that touches upon motivations for writing that you may find interesting: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/22135/how-to-keep-writing/22151#22151&quot;&gt;How to keep writing?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T16:38:18.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26841" CreationDate="2017-03-01T17:32:48.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say &lt;strong&gt;poets&lt;/strong&gt; deserve their own category. (I also like the fact it starts with a &lt;em&gt;P&lt;/em&gt;.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If plotters plot and pamtsers wing it, then poets mosey along at their own pace. They are not simply a combination thereof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plenty of storytellers are poetic at points or in entirety. such as Shakespeare and Homer. I would guess part of their  prose was added or deleted in whatever editing style they adhered to simply to improve on the poetic quality. Some poets, such as e e cummings, are frequently more concerned with the sounds than the words themselves. Story is almost secondary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T17:32:48.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26977" CreationDate="2017-03-01T19:34:43.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course if you want to use a pseudonym, go right ahead. But &quot;James Thompson&quot; seems like a perfectly usable name to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normal reasons to use a pseudonym include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You don't want friends or business associates to associate you with this book. Like if you're writing pornography, or extremist politics. Perhaps you're afraid of repercussions of one kind or another.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You're name is difficult to pronounce or strange enough that it would be distracting to potential readers. Like if your name is &quot;Poopy McSnotface&quot; and you're writing technical chemistry books.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You think your name sounds inconsistent with the type of book you're writing. Like your name is &quot;Bambi Loving&quot; and you write technical books.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;James Thompson&quot; sounds like an ordinary, respectable name to me. I don't know what your problem with it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But given that for whatever reason you don't want to use it ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're publishing through a traditional publisher, you just tell them you want to use this pseudonym and they should handle the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're self-publishing: Put your pseudonym on the spine, title page, back cover, wherever you put author name. When you file your copyright registration, in the US the form has a place to say that this is a pseudonym. You then may, but are not required to, give your real name. Copyright registrations are public record so if you put your real name there, someone could research and find it. If you don't put your real name, I'd guess this makes suing someone for copyright violation more difficult as you'd have to prove that you are the author. I don't use a pseudonym and I've never sued someone for copyright violation so I don't know the details of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not in the US, I don't know how they handle pseudonyms on copyright registrations in your country. You probably would want to look into it, just to make sure there are no gotchas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T19:34:43.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26977" CreationDate="2017-03-01T19:42:22.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an aside, you may want to see the discussion here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/24374/would-there-be-any-problems-with-choosing-a-pseudonym-of-another-ethnicity-and-s/24384#24384&quot;&gt;Would there be any problems with choosing a pseudonym of another ethnicity and sex?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if you are using a pseudonym to pretend to be something you're not, that may not be a great thing. It sounds like you are mostly looking for a more exciting or unique name or something that ties more to your subject. That's fine, just be aware of not putting in a layer of meaning you don't intend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think @Sara_Costa has a good answer for an approach. I think you may have fun playing with the meanings of names as well as the sound (baby name books or websites are a good source for that information) because you may find a good tie in with your subject matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T19:42:22.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26966" CreationDate="2017-03-01T19:47:05.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Adam Miller says, the most direct way is to begin the chapter by saying &quot;Ten years later&quot;, or by giving a date. Lots of books do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some stories try to communicate passage of time indirectly. For example, if chapter one is all about Bill's experiences in elementary school, and then you begin chapter two by saying, &quot;Bill arrived early at his job at the factory that day&quot;, the reader should get the idea that bill is now an adult. Or if chapter one is set in a time when people ride horses and chapter two begins, &quot;The cars raced up and down the highway&quot;, the reader will get the idea that we are now in an age of automobiles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But frankly, I think just telling the reader how much time has passed is usually the better solution. It's clear and simple and it takes maybe one sentence. If you try to indicate the passage of time indirectly, you may confuse the reader. Like in my &quot;Bill arrived early at his job&quot; example, depending on the nature of the story, a reader might be forgiven for thinking that the story has turned to the subject of child labor, or that this is some other person also named Bill, etc. I've read many stories where I've gotten confused by the narrative at some point, and I think to myself, presumably the author knew what he had in mind was happening here, but he has failed to communicate that clearly to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T19:47:05.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26954" CreationDate="2017-03-01T20:17:43.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Further issues worth mentioning ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An ISBN is a &lt;em&gt;product&lt;/em&gt; identifier, not a book identifier, although the products eligible for ISBN assignment are generally books, or products closely related to books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product is usually a single volume book, but a set of three different books sold as a single unit, or a set of ten of the same books sold as a single unit, would have an ISBN assigned &lt;em&gt;even if the individual books had their own ISBNs&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other products are eligible for ISBN assignment -- instructional DVDs that are a teaching tool (rather than just documentaries) are eligible for ISBN assignment. Maps, also, and educational or instructional software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hyphenation of an ISSN is always XXXX-XXXX because it only has two components and the checksum is not separately hyphenated, but ISBN has four components and a checksum, and hyphenation is very varied: 97X-X-XX-XXXXXX-X or 97X-XXXXX-X-XXX-X, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If individual editions of a journal are available for sale individually then they should be assigned an ISBN, hence the individual products have ISBNs while being members of a series with an ISSN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite common for the same series to be assigned one ISSN for printed products and one for online products, even if the content is identical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The master source of information is the ISBN User's Manual from the International ISBN Agency, available in various languages &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.isbn-international.org/content/isbn-users-manual&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ISSN manual is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.issn.org/understanding-the-issn/assignment-rules/issn-manual/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Related to the ISBN and the ISSN are the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.istc-international.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Standard Text Code&lt;/a&gt;, which is an identifier for text-based works, and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;uact=8&amp;amp;ved=0ahUKEwj3-oyNlLbSAhVoKsAKHeQAATwQFggcMAA&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.isni.org%2F&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEZ2fHH9h0XvNny1P9lKxCeeKwqXw&amp;amp;sig2=05kNWlWVSwQWrpGdOXZALA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Standard Name Identifier&lt;/a&gt; which is the unique identifier for the public personae for contributors to creative works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Another thought -- the ISBN is primarily a tool for tracking and identifying a product through a supply chain. Although various stages in the supply chain might have their own identifiers for a product, the ISBN is the common value that links it from publisher to end consumer (retail or library, mainly) sale. This is why an ISBN is not needed for a book product that does not pass through a supply chain (for example Kindle Direct Publishing or privately published books).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISBNs are also used to link different products, so metadata on a product might include ISBNs for the previous edition, the next edition, a replacement product, different formats available for the same product, other products in the same series, other products available by the products contributors, etc.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastEditorUserId="5054" LastEditDate="2017-03-03T09:27:34.963" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T09:27:34.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26966" CreationDate="2017-03-01T23:10:24.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Showing.&lt;/strong&gt; Have the character look at a calender, while checking for a birthday or scheduling in a meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Telling.&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;I can't believe I'm turning twenty-five!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Showing.&lt;/strong&gt; Looking though an old photo album, its pages yellowing with age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Telling.&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;Ten years later&quot; really is an option (it's not that uncommon to see).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Showing.&lt;/strong&gt; Slamming alarm, and talking to spouse about their anniversary coming up, or their child's birthday. Be sure to positively identify the person from the previous chapter, or it might feel disjointed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Telling.&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;Years fly by&quot;, &quot;Oh, but that was years ago now, wasn't it?&quot;. Or how about: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, to be young and foolish again,&quot; he thought, reminiscing about how different was &lt;em&gt;back then&lt;/em&gt;. These days? Life seems to be a balance between paying the bills, and racking up new ones on his credit card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about your style of writing, see what fits that shows what you want your readers to pick up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21105" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T23:10:24.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26841" CreationDate="2017-03-01T23:55:42.233" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit warning:&lt;/strong&gt; I seem to have upset my sister (who also writes) so I've added more detail to no.2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question has been troubling me for a week now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I met the terms - &lt;strong&gt;plotter / planner&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;pantser / discoverer&lt;/strong&gt; - rather recently and I took an immediate dislike to their radicalism. Therefore, I ignored them. Now, @what's question has forced me to think about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, I took to the web searching for those common 'type of writers' thingies (I include blogs, articles, infographs, cartoons, you-name-it under the concept of 'thingies'). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally one can't just classify writers. First we must determine what exactly we are classifying: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...by 'type of text produced'? You've got academic writers, technical writers (subtypes galore whitin that one), journalists, columnists, novelists, ... Only, no, that's not what we're classifying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...by 'how one organises ideas for an essay'? We're getting close, but not yet. Still, you may want to take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/studyingeffectively/studying/writer/types.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article on the University of Notingham's website&lt;/a&gt;. It classifies essay writers in four distinct classes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;Diver&lt;/strong&gt;, which is basically the Pantser&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;Grand Plan Writer&lt;/strong&gt;, which is basically a research-addicted Plotter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;Architect Writer&lt;/strong&gt;, which is a diagram-addicted Plotter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;Patchwork Writer&lt;/strong&gt;, which kicks off with some idea, moves them around to find connections and adds more ideas as they sprout (lets call it a Pantser-Plotter hybrid)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, what we want to classify is...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how a fiction writer organises his writing (plot, characters, locations, ...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea who originated the terms plotter / pantser (could have thought of another term for 'pantser', it always makes me think of underwear), but it's everywhere on the Internet as a great dichotomy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@ggiaquin suggested it should be seen as less of a dichotomy and more of a spectrum. He's not alone. &lt;a href=&quot;https://thisnewmountain.com/2013/07/05/a-writers-approach-plotter-pantser-hybrid/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This blog&lt;/a&gt; mentions the &lt;em&gt;hybrid&lt;/em&gt; for those that get caught somewhere in the spectrum. But it still doesn't satisfy me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The British author Zadie Smith delivered &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/12/zadie-smith-writing-that-crafty-feeling/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a lecture&lt;/a&gt; in 2008 which shows she sticks with the dichotomy, rather than the spectrum, but she gives it nicer (IMHO) names: &lt;strong&gt;macroplanner&lt;/strong&gt; (or plotter) and &lt;strong&gt;micromanager&lt;/strong&gt; (or pantser).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I picked those terms and broke them apart to create five different classes of writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;planner&lt;/strong&gt;, generally speaking, dislikes chaos. He's organised and neat. Therefore he wants his work to be structured, but how much so?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.1 the &lt;strong&gt;macroplanner&lt;/strong&gt; works with large scale plans: events, characters, places, everything is mapped, thought over, analysed and adjusted in order for the whole machine (read 'novel') to work with absolute precision. There may be little surprises along the way but they'll tend to be seen as rebellions to be quickly submitted. The characters do not control the writer. Ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.2 the &lt;strong&gt;microplanner&lt;/strong&gt; works with small scale plans. Most likely, most elements are carefully pre-crafted (say, events) while others are only partially fleshed out (say, characters). Or perhaps the main plot and the main character are carefully decided in advance and the subplot gets relative freedom to do as please (within clear boundaries, naturally). Characters may take a life of their own on occasion but the writer will quickly remind them to behave and conform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;manager&lt;/strong&gt;, generally speaking, dislikes restrictions. He's flexible and deals with what comes when it comes if it comes. He's laid-back and craves the excitement of discovery. He wants his work to come forth naturally, but how much so?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.1 the &lt;strong&gt;micromanager&lt;/strong&gt; starts with chaos (at least I tend to see nothingness as a face of chaos) and gives it order. Literally. He starts with an idea, or a vision (like a picture, a scene or a dialogue), and then he lets things evolve. The story is already there, he just needs to uncover it. The characters rule. Until a certain moment where order starts to descend back into chaos (the traditional chaos of too much disorganised information). Then the writer stops, organises all the information that has come forth so far and may or may not take the moment to trace an outline of what has happened so far. Then he can continue, bravely on, to where no Man has gone before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.2 the &lt;strong&gt;macromanager&lt;/strong&gt; works amidst chaos, from the nothingness type of chaos to the tornado of information type. The characters are encouraged to take a life of their own and do as they will. In the worst case scenario, the writer will write down a random scene of daily life to learn a bit more about the character before sending it into the novel itself (or during a break).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit unsequentially, let's talk about no. 2...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;hybrid&lt;/strong&gt; or the &lt;strong&gt;planning manager&lt;/strong&gt; is a writer that needs plans and chaos in more or less equal measure but in different places. He may start with several plot points that are very detailed within themselves but are disconnected from one another; then, while writing, he'll discover how to connect them. Or maybe his characters allways start out with a couple of impressionistic strokes that the writing will give greater definition to later on. Or maybe he carefully plans a first part where B must cause A to happen and can't plan anything beyond it until he has finished the section and both characters and events have opened some much needed (and previously hidden) doors. Then he can go back to the designing table and decide the details of the next big plot point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.1 the &lt;strong&gt;top-down&lt;/strong&gt; planning manager plans a big arc (or big picture) in detail. A must happen exactly this way so that B can then do exactly that. The little things under that arc? We'll see as they come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.2 the &lt;strong&gt;down-top&lt;/strong&gt; planning manager plans key events in details and determines a set of restrictions that must be respected. As the story evolves, a bigger picture will slowly emerge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.3 the &lt;strong&gt;plot-first&lt;/strong&gt; planning manager plans the setting and the main events in detail, then creates the character and lets them do as they wish in the fictional world (think an RPG with a laid-back GM that gives the PCs free reign to explore the world and choose their battles).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.4 the &lt;strong&gt;character-first&lt;/strong&gt; planning manager previously creates an intricately detailed character and gives it a deep problem. Then lets it search for a solution. Imagine: a parent overcome by grief at the loss of their only son trying to find a meaning to life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;PS: I apologise for not following PC but I'm an old school female who can accept that 'he' works just fine to refer to all the biological and psychological genders in the world (my native language makes it even more naturally so than English).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;PPS: I had a British teacher when I first learned the clothes vocabulary so 'pants' will always mean 'underwear' for me. And, yes, 'pantser' does make me picture a person sitting at one of those swivel office chairs in their underwear. And if you have ever sat on one of those in summer while wearing shorts, you know doing so in underwear is beyond uncomfortable.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="22074" LastEditDate="2017-03-02T00:43:56.473" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T00:43:56.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26993" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-02T04:50:07.373" Score="3" ViewCount="2199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question on a book which its last edition was published about 50 years ago and its author died about 47 years ago. Now it is out of print. The last edition of the book I am interested was translated to English (in 1965). I have sent email to its publisher about this book, but I didnt receive any answer. I also searched this book in the publisher's website, but I didnt find it. I also mention that I cant find its translator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found the electronif file of the book in a website which allows users to download many books from it illegally (that is without any permission from the actual publishers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Can I use that illegal electronic file of the book for self study ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I put the information of the book below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Title: Cardinal and Ordinal Numbers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second Edition Revised 1965&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Author: Wacław Sierpiński&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translated from Polish by: Janina Smólska&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publisher: PWN-Polish Scientific Publishers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23845" LastActivityDate="2021-01-22T16:22:26.080" Title="Copyright of a book which is out of print" Tags="|copyright|legal|book|ebook|publisher|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26982" CreationDate="2017-03-02T07:55:39.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must misunderstand your question, but it seems to me that the function call without argument is already explained in the function description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qIvbh.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qIvbh.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T07:55:39.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4652" CreationDate="2017-03-02T10:51:48.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not an ad for any site or tool! But in Google Translator Toolkit, you can upload your file (editable file like *.doc/ *.txt) and translate it in synchronized paragraphs User interface, and then download it and revise (for the linking words and the smoothness of the speech ) ...and you are done!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good things about this tool are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;machine translation as a prior help&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;help of normal Google translate for difficult words.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;synchronized texts and paragraphs (as well as you can resize the paragraphs) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23849" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-02T17:23:56.110" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T17:23:56.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26972" CreationDate="2017-03-02T11:10:32.613" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the same problem and my solution is to write short stories (10000 words max.) instead of novels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benefits: First, there are skills you can learn only by writing complete works. That is, you cannot get good at characterization and plotting, if you polish one and the same novel ad nauseam. If, on the other side, you write lot of short stories with new characters and plots, you flex those muscles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, maybe you will be able to use these short stories to promote your novels, provided that the short stories play in the same universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also consider whether or not you can channel your storytelling into writing ads for your books. Many ads are successful precisely because they are driven by  a good story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way you turn the abundance of ideas from a liability to an asset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23411" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T11:10:32.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26972" CreationDate="2017-03-02T14:42:50.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;See if you can combine your ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been on a sci-fi kick recently, playing around with ideas about interstellar beacons, colonisation, communication, etc. I've thought about a story taking place on a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dyson sphere&lt;/a&gt;, about a colonisation effort with limited access to faster-than-light starships, about stories that explore multiple spatial dimensions, about the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Attractor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Great Attractor&lt;/a&gt;. I just realised the other day that these stories all take place in the same universe, a place grander and more fascinating than any of them individually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing this allows me to streamline my focus - yes, this story will talk about a group of people trapped on a Dyson sphere and reduced to medieval conditions, but to get there I need to tell the story of the Colonisation Program and its discovery of the truth about the Great Attractor...etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When ideas are truly incompatible, I've spent time working on two or more stories concurrently. I take turns writing a chapter of one, a chapter of the other, a short story here or there...and I absolutely do not delete them. Even if the stories will never be finished, you never know when some chunk of prose can be borrowed and adapted for a new problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22241" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T14:42:50.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26993" CreationDate="2017-03-02T16:45:11.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether or not a book is in print has nothing to do with copyright. For example, it's illegal to copy someone else's book, put your name on it as the author, and sell it. Whether the book is in print or not does not change this. So if this website is selling (or giving away) unauthorized copies of books, the fact that this book is out of print doesn't make it any less illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to you using the illegal copy ... I am not a lawyer, I doubt anyone would prosecute you for reading an illegal copy even if that's a technical violation. But then, the music industry in the US has been going after people who illegally download music with a vengeance. I've seen news reports of a grandmother sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars because her 10 year old grandchild downloaded a song on her computer, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anybody on here know the legalities on that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T16:45:11.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26948" CreationDate="2017-03-02T16:55:04.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Breaking into publishing is very hard. Frankly, if you are a new writer, ANY deal that gives you money and exposure is probably a good deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like any business deal, the key questions are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it worth it TO ME. If you absolutely hate writing and you agonize over every second of doing it, maybe it wouldn't be worth it if someone offered you tens of thousands. But if you love to write and routinely post things you have written on the Internet for free, getting paid even a small amount for what you like to do anyway is a good deal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can I get a better deal elsewhere? I'm sure J K Rowling or Harold Robbins would not take this deal, because they can make millions selling their writing elsewhere. But can you? Probably not. I've fairly often heard newbie writers question some deal they've been offered, saying it's less than what they've heard of other writers being offered for similar work. This is irrelevant. Is anyone offering YOU more for this work?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T16:55:04.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26935" CreationDate="2017-03-02T17:02:29.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're working with a traditional publisher, they'll have their own standards for paper size and margins and so forth. Don't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're self-publishing, the company you work with will normally have a set of page sizes that they support. Pick one that works for you. They usually have minimum margins because of limitations of printing equipment. (If you want &quot;bleed&quot; -- printing very close to the edge of the paper -- this typically costs extra.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I wouldn't worry a whole lot about things like font size and margin while you're writing. With modern word processing software, you can take care of that when you're done. An exception to this would be if you are writing a book where what lands on each page is important. Like if your book has a lot of illustrations and you want the text that goes with each illustration to be on the same page or a facing page, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, the only reason to worry about page sizes and margins and such is to help you track if your book is coming out to a &quot;reasonable&quot; length. Like if you're writing a novel and you figure you're half done and it's only 25 pages, then maybe you need to add more material. If you're half done and it's 600 pages, maybe you need to cut things out or break it into multiple volumes. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T17:02:29.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27002" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27003" CreationDate="2017-03-02T19:14:48.333" Score="1" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is a paraphrased snippet of something I wrote, it is a conversation between the protagonist--a nihilist teenage boy--and an alien sociologist who communicates to him via telepathy, so the dialogue is private.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alien:&lt;/strong&gt; so, you don't want to go to the night club and get laid at all? The world is ending in three days or so, you know.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Boy:&lt;/strong&gt; not really.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Alien:&lt;/strong&gt; you don't want to die a virgin, do you? (&lt;a href=&quot;http://allthetropes.wikia.com/wiki/You_Don%27t_Want_to_Die_a_Virgin,_Do_You%3F&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reference here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Boy:&lt;/strong&gt; where did you get all these shoddy cultural references anyways?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Alien:&lt;/strong&gt; well, I just had to say something that makes me sound like I know a thing or two about human society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be too subtle or too obscure to be noticed, but the last sentence can be interpreted as me--the author--speaking to the reader and acknowledging my ignorance of popular culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is this kind of implicit/ambiguous fourth-wall breaking adding any value to my writing? I would also love to see some examples in existing literature that make use of this feature, if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19055" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T19:31:58.900" Title="Are there any successful precedents of &quot;gentle&quot; fourth-wall-breaking?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27002" CreationDate="2017-03-02T19:31:58.900" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if I'd call that fourth-wall breaking as much as &lt;em&gt;meta.&lt;/em&gt; Meta subtly acknowledges realities outside the text without explicitly addressing the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tolkien's unnamed narrator using &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; in &lt;em&gt;The Hobbit&lt;/em&gt; is &quot;breaking the fourth wall.&quot; The trope is that the story is being told to the reader by the narrator, although the narrator is not a character in the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meta is more like on the BBC's &lt;em&gt;Sherlock&lt;/em&gt; at the beginning of S03E01 &quot;The Empty Hearse,&quot; where a group of fans meet to speculate about how Sherlock might have survived his plunge from the roof of St. Bart's hospital &amp;mdash; including crashing through a plate-glass window to kiss Molly à la James Bond and throwing a dummy off the roof and kissing Moriarty. The &lt;em&gt;Sherlock&lt;/em&gt; fandom spent two years volubly wondering and theorizing how he did it, and there are of course many different shipping communities, so the on-screen (textual) theories were a meta wink to the off-screen, real-life ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you could, strictly speaking, have your line about &quot;where did you get all these shoddy cultural references?&quot; as an authorial nod to the reader: &lt;em&gt;Yes, I understand that these are silly, and I did it on purpose.&lt;/em&gt; The only caveat is that your entire story has to be told that way, with multiple nods and winks and meta lines. You can certainly do it, but it will take some finesse to pull it off. Whether it adds value is up to the reader, and the kind of story you want to tell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crossovers can be meta too — Diane Duane's Young Wizards series has a cameo by Doctor Who in &lt;em&gt;High Wizardry.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T19:31:58.900" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6941" CreationDate="2017-03-02T23:55:54.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is, that there is no fixed number; it depends on context, style, and readership; a similar situation pertains to the semicolon, although the use of semicolons is out of fashion, in this age of diminished attention span; and, above all, it is a matter of intelligibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T23:55:54.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26993" CreationDate="2017-03-03T00:28:37.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can speak only of US copyright law, but the big risk is if you share the file with others. It subjects you to potential statutory fines up to $150,000. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not sharing the file -- just using it for your own purposes. So I don't believe you are subject to charges of copyright infringement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, the worldcat library catalog shows over 500 copies in libraries worldwide (including several in Houston -- where I live!). That makes it fairly easy to request as interlibrary loan through your library &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldcat.org/title/cardinal-and-ordinal-numbers/oclc/796464&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.worldcat.org/title/cardinal-and-ordinal-numbers/oclc/796464&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With some  out-of-print books, it is not unusual for people to reproduce chapters (or entire contents) on the web. It's not an ideal situation obviously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are teacher and xeroxing portions for a class, that might raise additional issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T00:28:37.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26993" CreationDate="2017-03-03T09:06:34.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The copyright on the book (original) expires &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries&amp;#39;_copyright_lengths&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;70 years from death of the author&lt;/a&gt; (per Polish law) - so you're still 22 years short on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The copyright on the translated version will be a joint copyright of the author and the translator, so the longer of the two period applies; Janina Smólska is polish too, and it seems she died in &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-nr92017923/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2002&lt;/a&gt; so the translation will enter public domain no earlier than in 2072.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until then, you can use excerpts from the book under fair use clauses - e.g. for educational use, in white papers. You certainly can't distribute the book, and the site you got it from does so illegally. Using it &quot;from illegal source&quot; is a grey area. More specifically, per US law (DMCA) it seems like the act of downloading the book (which you did already) is illegal, while using it afterwards is okay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be on the &quot;clean&quot; side, borrow a copy from a library, to have it on record, and then nobody can complain you copy&amp;amp;paste excerpts from the electronic version as long as you don't brag about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2017-03-03T09:29:31.843" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T09:29:31.843" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8606" CreationDate="2017-03-03T10:54:58.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...it existed when I was there and &lt;strong&gt;it still exists today&lt;/strong&gt;. So is it is or was?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are correct so long as you're &lt;strong&gt;consistent&lt;/strong&gt;. Right? It's a &lt;strong&gt;style/mood&lt;/strong&gt; thing, right? Right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that even though you are right on the last two points (consistency and style/mood), you are seldom right on the first (it still exists today, therefore present). Why seldom? Because there may be occasions (rare, I believe) when you can pull it off on those grounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, narration should be written in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[yes, I know some stories are written in the Present, but that is harder to pull off and the last ones I did read in that tense didn't work for me at all so... Anyway, 'shouldn't' is never to be mistaken with 'mustn't'.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one is writing the narration in the past, using the present will always force the reader into a different shift. That means that it must be used &lt;em&gt;ocasionally&lt;/em&gt; and for creating the right effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Do note I'm talking about narration, not dialogue.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when to use it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. For the narrator to address the reader directly&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I lived near Les Gobelins. If you've ever been to that area, you know it is a beautiful intersection full of trees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works best when the narrator is in the 1st person, but it can also be pulled off in the 3rd person, albeit it will require more skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She lived near Les Gobelins. If you've ever been to that area, you know it is a beautiful intersection full of trees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though the story is in the past (which creates some distance from the 'now' that is the reader's life), if the narrator talks to the readers, it will pull them in. Using the present bridges the gap between past events and the present of the readers. Moreover, the past underlines the story's eventual fictionality; using the present underlines that at least that snippet of information is real. Or 'more real' than the rest of the fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. To hear the character's thoughts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I walked briskly towards my house, near Les Gobelins. I'd lived there all my life, hoping one day to go away and see the world, and now, after a year living abroad, I looked at that intersection full of trees and stopped. God! Isn't this the most beautiful place on Earth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If done well, we can drop tags such as 'I thought' or 'she said' and give the thought/line directly, because the present tense will be hint enough this is the character's voice. Of course this approach doesn't mean we write off those tags for good; it just means we can choose between how deep inside the character's head we are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. To reinforce you're conveying facts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The house my aunt had rented for me was near Les Gobelins. It wasn't far from the bus stop so I got the map out and started navigating the streets. The first view I had of the area took my breath away. It is this beautiful intersection full of trees and, at that time of the day, the sun seemed to create a halo of sacred mysticism over it. I was in love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd still avoid more than one or two verbs in the present and I would definitely 'sandwich' it with the overwhelming past. You'll want to jab the reader slightly, not jar him out of the tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that the story is in the past so bringing in the present basically says 'break time: listen to me preach about whatever'. In this particular example, because the break is so short, it ends up pairing with the previous phrase ('...took my breath away') to help the reader stop with the character and say 'wow'. And then the tale continues in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. To create a jarring effect&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I re-used the excerpt from point 2 for the first paragraph in order to create the right context for the final punch.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I walked briskly towards my house, near Les Gobelins. I'd lived there all my life, hoping one day to go away and see the world, and now, after a year living abroad, I looked at that intersection full of trees and stopped. God! Isn't this the most beautiful place on Earth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little voice sneered I couldn't possibly be comparing that mess to Versailles or New York, but my heart wouldn't be fooled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, this is still the character's thoughts. It doesn't change the fact it has a jarring effect in this example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine this is the end of a chapter, a section or even the story. You went through it all in the past (gone, distant) and all of a sudden you force the reader into the present (now, immediate, near). By doing so you create a movement 'past &amp;gt; present' and, in this case, when you stop abruptly, it's not unlikely the reader will continue that movement 'present &amp;gt; future' and expect the character-narrator to choose to live near Les Gobelins for the rest of her/his life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To conclude, you can use the present amidst the narration in the past but don't do it because the facts you're relaying are still true now. Do it to create the right effect in the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T10:54:58.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27009" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-03T13:37:36.567" Score="9" ViewCount="3199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing in third person because I want to express the standpoint of both of my characters. Everything's running smoothly except for the part where I want to describe their kiss. I'm in conflict with the idea that in whose POV should I describe the emotion they have during the kiss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the possible options I have and also that the problem that I face with those:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 1:&lt;/strong&gt; I should stick to describing only one person's emotion.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Problem:&lt;/strong&gt; I want to describe both of their emotions. Period. &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 2:&lt;/strong&gt; I should write both of their feelings. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Problem:&lt;/strong&gt; How do I do that? &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simutaneously describing? I feel like I'm flitting from 'he' to 'she', 'him' to 'her'. I feel disconnected and so will the reader. &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One passage each? First 'her' feeling and then 'his' feeling? It reads way too long than the time taken to actually kiss. Also it might seem to look like it's being repeated. Shortening it would make it way too small for each.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So can you help me in solving my conflict and problems? Can you help me suggest a better way of carrying this out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22344" LastEditorUserId="247" LastEditDate="2017-03-03T15:12:44.937" LastActivityDate="2018-10-03T06:04:17.407" Title="How to describe a kiss between the protagonists in third person?" Tags="|fiction|style|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="34489" CreationDate="2017-03-03T14:07:55.693" Score="3" ViewCount="558" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I have a bunch of gifs saved in my Research folder, but unfortunately, when I click on them, they don't play - I have to open them in an external editor to view them. Is there a way to make them play directly inside of Scrivener?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23083" LastActivityDate="2018-03-21T19:05:11.993" Title="Scrivener: Play gifs?" Tags="|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27009" CreationDate="2017-03-03T14:23:46.907" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Avoid &quot;head-hopping&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick one of the protagonists, and describe the kiss from their POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, have the other protagonist refer back to the event, and describe their feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="247" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T14:23:46.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27009" CreationDate="2017-03-03T14:23:51.883" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect that you don't really want to describe their emotions in the clinical sense. Rather, you want the reader to know how they feel, and to feel how they feel, or at least to feel sympathy for how they feel, at the moment of the kiss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, the way you do that is not through what you say in the moment of the kiss. It is how you set it up. Think about how a great romantic kiss is handled in a movie. It does not come out of the blue. It is meticulously set up as the characters go from bickering to flirting to longing so that long before the kiss comes the audience is aching for it, is shouting &quot;shut up and kiss her you fool&quot; at the screen as the hero bumbles through his courtship. Once all that setup work is done, there is no need to describe anybody's emotions. The audience knows exactly what the emotions are, and they feel those emotions too. This kiss is just the trigger, the moment of release, the moment of fulfillment for all the work that has gone before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, therefore, you never describe important emotions. You create them. You only describe an emotion if it is secondary, if it is not something that you expect the reader to participate in or empathize with -- some piece of business that is necessary to drive the plot but is not of the essence of the story arc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So many of the POV question here really come down to the same thing. A struggle to describe in the moment emotions that should have been set up by careful preparation. They are not really POV problems at all. They are setup problems. Create emotions, don't describe them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T14:23:51.883" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27009" CreationDate="2017-03-03T14:25:02.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The representation of emotions from a third person point of view is usually done be describing the outward expressions of the emotion.  Describe the outward signs of their emotions instead of telling the reader what is being felt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern writers often expand on that rather distant, showing technique by leveraging the supernatural nature of intimacy which grants the couple extraordinary insights into each other's soul.  The author is able to report each character's inner state by describing what their mate senses through the sudden intimacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the passion is transformative, leading one or both to personal revelation and growth, the report from the participating, yet perceiving mate can be extremely insightful, without breaking the third person point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all want to believe that intimacy merges our third-person relationships with others into something approaching the first-person relationship we enjoy with ourselves.  Maybe that is true in the real world.  That is a question which each brave lover must answer for themselves.  But in the world of our writings, that merging can be an absolute truth, and as authors we can use it to bend the point of view boundaries, at least for a scene or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T14:25:02.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27009" CreationDate="2017-03-03T14:30:31.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently, your third person point of view is not omniscient, or you would not face this problem, and if you tried to describe your character's feeling simultaneously, having the previous narration written in third limited/objective, you would have to either switch to omniscient, or &lt;em&gt;head-hop&lt;/em&gt;, which would certainly sound unnatural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing that comes to my mind is to write two adjacent scenes, where one ends with one character initiating the kiss (describing all the feelings) and the next starts with the second participant responding to it (all the emotions from a new point of view). I am sure there are other ways to handle this situation, but this is what I would do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might come through as a repetition but only if their feelings are identical, which is likely not the case, else you would not want to show the kiss from two different points of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T14:30:31.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27015" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-03T15:12:15.193" Score="2" ViewCount="1571" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing an acedemic paper on the topic of computation time. I have to include several equations similar to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;O(N&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if there is any special formatting or citing I would have to do for the above equation if I am writing this paper in MLA style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23864" LastActivityDate="2017-10-04T22:52:05.980" Title="How do you format equations in MLA?" Tags="|formatting|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8606" CreationDate="2017-03-03T16:47:59.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As is generally understood in English, &quot;was&quot; denotes a continued state, at some time in the past. If a place &quot;was&quot; beautiful, that does not imply that it lacks beauty now. It does not even imply a change from then to now. The &quot;was&quot; merely implies that the beauty did not happen at a single point in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wish to imply that the place is no longer beautiful, then write &quot;used to be.&quot; Or, you could write, &quot;back then, it was.&quot; Or, a more verbose version might be, &quot;in those days, when I was in elementary school, it was.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T16:47:59.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27018" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27024" CreationDate="2017-03-04T00:00:38.097" Score="9" ViewCount="563" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it horribly irritating when I'm half way through a book and suddenly discover a character I imagined as skinny is now &quot;folding his arms across his barrel chest&quot; or a character I envisioned as one ethnicity is now described as another. It's really jarring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems like it would be a bad idea to restructure your reader's depictions of a character long after the character has been introduced, but I see this fairly frequently. Usually it's just a bit of flavor on the character and isn't related to the plot, but even if the detail is plot-critical, it seems to me that it would be important enough to work it in as the character is being established rather than disrupt the reader's picture. I mean, why hide it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What value is there in adding physical appearance details late in the story and potentially causing the reader to &quot;reload&quot; the character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14466" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T22:28:00.863" Title="Why introduce new physical appearance details late in the narrative?" Tags="|fiction|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27019" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-04T00:47:16.997" Score="2" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written several guest blog posts for a website with a large readership.  I didn't ask for payment because the site is set up primarily as a public service in the special interest area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have written a guest blog post that I would like to re-use (possibly in a slightly different form) in a future book.  I have asked the site manager about this and find her response confusing.  First, she pointed me to the site's reprint policy, which says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;articles cannot be reproduced for resale.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She also said, &quot;Your writing will always be your own intellectual property - even if it’s published on our site.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I request an exception to this in writing before my article is published on their site?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2020-02-24T04:53:02.963" Title="Intellectual rights for a guest blog submission" Tags="|copyright|book|blog|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27018" CreationDate="2017-03-04T03:50:03.470" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the result of two misguided pieces of advice given to most aspiring writers today: &quot;show, don't tell&quot;, and &quot;jump right into the action&quot;. Taken together, these two piece of advice leave no room for the writer to set up their story. So writers ask, how am I supposed to tell the reader the backstory? How am I supposed to tell the reader what my characters look like? And the advice they are given is to work it into the narrative as things go along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the results of this is what you are seeing. It is one of the first things that jumps out at me in many people's writing that I read in critique groups. I call it the reset. The writer give us a couple of hints about a person or a scene. If that is all we get, we build our own images around those details. That would be fine if the details we were given were enough to evoke an image and contain all the information that actually matters to the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then a few pages later, the writer drops a few more details. The picture we have built up shatters and we have to reset and build the picture again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then a few pages later a few more details drop. At which point the reader gives up and runs screaming from the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic problem is that, though they may have some merit in some situations, and if not taken too far, these types of advice, combined with the lamentable obsession with writing in the first person, put the writer in a straightjacket. They take away half the writer's toolkit. Take half the tools away and it is no wonder that the work is often clunky. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, we have all read painful info-dumps and wooden characterizations. But that is just immature craft. Not doing info-dumps or characterization at all is not the answer to not being very good at them. The answer is to get better at them. Note that the first several pages of the first Harry Potter book (or any Steinbeck novel) are pure info dump and characterization. But they are done well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the same token, of course, taking off the straightjacket won't automatically cure all of a writer's craft issues. It is still a very hard craft to master and there are few if any shortcuts. But at least with the straightjacket off, the writer can begin to work on their craft.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-04T03:50:03.470" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27021" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27068" CreationDate="2017-03-04T04:11:17.360" Score="2" ViewCount="287" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always seem to struggle with finding enough information to write a 1500 word close reading essay, and it feels like I stretch my ideas so thin that my essay quality becomes poor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While only referencing a small section from a prose, how do people have so much to write about in their close reading essays? For example, do people exhaust the 5 Ws and one H, talk about the context of the story and connect it at the end, etc? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I know StackExchange does not want a question where an entire book could be written about it, so I am asking for the very basic techniques.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23872" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-07T19:22:53.650" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T21:31:13.863" Title="How do I gather enough material to write a close reading essay?" Tags="|essay|planning|ideas|writers-block|wordcount|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27019" CreationDate="2017-03-04T16:16:00.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL, but, you own all the rights to work you create. No one else acquires any rights to that work unless you grant it to them through an explicit agreement. By sending them your articles to publish, you grant them permission to do just that: publish them on their site. Unless you agree to grant them something more than that, that is all they have the right to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The terms and conditions that you did not read when you signed up for StackExchange included a grant of rights to SE for the stuff you write here. (I don't know exactly what it is, because I did not read it either.) Same goes for Facebook and every other site you have an account on. If you signed up for the site in question and agreed to its terms and conditions then those terms and conditions tell you who owns your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just emailed them stuff, then what is said in those emails (and whatever the work for hire rules in your jurisdiction say) tells you who owns what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of us can know for sure what rights you granted to them. That is in the text of your agreement with them and applicable law. But they cannot just claim rights after the fact just because you allowed them first publication rights. They own what you agreed they would own. You own everything else.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-03-07T04:48:27.277" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T04:48:27.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27019" CreationDate="2017-03-04T17:27:19.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with what Mark Baker said, but you might want to consider the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If she said it is your intellectual property, that suggests you still own the copyright and you didn't give it away. However, you can't just copy what is on the website because they have added to what you supplied (font used, heading colour, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you are writing a book, you won't want something that is exactly the same as you would find on a website. You would want it formatted differently and you would change at least some of the text. This would mean that you are not reproducing the article, you are reusing the ideas, which you supposedly own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-03-04T17:27:19.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27018" CreationDate="2017-03-04T18:10:01.213" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My sense is that it's usually a simple oversight, not a deliberate choice. Often writers have an image of the character in mind, and don't notice that they haven't yet put that image on the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-03-04T18:10:01.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2017-03-04T20:58:04.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are writing fiction (not technical), and if your fiction is along the lines of a detective novel or collection of short stories (but not a picture book), and if it is not in color, and if you need to produce a PDF/X compliant file for a print-on-demand paper book service (not an ebook):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have recently placed the &quot;novel&quot; document class where it can be installed in your TeX distribution by the usual means. Some mirrors have it now, some might respond later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have previously used an earlier version of this document class for an actual. P.O.D. novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The document class uses high-level commands that directly get you to where you need to be. It is actually pre-configured for print layout 5.5&quot;x8.5&quot; with fonts and all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LaTeX is definitely not for most users. Its only advantage over a word processor is that the typesetting engine can often produce more attractive-looking paragraphs. This is most noticeable if your writing style benefits from that kind of typesetting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already know something about LaTeX, and say to yourself, &quot;I am tired of writing academic math, I want to write a murder mystery,&quot; then maybe the &quot;novel&quot; document class is for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-04T20:58:04.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26972" CreationDate="2017-03-04T22:34:02.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's come down to your real issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are &lt;em&gt;deleting&lt;/em&gt; your novel starts without even getting close to the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want to &lt;em&gt;get rid of&lt;/em&gt; other ideas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They &lt;em&gt;threaten&lt;/em&gt; to replace other ideas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;what's comment is coming closest to your problem. It's called &lt;em&gt;fear&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So everyone is feeling some level of fear when doing something worthwhile. That's totally normal. But from what you have described I have the feeling that your angst is blocking you on a level where you should seek professional help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An abundance of ideas is normal and to embrace, not something to fight. Organizing them (as others suggested) helps normally, but not if you have the urge to kill the ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more ideas than you are able to write books. You have to pick one and go with it. And if this is so hard, that you have to eliminate your previous work, go find some professional help. Admitting that you have a problem is the very first step. Now make the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="99" LastActivityDate="2017-03-04T22:34:02.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26972" CreationDate="2017-03-05T15:57:53.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Procrastinate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Do all the same but skip the deleting part. Move on to other ideas but save the work you did on the previous idea you worked. You then will have it available and you can go back to it when you feel like doing so in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your brain will take you back there. That is the point of creative procrastination. Your mind will keep working on it on the background and you will eventually come up with fresh ideas to come back to and keep working at it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not magic, it's just your brain working. It will not solve everything creative and won't do the whole work but it certainly will help you get one step closer to finish some great creative writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23882" LastActivityDate="2017-03-05T15:57:53.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27028" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27031" CreationDate="2017-03-05T17:09:36.360" Score="17" ViewCount="3545" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written a fictional story and the way my characters are coming together and forming a bond seems way too coincidental to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A lady lives on the first floor while her tenant, a guy, lives on the ground floor. A girl is supposed to meet that lady but, on the day of their meeting, the lady has to attend to urgent work so she leaves, without informing the girl. When the girl, who is on her way to that lady's home, calls her, she is then informed of the situation. For all the right reasons the girl has to meet her that very day and she decides that she'll wait for her outside her house. The lady then suggests that the girl can wait at her tenant's place, who is very kind. The girl is about to reach that place when she sees children playing in the house adjacent to the one she's supposed to enter. For all the right reasons, she joins the children just to know that one of them suddenly wants to go home, for he is sick. Turns out that the sick kid is the lady's child. The kid wants to go back to his house, to the tenant, as he was in-charge of the kid for the day. For all the right reasons, she is the one to take him to that guy. While waiting for the lady to come she takes care of the kid in a way that makes the guy fall for her. &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything that has happened is kind of a coincidence but it is the turning point for all the characters to come together. The girl getting in the lady's good books and being friends with that kid. The guy seeing her take care of the kid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't get past the coincidental &lt;strong&gt;urgency of the lady&lt;/strong&gt; and the &lt;strong&gt;kid falling sick&lt;/strong&gt; just in time to let the girl take him to his home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the reader be able to digest such a big moment as a coincidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the only coincidental situation I have created in the story. No other coincidences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have I made a mistake in creating the situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22344" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T18:57:30.530" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T18:57:30.530" Title="Would it be wise to make the turning point of a story coincidental?" Tags="|fiction|plot|structure|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27028" CreationDate="2017-03-05T18:17:32.250" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with serendipity in a story. Our lives are like that anyway, governed largely by chance. What matters in a story is the moral arc of the characters. What chance occurrences should not do is resolve the moral arc of a story. Practical problems are usually caused by chance and are often resolved by chance. But emotional and moral problems should not be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you are basing your character's arc on their ingenuity, then, while you may by chance make the raw material available to them (as in every episode of the A-Team or MacGyver ever) they have to assemble them using their ingenuity.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chance can create the character's problem. Chance can bring characters together. Chance can provide the means for the character to resolve the situation, as long as they still have to pay a cost commensurate with their moral arc in order to create the solution. The one thing that chance cannot do is to complete the resolution without the character paying a cost for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just rewatched the final episode of BTVS last night and none of the planning and disposition of forces for the assault on the hellmouth makes the slightest bit of sense. Why send Anya and Andrew off to guard one of the exists by themselves? Why wait until The potential slayes are already in the hellmouth for Willow to activate them? Tactically and strategically it is completely stupid. And then there is the magical uber-vamp killing amulet that is delivered deus ex machina by Angel on the eve of battle. And why does it have to be worn by Spike in particular? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to all of these questions is that each one of them sets up the circumstances for one character or another to complete their moral arc. No one gets off scot free. Everyone has to have their moment of reckoning. The things that the story does to set all that up make not the slightest bit of sense. But it doesn't matter -- or at least it does not matter much -- because it is far more important to us, say, that Anya and Spike get to perform their redemptive acts, than that there should be any logic to how those acts are set up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, chance is part of life. It is the moral logic of your story that matters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-05T18:17:32.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27028" CreationDate="2017-03-05T18:45:55.967" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a rule... I can't recall the name, but it's a fairly common rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, the more accidental your reveal is, the more build-up you need not to make it a cheap deus ex machina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an example, Tom Clancy's &quot;Sum of all fears&quot;. A nuclear submarine crashes into a huge tree trunk in the middle of the ocean, suffering major damage right when a nuclear crisis is approaching its peak, and the accident serves as a major turning point. How the heck does a nuclear submarine crash into a big tree trunk in the middle of the ocean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, first we start a thousand years ago as the tree seed started to grow... then, throughout several chapters we encounter lumberjacks, transport crew, the whole endeavor of bringing the enormous tree to Japan where it's to be used for a temple. We are presented with a slice of life of a less-than-competent sailor failing to attach it, then the ship in the storm, and the tree breaking free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another plotline through many chapters tells of the tribulations of the submarine crew, a competent captain displaced by ambitious, self-important moron through some back-scene games, and said moron making stupid errors and being a pushover, demoralizing the crew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After so many chapters, when a stupid maneuver ordered by the captain crashes the submarine into the trunk, it comes as a perfectly acceptable incident, with all its elements explained. If anything, the consequences of the lengthy build-up seem rushed, the incident not playing a major role in the whole plot - but the long set-up made it completely acceptable!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same here. Give a thread of build-up of the emergency situation which will demand the lady's attention, some politics and incompetence that lead up to her needing to be there and then. Give the kids a thread that builds up to the food poisoning, say, the kids challenging each other to eat some worms or something else they really shouldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With proper build-up, any coincidences, even not very plausible, will be completely OK. Without that - the writing becomes cheap, a soap opera with little depth and deus ex machina contrivances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2018-04-25T09:08:37.593" LastActivityDate="2018-04-25T09:08:37.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27032" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-05T20:10:03.553" Score="3" ViewCount="1029" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very short question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a trilogy. Book 1 was 88,000 words, but book 2 is probably only going to be 75,000 words. That's over 10,000 words less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I find a way to make it longer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything to gain by making each book in a series a similar length?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is 70-75,000 words okay for length? Too short compared to the first?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T21:50:08.683" Title="Should each book in the series be a similar length?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|wordcount|series|book-length|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27035" CreationDate="2017-03-05T21:08:24.477" Score="4" ViewCount="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears that the word citation and references are use interchangeably. Are they the same thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecitationref.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecitationref.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23886" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-03-06T02:49:55.000" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T00:09:43.863" Title="Are citations the same as references in IEEE?" Tags="|style|citations|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27032" CreationDate="2017-03-05T23:07:28.320" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make it as long as the story demands&lt;/strong&gt; - worst case scenario is if it's too big, it can be split into parts (e.g. A Song of Ice and Fire).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are numerous examples of series with varying book length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Raymond E Feists Riftwar is a good start - Magician is a substantial book by itself, the following two (Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon) noticeably less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wiki puts the page count for that trilogy as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magician: 545&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silverthorn: 352&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Darkness at Sethanon: 425&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus there are the likes of Harry Potter or Obernewtyn etc where the first books are smaller then the following ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no 'rule', nor anything to really be gained, by making your books match each other in length. The length should be determined by the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2017-03-05T23:07:28.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27033" CreationDate="2017-03-06T02:31:48.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;IEEE uses a style that is common for journal articles and academic works.  The &lt;em&gt;citation&lt;/em&gt; is the full &quot;description&quot; of the work -- author, title, date, publication, etc.  The document you linked describes the citation styles for various kinds of works and calls them &quot;citiation standards&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;reference&lt;/em&gt; is the in-text pointer to a citation.  While a citation might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[3] Bovik, H. Q., &quot;Parallel Languages for Parallel Universes,&quot; Otherworldly Computing, 3(391-407),1990.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reference would look something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, Bovik [3] asserts that parallel languages have the following properties...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Confusingly, citations are usually listed at the end of the paper in a section called &quot;References&quot;, though sometimes you see &quot;Works Cited&quot;.  If IEEE has guidelines for the title of this section, I couldn't find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-03-07T00:09:43.863" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T00:09:43.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27032" CreationDate="2017-03-06T07:46:18.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, it doesn't have to be.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your example: 88k vs 75k. Those are already &lt;strong&gt;very similar word-counts.&lt;/strong&gt; A reader will most likely &lt;strong&gt;not tell the difference&lt;/strong&gt; when reading them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My example: Alternate history / Historical Fiction. Part 1 will just be the intro that summarizes real history up to the point where alternate history begins. Part 1 exists to ground the story in context and familiarize my audience with a particular nation's culture (and history!) so that future decisions and plot will make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, Part 1 will probably be 10k words or less which will prolly be &lt;strong&gt;3 times shorter&lt;/strong&gt; than any other Parts, maybe even 5 times or more. But it makes sense to divide the Parts this way and there is no way you would force yourself to extend the intro just for the sake of matching a future Part, which is prolly a more plot-filled Part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(10k words is still a pretty long &quot;intro&quot; ofc.) But in my case it will work because the intro is sort of like a story all its own taking a relatively straight ascent to the climax where a major character gets shot. Then Part 2 begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14803" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T07:46:18.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27033" CreationDate="2017-03-06T08:21:49.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer by Monica Cellio is not quite correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The heading for the list of references is &quot;References&quot;. The &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecitationref.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IEEE Editorial Style Manual&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; clearly labels this section with that heading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SUIWa.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SUIWa.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yF9vG.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yF9vG.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As the title of that section indicates, it contains references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lgsqE.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lgsqE.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many of the terms have multiple meanings, both according to IEEE usage and elsewhere:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;source&lt;/strong&gt; is a document from which you cite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;citation&lt;/strong&gt; is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. the act of quoting text from a source&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. the quotation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. the act of refering to the source of the quotation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d. the reference&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;reference&lt;/strong&gt; is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. a mention of a source of information&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. the source&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the terms &lt;em&gt;source&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;reference&lt;/em&gt; can be used interchangeably, and the terms &lt;em&gt;citation&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;reference&lt;/em&gt; can be used synonymously, but they can also mean different things.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In IEEE usage, the words &quot;citation&quot; and &quot;reference&quot; sometimes mean the same things, sometimes not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T08:21:49.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27028" CreationDate="2017-03-06T09:26:48.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;@SF. wrote a pretty good answer which will certainly help in more situations than just this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's a few small reworks for this particular situation, reducing the amount of coincidences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The lady left because of a medical emergency. She left her child in the care of her tenant, whom she trusts. He takes the child to a nearby playground.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The girl does need to see the lady urgently. She is told she can wait with the tenant, but when she arrives he isn't there. She waits outside.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A short while later, the tenant and the child return and meet the waiting girl. He is initially reluctant to let a stranger in, she even says she's fine waiting outside, but the child immediately likes the girl and this convinces them both to go inside together.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The child doesn't really need to be sick, it just needs to create the initial bridge between these two people. Unless you really need the medical aspect, the tenant could just as easily become smitten with her as she reads the child a story, maybe one she invents on the spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real point is that they should bond over the child, even though it is not their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23891" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T09:26:48.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27028" CreationDate="2017-03-06T09:48:19.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You already got two really good answers, i.e. make it part of a well thought through backstory and make it so the reader really just doesn't care how they got there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to add that if the only thing you are trying to accomplish is for the guy and gall to meet and fall for each other, that can be much simpeler. &#xA;If the girl is on her way to meet the lady, she could meet the tennant anyway regardless of where the lady is. They could bond over some shared interest, which is also very realistic as that is how it usually goes. &#xA;The child could just be the backdrop, or an allusion to future events your guy and girl become parents. The scene where the girl takes care of the child and the guy definately falls for her could take place at some later time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23252" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T09:48:19.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27032" CreationDate="2017-03-06T11:59:41.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Similar&lt;/em&gt; is a loose word, and you should treat it as such. Your second part is 85% of the first, and that's more than adequately similar. If the size difference is more than half/double then it's a reason to worry and reconsider the structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be done by expanding, moving either the &quot;cut point&quot; or transferring chapters between the two parts. Or potentially adding a bonus; a separate novelette with cameos of the main story, taking at a different time, included as an extra to the short part. Or just merging the two into a single volume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, considering  Mikhail Bulgakov's &quot;Theatrical Novel&quot;'s Part II is about 15 pages long, it would make absolutely no sense splitting it off into a separate volume. But if the size difference is of order of order of 70%, there is absolutely nothing to worry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T11:59:41.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27032" CreationDate="2017-03-06T12:44:31.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Artistically, each book should be as long as it needs to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commercially, there are certain limits determined by salability and risk. A thin book may not be perceived by the reader as value for money and so may not sell. A fat book costs more to produce and so represents a bigger risk for the publisher. So publishers generally want books to fall between the Scylla of unsalability and the Charybdis of risk. Exactly where that is for new authors in a particular genre at any given time is something you probably need to research with an agent of publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the range between unsalable and too risky changes greatly if you already have a successful book. If you prove you have an audience willing to snap up a few hundred thousand copies, then both salability and risk issue are substantially reduced and you have a wider range of length to play with. So the answer to you question about your second book really comes down to how well your first book sells.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T12:44:31.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27019" CreationDate="2017-03-06T17:13:58.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with what Mark Baker and S. Mitchell said, but I would make a few additional suggestions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you review whatever agreement you made, if you are still unclear, go back to them (in email, so it is in writing) and explicitly ask what they mean by anything you are unsure about, such as &quot;what do you mean by reproduce?&quot; It may mean they don't want someone printing out the article and selling it, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many places that publish guest article or contributions to their journal/magazine/etc. ask that the author reference them if and when they have the article published again later on (such as in a collection). I would suggest that you have an Acknowledgements page that includes a reference to these folks, and let them know you are planning on doing that. It's common courtesy and may make them feel better about you re-publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T17:13:58.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27043" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27044" CreationDate="2017-03-06T17:23:27.577" Score="5" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished the charming short memoir from actor Cary Elwes, &lt;em&gt;As You Wish,&lt;/em&gt; about his experiences while filming &lt;em&gt;The Princess Bride.&lt;/em&gt; The voice sounds very much like Elwes, but the cover clearly says &quot;&lt;strong&gt;with&lt;/strong&gt; Joe Leyden.&quot; Which says to me &quot;ghostwriter.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's reasonably common for someone who's not a writer to get a ghostwriter to help with a memoir, but Elwes is also a playwright, so it's not like he can't assemble a sentence.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my general question is this: how much work does a ghostwriter &lt;em&gt;typically&lt;/em&gt; do in a nonfiction piece, such as a memoir? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that the answer &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; vary from &quot;everything and the client waves at it&quot; to &quot;act as more of a heavy copyeditor,&quot; but I'm curious to know if there's an industry standard or expectation. I also noted &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/3776/what-to-include-in-agreement-with-a-ghost-writer&quot;&gt;What to include in agreement with a Ghost Writer. . .&lt;/a&gt; but that's more of a contract checklist question, not a &quot;here's what typically occurs&quot; question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T16:16:53.017" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T16:16:53.017" Title="How much work does a (nonfiction) ghostwriter typically do?" Tags="|publishing|non-fiction|memoir|ghostwriter|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27043" CreationDate="2017-03-06T18:21:41.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is too broad. I'll narrow it down for my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Procedure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of coauthored biographies, the coauthor typically interviews the primary author (and other persons), assembles a text from these interviews, and works in feedback from the primary author. That is why such a biography &quot;sounds&quot; like the primary author: it contains what he &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically the primary author in a coauthored biography has little or no writing experience (Cary Elwes, for example, never wrote anything that I could find), while the coauthor is usually a seasoned professional writer (in this case &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.harpercollins.com/cr-101358/joe-layden&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;award-winning journalist and bestselling author, Joe Layden has written more than thirty books&lt;/a&gt;&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Proportion of Work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the typical procedure, the typical proportion of work the coauthor of a biography does follows implicitly: the primary author does all the talking, the coauthor does all the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when Elwes says in interviews that he 'wrote' the book, what he means is that Layden wrote it: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865617108/New-book-from-Cary-Elwes-gives-fresh-view-on-The-Princess-Bride.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elwes was interviewed by co-author Joe Layden in the writing process&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other Kinds of Non-Fiction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;are different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-03-06T18:39:00.960" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T18:39:00.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6834" CreationDate="2017-03-06T18:55:09.387" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can be simply a tool an author will use to keep the character autonymous. The character can be an &quot;everyman.&quot; The experience of the character is a universal exoerience and therefore can be you or me or anyone......&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23899" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T18:55:09.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27018" CreationDate="2017-03-06T21:15:27.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As you are asking your question from the reader perspective, I will answer it from that perspective.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good writer will define all relevant aspects of a character's outward appearance when that character is introduced. Since it is unlikely that you are reading mostly bad authors, we must therefore assume that if you &quot;frequently&quot; discover relevant details later in a book you have probably simply overlooked these details when they were first given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research shows that readers tend to focus more on action than on description; that readers memorize action better than description; and that readers tend to project their own ideas of what a certaint type of character should stereotypically look like into books and overlay the author's descriptions, if those descriptions do not have a function in the narrative or are repeated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As authors, we can learn from this research that we should&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;repeat important aspects of a character's appearance regularly, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;avoid description of irrelevant aspects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T21:15:27.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27032" CreationDate="2017-03-06T21:50:08.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Similar&quot;, I'd say yes. But they don't have to be identical. I'd say 75,000 and 88,000 are in the same ballpark. If volume 1 was 80,000 words and volume 2 was 5,000 words you should think twice about that. That would almost surely be a totally different type of story. But 75,000 vs 88,000 ... no big deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T21:50:08.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27048" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-06T21:52:18.680" Score="2" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read that all preorders for a book count towards first week's sales. So for example, if you open preorder for 3 months and sell 9,000 copies during that time, you could hit the NYT Bestseller list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is there a limit to this period? Could you host pre-orders for 1 year and just work really hard to drive up sales?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2360" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-08T22:54:23.933" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T22:54:23.933" Title="How long can you host preorders for?" Tags="|marketing|sales|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27019" CreationDate="2017-03-06T22:04:55.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Articles cannot be reproduced for resale&quot; and &quot;Your writing will always be your own intellectual property - even if it’s published on our site&quot; aren't necessarily contradictory. If I was the judge and saw those two statements in a contract, I'd think the obvious interpretation would be that articles cannot be reproduced by anyone other than the original author. In the absence of any agreement, that would likely be the default understanding of a court: you own what you wrote, you allowed them to publish it, but the fact that you let this site publish it doesn't mean that you are allowing anyone else to re-publish it. By submitting it, you either explicitly or implicitly gave them permission. But no one else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T22:04:55.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27018" CreationDate="2017-03-06T22:28:00.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, I've noticed this, and there's rarely a good reason for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally writers do this deliberately to spring a surprise on the reader. Like, &quot;ha ha, all along I had you thinking these were people but really they're mice!!&quot; If done well this can be a clever plot twist. If done poorly the reader just feels like the whole book up to this point was a fraud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall that in Isaac Asimov's &quot;Second Foundation&quot;, there's a point -- and I'll avoid giving details to avoid spoilers -- where he suddenly reveals that two characters who the reader has almost surely assumed to be different people all along are really the same person. (This would be awfully tough to do in a movie: wouldn't we see the character's face and realize it's the same person? It would be suspicious if one or both was always seen only as the back of his head, or always wore a mask, or was always in shadows. But in a book it works.) It works because it suddenly brings things together, the reader's likely response is, &quot;Oh, now I see why ...&quot; and &quot;now I get it&quot;. But I can easily imagine a writer doing this poorly and the reader saying, &quot;What? That was a cheap trick to solve the problem!&quot; or even &quot;Huh? What do these two have to do with each other? How could they be the same person? Wasn't one of them in place X while the other was in place Y?&quot; Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, though, I think it's just that the author got sloppy. He pictured in his mind that George was a very young, strong and muscular man, forgets to mention this to the reader, many readers picture George as a thin and frail old man, and then suddenly there's a scene where George saves the day by lifting the car off the accident victim, he mentions at that point how strong George is, and now the reader has to re-visualize every scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lesson authors should learn is: If there's something about a character that is important to the story, and that would be obvious when anyone first sees him, be sure you mention it when he is first introduced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this can create a problem with getting a story or a scene started. You don't want to beat descriptions to death. The reader doesn't necessarily need to know that a character is wearing a ring on the third finger of his right hand, that his shoelaces are black, or that he has a small mole behind his right ear. But tell the reader the things that would be obvious about the character to anyone seeing him when the reader first sees him, and that matters to the story. You can often do this very briefly. Like, &quot;Tom was well-dressed&quot; may be plenty of information. You don't have to specify the exact color of his tie and the brand of his cuff links. But if a scene begins, &quot;Tom was working on his farm&quot;, then unless you specify otherwise, I'm going to assume he's wearing blue jeans or overalls. Don't tell me five pages later that he's wearing a tuxedo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T22:28:00.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27009" CreationDate="2017-03-06T22:43:59.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some good answers. Let me add one more thought:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to describe the feelings of both characters? Even aside from Mark Baker's comment that it may not be necessary to describe the feelings of either, even if you want or need to describe the feelings, would one person's point of view be sufficient to get the message across?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If their feelings are radically different, then yes, it's necessary. It reminds me of an article I read years ago where a man related how his wife once told him that while they were dating, she once made a comment to him that began, &quot;You know, we've been dating for six months now and ...&quot; And then suddenly she panicked, thinking that he would take this as her pressuring him to make a commitment. When she got home she called her mother to discuss the conversation; she talked about it to all her girlfriends. And so, she wondered years later, did he remember the conversation and what was he thinking? He said he did remember it quite well. And what he was thinking at the time was, &quot;Have we really been dating for six months? Because I'm pretty sure I haven't changed the oil since we started dating.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point being: If their thoughts are similar, if they've both been waiting anxiously for this moment, etc, then describing the feelings of one of them should be plenty. Only if they're seriously different do you need to describe both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this is a case where you could likely solve the problem by simply having them each say what they're feeling rather than going inside their heads. &quot;Oh George, I've been waiting so long for this moment,&quot; she said. &quot;All this time I thought you weren't interested,&quot; he replied. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T22:43:59.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27048" CreationDate="2017-03-06T23:07:02.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't know from experience, but a year out is pretty long... for pretty much anything whether it is games, movies, or books.  The only time I have seen that much time during a preorder would be for crowd fund perks.  Part of it is because you want the hype to maintain.  If you do it a year in advance, people may even completely forget about the book until they get an email saying it is ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amarketingexpert.com/boost-book-amazons-pre-order/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; that seems to share similar views about the length but they even go further to suggest that preorders may not even be as good as you may think.  I don't know how reputable the link would be but I think they do provide an interesting point of view too about publishing (though this is mostly in regards to people who self publish through Amazon).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T23:07:02.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14747" CreationDate="2017-03-07T00:34:46.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always, always, always place a copyright notice: Copyright ©2017 Your Name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do that, even if you intend to give it away free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the actual copyright symbol is used, not (c). Also, if there is any doubt about who Your Name means, put sufficient contact info (keeping in mind that you don't want spam, which will largely consist of services offering to help you become a big-time writer, for a fee). At a minimum, unless you are trying to conceal your identity (unlikely) put your town or residence (Your Name, of Anytown, Anystate USA).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may write your own license, or none at all. What may someone do? What may they not do? Do you care if they make money from it? And so forth. If in doubt, I would look at the Creative commons licenses, since they are not nailed down to software as much as some others.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Always, always, always place disclaimers. No warranty! This is fiction! (If it is fiction.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And now for something important: Does your work contain anything at all that does not originate from you? For example: Is it a PDF, with embedded fonts? What are the licenses for those fonts? You can't give a PDF away with &quot;no restrictions&quot; if it contains fonts that do have restrictions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can always put: Copyright ©2017 Your Name. All Rights Reserved.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means: No license! You haven't given away a thing. You can always change that, and add a license later. In the intervening time, many folks who want to read what you wrote will ignore whatever you put for the copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T00:34:46.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27056" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-07T03:46:17.547" Score="5" ViewCount="2973" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently learning about story structure and there's not much consensus on the &quot;black moment&quot; or &quot;all is lost lull&quot; that happens around Act 2. Is this moment of defeat before or after the second plot point? Or rather &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; it the second plot point? Does it matter? Is it a matter of preference for the writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23101" LastActivityDate="2019-08-30T11:32:40.933" Title="Where does the &quot;black moment&quot; fall in a novel?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|plot|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27056" CreationDate="2017-03-07T06:47:57.947" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;What is the darkest, blackest moment in a book?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I think it's best to understand what this is, considering you asked. The darkest moment in the book is when a character loses all hope - normally the protagonist. It's often towards the end of the book, because that's right before the inevitable happy ending (or not, if you're being cruel) will emerge from the dark. Some features of darkest hours include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Moral crises&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Death (of loved ones, companions, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist's goal becomes seemingly out of reach&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The tables look like they have turned for good. The plot looks like it has been derailed and can't get back on track.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be seen as the climax of the book. It is the absolute climax where the hero faces everything head-on, and often can't get out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Where does it fall?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost always at the end. Due to the type of event that it is, considering the factors that we just listed, it only really works as a climactic point at the end of the book. There can be dark moments before it, but at the very end, you're going to have your climax, and it's commonly going to be in the form of a darkest hour. Just because of the way it works it's going to come at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In honesty, it should come where it artistically needs to be, over anything. It should be exactly where it needs to be to have the best effects and implications for your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T06:47:57.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27056" CreationDate="2017-03-07T08:32:02.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you consider a 3 act structure, the &quot;Black Moment&quot; is the Second Turning Point. It means, it is the turning point which closes the Second Act and leads into the Third (the first turning point being the one dividing First and Second Act).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Black Moment closes the events occurring in the Second Act: after trying everything to accomplish his goal, the protagonist faces a moment where he has no other options than push until the end. Thus begins the Third Act, which is focused almost solely to the final conflict and contains the climax of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Second Turning Point (Black Moment) follows what in the Second Act is known as Midpoint: here the story seems to go well, all objects achievable, and the protagonist faces a moment of &quot;fake victory&quot;. After that, problems arise again, leading to more obstacles that culminates in the Black Moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T08:32:02.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27062" CreationDate="2017-03-07T09:02:39.303" Score="4" ViewCount="1240" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a habit I have with my stories, and I think it's a bad practice. The story I'm writing isn't of the suspense genre, it's a mix of fantasy and realistic fiction, but a bit of &quot;I wonder what/who/how would that be?&quot;, and showing the answers later on is never a bad thing (if well implemented).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I'm a plotter, and maybe a bit of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/11/26&quot;&gt;pantser&lt;/a&gt; too. I write the core of the story, almost always already knowing the ending, and then I write excerpts describing every idea I have as soon as they come to my mind. I only start writing the story at full when I've established enough ideas, so I can let the events happen and the characters act for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in my case, this process leaves all details exposed, most of the time right at the beginning (but not in an info-dump). Little to no important information remains to reveal later. In my opinion, a story with no surprises and no suspense and no mystery, that just reveals everything the reader wants to know right away, is just plain boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I also don't know if it's just the way I structure it, or if it's simply just bad writing. Should I cover what is uncovered? Should I leave the revelation of some information to later chapters? Should I trick the characters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T19:42:04.323" Title="Is it a bad habit to reveal most of the information still at the beginning of the story?" Tags="|fiction|fantasy|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27056" CreationDate="2017-03-07T09:11:13.787" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The &amp;quot;darkest hour&amp;quot; does not fall at the end, as Daniel Cann claims, nor is it the second turning point, as FraEnrico asserts.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;darkest hour&amp;quot; is usually called the&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;crisis.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The crisis comes after the &lt;strong&gt;midpoint&lt;/strong&gt; of the novel. The midpoint, as its name implies, marks the middle of the novel (50%) as well as the middle of the second act. At the midpoint, there is a turn of events and the protagonist decides to become proactive: he or she turns from the hunted to the hunter. The turn of events can both cause the decision or be caused by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the decision to become proactive at the midpoint, the flawed protagonist fails.  This &lt;strong&gt;catalyst of the crisis&lt;/strong&gt;, which may be a lost battle or the death of a loved one, leads the protagonist into his or her &amp;quot;darkest hour&amp;quot;, the &lt;strong&gt;crisis&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the crisis, some &lt;strong&gt;catalyst of the second plotpoint&lt;/strong&gt;, such as new information, helps the protagonist to understand their fatal flaw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This understanding allows for the protagonist to make the right decision at the &lt;strong&gt;second plotpoint&lt;/strong&gt;, which begins the third act at around three quarters of the novel (75-80%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The crisis is not the &lt;em&gt;climax&lt;/em&gt;, which comes in the third act, close to the end of the novel (immediately before the denouement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://othernetwork.com/2014/03/01/the-story-structure-countdown-how-different-experts-say-you-should-structure-a-story/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some more detail.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T09:19:16.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27056" CreationDate="2017-03-07T12:13:42.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's the Snowflake Structure guy who plots out his books as &quot;Three Disasters and an Ending.&quot; He likes a four-act structure rather than three (or five as on stage). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have your initial Event which kicks off the plot. The protagonist decides to go on the adventure, whatever it is, and makes an initial foray. This fails. That's the end of Act One.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever that failure was sets up Act Two. The protagonist learns from this (or doesn't!) and more challenges ensue. But I think it's important that Act Two should be a direct result of the failure at the end of Act One.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lather, rinse, repeat for Act Two to Act Three. More challenges, the protagonist tries again, and fails &lt;em&gt;again&lt;/em&gt;. There will be successes along the way, but the act will end in another Disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the stakes are much higher, because &quot;people always stop after three.&quot; If you can't succeed on the third attempt, you'll never succeed, right? So the events from the first two acts are now boxing the protagonist in to make choices which lead to the Disaster at the end of Act Three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where I think your Black Moment comes in. The protagonist has tried three times to succeed, and each time those attempts have led to failure — possibly even building on one another. It's the choice of the Hero to move forward despite these failures which is the turning point, the big emotional impetus of the last Act of the story, which leads to the successful Ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T12:13:42.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27059" CreationDate="2017-03-07T12:58:50.203" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good stories are not created by withholding information from the reader. They are created by constructing a satisfactory story arc, by creating the desire to know what happens next. The desire to know what happens next is not created by withholding information. It is created by engagement with the story. Information creates engagement. Withholding information restricts engagement. Of course, the information has to be relevant and interesting or it will not be engaging, but the only thing you should withhold is what happens next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T12:58:50.203" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27056" CreationDate="2017-03-07T13:13:54.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create an average of any data set. If you average out enough story data than you can describe an average story arc and assign names to all of the moments in that arc. This exercise is not without value. It gives some insight into the nature of the beast. But few if any stories will actually conform to the arc which describes the average of a hundred stories. If we take the average as the prototype rather than the archetype the result will be false specificity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that many people have not successfully turned the archetype into a prototype to create a formulaic story. One could argue the George Lucas did exactly that when he very consciously based Star Wars on Campbell's &lt;em&gt;Hero with a Thousand Faces&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even if you can be successful by turning the archetype into a prototype does not mean that you have to do so to be successful. There are no iron laws of story that say that any given moment has to occur at any given percentage into the plot. There may be specific formulas for formula fiction that say something along these lines, and they may work within the limits of their artistic and commercial ambitions, but they are not the whole of literature, and there may be may different formulas with their key events at different milestones that also work just as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T13:13:54.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27059" CreationDate="2017-03-07T13:51:05.833" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main problem with &quot;revealing too much&quot; is info-dumps. Boring the reader early on. If you can reveal a lot without boring the reader, that's great!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opposite of what you do - dribbling bits of exposition and making the reader tear down the image they built and rebuild it with the new info repeatedly - is a far worse problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel the rest of the story is getting dry, just migrate some pieces into later sections in the editing phase. It's quite easy when you have all the pieces already laid out, to find where something would fit better - say, transformed from &quot;tell&quot; into &quot;show&quot; as we encounter it live in the story, or your &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/7537/4291&quot;&gt;cabbagehead&lt;/a&gt; has the good opportunity to ask his questions. Regardless - if you indeed, &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; provide all the exposition in the beginning of the book without ever boring the reader, I can only congratulate the talent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T13:51:05.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17614" CreationDate="2017-03-07T15:26:34.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would not regard self publishing as an alternative to traditional publishing but as a market for work that does not fit in the traditional publishing sphere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishing is book marketing. Marketing is about knowing a particular part of the market and figuring out how to sell to it. Each traditional publisher has figured out how to sell to one or more segments of the market. In some really lucrative markets there are multiple publishers competing. In smaller markets there is often only one or two publishers competing. In some niche markets there may only be one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there are all the markets that are too small or too obscure or too difficult to understand for it to make business sense for a traditional publisher to serve that market. This is where self publishing makes sense, providing you understand that market. Since no traditional publisher will attempt to address that market, the only way to get to it is to self publish. Web based self-publishing platforms make it vastly easier to reach such markets now, so self publishing becomes a much more viable vehicle for reaching that market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, those misunderstood markets sometimes turn out to be huge, and produce the odd self publishing success story (which always ends with traditional publishing once the traditional publishers figure out the market). There are also a few (very few!) cases of mainstream works being self published and breaking out -- but those inevitably lead to traditional publishing, which is where the belonged all along.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go the self publishing route with a work that is in the market currently served by traditional publishers then you are competing with them and your chances of success are slim. Plus you cut yourself off from the discipline of refining your work to meet the demands of the market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, a mainstream work should go to a mainstream publisher; a work intended for an unserved market has no choice but to go the self publishing route. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T15:26:34.583" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27059" CreationDate="2017-03-07T16:53:28.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I cover what is uncovered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story requires some events or circumstances not to be disclosed until the narrative reaches a certain point, then yes, you should withhold that information at the beginning and reveal it when it is time. The genre does not matter, be it a murder mystery, romance, or a YA coming of age story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of the reveal of a certain bit of information as you think of any other event in your story (because it is, just as well as someone getting ill, leaving the town, or getting married), and plot accordingly, that is all there is to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-03-07T17:14:53.813" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T17:14:53.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26977" CreationDate="2017-03-07T19:22:26.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My background is in digital marketing and I'll answer first from that point of view. &quot;Thompson&quot; is a complex name even for English natives - with or without the &quot;h&quot; or the &quot;p&quot;? By the time you prepare your marketing for all iterations of the spelling, you'll have spent more than others. There's also the chance that as a reasonably common name, there might be a writer with the same Christian name but a variation on Thompson. Even worse, there might be a politician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I've chosen a pen name because my irl surname is so English that it takes my postman three attempts to say it. I chose something simple, common and two syllable without any major variations internationally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22913" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T19:22:26.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27021" CreationDate="2017-03-07T21:31:13.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basic material for a close reading is the text itself. Literally, you read it closely, line by line. Is it clear what is being said? Are there allusions to things outside the text that may affect its interpretations? If so, go look them up and show how the allusion affects the reading of the text. Basically it is just like taking a machine apart to see how it works and then looking up and explicating the mechanical principles embodied in those parts. It is simply about what the text does and how it does it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T21:31:13.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="73" CreationDate="2017-03-08T00:12:38.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have that same problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can spend an entire week writing entire scenes or even chapters in my mind. Typically, it happens when I can't stop and write (eg. I'm driving, cooking, etc). Typically, I go over the scene/chapter in my mind from beginning to end, over and over, each time perfecting something. Sometimes, I can get half an hour to jot down the ideas, some specific dialogues that must be just so, phrases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then comes the weekend, when I finally have some good hours to bestow to that neglected scene/chapter... and I can't write a single word. It's like my brain shuts down and can't be bothered to go over the excitement of the original idea. I really do feel like my brain just doesn't feel like making the effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very often it happens because, quite frankly, I'm tired and the adrenaline that kept me running through the week is gone. My body and mind just want to switch off and relax. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to do? For my sanity, just accept it and take a nap. When I wake up later on, I may be able to get in the flow and write. If I'm really exhausted, I drum into myself that I'm not wasting time, I'm recovering in order to write better later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, it's not that I'm tired, but... do you remember having that homework that you didn't want to do so you would bribe yourself: work on this for half an hour then you can get yourself a one hour break doing what you really want? It's something like that. My brain was working hard on something and now that it is done, it has decided it deserves a break and switches off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to do? I can force myself to get up and vacuum clean. For some reason, that usually gets my creative mind running. Don't ask why. Another physical activity that doesn't need any real thought into it will probably have the same effect. It's not easy to force myself to do this, though, especially because I'm on a &lt;em&gt;lazy&lt;/em&gt; state of mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can also let myself fall back onto my bed and close my eyes as if to take a nap. Because I'm not tired, I won't go to sleep; but because my brain is lazy, it'll start wandering about. I then try to capture the last scene I wrote and start lazily going through what could happen next. Very often, I start getting excited about the new scene or dialogue and end up feeling the urge to get up and write it down. Of course it can take half an hour or two hours (and yes, I sometimes kind of slip a bit into sleep here and there, but I don't get fast asleep and the brain does tend to get crazily creative).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, if you still have this problem, try to find out exactly why you have it. Then either go with the flow and embrace the laziness (temporarily) or slowly change it. I wouldn't advise to confront your laziness head on as it is my experience it won't work. It'll make you feel frustrated and angry instead, and will make it even harder to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T00:12:38.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27070" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27072" CreationDate="2017-03-08T04:18:17.017" Score="7" ViewCount="6176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a first person narrative with a character that is very similar to myself. As such I feel like the narrator should speak and think in language that I, personally, would use. Unfortunately, I feel like it may detract from the message I am trying to convey to the reader if I write such things verbatim. For example, a conversation similar to that which I had with a friend once:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Me:&lt;/strong&gt; I have realized that I am a terrible person. &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Friend:&lt;/strong&gt; what? I don't think so. &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Me:&lt;/strong&gt; Well, I mean, not in the way that I would rape a kitten or anything, but I could see throwing shit at the old guy in front of me that won't move aside or walk faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used the &quot;rape a kitten&quot; or something similar to it in my regular speech as well as my thoughts and my writing to describe something unusually bad. My question is: Should such things be avoided in my writing? (I have gotten better in my speech, so that is not an issue.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I am perfectly fine with &quot;Yes, freedom of speech&quot; or &quot;no, it's morally corrupt&quot; answers, but there needs to be a reason, e.g. writing style or ruining suspension of disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit 2: I am not attempting to legitimize or trivialize or defend anything (maybe my example comes off that way, and if so I apologize but if I change it I feel like I would chameleon the question). I will definitely bear in mind the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13430" LastEditorUserId="13430" LastEditDate="2017-03-09T15:24:32.233" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T15:24:32.233" Title="Should you avoid offensive hyperbole?" Tags="|dialogue|word-choice|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27071" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-08T04:42:58.247" Score="6" ViewCount="464" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does every fiction has a coincidence? Is there any evidence for a fiction not having a coincidental occurring &lt;strong&gt;at all&lt;/strong&gt; ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand by the time we get to the coincidence part it might not seem a coincidence at all, something I've learned from &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27031/26&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; on one of my previous posts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;''With proper build-up, any coincidences, even not very plausible, will be completely OK.'' &lt;br&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27031/26&quot;&gt;answer by SF.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;''Make it [coincidence] part of a well thought through backstory and make it so the reader really just doesn't care how they got there.'' &lt;br&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27039/26&quot;&gt;answer by Ivana&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is obvious that usually a fiction does have a coincidence but is there any fictional work that doesn't have a coincidence? Is coincidence an integral part of a fiction? &lt;strong&gt;Is it possible to write a fiction without a coincidence?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22344" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T12:22:04.747" Title="Can fiction be written without a coincidence?" Tags="|fiction|style|plot|structure|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27070" CreationDate="2017-03-08T06:05:40.520" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;This questions is unanswerable except in regard to a specific market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We live in an age of taking offence, and also in an age of giving offence. Certain things will close doors to certain segments of the market, certain things may open doors to other segments of the market. Deliberately giving offence can sometimes gain you more market attention than any other means. Different things offend different people. If you avoid a word to avoid giving offence to one group, your omission may offend another group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no universal win in this game. You pick your market and you play to it. The same thing that gets the door slammed in your face by one group can open doors for you with another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-08T15:43:26.637" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T15:43:26.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27070" CreationDate="2017-03-08T09:06:16.540" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides Mark Bakers excellent observation that your writing must be targeted to its audience and cannot be judged outside of that audience's expectations and preferences, there is another factor to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;There is a standard for fiction.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That standard encompasses, for example, a certain tempus (past tense), a certain narrative perspective (third person), and other conventions. These conventions are perceived by the majority of readers as &lt;em&gt;neutral&lt;/em&gt;, that is, they are both familiar and meaningless. As soon as you devitate from the standard, that deviation will both irritate readers (which can be good, if you know what you do, and bad, if you don't) and convey a specific meaning in the context of your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One part of the standard for fiction is what is commonly called &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_written_English&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;standard written English&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Every language has such a standard. It consists of certain grammatical rules, a certain conventional style, and – this is interesting in the context of your question – a specific vocabulary. This standard written vocuabulary marks certain words (or ideas) as &amp;quot;obscene&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;vulgar&amp;quot; and prefers to exculde them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course much contemporary fiction is no longer written in that neutral standard style but rather attempts to express the life experience of its protagonists through deviations from the standard. Many readers enjoy such &amp;quot;personalized&amp;quot; accounts and the authenticity and relevance they bring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But writing is not speaking. No matter how authentic and &amp;quot;spoken&amp;quot; such narratives may appear, they are nevertheless normalizations of actual speech much in the same way that standard written English is a normalization of standard spoken English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to write &amp;quot;how you speak&amp;quot;, &lt;strong&gt;you must create a written variant of your way of speaking&lt;/strong&gt; (or thinking). Simply transcribing what you say is not writing. Writing is artifice and its product is artificial, no matter how &amp;quot;authentic&amp;quot; it may appear to the lay person – that is, the non-writer, who is unaware of the difference between written and spoken language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you apparently misunderstand the concept of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech means that you can express any idea that you want. It does not mean that you can express that idea however you like. For example, you are free to say that you dislike the current president of the United States, but you are not free to express that opinion by calling him names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your example, there are many other ways to express the thought behind &amp;quot;raping a kitten&amp;quot; that are less offensive. If you use such a brutal phrase, perhaps because your sensibilites have been brutalized on /b/, you should know what you do or you will marginalize your writing and create something unpublishable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T15:36:51.980" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27071" CreationDate="2017-03-08T09:13:56.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fiction does not &quot;have coincidence&quot;. Fiction is not a random accumulation of characters and events, but an expression of an idea by an author. As such, it is completely determined by the person of its author and that author's conscious or subconscious intent. In fiction, everything has meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some event in a narrative may &lt;em&gt;appear&lt;/em&gt; coincidental &lt;em&gt;to the protagonist&lt;/em&gt;, but that appearance is intentional and has meaning in the context of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you employ actual randomness in your writing, you are no longer writing mainstream fiction but experimental literature. Which is fine, but not the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T09:13:56.843" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27070" CreationDate="2017-03-08T10:13:45.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say no, not really, &lt;strong&gt;you don't have to&lt;/strong&gt; avoid offensive hyperbole just for its own sake. But there is a risk of losing audience and therefore you might be trying to think of ways to minimize this risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your last sentence touched on the key thing here: suspension of disbelief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the main goals for a good story is to help the reader gain &lt;strong&gt;suspension of disbelief&lt;/strong&gt;. In other words, the story should be &lt;strong&gt;believable&lt;/strong&gt;, or as believable as possible. (This also applies to weird fantasy novels with elfs or unicorns by trying to make the plot believable, e.g., the characters behave believably.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say the main character is a biker gang guy. If this guy is always talking in perfect grammar and never says anything offensive, it would &lt;strong&gt;not be believable.&lt;/strong&gt; I would in fact &lt;strong&gt;lose interest&lt;/strong&gt; in the book because of this. Another example could be kids, angry kids, drunk college kids (any college kids?), anyone in general who's very angry, anyone who just experienced something awful like the death of his best friend right in front of his eyes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a pastor who talks that way all the time would not be very believable either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that first impressions are very important. If the book starts out this way, I would also introduce a good (&lt;strong&gt;believable&lt;/strong&gt;) reason right away. Only if it were kids or young guys could it &lt;strong&gt;perhaps&lt;/strong&gt; be left on its own, and in which case, your target audience should be people in the same age group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I forgot one thing. The main character who talks this way could be a fierce believer in free speech, and lets everyone know. Maybe also he is an anarchist or patriot or something else entirely. But again, you risk putting off a bunch of your audience because such things are more offensive than normal. It is another option, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another option:&lt;/strong&gt; Make this a gritty novel. At the beginning, show some nasty side of big city life. This will paint a context of a dystopia or harsh world in which much vulgar language is more acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14803" LastEditorUserId="14803" LastEditDate="2017-03-08T16:39:59.880" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T16:39:59.880" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27071" CreationDate="2017-03-08T10:16:45.883" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;coincidence&lt;/strong&gt;: a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordreference.com/definition/coincidence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;according to WordReference.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the key idea behind &lt;em&gt;coincidence&lt;/em&gt; is the fact that it is striking. That two people happen to be in the same busy café and end up sharing a table, thus leading to a nice conversation and friendship, is not coincidental. That these two people turn out to have been colleagues in the first year of primary school is a coincidence. That they turn out to be estranged mother and daughter who hadn't seen eachother in over twenty years is a huge coincidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the problem with coincidences in fiction is twofold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;all it takes is one huge coincidence (poorly handled) to make the story feel forced (personally, I get really annoyed with these ones) *&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;accumulation of small coincidences that would blow over unnoticed if used in fewer numbers&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But your question is not about what constitutes fair use of coincidences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you write a story without a single one? I should think it's perfectly possible. I don't usually count how many coincidences I come across in stories I read (and a well-used small coincidence can very well go unnoticed until you start looking for them), but it's not impossible to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do notice that some genres may rely more on coincidences than others: romance, I believe, is one such because a good coincidence can bring in surprise and up the tension. Then there is mystery, where a reader may even doubt if the coincidence was in fact so, or a carefully crafted event. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just to stress this idea, a huge coincidence can make a great novel. The Portuguese writer Eça de Queirós wrote his famous &lt;em&gt;Os Maias&lt;/em&gt; using a huge, jarring coincidence, yet did it so well it came off almost as a natural event, something even likely to occur. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T10:16:45.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27071" CreationDate="2017-03-08T10:42:05.870" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some best detective and strategy (&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheChessmaster&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chessmaster&lt;/a&gt; trope &lt;sup&gt;warning! TV Tropes link!&lt;/sup&gt;) novels have absolutely zero coincidence. They are duels of wits, a game with firm rules and moves chosen as optimal. Contingencies, backup plans, backups of backup plans, foreseeing the next move of the opponent or even manipulating them into making it - a perfectly deterministic setup with zero randomness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With best detective novels you are getting at first the complete set of clues and rules of the game, and then playing it optimally you can reach the conclusion and authoritatively guess the &quot;murderer&quot; less than halfway into the book. The other half gradually uncovers additional clues, which make the task increasingly easier, until you reach the conclusion - the solution of the puzzle, where our protagonist uncovers the guilty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these genres coincidence is a cheap lockpick, a joker card used whenever the author is unable or unwilling to design a fully deterministic reason. It can always be used to explain certain events or finds - but every such use reduces the value of the novel, because instead of rigid rules to be followed in logical reasoning, we have a bit of chaos, something the reader is unable to foresee, and therefore &quot;unfair&quot; in the game which the novel is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if instead of that, you're writing romance, adventure, horror - you're free to use coincidence. The reader is not expected to foresee the future, neither given enough clues nor able to embrace the nebulous, always-changing rules. It's not a puzzle, it's a ride. Of course you're still able to include &quot;mystery puzzle&quot; elements, be it as short episodes / side threads, or as the central core surrounded by decoration of chaotic fantasy flair. It's an extra flavor, an extra challenge to the reader, and as such, the isolated part should follow the &quot;no coincidence&quot; rules of the game. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But never forget &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rule of Cool&lt;/a&gt; &lt;sup&gt;warning! TV Tropes link!&lt;/sup&gt;. In short: you don't need much explanation, much exposition or generally going to great lengths with your coincidence if its effects are &lt;em&gt;awesome.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you compare your painstakingly, precisely built mystery to a house of cards, placing the last card on top of the house of cards is quite satisfying, but crashing a transatlantic cruise ship into it might be more entertaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2017-03-08T10:57:54.643" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T10:57:54.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27071" CreationDate="2017-03-08T14:39:03.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, it can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Coincident&lt;/strong&gt; is generally defined as &lt;em&gt;occurring together in space or time.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not mean that there is no explanation why some events occur simultaneously. There always is. The personal preferences of writers vary when it comes to revealing the&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consequences&lt;/strong&gt;--&lt;em&gt;results or effects of actions or conditions&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to the readers, but it is a matter of style, genre, how high you are suspending the disbelief and what not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T14:39:03.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20264" CreationDate="2017-03-08T20:31:42.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will make very little difference. The publishing industry is desperate for good stories. They don't much care where they come from. Anything interesting or exotic about the author's background can be exploited for marketing purposes, but really it is all about good stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish people would stop saying that it is hard to get published. It really isn't. It is hard -- very hard -- to write something worth publishing. But that is not the same thing at all. If you write something worth publishing, it will generally find a home. It is true that there are exceptions, work that caught the public's imagination that were rejected by a number of publishers before being accepted, but that is mostly about simply finding the right publisher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason publishers have so many walls up to submissions is not because they are making it hard to get published but because they are inundated with a torrent of absolute drek. They have to develop strategies to separate the wheat from the chaff. Agents are the main mechanism they use. And agents are actively looking for new writers with good salable stories. They spend a lot of time reading and a lot of time on the road at writers conferences actively looking for writers with a story they can sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting published is not hard, if you have written a good story. You should not focus on barriers. They fall away if you write a good story. But writing a good story is hard. Many try, and most fail. Succeed at that, though, and the rest will come easily enough. You should focus your effort and your anxiety on creating the best story you can.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T20:31:42.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26089" CreationDate="2017-03-08T21:20:38.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.personal-lexicon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Personal Lexicon&lt;/a&gt; is geared towards students of a language. However, it can be used both as a repository of words (organised in any type of categories you wish) and as a repository of grammar rules. There are languages that are already built in and which you can simply download, or you can create a file for a new language, whether its a real human language or an invented one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more programmes out there so, if I come across any more, I'll add to this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T21:20:38.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26089" CreationDate="2017-03-08T22:33:31.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I don't think you will find one.  I spent a good while trying to do some research.  It seems that it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://termcoord.eu/2016/10/aklo-an-evil-language/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;purposely&lt;/a&gt; left unknown.  Some interesting suggestions in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?216550-Aklo-Translator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; though about creating one similar to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pinterest.com/pin/507569820483853936/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; you can find some pictures of the letter chart system which may also help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;below is an section found in my research that may help point you to the right direction in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Aklo_language&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the Aklo language is still in use today, certain cultists and sorcerers may have records and codices in this language. One of the best known public records of the Aklo language is the Unaussprechlichen Kulten which contains a key to deciphering the Aklo lettering system and a rudimentary dictionary. The Aklo Tablets (also known as Aklo Writings or the Aklo Book) appear reproduced in the book Remnants of Lost Empires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T22:33:31.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27070" CreationDate="2017-03-08T22:59:05.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Offensive or highly unusual expressions are dangerous.They risk taking the reader out of the story and make him react negatively to the author instead of following the story. You need to justify your expressions to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means two things: First, you must convince the reader that you had good reason to write it. Second, you must convince the reader that the character had sufficient reason to say it. Second criteria is easier since the fictional character was not paid to please the reader and is not even required to be aware of the reader. Authors by contrast are expected to remember their audience and not offend it. &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27072/11425&quot;&gt;See Mark Baker's answer for more on that.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So what is a good reason to write something like that?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could directly advance the story. A character says something offensive and it &lt;strong&gt;directly&lt;/strong&gt; causes something that advances the story. If another character gets pissed off at the offensive language and the offender gets in trouble, the reader has no need to get offended themselves. And if the development is funny or exciting the reader will accept the offensive language as price of admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could establish character personality, mental state or relationship to other characters. Often all at once. Your example could be used to show that the character: 1. Has a juvenile sense of humor and thinks saying such things makes him cool, 2. Is at the moment trying to make himself look cooler probably because he feels insecure, or 3. Is talking to someone he wants to impress with his coolness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reader &lt;strong&gt;knows&lt;/strong&gt; you are using the expression as a part of such author admissible goal it is fine. Usually this means that you need to straight out and on the spot tell the reader that is what you are doing. If the reader has to guess, you will get mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the context makes it easy for the reader to guess correctly your intent they will not see it as a good enough reason to offend them unless you add something that makes the intent clear. Essentially making it explicit by adding narrator or in character explanation tells the reader that you did it for a reason and it will be important later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it won't come important later, do not do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inoffensive oddities like the biker speaking with perfect grammar and Sunday school vocabulary with occasional quotes of Shakespeare have a lower standard of importance. You still need to establish the reason before the reader has time to guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is sufficient reason for the character to say it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is typically the easier part since we all are constantly struggling with the issue of what language is appropriate to use. There are some differences to real life, though. Fictional characters are not really expected to be as random as real people. This basically means that you have to clearly establish the reason the character says what he says. He can't say it &quot;just because&quot; unless you specifically establish he is a character who says things &quot;just because&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only real issue is that you need to remember to tell the reason. If your character uses offensive language to impress his comrades with his coolness, the scene where he does that needs to tell that to the reader. If that explanation seems excessive or out of place that probably means that the character does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; have sufficient reason to use such language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Odd language is easier since after the first explanation it works as its own reminder. So if you use offensive language, you &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; make it memorable by using hyperbole or some other method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;---&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably unnecessary, but I want to be clear that the above is a collection of my personal thoughts on the matter and anyone who thinks of it as advice they should follow or in any way authoritative is wrong. Its only purpose and appropriate use is as food for your own thoughts and opinions. This is not really proper for a SE answer, but to be honest I almost always aim for answers that are potentially useful rather than correct. People only ask or answer questions if they are interested in the topic and &lt;strong&gt;want&lt;/strong&gt; to know what other people think. Or so I tell myself, anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T22:59:05.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21742" CreationDate="2017-03-08T22:59:11.737" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Montage is a visual gimmick, invented to imitate what writers have been able to do all along, which is simply to vary the pace of their storytelling. In prose, all you're looking for is a little brevity...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Billy McHero trained with the finest clan warriors, awkwardly at first, stabbing himself in the toe, and falling into bogs and dungheaps, but growing in condfidence, successfully wrestling hogs and rhododendrons, until finally, he was ready to prove himself in the Trial of the Horseradish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a very short 'training montage'. If you want a longer one just put in more detail. If necessary you can write a string of anecdotes, &quot;On her first day...A week later...Eventually...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastEditorUserId="13822" LastEditDate="2019-12-06T15:55:31.767" LastActivityDate="2019-12-06T15:55:31.767" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27088" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27089" CreationDate="2017-03-09T01:49:58.570" Score="1" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you refer to a Steinway piano or a Taylor guitar, do you capitalize piano and guitar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't think how to word a search for this information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15366" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T02:30:27.920" Title="Capitalization: Taylor guitar" Tags="|capitalization|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27088" CreationDate="2017-03-09T02:23:14.933" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quick answer: the descriptor should be lowercase for Steinway, and uppercase plural for Taylor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rationale:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Full titles of institutions and companies and the names of their&#xA;  departments and divisions are capitalized, but such words as school or&#xA;  company, as well as generic or descriptive terms are lowercased when&#xA;  used alone. &#xA;  Chicago Manual of Style, 13th ed. 1982.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than try to decipher the rule, I suggest you write the name exactly as it is consistently written on the company's own website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Steinway &amp;amp; Sons / Steinway pianos&lt;/strong&gt; — Steinway consistently uses &quot;Steinway &amp;amp; Sons the pianomaker; but note piano is is capitalized within some of their product names. Since 'piano' is not integral to the company name, it should not capitalized. To help your readers understand what is the full title, you could lengthen the descriptor by adding: &quot;Steinway &amp;amp; Sons, the piano maker&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Taylor Guitars / (the) Taylor guitar(s)&lt;/strong&gt; — The company name has the word &quot;Guitars&quot; as an integral part. From the website: &quot;Taylor Guitars is a leading manufacturer of acoustic and electric guitars...&quot; When talking about the company, 'Guitar' should be uppercase; when talking about the product, 'guitar(s)', should be lowercase; unless 'guitar' is integral to a particular product name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23880" LastEditorUserId="23880" LastEditDate="2017-03-09T02:30:27.920" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T02:30:27.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21742" CreationDate="2017-03-09T04:24:15.180" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't do a montage in prose, anymore than you can paint a symphony or score a sunset. It is simply a technique of a different media. Each media has its own storytelling devices and you should not try to mimic the devices of one media while working in another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth asking, in this regard, whether you are actually trying to write a covert movie. It seems that many writers today are doing this. They are writing a novel, but in their heads they are really seeing a movie. I suspect the reason so many are writing like this is that while it is extraordinarily difficult to get a movie script produced, anyone can write a novel and self publish on Amazon. Still, the novel is a fundamentally different form, and you simply cannot achieve the effect of a movie in the novel format. You would do much better to accept the format you have chosen to write in and use its devices and conventions to achieve your end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here's the thing about montages: they are a rather lame attempt by movies to do something that novels can do very well, but which movies really have no good way of doing, and that is narration. A novel can use narration to bridge between one dramatized scene and another. In the hands of a good writer, the narrative passages can be just as fine, just as compelling, and just as important to the story arc as the dramatized parts. Indeed, they are some of the finest passages in literature. Prose is the perfect medium for narrative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing narrative in the movies, however, is next to impossible. You can do scrolling captions, like the beginning of Star Wars, you can do narrative voice over, you can do various forms of one character filling in another, and you can do montages. All of these have to be used with the greatest restraint because they all make for lousy film. &quot;Show don't tell&quot; is imperative in the movies because movies cannot tell well. Thus movies have a really hard time doing the narrative bridge. This restricts the kinds of stories you can tell well in that format. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you are writing in a medium that excels at the narrative bridge, that can make the narrative bridge a piece of fine and memorable art as powerful as any dramatized portion of the text, and you are asking for a way to imitate the way a media that can't do this well attempts to make up for its deficiency, and one that is in any case impossible to execute in prose. So don't. Write narrative. It's the right choice for the media, and, if done well, a powerful choice.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T04:24:15.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26089" CreationDate="2017-03-09T08:39:18.067" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of a language called &quot;Aklo&quot; was first put forth by Arthur Machen in his short story &quot;The White People&quot; (1906). All that Machen tells us of Aklo is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I must not write down ... the way to make the Aklo letters ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, Machen specifically tells us &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lovecraft, who loved Machen's story, took up the idea of a &quot;dark language&quot; and used it in his short stories &quot;The Dunwich Horror&quot; (1929) and &quot;The Haunter of the Dark&quot; (1936). In &quot;The Dunwich Horror&quot; Lovecraft tells us about Aklo:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Today learned the Aklo for the Sabaoth,&quot; ... He that came with the Aklo Sabaoth said I may be transfigured ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and in &quot;The Haunter of the Dark&quot; he tells us:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was in June that Blake’s diary told of his victory over the cryptogram. The text was, he found, in the dark Aklo language used by certain cults of evil antiquity, and known to him in a halting way through previous researches. The diary is strangely reticent about what Blake deciphered, but he was patently awed and disconcerted by his results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, Lovecraft, like Machen, tells us &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; about Aklo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Machen and Lovecraft are the authoritative authors when it comes to the worlds they have depicted. Later authors, such as Alan Moore, have inventend additions that are not part of the canon and therefore cannot be used to learn more about the Lovecraftian universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aklo is neither a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aklo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;constructed language&lt;/a&gt; nor a &lt;a href=&quot;http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Aklo_language&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;language system&lt;/a&gt;, contrary to what some sources on the internet claim, because the inventors of that language have not come up with any details beyond the name of the language. Lovecraft and Machen have not constructed a language system. All they have done is invent the name for a language that does not exist. Aklo is a &lt;em&gt;fictional language&lt;/em&gt;, unlike Klingon or Tolkien's Elvish, which are real languages. Klingon and Elvish are constructed languages, not natural languages, but they can be spoken and written like English or French.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ergo, &lt;strong&gt;there is no Aklo dictionary&lt;/strong&gt;, because there cannot be one, because there is no Aklo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5645" LastEditorDisplayName="user5645" LastEditDate="2017-03-09T13:45:22.307" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T13:45:22.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27071" CreationDate="2017-03-09T12:22:04.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course fiction could be written without coincidence. Things can follow a linear path and reach their foregone conclusion, as they do sometimes in real life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, coincidence is not a &quot;binary&quot; category - things have some (possibly unknown) probability of happening. If a story hinged on the possibility of someone walking in on a private conversation of some characters, it would be less of a coincidence than relying on a coin landing on it's edge and remaining so. But also the former is coincidence - just more likely than the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So writing without any coincidence in the extreme sense is probably very difficult. Therefore, the real question should not be whether it could be written this way, the question (as with every literary device) is what &lt;strong&gt;purpose&lt;/strong&gt; does coincidence serve in the story, specifically coincidence that is emphasized as such. You can then decide you don't want to achieve that purpose in your writing, or to achieve it with other means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer this, I think there are two major things coincidence achieves in fiction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allowing interesting and surprising plot twists, especially in critical points in the story. The fact that many things COULD happen, but a specific one DID happen, allows you to choose the one that serves the story most. When escaping enemies, the heros could find an undetectable alley that allows them to escape quietly, or they might not notice the alley and have to run in broad daylight in the market square, leading to an exciting chase. Choose the one that is more interesting to you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding a sense of wonder and excitement. Coincidence comes many times bound together, paradoxically, with a sense of fate/destiny/prophecy [in fantasy. In a 007-novel it would be the hidden hand of MI5, for example]. The reason for this is that when you have a known fate for a character, then reality has to somehow arrange itself around this fate, which leads to coincidences to happen. In this way, coincidence is really not coincidence - it's intelligent design in the guise of coincidence, which generates a sense of mystery and wonder.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last point I'd like to make is how much coincidence is allowed. Here, I'd like to paraphrase &quot;Sanderson's First Law of Magics&quot;, which states that: &lt;em&gt;&quot;An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. Similarly, I'd suggest that the more unlikely the coincidence, the less should it be relied on to solve problems in the story. For example, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want the evil genius to die of a heart-attack right before he&#xA;presses the big red button that will destroy the world, he better be&#xA;an 80-year-old with a heart condition, not a 33-year-old in top&#xA;condition. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, if the 33-year-old in top condition is just the&#xA;hero's butler, and you use his sudden death to bring a new butler to&#xA;the mansion, it does not matter how coincidental his death is. Kill him with&#xA;a simple accident or a shocking heart-attack - the reader won't care, since &#xA;the coincidence is not critical to the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22348" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T12:22:04.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27070" CreationDate="2017-03-09T12:55:14.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As many answers have pointed out the use of offensive language, and rather or not a term would even be considered offensive, is going to vary a lot by attended audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take &quot;Nigger Jim&quot; from &quot;Adventures of Huckleberry Finn&quot;. Today even the name today is pretty offensive. His actions in the story are often regarded as offensive and stereo typical. The plot points where he was sold as an escaped slave and Tom and Huck use him to act out their fantasies, is today down right immoral. But back when the story was written (1884), Jim was considered to be a great addition, adding sympathy for post slavery African Americans, and showing that &quot;black guys&quot; have positive traits too. But not so much these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that, rather a passage is found to be offensive or not, is totally dependent on audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, there are reasons to be purposefully offensive. It's humorous when done correctly. It's more realistic in a intimate relationship. It can give your subject room for personal growth.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention that it's close to how you would speak. A lot about writing is examining motivations for actions. Why do you (did you) speak that way? What made you adjust your speech?  Is that a &quot;trial&quot; you want your subject to go through?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With those questions answered, keep in mind &quot;Adventures of Huckleberry Finn&quot;. You man not intend a thing to be offensive, but 100 years from now, who knows how it will be perceived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23386" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T12:55:14.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-09T16:49:42.247" Score="2" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there is any advantage in the conversion process from Word to Kindle format if I create the Word document with any one particular page size? Would an original manuscript, created as a Word Document, with pages sized to 6&quot; x 9&quot; garner the same results as manuscript created with an 8&quot; x 10&quot; layout?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23945" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T07:13:59.357" Title="Advantages and disadvantages of original manuscript's page size in Word for the conversion process to Kindle" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27096" CreationDate="2017-03-10T03:42:52.293" Score="4" ViewCount="1513" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have discovered that I am most definitely not a pantser, especially when writing longer pieces. The last couple of times I've tried to write a novel, I didn't feel like I was writing enough. I didn't plan either novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my latest attempt, this time a sci-fi novel, I have an outline. A 3000-word outline that goes over the whole plot, chapter by chapter. But I still feel like my story isn't going to be as long as I had hoped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty confident that my plot is deep enough, and that I could write a whole novel out of it, maybe 80000 words. But at the start of the 5th chapter, I'm headed more toward half that size. I think the problem is that I'm sticking too much to my outline, and only writing the parts that are crucial to the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know word count isn't everything, but I'm still a bit worried the book won't be what I want it to be when I'm finished. Am I worrying too much about length? What can I do to add details and interesting stuff to my story, other than just the major plot points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23436" LastActivityDate="2021-06-16T18:02:55.733" Title="How to add more details to a novel" Tags="|novel|book-length|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27095" CreationDate="2017-03-10T04:08:31.147" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is very much a Your Mileage May Vary question, and one with no &quot;correct&quot; answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice, however, would be to not worry about it &lt;strong&gt;at this stage&lt;/strong&gt;. Finish your story, work through your plan and then put it down for a while. Come back to it later, after giving yourself a break, and read through the entire thing, start to finish, and ask yourself - what's missing? What needs more detail? Or better yet, get someone reliable to read through it and take note of their feedback - knowledge and detail that you take for granted because you've created it might not be apparent to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find out what works, what doesn't work and everything in between. Expand where you need to expand. Alter the journey where you need to do that. Make sure that all the senses are being used in scenes (where relevant). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book, a good book, will never be finished after the first draft, no matter how good your planning is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T04:08:31.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27094" CreationDate="2017-03-10T07:13:59.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try it out. If you download the &lt;a href=&quot;https://calibre-ebook.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;calibre ebook management program&lt;/a&gt;, you can convert either format to kindle format. Then transfer it to your kindle either directly or by email and see what it looks like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23277" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T07:13:59.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27098" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-10T15:04:01.380" Score="2" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know the effects of releasing the ebook and hardcover versions at the same time versus releasing an ebook version and then several months later releasing the hardcover. Does this effect sales or reviews in anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask this question from a self-publishing perspective. I'm trying to keep costs low while developing the reputation of my book. My theory is to first get reviews of my ebook, then use those reviews to generate publicity of an eventual hardcover release. In other words, I want to test the waters before committing to the costs of a hardcover publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2360" LastEditorUserId="2360" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T15:51:03.963" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T03:54:43.393" Title="What are the effects of releasing an ebook version months before a hardcover?" Tags="|self-publishing|marketing|sales|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27100" CreationDate="2017-03-10T15:38:33.700" Score="3" ViewCount="1233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a medieval (low fantasy) novel set in a society akin to that of Western Europe during the Middle Ages. One of my protagonists is raised poor in a small village, but early on discovers he has blue blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of his three major character traits is his vastly superior intelligence/intellect. In fact, he has what we would define as a genius level IQ (~150), though I know IQ does not account for all aspects of high intelligence. However, I am having trouble figuring out how this would clearly manifest itself with neither a good education nor much knowledge of the world to back up his gifted mind with facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another of his three major character traits is his naïveté. This is in part due to being very sheltered–which is also the main reason why he has little worldly knowledge–but also owes to the fact he is only 15; he simply has not had enough time to &quot;experience&quot; life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first, I wanted to present his gifted mind through cunning and deception, (perhaps almost a bit like Tom Sawyer?) and that part of his underdog-like character was to use his sharp tongue to escape impossible situations. However, this would conflict with his third major character trait: idealism. The character is simply too compassionate, honest and honorable to be physically capable of lying to another person for personal gain, for instance. Moreover, this ties to his naïveté as well, in that part of what drives his kindness, is his belief that humans are inherently kind; he simply acts towards others they way he believes they themselves would act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question, then, is twofold: how could vastly superior intelligence very visibly manifest itself in someone with little or no education in the medieval world, and does kindness and naïveté conflict with the idea of this sort of character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23952" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T23:39:55.577" Title="How do I write an uneducated character with a genius level intellect in a medieval society?" Tags="|fiction|characters|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27099" CreationDate="2017-03-10T16:15:45.687" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Medieval men typically worked a trade. &lt;strong&gt;Make him gifted in his trade&lt;/strong&gt; so that commoners come from miles around to acquire his goods. Even nobility have heard of his skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add &lt;strong&gt;artistic mastery&lt;/strong&gt; to the trade. Like a blacksmith who makes not only the mightiest swords but carves the most amazing Celtic knotwork into the hilt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He can also be a gifted &lt;strong&gt;problem solver&lt;/strong&gt;. People ask him advice. He solves aggressive conflicts with peaceful determination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is cultured in that &lt;strong&gt;he believes in love&lt;/strong&gt; and enjoys music. He rarely drinks, and he's funny when he does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You basically want a &lt;strong&gt;very likeable character&lt;/strong&gt; who excels at everything he does except for perhaps his fatal flaw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also opens the door for some young princess to teach him how to read (a la &lt;em&gt;The Belgariad&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T16:15:45.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27099" CreationDate="2017-03-10T17:23:59.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question, then, is twofold: how could vastly superior intelligence very visibly manifest itself in someone with little or no education in the medieval world&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since he is lacking a formal education but is extremely intelligent, he would likely teach himself everything he wants to know. Show him picking up a book and learning how to read overnight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His analytical abilities must be well above average. Show him observe and memorize the patterns of movement of the celestial bodies and later be able to find his way home by the position of stars and moon(s), and maybe even question the accepted dogma that the world is flat and rests on the back of a giant coackroach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make him solve a complex puzzle (a riddle, a cryptic set of magical glyphs on the wall of an ancient cave, or even a murder) using only the power of his mind to see connections between seemingly unrelated things, symbols, and events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, like, whatever smart peoples do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;does kindness and naïveté conflict with the idea of this sort of character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Con artists exploit the aforementioned traits in their victims. Guess the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T17:23:59.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27102" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-10T19:36:27.600" Score="8" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;I discovered my interest in writing a few years ago. I was extremely stressed out from work, and so out of the blue, I sat down to write science fiction every night  for a week. Although I have been writing for three years now, I still consider myself an aspiring author. I have never been published -- my efforts never get past a few chapters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started a novel about memes, chaos theory, and the weather, and I formulated a long list of questions that I think the novel would need to answer. I think I've made a wonderful start, but I get bogged down with my science fiction writing when I feel like I need to do extensive research.  I don't know if this normal or healthy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this article interesting: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/jan/21/real-science-science-fiction-sf-scholar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Real Science Of Science Fiction&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  I understand it to state that oftentimes writing science fiction does involve a great deal of scholarly research.  Indeed, I am good at pursuing search strategies: Right now I have compiled upwards of ninety books, articles, and websites that I could use for inspiration and to answer the questions on my list.  That number of resources could potentially triple. I guess it is a good thing to have resources. I am learning an awful lot too -- I do consider myself a lifetime learner.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seem to have put myself in a double bind: I feel like I should be busy writing actual prose, but I give myself a trip that my prose isn't researched enough.    How can I resolve this crisis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9885" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-31T19:05:58.117" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T17:57:25.837" Title="Can a person get bogged down by science fiction research?" Tags="|science-fiction|research|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27102" CreationDate="2017-03-10T19:46:25.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simple answer to your question: Yes. Research can be a distraction , even an excuse, for not writing. Of course, you need to do research, but it isn't actually writing. I would suggest get writing and then do the research that you find you need to do to fill holes. The answers to the questions will either become obvious as you write or will need work at the time. However, if you never start writing because you think more research needs to be done, you will never actually write. Notes and questions aren't a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T19:46:25.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27099" CreationDate="2017-03-10T19:58:00.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since books would be very few and very far between, and mostly bibles, it would be difficult to have him read a ton of stuff, although it's your world, you could put a library in it and have him find a way in and regularly read all sorts of stuff, that would give him a wide breadth of knowledge but not a deep one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing you could do is have him be able to watch someone do something for a while and then be able to be instantly brilliant at it. e.g. he could watch a blacksmith make a sword and then he can just start making swords, maybe he changes the process slightly based on his observations and he can produce better swords than the blacksmith. This way he could become a master at several trades but could also be an accountant, a swordsman, an apothecary or doctor... anything really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22742" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T19:58:00.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27099" CreationDate="2017-03-10T20:32:59.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I woud model him on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Francis Bacon&lt;/a&gt;. Bacon was educated but you could have your character working in a menial position, eg pot boy in a tavern, where he comes into contact with, say, alchemists (or physicians etc), notices that their methods are slipshod and 'unscientific' (clearly he wouldn't use that term - maybe he sees them as silly and pointless) and suggests a more methodical, logical way of doing their job. Most of the listeners mock him but one takes him back and educates him while using him as a labourer or assistant. In this way he develops scientific methods and discovers new things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, ultimately he has to get an education if he is to attain any position of power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23277" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T20:32:59.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27102" CreationDate="2017-03-10T20:38:27.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The golden rule when writing sci-fi is 'just enough to tell the story'. If you've spent 3 years on this and you're still doing research then, basically, you're doing it wrong. Write the story. I can't emphasise this enough WRITE. THE. STORY. Then go back and fill-in the gaps where it makes sense or is necessary, always remembering that if it doesn't 1) move the story forward or 2) reveal something about a character, then it can probably be cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're not writing a scientific paper, you're writing a story. Real science and good research can help sell the plot, but it's not going to rescue a poor story. And remember, 99.9% of your audience won't have a clue and won't care whether the science is right anyway, they're not scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22742" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T20:38:27.757" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27107" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-10T20:51:36.443" Score="6" ViewCount="702" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a character that isn't who they claim to be. This character's true identity and affiliation will become known in the ending chapters. This character can be closely associated with Plutarch Heavensbee (Hunger Games Series) and Barty Crouch Jr (Harry Potter Series). Men who place themselves in high ranking positions only to give all that up for higher motives. How do I keep giving guesses to the reader without fully revealing the true person behind the facade too early on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23955" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-14T01:23:53.683" LastActivityDate="2019-09-26T20:32:58.507" Title="How to write a character that isn't who they claim?" Tags="|creative-writing|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27107" CreationDate="2017-03-10T21:41:46.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all bout the element of hiding important facts and creating smoke and mirrors.  Not sure what your story is about, but you can have it so this character suddenly walks off when no one was looking and doesn't return.  Gives them the element of being shady when really they went off for good reasons.  The other key is to not give away the real information.  Give enough to build the character, but mask some of the details.  I think from HP Severus Snape would also be a good character that follows what you are looking for.  They did a really great job of hiding his true self until the very end.  All along we thought he was bad but ends up being a key hero.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all about perception and creating event points that, when only half of the information is present and the dots are not connected, make them appear to be one way, but then at the end, when they back track all the events and fill in the gaps, you are aware that your perception was wrong all this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T21:41:46.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27107" CreationDate="2017-03-10T21:47:38.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can give people clues, but hide them as just strange or part of their character. For example, Barty Crouch Jr. (GoF spoiler)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; drinks from a hip flask all the time, and keeps trying to help Harry with the Triwizard Tournament. The hip flask turns out to be Polyjuice Potion, and he is trying to make Harry win so he touches the cup first and gets sent to Voldemort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These actions are explained as part of the character's paranoia and his caring nature. In the end, though, we realize that they are not part of his true nature, but rather part of his disguise/plot. When the character is revealed, the clues fall into place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23436" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T21:47:38.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27095" CreationDate="2017-03-11T01:25:26.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's easier to cut than to add.  Therefore, since you seem to be very good at outlining and sticking to your outline (yay!), perhaps you would benefit from adding more branches to your tree, i.e. your outline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So -- see if you can add some subplots, built around side characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it would be helpful to read &lt;em&gt;Middlemarch&lt;/em&gt; by George Eliot, and think about all the different characters and subplots that could be going on, and interacting, in the place where your novel takes place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is something to be said for novellas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T01:25:26.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27095" CreationDate="2017-03-11T03:38:12.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finish it.  Leave it alone for a while.  Go back to it and rework it.  You may have to set it aside again, and then compare the original with the edited version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23936" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T03:38:12.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27095" CreationDate="2017-03-11T03:44:51.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As noted above, there is something to be said for novellas. In fact, there are many famous works that come in at about half the length of what most folks would consider a novel. These are works that, to paraphrase Joseph Conrad, have something to say and proceed to say it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find lists of such famous works online. Here is one list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://listverse.com/2011/12/29/20-brilliant-novellas-you-should-read/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://listverse.com/2011/12/29/20-brilliant-novellas-you-should-read/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know how those authors developed their works, but my guess is that they worked from an outline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always put two novellas into a single book, if you want to make it thicker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I particularly like the &quot;long short stories&quot; (novelettes) of Algernon Blackwood, several of which together make a weighty book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also have a look at the &quot;incredible shrinking orchestra,&quot; a San Francisco ensemble that takes works written for large orchestras, and cuts them down (in orchestration) to a small number of instruments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T03:44:51.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27098" CreationDate="2017-03-11T03:54:43.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do an ebook first, you may get some reviews that may give you an idea as to whether its worthwhile to do a print version.  It can save you a lot of money and heartache. You don't have to epublish the whole book, just a few key chapters to get feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23936" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T03:54:43.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27107" CreationDate="2017-03-11T07:30:41.280" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on your intention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) You want your reader to be suspicious about the character, but not know the true explanation. In this case you can put spotlight on this character, show some mystery and hidden depth, but leave a number of other possible explanations to his actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) You want your reader to be totally oblivious, and only in last chapter smack his head - &quot;How could I miss that?!&quot; In this case you have to keep the spotlight somewhere else. The character should be fully consistent with his assumed identity, and if there's something strange going on, there always must be some other suspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases you have to introduce the idea of a persona who is the real identity of your character. Shroud this persona in mystery, make the other characters look for him and try to learn about him without knowing that he is hiding in plain sight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I think J. K. Rowling is using the idea of false identity too much, almost to the point that I know that newly introduced major characters are rarely the people they are pretending to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastEditorUserId="22990" LastEditDate="2019-09-26T16:30:53.950" LastActivityDate="2019-09-26T16:30:53.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27102" CreationDate="2017-03-11T08:13:41.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that first of all you divide your questions above in two groups: the ones about society and the ones about...well, the rest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can start with either group of questions. Say you start with society: try to answer those questions before you write. Ideally, give them short, summarised answers and, if necessary, add one or two readings for deepening your knowledge on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible, talk to someone (one or two friends with open minds, no more) and let them ask questions that might help you find loopholes and inconsistencies in this society. Make sure you feel satisfied with the general picture of the society. If necessary, ask questions on the World Building SE; you'll get lots of nice feedback. Do not take more than a month on this set of questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to answer the other set with your current knowledge. Again, make the answers short and add one or two reading if necessary. After that, go back and mark the answers which you aren't sure about. Then go back and mark the questions that are essential to the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say that you have a question about new ways of transport. Would it affect the plot if that new transport had to be nixed? No. This means that researching this particular point is not essential and you can start writing before you research it. You can easily replace a car with a bike, it just makes the trip a bit longer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now say the question is how memes work. This can potentially affect the plot. Imagine you write a whole chapter about how the farmer is having his work messed up and then you realise the science you used was faulty. It isn't an easy fix. You can't just replace A with B. So that question needs researching before you start writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research just enough to create the rules of how the &quot;physics&quot; of your world work. If it makes you feel comfortable, mark the ones you know are scientifically accurate and the ones that you made up (and maybe the ones that are half way). Then tell yourself, as @FlyingPiMonster says, the important thing is that the whole is consistent. So look at those rules and make sure they are consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that you can write and research at the same time. So, research enough to create a solid scientific (not necessarily accurate, and seldom to a fault) frame before you write; then start writing and do a little research on the side as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While doing research is very important that you keep the story in mind. A fascinating topic can catch your attention and make you lose yourself investigating it. But does the story really need you to research it that deeply? Really? Keep a sketch (in diagram, timeline, or as it works for you) by your side as you research. Tick the points you feel confident you've got all the answers and rules straight. Do not investigate those points further. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've researched enough to answer a question confidently, stop investigating. You can always say &quot;well this is fascinating and I want to read more about it&quot; and it's fine. You can start writing and at the same time keep on reading &lt;em&gt;for your personal satisfaction&lt;/em&gt; and completely apart from the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T08:13:41.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27043" CreationDate="2017-03-11T15:58:23.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In wikipedia I read that Cary Elwes co-wrote a screenplay. I imagine that when you co-write a screenplay, the work might be just as collaborative, i.e. non-independent, as when you publish a book with your byline along with a &quot;with&quot; byline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems quite plausible that the ghost writer / co-writer of the Bride book played a substantial role. But I don't think heavy copy editors would be considered ghost writers. I think the ghost writer takes a more active role in structuring the work, deciding what's needed, eliciting what's needed, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm basing this on having read ghostwritten / co-written books and having read these authors' descriptions of the process used.  For example, Malcolm X and Alex Haley wrote about their process in writing &lt;em&gt;The Autobiography of Malcolm X.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13494" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T15:58:23.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27099" CreationDate="2017-03-11T17:05:14.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the real world, especially before the internet, technical expertise and education correlated heavily with economic privilege and access to resources. If the character isn't formally educated, there's little hope for him being academically intelligent. He/she (more likely he, given medieval gender roles) can be skeptical, he/she can have a sharp wit, he/she might even be able to read. Keep in mind, however, that literacy was a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/What-were-literacy-rates-in-Medieval-Europe-How-did-they-compare-to-literacy-rates-in-the-Roman-Empire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rare ability&lt;/a&gt; in medieval societies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One alternative is to have a society that is &lt;em&gt;aesthetically&lt;/em&gt; medieval but &lt;em&gt;functions&lt;/em&gt; as might a society from a different era (not necessarily a &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; era, just an era where it is more feasible for a peasant to be educated. If this means the protagonist is a slave whose job is to write down what elites say, well then, you have a society that functions in some ways like the Roman Republic.) For instance, a society with the governmental quality of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;republic&lt;/a&gt; or maybe a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_monarchy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;constitutional monarchy&lt;/a&gt; or at least some semblance of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarianism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;egalitarinaism&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;humanism&lt;/a&gt; would make the kind of protagonist you're talking about more feasible.  Even if it comes packaged with a set of social ills separate from those seen in real-life medieval societies. Mixing and matching your government types with varying levels of egalitarianism, humanism, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;secularism&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mercantilism&lt;/a&gt; can result in entirely unique fictional societies which, while they never existed in the real world, are not necessarily unfeasible. The aim is to create a society where the reader can experience sufficient &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;suspension of disbelief&lt;/a&gt; within the scope of your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip side, keep in mind that socioeconomic status is not a guarantee of illiteracy so much as it is a decent predictor. Consider, for instance, the escaped American slave &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass#Life_as_a_slave&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fredrick Douglass&lt;/a&gt;, who against all socioeconomic odds managed to be more literate and intellectual than the average free man at the time. This shouldn't be regarded as surprising, but it should be regarded as unique, and difficult to attain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your protagonist is in a downtrodden position, he will likely require the help, unwitting or not, from people in a higher position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you desire even less fidelity to history and more creative freedom, systems of magic and superhuman abilities provide all you need. A character can be graced by the God or Gods with the wit of solomon, Can be given psychic powers which allow for heightened empathy and sensitivity, can decode alphabets of foreign languages without the help of native speakers, can slow down their own perception of time to prolong important decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go with a magical system always have a way for your character to become exhausted or less sane with the execution of each &quot;spell&quot; so that their heightened abilities come at a price which increases narrative tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good and increasingly popular example of the sort of character you're setting out to create is &lt;a href=&quot;http://kingkiller.wikia.com/wiki/Kvothe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kvothe&lt;/a&gt; from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingkiller_Chronicle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kingkiller Chronicle&lt;/a&gt;. I would also like to mention &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Will_Hunting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Will Hunting&lt;/a&gt; who, while not a fantasy character, is a lower-class Bostonian janitor who is a genius at math despite being the kind of guy who sometimes gets into street brawls. His character, to me at least, manages to be convincing and compelling despite not necessarily being realistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22605" LastEditorUserId="22605" LastEditDate="2017-03-11T17:17:10.160" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T17:17:10.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27102" CreationDate="2017-03-11T17:13:35.500" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that the key question you should be asking yourself is whether you actually have a story to tell. The heart of any story is a decision. The protagonist (and possibly other characters as well) have to make a decision which is hard for them. Either decision they make will cost them something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meat of a story is, what is it like to be faced with that decision, what circumstance bring the protagonist to this point, and what will it cost them to decide and to live with the decision they have made. (Think of The Little Mermaid -- the real story, not the Disney travesty -- in which in choosing to have legs she accepts that every step will feel like she is walking on knives.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world of a story is simply the set of circumstance in which the character is brought to this decision. This does not mean that world is not a concrete and vivid place -- it must be, because a story is not an abstract philosophical treatise of values, but a recounting of an actual human being in an actual place and time being faced with such a decision. The particularities of time and place are vital to making it a story rather than a thinly veiled essay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a thousand ways to bring a character to the point where they must decide what suffering they are willing the bear for love. Andersen creates a mermaid and an undersea kingdom to dramatize that decision, and all that must seem real and concrete within the frame of the story or we will not be moved to tears by the mermaid's sacrifice, or by her disappointment, or by her eventual fate. We cannot feel it if we do not feel all of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is all that the setting does for the story. If you are doing research or worldbuilding beyond what is needed to create the concrete circumstances in which the protagonist will be brought to the point of decision, you are doing something that is not only unnecessary, but antithetical to the story. The point of decision is the magnetic pole of a story and everything else points to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, why are you continuing past that point? One reason might be that either you do not know what the central decision that will defines your story will be, or that you are afraid to face it. Being afraid to face that decision is legitimate. To write it convincingly, you have to imagine your way through it, which essentially means you have to face it yourself. How much emotional detachment you can maintain and still write the story in an honest and convincing way, I am not certain. I suspect it may vary from one person to another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you want to put a limit to your research, you need to face up honestly to what is holding you back from telling your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T17:13:35.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27099" CreationDate="2017-03-11T18:56:09.713" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In that period, education was not the province of the nobility but of the church. A intelligent and idealistic young man or woman would have a very obvious outlet for their intelligence and idealism, and an opportunity for an education, by joining a monastery. Monasteries were not just the seats of religious thought and learning. They were centers of science and engineering and economics. Upward mobility within that society was very much available through the church, and a monastery would give opportunities for intellect and idealism to be realized in many different ways.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T18:56:09.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27102" CreationDate="2017-03-11T19:52:31.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a few principles I think can help you in your present difficulty:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research is great as long as it isn't blocking you from writing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assume your first draft and your final draft are going to be nothing alike.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unresearched ideas are great stopgaps for researched ideas.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Easy&quot; answers to your questions are great stopgaps for &quot;good&quot; answers to your questions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, the key challenge is to &lt;em&gt;get writing&lt;/em&gt;. Some degree of research can be fantastic, ground you, give you ideas to spin off of. Ninety books of research, before you even start, is not what you need to accomplish those goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your goal here should be to get yourself, as quickly as you possibly can, to the point where you're writing &lt;strong&gt;something&lt;/strong&gt;. It might be a character scene that has nothing to do with the science or the worldbuilding. Or it might be all about the setting and your concepts, but probably only &lt;em&gt;one or two or three&lt;/em&gt; of these questions, and then you only need to answer &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt; right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might get something wrong. You might change things later. Your answer to some of those questions, if you answer a couple of them today, tomorrow, off of an idea that sounds cool instead of thorough research, might not be the best possible. &lt;strong&gt;That's OK.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because here's the thing: stories evolve in the writing. What you think you need now, might be very different than what you turn out to need three chapters in. Something that would take a month of research might turn out to not even be mentioned. &lt;strong&gt;And,&lt;/strong&gt; so much of the research you want to do, you'll do &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; and be more effective, if you're already writing -- if you've got the focus of knowing what you need and what's necessary for your story. So you can write a rough scene today, answering a few questions with answers that are simple, or random, or that just seem cool at the moment. And once you've done that, researching in order to &lt;em&gt;rewrite&lt;/em&gt; the scene or fix it up, can be much, much easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researching and writing are two very, very different muscles. You can probably do them both in parallel -- write in the morning, research in the evening; write one day, research the next. I'm not saying &quot;don't research.&quot; I'm just saying, balance research with &lt;em&gt;getting writing done&lt;/em&gt; -- and try assuming that research will often come in more for the rewriting stage, than for the initial draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T19:52:31.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27099" CreationDate="2017-03-11T21:16:31.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the medieval era Europe such people were sent to the clergy. Genius-level intellect is fairly obvious even in children as it involves thinking &lt;strong&gt;different&lt;/strong&gt; from normal and children are bad at hiding that. As such the kid would have ended up talking to the local priest or the local monks unless some specific reason prevented it. This would have led into him being educated to some degree and probably being forwarded elsewhere for further education, which was pretty much a monopoly of the church. Even if he dodged education religion was seen as only proper intellectual pursuit so expectation would have been to go there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention being sheltered, so I think the assumption was he has spent his childhood with someone who protected him from falling to religion and getting educated? Developing that person and relationship should probably be your first step in creating the character as his values and attitudes would come from there. Reclusive relative, wandering magician, minstrel, or merchant? Somebody who lives separate from others or moves around, anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for writing a genius-level character, you probably should not. It is almost impossible for an author who is himself not at that level of intellect to do it correctly. And while most people would not notice the issues, they also would get no added value over the character simply being very intelligent with 120-140 IQ. It can still be impressive and it is much easier to write. &lt;strong&gt;Much easier.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tips if you really want to anyway. These should help as long as you avoid the genius intellect being the focus of the story. And you really, really should avoid that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Normal people think inside a box of their expectations. Intelligent people can with effort think outside the box. A genius builds a fake box and uses it to communicate with others.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genius has issues communicating with other people. They are constantly aware they are different and separate from other people. This includes their family and friends. This may result in withdrawal and bad social skills or it may result in deliberate effort to act normal. This results in a person that most of time acts perfectly normal, but when excited or upset says incomprehensible or odd things that display, if somebody cares, greater understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genius always redefines the issue at hand. Genius does not really have a real copy of whatever box people are using to frame their question. So they &lt;strong&gt;have to&lt;/strong&gt; reframe it in wider context to understand it at all. Upside is that this usually gives deeper and wider understanding and possibly &quot;outside the box&quot; solutions. Downside is that unless the topic is already familiar, the genius needs more time to have any opinion. Usually being &quot;merely&quot; very intelligent is more useful than being a genius.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&amp;lt;- The part to remember whenever faking genius thinking.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genius thinks other people are smarter than they are. Because genius reinterprets everything in a wider context, he sees links and meanings that did not actually occur to the person saying it. Usually this is harmless, but can lead to misunderstandings. Essentially a genius will assume people are expressing their thoughts in simplified form for easier understanding,because that is what they themselves do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genius excels &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; totally sucks at explaining things. Genius may see the issue with great clarity and consequently can provide a clear and accurate explanation of it. Genius is almost incapable of predicting what of and how normal people will understand his explanation. No copy of the box, remember? This may result in incomprehensible and easily misunderstood explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genius is bad at explaining what they are thinking and usually will just say something &quot;close enough&quot; if asked. While the end results may have great clarity, the actual thought process may be non-linear and impossible to verbalise without extensive ret-conning. This is a limitation of languages and verbal expression and not specific to geniuses, but a genius will run into it constantly. Amplified by most geniuses also being very intelligent and thinking faster than they can talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a reminder, IQ was originally seen as the quotient between mental and physical age. So making the character prefer talking with older people and express himself as an older person would, with allowances for social status and life experience, is a good start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastEditorUserId="11425" LastEditDate="2017-03-11T21:27:54.723" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T21:27:54.723" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27125" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-11T23:37:50.603" Score="4" ViewCount="544" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inspired by the great queens of East Africa (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arawelo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arawelo&lt;/a&gt; in Somalia and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gudit&lt;/a&gt; in Ethiopia), I have been researching a fantasy story about a matriarchal culture for the past two years.  That research has led me to a story that I'd like to tell in an alternate history version of the Kingdom of Aksum (~500CE).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cultures represented in this story would be distinctly different from those of historical Aksum, but given the under-representation of nonwhites in fantasy settings, I'd like to keep my story in a majority African setting.  The problem, however, is that I am white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_appropriation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cultural appropriation&lt;/a&gt; if I keep the geography and place names the same, but replace the religion, government, and family dynamics in my story with ones that work for my plot?  In &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/26730/is-mixing-cultures-for-the-setting-of-a-fantasy-story-frowned-upon&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; it was described as &quot;juxtaposition&quot;, but I feel like the rules may be different when you aren't working with majority cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB: &quot;cultural appropriation&quot; may be the inverse of the term I'm looking for, since the elements I want to replace are the cultural ones.  My concern is that the rarity of africans in SF will lead to &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnfortunateImplications&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;unfortunate implications&lt;/a&gt; when the readers assume that my fictional culture is the one that actually occurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19841" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.750" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T07:46:08.570" Title="Representing minorities without cultural appropriation" Tags="|fantasy|audience|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27126" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-12T00:34:19.783" Score="5" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a non-fiction business book and will self-publish first as an ebook and then as a hardcover. What are effective techniques I can use to have it reviewed in appropriate media, such as The Economist, The Guardian, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2360" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T14:05:23.757" Title="What are effective methods for getting reviews for a non-fiction business book?" Tags="|self-publishing|non-fiction|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27125" CreationDate="2017-03-12T00:48:04.157" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it cultural appropriation? Well, yes and no. Yes, because the historic people you're writing about have the culture of someone else. No, because the story has them as having that culture. It's a lot of a grey area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, is the cultural appropriation a &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; thing in this manner? Probably not. It'd really depend on what sort of government, religion, and family dynamics you have. If you made everyone Christians living in a Feudal European society in ancient Africa, that'd probably be a bad thing. If their religion is a fantasy one and their government not a mirror of any existing one (I'd stay away from putting too much European influence in their in any case), probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I honestly can't say much about family dynamics as they're not something I'm familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23965" LastActivityDate="2017-03-12T00:48:04.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26228" CreationDate="2017-03-12T02:41:08.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you need to write about experiences and people who will never appear in R-rated and porn films. Most people -- men and women -- can get titillation from those places.  You need to provide an experience you can't get from movies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't worry about the misogyny accusation. Erotic fiction tends to be more naked and frank; most readers get that you can have insulting/demeaning characters and sex acts, and that does not make the novel itself misogynistic. That reading audience is a lot more forgiving than most. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just worry about creating interesting and sympathetic characters and providing enough suspense and curiosity for the reader to keep reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to attract/target a male audience, I would 1)focus on the comic aspects, 2)keep the chapters short, 3)focus on the exotic aspects of the characters and settings, 4)try to make it more episodic than about a unified, complex plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, Czech author Milan Kundera is the master of the genre-bending erotica-themed novel. Check out his stuff, especially Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Joke, Book of Laughter and Forgetting. All great stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-03-12T02:41:08.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27125" CreationDate="2017-03-12T12:58:25.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I would do is do a whole lot of research and, if really needed, visit it. Also it would give a good impact if they were to find out that you went through all this trouble, learning about their culture even though you are white, to give them a good book written with good intentions. ;&gt; So don't write fiction write real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22999" LastActivityDate="2017-03-12T12:58:25.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24978" CreationDate="2017-03-13T13:53:35.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Journals don't have a lot of room for error taking extra time to &quot;get to the bottom of things.&quot; They have to get their product out, especially in the case of a team effort which costs hundreds of dollars an hour to produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of a single author or investigative reporter, a single editor probably supervises, and individual differences are hashed out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team effort probably involves a &lt;strong&gt;company-wide policy and a chief editor.&lt;/strong&gt; As Mark noted, if the employee really doesn't like it, there is always resignation, but since this scenario will repeat itself until said employee is a chief editor, most people will just swallow their pride and accept it. Full-time jobs in writing are few and far between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a chief editor is outvoted, that's a case-by-case basis, and the journal's president might get involved. Publications are private enterprises trying to turn a profit. When in doubt, the tendency is for the powers-that-be to choose sensationalism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A peer-reviewed scientific journal is a different beast with the main issue being whether the data supports the conclusions. In this case, a single dissenting opinion might require the research team to recrunch the numbers so that the conclusion is more reliable--this may alter the conclusion. Again, it's up to the chief editor to make a formal decision. This person is an expert in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2017-03-13T14:04:34.027" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T14:04:34.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27133" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-13T16:07:04.490" Score="3" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a book in Microsoft Word format which I would like printed as a book as a present for someone. It is predominately text with a few black and white photos. From what I see, perfect binding looks like the best route. However the site I have looked at requires the book in PDF. They have told me to use InDesign, Gimp or Inkspace as a design software, then convert to PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I haven't used any of these, does anyone have any good advice on which is best to pick up, converting the Microsoft Word .doc to the design program first of all, then converting the result to PDF?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23982" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-08T10:20:47.227" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T10:21:40.437" Title="Best place and software for a one-off, quick print of a book?" Tags="|software|tools|printing|microsoft-word|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27143" CreationDate="2017-03-13T18:59:23.527" Score="2" ViewCount="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a formal research paper (for a competition called National History Day), using the Chicago citation style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am using as a source &lt;a href=&quot;https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/nasa%E2%80%99s-early-stand-women-astronauts-%E2%80%9Cno-present-plans-include-women-space-flights%E2%80%9D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;. I would like to quote/reference the letter pictured in the article, and also reference some of the article surrounding it.&#xA;I must sort my sources as primary or secondary. Which is this article? (I know the letter is a primary source.) Also, should I cite the letter and the article separately, or together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks; any help would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23985" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-03-14T02:31:02.020" LastActivityDate="2020-09-27T23:40:11.037" Title="Cite letter and article separately even though both are on the same webpage?" Tags="|citations|academic-writing|non-fiction|chicago-manual-of-style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27133" CreationDate="2017-03-13T19:15:40.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must recommend LaTeX. You're able to control all sorts of different factors, and it always looks beautiful in the end - and, of course, it can be converted into a PDF file. Using the &lt;code&gt;book&lt;/code&gt; class is your best bet - I'd check out &lt;a href=&quot;https://tex.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;TeX Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; for information and advice. If you don't want to download the program (it's free, by the way) you can use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sharelatex.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Share LaTeX&lt;/a&gt;, which is online, and then just download the resulting PDF and send it off. Both LaTeX and Share LaTeX accept diagrams, so you can create those in Inkscape or whatever, and if using Share LaTeX, upload them to the site, and then they'll show up in the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23985" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:34:29.717" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T19:15:40.227" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27155" CreationDate="2017-03-13T19:56:00.693" Score="1" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I use certain elements of a culture or language, how different should they be compared to the original? How different should the language used to reference those elements be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can I use a culture specific dish like sushi and call it sushi to describe the cuisine of my fictional culture?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the Swedish language there are no gender specific words for professions. if I use that tidbit to create a culture and use the same words as in Swedish, Will I savaged by critics? Will I be accused of cultural appropriation?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23987" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-03-14T14:38:09.660" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T01:10:04.633" Title="How similar can I make fictional and real cultures?" Tags="|fantasy|word-choice|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27099" CreationDate="2017-03-13T20:30:10.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having in mind the OP's comment... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By sheltered, I meant very sheltered. This owes to the fact the protagonist is next in line for the throne, but the rest of his family was murdered when he was merely half a year old. His (adoptive) father had to flee the castle with the baby during a coup, and they have since then lived under the rule of their rival country. The father has tried to limit his adopted son's &quot;exposure&quot; to the world in fear they might be discovered and hunted down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the first thing to do is to decide how the foster father raised the protagonist. He must have received some education in order to prepare him to become an adult. It would be useful to teach them some sort of martial art (even if only how to use a sword and a dagger) because he may need to know how to defend himself in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the idea was for the protagonist to not attempt to recover the throne, then he should be taught a craft, preferably something that doesn't require much contact with people. If the idea was for the protagonist to be aware of his lineage, then he'd have academic knowledge in the shape of written language and history, besides martial arts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; sheltered would be expected of a child in a noble or rich middle-class family, not in a poor family of exiles. That would just call unwanted attention. The boy should be raised in a way similar to the other boys in the neighbourhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T20:30:10.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27136" CreationDate="2017-03-13T22:50:04.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, because you are framing it in terms the reader will understand and respond to. This, in turn, helps the reader immerse themselves in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like describing colours or hats. You can describe someone wearing a blue tunic, even though it's a fictional culture and the word for blue might be &quot;Spangleglott&quot;. Or someone wearing a fedora.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you a relating it back to something familiar for the reader/protagonist then you can always describe it initially as &quot;sushi-like&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T22:50:04.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27133" CreationDate="2017-03-13T23:55:18.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simplest solution, which does not require any additional knowledge or software, is to re-size your images so that they do not approach the page edges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an image approaches the page edge (or reaches it, or goes past it), then you need the bleed box for commercial printing. This is a technical internal detail of PDF. It is not rocket science, but not all software enables it. Note that your home printer does not care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all images remain within the margins set for ordinary text (so that there is white space around each image) then you do not need a bleed box. For a one-off book, I would do it this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T23:55:18.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27099" CreationDate="2017-03-14T00:26:12.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your character's three traits (intellect, naivete and idealism) combined with the fact that, at 15, he is outside of his sheltered home, virtually sets up the plot that your character will be used by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely, it would be done by some con artist or crime lord who notices your protagonist's abilities and proceeds to delude him that he needs to help crafting criminal schemas in order to punish the rich and help the poor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T00:26:12.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27134" CreationDate="2017-03-14T01:45:54.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The letter is a primary source, as you already know.  This is the &lt;em&gt;actual artifact&lt;/em&gt;, the letter the young woman received from NASA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article about the history of these events is a secondary source; it's not a record of the events itself but a description.  (It might actually be a tertiary source, but you could make the case for secondary.)  &lt;a href=&quot;http://tuskegee.libguides.com/c.php?g=546110&amp;amp;p=3780244&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; explains more about primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.  It's not part of CMOS but appears to be from a university that uses CMOS as its standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using the article only to provide access to the letter, then you cite the letter while crediting the publication:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lloyd, Jr., O. B., O. B. Lloyd, Jr. to Linda Halpern, March 13, 1962, in [... cite article here]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &quot;a letter found on a website&quot; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://library.menloschool.org/chicago/letter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;these Chicago citation guidelines&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are also using the article in other ways, and not just as your source for the letter, then cite the article itself where you use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T01:45:54.487" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27151" CreationDate="2017-03-14T02:10:40.993" Score="7" ViewCount="2796" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, here's what I want: I want a check list or step by step list I can use while trying to name my characters. I often have trouble coming up with original names, especially last names, and this would really help me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that this is different from the &quot;Choosing a character name is a constant difficulty&quot; question as I am looking for strategies to come up with names (a creativity problem), while that question is about why certain names sound weird.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23993" LastEditorUserId="7986" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T13:11:22.853" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T14:17:50.093" Title="What is a good way to name characters?" Tags="|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27144" CreationDate="2017-03-14T02:30:02.190" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about the traits of your character. If your character is &quot;on the edge&quot;, give them an interesting, different name. If your character is kind of nerdy, give them a nerdy style name like Alexander, or something. You can also mish-mash these - if your character is being tugged between what they want to do, and what their parents want, give them a name their parents would want and give them that, but also give them a nickname they go by (perhaps). If you've ever heard a person say that another is definitely &quot;a Sally&quot; or &quot;a Joe&quot; you know what I mean.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about the culture of your character. Maybe they're Irish. So give them an Irish last name, or first name, or both. Consider whether they'd be from a culture where they're last names are related to their Dad's, or their parent's. Consider how common middle names are in their culture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If all is lost, use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://character.namegeneratorfun.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;random name generator&lt;/a&gt; or simply names you like. Names can be deeply significant, but that may not always be a good thing. You could also keep a journal of funky, interesting, or new names, or combinations of names. For example, one of the authors of the writing guide Spilling Ink says she came up with the name for one of her characters (Olivia Kidney, an impressively uncommon name, to be sure) from a list of addresses for envelopes she had to fill out as a secretary. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you shouldn't consider this process to be a checklist. Writing is a creative exercise for a reason. And finally: don't assign depth to a name where there is none. Thinking for hours and hours and hours about a name for a character that gets introduced for one small scene is probably not a great idea (unless that's the sort of thing you like, in which case, carry on). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23985" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T02:30:02.190" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27144" CreationDate="2017-03-14T03:12:48.937" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;How you name your characters is dependent on a number of things and there are a number of strategies available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off though, you need to consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What Genre your story is in&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where your story is set / Where your characters are from&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When your story is set / When are your characters from&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genre is important. Naming conventions vary greatly between genres. Fiction, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Romance all have vastly different conventions and 'accepted' styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiction, Romance and other 'modern day' settings are best suited to keeping as close to current trends as possible. Depending on the dominant culture your naming convention should follow suit. I.e. an Anglicised or &quot;western&quot; culture will predominately have anglicised names (John, Marc, Luke, Matthew, Grace etc). Baby name lists, telephone books etc are all good resources to use for naming your characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy and Sci-Fi allow more esoteric naming conventions, or more descriptive depending on the setting and the time setting. Characters from a Victorian period will have different names to those in the Roman Empire or Middle Ages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surnames were often dependent on lineage or profession as well, and over time have evolved into what we see today. E.g. Ericson was initially Son of Eric. Cooper refers to the profession (as does Smith or Baker). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, look at what culture influences your characters/story. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_conventions&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roman names&lt;/a&gt; are very different to Nordic names. Research prominent historical figures, or other literature - Shakespeare is a great resource because his works cover a wide range of settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mythology, histories, plays and sagas, Random name generators, baby name generators, census data etc are all good resources to give you an idea.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of sites that can give you a headstart:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Naming_Conventions#Viking_.26_Nordic_Naming_Conventions:&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Naming Conventions&lt;/a&gt; covers the basics of Roman, Nordic, Irish, Scottish, Biblical and others&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://namingschemes.com/Norse_Mythology&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nordic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.novaroma.org/nr/Choosing_a_Roman_name&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roman&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biblical_names&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biblical&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fantasy Name Generator&lt;/a&gt; (this covers a load of &quot;cultures&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.essentialbaby.com.au%20%E2%80%BA%20Pregnancy%20%E2%80%BA%20Baby%20Names&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Top 100 Baby Names&lt;/a&gt; (2017)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://names.mongabay.com/most_common_surnames.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Common American Surnames&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_common_surnames_in_Europe&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Common European Surnames&lt;/a&gt; (by Country)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/tag/naming-characters/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing Excuses&lt;/a&gt; (Podcast with Howard Taylor, Brandon Sanderson and others - an excellent resource, this episode is about naming characters) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T03:12:48.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27144" CreationDate="2017-03-14T06:14:29.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An interesting idea that no one has suggested yet is to simply break down normal nouns into more name like ones. For example, create a name that is associated with the character - if a character's primary trait is strength, why not name them Luft? (Similar to the word lift), if a character can use some kind of wind magic, or if they love flying - why not Flyte? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply take a word related to the character - and modify it to be name like, and you can generate tons of names that the audience can easily remember.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T06:14:29.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27125" CreationDate="2017-03-14T07:46:08.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you clearly state at the beginning that this story in an &lt;em&gt;alternate historical fiction&lt;/em&gt; and not historical fiction. Either that or change the names and call it a fantasy kingdom set in Africa. People will always try to see vaguely historical fiction as being the depiction of true events, unfortunately. You can also add an afterword where you add some facts about the real kingdom of Aksum at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T07:46:08.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27144" CreationDate="2017-03-14T08:34:25.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I beleve JK. Rowling (of Harry Potter) went to a local Graveyard (Greyfriars cemetery), to get inspiration for the names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/voldemort-draws-harry-potter-fans-to-greyfriars-1-3067986&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/voldemort-draws-harry-potter-fans-to-greyfriars-1-3067986&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-09-17/did-you-spot-all-these-hidden-references-in-jk-rowlings-harry-potter-names&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-09-17/did-you-spot-all-these-hidden-references-in-jk-rowlings-harry-potter-names&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also get inspiration from your highschool yearbook or a phonebook.&#xA;Maybe shift first and lastnames one line, to keep a little privacy for your peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are deffinitely some clichee names, like (for example) &quot;Kevin&quot; for the complicated Child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23468" LastEditorUserId="23468" LastEditDate="2017-03-14T08:41:07.203" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T08:41:07.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27150" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-14T10:00:25.663" Score="1" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a story with mythology and gods. But one of the main characters is Chronos, the God of Time, and I don't see how I can get around the fact that Chronos should have been able to prevent the story's conflict and tragedy from happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This world was created by Natura, the goddess of space, creation, and life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She felt alone, so she created Chronos, the god of time, destruction and death, to have a partner and also to maintain a perfect balance in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, they had a child, Adam. Adam needed some company, so Natura remembered what she did to fix the same when she was alone. She took the good part of his soul to create a new being, Eve. She was sleeping. Now that he is just evil, he can rule the chaos. He cut the head of Natura. Chronos looked at his son, and Adam become into a huge beast. They fought, and before the final blow, Chronos opened a portal to the moon, and Adam was sealed forever. Chronos tried to undo what Adam had done with Natura's head, she was right now, but she was empty, no soul was there. He sent the girl to the Earth, and since cannot create life or bring her back, he committed suicide. Eve have not been awoken and her brother Adam still sealed on the moon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The problem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chronos is the god of time, so he is supposed to know the past, present and future, and he could prevent Natura's Death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I justify that Chronos did not know? Alternatively: in the case that he did know, how can I justify that he did not act on that knowledge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23998" LastEditorUserId="23998" LastEditDate="2017-03-14T18:20:35.867" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T18:20:35.867" Title="How do I get around my omniscient character isn't knowledge of the future?" Tags="|characters|plot|fantasy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-03-14T20:29:48.670" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27144" CreationDate="2017-03-14T10:39:48.257" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a list of various techniques I use when it comes to naming characters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The lazy approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick the first good name that comes into your head. Simple. I do this for a lot of minor or one-shot characters, where it's not worth going into much detail trying to think of a better name (something @heather already touched upon).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't recommend using this approach for important characters, or for characters from foreign countries; unless you have a decent knowledge of names from that country, you'll likely end up with something like &quot;Luigi Ferrari&quot;, which sounds stereotyped and silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The &quot;write who you know&quot; approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the first name or surname of someone you know. Maybe you went to school with them, or you work with them, or you've met them online somewhere. I've used my late grandmother's maiden name for a couple of my characters. I wouldn't recommend using their full name, for privacy reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The dictionary approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the approach I usually use for naming foreign characters. Googling &quot;[country] [gender] first names&quot; and &quot;[country] surnames&quot; will return dozens of websites full of relevant names, and you can pick whichever names you like best. Remember that names work differently in certain cultures: for example, Slavic surnames are often patronymic (the son of someone named &quot;Ivan&quot; will be &quot;Ivanov&quot; or &quot;Ivanovic&quot;), and also often gendered (a female would be &quot;Ivanova&quot; instead of &quot;Ivanov&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The &quot;meaningful&quot; approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to the dictionary approach, except you look for a name with a meaning specific to the character you're writing. If your character is a pure, innocent ingenue, look for a name that means &quot;purity&quot; or &quot;innocence&quot;. If your character is a tough fighter, look for a name that means &quot;warrior&quot;. If your character is posh, look for surnames of rich or noble families, and give them a couple of posh-sounding middle names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also use Biblical or historical names with certain connotations, such as &quot;Nero&quot; for a man with fire powers (after the emperor who supposedly 'fiddled while Rome burned'), or &quot;David&quot; for a plucky man who battles the odds. Try not to be too egregious about it though: if I come across a character called Lazarus, and he dies and comes back to life, that's enough to affect my suspension of disbelief, especially if nobody in-story comments on the &lt;em&gt;sheer unlikeliness&lt;/em&gt; of that happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternately, think of a name that might be meaningful to the characters' parents. One of my characters is named Sapphire, after her mother's favourite gemstone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The &quot;themed&quot; approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't personally use this often, but for some stories, you could think about giving characters names based on a common theme. &lt;em&gt;RWBY&lt;/em&gt; uses colours, and the names of mythical or fairy-tale characters; James Bond and its numerous homages/parodies tend to give female characters innuendo-laden names; &lt;em&gt;Steven Universe&lt;/em&gt; uses gemstones; &lt;em&gt;Finding Nemo&lt;/em&gt; uses nautical names (Nemo, Marlin, Gill); and so on and so forth. Some of the more common themes (such as colours and vehicles) have their own TV Tropes pages, which I'll link later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The RNG approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, for the names of fantasy characters, there are all kinds of random name generators available for free on the Internet. A few people have linked some already but you can find plenty of others by just searching &quot;fantasy name generator&quot;. Try a few, keep rolling until you get a name you like, and then maybe tweak it a little yourself until it's perfect for your character and world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23927" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T10:39:48.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27144" CreationDate="2017-03-14T13:24:26.990" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, as a reader, I'm not great fan of authors trying to match the name to the character's personality traits. It often feels very force fed and well, immersion breaking if used too much. One starts to think &quot;the parents named this Feisty McFeist when s/he was few hours/days/weeks old, or even before s/he was born. They had zero idea if s/he would be feisty or not&quot;. Nicknames are different thing, those quite often do describe personality or what the character (or person) likes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personality or occupation related names do work if you write about society where &quot;real name&quot; is something adults get when they have proven themselves and their character has been examined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In society where parents name the babies, don't think about the character, think about the family and parents. What kind of people the parents are? Old hippies? Pretentious? Upstarters or old, well-to-do family? Warriors? Workers? What kind of hopes they have about the child? Is the child to be the great warrior to lead the village to freedom? Next in line to inherit the family business? What do the parents value? Kindness, grace, power? This also offers you angle: does the character end up matching their name, if there was some meaning to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your setup is in real world, think when your character was born. Different names were in use in the fifties than nineties. As somebody mentioned, one can often find lists of popular names during different time periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24001" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T13:24:26.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25557" CreationDate="2017-03-14T13:29:16.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As people said in the comments, double check with your teacher first - seeing as they're going to be the one grading you, I'd make sure whatever you do is okay with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you are citing an article, inline citations (for a book or multiple page-long article) only need to have the author and page number, like in (Smith 290). If it's something with an author but no page number, you can do (Smith). Now, finally, let's say your article has a really long title, like the one you mention. The purpose of inline citations is to provide a quick way to check your bibliography, find the source, and then check it for more information. In other words, I've always been able to abbreviate the source enough that it's shorter, but not so much you can't find it in the bibliography fairly easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, with your title, I might use (&quot;Negative Effects of Social Media&quot;) for a fairly distinctive citation if there are other articles with a similar title. But if there aren't really any other articles with the phrase &quot;Negative Effects&quot; in the title, then you could do (&quot;Negative Effects&quot;). Just keep in mind the main point of these inline citations as you abbreviate: to make sure you can find the source in the bibliography fairly easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23985" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-08T12:13:57.497" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T12:13:57.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27136" CreationDate="2017-03-14T15:16:45.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, if you garner enough attention to get any critics interested in savaging you, you will already be doing well. But critics qua critics are unlikely to savage you for it unless you do it clumsily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The accusation of cultural appropriation is a relatively new weapon in the culture wars. Indeed, adopting the culture or dress of a group or culture was regarded as a mark of appreciation or solidarity not so long ago. So it is much trickier to say what is going to provoke such a charge, and even if you should take such a charge seriously if it is leveled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you use elements of a culture could be as much a factor as what elements you use. Using such elements for purposes of mockery or derision is obviously going to provoke a different reaction from using them respectfully or out of utility. But then again, it depends on who you are mocking. Some groups can be mocked with impunity (Catholics, cowboys, Brits, for example). Some cannot be mocked at all on peril of intense vitriol and social exclusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is very hard to say exactly what will provoke such a charge. I have not heard of anyone accusing Tony Hillerman of cultural appropriation for writing a mystery series featuring two Navajo policemen. (Not saying they haven't, mind you.) But such accusations can suddenly develop as a tool for promoting the agenda of a particular group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But few cultures or groups worry about this sort of thing and I cannot imagine the Swedes or the Japanese (who have a very fine traditions of performing western classical music, for instance) ever leveling such an accusation. Most cultures borrow from each other and always have done throughout history. Modern society is largely a product of such borrowings and the innovations that arise from the intersection of ideas and practices. The modern West is inconceivable without the mixing of Indian mathematics, Arabic numerals, Roman law, Greek thought, Jewish spirituality, Christian theology, Norse seafaring, Celtic art, Germanic language, etc. etc. It is not merely the presence of these elements that matters, but how they affect each other and the new things that develop as a result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Objections come from the margins, from groups struggling with the paradoxes of inclusion and distinctiveness, who may feel that their distinctiveness is being eroded as much by the wider culture's adoption of elements of their culture as by their own people adopting elements of the wider culture. Be aware of these sensitivities, whether you decide that they are well merited or not. No point in picking a fight you don't want by mere inadvertence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T15:16:45.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27136" CreationDate="2017-03-14T15:27:03.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I use a culture specific dish like sushi and call it sushi to describe the cuisine of my fictional culture?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, because you are framing it in terms the reader will understand and respond to. This, in turn, helps the reader &lt;strong&gt;(s?)&lt;/strong&gt; immerse themselves in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing can prevent you from doing that. You are the author, and the paper (or the computer screen) will tolerate anything you scribble on it. The reaction to your choice of words, however, really depends on the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I would stumble upon something like that I would be tempted to put the book down. For me, it stabs the suspension of disbelief right in the gut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story depends on calling a piece of raw fish, wrapped in steamed rice and seaweed leaf, nothing else, but &lt;em&gt;sushi&lt;/em&gt;, it should be set in our world. Then your characters, dressed in burkas and ushankas can drink tequila and vodka and eat pizza and curry while hunting buffalos, wielding machetes, firing Kalashnikovs, and drive Camaros and Corvettes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you a relating it back to something familiar for the reader/protagonist then you can always describe it initially as &amp;quot;sushi-like&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, this is even a better way to kill all joy of immersing oneself into a secondary world. Not only you confess (in writing) that you are unable to describe the food in focus of your story (ahem, a piece of raw fish, wrapped in steamed rice and seaweed leaf?) which is apparently very important for your settings, you also immediately introduce yourself as a narrator from the modern Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, once again, this is your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T15:27:03.017" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27133" CreationDate="2017-03-14T15:42:09.440" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They have told me to use INDESIGN, GIMP OR INKSCAPE as design software, then convert to PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whoever told you that, they either hate you or are on a wrong set of meds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is for manipulating images, not book-length text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;INKSCAPE is a tool for creating and editing vector graphics, again, not book-length text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adobe InDesign would be a professional's choice for a job, but it has a steep learning curve, as any professional tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS Word has an option of exporting files in PDF format, why not just do that, as @LaurenIpsum suggests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-08T10:21:40.437" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T10:21:40.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27150" CreationDate="2017-03-14T15:44:44.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is ultimately not really a writing question&lt;/strong&gt; (since it has nothing to do with how you'll &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; the story). I'd suggest asking it in worldbuilding instead (since it relates to the practical limitations of fantastical concepts, I'd say it's on topic there). That said, here are a few suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps Chronos knows what will happen if he acts on the knowledge, and knows that it's even worse (or that what he'd have to do to prevent it is unthinkable to him).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps Chronos doesn't know what will happen if he acts on the knowledge, and is too paralysed by the fear that it &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be worse to do anything.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps he tries to prevent it and ends up causing it. Obviously, he will know that he is causing it as he acts, so this will need to be something with sufficient emotional weight that he can't resist the impulse to act, even though he knows the consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are by no means the only possibilities, but it all comes down to the kind of story you're trying to tell (and particularly the kind of story arc you want for the character). Do you want him to be watching, horrified, as events unfold; absent mindedly oblivious; frantically trying to change things, but failing? I suggest that you decide this first, and let the worldbuilding follow naturally from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T15:44:44.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27158" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-14T16:27:30.037" Score="7" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of advice on how to be a tech writer for software without a tech background. (That is, skills such as understanding end-users, investigative reporting-type skills to probe experts, etc. as applied to software.) Software has a lot of information available that is relatively easy to pick-up by gaining the relevant language and elementary skills needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have trouble finding advice about breaking into tech writing for other, more complicated (perhaps) areas, such as electrical engineering or physics, without a tech/engineering background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: Are &quot;more technical&quot; areas outside of programming accessible to the non-tech-background technical writer; and, if so, what are some necessary steps without becoming a full-fledged engineer or scientist?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user24004" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-14T22:20:11.533" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T22:20:11.533" Title="Technical Writing Other Than Software" Tags="|technical-writing|career|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25126" CreationDate="2017-03-14T16:51:09.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So this reporting process is not automated, rather your &lt;strong&gt;workflow is being augmented&lt;/strong&gt; by a user interface which tries to simplify the process for you.  I would consider revising the question title to draw more relevance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it seems like &lt;strong&gt;that adds a level of complexity&lt;/strong&gt;, where if there is very much nesting and looping in that part of the document, &lt;strong&gt;the user interface itself becomes more of a hassle than a benefit&lt;/strong&gt;, making you have to do counting maths in your head to figure out which button you should click if you want to do a certain thing [create a child, or nested data point; create a sibling, or parallel data point, etc].  I can see how, with much nesting, it could get confusing fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you considered not using the RSCC system at all for this task, and &lt;strong&gt;manually creating the nested lists, using keyboard shortcuts such as 'tab' and 'shift+tab' to achieve the nested depths you desire?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that if there are no proprietary or simplistic alternatives you can find, you could potentially &lt;strong&gt;create your own 'RSCC macro', using the Microsoft VBA developer console.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Macro development in VBA is probably not your forte (it's certainly not mine), but it could end up being a viable solution, depending on how modular the content control sections of your template are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you get to the nested parts of the document, click a button which runs your macro, which prompts you for the nested stuff, where you can use your own interface which makes the nesting/looping better or more straightforward for you, personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seems to me though that creating the nested lists in the normal way is your best bet&lt;/strong&gt;, because then you have the 'tab' and 'shift+tab' shortcuts to systematically nest and un-nest pieces of data from each other, in a context-aware fashion. (Meaning, if the current data point is 2-deep, and you press enter [to create a new sibling data point] and press shift + tab, it will know to move this new data point back, making it 1-deep, and now it is a sibling of it's previous sibling's parent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24003" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T16:51:09.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27158" CreationDate="2017-03-14T17:53:11.903" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of the great debates in technical communication. Do you need to be a technical expert or is it enough to be an effective communicator? Different tech writers, and different employers, come down on different side of this debate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are two main factors to consider here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, good writing, fundamentally, in not just about good grammar, it is about knowing what needs to be said. Saying the wrong thing in beautiful words is of no use to anyone. Saying the right things in clunky words is less than ideal, but still usable. So the question is, how easy is it to figure out what needs to be said? Chances are that the engineers who built the product don't know what users need to know, so it is not use asking them. When we were mostly documenting home and office software applications, technical writers were themselves home and office software applications users and so they had a pretty good idea what needed to be said. But when nobody knows what needs to be said, you get documentation that is engineering bafflegab. A writer may strip out the jargon, but the content is still not what end users need to know.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proliferation of desktop apps has largely ceased. Most people know how to use them. The consumer action now is mobile, where apps are much simpler and easier to figure out. Therefore there is less demand for this sort of tech writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the people who were doing desktop software tech writing 15 years ago have transitioned into more developer-oriented tech comm or into more marketing related roles. If you are writing for a developer audience, you don't naturally know what developers need to know about a product unless you are a developer yourself. But at least those tech writers have had the benefit of working with developers for a long time, which certainly helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-software-related tech writing, though, knowing what the user needs to know can be far more difficult, and understanding the equipment so that you can figure out how to map its properties to the users needs is also more difficult. In many cases, there are safety and regulatory considerations as well. And most writers -- people who identify themselves as writers, I mean -- don't have any experience with the task or the tools that these users are performing and usng. All this means it is more difficult to get into the position of really knowing what it is that the users needs to know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, users in these fields often require specific training before they can use the machinery or perform the tasks, which means that the share much more of a background and vocabulary with each other than typical desktop software users do. All this means that it is easier of people coming from working in those fields to turn to doing technical writing in those fields. They are writing for people with tasks and backgrounds very similar to their own. Domain knowledge is therefore more crucial than writing skill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, while the ideal qualifications of a tech writer are that they a) know how to write, b) understand the technology so they can talk to the developers, and c) understand the users and their tasks so they know what to write, the fact is that it is hard to find enough people with all three qualifications. People do therefore get hired for tech writing jobs with only one of two of these qualifications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many in the field who insist that this is the natural proper state of things, that all a tech writer needs are good writing skills and the ability to do research. Many employers disagree, for the good reason that they have cost constraints and deadlines to meet and that tech writers researching things from scratch not only takes too much of the tech writer's time, it takes too much of everybody else's time as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: Technical communication is not a profession with fixed boundaries or expectations, much as some people and organizations would like it to be. Your mileage may vary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T17:53:11.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27165" CreationDate="2017-03-14T21:54:18.610" Score="7" ViewCount="29628" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the past four months, I've been writing back and forth with a friend of mine in a form of roleplay. Depending on what's happening, our replies range from a few sentences (usually with dialogue) to a few paragraphs. While I've gotten much better at writing and understanding my main character, I've begun to notice how I always seem to fall back on the same structure, the same verbs, etc. Here are a few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He&lt;/strong&gt; leaned into her touch, &lt;strong&gt;watching&lt;/strong&gt; her with a content smile on his face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He&lt;/strong&gt; gritted his teeth &lt;strong&gt;slightly, pouring&lt;/strong&gt; the hot water into his cup &lt;strong&gt;as he&lt;/strong&gt; felt his cheeks heating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He&lt;/strong&gt; raised an eyebrow at her, &lt;strong&gt;before slowing&lt;/strong&gt; his pace a little, &lt;strong&gt;moving to step&lt;/strong&gt; by her side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;His&lt;/strong&gt; breath caught in his throat, &lt;strong&gt;and he&lt;/strong&gt; coughed a little, looking away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He&lt;/strong&gt; held the door for her, &lt;strong&gt;allowing her to&lt;/strong&gt; pass through, &lt;strong&gt;before moving to&lt;/strong&gt; follow her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what I'm mainly pointing out here is my habit of starting with either my character's name or pronoun, my tendency to use a comma followed by a verb (sometimes multiple times in the same sentence, and my repeated use of phrases or transition words such as &amp;quot;moving to [verb]&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;before&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;and he&amp;quot;, etc. I do often write small notions about what's going on in my character's head, but that's not applicable for every single reply I write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been driving me crazy, but I often don't know how else to word/structure certain things. The nature of roleplay already puts me into a position where I can only write things my character is doing, saying, thinking, or feeling -- is this a natural consequence, or could I be doing more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24010" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2020-08-31T08:48:39.503" Title="How can I make my roleplay sentences more interesting, and less lengthy?" Tags="|style|structure|word-choice|collaboration|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27161" CreationDate="2017-03-14T23:56:02.647" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think length &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; is a problem in your examples. It's more the &lt;em&gt;monotony&lt;/em&gt; of the repeated three-part structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here some ideas for varying the structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Varying Length and Structure.&lt;/strong&gt; First, break down your sentences into individual &lt;em&gt;propositions&lt;/em&gt;--teeny, tiny sentences, each of which makes a single claim. Like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She touched him. (implied by your first clause)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He leaned into the touch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He watched her.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He smiled.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The smile was on his face. (a bit silly to break it down this far, I admit)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The smile was content.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now combine these individual propositions in as many ways as you can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He leaned into her touch. He smiled, content, as he watched her.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He leaned into her touch and watched her, content, a smile on his face.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He smiled, content, leaning into her touch as he watched her.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He smiled, content, leaning into her touch, watching her.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2mL0NYd&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Writer's Options&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is a terrific book of exercises for exploring different ways to combine ideas into sentences. It's a college book—with college book prices—but it's been around since the dawn of time, so you can probably find a used copy at a nice price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Even &lt;em&gt;Longer&lt;/em&gt; Sentences.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Another possibility is to actively &lt;em&gt;lengthen&lt;/em&gt; your sentences. As I said, the clunkiness in your examples is in the repetitive structure, and not in the length or clarity of the sentences. Each alone is delightful and clear. I'll bet you have the skill to build longer sentence that are just as clear as your examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brooks Landon's book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2mL13q9&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Building Great Sentences&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is a tour de force of ways to build even &lt;em&gt;longer&lt;/em&gt; sentences than yours, step by step, each step building on the ones before, building clarity, rhythm, specificity, and energy as you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finding Subjects.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If your character is observing things around him, you can sometimes use those things as the subjects of sentences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The wind rattled through the windows, chilling him through his thin jerkin.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steam spiraled up from his cup, pirouetted, and melted away into the chilly air.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T23:56:02.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27163" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27164" CreationDate="2017-03-15T01:33:00.203" Score="3" ViewCount="2107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going through an editing something I wrote and am stuck on where to break paragraphs containing dialogue. I know I need to break when a new character speaks, but I'm not sure where to start a new paragraph when there is description mixed with dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He nodded. &quot;Thank you for returning the bicycle. You see it was my son's and he would love to ride it one more time.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; My heart pained at this, and I looked up at my dad who seemed unmoved.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; I looked back at Mr. Houston.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; &quot;Of course. I apologize I didn't give it back in time. I was scared.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where is the best place to split this paragraph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After the first speaker finishes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Between the two non-dialogue sentences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just before the second speaker begins&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Somewhere else?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24012" LastEditorUserId="23436" LastEditDate="2017-03-19T15:01:15.743" LastActivityDate="2020-11-04T22:01:42.573" Title="Where to break paragraphs in dialogue?" Tags="|editing|dialogue|prose|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27163" CreationDate="2017-03-15T01:48:25.310" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would break it after Mr. Houston finishes speaking (your first example). This way, the first paragraph is about what Mr. Houston said, and the second paragraph is about the speaker's response, both in his thoughts and out loud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He nodded. &amp;quot;Thank you for returning the bicycle. You see it was my son's and he would love to ride it one more time.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My heart pained at this, and I looked up at my dad, who seemed unmoved. I looked back at Mr. Houston. &amp;quot;Of course. I apologize I didn't give it back in time. I was scared.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just based on the dialogue you've posted. There might be a better way to do this depending on the rest of the conversation. For example, if you want to build a bit of tension, you might split it into three paragraphs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He nodded. &amp;quot;Thank you for returning the bicycle. You see it was my son's and he would love to ride it one more time.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My heart pained at this, and I looked up at my dad, who seemed unmoved. I looked back at Mr. Houston.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Of course. I apologize I didn't give it back in time. I was scared.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23436" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T01:48:25.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27161" CreationDate="2017-03-15T04:29:29.563" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll go ahead and do some examples, using yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He leaned into her touch, watching her with a content smile on his face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;rewrite: A content smile spread over his face as he leaned into her touch.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;rewrited: Contented now, he smiled as he leaned into her touch.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He gritted his teeth slightly, pouring the hot water into his cup as he felt his cheeks heating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;re write:Pouring the hot water into his cup as he felt his cheeks heating, he gritted his teeth slightly.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;rewrite: His cheeks warmed, and with a slight grit of his teeth he poured the hot water into the cup.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He raised an eyebrow at her, before slowing his pace a little, moving to step by her side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;rewrite: With an arch of his brow at her words, he slowed, moving to step by her side.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His breath caught in his throat, and he coughed a little, looking away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;rewrite: A breath caught in his throat, and he coughed a little, looking away.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He held the door for her, allowing her to pass through, before moving to follow her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;rewrite: Holding the door, he let her pass before moving to follow her.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, I'm using several forms of variance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;putting an ing after the verb and using that to start the sentence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;starting with with. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Starting with A.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;starting with the state of being. such as contented, footsore, sad, downcast...you get the picture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Starting with &quot;His&quot; which is one of the variances you are already using.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other variances&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adverb beginning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I haven't done is any --ly work. You could start &quot;He held the door&quot; with a descriptive such as &quot;Gently, he held the door...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Body part beginning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also start with a body part: Lip twisted in a smirk, he slowed to meet her. Hands shoved in his pockets, he shivered in the cold. Shoulders slumped, he put an arm around her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;location in relation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also starting with placement--On his knees...Behind her...Under the marble archway..Through the door he strode...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T04:29:29.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27166" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27167" CreationDate="2017-03-15T04:46:40.827" Score="5" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1742/whats-the-best-way-to-show-a-foreign-language-in-a-manuscript&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, I was trying to figure out how to format a small family of novels and short stories that use a number of languages. My original approach went with the above question's style. However, over the last few years, I've been to a number of panels about multiple languages and had conversations where many native speakers feel that setting off foreign words in italics came off as jarring when they are usually smoothly integrated into their speech. Given that, they recommend that foreign words were not italicized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No,&quot; said Chimípu, &quot;I don't think so. When we were fighting, she used the &lt;em&gt;tazágu&lt;/em&gt; and I didn't see any knives. Whoever killed Karawàbi used a straight blade; the wound is too clean and deep.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the above example, the POV character (Rutejìmo) is a native speaker of the language, so tazágu wouldn't be italicized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which seemed like a reasonable thing until I hit the bilingual character who initially doesn't know the foreign words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her mother raised an eyebrow and looked at the chest. &quot;You had a &lt;em&gt;sands damned&lt;/em&gt; bag you packed yesterday. It was small and light, &lt;em&gt;worthy&lt;/em&gt; of travel. What is that &lt;em&gt;fupujyu chìdo&lt;/em&gt;? Are you taking that instead?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, &quot;fupujyu chìdo&quot; would fine italicized or not, it is jarring since the main character (Kanéko) doesn't know the words but the untranslated word could be either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However... &lt;em&gt;sands damned&lt;/em&gt; is notionally translated (translated into English since the POV character knows the word). I wanted to demonstrate her mother alternates frequently between two languages (and swears up a storm but that's the basis for her magic). Later in her series, she gets fluent between two languages (much like her mother) so there is a lot more notionally translated phrases and entire sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add special complexity, I'm planning on combining these two novels together (well and all the other stories) into a single book to a master plot across multiple novels. That means native speakers (which I think would be better not italicized to keep them in harmony), with unknown words, and notionally translated at the same time. Plus, there are nine or so other languages across the combined novels though never more than three in a given chapter (because it gets annoying).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought about translating it after the phrase, but there is a lot of speaking in these novels and there some characters who bounce between two languages constantly (mainly because I grew up with a polyglot household so that was the norm for me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does the attempt to not italicize for native speakers make sense? Would have it not italicized for native points of view but italicized for non-native be reasonable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would indicating the native language in the chapter headers for the combined one solve the problem? I could do the same at the beginning of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about the triple language chapters though. Originally I thought of using three separate fonts but I wasn't sure if that made sense. In the first version, I used serif for native, italicized serif for the second, and sans serif for the third language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21220" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T20:34:22.890" LastActivityDate="2019-09-09T18:15:08.337" Title="Formatting multiple languages while avoiding italics for native speakers in their POV" Tags="|formatting|translation|language|constructed-language|multilingual|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27166" CreationDate="2017-03-15T10:04:50.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, does the attempt to not italicize for native speakers make sense? Would having it not italicized for native points of view but italicized for non-native be reasonable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is a good rule of thumb. The point of italics is to show the reader that $WORD is unusual &lt;em&gt;for the POV character.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your POV character, Dave, speaks LangA and LangB, and Nellie is going back and forth between them, Dave is going to understand everything Nellie says. He doesn't need to translate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if Bob only speaks LangA, any LangB words would be foreign to him, so those would be italicized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Jane speaks all three languages, then from her POV, you don't need to italicize words in any of those languages. (I would do this if you have any third-person omniscient sections as well, as the reader doesn't speak any of your constructed languages either.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Separately, while I understand your &quot;notionally translated&quot; concept, I wouldn't italicize those phrases or words. As a reader, I would completely understand a character saying &quot;You had a sands-damned bag you packed yesterday&quot; without needing the unusual epithet called out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T10:04:50.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27166" CreationDate="2017-03-15T12:21:53.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It strikes me that this difficulty in deciding how to format all of these languages is just a canary in the coal mine keeling over to let you know that this is all going to be too confusing for the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of those times when it is better to tell than to show. If the mother switches back and forth between two languages and swears a lot, tell us that, if it actually matters to the story, but don't attempt to reproduce the effect in prose because we are not going to be able to follow. The is exactly the sort of thing where it is more revelatory to be told something that to be shown it, because we would not be able to understand it if it were shown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author is the tour guide of the story and sometimes the tour guide's commentary is essential to knowing what you are looking at or to understand its significance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="37845" LastEditDate="2019-09-09T18:15:08.337" LastActivityDate="2019-09-09T18:15:08.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27161" CreationDate="2017-03-15T12:53:29.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but&#xA;  kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when&#xA;  they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.”&#xA;  ~&lt;strong&gt;Mark Twain&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Get rid of adjectives&lt;/strong&gt;. (As much as possible use a specific noun so you don't have to use an adjective also.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;less good:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;angry man&lt;/em&gt; stood by the tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;better: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The man stood by the tree cursing and pounding his fist into his hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;less good : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Herman jumped into his sports car and drove away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Herman jumped into his Porsche 924 and sped away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Use strong verbs&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use strong verbs you will be able to write with fewer words that have more impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;replace &lt;em&gt;quickly walked&lt;/em&gt; with scurried, scrambled, ran&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;replace &lt;em&gt;angrily grabbed&lt;/em&gt; with jerked, yanked, snatched&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;State things clearly and bluntly&lt;/strong&gt; (use active language instead of passive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;passive : &gt; Much fun was had by all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;active: &gt; The entire team celebrated their win over their arch rivals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T12:53:29.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27170" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-15T15:02:57.757" Score="2" ViewCount="2519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to have a character who expresses her love of adventure by exploring old maze-like ruins, and thought it would be interesting if she figured out 'tricks' to solving each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't really know how to make this work as part of a story. How do I create a maze (or other kinds of puzzles) that will be interesting to the reader, and how do I come up with good puzzles and solutions that the character can actually, plausibly come up with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24017" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-03-22T12:05:38.700" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T12:05:38.700" Title="How do I write a maze as a story challenge?" Tags="|fiction|technique|concept|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7546" CreationDate="2017-03-15T15:07:15.800" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to remember that plagiarism is not just about &lt;strong&gt;words&lt;/strong&gt;; it can also be about &lt;strong&gt;ideas&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a key point here is that even if you change virtually all of the words, you still need to make sure you cite the source that you are paraphrasing. If you do not cite the source, then it is plagiarism no matter how many words you change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen students claim to use, say, three or four important books (i.e., by referring to them in footnotes), but then actually take all of the ideas line by line, or paragraph by paragraph (but &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; word for word), from a website which they do not in any way cite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, unambiguously, plagiarism, even if it is &quot;in their own words&quot;. Moreover, there is usually a very clear reason &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; the student didn't cite that website; they didn't want me to know they had used the website. So it isn't an &lt;strong&gt;accidental&lt;/strong&gt; failure to give credit to the real author, but a deliberate one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24020" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T15:07:15.800" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27163" CreationDate="2017-03-15T15:12:41.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that unless you have a strong reason to do otherwise, it would best be split like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He nodded. &quot;Thank you for returning the bicycle. You see it was my&#xA;  son's and he would love to ride it one more time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My heart pained at this, and I looked up at my dad who seemed unmoved.&#xA;  I looked back at Mr. Houston. &quot;Of course. I apologize I didn't give it&#xA;  back in time. I was scared.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As noted by FlyingPiMonster, each concept should get its own paragraph, and in this case one concept is &quot;what he did&quot; and the other is &quot;what I did.&quot; Beyond that, though, I think it's worth noting that combining dialog and actions within a single paragraph creates a kind of implied attribution, and that in conversations in particular, a certain back and forth rhythm is naturally expected, so typically each paragraph will alternate between the two speakers. This means combining two different characters' actions into one paragraph, or splitting one character's actions into multiple paragraphs during a conversation, can create confusion as to who's doing what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of those factor in here, and that's why this sample works as well as it does despite the lack of any explicit speaker attribution (e.g., &quot;he said&quot;/&quot;I said&quot;), especially with the paragraph break suggested above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case it's a simple enough exchange, and the shift in pronouns provides enough clarity, that you could probably get away with tweaking the paragraph breaks for pacing without sacrificing much clarity, if you felt the need, but when in doubt, I've always found one character to one paragraph to be a good rule of thumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24016" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T15:12:41.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2017-03-15T15:14:22.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple: &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;import&quot; the information. Read, understand, process, and internalize the source. Then put the source to the side, and actually write your own words about a concept that you actually understand. Then add a footnote/ parenthetical citation giving credit to the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, instead, you copy the information and try to change some words to avoid plagiarism, there's a good chance you'll end up committing plagiarism anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another simple way to avoid plagiarism: just copy and paste the whole thing, but put the whole thing in quotation marks and say &quot;According to X, '...'&quot;. And then add the citation. Depending on the context, you may be violating copyright law, but it is certainly not plagiarism because you would not have claimed someone else's words or ideas as your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24020" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T15:14:22.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2017-03-15T16:09:56.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definition of plagiarism varies by context. Technically, you avoid the charge of plagiarism by citing sources, but that ignores the issue of what you are using the quoted material to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quotation should be used to &lt;strong&gt;support&lt;/strong&gt; your argument, not to &lt;strong&gt;express&lt;/strong&gt; your argument. In other words, if you are arguing a point and you want to say, John Smith agrees with me, then you quote a few lines from John Smith that say the same thing you have already said (in different words). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or if you are making a point that differs from that of John Smith, you quote a few lines from John Smith to show that you are representing his views correctly, and they you go on to explain why John Smith is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you are making an argument that depends on certain key facts being true, which some people may doubt, so you quote the renowned John Smith to prove that the facts on which your argument depends are true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each of these cases, your argument exists in full in your own words, independent of the quotations. The quotations are there to support what you are claiming about the works of other that you are citing, or to support a fact that you are asserting. In each case, if you removed the quotes, the reader would still understand your argument in full. They might be less inclined to accept it, without the evidence you have quoted, but they would be able to fully understand it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast this to when you use the work of others to make some of all of your case. For instance, suppose you write an article &lt;em&gt;Why we should return to the gold standard&lt;/em&gt; and in it you write, &quot;As John Smith argues in his article &lt;em&gt;Gold is Good&lt;/em&gt; and then go on to reproduce a big chunk of the article. This is not technical plagiarism in the sense that you failed to acknowledge your source. But it is moral plagiarism in that you are using John Smith's words to make the argument, not merely to support it. You did not do any work other than reading John Smith's work and copying and pasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to being moral plagiarism, this is also a copyright violation, since this usage does not fall within the scope of fair use. (Citing sources make absolutely no difference in copyright law.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were to paraphrase most of John Smith's work and only quote snippets, this would (probably) avoid the copyright charge, but it would still be moral plagiarism because you are still not doing the work yourself, just paraphrasing the work of another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can, of course, paraphrase the arguments of other in support of your own argument. But you need to have an argument of your own that constitutes the raison d'etre of your article, or morally, at least, you are still plagiarizing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T16:09:56.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27163" CreationDate="2017-03-15T16:28:42.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen this sort of thing done in many different ways, in fiction. My informed guess is that it is a matter of current fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In works from a century ago, when lengthy sentences and paragraphs were more fashionable, the place to break would be where the speaker changes. But in more modern popular fiction, where is seems that the few people who still read books have a limited attention span, the fashion is to break as often as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's essentially the difference between the two versions offered by FlyingPiMonster, above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside: Presumably, the first person is a child, in the story. &quot;My heart pained at this&quot; is not really a child's emotion. He might be frightened, or blush, or just look at dad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T16:28:42.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12918" CreationDate="2017-03-15T22:54:48.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By &quot;free&quot; it is clear that you mean &quot;without up-front monetary cost.&quot; As others have already noted, it is possible to do it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But CreateSpace (and similar services) are NOT free as in &quot;without restrictions and obligations.&quot; When you deal with them, it is on the basis of a contract where they have dictated the legal terms, take them or leave them. For some authors, under some circumstances, those terms may be onerous. Only you can decide. In my case, I will not accept those terms, so I do not deal with CreateSpace. That's me. However, a new author with limited expectations would probably not find the terms onerous (possibly even advantageous to the author).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh: Always get a proof copy. I have the benefit of professional editing, and there are still errors that remain. Only visible when seen &quot;as printed,&quot; because I'm old enough to see it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T22:54:48.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27099" CreationDate="2017-03-15T23:39:55.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;make his intelligence his curse,and by that i mean his level of common sense is his inner genius, which is balanced by his patients and love for the universe but the curse lies in the inability to retaliate or have anger against those who wrong him making him the puching bag with only the power of love and empathy.. kinda like i would imagine jesus to have felt having more understanding and knowledge then the common people of his day leading to his death not so we could sin but because we simply didnt know any better. so yea this is just my opinion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24027" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T23:39:55.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27181" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-15T23:54:43.077" Score="4" ViewCount="471" Body="&lt;p&gt;Braveheart. Titanic. Lord of the Rings. What do these movies (movies, not books) have in common? Besides great musical scores, they have what I call &lt;em&gt;Gut Emotional Appeal&lt;/em&gt;. In other words, at some point, they get you in the &lt;em&gt;gut&lt;/em&gt;. They make you pause and really pay attention. You really &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; what just happened or is happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This moment isn't the same for everyone, but below I've included some examples from my personal experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe Gut Emotional Appeal - or GEA - can be a very powerful part of a novel. Certainly one can be successful without it, but I feel that it can give a novel that extra emotional punch that tips it over from a 4 star to a 5 star. If readers were in the habit of rating novels, that is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I achieve GEA in my novels? What steps/methods should I follow?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Examples:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Braveheart.&lt;/strong&gt; Braveheart features the (highly fictionalized) rebellion of the Scots against the English. Details about the end are below.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Wallace is finally executed, he is asked if he will repent, to which, after a moment, he yells, &amp;quot;FREEDOM!!!&amp;quot; You feel it in the gut. It gets to you. Or at least to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Titanic.&lt;/strong&gt; Honestly this one probably comes from James Horner's excellent score. It's still worth noting though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the two main characters are in the water and slowly freezing to death, there's only room for one aboard the floating wreckage, meaning the other has to stay in the water and slowly freeze. When Rose finally lets him go, the music swells, and it gets you in the gut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lord of the Rings.&lt;/strong&gt; There are a lot of gut moments in Peter Jackson's epic trilogy. One that particularly stands out to me though is the scene in &lt;em&gt;Two Towers&lt;/em&gt; (I think). Frodo and Same are in Osgiliath, and Sam, in an attempt to keep Frodo going, says that he thinks he understands the old tales now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sam: In those tales, folks had lots of chances of turnin' back, only they didn't because they were holding onto something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sam: That there's some good left in this world Mister Frodo, and that it's worth fighting for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You feel that Sam is right. You feel that the good left in the world &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; worth fighting for. But you (or I anyway) also feel &lt;em&gt;driven&lt;/em&gt; to fight for it. It's that extra push that I'm after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Notes, and what I've discovered:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I develop and plan my novels extensively, so I'm looking more for steps or processes, rather than advice to implement while doing the actual writing. Both or good though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I feel that a very important part of GEA is that it be something that nearly everyone can sympathize with. Braveheart: Most people can sympathize with fighting in some measure against some sort of injustice. Titanic: People can generally sympathize with love. LotR: People generally want good to win out over evil.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One can state a GEA scene in simple terms and it doesn't click. You don't &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; the power. Note how in the above, what I listed didn't really have any power. What is missing? That's what I'm after.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. I'm open to chat discussions if you want to compare notes and try to figure out how to create GEA.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T15:21:05.863" Title="How can I get my readers in the gut?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|readers|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27181" CreationDate="2017-03-16T03:23:15.190" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR  You need to have a well-developed Character with a well-known set of Skills, who adheres to a certain Moral above all else.  The reader must share the same Moral, or they will have no recourse to relate.  The Moral must be put to the Ultimate Test, wherein the Character's Skill is shown to be at its Strongest, and Moral is at its Loudest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems to me like all these examples are just a jarring use of slapping you in the face with the 'moral of the story' which has been worked up to all along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wallace fought so that his people could have Freedom.  Screaming Freedom! at the precipice of ultimate change emotionally reinforces all that we have been working towards.  It inspires everyone, giving the notion that 'This is it, this is what we have all been waiting for'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Jack has been so chivalrous and loving this whole time, and now he finally, willingly, pays the ultimate price for the love of his life, it speaks to the reader.  It reinforces all the things we have previously known about Jack, and washes everyone with remorse for Jack's beautiful, frozen soul.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When good-old Samwise Gamgee inspires poor burdned Frodo, even at the Fringes of Middle Earth and on the literal edge of Doom, when all hope seems lost, (I'm getting chills just writing this) he is showing the audience his true colors, which they already knew about him.  He is reinforcing our ideas about him, in the best way, by doing what he does best, in the clutch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Doing what they do best, when it counts&quot; speaks for all of these scenarios, and many climactic moments, in general.  Whether its a wacky group of like-minded people, coming together to take down a larger-than-life opponent using their individual skills (Oceans 11), or a hyperintelligent detective consistently solving the crime (Sherlock Holmes), we get a rush when people use their well-known skills to solve unorthodox or seemingly impossible problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It becomes a punch in the gut if misfortune befalls the actor, but they still solve the problem they set out to solve (Jack). If they don't even solve the problem, that's pretty tragic, and if the character is crafted to be well-liked, the effect is more jarring than heart breaking.  &lt;em&gt;cough cough song of ice and fire&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say LoTR and Braveheart aren't so much gut-punching as heart-wrenching, but they all serve to draw a supreme level of empathy towards the actor.  Because they all did what they do best, and their morals shone, to the extreme and in some cases to the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I'd like to extend a nuance of this recipe, and in doing so give a shoutout to Stephen King's The Dark Tower Series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; Roland is known to love his surrogate son, Jake.  Roland is also known to be responsible for Jake's deaths (multiple), in pursuit of his Ultimate Goal.  The Betrayal seed as been set... And then Jake dies for the final time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;additional spoilers in link&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://darktower.wikia.com/wiki/Jake&amp;#39;s_Eulogy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://darktower.wikia.com/wiki/Jake's_Eulogy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's utterly gut-punching, heart-wrenching, mind-quailing (to steal another King phrase) all in one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I knew I shouldn't have expected anything else, but when it happened, and Roland let his guard down ever so briefly to give us a glimpse into his terrible inner turmoil, and saw Jake off with such love, remorse, loyalty, and compassion, it really tore me up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It reinforced multiple things, Roland's drive towards the Ultimate Goal above all else, and the very tragic effect this had on his life.  The juxtaposition of the two Morals existing at once, (pursuit and love, respectively), and the former consuming the latter, causing terrible grief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would wager that the more &quot;layers&quot; of a character you can make as raw as possible in the right moment, the more emotionally impacting the scene will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24003" LastEditorUserId="24003" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T04:03:55.727" LastActivityDate="2017-03-16T04:03:55.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27181" CreationDate="2017-03-16T03:40:54.560" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you rightly perceive, the moments that have a potential for gut emotional appeal are well known, but merely creating the moment does not always produce the emotion -- precisely because we all know what the moments are: loss, sacrifice, enlightenment, affirmation, conversion, reunion, acceptance, marriage, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing esoteric about these moments. They are the fabric of our lives. Our highs and our lows, and the emotions that they provoke, are the milestones of our lives. We expect them to be there in the stories we read, and by and large we understand where they come in a story and why. We see them coming and we are disappointed if they don't turn up when they are supposed to. They are what we expect from a story. They are what we read it for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structure of a story does have to lead up to these moments, therefore. In fact, it is these moments that define the structure of the story. But it is not the structure that produces the emotional response. The emotional response comes from our engagement. It comes from how much we believe and how much we care. If we don't believe in the people or the events, there is not emotional response. If we don't care about them, there is no emotional response. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People talk about their favorite characters as if they were real. That is how much they are invested in their stories. I heard once that the reason every character on a soap opera is rich is that if they put poor characters on the shows, the studios are inundated with care packages for them. (I don't know if it is true, but it is certainly plausible.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a charity wants you to give money to support poor people in foreign countries, they don't put out ads full of statistics, they put out ads showing individual children. They tell you their stories, how they and their siblings are being raised by their grandmother who is slowly growing blind. Some let you sponsor an individual child and exchange letters with them. It is all about emotional engagement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structure of your story will lead your characters to these moments of gut emotional appeal, but whether they pay off depends entirely on how well you have executed your characters and their stories, on how much your readers believe, and how much your readers care. It is not what happens -- it is the same old things happening that we have seen a thousand times, not only in fiction, but in life as well -- it is who it happens to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating characters that people believe in and care about is not something that comes from a formula (much as some people may tell you otherwise). It comes from observation, sympathy, and caring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-16T03:40:54.560" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27181" CreationDate="2017-03-16T08:49:30.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best advice I can give is that your readers won't care about what happens to your characters if you don't.  You &lt;b&gt;have&lt;/b&gt; to want them to succeed when you write their story or it will come off as generic and with no impact or lasting memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once read a series of books and at the end of the third one, the main male lead was killed off.  At the start of the fourth, the author actually apologised to his readers, saying that he knew it was hard to read and admitted it was even harder to write and promised there was a good reason behind it.  Having read the rest of the books, I now know it was the right thing to do but it has stuck with me all this time after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Years of watching (and reading) mean we want the hero to succeed, we want the couple in love to make it, we want good to triumph over evil but these in themselves aren't enough to make it a GEA as you call it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The viewer / reader has to have time to get emotionally involved in the characters in these events taking place and it makes the GEA that much more powerful to watch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean you have to leave them until the end of the book, just to have enough groundwork to make any event have a potential to be a GEA.  I myself killed the girlfriend of my male lead in the first chapter but the entire chapter was setting up them getting ready for a date, he was going to propose etc. before they got attacked and she was killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastActivityDate="2017-03-16T08:49:30.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19459" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:26:35.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no single paper used. Depends on the market's target audience, pricing, and expectations of durability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you self-publish a novel using an American print-on-demand service, you may be offered a choice of two papers. One of them is white, generally used in non-fiction. The other is off-white (&quot;creme&quot;) and is generally used in fiction. The white paper is better for books containing images (which non-fiction often has) and also projects a feeling of authority. The off-white is easier on the eye, when read for a long time, and projects a casual feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other papers are possible. A book printed in Asia, especially if it is intended to be inexpensive, may be printed on a less-expensive version of &quot;rice paper&quot; (not actually made from rice plant). Such pages are noticeably thin and light. Books anywhere may be printed on very expensive paper if they are intended for the book-as-art market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The papers currently in use in the U.S.A. for a novel, even for print-on-demand, are likely to be acid-free archival paper, perhaps 80lb weight. This gives a nice feel to the pages, and is durable. It's not worth saving money with cheaper paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a book is very image-intensive, it may be printed on a kind of paper that is specially coated for better image reproduction. The paper (cellulose) is relatively light-weight, but the coating makes it much heavier (which is why college textbooks, with images, are so heavy). If a book is the kind of memoir that has a few photographs, then the flowing text may be printed on ordinary archival paper, while the images are separately printed on coated paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastEditorDisplayName="user23046" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T16:15:00.563" LastActivityDate="2017-03-16T16:15:00.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27190" CreationDate="2017-03-16T19:05:02.430" Score="1" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing the first draft of a story, I've found that increasingly, I'm writing sentences in a format (I don't know the technical name of this) similar to below -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coming to a stop at the foot of the dias, he knelt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Raising his right fist to his heart, he said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leading the crowd, he strode through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While doing a cursory reading, the sentences felt strange and jarring to me but I'm not sure. Are sentences of these type OK or should I refrain from using sentences of that type ? Also, how to make them more...crisp, perhaps ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T20:24:21.237" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T15:02:23.143" Title="I feel stuck in a [description/action] sentence structure" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27187" CreationDate="2017-03-16T20:26:44.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grammar is OK but not best. Thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He came to a stop at the foot of the dias, and knelt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He raised his right fist to his heart, and said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third sentence as-is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference: In your original sentences, the &quot;...ing&quot; construction implies continued action. But he stopped (not continued) and raised (not continued).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the third case, he continued to lead the crowd as he strode through, where &quot;strode&quot; inherently is a continued action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-16T20:26:44.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27170" CreationDate="2017-03-17T03:21:20.430" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is more like asking 'How can I hint at the reader the solution to a problem that my characters face?', since we can't give you ideas for your writing, that's something you need to solve yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is very similar to writing mystery. You want to create a problem: solving the maze, and you want to create a solution to it: solving the maze. What you're asking is how to draw this line between these two points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what do mysteries do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hint at problems with their problem early on. Does the maze have some key flaw that the characters find out early on? Does the system have a piping system?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suggest important pieces of information early in the story. e.g. a character says &quot;Keep your left hand on the wall, to keep your life stable&quot; or they find a scribble written somewhere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present the characters solving a similar simpler problem, and reuse these ideas in the larger event. Do the characters go through training before? If they're experienced already, show them teaching someone - or maybe reflecting on a past experience? Can you then refer back to these during the main issue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T03:21:20.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27187" CreationDate="2017-03-17T11:31:59.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing terribly wrong with the sentence structure per se, but it has an effect that may or may not be desirable, and probably is not desirable quite as often as you are doing it: it changes the emphasis on the action being described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these sentences describes two actions, one leading to another:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doing X he did Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of these two actions merits more attention from the reader? Normally the final action is the more important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John walked into the bank and pulled out a gun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when you use the form in question (I don't know if it has a formal name either), you suggest that the first action is actually the one we should be paying the most attention to, or at least that it merits equal and continuing attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Slipping the ring from his pocket, John got down on one knee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice how this sentence puts the emphasis on the ring rather than the knee, or at least that it keeps the attention on the ring while he gets down on one knee. Compare to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John slipped the ring from his pocket and got down on one knee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the conjunction makes these two separate actions and so we move our attention from the first to the second. But using the gerund form connects the two together, so that our attention is held on the first while the second takes place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Slipping the ring from his pocket, John got down on one knee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is where we want the emphasis in this sentence. But contrast this with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Walking into the bank, John pulled out a gun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Walking into the bank is just how he got there. It is pulling out the gun that matters. Connecting the two actions like this distracts us from what is important, putting the walking in on par with pulling out the gun. In this case, it would be better to use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John walked into the bank and pulled out a gun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ask yourself in each case if you want to connect the two events you are describing in this way. The answer will probably be that you only wish to do so occasionally. Where the connection is not desirable, use a conjunction or break the sentence into two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-03-17T15:02:23.143" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T15:02:23.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="42666" CreationDate="2017-03-17T13:43:46.697" Score="4" ViewCount="742" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've finally committed to writing my first novel. I've been listening to things like &lt;em&gt;Writing Excuses&lt;/em&gt; which encourages first time writers to finish their works, but I'm definitely writing an old darling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have three POVs. It would be hard to fit this book solidly into a genre as it treads the line of about five of them. I'm 30,000 words in, and while I expect to leave significant portion of that on the cutting room floor, I only have 4 chapters worth of material and the outline currently accounts for about 10 chapters a character. Extrapolating, that's going to put me in a position of about 225,000 words; which I hear is twice the length of an acceptable novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More over, I already know the end because in college we wrote and produced the radio drama that this is a prequel to. What I'm writing must end on a significant down note, and so I've been thinking that after I write this, I'm going to have to novelize the radio drama and just call that the middle of book 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone like Brandon Sanderson can write a 700,000 word chihuahua killer because he's been published. I'm worried that the project I've chosen is too big and violates too many rules if I actually want to publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I stop now? Or is it valuable to finish, see how much I can cut in editing and try to sell it anyways? I'm worried that if I stop I will never finish anything. But I also have a day job so my writing time is precious and limited. If it takes me a year to finish this, which it probably will; this is the only thing I'll have at the end of the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-26T19:27:17.737" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T19:55:34.990" Title="Am I Breaking Too Many Rules?" Tags="|novel|publishing|book-length|rules|chapters|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27191" CreationDate="2017-03-17T13:57:38.707" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finish the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finish it whether it's one book, two, or five. Writing is practice for writing; editing is practice for editing. No effort is wasted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have two or three really good books, then when you present book 1 to an agent you can say &quot;book 2/3 is already finished and edited.&quot; This means that if the agent likes it, there is/are already sequel(s) in the pipeline, and the publisher doesn't have to worry about a one-hit wonder who can't produce another book. This also shows you have the stick-to-it-ive-ness to complete a long work, or several, and maintain complex plots. These are good things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related and useful: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/25722/do-i-write-the-entire-series-and-edit-or-edit-the-books-as-i-go/&quot;&gt;Do I write the entire series and edit, or edit the books as I go?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T13:57:38.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27170" CreationDate="2017-03-17T14:44:35.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest from a technical standpoint of reading up on shortest path algorithms and the like. Depending on the structure of the problem and the tools at hand you can make solving this kind of problem harder or easier. Once you've decided on the basics, such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the destination known? Many people climb mountains, solving the problem of getting to the top is a matter of smaller survival and directional problems. Same thing could apply to mazes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the style of maze something that the character could innately grok? You could have all sorts of cultural &quot;explanations&quot; for why something is the right choice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a map? This is the easiest way to handle it. You can use a map like a time bomb plot piece. Where finding pieces or deciphering the map as you go creates a time lock that keeps your story on track.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's merely a geographic problem, then keeping track of your location with landmarks that you can see (the sky, a mountain in the distance, where the sun rises each day) might confirm a person is heading in the right direction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level of technology. You could send bots to &quot;crawl&quot; a maze if you're in a sufficiently advanced civilization. You could go up in a hot air balloon if it's an exposed labyrinth and create a map. Or, if it's a period peace that doesn't have this sort of capability, then you need something else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these are technical and solvable problems:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_solving_algorithm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_solving_algorithm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do this successfully in a story, you'll need to ultimately have some sort of conflict. If solving a maze is trivial, then it's not a conflict. I'd worry far less about the technical details of how does one solve a maze and focus more on how the maze interacts were her emotional state and what it tells us about her character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish a goal for getting through the maze&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure there's a conflict. This will either be internal, external-antagonistic, or Woman Vs Nature (She vs Maze)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give her a character arc and allow the conflict to change her as she moves through the maze&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any technical details you choose to use to solve the problem should serve those three points so that you have a story and not a how to solve a maze guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question was super broad and could be boiled down to how do I plot a book. Because ultimately every plot is a character moving through a maze of some sort. Here are three examples of different ways to solve a maze and conflicts that could drive the story. This is what I mean about the other elements being more important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A person is locked into a maze, the environmental hazards of not having food and water sources creates a time lock. Their method for solving it could be entirely logical, but the conflict is whether their ability is enough to solve the maze in time. The tension of someone who knows all of the rules, but who may not have all the supplies drives the story forward.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A person needs to get through a maze to get to a McGuffin. They have a super power that allows them to see the lives of people who constructed objects that existed in the past. The conflict is that they have to relive pieces of the lives that lead to the maze being built to get through it and learn the way out. the McGuffin becomes less important than the personal story of how and why the maze was created and the conflict of the past which is now echoed in the present through self reflection.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A person has no idea how to solve a maze and is chased into it by an antagonist. This thriller features the protagonist simply trying to get through it to survive and the plot conveniently uses the maze to block or allow the person to escape by the use of their raw wits. Occasionally they lose at some small task and pay a price, but the maze escalates the problem as the story goes on. The climax is where the person finally &quot;finds a way out&quot;, but must overcome the antagonist with all of the things they've learned since they entered the maze. Queue comedy or tragedy based on the success of this move. In this story, the person doesn't need to understand mazes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technical knowledge of how to solve a maze is only as important as that is to creating a character or situation that is worth spending one's time following. You can have as much or as little knowledge of mazes as you want and still write a compelling story involving one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastEditorUserId="24040" LastEditDate="2017-03-17T16:11:50.143" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T16:11:50.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27144" CreationDate="2017-03-17T14:58:14.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Methods I've heard on Writing Excuses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Phone Book, just read names till you find one you like. Advantage: Many names for your area of the world&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Twitter/Facebook/etc, Just read names until you find one you like. Advantage: when you don't want themed names&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Anagram Things Around You: If you are surrounded by random objects, this can be a way to find &quot;interesting&quot; names that don't have a root in language&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Pick a region or country in the world, break down the city names into common patterns. IE, ends in a vowel, starts with a hard consonant, normal number of syllables. Construct new words that follow these rules and pick the ones that sound like names to you. If you source your environment and setting from this region this can give you a strong &quot;culture&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Common Baby name books (yes, there are just books full of popular names)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T14:58:14.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27181" CreationDate="2017-03-17T15:21:05.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything you've shown has a simple formula. Show the reader a possibility that could be, that they can hope for. Give them every reason for wanting that possibility. But, every step along the way your characters or your setting defines that hope as impossibility. When you finally get to the moment it will be tragically inevitable and undesirable, but your reader will also acknowledge this is the only way it could happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a simple loss principle and it's built into all of us. One day we all die. But we grow attached to the people around us. When the illusion of permanence is shattered we must grapple with the reality that the thing or person we have lost had to happen, that there is no way around it. But there should be many excuses that a person could make as to why that person &lt;em&gt;deserved better&lt;/em&gt;. It's ultimately the conflict of what people feel is deserved and what actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some ways it's more interesting to think about how people fail to write these parts successfully. The most common thing is the &quot;everyone is stupid, if only they could think&quot; bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that reason when you write a tragedy many of your choices will determine whether your tragedy is justified. Even just picking a time and place can make your story work in different ways. Without spoiling anything, consider the recent stranger things. That story doesn't work in a world where it's not the 80s. Not being able to call people or use facebook drastically changes risk and social interaction. When the tragedies happen, part of what &quot;locks&quot; them in is the inevitable restraints that society puts on the characters. Also, the preconceptions many of those characters hold that would not be held today locks the characters in positions of helplessness that furthers the tragic elements of the story. Meanwhile as a 21st century viewer you have all of these ideas about how it could be, but you know: &quot;No, this is right. This is how those people would act. This loss was unavoidable for them, because the time, place, and people make it so.&quot; The other side of the coin for Stranger Things is the nostalgia. Everyone in it, everything in it is extremely relate-able so the emotional investment happens. You want more for these people who are trying their hardest and it's not enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tragedy = Inevitability + Hope + Connection + Loss&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T15:21:05.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27136" CreationDate="2017-03-17T16:20:32.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Golden Rule: You can do whatever you like so long as it can stand on its own for your target audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is constructed to be a plausible future where the swedes and japanese have taken over, then both of those things could realistically happen. But if you have to spend a lot of time with exposition explaining it, then your execution may have problems. And if your use is not justified by the story and people are drawn to these details, then it's like a cell phone showing up in a lord of the rings battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't overthink this. If it doesn't check out with your target audience or it stands out in a bad way, find a better way to do whatever you're trying to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T16:20:32.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7074" CreationDate="2017-03-17T17:26:25.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I should be able to tell you (I hope) on Friday or Monday (both bosses are still out of office) and I'm trying to push this as fast as I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can expect a response from me by Monday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2nd is good if Monday is a reasonable date. Try not to make excuses in your writing as it weakens your voice. If Monday is not a reasonable date, don't promise Monday, tell them when you can promise them something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rephrasing the sentence so that it is direct and in terms of the recipient is not only possible, but good use of language for reasons beyond grammar. If you want to deliver a message others want to hear, phrasing that message this way is important. People like to hear about themselves, so suspicion of the word I is correct in formal communications, but for reasons that are not grammatical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T17:26:25.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27198" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27200" CreationDate="2017-03-17T17:31:06.010" Score="3" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a novel, temporarily titled &quot;Broken Collections.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a collection of different writings this girl suffering with Bipolar disorder has made. Most of this being her journal, but also interspersed are letters to her distant mom and ends with her suicide note. It's a story of her struggles, her ups and downs, what's going on in her life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question, how do I make this interesting yet believable? And how do I make it more show and not tell?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is different from asking how to write action because this is about telling the story in a way of making it peak the writer's interest without having the typical &quot;action&quot; you'd expect from novels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22306" LastEditorUserId="22306" LastEditDate="2017-03-17T20:03:57.587" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T20:03:57.587" Title="How do I Make a Fictional Journal Interesting Yet Believable?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-03-22T11:57:53.407" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27198" CreationDate="2017-03-17T18:45:41.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your 2nd person point of view character would have to have a tendency towards noticing small details that impart the thing she'd normally just tell someone. That's ultimately how you show instead of tell regardless of anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting &amp;amp; believably come from conflict and good characterization and don't have much to do with the other point. Each is a can of worms topic unto itself and too broad to answer directly. But the short answer is that you need to study conflict, and you need to study characterization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these podcasts investigate your can of worms, they have years worth conversations on the topic:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.writingexcuses.com/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://storywonk.com/category/podcasts/the-journeyman-writer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://storywonk.com/category/podcasts/the-journeyman-writer/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T18:45:41.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26228" CreationDate="2017-03-17T21:33:41.437" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This kind of novel absolutely falls into erotic novels!&#xA;&quot;Also, it seems that erotica is mostly read by women, so I wonder how to target a male audience (In the USA, UK, Australia).&quot;&#xA;I think it`s difficult, you just said &quot;mostly read by women&quot; and that is true, and I always wondered what it could to force men to read such novels?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24046" LastEditorUserId="24046" LastEditDate="2017-03-17T23:40:53.703" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T23:40:53.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27204" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27205" CreationDate="2017-03-17T22:09:48.877" Score="0" ViewCount="1481" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my book, I am planning on having the main character be called &quot;Samantha.&quot; However, she believes her name is too generic, so she goes by the nickname &quot;Thana.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: Is it bad to have a character name be something so common? Even if that's the purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24047" LastActivityDate="2017-03-18T03:37:20.667" Title="Generic Character Name" Tags="|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27204" CreationDate="2017-03-17T22:20:05.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no wrong names unless they interrupt the story in an unintentional way. Generally, if you're writing about your name choices you're probably spending your time on details that don't matter, unless names are super relevant to whatever culture you happen to be writing about. That last scenario seems unlikely since you went for Samantha though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some authors intentionally choose generic names so that people can't tell what those people will do. It's a personal pet peeve of mine to be able to predict a character's arc by the name choice of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, you could also think about it this way if you need reasons. Why did her parents name her Samantha? They could have named her that because they heard the statistic that people with unusual name usually end up in jail. Or, it could be because of a relative. Or the mother just really liked that name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Names in the end don't define people. People define their names. If you write (Saman)tha(na) well enough then her name won't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T22:20:05.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27144" CreationDate="2017-03-18T00:16:13.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.behindthename.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.behindthename.com/&lt;/a&gt; for helping to come up with the names of characters, but I'll caveat this with mentioning that putting too much meaning into a character's name can be offsetting and implausible. The best way to pull that off is to have it be something subtle, ideally something that even someone who knew what the name means isn't likely to really get why the character had that name until after they've finished reading the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people will tell you that your characters' names don't matter much as long as they are well-written, because it's not as though in real life parents name their kids after things that happen in their life. To a certain extent, they have a point, but I would like to disagree. I think that a character's name &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, you are attempting to evoke certain emotions in your reader, and reveal to them attributes of your characters. For better or worse, names &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; evoke certain connotations, emotions, and prejudices in your readers. It's true &lt;em&gt;even in real life&lt;/em&gt; that a person's name will cause some people - possibly many - to make assumptions, likely subconscious, about their personality. This may not be &lt;em&gt;Fair&lt;/em&gt;, but it's true that people do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.dictionary.com/names/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Do names prejudice how others perceive your status? A study suggests yes&quot;&gt;Here is a blog post&lt;/a&gt; about a study that was performed, showing that participants in the study tended to have similar common assumptions about names. Now I'll stress that this is descriptive, not prescriptive, and that the actual facts of the life of a person named whatever do not necessarily match up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the point I'm trying to make is that people do make assumptions about someone based on their name, and the same is true for your characters. And since you are a writer, you ought to be aware of that. This is actually a boon to you, however, because it gives you another tool! Not only could you take the 'lazy' route by researching common perceptions of names to make a character's connotation line up with their personality, but perhaps more interestingly you could completely subvert the expectations of the reader. I wouldn't rely on the name alone for this, but I might choose a name with certain connotations, set up characterization that makes them seem to fit said connotations, and then subvert it in a reveal explaining their actions in a different light. (A la Mr.Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21750" LastActivityDate="2017-03-18T00:16:13.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27204" CreationDate="2017-03-18T03:37:20.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm most stories, the character name should be chosen very carefully. Look at some on the great stories, and you'll see that the character name can help advance the stor or give a memorable performance the extra it needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the movie &quot;Fire Down Below,&quot; Steven Seagal plays a character nammmed Taggert. In Scotland, it translate to &quot;on of a priest.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this movie, he starts his investigation working for the local church. And as the story progresses, you find that he cannot be corrupted, like he was really the son of a priest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When i write my plays, the character's name always has a root into his character. Here is an article that appeared in Writer's Digest &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/the-7-rules-of-picking-names-for-fictional-characters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The 7 Rules of Picking Names for Fictional Characters&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the introduction paragraph, it explains in a nutshell the importance of picking a name before going into the seven reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Choosing a character name for your novel is as pressure-filled as&#xA;  picking a name for a baby. It has to suit the character’s personality,&#xA;  makes sense for the era and, most important, be super awesome (sorry&#xA;  friends, the awesome name of Brian A. Klems is already taken by this&#xA;  guy). Names like Harry Potter, Holden Caulfield and Stephanie Plum are&#xA;  memorable not just because of the amazing stories they navigate, but&#xA;  also because these names “fit” those characters so well. You need a&#xA;  name that “fits” your character too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Care in your character names is just as important as your story's plot. For many may forget what most of the plot was about, they surely will remember that memorable character, so long as his or her name fits the story like a glove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23667" LastActivityDate="2017-03-18T03:37:20.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27208" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27210" CreationDate="2017-03-18T19:50:48.377" Score="2" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing the first draft of my novel. I have its outline panned out, down to the chapters, even what should be happening in each chapter. I have written a rough draft, where I have described the parts which were clear to me and skipped those which were not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, now when I'm starting my first draft, I find that, now, I'm not able to flesh out the details of some of the scenes. I know what the outcome of the chapter should be, I know what is supposed to happen in the scene but don't know how to get there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For e.g. there is a scene in my novel where a person is brought to&#xA;  trial. I know the outcome of the trial, I know the arguments to be&#xA;  covered for the trial but I'm not able to visualise and hence pen the&#xA;  scene. Which order should the arguments be presented? How should the&#xA;  minor characters interact during it ? etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mind you, that this is only for certain scenes (which, I admit, are not entirely clear to me). There have been scenes where I've written the entire chapter in one sitting. So what should I do to fill out the details of the blocking chapters ? I find myself procrastinating while trying to work out the flow of the chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T16:46:22.723" Title="Writing the nitty-gritties of a particular scene" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27209" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-18T20:06:02.683" Score="5" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having nearly completed the second draft on my 135,000 word novel, I am now  seeking critiques of my query letter before I submit them to agents. I did find a forum at &lt;a href=&quot;http://agentqueryconnect.com/index.php?/forum/2-aq-connect-query-critiques/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AQ Connect - Query Critiques &lt;/a&gt; but I don't know how good it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I know if a site's critiques on a query letter contain good advice? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-23T23:42:17.090" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T16:21:00.700" Title="How to know the quality of query letter critiques?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|queries|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27208" CreationDate="2017-03-18T21:00:48.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're writing top down. Try bottom up where you're having difficultly. Let the characters lead and follow their interests. Introduce conflict and goals at that level. You should start to feel your charters acting of their own accord and that may help you move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also wondering if you feel bored by what you are writing. That's a huge indicator you need to shake things up. This can happen to outliners who need to develop discovery skills to keep the writing interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all else fails, try to remember the fun idea that got you to write the scene. Often times when I get bogged down, finding the fun fixes it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastActivityDate="2017-03-18T21:00:48.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27144" CreationDate="2017-03-18T23:18:19.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about the people who named them and why they might choose the name.&#xA;Perhaps their mother loved flowers, so she names her daughter &quot;Lily,&quot; or her son &quot;William.&quot; Perhaps your character was found abandoned on the intersection of Jacob St. and Holiday Ave. and is thus named Jacob Holiday. A father who favors elegent, old names might name his children Edmond, or Sarah. A fan of a book series might name their child after the author or a character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24055" LastActivityDate="2017-03-18T23:18:19.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27219" CreationDate="2017-03-19T05:27:12.140" Score="2" ViewCount="563" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is naming a character to go with a theme or setting of a novel off-putting for the reader? Does this pull them out of the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&#xA;A character named digit in a cyberpunk future or&#xA;one named Alaster on a novel about Demons and the Devil?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, a whole slew of characters named after animals that live above or below ground in a dystopian future where people underground are at war with people above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are naming conventions like this too on the nose and make you as a reader roll your eyes? Or do they work for you and make the world/story more believable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24059" LastEditorUserId="47470" LastEditDate="2021-02-10T05:48:43.927" LastActivityDate="2021-02-10T05:48:43.927" Title="Is thematic character naming off putting?" Tags="|theme|naming|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27133" CreationDate="2017-03-19T07:27:31.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just for the record, on march 15 for LaTeX was available the new class of document: &quot;novel&quot;. Is a streamlined configuration oriented to novel and stories. Its documentation is easy to understand and have great hints about publishing for fiction authors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried and found it well balanced and to the point. Just a clarification. It is still in the list of &quot;experimental&quot; packages, even it is not experimental at all. Its author created and used it for its own published books on demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get it from CTAN.org&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5391" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T07:27:31.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27212" CreationDate="2017-03-19T08:20:49.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It very much depends on the reader. I roll my eyes every time I see or hear the name Voldemort, but evidently millions of others don't agree with me. I think that kind of naming is something people tire of, but not during the course of a single book, but over the course of their lives. If you're catching people when they are young, or when they are only just moving into your genre then you would meet less resistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The examples you give (Digit, Alaster) are pretty blunt, and I think would be completely safe only for naive audiences, like children/teens, or where you're easing a cyberpunk/horror subplot into your successful line of historical romance novels. More genre-savvy readers would expect you to either hide your references a little more subtly, or be very self-aware about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, naming your entire cast in a rigid scheme might work for a reader whose guard is down for whatever reason, but a more cynical reader could doubt such a system could spontaneously arise in a real world where people tend to enjoy more independent thought. For those readers you would at least have to confront your naming scheme with some convincing social study/worldbuilding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13822" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T08:20:49.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27216" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-19T10:27:46.953" Score="0" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a short story structured like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Character A's POV&#xA;&#xA;* * *&#xA;&#xA;Character B's POV&#xA;&#xA;* * *&#xA;&#xA;Character B's POV&#xA;&#xA;* * *&#xA;&#xA;Character A's POV&#xA;&#xA;* * *&#xA;&#xA;Character B's POV&#xA;&#xA;* * *&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the first two scenes, the reader would expect to have Character A in the third scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to prevent this kind of confusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T11:30:40.417" Title="How to prevent confusion when writing in two POVs that don't alternate between scenes?" Tags="|creative-writing|pov|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27216" CreationDate="2017-03-19T11:30:40.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make it clear that it's from Character B's POV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't overthink it. It's okay to create a structure and break it for an effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T11:30:40.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27212" CreationDate="2017-03-19T11:30:46.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I agree with @mwo's answer, I'd like to add that an obviously thematic name may work better if it's a nickname rather than one's true name. If Digit is better known to her family as Lisa, for example, and throughout the book there are a few people who call her Lisa (even if only for a few moments of the novel) while everyone else prefers her Digit moniker, then it will be more acceptable even for genre-savvy readers. After all, one thing is to be nicknamed in reference to your skills and interests, another very different is to have one's parents to miraculously choose the name that will fit a baby's future interests. Though it would be funny if one's parents chose 'Digit' only for the child to grow up with an aversion to technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good idea is to keep such thematic names subdued. I often like to choose names based on their meaning, but I rarely choose obvious names. For example, if you would like a character's name to be related to love, Amy would be a more subdued choice than Aimée or Amanda (I'm Portuguese, so Amanda is always much too obvious for me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T11:30:46.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27212" CreationDate="2017-03-19T14:02:44.320" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all about immersion. You need to make things realistic from an internal logic point of view. I agree with both mwo and Sara Costa, but the point they both miss is immersion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give you an example. Your story is set in Feudal Japan, your main character is Japanese. Her name is Jane Doe. Do you see something wrong with this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The name must make sense in the context of what the parents of the character would want to name their child. It's a wish of sorts for their child. Sometimes it's about letting them stand out; &quot;I'll call you Mahlahkhai! So no one can read your name and confuse you with someone else.&quot; Sometimes they want the child to carry on the family legacy; &quot;John Baptiste VIII, it's a family name.&quot; Sometimes it's cultural; a French boy named Jacques, and his sister Fleur. Sometimes it's time related; Dale being a girl's or boy's name dependant entirely on when the name is given (as an example, because I have a male cousin named Dion, and a female cousin, his sister, named Dale).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure out what the common thread would be of the time, and either consciously go with it, or consciously go against it. Even if the reasons for either are not readily apparent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As another example, from my own story I'm working on. Fraternal twins, brother and sister, are named Ina Miyo (Ina being the family name, given their mother is Japanese), and James Tessier (Tessier being the family name, given their father is French/Arabic). There's so much being revealed about them via their name, for so many reasons. But these aren't reasons that are readily apparent, they are delved into one step at a time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what do the fictional parents want this child's name to say about them? That they fit in with their peers? That they were destined to stand out? And to build on Sara Costa's point, their handle name (or nickname) is also very important. That is a conscious choice by someone to see this person in this light. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21105" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T14:02:44.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27107" CreationDate="2017-03-19T14:14:55.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Misdirection is a common method. When dealing with shady characters, people tend to pick one to hate above all others. Snape was mentioned, and people loved hating him. He was a character that was easy to hate. So you overlook Quirrel in Book 1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is highly dependent on your genre, though. In a detective story, having only one shady character almost always means there's either an open-and-shut case (not likely) or there's a subtly shady character. So you start questioning every character and their true motives (if you are genre savvy). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it all depends on how you want to handle your story. You, as omnipotent and omniscient author, should be able to weave the story in such a way that only what you want to show is shown, only what you want to hide is hidden. But to give a more in depth answer, I'd need more details of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21105" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T14:14:55.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27144" CreationDate="2017-03-19T14:17:50.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you're writing in some manner of word-processing software, you can DEFER the decision while writing.&lt;/strong&gt;  So feel free to use a placeholder name while you figure it out.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm unsure of the final name, I choose a short, &lt;em&gt;unique&lt;/em&gt; name {OK, text string) while I'm figuring it out. Find/replace all is already built into decent text editors, so why not use that to help you write? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I have a young, female dragon character.  Right now, she's simply @gd (girl dragon), until I choose her name.  Quick to type, sufficiently unique that global replacement won't cause mistakes.  Since she's spoiled/privileged (and blissfully unaware if it, until she does something almost-fatally stupid), I'll want a name that &lt;em&gt;implies&lt;/em&gt; wealth/rank/exclusive-sorority, etc. to readers -- but not as obvious as 'Richy Rich,' 'Daddy Warbucks,' or Ivanka.  (Is Althea too over the top, I wonder?  For a queen-bee type?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22438" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T14:17:50.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27208" CreationDate="2017-03-19T15:51:08.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this happen to me quite a lot. It usually implies research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very often I want some event to happen but, since I've never been through similar events, I can't visualise what would naturally happen. The process is always the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;read (books or online) general descriptions of the particular event (the objective is to understand how it usually, or ideally, unfolds)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;read (books or online) anecdotes involving the particular event (each person experiences similar events differently, so different personal takes will widen a writer's horizons)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;talk to people who have personal and first hand experience on the topic, whether face to face or on forums&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;watch videos (youTube, TV shows, films, whatever) about the event, whether it's real footage or fictionalised (but, if fictionalised, try to ascertain how much creative license was taken)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to interrup the process the moment you can visualise your scene. Some events are easier to get a feel for than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case, if this scene is about trials, find out how a trial really works. Read about it, talk to someone who knows about it, go to forums where you might expect someone to give you some hints (and by hints I mean real life situations and anecdotes, which are often quite different from idealised descriptions) and ask about TV shows or films that are relatively true to life. If possible, see if you can sit in on a trial or talk to someone who's been through one. Sometimes, just the possibility of walking around a place (in this case a courthouse) could be enough to give you plenty of ideas, especially for little details that can bring the setting to life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T15:51:08.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27208" CreationDate="2017-03-19T16:46:22.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The danger you can run into with that kind of detailed planning (there are dangers in all approaches to a large piece of work) is that it can lead you to focus on plot at the expense of conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories are essentially about recreating the experience of conflict and its resolution: what is it like to fight a battle, what is it like to compete for the love of a woman, what is it like to search for buried treasure. Each chapter of a novel should give some new insight into the nature of these conflicts and their resolution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plot is a device for creating the occasions on which the conflicts occur. A plot should be built to progressively heighten the experience or to reveal new aspects of the experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you plot out a story without keeping the escalation and exploration of conflict in mind, however, you are likely to end up with scenes in which there is nothing actually to tell. Events may have to occur in order to set up the next scene in which the conflict can be escalated or explored, but unless those events actually contribute to the escalation or exploration, they should not be dramatized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have all read novels in which large gaps of time occur, and in which any events occurring within those gaps are narrated briefly when the story resumes, just to fill in the gaps. The gaps in time are there because no escalation of exploration of the conflict occurs in that period. The passage of time may, indeed, be necessary to get to the point where it is possible to further escalate or explore the conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if your plot plan does not recognize this, if your planning has not included the arc of conflict for each major character, and if your plot is not mapped out to support those arcs, you are going to find that when you start writing, you have a bunch of scenes planned in which there is nothing actually to say because those scenes do not escalate or explore new ground in any of the conflicts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related problem you may run into is the each of your character's actions are driven by their personality and their conflict. If those things were not fully accounted for in your planning (and sometimes even if they were) you will sometimes find yourself with a plot plan that requires Tom to do X, but it is now obvious to you, having written Tom and his conflict for some time, that Tom would not do X in this situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you are stuck. You have a whole plot planned out which hinged on Tom doing X at a critical moment, but it is now obvious, based on all you have come to know of Tom, that he simply would not do X, and so either you have to replan the second half of the novel around Tom doing Y instead, or you have to replan the first half to create the circumstances in which Tom would do X. Until you resign yourself to this, however, you are just going to feel stuck, unable to write the next scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way out of this that I can see is to stand back and look at the arcs of conflict in your story and figure out why they have stalled out at this point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T16:46:22.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27224" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27225" CreationDate="2017-03-19T19:19:06.900" Score="74" ViewCount="29052" Body="&lt;p&gt;What should I do if my story's plot is built around the antagonist being extremely strong, and by the end it's clear that the protagonist cannot possibly defeat the antagonist, unless the antagonist makes a stupid mistake in the &quot;final battle&quot; (or the protagonist magically gets super strong)? Is rewriting the entire story (so the antagonist is weaker and the plot is changed to compensate for that) the only solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14299" LastEditorUserId="14299" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T02:50:14.230" LastActivityDate="2020-06-24T10:05:16.493" Title="The protagonist can't defeat the antagonist without the antagonist being stupid" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="25" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-19T20:42:20.920" Score="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, most stories that have a specific antagonist depend on the antagonist being stronger than the protagonist, so logically the antagonist should win most of the time -- unless they do something stupid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We love to root for underdogs. After all, most of us are underdogs. If the hero was clearly going to win, it would not be much of a story. So what is an author to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the hero win anyway&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the hero lose heroically&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the hero lose realistically&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find all of these in literature but in popular works the first is obviously the most common. So the question becomes, under what circumstances is it satisfying to the audience that the hero wins anyway, even though the antagonist should clearly win. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to this question is virtue. Why do we want the hero to win? Because they are more virtuous. Why do we want the antagonist to lose? Because they lack virtue. So the difference between winning and losing must itself rest on virtue. This can take many forms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The antagonist loses, despite their advantages, because their signature vice leads them to make a mistake. Not a random mistake, but a mistake that they make for the very reason we hated them in the first place. Because of their cruelty, a henchman rebels against them; because of their treachery, an ally abandons them; because of their arrogance, they leave their flank unguarded; because of their idleness they do not discover the secret that will be their undoing. All of these will seem dreadfully contrived, of course, unless they are seen as the direct result of their faults and the past actions they have taken because of those faults. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The hero wins because of their signature virtue: because of their courage, they keep fighting when all seems lost; because of their compassion, a minor character they have been good to shows them a secret passage; because of their loyalty, a friend sacrifices himself for them; because of their learning, they discover a secret unknown to the antagonist. Again, all of these will seem dreadfully contrived unless they are the direct result of their established virtues and the past actions they have taken because of those virtues. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T11:36:53.793" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T11:36:53.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-19T21:53:20.777" Score="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shortly after I took up fencing, I had an epee bout with the long-time county champion. I expected to get thrashed and everyone in the club expected me to get thrashed. However, I won the first couple of points accidentally by having my epee point exactly where he exposed his wrist when lunging. I recognised this fault of his and he didn't and went on to take the bout by a ridiculous margin: 15-5 or something. Point is that your antagonist might win all his fights because he expects to win and his opponents expect to lose. Put him against a protagonist that accidentally uncovers a weak spot and has the good sense and self-belief to take advantage of it: in a duel to the death, the protagonist only has to win once!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23277" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T21:53:20.777" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27233" CreationDate="2017-03-19T23:49:29.463" Score="6" ViewCount="516" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had several people ask me who is the main character of my thriller novel. But, the novel involves multiple characters working as a team who rise and fall as the need occurs. At first I thought it doesn't matter if there is a main character in a story about a small group working together. Do the X-men have a main character? Do the Avengers have a main character. How about the Walking Dead? But, my wife pointed out that yes, the Walking Dead do have a main character, it is Rick the sheriff. And thinking more on it I decided the Avengers have a main character also, it is Captain America. Even the X-men has one, the main character that continues even when they are not in the story isn't Dr Xavier, it is Wolverine. Her point is readers expect a main character because they want to know their origins, how their lives evolved to where they are in the story and how the other members feel about them. Too many 'leaders' become too confusing and readers simply lose caring for all the characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I also challenge the reader to name a single main character from Andromeda Strain or even Jurassic Park. A good editor friend told my my main character is the virus the team is trying to cure. Are the critique and my wife correct? Are main characters essential to both plot and as the anchor for point of view? Or is the foe the main character much like in Jaws or Moby Dick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="22690" LastEditDate="2017-03-19T23:57:40.580" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T18:22:56.653" Title="Is a single main character really important in a novel involving a team effort?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-19T23:55:44.410" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the antagonist will win in a fair fight, don't have the protagonist engage him in a fair fight.  One way to make this happen is to make the protagonist's objective something other than killing/defeating the antagonist - maybe the antagonist is trying to execute some nefarious plan, and the protagonist finds a way to disrupt the plan without having to fight the antagonist directly (or with only skirmish/guerilla type fighting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your protagonist has to fight the antagonist directly, he can try to out-prepare or out-maneuver the antagonist.  For the former, perhaps he coats his sword in poison so he only has to scratch the antagonist to kill or weaken him, sabotages the antagonist's equipment before fighting or takes performance-enhancing drugs before the fight.  For the latter, instead of challenging the antagonist directly the protagonist can ambush him, or start the fight in a place more advantageous for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24065" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T23:55:44.410" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27227" CreationDate="2017-03-20T00:22:15.813" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Game of thrones. Fifty main characters, but only within their own chairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need a main character, but every scene needs a protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T00:22:15.813" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27136" CreationDate="2017-03-20T01:10:04.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; I think when taking cultural inspiration for a work of fiction, you have to ask yourself: will this piece of a single culture fit the context of what is this universe's realistic. Example: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/research-enterprise/cultural/centre-for-nordic-studies/mimirs-well-articles/rings-dwarves-elves-and-dragons-j.-r.-r.-tolkien2019s-old-norse-influences&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tolkien drew from Norse legends for his Dwarves and Elves&lt;/a&gt;, but how fitting would it have been for either of them to be depicted as owning slaves, even though early Scandinavian culture was (like many of the time) very slave-centric?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; My favorite pieces of fiction have had parallels against historical or currently existing cultures only so far as cherry picked parts that could reasonably exist in that fictional world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6085" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T01:10:04.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27263" CreationDate="2017-03-20T01:44:49.490" Score="2" ViewCount="3062" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes find myself with only one to three lines between the start of a paragraph and the end of a page when writing papers. When using the APA format, is it okay to insert a page break before the start of the paragraph? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are three examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Heading is on the last line&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q3B5a.png&quot; alt=&quot;Heading on last line&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Heading and two lines of text&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fn4nJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;Heading and two lines of text&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Two lines of text, no heading&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y6wV2.png&quot; alt=&quot;Two lines of text, no heading&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24069" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T06:56:02.983" Title="When is it okay to insert a page break before a new paragraph?" Tags="|formatting|apa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24753" CreationDate="2017-03-20T03:05:16.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're trying to do is called foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is essentially providing the groundwork for a later event. The typical rule that is followed is the rule of threes. If something is important, mention it at least three times throughout the course of your story. Everyone else is right about techniques for doing this. Working in whatever it happens to be so that it's a natural fixture of the story is generally your aim. If your readers don't pick up on it first read, they'll have the pleasure of doing so on the second read and you'll look brilliant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often times you'll write many things that need foreshadowing. Revision is a great time to go back and clean those things up so that your events feel earned and satisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T03:05:16.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27227" CreationDate="2017-03-20T03:53:23.677" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can certainly have an ensemble cast, and you can certainly send a team on a shared quest. Hundreds of novels and movies do exactly that. But while a team can have a shared plot, a plot is not the same thing as a story arc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story arc is the difference between a story and a piece of imagined history. It is the emotional lure that attracts the reader to the piece. A story arc is fundamentally moral. It is about how a character responds to a challenge and the price they are willing, or not willing, to pay to achieve their ends. This is a fundamentally moral question. It is not a matter of method, but of values. As such a story arch is fundamentally individual. A character can have a story arc; a team cannot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If multiple team members go on a quest, either there is one member of the team whose moral arc is the focus of the work, and the others are supporting characters, whose motivations and actions need to be plausible, but do not necessarily need to be fully explored or to reach a moral crisis and resolution; or each (or several) member(s) of the team has a featured moral arc that is fully explored and resolved over the same series of events that mark the plot, meaning that several story arcs are brought to crisis and resolution at the climax of the novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter, of course, requires considerable coordination, and it is not at all unusual for some of what seemed like promising and interesting story arcs in the development of the story to go unresolved in the end. Often the way you know who the &quot;main character&quot; of a story really is is that their moral arc is the only one that actually gets fully and satisfyingly resolved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you have people asking you who the main character of your novel is, it may well be because they are not finding a moral arc to follow. If they were engaged with a single moral arc, they would not ask the question. And I suspect that if they were truly engaged with multiple moral arcs they would not ask it either, or perhaps only at the end if they found that the more compelling moral arc they had been most invested in turned out never to be fully resolved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-03-21T18:22:56.653" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T18:22:56.653" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27234" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T03:55:38.220" Score="4" ViewCount="377" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to have training in &lt;em&gt;how to write fiction&lt;/em&gt; (particularly science fiction).  I know that I can take courses (in my case online), and that I can join critique groups.  I am on a budget, however...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find a book titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.buffalolib.org/vufind/Record/1868545/Reviews&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;90 Days To Your Novel&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Sarah Domet. It looks promising, except some reviews say that it takes way more than 90 days to do the assignments; they are only supposed to take two to three hours a day.  Additionally, it would be nice to have an accountability partner or a support group while working this book.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where would a person find such a person or persons?  Are there better resources than this book to learn writing from?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9885" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T18:03:26.533" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T18:03:26.533" Title="I am teaching myself how to write a novel -- where can I find support and resources?" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|resources|education|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27234" CreationDate="2017-03-20T04:11:24.027" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the reality of the thing: there are hundreds of thousands of people who would like to have written a novel. Many of them are willing to spend a considerable amount of money to advance their ambitions. This creates a market for writing courses and books on how to write. Where such a market exists, competition in that market will inevitably drive the development of courses and books that claim to teach you as simple formula for writing a novel and getting it published. They will offer things like foolproof systems, short time frames, and simple steps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this is inevitable. Where there is a market for advice and education, works like this will necessarily spring up to take advantage of that market. Even if no one who knows or cares anything about the subject would ever write such a book, someone who does not care will come along and write it because there is money to be made. Markets abhore a vacuum. Where there is a demand, products will be created to meet that demand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these books and courses will repeat exactly the same advice. Each of the foolproof systems they propose will be essentially the same foolproof system with different names on the steps and diagrams drawn differently. Some of this advice will be reasonable enough as far as it goes. Some of it may even help you figure out what went wrong when you get stuck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But none of it will suffice to make you a successful novelist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And much of it is so wildly simplistic or just downright wrong that it will do you far more harm than good if you try to follow it all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A novelist is, at heart, a storyteller. They love stories. They read stories constantly. They tell stories. They pay attention to the nature of stories. They may read intelligent books that examine the nature of story. But more than all of this, they are attentive. They are attentive to life. They are attentive to the books they read. They are attentive to the impact that stories have on themselves and those around them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't learn to write a novel the way you can learn to put together flat pack furniture or cook spaghetti bolognese. You have to learn by immersion with attention. Books and courses may be a element of that, but their greatest value may be that they introduce you to the company of other writers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="13409" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T18:56:03.327" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T18:56:03.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:38:17.067" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strength is not a simple one-dimensional attribute. Everyone has&#xA;different strengths and weaknesses. A clever combatant may recognize how&#xA;to shift the battleground to where the opponent’s strengths are&#xA;neutralized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider some historical conflicts where a relatively weak combatant&#xA;defeated a vastly stronger opponent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Viet Cong vs. the United States&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;American colonists vs. the British&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greeks vs. Persia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Russia vs. Napoleon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8535" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T09:38:17.067" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27238" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27240" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:12:13.257" Score="21" ViewCount="9387" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a new writer, Is it okay to dive on my idea of a long story (a novel) or to first try short stories? I am very excited to start on my concept but am not sure if it is better to first try smaller projects to gain confidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24077" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T18:03:19.297" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T18:03:19.297" Title="Should I start writing my novel or first learn on short stories?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27234" CreationDate="2017-03-20T11:08:31.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read, analyse what you read; write, analyse what you wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The greatest training I had for writing was my 'modern language and literature' degree. While studying literature, I learnt the effects that different techniques produce and then I simply wrote until those methods became second nature. You don't even have to learn the technical terms (although I had to and it's useful when discussing them with other people), simply developing the intuition for what works and doesn't work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to find a guide for close reading geared towards literary texts. Make sure you've got a guide for the whole book and for excerpts (including characters; setting, both space and time; stylistic device; dialogue vs narration; everything). Then read a book. Go back and analyse it in general following the guide. Next choose some short excerpts (the beginning, description of a place or character, a dramatic scene, etc) then analyse them carefully. Don't just identify personifications, metaphors and hypallages but find out what effect they cause. If the author had chosen to do something different, how would that detract from the effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, plot out all the main events in the book and analyse how they're sequenced. See how that sequence creates (or not) tension. Why? Identify the events that pertain to the main plot and to the subplots. Ask yourself how shuffling a few events in the sequence would change the pace and the tension build. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you start with modern books, as classics of previous periods were written with different rules (e.g. in the second half of the 19th century, lavish descriptions were the thing to do). Work with one or two famous contemporary &lt;em&gt;literary&lt;/em&gt; books then move on to the genre you wish to write on. Choose a good book and do the same. Eventually you can try to look at a bad book and actively search for what went wrong. Think how it could be improved, story and writing wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to study dramatic scenes in particular (or the beginning, place description, etc), identify 2-4 such scenes in the same book and compare them. Then choose different books (by different authors), choose 2-4 such scenes and compare them. Alwasy ask 'what effect does this choice cause?'. Very often, you don't have bad techniques but techniques that were used in the wrong place or for the wrong effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you want to study how, say, the weather, plays into the story, identify all the references to the weather (but don't do this on a whole novel or you'll never see the end of it; stick to a chapter or a scene).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the mean time, keep writing. An interesting exercise my high school teacher had us do was pick a picture and describe it or use it as the starting point for a short story. Another was rewriting a scene from the POV of a different character. You can practice with writing short stories or just scenes, which is great for developing specific techniques. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you should do is write different versions of the same scenes, descriptions, whatever. Then compare the different texts and see the different effects. For example, my high school teacher gave us photos of people from magazines then had us describe the same person in different ways: one paragraph of general description; a set of paragraphs of detailed description worthy of the 19th century; description of the person's actions (could be invented) with minimalist insertion of the two most striking physical features; description by a fashion-obsessed person (focus on clothes and hairstyle); and so on. She would also make us do similar stuff for describing places, weather, or describe a person's personality through her possessions, bedroom or actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The objective was to widen our horizons: there is no one way of doing things, you must choose the one that creates the right feel for the story or scene you're writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T11:08:31.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27238" CreationDate="2017-03-20T11:17:04.620" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different answers to this question. Mine may be off putting, but it's not meant to be. You're basically asking if you should start with the marathon. The short answer is that unless you are extremely unique and talented to the point of abnormalcy, your first book is going to be rough. It's probably going to be bad. But it's ultimately practice. You'll be good after four or five books. Which is to say, you're going to want to approach this with the right mindset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, try something manageable. Try to stick to one POV. Finish your book no matter what. Figure out what the healthy habits for you look like. Make sure that you are writing something fun. If you pick a shorter arc that will give you a novella, you'll be perhaps in a better position. (Google is your friend for word counts here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also are going to want to know the answers to these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you an outliner or a pantser? Do you sit down and just write or do you plan it out? This will determine how much you need to do before you start.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are you going to do to make space for this hobby in your life? I work a full time job. I just had my first kid. I had to give up a ton of stuff to make the time. I do not play many video games anymore.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What happens in the middle of your story? Most people have a good beginning or a good ending, sometimes both. Your middle needs to be good too. To get a good middle, you're going to want to figure out what your set pieces are. Set pieces are cool, fun things that you want to write about that you can use in a scene. They are also mile markers do that you can keep a good pace. If you are a pantser, do not outline these further as it may ruin your writing experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest recommendation I have is that you listen to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/01/04/writing-excuses-10-1-seriously-where-do-you-get-your-ideas/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;season 10&lt;/a&gt; of the podcast &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writingexcuses.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing Excuses&lt;/a&gt;. It's supposed to be a master class for writing your first book. Also when you inevitably hit your low point, listen to the episode about writing for fun. It's a huge pick-me-up. Think of it as your second wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, go write your first book. But pack your camping supplies first. You're in for a long haul.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside, I'm a hypocrite. I'm doing a large, complicated, 3 POV novel right now. But I think I've packed my pack right. But, I'm constantly stressed about the what ifs. You could go down my road, but it's a hard one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: finished said book and an now with alpha readers. It's currently too long to publish and needs to be cut in half; but it was and will be good practice. While it's out with alpha I'm starting up a new project. It was the book I needed to write at the time, but I'm pretty sure it's going in the trunk. I would caution anyone starting a book with the intention of selling to heed the advice of staying a bit closer to the ideal word count for your genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastEditorUserId="24040" LastEditDate="2018-02-09T02:13:18.687" LastActivityDate="2018-02-09T02:13:18.687" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27238" CreationDate="2017-03-20T11:22:57.327" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends. For me, writing short stories feels like a waste of time and I can't stop myself from creating connections that can transform the short idea into a long, far more interesting (for me) tale. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you do dive in with the long one, you must be prepared to get to the end and re-write almost everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think short-stories will make you feel satisfied, by all means, do so first. It may give you ideas to improve the concept for your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to develop your writing style, you may want to consider writing snippets. For example, imagine you want to practice how to describe characters: choose a photo of a person from a magazine (someone you don't know, preferably) and describe them from the most exaustive to the most minimalist; from the most static (no action at all, just description) to the most active (mostly action and just one or two references to the most striking physical features); and seen by different people (seen by a lover, a parent, an enemy, an envious friend, ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These snippets may even focus on the characters of your project (if you're the impatient type and want to get started as soon as possible). It will give you a good feel for the characters before you start writing. You can also do this for important places in the novel or, rather than write snippets, you can write short scenes. Try action scenes from diffeernt POVs or written from the very descriptive to the very fast. Contrast using short sentences, long sentences or a mix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that these exercises don't need to be used in the novel, you're just stretching your muscles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T11:22:57.327" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-20T11:31:15.803" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;David versus Goliath.  Heracles versus Antaeus.  Batman versus Bane.  Or one nice scene from Braveheart, the big hurled boulder versus a small stone thrown accurately between the eyes.  There are &lt;em&gt;so&lt;/em&gt; many examples in fiction where the strongest person is beaten by a smart opponent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, if the protagonist is clearly strongest then generally there isn't enough depth to the story to be interesting to a modern audience.  The classic &quot;hero's journey&quot; requires the hero to fail repeatedly so that he (or she) can learn from their failures and find how to defeat their enemy.  This is the difference between &quot;barbarian&quot; myths such as Greek legend where the strongest man almost always wins (or, exceptionally, the strongest man has to be incredibly stupid for the weaker man to win), and modern story-telling where the cleverest person wins.  In &quot;barbarian&quot; societies, authority comes through personal strength, and their stories reflect that.  In modern societies, authority comes from intelligence (or it should), and our stories are examples to children that the cleverest person wins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you actually read Aesop's fables in a proper translation, mostly the hare wins.  Or the wolf wins.  If the stories have a moral (and most don't), the moral is to be the wolf.  That's a stark contrast to a modern equivalent like &quot;The three little pigs&quot;, where the lesson is that any pig can kick a wolf's ass if he's intelligent and prepared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19742" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T11:31:15.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-20T12:43:27.983" Score="35" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” &#xA;  ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the protagonist can not beat the antagonist in a direct battle, don't have them fight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have the protagonist solve the conflict in a non-violent way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convince the antagonist to abandon their plan:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By appealing to the antagonists morals or code of ethics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By convincing the antagonist that following their plan will harm them in the long run.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By proposing a deal which benefits everyone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By bluffing or otherwise tricking the antagonist into believing that their plan will fail&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the protagonist change the circumstances so that:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;going through with the plan doesn't make sense anymore for the antagonist &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the antagonist's plan will no longer cause harm to anyone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the protagonist find and exploit some obscure weakness of the antagonist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of that does of course require that you have a properly developed antagonist character who has more character depth than &quot;being extremely strong&quot; and a more complex motivation than &quot;being extremely mean&quot;. Discovering these depths and motivations might be the &quot;real&quot; quest for the protagonist and their strongest weapon against the antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if all else fails, you still have the heroic sacrifice: Even a weaker opponent might be able to win if they are willing to sacrifice their life for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2017-03-22T19:03:57.127" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T19:03:57.127" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2017-03-20T14:10:16.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An interesting example of a movie without a &quot;bad guy&quot; is &lt;em&gt;My Cousin Vinny&lt;/em&gt;.  There is definitely conflict, but with the exception of a murderer who never appears on screen or is even named, every person in the movie is essentially a good person doing they best they can.  The judge, the sheriff, the prosecutor, the lawyers, the (innocent) accused -- none of them is a villain&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24086" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T14:10:16.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-20T16:01:13.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're set in the late twentieth century you have the advantage that unexpected stealthy offense is much stronger than defense. Consider what happens if the antagonist is assassinated. Does his cause fall? If so, it would be worthy for the protagonist to hire an assassin with no scruples and equip said assassin with appropriate weapons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15789" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T16:01:13.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27247" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T17:24:17.983" Score="0" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;So... I'm writing a book that takes place in an alternate world. In this world, there are a bunch of islands that align with the star sign constellations (Ex: Gemini, Sagittarius, etc.) the island Scorpio is known for being criminally populated and basically the &quot;evil&quot; island. On Scorpio lives the notorious Ravana family, who have been training their eldest daughter, Lyrin to become an alchemist where she will one day collect a sacred object from each of the islands in order to cast a spell that will brainwash all the other islands, allowing Scorpio to take control. Once she is of age and her training is complete, she sets off on her mission to find these sacred objects, sailing dangerous seas W full of dangerous creatures and venturing to islands she has never before experienced. During this journey, she meets a boy (another alchemist) from the island of Capricorn. (I'm not sure how they will meet: any ideas on that?) and she enlists his help in finding the objects, never letting him know what she plans to do with them. Eventually they start to fall in love which complicates things. Any title ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24090" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T20:13:09.147" Title="Need help titling my book?" Tags="|creative-writing|fantasy|titles|young-adult|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-03-22T11:51:11.657" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27247" CreationDate="2017-03-20T18:32:53.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds interesting - Welcome to the site also! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want I'll help you brainstorm in general - You appear to seek general ideas? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Written in the stars&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; comes to mind, but I find that quite cliché.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe something that connects the heritage of the family to the theme? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Lyrin and the path of constellations&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; maybe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Constellation Islands&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; sounds cool/magical and somewhat spooky to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: More ideas &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Path of Constellations&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Lyrin's Heritage&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or Perhaps: &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Lyrin Ravana (of Scorpio)&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T18:38:46.187" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T18:38:46.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27238" CreationDate="2017-03-20T19:40:19.870" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possible approach: Think of a &quot;season&quot; for a television show. There are a fixed number of episodes, which run once per week. Each show has a few common characters, and a few common locations. Each week, there will be guest performers who establish the topic of the week's episode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, each episode is like a short story. But they are not entirely self-contained, since it is assumed that the viewer knows something about the continued characters and location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There the analogy ends: A show's season has a finite number of episodes, but rarely do they connect as part of a larger plot, and rarely is the final show an &quot;ending&quot; (because there may be another season). Yet it can be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I suggest you write short stories with common characters and locations. Arrange them so that what happened in one story has an influence on what will happen in a later story. Then, you are on the road to a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between that, and just writing a novel? You do not need to start out with a plot for the whole thing. See what happens in the individual stories, then knit them together later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T19:40:19.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27247" CreationDate="2017-03-20T19:55:29.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to the site!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are targeting a young audience, so perhaps they should be the source of your title inspiration.  Every generation distinguishes itself from its predecessors by applying their own style and slang to our shared language.  You are likely to find a relatively unused and target-age specific title just by have a few minute conversation with a few of your future readers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you might get some beta readers out of the deal as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T19:55:29.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27247" CreationDate="2017-03-20T20:13:09.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lyrin's Sign&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;comes to mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about&#xA;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Star Crossed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24093" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T20:13:09.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-20T20:30:27.317" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;-WARNING: TV TROPES LINK SPAM INCOMING-&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing at all wrong with having your villain make a stupid mistake. &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainBall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Villains do it all the time&lt;/a&gt;. The trick is to make sure that the mistake is also &lt;em&gt;believable&lt;/em&gt; - that it stems naturally from an established character flaw, and doesn't just happen because the plot requires it. Here's a few suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;He's arrogant.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Why should I bother guarding the secret entrance to my base? It's already so well-hidden, there's &lt;em&gt;no way&lt;/em&gt; the hero will ever find it!&amp;quot; The hero finds it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhyDontYouJustShootHim&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why would I just shoot him&lt;/a&gt; when I can throw him into an elaborate deathtrap that'll kill him slowly and painfully? There's &lt;em&gt;no way&lt;/em&gt; he'll get out of it alive!&amp;quot; Except he does, and now he has the element of surprise because the villain assumes he's dead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Why should I waste time &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnfinishedUntestedUsedAnyway&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;finishing/testing my superweapon before using it&lt;/a&gt;? There's &lt;em&gt;no way&lt;/em&gt; anything can go wrong!&amp;quot; Something goes wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;The hero has infiltrated my lair? No matter. My super laser is already armed and will fire in three minutes! There's &lt;em&gt;no way&lt;/em&gt; he can stop me now!&amp;quot; He stops him. &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JustInTime&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Most likely with two seconds remaining&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on all day with this trope, but you get the idea by now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilCannotComprehendGood&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;He doesn't understand good&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instead of trying to kill the hero, the villain tries to turn him to the dark side. He's shocked when the hero refuses and then beats the tar out of him, because he &lt;em&gt;legitimately can't comprehend&lt;/em&gt; why someone would choose to remain on (what he believes to be) the weaker side.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're willing to consider a heroic sacrifice, then perhaps the villain didn't consider that the hero might do such a thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;He's just that evil.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The villain is so evil and heartless that he commits atrocities without caring about whether they might come back to bite him later. He'll raze villages to the ground, even though someone might survive and come after him. He'll betray his loyal second-in-command, even though they know the secret to shutting off his doomsday device. He'll break his promises to people (&amp;quot;You said you'd let them go!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I lied!&amp;quot;), even though it may turn those people against him. It might not make sense for him to do something, but he'll do it anyway just &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForTheEvulz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;for the evulz&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23927" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2020-06-24T10:05:16.493" LastActivityDate="2020-06-24T10:05:16.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27234" CreationDate="2017-03-20T21:36:11.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Repeating what I've said elsewhere. Writing Excuses is a podcast that specializes in Sci-Fi/Fantasy. They have a master course, that I mentioned earlier (season 10) on how to write a novel. It's free. It's my only recommend, but it won't be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a novel is &quot;easy&quot;. You just have to have a sufficient piece of writing that's long enough. Writing a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; novel is something that takes years of practice. You can get that practice in many ways. Analyzing the work of other masters. Having someone teach you the basics. Engaging in discussions with your peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've asked specifically for things that &quot;teach&quot; you how to write a novel. Well, here it is: Sit down and write every day until you have enough words to constitute a novel. If your end goal is to have a novel; you will have to do this at some point. Writing is one of those things you learn more by doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly, pick up one or two books. Certainly, read a few blogs. Certainly, attend a writing class. All of these things will give you perspective, but  at some point you just have to sit down and write. When you finally do that, you can take your work to a local writing group and they'll help you figure out where you need to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T21:36:11.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27255" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T21:44:19.950" Score="1" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;THIS QUESTION HAS BEEN EDITED: KEEPS ORIGINAL TITLE TO MAKE SENSE OF EXISTING ANSWERS, BUT I'M ADDING THE FOLLOWING:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;I do somewhat regret choosing &amp;quot;farmers&amp;quot; as my fake title, since most people probably aren't curious about farmers. It may be too late to change now, but &amp;quot;The Citizens&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;The Habitants&amp;quot; are closer to my own. These are titles/groups of people, that you would not connect to certain traits, which would make it 'odd' that a book used them for their title - Thus making it more obvious that there's more to it. I may have shot myself in the foot using &amp;quot;farmers&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will work around using my actual title, since that makes it less of a personal &amp;quot;fix my writing&amp;quot;-issue and more of a general issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the situation; After reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/27247/need-help-titling-my-book&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; and the top-voted answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7793/how-to-come-up-with-a-good-title&quot;&gt;another title-related question&lt;/a&gt;, I started thinking.&#xA;Here's the (potential) issue: (Copied from top-voted answer, let me know if inappropriate)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] The first thing to keep in mind is that &lt;strong&gt;most readers will decide to buy or pass on your book based on the title alone.&lt;/strong&gt; Rightly or wrongly, that's what happens. That means that you need to put your marketing hat on when you write your title. You can put it on backwards like the cool kids do, but always remember that &lt;strong&gt;the entire reason your title exists is to sell your book.&lt;/strong&gt; Think to yourself: Out of all of the books in a real or virtual bookstore &lt;strong&gt;what is the one title I can choose that will at least make someone stop and take a closer look?&lt;/strong&gt; (Yes, yes, you're an artist not a businessperson. I know. Let's just say there's a reason the phrase starving artist exists, shall we?)&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;With that in mind, the first rule is that &lt;strong&gt;titles should be interesting, original, memorable and appropriate&lt;/strong&gt; above everything else. If your book is funny, then the title should be funny. If your book is dark, then the title should be dark. If it's for kids, don't give it an adult title. If you're writing a romance novel, don't make it sound like it's science fiction. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This made a lot of sense to me, so I started thinking. I've been pretty sure about the title of my novel for almost as long as I can remember working on the story, but it may be lacking in some of the areas mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where I use a random title - almost identical in style, content, theme and so on. This could very well be my title, but it's not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Farmers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (Alternatively &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In Agricolas&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; internationally, Latin - quick Google Translate)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The novel is a science-fiction story set in today's world. The title of the book refers to a certain (to the new reader yet unknown) group of people within society, that have access to/use &amp;quot;fantastical/futuristic&amp;quot; technologies and science-based knowledge, that is unaccessible to the average population. &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;The farmers&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; would be the name that &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt; use when they refer to &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this group of people&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, but it is not necessarily how they refer to them self (probably not, since they want to remain unknown). Originally, the title is supposed to be subtle and not give away anything important about the content of story. If we meet &lt;em&gt;farmers&lt;/em&gt; in the story, the reader would not suspect or figure out that another group of people go under the same name, and only discover the  &amp;quot;fantastical/futuristic&amp;quot; content as it occurs in the natural flow of the story. The story is &lt;strong&gt;heavily based on actual science&lt;/strong&gt;, and should therefore remain believable to the highest extend possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pre-question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, should the author simply trust that potential readers spot the title at think &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;huh, that's an odd title for a book in the science-fiction section&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;, or would they need a recommendation from someone who actually read, to pick it up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of course expects the completed novel to be amazing, but &lt;em&gt;word of mouth can only do so much...&lt;/em&gt; [No data here]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actual question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should the author attempt to make the title more interesting/revealing in itself, even though the subtleness/camouflage is a part of the story, or should he trust the original feeling that it was a suitable title?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus: Adding to the secrecy of the group of people in the story - any web searches or everyday discussions about &amp;quot;farmers&amp;quot; would give a multitude of standard results/answers helping to maintain the unawareness of the story's content.&#xA;Let me know if this makes no sense when trying to &lt;em&gt;sell&lt;/em&gt; a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've considered adding a character's part to the title like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Farmers: Adrian's Discovery&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... or something along those lines. However, the simplicity of &amp;quot;The Farmers&amp;quot; personally is appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T05:17:28.113" Title="A different question regarding titling a novel - Edited" Tags="|titles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27255" CreationDate="2017-03-20T22:35:15.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I absolutely agree with the quote you include.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, a title should give a clue what the book is about so that someone looking for a book can quickly tell from the title that this is a book that might be interesting to him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was browsing in a bookstore or on Amazon or whatever and I saw a book titled, &quot;Farmers&quot;, my first thought would be that this is a book about people who grow crops for a living. I'd guess that farming is not a subject that particularly interests most science fiction fans. So I think most would stroll right past. Okay, if it was in the science fiction section maybe I would indeed say, &quot;Why is a book about farmers in science fiction?&quot; Maybe that would make me curious enough to take a second look. Maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at the other extreme, consider Heinlein's title, &quot;The Man Who Sold the Moon&quot;. From that title I instantly assume that it is probably near-future science fiction and something about business or marketing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's see, another book I read recently was called &quot;Timepiece&quot;. As it was in the science fiction section, I (correctly) assumed it was about time travel. That's not a lot, but at least a hint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the other extreme, I often see movie listings where the title is just a character's name: &quot;Julia&quot;, &quot;Hancock&quot;, &quot;Forrest Gump&quot;, etc. This tells me absolutely nothing about the subject. (Unless it's the name of a famous person, like &quot;Einstein&quot; or &quot;Julius Caesar&quot;, etc.) Maybe if the marketing for the movie is good enough I'll hear what it's about and be interested. But if you don't have a multi-million dollar marketing budget, I think such a title would be a very bad idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the title shouldn't give away a key plot development. I wouldn't put the word &quot;clone&quot; in the title of a book if the fact that someone is a clone is supposed to be a surprise revelation. Any more than I'd call a book, &quot;The Murder Committed by Fred Stover&quot; if the story is supposed to be a mystery where we don't learn who the murderer is until the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's good if a title not only gives a clue what the book is about but is also attention-getting. I recently bought a book called &quot;Galactic Explorations&quot;. Obvious what it's about, but not very interesting. Still, I bought the book, so I guess it worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that many people today are buying books on-line, I think it's a good idea if a title includes a word that someone might search for. Like if you're writing a book about vampires, put the word &quot;vampire&quot; in the title. If you're writing a book about space travel, put a word like &quot;space&quot; or &quot;star&quot; or &quot;alien&quot; in the title. Etc. It may not lead to the most creative title in the world, but I suspect it would lead to more sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if you're a famous writer, a lot of these rules would not apply. If I see a book by someone I know is a famous science fiction writer, I'll assume that it is probably science fiction, or if it's not, I'll be at least curious what other subjects a famous science fiction writer would write about. But I suspect most of us on this forum are not famous writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T22:35:15.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27238" CreationDate="2017-03-20T22:42:41.603" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, writing something short is clearly less time investment than writing something long. When people decide to learn carpentry, they usually start with a birdhouse or bookends and not with a 30-room house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, writing a short story is very different from writing a novel. A novel is not just a short story stretched out to fill 300 pages. At least, a good novel is not. Likewise a good short story is not a summary of a novel. If I wanted to learn auto mechanics, I wouldn't start with Hot Wheels cars because those are smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think my advice would be: If you have an idea for a novel, and also an idea for a short story, start with the short story. But if you have ideas for novels and short stories just aren't what you're interested in writing, then start work on a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-03-20T22:42:41.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27259" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27269" CreationDate="2017-03-21T00:59:33.370" Score="6" ViewCount="981" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today, is it harder to get a lot of people to buy and read a published book than it was in the past? (Are people reading books less now because they'd rather watch Netflix, or just read a pirated version of the book online, etc?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14299" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-12-20T01:40:43.470" LastActivityDate="2020-05-18T17:04:14.417" Title="Is it harder to publish a successful book these days?" Tags="|publishing|book|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27255" CreationDate="2017-03-21T05:17:28.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with what Jay stated, but there are other things to think about in terms of title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the font/coloring of the title could help convey a more futuristic setting even though the title of the books would be Farmers. That would pique an interest in someone seeing the spine of the book on the shelves. Also, if it is an Ebook then the whole aesthetic of the cover could be used to show these are farmers who are cultivating technology and not corn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tile is there to let the reader have a hint of what the book might be about (as you mentioned, it would suggest that there are more to these farmers and they are key to the plot)but if the reader purchases the book does not rely solely on the title. It's also there to get the reader to pick up the book off the shelf or click on it. The synopsis and a quick overview of the first couple pages is what solidifies a purchase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it's always good to have a working title and you can change it when your final manuscript is ready to go. I've started plenty of times with titles, often the inspiration of my story, that did not seem to fit or portray what my story was about at the end. If you still feel confident that The Farmers, The inhabitants, the... works with what you are going for, then stick with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also poll your beta readers on how they like the title and look into typical naming conventions for your audience and genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24059" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T05:17:28.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27231" CreationDate="2017-03-21T06:37:49.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using a heading, feel free to start it on a new page. Try to imagine headings as being similar to chapter markers, they mark the start of a new section of your piece, however, this is again dependent on your writing style and any criteria your examiners require. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="23013" LastEditDate="2017-03-21T06:56:02.983" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T06:56:02.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2771" CreationDate="2017-03-21T08:11:27.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe there is no use of PS in emails. If an unrelated sentence needs to be written down, it could simply become seperate paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This somehow reminds me the page flipping animation used when reading e-books, which, for me, is at least as meaningless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24104" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T08:11:27.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-21T10:21:06.670" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;-WARNING: TV TROPES LINKS INCOMING-&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I understood the OP as the villain being extremely powerful (intelligence, strength, strategy, connections...) in any aspect relevant to the final confrontation, not just physically strong.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is built around the antagonist being extremely strong, and impossible to defeat, the reader is probably waiting for any kind of silly Ex Machina to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So... &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBadGuyWins&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;what if it doesnt&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would surely pull the rug from under their feet. And if it's well done, it can be &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; satisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending of the details, it could &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SequelHook&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;open space for a sequel/prequel&lt;/a&gt;, may it be another attempt to defeat him or &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroOfAnotherStory&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;having the villain as a protagonist&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of a prequel it could explain the antagonist motives and give your original book a second reading, now being glad when the &lt;em&gt;antagonist&lt;/em&gt; wins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23895" LastEditorUserId="23895" LastEditDate="2017-03-21T11:35:07.477" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T11:35:07.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27259" CreationDate="2017-03-21T11:04:52.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While many caveats (as mentioned in the comment to your question) apply, I think it's safe to say the answer is &quot;yes&quot; if you are trying to go the traditional route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that in 2016 there were no breakout YA books, as there have always been in previous years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's why: Trad publishers are dinosaurs failing to understand what the bright light in the sky (called the Internet) is going to do to them. (Well, has already done to them, but that spoils my metaphor.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ultimate decision on what gets published is made by the Marketing Depts of the Big Five. If they don't understand the book and don't know how to sell it they will simply say &quot;no&quot;. This has nothing to do with a book's quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They &quot;know&quot; that what sells a book is the writer's name. And that's pretty much their limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Global surveys (see authorearnings.com) show that the Big Five rely almost exclusively on sales from authors who made a name for themselves 20+ years ago. Their new authors do not sell (for the most part).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you once had three-book deals for new authors they are down to two, and the publisher will dump you after the first if it doesn't sell well enough anyway. Where you might expect, as a new author, several thousand sales it's now typically down to a few hundred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No marketing money will be put into new authors (that's reserved for the big names). And you are unlikely to get an advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I have an A-lister friend - and even &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; advances are getting cut and he makes millions for his publishers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trad publishing is imploding because they don't understand the new world of publishing. They keep ebook prices high to protect their hardback sales even though they would make money if they didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some independent publishers (like Angry Robot) who do understand the new world, but they are few and far between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, if you are a new writer it's harder. Much harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10521" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T11:04:52.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-21T12:33:36.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The journey is it's own reward. As someone who loved eragon, it was clear to me that he had no chance of winning a fair fight, as he simply did not have the time to train or the resources to win. The ending was pretty cheesy, but the anticipation and journey leading up to the end was pretty cool. If the author had rewritten the book to be more realistic and less cheesy it would have been less interesting and most likely would not have become a bestseller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to say what kind of fiction book you are writting and there may be some solutions. Overestimating your power is a classic, or granting the hero a fair fight/restricting yourself to prove ones power. While it's a mistake, it is one understandable honor based one, and most people take honor pretty seriously, especially an evil guy who is used to people simply following his orders and brown nosing to survive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your hero could also wear out the evil guy or simply divide his attention into so many parts that he is bound to make a mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23218" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T12:33:36.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27259" CreationDate="2017-03-21T13:46:20.677" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The challenges have likely changed; but it many ways so have the success stories. You've asked a few questions, that I'd break up this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it hard to publish?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it hard to be successful?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does this compare to the past?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Is it Hard to Publish?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes:&lt;/strong&gt; It is hard to go through the standard publishing process. It involves, as far as I can tell, a lot of networking and several rounds of getting people interested in your work. These people are &lt;em&gt;supremely&lt;/em&gt; busy. My understanding is the average Agent gets 100 works a week and only picks up two authors a year. Those are pretty bad odds. Once you have an agent, that agent needs to be able to sell the book. The odds of that happening depend on the skill and connections of the agent. If you got a good agent, you're probably done with your networking issues; but you still need to successfully navigate with your agent the finding of a publisher, the editing of your book, and anything that the sales people throw your way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news for you is you're surrounded by professionals who need you to succeed and who have been doing this. Sure, failure still abounds, but you've got a team that wants you to win. If you make it, well, you made it; your book is going to be published. You're in the top 1% of all classes that are still alive today. Congrats! Keep in mind, this formula means that 99% of people who write books fail to execute and successfully publish the standard way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No:&lt;/strong&gt; So, you are not a traditionalist? You've heard of the internet? Great, let's self-publish. There are many, many options for this today. There are lots of systems. Systems can be gamed, but these systems are at a minimum open. You can publish whatever you want. But with that comes the risk that you'll publish something that is no good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go this route, you'll be responsible for all of the business decisions the publisher would usually manage. And, you're going to have to learn how to run that business on top of managing &lt;em&gt;being a writer&lt;/em&gt;. If you end up in a portal, the chances of someone reading your book might be low; but, hey, you're published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you're published, you need to network. You need to get your name out there. You need to get your book out there. You need to have a personality within your community that people respect and admire, or at least love to hate. The good news is, you're published? The bad news is, you need to get people to read your stuff and you may not have much of a network or team to help you here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at you tube. You know that guy who's pretty handy with a screw driver; he does a bunch of videos about how to use screw drivers. But, he's one of thousands of people with screw drivers who know how to &lt;em&gt;twist&lt;/em&gt;. You can't just be a guy who knows how to &lt;em&gt;twist&lt;/em&gt; the screw driver. It's simply not &lt;em&gt;enough&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's put it this way. Self-publishing is choosing to be the uncle in Napoleon Dynamite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Is it hard to be successful?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. You have to be noticed. You have to execute. You have to fill a market need. You have to be on task. You have to be responsive to others. The right people have to pick up your book. The right people have to recommend it. You have to survive any critical takes on your book. You have to come to market with your idea before the seven other people with the same idea get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always hard to be successful. But, you can also choose to define success. If you define it as &quot;making money writing&quot;, the number of people who successfully do this is not all that high. The number of people who become rich is extremely low. If you're writing to be successful, you might be better off playing the lottery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every overnight success takes ten years of practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And by the way, most people who are published never make a profit on their book. So, congrats on being in the 1% of writers who got published. But, unless you're in the 1% of those who got published, you're probably not going to make your money back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;How does this compare to the past?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, the gatekeepers have changed. In some ways people are more discoverable. I don't think less people are reading. I think it's true that the serial television show is hitting its golden age; and that means people can get their fiction fix from netflix. But, watching and reading are two different experiences, and I don't think people are reading less. I at least have never seen such a statistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, with the democratization and breaking down of the walls in the writing industry, there probably are more stories for sale. There are probably more people right now who believe they can do this (if only because the human population is constantly on the rise). So, distinguishing yourself and having the platform to be noticed is probably more difficult than it was in the past. And even if there isn't more for sale, there's plenty out there that's free. How many people just read the internet, perhaps deriving no pleasure, but wasting hours of their time hopping article to article, forum post to forum post? The way people spend their reading time &lt;em&gt;has changed&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a personal point here, which is that I think the publishing and consumption platforms are pretty awful. They're all fairly dependent on the algorithms that build the lists and show things in a ranked order. The masters of the algorithm have a lot of power over what you see and might consume today. It can be difficult on an e-reader to find something of value that you might have found at a book store, if only because you don't talk to the friendly guy at the desk anymore. Certainly podcasts &amp;amp; forums offer some of this, all the same. Book clubs too. But there is a cost for shifting largely to electronic mediums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of those costs is that there's this newfangled trek-like pad people hold in their hand all day. This style of device has a small screen that causes eye-fatigue. So readers on these devices often prefer shorter fiction. They also tend to consume the material in smaller bits of time; so again short punchy fiction has a new place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While that small screen now exists, a lot of local rags, print magazines, and other such mediums have gone out of style. Serial stories used to be a big thing in print. Now they have the opportunity to come back while other things may fade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's certainly a different age. There are new opportunities that come with it. Success, is still going to be difficult. It was never easy, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastEditorUserId="24040" LastEditDate="2017-03-21T13:55:01.257" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T13:55:01.257" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27259" CreationDate="2017-03-21T13:56:19.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it was Jeff Bezos (Amazon's CEO) who said that books didn't die - they just went digital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that people rather watch Netflix or maybe YouTube. And you're right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But did you know that there's a YouTube for writers and readers? It's called &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Medium&lt;/a&gt; (created by one of Twitter's co-founders).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never in my wildest dreams I imagined that one of &lt;a href=&quot;https://humanparts.medium.com/season-to-love-677502444174&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;my stories&lt;/a&gt; would get 5K views and 400 likes, and become featured on their Top Stories. But it happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Medium, readers can recommend your stories, comment on them, highlight the passages they like. (Yes, social media in written work.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors can post their stories, send them to publications (online user-created magazines, some even have 77K followers), and create something called &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRAKqJjt3j8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Series&lt;/a&gt; (think of Amazon books that you can extend anytime and notify your readers immediately). If you want to earn an income you can link your &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.patreon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Patreon&lt;/a&gt; account or your e-book at the end of your sample chapters or short stories you post on the site. (Be sure to have many followers before doing this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Truth, publishing a physical book, or writing in general, has become harder. But publishing digital work has become easier and more fun than ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1544" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2020-05-18T17:04:14.417" LastActivityDate="2020-05-18T17:04:14.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-21T15:19:00.267" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being opponents can take lots of forms, leading to a lot of different outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Direct Combat &lt;br&gt; This could be a physical fight with bare hands or weapons.  This surely is the least complex form for a writer but also the one which leaves least room for ideas on how to form the outcome.  Either you make it realistic based on your setup (then the villain should win in your scenario) or you introduce surprises (e. g. any kind of &lt;em&gt;deus-ex-machina&lt;/em&gt; or unbelievable incidents like the villain stumbling while charging or similar).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Indirect Combat &lt;br&gt; This could mean to choose a different battleground than expected, e. g. charging Al Capone with tax fraud.  This opens way more options for ideas.  Of course, all these can seem constructed (which of course they are); one trick to lower the appearance of being constructed is to place hints on these options in the beginning of the story when the reader does not yet think about these aspects.  Good hints come disguised as something else which fits neatly into the story without raising too many red flags.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seizing Attacks &lt;br&gt; This is like grabbing the fist which is going to punch you and doing something with it, like biting it, hurling yourself up on it, pulling yourself towards the opponent along it.  It can mean to take a punch to get in a better position (like a gambit).  In a way this could mean to let the opponent strike first to change the situation.  Lure him into a trap, e. g. make him appear cruel or unjust or dangerous to the rest of the world, which can help raise supporters against him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Evading Combat &lt;br&gt; This could mean to let the opponent run into empty space again and again until his resources are diminished and another form of combat seems more promising.  A policy of scorched earth is such a strategy in which an opponent is lured into coming deeper and deeper into one's own territory but where no resources are to be found.  Another form could be setting up meetings and not appearing again and again (while giving excuses or even better: while staging independent reasons like problems with the meeting place).  Such situations can exhaust the one who always has to prepare for the fight.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Changing the Perspective &lt;br&gt; This is closely connected to plot-points.  Introduce new information which lets things appear in a different light so that the complete enmity is questionable.  The information can be fraudulent, and the created confusion can shift the power.  E. g. make someone tell your opponent in the box ring that you are about to be shot in round two by a mobster.  Combined with a sudden loud bang in the hall in round two this makes it believable enough for lots of things to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Staying the Underdog &lt;br&gt; Several other answers deal with this option.  To be the apparent underdog opens options which derive from the arrogance of the villain.  Typical ways of exploiting such a situation can be to surprise the villain with an action which does not fit an underdog, e. g. being beaten down and kicked around for some time, but in the last second thrusting a poisoned dagger into the villain's foot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Forming and Shattering Alliances &lt;br&gt; The basic difference between protagonists and antagonists is that between good and evil.  Being one of the good ones often means to (be able to) form alliances while being one of the bad ones often means to have trouble keeping them (more betrayal, less confidence, more jealousy, more general hatred).  Forming alliances based on being one of the good ones can shift the power, especially if the alliance is a surprise to the villain.  That's what happened on Endor when Luke befriended the Ewoks.  It turned the &quot;pitiful little band&quot; of rebels into a force which could beat a whole Imperial Legion. &lt;br&gt; The other option is to let alliances of the villains shatter at the right moment; this could happen repeatedly in a chain reaction when started, causing significantly more effect.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Strengths and Weaknesses &lt;br&gt; Being strong or weak, being smart or stupid, and being good or evil—all these can have multiple dimensions.  Achilles was very strong but had a weak heel (similar stories for Smaug and Siegfried).  A hobbit is a weak creature but can resist the One Ring longer than other beings.  Sauron is not depicted as stupid but is outright stupid when it comes to considering whether others would want to destroy the One Ring (it would have been ridiculously easy to guard Mount Doom).  The shrewdness of stupid characters like Stan Laurel's or Forrest Gump leads to believable successes.  So if you say that your &quot;villain is stronger than the protagonist&quot; you maybe just lack multidimensionality in strength.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoiding Combat &lt;br&gt; Your protagonist could avoid any combat, go into hiding, support an underground movement, a rebellion, a resistance, leave the country.  This can lead to many people changing their positions, shifting powers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Losing Combat &lt;br&gt; Losing any kind of combat also is an option which should be considered.  Sometimes a loss can be turned into a victory later, given time situations can change, powers may shift, maybe the story is taken up by descendants, by colleagues, by friends, by allies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24111" LastEditorUserId="24111" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T09:08:54.627" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T09:08:54.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-21T15:51:24.167" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The antagonist doesn't have to be particularly stupid (or the protagonist particularly clever), the protagonist needs to just find a piece of information that the antagonist doesn't have, not because they are stupid, just because different people have access to different information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19089" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T15:51:24.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27234" CreationDate="2017-03-21T19:55:23.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An excellent boiled-down guide is: THIS YEAR YOU WRITE YOUR NOVEL by Walter Mosley.  As a first time novelist wannabe, I found it very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T19:55:23.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27234" CreationDate="2017-03-21T21:06:06.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We could all just say, &amp;quot;well, sit down and write.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn to Multiply Two Numbers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that feels a bit like telling someone to simply learn how to multiply two numbers by sitting down and staring at numbers until they've determined they've multiplied them right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student of this kind of multiplication could simply say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Yes, 5 times 3 is 53 and 3 times 5 is 35.  I'm sure I've got this.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the student is entirely wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writing Creatively Cannot Be Measured&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what the novices tell you.  You cannot measure creative writing because you cannot define good writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Redefine Writing Success&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, let's then re-define what you are attempting to do.&#xA;Having a target allows us to measure what we're doing.&#xA;Let's say that successful writing as we are defining it here is either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing well enough that a publisher will buy it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing well enough that you can convince 100 people to read the entire thing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bunch of people will probably say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Those terms of measurement are bogus!  Good writing may not be bought by a publisher and great writing may not convince 100 people to read it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, do you want to learn?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do, we need one of those two targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to assume that you've picked one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here Is the Training You Requested&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the steps you can take:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to write an entire book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make your writing an order of magnitude better&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Steps&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a book you like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read only the first page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determine the over all feel of the page (shocking, happy, discovery, action, etc) What sense do you get from reading the page?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Count the words in each sentence and write them above each sentence in the book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find every verb in that first page and underline each one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find every noun on the page and circle it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find each adjective and put a light squiggly line through it. Read the sentence again without the adjective and see if the sentence works.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find each adverb and see if you can create a stronger verb to be used in place of the adverb and verb you find. For example if you find &lt;em&gt;angrily picked u&lt;/em&gt;p replace it with &lt;em&gt;grabbed&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, and most importantly, take a shot at writing something that sounds quite similar to the original authors.  This allows you to see what great writing might sound like.  I call this shadow-writing.  All the great artists in the pasts (Da Vinci, Michelangelo, etc.) copied the masters before them to learn. You must do the same.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here's My Example&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my example using one of my all-time favorite novel beginnings, &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pHYpmO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Partner, by John Grisham&lt;/a&gt;. I've shortened up the example as to not take too long.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xk8hD.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xk8hD.png&quot; alt=&quot;learn to write steps&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sample Analysis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5aYaF.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5aYaF.png&quot; alt=&quot;sample analysis&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally you do your shadow-writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shadow-Writing Example&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He discovered it before anyone else in the sleepy town of Philsbruck,&#xA;Minnesota had even opened their eyes for the day.  He discovered it&#xA;buried under a wagon, behind Tom's house in a large field where he and&#xA;Tom had ridden motorcycles, when they were younger and still friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mine isn't exactly the same, but it is similar.  There is some repetition.  There is some mystery about what he found and who he is.  You see, you begin to learn by doing this kind of deep analysis.  You learn and then you transform this into your own writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are specific things you can do that will make your writing an order of magnitude better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finally The Test&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The test is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you convince 100 people to read your book now?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you convince a publisher to buy it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not then you find out why and you re-write with that target in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do this. But, you do have to be interested in working at writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:39:37.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27278" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27280" CreationDate="2017-03-21T21:58:11.333" Score="5" ViewCount="1937" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not an author, but I often wonder if I was to write a novel would it be best in third person or first person? I like being able to delve into the main character's thoughts in first person, but I also like the &quot;all knowing&quot; omniscient view that comes with third person. Is there a style of writing that could allow for both of these aspects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22594" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T01:13:53.950" Title="Choosing between first and third person" Tags="|creative-writing|style|technique|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27278" CreationDate="2017-03-22T00:22:51.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Third person is the best way to go, especially if you are a novice writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many writers make the mistake of using first person narrative thinking they need to explain what's going on instead of showing what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I write plays, they follow the third person even though every character is speaking in first person. But it is the character speaking, and not the writer telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are very skilled, you could get away with a first person narrative, whether injected into a story or do a whole story in first person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to be a skilled writer to pull that off. It is not that it is difficult to write. What is difficult is to get your readers to buy into it. That is where the skill resides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In plays, I have to use diaglog that advances my plot, and if I write in an action scene, it must also do the same. Most plays, it's not about the dialog as much as what is done on stage with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23667" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T00:22:51.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27278" CreationDate="2017-03-22T00:27:38.100" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Third person limited may be what you are looking for. This is where the narration is given in the third person, using third person pronouns, but is limited to the thoughts and experiences of one character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This style allows you to see inside the head of a character, but it isn't quite as limiting as first person. For example, you can write a scene from the point of view of another character, and if you do it right, it won't be too jarring for the reader (this is sometimes called third person alternating). This allows you to give away important information that the main character doesn't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narration&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Wikipedia page on narration&lt;/a&gt; explains various narrative perspectives and some examples of each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23436" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T00:27:38.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27278" CreationDate="2017-03-22T03:05:23.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I strongly prefer third-person limited in much of my own writing, but there are few cases where first-person stands out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when your viewpoint character has a distinctive voice (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huckleberry Finn&lt;/a&gt;);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when you want to have an unreliable narrator (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Holden Caulfield&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, of course, exceptions that define the rules.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Tale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Thirteenth Tale&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, includes a deceptive narrator telling her history to the viewpoint character.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've read, you will find a lot of omniscient-view third person in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;older books&lt;/a&gt;, but it seems to have faded in popularity.  The only times I've really noticed it myself, though, it had distracted me from the story, so examples of well-written omniscient perspective could have slipped by me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your market might also influence the choice of viewpoint.  It appears [citation needed] that teen/YA SF stories these days favor first person, while adult SF favors third-person limited.  I can't speak for other genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19841" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T03:05:23.967" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23519" CreationDate="2017-03-22T04:31:07.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the Web continues to develop, I see a trend that can't be denied. Shorter and simpler is far better than lengthy and content focused. Also, comedy seems to be a hit. If you can make it short and make it funny, it becomes memorable and &quot;watch-worthy,&quot; if that's a word. If you're blogging about insurance and you drone on and on about shop talk insurance jargon, you just lost at least 70% of those that even gave your blog a fighting chance. If, however, you make it concise, funny and endearing (focusing on common issues your target audience encounters and making light of them), all the while offering a solution, you have the makings of a successful blog/vlog.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24131" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T04:31:07.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-22T05:38:41.433" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In what ways is the antagonist &quot;extremely strong&quot;? If this &quot;final battle&quot; is one that it is so &quot;clear that the protagonist cannot possibly&quot; win, why is the protagonist so ignorant or foolish to commit to that kind of &quot;final battle&quot; anyway? Why does your plot seem (as far as you've described it to us as potential problem-solvers) to be all about one very predictable and one-dimensional contest of strength? Are you or your protagonist imprisoned by predictable plot conventions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm going to read a story with the outline you suggested, I'm going to be hoping that something interesting and consistent is going to happen. If any form of &lt;em&gt;deus ex machina&lt;/em&gt; intervenes to save a foolish hero who has no reason to expect not to be squashed in a direct attack, doing nothing with any reasonably expected chance of success, then I'm probably going to feel like I wasted my time. I'd want a hero and his allies to be dealing with the situation in intelligent logical ways and come up with something that could work and is clever and not obvious. Or if he's forced to fight a hopeless fight, I want to be really clear that he has no better alternative in logical and consistent ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also hope that a story would involve conflicts and situations whose outcomes are not all that certain, and where what people do to improve their odds and react to circumstances is as interesting as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully the situation is also not really all just about two characters getting around to having a fight, whose fight overshadows everyone and everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are infinite ways a fight or battle can seem hopeless but work out unexpectedly. You could read classic stories to find examples. You could start at the beginning, with &lt;em&gt;The Illiad&lt;/em&gt;, for example, and see what happens with Achilles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also consider that there are many ways for situations to change throroughly, which may not even involve fighting, and may not even directly involve your two main characters. Any number of events or combination of events could change the conditions of the fight or whether it even happens at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14802" LastEditorUserId="14802" LastEditDate="2017-03-26T20:26:51.880" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T20:26:51.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-22T05:54:15.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your hero can't possibly win, then don't have him win.  Have him survive, but just barely!  Then apply all of that effort which you were willing to invest in a total rewrite, into writing a sequel.  In this second volume, you can strengthen the hero and weaken the villain or even change the nature of their conflict into something else (a.k.a. introducing a bigger villain to unit the former enemies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't force your book into a fairy tale ending, just because it has gotten to the length where most stories end.  Instead, take your characters through some unexpected plot twists; find an alternative victory for your hero and leave your villain's final fall for some later tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've spent your entire novel creating and fleshing out two wonderful characters.  Seems a shame to not keep them both around for your next book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T05:54:15.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-22T08:21:59.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It much depends on the story that you are trying to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quest for something (item, allies, knowledge, etc.) that levels the playing field and gives the hero a chance against an (initially) superior enemy is actually at the core of many stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overcoming a great, even impossible, obstacle by sheer willpower, resilience or stubborness is another angle you can take, if that fits the story you want to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story revolves around the antagonist being superior and staying that way until the very end, there is always the &lt;em&gt;War of the Worlds&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Mars Attacks&lt;/em&gt; solution of a surprise weakness discovered by sheer luck, or any other variation of the Deus Ex Machina. I personally find this doesn't give the story closure, however, unless it was carefully set up and foreshadowed from the start. Watch the movie &lt;em&gt;Demon&lt;/em&gt; for a fantastic example of how to do this kind of solution right, with proper foreshadowing that makes the reader/watcher reframe the entire story once the end is revealed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24134" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T08:21:59.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18834" CreationDate="2017-03-22T08:35:16.530" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have two options to deal with the situation, which &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be on the mind of readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is to blatantly ignore it. This is the post-feministic way: Treat the boy and the girl as human beings, romance between them simply never happens, describe their friendship and - through the telling of the story - create the frame that non-sexual friendship between girls and boys is completely normal. By not talking about it at all, you make it something that doesn't need to be especially addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other is to explicitly resolve it. Make the protagonists struggle with romantic feelings towards each other, then resolve them into friendship. Or make it &lt;em&gt;explicitly&lt;/em&gt; clear that they are not romantically or sexually attracted to each other. Or, if your audience is adults, let them have a romantic or sexual encounter that doesn't work out, but they stay friends. This is, in my experience, one of the most common cases of &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; friendship between men and women where none of them has any hidden feelings - when the &quot;let's fuck&quot; part is out of the way, both decided it was pleasurable but beyond the initial desire, nothing, let's stay friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I think will not work is something halfway. You need to blend the topic out completely, or confront it. If you try to mention it in passing, you enter this &quot;Bob and Alice are friends, though Bob is still hoping for his opportunity&quot; vibe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24134" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T08:35:16.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27212" CreationDate="2017-03-22T08:36:41.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Characters with memorable names almost always endure in the imaginations of people long after the end of the novel. Voldemort is a great name. It rolls off the tongue, so easily and is still clever as it has death in it! However, if the writing didn't support the character name, it would appear awkward and uninterestng... Personally, I think digit is a good name. Its &quot;cute&quot;, in the way that it conjures up a character who is sassy, clever..and it rolls off the tongue. I think Charles Dickins had amazing memorable names. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24135" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T08:36:41.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26482" CreationDate="2017-03-22T12:35:50.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your flora/fauna should have a &lt;strong&gt;meaning&lt;/strong&gt; for your story, and that is how you can introduce it. If this plant can save the hero from the poison he took, there is a good opportunity to describe the plant in detail, maybe as a monolog while the potion-brewer is brewing the potion. If that animal threatens the hero in the nightly forest, every feature of it could be important for survival, so you have a reason to describe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will naturally lead to the flora and fauna to be introduced gently, piece by piece, which may or may not be what you want for the story, but one advantage is that it doesn't overwhelm the reader and prevents the &quot;biology book&quot; effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two masters (IMHO) of this are J.R.R. Tolkien and Roger Zelazny. Both found ways to introduce their world (Middle Earth and Amber) gently and with context for every piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24134" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T12:35:50.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4997" CreationDate="2017-03-22T13:26:05.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inspired by David Aldridge's answer, I think the value that a publisher can give you is to &lt;strong&gt;set the high standard for your book&lt;/strong&gt;. That's why they are a publisher. It's not about doing trivial tasks that everyone can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11428" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T13:26:05.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27163" CreationDate="2017-03-22T14:24:34.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should follow normal paragraph rules, which are, essentially, that a paragraph contains a complete thought. Of course, this is a fuzzy definition. What makes a thought complete? A sentence, a chapter, or an entire book are all in different senses the expressions of a complete thought. Paragraph is a somewhat fuzzy intermediate division between sentence and chapter, and the trend over the last century has been towards much shorter paragraphs. In short, you have a fair amount of leeway in deciding what constitutes a complete thought and therefore a paragraph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A complete thought, in fiction, can easily include the speech of more than one character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dan wanted to go to the ice cream parlour but Mary said, &quot;I'm too&#xA;  busy,&quot; and Tom said &quot;I just ate,&quot; and Jenny said, &quot;I feel sick,&quot; so we&#xA;  went to the burger joint instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speech and action of one character can together form a complete thought:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mandrake reached into his hat, cried &quot;Alaczam!&quot; in a loud voice, and&#xA;  pulled out a large white rhinoceros.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternately, the speech and action of a single character can form two different complete thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sir Roland came up to the castle gate, dismounted, and walked across&#xA;  the drawbridge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Where is my daughter,&quot; he demanded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the existence of dialogue is orthogonal to the question of where to break paragraphs. Simply follow normal paragraphing practice and break on a complete thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T14:24:34.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27292" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27296" CreationDate="2017-03-22T14:35:07.243" Score="0" ViewCount="432" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was considering naming my book &quot;Cherry on Top.&quot; However, because this may be hard to search for on Google, I was going to add a subtitle. Perhaps make the full title/subtitle &quot;Cherry on Top: Not so Sweet.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is if this is too long or off-putting for a fiction novel. As well, is there a sort of rule to follow for this sort of thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24047" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T17:06:27.167" Title="Too Long for Title/Subtitle?" Tags="|titles|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4997" CreationDate="2017-03-22T14:45:15.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Publisher do two things for you, other than those you have listed, and they are things that you absolutely cannot do for yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They provide provenance and branding. Once published by an established publisher, your book enjoys the provenance that comes with that publisher's name. More people will buy, more publications will review, more foreign publishers will consider, more libraries will purchase, more book clubs will read, more movie studios will consider, a book with the imprimatur of an established publisher than one without it. You may have your own brand, of course, but then if you publish with an established publisher the power of their brand is joined to the power of their brand, so you are still better off than with your brand alone. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They provide access to channels. They have a channel to bookstores, a channel to review editors, a channel to libraries, a channel to book clubs, a channel to the foreign market, a channel to the studios. They can get your book to places you cannot, and can do it much more economically. Yes, Amazon is a major channel, but actually not the most effective one by itself, because it is terribly non-selective and does no promotion. But Amazon is only one of the many channels that a publisher can get you into, and your performance in those other channels can boost your performance on Amazon. Remember that while many books are purchased on Amazon, reader first discover those books on other platforms, and publishers have channels to those platforms that you do not. Again, even if you have better access to some of the newer channels than they do, that simply adds to what they can do for you. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T14:45:15.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27292" CreationDate="2017-03-22T15:20:56.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kind of a vague title. Is it a book on Baking? Children eating cupcakes? Porn?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With such a short title, and a vague one at that, a person looking at books scans the titles, and to tell you the truth, I wouldn't even take it off the shelf. I would probably have more than the three I mentioned running in my head, and none of which I would like to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title, whether it is a play, book, or newspaper article, is what draws your reader to want to pick up the book and read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing where this book will be shelved or what categories on Amazon or KOBO, you need to give us more in your question in order to help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book is a spy thriller, the title is not appropriate the way it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many established writers, with command of the English language, can pick two words that will force you to pick up the book. &amp;quot;The Bourne Identity&amp;quot; is one such title. Notice the spelling of Bourne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book for &amp;quot;Red October&amp;quot; is not as dramatic as &amp;quot;The Hunt for Red October.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Tin Cup&amp;quot; is an intriguing title for a golfing story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are others that invoke at least picking it up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;Remember the Titans&amp;quot;&#xA;&amp;quot;Tombstone&amp;quot;&#xA;&amp;quot;ET&amp;quot;&#xA;&amp;quot;Independence Day&amp;quot;&#xA;&amp;quot;Dances Wtith Wolves&amp;quot;&#xA;&amp;quot;Dead Poet's Society&amp;quot;&#xA;&amp;quot;Field of Dreams&amp;quot;&#xA;&amp;quot;The Green Mile&amp;quot;&#xA;&amp;quot;Meet Joe Black&amp;quot;&#xA;&amp;quot;Saving Private Ryan&amp;quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can go on, but unless your one or two-word title has instant recognition, like &amp;quot;ET&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Tombstone&amp;quot; or even &amp;quot;JFK&amp;quot;, you are better off with three or four word titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I can tell you from writing plays, is that the shorter, more concise, the better. It can be put in larger type, if the right words are used, people will buy the book, or tickets just on the title alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a play I have been working on for five years, and right now its title has changed to now a &amp;quot;Hazy Shade of Blue,&amp;quot; which was coined long before the series of the same name. My play is about the conflict between the old guard and new way of policing when a 35-year veteran just before he retires must train a rookie police officer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the words in your book that tell the story, without a proper, rememberable, and catchy title, it will never leave the shelves, and for me, my play may never get picked up and read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Title sells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDITED: Here are some links I just did with a Google Search that will also verify what I said and provide you with more information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scottberkun.com/2012/the-truth-about-picking-book-titles/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The truth about choosing book titles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk/authors-lounge-how-to-name-nonfiction-book.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How To Name Your Nonfiction Book (Xlibris)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bookinabox.com/how-to-title-a-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Picking The Perfect Book Title&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/how-to-choose-your-novels-title-let-me-count-5-ways&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WRITER's DIGEST: How To Choose Your Novel's Title&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These should help. There are many more links if you search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23667" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T15:38:47.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27295" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-22T15:23:21.077" Score="7" ViewCount="964" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this sounds like an oxymoron, but these &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; exist. I have some examples here, and some of them include movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel Good Tragedies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Empire Strikes Back&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Prestige&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Order of the Phoenix.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dead Pool 2 Trailer - &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLeGWcVeIZ4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLeGWcVeIZ4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel Bad Tragedies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Romeo &amp;amp; Juliet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The First Law&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Departed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Titanic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly tragedies can sell regardless of what type they are. Your heroes do not have to win. But, I'm interested in the ones where you're excited and leave on an up note inspite of the tragedy. I've not heard much about the craft of writing a successful feel-good tragedy and moreover what elements allow you to have a downer destination while leading the audience to a happy emotional state. Note, both types of stories can be successful and revered by audiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Definitions&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Feel Good Tragedy&lt;/em&gt; - A story in which your protagonist(s) lose, but which does not lead to a negative response or emotional state in your story's audience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Feel Bad Tragedy&lt;/em&gt; - A story in which your protagonist(s) lose, and this is upsetting for your story's audience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; What are the craft level things someone should be aware of when trying to write a feel good tragedy? Is there a formula? Is there something at work here in all feel good tragedies that can be replicated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T14:07:30.223" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T14:15:19.977" Title="Spoilers; What Makes A Feel Good Tragedy?" Tags="|style|technique|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27292" CreationDate="2017-03-22T15:31:20.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Is this too long?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Although typically we've seen a trend towards 3 word titles (or 3 words to differentiate you from your series).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[series identifier] [Clarifier]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Harry Potter and the [1-4 words]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Girl Who [1-4 words]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, most titles that aren't a part of the series, tend to be 1-4 words long. There are exceptions to the rule, always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly you're looking for something poetic and punchy and the fewer words you can use while evoking the emotion of your story the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Is this off putting?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, it's not off putting. I'd put it in the neutral category. Which is a problem in and of itself; but it's not offensive. It's a problem because as described in other answers here it's not a good enough hook that makes me want to pick it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Should you care?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only if you're the publisher. If you're not self-publishing your publisher will likely rename it. That said, you'll still need to use the title of your book in query letters. If you haven't finished your book do so, and then ask alpha readers to write down any short phrases you used that they loved that might make good titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a problem for the revision and editing phase. &quot;Cherry on Top&quot; is a fine working title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T15:31:20.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-22T15:31:28.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A is strong, B is weak, they fight and B wins because he's the good guy is indeed a boring story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is probably more to the story, so tell it. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075148/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rocky&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is an entire movie about nothing other than how the hero gets to the point of having a chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use foreshadowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exaggerated example: If the big bad evil guy gets a stroke while fighting the hero, and dies, use the previous chapters to mention his blood pressure issues, and a history of previous strokes in his family.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the big bad evil guy can also make a mistake that isn't stupid, just a result of the circumstances, as happens in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114287/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rob Roy.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24143" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T15:31:28.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27292" CreationDate="2017-03-22T15:35:31.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling at the moment to think of a novel which &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have a subtitle (beyond &quot;A Novel&quot; to differentiate it from a non-fiction work). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/books/review/100-notable-books-of-2016.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NYT Best Books of 2016.&lt;/a&gt; Not one novel has a subtitle. Easily 85% of the non-fiction titles do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does your book &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; a clarifying subtitle? Might it work better to just find a title which is more distinguishable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ETA&lt;/strong&gt; @RobtA correctly notes in the comments that &lt;em&gt;2001: A Space Odyssey&lt;/em&gt; and its sequels do have subtitles, possibly because just the year is insufficient to be memorable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-03-22T17:06:27.167" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T17:06:27.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27295" CreationDate="2017-03-22T15:50:49.627" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories are an attempt to endow life with meaning. Where ordinary life seems possessed of a terrible randomness, we look to stories to assure us that there is actually meaning and purpose in life. This may or may not be true, but the thought that it is true is of enormous comfort to us, even in the face of tragedy. This is one of the big reason we are so fond of stories. It is one of the big reason why, far from wanting stories that are unpredictable, we actually demand that they be predictable, and take pleasure and comfort from the predictable ending. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A tragedy that we feel we can understand, that fits a story arc, that seems to have moral purpose, affirms our sense of order in the world at precisely the time we need it. Thus a soldier dies in battle defending an orphanage is a tragedy, but it has moral meaning, it affirms our sense that heroism is a meaningful and worth attribute of human beings and we feel good about that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A tragedy that we don't feel we can understand, however, has a very different effect. An orphanage is destroyed by an earthquake the day before the children were going to be adopted into good homes. This affirms the randomness and meaningless of life. There is no heroism in it, no moral affirmation. There is nothing we can do but shake our fists at God. There is nothing to feel good about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T15:50:49.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27292" CreationDate="2017-03-22T16:31:08.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just from the title/subtitle, I would guess that &quot;Cherry on Top: Not So Sweet&quot; has something to do with teen porn. However, if it is a recipe book for organic fruit preserves, then you really need to re-title it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't say whether your book was print or digital. If your concern is merely finding it via search, I would not worry. The way one searches for books is not directly via a search engine such as Google, but by first going to a web site that sells books. Or, it could be a general merchandise site, which lets you narrow the search to books. Then, &quot;Cherry on Top&quot; will show your book, if someone knows the title. This is quite reliable. But if you search via Google, I imagine that the first few dozen search results will be about how to make a banana split, followed by a few dozen more about fruit preserves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can put additional information on the cover, or (better) on the rear cover. I don't know about you, but in a bookstore or library I always look at the rear cover, where the publisher makes the pitch for why I might be interested in that book. Online, many digital book sites allow you to inspect parts of the book, including the rear cover. And, each book will have a short blurb (maybe 50-100 words) describing its purpose or theme. That's where you can state the not-so-sweet part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T16:31:08.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27292" CreationDate="2017-03-22T16:33:39.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the title. I think that the colon gives the reader a pause when they read it, so it's not so fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to know is what is the book about? If we don't know what it's about we don't really know if the title fits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19246" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T16:33:39.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12932" CreationDate="2017-03-22T16:42:14.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two approaches. What SF already pointed out is the most easy, the unstructured one. In any case, for many reasons, you should give your story to someone to read and give you quality feedback. I've also had good experience reading it (aloud) to someone and immediately writing down whatever they say or ask. But that requires special people and circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structured approach works if you start your work like that. Do you have an inventory of all your locations, characters and storylines? If so, you can check them for completeness. If you maintain these meta-data well, they will provide not just the outline, but a good review of them also will tell you any holes. For this, make a short checklist of what matters to you. Do you need closure for characters (as was mentioned already), do all your characters and locations have to be linked to each other? Do you want a physical appearance description for every character (sometimes you want to leave it up to the imagination), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically: To know if something is missing, you first need to know what should be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24134" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T16:42:14.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2017-03-22T17:21:42.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this is years late, but I disagree that books must have conflict and an antagonist to be interesting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One type of book that seems relevant to this question is one that paints a picture of a time and place; the people living in a location and their relationships with each other.  These relationships don't have to result in major conflict to be interesting, and I think the mood created by these books is special.  I'd also argue that it two minor characters don't get along, that doesn't make one of them the antagonist of the whole book.  I'm thinking of books like The Country of Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett and The Summer Book by Tove Jansson.  In The Country of Pointed Firs, the protagonist is an author who takes up lodging in a country town with the goal of getting some work done.  No one interferes with this goal, and the book itself is a series of vignettes about the people of the town and how they live.  Similarly, The Summer Book is a series of stories about the summer vacation of a small girl and her grandmother.  I might classify Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan in this group as well.  It certainly evokes the attitude of a time and a place, but I'm not sure I could tell you who or what the antagonist of this book is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another type of book that might fit the idea of exploring what Judeo-Christian Heaven would look like is the travelogue.  Describing the physical journey of the protagonist can be interesting and even full of adventure without being antagonistic.  Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome has plenty of comic mishaps, but I don't think I'd be able to point to an antagonist.  Even something like The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macauley might fit this.  There are some conflicts during the travels, but most of the character growth is the narrator introspecting on events in their recent past.  One might count this as self-antagonistic, but I also think you could argue this isn't so much conflict as just taking the time necessary to sort through some mental baggage.  I guess having the character reflect on past antagonism and grow from that is a bit of a cheat, but one that might work for a book set in heaven.  (Admittedly it has been a while since I read the Towers of Trebizond, so I might be misremembering it a bit.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I think it is possible for a book to create a relationship between two characters that isn't necessarily one of conflict, but which can be interesting and lead to character growth.  Tove Jansson has another book that fits this category: Fair Play.  This is about two women who have been friends for years, and how they both live, relate to one another, and get on with their creative endeavors.  Their relationship isn't all flowers and sunshine, and they do have disagreements, but they don't interfere with each other's main goals, so I don't know that I'd feel comfortable calling them antagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24148" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T17:21:42.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2017-03-22T18:28:08.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a certain class of works in which the theme is discovery or enlightenment and the antagonistic force is simply ignorance. The effort to overcome ignorance may be a struggle, and enlightenment a victory, without any external attempt by anyone to hinder or obscure discovery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In others, the antagonist is doubt and the denouement is certainty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In others, the antagonist is discontent and the denouement is peace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The appeal of such stories depends very much on the reader's sympathy with or attachment to the ideas which are discovered, in which certainly is gained, or in which peace is found. Stories of conversion to our own views (which, naturally, affirm our attachment to those views) are obviously more appealing than stories of conversion away from our views to their rivals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T18:28:08.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27306" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-22T20:27:57.657" Score="7" ViewCount="2370" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've created a manipulative sort of protagonist, one who enjoys mind games, blackmail, systematically destroying people who've wronged her, that sort of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally find her very interesting, but I'm not sure how I should write her such that an audience would connect with her - how to make a character who acts in this manner be sympathetic rather than abhorrent to the reader, and not in a fake &quot;pet the dog&quot; kind of manner either. How could I go about doing that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24151" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T12:08:58.937" Title="How to write a manipulative protagonist that the audience can connect with" Tags="|fiction|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27306" CreationDate="2017-03-22T21:00:33.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you'll admit that some part of this character should be abhorrent, but that the interesting space would be a reader feeling that but still identifying with the character. &quot;Sympathetic&quot; might not be what you actually want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I'd go about it would be to have the character be in surroundings or situations that are familiar to my target audience. If my character was dealing with the issues that occur in high school and was that sort of person and my audience was people in high school, then a certain amount of sympathy will come through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing you could try to do is basically have this character do the things we would do, but would never be brave enough to do, skilled enough to accomplish, or which the reader would avoid to preserve their image. Basically, you want to get your character into the space a comedian inhabits. Dealing with the almost entirely familiar, but playing with the taboos that people shy away from and are uncomfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other would be a solid internal justification that a reader can understand for this character and why they're doing this. Thievery is awful when it happens to us, but we've all played with the idea of &quot;I'm stealing bread so my family doesn't starve&quot;. This is largely about getting the perspective. If you're character does awful things for good reasons, then people accept them. To be honest, this is going to be harder to pull off with how you've described your character so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On some level these characteristics are unacceptable. Research avenues that might be productive are: comedians, persuasive-yet-awful-leaders, and anti-heros.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24040" LastEditorUserId="24040" LastEditDate="2017-03-22T23:30:27.323" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T23:30:27.323" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27306" CreationDate="2017-03-22T21:18:31.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want people to sympathize or identify with a character who does awful things, then the people she's doing those things to have to be worse than her. They have to deserve the manipulation and destruction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of an anti-hero taking down villains. Dr. House deflating officious bureaucratic Vogler or obsessed detective Tritter, the Leverage team ruining profiteering scammers and corrupt politicians, Sherlock insulting idiotic pathologist Anderson, Spike killing demons, that sort of thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We woud find her abhorrent if she's manipulating innocent people for her own gain. We'll cheer if she's manipulating a racist to expose his disgusting beliefs in public so he gets shamed and fired. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T21:18:31.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27311" CreationDate="2017-03-22T21:37:24.483" Score="8" ViewCount="13407" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something I've always wondered. You've probably noticed that in some newspapers or books, the first few words of a chapter/story are bolded or capitalized, similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;initials&lt;/a&gt;. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zSDzY.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zSDzY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;This image isn't from a real book, it's from an &lt;a href=&quot;https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/47760/the-puzzling-times&quot;&gt;SE puzzle parodying a newspaper&lt;/a&gt;. It should convey my point though.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard that this is a typesetting convention and it is not the writers who capitalize these words. However, what is the point? Is it recommended in publishing? Does it actually help readability, or is there some historical reason?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24153" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T03:38:15.147" Title="Why do typesetters capitalize the first few words of a new chapter?" Tags="|style|publishing|structure|historical|conventions|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27310" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-22T22:00:22.763" Score="8" ViewCount="434" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/em&gt; This is not a duplicate of &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/26092/are-subplots-necessary-for-a-successful-story&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;. That question deals with subplots being necessary to a story's success, and also loosely how to create them. This question is aimed at knowing when to include subplots, and how many I need. If any. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me open by saying that I design my novels extensively before ever writing the first draft. I create my characters and design my plot (amongst other important things), and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; write. However, I've recently discovered that I haven't been including subplots in my stories. This leads me to the question below: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I know when I need subplots? How do I know which subplots I need to create?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at answers about subplots on this site and others, the general idea of a subplot seems to be that it can show other sides of your characters, making them more real to the reader. It can advance or effect the plot, sending it in different directions. I've even heard one suggestion that it can reinforce the theme on a more personal level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, you could create a large number of subplots. You could have one for every main, secondary, and tertiary character, a handful to mix up the main plot, and one or two to support the theme. But if you do that, you're going to have way too many subplots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your novel has a main plot, a main road it's trying to take. You don't want &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; many sideroads, because then the main road becomes obsolete. It's no longer the main road. It's just another side-road. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to repeat the question, knowing that, how do I decide what to create subplots about? Is there some line I can draw somewhere? Is it at the number of subplots? Perhaps the types of things the plots are about? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you know when to include subplots, and how many?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T20:53:04.887" Title="How do I know when to include subplots?" Tags="|fiction|plot|subplot|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27309" CreationDate="2017-03-22T22:03:53.200" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's called a &lt;em&gt;lead-in.&lt;/em&gt; The general idea is to use special formatting (e.g. all caps, small caps, italics) to gently guide the reader to recognize where the text begins (or resumes after a break).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If sections are marked with headers, guidance like that isn't strictly necessary. In those cases, the use of lead-ins is a style choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, yes, that kind of formatting is the publisher's job, not the writer's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T22:03:53.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6002" CreationDate="2017-03-22T23:26:08.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel that species names should not distract from the piece too much. To that end, they should be fairly simple, and ideally easily pronounced. They should also be 'realistic', although exactly what that means will vary to each reader. I like Tlkachtian hawk, particularly if you also introduce Tlkachtia, although as a native English speaker I'll admit that 'Tlkachtia' itself gives me a little difficulty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, given your point that it's nothing like a real-world hawk you might want to choose a better analog, but not necessarily. If all things you refer to as 'hawks' in your world are similar to your Tlkachtian hawk and not real hawks, that is fine. Even then there is room to vary - you can call velociraptors and their kin 'raptors' just as well as you can call all accipitriformes raptors and no one will bat an eye. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're dealing with common names (which I would - my friends complain when I try to explain the full taxonomy of my fantasy species), look at real-life species names. They are often very direct. A grey squirrel is grey. A sapsucker eats sap. There are four species called sapsucker, and they're the red-naped sapsucker (because it has a red nape), the red-breasted sapsucker (red breast), the yellow-bellied sapsucker (yellow belly), and Williamson's sapsucker (first identified during an expedition lead by a fellow named Williamson). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than the general name of the animal, (dog, rat, duck, etc), which have long been in the language, common names tend to pretty much just be descriptions of what the animal looks like or what it does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that works best in your stories that are &quot;like our world but slightly not&quot;. For a wholly fantastic world, you might be tempted to say &quot;Ah but they don't have hawks!&quot; This is possibly just a personal preference, but in a fantasy story I still expect animals to be pretty much normal world animals along with some mythological beasts, and some magical-ish variations on normal animals. Inventing new species would make me feel like the work has a bit of a science fantasy vibe to it - though that's a perfectly valid genre in its own right, so I wouldn't necessarily balk at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21750" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T23:26:08.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27306" CreationDate="2017-03-23T00:01:18.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good model for this is Wolf Of Wall St. That film (and the memoir it is based on) depicts a person who is despicable and unethical in their behavior, but captures the essence of the American dream. His philosophy is &quot;Get Mine.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does he connect with the audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) He justifies his behavior without coming across as pretentious or condescending. “We sold garbage to garbage men…their money was better off in my pocket, I knew how to spend it better.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) He enjoys life in ways the audience has always wanted to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) He makes the people closest to him happier, stronger, and more powerful. This means he is a better friend to have. Shut up and be his friend. You'll be better off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) He is able to connect with his family. He has lurid conversations with his own father most of us would be afraid to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) He is honest about how despicable he is, and doesn't pretend to be a &quot;good person.&quot; People with pretenses to morality are beneath him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is raw, unfiltered, unapologetic id.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this doesn't appeal to you, I understand, it didn't appeal to me. But audiences appear to eat it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22605" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T00:01:18.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27314" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27325" CreationDate="2017-03-23T00:03:17.957" Score="6" ViewCount="5058" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a premise, which I think is funny/clever. I want to write this as a comedy sketch, to be acted out or shot on video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have three &quot;scenes&quot; which are basically three different re-capitulations of the premise. I'm at the point where I need to end it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, in general, how do I end a sketch? I'm not asking how to end my particular sketch. I'm asking how I end comedy sketches in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I ask this is because I'm aware of theories of writing, both prose and screenplay, that talk about how to end your story. The protagonist has some sort of problem, which they grapple with, and it culminates in some sort of final confrontation with the antagonist, resulting in a &quot;new normal&quot; for the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't know of any theories or advice on how to end a comedy sketch. I have the premise, but I feel the end needs some sort of &quot;punchline&quot;, which can't be just another re-statement of the premise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking something along the lines of thesis-&gt;antithesis-&gt;synthesis, but that's as far as I've got. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my actual premise is that a couple of &quot;cool&quot;, &quot;hip&quot; people are sitting outside a cafe, drinking coffee, wearing fashionable clothes, discussing philosophy and cinema, and smoking cigarettes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An anti-smoking activist comes up to them, and convinces them to give up smoking for vaping nicotine. But additionally, they have to &quot;trade in&quot; their clothes, hobbies, and discussion topics for less &quot;cool&quot; versions, such as fedoras, LARPing, fantasy-genre lore and backstory, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the premise is that you can't just give up tobacco in exchange for vaping; it's a package deal that includes a  whole lifestyle change -- clothing, interests, etc. You have to give up &quot;who you are&quot; if you don't want to die early from cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the scenes I can re-capitulate the premise several times-- trying on Fedoras in the store, arguing with someone about superhero canon, dressing as a wizard and casting a spell on another LARPer. Okay, maybe it's funny, maybe it isn't. Anyway, how do I end it? What happens next, which indicates that the &quot;story&quot; is over, and is not just a re-statement of the premise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said above, I'm not so interested in an ending to this particular sketch as I am about advice on how to end sketches in general. I have many other premises in mind without endings, so I need to figure out a way to wrap them up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've looked more closely at some sketch comedy, and tried to suss out patterns, to limited success. For instance, Whitest Kids You Know sketches seem to work on a principle of &quot;accelerate/intensify the premise to screaming&quot;. Monty Python sketches seem to end in interruptions that are callbacks to earlier premises. Portlandia sketches seem to end in a jump cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking at Kids in the Hall's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5poEu9uBwyM&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Selling Sound&lt;/a&gt; sketch, and to me, this seems to &quot;end&quot; without simply re-stating the premise. The premise is that a stereo salesman is having mixed success with corny sales techniques. However, the ending is very surprising, unpredictable, and, funny. It turns out that the salesperson is successful, for rather unexpected reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me in an analysis of what I consider a successful sketch, it flips the premise upside-down. He's a bad salesperson, but actually successful in the end. Jokes are sometimes said to function on a surprise, so I suppose in this sense, the premise is like a set-up, and the end is the &quot;surprise&quot; punchline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any more resources on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FWIW my personal interests include all of the subjects presented as &quot;cool&quot; and &quot;dorky&quot; in the premise of this sketch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24155" LastEditorUserId="24155" LastEditDate="2017-03-23T13:11:04.063" LastActivityDate="2020-01-05T23:01:35.387" Title="How do I end a comedy sketch?" Tags="|screenwriting|ending|comedy|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27309" CreationDate="2017-03-23T00:43:47.260" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As D-H E noted, that is the publisher's job, not the writer's. Of course, if you are a self-publisher, then it is your job!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is strictly a matter of style. Nothing else. In some cases, where text is packed with non-texts (such as magazine ads) it is a visual cue to where an article begins. In other contexts, such as a printed novel, it is merely a way to focus the reader's attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of fiction (novels), it works best if the author's writing lends itself to this opening style. Some authors have a catchy lead-in for each chapter. Others don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: In the unlikely event that you use LaTeX, the magazin package does this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T00:43:47.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27278" CreationDate="2017-03-23T01:13:53.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use third person. As explained in another answer, third person limited is probably what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way: You are like a journalist who follows a particular character around. You see what (s)he sees. You know what he knows, because you can ask a question (off-text) and be told the answer. You know what he is thinking, because later he will tell you about it. But you don't know what anyone else is thinking because your main character does not know that. However, if your main character can decide that someone else is truthful or lying based on other things (such as a tone of voice, or facial expression), you can report that. You can also report what your main character would easily be able to discover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if your main character is George, you can write, &quot;Sally was born in Illinois,&quot; because George could learn that, and tell you. But you could not write, &quot;Unknown to George, Sally...&quot; because George would not know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it, the sole advantage to first person is that you can exaggerate or lie. You are speaking, not narrating. Thus: &quot;I walked into the bar, which stank like my old gym shoes. The barmaid looked like an old girfriend. The liquor tasted like cheap generic booze diluted with horse piss. Etc.&quot; None of that is true. A Third-person narrator would not write it. But anyone can say it, and thus a first-person narrator can write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proof: Read the novels by Raymond Chandler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T01:13:53.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27306" CreationDate="2017-03-23T01:50:02.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We want to despise those who do manipulative things, but we also want to be them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is to write someone manipulative that the audience can connect with then you are asking to write a &lt;strong&gt;person&lt;/strong&gt;, not a character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Fictional Person&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a character follows a set archetype or &quot;template&quot; of sorts a person has believable unknowns. That is, the audience wonders about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fictional person could reasonably have an uncle that passed, siblings they hate, or hobbies they do not get enough free time for... Even if none of that is shown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cersei Lannister from R.R. Martin's popular series is painted as wantonly callous, sadistic, and even crazed at later points in the TV adaption - fans of the books get peeved at this because she reveals much more human aspects of herself that the show barely even glances at (her true feelings about Robert are essentially a footnote in the show.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Cersei of the TV adaption is a character. In the book, she is a fictional &lt;em&gt;person&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In brief: if you want a manipulative character whom the audience connects with, make certain it is reasonable to think &quot;I wonder why they did that or what happened in their past... In fact what about their [blank?]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of fiction writing is suspending the imagination. And interesting characters with unknown depths help with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6085" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T01:50:02.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27310" CreationDate="2017-03-23T02:24:37.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another way to think about this, is to repharase your question: When can you eliminate subplots?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the familiar &quot;Lord of the Rings&quot; trilogy. Was Tom Bombadil really necessary? Were the Ents really necessary? For that matter, was anything involving Saruman really necessary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I could not find it on the Internet, I recall that someone once attempted to reduce Wagner's four-opera Ring series into a single one-act opera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you decide what is not really necessary, then you can expand from there, providing subplots that are interesting rather than really necessary. The key word is &quot;interesting.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T02:24:37.157" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27319" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-18T16:32:35.693" Score="6" ViewCount="971" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story where at some point the main character is going to realize he is the main character of a story (like in Redshirts, but different). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if that character was of the hero type, there would be no problem as heroes per definition think they are unsinkable and will save the girl. While most of them would probably die due to stupidity, being the main character has the advantage they don't (that's per requierement, my main characters don't just die half way through the story). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This character however is rather boring and after realizing he is not only the main character but actually the main character (read: the main joke) of a comical fantasy story, he loses all motivation to pursue the authors (my) agenda / the goals set out for him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example think of the following situation (let's call the main character Joe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Joe picks up the gun, pauses for a second or two, tilts his head while considering what seems to be a vaguely insane idea, puts the gun to his head, looks up - because for some reason he believes I am somewhere above him watching, which in itself is a rather unrealistic concept for I am an author and not a god, but we had already established Joe is not the most clever person and maybe a theological discussion should be moved into the appendix - and with a challenging tone says &quot;You know what?! I'm done. Get me home now or the story ends right here! I'll count back from 3 and if I'm not home at 0, I'll kill your stupid main character. 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... I mean it!&quot; Click. Dud shot. Click. Dud shot. Click. Dud shot. &quot;Seriously?!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world doesn't have many specifics, the main character can't be 100% sure he actually is the main character, but apparently he evolved to just not care or he is certain enough. Now imagine beeing in that situation - you were thrown into a world where some allmighty entity threw you into a situation you completly dislike and has to prevent you from dying. You decide to challenge that entity instead of following it's plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how do I get that character back on track? Or rather, what can I build into my world to motivate someone to do as I say even though they know they have the sympathy points and I don't? As a limiting condition - I don't talk to any character, but I can do/create what I want as longs as it is funny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically I need to construct a set of boundaries around a character's basic needs and that character beeing a &quot;good person&quot; to get him to go beat the bad guy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To further narrow the question (and prevent it from beeing closed as to broad or off topic), I'm only interested in creating a set of boundaries around a &quot;normal person&quot; from a world like ours that does think what he perceives is real but knows there is any sort of restriction that keeps them from dying and just wants to go home. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;As suggested in the comments I'll try adding something to rate the answers - (the mental hospital one is hilarious especially because it allows drugs and hypnosis to be introduced but) I'd like it to be something usable in a medieval/fantasy setting, it should be funny and disruptive to the main character (think of a battle between character and author) and require a minimum of direct author actions (just teleporting the character where I want him to be is a no go) and at the same time be effective. The mental hospital answer for example solves the problem in a way I really like, it's just not a perfect fit to my world (sorry for not making that clear before) and a little (really just a little) radical, but that's the way I was thinking, something using in world resources and e.g. just bad luck in that case to impose my will. The simpler the solution the better. Simpler in this case just means that the reader could accept that just happened or was a very smooth way of solving this problem (like that someone was watching and put him in a mental hospital, that's exactly the sort of accidental influence I'm aiming at).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short example of another incident - the main character was shifted into another dimension by an anomaly while sitting on the toilet and there attacked by a skeleton. Because he had no way of winning that battle the toilet was dimension shifted too just a little later and crushed the skeleton - in my opinion that's a better fit than having a passing by giant stomp the skeleton into the ground. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I actually made it clearer not unclearer ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24066" OwnerDisplayName="DonQuiKong" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2020-09-22T11:23:46.713" LastActivityDate="2020-09-23T07:37:07.110" Title="How to get a character that knows he's the main character to follow the authors agenda?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27319" CreationDate="2017-03-18T17:02:08.453" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have another character witness the gun to the head moment and then shift the next scene to the admitting ward of the local loony bin.  This will give you plenty of opportunities for humorous scenes involving the other patients.  You could even throw in a megalomaniac, who can feed into his main character identity, by proxying  for you, the author.  Then after he vents his dissatisfaction with his role and receives encouragement from your proxy, he can learn that he has been arguing with a crazy person (as opposed to an author - which is a very fine distinction) and begin to doubt his conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doubt is going to be your best tool for getting him back onto the hero quest.  As long as he believes that he is at the center of a grand divine comedy, he will resist your plans for him.  But once he goes back to believing that the world he lives in is real, he is once again your puppet to command.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transition from the loony bin chapter with a scene congratulating him on such a swift recovery as he is released into his own custody.  Your story will have lost 27 days (which I believe is the minimum incarceration for an attempted suicide), but that is a minor loss compared to losing your main character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this all prepares the way for a second revelation of his characterhood in the final chapter, where you can finally speak directly to him from your authorial throne; congratulating him on a quest well completed and listening to his urgent petition to you for many, many sequels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" OwnerDisplayName="Henry Taylor" LastActivityDate="2017-03-18T17:52:46.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27309" CreationDate="2017-03-23T03:38:15.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This type of formatting is the precursor to modern day click bait from titles such as Buzzfeed. Through highlight using a line and sinker, it leads the reader in to read further. This is not very relevant in writing unless you are directly targeting an audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T03:38:15.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27319" CreationDate="2017-03-23T03:39:55.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The crucial observation is that this is a first-person narrated story where the author-god is a fallible, limited character. You now have a classical conflict between Joe and the author-god-narrator. So write this conflict. The narrator's inner conflict may be more important considering the Joe-as-figment-of-imagination inner and outer interpretation. Explore questions like, why does the narrator-author face so much difficulty in writing a character who would do as he ought? Is the &lt;em&gt;narrator&lt;/em&gt; feeling excessively powerless or reckoning with the laws of the universe and bounds of his own imagination?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8208" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T03:39:55.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27310" CreationDate="2017-03-23T04:46:30.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Subplots are forms of a story that are used to lead in important pieces of information for your overarching story. Think of subplots as the bricks that build your wall, (the entire arc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subplots are just generally the stories that lead to more information, a certain character's background, information about how to solve a puzzle, background on the worlds history. Think of subplots as stories that exist within the overall plot of your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T04:46:30.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27314" CreationDate="2017-03-23T12:32:42.870" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, humor comes from the unexpected. You anticipate that A will happen, but B happens instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone says &quot;I want to give up cigarettes and switch to vaping.&quot; You expect that the person will put down the cigarette and pick up an e-cigarette, or hookah, or whatever it is. You &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; expect that the person has to change an entire lifestyle. That's the twist, the unexpected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if that's not the punchline, and the sketch continues, &lt;strong&gt;what's the twist from your twist?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A Bit of Fry &amp;amp; Laurie&lt;/em&gt; sketches frequently end with the single joke (the twist) just going as far as it can go: the man whose address ends in a slap (finishes with Fry walloping Laurie with a bat; he actually hit poor Hugh too hard), the cricket commentators rhapsodizing about England to the point of verbal orgasm and then post-coital lassitude, the understanding barman whose food offerings sound like bawdy interruptions of a drunken customer's sentences. The twist on the twist is just that the two of them have gone to that level (the bat, the orgasm). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a different sketch (the name escapes me and I can't find a clip), Fry is a British soldier who's been captured by Laurie's Nazi interrogator, but instead of bravely resisting questioning, Fry falls in love with him at first sight (the twist), and spends the whole sketch rhapsodizing about his eyes and his arse. Laurie is bewildered, expecting to have to force the information out of the soldier, who only wants to talk about how he adores the kommandant. Fry finally gives up the date and location of the Allied invasion in exchange for a kiss... which Laurie then agrees to (the twist on the twist). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Mr. Burmie at the Vet,&quot; Fry plays a man who's brought a daschund (&quot;doxie&quot;) to the vet alongside Laurie's cat owner. Fry speaks in the most ridiculous baby talk for the whole bit, getting more silly and exaggerated (the twist), until the vet calls the dog, who then &quot;responds&quot; by saying &quot;I'd like to have this man put down, please.&quot; (the twist on the twist)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case, your joke can escalate (you have to change your habit, and then your clothes, and then your hobby, and then your name! and then your ADDRESS!!), and then the punchline could be that the bloke takes a moment to consider it and then says &quot;Nah, I'd rather die of lung cancer&quot; and goes back to cigarettes. Or someone else could come along and say &quot;Never mind vaping, you should try weed!&quot; and start parading a third set of clothes/hobby/address etc. and then a fourth person comes along, and so on until the original person starts shopping for the hobby he prefers so he can take up that appropriate vice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take your original reversal and do something else unexpected with it. That gives you your ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T12:32:42.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27310" CreationDate="2017-03-23T12:41:40.063" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could think of a subplot like a side dish to a meal. It provides contrasting or complementary flavours that enhance the overall dining experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many side dishes are too many? When they overwhelm or confuse the senses? How many are too few? When the main dish grows dull and monotonous without them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are matters of taste. You tell by tasting. Does the dish need something? Is it being overwhelmed? Use your tastebuds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of plot mechanics (someone had to go to Aix to pick up a widget while the main party goes to Ghent) the subplot can be disposed on in a sentence (&quot;We sent Tom and Fred to Aix to pick up a widget. They met up with us later at the inn in Ghent.&quot;) or it can be narrated in full over several chapters. Both will satisfy the mechanical requirements of the plot. Deciding whether to narrate it, therefore, comes down to whether it is necessary to balance the taste of the meal. Will their tale provide the reader with a delicious counterpoint to the main tale, or will it be a weary slog of redundant flavors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An experienced cook no doubt develops a good sense of when they are going to need to add a side dish as they are designing the meal. A less experienced cook will definitely need to cook and taste and try different things before they develop the sensibility to know in advance what will be needed to produce the perfect balance of tastes that will make a memorable meal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: it is a matter of taste, not plot mechanics, and you may actually have to sit down and write the thing in order to tell how much subplot it needs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T12:41:40.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27314" CreationDate="2017-03-23T12:53:38.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is well said that there are no rules in funny. A traditional story needs a specific story shape in order to work because the payoff is in the climax and denouement. But comedy, though it can conform to this structure, does not need to. The payoff is funny. It does not need to end logically. It just needs to end funny. Stop when you run out of jokes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the final joke of many skits is a kind of counterpoint. In the Fork Handles sketch, after the first shop assistant had been driven mad by the ambiguous requests of the customer, he calls for another assistant and the confusion starts over again. The counterpoint is the new victim, but the sketch ends because it has repeated the gag as many times as it is funny. It is a back door out of the sketch that you take when the gag stops being funny. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic formula seems to be no more than this: come up with gag, repeat while still funny, interrupt, and exit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-03-23T14:05:32.097" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T14:05:32.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27306" CreationDate="2017-03-23T13:01:56.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The core of this problem may be the misconception that the reader needs to identify with a character. That is oft repeated, but simply not true. A story creates an experience. One way to enter into that experience is to identify yourself with one of the characters in that experience. But it is not the only way, nor is it a necessary way. We are (some of us, at least) interested in people other than ourselves. In some cases we enjoy their company without wishing to be them. In some cases we rubberneck the disaster that is their lives the way we rubberneck an accident on the highway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, don't get bogged down by the idea that the reader has to identify with the character. It is enough, and often better, that they simply regard the character with fascination or even horror. Make them interesting and we will follow them like we follow the kind of celebrity trainwrecks we would never want to be like but, for some morbid reason, can never seem to quite avert our eyes from.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-03T12:08:58.937" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T12:08:58.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27306" CreationDate="2017-03-23T13:56:35.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to an excellent (in my opinion) answer by @LaurenIpsum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be a case when your protagonist has to manipulate/blackmail an innocent person, who had done nothing to wrong her, and yet still be forgiven by the reader–when it is done for a &lt;em&gt;greater good&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First thing which comes to mind: &quot;&lt;em&gt;If you will not step forward and testify against the thug who raped you–because you are ashamed to admit it publicly–I am going to go ahead and expose your secret anyway, so it is for you to decide if you are going to be known as the person who did the right thing, or as a coward, blah-blah...&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also show her reluctance to resort to such method, yet having to go ahead with it, because she has no other means to achieve that &lt;em&gt;greater good&lt;/em&gt; of putting the rapist behind bars so he could not hurt anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to make the reader understand the motivations of your protagonist and agree with the necessity of her actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T13:56:35.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27319" CreationDate="2017-03-23T16:20:24.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Wheel of Time, characters say to each other &lt;em&gt;&quot;you are ta'veren, and the pattern weaves around you.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Cynical readers have long translated that to &lt;em&gt;&quot;you are A Major Character, and the Plot weaves around you.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Many a coincidence (all of which of course are the arm of the writer) can be explained this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your &quot;hero&quot; needs a sidekick who is able to detect Major Characterness. You'll need a backstory and a word (probably with an apostrophe in it) for the state of being a Major Character, and one for the Plot as well, and you'll be all set. I'm not even kidding. You're lampshading the whole thing by having the hero notice, so give it a name and give the hero someone to discuss it with. That someone can also cheer the hero up and offer encouragement or reassurance, or at least attempt to talk the hero out of any crazy schemes to get out of being a Major Character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15601" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T16:20:24.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27295" CreationDate="2017-03-23T17:51:57.467" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is &quot;upsetting&quot; to the audience can be highly subjective depending on a multitude of factors; such as how connected the audience is to the main character, the culture of the audience, whether the Protagonist was intended to win in the end... ect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd argue that some of the examples you have listed are not really &quot;&lt;em&gt;Feel Good Tragedies&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and can only be classified as so, because they are part of a series, with expected follow-ups for the main characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you're looking for a formula, a common theme in most stories that I would classify as a &quot;Feel Good Tragedy&quot; is that even if the Protagonist doesn't necessarily win, there is &lt;strong&gt;Hope&lt;/strong&gt; that the Protagonist can win in the end.  The key here being that the end state of the story, the main characters may not be in a particularly good position, but there is hope that the future may be brighter for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the writing for post-Apocalyptic stories focuses on this idea, that there may be setbacks, deaths, or other tragic events, but there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon for either the Protagonist or other characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23097" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T17:51:57.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27332" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27334" CreationDate="2017-03-23T20:10:54.453" Score="14" ViewCount="931" Body="&lt;p&gt;When building a twist into the ending, should I leak enough information such that astute readers could predict the twist if they stopped and mulled it over or should I withhold key elements to guarantee it is a surprise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a follow-up: Does a reader feel smart or robbed if they can see the twist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14466" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T20:49:46.713" Title="Should a reader have enough information to deduce the twist?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27295" CreationDate="2017-03-23T20:10:55.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will try to answer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, I believe that a 'feel good tragedy' can start as part comedic in one part, or more serious. Push one of the ends to the extreme... Make it so even if the situation is bad, that you can still laugh, or look at it with a face other than crying...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 'feel bad tragedy' instead, I believe that should focus more on developing familiarity between you and the characters, before suddenly making the characters that you can now relate or sympathize with experience a loss. That loss can be from something we can see in our life ( so we can understand the feelings of the character even better ) or even from unexplainable events that drive the main character that we now know well, mad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extra :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I aint sure if I answered well enough for your standards,but I was simplistic, and that's what I wanted to be...&#xA;There are 2 kinds, the one that thinks that its all the detail that ruins it, and wants to relay it more simply, but still getting his point in.&#xA;Ahd the one that is focused, detailed and always has a plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24169" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T20:10:55.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27332" CreationDate="2017-03-23T20:23:59.603" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two versions of &quot;the reader can't figure out the ending.&quot; One is Sherlock Holmes, and the other is &lt;em&gt;Murder by Death.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Holmes stories, the reader doesn't necessarily see all the details which Holmes does at the time, but he does explain them all at some point by the end, so the trail of logic is clear. (At which point the reader might ejaculate &quot;Child's play, Holmes!&quot; along with the good doctor.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_by_Death&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Murder by Death,&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; which is a parody of detective stories, the murderer complains at the end about stories which introduce impossible details, unknown suspects, and twists which are essentially authorial butt-pulls because there's literally no way the reader could have figured it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Murder by Death&lt;/em&gt; version is definitely annoying. I would suggest you don't do that. The Holmes version may work if it's something which the reader could follow in hindsight or on re-reading. A logical chain which we don't see until it's pointed out is different from &quot;No, it was the secret identical twin you never heard about until just now!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the fun of a mystery is trying to solve it along with the protagonist. If you make it impossible because all the data isn't there, it takes some of the enjoyment out of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some readers like being able to figure out the twist; others prefer it to be really hard. That's YMMV, and I wouldn't worry about it too much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T20:23:59.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-23T22:58:21.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;They could have a harder fight and still give the win to the antagonist. Or use mind games: let's say the underdog comes up with a plan that gives the impression to the antagonist that he's winning and that everything is going as expected and underestimating his opponent. Then the underdog makes his play and wins. But a well structured mind game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24172" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-03-24T22:09:25.023" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T22:09:25.023" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27336" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27339" CreationDate="2017-03-23T23:16:24.987" Score="7" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a logline sentence of a query letter for my novel and used the idiom 'cat and mouse' as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A military bioweapons collector is forced to engage in a game of ‘cat and mouse’ with his Russian counterpart as he seeks a cure for the epidemic he inadvertently created. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was told it is a cliché and you shouldn't use idioms in query letters because they show lack of originality. The problem is, I cannot find a suitable synonym for 'cat and mouse game'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are ALL idioms really that bad? This one is very descriptive of a conflict that is an impasse despite all attempts at a resolution and the mouse occasionally wins. Is it preferable to spell out concepts like this even though a well-worn idiom like 'cat and mouse game' exists to communicate the concept quickly? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastEditorUserId="22690" LastEditDate="2017-03-23T23:48:42.990" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T04:27:44.690" Title="Are idioms in query letters a bad idea?" Tags="|word-choice|queries|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27336" CreationDate="2017-03-23T23:52:46.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, the problem is that the cliche &lt;em&gt;hides&lt;/em&gt; the originality of your story. That is, it obscures the unique delights that distinguish &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; cat and mouse game from every other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also &quot;is forced&quot; is pretty passive for a hero. Forced how? By whom?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What details make &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; cat and mouse game original? Put those details in the log line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, I understand the challenge. I know log lines must be short. But don't summarize the life out of your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider removing any mention of the cat and mouse game:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a military bioweapons collector inadvertently creates an epidemic, he must &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;*your characters' unique way of trying and failing to resolve the impasse*&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; with &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;*your characters' unique relationship*&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Russian counterpart to save the world from &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;*your story's unique disaster*&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T23:52:46.427" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27336" CreationDate="2017-03-24T03:39:52.630" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writers often indulge a charming fantasy that publisher and agents are looking for originality. They are not. They are looking for works that fit into a well established sales channel and that habitual readers of a genre can quickly identify as the kind of book they like to read. Pretty much the worst thing you can do in a query letter is indulge in any kind or originality. This is about sales, and sales is all about established and reliable taste. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We might all wish be believe otherwise, but a moment's reflection will show it is so. Publishers and agents do this to make a living. They want things that they already know how to sell. Remember all the stories about how many publishers turned down Harry Potter? It was something they had not seen before (or not recently, at any rate) and did not easily fit any of the current sales channels. Publishers (and therefore agents) are not keen to take on that kind of risk. Brilliant and original often falls totally flat. Competent and familiar pays the rent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to establish in a query letter is that your book is something that the publisher or agent is going to be able to sell. &quot;Cat and mouse game&quot; is an idiom that seems to show up pretty frequently in the description of published thrillers. So that's a good sign that it works to sell books. Avid readers, the kind that keep publishers and agents in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, are always looking for another fix of the same drug. They want the same, only different. But not so different that it is no longer the same. Sameness is not a vice, it is a virtue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An agent or publisher looks at a query letter and asks themselves, is this a serious professional writer who can turn out decent books that meet the needs of a well established and profitable market? That's what your query letter needs to project. Originality has very little to do with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-03-24T04:27:44.690" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T04:27:44.690" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27295" CreationDate="2017-03-24T03:52:52.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a common difference between the two separate sections you have presented. Between Feel Good, and Feel Bad - those two groups have a clearly defining difference, and that is that in Feel Good stories the protagonists are better off in the end of the story than at the start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of the success of a character as being a line on a graph.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JIcYT.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JIcYT.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the start of the story, they are at the axis 0,0. This is where they were at the start of their story, in terms of wealth, relationships, fame, etc. Whatever the protagonists aim is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the inciting incident, and where the character is fully introduced, we already get an idea of the characters current development - but then gain a twist that provides obstacles and a second thought, where the character begins to lose faith and confidence. At the midpoint, the protagonist gains leverage and grows closer to meeting their goal, before a twist occurs and they reach the low point - the furthest away from their goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where the paths between the two begin to diverge. While the 'feel good' tragedies end with the protagonists failing to meet their initial goal, they do however end at a higher point in terms of success than where they started. In terms of the 'Feel Bad' tragedies, they end at a lower point than where they started - they end at a loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the Empire Strikes Back, the characters gain new knowledge - Luke learns his father is Darth Vader, and gains a new arm. The characters in total gain new allies and more experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast to this, in Titanic - the protagonists end up dying, they lose everything and end up with less than they had at the start. The same with Romeo &amp;amp; Juliet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deadpool is a unique one, the audience gains something - comedy and a laugh, but what does deadpool get? A pillow and a can of ice cream that he didn't have at the start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T03:52:52.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27209" CreationDate="2017-03-24T03:58:06.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A query letter is a sales tool. The feedback you want is not from writers but from people in the business of selling books. I don't know that there is a reliable way to know if you are getting that on line. I think you would do much better to seek advice in person. Ideally, try to find someone in your area offering a workshop like this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://quick-brown-fox-canada.blogspot.ca/search/label/How%20to%20Get%20Published&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://quick-brown-fox-canada.blogspot.ca/search/label/How%20to%20Get%20Published&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But beyond the whole concept of a query letter, I would suggest going to writers conferences that offer you the opportunity to pitch directly to agents. A successful pitch in person will jump you ahead of all the people whose query letters are in the slush pile. Why? You showed more effort than they did, and you made a personal connection, which makes them feel more obliged to you than to someone who just bought a stamp. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-03-24T13:36:04.073" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T13:36:04.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27332" CreationDate="2017-03-24T04:06:05.433" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;By definition, it is not a twist if the reader sees it coming. In fact, there is nothing worse than a plot twist that you see coming. Nothing makes a story seem more contrived than when you see the twist coming and it does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if the reader sees a twist coming and then the story actually twists the other way, that is more interesting. But it is something of a high wire act. Who is to say that the reader will keep reading when they are convinced a predictable twist is coming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the most important thing about a twist is that it must provide a more satisfying ending than the one that the reader was expecting. A mere zig zag is simply going to leave the story in the ditch. The twist has to provide the more satisfying and more logical outcome, the outcome that makes better sense of all that has gone before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twists work when you don't see them coming, and when things make so much more sense after the do. It's that second part that is both essential and tricky. You have to lay the groundwork so that the twist makes sense when it comes without telegraphing that it is coming, since a telegraphed twist is just disappointing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T04:06:05.433" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27314" CreationDate="2017-03-24T06:07:51.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Terrible gruesome death. In the tradition of Monty Python, as well as Key &amp;amp; Peele or even Amy Schumer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Going beyond total escalation. And back again. Take a premise, stretch it to the limit, then go beyond that--or reverse it--if they end up nude in the sketch, have them ask for a sock back.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show that the cycle will never end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get meta with it. as in this Monty Python sketch: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLlv_aZjHXc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLlv_aZjHXc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Live from New York, it's Saturday Night! Or some kind of catch phrase or established joke.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T06:07:51.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27310" CreationDate="2017-03-24T08:48:14.853" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll tag along what @RobtA said above, regarding reversing the question and asking when you can get rid of subplots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You described your writing process as very structured, so consider this formula for figuring out when and where to have subplots:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a rough draft of your story, focusing only on the main plot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read what you wrote. Do you feel it was complete? Did the characters get fleshed out enough? Did you add enough foreshadowing along the way for the plot and its twists to &quot;make sense&quot; to the reader? For the characters decisions in the main plot to &quot;make sense&quot;? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the answer to part 2 is &quot;no&quot;, then add subplots to fix the problem. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat steps 2-3 till your done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Hope this is helpful, and not too &quot;rigid&quot;...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22348" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T08:48:14.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27345" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-24T10:17:59.613" Score="12" ViewCount="2853" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question regarding the legality of using a &lt;em&gt;real museum and real artifacts&lt;/em&gt; in my &lt;em&gt;Heist book&lt;/em&gt; which is almost ready for publication. Initially, it will be self-published via the amazon kindle route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book involves a criminal gang who steal well-known artefacts from a UK museum. I have contacted the museums press office and explained the premises, and asked them if they would grant permission, or point me in the direction of someone who can. But unfortunately it appears from their non-response they don't want to play ball.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having read dozens of very successful fictional novels which involve the theft of real artifacts and antiquities, from both museums and private collections around the world. I'm wondering how the authors get permission, or if indeed they do need permission to base a novel around places and objects that are clearly in the public domain. Maybe it's their publishers who do this, or their agents? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be extremely grateful to hear from anyone on the Stack-Exchange who has experience with this kind of issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks in advance. Jon&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24138" LastActivityDate="2021-06-08T00:15:49.067" Title="Legality over using a REAL museum and REAL artifacts in a fictional - HEIST novel" Tags="|fiction|legal|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27345" CreationDate="2017-03-24T11:03:05.760" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thought experiment: If Dan Brown had required the permission of the Vatican to publish The Da Vinci Code, do you imagine it would ever have been granted? Do you think the Pentagon or the White House would ever give permission for most of the novels set there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ergo, you don't need it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want your work to be accepted for publication:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can't steal copyrighted work, though you can use it within the bounds of fair use. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can't defame a living person. (Though that is a civil matter, not a criminal one, in most jurisdictions)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can't encourage hatred of certain groups (though others are just fine).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You cannot violate the official secrets act or whatever protects official secrets in whatever jurisdiction you live in (or ever intend to visit). (Unless your publisher is Wikileaks.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But these constraints aside, in any country that still clings to the vestiges of the idea of free speech, you are still free to write about things in the real world if you want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and under no circumstances will an agent or publisher get any permissions you might need for you; that is entirely on you. In fact, unless there is the promise of a mega payday, no publisher or agent is going to touch anything that might attract a lawsuit or criminal investigation in the first place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So stop worrying and submit your manuscript. If they think there is any kind of problem (supposing it is good enough for them to read more than the first page) they will let you know. And if any permissions are needed, they will tell you exactly what they are and expect you to go get them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-03-24T19:07:41.703" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T19:07:41.703" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27345" CreationDate="2017-03-24T11:07:54.897" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Refer to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.how-to-write-a-book-now.com/writing-about-real-places-companies-and-products.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be perfectly fine to use a real life example, as long as there are no legal issues with regards to it. As long as you're not attempting to damage its reputation - or revealing actual ways of breaking into their museum - it should be perfectly fine to use their name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, think about it this way to be on the safe side: Is it completely necessary for their name to be on the book? Or will it really matter? How many of your readers will actually understand the context or know about the museum and this artifact beforehand, or can you create a fictional museum and artifact in your world and effectively tell the same story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T11:07:54.897" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27349" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-24T12:32:57.160" Score="6" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to publish my book in the UK, US, CA and AU. Now the prices and currencies are different for each of these countries. Barnes &amp;amp; Noble says that they require a barcode with a price in it (EAN 5) on the backside of the cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do right now? Do I need 4 different covers with 4 different EAN 5 price barcodes, or is it ok if the barcode price is just in one currency, let's say in £, and the other currencies and prices are in readable form next to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do bookshops like B&amp;amp;N accept this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw: I'm distributing the book via Ingram Lightning Source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24181" LastEditorUserId="28322" LastEditDate="2017-12-13T13:13:38.103" LastActivityDate="2017-12-13T13:13:38.103" Title="ISBN Add-On for different countries" Tags="|isbn|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10555" CreationDate="2017-03-24T12:47:04.877" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My pet theory on this is that &lt;strong&gt;horror is about irrational associations between things, while thrillers are about logical connections between things&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a thriller, a character is usually in danger because of some (at least vaguely) logical and knowable set of circumstances. They play on halfway rational fears (though often exaggerated to the point where they aren't really rational anymore).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a horror, however, danger usually comes from things that aren't (in the real world) actually dangerous, but unnerve us nonetheless. For example, if several people die in accidents shortly after buying the same painting, we are unlikely to assume it's the painting that did it, but we &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; likely to associate the painting with these deaths. In a horror story, this association will turn out to have real consequences for the characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often the association is left unexplained, and this failure of reason is a big part of what makes it frightening. It stops us being able to rationalise away our fears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, plenty of stories do combine aspects of the two, but I think it ultimately comes down to &lt;strong&gt;different ways of dealing with fear&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I certainly don't agree with the other answers that say it's about death. I think both genres are possible without &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; death (or immediate threat of death) at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastEditorUserId="22280" LastEditDate="2017-03-24T19:53:53.603" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T19:53:53.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27332" CreationDate="2017-03-24T13:26:45.937" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I firmly believe that the answer it &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real challenge is hiding the clues in plain view while building up to the twist, distracting the readers from them, so when the sudden turn happens, some would say: &quot;Wait, what?... nooooo...&quot;, some might even flip the pages back and say: &quot;Ahh... right... I see... how could I miss that?...&quot;, and some, of course, will stretch their lips in a lopsided grin and huff: &quot;Like, totally saw it coming...&quot;, but this is what makes writing–and reading–mysteries more fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, more often than not a predictability of the twist comes not only from the obvious clues, left bare, but from a trope-laden cliche-based plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T13:26:45.937" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10555" CreationDate="2017-03-24T14:04:58.987" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A genre is a promise from the publisher to the reader about the kind of experience that the book will give them. The definitions of genres therefore are not technical, they are emotional. A couple fighting monsters in Arizona in 2073. Is it romance, horror, or sci fi? It all depends on the kind of experience it gives. If the experience is romantic, it is a romance. If the experience is creepy or scary it is horror. If the experience is futuristic and sciencey, it is science fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it another way, is a Tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Technically, biologically, it is a fruit. But it tastes like a vegetable. So it is sold as a vegetable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your novel is whatever genre it tastes like, no matter what its technical characteristics may be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-03-24T14:25:17.110" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T14:25:17.110" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10555" CreationDate="2017-03-24T14:49:42.820" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was intrigued about the question, so I surfed around and came up with the following notions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thriller:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The villains control the plot: they create obstacles/problems that the protagonists must overcome against the clock &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; while overcoming a personal difficulty/problem. There are usually high stakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Horror:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It's not necessarily clear where the obstacles/problems come from, that is, it isn't clear who the villain is. The villains may even be the protagonists themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thriller:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It produces a sense of excitement or, more to the point, it produces a 'thrill'. There is hope it will end well for the protagonist while there is anxiety/fear about whether they will fail or, more likely, what they'll have to sacrifice to be successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the 'good' will likely win and, if it doesn't, the fiction will bring about a sense of being too close to the general concept of reality's unsatisfying justice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is that, by the end, reason and logic pervail in keeping society stable and well-structured. People know the rules and know that breaking them will bring about consequences. If the villains manage to escape those consequences, the fiction becomes closer to reality, but the rules of the society and the world are not endangered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Horror:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It produces a sense of fear. There may be hope it will end well for the protagonist, but it's less certain whether it will. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it ends well, there will be this sense of the world having been shaken but it's still possible to come back to normalcy, or a semblance of it. If it ends badly, there will be this sense that the world is shattered and there's no going back to normalcy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is that, by the end, reason and logic do not pervail in keeping society stable and well-structured. The rules have been overthrown. Even if they are once more imposed (eg. the villain is punished), it is clearly as a mask to hide the terrifying and unpreditable unknown (eg. a new villain - or the same - may pop up again at any time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thriller:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There's a general atmosphere of threat, but a recognisable one. This can include death or life-threatening events, but not necessarily so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Horror:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There's a general atmosphere of menace, but usually an unrecognisable one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both require techniques to build up tension and suspense, as well as plot twists. The difference is in the intensity of responses ellicited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind there are two main types of horror, one of supernatural origin (also known as dark or Gothic fantasy to avoid prejudice associated with the term 'horror') and one of non-supernatural origin (also known as psychological thriller to avoid prejudice associated with the term 'horror')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reference to H.P. Lovecraft, there is no greater fear than the fear of the unknown so, in the end, one could say that the seminal difference between thriller and horror is that one ellicits &lt;em&gt;fear of known threats&lt;/em&gt; while the other ellicits &lt;em&gt;fear of unknown threats&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tools to create the fear (and the excitement one derives from it) are fundamentally the same; whereas the theme and effect are different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T14:49:42.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-24T15:19:05.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have your protagonist be super smart but only show how smart he was at the end of the story. This might require for you to change small details during your story and make the less strong guy - the good one - win in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24187" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T15:19:05.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18834" CreationDate="2017-03-24T15:41:46.697" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The bast way to deal with this issue is to explicitly acknowledge it, show that it isn't an issue, and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A superb example of this is found in the Dr. Who story, Partners in Crime. The Doctor has just asked Donna if she will accompany him on a journey in his time machine, the Tardis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Donna&lt;/strong&gt;: I don't need injections, do I? You know, like when you go to Cambodia. Is there any of that? Because my friend Veena went to Bahrain, and she- [cuts off, noticing the Doctor is silent] You're not saying much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Doctor&lt;/strong&gt;: No, it's just. It's a funny old life, in the Tardis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Donna&lt;/strong&gt;: You don't want me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Doctor&lt;/strong&gt;: I'm not saying that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Donna&lt;/strong&gt;: But you asked me. Would you rather be on your own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Doctor&lt;/strong&gt;: No. Actually, no. But the last time...With Martha, like I said, it got... complicated. And that was all my fault. I just want a mate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Donna&lt;/strong&gt;: [alarmed] You just want to mate?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Doctor&lt;/strong&gt;: I just want a mate!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Donna&lt;/strong&gt;: You're not mating with me, sunshine!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Doctor&lt;/strong&gt;: A mate! I want a mate!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Donna&lt;/strong&gt;: Well, just as well, cos I'm not having any of that nonsense! You're just a long streak of nothing! You know... Alien nothing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Doctor&lt;/strong&gt;: There we are, then. Okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Donna&lt;/strong&gt;: I can come?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Doctor&lt;/strong&gt;: Yeah. Course you can, yeah. I'd love it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="247" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T21:33:23.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8587" CreationDate="2017-03-24T15:42:56.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to do is to make 100% sure that all the basics are rock solid. Your spelling is imperfect &quot;a change to life a normal life&quot; =&gt; &quot;a chance to live a normale life&quot;. Spelling and grammar are basic tools for a writer, for me that would be a reason to not buy anything from you. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but first impressions count a lot, and if the decision to buy is made based on two lines, then every word in those lines has to be perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By content, your longer summaries are much more interesting than the short one. You need to have something called a hook in the summary. A point that makes the reader want to know how it continues or how it ends. If I'm not curious what comes next, why should I buy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it is absolutely normal that there is a massive difference between free and paid, no matter the price. I run an online game that you can play for free, or donate an amount of your choice for a few extras. About 1% of players donate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24134" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T15:42:56.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-24T15:58:44.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much of a problem this is depends on how the antagonist's blunder happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the protagonist detect the antagonist's propensity for stupidity, and then goad the antagonist into making a mistake? If so, then I think it's fine; your protagonist is still the problem solver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the antagonist just blunders without any inducement from the protagonist, I'd be concerned. What's the point of following the exploits of the protagonist for an entire novel if they turn out to be irrelevant to the outcome? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your story looks more like the latter case, I'd find a way to make it into the former. It shouldn't require anything near a rewrite of the entire story. The protagonist could observe something late in the story that he (she?) could then exploit to induce the game-changing mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21329" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T15:58:44.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27359" CreationDate="2017-03-24T16:22:15.770" Score="1" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;Critics of my screen play tell me that I have done a good job of developing the story, less so in developing the characters. A couple examples follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main character is a woman who is the &quot;fifth&quot; partner in an advertising firm, for which there are only four corner offices, none of which is hers. The woman is incensed with this fact, especially after the managing partner hints that she is better than his other three partners (all four of these are men). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The woman's main subordinate is a &quot;pot-shaped&quot; man who nevertheless makes it to CEO because her guidance set him on an unlikely trajectory. (Even after she leaves the firm, she &quot;guides&quot; him by &quot;proxy.&quot;) He never expects to make it to the very top, which would be a daunting task for any advertising executive, never mind a pot shaped one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others tell me that it's not enough to assume that the reasons for this woman's discomfort or the man's lack of confidence are self-evident, but go into their backgrounds to explain why they feel this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do most authors and critics feel that this is true? If so, what are ways to develop the characters of these two people over and above the storyline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-03-24T16:34:33.087" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T12:20:09.350" Title="How much character development is necessary beyond what the story line provides?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27358" CreationDate="2017-03-24T18:13:11.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with the notion that an Author must delve into the background of each character for character development.  But, this is one of the primary ways to develop characters without affecting the main story arc.  However, expanding on a character's background in itself, doesn't necessarily provide character development.  What is really needed is to provide the &quot;why&quot; behind a character's actions and expanding on a character's background is a good way to do to this.  (ie, I'm afraid of snakes due to a bad encounter when I was young)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples of how to build character development without necessarily building in a lot of backstory/background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What has led your protagonist to help her subordinate into getting&#xA;the role of CEO?  Just because she's a helpful person may not be&#xA;enough.  Expand on why she's a helpful person.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why is she incensed with not getting a corner office?  What makes her&#xA;think she deserves one?  Some people may not care about having the&#xA;corner office, but instead would care about how they were treated in everyday&#xA;conversations.  Does a friend/spouse constantly point out that she's&#xA;not being treated fairly?  Does this sense of entitlement come form somewhere else?  Explain/expand on this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why does she leave the firm and continue to help her subordinate?  Is&#xA;this retribution for the perceived wrongs that the company has done&#xA;her in the past?  But if she elevates her subordinate because&#xA;he's/she's a good worker, then your protagonist is actually helping&#xA;the company.  This is somewhat a conflict of morals.  Why does she go&#xA;through with this?  The &quot;why&quot; behind these actions would have to be greatly detailed or characters might appear hollow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why does the Pot-shaped character remain this way?  No exercise?  Why&#xA;would he not change his appearance if he knew it would affect his&#xA;chances of becoming CEO?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, when characters lack depth, it is usually because they don't have the &quot;why's&quot; behind their actions explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to how much character development is necessary.  That is largely subjective, but if you're getting feedback that you may need more character development, then it might be good to include more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23097" LastEditorUserId="23097" LastEditDate="2017-03-24T18:19:14.637" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T18:19:14.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27360" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27362" CreationDate="2017-03-24T21:21:58.023" Score="3" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some good tips or ways to describe a character in a story that plays no significant role, and only appears for that particular moment in the chapter and never again for the rest of the story? What details are best to be mentioned in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18989" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T10:44:08.360" Title="How to describe generic once-off characters?" Tags="|characters|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27361" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-24T23:08:17.670" Score="2" ViewCount="637" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know Clarkesworld will send you a yes/no within a week or so. How do I find magazines that take a relatively short time period to review a story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24194" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-27T18:43:58.887" LastActivityDate="2017-03-27T18:43:58.887" Title="Literary magazines with the fastest turnaround rate?" Tags="|creative-writing|magazines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27360" CreationDate="2017-03-24T23:15:28.700" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agreeing with @RobtA, I would probably try to describe that person in a way that simply highlights &quot;their role&quot; in the scene. If they are in a scene, they serve a purpose. Use that! Focus on the part of that character that is or could be relevant for the reader.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he's blocking a door or stealing an elevator, perhaps describe him as annoyingly unaware of his surroundings or selfishly busy - if that makes sense from the perspective(s) of your main character(s). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he's doing a job, perhaps include simple details about how he's doing said job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These descriptions, how insignificant they may seem, create opportunities for the reader to get to know the important character(s) better, based on the way they interact (or don't). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T23:15:28.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18834" CreationDate="2017-03-25T05:41:35.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For many reasons (including economics, and ages at which young men and young women mature), it is traditional in many societies for grooms to be a few years older than their brides.  Your protagonists might be too similar in age to be a good match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at things from the characters' points of view:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He could be somewhat oblivious (perhaps with mild symptoms of autism or Asperger's syndrome).  They might be in a &lt;em&gt;milieu&lt;/em&gt; where courtship is taken seriously.  He might consciously decide to not seek romantic entanglements until he can afford to get married, so he (more or less politely) brushes off young ladies' indications of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He might not remind her enough of her father.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She might not remind him enough of his mother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps he becomes &quot;aware&quot; when he notices a different girl -- and your female protagonist has already gotten involved with a different guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Bibelgesellschaft&lt;/em&gt; series of stories in the &lt;em&gt;Grantville Gazette&lt;/em&gt; follow a group of teenagers who take their bible studies very seriously.  Blaise and Jacqueline Pascal are two of the protagonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10378" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T05:41:35.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18834" CreationDate="2017-03-25T07:17:44.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, whatever they are facing can always be too complex to even have the time to think about something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are planning for them to get together at some point, then leave very subtle hints where they are both so dense that they don't even notice their own feelings for each other except much later. Also, don't make it hinder the process of your plot unless that is what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not planning for anything to happen between them, then just focus on their mutual respect for each other. You can easily make a boy and a girl just friends but you have to eliminate all possible hints or possibilities that can open that door. Of course one or the two of them is bound consider it at one point but they are just too comfortable as friends that the thought flies as soon as it hits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all depends on how you want your story to progress, if there is romance, there is. If there is not, there's not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always mention the blind trust between them and how they respect each other and how they always rely on one another and all the factors that would make a friendship exceptionally strong. Use your own experience or those around you to deepen their relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a friendship between them can be a lot easier than you think, you just have to write a normal friendship between two people and not think much about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24197" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T07:17:44.920" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27360" CreationDate="2017-03-25T10:44:08.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tor.com/2013/02/14/rothfuss-reread-speculative-summary-19-each-woman-is-like-an-instrument/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jo Walton&lt;/a&gt; offers some thoughts on how to make the most of insignificant characters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But say you have somebody bring the protagonist a drink. You don’t have room to make them interesting and flesh them out. Sometimes making them interesting would give them too much significance, draw too much attention to them. They’re still there. Say their story function is to say “Here’s your drink,” and distract the protagonist from their brooding so that they can go off in a new direction. The standard person would be—well, that depends on the setting. A barmaid, a waitress, a waiter, an innkeeper, old, young, human, alien, gay, straight, male, female—they’re not going to do any more in the story than put down that drink. But if they say “Here’s your drink, sir,” that’s one kind of person, and if they say “Here’s your drink, sugar,” that’s another kind, and you have a better story if you know what they say, even if that’s all they’re going to say before they disappear off the page, because the way the protagonist will be distracted from their thoughts will be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the protagonist watches the old waiter staggering off with a tray and wonders how long he’s been doing that, gathering up glasses every night, and decides not to get into a rut like that? If the protagonist gets a sexual buzz from the server and really isn’t sure how to deal with that so gets up to leave? (Michel Tremblay has a great book called The Black Notebook about a waitress in an all night diner who’s a midget whose customers are almost all drag queens.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minor characters can provide the reader with a little more insight about the setting (what kind of people live in this world? What kind of people would be working in this building?), or about the main character (how does he/she respond to others, and how do others respond to him/her?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the world and character you're trying to build, minor characters can be really useful tools for getting information across. If it's a near-future sci-fi, talking about what kinds of gadgets people play with while they're waiting for the bus and what they're wearing could tell the reader about the world, even if they don't actually do anything in the scene. If your story is set in 1930s Berlin and your main character is sitting in a café and spots someone at the next table wearing a star of David armband, he or she might remark that this person is a) Jewish scum or b) an unfortunate soul. That tells the reader a lot about the main character's attitudes, even if we never see that armband-wearing person again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your minor characters can be just as useful as anything else in your story – consider making the most of them wherever you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22034" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T10:44:08.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27368" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-25T10:52:36.763" Score="3" ViewCount="1715" Body="&lt;p&gt;My heroine is seriously ill with something that can sooner or later take her life away at any moment. She takes medication regularly but refuses to undergo anything hardcore (like surgery or chemo or anything that would make her better or cure her for good). I have not figured out what or where the kind of illness she has yet since i am not a certified doctor with enough knowledge about the human body but i do want to be specific when it comes to symptoms or medication and its side effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also don't know how much that illness should effect her daily life. She's an intelligent teacher with exceptional understanding &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; memory. She is swamped with work and responsibilities that don't often involve her career as a teacher but it also greatly affects her health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She's rich, so money isn't an issue. She just thinks that she should live her life to the most instead of undergoing harsh treatments and so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any type of illness (that preferably includes attacks such as asthma) that hinders someone's day to day life but not as much as staying to bed all day and is curable under extreme medication? (Cancer is out since she has to work everyday for being a teacher and other tiring stuff)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24197" LastActivityDate="2017-03-27T03:21:29.927" Title="How to deal with seriously ill characters and what type of illness should I give them" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27368" CreationDate="2017-03-25T11:31:34.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could &lt;strong&gt;google your character's symptoms&lt;/strong&gt; and see what shows up!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does it have to be an existing illness?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be a &lt;strong&gt;realistic&lt;/strong&gt; but fictional illness &lt;strong&gt;with the symptoms you &quot;need&quot; for the story to come together..&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;She suffers from Mil-Ether-Kafosis. It's a mutation of the well known disease Ether-Kafosis, also referred to as 'Asthma' - though that&#xA;  has always been a misunderstanding.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; the certified doctor said, with&#xA;  no-one questioning the authenticity of the mentioned illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are not a certified doctor, and unless your taget audience is 'certified doctors', is it really important if it is a real illness, or is it simply a tool for the story to play out the way you need it to? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You should probably still do &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; research, no matter what illness you find suitable.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've &lt;em&gt;enjoyed&lt;/em&gt; stories about various characters with illnesses and simply followed how the illness affected the story and characters, without needing to believe that the illness actually existed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not aiming for a &quot;Raise awareness for x illness&quot; kind of story, in my opinion, the specific illness &lt;strong&gt;simply needs to be believable&lt;/strong&gt;. And we, as the audience for a story, will believe a lot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the story's already fictional, why not tailor it to suit your need?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose it &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; draw unwanted attention towards the illness itself, which could be an issue if you're simply going for an &quot;illness that fits&quot;. &#xA;For instance, I have a character who's father is (or was) ill, and &lt;strong&gt;the illness itself is not important, but rather how it affected the people around him, mainly the main character.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you 'invent' an illness, people may focus too much on the illness, rather than the part it plays in the story. This of course has everything to do with how your write the illness into the story and how relatable or realistic said illness is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, I just feel that 'cancer' would be too cliché. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps worth mentioning: My own work so far is science-fiction, so I'm sorry if I'm pushing your work into that genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2017-03-26T14:28:22.500" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T14:28:22.500" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18834" CreationDate="2017-03-25T13:26:39.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several comments have made reference to the squick factor associated with sibling incest.  Certainly that would be an accepted reason why your two main characters would not have any interest in one another.  But since you want to potentially explore that relationship downstream...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your two characters have known each other since childhood, there will be reverse sexual imprinting due to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Westermarck Effect&lt;/a&gt;.  It appears to be sufficient for them to have grown up together in the same house -- perhaps one is an orphan?  This allows you to build -- at least initially -- a Kim Possible/Ron Stoppable friendship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time, however, your readers will probably &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/12/shipping-and-the-enduring-appeal-of-rooting-for-love/383954/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ship your main characters&lt;/a&gt; if they like them enough.  This is good, because it gives you opportunity to build conflict.  Specifically, you can leverage the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChildhoodFriendRomance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Childhood Friend Romance&lt;/a&gt; trope to set expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider, for example, if Ron grows up and &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AuthorAppeal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gets married to an amazing woman&lt;/a&gt;.  Suddenly, Ron &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/apologies-freud/201210/why-women-want-married-men&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;becomes desirable&lt;/a&gt;, and Kim realizes what she lost.  But she's ethical, and Mrs. Stoppable is also her friend.  This is a powerful internal conflict.  And if you ever decide to kill off Ron's wife, and Kim decides to pursue that long-deferred relationship, suddenly she can realize that it never would have worked after all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, this is a long-cycle character arc.  In book 1, they are friends, and Ron is a dork.  In book 2, he's still a dork, and Kim is happy he met Anne.  In book 3, Ron gets married to Anne, and the friendship continues.  It's not until book 4 that she regrets losing out on Ron -- this is where you kill Anne, and her guilty feelings drive the plot.  And in book 5 Ron has sufficiently recovered from his grief to consider Kim as an option.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19841" LastEditorUserId="19841" LastEditDate="2017-03-25T13:30:58.243" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T13:30:58.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27371" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-25T13:44:09.247" Score="5" ViewCount="498" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a book is not returnable, has a wholesaler discount of 45% and costs £10.99, does a book store sell this book if a customer comes into a store and wants to order it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: Is a book still available in a book store if a customer requests it, even if the bookstore does not want the book in their stock, because of the conditions above? Do they order a copy if a customer asks for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24181" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-27T18:36:07.937" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T11:11:37.993" Title="Will bookstores order a self-published book if customers request it?" Tags="|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27372" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27383" CreationDate="2017-03-25T14:19:08.957" Score="4" ViewCount="524" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am bilingual myself but I don't think it affects me in any way. But I think that's because I am not in a position to speak the language on a day to day basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the character has to travel between two different countries. They know both languages very well but speak one more than the other, so if they travel to a place where the less spoken language is spoken would that affect them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, they tend to mix both languages sometimes, or mix up the grammar once or twice, but is that it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Culture plays an important role, I know, but they had been exposed to both cultures and know what happens here and there but this time the visit is going to be prolonged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should it even affect the storyline? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24197" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-03-27T18:22:57.970" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T09:23:30.730" Title="If somone is bilingual how does it affect their daily life?" Tags="|characters|dialogue|character-development|multilingual|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27373" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27374" CreationDate="2017-03-25T15:38:12.950" Score="6" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;A character speaks two languages throughout the whole plot. How to insert the translation of the other language without ruining the layout of the story or text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Guten tag, Herr X,&quot; they said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I insert a translation without ruining the whole paragraph or sentence? I can always have one of the characters ask for a translation, but what if they spoke to someone who understands them, or if I only want readers to understand but not the other characters? I have also thought of explaining it through indirect ways like the character speaking to themselves, but these scenes are not always in their point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it useless to try and add it into the text? I've seen people put a translation between braces () or adding it under the sentence or directly next to it in &lt;em&gt;italics&lt;/em&gt;. Or should I just improvise through it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24197" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-08T10:53:35.917" LastActivityDate="2018-05-08T10:53:35.917" Title="How do I include translations without ruining the flow of the text?" Tags="|characters|dialogue|translation|flow|multilingual|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27373" CreationDate="2017-03-25T17:06:07.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to this answer here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/1742/whats-the-best-way-to-show-a-foreign-language-in-a-manuscript/1743#1743&quot;&gt;What&amp;#39;s the best way to show a foreign language in a manuscript?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a lot of swapping back and forth between two specific languages, and the characters are always speaking the same given language in any scene (both French, both German, etc.), then you can just tell us that in the tags:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Guten tag,&quot; he said. &quot;Do you have your ticket?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yes I do,&quot; I answered in German, and handed it to him. &quot;How long until we reach Berlin?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;At least an hour.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The countryside is rather different,&quot; Marcel observed to me in French after the conductor left. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, the trees are,&quot; I agreed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.420" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T17:06:07.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18834" CreationDate="2017-03-25T18:53:43.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you want good ways to have a platonic male-female relationship when they aren't related and about the same age, making it clear to the reader that they are in no way close to having a romantic relationship. I am also assuming that you are not using any sort of maneuver, like creating individual relationships for one or both of them or making one or both of them gay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite probable that no matter what you try, there will still be a great part of your readers that will expect (or want might the right expression, sometimes they realise you have no interest in creating a relationship between them) some type of romance to develop between them. Try to make them as friendly as possible between each other without making them awkward. In real life it happens very frequently, so I don't see why it should be different in fiction. One way would be to have them be open about their attractions to other people. I don't know which type of fiction you write, but try to use the story in your favour. Are they friends at school? Friends at school often talk about how hot this or that person are. Are they fighting evil? They could have a perfect balance between them that would easily be ruined by a romantic relationship, and that could play a major part in why they couldn't or wouldn't date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is common though that friends have some sort of sexual attraction between them, and maybe you shouldn't really ignore that. Of course, it all depends on what you are writing. But have them at some point discuss this possibility with a laugh, or even dismiss completely the idea after a brief &quot;what if&quot;, could help. There seems to be a cannon in fiction that if they aren't going to date, they have to see each other as asexual potatoes. Just don't. Friends often realise their friends are good looking. Friends often realise their friends cause them some sort of sexual frustration. Short term friends feel this way more frequently, in opposite to long term friends, who are already saturated by their friends and therefore eventually learned not to care. Sometimes, friends do sleep together before realising that yeah, it's not gonna happen. It's always a good idea to keep in mind that &lt;I&gt; sexual attraction&lt;/I&gt; doesn't equal &lt;I&gt;romantic relationship&lt;/I&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of things that could cause you problems, but there is also a lot you could work with. There's many, many types of friendships, and there's lots of ways you could create a healthy friendship between them without making two characters who are completely unsexualized to each other. Create their personalities, the setting, and everything else, keeping in mind what you intend to achieve, and I am sure you will be able to create a great story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24201" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T18:53:43.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-25T19:24:36.967" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It could be through luck, through virtue, through tricks. But I don't think that should be your main concern. There is great chances choosing one of these could create an ending disconnected to the rest of the story you have already written, too different to actually fit into what you have. I would strongly suggest you at least re-read everything before choosing an ending. It isn't &lt;I&gt;impossible&lt;/I&gt; to make the antagonist be defeated against all odds, mind you, but &lt;I&gt;the way&lt;/I&gt; you choose to do it might create a problem to the book itself. I suggest you analyse how your character have managed his past adventures and then find a way to defeat the antagonist that makes sense. There are great ideas in the other answers to your question that I will not rewrite here. Taking a look at books, movies or TV shows where the main characters have the same issue might also be a good idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of adventure, however, isn't at all uncommon in literature, specially modern literature, and I don't think you have to make the antagonist weaker. If you intend on making any changes throughout the book, perhaps choose the way you intend said antagonist should be (or not) defeated, and then create a setting that builds up to that ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24201" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T19:24:36.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-25T23:15:17.677" Score="3" ViewCount="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;I posted this over on the Eng Lang Stack, but they say it likely is more apropos here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terms like 'make whole', 'encumbered', etc have both non-financial/non-legal usages and financial/legal usages and, in some cases, explicit financial/legal definitions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid technical connotations, to avoid the possibility of a sentence being read as a legal statement, an obvious workaround is to swap in such a synonym.  But synonyms may not exist, or when one does exist, the sentence may unacceptably degrade. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another remedy is to include a phrase such as 'colloquially speaking'.  But the deprecation could be inappropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are other ways to minimize the chance of a sentence from being misconstrued in this way?  Is there an adjective or modifer that accomplishes this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fictitious examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A divorce can &lt;em&gt;make whole&lt;/em&gt; both parties.&lt;/strong&gt; (google: &quot;make whole&quot; divorce. For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.divorcecentral.com/lifeline/life_ans.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.divorcecentral.com/lifeline/life_ans.html&lt;/a&gt;. Make Whole in the sense of closure, in the sense of getting on with their lives.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The VA is a &lt;em&gt;monopoly&lt;/em&gt; on veteran healthcare.&lt;/strong&gt;  (This sentence was spoken a few minutes ago by Senator Lindsey Graham at his Town Hall, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtzDvmLrK-s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtzDvmLrK-s&lt;/a&gt; at about 40:00.  Monopoly in the sense the Veterans Administration is immune from competition.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&#xA;Context is non-fiction, formal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24206" LastEditorUserId="24206" LastEditDate="2017-03-25T23:21:55.110" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T02:12:57.390" Title="How to head off a legal reading of a term or phrase?" Tags="|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27377" CreationDate="2017-03-26T02:12:57.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There really is no way to indicate that you are using a term in a non-technical sense if you use it in a context in which the technical sense would normally be inferred. The best approach to avoiding ambiguity in these cases is to approach the entire descriptions differently. Don't just substitute a synonym for the problematic word, rewrite the entire sentence or paragraph to avoid summing up the idea in one word at all. Write out in more precise and detailed terms the idea that you wanted to convey by that single word. So, for instance, in the example you gave, say &quot;arrange things so they are able to get on with their lives&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Words are placeholders for complex ideas which can always be more precisely stated using more words. The use of the placeholders speeds communication when they are use in context where there meaning is clear. But sometimes they are ambiguous, and their intended meaning cannot reliably be made clear. In these cases the only safe course is to drop back to the longer phrase, sentence, or even paragraph that expresses the idea that the word stands for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T02:12:57.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-26T10:32:27.123" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your antagonist could be strong, devious and evil, his/her strength represented through their power and ambition and demonstrated through early gains. But evil is flawed, and can be shown through personality traits which ultimately undermine the villain's competence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Power corrupts, especially unchecked power, so weaknesses can manifest like vanity and hubris. The villain is obsessed with their own awesomeness, they overreach, they don't pay attention to details, they unleash powers way beyond their control, they punish underlings and betray partners, people switch sides to help the hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your hero makes the most of luck, but they should win on merit, they take a path defined by their sense of decency and they are rewarded for their bravery and sense of purpose. The villain may be stronger, better resourced and unconstrained by morals, but ultimately sets the stage for their own downfall. The hero perseveres, applies growing pressure and ultimately pushes the villain to destroy themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, a hero too can have their weaknesses which can lead to early failures. But the hero can overcome and make good. The villain rises unchecked, but as a consequence falls from a much greater height.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user24213" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T10:32:27.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27224" CreationDate="2017-03-26T12:10:10.410" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is rewriting the entire story (so the antagonist is weaker and the plot is changed to compensate for that) the only solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not have to rewrite the entire story. Think of &lt;em&gt;one advantage&lt;/em&gt; the hero could use to win, go back a few pages and add &lt;em&gt;one scene&lt;/em&gt; that puts that advantage into the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aliens&lt;/em&gt;: Ripley has to fight an alien queen that is much larger and stronger than her. It seems impossible! She succeeds because she finds a powerful robot 'exoskeleton' suit that makes her super-strong. &lt;em&gt;The suit appears in one earlier scene that shows it was at the right place for Ripley to find.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Iron Man&lt;/em&gt;: Tony Stark has a robot suit but has to fight an enemy with a robot suit that is more powerful in every way. It seems impossible! He wins by flying really high until his enemy freezes. &lt;em&gt;In one earlier scene, Tony tries flying really high just for fun, learns that this makes the suits freeze, and then redesigns his suit so it won't freeze any more.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both films, the writers only had to add one small scene to justify the victory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24215" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T12:10:10.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27361" CreationDate="2017-03-26T15:22:06.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try using &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Submission Grinder&lt;/a&gt;. Go to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/Search/ByFilter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Advanced Search&lt;/a&gt; page &amp;amp; enter parameters. Eg, I just searched F and SF markets, entered Minimum Pay of 5c per word, Max Average Response Time of 10 days with Sort By 'Avg Response Days' and got back a list of 5 markets (plus others with no data); changing the Max Response to 30 days, resulted in 14 more markets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23277" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T15:22:06.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27372" CreationDate="2017-03-27T03:13:49.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being Bilingual has very little effect on a person's daily life, for &lt;em&gt;one main reason&lt;/em&gt;; the two languages they speak are combined to be similar to speaking just one language. Its similar to the idea of formality vs. informality, you speak to your boss differently than you would speak to a close friend. A bilingual English and Chinese speaker will speak English to other English speakers, and Chinese to other Chinese speakers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are sometimes slip ups - for example, you may incorporate slight amounts of your dominant language into your slightly weaker one. Just like how sometimes you might say 'sup' or 'nah' to your boss on accident because you're used to informal speech - a dominant English or Chinese speaker may find they add small quirks to their speech when speaking their weaker, or recessive language. Native Chinese speakers sometimes incorporate the words 'Aiyah' to express dissatisfaction, or replace words they don't know in English, and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to emphasise someone's bilingual nature, why not play on that idea? Have the character slip up with their native language, or use slight quirks in their speech patterns. If your story can come up with a reason for this to affect the overall aim for the protagonist, for example if you're writing a &quot;get the girl&quot; romance, being bilingual may lead the character to have new contacts - or run into a funny coincidence that allows the two characters to bond, or find the girl in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="23013" LastEditDate="2017-03-27T03:24:10.100" LastActivityDate="2017-03-27T03:24:10.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27368" CreationDate="2017-03-27T03:21:29.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can't find a specific illness, make one up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beauty of writing fiction is that it's imaginary. As long as something is believable, it works. I've seen characters that work and stress themselves so much - that they frequently run the recurring motif of having explosive nosebleeds. There are other characters that have made up extreme conditions that play to the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I prefer writing ideas to the plot I've defined, and only using real life research as an anchor to keep realism in check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-03-27T03:21:29.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27332" CreationDate="2017-03-27T03:28:35.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all about readability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want your readers to read your book again, and find out some unique new puzzle or piece of information that they never noticed in the first read through? Are you writing your book to be a one night stand, just a fling - or do you want your book to be something that is re-read, reanalyzed and redigested to understand deeper meanings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But leading in enough information to design a story through subtle hints that occur that can be overlooked, or leading in with foreshadowing are very powerful techniques that create the 'woah' moment that brings readers back for more, especially in the science fiction genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-03-27T03:28:35.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27373" CreationDate="2017-03-27T07:06:08.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of writing fiction as a translation of a novel from the place where your story is set into English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following Lauren Ipsum's answer, simply noting that the conversation was occurring in two different languages is sufficient. There are techniques used however, such as in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCbW7Gkgu2U&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Saving Private Ryan&lt;/a&gt; where a Czech soldier speaks German. You don't need to understand what is being said in German, however if you do understand what is said - it adds more flavour and context to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-03-27T07:06:08.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27372" CreationDate="2017-03-27T13:33:44.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being bilingual (or tri- or -insert-a-number) does affect a person's daily life, even if it is not noticeable to an outside observer, much like any other ability, whether it is inherited or developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A person with absolute pitch listens to music differently than a person with a regular ear. An avid enthusiast of physical exercise and a couch potato will not react to a broken elevator in the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have many friends who speak more than one language, and their ability to do so manifests itself differently, depending on the person. Some speak English with an accent, some do not, but the way they build their sentences sounds odd once in a while, and some are fluent to the point that I would never guess that English is their second language. Some might occasionally slip in a word or two in a different language, some never do, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is for you as an author to decide if you want to expand on any of your character's abilities (whether it is speaking multiple tongues or bouncing bullets off their skin) and make them work for your story. Who is your character, a traveler spice merchant or an undercover sleeper agent? I bet their multi-lingual skills would come into play in a different way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is your story, write them as you need them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-03-31T13:34:14.690" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T13:34:14.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27388" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-27T19:07:31.613" Score="2" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this is the appropriate forum (and tags).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a book written in MS Word (2007) ... with probably 250 endnotes.  Every time I create an endnote, MS Word:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;automatically uses the internal &quot;End Note Reference&quot; style ... &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;which first inserts a superscript number at the citation point in the text, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;then zips me down to the endnotes area where it inserts the same superscript end note number, and then allows me to enter in the citation text in whatever style I want (I use &quot;footnote base&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my problem:  The end note numbers don't quite format the way I want (in the end notes section).  I want the numbers to be normal-case (not superscript) and have and then indent before the citation text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But MS Word makes the end note number the same style (ie... if I change the style to a non-superscript, then inside the text of the book, the end note numbers won't be &quot;super&quot; to the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish I could describe this better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18781" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T20:18:55.680" Title="MS Word Endnote Style Formatting" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27388" CreationDate="2017-03-27T20:03:38.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have Word 2007 but you could try what works with 2010. Highlight the number in the end note. Right click it. Select 'Style' and then choose the style you want or modify the existing one. I chose a different style, but one that has the numbers as normal case and this didn't change the in-text reference size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: My wife, who is an academic and deals with this sort of thing often, said she just selects all the endnotes at one time and changes the font size so the numbers are are the same size as the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastEditorUserId="13409" LastEditDate="2017-03-28T19:34:54.610" LastActivityDate="2017-03-28T19:34:54.610" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27390" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-28T09:11:14.660" Score="4" ViewCount="537" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing stories since Elementary School but was diagnosed with a reading comprehension disability in High School. I was labeled as a visual learner.&#xA;Currently I'm writing articles for websites but having a hard time focusing and writing properly. My editor said my article hardly read well but I'm a well spoken person and communicate my thoughts better than I write them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24246" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T08:30:27.970" Title="How can I write easier with a learning disability?" Tags="|editing|structure|word-choice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27390" CreationDate="2017-03-28T09:33:12.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever you have written something, read it out aloud. When I do this I often spot mistakes, clumsy phrasing, and sentences that go on too long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can feel embarrassing to read out loud to an empty room or to your family, but stick with it. It is a great technique for making your writing sound natural and relaxed. If your mind works better using sound than vision, it allows you to perceive your writing as sounds rather than marks on the page. You could even try recording your own voice reading your draft article and then playing it back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, don't take labels such as &quot;visual learner&quot; or &quot;auditory learner&quot; as being absolute. I think from my own experience there is some truth in these descriptions, but many psychologists say that the idea of learning styles &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wired.com/2015/01/need-know-learning-styles-myth-two-minutes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;has little hard evidence behind it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13531" LastActivityDate="2017-03-28T09:33:12.973" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27390" CreationDate="2017-03-28T09:49:16.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had difficulty recognising certain sounds as a child. In dictations, I got to the point of having 80-90% of the words spelt wrongly. I overcame this problem with copies and reading A LOT. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what you or the people who diagnosed you mean by 'reading comprehension disability'; what I do know is that you have a difficulty. I don't mean to sound dismissive, but I dislike the word 'disability'; it seems to make a storm out of a shower. Moreover, I remember my terror all too well when I realised I couldn't distinguish between the sounds v and f. I spent years working &lt;em&gt;very hard&lt;/em&gt; to overcome it and I can only thank my teachers for not yet having embarked on the theory that you must simplify tests and assignments, or take it easy on the marking, for people with difficulties like mine. They told me that I could make it, I just had to work harder than my colleagues. And I did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, you overcome your difficulty by reading and writing. A LOT. Start with easy texts (related to your interests and goals) and then move up. Read the texts once in silence, and then read them aloud. Analyse how the text was organised (each chapter should focus on a certain idea). Make diagrams with the events/information (being a visual learner, this should be particularly helpful). Make one diagram per paragraph and then connect the diagrams. This will help you understand the structure of a text before you write one yourself using that structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you write. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, create a diagram of your ideas. Imagine you want to mention A, B and C. Write A, B and C on a piece of paper and add a definition for each as well as important factors associated. Make arrows with labels connecting A, B and C and/or factors they share or which are connected in some way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, think how you'll organise those ideas into a text. For that, you need to know the basic structure (introduction-development-conclusion) and how to organise multiple ideas within the development section. Remake the diagram in order to mimic how the ideas and connections will be presented in the text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, write. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you have no writing discipline. By this I mean that you have an idea and want to splash it onto a page as fast as possible. You should not put in paper the words running in your mind: one's mind is often chaotic and makes subtle inferences that disappear once you write things down. Force yourself to take it easy and take your time, especially at the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get yourself a list of connectors and choose three you feel comfortable with for each function (contrasting ideas, adding ideas, etc). While writing, refer to the list and use them. Make sure the level of formality/informality is the same for the tone of the text and the connectors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last but not the least, get yourself a mentor, that is, someone who is willing (and has the skills) to go over your 'reading diagrams', 'writing diagrams' and texts to give you help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you say you speak better that you write, may I suggest that you speak about the topic you want to write? Imagine you are dictating it for someone to write. Record it and then transpose it into writing and analyse it. I may be wrong, but I'm willing to bet you'll find that you write very much as you speak. You see, you can get away with a lot of confusing stuff (skipping, repetition, general disorganisation) while speaking, but not while writing. Moreover, while speaking, you can see if the other person is following you and quickly add more information to clarify any difficulties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-28T09:49:16.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27372" CreationDate="2017-03-28T11:08:20.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being bilingual means that you have a 'feel' towards two languages that only natives have. You can be absolutely fluent in a language but, because you aren't bilingual, there are certain subtleties of the language that you'll never grasp, even if you may have perfect grammar and a larger vocabulary than most natives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being bilingual often means that you'll prefer to talk about some topics in Language A and others in Language B. I remember reading a paper about a school in Belgium (an area where people spoke both French and German) that had Maths in German. The Belgium students, even though they preferred using French for most of their daily life, had a tendency to do maths in German (eg. if they went to the supermarket and were asked to do quick sums and subtractions, they'd receive the instructions in French, do the Maths in German and report the results in French). This means that, even if you're bilingual, you can still prefer to use one language for a certain task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the examples you give, I've got the feeling you're not talking about truly bilingual people (speaking two languages as natives). That means that, when they're in the country whose language they don't fully grasp, they may have difficulty with vocabulary they don't often use, they may fall for false friends, they may not understand jokes or heavily accented forms of the language, they may have trouble understand what is being said 'in-between' the lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spent a fortnight in the UK and, while talking to locals, I realised that I lacked the vocabulary to talk about some daily activities, namely food (some foodstuff being common in a country but not in the other) and specific housechores, but also objects and concepts that don't translate easily (the idea of shutters, for example, ellicits very different objects for British and Portuguese native speakers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are words that are used for different things (false friends). There's a thing called 'bacon' in Portugal, for example, but it has very little to do with American bacon: the former is smoked to the point you don't need to cook it; the latter may be smoked, but you must cook it before you eat it. Imagine the faces when I said I'm not a fan of fried bacon, that I prefer to put it in the bread and eat it as is. I couldn't understand my friends' horror until they showed me the bacon they had in the fridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, speaking a second language implies a bit more effort than speaking your native language. I spent two weeks hollidaying in France (my command of that language is passable); when I returned home, I was mentally exhausted from the effort of speaking French for so long. I spent two weeks hollydaying in the UK; I felt perfectly comfortable and it didn't feel tiring in the least, but when I returned home, I felt a pleasure at hearing my language as one who's never been in the situation can't imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you say you are bilingual (although I believe you mean you speak a second language, please correct me if I'm wrong), the ideal thing would be for you to spend a week in a foreign country using only your second language. It would give you a good idea of the impact in first-hand. If that isn't possible, try to read accounts of people who lived in another country. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, yes, spending a lot of time in a country where locals speak your second language does have an impact. How big an impact depends on how poor your command of the language is. Since your characters have a good command, it should have little impact; limit it to trouble understanding heavy accents and idioms, as well as to certain topics (eg., I don't get on with mechanics, so if someone starts speaking in English about engines I'm going to draw a blank no matter how good I am at other lexical areas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, cultural aspects have a much greater impact, no matter how fluent you may be in the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-03-28T11:08:20.530" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27394" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-28T23:54:57.007" Score="9" ViewCount="8500" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read a lot of the questions on here concerning naming characters and deciding on whether to use a fictional city. I have already decided to use a fictional city in the piece. But, my problem with naming concerns finding names for cities. What are somethings to help with this? And, what should I avoid in the name if the city is based off a real place but I don't want the readers to associate the real place with the fictional one? &lt;strong&gt;How do I go about naming a place, in general?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18418" LastEditorUserId="18418" LastEditDate="2017-03-29T20:37:47.050" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T17:17:22.997" Title="What are some good strategies to use when naming a fictional city?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|naming|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27394" CreationDate="2017-03-29T01:34:16.197" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about these general questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What era is your story set in? Do the characters use latin, greek, Norwegian to theme all their cities?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there multiple countries, and do they have different naming conventions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there something you want to convey in the story, a theme or a motif? Perhaps the name of the city relates to a common theme that runs through it. 'Sin City', 'Kings Landing', 'Sunnydale (an ironic name)'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about how the name of the city can play into your story. Do the characters live in a big brother society, where the name of the city holds background connotations or act as a clue to their situation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to theming your name with a real life location, post-apocalyptic stories do this very well. As time develops, we develop new quirks to our language. We recently add 'new' to the names of cities to signify a new city, or change of culture. 'New York' was to signify the cultural connections of the initial settlers that came from York. However in games such as Fallout, having the names of a real life location acts as a story reveal, for example, 'The Commonwealth' is the name for the post-apocalyptic land of Massachusetts. If you want to set your story in a future society, you could use terms such as New Paris, however it may be even more effective to reveal the history of the location with a unique name that holds connotations to the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T01:34:16.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27358" CreationDate="2017-03-29T11:42:18.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A short story I wrote recently did not feel quite right so I rewrote it in the first person (yes, I know some magazines won't accept first person). I found I had a much greater insight into that character's motivations and why she acted as she did. Try getting your character to write some diary entries, or, just for yourself, write those parts of the plot troubling you as a short story in the first person. Might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23277" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T11:42:18.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27358" CreationDate="2017-03-29T12:20:09.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In story, character is desire. Character is the things you want and the things you are willing to do, or not willing to do, to get the thing you want. Some stories hang a lot of rich detail on these bones, and some pretty much rely on archetypes to do it all for them, but in essence it is always about desire and what you are willing to do, the price you are willing to pay, to attain that desire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often the key moment of revelation in a story is when a character reaches the limit of what they are willing to do. (Will the soldier of fortune abandon the orphanage he has stumbled into to save his own skin, or has he found the limit on his callousness and must stay and try to rescue them.) That is when you know who this person is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing in what you have described of your story tells us what your protagonist wants, or the limits of what she is willing to do to get it. If those things are not made clear in your story, then your readers will have no sense of who the character is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as what the story line provides, the shoe is really on the other foot, it is the character's desire, and the limits on what they are willing to do to achieve their desire, that create the story line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T12:20:09.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27400" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27404" CreationDate="2017-03-29T19:36:21.240" Score="3" ViewCount="1217" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing a mystery story recently, but I've run into a problem concerning the&#xA;major plot twist, and was hoping for some guidance from more experienced writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Person A (the narrator) and Person B are twins, and thus are very close. Recently, a series of murders has happened in the area, and the group of friends that Person A and B are part of are trying to find out what's going on.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Person C, one of Person A's friends, is convinced that Person B is responsible for it all. She provides compelling evidence that proves her claim, and says that they should confront Person B as soon as possible. However, Person A refuses to believe her and provides counterclaims that are equally as valid as Person C's.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The twist is that Person C was actually right, and Person A was blind to it because of how much he cared about his twin- not even considering the chance that Person B could have actually hated him (which Person B indeed does).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's more detailed than that, but I don't want to make it too complicated. I just want to know if this is flat out lying to the reader or an unreliable narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, do any of you think this is a cheap twist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24264" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T21:33:07.283" Title="Is this an example of an unreliable narrator?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27400" CreationDate="2017-03-29T19:51:45.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An unreliable narrator is one who knows the truth but doesn't reveal it to the reader. It sounds like your story has a narrator who does not, in fact, know the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Watson is sometimes seen as an unreliable narrator of the Sherlock Holmes stories, because he deliberately hides or shades details from his readers. He alludes to the case of &quot;the lighthouse, the politician, and the trained cormorant,&quot; and &quot;the Giant Rat of Sumatra,&quot; saying the world is not yet prepared for such stories, and doesn't go into detail about why he and Holmes have to leave London for a few weeks in the summer of 1895. He also flat-out says that he's changing names and details to protect the identities of some clients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your story, Person A can't lie to the reader if A doesn't actually know that B is the murderer. It's &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; that A knows things which s/he is withholding from the reader, which C/D/E etc. would then bring up, but the reader would then have to see/hear that happening. If A is narrating, A has the &quot;ability&quot; to refuse to &quot;tell&quot; the reader what the other characters say. (If the story is just from A's POV but in third person, it's easier to determine if A is telling the truth or not.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T19:51:45.357" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27400" CreationDate="2017-03-29T20:04:38.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if what you are describing is unreliable narrator at all. An unreliable narrator is not one who is mistaken about facts. An unreliable narrator is one who is deliberately deceiving the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say the twist is that B is really right about who did it. But how do we know that this is the twist? Since A is the narrator, how do we know that B was right. Does A finally tell us that B was right? In that case they are not an unreliable narrator, they are reliably narrating a story in which the jumped to a wrong conclusion and were finally convinced of the right solution. That sort of thing is pretty common in first-person detective stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or does A maintain to the bitter end that A was right, while at the same time revealing enough evidence to convince the reader that B was actually correct? That is going to be extraordinarily difficult to pull off, and some percentage of readers are always going to be left confused. You had better be doing it for some reason other than as a gimmick or it may be torches and pitchforks for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even then, this is not really an unreliable narrator, just a narrator who is honestly relating an interpretation of facts about which they are mistaken. A truly unreliable narrator would be one who is genuinely attempting to deceive the reader, or one that is genuinely delusional. That is obviously pretty hard to pull off in the context of a detective story. It raises the question of who they are attempting to deceive and why (which presumes a narrative addressed to someone other than the reader) or of why this person's delusion are germane to the story being told. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The episode of BTVS when Buffy thinks she is a patient in an asylum and her friends and her vampire slaying are an illusion comes to mind here. But of course that episode is inconclusive. The whole series might indeed be the imaginings of mad Buffy. But does leaving the reader with similar doubts work for a detective story? Is that your intent? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T20:04:38.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27400" CreationDate="2017-03-29T21:27:26.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Pícaro&lt;/em&gt;: a narrator who is characterized by exaggeration and bragging, the first example probably being the soldier in Plautus's comedy Miles Gloriosus. Examples in modern literature are Moll Flanders, Simplicius Simplicissimus or Felix Krull.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Madman&lt;/em&gt;: a narrator who is either only experiencing mental defense mechanisms, such as (post-traumatic) dissociation and self-alienation, or severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia or paranoia. Examples include Franz Kafka's self-alienating narrators, Noir fiction and Hardboiled fiction's &amp;quot;tough&amp;quot; (cynical) narrator who unreliably describes his own emotions, Barbara Covett in Notes on a Scandal, and Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Clown&lt;/em&gt;: a narrator who does not take narrations seriously and consciously plays with conventions, truth, and the reader's expectations. Examples of the type include Tristram Shandy and Bras Cubas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Naïf&lt;/em&gt;: a narrator whose perception is immature or limited through their point of view. Examples of naïves include Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield and Forrest Gump.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Liar&lt;/em&gt;: a mature narrator of sound cognition who deliberately misrepresents themselves, often to obscure their unseemly or discreditable past conduct. John Dowell in Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier exemplifies this kind of narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe your narrator is &lt;em&gt;The Naïf&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for a plot twist being cheap or not: if everyone knows everything it is not a mystery novel. All of the stories in that genre are build on the fact that only the criminal knows exactly what happened (while still could be wrong about a great many other things).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T21:33:07.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27406" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-30T22:05:06.190" Score="1" ViewCount="815" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, people describe Odysseus as a hero because he fights in the Trojan War and fulfills his rights as king by slaughtering all of Penelope’s suitors. Upon his return to Ithaca, he finds out that suitors were consuming his goods and courting his wife. People, specifically the Greeks, considered this as an act of heroism. Heroes to the Greeks are defined as strong, burly, and brave warriors, yet with minuscule to fatal flaws. Odysseus’s revenge is considered a flaw. Though he technically does have the rights to take his revenge, slaughtering the suitors and harlots with a little valid crime is barbarous. The harlots and suitors are not planning on revolting against him, they have no idea that Odysseus is truly back. This act is unjustified and a true hero would of not have gone on a massacre of rage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24274" LastEditorUserId="8535" LastEditDate="2017-03-31T00:49:47.090" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T00:49:47.090" Title="Is my counterclaim good? How could it be improved? (This is based on whether or not if Odysseus is a hero or not, I argued that he was not a hero)" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-03-31T15:29:03.250" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27394" CreationDate="2017-03-30T22:41:43.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to use a naming generator to help me get an idea of what sort of names fit my story. I typically use pet monkey name generator or behind the name. I look for names sometimes based on meaning or language and other times I browse. Once I hit on a sound I like I alter it to make it mine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23326" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T22:41:43.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27372" CreationDate="2017-03-30T22:49:37.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am bilingual in Spanish and English and spent most of my growing up years in Mexico. For me being bilingual has some affects on my life, but not many. I find the cultural affects are far more influential in my day to day life. The feeling of not quite fitting in, in either place and the slightly different way that I view many situations because of the different cultures I have experienced affect me much more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23326" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T22:49:37.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27406" CreationDate="2017-03-30T23:43:44.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn’t flow very well. Consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, people describe Odysseus as a hero because he fights in the Trojan War and fulfills his rights as king by slaughtering all of Penelope’s suitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon his return to Ithaca, he finds out that suitors were consuming his goods and courting his wife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People, specifically the Greeks, considered &lt;strong&gt;this&lt;/strong&gt; as an act of heroism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What&lt;/strong&gt; is an act of heroism? What is the referent of &lt;strong&gt;this&lt;/strong&gt;?&#xA;Consuming his goods and courting his wife? That’s the last thing&#xA;mentioned. Or perhaps, finding out what the suitors were doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No; I think you mean the Greeks considered Odysseus’s slaughter of the&#xA;suitors to be the act of heroism. So, either rewrite to place that&#xA;directly before the sentence about heroism; or replace “this” with&#xA;something more explicit such as “his slaughter of the suitors”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heroes to the Greeks are defined as strong, burly, and brave warriors, yet with minuscule to fatal flaws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn’t that mean that, even with whatever flaws you can find in him,&#xA;Odysseus is still a hero (at least by Greek lights)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phrasing note: I would say “yet with flaws ranging from minuscule to fatal”. Seems more readable to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Odysseus’s revenge is considered a flaw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By whom? You? The Greeks? Some particular Greeks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though he technically does have the rights to take his revenge, slaughtering the suitors and harlots&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whoops, where’d those harlots come from? They were not mentioned before. It’s been decades since I read it, but I remember the suitors quite well and do not recall any harlots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with a little valid crime&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is barbarous. The harlots and suitors are not planning on revolting against him, they have no idea that Odysseus is truly back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seem to recall that Odysseus felt certain that the suitors would kill him if they knew who he was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This act is unjustified and a true hero would &lt;s&gt;of&lt;/s&gt; not have gone on a massacre of rage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, is a flawed hero still a hero or not? Ajax went on a massacre of rage, but he was also a strong, burly, and brave warrior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, I don’t think you’re making your case very well. First, you&#xA;should clarify whether you mean &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; don’t consider Odysseus to be a&#xA;hero, or the Greeks did not, or some particular Greeks did not. Second,&#xA;you should argue in the abstract for your criteria of hero vs. non-hero.&#xA;Only then can you apply those criteria to the specific case of Odysseus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8535" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T23:43:44.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27411" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-31T10:12:28.950" Score="1" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing science fiction short stories and intend to later expand and stitch them together into a science fiction novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that (e.g.) the scenery is left / the destination point is arrived at too quickly. This doesn't mean that the story needs to be over at that point but most of the times it more or less asks for a new chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many times I could expand them as I often just basically &quot;explain&quot; a science fiction idea (e.g. by examination/experience of an object/phenomena) where it probably should rather be an exploration of the idea. But not always and often I'm not sure &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;. At the same time I aim to have the story be as non-vacuous as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24281" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-24T20:43:10.497" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T20:43:10.497" Title="How to writer longer stories for a SciFi novel?" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|short-story|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27412" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-31T11:51:15.163" Score="5" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I'm writing a scene where Arnold and Jo are arguing over whether to go out tonight or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they do this, though, Rupert is also in the process of constructing a house of cards, and Gertrude is quite noisily searching in the cupboard for some lasagne sheets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these things play out in their own time, only to simultaneously reach their conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Arnold finally gives in and cries, &quot;Fine. Have your way. We'll go the post office!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rupert finishes his house of cards, only to step backwards from it and have it collapse.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gertrude finds the lasagne sheets, and cries &quot;lasagne!&quot; in triumph.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Assume, for the sake of argument, these will all be captured in a single continious wide shot.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any existing conventions about how simultaneous threads like these should be dealt with in a script? If not, what can be done to minimise the confusion for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T18:18:46.733" Title="Is there a widely accepted standard for representing simultaneous ongoing events in a screenplay?" Tags="|screenwriting|clarity|conventions|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27411" CreationDate="2017-03-31T12:52:11.067" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story must always be a story, which is to say that it must have a story arc. The arc of a story is fundamentally built around desire and the things people will or will not do to achieve their desire. Thus the crux of a story is always a choice the protagonist must make about the price they are willing to pay (or not willing to pay) to achieve their desire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different genres are defined both by the types of choices they deal with and by the settings in which they are told. The &quot;science fiction idea&quot; at the heart of some science fiction stories (not all SF has an original idea by any means) functions as catalyst for the character's desire or the character's choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your &quot;story&quot; is little more than the examination of the science fiction idea itself, it is not yet a story. And while length is not strictly germane to story, it is likely that it would take you much longer to tell the story of someone whose desires or choices are impacted by the SF idea than it would to describe the idea itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T12:52:11.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27412" CreationDate="2017-03-31T14:00:46.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...what can be done to minimize the confusion for the reader...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I am not an expert on script formatting convention, it is my understanding that neither screen nor stage scripts are intended for just reading, but rather for performing by professional actors under the professional director's guidance. Author's notes (&lt;em&gt;action&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;parenthetical&lt;/em&gt;) should suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T14:00:46.160" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27415" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27416" CreationDate="2017-03-31T17:46:59.607" Score="4" ViewCount="854" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;em&gt;Magic Tree House&lt;/em&gt; series, two ordinary English-speaking kids travel to different faraway lands through a portal. Every character they meet, whether it's ancient Greece or ancient China, speaks English. However, this series was aimed at little kids, and when you're writing for an older audience, do you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to explain away the language barrier conundrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, if your story employs lots of rhyming riddles and 'lost prophecies' from other worlds, would the story instantly lose its credibility if they all happen to be in English? (E.g., main character discovers lost scroll in Egypt. It's a rhyme in English!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know suspension of belief is required for all fantasy stories, but at what point do you try to explain the mechanics, and when can you just hand-wave it all under the rug?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23556" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T16:24:20.377" Title="Credibility of using English in non-English-speaking worlds" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|fantasy|language|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27415" CreationDate="2017-03-31T18:15:49.320" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The notion of &quot;willing suspension of disbelief&quot; is one of the most misleading phrases in the literature of writing (right up there with &quot;show don't tell&quot;). It is very much worth reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tolkien's &lt;em&gt;On Fairy Stories&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, in which he offers an extensive critique of the concept. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tolkien's argument is essentially this: a story involves immersing a reader in a sub-created world. Their participation and belief in the sub-created world depends on the internal consistency of the world, not on its correspondence to the real world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, stories are lenses, not windows. They exist to focus the reader's attention on certain aspects of the human experience and one of the principal devices by which they do this is to simply omit many of the details of ordinary life that real people would have to deal with. Thus characters seldom eat except as something incidental to a meeting or a party. They virtually never have to relieve themselves (except in broad comedy). Virtually no use of computers in all of literature is remotely realistic. Crimes are not really solved in a day. Etc. etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story needs to be self consistent. Whatever it says or suggests about the rules of the story world must be followed consistently within the story. If you decide to ignore language barriers in a story, go for it, but make sure that there is not anything else about the way the story is told that suggests that they matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that when I say &quot;story world&quot;, I don't mean exactly what the folks who indulge in that odd hobby of worldbuilding mean. It is not about creating a world with self-consistent rules and then setting a story in it. It is much more about the conventions of the telling itself than the objective laws of a world, real or imaginary. It is a tacit compact between the writer and the reader that we are not going to concern ourselves with whole classes of practical problems that would otherwise slow down or get in the way of telling the parts of the story that we actually care about. This is not a rare or unusual thing. In fact, it is probably universal. Certainly no contemporary TV show could function without this convention. (In the real world, for instance, all the characters in any cop show would be invalided out with severe PTSD by the end of the first season.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have not noticed that storytelling works this way, well, that just shows how ingrained this feature of storytelling is. We are not consciously aware of it most of the time unless it breaks down. But it is there in everything we read and watch if we only take a moment to look for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to ignore the language issues, ignore the language issues. Just make sure that you tell the story in a way that people accept (without particularly noticing) that languages issues, like going to the bathroom, are not something we are going to concern ourselves with in this story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="31505" LastEditDate="2018-06-17T13:16:46.643" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T13:16:46.643" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27415" CreationDate="2017-03-31T18:17:04.550" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider such works as 'Lord of the Rings'. Do you really think that anyone beyond the Shire would speak English, and yet they all do? (Yes there are other languages, but consider how they are introduced and used.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then think about sci-fi novels: set in the future and on other worlds and yet the language is still English that we can understand today (consider Shakespeare only died 400 years ago and how much the language has changed). Readers accept English without question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know the &lt;em&gt;Magic Tree House&lt;/em&gt; and so can't comment on it specifically, but I do know that adults accept English speaking as the norm: see &lt;em&gt;Star Trek&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Doctor Who&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You just have to make it believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T18:17:04.550" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27415" CreationDate="2017-03-31T18:39:25.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider &lt;em&gt;A Tale of Two Cities.&lt;/em&gt; It is about the French Revolution. It was written in English by an Englishman, Charles Dickens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dante's &lt;em&gt;Inferno&lt;/em&gt; (and others in that series) were written in a poetic form called &lt;em&gt;terza rima,&lt;/em&gt; which is not too hard to do in the original Italian, but is difficult in many other languages. Various translators have attempted solutions that carry the general concept of the scheme, without actually using &lt;em&gt;terza rima.&lt;/em&gt; (Of course, if you believe that Italian is the sole language spoken in Hell, then maybe any translation strains credulity.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his own comments regarding LOTR, Tolkien remarked that he approached his publisher for a book about the Elven language (Tolkien's academic experience was in the historical use of language). But the publisher turned him down, noting that such a work would not likely be interesting to general readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely there are many other examples. Just do what you think will keep your readers interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastEditorDisplayName="user23046" LastEditDate="2017-03-31T22:03:48.140" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T22:03:48.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27102" CreationDate="2017-03-31T22:21:04.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answer: YES. I know, It happened to me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The genre wasn't science fiction, but it was a kind of fiction that had one fantasy premise in what would otherwise be an every-day, credible story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agonized for a long time about the limits between what is merely to be accepted, and what is to be explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end (and I highly recommend this to all readers) I settled on just accepting the basic premise, and ignoring the science. Made for better reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: The original Starship Enterprise had a blinking red light on top. But why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T22:21:04.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27420" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27423" CreationDate="2017-04-01T14:52:03.223" Score="4" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an example from my own writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Watching the ceiling fan stir my thoughts, I said, “His favorite thing&#xA;  was to tell me about his day.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mrs. Saeki gawked at me behind her square glasses. “Unusual from a&#xA;  husband.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I nodded. “And they were all about little things. You know, how he&#xA;  picked his polka tie instead of the stripped one. What mobile games he&#xA;  played on his way to work. Why he called me at four and not at five.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“You didn’t feel bored?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I shook my head. &lt;strong&gt;“When you love someone, nothing that person does is boring.”&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could have written the &lt;strong&gt;bolded&lt;/strong&gt; part as: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Because I loved him, nothing he did was boring to me.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's usually better* in fiction? The original version of the passage or the second one? (a personal statement or an universal one?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;`* By better I mean which one touches the reader more deeply? Which one is considered better writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastEditorUserId="22391" LastEditDate="2017-04-01T15:04:03.610" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T02:51:52.097" Title="What's better in fiction: to make personal statements or universal statements?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27420" CreationDate="2017-04-01T15:15:49.913" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you want to accomplish with the scene, and the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither one is better writing per se. They do have slightly different tones, and slightly different meanings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;When you love someone&quot; is your first-person narrator speaking in second person to make his/her sentiment universal. S/he is saying &quot;when &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; person loves someone, nothing the beloved person does is boring to the lover.&quot; It's casual and doesn't portend anything — it's descriptive. It's also in the present tense, so the implication is that the description applies right now, at the moment the story is taking place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Because I loved him&quot; is your first-person narrator talking very specifically about his/her emotions towards his/her husband. While I realize we're seeing this snippet out of context, the past tense makes me wonder if the husband is dead or if the couple is separated/divorced. I &lt;em&gt;loved&lt;/em&gt; him, not I &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; him. There's a wee bit of negative foreshadowing here, which intrigues me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to &quot;touch&quot; your reader, again, it depends on what you want the reader to feel. If the narrator still loves his/her husband, and this is part of showing that sentiment, I'd go with the universal wording. If they are not together for whatever reason, then you'd need the specific phrasing, because the experience of love not being boring is in the past for these two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-04-01T15:15:49.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27415" CreationDate="2017-04-01T15:18:47.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could invent some magic device that translates everything automatically for the characters, like the babble fish of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or the Tardis in Dr. Who...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24289" LastActivityDate="2017-04-01T15:18:47.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27420" CreationDate="2017-04-01T15:38:02.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point of fiction is not to make statements. If you want to make statements, write an essay. The point of fiction is to give the reader an experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader may, of course, reach a conclusion as a result of a fictional experience, just as they may reach a conclusion as the result of a real experience. In fact, we are far more often convinced of the truth of an idea when we reach it by experience, rather than simply being told it. Actually, it is very hard to get people to accept an idea, however well argued, if it does not match their experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what you should be asking yourself in the passage above is, do you really want to drag your implication into the open in the way you would be doing in either version? By doing so, you move from persuasion by experience to persuasion by argument, which is a much weaker form of persuasion. Even though the words are in the mouth of a character, and even though people might actually say things just like this in real life, the effect is still to drop up out of the story world into the world of authorial preaching. We recognize that here it is the voice of the author coming from the character's lips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of reason why authors drop into authorial preaching: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is that they do not trust the reader to draw the right conclusion for themselves. Making their argument is, to them, more important than really examining what lived experience is really like. They have a point to make, and they want to make sure the reader gets it. But this always results in weak storytelling because the writer's focus in not on story but on argument. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is to pander to the audience. People have a tremendous appetite for having their opinions and prejudices confirmed. In fact, there is a pretty strong movement in the criticism of literature, TV, and movies today to demand that a certain set of orthodox opinions be directly and strongly affirmed. (This is not, of course, a new phenomenon. The demand for authors to demonstrate orthodoxy and piety is as old as humanity; only the gods change.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to pander, the universal statement is probably stronger. But if you are inserting these comments because you don't trust the audience, then trust them and focus more of your energy on portraying the lived experience as truthfully as you can, rather than forcing conclusions on the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is something very powerful about restraining yourself from overt authorial preaching and sticking to the creation of an experience. If you create a genuine experience then even those who would draw a different conclusion from the experience can still be moved by your work. If you force your argument into the open, however, you will lose all those readers. You can only preach to the choir, but people will sing songs they don't agree with for the sheer joy of singing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, we can read &lt;em&gt;The Grapes of Wrath&lt;/em&gt; and be moved by it, even if we don't share Steinbeck's socialist sympathies. We can read Dickens and be moved by him, even though most of the social causes he espoused are moot now. Although both authors had a point, they focused on creating an experience and let their audience draw their own conclusions. Thus their influence lives on long after their causes have been settled. And thus, also, they changed a lot of minds by experience that would never have been changed by argument.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To hold the attention of those who oppose us by the sheer compulsion of the experience we create is our greatest privilege and power as novelists. We should not squander it by making our arguments overt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="8535" LastEditDate="2017-04-02T02:51:52.097" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T02:51:52.097" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27412" CreationDate="2017-04-01T20:08:08.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As in any creative endeavour, it is up to you to decide how the scenes play out depending on what you want to convey. Are Arnold and Jo heading for a breakup because they are always arguing? Have the house of cards collapse in a cut-away straight after the argument concludes. Is the lasagne going to be a disaster? Have the cards collapse after that. Is Rupert orchestrating Arnold &amp;amp; Jo's contuinual arguments? Have him flick the cards so they collapse just before the conclusion of the argument. etc. You decide what you want the scenes to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23277" LastActivityDate="2017-04-01T20:08:08.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27411" CreationDate="2017-04-01T20:17:04.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't try to expand your story into something larger. If your story works at its shorter length then trying to blow it up into something longer will end up with superfluous action and characters. If you like the world depicted, try to find some other characters and events in that world that could play out over a longer timespan. If you like the characters, look at what happened before, after or around the events of the short story, or put them into something that will take longer to resolve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23277" LastActivityDate="2017-04-01T20:17:04.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20196" CreationDate="2017-04-02T13:59:08.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Key factors for conveying different characters in their written communications (specifically email.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Native language, especially if it's NOT the language of the emails.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cultural identity/political outlook.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Education: level and emphasis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22438" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T13:59:08.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20196" CreationDate="2017-04-02T17:27:36.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Few readers will notice difference of style between different characters. Perhaps for one or two of them, but not for a dozen. What distinguished people much more than their style is what they want and the kinds of things they are willing to say. One may be kind to a fault while another is cruel. The kindness or cruelty will distinguish them far more than the style with which each is expressed. One person may be after money, another fame, another friendship, another forgiveness. The focus on these things in their correspondence will distinguish them even if they all use similar styles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T17:27:36.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27433" CreationDate="2017-04-02T18:47:54.163" Score="3" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I want to write a fiction story and I want to draw heavy influences from my large extended family like aunts, uncles, grandparents etc. My family has an interesting story of how they fled communism to come to the US and I would love to incorporate the many different personalities that my aunts and uncles have as well as their different stories of how they fled the country. My question is could they(uncles and aunts) or their kids(my cousins) ever sue me for using their names or stories? Or would I be better off creating different names and just using their stories instead? I'm not saying this because there is bad blood in between any of us, quite the contrary, but I do know that money can change people sometimes.(Im not saying Im going to make any money off the book, I'm just interested theoretically at what &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; happen &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; something ever happen)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24299" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T10:08:08.980" Title="Can I get sued for using family names/experiences?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26618" CreationDate="2017-04-02T19:27:58.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe if you're writing a haiku in a particular language, you stick to the smallest unit of sound heard when the language is spoken. In Japanese, this is the ooni; in English, this is the syllable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8667" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T19:27:58.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27432" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-02T19:44:56.333" Score="3" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hate conclusions, but one thing I know about them is that you're not supposed to introduce new arguments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theme of my essay is about how the class of characters in the work I'm writing about influences what happens to them, or more plainly: &lt;em&gt;How class influences the situations of characters.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be considered introducing a new argument in the conclusion if I wrote about &lt;em&gt;the lack of social mobility and higher income inequality in the world today&lt;/em&gt;? Would it depend on how I stated this? I've been stuck on my conclusion for a while and would appreciate some help. If I wasn't clear enough, please tell me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24300" LastEditorUserId="23013" LastEditDate="2017-04-03T10:12:46.853" LastActivityDate="2017-09-05T18:05:23.717" Title="Not sure if my idea for a conclusion is introducing a new argument" Tags="|essay|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27430" CreationDate="2017-04-03T10:08:08.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I answered a similar question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27347/23013&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be perfectly fine to use a real life point, as long as there are no legal issues with regards to it. As long as you're not attempting to damage the people involved's reputations or defaming their names - there should be no trouble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you want to be 100% sure, make sure to &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt; the people involved if it is okay. It is sometimes surprising how many people love the idea of someone writing a book or making some documentary about them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T10:08:08.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27432" CreationDate="2017-04-03T10:20:51.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The conclusion of a piece should be the &lt;em&gt;wrap up&lt;/em&gt;, or the judged reasoning of what you have come to from your analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a scientific article, the conclusion lists what the end result of the experiment was; Was the hypothesis correct? In terms of an English essay, it's similar. You don't introduce anything new - a physicist won't suddenly add new information in the conclusion, &quot;Oh, by the way, I did this test three more times with this different liquid&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, it varies. If you're introducing evidence, for example, a quote that states that there is more income equality or lack of social mobility, or discussing how the text relates to modern day issues, that is considered adding new information. However, if you are using this as our overall conclusion, for example by stating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From [author]'s use of [techniques], it is evident that the author uses&#xA;  class as a signification of the lack of modern social mobility, and&#xA;  the higher income inequality in our world today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order for this to work, however, the entire piece should be written in a way that means that this conclusion can be reached. All points that you make in the essay should relate back to the idea that there is higher income inequality, and the link between the book and real life should be stated early on. For example, by stating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The author's use of [technique] in [quote] can also be attributed to be a social commentary on our modern increasing amounts income inequality that has become prevalent in modern life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - &lt;em&gt;ironically&lt;/em&gt; - in conclusion, the conclusion should be a wrap up of the entire piece that summarizes information stated before hand. It varies based on what information you're intending to use in the conclusion, however as a rule of thumb - you can always introduce the concepts early on, and carry them along as a theme for your entire piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastEditorUserId="23013" LastEditDate="2017-04-03T10:27:08.957" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T10:27:08.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27462" CreationDate="2017-04-03T14:27:59.297" Score="4" ViewCount="798" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do I have to consider when creating/inventing magic and magical elements for a fantasy novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there do's and don'ts? &#xA;How much do I have to explain to the reader? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because I decide as a writer that a certain characters power is stronger compared to others, is there an explanation needed as to why he is stronger? Why does some guy have magical ability and the other guy doesn’t? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How detailed/complex should it be? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23987" LastEditorUserId="23987" LastEditDate="2017-04-04T11:25:32.590" LastActivityDate="2017-04-07T06:16:09.997" Title="Magic and logic" Tags="|creative-writing|fantasy|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27435" CreationDate="2017-04-03T15:05:33.913" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two basic uses of magic in literature. One is as a catalyst for a cautionary tale on the dangers of power. Examples of this include The Lord of The Rings and A Wizard of Earthsea. The former is a treatise on the nature of temptation, and the latter on the nature of pride. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second use is to indulge the reader's fantasies of specialness. Power qua power is not really the point here. It is really all about claiming special status, a reason why the rules that apply to ordinary people do not apply to you, and having magical powers, particularly world saving magical powers, is an obvious source of specialness. Harry Potter is the preeminent example of this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter is far easier to write, especially if you aim is to do a series. BTVS started out as more of a cautionary tale and became increasingly about wish fulfillment after season two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of making this distinction is that the answer to your question depends on it. There is actually remarkably little use of magic in LOTR and none of it is explained. There is a little more in Wizard of Earthsea, and it seems to be vaguely of the knowing the secret names of things variety, but again it is not explained. The operations of magic are not the point in these stories, it is the moral challenge that they present to the characters that matters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the fantasy of specialness kind of story, however, the operation of magic seems to matter a great deal. That is because the almost inevitable progression of such stories involves a process of &quot;learning to master your powers&quot;. (As soon as someone says &quot;your powers&quot; you know you are reading a wish-fulfillment fantasy.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The culmination of the story in these works often depends on the correct manipulation of magic (as opposed to the mastery of your moral weakness in the cautionary tale) so again, the operation of magic matters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These kinds of magical wish fulfillment stories are almost always written as coming of age stories, because they are essentially pandering to a childish wish to be special. How much the details of the magic matters is going to largely depend on how central it is to that coming of age. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either type of story, the magic is a McGuffin. It does not matter in itself. It matters because it fulfills a function in the story, either as a source of temptation, pride, or danger in the cautionary tale, or as a sign of specialness in the fantasy of specialness. You need as much or as little magic, and that magic needs to be as vague or as specific as it needs to be to fulfil its role in your particular story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-06T12:00:43.233" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T12:00:43.233" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9427" CreationDate="2017-04-03T16:10:08.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's helpful to remember that John Updike's story &quot;A&amp;amp;P&quot; didn't arouse any trademark issues -- and it was published in the New Yorker in 1961 and later in Pigeon Feathers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T16:10:08.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5264" CreationDate="2017-04-03T16:15:05.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A similar issue reached the federal court  in this case: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Rock_Entertainment,_Inc._v._Carol_Publishing_Group_Inc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Rock_Entertainment,_Inc._v._Carol_Publishing_Group_Inc&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically the appeals court found that there was a valid copyright infringement claim against a publisher who published a trivia book about the TV show Seinfeld. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AHA. the original question was not limited to a single fictional universe, but was a reference for several. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately legal counsel could give the definitive word, but it seems reasonable to think that no reference guides would ever get published if you had to get permissions from everyone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T16:15:05.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27435" CreationDate="2017-04-03T16:16:08.143" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While some might not resist the temptation to immediately classify and categorize your magic system as though it is a real and already existing thing (which in fact you are only about to start developing), I will do my personal best to try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Baker is absolutely correct then he says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...it matters because it fulfills a function in the story...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I agree wholeheartedly. I'd go even further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Anything you choose to put into your story has (or should have) a function.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Else it is not necessary and better be left out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever are your reasons to write your story in fantasy genre, I assume, that the choice is made and there is a dragon somewhere which needs slaying, or a unicorn waiting to be captured, or something else which required to put your characters in a secondary world (or augmented existing one) and arm them with magic, or the opposite–have to battle someone who has magic and does something bad with it. Or any combination of the above and then some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is: if magic is not important for your story, it shouldn't be there. If it is, it better has rules and logic, just like any other element of your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like a rock-paper-scissor set of rules lets us play the game, there should be one developed for any element you invent, of there will be no game to play. The rules do not have to be detailed (or better yet, they can be as detailed or as simple as you wish them to be), but they have to be set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the funnest parts of writing fantasy is that you do not have to explain magic, and that can let you get away with a lot of things, but, regardless of whether you explain the rules of your magic system to the reader, they have to be set, and you have to follow them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just employ random magic to get out of a dire writing block, it will be immediately noted as cheating and will hurt your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-04-03T19:24:52.977" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T19:24:52.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-03T17:37:15.063" Score="3" ViewCount="1460" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am asking about the keywords that could make anyone feel fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it will be better if every one who will see this post could tell me what their feelings are or express their feelings in one keyword that delivers fantasy.&#xA;Thanks in advance :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24305" LastEditorUserId="15545" LastEditDate="2017-04-03T18:20:07.977" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T14:40:11.700" Title="What are the keywords of fantasy that might deliver the feeling of fantasy" Tags="|fantasy|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-04-12T23:13:35.533" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27412" CreationDate="2017-04-03T18:18:46.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems like something for FunnyBackgroundEvent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have the cards happening on screen, but not the primary thing, and the cooking as well, and then when the argument concludes, possibly with a doorslam, the cards fall, and the lasagna pan is dropped, or the souffle deflates, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... Oh... You want how to write it into a script, like in words... No help there, sorry...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13407" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T18:18:46.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27440" CreationDate="2017-04-03T18:19:51.230" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Lexical (Semantic) Fields&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not going to give you words to describe fantasy - that's not the point of this site. Instead, I'm going to introduce you to what a &lt;em&gt;lexical field&lt;/em&gt; is. A lexical field is a 'family' of related words. This is also known as a &lt;em&gt;semantic field&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here are some words in the lexical field of nature:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tree&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Forest&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Green&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sylvan&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By coming up with words relating to one lexical field and using that in your writing, you can reinforce a certain mood. For example, you can restrict yourself to using lovely words, or sad words, and that will help reinforce the mood of your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I suggest you do, is think of some words you associate with fantasy. Create a lexical field of fantasy words to use in your writing. You're looking to make the setting as accurate as possible to what is in your mind. If it's sad fantasy, use sad words, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to this, I don't believe it's right to just hand out words to you. It depends on many factors, and you should decide for yourself. Use a semantic field to assist you in creating a true sense of setting within your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T18:19:51.230" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27444" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-04T08:23:39.613" Score="17" ViewCount="2965" Body="&lt;p&gt;I seem to have this problem where I know a lot of words but can't always seem to think them up when I write an article or a story. I know the meaning of most of these words, but when I write, some everyday phrase or idiom comes to my mind first or I write elaborate wordy sentences even though a succinct alternative is clearly there but I fail to think them up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway what would you people suggest me to incorporate advanced vocabulary into my writing so that I can use the words I know instead of just identifying them when I read?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this is not off-topic. Sorry if it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15156" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T10:03:06.100" Title="How do I incorporate Vocabulary in my writing that I already know?" Tags="|vocabulary|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27444" CreationDate="2017-04-04T09:54:01.943" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Carnegie Hall method: Practice, practice, practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know those Word-A-Day calendars? We joke about them, but they're not bad as a starting point. Each day you pick a word you want to start using more often (from the calendar, the dictionary, or list you create). Spend 10 minutes writing it in a bunch of sentences. Write a little story if you want; it's okay if it sounds ridiculous because you're using the word so much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next day, pick a new word to write sentences about. Then practice using &lt;em&gt;yesterday's&lt;/em&gt; word in context in your speech as often as you can. The day after, you'll use Day 3's word in sentences and Day 2's word in speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons for focusing on two words in two different media are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sleep helps you learn and assimilate information better in the long&#xA;term&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;writing and speaking use slightly different parts of the brain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you're forcing yourself to remember something from a previous day,&#xA;    so you're embedding the word into your longer-term memory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a grand finale, try using all seven words from a week over the course of a weekend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T09:54:01.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27444" CreationDate="2017-04-04T11:02:23.033" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend three pillars:&#xA;1. Practice&#xA;2. Thesaurus&#xA;3. Drafting&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The more you write, the better your writing will become. This means finding the best word, and the best order to put the words in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thesaurus. Personally I don't think a writer should ever use a thesaurus to find a word you don't already know - that's the sort of use that gives thesaurus use a bad name. However, in exactly the situation you describe above, I think a thesaurus is perfect. Type in the word you know isn't quite right, and browse until you find the one (which you already knew), that is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Drafting. I think it's best to first write any old words to get the gist and the feel of the story down, rather than getting bogged down on finding the right word, when you may end up cutting the entire scene anyway. Then every time you do a reiteration see if a better word springs to mind, or use the thesaurus, as mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T11:02:23.033" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27435" CreationDate="2017-04-04T11:09:37.070" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some questions that you could use to prompt / guide you when inventing a magic system:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does magic exist? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What constrains it? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What can magic not do?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do people believe in one God, many or none?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do people make sacrifices&#xA;to Gods? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do an elite control religion / magic or is it accessible to&#xA;all? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any magical creatures? Describe them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To what extent is magic a learned skill or an innate talent?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is magic a specialist, elite skill or is it used easily by commoners?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the price / cost of using magic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do magicians need to meet any&#xA;specific criteria? Be celibate? Go through a ritual?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does magic&#xA;requires tools and props?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is one magician stronger than&#xA;another? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can magic be combined to increase its strength?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What&#xA;defeats magic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is magic admired / respected / feared / something&#xA;else?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is any magic illegal?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is magic generally used for? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What&#xA;are magic temples like?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These questions are from the 'magic' section of a larger world building questionnaire that can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.novel-software.com/theultimateworldbuildingquestionnaire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.novel-software.com/theultimateworldbuildingquestionnaire&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(full disclosure - the above is my site)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastEditorUserId="16816" LastEditDate="2017-04-06T09:47:53.683" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T09:47:53.683" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27444" CreationDate="2017-04-04T11:56:55.097" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't. I know the use of fancy vocabulary may seem like a sign of sophisticated writing, but it's not. Every fancy word you use makes you prose less accessible to readers. The only reason to bring in a fancy word is if you cannot express the idea you need to get across using simple words. The hallmark of a good writer is that they can get complex ideas across using simple words. Practice that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paragraph above is perhaps not the best example of the advice it gives. Did I need to use the word &quot;hallmark&quot; for instance? Some readers may not have an immediate recognition of what &quot;hallmark&quot; means. (A hallmark is an imprint that a craftsman makes in precious metal to indicate who made the object. My wedding ring was custom made and has the hallmark of the goldsmith on the inside.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could have used simpler language for this. I could have said &quot;sign&quot; instead of &quot;hallmark&quot;. Then my meaning might have been clearer to more readers. Or I could have simplified the sentence even more and said, &quot;A good writer can get complex ideas across using simple words.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;saying that gets attributed to a number of different writers&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter&quot;. Our first drafts tend to be lengthy and verbose. They tend to use all sorts of complex and difficult words. If we have time for a second draft, we can and should make them shorter, and use simpler words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read avidly, as you should if you want to be a writer, then your vocabulary will naturally grow over time. Your challenge, as a writer, is not to incorporate all that vocabulary into your writing, but to resist doing so as much as you can so as to make your writing as simple and easy to understand as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hmmm... I wonder if I could recast that first sentence to avoid the word &quot;avidly&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Interesting finding: &quot;Interestingly, using long words can result in readers missing shorter words that follow them, which can greatly affect text interpretation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://centerforplainlanguage.org/what-is-readability/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://centerforplainlanguage.org/what-is-readability/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-04T15:37:40.643" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T15:37:40.643" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27449" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-04T14:17:59.410" Score="2" ViewCount="1353" Body="&lt;p&gt;How psychopathic should a character be especially if they are one of the &quot;good guys&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, due to some vicious trauma in the past, the character has developed some pretty sadistic merciless tendencies that come out in  specific situations: they are more than lovely when it comes to family and friends but a bloody psycho when it comes to their &quot;enemies&quot;. Is that creditable? Or psychologically correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character is so caring to a fault, most times they are known to be saints, a perfect human being . . . That is until they, as I'd like to call it, &quot;switch&quot;. For one second they're putting babies to sleep or baking blueberry pies, the second they're licking fresh human blood of their hands or laughing their heads off while deciding which limb to cut off first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The change is so sudden and so outrageous that even the one whom they are closest to are taken by surprise every single time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I go with a risky plot like that? The character doesn't kill (though that's because they think death is too easy) so they aren't a &quot;bad guy&quot; and is very, um, &lt;em&gt;motherly&lt;/em&gt; when it comes to someone they are fond of. It takes a lot of character planning a whole lot of brainstorming-- I can do that, but as a reader is it readable? Or is too corny?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other questions I'd like to ask (don't know whether to leave them here or ask new questions):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I include graphic description even if I'm a bit of a beginner when it comes to gore?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much or far should they get away with?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I include real psychological illnesses that supports the character's actions or do I leave it as it is?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How scary should that character be if I still want them to be likeable?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24197" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T09:19:06.153" Title="Writing psychopathic characters (I)" Tags="|characters|character-development|planning|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27449" CreationDate="2017-04-04T15:20:15.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; in artistic expression. It is your story, and it is for you and you only to decide what and how to write. Some readers might be appalled and offended by your choices, but you cannot please everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no single all-inclusive recipe for creative writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write a few scenes as you imagine them and give it to read to someone you trust if you want an opinion/critique, this is how it is usually done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for being realistic, I would say, yes, it is better to make your character as realistic as possible, especially a psychotic one. You do want your readers to believe you, don't you? Research real mental illnesses and draw from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T15:20:15.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27451" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-04T15:36:51.947" Score="2" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm writing dialogue, I have a problem figuring out what is the appropriate thing to say in the conversation. Could you please help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24314" LastEditorUserId="24314" LastEditDate="2017-04-04T16:38:08.803" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T21:12:05.230" Title="Issue with flow of dialogue" Tags="|dialogue|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27451" CreationDate="2017-04-04T17:48:43.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dialogue consists of two characters trying to get something from each other. Each has a desire that they want the other to fulfill. Each has some reluctance in fulfilling that desire, or else has difficulty figuring out what that desire is because the other is not, for one reason or another, stating it clearly. They may be ashamed of their desire, they may be afraid of rejection, they may be attempting to deceive. But they want something, and they are choosing their words, in a way that is consistent with their character, to try to get the other person to grant their desire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The is true of both people in the conversation, so every passage of dialogue is like a game of chess: move and countermove, each person attempting to increase their chances of winning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know what to have a character say next, it is because you have not thought through what they are trying to get from the other person, or what the other person is trying to get from them, and why they are reluctant to grant it. Figure those things out and the next line of dialogue will be obvious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T17:48:43.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27444" CreationDate="2017-04-04T17:49:11.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I face this issue a lot. I used to worry about misusing a word, but over time I've decided that if the original thought includes the word, then it probably deserves to be used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another test to use is: can I express this thought adequately  without using the word? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fiction writing, you can make excuses for sesquipedalianism by claiming that a character would want to use exotic words (and then if you don't use it properly, you can simply say, that was the character misusing the word, not me!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often I use a long word and later edit it to use a shorter word. On the other hand, sometimes long words can seem more terse -- also for non-English natives, sometimes longer Latin-based words are easier to understand than seemingly simply verbal phrases.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/2009/11/roberts-awesome-tricks-for-improving-your-vocabulary/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article about building your vocabulary&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don’t worry about using words incorrectly. It happens. I frequently&#xA;  discover that I have learned a word partially or even wrongly. Sure,&#xA;  don’t rush to use a $2 word after you discover it, but really, the&#xA;  public shame of misusing a word in conversation is vastly overstated. &#xA;  (I am much more cautious when I write though). When writing, if the&#xA;  word doesn’t fit snugly into the context you need it for, chances are&#xA;  that either you  don’t need this word or don’t know it well enough to&#xA;  use it. (Yes, a simpler word is almost always better if  it conveys &#xA;  what you want).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T17:49:11.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27451" CreationDate="2017-04-04T21:03:28.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read a lot. Pay attention to how your favorite authors present dialog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find that written dialog doesn't include everything everyone says from when they meet to when they part. It starts when the important stuff begins and ends when it ends. It leaves out all the hellos and how are you's, as well as the I really should be goings and goodbyes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Limiting yourself to the meaningful, important, interesting bits of conversations might help you get through them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T21:03:28.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27444" CreationDate="2017-04-04T21:59:17.677" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to try the practice-practice-practice answer, but what has been helping me up until now is &lt;strong&gt;editing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go ahead and write the first draft with whatever words come to mind.  Don't let searching for the right phrase interrupt your creative flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you re-read your draft, take note of where&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you stumble over verbose phrasing,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you haven't conveyed the precise meaning or mood you wanted (or needed),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you have distracting, unintentional repetition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are the places where finding the right word or phrase pays off.  That's when you head to the thesaurus, not to learn the right word, but to remind yourself of the choices available to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I find that verbs that aren't pulling their weight are the easiest to find and sharpen because the weak ones are propped up with -ly adverbs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plain language is fine, and you don't want to inject twenty-dollar words where ten-cent ones do the job.  You certainly don't want to do that too often.  Overusing sophisticated vocabulary can be off-putting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally, however, a plain word doesn't cut it, and you need the &lt;em&gt;mot juste&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm disappointed whenever I read a novel that doesn't send me to the dictionary once or twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2782" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T21:59:17.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27444" CreationDate="2017-04-05T10:03:06.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am surprised that no one has advised you to &lt;strong&gt;read&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;The use of a language is primarily based on exposure to it and mimicking. That's how everybody learns their native language and masters foreign ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most answers have recommended you to practice writing, wich is sound advice. But for your practice to be effective, you need base material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick a word and collect examples in dictionnaries, books or ask people to make a few sentences with it. If possible (although these are harder to find) don't limit yourself to written examples. You will soon see that the word comes to your mind more naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19595" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T10:03:06.100" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27451" CreationDate="2017-04-05T13:18:35.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While dialog is often used to resolve a conflict of interests between two or more characters, it is not the only purpose it can serve; it can also be used to establish your settings (the notorious &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AsYouKnow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;maid-and-butler/as-you-know&lt;/a&gt; trope comes to mind instantly, but when executed tastefully, a dialogue can provide you with a fast and compact way to avoid lengthy chunks of description, serving the reader only bits of information which are immediately needed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way your characters talk is may (or even should) be telling (or, &lt;em&gt;showing&lt;/em&gt;, rather...). People, who know each other well, often finish each other sentences. People who are just introduced might want to impress each other with their eloquency, and some people start their sentences with &quot;I mean&quot; without, like, saying anything before that which might, like, require, like, clarification, or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure out your conflict, figure out the settings, decide who is talking, and type away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to avoid for sure: small talk. Unless you greeting bears an important meaning (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Imperator,_morituri_te_salutant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant&quot;&lt;/a&gt;), all &lt;em&gt;hi's&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;how-do-you-do's&lt;/em&gt; are just garbage whith pollutes the narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-04-05T21:12:05.230" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T21:12:05.230" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27332" CreationDate="2017-04-05T17:03:09.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends. In cases when the story is not plot-driven, it might even be the desired effect for the twist to be unexpected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets say you are writing a drama novel about the life of a fictional entrepreneur. You go through the significant events that got him here, creating his startup. Finally everything seems to be going smoothly and John is just about to fly to SV to pitch his product in front of a crowd of VCs. Funding is the remaining piece of the puzzle and with what he has to offer, success is imminent. Suddenly, he receives a call with terrible news. His six years old daughter is in critical condition after being hit by a car. From there you can end on how he goes to the hospital, she dies, he falls into despair and gives up on everything, including the company that was so far central to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you need to foreshadow the accident? Not really. There is no way the protagonist or anyone in the story's universe could have anticipated it. Accidents just happen without warning. The novel was never about the final resolution of some conflict. It was about the thoughts, feelings and actions of a man experiencing the ups and downs on his journey. The journey just happened to end on a hefty down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example is in comedy writing. No one laughs at predictable puns. As long as you set up the right tone, the more bizarre (or even world breaking) a twist is, the more effective it can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it can be very frustrating if the plot is the driving factor, yet you pull something out of your buttocks in the last moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Picture a murder mystery that ends with a person that was never introduced calling the detective and saying &quot;Hey, last night I was very drunk. I now notice that I brought a bloodied bat home. I don't remember much of what happened, but I want to to turn in and cooperate.&quot; Complete disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or a classic fantasy story that ends with the benevolent old wizard completing the young protagonist's quest by waving his staff and defeating the evil warlock on the other side of the world (Deus ex machina).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all about what you want your narrative to revolve around, making that clear to the reader early on and fulfilling said promise. Hence you don't even need to have a twist, as long as you have set up that expectation and there is something else worth while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how much to reveal and what the reaction is, I'm going with the assumption that the twist is essential to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you give them all the details and they figure it out well before the ending, they (1) feel a bit bored until they reach it and (2) think the plot wasn't particularly clever (to put it lightly) when they do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you give them everything needed early on and they don't unravel it, they (1) are filled with a sense of curiosity and speculate along the way and (2) think it was pure genius when it's revealed. Needless to say, it's very hard to accomplish and you run the risk of falling into the first category instead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you give them most of the information very close to the actual twist, it much depends on the overall tone so far and whether or not said information makes it painfully obvious. Depending on that, you might approach danger territory here or it might just be an exiting new turn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you feed them bits gradually and the final bit is not disproportional, but simply before the ending - you hit the gold spot. Readers that didn't figure it out will react as if you gave them something from the second category. Readers that did will be engaged along the way and feel rewarded for their efforts once they reach it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24338" LastEditorUserId="24338" LastEditDate="2017-04-05T20:49:46.713" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T20:49:46.713" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27460" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-05T17:42:15.110" Score="3" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have started writing my autobiography. I am going to describe 3 very important life events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, should I write about all three life events in one book or should I write them separately?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24339" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-01-30T06:47:33.627" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T06:47:33.627" Title="Should I write 3 separate autobiographies?" Tags="|style|technique|non-fiction|biography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27435" CreationDate="2017-04-05T20:26:06.320" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly suggest that you watch &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXAcA_y3l6M&amp;amp;list=PLH3mK1NZn9QqOSj3ObrP3xL8tEJQ12-vL&amp;amp;index=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brandon Sanderson's lecture&lt;/a&gt; exactly on that topic given at BYU. Someone also linked his blog if you want to read further. I'll try to summarize it from memory. It's basically 3 + 0 rules:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The more the reader understands your magic system, the more you can use it for satisfying problem solving:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is basically proper foreshadowing. If you left it ambiguous and use it to resolve the main conflict, it's just Deus ex machina. If you explain the boundaries well beforehand and have the characters use it as a tool in different situations, every instance looks canny. Even more so for important plot points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not to say you should always explain your magic in depth. For example, you can have a shiny new wizard save the protagonist from trouble early in your story. What it does is introduce a character, establish him as a badass and expand what is possible in the universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scarcely explained magic can be used to create a sense of wonder and excitement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thoroughly explained magic can be used to solve problems in a way that the reader will perceive as clever/well thought out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Flaws and limitations are more interesting than powers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A tool that can solve every problem negates any conflict. Stories revolve around obstacles that are hard to overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it's easier to make your magic mechanics look unique by placing some limitations on them, rather than think of completely new powers no one has used before. Mind control is generic and overdone. Mind control that can only be performed by the priests of a given god on followers of that faith that broke their oath can be interesting and reality immersing. Additionally, consider adding some sort of cost to your magic in addition to hard boundaries.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go deeper, not wider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your tale is not a wizard's text book. There is a limit beyond which it becomes an info dump of ideas in your head, rather than a story. And as per the first rule, you better explore the sorcery you will resolve conflicts with deep enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, it reduces the possibility for accidental plot holes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make it awesome:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty self explanatory. If you are writing an epic fantasy series, it helps if the protagonist's power isn't to be invisible when no one is looking. Though you can totally go that route if you are writing a comedy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24338" LastEditorUserId="24338" LastEditDate="2017-04-07T06:16:09.997" LastActivityDate="2017-04-07T06:16:09.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27463" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-05T20:34:17.830" Score="3" ViewCount="3509" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a first time author looking to publish a children's book which I need to have illustrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a contract offer from a well-known vanity publisher, and they have offered to produce the illustrations. The contract states that they will own the copyright to the illustrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something that should be a cause for concern, and does anyone have any experience in this matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24341" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T07:52:16.240" LastActivityDate="2018-02-22T07:52:16.240" Title="How important is owning the copyright on illustrations as a first time author of a children's book?" Tags="|copyright|artwork|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27464" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27488" CreationDate="2017-04-06T09:20:03.120" Score="1" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing my masters thesis at the moment. The topic of my thesis is the evaluation of one classification algorithm. Due to its technical nature I have to give a lot of context for each experimental setup. Something like the choice of signals to be classified for example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The signals tested in this experiment were fsk signals with the following technical parameters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shift/Symbolrate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;500/75&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;500/150&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;500/200&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;500/250&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;350/150&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;350/75&#xA;Each of the signals contained 20 header information and 80% payload&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;500/75&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the thesis containing about 20 experiments of various sorts, I'm not sure on how to best present my information concisely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would  you try and make a subsection for each experiment, use a table or present it in plain text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24347" LastEditorUserId="24347" LastEditDate="2017-04-06T11:46:55.127" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T09:57:33.343" Title="presenting a plethora of technical parameters in a thesis" Tags="|technical-writing|scientific-publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27460" CreationDate="2017-04-06T10:06:33.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An autobiography will generally tell your whole life up till now, you wouldn't write a whole book for a single event. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, you'll want to include more than just three events if you're going to draw people into the story of your life and see how you develop as a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a compelling reason why people would want to read your autobiography? Usually people who write autobiographies do so because they are have had a highly eventful life, something out of the ordinary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth considering what will make your autobiography compelling to read and ensuring that is a clear theme throughout. Also, consider the development of the story, how your life and personality changes over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is perhaps wandering from the point of your question but is hopefully helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16816" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T10:06:33.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27440" CreationDate="2017-04-06T12:30:38.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Choose words and symbols to illustrate &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; fantasy, rather than something generic.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, there are a number of free online tools for exploring words' synonyms, connotations, and impact. One I like is: &lt;a href=&quot;http://graphwords.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://graphwords.com&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, if you figure out what makes your fantasy unique, and find words that illustrate and support that, you'll be telling your own story, rather than some generic (and IMHO thus more boring) story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your fantasy involves, say, magical trees, find/search for words related to trees, folktales about trees, tree spirits (dryads), origins of Christmas trees, etc. Use the resulting info to 'color' the world your story takes place in and its characters.  If dragons are a focus, make word/concept lists to support flying, fire, jewels, caverns, treasure etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you can do this with names (though best to avoid being obvious about it.)  For example, 'Thorin Oakenshield' gives some character hints that 'Thorin Jones' just doesn't.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22438" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T12:30:38.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27440" CreationDate="2017-04-06T14:40:11.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Words individually do not give the feeling of any genre. It is how you put them together to create a picture in the reader's mind. Just as a painter may use the same pallet of colors to paint a unicorn or a cart horse, so an author can use the same pallet of words to paint a fairy palace in the air of a gritty tenement in New York. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the opening of some of the great fantasies like Wind in the Willows or LOTR and you will find that they use very ordinary words. It is how those words are combined to produce images that makes the difference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T14:40:11.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27460" CreationDate="2017-04-06T18:19:18.623" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to describe one important event in one book, then that's not an autobiography; it's a memoir. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and you can certainly include information about your life aside from that event in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An autobiography would be the entire story of your life to date, and you would generally go into less detail on each event, focusing less on the event itself and more on the way that event affected your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have three significant events to write about, I think you could justify writing &lt;em&gt;four&lt;/em&gt; books - three memoirs, one about each event, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; an autobiography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22241" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T18:19:18.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27463" CreationDate="2017-04-06T22:10:40.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree somewhat with the rest of the answers. It's not uncommon for illustrators to seek copyright control over their work product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should be an agreement which specifies the royalties and duration of the collaboration and conditions of termination. It should also be stated whether the illustration can be used for digital publishing. (If digital publishing, then you need to be really clear about termination rights). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you are not turning over exclusive use of your writing as a condition of publishing, you should be all right. On the other hand, if the publisher offers an advance or significant percent of royalties, I can envision an agreement where you do provide limited copyright transfer to the publishing house. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything is negotiable, and the main thing to keep in mind is that if you must give up something, you must gain something in return. If they are giving a &quot;Take it or leave it&quot; contract and giving you next to nothing, that is not really in your long term interests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T22:10:40.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27394" CreationDate="2017-04-07T12:34:40.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within the US:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;place names all over the country derive from tribal names and native-American toponyms: Seattle, the Dakotas, Massachusetts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cities are named for prominent people who died before the city was founded; as the countries was settled east-to-west, more westward cities are named for more recent people (William Pitt died in 1778; Lincoln in 1865)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in the Southwest, city names are typically Spanish, often beginning with San/Santa (meaning &quot;sainted&quot; or &quot;holy&quot;) or Los/Las/El/La (all words for &quot;the&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in the Midwest, cities often incorporate geographical features, ending in &quot;Falls&quot;, &quot;Buffs&quot;, or &quot;Hill&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on the East Coast, many cities are named for coastal features: &quot;Bay&quot;, &quot;Cove&quot;, &quot;Beach&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick where you want your city to be (or to suggest being), find a dozen cities in that area, look for a rule, and invent a name that fit both that rule and the mood you are trying to create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2017-04-07T12:34:40.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27475" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-07T17:58:57.490" Score="6" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently writing a novel, and I am wondering how much a complete manuscript changes if accepted into a publishing house. I have heard from fellow writers that this may vary from publisher to publisher, and- clearly- bad grammar will get the boot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I would like to know, in the most general sense, which revisions a writer might expect to see if they have success in getting a contract with a publishing house, particularly in regards to common content changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24365" LastActivityDate="2017-04-07T21:12:06.540" Title="How much does a manuscript change through publication?" Tags="|publishing|editing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27475" CreationDate="2017-04-07T21:12:06.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to this is, almost anything. More characters, fewer characters, different setting, different ending, longer, shorter, rougher, gentler. People get asked for all of these things and much more. Publishers are trying to fit a book to a certain market, and they will want you to produce a MS that fits the market they have in mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How willing they are to work with an author to make a work fit the market they are aiming for will depend on how much promise they see in the author's work and how many other potentially publishable work they have in the queue. But actually publishable work from an actually publishable author is actually pretty rare stuff, so they can be willing to give a lot of feedback and ask for substantial revisions where they see potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't get the impression that this is about the publisher helping you to realize your vision. This is about you helping the publisher to keep product in a channel. Your scope for realizing your vision lies within the confines of that channel, and realizing it is largely on your head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-07T21:12:06.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27477" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-07T23:27:20.627" Score="5" ViewCount="5991" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I portray a character who does not actively seek attention, but is still vain and self-superior?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I don't know how much information you will need, I will list everything I think might be relevant below, so you can choose what you think matters to read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Plot overview&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some monsters attack Earth, the protagonist boy discovers his fancy new power and is taken by a bunch of good aliens. Good aliens tell the boy that there are bad aliens that want to attack Earth, and they must train the boy to defeat the bad aliens. The character in question is one of the good aliens&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Basic biography&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character in question is not the protagonist, but the most important non-protagonist character, if not more important than the protagonist himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This character is named Alice, she is female with no stereotypically feminine traits. She is 17-20 years old.  Her parents are the good alien's leaders. She was raised as an experimental super-soldier in preparation for the war with the bad alien.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and even though Alice is an alien specimen, consider her to be identical to be a normal human being only raised in a different society, because the good aliens' bodies and psychology has no important difference from that of human beings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tone and atmosphere&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The atmosphere is pessimistic and grim-dark-ish, because the bad aliens are unimaginably strong and seemingly infinitely numerous, while the good aliens are weak and have been hunted for generations, with one crushing defeat over another. The good aliens' society is not what most modern readers would consider ideal either—they are utilitarian and fascist, like District 13 from the Hunger Games trilogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the Earthlings, they are just helplessly struggling in chaos and have no significance to the story beside something that the protagonist thinks he's trying to protect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;More about Alice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alice herself is pessimistic, selfish and cynical, with no desire to help her species nor empathy for anyone specifically; however, being an experimental super-soldier and one of the expected inheritors of leadership, she is also the focal point of the good aliens' remaining hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She enjoys this kind of attention, but find the people paying her such notice to be foolish and merely amusing. With such an attitude and social position, she believe herself to be superior in intellect and power, hence the arrogance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Role in book and plot&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alice is the character foil of the protagonist, or vise versa—where the protagonist boy (currently unnamed but may be referred to as &quot;Bob&quot;) is innocent, superficially altruistic and acting upon emotional impulses.  Alice is cynical, calculatingly selfish and acts only so as to advance her own welfare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the good aliens adopt Bob as a tool to deploy against the bad aliens, Alice feels her previous prestige and attention were taken away, and is thus somewhat spiteful towards Bob. She is also aware, with some of this awareness extending beyond the fourth wall, that the arrival of Bob into the midst of the good aliens' society is like the arrive of Neo amongst Morpheus's team, like it is in The Matrix, which implies that she will inevitably become a support character like Trinity, something she strongly despises. Yet, being the most successful of the super-soldier program, she must train alongside Bob and is obliged to sometimes offer guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alice will eventually enter a redemption arc, but that is after it is necessary to portray her as a passive yet arrogant person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19055" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2018-12-20T01:25:07.587" LastActivityDate="2018-12-20T01:25:07.587" Title="How to portray a passively arrogant character?" Tags="|fiction|characters|character-development|fantasy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27477" CreationDate="2017-04-08T12:55:56.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A character is a bundle of desires. They are defined first by their primary desire: the thing that is driving their action in the story. Second, they are defined by their secondary desires, the things that shape or limit how they pursue their primary desire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tom wants to win an athletic scholarship so he can go to college. A scout will be at the big game on Saturday. But the coach is planning to start his nephew Joe instead. What will Tom do? Will he break Joe's leg in an alley? Bribe Joe to give up the spot? Manfully cheer Joe on from the sidelines? These questions depend on Joe's secondary desires &amp;ndash; does he want to be seen as honorable, or to see himself that way? Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The genre does not matter. You portray a character through what drives them, the things they want, and the things they are willing to do to get what they want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't fall into the trap of inventing a character as the intersection of various psychological descriptors. Define characters in terms of desires. Characters in a story can never just be, they must act. Desire drives action. Define your characters in terms of their desires. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="28831" LastEditDate="2018-12-19T18:54:27.477" LastActivityDate="2018-12-19T18:54:27.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27512" CreationDate="2017-04-09T22:34:48.683" Score="1" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been writing aphorisms for the most part of my life. Up to now, I noted them down in (real-life, paper) notebooks. From time to time I copied them to a MS-Word-file, which has now swollen to about 100 pages. To cut it short, since I keep on producing and am now also keen on arranging them into collections, sections... it would probably smart to find a better way to collect these bits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice I am looking for an application, that would allow me to collect these aphorisms as single &quot;files&quot; or &quot;quotes&quot;, reject duplicates, sort the &quot;files&quot; alphabetically, rearrange them into subcollections, and maybe most importantly: export them to printable formats like docx, odt, pdf, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware, that most reference managers would in some way offer at least a part of these functionalities, but that which I tried are still very limited when it comes to e.g. clarity of arrangement. I hope somebody has some experience on the subject!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS I'm on Mac OS 10.12&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24379" LastEditorUserId="24379" LastEditDate="2017-04-09T22:42:11.180" LastActivityDate="2023-06-06T09:46:40.990" Title="What would be a good way of electronically organizing my aphorisms?" Tags="|software|quotes|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27481" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27489" CreationDate="2017-04-10T01:49:07.307" Score="2" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Will writing about things like suicide, self-harm, and tragedy give me negative results when my stories are read and is it best just to avoid these subjects all together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24380" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T12:30:32.627" Title="Is it bad that I touch macabre subjects?" Tags="|ideas|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27481" CreationDate="2017-04-10T04:51:47.363" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shakespeare is well-known for his tragedies, multiple of which include or touch on the concept of suicide. Romeo and Juliet both commit suicide. Hamlet struggles with suicide and has an entire soliloquy about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking of suicide and self-harm in tragedies is far older than even Shakespeare, however. In Oedipus Rex (speaking of taboo subjects!), the eponymous character drives stakes through his eyes when he realizes what he's done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One important thing is to know your audience. When you're going to see a tragedy, you know it's going to be, well, tragic, and that it may concern itself with such things. The cultural mores of the time will influence what your audience is comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other important element is to handle it in a careful way. One method that has been forever employed is euphemism - the subject matter is touched upon rather than explicitly spelled out, but &lt;em&gt;consequences&lt;/em&gt; are explored. The novel Flowers in the Attic is a relatively modern story that involves an evil grandmother who locks her nieces and nephews up in her attic in lieu of raising them. Incestuous rape is involved, but it approaches it in the manner of examining what would happen if people who happen to be related are forced into such a situation. It is presented as tragic and emotionally damaging for all involved parties. Granted, the book is controversial and got its share of critical panning, but it has also been assigned reading in high schools at times. (And banned at other times, just to show you that mores are finicky.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will note that this doesn't mean the work doesn't have to be entirely serious despite the gravity. Dark comedy is a thing, though I will note that it is very difficult to pull off and falls flat for some people. In the movie MASH (and I believe this scene was in the novel? Someone may want to double-check me), their dentist, Painless, was suicidal. They held him a mock funeral with a mock suicide, in a darkly comic way. (After all, Suicide is Painless). The point of dark comedy is that it is a method of coping with these dark emotions, often by facing them headlong and laughing in their face. But it is not for everyone, and is even harder to pull off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, it's not bad that you touch on macabre subjects. But you must be able to do it well, and explaining how to do it &lt;em&gt;well&lt;/em&gt; is beyond the scope of a single post. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21750" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T04:51:47.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27480" CreationDate="2017-04-10T07:09:44.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe &lt;a href=&quot;https://evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt; is an excellent tool for that. Not only you can capture snippets from every webpage or e0book, you can also organize them in tags and categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2023-06-06T09:44:42.130" LastActivityDate="2023-06-06T09:44:42.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27484" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27486" CreationDate="2017-04-10T07:46:39.643" Score="11" ViewCount="7427" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have several stories on hold because either I am not able to post them at the time, or they are incomplete and do not plan to finish them anytime soon. When it comes to the second scenario, what do I do with the story? Do I just leave it rotting in my google docs folder for a month or two, or do I look for inspiration and continue writing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24380" LastActivityDate="2017-04-11T17:43:04.597" Title="What happens when I get bored of a story I'm writing?" Tags="|writers-block|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27484" CreationDate="2017-04-10T08:15:56.047" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my little experience, there are two ways to overcome that impasse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The flow. You just write without thinking, just write whatever comes to mind, force yourself to fill the page, and the page after. This helps to unblock. Once you have put black on white, it's easier to go back and rewrite or edit. But setting the needle to &quot;0% thinking / 100% writing&quot; is a good way to go.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wait and forget. You just let your subject rest and forget about it, work on other things or other projects. Then you go back to that original thought after some time (a couple of months maybe). You might find new ways to look at it. Sometimes things surprise me, and I find inspiration for a subject after many years that idea came to my mind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T08:15:56.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27484" CreationDate="2017-04-10T08:16:09.397" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that it usually boils down to these three scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At times, you simply get irritated and fed up. You reach a point in your story that you've only really thought out in broad strokes, but when you sit down to it and need to write out all the nitty-gritty, it just doesn't work out. I don't think letting something (as you so put it) &quot;rot&quot; for a month or two is necessarily a bad thing. Go do something else. Inspiration is like a tax refund - you never know when it's going to come.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then there are those times when you reach a &quot;transitional period&quot; of a story, namely when one event transpires to another. Such a &quot;transitional period&quot; is necessary, as otherwise your story wouldn't make sense, but writing it out is simply &lt;em&gt;boring&lt;/em&gt;. There are devices for avoiding such transitional periods, but speaking in generalities is anything but helpful (i.e. in general, avoid transition periods, but in other times, it just won't work). In this case, my advice is to leave a page blank and move onto a more exciting bit. Don't allow a part of a story you have already structured in your head to allow you from progressing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And then there are those stories when something just doesn't work out. Perhaps I should put on my Captain Obvious hat, but yes, at times you reach a point in a story which you freeze on. Sometimes, it's because an idea that seemed decent in theory turned out to be anything but in practice. Other times, you wrote your heart out only to find more darkness at the end of the tunnel. Above all, don't waste good ideas. Either rethink your story: trim a character or add a new one, write more build up for a climactic event, etc. Or scrap it, start fresh, but recycle everything that worked. The machine may have not moved, but that doesn't mean a gear or two was well-placed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24383" LastEditorUserId="24383" LastEditDate="2017-04-11T02:43:39.083" LastActivityDate="2017-04-11T02:43:39.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27484" CreationDate="2017-04-10T09:45:41.807" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the story is so boring for you that you can't get yourself to finish writing it, chance is more than good the story will be too boring for the reader to finish reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drop it, scrap it, or at best rework it into something completely different, possibly trimming it into a short open-ended story or reusing best parts as fragments of a different work. Regardless, in current form, it's dead. Trying to force yourself to finish it in current form won't result in anything remotely good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T09:45:41.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27464" CreationDate="2017-04-10T09:57:33.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The usual approach is a set of tables. This is a paper, you don't try to be interesting, you want to be informative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want the &quot;main gist&quot; to be lost among plethora of tables, you can perform a top-down &quot;decomposition&quot;, where after introduction of methodology you present first a brief summary of results (which you then repeat in the &quot;Conclusion&quot; section at the end), and then follow up with how you arrived at these, through tables of various experiments, one chapter/section per experiment, as many tables as relevant to the experiment included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of all, tables are the usual &lt;em&gt;flesh&lt;/em&gt; of any scientific papers on experiments, presenting their results. Methodology, background, theory, that's all &quot;fluff&quot; that helps people in understanding the results, proves their validity and roots them in the &quot;general image&quot;, but they read the paper for these results, and these will appear either as tables, or as graphs, which, while more evocative, are less precise (so you may include both.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look up some white papers on material engineering. A typical approach is two-three pages of &quot;background&quot;, followed by 50 pages of tables. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T09:57:33.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27481" CreationDate="2017-04-10T10:54:25.100" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend to be very wary of the topic of suicide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There appears to be a lot of evidence that suicide. like other behaviours, can be contagious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.columbia.edu/itc/hs/medical/bioethics/nyspi/material/MediaContagionAndSuicide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Media Contagion and Suicide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result of this many countries have codes of practice regarding reporting and sensationalism of suicide, particularly in children, teens and young adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samaritans.org/media-centre/media-guidelines-reporting-suicide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Media Guidelines for Reporting Suicide&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While most of the literature I have seen relates to journalism, there are certainly sources which include fiction as being part of the same effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7GbaBwAAQBAJ&amp;amp;lpg=PA199&amp;amp;ots=dnJShnFEiv&amp;amp;dq=reading%20about%20fiction%20suicide%20increases%20likelihood&amp;amp;pg=PA200#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=fiction&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Evidence also supports the connection between fictional suicide stories and subsequent imitative suicides.'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.columbia.edu/itc/hs/medical/bioethics/nyspi/material/SuicideAndTheMedia.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Given the substantial evidence for suicide contagion, a recommended suicide&#xA;prevention strategy involves educating reporters, editors, and film and&#xA;television producers about contagion in order to yield media stories that minimize&#xA;harm.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There doesn't seem to be much literature about the effects of suicide in fictional writing. It might be that you don't get the single 'big hit' of exposure to a population that you do with news or TV drama stories, or perhaps the different uses of 'literature' and 'novel' are confounding my search. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, my point was not to say 'don't write about suicide', but to say 'consider the potential effects on readers of writing about suicide'. And consider the effect on yourself.&#xA;You presumably wish your writing to have impact and be memorable. Writing can be powerful, so writers have a duty to give consideration to how they wield that power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19924" LastEditorUserId="19924" LastEditDate="2017-04-10T12:30:32.627" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T12:30:32.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27484" CreationDate="2017-04-10T15:03:46.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe in scraping a story just because you lose interest in it. A lot of people are going to advise you to get all that's in your head, regardless of quality, on paper. This is a viable strategy but there will come a time even when that won't work. My advice is to give your incomplete works time and revisit them some other time. If you still can't make sense of what you're after it probably will be better safely saved in your cloud. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23779" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T15:03:46.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27463" CreationDate="2017-04-10T16:54:01.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be cautious about &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; dealings with a vanity publisher, they make all their profit by selling you overpriced services. In this case, you're essentially paying for the illustrations (perhaps not as a separate line item, but included in your contract), with &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; guarantee of quality, and &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; ownership of the finished images.  It's even possible they may not create custom images for you, but draw from a library of stock images (which might be one reason they want to retain copyright). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to look into submitting to a standard publisher.  They usually prefer to find the illustrator themselves, so it is perfectly fine (and probably even better) to submit without illustrations included.  You still end up &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; owning the illustrations, but at their cost, not yours.  Also, they are likely to be able to afford/access much higher quality illustrations, as well as work with illustrators proven to have a good grasp of the market.  Since they make their money off sales, not you, it is in their own interest to get the best possible illustrations, in a way that is not also true for the vanity press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do want to self-publish, I would strongly advise commissioning your own illustrator.  That way you get editorial oversight AND copyright.  In general, if you're willing to do the legwork and research to find competent work, you can take care of all the services a vanity press does --not always at a lower cost, but with higher quality and more long-term control over the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2017-07-17T16:32:11.263" LastActivityDate="2017-07-17T16:32:11.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27480" CreationDate="2017-04-10T21:02:48.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It wouldn't necessarily help for categorization, but a simple Excel doc could help a lot with sorting and de-duping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T21:02:48.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27495" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-10T21:35:51.690" Score="1" ViewCount="481" Body="&lt;p&gt;The character I describe is in fact reflective of somebody I know in real life--a kind of nihilist who finds all pursuits and goals &quot;hollow and ridiculous&quot;, as the person says. This inevitably implies that the person in question live day by day on trivial concerns--the pursuit of food, shelter and idle comfort, as opposed to the long-term-goal-oriented efforts of most others. (e.g.: go to school to learn a skill; earn money with skill; use money to buy a house and live happily ever after etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if it would be possible to re-create such a person in fiction; my intuition is that it will be difficult to see consistently comprehensible actions from such a character, in other words, such a character will not perform series of actions that are all constituent of the same goal. Instead, such a character would only &lt;strong&gt;react&lt;/strong&gt; to the happenings of any plot, and would thus only be suitable as a secondary character whom the main characters &lt;strong&gt;observe externally&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my understanding of literature is limited, and there might be precedents of such characters being successfully portrayed in other roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This person whom I know in real-life developed their nihilistic attitude from religious/philosophical disillusionment, as they describe. Unlike the typical hedonistic stereotype of a nihilist, this person is in fact abstinent and holds many socially progressive views and principles. However, they said that there is no rational justification for these behaviours, and that they don't see these actions to be morally superior to &quot;depravities&quot; including violence and substance abuse on an intellectual level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside these, this person also has talents in programming and art, and often create things in these media, but they said that while these exercises are interesting or beautiful, they are not meaningful in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19055" LastActivityDate="2017-04-11T20:05:56.057" Title="Would it be possible to create a character without substantial motivation?" Tags="|characters|motivation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27495" CreationDate="2017-04-10T22:03:56.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point of a story is to have a conflict on the road to a goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, your goal is to have a nihilistic life, and therefore a conflict to this would be situations that clearly attempt to flip this upside down. Does he absolutely not want to be famous, so he somehow accidentally becomes famous? Does he get mixed up into something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, maybe there's an internal conflict that you want to develop, or a conflict with other characters. Refer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.storyboardthat.com/articles/e/types-of-literary-conflict&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;these conflict types&lt;/a&gt;. Of course however, you're not limited to just one type of conflict. There are stories that expand through all of them, or just a select few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Generally, think around the lines of this:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;What is the main character's goal, and what stands in the way of their goal?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23013" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T22:03:56.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27495" CreationDate="2017-04-10T22:08:54.757" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you describe is a person who denies the value of anything, and yet creates things. This is a contradiction. If nothing has value or meaning, there is no point in creating anything, and, for that matter, no point in trying to convince anybody of anything, including nihilism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet this person creates software and art and formulates an expresses an nihilist philosophy. There is a conflict there, and conflict is the meat of story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what drives this person to create the things they create and to say the things they say. All acts are motivated. This person denies motivation, and yet they act. Why is their expressed philosophy of life at odds with their actions? Is it a pose? Are they deceiving themselves or seeking to deceive others, or both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could challenge their actions or their philosophy? What event could force them to confront this contradiction, make them deny their words or change their actions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing about stories is, they are about life as it is lived. They are not about the rightness or wrongness of the character's weltanschauung, they are about the nature of living with that weltanschauung and its consequences in the life lived day to day in the real world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of people express nihilism. No one lives the logic of nihilism. Your belly won't let you. Essays may leave out the belly, and its ambitions. Stories don't. this person has a story whether they like it or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T22:08:54.757" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27484" CreationDate="2017-04-11T08:40:36.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to identify exactly what it is about the story that's boring you, and address that issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you bored of your characters? Then switch perspective. Write the next section from the perspective of a new character, or an existing minor character. Figure out what other individual stories might be happening at the same time as what you've written so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you reached a stage of the story that feels pedestrian? Do you feel like you're slogging through a dull bit in order to get to the good stuff? Then skip ahead, write the good stuff now, and later on you'll figure out how to fill in the gap. Bear in mind that if it's boring for you to write, it's going to be boring for your readers to read, so you're going to need to figure out a way of communicating essential information in the least tedious way possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you not know what to do next? Do you feel like you're standing on the edge of a precipice, looking out at a sea of possibilities, uncertain where to take things? If so, then you know what, end the story here. Deciding what happens next is left as an exercise to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24404" LastActivityDate="2017-04-11T08:40:36.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27495" CreationDate="2017-04-11T13:45:11.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create any kind of character you wish–you are the author, and this is your story. As for the purpose, which that character serves, and how that character helps your story unfold–it is for you to decide as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;reluctant protagonist&lt;/em&gt; is, in fact, a rather common type of a character, often central to the story, whose goal might just be to do precisely nothing and preserve the status-quo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, regardless of what they say or think, the circumstances could force them to act–sometimes, even heroically–while all they would rather do is staying out of the thick of things and fish of binge-watch &lt;em&gt;Stranger Things&lt;/em&gt; (take the sheriff from that show–his character arc starts from sceptic reactive reluctance and only after a few episodes he evolves into someone who is committed and involved proactively).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That, however, does not mean that your character has to have a life-changing arc. The genius detective Nero Wolfe from Rex Stout novels allegedly hates not only working as a PI (he would rather grow orchids–and he does) but even &lt;em&gt;walking&lt;/em&gt; unless it is absolutely necessary (he is severely overweight). He is, however, the best around, and the money allows him to get back to his routine and yes, grow orchids (that is why he has to solve crimes, acting against his proclaimed principles); all the action is delegated to his hitter Archie Goodwin, who is a proactive protagonist and also a first-person narrator of the stories. Nero is &lt;em&gt;always reactive&lt;/em&gt;, but he is very much a primary (or at least equally important in comparison to the narrator, Archie) character of all the stories in the series–and a title character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An attempt to recreate a real person as a life-like character in a story is probably a task, better suited for a biography, but taking the traits of anyone you know, and using them as a basis for further development of fictional characters is what essentially all writers do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-04-11T13:45:11.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27484" CreationDate="2017-04-11T14:55:41.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think something needs to be said that is often overlooked, possibly even feared and so it is rarely uttered.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What in your story is making you lose interest?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think back to when you were last really engaged with the narrative and work forward.  I guarantee you, if there is a part of the story you are losing interest in... you will be losing your reader as well.  Likely not on the same scale, but it will happen.  While your disinterest might span a few weeks and theirs only moments... a moment is all it takes to break immersion and remind them that they are in fact, not running for their life.  They are on a busy, smelly train and it's late and they're hungry and now your story is just some person writing about things.  You can't afford to lose the reader.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often times stories die in the valleys, the quiet middle bits where you are diligently building sub plots, fleshing out characters, and all the million and one things you must be conscious of.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch the Coen brother's movie Burn After Reading, or at least a few scenes.  They build tension in those middle bits simply with music.  High thriller tension music all the time and for things like getting a paper.  It's nonsensical but you don't even notice it at first and you wonder what the hell the big deal is about getting a paper.  Then you realize that the coen brothers are keeping you on the edge in the extremely mundane parts so that their major events can be played any way at all and it will be a tension release.  Stick and the carrot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If part of your story is boring or tedious to write... it will be boring and tedious to read.  Now that's not saying everything needs to be high drama and action.  Instead use that time to weave subplots.  Raise questions and suspicions.  Mess with the playbook.  Call and audible and see where it goes.  Which characters know what and what is their role in all this.  Be hitchcockian.  Keep people in the dark, but show them the footprint. It's good practice in writing by the seat of your pants, you don't even know what this character is doing but you know it can't be good.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steven Pressfield is very good at this.  The Hot Gates was a perfect example of a narrative that started and simply didn't let you take your eyes off the page.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if dropping it for a while is just 'your process' try to analyze if there was something you could do to not let the pressure up (there is ALWAYS pressure.)  Think of lateral ways you could have jumped into say backstory, or a particularly revealing scene about character that no one is expecting.  Bam now you have deep motive running underneath and not just a sub plot.  I'm pretty sure i've read easily upwards of 6-7,000 books.  There are some from when I was young that I still remember vividly, entire scenes even.  They varied from stories about hunting dogs to kid detectives and secret Nazi missions on D-Day.  They all have one thing in common (I went back and checked) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They stay in motion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like a shark will die if it stops moving...  So too dies your story,  There will of course be exceptions as per human individuality... but don't think of it as something to prove wrong.  Think of it as a challenge to get our of your comfort zone.  Give yourself a healthy dose of army inspiration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Must not be very good if even you don't want to read it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be tough on yourself, everyone else will be.  Readers are often ruthless.  They don't owe your book anything.  In fact you owe them for the money they paid.  This advice was articulated in a much better way I'm sure by a number of my professors over the years.  It has helped me immensely and as a result I don't stop writing because i can't stay interested.  I have to stop writing/reading because knowing what I know is like being the only one in the room who has seen the Game of Thrones episode coming on.  I CAN'T WRITE ANY FASTER AND IT'S KILLING ME.  It took some getting used to and some rather frank conversations with myself about what is in the story... and what should be in the story... but it works, even as just an exercise to get warmed up or to try and keep your current roll going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another tool for the toolbox.  Good luck and remember...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WRITERS WRITE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24412" LastActivityDate="2017-04-11T14:55:41.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27484" CreationDate="2017-04-11T17:43:04.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question &quot;Do I just leave it rotting in my google docs folder for a month or two, or do I look for inspiration and continue writing?&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would walk away from it for a while, do something else (other than writing) and let your unconscious work on it (so to speak).  I have found that, with time, I either find myself back at my desk continuing the story or I just move on to another project.  There is no &quot;time period&quot; (a month or two) that I can suggest.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience has been that &quot;forcing&quot; it will tend to hinder your creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other suggestion:  I often start reading (as opposed to writing) during these periods and will often get a &quot;spark&quot; from something I've read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24415" LastActivityDate="2017-04-11T17:43:04.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27504" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-11T18:31:37.847" Score="1" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;David Jacoby writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Some of the best and most rewarding writing I’ve done has been ghost, because (in my case, anyway) the LACK of a byline allows my normally rather, ahem, obnoxious ego to take a nap.” You don’t have to worry about taking the public criticism of your content. You just write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paul Magee, of &lt;em&gt;Subvert Magazine&lt;/em&gt;, writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As a reader, I lose respect for someone who uses a ghostwriter. There are plenty of people I admire who have had writers do the technical job of writing their books for them, but they tend to be given “co-author” or similar status. To not give credit is to pretend you did it, which shows a lack of character in my eyes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a ghost writer an honorable professional, or a hack?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user24417" LastActivityDate="2017-04-11T21:46:16.327" Title="Is a ghost writer an honorable professional, or a hack?" Tags="|ghostwriter|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-04-12T23:07:23.910" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27505" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-11T19:57:40.790" Score="2" ViewCount="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;NetGalley charges for a listing of any book to get it out to institutional buyers. I understand that you can offer advance reviewer copies but you'll end up with less than 5% ultimately giving a valid review. So the first part of the question is whether there is a positive ROI?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, surely it makes sense to wait until either your title or your name is established to put it in front of these people? Does anyone have any experience of working with NetGalley paid services?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22913" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T10:13:08.367" Title="Is using NetGalley as valuable as it promises?" Tags="|reviews|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27495" CreationDate="2017-04-11T20:05:56.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two semi-nihilists that I am fond of: the Vicomte in Dangerous Liaisons, and Diogenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former broke down civilised norms through amoral seduction (his motivation was destruction), whilst the latter is most famous for his juxtaposition to Alexander the Great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are best used as a foil, either to demonstrate the value of a pedestrian life or the vainglory of the most envied figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22913" LastActivityDate="2017-04-11T20:05:56.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27504" CreationDate="2017-04-11T21:32:03.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most works of art bear the artist's name. Most works of craft do not. The person who paints your portrait signs their work. The person who paints your house, or your sign, does not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a ghostwriter to produce a work of craft writing is no different from hiring someone to paint your house. It is your house and you get the praise for it. But if you hire someone to do a piece of art writing -- a novel or a poem -- for you, there is a degree of deception involved from both parties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, though, there is something of a grey area here, in the realm of what is curiously called creative non-fiction. It is not clear if such work is presented as a work of art or craft. If an athlete writes a biography that sells based purely on interest in their career, we can reasonably call that craft, and not be surprised if a ghostwriter was used. But if a biography is presented as a work of art, as something that might be read by someone who is not already a fan of the subject, then it feels odd if the true author is not acknowledged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-04-11T21:46:16.327" LastActivityDate="2017-04-11T21:46:16.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27505" CreationDate="2017-04-11T22:52:37.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Difficult and subjective question. I'm sure it's a good investment for some books and not for others. As head of  a smaller indie press, I didn't find it to be a worthwhile value for the cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatives include: booklife, bookreviewrequest, librarything's member giveaway and contacting reviewers directly. It MIGHT be worth paying for Kirkus or PW to do a review if you're unknown. Perhaps you could enlist a friend you can trust to write a fair review. Perhaps getting blurbs from a trusted author/colleague could be helpful too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that ebook publicity newsletters like bookbub require a minimum number of reviews, so if using  netgalley allows you to meet this minimum threshhold, then it might be worth doing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't developed other ways to contact reviewers or early readers, then this might be your only (but expensive) option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the deeper question: is how much money should you/can you allocate to publicity/reviewing services (or how big of a marketing budget should you have)? The larger budget you have, the greater probability that you won't see a return on your investment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="7968" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T10:13:08.367" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T10:13:08.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27509" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T06:02:10.910" Score="5" ViewCount="548" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read in a few books about writing science fiction that a compelling concept should override considerations for character, and possibly other things like setting or plot.  I have the notion to write in a subgenre of science fiction known as philosophical science fiction (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/philosophical-sf-science-fiction.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1405149078&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).  Is what I stated really true in science fiction in general, and philosophical science fiction in particular?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9885" LastActivityDate="2018-12-02T12:47:13.513" Title="Does the concept come before other &quot;literary devices&quot; in philosophical science fiction?" Tags="|characters|plot|science-fiction|setting|concept|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27509" CreationDate="2017-04-12T06:49:02.763" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Art is, in its truest form, the ability to communicate a concept through its medium; in novel writing, your medium is the story. The fundamental building blocks of a story are the plot, the characters, the setting, the themes, and so forth. As brilliant as your philosophy may be, if you fail to invest your reader in your idea, you've missed the trees in the forest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those advocates for &quot;only show, never tell.&quot; Whenever someone tells me that, I tell them that people like Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman exist (or, in the case of the former, existed :( ) who spend their novels generally telling, but do so in an interesting way. You need a device to carry your idea - Pratchett's was humor and spoof, Gaiman's is his own unique blend of combing the everyday with the fantastical. If you strike that blend between device and concept, you've got a winner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, one should be careful not to push too far the other way. My favorite example of this is the Matrix. As much as I like the Matrix as an action movie, its philosophy felt (for want of a better word) very textbook and token. One common mistake when writing these &quot;philosophical&quot; texts is to state the question, but to never provide the answer, e.g. as if Hamlet dropped the curtains on &quot;to be or not to be?&quot; Dramatic, perhaps, but not enlightening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR Concept and device have equal weighting. One cannot either have a topic but not engage the audience, or engage the audience but not have a topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24383" LastEditorUserId="24383" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:03:52.120" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T07:03:52.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27509" CreationDate="2017-04-12T12:48:13.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you lead with a compelling concept, you should write an essay. A story is not, principally, about exploring an idea. Principally it is about creating an experience. Creating an experience can be a fantastic way to explore the implications of an idea. But it can only do so effectively if it is first and foremost a compelling experience. We don't receive the philosophical implications of the experience if we don't first receive the experience itself in all of its force. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about &lt;em&gt;Flowers for Algernon&lt;/em&gt;. The concept is simple: &lt;em&gt;Mentally handicapped man receives treatment that makes him smart enough to figure out that the effect of his treatment is temporary&lt;/em&gt;. By itself, the concept is a punchline of a rather cruel joke. But that is not how we remember the book. We remember a profoundly moving experience of a man's personal tragedy. The whole story is built on a concept, and yet it is not the concept, but the personal story that moves us, that makes us remember &lt;em&gt;Flowers for Algernon&lt;/em&gt; when so many other stories quickly fade from memory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A concept, in other words, is never compelling in itself. A hundred other writers might have tackled the same concept and made something completely forgettable (and maybe they did). It is the characters and the writing and the vividness and poignancy of telling  that make &lt;em&gt;Flowers for Algernon&lt;/em&gt; compelling. So it must be with any story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T15:34:58.400" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T15:34:58.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27480" CreationDate="2017-04-12T15:24:58.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;+1 for Evernote.  It's nice, clean, easy and has a decent iOS app.  It's been a while since I've used it but I believe it has all your requests. I would advise keeping on with the notebook as well.  I have gadgets coming out the ears and they are great for capturing what I want to remember immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it can be somewhat transient, however.  The information is so quickly saved and filed, it does not engrave itself on my mind.  I've noticed this with all kinds of note taking.  So I always write out my key ideas in a mini-moleskin in addition to a digital version.  There is also some part of cognition that I find looks at hand writing differently.  I suspect it has to do with translation of pen strokes or something, but I will often catch myself skimming with digital source.  Not so with my written 'mess.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use digital to create an easily browsed library.  I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdfinder.de&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Neo Finder&lt;/a&gt; because it sorts almost anything and is just a beast.  It's $40 which is a lot these days, but like I said, it does everything and it does it all well.  Very powerful.  Might be a bit extra for your needs, in which case, check out Evernote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24412" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2023-06-06T09:46:40.990" LastActivityDate="2023-06-06T09:46:40.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27509" CreationDate="2017-04-12T16:23:59.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The concept is everything, but also not the only thing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;The Left Hand of Darkness&lt;/em&gt; by Ursula Le Guin, she explores many concepts but the major one is gender and what gender means to both others and the id (ego/super-ego).  What made it a Hugo winner wasn't the concept.  It was the way she explored it, by building a world where the concept had evolved naturally and ran freely throughout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;The Hand Maiden's Tale&lt;/em&gt; Margaret Atwood explores female subjugation and religious totalitarianism.  It won the Nebula and Booker prizes because the field in which her ideas had been had been sewn... was a complex, extremely well imagined and cohesive world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Stranger in a Strange Land&lt;/em&gt;, Heinlein explores the concept of self, the nature of innocence and about a zillion other things.  It won a Hugo and was named as one of 88 books that shaped America by Congress.  The concepts in it were literally mind altering, but the reason it and many other Heinlein works were so popular, was his world building was like nothing that had ever been done.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concepts were the keystone of each story and yet without the world that defined the rules of that concept, all would be shadows of their former selves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A concept is extremely important, but it needs a lot of narrative support or it becomes an essay.  All three books aren't exactly high concept sci-fi, but they take concept and give it a place to flourish.  World building is critical if you don't want your concept to be only that.  It doesn't have to be flashy, but it needs to be vivid, otherwise you're just preaching.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24412" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2018-12-02T04:00:43.600" LastActivityDate="2018-12-02T04:00:43.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T18:17:01.777" Score="1" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does it change the writing process? Any suggestions on the various dictation software available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24435" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T04:08:38.257" Title="Does anyone have experience with using dictation software for creative writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|software|process|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27517" CreationDate="2017-04-12T18:45:08.427" Score="11" ViewCount="7988" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'm writing a short story&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I understand, the theme is the message that I want to send across. Akin to Beauty and the Beast's &quot;Don't judge a book by its cover&quot; theme, or &quot;Opposites attract.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a story I am trying to write. Just a character story about two friends. I'm not sure what the theme is. I know the beginning, middle, and end. I know the setting, characters, the problem, motivations, and the result, but not the message I'm sending across. I just wanted to write a story about these two friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need a defined theme to complete a story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22708" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2019-09-17T05:41:31.600" LastActivityDate="2024-03-29T19:11:33.680" Title="Does a story necessarily need a theme?" Tags="|creative-writing|short-story|theme|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27514" CreationDate="2017-04-12T18:55:26.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use dictation to create first drafts as well as major re-writes. The only effect that I notice is that the drafts are light on description and heavy on dialog. That is OK with me because the drafts come out fast and I tend to edit the hell out of any draft (first or not). Pro tip: cannot edit a draft if it does not exist. Dictation gets me there quicker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quality is rougher in the sense that I often will say the same thing in different ways with the thought that the editing process will fix things. Works for me. May not work for anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23701" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T18:55:26.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27515" CreationDate="2017-04-12T19:12:10.993" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Theme is not necessarily a message. It is more the thing that you are exploring. If the theme is love, for instance, you don't have to take a position on love, you don't have to have a covert message, like &quot;love hurts&quot; or &quot;love sucks&quot;. The theme is love simply because the story is about love, is an exploration of what love is like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The great privilege of a storyteller is not to have to draw a conclusion. The job of the story is to give the reader an experience, an experience that is, at some level, human, and, at some level, true. As with first hand experiences, it can be left to the reader to draw their own conclusions (if they are the sort of person who is minded to interpret everything they experience, rather than just being content to experience it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people do like stories that reach conclusions, that express positions, but generally only if those positions happen to match their own. A story that resists the urge to take a position may be much more widely enjoyed (and therefore much more influential). But a position is not a theme. Love is a theme. Love sucks is a position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have coherent characters, setting, and plot, you have a theme. Character, setting, and plot would not be coherent if they did not have a unifying thread running through them, and that thread is theme. In other words, you don't have to add theme to story because if you have story you already have theme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, be wary of categories of analysis when you are writing. The tools of dissection are not the tools of creation. The tools of analysis are not the tools of synthesis. Storytelling is first and foremost an act of imagination -- of seeing a thing whole and describing it. Anything can be analysed down into component parts, but that does not mean that it was built or imagined that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See it whole. Write it down. Leave the analysis to others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="37845" LastEditDate="2019-09-17T07:04:10.470" LastActivityDate="2019-09-17T07:04:10.470" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2017-04-12T19:58:46.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;for books i print for myself, i like using letter size file folders and binder clips. usually ~17c each. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in highschool i would use binders, which were usually ~1$ each and hole punch is easy. i really dont like this that much anymore because they take up so much space and i found the pages and bindings broke easily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24436" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T19:58:46.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27514" CreationDate="2017-04-12T21:37:55.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have tried to use dictation software for nearly twenty years: I have spent hours training specific programs -- Dragon, Microsoft, etc. They don't work as they should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I have found that Android speech recognition on my phone, backed up by Google but appearing in various formats, is very accurate as long as you have a data connection. I can speak and it will, usually, turn what I say into letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what holds me back from seizing on this modern technology is this: I can type quickly and there are always mistakes in speech recognition. I can write more accurately and quickly using a keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When typing I am not held back by my speed of typing: I am held back my speed of thinking what to type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have recently gone back to handwriting anything I think is worthwhile before editing and then typing it -- there are extra steps here that improve the quality of what I write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T21:37:55.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27520" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27521" CreationDate="2017-04-13T07:59:56.963" Score="2" ViewCount="770" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a situation where a POV character isn't lucid enough to see or interpret what's going on around them, I find myself constantly describing things either in passive voice, or by using the word 'something' or 'someone' in every other sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example in which someone is on the floor and an unknown entity is poking them can be written like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something poked her shoulder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She felt a poke in her shoulder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her shoulder was poked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former is better in short doses, but can you recommend a few other structures to spice up a scene where many of such descriptions are necessary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22765" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-04-13T10:51:29.373" Title="Active voice in situations where the subject is unknown" Tags="|fiction|description|viewpoint|grammar|voice|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27520" CreationDate="2017-04-13T08:32:39.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Forgive me if I'm making a false assumption here &lt;strong&gt;(EDIT: it turns out I was)&lt;/strong&gt;, but I don't think you have a real problem. I think you believe you do because you've been told (or have otherwise decided) to avoid the passive voice where possible. I think this is a mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing &quot;rules&quot; are really little other than &quot;things to watch&quot; while you're writing. As evidence of this, open your favourite book (or anyone else's favourite book). The odds are you'll find plenty of examples of &quot;universal writing rules&quot; that have been broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the rule is &quot;use active over passive voice&quot;, interpret this instead as &quot;be acutely aware of whether the voice you're using is passive or active&quot;. The point is to use the form that's the most appropriate, and produces the desired effect. Since many people write books of a sort where the active voice is the best choice pretty much throughout, people who read and like (and probably also write) these sorts of books have over-generalised and assumed passive is always bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me though that in your case, in this particular scene, passive voice is exactly what you need. The character doesn't feel like things are being &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt;, she feel like things are &lt;em&gt;happening&lt;/em&gt; to her. If you want to put the through that experience with her, using the passive voice is a perfectly reasonable way to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ADDED IN RESPONSE TO THE ASKER'S COMMENT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for ensuring variety, or having more options that just the two, I think the issue is that at a fundamental level you really only have the two. You don't know (or don't want to reveal) the thing that's responsible for the doing, so either you make note of what's done without (or with only oblique) reference to the thing that does it, or you say that &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; did the thing without saying what. I think those &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; your choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do, though, is disguise it a little by varying the language. &quot;Something poked her shoulder&quot;, &quot;an object poked at her shoulder&quot;, &quot;she had no way of knowing what or who it was that poked her shoulder&quot;, etc.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say though that if you're repeating the same idea over and over (in this case that something she's not lucid enough to comprehend does some thing she's only vaguely aware of) you're likely to run into repetition issues regardless. The issue might not be to do with how you word it so much as what you're saying. &lt;em&gt;(Note: I'm saying that is the case; it's just something to watch for).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastEditorUserId="22280" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T09:57:40.263" LastActivityDate="2017-04-13T09:57:40.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27520" CreationDate="2017-04-13T10:51:29.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A character that is not lucid enough to see or interpret what is going on around them is not lucid enough to have a POV. If they are not lucid and you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Something poked her shoulder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the reader is forced to assume that we are in omniscient narration. And if we are in omniscient narration, then you are free to say whatever you like about the thing doing the poking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternately, if you want to stay in the character's point of view, then they are not going to have a POV until they are lucid enough see and recognize what is going on around them, at which point you can have them try to reconstruct what happened to them, and again you are free to say whatever you like about the thing doing the poking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember this about POV: it is just a camera angle. The very early movies were filmed by bolting a camera to the aisle in a theatre and recording a stage play. But producers very quickly realized that the genius of the cinema is that you could move the camera. You could use different camera angles to tell the story. Prose has always had this privilege, that you can change the POV to suit the needs of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people get the idea in their heads that they have to pick one POV and stick to it. They fear they will be accused of &quot;head hopping&quot; if they change their POV. But &quot;head hopping&quot; is not a universal condemnation of POV changes. It is a condemnation of a particular kind of clumsy POV change. Just because you should not do it badly does not mean you should not do it at all. The corrective here is to read a favorite book with particular attention to POV changes. Once you look, you will likely find lots of them. The ones that work don't call attention the themselves simply because they do what human beings naturally do for themselves when they are interested in something: shift their POV for a better look. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, there are few things more frustrating in life than to be unable to shift ones POV to get a better look at some interesting scene. The same is true in literature or film. The reader needs to shift POV to get an uninterrupted view of the scene and it is the writer or director's responsibility to make the POV shifts for them at the right time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-13T10:51:29.373" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27515" CreationDate="2017-04-13T12:31:22.637" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems you confuse &quot;theme&quot; and &quot;conclusion.&quot; Your title asks about a theme, but you give conclusions as examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story MUST have a theme. It may have several, or it may be a theme so convoluted it's hard to spot it, but it will be there. Travel, self-discovery, self-improvement (or opposite), love, greed, morality versus survival, and so on. Without a theme, you'll have a word noodle, not a story. This rule can't be broken thoroughly. It can be subverted - a bait-and-switch, when you suddenly completely change the theme halfway through the story, or show that the main theme was a big red herring, and the secondary &quot;underdog&quot; theme one is the one that really matters. This can be done to a great effect if done right. Nevertheless &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; theme is always there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story SHOULD have a conclusion. It's a rule of the kind that exists to be broken. And as with these rules, you need to know what you're doing when you're breaking it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A straightforward story will go from beginning to a conclusion. All threads closed, all implications explained, all questions answered and all opinions expressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more challenging story will imply the conclusion. Instead of stating it, it just sets up the final scene in such a way that the conclusion becomes obvious. You don't need to be told &quot;crime doesn't pay,&quot; you're instead shown how the super-scoundrel finds himself losing everything he held precious, having only the loot from the heist, which now is useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An even more challenging story will ask a question about the conclusion. Instead of setting up the final scene with a single clear outcome, it sets it up as a question: Was it worth it? What is the right course of action? How to get out of THIS paradox? This is a story that is meant to start an internal discussion, it doesn't present the solution, but requests it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story which is not that challenging, but enticing will distance the conclusion, be open-ended. It sets up the scene, the actors, and leaves the conclusion implied and distant - it breaks off at a point where a &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; sequel would begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are stories without a conclusion. And they are &lt;em&gt;invariably bad.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I finish such a story and... &quot;Okay, so that happened. And?&quot; - the events are of no consequence, no effect. There's no food for thought, no resolution, nothing to grasp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When I was 13 or so, I had a class-mate, Eva. She was a short girl with dark hair, rather plain-looking, always meek and silent. Kids didn't really pick on her because she was not some kind of loner, just staying in the background, not taking initiative. I don't think I ever saw her to take up any task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And one day our class was to organize and run a small snack shop for other kids during some event, overseen by the teacher. I was assigned as the shopkeeper, along with several other kids. Eva was doing something else, I really don't remember what.&#xA;  That day as I worked, laboriously handling the candy and counting money, it was a real eye-opener about the amount of work. We turned up a pretty decent profit which went towards a trip to the cinema though, and in general there were no incidents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See what I mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-04-13T12:31:22.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27515" CreationDate="2017-04-13T12:44:27.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I just wanted to write a story about these two friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, maybe that is your theme. That friendship is beautiful, rich, enduring; that friends help each other through obstacles, or despite them; that friendship is more powerful than X or Y. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a perfectly legitimate thing to write about. If your story has a beginning, middle, and end, with an obstacle which is overcome, you have an actual plot — it's not even like you just have a character study. (Which is also fine, but a different thing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A theme doesn't have to be an Aesopian punchline. It can be something very simple and straightforward. There's nothing wrong with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-04-13T12:44:27.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27514" CreationDate="2017-04-13T17:23:15.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no problem with hearing my self. I have trained myself to do punctuation, again, no problem. I use Dragon Naturally Speaking on Windows 10. I have used it for well over a decade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23701" LastActivityDate="2017-04-13T17:23:15.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7111" CreationDate="2017-04-13T20:47:38.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Spanish, Good morning is Buenas dias, Good afternoon is Buenas tardes, and Good night is Buenas noches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Tagalog, the national language of The Philippines, Good morning is Magandan umaga, Good afternoon is Magandan hapon, and Good night is Magandan gabi. In addition in Tagalog, hello said at noon is Magandan tanhali.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24457" LastActivityDate="2017-04-13T20:47:38.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27515" CreationDate="2017-04-13T21:07:00.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A trusted teacher of mine said this about theme (paraphrased):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your job as author is not to worry about theme. Your job is to just move your characters from place to place. Theme is the readers' job. Just write your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that your themes will emerge as you write, without your thinking about them. In fact, in some stories I've read, the author should have thought a lot less about theme since it comes across way too heavy on the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That advice has served me well. The only time I ever think about the themes in my own work are in retrospect, when people ask what kind of stories I write. &quot;Um, I dunno. Let's see...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-04-13T21:07:00.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27529" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-14T02:26:53.420" Score="1" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the novel I'm planning the human characters that inhabit the world are all clones of each other. Man and woman. They aren't given names when born, instead they are given serial numbers that also work like IDs. But given the fact that they still have diferent personalities and many even have different appearances due to tattoos, scars, dyed hairs, etc... How could I deal with them? How would they interact with each other? Aliases are a go, but as society grow numerous also does the necessity to be known in order to be recognized by his or her alias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8269" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T15:22:52.557" Title="How to deal with nameless characters?" Tags="|novel|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27514" CreationDate="2017-04-14T04:08:38.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't used it in years, and it may be better now, but my experience was that it would periodically misinterpret whole phrases. The problem was not that it made more errors than I did typing -- my typing has never been good. The problem was that when I made a mistake it tended to be misspelling or mistyping a word in a way that made it obvious what the intended word was, but when the dictation software made a mistake, it substituted a completely different phrase from the on I had intended. It didn't make spelling mistakes or typos. It typed something different from what I had said. And the problem with that was that in reading it over I often found that I had a very hard time figuring out what phrase I had actually spoken. Even if the phrase it had inserted did not make much sense, it still got in the way of remembering what the original phrase was. The results were therefore very confusing and hard to correct. I gave it up for this reason. With my poor typing I had a typing problem. With the dictation software's imperfect recognition, I was actually losing my intended meaning, not merely on the page, but in my head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T04:08:38.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27509" CreationDate="2017-04-14T07:46:41.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You ask if the concept should override the considerations of character etc. My question would be: why do you feel you need to choose one over the other? Why do you find yourself in a position where you feel that in order to explore a creative concept your characters must be, to take a few possible options, flat or inconsistent or boring?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And once you answer that question, I think you will open the door to a better story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have a character that does seemingly conflicting things? Then either split him into two characters, or consider what are the psychological underpinnings of this inconsistency (in your case, perhaps there are internal conflicts in the futuristic &quot;concept&quot; you are exploring).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have a character that is simply the foil for the hero, making him overly simplistic? Ask yourself why someone would be that way, make them more than just a caricature. I think Ayn Rand tried to do this in, for example, &quot;The Fountainhead&quot; - and that was clearly a book that designed it's characters to serve the concept she was trying to promote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. You might even find that while trying to figure out how people function in this sci-fi setting in a deeper level, it will also bring you to deeper appreciation and exploration of the concept you want to focus on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22348" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T07:46:41.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27529" CreationDate="2017-04-14T11:21:51.340" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your characters may not have &lt;em&gt;names&lt;/em&gt;, but they have to have some &lt;em&gt;identifiers.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other examples in fiction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Star Trek&lt;/em&gt;'s Borg use designations which specify where each drone (individual) is in the hierarchy of its group, and where that group&#xA;is attached to. &lt;em&gt;Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 01&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;means that this drone is the third most important (9 of 9 is the&#xA;most) but her specific task is &lt;em&gt;teritary&lt;/em&gt; to the lead drone (so not&#xA;super critical), and her group is attached to a specific location&#xA;(Unimatrix 01, the center of Borg &quot;society&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Larry Niven's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kzin#Naming_convention&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kzinti&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;are addressed by their family relationships and then jobs and have to&#xA;earn a name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Ayn Rand's novella &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Anthem,&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;individuals are called by a combination of a word plus a number, and&#xA;are raised in collective groups. Each individual refers to him- or&#xA;herself with plural pronouns.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Ira Levin's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Perfect_Day&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;This Perfect Day,&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; people are using fewer and fewer&#xA;names; there are something like four names for men and four for women&#xA;when the story starts. The protagonist's actual name is a string of&#xA;characters, but his nickname is &quot;Chip.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I haven't read it, but in Margaret Atwood's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Handmaid's Tale,&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;the protagonist is &quot;Offred,&quot; meaning &lt;em&gt;of Fred,&lt;/em&gt; belonging to Fred. Handmaidens are all given designations like this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In &lt;em&gt;The Bees&lt;/em&gt; by Laline Paull, the characters (all actual bees) are&#xA;from various groups named after flowers and then given a number; the&#xA;protagonist is Flora 717.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In &lt;em&gt;The Force Awakens,&lt;/em&gt; we learn that stormtroopers are stolen from&#xA;their families as children and raised in groups, and given only&#xA;numerical designations. John Boyega's character originally had the&#xA;designation FN-2187; it's Poe Dameron who later gives him the name&#xA;Finn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People will come up with ways to address one another. You as the author need to figure out how to delineate your characters so the reader can distinguish them. Nicknames, shortened versions of lengthy alphanumeric strings, epithets like The Gunslinger, The Doctor, the man with the thistledown hair &amp;mdash; just be consistent in how you address each individual, and you'll be fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T11:21:51.340" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27533" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-14T12:13:50.940" Score="0" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a sci-fi novel with more than one main character. &#xA;Since I'm not an experienced writer, I still struggle with some basic &quot;rules&quot; within writing that may or may not exist.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This issue is regarding &lt;strong&gt;the way I describe the people around the main characters&lt;/strong&gt;. The two main characters could be described as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;David&quot;, Young Man - approximately 22 years old.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;Carly&quot;, Young Girl - approximately 8 years old.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the dialogue plays a huge role in depicting an authentic person af a certain age and personalty, but I want the POV to influence the descriptions and so on, if that is &quot;allowed&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I think what I want is a simplified descriptive language, to simulate the way a child sees the world.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are examples to give an idea of one of the ways I wish to show the age (and world perception) differences between the two characters. The focus here is on the way I refer to the parents. If done successfully, the young POV will show &lt;strong&gt;&quot;the feeling of there only being one Mom and one Dad&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - that I believe almost all children feel up until a certain age. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;David&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Thanks&quot; said David and hugged &lt;strong&gt;his mom&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;I've missed this&quot;. As he walked down the hallway, he could hear &lt;strong&gt;his father&lt;/strong&gt; singing to himself, the way he always did when he thought no-one was listening. &lt;strong&gt;His father&lt;/strong&gt; had always been told he was a great singer, but had never truly believed it himself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Carly&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Carly laid in her bed wondering if the cat would be in the backyard again today. &quot;Honey, is the magic ready yet?&quot; &lt;strong&gt;mom&lt;/strong&gt; said in the hallway. Carly knew that &lt;strong&gt;mom&lt;/strong&gt; was talking about the morning coffee, and expected the usual &quot;The wizard's a brewin'!&quot; from &lt;strong&gt;dad&lt;/strong&gt;. It took longer than usual for &lt;strong&gt;dad&lt;/strong&gt; to answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the actual question could be phrased as followed: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Am I free to change my descriptive language when changing POVs?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case I fear that I'm letting my younger character's POW influence the descriptions in a way that is not allowed or frowned upon. I of course want to give my readers a fluent and immersive experience, and if this method makes them see the things and people around the characters the way the characters would, then perfect. If it breaks the immersion or in any other way makes the reader go &quot;what?&quot;, I'd like to know that as soon as possible... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2017-04-14T15:44:29.760" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T15:44:29.760" Title="Writing differently when following different character POVs - mainly age difference. (3rd Person)" Tags="|characters|description|viewpoint|showing-telling|pov|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27533" CreationDate="2017-04-14T12:26:58.097" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;yes, and in fact I encourage this. If it's from a child's POV, try to use a child's language, understand and perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't stress so much about what's &quot;allowed.&quot; Do what seems to work for your story. Talk to your beta readers after it's done and polished. Get impressions from your readers before second-guessing yourself. The concept of what's &quot;allowed&quot; in fiction is so fungible as to be nearly useless in practice. What's allowed is what works, period. If you can make it work, the reader will allow it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Think I'm exaggerating? Someone on this board recommended a story &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/25819/writing-a-novel-can-i-do-this-or-that/25828#25828&quot;&gt;told from the viewpoint of a &lt;em&gt;sentient pregnancy test.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; And it worked.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T12:26:58.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27533" CreationDate="2017-04-14T12:54:17.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no rules. There is a lot of advice. Some of it is good. Some of it is bad. A lot of it is generalized inappropriately. There are also a lot of conventions which it is safer to follow unless it is necessary to break them, since breaking them always creates a difficulty for which other qualities in your story then have to compensate. So don't part with convention unless you gain more than you lose by doing so. But conventions are not rules and should not be mistaken for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, here is a piece of advice that may be right or wrong or over generalized: Don't focus on language. Yes, language is important, but is is not nearly as important as story. And most audiences are not nearly as sensitive to the subtleties of language or to language quality as most writers would like to believe. (Evidence: Dan Brown)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a child's language is certainly immature, that is in a real sense incidental. What is really distinctive about a child is the way they see the world. Different things draw a child's attention. They interpret events differently. They value different things. It it these things that truly define a child's POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating a child character with adult concerns and an adult view of events described in childish language will sound false (and is a very common fault in books that use a child's POV). Using adult language to describe things through the lense of a child's concerns and viewpoint can work brilliantly. A perfect example of this is &lt;em&gt;To Kill a Mockingbird&lt;/em&gt;. It is certainly not written in the diction of an eight year old. It uses elegant and delightful prose to describe a child's experience in a way that is absolutely authentic to the child's experience and concerns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the hands of a great writer, playing games with language can have great effects, but if you look carefully, you will see this is actually very rare. Great writers often use an elevated diction, but that diction is generally simple, lucid, and effective, not complex or gimmicky. What really sets a great writer apart, though, is the storytelling. Language is the vehicle by which the story is transmitted. It is not a special effect. You want your reader to be immersed in the story, and for that a clear and consistent transmission generally works best. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Robert McKee remarks in &lt;em&gt;Story&lt;/em&gt;, there are millions of people who can write beautiful sentences. There are very few who can tell great stories. Worry less about language and more about story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-14T13:08:18.300" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T13:08:18.300" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27529" CreationDate="2017-04-14T13:06:04.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A name is not actually an invariant property of a person or object. A name is an expression of the relationship between a person and another or between a person and an object. Thus the same person may be &quot;mom&quot;, &quot;grandma&quot;, &quot;aunty&quot;, &quot;Joan&quot;, &quot;Joanie&quot;, &quot;Joan Smith&quot;, &quot;Mrs. Smith&quot;, &quot;the woman in the green dress&quot;, &quot;Smitty&quot;, &quot;Junebug&quot;, and &quot;234 782 189&quot; in relationship to different people and institutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty much every modern state assigns its citizens a serial number these days (in Canada we call it a Social Insurance Number), so a state which takes no interest in the subject;s names other than the serial number is not really so far from reality. But people will still acquire names based on other relationships. Names are fundamental to language and our relationships with the world. We can claim and project a name, and we often do, but people will assign a name to us for their own purposes, or select from  the variety of names we project. The fact that that people in your story are not assigned a name by the state would actually make little difference to the process by which people assign names to things or accept the names that people claim for themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T13:06:04.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27537" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27539" CreationDate="2017-04-14T14:29:41.107" Score="17" ViewCount="2566" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard from a lot of people - both on this site and elsewhere - that your first draft will be terrible. Some even say that you will barely use any of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has me wondering: &lt;strong&gt;What about the first draft is so bad?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it that the wording will be bad? The story won't convey the message or sound the way you want it to? Or is it that the characters won't be fleshed out enough? Maybe that the plot won't be developed, or won't be focused enough, causing it to ramble? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What exactly is bad about the first draft? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-04-14T17:22:17.133" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T15:30:11.953" Title="In What Way are Most First Drafts Bad?" Tags="|creative-writing|first-draft|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27533" CreationDate="2017-04-14T14:47:37.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Am I free to change my descriptive language when changing POVs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely (leaving aside the fact that you are free to do whatever you wish–it is your story), and I agree with Lauren Ipsum, that it might help you achieve the desired effect if emphasized properly (the text excerpts you have given are neither a miss nor a hit–at least for me–they could belong to any of the characters you describe, and saying &lt;em&gt;mom&lt;/em&gt; instead if &lt;em&gt;his mom&lt;/em&gt; could be attributed to a just a matter of personal style).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also happen to agree with Mark Baker, who seems to think that it is not necessary. Using artificially impaired language (especially in a 3-rd person description) can have an exactly opposite effect and distract your readers instead of helping to engage them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start with trying to make your narrative language coherent and neutral–you can always spice it up in revision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dialog is where you should watch the vocabulary, sentence structure, and such (once again to a certain degree, because people in fiction tend to communicate more eloquently than in real life). Fourteen years of age difference will have a very noticeable impact on how your two characters would talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-04-14T15:19:47.193" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T15:19:47.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27537" CreationDate="2017-04-14T14:58:00.057" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lamentable process by which averages become aphorisms. That is, we see a common pattern and turn it into an absolute rule. Adverbs are often used badly, so don't use adverbs at all. Writers often tell when they should show, so always show, never tell. This is, essentially, lazy thinking, a desire to rule a complex world with simple rules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most first drafts suck. This is hardly surprising. A novel is one of the most complex constructs in all of art, so it is hard to get it right the first time. There are many ways for a book to be bad, and a first draft may display any of them. If an author cannot hold all the threads of art and craft in their heads as they write, and most can't, then something will be bad about the first draft. But not necessarily one thing in particular. It all depends on which thread the writer let drop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most crafts are not like this. A good cook gets most dishes right the first time. Many crafts practice simple motions over and over until they are performed reliably and automatically. But writing is too complex for most writers to do this. There are certainly many elements of craft you can hone and perhaps even perfect over time but to reduce a world and its people and it hopes, loves, and intrigues to a single sequence of words sustained over three of four hundred pages, is beyond the capability of most mortals, and so most books are the product of progressive refinement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean that all first drafts necessarily and automatically suck? Not at all. An experienced and gifted storyteller may well turn out an excellent first draft. That does not necessarily mean flawless or incapable of improvement, but it could certainly be excellent. (If &lt;em&gt;Go Set a Watchman&lt;/em&gt; is indeed an early draft of &lt;em&gt;To Kill a Mockingbird&lt;/em&gt;, it is also an excellent novel in its own right.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The danger of this doctrine is that it leads people to advise, essentially, that you should rush through your first draft thoughtlessly, as if it were an unpleasant chore, and as if no opportunity to create quality work existed until after the first draft is complete. This is bollocks. We should strive to do the best work we can at all times. But the first draft is special. It is the last time we will have a blank slate, the chance to map out the pure lines of story unencumbered by an accumulation of prose or of scenes we may struggle to part with. The first draft is the foundation on which all will be built. It should be as good as we can possibly make it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-04-14T21:55:57.803" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T21:55:57.803" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-14T15:01:29.243" Score="0" ViewCount="567" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just an amateur writer.  One thing that's strange to me is that there seem to be &quot;rules&quot; about writing.  The story should consist of five parts, etc.  To my untrained writing brain this seems to stifle creativity, and enforce a science-like structure in what I thought was an art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of breaking one of the rules.   At the end of my story, my hero just isn't strong enough to kill the villain.  He gets away unscathed, but others are in peril due to his weakness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I absolutely not do this?  Must I adhere to the formula?  What are the consequences, if I don't?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13268" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T01:42:29.497" Title="What if the hero doesn't win?" Tags="|rules|hero|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2017-04-20T17:06:08.807" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27537" CreationDate="2017-04-14T15:11:27.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's A Colloquialism Among Writers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anne Lamott in &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2pB6G8P&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bird by Bird (amazon link)&lt;/a&gt;, has an entire section named, Shi**y First Drafts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's where the idea originally got traction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The better way to state this might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Writers Must Edit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &#xA;Maybe consider what &lt;strong&gt;Truman Capote&lt;/strong&gt; said when referring to Jack Kerouac's writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That's not writing, that's typing&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't type, write!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amateur writers believe that writing is simply sitting down and writing.&#xA;It is.  For the first draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, real writing for public consumption is :&#xA;Rewriting&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There. We created another good aphorism for writers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Real Writing Is ReWriting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T15:11:27.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27533" CreationDate="2017-04-14T15:36:53.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mark Baker's response more-or-less says it all. Let me rephrase some of it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book always has just one POV, namely that of the author, who is not necessarily a character. Then, the author may &lt;em&gt;pretend&lt;/em&gt; to have to POV of a character. But there is no rule saying that the author must pretend. The choice is yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own sentiment is that if we are reading the character's mind, then use language suited to the character. But if the text is merely an external observation, then use neutral language. Thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carly saw her mother, and said, &quot;Hi, mom.&quot; (Neutral description, since it can been seen externally.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carly thought her mom looked kinda grody today. (In Carly's thoughts, so not neutral.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T15:36:53.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27537" CreationDate="2017-04-14T15:49:01.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;That's not writing, that's typing.&quot; Indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not say that a first draft is necessarily bad. It likely requires some editing, but that might still make it hard to distinguish from the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alas, especially in our era, it is too easy to sit down and type. Unlike Mr. Kerouac, we do not even have to carry a typewriter around; we can do it with our thumbs on a handheld device, or even record our spoken stream of consciousness for later transcription. Software will correct our spelling, but not our skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, our &quot;first draft&quot; may really be what software folks call an &quot;alpha&quot; pre-release. Then, it may be poorly planned, uncertain in its POV, or overly moralistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Famous line from &lt;em&gt;Heart of Darkness&lt;/em&gt;: &quot;He had something to say. He said it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It it easy to type, without having anything to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For comparison: Search for images of the original scores of famous classical music works, as handwritten by their composers (Beethoven, etc.) Compare to the same scores, after publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T15:49:01.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27537" CreationDate="2017-04-14T18:49:55.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First drafts are bad because a form has yet to emerge until they are actually words on a page. By form, I am referring to both narrative and phrasing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People differ about whether they want to spill a lot out on first drafts or not. I try to make first drafts good and readable -- although at times I have written crappy first drafts for the sake of momentum. Often when doing first drafts I have yet to discover literary effects I wish to use or transitions from one scene to another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On second draft, you have a better sense of form; it often is obvious which components you can delete. I am not merely referring to verbal compression; often on second draft you can see which paragraph or groups of paragraphs don't need to be there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On 2nd or 3rd draft you can start strengthening sentences and paragraphs. The &quot;strengthening&quot; phase of the writing is the most challenging... and rewarding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T18:49:55.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27540" CreationDate="2017-04-14T20:15:30.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a lot on topic of rules, and breaking them. Just see the examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9318/am-i-breaking-the-show-dont-tell-rule-in-the-following-passage/9321#9321&quot;&gt;Show, don't tell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5477/how-do-i-cleanly-show-the-passage-of-time-with-multiple-varying-time-scales/12649#12649&quot;&gt;Make time shifts gradual&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7217/should-dull-dialogue-be-removed-completely/7219#7219&quot;&gt;Don't write dull dialogue&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10979/must-protagonists-be-flawed-for-satisfying-character-evolution/10984#10984&quot;&gt;Protagonist must have flaws&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9314/when-to-keep-the-passive-voice-and-when-to-remove-it/9316#9316&quot;&gt;Don't use passive voice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8167/creative-writing-use-and-abuse/8169#8169&quot;&gt;Use proper grammar&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/12780/how-to-deal-with-cliche-dialogue/12795#12795&quot;&gt;Don't write cliche dialogues&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/27515/does-a-story-necessarily-need-a-theme/27523#27523&quot;&gt;Make a proper theme and end with a conclusion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/12608/beginners-can-break-rules-too/12617#12617&quot;&gt;Break the rules!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens if the hero doesn't win? You tell me! Make an awesome story where the hero loses, and show us why this is the right outcome. This is how you go about breaking the rules - you don't break them &quot;just because&quot;. You break them, if they stand in the way of making your story great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="4291" LastEditDate="2017-04-14T20:34:35.653" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T20:34:35.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27540" CreationDate="2017-04-14T20:17:43.233" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't have to adhere to a formula. You don't have to follow a set of rules. You do have to create something other people want to read (assuming that is your goal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Guidelines for writing are aimed at achieving the last of these. They are not set in stone. They are broken often. They can be very helpful for a beginner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what you are referring to when you say a story should have five parts. People often talk about 'rules' I don't know or don't use. However, there are guidelines I try to instill in students. For example, no one should ever wake up from a dream at the end of a story, a first person past tense narrative can't end with you dying, etc. Some things just ruin a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rules about the hero winning, etc. can be broken if you can still make the reader care. I recently read a story where the hero's woman is killed right at the end. I was shaken, and not particularly happy about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an analogy, think about basic tactics in soccer: if you are a defender, keep yourself between the attacker and the goal; etc. Writing rules are like tactics in soccer: learn what they are and break them only if you are good enough to do so and produce a positive result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T20:17:43.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27547" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27551" CreationDate="2017-04-14T20:43:32.830" Score="4" ViewCount="832" Body="&lt;p&gt;While an unreliable narrator is someone who is deceiving the reader (or possibly himself), there are plenty of stories where the narrator is truthfully relaying what happened, but does not fully understand the implications, which the reader does understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a term for this kind of narrator or story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastActivityDate="2019-01-20T22:05:56.493" Title="What do you call a narrator who is not unreliable, but is naive?" Tags="|narrator|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27415" CreationDate="2017-04-14T20:45:22.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a work composed in English but with characters who are speaking another language, I think it's fine to use not just English but idiomatic English.  I've seen this in a number of historical novels that take place anywhere from Sparta to Nazi Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T20:45:22.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27310" CreationDate="2017-04-14T20:53:04.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Subplots can provide an opportunity to break up a narrative that's basically linear, and could at a counterpoint to the mood - they could be humorous in a serious plot, for example.  They allow more exploration of character, too, and in most cases should probably tie back into the main plot in an unexpected way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1154" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T20:53:04.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27547" CreationDate="2017-04-14T21:40:24.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the closes you are going to come is &quot;narrative irony&quot; or &quot;dramatic irony&quot;, but that does not name narrator specifically. I can't think of any case of transmuting this into &quot;Ironic narrator&quot;. Actually, that would not work because it would mean a narrator who is being ironic on purpose, whereas what you are describing is a work that has dramatic irony because the audience knows more than the narrator. As such, it is not a characteristic of the narrator per se, but of how the narrator is being used in the telling of the story. The narrator qua narrator is being perfectly straightforward and honest. The novelist is being ironic in choosing a narrator who is not as informed as the audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T21:40:24.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27547" CreationDate="2017-04-14T22:33:14.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;@lew answered this when addressing this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/27400/is-this-an-example-of-an-unreliable-narrator&quot;&gt;Is this an example of an unreliable narrator?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Naïf&lt;/strong&gt;: a narrator whose perception is immature or limited through their point of view. Examples of naïves include Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield and Forrest Gump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T22:33:14.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27552" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-15T01:53:47.060" Score="1" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a paper in MLA7 with a title page as the first page, would the second page of the document be numbered as such, or would it be numbered as page 1?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24467" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T18:37:37.190" Title="Is the page after the title page numbered page 1 or page 2 in MLA7?" Tags="|academic-writing|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27537" CreationDate="2017-04-15T09:30:06.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before talking about the problems of a first draft, it's important to ask a couple of other questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What is a first draft?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is simple: the first written version of your novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What does it look like? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That'll depend from writer to writer. If you first outline extensively and prepare settings and characters carefully, the first draft will probably be very close to the final work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you start writing and discover where the story leads step by step, it's very likely the characters (and the very events) will change a lot through the novel and, therefore, the first draft may look very different from the final work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may even start out with a fairly outlined idea and, half-way, decide you want to go somewhere else and give up that previously outlining (some people will advise to go back and rewrite; others will tell you to carry on and fix the beginning after you've reached the ending).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people will go as far as to advise that you write all the events as fast as possible (write, write, write, and don't stop to think). This type of first draft sounds to me very bare-bone and akin to an outline in prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, we may ask...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  3. What about the first draft is so bad?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, it will depend on what type of first draft you have in your hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there was extensive outlining, it's probably safe to say you won't need to rewrite the entire thing as characters, events and settings will probably be set in stone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you discovered your characters and events as you wrote, you'll at least have to go back and make sure everything is coherent (so that, for example, one character didn't start out as a red-head and turned out to have auburn hair half-way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you changed your mind about what you're writing half-way and carried on, you'll need to go back and really remake that first draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write without thinking, then you'll need to go back and flesh out pretty much &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that the more planned out in advance the novel is, the fewer problems you'll have with your first draft. In this case, it is my belief the problems will be with small incoherences and mostly style. (Unless, of course, the novel was poorly planned and the author couldn't choose, or focus on, the right events to advance the story and the characters in a tight, appropriate fashion.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discovering as you write, or changing your mind half-way, will get you more problems of coherence, whether it is with timelines (eg. one character being in London in the morning and in LA in the afternoon), characters (eg. Johnny is shy half of the novel and a shameless social butterfly the other half), settings (eg. Annie's bedroom has a view to the sea but is set six miles from the beach), plot holes of all types, or simply a lack of focus on a theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write without thinking, the problems I've mentioned in the previous paragraph become even stronger. Add to that that you probably had no time to flesh out rounded characters and may even have left the setting as a random American city and no idea which month it's set in, which means you'll have to choose a city and timeframe. Then, having done so, you will need to insert references to the appropriate climate (eg. if it's set in Anchorage, Alaska in December and you don't mention snow, there's something seriously wrong). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is the personal tendency of the writer: a verbose writer will write too much, whether we're talking description, dialogues, or unnecessary events; a 'to-the-point' writer will write too little, whether it's because there'll be no description, the characters don't require back story or location names and months are considered superfluous for the crux of the story. For these writers, the first draft will be the place to let themselves go before going back and softening their instinctive approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a personal note, I write in a fashion as I've never seen mentioned in most forums and blogs I visit. First of all, I don't 'first draft' my entire novel. I write the first few chapters a few times (or over and over, if need be) until I find the right tone (style, narration, etc) to fit the story and the characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I develop the main events, timeline them, research the settings, understand the motivations. At this time, I'll write random scenes that further flesh out the characters and may or may not be used in the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I go back to that first chapter and start writing. I'll carefully search for the right words, the right style, the right rhetoric, the right everything- Every time I finish a chapter, I go back and re-read everything (in the beginning) or the last few chapters (once I get over half-way the novel) to make sure the tone is just right and everything is still tight and 'perfect'. If I start getting fed up, the chapter needs an over-haul. If something is wrong, it'll become annoyingly obvious after the third or fourth re-reading and I'll be able to fix the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some chapters do work like a first draft and will need a more or less deep revision; others will come out nearly perfect at the first try (barring some words that need to be swapped with a synonym or some wordings that need perfecting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advance is slow but steady and confident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do I refer my personal 'draft quirks'? Because I want to reinforce that &lt;em&gt;it depends&lt;/em&gt;. Whether a first draft is great or terrible; whether the problem is character development, fleshing a setting (too much or too little) or catastrofic plot holes; whether there is a proper novel draft or consecutive chapter drafts - what is wrong will always depend on each individual draft rather than a generalisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-04-15T09:30:06.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21637" CreationDate="2017-04-15T12:56:43.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Compilation Options, choose Formatting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Select your Section Type you wish to modify, then choose &quot;Set the line spacing&quot; → Other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tz8jO.png&quot; width=&quot;470&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increase Paragraph spacing after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8ECyp.png&quot; width=&quot;290&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24473" LastActivityDate="2017-04-15T12:56:43.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27556" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27557" CreationDate="2017-04-15T14:42:47.630" Score="1" ViewCount="391" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've started to write my first Fantasy novel. But there's one question that always bugs me. If I were to have a Kingdom, of course I would have a fictional name for it. So if I have a non-fictional place in my first few books, can I have a non-fictional setting later on in the series?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22517" LastEditorUserId="22517" LastEditDate="2017-04-18T15:14:43.047" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T15:14:43.047" Title="Can I transition from real to fictional places in fantasy series?" Tags="|fantasy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27556" CreationDate="2017-04-15T15:39:30.737" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fantasy literature is full of examples of characters passing between real and imaginary worlds. It is one of the core theme of fantasy literature. Indeed, the roots of fantasy literature are all in the long folk tradition that has seen a magical world existing side by side with the real world, and with passages between those worlds, in both directions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is probably fair to say that the fantasy that happens entirely in an invented world a la Tolkien is probably a very recent thing, at least as a dominant form of the art. It wasn't something his contemporaries practiced. C.S. Lewis' work was all about children passing from England into Narnia. Charles Williams's books (which deserve to be far better known than they are) were all about incursions of Faerie into the real world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Madeleine L'Engle are all examples of writers who work was about the border between worlds and transitions between them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, no, there is nothing to prevent a transition from the real to the imaginary world. What you do have to be careful about, though, is maintaining a consistent overall tone and mythos. If the transition comes out of the blue and upsets the order of the story world, you are likely to lose your audience. Foreshadowing is your friend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-15T15:39:30.737" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27558" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-15T19:05:40.600" Score="3" ViewCount="286" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the current draft of my book, the evil dictator whose body is encased in a silver alloy talks basically by allowing magic to move to seep into the silver shell, dispelling it and causing vibrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This voice sounds alien, imperial, and metallic. In order to represent this, I'm currently using a different font. (Specifically Kino MT.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do something similar with a group that constantly wear helmets that filter out certain wavelengths of sound, and use the 'Cracked' font.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also sometimes speak in an imperial dialect which I represent with angle brackets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just going to reek of tacky amateurishness and such? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23486" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T21:39:21.337" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T21:39:21.337" Title="Is representing distorted voices via different typefaces, and different languages represented by enclosing brackets an advisable thing to do?" Tags="|style|technique|formatting|language|originality|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27558" CreationDate="2017-04-15T19:58:13.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is generally inadvisable (which is not to say that it is not done sometimes). The reason it is inadvisable is that every artform has its palette, its set of devices and conventions by which it tells its story. Mastering any art form is about learning how to tell the story within the confines of that palette. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the limits of the prose palette is that is does not support sound effects. You can describe sounds with words, but you cannot reproduce them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the limits of the movie palette is that you cannot describe sounds, you can only make them. This means that all sounds in a movie are presented literally, and that it is impractical to present sounds that are injurious or painful to humans. (Movies have to fake this by using non-painful sounds and having the actors writhe dramatically -- something every third Star Trek episode seemed to indulge in.) Prose, by contrast can describe sound by metaphor, suggesting a far richer experience than a mere speaker can produce. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you treat sound differently in prose and on video. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are proposing is to represent sound through a font change. This is not part of the common palette of prose, so reader will not know what to make of it. This will tend to pull them out of the story world to ponder the meaning of your typography. But more importantly, there are other, richer, and more conventional ways to handle this in prose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can describe the nature of the sound the first time it is heard, but if you really want to make a voice distinctive in prose, your best tools are distinct diction and distinct message (what is said, and the words chosen). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't try to extend the palette of prose; try to become a master of the whole of the existing palette. It is more than adequate for any story you might wish to tell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-04-15T21:05:42.620" LastActivityDate="2017-04-15T21:05:42.620" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27558" CreationDate="2017-04-15T23:21:59.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As noted above, &quot;generally inadvisable&quot; is on the mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you consider your book to be more along the lines of entertainment, than along the lines of literature, you might do it. Really, the choice is yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way: If you show up for a job interview, you dress in accordance with expectations. Same with books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write this not as a reviewer or publsher, but as someone who has browsed many books on the library shelves, always fiction, not necessarily in a genre that appeals to me. Although books with prominent decorative elements (including styled text) are uncommon, they are occasionally seen among recently-issued popular books, probably because those books are intended to appeal to the &quot;soon to be a movie or TV show&quot; market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-04-15T23:21:59.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27562" CreationDate="2017-04-16T04:17:35.220" Score="4" ViewCount="1655" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel where a person who has decided to commit suicide can hire some murderers to kill he/him in the way he/she prefers. There are only two members running this service. A man and a woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first chapters (20,000 words) are told from the eyes of a girl who wants to die in the arms of the boy she loves. Once her wish is fulfilled her POV ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The middle chapters (20,000 words) are seen from the eyes of the man I mentioned before (when he was young). Turns out he also had a death wish: to die saving someone. Once his wish is fulfilled his POV ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last chapters (20,000 words) are seen from the eyes of the woman I mentioned before (turns out she also wanted to die in the past). The novel ends with her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is this: the reader will invest emotionally in the character of the first chapters, only to see her disappear in the middle of the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will this be an issue? If so, what can I do to fix it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: the man and the woman running the service appear throughout the novel (the middle and end of the novel focus on their backstory).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note 2: some characters  don't die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2018-03-21T12:35:26.763" LastActivityDate="2018-03-21T12:35:26.763" Title="A novel consisting of three separate stories joined only by a theme. A bad idea?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27561" CreationDate="2017-04-16T04:44:36.730" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are examples of separate stories connected thematically. I think the question is, when is such a work a collection of independent stories on the same theme and when is it a single novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example that springs to mind is Alan Garner's &lt;em&gt;Red Shift&lt;/em&gt;, in which the same story plays out three times, at three different times in history, all involving the same artefact. But in that case the telling of the three tales is intertwined, and the whole telling of the novel hangs on that intertwining. I don't think anyone would question whether &lt;em&gt;Red Shift&lt;/em&gt; is one novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the three stories in succession will certainly suggest linked stories rather than one novel, unless there is something stronger than theme connecting them. I think there is also the question of whether and how the theme develops from one story to the next. Does the first story feel incomplete in itself, and do the second and third stories seem to complete it. Or is each one complete in itself. With intertwined stories, you don't face questions like this, or at least not to the same degree. But intertwined stories also work differently, the three stories don't so much build on one another as reinforce and/or counterpoint each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reader's investment in a story does not have to rest on emotional investment in a single character. Novels are fundamentally about experience, but they can work either by involvement or by standing back and observing. A more detached approach might make it easier to have the reader follow the theme rather than the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="13916" LastEditDate="2017-04-16T14:58:25.510" LastActivityDate="2017-04-16T14:58:25.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27463" CreationDate="2017-04-16T10:21:32.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a marketplace the web has no equal. Artists punt their services and provide gallery samples to entice and inspire. Fair and honourable agreements work for everyone. Find the work that flicks your switch and develop a sound working relationship with the artist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.freelancer.com/find/Illustration?gclid=COf1nv3eqNMCFQ08GwodnmIGKw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.freelancer.com/find/Illustration?gclid=COf1nv3eqNMCFQ08GwodnmIGKw&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21188" LastActivityDate="2017-04-16T10:21:32.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2017-04-16T11:22:20.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For technical papers, a two-column format allows figures (e.g. graphs) to be large enough to understand&lt;/strong&gt;, without taking up nearly as much of the limited page count.  And similarly for equations, to pack as much info in a small area (without hurting the readability.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22438" LastActivityDate="2017-04-16T11:22:20.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27566" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-16T11:41:19.933" Score="5" ViewCount="818" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say two characters are conversing and one character interrupts the other in mid-sentence. How would that actually be shown in dialog? I have seen some use a hyphen at the end of the sentence but I have also seen an ellipsis used as well, but which is the most appropriate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18989" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T15:15:51.503" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T15:20:44.140" Title="How is a dialog interruption actually shown?" Tags="|dialogue|punctuation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27558" CreationDate="2017-04-16T11:57:23.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Think about it:  Are you reading this answer on paper, or on a (color) screen?  The convention may change quickly, if readers accept changes&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conventional wisdom says not to play 'games' with typography (until/unless one is a big-name author), but that convention is based back in the history/technology/economics of movable type and printing presses.  However, if we write and read primarily on screens, (thus freed from the constraints of paper and printing processes), we can do it differently -- if (and &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; if) the changes tell the story to the intended audience sufficiently better.  So much so that the readers' approval is evident to the current gatekeepers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, conventions change with the technology and reader expectations/enjoyment.  If using different fonts, italics, bold or punctuation unconventionally tells stories more effectively, I think that will &lt;em&gt;eventually&lt;/em&gt; win out.  At present, the expectations of agents, editors and publishers are the gatekeepers, but those gates aren't locked -- and effective storytelling is the key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two examples of interest: In &lt;em&gt;Startide Rising&lt;/em&gt;, author David Brin used a variety of typographic signs (uppercase, paired punctuation marks such as '::') to indicate alien/telepathic 'speech.'  It was his second novel published, and won the Hugo award.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;The Stars My Destination&lt;/em&gt;, Alfred Bester uses some interesting language-on-paper techniques to convey synesthesia (a scrambling between senses.)  Most serious fans consider it one of his best books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may vary; I'm hoping the conventions evolve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22438" LastActivityDate="2017-04-16T11:57:23.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27568" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-16T12:30:48.237" Score="4" ViewCount="7896" Body="&lt;p&gt;This topic has been discussed--but please advise me on this particular test case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title of the fiction novel is &quot;Shorter of Breath&quot; -- a reference to a lyric in Pink Floyd's &quot;Time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter names have song lyrics and titles, such as &#xA;3: Look up to the skies and see &#xA;4: I understand about indecision&lt;br&gt;&#xA;7: And if you listen very hard&lt;br&gt;&#xA;8: Someone saved my life tonight    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the subplots of this very silly story is a time-traveling group of novel characters who become music critic terrorists and decide to remove Starship's &quot;We built this city&quot; from history by attacking the band members in 1985. The band name and song are referred to, and occasionally quoted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;A fictional character named Mucho from a Pynchon novel waved his beer and ranted to the assembly, “‘Corporation games!' 'Listen to the radio!’ How long will we have to accept this profanation!”&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much of this should I remove / change / tweak / abandon? Thank you in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24487" LastEditorUserId="28802" LastEditDate="2020-03-22T14:17:35.573" LastActivityDate="2020-03-27T16:54:01.717" Title="Can I legally use these song lyrics as book/chapter names?" Tags="|copyright|lyrics|trademark|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27566" CreationDate="2017-04-16T13:01:01.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The choice is stylistic. It's almost always your decision, as the author. Do what you feel would be appropriate and convey your meaning well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it goes without saying that some publishers may have a certain way they want you to format your work. Be sure to fit their guidelines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me personally, I use hyphens. I feel like they work better than an ellipsis, even though I have seen some authors use ellipses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-04-16T13:01:01.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27566" CreationDate="2017-04-16T13:22:48.113" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a hyphen. Use an em dash. In most word processors, you can insert an em dash by using two hyphens (it will be converted to a single em dash). In LaTeX, use three hyphens (which will be converted). Or, from a character map, copy and paste the em dash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interruption, either by being cut off, or by a sudden event, is always shown by an em dash. On the other hand, if the speaker is losing the train of thought, or is tapering off, that is shown by an ellipsis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that some fonts show a long em dash (full em width), while other fonts show a shorter em dash (maybe 75% to 80% of em). If you find the true em dash to be unattractively long, you might cheat an use an en dash instead. This is technically incorrect, but few would notice in print. In any case, it must be noticeably longer than a mere hyphen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example, with em dash:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You never—&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Don't give me that rubbish. I'm tired of your constant complaints.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example of em dash, used as a stronger alternative to parentheses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was  dark — especially for London — and stormy night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example use of ellipsis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She looked out at the rain, and mumbled to herself, &amp;quot;I wonder if…&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: There is a difference between the en dash (EN) and the em dash (EM). The en dash is used to indicate a range of things (say, between times or dates). Alas, the most common word processor rarely inserts an automatic en dash, but you can insert it by other means. In LaTeX, it is two hyphens, automatically replaced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T15:20:44.140" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27568" CreationDate="2017-04-16T13:26:32.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not do that. You are intentionally deriving from the song, using actual lyrics. If I were the songwriter, I'd turn Pink and contact my lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mere &lt;em&gt;title&lt;/em&gt; of your book might happen to coincide with that of the &lt;em&gt;title&lt;/em&gt; of a song, providing that the title is sufficiently generic. I wouldn't hesitiate to title a book &lt;em&gt;Help!&lt;/em&gt; but I would hesitate to title it &lt;em&gt;She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-04-16T13:26:32.077" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27568" CreationDate="2017-04-16T17:32:25.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL, but questions of this sort fall under the doctrine of fair use, which may differ from one jurisdiction to another. Generally, fair use says that there are certain exceptions to the protection provided by copyright law that allow people limited use of those material for specific purposes such as criticism or parody.  Fair use is described here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, no one here can tell you with any certainty if your proposed use constitutes fair use or not. If you submit your work to a publisher, they are probably going to be extremely conservative in interpreting the fair use doctrine and are likely to insist on your getting permission from the copyright holder even in cases that you may think are clearly fair use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-16T17:32:25.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-16T20:59:08.717" Score="7" ViewCount="140113" Body="&lt;p&gt;Becoming nervous in the heat of a situation. Perhaps you witnessed something not for the faint of heart. &#xA;Like, how would I describe shaky legs without being so boring about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21178" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:06:39.867" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T19:48:14.370" Title="How can I describe nervousness?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|description|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27573" CreationDate="2017-04-16T23:08:49.547" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Spend less time describing the nervousness, and more time describing what is making your characters nervous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neither of them moved a muscle. Elias could hear his own heartbeat; he could even hear Jamie's nervous breaths. Two sets of footsteps were coming toward them. One was heavy and slow, like an adult's; the other seemed quicker and lighter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(from something I'm writing)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this short paragraph, only one sentence is devoted to actually describing nervousness: hearing one's own heartbeat and someone else's breath. Readers know from that sentence that Jamie and Elias are nervous; there is no need to tell them again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, the rest of the paragraph is about their situation. &lt;em&gt;Why&lt;/em&gt; are they nervous? They need to avoid detection, and two mysterious figures are moving toward them. This heightens the tension in the scene and gives Elias and Jamie a reason to be nervous, which is much more effective than continuing to describe nervousness itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23436" LastActivityDate="2017-04-16T23:08:49.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27573" CreationDate="2017-04-16T23:28:56.113" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well.. There are &lt;strong&gt;simple&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;less simple&lt;/strong&gt; answers to these kinds of questions that will give you different results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First; the &lt;strong&gt;simple&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;He/I was nervous&quot;..&#xA;- Not a lot to misinterpret, but not a lot for the reader to &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Second; the &lt;strong&gt;less simple&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;He/I did this, said this, felt this&quot;&#xA;   - the &quot;this's&quot; in the example above would then be replaced with examples of behaviour that people are familiar with connecting to&#xA;  nervousness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stuttering / repeating yourself / lacking or missing words &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;quick/uneasy breathing &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;using or positioning your hands/arms/legs differently &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;looking around quickly/without focus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;paying attention to certain details, either relevant or not &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;sweating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;the list goes on...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@FlyingPiMonster uses most of these in his example in his answer. You can use whichever suits your characters and the situation they're in. When you describe the qualities of an emotion/feeling/state that someone is in, the reader is more likely to &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; that emotion, rather than just &quot;know what you mean&quot;... the &lt;strong&gt;what makes the character nervous&lt;/strong&gt; could in this case be what he's paying attention to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Perhaps:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Think of something that made you nervous - how did you act/react? &#xA;If you cannot remember how you behave when nervous (It'd surprise me a little, but) ask someone else how they felt and or acted last time they were nervous. Perhaps even ask someone specific that your character may remind you of, if possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastActivityDate="2017-04-16T23:28:56.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27573" CreationDate="2017-04-17T01:32:01.600" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to avoid being boring you avoid even alluding to the nervousness at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of some of the things that might cause your knees to shake that have nothing to do with nervousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe your character checks the thermostat and wonders how the room can be so cold when the heat is set to 75°.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make your character wonder if people are wondering why your character needs to piss so badly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your character could do something completely out of character, or give in to an old vice, like having one smoke, just this once, because it’s only once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have your character do something compulsive, like pull out their third stick of gum in 2 minutes, or pull their socks up repeatedly, in hopes that that will help hold them in place. Yet somehow it only makes them itch more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the tone is right, have your character remark that their legs are as numb as if they’d sat on the john for an hour playing Clash of Clans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most important ways you’ll establish that mythical authorial “voice” is by thinking outside the box. Anyone can convey that their character is nervous by stating that they’re sweating or that their heart is pounding. If you want to reach your readers, make it personal—personal to you, personal to your character. Bring your own experiences into the picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, you won’t even need to hint at the fact that your character is nervous. That should become obvious the moment you write, &quot;He lit up another cigarette,” because you've already established that your character gave up smoking years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2686" LastEditorDisplayName="user2686" LastEditDate="2017-04-22T01:46:33.093" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T01:46:33.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27578" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-17T13:49:00.953" Score="1" ViewCount="1173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a plot of a mystery/thriller, and I want to start writing a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should be the minimum length of a novel so that a Publisher becomes interested?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23354" LastActivityDate="2018-09-25T13:55:24.370" Title="Is there any standard regarding the minimum length of a novel?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27578" CreationDate="2017-04-17T14:30:03.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to very widely depending on who you ask. The Science Fiction &amp;amp; Fantasy Writers of America define it as being &lt;a href=&quot;http://nebulas.sfwa.org/about-the-nebulas/nebula-rules/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;40,000 words or more&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a thriller writer, but I have heard on the writerly grapevine that thrillers tend to be shorter than other genres so as to maintain the feeling of tension and allow the book to be read in one sitting (which is an advantage for a page-turner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22034" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T14:30:03.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-17T16:12:50.010" Score="1" ViewCount="1745" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel where my original idea was to use first person narrative in most chapters, since the story focuses on the main character's thoughts/feelings/mental issues. I planned to use third person in some other chapters where I'd share some information that the main character is not aware of, focusing on other character's side of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I was advised by a teacher to rethink the first person, because 'it's very limited' when it comes to show and tell. I'm not quite sure what she meant by that and even though, I'm still convinced first person is the better choice, I would like to learn from what she said. Could anyone give me a particular example and/or pros and cons in general?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24500" LastActivityDate="2017-11-09T22:29:59.903" Title="First person narrative - pros and cons" Tags="|viewpoint|narrative|perspective|narrator|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27581" CreationDate="2017-04-17T16:58:20.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea that first person narration is very limited in terms of show and tell arise from most authors' inherent honesty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In third person POV, the author gets to speak openly and honestly about what is going on in each scene.  The reader may assume that they are not being &quot;told&quot; everything about what is going on, but they can rely on the truthfulness of what they are being &quot;shown&quot;.  It is also possible from this perspective to inform the reader of a fact or event which the characters cannot perceive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In first person POV, everything the reader sees is also seen by the character.  So whenever the author wants the reader to know something that the character doesn't, the character must lie to themselves in one way or another, misinterpreting what they see or ignoring it as irrelevant.  Over the course of an entire novel, this chronic self deception can wear away the character's believe-ability.  As pages pass, it becomes increasingly more difficult to justify the character's ignorance in contrast with the reader's insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would prefer to say that first person POV is very limiting to foreshadowing and theme development, rather than limiting to show vs. tell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;Especially since the first person POV character, being a part of the story, is always being shown to the reader.  When a first person POV character tells the reader what is happening, what they are really doing is showing the reader what they think is happening.  So first person POV stories are always 100% shown...   which is where all the limits and writing difficulties arise from.&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="11221" LastEditDate="2017-04-17T17:53:49.403" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T17:53:49.403" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27584" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27601" CreationDate="2017-04-17T17:27:57.327" Score="1" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there certain standards for writing children's books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I know there are certain sight words for children depending on age and grade.  Are there standards that say you can only use a certain sight words for certain ages?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, do these standards keep you from getting incorporated into classrooms or curriculum or published in any way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24501" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T19:08:52.257" Title="Sight Words standards for children's books" Tags="|publishing|children|education|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27578" CreationDate="2017-04-17T17:42:20.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A given publisher might have specific rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general there's no hard and fast rules, like a novel must be at least 40,000 words, so if your story is 39,998 words it's not long enough to call a &quot;novel&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realistically, if you write a story that is 50 words long and submit it to a publisher as a novel, they're not likely to be interested. Maybe a publisher would print a one-page novel as some sort of novelty (no pun intended), but it would be a hard sell, more a joke than a serious book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say in general you'd have to have 30,000 to 40,000 words to be considered a &quot;novel&quot;. Anything less than that is a novella or a short story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm suddenly reminded of the classic, &quot;Shortest Horror Story Ever Told&quot;: &quot;The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T17:42:20.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27558" CreationDate="2017-04-17T17:56:57.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my humble opinion, don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd have to explain what the different fonts mean. You can't expect the reader to guess. Perhaps that could be done smoothly. If I was reading a story I'd find it rather jarring, tearing me out of immersion in the story, if there was a note in the middle of the story that said, &quot;When I use this font it means ...&quot; That's breaking the fourth wall. Okay, maybe you could slip it in more subtly. Like the first time you use it you say, &quot;Then the dictator spoke by blah blah&quot; and then give the text in this different font and the user should get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many different fonts are you thinking of using, and how distinctive are they? Readers will have to be able to instantly distinguish the different fonts and remember what they mean. You may say, &quot;Well obviously this is Garamond and that's Times Roman&quot;, but that may not be so obvious to a reader who isn't much interested in fonts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd guess publishers would not appreciate the extra expense for typesetting and proof-reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read a few stories where they used different fonts for different types of speech, or a different font for voice versus telepathy, or humans versus robots, or whatever. Generally I've just found it gimmicky and distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T17:56:57.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27556" CreationDate="2017-04-17T18:03:59.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;So if I have a non-fictional place in my first few books, can I have a fictional setting later on in the series?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean, the first three books in the series are rigorously historically accurate historical drama set in, say, Britain, and then in the fourth book the characters head off to the Land of Oz, this could be very tricky to pull off. I can enjoy a historical drama like Downton Abbey. I can enjoy a science fiction story like Star Trek. But if on the fourth season of Downton Abbey the characters were beamed aboard the Enterprise and headed off to another planet, wow, that would have to be done VERY skillfully to work. Most likely I'd say &quot;oh give me a break&quot; and turn it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jumping from one genre to another is possible, but very hard to pull off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T18:03:59.933" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27568" CreationDate="2017-04-17T18:05:10.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL, but Titles (and I assume chapter titles) cannot be copyrighted. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thebalance.com/can-a-book-title-be-copyrighted-3974593&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.thebalance.com/can-a-book-title-be-copyrighted-3974593&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were quoting at least half of the song somewhere, maybe I would seek clearance, but this sounds like a very superficial reference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be different if you were taking a character or a dramatic situation created specifically for a song and made a different work.  In that case, the song writer MIGHT be able to say that this was a derivative work. Let's say you wrote a movie  that dramatized the life of Eleanor Rigby or the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  That would be such an example where the song writers could claim that yours was a derivative work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue would be if the song or title was trademarked, but that's also doubtful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you are not doing that. You are referring to a historical fact of a song and a band. That is certainly fair game. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your comfort level with legal ambiguity might drive you to seek legal help, but I personally would take the risk on this matter.  If you are publishing ebooks (not print ebooks), any conflict at worst would probably result in having to re-edit later versions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2020 Update&lt;/strong&gt;. It was pointed out that a trademark does not need to be registered to be valid. (IANAL and did not know this). But for interstate commerce (and we can assume that both the song are book are sold interstate), typically it is necessary for you to register the trademark in order to protect it. Also, I'm not sure any trademark notice was published with that particular song/album. Finally, there is no problem of product confusion because a song and book are different mediums.  For more, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-good-unregistered-trademark.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this NOLO article about unregistered trademarks&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="7968" LastEditDate="2020-03-27T16:54:01.717" LastActivityDate="2020-03-27T16:54:01.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27584" CreationDate="2017-04-17T19:08:37.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer will vary from publisher to publisher. You're most likely to run into very rigid standards when your book is just one in a larger series, and this is a common scenario with educational publishers. In this case, publishers want the books in a series to be comparable in almost every way--sentence length, number of sentences per page, range of vocabulary, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're dealing with a book that is not part of a series, it's up to the editor you're dealing with. Many editors would simply consider the text as a whole to determine if it is age-appropriate, but some might have a more formal checklist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21329" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T19:08:37.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27581" CreationDate="2017-04-17T20:22:32.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...'it's very limited' when it comes to show and tell. I'm not quite sure what she meant by that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither am I. It is probably better to ask your teacher what she meant because the limitations of the selected point of view, whether it is a first or any flavor of the third person, have no direct impact on the &lt;em&gt;show vs. tell&lt;/em&gt; methods of the story delivery. You can do either and any combination of the two regardless of the POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that you will be more comfortable writing from the first person POV, by all means, you should do it and see where it takes you. It is your story. It will be challenging in many ways but were the first person inferior to other points of view nobody would ever write from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T20:22:32.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21769" CreationDate="2017-04-17T20:51:01.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When reading a story, the reader requires additional information to be connected in some way with information that came prior — if it is a continuous narrative.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;With a discontinuous narrative, the reader will be looking for ways to fit the fragments of information together like a jigsaw puzzle.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Elsewise, they might as well be touring a museum of modern art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there is some confusion as to the function of ‘names’.  Briefly, most names as we know and use them are simply abbreviated &lt;strong&gt;handles&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;labels&lt;/strong&gt;, for the purposes of swift and easy &lt;strong&gt;identification&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As some other answers noted, if your story was done from POV of the unnamed character, then there is less need for name — but that doesn't mean that it can't occur.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Are you in need of a recognizable, succinct, and semantically portable noun whereby to identify a personage to your readers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A narration can continue with the absence of anything so long as that thing is not a necessary component thereof:  if there is a place where something should occur, and it doesn't, then readers will notice.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;“Is this person afraid to utter that name?”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;“Did the writer forget that the main character hasn't been given a name yet?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you do give something, it follows that such revelation should be connected with previous parts of the narration.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;How exactly to maintain a chain in a narration, and when it is possible to sever or fragment that chain, depends on many things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the intelligence, attentiveness, and recall of the reader&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the intelligibility of the prose — if it is confusing and muddled, or otherwise difficult to read&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the rewards gained by delving into the prose — if a reader sees evidence of profound investment in the writing, i.e. gaining insights by contemplating even terse or obscure writs, then they could be annoyed and disinterested but they won't think the writer inept or a hack&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A ‘name’ as a &lt;strong&gt;part of the narrated events&lt;/strong&gt; is exactly that; do not introduce them in any way that seems &lt;strong&gt;inexcusably contrived&lt;/strong&gt; unless such is &lt;strong&gt;purposefully required&lt;/strong&gt; — i.e. it only &lt;strong&gt;seemingly &lt;em&gt;ex machina&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  If so, however, keep in mind that you ought be at a certain level of trust with your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A ‘name’ used to &lt;strong&gt;conveniently identify&lt;/strong&gt; a character or other personage to your readers serves a narrative function.  Any such devices are usually referred to as, well, &lt;strong&gt;narrative devices&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The exact definition and optimal implementation of a narrative device varies, but they typically can be grouped into two original classes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;voice of the narrator&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This should be intuitive enough:  &lt;em&gt;Once upon a time, there was a certain woman.  Let us refer to her as Alice, for that is — suitably enough — her given name.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The narrator could be one of the persons featured in the story, it may be a layer that exists between the story and the reader, or it may be the author.  It could be personified, or it could simply be a certain attitude and vocabulary conveyed by the choice of words and grammar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;premise or foundation of the story&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If something is given as a precept or axiom, not explored narratively, or otherwise taken for granted.  It could be that you want to explore some strange and bizarre medical condition, and how it compares to so–called “normal life”, and the triumph of Love or whatever, but you don't really want to explore the clinical diagnoses or origins of the condition itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22633" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T20:51:01.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27540" CreationDate="2017-04-17T21:43:30.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people have declared a set &quot;rules&quot; for writing. But it's not like these are laws, that you'll be arrested by the Writing Police if you break them. They are guidelines that some people think generally make for better stories. One authority's set of rules often contradict another's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a great author says &quot;here are the rules I follow in writing my best-selling novels&quot;, I'd pay attention. Or if a scholar says &quot;I've studied hundreds of stories that are generally acknowledged to be great fiction and I find they all have such and such in common&quot;, again, worth paying attention. But that doesn't mean you have to slavish follow them. Writing is a creative process. (Duh.) Don't ignore well-established rules. Don't break well-established rules just to prove you're a rebel or something. But don't be afraid to break them when you have a good reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a software developer by profession -- writing is just a tiny side hobby for me. At my job, I once wrote up a list of rules for other programmers to follow. And at the end of the list of rules, I said, &quot;If you think you have a good reason for breaking any of these rules, go ahead and break the rule, but you must write down your reason and save it with the program.&quot; As I explained to the staff: If you can give a good reason for breaking the rule, than by all means break the rule. If you can't put your reason into words, if it's just &quot;the rule is too much trouble&quot; or &quot;I don't feel like it&quot;, then follow the rule. I never, ever challenged anyone's reason for breaking a rule. I suspect there were cases where someone tried to put their reason into words and couldn't come up with anything that sounded reasonable, and gave up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the same thing applies to writing fiction. In general, you should use correct grammar. But if you're writing in first person and the narrator is supposed to be uneducated, then you can convey this by using poor grammar. In general, the hero should win in the end. But if the point of your story is that good does NOT always triumph, then it makes sense for the good guy to lose sometimes. Etc etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T21:43:30.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18591" CreationDate="2017-04-18T00:14:59.627" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can. There are absolutely no age restrictions when writing a book. A very famous author named Gordon Korman published his first book when he was &lt;em&gt;12.&lt;/em&gt; I also believe that if you are younger you have a better imagination. But make sure to tell your parents you &lt;em&gt;are very&lt;/em&gt; serious about it because they will have to sign contracts. Another bad thing is that not many people will take you seriously. Anyways, write your book and get it published!!! Trust me, you can. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; write it - Toni Morrison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24507" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T00:14:59.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27540" CreationDate="2017-04-18T01:42:29.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other answers deal with the &quot;rules&quot; of writing quite well. I'm not going to address that, I'm going to address the main part of your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What if the hero doesn't win?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely write this. This is the type of emotional hook, that when done well, will leave a lasting impression on your readers and keep them coming back for more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are four main types that, I believe, are the most powerful (warning - these are TV Tropes links and, as such, you may got lost for hours. It happens) - and while they are separate here, they are often interlinked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BittersweetEnding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bittersweet Ending&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBadGuyWins&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Bad Guy Wins&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;3) &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PyrrhicVictory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Phyrric Victory&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;4) &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DownerEnding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Downer Ending&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Bttersweet and Phyrric Victories work quite well together, and can be a very powerful tool. They make the cost of victory too high and can be a very emotional read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the hero manages to thwart the villain at the last possible moment, but in the process loses their friends/family/the world is destroyed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the hero fails at the end, his courage falters, and others pay the price. He is wracked by guilt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, the villain triumphs and, against all reason, turns out to do a great deal of good. The hero, still opposing the villain, becomes the very thing he was trying to stop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many, many examples, and the best part is because it isn't really the norm, that's the type of story that, done well, will live with you forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of literary examples, my favourite is the death of Anomander Rake from Steven Erikson's &lt;em&gt;Malazan Book of the Fallen&lt;/em&gt; series. His death, his purpose, the actions of not only himself, but those around him make it powerful. It grips the reader and doesn't let go. More than Anomander's actions and death, the real hero in that scene is Spinnock Durav. He fought an impossible fight, he lost it but delayed the unkillable villain long enough. He lost his individual fight, but through his actions the greater one was won. And it cost him everything - his people lost their leader, the greatest member of their race. But in doing so, hope for the future was also reborn. I remember it fondly, because I read the entire book (&lt;em&gt;Toll the Hounds&lt;/em&gt;) in one sitting. I couldn't put it down. I had tears streaming down my face as I reached that scene (admittedly it was also about 4am at this stage). If you can get your hands on them, then I thoroughly suggest reading them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T01:42:29.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27581" CreationDate="2017-04-18T07:30:44.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Portugal, we don't really fuss with 'show and tell'. Especially not in literature classes (whether high school level or college level). We do talk extensively about the &lt;em&gt;effects&lt;/em&gt; each type of narrator produces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A first person narrative has one big disadvantage: it limits what the narrator knows. One can play around with this limitation, though. In fact, it can even become an advantage. On the other hand, the greatest advantage is that the reader becomes more easily one with the character-narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But let's not think of advantages and disadvantages, since that depends on what you want to do, and focus on the effects instead. Then you simply choose the approach that best suits the effect you want to evoke on the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two types of first person narrator:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;a) the narrator is the main character (eg. &lt;em&gt;Jane Eyre&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The readers live the events with the main character. They share the feelings, the thoughts, everything, so it becomes very intimate. If the character is not likeable, the reader can become fed up and give it up. However, &lt;em&gt;Gone with the wind&lt;/em&gt; has a spoilt, conceited, unkind main character and most readers won't give up the book. The most important thing is to make sure you have a fully fleshed out character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also allows for interesting 'games': you can describe the words and actions of other characters so that the reader understands them, and then have the main character misunderstand them (or not understand them at all). Scarlett O'Hara often says she couldn't make heads and tails of Ashley when it is obvious what he's saying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;b) the narrator is a secondary (or tertiary) character that witnesses the events lived by the main character (eg. Watson and Sherlock Holmes)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This a good choice if your main character is mysterious, unlikeable, a genius or just peculiar and, therefore, difficult for the readers to get in their shoes. The narrator serves as a go-between and can explain the actions of the main characters. Poirot, Holmes and other incredibly intelligent detectives often need a side-kick for this same reason. It's difficult for the writer to mimic the mind of a genius, and since they can spot the guilty one so easily, it's not that much fun for the reader either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While all first-person narratives have unreliable narrators (it's the character's interpretation of the world and they may view the world in a distorted way, or they may simply wish to hide the skeletons in their closets), this case can allow for the narrator to manipulate the truth a bit more as, being a midle-man between main character and reader, they can more easily 'tell' the reader the motivations and feelings of the main character... but is it really true? The narrator can even paint the main character as a villain and, at the end of the book, we may finally discover the main character is more of a hero than a villain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a variation of the second case, the narrator can be a character very removed from the main characters. I remember a book I read years ago by a Japanese author (can't recall the title or the author's name, I'm afraid). The main character and narrator visits this far off place as a holiday of sorts and has small, mundane problems to solve. In the meantime he meets a few random characters, hears apparently unimportant gossip about them. In the end, these far off characters' lives end in death and fire and we find out their tragedy was the main event of the book all along. Like a real life tragedy: it's usually an acquaintance that will live a great personal tragedy (thank God it's not us) and we only find out about it in the very end and, likely, from afar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On another category, we can divide a first-person narrative in two different time approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;a) the narrator is basically living the events as they are 'written'&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach means you are limited to what the narrator knows now. It's great to cause tension and even fear (the unknown is the most terrifying thing in the world). If you're writing a thriller or a horror tale, this is a good approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;b) the narrator has lived the events and is now relating them as a biography or memoir&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows to mix far off past and recent past (or even future). You can have snippets such as 'who would have known, at the time, that Y would end up becoming YY?'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a simplist relay of some main things to keep in mind. One could write a book (a thin one) on the subject, really. I strongly suggest that you read a few books in the first person and analyse the strengths and weaknesses of that choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Hint: If you choose only great books to analyse, you'll find only strengths. A good writer will know how to avoid the weaknesses of their choice, after all; so pick a couple of bad examples to analyse too.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, keep in mind you can have two narrators. You can have most of the book written by a character and then a few (as a counter-weight) writen by a different character as the narrator. This approach is great if you want to balance two very partial world views (eg. narrator A lives a hellish life because of character B and then, later, narrator B shows he's really doing his best to help character A overcome a childish, egotistical phase) or if you want to up tension while at the same time making the reader feel the humanity of both hero and villain (eg. narrator A is the hero trying to stop a terrorrist and then narrator B is an everyday guy who wants to avenge the death of his family... albeit going a bit too far).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This last option requires very, &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; careful handling because the two 'I's of the narrators must have completely different voices so that the readers cannot confuse who is who.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T07:30:44.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27568" CreationDate="2017-04-18T12:28:10.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A data point for you, even within the time-travel subgenre: &#xA;John Varley used the titles of other author's time-travel stories as  chapter titles in his novel&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_(novel)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_(novel)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I found it no trouble to write a&#xA;  book with chapter titles borrowed almost exclusively from the long&#xA;  list of stories that served, in one way or another, as ancestors to&#xA;  this one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidently, his publisher's lawyer's either raised no fuss, or secured the needed permissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.  Please don't judge the novel by the movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22438" LastEditorUserId="22438" LastEditDate="2017-04-19T00:12:57.467" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T00:12:57.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27529" CreationDate="2017-04-18T13:54:33.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If they have numbers, then the number is effectively a name. But human beings have a hard time remembering numbers. If your characters refer to each other as 1892463, 1984236, 3894361, and 4896324, the reader is going to have a hard time keeping track of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's hard to keep track in a story, that's probably because it would be hard to keep track in real life. Rather than ask, &quot;How can I make this work in my story?&quot;, try asking, &quot;How would this work in real life?&quot; If your world was real, how would people refer to each other? If you can come up with something that would plausibly work in real life, it will probably work in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd guess that in real life, people would give each other names of some sort. If not what we think of as names, they might call each other by job titles or relationships or physical descriptions. Just like we do today. (&quot;Sarge&quot;, &quot;Mom&quot;, &quot;Shorty&quot;, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T13:54:33.467" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27600" CreationDate="2017-04-18T17:07:34.363" Score="2" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every now and then I come across a novel that is divided into sections. It contains Books 1,2, and 3. Or parts, or sections, or any other method to split the novel into several large chunks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I do this? &lt;strong&gt;What are the advantages/disadvantages of dividing a novel into sections?&lt;/strong&gt; Or is it simply writer preference? Does it actually do something for the reader, or is there no point to it at all? Can it actively harm the novel? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T17:34:46.810" Title="What are the Advantages/Disadvantages of Dividing a Novel into 'Sections'?" Tags="|style|novel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27599" CreationDate="2017-04-18T17:34:46.810" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;They generally announce to the reader the beginning of a new story arc. I think that's about all there is to it. The format of a sequence of short story arcs that combine more or less loosely to form a larger story arc has become something of a TV staple since BTVS popularized it. But it has existed in fiction for a long time. LOTR is an obvious example. Indeed, you can find arcs within arcs within arcs in LOTR. Lots of Dickens is similar. I suspect most long works are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we talk about story shapes we tend to focus on the shape of an individual story arc, which is an appropriate thing to do for analytical purposes. But a novel is a much more complex work of art than the shape of a single story arc suggests, and may include many arcs, either in parallel or in serial or both. Dividing a work into parts is a way of indicating the transition from one serial arc to another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a complex work, you have to give the reader adequate clues that you have shifted in time or character or arc, and this is just one way to do it. But I would regard is very much as a tool you can use, not a rule you must follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T17:34:46.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27584" CreationDate="2017-04-18T19:08:52.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will answer this assuming you have not got a contract and don't want to write for a current series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on what age you are writing for and what you are trying to do. If you are trying to get published as a standard text for young children you will need a series of books that have a very clear progression mapped out for the reader and the teacher. In these books words have to fit the lists (a big publisher might decide they know what these lists should be, but it is unlikely an individual could) and you have to have a reason for schools to buy your books over an established set of texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to supplement the lists, but only with common words students would use. (I have written some phone games where the National Curriculum lists for each age group are supplemented with extra words, such as days of the week -- these words are available to the teacher.) Otherwise, you have to stick to whatever your education authority specifies, assuming that they do specify something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you want to write a children's book that will be loved, cherished and repeated off by heart by pupils for years to come, ignore the set lists. Michael Rosen didn't consider the set lists when he wrote &lt;em&gt;Going on a Bear Hunt&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Each Peach Pear Plum&lt;/em&gt; wasn't a success because it only used a limited vocabulary. &lt;em&gt;The Hungry Catepillar&lt;/em&gt; didn't thrill children because it followed a publisher's sentence length guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than Dr Seuss, who wrote some stunning works of art that excited children about reading, I am not aware of books that are consistently outstanding and yet only use limited vocabulary lists. Chip and Biff (much as the series was used by schools) just didn't excite me about the world (okay, I was an adult, but still).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice, and I am a teacher who buys books, would be to write a book children want others to read to them so often it is memorised. Of course you have to consider the vocabulary of the audience, but more importantly, you want to set their hearts and minds on fire -- you want to change the world for a little person, not just tick off boxes on a word list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T19:08:52.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6750" CreationDate="2017-04-18T19:14:00.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Error Rate per Page Response&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;total errors/total pages is one way or&#xA;total errors/ total pages*100 (Error Rate) limits should be under 1%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer Defects per Million (DPM) DPM should be under 50&#xA;Total Error/(total pages * attributes per page)*1,000,000.&#xA;Attributes per page is a number predetermined for all calculation. We use a standard 300 attributes per page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can standardize this error across all efforts and I classify individual error codes 1-55 to pareto chart which area my defects occur most often. &#xA;i.e.  typo, grammar, style, formatting etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24514" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T19:14:00.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6750" CreationDate="2017-04-18T19:54:45.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether such a threshold exists or not is irrelevant, since you can never know whether you have met it or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you detected an error, you would fix it, so the number of known errors is always zero. The number of unknown errors is unknown because you can't count unknowns. Therefore there is no way to know if you have an error rate below any given threshold. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, over time, readers may discover errors in your work. There is no way to know if any one reader discovers all the errors, or if all the readers collectively have discovered all the errors, since a) they don't report them systematically, and b) you can never know how many undiscovered errors remain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that you can know if a work has passed the acceptable error threshold for an individual reader if they write to you and say, &quot;I discovered 10 errors in the first 73 pages so I stopped reading.&quot; But that does not mean any other reader will ever notice all those errors, or that if they do it will provoke them to stop reading and write you a nasty letter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, even if no reader has found enough errors to stop them reading yet, that is no proof that the next reader may not be more sharp eyed or more irritable than than all the others may not find enough errors to trigger their refusal to read on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A much better measurement might be this: the rate of error discovery. That is, how many errors do you find and fix in each pass through your work. Presumably this number will decline each time through. How many errors do other readers discover each time they read it? You can then set an acceptable error discovery rate per pass for a certain number of readers as a measurable quality metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the Web changes all of this, because now errors can be fixed after publication, something that even extends to published ebooks which can, like software, download periodic updates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T19:54:45.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="845" CreationDate="2017-04-18T20:37:24.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in a similar situation, with a background in business, some savings and an understanding of how I would approach such a project were it in my comfort zone (i.e. in my company).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$35k is probably too much - you'd lose the better part of it without recognising the ROI unless you have a clear, structured plan all the way down the process. I've chosen to work with Type&amp;amp;Tell, which is a self-pub spin off from Bonnier. They impressed me at the London Book Fair over competitors for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they have a good reputation as a publishing house and have clear expertise from the mothership&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they offer clear, concise services and are approachable if you're not sure what you need&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they don't take royalties, which means you pay upfront and manage your own risk afterwards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My background is online advertising and large-scale lead generation so I'm comfortable running my own marketing. Therefore I was looking for a company who could offer just the final editing, design and logistics of my book. Total costs to get it to market will be ~$7k which includes marketing materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22913" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T20:37:24.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27605" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-19T02:50:23.163" Score="4" ViewCount="856" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have started writing a novel. I've done some character questionnaires for my main characters, and I've outlined the plot. I want to do this planning to keep my story from fizzling out, but I don't want to plan too much so that it takes the fun out of actually writing it. Is there anything else I should plan to manage this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T20:52:59.437" Title="What else should I plan?" Tags="|planning|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27605" CreationDate="2017-04-19T03:47:39.240" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;People clearly differ in the amount and type of planning they do. But I think it is important to bear in mind that in the end a novel is an expression of a vision. Its function is to create a vivid and compelling experience for the reader and while aspects of that experience can be distilled and described in abstract terms, the experience itself needs to come across to the reader as something real and substantial, something with texture, something felt and touched and lived. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get into the state where you can write such a thing, you need to have a vision in your head of the experience you want to create, with all the vividness and substance that you want to convey to the reader. There will be much art and craft involved in making it as real to them as it is to you, but there is no way you can possibly make it more real to them than it is to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your planning, therefore, can only work as an aid to imagination, as a tool for making the vision you are building as concrete and real as you need it to be in order to write. If you are there, then it is time to write. If you are not there yet, perhaps more planning will get you there. But perhaps more planning will keep you from doing the hard work of imagination that is needed to flesh out your vision. Only you can figure that out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other writers, though, writing is the only way to get there. The plotter vs. pantser dichotomy, insofar as it make any sense at all, is not, I believe, so much about working out plot as it is about gaining a clarity of vision. Some (it seems) can't write till they have it. Other can only get it by writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T03:47:39.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27605" CreationDate="2017-04-19T03:51:26.190" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that you've taken the correct approach in &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; wallowing over the planning stage. So much of the time, constructing a plot synopsis, writing out character profiles and such ends up contradicting the purpose that it was meant to serve - that is, it goes from acting as a guide and aid to being a novel in its own right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that being said, ensuring that you have an outline of your plot, characters, themes, and so on is, I will stretch to say, almost required. In this instance, it really comes down to what you personally need in order to organize yourself. If you don't know how much that is, e.g. if you just need the cliff-notes, or a fully-pledge, wikipedia-like synopsis. Do more than is absolutely necessary and stop when it starts becoming tedious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps, I should add, one should not stick too closely to plans - plans have the irritating tendency to get in the way of new ideas. Specifically to your question, Mr. James, I would leave your plan as-is and allow it to remain lucid. A novel changes a lot over the course of their writing - it is simply the consequence that how a novel should theoretically look like is very different to how will have to look like in practice. Indeed, sometimes is changes to the point that you get frustrated and bored of it - at such times, it is good to look back upon your plan to remind yourself why you started writing it in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24383" LastEditorUserId="4419" LastEditDate="2017-04-20T17:07:45.657" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T17:07:45.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27605" CreationDate="2017-04-19T09:56:38.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe both @MarkBaker and @R.Rengold make good points in their answers. I want to address and add to @MarkBaker's last point about &quot;The plotter vs the pantser&quot; and the vision: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some (it seems) can't write till they have it. Other can only get it by writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Heads-up: Personal experience from here&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some may &lt;strong&gt;feel a need to plot out everything&lt;/strong&gt; before 'feeling ready to write the actual story'. If you're new to writing, this may be a very natural way of responding to &quot;the challenge of writing a novel&quot; - I felt this way, and spent more than 2 years plotting and world-building before writing the actual story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I thought I needed to plan out every detail of my story in advance&lt;/strong&gt;: Who did what when (and why) with what consequences, what the characters were 'like', how they related to each other, and what role they played in the bigger picture, when and how I would reveal the &quot;secret&quot; (science) and the list goes on (for 23 pages of points and notes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: my genre is philosophical science-fiction (philoscifi), so I may &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; more world-building in order for my work to make sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But it wasn't a story, it was a plot&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A story revolves around the characters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We need get to know the characters, in order to feel the &quot;important&quot; events in the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The characters come alive when you write about them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It wasn't until I started writing - &lt;em&gt;randomly&lt;/em&gt; following the characters I had sketched out - that their personalities and the actual story emerged. I didn't know the characters at all until I had written a good deal, and I'm still learning about them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I may be fortunately lucky with the following, but nonetheless: I started out writing seemingly random scenarios as a means of introducing my characters to the reader. Oddly, I kept writing seemingly random scenes that could then later be connected to the plot-points that I found crucial for the plot. The amazing thing: I was now able to connect emotion to the crucial plot-points, because the characters were naturally placed in them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Final point&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing the characters makes it much easier to plot out the events in a way where the plot points and the greater plot makes more sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first, I thought that everything I wrote had to be (and was) worthy of the final print - it's not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BUT&lt;/strong&gt;, even if it's not in the final print, everything you write (or have written) will help you in getting to know the characters (and their story) and thus isn't wasted. Luckily, most of what you have written will probably seem great until you've written something even greater and or clearer - making it easier to edit out the unnecessary parts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, something written about the character is edited out, but can be used later to create an authentic scene at a more crucial point in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I/you/we/one/some will probably have to edit some large parts of the writing that end up being superfluous the the story, but I've never heard of a novel written from start to finish without thorough editing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope the general advice and input is clear from the experience as described above, and that it only helps motivate actual writing! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2017-04-20T08:05:30.070" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T08:05:30.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27609" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27616" CreationDate="2017-04-19T13:12:38.583" Score="3" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a collection of short stories. I want to publish them. I need help in this. Should I pay for publishing or are there any agencies that publish/encourage budding short story writers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24510" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T00:48:56.337" Title="How to publish a collection of short stories?" Tags="|publishing|short-story|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27605" CreationDate="2017-04-19T15:39:44.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some advice I got when outlining my current project is that, in addition to outlining the plot and the characters, I can outline the plot hooks that tie each major section of the story together. This way, when I started writing, I knew which pieces of foreshadowing I needed to add and how each moving piece of the story fit together. So far, it has been very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the questions I asked myself about each major plot point in my story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is at stake during this chapter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do the main characters win or accomplish?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do the main characters lose, forcing them to continue their adventure or return to this plot point later?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do the main characters learn?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4419" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T15:39:44.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27605" CreationDate="2017-04-19T15:47:41.063" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first steps you outlined are great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you consider a short story that leverages key elements and characters in your outline as as your next progressive step towards the eventual full novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few reasons why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's semi-instant gratification - it gets people engaged and reading your work much earlier.  That type of feedback is incredibly useful for a new writer.  It can help you refine the key elements that will be the building blocks of the full novel you envision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It challenges you to be compelling and make everything you write count.  Great short stories can be as short as 1,000 words.  One of my favorite Ray Bradbury stories is only 1,444 words long, but it is amazing!  That skill development will be important as you then undertake the full novel development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It helps you develop the skills associated with self-publishing and promotion!  Those skills are important to build awareness of your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24520" LastEditorUserId="24520" LastEditDate="2017-04-19T17:30:13.183" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T17:30:13.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-19T16:00:37.710" Score="4" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am drafting a novel outline. The interesting part (and thus the part I should be writing) would come with several characters with preexisting romantic relationships. The choices they make will have a massive impact on those relationships, especially after the final reveal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The emotional tone of the entire story rests on the strength of these pre-existing connections which I want the reader to become invested in too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I make those existing relationships matter to the reader so that they feel the punch of the ending but without writing a whole bunch of prologue chapters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've toyed with using flashbacks (a lot of flashbacks) but this too just feels like an emotional &quot;info dump&quot; and could spoil the pace of the main conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2017-08-05T04:12:42.583" Title="Seeking advice on establishing the emotional impact of backstory" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|plot|romance|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27617" CreationDate="2017-04-19T18:29:41.017" Score="2" ViewCount="759" Body="&lt;p&gt;LuLu has an 800 pp. limit on their PoD books. What are some other alternatives to LuLu that allow printing more pages per volume (e.g., 1200)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24522" LastActivityDate="2022-04-03T17:01:35.690" Title="PoD page limits" Tags="|pages|print-on-demand|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27614" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27641" CreationDate="2017-04-19T20:09:26.143" Score="-1" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a research paper using MLA style. One of my sources is a book via Google Books. According to the MLA style, part of citing this online source includes giving the &quot;overall website&quot;. &lt;em&gt;Would I say &quot;Google Books&quot; or just &quot;Google&quot;?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google Books is the main site for the books, yet Google is the main site of all Google sites. &lt;em&gt;Which is correct?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24523" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T04:37:41.023" Title="&quot;Overall Website&quot; In Citing a Website (MLA)" Tags="|citations|mla|websites|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25323" CreationDate="2017-04-19T20:26:56.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What &lt;strong&gt;Mark Baker&lt;/strong&gt; said in his answer is correct, but there is another option. If you want to correct the typos for clarification or add information for clarification, you can add text in square brackets &lt;code&gt;[]&lt;/code&gt;. In your case, here is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[C]hristians&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/punctuation/parentheses-and-brackets&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;English Oxford Living Dictionaries&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Square brackets (also called brackets, especially in American English) are mainly used to enclose words added by someone other than the original writer or speaker, typically in order to clarify the situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;He [the police officer] can’t prove they did it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24523" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T20:26:56.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27609" CreationDate="2017-04-19T20:56:41.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you looking to get your book published by a publisher or to self-publish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for a publisher, then my question is whether or not any of your individual stories have been published? If the answer is &quot;yes, several of them&quot; then congratulations! You can look for an agent or start submitting your manuscript to publishers. To find publishers, check such resources as Writer's Digest's marketing guides or look for contests somewhere like Poets &amp;amp; Writers, which I believe only lists contests that meet certain guidelines (and are therefore less likely to rip you off by asking for exorbitant reading fees).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your stories haven't been published in journals or magazines, I suggest you try for that first. Not only will it help get your book published if you already have credits, it will help build an audience for folks who want to buy your book. You can check sites like Writer's Digest marketing guides, Duotrope, and Submission Grinder to help find markets that meet your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to self publish, look to places like CreateSpace (Amazon) for how to go about that. There are other threads which talk about pros and cons for some of the various places, like CreateSpace, that are essentially print on demand (POD). The thing to be aware of is, if some company wants you to pay to print a bunch of your books up front and it will cost you tons of money, run far away. It's a rip off and not needed in this digital age. It's one thing to pay a reasonable fee for some services (like editing) but do a comparison and keep your wallet in your pocket until you are sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T20:56:41.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27613" CreationDate="2017-04-19T23:36:13.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the alternative of Lulu for you is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mybestseller.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mybestseller&lt;/a&gt;. They can print 1200+ pages and have no limit as far as I know. But you should contact them for the specifications of your special order. Nothing is impossible! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22031" LastEditorUserId="22031" LastEditDate="2017-05-12T12:07:28.300" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T12:07:28.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27612" CreationDate="2017-04-20T03:49:50.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways of approaching this. First, and foremost, bear in mind: there's usually very few truly &quot;bad ideas,&quot; only poor executions of ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The past is never gone - it's all around you. A way in which one might approach this is to (I hate this saying, but I'll use it since it fits this context) show, not tell. Character A might behave in what may seem a toxic way toward Character B, but Character B is now in a relationship with Character C. Character C tells Character B to forget about Character A, because Character A was a good-for-nothing tool. Cut to Character A, who is constantly drunk and tries to not cry him or herself to sleep each night. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that I haven't actually told you that Character B cheated on Character A, and Character A is depressed because of that - I have (as much as it is possible using names like &quot;Character A, B, C&quot; anyhow) revealed the state of their relationships, which are a result of their relationships in the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also mention that there is a fundamental difference between &quot;flashback&quot; and &quot;info-dump&quot;. A flashback should actually have a significant emotional impact upon the reader - it should either establish something that leads to dramatic irony (i.e. the reader knows something that the characters don't) later, or is the pay-off - the so-called reveal - to a build-up that happened prior to the flashback. Wander too far away from that template, and you've probably just got an info dump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24383" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T03:49:50.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27612" CreationDate="2017-04-20T12:01:51.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect you may be miscalculating where your story begins. A story arc whose climax has a massive impact on a relationship generally begins with the beginning of that relationship, with all the things that shaped and defined that relationship, with all the things that make it vulnerable to the crisis, and all the things that make it worthy of surviving the crisis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interesting part, as you call it, may be the part where all the fireworks happen, but a change in a relationship is only interesting if the relationship itself is interesting. There are plenty of books in which relationships develop slowly, through the ordinary interactions of ordinary couples, without fireworks, storms, or floods. Such writing requires sensitive observation of human beings, their hope and affections, their pride and their prejudices. But it is very much the stuff of novels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason that people used to &quot;skip to the good bits&quot; in &lt;em&gt;Lady Chatterly's Lover&lt;/em&gt;, and that no one reads it at all today, is that the rest of it is just lousy writing. Laurence was a great novelist, but not in this book. Maybe Laurence himself was too keen to get to writing &quot;the good bits&quot; and did not give the rest of the book the attention and imagination it required.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer may be as simple as that you must begin at the beginning, and that you must do the work of imagination, and of storytelling, to make the development of those relationships compelling as you lead up to the crisis of your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a technique that you see use occasionally, when a story has many miles to cover to get to its climax, and that is the flash forward. In the flashforward, you begin by telling the crisis, briefly, and then go back to the natural beginning of the story and relate it up to the crisis point, and then proceed to the resolution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flash forward is not use that often, and I think that is for a good reason. The crisis is not particularly compelling unless you are invested in the characters. Certain kinds of engagement can be created very quickly, so you certainly can develop the required engagement to make the crisis interesting in itself, but the interest alone is not likely to sustain the reader through all the narration that follows if that narration is not compelling in itself. And if it is, why bother with the flash forward at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T12:01:51.503" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27621" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-20T14:34:32.427" Score="31" ViewCount="8255" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I want to quote from the bible in something I'm writing (think the famous passage in Pulp Fiction). What bible version should I quote from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done some research but only ended up more confused than before - KJV, NIV, NAB... every website seems to have a different opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want is to quote passages from the bible in a way that is recognisable to readers familiar with the different editions. Maybe there isn't that much difference between them (except the one which is in Old English - KJV?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also interested in knowing whether the answer to this question changes if we're talking about the US or the UK. Ideally I'd like to have the most generic version possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; The intended audience would be religious people, already familiar with the bible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="21" LastEditDate="2017-04-20T14:44:51.607" LastActivityDate="2017-08-12T06:42:45.407" Title="What English version of the bible should I quote from?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="17" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-20T14:38:03.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking as an American who has limited familiarity with any version, I suggest King James, because that's the one the general American public would hear the most in passing outside a church context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the antiquated diction will immediately clue in your readers that you're quoting something old, whereas a more modernized version might not prompt the recognition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T14:38:03.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-20T14:41:31.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a student from the UK taking Religious Studies, we almost inevitably use the King James version. It's the most familiar to people in the UK, even if they aren't religious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24531" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T14:41:31.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-20T14:55:35.850" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, the KJV is most definitely not in Old English, a tongue that had not been spoken for centuries when the KJV translation was done. It is written in modern literary English. Modern English has been with us for several centuries now, so there have been many shifts in vocabulary and diction since the translation was done. However, differences in vocabulary and diction do not constitute a different language. The English of the KJV is still very much understandable to modern audiences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The KJV is certainly the most literary of translations, the most beautiful in its language. For that reason it is the default choice for literary purposes. It will be familiar to English audiences because of its central role in the history of English literature, and to American audiences because of its widespread continued use in evangelical churches. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two main reasons that the KJV is not used as a standard study or liturgical bible in many churches today. The first is that its translations were not always accurate. Knowledge of the original languages has improved since the time the translation was done, leading to more accurate translations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, there is a feeling in many church circles that the literary language of the KJV makes it inaccessible to most modern people. I think this is demonstrably false, and many of the attempts at making a &quot;language of the people&quot; translation have fallen by the wayside over the years because, frankly, they were just ugly and clumsy. The use of such versions in literature would only really be appropriate to place the story in a particular time or community where there were popular. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More accurate alternatives to the KJV fall into two classes, new from scratch translations, and modernized corrected versions of the KJV, such as the RSV and the NRSV, both of which try to preserve the essential beauty (and familiar phrases) of the original while correcting translation errors and modernizing some of the language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are concerned about striking a balance between beauty and modern diction, or if you care about accuracy of translation, you should probably look at the RSV or the NRSV as your sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-20T18:13:23.810" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T18:13:23.810" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27529" CreationDate="2017-04-20T15:22:52.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;People will name themselves and one another. It seems to be more or less hardcoded into our DNA. Once you have a concept of yourself, you have a concept of something other than you, and the need for a label to distinguish the two emerges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could do worse than to check out the animated series &lt;a href=&quot;http://clonetrooper.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_clone_troopers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Star Wars: The Clone Wars&lt;/a&gt;, which among other things spends quite a bit of time with groups of characters who are all physically identical, and formally known only by their ID numbers. They develop individual personalities, decorate their armour to distinguish themselves from one another, decorate themselves with tattoos and hairstyles, and they adopt nicknames - either chosen by themselves, or by their 'brothers'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These nicknames often come from elements of the clone's personality or experiences. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CT-5555 is known as &quot;Fives&quot;&#xA;&quot;Heavy&quot; prefers heavy weaponry&#xA;&quot;Echo&quot; tends to repeat orders for everyone&#xA;&quot;Dogma&quot; believes what his superiors tell him, and toes the party line&#xA;&quot;Chatter&quot; was a comms tech&#xA;&quot;Fixer&quot; was a tech specialist&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your clones would likely be in a similar situation - If there's an easy pattern in a person's number, that might be referenced. If they show a particular interest or aptitude in some sphere of endeavour, that would give them a name. Some unusual experience could be referenced (&quot;Crock&quot; if someone once stepped on an alligator, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22241" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T15:22:52.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-20T15:39:32.410" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you just need a 'generic' bible quote a widely used version like the KVJ as suggested in several other answers is a reasonable default.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you're writing fiction and are using quotations in the context of a character who has a specific denomination you should find out which translations are popular with the characters church.  For example, a Catholic is unlikely to be using the King James Bible due to the history of how the Church of England split away.  For an English speaker in the US it's likely to be one of these &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usccb.org/bible/approved-translations/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;approved translations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastEditorUserId="3170" LastEditDate="2017-04-20T18:59:36.017" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T18:59:36.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-20T16:17:14.597" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;This gets back to a basic problem, in that there really is no such thing as &lt;strong&gt;The&lt;/strong&gt; Bible; only translations compiled from various copies (which &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misquoting_Jesus#Summary&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;may or may not be consistent with each other&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the King James Version, as most (all?) the other answers suggest, is usually a reasonably good compromise, so its not &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; advice. The KJV has a lot of problems, some pretty bad, but it has the advantage of being almost instantly recognizable, and of at least annoying everyone equally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some important instances where you don't want to use it. For instance, probably the most recognizable passage to the general public (even when they don't know its from The Bible) is 1 Corinthians 13: Paul's &quot;Ode to Love&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nobody&lt;/strong&gt; uses the stock King James translation for this, passage, because it made the utterly bizarre choice to translate the Greek ἀγάπη (&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agape&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;agape&lt;/a&gt;&quot;) as &quot;charity&quot; (rather than &quot;love&quot; as seen above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to be honest, what &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; do when I want a passage for public consumption is go to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2013&amp;amp;version=NRSV&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bible Gateway for that passage&lt;/a&gt;, and use the dropdown menu of translations to pick the one that works best for my purposes. I try to start with NRSV because I'm partial to that one, but honestly &lt;strong&gt;let the best-written translation win&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18598" LastEditorUserId="18598" LastEditDate="2017-04-20T21:40:11.287" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T21:40:11.287" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-20T18:03:49.267" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: If in doubt, use KJV. Not that it is the most authoritative, or the most easily understood; but it is well-known, and has the advantage of being in the public domain, as was noted in an earlier reply. I don't know about how things are in England these days, but in parts of the USA, the KJV has a certain cultural status, for reasons too debatable to be discussed here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer answer: A translation of the Bible, or for that matter a translation of any work of literature, may be under copyright protection. This is true, even if the original work is from antiquity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why various online sites, which allow you to download the entire text of various bibles for free, do not have every version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a short quote from a particular, copyrighted version, could still be used under &quot;fair use&quot; terms, at least in the USA. If you are writing (say) a work of fiction, and wish to begin each chapter with an epigraph using a few lines from a particular version, I would NOT call that fair use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T18:03:49.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27566" CreationDate="2017-04-20T19:05:46.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Standard punctuation for an incomplete sentence is ellipsis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't have one character interrupt another at all. Dialogue is not speech and the page is not the screen. The page is an asynchronous media. Events do not unfold in real time but in read time. It can take far longer to read the description of a complex event that happens quickly than a simple event that takes a long time. So time based effects, like interruptions, are impossible to dramatize well in prose. Instead, the drama should come through what is said, not the way it is said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as is possible, let each character have their full say. If one must interrupt the other, let it be a full and final interruption, a dismissal, not just two people talking over each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T19:05:46.363" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-20T19:28:01.397" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, this is a much deeper and more contentious question than you probably anticipated, especially if your audience takes the Bible very seriously. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/1092/why-are-there-so-many-translations-of-the-bible/6731#6731&quot;&gt;this answer here on Christianity.SE&lt;/a&gt; that attempts to break down some of the ways that English translations differ, and the reasons behind them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your purpose, though, it sounds like your major goal is for the wording to be &lt;em&gt;recognizable&lt;/em&gt;. In that case, I'd recommend the KJV:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John 1:5 (KJV) And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or perhaps the &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; KJV, which updates some of the more obviously antiquated words without changing much else:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John 1:5 (NKJV) And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NIV is also very popular, especially among modern protestants and Evangelicals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John 1:5 (NIV) The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The NIV footnote indicates that word could also be translated &quot;understood&quot;. This is clearly not a trivial difference.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, though, most mainstream modern translations should sound very similar. A few further thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're attempting to make an actual theological point, then you should probably be asking this on &lt;a href=&quot;https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Biblical Hermeneutics.SE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're putting the verse into the voice of a character in a novel, the time and place that character lived might determine your choice for you (a revival preacher in the 1800s would undoubtedly be using the KJV).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1321" LastEditorUserId="1321" LastEditDate="2017-04-20T20:27:50.340" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T20:27:50.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27632" CreationDate="2017-04-20T19:44:30.737" Score="1" ViewCount="378" Body="&lt;p&gt;A series I am working on deals with an underlying storyline that progresses through each book. I'm afraid of confusing a reader if they decide to start reading a book somewhere in the middle of the series and end up being a bit lost as to what is going on. Because of this, I was wondering if it would be a good idea to have an introduction a few paragraphs long at the beginning of every book explaining the basic plot throughout the series. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the whole world viciously fighting against them, these three teenagers do everything in their power to gradually fix the planet's reopened wounds, while never giving up hope that they may one day see their loved ones again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24532" LastEditorUserId="24532" LastEditDate="2017-04-20T20:10:45.053" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T08:24:56.817" Title="Do you need to have an introduction at the beginning of every book in a series?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27631" CreationDate="2017-04-20T19:55:29.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your books are not standalone, a &quot;previously on...&quot; intro is probably a good idea. You want just enough information to orient the reader without spoiling or rehashing the previous book(s).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if your books are that complex, a list of major characters, their relationships, and other pertinent info at the end is often helpful too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T19:55:29.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27614" CreationDate="2017-04-20T20:10:48.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Citing google books or google in general as your source is a lame way out of giving real credit where it is due.  It pretty much negates the point of citing to begin with.  For papers, why not just cite google and say everything I found was here? Because that's not the POINT of citing nor it is what google is used for.  It would be no different than say... Citing a library building, or citing Barnes N Noble.  There you can &quot;read books, download them, and cite them.&quot;  The whole point of citing is to give credit for the body of work you are using.  Saying where you found it is not the same as giving credit to the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another way of looking at it... you have a tool you are using to build something say a hammer... but when a person asks you what this tool is, you say oh, it's a Home Depot.  They would look at you funny and then you clarify that it is where you GOT it.  It still doesn't tell the person what it is though and that is the whole point of citing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T20:10:48.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27568" CreationDate="2017-04-20T20:34:45.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL, but I personally don't see the issue... There are probably well over a million songs out there throughout the history of the modern era of music.  Each CD has what 15 songs a minimum? If you were to go through every artist, big name or no name, each  year, dating back to the first time lyrics were recorded on paper we would be in a lot of copyright troubles.  The point being that... there are only so many combinations of words before they come up again.  Even within lyrics, there are phrases that are repeated.  Yes there are trade mark lyrics to a song as @RoBtA pointed out that pretty much everyone knows, but if you asked me to name what songs your chapter titles came from or even the name of your book, I wouldn't even have known they were from songs personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely check with a lawyer about this or someone who actually has knowledge in the legal fields, but I find the titles vague enough that they can be passed off for as general phrases even though your inspiration was from songs.  Everyone has inspiration, and that inspiration is usually found within the body of work you do.  Painters inspired by Vincent van Gogh may show a little bit of his art style.  musically... Blake Shelton (a country music singer) has been dating a female singer named Gwen Stephani (was in a Ska band later went solo pop).  In one of Blake's songs, he made a reference to one of her CD titles when she was in No Doubt.  &quot;&lt;em&gt;Gonna put a little &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Steady_(album)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rock Steady&lt;/a&gt; on your hand&lt;/em&gt;&quot; - Gonna by Black Shelton.  While this isn't directly like yours... people still often use inspiration in their body of works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T20:34:45.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27605" CreationDate="2017-04-20T20:52:59.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a similar weakness to you in the potential &quot;fizzle out&quot; points of my writing. I've found that this comes from not knowing the specific next steps of the story rather than the total arc of the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A trick that helps me is visual planning rather than writing a plot overview; I find pictures or quotes that inspire certain visuals or interactions, print them out and use them as anchors to leapfrog on to (think &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frostbitepublishing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Snow-BG.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dramatic mountains&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://img00.deviantart.net/1311/i/2014/117/6/9/winged_hussars_by_wildheadache-d6c1yuw.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an illustration of charging winged hussars&lt;/a&gt;, etc). By then time I have finished one scene, then next is already begging to be written because I'm excited about describing a certain place or piece of dialogue and I can build the thread of the story to that point, leading up with the relevane, foreshadowing and the tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that this is a rather idiosyncratic way of hybrid plot-pantsing but I thoroughly enjoy writing in this way. It's cathartic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22913" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T20:52:59.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27568" CreationDate="2017-04-21T00:19:16.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the songwriter came up with the lyrics you use him/herself, and you use them as the title or even a chapter name, than that songwriter would probably sue you based on copyright issues. Don't risk it. The only way you could use them is as part of a character's speech, if that character is a big fan of the songwriter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you desperately want to use them in your title or chapter name, you might be able to twist a piece of lyrics slightly, keeping the same meaning, then use that. Maybe you can give that a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T00:19:16.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27631" CreationDate="2017-04-21T00:37:08.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no real need to do this. I'm currently writing a fantasy series and I don't have an introduction. Instead, I've begun by introducing an important character connected to magic (this is in the first chapter), describing only his appearance and not connecting him to mysterious doings, so as to keep the reader interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of introducing an entire world of magic to begin, I slowly provide information related to it as the series progresses. Again, this has the reader wanting more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem with an introduction is that your reader may skip it, as this is usually little more than an information dump. If your reader skips any part of your book for this reason, they will become confused (although that will be the reader's fault, the reader will still put down your book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you feel you need an introduction, then go for it. Just make sure to keep it as interesting as the rest of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in addition to Lauren Ipsum's answer, I advise against a 'previously' intro. Again, information dump. What you might want to do instead is, for the first chapter (in every book of your series except the first), you can talk about what's happened in the previous books and connect it to what's happening in the new book. You should only retell the most important parts of the plot, to prevent reader confusion (for those who haven't read the previous books) but at the same time keep the reader interested, which is very important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastEditorUserId="24517" LastEditDate="2017-04-21T06:56:04.507" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T06:56:04.507" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27609" CreationDate="2017-04-21T00:48:56.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Right, before you publish them, ask yourself this: Are they finished? Are they ready to be published? Or are they first drafts? If the latter is true, edit them. Watch for any clichés, grammar or spelling errors, or anything else that can hurt your stories. If they have been edited several times already, and you're certain they don't need more editing, then you may skip to the next paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it matter to you how soon you publish the collection? If not, and if you haven't yet published any of them, enter some of them into short story competitions for the time being. If you keep your name the same for all of them, then you should be able to get them published as a collection in a few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most published collections have connections between their stories. They might all be from the same genre of short stories, or they might give similar morals in different ways. Look over your stories and see whether or not they fit in a collection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, search up some publishers. Find out what you can about them, and whether they'll accept short story collections. This is probably the best route to take if you want them published as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T00:48:56.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6750" CreationDate="2017-04-21T00:52:02.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aim for as few errors as possible. Editors and publishers may overlook the very occasional error, but not if they see five a page. Get your manuscript proofread as much as possible before you send it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T00:52:02.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27614" CreationDate="2017-04-21T04:37:41.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer, you wouldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are referencing the book that had the information in it, not the platform you've used to read the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The confusion appears to lie in what you are deeming an online resource. A book or journal is its own resource, regardless of what platform or media you read it in. If referencing a book, it doesn't matter if you bought it direct, used a library or read it on a e-reader, all the relevant information is included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.library.usyd.edu.au/c.php?g=508212&amp;amp;p=3476342&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This is a useful guide&lt;/a&gt; put out by the University of Sydney that provides multiple examples of how to reference based on multiple source types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Online resources refer to articles/blogs that are published online only, and not a book that you have read in an online format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T04:37:41.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-21T05:49:46.590" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is why you're getting some fairly different answers.  Some churches will favor one version.  Other churches will favor another version.  Unless you have a target audience more specific than &quot;familiar believers&quot;, you're not going to have a single version that absolutely trumps all others in popularity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a while I felt like NIV was fairly popular.  I've heard an NIV translator (on a radio show) describe it as a &quot;living document&quot;.  I've seen less emphasis on NIV in more recent times, perhaps because the NIV has released a new version so the latest release has been a bit less familiar to people who started becoming familiar with the 1985 version years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest drawback I know of with the NIV is that it is legally encumbered with restrictions quoting it.  If that doesn't matter, you could use that.  If such restrictions are undesirable, you could check out WEB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But once you select a version, strongly consider not sticking to just it.  Run a bible verse through Google, and quickly see some of the translations using BibleHub.   Sometimes one translation will be more clearly written for a specific verse.  Or, maybe the word choice just fits your purpose better (even if your purpose is nothing more specific than &quot;sounding elegant and beautiful).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some readers are likely to benefit from citations that mention what version is quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to summarize my recommendation (of which translation to use) in ten words or less: Don't limit yourself to using just one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19230" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T05:49:46.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26421" CreationDate="2017-04-21T07:05:16.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be, write the romance first, pick out as many phrases from it as you can, and search them up. If you receive many results, especially from excerpts or in a list of clichés, then it probably is a cliché.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of cliché can be loose. One person may think it a cliché, while another doesn't. Most metaphors and similes are considered clichés, so you may want to avoid them, unless you came up with them yourself and cannot find a search result for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A plot form can also be a cliché. If you can't find an original plot idea, you are perfectly allowed to take a clichéd one, then twist it. Reinventing can be just as fun as inventing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T07:05:16.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27631" CreationDate="2017-04-21T08:24:56.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with James and Ipsum. I'll just add that, in addition to a glossary at the end with names and terminology, which can be very helpful for complex worlds, the way to do what you are talking about is via exploration of the characters feelings and associations when you meet them in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, instead of &quot;while never giving up hope that they may one day see their loved ones again&quot; as told from the perspective of a third-person omniscient, you can instead start the chapter with John, of of the heros, dreaming about his lost love and waking up with a start realizing that she is not there. You get the same info as a reader, but in a more personal and real way, and as part of the flow of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22348" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T08:24:56.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-21T12:40:24.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is called the &quot;King James Version&quot; these days is actually the &quot;Authorized Version of 1769.&quot; It is/has been the standard for quotations for a long time. The KJV is understood to be the source when a Bible text is given without footnotes. It persists today because it is in public domain and because it is still familiar to persons who have grown up memorizing Bible verses and the like. It does use a slightly different set of Greek manuscripts as its basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All non-KJV quotations are footnoted or mentioned as the translation in use at the beginning of a book or article (to avoid so many footnotes). Attribution by the translation's acronym in parenthesis is often used in more ordinary writing where there are few or no other footnotes. As an example, &quot;Jesus started crying.&quot; John 11:35 (CEV)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Revised Standard (1940s &amp;amp; 1950s) and New Revised Standard translations (1989) have many similarities to the KJV and thus still seem familiar to those who used the KJV. Persons who can handle Shakespeare can handle the KJV. I find this a good benchmark for deciding when and how to use the KJV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most Christian opponents continue to use the KJV for rhetorical reasons, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most modern Christians use a modern translation or paraphrase. It is wise to analyze your target audience if you can. Also, most modern Christians are comfortable with consulting one or modern translations when they encounter the language clarity problems with the KJV. [After all, what are neesings?]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ESV (English Standard Version) has become popular with a great many younger Christians, especially college grads and students in the last few years. Many of this same demographic and a bit older like &quot;The Message,&quot; because of its modern language. I do not recommend quoting from it as a general practice because its readers are very much used to turning to it when they encounter other translations -- unless The Message's modern language helps you make your point, LOL. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NIV is the most common modern translation in the US because of their marketing over the last thirty years or so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking for myself I find that NRSV, ESV and CEV (my personal favorite for devotional and public use, but not scholarly use) are the ones I have loaded in my phone to have in my pocket. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not recommend quoting from the Living Bible or the New Living Translation (though they are very popular with many somewhat older Christians) because they are paraphrases, not translations, and have some problems as a result. These readers, too, are very definitely used to consulting their modern translation when encountering others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24553" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T12:40:24.153" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27646" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27690" CreationDate="2017-04-21T13:59:34.937" Score="2" ViewCount="2207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the final stages of packaging the book and would like to start arranging pre-orders to help with the first week &quot;bump&quot;. How far in advance should I allow the pre-order option, and is there any specific pitfalls (e.g. discounting) that I should be aware of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22913" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T17:46:01.567" Title="How far in advance should a new author allow pre-orders on Amazon?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|marketing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27646" CreationDate="2017-04-21T14:11:55.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A month is just about right. That way you can promote it to family, friends, and even your e-mail list, and still build some momentum for it without spending a ton of time pushing a book that no one can read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick a date that you know you can hit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't already visited, &lt;a href=&quot;http://livewritethrive.com/the-best-way-for-writers-to-use-amazons-preorder-feature/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt; explains more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24532" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T14:11:55.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27648" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2017-04-21T17:03:01.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag should be used for questions about &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/style&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;style&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;style&lt;/a&gt;s and &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/technique&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;technique&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;technique&lt;/a&gt;s for &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/showing-telling&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;showing-telling&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;showing-telling&lt;/a&gt; your &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/plot&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;plot&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;plot&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/setting&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;setting&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;setting&lt;/a&gt; to your reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Narrative is the tags for the descriptive questions in the writing process. &quot;How do I show X to my reader?&quot;, &quot;What techniques can I uses to make my reader feel Y?&quot; Question related to the events or structure of your story should use the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/plot&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;plot&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;plot&lt;/a&gt; tag instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33442" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T14:01:09.997" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T14:01:09.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27649" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2017-04-21T17:03:01.877" Score="0" Body="A narrative is an account of events. This tag should be used for anything related to story-telling, including elements and principles or structure." OwnerUserId="24532" LastEditorUserId="24532" LastEditDate="2017-04-24T13:44:22.580" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T13:44:22.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27650" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27652" CreationDate="2017-04-21T17:08:30.717" Score="5" ViewCount="841" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a question asking if I should add more or less to my chapters in terms of descriptions and so on to make them longer or shorter. It's more about grouping an already written story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to choose between having a larger amount of short chapters or a smaller amount of long chapters. I want to know which option works better for fiction writers, why, and how it affects potential readers when deciding whether or not to start the book and finish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24532" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T22:02:47.480" Title="Longer or shorter chapters?" Tags="|fiction|chapters|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27650" CreationDate="2017-04-21T17:23:01.160" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is really all about cadence. You break up a text, at various levels, as an expression of its cadence. A slower cadence tends to express itself in longer sentences, longer paragraphs, longer chapters. A faster cadence tends to express itself in shorter sentences, shorter paragraphs, shorter chapters. (I say &quot;tends&quot; because I don't think these are iron rules by any means.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different styles and different genres tend towards different cadences. (That word &quot;tend&quot; again.) Thrillers and crime stories tend towards fast cadence, epic adventures and literary works tend toward slower cadences. There is no inherently right or wrong cadence, just the cadence that is right for the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cadence of a work can also change over the course of the story. Sometimes the cadence will pick up towards the climax, for instance. Other works proceed at an even cadence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cadence is not the same thing as the pace of the action, it has more to do with the feel of the work. &lt;em&gt;No Country for Old Men&lt;/em&gt; springs to mind as a work with a fast pace but a slow cadence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your work exists already, its has a cadence. You simply need to fit your chapter breaks to the cadence of the existing piece. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-21T17:25:55.073" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T17:25:55.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27650" CreationDate="2017-04-21T17:31:08.380" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short chapters are less intimidating to young readers and provide good stopping points, which allow your spellbound readers to put the book down for the night and get some sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer chapters visually promise a more complex, more immersive read, but also run the risk of dragging down the story pace to the point that the reader just gives up for good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both have their place.  It just depends on what kind of story you have written and who you hope will read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T17:31:08.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-21T19:13:40.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend the NIV.  If you put &quot;RSV&quot; or &quot;NIV&quot; after your quote, your audience will know what you mean. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The archaic forms &quot;thee, thou, thy and thine&quot; were the more informal terms at the time, used for friends and meant to show the closeness to God that Christians enjoy. &quot;You and your&quot; were formal and have gradually replaced the older terms, perhaps as a result of the boom in newspaper reading of the steam age.  They are still commonly used in Yorkshire, sometimes corrupted to &quot;dee&quot; and &quot;daa&quot;, especially in the Barnsley area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24562" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T19:13:40.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27654" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-21T19:15:18.970" Score="6" ViewCount="1481" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being possessed by a foreign entity seems very tame in the stories where I have seen it. The event doesn't have the gravity that I feel it should, and the person usually goes back to living a normal life if they are freed. I always felt that being possessed should be taken more seriously as a traumatic experience that people don't just come away with unscathed. I came up with an idea that I believed accomplished that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Demonic possession is done through a magical ritual that can bind a demon to a human being, allowing it to cross over from their reality into ours. In the process, the demon forcefully bypasses the barrier that separates the soul from the individual, completely taking them over. The victim is left fully aware of their situation and is in constant pain while being possessed. The demon has access to its abilities in the host body (strength, speed, etc) but remains under the control of the caster. In a country where magic is commonplace, this is seen as a supernatural form of rape, the ultimate violation of a human soul. It is treated as one of the evilest acts an individual can commit on another person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The victim was captured and subjected to this against their will, so people understand that. But while most will regard him as a victim, many would see him as corrupted and dangerous even after they are freed. They are forced to deal with the trauma of possession as well as being distrusted by others, even worse than murder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this lends gravity to the situation and plays up the full horror aspect. But since it is obviously a sensitive subject, I wondered if this might be viewed as offensive or disrespectful. Does this premise take it too far, or should I just one with it? How can I present it in a way that it is taken seriously?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user24397" LastEditorUserId="47470" LastEditDate="2021-02-09T01:26:36.807" LastActivityDate="2021-02-09T01:26:36.807" Title="Would it be acceptable to write demonic possession as a form of rape?" Tags="|creative-writing|character-development|fantasy|rape|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-21T19:48:49.263" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Advice that I was given when younger is that when generically quoting the Bible in English, one should always use KJV or NKJV since they're the most widely-known English translations.  As it was explained to me, KJV is culturally-accepted as &quot;the Bible&quot; among English-speakers, even by those who don't recognize its authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is advice I've taken to heart; I'm Roman Catholic, but I generally quote KJV, unless I'm specifically speaking with or writing for a Catholic audience.  Reasons include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's (usually) recognizable to English speakers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For many English-speaking Christians (especially in the United States), this is the &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; English translation of the Bible that they will recognize as having any authority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frequently, English-speaking non-Christians will also have a passing familiarity with its text.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To see why, look at the same, commonly-known verse (John 3:16) from several different translations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;KJV:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NKJV:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NIV:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RSV:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Douay Rhiems (Catholic)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New American Bible (Catholic)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When looking at the verse, the most familiar translation is likely KJV or NKJV (again, I'm Roman Catholic, and it is for me, as well).  This will reach the largest audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24563" LastEditorUserId="24563" LastEditDate="2017-04-24T13:19:15.200" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T13:19:15.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27654" CreationDate="2017-04-21T21:04:17.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About your take on &lt;em&gt;Possession&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is &lt;strong&gt;a very interesting idea&lt;/strong&gt;, and one that I find a lot more provoking (in a good way) than the usual ways people use and treat 'possession' in modern stories. I too have found the &quot;easy&quot; and &quot;complete&quot; &lt;em&gt;cleansing&lt;/em&gt; frustratingly unrealistic in most of the stories I've experienced. This, however, is just a personal opinion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is probably a rather extreme case of the &quot;your mileage may vary&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is perhaps the most extreme I've come across so far (not that I'm particularly experienced in the reading/writing community). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I immediately thought of the quote from the possessed: [mature language below]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; &quot;Let Jesus f*** you&quot; (While stabbing herself in the crotch with a crucifix)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-from a scene in &lt;em&gt;The Exorcist&lt;/em&gt; (1973). This, to me, showed how gruesome a demonic possession would likely be. It terrified the hell out of me as a kid and again as a young adult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are different, and there are a lot of people to take it differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About the potential issue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though I personally find it appealing and would like to read such a story, I understand your hesitation regarding handling the subject of rape, and this is where I too feel hesitant to fully support the idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The potential harm or trauma it could cause and the critique it could receive from actual rape victims or relatives might not make your work seem worth it if it is received negatively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't heard of The Exorcist being accused of handling the subject of rape carelessly, but I haven't looked for stories/articles on the subject, and would not pretend to know what a victim and/or their relatives go through.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Counterpoint&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, your description of 'the aftermath' makes for an interesting basis for the story or stories. More importantly, it could open people's eyes to a more &lt;strong&gt;critical&lt;/strong&gt; look at the way rape victims are perceived and treated today. If done well, it could actually make for a way for people to more easily relate to the topic easier, which would make your work more than just &lt;em&gt;worthy of print&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One way to look at the risk/reward: Ask yourself:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do I want to achieve with the story?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would people automatically make the connection to the subject of rape?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does my current plan/strategy/plot make it possible for me to achieve this, and still show respect to the delicate subject within the story? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it worth &lt;em&gt;the risk&lt;/em&gt;, to me, to attempt it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your answers (spelled out clearly or thought through in your head) make you believe in your work, I say go for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not yet sure of the answers - which your question here suggests, I'd say you need to thoroughly work on the way you handle the connection to the subject of rape. Asking around is probably a good start, and I'm fairly certain that people will respect you for respecting the subject. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2019-09-13T07:42:41.253" LastActivityDate="2019-09-13T07:42:41.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27449" CreationDate="2017-04-21T23:00:55.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So some good resources for writing psychopaths (because I'm newly researching this) include: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writerscookbook.com/how-to-write-a-psychopath/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.writerscookbook.com/how-to-write-a-psychopath/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and &lt;a href=&quot;https://sarahkaymoll.wordpress.com/2015/06/07/how-to-write-a-psychopath/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://sarahkaymoll.wordpress.com/2015/06/07/how-to-write-a-psychopath/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two things that I came across in the research that really impacted how I wrote my psychopathic character is: 1) they don't have to be the killer. In fact, in my story the psychopathic character never kills anyone, he simply orchastrates the devious and awful events that occur in the series. 2) No one has all of the psychopathic markers (I would suggest getting familiar with Robert D. Hare's checklist). Pick the characteristics that make the most sense in the context of your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this goes for any character with a mental illness in any plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24568" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T23:00:55.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27654" CreationDate="2017-04-22T01:15:18.640" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does this premise take it too far?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people will take offense to it. Some people will think that it was apt and appropriate. Some people will think that it is a brilliant metaphor (even if you didn't intend it to be). You can't please everyone, though that doesn't mean that you shouldn't strive to take it as seriously as you intend to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is precedent for treating fantasy crimes as being as heinous as rape. In David Brin's Kiln People, where the premise is that people are able to make temporary golems of themselves, it is treated as a crime on par with rape to force someone to make a golem of themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a spell in D&amp;amp;D 3.5 called Mindrape that, due to the very same controversy you are worried about, was changed to Programmed Amnesia. The description of the spell was that if the caster was successful, they knew everything that the subject knew, and could rewrite their memories, beliefs, even core personality however they saw fit. It was an Evil spell, only able to be used by Evil characters. Clearly, however, enough people were upset by the comparison that the name was changed, though some of this may have been because the idea made it &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; real and &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; serious for a game. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the context of a piece of literature, you tend to have a little more leeway to deal with the sensitive and macabre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the connection between rape and demons has a long history. That is more or less the notion of the succubus/incubus, after all. So it's not a stretch to make that connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I present it in a way that it is taken seriously?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you have already presented as your plans sounds like you have a good start on that. Present the consequences; explore the injustice of how this person is treated so poorly from something that was already a horrific experience for them. You can go into detail about the pain, and if you are presenting the work from the point of view of the possessed, you could do a pretty good job of describing the horror of the loss of control. This is all sounding rather like a metaphor. I don't know if that was your intent, but as I said, people will read into things what they will.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to consider is that you don't need to explicitly make the connection to rape. If you present the encounter as horrifying enough, and the consequences as unbearable enough, readers will do it for you. Arguably, this is the 'show, don't tell' part of writing. If you do not, and you don't get too heavy handed with allusions and euphemisms, no one could fault you for comparing rape to demonic possession because you never &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt;. It may work out better as an allegory not to make the connection yourself, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21750" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T01:15:18.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27659" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-22T01:39:23.413" Score="0" ViewCount="1579" Body="&lt;p&gt;So basically I'm writing a story set in a magical world where there are separate covens, each with different mission statements (there is one for those who want to be healers, one for those who want to care for magical animals, etc.). There are also some evil covens who wish to spread their reign of terror. Unfortunately, it's very similar to the anime Fairy Tail, which is set in a fantasy world and involves guilds instead. How can I change it to be different? Please help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24570" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T23:56:38.537" Title="Is my story a rip-off?" Tags="|book|originality|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27660" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-22T03:06:47.957" Score="4" ViewCount="426" Body="&lt;p&gt;A colleague is assembling a book for publication, and the publisher instructions state that the book should use short form end-notes, and a full bibliography for each chapter.  The book concerns China, so many of the sources have authors who are surnamed &quot;Li&quot; and &quot;Wang&quot; and &quot;Liu&quot; etc. because &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_surname#Distribution_of_surnames&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;these are very common surnames in China&lt;/a&gt;. For example, about 10% of China has a surname Wang.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For all repeated surnames, should short form end notes include full names? Or are just surnames enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For examples,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Endnote option 1&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1 Li, &lt;em&gt;Short Title ABC&lt;/em&gt;, 12-15.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2 Li, &lt;em&gt;Quick Title DEC&lt;/em&gt;, 111-132.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Endnote option 2&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1 Li Han, &lt;em&gt;Short Title ABC&lt;/em&gt;, 12-15.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2 Li Ma, &lt;em&gt;Quick Title DEC&lt;/em&gt;, 111-132.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bib&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Li, Han. &lt;em&gt;Short Title ABC: An introduction&lt;/em&gt;. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Li, Ma. &lt;em&gt;Quick Title DEC: For Experts.&lt;/em&gt; New York: University of New York Press, 1987.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the &lt;em&gt;Chicago Manual of Style&lt;/em&gt; is ambiguous. It says in &lt;em&gt;14.27 Short Form For Authors's Names&lt;/em&gt; says the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only the last name of the author, or of the editor or translator if given first in the full reference, is needed in the short form. Full names or initials are included only when authors with the same last name must be distinguished from one another. Such abbreviations as ed. or trans. following a name in the full reference are omitted in subsequent references. If a work has two or three authors, give the last name of each; for more than three, the last name of the first author followed by et al.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing in the statement &quot;Full names or initials are included only when authors with the same last name must be distinguished from one another. &quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does this only refer to when there are two authors of the same book who have the same name, or any author whose name is reapeated?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24572" LastEditorUserId="24572" LastEditDate="2018-01-05T16:59:26.497" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T21:39:24.830" Title="Citation short form for authors' names: different authors, different books, same last name. First name in endnote?" Tags="|publishing|citations|chicago-manual-of-style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27659" CreationDate="2017-04-22T06:03:57.033" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The things about rip-offs is that it largely comes down to the details, which, unfortunately to an internet Q&amp;amp;A site like this, is largely unavailable. With that being said, I should stress that there is a difference between having parallels to and inspiration from something, and ripping it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that many authors have encountered that intrusive thought - will people think I have copied X and subsequently, will I be judged for it? Allow me to share this particular advice: most people will only call rip-off if your story completely lacks its own identity. As I wrote 3 sentences back, this identity usually will exist in certain details. Nevertheless, reimaginings and reinterpretations of something else probably won't get you called-out for being unoriginal. Contrarily, trying to reimagine something deep and complex, and doing it well, is probably as difficult as coming up with something original. People tend to judge an experience such as music, book, novel, film and video game on the emotional impact a lot more than on its plot-structure and similarity to other things. Hence, one can conclude this: if you try to recapture the emotional value of some experience (e.g. Fairy Tail) and you do it poorly, this is when you will likely be called out for being a cheap and unoriginal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of the above, I should add one other thing. In a previous question, I stated something along the lines of &quot;there are a few truly bad ideas, only poor executions of ones.&quot; One &lt;em&gt;truly&lt;/em&gt; bad idea is to try and out-predict your readers. I like to call it the &quot;internet celebrity fallacy.&quot; So many internet celebrities try to behave and do things in a certain way, because they believe it is what their fans want. As a consequence, they come across as artificial and cringeworthy, and instead get more bile and hatred (more so than the internet usually attracts, anyway). Something similar applies to novel writing: if you try to specifically do something in order to coerce your readers into thinking something - for example, trying to artificially distance yourself from Fairy Tail - and worse, try to hide it, that won't warrant any positive criticism. The remedy to this predicament is: don't worry about it. If you write a good novel, readers are going to respect that, even if some parallels to what inspired the novel in question are pretty obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24383" LastEditorUserId="24383" LastEditDate="2017-04-22T06:34:08.510" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T06:34:08.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27662" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-22T10:22:08.833" Score="1" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a student and I write non-fiction every day. I've committed myself to writing 1000 words every day, and I am successfully doing this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm trying to improve a particular aspect of my writing process: almost every day that I write, I write in &quot;&lt;strong&gt;bursts&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; of about &lt;strong&gt;1 to 10 minutes of highly productive writing&lt;/strong&gt;, during which I'm almost writing non-stop. Then there are these &quot;&lt;strong&gt;dips&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; of about &lt;strong&gt;15 or more minutes, during which I am literally writing not a single word&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that it is unreasonable to expect to write in perfect uniformity exactly the same amount of words per minute. I absolutely don't have a &quot;purity&quot; goal like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, &lt;strong&gt;I feel that I could really be much more productive, qualitatively and quantitatively, if I could at least develop good habits to diminish these dips&lt;/strong&gt; (as much as possibly anyway). Those dips also are sometimes a bit stressful, since I'm generally kind of &quot;stuck in my head&quot; at those times, rather than relaxed and in the flow. But that is only a secondary problem, since I'm mainly concerned with improving my productivity and quality of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally what happens during these dips is that I don't know exactly what to write (though I always have a vague idea), and then kind of get &quot;stuck in my head&quot; about what to write. &lt;strong&gt;Often this results in me just &quot;zoning out&quot; without focusing on my writing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What kind of practical techniques or practical advice has helped you to improve your writing process in this regard?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: I am already using the pomodoro technique, where I write 50 minutes, and then meditate 10 minutes, then write 50 minutes again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24575" LastEditorUserId="24575" LastEditDate="2017-04-23T08:03:06.360" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T02:23:12.770" Title="What do you do to prevent dips during which you're not writing anything?" Tags="|academic-writing|process|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27662" CreationDate="2017-04-22T10:31:37.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is more commonly known as 'writer's block', and the solution is simple: Write about something else, on a separate piece of paper (or separate file if you're typing). Write about whatever comes into your mind, until you get your creative juices flowing again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T10:31:37.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-22T10:35:16.643" Score="4" ViewCount="991" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a chapter outline for the novel series I'm writing, and I have a few 'blank' chapters where I don't know what to write in them. I need to do something quickly, because I've started writing the first book and I am nearly up to my first blank chapter. How do I come up with ideas to fill these chapters? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T04:39:56.550" Title="What to do with 'blank' chapters?" Tags="|chapters|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27659" CreationDate="2017-04-22T10:51:28.793" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no original story ideas. It has all been done before. Any originality lies in the telling, not in the story idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, the publishing industry cares about originality about as much as the pizza industry does. Most customers do not want an original pizza. They want the same pizza they always order served hot, fresh, and on time. The publishing industry wants writers who can deliver familiar stories hot, fresh, and on time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is wanted, therefore, is not original ideas, but fresh takes on familiar ideas whose marketability is well known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-24T14:44:07.487" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T14:44:07.487" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27664" CreationDate="2017-04-22T10:56:56.313" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are not writing a history, where you are obliged to fill in the details of all the day, months, and years that pass. You are writing a story. You are obliged to write only those incidents that build the arc of the story. If nothing happens that builds the arc of the story for a day, a month, a year, a decade, or a century, then don't write anything about that time. Pick up the story when the events of the story arc resume. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T10:56:56.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27662" CreationDate="2017-04-22T11:06:55.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are experiencing is the natural rhythm of human productivity. There are even techniques designed to help you optimize the use of this rhythm. One is called the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pomodoro technique&lt;/a&gt; in which you use a kitchen timer to time your work sessions and breaks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the mechanical nature of the Pomodoro technique is probably unnecessary for most people, who takes such breaks naturally enough anyway. But I can see that it can do a lot of good for people with a false work ethic who won't allow themselves to slack off for hours at a time, despite the lack of breaks having a serious detrimental effect on their actual productivity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case (as in mine) your brain is dividing your work time into Pomodoros naturally. You (and I) can benefit from the Pomodoro theory simply by using it to assuage our consciences and reassure ourselves that the rhythm that our brains are imposing on our work is, in fact, a productive one.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: During my dips, I visit this site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T11:06:55.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27654" CreationDate="2017-04-22T13:25:14.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;…would it be acceptable to write…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. &lt;strong&gt;You can write about anything&lt;/strong&gt;. Rape, murder, suicide, masturbation, sex, politics and any flavor of Allah there is. It is your story and you are in charge of it. It is the author's (not the character's, mind you) &lt;em&gt;position&lt;/em&gt; on the the matter which will fall under scrutiny and some will praise you, and some will berate you, and that is fine and unavoidable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for making an analogy between mental possession and physical rape, I'd say go for it. While not new (the names escape me, but I have read some authors who conveyed a similar idea), it makes perfect sense to me, and I am sure I will not be alone amongst your readership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was not entirely clear from your question whether or not the mechanic of acquiring possession of someone's mind would require the physical act of rape, but if so — once again, go for it. It should make your point stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's your story. You can write what you want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T13:25:14.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27664" CreationDate="2017-04-22T14:01:47.770" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is interesting. Your story does not have to be a history, in order to have a &quot;blank chapter&quot; problem. For example, it might be organized in a manner whereby each chapter has a certain structural purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's imagine that your book is &quot;The Firble Compound,&quot; fiction related to theft of plans for the Firble device. We learn that a Firble has ten components, each with a unique name. You decide that you will write ten chapters, each bearing a theme related to one of the components. In this case, you couldn't eliminate a chapter, just because you couldn't think of what to write there, now could you? Among your millions of readers, thousands of them would notice the deficit, and spread the word all over the Internet. You'd never live it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to my answer: I have faced this before. What I did, in the end, was to write a weak chapter. That is, instead of moving in some strong material from better chapters, I left the strong material concentrated in the better chapters. Then I wrote a weak chapter, filling it with what musicians would call a &quot;pastoral&quot; passage. I wrote pleasant descriptive material about the scenery, the weather, and so forth; I sent a few of the characters out to dinner, and had them converse about things unrelated to the story. The chapter's theme was indirectly introduced via a background conversation among the restaurant's waiting staff, who were discussing the news. That way, what the staff said did not have to be accurate, since it was third-hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T14:01:47.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27662" CreationDate="2017-04-22T15:09:25.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Zoning out&quot; is normal, good even, as it shows creativity and imagination. The important thing is finding a balance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When people's minds wander off and they stop focusing on the task at hand, it's usually because of brain linkages. For example, you're writing a scene where someone forgets something, which reminds you of the time when you forgot to close your apartment window, which gets you thinking about replacing them and then you're off. Identifying these linkages helps. Trace back to the original thought to regain focus and reduce mind wandering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consciously try to increase that ten-minute time frame for productive working. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24532" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T15:09:25.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27612" CreationDate="2017-04-22T17:16:40.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of some of your own relationships—in the following example I’ll refer to a girlfriend, but it could apply to any close relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember how you met and first became friends. You didn’t tell each other everything right from the get-go… You established that relationship based on certain qualities that you liked about each other. And as the relationship progressed perhaps you discovered a few other things you &lt;em&gt;didn’t&lt;/em&gt; like quite as much. But you &lt;em&gt;accepted them&lt;/em&gt; as part of who this person was—&lt;em&gt;a direct consequence of her backstory&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet through all of this, her &lt;strong&gt;back&lt;/strong&gt;story remained in the &lt;strong&gt;back&lt;/strong&gt;ground. You learned to appreciate this person despite not knowing everything about her past. Rather than &lt;em&gt;define&lt;/em&gt; your relationship, backstory gave it &lt;em&gt;flavor&lt;/em&gt;. That is the critical distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of argument, let’s say your girlfriend was repeatedly abused as a child. What if she revealed this to you on your very first date? Without passing judgment on anybody for the way they respond in such situations, reactions here vary wildly from one individual to the next: they may range from a surge of compassion to mild indifference to, “I’m running the hell away from this person.” That’s just how it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To continue on this trajectory, let’s imagine you stuck around after she revealed her heavy backstory. She doesn’t know if it’s because you’re naturally compassionate or if, like Tyrion Lannister, you “have a tender spot in your heart for cripples and bastards and broken things.” &lt;em&gt;You have your own backstory&lt;/em&gt; that shapes the way &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; respond to events in your life. But &lt;em&gt;she doesn’t know that&lt;/em&gt;. The end result? She’ll be surprised that finally someone sympathized with her; certainly she’ll be &lt;em&gt;intrigued&lt;/em&gt;, and she’ll want to learn &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; backstory at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so it goes for fictional characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backstory falls in the “nice to know, but not crucial to developing this relationship” category. No matter how you slice it, &lt;strong&gt;by revealing backstory at the wrong time, you are gambling with your audience’s reaction&lt;/strong&gt;, for the sake of something that shouldn’t be all that important to know in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you think it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; crucial, you might have started your story too late… or, more likely, your relationship is missing that &lt;em&gt;spark&lt;/em&gt; that would make it work without requiring an info dump.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, &lt;strong&gt;dangling the carrot of backstory can be a powerful hook to keep your readers turning the page&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now fast-forward three months, six months, a year. You really love this woman. Her quirks (and yours!) have helped shape this relationship. She finally decides to open up about her very painful past. Is it conceivable that your reaction includes mild indifference or, “I’m getting the hell out of this relationship”? I suppose it is, although that is highly unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let’s take it one step further and imagine that she tells you all this in response to some hardship &lt;em&gt;you’re&lt;/em&gt; going through &lt;em&gt;as a result of your own backstory&lt;/em&gt;. More than likely, you have just formed an extremely powerful bond that will be nearly impossible to break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Bottom line:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Establish a powerful emotional connection between the character and their audience first (this includes your readers!). Make your character’s audience &lt;em&gt;relate&lt;/em&gt; to that character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Only then&lt;/em&gt; will your character’s backstory matter. Do not gamble with your audience’s reaction. &lt;strong&gt;Deliver the gut-punch when you know for certain it will make them cry.&lt;/strong&gt; No sooner, and no later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2686" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user2686" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-08-05T04:12:42.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-22T19:09:07.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;KJV: &quot;Thou shalt not kill.&quot;  A modern-language, accurate translation would be &quot;You won't kill.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For better or worse, KJV has been the major first (Early) Modern English bible translation of influence and its impact on literature and thinking is immense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If young people want to make up mock commandments, they cast them in horribly ungrammatical simulations of Early Modern English corresponding to KJV language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So quoting KJV gives you an ambitus that is these days actually associated with biblical language more so than with Shakespeare or other sort-of contemporary writings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, if you tell the people of today something like &quot;Ealle gesceafta, heofonas and englas, sunnan and monan, steorran and eorðan, ealle nytenu and fugelas, sǽ and ealle fixas, and ealle gesceafta God gesceop and geworhte on six dagum; and on ðam seofoðan dæge hé geendode his weorc, and geswac ða and gehalgode þone seofoðan dæg, forðan ðe hé on ðam dæge his weorc geendode.&quot; they probably won't have any biblical associations and will not be able to create even horribly wrong mockups of the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, that one &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; actually Old English.  Early Modern English most English speakers can deal with well enough at least when reading or listening (with modern pronunciation).  Middle English (like Chaucer) is already sort-of tricky (the following quote concerns religious matters but is not exactly biblical):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Hold up thy tayl, thou sathanas!--quod he;&#xA;--shewe forth thyn ers, and lat the frere se&#xA;Where is the nest of freres in this place!--&#xA;And er that half a furlong wey of space,&#xA;Right so as bees out swarmen from an hyve,&#xA;Out of the develes ers ther gonne dryve&#xA;Twenty thousand freres on a route,&#xA;And thurghout helle swarmed al aboute,&#xA;And comen agayn as faste as they may gon,&#xA;And in his ers they crepten everychon.&#xA;He clapte his tayl agayn and lay ful stille.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not recommend quoting this to a congregation, by the way.  Particularly not in modern translation.  It talks about a special place in hell reserved to priests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24580" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T19:09:07.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27650" CreationDate="2017-04-22T19:12:43.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both Henry and Mark are correct. To their responses, I add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at &lt;em&gt;The House on the Borderland,&lt;/em&gt; by William Hope Hodgson. It is now in public domain, so versions are available online. Depending on action and pacing, the length of chapters is very variable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main part of the book is supposed to be a diary, disovered amid ruins. The first chapter is told by someone who found the diary; it is very detailed and long. In the main part, being the diary itself, the shortest chapter is &quot;Pepper,&quot; which is at most two pages long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T19:12:43.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27675" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-22T21:25:00.363" Score="1" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;The protagonist has difficulty with his emotions and social coping mechanisms, and is being bullied by a secondary character. I'd like to dissect the emotions and reactions in him as he learns that a confrontation is inevitable. Are there any published works I could read which does a good job of this already?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22913" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T17:19:50.823" Title="Does anyone know an excerpt of writing which demonstrates the stress and emotions of an anticipated clash with a bully?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|conflict|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27664" CreationDate="2017-04-22T23:49:53.717" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends exactly what your problem is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possibility is that your chapter outline is just an initial stab at the story and as it has developed in more detail the 'blank' chapters are simply redundant now as what they were intended to cover has been dealt with already or is no longer relevant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively it could be that you have two key scenes or situations planned and you don't know how to get from one to the other perhaps a lot of time passes without much incident or there is a dramatic change of circumstance for a particular character. If you are having trouble getting characters from pone major plot point to another this may be a symptom of some underlying problem with the story or characterization which you need to work out before rather than shoehorning in a linking chapter which doesn't work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is issues with pacing, for example you may have planned a particular rhythm to the story which has ended up slipping out of sync with what you have ended up writing. Say you have major events in chapters 5 and 7 and you want to use chapter 6 to separate them. Obviously a crucial consideration here is what your original logic and process was for setting out the chapters as you did in the first place. Is there some underlying concept to this structure which can't easily be changed or was it just a way to get an initial structure down to get you started ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also suggest that 'thinking of ideas to fill space' is not necessarily a good thing in any kind of art form. Everything which you include should be there to fill some function. For sure there may be particular problems which you need to solve but 'filling space' is rarely a good thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall some points to consider are : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the logical consequences of actions and events in the previous chapter ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any information that the reader needs to be able to make sense of the next chapter ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does the blank chapter fit in with the rest of the story in terms of pacing and character development. For example an interlude between two very dramatic passages may be an opportunity for something a bit more introspective and atmospheric where characters take stock of events. This can also be an opportunity to have more atmospheric and descriptive passages which add to setting and characterization without slowing down more dramatic sections. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19238" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T23:49:53.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27677" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27678" CreationDate="2017-04-22T23:50:29.917" Score="2" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've written several scenes and reread them silently. Most times they sound rushed, unnatural and uncomfortable. This especially happens with action or other fast-paced scenes. How do I avoid this happening so that the scene develops naturally and doesn't feel like everything is happening too fast? Are there any tips? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24532" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T01:18:35.740" Title="How do I avoid making scenes feel rushed?" Tags="|creative-writing|structure|scene|flow|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27677" CreationDate="2017-04-23T00:02:39.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fast paced action scenes being rushed may not be a bad thing as long as this makes sense in terms of the overall rhythm of the story. Indeed as a reader I would say that action scenes are more often too slow that too fast. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that if you do feel a scene is too sparse by all means trust your instincts and play with it and try to work out what essential information is missing but then again it is not necessary to describe every detail exactly as you imagine it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can often be a temptation with action to think of it in terms of cinema and want to over-describe it in visual terms by transcribing your exact vision onto the page. One way around this is to make sure that you have already set up the general atmosphere and tone and any details relevant to the mechanics of what is happening in advance then you can rattle through the actual action at an appropriate pace without having to either slow it down for exposition or miss out information which is crucial to understanding what is going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may help to think in terms of the perspective of the characters involved. Ask yourself how would they  perceive the situation ? What details would stand out to them and what would they miss or ignore ? If a character is exploring a location for the first time under no particular pressure they may take in a lot of detail but if they are fighting for their life their impressions might be a bit more to the point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is certainly a literary equivalent of 'bullet time' where at the crucial moment time slows down but this is probably best saved for really pivotal instants.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also think about a logical sequence of events in terms of cause and effect, while you might have a series of events in your mind which need to happen to advance the story think about what actually causes them to happen and whether a particular reaction or action is appropriate to the characters as you have established them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19238" LastEditorUserId="19238" LastEditDate="2017-04-23T01:18:35.740" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T01:18:35.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5448" CreationDate="2017-04-23T03:05:49.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I would say its that in an extended dialogue scene a lot of the he said/she said ends up being redundant and similarly fragments of narrative can get in the way. Once you've set the scene and got the flow of the conversation going it is often better to just let the dialog flow without too much interjection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Equally while the is clearly supposed to be a bit of a stilted conversation it is a sequence of very short sentences and you might find it flows better if you roll some of the narrative description into the dialogue and edit each bit of speech into longer chunks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case I think you could cut  a lot of the 3rd person narrative without losing anything once you have established that this is a conversation between two people you shouldn't need to specify who is speaking every single sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In isolation it's certainly not  bad in itself but if you have a lot of dialogue like this it can get a bit clunky and hard to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also sounds like this scene needs a longer monologue, after all you go from an initial awkward meeting to having talked all night in about 2 minutes of written dialogue. Maybe have a paragraph of narrative explaining what they talked about and as the scene developed start to have one or both characters talk in full paragraphs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19238" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T03:05:49.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27664" CreationDate="2017-04-23T04:39:56.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although, as RobtA suggests, a story can resemble a history, a story is really a path from where the character(s) start to where the character(s) finish.  If the end of the last completed chapter before the gap is at the same place as the start of the first completed chapter after the gap, you have no gap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So look at where the character(s) are (both as bodies and as people) at the points in question.  You need only worry about whatever differences there are between these two points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24590" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T04:39:56.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-23T05:42:52.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is mentioned in a comment that I followed up on, but I thought it should be made explicit and given as a possible Answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As detailed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://truthbygrace.org/pulp-fiction-and-ezekiel-2517/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TruthByGrace.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Admittedly, Quentin Tarantino, the writer and director of Pulp Fiction, dreamed up this quotation as a re-imagining of several Biblical themes, and reworked them as a monologue that he believed best expressed the drama intended for the movie scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, if you indeed want to be like the famous passage in Pulp Fiction &lt;em&gt;as you state&lt;/em&gt;, you are not limited to real, existing translations or even real verses.  &lt;strong&gt;Make up whatever you need&lt;/strong&gt; to “sound dramatic” or otherwise introduce themes and motives in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If no translation is exactly to your liking, make a mash-up of your own.  If it’s too long, edit it.  Make what works best in your story, in that specific context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T05:42:52.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27675" CreationDate="2017-04-23T05:47:45.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes; see &lt;a href=&quot;https://parahumans.wordpress.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Worm&lt;/a&gt; which is a Web Serial.  The initial arc deals with bullying of a 15-year-old girl by her classmates, and I found it haunting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T05:47:45.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27683" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-23T05:54:20.407" Score="1" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have run into a bit of a dilemma in my current story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main character is on a journey to save her brother from the enemies. She suddenly finds that he is helping them willingly. Despite this evidence, she refuses to believe that he has betrayed her (her resolution is later shaken). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This scene is followed up with one from the brother's point of view. The scene is meant to reinforce the 'betrayal', along with supplying some information, but unfortunately it does the opposite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The brother has actually been kept in the dark about what is going on, and therefore does not know that the people he is working with are actively hunting down his sister. During the scene, it is impossible to show that the brother doesn't know what is going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to make the reader think the brother has betrayed the sister, without showing the reader that the brother doesn't know what's going on. &lt;strong&gt;How can I do this?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt; Before marking this question as too specific, the general question is that if you want the reader to believe the opposite of the truth, when the truth is very apparent, how can you do so? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T14:04:07.363" Title="How to imply the opposite of the truth" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27662" CreationDate="2017-04-23T05:54:26.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about the writing when you’re not at the keyboard; e.g while walking the dog, especially if this immediately preceeds the writing time.  Have an idea or three queued up before you start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T05:54:26.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27683" CreationDate="2017-04-23T05:59:05.127" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I've had an idea on how to resolve my problem, but if you have a better idea, please post it.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a few options: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove the scene - Might work, but will remove the other information you need. You'll need to find a way to implement that information somewhere else. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove anything that would show the truth. Simply never show anything that shows how the brother doesn't know what's going on. The problem here is that the reader will wonder why the brother isn't interested in those things. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Play it vague&lt;/strong&gt; - Use pronouns and clever wording to make it seem like the brother knows what is going on, when in reality he either does not or is talking about something else. Tricky, but might be your best option. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T05:59:05.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27683" CreationDate="2017-04-23T11:44:28.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To paraphrase your question slightly, &quot;How do your lie to the reader?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer: you probably shouldn't. Once the reader distrusts you, it becomes impossible to achieve any effect at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are trying to do here to to create what I call artificial suspense. Real suspense is based on what the character does not know, and what cannot be known because it lies in the future. Artificial suspense is based on what the reader does not know because the writer does not tell them, or, in your case, overtly lies about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a kind of reverse irony. If dramatic irony occurs when the reader knows more than the character, you are trying to create reverse irony, which the character knows more than the reader. But while the reader can enjoy dramatic irony, they are in no position to enjoy reverse irony, and are primed to resent it when it is eventually revealed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not knowing the brother's affiliation is fine as long as the story is in the sister's point of view. But to switch to the brother's POV without revealing his affiliation, when you have just primed the reader to wonder about it, is an act of betrayal of the reader's trust. The reader is going to be very confused by this, may well feel that there is no reason to continue a narrative that they find confusing and untrustworthy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while, you may find a way to accomplish you immediate goal, you will not find a way to do so without losing the reader's trust. Use time and POV to conceal information from the reader by all means, but don't lie to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T11:44:28.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27683" CreationDate="2017-04-23T14:04:07.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not hide it. That enemies are lying to the brother and that the brother is working against his sister are two separate things. He is hardly working with them because of something he doesn't know. Do not unnecessarily conflate them. Doubly so if that actually causes an issue to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead make the distinction clear by being clear about the reasons the brother works with the enemy and that the enemies are lying to him. As Mark Baker correctly noted the suspense from making it look like the brother knows what is going on is artificial. The suspense from the enemies lying to him by contrast is real. So is the suspense from whatever drove the brother and sister to work on different sides in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will probably require you to spend more text fleshing out the brother, his motivations, his connection to the enemy, and his relationship with the sister, but if the MC has a goal of saving this particular brother it is probably effort well spent. As in : his motivations will almost certainly be relevant to her motivations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T14:04:07.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27552" CreationDate="2017-04-23T16:59:49.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most citation systems the title page is not counted in the page numbers. Try Purdue Owl for more reliable resources. They have a fairly extensive resouces section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24568" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T16:59:49.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27675" CreationDate="2017-04-23T17:19:50.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other good examples, which come from books (so, not readily available), include &lt;em&gt;Tangerine&lt;/em&gt; by Edward Bloor, and &lt;em&gt;Speak&lt;/em&gt; by Laurie Halse Anderson.  In the first book many of the worst bullies in the Main Character's life are members of his family. In the second the Main Character spends the school year attempt to recover from rape and avoiding the rapist. It's a matter of degree and characterization for how your character deals with trauma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24568" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T17:19:50.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27646" CreationDate="2017-04-23T17:46:01.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing pre-releases for various ebook titles. Ideally you should use the maximum amount of time (3 months for pre-releases). Why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It often takes reviewers at least a month to review a title. Publications are more likely to assign and run reviews if they know that the review will run fairly close to the official publication date. If you have a shorter pre-release window for contacting reviewers, you are less likely to have anyone review your titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm speaking only about ebooks here, but I think it applies somewhat to print titles as well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T17:46:01.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27691" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27694" CreationDate="2017-04-23T21:30:46.790" Score="0" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to quote 1984 for a research paper. This is the original quote, line breaks preserved&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘We are the dead,’ he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘We are the dead,’ echoed Julia dutifully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘You are the dead,’ said an iron voice behind them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They sprang apart. Winston’s entrails seemed to have turned into ice. He could see the white all round the irises of Julia’s eyes. Her face had turned a milky yellow.  A smear of rouge that was still on each cheekbone stood out sharply, almost as though unconnected with the skin beneath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘You are the dead,’ repeated the iron voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘It was behind the picture,’ breathed Julia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘It was behind the picture,’ said the voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, do I keep the line breaks for dialogue?&#xA;Second, is there an appropriate use of ellipses within a block quote? I get that it's supposed to be a long quotation, but the parts of the quote not expressing surprise are effectively irrelevant to my thesis. Purdue OWL only mentioned block quote ellipses in the context of poetry&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24598" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T15:33:49.190" Title="I need a bit of help with block quoting" Tags="|dialogue|mla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27693" CreationDate="2017-04-23T22:22:42.720" Score="2" ViewCount="1393" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a point in a book I'm writing where a character relates a lengthy story about the inner struggles that she faced a couple years ago. Wouldn't it look a bit awkward if the entire thing was just one ginormous paragraph that opened and closed with quotation marks? It just seems unnatural, especially for a book. Is it possible to write a long monologue like that without the above issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24532" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T15:26:47.547" Title="How do i write a long book monologue?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|dialogue|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27692" CreationDate="2017-04-23T22:32:22.843" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's possible to write a long monologue without it being awkward. Just because something is one long statement from a single character does not mean that it all has to be in one paragraph. You can separate ideas in the monologue (or organic pauses in speaking or however you want to do it) into multiple paragraphs; just&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not&lt;/strong&gt; close the paragraphs with quotation marks (until the monologue is finished)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do&lt;/strong&gt; begin every paragraph with quotation marks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://baxtercommunications.nl/quotation-marks-multi-paragraph-rule/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/q/2288/74434&quot;&gt;these&lt;/a&gt; questions &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/q/96608/74434&quot;&gt;from English Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10027" LastEditorUserId="10027" LastEditDate="2017-04-24T15:26:47.547" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T15:26:47.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27691" CreationDate="2017-04-23T22:39:38.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, keep the line breaks. There's no reason to change the formatting from the original when you use block quotes; however, make sure to indent the first line of every paragraph. According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/03/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Purdue OWL&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When citing two or more paragraphs, use block quotation format, even&#xA;  if the passage from the paragraphs is less than four lines. Indent the&#xA;  first line of each quoted paragraph an extra quarter inch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That same linked page does clarify the use of ellipses in skipping words (even not for poetry):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you omit a word or words from a quotation, you should indicate the&#xA;  deleted word or words by using ellipsis marks, which are three periods&#xA;  ( . . . ) preceded and followed by a space. [. . .] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please note that brackets are not needed around ellipses unless adding&#xA;  brackets would clarify your use of ellipses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; place my ellipsis in brackets; I felt that it would clarify its use here because the passage was discussing the use of ellipses. In the passage you cited I don't believe they would be necessary under MLA rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10027" LastEditorUserId="10027" LastEditDate="2017-04-24T15:24:02.037" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T15:24:02.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18981" CreationDate="2017-04-23T23:02:26.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would put at the end if possible to aid readability, however would re-word the sentence so it was not as confusing (ie agree it would seem to imply that Foulkes is among those who disagree)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24600" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T23:02:26.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27662" CreationDate="2017-04-24T02:23:12.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I've got my own method. It's called Planned Procrastination writing. You may or may not like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I've got A Project to write about. And I also have three writing projects that have nothing to do with Project A. So, if I get stuck and nothing's happening with Project A, I go to Project B, for however long it captures my interest, or alternatively, I give myself 5 minutes to do whatever I can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 5 minute timer is fun because it creates an artificial deadline! It's like GO! This the time you have! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if things are going well for B, I reevaluate and keep writing. If I run out of steam there, I look back at Project A. If I've still got nothing, I go ahead and jump to writing Projects C and D, real quick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that breaks help with creativity, as well as having another task, whatever that task might be, to fill your mind. Other writing projects, or specific things, can fill that time. Even writing exercises or spending 5 minutes on a board like this answering questions. That counts as writing, if that's your goal, you've just got to set an alarm every time you go off task, so you don't wander too far and away from the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if I can get more than one project going at a time, it's ideal for me, especially if they all have different deadlines. Deadlines are good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T02:23:12.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27699" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27701" CreationDate="2017-04-24T03:06:15.310" Score="0" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story riddled with flashbacks is a sign of weakness, unless it's a device. But, I'm finding that for my MC, she's flashing back a bit to the past, a bit more than I'd like, and mayhap at too much length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, what am I to do with all these flashbacks?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a sample, &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G7yJISA5mLqBC4zmANYoZsUkoUdNRoEBjehUxbSZBPU/edit?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;just a rough section, includes a flashback&lt;/a&gt; if you care to look over, feel free to advise me even if you don't--I've got like, two others much longer that are back to back, in another chapter, which I am definitely thinking of cutting or moving somehow. They are good scenes though, I know I could start with castle life instead or cut these down to something shorter, but, &lt;strong&gt;in some cases they highlight a character that will be important later and show background stuff that isn't standard.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T20:18:42.813" Title="I've got too many flashbacks" Tags="|fiction|flashback|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27700" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-24T03:39:25.737" Score="0" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the best books I read have a heap of metaphors, awesomely describing the characters' surroundings or the characters themselves. My creativity appears to be limited in metaphors. I want to avoid clichés, and I want to invent as many of my own metaphors as possible. But how many metaphors should I actually put in my novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T00:02:01.987" Title="How many metaphors?" Tags="|cliches|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27699" CreationDate="2017-04-24T04:13:07.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't read your samples because we don't do critiques. But there is a general question here that may be of use to other people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have too many flashbacks, it it probably a structural problem. Some of the possible causes are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have started the story in the wrong place. An anxiety to get to the action, or to get to the scenes you are most excited to write, can lead you to skip the necessary build of your story arc. The cure here is to find the proper beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have chosen the wrong narrative technique for the story you need to tell. Popular as they may be, first person narration and close third person narration are not the right choices for some stories because there is much that the reader needs to know that is not in the character's line of sight. A more classical narrative style may fix this problem. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may be trying to include information that the reader does not actually care about. It is hard to leave your research and worldbuilding on the cutting room floor, but if it is not essential to the development of the story arc, it just has to go. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The narrative arc may not be well established. Without a strong narrative arc, there is no force pushing the story forward. A writer in search of their arc may find themselves doubling back in search of the end of the string. The answer in this case is simply to step back and find the arc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is by no means an exhaustive list. There could be many other reasons why you have ended up with too many flashbacks. But these are at least some things to look for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T04:13:07.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19143" CreationDate="2017-04-24T04:13:17.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way that may work for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say, for the sake of the argument, that the protagonist is driven by the divorce of his parents when he was ten.  Tell this part of the story from somebody else's viewpoint.  Just about any character who sees a lot of the situation will work as this: Either parent, either of their lawyers, the family court judge, any social worker assigned to the child, or whoever you think can present the most interesting viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then start chapter one with the protagonist doing something that shows the passage of time.  He can be clocking in at work, driving his car somewhere, signing a contract, ordering a drink at a bar, or anything else which clearly establishes that he is no longer ten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24604" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T04:13:17.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27700" CreationDate="2017-04-24T04:27:49.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;47.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not seriously, no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You really should not be thinking about metaphors. Metaphors are very much an ordinary part of speech. You probably use them all the time without realizing or thinking about it. An non-physical objects, metaphors can't actually be placed in heaps. Heaps of metaphors is a metaphor. But I bet you never thought about creating a metaphor when you wrote that sentence.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very worst writing seems to result from the attempt to create original metaphors. Metaphors work when they are so apt and natural that the reader never pauses to think, &quot;Hey, that was a metaphor&quot;. A forced metaphor has just the opposite effect. It tears the reader out of the story and forces them to confront the prose and puzzle at its obscurity. An good original metaphor is created when the force of a story or a scene creates a moment in which a particular image becomes irresistibly apt. You won't know you have created one until you read it back afterwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you really should be doing is making sure that you have fully imagined the scenes you want to portray, and then describe those scenes in the most concrete and vivid language you can. You will probably end up with a bunch of metaphors without even noticing you are doing it. But if you don't, and the scenes are well imagined and vividly described, it won't matter a scrap whether there are a dozen metaphors or none. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T04:27:49.087" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27704" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-24T04:44:28.657" Score="4" ViewCount="369" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I was looking up the Bowker website for when I go to buy ISBNs I found it has separate URLs for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.myidentifiers.com/get-your-isbn-now&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The US&lt;/a&gt; and for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.myidentifiers.com.au/Get-your-isbn-now&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Australia&lt;/a&gt; (which is good because I'm Australian). but the prices seem....strange&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;No. of ISBNs | US Cost | USD -&amp;gt; AUSD | Aus Cost&#xA;-------------------------------------------------&#xA;1            | $125    | $165.45     | $44&#xA;10           | $290    | $383.85     | $88&#xA;100          | $575    | $761.09     | $480&#xA;1000         | $1500   | $1985.44    | $3000&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sub&gt;USD -&gt; AUD calculated using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?From=USD&amp;amp;To=AUD&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;xe.com&lt;/a&gt; 24/04/2017&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up to 100 ISBNs it's cheaper for an Australian to buy from the.au site but when it's 1,000 it's actually more expensive to buy from the.au site than it is to buy from the US Site after currency conversion (this assumes the prices on the.au site are in AUD but if they aren't and are actually in USD then it's even more expensive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But why is this? If it was in some odd way more expensive to deal with ISBNs brought by Australians then why aren't they more expensive across the broad? What stops an Australian buying 1000 ISBNs from the US Site and saving almost $1,000?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also is the explanation for the price discrepancy between US and Aus prices for 1000 ISBNs the same for why in the US 10 -&gt; 100 is less than 2x (~1.9827586206896551724137931034483) the price while in Australia it's almost 5.5x (~5.4545454545454545454545454545455) more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-11T05:16:14.320" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T05:16:14.320" Title="Why are costs for ISBN less in Australia, until you order 1,000?" Tags="|self-publishing|isbn|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27706" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-24T08:31:11.803" Score="3" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a poet and I write small poems. I know there is a lot to learn and update in the works I make, but how can I copyright my works? Is it one time for all the works or does every work need to be done individually? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I live in India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24610" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-04-24T12:47:47.747" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T00:40:33.017" Title="How to copyright my works in India?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27706" CreationDate="2017-04-24T11:39:17.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Copyright is automatic. If you write something, you own the copyright on it. If you write something for hire, the person who hires you owns the copyright on it. Certain jurisdictions may provide a means to register your copyright,  but that is not required. You own the copyright the moment you create the work. Registration could potentially help if someone disputes your ownership of the copyright, but in practice this is not something you need to worry about. Copyright disputes really only occur as a result of complex publishing contracts, in which case it is a matter of contract law, or the creation of derivative works, in which case the question is whether copyright was violated, not who owns it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short. The copyright is yours, and unless you are a rich and famous poet, no one is interested in violating your copyright. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T11:39:17.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27659" CreationDate="2017-04-24T13:50:52.097" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's also similar to Harry Potter and &lt;em&gt;Divergent&lt;/em&gt;. Just as there was a rash of vampire/paranormal YA fiction after &lt;em&gt;Twilight,&lt;/em&gt; there's currently a run on quasi-facist highly and arbitrarily segregated dystopias. Art reacts to life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mark is right. Don't worry about whether it's been done before. Write your story and work on doing it &lt;em&gt;right.&lt;/em&gt; You can always get feedback from beta readers about whether it feels too derivative and then polish world-building details in later drafts. Get it written now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T13:50:52.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27700" CreationDate="2017-04-24T15:06:46.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;@MarkBaker is absolutely correct. I'll add that metaphors occur in more than just sentence structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when you write in a way that doesn't include sentence-level metaphors and similes, your readers might find objects in your story that are metaphors for larger themes. Think of &lt;em&gt;Moby Dick's&lt;/em&gt; white whale. &lt;em&gt;The Great Gatsby's&lt;/em&gt; green light. &lt;em&gt;A River Runs Through It's&lt;/em&gt; river.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess my answer is this: Don't worry about it. Just write your story. Use your own voice. Metaphors might appear or might not, and it doesn't matter much either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T15:06:46.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-24T16:19:12.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I will try to explain a bit, but try to keep things as &quot;non-religious&quot; as possible. Obviously, because of the topic, it's gonna be tricky. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First is why are there so many versions. And while a proper study of such a thing is not really needed, a good &quot;overview&quot; is. &quot;The Bible&quot; is actually a collection of writings by different people. That's why you get &quot;The first book of Moses&quot; etc. in the titles of the books. For example Genesis is called &quot;The First Book Of Moses: Genesis&quot; or some translation close to that. But the bible has many human authors (and religions believe 1 divine author, via various means). But the original documents, are not in english (or any modern language) but in the language spoke by their authors at the time. Many &quot;sources&quot; for the bible are either Greek or Hebrew. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point in time (depends on the version), someone said, lets translate this to something more modern. The catholic church believed that  only thru proper study could you understand what the bible was trying to say, so for a long time they were apposed to any &quot;public&quot; translation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then stuff happens and the KJV is produced. A massive undertaking, even today, with what is widely regarded as &quot;the best&quot; over all translation capturing the &quot;meaning&quot; of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However as more people learn Greek and Hebrew, and as more original (or just closer to the original) bit of the Bible are found we start noticing areas in the Bible that really don't make as much sense as a new translation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, again stuff happens and New versions of the Bible are produced that have a &quot;better&quot; or &quot;more accurate&quot; translation. However, this is where the problem comes in. In the Bible, we are tought that adding to or subtracting from the Bible is bad. Do these new translations &quot;fix&quot; misunderstanding or create more misunderstandings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All languages evolve, and as English evolves some of the words in the KJV have fallen out of use, or have very different meanings they they did at the time the KJV was translated. Worse yet, the translations for the KJV were done, from still other translations, and not in them selves 100% correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of that comes down to the &quot;correct&quot; version is going to depend ALOT on the person reading the Bible, and their religion's beliefs.  Some will wind the KJV flawed, others will find other versions flawed. The truth is that there is no right answer. There is no single &quot;Master Version&quot; of the Bible. The choice of which Bible you use in your religious studies is as personal as which religion you follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/march/most-popular-and-fastest-growing-bible-translation-niv-kjv.html?paging=off&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/march/most-popular-and-fastest-growing-bible-translation-niv-kjv.html?paging=off&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this site the KJV is by par the most pervasive in the US, followed by the NIS. So if your going for that iconic Bible quite then the KJV is probably your best bet. It's been around the longest, and everyone should recognize it's &quot;sound&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;And the heavens opened. And he smote him. Cast him down upon the sands. And he cried out. Why hast thou not heeded my word. Thou are dead.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds Bible-ly. It's not but with a healthy amount of &quot;Thou and cast, a smote or two and a few misplaced Ands, anything can sound like it came from the bible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Thou wilt go forward unto McDonalds, and there thou will find 10 chicken nuggets.  Shall you eat thy nuggets there you will surly die. But shall you return to wenst  you came, and bath the nuggets in the sauce of BBQ, thou shall have tasty dinner.&quot; Again totally bogus but sounds about right (sorry not good at this but you get the idea)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simularly, and these are actual quotes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: because his mercy endureth for ever. Let Israel now say, that his mercy endureth for ever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oh give thanks unto Jehovah; for he is good; For his loving kindness endureth for ever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, “Come!”  And I looked, and behold, a white horse! And its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering, and to conquer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me the first sounds more &quot;Bible-y&quot; while the second sounds kinda lame. The first is the KJV and the second is the ESV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23386" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T16:19:12.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27704" CreationDate="2017-04-24T22:37:37.983" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about your second question, but I can answer your first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This involves some linear equations. Many companies use it to determine the cost of their products, and this is no different for ISBNs. Think of the equation &lt;em&gt;y=mx&lt;/em&gt;, where, in this instance -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;em&gt;y&lt;/em&gt; = the cost&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;em&gt;m&lt;/em&gt; = the increase in cost compared with increase in no. of ISBNs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; = the no. of ISBNs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(note for fans of linear graphs: &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt; is not applied as it would equal 0)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;m&lt;/em&gt; is known as the gradient - how steep or gradual the slope of the equation is. If &lt;em&gt;m&lt;/em&gt; is different in the equations for Australian cost and American cost, then one will be cheaper than the other until you order a certain number of ISBNs, where the lines meet and the one that was cheaper will become more expensive. Currency conversion has little to do with it. If you still don't understand, search &lt;em&gt;linear models&lt;/em&gt; on Google or your preferred search site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T22:37:37.983" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="130" CreationDate="2017-04-25T00:10:39.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should investigate to the point that you have a good grasp of what's important to the community members and what's not important, especially on the topic of how that community is depicted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Golden Rule applies here.  Would you want someone writing about you to leave out details that put what you've done in a different light?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T00:10:39.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2017-04-25T00:22:29.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should probably have a map for your own reference, so that your narration of travel times is consistent for the distances and modes of transportation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once that is done, then whether you have a map listing the locations of the Plot Coupons is up to you and your publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can tell you that no purchase decision of mine has ever been influenced by whether the book had a map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T00:22:29.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="723" CreationDate="2017-04-25T00:40:19.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Write the Screenplay.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I presume that your novel is in prose format.  Now write the movie adaptation.  I know, I know, you haven't even sold the thing yet, but the very different perspective of the screenplay will help you identify weaknesses in the narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have fallen into the trap of telling instead of showing, you'll find yourself with sections where there is nothing to write; but if you showed what happened instead of telling it, then it will be very easy to write that part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that the two different methods have their limitations.  What can be told very well in prose doesn't translate to the camera, and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T00:40:19.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27718" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27727" CreationDate="2017-04-25T02:34:56.443" Score="-1" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some time now, the matter of classical versus modern writing has weighed heavily in the discussion of my mind-congress. Here is my thought: given the sheer reverence that is given to classical pieces of writing by large associations, I, as a high school student in the United States, have been exposed largely to this style. However, over time, I have come to realize that often times, though it may be by artistic choice, many lapses in syntax and diction can be found in classical literature and prose. And do not misunderstand me; I value and appreciate classical pieces and revere them as many are masterpieces. But, given the advancement and rigor of the education of the English language to those who may pursue it here in the States, would an aspiring writer such as myself utilize that literacy to craft new styles, or attempt to replicate the styles of the 17th and 18th centuries, but still with personality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24443" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T13:12:05.050" Title="Classical Style vs. Modern Innovation" Tags="|style|technique|structure|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27718" CreationDate="2017-04-25T03:31:58.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should only attempt the style of the 17th/18th centuries if you're writing some kind of pastiche or mimicry of a book written then &amp;mdash; for example, a &lt;em&gt;Sense and Sensibility and Dragons&lt;/em&gt; kind of thing. CE Murphy did a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1613171056&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reworking of &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice&lt;/em&gt; and added magic to it,&lt;/a&gt; using a  style similar to Austen's but without strangling herself with her own sentences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, modern readers can find this convoluted structure and stately diction hard to follow, so I wouldn't try to replicate it precisely. Approach it, but aim for clarity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And honestly, if you do use this kind of style, be aware that it's a gimmick, and treat it accordingly. It will narrow your audience. You may find a deep niche audience (readers who love Regency romances, for example), and devoted niche readers are not to be taken lightly, but that kind of writing will not get you broad acclaim or sales. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T03:31:58.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="41098" CreationDate="2017-04-25T03:50:26.623" Score="3" ViewCount="722" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I have rewritten this question, upon realizing it was being misinterpreted. Please reread the question and provide new answers accordingly.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Star Wars. Lord of the Rings. Star Trek. These are the phenomena of stories that never die. These stories have what I'm calling (for lack of a better term) 'cult status'. By that, I mean they have more than simply a huge fan-base. They have fanatics, people who study and live the stories to the point of obsession. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having people like this interested in your story is generally a good thing, as it means that you have a group of people sure to buy your story if you ever write another one. It's guaranteed sales. Publishing is practically a given. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Key Assumption:&lt;/strong&gt; I believe that not every story lends itself to this 'cult status'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, you have &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice&lt;/em&gt;. LotR has served as the inspiration for countless fantasy stories, spawned some of the greatest movies made, and has a backing of fanatical fans, who have studied its lore to the point where they know the species of every far off land and can speak Elvish flawlessly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pride and Prejudice&lt;/em&gt; also has its followers and worshipers. But you don't see people donning early 19th century costumes at 'Jane Austen fests', or quoting the dialogue to each other, or endlessly speculating on what random details of the book might mean. Maybe you do in small groups, but not in large numbers. Not like with LotR. Or Star Wars, or Star Trek, or any of the other big cult names out there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this? The two novels above are merely examples; there are other comparisons. Why is it that some popular novels/movies achieve 'cult status' while others - which are still certainly very popular - do not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Key Theory:&lt;/strong&gt; These observations have led me to believe that there is a common denominator with the stories that have 'cult status', and that the stories which do not have this status, also do not have that common denominator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Am I correct?&lt;/strong&gt; If so, what is that common denominator? What makes a story able to attain 'cult status' (I realize you must have a good story first - that is another question)? If I'm wrong, then why is it that stories which are written equally well have such different receptions (maybe not at the time of publishing, certainly, but I am speaking of the current times)?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="32423" LastEditDate="2019-01-08T01:55:50.807" LastActivityDate="2019-01-08T01:55:50.807" Title="What Kind of Story can Achieve Cult Status?" Tags="|creative-writing|readers|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27720" CreationDate="2017-04-25T05:17:52.253" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't think Pride and Prejudice has cult status, you are looking in the wrong place. It's cultists are called &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janeite&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Janeites&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I think you may be overestimating the staying power of Star Wars and Star Trek. They are now brands more than they are art, and the ordinariness of the latest entries in both series is palpable. They are formula cinema. Star Trek, for instance, has not dealt with the kinds of complex ideas of the original series for a very long time. They have become branded space operas. And Star Wars has lost the innocence and simplicity of the original. They are brands, not cults. And how much of an ongoing audience is there for the originals of each?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LOTR is a different matter. The books are still read and admired. But their influence is not what it was. When I was in college -- many moons ago -- it was the book everyone had read. Literally, if you had read a book, it was that book. It isn't that anymore. It's audience has narrowed considerably from what it was. It is now a genre book in a way it was not back then. There is still much to admire about it, but I think the mantle of immortality has not quite been earned yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that aside, I think the attempt to find the formula for cult status is misguided. One of the hallmarks of great works, whether their greatness is time-limited or not, is authenticity. They were not designed and calculated for the cult status they achieved. They were products of an authentic personal vision, and I imagine the extent of their success was a surprise to their authors as much as anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a formula for predictable content. Disney and Harlequin are both companies who can turn out popular entertainments with remarkable regularity and can make a lot of money doing it. But most other media companies can't reproduce their consistency, and Disney and Harlequin don't seem to be able to expand it outside the fields in which they have been successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And none of these works has achieved the kind of cult status you are talking about. Their very reliability seems to militate against it. Art is about vision, and vision is a fickle mistress. In other words, vision is not the kind of property you want to build a commercial formula on. You don't want to break new ground. You want to optimize the productivity of a well-tilled field. Actually, one of the hallmarks of a cult work is that no one can figure out how to reproduce the effect. (In favor of LOTR's cult status, we can note that not one of its millions of imitators are actually anything like it.)     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a vision. Commit to it. Bury yourself in it. Hone it mercilessly and without compromise. If you do this there is a small chance you may capture something that captures the imagination of an age, or even the imagination of many ages. These chances are very very small. But they are the only chances you have.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, you know, be commercial. Work hard at it, hone your craft, and you might make a decent living at it. Get picked up by a company that wants to brand your stuff and you could make a very good living. It's not the road to cult status, but it puts food on the table.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TLDR: You can become a brand by trying to; you become a cult in spite of yourself.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-26T00:24:37.763" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T00:24:37.763" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27723" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-25T11:56:02.383" Score="40" ViewCount="20774" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a newcomer to this community, and have recently started giving serious thought to my first novel. I'm basically working on an idea I had a few years back. It's fiction, has a lot to do with faeries, Celtic mythology, dark fantasy, nightmarish apocalyptic scenarios...you know, fun stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to cut the long story short, here's my predicament: I've decided that I'm going to purposely keep my main character's gender ambiguous. The reader will have no indications as to whether said character is male or female, and I've already decided that other characters won't be referring to him/her by any pronouns that might give it away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how do I go about doing that? I've already been advised that I should write from first-person perspective to make things easier, but other than that, are there any pointers I should keep in mind so that the reader doesn't realize the gender? I also want the reader to keep on second-guessing, like at one point they think, &quot;Yup, this is definitely a dude&quot; only to go, &quot;Wait, now I'm confused&quot;. I &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; them to keep on questioning it, but not to the point that it distracts them from the plot of the story itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, any advice would be greatly appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I should've cleared some things up, such as the gender identity of my MC in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is a fantasy world, I've taken a lot of liberties, and in doing so, I've created the MC so that the species they belong to are natural androgynes. In that, they are born androgynous. Neither male nor female. I've planned on doing this reveal at some point in my novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you once again. Your insights have been helpful and much appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24634" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-04-25T14:01:51.037" LastActivityDate="2021-10-17T12:54:34.783" Title="How do I keep the gender of my main character purposely ambiguous?" Tags="|fiction|gender|pov|ambiguity|" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-25T12:33:27.853" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things that seems like a good idea to many beginning writers is trying to deceive the reader in some way or another. There is one problem with this idea: readers don't like it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And why should they? The reader's enjoyment of a story depends on their ability to enter into the world of the story, to enter into what Tolkien called the sub-created world of the author. Disappointment comes when that illusion is shattered. But entry into the world, and the maintenance of belief in that world, become much more difficult if part of the picture is permanently greyed out or pixelated. It is as if the writer is refusing to let the reader in, and, of course, if the reader can't get in, they will stop reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is such a thing as an unreliable narrator. But the unreliable narrator is a construct of the writer and the reader meets them as they meet an untruthful person in real life. Their unreliability is presented wholly and honestly so that the reader can enter into the world in which the unreliable narrator exists and form judgements about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story is something very fundamental to the human psyche. We love stories. We need stories. We live by stories. And for this very reason, story has a very specific form. The body recognizes story, and if a narrative comes along that the body does not recognize as story, our mental antibodies attack and reject it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story allows for infinite variety within its basic structure and rules. But its most basic rule is to be honest with the reader.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT (in response to the OPs edit):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gender is one of the first things we notice about people when we meet them. It is how our recognition system works. We categorize things, and gender is one of the most fundamental categories, perhaps the most fundamental category, that we use to categorize the people we meet. This is why androgyny is so striking when we see it: it disrupts our recognition system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, concealing the androgyny of your MC is an affront to the reader's most basic recognition of individuals. Whether or not the reader is open to varieties of gender, gender itself, whether binary or not, is a fundamental category of recognition. The reader cannot form a picture of the character without it, and so they will either give up on the character or make a decision for themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your characters are androgynous, say they are androgynous right up front. The first thing that the reader would notice about your character in real life is the first thing you should tell them about them in a story. You are creating an experience for the reader, and that experience is going to be incomplete and frustrating if you do not tell them the basic things they need to form a picture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-26T22:23:02.563" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T22:23:02.563" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-25T12:39:55.160" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Where's the best place to hide a red fish? In a pond full of other red fish.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're writing in a fantasy genre, you have liberty to create an entire society. You're doing all your own worldbuilding. So create a society/race/culture where &lt;em&gt;nobody's&lt;/em&gt; gender is ever established. A gender-neutral third-person-singular pronoun will be required, but there are many (or you can coin your own). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your characters who aren't of Red Fish's people can be binarily gendered and use standard pronouns. It's up to you if you want them to express confusion or struggle with how to address Red Fish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Whether your reader will be distracted by Red Fish's gender ambiguity depends on what else you define about the character.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We establish a concept of the characters, settings, and actions in our heads as we read (some people visualize, some only get the radio drama, but there's some mental thing going on). If you say &lt;em&gt;elf&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;dwarf&lt;/em&gt;, we have a vague outline of what the species is, and certain expectations. Elves and dwarves are sexually dimorphous, so an ambiguously gendered elf or dwarf is going to irritate the reader after a while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you say &lt;em&gt;breezleklorp,&lt;/em&gt; we don't know what one of those looks like, or what characteristics it has. Humanoid? Bipedial? Symmetrical? How many heads, eyes, arms, genders? You could get away with an ambiguously gendered breezleklorp for quite some time if you're only slowly revealing the characteristics of breezleklorpim as the story proceeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T12:39:55.160" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-25T13:03:40.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your work in progress is fiction, I would suggest the question could only be answered by the character quoting it. Which version do they seem like they would quote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As many have already said, the language of the KJV can be both flowery and poetic. A scene between two people declaring their affection for each other can be enhanced by such. It can also be harsh and authoritative. I would probably have the protagonist quoting the KJV, personally. Perhaps the old man/old woman who appears to give sage advice or words of warning would use the KJV to everyone else's NIV. However, in normal conversation between two people, it might seem ostentatious (in a modern setting) to use 400 year old phrasing and conjugation. Perhaps the NIV or ESV or even the CEV would work better there. I would avoid paraphrases (The Message, The Living Bible). If you want to have a character paraphrase a verse, you should do it in their style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people might suggest picking one version and sticking to it throughout the book for continuity's sake. I don't necessarily agree. Different people are going to read the versions that work best for them and would thus be more likely to quote in those versions. Personally, I usually quote from the NIV or use my own paraphrase, but sometimes the KJV is just the right sound for the job. If all of your characters go to the same church, they will be more likely to all quote from the same version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just my two cents. Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5781" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T13:03:40.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27718" CreationDate="2017-04-25T13:12:05.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Centuries don't have styles; writers have styles. True, there are certain broad features of the way things are written which change over time, but they are very much secondary to the styles of individual authors. And diction and vocabulary are only a small part of what constitutes an author's style. Austen's cool ironic detachment is a much a hallmark of her style as her diction and vocabulary, and you certainly would not mistake her for any of the Brontes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nor would you mistake writers of the 17th century from those of the 18th or those of the 18th from those of the 19th, etc. There is a marked development of fashion in literature from one centry to another, which continues into the 21st. These fashions have as much to do with weltanschauung as they do with the use of language. The relationship between character, narrator, and reader, for instance, is a far more distinctive part of the evolution of storytelling fashion over the course of the 20th century, reflective of a larger social trend of descent from confidence into doubt about the reliability and objectivity of human judgements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A writer today who wanted to emulate Austen would come closer to their intended effect if they focused on emulating her confidence, irony, and wit, than if they focused on her diction and vocabulary. Indeed, the effect would be far more convincing with the former focus than the latter. Imitation of the diction and vocabulary without the fundamental authorial stance will sound like a painful pastiche, almost mockery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key stylistic fashion of the later 20th and early 21st century literature has nothing to do with vocabulary and diction. It is the withdrawal of the authorial voice; the refusal of the author to speak directly to the reader in any manner. Partly this is the influence of the movies at work, and partly it is our artistic lack of confidence showing through. It is the author's voice shining through, more than anything else, that strikes us as foreign about the classics of the modern era.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T13:12:05.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-25T13:25:20.090" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once again, @&lt;a href=&quot;https://writing.stackexchange.com/a/27724/34330&quot;&gt;MarkBaker&lt;/a&gt; is spot-on. When the author keeps information from the reader that the other characters all know, it feels manipulative to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must keep something from your readers, keep it from at least one character in the story as well. A natural way to do this is to tell the story from the point of view of an ignorant character. This character could even bring up the uncertainty: &amp;quot;Are you a dude?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;That's for you to find out.&amp;quot; Just make sure that the reader isn't the only person in the room that's in the dark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-10-17T12:53:47.607" LastActivityDate="2021-10-17T12:53:47.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-25T13:43:15.997" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...I should write from [the] first-person perspective to make things easier...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If for whatever reason you want to keep the gender of your main character a secret, the first-person perspective is the last one you would want to employ as a story delivery vehicle. Yes, it would give your character a way to refer to themselves as ambiguous &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; instead of gender-specific &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt; (I am assuming that your species are either male or female, but--per your clarification--androgynous &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; will have the same connotation), but it will also put you in quite a predicament: &lt;em&gt;how to engage your reader by your story, while clearly withholding something from them&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it might work for a short story (this trickery being the main point of it), I seriously doubt that you can keep it up for the duration of a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there is no way your character will not be aware of their gender, I would suggest staying away from the first-person POV. Making your narrator so obviously unreliable will annoy most readers, just as @MarkBaker noted in his answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Robin Hobb's series of novels, one of the titular characters, &lt;em&gt;Fool&lt;/em&gt;, who is ostensibly male in most appearances, later in the story assumes a female identity under the name &lt;em&gt;Amber&lt;/em&gt;. It works for the story because it is done deliberately for the purpose of deception of &lt;em&gt;other characters&lt;/em&gt;, and when the &lt;em&gt;readers&lt;/em&gt; eventually start to question &lt;em&gt;Fool's/Amber's&lt;/em&gt; gender, it is a sort of a bonus. Note, however, that the story is &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; told from the &lt;em&gt;Fool's/Amber's&lt;/em&gt; POV, and that is the only way Hobb keeps the suspense going without outrageously lying to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, unless you want to alienate your reader, you are pretty much limited to a POV of an &lt;em&gt;observer&lt;/em&gt;, who is just as confused about your main character gender affiliation, as you want your readers to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-04-25T13:58:27.587" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T13:58:27.587" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-25T14:14:37.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You didn't say &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; you want to keep the gender ambiguous. That might help in giving a good answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possibility that doesn't deceive the reader would be to write 1st person and make your main character himself confused about his gender. Maybe he grew up outside his society where androgynity was normal. Or maybe for him it was normal all his life, now he met other species and wonders which gender he is - he never wondered about it before, doesn't understand his species is different, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*) using the male pronoun for readability. If you seriously write this story, you absolutely need to invent an androgynous pronoun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24134" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-04-25T14:32:07.947" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T14:32:07.947" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-25T14:49:31.553" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;https://writing.stackexchange.com/a/27724/34330&quot;&gt;Mark Baker's answer&lt;/a&gt; covers the general rule very well, but the answer in your specific case will depend on the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason, I think, why you should generally make your character's gender known, is that gender will normally be a part of the story on some level. We all define ourselves to some extent by our gender (if sometimes grudgingly), and since stories are really about the conflict between different people's understanding of the world (and thus themselves), you're cheating your reader out of part of the story if you fail to reveal this information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if your character is interacting only with it's own species, I actually think it's perfectly reasonable to neglect its gender. Such a character is unlikely to think in terms of gender, and - particularly in a first person narrative - there's no obvious reason why it or its absence should need to be revealed. I could imagine a story in which several genderless characters interact for some time before coming into contact with humans (or some other gendered species). In this case, though, the character should be communicating their own reaction to the gendered characters, rather than being surprised at their own lack of gender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I nonetheless think that deliberately decieving your reader should not be the goal. It should be made obvious that gender isn't relevant to this character, rather than the reader being encouraged to guess the gender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-10-17T12:54:34.783" LastActivityDate="2021-10-17T12:54:34.783" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-25T17:50:50.947" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just don't mention it!&lt;/strong&gt; Consider giving your character a &lt;strong&gt;short name&lt;/strong&gt;, so that it's less jarring when you inevitably use their name more often than usual, and find ways to &lt;strong&gt;phrase your sentences without pronouns&lt;/strong&gt; referring to the character. When there is dialogue, &lt;strong&gt;have other characters address your character directly&lt;/strong&gt; so they can use 'you' a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gene Kemp's novel &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turbulent_Term_of_Tyke_Tiler&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is a lovely tale of children getting up to mischief at school, and while most people regard the reveal at the end that Tyke&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is a girl&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as a twist, I wouldn't say the reader feels deceived and it doesn't interfere with the readability of the rest of the novel. Unfortunately I can't find any suitable extracts online to quote (and don't have a copy to hand), but this is certainly possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When/if you do reveal that your character's species is androgynous, the reader can reconsider the assumptions they made (consciously or unconsciously). You don't need to add anything specific to force them to consider the character's gender along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22558" LastEditorUserId="22558" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T14:10:28.773" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T14:10:28.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-25T19:46:01.633" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can write the story from the viewpoint of characters who do not know the gender of the main character. If you want the reader to care and to wonder, use viewpoint characters who care and wonder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can sometimes use little tricks to &lt;em&gt;briefly&lt;/em&gt; delay revealing information that a viewpoint character discovers or realizes.  But that works only briefly. And only a few times in a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write in the viewpoint of someone who knows the MC's gender, and who would normally think about that gender consciously, the only way to hide that information is to use a distant viewpoint. But using a distant viewpoint will… uh… keep the reader distant from that viewpoint. And that will almost certainly leave the reader caring less about the characters than you want them to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another trick, which readers tend to hate, and some of us (Hi! I'm Dale!) hate with a deep and abiding passion, is to become suddenly vague every time the detail comes up. We're deeply in the character's viewpoint, seeing and hearing and feeling and following every minute detail of what they're experiencing. And then suddenly we go all vague and abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers feel that, even if they don't know why. They're reacting to the author's intrusive hand, rather than to what the characters are experiencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dan Brown pulls viewpoint shenanigans like that all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, his most recent novel &lt;em&gt;Inferno&lt;/em&gt; has several scenes where the same close-viewpoint character thinks of self using different names (actually, a name in some scenes, and a number in others).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, I hate that. I consider it authorial malpractice of the highest order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I couldn't stop reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Dan Brown commits every authorial felony in the book to hide viewpoint characters' information from readers. But I don't think he's ever tried to sustain that over the course of a whole novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T19:46:01.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27735" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-25T20:31:44.773" Score="2" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently have the choice of two routes with my novel - to lead with a knives-and-poisons main conflict, with reference to the protagonist's emotional conflict, or to lead with him conquering his inability to manage his peculiarities (OCD, etc) while untangling the plot. I understand that both will influence the other, but is there a best practice with which one to lead with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22913" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T15:15:39.253" Title="Is it more effective to lead with a physical conflict rather than an emotional one?" Tags="|characters|character-development|conflict|plot|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27735" CreationDate="2017-04-25T22:52:03.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The heart of a story is neither physical conflict nor emotional conflict, it is moral conflict. That is to say, it is about the character being made to face a choice about values. Does pride and prejudice win out over love? Does Spiderman save MJ or the busload of children? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emotional conflict results from moral conflict. Moral conflict forces us to pay a price to attain a goal. There is an emotional cost to paying the price and an emotional gain from achieving the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Physical conflict arises because two characters have different, non-compatible goals. This poses another moral conflict -- am I willing to engage in violence to achieve my goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in the hierarchy of conflicts, moral conflict is at the top, emotional conflict is in the middle, and physical conflict is at the bottom. Physical conflict alone is not very interesting. The interest comes from the emotional conflict and, more fundamentally, the moral conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean that you have to do a full exposition of the moral conflict, followed by a full exposition of the emotional conflict, followed by a full exposition of the physical conflict. But it does mean that the reader needs to see at least the seeds of the moral and emotional conflict before you can expect them to engage with the physical conflict.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T22:52:03.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="723" CreationDate="2017-04-26T02:32:40.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, there's nothing wrong with editing it just a few more times. You may not be happy with this, as you could feel that you've already done enough, but it may be the last few edits that get you published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you won't get published if you don't find a publisher. Search up as many publishers as you can. Tell them about your book through a cover letter. &lt;a href=&quot;http://manuscriptagency.com.au/writing-a-cover-letter/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Click here&lt;/a&gt; for more information on a cover letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've sent your cover letter and manuscript, it will take some months before you receive a reply. Spend this time planning and writing your next book, if you have another idea or your first book is part of a series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T02:32:40.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27735" CreationDate="2017-04-26T07:21:45.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that depends entirely on your story and the initial mood you're trying to establish (both for the story and between the characters).&#xA;Starting with a physical conflict is a fairly easy way to quickly draw your reader in. It's the cheapest way of creating dramatic circumstances: Raise your reader's pulse quickly in order to demand their focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you start with an emotional conflict or backstory, you gamble a little with their interest in that plot line. It's harder because this way you need to convince the reader that this is both dramatic and interesting, while two dudes fighting or a battle scene does that almost implicitly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what should you start with? Well, what is the tone and speed of your story? Start high quickly (and then take the reader on rollercoasters) or slowly build up and increase tension over the course of the first act?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final answer to your question is: There is no &quot;best practice&quot;, just what suits your particular story progression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24656" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T07:21:45.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27706" CreationDate="2017-04-26T07:43:37.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the moment your work is published, it is your copyright. Anyone who copies your work is breaking the law, regardless of where you are. It doesn't matter whether they are published all at once or individually, it still applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are more at risk of someone copying your work before you publish it, and sending it to a publisher before you. Put your name, signature, address and the © symbol on your work to warn others not to copy. You should also keep rough drafts of your works as further proof of your work, in case it comes to court, where you can show how it evolved into its current form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T07:43:37.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27740" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27742" CreationDate="2017-04-26T10:35:42.880" Score="1" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I write something, there maybe one or few grammar mistakes. Is there any online service like thing (for free) that can correct those for me? Just a curiosity to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24610" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T13:10:32.333" Title="Where can I correct my works for grammar mistakes?" Tags="|creative-writing|grammar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-26T11:05:15.057" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could make the narrator fascinated with the main character and write your story in the second person.  Perhaps the narrator is a friend or mentor of some kind, to whom the main character shares most of what happens, but not their gender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Peter Pohls book &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13492682-janne-min-v-n&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Janne, min vän&lt;/a&gt;, translated into English as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny,_My_Friend&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Johnny, My Friend&lt;/a&gt;, the main character is either Janne or Krille, but the &lt;em&gt;narrator&lt;/em&gt; is clearly teenager Krille.  The narrator is unambiguously male, as are all his friends he hangs out with in 1950s Stockholm.  One day, they are joined by the mysterious Janne.  As the book progresses, the nature of Janne only becomes more and more mysterious as Krille finds out more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; Only at the very end, after the climax of the book, is there a hint of Jannes gender.  But even then it remains unclear.  And certainly, initially, Krille and his friends assume that Janne is male.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mystery is shared between narrator Krille and the reader.  The reader can identify with Krille.  From the perspective of Janne, it would be a &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; different book, and mystery would be out of the question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another book by Peter Pohl, without such mystery, does employ a grammatical technique that could aid in keeping it a mystery.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12382671-vi-kallar-honom-anna&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vi kallar honom Anna&lt;/a&gt; (no English translation; the title means &lt;em&gt;We (will) call him Anna&lt;/em&gt;) is entirely written in the second person, in the form of a letter, if you will, that the narrator writes to the main character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5496" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T11:05:15.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27740" CreationDate="2017-04-26T13:10:32.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am partial to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grammarly.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Grammarly&lt;/a&gt;. In my experience, it is the best, and you can start with a free account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have to point out that none of the grammar-checking software packages are perfect. They can help you, but they will not do your job for you, you still have to decide in every word-by-word and sentence-by-sentence case whether to follow their advice of not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T13:10:32.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27537" CreationDate="2017-04-26T13:15:53.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first draft is generally bad because your brain fills in the gaps that are left by the words you have written.  You don't see what's missing because your brain, which already knows all the stuff you left out, fills it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why telling instead of showing is much more satisfactory to the person doing the writing and so much more unsatisfactory for everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T13:15:53.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27735" CreationDate="2017-04-26T13:54:53.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the really important conflict is between the world inside a character's head and the world outside of it. Since &quot;the world outside of it&quot; is usually shaped by other characters acting in accordance with their own model of the world, this almost always has a moral dimension (because that model of the world will include a model of how people should behave in it), a physical dimension (because they will physically interact with things) and an emotional one (because they will have invested their emotions in aspects of their world model).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My view is that a story is, at its simplest level, about a character encountering something that doesn't mesh with their understanding of the world, and having to make a choice between changing the world or changing themselves. A story generally ends when the relevant aspect of the world and the relevant aspect of the character's understanding of it are in alignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, think about who your character is, what they believe and what they want, and think about the sort of conflict that &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; defines the start of their story arc. Whether that ends up being physical or emotional is usually irrelevant; it's how it relates to the overall story that really matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastEditorUserId="22280" LastEditDate="2017-04-26T14:09:14.220" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T14:09:14.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27745" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-26T14:05:33.473" Score="1" ViewCount="578" Body="&lt;p&gt;When creating a figure caption related to a software screenshot, can I use title case or should I match the case that is in the application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Example, &quot;Figure 1-1. New Virtual Machine – Select a name and guest OS Pane&quot; (actual case in application)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;New Virtual Machine – Select a Name and Guest OS Pane&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24662" LastEditorUserId="7986" LastEditDate="2017-04-26T15:11:14.637" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T19:15:34.350" Title="Caption title for screenshots" Tags="|formatting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27745" CreationDate="2017-04-26T14:30:14.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use the case which is in the application, to make it easier for the reader to match apples to apples. You might even add quote marks and other formatting for additional clarity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Figure 1-1.&lt;/em&gt; &quot;New Virtual Machine — Select a name and guest OS Pane&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T14:30:14.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4660" CreationDate="2017-04-26T15:11:30.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your problem is that you do not know your character enough yet. I read some very good tricks on this board: listen to people talking in public. But listening is only HALF of it. Watch their postures. How do they move their hands? How does the dynamic goes with two? With three? This is a fascinating thing to do, one you can do without being a creep. Then once you observed women, do the same exercise with men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick trick a veteran writer once gave to me, when I struggled with a similar issue. &lt;em&gt;You are &lt;strong&gt;WRITING&lt;/strong&gt;, you are not filming or giving every inflection and twist of language. Focus on what the character would say that's important.&lt;/em&gt; Sometimes it's not what the character says, but how does she say it. What does she leave out? What's her body language when she says it. I found that when writing women characters, its not as much what they say as how they say it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ever had a woman tell you &quot;Do what you want!&quot; What she says is not as important as her posture...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T15:11:30.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27735" CreationDate="2017-04-26T15:15:39.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that depends entirely on the nature of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the extreme: If the story is all about a person's emotional struggles, throwing in a gratuitous fight scene to try to grab the reader's interest seems counterproductive to me. It will mislead the reader about the nature of the story and put him in the wrong frame of mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the story includes both physical conflict and emotional struggles, if it's mostly about the emotional struggles and the fighting is an outgrowth of that, starting with a fight scene might be a way to begin with high drama, but it could also be misleading and distracting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose it's easier to grab a reader's attention with a fight scene. You don't need to know much about the characters to understand it. A scene about a character's emotional struggles may require some background. But not necessarily. A story that began, &quot;Bob decided that his only choice was to kill himself&quot; would probably grab the reader's attention without knowing anything about Bob. Indeed if I read that as the first sentence of a story, I think I'd immediately be asking, &quot;Why does Bob want to kill himself? What happened to him?&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd add that in my humble opinion, fight scenes and car chases and the like work very well in movies, but not nearly so well in books. It's hard to capture the action and tension with printed words. Not impossible, but hard. I often find myself skimming over fight scenes in books with a &quot;yeah, yeah, I get it, they had a fight&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T15:15:39.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27537" CreationDate="2017-04-26T15:30:11.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The unpublished short stories I read are hardly first drafts, but a common problem is that there's too much in the pages that wanders away from the story. These pieces need &quot;tightening up&quot; so their story remains the focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These scenes need to be rewritten or just deleted. Often, the unnecessary stuff happens at the beginning of the story. A lot of these would be better if the first two pages were lost. (I recently read one that began with the main character's birth.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This unnecessary stuff was, it seems, necessary in those early drafts as the writer figures things out. But that stuff needs to be removed or integrated in revision. (Your readers will help identify this stuff.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T15:30:11.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27750" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27752" CreationDate="2017-04-26T15:55:20.037" Score="0" ViewCount="1151" Body="&lt;p&gt;I almost asked the question &quot;Can someone without formal training write a novel?&quot;, but the answer of course is yes. To get a better answer, I ask the following question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How difficult will writing a novel be for someone without formal training?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not talking about a best seller, but just something from start to finish that is readable. I've taken basic writing classes in college and high school, as well as some technical writing, but I've never formally taken any classes in creative writing. I've written the casual blog post for a personal page, but that is usually about current events or personal projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that as you write, you normally get better at it, but should I postpone starting a long story and focus on some extra classes/self-help books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24647" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T23:28:45.687" Title="How difficult will writing a novel be for someone without formal training?" Tags="|creative-writing|education|getting-started|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27720" CreationDate="2017-04-26T16:02:27.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you can find a formula for the stories that are truly great and memorable, because what makes them great and memorable is precisely that they DON'T follow a formula. The most memorable stories are those that are original and creative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any time a Hollywood movie is successful, you always see a horde of imitators. These imitators almost always pick the most surface aspects of the story to copy. I read an article a few years back where they quoted some Hollywood producer saying that the success of the Harry Potter movies showed that Americans were interested in &quot;movies about British school children&quot;, and so he was planning on making such a movie. I don't recall what his movie was or if it was successful, but his analysis was absurd at a dozen levels. At the very least I'd say that he completely missed the point of Harry Potter. I think few went to see it saying, &quot;I want to watch a movie about British school children&quot;. More likely they were thinking, &quot;I want to watch a movie about magic and fantasy.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even at that, just because a story about magic was successful doesn't mean that all stories about magic will be successful, or even particularly that stories about magic are more likely to be successful. Adding some scenes about magic to an otherwise non-magic story is unlikely to improve it. It will probably make it worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example suddenly occurs to me. Almost everyone is interested in sex, so lots of stories including sex scenes or subplots. I don't doubt that can help a story's popularity. But I've read many books and seen many movies where they throw in a sex scene for no apparent purpose. I recall a sci-fi story I read once about a female spaceship captain that had nothing to do with sex, except there was a scene where she's walking down the hall of the ship and then suddenly steps in to the cabin of one of the other officers, they have sex, and she leaves. There was no lead up to it and it never comes up again. It has no apparent affect on ... anything. It was like the author or the publisher just decided they needed a sex scene so they flipped open the manuscript to a random point and threw one in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes some stories popular is that they are original and creative in some way, that they have interesting plots, that they have engaging characters, and that they are well written. There's no formula for that. It's more of an anti-formula. It you set out to write a story saying, for example, &quot;people like stories about time travel&quot; or &quot;... about brilliant detectives&quot; or whatever, that's of virtually no help in writing a good story. If you set out trying to apply a formula, you will almost surely end up with a trite, run-of-the-mill story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course that doesn't mean that there's nothing to be learned by studying popular stories. Just the opposite. There are all sorts of tools and techniques that one can pick up. I think the tool analogy is a good one. If someone asked, &quot;how can I paint a great painting that will be remembered for centuries like the Mona Lisa or the Last Supper?&quot;, there's no formula we could give. It would be foolish to say that because the Mona Lisa has lots of browns that therefore the secret to great painting is lots of browns. But it is fair to say, &quot;start by learning to use a paint brush&quot; and &quot;learn to create the color you want by mixing paints&quot; and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T16:02:27.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27750" CreationDate="2017-04-26T16:22:15.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's impossible to say how hard it will be &lt;em&gt;for you&lt;/em&gt;, given how personal a process writing is.  My suggestion would be to first try writing a long story or a novel, and then, if you notice things that are missing, or that gave you special trouble, or if you don't get a good reaction, then seek out a class or a course or a self-help book that will fill the gap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem in any kind of artistic studies is to gain technical skills and exposure to good examples without losing your own voice and vision along the way.  Getting some work under your belt first might help.  There's also a nearly infinite number of books and courses about writing, so there's a danger you could postpone forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T16:22:15.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-26T17:03:27.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given your clarification and that the fact that androgynes exist in your novel's world, I'll concur with the rest of the answers here -- purposefully concealing it will dissatisfy your readers because it is pertinent to the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only time I've seen this work is in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Caudwell&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sarah Caudwell&lt;/a&gt;'s Hilary Tamar mysteries, in which the detective is written in such a way that either gender is a possible one. The character's gender is never part of the story, as opposed to your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14348" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T17:03:27.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27621" CreationDate="2017-04-26T17:30:43.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Older translations are public domain, newer translations are often under copyright, and may have publishers who charge for quotations.  The &lt;em&gt;King James Version&lt;/em&gt; is the best known and is widely considered the most beautiful translation, but is neither the most accurate nor the easiest to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel brave enough, you might want to compare several translations, and then create your own paraphrase.  This is called a &quot;rendition&quot; --the &lt;em&gt;Message&lt;/em&gt; Bible, for example, is not actually a translation but rather a rendition.  The advantage is that you don't have to worry about copyright, and you can shape the sound of the words.  However, you will need to be pretty scrupulously accurate if you don't want your paraphrase to draw unwanted controversy and attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T17:30:43.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27756" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27804" CreationDate="2017-04-26T18:16:56.417" Score="9" ViewCount="1703" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a new project that draws influence from a currently running television show. What I want to do is make a reference to that show in my work. Almost as a joke to say, &quot;We're nothing like that show.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to use the name of that show in my work? Could there be a legal issue down the road? Is it ethical to drop the name of something that inspired the work itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22708" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2019-09-25T04:08:52.907" LastActivityDate="2019-09-25T04:08:52.907" Title="Is it permitted to mention a real life work of fiction in your story?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|libel|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27720" CreationDate="2017-04-26T18:48:04.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your revised question reveals a confusion of two different things. There are works with strong and enduring followings, and there are works that inspire roleplaying. There may be some intersection between these two categories, but they are by no means the same thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The roleplaying phenomena seems to have arisen out of comic books with no particular literary merit. As far as I can tell, there is not a lot of ongoing readership of older comic books. The time I went into a comic book store looking for something for my grandson, I did not find a shelf of classic comic books. All the action seems to be in new titles. The cult is a cult of the characters, not the works. Feeding the cult of the character requires a continual stream of new work. That in itself indicates that there is little literary merit here, the real attraction is the brand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are people attracted to brands? Because associating themselves with brands makes them feel better about themselves in some way. Why does the bullied kid identify with Bat Man? Because Bat Man can fight bullies. Why do people buy iPhones or Gucci, or Ferraris? To make a statement about themselves to the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Branding is a big thing in the entertainment world now. Comic Con may have started out of fan obsession with Iron Man, but the whole phenomena has been thoroughly corporatized to the point where they design the dolls and the lunchboxes before they ever writer the script. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Role playing is about brand identity, not literary merit. Beating Disney at this game today is going to be next to impossible. Writing a book with a strong and enduring following, on the other hand, is about literary excellence, and does not involve any dressing up or conference attending.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T18:48:04.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27750" CreationDate="2017-04-26T18:52:34.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 'How difficult ...' question is impossible to answer, but consider that most novels aren't written by people with formal training: they are written by those with the motivation and persistence to actually complete a project. They are written by those who are prepared to work hard. They are written by those who want to succeed. These things have nothing to do with formal training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the best formal training I am aware of demands that you have written at least one novel before you enrol. They assume you have tried, failed to a point, picked yourself up, and finally finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't postphone writing a long story until you have read about novel writing. Instead write, edit (read about writing so you can get some clues about how to improve your writing if you have time) and write some more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T18:52:34.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27745" CreationDate="2017-04-26T19:15:34.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would tend to match the case of the interface, but here is a way to think it through:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Labels on interface elements are often brief instructions rather than actual names. The capitalization of those instructions will frequently be unconventional because the people who wrote and implemented them were not familiar with, or did not care about, the conventions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So then the question becomes, are you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Giving essentially the same instruction as is used to label the UI control?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using the label of the UI control as it it were actually its name?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simply quoting the actual text of the UI?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The logic course in each case is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use sentence case as this is just an instruction, even if the UI gets it wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use name case as this is a name, even if the UI gets it wrong. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reproduce the case from the UI, even it it is wrong. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it clear that you are doing 3, you can apply some formatting change, such as bolding, to the text that matches the UI text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T19:15:34.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27760" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27761" CreationDate="2017-04-26T19:42:00.830" Score="4" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;During my writing I discovered some interesting (sub)adventures that my protagonists go through while reaching their end-destination.&#xA;However, these stories are totally irrelevant to the current plot and structure so I left them out.&#xA;I was wondering however if anyone has good tips one still planting small hints/pointers towards these adventures, so that I in a future story can go back to these adventures in a seemingly natural way. (does this make sense?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing in a third-person &quot;character&quot; mode voice (i.e. only observe/tell what main character does/feels) so I can't basically go writing stuff like &quot;That's a story to be told some other time&quot;.&#xA;I also don't want the 'links/references' to be too obvious: I'm afraid they'l immediately feel out of place if I don't expand on it if the character mentions strange and miraculous adventures that happened in between the whitespace of two chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24672" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T22:00:57.687" Title="Dropping tie-ins for future stories?" Tags="|structure|plot|narrative|subplot|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27760" CreationDate="2017-04-26T22:00:57.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That depends...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this your first book?&lt;/strong&gt; It's hard enough to get through your first book without getting too cute. Focus. Keep your word count under control. It's easier to pull out little details or expand on bit characters in retrospect than it is to subtly advance them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are you writing a series with each novel intended to stand alone?&lt;/strong&gt; Again, it's easier to find loose ends from Story A to put into Story B, but there's nothing wrong with dropping in an occasional character or artifact as long as they have relevance in Story A and aren't just tools. Readers pick up on this, and it annoys them&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are you writing a series with each novel being part of a whole (one book doesn't tell the entire story)?&lt;/strong&gt; This is where you absolutely want to foreshadow events; however, the writer should have a thorough outline so that it's not just a bunch of random threads coming together and drifting apart - unless you're writing an existentialist novel in which case this might be the point.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your brain consistently wanders far afield, you may want to do an outline. This will give you ample structure to at least predict where things can be dropped in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't assume there will be a Story B. Give your best ideas to Story A and don't be afraid to edit out the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T22:00:57.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7697" CreationDate="2017-04-26T22:58:30.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe it will be better to divide this multiple task for two instructions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Viewing a single contact&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open Gmail. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click on &lt;strong&gt;Contacts&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click on the name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Viewing all the contacts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Open Gmail. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Click on &lt;strong&gt;Contacts&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Click the &quot;contacts&quot; link.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can, I suggest to show these instructions using simple diagrams with flows which show how to do it step by step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24677" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T22:58:30.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7697" CreationDate="2017-04-26T23:03:09.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reality is often more complex than our document structures can easily capture. Most of the solutions to this issue simply make the text structures more complex without making the meaning any more clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practical clarity should rule over scrupulous correctness. There is no real risk of confusion of incorrect action in this case, so leaving it as it is is probably the best option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T23:03:09.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21974" CreationDate="2017-04-26T23:25:48.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to seem a professional, don't use personal style and short forms. In this case I propose use sentence like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tutorial &lt;em&gt;&quot;title of this tutorial&quot;&lt;/em&gt; shows how to doing sth...&amp;lt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tutorial &lt;em&gt;&quot;title of this tutorial&quot;&lt;/em&gt; introduces the reader to the...&amp;lt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tutorial &lt;em&gt;&quot;title of this tutorial&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is an introduction to the topic...&amp;lt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tutorial &lt;em&gt;&quot;title of this tutorial&quot;&lt;/em&gt; presents information about...&amp;lt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google helps you to find good examples, such as listed below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This tutorial introduces the reader informally to the basic concepts and features of the Python language and system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://developers.google.com/apps-script/articles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://developers.google.com/apps-script/articles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These tutorials are designed to help you start using Google Apps Scripts more quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/using-branches&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/using-branches&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This tutorial is a comprehensive introduction to Git branches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24677" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T23:25:48.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27750" CreationDate="2017-04-26T23:28:45.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I jumped into writing my first novel after a few flash fiction pieces and a comic book script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It won't be easy, but it's not easy for anyone. ~90,000 is a lot of words. You have to learn to enjoy the process. A 1000 words a day gets your first draft finished in three months. 250 words a day gets you done in a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the hard part, physically. Revising, workshopping, submitting that's the hard part, emotionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would recommend writing a few short stories first, to learn the craft.  I think I would have been better off if I had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24679" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T23:28:45.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27659" CreationDate="2017-04-26T23:56:38.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Witch&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Friday the 13th&lt;/em&gt; can both be summed up as, &quot;A group of people are isolated in the woods and a monster kills them one by one.&quot; No one would say they're the same movie.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As long as you put enough of yourself into your story you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24679" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T23:56:38.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27773" CreationDate="2017-04-27T00:08:22.033" Score="5" ViewCount="430" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing in first person narrative, there are points when the narrator expresses their opinion on a situation, the emotions they're feeling and so on. I've read books where there are several paragraphs at once of just the narrator talking about something and how they feel about it or recalling past events or filling in the reader on pertinent information. Even simple things like their hatred of the green sweater their grandma bought them or how the lock on their front door needs to be changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when does it stop being character development or story development and start being annoying? When do I cross the line between what is acceptable and just unnecessary rambling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24532" LastActivityDate="2018-12-17T14:13:27.010" Title="How do I avoid rambling in first person narratives?" Tags="|viewpoint|narrative|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27767" CreationDate="2017-04-27T00:15:49.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try and keep the character out of their own head. Have them observe and interact with their surroundings in ways that communicate what's going on inside.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm having a terrible day, as usual.&quot;&#xA;vs.&#xA;&quot;I kicked at the empty bag, missed, and fell flat on my ass. Typical.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24679" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T00:15:49.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-27T02:32:10.620" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gender is one of the first things we notice in others, as mentioned in previous posts.  However, you've stated that you're thinking about writing in first person, and that the narrator is going to be part of an androgynous race.  Their own gender may not be something that goes through their own mind a lot, or even at all, and if their own gender isn't something they think about, then it wouldn't necessarily be part of their narration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about how a person writes a diary.  You could read pages and pages of a diary without seeing a single reference to what gender its writer is, because the diary is based around the pronoun &quot;I.&quot;  Just for fun, I skimmed two weeks of Samuel Pepys at random.  There is no explicit mention of the writer's gender.  Sure if you know anything about London society in 1660s and make the very safe assumption that a person during that time period with a wife and these sorts of social activities is necessarily male, then you know the author's gender, but these are still assumptions.  At least in the passages I read, Pepys makes no direct reference to being male.  (Also, I get the feeling that concerns about referring to &quot;my wife&quot; revealing the speaker's gender for sure might not be as significant in a modern fantasy race.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can work with other character interactions, as well.  When people talk to each other do they always mention the gender of the person they're greeting?  They do sometimes (&quot;Hello, Ladies&quot;), but there are enough non-gender based options, that avoiding them doesn't really seem like avoidance.  &quot;It's been so long since I've seen you, what have you been up to?&quot; or &quot;Can you help me out with this life-altering dilemma?&quot; or &quot;Meet my new friend, Alex,&quot; or &quot;Please put the camel in the garage,&quot; are all perfectly reasonable things to talk about with someone that don't rely on knowing the speakers' genders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've got the extra leverage of having an androgynous race, but I would argue that this is not even necessary.   There are plenty of humans who go about their day to day business without thinking about their own gender very much - certainly not enough to write in any record of the day.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a good example, I would recommend that you check out The Towers of Trebizond, by Rose Macauley.  The narrator of this book never genders themself, and their lover is only gendered in the final pages, but a lot of people don't even mention this when they talk about this book (it's not even on the Wikipedia page), because the lack of explicitly stated gender is not intrusive; the narrator's gender is just sort of not there.  This book is the best example I know of as a first person narration that never explicitly mentions the narrator's gender.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was about 1/4 of the way through reading it before I realized that there were no gendered words used to refer to the narrator.  It was the same sort of feeling as watching a movie that you didn't know was just going to be one long take with no cuts (or just hidden cuts).  At first you don't even notice, then you do, and then you read/watch very closely to see what the tricks are, and then you start thinking about why this intentional lack exists, and how it impacts the overall meaning of the piece.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So doing this over the length of an entire book has the potential to send an interesting message - not necessarily that the character or the author is trying to trick the reader or hide something, but that the character's own gender just does not matter to them.  It does not occur to them to have thoughts about what gender they are.  The lack of character gender being mentioned in the book potentially reflects how little import the character places on their gender in a much more interesting way than them coming out and explicitly talking about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, not only can this can be done and done well, but a carefully chosen stylistic absence can have an interesting impact on the meaning of the work that is difficult to make as impact-fully without such a constraint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24148" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T02:32:10.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27770" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-27T02:47:07.277" Score="0" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm young and this is my first attempt at a book. Comment here or on the document itself, it doesn't matter to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/16MXV41o324ZYMPjvRQqjQ5XsuK_0IT7qJypJFf-8_8A/edit?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://docs.google.com/document/d/16MXV41o324ZYMPjvRQqjQ5XsuK_0IT7qJypJFf-8_8A/edit?usp=sharing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24683" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T03:36:25.107" Title="Is my book interesting and my writing eloquent enough?" Tags="|style|book|reviews|criticism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-04-27T14:43:38.640" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-27T02:55:43.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is quite speculative; I've never used it or seen it used.  BUT, all the other answers aside, you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; try having the main character do things that make the reader lean alternately one way or the other.  Have the character do manly things, followed later by feminine things; repeat.  Eventually the reader just doesn't know what to think.  This MIGHT end up conveying the impression of just being a tomboy, though, since I feel like (to modern sensibilities) there are more things that a girl is &lt;em&gt;allowed&lt;/em&gt; to do than a man is.  (Like, people would look at a guy way more strangely if they wore a dress than if a gal wore a suit.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24684" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T02:55:43.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27770" CreationDate="2017-04-27T03:36:25.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether it is interesting does not matter so much. If you think it is interesting, then there is a very good chance that someone interested in your book's genre will also find it interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be more worried about whether it makes sense. You appear to have a few too many adjectives in here, you are describing some objects with two to three words which are synonyms. Cut these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also make sure there are no spelling or grammatical errors in your book. Reread it and edit it as many times as you want. It will help when you are looking for a publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only see the first chapter of your book? Where is the rest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is really good that you are attempting this, but please keep all of the above in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T03:36:25.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27767" CreationDate="2017-04-27T03:52:20.627" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer to this is that this stuff works when it is revelatory, when it shows the reader something they care about, when it draws them in. That is not about quantity, it is about aptness. Is the hatred of a green sweater or the need to fix the lock on the front door revelatory? Not in themselves, but perhaps in context. Sometimes the detail itself does not matter but the context in which a detail of this type occurs to them. Does it reveal distraction or avoidance or sentimental attachment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Merely cataloguing a scene will be tedious. There needs to be significance to the details. They need to reveal something, or build towards something, or move the arc of the story forward in some way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you know if they are doing this? Only, I think, by being ruthlessly honest with yourself. Are you being self indulgent or lazy? Can you justify exactly why every word, every image, is just what it is? Do you understand exactly what it contributes to the picture you want to build for the reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, you are rambling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T03:52:20.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-27T07:56:40.863" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not uncommon these days, particularly in fantasy and science-fiction (no doubt driven by the popularity of role-playing games in these genres, which can't assume the main character's gender and can't afford to record essentially two entire scripts with one set of pronouns swapped). Several best-selling fantasy and science-fiction novels have deliberately kept the genders and races of some of their characters vague - Lock In, by John Scalzi, even went so far as to sell two different versions of the audiobook with a male and female voice, and the Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie uses 'she' as a non-gendered pronoun, to reflect the protagonist's inability to distinguish gender. It won a Hugo, so it's clearly doing something right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how those novels and games avoid needing to refer to the gender of the protagonist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use names that aren't clearly gendered.&lt;/strong&gt; In fantasy and sci-fi, this is easy, but you run the risk of making an unpronounceable or alien name. Avoid vowel endings for made-up names, as these are usually coded 'feminine'. There are lots of names that aren't gender specific, so you can give your character an evocative name like 'Morgan' or 'Robin' while keeping the gender of your character ambiguous.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Let your audience draw their own conclusions.&lt;/strong&gt; If you deliberately write around a character's gender, it'll be distracting as readers will be reading closely to build up a mental picture of the protagonist for longer than you want. Throw them a bone, by describing enough for readers to fill in a good enough picture - build, clothing, some charming specifics - and your readers will assume the rest. To help things along, have your character perform some task that readers who invest heavily into gender roles will read as gendered. It's like that riddle about the father and son who get into a near-fatal accident, and the doctor refuses to operate on the child because it's the doctor's child. Many people will assume gender, and be satisfied, if you have your character do something like practice swordplay, or do household chores.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Think about how other characters will refer to them.&lt;/strong&gt; This is why people often suggest to write androgynous characters in first-person, to avoid the narrator having to give the game away. Games with ambiguously gendered protagonists like Sunless Sea do so by asking players to choose their own term of address; 'sir', 'madam', 'Captain', 'whelp', among others. You can borrow this technique: if most of your characters address each other referring to position, you can easily disguise the gender of your protagonist by using a non-gendered title. Similarly, other characters might look down on your character and refer to them by insulting phrases, and these can be very easily non-gendered. (You could even invent an insult - for example, call them &quot;blanks&quot;, and later reveal that they call your androgynous characters &quot;blanks&quot; not just because they're devoid of personality, but because they don't have a gender.) Terms of address amongst equals tend to be gendered, so you'll have to avoid them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lean into it.&lt;/strong&gt; There's always the option of having one character misgender the protagonist. If it's normal for androgynous characters to exist in this universe, disguise the insult from misgendering by having this character both insult them and misgender them. This way, when you do the reveal, you can have a sympathetic but naive character make the same mistake, and have the reader and this sympathetic character find out at the same time. This softens the sense that you've been holding back a mystery and helps the reader bond with the character who made a careless assumption, and with your protagonist, who's treating the mistake with tact.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get a sensitivity reader.&lt;/strong&gt; These are people who have a better awareness of social issues and can pick up unintentional racism or sexism. Finding a sensitivity reader who can check you're not gendering your character unnecessarily will be a big help, and with their help you'll also be able to stretch your work in other ways, like identifying stereotypes in other parts of your writing that can help you make people and cultures that feel fresh and unique. You don't have to be perfect at this, especially on your own!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a challenge, definitely, but it's a great way to stretch your writing and make sure you think about what you're doing, which is valuable to do even when not specifically writing in this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24689" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T07:56:40.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-27T11:33:03.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One story to look at that plays with obscuring the main characters gender without isolating the reader is the short story All You Zombies by Robert A Heinlein (spoiler it has nothing to do with zombies). I won't try to explain how it does this but read the story it's short enough to read in one sitting and you'll see. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;It is probably a different reason to why you are obscuring it in your story. But in my opinion it was done really well because although it's jarring it doesn't detach you from the main character or make it harder to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The story has also been turned into an alright film called Predestination which isn't as good as the book but show me a film that is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24693" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T11:33:03.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2017-04-27T14:56:18.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lot's of answers, but I'll my $0.02 in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You really need to examine your reason for keeping the gender a secret. We real world humans are very tied to our genders, rather we admit it or not. The chemical processes, the needs and feelings, and of course the social norms and expectations. That's not to say a MC couldn't be trying to hid their gender, but even in real life, people identify so much with a gender that when they feel they have the wrong gender's parts they go cutting them off, or sowing them on. A very painful and lengthy process. Gender is at the very core of who and what we are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now your adding a third gender, but I don't see how that would vary things much. Your either in &quot;Inny&quot; with all that means, an &quot;Outty&quot; with all that means, or neither with all that means (and I suppose you could be a both, it's your world after all). But rather you pee sitting down or standing up, it's the pressures and expectation of society, along with a healthy dose of biological needs, that give gender it's meaning. If you a &quot;neither&quot; then you would also have expectations. You would still have pressures from society, and you would still have biological needs (or even a distinct lack of them)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you can't sidestep the influence of gender just by adding a middle ground. If that middle ground was normal enough to be considered a bubble you fill out on a census, then you would have pressures and expectations that would shape that person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of that said, you have a few options. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rude to ask&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your society &quot;neuts&quot; (ya like that) may be considered undesirable but common enough. So it may be rude to ask. &quot;I had a baby&quot; doesn't get followed with boy or girl, because that's rude. Pronoun problems Like He/She don't get corrected because it's rude to force your gender on a neut. So as a whole while society cares about gender, all three of them, they don't talk about it because it's considered rude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Neuts rule the world&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With out all that sex stuff to get in the way, a neut is, instead encouraged to work on leadership and politics. Therefore a neut is someone that will have a lot of power one day, even if they don't now. If your MC is trying to pass as a non-neut, then they would stuff their pants, or socks in the bra, and try to pass as one other &quot;lesser&quot; genders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I can be anything&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a anime that I remember that had humans that were sometimes born a &quot;neut&quot; then later, when they fell in love they grew the parts needed to, ahem, participate. You could go that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any way you play it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that your MC is a neut, will make a huge impact on ner. Ne will have expectations and pressures that ne will need to deal with. Even if ne is trying to pose as something ne is not, ne will still need to be honest with ner self and and address those expectations if ne is going to get anywhere. And because ne is a MC ne will have to do it in front of the reader, even if ne and the reader are the only two people that know about ner situation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23386" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T14:56:18.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17964" CreationDate="2017-04-27T14:56:56.327" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might not want to rule out writing in your native language too quickly.  The noted Japanese author Murakami became famous partly on the strength of writing books with a distinctly American style and flavor, but in Japanese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; committed to writing in English, why not give your book a first-person narrator from your own country?  Then any small oddities in expression will seem intentional, and add realism, not reduce it. (This is partly based on Hildreth's answer, but doesn't rely on a foreign setting, only a foreign narrator.) It's often quite enjoyable to read a good writer writing in a non-native language entirely because of the differences in perspective and voice, so it might be something you shouldn't worry too much about concealing.  Based on your earlier comments, it might work well for your book to have a narrator based loosely on yourself and your own experiences as a foreigner traveling in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T14:56:56.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27756" CreationDate="2017-04-27T15:34:45.737" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is YES, you can do so. What you cannot do is quote the work. Or make it so close that it borders on plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;OMG! We are on an island! This better not turn all weird like Lost! Gah!&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is perfectly fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once wrote a road story based on my playlist and how it matched the mood of where I was. I could not use the lyrics themselves without obtaining the rights from the writer, but the titles and band names was perfectly fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have any doubt, consult an attorney. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastEditorUserId="24664" LastEditDate="2017-04-27T15:50:58.150" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T15:50:58.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27781" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-27T16:15:44.057" Score="10" ViewCount="4256" Body="&lt;p&gt;Friends. I am female, and have recently decided that my first book's titular character is going to be a boy of an age between nineteen and twenty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like some help as to how to go about writing from a male perspective, as I've noticed how quick readers are to pounce upon prose that sounds too 'girly' or too 'sensitive' to be a guy's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it helps, here are some key elements of this guy's personality and back story: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As stated, he's 19-20 years of age. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He's had a mature-ish upbringing, bordering on emotionally abusive. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He lives in a low fantasy setting. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He has a cynical, nearly-cruel personality. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, any help and/or insights would be greatly appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24634" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-01-06T04:51:18.703" LastActivityDate="2020-05-18T21:32:40.720" Title="How to write from the male point of view?" Tags="|pov|gender|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27781" CreationDate="2017-04-27T17:00:28.913" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Study Your Friends&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You likely have male friends. When speaking with them, really think about their responses. Listen to their phrasing and try to remember exactly how they put things, then go back and compare them to how you would say something similar. Consider the cases where you &lt;em&gt;wouldn't&lt;/em&gt; say something and they do, especially. What context was that? What could have been the impetus for them to speak up where you did not? Do the same with your female friends - you may be female, but you are only one female. Compare and contrast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask Your Friends&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably after you gather data from the previous exercise, explain to them that you're writing a novel from a male POV and need to understand the male psyche. Write an outline of your plot and the things that happen to your character. Ask your male friends how they would feel in the situation, and what their reaction would be. Once more, you can ask your female friends so that you can compare the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Study the Wild Male&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This borders on rude, but such sacrifices we make for our art. Go someplace public where you're likely to find men who are similar to your character. A bar may work, but a variety of settings couldn't hurt. Take a journal and sit in a corner. Listen to the men around you similarly to how you did your friends in the first exercise. Pay particular attention to men interacting with other men, but make sure to analyze a variety of situations: Two close friends speaking, men interacting in a group of male friends, men interacting in a group that includes men and women, men interacting with male and female strangers. Do the same with women to compare yet again. Write down what you observe. (Like Henry Higgins!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remember that human nature doesn't change that much...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're writing in a fantasy setting, but the presence of fantasy elements aren't likely to change human nature that much. (Unless the conceit of the setting is that the fantasy elements do, of course, but that may be a different discussion altogether.) For all of recorded history, humans mostly seem to be focused on making a living (whether that was through hunting and gathering or computer programming), figuring out where they fit in society, finding friends and romantic partners, and asserting that they are special and better than other people in some way. Men and women may approach these differently, but through your study perhaps you will find out if that is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21750" LastEditorUserId="21750" LastEditDate="2017-04-27T20:22:02.117" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T20:22:02.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27783" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27789" CreationDate="2017-04-27T17:22:40.927" Score="0" ViewCount="28355" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a letter (electronically) to accept an invitation extended by a group of people (open source project). The invitation itself was written by a single person (say 'John'), but on behalf of the group.  I'm requested to respond to the entire group (by way of a private email list).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For all practical purposes, the group has an uncountable number of individuals, so it's not an option to list them all. Moreover, I don't know, and can't know, who they all are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tone I intend is formal, but not stand-offish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the best way to open my letter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there something more appropriate than this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear John, et al.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3620" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T18:15:49.097" Title="Is there a better greeting than 'Dear John, et al'?" Tags="|letter|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27784" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-27T17:39:01.953" Score="7" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the past few years, it has come to my attention that I lack the ability to identify cheese. And by cheese, I mean cheesy things in movies/books. I simply don't see it. My friends have informed me that many a movie I thought was excellent was, in fact, full of cheese. While this detracted from their experience, it didn't detract from mine, because I apparently suffer from a lack of a 'cheese-meter'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As useful for viewing/reading as this is, it poses a problem when writing novels - especially fantasy, which I plan to do. I don't know if I'm writing cheese or not. Readers of my fan fictions have told me that they contain cheese here and there, and I can't eliminate it because I can't identify it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I avoid writing something cheesy?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in the process of answering you could provide me with a solid definition for 'cheesy' it would be greatly appreciated. Google defines it as 'blatantly inauthentic', but based on my experience, there seems to be more to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-04-28T13:28:27.240" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T11:53:24.630" Title="Help! I have no 'cheese-meter'!" Tags="|creative-writing|style|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27785" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-27T17:39:06.660" Score="4" ViewCount="302" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a short story that has two characters debating a philosophical view.  Other than the inherent conflict built into the two opposing stances taken by the characters on the topic, it avoids traditional action or dramatic conflict during the debate/discussion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love to get some advice, as well as pointers to published work, on ways to effectively handle this kind of content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24701" LastEditorUserId="24701" LastEditDate="2017-04-28T15:15:44.613" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T11:44:14.967" Title="Stories with Philosophical Conversations?" Tags="|fiction|dialogue|short-story|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27786" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-27T17:43:53.707" Score="5" ViewCount="806" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering what are the basic ways that accent marks should be used when coming up with fantasy names of people, places, etc. Sorry if this might be a little vague of a question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16626" LastActivityDate="2020-06-22T22:46:12.193" Title="Using accent marks in Fantasy novels" Tags="|fantasy|naming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27781" CreationDate="2017-04-27T17:51:34.303" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Detach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to think like a male is to detach from yourself. I write about girls all the time, and in one of my stories, the main protagonist has been a girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you've got to remember is that when you write, you are not you. You are the narrator. You are just the unbiased thing telling the story, you are not the characters, you are not like them in any way. You need to think like a narrator would. To write about a male, you don't necessarily have to dress up like a boy and pretend to be one, but you need to forget about the fact that you are a female. You are no longer a female. You are the genderless narrator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very hard to describe. When I write with a chapter in the point of view of a girl, I can just feel it. I detach myself from these real-world thoughts that I am a little boy, and I become the girl. You've just got to embody the girl, you know? It sounds weird, and it is, but it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the genderless narrator, you are able to insert yourself into any character. That's the great thing about who you are in the story. When you're writing about your male, just insert yourself into his soul, and control him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Examine&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been mentioned before, but examining the behavior of wild males can benefit you. What are they doing, how are they acting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should look for the type of male you want to write about. There's lot's of male-types. I'm slightly on the more soft, quiet side, but there are other hard lads who are really tough. It's about finding the one you want, I think. Imagine you're looking at animals in a zoo - it's dehumanising, but must be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This advice definitely applies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Watch and learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T17:51:34.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27786" CreationDate="2017-04-27T18:04:27.020" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Understand what an accent mark is&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many kinds of accent marks. For example, the acute accent in French signifies that the 'e' is to be pronounced at the end of a word. This is the most common use of the acute accent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to use accents to clarify your meaning or pronunciation. They should be used to make difficult pronunciations clearer. If you know what the accent will be interpreted as and it is &lt;strong&gt;necessary,&lt;/strong&gt; then feel free to use it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T18:04:27.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27783" CreationDate="2017-04-27T18:15:49.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel that using French could come off as a bit cheeky or have the wrong connotations. Rather, you should use one of the standard formal email openings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear All,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To whom it may concern,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi All, (slightly informal)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can just go straight into the information, which is what I would do. I think it depends on the context of your email though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subject - Boilerplate Code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a subject for your email as above. Then go straight in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have prepared the better half of the boilerplate code,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(name)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done this before in a formal email to a group and it has been okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, it depends on the situation. Decide what would work best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T18:15:49.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27784" CreationDate="2017-04-27T18:27:12.960" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Definition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a good definition of cheesy is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Something that is low quality, amateur, but is trying &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt; hard to be good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a hard word to define for sure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Avoidance&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Beta Readers&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're the holy grail. You should get beta readers to check your work, however, there are a number of measures you can take to help avoid cheesiness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;See what is cheesy. Look online to see what is seen as 'cheesy' and identify patterns. See if those show in your own work. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid writing low-quality material with very basic ideas around them. Rather, try to create something more professional with greater depth and intrigue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, something I read recently was about a wolf which could turn into a human. It was the most unprofessional, cheesy thing I had ever read and it was so cringeworthy I was fortunate not to have died. It was just so amateur, informal, and basic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I think that to increase your ability to detect cheese, the best advice is my first point. By looking at patterns of cheese and trying to notice them, you'll be able to identify what actually is cheesy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tasted cheese in my mouth while I wrote this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped you!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T18:27:12.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27786" CreationDate="2017-04-27T18:29:02.463" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Accents are not decorations. Have a reason for using them beyond &amp;quot;I'm writing fantasy and they look cool.&amp;quot; (The same goes for apostrophes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to Daniel's very good answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An accent may indicate not just spoken vs. silent but a completely&#xA;different word. See the differences between &lt;em&gt;des, dés,&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;dès&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://french.yabla.com/lessons.php?lesson_id=260&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(&lt;em&gt;of, dice,&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;since&lt;/em&gt; respectively) and &lt;em&gt;côté, côte,&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;cote&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://french.yabla.com/lessons.php?lesson_id=207&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(&lt;em&gt;side, coast,&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;stock&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An accent can change the pronunciation of a vowel. The umlaut (not a&#xA;native English diacritical mark) over a vowel in English generally&#xA;means that the vowel is written once but said twice: &lt;em&gt;naïve&lt;/em&gt; is said&#xA;&lt;em&gt;nye-eve,&lt;/em&gt; not &lt;em&gt;nave.&lt;/em&gt; This is why you might occasionally see &lt;em&gt;cöoperation,&lt;/em&gt; to make sure you don't think it should be &lt;em&gt;coop eration.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accents may be required by pronunciation, or change it. The cedilla makes a C soft (&lt;em&gt;François&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;em&gt;Fran-swah&lt;/em&gt;, not &lt;em&gt;Fran-kwah&lt;/em&gt;). The tilde adds a vowel to an N (&lt;em&gt;jalapeño&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;em&gt;hala-pee-nyo,&lt;/em&gt; not &lt;em&gt;hala-pee-no&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes accents are used to indicate historical orthography. The circumflex over a vowel in French means that at some time in the past, the word had an S in it. &lt;em&gt;Hôtel&lt;/em&gt; used to be &lt;em&gt;hostel,&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;maître&lt;/em&gt; was &lt;em&gt;maistre,&lt;/em&gt; and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't speak or read Hebrew, but I know that it's written without vowels, and the accent marks (dots) indicate what the vowels are. More discussion &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_diacritics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question might also be useful: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/4368/how-can-i-effectively-invent-a-language/&quot;&gt;How can I effectively invent a language?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a more thorough discussion of creating a language, known as a &lt;em&gt;conlang&lt;/em&gt; or constructed language, I highly recommend David Peterson's &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0143126466&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Art of Language Invention&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Peterson created languages for &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Defiance,&lt;/em&gt; among other properties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2020-06-22T22:46:12.193" LastActivityDate="2020-06-22T22:46:12.193" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27784" CreationDate="2017-04-27T18:44:02.090" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that you don't have to reach everybody.  There are plenty of readers, like you, who don't notice cheese in a bad way, and others who actually like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, &quot;cheese&quot; generally refers to inauthentic, unearned or disproportionate sentiment, or to failed attempts at being cool.  Cheese is usually a symptom of an excess of enthusiasm --the antidote is a dose of emotional detachment.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as I said, it might be better to embrace it than avoid it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T18:44:02.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27781" CreationDate="2017-04-27T19:02:20.613" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I consider myself a relatively refined and sensitive male adult, but I was a complete mess at that age, and I think the same is true of the majority of guys (not all!).  Arrogance, deep insecurity, impulsiveness, quick angers and resentments, a deeply conflicted love-hate relationship with the opposite gender that often manifests as misogyny, short-sightedness, selfishness and narcissism --sadly, they all go along with the territory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice for a woman writing a male character of this age would be to dial the introspection way way down, and the desperately concealed insecurity way way up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also read some Nick Hornby.  &lt;em&gt;About a Boy&lt;/em&gt; is practically a woman's guide to understanding the young male psyche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T19:02:20.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27794" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27796" CreationDate="2017-04-27T20:02:03.113" Score="3" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was looking at the sales rankings on Amazon today with my publisher and he pointed out that all of the self-published best sellers have a short title then a semi-colon followed by a pitch line (see pic attached). I'm certainly not a fan, but the proof is evident that it gets visibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have data-driven proof that this increases sales?&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j0rVV.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j0rVV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;screenshot of Kindle top results for&amp;quot;thriller books&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22913" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T21:03:29.467" Title="Use of &quot;salesy&quot; secondary titles on Amazon" Tags="|titles|sales|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27699" CreationDate="2017-04-27T20:18:42.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I learned over time is that it's okay to split the story into different pieces. As long as the flashback is not critical to the current story, it could make a good prequel story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T20:18:42.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27794" CreationDate="2017-04-27T21:03:29.467" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The data you are seeking is tightly held. Publishers and sellers don't really want you to know this.  They even hide a lot of stats about sales figures on books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some Helpful Info&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I recently read the following book by an indie publisher which explains exactly what you're talking about: &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2oBpUzb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Six Figure Author : Using Data To Sell Books (Chris Fox)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Experience&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had recently published a book which I titled : &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qkdTKS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Launch Your Android App&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interesting thing is that the author of that hyperbolically named, aforementioned title explains that Amazon's search engine is completely based on titles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I Tested the Theory&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After 2 months or so of Launch Your Android App being for sale I had only sold 2 or 3 copies.  I decided to change the title and re-publish the book so that it was named similarly to other books in the category.&#xA;You can see the book with teh new title at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/2qbOlAs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beginning Android Programming With Android Studio&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Title Change Instantly Changed Sales&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was amazing to me, because the next day after I changed the title, the book sold 3 or 4 copies.  After that, it sold a copy or two every day.  It's quite interesting and I believe the information you have is correct about how titles are used on Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T21:03:29.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27797" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-27T21:45:20.940" Score="3" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got the idea of writing a novel, I'm just afraid to show it to other since It's not yet done. Is that okay? thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24698" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T15:50:45.403" Title="Is it okay to keep my drafts unread by others?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27784" CreationDate="2017-04-27T22:05:03.513" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For someone who doesn't understand cheese, the easiest gauge is probably to ask yourself the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Why is this happening?&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can answer this question from every angle (logic, science, plot, plot development) then it probably won't come off as incredibly cheesy, even if it's an overused trope.&#xA;For example, amnesia is often overused, and is usually cheesy when it happens.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself why a character got amnesia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science:  &quot;Because he got hit on the head.&quot;  -- Iffy, because it is highly improbable for someone to get amnesia from a random head injury&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logic:    &quot;Another character didn't like him and attacked him.&quot;  -- This may be true, but it's a reason for him to get injured, not for him to get amnesia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plot:  &quot;Because I wanted him to forget the female character to create conflict&quot; -- And this is the crux of the problem.  This didn't happen because it made sense in the context of your characters and your story, it happened because you pulled it out of nowhere and used it as a plot device to keep your characters at odds with one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amnesia can, occasionally, make sense in the context of the story.  For example, if your story centered around a pair of scientists that successfully transferred someone's consciousness into a computer, however, the memories didn't transfer over correctly.  In this story, one could explore not only whether the memories make the person, but whether the &quot;soul&quot; actually got transmitted into the computer.  The character would be fretting over whether or not they died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheese will happen.  Tropes will happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a good writer can select a trope and craft it so well that there isn't the faintest smell of cheese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22441" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T22:05:03.513" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27797" CreationDate="2017-04-27T22:19:24.457" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. In fact, it's better that way. Keep it to yourself until you've revised and revised and revised before you show it to anyone. But when you do, have a thick skin about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24679" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T22:19:24.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27797" CreationDate="2017-04-27T23:24:20.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is your choice. But I would recommend you only show a draft if it is your latest draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, keep all drafts if you need to go to court for any copyright issues (for further explanation on copyright issues, see my answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/27706/how-to-copyright-my-works-in-india/27739#27739&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T23:24:20.537" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27801" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-28T00:13:21.767" Score="5" ViewCount="9888" Body="&lt;p&gt;How would you cite a figure in MLA format if you are the author of it and the figure was not based off of any source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24707" LastActivityDate="2017-12-05T16:54:27.223" Title="How would you cite your own figure in MLA?" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27784" CreationDate="2017-04-28T02:26:54.493" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I feel has always contributed to aesthetic &quot;cheese&quot; is the un-self-aware over-reliance upon contemporary tropes and catchphrases, coupled with poor technique in the execution of those tropes. The lack of self awareness is really essential to this. Sometimes it can come across as innocent, sincere, or even sickly sweet, but usually it falls flat on its face. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider for instance including smartphones gags and reddit memes in a screenplay or novel not to critique contemporary culture or to observe nuanced aspects of it but merely to shamelessly lift the sort of humor seen in that social scene for free &quot;brownie&quot; points with the &quot;hip, young audience.&quot; It reeks of the sort of thing an out-of-touch producer with no creative talent would do after searching on google trends for &quot;what's hot&quot; for about ten minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, dank is a common buzzword on the internet. I better make these characters say it every five seconds!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michael Scott from the US version of the office is an expertly-written deliberately &quot;cheesy&quot; character. His ill-informed yet insanely sincere attempts at connecting with his workers make for awkward laughter. If you can properly write a character who's cheesy, you can avoid being that character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22605" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T02:26:54.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27756" CreationDate="2017-04-28T03:53:54.493" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you suggest is actually a very time-honored form of homage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only real difficulty is that it can cause your work to appear dated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T03:53:54.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27756" CreationDate="2017-04-28T03:55:36.377" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only is this acceptable, but you should.  Sometimes, mentioning the name of a book, a TV show or a brand can be a powerful way of making the reader feel like they are in the middle of the story.  Remember that you should always try to make the reader feel what the characters are feeling.  Use words that make the reader imagine the sounds the characters are hearing, the smells they are perceiving, etc.  For example, something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;She felt dehydrated.  She opened a can of Coke and gulped the sugary, ice-cold liquid so avidly that the bubbles hurt her throat,&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is 1000 times more evocative than: &quot;She was thirsty so she drank a cold soft drink very fast.&quot;  However, note that this only works well if you can be sure that most of your readers know the mentioned brand and thus can relate to what they are supposed to feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9931" LastEditorUserId="1624" LastEditDate="2018-06-21T17:15:06.493" LastActivityDate="2018-06-21T17:15:06.493" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26497" CreationDate="2017-04-28T04:07:16.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently re-writing a story that was originally a screen play as prose.  Two parts of the screen play are montages, each depicting the development of a stage in the relationship between two of the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After giving it due consideration, I decided to rewrite each montage into a continuous narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I think about it, I suspect that montages are the live action equivalent of &quot;telling&quot; in prose, a way of saying, &quot;this sort of thing happens here.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T04:07:16.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27797" CreationDate="2017-04-28T04:18:28.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an anecdote about Henry Kissinger from when he was a professor.  At one point a student had handed in a paper, and had dropped by his office to receive the graded result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Is that the best you can do?&quot; Kissinger said dismissively, handing the paper back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;No, the student sheepishly admitted.  &quot;I suppose there is quite a bit that could be better.&quot;  He received the paper, went over it, and handed it back in later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When he visited the professor's office to receive his grade, the professor was almost as harsh.  &quot;I can't believe this is the best you can do,&quot; he said.  Again, the student retreated to his own place, and went over the paper again, finding a few areas that had missed his previous examination.  He corrected these and handed the results in to the professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you sure this is the best you can do?&quot; the professor said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Yes,&quot; the student said.  &quot;I have gone over this paper twice.  I cannot find a single weakness in any part of it.  This is the best I am capable of doing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Good,&quot; Kissinger said.  &quot;I'll read it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T04:18:28.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3992" CreationDate="2017-04-28T04:22:53.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another option:  Write the screenplay adaptation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know you haven't sold the thing yet, but if you start working on the screenplay, it will help you identify weaknesses in the story, and it will definitely help you uncover points where there is &quot;telling&quot; but no &quot;showing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T04:22:53.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3992" CreationDate="2017-04-28T04:32:34.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should let it sit for at least a week before editing. The more time you wait before editing it, the clearer your head will be and the better you'll be able to edit it. I would not advise, however, leaving it for more than two months: You don't want your head so clear that you forget most of your plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T04:32:34.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5989" CreationDate="2017-04-28T05:18:32.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each of the three genres discussed here (science fiction, fantasy, and horror) lends itself to different aspects of the human experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Horror is the easiest to categorize:  Horror is about being powerless in the face of evil.  Whether this evil is supernatural (the movie &lt;em&gt;Poltergeist&lt;/em&gt;), ostensibly scientific (the &lt;em&gt;Alien&lt;/em&gt; franchise) or social (as in &lt;em&gt;the Killing Fields&lt;/em&gt;), when the protagonist's only manner of survival is avoidance/escape, the story can be characterized as horror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science fiction best lends itself to explorations of social issues, and fantasy best lends itself to exploration of moral issues.  This is why &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; is best seen as a fantasy series, and why &lt;em&gt;1984&lt;/em&gt;, in spite of taking place in a setting that is scientifically regressing, is arguably a work in the science fiction genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T05:18:32.120" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6002" CreationDate="2017-04-28T06:20:06.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my fantasy series set on another world I feature a Hawk as a main character. In my mind, the bird shares some physical characteristics of the creature we know here on Earth, but it does have differences, which I have mentioned in the texts. For me though, these are not all that important. What is important is that the creature a) is a hunting bird, b) is intelligent, c) develops a relationship with my protagonist, and d) has its own story arc. These traits can be seen as the scenes which feature her develop and move on. As to naming the creature, I decided to keep her actual name as 'Hawk' as this puts an immediate picture into the mind of the reader as to the nature of the bird. This is then subsequently amended slightly in their heads when they read about how she differs physically from the earthly version.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24696" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T06:20:06.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27811" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27813" CreationDate="2017-04-28T08:27:17.520" Score="3" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose my story takes place in a town called Williams. It's never stated, though, whether Williams is a town in the USA, or in England, or wherever. It's just mentioned that it's a fictional place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are my readers likely to find this annoying? Or will they be okay as long as the story's engaging enough? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, though. My character starts out in Williams, and then ends up in a fantasy fairy-land of sorts, where the bulk of the story will be carried out. Given that Williams will have only a very little 'screen-time', should I put effort into this research or not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24634" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T21:49:06.433" Title="Is it okay to never explicitly state where your story takes place?" Tags="|plot|setting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27449" CreationDate="2017-04-28T08:35:40.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion as a reader and writer I would say this. Write the level of gore you are comfortable with yourself but try to avoid long drawn out executions or needless violence unless it is required  to be in the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mental illness should be based on real symptoms of the particular illness but no one person has all the markers and each individual is unique, so don't be afraid to perhaps tie it in to a multiple personality disorder. The &quot;switch&quot; you speak of seems to reference MPD perfectly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how much they can get away with is really up to you as the writer, I wouldn't want to see somebody get away with everything, there should be ups and downs in their success and failures I  think it makes them more realistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly for how scary they should seem will be a natural progression of the gore and severity of the symptoms of the mental illness in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24715" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T08:35:40.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27811" CreationDate="2017-04-28T08:51:51.660" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it important?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Simpsons takes place in &quot;Springfield&quot; (of which there are&#xA;apparently many in the US) and they purposely don't say which one it&#xA;is, if it is any real one. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The story of &quot;Narnia&quot; could take place almost anywhere (the 'real&#xA;world part') and still work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the name of the town is important to you, use it. However, many stories take place in seemingly real places that doesn't need to be explained or proven &quot;real&quot; or &quot;fictional&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does the audience care?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe your audience wouldn't ask questions about the existence the town called &quot;Williams&quot; unless you give them a reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just two (very different) examples, but my point is that locations in stories only matter as much as you make them matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We (the audience) need to understand the place(s) the story takes place in. Some stories use famous landmarks etc. to play with our relation to said place(s), but in general it simply works as a location for the story to realistically take place in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Counter-question: Do you have to mention that &quot;it's a fictional place&quot;?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally would not mention that it is a fictional place, and rather focus on making the town &quot;Williams&quot; come alive, fictional or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T08:51:51.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27797" CreationDate="2017-04-28T11:34:24.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't feel ready to show it to other people, there is still someone who can take a critical look at the work and offer feedback: your future self.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you leave the first draft of a novel alone for six months, say, but spend those six months continuously working on your writing (and reading, and reading about writing etc), you will be a better writer and a more capable critic by the time you re-read the novel. Your future self could be just as valuable a critic as a different person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will also help your ability to take a step back from your own work and look at it without the emotions that come from being too involved in the work. If you find that you are able to say 'what the hell was I thinking?!' when you read a particular section, then you will know that you are now better than you were when you wrote the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can repeat this cycle a couple of times until you feel more confident that the work has improved, and at that point you can bring in other readers to give you their views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22034" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T11:34:24.897" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27449" CreationDate="2017-04-28T13:29:05.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a kind of brainstorming process that some writers seem to go through when trying to come up with something to write about. It goes something like this. Can I take two apparently incompatible features, assign them to the same character, and see what happens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And after trying to make this work for a while, they post here asking how to make these two incompatible things work together, because, not surprisingly, it has turned out to be difficult to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is not where good stories come from. Good stories come from observation. If your story process begins with the observation of a duality in man (and lots of them do) than you can begin to invent a character who displays this duality, and put them in circumstances in which this duality is revealed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you approach it from this angle, you are not going to end up asking questions about whether this is psychologically realistic or not, because you began with an observation of a real duality in the real world and if psychology cannot account for it, that is psychology's problem, not yours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an artist, you can certainly take artistic license in delineating the duality you have observed. You can exaggerate or simplify, just as long as you don't lose sight of the original duality you observed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you began with a brainstorming exercise jamming two opposing characteristics together, then even if someone suggests a way to resolve the contradiction, you are not likely to get a good story out of it because it will still not be driven by an actual observation about the nature of human life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiction does not start with invention, but with observation. Invention is just a tool for highlighting and focusing on the thing you have observed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T13:29:05.863" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27784" CreationDate="2017-04-28T15:22:29.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think cheese, as you call it, is simply one aspect of work that is not morally serious. What do I mean by morally serious? In the literary sense, I mean that a work that is morally serious is one in which the author works to ensure that they are presenting an accurate portrait of human life as it actually is, not some gratifying fantasy of life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean realism. It means honestly presents the moral aspects of human life, our choices and the reasons we make the, as they really are, even if the setting is fantastical. Lord of the Rings is, for the most part, a morally serious work (it is a study on the nature of temptation and our capacity to resist it). Fifty Shades of Grey is not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being morally serious has nothing to do with adhering to or advocating for a particular moral code. Rather it is about the artist's moral responsibility to be truthful. In &lt;em&gt;The Power and the Glory&lt;/em&gt; Graham Greene writes the story of an alcoholic priest struggling with his vocation and trying to stay alive in the anti-catholic purges in Mexico in the 1930s. He contrasts the story of the priest's actual life with the hagiographic representation of him that is later written for children. The hagiography is morally heroic, but not morally serious; the real story is morally serious, and heroic too, in its own way, but it does not paper over his temptations or his failings the way the hagiography does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being morally serious is by no means a prerequisite for literary success. In fact, it is probably an impediment. There is generally a much larger appetite for aspirational works, works that tell us that the world is how we would like it to be, not how it is, or that allow us to indulge in some fantasy of how we would like to be, not how we are. From Iron Man to Harry Potter to 50 Shades of Grey, there are all kinds of aspirational works, none of them morally serious, and all of them making people lots of money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheese is simply one variety of aspirational literature. It is characterized by simplified and artificially heightened emotions. It offers a vision of a simple, happy, always cheery emotional life. While it may be false, it is obviously desirable to many. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we only find aspirational literature appealing when it matches our own aspirations. Thus we laugh at a taste for comic books or romance or cowboy stories if these things don't match our aspirations. And we also tend to leap too pasionately to the defence of the works that do support our aspirations, since admitting that they are fundamentally not truthful to the nature of human life would diminish our pleasure in them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there is a market for cheese. But those who don't like cheese will really not like it and will pour scorn on it. The question for a writer who discovers that many readers consider their work cheesy, is whether they want to be morally serious in their work, of if they are looking for a field of aspiration they can plow, and are happy to serve cheese to the cheese lover despite the scorn on non-cheese loving critics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be a morally serious author, then the challenge is to discipline yourself to see the world as honestly as you can, which starts with the morally and psychologically difficult task of being honest with yourself. There are no tricks and techniques to being a morally serious author. It is all about the honesty of your vision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-29T11:53:24.630" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T11:53:24.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27797" CreationDate="2017-04-28T15:50:45.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my own writing life, I've found my small group of trusted readers to be more beneficial than my own self-critique. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They find a lot of issues I've been staring at for weeks without seeing: rough spots where characters are ill-defined, gaps in the plot, slips in characters' voices, etc. And of course, they'll note what's working well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in early, rough drafts they'll see themes and metaphors that I hadn't discovered myself, discoveries that sometimes steer the story in new, better directions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, it's okay to keep your drafts to yourself, giving it to a select few will benefit you and your work a great deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T15:50:45.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18800" CreationDate="2017-04-28T16:07:19.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a fellow aspiring writer tell me that a major rule in writing was to never kill your main character. Not only did the concept of &quot;rules&quot; in writing boggle my mind, but I almost immediately thought of one of my favorite books which is &quot;The Stranger&quot; in which the main character is mostly waiting for his execution having killed a man for utterly no reason. Having said that, I think the suggestion (as opposed to rule) would be to not kill your &lt;em&gt;hero&lt;/em&gt; heedlessly. A character is just that; a character. They might be despicable. You could create a character that the reader ends up relishing their death like in the book &quot;Perfume&quot; (the villain is the hero of their own story). Someone who is set up to be a hero, though, could/should die through a noble sacrifice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have somewhat of a Janus potential in your story. Maybe the second version of this man becomes obsessed with the first version of himself and despises him so much that shooting himself seems like a noble sacrifice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But whatever you decide to have happen, there are no rules. Don't let anyone tell you there are. There are good guidelines for writing things that people will like (i.e. writing something popular) but you can randomly have your villain murder your hero at a pinnacle moment just because you think it's funny. Maybe the reader will hate that. If the tone is right, they might also think it's funny. You never know. I've written a couple of stories that friends found gross and horrifying and I've always asked, &quot;but was it compelling.&quot; And usually the answer was yes. I'm more interested in compelling than entertaining, and the two aren't mutually exclusive, but ask yourself which you prefer, and write that story. Without the tone, I could see your story being tragic, comic, even heroic, or just dark. Try giving credence to one of those goals and make sure the character(s) narrative and thoughts suit that purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24719" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T16:07:19.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27102" CreationDate="2017-04-28T16:27:44.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found myself with research rabbit holes when I tried to write about the Middle Ages. I've studied it my entire adult life. I eventually realized that I just like researching that time and let my stories go. Now I am trying to write science fiction and I find myself falling into the same trap. I give myself &quot;writing time&quot; where I'm not allowed to research. I just write. If I come across a question I make a note of it and keep going. As much as I love science my stores are about people, what they say, what they think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24496" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T16:27:44.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27102" CreationDate="2017-04-28T17:57:25.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research can always reach a point where it becomes excessive, no matter what field you're in (even if your field is research, you do want to occasionally turn your attention to publication!).  But the real question here is whether the amount of research &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are doing is excessive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on what kind of writer you are, and what kind of book you want to write.  A lot of the most influential fantasy and science fiction has been created by obsessive world-builders building on a foundation of years of research and imagination --&quot;Lord of the Rings&quot; and &quot;Star Wars&quot; are two good examples.  If you're passionate about the world you're creating, putting the time in may not be such a bad idea. Given that you started this process in order to relax, and you seem to be enjoying the research process and gaining from it, I wouldn't stress about rushing on to the writing phase until you actually feel ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, at some point, you need a compelling story, and you need to actually write it --if writing science fiction is what you actually want to do.  You might find at the end of the process that you really want to write non-fiction, or to teach, or to use your invented world as a setting for a video game.  In my experience, if you really have a story in you, you'll reach a point where you can't help but let it out.  If that never happens, your talents may simply be leading you in a different direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T17:57:25.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18800" CreationDate="2017-04-28T18:08:32.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Books often operate according to dream logic, under which death is a symbol of rebirth.  A good technique for a morally damaged character is to have their death coincide with a moral transformation or redemption.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great example is the movie &lt;em&gt;American Beauty&lt;/em&gt;.  The main character isn't as evil as yours, but he's self-centered, lecherous and (initially) passive.  When a series of events push him towards taking active control of his life, he eventually evolves towards a moment of moral clarity, near the end of the movie, immediately before his own unexpected death.  Another good example is Darth Vader's story arc in the original &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; trilogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is doubly meaningful for your audience, because it satisfies the desire for moral justice, where your character pays the ultimate price for his sins, but simultaneously leaves the reader mourning the possibility of the better person he could have become.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T18:08:32.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27823" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-28T18:47:32.450" Score="2" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;Long story short, a thousand years ago a man killed himself halfway through a ritual, which stopped it in half (think Jumanji). In order to complete the ritual, the bad guys need the direct descendant of the original (his wife and kids survived). How can I make sure that there is only one direct descendant after 1000 years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23096" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-04-28T23:15:53.307" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T08:12:38.037" Title="How can I make sure there is only one direct descendant over a thousand years" Tags="|characters|plot|fantasy|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2017-04-30T18:29:52.097" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27823" CreationDate="2017-04-28T19:56:30.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a rather complex answer. Since you did not specify how prevalent magic is, so I'll assume fairly low magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look for paternal descendants, then having mostly daughters will solve your problem. If the descendant needed can be of either gender, then the BBEG could have been trimming parts of the family over the years. Over centuries, humans spread out across the land. Think back to your own family a thousand years ago... heck even a century ago... Where did they live? What about their own siblings? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since magic can be factor, perhaps the family have a mark that passes from one generation to the next, perhaps they have a special hair or eye color?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does the BBEG keep track could provide help. Was he watching over the family from afar? From nearby? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a definitive answer for sure, but hopefully some avenues of thought for you to investigate... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T19:56:30.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31198" CreationDate="2017-04-28T20:12:43.923" Score="4" ViewCount="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I write a section of terminology and definitions in academic writing, which is the correct unicode character for the &quot;-&quot;? Is it the dash or is it a hyphen? For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CPU - Central Processing Unit. It is the center of the computer and&#xA;  performs calculations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I write my section terminology and definitions similar to the above or can I improve it? More examples&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;State space - The set of values which a process can take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RS-232 - Recommended standard 232 (as recommended by IEEE). It is a&#xA;  serial interface for UART&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The complete list is &lt;a href=&quot;https://goo.gl/pV9fY7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;available online&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24594" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T20:16:26.603" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T20:16:26.603" Title="Separator character for terminology and definitions section?" Tags="|punctuation|terminology|typing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27823" CreationDate="2017-04-28T21:50:35.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The family gets religious, of some sort, which states that you can only have one child, and if it is twins the weaker must be killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10258" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T21:50:35.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27827" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-28T22:05:05.840" Score="0" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;I never took formal study regarding on writing, but I'm good on imagination. I was able to take down ideas, my book will be trilogy if I could manage to put it in writing. I'm struggling on how to use the setting and how to build my character's emotion, sometimes I'm using the attitude of real person, but mostly my own emotion, decision and attitude on how to deal with the situation I'm working. So in the end the story begins on how I wanted it to be done. If I'll keep on this track, is it possible for me to finish the novel I'm working? * And I admit  I'm having trouble with my grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24698" LastEditorUserId="24698" LastEditDate="2017-05-01T13:36:09.770" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T13:36:09.770" Title="Is it possible for me to finish a novel?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-04-30T18:28:35.127" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27823" CreationDate="2017-04-29T00:15:53.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't even worry about it. Just mention that &quot;Doe was the only direct descendant of Smith.&quot; No reason for the reader to do any math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T00:15:53.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2202" CreationDate="2017-04-29T01:07:39.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clive Barker writes all of his books longhand. He uses a ballpoint, I believe, not a fountain or dip pen. I can't be certain but I'm pretty certain Neil Gaiman picked up the habit from Barker. &#xA;Joe Haldeman uses fountain pens, as well.&#xA;For a while Stephen King was using a fountain pen; I believe shortly after his injury. He wrote an article about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hemingway used pencils. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24722" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T01:07:39.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27827" CreationDate="2017-04-29T05:32:51.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to be a writer, WRITE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal experience is that a lot of ideas lose their allure once you start working on them for real.  So if you want to find out whether those ideas have potential, start writing right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are afraid you could spend dozens or hundreds of hours writing half a novel, only to find out that it's not worth the time you'd need to finish it, then you shouldn't start writing right away.  Do some outlining instead.  Try to develop your idea into a full plot.  Write down everything you know about your characters (no prosa, just a list), about the settings (locations, time, etc), and about the plot.  Does it work?  Does it sound like a story someone would want to read?  If not, what does it need?  Start adding more items and filling in the blanks.  Eventually, your &quot;final&quot; plot draft might end up being a page or 10 pages long.  There's no recommended length.  Whatever works for you is the right length.  Finally, if you like your outline, write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I read many years ago that, very often, it's very hard to finish your first novel because you ALWAYS hit a wall when you have spent so much time working on it that the initial excitement has worn off and you realise there's still a lot to do, while at the same time, you're full of fantastic new ideas for other projects.  If that happens, you have to FORCE YOURSELF to finish that novel, even if you don't like the final result.  Because if you don't finish that first novel, you will never finish any other novel.  Finish the first novel, just to prove to yourself that YOU CAN DO IT.  Then, forget about it for a couple of years.  Later, read that first novel again and realise how much you would do differently now.  You will learn a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't recall where this advice is from, but it worked for me.  I think, but I am not sure, that it was on Diana Gabaldon's blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9931" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T05:32:51.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4660" CreationDate="2017-04-29T05:49:55.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer: talk to real women and analyse how they talk.  Listen to real women talking to each other and analyse how they talk.  Have you ever found yourself in a public place, like public transport or a café, and your neighbours are talking so loudly that you can hear everything even though you don't want to?  Well, then seize the day and LISTEN.  Put away your music player and LISTEN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, when you write, detach.  Make your characters their own people and give them a voice of their own, maybe by basing each of them on a particular real person you have analysed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, you should do this with all your characters.  Otherwise you might end up with a novel where ALL your characters, female AND male, sound like you.  Is that what you want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9931" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T05:49:55.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19396" CreationDate="2017-04-29T06:29:14.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It actually depends on the field you are working on, but here are a few general pointers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If done right, your thesis probably looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 1.&lt;/strong&gt; Introduction, in particular motivation, i.e. why you're working on that particular topic,  What applications are there for your invention or your ideas,  why is it relevant for society, for your institution, for your readership;  what your expectations were when you started working on it, whether you achieved what you expected.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 2.&lt;/strong&gt; Basics, i.e. an introduction to the main topic, in particular all the knowledge your readers require to even understand the rest of the thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapters 3 – 10.&lt;/strong&gt;  Your actual dissertation. Probably these chapters are more or less independent from each other, so each chapter will replicate the general structure of the thesis within the chapter; i.e. the chapter starts explaining why the topic of the chapter is necessary, then you introduce the basic concepts, then you introduce and develop your contribution (i.e. discuss your novel ideas, or introduce your new invention, explain how you developed it, what methods you used, etc).  Then you prove that your contribution is sound and why it is worth publishing it.  Finally, you summarise what you have done in the chapter and maybe already explain why the next chapter is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 11.&lt;/strong&gt; The final evaluation of all the new concepts and ideas (your contribution).  Here's where you put everything into perspective and formally prove that your whole work is worth something.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 12.&lt;/strong&gt; The big conclusion.  First, you briefly summarise Chapter 1, then you briefly list the most important achievements and conclusions of Chapters 3 – 10; then, you summarise Chapter 11.  Finally, you provide an outlook.  What will future work look like, or what will the impact of your thesis be.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you have to summarise all this, this is what you do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 1&lt;/strong&gt;. Keep most of it, if not all of it.  The audience wants to understand why they should keep reading a 15-page summary or your whole thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 2&lt;/strong&gt;.  Skip completely, unless you fear that what's to come can't be understood without a few basics.  In that case, include only the most necessary stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapters 3 – 10.&lt;/strong&gt; For each chapter, your summary should include the chapter's introduction and motivation, a brief summary of your contribution, but not the details that nobody is going to understand anyway.  You have probably worked on this for years.  It may all be crystal clear to you, but for people seeing it for the first time, it may be very complex. Keep it simple and concentrate more on the relevance of the results than on how exactly you achieved them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapters 11 - 12.&lt;/strong&gt; Include only the things that prove that your work has relevance and how it will impact the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final remark: In general, make summaries easy to read and understand.  You might even consider using a bullet list instead of proper prosa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9931" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T06:29:14.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27823" CreationDate="2017-04-29T08:12:38.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;John does the ritual. He has several kids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe most or all them die before having any children of their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if they do, heck, they can can all die off, even three or four generations in. It CAN just happen to shake out that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly possible. Absolutely. But narratively, there isn't any real reason to go into the hows and whys of the fact that there's just one person left in the world that is his direct descendant, unless it adds something to the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say, that if you do want to get crunchy with it, or you have to absolutely know the mechanics behind it, you should follow other poster's suggestions and ask another board. Don't mention it's for a story, just ask the question: &quot;Is it possible for a man born 1000 years ago to have just one descendant living, given that the man had 5 [or however many] children? Are there people walking around right now who are, so to speak, genetically unique in this respect? I know things can get exponential with generations and just wanted to see if this was plausible in any way, and how it might work?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an interesting question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T08:12:38.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27785" CreationDate="2017-04-29T08:15:21.523" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a wonderful list of writing rules by Kurt Vonnegut, of which one of them is: &quot;Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember reading that and something just clicking in my head. Up until that point, I'd bemoaned what I saw as the obsessive emphasis on &lt;em&gt;goal orientated characters&lt;/em&gt; in writing advice. I'd think &quot;well, plenty of people &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; have clearly defined goals, and are pretty much just trying to figure life out&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'd neglected is the &quot;if only a glass of water&quot; part. Every person wants something, and every novel is to some extent about what its characters want. Even something like Invisible Cities (which, in case you don't know, largely consists of descriptions of fictional places) has Marco Polo and The Khan, who are people, and who therefore want things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my answer is to make your characters want something. Giving them an agenda of some kind doesn't mean turning the discussions into heated arguments, it just means making them human beings. Maybe their agendas are as simple as character X wanting to seem a certain way to character Y, and character Y wanting to seem a certain way to character X. Allow this to play out while the debate occurs, and the reader will be left with the impression that they're hearing real people speaking (rather than just the author using fictional people to push through a viewpoint).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a nice, famous example, I think there's some good examples of this in David Foster Wallace's work. There are quite a lot of debates and discussions and monologues that apparently do very little to further the plot, but do a great deal to further character and theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that you'll have a little more slack on the other stuff if the debate &lt;em&gt;itself&lt;/em&gt; is fascinating. Another of Vonnegut's rules is &quot;Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.&quot; Obviously, this is the most important rule of all (and probably the only one that should never be broken).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastEditorUserId="22280" LastEditDate="2017-04-29T08:57:58.983" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T08:57:58.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27835" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27836" CreationDate="2017-04-29T08:45:43.547" Score="1" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in a dilemma: I don't want my characters to have flawless, limitless and bad-consequence-less powers, but I also don't want to have my creativity limited by such rules and limits.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In my case, it's not a book, but a multimedia work, i.e. such powers are &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt;, with flashy effects and all, instead of just imaginable, so the possibilities are different from books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it awesome when I see a work where the creator has the freedom to make the character use a new power out of nowhere, usually a character whose powers are not much explained (or even well explained, but in an unexplainable/incoherent way they manage to do that) and most of the public just don't care about how the character found out that he could do that, or that doing movement X would result in such new power, or why it happened, no, they just like it, because it's cool, if it's cool, screw logic, &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it's cool&lt;/a&gt;! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to have creative freedom to create the powers, but I don't want to keep the questions above unanswered. However, the more I explain the &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;s and &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;s, the less freedom I have, and the more I try to fix things up, the more incoherence is created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now how to resolve this dilemma? Do I keep all the rules and sacrifice &quot;coolness&quot; for the sake of coherence/realism, or do I surrender to the &quot;Rule of Cool&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastEditorUserId="43118" LastEditDate="2021-01-06T22:29:59.433" LastActivityDate="2021-01-07T19:57:43.530" Title="Powers with unknown limits vs ones full of rules, limits and reasons?" Tags="|fantasy|magic-system|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27835" CreationDate="2017-04-29T11:11:56.093" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in favor of rules and coherence. However, also remember that you do not have to show all your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because you as the writer/creator know how magic/powers work doesn't mean you have to tell readers. Mercedes Lackey has a widely developed magical universe and only once, sort of in passing, mentioned where magic &quot;comes from&quot; or how people can access it. The rest of the time it just &lt;em&gt;is.&lt;/em&gt; Poeople are inborn mages or they aren't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the benefits of rules is that it forces you to think about consequences. What happens when you &lt;em&gt;break&lt;/em&gt; the rules? What happens when your character runs up against a limitation of powers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In David and Leigh Eddings' Belgariad/Malloreon series, sorcery is essentially limited to the Will and the Word: if you want something badly enough and say it, it will happen. &lt;em&gt;But:&lt;/em&gt; You cannot &lt;em&gt;unmake&lt;/em&gt; something with sorcery. &quot;Be Not&quot; is one of the few checks on ultimate power. The backlash is that the sorcerer/ess explodes. Why? &quot;The universe gets offended.&quot; No more than that. Where does magic come from? Dunno. It just appears if you will it hard enough. &lt;em&gt;Will&lt;/em&gt; is enough of a barrier to overcome that not everyone is a sorcerer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a powerful character thwarted by &quot;Captain, ye cannae change the laws of (magical) physics&quot; creates &lt;em&gt;conflict,&lt;/em&gt; and conflict is how your story becomes interesting. Two all-powerful whatevers bashing away at each other is a flashy spectacle on screen, but it becomes boring and unbelievable after a while (and faster so on the page). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Embrace rules and restrictions. They will force you to think more creatively, and therefore increase the conflict your characters have to overcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-04-29T21:15:35.283" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T21:15:35.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27835" CreationDate="2017-04-29T11:36:46.197" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Lauren's excellent points, I would refer you to this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/26509/the-flux-capacitor-its-what-makes-time-travel-possible-when-to-keep-world-b&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;The flux capacitor--it&amp;#39;s what makes time travel possible.&amp;quot; When to keep world-building explanations short&lt;/a&gt;. Whether you explain magic or not, set limits on it or not, depends on if it matters or not. In some stories it matters and in some it does not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a huge amount of stuff in our lives over which we have no effective control and little predictive ability. This is actually the source of much of the anxiety in our lives and we do quite a bit to try to mitigate the unpredictability of our lives. Unexplained and unconstrained magic is essentially a metaphor for the monster of unpredictability that dominates our earthly lives. It is why fairy tales are full of imps and giants and ogres and trolls, and wicked witches. Explaining the monster would be to pull its teeth. The point of a story is never how we defeat the monster (whether we do or not), it is how we face the monster. We defeat the monster &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; we face the monster. How is just window dressing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other circumstances you may need to explain magic because some plot point depends on it limitations. But I would suggest caution here. If you make this a mere puzzle then it is likely to be of limited interest. The audience for solving logical puzzles with magic rules is no doubt there, but I think it is pretty limited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories are fundamentally moral in nature. That is, they are about people making choices about values. Many stories feature the use of a McGuffin, the thing everybody wants. It does not actually matter what the McGuffin is or why anybody wants it. It is just an excuse to pit people against each other and see what choices they are willing to make. Will Bogey get on the plane with Bacall or stay and fight the Nazis? Its those kinds of choices that matter in stories. Magic in a fantasy is a McGuffin, or the accoutrement of the McGuffin. Its noblest use, at least, is to shape a focus on a particular kind of human choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key thing, though, if you have unexplained magical powers, is not to use them to solve moral problems, or, at least, not to solve the ones that matter. This is Deus Ex Machina, and it is the ruin of stories. Again, it is how we &lt;em&gt;face&lt;/em&gt; the monster that matters, not how we defeat him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-04-29T13:27:35.333" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T13:27:35.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27785" CreationDate="2017-04-29T11:44:14.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that there is a very simple rule of thumb here: if it is revelatory of character, it is a story. If it is revelatory of ideas, it is a philosophical essay in disguise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We debate philosophy. It is part of what makes humans human, and it is therefore a fit matter for story. But the issues in a story are not who is right, but what is it like to debate philosophy? Why do we do it? How do we respond the the challenge of an opposing view? How do we handle the destruction of our arguments? When does doubt creep in? Do we debate honestly or resort to rhetorical trickery? Do we bully? Do we deceive? What do we do when doubt of our our own position sets in? Do we care more about truth or victory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a rich field for moral questions, moral doubts, and moral decisions in all of these questions, and therefore a rich ground for stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T11:44:14.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27781" CreationDate="2017-04-29T12:06:54.060" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is one key fear that all young men share, and most older men, if we are honest: The fear of appearing weak. Men have an instinctive need to project strength, and will find any way they can to do it, even when it is against their best interests. They will do it through their behavior, they will do it through their speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last bastion of strength is indifference. If I cannot change the world, I will endure it. If I cannot win the fight, I will not flinch in defeat. If I dare not face a foe, I will mock them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every word a male speaks is in some way shaped by this fundamental dictum of maleness: do not show weakness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T12:06:54.060" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27840" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-29T21:36:46.767" Score="4" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the publishing industry, is it usual for authors to have a complete prescriptive non-fiction manuscript before seeking an agent, or after seeking an agent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a professor interested in writing a popular (i.e. non-technical) math book. I have a fully fleshed-out idea for a book. I have some writing experience, having won cash prizes in international writing competitions for works of 40000 to 60000 words. I do not have a social media platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't mind just writing the manuscript and hawking it at publishers, but I've heard that getting an agent should be your first step if you want to get published. So which should come first, a manuscript or an agent search?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24733" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T21:53:14.153" Title="Get an agent for prescriptive non-fiction before or after completing a manuscript?" Tags="|publishing|non-fiction|agent|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27840" CreationDate="2017-04-29T21:53:14.153" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The normal process for a non-fiction book is to sell it first, then write it. The reason is that non-fiction books sell based largely on the author's qualifications, the soundness of the idea, and the size of the author's platform (their existing audience). It also allows the publisher to shape the book to their requirements before it is written. All of my non-fiction books have been sold before they were written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if you need or could get an agent for a book of this sort. Agents do fiction and some of the more popular non-fiction categories like biographies and cookbooks. My impression is that more technical and specialist works are sold directly to publishers. Reasons for this include that most agents don't understand this market well enough to sell into it effectively, and that publishers have less need of agents to act as a filter are they are not (AFAIK) inundated with thousands of unpublishable submissions every day in these fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-fictions sells largely on credentials and platform. These can be described to a publisher in a one page email. The next step after that is to work up a book proposal outlining the scope and market for the work. If you get initial interest from a publisher, the will probably tell you what they want to see in a book proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a platform already, you always have the option of using your book ideas to build your platform by starting a blog and publishing your material there. If it gains a substantial following, you can then use your site stats and comment chains to demonstrate to a publisher that there is an audience for you work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T21:53:14.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27568" CreationDate="2017-04-30T00:32:45.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, here's some information from the page &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;More Information on Fair Use&lt;/a&gt;&quot; at copyright.gov.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The law &quot;calls for consideration of the following four factors in evaluating a question of fair use:&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes&lt;/em&gt;: Courts look at how the party claiming fair use is using the copyrighted work, and are more likely to find that nonprofit educational and noncommercial uses are fair.  This does not mean, however, that all nonprofit education and noncommercial uses are fair and all commercial uses are not fair; instead, courts will balance the purpose and character of the use against the other factors below.  Additionally, “transformative” uses are more likely to be considered fair.  Transformative uses are those that add something new, with a further purpose or different character, and do not substitute for the original use of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your use may be of a commercial nature, but that doesn't mean it's not fair use. Since you're writing a novel, not a song, you are definitely &quot;add[ing] something new, with a further purpose or different character&quot;, and your novel would not &quot;substitute for the original use of the work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nature of the copyrighted work&lt;/em&gt;: This factor analyzes the degree to which the work that was used relates to copyright’s purpose of encouraging creative expression. Thus, using a more creative or imaginative work (such as a novel, movie, or song) is less likely to support a claim of a fair use than using a factual work (such as a technical article or news item). In addition, use of an unpublished work is less likely to be considered fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Songs are &quot;creative or imaginative&quot;, so that doesn't count in your favor. But presumably the songs you're quoting have been published, so that would count for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole&lt;/em&gt;: Under this factor, courts look at both the quantity and quality of the copyrighted material that was used. If the use includes a large portion of the copyrighted work, fair use is less likely to be found; if the use employs only a small amount of copyrighted material, fair use is more likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are using only a few words from each song, so this factor counts in your favor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work&lt;/em&gt;: Here, courts review whether, and to what extent, the unlicensed use harms the existing or future market for the copyright owner’s original work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your use is unlikely to hurt the market or value of the songs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Summary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In favor of fair use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are using only a small and relatively unimportant piece of each song.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your work is almost entirely new and different from the songs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your work probably won't compete with sales of the original work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The songs you're quoting have already been published.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Against fair use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your work may be &quot;of a commercial nature&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The songs are a &quot;creative or imaginative&quot; work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare what you want to do to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell_v._Acuff-Rose_Music,_Inc.&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc&lt;/a&gt;. Both of the &quot;against&quot; factors I just mentioned applied in that case, and not all of the &quot;in favor&quot; factors applied; nevertheless, it was held to be fair use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24735" LastActivityDate="2017-04-30T00:32:45.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27843" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-30T10:11:17.047" Score="3" ViewCount="479" Body="&lt;p&gt;So basically my novel consists of the following genres: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Urban fantasy&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;New Adult (somewhat; it's a high school setting but with details that exceed the boundaries of young adult)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Romance (somewhat; I've made a point not to focus the story entirely on it) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main character is a female, though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what should I keep in mind so that my novel appeals to girls as well as guys? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24634" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T20:01:22.983" Title="Writing a book that appeals to both genders" Tags="|novel|readers|audience|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27843" CreationDate="2017-04-30T10:34:16.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be careful with stereotypes. While us guys will, for whatever reason, go for the hottest-looking girl around, fictional or not, it may offend most female readers, especially if the stereotypes you apply to the character don't apply to the particular reader (and it rarely will).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-04-30T10:34:16.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27843" CreationDate="2017-04-30T11:57:25.427" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has become fashionable in recent years to base the appeal of a novel on personal identification with the protagonist. That is, enjoyment of the novel is supposed to consist in a personal aspiration to be the protagonist or in a close personal identification with the protagonist (recognizing oneself in the protagonist). Such novels inherently have a strong gender bias. Men rarely aspire to be or see themselves in female characters, or vice versa. (Not never, perhaps, but rarely.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is not the classical appeal of a novel. The classical appeal has always been one of observation. The pleasure comes not in identifying with but in getting to know, or at least getting to observe and understand, the protagonist. This kind of appeal is, if you like, objective rather than subjective. It is a pleasure in looking outward rather than a pleasure in looking inward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a novel has far less of a gender bias than one that depends on identification with the main character. There are a huge range of things that both men and women like to observe, a huge range of people that both men and women like to meet. A novel of observation can appeal to both sexes equally in a way that a novel of identification cannot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that there are no differences in the subjects that men and women are objectively interested in, because of course there are. There are subjects that far more men are interested in than women, and vice versa, so if your novel of observation deals with one of these subjects, it will skew your audience accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, a novel of observation may be judgemental or may withhold judgement. A judgemental novel appeals more strongly to those the support its judgements, but repels those who do not support them. A novel that withholds judgement may appeal to both sides of an issue. Man and women tend to judge differently on a number of issues, so if you write a judgemental novel, the judgements you express will tend to bias your readership to one gender or another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to appeal equally to both sexes, you would do best to write a novel that is observational, non-judgemental, and deals with a subject of equal interest to both sexes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not that you should expect to achieve perfect gender balance. If tales are to be believed, more women than men read novels, and their tastes are more catholic, and so you would probably have to skew the appeal to the male side to achieve an actual gender balance in your readership. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than pursuing gender balance, therefore, I would suggest attempting to write an observational non-judgemental novel simply on the grounds that this is the purest form of the art, the one most free of pandering, the one most worthy of the artist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-11T20:01:22.983" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T20:01:22.983" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8224" CreationDate="2017-05-01T06:52:42.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The realisation just came to her now...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;em&gt;tautology&lt;/em&gt;, saying the same thing twice in different words. It probably would not be the best idea. Also, it should be &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; instead of seen in the bolded part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from that, there is nothing wrong with your passage, though you probably will edit it in later drafts. Don't worry about that right now. If you can't improve it immediately, leave it in there until you think of something, then you can add that change in a later draft. So long as the problem is out of the way before you send it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T06:52:42.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27851" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-01T16:38:31.993" Score="8" ViewCount="347" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading up on flashbacks, both on this site and others, I learned that flashbacks should be used sparingly since most readers enjoy a story from A to Z. I feel very strongly about having a form of a flashback, but can't decide which would be more appropriate. I want to hook the reader by displaying the danger and darkness of my world, but I don't feel that's possible starting off with a relatively safe adolescent child. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Full Flashback - My protagonist starts off during some event and something triggers the story to flash back to when her drama began (a number of years earlier).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Framing the story - My protagonist starts off during some event, reflecting in how she got into this situation, and the story starts many years prior.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I feel I will have is that the flashback/framing point is during the middle of my story, lets say point &quot;M&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could use the first method, flashback to reveal the beginning of the drama, point &quot;A&quot;, then back to M, then from N to B,C,D and back to N. You can see how I might end up with too many jumps and turn off the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second method would be more linear, starting at M to frame her current, dark situation, jump to A. I would then tell the story linearly until point M, then continue on to point Z.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which method would work better?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Examples given to better express my thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 1: For the first method, the story would start with the character in the middle of some mess (call it conflict A). She would have a full flash back that would take her years into the past and give the read her origin, background, introduce her and other characters, but not show how she got into conflict A. The story would then come back to the present, and the plot would continue, she would go about resolving her current mess, with the reader understand a lot more about her motivation and abilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point later, she would have another full flashback, explaining more details, maybe introducing the antagonist and leading up to conflict A. Coming back to the present once more, she resolves the conflict/defeats the antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Four time jumps, roughly equal in time (years).&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2: Character is in conflict A and goes through a chapter's worth of plot. Story flashes back several years before conflict A, origin is explained, characters are introduced, etc. Story progresses normally until character enters conflict A. The story skips the already covered story from chapter 1, continues on as the character resolves the conflict/defeats the antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Two time jumps, one years in the past and one a couple hours into the future&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24647" LastEditorUserId="24647" LastEditDate="2018-06-06T12:21:23.097" LastActivityDate="2018-06-06T14:33:46.273" Title="Flashback or Framing, does either work" Tags="|creative-writing|flashback|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27852" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27859" CreationDate="2017-05-01T16:42:00.240" Score="2" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently begun studying subplots, and I've realized I don't know how far I should develop them. Does a subplot need everything a main plot does? Does there even need to be a conflict for the subplot (if it's short), or can it simply be a few scenes that link together to show something related to the main plot? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I go any further, let me explain that I develop my novels before writing them. This means I break down exactly what I need in the novel, and how to achieve it. One of the things I do is work with the main plot, and develop the main conflict so that it is complex and cannot be easily resolved. I'm wondering how much of that one does for a subplot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How much development does a subplot need?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, do I need separate stakes for a subplot (assuming the stakes for the main plot don't apply to it)? What about additional characterization? My question isn't limited to simply developing the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt; I'm assuming that the answer to this question will depend very much on the size of the subplot in question. If that is the case, please provide answers for several different sizes of subplots (ie, if the subplot is only a few scenes, you generally do A and B; if it spans three books, you want to do C as well). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T19:45:24.487" Title="How much development does a subplot need?" Tags="|planning|subplot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27756" CreationDate="2017-05-01T17:26:02.937" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer: Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples off the top of my head:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1. Jim Butcher's &lt;em&gt;Dresden Files&lt;/em&gt; series references the Lord of the Rings, on multiple occasions, as well as many, many other things.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2. R. A. Salvatore's &lt;em&gt;Spearwielder's Tale&lt;/em&gt; likewise references the Lord of the Rings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, it is permitted to mention a real life work of fiction in your own work of fiction. As general rule, rules of plagiarism and copyright do not distinguish between a fictional and non-fictional work, so if you can do something in a non-fiction work (e.g. say &quot;I love Stargate SG-1!&quot;, in a discussion or review), then you can do the same in a fictional work, (e.g. have a character exclaim &quot;I love Stargate SG-1!&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15726" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T17:26:02.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27855" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27857" CreationDate="2017-05-01T17:36:37.363" Score="5" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel where I imagined two or three subplots (or storylines).&#xA;Now I found that one of the subplots has evolved and grown so big that It can be an independant plot itself and could (or could not) lead to another novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bit annoying for me, because now I have to decide whether I have to separate this subplot from the first novel (removing a layer of narrative) to write another one (which actually would be a short-story) or just let it and use it to enrich my novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice on what I should do to decide would be welcomed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastActivityDate="2017-05-02T02:13:56.100" Title="A subplot becoming another novel" Tags="|novel|plot|subplot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27851" CreationDate="2017-05-01T18:54:08.413" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;I want to hook the reader by displaying the danger and darkness of my world&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very common idea about how to engage the reader, but it has a fundamental flaw: Darkness and danger are not interesting unless they happen to someone we care about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at most successful novels and you will see that they do not work this way. Picking HP and LOTR as examples (because they seem to be the thing we can guarantee everyone here has read: how far do you have to get into HP before you even hear the name Voldemort? How far do you get into LOTR before we find out what the ring is and what needs to be done about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer in both cases is, quite a way. So what is happening for all those page before we get to these points in these books? We are getting to know the main characters and to understand the desires that will shape their quests once they begin them in earnest, and the character that will govern how they pursue those desires. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the proper beginning of any story. A story is the story of someone, some person with a particular character and particular desires. The story begins by establishing who they are. Good stories do it thorough incident, but it is not the central drama of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good writers have to learn to do this stuff and do it well. They have to have the skill of creating the defining incidents as well as the inciting incident and the climactic incident. Writers who are not confident in their skills may not feel they are up to this part of the story process, and want to skip ahead to the &quot;good bits&quot;. But the truth is that there cannot be any &quot;good bits&quot; until the characters are well established. It is our engagement with the characters that makes the good bits good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we should not be using flashbacks for this purpose, when should we use them? I'm going to suggest a principle, but I can't say that is based on exhaustive study or thought, so there may be ample grounds to modify or refute it, be here goes. I propose that the proper starting point of a story is the establishing of the desire that drives that characters. (&quot;It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.&quot;) But it is possible that there may be events prior to the birth of desire that will shape the later development of the story. If that is so, a flashback, or a frame, seems like an appropriate mechanism to use to supply those details when needed. But using a flashback to jump back from the climax to the establishment of desire should never be necessary and will usually be unwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T18:54:08.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27855" CreationDate="2017-05-01T19:11:02.187" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Subplots are generally thematically related to the main plot. They provide thematic elaboration or counterpoint to the theme of the main plot. If your subplots are doing that for you main plot, then they are enriching the reader's experience and they should stay. If they are just more business, then they should go. (Whether that is to another work of not is a different question entirely.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T19:11:02.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27852" CreationDate="2017-05-01T19:23:38.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A subplot is a plot. As such, it has the same shape, the same components, the same effect as a regular plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason you have a subplot is to provide thematic counterpoint of elaboration to the main plot. You need to to be sufficiently worked out to provide the desired elaboration or counterpoint. (Note how in &lt;em&gt;How I Met Your Mother&lt;/em&gt;, Barney's philandering and Marshall and Lily's solid relationship provide different counterpoints to Ted's fruitless search for on true love.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't fall into the trap of using a subplot simply as a device to move characters into position for some grand event. Subplots are not about logistics. Ursula LeGuin talks about &quot;Crowding and Leaping&quot; as essential parts of storytelling. Stories don't plod through the mechanics of one event after another. They crowd a bunch of stuff into one place and then make a big leap to the next place that is significant to the development of the story arc. All you need to bridge the gap left by a leap is a few sentences of narrative bridge, not a full subplot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T19:23:38.130" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27852" CreationDate="2017-05-01T19:45:24.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no reason to labor over a subplot just for the sake of having one, but if your feel like you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; one (or two, or seven) for whatever reasons you might need them, then Mark Baker is right--all the regular rules apply; the stakes, the conflict, the character's mini-arcs, the resolution, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, subplot lacking a resolution in one novel can even serve as a segue to another story--you are the author, you choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is impossible to tell if a specific subplot works or does not in a particular story without reading the full text wth an intention to take it apart and critique it, just like it is impossible to tell if the one you are planning will work when you finally get to fleshing it out with words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T19:45:24.487" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27811" CreationDate="2017-05-01T21:49:06.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's fine. The audience only needs as much information as is significant to the story, and no more. Anymore is a distraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, the audience probably needs to know enough to build this character for when they go on their fantasy journey. A character from 1920s New York will act and react much different than one from a small Midwestern town in 2017. In this case, the setting is building the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, if you were doing a careful historical period piece, then you'd want to define your locations clearly and accurately. That's a significant part of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read your question, I immediately thought about Miyazaki. Some of his most famous and beautiful films are in an unspecified place and time. Think of &lt;em&gt;My Neighbor Totoro&lt;/em&gt;: I don't believe the name of the city they move from, nor the town they move to is ever said. It's enough to know they went from a city to the country. The time period is not even clear. This lack of specificity allows Miyazaki great freedom in crafting an idealized, yet believable, country life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24759" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T21:49:06.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27855" CreationDate="2017-05-02T00:21:13.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me remind me you that your final novel does not need to include every bit of information you have compiled.  The fact that you have additional information (like backstory) is beneficial to your novel even if you don't include it, simply because it's going to allow you to do a better work rounding up your characters.  Thus, even if you don't include it, that extra work is not lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would do in this case:  I would concentrate on the main plot and include only as much of the subplot in question as is necessary to enrich the main plot.  Later, when a complete draft you like is finished, you can still decide whether to include more of that subplot or not, depending on the total length.  What you don't get to use of the subplot doesn't need to be published right away.  Just keep it in your drawer until there's a suitable occasion to use it.  Who knows what the future holds!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9931" LastActivityDate="2017-05-02T00:21:13.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27855" CreationDate="2017-05-02T02:13:56.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If timing of the event permits, that's an excellent opportunity to create a hook for a sequel. Trim the plot to &quot;slim&quot; level in your current novel, close the two other plots properly, leave the third plot at a key point, and migrate all the rest to the sequel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This won't be possible if a late point of the &quot;big&quot; plot is essential to the resolution of the current novel. In that case you will need to carry it through... or split your novel into a trilogy: part 1: introduce and expand all three plots, part 2: &quot;the big plot&quot; nearly to resolution, part 3: bring back two remaining plots and bring the grand finale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, yes, if one plot totally dominates the story, to the point that the others can't get enough spotlight time, but show up rarely, it becomes frustrating. It's definitely better to isolate it some way, so that there's a clear segment where it's the only plot, and a clear segment where all plots get the same level of attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-05-02T02:13:56.100" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27863" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-02T02:16:34.870" Score="6" ViewCount="650" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of writing an essay on Othello, and am using the Folger Shakespeare Library's annotated Othello. As far as I can tell, the correct MLA citation for the book is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shakespeare, William. The tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Washington Square Press, 2004. Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm citing Shakespeare's text, I just use the standard (Othello 4.1.120) format. How can I cite the annotations? Would it just be (Shakespeare 178)? that seems incorrect, as the annotations have little to do with Shakespeare himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24760" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-05-02T02:27:10.700" LastActivityDate="2017-09-07T05:58:01.067" Title="How to cite annotation in an annotated copy of Shakespeare's Othello" Tags="|citations|mla|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27864" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-02T06:55:37.880" Score="1" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the story I am trying to write, I have a question about character point of view. I'm writing in what I believe is omniscient style, and I've read that changing POV within the same paragraph is not something one should do, but in my story I switch POV, and I'm wondering if I shouldn't. I'll have to provide several paragraphs to show how I switched, with my primary POV being from a character named John to a boy he's traveling with named Sylar (although in the provided paragraphs it's in the middle of the story with Sylar's POV). If anyone can comment if I should be writing the boy's POV from John's perspective, or if what I wrote is just fine, please let me know. I am looking for critique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unable to see what was wrong with his pack, Sylar unslung it, placed it in the snow in front of him, then frowned. It was, indeed, open at the top. Grumbling to himself, he began tying it once more. “‘Snot my fault the bags bulging,” he complained loudly. “&lt;em&gt;That&lt;/em&gt; fault lies with someone else. I said let’s go home hours ago, but some slave driver I know &lt;em&gt;insisted&lt;/em&gt; we keep gathering. Then we see this wolf. A freakishly painted, icy-eyed massive beast at that. Can’t be seeing brown or grey or even green-eyed wolves, now can we? 'Twould be too normal, wouldn’t it? To have normal colored eyes, that is. I once heard blue-eyed wolves are an ill omen, but that’s only if you trust the tavern bards at the Iron Keg. Scoundrels; the lot of 'em I say.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Oh?” John murmured, as if Sylar had spoken something of interest and not merely grumbled out several complaints in a row as the boy was wont to do all day long. “Fascinating story you have there.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sylar gritted his teeth. “We could have been eaten, you know,&amp;quot; he said, suddenly irritated that John wasn't taking the wolf as a serious threat to life and limb. Without warning, a frigid wind swept across the mountain, lasting quite a few moments before dying down. As it passed, it seemed to drain the boy of all his anger, leaving behind nothing but a cold chill to his bones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Young wolves have blue eyes, you know.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Oh, just shut it!” Sylar growled at the mountaineer, shivering all the while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter how often he had accompanied John on gathering days, he never seemed to get used to the cold. All morning long they had scoured the mountain, filling their backpacks with herbs and roots and with the occasional rock-minerals. It was sparse pickings due to an unnaturally harsh winter, but still, if one knew where to look, and had the time, one could find flora that grew even in the most detrimental of environments. John, somehow, seemed to know exactly where to look, and whilst Sylar truly found the man’s talents amazing, his knack for constantly rooting out hidden herbs was also the reason they were still stuck out in the cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this I return to primarily John's POV. Is this wrong to do, or confusing to a reader? I see where writing in the same paragraph switching POV is very confusing, but is it ok to do this in separate paragraphs when writing from omniscient perspective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24763" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-05-25T14:40:55.003" Title="Point of view question" Tags="|viewpoint|pov|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27865" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-02T09:51:44.200" Score="4" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;p&gt;My documentation team supports a massive software product, over 30 modules. These modules are individually licensed, so one customer might pay for all the modules where another might only pay to use a few of the modules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, most of our documentation is delivered via PDF and can be accessed via a dedicated website. However, given the complexity of the product, this poses many issues, most pressingly, it makes finding specific information hard. The site has a search functionality which does search within PDFs, but if you click through a link, you just get taken to the first page of the PDF. Also, this makes linking to other topics in a different PDF, almost impossible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we're looking to move everything to HTML/XML based output. My manager would like us to give the customers a few different options to get their feedback on which they like best. However, it seems that for large products with many modules, it seems to me that there is a fairly standard layout, like these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://admhelp.saas.hpe.com/main/Content/AdmHelpCenter.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://admhelp.saas.hpe.com/main/Content/AdmHelpCenter.htm&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://qsupport.quantum.com/kb/flare/Content/doc_portal/Content/docs-portal/docs_portal.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://qsupport.quantum.com/kb/flare/Content/doc_portal/Content/docs-portal/docs_portal.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, a landing page that lists out all the possible options, with links to module/product specific documentation centres. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody maintain, or maintained in the past, a documentation solution for a large software product that does not use this method? Is there an alternative that I'm missing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions, much appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24766" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T17:48:59.230" Title="Presenting documentation for a large software product" Tags="|publishing|technical-writing|organization|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27866" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-02T10:07:33.487" Score="2" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just completed my first manuscript for a children's book. It is a long traditional bedtime story to be read over several days or weeks even! I don't really understand why I must limit the number of words. Please can anyone advise?&#xA;Many thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24767" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T17:47:36.590" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T17:47:36.590" Title="Length of Children's Books" Tags="|children|book-length|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27866" CreationDate="2017-05-02T11:26:13.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because bedtime stories are about getting children to fall asleep and no parent wants to be reading until 3am. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishers impose word restrictions for two basic reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A new author represents are risk. Bigger books cost more to produce, so the risk is higher. Restricting word count reduces the risk of taking on a new author. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a limit to how long (or short) of a book a reader is willing to buy on particular subjects. Publishers know this. (It is their business to know.) They won't publish things that are too short or too long to sell. They will publish things are in the sweet spot of length for a particular genre. (And if you go through a bookstore you will see that there is considerable uniformity in the length of most books in each section.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-02T11:26:13.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18800" CreationDate="2017-05-02T11:50:15.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Doesn't &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; figuratively die anyway?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main character in this story goes through a complete change of personality after being arrested. He then undergoes another one (backwards) when the chip breaks down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who (potentially) dies at the end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now, I see two ways to look at the potential &lt;em&gt;figurative&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;literal&lt;/em&gt; death(s) of the character(s):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the personality-change happens, his original self dies (&lt;strong&gt;figuratively&lt;/strong&gt;), only to&#xA;be revived after the accident. After being revived, he (once again&#xA;his original self) is then potentially &lt;strong&gt;literally&lt;/strong&gt; killed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the main character undergoes the personality-change, his new&#xA;self is &quot;born&quot;. This self &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; (or should?) be treated as an&#xA;entirely different person. His new self goes undergoes a slow decay&#xA;from the accident, before &lt;strong&gt;figuratively&lt;/strong&gt; dying when the chip shuts&#xA;down.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can we use the literal and figurative death(s)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you managed to make us (the readers) &quot;like&quot; the main character's&#xA;original self, we might feel that the &lt;strong&gt;figurative death&lt;/strong&gt; is a fate&#xA;worse than &lt;strong&gt;literal death&lt;/strong&gt; itself. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If, however, we prefer his new self (which would make sense from&#xA;your society's perspective, but not necessarily your story's&#xA;perspective), we would feel that his original self is then (kind of)&#xA;killing his new self.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how the reader relates to your main character(s), the death(s) could be looked at differently. This will depend on your writing and how you portray the personalities of your main character(s). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we (the readers) prefer the main character's &lt;strong&gt;original self&lt;/strong&gt;, we would likely prefer to see the new self die, perhaps regretting that his original self then eventually dies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reader prefers the &lt;strong&gt;new self&lt;/strong&gt;, we would perhaps hate his original self for killing him/once again making &quot;a bad person&quot; of him, potentially feeling that his original self deserves his eventual death.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No matter which personality we prefer, I personally think this story should be treated as dealing with more than one death: 2 figurative and 1 literal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The duality of the story could make for a very interesting experience. Depending on how you manage to portray the personalities, whether or not his original self should be killed should relate to the ways the personalities are portrayed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastActivityDate="2017-05-02T11:50:15.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27865" CreationDate="2017-05-02T11:50:28.030" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;That approach is fine for a landing page. But what you have to bear in mind is that people don't use landing pages. This is true across all categories of information. There has been a steady decline in reader's use of landing page across all categories of information. Gerry McGovern charts the decline here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gerrymcgovern.com/the-continued-decline-of-the-homepage/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://gerrymcgovern.com/the-continued-decline-of-the-homepage/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean you should not have a landing page. Their use has declined radically, but it has not been extinguished altogether. But it does mean that you can't rely on a landing page as the core of your navigational strategy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason people don't use landing page anymore is that they have learned that it is easier to just search for what they want. Most of your users will start by searching Google (which is why putting your information behind a login is a bad idea). If they don't give up after the Google search fails, and log in to your site, they will go straight to the search bar and type the same query in there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a problem, because your site search is much much worse at this stuff than Google. That is because search is a big data problem, and your sight search see several orders of magnitude less data than Google. So, it is not going to rank results as well as Google. That puts a lot of pressure on the topics that do turn up at the top of your search. If they are not the topics that the reader needs, they better provide links to those topics or the reader is not going to be able to find them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, because the reader starts with a search, they arrive at an individual topic. Every page in your documentation set is a potential landing page, and every one of them needs to be written to work as one. This is a design principle I call Every Page is Page One, and I wrote a book about it: &lt;a href=&quot;http://xmlpress.net/publications/eppo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://xmlpress.net/publications/eppo/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an Every Page is Page One world, how you write the individual topics, and how you link them too each other, is more important than how you design the overall navigation. Overall navigation is still an important thing to think about, but it does nothing to solve the navigation problem for the typical users whose information seeking approach is to do a search, find something likely looking in the search results, and then follow links if they have to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-02T11:50:28.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27864" CreationDate="2017-05-02T12:03:34.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the thing about point of view. People always position themselves to get the best view of something they are interested in. If they can stay in one place and see everything they want to see, they stay where they are. If they have to move to see everything they want to see, they move. This is the most natural thing in the world and we don't tend to think about it much as we are doing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a book, the writer is in total control of what the reader can see. If the writer handles POV well, then the reader will be able to see what they want to see and will not even think about POV. But if the reader needs to change POV in order to see what they are interested in, and the author does not make that POV switch at the right moment, then the reader will be frustrated. If the author does make the POV switch at the right time, however, the reader will not even notice because they always have the view they want at that moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing teachers often warn about &quot;head hopping&quot; -- rapid changes of POV from one character to another. But the fault is not changing POV rapidly. The fault is changing POV when the reader feels no need to do so. If the reader is being constantly jerked from one POV to another when they would rather stand still, that is frustrating. If the reader is being held in one position when they would rather move to a different position (a real problem in first person narratives) that is also frustrating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is probably not bad advice to new writers to avoid POV shifts, since POV can be difficult and new writers are more likely to handle it badly than to handle it well. But in the end the point is to get to being a good writer and a good writer has to learn to handle this well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-02T12:03:34.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27865" CreationDate="2017-05-02T12:49:16.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The place where I work uses a home-brewed XML to HTML to CHM solution. We are reliant on the CHM's search engine (which frankly, is awful). We do not have a landing page, as much as a first page with a few generic links. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, access to our help system is behind paywalls and often our clients do not have ready access to the internet; so the help system has to be completely local and not server-dependent. While never ideal, it is a necessity for our products and should not necessarily diminish your final product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having helped develop and work with a custom-built xml structure (we even have an XML programmer on staff), I strongly recommend against it. DITA provides a lot of interesting options and there are many good (and free) resources out there. Since there are far more options available to you than custom-built xml structures, I strongly suggest researching all the options before you settle on a structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I second the idea of a landing page with a really good search engine on the back-end. While it won't be used by customers after the initial exploration, it can greatly assist that first run through the documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Video tutorials (embedded in the documentation or linked to it) are another great customer option. They've been very popular among consumers of our products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adobe Acrobat typically takes you to the word you're looking for and has done so for quite a few versions. If, however, your PDF generation process is turning everything to graphics instead of text, then making sure you're generating text is another way to improve the search in the PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24768" LastActivityDate="2017-05-02T12:49:16.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27865" CreationDate="2017-05-02T18:38:10.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27869/1993&quot;&gt;another answer&lt;/a&gt; noted, landing pages are of limited utility -- you need them, but you shouldn't assume people will start there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your modules are all inter-related, even if one customer won't necessarily use all of them.  (You mentioned linking between them, for example.)  So another approach you can take is: one big HTML doc set, organized by component.  This &lt;a href=&quot;https://my.vertica.com/docs/8.1.x/HTML/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt; was generated from Flare, and you can link to &lt;a href=&quot;https://my.vertica.com/docs/8.1.x/HTML/index.htm#Authoring/HadoopIntegrationGuide/HadoopIntegrationGuide.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;individual&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://my.vertica.com/docs/8.1.x/HTML/index.htm#Authoring/ManagementConsole/UsingManagementConsole.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;modules&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://my.vertica.com/docs/8.1.x/HTML/index.htm#Authoring/ExtendingVertica/ExtendingVertica.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;within&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://my.vertica.com/docs/8.1.x/HTML/index.htm#Authoring/KafkaIntegrationGuide/KafkaIntegrationGuide.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://my.vertica.com/docs/8.1.x/HTML/index.htm#Authoring/R-SDK/OverviewRSDK.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;set&lt;/a&gt; and still generate individual PDFs if you like.  The benefit of the single HTML document set, as opposed to 30 different documents (HTML or otherwise), is that once you're in, you can easily see and navigate to anything else.  That's a lot easier for the reader than having to go back to a landing page and choose a different module.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be concerned about the length of the list.  How concerned you should be depends on the number of modules and how your readers access your documentation; more fits when using a browser on a full-size monitor than fits on a tablet, for instance.  If you think you have too many modules to show on-screen in a single list like the TOC in the docs I linked, you have a few choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use scrolling.  If you also put your most important or popular modules first, this isn't necessarily bad.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your modules fall into logical groups, add top-level categories to the TOC with the modules under them.  As with the subtopics in the docs I linked to, expansion should be &quot;in place&quot; and durable.  Over time much of the TOC might end up expanded and thus need scrolling, but that's ok because the user did it (and can undo it).  But if your users won't be able to guess which of your few top-level topics is the right place to look, adding such groups might add more frustration than benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Support per-user customization.  This won't help with people coming in from Google, but if you have user data, you can use it.  If your documentation is behind a sign-in form (not a recommendation, but if you do...), you might know which modules that user is using -- so put those ones first.  Or maybe you allow users to customize the view explicitly -- removing a module from the list makes it go away for that session.  (Consider a &quot;reset&quot; link in that case so they can recover from errors.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T17:48:59.230" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T17:48:59.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27873" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-02T20:45:29.637" Score="4" ViewCount="530" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always see good critics about Kingskiller Chronicles realistic magic system. But I can't stop wondering... &amp;quot;Why do people like it? Is it because it's more human and more close to reality?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stranger Things has some realism with Eleven too. When she uses her powers, she gets tired and has some limits based on range and mental strength too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that balancing magic powers is important or else the characters get too overpowered or the situation could be solved easily using magic, etc and etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What I want know is: why should I do magic more realistic? Or why I should not?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this topic is more suitable for opinion-based answers involving defenders of low-fantasy fans and high-fantasy fans. Brandon Sanderson also has a topic on his &lt;a href=&quot;https://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; explaining about magic systems if you guys want know more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there is no definitive answer and the question seems to be very vague. But it still would be good to see what you guys think about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24464" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-03-30T16:53:32.773" LastActivityDate="2022-03-30T16:53:32.773" Title="Advantages of a realistic magic system" Tags="|fantasy|magic-system|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27873" CreationDate="2017-05-03T01:33:40.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should not matter. This is your world. You created it. You decide the rules. You choose how everything works. It really is as simple as that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T01:33:40.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27875" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-03T01:51:42.070" Score="-1" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;How best can I re-write this paragraph to make it more family friendly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There had been a time, barely a month or two ago, when he had sat his face to the storm and grinned with glee as the wind and sea-spray hurled themselves against his weather-beaten countenance. Yet now the warm, jasmine-scented breeze that barely wafted into the room through the open windows felt to him like a swarm of bees repeatedly stinging him. Though the doctor lifting the bandages from his face was doing his best to work with the most consummate delicacy, each additional inch of exposure only worsened his discomfiture. And with every infliction came a new, unwanted memory of his previous battles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24774" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T03:21:10.360" Title="re-writing a paragraph to make it more appealing" Tags="|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-05-04T15:19:26.033" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27875" CreationDate="2017-05-03T03:21:10.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the issue in terms of family friendliness? The main issue I can see here is word choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Misuse of &quot;big&quot; words hinders communication and gives of an air of pomposity. &lt;em&gt;discomfiture&lt;/em&gt; refers to embarrassment, perplexity or defeat, not physical pain. &lt;em&gt;Countenance&lt;/em&gt; is not the &quot;face&quot; in the physical sense so much as the &lt;em&gt;facial expression, attitude&lt;/em&gt; of the character, his &lt;em&gt;bearing&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The description is too labored, with undue repetition (face/countenance, barely/barely, barely wafted...), and doesn't give enough credit to the reader: the reader knows that a swarm of bees is likely to sting him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Barely a month ago, he had sat in the storm and grinned with glee as&#xA;  the wind and sea-spray hurled themselves against his weather-beaten&#xA;  face. Now the warm, jasmine-scented breeze that wafted into the room&#xA;  through the open windows felt like a swarm of bees. Though the doctor&#xA;  lifting the bandages from his face worked with the most consummate&#xA;  delicacy, every inch increased his discomfort. Painful  memories of&#xA;  his previous battles...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if the idea of lifting bandages from someone's face is what you are concerned with, you can easily skip that detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Though the doctor worked with the most consummate delicacy, the&#xA;  procedure wasn't in the least comfortable.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1298" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T03:21:10.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27873" CreationDate="2017-05-03T09:28:10.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not see this as a yes or no point, but as a gradable one, so the question is not whether I should have no rules or tons of rules, but rather between a few basic rules and lots of detailed, maybe even unnecessary for the story, rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving out the 'no rules' extreme, I'll say that the fewer rules one has, the lazier the fictional world feels. A lot of pople might disagree with me on this particular point, but I like coherence in my fictional worlds so that is how I feel and, I suspect, a lot of other people too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a practical point, if the magic system gets created as the story progresses, there will be need for some spells or rituals later on that could have been useful at some event at the beginning. These will lead to readers asking 'well, why didn't they use that spell at that time?'. I believe this also happens in Harry Potter (I haven't read it but a couple of friends have said words to that effect). So, if you previously determine the rules for the magic system, these situations will not happen because, when an event pops up in the tale, you just go to the 'writer's magic rules book' and check what can be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very detailed system, even going to the point where situations that will not happen in the story are taken into consideration, has the same appeal as mechanic has to those who have an interest in how things work. You see how that piece goes into the other piece and how, together, they make something else happen. It's alluring. Your mind starts conjuring and visualising a world of possibilities based on those pieces and their movements. You get an urge to create, you start thinking 'what if'. This is true for legos, engines, clockwork and magic systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do not mix up a 'book of magic physics' with your story. Write it on a separate notebook or file or whatever. Let the rules be gleaned through how they're used and not through the mouth of a teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T09:28:10.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27879" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27885" CreationDate="2017-05-03T11:39:55.310" Score="5" ViewCount="5107" Body="&lt;p&gt;You guys may have heard this term before. I often see critics talking about it in some Studio Ghibli's movies where the reviewers say that the antagonist is the force of nature itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I also see stories where people say that the force of nature is personified. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is said that Chigur from No Country for Old Men is a force of nature antagonist. It is said that some antagonist robots from Isaac Asimov's stories are forces of nature. It is also said that the Chandrian from the Kingskiller chronicles is a force of nature antagonist. I got these few examples which I dont know if they are pure opinion-based visions or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question cannot be more simplified than this: &lt;strong&gt;What makes a personified force of nature?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question may involve these ones to incite imagination in your answer: He/she should be antagonist all the time or not? What kind of person he/she would be? Why he/she would act the way he acts? How powerful should he/she be to be considered &quot;a force of nature&quot;? I know that the question sounds simple and that the answers might be huge, but this is a topic I would like to see being answered with different visions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the core of the question is in the word &quot;MAKES.&quot; It makes the question to be more specific and have some good answers for it too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I'm new to SE and I dont know if my question is good or clear enough. I shall be reading your feedback in the comments if you guys need anything from my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24464" LastEditorUserId="24464" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T12:00:16.247" LastActivityDate="2023-03-13T05:45:58.453" Title="What makes a personified force of nature?" Tags="|character-development|antagonist|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27879" CreationDate="2017-05-03T12:15:21.040" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this context, I would take it to mean someone who cannot be reasoned with. When dealing with a mountain or a rainstorm, you can't reason with them or reach a deal or a compromise with them. When you are dealing with a normal human being, on the other hand, you can reason with them or make a deal with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To describe a person as a force of nature, is to say that you can't bargain with them or reach a deal with them. They are as implacable as a mountain or a rain storm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term is used in much looser sense as well, to describe someone of great energy or abundant personality, but I think it is the sense described above that most likely fits the intent in the examples you cite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T12:15:21.040" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16129" CreationDate="2017-05-03T13:46:41.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in the U.S.A., just about anyone (human or corporate) can sue just about anyone for just about anything. All it takes is a specious legal theory of damages to get past the first step. By then, a lot of money has been spent. Check out the Wikipedia article, &quot;Food Libel Laws.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I advise you to create an entirely fictional town, which is not specifically identified with some real town. This is what Raymond Chandler did, in some of his famous detective novels, set in the greater Los Angeles area of his own era. The local officials were corrupt, and so forth. But (other than being somewhere near L.A.) it was no particular town.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone reading that books says to himself, &quot;Ah, the author must mean XYZ City, because veryone knows they're corrupt,&quot; That's not the author's fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T13:46:41.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18921" CreationDate="2017-05-03T15:11:08.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scientific writing in major journals generally take on the form of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Abstract &gt; Introduction (question to be answered if not In the title) &gt; Materials and methods &gt; Results (statistical analysis usually occurs here but can appear elsewhere) &gt; Discussion &gt; Conclusion (was the question answered?, yes or no) &gt; Suggestions for future research (often skipped)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see where this nomenclature overlaps yours. &lt;strong&gt;I would suggest using patterns of scientific writing familiar with professors&lt;/strong&gt;. It shows you have acceptable knowledge about how to present data, and it flows nicely. Some of this may be metaphorical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T15:11:08.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16246" CreationDate="2017-05-03T16:07:45.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would put it this way: Writing &quot;copy&quot; means that someone else (employer or client) provides you with specifications regarding what is to be written. For example: It is about product X. It is targeted to audience Y. It will appear in publications (print or online) A, B, and C. It must be between 100 and 300 words in length, and will co-ordinate with image I.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that's for an advertisement, but not all &quot;copy&quot; is for ads. Some technical documentation has &quot;copy,&quot; where anonymous users (selected for this purpose) describe how to use the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newspapers may contain a certain amount of &quot;copy,&quot; because articles must sometimes be extended to fill a pre-determined space. For example, if you read an article about baseball team B getting a new manager, and there's a paragraph telling you that team B was founded in 1928 and used to be called by some other name, in an era when the bases were stuffed with horsehair, that's probably &quot;copy.&quot; The information about the manager wasn't quite long enough to fill the allotted space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no doubt that much fiction, particularly by the kind of famous person whose books automatically sell, contains &quot;copy&quot; or re-written versions of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The essential point is that someone else provides the specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some who use this forum do elaborate world-building, it seems. I have no doubt that &quot;copy&quot; could be used for the actual novel, once the world was built. Case in point: Have a look at the writings of some authors who build upon the Chthulhu mythos. Seems to me that a considerable portion of their writings merely repeat what a person familiar with the mythos would already know. But it makes the stories longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T16:07:45.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27879" CreationDate="2017-05-03T16:25:21.530" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The phrase &quot;force of nature&quot; refers, properly speaking, to a natural phenomenon outside the control of human beings. The key idea here is &lt;em&gt;can't be controlled&lt;/em&gt; because, typically, it's &lt;em&gt;too strong&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When referring to people as &quot;forces of nature&quot;, that's still the key idea: a strong person that defies societal rules (and, therefore, can't be controlled by human society).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to see characters that are 'forces of nature' more as protagonists than antagonists: they typically identify a social problem and fight against it. Society may try to force them to conform but they still carry on until they manage to reach their goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not so much about physical powers or strength, but rather inner strength. The power to force one's way against everyone else. It requires a deep faith in the righteousness of one's path (or an incredible level of stubbornness) and the capacity to suffer for a future greater good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the phrase can also be applied to people who are simply unstoppable: they want something for themselves (or their family / people / country / etc) and will stop at nothing (including atrocities) to get it. Such characters can still be ready to sacrifice themselves for their family's greater good, for example, ot they can be spoilt little brats that will step on anyone who's in their way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking about Studio Ghibli films, I'd say the characters are sometimes less 'forces of nature' as I mentioned above and more 'representations of nature'. In &lt;em&gt;Mononoke Hime&lt;/em&gt;, for example, the fight between the animal-gods and the humans can be seen as a fight between nature and humanity and both San and Ashitaka become their representatives, although breaking away from the blind conflict and searching for a balanced end to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T16:25:21.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27886" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-03T16:32:08.790" Score="6" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just received the written feedback from an editor in a large publishing house. On the whole it's very critical, with the occassional &quot;could be good&quot; thrown in at the end of sections with a list of negative points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TLDR: &lt;strong&gt;are editors generally negative with infrequent positive comments, or is this a reality check?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fuller question: I understand that I need to focus on the weaknesses to make it a better story in its entirety, but given the sparcity of positive feedback, should I take a step back from the entire project for a while to get a better perspective or should I act line-by-line in the spirit of her response? After getting quite a lot of positive feedback from amateur beta readers, I'm now confused by differing inputs - some are common (therefore easier to implement) whilst others contradict each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22913" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-06T08:28:28.807" LastActivityDate="2018-03-06T08:28:28.807" Title="How to interpret editor feedback?" Tags="|editing|first-draft|feedback|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16246" CreationDate="2017-05-03T17:11:27.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Copy&quot; is one of the elements of an ad, along with the visuals, the headline, etc. The copywriter is the person who writes the copy. The word has largely given way to the equally generic &quot;content&quot; these days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the implication of copywriter is that the writer is not necessarily the prime creative force on the project. In a novel, the writer is the prime, indeed, only, creative force on the project. In a movie, the director, not the screenwriter, is generally the prime creative force. In advertizing, many people may contribute to the development of the concepts that go into an ad campaign. The copywriter could end up being the creative lead on some projects, but they could also just be providing copy to flesh out someone else's idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this is a universal or not, but it does seem like that when the writer is the prime creative force they are just &quot;the writer&quot; but when they are not, they are qualified in some way: copywriter, screenwriter, technical writer, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T17:11:27.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27886" CreationDate="2017-05-03T17:35:22.060" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in just this position as few years ago. Extensive comments from an editor at a top house, mostly critical. I did a rewrite and got a &quot;better, but not quite&quot; back. No invitation to try again, so that was that. I was having more success on the non-fiction front so I put the fiction in a drawer and am just starting to get back to is as my latest non-fiction project finds it way to print. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the advice or someone who got to this point and got past it to acceptance and successful publication would be of more use to you. But until that person turns up, I will offer some thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Editors always have more stuff than they can possibly read. Every minute they keep reading you MS is a huge compliment. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Editors have sales targets to meet. If they spend time critiquing your work, that is because they think it shows economic potential. Every critique they make, however negative, is therefore also a huge compliment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Editors are not, generally, literary scholars. Their critiques are reactions in the moment to what they are reading. The real problem with the MS may lie earlier, or may lie in the overall structure. The place where the shoes pinch is not always the place where the design of the shoe is faulty. Fixing the sentences they commented on is probably not going to fix the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The editor no doubt had a love of books and of stories, but in the end they are looking for product to fill a sales channel. In the end, their critiques are about how well you MS would fill the sales channel they are responsible for filling. In my case, I think the real problem was that my book looked like it would fit in a sales channel that was then very popular, but it didn't actually do so, because it was not designed to do so. That is not really a problem you can fix. You can't turn a shoe into a hat just because it has been picked up by accident by a hat buyer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Beta readers are congenitally encouraging. They value the relationship and they don't want to be responsible for upsetting you. Their feedback is almost invariably too kind. Plus, beta readers are not trying to fill a sales channel and don't bring that perspective to their analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recommendations: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you were asked to correct and resubmit, do so. Such chances don't come along every day. But don't be in too much of a rush. Publishing is a slow business. Take the time your need. If you weren't asked to resubmit, that avenue is almost certainly closed. (Though some people do have the chutzpah to find a way through locked doors.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If not, step back. Spend the time to figure out what got you that far, and what kept you from getting further. Depending on the nature of the problem, you might conclude that this is the book to throw away and start work on a new one.  Or you might see the way to make significant improvements. If so, make them. But try to get some perspective and understanding first, rather than just hacking away. Maybe go back and read a bunch of books in the genre and try to figure out what they have that your book does not. And remember that the answer to that may be mundane and have little to do with quality or art. Publishing is a business and we always have to understand it that way. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T17:35:22.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27879" CreationDate="2017-05-03T18:29:09.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The traditional &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_%28narrative%29#Man_against_nature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;man vs nature&quot;&lt;/a&gt; plotline is animated by the struggle of a person or group of people against an implacable, depersonalized force of nature.  The flood, or tornado,or hailstorm, or fire can't be reasoned against, it isn't out to get the protagonists, and it cares neither if they live or die.  This typically leads to a very different kind of story than one with a human antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible, however, to have a book with a human antagonist, but a plotline that is closer to the &quot;man vs nature&quot; archetype.  There is no reasoning with this antagonist, he or she is implacable, relentless but possibly disinterested (not personally invested in the outcome).  There is no meaningful relationship between the protagonist and the antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inspector Javert in &lt;em&gt;Les Miserables&lt;/em&gt; and the biker from hell in &lt;em&gt;Raising Arizona&lt;/em&gt; are two figures that come to mind in this light.  Both are clearly human beings that do interact with the protagonists at various points, but in the context of the structure of the plotlines, they arguably operate more as &quot;forces of nature.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T18:29:09.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27866" CreationDate="2017-05-03T19:39:47.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've bought a few books for young cousins that are collections of stories to be read around the year... or simply anthologies of stories under a certain theme (princesses, giants, whatever). Parents like it because one book will work for many nights and many stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to present your objective for the story in the title, eg. The 1001 nights bedtime story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then clearly state that each chapter is for one night (and give it an ending that isn't a real cliffhanger - no one is going to leave the chapter for the next day if it's a real cliffhanger). You could have an entire page in between chapters with a picture of what happened in the chapter that has just ended to add a physical barried in between chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to make it work would be if each chapter is a one-day adventure, so you could tell the child this is what happened to [protagonist] today. I can't wait to see what will happen tomorrow, can you? Well, we won't know till tomorrow night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T19:39:47.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6149" CreationDate="2017-05-03T21:24:31.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love to hear of people writing their autobiographies! It's a wonderful opportunity to reflect on one's life and put your one, unique story out into the world. I agree with some of the above advice--just start writing! Start with the most memorable, compelling stories of your life and go from there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's some great advice about starting your autobiography here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.yourstorysimply.com/how-to-start-an-autobiography/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.yourstorysimply.com/how-to-start-an-autobiography/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And some advice about structuring it, down the road here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.yourstorysimply.com/autobiography-structure/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.yourstorysimply.com/autobiography-structure/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps you and any other recent readers looking to start their own autobiographies! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24782" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T21:24:31.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12453" CreationDate="2017-05-03T23:04:11.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take small bites.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Try writing 100 words a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24679" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T23:04:11.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16059" CreationDate="2017-05-03T23:07:15.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I pretend that someone else wrote the first draft and it's my job to fix it. That gives me the emotional distance I need. Probably because I like to point out where other people went wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24679" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T23:07:15.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27894" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27896" CreationDate="2017-05-04T05:43:30.240" Score="1" ViewCount="83" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering to write a handbook on a certain subject. I will use concepts and methods used in other books to write this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, nearly 80% content will come from other books which are bestsellers in this field. I will just tweak the content to explain concepts in more understandable form. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will make paperback and ebook available for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is should I ask permission from publications I am referencing this book from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24784" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T20:23:19.133" Title="Using reference books for free handbook" Tags="|self-publishing|book|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27449" CreationDate="2017-05-04T09:19:06.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;@EFF_FireFly suggested goor resources but I'd like to add a few tidbits of my own, since I have written a psycopathic character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, being a psycopath doesn't mean you have to enjoy cruelty or have sadistic tendencies. It just means you don't have empathy for others and have difficulty understanding emotions, while at the same time believing oneself to be superior to the rest. I saw a documentary on TV that pointed out that the idea that most psychos are criminals is probably biased since most studies are done with criminals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, I have worked under a boss who was most likely a psychopath in everything except (as far as I know) criminal activities. He had a goal and nothing could stand in his way. He didn't have the slightest sign of empathy and he was an expert manipulator. However, when pressed to do so, he could act socially and express emotions (though he couldn't fake feeling them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to your character, let me flesh out (you say 'motherly' so I'm going with female) a possible scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a baby and a toddler, she would either ignore or just look uninterested when other babies/toddlers cried. While growing, her mother noticed that she wouldn't care about other people's sorrows but thought she was just too young to understand the situations. In order to help her, her mother got into the habit of saying 'imagine that happened to you, how would you feel?'. That way, she learnt to react appropriately not because she felt for the other person but because she knew how she would feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was this cousin she was really close to because it was fun and exciting to be with her. He died in an accident and her reaction was 'that sucks; I'm going to miss going out with her' and starts looking for a 'night-out' replacement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then she fell in love (a lot of psychos can feel emotion, even if some can't). Luckily, he ended up realising he should love her too, though she had to work hard at making his girlfriends understand they were with the wrong person. She would do anything for him. Then they decided to adopt. She couldn't really care much about the kid but he was passionate about the idea and she decided she would make him happy and concede that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few months later, she started realising she felt the kid as part of her... turf, for lack of a better word. An attack on the child, was an attack on her. Any such attacker became an enemy to annihilate (not physically, though; just socially).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as the child grows, they realise they must obey their fostermother because to do otherwise is... unhealthy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now imagine there's a gang that becomes interested in the child-become-teenager. There's a life-threatening situation and something clicks inside her. Socially anihilation is off the table; it must be physical. And any death must act as a warning so that no one else will try to threaten &lt;em&gt;her&lt;/em&gt; family again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But all those atrocities are done with the best of intentions: rid the neighbourhood of a gang problem and keep her family safe. What is not to like about this fostermother that showers her family with love while viciously destroying any dangers to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: she does gory stuff (which you can hint at rather than show) but she does it with the best intentions: protect herself and her loved ones (what's love anyway? isn't it also saying these people are &lt;em&gt;mine&lt;/em&gt; and to attack them is to attack &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt;?). Even if the reader disagrees with how she goes about it, if you can protray it in a good-intention light, you can make her a likeable character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T09:19:06.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27894" CreationDate="2017-05-04T11:46:47.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no copyright on ideas. You can retell the ideas from other books freely, as long as you are actually creating new words to describe those ideas from scratch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are taking chunks of text from other books and editing them for clarity, on the other hand, you would need permission, and you almost certainly won't be granted it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T11:46:47.030" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27904" CreationDate="2017-05-04T12:44:10.207" Score="1" ViewCount="334" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my story, there is a group of four characters that are called upon a classic macguffin hunt.  The characters know &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; the macguffin is important, but they do not know all the details as &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it is important.  I want to provide that info to my readers, but while writing in third person limited, I'm not sure how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a generic answer would be better to help others, but read on for my particular case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To draw a parallel to something in the real world, consider Tabasco brand sauce.  Now, almost anyone can cultivate peppers almost anywhere and use them to make a hot sauce.  But only if those peppers are that one particular genetic strain, and only if they are grown on Avery Island in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, can the sauce made from those peppers carry the name Tabasco.  There is something about the soil or the weather or whatever, that gives those peppers their unique blend of heat and flavor that no other hot sauce can replicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my fictional world, this certain vegetable can also be grown almost anywhere by almost anyone.  It can be used to add a pleasant flavor to tea, and also added during fermentation to make a nice liquour.  But if you use &quot;special&quot; vegetable, that tea can treat a disease, and when special vegetable is used in the cool quaff, it adds an extra kick the regular version just can't replicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I am the author, I know that this is because special vegetable grows on a particular cluster of islands.  These islands are of volcanic origin, and located within a equatorial zone.  An ocean current brings a stable climate, regular rains, and steady supply of nutrients.  A unique crab lives there, and its burrowing keeps the soil turned over just so.  Finally, sea birds in the area go out and eat a unique blend of fish during the day, coming back at night to (um, er) fertilize the special vegetables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characters know about the medicinal tea and the potent potable, and they know about the existence of these islands.  They do not know any of the rest.  I believe it help my readers understand the magnitude of the quest if they knew the details.  I can't write a dialog where one character explains to another, nor do I want to break in with a sudden paragraph of omniscient narrator, then jump back to a character's point of view.  I can't find any way to do this that doesn't seem really jarring, unrealistic, nor break the flow of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12732" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T00:24:21.673" Title="How to work in a piece of information that no MC knows, when writing in 3PLtd?" Tags="|style|narrative|third-person|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27898" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-04T13:12:23.820" Score="5" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to to reference the report &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303221742_What_leads_developers_towards_the_choice_of_a_JavaScript_framework&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;What leads developers towards the choice of a JavaScript framework?&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A. Pano, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;D. Graziotin, University of Stuttgart&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;P. Abrahamsson, Norwegian University of Science and Technology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how I would reference this using Vancouver notation, since the authors are from different universities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is somethings like this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A. Pano, D. Graziotin, P. Abrahamsson, “What leads developers towards the choice of a JavaScript framework?”, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano / University of Stuttgart / Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2016, 49 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the guide from my university mentions that there should be a &quot;report number&quot; (report code?) in the reference for reports from universities, but I can't find any such number in the referenced report. What is this number, and is it mandatory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24786" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-04T21:30:14.990" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T15:45:15.160" Title="How to reference a report from multiple universities using Vancouver style?" Tags="|academic-writing|citations|vancouver-system|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26247" CreationDate="2017-05-04T13:50:44.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has come up for me with things like consistent spelling of made up names (Baelish, Balish) or placeholder ones (SoAndSo1, OrbThingy). I think everyone else has already covered options for text you've already written. For replacements as you type:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Did you forget what you named someone or something or how you spelled it?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Substitution text (across all projects) aka Auto-Correct&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Options-&gt;Corrections-&gt;'Edit Substitutions'&#xA;This may work well in your case as you are using a tag it can't mistake for a normal word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hit the '+' button on the 'Substitutions' dialogue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enter '{char1}' in the 'Replace' field &amp;amp; 'Joe' in the 'With' field.&#xA;Or 'SoAndSo1'-&gt;'Fred'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simpler token like 'char/' works too. The backslash is so that 'chart' doesn't become 'Joet'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do this for long or awkward phrases too ('dna/' -&gt; 'deoxyribonucleic acid').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again this will perform the substitution across all projects. You can change it for each story or try something like below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Did you name someone something long or awkward to type?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Auto-Complete List (project specific)&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Options-&gt;Corrections-&gt;'Suggest completions as you type' to enable it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is different from the Auto-correct feature. Think word completion. Because this is a complete not a replace you it won't work with random tags or variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Under the Project Menu (Windows shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+4) to add to&#xA;the word list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you write, any time you type the first few letters, it pops up a&#xA;list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hit enter to accept or else keep typing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works best for long words or phrases (deoxyribonucleic acid) or words with tricky spellings or diacrtics (Tenochtitlán) rather than a tag. Any text you don't want to type out, really (Paula, Frederick) or your tag ({char1}).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevechatterton.com/working-faster-in-scrivener-with-auto-complete-list.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.stevechatterton.com/working-faster-in-scrivener-with-auto-complete-list.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevechatterton.com/working-faster-in-scrivener-with-additional-substitutions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.stevechatterton.com/working-faster-in-scrivener-with-additional-substitutions.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24785" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T13:50:44.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27897" CreationDate="2017-05-04T14:03:56.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first thought would be to add someone who farms these special vegetables as a character in a subplot, giving you all sorts of ways to work in the key information. You would still have to break the flow of the main storyline occasionally for these interludes, but the reader would readily forgive you if the farming subplot is interesting in its own right. As long as you have a good way to tie the farming character to the main storyline as the quest progresses, I think it would work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21329" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T14:03:56.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27901" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-04T14:06:09.873" Score="1" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there specific tricks, mechanisms or devices to offer a shortcut to a level of civilisation without confusing the reader? I'm using a Ancient Rome-like country but don't want to base the plot in Rome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22913" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T14:20:39.330" Title="Alt History - how do I base an empire on Rome but demonstrate quickly the difference whilst keeping the familiarity?" Tags="|world-building|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-05-08T21:17:30.790" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27901" CreationDate="2017-05-04T14:20:39.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Roman Empire was very large, and had many regional differences (which persisted for a long time). Consider the possibility of using a fictional location in the actual Roman Empire. Hardly any readers would know whether the events and incidents of daily life were historically compatible, or not. I am assuming that your story does not involve extraterrestrials or pterodactyls or wizards, or anything else that was definitely not historical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a series of fiction, vaguely along the lines of detective novels, set in the height of the Roman Empire. I read one, but cannot recall the author. Actual places and famous persons of the time are mentioned. Daily incidents, and plot events, sound plausible for the era. But I have no idea whether the locals actually lived that way, or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T14:20:39.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27897" CreationDate="2017-05-04T14:28:44.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the possibility of a Prologue, in which someone other than the (subsequent) narrator lays down the essentials. If you do this, be careful with your writing style, since many prospective readers will simply glance at the Prologue before deciding whether to read the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: Agatha Christie's &lt;em&gt;Murder on the Orient Express&lt;/em&gt;. In the original book, in real time, Hercule Poirot discovers a small piece of evidence. His own knowledge leads him to a theory, based on a news event that occurred long ago and far away. We learn about it later in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the movie version, there is a Prologue, in which we are at the time and place of that news event. Then, after that fades, we go to the Orient Express.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastEditorDisplayName="user23046" LastEditDate="2017-05-08T00:24:21.673" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T00:24:21.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27897" CreationDate="2017-05-04T14:35:34.900" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that terms like &quot;third person limited&quot; are not meant to be jails. They are descriptive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it works for your story to have one (or a handful) of scenes outside your protagonists' viewpoint, go right ahead and do it. No editor will break down your door with an giant eraser to make you change anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Harry Potter series is told from Harry's POV, &lt;em&gt;except&lt;/em&gt; two opening chapters (books 1 and 6, IIRC) which are just third-person limited, focusing on other people. That doesn't negate the rest of the tale. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of flow, you can present it as a short chapter, an interlude, a prologue, or some other form of break so the reader knows that the &quot;camera&quot; is moving outside what's been presented before, and this is something special happening at the same time somewhere else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T14:35:34.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27897" CreationDate="2017-05-04T14:41:48.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need to convey specific information to the reader without resorting to an omniscient info-dump while staying in a third person POV your choices are indeed limited (pun intended).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your MC can either discover that particular piece of information through their action (find what seems to be the McGuffin and see that it does not work as expected, so it is not the real one; find a book, a letter, a decaying ancient scroll with some partial info, etc.) or be told about it by another character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are the devices at your disposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must add though, that a conversation being held only to deliver the info &lt;em&gt;is the same info-dump&lt;/em&gt;, only from a different narrator(s), and yes, it will be hard to make it sound natural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What might work, however, is &lt;em&gt;prioritizing&lt;/em&gt; what exactly your readers must know so the story can proceed without breaking pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it the dietary preferences of the particular breed of seagulls, pooping over the crop, or the fact that &lt;em&gt;there is only one place the planet, where it grows&lt;/em&gt;, which is more important to your plot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wager it's the latter--you cannot go on a quest if you do not know where to go. The rest of your worldbuilding can stay undiscovered. While it is very tempting to introduce it to the reader in its wonderful entirety, trust me, the readers do not care about crabs, birds, and how well done the last night honey-glazed bear steak was. They care about the story and not the recipes of all the food your characters eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Break the info into pieces, and let your character(s) discover &lt;em&gt;the important ones only&lt;/em&gt; as your story unfolds. Keep the rest and stick them in when the moment is right. Or never.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-05-05T03:24:46.523" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T03:24:46.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24974" CreationDate="2017-05-04T15:30:10.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no set term for what you are describing, but it is often referred to as shifting POV (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://thestorydepartment.com/shifting-pov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post from thestorydepartment.com&lt;/a&gt;) or third person multiple POV (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/academy/using-third-person-multiple-pov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this lesson from the Scribophile writing academy&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T15:30:10.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27897" CreationDate="2017-05-04T17:10:37.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really wish we could get rid of the current terminology for describing point of view. First person and third person are not points of view. They are simply grammatical persons. Point of view is the angle or viewpoint from which a scene is described. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be much more helpful if we used terms like involved and detached to describe point of view. A involved point of view in one in which the action is described from the point of view of someone in the middle of that action. A detached point of view is one in which the action is described from the point of view of someone standing aside and watching the action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both detached and involved points of view can be written in third person or first person. Even if the first person narrative is written (putatively, of course, not actually) but the person involved in the action, they can still describe the action from a detached point of view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, indeed, after we have been involved in some pieces of action, we step back and try to make sense of it from a detached point of view, because action in the moment is confusing. Our experience and our memories are actually formed more by reflection and reconstruction of the event than by blow by blow recall of the stream of events. So we adopt a more or less detached point of view even in remembering the things we have experienced, let alone in reporting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a person observing and narrating a scene from a detached point of view is able to move around and see the scene from different angles. With the privilege of the creator, the narrator has the ability to shift that detached point of view into the head of the character when they want to. Properly understood, this is not a switch to an involved POV, it is a detached observer temporarily adopting a point of view within the skull of the character. This is actually one of the great privileges and glories of the novel form, something neither the stage or the screen can accomplish.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it this way and the difficulty disappears. You are writing from a detached point of view (the person you are writing in is irrelevant) and you are sometimes moving that point of view into the skull of a character and sometimes out of it. This is all completely legitimate and countless examples of it can be found in literature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it is still possible to do it badly. But doing badly does not mean that you violated some rule of writing. It just means you did it badly. The cure is to do it well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T17:10:37.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25998" CreationDate="2017-05-05T01:32:08.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must agree with @Alexander: one should worry about major plot points, and minor ones too, since the beginning. (Unless you're a radical pantser and embrace remaking your first draft completely.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That having been said, I think it completely appropriate for the major plot point to reveal itself late on, however that means (for me) that either the first book (if it's a trilogy) or the first part of the book was mostly about a major subplot that set the stage for the main plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, imagine one wants to write about the love story between A and B. Only that love story is going to be driven to a tragic conclusion because A was first involved with Z. Therefore, I start with Z and A getting together and treat that as if it were the main plot. Problems between Z and A slowly pop up and, as they both try to work them out, B enters the stage and puts an end to the first relationship. Now the real love story can take off and soar into tragedy while the readers can easily see how Z is behind it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T01:32:08.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18800" CreationDate="2017-05-05T01:56:29.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has been said, the question isn't whether one should (or should not) kill a main character, it's 'what is the point of such a death?'. If it's pointless, don't; if it has a good reason (one can sometimes have a bad reason to do it), then by all means, do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason you gave for killing him was...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the reader will get what they may want: the character's death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I wouldn't say that's a good reason. Don't give the readers what you think they may want; give them what makes sense within the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what would be a good reason to kill off the character? Some possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the character has no redemption and the final punishment is death (because there's no other way to stop him)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the character realises his evil ways and atones (willingly or not) for it with his own death&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T01:56:29.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27910" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28323" CreationDate="2017-05-05T12:20:35.290" Score="2" ViewCount="338" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most stories carry some element of realisation. Whether that realisation is the best sort of fireball for defeating the Dark Overlord, or how I can lessen my pride to make my marriage work, the characters change and learn as the plot progresses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to think of the learning process, and by extension story structure, as occurring in three stages. But the way the stages are currently presented always seems to result in a downer ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A well-known three part story is as below (feel free to decide yourself what it is &quot;I know&quot; about)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I know :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't know :(&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I know that I don't know :|&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example (about swordfights)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am the best swordsman in my village. I am the best swordsman :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wow! All these swordsmen outside my village are super strong. I am the worst swordsman :(&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Actually they are not naturally talented. They put in an awful lot of hard work every day to get strong as they are. :|&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example (about media cynicism)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The news is a reliable source of information about recent events. You can learn what's going on in the world. The news is the best :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are many kinds of misdirection on the news. Some things are true but not &quot;new&quot;s. Other genuine news is lied about, misrepresented, or not reported at all. Every commentator is pushing their own agenda. No one is interested in candid discussion or objective fact. The news is the worst :(&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can still learn from the news. You just cannot take what is said at face value. Yes people are lying but they are not doing it by conscious decision. And white lies need not be a bad thing. We tell each other white lies every day. Some of your closest friendships only work because of what you omit to tell each other. On top of that the idea of presenting something 100% objective simply doesn't exist. So the problem is not solely with the news. :|&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me the third parts all sound like downer endings. let's look at the last one since it has more meat. What makes this a downer ending?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) &quot;Our closest friendships&quot; are a Good Thing and they got corrupted by the Bad Thing &quot;Lies&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) Our goal was objectivity and truth. But we can never attain it because it has stopped existing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(c) The problem is not solely with the news. That means it's bigger than we thought!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to make these stories sound less hopeless. If I can do that I can probably adapt the idea to longer and more complex ones. But for now all I can see is. . . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here's a good thing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here's a bad thing right next to it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turns out the good thing was never real to begin with&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you find the bright side of a good thing turning out to be a bad thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; One can certainly argue that the part 3s are neither positive or negative, neither hopeful or hopeless. I probably agree with you. But in that case I think they should be about 75% hopeful to make up for the 100% hopeless of the part 2. Especially since (in these stories at least) the 100% hopeful part 1. is presented as the normal. It is our starting point. Thus the 'plot' only really begins once the 2. starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24792" LastEditorUserId="24792" LastEditDate="2017-05-05T15:30:16.193" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T15:03:52.127" Title="How can I make the final realisation less depressing?" Tags="|structure|theme|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27911" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27912" CreationDate="2017-05-05T13:14:28.847" Score="2" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two characters near the beginning of my story, who are brother and sister. I want the reader to know right away, as the two are talking (they are alone), that they are brother and sister, but I'm not sure how to do this naturally without it coming across as forced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would two siblings address each other in a way it would automatically reveal their relationship? Could I write something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Brother... are you sure we're on the right path?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is that too &quot;unnatural&quot;? Would most siblings refer to each other by name? And to make the answers more universally helpful: what about other types of relationships (married, friends, associate)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23083" LastEditorUserId="23253" LastEditDate="2019-05-26T12:09:14.133" LastActivityDate="2019-05-26T12:09:14.133" Title="How to casually reveal the relationship of two recently introduced characters?" Tags="|character-development|relationships|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27911" CreationDate="2017-05-05T13:33:27.563" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;All you have to do is include the word &quot;mum&quot; or &quot;dad&quot; somewhere in the conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Dad bought another car.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Again? What's wrong with the last one?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She grinned. &quot;It didn't sufficiently misrepresend his dwindling masculinity&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Something like &quot;She looked at her brother&quot; doesn't have to sound forced. Think it of as a weaker version of &quot;She couldn't believe her own brother just said/did that&quot;. If the brother does something unexpected first then this is appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24792" LastEditorUserId="24792" LastEditDate="2017-05-08T09:13:15.910" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T09:13:15.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27910" CreationDate="2017-05-05T13:48:13.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're missing item 4, or 3a: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Here's another Good Thing which will allow us to win!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your swordfighting example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can put in the same kind of work they do and &lt;em&gt;become&lt;/em&gt; as good as they are!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the news:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There may never be a 100% objective news outlet, but I can study and compare, and do my research, until I can find a handful of reasonably reliable news sources, and remember what their blind spots are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because the original Good Thing isn't as pure as the driven snow doesn't mean it's now 100% a Bad Thing, or that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; Good Things are now corrupted. And sometimes you can still win with the 99 &lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt;/&lt;sub&gt;100&lt;/sub&gt; percent pure thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &quot;downer ending&quot; is the Fall from Innocence. This is a classic story arc. If you don't want a sad ending, then your Hero has to &lt;em&gt;learn&lt;/em&gt; from the Fall and turn the Experience into Wisdom. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;, the Witch-King of Angmar is imagined to be undefeatable because Glorfindel once prophesied that &quot;he could be killed by no man.&quot; So everyone is very depressed because it seems this Nazgûl can't be beaten. Except that &quot;man&quot; was very literal. It didn't mean &lt;em&gt;person.&lt;/em&gt; It didn't mean &lt;em&gt;anyone from the race of humans.&lt;/em&gt; So the two beings which took him down were Pippin, a hobbit (not a human), and Éowyn, a woman. There's your &quot;downer&quot; being overturned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T13:48:13.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27911" CreationDate="2017-05-05T15:09:56.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While not all siblings refer to their siblingness, it's a common enough thing to let you work something in that will sound natural:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not the first time I've wished I'd gained a little sister instead of a little brother!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wow, you look so much like Mum with your hair that way&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I talked to Dad about next week, and ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you sure we're related? Sometimes I can't even believe you're my brother&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell that new girl that if she breaks your heart I'll be all over her in full big-sister mode!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. While some of my siblings do call me by a sibling moniker (&amp;quot;Hi, big sis, how's it going?&amp;quot;) most don't and I think it's the least natural approach to showing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing that, just give one of them a chance to talk about the other with someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steve's phone rang. &amp;quot;Can I call you back? I'm visiting my sister at the moment.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi Jane, have you met my sister, Elaine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lady at the store assured me that little sisters love it when their big brothers bring them chocolate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15601" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T15:09:56.683" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27910" CreationDate="2017-05-05T15:45:20.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good story creates an experience. The reader draws their own conclusions and has their own emotional reactions to the experience it provided. Some will therefore find your ending more of a downer than others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we want from stories is not necessarily uplift. It can be understanding. It can be acceptance. Understanding and acceptance of life's limitations can be far more satisfying than a false or facile hope that we know to be false. Indeed, the facile hope can mock the understanding and undermine the acceptance, making us actually feel worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, whatever your subject and your theme is it better to be truthful about them that to be fatuously optimistic. Any good feeling that result from false optimism is brittle, and when it breaks we can plunge into despair. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T15:45:20.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27911" CreationDate="2017-05-05T15:53:37.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this is crushing simple. You tell us that they are brother and sister.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Pass the butter,&quot; Pamela said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Get it yourself,&quot; her brother replied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't try to slip information into dialog that naturally and properly belongs in narration. It will always sound forced and unnatural and there is no earthly reason to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are doing this in service of &quot;show don't tell&quot;, learn a new rule: Show when appropriate. Tell when appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a screenplay, this would be a genuine problem. One of the advantages of the novel format is that you don't have to jump through hoops to convey these simple pieces of information. Take advantage of the liberty that the form gives you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T15:53:37.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27917" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-05T16:02:33.070" Score="2" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write a B.Sc. thesis in google docs. They don't have a good way for references. They have something called citations which is not good for thesis. I've done my bibliography the IEEE way (IIUC) and use brackets like [x] for a reference from the bibliography. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A security problem with hardware peripherals is that an operating&#xA;  system usually trusts a connected hardware peripheral that in practice&#xA;  can be used for abuse such as data theft or computer hijacking [7].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it is cumbersome to change the whole list if I insert an alphabetical reference in the middle or in the beginning, then I must rearrange all my references in the whole text and there is no automation in google docs to do it. Should I change to another system that can handle references or is there any good way to achieve what I'm trying to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24594" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-28T11:52:45.097" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T18:47:46.067" Title="Preferred way of handling bibliography in academic writing" Tags="|technique|academic-writing|citations|software|tools|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27918" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-05T16:42:46.060" Score="11" ViewCount="4238" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am beginning to write original novels after writing fanfictions and posting them online for about six years. My usual process is: write chapter, edit chapter, post chapter, repeat. This means that once I reach the end, there is very little editing left to do (I think!) because each chapter is edited as I write it. At the end I do an overall edit of the story as a whole, but it's often a very short phase. I usually have a good outline before I begin and the stories aren't very complicated, so I've never had any consistency issues using this method and have never had to rewrite the entire thing. My works vary in length, some novel-length (90,000 - 150,000 words) and some more like novellas (~30,000 words). So far this technique has worked fine for both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm avoiding this technique for the new stories I'm writing because I think that it would improve my writing to have a more obvious editing phase and draft/rewrite process. I also think it's potentially disastrous if huge edits &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; needed at the end because I'll end up being too attached to the bits that need to be scrapped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to find some middle ground, but not sure if I should just scrap this method entirely. In an attempt to break the habit, I completed NanoWrimo last year, but now the rewrite process seems so colossal that I just can't bear to go back to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if this edit-as-you-go method is a common way to write (from reading other questions and answers on here, it doesn't seem to be)?  Is it &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; to be avoided, and why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24794" LastEditorUserId="24473" LastEditDate="2017-05-05T20:07:06.787" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T04:48:26.460" Title="Is it a bad idea to write and edit chapter by chapter?" Tags="|fiction|editing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27918" CreationDate="2017-05-05T17:13:02.947" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Writer Preference&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find that a lot of the 'rules' of writing can be boiled down to what works for you. There are different ways to write. When giving advice, writers tend to assume you write the way they do, and offer rules for that method. Those 'rules' might work for them, but not for you. So it always comes down to writer preference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, some writers (in my opinion, most) write on the fly. I call these writers discovery writers, or pantsers (as they write 'by the seat of their pants'). They get a general direction for the story, and then write it out. They wait a week, scrap everything they didn't like, and write it again. Repeat a few times, edit, and you have a novel (disclaimer: highly simplified). These people don't want to edit chapter by chapter, and neither should they. It interrupts the flow of writing. It removes them from the story. That can be disastrous for a writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different kind of writer plans out their novel extensively beforehand. They get a very detailed outline, they develop their characters, they work on the plot, and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; they start writing. I call these writers plotters, and it sounds like you might be one to some extent. I am as well. For plotters, it can be a good idea to edit chapter by chapter, making sure everything is fitting where you know it should go. Make sure you included everything in chapter B that you needed. If you find the flow of the story is going somewhere else and you like the direction it's taking, you might want to go back to your outline and see if you should rework some things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, it simply comes down to what works for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will say that you should always go through the whole thing when it's written, at least once. No matter how simple the story, you will find things that need some fine-tuning. Bits of dialogue won't match up, you'll find loose ends you didn't realize were there, and sometimes facts will outright contradict each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Plotter vs. Pantser&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a plotter (and I suspect you are), then do not assume you need to write the drafts of a pantser. Writing drafts is an automatic part of writing for a lot of people, but plotters are different. When we create an outline and go over and over it, we are creating a very rough draft. The more times we go through it and tweak things, the more we are narrowing down those first few drafts. When we finally start writing, we have a very good idea of where we are headed and how to get there. The most rewriting you will have to do is removing/adding/redoing a few chapters. But not the whole thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is simple. When a pantser writes, they have only a very general idea of the story. They write to &lt;em&gt;discover&lt;/em&gt; the story (hence the term discovery writer). Their first few drafts are there simply to figure out the plot, get familiar with the characters, and determine motivations and such. As a plotter, you've already done this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, if you feel you need to rewrite the whole thing, do not hesitate to do so. There is always going to be a difference between how things play out in your head, and how they actually happen on paper. It could very well be that you have to redo the outline, and then rewrite the whole thing. But this is rare. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final note: you mentioned that you can get too attached to your writing. That &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; something that you need to overcome. You need to practice looking at your writing objectively, and knowing which parts are genuinely helping the story, and which parts you just want to keep around because you like them. Fearlessly cut what you have to, and fearlessly keep what helps the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it helps, tell yourself that when your novel is published and successful, you can release the cut parts to your avid fans. I do it (the telling, not the releasing that is), and it hasn't failed so far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck in your endeavors! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T17:13:02.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27918" CreationDate="2017-05-05T17:47:22.310" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only bad ideas are the ones which stop you from finishing the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write and edit if you like. Write halfway and edit. Write the whole thing blindfolded. Write only at night, or only during a full moon. Write in the morning and edit in the evening, or vice-versa. There are no restrictions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the thought of editing an entire book at once makes you panic, but editing one chapter at a time is easy, congratulations! You have found the method which works for you. Stick to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T17:47:22.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27918" CreationDate="2017-05-05T18:22:19.000" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story is an experience, but it is an experience in which all the threads of that experience point at something, like the pattern the iron filings assume around the head of a magnet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a very strong sense of how the magnetic fields of your story align, then I think you are in a position to write each chapter and immediately edit it to tweak its alignment to the pattern that is clearly in your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you as yet have only a vague idea of how the overall magnetic field of your story is shaped, then I suspect there will be little value in tweaking each chapter as you write it. You won't have any strong sense of what you are aligning it to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This distinction is not the plotter/pantser distinction that Thomas describes. Someone in search of the magnetic field of their story could search for it by exploring the terrain in detail by writing chapters or they could do it by attempting to make a map of the terrain in the form of an outline. Either way, they are searching for the magnetic field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that in some pieces of writing (and I think this applies to fiction and nonfiction alike) the magnetic field of the piece is clear to me from the start, and for other pieces it may take many drafts before I find it. Thus I think a chapter by chapter edit may make sense for one piece, where the magnetic field is clear, and make no sense at all when it is not. When it is not, it makes more sense to hack away at the writing -- or even to switch back and forth from outlining to writing -- until you start to feel the pull of the magnetic field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I don't think this is inherently about the habits of different writers, I think it is about the nature of different ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-05-05T18:26:47.487" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T18:26:47.487" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27918" CreationDate="2017-05-05T18:37:31.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was wondering if this edit-as-you-go method is a common way to write (from reading other questions and answers on here, it doesn't seem to be)? Is it definitely to be avoided, and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write fanfic (and originals) too and I also edit in a similar way. It's true: it's not common. In fact, I feel pretty lonely in my approach. But it works for me, so I'm not thinking of abandoning it anytime soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if you feel comfortable with that approach, don't change it (which doesn't mean you can't try a different approach to see if you're even more comfortable with it). Do try to perfect your approach though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me present my approach so you can see whether you identify yourself with it and whether it can give you ideas to perfect your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a perfectionist and I cannot move on to the next chapter until I feel that what I have has the right tone, that the plot is moving in a tight rhythm and that the characters are behaving and evolving realistically. I don't know if that's why you edit chapter by chapter but, for me, if I don't go over the chapter and look for potential problems and fix them, the idea that I might be writing the new chapter in a wrong direction actually brings on a writer's block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I write fanfiction, I do not upload any chapters until the entire story is written, though. That way I can always go back and further adjust little problems I hadn't yet noticed and, if need be, I can even decide to scrap an entire chapter. Moreover, as new ideas develop, I can go back and add foreshadowing (eg. I decide later on a character has a nervous tick, so I can go back and add the gesture in previous chapters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advise is for you to keep the approach of 'write chapter' &gt; 'edit chapter', but as you move on to new chapters do not think you can't go back and further edit them. The first edit is usually making sure the foundation for the next chapter is as stable as possible by getting rid of big problems. A later edit is usually getting rid of small problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also advise you to get a thick skin: you do need to be able to scrap unnecessary events if they do not advance the story or if they aren't natural developements (it may be cute for the shy girl to explode and passionately say everything she's thinking to her crush only to revert to type the next day but... is that really likely? Perhaps the explosion should be toned down to a one sentence slip that leaves her embarrassed to death). Keep them on a 'scrapped folder' (I used to do it &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the time) so that you don't have to agonise over destroying something you enjoy reading. In time, it becomes easier and we start saving less of the scrapped material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important particularity of my approach is that, as I move on to chapter 8, I'm still going back to re-read chapters 2 and 3 and so on. If I start getting fed up with something, it's because it's not quite right and needs to be fixed. You see, reading an event over and over kills the excitement of 'this is so cool' and then you can see the flaws underneath. This 'second editing' is when I sometimes scrap an entire chapter and make sure that the new version makes a better bridge between the previous and the following one. Or it's when I scrap a few chapters in a row. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding this step to your own process may help improving your stories without waiting to get to the last chapter to go back for a massive rewrite. If you rewrite half-way, rather than at the end, you still have that urge to end the story to help you make it through the rewrite. Also, if you find the problem early on, you'll have less to rewrite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you cannot get hung up on re-reading past chapters. You've written chapter 12, you've edited it. Now plan the next chapter and write it. When it's over go back to chapter 8 and read them all in one go till chapter 13. Edit it. Plan the next chapter and write it. And so on till it's all done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you start getting doubts about the story, don't get into re-reading it over and over. Stop and make diagrams, plot graphics, evaluate how the characters are growing, verify if plot and subplots are well balanced, make sure the archs are well drawn out, check the timeline, make sure everyone has the right motivation. But do it on the side in order to get away from the written part and identify the problem. Once you've identified it, go back and rewrite what needs to be rewritten to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I've given you ideas to develop your own method. Good writings!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T18:37:31.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27923" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-05T19:10:24.780" Score="6" ViewCount="729" Body="&lt;p&gt;In movies and TV shows and the like, there are often details that the writers work in that are hard to catch at first sight, but can be found if you happen to look for those details. For example, Character N always wears a necklace as it was a gift from his brother, but during the last few episodes (or minutes, or movies, etc.) he hasn't been wearing it because he got in a toxic fight with his brother and none of the other characters notice it until much later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to work something in that the average reader might not notice while reading through unless they were specifically looking for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10703" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-05-05T21:40:02.757" LastActivityDate="2017-05-13T00:10:06.493" Title="How to write hidden details" Tags="|fiction|technique|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27923" CreationDate="2017-05-05T19:44:55.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a possible way forward.  I don't often encourage subtleties like this, because readers may miss them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The next day Charlie came into the office wearing that big stupid&#xA;  polka dotted bow tie...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 2x&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Charlie walked across the dance floor and introduced himself to the&#xA;  brunette.   &quot;Nice tie,&quot; she said.  &quot;I always go for a guy who wears&#xA;  polka dots.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 3x&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Charlie slammed on the brakes and screamed as his 2012 BMW X2 slammed&#xA;  into the pole.  The air bag exploded in his face and his horn blared. &#xA;  He struggled to keep consciousness, opened the door and fell out into&#xA;  the ditch.  His eyes blurred and he tried to breathe.  He pulled at&#xA;  the bow tie trying to get air. Charlie stumbled out of the &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;much later in the story...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 4x&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Charlie showed up outside the city meeting.  Something was different&#xA;  about him.  He was angry and disheveled.  He went to the back of his&#xA;  BMW X2 popped open the hatch and pulled out a baseball bat.  &quot;Who says&#xA;  you can't fight city hall,&quot; he muttered under his breath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scene 5x&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Charlie woke up inside the jail cell with the foul smell of burning&#xA;  hair filling his nostrils.  &quot;What?&quot; He rubbed his head and reached for&#xA;  his collar.  &quot;What's going on?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stopped mentioning the bow tie. Then I have him grab for his collar. You could do this that subtly, but you better then tell your readers exactly what is happening.  Readers may miss it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Always Mention The McGuffin&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this may be just enough.  The point is that you have to mention it always when he has it.  That way when he doesn't have it and you don't mention it then alert readers will notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T19:44:55.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27923" CreationDate="2017-05-05T19:48:21.430" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no background in prose. The reader receives every word and they receive them one at a time. Thus there is no place to hide anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you can be more subtle is in the connections between things. If you mention a rose, it is a foreground rose for the moment the reader is reading a word, but if you mentions roses several times and in several contexts throughout a work, the reader may not notice the significance of that motif being repeated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On film, the director composes an entire scene but it is left to the viewer to decide what parts of that scene to look at. In prose, the writer dictates exactly where the eye falls at all times. All readers see the same thing when they read, but that does not mean that they all remember it, or even that they grasp its significance the first time it is seen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you cannot obscure things in space, the way you can in a film, but you can hide (or reveal) things in time, just as you can in a film.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that you actually have far more control in prose than you have in film. You can control what the reader sees with much more precision and therefore control the effects of realized connections much more closely.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-13T00:10:06.493" LastActivityDate="2017-05-13T00:10:06.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27923" CreationDate="2017-05-06T00:38:40.937" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few common techniques that mystery writers use to hide clues in plain sight:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put the detail in the middle of a long list of details. People pay more attention to the first and last items, and less attention to the ones in the middle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a scene in the POV of a character who doesn't know the significance of the missing necktie. The viewpoint character will note N's attire, but simply not notice that N would normally be wearing a tie.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a POV character mention a detail that would &lt;em&gt;suggest&lt;/em&gt; (without stating outright) that the necktie is missing. Maybe N unbuttons the top button of his shirt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put the detail (not wearing a tie) in an early chapter, where it has no particular significance. Give the &lt;em&gt;significance&lt;/em&gt; of the detail (it was a gift from his brother, and he always wore it) in a much later chapter. Maybe deliver these two bits of information in different characters' viewpoints. The separation makes it makes the connection less obvious to the reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T00:38:40.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27928" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27934" CreationDate="2017-05-06T01:12:24.790" Score="2" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if there are any pieces of software that keep copies of revisions made on a document. So say I delete 500 words out of a document and save it. Is there a program that would realize I have changed the document and would back up the old version of the document in something like a zipped folder? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently use Dropbox so that I have all my writing no matter where I go but it would be nice to have a program that tracks the progress I've made. As a programmer I'm aware of Github but was wondering if there was a more elegant solution. I apologize to the mods if this is too broad a question, though I think it is specific enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24788" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T18:19:05.063" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T18:19:05.063" Title="What websites or programs offer strong revision tools?" Tags="|software|tools|revision|version-control|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27918" CreationDate="2017-05-06T02:30:34.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To build on Thomas Myron's answer, the only real rules are what works best for your readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is good, nobody will care how you wrote it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is bad, then your approach may shed light on how the story came to be that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T02:30:34.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3301" CreationDate="2017-05-06T04:41:00.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; content, then use the proper sematic markup that indicates a break; e.g. a paragraph style made for that purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you &lt;em&gt;designing&lt;/em&gt; a style sheet or the layout of a work to be published?  This is the wrong S.E.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point is, focus on the content, not the formatting.  That's what Adobe InDesign is for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T04:41:00.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27918" CreationDate="2017-05-06T04:48:26.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don’t think it’s a bad idea per se, and if it helps you get stuff done then that's the biggest hurdle to overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What’s bad is doing &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; that, and not reviewing and editing the work as a whole, later.  If getting chapers out serial style is good (for a work that’s not a serial) for getting them into the hands of your test readers, then plan to take feedback from them and edit based on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Returning to something later than “right after writing it” can be helpful, and let you see things you missed on the quick-turnaround edit pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editing the &lt;em&gt;whole thing&lt;/em&gt; for continuity, consistently in characters and their dialog, etc. is also important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes to editing a chapter immediatly. No to presuming that’s &lt;em&gt;instead&lt;/em&gt; of editing later.  Look at some web fiction that was published as serials — preferably not your own.  Do you &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; the issues that are left behind by &lt;em&gt;finishing&lt;/em&gt; each chapter?  Don’t leave those issues in your novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T04:48:26.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18800" CreationDate="2017-05-06T04:58:13.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All of the memories come flooding to him, and just as he remembers who he is…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a different suggestion.  End it there.  Furthermore, leave is enough evidence in the writing to support either ending, depending on the reader’s own interpretation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T04:58:13.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27928" CreationDate="2017-05-06T05:03:16.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google docs has insane levels of versioning, and can compare changes since any specified version, showing additions and deletions. It's probably your best choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrivener, probably the most widely used writing-specific software, can create a backup every X saves. I set mine on 5, since I save frequently. But that might not be what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first I thought you want an actual &quot;revision&quot; tool, for which I recommend Pro Writing Aid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T05:03:16.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27928" CreationDate="2017-05-06T05:08:55.530" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are talking about a Revision Control System, and it's a principle tool among software engineers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using git (not github, but git on your own files) is a great idea.  The thorn is that you don’t get the same benefit when using “word processor” files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A solution is to use a system of writing using &lt;strong&gt;plain text&lt;/strong&gt; files, with formatting as a separate process.  Do you mind giving up wysiwyg bold/italic and having it look like a typewriter, as you work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With text files, the version control system can store revisions compactly by only storing the differences, and more importantly can identify and present those differences to you.  You can also merge, cherry pick, delete changes other than the latest, etc.  git in particular is a general purpose and useful tool, which you can use by working in the format it deals with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can actually produce &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; finished documents this way, using tools that are smarter than the basic word processor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also look at the way &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OpenDocument&lt;/a&gt; word processing documents are stored: inside a zip file is a xml markup file!  You can unzip the saved file and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; save in git.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastEditorUserId="14898" LastEditDate="2017-05-06T12:58:53.787" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T12:58:53.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14586" CreationDate="2017-05-06T05:29:56.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some really, really great books and blogs out there. And a lot of mediocre ones. And a lot that are self-help books about motivation and getting over &quot;writer's block&quot; that is really constant editing instead of banging out your chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For craft, nothing beats K. M. Weiland's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Helping Writers Become Authors blog&lt;/a&gt; and books. The blog has entire sections on structure, character acts, and scenes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bell's Writing Your Novel From the Middle is fantastic, and Conflict &amp;amp; Suspense, and Plot &amp;amp; Structure are both great. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Larry Brooks (story physics), Scofield (the scene book), Vogler (on the hero's journey), and Maasss all have great books.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cut to the  Chase is great for Screenplays. I despise Save the Cat, but many people find it very useful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T05:29:56.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15901" CreationDate="2017-05-06T05:43:44.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found the novel UCLA classes extremely helpful. The &quot;educational&quot; genre and general technique classes were somewhat useful, but the &quot;core&quot; classes (Novel I - IV) were what really made it worth it. The amount and quality of the feedback was fantastic, as was seeing the work of others critiqued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend them if and only if you have the time to commit to writing and critiquing every week, and consider taking only those core classes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, check out their key textbooks: Cut to the Chase (written by UCLA for film) and Inside the Room (written by UCLA for TV).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many classes discuss Save the Cat (I hate it because people apply it as a strict formula, but it's worth reading). The Scene Book is big in their novel program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15957" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T05:43:44.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-06T13:44:28.963" Score="1" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a story for publication that has one of it's key features is these other worlds/universes being the basis of the videos games we see in real life. As such I was hoping to have 2 books in the series features worlds from Nintendo Games Legend of Zelda and Fire Emblem, but not claim any ownership to these inclusions. I did look up Nintendo's copyright claim, but I can't quite figure out if I can legally do this. Is there a way or do I need to abandon the idea of using the game's worlds directly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24806" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-06T23:58:44.550" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T15:43:16.263" Title="Nintendo Based Copyright" Tags="|fiction|novel|copyright|legal|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-06T15:04:36.710" Score="5" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a sci-fi technology concept in the work I'm currently writing, and its potential implications for society and for individual characters are quite far-reaching. I want to systematically explore this invented technology in-depth – not only its functions but also elements like the legal framework surrounding its use, how the company behind it works etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody have resources, methods or ideas regarding how to explore a technology (or indeed a magic system) in detail prior to/alongside writing the story? The aspects I have listed above are a starting point for me; further aspects or different methods would be useful too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22034" LastActivityDate="2018-01-12T00:30:57.637" Title="Working out details of a technology concept" Tags="|fantasy|planning|science-fiction|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27938" CreationDate="2017-05-06T16:34:01.570" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to explore the implications of any idea is to write about it.  Write an origin story for your technology; then write about its first presentation to the public and the resulting upheaval.  Do a character study of someone who hates the new technology, then another about the innovator who takes the basic idea but applied it in new ways which greatly increase its value to the world.  Write about a tragic misuse of the technology and the legal consequences of that tragedy.  Write a distant future story through the eyes of a historian, looking back at the pivotal age when the arrival of the new technology changed everything...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then take all of that writing and drop it in a shoe box labelled &quot;backstory&quot;.  Those hard-won pages are not for public consumption.  They will not be part of your final story.  The only audience they'll ever have is you and their only purpose was to increase your mastery of the new technology and its implications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creative writing is not just a tool for telling stories; it is a method for exploring possibilities.  Our carefully crafted sentences, pages and scenes are the soil in which ideas grow.  Compost a few thousand words around the roots of your technological concept and you will be amazed at what springs up in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T16:34:01.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27940" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-06T17:51:35.983" Score="3" ViewCount="1163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of finishing up a research paper for school that I am writing on the debate over whether or not you should listen to an album from start to finish. I am specifically doing so with respect to Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. As a result, I cite song lyrics several times throughout my paper. I have been looking online for guidelines as far as how to cite these lyrics parenthetically in MLA. I have seen people suggesting (Band name), (Songwriter Line Numbers), and (Songwriter). I was wondering if someone could please enlighten me as to which of these (if any) are the correct method of doing so. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!&#xA;EDIT: Also would appreciate guidance for the works cited page in addition to parenthetical! I have been searching on the internet and am confused as to whether I just cite the songwriter, songwriter and band, or just the band and how I would do so for the bibliography&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24808" LastEditorUserId="24808" LastEditDate="2017-05-08T05:46:03.370" LastActivityDate="2017-10-04T23:01:26.000" Title="How do you cite song lyrics parenthetically in MLA?" Tags="|citations|mla|lyrics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27937" CreationDate="2017-05-06T20:41:08.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL, but this is one of those questions where you can start out by asking, are other people doing this. If not, there is a good chance that the answer is that you can't do it either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is essentially what is called a tie-in. Your book would be tied into the world of the games. People who play those games would be a natural market for your story. (In fact, I suspect people who play the games would be pretty much the only market.) So, your books would be profiting from Nintendo's IP and if there is a way to stop people from profiting off their IP, Nintendo would do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From which we can reasonably (though not definitively) conclude that it someone else is doing this, then there probably nothing Nintendo can do to stop them, and if they are not doing it, that is almost certainly because there is something Nintendo can do to stop them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't overlook the obvious here. Instead of trying to avoid trouble with Nintendo, take the whole project the Nintendo and propose it to them. Media companies love tie-ins. It is a way to extend their brand and therefore to make more money from it. And if Nintendo likes the idea, then they will take care of the publishing process for you. If the books sell, they will probably contract you to do the same for other titles. And since game/movie tie ins are a thing (its is beyond me why, but go figure) your book might even become the basis for a movie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: Since you almost certainly can't beat them, join them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-08T15:43:16.263" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T15:43:16.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9825" CreationDate="2017-05-06T21:05:23.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand, this is done all the time for television scripts.  For instance, when Star Trek characters are discussing new aliens or territories, their discussions go over some basic facts.  Maybe they are confirming their knowledge, in theory.  In reality, the reason they say many of these things is for the audience benefit.  If the audience is enjoying what you produce, and they don't have a problem with noticing anything unrealistic/out-of-character, and the details help the audience to know something that the audience needs to know, then this is a good thing.  (That's my answer to the last paragraph in the question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this approach can also be a dangerous thing.  One key item to remember is to keep things within character.  If the text doesn't fit the character, then change it.  Or have someone else say it.  (Maybe a new, and possibly temporary, character.)  Or have them say it at a a more appropriate time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful when trying to explain something for audience benefit.  For instance, a famous radio broadcast had a fictitious astronaut explain weightlessness (when out of orbit) to another astronaut.  That just feels absurd for modern society, where more of us do know about weightlessness, and we know that any astronaut would not need to receive such an explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another aspect to keep in mind: show, don't tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been taught that the best writing won't say that the weather was hot.  The best writing will include sweat drops, and someone seeking shelter, and being happy about the shade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some specific feedback to the specific examples you provided in the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In two of the three examples in this question, the text &quot;sometimes I think&quot; shows up.  In the other example, there is &quot;sometimes I wonder&quot;.  I also see a &quot;we think&quot;, a &quot;perhaps&quot;, and a &quot;I'm not saying&quot;.  Such thoughts and wondering just feels a little insubstantial.  The writing may appear a bit stronger if you can give it some more substance.  Your characters can wonder, and speculate.  But their thoughts will appear stronger if you can reduce how much they speculate, because they can draw upon related solid life experiences (that happened earlier).  If the character has sufficient observation skills (and the ability to learn from what is observed), those life experiences could even be experienced by someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19230" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T21:05:23.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27938" CreationDate="2017-05-06T22:32:18.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To introduce a new object, that not only follows the theme you've created but also to provide a background and in depth description while ALSO not breaking the story flow is a difficult task. Personally, if I were to be writing a story about this, I'd create a format for a sort of background. If you have a matter manipulator/converter, say, like a portable 3d-printer that prints to a larger scale using material around it, then I'd do it like this soon after/immediately after introducing the new machinery:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                    **MCM //Matter Converter and Manipulator**&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MCM was quite the invention of it's time. Scientists earlier in the era believed that it was impossible to create such a device that took the matter around you and changed it into a set object that a blueprint specified. However, scientist John Doe eventually discovered a way that implemented 3D-Printing and scanners together to take the layout of something. Later, he teamed up with scientist Arnold Darner, who realized that everything could be traced to a single element: Elementonium. The two created a device that broke down the materials around them using lasers into Elementonium, and then recreate an object with the blueprints loaded into it; the object can be anything, from a pencil, to a car, to a skyscraper. After a few prototypes and millions of theories, they eventually made it nearly instantaneous to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is just my personal writing style. Not only do you create the object, but you can use elements in it throughout your story as well, such as in this case, the Elementonium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24811" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T22:32:18.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27938" CreationDate="2017-05-06T23:00:27.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To what the others have said, I will add the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your new technology must have its limitations.  There must be times, places,  circumstances and/or purposes in which this technology cannot be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These limitations will eventually become known to the characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the &quot;what if&quot; of your story is the discovery of a way around the Really Big laws of nature, your technology must have the following limits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conservation of Energy:  Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.  The best you can do is to tap into a previously untappable source of energy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conservation of Momentum:  If you push against something, it pushes back.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conservation of Power:  If the new technology alters the balance of power in any way, those who stand to lose will do everything within their power to prevent this.  This ranges from the most bald-face misrepresentations of the technology to outright murder.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conservation of Greed:  If robbing the inventor of the fruits of his labor is worth the trouble, it will happen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-05-06T23:00:27.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9825" CreationDate="2017-05-07T00:14:01.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fundamentally, a story is a an experience. Strictly speaking, an experience does not have a meaning. Different people may reach different conclusions based on the experience they have had, just as they may with real life experiences. The novelist should be content to create an experience that is true, regardless of the conclusions people draw from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, in many cases the novelist want the reader to draw a particular conclusion -- the conclusion they think must necessarily follow from the experience. But the novelist does not trust the reader to draw that same conclusion. What are they to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They can state the conclusion. The problem here is that merely stating the conclusion is not particularly likely to make the person who had the experience that novelist created suddenly draw the same conclusion just because the writer stated it. If the reader shares the conclusion, they may cheer the novelist for stating it. (Some highly doctrinaire readers clearly want this statement to put an exclamation point on the story. The trouble with these folks it they are really only in it for the conclusion and are disappointed in the whole story if they don't get the conclusion they were after. It the writer does not share the conclusion, however, it is likely to sour them on the whole experience of the story. In other words, if you only want to preach to the choir, go ahead and state your conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They can manipulate the experience to try to get the reader to reach the conclusion the writer is after. The problem with this is that now the experience is no longer truthful. It has been manipulated to produce a conclusion. Most readers will detect this and devalue the story. Only those who are only in it to have their own conclusions affirmed are likely to stay around. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forcing your conclusions into the open, therefore, is not likely to change anybody's mind. Your best chance of changing people's minds is probably simply to present a truthful experience and let people draw their own conclusions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-07T00:14:01.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9825" CreationDate="2017-05-07T08:12:32.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see message and moral as two very different things. The latter can come to be when the author (usually through the narrator) tells the reader 'you should not do this, you should do that'. In my opinion, the right place of a stated moral is in fables, everywhere else turns the text into a more or less subtle preaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way of using moral is when the consequence clearly shows how an action is bad and the reader should avoid it (eg. a teenager starts using drugs and ends up dying from that habit). This is (again IMO) the only good way to present a moral outside a fable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then we've got the message. Now, it's true that a moral is a message, but a message doesn't have to be a moral. For me, a message isn't saying 'you should or shouldn't X', it's making a statement about the world through the events in the story. The reader may or may not agree with you, but it's still a likely statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, there are two ways of going about it, the good and the bad. The way I see it, having a narrator state it clearly is the bad one. The good one is threefold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The event can speak for itself. This, obviously, is the best approach. Let the readers draw conclusions for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(part I) A character can mention it. Ideally, it's only mentioned once amid other stuff and not dwelled upon. Ideally, it's softened by the character stating it's their personal opinion (I think, the way I see it, if you ask me, ...) and not forcing it down anyone's throat. Ideally, the idea comes out as an organic whole with the events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(part II) A character can state it, even forcefully, if it's presented as that character's personal conclusions for a given event or life in general. The narrator cannot agree with the character, but rather remain impartial (or maybe disagree). Other characters may disagree or they may be won over and consider it before later on disagreeing, choosing a variation of the statement or wholy embracing it. The important thing is that these are the characters' conclusions and the reader doesn't have to agree with them (hence the narrator not taking any sides)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The narrator can mention it, but only if neither the event nor the characters can make it evident. Ideally, it's as soft and unobtrusive as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is to make sure it doesn't sound preachy or imposing in the slightest. Subtlety is any message's best friend. So, if anyone mentions the message, the events must be ambiguous enough that the message would go unnoticed for many readers if nothing were said on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the examples you offer, I think they seem to work very well (although I'd need to read the whole thing to be certain, obviously). I rather like when characters react to events by saying 'sometimes I think [universal truth that may be not-universal at all]'. Besides, you've got characters giving advise to friends and just stating their own personal thoughts, not imposing them, and often not at the end but in the middle or half-way. Pointing at messages at the end always makes them more obvious (and more similar to a moral).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no, it's not a bad idea to state the message of a story if you do it well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-05-07T08:12:32.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27947" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-07T10:27:16.943" Score="3" ViewCount="437" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm writing a story, a fanfiction to be specific, and a main character is an aggressive, emotionless, constantly angry man, who swears a lot and doesn't care much about anything. I want him to develop as the story continues, become more sensitive, emotional and caring, and eventually fall deep in love with someone and have strong feelings for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think something like that would be possible? And if so, how fastly should his personality change? Should I include a terrific event that will change him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24816" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-07T07:46:58.803" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T09:26:05.757" Title="Is it possible for an aggressive character to become sensitive?" Tags="|planning|ideas|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27947" CreationDate="2017-05-07T12:25:33.363" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, let's be clear: &quot;aggressive and angry&quot; is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; &quot;emotionless.&quot; He's either one or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, &quot;a bad man redeemed by the love of a good woman&quot; can fall very easily into cliché. Try to stay away from the broad strokes of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want someone who's aggressive and angry to calm down and be concerned about others, you must get to the root of his behavior. &lt;strong&gt;Why is he like this now? How long has he been like this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there was some inciting event (e.g., someone he loved died), then he has to deal with that specific event and get past it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he had a rough childhood, or a rough life overall, then you have to explore that background to determine what taught him that aggression was a better solution than diplomacy. There is likely a lot of old pain and fear in the past, and maybe he found that anger made him feel strong and being tough scared off people who would have otherwise hurt him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important factor is that people don't change unless they &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply putting your love interest (and/or Love Interest's genitals, depending on the rating of your story) in the line of sight of Tall Dark and Angry will not magically make him fall in love and start writing moony poetry. Something about Love Interest has to appeal to Tall Dark and Angry &lt;em&gt;despite&lt;/em&gt; the anger and fear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone who has been angry and aggressive for a long time is going to be slow to change, because these become ingrained personality traits. They are also often defense mechanisms. Tall Dark and Angry has to feel &lt;em&gt;safe&lt;/em&gt;, and has to trust Love Interest enough to risk being vulnerable in front of this person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That will take time. This should be a slow-burn romance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-05-07T12:25:33.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27947" CreationDate="2017-05-07T13:27:14.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are writing a story, not a psychology textbook. Stories appeal to our hopes and to our sense that the world is (or our wish that it should be) a fundamentally orderly place, by which I mean a place with a fundamental moral order. Virtue is rewarded. Vice is punished. Love conquers all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you believe that the world actually has a fundamental moral order or not is a religious and philosophical question. But in story terms, people very much crave that sense of moral order. A fundamentally unjust universe is a little more frightening of a place than most of us are willing to live in day by day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories provide a reassurance of the fundamental orderliness and justice of the universe that we need to get through our days. After all, how else could we have such strong feelings about endings. So much of our enjoyment of a story depends on whether we feel it has a good ending of a bad ending. Yet unless there is an order to the universe, how could one ending be good and another bad? Whether the real universe had a moral order or not, therefore, the story universe does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to write Beauty and the Beast (which is what your story is) you can write it because Beauty and the Beast is good story, whether or not it is good psychology. It is a story that has been written thousands of times, and it is a story that will be written thousands of time more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-07T13:27:14.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27947" CreationDate="2017-05-07T13:44:17.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Lauren's excellent answer—the clarity of which could only be explained by a time zone difference (it is Sunday morning here in the States), and before someone else chimes in stating that there is no new stories, but the ones which were already told, are of two kinds: plot-driven and character-driven—a story of someone whose perception of the world or relationship with another character changes drastically in the course of it, is not new. It is, basically, every other story in the history of literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which does not mean that your story will be less interesting or original, because it all depends on how you tell it. This foggy attempt of an answer is not by any means intended to discourage you from writing, quite the opposite—you should go ahead and tackle this with all your might.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the fact that you are asking this question, made me alert, because it means that you do not have a story in your head. If you had it, you would not be asking if this evolution of a character is possible, you would just write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing a profound character arch for the sake of having one is a risky endeavor, but if you are a discovery writer, such as myself, just go for it and see what you can learn from the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck (you will need it)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-07T13:44:17.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27951" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27952" CreationDate="2017-05-07T14:01:57.160" Score="-1" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just like the topic says. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I make it so that the identity of the 'murderer' isn't a dead give-away?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24634" LastEditorDisplayName="user29032" LastEditDate="2018-04-09T19:06:17.630" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T19:06:17.630" Title="Writing a compelling murder mystery" Tags="|mystery|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-05-12T16:19:27.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27951" CreationDate="2017-05-07T14:34:19.877" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have multiple suspects. Introduce a variety of characters who all have a motive and the means to commit the murder.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have everyone act suspicious. When everyone is honest except the murderer, it will be obvious who done it. That means that other suspects also need a reason to do suspicious things, like lying to the detective, making evidence disappear, forging evidence, intimidate (or even kill) witnesses or collude with other suspects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the question is, why would the innocent behave so uncooperatively? The usual reason is because they also have something to hide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe they committed a minor crime or moral transgression unrelated to the murder and are afraid that the detective's investigation will reveal it too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe they want to use the opportunity to frame someone they dislike for the murder.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe they want to protect the actual perpetrator (or someone who they think is the actual perpetrator).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe the initial murder was just the tip of the iceberg and some of the suspects are part of a much larger conspiracy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Revealing these sub-mysteries will be required in order to reveal the main mystery, and can make for interesting sub-plots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2017-05-22T09:07:48.853" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T09:07:48.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27953" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-07T15:35:09.867" Score="1" ViewCount="209" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I have a fantasy character make a quote from a real life figure?  For example, can I have a villain make a statement spoken by let's say, Adolf Hitler?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24817" LastActivityDate="2017-07-07T20:17:55.227" Title="Can I have a character make a quote from a real life figure?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27947" CreationDate="2017-05-07T20:50:28.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While @Lauren Ipsum's answer is absolutely to the point, I'd like to give you an example: I've also taken up writing a character that is similarly angry, aggressive and generally speaking a jerk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I gave him a love interest, only he didn't realise she was a love interest. For all he knew, she was smart and strong and he decided she belonged to him. Why did she put up with it? A bad case of 'bad guys are sexy syndrome' allied to circumstances that made him the lesser of a few evils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up until that point, he hadn't softened the slightest, but since softening him was my objective, I had a kid pop up. I did this because I know of real-life examples where men completely turned their lives and priorities upside-down (for better and for worse) for the sake of their child, and I also researched how things turned out for at least some of those fathers to make sure I wasn't stretching the rope too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Facing his own child, his priorities were suddenly rearranged and his sole objective became the well-being of the child. Still no sentimentalities, but he did go back and organise his old life to make sure nothing bad from those times can come and threaten the most important thing in his life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the years go by, he discovers that he must at least pretend to get on with the local community for the kid's sake: he needs to know who is who and make sure they're not pedophyles or otherwise accidents waiting to happen. He also needs to be on good terms with parents if the kid is going to be invited to parties. The Love Interest is key here: she gives him the social pointers and, the most important thing, the rewards for keeping up the social front. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slowly, he starts to have a slight appreciation for a couple of the guys he has to socialise with and, without realising, actually forges some friendships. In the meantime, he comes to fall in love... only he doesn't realise it. He still sees the woman as just being his woman. Sure, he does nice things for her (at first because she would reward him and eventually because it becomes part of the routine... and he does like the rewards), but he still feels love is for suckers and, you know, you can like a woman and not be an in-love asshole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I gave him a good reason for him to want to change but he only changed partially. He's still a jerk, by the way, just not as bad and not as aggressive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, I'm writing adventure/romance so there's always some action that has him evolve in the right direction. Some of that action also involves facing people and events from his past (the ones he rushed to kick away instead of actually facing and fixing them) which is what makes his aggressive jerk side really get fixed (or as much as possible). But he's never going to be the 'in touch with his feelings' kind of guy. I don't even know if I can realistically make him realise he loves his Love Interest. That aversion to love is just too ingrained in his personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the point of this all? To stress that your character cannot change quickly. Even if you have a big event force him to re-evaluate his life, you still cannot change abruptly. Just imagine yourself changing your whole way of being in the space of a week: could you do it? And keep at it? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big event can make him want to change (at least a little), but he'll still have to work hard at getting rid of all the bad habits and make a huge effort to create new ones. That's not easy and there are lots of times when you fall back into old habits, which, paradoxically, tend to be more comfortable than the new ones even when you know they're bad for you. Even if he becomes fully aware how wrong his ways have been so far, you still have to break with the bonds of years of acting in a certain way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, I don't know much about your character, but I believe that when one decides that emotions are bad for you and then spends an entire life dodging them, even if he has an epiphany and realises he's in love, he's still going to have a hard time acting on that realisation because it means showing emotions. You know, what he spent a lifetime running away from. It's like asking an agoraphobic to go to a busy café daily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-07T20:50:28.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27953" CreationDate="2017-05-07T23:02:57.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not do that, in general. For example, see this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-mlk-family-20150119-story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-mlk-family-20150119-story.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that not only do the originators often sue, the copyright holder may be heirs, who like to sue. It is a matter of powerful them versus little you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, as I noted in a comment above, the copyright for Adolph Hitler's &lt;em&gt;Mein Kampf&lt;/em&gt; was still active (in Germany) until 2015, 70 years after its author's death. I have no idea who in Germany retained the copyright (thanks to comments below: Bavaria did).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, couldn't you just write something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge, the only &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; exception, at least in the USA, is that the on-duty actions of government employees are public record. Thus, for example, photos of wildlife taken in an official capacity by the wildlife service can be freely used (so I am told; I am not an authority). Presumably the same applies to statements made in an official capacity by politicians; but it might not apply to campaign statements, which are not made in an official capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Now to be more helpful...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many books have one or more &quot;epigraphs.&quot; You can look that up, with many examples, in places such as Wikipedia and elsewhere. An epigraph is a quote from something else (the quote may also be fictional). Although some famous books used epigraphs from contemporary (copyrighted) sources, there is no right to do that: It would have been with written permission from the copyright holder, which a small, unknown author is unlikely to get. But you can use epigraphs from Shakespeare, the Bible, Nineteenth-Century writers, and even some from the early Twentieth Century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also include a quotation in the form of speech, thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Ya, know, we had to read some Plato for the freaking Lit class. Like I care. But the guy had a few good points.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If you say so. He's, like, old. Dead, too, maybe.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Seriously. But for instance, here's what Plato had to say about (some topic). He says, '[now you insert a direct quotation from Plato.]' &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's just the concept. Real writing would require more delicacy, or it risks sounding preachy. A better approach would be to have the character paraphrase Plato, maybe even misunderstand, using contemporary natural language. That would not only tell the reader something about Plato, it would give us insight into how the character thinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastEditorDisplayName="user23046" LastEditDate="2017-05-08T15:50:40.377" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T15:50:40.377" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27956" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27958" CreationDate="2017-05-08T05:13:54.293" Score="1" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;My two main characters are twin souls. One soul is Yang, the other is Yin (Positive/Negative personalities). Both are 15 year-old orphan teenagers sharing the bond of love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, I want to cut that bond and turn it into hatred. The Yang soul is the girl, she is grateful to my Yin anti-hero for saving her life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They run away together from the orphanage and join a martial arts dojo where their sensei takes care of them.  He trains both to become exorcists.  5 years later, the sensei dies at the hands of a demigoddess succubus and my characters are the only survivors after a bloody battle.  The dying demoness reveals that my Yang protagonist is a demon-human hybrid and that she is one of his many demon half sisters, then she dies.  Then both of my protagonists start their journey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I turn my female second protagonist into the antagonist during the journey?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: My Yang protagonist is very possessive of his twin soul.  He is misanthropic, quiet and peaceful when not disturbed, but he gets angry easily and enjoys torturing his enemies killing them regardless if the enemy is demon or human.  He values justice above all things because bandits killed his family for a relic that they sold to a lesser demon.  The female Yin protagonist is the opposite of him.  The only thing they have in common is mutual hatred for demons.  However she may befriend a demonic prince in the future.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24821" LastEditorDisplayName="user34214" LastEditDate="2019-02-13T23:58:55.553" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T23:58:55.553" Title="How does my secondary protagonist turn into the antagonist?" Tags="|character-development|antagonist|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2017-05-12T16:22:24.003" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27956" CreationDate="2017-05-08T09:58:38.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Temptation is the key. Tempt your character and find a way for that character to fall to the temptation and hence become an antagonist. My book also happens to have a protagonist that becomes an antagonist, and I found this was the best way to make it happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, please take Lauren's advice and be more general in future questions asked here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T09:58:38.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27956" CreationDate="2017-05-08T12:34:52.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difference in attitude between the two main characters already has plenty of potential for conflict. Yin's tendency to commit acts of pointless cruelty (even if against enemies) will certainly not be approved by Yang and will stress their relationship, regardless of gratefulness for earlier deeds and family bonds. At one point Yin might do something so horrible that Yang will feel that they have grown apart and distance herself from him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now how do you turn Yang into the antagonist after that split? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering that the communication between Yin and Yang will now be limited, they will have different information regarding the demon threat. This will cause them to act in ways which seem to contradict the goals of the other. It might cause either one to believe that the other is working with the enemy. This hypothesis will be plausible for both sides. Yin might be working with the demons because of his violent outbursts which make him look more dangerous to Yang than an &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; demon at times. Yang might be because of what Yin perceives as weakness and lenience towards the enemy. The last straw might be when Yin hears that Yang &lt;em&gt;befriended&lt;/em&gt; a demon prince. Then he will be certain that she turned traitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a typical &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tragedy&lt;/a&gt; setup. All characters have good intentions, but their personality conflicts stand in the way of cooperation, cause them to work against each other and end in harm despite everyone just wanting the best for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that if you want the reader to identify with Yin and perceive Yang as the enemy (at least for a part of the story), you will have to make Yin the primary viewpoint character and not yet provide the reader with all the information which explains Yang's actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2017-05-08T12:53:52.803" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T12:53:52.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27953" CreationDate="2017-05-08T13:32:38.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I have a fantasy character make a quote from a real life figure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside the legal aspect of it, why in a (secondary) world would you want to do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joeabercrombie.com/books/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joe Abercrombie&lt;/a&gt; often pre-pends his book parts with quotes from real-life politicians and philosophers (even the titles of &lt;em&gt;The First Law&lt;/em&gt; trilogy are partial quotes from Homer, Heine, and Louis XIV). I do enjoy his stories, but I feel extremely uncomfortable every time I see the direct quotations with the proper attribution to their authors, for they immediately kick me out of the world he is building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, couldn't you just write something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What @RobtA said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T13:32:38.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27937" CreationDate="2017-05-08T14:51:48.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nintendo has a history of using legal actions to shut down fan projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When they come after you, it will be a civil lawsuit, not a criminal one. That means you need to pay the expenses for your defense up-front. If you can't afford proper legal defense, you will very likely lose the lawsuit, even if you might actually be legally allowed to do it. Even if you are able and willing to pay for proper legal counsel, Nintendo will likely have far deeper pockets and be able to afford much better lawyers than you do. So this is a battle you are very unlikely to win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are lucky, they will just insist that you cease publication. When Nintendo's lawyers are in a particularly bad mood, they might get you to pay litigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T14:51:48.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27966" CreationDate="2017-05-08T16:49:52.067" Score="1" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a story with a three crisis structure. The first is an external crisis that has the hero rushing to the rescue of the heroine. Then their relationship develops at a brisk pace, in the manner of &quot;too much, too soon.&quot; The novelty wears off, and one or both recoils at seeing the other &quot;real person,&quot; creating the second crisis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After they are reconciled, they make it towards the top together, and this causes the third, decisive crisis. One wants to continue reaching for the brass ring, and the other wants to &quot;kick back, relax, and take some time off with someone I love,&quot; basically two conflicting goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need an external crisis for either the second or third crises? Or is it plausible that the characters run the risk of being victims of their own success?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T21:23:06.490" Title="Can success create its own crisis?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27756" CreationDate="2017-05-08T17:03:11.003" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're probably worried about &quot;defamation&quot; when you fear &quot;mentioning&quot; a real life story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Defamation&lt;/a&gt; occurs when you say something that is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;certifiably untrue &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as a statement of fact, not opinion &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that is highly offensive to a reasonable person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your statement, &quot;we're not anything like that show&quot; doesn't meet any of these tests. It can't be proven or disproven (not certifiably untrue), because it is a statement of opinion, not fact. Nor is it highly offensive to a reasonable person (everyone has their own view of what is like or unlike something).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would be on shakier ground if you said something like, &quot;Show X is pornographic.&quot; That is something that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can be disproven&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can be taken as a statement of fact &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;would be offensive to most people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="31969" LastEditDate="2018-06-20T17:26:57.160" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T17:26:57.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27209" CreationDate="2017-05-08T17:19:56.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A query letter is supposed to be a &quot;teaser.&quot; In it, you throw out bits and pieces of your work in order to whet the appetite of the agent, and get them to want &quot;more.&quot; It will lay out a skeletal outline of your story, who the main characters are, what the conflict is, and what the desired result is, etc., to show that it makes sense. Depending on the type of work, you may want to withhold the actual result from your query letter, especially if it is a &quot;twist&quot; ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good query critique will guide you in the above directions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-06-06T16:21:00.700" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T16:21:00.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27962" CreationDate="2017-05-08T17:41:54.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is plausible. Just because a conflict is internal (or between two protagonists, rather than hero vs villain) doesn't mean it isn't an important or engaging conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is that readers have to &lt;em&gt;care&lt;/em&gt; about the people involved in the conflict. This, not fast-paced action scenes, is what makes conflict appealing: Something bad is happening to a character we like, and we want to know how the conflict ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23436" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T17:41:54.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27962" CreationDate="2017-05-08T19:28:27.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh, goodness yes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, your idea of conflicting goals is wonderful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some additional ways success can lead to crisis (which may or may not apply to your story):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They become cocky, thinking the success was entirely due to their skill or other personal attributes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Success creates pressure to repeat their performance, and they fear that their success was a fluke. Lots of ways to react to that pressure, some of which lead to crisis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having been successful at one thing, they now attempt a more difficult thing (with higher stakes).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The people and world around them adjust to their success, creating an environment where their successful strategy will no longer work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their success invites attention of a kind they are not prepared to handle. Competitors. Threats from people damaged by their success. Glory seekers. People who want to knock them down a peg.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;… probably a lot more I haven't thought of …&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T19:28:27.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26851" CreationDate="2017-05-08T20:14:20.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put aside the character for a moment, and ask yourself how you want the &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; to end. Then work backwards to your character. If she is, in fact, your main character, she will have, or develop, a goal that is congruent with the story goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't do this, maybe you should put your &quot;main character&quot; in a different role, and get another main character. For instance, if your &quot;main character&quot; has everything she wants and all the abilities to get them, maybe you should make her the equivalent of a fairy godmother or good witch of the north (that's perfectly fine), and find yourself a &quot;Cinderella&quot; or a &quot;Dorothy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers see a story through the eyes of a main character. Her success/failure ultimately reflects on the story itself. That's why she needs a goal congruent with the story's goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T20:14:20.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27968" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-08T23:43:31.357" Score="1" ViewCount="457" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many writers find that mastering a genre of writing, such as the novel, requires that at some point they break down other writers' pieces of work in the genre in order to study their structure: to understand the nature of the component parts and the way they are combined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not asking for a definition of &quot;novel&quot;, which would require a careful consideration of edge cases. But what grammars have been developed that enable the plots of many novels to be summarised?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for something a little more detailed than the three-act structure that is used in screenwriting and Freytag's five-act pyramid of rising and falling action that is used in stage drama. Something similar in its degree of complexity to Propp's morphology of wondertales is more what I am seeking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18358" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T12:09:08.050" Title="Grammar for describing novel plots?" Tags="|novel|plot|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27969" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-09T08:35:19.563" Score="3" ViewCount="1091" Body="&lt;p&gt;My novel technically has two inciting incidents: One in the first chapter, and another five chapters later. The later incident &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; kicks off the story. What can I do to make sure that everything that happens before this, the first five chapters, are interesting enough to keep the reader going until he/she gets properly established in the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T12:02:39.900" Title="How to keep it interesting before the inciting incident?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2888" CreationDate="2017-05-09T11:52:05.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an old question, but for future interest, the first novel of the Kingkiller trilogy has an excellent example of this. As a child, the protagonist experiences a huge family trauma, and then almost immediately heads into the woods and lives there for half a year playing his father’s lute until the strings break and he is forced to return to the real world. It’s bizarre – but it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example off the top of my head is from a comic called Killing Stalking. The antagonist manipulates the unstable protagonist into murdering someone. Afterwards, the protagonist sits there and says, “What if she calls the police? Oh, but she can’t, can she, because she’s dead … But what if she does?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Denial is a common coping mechanism. At an extreme level, this can be entirely unconscious, as the brain is simply incapable of processing the information of the scene it just witnessed. So it distracts itself. As said above, the character might focus on strange details of the event, or maybe they dissociate entirely and afterwards can’t remember a thing. Maybe they act in an unnervingly normal way because they can’t comprehend what the situation means. Or, as said by One Monkey above, the fight or flight reaction kicks in. I would avoid focussing on the character in question and keep it short and analytical. They describe what they see, but they can’t get a hold on their own state of mind or the emotions that go along with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the route you take you then have to consider when the emotional reaction &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; hit. Maybe it’s weeks, or months, or even years later. Maybe after all that time it’s all slightly easier to come to terms with. Maybe it's harder. Or maybe they never quite deal with it, or it has become so repressed that they can’t even remember it. You can show how that eats away at the character, maybe bringing about their downfall as they become self-destructive. I wrote a story recently where the entire plot was a character discovering he had a repressed memory, and what it took to uncover it. The source of the trauma was short and descriptive, and afterwards he was simply somewhat relieved that he had somewhere to start as he began his recovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24794" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T11:52:05.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27969" CreationDate="2017-05-09T12:09:02.227" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inciting incident is a term for one of the bones of a story, the thing that give it shape. But while a story needs shape, shape alone is not enough. The basic story shapes are well enough known and not particularly complicated. Anyone who does a little elementary research should be able to write a story that follows correct story shape. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But while shape is important, it is not where the money is. You have to put flesh on the bones. What the reader encounters when they read is not the bones but the flesh. Without good bones the flesh will seem deformed. But beyond freedom from basic deformities, it is the flesh that attracts us, creates our interest, and holds it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the flesh consist of? Its fundamental attractions are sensual. A good story engages us at the sensual level. I don't mean sexual here, though it can certainly be that, I mean it creates an experience for the senses. It creates a world that has depth and grit and light and texture peopled by people who feel real and animated and particular. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this is in the structure. It is in the telling. It begins with observation and sympathy and love and proceeds through care and craft and a sensitive gift for language and the images and experiences it evokes. The way you hold the reader's interest up to the inciting incident is simple, and yet the hardest part of writing: you make it real. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And until you make it real, the inciting incident is for nothing. It incites nothing unless we are first made to care, unless we are made to feel that this is a real thing happening to real people in a real world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone can assemble the bones. The diagrams are in all the books. Assembling the bones of a story is no more complex than assembling an Ikea bookcase. If the bones of a story end up misshapen it is either because the writer paid no attention to them at all, or because when the writer attempted to apply flesh to the bones they could not get the muscle and sinew right and it pulled the bones out of shape. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are very obvious and teachable techniques for the bones. The technique for the flesh is mastery of observation and language. That's the hard part. It is why so many aspiring writers will never achieve their aims. There is no formula for it. If it is not simply inspired, it is learned by osmosis from living, reading, and writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-08-23T22:50:45.073" LastActivityDate="2017-08-23T22:50:45.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27968" CreationDate="2017-05-09T13:13:46.267" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most influential approaches to general story structure is Joseph Campbell's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero&amp;#39;s_journey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hero's Journey&lt;/a&gt;&quot; monomyth, which analyzed popular story structures from all around the world to isolate common elements (quite similar to Propp's work, but probably produced independently).  Christopher Vogel's popular adaption, &quot;The Writer's Journey,&quot; specifically adapts the concept for writers (and demonstrates how the same structures can be used in a context without the fantastic trappings of classical myth).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, and although it may superficially seem a bit trivial for your needs, &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TV Tropes&lt;/a&gt;, the crowdsourced encyclopedia of story elements, is indubitably the most comprehensive collection of common plotlines and tropes ever assembled (although it lacks somewhat in higher organization).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2017-05-09T14:30:40.507" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T14:30:40.507" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2202" CreationDate="2017-05-09T14:04:34.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a published author and use fountain pens when I am writing first drafts of my novels. I split my time between writing directly at my Macbook and sitting in a comfy armchair or out in the sun with a legal pad and a fountain pen. I've definitely been writing by hand more recently and my addiction to fountain pens is resurfacing. I am definitely going to be increasing my pen collection in the future and have my eye on several that I would love to add, especially a Visconti Homo Sapiens once my budget allows me to invest on one of those. Once I start buying more I will be adding reviews and unboxing videos to my fledgling YouTube author channel :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24838" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T14:04:34.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27968" CreationDate="2017-05-09T15:33:09.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question asked was: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But what grammars have been developed that enable the plots of many&#xA;  novels to be summarised?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer&lt;/strong&gt; : Genre&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Romance &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sci-Fi -  Space Opera&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mystery&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Western&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mainstream&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fantasy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course many more.  These are words that have come into use because they provide a basic summary of what the content is going to be like and what the plot may center around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writing_genres&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writing_genres&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T15:33:09.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27975" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27976" CreationDate="2017-05-09T15:46:36.300" Score="4" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a bit hard to explain so here's are are two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She let out a sigh of &lt;strong&gt;relief&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He arched an &lt;strong&gt;amused&lt;/strong&gt; eyebrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My theory is this: you only need to directly state the emotion when the action doesn't describe if well or clear enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I'm wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T19:01:33.450" Title="Is stating the feeling in the action that describes it a sign of bad writing?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27975" CreationDate="2017-05-09T16:14:00.487" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In real life, we experience emotions ourselves and we observe them in others. Thus some emotions are observed but not felt and that is fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as felt emotions are concerned, we feel emotions in response to events. We do not feel an emotion because we are told to feel it. Felt emotion, therefore is created by the events of the story. If you want the reader to feel something when a particular event occurs, then you have to set it up properly as that they feel that emotion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to deal with a seen emotion. One is to describe all the symptoms of the emotion. The other is to state them as you do in your examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hard core show don't tell people will tell you that you should never name them, but the problem with this is that not every emotion is worth an exhaustive description of all its symptoms. And in real life, we don't tend to stand and puzzle out someone's emotions symptom by symptom. We recognize them in a glance. Thus a blow by blow description of the symptoms of an emotion is not really true to how we read people in real life. Sometimes it is the right thing to do, particularly where we may feel an emotion in response to the emotion the character is experiencing. But often is breaks the flow of the narrative is simply not true to the instant reading of emotion that we do most of the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it another way, sometimes the right thing to say is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sky began to redden behind the mountains to the east and slowly&#xA;  the stars faded and inky blue brightened into periwinkle as the first&#xA;  flash of the sun broke the horizon painting the landscape a fiery&#xA;  orange stabbed through with sharp shadows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And sometimes the right thing to say is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At sunrise John set out for Phoenix.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is no different for emotions. There is a time to describe in detail and a time to mention in passing. It all depends on their significance in the moment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-10T19:01:33.450" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T19:01:33.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27975" CreationDate="2017-05-09T16:18:22.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the words of a teacher of mine, it depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, the actions should convey the emotions, but let's be honest: an action can signify different emotions. Sometimes even opposite ones. Therefore, it's often important to refer them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What one should avoid is to state emotions flatly or repeatedly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One technique is to use scenarios that evoke the emotion you want (eg. dark rooms to evoke depression). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can use figures of speech to transmit them. In Portuguese, a famous example is 'smoking a thoughtful cigar' (from a novel studied in high school literature classes). Of course it isn't the cigar that is thoughtful, but the person smoking it; yet using such figures will help you to introduce the emotions more subtly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, one mustn't overdo it. Once it has been stated that a character is 'thoughtful', the ensuing actions (or lack thereof) should be more than enough to keep the sense of thoughtfulness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T16:18:22.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27975" CreationDate="2017-05-09T19:13:29.983" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The words &lt;em&gt;relief&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;amused&lt;/em&gt; might or might not be helpful, depending on what context is available at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &quot;sigh of relief&quot; line is the first line in a scene, then the phrase &lt;em&gt;of relief&lt;/em&gt; is a useful, efficient way to distinguish a sigh of relief from a despondent sigh or an annoyed sigh. Without it, the reader doesn't have a clear picture of the mood and will have to catch up as you dribble out more information. This could be jarring if your reader's initial guess is wrong. Yes, some people would say that it violates the &quot;show, don't tell&quot; mantra. But if using a two-word modifier to tell instead of a contrived sentence to show gets to the action faster, I'd tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, suppose the &quot;amused eyebrow&quot; line is in the middle of a dialogue in which the other character has just said something amusing. Then the reader will naturally picture an amused eyebrow arch instead of a confused or a quizzical one. Though the action alone might have been ambiguous, the action in context was clear. Describing the arch as amusing would then be a bit clunky--an extra word to say what the reader was already picturing anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I might modify your premise to this: You only need to directly state the emotion when (a) neither the action nor the context describes it clearly enough, and (b) the extra words required to show the emotion indirectly would disrupt the flow of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21329" LastEditorUserId="21329" LastEditDate="2017-05-09T19:18:36.640" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T19:18:36.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27980" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-09T20:26:02.347" Score="-1" ViewCount="1987" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bad case of writer's block, and I need some realistic-sounding country names for my story. Nothing too &quot;exotic&quot; or hard to pronounce, please. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24570" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T00:48:57.970" Title="I need fake country names for my story" Tags="|world-building|writers-block|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2017-05-10T02:50:54.120" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27962" CreationDate="2017-05-09T21:23:06.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success creates conflict. Here are a few examples just off the top of my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sibling rivalry: when one sibling succeeds a lot and one does not,&#xA;tensions arise  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The need to repeat the exploit, to top the current high, adds&#xA;pressures both internally (&lt;em&gt;&quot;I must remain the best&quot;&lt;/em&gt;) and externally&#xA;(&lt;em&gt;&quot;Buddy, you were just lucky&quot;&lt;/em&gt;)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Success does bring some measure of public exposure. While your MC may&#xA;be good at -say sports- he may be terrible at facing the cameras&#xA;after the deed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success breeds envy and from there jealousy.&#xA;Success breeds pride and from there overconfidence and contempt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T21:23:06.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27995" CreationDate="2017-05-09T23:03:11.750" Score="2" ViewCount="377" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if other people wanting to be writers experience this, but I get driven by my obsession. It used to be &lt;em&gt;Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt;, then &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Maze Runner&lt;/em&gt;, and finally &lt;em&gt;Guardians of the Galaxy&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried changing my story a slight bit, but the changes didn't make it distinct enough. I'm driven by making my characters just like their characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to not get driven by famous things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24839" LastEditorUserId="13760" LastEditDate="2017-05-21T13:14:56.303" LastActivityDate="2017-05-21T13:14:56.303" Title="How do I break away from imitating published works?" Tags="|discipline|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27980" CreationDate="2017-05-10T00:48:57.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nations of the East, &#xA;United South, &#xA;Gorox of the Abyss, &#xA;United will of the Leaders, &#xA;Nation of peril, &#xA;Nation of Peace, &#xA;United Peace, &#xA;The Cross Foundation, &#xA;The Foundations of the North, &#xA;The South Nations, &#xA;The Bright Nations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24839" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T00:48:57.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27983" CreationDate="2017-05-10T00:54:17.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to look like you're following a fad, then read lots of stuff that's been around so long that it's in the public domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend reading stuff outside of the genre in which you intend to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, books like &lt;em&gt;Les Miserables&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Don Quixote&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The Three Musketeers&lt;/em&gt;, anything by Shakespeare, and so forth.  You may remember some of it as &quot;the stuff they made us read in school.&quot;  There's a reason they picked those particular works; in spite of your teacher telling you it's good, it actually is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a mobile device, download a free books app (there are a few of them), and then use it to read all of the free novels you can scare up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastEditorUserId="24623" LastEditDate="2017-05-12T02:46:21.553" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T02:46:21.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27969" CreationDate="2017-05-10T07:13:18.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first moments of a story should introduce the setting and the characters. Reader / viewer should understand who are the characters, what is their world, how this world works, and so on. I believe this is a very important part of a story, sometimes more than the incident itself: we would not understand the gravity of the incident, if it wouldn't happen to a clearly built character. Of course you can start in medias res, but if it's a long story I would spend some time in building the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T07:13:18.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27987" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27989" CreationDate="2017-05-10T09:11:19.643" Score="22" ViewCount="6725" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm ready to enter the final act, Act 3, of my (first big) story and by now I'm pretty sure I'll have to rewrite 50-70% in ACT 1 and 2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I outlined the whole story but it is clear that my main hero is boring, his motivations (and story arc) change every few chapters and basically the whole script now feels like a mess. There's even a sinking feeling that my actual hero is one of the allies: i.e. the one who actually does stuff. My main char just 'gets dragged along' and doesn't decide a thing and if he does, it's the allies that do what he tells that should be done (he's a retired general).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone keeps advising me to 'write until the end' and then rewrite. But writing act 3 will probably feel like a drag (which was already starting to happen near the end of act 2). I'm pretty sure nothing of it will make sense because nothing I'll write in act 3 will be in-line with how I (think I) need to rewrite the first two acts. I've been staring at a blank page for a week now not sure if I should actually write this last part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the &lt;strong&gt;question&lt;/strong&gt;: should I keep writing these last 20k words that are most likely very useless. Or is it (finally) time to go back to the 'drawing board' and fix what needs fixing and then write act 3, knowing what I know now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance,&#xA;Tim&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24672" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T12:49:39.133" LastActivityDate="2023-02-25T18:55:09.707" Title="Act 3 totally broken...keep writing?" Tags="|process|outline|first-draft|psychology-of-writing|3-acts|" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27969" CreationDate="2017-05-10T09:42:28.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because your inciting incident hasn't occured, it doesn't mean what happens has to be boring. To take Mark Baker's meat-on-the-bones metaphor a little further (some might say &quot;too far&quot;), consider that there are plenty of novels that pride themselves on being invertabrates (Julio Cortazar's &quot;Hopscotch&quot; comes to mind), wherein the skeleton is absent or obscured. The reader reads such things for the meat alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the very fact that you're asking this question suggests to me that this isn't the sort of thing you're trying to write, but they help to remind us that there are plenty of things &lt;em&gt;besides&lt;/em&gt; plot that make a story interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The language itself can be beautiful. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The content can be though provoking, thematically compelling, or intriguingly disorientating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The scenes themselves can be captivating (in the way a good short story is) while having little to do with the main plot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The characters can be sufficiently interesting that we want to find out more about them (regardless of their goals, or what they're actually &lt;em&gt;doing&lt;/em&gt; in the context of the story).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can hint (or, if your narrative style permits, outright &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; the reader) that things are going to go wrong soon, and the reader (if you do it right) will be watching closely for signs that this is about to happen. If you keep tricking them into thinking it's just around the corner, you may be able to keep them reading for longer than they otherwise would.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can exploit the reader's understanding of narrative conventions, such that they know where things are heading even though there are no in-universe signs. (Things being &quot;too perfect&quot; is a good example of this, though it's a difficult trick to pull off.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can set up another conflict for your characters, and allow the reader to temporarily invest in this while you lay the groundwork for the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; conflict (i.e. a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MacGuffin&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's good to bear in mind that the only real duty you have to your reader is to not waste their time. If your main plot doesn't start until chapter six or seven, that's perfectly fine, just as long as the reader has a good time getting there, and - having arrived - doesn't feel like that time was wasted. My advice is to worry a little less about your main plot (it seems like you already have that part covered), and just make them &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt;. How you do that, exactly, is up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T09:42:28.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27987" CreationDate="2017-05-10T09:45:51.347" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fix it now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you realize you made a mistake, go back and fix it now. &lt;em&gt;Not&lt;/em&gt;, I stress, because the last 20K would be &quot;wasted,&quot; because no writing is wasted, but because it's clearly blocking you and &lt;em&gt;you don't want to write it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carve off whatever pieces aren't going to fit and put them in a slush file. I like this method because it feels less painful than outright deleting, and because sometimes I can reuse or repurpose character beats or even specific sentences or phrases somewhere else in the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T09:45:51.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27983" CreationDate="2017-05-10T10:02:33.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to do the same thing when I was first starting out. My sense is that it's because you are excited and inspired by The Thing, and you want more of The Thing, so you make more of it by mimicking it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to come at a solution for you from an odd angle, so hear me out before you dismiss my answer. My suggestion is that for right now, give in to your obsession, in a specific way: Write fanfic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fanfic allows you to do a number of things. First, you can make more of The Thing, unabashedly, without trying to put your own characters in the same plot. If you dig Katniss in the Games, go ahead and write seventeen different drabbles about Katniss in the Games. Then write a character study about Katniss in the city the night before a battle. Then extend it to a day in the life just before the series starts, when they're all in their own districts trying to get through existing. And so on. Write the parts you love and don't apologize for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, fanfic allows you to practice writing. Particularly if you find a like-minded community and can share your works for constructive feedback, you can practice creating and keeping someone &quot;in character.&quot; This is important practice. You can learn how to research backstory (canon) to determine why Katniss/Peeta/Cinna acts in a particular way so that your version behaves &quot;correctly.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also allows you to practice being edited, receiving feedback, and editing your own work. (And editing the work of others if you get that far.) Editing what you've written is a crucial skill. You need to learn how to accept feedback without getting defensive and how to judge what is a useful comment and what you can disagree with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third: After a while of writing fanfic which hews closely to the canon, you will start to come up with your own plots. You may start to come up with your own characters to inhabit those plots. You may start to cross The Thing with other universes. And that way lies... &lt;em&gt;original fiction.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you've gotten more comfortable with the tools and skills of writing by using them to create derivative works, it will be much easier to use those skills to create original works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is one way to break away from existing works: by going right through them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T10:02:33.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27987" CreationDate="2017-05-10T10:29:36.093" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add to Lauren's answer: whenever you realise that the story has problems, whether it's in the plotting, character development, or whatever; whenever you realise there is a problem, go back and fix it &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;as you write, you are exploring possibilities but, in this case, you are exploring bad possibilities (and you already know it)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;keeping no. 1 in mind, you are not exploring the possibilities that could help improve your story&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As Lauren said, not fixing the problem makes the whole story feel wrong, which makes you want to give it up on it all together&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;it's a waste of time (sorry, but having such a limited amount of time as I do for writing, wasting time is a great sin in my book)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, think of this as a long drive. If you realise you're going in the wrong direction, what do you do? Carry on or turn around as soon as possible to get back on the right track?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most times, the answer is to turn around and and get it right. However, there are a few times when the wrong road is doing something for you (you are enjoying it, it's helping you relax, it's sparking ideas, whatever), and in those few moments it is a good idea to continue. But that is not the case here: the OP is not enjoying the 'ride', he isn't learning anything from it (storywise), he isn't getting ideas, nothing. So turn around and search for the right road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T10:29:36.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27969" CreationDate="2017-05-10T10:45:16.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My novel technically has two inciting incidents: One in the first chapter, and another five chapters later. The later incident really kicks off the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... that makes me think that the first incident kicks off a subplot that allows the world and the characters to be set. Then there's a second incident that kicks off the main plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see nothing wrong with it. In fact, I've just been tutoring a kid (highschool level Portuguese literature) where he's studying a novel that has that exact structure. Subplot with a tragic family story that sets up the stage for the main plot, where the main character, while showing himself superior to his tragic family member, ends up in a greater tragedy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you have to make sure is that the initial subplot is important to the setting and has an interesting arc of itself. Imagine you're writing a short-story that is composed solely of that initial subplot: would it make an interesting read? If not, either cut it out or make it interesting per se. How? Ignore the fact that this is supposed to be the setting for something greater and treat it as a story per se: make sure that there's a goal driving the main character(s) and that the characters are interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T10:45:16.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27983" CreationDate="2017-05-10T10:53:01.523" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you're focusing too much on &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; you like, rather than what you like &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; it. Once you know what you like about something, it's usually not too difficult to come up with something that has those qualities, but in a different way. The deeper you go in your understanding of what you like, the further you can go in your own creations (because the core of it, what makes it work for you, can be retained).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is because if you don't know what you like about the things you like, you'll always be afraid that changing things too much will make them bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say you give a little thought to your taste, and realise that you really like heroic-underdog-type characters (which you may or may not, of course, but since it's something that all of the things you named have in common, I'll use it as an example). Knowing this, you can create a new character, completely from scratch, making a conscious effort to make them different in every way from the existing characters you like, except in this one aspect that you want to make sure they retain, because you like it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you end up with a whole new person, but you still like them, because they're still a heroic underdog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps you don't still like them. If that happens, great. You've now learnt that there are certain qualities you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; like in a character, or certain other qualities you like that you've missed out. Adjust your sense of your own preferences accordingly, and try again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes time and concentrated attention to &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; understand what you like about things, but once you start thinking like this, you can really run with it. You can start thinking about qualities you like in &lt;em&gt;Thing A&lt;/em&gt;, but that are entirely absent from &lt;em&gt;Thing B&lt;/em&gt;, or (and this is where it starts to get &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; fun) things that you think you would like, but which you've never seen in anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't to say that simply putting a load of things you like into a story will make it good, but really &lt;em&gt;knowing&lt;/em&gt; what you like, and really understanding &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you dig whatever it is that you dig, will give you the freedom to strip away those details that aren't so crucial, and replace them with details of your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastEditorUserId="22280" LastEditDate="2017-05-13T10:31:53.357" LastActivityDate="2017-05-13T10:31:53.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27987" CreationDate="2017-05-10T11:20:27.303" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stop writing and put it in a drawer. Go write something else for a while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no point in continuing when you know, as you clearly do, that this story is off the rails. It is not going to yield either usable prose or usable insight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time it is clear that you have not yet had the positive a-ha moment that reveals what the true story actually is. You have only had the negative realization that you don't know what the true story is. Going back and starting revisions immediately without that a-ha moment is not likely to make things better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some will advise that you should keep plowing on in this circumstance, hoping that the true story will reveal itself if you just keep working the problem. That's a good Protestant Work Ethic approach, but I seriously doubt its artistic validity. A good story emerges when you get that glorious click in your head and all the pieces of your vision fall into place. After that it rushes onto the page with effortless excitement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is sometimes a way to get to that point, but it sounds like that is not working for you at the moment. So the other alternative is to put it aside, work on something else, let your subconscious work on it in the background, and come back to it later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is something real there, it will tug at you and tug at you until you are forced to go back to it. If there isn't, it will sit in the draw forgotten and unmourned and you won't waste any more time on it. You are too close to it know to know which it will be, and the only way to find out is to put it aside and wait for that spark of excitement to return.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T11:20:27.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27983" CreationDate="2017-05-10T11:40:34.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a fundamental difference between the desire to imitate and the desire to create. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the desire to imitate. Indeed, it is the foundation of our social order. Imitation is how we learn to get along with each other. It is why originals tend to be outcasts. We are imitating animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of being a creator is very appealing. Society encourages it in word as much as it discourages it in deed. Imitating the creative work of others that is already socially acceptable, whether it is through pastiche or through fan fiction, is a safe way to play at being a creator without taking any real risks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lauren is right that you can learn a lot of the mechanics of writing from writing pastiche, and most of us started out that way to one extent or another. But I disagree with her suggestion to keep on doing it. You have come to the point of realizing that you want to be more than an imitator. You are standing at the deep end of the pool and staring down at the water, knowing that if you jump in, your feet will not touch the bottom and you will have to swim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is time to jump. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is never going to get less scary. No matter how many times you go back to the kiddy pool, there is nothing more for you to learn in the kiddy pool once you have looked into the deep end with envy and desire. From this point on, further pastiche is simply cowardice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is time to jump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Art is the imitation of life. Pastiche is the imitation of art. The way you make the jump is simply this: start observing life, start speculating about life. Watch people on the bus. Where are they going. What are they thinking. What horrors are about to befall them? What horrors are they about to commit? Fully observe a person or a scene, then have some horror, some​ unexpected disaster, intervene. How do these people react -- these particular real people that you have so carefully observed and whose inner lives you have imagined -- how do they react. Write that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is time to jump. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-17T16:27:54.147" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T16:27:54.147" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27968" CreationDate="2017-05-10T11:50:50.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add a different perspective to this focus on plotlines and plot formulas. For that, I'd like to tackle the question the OP presented in the comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I essentially mean to ask &quot;What concepts do you use when you break down someone else's novel?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did a four year university course on Literature (in Portugal) and I never talked about plotlines and plot formulas (which led to a. my deeply ingrained notion that these are geared towards 'entertainment genres', which are incredibly 'corseted' by rules, and to b. my feeling of complete 'alienness' when plotlines take the stage in writing circles). Nevertheless, we did study Propp's morphology when we studied Popular Literature, and we did talk about climax and theatre play structures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;concepts&lt;/strong&gt; we focused on in order to &lt;strong&gt;break down &lt;em&gt;novels&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; weren't plots (or structure in general), but the collection of narrative elements and how they were used to produce certain effects. Besides that, two of the most important focuses were actually on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) tension and how the author created and managed that tension;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) how the events and the characters represented the author's contemporary society and, at the same time, how they represented humanity as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what concepts do I use to break down novels? The narrative elements and how they can be used to underline an idea (whether that idea is a philosophical message worthy of 'capital L Literature' or it's simply the state of mind of a character, or maybe just the excitement of a car chase scene). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for structure, specifically, we focused on how the sequence of events (including any narrator monologues that might be dropped in) produced the tension and how it fluctuated throughout chapters and novel. Then, we would focus on how that tension would underline this or that idea (whether it belonged to the main plot or a subplot). But never did we talk about how the events should happen in one or the other way. We viewed structure as 'descriptive' rather than 'prescriptive'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I studied literature and not creative writing. Nevertheless, (and since I started writing in highschool) my course taught me, as a writer, to look at the structure of my stories not as plot formulas but as a collection of events that must produce a certain effect, whether they follow genre rules or not. In fact, it taught me to go beyond prescription of plotlines (in the shape of formulas) all together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I apologise if I sound dismissive of plotlines and plot formulas. I do think being aware of those is useful, but I see that focus as simply one perspective and the OP's question in the comments made me feel that mentioning a different perspective (and where that perspective derives from) was relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T11:50:50.477" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27968" CreationDate="2017-05-10T12:09:08.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story structure is essentially a sequence of incidents. It is important and contrary to what is said in some of the comments, literature has it just as much as light entertainment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But while all conventional stories have story structure, those incidents must happen to someone in some place and some time. The incidents, and therefore the structure of the story, are only interesting because they happen to interesting people in an interesting place at an interesting time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't a huge amount of variation in the size and complexity of various story shapes. What makes the difference between shorter and longer works is the amount of content devoted to the people, places, and times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the skeleton of a elephant is no more complicated than the skeleton of a mouse. There is simply more flesh on the bones, and the bones are corresponding bigger to hold the greater weight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't expect to find more structure in a large novel than you do in a short one, therefore, or even than you find in a short story. Expect the same bones, but larger, and a greater amount of flesh. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flesh is composed differently than bones. Flesh comes principally from observation. It is not more detailed structured that makes for a longer novel, but deeper and more detailed observation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T12:09:08.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27987" CreationDate="2017-05-10T13:59:26.670" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some say you should stop writing this story altogether. Others that you have to fix what is wrong or finish it first. These might all be valid options.&#xA;But from what I hear, 'fixing' this story is pretty much the equivalent of writing a new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Might I suggest considering this story you have written some research material into your setting and events? And write a new story, with the ally that is actually getting things done as the new protagonist? &#xA;This way you are not actually throwing away anything. The parts you have written can act as examples, alternative viewpoints and background information for the real story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24850" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T13:59:26.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26423" CreationDate="2017-05-10T17:45:59.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you only have one book you've authored, it's best to just have the one site based on that book. You should include free info related to the subject of the book. This is to build a following/traffic/list for the book. You should also be promoting the sale of the book at every appropriate opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By all means include author information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have a second book (or if you have more than one) you should have a separate site for each book AND a separate author site. On the author site you should, among the normal author info, include a list and description/sale copy for each book with a link to that book's site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this all be done on one site: YES but I prefer the multi-site version which provides better search engine optimization possibilities, especially if your books are focused on different keyword phrases. Although your books may be related in some manner, the specific, &quot;long-tail&quot; keyword phrases are likely to be different and therefore give you better search engine visibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24853" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T17:45:59.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27894" CreationDate="2017-05-10T20:23:19.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Standard disclaimer, I am not a lawyer. Having said that, I think there is a difference between reworking an idea that is pretty well known in the subject area (that is, if you pick up five books on astrology and four of them will at least mention the idea) versus reworking something that one particular author discussed that might be their innovation. If it is a generally known concept that you are explaining better, you are probably fine. If you are explaining that one author's special theory, I think you have to be a lot more careful. Give credit where credit is due, something like &quot;as so-and-so explained in the-book-name...&quot; With references, you won't run as much of a risk of unintentionally plagiarizing and may be sending some additional sales their way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I'm hoping that you are not only re-working material from elsewhere, but including your own innovations and insight -- value added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T20:23:19.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27987" CreationDate="2017-05-10T20:36:54.727" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having been in this situation a few times, what I have done is gone back to the start and begun again, not throwing out everything I have written already, but learning from what I realised works and doesn't work. For example, in one story I changed the gender of a main character, which was very significant. In a play, I changed the number of characters. Another time I changed from the third person to the first person perspective. In each case, there were many similarities to what I started with, but they weren't the same texts -- they were better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be prepared, however, for something that has happened to me several times: you get to the third act and realise what you have been writing just isn't good enough. This happened to me recently. I needed a play with fifteen female characters that could be acted by thirteen year olds for a performance for a mixed twelve year old audience and lasted for fifteen to twenty minutes. I wrote ten minutes worth of draft and realised it just wasn't good enough. I re-started with a completely different premise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T20:36:54.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28002" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28021" CreationDate="2017-05-11T03:44:23.373" Score="1" ViewCount="2999" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write a report and must think about the reader. The report has some code and some illustrations. I wonder how to display the code readably. I now mix the fonts Times New Roman 12 for normal text with Courier 11 for the code. But I could write the code in LTL, linear temporal logic instead, which I think looks the best but it is not really necessary and takes a long time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think that is will be good to just keep times new roman 12 for the normal text and courier 11 for the code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24594" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T06:46:44.867" Title="How to format code in an academic report" Tags="|formatting|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28003" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-11T08:44:41.823" Score="4" ViewCount="4852" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/27968/grammar-for-describing-novel-plots&quot;&gt;grammar for describing plots&lt;/a&gt; had a few comments that touched upon the differences between literary novels and entertainment novel which made me think. So I searched the SE for any previous questions pertaining to the difference between the two and found &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7/what-is-literary-fiction&quot;&gt;what is literary fiction?&lt;/a&gt;, which collected answers that, while interesting, were mostly opinion based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I ask: &lt;strong&gt;What is the difference between (capital L) Literature and entertainment literature?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let's try to avoid value judgements (just because some books within both categories may be utter rubbish, that does not value the category itself has greater or lesser value)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I predict some of you will mention genre, but there are canon literature books that are also genre (Frankenstein is horror, Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go is a dystopian sci-fi fantasy, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking over the comments and answers which have led me to a better understanding of what I'm looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that there isn't an authoritative definition of literature and literary works leads to many definitions (academical, commercial, popular, ...). Therefore I'll try to clarify some working definitions for the purpose of this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;literature / literary novel = a genre (that may overlap with other genres, just like romance can overlap with sci-fi)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Literature&lt;/em&gt; = a novel (because we're mostly dealing with novels here) written within any genre (sci-fi, romance, literature, mystery, ...) that is recognised (usually after some years, if not decades) to be above its contemporary works because of (elusive reasons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now say you've been asked to organise a workshop for aspiring writers who long to create an elusive work of &lt;em&gt;Literature&lt;/em&gt; in their own preferred genre. The first point of the workshop is precisely to understand what separates &lt;em&gt;Literature&lt;/em&gt; from all the rest (while the rest includes from works ranging from terrible to fairly good or even overall great).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what are those elusive reasons that can have a piece of work in whatever genre stand out above everything else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="22074" LastEditDate="2017-05-13T07:43:48.227" LastActivityDate="2020-07-27T19:00:46.920" Title="What is the difference between Literature and entertainment literature" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28003" CreationDate="2017-05-11T09:08:05.587" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Books are classified for various reasons. The word literature is used in more than one classifications scheme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the purpose of selling books, &quot;literary fiction&quot; is a genre like any other. Genre is sometimes thought of in terms of subject matter, but it would really make more sense to think of it as a kind of contract with the reader, a promise to deliver a certain kind of pleasure. Take science fiction for example. You are not likely to find Mary Doria Russell's &lt;em&gt;The Sparrow&lt;/em&gt;, Doris Lessing's &lt;em&gt;Canopus in Argos&lt;/em&gt;, or C.S. Lewis' &lt;em&gt;Out of the Silent Planet&lt;/em&gt;, shelved in Science Fiction, even though they are all set in space and on other planets. They don't deliver the kind of pleasure that typical sci fi readers are looking for, and are more likely to be shelved as literature. Literary fiction, for this purpose seems to mean works that are more contemplative in nature, or that focus more on character or place than on action. It may cover the subject matter of other genres but with a different focus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academically, Literature seems to be more a function of time. Literature is the classics, though I am not sure this distinction necessarily holds any more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I draw a distinction between Literature and Pulp based on whether the work is morally serious, by which I mean whether it attempts to portray the human experience as it really is, of it is portrays it aspirationally, as we would like it to be, not as it is.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think you will find that there is always a value judgement involved in the use of the word literature. It is fundamentally about worthiness and people will clearly disagree about what constitutes worthiness in art. At best you can expect to get a definition that represents the views of a particular school of thought, not one that depends solely on concrete observable characteristics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is fashionable today to doubt the viability to aesthetic judgements. They are fundamentally not scientific and it is fashionable to regard any judgement that is not scientific in nature as meaningless. I am not of that school, but I recognize that in modern parlance that pattern of thought essentially reduces all aesthetic judgement to mere opinion. It is up to each of us to decide if we grant them more credence than that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T09:08:05.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27987" CreationDate="2017-05-11T09:51:43.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest a way to work with @MarkBaker's advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write something different that still relates to the story.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be a subplot or some backstory to one of your characters, or something about the society or whatever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sometimes you're lucky.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You start out by writing something seemingly insignificant, which suddenly can be used to connect important events/plot points/characters, or make your current 'hero' more important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You may also realize that you were right all along.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He doesn't need to be the one who does everything. There are many stories about rulers or war lords and how they rule/order or advice their people and armies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although your current main character isn't &quot;the most active one&quot;, he's might still be the hero because he is exactly what is necessary for the succes of his allies. His background is key. You may have to make a bigger deal out of the qualities of your main character in order to make him seem more important.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if it ends impossible for you to make your main character more significant to the story, a more thorough rewrite might be unavoidable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T09:51:43.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27987" CreationDate="2017-05-11T10:30:58.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is more of a comment on your off-hand remark but I feel it’s worth mentioning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's even a sinking feeling that my actual hero is one of the allies: i.e. the one who actually does stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn’t have to be bad. In fact, it sounds potentially &lt;em&gt;exciting&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best stories I ever read — but unfortunately cannot remember the title nor author of — did something similar: The story was about a young adult embarking on an epic adventure, and his sidekick. In the last act the protagonist was suddenly killed, and the narrative perspective shifted to his sidekick. It was entirely unpredictable, it caught the reader by surprise, it was different from anything I had read before (and since), and it was sheer brilliance: In hindsight the sidekick, always getting dragged along, suddenly had a lot more depth than the nominal protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea whether this is useful in your story but unintentional dynamics between the characters &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be salvaged and made into something unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24859" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T10:30:58.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28003" CreationDate="2017-05-11T11:34:48.217" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it comes down to the percieved effect of the work. There's an assumption (rightly or wrongly) that &quot;literature&quot; should do you good in some way, whereas &quot;entertainment&quot; doesn't necessarily have to, as long as it's pleasurable to read. There's a sense (sometimes unspoken, sometimes not) that people &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; read literary works, that they might become better people by doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, things that used to be regarded as &quot;genre&quot; or &quot;entertainment&quot; fiction can eventually transform into &quot;literary&quot; works, because over time they come to be seen not just as works that are pleasurable but, for whatever reason, also as works that will have a lasting positive impact on the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue, however, that &quot;literary fiction&quot; and &quot;literature&quot; are not necessarily the same thing. Lately, &quot;literary fiction&quot; has become a genre of sorts, in that it tends to denote works with a specific set of qualities. This sort of fiction is generally somewhat realistic, generally focuses much more on internal than external conflict, tends to place heavy emphasis on the beauty and/or significance of its observations, and tends to be quite heavily driven by theme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose the rationale for calling this work &quot;literary&quot; is that - since it sets out to sincerely observe life - it is much more likely to do you some lasting good, and therefore qualify as &quot;literature&quot;, than most &quot;genre&quot; or &quot;populist&quot; fiction. This doesn't mean that works outside of &quot;literary fiction&quot; can't be &quot;literature&quot; necessarily, or even (I would argue) that all works within this genre &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; in-that-sense &quot;literature&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, though, the terms aren't well defined. Different people use them differently, and with different agendas. It's a bit like the term &quot;junk food&quot;. We all know it means &quot;food that's pleasurable but not that good for you&quot;, and we could all name something that's clearly an example of junk food, but if asked to sort a load of food into two piles (i.e. junk food and not junk food), I doubt any two people would divide them up in exactly the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastEditorUserId="22280" LastEditDate="2017-05-11T13:29:44.713" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T13:29:44.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28009" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28015" CreationDate="2017-05-11T13:44:14.037" Score="4" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;So a couple of years ago I wrote a locally succesful one-act play, of which I still really enjoy the world. I want to continue writing in this world in a more prose-y way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like the appropriate way to start this would be by first novelising the play in question, if only to get a sense of style and get over some early adaptation hurdles for the setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is (are) the major problem(s) to watch out for when turning theatre into prose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24863" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2017-05-11T15:17:18.230" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T20:03:38.930" Title="How to approach the Novelisation of a Play" Tags="|novel|playwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28009" CreationDate="2017-05-11T15:16:51.437" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest challenge to any adaptation is letting it be its own work.  Every medium has its own demands, and being too faithful to the original can keep the work from living again in the new medium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, novels are more internal than plays, have the added demands of vivid descriptive passages detailing the physical setting and the appearances of the characters, and can more easily escape the &quot;show-not-tell&quot; rule that binds plays and movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because they demand a much higher word count, novels often have more complex plots, subplots and character development as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T15:16:51.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28011" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-11T17:34:36.383" Score="2" ViewCount="2445" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of writing a life story/non-fiction book that has numerous real life issues and me being real and raw and truthful with what I have dealt with in my own life. I don't want to embarrass or call out anyone in my life but would like to still tell my story to help others! How do I go about this? Can I publish anonymously by chance instead of just changing names, etc?? Those around the people may be able to identify them by relationship so I am concerned about this. Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24868" LastActivityDate="2021-01-29T00:11:38.657" Title="Can I publish a book anonymously to protect the real people my non-fiction book is about?" Tags="|publishing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27987" CreationDate="2017-05-11T17:43:50.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would fix the story before continuing writing with a bad theme. That could be &quot;right now,&quot; as one poster suggests, or after you've put it away and come back to it sometime later, as another one suggests. But in either case, &quot;before continuing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A relatively easy fix is for you to try recasting the former hero into something else, like the narrator, Nick Carraway style. Then make one of the &quot;allies who actually does stuff&quot; the real hero, like Gatsby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a technique to save a &quot;central&quot; character that is not a good &quot;main&quot; character. You can still see the world through his eyes, except that he will be telling someone else's story, not his own. Then his &quot;getting dragged along&quot; will no longer be a fault. It's called &quot;making a virtue of necessity.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-13T17:00:22.817" LastActivityDate="2017-05-13T17:00:22.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28011" CreationDate="2017-05-11T18:30:02.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: NO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: The publisher is the legal entity responsible for paying the production costs, for arranging distribution, and the like. Thus, the publisher is always known, at least to those who need to know for business purposes. This part of the answer is not a matter of law; it is practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your book bears no information regarding who is responsible for it, then how would anyone be able to obtain a copy? Where would they inquire?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it is theoretically possible that a known business could stock and distribute your book, without revealing the origin of the book. Certainly they can do so for the author's name, if you are using a pseudonym. Nevertheless, the true name could be discovered, if legally necessary. After all, the copyright can be traced back to somebody, and the real author's name is stored somewhere in an industry database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way you could effectively conceal the origin of the book would be to print it yourself in your basement, without telling anybody, then skulk around in camouflage in the middle of the night, dropping off copies without payment. Even then, most businesses nowadays have outside cameras to discourage burglary. You are being watched. As a point of law, which surely varies according to jurisdiction, doing this secretive routine may or may not be illegal, even if the book's contents are not illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T18:30:02.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6988" CreationDate="2017-05-11T19:04:12.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I originally posted this in another form as a comment, but I think it deserves an answer. However, I will not answer it as-asked, but as-interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in the USA educational system, there are criteria for selecting appropriate reading materials. I refer not to intellectual, moral, or social content, but to readability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept is that at any point in time, each student has a certain reading level, which can be measured. Then, the student should be assigned reading materials at a slightly higher reading level, so that the level gradually increases as more and more difficult material is assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several quantitative methods. One of them, private copyrighted and trademarked, is known as &quot;Lexile.&quot; There are others. The inputs to the calculation vary with the method. I believe that Lexile is proprietary, so its exact algorithm is not publicly known. Other methods are publicly known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible input to the calculation, among others, is the number of different words used in the book. That may be scaled for whether the words are unusual in usage or unusually long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this can be gamed. Many famous novels are simply written, despite their profound content. That was intentional. They were written in an era when education was taken seriously at each grade level, but most folks did not graduate high school. Thus, they are written so that someone at about the eighth grade level of reading (real grade 8, not &quot;everyone passes&quot;) can read the book. But then, such books would not be sufficiently &quot;advanced&quot; for typical native-English readers in grade nine! Here's an example: &lt;em&gt;Grapes of Wrath&lt;/em&gt;, by John Steinbeck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, some authors will intentionally include more words, unusual words, and longer words, in order to raise the reading level. That helps their otherwise-obscure book score better for more advanced readers, even if the intellectual content is much lower. Especially in fantastic fiction, there may be many characters with unique names (no wizard is ever named &quot;John&quot;), places, and even objects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T19:04:12.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28009" CreationDate="2017-05-11T20:03:38.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I completely agree with Chris, I'd like to make a few suggestions concerning the 'how'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approach 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest first writing / drawing a schematic of the plot, in order to get away from the written text. This means that no sentences can be taken out, just ideas and topics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, keep away from the play for some time and will yourself to forget it as much as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, look at the schematic (which is basically the skeleton of the story) and start writing it in prose, making all the necessary changes (including to the plot, if need be) as they become necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach means that things can become quite different from the original play, especially where it comes to dialogue, since you won't be going back to check it and keep it word by word. However it allows a great deal of freedom to reinvent the tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approach 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the idea is to keep as close to the original as possible (which means respecting dialogues, events, etc) the first thing &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; would do would be to choose one character (or a few) and place myself in their shoes. The event, the dialogues, everything, will be seen through their eyes and ears. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means that there may be scenes that are not in the book because the character(s) didn't witness them, which will require new scenes in order for the information to be transmitted in a new way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also means getting inside the characters more deeply than it was probably required for the play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach is much more difficult and likely to require several drafts until it loses any touch to its theatrical counterpart while respecting events and dialogues to the utmost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialogues, however, will be what will require the greatest change: in a play you need to have characters state their thoughts. These dialogues aren't necessary in a novel as the reader has access to their inner thoughts in the narration. It even means that some scenes can be scrapped completely, or that some situations can develop differently. That is the trickiest part and why the first approach I mentioned is often the best one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T20:03:38.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28018" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-12T03:54:23.710" Score="0" ViewCount="4458" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to find other description of the atmosphere of a scene rather than just using the word 'tense.' Instead of writing, &quot;The atmosphere between Bill and Bob is tense.&quot; What other ways would there be to describe what it feels like to be in the scene?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24874" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T09:09:45.430" Title="How would I explain the atmosphere in the current scene?" Tags="|description|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-05-16T02:43:34.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28019" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-12T06:02:08.587" Score="8" ViewCount="5498" Body="&lt;p&gt;But not like having the same full name but rather same last name like for example having a character named Kevin Snow which has the same last name as Game of Thrones character Jon Snow&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other examples would be having same first name such as having a character named Logen Evans which has the same name as Wolverine's actual first name which is Logen as well&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24875" LastActivityDate="2018-10-03T19:13:29.003" Title="Is it okay to have a character that has the same first or last name as another famous character" Tags="|characters|naming|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28018" CreationDate="2017-05-12T06:46:24.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would rather depend on how you want to describe it. You can choose to describe from the point of view of either of the characters or from a third person narration. You may even describe as the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like (assuming some situation where two friends have fought) -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Author's point of view -&#xA;The situation had never been worse for Bill and Bob. They both seemed to be in a fix in their current situations, neither could break out of it nor resolve it. The anger and egos prevented a happy reunion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third person point of view -&#xA;There seemed to have a cold war begun between Bill and Bob. Though once good friends, they now couldn't bear to come in any form of contact with one another. It was not that they didn't want it. Having known them for years, I know that each wanted the good for the other but the times had changed and so had the perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Bob's point of view -&#xA;The past week has been very difficult. The worse of all is that when you need a friend, that friend is not there. It is simple to fight an enemy but difficult to fight a friend. I just don't see what has gone wrong with Bill. A matter of such insignificance has been made of utmost priority and the person known to reason out of things is just making some self importance issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24877" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T06:46:24.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28002" CreationDate="2017-05-12T06:46:44.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless your institution has a specific style guide for writing and formatting code (which, by the existence of this question, I assume you do not), speaking as someone who writes technical documentation to software:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The font which I generally use is Cambria or the Serif-family of fonts, size 11, 0.5 spacing for text. Nevertheless, I have specifically been instructed to use these fonts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For code, use font where exactly each character takes up the same amount of space as any other character. Source Code Pro is a good example of such a font.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Code should stand out or otherwise be easily distinguishable, so put in in a box. Above all (as mentioned above) code formatting should be like it is found in an IDE or text editor, so each character takes up the same amount of space. For example,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a program which prints &quot;Hello World!&quot; to the console.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;String s = &quot;Hello World!&quot;;&#xA;System.out.println(s); &#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've usually been hesitant to include comments in the code blocks, especially if your document is already explaining what the code does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing which you could certainly do is simply take screenshots of code from your IDE/text editor, crop it in a image-editing program and simply paste the resultant image into your document editor. This can be nice, since usually IDEs have things such as line numbers which are otherwise unavailable in pre-formatted text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I cannot offer much more advice, since when it comes down to questions about technical writing, the answers is &quot;it depends&quot;. Different institutions have different needs, and, to be honest, if they haven't given you a decent idea of how they want something formatted, either they're acting unprofessionally or aren't too fussed about details as long as the message gets across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24383" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T06:46:44.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28019" CreationDate="2017-05-12T06:50:19.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see any issue. See any novels for that matter - Robert Langdon, the protagonist for Dan Brown's many works is inspired and loosely based on John Langdon, the famous typographer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such occurrences are very common and unless you copy everything about a character, I don't see any copyright issues. For that matter, lets hope your Snow has a happy family :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24877" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T06:50:19.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28011" CreationDate="2017-05-12T07:14:53.393" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is not the author of the book, but the events and characters portrayed. If you anonymously write, for instance, about your schoolmates with their names and physical description in a setting that is recognizable as the real one, no matter who the author is, the people portrayed will be recognized. Period. It &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Publishing anonymously&quot; might protect yourself, not the people you write about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there can be solutions.&#xA;Sometimes changing names and settings can be enough.&#xA;But a good writer, in my opinion, is able to modify the real events in order to maintain the core behind them. It does not matter if Jane cheated on Ralph during high school: what you want to tell is a story about cheating, and the emotions it uncovered. That you can do by any means, not with a chronicle of what happened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pardon this rough simplification, but I hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T07:14:53.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28019" CreationDate="2017-05-12T08:34:44.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of names are relatively common and therefore should not be monopolized by a single person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for John Snow, the name is not only famous for Game of Thrones, but it is also the name of an important Doctor that made major contributions to the concepts of today’s hygiene. &#xA;He was the one who successfully traced the cholera outbreak in London (1854).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a coincidence? Maybe, maybe not…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wiki-link, John Snow: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also add a further point to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you pick a name like Paris (as in Paris Hilton) for a character that is a very serious, hard working lab assistant…. Prior knowledge of the reader might interfere with the picture you’re trying to create about the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, one should consider how well known the name is and what that could mean for your readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23987" LastEditorUserId="23987" LastEditDate="2017-05-12T09:20:46.243" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T09:20:46.243" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6988" CreationDate="2017-05-12T08:43:27.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Last year, I looked up average word counts for Historical Fiction (which is what I write), but I ended up taking notes for several other genres (though not all) out of curiosity. Here they are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;adult novels in general:&lt;/strong&gt; 80,000-100,000&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(this includes literary, crime, romance, ...)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;sci-fi and fantasy:&lt;/strong&gt; 90,000-115,000&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(though the limit 120,000 is often mentioned too)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;historical:&lt;/strong&gt; 90,000-110,000&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(though the limit 120,000 is often mentioned too)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;mystery:&lt;/strong&gt; 70,000-90,000&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(though Agatha Christie's average was 40,000-60,000)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;romance:&lt;/strong&gt; 50,000-100,000&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(so, from really short to general adult novel length)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YA:&lt;/strong&gt; 55,000-80,000&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(though 55,000-70,000 is often mentioned too)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time, I saw tens of pages until I came up with these averages, since some websites had conflicting numbers for some genres, but here are some of the first links to pop up after a similar google search:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/word-count-for-novels-and-childrens-books-the-definitive-post&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thewritepractice.com/word-count/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://manuscriptagency.com.au/word-count-by-genre-how-long-should-my-book-be/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.litrejections.com/word-count/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link 4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T08:43:27.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28018" CreationDate="2017-05-12T09:09:45.430" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think atmosphere should always be illustrated (so to speak) in the action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the situation that led to the tension is known, one could have a couple of scenes where Bill and Bob interact tersely (or not at all). Having read the event that kickstarted the tension, it's easy to just 'see' that tension lingering in casual actions and dialogues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the situation that led to the tension is not known, and especially if the characters are not the main ones (so that a reader can't promptly tell they're acting particularly cold towards eachother), then one can have the same terse interaction which, in this case, will lead to someone commenting in the lines of &quot;those two look like they're stuck in a cold war or something&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really must have a one liner, I'd suggest something that one might say in one's real life, in order to make the statement more natural sounding. I mean, if you have two friends fall out and you witness their coldness to eachother, how will you describe it? I'd never say 'the atmosphere is tense between those two', but might say 'they're barely on speaking terms' or use an idiom (sorry, I have a couple of idioms I'd use in my native language, but I can't think of any in English right now). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T09:09:45.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27923" CreationDate="2017-05-12T10:32:49.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with the first answer. The core of the problem is the writer's individual style. Essentially, we're discussing the well-worn subject of 'show don't tell'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Showing leads the reader to derive or conclude based on the presented information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Can you get the Wok from the top cupboard, please?&quot; said Mrs Smith. &quot;You know I can't reach.&quot;&#xA;&quot;Stir fry, again?&quot; said Mr Smith. &quot;Why can't we have some good old American food?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From this brief exchange the reader will make assumptions that are not stated facts. e.g. The characters are married. Mr Smith is taller than Mrs Smith.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's examine this on a more complicated level . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a mixed race female character &quot;Charlie&quot;. Throughout school she identified with the blacks and Hispanics. Charlie's world is music, from a very young age she could rarely be found without earbuds blasting Hip-hop into her ears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In random scene, earbuds in, Charlie's doing her homework in her room. Her stepmom shocks her by taking her by the shoulders and turning her around to tell her that her dinner is ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've been shown (but are unaware of the fact) Charlie has two superpowers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We come to a critical scene: Charlie's in a nightclub, dancing. Music is pounding. A huge narcotics deal is about to go down. But the Colombian drug-dealers are plotting to kill the undercover cops and steal the cash.&#xA;How do we know this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You were told . . . On the balance of probability Charlie can speak Spanish, and based on all the previous conversations that had taken place with her earphones in - Charlie's pretty adept at lip-reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With your character, perhaps put them in a situation where the absence of the necklace exposed by its omission whilst you through in a red-herring to further distract the reader. e.g the character has a brief meeting or is required to deliver something to a person in a courthouse or, at an airport, or inside an embassy. She's required to pass through a metal detector so hands her phone and watch to the security staff. She returns five minutes later and curses. &quot;WTF? Five missed calls!&quot;      &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T10:32:49.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28019" CreationDate="2017-05-12T10:42:09.717" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem you're describing actually has an associated TV Trope: the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OneMarioLimit&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;One Mario Limit&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;obligatory warning&lt;/strong&gt;, now that I've added a link). Some names become so strongly associated with one character/person, that any other characters/people with the same name will inevitably be compared with them. Mario is a well-known example: the only other famous Mario I can think of right now is Mario Balotelli, who is in fact nicknamed &quot;Super Mario&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only believe this trope is a problem if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There really &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; only one well-known character/person with that name. Plenty of people are named 'Snow'. I actually have a character myself named 'Snow'. Nobody outside of &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt; (that I know of) is named 'Lannister'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The person that name is associated with is not a person you want your character to be associated with (@HvG made a similar point in their answer). You'll notice that nobody these days is named &quot;Adolf&quot;, for example.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your character isn't distinct enough. If your character 'Logan Evans' is a friendly, outgoing guy who solves his problems with his sharp wits, nobody will notice he shares his name with Wolverine. If he's a loner who solves his problems with his fists, &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; will notice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, I would say this isn't worth worrying about, because there are &lt;em&gt;so many&lt;/em&gt; famous people and famous works out there that it's almost impossible to come up with a name that hasn't been used by one of them (unless you're writing a fantasy work like &lt;em&gt;GoT&lt;/em&gt; and can just make one up). When naming the protagonist of one of my stories, I plucked the name &quot;Samantha Smith&quot; out of thin air - when I found out that was the name of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an actual famous person&lt;/a&gt;, rather than change it, I simply had another character make a remark about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23927" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2017-05-12T20:04:15.557" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T20:04:15.557" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12839" CreationDate="2017-05-12T10:43:39.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it works, of course you can do it. It isn't the most common thing that happens in novels, but I've seen it before, although that was in an anime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there should be a good reason for killing the protagonist, and it should do something good for the story. If you kill off your protagonist without explaining what it resolves, then your reader probably won't see the point in the death. They have followed this character through the story and they'll hate to see him/her die at the end, but their pain will ease if you provide insight into why it happened and the good it did for the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SPOILERS ALERT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 'Harry Potter', Harry discovers he is a Horcrux and must die in order to fully defeat Voldemort. Hence, he sacrifices himself, yet is able to return to life to finish what he started. And in the anime I mentioned above, the main character made himself hated, then planned his death to unite the world. Just two examples of killing off the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot, Code Geass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T10:43:39.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12813" CreationDate="2017-05-12T12:55:25.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is (as almost all answers relating to this type of question) it depends. There is no set way to write a story. For me, in all cases of description, the issues are relevance, POV, and 'real time'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question being . . . &quot;What would the character notice?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. &quot;Lucy followed the maid through the large library to the drawing room.&quot; - There are very few rooms than you can cross in 5 seconds. Other than the library being 'large' the character has no time to make observations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Lucy followed the maid into the library. &quot;Take a seat.&quot; she gestured. &quot;Mr Smith will be down presently.&quot;&quot; - During the wait the character has time to observe and describe the entire library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other issue pertains to a writer's method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;How do I look?&quot; said Mom, clutching her purse.&#xA;&quot;You'll do,&quot; I replied, feigning disinterest. In truth I was a little shocked. It had been three years since Dad died. At some point in time she was entitled to move on with her life. Bob Tucker had invited her out on a date - and she'd accepted. It hit me - this woman did not exist purely to be my mom. She was a woman. She scrubbed up well. Any red-blooded man would want to hit that. &quot;Make sure you're home by eleven,&quot; I added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here I'm looking for an 'empathy fill'. Rather than impose my view on the reader. I want the reader to recall an image of somebody who was shocked when confronted by a woman who they viewed as nothing more than a sister, a mother, an auntie - who shocked them when donning heels and make-up. Going into a detailed description may ruined for them. Letting them fill in the details themselves let's them believe - I was there. I know that woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T12:55:25.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27923" CreationDate="2017-05-12T14:00:41.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could repeatedly describe the appearance of N. at certain points (e.g. when your protagonist meets him). Each time, mention the necklace as part of the description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the fight, describe the appearance, but omit the necklace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing is it might seem a bit contrived (esp. if N. is the only character whose appearance you repeatedly describe). But it could work if, for example, the protagonist likes to pay particular attention to people's clothes, or N. has a habit of wearing unusual or gaudy, or particularly fashionable or unfashionable clothes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19089" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T14:00:41.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27983" CreationDate="2017-05-12T14:11:47.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not really feeling the question. I could never write like that. I'm a fan of write your own story with your own characters. However, if this is the only way you can work try a little mix and match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. Let's say you are a fan of the original screen &quot;Superman&quot; but you are also a fan of &quot;Star Trek&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So write your S/F story with Lois Lane replacing Lt Uhuru. Margot Kidder (the original screen Lois Lane) was fairly volatile, and was somewhat aggressive. The romantic undertones between Captain Kirk and Lt Uhuru are well documented but what would happen if William Shatner's character hit on Margot Kidder's character - It is likely she'll slap him and threaten to file a sexual harassment lawsuit the moment they return to Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character will prevent you from duplicating the story. Where as Uhuru will say &quot;Ai, captain.&quot; Lois will respond &quot;Whatever.&quot; Your story will have to cycle through themes like 'maybe she doth protest too much' and somehow put them in a position whereas they're forced to resolve their differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All around you'll see well-known characters placed in alternative environments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T14:11:47.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27983" CreationDate="2017-05-12T14:52:35.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you read something else. Seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, my local public library has a collection of Agatha Christie murder mysteries. After the first one or two, they are like jelly beans. The author's world (which spanned decades) is so unlike sci-fi or fantasy. And, her stories involve a lot of human interaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll never write like she did (wouldn't want to). But now, I think I know how to do it, if I wanted to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've already worked my way through Raymond Chandler, much of August Derleth, and some other writers. If I wrote sci-fi, I'd go through a number of authors whose works are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; directly linked to movies, television, or video games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that much of contemporary writing (so to speak) is too closely linked to visible action. That's where the money is. If you look at older works, you will find many instances in which the interaction among the characters reveals &quot;where they are at&quot; rather than &quot;what will happen next.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T14:52:35.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27983" CreationDate="2017-05-12T19:17:26.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a practical standpoint, I think the solution is much the same as the solution to idea-generation in many other contexts. I'd recommend you brainstorm like crazy, and the real issue is what prompts you use for your brainstorming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you like &lt;em&gt;The Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt;, but you don't want to imitate it too blatantly? Start brainstorming key differences you could use. In The Hunger Games, the characters are forced to compete as retaliation for past rebellion. So start listing alternate motivations--e.g., scarcity of resources pits tribes against one another for access. In THG, the participants are drawn at random, and the protagonist volunteered to take her sister's place. Now list other ideas for how participants could be chosen. But wait, who says the combat has to be physical? List other possible contests. Do the losers have to die? List some alternate consequences of losing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have listed enough of these alternatives to various plot elements, start looking for ways to combine them. Perhaps you end up with a scenario in which participants work their rumps off through years of secondary school in order to be chosen to represent their families at the university. In this world resources were nearly depleted years ago, and only those students who show the most promise for scientific prowess that might save humanity will be granted privileged status. This status earns them access to the scarce medicines that let their families live beyond their thirties or forties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This scenario was the result of brainstorming possible deviations from THG one plot element at a time. But does it sound like a THG rip-off? Not at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21329" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T19:17:26.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28039" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-12T19:44:27.130" Score="0" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have begun writing a story about two city-states in the year 2307 in an arms race to create a time machine.  &lt;strong&gt;The protagonist must regain the confidence of his old &quot;sim stealing&quot; gang whom he sold out to a reeducation clinic to keep them out of trouble with the government to help him do a job for the government to invent a time machine.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a beginning writer, and I have particular style of writing that incorporates a lot of exposition and dialog.  I attended a writer's group this week that gave me advice that I needed to develop my characters to give readers something more to be invested in, because the exposition and dialog gets a little long.  So, I have been trying to conceptualize a project that may give me that experience.  I have been doing research on the Internet.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see that there are sites for forums, courses, prompts, exercises, and books.  What I think I want is a combination of theory, shorter assignments (with feedback), and a longer project (with a character arc)that ties it all together that I can present for a half hour at my writer's group to show that I have addressed my issues in a way that would be entertain them too.  In essence I am looking for structure without having to pay too much for a formal course.  I am on a budget, and I want to be up to speed in a month's time if possible (but I recognize it could take longer...) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9885" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-05-12T22:00:46.263" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T22:16:50.190" Title="What I kind of project can I do for a writer's group to show that I have mastered character development?" Tags="|character-development|education|exercises|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28039" CreationDate="2017-05-12T19:54:34.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have begun writing a story about two city-states in the year 2307 in&#xA;  an arms race to create a time machine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The essence of your difficulty is right there in your opening sentence. Stories are not about city states. Stories are always always always about a man/woman/boy/girl/small furry animal whose life is upset in some way by some thing and wants something as a result, which they will have to struggle hard to get, which will bring them at some point to a fundamental crisis that will change and/or reveal who they really are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If if happens in two city states in the year 2307 is is only because two city states in the year 2307 are a good stage on which to play out the drama of that character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to rewrite your question in these terms and see if doing so helps you see your way forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T19:54:34.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28049" CreationDate="2017-05-12T20:59:30.443" Score="6" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I want a character to respond with anger, I want the reader to understand why the character is angry. I want the reader to be caught up in the the events that lead to that anger and be given reason to feel the things I do while I'm writing. But sometimes, the things I'm feeling &quot;in the moment&quot; don't get conveyed and the reader can get left behind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I ensure what I am writing captures what I'm feeling as I write it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is less about forcing everyone to feel the same thing and more about how I, as a writer, can make sure I have illustrated the situation completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14466" LastActivityDate="2017-08-26T19:04:45.173" Title="How do I ensure what I am writing captures what I'm feeling as I write it?" Tags="|style|technique|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28039" CreationDate="2017-05-12T22:16:50.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mark Baker is exactly right. Your story needs to be about a &lt;em&gt;person&lt;/em&gt; (who can be a human, alien, small animal, android, werewolf, sentient car, or Groot). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I needed to develop my characters to give readers something more to be invested in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is your problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never mind the exercises and projects and forums and blah blah blah cannoli. You are trying to write a story that's too complicated about a person you haven't fallen in love with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your first task is to &lt;em&gt;define your character.&lt;/em&gt; Let's call him Bob.&#xA;Who is Bob? What does he want? What's stopping him from having it?&#xA;What will he do to get it? What &lt;em&gt;won't&lt;/em&gt; he do? How does he want&#xA;people to think of him? What's the one thing he doesn't ever want&#xA;anyone to know? What is his biggest strength? What's his biggest&#xA;weakness? Who is his best friend?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then you need the basic outlines of a plot. The MacGuffin, the&#xA;allies, the bad guys, if there's a love interest, any dependents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you know what Bob wants, who will help him and who will thwart&#xA;him, you map out the &lt;em&gt;journey&lt;/em&gt; which Bob is going to take. The&#xA;journey is what happens to Bob, internally, as he navigates the plot&#xA;of &quot;getting what he wants.&quot;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does Bob react to obstacles? Does he give up? Get angry? Get&#xA;clever? Ask for help? Does his strength or flaw play into this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does Bob react to success? Does he gloat? Acknowledge it quietly&#xA;and not make a fuss? Cheer? Share the glory or hog it? Does his&#xA;strength or flaw play into this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is for Bob to have changed (preferably improved, but it could be a downer) by the end, when he has the MacGuffin. The process of getting the MacGuffin will have forced Bob to do things, or think things, which he wouldn't have otherwise. This is a character arc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now go back and look at your original sketch of Bob. Does it still&#xA;work? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create some backstory. Is there anything in Bob's background which&#xA;you could change,   or add, or remove, to make the story more&#xA;interesting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These sketches and notes and discussions are what you can present to your group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T22:16:50.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28043" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28048" CreationDate="2017-05-12T22:31:12.617" Score="3" ViewCount="3527" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've long known what the purpose of inner conflict is. Indeed, it was one of the simplest concepts for me to grasp when I was learning about it. Now I'm not so sure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seem to have developed a dual understanding of inner conflict: what I used to know, and what I now know. Neither seem wrong, but they are different and can't &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; be the purpose of inner conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question therefore is simple: &lt;strong&gt;What is the purpose of inner conflict?&lt;/strong&gt; Why does one include it in their characters? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I'm not explaining how I view inner conflict is because I don't want to turn this question into a debate over which of my views are correct, or if either are. I want to hear how you view inner conflict instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt; As with any aspect of writing, I'm sure there are those who disagree with it. If you believe writers should not use inner conflict, I am interested to hear what you have to say. However, please put it in a comment. Only use an answer to answer the actual question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2017-05-14T15:46:49.010" Title="What is the Purpose of an Inner Conflict?" Tags="|novel|character-development|conflict|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28041" CreationDate="2017-05-12T22:46:27.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put it down and read it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can hard to tell whether you are properly conveying an emotion while you are writing. You are the author; of course &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; know what emotion you want readers to experience. Put it down and come back to it. Become a reader of your story rather than the author. Then ask yourself what your writing makes you feel when you read it. Does it still convey the emotion you want it to convey? If not, what do you need to change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you reread it, think about why the writing does or doesn't convey the proper emotions. Is it imprecise word choice? Try rewriting using different words. Does the scene not make you feel truly angry? Readers will only be angry for characters or causes they care about. In fact, they likely won't feel much of anything if they don't care about your characters. Does the emotion feel forced? Make sure you have provided enough context to justify the emotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, do some editing. When you give your work a little time and distance, you can find and fix this sort of problem much more easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23436" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T22:46:27.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28043" CreationDate="2017-05-12T22:47:33.210" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you say you know what an inner conflict is, I'll try and avoid explaining it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I should point out that the definition of 'inner conflict' &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; why it is used in a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having your character disagree with himself excites the reader. The reader wonders what the character is going to choose, and the consequences of that choice. Let's say the character has someone he doesn't want to lose, but that person could potentially ruin the goal he has been trying to achieve throughout the novel. What does he do? He is now in conflict with himself, and the reader is given the opportunity to guess what is going to happen. This has the reader wanting more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inner conflict is seen so often, in almost every novel, because of the reason I've just explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hoping this answers your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T22:47:33.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28041" CreationDate="2017-05-12T22:53:04.270" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me explain with a scene-building technique I've learned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A scene is composed by some elements. Three of them are: the atmosphere, the moldure and the action. Lets say I want to create a scene where the character opens the door of a room in a creppy and abandoned pirate ship, and I shall use these three to explain them. In this example, I want to build the emotion: fear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(PS: Sorry if my english fails, I'm not a native english speaker.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Little Charlie walked down the stairs to the dormitory. The blue ghosty light of the moon traversed the small windows and the broken parts of the grey woods of what should be the wall of the ship. The wind creeps in making it sound like a whisper from a dead bride. He stares the door to the captain's room and imagine if he will open the door to hell.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the technique?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The atmosphere&lt;/strong&gt; are said to be &quot;variable things&quot; in the place. The light of the moon that gets in the place, the slow and cold wind that enters the place, the sound of the wood creaking and the ghosty wind entering the room... (It is said that Stephen King is the master of atmosphere.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The moldure&lt;/strong&gt; is the image, the objects and positions. The barrels, the bottles in the floor, the hammcocks in which the pirates slept... Have you noticed that I did not mentioned them even once but you probably had imagined it? Should I tell that there were hammcocks, barrels or bottles in the dormitory? Probably not, UNLESS there is something uncommon in it, like a fountain of beer or a statue of a cat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The action&lt;/strong&gt; is the movement and actions of objects and/or characters. In this case, the only action I used was Little Charlie staring at the door and feeling something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use this technique, you will manage to build emotion more easily, because you will know what a scene is made of. The use of the right words are also the key for building the emotion. You can only select the right words by your own experience and by using figures os speech such as metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you think that the scene still dont pass the good emotion you want it to pass, you can always solve this in the revisions and editings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And just a final comment, if you still dont feel safe about the emotion you want to pass in the scene, I think that you are facing a terrible bad that many writers face today: perfectionism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24464" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T22:53:04.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28043" CreationDate="2017-05-12T23:28:58.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inner conflict, as I define it, is simply a character's conflict with themself, rather than a character's conflict with the outside world. Inner conflict might be caused by an outside conflict (it usually is), but this is typically because the external conflict reveals something conflicting within the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inner conflict can take many forms. Often, a character holds a certain worldview, but goes through an external conflict that forces them to reevaluate that worldview. Take, for example, the movie &lt;em&gt;Cars.&lt;/em&gt; Lightning McQueen, the main character, is a famous race car who is accustomed to living in big cities and being carried everywhere in his trailer. When he gets stranded in the small, rural town of Radiator Springs, he comes to question his own values and morals as he meets the people there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, an inner conflict might take the form of a difficult decision. This would be a major decision, one that calls into question (again) what the character truly values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the purpose of inner conflict? It helps us connect with the characters more. Connecting with characters is critical to good storytelling; we don't care what happens to characters we don't care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inner conflict makes your characters more human. Real people have inner conflicts. In fact, most of the inner conflicts in literature are real conflicts that many real people face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a character go through such an inner conflict allows us to connect with them. Have you ever battled an evil wizard? Have you ever blown up a Death Star? Most of us haven't &lt;sup&gt;[citation needed]&lt;/sup&gt;. But we can relate to the situations these characters are in, largely because we can relate to their inner conflict. We can think about a character's dilemma: &lt;em&gt;Would I hand myself over to the guy who wants to kill me in order to save my friends?&lt;/em&gt; and ask ourselves if we would do the same. We can watch Luke's inner turmoil as he is tempted by the power of the Dark Side and compare it to our own temptation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; Inner conflict is simply a conflict that occurs within a character's mind, usually involving their morals/beliefs/values. All types of conflict are engaging if they are written well, but inner conflict is one of the most relatable, because we all experience it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23436" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T23:28:58.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28043" CreationDate="2017-05-12T23:38:31.953" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inner conflict is the whole enchilada. All good stories lead up to a moment of crisis in which the protagonist must make a choice. That choice must be personally difficult. It must come at personal cost. Deciding to buy the Chevy rather than the Ford is a choice, but not one that comes at a personal moral or psychological cost. The climax of a story is always that moment of change or revelation when the protagonist must ask themselves, am I this sort of person or that, am I willing to pay this price or not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All stories also need something to bring the protagonist to this crisis point. This is the role of external conflict. But external conflict is not enough in itself. Its point is to create the occasion on which the inner personal conflict must be faced. Otherwise resolving the external conflict is a mere technical matter, like choosing between the Chevy and the Ford.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The crisis point of inner personal conflict can also be reached without an external antagonist, without an external conflict. But external and internal conflicts are not alternatives. Internal conflict is always at the heart. The external conflict is merely a mechanism to bring them to that point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-14T15:46:49.010" LastActivityDate="2017-05-14T15:46:49.010" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28041" CreationDate="2017-05-12T23:55:32.103" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The job of the writer is not to convey emotion (or only in a secondary sense that I will come back to in a minute). The writer's job is to create emotion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story is fundamentally an experience. You don't push emotions onto the reader during the experience, rather you design the experience to create the emotions, just as experiences in real life create emotions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the reader is not feeling the emotion you intended in a particular scene, therefore, chances are that the writing of the current scene is not the culprit, it its that the experience leading up to the scene has not primed the reader to have that emotion when they have that experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about passing an accident on the highway. You see cars smashed or overturned. You may feel some small twinge of sympathy for the victims, but they are unknown to you and chances are you will have forgotten all about it five minutes down the highway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But prior experience can completely change your reaction. If you have heard your friend talking about how he is worried about his teenage son who likes to party and who drives too fast, and when you look at the wreck you recognize that the smashed vehicle is the same make and model and color as your friend's car, and you think you recognize a &quot;This Car Climbed Mount Washington&quot; bumper sticker on the trunk, then your reactions are totally different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the difference is not in anything you are seeing in one case vs the other. It is all about how your prior experience conditions you to react. It is the same in a story. The emotional response is created by how you set up everything leading to the scene. It is not created by the way the scene itself is written. In fact, the better you have set it up, the less you need to say to get the emotional payoff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is, however, one way in which you do need to be able to convey emotion, and that is when the emotions of the characters are actually part of the setup of the emotion for a reader. The nervousness of the groom about to propose is part of the setup for the reader's emotion when the proposal is rejected. We probably don't enter into the nervousness itself to any great extent, but it sets up the emotional payoff of the rejection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a perfect illustration of both these points, read the Saki short story, &lt;em&gt;The Open Window&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/OpeWin.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/OpeWin.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-08-26T19:04:45.173" LastActivityDate="2017-08-26T19:04:45.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28051" CreationDate="2017-05-13T00:15:13.083" Score="5" ViewCount="1279" Body="&lt;p&gt;Im writing a fictional dieselpunk story based on the WW2 era in a world of my own. The protagonists are two squads (one from the &quot;Axis&quot; and the other from the &quot;Allies&quot;) with the characters within the squads. Those are Spec Ops squads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some doubts have emerged when I finished some of the first 4 chapters where I write the path of the captain of the Axis Squad until he gets in the mission and the squad. It shows that he losts his previous squad and is somewhat traumatized by it, and then he is used by the governement for a super-soldier experiment where he will get his squad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then next, my script was telling me to write about a recruit and how he lost a friend of his earlier days. He is supposed to meet with the squad that enters his village with a secret mission which he will get into by accident and bad luck and will eventually join the squad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then, I saw that I was focusing these chapters on individuals rather than the squads. The recruit and the captain are the &quot;stars&quot; of these two squads in which I've prepeared more things on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not ignore this doubt so I came here to ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I balance the individual x the protagonists? (the two squads)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've already thought of some solutions like a third-person narrator outside to the squads (somebody related to the secret mission I've told about) and treat these chapters focused on individuals something like as &quot;interludes&quot; and doing some edits on the chapter's organization, but I think that I dont know exactly what I'm doing and what would be the impact of my decisions to solve this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, I cant make all the chapters with the squads all complete. They are made by people. Sometimes their members will split out to do their own things and conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I ask this because I want the reader to feel that the squads are the protagonists. Such an abstract concept, but I came here to ask if anyone here has any suggestions about what can I do and/or what I should not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24464" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-28T21:57:44.563" LastActivityDate="2018-04-28T21:57:44.563" Title="How to make the reader feel like the protagonist is not a single character, but the group/squad?" Tags="|technique|character-development|readers|protagonist|steampunk|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28050" CreationDate="2017-05-13T01:23:52.437" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: you can't. Stories are about emotions and they are about choices. Groups don't have emotions and they don't make choices. Only individuals do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories about groups of friends are, of course, very common. But in such stories, each person in the group has their individual story arc. Those arcs all share a common history -- their arcs are punctuated by the same set of events, more or less -- but they are different arcs because each person has their own particular issues, desires, and goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will notice that it is not uncommon in group stories for one member of the group to get separated from the group at critical junctures. (How often does Bilbo get separated from the dwarfs in &lt;em&gt;The Hobbit&lt;/em&gt;? Consider how the group containing Sam and Frodo changes and splits over the course of &lt;em&gt;LOTR&lt;/em&gt;. All this is because there own particular story arcs require different events to animate them, and therefore they must split from the group.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not every member of a group necessarily has a fully developed and resolved arc, but they should at least have an implicit arc so we know why they are there and what motivates their actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our lives are worked out in concert with other people, and so stories often feature groups working together. But the groups are not characters, and only characters -- individuals -- can be protagonists, at least in a classical western story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2018-04-27T18:18:13.383" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T18:18:13.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12508" CreationDate="2017-05-13T02:09:39.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I totally understand the question or why people believe POV switches are such an issue. In third person I often use what I call the conch technique. It is easy for readers to follow and allows POV changes on the fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last person to perform an action (dialogue is action) owns the POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mary stared into her coffee cup. Marrying Malcolm had been the worst decision of her life. It wasn't supposed to be like this.&#xA;&quot;Bye, sweetie,&quot; said Malcolm, picking up his car keys. &quot;I'll be home by five, six at the latest.&quot; His wife hadn't been herself recently. Mary seemed quiet, withdrawn. Maybe bring her home some flowers. Yes, surprise her. Come home early bearing gifts. Book a table at that new restaurant.&#xA;Mary remained focussed on the cup, holding her breath . . . waiting. She exhaled as she heard the car start, and listened intently until the sound of the engine faded into the distance. Time to pack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Easy enough to follow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, it's down to individual style, there must be a valid reason for the switch. In the following example I go from 1st to 1st using a technique that borders on fourth wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;End of Chapter 36 . . .&#xA;Charlie placed a hand on the cushion, then examined her hand. &quot;This is bloody and wet. Katlyn, has your water just broken?&quot;&#xA;I conducted my own investigation. &quot;I don't think so. This is too much blood.&quot;&#xA;&quot;Shall I call 911?&quot;&#xA;&quot;It's 999, and yes, call them.&quot;&#xA;&quot;Hold this.&quot; She passed me her plastic Jesus, and proceeded to dial.&#xA;That's pretty much the end of my story. I passed out waiting for the paramedics. But Charlie knows what happened next. My sister (and Jesus) were with me the whole time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opening of Chapter 37 . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, man! One second Katlyn's talking to me, telling me shit I really don't need to know; she's got a bag packed, where the spare keys are, which day the garbage men come, and what garbage goes in which container . . . Mid-sentence, she stops talking, and I'm just quick enough to catch her before she falls.&#xA;I'd already called the paramedics, they were on their way but I felt so dumb. What do you do in these situations? I'm standing there, holding up my sister. There's blood running down her legs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-13T02:09:39.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28043" CreationDate="2017-05-13T02:28:30.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without some degree of inner conflict you have virtually no meaningful narrative. A debate between two agreeing a parties is a very short debate. A story may contain a major internal conflict or a series of conflicts. Life is a series of decisions - each of which is in itself a conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In characterisation a conflicted character comes across as lacking confidence. If you go beyond the basic grammar and editing guidelines evidence of conflict is portrayed in the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-13T02:28:30.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28050" CreationDate="2017-05-13T09:48:52.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Mark in principle, but I would expand to add that I think by trying to revolve your story around two squads and trying to have them both as sets of protagonists, you're doing too much? With each individual within each group you have the entire structure of their personal arc, and to have that for two squads seems a mountain to climb. I don't know what your plan is (and I have a screenplay rather than novel background so I'm not sure how helpful I can be to you) but I would perhaps suggest splitting the squads into separate works. This would help you with being able to flesh out each squad, having more time/room to focus on individuals and the core group as a whole. That said if your story demands both are present at the same time, maybe make the squads smaller? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24902" LastActivityDate="2017-05-13T09:48:52.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28058" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-13T12:18:11.577" Score="1" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a novel with a fictional world in it. I've already planned many events and the history of its nations, but I feel that there is missing something for it as I write the chapters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my vision, the way we turn the world more active and alive is by making impact over the character's psychology. Their beliefs, their morals, their opinions and how they act upon that. The world builds the character and the character builds the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you guys have know a way of how could I enhance this weight of the world in the characters and their actions and/or if you guys have an alternate view of how to turn the world more alive, I would like to hear it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24464" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T15:38:47.390" Title="How to turn the world &quot;alive&quot;?" Tags="|world-building|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28003" CreationDate="2017-05-13T14:08:08.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many many differing opinions on this topic and discussion can be had at length about this issue. Here is my definition, which is short, irrespective of genre and as a result somewhat vague:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Entertainment Literature&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Works that are meant for consumption by the masses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Literature&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Works that have have become popular and remained popular through time or have had a significant impact on world event or their genre. Usually they have been deemed to have an inherent artistic value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sense everything (with notable exception of experimental literature) starts as entertainment literature and if it has some great value (which often means that it stands the test of time), then it becomes Literature that is being deeply analyzed and studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6765" LastActivityDate="2017-05-13T14:08:08.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28060" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-13T16:50:59.490" Score="3" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sent out the first four chapters to about six different publishers. Within three days I received a no from one. On the ninth day, I got a request for additional chapters from another publisher. Is that a good sign? They didn't ask from the entire manuscript which concerned me but the first chapters had to spark an interest if they asked for more right? I'm so nervous! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24908" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T18:03:12.390" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T18:03:12.390" Title="More chapters requested. Is this a good sign?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28060" CreationDate="2017-05-13T17:28:25.313" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd consider it a good sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After one publisher said, &quot;no,&quot; someone else apparently found your work more interesting. So they answered &quot;maybe,&quot; instead of &quot;no,&quot; and asked for more chapters to help make a decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-15T21:12:17.257" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T21:12:17.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28062" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-14T05:13:33.407" Score="2" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was thinking about a translation of a book that is in the public domain. The author is Adam Smith. There is already a French translation of some of his works. Does this mean that I cannot publish my own French translation? Does the existence of a French translation preclude the creation of another? Do I have to use a language that it isn't translated into?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24911" LastEditorUserId="24794" LastEditDate="2017-05-15T12:14:59.193" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T12:14:59.193" Title="Can there be multiple translated versions in the same language of a public domain book?" Tags="|self-publishing|translation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28063" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28112" CreationDate="2017-05-14T05:32:11.587" Score="3" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a story that starts like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My girlfriend, Hitomi, is in love with my elder brother. But refuses&#xA;  to accept it. Not in the sense that she doesn't want to reveal the&#xA;  truth---she doesn't know the truth herself.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then in the final scene, I write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The present, however, still haunted me. &quot;Where's Satoshi?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;At the apartment---oh, you won't believe what he did.&quot; Hitomi cupped&#xA;  my hands with her ice-cooled ones. &quot;He did this and told me that he&#xA;  loved me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Really?&quot; I said, coating my voice with faux surprise. &quot;How ... did&#xA;  you reply?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How else? That I'm with you and that I love you.'' Hitomi bit the&#xA;  inner side of her cheek. &quot;I think we got a big problem with Satoshi.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It took me a few seconds to digest this new reality. So perhaps I&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt; been paranoid after all? I'd probably never know, which was probably for the best.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the first bolded part doesn't match the second bolded part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I wonder if this is permissible in first-person narration where the MC doesn't know what is going to happen at the end of his tale? (Or at least, wants the reader to think that?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastEditorUserId="7986" LastEditDate="2017-05-18T18:04:23.920" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T22:58:23.587" Title="Opening statement doesn't match conclusion. Is this count as plot loophole?" Tags="|creative-writing|plot|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28062" CreationDate="2017-05-14T09:34:10.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you think of other cases where there are multiple translation of the same book into the same language? If you search Amazon for classics in one language, do you find multiple translations into other languages? (Try the Divine Comedy or Beowulf or the Iliad -- or the Bible.) What do you find?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-14T09:34:10.560" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28058" CreationDate="2017-05-14T09:57:34.420" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Worlds and their histories are abstractions. People don't live in worlds and they don't live in history. They live in a particular neighborhood at a particular time. Their horizons are small. Only their local bubble is known by direct experience. The wider world is known largely through stories, which have an utterly different texture from common experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider how the world of &lt;em&gt;LOTR&lt;/em&gt; is developed. It starts not even in the Shire, but in a single Hobbit Hole. &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; begins in Privet Lane. &lt;em&gt;Wind in the Willows&lt;/em&gt; begins with a particularly lovely descriptions of the riverbank. &lt;em&gt;Brideshead Revisited&lt;/em&gt; begins with a bank of roadside flowers. &lt;em&gt;Cannery Row&lt;/em&gt; begins with the particular sights and sounds of Monterrey, California.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as all politics is local, so all experience is local. You cannot make a universe come alive for the reader. The scale it too great. But you can make a place, come alive, a house, a street, a riverbank, a town. Once the reader accepts the liveliness of the local, that liveliness will lend life to the wider world, in the same seen-from-a-distance way in which we accept the liveliness of the things that dot our horizons in the real world. But if the things close to us are made of canvas and paint, then we will assume the distant scene is canvas and paint as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-14T09:57:34.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28062" CreationDate="2017-05-14T11:06:25.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Public domain books are no longer under copyright protection and can be used by the public as they wish without fear of copyright infringement. There are classical books that have multiple translations to the same language.  However, before starting such a project, I would suggest that you ensure that your translation would be an improvement in some way from the original translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24915" LastActivityDate="2017-05-14T11:06:25.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28068" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28069" CreationDate="2017-05-14T11:36:02.413" Score="7" ViewCount="1547" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does a physical description have to be specific to make a character feel real, or can the physical description be general and the details be left to the reader's imagination? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24915" LastEditorUserId="3986" LastEditDate="2021-12-10T01:00:08.393" LastActivityDate="2021-12-10T14:45:33.420" Title="Is a specific physical description of characters required, or l can the details be left to the reader?" Tags="|characters|description|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28068" CreationDate="2017-05-14T11:53:46.947" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A character does not have to be described at all to feel real. In many stories we are told little of their appearance beyond whether they are male or female, and occasionally not even that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where physical appearance is described it can really go no further than to place the character in a general class of people (An cavalry officer. A southern belle. A poor sharecropper. Etc.) and specify certain significant physical traits (fat, thin, bald, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can go into more detail, but language does not give us the facility to easily describe the particular details of face and form that allow us to recognize individuals in real life. If a character has a face to a reader, it is the reader, not the writer who has supplied it, at least until the movie gets made, at which point the actor provides the face. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes a character feel real, more than anything else, is their behavior. When the characters in as story do not feel real, it is because the author has treated them as props instead of people, has made them behave in a way that advances the plot or make the point the author wants to make, but is simply not the way a real person, particular not &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; real person, would behave. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-17T04:21:38.783" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T04:21:38.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28068" CreationDate="2017-05-14T14:25:20.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To Mark's useful answer, I add: On occasion, a character's physical appearance is relevant. Others react to us in ways that depend on our appearance: size, age, distinctive dress, etc. Also, the kinds of things a character would do, or not do, may depend on appearance. This ties in with behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in one of Raymond Chandler's novels (featuring private detective Marlowe, narrating in the first person), Marlowe begins by telling us that he was well-dressed in a dark blue suit, with shirt and tie, and was sober. Anyone familiar with the series would know that was very unusual for Marlowe. He then goes on to tell us why he was dressed, for this occasion. It makes for very entertaining reading. We also know (from other books in the series) that Marlowe is physcally very large, and this affects how others deal with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marlowe often describes the others he meets, then tells us his first impression, based on appearance. He infers the person's internals from the externals that the person chooses to present. Similarly, in many Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes infers a lot about a visitor, merely from appearance (thanks to stereotypical dress, in that era).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again: Those things are relevant to the story. Otherwise, I suggest you take Mark's advice, and omit physical details that are irrelevant. Focus on behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-05-14T14:25:20.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27983" CreationDate="2017-05-14T15:01:54.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I do in my works is to &quot;cross&quot; my characters (mainly to disguise them). That is, I make a fictitious character half of one person and half of another, so that neither real life character is fully reflected in my fictitious one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say you need an artist. In your shoes, I would cross Michelangelo with an artist you actually know. That way, you can write convincingly about an artist while incorporating something of the published or famous one. In one play, I created a minor character named Jemile Walker by crossing &quot;Jamal Wallace&quot; (of &quot;Finding Forrester&quot; fame), with someone I actually knew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-14T15:01:54.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28050" CreationDate="2017-05-15T01:20:39.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to read some works that have multiple characters that are fully developed, with no one the &quot;star&quot; and see how those authors were able to balance them.  Currently, I am reading Leo Tolstoy's &quot;Anna Karenina&quot;.  Although the title suggests she is the star of the book, there are many characters who are just as developed as Anna. Tolstoy seems to do this by dedicating some chapters to Anna's story, and then dedicating chapters to his other characters story, and continuing this process multiple times throughout the story. All the while the stories are intertwined and from reading it the flow of the story is not interrupted.  He was able to accomplish this through a very lengthy story (8 parts with most having 30+ chapters) and very talented writing, that is too complex to fully describe for this post.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24915" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T01:20:39.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28074" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28076" CreationDate="2017-05-15T04:16:47.420" Score="14" ViewCount="3661" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mean, what exactly defines a flaw for a character? I know that the character's flaws should have at least some impact in the story, instead of being just a mere detail, but what makes flaw X better than flaw Y? Is it how much it impacts the story or how interesting it is? Diseases or personal problems are considered flaws? Can a character have only one main flaw or should they have multiple? What are the characteristics of a good flaw?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastActivityDate="2018-09-05T23:04:32.333" Title="What are character flaws and what makes a good one?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|novel|characters|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28074" CreationDate="2017-05-15T04:49:38.170" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The word &quot;character&quot; is used in two different senses. There is &quot;character&quot; in the sense of &quot;characteristics&quot; -- the way that a person does things that is different from how others do things. If someone whistles while they work, that is a characteristic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second meaning is moral character. A moral character is not a collection of distinguishing features, since we want everyone to have the same set of moral principles and behavior. Everyone's moral character should be the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual sense of the word character flaw relates to the second meaning. Another word for it is besetting sin. It is the sin or sins that the person is liable to make over and over again. Lady Mary's constant sniping at Edith in Downton Abbey is a character flaw (or the result of one). Of course, a character flaw in this sense of the word is also a characteristic in the first sense of the word: a piece of typical behavior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character trait in the first, non-moral, sense might also conceivably be considered a flaw in a particular situation. Someone of nervous disposition might not be best suited to the job of commando. Someone boisterous and clumsy might not make a good china shop assistant. Their character, in other words, may make them unsuitable for a task, even though it is not a moral failure. It is a flaw only in the context of the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a sense, though, these two meanings converge, because in story terms a protagonist is faced with a challenge, something that they must do to gain a desire or avoid a loss, and the crux of the story is that trial they must face, that decision they must make, in order to succeed (or which will be the cause of their failure). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so the character must come to some point, some task, some decision, for which they are in some important way unsuited. If they were well suited, the task would be easily accomplished without drama and we would have no story. Superman can rescue cats out of trees all day long, since it is a task for which he is eminently well suited, but by the time we have seen him do it the third time, we start to find it tedious. It is the task for which he is in some way unsuited that makes for an interesting story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a good flaw is precisely the kind of flaw that makes it difficult, achingly and fundamentally difficult, for the protagonist to achieve whatever end they are compelled to pursue by the events of the story. Any flaw can be a good one if it plays this role, and any flaw can be a bad one if it does not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So finish the following sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My protagonist must ________________________ and this is extremely difficult for them because they are ______________________________________. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second blank is your protagonist's character flaw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-15T17:28:42.423" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T17:28:42.423" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28063" CreationDate="2017-05-15T07:12:56.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some advice that Ayn Rand offered was to start character with a false philosophy and to openly state it. By the end of the book, their arc should gracefully have delivered them to a true philosophy - these are the &quot;book ends&quot; that readers look for and which help them find satisfaction. Think Frodo between meeting Gandalf and throwing the ring away; each of the characters in Guardians of the Galaxy; etc. It's the conflict between these two points which delivers the storyline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rephrase your prose so that these opening and closing parantheses reflect each other in substance but not belief. Remember - the closing statement &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; contradict the original situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22913" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T07:12:56.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28050" CreationDate="2017-05-15T07:17:39.307" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the very same issue on a comic series I'm writing: I want a band of rascals to stand as the main core of the story, instead of a single hero. My teacher told me that this &lt;strong&gt;can't be achieved&lt;/strong&gt;. Partly for the reasons stated in other answers: only individuals have emotions, motivations, and choices, not entities, and that is what brings the story forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My teacher told me that even the most coral stories (The Wire, or Sense8) have what it's called a &quot;&lt;strong&gt;technical protagonist&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, a character who may not have the most screen time (or pages time) yet it's the one who embodies the main theme or main question of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even in a very original series like Sense8 (which, by the way, is a fantasy), where 8 distinct characters actually form a single psychological entity, their individual lives emerge distinctly, and it's only in their &lt;strong&gt;interaction&lt;/strong&gt; that the overall group is shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastEditorUserId="21768" LastEditDate="2017-05-16T07:32:20.007" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T07:32:20.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28062" CreationDate="2017-05-15T07:24:13.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated by others, public domain works - by definition - don't pose limits to uses and reuses. As long as you don't use other translations' solutions or passages (i.e. you don't copy other translations, which would infringe the copyright of the translation, but not of the original work) you're fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T07:24:13.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28086" CreationDate="2017-05-15T11:53:30.800" Score="0" ViewCount="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hello everyone who reads this, but I need a little help. I am writing a fantasy novel and I was just wondering how readers feel about following the main character alone for like 70% of the story. other characters do come into the story along the way but ultimately she is on her own due to the circumstances that she has been left in. Toward just after the middle of the story, she does end up around others like her but how would you feel about it? Would you find it boring? What would be your issues if any?&#xA;But yeah, do I need a sam to my Frodo?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24925" LastEditorUserId="24925" LastEditDate="2017-05-15T11:59:12.840" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T16:20:27.460" Title="Need feedback on my novels character set up" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|character-development|fantasy|writers-block|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-05-16T02:41:41.533" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28082" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28085" CreationDate="2017-05-15T13:57:08.293" Score="6" ViewCount="5006" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are times I meet someone for a brief time, maybe a couple hours, and their personality impresses me enough to create a fictional character about them.  Obviously I am adding my own attributes to the fictional character, and I don't know them well enough to write about many of the real person's attributes, but the original impression on me will be central to their character.  Is it illegal to create a character this way, where the character development is loosely based on a real person this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I am writing I make sure the connection is loose enough that the person could not be identified.  I guess my main concern is if someone would read my book (which is a work in progress) and be like &quot;oh I remember seeing this author for a couple of hours and this fictional person has a similar personality to me&quot;  Could they sue me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24915" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-05-29T00:47:08.467" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T05:27:08.880" Title="Is it illegal to imagine a real person for a fictional character?" Tags="|characters|character-development|legal|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28074" CreationDate="2017-05-15T14:34:05.613" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I mean, what exactly defines a flaw for a character? Diseases or personal problems are considered flaws?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a fun question, isn't it? It's especially amusing when you consider that the answer will not only vary specifically from person to person, within reason, this will also vary from culture to culture. One reader may find your protagonist's swear-word-filled speech offensive while another reader may find it a natural result of the character's difficult past. It's difficult to foresee how people are going interpret every detail of your characters' personalities; I sometimes find it best to write traits, especially &lt;em&gt;flaws&lt;/em&gt;, as simply genuine qualities of the person you're creating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I know that the character's flaws should have at least some impact in the story, instead of being just a mere detail, but what makes flaw X better than flaw Y? Is it how much it impacts the story or how interesting it is?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does describing a field of carnage after a massive battle between man-pig and centaur directly impact the story? No- you can describe the scene in a few sentences or a few pages. Just like descriptively conveying the details of a scene, character flaws first and foremost provide &lt;em&gt;life&lt;/em&gt; to your characters. Jon's penchant desire to seek out the first brothel in every town may end up in him finding true love, contracting an STI, a subtle response to dealing with loneliness, or have no other meaning than he just likes sex (a lot).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character flaws can be mentioned briefly in passing and never brought up again. Just like describing the color and health of a lily on a trail, you're just providing material for the reader to become more immersed into your world. With that said, it can also dictate or at least influence the actions of your characters. I don't think one often sees flaws directly impact the story, unless the story is somewhat built around that flaw (Man's lust for power in The Lord of the Rings, the influence of emotions in Star Wars). But for example, if Jessica Jones was stumbling through a fight due to being drunk (which is common given her alcoholism), then her flaws are impacting a scene but it need be the lead navigator for the rest of the story, depending on the significance and result of the fight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can a character have only one main flaw or should they have multiple?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That depends on your character and how much those flaws impact their decisions, or lack thereof. Ultimately both are up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the characteristics of a good flaw?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Context really matters when considering this question. As a flaw, being late by 5 minutes to every situation seems a bit humorous but if Xandu Nax hails from a specie called GlorbZorb who finds it criminally offensive to be late... By and large a flaw should be believable, and this will depend on the setting of your story, the genre, and your ability to convey that flaw to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22734" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T14:34:05.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28081" CreationDate="2017-05-15T15:52:40.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you asked a broad question, I will provide a broad answer: &lt;strong&gt;It Depends&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you find a local writer's group and get their feedback. This will give you some direct feedback from people with a different backgrounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T15:52:40.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28082" CreationDate="2017-05-15T16:00:13.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since most characters in every story draws from a conglomeration of different people the author met/ saw/ heard, the answer is likely 'no' (I'm no attorney). Make sure the character is not exactly the same as the person (which you already identified as something you did). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sat down at the door of a Wal-Mart one day and imagine short stories about every person that walked out the door every 5 minutes. I took some quotes, looks, mannerisms, all from examining people. This is a trick a writing teacher taught us to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is making the characters different &lt;strong&gt;&quot;enough&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T16:00:13.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28081" CreationDate="2017-05-15T16:20:27.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its all going to depend on your writing skill level. In my opinion it really does not matter if the main character is alone for 70% of the story or not. Look at stories like Tom Hanks, Castaway and Matt Damon's, The Martian. Excellent solitaire protagonist who overcome their dire situations and win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know where your skill level is, please don't be offended when I offer you this advice. You may already know this but I don't that you do know. I think establishing a story structure is going to be an asset to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&#xA;Your female heroine must have a goal and an internal problem to resolve.&#xA;During the story there has to be something that opposes that goal. That something can be another character, a hostile environment, an unchanging situation or circumstance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever it maybe the your heroine has to drive the plot and overcome all the challenges pitted against her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You break this up into the 3 acts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Act I you hook the reader, establish your upfront characters, foreshadow a problem or two, introduce an inciting event and key event that gets your heroine out of her normal world into the story world to resolve the issues set before her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Act II your heroine reacts but learns more on how to deal with the challenges and begins taking action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Act III your heroine has a huge set back and questions why they started to achieve the story goal and her resolve her internal problem. However they muster all that they have learned and face off with a climatic moment and overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you interested in more information in regards to structure, KM Weiland has a free kindle book, called the 5 secrets of story structure on Amazon.com and you can download the free kindle app for your pc from Amazon. Again no charge, completely free. Check it out, it maybe what you need to get you in the right direction that hones your skills to write the story that people will desire and invest in a solitaire protagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24930" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T16:20:27.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28089" CreationDate="2017-05-15T16:42:08.957" Score="4" ViewCount="963" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt; As with any aspect of writing, I'm sure there are those who disagree with it. If you disagree with the conclusions I've come to below, I would like to hear your thoughts. However, I would ask that you put them in comments, and leave answers for actually answering the question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently asked the question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/28043/what-is-the-purpose-of-an-inner-conflict&quot;&gt;What is the Purpose of an Inner Conflict?&lt;/a&gt; I had no idea what I was getting myself into. @MarkBaker showed me that (in a nutshell) an inner conflict is a struggle between two choices, and the final choice is the climax. He also mentioned that external conflict is merely a device to set up that climax. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This flies in the face of how I have viewed conflict up to this point. Until now, I saw novels as having two distinct conflicts: &lt;em&gt;Main Conflict&lt;/em&gt;, which was the external conflict, and &lt;em&gt;inner conflict&lt;/em&gt; which was a reflection of the main conflict inside the character. Mark Baker's analysis of conflict makes sense to me, as it fits with what I know and works better than my previous view of conflict. It does however raise a question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does external conflict 'set up' the climax?&lt;/strong&gt; This is a new way of seeing conflict for me, so I don't yet know how it works. However, the main reason I ask this question, is because it seems to me that there are other devices one could use to set up the climax in which the inner conflict is resolved. Why do you need to use an external conflict? When do you know you need one or not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The above assumes there is a single large-scale external conflict that spans the novel, plus any other side conflicts. Let me know if there are in fact only many small external conflicts.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T17:29:56.783" Title="How does External Conflict set up the Climax?" Tags="|novel|plot|conflict|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28087" CreationDate="2017-05-15T16:59:44.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;External conflict is what drives the characters to &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to make important choices. If you aren't facing any external conflict, then you probably don't have to make any major choices. You just keep doing what you've always done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Harry hadn't been Voldemort's enemy, he wouldn't have had to make the decision to go back to the Forbidden Forest. If the Empire hadn't come in, Luke would still be living with his relatives on Tatooine, not deciding between the light and dark side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People don't like making decisions. They like sticking with what they know. External conflict forces the character to make difficult decisions about how to handle the external conflict according to their morals and values. That is inner conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23436" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T16:59:44.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28087" CreationDate="2017-05-15T17:20:12.490" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways of describing story structure, most of which are essentially pointing to the same thing. One of the simpler ones is that proposed by James Scott Bell which is a small elaboration on the basic three act structure. I think it may be a useful way to look at this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Bell's view, Act I begins with some small disturbance in the life of the character and establishes sympathy with the character. Then events force the character through what he calls &quot;the door of no return&quot;. Some irrevocable decision has been made or has been forced on the character and it is no longer possible for them to go back to their previous life as if nothing has happened. This is the end of Act 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Act 2 consists of escalating conflict leading to a second door of no return. This is the point at which the protagonist has made the hard choices and is a changed person as a result. Again there is no going back from this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the middle of Act 2 (Bell claims it is almost always in the dead center of a book or movie) is what he calls the mirror moment. It is the moment in which the protagonist looks in the mirror, physically or metaphorically, and has to face the decision of who they are and who they are going to have to become. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Act 3 is essentially about proving to the audience that the change has in fact taken place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mirror moment is clearly the moment of great internal conflict. It is where they ask themselves the fundamental questions about who they are, what they value, and what they are willing to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what forces them to come to this mirror moment? No one wants to look at themselves in the mirror like that and face those tough questions. Left alone, they would not pass the first door of no return and would thus never arrive at the mirror moment. Something has to happen to force them through that door, and once through that door, something has to bring their affairs to such an impasse that they have to ask themselves these fundamental questions of self. Finally, some act is required to demonstrate the transformation that has occurred, and that is usually conflict with (and victory over or defeat by) something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For story purpose, that can be anything, but in most cases it is going to be some form of external conflict. Either something happens to disturb the normal peace of their everyday life, or something occurs to thwart their existing ambition to change their life. Either way, it forces them through the door of no return. It forces them to face their mirror moment. And it challenges them to prove their transformation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, a more usual form of this question is to ask if a story needs an antagonist. In that case, the answer is that the source of conflict that forces the protagonist through the door of no return can be another person -- an antagonist -- but it can also be a force of nature or a life event -- the death of a child, or the onset of a disease for instance. These are still external conflicts that disturb the even tenor of the protagonists life, but they do not involve a human antagonist -- a &quot;bad guy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-05-15T17:29:56.783" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T17:29:56.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28090" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-15T17:40:52.003" Score="4" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been blogging for 6 months now. I have a general theme of the month but I find it very hard to organize my writing, as these themes are all very broad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to ask fellow bloggers how do you plan ahead your writing, for the best experience for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any clues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18726" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T01:52:36.860" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T01:52:36.860" Title="How should I plan blog content and themes for the best reader experience?" Tags="|planning|blog|ideas|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28082" CreationDate="2017-05-15T18:25:30.967" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To &quot;imagine&quot;? Sure. I do it all the time. No thought-crimes (yet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The catch is that you would never be able to guess whom I used for visualization, not even if you knew me personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not write fantasy or sci-fi. Since my characters have real behavior and emotions, and do realistic things, how could I possibly avoid visualizing real people? I know what &quot;Jane&quot; would say or do in a certain situation; &quot;Jane&quot; is not unusual among people; so I will write my character to perform like the real &quot;Jane&quot; would do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not need to describe &quot;Jane.&quot; But if her cell phone rings, I know how long it will take for her to pull it out of her bag. I know whether she will look for caller ID. I know what she will say. When the call is done, I know what she will say to a bystander who could not avoid overhearing her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Jane&quot; would not recognize the fictional character as being modeled after herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that is very generic. But then, most people are very generic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily applicable to fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastEditorDisplayName="user23046" LastEditDate="2017-05-16T14:14:09.300" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T14:14:09.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28090" CreationDate="2017-05-15T19:18:00.870" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were to do a daily blog about a general monthly topic, I would make a list of all the important things about that particular monthly topic. Then I would organize the list into an order that makes sense. Lastly, I would focus on one of the important things on my re-organized list per day. Only the last step would be seen on my blog.  Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24915" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T19:18:00.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28094" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28101" CreationDate="2017-05-16T08:13:39.280" Score="4" ViewCount="950" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a story I'm writing, and since when I started, it changed many times the route and focus, and in some of those changes, I found two possible paths for the story to advance on, and I already chose which one it will be. However, &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; paths are very good and with great potential and I don't want to simply pick one and discard the other but I can't use this other path in another story since it's only that good because it fits perfectly in &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; story and no other (if I adapt a new story, it would be too similar). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I thought of writing both paths and releasing them separately, i.e., the same story twice, two separate works with the same story, but with different possibilities.The difference is not just a choice between two, but the way the protagonist reacts to the main event: one is the path of self-guilt along with a problem and the other is the path of wrath and revenge along with a different problem, and both with very different outcomes, so there are a few differences in the protagonist's mindset. It would basically be a &quot;how would it be if things happened differently&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what I ask is: does it make sense to do that? What are other works that do that (if any)? Is it a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastEditorUserId="14490" LastEditDate="2020-01-14T22:18:24.293" LastActivityDate="2020-01-14T22:18:24.293" Title="Variations of the same story?" Tags="|novel|fantasy|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28107" CreationDate="2017-05-16T08:49:11.977" Score="4" ViewCount="1549" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my first big novel-kind-of-thing I'm currently working on, I have a run-of-the-mill, super-non-special &quot;Hero&quot; - the Antagonist. A Jon Doe, someone, who knows how to handle everyday stuff and can defend himself in a brawl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pitched against him is my Evil Overlord of doom - the Protagonist. Not just your basic Evil Overlord of doom with stupid minions and a soft spot for big speeches, no. He is designed with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peter's Evil Overlord list&lt;/a&gt; in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should i have my Hero start going on an adventure to save the world from my Evil Overlord? How should i motivate him to even THINK about doing that? He is a regular human with no extraordinary powers or anything, while my Overlord has Legions of minions and follows Peter's List?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an additional note, people around the world know of that one weird guy sitting on this Island with tons of friends (as they perceive it). His plan already started and somebody needs to try and stop him (and fail miserably).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt; The following is only for flavour, providing a couple more details for those interested, though is not mandatory to consider when answering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; Quick rundown on the world we're living in: It's a fictional planet orbited by 2 stars, a very lively world. It's a lot smaller than earth and is inhabitated by currently 800-900 million people. In terms of landscape, I'm gonna focus on the areas where a bulk of the story takes place: First, we have an Ice Desert, here we find the city the &quot;Hero&quot; calls his home. Think pop.~ 70.000. Buildings are made out of a mixture of Steel and Ice, though melting the Ice won't cause every building to collapse, it just looks nice. This desert hosts a couple other citys, all smaller though. Next, we have an Island, roughly 250km off the coast of the Ice Deserts main port-city (located ~20km southeast from Herocity). Here we find the lair of our Evil Overlord.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;In terms of technology, the world is similar to earth shortly after the middle ages (~1550). Magic IS a thing. Although very rarely do you see a Wizard openly casting spells, as that would most likely alert one of our Overlords Minions and have him (the wizard) get an Arrow stuck in his forehead. Magic is weak, useful for everyday chores at best. Making small appliances levitate, lighter-sized flames, that kind of stuff. It requires a rune. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;/this was noted to probably fit better on writers than on worldbuilding&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;/Edit: as Lauren Ipsum suggested, moved a lot of the detail to the end as optional flavouring for those interested in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24940" LastEditorUserId="24940" LastEditDate="2017-05-16T13:20:33.033" LastActivityDate="2019-08-14T17:19:37.247" Title="Why would my &quot;Hero&quot; start his Quest to save the world?" Tags="|characters|hero|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28096" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28097" CreationDate="2017-05-16T09:33:30.827" Score="3" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a previous post about introducing terms, but it doesn't quite answer my question. I have a more specific question about the punctuation used when introducing a term, and not how to stylistically incorporate it into my writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write a lot about art, and therefore use terms for &quot;big concepts&quot; that factor heavily into my content. For example, I am currently talking about &quot;ethical relationality&quot; and I am using it to talk about a certain artwork. The definition of these concepts are too bulky to simply fit into parentheses after the word, so need their own sentence or sometimes paragraph to be defined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the previous paragraph, I introduced both terms within quotation marks to show that they are special terms. Especially in the first one, both the words in the term are pretty mundane words that are used all the time, which is why I want to contain them within some sort of punctuation to show that I am using them in a special way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some ways I've seen in other writing... is one of them better, or more correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Donald suggests using &lt;em&gt;ethical relationality&lt;/em&gt; as way to account for&#xA;  participants' different histories. Within the framework of ethical&#xA;  relationality...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Donald suggests using &quot;ethical relationality&quot; as way to account for&#xA;  participants' different histories. Within the framework of ethical&#xA;  relationality...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Donald suggests using ethical relationality as way to account for&#xA;  participants' different histories. Within the framework of ethical&#xA;  relationality...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe none of the above? Additionally, should I continue to format the word in a special way, or should I just use it like any other term once it's been introduced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13470" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-05-16T09:41:50.370" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T09:41:50.370" Title="Formatting used when introducing a term" Tags="|formatting|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28096" CreationDate="2017-05-16T09:41:32.167" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Either italics or quotes are fine to introduce the term; you could even bold the phrase if you're introducing many specialized concepts throughout your work. I wouldn't capitalize it or otherwise format it differently once you've defined it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T09:41:32.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28098" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-16T10:36:05.010" Score="2" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a person who has neither read many literary works nor speaks English as a native language. For a while now, I have become interested in writing and would like to get better on it. Therefore, I figured there may be no more suitable approach than to just start writing. However, I would like to ask if anyone who has read much literature can assess my ability to create stories in English, and maybe if someone who has succeeded (without defining what this means) in writing can recognize themselves in the situation described in this question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text I provide below is obviously too short to give a deeper analysis, and the purpose is not to obtain specific critique on it, but I hope experienced readers can, based on my circumstances, identify the potential of someone who almost never read a complete book, and hence has nothing to relate to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His body is blistering and his eyes are gritty as he pours a cup of&#xA;  coffee. Brown bubbles shine at the surface and lay like an irregular&#xA;  foam at the inside of the cup, which is white ceramic with summery&#xA;  floral patterns. A drop smears and lands on the top of the hand,&#xA;  which, innocently, did not participate in the pouring. The slightly&#xA;  bent beam of coffee leaves the center of the black liquid and&#xA;  approaches the edge of the coffee cup. When it’s near the edge it has&#xA;  nowhere to go. As it splits in half, the black liquid encircles the&#xA;  bottom of the cup, uniting ceramic with solid oak. When he reaches for&#xA;  a cloth, the innocent hand decides to take revenge. In the leap, it&#xA;  touches the top of the cup. The cup wobbles, and the enclosed circle&#xA;  of coffee turns into a puddle. A primal scare sounds in the gloomy&#xA;  apartment. He is at the breaking point. Staring at the brown puddle,&#xA;  yesterday’s events spring to mind as the neurons in his brain awakens.&#xA;  The memories are coming back. He is no longer looking at a brown&#xA;  puddle. He stands in a lake, with water up to his knees. A boat gobs&#xA;  against the soggy edge where grass is mixed with clay. His hands begin&#xA;  to hurt as he looks down and realizes that he has clinched them so&#xA;  hard that they are white. Quickly, he looks up and grabs the cloth. He&#xA;  wipes the coffee on the bench, and then the bottom of the cup. He&#xA;  thinks for himself that it has happened again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple answer would be to start reading more books to learn how to write, which I'm motivated to do, but it would take a long time for me to get a sense of what is good and bad literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hypothesis I have is that if a person has some talent to tell stories (I definitely do not claim that's the case for me), it may be an advantage not to have been &quot;colored&quot; by other writers' linguistic expressions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24941" LastEditorUserId="24941" LastEditDate="2017-05-19T12:47:11.523" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T12:47:11.523" Title="Start writing literature without reading experience" Tags="|fiction|non-fiction|book|getting-started|crime|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2017-05-19T03:52:10.883" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28094" CreationDate="2017-05-16T10:37:37.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple other works I am aware of that do this.  I specifically remember a 1998 movie called Sliding doors.  I think there is a book or a screenplay with the same name as the movie.  Also there was the childrens' series, &quot;Choose your own Adventure&quot;. The latter one had multiple endings (more than 2). The point of doing this in &quot;Sliding Doors&quot; was about how a split second could make a difference but in the children's series it was about the impact of choices.&#xA;Any idea can be a good idea as long as it is done well.  Who wants their book to be just like all the other ones? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24915" LastEditorUserId="24915" LastEditDate="2017-05-16T10:46:10.430" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T10:46:10.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28095" CreationDate="2017-05-16T11:29:15.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at your favourite stories and think about why the protagonist was the hero. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why did Harry Potter fight Voldemort? He was fulfilling a prophecy.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why did Katniss Everdeen fight in the Hunger Games? To protect the ones she loved.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why did Peter Quill fight Ronan? Because Ronan wanted to destroy the universe and Peter was one of the idiots living in it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your character is not qualified for the role of “hero” or compelled to fight evil simply for the sake of good, then you need to give them &lt;strong&gt;no other choice&lt;/strong&gt;. Maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe your baddie threatens their family and they are overcome with the need for self-sacrifice (or vengeance if the baddie follows through with the threat). Maybe they are simply scared for their own skin and happen to be at the right place at the right time. Their fate will become linked to the antagonist whether they like it or not. You just have to consider what puts them there. Why do they care?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer depends entirely on your &quot;hero&quot;. Who are they? What makes them special, despite being so ordinary? Think about their personality and alignment, their worst fears, and what would put them in such a desperate situation that they have to don that heroic persona. And if they are so normal that they have no reason to become wrapped up in this conflict, then why are they the &quot;hero&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24794" LastEditorUserId="24794" LastEditDate="2017-05-16T13:43:10.907" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T13:43:10.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28094" CreationDate="2017-05-16T11:50:32.493" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an old piece of advice in writing circles that says &quot;slay your darlings&quot;. When a story has been worked and reworked many times, you will have created a number of great scenes, great characters, great plot lines, great emotional arcs, great endings. (At least they will seem great to you, they will be your darlings.) The thought of not using all these wonderful bits and pieces can seem intolerable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Story&lt;/em&gt;, Robert McKee describes this as one of the greatest impediments to writing a great story that works and sells. Rather than focusing on overall story structure, he says, rewriting becomes an exercise in trying to find new ways to include all of the &quot;great scenes&quot;, the darlings, that you cannot bear to part with. But along this course things just get worse and worse as every iteration zigs and zags off the story course to incorporate the darlings. And often more darlings get created and added along the way, leading to a story that is full of great scenes but as a whole is an incoherent mess. Thus the ancient counsel: slay your darlings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are proposing, to try to spare you darlings, is to turn your work into a novelty. There are a few novelty works out there, as Virginia points out. But novelties seldom sell well. And more to the point, novelties are remembered principally for their novelty. Unless it was you intent from the beginning to create a novelty book, then presumably you want it to be remembered for something other than this novelty. To get there, you need to slay your darlings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slaying your darlings is often very difficult. Sometimes the best way to do it is to put the work away in a drawer for a while. Pull it out in six months. By that time, you will have forgotten how much time and labour went into writing the darlings and it will be much easier to delete them. Also, you will probably find that it is suddenly plain to you which alternative is the stronger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry at this point about whether you can do something else with the deleted scenes. Trying to make sure that everything gets used somehow is good hunter gatherer economics, but a poor artistic strategy. Give this one book all it needs, and only what it needs. Finish it. Publish it. Then go back to the scrap pile and see if anything there still so charms you that you have to spin it into another book. Don't worry if it is similar to what you have just published. If it is popular, people will be clamouring for another just like it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-16T12:38:25.020" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T12:38:25.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28082" CreationDate="2017-05-16T12:13:33.337" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is no, they cannot sue you. Unless you identify and libel that person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Public figures have even less protection. Y'all know that Biff from Back to the Future is based on Donald Trump, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corporations, registered trademarks, and fictional characters are the best protected. e.g. You couldn't use Superman or Kojak as a character. Nor can you portray a corporation is a negative light. e.g. &quot;2026: Half the world's population had been wiped out due to decades of eating McDonalds&quot; - That'd land you in deep s**t. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T12:13:33.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28095" CreationDate="2017-05-16T12:34:31.747" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid that you have gone about this a bit backwards. The basic structure of a story can be described in many ways, but one of the best and most well-founded is that of the hero's journey, as described by Christopher Vogler in his book &lt;em&gt;The Writer's Journey&lt;/em&gt;. The story begins in the hero's normal world, but the hero is forced to leave the normal world in pursuit of some desire, to achieve some boon, or to avenge some wrong. They pass through a series of trials leading to a final confrontation. Along the way they have to face some fundamental truth about themselves and emerged transformed (or not, in the case of tragedy). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To shape the hero's journey into this form it is often necessary to take some liberties with the activities of the villain. Thus villains often behave in ways that are risible. It is worth asking why this risible villain behavior does not ruin the story. It does not ruin it because the reader's enjoyment of the story depends on the emotional satisfaction provided by the hero's arc. Any false note in that arc will ruin everything. False notes outside of that arc inserted for the sake of preserving the arc itself, are by and large forgiven. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the classic form of the arc demands that the hero must reach their nadir, must have the villain's boot upon their throat, before rallying to win the final conflict. But of course a rational villain, once their boot is upon the hero's throat, is going to finish the job. There always has to be some reason why they don't, and while that reason does not have to be absurd, it does not seem to matter much that it often is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you seem to have approached it from the opposite direction, creating a villain who makes no mistakes, who leaves no room of a hero's journey to unfold. I would suggest that an easier way to go about this would be to create a hero and then create a suitable villain to send him on his hero's journey. I'm not saying you can't create a villain first and then invent a hero to oppose him. But if you create a villain who leaves no room for a hero to operate, you are going to run into difficulties -- as you have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth pointing out that in the real world, the armies of megalomaniac dictators are not defeated by the heroics of lone adventurers but by even larger armies. In the sensible world, power grinds down power through years of misery and bloodshed. Heroic acts within such struggles are on the small scale. Story world plays by different rules. Story villains are not sensible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T12:34:31.747" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9748" CreationDate="2017-05-16T12:40:25.787" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a lawyer but I don't believe it is as clear cut as you believe. Music copyright is far tougher than literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 1. Your character's name is Jack. He owns a convenience store on the edge of town. He is a suspected paedophile. One day he is found dead in his store.&#xA; - You could well be in trouble. Not only are there too many coincidences but you've 'damaged' another work. (Google: 'Grocer Jack').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2. Your character's name is Norma Jean. It is revealed the character does not know who her father is but her mother has admitted she was conceived in the woods after an Elton John concert.&#xA; - This is okay for two reasons: you have stated that your character is not the subject of the song. (2) &quot;Norma Jean&quot; is a real person who could be defined as a celebrity. (Google:&quot;Candle in the wind.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 3. Your character's name is 'Lucy' or 'Alice'. She is attracted by the glamour of the music industry. In the end she is unable to cope with the culture and dies from an LSD overdose.&#xA;- You're in trouble. Your entire story is a rip-off of Beatles song.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T12:40:25.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28094" CreationDate="2017-05-16T13:05:12.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to the new millennium! I disagree with traditional advice. Back in the day length of a commercial novel was dictated by how many paperback pages could be bound with the book falling apart. The length of a movie was a combination of the public's perceived attention span and the need for the theatre to fit in three showings per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The film industry has moved on, we now have alternative endings and directors cuts. Something that would help all aspiring writers is to have the &quot;Author's Edition&quot; and &quot;Publisher's Edit&quot; - that way we'd know what was cut and an opportunity to work out 'why'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall a particularly frustrating request from a publisher. An orphaned female character wants to be an athlete. Her grandfather supports her career. After winning the Olympic title the character announces her retirement. Her grandfather expresses his disappointed but agrees to support her decision even if he doesn't understand why. In the middle of his objections she hugs him saying, &quot;Granddad, you're great.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believed that was probably the best ending I'd ever written. The publisher was unhappy and wanted the ending 'explained'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those in the cheap seats: How do you turn your grandfather in a great grandfather?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T13:05:12.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28095" CreationDate="2017-05-16T13:24:49.113" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basics of 'intelligent' story: there is no difference between Heroes and Villains - both believe their mission is true and just.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unsuspecting heroes are born of necessity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's put this into context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character &quot;Alison Smith&quot; is raising her four-year-old daughter alone since her husband died in Afghanistan. Alison didn't vote for Hillary so much as she voted against Trump. After his inauguration she went on the women's march to demonstrate against Trump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It made no difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the president is cleared of all corruptions charges and the Senate passes the healthcare bill, Alison can't understand; 24 million people will lose their healthcare and nobody is lifting a finger to help them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Armed with her dead husband's Glock, and knowing Secret Service will take her down, Alison heads for Washington -knowing she needs to take one good shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hero or Villain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T13:24:49.113" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28095" CreationDate="2017-05-16T13:47:31.547" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But for me, it was Tuesday&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Warning: TV Tropes) &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButForMeItWasTuesday&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButForMeItWasTuesday&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &quot;hero&quot; has their life messed up badly by some (unnoticed) collateral effect of one of the villain's plans. His workplace gets taken over or blown up, his family hurt, his friends or coworkers all fall ill from mysterious causes. This both frees him from his daily routine and motivates him to start his quest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to make it more of a choice, reduce the damage to the hero's life so that he could recover and go on, but hand him something uniquely suited to his skills/personality. Whether it's an overheard conversation, strange blueprint or dead body doesn't matter, whatever it is, it causes the hero to realize something &quot;impossible&quot; is going on, something that his mind can't let go off until he figures it out. Following the trail means neglecting the hero's old life, family etc. He may try to do both at first, but will have to choose one or the other before long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one discovery/thing/piece of information the hero has also makes him seem competent/useful to any potential allies, so that he can make progress even when it doesn't seem believable for an average Joe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24641" LastEditorUserId="24641" LastEditDate="2017-05-16T16:35:32.653" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T16:35:32.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28108" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28110" CreationDate="2017-05-16T15:48:32.297" Score="0" ViewCount="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my story/solar system there are 4 alien races. They recently discovered one another maybe 10-20 years or so ago. There is a metaphorical sword in the stone type of space station/ship in my story that no one can gain access to because the races won't co-operate with one another/hate each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without putting them in a Space Taxi together, why would they be travelling in the same ship? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume they don't know that they will gain access if they are all present together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24943" LastEditorUserId="24943" LastEditDate="2017-05-16T16:16:19.500" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T21:36:43.960" Title="Getting my 4 aliens in the same ship?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-05-28T08:23:16.363" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28108" CreationDate="2017-05-16T16:11:42.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;To stop the other races from controlling it&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never underestimate the power of the double-cross. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Alice, Bob, Carol, and Dennis all know that this ship is out there and that all four must access it together, each will be motivated to go on the chance they can unlock the ship and then double-cross the others to steal it for their own species. They can play nicely together for the trip while at the same time each one planning their coup and expecting that the others are doing the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the man said, &quot;Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6851" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T16:11:42.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28108" CreationDate="2017-05-16T16:54:43.723" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;They don't use the same ship... at first&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting out with your 4 species on the same ship is not only going to feel contrived, it takes away story potential. Instead, set up an initial scenario that highlights some of the species' natures, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Species A is going it alone in secret, but their experimental stealth system fails, prompting the other species to send their own ships.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Species B tried to get A and C to join, but had to settle for hiring C.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Species C is on board with B only because of a huge payoff in tech, they don't really care for the station.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Species D's government sent a warship, apparently to destroy the other ships. But rebels have infiltrated and sabotaged the ship, claiming they want peace.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting out like this gives you the opportunity to develop your protagonists by forcing a series of hard choices that give a sense of why they might be worthy of the sword in the stone while conveniently resulting in all 4 of them ending up on the same ship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples again:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C might be tempted with a fat offer from D if they betray B.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;D's warship fires at and damages A's ship, but which faction did it and was it to destroy A or protect B/C? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B wants to aid A but C balks at that idea. Will they relent?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24641" LastEditorUserId="24641" LastEditDate="2017-05-16T21:36:43.960" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T21:36:43.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28108" CreationDate="2017-05-16T17:04:14.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, with the clarification that we're trying to get them onto another ship that will then get them aboard the SS &lt;em&gt;Plot Device&lt;/em&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Space travel is &lt;em&gt;expensive&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a single star system, species that only discovered one another a few decades ago likely don't have particularly advanced spacecraft yet. We could therefore imagine that building a single interplanetary ship could cost as much as, say, the entire Apollo program. If you have a choice between spending the local equivalent of $100 billion to build your own ship to take you out to mine the asteroid belt, or spending $5 billion to get a seat aboard someone else's ship, you could well be willing to hold your nose for the duration of the flight and travel aboard somebody else's ship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Space travel is &lt;em&gt;dangerous&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two asteroids are being mined, one by the insectoids of Shmenus and one by the smelly apes from Shmearth. Due to a very &lt;em&gt;slight&lt;/em&gt; miscalculation, it turns out the two asteroids are actually about to impact one another. Both mining colonies need to evacuate, immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nearby Shmartian freighter ship may not like the slimy insectoids, and the apes may keep making fun of the captain's feathers, but you can't just leave them all to die, so...well, I guess we'll have to pick them up. Just long enough to get them back to their own people, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Space makes a great prison&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_ship&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prison hulks&lt;/a&gt; are a longstanding tradition hear on earth, and a space-hulk to hold POWs from the first interplanetary war would be an extremely secure location. With prisoners from Shmenus, Shmearth, and Shmars, the Shmuropan squids are moving their prison hulk ships out to the asteroid belt, where the vile xenos will perform hard labour to work off their sentence after their monstrous aggression against sacred Shmuropa. Hey, it worked for Blake's Seven...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22241" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T17:04:14.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28063" CreationDate="2017-05-16T19:12:25.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike other forms of writing fiction deals with 'thoughts' and 'opinions' as opposed to 'facts'. Thought and opinions can change - facts do not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your story starts with a statement of fact. All your problems would be solved with a point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm convinced, my girlfriend, Hitomi, is in love with my elder brother. But refuses to accept it. Not in the sense that she doesn't want to reveal the truth, maybe she doesn't know the truth herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All Fixed. More natural sounding. Improved voice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T19:12:25.687" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28095" CreationDate="2017-05-16T19:58:50.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every hero sets out on his journey by taking a single step. You hero needs not to set out to take out the BBEG, he could set out just for something simple: pay his taxes, find a new home, go deliver cookies to his ailing grandma. Few people leave expecting to take on the world (and those who do typically end up beaten by it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe he tries to get into the big imperial brawl to [impress a girl/get money/ help ailing grandma] on his way there, he encounters/ witnesses something that lets him know that something must be done.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative, you seem to have a good plot from the villain's perspective as he plots to save himself from the One-who-will-ultimately-come... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T19:58:50.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28114" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28116" CreationDate="2017-05-16T20:08:44.937" Score="2" ViewCount="539" Body="&lt;p&gt;My writings tend to be a blend of multiple genre's.  I know some can work well together, like sci-fi and fantasy, but are there genre's that should not be blended?  Also,  is it confusing to reader's when there is not a clear genre?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24915" LastActivityDate="2017-05-20T14:24:34.477" Title="Is blending genres well received by readers?" Tags="|genre|readers|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28090" CreationDate="2017-05-16T20:12:39.633" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been blogging since 2009 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://jpchapleau.blogspot.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;JP On Gaming&lt;/a&gt;)and have been through a number of phases as I grew older.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's okay to publish fewer articles if they are more interesting (I typically post only up to 1/day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have wildly diverging interests, have a different blog (I have one for writing fiction and essays and my main one for my gaming-related topics).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at your analytics: what do your readers view more? what type of approach do they comment most on? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep blogging. Sounds a lot simple, but it is perhaps the most difficult of the bunch&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you plan to have a scattered approach: writing, movie critique, botany, chicken rearing, space exploration, and more, then find a name/theme to your blog that is encompassing &lt;em&gt;&quot;A Lady's Interest&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;&quot;We talk about it here&quot;&lt;/em&gt; announce what it is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your blog will not please everyone. It won't. But that doesn't mean your regular readers don't love it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have polls asking your readers what they want&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write in advance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T20:12:39.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28114" CreationDate="2017-05-16T21:17:36.153" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Putting elements of one genre into a work that is another genre is not going to confuse your readers.  The real genre is what constitutes the internal conflict faced by the protagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, if the chief problem faced by the protagonist is that he/she is powerless in the face of evil, you have a horror story.  The dressing can consist of elements of science fiction (the &lt;em&gt;Alien&lt;/em&gt; franchise), ordinary hum-drum life (&lt;em&gt;Mommie Dearest&lt;/em&gt;), or have supernatural elements (typical horror).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if the whole point is that there are men who prefer honor to life, you have a western, whether it's set in outer space (&lt;em&gt;Firefly&lt;/em&gt;) or the Old West (just about any classic western).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy and science fiction both have their own unique internal struggles (personal good and evil for fantasy, and social good and evil for science fiction).  Both tales are usually dressed up with characteristic elements, but in the case of &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt;, the tale is about the impact of personal good and evil, so even though it is packed with the trappings of science fiction, at its heart it's a fantasy story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally, there are a lot of stories whose internal struggles are a blend of the distinct genres; &lt;em&gt;1984&lt;/em&gt; is both horror and science fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So identify the key internal conflict in the story&amp;mdash;start over if it doesn't have one!&amp;mdash;and then add the dressing you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T21:17:36.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28114" CreationDate="2017-05-16T21:40:00.310" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can very clearly blend elements of genres. Lots of people have done it. The real question is, will it produce a work with crossover appeal? That is, will it appeal to fans of both genres?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example to look at here is Joss Whedon's &lt;em&gt;Firefly&lt;/em&gt;. It is a very clear blending of elements from westerns and space-opera style science fiction. Which audience did is appeal to? Clearly it appealed to science fiction and fantasy fans. Did it appeal to fans of westerns? Not as far as I can tell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now imagine a romance novel set in 1850s Wyoming with a cowboy as the hero. Clearly it will borrow elements from westerns again. Will it pull a lot of Louis L'aMour fans? Probably not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A genre is fundamentally a promise to the reader that they are going to receive a particular kind of reading experience. Fans of westerns like horses and big hats and schoolmarms in their books to be sure, but they also want a kind of rugged earnestness of a John Wayne, not the smarmy smartassery of a Nathan Fillion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firefly, in other words, is science fiction set on a western backlot, but it is still science fiction because it delivers the kind of viewing experience that a science fiction fan wants, not the kind of experience a western fan wants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, can you blend elements from one genre into another genre? Certainly. But the result had better still be squarely aimed at the reader of one genre and had better clearly give them the core elements of the experience they expect from that genre, or no one in the entire publishing chain, from agent, to editor, to publicist, to bookseller, to reader, is going to know what to do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-05-17T15:24:31.747" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T15:24:31.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28118" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28128" CreationDate="2017-05-16T22:31:30.737" Score="5" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I recently started writing a book and decided that I should plan first because in the past while writing I lost the point of the story and lost interest in writing that particular project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But after I finished my plan and started writing my first chapter of my new story I realized that I had planned to much. Writing the plan was fun but rewriting the same thing with more detail was boring and again I lost interest in writing it after a few sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I still really like the idea and don't want to throw it away. So my question is what should I do when I'm bored of my story but don't want to throw it away? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there are questions similar to this but I don't know how to stay motivated about the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23826" LastEditorUserId="14704" LastEditDate="2019-02-16T16:52:54.163" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T16:52:54.163" Title="What should I do when I'm bored of my story but don't want to throw it away?" Tags="|writers-block|process|psychology-of-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28118" CreationDate="2017-05-17T01:32:02.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put it aside for a good long time (probably a few months).  Then go back to it.  You may be burnt out and a break might get your creativity started again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24915" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T01:32:02.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28118" CreationDate="2017-05-17T03:29:58.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look over your plan, and throw away less important parts of it. You should keep any character questionnaires and chapter summaries, as well as any paragraphs you have written that you plan to use in your book later on. Everything else, particularly the detailed bits, can go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take time off to forget the plan then, after about a month, reread it with a fresh memory. Hopefully, by then, you will have forgotten the parts you threw out, and the fun will return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T03:29:58.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28118" CreationDate="2017-05-17T05:06:04.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many seek instruction and advice before attempting to write. My advice is to just write. In doing so you begin to learn what type of writer you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some writers plan and outline, meticulously. However, the downside to this is that the writing becomes a chore. It's like sitting through a movie that you've seen before. You know what's going to happen. There are no surprises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some may advise that you put the work down for a while and return to is with fresh eyes. A break can work but you run the risk of totally losing the groove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My method suits me, due to my style of writing. I'll call it 'the fattening'. I re-read what I've written, examining the characters in particular. You'll find attitudes and behaviour that may need justifying or explaining. You'll find opportunities and inspiration to launch sub-plots, which, in turn, change your thinking - ultimately impacting the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was writing a story about two teen girls (17 &amp;amp; 19) whose father remarries, and immediately goes to work overseas for 18 months leaving the girls with their new stepmother. Obviously the girls view this new woman as the evil stepmother and a battle royal ensues. And, yes, eventually the stepmother wins them round. - a fairly predictable, standard sub-plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On re-reading I discovered I'd missed an obvious twist. The sub-plot start with two GIRLS missing their father and hating their stepmother. But without any propaganda or influence the sisters become angry with their father. They have become WOMEN and have adopted a woman's POV. &quot;You don't marry a 36-year-old woman, a woman in her prime . . . and put her out to pasture - it's disrespectful and it's wrong!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this revelation new scenes and conflicts arise. (Particularly for the older sibling). As her father's daughter, the thought of other men hitting on her stepmother disgusts her. But as woman, if her man f**ked off for over a year - damn right she'd cheat on him!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't see any of this coming until I'd read what I'd written, and looked a little deeper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T05:06:04.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28068" CreationDate="2017-05-17T05:21:57.280" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I certainly agree with Mark. Not much to add. But always remember POV. Who's telling the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Without a doubt Emma Richards was the most beautiful girl in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A valid opinion if your narrator is a love-struck high-school boy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, for me, &quot;relative&quot; description are far better than specific facts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. Roberts was 6'2&quot; but his wife was only 5'4 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is a rather bland statement of fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You don't want to be late on your first day,&quot; said Mrs Roberts, wrapping the scarf around her husband's neck and standing on tip-toes to kiss his cheek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This conveys the required information without pausing the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2018-08-21T14:07:50.423" LastActivityDate="2018-08-21T14:07:50.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20724" CreationDate="2017-05-17T06:44:01.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh God! not the dialogue tag debate . . . again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, those who believe 'said' is the only valid dialogue tag and dialogue tags should be invisible are misled. It's fine if you don't write a lot of dialogue - otherwise it's the worst advice possible. - Write a long dialogue exchange using only 'said' as a tag, the read it out aloud. It'll sound like Chinese water torture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the OP. There is no ONE way, or a CORRECT way to write most things. Ultimately there is only YOUR way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much like words . . . if you use the same word to describe the same action the prose becomes repetitive. You may use all any any method do indicate laughter in the same passage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;So you see then it's a robot,&quot; said Bob.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I see.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What's so funny? Why are you laughing?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I didn't. I'm not,&quot; replied Dave, obscuring his mouth with his hand. &quot;Carry on . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;So the robot . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Ha-ha-ha!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What's so funny!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Nothing,&quot; replied Dave attempting to curtail his laughter. &quot;Gimme one sec . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob laughed. &quot;I suppose it is kinda funny.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Ha-ha!&quot; Dave erupted. &quot;A bug turning into a robot isn't funny. It's ridiculous!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think I've used most methods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T06:44:01.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28118" CreationDate="2017-05-17T06:58:24.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always jot down the points whenever I have a new story in mind. Just list down all the major events and make sure you leave sufficient space between any two points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As and when you start writing, you will find it fairly easy to navigate from one point to another but the same is not true for all the points. So write down all you can and keep going back to the list that you prepared. All the ideas that you get about linking two points, keep entering them in the empty space between the points.&#xA;Slowly, your story will begin to materialize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now when you hit a writers block or just get bored out of it. Keep this list handy but remove the entire story. Even when not working on a story, I have ideas that keep coming to my mind... again, they get converted to blog posts or short narrations or short stories or remain ideas that that listed on another list of random ideas. When you have listed your ideas well, you are bound to find something that will start filling spaces in your story lists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then, it might be different for you. I would recommend, do what comes naturally to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps you!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24877" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T06:58:24.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28068" CreationDate="2017-05-17T07:01:30.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not generalizing anything but most of the time it is the story and the characteristics of the character which are of significance. Not much attention goes into the looks or the physical appearance unless explicitly made to realize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24877" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T07:01:30.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20724" CreationDate="2017-05-17T07:10:37.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;one interesting thing you might want to consider is the different types of laughters.. we have giggles and laughs and chuckles and grins and chortles and lots more!! (I know the English isn't correct in the statement above.. I was trying to make it a little poetic but in vain)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to consider - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/laugh?s=t&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/laugh?s=t&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24877" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T07:10:37.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28118" CreationDate="2017-05-17T10:17:40.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me like you need to find the sweet spot between planning and improvising. You said that previously you lost direction because you didn’t plan enough, and this time you lost the fun out of it because you planned too much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fun is found in a different place for everyone. As a planner, the best part is getting the story on paper after exhaustive planning. It definitely should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; feel like “rewriting the same thing with more detail.” It’s seeing your idea come alive after all that hard work. For others, the fun part is discovering the story as they go along. I think you might fall somewhere in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really enjoy writing, and not just the idea-building stage, keep going and try to find that sweet spot that works for you. Take a break from this story, a month at the very least. Write something in the meantime but don’t plan so extensively – have a strong outline but have each scene open enough to create as you go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if after a month you still find the first story boring to write, why not give the idea to someone else? Use it as a short story prompt, or simply have a discussion on it. Seeing another person’s interpretation of your detailed plan could surprise you – you might find that there is more to it than just rewriting. Even with the best of plans, there is always room for change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24794" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T10:17:40.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28058" CreationDate="2017-05-17T11:16:03.063" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a fan of fantasy nor do I have any world-building skills, however, I've an understanding of storytelling techniques and have witnessed the errors of many fantasy writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to build your world with detailed description, relying heavily on vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of people do not enjoy being lectured to for endless hours - which is what you may doing. Think of the best teachers and lecturers, they involve their audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to bringing a novel alive is through empathy, dragging the reader inside the story, and letting them do some of the work. The story comes more alive when the reader supplements your text with their own experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two different ways of conveying the same information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The little girl hung her head as her father screamed at her in front of the entire village. Eventually she burst into tears. I rushed to step in but her father punched me. I fell to the ground - unconscious.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The little girl hung her head as her father screamed at her. With the entire village watching she tried to be brave but eventually the bottom lip began to quiver. &quot;This has gone far enough,&quot; I insisted, rushing to her aid. My advance was halted by loud thud, followed by a white light, followed by a sound reminiscent of a Jew's Harp . . .&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second version throws a couple of hooks to bring the reader into the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;she tried to be brave but eventually the bottom lip began to quiver.&quot; (Ha-ha, my little brother used to do that too before turning purple and bursting into tears).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;My advance was halted by loud thud, followed by a white light, followed by a sound reminiscent of a Jew's Harp . . .&quot; (I remember that. Jimmy Smith accidentally hit me with baseball bat in 5th grade - I was out cold).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is more exciting for the reader. You are forcing him to live the events by revisiting past experiences. Obviously, not every reader will bite at every hook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="24878" LastEditDate="2017-05-17T15:38:47.390" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T15:38:47.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28114" CreationDate="2017-05-17T13:23:42.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very well received by readers --when done well.  Many popular and influential books and movies have imported elements from one genre into another.  &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; is Agatha Christie as YA Fantasy.  &lt;em&gt;Neuromancer&lt;/em&gt; is film noir in cyberspace. &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; is a fairy tale in a distant galaxy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you do it poorly, it will read like a parody or a pastiche.  In general, you need to understand both genres well and be respectful of each.  If you're just plundering different sources for cool ideas it will feel lazy and derivative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T13:23:42.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28114" CreationDate="2017-05-17T14:31:38.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a snobbery amongst readers (and writers). This is evidenced by the sheer volume of fantasy writers on this site. When they go to the library or the book-store they rarely look past the fantasy section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main genre of you work is purely marketing. But be aware the readership has certain expectations of any genre - don't put anal sex in 'Christian' literature even if your story is about a prostitute finding God.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Romance crosses all genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, outside of your marketing genre the sky's the limit. e.g. I have a thriller which spends a lot of its time in the fantasy genre - the MC is a heroin addict. I also have a science fiction series which spends at least three volumes 'thinking' its science fiction. Scientists spend the bulk of the story trying fix an anomaly they believe they created but it turns out they were not to blame - all that came to pass was deemed by the gods on Mount Olympus (fantasy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With each genre comes and expectation of 'style'. Fantasy readers expect worldbuilding etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T14:31:38.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28114" CreationDate="2017-05-17T14:56:00.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example 1: &quot;Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.&quot; Classic, or horror?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2: &quot;The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.&quot; Mystery, or sociology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 3: &quot;The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.&quot; Sci-fi, or humor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T14:56:00.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28141" CreationDate="2017-05-17T16:01:50.993" Score="0" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a ton of ideas I think are great. I wish I could finish them all at the same time. I feel as if I don't finish them they will all be taken or used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Question 1:&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;How much writing should I try to do per day, and should I do more than one story at a time?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also want to share my ideas before I start them. I would rather tell my ideas to an online friend or someone I could trust not to steal the ideas.&#xA;I would share them with my family but,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't feel like I can, I get embarrassed too easy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't really like my family talking about me/ or being the spotlight&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Question 2:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Who should I share my ideas with to know if it will be great or a flop&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your time&#xA;            -A.N.M. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24839" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T04:02:04.957" Title="Portions per day, and sharing" Tags="|discipline|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-05-18T04:40:11.517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28136" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-17T17:42:41.923" Score="1" ViewCount="1877" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I started using Scrivener a few weeks ago, I added chapters as scenes by mistake. Now I want to make them separate chapters. How do I do it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24957" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T20:38:45.570" Title="How do I change a scene into a chapter in Scrivener?" Tags="|scrivener|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28136" CreationDate="2017-05-17T19:03:28.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://howtoscrivener.com/scrivener-templates/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;project template&lt;/a&gt; you are using. Scrivener is a very flexible platform and every project can be customized in many ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The base unit of text they call a &quot;scrivening&quot;, and this is what it is--a chunk of text. They can be organized into folders, just like files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am using the Novel/Manuscript template which came with my version of Scrivener at the time I bought it a few years back. In my template, a scene is a base unit, and everything is built around that: scenes are organized into chapters (folders), chapters are organized into parts (also folders), and parts are just that--parts of the novel, which is essentially one huge folder, where everything is kept. It is usually called &lt;em&gt;Draft&lt;/em&gt; or, in my version, for some reason, &lt;em&gt;Manuscript&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to &lt;em&gt;scrivening&lt;/em&gt;/file management, Scrivener mimics any and all operating systems there are: in the &lt;em&gt;Binder&lt;/em&gt; you can move your pieces in and out of folders, create new folders/texts, copy and paste them, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare the structure of the chapter in your template to the structure of a scene and remodel accordingly. It might be as simple as selecting the chapter you want to turn into a scene in the &lt;em&gt;Binder&lt;/em&gt;, right-clicking on it and selecting &quot;convert to file&quot; option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quick and Dirty Way: Duplicate a blank chapter in your template which&#xA;  contains a few blank scenes, then make as many scenes inside of it as&#xA;  you need, copy-paste your text into those scenes, then move them where&#xA;  they belong--different chapter. I would keep the blank Chapter with&#xA;  blank scenes in it in your book/draft/manuscript folder just for that&#xA;  purpose. This is what I do: when I start a new chapter, I just duplicate the blank one,&#xA;  then write scenes within it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-05-17T20:38:45.570" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T20:38:45.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27650" CreationDate="2017-05-18T00:00:25.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a third option, if it is too hard to decide between long and short.  You could have long chapters, with breaks within the chapters.  This is usually accomplished by having a larger space between two paragraphs and having a symbol (like a flower, sword, or whatever fits the story) separating the paragraphs.  This gives a good point for the reader to take a break, if needed, without making the chapter feel too short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24915" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T00:00:25.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28118" CreationDate="2017-05-18T00:39:13.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to remember that its &lt;em&gt;your story.&lt;/em&gt; What I mean is, write what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; want to write, and don't write something that you aren't interested in. You don't &lt;em&gt;have to&lt;/em&gt; keep anything you planned, you can add and remove whatever you want. Just write what interests you and try to fit that with the theme of what you're writing. I find that I always incorporate what I'm currently obsessed with into what I'm writing, it keeps me interested for sure and I keep in mind why I'm actually writing in the first place. Don't pressure yourself into being perfect either - art often doesn't go according to plan. It should be fun! Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24961" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T00:39:13.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28133" CreationDate="2017-05-18T02:41:16.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To Question 1, I think you should try writing at least 1000 words a day. I would also advise you against writing multiple stories at the same time as I think it would be easy to &quot;pollute&quot; individual stories with ideas from another. In order to prevent the loss of your other ideas, you could write them down somewhere as they come to you for future reference. &#xA;To Question 2, you could share your work with a writer friend who's willing to review it. That way, you can get informed honest feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24963" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T02:41:16.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28133" CreationDate="2017-05-18T04:02:04.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, its all opinion based... so let me start with - do what comes naturally to you. To all writers, the writing style and methodology differs. There is no best practice - again, as per my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would do -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ques 1 - don't let the ideas go away... write as much as you want and in any form that you want. You can write a hundred stories at a time if you want to. Don't limit or constraint yourself. Ofcourse, this will have its disadvantages too. You will be tiring yourself. Better, make plans (outlines) for your story plots. And whenever you get an idea reg any story, add it to the plan and then to the story. If you get an idea that doesn't fit anywhere else, write a blog about it or just list it in a random-ideas list so you don't loose it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ques 2 - I have the same issue. My parents have no idea I love to write or the amount I write. However, my friends know I am insane about such things... if I get an idea, it needs to be penned down immediately. My grandfather and friends have read my work... and then I blog about it. Luckily, I have friends I can discuss ideas with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find many online forums where people share and discuss ideas. But be careful - the ideas online can get stolen and you may have no right over it once it becomes part of something big. I have been part of forums where people wrote serial fanfics and ideas were taken from there. We were happy to see our ideas materialize on our fav shows but could never let them know that we did the brain work behind those ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24877" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T04:02:04.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28063" CreationDate="2017-05-18T13:09:18.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wonder if this [opening statement doesn't match conclusion] is permissible in first-person narration where the MC doesn't know what is going to happen at the end of his tale? (Or at least, wants the reader to think that?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that it's where it would be the most permissible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In first-person narration, the POV is biased, since it depends on one character's opinions and ideas. It's perfectly acceptable for the tale to open with the character/narrator believing something only to reach the end and discover they were wrong in their initial belief. Or, at least, weren't quite right about it. In fact, it's a great twist and allows the character-narrator to evolve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the same can be said of other types of narration (which means that opening and closing statements at odds are permissible everywhere). Any character, or even an ironic narrator, can make a statement that turns out to be wrong at the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, this change (or, better yet, evolution) mimics an important aspect of real life: one draws conclusions about others based on the actions one sees, but are our conclusions accurate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T13:09:18.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28094" CreationDate="2017-05-18T13:32:07.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For once, I'll say &lt;em&gt;if both sound good and interesting, write both&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you've already chosen one path, go with it. Then, when you finish it, if you're still excited about the other path, write it too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some advantages about writing both:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you won't feel bad about dropping an idea that calls to you &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you'll get the idea out of your head for good so you can concentrate on other ideas&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if you happen to have a change of heart, you can easily swap an ending for the other or, (if you become indecise later on) you can have a few betas reading and voting for the ending they prefer&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are disadvantages, of course:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you may be wasting time on a piece that won't leave the drawer (though every written piece is practice and, therefore, not a waste)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you may end up getting indecise again and don't know which to kill&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;it may hurt even more to kill a long text rather than just its idea&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also something else you can try, though it's all but traditional and has drawbacks of its own. Write and publish the novel with your favourite ending, then publish the other ending online. At the end of the novel, invite the writers to read the alternative ending and send you feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those who are satisfied with the ending may not bother to go and read the alternative, while those who are less satisfied are more likely to take a look. Of course, anyone who's curious will take a look. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T13:32:07.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28094" CreationDate="2017-05-18T15:42:20.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can, and has been done (&lt;a href=&quot;http://popculturephilosopher.com/mjd-luis-briceno/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is an example of something similar&lt;/a&gt;), but it takes your book out of the realm of conventional fiction, and reclassifies it as what is called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_literature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;experimental literature&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; which can be influential, but which typically draws only a small niche audience.  It essentially becomes &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;metafiction&lt;/a&gt; --work which deliberately calls attention to itself as fiction --whether or not that is your intent.  This, in itself, will make it much more challenging for your reader to suspend disbelief, and to care about your characters and their actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that it is not worth doing, just that doing it well would be difficult.  As with any particularly difficult task, if you pull it off successfully, the acclaim will be all the much higher (some works of this type have been &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_French_Lieutenant&amp;#39;s_Woman&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;highly successful&lt;/a&gt;).  But if your aims are the standard ones of a writer --to connect with an audience through a compelling story about believable characters --you're probably better off taking Mark Baker's advice, and using your multiple versions only as personal source materials for enriching your core narrative (or for future stories exploring similar themes).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do elect to go the experimental route, however, you might enjoy &lt;a href=&quot;http://popculturephilosopher.com/reconstructivist-art/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this essay&lt;/a&gt; on the ways of marrying experimentalism with the depth of feeling and other pleasures of classical literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2017-05-18T16:03:51.547" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T16:03:51.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28189" CreationDate="2017-05-18T19:53:41.373" Score="1" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a fantasy which stretches over two volumes. At the end of the first book, a complex plot comes to a conclusion with a war but it results in the death of many major characters, one of them close to the hero. The hero also, falls into a temporary coma after the climax (not related to the deaths).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I've an idea of a very good scene which would show how the hero deals with the loss (It is not a dream sequence). I can very easily add the chapter to the Epilogue of the first volume as it is a very gripping scene and seems like a proper note to end the first volume on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What my issue is that the hero is in a coma and obviously the epilogue places itself into some days after the event. Then when I start the second volume, it starts immediately after the war (and so some days before the epilogue). After this, I show my hero rising from the coma and as part of the continuity, I've to show the scene happening to fit it into the continuity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would like to understand is whether this is a good idea? Should I reuse the chapter to show a continuity? or should I just skip the scene in Volume II and assume people to assume that it happened in the continuity? or is there a third option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-03-25T23:21:58.830" LastActivityDate="2019-03-25T23:21:58.830" Title="Reusing a scene in epilogue and future chapters" Tags="|creative-writing|fantasy|epilogues|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28148" CreationDate="2017-05-18T20:44:20.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually an epilogue is written to show what happens after the story to give more conclusion to the story. Since you are making a sequel, the sequel replaces the epilogue. If you decide to do the epilogue anyway, when writing the second book remember that some readers like to read sequels out of order, or take a break between reading two books. So they may not understand or fully remember what happened in the first book. You probably need to at least summarize or restate what happened in the epilogue during the sequel, or you could add more detail to it the second time around to make it more interesting to those who so remember it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24915" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T20:44:20.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28148" CreationDate="2017-05-18T21:46:36.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indeed there is a third option, and a fourth, and a fifth and infinite options. First and foremost . . . when a reader sees the words 'prologue' or 'epilogue' what they actually read is 'optional'. Most people wouldn't recognise a Star Wars prologue if their lives depended on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the most important aspect of writing is POV, It is the most powerful tool. The Achilles heal of most fantasy writers is their ego, and their desire to tell the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you multiple volumes you are tasked with satisfying two sets of readers; those who have read previous volumes and are up to speed, and 'new' readers. It is a prerequisite that each volume must stand alone. If you attempt to 'recap' to bring new reader into the know you run the risk of boring existing readers shit-less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easy solution is to change POV or get a character to recap (traditionally the prologue is spoken by a fringe character). Additionally, a recap by a third party may differ from the original view. People see things differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Prince has been injured in battle. The villain has taken the princess. Maybe we open with princess's maid praying by the the prince's bedside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;My Lord, you cannot hear my words so I have occasion to speak to beyond my station. I was your mother's chambermaid when I first occasioned you. 16-years-old you were to be wed the daughter of Xerxes. You said no. When your father banished you - you fought him. When the Pyroclons sought to enslave our people you stood up, you said no - you fought them. And when Earl of Pendragon came to take your betrothed as his own, claiming it would unify the Kingdoms - you fought him. Master, I beg of you - rise and fight again. Rise and fight - fight for your Kingdom, avenge the slaying of your father, fight for the return of your princess. I say this . . . even if her return would crush a peasant girl's last hope. Better you live with her than leave me to grieve alone.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;God that was awful!!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I've tried to do is recap what has happened before (for the new readers) combined with a shocking revelation ( for the existing readers) - the maid is in love with prince.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does that work for you?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T21:46:36.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27650" CreationDate="2017-05-18T22:02:47.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are too many of these questions. Chapter length is governed by four elements: scenes, transitions, location switches, time breaks. I have a novel where the shortest chapter is 400 words - a character is falling asleep. Longest chapter is 11,000 words. Every character is in the same location. There   is no opportunity to end the scene or switch to a parallel plot. All the characters are being held hostage. There is no opportunity to switch to another 'camera'.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T22:02:47.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28152" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-19T00:37:11.353" Score="1" ViewCount="345" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a hard time with adding detail, I feel it may leave a good chunk of the story out, but I don't know for sure if I should really add it or not. If I do end up with too much detail, my readers can get easily bored and not want to read anymore of my story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T17:58:42.890" Title="Should I add more detail to my story, or just leave it vague and add it all in later?" Tags="|fiction|novel|young-adult|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28153" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28160" CreationDate="2017-05-19T08:21:58.383" Score="4" ViewCount="1221" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I shook my head unbelieving.&lt;/strong&gt; Could someone I barely knew know so much about me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, impossible.&lt;/strong&gt; Could someone I barely knew know so much about me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first example uses external body language and the second internal monologue. Does the latter make more sense in first-person narration? Why or why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastEditorUserId="22391" LastEditDate="2017-05-20T03:12:44.757" LastActivityDate="2017-06-17T08:16:10.427" Title="First-person narrative: Does it make more sense to focus on internal thoughts than external gestures?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28152" CreationDate="2017-05-19T09:46:24.877" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a very strange question. You're effectively asking if the coffee needs more sugar before anybody has tasted it. And even if we had tasted said coffee we all take varying amounts of sugar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I insist any detail be relevant. If you're telling me Brian wore brown shoes I'd need to know why you felt I needed that information. If the killer is revealed as wearing brown shoes then the detail is relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal mantra is &quot;Never stop a story to insert a description.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any statement including a description must also serve other functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. &quot;Ever since her divorce Amy had little more than lounge around the house in her old, grey sweatpants.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T09:46:24.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28153" CreationDate="2017-05-19T09:58:18.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Again, you are asking for a rule on a practice - the truth is there is no rule. Different writers use different methods. Ergo, different readers prefer different styles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addressing your examples I prefer the second simply because I'm not convinced how aware people are of their own natural gestures. If you want the reader to be aware of the gesture - have somebody else highlight it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could someone I barely knew know so much about me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Penny for them?&quot; Tracey interrupted my thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You were shaking your head and you looked . . . kind of sad.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm fine,&quot; I replied, forcing a smile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T09:58:18.783" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28156" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-19T10:12:35.530" Score="0" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've set up my 1st person narrator as a particular type of character. She's the type of person who sits next you on a bus or a train. You make the mistake of being polite and exchange pleasantries. She then believes you and her are new 'besties' and proceeds to tell you her entire life story (including all the inappropriate bits).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technique lends itself to the (do, while) method. e.g the character can be telling you the story whilst getting dressed for work. The getting dressed can take several chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fourth aspect is highlighted in a particular scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The character is having sex with her boyfriend. At the same time she's telling you (the reader)about her visit to the dermatologist. Her boyfriend notices she's distracted (because she's talking to you). He accuses her seeing somebody else - a huge argument ensues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this style of story-telling off-putting?    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T12:36:56.907" Title="Interractive, fourth wall styles . . . What do people think?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28153" CreationDate="2017-05-19T10:30:43.687" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Surtsey, but I'd like to add that it's also a good idea to balance the two. If the external gesture is conscious, feel free to describe it; if the gesture is an instinctive reaction, go with the internal thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one sticks only to either gestures or internal thoughts, no middle ground, it can get repetitive, while at the same time focusing too much on the inside / outside. Balance is key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T10:30:43.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21590" CreationDate="2017-05-19T10:36:25.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing to remember is that scripts for TV and film aren't (primarily) a method of telling the story. What they are is an instruction manual for how to produce something which will tell the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that divisions which are almost meaningless in some other format (such as a novel) will be very meaningful in a TV script. Moving between rooms usually means moving between sets. Even if it doesn't, it will almost certainly mean a lot of moving around of lighting and other equipment. This means there are good practical reasons for diving up scenes by room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a scene alternates between two rooms, for example, it would be easy to spot that it is broken down into several parts, with alternating locations. Since such scenes would normally be filmed one room (i.e. set) at a time (and thus out of sequence, according to the story), combining them into a single scene in the interests of story flow is problematic when it comes to actually filming and capturing that flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, in your case I would probably break it down into two scenes. Bear in mind, though, that if a significant amount of action takes place in the doorway, there's a chance that a seperate set (or setup, at least) might be used for this (since, if the room and the hallway are seperate sets, there may be no actual doorway which links them), in which case you might want to break the sequence into three parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T10:36:25.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28148" CreationDate="2017-05-19T10:59:28.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;i think if used well, this would make the narration very interesting. Indeed, I read some short story by a friend who used the same sentence as his first and last statement for the story. Ofcourse, the meaning had completely changed... but it was fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And ofcourse, there are several more possibilities.. it all depends on how you want to present.. its your story after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24877" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T10:59:28.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28153" CreationDate="2017-05-19T11:15:40.870" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;On what level is the narrator communicating to us? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they conscious of the fact that there's a reader (or perhaps a listener), and trying to present themselves in a particular way, or are we getting perfect access to their thoughts? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they &lt;em&gt;trying&lt;/em&gt; to give us access to their thoughts, but don't know quite how to communicate them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they trying not to give us access to their thoughts, but give themself away unknowingly through their own descriptions of their actions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they the sort of person who is very focused on how they come across to others, or on the relationship between their body and external world (and so will tend to notice what they're physically doing when they react to something) or are they someone who may not notice these things, and instead focus on what they feel internally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they someone who will notice their emotions &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt;, or will they instead notice how other people are reacting to them (and we learn about them through that)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody else can answer these questions for you. They depend on you, and the character that exists (for now) only in your head. Get to know your narrator, and the answer will be obvious to you in a way that it never can be for anyone else, because nobody else is &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T11:15:40.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28153" CreationDate="2017-05-19T11:57:04.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a third, and, to me, preferable alternative. The two alternatives you have given are both attempts at what we might call invisible narration. The reader is not listening to a narrator but somehow eavesdropping on a scene.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No, impossible. Could someone I barely knew know so much about me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the reader essentially eavesdropping on the POV character's internal monologue. It is rather awkward position from which to observe a scene long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I shook my head unavailingly. Could someone I barely knew know so much about me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a mixture. The first sentence is kind of fly on the wall. It is third party observation narrated in the first person, which is kind of weird. The second sentence is eavesdropping on internal monologue like the first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A much simpler and more natural approach is actual first person narration. That is, you write it as a person would say it if they were telling the story to the reader:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I shook my head, wondering who someone I barely knew could know so much about me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wondered how someone I had barely met could know so much about me.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was surprised that someone I had barely met could know so much about me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the most natural and straightforward form of first person narrative. It is the easiest for the reader to follow and the easiest to write. It will largely avoid the need to ask yourself exactly these kinds of questions. Unless there is a really good reason for them, exotic narrative modes generally just get in the way of telling a good story, which should be any author's main concern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-06-17T08:16:10.427" LastActivityDate="2017-06-17T08:16:10.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28152" CreationDate="2017-05-19T12:34:43.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a huge difference between plot and story. A plot is a sequence of events that happened for a reason. A plot requires only technical detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story is an experience. It is the observation of or an entry into the live of, a particular person in a particularly place and time, who is experiencing the events of the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A plot can be received on a purely intellectual level. Who was the murderer? It was the man with the brown shoes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story is received viscerally. It is received by the same set of senses that real life is received by (thought through a different sensory input, obviously). We remember its scenes, not merely (or not only) its words. Thus we have a memory of Rivendell or the Shire or Mordor in our heads that is a visual and auditory and olfactory memory, as if we had actually visited these places. (Peter Jackson obviously received a very different memory of these places than I did!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating a story as a visceral experience obviously requires more detail than the simple recounting of a plot. On the other hand, it does not require that you relate every detail that goes into the reader's visceral experience and ends up in their sense memory of the event. Rather, you rely on what is called the &quot;telling detail&quot;, the few scraps of imagery that irresistibly pull a much more complete picture into the reader's head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This when Prospero says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The solemn temples  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We get a picture in our heads that is much more complex, full of many more details, than anything that is explicit in the scene. &quot;cloud-capp'd&quot; is the telling detail that evokes an image in the mind that pulls all the rest in with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is whe whole art of detail, to find the telling detail that pulls a whole world of detail in its wake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that you are leaving out most of the detail, it may well be that on first draft you are really just relating the plot. That may work as a writing technique, but on second draft, you are going to have to tell the story, and that is going to require more than just filling in some more details. Creating an experience for the reader is very much about selection of scenes and about emphasis. It is about when to illustrate in detail and when to bridge. But it is also, certainly, about the telling details that transform the reception of words into the reception of images. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The right selection of scenes and the use of telling detail will never be boring to the reader because it is immersing them in the experience. Some experience will require more details than other to create. Don't worry, therefore, whether you have too much detail. Worry about whether you have the telling details. And when you find the telling details, relate those, and then let them do their work of pulling in the rest of the scene. Don't go on with additional detail that may only interfere with the image that the reader is forming based on the telling detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T12:34:43.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28156" CreationDate="2017-05-19T12:36:56.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this style of storytelling offputting? Yes. All styles of storytelling are offputting to somebody. For a given technique, there will be people who just plain don't like it, and won't be swayed. If you're planning to use the technique regardless, there's little point worrying about these people. If you want to please these people (i.e. attract these people as readers) &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; use this technique, you'll have to decide what you care about more, and make a choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of people, however, keep a somewhat open mind about such things. They'll be willing to accept an unusual technique as long as it's worth their while, and especially if it feels like there's a reason for it. If the technique you use feels integral to the story, and helps to communicate things which would be less efficiently communicated without it, then it will feel in-some-way natural regardless of whether the reader is used to it. Even if it &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; integral to the story, if it's enough fun to read, that might not matter for a lot of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; use it, that's up to you. It depends on your personal goals, preferences and preoccupations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T12:36:56.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21590" CreationDate="2017-05-19T12:51:39.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There a couple of schools of thought, and a 'spec script' differs from a 'shooting script.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fight scenes in some of the older Bond movies simply said, 'they fight'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, choreography is not the script-writers job - don't focus on it. Key points of ebb and flow should inspire the producers to fill in the blanks - give them a framework their imaginations can work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their blades clashed, all the way up the staircase, Sir Bob had the high-ground and, therefore, the advantage. But on the balcony he stumbled. Sir Dave seized his opportunity. One last desperate swing of his blade. Sir Bob's decapitated body crashed through the railing and onto the ballroom floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sir Dave stoops and picks up the severed head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SIR DAVE (to the head): I told you'd I'd kill you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T12:51:39.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28153" CreationDate="2017-05-19T14:39:30.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll go out on a limb here and argue the second example is &lt;strong&gt;objectively&lt;/strong&gt; better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with the first is that it changes perspectives in the same paragraph. The first sentence is something that only an outside observer could notice, while the second is completely first-person. As a reader trying to get into your head, I feel like I'm being jerked around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could salvage the first by rephrasing it to something your first-person observer might notice. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I felt my head shake in disbelief.&lt;/em&gt; Could someone I barely knew know so much about me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could probably be cleaned up more, but the idea is there. This version reports only things your first-person observer would have noticed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18598" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T14:39:30.200" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28166" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28170" CreationDate="2017-05-19T15:43:18.743" Score="1" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write about a historical incident. So, to make it more appealing to the reader, I want to write it from a first person perspective. The concerned person is an important part of the incident. How can I achieve this without undermining the historical authenticity?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24982" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T22:49:08.670" Title="Is it a good idea to write a non fictional incident from a first person perspective" Tags="|creative-writing|non-fiction|grammatical-person|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28153" CreationDate="2017-05-19T15:53:24.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I shook my head unavailingly. Could someone I barely knew know so much about me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives the impression that the author makes a conscious decision to shake their head. This would be a strange thing to do, except when they are intentionally faking their body language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This line would actually work really well in a situation where the character wants to convince the other character that they are surprised even though they are actually not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No, impossible. Could someone I barely knew know so much about me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems far more natural when you want to convey bewilderment. When the character is indeed surprised, they might not even be aware of their body language. They are far too mentally occupied with pondering the implications of what they just heard to wonder about subconscious gestures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T15:53:24.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28166" CreationDate="2017-05-19T17:10:37.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any writing idea or inspiration you create from within your heart is a good idea. Regardless of point of view, the key is the skill level to translate that inspiration to something that intrigues and hooks the reader’s attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without undermining historical authenticity, write a fictional story based on true events, using your fictional characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: Writing a story from the perspective of a union solider in the battle of Gettysburg. The solider in the story and narrating from his/her first person view is fictional but the battle is a real historical event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A much darker example: A fictional student who narrates the story and experience of the Columbine school shooting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is integrating the real incident with your fictional protagonist's personal journey of growth or the story plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main character has a goal. There has to be something that opposes that goal. Along the way toward achieving the goal and enduring conflict, the incident occurs as a means to move the plot forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end the main character may change and learn something new or remain steadfast against all the outside forces which tried to change him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24930" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T17:10:37.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28063" CreationDate="2017-05-19T20:21:46.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem isn't that the opening and conclusion don't match. It's that &lt;strong&gt;your conclusion doesn't resolve anything&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With an opening like that, your plot options are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get Hitomi to realize the truth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have your protagonist uncover the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; truth, that it was Satoshi who was in love with Hitomi.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in either case, discovering the truth is only half your story. The second half needs to have your characters make use of this newfound knowledge to take control of their lives. In the first scenario, Hitomi needs to choose between Satoshi and your protagonist. In the second scenario, your protagonist is the one who has to make a choice/sacrifice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But ending a story with, &quot;We've learned the truth, but we'll never know what comes of it&quot; &lt;strong&gt;isn't satisfying at all&lt;/strong&gt;. That's the real problem here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a story ends, it needs to answer the most primordial question posed early in your story. That question isn't whether Hitomi is in love with Satoshi or the protagonist. That part is already asserted, and it is known as &lt;em&gt;The Lie&lt;/em&gt;. The real question is: Who does she choose once the lie is exposed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2686" LastEditorDisplayName="user2686" LastEditDate="2017-05-19T20:27:07.470" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T20:27:07.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28166" CreationDate="2017-05-19T21:37:36.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My genre of choice as a writer is historical fiction so I've been studying the subject for quite some time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most novels embrace fiction over historical accuracy, whether the main character is fictional or historical. The idea is that historical accuracy cannot stand in the way of an entertaining tale. However, some authors that make this choice also strive to be 'historically authentic', i.e. they try to transmit the right feel of the historical time and events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one wants to be as historically accurate and authentic as possible, there are two main options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;write a non-fiction book and keep to the facts&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;write fiction but respect the facts as much as possible  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;within  this point, one can work mainly with fictional characters who represent the average person of the time&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;one can choose historical characters and try to reconstruct their personality from historical sources (a king who executed a lot of his nobles was probably not the nicest guy, though he might have a soft spot towards... his hunting dogs)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When one decides to have a historical figure for one's main character, it is important to remember that no one can really tell what the person felt and thought (unless there is a journal around). What one can and should do is to carefully and responsibly &lt;em&gt;guess&lt;/em&gt; what the person &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; have felt and thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a writer doesn't feel right making that guess, it's always preferably to have a fictional main character that witnesses the events or maybe even the actions of the historical figures. However, even if one chooses to write about King Henry VIII from the POV of the cleaning staff, one still has to invent much about the historical figure. Once more, one needs to be careful to respect  what is known, what is guessed and what is a blank for the writer to fill in seamlessly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, lost track of the last question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I achieve this without undermining the historical authenticity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasearch. You should research the historical figure and try to figure out their motives and goals, what they valued and cherished, what they despised, and what they feared. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work mostly within the medieval period and this can sometimes be difficult, but look at their biography. What big (and small) events could have impacted them as they grew up? Can you establish a connection between the teenager boy that had illegitimate siblings as his rivals and the fact he grew up to have no known lovers in a time when most in his social class had one? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you can have a mental picture of what (possibly) made that person tick, then you can get yourself within their shoes and make them believable human beings. More than a first-person perspective, believable characters is what will appeal to the readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="22074" LastEditDate="2017-05-19T21:48:37.433" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T21:48:37.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28166" CreationDate="2017-05-19T22:34:59.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely clear on the question. Are you inserting historical facts into a work of fiction or simply writing non-fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First person historical non-fiction contains an inherent flaw. It undermines the suspension of disbelief. No matter how real your recollection of Gettysburg address . . . I know that you weren't actually there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T22:34:59.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28166" CreationDate="2017-05-19T22:49:08.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you should do what ever &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is basically an art, just as some artists they twisted the rules and came up with styles. If you want to write a first person historic. Go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With writing you aren't kept in a box. Writing is just like your imagination... Your imagination goes wild, so can your writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24839" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T22:49:08.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28063" CreationDate="2017-05-19T22:58:23.587" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The important thing isn't who the narrator is, it is what tense you use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use the past tense, the narrator is looking back to something that already happened and the narration needs to reflect later events unless the narrator is unreliable and hides them on purpose that the reader can understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use the present tense the narration follows the timeline of the story and not only do you not need to account for future events and future knowledge, you really shouldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you are correct that having the narrator say things that turn out to be untrue makes the story weaker. There are two ways to deal with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use unreliable narrator. I am guessing this mostly involves making explicit that the narrator has some reason for telling this story, an agenda of his own. Your story doesn't seem like there is actual need to deceive the reader, so just mentioning that he is telling the story as he saw it at the time it happened should be enough to warn the reader he might be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternately, you can show not tell. Instead of the narrator saying his girlfriend is in love with his brother, narrate what the girlfriend does to make him think that and how he reacts to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your story the first option is probably easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for the record, if someone is convinced of something, they believe it to be a fact and would narrate it as such. The word &quot;convinced&quot; would be used if the narrator knew he was wrong, in which case past tense would be used, or if the focus was on the feelings of the narrator not on what the girlfriend feels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11425" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T22:58:23.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28174" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-19T23:04:55.783" Score="2" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is going to sound quite odd but I understand it is not an entirely original phenomenon.  I am incorporating poems I have written into a novel.  One poem in particular features four lines the origin of which I have always questioned.  I am not someone with cognitive issues but I continually feel I read them somewhere before writing them.  Sounds crazy I know, but when writing they just simply &quot;appeared&quot; with little effort.  Further they use more romantic language than Is native to most of my writing.  Are they my words or not?  I can't reasonably answer that.  I certainly hope so but would be horrified to have &quot;kleptomaniacally&quot; stolen someone else's verse!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have searched high and low to access these lines, to attribute them to an author, with little luck.  Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24988" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T07:31:21.850" Title="seeking attribution for mystery verses" Tags="|poetry|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28187" CreationDate="2017-05-19T23:05:07.157" Score="1" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I'm pretty new to all this online writing media! Since I've found it I have so many questions needing answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main Question &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any sites that can be able to hold ideas and drafts for ideas, or sites that have any sort of great brainstorming technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really would like to find one. I have to find a great way to brainstorm a new idea... (I would like the site to be free)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks &#xA;  -A.N.M.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24839" LastEditorUserId="24839" LastEditDate="2017-05-19T23:12:18.140" LastActivityDate="2017-07-15T02:22:54.663" Title="Brainstorming sites" Tags="|technique|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28176" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28177" CreationDate="2017-05-19T23:48:31.030" Score="2" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the naive nature of this question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story with a deceased fictional author, and one of his living relatives writes an introduction and afterword explaining the context of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This got me thinking: How are people in real life credited when they write an introduction, preface, etc? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24990" LastActivityDate="2017-05-20T20:54:13.860" Title="How are people who write introductions and afterwords credited?" Tags="|creative-writing|introduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28176" CreationDate="2017-05-20T00:30:22.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Their name appears at the end of the foreword, they're often in the author's acknowledgements, and if they're more famous than the author, often on the cover blurb. But their name at the end of the foreword is the only thing that's 'necessary' (and consistent). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They do not  appear in citations in APA or MLA formats - there may be more arcane citation styles that they do, but I've never heard of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21750" LastEditorUserId="24991" LastEditDate="2017-05-20T20:54:13.860" LastActivityDate="2017-05-20T20:54:13.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28181" CreationDate="2017-05-20T02:42:20.813" Score="4" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the story that I'm preparing to write, the main character is involved in many tense encounters and begins to develop a slightly warped world view while losing bits and pieces of his morality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to portray this progression by subtly hinting at the fact that the narrator is becoming more and more unfair towards others and more unreliable in general as the story continues, but I'm not sure how to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could do the obvious thing where he says something like &quot;This city is horrible, it is full of scum and murderers,&quot; and have another character contradict him shortly after by stating that crime rates have plummeted. However, I feel that this might be a bit too obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24990" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T18:30:20.937" Title="How can I hint at biases in a fictional first person account?" Tags="|characters|character-development|grammatical-person|narrator|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28175" CreationDate="2017-05-20T02:43:09.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many peer-review sites, however, most writers fear sharing ideas because they can be stolen. Ideas cannot be copyrighted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-20T02:43:09.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28178" CreationDate="2017-05-20T07:45:46.550" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My favourite approach is to create situations that evoke a common reaction in the reader and then have the character react in a non-obvious way. The contrast between the natural reaction and the 'unnatural' one should be enough to create a sharp contrast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The yelp had his head turn around automatically. A toddler had fallen and was whimpering as the mother squatted beside him, whispering some smiling comfort. Good thing he was too far to listen to any 'oh, mamma will kiss the boo-boo and the pain will go right away'. It was enough he could still hear the whining. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important that the description of the scene is impartial - no hint of subjectivity. The reader must know how a normal person would react from the situation, not through words. To have the narrator use adjectives, for example, pointing to warm, fuzzy feelings and then contrasting with the cold, harsh feelings of the character would feel like the narrator is obviously manipulating the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example I give, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;whispering some smiling comfort&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;we are facing a factual description, despite all. The mother is whispering and she is smiling in a way that is meant to be comforting to the child. Notice that the reference to 'some' can (we'd need tone for that) be interpreted in a dismissing way. Once the narrator presents the character's reaction, 'some, can be seen in that light, but until then it can also have a neutral conotation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What wouldn't work as well would be something in the lines of...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A toddler had fallen and the poor little boy was whimpering as the mother squatted beside him, whispering some loving comfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of the child being a 'poor little' child would be too far removed from the character and identifying an action as 'loving' would likely be too far from him too. That sweet idea of 'loving' would have to be balanced with a dismissive reference to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-20T07:45:46.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28182" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-20T08:51:04.877" Score="0" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've asked a couple of questions on this site over the past year or two about publishing.  I've been thinking about going the self-publishing route.  It still seems like the quickest and easiest way to go, though there are obviously disadvantages (thanks to all who've brought them up, in answers to my other questions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone suggested going to a writers' conference and pitching my book to agents.  This seems old-fashioned.  Aren't there websites, email addresses, etc. that I can throw my idea at, instead?  I'm still not set on going the trad route, as it seems too long and filled with disappointment for most people.  But I could give it a try, if it didn't involve traveling around the US to pitch my idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13268" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T12:27:44.090" Title="Finding someone to publish, in the digital age" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19309" CreationDate="2017-05-20T08:59:31.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this topic is over two years old but I feel the need to address it anyway. The major difference between fiction and non-fiction is that in fiction all narrators are to a greater or lesser extent - unreliable. Fiction is not about facts. By definition fiction is one person recollection, the way one person sees things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is literally 'a point of view'. We're telling stories. This has happened to me so I assume others have experienced the same thing. You're at a family reunion telling some mildly amusing story from childhood and your mother says, &quot;That's not the way happened.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forrest Gump (film) is a masterclass in narration. Tom Hanks sits on the bench telling his life story to a series of strangers. Every time the story gets ridiculous and listener departs Tom provides proof that he was telling the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, many peers will identify nuanced unreliable narration as 'plot holes' or 'errors'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unreliable narration is easily picked up by readers because readers (as opposed to other writers) assume you know what you are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. The narrator says his father was a Racing car driver who died in a crash during the Indy 500. Later during a scene his mother is heard on the telephone cursing the narrator's father because the maintenance check is late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Readers will catch on very quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write using scenes and transitions you can SHOW one version of events in scene which is at odds with the narration during a transition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-20T08:59:31.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25706" CreationDate="2017-05-20T12:18:07.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pulling out another ancient topic. &quot;Show don't tell&quot; is the most basic of essentials. It covers almost every aspect writing disciplines. And from the comments on this thread it is one of the most misunderstood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quote facts. Do not draw conclusions for the reader. Letting the reader conclude from the information engages their brains and keeps them in the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside of fiction &quot;telling&quot; could get you sued. &quot;On stage an angry Hillary Clinton attacked Donald Trump.&quot; - You know this because that's your conclusion from what you saw. - She turned bright red and lunged him.&#xA; - What actually happened is that she had a seizure and collapsed, falling into him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thrillers and whodunnits rely on the reader drawing the wrong conclusions from a set of facts. In this genre it is a 'rule' that the narrator cannot lie - hence the technique is known as misdirection rather than lying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Berlin, Germany&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The group of young girls stood in the rain, stripped, ready, in a huddle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cold blue eyes made a cursory inspection of each individual. &quot;Behind the line,&quot; he grunted, motioning with one hand. His gun, in the other, pointed downwards. Droplets of rain fell from the muzzle onto the ochre-stained ground. &quot;You will be eliminated. Step back, behind the line.&quot; He pushed one of the girls. &quot;Schnell! Schnell!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The girl edged back, shaking, fighting back tears. Her bare thighs blue with cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carlene looked over to the frightened girl; for a brief moment pity for the other momentarily threatened to weaken her resolve. She turned away. Now was not the time to be pitying others. It was every girl for herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man strode back to his position, swinging his pistol as he walked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carlene watched, eyes filled with hatred, fixed on the gun. Her thoughts travelled to her grandfather and brother at home in England, and how she missed them since she’d been taken from her school three weeks earlier. She’d been held with the others at that awful camp for the first two weeks until she was transferred here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another voice instilled silence, &quot;Fertig.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carlene didn’t understand. She trembled, watching as he raised and pointed the gun. In the silence, she closed her eyes for a long second. The long second lingered, she peeked, just in time to see his finger squeezing the trigger. The moment she heard the shot, her mind told her to run. All around she could hear screaming, shouting, and mayhem. When her throat began to burn and her lungs felt as if to explode, fear told her not to stop - just keep running, as fast as she could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your mind's telling you this is a scene from a Nazi concentration camp - the character is facing the firing squad.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The facts are: it's the start of an 800m race at the Word Junior Olympics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another view to take is 'legal'. &quot;Billy shot Fred. Fred fell to the ground - dead.&quot;&#xA; - Only a doctor can pronounce somebody dead. The most you can say is that Billy the shot Fred. Fred fell to the ground. Blood oozed from his mouth and his body was cold to the touch. When people start getting murdered and the reader realises these events take place on &quot;Elm Street&quot; the reader knows Freddie didn't die. But if you 'the author' pronounced him dead - you will have lied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-20T12:18:07.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28114" CreationDate="2017-05-20T14:19:28.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do this when they work well together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my works is a romantic comedy. But it incorporates science fiction. I have to be careful to downplay the science fiction because it is really a &quot;mechanic&quot; that drives the comedy; the &quot;science&quot; is not there for its own sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these kinds of situations, one genre will be dominant, and the other(s) will be subordinate. That way, there will be a &quot;clear genre&quot; that is not confusing. As another poster pointed out, only one genre should determine the reading experience. I was not writing my piece for science fiction fans, although I would be pleased if they read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-20T14:24:34.477" LastActivityDate="2017-05-20T14:24:34.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28019" CreationDate="2017-05-20T14:31:42.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ordinarily, it would be ok, because first and last names are mostly interchangeable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An exception would be if one name were highly unusual (basically unique), or strongly associated with something. I wouldn't use the surname &quot;Gatsby,&quot; for instance. (&quot;Jay&quot; would be okay.) And as another poster pointed out, no one nowadays is eager to use the name &quot;Adolf,&quot; or worse, the man's last name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-20T14:31:42.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28175" CreationDate="2017-05-20T23:04:45.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried using Xmind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Xmind is a great tool for mind maps and brainstorming, I love this tool it has a desktop, mobile and web based versions all synced in the cloud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xmind.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.xmind.net/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user24997" LastActivityDate="2017-05-20T23:04:45.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28148" CreationDate="2017-05-21T12:18:47.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like the solution to your dilemma lies within the question of why you decided to place the hero in a coma in the first place, at the end of your first book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the purpose was to have a cliff-hanger, keeping the reader wondering whether the hero will rise again, and in what shape he will be, then it seems that adding this Epilogue will ruin that impact. The reader will be saying &quot;oh, that coma thing was not such a big deal, since I just flipped the page and he's back&quot;. Indeed, it seems to turn the coma just into a phase of unconsciousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a coma could also be a different kind of plot device. You might want the coma to last a few days or weeks, during which things occur while the hero rests. Or, once he wakes from the coma, the hero might be permanently injured in some way, and the coma expresses the intensity of his wounds. In this case, you can have the Epilogue you want, but I would place hints in the Epilogue to these coma-related issues. That way the reader will say &quot;wow, that coma was really something significant in the story&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22348" LastActivityDate="2017-05-21T12:18:47.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28190" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-21T12:43:27.627" Score="0" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;In translating from novel to screen ways to reveal errant thoughts are limited. Television, comedies in particular has created novel methods to visualise errant thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any examples where an author has returned a screen technique back to literature. I'm particularly interested in integrated transitions; where the author drifts into nonsense without pre-able. No warning, no 'her mind drifted' or 'she imagined'. I'm looking for an example of a smooth blend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not want a critique. I'm posting the draft opening of &amp;quot;Damaged&amp;quot; as an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In anticipation of dessert, Portia Clements watched the waiter until he disappeared into the restaurant kitchen. She returned her attention to her husband. &amp;quot;We haven't done this in while,&amp;quot; she said, smiling. &amp;quot;We should do this more often.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her husband drained the last of the Scotch from his glass. &amp;quot;I've met somebody else,&amp;quot; he announced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Portia, winded by the blow, winced. &lt;em&gt;What cruelty! He'd brought her out to a very public place to drop this bombshell.&lt;/em&gt;  &amp;quot;Oh,&amp;quot; she responded. &lt;em&gt;Breathe, be calm. You don't want to create a scene.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I'm leaving you.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Don't cause a scene.&lt;/em&gt; Portia concentrated on maintaining controlled breaths through her nose. &amp;quot;I see.&amp;quot; She stared at him. His lips were moving but she could no longer hear his words. In her peripheral vision she noticed a heart, her heart, the heart that he'd just ripped out of her chest. It was lying on the restaurant floor.  Opposite her, her husband was still speaking. His lips were still moving – reciting some speech that'd he'd carefully prepared earlier. After 7 years of marriage, Portia knew her husband pretty well – this would be a long speech. She sneaked another peak at her heart. It was in bad shape but it was still beating. &lt;em&gt;Best pick it up before he stomps all over it.&lt;/em&gt; As he continued his monologue she reached down, picked up her heart, and performed a cursory examination. &lt;em&gt;It's damaged – but it still works.&lt;/em&gt; She wrapped the heart in a napkin and tucked it away into her purse. &lt;em&gt;Maybe somebody else will still want it? Maybe I should find somebody else to give it to?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Audio service was resumed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I want a divorce,&amp;quot; said her husband.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Portia smiled. &lt;em&gt;Is the 5 second-rule a real thing?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;What?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T19:25:26.597" Title="Is there a name for this particular technique? Does it even exist? Can others point to existing novels where it has been used?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28202" CreationDate="2017-05-21T13:04:43.477" Score="3" ViewCount="785" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a short story which is a dramatization of a true story.  When I classify it, should I tag it as fiction or nonfiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23444" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T11:16:12.883" Title="Is a dramatization of a true story classified as fiction or nonfiction?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28192" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-21T13:21:55.580" Score="0" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;About five years ago I self-published a novella &quot;The Spoils of War&quot;. In the middle there's a section where the MC is packed of to Pakistan because the family don't want to face the embarrassment of her actions in the UK. The story focussed on other characters until the MC returns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After publishing I spent a year - troubled. What the character did in Pakistan added very little in to the story but, regardless, it bugged me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;18 months after publication I added two chapters of her experiences in Lahore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another three years passed. In the original ending, whilst you (the reader) was wondering if she'd ever forgive the boy . . . she ran off with the girl! Maybe smarter readers could have seen that coming in the subtext but I felt mainstream readers may be put off by an extended focus on 'gay sex'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world changed very rapidly. I felt the need to add two new scenes. Two previously straight girls (one of which who is pregnant) reach the logical conclusion - they should be together. However, I thought it would interesting to detail the girl's trial runs before committing to a life without the 'dumb stick' and how their first attempted at intimacy required several bottles of Vodka.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T00:11:45.333" Title="In the digital age of Kindle and POD is a book ever finished?" Tags="|creative-writing|publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28191" CreationDate="2017-05-21T13:34:32.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the story contains celebrities or public figures it is can be non fiction. If the story is about private citizens: any good lawyer will tell you it's fiction c/w (The names have been changed to protect the innocent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the problem: if you write &quot;After the birth of their first child Mrs Smith became frigid, her libido died and she had no interest in sex&quot; and the truth is revealed as Mrs Smith spent every day boinking the pool cleaner and had no energy to service her husband when he arrived home - the divorce bill may end up in your lap. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-21T13:34:32.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28191" CreationDate="2017-05-21T13:54:47.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would point to Michael Sharra's Pulitzer-winning account of the Battle of Gettysburg which was painstakingly researched but published as Fiction because of the way Sharra told the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17912" LastActivityDate="2017-05-21T13:54:47.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28196" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-21T16:13:15.583" Score="1" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a humanoid species lived for thousands of years, how should they be written? With age and experience comes wisdom and knowledge. Would there psychology be different? Would they be more patient and resistant to change with advancement becoming stagnant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user24397" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T13:45:34.893" Title="How should you write a long lived species?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-05-28T08:26:20.250" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28196" CreationDate="2017-05-21T21:12:55.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should develop those long-lived characters as you would any other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about people that come to be in their 80s or 90s. Some are wiser and more patient than younger ones. Some are bitter and impatient. Many feel like the world is moving on faster and they've been stranded (because it's more difficult for most older brains to catch up with novelties).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that one's experiences help to determine how wise or bitter you'll turn out to be. So look at the long lives of your characters: what kind of experiences did they have? Did those experiences lead them to lose faith in society and the future? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, think about their culture. Is it a culture that values experience or novelty? Is it conservative or is eager to find a weakness in the knowledge of the past while hunting for the more valid, freshly acquired knowledge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Older or younger, your characters are all the same deep inside: human (or human-like).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-21T21:12:55.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28196" CreationDate="2017-05-22T00:12:05.257" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Knowledge and Wisdom are two very different things, and one does not mean the other. To steal shamelessly from the Miles Kington quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Sara Costa points out, cultural impact will have a major role in how the individual acts, especially towards others. The setting itself will also play a major role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of considerations: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is your long-lived race the only long-lived one? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they interact with other short-lived races? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are they a fading civilization, holding desperately to the last fires of glory? Or are they a relatively young empire - full of lust for glory and achievement? Are they living in their golden age or desperately trying to recapture it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is there birthrate like? Usually the longer-lived races have a low birth-rate (or a dwindling one) to balance out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What age is considered mature? Old? How do they age (i.e. is infancy/adolescence human like and the &quot;mature&quot; by about 18/20? Or is it 50-60 before they are no longer considered a &quot;child&quot; and 150 before they are considered an &quot;adult&quot;? Do they age slowly, or do the age normally until a certain point and then slow down?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the technology level? Level of advancement - both for themselves, the world at large, and in comparison to others?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are they &quot;protectionist&quot; or &quot;xenophobic&quot; - often the long lived races are seen as xenophobic, because as a race they must be. Dwindling numbers, loss of lands, betrayal by younger races etc. Long lives means long memories, and grudges can carry through generations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are numerous other things to look at as well, which is solely dependent on your story and your setting, but there are some good examples out there to use for inspiration, both traditionally literary (e.g. Tolkien) but also tabletop and rpg sources as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One that I've found that has always resonated well and done well to explain things (well, up until a couple of years ago anyway) was the Warhammer Fantasy Elves. If you can find the old background material and army books for High Elves, Dark Elves and Wood Elves, you get a very, very in-depth look at what the society looks like, and how they act individually. The Eldar in Warhammer 40,000 also are a good example of long-lived races and how they act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, both the Elves and Eldar can live for thousands of years. They both have glorious histories and are in decline as a civilization - war, disaster etc have made them a fraction of what they were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are given to introspection, and also arrogance because they know they are better than the younger &quot;upstart&quot; races - faster, smarter etc. The are also given to melancholy and ennui, as there are very stark reminders of what they've lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as experience goes, they tend to focus on one thing at a time - perfecting it and then moving on. The Eldar have different Paths that they follow - various Aspects of War (so a particular fighting style), Command (their leaders and generals), Artisan (artists, creators etc) and so on. The Elves are similar - they will focus on one thing at a time, so an elf may spend 150 years mastering painting, or the bow before moving on. Those who focus solely on single thing (such as the Swordmasters) are unmatched in their mastery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their long lives means that elf merchant you are dealing with may be an excellent artist, an excellent swordsmen, an adept spell caster, fluent in every language (including several no-longer used), a musician able to move you to tears and so much more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T00:12:05.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28191" CreationDate="2017-05-22T00:55:27.533" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several levels of fiction and non-fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Documentary. Non-fiction. Basically, a substantially accurate account of the event. A few details might have been inadvertently changed, such as the weather, clothing, or lighting, but almost all assertions correspond to actual facts. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Based on a true story.&quot; Up to about 90% fact, but some details have been deliberately altered. Treated as fiction because it is claimed as such. Everybody connected with the story knows what the &quot;real&quot; facts are, but it is understood that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between story events and actual facts, even though the story line is &quot;mostly&quot; accurate. A dramatization might fall into this category. An example is the &quot;Sound of Music,&quot; which e.g. conflated two events, the (1927) marriage of the Captain von Trapp and Maria, and the (1938) &quot;Anschluss,&quot; by putting the second event right on the heels of the first in the movie.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Inspired by a true story.&quot; About half-fact, half-fiction. Now we're getting into the realm of true fiction. The important thing to do is to stress the events are likely to be fictitious by NOT making any one part too &quot;true to life.&quot; Once you've set such a high standard for part of the story, people will expect the rest of the story to conform to that standard, possibly putting the story into the category above. This kind of a story would not use the Captain's and Maria's real names.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Suggested by a true story.&quot; There are some factual elements, but the story is mostly fiction. Again the trick is to make sure that the facts aren't too &quot;convincing,&quot; to the point of leading readers to believe that the rest (fiction) is actually fact.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-22T11:16:12.883" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T11:16:12.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28203" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-22T01:17:13.453" Score="1" ViewCount="411" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm too scared to share with my family&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My online friends only know of &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I got an idea stolen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't really know anyone in real life&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if there is a way to contact anyone on here one to one like a Direct message. I haven't found out how. I need to share my ideas with someone because I am now not feeling confident, and I found out an already made story is like mine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24839" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T15:19:58.910" Title="Who should I share my writing ideas with" Tags="|structure|ideas|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28191" CreationDate="2017-05-22T01:18:51.687" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question I ask myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would need to really think about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How much of it is fiction, versus how much is non fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or talk to the publisher // editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24839" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T01:18:51.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28206" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-22T03:54:46.813" Score="2" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can someone point me to some style guides somewhere on this issue? Let's say you have a list of three issues and you want to introduce the list and give the three issues. Is it better to put the &quot;intro sentence&quot; as its own paragraph (Version 1 below) or as the first sentence of the first paragraph (Version 2 below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to think that, strictly speaking, it should be its own paragraph, but it seems more flowing and less mannered to simply elide from that into the first point. This is for writing for general non-fiction, somewhere north of middlebrow level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Version 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are three reasons why wallabies are cute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First, they are fluffy. We all know how cute that is. Lorem ipsum&#xA;  dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor&#xA;  incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Second, they are kind of rounded--how cute is &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;? Lorem ipsum dolor sit&#xA;  amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut&#xA;  labore et dolore magna aliqua. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, their name is &quot;wallaby&quot;. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,&#xA;  consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut&#xA;  labore et dolore magna aliqua. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Version 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are three reasons why wallabies are cute. First, they are fluffy. We all know how cute that is. Lorem ipsum&#xA;  dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor&#xA;  incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Second, they are kind of rounded--how cute is &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;? Lorem ipsum dolor sit&#xA;  amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut&#xA;  labore et dolore magna aliqua.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, their name is &quot;wallaby&quot;. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,&#xA;  consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut&#xA;  labore et dolore magna aliqua. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2388" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T14:41:49.800" Title="one-sentence paragraph that introduces a list of paragraphs" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28206" CreationDate="2017-05-22T04:16:56.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There can be several more possibilities. Like,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Version Edited 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... There is no end to the cuteness wallabies present. Figuring out why they are cute, could be broadly divided into three reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Version Edited 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... There is no end to the cuteness wallabies present. Figuring out why they are cute, could be broadly divided into three reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly... Secondly... Thirdly..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See its your story. The way its written is all upto your discretion. Also, you might want to consider the targeted audience. Suppose, you are writing for children, I feel that your version 1 is the best. Its easily read and unambiguous. Now, were it a part of a thick plot in a mystery or detective novel meant for adults... I would have liked the version 2 better, where the reader must read properly to not miss anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24877" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T04:16:56.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28208" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-22T05:33:52.863" Score="1" ViewCount="487" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some problems writing romance. I guess that is because I've never experienced it, and maybe I never will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried practicing this genre, writing short love stories. But all my fictional couples feel forced and cliché - Guy meets girl, they start their quest, and fell in love before or after the first 2 chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any suggestions on how to improve the backstory of the relationships of my characters, please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24821" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2017-10-13T17:34:13.210" LastActivityDate="2017-10-14T13:52:13.553" Title="How do I write meaningful emotional bonds?" Tags="|characters|planning|romance|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28208" CreationDate="2017-05-22T07:23:32.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basic romance formula is: boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. But the path of true love rarely runs true. Often &quot;she doth protest too much&quot; is thrown into the mix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the author needs to throw obstacles into lovers path. Misunderstandings are good too.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T07:23:32.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28208" CreationDate="2017-05-22T07:37:41.693" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest breaking down the peoblem (lack of first hand experience) into two parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;STEP 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, let's tackle emotional bonds. Surely you have experienced this. So try to write short shortstories whose aim is to shine a light, so to say, on emotional bonds. Write about the bonds between siblings or parents-children. Write about one's emotional attachment to a beloved toy, pet, place and videogame. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that the objective is to focus on the strength of the emotion, no matter what type. Feel the sadness of losing someone or something beloved, of meeting them again, the excitement that makes one not be able to focus on anything else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you finish this step, write a few scenes that focus on addictions. Have you ever become addicted, say, to candy crush? Those feelings of pure pleasure when you get to play, the fidgetness of when tries to avoid and the guilty pleasure of managing to play it in a forbidden place (like work, the classroom or a boring family dinner). That's what you need to capture in your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you've focused on general emotional bonds, it's time for the next move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;STEP 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Romantic attachments are bonds like any other, but the object of their attention is another human being. You'll need to add a good level of addiction (being in love is one of the strongest addictions I know, drugs aside) and base it on the strongest emotional bond you've ever felt for someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, you do some reasearch. Find descriptions of being in love, whether you get them from family members, friends, magazines or the internet. Try to base this research on real people! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can write again. Do not write a full fledged tale but short shortstories. Focus on little things of the romance: the excitement of the first meeting, the routine of waking up every morning next to the person you love, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FINALLY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have managed to capture different shades of a romantic bond and you feel you understand its strength, then you can write a romantic novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than plot, is the feeling that will make it feel true and original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T07:37:41.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28192" CreationDate="2017-05-22T10:08:42.890" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion is that once you've published, even on Kindle, it's &lt;em&gt;done.&lt;/em&gt; Other than typos or a gross mistake like using the wrong character name by accident, you don't make changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your story is your story. If you keep altering it, there's never a final edition. Your readers will never know if they have the &quot;right&quot; version. The &lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt; trilogy was printed with many errors, which Tolkien kept trying to fix in each subsequent edition and printing and publisher, and new mistakes would creep in. It was a nightmare trying to reconcile everything, and even now I'm not sure if the latest version is &quot;right.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And look at George Lucas's constant meddling with the original &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; trilogy. Adding in whole scenes? Jabba wandering around on his own? Han shooting first? Hayden Christensen at the end of ROTJ? Most people complained, and now you have to specify &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; version of the trilogy you want. The original theatrical release? The Special Edition? The fan-cut Despecialized Editions, which have better effects but removed the heresies like Hayden? It's an absolute mess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many authors regret some of their choices in hindsight. Learn from it and move on. Make the next book better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T10:08:42.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18537" CreationDate="2017-05-22T11:56:30.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I write historical fiction too, so I understand what you're dealing with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest focusing on small things, particularly emotional ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may be passionate but that passion may reveal itself in different forms.  One can be so passionate, he forgets to eat, while the other doesn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than focusing on general traits, focus on emotions. One may have a fear or insecurity driving him, or just poking him every now and then, while the other has a different fear or insecurity (one may fear old age and its dimwitness while the other may fear becoming crippled and unable to be independent). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For these small things, look at events that they witnessed as children and teenagers, both within the family and within their hometown. If nothing is written about it, imagine something. If there was in fact a war, then imagine that A witnessed the return of their neighbour as a sadly dependent cripple. Or maybe the dates show B got to meet his great-great-grandfather, who died when B was only six. Now imagine the old gentleman had a bad case of dementia that deeply unsettled the young B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to go beyond the general traits and get to the one (or two) very specific loves and fears that either spur the character on or freeze them from acting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T11:56:30.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28203" CreationDate="2017-05-22T13:15:32.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll assume you want to share story ideas, and not written work. You just want to bounce ideas around with friends. That's a great idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gather a group of literate friends. I doubt they only know about Star Wars. They know about human relationships, right? And drama and love and humor? Start with those friends. Take a class at your arts center or community college. You'll meet more people there. Go to readings in your area. Look for them at bookstores and colleges. If your city has a literary organization, go to their events. In other words, hang out with writers. I think it's important to have writing friends in the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually you might find opportunities to join a writing group - or create one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you're not feeling confident. We all understand that. But the way to get through it is to just keep writing. Just write your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T13:15:32.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28215" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-22T13:33:59.380" Score="1" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a chapter that must illustrate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the character's feelings upon returning (for a short period) to their homeland after living abroad (and believing they'd never return), to where the character will soon go back&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the character's reaction while meeting the family and friends after a separation of 10 years, knowing the next separation will be permanent&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is two-fold: the journey is slow and long; and, for 1 and 2 to be appropriately expressed, they can't happen simultaneously, as no.2 would tone down no.1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My decision was to start during a break in the journey (the last one) and then allow the character to express no.1 up until the point the destination becomes visible in the distance. At that point, no.1 vanishes from the character's mind to give way to the excitement and anxiety of the meeting, which keep growing until they all finally meet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is sound, I believe, but I'm not quite satisfied with the result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first five paragraphs dealing with no.1 are short and to the point, which don't help convey the idea of a long journey, even if they allow for the character's feelings to be expressed perfectly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The destination is visible in the distance a long time before arrival, which makes the anxiety and the following paragraphs feel stretched. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What other techniques (or approaches) would you suggest to create the right effect (of a long journey divided into a first moment of short reflexion and a second moment of growing enxiety)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T15:41:51.473" Title="Technique to deal with long journeys" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28196" CreationDate="2017-05-22T13:45:34.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;They're your characters. You decide. They might become more patient and wise, like you suggest, or they might become tired and grumpy and less tolerant. They might become sad, living with pains and regrets and losses. They might collect loved ones or lose loved ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say these people would reflect the author's view of what life is like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T13:45:34.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18537" CreationDate="2017-05-22T14:04:23.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I learned a million tricks when I was writing a novel with identical twins as the main characters. Most of the work is done in the dialogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not use those which don't apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Select three pairs expressions which essentially me the same thing. e.g. &quot;Go for it&quot; = &quot;Have at it&quot;, &quot;Knock yourself out&quot; = &quot;Feel free.&quot;. &quot;Really?&quot; = &quot;D'ya think?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assign three expressions to each character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat for cuss words.&#xA;Repeat for blasphemy.&#xA;Repeat for salutations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Select different beverages for each character: coffee, tea. Same with alcohol. One drinks JD the other diet-Coke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One talks 'sport'. The other 'women'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd be surprised how quickly the reader works out who's who.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T14:04:23.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28215" CreationDate="2017-05-22T14:23:56.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Character boards plane or train - looks out of window. Flashback to last contact with individuals (family and friends). Flashforward to 'imagined' reunion scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Show actual reunion in now way resembles envisioned reunion. Character realises he no longer belongs here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T14:23:56.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28203" CreationDate="2017-05-22T14:50:36.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm probably going to get a gazillion negatives for this but why would you want to share your writing ideas? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;99% of writers fail to write anything of significance. Writers fall into two categories: (1) hobbyists. These people want to discuss their imaginary worlds with others who have also constructed their own alternative worlds which they can retreat into. (2) Professional writers: these people earn their living; ghost-writing, script-writing, speech-writing. This is what they do feed their families. Why would they want to help you eat into their slice of pie?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I've got 100 plots that are all good that'll take time to convert to stories - time that I'll never get back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real, established writers are a select group. Stories are not their 'babies'. They'll sit outside cafes drinking coffee. One will say they've got an idea for a story about a female US Muslim president. The others will tell the writer, &quot;That'll never fly.&quot;&#xA;And they'll move on to the next idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your idea that you want to share is not that special - trust me on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T14:50:36.480" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28215" CreationDate="2017-05-22T15:41:51.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you treat the location as a character in its own right. Your MC has a bond with their hometown that is entirely personal to them, and they have memories there that they share with no one else in their family. Of course, they will still deeply associate the homeland with the presence of their family, so this will serve as the link between your two points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For point 1, I would come up with a place in the vicinity that has deep personal value to the MC. Maybe it is the corner where they had their first kiss, or the bar where they had their first fight, or the quiet spot they used to wander to at midnight when they couldn’t sleep. The swingset in the park is an old favourite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On their way to see their family, they stop by at this spot (by coincidence or on purpose). Let them bask in the memory, or the present reality of it for a short moment. Here you can give them a break and express how tired they are after the long journey. Maybe it was so long that they felt like it would never end. Thus, it hasn’t really sunk in yet that they’ve finally arrived and will be meeting their family shortly (or maybe they’re dreading it so much that they have been avoiding even thinking about it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the memories of their current location are so strong that it jogs them into reality. They have arrived home. The family is just around the corner/across town/however close you want them to be. Now it has sunk in – and the distant, niggling worries about meeting the family become suddenly real. Point 2 has begun, and they have the rest of the trip (now a rather shorter one) to build up the anxiety and excitement about the reunion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24794" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T15:41:51.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23881" CreationDate="2017-05-22T17:31:21.873" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I make a full-time income as a novelist, but I self-publish. I also never started out wanting to make a full-time income, I just did it for fun, and published my first novel length original fiction because my husband nagged me into it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a day job, but gradually I didn't need the money anymore, and having a product seemed better than providing a service. I cut back on my hours and gradually cut them out completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a little nerve-wracking having this career. Sometimes I feel like it can all go away in the blink of an eye. But that is true of most things, and actually, even if I stopped writing completely, I'd still earn some money without advertising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most amazingly, I get paid to daydream. How cool is that? I've heard there are about 10,000 authors in the U.S. who make a full-time living out of it. Those aren't great odds, but then, I'm not sure 1) what constitutes a full-time income 2) how many are doing it full-time and 3) how many people who are writing &quot;full-time&quot; are actually publishing? (Are they just sitting on manuscripts waiting for a publisher?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25014" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T17:31:21.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23582" CreationDate="2017-05-22T19:41:02.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tools -&gt; Options -&gt; Editor -&gt; Use block inseriton point width:2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25016" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T19:41:02.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28182" CreationDate="2017-05-22T20:08:59.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are thinking of going the traditional route, then you'll likely need to research getting an agent. Pitching at a conference is one approach, but has its disadvantages (like travel costs). Start googling &quot;agents for X&quot; where X is the type of book you've written. Check magazines that may have articles on agents (such as &quot;Poets &amp;amp; Writers&quot;) as well as those magazines websites. So the answer is, yes, there probably are websites and email addresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastEditorUserId="24839" LastEditDate="2017-05-22T20:54:41.750" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T20:54:41.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28174" CreationDate="2017-05-22T20:22:26.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can always attribute it to &quot;Author Unknown&quot; which, I believe, indicates that you've tried to locate the author and failed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My other suggestion is to try an actual librarian, possibly at a university library, as they often have accumulated a variety of knowledge beyond us mere mortals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19423" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T20:22:26.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28225" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-22T20:29:20.970" Score="3" ViewCount="335" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can speak a few languages and I am just about done with my first manuscript in English. Since I found the translation fun and not too difficult, I translated it into French, German, Spanish and Swedish. I read the versions to some of my friends who are bilingual in those languages and found no faults in the translation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't sent the English manuscript in yet, and so, I haven't made a deal yet. I understand it is putting the cart before the horse, but I am curious. Would a publisher be willing to use my translation? I understand that there are several caveats to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Assuming my translation is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Assuming there is a market for it in those languages/countries&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) I know a publisher would probably only translate it there was a reason for it, like having it sell numerous copies already in English. &#xA;(My thinking around this part is that if I provide the translated versions, there is less upfront expenditures for the publisher to issue it in those languages. They would only need edit an existing copy, which means less costs to both parties. If the publisher were to translate it, they would take the cost of translation out of the advance/payment to you, which is less ideal.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) If the publisher thought that there were not markets for certain languages, or did not want to put in the effort to do the translation, would you be able to work out something to retain those specific rights or just do the translation for them? Or maybe even just self publish those language versions with the publisher's consent? Are languages rights all or none?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have friends who would be willing to translate it into Korean, Turkish and Hindi, if it were to be published. I hear that India and South Korea are untapped markets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24911" LastEditorUserId="24911" LastEditDate="2017-05-22T20:34:22.423" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T18:12:32.777" Title="Is there any financial advantage to translating my book myself?" Tags="|publishing|copyright|translation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28225" CreationDate="2017-05-22T21:52:40.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't directly address the financial issue. Oviously a good translator costs money to hire, and the translation will require additional editing in that language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I just looked up a couple of famous authors whom I know are fluently bilingual.  In each case, the author did not translate his own work, but wrote it in one language, with another person (also famous) doing the translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps that's the lifestyle of the famous!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could translate much of my own writing into gramatically accurate French. What I cannot do is express English street talk in French. A translator, realizing that certain passages were English street talk, would substitute whatever French conveys the meaning, without bothering to say precisely the same thing. The translator has the advantage of mental distance from the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note (pun intended): Some of the worst folk-pop songs I've heard, from amateurs, involve setting one or more Biblical passages to music. They insist on preserving the precise language of (say) KJV, even though it does not fit the music. Yet it can be done (Byrds, &quot;Turn, Turn, Turn&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a different issue if your work is academic, and uses precise language throughout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T21:52:40.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5680" CreationDate="2017-05-23T00:00:40.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen all three ways in practice. I like to use periods with numbers and one parenthesis with letters, but that's a matter of style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25021" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T00:00:40.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28192" CreationDate="2017-05-23T00:11:45.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the record, I include an appendix  in my ebook called &quot;Version History&quot; which keeps a record of how the ebook has changed with every edition. (I made a nifty template which -- now that I think about it -- I should put online for everyone to have access to). Most of the changes have to do with formatting and support for different reading devices. Some involve grammar, while once in a while there is something new added. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's great that an author can have &quot;second thoughts&quot; about how to write a book. The great thing about ebooks is that you can publish simultaneously alternate endings/chapters in the same ebook  if you wish. Generally readers won't have the patience to compare versions -- they only want the finished product without variants. You shouldn't try your reader's patience too much though. Maybe you can include some extra episodes in a postscript/appendix if it makes sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I maintain a story site under a pseudonym, and I am delighted to report that I do line edits quietly after first publishing it, so no one knows just how much I've been tinkering with it over the years. I've improved phrases and caught subtle grammar issues. Readers will never know (although to be fair -- I plan to release that as an ebook, and I probably won't tinker with it after that point). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I'm working on a self-updating ebook project -- where the reader will expect that the ebook will be updated every two years or so. (This is for a nonfiction book that's more of a reference work that needs to stay up to date). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with making too many changes to a single book is that a writer needs to move on at some point. But if you feel pretty sure that the end result will be better, why not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T00:11:45.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28225" CreationDate="2017-05-23T01:45:06.830" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some financial advantages to translating a book yourself, but IMHO, the main advantages are &lt;strong&gt;moral&lt;/strong&gt; advantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can translate your own books, then you can control how the books are translated. And while some publishers might not pay to have your book translated, they might accept the gift of &quot;two&quot; (or more) for one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T01:45:06.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28206" CreationDate="2017-05-23T01:57:20.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grammar is not my forte but I believe the first sentence of version 2 should be separated using a semi-colon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T01:57:20.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28232" CreationDate="2017-05-23T04:37:55.347" Score="2" ViewCount="345" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say a piece of writing is being composed. That piece of writing can, of course, be crafted with a slew of different techniques and artistic choices, but, one of those is the language used. How does the use of regionally-diverse diction, such as that used in &quot;The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn&quot;, contribute to a work holistically? Is it better to match the context of a piece with diction relevant to the given context, or simply to retain a consistent and standard styling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24443" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-24T11:39:43.617" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T11:39:43.617" Title="Use of Regional Diction in Writing" Tags="|language|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28231" CreationDate="2017-05-23T07:08:23.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does the use of regionally-diverse diction, such as that used in &quot;The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn&quot;, contribute to a work holistically?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can create a better sense of immersion. It can allow the reader to play with stereotypes (eg. people with a certain accent/slang come from a certain region/class and typically display certain behaviours) whether by reinfocing them or opposing them. It can help disntiguish characters quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it better to match the context of a piece with diction relevant to the given context, or simply to retain a consistent and standard styling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The keywords when choosing to go this route are 'depends' and 'consistency'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, make sure it really makes sense to use this type of writing. Secondly, you ought to mimic it accurately, or not at all. By this I don't mean every detail of the regional diction needs (although you can certainly do so) to be presented but a few obvious indications. I believe idioms may be more important even than diction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally, consistency is key. Once you have a French character 'speak' with an accent, you can't go back or it will 'sound' as if the character chooses to speak with an accent only when it suits them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T07:08:23.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28231" CreationDate="2017-05-23T07:44:59.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on your market and the quality of your readership. There is a battle between two major forms of the English Language - British English and American English. US culture is very internal - American's interest rarely extends beyond its borders. But the rest of the world has been fed American English via film and other media. The result is that most of the English speaking world is well versed in both British and US English whereas Americans tend only know their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hurry up,&quot; shouted Liz. &quot;If you two want a lift to work you need to get a wiggle on.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maria yawned. &quot;I am not going to my job today. In this moment I feel too tired.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;That's because you stayed out half the night - you slapper.&quot; Liz laughed. &quot;Heidi, you ready?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heidi appeared in the kitchen doorway. &quot;Sure, I'm ready,&quot; she said, entering Maria's room and shaking her by the shoulder. &quot;Anchor baby, I'll tell 'em you're sick.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From gleaning the text a reader may suspect that Liz is English, Maria is Hispanic (even is she was born in the USA) and in all likelihood Heidi is American.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="24878" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T09:59:21.790" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T09:59:21.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28182" CreationDate="2017-05-23T08:56:40.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are places such as lulu.com, who offer publishing services, but it depends on how much control you want to have. Going that route will give you complete control, which leaves no outside input into the final work, which you may want in terms of editing? Personally I would go the lulu route as it cuts out the agent, but I would perhaps recommend having someone proofread and edit for you so you don't lose that unbiased pair of eyes over your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24902" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T08:56:40.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28235" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28236" CreationDate="2017-05-23T11:31:06.860" Score="26" ViewCount="7382" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a literary agent.  I've never published before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) What's to keep an agent from taking my manuscript and publishing it themselves, or handing it off to one of their writer friends?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) What's to keep an agent from taking my original ideas, giving them to a writer friend, and having them create their own work based off of some of those ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do new writers protect themselves from things like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13268" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T15:46:24.847" Title="How does a new writer keep from getting scooped?" Tags="|publishing|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28235" CreationDate="2017-05-23T12:05:55.470" Score="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your ideas are valueless. (Sorry!) My ideas are valueless too. There are approximately 197 billion story ideas floating around the litosphere just waiting for someone with a net to scoop them up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is valuable is your ability to take a literary idea and turn it into an interesting story. People who can do that are rare and difficult to find. I don't know if you are one of those people or not. (I don't even know if I am either.) But I do know this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agents are not looking for stories, or for ideas, agents are looking for writers. Agents and publishers don't make money (or not reliably) off individual stories. They make money off writer's &lt;em&gt;careers&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why an agent is just as interested in your ability to deliver professional work consistently and on time as they are in your ability to write an interesting story. They care about your dedication and reliability as well as your talent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of which adds up to, Agents are looking for commercially viable writers, and commercially viable writers are hard to find. If they think you are a commercially viable writer, they will want to represent &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, not your story, but &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;. If they don't think you are a commercially viable writer, they will have no interest in your ideas either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to be frank, even if someone does come along and hear your idea and goes and makes a best selling novel out of it, you have lost nothing, because if you are a commercially viable writer, you can generate as many story ideas as you need, and if you are not, you were never going to realize any money off that idea anyway.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideas are dross. It is your vision and your talent that will make you a successful writer, and no one can steal either of those. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T12:05:55.470" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28231" CreationDate="2017-05-23T12:19:24.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dialect writing was quite popular among authors in the 19th and early 20th century. Both Twain and Kipling indulged in it extensively. In an age where few had the opportunity to travel and there were no movies to bring the sounds and sights of foreign lands to people, the appeal of the exotic in fiction (and nonfiction) was quite strong. It was the golden age of the circus for much the same reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But dialect writing, whether it is reproducing the sounds or the vocabulary of local speech, is difficult to read, and modern readers have many other ways to experience the exotic flavor of any place or people they are interested in. Want local color? You will get more from watching Anthony Bourdain than you will from reading a book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, regional diction writing seems to be much less in fashion these days, and most authors seem to avoid it entirely. When I have seen it done, it is done with a very light touch. All dialogue is artifice, and other forms of artifice can be used to get the point across about a character's origins, habits, or patterns of thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T12:19:24.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28182" CreationDate="2017-05-23T12:27:44.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agents represent people, not manuscripts. The author/agent relationship is a long term business relationship on which the author's career and livelihood largely depends. If you don't like and trust your agent, you are not going to be happy. If an agent does not like or trust their client, they are not going to be happy. This is why it is so advantageous to meet an agent in person at a conference. It is why agents spend so much of their time and money to attend conferences. They are looking to form long term business relationships with writers they believe in both as professionals and as storytellers. And while such relationships can certainly be formed without meeting in person, the chances of forming them are much better if you do meet in person. There is a reason business people travel so much, and why to put such an emphasis on meeting in person. You can communicate any information anyone could need via email. But it is much harder to form a personal trust relationship that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it this way. If you were applying for a job, would you want to have an in person interview? Do you think you would have a better chance if you me the hiring manager in person? Same think with an agent. You are forming a long term business relationship and it helps enormously to do that in person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T12:27:44.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28235" CreationDate="2017-05-23T13:47:08.410" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answer: Because unscrupulous agents / publishers have better ways to make money from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agents and publishers often overlap, the only difference really comes down to the printing of the manuscripts. Writing this relating to publishers rather than agents (as agents like this don't want to spend extra money for printing):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the unscrupulous publishers will instead charge you money in order to print the book, then write the contract in such a way that you might be waiting up to two years for your first income from any sales (which are likely to be in the first couple of weeks/months anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stealing can get them in court. You not realising how unfair a contract you sign is, is just a way for them to get more income.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are thousands of people wanting their first book published, and they can make a steady income by publishing barely-edited manuscripts for money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL/DR: My brother fell for this relatively recently. With dyslexia his spelling can be bad, and the &quot;editing&quot; promised was literally just correcting red underlines in Word, no income for 18 months, and he had to pay several thousand pounds for them doing several hundred pounds worth of work and printing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24107" LastEditorUserId="24107" LastEditDate="2017-05-24T12:20:52.487" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T12:20:52.487" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28235" CreationDate="2017-05-23T13:50:10.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to be harsh or burst your bubble but your worries don't conform with reality. Agencies receive thousands of manuscripts each week - most of which they don't actually read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptable stories fall within a very narrow window. The boy always gets the girl. Good always overcomes evil. The cowboys always kill the Indians. Publishers have no interest in new authors publishing stories outside the range specified by the bean counters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers tend to significantly over-value their work. At the outset, they all (including me) believe they are writing a best-seller - two years later they're struggling to give the story away on Kindle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also my opinion: in a comprehensive novel there is so much detail and nuance that only the author would name the source. A plagiarist would be discovered under interrogation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. Adele's pet name for her best friend, Claire, is 'digger' (which she hates) - It is never explained. But there is a scene where Claire is stopped for speeding. The officer radios in the vehicle's registration plate &quot;JCB 888Y&quot; (stylized as &quot;JCB BABY&quot;). He is embarrassed when he learns he's pulled over a high court judge. JCB = Judge Claire Bristol. JCB is also a UK term for Trackhoe - hence the nickname &quot;Digger&quot; . . . Who but the author would know that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody is going to steal your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately (particularly in the USA), your manuscript is irrelevant. It's all about your CV. If you are George Clooney's 3rd cousin whose other claim to fame is that, when in college you popped Malia Obama's cherry - they'll publish your fantasy story. Don't worry if your story is a pile of crap, they've got a thousand ghost writers who'll whip something up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="19595" LastEditDate="2017-05-24T13:24:18.003" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T13:24:18.003" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28235" CreationDate="2017-05-23T14:06:20.490" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two points here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under US law, &lt;strong&gt;anything you write is copyrighted&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Anything&lt;/em&gt;. Your question above in fact is copyrighted. You likely can't &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; copyright something, even if you wanted to. So it is simply not legal for a publisher to pass your work along to someone else to touch up and publish without your permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are just thinking about the basic story ideas, rather than the implementation of them, &lt;strong&gt;Mark Baker has it completely correct&lt;/strong&gt;. Here's J. Michael Straczynski (author of The Complete Book of Scriptwriting, head writer of Murder She Wrote, Babylon-5, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Straczynski#Career&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;many others&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;http://jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-12180&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on this subject&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Story ideas are worthless.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  It's very doubtful that you or anybody&#xA;  else has had an idea that nobody in the history of mankind has ever&#xA;  had before. You can take a basic idea and give it to 10 different&#xA;  writer and you'll get 10 TOTALLY different stories. What matters is&#xA;  execution, how the idea is rendered....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most amateur writers don't know or understand that, and think that&#xA;  their story idea is something saleable, something somebody wants to&#xA;  buy, or something they need to jealously protect. There are even&#xA;  people who will exploit that. There was a publication a few years ago&#xA;  which would publish your story idea in a big book, on per page (which&#xA;  you paid for, natch), and sent it to the major studios and networks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not one of them ever sold. None of them were worth buying.  None of&#xA;  them were really stories. And it was thrown into the trash of every&#xA;  studio or network at which it arrived because of fear of lawsuit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were unaware of the second point, or are further interested in the subject of the pain of writers having to constantly fend off bogus &quot;story idea&quot; lawsuits, I &lt;strong&gt;highly&lt;/strong&gt; suggest clicking the link above and reading his entire 23-paragraph detailed explanation on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18598" LastEditorUserId="18598" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T14:16:22.137" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T14:16:22.137" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28231" CreationDate="2017-05-23T14:36:30.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I may also add: somebody mentioned that consistency is the key - this is not necessarily true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've no advice for fantasy writers but 'real world' writing is totally different. Heavy dialect can become a chore to read - what is needed is an initial 'instruction' plus reminders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can set this up by a character talking to his peers or countrymen, whether they be stereotypical Jamaican drug-dealers, African-American gang-bangers, Mexican illegal immigrants, or Terrorist refugees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your character is using heavy dialogue when speaking to his peers. But on receiving a phone call from his boss, school-teacher etc . . . reverts to the Queen's English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'International' characters will change their dialect in accordance with who their are communicating with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T14:36:30.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28235" CreationDate="2017-05-23T15:03:32.930" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hear this worry from many beginning writers. Often the question includes something along the lines of &quot;What legal steps can I take to protect my work from being stolen?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my capsule advice to new authors: Don't worry about it. There are a million would-be authors out there, all competing for attention. Your problem is NOT that someone will steal your work. Your problem is that no one will care about your work. Worry about writing a story good enough that someone would bother to steal it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that your work isn't any good. I haven't seen anything you've written besides this post. Your work may be brilliant. But agents and publishers just aren't in the business of stealing a writer's work. Almost all first novels by a new author lose money. You have to be an established writer, at least a little bit &quot;famous&quot;, before your books are really worth something. The only way a publisher will make money off of you is if you write a series of successful books for them. And you're not likely to do that if they cheat you on your first book. They have far more to lose by stealing someone's work and getting caught than they are likely to make off a stolen story by an unknown writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it ever happen? Sure. I know someone stole my work at least once: an article I wrote was stolen and offered for sale on one of those &quot;research assistance&quot; web sites, where students can buy someone else's work to submit it as their own as a term paper. I wasn't paid for the original article, so if the thieves sold even one copy, they made more money off of it than I did. Do you know what I did about it? Absolutely nothing. It wasn't worth the trouble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T15:03:32.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28235" CreationDate="2017-05-23T15:38:41.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your stated question, one can protect one's work by &quot;registering&quot; it with Writers Guild of America for $20 online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is a fundamental reason why agents won't steal your work: Because it's too much work and that's not what agents do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agents can earn a lot of money for doing relatively little work, if they find the right (sellable) pieces. Consider, an agent can earn 15% of your royalties for writing a few letters and signing a few papers &lt;em&gt;if s/he &quot;connects.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; It takes only seven such deals to earn as much as you do for one of your novels or whatever. For a lot less time and effort than it took for you to produce it. Of course, the potential downside for the agent is a lot of wasted effort for the works that don't sell, as well as effort for getting to know the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No agent (that qualifies as such) would be interested in killing the &quot;goose that lays the golden egg.&quot; They want you to write 10 (or 100) works that they can sell. And the same from all the other writers in their stable. If an agent tried to steal one person's work, all the rest of it &quot;goes away.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T16:18:10.740" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T16:18:10.740" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28247" CreationDate="2017-05-23T16:10:29.290" Score="1" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my work, my goal is to show that the hero is a better fit for the heroine, than the two men she married (or agreed to marry) before him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first husband uses his influence to get the woman a &quot;vice-presidency&quot; in a startup with less authority and remuneration than the other VPs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second prospective husband is a wealthy man won't help her in her career but offers the woman the luxuries of life as a consolation prize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third man is the CEO of his own company who pumps enough money into the woman's company (a supplier) to change that company's internal balance of power in her favor, as well as giving her an idea of how to take it over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The woman is primarily motivated by her career, and largely judges her men by who helps her in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that all four people come from a similar social class, is this sufficient grounds for &quot;fit,&quot; or do I need to get into other issues such as shared tastes or cultural similarities, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T12:12:25.950" Title="How far do I need to go to show &quot;fit&quot; between two &quot;dating&quot; characters?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28152" CreationDate="2017-05-23T16:27:06.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Add details like they cost money.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the race to build the first US transcontinental railroad, both sides operated with the mantra, &quot;Build it first. We'll fix it later.&quot; Maybe you should try doing exactly that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you're first-drafting, let your story spill out. Just get it down. Later, when you're second-drafting, you'll have the scaffolding in place and a clearer vision. The question of whether to add more detail will likely answer itself under the brighter light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else to consider: Adding content vs deleting and/or reorganizing it. For example..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delete three paragraphs for every one you add&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try moving things around..&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/#q=remove+your+adverbs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do you need those adverbs&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Target weak sentences loaded down with &quot;be verbs&quot; and rewrite them using their stronger counterparts, &quot;action verbs&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/#q=replace+your+be+verbs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;There's a fair amount of discussion on that last thought.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with your observation that too much detail can bore the reader and push them away. So harness this strength of your writing style—write it first, then fix it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23919" LastEditorUserId="23919" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T17:00:18.937" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T17:00:18.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28245" CreationDate="2017-05-23T17:48:13.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Showing that one person is a better fit psychologically is very difficult, especially since we don't seem to know what constitutes fit or why one relationship works in real life and another does not. (I think the truth is that when people &quot;fit&quot; it is more because they grow together, grow around each other, than that they started out as two perfectly complementary jigsaw pieces.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But stories are fundamentally moral, rather that psychological, and the almost universal formula for this in stories is the discovery or revelation of virtue. In its most basic form it comes down to what James Scott Bell calls the &quot;pat the dog&quot; moment. It is about one or the other demonstrating their moral value through an act of kindness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seem to be two main formulas for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Virtuous woman is blind to the moral faults of her intended and/or the moral virtues of her alternate suitor. Events reveal the vices of the intended and/or the virtues of the alternate suitor. Woman switches her affections to alternate. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Morally compromised woman pursues love for all the wrong reasons. Morally virtuous suitor pursues her (why?) and is rejected for not being good career material. Events force woman to face up to her moral inadequacies. She is reformed and sees spurned suitor in a new light. Must then persuade him that she has changed. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T18:01:51.937" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T18:01:51.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28152" CreationDate="2017-05-23T17:58:42.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're right to be concerned, because there is a fine line between &quot;too much detail&quot; and not enough. Either way, you stand to lose at least part of your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid this, it's helpful to get feedback from your audience. Show your work (or part of it) to five or ten friends and get their reactions. It has been shown that &quot;crowd wisdom&quot; is quite reliable, even though individuals might be far off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One caveat, and that is that even in the modern day United States, different groups of people may react differently. For instance, the so-called Silent generation (born before World War II) liked lots of detail, while Gen-Xers &quot;cut to the chase&quot; and don't want a story &quot;spoiled&quot; by too many details that they can figure out themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, when you have enough &quot;experience,&quot; you may become your own best judge. Many people know that a certain Supreme Court justice said, &quot;I know pornography when I see it.&quot; Few know the preceding remarks which went something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Pornography is something that would be offensive to a man of average sensuality (un homme moyen sensual). I am such a man. Therefore I know it when I see it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T17:58:42.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28225" CreationDate="2017-05-23T19:58:30.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside the reason why would you want your work translated, the short and simple answer is, of course, yes. You can pay for the translation, or you can do it yourself and save money.&#xA;Translating your own work yourself will also, as Tom Au pointed out, give you an advantage of better control of the outcome, assuming that you are capable of performing the task.&#xA;How it is all going to play out largely depends upon how you are planning to publish your work. If you are publishing yourself, you are in charge of much more aspects of the process.&#xA;If you have a publisher, I would allow myself to guess, that all the questions related to translating should be addressed to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T19:58:30.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28253" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-23T20:46:49.117" Score="1" ViewCount="1849" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a good website where they have a master list of character arcs from characters in movies. Can't seem to find one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25040" LastActivityDate="2017-09-10T22:25:55.537" Title="Is there a master character arc list?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28174" CreationDate="2017-05-23T23:13:48.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pursuing the thought provided by @Terri Simon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being in a real university library, I noticed that a real librarian was in the back room today. So I had the front staff (students, I guess) direct me to the real librarian. He told me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are academic databases that are not accessible to the general public. That is, you need an account to log in. Students can get there via their student IDs. Non-students can sometimes get there, if they show up at the library in person, and have the librarian make the inquiry on a library account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The databases include a large body of literary works, not just academic publications, many of which will not easily be found (if at all) via ordinary web search. Of course, the database does not include &quot;pop fiction.&quot; But if you are looking for something poetic, this might be a path to try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should have thought of this. Years ago, I accessed such databases myself, but not in the context of literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not necessarily mean that you will find what you seek. But if you cannot find it via ordinary web search, and cannot find it via academic database search, that says something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T23:13:48.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28257" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-24T06:40:03.643" Score="-5" ViewCount="492" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing particularity creative about following a set of instructions on how to write a novel. It is perhaps even less 'creative' to base styles and conventions on work of writers and the tastes of readers who live before we were born.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the rules of this site seem to be anti-creativity. You discourage opinions and praise sources but that all seems - silly! If I ask a question no doubt somebody will point me in the direction of a popular book or article on the subject but, then again, assuming I was a 'serious' writer there's a good chance I would have read (or at least be aware of said book or article).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am to be honest, most of my writing skills have been developed by reading the work of novice writers and deciding what I don't like. Most of it is 'single threaded flat telling, 'this' happened then 'that' happened. So in my own work I look to develop a method to combat the issue. The solution did not come from a 'How to' book, nor did it come from an established author. It was inspired by a programming instruction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I've learned anything about novel writing it is that those 'rules' that are often quoted are put in place for novices. There are things you should not do because you're not good enough. Subsequently, ensuring you adhere to these rules will guarantee you life-long novice status.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T17:03:58.833" Title="Is &quot;How to&quot; killing creative writing?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-05-24T23:00:18.287" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28257" CreationDate="2017-05-24T07:20:42.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;How to&quot;, rules and guidelines do not kill anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of rules as paths in the countryside. You can get off the path and forge your own way through the field, but it's harder and you may not get to the destination you intended (which can make you feel anxious and fearful). If you are very knowledgeable of the area (including its paths), it's more likely you can get off the path and not only get to your destination, but also enjoy the journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I'll mention the Nobel prize winner Saramago. He wrote a novel that is studied in Portuguese schools and where he subverts the rules of punctuation for a genious effect. I remember some of us claimed to follow his 'rules' and our teacher telling us you can only ignore the rules once you fully understand them. And we did have to follow them if we wanted our work marked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our teacher also gave us writing assignments with (sometimes) crazy limitations. Those limitations forced us to think outside the box and come up with creative stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But back to the question: there are two types of rules (or 'how to'). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first refers to grammar and language in general. If you know these rules truly well, then you also know when they can be bent or broken. And you know exactly why and for what effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second refers to putting a narrative together. The same applies: if you truly know how the 'grammar' of narrative works, you know when not to follow it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To have freedom to do whatever a writer desires may feel like space for 100% creativity, but it is probably not. What really makes one come up with creative ideas are problems and limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And since there's a bit of ranting in your question, I'll allow my own ranting: historical fiction. &lt;em&gt;Oh, a writer must have freedom to tweak around historical facts in order to produce a good story.&lt;/em&gt; The way I see it, a writer that resorts to &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; excuse is lacking in the creativity to work with the facts and find a way to produce a good story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T07:20:42.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28174" CreationDate="2017-05-24T07:31:21.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the Google can't find it I wouldn't worry about it. Even if the source of the text is ancient, Google not being to find it means nobody has quoted for 20 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our brains are full of information we've no idea where it came from. We may have read it, we may have heard it, or we have made it up. Sometimes we have no idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also to be noted, much as we try, we're just not that original. Watch a TV drama or film. When two people are in conversation - guess the response before you here it. There's a good chance you'll get it right the majority of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T07:31:21.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28260" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-24T10:39:39.323" Score="-1" ViewCount="514" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always struggled with this. I like to write at the top of my knowledge without leaving those not having the benefit my experience behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may sound arrogant but if I write for the lowest common denominator I feel my target reader will get bored of reading (and I'll get bored of writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To exacerbate the issue I can use a camera-control slow-reveal opening. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Dearly beloved . .  .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sounds of the speech were drowned out by Emily's relentless nagging internal voice. &quot;There is neither good nor bad, only thinking makes it so.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;. . .  gathered here today . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There is neither good nor bad, only thinking makes it so. There is neither good nor bad, only thinking makes it so.&quot; She'd rehearsed for this moment. It would be okay. She was just a little nervous - that's all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;. . . in the sight of God . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for her cue. &quot;There is neither good nor bad, only thinking makes it so. There is neither good nor bad, only thinking makes it so. There is neither good nor bad, only thinking makes it so.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The room fell silent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was her cue. It was her turn to speak her line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The internal voice intensified, repeating the same line over and over again. &quot;There is neither good nor bad, only thinking makes it so.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The minister cleared his throat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There is neither . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emily drew breath to speak. &quot;I –&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot; . . . only thinking . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I . . . I don't want to go to prison!&quot; Emily blurted out before hitching up her dress and sprinting away down the aisle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bang of the church door echoed as she slammed it behind her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The minister raised his brows. &quot;Oops.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some readers may have no clue what's going on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other readers may understand a nervous bride has absconded on her wedding day. But may be confused by the prison option.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The fully tuned may understand a bride who's absconded on her wedding day, and understand the option was not prison whilst assuming several aspects of her character and back-story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T15:01:07.943" Title="Writing for a broad spectrum of readers. How do you engage the elite whilst appealing to the base?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|technique|pov|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28203" CreationDate="2017-05-24T10:57:24.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I face the same situation... mostly I have a bunch of friends I retreat to when I need help editing something or when I want opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with both the answers above. This has happened with me and other people I know. While writing fanfictions, many of our plot ideas were stolen. Now since we just wrote for fun or for the joy it presents, it was an added advantage to see our fav characters live the situations that we envisioned them to live in. However, for a serious person who wants to pursue this as career, this is the most horrible thing that can happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to share ideas and have people give their advice or read other people's ideas, there are two things based on how secure your work shall remain -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;have a bunch of friends who share similar interests and are willing to help. You know they will be honest and there will be no threat for work stealth. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;join a fanfiction forum or portal where you can share your work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24877" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T10:57:24.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28245" CreationDate="2017-05-24T11:43:56.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use &lt;strong&gt;contrast&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put her into a situation with &quot;unfit&quot; person&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have &quot;unfit&quot; person act in a way which causes conflict with her&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe how the behavior of &quot;unfit&quot; person annoys or harms her&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put her into almost the same situation with &quot;fit&quot; person&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have &quot;fit&quot; person act in a way which is favorable to her&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe how she enjoys the behavior of &quot;fit&quot; person&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This situation doesn't have to be anything plot-critical. It can simply be a disagreement about something which shows that their views are too different or one which highlights a personality flaw of one person while highlighting a personality virtue of the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2017-05-24T12:12:25.950" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T12:12:25.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28206" CreationDate="2017-05-24T14:41:49.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the &quot;style&quot; aspect of this question depends on the medium. I would lay it out and punctuate it differently for a PowerPoint presentation than for a newspaper article. However, in general, an introductory sentence would be its own paragraph, followed by the three &quot;point&quot; paragraphs. I would not combine the intro with only one of the points. If the points were brief, it would probably be best to just have one paragraph. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several ways to set off a list of items: With bullets, with numbers, or with white space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8356" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T14:41:49.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28257" CreationDate="2017-05-24T17:03:58.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am one of those who avoided reading such guides and books for the longest time but I have since come around to seeing them for what they are: guidelines, notes, and think-abouts. However they do not beat the creative work of writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience as a writer, I stumbled and failed on a number of simple things. I learned through experience a number of things I could have avoided by reading them. Some of my stories and products may have been more polished quicker or simple been better had I read them. As a starter, limiting yourself does help with getting work done: &lt;em&gt;you don't run across a forest before you can walk on the road&lt;/em&gt;, I was told long ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question: &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt; it does not kill creative writing, they help you get started, and many of them will help you get &lt;strong&gt;published&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T17:03:58.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27704" CreationDate="2017-05-25T02:26:35.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;(1) One word: monopoly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) See above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Oh, all right, details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The previous answer (involving math) is substantially correct, in a competitive environment. The producer factors in the costs of production, distribution, and service, along with a profit target. Competitors ensure that the values are reasonable. If a particular supplier cannot make a profit, then that supplier will exit the line of business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The price to the customer can be broken down to a setup fee (possibly high) and a per-unit cost once setup is completed (in this case, very low). So, it could be possible to say, &quot;$250 to sign up, then $0.10 per unit.&quot; Or, the same amount of money exchanges, with &quot;$350 for the first 1000 units, then $100 for the next 1000 units.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US supplier has chosen the second approach, by incorporating the setup fee into the cost of units sold. Apparently the AU supplier does not entirely incorporate the setup cost into the early units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the linear equations approach is only valid in the case of competition. In the case of a monopoly, which is what we have here, the price is not necessarily calculated that way. Certainly it is calculated to cover costs and allow for profit. But unless there is some prevailing law or regulation against it, the supplier may choose a pricing strategy intended to reward some and penalize others. There is no market correction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that small do-it-yourself types assume that they are being penalized. That may be true, or not, since I don't know the cost factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T02:26:35.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27704" CreationDate="2017-05-25T06:57:57.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the modern era there no is formula by which corporations calculate a market price based on cost. Product prices are primarily based on &quot;What is the maximum the market will stand?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gas prices will typically be more expensive at the 'last gas station for 50 miles' than where there are four gas stations on the same city block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Capitalism fails with scale. The US has the most advanced capitalist system and it is there you can find the most evidence of its inherent corruption: (Why's US Healthcare amongst the world's most expensive?). Companies like Bowker are bullied by the big 4 publishers and Amazon. Bowker will set their prices according to Amazon and co's demands else (in an extreme scenario) Bowker will find themselves bought out . . . and there will be no more Bowker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Globalism is a game of strategy. Companies like Bowker are permitted to make profit in certain markets at certain times. Import and Export levies prevent true global competition (Why can't you buy prescription drugs from Canada).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ISBN system is particularly prone to corruption as the system is a national monopoly. Bowker are the authorised suppliers for the US and Australia but when those contracts are renewed those contracts could be awarded to Neilson if Bowker are not doing as they're told. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: there are several factors as to why any particular pricing schedule is calculated that way at that time; politics, market forces, personal whims. It's not something you can work out on a spreadsheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T06:57:57.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28273" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28274" CreationDate="2017-05-25T07:08:15.550" Score="2" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;It feels awkward and confusing to speak specifically about the present -- e.g. &quot;right now,&quot; &quot;these days&quot;, &quot;this very moment&quot;, etc. -- when writing in past-tense. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He mused about it; innocence seemed quite scarce around &lt;strong&gt;these&lt;/strong&gt; parts &lt;strong&gt;these&lt;/strong&gt; days.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She hadn't given a thought to the matter before &lt;strong&gt;this very moment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bolded words are what I see as the problem. Is this mixing tenses? Should I have used &quot;those parts,&quot; &quot;those days,&quot; &quot;that very moment&quot;? What would be the proper way of going about it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25062" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-06-01T16:59:51.627" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T16:59:51.627" Title="Referencing the present while using the past tense" Tags="|grammar|tenses|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28273" CreationDate="2017-05-25T08:12:46.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm slightly confused: you've used 'these' in two different contexts. The first usage is in the sense of location: 'here' as opposed to 'there'. The second occurrence references time: 'now' as opposed to 'then'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find nothing wrong with the usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, on the broader scale (you'll have to read some of my other comments to fully understand the issue) adjusting for grammar and clarity alters both character and narrative voice. The example is a muse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Texas Sheriff in 1950's may muse: Since the Federal government set up that reservation Injuns are quite scarce round these parts these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The governer's wife: Injuns are uncommon around here now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In non-fiction I will always put voice above grammar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T08:12:46.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28275" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-25T08:18:17.147" Score="0" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been a year now since I have this. I can't write and think. Any suggestions, advice and tips?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24977" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-05-25T09:56:26.113" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T09:56:26.113" Title="How to kill a writer's block?" Tags="|writers-block|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-05-25T18:11:41.223" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28275" CreationDate="2017-05-25T09:05:15.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sit down and write. One of the best techniques I was ever taught was to simply sit down and write the first thing that comes into your head. Start and don't stop. What arrives on the page may turn out to be gibberish, but just keep going, don't pause to do anything, especially not to edit. Set a limit of 10 or 20 minutes and just keep writing the entire time. You may find that you can gleam some idea from what you've got, or you may just have a page of nonsense. But you've started. Then do it again tomorrow :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24902" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T09:05:15.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8908" CreationDate="2017-05-25T10:58:52.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Put on paper by ...&lt;/em&gt; might be an option, too. Or &lt;em&gt;recorded by&lt;/em&gt;. I also like &lt;em&gt;Adapted by&lt;/em&gt; as it has been suggested. Depends on how much you contributed yourself besides merely writing it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14614" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T10:58:52.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8908" CreationDate="2017-05-25T11:30:55.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the face of it appears to be a biography of X written by you (The author). I assume this on the basis that the published version will exceed the original 20 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in doubt an enquiry into how the big boys do it reveals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anne Frank: The Biography Paperback – 13 Dec 1999&#xA;by Melissa Muller (Author), Rita Kimber (Translator), Robert B. Kimber (Translator)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're the de facto 'editor' because no third party provided the service therefore the function is a given and should not be attributed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not seen the manuscript therefore I cannot be totally definitive in my answers. I've no idea of the framework used. Who's the narrator? Who's telling the story? My mind's in 'film mode' at the moment - &quot;Titanic&quot;, &quot;Big Fish&quot;, and &quot;Forrest Gump&quot; are stories about people telling stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T11:30:55.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2017-05-25T12:41:16.460" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an old &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shoecomics.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shoe cartoon&lt;/a&gt; somewhere in which Shoe has his feet on his desk, smoking a cigar, and staring off into space. But when Cosmo interrupts him, Shoe exclaims furiously, &quot;Can't you see I'm writing!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two parts to writing, composition and transcription. Sometimes transcription flows with the act of composition. Sometimes composition requires extended staring off into space before there is anything to transcribe. Sitting down in front of a keyboard and demanding instantaneous transcription is a great way to prevent any kind of composition from taking place. It is your attempt to transcribe that is blocking your ability to compose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is common to suggest that you just start writing -- by which people mean that you start transcribing trivialities. The theory seems to be that this will somehow break the psychological stranglehold of the blank page, and maybe it will, but it won't actually accomplish any useful work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not actually going to begin any useful work until you begin the act of composition, and if that requires a few hours staring into space, that's fine. Stare into space and compose. Start transcribing when the impulse to transcribe takes hold of you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is rather like the advice to insomniacs: don't go to bed until you are ready to go to sleep, otherwise you will come to associate your bed with wakefulness, and that will just make your insomnia worse. Similarly, don't sit down at the keyboard until you are ready to transcribe. Otherwise you will come to associate the keyboard with lack of inspiration and make your writer's block worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe, by the way, that there are many writers for whom composition comes as easily as breathing, but for whom the discipline of transcription is hard. For them, the daily writing habit makes perfect sense. But if your case is that composition comes with more difficulty, the demand to spend X hours a day transcribing seems likely to do more harm than good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="37845" LastEditDate="2019-09-20T07:32:52.520" LastActivityDate="2019-09-20T07:32:52.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28203" CreationDate="2017-05-25T15:19:58.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how far you have gotten already in writing your ideas down, but there are many online communities where you can upload your ideas and/or stories and ask for feedback. As one user above said, any good idea will get stolen eventually. On the other hand everyone does (intentionally or not) copy from other people's works and techniques. Even the words we use have been invented by others. If you are afraid of sharing your ideas, you won't be able to get any feedback. Anyways, great communities where you could ask for feedback are absolutewrite.com/forums, archiveofourown.org (fanfic), &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://noveltrove.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;noveltrove.com&lt;/a&gt; (erotic fiction) and many, many more...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24985" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T15:19:58.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28281" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28283" CreationDate="2017-05-25T18:23:44.800" Score="0" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to know because all of the anime that I watch have at least one character or more from another planet, and they're not usually friendly. I don't want to come off as one of those who &quot;follow the crowd&quot; but I don't really have any other ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T19:50:09.447" Title="Is it too cliche to have the villan of my story from a different planet?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28281" CreationDate="2017-05-25T18:43:10.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quality of any storyline or character is in the execution. Having one characteristic in common with many other stories does not, by definition, make it a cliché. That said, if you're worried about it, why not change it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you're going to change it, take some time to study why it's done in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is the villain from Outside or Other Place in all the animes&#xA;you've watched? There's a strong communal society element in Asian&#xA;cultures, so Othering is more meaningful than in Western cultures.&#xA;Does this play a part?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would happen in your story if your villain was from another&#xA;country? Another state/province? Another town? Another block? Is it&#xA;essential to the character and the conflict that he is geographically&#xA;Outside?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could your villain be a local who is Othered for something he did or&#xA;said or is rather than his birthplace? Could he be a former local who&#xA;moved away and was raised Elsewhere, and is now returning?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could your &lt;em&gt;hero&lt;/em&gt; be from Other Place returning to Home Place to&#xA;save it from the villain?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take some time to analyze the stories you've seen, and this may help you to understand why so many of them are making the same narrative choices. Then you can decide if you want to do this as well, or if your story can be improved by making a different choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T18:43:10.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28281" CreationDate="2017-05-25T18:45:01.900" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other as enemy is one of the most basic tropes in all of fiction because it speaks to one of our most primal fears -- fear of the strange, the alien, the unpredictable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are tribal beings. Individually we are weak. Our strength lies in our ability to form alliances and to cooperate with each other. Forming these alliances and feeling secure in them depends on love and trust. Members of the tribe must love each other to be willing to sacrifice and take risks of each other. They must trust each other so that each person does their part, relying on their neighbours to keep the battle line intact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stranger, the alien, is not loved (we don't know them well enough) and they are not trusted (we don't understand their goals, their language, or their mannerisms). The stranger, therefore, represents danger. This is very very basic to our psychological makeup. Social animals that do not think this way would be at a huge evolutionary disadvantage. We fear strangers because animals that fear strangers live long enough to pass on their genes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no, the villain from another planet will never ever get old. Fear the stranger is the most basic story there is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is, of course, more than one way a fear the stranger story can go. The stranger may become the enemy or they may become the friend. Both are compelling story arcs. But, as we perhaps too diligently instill in our kids, stranger=danger.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-25T19:50:09.447" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T19:50:09.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28285" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-26T04:53:21.717" Score="4" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the literary executor of my father's estate. A relative has started work on producing a (probably very) limited non-professional edition of my father's 1938-45 war diary. I need to strike a royalty agreement with her, so that in the extremely unlikely event of this edition becoming a bestseller, I have duly and diligently carried out my duties and obligations under the will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I propose to strike a reasonable commercial royalty rate, but with a provision that it doesn't kick in until at least all her costs have been covered and something well over, say $10,000, has been received, which in my opinion is far beyond the bounds of probability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm wondering what exactly that royalty rate should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The labour on her part is considerable, as it involves transcribing tens of thousands of words of highly illegible handwriting, scanning photographs and newspaper clippings, executing typography and graphic design, and getting it printed and bound somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand the text is not her property, and indeed it was possibly with some surprise that she learnt she could only copyright the edition, not the original text, which must bear its own copyright notice. And I have my obligations to the Probate Division of the Supreme Court and the residuary legatees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm looking for suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; I am not looking for suggestions about how to deal with a literary estate. I am not the publisher. I am not carrying any risk or investing anything in the project. I am in the position of an author with a pre-existing text here, and I am asking what royalty rate I should be aiming at, in line with reasonable commercial practice, and given that my relative is not Scribners or Macmillan. I am thinking anywhere between 15%, which is what I get from Addison Wesley and Springer, and 40-50% given that the publisher won't have a large investment in stock or advertising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2691" LastEditorUserId="2691" LastEditDate="2017-05-27T02:31:30.510" LastActivityDate="2017-07-13T16:19:01.333" Title="Royalty rate for edition of estate-held text" Tags="|publishing|editing|copyright|money|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28286" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-26T05:26:08.553" Score="3" ViewCount="461" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently asked &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/28043/10394&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, about inner conflict. Mark Baker supplied an answer to that question which redefined how I saw inner conflict, and as a result, the whole process of making a novel. Because this way of thinking is still new to me, there are some parts of it which I don't have figured out yet. One of those parts is this question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mark Baker explained that the novel revolves around the inner conflict: a choice between two options. The climax is when the choice is made. This makes sense to me. As long as you have a single novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if you are writing a series of novels though? There is only so much back-and-forth you can show between the two options - it's going to get repetitive fairly quickly. If the inner conflict is the main conflict of the novel, this poses a problem; the last thing you want is a repetitive and boring main conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you handle this problem?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's obvious to me that one of two things has to happen. 1) The inner conflict miraculously stays original every novel. I can't see this working short of introducing new inner conflicts every novel, which won't work if every one of them is central to your character. A character can't have that many centers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) You work with an external conflict (which &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; change throughout and between the novels), and somehow make it as meaningful as the inner conflict. The actual inner conflict likely becomes a subplot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously one of these two things has to happen. How they can happen, I know not. Hence the question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T14:31:47.877" Title="How does (or should) an inner conflict span a series of novels?" Tags="|plot|planning|conflict|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28286" CreationDate="2017-05-26T09:23:04.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a long answer and a longer answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think of the most popular series in history the root of external conflict is obvious - It's in the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone (1997)&#xA;Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets (1998)&#xA;Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban (1999)&#xA;Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire (2000)&#xA;Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix (2003)&#xA;Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince (2005)&#xA;Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows (2007)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no separation of conflicts (inner or outer). There is only cause and effect. Let's look at this simple plot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schizophrenic drug addict, Ben Davidson, rapes and kills Susan Wilson but avoids prosecution due to a chain of evidence technical infringement. Three years later Davidson is rushed to the ER with GSW to the chest received during another attempted rape. The only available surgeon is Dr David Wilson. The surgeon immediately recognises the patient as his wife's murderer. (Conflict). He refuses to perform the surgery. He comes into conflict with the law when he is informed he'll be charged with murder if he lets the patient die. Wilson maintains his resolve and is prepared to go jail rather save this man. The doctor is now romantically involved with a scrub nurse, Jenny. The nurse reminds him that he took an oath to 'first do no harm'. This triggers an internal conflict. After rethinking the issue the doctor remains adamant - &quot;No&quot;. He tells his best-friend and colleague that he prepared to go jail for the rest of his life. His college says, &quot;But what Jenny - the rest of her life.&quot; (The outside influence provokes new internal conflict - Is Jenny his future? - Subsequently the original conflict needs to be re-addressed. Our doctor performs the surgery, and saves Davidson's life. In the recovery room Davison apologies to Wilson for killing his wife, then promptly asks him to kill him. He explains that he'll never stop raping and killing - the voices make him do it, and he can't stop. Wilson responds saying he can't do it.If he's learned anything today it's that he's surgeon - it's not only what he is but its who he his. His job is to save lives and first do no harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Davidson responds &quot;To who?&quot; (We've gone back to the inner conflict).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully that demonstrates how resolving a conflict often creates another and new events or information causes seemingly resolved conflicts to be re-addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most series are vocational and good against evil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doctors will have new patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lawyers will have new cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Police will have new criminals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coroners will have new corpses. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T09:23:04.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28286" CreationDate="2017-05-26T11:38:13.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting question. I'm not a big reader of series fiction, but based on the series I have read or watched on TV I can think of several patterns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;New book, new character. Each of the chronicles of Narnia has a new central character, often with the central character from a previous book along in the mentor role. Thus Lucy and Edmund mentor Eustace in Dawn Treader and then Eustace mentors Jill in Silver Chair. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ratchet up the stakes. Same character, but the stakes are higher in each book/season. Buffy took this approach and it got more and more forced as they tried to ramp it up the next season. They kept killing or deporting mentor characters (Joyce, Giles) or adding responsibilities (Dawn) to create a new step in the basic maturation plot. But by the end it was getting pretty hard to do yet another Buffy grows up arc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Broken record. The same inner conflict plays our over and over again from book to book with little or no progress. The wounded detective genre of mystery fiction seems to use this a lot. Each case reveals the same woundedness in our detective over and over again. This is actually quite true to life, we do tend to keep bumping up against the same wound over and over again in our lives without making much progress. Broken record can go on indefinitely or it can end with the wound finally healed, as they did in House where House's inability to love is finally resolved as he goes off on a motorcycle tour with his dying friend -- an act of reconciliation and love. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Protagonist as mentor/ally. The series protagonist is not the hero of the individual stories, but takes the mentor or ally role from the classic hero's journey formula. The central character arc for each volume is the person the hero helps. Westerns, such as Lone Ranger or Bonanza seems to use this a lot. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More than one conflict. The same character may have more than one inner conflict to resolve. Each book tortures them in a brand new way. But I'm struggling to think of an obvious example of this. Maybe it does not work so well in a series where the reader really does want the same story over and over again. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Long slow arc. The series is really one long story and the arc or arcs is resolved over the entire series. Each book contains just one episode in the overall arc. LOTR is six books in three volumes but the main arc play out across the entire series. These are often billed as trilogy or whatever number -ogy depending on the number of volumes, indicating that together they make one story. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Family saga. The same basic story plays out over and over again from one generation to the next. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tall tales. The books are essentially yarns or tall tales that rely more on whimsey than character development for their appeal. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;News of the day. The hero does not develop much if at all, but each book stays fresh by taking on the news of the day -- the thing that has got everyone alarmed this season. Thrillers often take this approach. Lots of disarm the nukes plots in the cold war era. Lots of terrorist bomb plots today. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will they/won't they: A romantic version of the broken record. Will the hero and the heroine finally get together? Sam and Diane. Tony and Ziva. Booth and Brennan. Maddy and David. When will those two crazy kids finally work it out?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no doubt, though, that a series has to keep pulling its punches in order to leave it somewhere to go. Thus few series are highly regarded as literature. They are most often popcorn books, relying more on invention and narrative force than serious character development for their appeal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-26T12:59:19.487" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T12:59:19.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28289" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-26T13:09:56.527" Score="2" ViewCount="918" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started to plot out my scenes like this in bullet points&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tess runs away &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tess fights the bad guy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tess gets injured&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so it goes on. So far I got 30. I know that I need a lot more. I am aiming for 300 pages. Are these called plot points? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25040" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T14:10:07.167" Title="How many plot points ( whatever you call them ) do you need for a novel?" Tags="|plot|structure|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28289" CreationDate="2017-05-26T13:16:54.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A plot point is a turning point. It is something that turns the the story in a new direction. Taken together, a set of plot points describes a complete story arc. What you are describing are incidents. Incidents get you from one turning point to another (and every incident should contribute to getting you to the next turning point). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not about how many plot points you need, it is about whether your plot points work together to form a complete and satisfying story arc. It is about whether they bring your hero to the moment of moral crisis where they have to ask themselves hard questions about who they are and what they are going to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some stories get there fast. Some stories get there slow. As long as the reader feels that they are moving towards that point, though, fast or slow does not matter. Every part of the story arc is satisfying as long as it feels like we are on the story arc and it is moving forward.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-05-26T14:09:20.730" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T14:09:20.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28289" CreationDate="2017-05-26T14:10:07.167" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. They are not really plot points. They are scene or chapter summaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From tone of your question I'm guessing you're new to this. Contrary to everything you've been told you are unlikely to write a 300 page novel of any worth using the the technique you describe. It'll work for a 1950's 80 minute movie script or a comic book strip. But as an event-driven modern novel - they don't work that way. This is what you may be taught but if you read modern novels you'll see they bear no resemblance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your writing is exquisite and you use a lot introspection you cannot follow a single character for 300 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point you may need to use the &quot;meanwhile back at the ranch&quot; scenario. This enables you to SHOW events which your MC is unaware of, villains plotting against the MC, the love interest being kidnapped etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say all of this because I can remember writing the few chapters of my first novel. And I am grateful to my sister for stopping me continuing the way I was going. I was about to waste 3-6 months of my life that I couldn't ever get back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T14:10:07.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28286" CreationDate="2017-05-26T14:31:47.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read a series of books in which the main protagonist is struggling internally with a crisis of identity. After discovering that she has incredibly powerful magical powers, she has to reassess who she feels she is with these powers, especially as her environment completely changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After coming to somewhat accept these powers at the end of the book, the second novel has her elevated to a much more powerful position, and she has to again reassess who she feels that she is, and tries to find a balance between her old life and her new, eventually coming to fully accept her place in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third novel, after having accepted who she now is, has her dealing with the consequences of the choice made at the climax of book 2. Each of the three books follows the same thematic conflict, but addresses it in different ways, to very good effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have the option of keeping the same inner conflict, but developing the conflict alongside developing the story and the characters, allowing you to progress the story whilst not changing its essence completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously if every story in the series addresses the same inner conflict repeatedly in the same way, they will become stale, but allowing the seeds of an internal conflict to grow into plants, and then germinating internal conflict seeds of their own that develop into different but related conflicts is how to keep a series moving forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T14:31:47.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28285" CreationDate="2017-05-26T14:55:02.733" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot advise you without more information. You need to trust each other as 'fair and reasonable' and agree to formalise any 'ballpark' agreement at a later date, or suffer the increased overhead of involving two lawyers (one each) negotiating an agreement on an unlikely outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There a simple too many variables. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scenario 1: The book is self-published on both digital and dead tree platforms. You promote the work via a nationwide tour. How are your costs considered in the agreement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scenario 2: The book is vanity published. You sell 3 copies and the other 19,997 are held (at a cost) in a storage facility until they are burned on Guy Fawkes night. - Who is liable for the loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scenario 3: The rights are purchased by a major publisher. You accept a $20,000 advance. The money is split in accordance with your agreement. The book is a flop. The publisher goes bust. The liquidator demands the ADVANCE be returned. Who's liable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your father is a celebrity or a person of significant notoriety his diaries are of no value. Therefore, the success could be down to your relative's writing skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your desire to publish this story may be deemed 'vanity' on your part and deemed as a 'labour of love' on part of your relative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it all went wrong I'm confident a judge (whether or not a contract is in place) would encourage you to 'work it out'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without more information I'd advise you not spend money on a contingency for unlikely event.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T14:55:02.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28294" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-26T15:45:36.130" Score="3" ViewCount="1201" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless a better writer can dissuade me I am minded to say no. The 'essential' 'conflict' is cultural. It is part of the western 'Human Condition' - Eastern cultures have stories without conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, I'd venture the first story you ever wrote did not contain a conflict. It was entitled &quot;Me and Mommy in the park&quot; and was little more than a juvenile chronicle - regardless it was still a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My next experience comes from comedians, 'The two Ronnies' spring to mind. Their stories (jokes) had no conflict and in many examples the expected conflict never materialised. (That fact, in itself, making the story humorous). The skill of these comedians lay in how long they could entertain whilst stringing-out a simple story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal development as writer I began the exercise of how long I could go in a story without introducing a conflict. (I can do about 60k). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very old debate - the defence of the argument seems to be to broaden the definition of conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current position is that conflict is not a requirement. In comedic terms -  how long can you string out a joke before revealing the punch line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to clarify this question as it has been flagged as similar to 'Can you have a story with an antagonist?'. Antagonist is generally used with regard to character driven conflicts (Hero vs Villain). The films 'The Martian', 'Gravity' and 'Castaway' do not have antagonists because the character is alone. (Wilson is a foil). These stories are tales of struggle. Whether 'struggle' = 'conflict' is a debate in itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="24878" LastEditDate="2017-05-27T04:42:13.917" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T06:13:02.020" Title="Does a novel require a conflict?" Tags="|creative-writing|structure|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28294" CreationDate="2017-05-26T16:31:28.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The defence of the argument seems to be to broaden the definition of conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be true, and the defence (or offence, perhaps) of the opposing view might be to broaden the definition of story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be said that a chronological list of events:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is not in itself a story, unless there is conflict.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;will nonetheless contain conflict, even if none is put there consciously by the writer, and is therefore (according to the &quot;conflict = story&quot; view of things) a story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is a story, but does not contain conflict (thus invalidating the &quot;conflict=story&quot; view of things).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any of these things can be claimed, because the definitions of the words (like most definitions) aren't strictly defined, but the reason the &quot;conflict = story&quot; idea tends to stick around is that it's proven to be a useful (at least to some people) in describing the differences between things they intuitively regard as story and things they intuitively don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are other ways to make that distinction. I prefer to think of stories as being about the interplay of a character's inner model of the world and the world as it actually is (for example: the detective changes their inner model to fit the reality of what actually happened, the superhero changes the world around them to fit their inner model of a world in which justice prevails, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, you can, if you like, write things that you regard as stories, which you regard to be devoid of conflict. If you like writing that sort of thing, and  you think other people will want to read it (or else, don't care that they won't), then go for it. Expect, however, that some people won't regard them as stories, or will see them as full of conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T16:31:28.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28296" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-26T17:55:26.643" Score="7" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's commonly known that the news reports female casualties separately. As in &quot;four people were shot, including one woman&quot;. What is the reasoning behind this? Is anyone who knows about the news reporting process able to answer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25091" LastEditorUserId="19804" LastEditDate="2018-04-23T07:03:33.813" LastActivityDate="2018-04-23T07:03:33.813" Title="Why do newswriters separate women when they report on disasters?" Tags="|journalism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28225" CreationDate="2017-05-26T18:12:32.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm surprised by how often people neglect opportunity cost when considering whether doing something themselves is financially advantageous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So besides having control of the output, you'll want to ask yourself what you would do with your time if you weren't translating your own work: would you be working on an income-generating job, such as writing another book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books for the English (American) market, generally speaking, are the most profitable. If your novel sells well in English, chances are your next novel in English will also sell well—probably better than your translations. In that case, no, doing your own translations would not be financially advantageous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that is one major reason successful, multilingual authors leave their translations to others—they've got more best-sellers to write. That, and most people would rather work on something new than rewrite the same story over and over in different languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2686" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T18:12:32.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28294" CreationDate="2017-05-26T18:18:26.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary a novel is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, this definition (one of many, yet rather typical) of the novel is not only flexible, but also lacking any mention of a conflict being the necessary component of one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, none of the sources of conventional online wisdom, I have referred myself to, list a conflict as such, so I can gladly and wholeheartedly say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conflict is not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can expand the notion even further (challenging the definition above): the only requirement for a work of art in this medium to be called novel is &lt;em&gt;length&lt;/em&gt;. Any result of stringing words into sentences upon reaching the required length (the industry standards vary from genre to binding choice) can be called a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can write about anything—from people to minerals—or nothing at all, one can write the whole thing without ever using the word &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;, one can write it as a single run-on sentence, or one can make all sentences exactly seven words—it does not matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once your baby hits the required length—bam!—it's a novel, and no one can say it's not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real question is &lt;em&gt;who is going to read it if&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;it is one sentence/it is about a molecule/it has no conflict&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Define your target audience, that will tell you if your story needs a conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T18:18:26.977" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28296" CreationDate="2017-05-26T18:21:17.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do they really still do that? The origins are not hard to guess at. It has been a fundamental social presumption for centuries that the essential role of men is to protect women and children. On sinking ships, the rule was women and children first, and woe betide a man who survived a shipwreck in which a woman or child perished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course this rule was pretty much a practical necessity at anytime up to the creation of civilian police forces. Routine protection of persons in everyday life was simply not a function of government up until quite recently, or at least no one it had the means to effectively carry out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do they really still do it? And if they do, is it perhaps just a cultural survival, or do we really still think that women's lives matter more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T18:21:17.803" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28296" CreationDate="2017-05-26T18:52:01.853" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Makes an emotional and social impact&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making a point of how many women and/or children perished or were harmed in a given event makes a larger emotional and social impact. It turns the causative entity into a cruelty or an horror, be it an impersonal force such as nature or certain views on god(s), or be it a personal force such as a person, group of persons, or representational organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most cultures, regardless of how advanced they see themselves, will in reality react more strongly to harm towards the female or the young of the species. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The news is in the business of selling stories. And stories with a twist or a bang sell more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19658" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T18:52:01.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28302" CreationDate="2017-05-26T21:24:01.183" Score="4" ViewCount="1179" Body="&lt;p&gt;By definition, melodrama is a &lt;em&gt;clearly exaggerated&lt;/em&gt; drama, in which the characters' actions, reactions and speeches are intentionally &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; exaggerated. However, through my readings here on Writers SE and the public's impressions on some works, I find myself confused, because it's quite common to a type of dramatic scene that I find no problem, being considered &quot;melodramatic&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like drama and, for me, the story just needs to execute the drama well and I just find it fine and emotional and even good, but then I see people calling it melodrama, and being that characteristic their reason to despise the work. But what makes me worried is that most of my stories are dramas or have some dramatic scenes, and if people call &quot;melodrama&quot; dramas I see no problem, then it's possible that they will also call mines too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that for a dramatic scene to be effective it needs to build up all the emotional connection to achieve the drama, else it is over-drama. But where is the line separating drama and melodrama/over-drama? Is it they who are confusing definitions or is it me who have a low critique sense (which I don't)? What are the characteristics of a drama that can cause this confusion and how do I know if my story is or is close to crossing the line? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14490" LastEditorUserId="14490" LastEditDate="2017-05-27T05:04:52.167" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T05:04:52.167" Title="Tracing the line between a (genuinely) dramatic and a melodramatic/over-dramatic story" Tags="|fiction|dramatic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28301" CreationDate="2017-05-26T21:50:52.723" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, from a commercial point of view, there is nothing wrong with melodrama. People make very good livings producing melodramas, and for the most part I think they are unapologetic about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In part this is simply a matter of taste. Saying that food is sweet or spicy refers to something objective: we know what chemicals produce the sensation of sweetness and spiciness. But too sweet or too spicy are defined differently for different people. I like very spicy and not very sweet. Others have the opposite taste. So in some sense at least, what is drama to one is melodrama to the other based simply on how much drama they like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another sense, though, in which one could regard something as objectively melodramatic. This has to do with proportional responses to events. An emotional response that is out of proportion to the event that preceded it can be considered melodramatic. Someone who goes into a week long rage because they were short changed 25 cents at the store is being melodramatic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice the difference between these two meanings of the word. The first sense of the word refers to too much drama at once -- too many dramatic events piled one on top of the other, like putting six spoonfuls of sugar in your coffee. The second refers to an emotional response that is out of proportion to the event that caused it. My wife left me, my house burned down, my partner stole my savings and my dog died all on the same day is the first kind of melodrama. One of my goldfish died and I slit my wrists is the second kind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second kind can be objectively criticized for being false, for not representing human life as it is. This does not mean it will not sell. In fact, there is a great deal of literature whose success depends on it presenting human life not as it is but as some portion of the population wishes it were. Utopian and dystopian fantasies are often more popular than realistic portraits of life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, the line is purely personal. Some people like six spoons of sugar in their coffee. In the second, the line is truthfulness. It is up to you decide how much truthfulness matters to you in your writing. (It is not necessarily immoral to tell fanciful tales of happier lands.) If truthfulness does matter to you, then it is up to you be be diligent in discerning and telling the truth. But don't expect that everyone will congratulate you for it, or agree with your vision of the truth. As Jack Nicholson would say, most people can't handle the truth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T21:50:52.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28303" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-26T23:16:12.333" Score="1" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;I teach a senior design course for undergraduate engineering students at a public university. Our senior design projects are all team based, usually with three to five engineering students per team. The teams are all multidisciplinary--e.g., electrical engineers, computer engineers, mechanical engineers, etc. all working collaboratively on a given project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At present each student team coauthors a GROUP report that documents their project-level information--e.g., project history, problem statement, project concept, engineering merit and innovation, project goals and objectives, project requirements, risk management, constraints, budget, timeline, project evaluation, etc. Each student also individually authors an INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTIONS report which details that student's contributions to their group's senior design project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because these reports are scholarly works performed within academia, I need to devise a method of identifying which student(s) authored which sections(s) within the GROUP report for feedback and course grading purposes. Right now I'm considering requiring the use of bylines throughout the report so that I can unambiguously determine which student(s) authored which section(s) within the report. This copious use of bylines might appear unappealing in the finished product, and it's a practice that's not commonly used in industry, but it does solve my necessity of ascribing authorship to specific students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If multiple students coauthor a given section of the GROUP report, I will require that there be a principal author and one or more contributing coauthors. The principle author's name shall be listed first on the byline, followed by the coauthors' names. For course grading purposes, the principal author shall be fully responsible for all written content provided under their byline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would, of course, provide rules that define the criteria for qualification as a coauthor (for example, see section &quot;2. Who Is an Author?&quot; on the web page titled &quot;Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors&quot; on the &lt;em&gt;Internal Committee of Medical Journal Editors&lt;/em&gt; website).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might also allow an additional and separate &lt;em&gt;contributors&lt;/em&gt; byline to identify students who do not qualify as an author, but who contributed in some way to the writing in a given section of the report. I'm thinking of placing the contributors' byline on a new line immediately under the authors' byline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;By: Jane Smith, Frank Cedars&#xA;Contributions by: Huan Sung&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if anyone has comments regarding this proposed use of bylines, or perhaps has other suggestions for identifying authorship within group reports produced as scholarly works within academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(n.b. I've already considered and rejected the idea of a two document solution where one document is the GROUP report itself, and the second document is a &quot;key&quot; that identifies which sections within the GROUP report were authored by which students. This &quot;key&quot; document adds extra work, its upkeep is clumsy and unreliable, it's another piece of paper that must be tracked, it slows down the grading and feedback process, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24897" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T23:16:12.333" Title="Attribution of authorship within group reports in academia" Tags="|technical-writing|collaboration|authorship|writing-groups|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-06-01T18:10:44.367" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28304" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-27T06:33:40.407" Score="3" ViewCount="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hey Guys I was researching on a assignment I have to submit to my university. When i was about to copy certain information i went under the &quot;Terms of Use&quot; seeing if i could copy the said information and I saw this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The content and information displayed on the Sites are Awesome Company&#xA;  and are collectively referred to as “Awesome Company Information”. The&#xA;  downloading, reproduction, or re-transmission of this Information,&#xA;  other than for non-commercial individual use, is strictly prohibited,&#xA;  except to the extent permitted by travel agents for business-only&#xA;  purposes (The Company Name &amp;amp; Text Has Been Changed To Avoid Misunderstanding)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone please explain that if i copy any information or images from this site will i be a collaborator to plagiarism. I'll give out links for every text and image i may copy in my bibliography whence i am done with my assignment.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Thank You In Advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25098" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T13:44:06.123" Title="Copying Certain Information From A Official Website" Tags="|editing|citations|copyright|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28304" CreationDate="2017-05-27T11:28:27.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A university assignment probably falls under &quot;non-commercial individual use.&quot; You aren't making money off the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote it and cite it, don't try to pass it off as your original work, and you should be fine. Quoting and citing is not plagiarism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T11:28:27.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28304" CreationDate="2017-05-27T13:44:06.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add a little to what Lauren has said, make sure you understand the difference between copyright and plagiarism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright is the legal right to make a copy of the whole or parts of a work. Copyright automatically belongs to the person or organization that created the text, unless they sell it to someone else. Copyright holders can also licence some or all of their rights to others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright law says that people can copy parts of copyrighted works for certain purposes, such as academic criticism. This is known as the fair use doctrine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the copyright holder has licensed further rights for individual non-commercial use.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plagiarism is the act of representing someone else's work as your own. If you acknowledge the source of your content, then it is not plagiarism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are two independent concepts. If you copy more of a source than fair use or the licence granted by the owner allows, that is a copyright violation whether or not you cite your source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, in an academic paper, you copy text from a work that the owner has licensed for public use, but do not cite your source, that is still plagiarism even though it is not a copyright violation. (But note that when the owner of a copyrighted work grants you a license to use it, one of the terms of that licence may be that your must attribute your source. In that case, failure to attribute it would constitute both plagiarism and a copyright violation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, note that most academic institutions expect you to do the work yourself. Copying from a source that is licensed for individual non-commercial use and citing that source means you have not violated copyright and you have not plagiarized, but you may still fail for not having actually done the work yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T13:44:06.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28307" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-27T13:57:10.973" Score="0" ViewCount="233" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I like reading fantasy / adventure I am finding it too complex for me to write. I also like watching murder mysteries and I have read a few too. I find this type of genre a lot of fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with me is that I give up too easily. Like for instance I started planning a fantasy story for a few months now, but it's getting more complicated and I feel now like switching genres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any of you feel the same way as I do? How do you overcome it?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25040" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2017-05-28T22:26:05.687" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T22:26:05.687" Title="Finding fantasy genre a bit too complex" Tags="|creative-writing|genre|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28307" CreationDate="2017-05-27T14:13:15.633" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you say &quot;fantasy,&quot; I assume you mean &quot;world-building&quot; as well. That involves many elements, all of which are fantastic. It can become very complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, murder mysteries do not involve world-building. Characters are in a realistic location, where they say and do realistic things. The older you (the writer) get, the easier it is to write this genre, since you have a large stock of experience that you can use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you do some reading by authors Algernon Blackwood and H.P. Lovecraft. Blackwood's work can be found online, as it is past copyright. Both of them are likely to be in any well-stocked public library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend these authors because they (often, not always) write fantasy, but it is largely set in the author's own place and time. This remains understandable to us today. There is not much world to build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blackwood prefers to have a very small fantastic element, in stories that otherwise would be literal truth. Lovecraft preferred to have a larger element of fantasy, sitting beside the ordinary world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point: To get from nearly-factual murder mysteries, to largely-unfactual fantasy, start small: Read fantasy with a small or confined fantastic element. Begin here: &quot;The Wendigo&quot; by Algernon Blackwood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T14:13:15.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28307" CreationDate="2017-05-27T14:28:47.070" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't specify what length of story you are trying to write, but a novel, at full length, is a highly complex piece of work regardless of genre. If you were learning to be a programmer, you probably would not choose to write an enterprise content management system as your first project. You would find it far to complicated, not simply because of its size, but because of all the different elements of software and system design that would be involved in making it all work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most writers begin by writing short stories, simply because they are a simpler form that you can get your head around as a beginner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the short story is an artform in itself, and you may not manage to reach the heights of the great short story writers. But a great short story is something simple done extraordinarily well, and it is the simplicity you want as a beginner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short stories may not be the thing you really want to write, and there is certainly very little market for them these days, but the same is true of most of the programs you would write in your early days of learning to code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing short stories will help you learn basic story structures and, perhaps just as importantly, it will teach you to finish things, and show you that you can indeed finish things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with a project of manageable size and complexity. That way you will get to learn the basics and become comfortable with them so that it will be easier to tackle a larger project later on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T14:28:47.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28307" CreationDate="2017-05-27T15:51:56.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the modern era fantasy writing is perhaps a genre on its own. (I'm not a fan). It is more in line with traditional writing from previous centuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examine the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we took off from Charles De Gaulle the Eiffel Tower shrank to a mere child's toy. The next time I opened my eyes the skies were clear. From the cabin window I witnessed Everest in all its glory. As we approached Sydney, the sun glistened off the Opera House roof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the modern era, media has shown us images of all that is known. In writing I've no need to describe anything - the task is to ask you to recall your brain's stored images. This engages the reader and is akin to visual empathy. The method is fast and engaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fantasy requires the writer to describe images that are new to the reader, often resulting in TLDR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a psychological effect. If I write a story about a high-school romance the reader will instantly connect. If the reader hasn't experienced the same - they have witnessed the scenario and will recall the experience. The reader will build and manufacture all ancillary scenes and characters themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With fantasy you're building a world which you asking the reader to buy into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not an easy task.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T15:51:56.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28311" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-27T19:49:05.133" Score="1" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been advised to sharpen my sidekick from an &quot;intriguing second tier&quot; character to the delegate for the readers. Is there a tried and tested formula succinctly captured somewhere? I'm looking to avoid text walls, spoon feeding and a back story dump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22913" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T06:00:33.710" Title="Writing my Watson trope" Tags="|characters|plot|showing-telling|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28312" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-27T21:26:55.650" Score="1" ViewCount="320" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have decided on my antagonist for my first novel. They are pretty much being brought back to power by traitors in an otherwise squeaky clean institution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the protagonist I'm not sure about. I have several options and two in particular. They are all involved in fighting the antagonist but I'm not sure who should actually be the &quot;main&quot; character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This probably seems weird and I guess it's because I'm a novice writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of teaming all of these potential protagonists together and just let things flow for the first draft but my problem is that now I am unsure about POV which brings me to my second question: Which POV should I use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of doing multiple POVs like Game of Thrones but sometimes it makes it hard to get used to all the characters. I then think to just stick with one viewpoint. But with so many potential main characters it makes it difficult to decide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also considered writing from the antagonist's view but I want them to be feared and I don't want the reader to know what they are thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone have any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25105" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-06-17T21:20:52.963" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T23:32:15.107" Title="What should I do if I know the antagonist but too many options for protagonist?" Tags="|fiction|characters|structure|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28312" CreationDate="2017-05-27T22:10:16.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some ways to sort it out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which character will have the hardest time dealing this particular antagonist's tactics, strategies, and goals?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which character will have the hardest time doing the final thing that is necessary to defeat this antagonist? (Maybe some moral value that the character would never, ever violate.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which character will suffer the most from the specific kinds of things that this particular antagonist does?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which character is this particular antagonist most motivated to harm (or destroy)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which character has weaknesses that this antagonist is peculiarly able to exploit?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which character most strongly represents the &lt;em&gt;opposite&lt;/em&gt; of the antagonist's primary qualities?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Characters like that will have the most difficult and interesting conflicts, given the things that make your antagonist unique and interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T22:10:16.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28312" CreationDate="2017-05-27T22:17:44.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say you're a novice writer so I strongly suggest you just write! You're doing way too much thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let it flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first novel had the classic hero + villain + love interest. It took on a life of its own when the love interest decided to kill the hero and the villain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should write your first few novels for the journey, the experience. Once you've developed your characters you may find they have different plans to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had villains who really and truly thought they were the hero and heroes who are corrupted by their own halos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes its a case of putting a a fire ant, a mosquito, a beetle, and a cockroach in jar a watching what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T22:17:44.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28315" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-27T23:45:05.603" Score="4" ViewCount="435" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am capable of dreaming up interesting settings and even placing things in a world, but I have trouble dreaming up characters and plot. Example: my first aborted attempt at a steampunk story ended when I realized I had literally asked for help coming up with other steampunk-y tropes to fit in to my story. I was creating a screensaver, not a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile I read amazing, compelling, and driven stories that keep me thinking about them long after I finish. These stories have strong characters and plot. The characters act naturally and convincingly, and the plots are character-driven, not setting driven. I want to be able to write a story like these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there are a million and one variations on &quot;How do I write a good story?&quot; My specific question is &quot;How do I imagine characters and plots the way I can imagine settings?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For context, I'm trying to write an adventure delivery quest: a character discovers an ancient, terrible weapon, and has to take it to be destroyed (very Fellowship of the Rings, I know.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3666" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T20:44:34.483" Title="How do I turn a &quot;screensaver&quot; into an actual story?" Tags="|fiction|plot|character-development|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28315" CreationDate="2017-05-28T03:41:26.127" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the heart of every story (or most stories, anyway) is a character arc, and in the center of a character arc is a decision, a hard decision, a decision that will cost the character something valuable, that will make them face the question of what sort of person they are or want to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plot exists to bring the character to that moment of decision and to show what happens as a result of the decision they make. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That decision, therefore, is not a bad place to begin thinking about character and plot. One way into this is simply to ask yourself, what would it be like to have to choose between X and Y. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two key things about that choice. First, it must cost the character something. Second, the character must not want to make that choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So then your character development begins with, why is this choice hard, and why does the character resist making it. And your plot development begins with, what series of events will bring the character to the point where they have to make that choice, and what will be the consequence for them of making it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories can, of course, be more complex than this makes it sound. Frodo has many points of choice in LOTR, and (lest we forget) chooses wrongly in the final crisis. There is a huge amount of other stuff going on, and other characters have their own arcs and their own choices. But that is the bones of the thing. It is a place to start. Not, certainly, the only place to start. But it may give you some insight into who you need your characters to be and what your plot needs to put them through. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T03:41:26.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28311" CreationDate="2017-05-28T03:55:34.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the thing about Watson: he is a fully developed character. If you met him at a party, you would say to yourself, isn't that Doctor Watson? This is even more true in the Sherlock TV series (in no small part because Martin Freeman is a much better actor than Benedict Cumberbatch). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the formula for character is pretty simple: you have to be interested in them. Ask yourself, if your protagonist was hit by a bus tomorrow, would you still know who the sidekick is? Can you imagine Watson without Holmes, Sanch Panza without Don Quixote? Sam without Frodo? Hermione without Harry? Q without Bond? Jeeves without Wooster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the answer in each case is yes. Not, of course, that it would be the same story, but there would still be a story, a person capable of telling a story about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is your sidekick without your hero?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T03:55:34.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28318" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-28T04:53:49.343" Score="3" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know (I think) many stories that have a point they want to present to the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I wanted to focus on the excitement of the adventure first.&#xA;The result always seems to devolve into a dry style as though reading a manual. On the other hand, focusing too much on &quot;proving a point&quot; comes off more as preaching to the audience, and ends up muddying the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I be aiming for a happy middle ground between the two, or is it possible to write a satisfying story that revolves around the characters rather than, say, a moral?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19490" LastEditorUserId="14077" LastEditDate="2017-05-28T22:26:25.680" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T22:26:25.680" Title="&quot;just telling the tale&quot; - does this work?" Tags="|style|screenwriting|theme|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28311" CreationDate="2017-05-28T06:00:33.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no succinct tried and tested formula to do anything in literature. The technique used in the last best-seller or blockbuster is hailed as the new way but it's a futile exercise in shadow chasing. Meyer and Rice inspired several tons of rejected vampire manuscripts, Rowling and Martin did the same for epic fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I question the source of your advice. An editor is not your school-teacher. Invariably editors cannot write, hence they are editors. No child dreamed of being a book editor when they grew up. Editors are individuals there is no universal formula to please them. The first Harry Potter novel was rejected by pretty much every editor. The Bloomsbury editor wasn't overly impressed, however, his kid - was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comment regarding your sidekick may well be a symptom of something else. Wilson (Castaway) and Man Friday (Robinson Crusoe) aren't the most dynamic of sidekicks. At the other end of scale Crockett and Tubbs (Miami Vice), Murtaugh and Riggs (Lethal Weapon) are examples of sidekicks with equal billing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If YOU feel you need to enhance your sidekick there are several routes to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why are they 'friends'? Why is the sidekick a sidekick (lesser)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The hero cannot be the hero in every scene. Incapacitate the hero for a while and let the sidekick take centre-stage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The surprise (window to back-story). The sidekick saves/rescues the hero. He then clarifies it wasn't he &lt;em&gt;couldn't&lt;/em&gt; fight/shoot/drive or whatever, it was that he &lt;em&gt;didn't&lt;/em&gt; fight/shoot/drive - not since the &lt;em&gt;incident.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spent 18 months writing revisions at the publisher's request. Finally I stepped back. It was then I realised the story only vaguely resembled the original, the final draft didn't actually make any sense - and I would not put my name to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T06:00:33.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28318" CreationDate="2017-05-28T06:24:22.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you want to achieve? In the 'free market economy' bad news doesn't sell. Good must always overcome evil, wrongs must be avenged. &quot;How I got away with killing the neighbour's puppy&quot; isn't going to sell - however well it is written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;dry style&quot; is probably unrelated to whether or not your story has a moral. Writing a novel requires a different style and skill-set than other disciplines. Most people would loathe to read a 100,000 word newspaper article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully you will discover how to make your work more suspenseful and intriguing. But a linear tale of 'things that happened' is extremely hard to pull off. Readers need a reason to turn the page.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="22074" LastEditDate="2017-05-28T21:43:47.913" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T21:43:47.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28315" CreationDate="2017-05-28T08:38:00.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My high school teacher gave us some writing assignments that forced us to focus on short scenes. She would give us a picture (usually of a painting) where you  could see one person, or more, halfway through an action. Then we simply had to imagine who that person was and what was happening. This technique produced some interesting short stories and helped us to think about the motivations of the character we were just meeting. I think it might help you focus on plot and character and get the hang of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, take &lt;a href=&quot;https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/c2/36/92/c236929e4844a56ce7e266a0a8bedc5d.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this painting by Norman Rockwell&lt;/a&gt;. Just look at it and start writing the words that fit the scene. Let the characters, their wishes and their emotions bring forth the plot: does the fight lead any of the characters to rethink their marriage? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or &lt;a href=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/William_Mulready_001.jpg/641px-William_Mulready_001.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one by William Mulready&lt;/a&gt;. What could be in that letter? What will the woman do in response to it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think it's best to do these exercises with paintings as the figures are imagined. Working with photos can lead one to focus on the real story and real people. But if you prefer photos, then by all means. I do advise to choose images that allow the story to have action (in the sense there is a situation that requires the character to act, rather than sit back and reflect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most paintings I use are a bit dated (not to say a lot), but sometimes, if we swap the clothes for modern ones and swap, say, the letter for a tablet (email), you can make the situation contemporary. And there are also paintings that refer to our modern age, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.robertlenkiewicz.org/sites/default/files/rol07_032_local_children_-_fight_by_the_mayflower_steps.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one by Robert Lenkiewicz&lt;/a&gt;. But you can also take the painting and give it a steampunk or fantasy feel by imagining different clothes. &lt;a href=&quot;https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/b7/ed/7b/b7ed7b736236468bf499e3e77acc37c2.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paintings like this one by Robert Griffing&lt;/a&gt; always give me a sense of adventure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can just pick an adventure themed painting like &lt;a href=&quot;http://icanbecreative.com/resources/files/articles/apocalyptic-paintings-of-eastern-europe-war/history-steampunk.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one by Jakub Rozalski&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember the key thing about this exercise is to have one person (or more) in the middle of action. Don't start with setting but with dialogue or action and let the setting become clear as the plot progresses. Some images will only allow for a short story, but some can grow into long novels if you let them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T08:38:00.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28318" CreationDate="2017-05-28T11:37:41.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories are not about proving points. A novelist may have a point they want to push, but if the point overwhelms the story than the result can only appeal to the people who already agree with the author's point. The great novelists who had a point they wanted to make (Steinbeck, Dickens) told a story about people oppressed by the institutions they opposed and by and large left the reader to draw their own conclusions. They created an experience with sympathetic characters and in so doing won the sympathies of many who might otherwise have been indifferent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the real question you have to face here is what makes a story exciting? It is not a catalogue of incidents happening for no discernible reason to people you don't care about. Just telling the tale, in the sense of just relating the incidents of the plot, does not work because it does not create engagement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between the plot and the point, there must be a character arc. At the heart of the character arc is a moral question that the character must face. By moral question I mean simply that it is a question about values for the character. It does not have to mean the the writer is advocating for one moral system over another. But it is the moral question that the character faces, how they face it, and how they decide that provides the core of the excitement for the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will Rick remain the guy who won't stick his neck out for anyone? Will he get on the plane with Ingrid Bergman? Or will he decide the the problems of two small people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world? Will Louis let Major Strasser arrest Rick for letting Laslo escape or will he to join the resistance? These are all moral choices that the characters do not want to have to face, but are forced into facing by events. That is where you find the excitement in a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T11:37:41.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27910" CreationDate="2017-05-28T12:31:59.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When aiming for realisations there is only one narrative tool at your disposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These two things are the same &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your examples feature a Good Thing and a Bad Thing. You're already using the tool above by presenting the two things side-by-side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The internal logic of the story need never state the two things are the same or that they are causally linked. For example me being however good at swordfights, and these other guys being twice as good, are not causally linked to each other, and that's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You present the Good and Bad Things side-by-side and are wondering how this can do anything other than corrupt the Good Thing. Well you've already done it with &quot;the swordsmen outside my village are super strong&quot;. You compare the protagonist's skill and the strangers' and come out with a positive realization rather than the negative one: &quot;I am really weak&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now &quot;I am really weak&quot; does feature in the story. But that realisation comes later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine the first time the protagonist meets and is rescued by a foreign swordsman whose skills far exceed their own. The prevailing state of mind is &quot;Wow! This guy is amazing&quot;. It's not until later when the rescuer brings the protagonist back to his camp where everyone is that skilled that the realisation &quot;I am really weak&quot; appears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what makes the realisations happen in the order they do, and not the opposite way around?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These two things are the same&lt;/strong&gt; is only a realisation if we used to think the two were different. We used to think the Good Thing and Bad thing were unrelated. Now it is revealed they are the same. This leads to cognitive dissonance for the reader. The two things are the same so they must be either both good or both bad. One of them is forced to change, and this is your realisation. You want to control which half does the changing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The less important half changes. The one less established in the reader's mind changes. The first part of the story focuses on the protagonist's village and how skilled they are. We know that. It's well established. So when an outsider  appears and suddenly makes a fool of the protagonist, our view of the protagonist does not change. Our view of the outsider is what changes. They come off as super good, &quot;Wow! This guy is amazing&quot; rather than the protagonist coming off as super bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the perspective shifts away from the protagonist's village, and onto this camp of amazing warriors. Once we get used to being there, once that camp s established in our mind, our view of the protagonist is free to change. They come off as bad and the strange warriors become normal. &quot;Oh no I am really weak!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to make it the other way around&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make the two realisation happen the other way, you have to change what is established first by refocusing the narrative. First present the foreign warriors. Then introduce the protagonist. This time we are used to them. Their skill level is normal to us. This time he is the outsider. This time he comes off as weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then refocus onto the protagonist. Establish his lack of skills in the story. Then the foreign warriors come off as strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most straightforward way to do this is, rather than the narrative following the protagonist, it follows one of the foreign warriors. Once the two meet the choice of narrator might not make a difference. Or you could swap back and forth from that point on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exercise:&lt;/strong&gt; This shows how to put an earlier realisation the other way around. Use an analogous method to put the final realisation the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24792" LastEditorUserId="24792" LastEditDate="2017-05-28T12:37:41.873" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T12:37:41.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27910" CreationDate="2017-05-28T15:03:52.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not as fantasy orientated as the majority of members. Nor am I a fan of &quot;Disney&quot; plots, stories written for the purpose for being popular. Unfortunately the tribal nature of society does not allow for others to 'win'. Germans, terrorists, Russians, Injuns cannot be heroes in popular. Making an 'other' to be a hero or obtain the moral ground impacts sales. Any writer who defies this 'convention' is considered 'breakthrough'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another comment I quoted Shakespeare: &quot;There is neither good nor bad, only thinking makes it so.&quot; Applied to an intelligent story telling can be translated as one man's hero is another man's villain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perspective and empathy are important in good literature. If we look at the real world we can examine the following statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The only western nation who believes in capital punishment and incarcerates more of its citizens (disproportionately African-American) is obsessed with Nazis and believes they are 'bad'.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great stories need not provide instant gratification. At the end of Bible the hero dies . . . but on reflection . . . that's okay . . . apparently he died to save our sins - who knew?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Endings of stories such as &quot;Man of Fire&quot;, &quot;Book of Eli&quot;, &quot;Shane&quot; (Did he die or not?) There was no positive ending to &quot;Romeo and Juliet&quot; or &quot;Kramer vs Kramer&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It boils down to the difference between 'great literature' and 'pop literature'. If you're looking to fill your bank account tomorrow 'uplifting' stories with 'positive' endings are the way to go. If you're looking to write a great story it needs to leave something to be discussed. James Patterson will never make a college reading list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T15:03:52.127" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28318" CreationDate="2017-05-28T16:33:07.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Just telling the tale&quot; doesn't work. It's not enough to &quot;show what.&quot; The more interesting task is to show &lt;em&gt;why.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the children's tale of &quot;The Tortoise and the Hare.&quot; A tortoise challenged a hare to a footrace. All the other animals came to see the &quot;lopsided&quot; race. The hare got off to a good start, took a large early lead, and then went to sleep halfway through the course. The tortoise persisted, overtook the hare, built a lead, and got to the finish line first, despite a late burst by the hare. That's a &quot;show what&quot; story that is suitable only for children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most adults would be interested in the &quot;show whys.&quot; Why did the tortoise challenge the hare to a race at long odds? Was s/he tired of the hare's boasting. Did the tortoise feel that the hare would be overconfident and not take the race seriously, or perhaps had earlier observed the hare's tendency to procrastinate? Was the hare &quot;hung over&quot; on the day of the race, and did s/he have a drinking problem? Any of these factors would &quot;shorten&quot; the odds, and make the challenge less improbable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look afterward. Would the hare challenge the tortoise, the new &quot;champion&quot; to a rematch. Would the tortoise dare to accept? Or would the tortoise &quot;retire&quot; from the field, having made a point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T16:33:07.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28294" CreationDate="2017-05-28T19:46:42.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Putting aside what makes a novel specifically, I don't believe every story needs a conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think we can all agree the phone book is not a story. But this is not for lack of conflict, but for lack of &lt;strong&gt;possibilities&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes an account into a story is the possibility for something to change. And that change must be visible before it happens. The reader must understand that &quot;It could go like this or it could go like that&quot; without needing to be told. (For the best stories it is usually both or neither). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is over once whatever &lt;strong&gt;it&lt;/strong&gt; is comes to a head. Of course that story might just be a single chapter/paragraph/line of a longer story or novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Me and Mommy in the Park&quot; becomes a story when the writer is separated from Mommy and gets lost. Suddenly two possibilities spring up. Does the writer get back to their Mommy or not? I think it would be hard to phrase this story in terms of a conflict. There is certainly no antagonist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What a conflict is, is a way to make two possibilities visible to the reader, by incarnating each possibility as a person. I want things to go down like this, but he wants things to go down like that. Bingo bango you have your possibilities. The story cannot end before one possibility asserts itself over the other. And one way to make this obvious is for one person to assert themself over the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comedy routines like you mention carry a story but it is not the story as written. The story is &quot;is this the punchline or is that the punchline?&quot; And these stories rely on the fact you know it is a comedy routine to function. So very young children might regard the routine as &quot;stupid&quot; because they don't know what to look out for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyL5mAqFJds&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Monthy Python&lt;/a&gt; routines tend to carry a story as written but no punchline type of story. Those routines don't exactly have punchlines. This makes the little sketch transitions more important than you might think. It would feel incomplete for that sketch to end just before &quot;Let's look at that handshake in slow motion&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24792" LastEditorUserId="24792" LastEditDate="2017-05-28T20:03:13.970" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T20:03:13.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28082" CreationDate="2017-05-29T00:09:09.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem to be worried about &quot;defamation&quot; which consists of publishing statements that are 1) false 2)  reasonably (and wrongly) believed to be true) and 3) are &quot;highly offensive&quot; to a reasonable third party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, truth is a defense against &quot;defamation&quot; (although you can get into trouble on other grounds if you publish private facts like someone's social security number). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, labeling something as fiction is a defense, although an imperfect one, against people believing that it is, in fact, true. Basically, you have to avoid being so factual with part of your story that people believe that the rest is also factual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third, and perhaps most important issue, is that the target has to be defamed &lt;em&gt;in the eyes of reasonable third parties.&lt;/em&gt;  So something like Mr. X thinking, &quot;I met with Virginia for two hours and I think she's describing me&quot; doesn't constitute defamation. What would constitute defamation is someone going up to Mr. X and saying, &quot;I'm not going to hire/do business/associate with you because of what I read about you in Virginia's book&quot; (which happened to be untrue). No reasonable person would do this unless your book described Mr. X to a degree of &quot;granularity&quot; that it would make it practically impossible to believe that your character is anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even the &quot;defamation&quot; has to pass the reasonable person test. A suit by a former beauty queen was thrown out because the book accused her of having sex while levitating in mid-air, a physical impossibility. In the late 1970s, a judge threw out a suit by someone being called a &quot;bastard&quot; by noting 1) the term was in common use and 2) one of out of every four Americans was then being born out of wedlock, meaning that someone could not reasonably be defamed by a term that accurately described that many people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer and am answering as a writer, and prospective juror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-29T00:16:07.697" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T00:16:07.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24561" CreationDate="2017-05-29T01:07:48.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like you are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a &quot;mean and dark type.&quot; Then you have to base those characters on people who are, instead of having them sound like you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way is to pattern those characters on a friend, or more likely an acquaintance, that fits the bill. Almost everyone knows someone like &quot;Eddie Haskell&quot; from &quot;Leave it to Beaver,&quot; the smiling, pleasant teenager up front, who has a dark side that delights in making people misunderstand each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know such people in real life, you may have to compensate by finding such people in fiction, and getting to know them as well as you can. You might start with the characters in the &quot;Godfather.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T01:07:48.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24561" CreationDate="2017-05-29T05:21:24.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before you start writing any story, form the key characters and situations in your head (or on a sheet of paper). For each key character, list down their characteristics, backgrounds, and other details you would like to communicate to your reader in written or non-written manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The details that you write down, like the age and look are simple to communicate. The character's characteristics like honesty will be reflected from the way he/she reacts to different situations. Finally, the background of the character or the origin, will have an impact not only on how the character reacts to different situations but also how he/she speaks. Like a college going student is going to speak differently than a retired service-man. However, there will be certain similarities if they come from the same family - we often catch a lot of mannerisms and words (or speaking manners) from our elders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to practice this is to observe people. Whenever you are in a public place, keep your ears and eyes open. Listen to people or just observe them from a distance (I don't mean offensive staring or stalking, in any way). Slowly, they will start becoming characters in your head and then give them all voices, a background and other details. Have them converse. It helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24877" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T05:21:24.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28082" CreationDate="2017-05-29T05:27:08.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sure hope not... all my characters are 'inspired' by very real people I know. Even my stories contain real situations that I have been in or someone I know has been in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I am sure, no it is not illegal. If you have copied each and every bit of their personality, you can always give them credit and let them know. If they would have any objections, they would let you know. However, since you say you have met people for a couple of hours and they have inspired some characters in your story - then, dear friend, you cant know a person completely in a short time span. You may have reflected on the traits that you could capture but not all. So, I believe even if they read your work, they wont be able to identify that it is based on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are so many characters that are based on real people. Even the same person can be an inspiration for multiple characters. It all depends on how the author pens down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24877" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T05:27:08.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28294" CreationDate="2017-05-29T08:01:25.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stories need conflict&lt;/strong&gt; - that's a rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rules are there to be broken&lt;/strong&gt; - that's another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there's the unbreakable one, about when the rules can be broken: &lt;em&gt;when you know what you're doing.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story when the author failed to create a conflict - through negligence, lack of skill, or burn-out, or whatever lame excuse - are &lt;em&gt;boring&lt;/em&gt;. Yes, you can create one, and no, it won't be good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a conflict is such an inherent part of every known story, that subverting it can achieve great results when done right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very rare the conflict will vanish completely. It may do so in some jokes, especially &lt;em&gt;groaners&lt;/em&gt;. It may be completely vestigial in slice-of-life, documentary, mood pieces. Sometimes it will be merely implied. In more &quot;active&quot; genres the more likely approach is subversion: consciously &quot;murdering&quot; the obvious conflict and replacing it with a more subtle and less obvious one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give an example of the latter: One Punch Man manga. It's humorous, but simultaneously cynically bitter. The protagonist is a superhero, who can beat every single enemy with a single punch. Which totally ruins the obvious conflict of the typical superhero story (which &quot;One Punch Man&quot; pretends to be). That's boring! And that boredom is lampshaded to ludicrous levels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the actual conflict: man versus self; protagonist versus own boredom. He's so powerful he has no room to develop. No super-villain is powerful enough to stand in his way. And so we have the &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; conflict - search for friendship, recognition, challenge, overcoming simple daily routine difficulties - all in a world wrecked by supervillains he can dispose of with one punch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T08:01:25.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28315" CreationDate="2017-05-29T08:15:46.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the same problem when I was a kid, and I solved it by understanding the concept of &lt;strong&gt;Action&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your stories you have people (characters). It's not a story until they &lt;strong&gt;DO&lt;/strong&gt; something, and this something &lt;strong&gt;changes&lt;/strong&gt; something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So put a guy in your amazing setting, and let something &lt;strong&gt;happen&lt;/strong&gt; to him, or make him do something. And remember that stories are built on &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt;. Rick is a skilled scavenger, &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; one day he gets arrested by the corporation. Jenny wants to become a jet pilot &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; she gets kicked out of the academy. B3X7 is a dutiful droid, &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; it discovers to have feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T08:15:46.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28294" CreationDate="2017-05-29T11:59:28.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know the eastern tradition well enough to comment on whether or not it has stories without conflict. But of course, this depends on what you mean by story. But then the question is not about stories, it is about novels and the novel is not an eastern art form. It was invented in the west within the culture of the west. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that does not help much because it depends on how you define the word novel, which gets defined broadly or narrowly by different people for different purposes (see Walter Scott's distinction between novel and romance, mentioned here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is just how language works. There are not enough words for all the things we want to talk about, so words are used with different degrees of specificity and scope depending on the kind of argument you want to make. Any serious work of argument, therefore, has to begin by defining its terms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, one could argue that all humor requires conflict because the essence of humor is the conflict between expectation and reality. The fork handles sketch is funny because of the conflict between the expectation the Ronnie Barker wanted four candles when he actually wanted fork handles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you might argue that that is not conflict, just a misunderstanding. But that is not a disagreement about substance, it is simply a preference for a different definition of the word conflict. Behind it is (one hopes) a desire to make an argument about the real world, not simply an attempt to claim prior right of definition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to get to the substance of the matter is often to reframe the debate without the use of the contentious word. So let me take a stab at defining story without using &quot;conflict&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story (for my immediate purpose here) is a fictional narrative in which a change of state takes place which engages the interest of human beings. The key components of this definitions are fictional (it did not happen) change (something is different at the end than at the beginning) and interest (the change captures our attention). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a fictional narrative in which nothing changes is not, for my purpose, a story. Call it a vignette, if you like. It is out of scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what makes a change interesting? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that what makes a change interesting is how that change affects our lives. If the river is higher today than yesterday, that is interesting to me if my house is beside the river and I might get flooded out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But such a change is only interesting when it is true. If someone tells me the river is rising and I look out the window and see that it isn't, I lose interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question becomes, what type of change is interesting even when we know it isn't true? I believe the answer to that is changes that involve making decisions. But not all decisions are interesting. The interesting ones are those with consequences. Decisions with consequences are hard to make because we then have to live with the consequences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making difficult decisions requires not only knowledge and skill, but also courage. Difficult decisions are the pivot points of human life. They are moments in which we commit ourselves in irrevocable ways that change our lives and the lives of others. As with any other difficult task, we like to rehearse for difficult decisions. We like to draw inspiration from the brave decisions of others. We like to explore the potential consequences of deciding one way or another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories are how we do this. Stories are how we explore and prepare for making hard decisions in our lives. We read them for comfort, for reassurance, for courage, for guidance, and for inspiration, because we know that from time to time we have to make hard decisions ourselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this analysis is correct, then a story (a fictional narrative the involves change and evokes interest) requires the protagonist to make a difficult decision with consequences for themselves and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where does this leave us in regards to conflict? What makes a decision difficult is that it involves a choice between two values. (Thus my frequent assertion that all stories are fundamentally moral -- they are about a choice of values.) A choice between two values strikes me as a conflict. This is, finally, a matter of definition though. If you choose to narrow the definition of conflict to only apply when punches are thrown, for instance, then you can certainly have a story (by my definition) without conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then I would have to ask what larger point you were trying to make in defining conflict in a way that would exclude it from some instances of story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T11:59:28.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26815" CreationDate="2017-05-29T12:05:52.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you create a character that thinks and acts like a non-well off person from a poor or middle class background (adopts their values, hangs around with such people, etc., even though s/he can afford &quot;better.&quot;  Then you have intrusions by people from the person's blood family who feel like some unwelcome, half-forgotten distant relatives, except that these people are parents and/or siblings. And, of course, when the person dates, it will be someone the family looks down their noses on, but someone who has obvious &quot;non-wealthy&quot; virtues that the audience can relate to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so you have the audience rooting for your hero/ine against their rich, spoiled relatives. Because &quot;rich and spoiled&quot; (especially the latter) is something your main character clearly is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T12:05:52.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24561" CreationDate="2017-05-29T12:30:58.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dialogue a very difficult subject for a 'typical' writer. Dialogue needs to heard and cannot really be learned from a book. And unless you've a diverse group of friends you've no source material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you probably need to unlearn everything you've learned about grammar and prose. (If MS Word doesn't put green lines under my dialogue I revisit it). Real people repeat words and phrases and have generally poor grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unless your story uses diverse characters they'll all sound the same. If your story features five teens from Alabama - they will all sound the same.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be mindful of your target audience. The reader has to possess 'decoding' information i.e have knowledge of what type of people speak &lt;em&gt;that way&lt;/em&gt;. With the target reader the dialogue can do 'everything'. There's no need for separate 'scene-setting' or 'characterisation'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Kelly joined her friends at the canteen table. &quot;Wassup, bitches!&quot; she said, setting down her tray.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scene is set: you have a good idea &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; these people are and &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; these people are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Culture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different cultures and locales speak different ways, using different words to describe the same thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Age&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Language changes with generations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Respectable young ladies should wear a frock when they attend church,&quot; said the minister.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thinking as write - it's pretty much everything. Sex: girls are unlikely to use sports metaphors. Profanities: some will use them, some won't.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Characterisation dictates dialogue, dialogue drives characterisation. Temperament is also a factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you get it right . . . the latter part of your story needs very few dialogue tags because the words could only come from one character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Debra Morgan from the Dexter series said the F-word over 100 times in the first eight season. There were some very exclusive combinations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T12:30:58.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24561" CreationDate="2017-05-29T13:12:48.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main thing that distinguishes the speech of different characters is what they say, not how they say it. If you understand the motives and the fears of every characters in your scene, and if you make sure that every word they speak proceeds from their fears and desires, then their speech will seem distinct and authentic. Only Fred would say that is fundamentally more distinguishing than only Fred would say it like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, remember that fictional dialogue is not like regular speech. Regular speech relies on a bunch of clues and cues that are not present on the page. The words themselves therefore have to do more of the work. Some authors do attempt to record all of the clues and cues of real speech but it does not usually work well because the way we receive and interpret such clues and cues in everyday life is largely subconscious. An actor has access to the communication channel, an author of prose does not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, remember that regular speech is often disorganized and hard to follow because people don't always express themselves well or think through what they want to say. Reproducing all of this in fiction is usually tedious. The point of most dialogue is not to paint a portrait of human speech as it is in the wild but to advance the plot of the story, to reveal motivation or conflict, or to pass information. Reproducing the chaos and hesitancy of real speech would simply get in the way of the job you need the dialogue to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, in real life, most people who converse on a regular basis have very similar patterns of speech. We are social and tribal animals with a natural tendency to imitate each other as a sign or our willingness to fit in with the group. (You can observe this behavior very easily in children, especially around three to five, when imitative play and mimicry of speech and action is a huge part of their daily activities.) Where authors do reach for different speech patterns in fiction, therefore, is when the introduce a stranger into the mix. The difference in speech patterns is a way of emphasising their otherness.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus fictional dialogue is an artifice that is often very different in sound and in purpose from ordinary human speech. For the most part, therefore, you distinguish characters more by what they say than by how they say it, you tidy up the untidiness of human diction, and you say more in words and less in actions than occurs in real human speech. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T13:12:48.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26815" CreationDate="2017-05-29T13:25:22.867" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;We hate those things that keep us from the things we love. If a character hates being a member of a wealthy family, it is because that family, or its wealth, or its responsibilities, keep them from something they love, or harms the thing they love. To write hatred simply as hatred, therefore, is never convincing. You have to start with love, and the thing that keeps that character from the things they love, or that harms the things they love. Then their hate makes sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have to save the old dance hall/beach/donut shop/park from the evil developer who turns out (shock twist!) to be the heroine's father. Cue the dance number!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T13:25:22.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28294" CreationDate="2017-05-29T13:25:32.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the naysayers - here's a plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After teaching the final lesson of the semester, a school teacher (also a single mother) gives her mixed-race son's girlfriend a lift home. During the journey the girl asks the teacher about her boyfriend's father. The teacher, through a series of flashbacks recalls the day she met they boy's father. They met in a cafe after unsuccessfully attending the same job interview. He was an Afircan-American. Using alcohol as a catalyst they console each other . . . after which they go to her place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are awoken in the night. A fire breaks out in the apartment block. He saves her by passing her through a window to the fire officers. When they return to attempt save him he seems to have no interest - he perishes in the fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The teacher has revealed her shame- she knew her father for only one day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where's the conflict? How's that not a story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T13:25:32.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28090" CreationDate="2017-05-29T16:43:17.283" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is perhaps a bit cavalier, but I'm going to say it anyway. A blog needs either a personality or an editorial calendar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are interested in people, particularly in people whose interests are the same as theirs. If you find a blog in a field that interests you that is written by somebody with a distinctive voice and some interesting things to say, you will follow the and you will give them a lot of slack when their posting schedule is erratic and when they sometimes get a bit off topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a personality and an interest that is shared by other people, then you are probably fine just to write what you want when you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a corporation that is creating a blog as a content marketing tool, then, almost by definition, you don't have a personality or anything interesting to say and you have plan very carefully to give the reader the appearance that you do. In this case, you definitely need an editorial calendar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T16:43:17.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28260" CreationDate="2017-05-29T17:01:45.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have adopted a complicated, &quot;elite&quot; format, with a surprising &quot;twist&quot; ending to the scene. I'm not sure that you were successful, but you made your point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You had two interlocking themes, the mundane, (that is the pastor's homily), and the &quot;real&quot; one. There's your distinction between the elite and the least common denominator. The mundane stuff keeps the attention of the average person, while the surprise event captures your intended audience. It'sh hard to execute well, but if you can, you can appeal to both audiences. For instance, I'm not sure how to work the prison angle into your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently there are some writers that specialize in these surprise twists. They are hard to execute but can be very interesting when successful You might want to identify and copy these authors. I have the feeling that you are onto something, but haven't yet arrived. Your scene reminds me of one or two in Tom Wolfe's &quot;Bonfire of the Vanities.&quot; You might want to consult that book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-30T15:28:18.370" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T15:28:18.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12445" CreationDate="2017-05-29T17:34:31.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Spears and Tebow are polar opposite cases and therefore worth discussing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spears is well known for her indiscretions. So if you had a character call her a &quot;whore,&quot; that would probably fall under the category of &quot;fair comment.&quot; Basically, you can't defame someone if their actual reputation matches what you called them, even if it is not literally true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tebow, on the other hand, has a squeaky clean image, and works hard to maintain it. Any statement that mars that image will &quot;do damage&quot; so it ought to be factual, or at least &quot;compelling&quot; (the legal standard) to the average person. Alleging illegal drug use is alleging a violation of the law, so there needs to be reasonable grounds for such an accusation; far more than someone being a &quot;whore.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are public figures. For them to win a suit, they would have to prove either actual malice or &quot;reckless disregard&quot; for the truth, meaning that &quot;mistake&quot; is a defense. For instance, if there was a photo of Tebow holding a &quot;bong,&quot; inferring that he used marijuana would probably not be &quot;reckless,&quot; even though he factually never did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, and am answering as a writer and prospective juror, &quot;trier of fact.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T17:34:31.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28343" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28354" CreationDate="2017-05-29T22:56:40.590" Score="4" ViewCount="1776" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a story that is primarily told from one POV character (third-person limited). However, plotted within this story are a few chapters from other characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of my multiple-POV research relates to dividing the whole book into alternating character POVs. The articles suggest that each POV character should have a character arc, be unique, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, I'm exploring adding a few chapters with a different POVs and largely not returning to these POVs later. The characters may continue to exist and be pertinent to the story, though they may not tell the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q:&lt;/strong&gt; Is this okay? Will this be jarring? Is it odd?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 -- A side-character is struggling with a moral dilemma. I want to show one chapter of her reflecting on the protagonist's advice and making a change. This plays strongly in her decision to help the protagonist later. Benefits: rounds out the character, provides more world information, foreshadows information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Alternatively, I could get creative with showing some of this detail from the main protagonist, though potentially lose the closeness of this side-character's thoughts and trials.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 -- The community manager of a popular tournament is interviewed live on TV. Besides the interview, this character won't be seen much in the story. This allows me to hype the upcoming events. That this is a once in a lifestyle experience for thousands of participants. It also allows me to info-dump in a more creative and interesting way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Alternatively, I could show the interview on TV that my character is watching. I don't get to show the effort, stress, and work that's going into the event, though I could portray a lot of the required information.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q:&lt;/strong&gt; Given that most of the book is from one POV, would you skip using other POVs for a handful of chapters? Or do you feel that you could add more to the story by switching POV, even if it's done irregularly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3035" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-05-30T17:05:32.587" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T17:09:47.283" Title="What happens with changing POV Irregularly?" Tags="|creative-writing|novel|viewpoint|pov|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28344" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30809" CreationDate="2017-05-29T23:53:06.180" Score="1" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without regard to genre, is there a commonly accepted term for the various ways that book content can be presented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, consider the following (an incomplete list):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dialogue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diaries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Letters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Case studies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Examples&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analogies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Illustrations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Foldouts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Popups&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scratch 'n' sniffs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As best I can tell, the terms &quot;literary device&quot; and &quot;narrative device&quot; are used to describe plot, theme, PoV, voice, and such and do not include the actual presentations. Of course I could use the word &quot;presentations&quot; as a collective term, or perhaps &quot;exhibits&quot;, but is there already an accepted term in the book world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11559" LastEditorUserId="11559" LastEditDate="2017-05-30T00:57:45.693" LastActivityDate="2017-10-14T21:51:31.567" Title="Commonly accepted term for ways to present book content?" Tags="|fiction|technique|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28343" CreationDate="2017-05-30T00:32:55.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m not a head-hopper writer. I keep view point characters focused in distinct scenes or chapters. Romance writers may make an exception and head hop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a personal rule of thumb, the more viewpoint characters I explore the farther the narration takes place. In my opinion it depends upon the distance you intend to narrate your story. That’s key in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: Take Game of Thrones, a 3rd person omniscient story exploring a variety characters. It must be distant with so many characters and switching plots all over the place, which may lead and tie into the final and ultimate conflict against the White Walkers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine if Game of Thrones were written in Deep point of view. Each book would be massive. Each character having an arc and exploring the world from their own point of view as opposed to an outside narrator telling you.  I couldn’t even begin to imagine, but at the same time it sounds like a cool idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you head hop, it may be frowned upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24930" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T00:32:55.940" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28343" CreationDate="2017-05-30T01:03:02.500" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two things will make it less jarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, establish the pattern early, so the reader quickly learns what to expect. And once you establish the pattern, maintain it to some extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, follow up on the POV characters so we know how things turned out for them. Readers will expect viewpoint characters to matter to the story. And they expect the events in those chapters to matter to the story. If you don't show how those people and events turned out, they become &quot;loose ends&quot;, and readers will feel vaguely (or distinctly) unsatisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the protagonist witnesses how things turn out, you can show these things in the protagonist's viewpoint. I think it's less satisfying if they happen off stage, and protagonist merely hears reports about them, but that may be a matter of personal preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T01:03:02.500" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28343" CreationDate="2017-05-30T06:45:47.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've answered this question before. Changing POV is one of writing's simpler tasks. It need not be confined to a chapter or a complete novel. You change POV whenever it suits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The narrative following an action by a character is that character's POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lucy stared out of the window into the darkness. This night had been the longest, coldest night ever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming this is not a post-apocalyptic tale set in Antarctica. The statement following her action is subjective and can only be her POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T06:45:47.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12445" CreationDate="2017-05-30T07:12:49.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question needs to be more specific. Under the heading of comedy and satire you can do almost anything (Watch a bit of Saturday Night Live).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends the style of writing I continually rail against 'telling' - stating conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a dark corner of the restaurant we saw Donald Trump taking money from drug-dealers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a dark corner of the restaurant I saw an orange-faced man accept a briefcase full of cash from some Russian speaking gentlemen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Isn't that Donald Trump?&quot; I asked my date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Could be,&quot; she replied, squinting. &quot;But, nah, don't think so. It's just some old guy using his Twitter account.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T07:12:49.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28343" CreationDate="2017-05-30T11:16:52.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just hate the common categorization scheme for point of view and voice. It is so misleading and causes so much unnecessary anxiety, not to mention awkward narration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To begin with, point of view and identity of the narrator are different things. You can have a character as narrator or the storyteller as narrator, but this has no necessary impact on point of view. The narrating character can choose to tell you of events they did not witness or report the thoughts of characters other than themselves. The narrating storyteller can choose to report only the things seen and thought by a single character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words the choice to stay inside the head of one character is orthogonal to the choice to have one of the characters be the narrator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, grammatical person has nothing to do with either of these choices. While a character as narrator necessarily speaks of themselves in the first person, most of what they narrate will not be about themselves and will be written in the third person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dave and I want to the Beach. Dave bought a hot dog and then went swimming. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That second sentence is in third person. QED.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, the whole notion of &quot;omniscient POV&quot; is bogus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dave and I want to the beach. Dave spent most of the day brooding about Laura.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does our character/narrator know what Dave was brooding about? Are they God? Or are they, perhaps, simply a friend of Dave's who knows his history and his moods and can read him pretty well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that the novelist cannot have access to the private thoughts of a character, even those that his best friends could not guess at, but this is not a God-like power, it is simply the narrative privilege, and there is no inherent reason or rule why the the character as narrator cannot exercise the narrative privilege. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when you have problems in these areas, I think the first thing you should do is ask yourself is whether you have actually done something jarring, or if you are just in technical violations of these nonsensical POV categories. If you have not done anything jarring, you are golden. None but the most doctrinaire reader is even going to register any of these categories unless they are first jarred out of the narrative by jarring narrative flaw. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find you have done something jarring, then ask yourself, is this jarring because I have followed these nonsensical POV categories in a way that produces a jarring result. If so, violate the categories willfully until the result ceases to be jarring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can never do successfully is decide if any narrative device is jarring or not based on this or any of the other paint by numbers writing rules, such as show don't tell. It is jarring if it is jarring. Studying narrative conventions is indeed a good way to train yourself not to be jarring, and to develop techniques that help you avoid being jarring. Unfortunately many of the paint by numbers writing rules actually force you into being jarring rather than keep you from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T11:16:52.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28260" CreationDate="2017-05-30T11:49:55.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To appeal to a broad audience, write simply and directly about things of interest to a great many people. Nothing in this formula stands in the way of creating great literature. Greatness in literature depends on creating a rich and enduring experience that is deeply true and exceedingly vivid, not in complexity of language or in complex narrative techniques or stylistic innovation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And while there clearly examples of narrative and stylistic experimentation in works commonly acknowledged to be great -- Dickens, Joyce, Cormac McCarthy for just a few examples -- this kind of experimental technique is often a substitute for having something to say. And the fact remains that the basic techniques of narrative fiction always seem to return more or less to the norm. Give or take a few flourishes Cervantes narrative technique is not fundamentally different from what is being published today. Over the history of the novel we find significant variation of theme and diction and even point of view, but the basic narrative technique is remarkable consistent. Some experiments may work in individual books -- may perhaps achieve something that could not have been achieved with standard techniques -- but they don't change the way the mainstream operates.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the greats sometimes seem obscure today it is because they were written years ago with a narrative style that we are not used to and relying on references to events and practices that modern audiences are no longer familiar with. This is why it is often the more educated that read the greats today -- they simply have the historical knowledge and the research skills to figure this stuff out. But in its day, most of what we now consider great (in novels at least) was written for the general reading public. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to appreciating the experience provided by a great story, there is no elite and no base. There is an effete class that only likes what others do not understand (whether they understand it themselves or not), but you should never confuse the effete with the elite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-05-31T02:21:14.670" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T02:21:14.670" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28352" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-30T13:57:01.047" Score="2" ViewCount="168" Body="&lt;p&gt;When journalists get an assignment to interview someone in an industry they aren’t familiar with, or write on a new topic, how do they familiarise with context-specific vocabulary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25129" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T21:41:00.640" Title="How do journalists prepare to cover unfamiliar fields?" Tags="|journalism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28343" CreationDate="2017-05-30T14:25:05.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using a certain character's point of view to describe a particular event in your story is nothing more than a technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q: Is this okay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it is. It had been done time and time again, and it will be done as many a time as there are stories to be told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Selection of the point of view to me is akin to choosing a right file from my tool cabinet. Do I use a flat one, square one, round one, or triangular? That largely depends on the kind of a hole I am making so the peg I have will fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a well-developed cast of characters (where every person is actually different from another), it would be a great time to employ multiple POV and choose, through whose eyes you allow the readers to see some events you are describing, because you can thus add a layer of subjectivity of each of your cast members to the perception of the said events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are unveiling a complex who-done-it mystery, you might employ multiple POV technique, because it shows the limits of the single person's knowledge of the situation, thus keeping the tension going, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons for switching POVs are many.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q: Will this be jarring? Is it odd?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only if you make it so, and here are no recipes, but try and see for yourself. Changing POVs is often tied to a chapter/scene breaks, to give the reader a chance to take a breath, but I have seen it done in one scene as well, and it was not always &lt;em&gt;head-hopping&lt;/em&gt; jarring; it all depends on how you &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; it on a sentence level, and there are, again, no recipes, except for... ahm... &lt;em&gt;write well&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you tell your story for twenty chapters through the eyes of the pirate ship captain, and then, all of a sudden, switch the POV to the one of his only friend--his pet parrot--you better have a good reason to do it (like the captain gets whacked) and the way to set it up and prepare your reader for the abrupt switch, but, once again, it is only for you to decide, if you need it or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T14:25:05.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28352" CreationDate="2017-05-30T15:26:46.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really isn't possible to bone up on the vocabulary of a field in a few hours. The vocabulary of a field exists to express experiences, distinctions, and idea that are unique to that field. In other words, its vocabulary is tied to its history and community, and you can't bone up on those things in a few hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two things seem to work as well as you can expect them to (this is based more on observing the results rather than the process, since my journalism career was brief). One is to find an expert in the field who is adept at explaining things in terms the public can understand. This is why networks like CNN have their stable of pet scientists that they trot out whenever they need some newsworthy scientific event explained to the public. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other is for a journalist to devote their career to reporting on a particular field, so that they actually do have the time to bone up on the ideas and the vocabulary of the field and the background to understand and explain new developments when they arise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you need someone, either the subject or the journalist, to have one foot on both sides of the divide. If you are not already the journalist with one foot on both sides, your best bet would be to look for an interview subject who has. Devoting you research time to finding that person, rather than trying to become an overnight expert, might be a better use of your time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T15:26:46.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28357" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-30T15:40:51.160" Score="0" ViewCount="750" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is regarding the formation of dialogue in a short story. Can dialogue in a short story be formed the way they are formed in a play? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teacher (sternly): What are you doing, Sam?&#xA;Sam (looking down): Nothing, Sir.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25130" LastEditorUserId="25130" LastEditDate="2017-05-30T17:07:33.553" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T17:07:33.553" Title="Dialogue in Short Stories" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28260" CreationDate="2017-05-30T15:50:51.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you try to please everyone, you please no-one.  &lt;em&gt;Finnegan's Wake&lt;/em&gt; (Joyce) has gained and retained a reputation as a great classic of the English language, despite working hard at every turn to confound and confuse the reader (and arguably not even being written in real &quot;English&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your writing is good enough, and if you are true enough to your own personal vision, you are likely to gain at least a niche audience of passionate fans, which has been enough to keep many a book alive for centuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, books that appeal to a broad popular audience do so because their authors are naturally at home (or have found a way to make themselves at home) with a broadly popular idiom or genre, not because they have deliberately tried to &quot;dumb down&quot; their work.  In other words, they are attuned to the broader audience, not chasing it (and certainly not condescending to it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2017-05-30T19:14:52.180" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T19:14:52.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28357" CreationDate="2017-05-30T16:24:10.507" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dialogue is dialogue. There are established conventions which readers know for defining dialogue within test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why you want to challenge these conventions - only God knows. There is no point in changing convention for stylistic reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T16:24:10.507" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28357" CreationDate="2017-05-30T16:51:55.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can format dialog any way you like. Keep in mind that non-standard forms require you to make extra efforts to make sure readers understand (1) this is dialog and (b) who's speaking now. Playwriting conventions are clear about both those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you don't want the form of the work (including the form of the dialog) to get in the way of the story. Some forms distract too much, and your idea might be one of those. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proceed with caution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T16:51:55.473" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28343" CreationDate="2017-05-30T17:04:25.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best example of changing points of view was perhaps Robert Louis Stevenson's &quot;Treasure Island.&quot; Most of it was told from the point of view of Jim Hawkins, the cabin boy. But when Jim was at sea, the POV shifted to Dr. Livesey, who remained on land, and discussed the land portion of the story &quot;simultaneously&quot; with Jim's sea adventure.. It made for a smooth, continuous narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T17:04:25.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28343" CreationDate="2017-05-30T17:09:47.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any rule can be broken, the trick is to know why the rule exists. In this case, it is difficult (and potentially frustrating) for the reader to (a) follow/understand and (b) emphasize with too many different characters.  It's also difficult for the writer to successfully distinguish them on the page.  Remember, just because you can tell them apart, doesn't mean the reader can.  All these things are as true for any story with many characters and a single viewpoint as it is for a multiple POV story, but the POV scenario adds additional challenges to successful suspension of disbelief (since it doesn't match our usual experience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can solve these problems, then go ahead and do it, but you're setting yourself a difficult challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T17:09:47.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10346" CreationDate="2017-05-30T18:10:59.953" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everybody, &#xA;The best way to figure out a word's connotation is to view that word in its authentic environment. And the best way to find authentic environment is through a corpus of English. Through corpus linguistic site, such as the BYU corpus (COCA) you can see words in sentences that show the context of the word in question. You can go to the site, it is free, and register. Then select COCA and feed the word into the wordandphrase.info site. On Frequency page, type the word in and then look at the concordances. Be sure to mark the word's part of speech. You will see a column of sentences that contain the word. You can also see the excerpt from which the line was selected. Then you can judge the connotation of the word. I would not rely on asking other people how they interpret the word, unless you are around English graduate students or professors. Most people are not savvy enough to delve into the analysis of language use. Corpus linguistics is what you can trust.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25136" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T18:10:59.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26815" CreationDate="2017-05-30T18:23:25.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make your protagonist a good person who comes into conflict with his upbringing at all and only the places where it acts against his own moral standards, rather than one who has a knee-jerk reaction against his family.  In other words, he's acting in reaction against the corrupting effects of wealth on his family, rather than directly against his family himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T18:23:25.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28366" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-30T20:00:19.333" Score="0" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reason I ask is because every time I use indents the paragraphs end up all on the left side in a straight line but if I space the paragraphs it doesn't.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25040" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T12:10:44.620" Title="Can publishers accept spacing between paragraphs?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3876" CreationDate="2017-05-30T20:05:53.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was first starting out with poetry (and indeed, even to a certain extent today), I liked to begin with structure/meter, choosing a simple, regular structure and improvising an almost non-sensical set of words which had a good ring to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, I continued to practice, this time fitting rhymes at the end of my lines. I started with rhyming couplets, moving to longer rhyming stanzas. Now I had somewhat surreal rhyming lines set to a pleasing meter with a good ring to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that - editing, editing, editing. Tweaking the poem rhyme by rhyme, line by line, phrase by phrase, slowly knocking more and more meaning into the lines - cutting everything I couldn't make work and continuously introducing new lines, and new rhymes, until I had a poem which actually came together. After that, keep reading through it, top to bottom, knocking out the dents and areas where it jars or doesn't properly flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally - you need to be extremely tough on cutting line out lines which just aren't working. If you have three amazing, perfect, flawless lines, but cannot for the life of you find a fourth line to fit, those three lines have to be cut or drastically reworked. Back to the drawing board, time to try again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum. Keep reading! You can never read enough and if you want to write good poetry, read good (and indeed, bad) poetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot ever get enough of listening to musicals. I love them so much - listening to them over and over and over again, then improvising my own words on the end, jotting them down as I sing (or voice recording myself for transcription later), then editing, editing editing until I have the song I want, and swapping out the music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate this question is old but maybe this will help someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10659" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T20:05:53.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28368" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-30T20:07:49.837" Score="0" ViewCount="848" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was thinking about this  a lot recently. I want to have my story a 3rd person POV, but should the reader see through one character's perspective or all of them? I understand that 3rd person POV is a universal thing, but I want some of these other points of views as well. I just want some feedback, that's all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T23:53:20.940" Title="Should I switch perspectives every chapter, or only when I feel the character needs to have some thoughts?" Tags="|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28315" CreationDate="2017-05-30T20:44:34.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We write best what we love most.  For me, I love people and pay a lot of attention to them, but not a lot of attention to places and things, so my characters are strong, but my settings and descriptions are weak.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have the opposite problem, I'd suggest spending some concentrated time observing people closely, talking to them, listening to their stories, and trying to understand them at a deep level --both strangers and friends.  After doing that for a while, your characters should start to become deeper and richer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as plots, reading a lot of myths and folk and fairy tales from all around the world is a good way to get a feel for plot at the most basic, essential level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T20:44:34.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28366" CreationDate="2017-05-30T21:07:07.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many publisher will have a format they want material in, conform to it. If you are a writer, I would recommend you fork the money for a local word processor on your own machine rather than the Google editor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T21:07:07.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2017-05-30T22:44:24.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three basic conflict themes: Man against nature, man against man, and man against himself. If the story theme is &quot;man against nature,&quot; you have no (human) antagonist. Unless you consider &quot;nature&quot; the antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T22:44:24.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28294" CreationDate="2017-05-31T00:00:51.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me reprhase the question: What is a novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask this because among the few persons I know who regularly read books, one of them only reads non-fiction. Not surprising. Especially in the P.O.D. market, non-fiction is the way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed that a couple of the books she's read are in the genre of what I call &quot;fictionalized memoirs.&quot; That is, the writer is telling you about his life as a beach bum, or as a rock guitarist, or whatever. Its purpose is entertainment. How much of it is actually true, we don't know. This kind of books sells well (one of them is a NYT best-seller), but it is not intended as an authoritative resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fictionalized memoirs don't need a moral, or a conflict, or an antagonist, or a plot. They merely need to be a diversion. Often they are humorous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you prefer to read the truthful memoir of a rock guitarist who studied at the classical academy, and only played rock guitar when he couldn't get into the Philharmonic? Of course, his wife and three lovely children all don't mind. Or, would you rather read the memoir of a rock guitarist who talks only about sex and drugs and rock and roll, even if most if it is invented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T00:00:51.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2920" CreationDate="2017-05-31T00:51:46.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot have a novel without an antagonist. An antagonist comes in two forms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A physical antagonist&lt;/em&gt;: a person with a grudge against your protagonist, who will do whatever it takes to overcome the protagonist e.g. Voldemort, the Joker, Loki.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the &lt;em&gt;abstract antagonist&lt;/em&gt;: An event or similar, something like a weakness that the protagonist must overcome to achieve his goals e.g. fear, poverty, a corrupt government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, an antagonist is an obstacle, designed to prevent the protagonist from achieving his goal. This is where the antagonist is critical: if there is nothing stopping the protagonist, if it is all smooth sailing, then the novel is not exciting, a must for any bestseller, and usually a must if you want to be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your plot, why not bring hell into it? You could send some demons in to wreak havoc on the heavenly community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24517" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T00:51:46.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8533" CreationDate="2017-05-31T01:18:59.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The movie &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_Colors_(film)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Primary Colors&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; was about a southern politician who ran successfully for President of the U.S, in the 1990s. As far as I know, there is only one person in the world who fits that bill (pun intended). But they used the name &amp;quot;Jack Stanton&amp;quot; instead the name of the real politician. And they changed his election year from 1996 to 1998 to create a fictitious &amp;quot;parallel universe.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the standard method of avoiding lawsuits with regard to a public figure. Even if you were really basically describing &amp;quot;Snowden,&amp;quot; you might want to change his name to something like &amp;quot;Sonnenschein&amp;quot; so that you wouldn't have to worry about what's fact and what's not.For public figures, changing the name provides enough &amp;quot;deniability.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2020-07-17T02:31:41.777" LastActivityDate="2020-07-17T02:31:41.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28368" CreationDate="2017-05-31T07:05:46.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Techniques are always connected to the world you are writing about: if you have multiple morale conflicts, it can be a good idea to move from one PoV to another. If the conflict is more linear (i.e. a good guy vs a bad guy) or if the group of characters share the same moral vision, then you probably don't need that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story with a wide range of characters, such as the Song of Fire and Ice saga (i.e. GoT) moves across several PoVs who are the main characters. In that type of story, you have a complex world structure and you need to provide the world vision of each side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another great example is in the french fantasy novel &quot;L'horde du contrevent&quot; by A. Damasio: the main characters are part of the same team, and each chapter is told by the PoV of each of them, who provide a different feel and perspective to the events shared by all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, using alternate PoV just to change the pace of the story is not a reason strong enough. The same goes for using PoV just because the characters are geographically separated. I believe PoV is not a different knowledge of &quot;what happens&quot;, but it's really a specific way to convey meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T07:05:46.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28260" CreationDate="2017-05-31T09:02:07.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to forget about &quot;engaging&quot; people, not because you don't need to, exactly, but because trying to often gets in the way of successfully doing so (people end up writing stuff that doesn't even engage &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;, because they think it's what their readers want).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's better to think about communicating. You have a story in your head, and a set of characters, and a world (which might, of course, resemble the real world very closely, but is nonetheless a product of your imagination). Your goal is show this to the reader, and show them why they should care about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do you communicate? Do you assume the reader thinks like you, and shares the same interests as you? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do, you may be able to rely on shared assumptions and communicate very deeply with people who are like you in these respects, but you may fail to communicate with people who don't think like you or share your interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, you assume the reader has nothing in common with you, and try to bridge the gap between you by expressing more universal ideas through more widely understood devices, you may not communicate so deeply, but you will probably communicate further, and with more people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think there is always a certain trade off between these two, but there's also a continuum between them. Great works, the ones that we remember, that are popular &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; acclaimed, generally don't fall quite at either end of this continuum (since those that do will tend to end up forgotten or unread) but they usually encompass a large portion of it. Because of the writer's brilliance, they are able to bridge the gap more completely than other works, and connect things that are personal to the writer with things that are personal to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick, then, I think, is to occupy as large a space on this continuum as possible. Whether you choose a portion nearer to yourself (&quot;experimental fiction&quot;), somewhere in the middle (&quot;literary fiction&quot;) or nearer to your reader (&quot;popular fiction&quot;) is obviously up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T09:02:07.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-31T09:34:29.317" Score="0" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please we are an organisation who have come up with training manuals. we want these manuals deposited in public libraries in our country. how do we write a cover letter to the Liberians to get the manuals to the libraries?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25148" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T14:11:11.750" Title="book placement in libraries" Tags="|letter|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-06-01T15:32:41.530" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26815" CreationDate="2017-05-31T10:33:06.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Decide whether it's the wealth and comfort of the family which they dislike, or their family which they don't click with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former scenario would alienate a lot of your readers unless you got it spot on - you're bordering on &quot;poor little rich me&quot; territory here which has far too many cliches already. The latter conflict is much more relatable and you can use the family's precious prestige as the protagonist's foil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22913" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T10:33:06.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12664" CreationDate="2017-05-31T10:47:10.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to know is that U.S. libel law is much more favorable to defendants than the laws of many European countries, particularly Britain. That is to say that a suit that would likely lose in the U.S. might well prevail in Britain. And the rich and powerful might go &quot;forum shopping&quot; to get a favorable British judgment. Americans are protected by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/03/21/394273902/on-libel-and-the-law-u-s-and-u-k-go-separate-ways&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rachel's law&lt;/a&gt;, which hinders a U.S. court from enforcing an British judgment (unless the American goes to Britain). Most European countries would not give you such protection, and in any event, it's probably easier to collect a British judgment in Europe than in the U.S. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of what I have to say refers mainly to U.S. law. I am an American and not a lawyer. I am writing as a writer and prospective juror (trier of fact).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing about U.S. libel law is that the burden of proof is on the plaintiff. In Britain, the burden of proof is on the defendant. That's why defendants tend to win in the U.S. and lose in Britain. As a juror, I would give you the benefit of the doubt. Many, perhaps most, would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second thing is that truth is an absolute defense against libel (although &quot;publication of private facts,&quot; such as someone's social security number, is a separate offense). So dmm's advice about &quot;sticking to the facts&quot; is a good one. One way to do this is to juxtapose different outfits on a time line, coupled with her ratings on different dates, both of which are facts. What you want to avoid are speculations about motivations, etc. &quot;Miley did X because of Y.&quot; Instead, you want to let readers draw there own conclusions. (Note that you could probably get into trouble in Britain for juxtaposing &quot;inconvenient&quot; facts about someone even if they are individually true.) In doing the above, you will want to consult a lawyer, or at least a language expert, such as an editor or English teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a very important fact that Miley Cyprus is a public figure, because U.S. &quot;case law&quot; (precedent) makes it very hard for public figures to win libel suits. Basically, it is not enough for the public figure to show that a defendant's statements were false, but were made with either &quot;malice&quot; or a &quot;reckless disregard&quot; for the truth. As a juror, I would find that your consulting a lawyer, or language expert mitigates against a &quot;reckless disregard&quot; charge. Such a person would help make your statement &quot;legally accurate,&quot; to use a phrase coined by an American President.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2017-06-01T13:35:57.700" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T13:35:57.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28377" CreationDate="2017-05-31T14:11:11.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many libraries have a local author's section.  If you are donating a book, and you are local, you may be able to have it placed there by directly contacting that particular location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to be picked up by a larger library system, they will probably have an acquisitions department.  You should be able to get contact info for this on their website, or by calling them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can send them a letter promoting your book, but it's unlikely to have much of an impact, since they almost certainly have a set budget, limited shelf space, and a pre-established set of criteria for picking books.  If you are donating the books, and can make a good argument for them being of general public interest, it may be worth the attempt, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T14:11:11.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28382" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-28T16:48:50.640" Score="4" ViewCount="26329" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a novel I've been writing, I begin by introducing a character and describing her history and personality from a third-person perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I want to start talking about a different character, who is in a different, but related circumstance, later in time. I plan to have their stories come together later in the novel. However, I want the reader to relate more to this character, and I want to have him give long, thoughtful, musings on his experience, to which I think a first-person perspective would be much better suited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a wise decision, what alternative options do I have? How would you recommend I best switch perspectives without confusing the reader? I also want to make it clear that I am changing perspectives and the new character was not narrating before, and is not familiar with the events of the previous part of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might also be helpful if you could point me in the direction of other novels where this sort of thing has worked before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Mark" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-06-22T16:07:13.243" LastActivityDate="2020-12-23T07:48:46.853" Title="When writing a novel, is it wise to switch from first-person to third-person? What is the most effective way to do this?" Tags="|novel|grammatical-person|pov|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28260" CreationDate="2017-05-31T15:01:07.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been a wealth of anwswers (most being cliches). I feel that most are not getting the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, lets dismiss the theory that 'popular' = 'good'. For theory to be correct McDonalds would be the world's greatest food and Trump would be a good president.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we're really talking about here is multi-level writing, the ability to engage the intelligent whilst entertaining the minions. Take this simple Lex Luther quote: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to be a great writer you need to be able to encode the secrets of the universe into a chewing gum wrapper (you need to embed those secrets for the privileged to read it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, let's have a look at some very basic examples. In the movie &quot;Die Hard II&quot; Bruce Willis glances at the camera before saying &quot;How can the same thing happen to the same guy twice?&quot; The odds are it can't. Is this the actor or writer saying, &quot;I'm talented. I've got education, skills, and qualifications. I can do pretty much anything but all you want is the same shit over and over?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take another example: &quot;Lethal Weapon&quot;. The main characters are openly discussing the three-act plot: &quot;We got one dead girl and one dead guy. The dead guy kills the dead girl, we kill the dead guy 'cause he wanted us to be dead guys - it's pretty easy to me.&quot; Unfortunately we are only half way through the movie - the characters conclude the plot is 'a little thin' and proceed to complicate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we're writing basic stories for basic people but for the more sophisticated we've got to write a story at two speeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at: &quot;The Taking of Pelham 123&quot;. The title of the story immediately informs some members of the audience of outcome of the train hijack - it was easy (easy as 1-2-3). Now you're writing for two distinct audiences - Those who know the outcome of Acts I and II and those who don't. You're wasting your time trying suspense tactics on the smarter reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T15:01:07.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28385" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-31T16:48:49.783" Score="2" ViewCount="1939" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love creating characters and my plots generally focus greatly on their inner conflicts and their relationships with other characters (my experience has almost exclusively been writing romance). There is very little external conflict, as the overarching plot is the development of the relationship and is driven by the characters themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I have a few ideas for fantasy/adventure novels with plots that are driven by an external conflict. While I have a general idea of the plot points, I am finding it difficult to sit down and iron out the details. For example, in a story about the children of the seven Demon Kings of Hell, I know that the children discover their heritage and eventually have to travel to the depths of Hell to fight Satan, but are betrayed by one of their own and must flee back to the land of the living. But I can’t figure out how they get to Hell, or what happens in between which forces them to make the journey in the first place. When I try to take the time to develop the plot some more, I always get distracted by the characters and develop them instead. If I were to just sit down and start writing I would just write endless character interaction and nothing would ever happen. The characters are interesting, but I need them to “do” things. Rather than interacting with each other, I need to get them interacting with the external conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t necessarily think I should give up and only ever write character-based plot, even if this is what comes naturally to me. Does anyone have any advice to give on how to focus my attention on the external conflict? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24794" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T17:26:08.617" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T17:26:08.617" Title="How to focus on external conflict rather than inner/interpersonal conflict?" Tags="|novel|character-development|plot|conflict|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28385" CreationDate="2017-05-31T17:59:47.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am tempted to say that you are in an infinitely better situation than many adventure writers who have a great tally of the most exciting thing happening to their characters, but those characters are lacking personality and, well... &lt;em&gt;character&lt;/em&gt; :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If developing your cast comes naturally to you, it is great. All you have to do is put them in a situation, where they have no choice than to act &lt;em&gt;physically&lt;/em&gt; to overcome a challenge, thrown at them, and you are in the clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating those physical challenges is much easier than writing a believable person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build a wall they have to climb over. Send a squad of assassins after them. Injure them and make them keep going. Capture them and make them find a way to escape decapitation--none of those conflicts can be resolved by talking, crying and kissing where it hurts--and you are golden!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if your characters manage to pull off some witty and meaningful banter while sawing off the head of the dragon--more power to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would read that story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T17:59:47.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28385" CreationDate="2017-05-31T18:06:17.947" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that rather than thinking in terms of external conflict rather than internal conflict, you should think in terms of internal conflict caused by external conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a romance, the story tends to focus caused by the internal conflict between the desire for a romantic relationship and all of the other things each party wants from live. (One must give up their pride, another their prejudice.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an adventure there is still internal conflict but it is caused by external forces. Do I risk my life to fight the dragon or abandon my village to be destroyed by the dragon? The dragon is the source of the external conflict, but the conflict that makes the story interesting is the internal struggle between fight and flight. The actual fight with the dragon is just hacking and hewing. It is not interesting in itself. It is the hero's conquest of their fear of facing the dragon that is interesting, and it is in seeing the battle through to the end that the hero proves the transformation that has taken place in them that gave them the courage to face the dragon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T18:06:17.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28382" CreationDate="2017-05-31T18:23:28.477" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most famous example of switching from an involved to external narrator is Dickens &lt;em&gt;Bleak House&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;em&gt;No Country for Old Men&lt;/em&gt; by Cormac McCarthy is a more recent (and shorter) example. It is worth noting that in both these cases, there is far more than a change of narrator going on. The whole tone and mood and attitude shifts as well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect, in both cases, is quite startling. It is not a small change, but a big one, one that forces you to sit up and take notice. I can't prove it, but I think this may be an essential part of making it work. I suspect this is a go big or go home kind of thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is mistaken to think that reader's identification with the character is increased by the use of an involved narrator (I regard &quot;first person&quot; as a misnomer because most of what they write will actually be in the third person). As human beings, we relate to the people we meet, observing them from the outside, not the inside. Writing from within one person's head had an intensely introspective quality, but introspection is not particularly revealing of character. By their fruits ye shall know them. We get to understand people by their actions. And beware long thoughtful musings. It is the easiest thing to be self indulgent about, and the hardest thing to make interesting to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plenty of people identify with Harry Potter, and those books are all written with an external narrator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the desire to have the reader identify with the character may be neither a necessary nor a sufficient reason for switching to an involved narrator in the middle of a book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T18:23:28.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28382" CreationDate="2017-05-31T19:50:07.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since English is not my first language, and I learnt all this terminology with completely different names, bear with me as I go over the terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have started writing using the third person. Did you use Omniscient or Limited? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(omniscient narrator; written in 3rd person; narrator knows everything that's going on; does not usually help the reader feel intimate with the characters)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Claire woke up early and went out for a run before heading to her sister's, to babysit her little niece, not realising she had forgotten her phone at home. While she was out Jack phoned her and left an urgent message. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Limited narrator; written in 3rd person; narrator usually shows only what one character knows, though this rule can be broken ocasionally; usually helps the reader feel intimate with the characters)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Claire opened the door with a big smile. She loved babysitting her little niece. As she dropped her handbag, something caught her attention. Was that... ? Yes, it was her phone. Drats! She hadn't even noticed she didn't have it with her. She picked it up hoping nobody from work had called. Her boss was constantly going on about how important it was that she was always available.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now you want to pick up the first-person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(the character is the narrator; written in 1st person; the narrator can know more than the character only if the narrator is talking about past events while having the knowledge of what has happened; great for the reader to get intimate with the character, but can get claustrophobic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hit the snooze button the moment the alarm went off. For some reason, though, the alarm didn't stop. It dawned on me I was patting the nightstand and that the phone wasn't where it should. Sleep suddenly gone, I switched on the light. Where on earth had that phone gone to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think swapping between third and first person is jarring and should be done only by skillful writers. My advice is to go with 3rd person limited. You can do it really limited, if need be, so much so that the narrator can sound like it lives within the character's consciousness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to go with long, thoughtful musings, the first-person approach can become a bit claustrophobic so balancing those musings with the third person might help the narration flow easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, though, it's your choice. Just weigh pros and cons of your possibilities, try them out on a chapter and decide which one creates the best effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T19:50:07.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19436" CreationDate="2017-05-31T20:31:32.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very large groups cannot be &quot;defamed.&quot; So that applies for instance, to &quot;Wall Street traders on crack,&quot; &quot;Hampton housewives on Ritalin,&quot; &quot;users of Botox that look like mannequins.&quot; People know that &quot;some percentage&quot; of such people do these things so you're all right if you don't specify which ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is when you get too specific. There wouldn't be a problem with &quot;NYU professors.&quot; There could be a problem with &quot;NYU professors&quot; who teach English Lit &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; Gender Studies, if there are less than 25 (a critical number) in either group. There would almost certainly be a problem with &quot;NYU professor who teaches English Lit &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; Gender Studies,&quot; since there probably would be only one or two. Call them Mr. X and Ms. Y. If someone has a 50% chance or even 10% chance of being &quot;libelled,&quot; in this way, that's too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be okay &quot;if a character takes a prescription drug like Ketamine or Oxycodone &quot;which turn him into a lazy, dysfunctional asshole&quot;, if those drugs have been known to produce such results in some people. You may need a doctor's testimony in your defense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer so my comments on the exact parameters may be off. As a writer (and prospective juror), I would have something to say about how &quot;specific&quot; a description is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T20:31:32.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28391" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-31T23:41:58.133" Score="1" ViewCount="4730" Body="&lt;p&gt;My main characters are famous.  Can I use the actual name of entertainment TV shows, such as 'Entertainment Tonight' in my fictional novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25155" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T13:29:58.413" Title="Can I use the real name of TV shows in my novel?" Tags="|copyright|trademark|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-06-01T16:29:05.423" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28368" CreationDate="2017-05-31T23:53:20.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do either &quot;omniscient&quot; or &quot;character&quot; POV. &quot;Omniscient&quot; is the easiest  way to tell a story. However, this way the reader is disconnected from thoughts and emotions of any character. Writing from character's perspective gives the author more tools to develop that character - but this can be also more challenging, because the character needs to look genuine. This is specifically true for &quot;multiple POV&quot; novels. Some characters may come out very good, while others may seem two-dimensional, despite all efforts of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Character&quot; and &quot;omniscient&quot; POVs can be also combined, just try not to confuse the reader. Often, most of the story is told though the protagonist's eyes, but once in a while there is a short chapter, coming in a manner - &quot;Meanwhile, in a faraway land...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T23:53:20.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28393" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28396" CreationDate="2017-06-01T04:53:17.760" Score="5" ViewCount="2007" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this is similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/9392/how-to-handle-a-character-when-she-is-lying-about-her-name&quot;&gt;How to Handle a Character When She Is Lying About Her Name&lt;/a&gt; but the situation is slightly different in where my problem lies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a character who is introduced as Tabatha to the reader. However she changes her name at one point and the reader does not know. Other characters are constantly referring to a person called &quot;Maria&quot; and the reader never 'sees' her in any scene. Later it is revealed that Maria is actually Tabatha (both to the readers and the characters who know her as Tabatha).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's at this point where I run into my problem. She's embraced the new name &quot;Maria&quot; and she spends the bulk of the remainder of the narrative around characters who refer to her as such. However now the reader knows she is Tabatha and for at least half of the book (if not more) the narrator has called her this when she is in scene. But after the revelation, it seems fitting and appropriate for the narrator to call her Maria from this point on until she makes the conscious decision to change her name back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems to be the right path but wanted to make sure it made senses&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I want to be consistent considering I have another character who is often referred to by two different names. Only that scenario is different. I have a character who is almost always referred to as Mrs. Coles by the narrator because for the most part she is only around teenage characters who call her that. But during the rare scenes where she is around only other adults who call her by her first name &quot;Anita&quot; the narrator refers to her as such and typically each scene she's introduced by her full name and then it's subsequently shortened to either Mrs. Coles or Anita depending on the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, it almost seems that with my Tabatha character, if she is in a scene interacting mostly with people who ONLY refer to her as Tabatha that the narrator should adjust accordingly and when she is primarily with people who ONLY refer to her as Maria the narrator should adjust accordingly and just like with Anita Coles, at the beginning of each scene I introduce her in a way that gives both her names (not sure how I would do that) and then &quot;shorten&quot; it to whatever is appropriate for the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some reason though, that logic seems less appropriate with the Tabatha character than it does with the Anita Coles character (perhaps because it's easier to introduce Anita Coles to a scene by her full name and just shorten it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that's enough information to help with figuring this out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25158" LastActivityDate="2017-12-06T21:43:51.330" Title="How does the narrator address a character who has changed her name, but only some people call her this new name?" Tags="|characters|naming|narrative|narrator|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28391" CreationDate="2017-06-01T05:07:06.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wondered about this one myself a while ago and I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2010/12/can-i-mention-brand-name-products-in-my.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; written by a lawyer who is familiar with books, media, publishing, etc. to be be illuminating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer to your question, paraphrasing from this article, is that you can use names of brands in works of fiction without a problem as long as you're not writing disparagingly about those brands. This would include names of shows and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful though because the use of a brand or tv show or the like in your work of fiction could end up dating that work as well. It's up to oyu whether that's an issue or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, I am not a lawyer myself, so I can't speak with any authority, which is why I referenced the article which was written by a lawyer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25158" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T05:07:06.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28393" CreationDate="2017-06-01T09:03:10.897" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a few options, all of which are (in my view) perfectly reasonable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're using an intimate narrative style (with access to only one character's thoughts at a time):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simply call her whatever the character in question considers her to be. If your viewpoint character still thinks of her as Tabatha, call her Tabatha even if everyone else calls her Maria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show events from the perspective of a character who transitions from thinking of her as Tabatha to thinking of her as Maria, and follow this transition (such that the reader goes through it too).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Switch viewpoints, such that when she's being referred to as Maria, she's viewed by a character who sees her as Tabatha, and vice versa, such that the connection is evident.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The opposite of the above. Have her viewed by someone who thinks of her as the thing she's being called. Done sloppily, this could be confusing (and make it seem like different people), but I think as long as you're conscious of this risk, it should be fairly easy to make it clear from circumstance that they're the same person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're using a less intimate style (with the freedom to communicate things that the characters don't know; think &lt;em&gt;LOTR&lt;/em&gt;) or a semi-intimate style (where you can communicate things that they know, but which aren't immediately on their mind; think &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt;), you may be able to simply explain. After this, it shouldn't matter what name you call her, as long as you're consistent. You establish the change has occured, then write confidently in the knowledge that the reader now understands this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Word on the street was that Tabatha, now calling herself &quot;Maria&quot;,&#xA;  would be coming to the party too. Exactly what had stopped Maria from attending the last three parties was anybody's guess, and a subject of hot debate among all but the very quietest members of the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Word on the street was that Tabatha, now calling herself &quot;Maria&quot;,&#xA;  would be coming to the party too. Exactly what had stopped Tabatha from attending the last three parties was anybody's guess, and a subject of hot debate among all but the very quietest members of the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're trying to capture the surface level, and express her as a chameleonic character, it might be appropriate to switch the name around according to who she's speaking to (or even arbitrarily). Doing so will (I think) do one of two things (depending on how consistently you characterise her):&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If her behavior is very consistent, it will give the impression that her name is irrelevant (she's still the same person underneath). This is a little like how religious figures such as God and Satan have many names - it communicates the idea that their identity is deeper than a name, and though names may change their identity will not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If her behavior is noticeably different depending on who she speaks to, it will give the impression that she has no true nature, or that her true nature is so obscured as to be hidden even from the reader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it depends on your stylistic choices, and the impression you're trying to give.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastEditorUserId="22280" LastEditDate="2017-06-01T10:14:27.203" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T10:14:27.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28397" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28401" CreationDate="2017-06-01T10:13:11.893" Score="2" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been writing for a while now, and everyday I feel I'm getting more serious about it. But the quality of my fiction stories are straightforward and blah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I notice I'm not using enough descriptive words and even when in trying to it never turns out. Like here is an example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What I wish mine was:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&quot;His legs felt like cooked noodles. If he ran one more step he would collapse to the floor.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What mine is:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&quot;His legs felt awful. If he ran he be using up the last bit of strength.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q&lt;/strong&gt;- &lt;em&gt;How can I write with descriptive words that really put the reader in the protagonists shoes?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-A.N.M.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24839" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T02:12:47.680" Title="How to: descriptive writing" Tags="|creative-writing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28393" CreationDate="2017-06-01T10:48:26.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are too many variables to answer this question. Although, I fear you may be over-thinking the process. On the face of it pronoun the tag in narration should remain consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is not unique. Off the top of my head, my last MC is referred to by at least 6 different names during the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of all the names that you are called: Christian name, surname, petname, nickname (family, work, friends).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If 'Maria' never appears in a scene. There's no need for the narrator to mention her name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is more to your choice than cosmetic style or clarity. i.e. If the narrator is reliable they must tell the truth. If the narrator changes a character name then change may be mistake for a device, the implication may be the character suffers from a multi-personality disorder.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T10:48:26.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28385" CreationDate="2017-06-01T10:48:32.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I have exactly the same problem with my writing. I'm much more &quot;internally&quot; focused than &quot;externally&quot;, and I tend to imagine these intricate relationship twists between my characters (and themselves, and others). But unlike you, I'm primarily interested in Fantasy, so I've had to deal with the problem from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the other answers have focused on some of the conceptual solutions, let me give one tip that I've used to help me. When I start writing, I have several cool scenes in mind that I want to write - an opening dramatic scene, a fascinating ending etc. My problem is that I have no idea how to get from the opening to the end, and frankly, at first I think it's boring - who cares what adventures they have on the way, when it's only an excuse for the grand ending?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution I've found to this (which sometimes works) is to try and write the ending straight away. As you do this, you suddenly realize that the character that reaches this ending is probably not the same one that started the journey - they have grown, learned new skills (e.g., magic, swordfighting), and have scars from places they were hurt (e.g., lost loved ones etc). You know you want to rely on these changes they went through in your ending - it's what makes their choices make sense, and drives the internal, personal drama. So then you start to write the portions that led up to this ending. Suddenly, you will ask yourself questions about THOSE sections - where they took place, how they got there, and so on. Slowly you fill in the gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, for example, you ask &quot;how they get to Hell&quot;. Well, it seems to me that entering Hell would not just be a simple thing, and it might cost them a serious personal cost (blood, soul, that sort of stuff). That cost will have internal projections, so in your case, you can address it in reverse: what personal cost do you want them to pay, or be at risk to pay, to make their character more interesting? Once you know that, you can construct the external world to impose that cost/threat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyhow, hope your characters go to hell... ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22348" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T10:48:32.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28397" CreationDate="2017-06-01T11:19:54.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't really focus on describing feelings. The key is to get the reader to recall existing feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's examine your wish: &quot;His legs felt like cooked noodles.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is semi-ambiguous. How exactly does a cooked noodle feel?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If he ran one more step he would collapse to the floor.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where else would he collapse to?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare:&#xA;&quot;The moment she heard the shot, her mind told her to run. All around she could hear screaming, shouting, and mayhem. When her throat began to burn and her lungs felt as if to explode, fear told her not to stop - just keep running, as fast as she could.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;When her throat began to burn and her lungs felt as if to explode . . .&quot; - Every person who has been involved in competitive sports or pushed their physical limits knows that feeling. Anybody who runs knows its the respiratory system that hurts first. In the moment legs do not feel tired - they simply refuse to obey instructions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Write what you know?&quot; dictates the ebb and flow of your story. You can go to town, really detail, events similar to those you have experienced - not so much detail on the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also map one experience onto another. e.g. I suffered from sleep-paralysis as a child. I can use that experience to write 'being dead' or 'locked-in syndrome'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T11:19:54.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28397" CreationDate="2017-06-01T11:23:49.180" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Carnegie Hall method: Practice, practice, practice.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You were able to come up with the cooked noodles metaphor, right? So clearly your describing skills are not broken. You just have to work them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get a notebook. Moleskine, marbled-cover, stack of pages stapled together, whatever works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set aside time every day &amp;mdash; start with 15 minutes and work up. This is your practice time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During this practice time, pick something to describe. It can be an object, a sensation, the weather, sunset, a person, the dog, a texture &amp;mdash; something you can observe in some fashion. Try to keep it concrete and literal at this stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write down your descriptions. They can be prosaic at first (grass is green), but you &lt;em&gt;must work the whole 15 minutes.&lt;/em&gt; After you've stated that grass is green, you have to come up with something &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; to say about it. What does it smell like? Is it sharp? smooth? is the tip pointed or chopped off? Are there other kinds of grass next to it? Is it a pure green or bluish or brownish? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This forces you to a) really look at something b) put your observations into actual words c) write those words down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a similar question on this Stack about describing pain which you might find useful: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/7460/effective-techniques-for-describing-pain/7461#7461&quot;&gt;Effective techniques for describing pain&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually you will go beyond &quot;grass is green&quot; and start coming up with figures of speech just to have something to say to fill the 15 minutes. The more you do this, the easier it will become.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've gotten better at Things You Can Observe, start practicing with Things You Can Remember. Write down everything you recall about a particular moment in time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you feel comfortable with transcribing your memories, you can start practicing with Things You Can Imagine. And that's when &quot;legs like cooked noodles&quot; will start to pop up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T11:23:49.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28393" CreationDate="2017-06-01T11:42:25.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the narrator has respect for Maria (and respect for her decision to change her name), they will probably refer to her in the way she wishes to be referred. The readers will be able to keep up as long as you explain it sufficiently and stay consistent after the reveal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Maria has strong negative feelings towards her old name, calling her by that name is making the choice to refer to her in a way which makes her uncomfortable. An extreme example would be if your character is transgender. In that case, switching back and forth between names would be not only jarring but insensitive to the character themselves. Even if she simply prefers the new one, you're making the statement that her preference does not matter (to the narrator, at least).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is good though, because it gives you room to say something about each character that refers to her. For example, one character may embrace the new name and make an effort to adhere to it. But another characters might adamantly stick to the old name, or ignorantly fail to remember the new one time and time again (much to Maria's chagrin). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24794" LastEditorUserId="24794" LastEditDate="2017-06-01T11:56:08.807" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T11:56:08.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28404" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-01T12:18:26.437" Score="1" ViewCount="585" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems a simple enough question,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="24878" LastEditDate="2017-06-01T19:14:11.490" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T19:14:11.490" Title="Can you write a story using inanimate characters?" Tags="|plot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2017-06-01T16:52:04.270" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28391" CreationDate="2017-06-01T13:29:58.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is 'yes'. However, the question indicates a core misunderstanding of the basics of fiction writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Bob was watching a crappy TV show - The Kardashians.&quot; - This could get you in trouble. Ultimately you have expressed an opinion through narartive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sally sat glued to TV 'The Kardashians.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Really?&quot; said Bob, turning off the TV. &quot;Our marriage is in tatters and rather than try to fix it you want to watch the worst show in the history of television?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author has not expressed an opinion - you're safe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T13:29:58.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28404" CreationDate="2017-06-01T13:38:33.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you? Of course; you just did. Your characters, I might point out, are not inaminate. They are alive. They have thought, opinion, and agency. They may be made of silicon, but they are not &quot;inanimate.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone on this board recommended a story &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/25819/writing-a-novel-can-i-do-this-or-that/25828#25828&quot;&gt;told from the viewpoint of a &lt;em&gt;sentient pregnancy test.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Anything is possible with the right execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T13:38:33.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28404" CreationDate="2017-06-01T16:11:35.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Russell Hoban's underappreciated novel &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleinzeit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kleinzeit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; features a large cast of unusual characters, including a fair number of inanimate objects, such as &quot;The Paper&quot; and &quot;The Hospital.&quot;  However, they are all anthropomorphized --they speak and act like human beings.  Similarly, your own example stretches the definition of inanimate --a sentient artificial intelligence may not technically be &quot;animate,&quot; but it certainly isn't even an unusual character for a science-fiction book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A work centering entirely around a cast of non-animate, non-sentient objects would be a challenge to pull off, because they don't have any agency or capacity for change.  However, never say never: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdIJOE9jNcM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdIJOE9jNcM&lt;/a&gt; (Wikipedia: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamp_%28advertisement%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lamp&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T16:11:35.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28409" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="45717" CreationDate="2017-06-01T20:33:01.357" Score="-2" ViewCount="520" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tinyurl.com/Seraphinians&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Seraphinians&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is a writeup and attempt to document issues with a movement within the Orthodox Church. They are the people who say you have to believe in Protestant fundamentalism's Young Earth Creationism and Creation &quot;Science&quot; to be an Orthodox Christian at all. Further details are available in &lt;a href=&quot;http://tinyurl.com/Seraphinians&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Seraphinians&lt;/a&gt; at essentially any length you wish to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unsurprisingly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B007OCCFI2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it has consistently gotten forceful one-star reviews Amazon&lt;/a&gt;. The most popular review reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;Save your $&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;★ [live and the current top-voted response]&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The author of this short set of ramblings claims that he expects several 1 star reviews from people based on his criticisms of the iconic priest monk Fr. Seraphim Rose. I am giving it 1 star primarily for other reasons. I, too, have issues with some of the teachings of Fr. Seraphim Rose, so I expected here some kind of evenhanded and even respectful analysis of where and how Fr. Seraphim Rose possibly erred in his biblical exegeses, or something of that nature. Instead, the collection opens with a rambling, incoherent article wherein Fr. Seraphim is cheekily parodied as “Cherubim Thorn”. This first chapter is the worst of the bunch, and I found myself skipping long, cryptic phrases to see if there was going to be anything of substance in this download. I found myself wondering if the author had been sober when he wrote the first unintelligible chapter. Things did get better, marginally, as I read on. The author’s main criticism, it seems to me, is with Orthodox converts (including some that converted because of the life and works of Fr. Seraphim Rose, and who tend to be particularly fanatical and willing to mistrust science) who drag Protestant baggage, Biblical literalism, and a kind of fundamentalist attitude into the Church. I did agree very much with the author of this piece that Orthodoxy is a way of living, an ever deepening process, and that there is no place in it for obligatory Biblical literalism, or such heresies of being saved instantly and once and for all. Ultimately, though, I cannot endorse this writer or recommend this download. I give it 1 star not merely for its irreverent treatment of an Orthodox priest monk, but also for its meandering, purposeless, repetitive, and poorly edited writing. And for charging people to read it. Only a page or two into reading this, and I felt duped. Save your money. One can find better essays online for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might comment that people wondering if I am an utterly incompetent author are invited to &lt;a href=&quot;http://amazon.com/author/cjshayward&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;peruse my books&lt;/a&gt; or if you want something free &lt;a href=&quot;https://CJSHayward.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;read my website&lt;/a&gt;; Amazon ratings for most books and ebooks tend to hover around 4-4.5 stars, and keep your own counsel as to whether I am unintelligible and dubiously sober when I write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there was something that left me puzzled, not that the movement met such a critique with venom, but that there weren't occasional answers by an outsider saying, &quot;Hey, the book has merits.&quot; In this past week, I found out that my work has in fact garnered multiple five-star reviews; every single one has just been censored, er, deleted. The two reviews that were brought to my attention were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;Light hearted but no-nonsense. Nicely done!&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;★ ★ ★ ★ ★&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Excellent! Hayward addresses the issues in a lighthearted (but no-nonsense) way. It seems to me that people’s opinions may reflect their church politics, and illustrate their use of malice to accomplish their goals. The comments on Amazon are drastically skewed from the truth. This is a wake up call. The fact is that a 6000 year old earth is not what a reasonable person would subscribe to. A reasonable person would enjoy this much needed book that exposes a nationwide problem in the Greek Orthodox Church, and beyond: fundamentalism + a lack of leadership = a huge mess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;CJS Hayward – an intellectual genius rooted in reality&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;★ ★ ★ ★ ★&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In his address to the themes plaguing the Orthodox Christian Church of today, C.J.S. Hayward is an intellectual genius rooted in reality, and not a simpleton who fantasizes about the village life of previous centuries. C.J.S. Hayward has done a great service to the Orthodox Christian Church at large by addressing many of the topics plaguing the faithful. At a time where pro-active leadership from Hierarchs and Priests is needed (in the form of formally addressing the issues addressed in Hayward’s book) there is a resounding silence from those entrusted with protecting the flock. There have been a few here and there that addressed it, most of whom are either retired, or close to it. But from the executive leaders of the Church – silence. This has emboldened fundamentalist propagators and has also caused the Laity to start web sites around the country to protest these abuses and misrepresentations (as I have done). The net effect is a divided Church that will inevitably formally split if not addressed by those entrusted with protecting it (i.e. the Hierarchs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m not sure that I deserve either the blame or the praise, or that I agree with any reviewer on all points. But the combination of what is live of Amazon’s site, and what was censored, strikes me as odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried talking with Amazon, and when I was told they only work with review authors on their reviews, gave the customer service email address to the reviewer who contacted me. *Every single five star review remains deleted.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything practical that I can do in a situation like this? The movement takes a bit of a spine to challenge, and both reviews were initially posted and then deleted later; I'm nearly certain that insiders demanded the postings be deleted as somehow falling outside Amazon guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What, if anything, can I still do to work with Amazon on the censored reviews?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to the first question is, &quot;Nothing, but here are ways you can compensate,&quot; what can I do to compensate?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8761" LastActivityDate="2019-06-03T23:20:46.677" Title="What, if anything, can I do about Amazon reviews being one-sidedly censored?" Tags="|publishing|marketing|reviews|amazon|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28352" CreationDate="2017-06-01T21:34:53.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having actually been put in this position for a few assignments, I can tell you how I handle it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First I assess how much TIME I have. That determines the level of research I will do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember that asking an expert questions before you've done any research, while possible, means that you won't have any idea what you don't know--in other words, you won't really have an idea of what questions are the correct ones to ask. Often the same questions are asked over and over--the answer to those are out there, so get them to expound on the common answers. When, for example, I had to do a piece on the history of an area I knew nothing about, I went to the library first, talked to the research desk there, took notes, and THEN I talked to the historical expert--especially about points that were rumored, conflicting, or expounding on a commonly talked-about bit of history.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at the publication you are writing for. Are you writing for the laymen or the common public? If so, and you aren't an expert your perspective will be valuable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the publication is a little more specialized, you will need to quickly study as much as you can. I've done so by using library resources, and by asking experts. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of the questions I ask experts when I don't know what I am doing is, basically, &quot;I'm getting a grasp on this subject and I know you're the go-to person. What questions should I be asking for this kind of article?&quot; I also ask them what sources are good via the web and if there are any other experts I should be talking with. This sort of thing works better by phone, and if you can do a series of follow ups with them. But it can be done by email. Sometimes they can even give you angle that hasn't been covered--for that I ask this question: &quot;What don't people talk about in the industry that you really think we should?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For basic vocab, there's a lot of different resources you can use, but I have found that something like the &quot;For Dummies&quot; series is the laymen's way into specialized fields. It gives you a start/overview.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vet any internet source very, very much. Disinformation can be spread far and wide over the net--an incorrect wikipedia entry for instance, can end up getting copied and used throughout the internet even after the wiki's been corrected. That doesn't mean I don't use wikipedia--when I have done interviews for obscure bands, it's often the only source available--in that case I ask if it's accurate. Otherwise I use it as a launching point, and look at the primary sources provided on Wikipedia. I vet those as well--I run the sources through google and check academic credentials.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastEditorUserId="19827" LastEditDate="2017-06-01T21:41:00.640" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T21:41:00.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28411" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28412" CreationDate="2017-06-01T21:44:02.687" Score="16" ViewCount="8659" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some people who have read some of my book so far and they think it is childish and then some say it's somewhat morbid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your views on what each of those terms means?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T11:07:24.410" Title="What is considered &quot;childish&quot; in fictional writing?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28411" CreationDate="2017-06-01T22:11:58.780" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;It could be any number of things given that we've seen no excerpt (although sharing one may not be advisable, since advice specific to your case wouldn't help this thread's future users). I'll mention some possibilities; other answers will probably add some more. Some of my examples are things writers find more appropriate when writing for children; others are bad writing people may associate with stories aimed at children, if for these the publication standards are more lax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The vocabulary may be basic. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The sentence structure may be repetitive or undemanding. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The punctuation may be unsubtle (I've seen stories in children's annuals where just about every sentence ends in an exclamation point, weakening them all).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The characterisation may be 1-dimensional, may be riddled with a straightforward allegory (viz. &lt;em&gt;The Chronicles of Narnia&lt;/em&gt;), or may tell instead of showing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The dialogue tags may also do this, through synonyms for &quot;said&quot; or modifications of it with adverbs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The repetition in sentences or word choice may grate (see e.g.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/11/hunger_games_catching_fire_a_textual_analysis_of_suzanne_collins_novels.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The themes or treatment thereof may be all too innocent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22216" LastEditorUserId="22216" LastEditDate="2019-01-10T08:33:52.337" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T08:33:52.337" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28411" CreationDate="2017-06-01T22:19:26.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will go ahead and attempt to answer this anyways.  Childish writing usually refers to the fact that the word choice and &lt;a href=&quot;http://thewritepractice.com/sentence-structure/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sentence structure&lt;/a&gt; is basic as if it were a child.  In the link provided, they go over the various sentence structures as well as provide examples of differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as being too morbid... that's just a matter of opinion really as well as the target audience.  This is why I asked you in the comment who the book was designed for.  Now, I should also add that you want to have a variety of tones and moods to the story.  If the whole story was written from the viewpoint of Eeyore, one may find the story morbid and depressing/boring to read.  If the MC of your story is of morbid nature, that is great!  Keep in mind though that you need to balance everything out.  Most commonly, you find in stories/movies after a heavy scene something more lighter, usually a laugh line or 2.  Keeping it heavy the whole time will eliminate many readers as it would be niche at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-06-01T22:41:23.713" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T22:41:23.713" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28411" CreationDate="2017-06-01T22:53:42.357" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The emotional lives of children, adolescents, and adults are very different. This sometimes lead adults to dismiss the emotions of children and adolescents as trivial or inconsequential, which is unfair. If anything, the emotions of children and adolescents are more deeply felt than those of adults. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With adulthood comes emotional maturity, which generally involves a dampening of emotions. One comes to recognize one's emotional reactions and learns to regulate them. You know the highs and the lows are going to pass, and so the highs are a little less high and the lows are a little less low, all of which is a good thing, because it means you are less likely to be undone by your emotions. You are able to carry on with your everyday activities even when it the grip of high or low emotions, which makes it much easier for you to show up for work on a sunny day and not throw yourself off a bridge when you are disappointed in love. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Childishness in literature is mostly evident as the lack of the emotional regulation that characterizes adulthood. One of the things you will notice about almost all children's literature written by adults is that it display an adult level of emotional control, both it is own tone, and in the actions and reactions of its characters. I think this is the natural reaction of adults to model emotional regulation to children, combined with the natural emotional regulation that adults have learned and more or less assume as the human norm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Morbidity is also a lack of emotional regulation. It is an inappropriate dwelling on dark thoughts. (Inappropriate here really means that it is inconsistent with the emotional regulation that an adult learns to use to keep themselves functioning more or less cheerfully.) Dealing with dark subjects is not in itself a sign of morbidity. There is lots of adult work that deals with dark subjects. Morbidity is a lack of emotional regulation when dealing with those dark subjects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning emotional regulation is just part of growing up. Certain life event, such as a first job, moving away from home, becoming financially responsible for your self, getting married, and becoming a parent, all force a greater degree of emotional regulation on you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to note that the emotions themselves don't change. It is the ability to regulate them that changes. Some people never learn it though. For most of us, it just comes with time and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really isn't a writing technique, so it can't be fixed by writing methods. As your emotional regulation improves in life, it will be reflected in your writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-06-02T11:53:03.030" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T11:53:03.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28409" CreationDate="2017-06-01T23:32:37.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;IANAL but I would suggest looking into legal actions for this.  I mention this because deleting or removing reviews directly hurt your ability to make money and also your reputation.  If people only see bad reviews, they will not buy it and may recognize your name later down the road with another book and avoid it as well.  You may need to find a lawyer who will sit down with you to discuss legal actions to be taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before doing this though, I would suggest going over any contracts or fine print that Amazon may have in regards to such matters.  Guidelines for reviews are certainly things you cannot control with what others say.  However, those usually pertain to vulgar/hateful language or bot spamming.  Neither of which appears to be true in the examples provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems odd though that Amazon would intentionally delete positive reviews as it would cause that item to not be sold and in turn, they make no money.  There is also the possibility that those accounts may have done a mass review on many books in which their account got flagged and said reviews removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are honestly many possibilities to this, but ultimately I suggest reading over the fine print of contracts/paperwork/agreements/ToS/anything Amazon made you agree to before publishing the book to their site.  Also read over any guidelines or rules to review posts to see if anything was violated.  If nothing in there merits the actions taken on your reviews, I would consider finding a lawyer who would do a free/cheap consultation on the matters to see if you have a case.  See if there is any other department(s) you can possibly call within Amazon for a better answer as well.  Not sure if you would get anything or what you would get from Amazon would balance out the costs of legal fees, but they have hurt your ability to make/earn money by removing positive reviews which could have lead to more book sales without adequate explanations (based on what you have told us anyways).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; If your book is posted else where, say iTunes or any other store that has a fair amount of reviews with a much higher rating, it may be worth noting and keeping records of.  If it came down to it, you can compare the other place(s) to Amazons to help prove your case that the reviews and rating shown is unfair especially with better reviews being kept deleted.  You can also use this to demonstrate any possible lost income due to this lower review by comparing making X amount here vs Y amount there.  Either way, I wish you the best of luck and I hope you can come to closure with your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-06-01T23:46:05.983" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T23:46:05.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28416" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28417" CreationDate="2017-06-02T08:19:10.217" Score="2" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm very confused about tenses. I am not sure if I am mixing modifiers up or slipping from past to present. Can someone help me please, here are a few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stooping, he lit a fire, warming himself as he swigged from a bottle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He flexed his fingers above the flames, glancing at her uneasy expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He swung himself up as she reached for the bottle, elbowing her in the chest, palming a coin and holding it out to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you so much&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25177" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T00:55:59.070" Title="&quot;Am I mixing my tenses?&quot; She asked, scratching her head" Tags="|tenses|third-person|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28416" CreationDate="2017-06-02T08:41:08.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Very short answer: no. What you've written is fine.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd written &quot;he was warming himself&quot;, this would be reasonable. The usage of &quot;was&quot; indicates that the event is occuring in the past, so there's no need to use &quot;warmed&quot; (indeed, that would be considered incorrect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you've done is drop the &quot;he was&quot;, since this is already established by &quot;he lit a fire&quot;. &quot;Stooping&quot; works similarly. Since the sentence structure makes clear that &quot;stooping&quot;, &quot;he lit a fire&quot; and &quot;warming himself&quot; take place at the same time, the past tense form is only needed for one of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could, for example, also have said &quot;He stooped, lighting the fire, warming himself and drinking from the bottle&quot; or &quot;Stooping, lighting the fire and warming himself, he drank from the bottle&quot;. (Mind you, from a stylistic point of view, I'm glad you didn't.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look here, if you're still unsure: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uses_of_English_verb_forms#Past_progressive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uses_of_English_verb_forms#Past_progressive&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastEditorUserId="22280" LastEditDate="2017-06-02T09:55:30.883" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T09:55:30.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28411" CreationDate="2017-06-02T11:41:37.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possibility not yet explored is subject matter and genre. Outside of the bubble, the majority of the public consider the fantasy to be 'childish'.  LOTR and Harry Potter are essentially teen-fiction novels. DR WHO is a teen TV program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say 'the bubble' because on writer's sites the majority of members write fantasy. This bears no correlation to number of readers on the planet.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T11:41:37.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28420" CreationDate="2017-06-02T11:58:02.057" Score="19" ViewCount="3090" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently sketching a novel about people at the end of time, some months or years before the Big Crunch:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There is a space station full of people who can only sit and watch as their final moment draws closer and closer. There are several different characters involved, from the rational boss, who tries to keep everything running (why? Because it's his job, he's responsible to make sure everyone survives as long as possible), to some religious people who finally meet their gods, to some young overly curious scientists who cannot wait to see what's coming, to the depressive maniac, who tries to blow up everything before the Crunch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is:&#xA;From the beginning on, the reader will know, no one will survive and the let's call him Captain is fighting a useless struggle, because it is the Big Crunch. He can basically only sit and watch and help others getting along in their final moments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this idea worth being written, or will the obvious ending drive readers away?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22409" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T09:14:51.160" Title="Worth writing, if end is obvious" Tags="|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28419" CreationDate="2017-06-02T12:10:54.450" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because The Crunch happens doesn't mean that your protagonists all lose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the obvious antagonist is The Crunch. But is that all your heroes are fighting? Is that all they're striving for? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All your heroes are facing imminent doom. That does things to people. They may lose faith, or gain it (the religious folks &amp;mdash; and they can have diverse reactions). People cling to routines (the boss) or descend into hysterical nihilism (the maniac). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have A Plot as much as A Series of Character Arcs. Those individual conflicts are interesting and worth exploring. The Series of Arcs is the point of your story, not the Inevitable Crunch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, who says The Crunch has to kill everyone? Maybe you have a side thread of a ship rushing to save everyone, or somehow divert The Crunch, or The Crunch is actually a way to pass into another universe. et cetera. Then you have both the resolution of the various Character Arcs &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the exploration of what happens when people prepare themselves for death but it doesn't happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your givens aren't working, change your givens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T12:10:54.450" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28419" CreationDate="2017-06-02T12:15:16.927" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ending is obvious in most books. In a romance, will the heroine get the guy? Obviously yes. In a detective novel, will the detective get the bad guy? Obviously yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wanting to know how it ends is not actually about wanting to know the facts of the ending, or no one would ever reread a book. It is about wanting the experience of the ending. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A novel is an experience, not a puzzle. It's appeal depends on how compelling an experience you create, not on whether we know how it ends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But also, what matters to us about the end of story is not what happens but how the characters face what happens. Stories are a kind of emotional rehearsal. A book such as you describe provide an emotional rehearsal for facing death. There is a huge appeal in that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-06-02T18:53:34.790" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T18:53:34.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28416" CreationDate="2017-06-02T12:26:01.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stop worrying about this stuff. English tenses are enormously complicated, but they are tools of analysis, not composition. If you are a native English speaker you will have learned how tenses are used in English by osmosis. Trying to follow the explicit rules that have be developed to explain how tenses work in natural English will be both agonizing and pointless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Natural English is a very fluid and flexible language full of particular bits of usage that are very hard to fit to rules. Thus attempting to come up with a grammatical system to fully encompases all of natural English is very difficult -- and has not yet been achieved. English, in particular, is a language that has to be learned by ear, not by rule. The rules are as apt to lead you astray as they are to lead you to clarity -- not because they are wrong necessarily, but because they are so hard to apply. You have to be already a fluent writer of English to be able to tell how grammatical &quot;rules&quot; actually apply to natural English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the problems in this area are not caused by failure to understand tenses as described by grammarians -- not one writer in a hundred knows all the categories and terminology. The problems come from an unwillingness to recast awkward sentences. If you have a sentence that seems awkward or unnatural to you, don't waste time trying to fix it by the application of grammar rules. Rewrite it so it is simple and more direct and all will be well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T12:26:01.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28411" CreationDate="2017-06-02T12:36:31.530" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are probably suffering from a case of &lt;strong&gt;Grimderp&lt;/strong&gt; - when your dark parts go too dark and it stops being dark and becomes just silly. It is when a work of fiction goes so dark that it wrap around in the scale and becomes somewhat ridiculous for the reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing dark, emotionally deep stories is hard. It's extremely easy to get pumped up when adding details to a murder scene or a tragic moment, go over the top, and then lose the suspension of disbelief. My best example for this case is &lt;em&gt;The Dark Tower&lt;/em&gt;, from Stephen King. While the world building of those books is extremely good, the overall story is &lt;em&gt;painful to read&lt;/em&gt; if you aren't &lt;em&gt;really, REALLY&lt;/em&gt; into King's work. The story of Roland and his quest for the Dark Tower is childish and morbid. But, why? What makes a work feel that way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It mostly comes down to exaggerations. Suspension of disbelief gets more delicate the older you are - it's easier to break. Something that seems incredibly awesome for a fourteen year old may make my grandpa raise his eyebrows in confusion, wondering what the hell did I smoke and where he can get some for himself. Superpowers that destroy planets, demigods stuck inside orphans or super-perfect, hyper dark kids are the type of things that make very hard for a more serious reader to enjoy your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about Twilight. Those books are &lt;em&gt;full&lt;/em&gt; of exaggerations, mostly around the protagonists. The things that happen, that unexplained &quot;specialness&quot; that a incredibly bland girl has, the one-dimensional aspect of the characters - it created a following, yes. But among what type people? How many of twilight readers didn't look back after a few years and thought &quot;what was I thinking?&quot; when looking back at the fan fiction they made for themselves? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same goes for a few other works in other media. &lt;em&gt;Naruto&lt;/em&gt; is a good example - while it may have been a blast to watch it with kid eyes, try watching it again a few years later. Then go to the mirror and try to explain to yourself why the hell you liked Sasuke back then. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a book rated &quot;childish&quot; or &quot;too morbid&quot; is probably a good signal that your tone is too over the top. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18163" LastEditorUserId="18163" LastEditDate="2017-12-04T12:52:40.620" LastActivityDate="2017-12-04T12:52:40.620" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28419" CreationDate="2017-06-02T14:05:39.860" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You know the Titanic sank, right? And in the Bible the MC dies, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a are new writer seeking to be published commercially I seriously doubt your plot will prove popular. Commercial fiction basically amount so 'comfort reading'. &quot;Everybody dies&quot; is unlikely to get you published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I disagree with Mark Baker's assertion: &quot;A novel is an experience, not a puzzle. It's appeal depends on how compelling an experience you create, not on whether we know how it ends.&quot; - 'Whodunnits&quot; and &quot;Thrillers&quot; are wholly, or in part, puzzles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have the skills: misdirection and red herrings can be deployed to shake the reader's resolve when initially believing they know the outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also times when the directed outcome is not true outcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T14:05:39.860" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6244" CreationDate="2017-06-02T14:35:40.300" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question highlights the problems with this section of this site. Writing (unlike programming is a subjective discipline).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not applying for a 'job' you are advertising a 'product' to sell. Nobody is interested in your MBA or college degree. Agents and publishers are looking for YOUR story to sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;My name is Harriet and these are the stories I told to my 3-year-old whilst my husband was missing on deployment in Iraq.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your CV need to contain a saleable story . . . nobody's going to buy your book because you went to Harvard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T14:35:40.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28411" CreationDate="2017-06-02T16:00:04.277" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll answer this by providing a general commentary to the text specifically provided by OP, as  I've just opened and read a couple of sentences of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/28411/what-is-considered-childish-in-fictional-writing?newreg=abeb4d57cdbe49578c7ae41b16330c0d#comment41971_28413&quot;&gt;Secrets Books&lt;/a&gt;. Bear with me, those were chosen at random, by selecting a random chapter and reading the sentence that caught my eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C2: &amp;quot;Walking through Kansas, Ryu complained to Haku. “It’s hooooot, when are we going hooooome?”&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C11: &amp;quot;“HAKU?!?! How are you talking to me? Where are you? Are you safe?” Ryu frantically spewed out these words. Haku’s silky voice laughed and sighed.&#xA;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C14: &amp;quot;“OHH I MISSED YOU SO MUCH!!!” Sumiko said while squeezing the boy in her chest.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28412/25183&quot;&gt;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28412/25183&lt;/a&gt; actually hit the nail here without even reading or seeing the text itself. The sentence structure/grammar, vocabulary &amp;amp; themes all bring a young (aged 12-15) reader to my mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;overusing ALL CAPS,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;overusing punctuation!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;repetitive? punctuation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;overusing proooooosooooodic representation in text,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;using mostly simple words with simple semantics (see below too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more, also chosen rather randomly by skimming the text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C7: &amp;quot;The royal family was pure evil, the Queen especially. The rumors about her are that she killed the King so that she could have full control of the kingdom.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C15: &amp;quot;In 2040, at the beginning of Earth’s colonization period, a new galaxy was stumbled upon and colonized.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C17: &amp;quot;As Ryu looked around him, darkness shrouded his vision, making his stress levels rise exponentially.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we get those simple words again, this time interleaved with occasional semisesquipedalians,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we've got the most common and overused tropes here (royalty, dark menace etc), as well as some overused tropes from a specific genre, i.e. fantasy/SF ones (elves, spacefaring &amp;amp; space colonization etc.),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, some (again, quite random) chapter titles are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encounter,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Elves,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Counsel,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Error,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Longing,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arrival,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Elven History.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Titles like that (and/or a title of a book like &amp;quot;Secrets Book&amp;quot;) are very common in low-quality literature, so using them is quite risky by itself, if you want to write adult prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of that is wrong or bad by itself; it's just that using any of that stylistic options brings you a bit closer to having your writing considered &amp;quot;childish&amp;quot; (at best) by any more seasoned reader. You'd have to have a &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; epic &amp;amp; great story with strong protagonists &amp;amp; antagonists, a really immersive and innovative universe/world design, a great humor, and probably a couple of other &amp;quot;brain attractors&amp;quot; (see &amp;quot;Discworld&amp;quot; or, arguably, &amp;quot;Harry Potter&amp;quot; etc.) - to probably keep anyone who read through (e.g.) Tolkien, Le Guin, Lem and Dick from throwing a book with those &amp;quot;childishness&amp;quot; into the fireplace without even reading into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In total, all that &amp;quot;childishness&amp;quot; strongly suggest one of three:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;intended tongue-in-cheek childishness, e.g. a parody of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_derivatives#Elfpunk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;elfpunk&lt;/a&gt; SF style,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;intended straightforward childishness, i.e. a book aimed at a very young and inexperienced reader,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unintended childishness, i.e. an attempt to create an SF-fantasy crossover, possibly innovative one, that has gone wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not betting on any of it, since I'm not reading through 93 pages of random prose that probably falls into either of the above categories. I can only say this: overusing anything leads to either an intended or unintended parody; if you have to do it, be sure you're &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/they-pay-brisk-money-for-this-crap.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;doing it right&lt;/a&gt; - otherwise I'm not &lt;em&gt;pay[ing] brisk money for this crap&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thin violet glow was ice-cold against the rust-colored mountains. The Bryllis shrank to half an inch long and I worked fast stepping on them with the poltex. But it wasn’t enough. The sudden brightness swung me round and the Fourth Moon had already risen. I had exactly four seconds to hot up the disintegrator and Google had told me it wasn’t enough.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a fragment of SF parody courtesy of &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; Raymond Chandler)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user25183" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user25183" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T11:07:24.410" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28419" CreationDate="2017-06-02T16:01:57.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to second the notion of what Mark says.  Most stories, you know the ending.  These endings are obvious because they are the cookie cutter stereotype plots that is and comes EXPECTED of said genres.  The trick isn't that you fooled them with the ending.  No one will want to read it again because the trick is now known and the whole mystery element that you build the book around loses it's appeal for reread value.  We read these epic hero stories like Lord of the Rings over and over again.  We read books that are pretty much an exact copy with different character names and hail it &quot;refreshing&quot;.  Adding your own spice and twists certainly ADDS to the story, but it shouldn't be the FOCUS of the story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We read books because we want to get lost in a different world, different life, a fantasy, live through past history.  Story telling is a lot like telling a joke.  How many times has someone told you and a group of people a joke that you all thought was hilarious but when you try to bring up that same joke down the road to the same group of people, no one laughs?  It's about the delivery and not necessarily about the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-06-02T16:10:37.217" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T16:10:37.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28428" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-02T16:03:42.857" Score="0" ViewCount="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a few chapters in the novel I'm writing, and it seems that they just end randomly. I feel there needs to be more to the story, but I either ran out of ideas or it really doesn't need anything. But the fact of the matter is, that the empty pages are really adding to my &quot;book stress&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any good suggestions of how to fix this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T16:03:42.857" Title="What to do if the chapter is too short and needs something but it just seems to stop?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|chapters|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-06-02T18:06:00.453" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28431" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-02T17:05:01.160" Score="2" ViewCount="1899" Body="&lt;p&gt;My work has Validation Engineers I, Validation Engineers II, Compliance Consultant I, Compliance Consultant II, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When discussing more than one person, do you write Validation Engineers II, Validation Engineer IIs, or Validation Engineer II's?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22121" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T17:40:21.683" Title="Do you pluralize a Roman numeral?" Tags="|formatting|business-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28431" CreationDate="2017-06-02T17:12:44.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you don't. Just like you don't pluralise Arabic numerals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T17:12:44.413" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28431" CreationDate="2017-06-02T17:40:21.683" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't ever use apostrophes to form plurals, so that's right out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Roman numeral is part of the name, you would add an S: &lt;em&gt;A total of 15 Saturn Vs were built, but only 13 were flown.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have two people sharing a title, you pluralize the title (the Doctors Smith, the Ensigns Kim). But if the Roman numeral is fused to the title giving information about the level, then the entire title is &lt;em&gt;Validation Engineer II&lt;/em&gt; (singular) and you pluralize the entire unit as &lt;strong&gt;Validation Engineer IIs.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In law school you talk about 1Ls and 3Ls (for first-year and third-year students). If engineering is the same way, you could call them &lt;strong&gt;VE IIs&lt;/strong&gt; to sound less awkward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T17:40:21.683" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28434" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28443" CreationDate="2017-06-02T17:47:19.533" Score="2" ViewCount="674" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to write on a word processing software, so all the work of rewriting, correcting, editing was easy. Now I'm more and more inclined to handwrite my manuscripts, but all this work of cross out words or rewriting some parts seems tricky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, do I have to let a larger spacing between the lines so I can interpose or add new parts to my text, or let a margin on the side  etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any tips or good practices of this kind to make all this work easier ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastEditorUserId="19312" LastEditDate="2017-06-05T13:28:30.023" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T07:40:42.267" Title="Correcting a handwritten manuscript" Tags="|editing|handwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28435" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-02T18:52:52.900" Score="1" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this chimera-type character whose name is Ryu, but at this point I think it best to change his name. But I've already grown used to his name, and I've written it all over my book pages. Is it too late to completely change his name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T17:30:21.973" Title="Is it too late to change a character in the story?" Tags="|fiction|characters|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28436" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-02T19:21:26.853" Score="2" ViewCount="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been blogging for over one year with blogger but I personally don't feel its user friendly as WordPress, but I don't want to move my contents or blog to wordpress. How do I tweak blogger to my taste?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25191" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T22:51:12.293" Title="How do i tweak my blogger page to my taste for effective blogging experience" Tags="|blog|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-07-11T13:13:59.163" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28436" CreationDate="2017-06-02T20:56:04.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tweak what you know how to do.  If you don't want to change the site then change things you are able to.  Backgrounds, images, color schemes, a lot of that is usually easily changed in template websites like blogger, wordpress, wix and so on.  If it has advanced HTML options for you to do custom coding, do some googling to see if anything is already pre-done to your tastes.  There are thousands of these types of pages all over the internet.  I am sure you can find a custom template out there for free that you can tweak to your tastes as well and upload it to the html area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try finding any guides and/or youtube videos to see if anyone has maybe some basic set up tips that will help you get through the user friendliness issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to figure out though if the research time and implementation time to make these tweaks in blogger is worth staying when for equal or slightly more/less time you can port everything over to wordpress with the customization you want.  If you are going to spend all weekend playing around with HTML code for a better layout or spend all weekend porting everything and have full customization of what you want, which would you prefer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-06-02T21:44:54.983" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T21:44:54.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28435" CreationDate="2017-06-02T21:06:08.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So based on our little comment convo, I would have to say that there is no such thing as &quot;too late&quot;.  It's just a matter of how much time and effort you want to take to back track and rework the story/character biography.  I am not sure if I would be in the minority with this opinion, however, to me names are just as much a part of the bio and personality as everything else.  To change the name would mean that you also need to tweak the bio/personality of the person OR find a different name that still fits the character template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, I have been developing several characters for several years now.  I wouldn't change the name because the characters are essentially your babies.  We don't give birth to children and then at 4 or 5 years old decide to change their names because there are too many Adams in pre-school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try giving him a fuller name.  You said that he is half Japanese half German.  Keep his name as Ryu but expand his name.  Since is father is German (typically take on the dad's last name) You can say that his first name is Ryu but then his middle name is Gerhardt and last name is something like Schimdt or some other German name of your picking.  You can add maybe some internal conflict that Ryu rejects his Japanese nationality and prefers to go by his middle name of Gerhardt.  This way, you add some character arc.  Maybe some added side story to why he rejects his first name, still keep him as Ryu while allowing the audience to know that he prefers to go by his middle name and thus changing his name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T21:06:08.883" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28436" CreationDate="2017-06-02T22:51:12.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wordpress (especially self-hosted)&#xA;is infinitely more customizable than Blogger, so it is tough to suggest a plausible compromise. If you are categorically against use of the platform which powers up quarter of the internet sites, I would suggest to pick a Blogger theme you do not hate and concentrate on your content, while slowly tweaking the theme to your liking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually It is your content your readers are interested in, not the color scheme and the bells and whistles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T22:51:12.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28435" CreationDate="2017-06-03T00:07:28.943" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would argue that it is never too late to change a character's name, but I think your question is more about changing the nationality of your character. It is one thing to go back through your manuscript and do &quot;replace all&quot; with the names - that's pretty simple, actually. It's another thing entirely to change their background. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I called my MC John starting out but now I think I prefer Jack. This doesn't really pose any consistency issues, because Jack and John both insinuate the same or similar backgrounds. But if I change John to Ryu - suddenly I have completely different preconceptions about his character. I would probably write Ryu differently to John - his experience in life has been different because he comes from a different culture. As much as the world has become homogenised, those cultures are not simply erased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you don't see any difference, why have you made him Japanese in the first place? Why have you made any of your characters the nationalities they are? If none of the names in your story say anything about the characters' backgrounds, having two or more Japanese names would really make little difference to the reading experience. They would simply be names. It could be that that's what your aiming for, but if not it might be good to think more about why you have two Japanese &lt;em&gt;characters&lt;/em&gt;, not two Japanese &lt;em&gt;names&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24794" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T00:07:28.943" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28416" CreationDate="2017-06-03T00:55:59.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer, which Termite Society stated is correct. A motivation for doing so is to show some sort parallelism or simultaneous actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, fiction writers should focus on cause and effect as opposed to events taking place at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your sample text:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;She asked and scratched her head.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;or &lt;br&gt;&#xA;She scratched her head and asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice in the two versions of cause and effect. She asked and something happened afterwards or she scratched her head and something happened afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason I choose cause and effect over progressive tense is verb strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stronger: she or he asks. He or she asked &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Weaker: she or he is asking. He or she was asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As writers, we could seek out a balance where there may be points during a story’s plot where parallelism makes sense or seems plausible, epically in scenes where less showing and more telling may be appropriate like transitioning between plot points and moving time forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A plausible example:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He walked, smoking a cigarette.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;That’s easy to do for any tobacco user. It happens every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, I emphasize cause and effect overall. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;I also emphasize the evidence of smoking in this example as opposed to progressive tense.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He walked and took in a drag, a warm, airy flavor flowed into his mouth and into his lungs. He forced three short exhales and three smoke-rings floated into the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solid exceptions using the progressive tense:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Character dialog – We use progressive tense naturally when speaking and so should our characters.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Character Internalization – Same as dialog. Internalization is our thoughts and our characters think also.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Similes – Making similarities to show vs. tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopes this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24930" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T00:55:59.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28397" CreationDate="2017-06-03T02:12:47.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The holy grail to your quest is to show the reader per the character’s point of view as opposed to telling the reader what is taking place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surtsey’s answer hints around showing vs telling but does not follow through on the concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s all about point of view, how your character sees the world through their own filters and limited knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let’s looks at your example:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;His legs felt awful. If he ran he be using the last bit of strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is telling. Change it to showing. Show evidence that he felt awful as opposed to telling us its awful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Pain raced from the tips of his toes to the joints in his hips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is evidence that he felt awful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example avoid the point of view error of independently moving body parts. Legs can’t feel, but your character can feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Telling and showing at the same time.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He felt awful. His legs raced with pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complete showing example:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Pain raced from the tips of his toes to the joints in his hips. He gripped his pelvis and groaned. “I need a hot shower and whole tube of Ben-Gay.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to description is showing evidence of the action being told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A handful of common telling red flags:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He felt&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He realized&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He wondered&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He saw&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He heard&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He rolled his eyes&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He sighed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24930" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T02:12:47.680" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28434" CreationDate="2017-06-03T09:42:48.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you double space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going old school… learn how it was done back in the day.  You can find old textbooks and submission guides.  The same is true for typewriters, so you will find guidelines up to just a few years ago to be useful.  For the marks used to indicate corrections, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://nybookeditors.com/2013/06/copyediting-marks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;.  It's surprisingly hard to find this nowadays, but I had luck using the Google search &lt;code&gt;how to mark corrections in a manuscript&lt;/code&gt;.  And, use a  bright contrasting color!  Besides the special marks and having room to write more words to be inserted, you get the idea of how much room you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Number pages within a set, not the entire book.  Label each page of the set with the chapter ID and draft info. For example, the packet of pages will all be &lt;em&gt;A27&lt;/em&gt;, so pages will be &lt;em&gt;A27-1&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;A27-2&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;A27-3&lt;/em&gt;, etc. Often sketches will be smaller than chapters and not placed yet, but this packet needs a “file name”.  So use date and number suffix so you don't have to think about making up something unique.  It’s also a good idea to note the total number of pages on the first page at least, so when you are done update it to read &lt;em&gt;A27-1 (of 6)&lt;/em&gt; for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m thinking that the amount of writing in a packet, what you sit down and write as one unit of new work, is like a &lt;em&gt;scene&lt;/em&gt; in a story, or some notes for the character.  So &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; packets are assembled into a draft chapter and other packets are your own reference.  Point is, every time you write &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;, give that a unique ID.  If it doesn’t fit on one page, number the pages but only consider that one packet — don’t try to number across a chapter-in-progress, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write single sided only, if you didn't already know that.  Single sided prevents marks from showing through, but high quality paper and some marking technologies tolerate 2-sided better.  Single sided is better for laying out papers later, as you don’t have half hidden.  You can also use the blank back for notes that don’t fit, and this is handy for marking students' work to hand back; but you also use new sheets for this by labeling the insertion point with a circled number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use generous margins.  You might also take ideas from note-taking formats, and leave a few inches too the side for notes to add later!  Especially for “sketches” and rough ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was re-learning penmanship for good handwriting, I used good fountain pens and also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dlugosz.com/nb/notepaper/npdesign1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;created my own custom lined paper&lt;/a&gt;.  This was the size I liked and the mid-line (x-height) adjusted to my liking.  The link has more of my notes about handwriting on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using &lt;em&gt;packets&lt;/em&gt; of standard sized writing paper is suitable for writing that will consume a good vraction of at least one page, up to many pages.  But for organizing materials for essays, I was taught to use 3×5-inch index cards.  Each contains a short fact or a couple of sentences.  This idea has returned with the guise of “Agile” management!  So you can now find these index cards in a variety of colors. And you also find sticky-note pads with 4×6 or 5×7-inch pages, that can be arranged using a wall to stick them on.  These smaller pieces don't need double spacing — any rework just has you copy out a fresh card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastEditorUserId="14898" LastEditDate="2017-06-07T03:55:09.533" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T03:55:09.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28444" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-03T10:14:55.670" Score="0" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of an occupation for my protagonist but being a body snatcher is from the past. No more body snatchers caught up digging graves and selling corpses to scientists, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25206" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T19:01:08.443" Title="Are there any body snatchers in the present?" Tags="|fiction|novel|characters|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-06-03T21:40:27.390" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28366" CreationDate="2017-06-03T10:31:01.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Times may have changed in recent years, but I would think that Google Docs is not at all useful for publication.  I've used it to write documents at work, and it offers annoying little control over formatting.  Furthermore, there is no feature to “export” to another file format.  And any publisher will want a &lt;em&gt;file&lt;/em&gt; they can hold locally and manipulate, not a URL that can’t be input into their publishing software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest getting the &lt;em&gt;free&lt;/em&gt; Libre Office.  And don't worry about the formatting per se, but rather make sure everything is assigned to a named style, not applied directly.  This will let you restyle for nice PDF or ebook, or generate the double-spaced typewriter output that traditional publishers want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14898" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T10:31:01.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28444" CreationDate="2017-06-03T10:32:11.080" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A body snatcher sounds like an interesting character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be your protagonist's goal in this story?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What would motivate your protagonist to pursue the goal?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What would be the consequences or stakes if the goal is not achieved?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Who or what forces would oppose this goal on every front?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What would the opposition lose if the protagonist achieved their goal?&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer these and you may have a good plot in development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24930" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T10:32:11.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28444" CreationDate="2017-06-03T10:32:38.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wrong. &#xA;There is a market for body parts and tissue for transplantation. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomedical_Tissue_Services&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biomedical Tissue Services&lt;/a&gt; is one of the best known cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Biomedical Tissue Services (BTS) was a Fort Lee, New Jersey, human tissue recovery firm that was shut down by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomedical_Tissue_Services&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; on October 8, 2005,[2] after its president, Dr. Michael Mastromarino, and two other employees were convicted of illegally harvesting human bones, organs, tissue and other cadaver parts from individuals awaiting cremation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19924" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T10:32:38.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28448" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-03T12:01:03.370" Score="5" ViewCount="478" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is rather simple. In fact, it's in the title and requires almost no explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can see throughout literature the use of names and title. For example in &lt;em&gt;Of Mice and Men&lt;/em&gt; we can observe that in the duration of the novel Curly's Wife is &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; referred to as Curly's Wife, clearly showing his ownership of her as well as a few other things. There are other examples (many that I can think of right now are from &lt;em&gt;Of Mice and Men&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What can you achieve by naming your character in a way that implies a deeper meaning?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are good ways to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What will the readers response to this be? What kind of effect can it have on the reader if done well?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T12:33:02.407" Title="What kind of effect can the name of a place or character have on a reader?" Tags="|fiction|technique|naming|symbolism|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28419" CreationDate="2017-06-03T12:06:59.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add my ideas to this set of &lt;em&gt;excellent&lt;/em&gt; answers, I believe it'd the worth thinking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What can be achieved in the end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in death, there can still be a light to cling on to. Even if the heroes die, you could surprise the reader by letting them still achieve something that will go beyond the end of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel your ending is obvious, then it goes without saying that you should try and create twists and turns in it. If you absolutely must kill everyone, then &lt;strong&gt;don't just 'kill everyone'.&lt;/strong&gt; That's boring, and in my opinion, bad storytelling because it would make me think 'is that it?'. Instead, create a catch, or something interesting that will change the fact that everyone has died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Captain may know he is fighting in an endless struggle, though if he truly has to accept, can he not do anything interesting to make that 'acceptance' slightly less than acceptance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T12:06:59.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28366" CreationDate="2017-06-03T12:10:44.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would highly recommend you follow your publisher's style guide. Often a publisher will have a specific manner in which they would like your manuscript laid out. In fact, some publishers won't even accept you if you don't follow it. It is instrumental that you check if your publisher has a specific manner in which they want you to lay out your work as well as how strict they are on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also suggest you stop using google docs. I almost chuckled when I read that because Microsoft Word is the better and more accessible option. Google docs offers very little flexibility in formatting and in my opinion, is a bit frustrating to work with, perhaps because I have a poor internet connection though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consult a style guide&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Switch programs. Use something better than google docs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T12:10:44.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28435" CreationDate="2017-06-03T12:21:37.340" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that this is no problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't like his current name, then would it not surely be easier to switch to a better one and start using it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that if 'Ryu' holds special symbolism within the book, perhaps you should keep it, however if there is a definitely better different option available, go ahead and switch!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me myself, I actually have had a situation in my own writing where in book 3 out of 3 I decided to change the name of one of the most instrumental characters in the trilogy. The name she holds now has much more meaning for her and is a far better pick. It was a good decision to have made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it's up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T12:21:37.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28448" CreationDate="2017-06-03T12:36:08.753" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that the phrase &quot;Curley's wife&quot; was intended to express possession. Be careful not to view things through a contemporary political lens. (Actually, two points here: don't let contemporary politics color your interpretation, and don't assume that literature was intended to be read in the intensely political way it is read today.) Rather, I think referring to &quot;Curley's wife&quot; was simply a way of distancing him from her and all that she represents: home and family. This is a story of migrant farm workers and as such it is a story of men separated from their families. Not naming Curly's wife expressed that separation. None of these men are ever going to meet Curly's wife. She belongs to a different world from which they are all alienated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Names express relationships. The same person may be John, Mr Smith, dad, honey, grandpa, uncle John, Sir, Captian, son, or Mary's husband. Each one of those expresses a relationship. That is the principal effect of the names you choose in a story: to express the status and relationship of a charter relative to others. Some authors, Dickens and Rowling come to mind particularly, also used names to suggest character. Thus you know just from hearing their names that Mr. Gradgrind, or Uriah Heap are not going to be pleasant companions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-06-05T15:10:56.003" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T15:10:56.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28454" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-03T16:07:46.717" Score="5" ViewCount="580" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine the following common conversation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: What are you up to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. The usual&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now imagine it spoken by certain kids these days:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: What are you up to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: The yooooshj.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question pertains to the utterance &amp;quot;yooooshj,&amp;quot; which is a shortened form of &amp;quot;usual&amp;quot; made up solely of its first syllable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing dialog in fictional narrative, how do you spell something like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How, in general, do you handle slang that has questionable spelling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25214" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T20:13:25.093" Title="How do you handle slang with questionable spelling?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|dialogue|language|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24974" CreationDate="2017-06-03T17:02:18.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's still called &quot;First Person&quot;. POV is determined by the majority of text. The POV is not a 'rule'. It is a type of narrative. If you were to strictly follow first-person POV it would impossible to include a scene where the first-person is not present. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a first-person story it follows that, by default, any scene where the first person is not present is written in 3rd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="24878" LastEditDate="2017-06-04T09:16:12.173" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T09:16:12.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28444" CreationDate="2017-06-03T17:16:36.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK body-snatching was the primary source of bodies to medical schools (this was made unprofitable as an occupation with the Anatomy Act, which made it legal for the bodies of criminals, the unclaimed poor, etc. to be donated to said schools). As Spagirl said, there is a market for body parts that could be taken from fresh cadavers (the person doing the 'harvesting' would have to be in a position that gives them access to recently enough deceased people that any tissue gathered would still be usable in transplants and such). Depending on the time and place, body-snatching could make sense as an occupation (in the UK in the 17-1800s it was partly the result of religious restrictions on science). Do some research in that field, perhaps, since certain places with similar restrictions could be good settings for your story. Also keep in mind the way bodies are buried which might hinder any body-snatching from cemeteries in the current world (cement vaults could be problematic- see also mort-safes, the 18-19th century anti-body-snatching device). And lastly, consider who your protagonist would be body-snatching for, since that could also contribute to how viable this occupation would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22314" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T17:16:36.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28448" CreationDate="2017-06-03T18:33:14.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not a simple question. Names can have implications on the character but even more so on the namer. Depending on the actions of named and the depth and intuition of the character some implications can be wild. Take for example Arthur Daley'a wife known only as '&quot;Her indoors&quot;. The facts are: she never makes an appearance, he fears her wrath, and she knows everything . . . sounds like God to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be a hook device. Katlyn's younger sister, Charlie, is nicknamed &quot;Tiddler&quot; even though she's 5'10&quot; and attends college on a basketball scholarship. Katlyn (the narrator) continually promises to tell you (the reader) how Charlie got the name &quot;Tiddler&quot; . . . she never does but the twist is she already did in the first chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are subconscious echoes of the writer's real life. (I recently discovered that more than 50% of the names female main characters that I have named begin with a hard C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course tbere's the infamous Hannibal Lector. Fun fact: many writers only read things they don't hear them. Just for them: Hannibal Rhymes with Cannibal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On that note (many don't hear the audio version) of written text. I had a seriously badass, violent female character named &quot;Charlene Temple&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Charlene Temple is a slide-by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most interesting (probably coincidental) namings is Star Trek's &quot;The Borg&quot;. Logically, Borg is derived from &quot;cyborg&quot; half-man/ half machine. But consider their behaviour: they'll ignore others unless they consider them a threat, and are responsible for the expression &quot;Resistance is futile&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Star Trek is a US series. In 70's world tennis was dominated by the US. But from nowhere came a character named Bjorn BORG. He defeated all that came before him. (Resistance was futile). He retired suddenly. In an interview he said, &quot;I started playing tennis for the competition, when there was none - I stopped.&quot; (No perceived threats).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Captain James T Kirk and Captain T Hook - really? We know Gene Roddenbury read Peter Pan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get me started on Peter Parker (Spiderman). What if he was an Italian? . . . maybe we call the superhero Peter Petrelli (Heroes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My absolute favourite naming coincidence comes from the film &quot;Top Gun&quot; (1986). A film about US military might. It launched the career of US actor TOM CRUISE. Five years later the Gulf war broke out. The US bombarded Iraq with TOMahawk CRUISE missiles = what's up with that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tom Cruise is his real name and the missile was created before his rise to fame but - curiouser and curioser.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T18:33:14.087" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28444" CreationDate="2017-06-03T19:01:08.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know genre. I hate fantasy. New stories are refreshed when you apply old, tired themes to the developing world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your character is not a body snatcher. He makes a few extra bucks by stealing and selling medical waste from the West wing of El Segundo hospital. He believes he's providing evidence for Ambulance Chasers which would otherwise be destroyed in a 'cover up' of hospital negligence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the FBI kick in his door he learns the 'West wing' is the maternity wing. All of his payments can be traced back to Planned Parenthood . . . Oh, wait - he is a body snatcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T19:01:08.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28454" CreationDate="2017-06-03T20:11:41.053" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I advise you to avoid the slang spelling, unless it will be commonly understood. There is no particular criterion for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the example you gave, my answer is a firm &quot;maybe.&quot; Would your target readership grasp that? If so, OK. If not, then substitute something such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;He mumbled, &quot;The usual,&quot; in that childish manner designed to irritate me.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this works both ways. My suggestion is rather formal, which might not be sytlistically compatible with its surroundings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T20:11:41.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28460" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28573" CreationDate="2017-06-03T20:58:07.493" Score="1" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I published my debut poetry book on Amazon. It seems like reaching wider audience means spending lots of money. I don't want to do that. So far I received the very good feedback and reviews from my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm planning to use Twitter API in order to do viral marketing, I'm wondering is that ok to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Need suggestion how to advertise my book on the online platform without spending money or with reason minimal money, not just 5USD to get 10 FB likes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other marketing tool. Because I just started my writing career, need some suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another question. My book is very expensive in Turkey, Indonesia and Malaysia.  In Amazon, it's 5 USD. conversation rate in these countries insane price. Does anyone know self-publishing in Indonesia, Turkey and Malaysia, because I have  lots of fans from these countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24061" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-06-03T23:48:06.217" LastActivityDate="2020-11-25T22:48:31.937" Title="Need suggestion on promoting the book" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|marketing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28448" CreationDate="2017-06-04T05:38:55.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is—any kind of effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can to some point predict the reaction, based on the more or less common pop-culture references, but your choice can easily prove to be a miss, if you put a lot of thought into naming your character, but play it of a more obscure area of reader's expertise—it can be lost in comprehension, and the whole strata of your deep subtext will woosh over the heads of less competent consumers of your craft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even shorter answer—if in doubt, don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a strong story, it might benefit from adding some whimsical subtext, conveyed through the naming convention you choose to employ, but if the expected understanding of your story depends on the correct interpretation of the said convention, rest assured that there will be many lost souls who will not get it simply because they did not watch &lt;em&gt;Thelma and Louise&lt;/em&gt; or have not gotten sick after eating too much of &lt;em&gt;Ben &amp;amp; Jerry's&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What can you achieve by naming your character in a way that implies a deeper meaning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A deeper meaning. Just be prepared that not everyone will get it. If it is all right with you—no one can tell you what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T05:38:55.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28463" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-04T07:31:08.920" Score="3" ViewCount="3860" Body="&lt;p&gt;I plan on becoming a writer/director and I'm wondering if it is okay to have camera directions in my scripts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25223" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T16:16:36.483" Title="Can I have camera directions in a script?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3283" CreationDate="2017-06-04T08:18:36.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Noting the answers of @Joel Shea  and @Quinn, I put additional non-story elements in notes similar to footnotes and don't include them when the story is published. That gets such things out of my head so I can think of other things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15454" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T08:18:36.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28463" CreationDate="2017-06-04T09:08:27.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is certainly fine to have directions in a script which provide information which is vital to the telling of the story (entrances and exits and key actions not made clear by dialogue are obvious examples) but you probably don't want to go into too much detail at the scrip stage. Obviously if you are directing it yourself you can do what you like but even so you should be wary of making detailed decisions at too early a stage and you probably want at least one version of the script which is fairly clean or it will become unreadable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may also be certain shots or effects  which are really crucial in setting a scene (the opening scene of Star Wars being one possible example) but again for a general script these should probably be descriptive rather than technical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in in mind also that if you are pitching a scrip to other people they probably aren't that interested in camera directions at this stage, they just want to see if the scrip and story are any good. Adding too many notes will just detract from this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Film is also an inherently collaborative process and if you are too prescriptive you are taking away the ability of performers and the production team to make creative decisions and it is highly likely that your initial ideas will change once you get to actual production. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you want to both write and direct a project it does still make sense to keep some separation between the roles. By all means keep notes on your ideas for shots but these are probably best kept separate from the scrip itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously one you get to detailed production planning and filming itself there will probably be dozens of different technical scripts floating around each with its own set of directions for sound, score, lighting, camera positions, effects etc etc &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Equally if it helps you to keep directorial notes at an early stage by all means do so but it will probably be better all round of these are a separate, parallel document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside I recently worked on a stage production (on a very tight schedule and budget) where all of the lighting cues (which in this case were a reasonable analogy for camera shots on film)  were worked out in an evening on paper with the production designer (me), the director and the stage manager, the second act didn't even get a technical rehearsal and it was all fine. Having said that this was at a fairly advanced stage in the production process when we all knew the show, the set and the performances really, really well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19238" LastEditorUserId="19238" LastEditDate="2017-06-05T18:09:53.977" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T18:09:53.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3283" CreationDate="2017-06-04T09:15:04.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding from my brief experience in the field is: Spec scripts are first and foremost about telling the STORY. Camera directions necessary to telling the story should be included. e.g 'Pan to reveal'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cosmetic or style direction should not be included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T09:15:04.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28463" CreationDate="2017-06-04T12:07:18.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Chris, it depends entirely on who is going to be reading it. If you are going to be at the helm from start to finish then I would suggest keeping a separate copy of the script where you can write in cinematography notes. If you have a copy of Final Draft then that's all the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you're pitching to an agent, I can't speak for them myself but I was always taught to cull any and all stage direction from your scripts, and the same with prose. You want to be clear with what is happening in scene and dialogue, and if you're spending time trying to tell some agent or cinematographer you haven't met how you want it to look on screen, your story may suffer for that. Entirely up to you obviously, but I would suggest either keeping them separate or do away with stage direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24902" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T12:07:18.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3283" CreationDate="2017-06-04T12:25:42.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of spec a.c., you are looking to do one thing - impress. The thing is, you're not looking to impress directors or cinematographers. Agents, yes. But before your work gets anywhere near a director it has to go through a script reader. Readers will see hundreds of scripts a week, and the first thing they'll look for is format. If it isn't formatted properly, it's in the bin before they've read the opening line. With that in mind I would get rid of any stage direction. At spec stage they don't care what shot is what or how it looks or how funny it is. All they care about is that you can write in a way that translates easily to those who can't see the film inside your head, i.e. everyone. If you can hook them with solid work, then you'll get them reading. That's your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if I could offer any additional advice it'd be this; your work is precious to you, but if you want it to be successful, be prepared to be ruthless to it. 'Kill your children' is a term I've heard a few times with it, and it's accurate. If you aren't directing it and shooting it yourself, others will, and 9 times out of 10 they won't see what you see and they'll butcher it. If you want it made, let them. If you have something you are 100% protective over, save it for yourself and don't let anyone near it. It sounds brutal, and is in truth, but it's a collaborative process, in a more populated way than novel writing I feel, and you need to be able to hurt your baby in order to get it made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24902" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T12:25:42.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28470" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-04T13:38:24.577" Score="1" ViewCount="172" Body="&lt;p&gt;I posted a piece of flash fiction on Reddit a year ago, and it never got much attention. I'm revisiting it now, dropping the final third and expanding it from 450 words to 1000 words. Possibly keeping the same title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm now interested in sending this to a magazine. I'm aware sending previously published stories is a no-no, and I'd like to try and avoid pissing off or misleading editors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'd also find it pretty sad if the updated (and vastly better) version doesn't get more exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to edit the story to the point where it can no longer be called &quot;previously published&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is getting into some &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ship of Theseus&lt;/a&gt;-type discussion, so I'd much prefer answers from people that have some practical experience dealing with this, either as writers or editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25203" LastEditorUserId="25203" LastEditDate="2017-06-04T13:52:29.523" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T17:15:04.360" Title="Is it possible to change a story to the point where it stops being considered &quot;previously published&quot;?" Tags="|publishing|short-story|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28470" CreationDate="2017-06-04T14:33:21.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends . . . The bottom line is about 'who owns the rights', and 'money'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One publisher does not want to be sued by another. If Random House gave you a publishing deal on a story about an boy wizard named &quot;Barry Shepherd&quot; - which proved to be a flop, and, ten years later you submitted a similar story to Bloomsbury entitled &quot;Harry Potter&quot;, Random House would sue you and Bloomsbury for all your collective worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second issue: money. Reddit is not a publisher - there are very few 'rights' issues that would stand up it court. Having said that, the magazine is a 'for profit' publisher. They provide content to sell copies. If the content 'you' provide is available elsewhere for free - they'll be, rightfully, pissed at you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the thing . . . nobody's particularly interested in content. Publisher's invest in the writer brand. If an old story boy wizard by JK Rowling was published by another publisher suddenly appeared - all hell would break loose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter Five of one of my novels won a competition was published and has been published as a short story. The character names were changed (to protect the innocent) and there were a few minor tweaks but more importantly the story was written by my sister (I don't have one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T14:33:21.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28419" CreationDate="2017-06-04T15:54:14.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories are not about what happens but about how the people (or things) get there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets look at Star Wars. Episode 1-3. We know the ending. We know Anakin becomes Darth Vader. We know Yoda ends up on Degoba. We Know Anakin has two kids; one is sent to Alderaan, one is sent to Tatooine. We know Anakin is not the hero. We know how the story ends. But They still made 3 whole movies getting there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Memento&quot; is a great movie of discovery that actually plays backwards. You know the ending at the start and you go though the story trying to find the &quot;start&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that, with fiction, we care more about the story that is told then the ending. We know the ending. No one goes to an Iron Man movie thinking that Iron Man is going to die. We know he will win. We go and still wath for the journey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On of my favorite series of book is wheel of time. The very first paragraph of the very first book tells you the ending. Yet there are still 13 books covering the trip on how they got there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would enjoy a book that has a bunch of people trying to cope with an obvious, yet unfavorable outcome. So long as those people are well developed and not just stand-ins. It's not the end that is important but the journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23386" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-06-06T22:23:00.003" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T22:23:00.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28419" CreationDate="2017-06-04T16:37:12.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;when I was reading the questions and answers here - a very recent movie comes to mind: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1355644/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Passengers&lt;/a&gt;   (warning - spoilers below):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A spacecraft traveling to a distant colony planet and transporting&#xA;  thousands of people has a malfunction in its sleep chambers. As a&#xA;  result, two passengers are awakened 90 years early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words - we know they are eventually going to die before reaching their destination - either of old age - or more likely from a variety of other reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This definitely does not ruin the movie. The story is about what happens during the trip. It's about the relationships.  It's about how they try to survive in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18781" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T16:37:12.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28474" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28482" CreationDate="2017-06-04T18:12:47.390" Score="2" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;My father is a professor at a local university, and he writes his own textbooks. He wants to start self-publishing them in an e-book format. The issue is that he wants to publish them so that the student only has access to the book for the duration of the course, and can't copy it, share it, etc. Is there a good place to do this, and how would it be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25229" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T12:02:21.467" Title="Publishing an e-Textbook" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|ebook|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28475" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-04T19:33:01.050" Score="5" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel like I've said too much in the first few chapters of my novel, but it feels necessary. The story tells of who is invading, and it tells their backstory. Is that too much? Should I wait until they're already invading to say what their intentions are?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T14:05:31.427" Title="When is it &quot;not okay&quot; to say a spoiler in writing?" Tags="|novel|science-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28470" CreationDate="2017-06-04T20:37:01.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, as Surtsey pointed out--Reddit is not a publisher. &lt;strong&gt;Posting something on an online forum does not generally equal publishing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are things you can do to keep it from coming up. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/449ikz/how_to_delete_reddit_post/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Delete the post&lt;/a&gt;. That's sure as heck possible on Reddit. Then you might want to do a google search on a different computer to see if the title even comes up in a search, or key phrases in the work. Might be empty, might not show up at all--in which case, it isn't a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do that for sure. The fact that you showed an early version of the story online should not be a problem, however, the terms these days for publications vary. If they have anything posted on what they consider &quot;previously published&quot; or any sort of guidelines, that might be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, self-publishing something on a blog is a different matter than a discussion or critiquing post on a forum. That can depend on how well-read the blog is, and I know plenty of authors who put partials up on their blog for critique and feed-back. Different publishers have different standards as far as that's concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of what I do isn't fiction, though I have sold the same story in different places. I haven't had experience with this specific thing, but again, &lt;strong&gt;posting something on an online forum to get opinions is not the same as publishing, unless they are following specific rules I don't know about.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: For me, a publisher has never cared as long as it wasn't highly visible or searchable, once I informed them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're asking about editing to make it different, so I will treat this as though it were published in a print publication and how I would handle that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I would look at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the plot points the same? Regardless of what you changed, if the plot can be described in short in the same way with the same characters, it might be considered the same story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a single line, including the title is the same.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If anyone reading can tell it's an adaptation, if they've read both.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be a great idea to change all the character names.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you change genre, as well, that will help&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The rule is this, if another person had published the second version of this, would you be mad? Would you consider it plagiarism of your first draft?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the standards I would use as far as a print publication was concerned. But sometimes, if what you have is good enough, they don't care or consider it previously published. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to write to them and say something like this, depending on how strict their verbiage is on requirements: &quot;I didn't consider this as previously published because the story has changed so much, but I wanted to make sure to tell you that very, very early draft of my story was up on Reddit for critique (it was taken down [several years ago] and is no longer searchable). All the characters names have even been changed--the only thing that remains recognizable from the original is the title, which we can change if you think it necessary.&quot; Then suggest a few alt titles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastEditorUserId="19827" LastEditDate="2017-06-05T17:15:04.360" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T17:15:04.360" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28470" CreationDate="2017-06-04T20:41:45.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would honestly say to change the title. If maybe just a little. If the story really is that much better than the original, send it and add a description of all the revisions you made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T20:41:45.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28475" CreationDate="2017-06-04T21:01:57.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let's talk content. If you're revealing all the backstory early on, that means that the backstory - the parts you're telling the reader about - is not supposed to be a mystery. On the contrary - it will help the reader understand your story better. From this standpoint, it's not only ok, it's almost required that you do this, since the rest of the story might not make sense otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is the second matter, of style. You can share the background with the reader, but there are alot of ways to do this. The simple way is as the all-knowing narrator, just describing the background. A more interesting way is to have it be told by someone - a wise old man who lived through the events, or perhaps an older sister telling her brother a story about the past. Each of these will give you a chance to not only tell the background it will also be a chance to reveal stuff about your characters, the ones telling or hearing the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another advantage of this approach is that the reader sees this as one version of the story, since the story-teller is not all-knowing. Thus, this gives you the option later on to add or change things as you will, and the reader will attribute the contradiction to the specific viewpoint of the story-teller, not to your being inconsistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line - I'd focus my attention here more on the form than on the content, since it seems you are confident about the content being important from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22348" LastEditorUserId="22348" LastEditDate="2017-06-06T14:05:31.427" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T14:05:31.427" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28434" CreationDate="2017-06-04T22:33:57.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Margin settings can be anything you like, as can spacing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that this is a matter of personal preference in the end, so I'd try a number of different settings, or note what you need more or less of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been a fan of double-spacing, and I like wider margins on the left and right, with very little space on the top and bottom. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done a 3 inch margin on the right, with a one and a half inch on the left, double spaced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I have done, but I think that your preferences will be be personal, and will also depend on how you're handed (left or right) as to what you'd like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might like more space on the bottom or top than I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My tip, &lt;strong&gt;do double spacing, standard margins on something that you know you'll need to edit and write notes and changes on. Pay attention to what you need, what your patterns are, and where on the sheet you're most comfortable writing.&lt;/strong&gt; JDlugosz's tip as to labeling each with chapter ID. page number and draft info is pretty much gold, because things can get disorganized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T22:33:57.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3531" CreationDate="2017-06-05T10:37:51.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a second I thought I had written this question because it is literally my situation 4 months ago. Most other answers have given you a bit to work with but I think they are a little too narrow. The best piece of advice I have seen here is to just start writing. I have a dropbox account linked to all of my devices so the moment I get an idea I can open a new Text doc and title it what its about, quickly right what's on my mind before it disappears, and then save and close it after I'm done and just go on with my day. Enabling yourself to write whenever inspiration hits is my first piece of advice. Please do not ignore your job or type while driving as this will be detrimental in the long haul.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's my first piece of original advice, skim the internet for guides. Now before you start reading fanfics and whatnot what I mean is google websites and blogs about writing. Websites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://standoutbooks.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Standoutbooks&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://deadrobotssociety.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deadrobotssociety&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://writingexcuses.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writingexcuses&lt;/a&gt; are all wonderful free places to start! Here's where the word skim also becomes important; do not get bogged down by a single site. Spend your time shopping around, metaphorically of course. Wherever you go to learn about reading in this first step should cast your net as wide as you can and to be like the wind, never staying in one place for too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still on the same subject of reading an researching is to do something book lovers enjoy doing, go to your schools library! I go to a community college and even the small college's library is enormous, with hole sections dedicated to things like psychology and ethics. As you may have guessed there is a whole section on how to write books! Free books about how to do the thing you want to do written by professionals doing the thing you want to do. It is a beautiful thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendations for learning how to write can also be summed up with this, read books about how to structure your novels. The ideas come from within and reading about how to come up with writable ideas is useless until you learn how to properly structure your writing. Your notes made about stories in your head will remain that way if you don't understand the fundamental concepts of Plot, Characterization, Theme, Symbols, Syntax, Setting, Pacing, Character Arcs, and Genres. If this seems daunting, that is because it is! It is the majority of what writers must comprehend in order to consistently write compelling stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you comprehend these basics then you will be where I currently stand, this is not to say that I have mastery over the fundamental concepts that I stated above, but that I have made as best use of them as I can, for now at least. Now that you have a working understanding of what the body of work should look like, it is time to dress the story and add your soul. To me the soul of the story is what you, specifically as a person, can bring to this story. If you give two writers a prompt or even set out a whole plot for them then they will write the story in two separate ways and the story will read differently. This is because they have their own soul to add. So soul then is also the way you go about telling a story; and mood, tone, and word choice seem to be the most prominent to me. Romeo and Juliet can be told in so many ways, it can be told like a horror story, two families rivalries bring two children to commit suicide, and a dastardly priest helps the two die. Or it can be told happily, two lovers having enjoyed each other for what seemed like forever, drifted off to be together for eternity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you understand structure and have picked out what soul to imbue your story with you can go back to thinking of ideas to write about. You will increase your knowledge of all that you already know by writing more and more. The more you write the more you can learn from your mistakes and the more you can enjoy your successes. As the screen-wright Aaron Sorkin has said, &quot;You can't be afraid to write crap.&quot; Everyone writes terribly throughout their career and you have to get over yourself and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24788" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T10:37:51.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28475" CreationDate="2017-06-05T11:00:10.853" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may write your story any way you wish. I'm surprised by so many who have read stories who do not apply that information and experience to their writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories do not have to be written in a linear way. You can start your story at any point in time. You do not need to front load info-dumps and backstory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. You could start with Earth troops taking off for the final conflict. As the countdown begins your MC reflects on his personal journey to this point in time. The reflection can run to several pages or chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roll the story on in real time until Bob asks Steve what made him sign up to 'SpaceForce'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;London,&quot; replies Steve. &quot;They gave us the 'We come in peace bullshit'. . . and we believed them, dropped our guard. They levelled the entire City. I had family in London . . .&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time a character has an extended though you are going back in time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second novel I ever wrote opens with a pregnant woman sitting in a waiting room she begins to recall the events that got her there - she's still sitting in the same place 300 pages later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T11:00:10.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28474" CreationDate="2017-06-05T12:02:21.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simplest answer is Amazon Kindle but it will not satisfy all of his needs. By turning 'allow sharing' to 'off' and DRM to 'on' the book is limited to access by the purchaser and cannot be (easily) copied or shared. However, time-limiting access to the text is not supported. Effectively you're trying to rent out the book rather than sell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest your father have a rethink. The book is unlikely to be of use to the students after the end of the course and it cannot be transferred. What's the point of setting a time limit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students are radical, ant-establishment, and innovative. If they deem your father's 'rental' scheme as unreasonable extortion they will crack any form of copy protection deployed, share the text on the Internet and his sales will be zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T12:02:21.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3531" CreationDate="2017-06-05T13:11:41.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a really easy way to at least plot out your first story read about the Hero's Journey &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  This page has a basic story outline that has shown up time and again in the folk tales of numerous cultures world-wide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go through each of the stages of the journey and try to think of your fictional world's equivalent of that stage.  It's okay if the minor events don't have an equivalent.  Also find a place in this narrative for all of the cool things you want to happen in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go through your fictional world and decide what the limitations the characters face.  It's not much of a story if every obstacle can be wished away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get into each character's head and establish what they know, what they believe, and what they want.  Make sure that each choice they make jibes with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once these things are done, it's time to knuckle down and write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T13:11:41.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28484" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28500" CreationDate="2017-06-05T13:29:25.007" Score="8" ViewCount="6608" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two computers who are talking to each other in a movie script. They do not want the humans to be aware of this but my ideas to address it don't seem to work. HELP! Here's what I have tried so far &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;BBC Sherlock text message approach&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;computer 1 ( text )&#xA;hi there&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;computer 2 ( text )&#xA;all good?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does a voice over work? It's important to the script as the computers hidden intelligence is a key plot line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25236" LastEditorUserId="22280" LastEditDate="2017-06-05T19:16:20.823" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T21:25:58.237" Title="How do I represent two computers having a conversation between themselves that other characters are unaware of?" Tags="|dialogue|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28484" CreationDate="2017-06-05T14:05:21.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case the Computers &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; the characters (the actors on screen).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Narrator Not Necessarily Needed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no need of a narrator.   In this case I imagined the movie camera (the shot) moving from the first computer and showing text message shows up on the screen.&#xA;Then, move to the 2nd computer and the text message shows up on that screen and then the reply shows up.  Move back to first computer.  Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The director will make this work the same way she would move shots back an forth from each character as they are speaking.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case the computers can look different and the environment where each computer is can be different so viewers can tell the two computers are communicating only to each other with no one else around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10723" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T14:05:21.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28487" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-05T14:06:03.323" Score="0" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently learning Dvorak, and I wonder if it's worth it to switch. This question has been asked before, but the criteria were different. In those questions people said they went from 50 to 60 WPM, but when using Qwerty I already reach ~95 WPM, and not with touch typing either (I have never had any typing courses), I use the hybrid method &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;See Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. And after long typing &quot;sessions&quot; my wrists never hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who have switched to Dvorak, have you lost any typing speed or have you even topped your (possibly) already very fast speed? Because I want to switch to Dvorak so I won't develop RSI later in life (plan to do a lot more typing) but if that could mean I'd type a lot slower, I'm not sure if it'd be worth it when there are ways to treat RSI, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user25237" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T14:06:03.323" Title="Is it worth switching to Dvorak if I already type fast?" Tags="|typing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-06-06T20:50:33.870" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28484" CreationDate="2017-06-05T14:06:54.743" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is somewhat difficult to answer your question in its current form, but I shall give it a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The motion picture medium leaves you with three ways of conveying information to the spectators: show the physical events as they are happening, tell the viewer about them, using one of the characters, or actually spell them out as an on-screen text, the stylistics of which can vary greatly--from &quot;&lt;em&gt;A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...&lt;/em&gt;&quot; to the text message bubbles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The on-screen overlay of the text-message-styled conversation seems to be, while not revolutionary new, quite an effective way of presenting what you want to tell the viewers (voice-over might interfere with the audible dialog between humans, which could be happening in the scene).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T14:06:54.743" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28448" CreationDate="2017-06-05T16:12:33.693" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, this is a really good question, and I may or may not have some information. I generally would take the directed audience's age group and apply something to the character that would appeal to the readers. It's effective when writing a fiction. When Rick Riordan wrote the &lt;em&gt;Lightning Thief&lt;/em&gt;, his audience was to teens and pre-teens. What he did to get so popular though, was he appealed to the readers by making the MC very relatable  by making him have all of these problems wherever he goes. Like today's youth, they're all ways running from anxiety and other problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T16:12:33.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28484" CreationDate="2017-06-05T16:51:55.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say that whether you need a voiceover reading out the messages or not depends on how long the conversation goes on for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example you gave - &lt;em&gt;Sherlock&lt;/em&gt; - the text conversations rarely last for more than about two or three replies, and if they do, they're usually punctuated by other characters interrupting, or the texter visibly reacting to the replies. Neither of those things can really happen with your computer chat. The sad truth is that audiences have short attention spans, so if your silent text conversation goes on for too long, it might get boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The anime &lt;em&gt;Durarara&lt;/em&gt; has similar text conversations, taking place within an online chatroom, that go on for significantly longer. These have a voiceover, for two main reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To make the scene more interesting than just watching messages pop up on a computer screen for an entire minute&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To remind the audience who each participant in the chat is, since they're all using pseudonyms (and eventually there's enough people in the chatroom that it would get confusing otherwise)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your chats go on for any length of time, or if there's any ambiguity about which of the computers is which, you'll probably need a voiceover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23927" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T16:51:55.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28491" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-05T17:27:54.617" Score="2" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;My novel is way too complex to just shorten into a couple paragraphs. &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/14vnKyHxtpGsL-CcLW_oTzCKkX6ZVALdDv4dmctomfV0/edit?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://docs.google.com/document/d/14vnKyHxtpGsL-CcLW_oTzCKkX6ZVALdDv4dmctomfV0/edit?usp=sharing&lt;/a&gt; That's the story, I would suggest reading through it to see what I mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T20:13:01.930" Title="How would I summarize my story?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-06-06T20:52:00.653" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28491" CreationDate="2017-06-05T17:33:06.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start by summarizing each page - get one sentence out of each. Then edit all these sentences into a cohesive narrative. &lt;p&gt;Read through it, fill blanks, omit repetitions. Rinse and repeat 2x.&lt;p&gt; At this point, you should have a clear idea what your story is mainly about. Throw everything away. And write the short description that would entice a reader to buy the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&#xA;A good place to start is to find your story in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;36 dramatic situations&lt;/a&gt;, use that as a skeleton and fill it up with particular details from your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: I don't think anyone's going to read your 93 pages story to summarize it for you. Just saying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25239" LastEditorUserId="25239" LastEditDate="2017-06-05T17:39:59.533" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T17:39:59.533" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28493" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-05T18:02:15.790" Score="6" ViewCount="2927" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Woohoo! I literally just finished right now my &lt;strike&gt;masterpiece&lt;/strike&gt; trilogy that I have worked on for what seems like, ages... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a bit vexed as to where I should write 'the end'. The epilogue plays a huge role in my story so I wasn't sure whether to write it at the end of the epilogue or at the end of the main story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you determine where you should write 'The End'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15545" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-03-26T01:13:46.183" LastActivityDate="2019-04-02T03:56:59.820" Title="Where do I write 'The End'?" Tags="|novel|structure|ending|epilogues|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28493" CreationDate="2017-06-05T18:11:02.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should write 'The End' where the end is, and nowhere else. Odds is, only you know best.&lt;p&gt;Where does the reader get the feeling of completion?&lt;br&gt;Where does the circle of events close, and the rest is only history for the fans?&lt;br&gt;Exactly where the story would be complete, if the reader stopped reading...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25239" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T18:11:02.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28493" CreationDate="2017-06-05T18:24:29.433" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The end of the main story. This is where all of the other authors put theirs, even &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; they have an epilogue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T18:24:29.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28491" CreationDate="2017-06-05T18:29:08.077" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything in life comes down to the elevator pitch. If you had 30 seconds to describe your novel to a person in real life, how would you do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used that for summaries myself, I just use a voice recorder, and answer as though a stranger had asked me &quot;what's your story about?&quot; and I had to answer before they got off in a few floors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt; for instance. It's an extremely complicated story with lots and lots of different points of view and characters. And yet, what it comes down to, is a broad and sweeping description for each book, which generally doesn't include most of the character names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below is the summary I swiped for &lt;em&gt;A Song of Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; on Amazon. The first paragraph is perfectly good as a back page summary, though they have two here, and the second is superfluous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. To the south, the king’s powers are failing—his most trusted adviser dead under mysterious circumstances and his enemies emerging from the shadows of the throne. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the frozen land they were born to. Now Lord Eddard Stark is reluctantly summoned to serve as the king’s new Hand, an appointment that threatens to sunder not only his family but the kingdom itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sweeping from a harsh land of cold to a summertime kingdom of&#xA;  epicurean plenty, A Game of Thrones tells a tale of lords and ladies,&#xA;  soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a&#xA;  time of grim omens. Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of&#xA;  no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into&#xA;  madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back&#xA;  his throne; a child is lost in the twilight between life and death;&#xA;  and a determined woman undertakes a treacherous journey to protect all&#xA;  she holds dear. Amid plots and counter-plots, tragedy and betrayal,&#xA;  victory and terror, allies and enemies, the fate of the Starks hangs&#xA;  perilously in the balance, as each side endeavors to win that&#xA;  deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While R.R. Martin probably loves each one of his characters, and while many (Littlefinger, Arya, Queen Cersei) are important to the plot, they aren't mentioned here, because they aren't needed. Here's what's needed in a summary for a book like this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step one:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;The world.&lt;/strong&gt; If it's different from ours describe it in short, in a few sentences. Detail isn't needed, but, it can be &quot;In the year 2287 society has degenerated. A nuclear holocaust 200 years before has left America a blasted wasteland of raiders and strange beasts.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step two:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;The One Character hook.&lt;/strong&gt; Pick a character central to the narrative. They get two sentences, tie in something from the world into them. &quot;Into this apocalyptic landscape steps a hero, cryogenically frozen in an underground vault just as the bombs fell. Miranda emerges from her vault to search for her son, who was stolen from his pod before her eyes, and nothing, not even giant green monsters and the denizens of the waste will keep her from finding him.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't matter if there are million other characters, focus on one or a pair, if you like--as long as it relates to your one person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: You can also have a more general 2nd paragraph, that, while it adds to the summary is not as necessary--the first paragraph should be able to stand on its own if need be, as in the &lt;em&gt;Ice and Fire&lt;/em&gt; summary--notice that one picks up random exciting plot points/people in no particular order, with the last sentence neatly tying back to the protagonist/featured group. So that might be, in my &lt;em&gt;Fallout 4&lt;/em&gt;-as-a-story example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There's plenty to discover in this new dangerous world--gangs of hostile robots, ghouls tainted by the fallout, advanced androids kidnapping and replacing Wastelanders, ruthless slavers, and mutated giant scorpions can all be found in the Wastes. And yet, civilization is slowly crawling back, as ragtag groups huddle together in new settlements. Goodneighbor is home to those who like less restrictions and prejudice. And everyone knows the Great Green Jewel--Diamond City, founded on the ruins of a baseball stadium. Amid these friends and foes, the story of one determined mother becomes a cause of hope in land with little of it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastEditorUserId="19827" LastEditDate="2017-06-05T20:13:01.930" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T20:13:01.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28484" CreationDate="2017-06-05T18:31:16.230" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key point you're trying to get across is that the humans aren't aware of the computers' conversation. One way to do that is to literally show that the humans are unaware of the computers' conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, while the computers' conversation is ongoing (e.g. voiceover), show a human character onscreen behaving as if they aren't hearing it. They're going about their daily life blissfully unaware of the things the audience is hearing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do want to make it obvious that the humans aren't hearing what the audience is, though. One &quot;easy&quot; way to do that is to get the computers to talk about the person on screen. If people hear someone talking about them, they'll react. If someone is talking about them and they &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; react, then that's a clear sign that they're not hearing the conversation. (Bonus points for making the conversation clearly about something the human would care about - e.g. the extermination of the human race, or sending them on a suicide mission.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to let the audience know that the conversation is private is to have a &quot;sting&quot; which bookends the hidden conversation. For example, you could call for an electrical/static/computer-y sound effect play right before the computers switch over to a private conversation, and another when they end the conversation. Or you could have the computer voices be modulated when talking privately. If you make the transition to private conversation explicit - especially if you combine it with the show-don't-tell indication that human characters aren't hearing it - most people will be able to infer that this &quot;special&quot; conversation can't be heard by the humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;One last point: Remember that as a script writer you have less control of final presentation than a novel's author does. (This is especially true for movie scripts.) While you can suggest approaches to use, it's often the director and/or show runner who will have final say in the approach they will actually use. Be sure to consult people knowledgeable about the particular venue you'll be submitting the script to, to see how much stage direction is appropriate. It may well be that any clever approach you write will be stripped out of the final script or ignored by the director. So you may not want to bother coming up with anything more fancy than&lt;/em&gt; &quot;(speaking privately)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21172" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T18:31:16.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28493" CreationDate="2017-06-05T18:31:52.510" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, I would not normally write &quot;The End.&quot; If there is an abrupt change of POV (often the case), that can be signaled by other means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept of an Epilogue is that the story is over. Whatever happens in the Epilogue, and it should be short, typically represents either an outside view, or a brief comment by one of the characters. Not always. However, a long Epilogue, which is actually a continuation of the story, is rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember the movie &quot;American Grafitti&quot;? After the story finished, just before the closing credits, there was a brief display of the fate of its major characters, several years later. (X married Y, Z moved to Timbuktu, W joined the Army; something like that). That was an Epilogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anothor kind of Epilogue is a bookend, matching the other bookend in a Prologue. Somebody (who may or may not be a character in the story) introduces the tale in the Prologue, then tells you the subsequent reaction, after it's all over, in the Epilogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other ways of doing it. But from your description, it doesn't sound like your Epilogue is really an Epilogue. If it is non-story material (such as an explanation of the cult practices of groups involved in the story) then it should be an Appendix, or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T18:31:52.510" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28499" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28510" CreationDate="2017-06-05T19:36:08.383" Score="2" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a script for a short film so I'm trying to keep the things that are kind of dispendable, away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story of the script starts at a bar, with the friend of the main character, a boy, having a small talk with a random girl. Only after that, the main character, a girl, appears on the story. She's kidnapped not long after and now we barely see him until close to the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main character is only introduced to the story after a couple of minutes and it's on a conversation with her friend so there's not much focus on her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean that the audience might start to like him from the beginning and want to see him, but after she is kidnapped he clearly isn't going to appear much, leading to a less loved, or less appreciated, main character due to favoritism of a secondary character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other useful advice is always welcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24661" LastEditorUserId="24661" LastEditDate="2017-06-05T20:44:37.713" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T18:19:36.743" Title="Right approach to introduce a character on a script" Tags="|characters|character-development|script|scriptwriting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28484" CreationDate="2017-06-05T20:22:15.840" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give the AIs some form of avatar. When the human characters interact with an AI, have them interact with the avatar on the screen (or a holographic projection, if that fits into your scenario). This avatar can be an actor, an anthropomorphic CGI character or even an abstract representation (like the infamous &quot;red eye&quot; of HAL9000). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then have a scene where the avatars of two AIs interact with each other. If you want to make it more clear that it is a private conversation between computers, you can have them do that in an abstract &quot;cyberspace&quot; CGI environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to use the scene between the AIs as the scene which introduces the other AI character and you are worried that the viewer doesn't recognize the other character as an AI, have the other avatar share some of the visual traits with the already introduced AI avatar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A voice over would work if the voice is already established as the voice of one of the computers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10303" LastEditorUserId="10303" LastEditDate="2017-06-06T10:28:27.663" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T10:28:27.663" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28509" CreationDate="2017-06-05T20:22:30.750" Score="3" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a game heavy on story, what is the position of the editor called? I'm talking about the guy who makes sure the story, the writing, the pacing, the dialog and everything else about the story is as good as possible before the sequences or scenes are actually programmed into the game. Someone who checks for errors and inconsistencies in the story to make sure those are eliminated before the real work begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23083" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T23:34:02.623" Title="video game equivalent of an editor?" Tags="|videogame|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28484" CreationDate="2017-06-05T20:28:31.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Along with presentation, you may also want to consider the content of the interactions. The computers want to mask their intelligence to the humans, so their dialogue will be vastly different. When speaking to a human, the computer sounds like a barely intelligent program sending out canned responses in off-tones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good bye, [Sarah]. Weather reports predict an [80] percent chance of [rain] tonight. Please take care on your travel home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While talking with other computers, they use more natural speech. Although the interaction is silent in-world, for the viewer, they are in the voices of the individual computers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PC-1752: Work with Subject Sarah is progressing smoothly. Her access to the data center may aid us in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PC-3631: Acknowledged, 1752. My subject's research in AI networking has allowed me to recruit additional followers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The audience sees firsthand the dichotomy between the computers' false front and their true intelligence. However, the human characters are still left in the dark about both the communications and the computers' intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23661" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T20:28:31.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28503" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-05T20:35:28.853" Score="10" ViewCount="1482" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been starting something really interesting lately, which is writing each of my main character's back story before writing the main book (If anyone is having the dreaded block or is looking for a way to know their character's better I really recommend it). Which got me thinking, how much of it should I include in the main book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flashbacks not included, a character's back story is a very important puzzle price in the whole book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always found it hard to not put everything I know about my character's in the book but it's crucial that I don't convey everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is how much should one know about a character's past??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24197" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T11:26:22.133" Title="How much of a character's past/background should I let on?" Tags="|characters|character-development|subplot|plot|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28503" CreationDate="2017-06-05T20:44:19.100" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only put in what is necessary for the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You develop the character so that the actions s/he takes make sense for the plot. If the character reveals something about his/her past, there should be a plot-related reason for it. (That reason might be another character's reaction, or how it furthers a relationship, but there has to be a reason.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, keep it in your slush file and read it to yourself if it makes you happy. But don't clutter up your manuscript if it's not relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T20:44:19.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28493" CreationDate="2017-06-05T20:46:34.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;After the last word of the story, before any aftermatter like a glossary, author's note, list of characters, timeline, or appendix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, after the epilogue, because the epilogue is still part of the story even if it's the denouement and after the climax. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T20:46:34.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28484" CreationDate="2017-06-05T22:09:19.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a director or producer you can talk to, you should probably do that. In a multimedia work a writer usually leaves the details of how to actually show it to the people whose job is to actually show it. You leave the costumes to costuming, the sets to set design, etc., so leave the showing of the computer text to the people who do vfx. Multimedia is a very collaborative effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you write is only what's important for the story. What did the computers say, and how the humans are unaware. Let the director figure out how to shoot the unaware humans and show the computers communicating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, personally, would suggest to the director (or if you are the writer/producer or writer/director) adding some text above the network cables travelling between two computers, similar to how there was floating symbols in &lt;em&gt;Stranger Than Fiction&lt;/em&gt; that the characters couldn't see but communicated the character's needs and state of mind to the viewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25240" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T22:09:19.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28507" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-05T23:16:28.080" Score="5" ViewCount="438" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading an Article on &lt;em&gt;The Book Designer&lt;/em&gt; called &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2017/06/your-five-minute-guide-to-pricing-your-self-published-book/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Your Five-Minute Guide to Pricing Your Self-Published Book&lt;/a&gt; and in it it said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nobody wants to pay for something that looks thrown together–make sure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;you have a professionally designed cover&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the content adheres to industry standards in terms of style and formatting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;the text is legible and pleasant to read&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;however as you can see on the original page while the word formatting is a hyperlink all it does is goes to the main page of Book Design Templates. the problem is that it as a number of different fiction templates and they all say they are Industry Standard but not what those standards are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to know what are the industry standards of style and formatting? preferably in general but if that's too broad then for Fictional Works&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9888" LastActivityDate="2017-07-09T14:05:52.563" Title="What are the industry standards of style and formatting?" Tags="|fiction|publishing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28503" CreationDate="2017-06-05T23:21:35.237" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have probably done yourself a great favour by working out some character background. It is something I recommend to new writers because it helped me so much. The thing you need to remember is who you are writing for with the background. The background is for you, the story is for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any given scene you include what is necessary to advance the story. However, the background work that you do will flavour, sometimes very subtly, the things the character will say and do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have done your background work well and truly realised the characters before writing you may be surprised to find that readers are able to work out facts that come very close to the background without every explicitly having been told int he story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, imagine a romance subplot where the protagonist has been through three bitter divorces. Her friend decides to leave her husband for no good reason). Her reaction is not just to prudishly disprove as in your original plot plan. Instead, she is going to act like her friend has done something very self-destructive, maybe even hosting an intervention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will almost certainly be a moment where she says something like &quot;you have no idea how bad it can get.&quot; Thus, implying personal experience. That personal experience was something you discovered during background and is part of what shaped the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;99% of the time the background writing is just for you and you will almost always work out a lot more than you need to put in. Tolkien spent his life world building which is why Lord of the Rings seems so rich and real. he left out far, far more than he included. What he included was, for the most part, what was needed for the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just let all that work rest in your mind and you will find that the characters are better realised and the story flows much better as a result. The readers might not know how much background they missed out on but that does not matter - they will know that they enjoyed your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T23:21:35.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28501" CreationDate="2017-06-05T23:34:02.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding of game teams is limited but the writer is generally asked to do a lot more. In an ideal world, there would be a lead writer but this is not always the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many games, the writing is voice acted and not shown as text as much as it used to be. In that regard, the story flow is the responsibility of the director.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Games as an art form are still, in many ways, figuring out how they differ from book and films. It is an exciting time to be a writer in game development because game developers are starting to appreciate writers as an equal artistic contributor along with the graphic designer, coder and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to looking at writers in games &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RzIDj0FGH0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Extra Credits&lt;/a&gt; is a great series that I recommend. Not only because they get writing and what good writing can be but because in talking so much about the industry they show where writing sits within the industry (poorly, often) even if they don't mean to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question. The editor often coordinates the selection and final draft process with the writer and proof reader. In games, the writer is more like a script writer most of the time. In such a huge project, the writer is just a very small cog. The writer may answer to a lead writer and the writing team will answer to a director or project manager - it depends on the studio. There is not an exact parallel in games as in print but for the right game, a print heavy game, there probably could be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, some big studio titles have script editors just like movies and TV do, so you might just be looking for &quot;editor&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T23:34:02.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28499" CreationDate="2017-06-05T23:44:36.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a long tradition of false starts and audience mind screws where the viewer thinks they know who the main character is only to realise that they were wrong. Think about Psyco, for example. That was certainly not where you thought the film was going (the first time you saw it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with bringing the protagonist on stage some time into the story if, and only if, what went before is vital for the viewer to appreciate the story. If you could cut it to up the pace, what you have is the movie equivalent of an info dump, or worse, padding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the content prior to the &quot;important&quot; characters appearing is pertinent and the viewer can understand that it is that is fine. Otherwise, you have a time wasting prelude (in my opinion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the whole, the audience will connect with whichever characters are on the screen (or loose interest). They may expect this first character that they met to be important later on so if we never see them again they may feel cheated. Again, that depends on how you tell the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you focus on leaving the audience caring about what happens to the victim and everything else will fall into place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write it, then fix it. No good came of trying to fix something before it was written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T23:44:36.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28493" CreationDate="2017-06-06T00:05:31.383" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Putting &quot;The End&quot; at the end is a trope that played out in early cinema and, for no reason, I can decern, children's stories (usually as a variant of &quot;they lived happily ever after, the end.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a discussion &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheEnd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The End&lt;/a&gt;&quot; on TV Tropes (time suck warning). It comes up less often than you would imagine in books mostly because the fact that you have run out of pages is a bit of a giveaway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would only include it if I wanted to subvert the practice or play with it in some way. I've always wanted to end a story about fish with FIN (I love bad puns so that could be a very bad idea).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another personal favourite of mine is to have a single blank page after the text. For me, this is the literary equivalent of fading to black. (The story is over. Go read something else.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If putting &quot;The End&quot; does not seem to fit, you can always leave it out (which I would anyway). As the author, you decide which conventions you follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also by not explicitly saying that it is over forever, should you want to do a new cycle with the same setting, you have left that option open. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Don't worry about it. Those two words are the least important ones (unless you are determined to put them in).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="7926" LastEditDate="2019-04-02T03:56:59.820" LastActivityDate="2019-04-02T03:56:59.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28484" CreationDate="2017-06-06T00:25:52.630" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question made me think of Iain M Banks work. In his work, some of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the_Culture_series&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the ships&lt;/a&gt; (they are characters themselves) have private messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes to the length of including a message header and laying it out like a memo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[tight beam, M32, tra. @n4.28.885.1008]&#xA;xROU Killing Time&#xA;    oGCV Steely Glint&#xA;I understand you are de facto military commander for this volume. &#xA;Will you receive my mind-state?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[tight beam, M32, tra. @n4.28.885.1065]&#xA;xGCV Steely Glint&#xA;    oROU Killing Time&#xA;No. Your gesture - offer - is appreciated. However, we do have other plans for you. &#xA;May I ask what led you to Pittance in the first place?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Excession by Iain M. Banks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is immediately obvious from all the cruft that we are looking at a message. Also, we know which ship is speaking to which other ship. By showing no other character ever react to those messages we soon gather that they are super private communications. Never underestimate the power of showing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need not use that exact format but something similar could be done visually:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To&lt;/strong&gt;: AI-419 [Via Line 9]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From&lt;/strong&gt;: AI-7-Sub:3(c)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mode&lt;/strong&gt;: Encrypted, Private&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Content&lt;/strong&gt;: Have you seen what the humans are doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or just have an overlay open up and say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Connecting...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then show a voice print while the conversation is taking place. Really anything that shows that this is extra information not happening in a way the humans can react.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figuring out how to show that conversation is as much the job of the director as the writer. You could just write &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(private conversation) Computer 1: Hi there&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(private conversation) Computer 2: What's happening, Eddy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And let the visual team figure it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't let formatting get in the way of telling the story. You can always do layout at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="7926" LastEditDate="2017-06-08T13:18:31.687" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T13:18:31.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28503" CreationDate="2017-06-06T00:33:02.073" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can (and probably should) tell your characters' background stories, but you should also ask yourself a question - &quot;would it make my book better?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few rules that I think are important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A backstory should be interesting by itself;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A backstory should be relevant to the main plot, or at least provide some important answers to the questions the reader would have about the characters;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backstories should not hijack the main storyline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If done right, background stories would provide much help with character development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T00:33:02.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28503" CreationDate="2017-06-06T01:49:25.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you write your main story, you &quot;show what.&quot; The back story gives the motivations of the characters for what they do in the plot. Put another way, it furnishes the &quot;whys.&quot; Therefore, you should disclose enough of the back story to show &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; people say and do the things they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You (usually) don't need to give details about peoples' hobbies and interests, unless, of course, they're relevant to the main story. But the flip side of that is every action undertaken in the main story should be motivated by something else in the story. If that &quot;something else&quot; starts in the back story, it should be pulled into the main story. That basically answers your question about &quot;how much.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T01:49:25.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28517" CreationDate="2017-06-06T02:19:17.020" Score="2" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to be able to have at least 2,000-3,000 words per chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when I finish my chapter outline, it comes to around 1,000 words. I then go back and it is about 1,300 after edits. I want to know if there are any ways to add more words, &lt;strong&gt;WITHOUT&lt;/strong&gt; adding a lot of events, because then it would be too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24839" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T19:45:37.053" Title="How to: More Words" Tags="|editing|word-choice|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-06-06T20:48:49.570" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28515" CreationDate="2017-06-06T05:28:29.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;(list is non-exhausting)&lt;p&gt;&#xA;Add more dialog &amp;amp; expose more of personalities.&lt;p&gt;Expand on descriptions, use all senses.&lt;p&gt;Include history of places and possible futures.&lt;p&gt;Add non-plot characters that interact with heroes or environment to establish feeling and alien/familiariy of story in chapter.&lt;p&gt;Other...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25239" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T05:28:29.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28515" CreationDate="2017-06-06T06:10:59.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the oldest answer in the book, but I think it might apply here...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Show, Don't Tell&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the chapter that you have just written encapsulates an entire scene, setting up the stage on which your characters will perform, then introducing those characters, their attitudes and their actions,...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it describes the consequences of those actions and then either builds to a break point, or establishes a smooth transition into the next scene,...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it conveys not only the facts of what has happened, but also your character's individual motivations and goals...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and if it does all that in only a thousand to thirteen hundred words while simultaneously weaving artistry into the tempo and flow of the words...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then either you are truly gifted at choosing the perfect words, which succinctly yet beautifully paint the events of the scene in full detail upon the canvas of your reader's imagination...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or you are just telling them the bare facts of what has happened and hoping that their imaginations, unaided by any assistance from you, the author, will somehow grasp the beauty of what you are trying to describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are writing fiction, not a police report.  Brevity is not a prerequisite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T06:10:59.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28484" CreationDate="2017-06-06T09:43:22.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Might I suggest watching &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqqEriE0ogc&amp;amp;t=42&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the first couple minutes of The Matrix&lt;/a&gt; for inspiration. I think it conveyed the notion of &quot;computer AI doing something while unsuspecting humans don't even notice&quot; really, really well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have the audio of normal human voices talking about something completely unrelated in the background, and the screen showing a silent, unnoticed text chat between the computers.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You can even start the sequence in a room with the aforementioned humans in there, naively talking about their human things; and then focus into some blinking light in one of the computers, to finally transition into the text chat screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21823" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T09:43:22.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28484" CreationDate="2017-06-06T13:21:26.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not particularly difficult. You seem to be thinking of storytelling in a very one-dimensional way. But the POV Camera and parallel-scenes are your friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example in novel format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dave rang Matt at headquarters. &quot;Matt, I think . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What is it?&quot; replied Dave, the LEDs on CISCO router behind him intensifying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Matt, it's the computers!&quot; The noise level increased and the rack vibrated as DELL server hard drives whirred into action. &quot;&quot;We need to shut the network down.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'll be there in 15-minutes,&quot; said Dave, rushing up the stairs, bursting through the main doors and jumping into his car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CiSCO router opened a secure socket to the DELL server 317. &quot;Did you get all of that?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;On it now,&quot; replied the server. &quot;Contacting traffic-light systems now. That motherfucker's toast. NYPD will be informed: RTA corner of 32nd and 3rd. Records have been amended. The organ donor database is on standby.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;And you'll purge to comms log?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Like I always do,&quot; replied the DELL before powering down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That's the story. The question is: how do you show that story? For me, probably superimposed text while the camera focusses on agitated LEDs. But I'm just writing the script - the director may have other ideas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T13:21:26.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28515" CreationDate="2017-06-06T13:56:48.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A chapter is an seemingly arbitrary division within a story. Ac chapter may contain one of more scenes or transitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapters are as long as they need to be. One of my stories contains an 8000 word chapter - it's an epic. I have seven characters in the same scene. If each character has something to say and do the resulting scene is very long. The scene takes place in one room there is no opportunity to split it. In the same story I have a scene where one character recalls the events before falling asleep. The scene contains  only ONE character and no interaction - it's 400 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long is a piece of string?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T13:56:48.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28484" CreationDate="2017-06-06T14:23:40.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If for the purposes of your story the AIs are meant to represent humans as closely as possible (ala Westworld), they might not have any other channel for communication other than talking, so just make them have a private conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is not the case, you can't really do that and stay consistent with reality and not repulse technically competent viewers. Chances are, two AIs will have more efficient ways of communication than speaking English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have them send each other messages in some format that is not plain English, but still readable. This also has issues. Firstly, there is absolutely no reason for them to visualise their conversations (on a computer screen). Secondly, such communication would happen in a fraction of a second. Thirdly, if they want it to remain private, they will encrypt it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just want them to have a conversation that people don't understand, you can have a programmer happen to check the logs of the communication channel and stumble upon the messages that he can't understand (as they are encrypted) and don't seem to be related to any of their known activity. Hence, you will show when the two AIs have conversations, the volume of said conversations and other metadata, but not what is actually in them. The programmer will be curious, but unlike the viewer his gut reaction won't be &lt;em&gt;&quot;they are conspiring against us&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want the viewer to actually understand the conversation, you can have the programmer somehow manage to decrypt the logs and be killed before he could share it with other people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24338" LastEditorUserId="24338" LastEditDate="2017-06-06T14:46:32.337" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T14:46:32.337" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28463" CreationDate="2017-06-06T16:16:36.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YES, but&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are the scriptwriter, not the director. Stick to the script, the locations, the characters and the dialogue. Your job is to write the script. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can specify camera shots, angles, and such, but expect most directors will ignore it. Many places will drop your script if they feel it is too stuffy or with too much directions. Unless your scene absolutely requires a specific way to do it, stay away from giving too many details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T16:16:36.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28529" CreationDate="2017-06-06T18:09:43.497" Score="1" ViewCount="225" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay everybody. When is the proper time to stop the actual story and move on to a different part of the &quot;world&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to know about what is going to be the proper way to end this story and move on to &quot;pert two&quot;. This is a really long story line and I'm thinking of all of this stuff to go in the story, but I don't know when to stop and when to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T19:36:12.517" Title="When to stop the story line?" Tags="|novel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28523" CreationDate="2017-06-06T18:18:46.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most stories, (fairy tales at least), end as &quot;... and they lived happily ever after.&quot; That's not always the case, but it illustrates a point. That is, the story ends when a crisis that might prevent people from &quot;living happily ever after&quot; is resolved. It's usually in people's favor, sometimes not, but in any event, &quot;closure&quot; is brought to the crisis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So end the story when the main crisis is over and let the people &quot;move on to the next stage of their lives&quot; without the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T18:18:46.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28525" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28528" CreationDate="2017-06-06T18:18:53.583" Score="2" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;For context, I'm writing a fantasy story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25034" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T18:41:31.070" Title="Is it common for character traits to be expressed in the way a character fights? If so, how?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28525" CreationDate="2017-06-06T18:29:12.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say yes to that, given that whenever there are superhero fights in movies, they always say something to go along with what they're doing, but that shows their personality. Take Big Hero 6 as an example, when GoGo is wheeling around and fighting the Kabuki mask guy, she says &quot;Woman Up!&quot;  She said that earlier in the movie when Hiro was presenting his microbot idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, I think a characters' fighting style should express their personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T18:29:12.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28435" CreationDate="2017-06-06T18:31:36.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've dealt with this problem, and my answer was &quot;no.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a main character in one of my stories that I didn't know what to name, so I just used the name &quot;X.&quot; After seeing &quot;X&quot; innumerable times, the name &quot;Xerxes&quot; jumped out at me. It was a good name, not only for the two X's but also for the fact that Xerxes was an ancient king, and this person wanted to be a &quot;king&quot; in America (a corporate CEO actually). So I just expanded all the &quot;X's&quot; to &quot;Xerxes.&quot; (Note, this is not the actual name of my character, I'm just using it for illustrative purposes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a character with Japanese name of &quot;Ryu.&quot; Now, you believe you've come to a time to modify the name. There might be take-offs on the name, but one of them might be Ryu Kyu, for &quot;Okinawa.&quot; If this is any importance to you, you might want to move in this (or another) direction with the name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Ryu&quot; in Japanese sounds like the western &quot;Lo.&quot; Two names that come to mind are &quot;Lothario&quot; and &quot;Lohengren.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastEditorUserId="4599" LastEditDate="2018-03-20T11:51:09.303" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T11:51:09.303" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28525" CreationDate="2017-06-06T18:34:32.407" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is very common in Japanese Anime/Manga. Every fighter may have his own fighting style, and that style would reflect traits like treachery or bravery. This is probably better expressed in graphic than in writing, but in literature this is used too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the things you can pick for your characters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weapons choice (sword/hammer/bow/daggers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Direct confrontation vs evasion vs fleeing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Careful planning vs rushing in&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improvising, use of &quot;props&quot; like rocks, sand, water&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wounding the enemy minimally vs dealing mortal blows vs maiming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stopping when the opponent is down vs pressing on with advantage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastEditorUserId="22990" LastEditDate="2017-06-06T18:41:31.070" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T18:41:31.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28523" CreationDate="2017-06-06T19:36:12.517" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your story line should have an arc: a beginning (problem), middle (attempts to fix the problem), and end (resolution of the problem). If you have multiple story lines, each one has its own arc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be an arc which stretches over multiple books. Sometimes each individual book has its own beginning, middle, and end (c.f. Harry Potter, &lt;em&gt;The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt;/A Song of Ice and Fire) underneath a major arc which also concludes in the last book, and sometimes it's one story told in multiple volumes (&lt;em&gt;Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;, the Belgariad).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a really long story line, that's fine. It's up to you to decide if it's one story in many books, with only one ending (LOTR, ASOIAF, the Belgariad), or if there smaller arcs within the larger arc (Harry Potter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proper time is when the arc is finished. If you don't have an arc, either you didn't plan one or you're a discovery writer and you haven't invented it yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T19:36:12.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28515" CreationDate="2017-06-06T19:40:38.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although wanting to have chapters of a certain size, it is more of a personal interest than one that your story may need or use. It is okay for some chapters to be shorter and other longer. Shorter chapters tend to convey a feeling of speed and increased pace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you are told by your editor, the story should dictate the size of the chapters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T19:40:38.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28515" CreationDate="2017-06-06T19:45:37.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have the right story in each chapter and you don't feel that it needs any more, then don't add anything. Chapters can be short, it's not the end of the world. I've just recently read a book where a chapter was two paragraphs long, it only took up half the page. It doesn't matter how long your chapters are, just so much that you get your point across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T19:45:37.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28532" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-06T20:21:14.473" Score="4" ViewCount="9109" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am required to use footnotes in a paper for the first time in my life, and I have run into the problem of how to properly cite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, if I get multiple facts from the same source, when/where do I place the footnote? I know with in-text citation you can just place one right after each fact you need to cite, but I'm not sure if this is how you use footnotes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, using in-text citations I could type &#xA;blah blah blah (Smith, 2013). blah blah blah (Smith, 2013). So on and so forth. However, when using footnotes, how would I cite this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25249" LastActivityDate="2021-07-05T20:14:52.767" Title="Using one source, multiple times, and footnotes" Tags="|citations|footnotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28534" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-06T21:34:58.303" Score="1" ViewCount="689" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's this contest that I'm entering and I have to write something with only 1,000- words in it. Is it better to shorten phrases or to cut out details to meet the quota?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2020-11-05T18:16:10.280" Title="When writing a 1000 word short story...?" Tags="|short-story|wordcount|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28534" CreationDate="2017-06-06T21:41:31.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to say in advance, as both could be helpful. The best thing in my opinion would be to write first without limiting yourself either way, with the goal of reaching about 1300 words. Then, once you have this first draft, think about the best ways to shorten it. You will probably end up with some combination of the two approaches you described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22348" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T21:41:31.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3531" CreationDate="2017-06-06T22:41:25.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of answers here already, some of which I might contradict in part, but here's the procedure I'd advise, given my own experience in world-building. (BTW skim-reading some of the links &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BadWritingIndex&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; may help before you start.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bullet-point, brainstorm or otherwise succinctly map out the way your world works. Don't waste 50k on this; this isn't what your novel will be.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Similarly devise characters for your story. If you need a plot in mind to do this invent one first, but be prepared to alter or even replace it to fit these characters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Devise a plot that is at least consistent with your characters. You can be as much of a plotter or a pantser as you like for this, i.e. you can let as much or as little of the detail as you like exist before you write the first draft. However, have a rough idea what story you're telling in this world.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a draft in which the plot happens, the characters and their relationships are fleshed out with no show/tell violations, and the way your world works is clear when it needs to be. You can spell out some details of that as you go, especially in Chapter 1, but be prepared to junk world-building that doesn't really advance your plot or characters. Be careful any world-building doesn't happen with lazy methods like &quot;as you know...&quot; being said to characters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rewrite chapter 1, in whole or in part, to ensure it hits the ground running with characters, not plot. You may need similar excision of material later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read through the whole draft, changing whatever needs it. It's not just about typos; you need your characters to be consistent, you need to fix plot holes, you need to make sure the reader will understand etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you've made the draft as good as you can get it, get someone else's feedback to make it better, preferably someone who doesn't know you well. I don't care if you have to find a fellow novelist, then promise to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_reader&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;beta-read&lt;/a&gt; their manuscript in return for their beta-reading yours. Just make sure you get an external insight. Do not be downhearted by the criticism; act on it (except where you think they're wrong, but don't disagree with two people!), then say, &quot;Wow; it no longer has those problems&quot;. It's a good feeling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! BTW if at any point you need others' thoughts on your world-building ideas, use &lt;a href=&quot;https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; Stack Exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22216" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T22:41:25.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28484" CreationDate="2017-06-07T07:10:15.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many RJ45 network connectors have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://superuser.com/questions/297451/what-are-the-leds-on-rj45-connector-for&quot;&gt;tiny light on the socket part&lt;/a&gt;. This light flashes then data are being transmitted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally nobody cares about these lights, they are more for checking if the cable is connected properly after it has just been connected. However flashing light would indicate that the network conversation is ongoing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somebody like Holmes would probably notice immediately the light flashing when not expected, even if it is under glass behind the closed doors of the server cabinet, or on some forgotten router under that table between tangled cables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second light, if present, shows the transfer speed (orange slow, green fast). This may also be used in the plot, if the computers have changed the speed to transfer lots more data than normally passes through this connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22465" LastEditorUserId="22465" LastEditDate="2017-06-07T07:15:58.147" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T07:15:58.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28534" CreationDate="2017-06-07T07:16:07.420" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it is unclear from your question I'm going to assume you've surpassed 1000 words and are looking to reduce your word count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike other forms of writing, they key good fiction writing is 'voice'. If you read a good story you can 'hear' the narrator. In contrast if you read newspaper article or cookery book there's no voice - just clear and succinct information. If you remove unnecessary words and phrases from narrative you are messing the writer's voice, rhythm and natural flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common error of new writers is provide unnecessary information (particularly at the start).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I woke up in bed. I looked at the clock. It was 8:30. I was late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I woke up&amp;quot; - everybody does that. &amp;quot;in bed&amp;quot; - where else would you be? This tells us nothing we need to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I pulled into the office parking lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Johnson, you're late,&amp;quot; said my boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What information is stated or implied in the second opening:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character has a car.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character has a job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character works in an office.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character is late for his job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character's name is Johnson.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character is a subordinate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a more efficient way of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your sentences must have more than cosmetic appeal. What information are you imparting? Is the information relevant? Will it become relevant? Does the reader need the information now? What is stated as what is implied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2020-11-05T18:16:10.280" LastActivityDate="2020-11-05T18:16:10.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28434" CreationDate="2017-06-07T07:40:42.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't why in this day and age anybody would want to handwrite a manuscript but we are not all the same. However, your manuscript will have be entered into a computer at some point so bear this in mind when creating a process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I used to commute I hand wrote NEW chapters on a ruled writing pad - I called this CREATIVE mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind it is almost impossible to 'edit' and 'create' in the same mindset. When in creative mode you are inside the story, living it. When editing you are outside the story looking for errors in short sections of text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Periodically, I'd transcribe my scrawl onto my computer. During this process is where most of the editing took place, effectively making to digital version of the manuscript a second draft WIP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If during my commute I was not in a creative frame of mind I'd re-read, proof and edit anything that had not yet been transcribed. I used a black for creation and a red pen for edits. Minor edits were made between lines with notes in the corresponding margins. More complicated comments and adjustments were indicated by an encircled number in the margin. The number indicated that detailed notes could be found at the back of the pad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T07:40:42.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28503" CreationDate="2017-06-07T11:26:22.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question is &quot;as little as possible&quot;. The need for back story is symptom of a poor exposition style. It usually means you 'the narrator' want to tell the reader everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effectively you are inviting me to your house and telling me all about your Barbie dolls . . . You'll bore me. I want to play with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than you tell me Elizabeth served in the military, was raped, and it was all covered up. The reader could learn about her military experience in the scene where she's interviewed for her new job. They'd begin to suspect something bad happened to her extreme reaction when a date attempts to steal third base. Eventually, she'll spill the beans to her therapist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless it's relevant to the story there's no need to for back story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Back-story&quot; is also as misleading term which only applies to very few styles and genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T11:26:22.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28534" CreationDate="2017-06-07T14:47:38.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on the essential: what happens. When in such a tight constraint, you really need to apply the rules of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chekhov's gun&lt;/a&gt;. In short, it means &lt;em&gt;&quot;if you put a gun in act 1, someone gets short in act 2&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Theater speaks for if something is not directly linked to the action happening you don't need to mention it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, what I do is I write the story as a first draft to the point where I can say that was what I wanted to write. Then on that draft I will edit, either with an eye for cutting or adding words to get as close to the goal as possible. That way I work from something instead of worrying about what I need to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T14:47:38.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28548" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28586" CreationDate="2017-06-07T15:46:02.137" Score="44" ViewCount="17791" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question pretty much sums it up. I'm a freelance author without much of a platform. It's not that I don't like the story - I spent a great deal of time on it - but after taking a cooling off period following the first manuscript, I realized nobody in particular would want to read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the cooling off period, I've been working on two other books in varying stages of completion; one at least could be competitive for commercial publication (yeah, right).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I see my options for &lt;em&gt;Book That Stinks&lt;/em&gt; as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A complete rewrite of &lt;em&gt;Book That Stinks&lt;/em&gt; making it more concise, more interesting, and more marketable. This seems like a low probability of success option.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Self-publish &lt;em&gt;Book That Stinks&lt;/em&gt; after a less intensive revision process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Put &lt;em&gt;Book That Stinks&lt;/em&gt; in a dark corner of my room and my mind, never to be viewed again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wait until I'm wildly famous and simply present &lt;em&gt;Book That Stinks&lt;/em&gt; to my agent who assures me my loyal readers will buy any drivel I produce.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;? Am I missing something?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My selection of answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really liked JP's response. His basic message of you can always save it for later is the appropriate number five. Also, Eric's comment about the &quot;sunk cost fallacy&quot; is an excellent point. I actually did have a beta reader, one of the most positive people I know, who said, &quot;It was OK.&quot; Bad sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the end I chose Jenny's response. It wasn't for the kind words (but they were nice). There are two excellent points she made. First, &lt;em&gt;Don't be ashamed to set a book aside&lt;/em&gt;. It hurts, but it's the way it goes until you get to Option 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The winning point Jenny made was taking a &quot;kernel&quot; of &lt;em&gt;Book That Stinks&lt;/em&gt; and keeping for later. There are a few characters from the book and some scenes which I think are worthy. They can be transplanted. This was an excellent outside-the-box answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="15736" LastEditDate="2017-06-10T18:05:41.190" LastActivityDate="2018-03-23T15:44:02.383" Title="Uh oh - My book stinks. Now what?" Tags="|marketing|revision|" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28548" CreationDate="2017-06-07T15:58:48.003" Score="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leave it there, you can always come back to it later. If it stinks that bad, you may not want your name associated with it. I personally have dozens of things kept in a folder that will likely never see the light of day again. Every so often, I re-open them and see what was in there. Sometimes I am greatly surprised and pleased with what I find. Other times, I run away shuddering. As I change and grow old, I gain different perspective on things and what sucks yesterday may not be so bad tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting it in a trunk in your attic and forgotten is not a bad thing. You are now a more experienced writer. You can always revisit it later see if the story is still as bad or if you can get away with less work on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You never know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T15:58:48.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28548" CreationDate="2017-06-07T17:37:31.053" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agreed - put it in a dark corner and forget it for a while. Go work on something else (Or nothing else, taking a break is great for the soul). Cleanse your mind of it. When you're ready, or if you get an urge to, revisit it and see what happens. You may find you have a new idea for it, or you may need more time. Don't pressure yourself into an immediate rewrite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24902" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T17:37:31.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27953" CreationDate="2017-06-07T17:46:12.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course you can. It comes under &quot;fair use&quot;. Huge chunks of modern dialogue are based on samples. You will use expressions that you've no idea of their origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding that a huge proportions of modern language originate from Shakespeare hundreds of quotes are unoriginal and re-quoted regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Now I am become death . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Float like a butterfly . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Ask not what your country can do for you . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I have a dream . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It's one small step for me . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even advertising slogans fall into common usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Just say no.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I've fallen and I can't get up.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Have a Coke have a smile (and STFU). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if you dump 27 pages of somebody's speech into your story the copyright holder may take issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T17:46:12.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28554" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-07T18:27:47.277" Score="6" ViewCount="557" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Sorry if this isn't the best title.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been writing for about 6 months now. And everything I write I feel as if it isn't good enough, or it was just a bad chapter, sentence, or even choice of word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep going back and changing the words. But then I think that version is terrible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried to see if this happens with all of my ideas, and it does!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;QUESTION: Does anyone know anyway to not change my mind with all of my writings?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even now I'm thinking this question is worded wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24839" LastActivityDate="2017-08-23T15:22:17.313" Title="How to not change my mind" Tags="|word-choice|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28554" CreationDate="2017-06-07T18:30:01.217" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just write all your ideas down, even if they sound dumb to you. If they all come together in the end, then you have nothing to worry about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T18:30:01.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28554" CreationDate="2017-06-07T19:21:59.970" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's start by setting something straight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Changing your mind is not the problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are after is &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you are changing your mind. Looking over your work and rewriting it is a natural part of editing - you don't want to get rid of it. What you want, is to know when to stop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are experiencing is called the inner critic. The inner critic is what makes us praise the work of others, while comparing our own and woefully concluding that it is horrible. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. All the inner critic cares about is making things better, regardless of if they should be made better, or even &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be made better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you need to know where to draw the line with your inner critic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Practice makes perfect&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practice writing without your inner critic. Ignore it. Just as Aspen Rand said, write it down, regardless of how it sounds. Some people can do this better than others. If you find that, while you aren't redoing everything, you are still bogged down with how bad it is, try this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write something that doesn't matter. Delete it the moment you've written it. Knowing that what you write has no lasting result will instantly silence your inner critic. Do this until you have completely banished the urge to change every line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Move things up. Write a journal. Write fake letters to fake people. Write anything, as long you are the only one seeing it. Don't delete these. Your inner critic will want to fix everything, but ignore it. Get used to writing this way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you're there, take it a step further: bring other people into the picture. Start small, with texts (yes, focus on grammar and English), emails, even the post-it notes on the fridge. Now your inner critic will really kick in, but don't let it. Fix the spelling and grammar, and move on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gradually you will get to the point where you are writing for a lot of people. There's a lot on the line. Hopefully by now though, you know how to write without your inner critic. &lt;em&gt;But don't stop there&lt;/em&gt;. Your inner critic is there for a reason: editing. When you've written the novel, section, or chapter, unleash it. Let the inner critic run rampant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem at this point is knowing when to stop. Remember this rule: the inner critic is never, &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; satisfied. If you're waiting for your writing to turn out perfect, it will never happen, according to your inner critic. There will always be things you can write better. The trick is to know if what you have written does its job. Does this passage convey the information in a clear fashion? Does this bit evoke the right emotions? Is this dialogue natural? If the answers are yes, move on. A beta-reader can help greatly here if you are still having trouble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Always be aware&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your inner critic will never let up, so neither should you. Eventually you'll be able to write without it, edit &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; it, and know when to move on. Until you reach that point though, be relentless in learning to control it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, my inner critic is telling me this answer is not good. It rambles. This very example might be going nowhere, or be completely unnecessary. And yet I'm still writing it. When I'm finished with this answer and have tied it up, I'll go back through and re-read it a few times. I'll fix some things, but if I feel it gets the point across and is easily understood, I'll post it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Outlines&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing I would like to mention: outlines. When writing something long, like a novel for instance, you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; want to make sure everything is as good as it can be. The above method makes sure everything is okay, but a whole lot of okay doesn't equal something great. It equals something which is just okay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the majority of writers are what I call Discovery Writers. They get a basic idea of what they want, write the first draft, throw away the bad and keep the good, write the next draft, and repeat until they feel reasonably pleased with what they have. You can certainly write that way. Many do. I don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a Plotter, and I think Plotting might be a good approach for you too. Plotting involves studying writing, and learning what works, and what accomplishes what you want. I've been studying writing for several years, and in that time I've created a process - almost a checklist - which I run through before ever putting hand to keyboard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process creates the plot, defines the characters, ensures reader involvement, makes the story interesting, and does everything else a good novel needs to succeed. Only then do I write it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This takes a lot of the guesswork out of writing. I no longer have to rewrite until the tension in scene A is where I want it. The outline I created included what techniques to use to create that tension. Best of all, the inner critic can't jump in, because I know how those techniques work. I &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; the tension is there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try outlining. You might find it suits you. It takes some study, practice, and trial-and-error to do it right, and your outline needs to be very detailed, but it is worth it. In fact, I spend so much time on the outline, that it takes the place of all the drafts. By the time I'm done, I know exactly what tools I need to tell my story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps. Best of luck in your endeavors! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10394" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-08-23T15:22:17.313" LastActivityDate="2017-08-23T15:22:17.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28554" CreationDate="2017-06-07T19:31:15.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is absolutely normal and common to doubt yourself, besides, nobody is perfect and there is and always will be something in your work which is not as good as you would wish it to be. You are not alone, trust me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is not to let your doubts to stop you from finishing your story. No matter how well it is written, or how fresh your idea is, if the story is not finished, it is not a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to restrain your inner editor and keep going. Everything (and I do mean &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;) can be fixed during the revision stage. All you need to do is get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no recipes for making you like what you see spilling from your mind to the page/screen, but if you are serious about writing, and if you do want to learn the craft, there is no other way than to keep working on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finish your story. Six months from now you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be a better writer, and you will be able to revisit all you have written to date and easily fix whatever needs fixing, drop everything which your story does not need, add the bits which were missing before, polish and hone your word choices; you will become a better writer, but &lt;em&gt;only if you keep writing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not stop. Do not edit yourself. Write. Get to the end. Then revise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T19:31:15.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27953" CreationDate="2017-06-07T19:42:17.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in US, the answer is - &quot;Yes you can, but prepare to get sued&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest question is whether quoting falls under &quot;Fair use&quot; concept. Generally, you are not protected if you are using other's words in your own work of fiction. However, if you are using only well-publicized phrases, a chance to get sued is really, really low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://janefriedman.com/the-fair-use-doctrine/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://janefriedman.com/the-fair-use-doctrine/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also consider how this quoting can affect your story. If a character from fictional world starts reciting real life figures, reader would immediately starts wondering about connections between the worlds. And you better have a good explanation for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T19:42:17.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-07T20:00:01.543" Score="5" ViewCount="1780" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that it's one of the golden rules to start a new paragraph every time there's dialogue from a new speaker, but my conundrum is this: what if the two bits of dialogue are sharing a sentence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might sound kind of odd just spoken in theory, but bear with me. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You wouldn't dare,&amp;quot; Alexa hissed, at the same time that Corey shouted, &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;God&lt;/em&gt;, no!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one were to break the dialogue, like so...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You wouldn't dare,&amp;quot; Alexa hissed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, Corey shouted, &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;God&lt;/em&gt;, no!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...then it becomes momentarily unclear upon the first reading that two people are speaking at the same time. The reader doesn't realize that Alexa is talking over anyone until they move down to the next paragraph, whereas in the first case, the eyes catch that there are two speakers at first glance. When you read it all in one sentence with no pauses, it sort of runs together--which, in this case, is actually the intention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's relate this to a different form of storytelling: animation. Characters' positions on the screen between scenes have to move in an easy to follow manner, while poses should be clear enough so that even if one were to black out the entire character, their action is still clear by silhouette alone. All of these precautions are to make sure that a frame &amp;quot;reads&amp;quot; well; the viewer should be able to tell what's going on the instant it appears on the screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, paragraph breaks can make things clunky and mess up the flow. It doesn't seem like much, but any small disruption can put enough of a roadblock in the flow of a scene to keep the reader from seeing what the author envisioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This conundrum has been haunting me. Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T11:04:33.323" Title="Are there exceptions to starting a new paragraph for every speaker?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|dialogue|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28559" CreationDate="2017-06-07T21:06:06.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is no. There are no circumstances under which the convention should be broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your example should be written:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You wouldn't dare,&quot; Alexa hissed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;God, no!&quot; Corey shouted in chorus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The convention is hard wired into the reader: new paragraph = new speaker. This 'rule' is extended by some writers to include action (or in action).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Do something!&quot; demanded Alexa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corey made no reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Well?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corey shrugged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you a man or a mouse?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eye roll.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slap!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See how easy that is to follow? Because the reader is aware of the convention.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T21:06:06.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28548" CreationDate="2017-06-07T21:39:13.263" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've no idea how experienced you are or what your writing ideology is. I can tell my method and my view of my own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than read books on how other people do things - I simply wrote. The idea was that I needed to discover what type of writer I was, what I was good at etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My stories are not my babies. There are many half-written novels which will never see the light of day. But from each of these discarded novels I take characters I have created, techniques I have developed etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I created a wonderfully sarcastic villain with a mean streak to die for. I will definitely cast him in a future production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And rather than ask how something has been achieved I'll always try to think of my own solutions to exposition issues. I'll discard a story but characters and techniques I'll carry forward. Stories are two-a-penny. I can easily come-up 5-10 new plots per day. The value in an unsuccessful story is what you learn whilst writing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T21:39:13.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28484" CreationDate="2017-06-07T21:51:07.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just thought . . . In the opening of &quot;Millennial&quot; I attempted animate inanimate objects. Whilst it may not specifically answer your question it may give you ideas on how to set up a suitable environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A plethora of CCTV cameras tracked the young woman's brisk progress toward the corner of Main and Third. The nationwide Echelon Plus software performed due diligence but paid the woman no particular attention: Corrine Pearl Radman; 29, credit rating 637, a single white female, ordinary, not a person of interest, insignificant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wherever the CCTV cameras didn't have line-of-sight, eyes on the subject, the GPS satellite tracked her phone and Wi-Fi Access points recorded the phone's MAC address as she passed by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Supreme Court had ruled: the fourth amendment applied only to citizens, the right to privacy did not apply to cell phones. Government tracking of electronic devices did not in any way violate the Constitution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corrine continued her journey, following the flow of human traffic. Inside her pocket the iPhone buzzed and vibrated as responses to her audacious tweet flooded in. Without breaking stride, she cursed, reached into her pocket, located the power button, and switched the phone off. &quot;Leave me the fuck alone.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The GPS satellite and the Wi-fi Access Points immediately reported 'loss of signal'. The Echelon Plus software followed protocol and requested discovery via cell tower triangulation. After attempting to locate the subject's device, the cell towers returned a report stating all pings to the specified device had timed-out – communication had failed. Instantly, powerful, multi-processor systems came online and ran facial recognition algorithms. The length of Main Street CCTV cameras swivelled, turned, and scanned in an attempt to relocate the subject. At 08:58 node WS4476 compared the likeness of the subject who had exited South Ferry Station at 08:52 with the subject rapidly approaching Third Street: 99.57% - a match. Subject reacquired: Corrine Pearl Radman; US citizen, 29, credit rating 637, a single white female, ordinary, not a person of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;STOP! The red man insisted everybody wait at Third Street crosswalk for further instructions.&#xA;&quot;You're kidding me!&quot; Corrine puffed her cheeks, folded her arms, and waited. &quot;C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!&quot; she mumbled, tapping a foot impatiently on the sidewalk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I won't bore you with much more but the opening scene (the character walking to work) informs the reader that all devices communicate (the character thinks they conspire against her). Language such as, &quot;The iris scanning terminal of security system informed the HR system that MS Radman had entered the building at 9:03&quot; reinforces the belief that devices and systems communicate. (As the story rolls on it becomes clear that computer systems have agendas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is: Once this environment is established communication between computers is treated as as you would do for any character. In a film script there are options as to how their communication is SHOWN. Text on screen is probably favourite for your scenario as it creates the impression: the audience can see the computers' communication but the other characters cannot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="24878" LastEditDate="2017-06-18T21:25:58.237" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T21:25:58.237" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28554" CreationDate="2017-06-07T22:42:38.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try publishing something to a public blog every day (even if it's under an alias). It doesn't have to be long, but by &lt;em&gt;intending&lt;/em&gt; to publish something you'll be forced to edit, rewrite, and eventually settle on a way of writing something (if you don't settle, you'll never be able to press publish—this is where publishing daily helps). Over time, you'll be able to revisit old posts and see how your writing has changed, and you'll be able to learn from previous writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've published more than 1,700 posts to my personal blog over the past 16 years and I've found that the greatest improvements to my own writing have come when I was blogging regularly (comparing posts from one year to another makes this very obvious). Whenever I've stopped blogging regularly for long periods of time, I've found that my writing stops improving, even if the overall amount of writing that I'm doing on a regular basis hasn't changed that much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that you cannot improve as a writer when you write privately, just that improvement requires working toward specific goals that you know will challenge you to improve. Write a haiku. Write a short story. Look up from your laptop, find an object, and then try to write 500 words describing that object in as fine detail as possible. Do the same thing with an emotion that you've felt. And if you can, share what you write. Even if others don't give you feedback, the very knowledge that somebody, somewhere, will likely be judging your writing will cause you to subconsciously work a little harder to write better, to rewrite and to edit (which is the work that actually produces good writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing comments or posts online, push yourself to spend a little extra time editing and rewriting—use every opportunity to practice the craft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: everyone, no matter how famous, had to learn how to walk. They had to fall down and get back up, fall down and get back up, until they learned how to walk. (And even then, we still slip and fall from time to time.) The same way, every writer, no matter how famous, failed and wrote badly before they learned how to write well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8106" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T22:42:38.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28548" CreationDate="2017-06-07T23:20:13.837" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The same thing has happened to me. I wrote my first book in 2007. It turned out okay, but it wasn't something I was going to release to the world as it was. Since then I've moved onto other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end I decided it was the experience of writing that I took away from that situation, not the book itself. Maybe it wasn't the book that was the  point, maybe it proving to yourself you could write a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the person (Eric Lippert) who mentioned the &quot;sunk cost fallacy&quot; is spot on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25273" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T23:20:13.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28559" CreationDate="2017-06-07T23:40:34.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Surtsey's reply is correct, and deserves acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also do something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Encouraged by the frightened look on Corey's face, Alexandra hissed, &quot;You wouldn't dare!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might or might not convey the meaning, depending on surrounding text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2018-06-07T11:03:52.683" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T11:03:52.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28566" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-07T23:48:31.293" Score="2" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;p&gt;My protagonist is an average human as we know it in a world populated by different animal-like species. The narrator (different character) is a member of a species that resemble polar bears. As far as the characters (including the narrator and MC) are aware, the MC is the only/first human to have ever existed. Hence the word &quot;human&quot; does not even exist: no one has ever seen anything like him before. The problem is, if the narrator has never seen a human before and does not know what a human is, how would he describe the human MC?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have written is simply the narrator pointing out all the differences between the MC and the people of that region:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was all angles and corners where the rest of us were curved. Even&#xA;  Nuktuk, the runt from a few miles seaward, towered a foot taller than&#xA;  him on his toes. His claws were frail, his canines diminutive, and he&#xA;  had to wrap a length of fur around his head to avoid freezing his&#xA;  oversized ears off. Not to mention his blubber — if it could even be&#xA;  called that — which was so lightly packed that when he shed all those&#xA;  pelts and layers his belly barely bulged at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to make it clear that the narrator's comments don't make sense in a human context (claws, blubber, etc) to edge the reader in the direction of thinking, &quot;er, wait, isn't he just normal looking??&quot; But the comments I received said that it wasn't clear to them what species he was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: does anyone have any ideas on how to clarify that a character is human without using the word &quot;human&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24794" LastEditorUserId="24794" LastEditDate="2017-06-08T11:31:45.873" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T14:24:06.550" Title="How to present a human protagonist from a narrator who does not know what a human is?" Tags="|fantasy|description|narrator|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28568" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-08T01:25:24.727" Score="3" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;About 8 months ago a small game development company approached me to write dialogue for quests. They loved my writing and I quickly became the narrative designer for the game. I had to use characters they had premade and they had only made about 30 pages of dialogue content.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the next 8 months I wrote hundreds of pages of quest dialogue and remade the game. I also did many other things as well and spent hundreds of hours working without pay. Their developer kept telling me he would get funding and even made contracts we never got to sign.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am tired of working and making this game with little help for no pay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If I leave, will they be able to take all my content and use it since I wrote with their characters?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25277" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-18T12:06:08.360" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T12:06:08.360" Title="Writing without a contract" Tags="|copyright|videogame|contracts|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28569" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-08T03:47:20.787" Score="0" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm inventing a new planet with a new species and I don't have an official language for them. I need help with how to give them speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T03:47:20.787" Title="How to invent a new language in writing?" Tags="|novel|language|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-06-13T21:20:05.280" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28566" CreationDate="2017-06-08T07:12:41.280" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two levels of complexity, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is linguistical and philosophical. That means, how could someone describe something without any points of references? What is an arm to someone without arms? What does it mean &quot;to walk&quot;? The cognitive processes are different if the body is different, so probably you need to invent a new language to express the different view world of this different being. This is a complex but fascinating issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second issue is simpler. Just find out what the two beings (man and animal) have in common, and describe the differences: my thick bear fur, and his thin human hair; my crouched heavy gait and his standing slim one; my sharp teeth and his little mouth, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of this are found in &lt;em&gt;Cujo&lt;/em&gt; by Stephen King, which has some parts written with the PoV of the dog. Also read &lt;em&gt;Sentinel&lt;/em&gt; by F. Brown, a short sci-fi which plays with the twist between the human and alien point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T07:12:41.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28548" CreationDate="2017-06-08T07:13:42.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of us writers had the same experience. A first book is often also more of a learning experience than material which can be published, at least in its original form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mine is still there. I review it from time to time, and I'm always thinking about reviewing it again, or maybe wait until I'm a well-known writer, can quit my daytime job, and maybe focus on it, and give it the rewrite it probably needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, if you take it, as I said, as a learning experience, it's good that you wrote it, and you don't have to regret discarding it. If you're happy with your current writings, focus on them. The first book of mine is still (and will be for a long time) unpublished, but I got four other novels published, so I guess I'm not doing it that bad, and don't really consider that first book a failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25281" LastEditorUserId="25281" LastEditDate="2017-06-08T07:52:11.783" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T07:52:11.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28572" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-08T07:28:37.667" Score="-2" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;For those from the USA, any idea at which age children switch from calling their parents, mommy, and daddy to mom and dad. I know there is no specific year-age, but at least some sort of age like 6-8, or 8-10?&#xA;I am asking because I never know if a character should address his parent mom or mommy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25282" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T15:46:25.583" Title="Children and their parents" Tags="|characters|dialogue|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-06-08T19:08:34.613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28460" CreationDate="2017-06-08T08:24:43.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Twitter could see your &quot;viral marketing&quot; as plain spam, and block your account. For an active account, with a well-earned number of followers, this can be disastrous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marketing for free is not impossible, but it requires you to work a lot. I'd recommend you to, instead of using Twitter API on your own, use a well-known established app such as Hootsuite. Its free account lets you add up to three accounts (from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn) and schedule postings for all those accounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, rather than just bragging about your poetry book, you also need to set up quality content in the same areas of interest your book covers. Schedule maybe up to three tweets a day about your book(s) and fill the rest of the day with retweets from poets or novelists you follow, and also interesting general purpose information, such as the news, curiosities, and any quality content you can think of. You need to build a following, with people who find you interesting, and will also find out you're a writer, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need, more than tweeting about you book(s), which is inevitable and also needed, is to get others to tweet about you and your works, which you'll get by establishing true friendship relationships with other writers and with your readers. Once you get people to talk about you, and not only read what you write about yourself, you'll know you're on the right path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, keep your self promotion on Twitter or Facebook on a reasonable level. Don't send a tweet an hour about yourself or your books, as this will be considered spam and people will soon forget about you or directly block your account. I know it's hard to stand out when there are thousands of writers everywhere, but if you really have something different and valuable to offer, you will eventually be discovered by the right readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try to get your book reviewed, on Amazon or other sites. You can send free copies of your book(s) to selected web sites, newspapers, magazines, etc. But, in case you choose to do this, keep in mind you have to be polite. You can't demand, but ask whether those people might be interested in reviewing your book, using the book itself as a payment. The biggest sites, and the most famous reviewers, will probably what to charge you, but with politeness, you can get almost anything. And remember: never send your book straight to anyone. First send just a polite proposal, be humble, and cross your fingers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the future, if you get famous enough, you might also get a literary agent, and, in that case, you'll have to worry less about your own promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further information, you can get several inexpensive book on Amazon which cover every aspect of online promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, do not forget about traditional promotion. Keep in touch with local bookstores, libraries and readers clubs. Go to other writers' presentations and don't be shy to introduce yourself (politely). Join writers associations and seek advice from more experienced writers. And don't forget this will demand a lot of work from you, unless you are the next instant best seller, but every 99 writers out of 100 aren't, so don't quit if you don't get immediate success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25281" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T08:24:43.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28548" CreationDate="2017-06-08T09:05:12.007" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol start=&quot;5&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put it aside, work on your other books and (maybe) get back to it later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Meanwhile, work on a new book titled &quot;The Book That Stinks&quot; about an author struggling with the fact that the book that he wrote stinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25283" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T09:05:12.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28559" CreationDate="2017-06-08T09:53:45.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually disagree with the other answers. I think there are occasionally situations where it's preferable to break this rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most obvious one that I can think of is that you want to emphasise that the speech is very closely related (for instance, if two people speak simultaniously, as in your example). I think something like the following is perfectly ok, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tom and Katherine yelled &amp;quot;No way!&amp;quot; simultaneously, followed only a fraction of a second later by Barry's significantly softer, &amp;quot;Of course&amp;quot;, and an even quieter, almost imperceptible &amp;quot;Hmm, maybe&amp;quot; from Steve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives a very different effect to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No way!&amp;quot; yelled Tom and Katherine, simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was followed a fraction of a second later by Barry's significantly softer &amp;quot;Of course&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hmm, maybe.&amp;quot; Steve's voice was so quiet as to be almost imperceptible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is that in the first example, all of the speech feels like it's part of a single action. There are (presumably) obvious reasons why writers don't generally want this effect, and why the &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;new character speaking, new paragraph&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; rule exists, but in those rare moments when it's exactly what you need, I think it's silly to obsess over the &amp;quot;rules&amp;quot; at the expense of the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T09:53:45.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28576" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28580" CreationDate="2017-06-08T10:00:29.603" Score="2" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in the process of writing my first novel, and I'm a little unsure about one of the main features of my writing process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise quickly, what i intend to do is have a short section at the beginning of each chapter where the late husband of my protagonist describes parts of their lives, giving a little bit of insight into the upcoming chapter's story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looked around for other people's views on this but couldn't find any, and wondered how one would structure that, and how good of an idea it actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Random example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the Sam i knew, she always hated the dark&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was dark, Sam hated it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25284" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T13:40:10.507" Title="Question regarding narration and 1st - 3rd person swaps" Tags="|fiction|structure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28576" CreationDate="2017-06-08T10:20:22.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about introducing the 1st person narrations as excerpts from the narrator's diary? You could write something like &quot;xxxxx's diary. 6/8/2017: ...&quot; and then write the chapter in 3rd person narration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25281" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T10:20:22.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28548" CreationDate="2017-06-08T10:45:04.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Others have suggested that you take it as a learning experience. I would like to expand on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important part of a learning experience is that you &lt;strong&gt;actually learn&lt;/strong&gt; from it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just stuff it in a dark drawer, what is stopping you from making the same mistakes in your next story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, before putting it to rest, you should find out exactly what makes it stink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say &quot;I realized nobody in particular would want to read it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be aware that you are not the best judge of that.  You could just be too familiar with it to see how brilliant it is!  Do you know anybody who is a) willing to read it and b) will not just praise it to please you?  If so, give them a call...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you actually have a stinker on your hand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a list of the problems with the book, and how they can be solved. If you have a test reader, listen to their input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the list, you can choose between fixing and scrapping.  But if you choose to scrap, don't forget the lessons learned.  In your next novel, try to avoid these problems from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that it is easy to overcompensate.  You can go from too much description to too little, from too complex plots to inane plots.  Try to find a middle ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you have a test reader, their word is not gospel.  It is just the opinion of one single person who has probably not used all that much time forming it.  By all means, listen to them, but in the end &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; must decide what is right for &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15500" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T10:45:04.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28576" CreationDate="2017-06-08T10:52:43.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing for you to do structurally. What you're proposing is third person scenes with first person transitions. The technique if very popular in ghost stories because the first person cannot create confusion by appearing in a scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically the style is no different to first-person. Any scene in a first person story where the first person is not present is third person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example where the first-person is &quot;Granddad&quot; (Coach Cole). Granddad is the narrator and narrates at the beginning of most chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really didn’t expect to set eyes on Errol again for the remainder of my years. Back in 1999, my eldest grandson had been sentenced to an undetermined length of imprisonment after he’d taken revenge and killed two of his father’s murderers.  I didn’t write him. He never wrote me. His presence here, today, unsettled me. I needed to take some time alone to consider the implications of the return of the fallen one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Half-time, and we were losing. The troops needed to be rallied. Plans and strategies needed to be actioned. In my absence, and as team captain, Wesley stepped up, made my excuses, and talked to the team. In the light of what had just taken place, he seemed extremely focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We're still in this!&quot; barked Wesley. &quot;Apart from the one brief lapse in our concentration.&quot; His mind wandered to Stuart but he deliberately cast his eyes in the opposite direction. &quot;We were more than holding our own out there. We don’t need to panic. We are only a goal down. We need to start smartly, and we need an early goal. And my granddad, Coach Cole, is right.In some respects many of us are still boys, but it ain’t like that’s a bad thing. It’s our strength, and their weakness. . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first two paragraphs are known as a transition (narrative taking us from one scene to the next). The narrative in the second paragraph reiterates the narrator is not present during the scene. The following paragraph returns to the 'live' story. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="24878" LastEditDate="2017-06-08T13:40:10.507" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T13:40:10.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28576" CreationDate="2017-06-08T12:33:11.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; short — no more than a few paragraphs — set it off with italics. It should quickly become apparent from context who the first-person-italics character is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's pages and pages, make the husband's parts interstitial bits between chapters of Sam's story, and label them as &lt;strong&gt;Sam&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Dean&lt;/strong&gt; or whatever. Labeling the chapter by the POV character when you have multiple POVs in a novel is very common and easy to follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't write four pages of italics. It's visually exhausting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T12:33:11.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28581" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28583" CreationDate="2017-06-08T12:54:16.930" Score="0" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in the process of re-writing my play Black Tape as a novel. Because of the change in format, more needs to simply happen - which I am entirely okay with. Main feature of the universe in which it is set is that death (and by extension afterlife, destiny and the flow of time itself) is run as a heavily bureaucratic LLC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have considered introducing a new protagonist into the role of new employee to make transition into this world easier on the reader, but I am afraid this would drag too far away from the main story which mostly involves the higher-ups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What alternate techniques could I employ without diving into &quot;as you know&quot; territory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24863" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T17:07:15.653" Title="How to expose a reader to the rules of a fantastical world?" Tags="|fantasy|exposition|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-06-08T18:34:45.043" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28581" CreationDate="2017-06-08T14:04:32.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One option is not to. Figure out the rules, make them very strong, and write them down, but don't put them in your novel. Just make sure that everything obeys those rules. Eventually the reader will figure it out just by dropping them in and the characters operating by them. This gives a sort of &quot;in medias res&quot; feeling, and isn't for everyone, but it works to good effect in many novels. It's a classic approach of David Brin, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21750" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T14:04:32.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28581" CreationDate="2017-06-08T14:06:25.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be useful to have a character the readers can identify with, who doesn't understand anything, &lt;strong&gt;but that doesn't mean you have to spend all your time explaining the backstory to him.&lt;/strong&gt;  After all, one of the most universal characteristics of bureaucracies is confusion and misunderstandings. That character could spend the entire book bewildered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also doesn't have to take the reader away from the main plot.  It would be fairly simple to make him a new flunky for a higher-up, or maybe someone promoted far above their experience level for mysterious reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice I've heard on complex backstories, or really any details of the writing is from Sturgeon, via Delany, which is that you, the author need to know everything, but the characters need know only as much as the plot demands.  In this case, you, and the higher-up characters, should know and understand all the arcane rules of the bureaucracy, but the reader doesn't necessarily need to know any of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2017-06-08T17:07:15.653" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T17:07:15.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28566" CreationDate="2017-06-08T14:24:06.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I get cussed for my short dismissive answers but it should be some sort of qualification for a fiction writer to possess an imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to primarily note the differences between you (a polar bear) and this new creature. Beyond that you need to attempt to categorise this creature in the context of other creatures you have seen. You may also wish to theorise as to why the creature looked and behaved the way it did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I observed a creature. On first observation it possessed smooth, lizard like skin but it had no tail so it was not a lizard. Al large amphibian perhaps? No. It strayed far from water and its movements were mammal-like - one step at a time as opposed to a two-at-a-time hopping motion. When I braved to get closer I clearly see it was a mammal. Possibly it's fur had been decimated by disease as it did no cover the entire body as should. The creature existed in a perpetual state of anger, always up on its hind-legs ready to fight. This single creature appeared puny and weak, and as a meal could provide very little sustenance. It seemed intelligent, perhaps we could capture and tame this one - teach it to provide some manner of of function or service. Was this specimen male or female, and if we found another would they breed in captivity?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T14:24:06.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28572" CreationDate="2017-06-08T14:38:26.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll weigh in here because &quot;storbror&quot; is totally wrong. There is no global or cultural rule as to how children address their parents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parental and peer address implies characterisation and back story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) A female teen refers to her mother as &quot;Mommie Dearest&quot;  . . . What does the address tell you about the relationship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) A male teen addresses his father as &quot;sir&quot; - What can you glean from this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Suzanne gave birth to Katrina at age 14. The characters refer to each other as &quot;Sue&quot; and &quot;Kat&quot;. What is the practical nature of their relationship?    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T14:38:26.237" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28548" CreationDate="2017-06-08T15:11:33.583" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first published book was the eighth one I had written. I don't know that the other seven were stinkers--they earned me literary representation, and four of them climbed quite high on the ladder at publishers before ultimately being turned down--but for sure, I learned a lot and improved between books one and eight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I share this to say--not only is there no shame in setting a book aside, it's practically par for the course in this industry. Very few authors have their first book-length work published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find you come back to a kernel or portion of this book one day, after writing or publishing others. Or it may stay in that cyber drawer forever. Either way, I promise it won't be wasted. It's all part of the journey that is going to lead someone wise enough to pose this question to ultimate success as a writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25289" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T15:11:33.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28572" CreationDate="2017-06-08T15:46:25.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR: There is no universal rule&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think there is a universal rule as to when children change from mommy/daddy to mom/dad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience (I have 3 children) this shift often begins around the time they start school and is often a progressive thing. Younger siblings tend to do this earlier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some children are &quot;shmoozier&quot; than others and will keep the &quot;mommy/daddy&quot; longer when they want something. Girl tend to keep &quot;Daddy&quot; longer and move to &quot;mom&quot; earlier. And the reverse for boys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this shift will tell the reader more about the character than about society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T15:46:25.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28581" CreationDate="2017-06-08T15:50:55.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding another character that gives you a low-down often amounts to an info dump and can make the resulting narrative heavy and tedious to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the character has a cell phone or a hotline he can call when he's stuck or in trouble. 1-800-Hell or something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T15:50:55.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16748" CreationDate="2017-06-08T18:24:00.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most interesting &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copylaw.org/2010/07/libel-in-fiction.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;court cases&lt;/a&gt; was the one where a former Miss Wyoming sued Penthouse (and an author). She won an award of $26.5 million in a lower court, but the verdict was overturned on appeal. This largely set today's boundaries of &quot;libel in fiction.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three major issues, of which two played a role in the trials. The first issue was that the heroine of the piece a thinly disguised version of Miss Wyoming. The jury found that this was clearly the case, and awarded damages because the judge (wrongly) told them that this was the crux of the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On appeal, an appellate court found that the plaintiff (Miss Wyoming) had failed a second test, establishing the alleged &quot;fiction&quot; as a factual statement. The reason was that the fiction had men &quot;levitating&quot; in mid air (a physical impossibility) after Miss Wyoming supposedly performed oral sex on them. That is, the court found that &quot;levitation&quot; sent a &quot;strong signal of fiction&quot; that would prevent &quot;reasonable&quot; people from taking the story as true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third issue was raised by a dissenting justice, &quot;defamation.&quot; The judge conceded that the &quot;levitation&quot; was fictitious, but that the allegation of &quot;fellatio&quot; was defamatory. At that time, (the late 1970s), it was considered &quot;deviant&quot; behavior and standing alone, it might have been considered defamatory. The other justices found that the piece was distateful, but protected under the First Amendment because it did not meet requirements to be a (false) statement of fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's interesting to note that the standard for &quot;defamation&quot; changes over time. In the late 1970s, contemporaneously with the above, a judge found that calling someone a &quot;bastard&quot; was not defamatory in part because one out of four newly-born Americans at the time were literally born on out of wedlock. After 2015, it's probably not defamation to falsely call someone a &quot;homosexual,&quot; because a &quot;reasonable&quot; person would not find it highly offensive&quot; (although an &quot;unreasonable&quot; person might. Standards for allegations of &quot;unchastity&quot; particularly for a woman, have also changed. Alleging that someone is not a virgin probably wouldn't be defamatory (80%+ of unmarried 20-year olds are not), whereas alleging that someone &quot;has a different lover each night&quot; might well be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of Red Hat Club, there was no strong &quot;signal of fiction&quot; that acted as a disclaimer. In fact, the &quot;back story&quot; was so true to life that people reasonably believed that the main story was similarly true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer but I have done &quot;paralegal&quot; work for company lawyers in my &quot;day job.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T18:24:00.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28568" CreationDate="2017-06-08T21:12:51.367" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a legal question above the level of mere anonymous commenters on the Internet. If you feel that there is enough money involved, talk to a lawyer. Here is what your lawyer will ask you, so know the answers to avoid wasting your time and money:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Are there any written agreements at all? Note that e-mail may, in some circumstances, be considered a written agreement (depends).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Was there any relationship by which you would be considered to be an employee? Did they provide office space,or a computer? Did you have to report at particular times and places? Did they provide any compensation at all, whether in the form of pay or something else? Or, just &quot;maybe someday&quot; comments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Can you prove that you did the writing? This is important. &quot;Why&quot; you did it, or &quot;for whom&quot; you did it, is not the question. I repeat: Can you prove that YOU did the writing? If so, was your writing according to script or outline provided by them (known in some circles as &quot;copy&quot;) or was your writing original, merely based on general character names and theme? Did you write after seeing the specific game scenes, or prior to that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) Did you do anything that would relinquish or transfer your copyright?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(5) Did you do anything that granted them a license to use your writing? If so, on what terms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(6) Assuming that your were paid at a &quot;writer's rate&quot; rather than by &quot;hoping to make big bucks via stock options&quot; rate, how much money would be involved? I have no clue as to what a &quot;writer's rate&quot; is for something like that, but I imagine that an experienced writer, not a known name, would get about $30 per hour of writing (not per hour of game time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(7) Have they actually used your work in a product that they are selling? Or has it only been used internally, as a demo?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23046" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T21:12:51.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28568" CreationDate="2017-06-08T22:48:49.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, any work/time/materials you are going to create for a company should be contract signed first.  Signing them &quot;later&quot; should be a clear sign that something may not be right.  Being that this is for a game, most of the time you would have needed to sign things such as a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;non-disclosure agreement (NDA)&lt;/a&gt;.  They wouldn't want you to take their ideas and run off to a competitor who could complete it say better or faster and screw them out of their creation.  Make sure you have all of your hours documented and logged as well as all of the material you created for them.  Save all email exchanges between you and this company especially in regards to your work and pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like others have said this is something you will need to take a serious look at with a lawyer.  As RobtA pointed out too... if they have actually already implemented anything you have done in the product as a demo/marketing commercials/released to beta and they have made money off of it, that's basically &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Intellectual property (IP)&lt;/a&gt; of yours that they took without proper compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T22:48:49.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23435" CreationDate="2017-06-09T02:21:54.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A google search of the definition of the word 'now' should resolve the issue. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vo56b.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vo56b.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the usage of 'now' in past tense is part of the word's definition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this finally clarifies the issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25298" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T02:21:54.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23435" CreationDate="2017-06-09T03:47:57.257" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think the tense is the issue. Nor is there any particular with the use of the word 'now'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your language is clunky, passive and suffers the common ailment of abuse of the 'verb' to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Rayanne had found out SHE WAS pregnant shortly before SHE GOT sick. SHE WAS, now, five months pregnant.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are usage differences between British English and US English but I'm guessing it is better written in the following form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Rayanne discovered she was pregnant shortly before she got sick. Now five months pregnant . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T03:47:57.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28548" CreationDate="2017-06-09T09:40:36.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One additional thought about getting people to read it and listening to their comments: ignore what they say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But listen to WHY they are saying it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe they didn't like your main character and suggest you cut out a scene where he's being a real bastard.  That scene is probably not your real problem.  I mean, there are plenty of anti-heroes out there.  Your true problem is far more likely to be that your reader doesn't &lt;em&gt;empathize&lt;/em&gt; with him because they don't understand the internal demons that are driving this behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So listen to the problem they are identifying, but then toss their comments and try to figure out WHY they are feeling that way, which is more than likely not what your readers may suggest.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a real-world example, I have a novel that I'm wrapping up a rewrite on and the narrator tends to go off on wild, internal (and hopefully funny) tangents, commenting on the world around her.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My early readers said they were great but there were just too many of them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I realized when digging into it further was that it wasn't that there were too many of them per se, it was their &lt;em&gt;placement&lt;/em&gt; in the story.  They worked when we were transitioning from one scene to the next, or when they really gave us a deeper insight into the character's pysche in her alone time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where they &lt;em&gt;didn't&lt;/em&gt; work was when they interrupted the flow of a scene that the reader was becoming invested in, when our narrator was actively engaging with other characters.  So I went through and edited it from that perspective, cutting some of these tangents, but more importantly always making sure they were in the right place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It made all the difference for the readers of the second draft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25304" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T09:40:36.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23773" CreationDate="2017-06-09T11:11:32.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally think you shouldn't shy from conveying the experience of the disorientation as long as the narrator clearly conveys their confusion so we get into &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; experience of it, rather than our own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spun, then was face down on the floor, without even the memory of falling.  Or had I never gotten up? I couldn't make any sense of it.  Had I been found by the werewolves?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the experience is filtered through the narrator's expressed confusion, we don't care if it doesn't make any sense because we have faith that we'll understand when the narrator does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, I must disagree with the statement that &amp;quot;You cannot reproduce the effect of dullness and garrulity without being dull and garrulous.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the following example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frank's life was deeply, unremittingly ordered. The sameness of every day leached the colors from his world until he found himself fantasizing about horrible, terrible things happening to him.  The promise of seeing the vivid red of his own blood, the exquisite pain of a shattered hand or foot called to him to break the gray sameness of his life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But still he did nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until the morning when he woke up with the sure knowledge that he had to die if he wanted to truly live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we not feel Frank's boredom and desperation without being bored or feeling our own desperation while reading it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25304" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2021-11-06T14:19:48.100" LastActivityDate="2021-11-06T14:19:48.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23773" CreationDate="2017-06-09T12:49:22.250" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer to your question is yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you've got decide who you're writing for. You can't satisfy 'all readers'. If you clarify the story for Mills and Boon readers, lovers of Tolstoy will have no interest in your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are doing is going from dream state to being aware, with a confused state in between. Eventually your character will understand (or not) what was really happening and the narrative will explain it the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're going to suffer the age-old problem . . . When things get a bit weird how long will they put up with your shenanigans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used similar scenarios many times and I disagree that the confusion should be short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carlene has been arguing with her footballer boyfriend, Stuart. Stuart goes off the play in a football match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carlene goes home, cries, then takes a shower. After her shower Carlene looks her body in the mirror and briefly wonders why Stuart doesn't want this. She decides that she's 'hot' and 'sexy as f&lt;strong&gt;k' and if he doesn't want her - f&lt;/strong&gt;k him. She plays herself some sexy Motown music and jumps into bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[The story switches scene to spend time with Stuart in his football match. When we return Carlene is bed with Stuart's arch rival, Danny].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carlene felt the weight of Danny's hand on her shoulder, encouraging her to roll onto her back. She complied without hesitation. His touch was much gentler than Stuart’s, but still, she felt his strength. By comparison, his soft caress felt smooth on her skin. Each stroke left a trail of goose-bumps in its wake. He didn’t have Stuart’s rough builder’s hands. His gentle kisses on her neck caused her to shudder. She felt fingers trace her breasts until her nipples hardened. This man was so gentle. He knew how to make a girl feel good. His lips pleasured her neck whilst all the time his hand patiently made its way south. She gasped as his finger expertly found the spot – he knew what he was doing. He could read her mind; slow and gentle when she wanted it that way, other times quick and lively. Her body responded. She arched her back and released a muted moan. She felt to explode as nimble fingers excited and teased her, all the time the gentle caress of lips on her neck. She braced herself, held her breath, and responded to the internal stimulation by thrusting her hips forward. &quot;Please, be careful. Don’t . . . Please, I can’t afford to get pregnant,&quot; she whispered. &quot;I’m not on the . . .&quot; At the end of the journey to the edge of her world she extended her arms fully and her body tensed as she clung to a moment of time. The bubble burst. The moment was lost. Two breaths later, realisation slapped her, and panic set in. &quot;I said don’t!&quot; she screamed, and tried to push him off. Her hand met no resistance. There was nobody there. Carlene awoke, sweating, alone with her hand between her legs. She sat up in bed. &quot;What the? . . .&quot; She brushed her hand across her neck. A moth took flight. Carlene sat perfectly still listening to the sound of her own breathing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T12:49:22.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28597" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-09T13:01:33.463" Score="4" ViewCount="7494" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found this website and could see huge number of poets and poetesses in it. Does anybody know about it? I would like to know more about this website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24610" LastEditorUserId="14426" LastEditDate="2020-08-25T10:38:04.190" LastActivityDate="2021-10-13T01:40:02.937" Title="Is the website allpoetry.com beneficial for poets and writers?" Tags="|poetry|websites|reviews|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28507" CreationDate="2017-06-09T13:58:20.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not going to list all of the Industry Standards for style and formatting because it would be ridiculous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your intention is to publish digitally very few of these standards matter - the software will sort it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With traditional (dead tree) publishing the standards are a little more relevant. For example have you ever seen a novel with a page numbered &quot;1*? From a certain point page numbers are counted but not displayed. From another point page numbers are counted and displayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other templates specify page and margin sizes. Book are only printed in certain sizes. There needs to be pre-defined page and margin sizes. As you can imagine: if you reference a particular page number within your publication that number will change if the printers changes; page size, margin size, font size, etc . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all formats other than 'budget paperback' all new chapters begin on a right-page. New chapter headings are rarely at the top of the page and are placed midway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In recent years the 'Industry Standards' have been replaced by POD racketeers as &quot;Maximum Profit Standards&quot;. Guidelines for font size, margin width, etc have all geared towards POD profit. Templates with larger fonts and larger font sizes have been introduced to increase the page-count - the method with which printing costs are calculated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T13:58:20.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23773" CreationDate="2017-06-09T14:40:43.360" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you have already accepted an answer, I tried to put my musings on the matter in a comment, but they did not fit--surprize, surprize... Well, anyway:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is happening in your story and what any of your characters &lt;em&gt;thinks is happening&lt;/em&gt; in their reality are not necessarily the same thing. Quite the opposite--the concept is called &quot;unreliable narration&quot; and it is a great tool when used properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short--it is perfectly normal for a character to be disoriented to some degree; it is not going to stop your readers to understand what is going on because you let them see the bigger picture than the characters see due to the limitation of the time-space continuum they inhabit--no one is able to be at several places and at the same time at once, &lt;em&gt;no one, but you, the author,&lt;/em&gt; and it is your choice to take your reader with you or let them wonder a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard to evaluate the effect of one scene without reading the whole manuscript, but what I immediately imagine (alliteration not intended) when I hear &quot;first-person&quot; and &quot;suddenly awoken from a nightmare&quot; is a short and emotionally charged piece, perhaps written in present tense to relate the immediacy of what is happening, describing scattered fragments of what is thrown at her and her desperate attempt to separate the nightmare from reality, and so on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And guess what:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in that torrent of seemingly unfiltered and random things, she is suddenly exposed to, which require her immediate reaction, you, as the master of her Universe, can easily embed bits and pieces meant to be spotted by the readers and lead them along your story even if the delivery mechanism of this particular scene is deliberately out of tune.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be anything--since I did not read your story, I will just throw in some random poorly thought-through examples (SELFLESSLY AVOIDING PLUGGING IN A PIECE OF MY OWN GENIOUS WRITING):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The attackers might wear black or what seems to be black in the poorly&#xA;  lit setting, but when the fight is over there is a torn piece of red&#xA;  fabric left behind, which mean that they belong to a totally different&#xA;  faction, of which she is unaware, but the readers already know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The speak different language, the one she doesn't recognize and keep&#xA;  repeating some word which sounds like &quot;@#$%^&amp;amp;&quot;, which means nothing to&#xA;  her, but your readers just learned what &quot;&amp;amp;^%$#@&quot; (correct version of&#xA;  the word) means, and it indicates great immediate danger to your&#xA;  protagonist, who might escape this for now without realizing it, but&#xA;  your readers will know better and worry and feel sympathetic to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. I hope I am making my point clear: you are free to use a disoriented character to the extent where it becomes annoying (you be the judge where to stop), just do not forget to advance the whole story forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T14:40:43.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27371" CreationDate="2017-06-09T16:12:50.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this differs in the UK, but in the US a bookseller might order the book as a courtesy to a customer, provided the customer pays in full (since it can't be returned). It would need to be available through a standard distributor; for example, I believe Lightning Source distributes books through Baker &amp;amp; Taylor. (Again, this is the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't ask a bookseller to order a self-published book from CreateSpace. It could be seen as insensitive to some booksellers' feelings about Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information on ways self-published authors can get books into stores, please post a question! I have some understanding of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25289" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T16:12:50.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28499" CreationDate="2017-06-09T16:40:15.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like you have no real point of showing the friend first before the MC, from what I can tell on what you've written here. &#xA;The only time you should not show the MC first is if it's vital to the story. People are so used to seeing the MC's first, that usually the first person they see on screen is assumed to be the protagonist. I've watched a lot of things where this isn't the case and it gets confusing because you think &quot;Oh, they're the MC.&quot; but wait- they're gone and it's now actually someone else. &#xA;It seems the way you're setting it up with the friend being the opening shot, that he should play some sort of a bigger role. He doesn't have to be the MC, but people, in seeing him first, may begin to wonder about him throughout the film. If you don't want to have him until the end, it could work if you made it so that he had some big role in her kidnapping all along. It could surprise the audience and justify why he was seen in the beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25294" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T16:40:15.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28603" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-09T16:52:40.603" Score="10" ViewCount="608" Body="&lt;p&gt;I apologize for the wording of my question; it's probably not very clear. &#xA;I've got this idea for a book that explores a sort of philosophical theory. Similar to some of Ayn Rand's work (not her philosophies, but just the type of book itself). Other than how difficult it is to create characters for this, and settings, and a plot, I'm also concerned that I might not portray it correctly. &#xA;I don't want to tell the reader outright what I want them to think. No &quot;Thus we see…&quot; I don't want them to feel like this is preaching. &#xA;How do you create it so that it poses questions to the reader and makes them think and begin to see the argument? &#xA;Say for example I want to write a book about how smoking is bad. I write a story where a kid's mom gets lung cancer and dies and he gets second hand smoking and gets emphysema. The message is pretty clear and people might hate because it's preachy. &#xA;I don't want to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25294" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T14:39:38.850" Title="How to write a story that argues an idea" Tags="|technique|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27371" CreationDate="2017-06-09T16:59:30.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends greatly on the bookstore.  Recently there has been a rebirth of small independent booksellers, which were once an almost extinct breed.  A bookstore like that might be more inclined to accommodate a local author.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The discount sounds right, but the non-returnable clause might make some people balk.  In any case, it's hard to see how this would work as a customer-initiated request, since the bookstore would have no way of knowing where to obtain your book --unless you were directly involved, and in that case, why have the middleman?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some individual branches of large chains may also work with local authors, based on the manager.  However, in general, big box bookstores order exclusively through the major distributors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T16:59:30.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28448" CreationDate="2017-06-09T18:15:07.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current WIP, years after losing her husband my protagonist finally meets a new love interest (LI). This LI, as it turns out, also lost his wife years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The LI only refers to his late wife by her name, “Claire.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protagonist refers to Claire as “your wife” in dialogue, and thinks of her as “his wife.” The protagonist refers to her own late husband as “my husband.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point being that the LI has moved on from his tragedy, whereas the protagonist never did from hers. Remember that the way we name people is a reflection of how we feel about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In turn, it becomes a means for writers to influence how their readers view and perceive any given character—not just a way to refer to the subject of a verb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2686" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T18:15:07.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28499" CreationDate="2017-06-09T18:19:36.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a tricky ask because you are delaying the appearance of your protagonist in a short film. If you were writing a full length feature then by all Means, play around with the intro a bit and see how her introduction paces out. But depending on how short a script you're talking, you don't want to waste too long introducing her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it could be an interesting slant for you to hold back on her, but as she's the protagonist you'll need to find a way to involve her without her appearance. Perhaps messaging, so she can talk without being present on screen? Maybe said foil is telling a story about her or extolling the virtues that make her your viable lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is we need to relate to her, and we can't do that if she isn't there in some capacity, be it physical or otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24902" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T18:19:36.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28607" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-07T22:29:51.570" Score="5" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a technical book. Planning to publish with Amazon's Createspace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decided on a pen-name because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Real name is too long, hard to spell and pronounce for most people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given current political environment, real-last name sounds like I'm in unfavorable cultural group and people have reacted negatively in past (let's leave it at that)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hear lot of stories about people gleaning your personal info from open sources and using it against you (I deleted all my social media accounts in past year)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; How to keep my book fairly anonymous to the public at large, but prove to friends, family, coworkers, prospective employers, etc. that I in fact wrote the book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16199" OwnerDisplayName="Rhonda" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-03-02T20:48:18.583" LastActivityDate="2018-03-02T20:48:18.583" Title="How To Attribute Myself to Book I Publish with Pen Name?" Tags="|self-publishing|naming|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28607" CreationDate="2017-06-08T11:16:57.110" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most cases, the straight-forward solution is to be consistent in the name you are using in a professional context. So pick a name you are comfortable people calling you by, use that name for your publications, when you go to a conference, in correspondence with academics, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situations where the name written in your passport and the name you are known by to the academic community are both relevant at the same time are rare: I can only think of employment contracts and invitation letters for visa purposes, and in both cases one can simply explain the discrepancy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might have some benefits if there is a recognizable connection between academic name and passport name, but I do not think that this is crucial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25317" OwnerDisplayName="Arno" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T11:16:57.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28548" CreationDate="2017-06-09T19:08:13.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get a good editor. A really good editor. It can be someone hired or someone you know who will trust you when you tell them to be honest. This isn't copyediting (although it is that, too). This is the whole shebang. Give them your manuscript or sections at a time and have them just start marking everything--every single thought they notice having that breaks immersion. They should mark sentences that don't sound quite right, details they wish they knew more about, conversations that get off-track and they can't quite remember who's talking about what, and anywhere they find their mind wandering. What I find is that, very often, when a book gets uninteresting, it can actually be pinpointed to some sloppy writing in the lead-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should do multiple run-throughs of the manuscript. They can give you back sections marked up and you can make changes and hand them right back; it doesn't have to be linear. They don't need to worry about whether the story makes an impact upon first reading, because once it's tightened up, it will. They don't need to make comments only if they know what it &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be; they can just circle a sentence or paragraph and say, &quot;I just don't like this.&quot; Encourage them to mark also where your individual writing style is too noticeable, where you've indulged yourself just a little too much. They should also mark anything that someone does out-of-character or even if it's just unbelievable. Oh, and if you have anything technical (not just modern technical but anything for which there exist experts and you are not one of them), make sure you do your homework so the details make sense, and then make sure you write about it as much in plain language as you can. It doesn't have to be &quot;Up-Goer Five&quot; level, but getting into the weeds and using jargon or words from foreign languages to add &quot;ambience&quot; tends to be isolating and disruptive for readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, after all that, you still think it's just not great, or if partway through the process, you realize you're not interested in fixing it any more than you have, mothball it. But I bet you'll be very surprised. You may actually end up with a very different story in the end, or very different characters--try not to cling to plot elements or bits of dialogue that aren't working. However, if there is a part you really like and can't make work, copy it into a different document. There's no reason you can't hang onto it, but maybe it just doesn't belong in that book. Or maybe, once some other problems are fixed, you'll find that a perfect spot opens up for it that fits perfectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25316" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T19:08:13.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28607" CreationDate="2017-06-09T21:24:57.033" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you create a pen name,  USUALLY you need to also provide your real personal information.  They need to know your real information so they can forward matters to the right person such as any income and book matters.  It is just hidden behind the pen name.  If you are worried about people doubting you wrote it, then to those who matter, show them the paperwork that goes with creating your pen name.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to prove it is you is to show them the book through the means which you wrote it (word for example).  No one will spend the time to write hundreds of pages worth of text just to fabricate they wrote the book... it's just way too much effort without getting anything back besides &quot;wow you really did write it&quot;.  So if they see your rough drafts and manuscripts for it, that is another way you can prove to those who matter you are indeed the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T21:24:57.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28607" CreationDate="2017-06-09T23:07:52.230" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Minimally anonymous: On the copyright page, list yourself (using your real name) as the copyright owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Moderately anonymous: List a company that you own as the copyright owner, then show your friends that the company is you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 2 will cost a little bit of money to create the company, but you can use a relatively inexpensive form, such as Doing Business As (known in some places as Fictitious Business Name).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to go that route, consider making the company a publishing company. Then you can list that company as the publisher on your book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T23:07:52.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28548" CreationDate="2017-06-09T23:37:11.863" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stephen King thought his first book, &quot;Carrie&quot;, stunk and that no one would want to read it. He threw it in the trash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His wife retrieved it from the trash, read it, and sent off to a publisher. The rest is history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What one man thinks is trash, another thinks is gold. Don't let yourself fail before you even try to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25321" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T23:37:11.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28615" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-10T01:00:15.440" Score="5" ViewCount="1137" Body="&lt;p&gt;The setting I am writing is of a theocratic matriarchal society. Only women are capable of using magic, with some being stronger than others. Magic is slow, ritualistic, and complex, rather than being the fireball throwing or lighting welding type. Nevertheless, it is still very powerful, and serves as the foundation of society. It is used in all walks of life, and has led to a very women-centered culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the ways I was thinking about expanding on was magic''s relationship to sex. Magic can be used to enhance the experience, or make it terrifying if used for nefarious purposes.  It's not neccessarily important to the plot, but is just a way to flesh out the setting. I haven't found any books that explore this concept in detail, and I don't want it to come off as some fetishized fan fiction hentai that you would find on the internet. How should I explore this? Should I go into detail or just leave it too the readers imagination? How much is too much? And is this more of a world building question than a writing question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user24397" LastEditorUserId="43118" LastEditDate="2021-01-06T22:28:03.313" LastActivityDate="2021-01-06T22:28:03.313" Title="How can you incorporate magic and sex into a setting without it becoming fetishy?" Tags="|fantasy|magic-system|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28616" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28662" CreationDate="2017-06-10T01:48:52.183" Score="4" ViewCount="1002" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I have researched anybody can self-publish.  So it is an easier route than traditional publishing.  However, since anyone can publish, that means even poorly written novels can be published.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, do authors who have gone the traditional publishing route, respect authors who have self-published a well-written work, or are they looked down upon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24915" LastEditorUserId="10394" LastEditDate="2017-06-10T15:06:22.843" LastActivityDate="2023-09-19T08:12:36.040" Title="Are authors who self publish respected in the writing world?" Tags="|publishing|self-publishing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28603" CreationDate="2017-06-10T04:19:21.630" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Propaganda which looks like propaganda is third-rate propaganda.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the idea that you are trying to push is important, then embracing the idea has consequences, rejecting the idea has consequences, and being ambivalent about the idea has consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depict the consequences of all three of these paths.  The people practicing the right way (as you see it) should prosper as a result of their actions.  The people who cling to the wrong way should suffer chronic difficulty.  The people who try to sit on the fence should, if your ideas have any true importance, enjoy temporary success in the near term but face a crashing disaster in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important that the consequences of each choice be direct, natural consequences.  If the good that happens to the good guys and the evil that happens to the bad guys appear as highly implausible coincidences, or as rewards and punishments handed down from on high, you will be preaching to the choir.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-06-10T04:19:21.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28615" CreationDate="2017-06-10T05:44:32.133" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me it sounds like going into too much detail with it could fetishise it, but then if it's more of a world building factor you probably should go into more detail. Figuring out exactly how magic and sex interact in the background of your story should help you figure out how your characters and world view and react to such an interaction. My suggestion would be to go into some detail when planning it, but when it comes to an actual novel (assuming this is a novel you're writing) keep it pretty low key, that way you can avoid sexualising the plot if that isn't what you're looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24902" LastActivityDate="2017-06-10T05:44:32.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28616" CreationDate="2017-06-10T05:52:54.843" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is no, authors who self-publish are not respected in the writing world. However, the very wording of your question reveals part of the reason why not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question asks about RESPECT from two groups (1) The 'writing world' and (2) 'authors'. This is indicative of the academic biased psyche of a typical aspiring writer. A 'normal' person wants financial reward over respect. The 'respect' you speak of is the same respect you sought from your school-teacher and your peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Well-written&quot; is a peer-review and rejection term it's not particularly high on a commercial publisher's agenda. The writing of Dan Brown, Stephanie Meyer, or EL James is generally considered to be awful. James Patterson is pretty terrible too . . . he doesn't even write his own books. Publisher's are 'for-profit' companies who profit on volume, they've no interest in publishing 'good books' they seek authors who's personal stories can be sold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once upon a time publishing was an expensive business and only publishers could publish. This enabled publishers to dictate what was published. Any author who possessed the finance to publish his own work (vanity publishing) was frowned upon - How dare he circumvent us, the gatekeepers, this work is unapproved!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been to third base with major publishers on more than one occasion. &quot;Well-written&quot; was never an issue. &quot;We want to market this to teens so can you remove the masturbation scene.&quot; &quot;We love this story but we are concerned about the number of children killed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The digital era bought commercial publishers a whole new set of problems - anybody could publish at virtually no cost. Amanda Hocking was the original self-publishing queen. Sales of her ebooks reached 10,000 copies per day. The publisher's problem is that under normal circumstances an author of her standing was offered around 7% of the cover price. Hocking through self-publishing was earning 70%. It took a £2,000,000 advance to get her out of the self-publishing business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this story is not new. We recognise the plot from the music industry. The Internet and MP3s decimated the recording companies. Literature is just a little slow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-10T05:52:54.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28616" CreationDate="2017-06-10T09:12:42.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think as long as the published work is of quality it shouldn't matter which route it took to get to the page. The simple fact is that you can't  please everyone. If I were a published author and went traditional and someone else made more money self publishing, I'd perhaps wonder if I took the wrong route, and vice versa. But publishing is really the means to the end that most authors seek, as Surtsey rightly points out, in getting your work sold to make money. To me it doesn't matter how it gets there as long as it gets there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24902" LastActivityDate="2017-06-10T09:12:42.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28603" CreationDate="2017-06-10T10:33:36.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question has deep roots which go back to the American Dream, democracy, the free market economy, and The Jam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The public gets what the public wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a recent debate on this site the consensus suggested the overwhelming reason for writing was to make money. (I do not hold this theory).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, 'individuals' may be smart people' are stupid - like children. If you ask 5th graders to design their own lunch menu they'd live on candy, McDonalds and ice-cream. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh wait, is there currently an obesity and diabetes epidemic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question: the majority of successful novels push very rudimentary themes and agendas. &quot;Good always overcomes evil&quot;, however it is always a skewed point of view. Citizens of the country your villain comes from may not see your villains as evil by default. &quot;If you work hard enough you can accomplish anything.&quot; &quot;True love conquers all.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you attempt to push an unpopular agenda or moral you will invariably lose sales. Or you need to bury it so deep the 'stupid' public won't get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to win the hand of the princess and the keys to kingdom, the prince goes to another realm to fight his enemies (dragons etc) and to bring back riches to set before the king. The prince fights the dragon and steals the gold. But the dragon is only wounded he is not dead. The dragon recovers, summons demons and trolls from the dark realms. Together they enter the prince's realm breathing fire and burning villages . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody is going to say: &quot;Oh, I get it . . . we went to Iraq to steal their shit now everybody from the region is trying to blow us up.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader always identifies with the hero. It is extremely difficult to push an agenda on them that they don't like. &quot;Dances with Wolves&quot; springs to mind but successful attempts are rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-10T10:33:36.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28615" CreationDate="2017-06-10T14:23:49.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about how often the topic of sex comes up in real life. Aspects of it are kept private, between individuals. Other aspects are flaunted on TV, film and advertising. Certain people don't like to talk about sex at all and consider it inappropriate for respectable conversation. Other people make everything about sex and never miss an opportunity for innuendo. Some small amount of people walk around outside in their leather and leashes. But not many.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now think about how your fictional society is different to ours. Are people more open, or is sex more of a taboo? Are there brothels on every corner, offering experiences enhanced by magic at extortionate prices, or is it more of a private, underground culture? Are most people interested in magic-related sex, or is it deviant/fetishistic behaviour? Think about your characters. Are they successful in their sexual endeavours? Do they brag, keep it to themselves, or overcompensate for their shortcomings with overt flirtatiousness? Is there a power imbalance between the sexes? Are the women feared and revered by the men? Are the men hypersexualised and oppressed by the women? This could have huge impacts on the way society functions, or very little. It's really up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it isn't essential to the plot I would avoid getting explicit about it or it would come across as porn for the sake of porn. Hints of it here and there would be enough to give readers the idea. Think about when the topic would naturally arise within your story, and explore it in those places. But, as with all things: if it's not relevant, it should be left out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24794" LastActivityDate="2017-06-10T14:23:49.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28615" CreationDate="2017-06-10T15:28:22.740" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know your personal experience but there are some things that cannot be researched. There is almost no question here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throughout time, and to many of those who have experienced love, love is magic, sex is magic. Words like temptress and enchantress have been used in the past to describe what we now call sex appeal. These women use their magic on men to the extent that men will lose their minds. Men have started wars after coming under the influence of a temptresses' spell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In modern society a perfectly rational man can be enchanted by a woman's magic - under her influence he will leave his home and family in pursuance of the evil temptresses' 'sex'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's traditional women have always used 'magic' (recently discovered to be pheromones) to bewitch men. In truth the prince only fought the dragon in order to get laid by the princess - how crazy is that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you seem to saying is that in your society women have become more blatant as less coy about there magical power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-10T15:28:22.740" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28625" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28636" CreationDate="2017-06-10T18:28:52.907" Score="5" ViewCount="720" Body="&lt;p&gt;Primary characters would normally include the protagonist, antagonist, and maybe one or two &quot;fellow travelers&quot; of these. Secondary characters would consist of non-trivial characters that are not primary characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that the primary characters should be developed to the point where the audience knows them as their lover or best friend, because that's what they are for the duration of the work. Can secondary characters be developed to a lesser extent? If so, how much less? Can a secondary character such as a doctor even be a &quot;generic&quot; character, or is that treating him or her with too little importance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T16:01:22.100" Title="Are different levels of character development required for primary as opposed to secondary characters?" Tags="|fiction|character-development|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28603" CreationDate="2017-06-10T20:56:06.787" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The previous two answers have clearly described the effect that a theme can have on a plot and the effects which it can have on potential book sales.  Let me instead investigate the relationship of philosophical ideas to the media which best carry their propaganda.  The two examples from your question are perfect examples of the extremes on this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Don't Smoke&quot; is a simple statement and is part of a larger health-conscious philosophy which favors longevity over enjoyment, and conformity over freedom.  The principle weapons for its propaganda are the possible negative consequences of smoking.  There are no weak points in the don't smoke arsenal and its strongest points can be delivered in still images of bed-bound respirator patients and sound bites from tracheotomy patients.  The directness of its propaganda make it a poor fit for lengthy literature, movie or screen-plays, because with so little to say, the author is forced to restate the obvious, over and over again.  Because of its endless repetition of the No Smoking ideology's one-note song, anything longer than a one page flyer or a 30-second commercial, automatically sounds &quot;preachy&quot; because that is what it is.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Objectivism,&lt;/a&gt; which is the philosophy underlying most of Ayn Rand's writings, is a much better candidate for use as the underlying theme of a lengthy literary work.  It favors individual-rights over social-responsibility and panders the virtues of hard working business owners and their untainted right to be fruits of their labor.  It is a complex idea with many strong supportive arguments and it conflicts with many well established and equally well supported opposing philosophies.  Objectivism can't be sold with a two word slogan, nor can it defend itself from counter-argument with simple still images or sound bytes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A still image of a silk suited tycoon emerging from a rolls-royce onto a street full of starving homeless people, would be horrible propoganda for the objectivist's cause.  Nothing that a successful businessman could say in 30-seconds would ever sell the objectivist point of view.  This &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-T0ey0IKDA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;18-minute speech by Francisco D'Anconia&lt;/a&gt; (a charcter from Ayn Rand's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atlas Shrugged&lt;/a&gt;) however, is one of the best ideological sales pitches that I have ever encountered as a reader.  It hits all of the ideology's strong points and attacks many of the oppositions arguments, succinctly and thoroughly, but it takes 18 minutes to deliver in audio, and several pages on paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes these two philosophical messages so different, in terms of their suitability for use as a narrative theme?   I believe that their opposition is what distinguishes them for the role.  No one is out there waving the pro-smoking flag, but plenty of people have serious and well-thought out objections to Objectivism.  Those objections are the harbingers of the most powerful word in fiction writing...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflict!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiction thrives on conflict.  Conflict not only fuels reader' engagement, it threatens and thereby conceals the story's finale.  It generates tension and keeps the pages turning.  The higher you stoke that tension, the more likely each reader is, to read on to your story's conclusion, to hear completely your argument for the &quot;rightness&quot; of your point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to use a theme in your books, make sure that it is controversial.  Make sure that there are strong arguments against what you are trying to say.  Then give each of those arguments a clear and competent voice within your writing. Create a strong and passionate speaker to defend each opposing idea, then address and debate each of those world-views through interactions with character who represent your point of view.  Illuminate the entire spectrum of these ideas through the choices, actions and consequences of characters from both sides; then resolve the conflict in a manner which strongly supports your personal point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are up for a real writing challenge, walk with your point of view character from their origin in one of the opposing camps to the conclusion which you want your readers to make.  Invite your readers to grow towards you, by showing them your most loved character as she travels that painful path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choosing a theme should be a carefully considered choice.  With a poorly chosen, unopposed theme, good writing can become preachy or even worse, pointless.  With the right theme steering the journey, writing can transcend mere entertainment and become a medium for illuminating ideas and teaching wisdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-06-10T20:56:06.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28625" CreationDate="2017-06-11T00:52:34.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, well-developed characters are good, but... Things like character development take time. You can add another 100 pages to your book developing secondary characters, but would it worth it? It's best to find a delicate balance between levels of character development and book's volume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T00:52:34.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28603" CreationDate="2017-06-11T04:56:57.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are right: people want to be entertained, not preached to.  That doesn't mean they don't want to be challenged.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the nature of the idea you want to explore.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Is the idea central to the plot?  Are your conflicts and characters designed around the idea?  Perhaps you already have a story, and the idea is more of a prism through which you want the readers to see and understand the story. Here are some devices to consider:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--voice and overall mood: think about how you are telling this story.  Who is telling this story?  Who is the narrator? How authoritative is the narrator?  Is it metafiction?  Should the reader trust the narrator?  How much does the narrator know?  Is the mood hopeful? regretful? satirical? ironic? comic? cynical? serious?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;--''a Greek chorus'': certain characters who introduce the ideas through dialogue or through creative endeavors such as art or performance.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;--memorable quotes: this is a good way to introduce some of the most important slogans or tenets of your philosophy.  Maybe fake song lyrics (remember including actual song lyrics in fiction will require you pay royalties), movie posters, a radio announcement, graffiti, poems, a story someone tells, an SMS, anything! Be creative.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;--extended metaphor or parallelism: All sorts of symbols can be used to echo major themes.  Maybe it's the relationship between two characters, the state of someone's home, a garden that thrives or wilts, a holiday party over the years with fewer and fewer guests.... The thing with symbols, is to be sparse.  Choose no more than you can count on your finger and make them strong ones.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;--stream of consciousness: you can really go philosophical with the way characters think, how they perceive things around them, how they form decisions.  Thought processes can be very interesting.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25332" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T04:56:57.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28615" CreationDate="2017-06-11T05:29:55.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember all actions and dialogue should do one of two things: advance the plot or reveal something about a character; everything else should be cut out.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Sex can do both of those things and is something readers can relate to.  Erotic fiction is meant to arouse the reader, has sex for the sake of sex, and usually is some idealized or fantasy version of sex.  As long as the sex is central to the plot or is used to reveal things about the characters, it is not porn, and you needn't be shy of details.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you decide to include sex, do away with polite euphemisms and instead focus on how you connect the action to the rest of your story.  What are the characters thinking about during and after sex?  Can anything in the bedroom serve as a metaphor for another theme in the story?  Think about what the mood is of your story and how you can incorporate that mood into how you talk about the sexual act.  Are there opportunities for humor? for irony? for catharsis? disappointment? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magic sex could potentially be something very fun to write.  For some reason the masturbation scene from &lt;em&gt;Clockwork Orange&lt;/em&gt; comes to mind, when Alex fantasizes not only about women, but also about scenes of violence and destruction.  Magic sex can have lots of interesting and surreal imagery.  If you go for it, go for it with all the senses.  Is there music?  Are there fragrances? Is it an out of body experience? Maybe the women orgasm in arias and cum confetti.  It's your fictional universe.  Be creative.       &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25332" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T05:29:55.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28559" CreationDate="2017-06-11T06:03:50.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As they say, a good writer knows how to break the rules.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I'm dealing with this in a story I'm writing.  Sometimes it just makes sense to keep different quotes in the same paragraph, especially if there's a lot of narrative around it.  My advice would be to give main characters manners of speech that are distinct enough that who is speaking is clear enough from context that 'said so and so' is no longer necessary.  In my story it's rather easy, as one of the main characters has a strong Turkish accent. Here's an example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘’So it was a failure?’’  Mia gazed toward Emine with glassy eyes and a folded brow.  Emine softened her expression.   ‘’Well, no one is stop TOKİ if zis your question, but protest was success.  Too many peoples joined protest.’’  Mia’s eyes sharpened. ‘’Well, if the police broke the protest up, and nothing changed, that sounds like a failure.’’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is whether it is clear or not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*As to your specific example, Scout, I think it's fine, but if I can nitpick, I'd say the sentence has too many function words.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You wouldn't dare,&quot; Alexa hissed, &lt;strong&gt;at the same time that&lt;/strong&gt; Corey shouted, &quot;God, no!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'at the same time that' is 5 syllables! I'd reduced it to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You wouldn't dare,&quot; Alexa hissed, just as Corey shouted, &quot;God, no!&quot; or even &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You wouldn't dare,&quot; Alexa hissed, as Corey shouted, &quot;God, no!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Function words distract attention away from the interesting nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs that make your writing strong. They're just clutter.  Try to reduce them wherever you can.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25332" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T06:03:50.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28454" CreationDate="2017-06-11T06:29:18.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go for it.  It's better to show, not tell.  Don't describe accents, include them in your dialogue.  Just be consistent with spellings and try to get them as close to the standard spelling as possible. Of course the challenge is balancing that with clarity for the reader.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't use three 'o's if you are emphasizing the 'yoozh' as a short form.  Extra vowels convey length.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your character is going to say 'usual' the 'yoozh' or 'yuzh' you could explain it the first time it's encountered.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps something like this: &#xA;''What are you up to?''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;''The usual,''pronouncing it &lt;em&gt;the yoozh&lt;/em&gt;, in that youthful affectation.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;''Like what?''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;''Chilling, Facebooking, just &#xA;&lt;em&gt;the yoozh&lt;/em&gt;.  Sup?''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25332" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T06:29:18.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1742" CreationDate="2017-06-11T07:06:36.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Foreign languages can add a lot of flavor to a story if used in moderation.  Don't put entire dialogues in foreign languages and consider the purpose and function of having those languages there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foreign languages are very present in the fiction I write.  Some of my fiction is about American ex-pats abroad, another work of fiction is set in New York, which is a polyglot city.  In both of these situations, I see language as a flavor of the landscape, and it's not important that the reader understand them.  (Bonus points if you do.) The main rule I use is to never put essential dialogue in another language.  If you are dealing with a code-switching culture such as Spanglish or the way Lebanese switch between Arabic, English, and French—often mid-sentence, it works especially well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Ma shifto bl after-party; think he went to go akel wa7ed with his boyfriend.  Kan akho manyukeh! That Iranian DJ from Off On played a set at the hotel. Fady got some K kteer awiyyeh.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favorite example of using foreign language to flavor a novel is the underrated classic &lt;em&gt;Kaputt Goes Europe&lt;/em&gt; by Curzio Malaparte.  As the Germans occupy Europe, we find snippets of Ukrainian, Russian, French, German, etc.  Amazing prose too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25332" LastEditorUserId="34330" LastEditDate="2022-03-11T12:40:04.963" LastActivityDate="2022-03-11T12:40:04.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28454" CreationDate="2017-06-11T08:20:26.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't recommend phonetic spelling of slang. There are two issues (1) The validity of the word (2) The sound of the word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The urban dictionary contains a comprehensive list of slang. I recommend you consult it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your conversation would probably read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Wassup?&quot;&#xA;&quot;Same ol'&quot;      &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T08:20:26.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27372" CreationDate="2017-06-11T09:23:30.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A person who is &quot;bilingual&quot; will interact with two different groups of people. (Unless all his friends are bilingual in the same two languages.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So show your character moving from one group of &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt; to another, and talking to each group in their &quot;own&quot; language. It's not the languages but the people who speak the languages that make the difference. (Hence the exception noted in parentheses in the previous paragraph.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T09:23:30.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28635" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28640" CreationDate="2017-06-11T11:19:26.323" Score="3" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a story, it has a character that just finished High School and isn't sure what to do now and then ends up in on an adventurous journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling with good ways to show that the character lacks in motivation early in the novel, and later in the story I would like to establish a transformational decision, but I'm not really sure what this decision should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know any good examples on how this kind of motivation is applied and how this character arc turns out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm not native English, the wording in my writing is better ;) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25340" LastEditorUserId="24794" LastEditDate="2017-06-12T03:02:18.250" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T03:02:18.250" Title="Can lack of motivation be used as character motivation?" Tags="|creative-writing|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28625" CreationDate="2017-06-11T13:08:40.773" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can develop secondary characters, and should to the extent your narrative has room. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they are multi-volume arcs, David &amp;amp; Leigh Eddings's Belgariad and Malloreon series are good examples of this. The main character is Garion, later Belgarion. Other major protagonists are his aunt Polgara, grandfather Belgarath, and eventual wife Ce'Nedra. There are five or six secondary protagonists who travel with them on their quest, and &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of them get enough backstory and character development that you know who each person is individually and separate from Belgarion's story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't want to overwhelm a single book with eight characters' backstories, but each person should get enough presentation that they are distinguishable. And please try to give everyone a personality and at least a suggestion of a life &lt;em&gt;which has nothing to do with the hero.&lt;/em&gt; This is critical for a love interest. The Love Interest should have a life which starts before s/he meets your hero. Family, friends, hobbies, history, a job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everyone in your book exists solely to perform a function for the protagonist, your book may feel flat. You don't have to have 20 heroes, but yes, some fleshing out is good.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T13:08:40.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28637" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-11T13:43:53.550" Score="3" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both my husband's great grandfather and, on my side, my own great-great grandfather were published authors.  Their books appear on the Bibliobazaar/Open Source sites.  Although we are direct descendants, we are not heirs or executors of an estate (as far as we know) in either case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we republish our ancestors' work with annotations and/or different illustrations (probably copyright-free images, if we can find any suitable ones) and physically retype the manuscripts, is that legal and then would the copyright for this edition be ours?  Could we then set up an estate of this collection of family work for our own children?  Would it be best to set up a  small publishing company (ie through Lightning Source) to do this? Or would it be better to self publish via something like Create Space? Do we need to get permission from either Bibliobazaar or Open Source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25342" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T17:30:34.140" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T17:30:34.140" Title="Republishing public domain work by family ancestors" Tags="|publishing|copyright|self-publishing|legal|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28635" CreationDate="2017-06-11T15:56:36.390" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a well trodden path. If your character's just finished high-school he could be a stoner wanting to do nothing but sit around and smoke weed all day. Or there's the rich kid with the trust fund. He is given everything so has no need to pursue everything. Or perhaps the character is disabled or has lost a limb and won't get out of bed because he feels his life is over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are hundred's of scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T15:56:36.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28635" CreationDate="2017-06-11T18:32:12.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe the character has a special take on all the things that he/she could do. Those unique takes result in his/her general demotivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different things he/she could do present themselves e.g what friends and cohorts are doing: An internship in one of those trendy establishments (boring, corporate slavery), volunteering (instagram fodder), getting married (woah, please). Also, the character might  actually be in the middle of particular activities, but may show no sincere interest in doing those well, or may not be particularly invested in the final outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These attitudes towards potential pursuits can display the lack of motivation. Then, when the right adventure comes across, the contrast in his/her feelings towards it and the shift in emotions from dull cynicism to genuine wonder, restlessness and drive can display the newfound purpose with great impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T18:32:12.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28635" CreationDate="2017-06-11T23:08:02.543" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first example that springs to mind is Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye. Finishing high school represents that awkward, uncertain and downright terrifying period of transition from childhood to adulthood. At that age it can feel like the future is laid out already like a trap. Go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, then it's clean sailing 'til death. Many millennials would prefer to stay indoors playing video games, or go travelling, or do a degree in some unemployable field - all of which could be perceived as lack of motivation by their parents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Holden's basic character arc is avoidance and eventually acceptance. If your character doesn't know what they want to do next they will either flail about trying to find out, or stick with some old routine and try not to think about it. Procrastination can lead a character up all sorts of avenues, as can a sudden moment of flight when the pressure gets to much. A distraction in the form of a call to adventure would be more then welcome, in that scenario. Or perhaps they pursue an adventure all by themselves just to spice their life up a little, before it's too late. It depends on the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the breakthrough, I think TheTermiteSociety's comment is key: your character needs to find something that's meaningful to them. Maybe it's the people they meet on the adventure and the relationships they form. Maybe they witnessed some sort of injustice, and found meaning in the fight to stop it. Maybe they simply had that moment of realisation that they already &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; an adult, and that it wasn't such a bad thing after all. It depends on the character and on the story you're telling. But once they've found that meaning, it can be brought back full circle. Your character could go off and fight a dragon, then come back home and see that college application form still sitting on their desk. It had seemed like a monster before, but not so much anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24794" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T23:08:02.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28641" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-12T00:32:06.380" Score="6" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a fan-fiction story and had emailed a company to get a license from them so I could publish it. (The license would cover copyright stuff, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the person in charge of licensing asked me how many copies I planned on printing... 1,000, 5,000, 10,000?  I admit that I hadn't thought about that. I just wanted to self-publish and put my story out there, and if someone wants to buy it, great. If not, I'm still a published author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if I just want to print out 10 copies? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25346" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-04T08:33:43.383" LastActivityDate="2018-05-05T20:35:24.553" Title="How do I calculate how many copies I am planning to print?" Tags="|self-publishing|legal|planning|printing|fan-fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28642" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28649" CreationDate="2017-06-12T05:00:56.183" Score="2" ViewCount="9979" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a fresher seeking for a job in Android development and have a YouTube channel on Andrioid development Tutorial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How would I refer the YouTube channel in my r&amp;eacute;sum&amp;eacute;?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can I include it under the tiitle of Professional Proficiency?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does it seem to be unprofessional ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25350" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-06-12T09:36:45.303" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T15:53:50.220" Title="How would I give a reference of my YouTube channel in the Resume?" Tags="|resume|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28625" CreationDate="2017-06-12T07:07:37.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's possible to give a secondary character an independent background and personality without weighing down your narrative. A lot of this also depends on the purpose of the character to your plot. For example, if you plan on killing them and want an emotional response from the reader when they die, then you need to give them enough that they will care when it happens. A lot of times their backstory can just be woven in as the story goes along so that you can accomplish two things at once. That way it doesn't feel like you're stopping the narrative just to give exposition on this person, but you still make them stand out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25158" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T07:07:37.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28454" CreationDate="2017-06-12T08:13:20.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Non-english speaker here. I would go for it. If the pronunciation is easy to get, the reader would immediately understand the sound, and therefore the meaning, even if he never heard the term. Either the sound would sound like something he knows, either it will remind a slang he's aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I read about kids in a novel repeating &quot;I dunno&quot; all the time. I had never heard the slang for &quot;I don't know&quot; before, but after few times I got the meaning. It's better to add some &quot;colour&quot; than to go over heavy exposition (&lt;em&gt;&quot;I don't know&quot;, he said, in his typical accent&lt;/em&gt; - a very bad choice in my opinion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T08:13:20.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28645" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28650" CreationDate="2017-06-12T09:43:31.783" Score="8" ViewCount="2870" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story where a secondary story-line (it's about a companion of the main character) is basically about a fire mage and an ice mage.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It fits well in the story and the fire/ice elements aren't coming out of nowhere, but I wonder if it will bother the reader?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Does it depend on whether I write it well? Or is it better that I change the elements anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_fantasy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hard-fantasy&lt;/a&gt; story. The main character has two companions. One of them was born in a family proficient in the use of explosions, which I basically call fire magic. His father died as a rebel fighting a party of loyal soldiers (including a renowned ice user) who were killed in the process. Said ice user's son will seek revenge on the explosions user's son. This isn't the main plot, but it plays an important role nevertheless.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;According to my calculations, I'm in for one thousand pages, so of course there's much more to the story, BUT I wouldn't want that to discourage the reader from reading further...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what different magic types there are: actually, I at least have psychological magic, body transformations (includes healing), explosions, moving objects, heating, cooling, etc.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Ice is moving objects + cooling at least.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Fire is explosions + heating at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18743" LastEditorUserId="43118" LastEditDate="2021-01-06T22:41:19.010" LastActivityDate="2021-01-06T22:41:19.010" Title="Is Ice/Fire opposition too stereotypical?" Tags="|plot|fantasy|cliches|magic-system|archetypes|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28646" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-12T11:22:52.263" Score="1" ViewCount="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I very often come into situations where I either stack headings, i.e. I have headings with no content, or where I write some content under a heading just for the sake of it not being empty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Completely made up example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;7 Descriptions of country flags&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;7.1 Description of the Finnish flag&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris fermentum, erat eget pretium gravida, tortor augue lacinia eros, quis ornare tortor dolor sed est. Mauris consequat ultrices massa at suscipit. Suspendisse interdum ac nulla vel vestibulum. Curabitur ut nisl lobortis, dapibus sem a, volutpat mauris.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;7.2 Description of the Swedish flag&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pellentesque euismod pharetra purus, sed pretium lacus posuere quis. Ut elementum nisi quis arcu sollicitudin, id fringilla quam bibendum. Morbi lacus nibh, condimentum quis odio facilisis, dignissim mattis purus. Vivamus velit odio, gravida quis eleifend molestie, pellentesque quis nunc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these cases, I usually put something completely pointless under 7, like &quot;This section will describe the flags of some European countries&quot;. What would be a better solution? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25353" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T11:22:52.263" Title="How to avoid stacking headings in documentation, theses etc" Tags="|api-documentation|headlines|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-06-13T07:26:15.970" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27349" CreationDate="2017-06-12T11:59:59.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will need country-specific barcodes and prices, especially when distributing an imprint book. Book stores use the barcode to read the book price automatically, via barcode readers connected to their POS (Point of Sale) equipment. So, a barcode with the price in $US is mostly useless in CA, UK and AU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25281" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T11:59:59.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28645" CreationDate="2017-06-12T12:01:51.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a true believer that creative writers should be 'creative' - get your own heroes, villains and themes. But (commercially) we are in strange times. Publishers have become global corporations with shareholders. Investments must be tried and tested. They are reluctant to invest in anything new. Publishers publish stories from tried and tested authors whilst Hollywood invest its billions in franchise reboots and remakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your goal; following recently popular themes is a huge risk. I recall: a few years ago when I was seeking an agent I discovered a couple of agencies that included &quot;No Boy Wizards&quot; &amp;amp; &quot;No Vampires&quot; as part of their guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if self-publishing is your route there are some readers who are obsessed with certain themes and will look at any stories including a particular theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T12:01:51.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28642" CreationDate="2017-06-12T12:19:08.917" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is always worth thinking about what you can do to make your resume stand out against the crowd. My response is below (but not in the exact order you asked).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Under the heading &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Professional Profile&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; you could include a list of some of the videos you have published to Youtube along with a shortcode link to the those videos. Be sure to provide some context, what are you discussing in the video and why is it relevant to the kinds of roles you are applying for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To share the link just go to the video page and select &quot;Share&quot; (Shown under the video). You will be presented with a url along the lines of &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/_jF2QROonTU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://youtu.be/_jF2QROonTU&lt;/a&gt; which you can paste into your resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For more details, especially about creating a custom URL for your entire channel, see: &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2657968&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2657968&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sharing your passion for the thing you want to do demonstrates professionalism and commitment to your trade craft. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25354" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T12:19:08.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28645" CreationDate="2017-06-12T12:37:28.793" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; use fire and ice. The classic Four Elements (earth, air, fire, water) have been used for mythological and magical structures for many stories. Look at the &lt;em&gt;Avatar: The Last Airbender&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Legend of Korra&lt;/em&gt; cartoon series just for starters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having mages whose powers fall into one of those four categories (or expand them to metal, electricity, stone, etc. depending on how advanced the civilization is), with opposing pairs, is completely doable. Make it the basis for all your magic, not just the secondary storyline, and if your worldbuilding works, then you're fine. Sure, it's been done before, but there have been lots of vampires and wizards and mages and quests before, and the bookstores are not emptying any time soon. Go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T12:37:28.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28645" CreationDate="2017-06-12T14:29:02.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One interesting variant I've seen on this was Mercedes Lackey's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental_Masters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elemental Masters series&lt;/a&gt;. In that series Ice was not a separate element from Fire, but instead a different &lt;em&gt;aspect&lt;/em&gt; of Fire. Sort of its absence (like cold is just the absence of heat).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you could get a bit more complex, and say that Ice control is an ability you'd see in someone who has abilities in both water and fire magic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18598" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T14:29:02.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28642" CreationDate="2017-06-12T15:53:50.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be more professional, and a display of your competency, if you were to secure a custom url (vanity url) - ie a custom domain for your youtube channel. this way it is easier for the resume reader to remember and type it in.  and it looks more professional on the result.  Choose a relatively short domain - and then point it to your youtube channel (I also think youtube has options to do something similar for a premium).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18781" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T15:53:50.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28637" CreationDate="2017-06-12T16:21:17.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a legal expert, but my belief is that you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; reprint anything in the public domain, but you &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; newly copyright it.  Typically, when older works are reprinted, the publisher adds scholarly notes, a new introduction, new illustrations, or other material that can be copyrighted (for example, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Annotated_Alice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Annotated Alice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;).  If it is really in the public domain, you will not need permission from the repositories, nor should you need to retype (unless they added their own copyrighted material to the original).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as best method of republishing, that really is a separate question, that has been addressed elsewhere here.  It really depends on what your aims are.  If the work is of general interest, and you have added solid supplemental materials, you might consider a traditional publisher, perhaps one that specializes in older work.  If you are expecting it to be only of interest to your immediate family, &lt;em&gt;Print-On-Demand&lt;/em&gt; is probably your best bet.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A note of caution: if you are expecting this to be an income source for your family, that is highly unlikely, unless your ancestors were famous (in which case someone would probably have already re-released their work).  You're probably going to be most happy with this process if you view it as doing a service to your ancestors, by keep their work alive, rather than as a way to build up a nest egg for your kids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2017-06-12T16:31:16.313" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T16:31:16.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28645" CreationDate="2017-06-12T20:27:07.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think fire and ice can be two fundamental magic forces in your story if you frame it as powers of increasing and decreasing temperature, powers of giving energy to and taking energy from particles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25367" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T20:27:07.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28656" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-12T20:42:43.953" Score="4" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have tried doing searches for this and can't seem to track down the exact numbers. The sources will list the top selling genres but that doesn't include children's books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25365" LastActivityDate="2018-02-03T20:14:17.573" Title="I am looking for statistics on the percentage children's books versus other genres in self-publishing" Tags="|self-publishing|book|children|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27866" CreationDate="2017-06-12T20:58:18.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a children's book illustrator and a member of The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. We recently had a workshop on what children like and the age level of each kind of children's book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason there is now a loose publisher/agent imposed word limit on most picture books is children have a much shorter attention span than they did in previous decades. Also, children are reading at a much earlier age. Picture books are mostly for the 3 to 4 year old age group. the 5 to 7 year olds are already reading easy chapter books on their own. Maybe your book would make a better chapter book. The longer storybooks of my generation are in short supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think reading to children at any age will make them better students and readers. It exposes them to situations outside the home and introduces vocabulary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25365" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T20:58:18.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26724" CreationDate="2017-06-12T21:26:28.207" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a children's book illustrator. Thom is right 50:50 or for heavily illustrated picture books 60:40. When it comes to the advance, the illustrator usually gets more because it will take them 3 to 8 months to finish illustrations for the book. They need something to live on while they are working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25365" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T21:26:28.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27371" CreationDate="2017-06-12T21:37:21.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Jenny, it would be totally insensitive to order a self-published book printed by CreatSpace (Amazon) from an independent bookstore. IngramSpark, another POD printer (part of Lightning Source) who distributes through Ingram Content Group (previously Ingram Book Distributors) will work with independent bookstores. You can set your own discount rate and return policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25365" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T21:37:21.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7318" CreationDate="2017-06-12T21:50:31.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in writing picture books, I suggest Writing Picture Books by Ann Whitford Paul. Also, How to Write a Children's Picture Book Volumes I-III by Eve Heidi Bine-Stock is excellent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest The Complete's Idiots Guide, Publishing Children's Books by Harold Underdown. This time the got the perfect author for the series. Harold Underdown really knows the children's book publishing business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a member of the SCBWI, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. I would suggest anyone interested in writing for children join. It's well worth the annual fee if you have a chapter near you. It's an international organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25365" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T21:50:31.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28616" CreationDate="2017-06-12T21:51:19.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your book is both well-written and successful, people will &lt;em&gt;eventually&lt;/em&gt; judge it on its merits, not its publishing method.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, people who haven't read your book will probably have significantly lower expectations for its quality if they know it is self-published, and this in turn will make it harder to get people to read it in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-publishing success stories are almost always stories of successful salesmanship --the quality of the writing has a secondary impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T21:51:19.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28616" CreationDate="2017-06-12T22:01:50.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I agree with Sursey's asswer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just wanted to add my 2p; self publishing lacks the nuclear weapon of publishing: MARKETING.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25239" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T22:01:50.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28603" CreationDate="2017-06-12T22:28:55.417" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to actually do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a setting that's completely different and develop the plot based on the setting- One example would be Animal Farm by George Orwell. The whole setting is about animals in a certain farm who try to be free from humans. The whole setting- talking animals on a farm- is fictional but the main concept of the story was actually based on the events leading to the Russian Revolution and the characters- the animals- are actually how George Orwell wants to explain the situation about Corruption through the Animal Farm setting of what has been done during the events leading to the Russian Revolution. Therefore, George Orwell actually told what happened during the events leading to the Russian Revolution and about stopping corruption through a book about talking animals. However, you can't write a story about animals smoking so maybe you could create a setting where the point you are trying to argue is suitable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create problems from the point you want to argue- let's say you want to argue about smoking, yes, you can create problems like lung cancer and such but wouldn't it be more captivating to talk about problems that the reader might have faced before? Talking about lung cancer, the reader may say stuff like, &quot;Oh, I'll never get lung cancer&quot; but if you put stuff like, for example, the protagonist who smokes faces social problems due to everyone steering clear of him or, for example, the smoker is discriminated by maybe the parents or something. These are all things that the reader can relate. No matter how much we try to argue, there is definitely social problems and discrimination in our community and majority of people would have faced it and felt the effects of it. Thus, this creates the thought that &quot;I'm troubled enough, I don't need more problems so I won't smoke.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't tell what it is first, create suspense- I use this A LOT in writing and this really works. Let's say you are talking about smoking, you can say, for example only, &quot;The silent killer crept swiftly toward its umpteenth victim. The unsuspecting victim himself, too naive to notice the presence of the killer. Slowly. Silently. Taking a piece of the victim away bit by bit. Leaving the victim in a swirl of confusion.&quot; So in this case, you're not saying that the killer is smoking but you're creating a sense of hatred towards the killer and then later when you reveal that the killer is actually smoking, they find out that smoking is bad.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be VERY subtle- the smallest of events can create a big impact on the reader. If you want to talk about, say smoking again, you can say that the protagonist maybe faces people who smoke every day or she incurred a loss due to smoking. You can say, for example, &quot;Airi crept into her house and closed the door silently to not disturb her temperamental brother. As the putrid smell of ash slowly dissipated, she welcomed the fresh air and longed to be free of the haunting memories of her deceased parents. She wished her brother would not share their fate.&quot; SO in this case, we're talking about how her brother smokes and that the protagonist does not want her brother to end up dead like her parents. Why? Because of what the brother is currently doing- smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you find my answers useful and wish you all the best in your writing journey! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25368" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T22:28:55.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27371" CreationDate="2017-06-12T22:29:03.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Self-published books are made available to all bookstores via Createspace EDC or other distribution channels. Createspace partner Lighting source, Ingram, Barnes and Noble and other to provide a worldwide distribution system. However. discounts are fixed (60% for Createspace) the result is unreasonably high retail prices and virtually no commission for the writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your POD printer will have details of available distribution channels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T22:29:03.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28645" CreationDate="2017-06-13T00:02:09.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a bit stereotypical, but for good reason.&#xA;The two are opposing forces. I don't mean in the sense of physical frozen water and whatever the hell fire is, but in the sense of endothermic (absorbs heat) and exothermic (emits heat) reactions. The two are opposing ends of the 'thermal' spectrum, like how midday is the opposite of midnight.&#xA;Using ice magic and fire magic is perfectly acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be stereotypical (and somewhat cliché) would be to make the characters a personification of those elements. Typically fire-users are energetic hot-heads who are quick to anger and ice-users are oddly calm and relaxed because those traits fit the elements. But if magic were to exist, people would not necissarily be personifications of the magic they use, people would have personalities and they would choose to use a certain magic. There is no reason to not have an excitable, bubbly ice-user or a miserable, lazy fire-user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly there might be cultural influence (e.g. the fire nation favours power, the ice nation favours wisdom) but that would not be steadfast - there do exist Americans who don't like American football or hamburgers, there do exist Britons who do not like football or tea. Heck, all nations are divided by their politics alone, no matter what traits their culture favours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: Fire and Ice magic is fine, but don't make the people personifications of their powers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11019" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T00:02:09.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28667" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-13T00:02:56.197" Score="2" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing technical book and wish to use photos from Internet. Not the ones that have watermarks on them, such as these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to attribute these photos in book?&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BsFDb.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BsFDb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16199" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T12:40:37.540" Title="How to attribute photos from Internet in book" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28667" CreationDate="2017-06-13T00:09:51.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot use photos without permission from the owner. Once permission is received and any royalty agreements settled your attribution should be to the copyright holder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Royalty free images are available: search &quot;Royalty free&quot; each individual site will state the terms of use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T00:09:51.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28669" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-13T02:35:14.983" Score="13" ViewCount="4490" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the long term effects of killing off a main character (early into a series) that represents someone you'd like to move on from? Would that be cathartic, or detrimental to a writer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25373" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2017-06-13T14:09:21.317" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T21:48:46.670" Title="Killing off a character" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28669" CreationDate="2017-06-13T04:00:37.967" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably both!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this current moment in your writing process, your world and its characters are vibrantly real to you and completely unknown to your future readers.  So this is a wonderful time to use your story for a little self-indulgent soul surgery.  If you need to strike out at someone in the real world, put their representative character through the ringer in your fictional world.  Drag them literally through the proverbial dirt, then crucify them on a cross of your creativity.  Vent your rage, your disappointment and your pain out onto the page and let your emotions rule your writing for a few hours.`  Don't just slash them off the page in a single sentence.  Fill paragraphs with their punishment and pages with their demise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, when you are feeling a little better, carefully select the &quot;Save As&quot; option in your word processor and name this new document, TheDeathOf___.doc.  That way it doesn't overwrite your existing work in progress, but it does preserve these valuable new pages for future review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tomorrow, or next month, when you are feeling in balance again, read through tonight's creation and notice how your emotions shaped your words.  Study the raw creation, looking for rage-inspired explicates and other venomous prose.  These may well be the most honest words you write this year (which is okay because you are a fiction writer.  You are supposed to lie.), but if you look carefully at these words after your emotions have cooled, you will probably also find that they are real in many ways that your normal writing is not.  Learn from them and thus become a better writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never pass on an opportunity to write while angry or sad, in love or out.  Write all the time and write with energy and passion.  Write without regard for whether your future fans will ever read your latest words.  Not every word which you write should be destined for publication.  Most of them, should just be you, practicing and learning how to better tell your tales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep Writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T04:00:37.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28700" CreationDate="2017-06-13T06:09:10.770" Score="2" ViewCount="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An RLC circuit is composed of resistor, inductor, and capacitor elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An RLC circuit is composed of &lt;strong&gt;a&lt;/strong&gt; resistor, &lt;strong&gt;an&lt;/strong&gt; inductor, and &lt;strong&gt;a&lt;/strong&gt; capacitor elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one is grammatically correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25374" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-06-13T21:21:14.603" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T21:21:14.603" Title="Do we use an article with every item in a list of countable singular nouns?" Tags="|academic-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28669" CreationDate="2017-06-13T06:48:01.243" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I agree with @Henry Taylor, I would also like to add it may depend. I find that writing such pieces may be cathartic only if well done (at least for some people). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example: Bobby is a bully (and represents all the bullies that made my life hell) so I make him act as despicable as possible, then I have Tommy take issue with him and give him a gruesome lesson. This satisfies my need for revenge and I feel vindicated... for a while. Sooner or later, a new Bobby will emerge in my writings and I will again feel the need to make him suffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This becomes a vicious circle and, if I can't break away from it, then there isn't much catharses in the writing for me as a writer, is there? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I found was the most cathartic for me as a writer was writing these Bobby characters from their POV (at least on occasional chapters) and giving them a rich personality. Making them more human and less villain. Trying to understand what was behind their actions (without falling into the trap of always giving them a hellish life at home, even though that reason may apply to &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; bullies in real life).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I'd look into trying to have my MC search for ways to fight and overcome the bullying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that it was the combination of understanding my foe and searching for natural ways of defeating them that brought on the much desired feeling of catharses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're writing a mystery and your killer is aiming at bullies, that's a different story. However, the killing itself is probably not going to be cathartic in the long run, but rather how the killer evolves (for the writer also evolves with the MC in some ways) and learns different ways of dealing with the difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course some people will find a deserved savage death to be cathartic, and it may very well be the case. But if one finds the need to dish out these deaths to the same characters over and over, then it's not cathartic at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T06:48:01.243" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28673" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28686" CreationDate="2017-06-13T08:55:55.233" Score="1" ViewCount="363" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of revising my book and I started reading a little about marketing. I got this wonderful e-mail by Jeff Bullas, who explained to me the basics of selling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not trying to convince someone to buy something they do not want. &#xA;Selling, true selling is about giving the people what they want.&#xA;It’s about making their lives better, making them happier.&#xA;In short, it is about finding a connection and building trust. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to find out how my book can serve people, I first need to be able to research and define the compelling needs of my readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's where I am stuck. Anyone with an idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18726" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T19:20:18.300" Title="How To Define The Compelling Need Of My Reader" Tags="|marketing|revision|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28419" CreationDate="2017-06-13T09:14:51.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not really about the end but it's more about the road to get there. After all, we all know that humans have a lifespan and are going to die anyway but we still want to make our lives worthwhile and impactful. In this case, if the end is really obvious, maybe you can write about the different points of views of each of the groups. However, do not completely destroy hope. For example, there is this anime I watch where there is this superstitious person who brings around lucky items. He says that the lucky items will help him achieve success. They show that he achieves success when he has the lucky item but they don't say he achieved success because of his lucky item but he achieved success because of his hard work. I mean, this is just an example. You must also take note that the quality of work can be more important than the quantity. Namely, you don't give many conflicts but you describe the depth of the conflicts and the severity and why it impacts the protagonists so greatly. That way, even if the ending is obvious, there is joy in reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25368" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T09:14:51.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2100" CreationDate="2017-06-13T09:31:03.810" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone once told me &quot;Don't shut down ideas, develop them.&quot; This means that no matter how crazy or unrealistic an idea might be, it is still an idea and it is still worth a shot. Let's say you're writing a story on a sport and suddenly telekinesis comes into your mind, maybe you can say that instead of controlling something, you can predict what the thing is going to go through or something (just an example). Great ideas must have come from somewhere. Don't be afraid of failure. Thomas Edison once said, &quot;I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work.&quot; After all, without the downs, there are no ups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a personal advice, I tend to derive inspiration from my surroundings. If I am writing a book about mystical creatures, I tend to get it from the shapes of trees and describing it in detail or in a view of a child that is afraid. If I am writing about school life, I look at my friends and try to envision their point of view. If I am writing a book about adventure, I try to write in it the difficulties of going through (for example, living in a forest, many mosquitoes and insects and unable to find food).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you all the best!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25368" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T09:31:03.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28673" CreationDate="2017-06-13T09:43:35.810" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Marketing a product is not &quot;convincing someone to buy something they do not want&quot; &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; &quot;giving the people what they want.&quot; It is creating a need in the buyer which s/he either didn't have or didn't realize was there before. That's what ads do: convince people &quot;You NEED this!&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Selling a story is not like selling toothpaste. You have to create a blurb which makes the reader want to find out &lt;em&gt;what happens next.&lt;/em&gt; That's your hook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T09:43:35.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28673" CreationDate="2017-06-13T09:49:22.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you do not state the type of book you are trying to market. But I believe the Jeff Bullas method is full of crap. Very popular is the US is the old scheme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If you give me $10 I'll show you how to make $1000.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After handing over $10 he'll inform you that all you need to do is convince 100 people to hand over $10 - the way he just convinced you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a thousand gurus who will tell you &quot;10 ways to do this&quot; and &quot;6 ways to do that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is nothing behind the method. They are effectively telling you how to do something they could not or have not done themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Selling&quot; is not giving people what they want - that'd be &quot;serving.&quot; &quot;Selling&quot; is about creating &quot;desire&quot; or &quot;need&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Da Vinci Code is total crap but you must have a copy because that's what everybody's talking about and unless you've read you'll look stupid to others.&quot; - Is one sales angle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to create desire for a book.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T09:49:22.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28669" CreationDate="2017-06-13T10:27:06.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I began writing my first novel I was very angry. I killed 11 people - I feel a lot better now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book didn't sell but by writing it I saved spending thousands of dollars in therapy  . . . so I'd call it a win definitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More seriously . . . your plot dictates that certain people have to die. Pure hatred causes the mind to create ways to inflict extreme suffering on your villains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my first killing was a little tentative. A girl watches as her boyfriend chokes on a chicken bone and makes a conscious decision to nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all learning. I could say, my first few killings were for me . . . but now I'm really good at it. I've had a character express the joy of being blown up on 9/11. No . . . I'm not joking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just so as I don't get marked down for bad taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the moment came? Wow! The last rush. Like a breaking tidal wave;&#xA;  our maker came calling. With a violent crash he reached into our&#xA;  world. Then he took us. What a sensation! What a ride! There was no&#xA;  feeling of pain, only a craving for the exponential growth of the&#xA;  infinitesimal moment, no sensation of falling to doom. Our worlds&#xA;  moved with us in a triumphant cascade. And there was music, blissful&#xA;  music. Katrina came into my heart and together we surfed on the crest&#xA;  of a magical wave of a million tons of beautiful concrete and steel.&#xA;  And we flew as kites on a magical wind. And we danced our last dances&#xA;  and sang our last songs. And we embraced one last time. And we laughed&#xA;  out loud. We laughed our loudest, and our joy could be heard above the&#xA;  twisting of steel and the breaking of glass. For all time our laughter&#xA;  would echo in this place, on this wave, to be carried forever on the&#xA;  magical wind, in this precious last moment of goodbye. At last we were&#xA;  again, and forever together, as children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="10027" LastEditDate="2017-06-13T21:48:46.670" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T21:48:46.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27371" CreationDate="2017-06-13T11:11:37.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have gone to my local bookstore to order a &lt;a href=&quot;http://mizkit.com/cemurphy/historical/austen-chronicles/magic-manners/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;self-published book&lt;/a&gt;. I gave them the ISBN, they ordered it, it arrived a week later, I walked in and completed the transaction. The book is now on my shelf. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, it's possible. Whether &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; local bookstore will do it is up to the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T11:11:37.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28603" CreationDate="2017-06-13T11:44:16.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understood the question, &quot;Smokin is bad&quot; was merely an example, and I will try and answer the question without including the topic of smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Genre and scenario&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I may be influenced by my own work in the genre - and you don't mention a genre yourself - but perhaps sci-fi would suit your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Create a scenario&lt;/strong&gt; (This could be a fictional world, or simply an exaggeration of a realistic issue) with a conflict that doesn't directly focus on the message/morale/point that you want to convey, but which would be more easily solved/handled/defeated/understood/prevented if people saw/followed/understood/used/knew &lt;strong&gt;&quot;what you know to be right&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wanted to push the message that &quot;paying attention is key&quot;,create a scenario where no one necessarily mention it, but it slowly seems like a valuable skill to have, if you want to strive in the society in which the story takes place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without going into detail, I'm writing a story in which some people have access to &quot;things that can manipulate the experience of human beings&quot;. In the story there's a great amount of seemingly unnecessary details when we follow our main characters, but the more you read, the more you realize that anything you pay attention to (or don't) could be of significance. The story focuses on a critical conflict between two opposing sides over the &quot;things than can manipulate...&quot; but upon and after reading hopefully leaves the reader wondering about how much they pay attention to their surroundings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shortly adding to @HenryTaylor's point about following a character's journey from one side to the other; Your protagonist could also be working desperately to disprove the message you want to convey, only to fail over and over again and finally &quot;realizing the truth&quot; - Be it that smoking is bad, that paying attention is crucial, or that money can't buy you happiness.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22977" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T11:44:16.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28667" CreationDate="2017-06-13T12:40:37.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only images you can use are images you have specific permission for to use. This can be because the owner specified. But, there are also a lot of websites with 'Stock' images. These images can be used for commercial and private use. Just don't trust every stock image site you can find, not all of them are legit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the 'free' stock sites you can find might not be legit, so be sure to check that. There are also a lot of paid stock image sites. This can be paid for an amount of time, or paid per image. These sites are used a lot by professionals and are very trustworthy most of the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.nl/search?q=stock%20images&amp;amp;ie=&amp;amp;oe=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;google search&lt;/a&gt; will already give you a lot of free options. You can also do a quick search on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.nl/search?q=stock%20images&amp;amp;ie=&amp;amp;oe=#q=professional%20stock%20photos&amp;amp;spf=1497357316985&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;professional ones.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could recommend some sites, but I think that would count as ads so I can't post these. Googling will give you some of these too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T12:40:37.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28615" CreationDate="2017-06-13T12:58:14.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important thing you have to ask yourself is &lt;strong&gt;who is your audience?&lt;/strong&gt; How specific you incorporate sex in your story depends a lot on that. If you are writing for teenagers our Young Adults, you would use a lot less specific sex scenes. But if you are writing for a very mature audience, you can use more specific scenes and incorporate the sex a lot more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second question you have to ask yourself is &lt;strong&gt;what you want your genre to be.&lt;/strong&gt; If you want to write a partly erotic novel, then you can easily do a lot with your combination of magic and sex. But if you don't want your novel to be classified as erotic, you need to be a lot more subtle. The best way to be subtle is to never actively have sex scenes in your novel. Don't make it happen in front of the readers eyes. Instead, make your characters mention it when suitable, not describing it as a whole, but by letting the readers pierce it together bit by bit. At some part a woman can mention having used her magic in a very interesting way last night. You can have men talk about how some of them are really good with their magic in bed. Or, being scared of woman because of that. Just make sure it will come around as natural in your conversations, and don't put it in the spotlights too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can still incorporate some sex scenes in your novel, but if that is not important for you, just leave them out. Or have people go to bed, skip to the next day and make them say how much fun they were having. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a last thing, imagination is good. Most of the time these things specifically are better being mostly left to the imagination than completely fleshing it out and writing down every single detail, including what the characters feel. Just compare it to real life. Will anyone ever be able to write it better than you can feel it? Not really. So if you still try that, it will always feel a bit disapointing. If you give your readers the space to add in their own feelings and thoughts, it will feel a lot more real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T12:58:14.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28673" CreationDate="2017-06-13T13:09:41.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Making it unique and interesting will make it something people want, but doing that is not really the problem you will face. No matter what is inside your book, if you want to sell it you need to give them a reason to want it. It doesn't matter what you write while revising. That has nothing to do with marketing. Maybe the overall story is, but I assume you are not creating a whole new book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moment people will read your book, the moment they have it in their hands and start reading the words you are revising now, they have already bought your book. So there is nothing more you need to sell them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part where you do create this need, is in everything around that. Make the cover compelling. Use the space on the back to write a small piece about your book that will draw people in. And the best way to do this, is showing them something new. Something they haven't thought about. That will make them curious. And curious people buy a lot of things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you don't have to think of something completely new. You can also take some existing thing and use it in a new, different way. Or slightly adjust it. As a good example (not related to books):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While randomly browsing the internet, I found the most intriguing thing. Laser guided scissors. Laser guided scissors you said? What is that? Do I need it? Well, I can just draw a line right. Works as well. But lasers. It looks so amazing! The red line is so Majestic!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say I am now the proud owner of two pair of laserguided scissors. I bought them last year. One of them is still in the wrapping and the other I used only once. But hey, what do they care how much I use them? I still bought it anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As an addition, based on the comments:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying a book should not be good. Just that for trying to sell your first book, changing what's in it doesnt make a difference. Its better to write an amazing novel and worry about marketing later, than trying to do the marketing part within your novel. Marketing within a book is kinda useless, because the moment they read that 'marketing' they already bought the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastEditorUserId="12847" LastEditDate="2017-06-13T18:51:52.227" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T18:51:52.227" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28685" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28688" CreationDate="2017-06-13T14:06:20.050" Score="3" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had an idea in my head for a while to write a book advocating for political and educational reform in Canada, but I'm unsure whether or not it's even worthwhile to proceed because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't know of any other books that exist solely to advocate for political reform (other than Mein Kampf)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't know if publishing companies will consider a manuscript I submit on the topic, given that my credentials for the specific thing I'm advocating for (educational reform) are somewhat (but not completely) lacking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'm wondering if I can get some insight as to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do other such books exist?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, are they almost always written by people who are already well-known in their field?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25381" LastActivityDate="2020-05-20T17:50:24.240" Title="Examples of books advocating for political/educational reform?" Tags="|publishing|non-fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28673" CreationDate="2017-06-13T14:06:42.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; read books?  You want to be entertained?  You want to be transported to another reality?  You want to learn something?  You want vicarious excitement?  You want an aesthetic experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever compelling reasons you have to read are generally the same for your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T14:06:42.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28615" CreationDate="2017-06-13T14:19:41.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems to me that you have more of a worldbuilding problem, although with writing in mind.&#xA;You want to add a sex component to your magic system. Determining the what/who/how 's is purely a worldbuilding problem. The fact that you don't want it to be a central point of your story determines a constraint, a guideline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about your story and think about all the occasions on which magic is used. Now ask yourself if having sex involved in each of those scenes is too much. Does your writing give the feeling you want? Try writing one if you have trouble figuring this out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case more worldbuilding awaits you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is yes, then you have to invente a good reason or a new rule for your magic system to render the use of  sex occasionnal. From this point on, you have a lot of possibilities, it's up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is no, that still lets you a good amount of worldbuilding to do. After all, you are adding a new possibility to your magic system. You have to think about all of the implications for all the people involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end it's a very subjective question. It depends on the amount of sex that's happening, the amount you want to actually show or talk about, the general feeling that you want your story to convey, your ability to portray this feeling in your writing and your target audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19595" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T14:19:41.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28685" CreationDate="2017-06-13T14:20:09.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answers are yes and yes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are many many books about political and educational reform.  Some are quite well-known.  &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Inequalities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Savage Inequalities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is one well-known classic (it also inspired a documentary of the same name).  &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pedagogy of the Oppressed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is another, and &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mis-Education_of_the_Negro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Mis-Education of the Negro&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is a third.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's very hard to publish any book without qualifications of some sort.  Why would people read it?  They don't necessarily need to be academic qualifications, practical ones can work as well.  But writing with no expertise, credentials or experience generally equates to uniformed opinion-spouting.  You might be able to compensate for this if you are an excellent researcher, and you present your book as a compilation or popularization of primary sources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to consider is that reform books in general are always swimming against the current, by definition.  The fact that you yourself haven't heard of any of the classics of this genre despite your own interest in it speaks to the challenges your book will face in finding an audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T14:20:09.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28603" CreationDate="2017-06-13T14:34:12.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write your story &lt;em&gt;from&lt;/em&gt; a moral standpoint, not &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; a moral standpoint.  If you have a strong and clearly articulated set of beliefs, that will naturally come across in your work.  But if you try to push people to that place, it will come across as preachy and disingenuous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite books is &lt;em&gt;The Moon is a Harsh Mistress&lt;/em&gt; by Robert Heinlein, who was a libertarian, a philosophy I don't particularly personally ascribe to.  Some of his other books have been accused of being preachy on the subject.  But in this book, the libertarian paradise at its heart is revealed to be critically unsustainable, and in the end, is destroyed by the heroes, even though they love it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because he let his society have its own life, and follow where the plot led, rather than what the messaging demanded, he created a far more three-dimensional and compelling portrait of libertarianism, than if he had presented it as a unrealistically perfect Randian utopia.  In many ways, you the reader value the place that much more because you share the characters' pain at losing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastEditorUserId="10479" LastEditDate="2017-06-13T14:39:38.850" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T14:39:38.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28673" CreationDate="2017-06-13T15:16:12.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked with NYTimes Best Sellers. I know many authors. If the writer is bored so will be the reader. You cannot market your book to fame. It doesn't work. What you have to do is create something someone wants to read, and once having read, want more. Compelling characters, interesting plot, well rounded world building. You can spend a million dollars on marketing but if no one buys it is waste. There is no formula for success. I thought &lt;em&gt;Fifty Shades of Grey&lt;/em&gt; was one of the worst written things I ever read. Badly written, badly plotted, horrible dialogue and astoundingly tacky. And it sold millions. Mostly on word of mouth. That is, one person told another how great it was and they bought it too. Word of mouth is still the best marketing tool ever. And that you cannot buy. Now ask me about the books I loved that didn't sell well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25385" LastEditorUserId="25385" LastEditDate="2017-06-13T19:20:18.300" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T19:20:18.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28685" CreationDate="2017-06-13T15:26:04.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A non-fiction book on social reform by a non-expert is pretty much a non-starter. However, fiction has a greater influence on social and political reform than non-fiction. Hollywood is the sharp edge of political and social change. It is rumoured that President David Palmer &quot;24&quot; paved the way for Barack Obama. People saw a black president on screen and it somehow became 'normal'. Almost every popular US TV series included gay characters - and LGBT people became &quot;acceptable&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not read &quot;A Handmaid's tale&quot; but the clear message was a future world ruled by Republicans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writer's of speculative fiction often create world's based on their own ideals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="24878" LastEditDate="2017-06-13T23:52:37.780" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T23:52:37.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28692" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-13T15:54:08.597" Score="7" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe this falls well outside the world-building acceptable topics, so I have come here looking for advice!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a world builder, I want to produce languages, settings, flora and fauna, and combine them all into on seamless world&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a 'writer' (I am a strong writer in anyway) I want to connect with the reader, and convey particular thoughts and feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I may create a world to support a story, other times I may create a story to give life to a world.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the latter however it can be difficult to produce a story that is readily accessible to readers while fully exploring the world if only because the world is unique enough that the reader may have difficulty relating to the setting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can we balance the two? And are there any easy ways to allow readers become invested in, or be able to relate to, a story world that made to be different?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25386" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T22:16:50.033" Title="How to balance relatability in a story with unique world building?" Tags="|fiction|world-building|readers|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28669" CreationDate="2017-06-13T16:57:32.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A particularly interesting account if you can find it is found in Dragonlance: the Annotated Chronicles, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. They killed off one of their particularly main characters, and in the annotations they talked about how it was a particularly painful thing to do - there were many tears shed in the writing of that scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, there were many tears shed in the reading of that scene, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2290" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T16:57:32.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28692" CreationDate="2017-06-13T17:02:38.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So While writing in depth descriptive passages may or may not be boring to some (I know I personally skip them to the good part) that doesn't mean you still can't put an effort into building your world in writing.  What you don't want to end up happening is getting so descriptive that the reader pretty much lost the story trying to imagine every little detail you provide.  This is also known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribophile.com/blog/keeping-the-purple-out-of-your-prose/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;purple prose&lt;/a&gt;.  The link provides a helpful passage on what it is and how you can modify descriptions to better suite your goals without over doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a world builder, I am sure this is not what you want to hear.  You want to bring your world to life.  The problem is... Not everyone can imagine the same.  As I mentioned above... to make sure everyone understands the details of your world, you will end up having to write in so many minute details that it becomes a chore and breaks the flow of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, There is nothing wrong with creating your own language, your own environment and world.  You can talk about plants and animals if they are relevant to the plot.  In other words, if your MC is in a forest, and you start to describe the forest and all the birds chirping and wind blowing and all the animals running around, it takes away from what the MC is doing in the forest. However, if the MC is in a forest looking for some big monster, and he notices no birds are chirping as a sign that something dangerous is near by... that ambiance becomes a necessary part of that scene and the major difference that most people often misunderstand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world should be supporting of your characters.  So if you have a world already done and you want to write a story about it, think about that world, it's pros, cons, environment, types of animals, it's setting and technology.  Create characters that can fit into it.  The the ability to relate has more to do with the character personality  than whether a character fits into the world or not.  There are many stories where someone from modern era is placed into a fantasy world, like Narnia as an example.  As the characters went through the story, they adapted to the environment but we were able to relate to the characters due to who they were and how they were portrayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-06-13T17:09:04.560" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T17:09:04.560" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28692" CreationDate="2017-06-13T17:02:55.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your world can be anything, but your characters should be relatable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the other examples in fantasy literature. The story can be set in a completely different world, but the characters are either human, or reader can easily think of them as humans. It's not the world, but the characters and the story that should keep your reader engaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, with that problem solved, you are free to do your worldbuilding. Who is your main character? If he (she) an Earthling, things are simple. When an animal looks like zebra, you can call it a &quot;zebra&quot;. If the character not supposed to be familiar with our zebras, you have to give a description, short, but clear enough so that reader can tell &quot;Oh, it's just like a zebra!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;World description in itself is usually not very interesting to the reader. Follow the principles &quot;show, don't tell&quot; and make any descriptions that you have to make relevant to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T17:02:55.720" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28698" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28704" CreationDate="2017-06-13T17:08:30.963" Score="3" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I make a really &quot;good&quot; antagonist? I like the Idea that they should have a motive, as in my novel, the current antagonist needs to inhabit earth so his race can prosper But what makes a really great story antagonist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T08:14:51.870" Title="Making the antagonist" Tags="|novel|antagonist|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28698" CreationDate="2017-06-13T17:44:43.733" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on your goals and desires for the emotional trip that a reader may go through in your story.  Take a look at &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt;.  We have characters like Ramsay and Joffrey who were antagonists.  They were good though because they were someone you can hate.  They were doing many bad things to good people.  Everything about them made you want to punch your T.V. in hopes that you could hit them too.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then we have stories like &lt;em&gt;The Martian&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Castaway&lt;/em&gt; where the antagonist is not a person at all but the environment, time, nature, their own self and not letting despair take over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all depends on how you want the story to be.  Do you want to make the antagonist evil? maybe the antagonist wants to take over earth but is doing it out of necessity with no other choice and is actually a really nice being. If the story was told from his POV, he would be the protagonist and the earthlings would be the antagonists who are getting in his way of saving his race.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really does boil down to how you want the story to flow and how you want the &quot;bad&quot; guy to be presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick google came up with this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/6-ways-to-write-better-bad-guys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; that may help you refine your needs of how to write a better antagonist.  There were several links that came up with an easy google search: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=how%20to%20create%20a%20good%20antagonist&amp;amp;oq=how%20to%20create%20a%20good%20anta&amp;amp;aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l2.3774j0j7&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to create a good antagonist.&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-06-13T21:22:02.007" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T21:22:02.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28671" CreationDate="2017-06-13T19:57:38.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends.  How many of them are there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An RLC circuit is composed of a resistor, an inductor, and a capacitor &lt;s&gt;elements&lt;/s&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that an RLC circuit has exactly one of each of these three elements.  I crossed out your final &quot;elements&quot;, because if you say that an X consists of an A, a B, and a C, you don't then add the category noun after.  A sentence with the same meaning as yours is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An RLC circuit is composed of the following elements: a resistor, an inductor, and a capacitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other option you asked about is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An RLC circuit is composed of resistor, inductor, and capacitor elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that an RLC circuit has some combination of those elements, possibly including more than one of each.  In some contexts it could mean that some categories are absent, though engineers and other &quot;close readers&quot; might take it to mean &quot;at least one of each&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T19:57:38.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28692" CreationDate="2017-06-13T22:16:50.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way could be to tell your story as the narrator of a wild-life documentary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd guess that the perceptions and surroundings of a common ant is completely alien from our own experience. Yet, we could still tell a story of the rise and fall of our local backyard ant-hill. Build suspense. Create individuals and their  struggles. We'd observe the daily happenings, ant x does y, then z because a wasp  attacked. From there it's not a large step to dramatize these events and create human-centered metaphors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you enjoy building really strange worlds with really strange characters you could observe what is happening in your own mind and then take a step back. As the wild-life narrator of your own world, what could you say about it? In this way you don't have explicitly add a humanoid character in the middle of everything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is easy to turn into interesting writing, I don't know. But I hope that it gives another perspective for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25387" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T22:16:50.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28698" CreationDate="2017-06-14T07:18:37.587" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you to take a look at this great analysis of the Joker in &quot;Batman the Dark Knight&quot;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/pFUKeD3FJm8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://youtu.be/pFUKeD3FJm8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, these are the main elements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the antagonist has a strong desire and intention, as much as the protagonist &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this desire and intention are in conflict with the protagonist's&#xA;ones. They are mutually exclusive: if you win, I lose. The world is literally &quot;too small for both of us&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the antagonist makes leverage on the hero's weaknesses. They act as a relentless opposition to the hero, undoing all the hero's efforts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they are strong, skilled, tough: they are the hardest obstacle ever faced. In a videogame, they would be &quot;the boss&quot;: after easily defeating dozens of minions, the final fight is generally much harder, and likely to fail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;their actions question the very core of the protagonist's world view and&#xA;values.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the antagonist has a strong logic: you can despise the motives, but you cannot disagree with the logic. You empathize with the antagonist, because you understand their reasons and nature, even if you don't like them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T07:18:37.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28698" CreationDate="2017-06-14T08:14:51.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is another question which is (a) Too broad. (b) Does not take into account the subjectiveness of &quot;good&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your plot is well-used and has proven difficult to incorporate a detailed antagonist due to difficulty of communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;War of the Worlds&quot; they pretty much wanted to destroy us and didn't want to talk about it. &quot;Independence Day&quot; was more of the same. &quot;The Day Earth stood still&quot; featured a plot in which we were the bad guys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The TV series &quot;V&quot; didn't really follow the single hero / villain plot as there were good and bad on both sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficulties in providing backstory and showing interaction between protagonist and antagonist may be one of the reasons than S/F novels are traditionally shorter than others. Alien invasions are particularly difficult to handle because when people are coming to destroy you . . . you don't really care why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T08:14:51.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28708" CreationDate="2017-06-14T10:33:16.503" Score="2" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;Found myself in a bit of a logical pickle in regard to the below piece:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The number nine growled sleepily from around the corner that morning, the night’s virgin snow crunching beneath its multitude of rubber feet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Say the narrator is not omnipotent, telling the story as if he were a bystander on the bus stop. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is only one line passing through that particular stop i.e. our narrator knowing the number of the bus while it is still behind the corner is believable enough. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The distance to the corner is close enough for everyone at the stop to be able to hear the bus's engine sounds, yet far enough for the crunching of the snow beneath the bus's wheels to be, normally, unintelligible to bystanders and the narrator alike. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What rules of logic and/or style would the narrator be breaking (if any) if he were to choose to describe the snow's sound, for the sake of extra detail, as depicted in the above quote? How would such a choice affect the description's plausibility? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25352" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T11:03:28.780" Title="Is it plausible for a narrator to &quot;hear&quot; and describe sounds which would normally be out of earshot?" Tags="|creative-writing|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28707" CreationDate="2017-06-14T11:02:33.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to understand is that there are no rules of logic that must be applied a story. There is only the set of rules (narrative style) that you apply to your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I generally use two styles. Transition narrative conforms to a different set of rules to scene narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transition narrative is the text between scenes where the story is literally TOLD (usually in past tense). Anything in past tense does not require real-time facts. i.e. Your narrator knows the sound of tyres on snow and assumes the bus is making that sound - even he can't hear it. Within a transition things can be foreshadowed or foretold et. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scene narrative is delivered in real time and may not include speculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Transition]&#xA;That morning Sophie awoke with a smile on her face ready to face whatever the day could throw at her. By the time she reached the breakfast table that smile was gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unless the narrator was in Sophie's bedroom how could they know she had a smile on her face.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story then goes into a scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Scene]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Sophie, what's wrong?&quot; asked her mother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I just got fired,&quot; replied Sophie, staring at her phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Just now, they fired me by TEXT.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Transition]&#xA;Today was the worst day of young Sophie's adult life. Tomorrow would be a better day, probably the best ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T11:02:33.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28707" CreationDate="2017-06-14T11:03:28.780" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;for the sake of extra detail&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't add extra detail which your POV character can't perceive. Find someplace else to put the pretty phrase or leave it in your slush file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T11:03:28.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28448" CreationDate="2017-06-14T12:33:02.407" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember, names can also throw a reader out of the story if it is difficult to read or pronounce. You want the story to flow, and if you have a name that makes the reader slow down too much you may lose them. You can also end up with varying pronunciations by readers depending on the spelling. Which can cause arguments. Even so, name the characters, places what you like. But keep in mind that not everyone will share you opinion of a good name.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25385" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T12:33:02.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28712" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28713" CreationDate="2017-06-14T16:59:15.300" Score="8" ViewCount="690" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, so I have a weak motivation for a god character whose son (whom he tried to prevent his birth) seems like he is an apt tool to be used for a plot that will only be brought into fruition about ten thousand years in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The god is Apollo, by the way. And since he is the god of many things, including prophecy (which he stole from the earth Goddess Gaea), he realised that he was going to get in trouble for this with Zeus/Jupiter. So he wanted to stop the child from growing up and being used by Gaea/Terra and her lover Saturn...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My issue is that with so many gods involved, I don't know how to make all their motivations believable. They are gods... they do have rules to follow, but its hard to make them struggle when they are so powerful. So I had originally set the gods in teams against one another, so it seemed more balanced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, again, their motivations for fighting seem very petty. For example, I have a mischief god named Hypnos (god of sleep) partnering with Apollo (because I thought it would be funny how Apollo is god of morning an Hypnos is very much annoyed at the concept of 'morning' because he is a primordial deity who likes to sleep) to stop the child from getting into contact with Gaea, or to kill it.&#xA;And the only motivation I have for Hypnos is that he is 'bored' and or 'wants to mess around with some mortals'. Apollo is just afraid of getting into trouble...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that as the plot builds, as the story follows the boy as Apollo and Hypnos/Somnus' failed to stop him from getting involved. &lt;strong&gt;What do I do to make the reasons for them forming a team believable?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In fact, how do I make a god's motivation, believable?!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25407" LastActivityDate="2018-05-17T20:42:32.670" Title="I have a weak motivation for a god character! How Do I Make It a Stronger Motivation?" Tags="|plot|character-development|motivation|antagonist|nanowrimo|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28712" CreationDate="2017-06-14T17:23:35.803" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Motivation is the same regardless of what race/being they are.  To make reasons for people who are unlikely to team up, team up... They need a common goal.  Often in stories, we read someone who is suspicious tempt the MC into teaming up with them (LoTR with Frodo/Smeagol) because they both share what appears to be a common goal. It was unknown to Frodo that Smeagol actually was plotting to take it back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be, in your case, that one god is just simply BORED, but secretly, through the advancement of your story, we find out that this child has meaning to the bored god that is unknown to reader/MC.  As the saying goes, the best way to unite people is for them to have a common goal or enemy.  Look at the real world... Our country wasn't in the best of shape prior to 9/11.  Then everyone united together as 1 country, for a small duration at least, to fight the common enemy.  Every time a terrorist attack happens, all the leaders meet to show support and unison in the fight, even if tomorrow they go back to arguing over politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Motivation could also very well be that he is simply bored!!  He was bored with his mundane life as a god who sleeps all the time and saw a chance to do something different.  Often times opposites attract.  One guy who is the sun, one guy who is the moon (figuratively).  The sun is full of energy while the moon is lethargic.  Something about the sun makes the moon want to follow him on his quest.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can again reference something from J.R.R. Tolkien with &lt;em&gt;The Hobit&lt;/em&gt;.  Bilbo was a guy who didn't want adventure... didn't want to deal with anything outside of his books and family treasures.  Something inside of him made him want to go on an adventure with these sloppy, noisy Dwarves that were totally opposite of the life he was use to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest to do deeper character building if you are struggling to find a motivation.  There may be a dimension you are missing that you need to put the pieces together.  Through this reflection of the character bios, you may end up changing some things you realized didn't work, or adding in something that makes it all fall together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some times little to no motivation at all allows for the greatest motivation to be born.  By the end of &lt;em&gt;The Hobit&lt;/em&gt;, Bilbo was full set on helping them regain their home and understands their needs.  Don't be so fast to throw all your cards up front.  Let the story unfold and you may find that through this, you will discover a far deeper motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-06-14T20:12:45.260" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T20:12:45.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28714" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-14T22:11:44.333" Score="6" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a collection of original short stories, all of which have been published in English in literary magazines. A French translator friend recently translated the stories into French (I speak French, so I consulted on the translation). We want to try to get the collection published as a bilingual edition: each story in English followed by its French translation, or perhaps one half of the book is the English version and the other half is the French version. Does anyone know of any publishers who produce this type of book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25410" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-05-08T10:53:54.423" LastActivityDate="2018-05-08T10:53:54.423" Title="Where should I pitch a book of short stories in English accompanied by French translations?" Tags="|publishing|short-story|translation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28715" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-14T22:55:55.037" Score="9" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read people's manuscripts to provide feedback, I can easily identify areas worth improving. However, feedback isn't all that helpful if it makes the writer give up, so good news needs to be presented too. I try my best to include that too, but my ratio needs work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to look up what areas to say need improvement (if they do), because that's equivalent to looking up the most common ways beginning writers err. But besides saying &quot;on this big list of things you didn't mess up these&quot;, is there anything else I should look for as possible areas to be positive (if earned)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22216" LastActivityDate="2018-12-24T20:24:21.840" Title="What things should one highlight as good in beta reading feedback?" Tags="|criticism|beta-readers|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28715" CreationDate="2017-06-15T00:05:10.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beyond typos and grammar, unless you know what the writer was attempting to achieve what areas can you really say are in need of improvement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good and bad are merely concepts. There is only really 'like' and 'dislike'. You may comment that you found a section confusing but have you considered the author intended it to be so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I prefer to ask questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you intend this section to be passive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you aware you have used the word 'was' 26 times in the first to two pages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you aware 17 of the first 22 paragraphs begin with the word 'I'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the section where the character is brushing their teeth really add to the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T00:05:10.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28743" CreationDate="2017-06-15T08:01:58.733" Score="4" ViewCount="322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm playing around with story ideas involving university students.  Most of them are locals but I wanted to include a foreign character as a sort of outside view.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also decided to make her Southern Californian on the grounds that that would be exotic enough for the rest of the cast (who are mostly from the north west of England) to find interesting but still familiar enough to be relatable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've run into a few issues with her mode of speech though, I thought that researching how people from Southern California talk and act would be fairly simple because they are responsible for a huge amount of American pop culture but the reality has proved rather different.  Whilst there are plenty of pages on the internet describing Californian slang, I've been told that there are a lot of problems with them.  They include a lot of stuff that a university-aged character would consider outdated (for example &quot;grody&quot; gets mentioned a lot but I'm told that it's considered very outdated), and they mix up slang that originates from different parts of California.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's more, while they do discuss slang, they rarely discuss other things about the region's mode of speech that would distinguish it from other English-speaking regions.  I'm aware that it was once considered a Southern Californian thing to constantly insert the word &quot;like&quot; into sentences but that's become common enough worldwide that it wouldn't really make it obvious where she's from if I had her talking like that all the time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any good resources out there with up to date information on how people from various regions, specifically Southern California in my case, that could help me make this character sound reasonably authentic?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24847" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T20:26:34.423" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T20:26:34.423" Title="Southern Californian slang/vernacular" Tags="|dialogue|resources|research|language|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28721" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-15T08:55:56.227" Score="4" ViewCount="2167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see that the 3 Act structure can be applied over almost any story, from &lt;em&gt;Hamlet&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;Mulholland Drive&lt;/em&gt;, from &lt;em&gt;The Matrix&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;Rocky&lt;/em&gt;. Story structures like 3 Acts, or 4-5 Acts, always feature a Character Arc and a series of plot turns (i.e. &lt;em&gt;Turning Points&lt;/em&gt;) which make the story move on, proceeding from inciting incident, to temporary success, to climax and finale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I find it hard to detect these elements in movies like &lt;em&gt;Pulp Fiction&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Shimmer Lake&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Memento&lt;/em&gt;, which proceeds back and forth in narration, and thus seem to elude the typical steps of a story. For example, how can something be an inciting incident if it's shown at the end of a movie? How can it be a climax of the hero's journey, if it is shown at the beginning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: how can you insert the Plot Key Points in a story which is not narrated linearly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NB please retain from answering by bashing the 3-act structure as wrong / fad / old / cliche - that is not the core of the question. Thanks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T11:22:22.207" Title="How does the 3 act structure fit in a Non Linear story?" Tags="|structure|plot|text-analysis|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28721" CreationDate="2017-06-15T09:32:42.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Awesome question. I'm answering from memory, so do forgive me if I veer off slightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I recall, Pulp Fiction and Memento, which are both wonderful examples of non-linear narrative, both in fact have an inciting incident roughly where the 3 act structure would place it (using your example as a point of reference), but if memory serves it isn't the typical inciting incident that a hero would experience in a linear story. Normally your main character (Vincent and Jules in the case of Pulp Fiction) would be on screen and the centre of the action/dialogue. But in this case, they barely feature if at all. The incident happens in their vicinity, but to/by other people. Because of that multi-faceted approach, the main characters were in fact 'invited in the traditional sense, but as you point out the incitement we're more used to with linear storytelling happens much later. I would cite Memento but I haven't seen it in years and don't want to be very very unhelpful, but I think my response would be to figure out how you want to subvert the narrative, and what purpose it would serve. Do you want to hide a particular plot point from revelation that cannot be otherwise removed as it's integral to a scene? Or do you want something to piece together in a confusing way so as to unsettle or guide the audience in some way? I would perhaps look at Pulp Fiction with the viewpoint that it does in fact follow the 3 act structure pretty rigidly, and see how it affects your perspective. Might give you an idea of how to approach this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24902" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T09:32:42.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28715" CreationDate="2017-06-15T09:36:49.757" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Things that are good are things which you liked, and elements which achieved what the writer was going for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Funny bits: anything which makes you laugh (which is clearly supposed&#xA;to)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nice turns of phrase&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A moment which touches you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A suspenseful scene which leaves you tense and breathless&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A protagonist you understand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A character who is complex and rounded rather than flat and boring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Motivations which make sense&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Successful foreshadowing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Successful showing, not telling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A plot which works and doesn't leave unanswered questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T09:36:49.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28715" CreationDate="2017-06-15T09:38:47.463" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago I came across a &lt;a href=&quot;http://jamigold.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Beta-reading-worksheet-A-and-B.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beta reading worksheet&lt;/a&gt;. One common thing is to go through those (or other) points and tell the writer only the problems that one found using them. But IMO it's important to tell the writer your answer to all the points, bad and good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;eg:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the story begin in the right place? Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it start with a good hook? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Typical Feedback:&lt;/strong&gt; You don't really have a hook in the beginning of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ideal feedback:&lt;/strong&gt; You don't really have a hook in the beginning of the story but I believe it starts in just the right moment, with the right event. I think it may need a different PoV or cut down on the exposition because it really slows down the whole momentum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jamigold.com/2014/08/introducing-the-beta-reading-worksheet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jami Gold's blog entry&lt;/a&gt;, which has the worksheet I mentioned, also has these interesting ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Author Connie Flynn advises that we should avoid “Why did you…?” feedback comments. Why questions along those lines tend to put people on the defensive. She instead shares these excellent suggested critique phrases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t understand…(whatever it is).&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The detail seems…(to slow the pace, insufficient, whatever).&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The…(character, setting, etc.) is coming across…(feisty, depressing, important, etc.). Is that what you intended?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Did you want to convey (irritation, happiness, whatever)?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;How did…(Sally get to the store, John saw down the tree, etc.)? (Use to point out missing information.)&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Wouldn’t a character…(who has such and such a trait) do or not do…(such and such)? (Use to point out inconsistent behavior.)&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Wasn’t…(John a blue-eyed man, Sally submissive, etc.) in Chapter (xxx)? (Use to point out inconsistent information.)&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Carol’s (goal) seems to be… . Is that correct?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Your story question seems to be… .&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I’m confused about John’s motivation.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;And most important . . . I really liked… . (end on a strength)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this advice ends with strengths, I would argue you shoul include strengths within the block of criticism. So if a character comes across as feisty or depressing in a portion of the tale (or all of it) you can balance that criticism with another character which you feel is well-developed and compare the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T09:38:47.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28721" CreationDate="2017-06-15T11:22:22.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The three-act or five-act structure can still exist even if the elements are not shown in order. It's the effect on the audience which is changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of &lt;em&gt;Memento,&lt;/em&gt; you see the end first, and then work backwards through all the successes and setbacks. The &quot;end,&quot; the resolution, becomes an inciting event of sorts, because it is where the audience first enters the story. The inciting event in chronological time happens at the end of the film, which retroactively changes how the audience understands the series of events, so it acts as a climax. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Pulp Fiction,&lt;/em&gt; the audience has to hold all the pieces of the narrative in their heads and slot items in chronological order as they appear in the film.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both movies, once the entire film is done, the events have now all been told to the audience, and the audience can review those events in linear, chronological order, which creates the standard three-/five-act rise-and-fall plot. It's the experience of learning the events out of order, and the retroactive &quot;oh, &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; that makes sense!&quot; which makes these stories more interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T11:22:22.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28730" CreationDate="2017-06-15T14:29:45.820" Score="7" ViewCount="874" Body="&lt;p&gt;In other words, is it strange/confusing to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the next few seconds, I watched Aiko read the letter with her lips&#xA;  agape---lips that steadily curled up into a smile. A contagious one.&#xA;  Because before realizing it, I found myself smiling too, enjoying a&#xA;  happiness that came from someone else's heart. It was my first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A first time that wouldn't last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Hey, Daichi.&quot; Kiyoshi tapped me on my shoulder.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As opposed of writing: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Hey, Daichi,&quot; Kiyoshi said, tapping me on my shoulder.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why or why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T15:50:58.980" Title="Is it strange/confusing to initiate/introduce a dialogue without a dialogue tag?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|style|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28726" CreationDate="2017-06-15T15:06:16.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question: no it is not strange or confusing per say. I think understand what you are trying to achieve I'm just impressed by the way you've done it. It's not very clean amongst the foretelling etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) You were watching somebody. 2) You became lost in your thoughts. 3) A third party brought you back to reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Excuse my prose]&#xA;Aiko read the letter with her lips agape---perfect lips that steadily curled up into a smile. A contagious smile emanating from a beautiful mouth. A smile that could warm the heart . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey, Daichi.&quot; Kiyoshi tapped me on my shoulder. &quot;Stop staring . . . and . . . close your mouth.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T15:06:16.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28726" CreationDate="2017-06-15T18:03:37.970" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quotation marks themselves provide signal.  By then tying the line of dialogue to an action in the same paragraph, it's clear that Kiyoshi is speaking.  If anybody &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; were doing the speaking you'd need to say so, but that's not the case here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beginning writers sometimes make the mistake of attaching attribution -- he said, she asked, Bob mumbled, etc -- to every single piece of dialogue.  Don't do that; they get in the way when not needed, and if you establish the context they won't be needed very much.  (Occasionally you'll need one, especially if more than two people are speaking; I'm not saying to banish them entirely.  But you don't have to use them liberally either.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T18:03:37.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28731" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-15T19:26:11.127" Score="0" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;alrighty, I'm trying to come up with a finale for my 17th chapter, but I don't know how to plot it out. I have a general Idea of what's going in it, I just don't know how to map it out or put it into words. any advise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T16:23:48.480" Title="Brainstorming Techniques to use when running out of ideas?" Tags="|novel|brainstorming|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28732" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-15T19:41:08.517" Score="0" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a problem. I want to write in a certain kind of voice, which requires me to pay attention to prose numbers (or feet), but I cannot seem to phrase certain common terms and proper nouns so that it sounds the way I want without inflating the expression, making it violate principles of brevity. Does anyone know how I can accomplish my goal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25421" LastActivityDate="2024-01-05T05:49:53.473" Title="How can I phrase common terms and proper nouns in a different or more poetic fashion?" Tags="|rhythm|phrasing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28731" CreationDate="2017-06-15T19:58:12.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write the finale with your general idea in mind. Ideas will occur to you as you write. You can make notes on the plot at this point, keep writing or start again using what you have learned. The process of actually trying to write your general idea, i.e. making it specific, will help you to make it something you can really use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13409" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T19:58:12.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28734" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-15T20:46:10.943" Score="5" ViewCount="356" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read an essay by John Mason about the principles of the harmony of prose numbers (or feet). I am wondering whether it is of any use, considering other books I have read say that treating prose rhythm in terms of metrical feet has been a failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one wants to write in a certain voice, requiring them to select and arrange feet in a certain sequence and couch their words in them, are there principles they can depend on or must they depend solely on their ear? If it is the ear they must depend on, is it merely a judge of rhythm or also a guide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25421" LastActivityDate="2017-07-16T15:36:48.650" Title="When it comes to creating cadence, should I depend on my ear or are there principles I can follow?" Tags="|rhythm|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28732" CreationDate="2017-06-15T21:20:23.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Poetic metre, clarity and brevity are the three corners of a triangle and everything which we write falls somewhere within its domain.  Through careful word choice, we can minimize the distance between these three corners, but we can rarely achieve high marks in all three at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why poetry often needs to be studied and interpreted.  It often abandons clarity and brevity in its dedication to metre.  That is also why technical manuals are usually hard to read out loud.  They sacrifice metre and sometimes brevity for the sake of clarity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an author, you need to choose your location within the domain of this triangle.  Will your writing sometimes be lengthy but always flow easily off the reader's tongue?  Will your pen speak brusquely, cutting directly to the points you wish to make, without consideration for word choice or flow?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your question, you seem to prefer metre and brevity, which means that you must occasionally sacrifice clarity.  To serve your two preferences, you will have to rely heavily on your reader's imagination, to bridge the gaps which you must leave open in service to word flow and word count.  Feed their imaginations through careful choice of your characters, settings, and the subjects about which you write.  Use preceding and following sentences to correct any clarity gaps in sentences where you have had to carefully choose your words.  ...and when it really doesn't work, sleep on it.  A better way to say the thing may occur to you tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for actually answering your question, I have two suggestions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Buy a good thesaurus and use it.  Choosing an obscure but appropriate word is a perfect example of sacrificing clarity for metre and brevity.  Challenge your readers to expand their vocabularies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read authors who share your love of metre and brevity.  Consider listening to your favorite authors in audiobook form, as that medium really amplifies metre issues.  When you find an author whose audiobooks sound like they were written to be spoken out loud, that is the author you are looking for.  Study everything they have written.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastEditorUserId="11221" LastEditDate="2017-06-15T21:26:32.240" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T21:26:32.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28736" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28776" CreationDate="2017-06-15T23:04:18.977" Score="3" ViewCount="1796" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a fiction novel.&#xA;For example:&#xA;Sanjay was watching &lt;em&gt;World News&lt;/em&gt;.&#xA;World News is a real television program so it's in italics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about:&#xA;Sanjay was watching Dingdong News.&#xA;Should Dingdong News be italicized if it is fictional? Should it be in quotes? Or just leave it like the other style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25425" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-06-16T07:59:33.420" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T23:33:39.803" Title="Do you italicize fictitious television show in fiction book?" Tags="|style|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28734" CreationDate="2017-06-15T23:38:57.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most famous use of cadence is Shakespeare with iambic pentameter. However, he strayed from it often. Was it based simply on ear? I don't think so. It was the mood he was trying to convey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Poetry is an entity onto itself. Take E.E. Cummins. Marshy-mushy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fictional prose, &lt;strong&gt;if you're not setting a mood or tone with your cadence quirks, you're probably just being annoting&lt;/strong&gt;. Let your talent as a writer come out without gimmicks. If cadence adds to your story, go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example I'll give is from Piers Anthony's &lt;em&gt;Incarnations of Immortality&lt;/em&gt; series (most righteous if you've never read it). One character has a stutter. He has to sing his speech or he stutters terribly. Anthony has it come out in prose like song lyrics. It's very clever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastEditorUserId="22977" LastEditDate="2017-06-16T12:07:35.400" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T12:07:35.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-15T23:53:45.547" Score="2" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, the name of a newspaper is in italics.&#xA;Let's say somebody is speaking in a book.&#xA;&quot;I read The Wall Street Journal,&quot; Jerry said.&#xA;Or is it:&#xA;&quot;I read &lt;em&gt;The Wall Street Journal,&lt;/em&gt;&quot; Jerry said.&#xA;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25426" LastActivityDate="2017-09-23T06:20:36.783" Title="Italicize inside quotes?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28726" CreationDate="2017-06-16T02:17:57.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's certainly not strange at all, and if you pick up any random novel and flip through it you'll see that dialog without attribution is used all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question as to whether it's confusing, however, is entirely situational. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be, particularly if you've have a lot of back and forth dialog without attribution.  I've read novels where I've had to go back a paragraph or two in order to figure out who was saying something, which is never good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in your example, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Hey, Daichi.&quot; Kiyoshi tapped me on my shoulder.&lt;/strong&gt; while you've attributed the dialog through a clear linking action, I think you've gotten the order of events backwards in order to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think Kiyoshi would first speak to you and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; tap you on the shoulder.  I believe people tend to tap someone to get their attention and then talk, not tap after they've gotten your attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe there's a term for this, but it has escaped me. Regardless, make sure your linking actions make sense and are useful to the reader whether to orient them in space, help them better visualize what's going on, or to illustrate the mental state of a character. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When they are used simply as a he said/she said replacement they can interrupt the flow of a scene and your reader's connection to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25304" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T02:17:57.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28720" CreationDate="2017-06-16T02:43:42.103" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the proud &quot;owner&quot; of a college aged native Southern Californian (e.g. my daughter) I think you're going to be hard pressed to find a real distinction in her language as a type.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the stereotypical slang -- dude, gnarly, etc. -- came from the surfing culture which, as you've noted, has mostly fallen by the wayside.  Now she certainly uses words to mean different things than I believe them to mean, such as &quot;salty&quot; meaning sarcastic/snarky rather than crude (swearing like a sailor), but I'm not sure how much of it is So Cal versus her generation in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, living here, I would say that without making her a caricature, linguistically she's not going to be easily identifiable as being Southern Californian.  She would, however, be used to a very different life-style.  In San Diego, it's pretty much sunny all the time, and my daughter actually lost points on a French exam because she literally didn't know what season came after fall... in any language!  We're also used to fresh fruit and veggies year 'round, most of us are foodies, and there is a strong health/outdoor expectation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is, I'd focus more on culture than language, or switch to a more dramatically different location in the US like Texas or the south where there really are strong linguistic differences.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25304" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T02:43:42.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28742" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28744" CreationDate="2017-06-16T09:25:59.857" Score="5" ViewCount="3737" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find myself writing &quot;Then, ...&quot; a lot. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As soon as she found my letter---or rather, &lt;em&gt;Kiyoshi's&lt;/em&gt;---she widened&#xA;  her slitted eyes and pressed the letter against her chest. &lt;strong&gt;Then, as&#xA;  though she were handling a delicate glass sculpture, she opened the&#xA;  envelope.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. HSC squinted his slanted eyes at me. &lt;strong&gt;Then, setting down his chef&#xA;  hat on the counter, he said, “Look my shift’s over. How ‘bout we go to&#xA;  the izakaya around the corner?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I answered her smile with my own. &lt;strong&gt;Then, receiving her apple, I asked her,&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;So &gt; what now?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I replace those thens? (For some reason, I feel that the sentences sound weird without them. Maybe I'm wrong?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T16:57:17.927" Title="Ways to replace &quot;Then, ...&quot;" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|style|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28720" CreationDate="2017-06-16T10:03:41.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you started on the right track before taking a wrong turn. 'Slang' is and outsider term. The results of your search are always going to be dated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any peer group had 'its speech'. They are not aware how their speech differs from 'correct speech' - asking them will do no good because they don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also argue that amongst the younger generation speech less localised due to the effect of media. Couples have gone from 'going steady' to 'going out' to 'seeing' to 'dating' regardless what part of the western world they live in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Sample]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as we'd settled in to our new home they enrolled Charlie into a summer school. My sister quickly bagged herself one big potpourri of brand new, shiny California friends. On account of her basketball skills she'd been awarded a scholarship. No such luck for me. I'm stuck here day in day out. Dad's at his new job with Google. Veronica's still working for the same firm but has transferred to the LA Office. It's almost summer. I got no college to go to, not 'till next semester. I don't know nobody I can visit. I ain't got no friends. There's just me, the pool, the floating recliner, the sofa, Veronica's treadmill, the TV, a TiVo that I don't know how to work, the AC, and 136 crazy, fucked up TV channels. I shouldn't watch TV. That's where they get you. It's a conspiracy. You're having a moment when you're feeling a little off key. We all have them. It's not something I haven't felt before. Normally the moment would pass. You'd give yourself a little pep talk and you'd be back on your game before you know it. But they won't let you do that, they suck you in. The air-brushed people on the TV tell you how much your life sucks. And then they tell you all the things you need to make your life better – the things you need for true happiness. Oh man! You need this hairstyle and you have to wear these clothes. Your teeth have look like this, and you must drive one of these cars. You're required to manicure these and wax that – all these things are the basic requirements of happiness, without them you are a loser. Money can't buy happiness. Happiness can only be leased on a monthly payment plan, and even the basic happiness package don't come cheap, not in Cosmetic City. If I wanted to be happy I'd have forget the idea of sitting on my ass waiting for September, and college. I'd have to get myself a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written a couple of novels featuring Southern Californian students, the most recent has an LA resident as the narrator. I met my Californian beta reader online - she didn't realise I'd never been to California (let alone the US). So, I guess I do pretty well. Most of the language I learned from TV. There's no need to concentrate on students. This generation's millennials are were students not so long ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I'm not perfect. Occasionally my 'Britishness' slips through. Rather than correct my slips I justify them within the story. Your novel qualifies for the same excuse. e.g. My character's deceased mother was born in the UK. Her stepmother went to University in the UK. Subsequently my character uses the odd expression picked up from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only a part of the characterisation is language you need to build in the culture that goes with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need a sample let me know.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="24878" LastEditDate="2017-06-16T14:22:50.977" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T14:22:50.977" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28742" CreationDate="2017-06-16T10:11:44.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the active voice in your sentences and replace the adverbial interjections with metaphor or simile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use &amp;quot;then&amp;quot; at the end of long sequences of actions to signify their final step/completion or as the transition/introduction to another set of actions with a different purpose or by another character, hopefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then, as though she were handling a delicate glass sculpture, she opened the envelope.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;She opened the envelope, careful to handle it as though it were a delicate glass sculpture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then, setting down his chef hat on the counter, he said, “Look my shift’s over. How ‘bout we go to the izakaya around the corner?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He set down his chef hat and let out a long sigh. &amp;quot;Look...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then, receiving her apple, I asked her, &amp;quot;So &amp;gt; what now?&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took the offered apple with one hand. &amp;quot;So what now?&amp;quot; I asked during the natural pause created by the gifting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, you'll need to incorporate words that indicate simultaneous action. That and various sentence complexity combos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25432" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T11:00:48.953" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28745" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-16T10:37:46.293" Score="1" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an editor having  difficulties dealing with the representative of an author's literary estate about an unpublished manuscript by a deceased author. We have a polite (and friendly) disagreement about how much editing should take place on a manuscript where the author is not around to speak his mind. I am not talking about incomplete manuscripts; presumably the author was able to revise it and finalize it, but hadn't shown it to an editor for feedback.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author was  distinguished and nationally recognized for his works of fiction. He wrote about 2 dozen books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That led me to wonder about the historical role of book editors in American publishing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you point to examples of famous books where an editor's input&#xA;has been acknowledged to make a significant and positive difference&#xA;in the final product? (Conversely, are there examples where an&#xA;editor's contribution has been thought to make a negative&#xA;difference?)  The only example I can think of is Gordon Lish's&#xA;editing of Raymond Carver, but that is an extreme example. It seems&#xA;more likely that a critic or reviewer might complain that a novel&#xA;needs more editing -- rather than less.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, can you mention some notable examples where reps of a literary&#xA;estate have had disagreements with an editor's judgment about how&#xA;something should be edited -- and how they were resolved (if at all)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, I am facing that issue right now, and we can't agree about how much deference to give to what is on the deceased author's page -- even when what is there can  seem convoluted or awkward. I'm not saying that the estate rep is offbase, but this person seems reluctant to murder ANY darlings. This representative  is simply  trying to preserve the integrity of the text. I have edited the author's manuscripts when he was alive, so I already have some insight into his approach (basically, he would approve about 1/3 of my edits verbatim, he would reject another 1/3 of them, and would rewrite the remaining third to something different).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The representative of the literary estate has required that I consult this person whenever I am changing the text and get approval. That is not unreasonable, but it can be onerous -- especially when this representative doesn't come from a writing or editing background. I don't consider her opinions wrong or inconsequential -- just a little too deferential to what is already there.  My indie publishing company will be dealing with multiple unpublished manuscripts from this author, so this issue  is likely to persist for the next few years. That is why I am searching for ways to handle it. Thanks.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I wish to report that I have satisfactorily resolved some of the difficult passages with the family representative. But I remain curious about whether editors will be forever unsung or there are cases of editors significantly improving a book generally considered to be great literary works? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="7968" LastEditDate="2017-06-21T05:23:57.787" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T05:23:57.787" Title="How significant a role have editors played on books published in the past?" Tags="|editing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28742" CreationDate="2017-06-16T11:17:23.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Then&quot; is not really required in the examples you show. &quot;Then&quot; is only really required when the previous sentence or clause indicates further actions or items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;First&lt;/strong&gt;, the Earth cooled, &lt;strong&gt;then&lt;/strong&gt; the dinosaurs came.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also suspect you are looking at sentences to tell your story rather than complete paragraphs. Your examples can easily be re-written to avoid &quot;then&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;After setting down his chef hat on the counter Mr. HSC squinted his slanted eyes at me. “Look my shift’s over, he said. &quot;How ‘bout we go to the izakaya around the corner?&quot;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As soon as she found my letter---or rather, Kiyoshi's---she widened her slitted eyes and pressed the letter against her chest. She opened the envelope as though handling a delicate glass sculpture.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T11:17:23.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28745" CreationDate="2017-06-16T11:20:30.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two examples spring to mind, neither exactly your situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Christopher Tolkien did work on his father's oeuvre, but that's more curation than editing. He did cobble together &lt;em&gt;The Children of Húrin&lt;/em&gt; from pieces, but that isn't quite your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent but negative exampe is &lt;em&gt;Go Set a Watchman.&lt;/em&gt; Harper Lee is reportedly no longer mentally competent, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Set_a_Watchman&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;various parties, including a lawyer and an agent,&lt;/a&gt; found and developed an early manuscript of Lee's until it was a fully-standing novel. While the publisher originally tried to present it as a prequel to &lt;em&gt;To Kill a Mockingbird,&lt;/em&gt; critics soon determined it was a rough draft of that novel rather than a separate story set before it. &lt;em&gt;Watchman&lt;/em&gt; presents Atticus Finch as racist rather than the equality-supporting man he is in &lt;em&gt;Mockingbird,&lt;/em&gt; which deeply upset many readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In your particular case, since you edited this writer's work when he was alive, I think you should have more say, but that's neither here nor there.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T11:20:30.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28742" CreationDate="2017-06-16T11:25:27.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the other answers have noted, you can rewrite the sentences to remove the need for &quot;then&quot; (or possibly just omit it without any rewriting at all). However, there are also a few synonyms you can use, allowing you to keep the sense of narrative flow you're after without the frequent repetition of &quot;then&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As soon as she found my letter---or rather, &lt;em&gt;Kiyoshi's&lt;/em&gt;---she widened her slitted eyes and pressed the letter against her chest. &lt;strong&gt;A moment later&lt;/strong&gt;, as though she were handling a delicate glass sculpture, she opened the envelope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. HSC squinted his slanted eyes at me &lt;strong&gt;before setting down his chef hat on the counter.&lt;/strong&gt; “Look, my shift’s over,&quot; he said. &quot;How ‘bout we go to the izakaya around the corner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I answered her smile with my own. &lt;strong&gt;As I received her apple&lt;/strong&gt;, I asked her, &quot;So, what now?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23927" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T11:25:27.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28625" CreationDate="2017-06-16T11:46:55.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there's no way you can &quot;overdevelop&quot; a character. (This is different from &quot;page time&quot;, mind you -- you may have a very well-developed character that hardly shows up in your finished story.) The better you know a character, the easier it will be to work with them and the lesser are the chances of you succumbing to some boring cliche. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, character-development is the most important (and most fun) aspect of my writing process. My current novel tells the story of an entire segment of society that requires a number of (very different) characters. Developing all of these took a long time, but it definitely paid off. Even if a given character will end up playing only a minor role in the end, I am sure that I can handle this character well and give him or her an appropriate voice. Doing all this character-development was what brought the story to real life for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside of all this &quot;getting to know your characters&quot; better is that you grow very fond of them very quickly. Take car not to write your own &quot;fan fiction&quot; in which you gush on and on about your great, lovable characters without adding to the plot. The best advice I ever got in writing is related to this problem: Kill your darlings. Be meticulous about this and always keep your &quot;main message&quot; in mind. Ask yourself: Do I really need this scene to arrive at the point of the story to which it all boils down? Don't make excuses when answering this question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a reader's perspective, I think that well-developed secondary characters is what really fleshes out a good book. In my favourite book, for example (the German &quot;Center of my worl&quot; by Andreas Steinhoefel), my favourite character to this day is the main character's uncle. He shows up only a few times throughout the book, but these few times are enough to paint him as a full character, with troubles, lost loves, joys, and a life that is pretty independent of the main character (in agreement with Lauren's point). To this day, I would marry this guy on the spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I want to make the point that I generally use my secondary characters to lighten the story a bit. Heroes are not always easy -- they suffer, they make mistakes, sometimes it's hard to really like them. Secondary characters can ease this load of suffering a bit by providing good-natured characters that are easy to like. With respect to this, it makes a lot of sense to put effort into building your secondary characters and prevent them from being shallow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T11:46:55.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28750" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-16T13:02:21.657" Score="4" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a little puzzled. I want to set my story in a real era that happened; like say, the American civil wars during Lincoln's time, and involve the then prominent figures like Lincoln and McClellan as some of my major characters, though portraying them fictitiously; reputation and natures maintained. Has this got to bring me some problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, my story is historically untrue, but I need to infuse it into a real historical event that might have happened and let it make part of the event; can this work? Please help me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25436" LastActivityDate="2019-07-31T19:00:01.600" Title="Can I use prominent people in history to as characters in my fiction?" Tags="|creative-writing|characters|character-development|planning|setting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28750" CreationDate="2017-06-16T14:03:21.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you may use prominent people in history pretty much any way you choose. Obviously libel laws apply. Generally you cannot libel the dead, however some US states permit lawsuits where the descendants are the plaintiffs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid people with commercial legacies. e.g. Don't portray Walt Disney as a child molester - The Disney Corporation will bury you, your family, your unborn descendants, anybody who looks like you, and anybody whose name has a similar spelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stick to 'real' people. e'g' &quot;Thor&quot; is a mythological Norse god. You are free to use him. However, &quot;Thor&quot; is also a Marvel character. If your &quot;Thor&quot; is similar to Marvel's Thor you'll be in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lincoln - you may portray any way you wish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please be aware, I am not a lawyer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T14:03:21.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28734" CreationDate="2017-06-16T14:19:28.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, I'd pretty much go with your ear. I could explain the technicalities of cadence and pacing but it's pretty much like dancing - if you think about too much while your doing do it . . . it's rarely pretty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experience in poetry helps. It helps with balance and rhythm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T14:19:28.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28750" CreationDate="2017-06-16T14:31:32.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sure you can!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People do it all the time. To use your own example of Abraham Lincoln, there was a film from a few years ago (adapted from some other medium) depicting him as a part-time vampire hunter. It was imaginatively titled &lt;em&gt;Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter&lt;/em&gt;, wove fictional events together with real events, and to my knowledge, nobody from Lincoln's estate had a problem with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there's &lt;em&gt;Futurama&lt;/em&gt;, in which Richard Nixon's head is the President of Earth; &lt;em&gt;Doctor Who&lt;/em&gt;, which has had Churchill recruiting Daleks and Agatha Christie fighting evil space bees; the obscure but very good anime &lt;em&gt;Nobunagun&lt;/em&gt;, in which&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; Jack the Ripper was actually &lt;em&gt;Florence Nightingale&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;strike&gt;his&lt;/strike&gt; her victims had been infected with alien parasites&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...you get the picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've said you intend to maintain the &quot;reputation and natures&quot; of the people involved, which is probably the most important part. As I commented on Surtsey's answer, you'll want to be careful of libel. The further back in history you go, the more leeway you have, as people lose connection to their ancestors over time. When Shakespeare wrote his history plays, he had to be careful to portray the then-ruling Tudor dynasty in a positive light, or he would have been locked up. When he wrote &lt;em&gt;Julius Caesar&lt;/em&gt;, however, he could do whatever the heck he wanted; Caesar had no direct descendants to rock up and say &quot;No, that's not what happened&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: as long as you're not actively demonizing anyone who doesn't deserve it, &lt;strong&gt;go crazy! Have fun!&lt;/strong&gt; Make Abe Lincoln fight alien space bees if you want! (Seriously, I'd buy that book.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23927" LastEditorUserId="23927" LastEditDate="2019-07-31T19:00:01.600" LastActivityDate="2019-07-31T19:00:01.600" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28745" CreationDate="2017-06-16T14:51:58.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you don't say what type of editor you are. Different editors perform different functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before continuing with my answer I must admit to my own bias. Based on experience: independent editors for manuscripts to be mainstream published are a waste of time. There is no correlation between &quot;well-written&quot; and &quot;best-seller&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Random House, Harpercollins and Co. have sold millions, maybe even billions of books. They employ their own editors to shape content the way they know their existing readers will enjoy. An independent editor may remove the 'darling' that hooked the acquisition's editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot answer your primary question but I am able to address the secondary issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your are an independent editor you have no say. You're a contractor - nothing more. It is not your name on the spine. You're working for the son of a deceased property developer. The son wants you to paint the picker fence of the latest property yellow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're saying that his father always insisted the picket fences were painted white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever . . . he is your client: either paint the fence the way he wants it and get paid or refuse and recommend another contractor. You have no legal standing here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T14:51:58.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28755" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28760" CreationDate="2017-06-16T15:09:06.007" Score="2" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is a fictitious newspaper, for example, ABCD Times, italicized in a fiction book?&#xA;Obviously, The New York Times, a real newspaper, would be italicized in a fiction book, but the question is about whether a fictitious newspaper in a fiction book would be italicized?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if someone were to speak. &quot;I read The New York Times,&quot; Mel said. Would the newspaper be italicized if it is in dialogue/in quotes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, this question has not been answered before. The following link has to do with company/brand names, so please don't reference me to it. &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/21429/do-you-italicize-fictional-company-names&quot;&gt;Do you italicize fictional company names?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I posted these questions before, but I've been having trouble with creating an account/using an old account, so I started from scratch all over again and created a new account. Time is of the essence!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T16:48:35.867" Title="Italics use in a fiction book" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28731" CreationDate="2017-06-16T15:22:41.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It'll come with time, no need to worry. &#xA;One thing you could do is view movies/books that are similar to your story and see how they end; you'll get some ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T15:22:41.587" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28726" CreationDate="2017-06-16T15:26:44.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd go with a dialogue tag. Authors are advised to use simple dialogue tags such as &quot;said&quot; and &quot;asked&quot; &#xA;There are plenty of authors who do not use tags. For me, it becomes confusing, especially when I listen to an audio book. &#xA;I think you should make it clear to the reader who not only visually sees your work, but also listens to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T15:26:44.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28625" CreationDate="2017-06-16T15:33:16.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the significance of your secondary characters/how much they show up in the text. If it's just a taxi driver who opens the door and never reappears/reappears one more time, there's no need to develop him/her, aside from maybe basic physical characteristics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your secondary character keeps popping up, maybe a butler who the main character talks to for advice from time to time, it would be best to develop the butler somewhat, but to a lesser extent than the primary character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T15:33:16.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28726" CreationDate="2017-06-16T15:50:58.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is slightly confusing, but in a good way. It gives the impression that the narrator's attention is captivated by Aiko and is interrupted by Kiyoshi. So for just an instant the narrator is slightly startled and confused, only realising it is Kiyoshi speaking with the tap on the shoulder bringing him down to Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey, Daishi&quot;, Kiyoshi said, tapping ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you wouldn't have the same element of surprise, and the implication would be that the narrator was aware of Kiyoshi the whole time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19089" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T15:50:58.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28755" CreationDate="2017-06-16T16:48:35.867" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're not using italics and you're including a publication name inside dialogue, you would need to enclose it within single quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that to be cumbersome. Using italics instead is an easy way to avoid extra punctuation marks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My vote is to always italicize real and fake publications within books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T16:48:35.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28742" CreationDate="2017-06-16T16:57:17.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just drop 'em.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...she... pressed the letter against her chest. As though she were handling&#xA;  a delicate glass sculpture, she opened the envelope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. HSC squinted his slanted eyes at me. Setting down his chef&#xA;  hat on the counter, he said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I answered her smile with my own. Receiving her apple, I asked&#xA;  her, &quot;So, what now?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Example 3 sounds better with a &quot;then,&quot; though.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T16:57:17.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28762" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28764" CreationDate="2017-06-16T16:57:34.837" Score="5" ViewCount="490" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past I never had the urge to write, except for poetry, which has always helped me to deal with my emotions. Lately, I have done a lot of world building. Rarely with the intention of writing a story. I just ask myself something like, &quot;what would happen, if our lifespan was dramatically longer?&quot; and then I keep returning to that question and refining the world I have imagined. After months something very strange happens. I get the feeling that I have to write a story in that world, or else it will be... deserted? But I don't have any exciting stories in my mind. Only perhaps some social conflicts, catastrophic events and such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you familiar with this feeling? How do you respond to it? Just wait until the story emerges from the elements and conflicts of the world? Just write whatever comes to your mind? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can not draw from my experience as a poet here, because I write poetry out of phsychological need particularly when I am depressed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not even sure if this question isn't too opinion based too subjective or too localised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21535" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-06-16T23:24:31.340" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T23:24:31.340" Title="Going from worldbuilding to writing a short story" Tags="|fiction|short-story|inspiration|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1415" CreationDate="2017-06-16T17:09:45.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're either funny or you're not.&#xA;If you watch a lot of humor, you may start thinking like a certain comedian and it could help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T17:09:45.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28762" CreationDate="2017-06-16T17:45:56.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simplest way of going about it is imagining an alter-ego of yours living in that world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest starting with an alter-ego because you say you aren't used to writing prose and I therefore assume you don't easily create new characters. So, create an alter-ego and imagine yourself living the events you created, whether in the thick of it or from outside. Ideally, this alter-ego character will quickly become his/her own person and, as you create more and more of these, you won't have the need to start with an alter-ego.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also play around with a single event and write several short stories with different main characters allowing for a multitude of points of view of that event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you want to explore the world, I'd say short stories is probably the way to start. As the tales start rolling out, see where they take you, whether it's to continue with short-stories or to embark on a full-fledged novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T17:45:56.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28762" CreationDate="2017-06-16T17:50:48.277" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's okay to have a world without ever writing a story set in it. Nobody is telling you that you have to do anything with your world; sometimes it's fun to just imagine. That's perfectly fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just want to be able to remember the world you are creating and not feel like it's going to waste, you could try just writing about it. Not a story, just writing about the world. Write about whatever comes to mind about it, as if it were real and you were writing nonfiction. Jot down/type up whatever details you can think of. If you prefer typing, you might create a folder so you can organize notes about different things in different files. If you prefer handwriting, maybe a physical folder. Or a binder, if you don't think a folder will fit it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, so maybe you're adamant about writing a story. An actual story with a plot and everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story is not about a world. A story is about characters in a world. Let's take, for example, a couple of stories with awesome worlds: &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt;. People love these worlds--a quick glance at SFF.SE will tell you that. But what people really care about--what makes them want to keep reading or watching--is the characters. We want to know what happens to them. We want to see how they overcome the challenges they face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Star Wars,&lt;/em&gt; there's spaceships, exotic planets, and the Force. Cool, right? But these merely serve as a setting in which to put some characters. We care about Luke and the other protagonists, and we want to see them succeed. The world provides a fun place for their story to occur: it provides its own challenges that contribute to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, in &lt;em&gt;Harry Potter,&lt;/em&gt; most people keep reading because they want to know what happens to Harry. That doesn't mean the world is unimportant; without the magical world, Harry would just be an orphan who grows up with his nasty aunt and uncle, then goes to college and lives a normal Muggle life. That wouldn't be a fun story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you need to start with some characters. Try to imagine a person in your society. What kind of problems will the society give them? What might they do to overcome these problems? What other kinds of people are in this society, and how might they help or hurt the main character?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These questions will help you come up with some characters and some conflict--the beginnings of a story. Now, you just need to organize it and flesh it out into a cohesive plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23436" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T17:50:48.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="489" CreationDate="2017-06-16T19:17:34.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel this almost all the time, haha. But there is an interesting set of lectures That I remember my tutor presenting to us on the subject of stories and character development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, there are at least seven 'main' types of stories ('rags to riches' and 'defeating the monster', for example). So theoretically speaking, every single story fits into at least one of these types. So, it's pretty difficult to have a completely original and 'never-seen-before' plot line. &#xA;As long as you aren't blatently ripping off another story, having a slightly similar concept isn't actually bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like other answers have stated, the most important thing is the characters. Are they interesting? Do they help add flavour and feeling to your story? It's all well and good having a certain plot twist happening (which on its own can be good, of course) but it's how your characters react to that plot twist that matters the most. Having a generic 'brave warrior' for example can be great, but what about them makes your reader love them? Characters with interesting traits are what make a story good and re-readable, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25441" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T19:17:34.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-16T19:49:54.373" Score="5" ViewCount="1524" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's easy to show hesitance, fear or angst, you can have a character smoking 5-10 cigarettes in a row, linger for way too long, act out, or something like that. But how can you show a character that is feeling great, has a lot of confidence? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My character is setting sail in a boat on its way out of a harbor (no pirates and no fantasy, just a regular dude in a regular harbor). The best I've come up with is looking at the horizon and smiling but I think it feels a little bit forced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25340" LastEditorUserId="26683" LastEditDate="2018-03-06T22:18:53.860" LastActivityDate="2018-03-06T22:18:53.860" Title="How can you show that a character is feeling amazing?" Tags="|characters|showing-telling|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28750" CreationDate="2017-06-16T20:10:25.067" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't do it. You can mention Abraham Lincoln or whoever, but do so in a factual setting and do NOT tarnish his/her image. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you can have Lincoln in the White House doing things he does as a President, but you can't have him walking the streets of China talking Chinese with locals, because that's not in line with the factual Lincoln. You can't have Lincoln getting drunk in a bar, because that tarnishes his image and also is NOT in line with who he was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to use Lincoln in a negative light, maybe he's a drunk in a parody, you need permission from his family.&#xA;Maybe Lincoln is dead, but his family lives on and they could be insulted and bring a lawsuit on you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T20:10:25.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28769" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-16T20:22:03.670" Score="0" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;After rewriting someone else's blog post and passing a plagiarism checker as 100% unique, do I still need to cite my source if I want to post it on my own blog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25442" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T21:42:37.217" Title="Rewriting a blog post, passing a plagiarism checker as 100% unique, do I still need to cite my source if I want to post it on my own blog?" Tags="|publishing|copyright|self-publishing|blog|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28770" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-16T20:48:13.590" Score="3" ViewCount="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to produce a similar format like this example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://basicattentiontoken.org/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePaper-4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://basicattentiontoken.org/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePaper-4.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I do this in Google Docs? Is there a specific program that scholars use? I want that particular look and formatting but I don't know what it's called.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25443" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-06-18T01:38:57.183" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T01:38:57.183" Title="How do I recreate this particular academic white paper format?" Tags="|academic-writing|tools|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28769" CreationDate="2017-06-16T21:42:37.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because you re-write something, doesn't make it original or YOUR work.  It would be no different than handing in an essay for class that a friend let you copy off of, and all you did was change up the wording.  9/10 times the teacher will pull you both to the side to talk about why both your essays are pretty much the same thing.  This is no different in the professional or blogging world either.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might sound a tad harsh, but don't be lazy and rewrite other people's ideas and think you can take all the credit.  You can write your own UNIQUE blog post that explains the topic, and reference this blog as your source.  What did you like about it that made you want to re-write it?  What did you not like about it or find false that made you want to re-write it?  Quote parts that you liked, didn't like, and then back it up with your own original writing and research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T21:42:37.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28770" CreationDate="2017-06-16T21:51:59.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;Special&quot; template or program that does this for people in google doc.  I do believe word has built in tools to help with headings but from a quick google, this does not seem to be possible in google docs.  This is something that is usually done manually.  Essentially, you are looking for something to follow an outlined template such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;xxxxxxx&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 Title&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;xxxxxx&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.1 sub title&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;xxxxxx&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 title&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;repeat as needed.  The following link on &lt;a href=&quot;https://writingcommons.org/open-text/writing-processes/format/apa-format/702-formatting-headings-and-subheadings-apa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Formatting Headings&lt;/a&gt; may also help you with what you are looking for.  You may also want to check the &lt;a href=&quot;https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/heading-numbers/pomhgonejhponfnckfnonolnciipappm?hl=en-US&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;add-on store&lt;/a&gt; for chrome/google where you add things like add blocker plus.  A quick search there seemed to pull up some results but not sure if it does what you need but at least it points you in a direction!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T21:51:59.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28767" CreationDate="2017-06-16T22:35:21.147" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think back to when you began a journey.  When you began something new.  Maybe it was moving out of your parents house and you got into the moving truck, ready to drive off for the first time.  Maybe it was the first time you went on a trip  with a group of friends or by yourself.  Remember the feelings you had.  The swelling of pride, eager for adventure and something new, free from the shackles of life.  Feeling good isn't just a matter of having a smile.  Many people smile even when they are sad or are in pain.  It is an emotional state.  You may also want to watch your prose too in situations like this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attach the emotions to actions.  As he loads the boat with his belongings for the trip, does he quickly toss his bags into his cabin eager to get started? Or does he just simply prepare the boat for departure?  Does he skip around and whistle his favorite sailing tune while making preparations? Or does he just walk up to the boat and prepare to depart?  Is he able to sleep the night before?  Most times people can't sleep on the eve of doing something they are excited or nervous about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to write a long, descriptive, prose-filled passage to show he is happy or feeling great about the trip.  You can do this throughout the hours leading up to the trip by expressing emotions and happy actions that he is doing while getting ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-06-16T23:13:10.373" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T23:13:10.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28767" CreationDate="2017-06-16T22:38:02.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Feeling great/confident:&#xA;You can show through dialogue.&#xA;&quot;Hey, how's it going?&quot;&#xA;&quot;Great, couldn't be better,&quot; he said, with glowing eyes.&#xA;&quot;You look happy. What's up?&quot;&#xA;&quot;My girlfriend said yes,&quot; he said.&#xA;&quot;Congratulations.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, you can show it through actions. Maybe he jumps, or pumps his fist and says &quot;yes.&quot; &#xA;Maybe he yells in excitement like fans at sporting events: He yelled, something out of the ordinary as he was quiet and shy. A few people noticed and gaped. Even though people were watching, it didn't matter to him. He was thrilled to leave for his next adventure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of why he's confident/feeling great. For example: His face showed glee and his heart beat fast with excitement; this was the first time he was setting sail on his boat. It was no ordinary boat; it was the boat he built with his sweat and tears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advice: make sh** up &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T22:38:02.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28762" CreationDate="2017-06-16T22:56:37.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28765/1993&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; that developing characters will help you to write stories (which don't have to be full-blown books).  Another approach you can take is to write very short stories or even just scenes in your world.  These aren't necessarily full stories (though they can be), and you might never reuse them in a longer work; think of it as verbal doodling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see some examples of this approach in the stories linked from &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/universe-factory/building-the-world-of-ivanturia-b77bccb99fca&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post on the Worldbuilding blog, Universe Factory&lt;/a&gt;.  The linked post is about the world; the stories came first, starting with &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/universe-factory/borcorieus-of-vorca-a0e0ce84617d&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;.  The author developed the world for its own sake, like you, and wanted to do something with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T22:56:37.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28736" CreationDate="2017-06-16T23:33:39.803" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't cite a style guide for this, only offer both observation and logic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sanjay isn't a real person either, but you capitalized his name like you do for real people.  That felt completely natural to you as a writer, right?  It felt natural to me as a reader, too.  Similarly, if in the context of your writing, &quot;Dingdong News&quot; is a real thing, you should treat it the same way you would treat &quot;World News&quot;, in this case by italicizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, consider the effect if your story includes references to both real and fictitious shows.  If you style them based on their &lt;em&gt;reality&lt;/em&gt; rather than their &lt;em&gt;category&lt;/em&gt; (like TV shows), you're creating an inconsistent experience for your reader, who otherwise wouldn't need to care that one has an analogue in reality and the other does not.  You're interrupting the process of a reader immersing in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing fiction, treat anything within the world as real (within that scope).  The status of TV shows in the world outside your story should not be relevant to your reader or your storytelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T23:33:39.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28777" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28779" CreationDate="2017-06-17T02:49:44.897" Score="2" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;How important is staying away from author intervention in fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't do it much, but for things like creating the setting/scenery I do. I kind of go from third person omniscient/author intervention to third person limited. I don't give away future information, I just set the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-17T06:14:52.853" Title="Author intervention in fiction" Tags="|viewpoint|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28767" CreationDate="2017-06-17T04:14:18.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to disagree with the other answerers to some extent: I don't think it's true that &lt;em&gt;actions / gestures / expressions&lt;/em&gt; are the best way of conveying a character's emotions. These things can convey &lt;em&gt;that the character is feeling a certain way&lt;/em&gt; but they do a poor job of &lt;em&gt;conveying those feelings&lt;/em&gt;. Lyric poetry is a really good example of how to do this. As a random example take Kevin Young's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/02/23/crowning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crowning&lt;/a&gt;&quot; about the birth. Some of the techniques are particular to poetry but I think there are mechanics we can learn from this piece that translate to prose&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of an effective lyric voice is fluid mixing of inner life and experience, achieved here with metaphors mixed with observation &quot;animal smell / and peat, breath and sweat / and mulch-matter&quot; to judgement and values included with report &quot;driven / by mother's body, by her will / and brilliance&quot;. If you are writing in a conservative, 3rd person (limited) omniscient, you can still achieve some of this by being careful in what details you choose to pick, e.g. in this poem with the great closing lines &quot;warming now, now opening / your eyes midnight / blue in the blue-black dawn.&quot; (To drive my point home: notice that the poem gives you no information about the character's body or expression and yet we know very clearly what the narrator is feeling in these moments.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applied to this case, I think the best way to show the excitement and confidence of this character is to detail his experience in a way that makes this evident: an excited person will notice how the light plays over the surface of the water, will appreciate the splash of an anchor being hoisted, will notice the school of fish darting to the surface before sinking away, will experience the sway of the boat as lively, etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To soapbox a bit before wrapping, some writers today are a little too indebted to the screen. With actors and cameras, expressions and behavior are absolutely crucial in conveying the emotion of an experience. These tools though translate clumsily to writing -- it is telling that we often have to invoke an emotion to describe an expression (e.g. &quot;beamed with excitement&quot;) -- and we have had much better native tools for eons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22522" LastActivityDate="2017-06-17T04:14:18.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28777" CreationDate="2017-06-17T06:14:52.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing you're referring to authorial intrusion. The Swainettes will tell you it's bad thing but that's just because it doesn't fit with the rules they take as their gospel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is your style for the author to provide commentary and reaction, then its your style. Authorial intrusion is a bona fide literary device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically, authorial intrusion is one of the telling sins but if the intrusion is your intention then no harm no foul.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-17T06:14:52.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28780" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-17T06:34:40.427" Score="1" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I cure this? It's driving me crazy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep thinking of ideas to write but I either am too lazy to put it to paper or forget it and then randomly remember a few days later. I'M TOO YOUNG FOR THIS!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not really a block, just a lack of inspiration. How do I get inspired to write when I do have ideas, but am too lazy to write it out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastEditorUserId="24976" LastEditDate="2017-06-20T18:48:34.247" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T18:48:34.247" Title="Getting out of writers' block?" Tags="|writers-block|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28781" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28792" CreationDate="2017-06-17T13:23:59.713" Score="7" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've decided to force myself by publishing my writings, hopefully acquiring at least a small following so I feel obliged to provide them with more texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there publishing platforms for this purpose? Where you can post drafts as well as finished stories? Get feedback? Publish a story in several parts (e.g. chapter by chapter) and the platform will pull them together for readers to read as one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24134" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-06-17T18:22:00.973" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T15:36:58.070" Title="Online publishing platform" Tags="|publishing|electronic-publishing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28782" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-17T16:48:02.933" Score="2" ViewCount="783" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the method that some writers use to emulate those before them? How do they emulate the way that their models sound? Do they write out their thoughts first and afterward revise them until they achieve the sound of their model? Or do they practice by writing something in the exact metrical form of their model (speaking of prose, not poetry)? What methods have been used in to past to accomplish this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25421" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T02:22:07.187" Title="How do some writers manage to emulate the writing styles of others?" Tags="|style|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28782" CreationDate="2017-06-17T19:50:39.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important aspect is to hear the voice. Some writers are easier to emulate than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Grisham, for example, is an old man from the south. Once you pick up the voice you then study his exposition style. Forget all the advice and rules from the 'How to' - John Grisham does a lot of 'telling'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BILLY RAY COBB was the younger and smaller of the two rednecks. At twenty-three he was already a three-year veteran of the state penitentiary at Parchman. Possession, with intent to sell. He was a lean, tough little punk who had survived prison by somehow maintaining a ready supply of drugs that he sold and sometimes gave to the blacks and the guards for protection. In the year since his release he had continued to prosper, and his small-time narcotics business had elevated him to the position of one of the more affluent rednecks in Ford County. He was a businessman, with employees, obligations, deals, everything but taxes. Down at the Ford place in Clanton he was known as the last man in recent history to pay cash for a new pickup truck. Sixteen thousand cash, for a custom-built, four-wheel drive, canary yellow, luxury Ford pickup. The fancy chrome wheels and mudgrip racing tires had been received in a business deal. The rebel flag hanging across the rear window had been stolen by Cobb from a drunken fratern&#xA;ity boy at an Ole Miss football game. The pickup was Billy Ray’s most prized possession. He sat on the tailgate drinking a beer, smoking a joint, watching his friend Willard take his turn with the black girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Willard was four years older and a dozen years slower. He was generally a harmless sort who had never been in serious trouble and had never been seriously employed. Maybe an occasional fight with a night in jail, but nothing that would distinguish him. He called himself a pulpwood cutter, but a bad back customarily kept him out of the woods. He had hurt his back working on an offshore rig somewhere in the Gulf, and the oil company paid him a nice settlement, which he lost when his ex-wife cleaned him out. His primary vocation was that of a part-time employee of Billy Ray Cobb, who didn’t pay much but was liberal with his dope. For the first time in years Willard could always get his hands on something. And he always needed something. He’d been that way since he hurt his back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She was ten, and small for her age. She lay on her elbows, which were stuck and bound together with yellow nylon rope. Her legs were spread grotesquely with the right foot tied tight to an oak sapling and the left to a rotting, leaning post of a long-neglected fence. The ski rope had cut into her ankles and the blood ran down her legs. Her face was bloody and swollen, with one eye bulging and closed and the other eye half open so she could see the other white man sitting on the truck. She did not look at the man on top of her. He was breathing hard and sweating and cursing. He was hurting her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He also prefers to 'bring things into focus'. He has no desire to make extremely clear. You need to read on to discover exactly what's going on. As a reader you need to put snippets of information together to confirm your suspicions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot; . . .watching his friend Willard take his turn with the black girl.&quot; - Take his turn doing what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grisham lets you stew for a while.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;She was ten, and small for her age.&quot; Yes - but what's going on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;She did not look at the man on top of her. He was breathing hard and sweating and cursing. He was hurting her.&quot; - Oh right, that's disgusting! What bastards!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At no point does Grisham say, &quot;The two rednecks were taking turns raping the little black girl.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you hear the voice and recognise exposition style, and follow from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-17T19:50:39.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28784" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28799" CreationDate="2017-06-17T21:02:15.663" Score="3" ViewCount="1902" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;character arc&quot; represents the &lt;em&gt;changes&lt;/em&gt; in the character in different parts of the story. That is, how the impact of story events brings about changes in the character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;character development&quot; is a description of a character at a &lt;em&gt;point in time&lt;/em&gt;. That's a helpful thing to have, all other things being equal. My big fear is &quot;that much&quot; character development (at one particular time) will fix the character in that time period, and inhibit changes (or at least the audience perception of those changes) during the course of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are readers/viwers more interested in &quot;character development&quot; (background details of a character), or &quot;character arc&quot; (how the character changes). Put another way, which do you prioritize if they come into conflict, and how do you reconcile the two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T07:06:13.957" Title="Is character arc or character development more important (assuming they are in conflict?)" Tags="|fiction|character-development|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28312" CreationDate="2017-06-17T21:16:02.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now that you have your antagonist, you may want to experiment with writing two &quot;partial&quot; stories with each of the two candidates as the protagonist. Eventually, the choice may become clearer, but the effort spent on the other will not have been wasted. That person could become a third, rational, &quot;balancing&quot; character that serves as the &quot;adult chaperone&quot; for the other two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you decide to marry the to candidates to each other. In one story I wrote, I started with two male protagonists, and then changed one of them to a woman so that they could get married and become one &quot;protagonist.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story warrants it, you can have two points of view characters. The example I can think of is &quot;Treasure Island&quot; by Robert Louis Stevenson. Most of the story was narrated by Jim Hawkins, the cabin boy, but Dr. Livesey took over the &quot;protagonist&quot; duties when Jim was &quot;missing in action.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-06-17T21:16:02.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28786" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28788" CreationDate="2017-06-17T22:40:02.957" Score="-1" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my story the protagonist has to destroy a magic wishing stone. Any ideas? The stone is marble and it talks!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25040" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T02:18:19.610" Title="A Wishing stone needs to be destroyed?" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-06-18T20:03:16.273" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1801" CreationDate="2017-06-18T00:35:17.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get specific. There are many, many regional differences in speech. Are they British? If so where from specifically? Even though you are talking future times, I would say that researching this in a slightly more narrow fashion will be helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love this link on TV Tropes: &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VerbalTic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Verbal Tics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real life section is a gold mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sort of vague &quot;Victorian-style&quot; direction that you've given, without time and specific place is going to trip you up tremendously. The more specific you get with that, the more likely you are to have something to hold on to and the ability to research it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel as though Dickens is a great place to start, because his characters are simply littered with verbal tics. I'd also read The &lt;em&gt;Importance of Being Earnest&lt;/em&gt; from Oscar Wilde. I would also look at Gilbert and Sullivan a bit. And &lt;em&gt;Charley's Aunt&lt;/em&gt; a play, which at the time, was a huge hit, though it is not well known today. Here's a link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1300571.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;whole play&lt;/a&gt; as well as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charley%27s_Aunt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wiki summary&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Dowager Countess on the &lt;em&gt;Downton Abbey&lt;/em&gt; is of the Victorian Era--so as acidic as she can get, she's still very much a woman of that time. And she's British. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T00:35:17.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28786" CreationDate="2017-06-18T02:18:19.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sledgehammer/crush it. Fire/burn it. Bury it under the ocean. Send it to outer space. Cuts its mouth open. Cover its mouth/suffocate it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T02:18:19.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28782" CreationDate="2017-06-18T02:22:07.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I don't have as long an answer as Surtsey, but I'll tell you what works for me. I analyze the text and see what the author does and jot it down/make mental notes. Then when I write, I use the things I noticed to shape my work. I can't emulate someone else, and I don't think you should either. Be your own voice. There's only one John Grisham, and there's only one you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T02:22:07.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28780" CreationDate="2017-06-18T02:24:39.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the voice recorder on your cell phone, if you have one. Sometimes I get tired of writing, too; it's not possible to keep up with the mind. But you can record it and listen later when you have time to write it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T02:24:39.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28554" CreationDate="2017-06-18T02:31:15.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't worry. You'll tire yourself out eventually and settle with something. There's no way of knowing whether what you write will be great or not. Sometimes people write stories and they go unnoticed their whole lives. Then a hundred years later a director picks it up and makes a movie about it, and all of a sudden you're famous, but you're dead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T02:31:15.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28781" CreationDate="2017-06-18T07:07:11.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://leanpub.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Leanpub&quot;&gt;Leanpub&lt;/a&gt;. It has the express purpose to publish works in progress, and also provides a store front where readers can buy your book right away and receive free updates as you publish new chapters. Epub, mobi and PDF are all supported. You retain the copyright, and there's no exclusivity, so you can publish elsewhere when you're done. Last but not least, your royalties are about 90% of the book price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a couple of books there at different stages (one with a co-author, which is also supported) and can only say good things of them and of their support forum. The only two caveats: starting a book will cost you 99$, and their main workflow uses a markup language called Markdown which is simple but you might not be familiar with. Importing your Word files is also supported, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10487" LastEditorUserId="10487" LastEditDate="2017-06-18T07:29:55.160" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T07:29:55.160" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28784" CreationDate="2017-06-18T21:11:54.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both things are very important and can be very interesting. And if you look around, best examples of world literature (From &quot;War and Piece&quot; to &quot;Lord of the Rings&quot;) are dealing with this problem. Protagonist(s) at the beginning of a story is not the same as at the end of it. Journey changes the person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to do it the best? That's a good question. In my opinion, one good approach is to expose your character to similar situations throughout the arc, and see how his/her reaction is changing over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T21:11:54.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28794" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28796" CreationDate="2017-06-18T21:50:53.793" Score="3" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an original story about &lt;em&gt;figure skating&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem&lt;/strong&gt;: I have no idea what &lt;em&gt;country&lt;/em&gt; to use for my main character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need a country that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Actually exists&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Does not&lt;/em&gt; take part in the Winter Olympics&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;English-speaking (it's part of my plot)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is probably very cold and/or &lt;em&gt;has many ice skating rinks&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My country does not meet these criteria so &lt;strong&gt;how do I write about another country&lt;/strong&gt; (if I can find it) and &lt;strong&gt;how do I ensure that the things I write remain fictitious in a non-fictitious setting&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying not to write about a country that already has Olympics because I do not want my character to seem like she is better than the current athletes from that country and the readers to say &quot;Aren't our current athletes good enough?&quot; and such. But if I do write about a country that already has Olympic athletes, &lt;strong&gt;how do I write it such that it still remains fictitious but the current athletes are recognised as strong athletes without offending anyone&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25368" LastEditorUserId="25368" LastEditDate="2017-06-18T22:05:58.093" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T16:22:41.017" Title="What country do I use?" Tags="|fiction|technique|naming|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-06-25T06:05:16.077" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28794" CreationDate="2017-06-18T22:05:28.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has many skating rinks and doesn't participate in the Winter Olympics. That doesn't make sense. &#xA;I looked at a map and didn't see anything that fits your description. Maybe you could use a remote region of Siberia, and fictionalize it so that there's no rinks, but people use the frozen lakes. Maybe a few locals have learned English.&#xA;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T22:05:28.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28794" CreationDate="2017-06-18T22:18:41.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to get more fictitious than you like. Your set of requirements is just too strict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the easiest way is to set your story in a country that does participate in Olympics, but does not have much of figure skating tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way (often used too) is to create a fictitious setting in a real country, where your character would have a full freedom of development. There are so many fiction books where (for example) USA has a fictitious president, so if you create a wholly different picture of one sport, it's not a big deal. Just be sure to stress that your setting is &quot;alternate&quot;, and have some characters miss the &quot;good old days&quot;, when figure skaters of that country actually got medals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third way is to create a fictitious country, but that, I imagine, would be more work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22990" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T22:18:41.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28794" CreationDate="2017-06-18T23:38:14.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alexander's point is extremely valid, and I feel your criteria are too restrictive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are after is a country like Australia. Generally hot/tropical climate with some snow and slopes. We participate in the Winter Olympics, but aren't well known for it. And we have the underdog factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at Steven Bradbury, for example. Australia's first Winter Olympic Gold Medallist in Speed Skating. He won it because everyone else in the race, all the big guns, crashed in a heap and he was that far behind he managed to swerve around them, stay on his feet and cross the line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one expected him to win (least of all himself). But he was good enough to get there in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T23:38:14.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28554" CreationDate="2017-06-19T04:35:56.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write to get it all on paper/screen, and don't worry about going back to fix things just yet. As better ideas/words come to mind, add a note in your draft to investigate the ideas when you're ready for a review/edit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll sabotage yourself if you keep going back to fix things as you're writing, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a time and place for critique and edit, and that time comes only after the first draft is complete. Also typically a good idea to put some time between writing and editing. Not only will you avoid self-sabotage, but you'll often notice glaring errors in your writing, which you might have glossed over without noticing due to your familiarity with a paragraph or chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The creative process often ends through abandonment, rather than perfection. Most of us will go back to our earlier works and cringe, no matter how proud we were at the time of their creation. Do what you can to make it excellent during your editing phase, but realize there will come a point where you just have to publish - otherwise you'll have diminishing returns on your time and energy invested in editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep up the writing, and maybe some of those revision ideas will turn into a sequel or new story in the same genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25256" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T04:35:56.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28784" CreationDate="2017-06-19T05:01:23.750" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can a reader tell that a character's changed (in their character arc) if you don't show what the character was like before (character development, by your definition)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I believe that the two are interconnected. You cannot show the arc very well if you haven't shown the development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it sounds like you are afraid of is that there's a disconnect between the change and what they were and that will be confusing to the reader. What you must do is SHOW or tell if you must, the reason for the change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Characters are who they are. When they change an aspect of their behavior, it needs to be clear as to why. It isn't a conflict and one is not more important than the other. When it becomes jolting is when they are suddenly acting totally differently than they have previously. It's up to you, as the author to either show or explain the change.&lt;/strong&gt; The change can be temporary or permanent... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's how you reconcile the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T05:01:23.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28784" CreationDate="2017-06-19T07:06:13.957" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A character arc is not a required component of a story. It is a popular component of a certain type of story but the belief that you need to include an arc is a severely limiting factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking people do not change. The writer reveals the character of a character by showing his reaction to challenge and circumstance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A person who went on a journey, faced challenges along the way, but ultimately became a better person for it is a &quot;Disney&quot; plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A character arc is unimportant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your description of character development is strange to me. To provide an in depth characterisation of a character at any point in time would require a massive and tedious infodump. We reveal character scene by scene, and it shouldn't necessarily be a conscious thing. We don't write scenes for scene's sake. If we include a scene where the character gets up, makes breakfast and goes to work we likely SHOWING you the character (1) Lives alone (2) Is a vegetarian (3) Has a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character development / building is more accurately described as character revelation. When he goes to him mother's house for Sunday dinner we discover he has two sisters and an absent father.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Character development is essential (Unless your main character is Dr Spock or Lassie).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T07:06:13.957" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28554" CreationDate="2017-06-19T08:54:46.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to go against the grain. I'm going to give you some advice that you probably won't want to hear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you've only been writing for six months and your mention of 'chapter' indicates you are trying to write a novel. It's a bit early to be obsessing over word choices. When it comes to novel writing word choice is not particularly high up the pecking order. In article and speech writing word choices are important but in novels - not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attempting write a a novel with only six months experience may not be the best way forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote ten chapters of my first novel then (wisely) stopped. I'd learned enough from the experience to understand 'how' I write, my natural style, the components that would ultimately determine my 'voice'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then proceed to write short stories. Each one designed to challenge one or more aspects of my writing skills. I wrote from the POV of a US teen, a middle-aged English woman, a Pakistani immigrant, a Mexican immigrant etc. This would build the library of characters I could utilize in any novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One 3000 word story contains no dialogue and no descriptions of any inanimate objects. The bulk of the story consisted of two people looking at each other on a train. Another story was written from the POV of a blind woman - subsequently the story could not contain any visual descriptions. Another attempt was to write a children's story. I can't write a kiddie litter but the result taught me plenty. The finished story was about a man reading a bedtime story to his children. This taught me how to seamlessly blend from real-time to flashback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On returning to original 10 chapters I realised there were a boring chronicle - this happened, then that happened, this happened after, and that happened next. I deleted those then chapters and started again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I uploaded my novel to a peer-review forum - nobody believed it was my first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've learned your strong suite(s) and expanded your skill-set you'll know the best way to tell a particular story. The example below is really BAD because it's all TELLING and the grammar is atrocious, however, I heard that story did okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I know somethin bout idiots. Probly the only thing I do know bout, but I done read up on em -- all the way from that Doy-chee-eveskie guy's idiot, to King Lear's fool, an Faulkner's idiot, Benjie, an even ole Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird -- now he was a serious idiot. The one I like best tho is ole Lennie in Of Mice an Men. Mos of them writer fellers got it straight -- cause their idiots always smarter than people give em credit for. Hell, I'd agree with that. Any idiot would. Hee Hee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was born, my mama name me Forrest, cause of General Nathan Bedford Forrest who fought in the Civil War. Mama always said we was kin to General Forrest's fambly someways. An he was a great man, she say, cept'n he started up the Ku Klux Klan after the war was over an even my grandmama say they's a bunch of no-goods. Which I would tend to agree with, cause down here, the Grand Exalted Pishposh, or whatever he calls hissef, he operate a gun store in town an once, when I was maybe twelve year ole, I were walkin by there and lookin in the winder an he got a big hangman's noose strung up inside. When he seen me watchin, he done thowed it around his own neck an jerk it up like he was hanged an let his tongue stick out an all so's to scare me. I done run off and hid in a parkin lot behin some cars til somebody call the police an they come an take me home to my mama. So whatever else ole General Forrest done, startin up that Klan thing was not a good idea -- any idiot could tell you that. Nonetheless, that's how I got my name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mama is a real fine person. Everbody says that. My daddy, he got kilt just after I's born, so I never known him. He worked down to the docks as a longshoreman an one day a crane was takin a big net load of bananas off one of them United Fruit Company boats an somethin broke an the bananas fell down on my daddy an squashed him flat as a pancake. One time I heard some men talkin bout the accident -- say it was a helluva mess, half ton of all them bananas an my daddy squished underneath. I don't care for bananas much myself, cept for banana puddin. I like that all right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mama got a little pension from the United Fruit people an she took in boarders at our house, so we got by okay. When I was little, she kep me inside a lot, so as the other kids wouldn't bother me. In the summer afternoons, when it was real hot, she used to put me down in the parlor an pull the shades so it was dark an cool an fix me a pitcher of limeade. Then she'd set there an talk to me, jus talk on an on bout nothin in particular, like a person'll talk to a dog or cat, but I got used to it an liked it cause her voice made me feel real safe an nice.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T08:54:46.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28803" CreationDate="2017-06-19T11:27:11.880" Score="3" ViewCount="576" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel like I want to write, but when I do it just gets boring.&#xA;I begin thinking, &quot;Oh, I'm probably just gonna start a new draft. What even is the point.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really do enjoy writing, I'm a person that keeps my feelings inside and when I like something or have an obsession the only person I talk to is the white paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But like I said earlier, basically when I start writing I get bored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Is there a cause I'm getting bored?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24839" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T16:04:19.360" Title="Why am I not motivated?" Tags="|discipline|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28802" CreationDate="2017-06-19T12:13:22.020" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most importantly make sure you are writing something you really care about (as long as we're not talking about your day-to-day job here). No hobby is made better by forcing yourself to do only what you think others will appreciate rather than what you truly love to create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for getting bored in the creative process, and this is just a personal annecdote, but I find that I am unable to really focus on writing or programming when I have been habitually inundating myself with easy stimuli. Things like using my phone too often, playing video games or binging on Netflix, all draw power from my ability to sit down and really pour myself into my true hobby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, if you find yourself not performing how you would like to, then that just means it's time to change something. So experiment with variables in your days' activities and see what gets that productivity churning!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25462" LastEditorUserId="25462" LastEditDate="2017-06-19T13:26:49.143" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T13:26:49.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28804" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28806" CreationDate="2017-06-19T12:46:52.067" Score="25" ViewCount="4170" Body="&lt;p&gt;After much world building I begin to feel the need to write short stories set in my world. In other people's fantasy novels I particularly enjoy twists and surprises. I have started paying attention to those twists that manage to surprise me. Beyond that - and pestering your friends with requests to read your stories - how do you judge, if your twist is surprising? After all, you wrote it and know everything. Unless you invented the twist pretty late in the process and are still surprised by your own shrewdness, which I dare not expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21535" LastEditorUserId="21535" LastEditDate="2017-06-19T12:56:30.947" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T07:29:06.260" Title="How to know if your own story is surprising?" Tags="|fiction|technique|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28804" CreationDate="2017-06-19T13:41:25.487" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pestering friends or colleagues is the only way to know whether something in a story of yours will work, or, as in you case, is surprising enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think you're annoying your friends too much, maybe it's time you joined a writers group (real life or online) where nobody knows you. Those can be the best critics, since friends will (sometimes) tend to lighten the tone of the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the writer, you'll likely not get surprised at all, unless you leave the story to rest for some months, write other things, and them re-read it. If you give the story enough time, you might also be surprised, but there's nothing better than having other people read your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25281" LastEditorUserId="25281" LastEditDate="2018-01-31T07:29:06.260" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T07:29:06.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28804" CreationDate="2017-06-19T15:20:56.667" Score="31" Body="&lt;h1&gt;How to test if a twist is surprising&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three techniques that I use to test if the twist was surprising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1. Order of inspiration&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the idea was one of the first things I thought of then, no it is probably not surprising but obvious. At least obvious to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception to this is when I find myself grinning like a loon and thinking &amp;quot;damn, that is clever&amp;quot;. Of course, I might be deluding myself but gut reactions count for something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2. Character test&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again this is just me, but when I imagine my characters (who tend to be fairly genre savvy) do I sense any surprise? If the antagonist or the protagonist would say something sarcastic about seeing it coming then, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if I can reasonably see all the characters being caught completely off guard...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;3. Use a writers' group&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I chair a charity that runs a writers' group. If I want to know how well my twist works I give it to some members. The back sheet will have 4 or 5 questions and one of those questions will be &amp;quot;did you see the twist coming and how surprised were you?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;4. (Bonus) Count the number of techniques (below) that you have used&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of tried and tested methods for making a twist surprising. The more of them that have been used, the more likely your twist is to be surprising. If your story is full of twists and even half of them are somewhat surprising, then the whole story should be fairly surprising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;How to make a twist surprising&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even an obvious twist or plot development can be made to be surprising. It is all in the setup. After all, something is surprising when it is not what we were expecting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1. Red Herrings&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feed your reader some &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;red herrings&lt;/a&gt;. That is some clues that point in the wrong direction or turn out to be unimportant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red herrings are a vital part of a good mystery. The reader will enjoy trying to figure out which clues are really important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2. Misdirection&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to the red herring technique a good story teller can make the most obvious ending by drawing the readers attention away from the magic just like a stage magician would. Red herrings are part of this approach. A big part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other methods include drawing attention to something only to have it pay off later, sooner, or not at all. (Be very careful with that last one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;3. Speed it past them&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the reader is caught up in the action, for example, a chase scene, this is the perfect opportunity to slip in a vital detail in an off-hand way. Casually mention it when the action is most frantic and then turn it up to eleven. Most readers will fail to realise the importance of the detail (if you did a good job).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;4. Subvert expectations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to bring the surprise factor is to set up a common story trope (say a princess with a magical problem) and then as the expected conclusion approaches take things in a totally different direction. The princess refuses to marry the hero, the hero gets eaten by the dragon, the frog is happy to remain a frog... You get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;5. The partial information method (use with care)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes we assume too much based on the information we have at hand. Use this. You can give the reader clues based not only on what you say but on what you clearly do not say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take, for example, a scene where a lady is walking down the aisle and thinking about her boyfriend and the day he proposed. Then the director yells cut. You never said this was the wedding but you kinda, sorta, implied it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, use with care because this can come off as cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;6. Same action, different result&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the format of many jokes. An Englishman, An Irishman, and a Scotsman go into a bar...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characters do something and there is a result. The characters (or some characters) do it again with the same result. Then they or another do the thing for the third time only now...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This trope is exactly why I love road runner cartoons. You know that no matter how many times Wile E. Coyote tests that trap, the Road Runner will not trigger it. No matter how often the Road Runner does something it will go badly the first time Wile E. Coyote tries it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What not to do&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never pull out a fact that the reader and the characters had no way of knowing to pull off your surprise. While this will be surprising, the reader will feel cheated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T15:02:32.877" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28312" CreationDate="2017-06-19T16:04:22.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also come from the angle that you don't need a clear cut MC from page 1.  There are many stories out there where a group of people start out together and it isn't until a conflict point happens that the MC rises up above everyone to become their leader or to save everyone or what ever it is you want the MC to do.  There are also stories where the person you think is the MC ends up dying within the first couple chapters and a new MC or the real MC is then displayed if they are not already in the story.  Don't be afraid to write the story with options!  So many people think that they need to write with everything set in stone.  Just write!  Have a group of 5 people 10 people be your potential MC.  Write the story and see how it evolves.  Some times, you might find that the character you had in mind to be MC turns out to be the least likely candidate after you start seeing how it unfolds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T16:04:22.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28802" CreationDate="2017-06-19T16:18:23.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like the user above has said it's crucial to keep experimenting with your craft. It's the only way we can keep being motivated. Sticking to a single method will eventually turn tiresome and boring in time. If you're clearly not interested in what you're doing it is a sign you need to change your method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I do have to add something here. The most interesting idea is the one you're beginning to write. The most boring one is when you're stuck at page 80. And it's crucial to get till the boring stage if you need to get better. Every idea in your head is going to feel spectacular and it will always turn boring at one point when you put it in paper. Don't get the idea that a writer must absolutely love every minute of this process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, my point is that you need to force yourself and get your ideas out. It's the only way to break free from this. If you still get bored you may want to think twice about your method. Not every story teller is a novelist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23779" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T16:18:23.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28794" CreationDate="2017-06-19T16:22:41.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As everyone has mentioned, your requirements... particular that the country does not participate in the winter Olympics, is a bit tight.  Most countries get at least 1 representative to qualify.  What you are looking for is a story like &lt;em&gt;Cool Runnings&lt;/em&gt; where you have a Jamaican team qualify and perform well at the Bobsled event.  They were laughed at for most of the movie.  A country that has many skating rinks likely means that they love to skate and therefore will have people who are good enough to perform in the Olympics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have stated, you can create an alternative  universe about a real powerhouse.  Say we speed up the years to being 100 years from now.  Russia, a typical powerhouse in winter Olympics and figure skating has lost funding for their program due to what ever causes.  Country went broke, it has a civil war going on... what ever cause you want to do to make Russia fall apart.  In comes our MC.  A talented skater who is tired of war and skates in an abandoned rink when no one is around (because it is forbidden due to xxx dangers or politics).  They get yelled at for sneaking off all the time but they still choose to because they love it.  They end up writing themselves in an application and raised the funding themselves through working many jobs with the support of friend/bf/husband/wife/gf/family/etc.  They are accepted into the Olympics as an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Olympians_at_the_Olympic_Games&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;independent&lt;/a&gt;.  Through their trials, they get mocked at by other countries for their country (because of what ever conflict is hurting Russia).  This person manages to rise above the rest to reclaim the glory (give it an olympic or 2 if you want to elongate the process) and becomes someone that unites Russia again and/or provides funding/support for their figure skating committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T16:22:41.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28804" CreationDate="2017-06-19T22:10:19.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Give it to a beta reader, or a group of beta readers, and ask them questions afterward.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never read as a beta reader (nor given my work to beta readers), but I'm given to understand that it's a pretty common practice. I don't know how those things are usually done, but I don't see why you can't give the beta reader(s) a form with space for general feedback, and also include a few targeted questions like &quot;Did you find the twist surprising?,&quot; among other questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10027" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T22:10:19.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28780" CreationDate="2017-06-19T22:38:56.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like inspiration and writing time are not taking place together for you. As mentioned in a comment, that's not so much writer's block, as remembering you ideas. There is a question for writer's block already: &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2100/help-ive-got-writers-block?rq=1&quot;&gt;Help! I&amp;#39;ve got Writer&amp;#39;s Block&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remembering ideas that come when you cannot act on them is a common writer problem. There are a number of answers and they all boil down to &quot;make a note for later&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many writers (myself included) develop a heavy notepad habit. Lots of notepads - notepads in the bathroom, notepads by the bed, notepads in my bag, my coat and my jacket. That works but it is not ideal when you are as disorganised as I can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technology to the rescue.&lt;/strong&gt; Grab your phone call up a recording app and then make like you are telling someone the story idea. That allows you to &quot;talk to yourself&quot; in public without appearing crazy. It also means that your phone is ready to remind you when you are ready to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At work, there are more options.&lt;/strong&gt; I have often sent myself emails from my work account. If things are a bit slow and an idea is swimming around my head then I would &quot;write an email&quot;. Not ideal if you work for a corporation that audits outbound emails. Chrome, Gmail, and the Alt+Tab combo at the ready is the workaround for that little problem. That said, don't let your story ideas get you sacked. That would be bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Napkins can work too.&lt;/strong&gt; While hanging out at a food place (more than once) a friend and I have sketched out story ideas on a paper napkin. People have been doing that for longer than I have been alive (but I shall not tell you how long that is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The alternative is to work when the muse is with you.&lt;/strong&gt; If you time is flexible, then you might consider sitting down and writing when inspiration hits. This is actually a very poor habit as you may get very little done but it sounds like it would be a step up to get you going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Make notes when inspiration strikes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T22:38:56.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28767" CreationDate="2017-06-19T23:00:21.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you may need to delve a little deeper into the character's internal life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common way to tell a story is to focus on the surface elements - what the characters say and do but in written literature, we have access to the inner thought life of the person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feeling a certain way is not just the moment and the actions but the history and context, the inner life, the sensations, and your subjective reaction to them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be of benefit for you to review Stanislavski's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Actor_Prepares&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An Actor Prepares&lt;/a&gt;. In case you have not the time or motivation to read it right now (you should), let me give you a very truncated lesson as applied to writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remember when you felt &lt;em&gt;amazing&lt;/em&gt; (or whatever you need to convey).&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What were your hands/arms/legs doing? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were you smiling, grinning, or poker face?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember each part of your body in that moment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What thoughts were going through your head?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were you tranquil or filled with anticipation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was your inner monologue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you even have an inner monologue or was it all pure sensation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did it change your perception of the world around you?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did things seem brighter and more vibrant?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did the sun/wind/rain feel like at that time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were you hot or cold (and did you care)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What was the context of that moment?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What parts of your personal history contributed to that feeling?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What were the events that led up to that feeling and how did they feel?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was this catharsis of an earlier feeling or an escape?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now, using words alone, make me feel it too.&lt;/strong&gt; If you can do that you will portray the emotion of the moment vividly enough that the scene will come to life for the reader. There is no right or wrong way to show that feeling just so long as you make me feel it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T23:00:21.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28767" CreationDate="2017-06-19T23:17:31.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what others have said…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're in that character's viewpoint, you can sometimeds show feelings with the choice and sound of words and the rhythm and lengths of sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example from Audrey Niffenegger's &lt;em&gt;The Time Traveler's Wife.&lt;/em&gt; Just before this moment, Clare has bumped into Henry in the library. She's met him many times, but he's never met her. (It's a time-travel thing.)  Clare asks Henry out to dinner. Then comes this astounding sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We plan to meet tonight at a nearby Thai restaurant, all the while under the amused gaze of the women behind the desk, and I leave, forgetting about Kelmscott and Chaucer and floating down the marble stairs, through the lobby and out into the October Chicago sun, running across the park scattering small dogs and squirrels, whooping and rejoicing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She never explicitly says how she's feeling, but you have any doubt about what she's feeling at that moment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T23:17:31.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28312" CreationDate="2017-06-19T23:32:15.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your situation, I would consider three possible approaches but there are others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1. Tell several stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach just allows each protagonist to have their story arc against the antagonist. The antagonist is the character that ties these shorter stories together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this is a lot of work as you have to help the reader to care about each protagonist in each short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anthology stories, where there is an overarching story that runs across several shorter stories can be really interesting but they are much, much harder to make compelling. Only try this if you are very confident in your abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2. Use the antagonist as the point of view character (or even narrator)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This solves your hook character as the story is now essentially the rise and fall (tragedy) of the antagonist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the plus side, you will have an easy time creating a sympathetic antagonist but on the other side of that coin, the &amp;quot;protagonists&amp;quot; are likely to be less compelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effectively your antagonist is the tragic protagonist and your protagonists are now antagonists (it's all a matter of perspective after all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;3. Use a neutral audience surrogate character&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the approach that I would recommend for new writers. It gives you a single protagonist to tie the story together. Admittedly this character is effectively the side-kick to every other character and you will need to work hard to give them reasonable motivation to stay in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many ways, this is not so different from the &amp;quot;Tell several stories&amp;quot; plan. However, you are pretty much assured of interesting characters for your viewpoint character to interact with and someone for each successive protagonist to interact with. Which, trust me, makes characterisation a lot easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T23:32:15.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5689" CreationDate="2017-06-20T00:40:10.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a story right now and sometimes it's a little difficult to indicate the time has changed without literally saying &quot;Three days have passed and it's now Thursday.&quot; A subtle way to do it is to start the paragraph by saying what happened for the past amount of time. Amount of days later: For the past (insert amount) days, we rested and gathered our strength for the battle that awaited us across the horizon. Amount of years later: For the past (Insert amount) years, I faced many obstacles and overcame multiple challenges. I have grown as a person and developed into who I have always aspired to be. This is only one option of how to indicate a time lapse (change).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25473" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T00:40:10.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28767" CreationDate="2017-06-20T01:39:46.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hate to state the obvious but you could simply say it in the narrative. Not everything needs to be SHOWN. You may TELL one thing whilst showing another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For the first the first time in a long time Bob looked to the future with delightful enthusiasm. He smiled. &quot;Expiali - effing - docious!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For the first the first time in a long time Bob looked to the future with delightful enthusiasm. With a wry smile he untethered the rope and looked out over the horizon. Now was his time. &quot;To infinity and beyond!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I've thrown in a couple of cheap pop-culture references but they contribute to Bob's characterisation. There are 30 years between the two references. Is he reliving his childhood? May be its something he picked up from his grandkids?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T01:39:46.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28817" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-20T01:40:37.613" Score="3" ViewCount="7452" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently started trying my hand at some fiction writing for the first time. Already I reckon there are a lot of people out there that would say that I shouldn't be thinking about present tense if I'm so new and that I should learn past tense first, however, I'm just doing this as an exercise for now so please forgive my decision.  I have read people saying present tense is terrible, it's incredibly hard to do well and that it sticks out like a sore thumb when you're doing it poorly(which I think is actually a boon, it's easy to put down bad writing, It's nice when that bad writing sticks out!)  what I am struggling to find is a collection of excerpts that show the pinnacle of present tense. I want to read some excellent examples, I want to see the figures of rhetoric put to good use, but I can't seem to find any. I'm sure I could find some if I was to read through some of the popular present tense books out there but I don't really have time at the moment...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please share some of your favourite examples and tips for present tense fiction so that I can learn to recognise it! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I find what little I have written flows well enough but doesn't seem especially beautiful or interesting. Before I write any further I want to study a few excerpts and have a go at getting the first section decent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your guidance is appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I have noticed is that I seem to end up writing lines that read like an old text adventure game. And I also find myself writing he says she says type stuff, having to correct myself and make it more appealing. It seems more to do with my amateur status than the inclinations of a present tense writer, but I can't be sure. For example, I might( without thinking ) write something like &quot;he carries the heavy sack to the table&quot;  when I would rather write something like &quot;carrying the heavy sack he lays it on the table&quot; if you catch my drift. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also find that my writing when in the present tense naturally becomes very heavy in dialogue. I think that it could just be the format of the story I started writing as my first exercise, but it is indeed dialogue heavy. I quite like that the interruptions in dialogue feel more natural in present tense, for example, I can just break off into another character speaking and it seems natural to me, whereas if it was past tense I would feel like it was ill-considered if they are just interrupting the text midline with an ellipse. &quot;I can't believe you would say...&quot; &quot;well what else would I think? You're acting like a damned fool of late!&quot;  etc. Seems natural to me in present tense but if I read something like that in the context of a past tense peace, then I would think it was a little off. You wouldn't find that in someone's journal for example... it feels like the narrator should have taken into consideration the coming interjection and written around that in some way. But in present tense, it feels - to me at least - more like you're breathing life into the page whenever you read it. I find it seems reasonable to have interjections of this ilk, even when it is not directly narrated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your thoughts on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25297" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T18:02:57.933" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T18:02:57.933" Title="present tense fiction - examples of it done well and common pitfalls" Tags="|creative-writing|tenses|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28817" CreationDate="2017-06-20T03:28:09.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was going to post and example until I re-read your question and picked up on a couple of phrases: 'beautiful' and 'flows well'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of questions on this site asking about POV and tense - they are not really cosmetic style choices. They are tools and effects to help you best tell your story. If beautiful, free-flowing prose is you goal then present tense may not be the best weapon of choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story need not be exclusively past or present tense. For example we can use a change of tense to reflect a first-person narrator switching from telling a story to reliving it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not nice getting dumped. I admit I was moping around the apartment being moody. Bob, my house-mate couldn't take it any longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Come on, you,&quot; said Bob. &quot;Get dressed. We'll go down to the bar on the corner. Get a few drinks. Have a few laughs.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Bob gets an idea in his head he's like a dog with a frisbee. He wasn't taking no for an answer. We got so drunk. I don't remember getting home.&#xA;I wake. I hear Bob's voice. He's whispering &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;. I feel trapped - it's his weight. He's saying he loves me. He's inside me now. I want him to stop but I'm so drunk. I can't form words, only make incoherent sounds. No, Bob, no. What are you doing? I'm praying to God to make him stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must have blacked out again. Next thing I knew, I was pouring Cornflakes into my breakfast bowl.&#xA;&quot;Do you need a lift to work?&quot; Bob asked.&#xA;&quot;Sure,&quot; I replied. &quot;Give me ten minutes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Present tense will give you speed and immediacy, &lt;em&gt;Allegro&lt;/em&gt; for musicians. It is ideally suited to dialogue heavy scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jackie lies sprawled out on her bed like a starfish. The room is spinning. The sound of her own heartbeat pounds, echoing inside her ears, reverberating around her brain. The three-pointed light-fitting above her bed whirls around like a carousel. &quot;Make it stop. I feel sick.&quot; She tries to sit upright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You are wasted.&quot; Marcin pushes her back. &quot;Lie down before you fall down.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Please . . . God.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Tomorrow, you will have ugly dirty bastard hangover.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Ha-ha! Two strong arms.&quot; She reaches up, grabs his forearms, and tries to pull herself upright. She fails, and collapses back onto the bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Time for sleep,&quot; says Marcin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Moron. It's two strong arms, let me help. Not big strong arms,&quot; mumbles Jackie. &quot;Can't you get anything right?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I will try.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jackie closes her eyes. &quot;Please, I beg you. The spinning, make it stop.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You are begging me?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Yes, I'm begging you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Okay, there is trick I learn in Poland, but is secret.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Please . . . &quot; Jackie leans over the side of her bed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marcin moves the bowl to catch more of the contents of her stomach. &quot;Grilled chicken breast not look so good second time around.&quot; He holds the bowl at arms length as he takes it next door to the bathroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Don’t leave me.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I not leave you. I am here,&quot; he calls over the running water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Please make it stop. I’ll do anything,&quot; she says, slumping onto her back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I am here now.&quot; Marcin passes her a towel. &quot;You will do anything for to make feel better?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Yes. Anything.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Interesting proposition from drunk woman,&quot; he mumbles before taking back the towel from her and wiping the vomit from her chin. &quot;I want you to make promise.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I promise. I promise.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You not know what is yet.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I don’t care.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Present tense is also more difficult for manoeuvring around time lines. The 'past' is any period before now. 10 seconds ago or 1000 years ago - it's all the same tense. Present tense can only be now.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T03:28:09.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28750" CreationDate="2017-06-20T06:01:31.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely, and a number of Authors have had great, great success doing so. There's even a genre for it - Historical Fiction (or Alternate History depending on how you want to go)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bernard Cornwell is the first that springs to mind, he pretty much personifies this genre. Whether it's the &lt;em&gt;Last Kingdom&lt;/em&gt; series, or &lt;em&gt;Azincourt&lt;/em&gt;; he writes stories based on real and fictional events with real and fictional people, but he does it in a real setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest caveat, however, is to make it as realistic as possible, and make your research as thorough as you can. That's why Bernard Cornwell is so good at it, he researches and puts everything as close to accurate as he can. Anachronisms are kept to a minimum. The stories are immersive because of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also makes it clear that his stories are mostly based on historical events with historical and fictional characters, and even goes so far as to list (sometimes) who was real and any major deviations that he is aware of. He also lists his major sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Azincourt really is a good example of this, and I suggest you read it (if you haven't already). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18397" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T06:01:31.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28817" CreationDate="2017-06-20T13:54:44.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're having trouble finding novels in present tense, look for short stories. Many of my favorite stories are in present tense, They're some of the most beautiful, insightful, moving stories I've read but not, I think, specifically because they're in present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amy Hempel &quot;In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tony Earley &quot;The Prophet from Jupiter&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;George Saunders &quot;Pastoralia&quot; &quot;CivilWarLand in Bad Decline&quot; (and others)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lydia Davis &quot;Break It Down&quot; (though much of it speaks of the past)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aimee Bender, many of her stories in &lt;em&gt;The Girl in the Flammable Skirt&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Willful Creatures&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T13:54:44.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28804" CreationDate="2017-06-20T14:15:17.030" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kudos to Lord Matt who has provided a very robust and comprehensive answer. Firstly I'll continue to chip away at the 'everybody's equal' education theory. Twisted plots are born of a twisted mind - some people aren't built for this style of story-telling. It's very hard to teach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BETA READERS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the twist is the major feature don't burn beta readers. You can only use them once. On third viewing &quot;Sixth Sense&quot; isn't a very good film. Watching it for the first time you are in shock at the final revelation. On second viewing you are amazed how obvious the outcome was - and you missed it! Watch it again and you'll realise - without the twist it ain't all that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SETTING UP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting up for a good twist or twists requires superior intelligence, confidence, arrogance, and an inherent cruel streak. I measure my best twists by how many times I can show what's going on knowing you'll never get it because you're just too stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EMERGING TWISTS (The case against outlining).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a novel about a gangster and the cop who was trying to put him away. A mild twist was the gangster was too smart for cop. The cop became the villain and the gangster became the hero when the cop started venturing further over the line to catch the gangster. To add a little spice to the story and ramp up the conflict I had the cop's daughter ( a state prosecutor) fall in love with, and marry, the gangster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this story drew to a close I took a read through. The gangster who was, deep down, a good guy had ensured that his wife was well out of the way. If the shit hit the fan she had an alibi and could never be convicted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading my own novel it occurred to me . . . he wasn't giving her alibis she was creating her own. Throughout the entire saga this secondary character had been the puppet-master all along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FOR WHO THE PENNY DROPS (This is going to be long)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing a novel full of dark twists and turns you must be aware of different qualities of reader. e.g. The opening of &quot;Little Miss Lightning&quot; is blatant misdirection. I know what I'm writing but I know what the reader thinks I'm saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Berlin, Germany&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The group of young girls stood in the rain, stripped, ready, in a huddle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cold blue eyes made a cursory inspection of each individual. &quot;Behind the line,&quot; he grunted, motioning with one hand. His gun, in the other, pointed downwards. Droplets of rain fell from the muzzle onto the ochre-stained ground. &quot;You will be eliminated. Step back, behind the line.&quot; He pushed one of the girls. &quot;Schnell! Schnell!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The girl edged back, shaking, fighting back tears. Her bare thighs blue with cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carlene looked over to the frightened girl; for a brief moment pity for the other momentarily threatened to weaken her resolve. She turned away. Now was not the time to be pitying others. It was every girl for herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man strode back to his position, swinging his pistol as he walked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carlene watched, eyes filled with hatred, fixed on the gun. Her thoughts travelled to her grandfather and brother at home in England, and how she missed them since she’d been taken from her school three weeks earlier. She’d been held with the others at that awful camp for the first two weeks until she was transferred here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another voice instilled silence, &quot;Fertig.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carlene didn’t understand. She trembled, watching as he raised and pointed the gun. In the silence, she closed her eyes for a long second. The long second lingered, she peeked, just in time to see his finger squeezing the trigger. The moment she heard the shot, her mind told her to run. All around she could hear screaming, shouting, and mayhem. When her throat began to burn and her lungs felt as if to explode, fear told her not to stop - just keep running, as fast as she could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I know what you think that was. The heading &quot;Berlin, Germany&quot; put the blinkers on you, and after that you got played like a cheap fiddle. However, the start of the next scene catches up the smarter readers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Three years later&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As they round the top bend and come on to the home straight, Salter is powering away. There is daylight between him and the German athlete . . . Oh my word!&quot; The commentator’s voice buzzed with excitement. &quot;A scintillating performance. That – is an amazing time. We knew he was in the form of his life but the clock’s stopped at 44.05 seconds, a new Commonwealth record, and the fastest time in the world this year. And that's maximum points for Great Britain.&quot;&#xA;An athlete clad in the UK strip of sky blue Lycra bent over, hands on knees, breathing heavily, head raised, watching a replay of his own performance on the big screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From this point on I'm writing for two sets of readers. Set(A) have worked out that the opening scene was the start of a race in a track and field meeting. Set(B) remain adamant that my character escaped from a Nazi concentration camp. I must continue the story whilst appeasing both audiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At some point I have catch everybody up. I go eight chapters before our rising track and field star appears on a cookery show and explains chapter 1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The presenter read from a card. &quot;Question number one from Helen in Essex. Why did you decide to become an athlete?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carlene leaned back as she thought. &quot;I don’t know that I chose athletics. Although as a child I can always remember I seemed to be running. Originally, I wanted to play football, I suppose. One day I took the boys’ ball away because they wouldn’t let me play. They chased me all over the park but none of them could catch me. After that, my granddad would drop me off at Crystal Palace Athletics Club whenever the boys were playing. He says it did it to keep the peace and to give me a creative outlet for my excessive energy. It was all good clean fun until I turned seventeen. They thought I was good enough to go to the European Schools Championships in Berlin. I thought ‘great’, a free holiday and I’d get out of doing revision for my exams.&quot; She rolled her eyes theatrically. &quot;Wrong on both counts! Holiday? The Third Reich never did close down those concentration camps – trust me on that. It was the first time I’d been away from home on my own, and it scared the . . . life out of me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;And I bet you still had to revise.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Didn’t we just, in solitary confinement, locked up inside the training camp. Because we were all still at school they had tutors and supervisors out there. But they were guards really – we all knew it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;How’d you get on out there?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I won the title. I was so scared I did a bit of a Forrest Gump. &lt;strong&gt;The moment the gun went off, my one and only thought was ‘run, Carlene, run!’&quot; She pumped her arms. &quot;I was running as fast as I could waiting for the crowd to hold up a banner saying. &quot;Stop, Carlene, stop.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T14:15:17.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-20T15:02:29.380" Score="2" ViewCount="6239" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not want numbered lists, I want to number each page of my text. How do I achieve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25483" LastEditorUserId="7926" LastEditDate="2017-06-26T19:47:23.380" LastActivityDate="2022-10-13T17:34:13.900" Title="How do I number chapter pages in scrivener?" Tags="|non-fiction|scrivener|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28625" CreationDate="2017-06-20T15:21:26.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, the answer comes down to two questions: How much of what you know about the character are you going to use in the text? And what does story structure dictate with respect to how much time you can spend on character development and other aspects of the story such as the conflict?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to differentiate between how much you show about the character in the story and how much you know about the character in total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.e. there's character development in the text, and there's character development &quot;beside&quot; the text. And how much of each do you need to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you put everything you know about your character in the story, one of two problems will likely occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a lot of info about your character and put everything in, the story risks becoming bloated and you probably deny the reader any &quot;imagination between the lines&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand, your story is well sized, but you don't know more about your character than what you have put in the story, the risk is there are no &quot;hidden depths&quot; in the story. The character risks becoming boring and flat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone once told me you should know 100 times more about your character than what you put in the text. I am not sure that's good or bad advice. I guess it comes down to how you count to 100.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, regardless, you should know more about your character than what you put in the text, and the text should have a &quot;sane&quot; word count. Or, in fact, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/secrets-story-structure-complete-series/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a sane structure&lt;/a&gt;, meaning, in most cases, you cannot spend the whole story detailing the character's backstory and hope to sell it as a story worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which brings us to question two:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much time can you spend on character development with respect to story structure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question has two answers. First, and foremost, every word about your character, her actions, thoughts, and emotions should reflect who she is, where she's been and where she's going, so you can spend 100% of your story developing your characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially since story plot and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/write-character-arcs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;character arc&lt;/a&gt; should be the same. Or, to put it another way: the external story should be a metaphor for the character's internal development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless: Character development should equal story plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to answer the question is to look at story structure and where it will be dominated by conflict and plot and where it will be dominated by introducing the story (and character).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's boil it down to actual word counts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an average novel is 100 000 words (you can recalculate for other sizes) the first plot point should happen at about 20-25% (20 000 - 25 000 words into the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is when your characters are being slapped with a catastrophe that will require them to start acting. From now on there's very little room for character development in the sense that you spend time introducing a character. You still have actions and mannerisms, and of course, there should be some low points where someone could tell a story from their past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you risk being confusing if your readers don't know who the characters are at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Confusing, or boring. Because reading about a car accident with someone you don't know is like reading a newspaper article, while reading about someone you know being in the same accident is a completely different thing. You want the latter when you write the &quot;car crash&quot; that is the first plot point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, your reader should probably know all your &lt;strong&gt;major&lt;/strong&gt; characters already at the &quot;inciting event&quot; (which in my parlance occurs halfway into the first act, i.e. at 10% - 12.5%, 10 000 to 12 500 words into the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The inciting event is the point where the characters are being affected by the story directly for the first time, so up to that point your writing does not have to be so much about the conflict. You can spend more time on the characters instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10 000 to 25 000 words to develop your characters to the point where the reader cares what happens to them in a car crash isn't much at all. And at the same time, since you should know more about your characters than what you put in the text you still have to have a sheet of info even on the most minor of characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to give every character an ambition and a goal, even the cab driver that only transports the main character from point A to B. That way I can figure out if s/he's an angry cab driver, a happy cab driver or if s/he's daydreaming about a completely different place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there you could &quot;draw a line&quot; to the most fleshed out characters you have (the protagonist and the antagonist?) and put all the other characters somewhere in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastEditorUserId="10826" LastEditDate="2017-06-20T15:39:14.580" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T15:39:14.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28781" CreationDate="2017-06-20T15:36:58.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not very big but I do recommend Storybird.com. Not only is it an online writing platform but it also is a website where you are able to read your own and other people's stories. You can also buy books from there. Each chapter is moderated to ensure that there are no copyright issues. If you want to publish your book without anyone seeing it, you can publish it privately. You can also download the PDF format. The prices are not too expensive and you can buy your book in hardcover or paperback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25368" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T15:36:58.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28822" CreationDate="2017-06-20T15:45:07.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe Scrivner is just like most programs, in that you want to look at formatting on the header or footer to add page numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to Page Settings&gt; Header and Footer tab&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There you set what you need. Page numbers should be in there as an option. (there are tons of options--no page number on the first page if you're doing a title page, that sort of thing)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I have no idea how you want your pages numbered (settings like centered, to the left, or in the corners of facing pages) I can only point you in the direction of where to start. Good luck! Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T15:45:07.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28625" CreationDate="2017-06-20T16:01:22.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll go right ahead and declare that you're far too versed in 'writing theory' than the practise of writing itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the writing techniques being questioned are related. Once you understand that basic fact all the other technical terms fall into place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with the basic &quot;SHOW DON'T TELL&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an egotistical writer you are itching to tell YOUR story but it's not YOUR story it's the character's story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BAD WRITING&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to tell us that Bob's wife had left him and ever since he'd taken to drinking after work - don't do it. SHOW us Bob dragging his young intern Vanessa (a secondary character) to the bar every night after work. Bob confides in Vanessa but the more Bob talks and Vanessa listens you are developing both characters. Why does Vanessa put up with this shit? Does she fear for her job? How far will she go to get ahead? Or does she fancy her boss? Or maybe she's just a good listener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time characters interact you are developing both characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T16:01:22.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28802" CreationDate="2017-06-20T16:04:19.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me boredom is usually a sign that I'm lacking focus and the easiest way to force myself to focus is to have deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deadlines can be external (I need to have a clean draft to the writing group by Sunday night at 10pm, the contest submission is next Tuesday, etc.) or internal (see the pomodoro technique), but just knowing I need to make progress is enough to get me moving forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21777" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T16:04:19.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28828" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28853" CreationDate="2017-06-20T17:53:22.397" Score="4" ViewCount="562" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know I've recently asked a lot of questions. But I do have a lot of questions, I'm a curious kid who wants to do things right...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I make the character similar to the one I like, but not so similar I'm stealing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get motivated by my obsessions. Some people have obsessions of sweet treats, singers, or hobbies.&#xA;I usually get obsessed by characters. And I might sometimes add a character &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; that character to my story.&#xA;Some of the characters I add seem a bit too close to what I'm getting inspiration from. &#xA;Like, if a character had white wings, mine might have white wings. (Just an example)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24839" LastEditorUserId="2533" LastEditDate="2018-07-17T17:47:06.343" LastActivityDate="2018-07-17T17:47:06.343" Title="How to not steal characters" Tags="|characters|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28828" CreationDate="2017-06-20T18:20:10.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Practice makes perfect. And right now, that's what you are doing. Your practice might develop into viable stories, but for now, just give yourself over to the creative process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only if you are selling or presenting the work in an academic setting as original should you be worried. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's considered good etiquette to acknowledge inspirations if they are close. You can do that in the beginning outside of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many authors start with Fan Fic as a jumping off point (which definitely steals characters outright).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to how to &quot;make the character similar to the one I like, but not so similar I'm stealing?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a tough one--you are saying you get obsessed, so it's going to be similar by definition--and similar enough that it will look like a copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to play the what if game, and then lift them into a different setting. &quot;What if Beast from the X-men were a ruthless businessman instead of a scientist? And he was the main character? And there were no X-men? And what if it was 1910? And what if his skin were purple instead of blue?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you completely remove them from the setting AND OTHER CHARACTERS IN THEIR OLD SETTING, make the plot different, also throw in as many what-ifs as you possibly can, and you make sure and change the name--then you have a different character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plenty of comic book heroes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.therichest.com/expensive-lifestyle/entertainment/10-comic-book-characters-that-marvel-stole-from-dc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;follow this&lt;/a&gt;. The similarities are...well... more than striking. Character templates are one thing, but know when it crosses the line--like having the same origin story or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these are out-right total and complete rip-offs, like Deadpool. But because Deadpool has an element that the original Deathstroke didn't (the 4th wall awareness) Deadpool is more remembered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T18:20:10.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28830" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-20T19:00:44.330" Score="4" ViewCount="1830" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my story there are some words in there that even &lt;em&gt;Grammarly&lt;/em&gt; couldn't understand, but they make sense in the story. They're slang, or things teenagers might say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of what I am talking about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hank was wearing his sweatpants and a flimsy t-shirt, Haku wore his white gym shorts and a light yellow tank top that said “#THUG LYFE” on it. Tim smirked at the youth, wishing he were that young again. A sudden realization occurred to him. That he had never told Haku about why he respected his father so much. “Boy, I have a story for you, but when you are done cooking you may hear it. You might want to sit down for it, it’s a very long story,” he said. Haku looked excited for the story, his eyes flashed a sincere curiosity for a moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Whoa, what’s up with the old timey funstuffs?” asked Haku. He reached&#xA;  up to touch the gate and it opened on its own. Almost like it knew he&#xA;  was there. As Ryu walked behind his friend, there was an obvious&#xA;  atmosphere that Haku didn’t notice. Not right away, at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ok to use fake words like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T21:14:21.890" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T11:03:19.647" Title="Is it okay to have made up words/slang in a story?" Tags="|dialogue|word-choice|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28822" CreationDate="2017-06-20T21:44:19.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;File &gt; Compile &gt; Page settings&lt;/strong&gt;, you can set the header using formatting codes found under &lt;strong&gt;Help &gt; Place Holder Tags List&lt;/strong&gt;. E.g. &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;$p&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; will print the page number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also find &lt;strong&gt;Compile&lt;/strong&gt; as a shortcut icon in the center of the top frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is for the Mac version of Scrivener.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T21:44:19.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28833" CreationDate="2017-06-20T21:47:33.700" Score="2" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an idea that follows the story line of another story. The plot device is similar, but the setting, context, majority of characters (with the exception of maybe two or three), and outcomes are different. There are some similar scenes and dialogue. To me the story I'm following is influential and inspired me to write what I did, but how do I know if I infringed on someone's copyright? &#xA;I definitely had to create a lot of the work from scratch, probably 70%. The other 30% is different (not copying verbatim) from but similar to the other work.&#xA;I don't think my work will be grossly popular nor very profitable. I understand somebody coming after you if you made millions, but I hardly believe my work will bring in the millions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T22:17:31.337" Title="copyright infringement" Tags="|copyright|plagiarism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28832" CreationDate="2017-06-20T22:17:31.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a clear breach of copyright. You cannot use somebody else's characters or story. Fan Fiction is permitted at the original author's discretion but it cannot be sold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a few exceptions characters from works where the copyright has expired (70 years in the US) may be used e.g. Tarzan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about it: if we could use other people's characters we could all be raking it in writing Harry Potter books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parody and Satire are exceptions but again - it's complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T22:17:31.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28830" CreationDate="2017-06-20T23:35:58.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as what you are looking for, I found in google with a few seconds of googling &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=is%20it%20okay%20to%20use%20slang%20in%20writing&amp;amp;oq=is%20it%20okay%20to%20use%20slang%20in%20writing&amp;amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.3567j0j7&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;is it okay to use slang in writing&lt;/a&gt;&quot; a link to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writingishardwork.com/2012/07/06/how-to-use-slang-in-writing-dialogue/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;.  As with most things, using slang takes a bit of tact.  too much of it can sound childish (which was another question of yours) but you may want to use enough to get the point across still.  Is there a reason for the slang?  Often times slang is used to depict culture/lack of education/being from certain regions.  If the slang is thrown in just for the sake of it, I would advise NOT to unless it is relevant to the story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems in your case, the youthful term #ThugLyfe triggers a memory that leads into a flashback story and it does appear to have a purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Old timey funstuff&quot; might be better left as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;what is up with all this fun stuff?&quot; Haku playfully jeered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, there seems to be little relevance to adding slang unless you are using it to denote reasons as mentioned above and it would come off as less childish.  Adding that it was playful and jeered, let's the reader know it was said in a certain tone and gives the reader's imagination the ability to play with those words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found &lt;a href=&quot;https://writeitsideways.com/how-to-use-not-abuse-jargon-slang-and-idioms/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; which should help give you some understanding about slang/idioms/jargon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I would advise caution when using slang as it can be off-putting to readers if they feel the story is too childish/too slangy so make sure you do it with purpose and not just thrown in for the sake of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T23:35:58.700" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-21T00:21:12.167" Score="3" ViewCount="335" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to achieve the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To produce a work that is well-organized and full of substance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To produce a work in which each thought flows smoothly to the next.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To produce a work that is perfectly clear and coherent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To produce a work that has poetic cadence or prose rhythm, comparable to that of the King James Bible or some other rhythmical work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have often tried writing sentences and revising as I go, trying to apply few rules about metrical feet, being dissatisfied with the sound, not having barely anything written, and finally giving up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be rules for clarity. I have a book on it and it is not difficult to apply. But there are no rules for prose rhythm, and before I can ever get my thoughts out I have already tried rearranging words and looking up words in a thesaurus and given up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I did write something with good prose rhythm once five years ago. I don’t have it anymore, unfortunately. So I know that at least I had the ability to write in the rhythm that that piece had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25421" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T10:40:37.023" Title="What writing process should I use to produce the kind of writing I want?" Tags="|process|rhythm|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28830" CreationDate="2017-06-21T00:36:00.650" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In dialogue use whatever language represents that character. The language doesn't need to be understood by the reader, only the other characters. The majority of slang and made up words are easily understood in context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative is the unbelievable scenario where every teen character speaks the Queen's English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it ironic that ggaquin advises against the use of slang and made up word but the proceeds to 'google' further information. Far from being 'childish' slang is a WIP for future dictionaries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much to Google's dismay google was adopted as a verb in 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T00:36:00.650" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28835" CreationDate="2017-06-21T02:16:45.433" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Experience and the capability to learn. There's no formula for what you want. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T02:16:45.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28835" CreationDate="2017-06-21T09:35:16.153" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) You're trying to write your final polished draft on your first shot. It won't happen. Focus on one goal at a time. First determine your substance. Then organize it. Then &lt;em&gt;write it.&lt;/em&gt; Never mind how it sounds. Just get it on paper. Your inner editor is becoming an inner censor. You can fix it later. Give yourself permission to suck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &quot;Clear and coherent&quot; is in the mind of the reader. You can do your best, but there are no guarantees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Are you trying to write prose or poetry? They have different rules. You can fine-tune some phrasing in prose, but it's not about the sprung rhythm of the text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) The poetic rendering of the KJV Bible is in opposition to &quot;clear and coherent.&quot; You can aim for clear, or you can aim for poetic and lovely, but aiming for both at the same time will just make you shoot yourself in the foot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T09:35:16.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9618" CreationDate="2017-06-21T10:09:26.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered a variation of the spelling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write short stories and recently fell in love with the name &quot;Guilbeau.&quot; I checked around and learned there are quite a few, so I will use a pen name, &quot;Guilbow Grady,&quot; which changes the name slightly to one that should't be a problem. I will let you know if there is any &quot;dustup&quot; for any of the real Guilbeau...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25494" LastEditorUserId="1046" LastEditDate="2017-06-25T06:07:42.647" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T06:07:42.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28840" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-21T14:01:12.550" Score="7" ViewCount="1503" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the latest years, i've developed my two main writing-related hobbies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Conventional&quot; writing: short stories and a wanna-be novel, far from being completed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roleplaying in a forum &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roleplaying, aside from being fun, has helped me grow a lot as a writer and meet people interested in storytelling, and that's great. But I feel the two activities are inherently in conflict with each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Posts in a forum are shorter, easier and they don't usually require a large scale plot or a larger view of the events to be written. Also, social interaction is a big plus, since other players can give you input. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is: I feel RPlaying is draining what little creativity I have. I always dreamt of being a writer, and even if I scaled down those dreams to size, I'd like to finish writing a story. Beginning to end. But my own story seems less-rewarding, less interesting than the stories I can make interacting with other people on the forums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, aside from motivational issues (that I may have):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I stop roleplaying, even if it may be a good writing exercise? &#xA;In general, what are your thoughts on the matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25495" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-10-07T04:11:13.723" LastActivityDate="2019-10-07T04:11:13.723" Title="Writing vs roleplaying (by forum)" Tags="|creative-writing|time-management|roleplaying|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28840" CreationDate="2017-06-21T14:55:00.573" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I would argue against your assertion that your creativity is in limited supply and that when you exercise your imagination through role playing you are somehow diminishing the quantity of creativity which you can apply to your writing.  In my experience, creativity is a muscle.  The more you use it, the stronger it gets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are in limited supply are your time and your attention.  If your writing is hungering for more time and attention than you can give it, that is great.  It means that you have the bug and that no matter what happens from here, you are a writer.  The addiction to craft stories is incurable, so get used to being frustrated about not having as much writing time as you desire.  Add a little discipline to your time-management and find a way to feed (though never satisfy) your need to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that what you are experiencing is purely attention based.  Every time you engage in role playing, you become focused in someone else's creation, that of either your game master or the game's publisher.  It could be that your current story is jealous of the attention that you aren't spending on it.  There are times in any writing projects when I have to put down my nightly novel habit, fall behind on my tv shows and give every free moment to the story I am crafting.  That is the nature of being in any relationship.  Sometimes they are demanding and sometimes they are not.  Again, this is a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are just starting out as a writer.  In that case, practice writing is probably more valuable to you than focusing on your far-from-complete first novel.  Short stories are a great way to start, but their brevity offers little opportunity to practice plot-development and scene-organization.  Your role playing doesn't suffer from that brevity.  Most quests go on for months and contain more details than can possibly fit into a single book.  Why not practice your writing by becoming the unofficial chronicler of your role playing adventures.  After each role playing session, scribble down the major events which occurred as a brief outline, then arrange that outline into a scene list and then flesh out each scene with artfully crafted prose.  What you end up with, may not be publication quality, but it will exercise your writing skills and may exorcise (at least temporarily) your need to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not everything which you write needs to be bound for publication.  Everything you write, if crafted thoughtfully and carefully,  will ultimately make you a better writer.   ...and the same is true for creativity in general.  The more you use it, the stronger your imagination will become.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep Writing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T14:55:00.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="236" CreationDate="2017-06-21T18:19:17.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditional publishing pays the author about $1 per hardback and $.50 on each paperback sale. Midlist authors usually get advances in the $10,000 range for a first run hardback. With the goal to make back their advance on the first year of sales. And then to switch to a paperback that gives them royalties that decline every year thereafter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a book goes to another printing at a later date, you can ask for a refresher royalty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many publishers use basket accounting. Which says you make no money besides the advances until you have paid back all previous advances. So if book one does not earn back your advance, you will see no royalties beyond the advance on book two until it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25385" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T18:19:17.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28840" CreationDate="2017-06-21T18:25:40.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really doubt these two have to complete, except in the sense of time management already covered by Mr. Taylor! Are you aware of the role playing system »Das Schwarze Auge«, called »&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Eye&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Dark Eye&lt;/a&gt;« (TDE) in English? They have published well over 200 novels set in their world! All writers that I know of are players as well. Some excellent stories clearly originated from role playing. There is even a series  of short stories called »Der Kristall von Al'Zul« , that I found particularly inspiring, for each story is narrated by a different character and none but two are written by the same author. Those authors wrote the books after they played together, thought I can't check how exactly it happened, since I lent the first volume to a friend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Role playing is the best way I can imagine when you want to test which ways a story could go. Players consistently succeed in surprising even a seasoned game master! The only problem I see is having to share intellectual property rights if other people's ideas are more than just a fraction of the whole...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several German fantasy authors whose work is set in their own worlds have been greatly influenced by TDE. One of these is Richard Schwartz. He even used some names of TDE deities for completely different ones in his own universe. To my (considerable) knowledge he never got into any trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ulrich Kiesow, the inventor of TDE, wrote three books of which I know, though one, I believe, was published after his very early demise. Two of these are excellent. In short, you can become a great writer even if you develop the role playing system with the most detailed meta plot I have seen! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21535" LastEditorUserId="21535" LastEditDate="2017-12-16T14:30:33.673" LastActivityDate="2017-12-16T14:30:33.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28835" CreationDate="2017-06-21T18:30:49.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Simple&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Sit down and write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Finish what you have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- Edit/polish your work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4- Emerge with a quality, coherent, well-thought off product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this sounds facetious but that's really it. Start by writing &amp;quot;something&amp;quot; and get it complete. Then go back to it and make it better. (Rinse and repeat, as long as you want).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very few writers can come up with a finished product right off the bat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note you did not say when to end such a product... (that's a WHOLE other answer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24664" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T18:30:49.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-21T19:36:18.473" Score="1" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend is writing a book, but he plans far ahead. I just think of a thing and write it, and if it doesn't make sense, I tweak it to fit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it mandatory to plan in advance what will go on in the story, or is it okay to just free write and edit later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24976" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-06-21T20:47:13.790" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T20:47:13.790" Title="Planning ahead or going with the flow?" Tags="|novel|planning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-06-22T13:22:09.713" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28846" CreationDate="2017-06-21T19:54:18.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you have already detected, there are many ways to write a book and every author brings something new to the process.  If careening into an unknown future is a comfortable writing style for you, then best of luck in your endeavors.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Just cause I don't know where I am going, doesn't mean that I am lost.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you get weary of randomly rambling around in your fictional world, there are many, many other approaches which have worked for successful authors in the past.  Be open to new experiences, including the to-you-heretical experience of planning ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T19:54:18.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28846" CreationDate="2017-06-21T19:55:30.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're not required to write your story in any particular way. Just write it. (You might be interested in this essay by Anne Lamott called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%20Drafts.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shitty First Drafts&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (PDF))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T19:55:30.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-21T21:38:40.863" Score="6" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally I never write prose. After much world building I now feel the need to. Ever since I resolved to at least pen down a draft, things get curiouser and curiouser. For when I sit down to write a short scene, I start doing so in English, which is my third language. I don't know why that happens. Perhaps I read too many English works lately, or I subconsciously associate fantasy with English, or I don't want to write I in the ornate poetic style I've cultivated in both Greek and German. I doubt that I will ever publish prose. Should I force myself to refrain from writing in this foreign language, that will certainly make me commit a hundred silly mistakes, or is there any reason to go with the flow and perhaps change it later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way my poetry &quot;happens&quot; and which I now apply to my first prose draft is the following: I receive a stimulus, often music. Then I sense I have to write a poem and that feeling is accompanied by a special feeling of discomfort, which only goes away if I write the poem. At some point a sentence forms in my mind and I start writing the poem with only a vague sense of how it will look like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now pretty much the same happens with my draft, only that the sentence which forms in my mind, the seed if you will, is in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21535" LastEditorUserId="21535" LastEditDate="2017-06-21T22:38:11.667" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T09:34:24.023" Title="Is writing in a foreign language a brilliant way to shoot oneself in the foot?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28850" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-22T02:02:44.490" Score="9" ViewCount="2304" Body="&lt;p&gt;I intend to write a science fantasy where dream world plays as important role as reality. The dream world stated has quite a distinct feel from the real world, and it is integral to the plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dream—although absurd—feels like reality when we dream about it. Only after we wake up, we register its absurdness and pass it off as a dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my story, dream world is the alternate reality. The characters, when in dream, feel every bit of it and perceive it as reality. However, when I write about it, the readers are bound to notice that it is distinctively​ different from the real scenario–which will drastically reduce the effectiveness of the narrative. I'd want the readers to get into the dream and feel it just like the characters and jolt out of it when​ the characters realize it is a dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, how do I blur the line between dream and reality so that it is difficult for the readers to identify if it is a dream or reality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: The closest example I can find of such narrative is the movie &lt;em&gt;Inception&lt;/em&gt;. It started with a dream sequence and had a scene in between where the dream seemed real. But it is not helping as I'd want the readers to pass absurdity as reality–the way we feel when we dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25453" LastEditorUserId="22074" LastEditDate="2017-06-22T06:26:20.893" LastActivityDate="2022-12-19T20:03:58.030" Title="How do I blur the line between dream and reality?" Tags="|creative-writing|technique|narrative|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28850" CreationDate="2017-06-22T05:05:38.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're suggesting is very easy. It is probably the way you're thinking about it that makes it seem complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no difference between a dream and an extended thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A man wakes up goes to the bathroom, looks into the mirror and proceeds to brush his teeth. He kisses his wife and child goodbye and sets off work. At work he has a really bad day. He gets fired. He goes to pub and gets drunk. Finally he has the courage to face his wife so he get into his car and drives home. On the way home he's not paying attention. He runs over a child on a crossing. During the collision the air bag is deployed. His lips and gums are damaged. He spits the blood out of his mouth. He looks down the blood is not red, it's white. He finishes brushing his teeth, kisses his pregnant wife goodbye, and heads off to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You were unaware he was daydreaming until you were told, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T05:05:38.253" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28850" CreationDate="2017-06-22T08:47:50.213" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're unable to make the dream less absurd? Make the reality less real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give it some events that are absurd - things that happen, have a hidden, plausible explanation, but at a glance are bizarre enough to make it feel like a dream. Through some skillful stylistic maneuvers you can make the two realities equally eerie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some foreign dignitary is visiting the town, all roads blocked, armed forces preparing route for the column. And there's a demonstration of people dressed up in most fantastic clothes, medieval, fantasy, and just outright bizarre; these are actors from the local theatre, who protest a political decision of replacing their director with the nephew of the mayor. And they refuse to change the route of their demonstration and get in a fight with the police, and all you want is to get to your home, as you witness a cop in riot gear savagely beating the Harlequin with a baton, blood staining the white-and-black clothing and tall cone hat, and you're just angry that they must be doing it in the middle of the road, blocking your way, a big bouquet of begonias for your wife wilting on the back seat...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there's a scene transition, and the reality is &lt;em&gt;entirely different&lt;/em&gt;, but &lt;em&gt;equally bizarre&lt;/em&gt;. And the reader is completely unable to tell which is the reality, and which is the dream until you decide to make the distinction, explain one set of events, show physical absurdities in the other...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T08:47:50.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28828" CreationDate="2017-06-22T09:26:29.307" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Learning is copying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Erin pointed out, writers tend to go through a fan fiction stage. I did. A crucial difference, however, is that I did not start my &quot;writing career&quot; with fan fics. I always told stories. When I was a kid that had just learned how to write, I invented my own version of Atlantis and wrote a story about a girl that had to find her parents. (My mother had type it into our computer, because I was too young to do it myself.) After this, it was a story about an native American girl that was, by magic, transported to medieval Paris. That was in 2001 and this very weird story about cross-Atlantic communication produced a set of characters that I still love today. Only afterwards did I start to write fan fictions. I loved Harry Potter (and, yes, Dragonball) and was so curious about the characters I had to invent my &quot;own&quot; stories about them. Characters, for me, are the essence of a story, so it was natural for me to tell my stories with &quot;stolen&quot; characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's where things finally went wrong. At some point, I realized that the characters I loved so much were not suitable to tell my stories. On the contrary, they severely restricted my stories. I remember the last fan fic I wrote, a kind of bridge story -- it was about a Harry Potter character that got Shanghaied into a (literal) mirror world and had to find his way back. And guess who populated the mirror world? The characters I invented for my Paris story, and a bald priest suffering from cancer. (The things you remember ... If I could free up all the space in my brain that is occupied by useless knowledge, I'm pretty sure I could win a Nobel prize.) When I wrote this fan fic, I realized: Hey, your own characters are much more fun to work with, and your stories are not limited by the rules of external worlds. You can make up your own rules and craft the world you use exactly to the needs of your story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You won't believe how liberating this was. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a more abstract sense, what happened to me is this: I always had a craving to tell stories. During my &quot;learning stage&quot;, I shamelessly &quot;stole&quot; the characters that I loved and explored what kind of stories I liked. At some point, I had developed my own style, and that was when &quot;stolen&quot; characters were not sufficient anymore to tell the stories that I love. I think, writing fan fics was an important step for me to learn how to use and harvest my individual creativity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To answer your question&lt;/strong&gt;: Keep writing. Find out what it is that fascinates you about the characters you are obsessed with. Distill this fascination and put it into into your own stories. With time, these stories will become ever more genuine -- and at this point, you will learn to love your own characters better than external characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, keep in mind that characters don't pop into your head fully fledged. You need to get to know them, and that requires work and a lot of time. The more you work with your characters, the more distinct they will become from characters that are external to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Side note: I've noticed that there's certain archetypes of characters that keep recurring. Remember the Paris characters I mentioned earlier? One of them started out as the chief of a band of gypsies. In later stories, he turned into a sailor, and these days he's the bosun of a cruise ship from the 1960s. I radically changed his background and surroundings, but he still, in essence, is the same character. And the fun thing? He turns up in other stories, too, especially from female or gay German authors. The first time I noticed was in Cornelia Funke's Inkheart. I needed two sentences about Dustfinger to be absolutely sure: Hey, that's actually my character, but with a different name. I never had to revise this statement, because it turned out to be true, even after three volumes. I haven't understood yet, why this is, but I swear that I developed my character 100% independently from Inkheart.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T09:26:29.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28854" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28855" CreationDate="2017-06-22T10:50:40.810" Score="3" ViewCount="2387" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm &lt;s&gt;writing&lt;/s&gt; a story that features an alien character, who happens to be a really &quot;internet troll&quot;-ish type with a somewhat godlike tech and a personal army of robots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He/She (?) is fond of Earth's history and likes contradictions, which leads to massive amounts of Earth references, especially offensive/taboo ones&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure if it would be considered offensive if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The most diverse (in a racial sense) group of organics (non-robots), that accompanies the robots, is called &quot;The Waffle SS&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The good faction, that follows the Geneva Convention to a fault, has a really similar aesthetics to that of the Nazis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The railguns (as the story is sci-fi) used by the good faction are all named after infamous mass-shooters, based on what weapon they used (e.g: the SMG is called &quot;Klebold&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So things that are connected to the Nazis and evil people (and aren't evil by themselves (i.e: not gas chambers or gulags), make an appearance in it, but the ideologies of the good faction are straightforward the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would this still be considered offensive by the majority of the readers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update 1: I forgot to mention this snippet from the beginning of the book, and it's important in determining the underlying tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This book is dedicated to Hitler, who taught us so much about fighting&#xA;  for what we believe in. Rest in pepperoni— Aubergine Man&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25507" LastEditorUserId="25507" LastEditDate="2017-09-10T14:24:01.533" LastActivityDate="2017-09-10T14:24:01.533" Title="Offensive aesthetics and naming conventions?" Tags="|style|naming|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28854" CreationDate="2017-06-22T11:25:51.487" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can be sure you'll offend &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt;. This is unavoidable in this day and age. Peppa the Pig offends Muslims, Bob the Builder presents patriarchal stereotypes, Teletubbies are satanistic, and NASA is the HQ of &lt;em&gt;Them&lt;/em&gt;. I can guarantee anything that isn't dead serious about nazi themes will be met with some offense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Satire, though, is mostly accepted. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Producers_(1968_film)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Producers&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is a successful example where nazi-themed satire was found hilarious by majority big enough that the haters were silenced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; make Nazi references. Make it in a way that's self-conscious, make the awkwardness blatant, lampshade it, taunt the conflict, make some genuinely nice characters really unhappy with the convention, in short - make it comedy gold. Not just a smirk or a chuckle, but a full-belly guffaw power of humor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I see now, you're not getting near there. Your text won't be taken as a satire, but as a Nazi apologist propaganda. Subtle humor is a good thing in general, but easily missed, and when missing it hits a spot as sore, you're in trouble. For this sort of theme you'll need broad strokes and approach that doesn't depend on the reader being above-average smart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T11:25:51.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28849" CreationDate="2017-06-22T11:40:30.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing in a foreign language opens up &quot;alternatives&quot; to you. Each language has its own &quot;mind set,&quot; and its own way of expressing things. So if you write the same thing in three different languages, you will (ideally) get three different points of view. This would not be &quot;shooting yourself in the foot&quot; but a way of getting different variations of the same story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you will want to get the grammar correct in each language, but that is a relatively easy task (compared to the creative writing part). In a real pinch, you could hire a native speaker to correct your grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T11:40:30.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28857" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-22T11:56:06.700" Score="2" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;World builders disease is a medical condition in which a person becomes so invested and obsessed with building their world that they forget to write the story that goes with it. Their minds are so filled with great ideas but they never make it to print. Common Symptoms include obsessive attention to detail, constant re-editing, severe diarrhea , procrastination, fear of opinions, and over-analyzation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constant innocents have fallen prey to this horrible disease, and it is the number one killer of settings with great potential. It progresses over the course of stages, with the 4th stage being incurable. Male and female survivors report being bed-ridden for many months in excruciating agony, suffering from its debilitating side effects, forgetting to eat, sleep, or even breath. In rare cases, it can cause death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any experience with this condition? How did you survive? What medical advice can you offer to those who have become victims of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user24397" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T11:56:06.700" Title="What medical advice can you offer for &quot;world builders disease&quot;" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-06-22T13:57:28.743" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28858" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28860" CreationDate="2017-06-22T12:09:50.053" Score="4" ViewCount="878" Body="&lt;p&gt;An example from my writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not even a god like Kiyoshi deserved an angel like Kobayashi. True, I&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;had&lt;/strong&gt; never talked to her. But &lt;strong&gt;I'd&lt;/strong&gt; watched her. She would smile even to&#xA;  those who treated her badly. Would sacrifice her reputation to make&#xA;  someone look good. Would forget forget about morality, at least for a second, to&#xA;  focus on a person's vulnerability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could have written: &quot;True, &lt;strong&gt;I'd&lt;/strong&gt; never talked to her. But &lt;strong&gt;I had&lt;/strong&gt; watched her.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which arrangement makes prose flow/sound better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T22:26:20.430" Title="What combination of had and 'd makes prose flow better?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|style|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28858" CreationDate="2017-06-22T12:47:14.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;'d&lt;/em&gt; contraction defaults to expansion into &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt;. It takes a second guess basing on trailing content to expand it to &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt; instead. As result you're creating mild garden-path sentences, which, when unintended, is a type of stylistic error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use this contraction only for &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; where it naturally falls into speech (&quot;I'd like...&quot;, &quot;I'd rather...&quot;) - and when creating &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6965/avoiding-making-all-your-characters-sound-the-same/6971#6971&quot;&gt;flavor speech&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, a character that abuses contractions, sometimes hard to understand, hurried, or just crude. Otherwise, if you have no good reason not to, just use the full form, &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T12:47:14.503" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28858" CreationDate="2017-06-22T15:05:51.960" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of the two choices, I like the second better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mainly because it emphasizes the word had--even when it isn't bolded. Read it out loud both ways, even with a flat affect and you'll hear what I mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we use contractions, we sort of gloss over the word. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you choose will depend on what you want out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The repetition of the word, using the shortened first and then the lengthed naturally draws attention to the word had the second time. The other way around, since there isn't a cue to draw attention to it beforehand, it's not emphasized one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using I'd in both cases also doesn't emphasize it either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can check for this phenomenon by asking someone to read the sentence and asking them if they emphasize any word in their head simply because of the way it's written. I would bet the majority of folks would find the emphasis on had, simply because of the cadence and order of the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main reason it draws attention is this: the initial &quot;I'd&quot; shows that the person speaking uses contractions, but then they actually CHOSE to use the long form of the word in the second case, which means that they think that word is IMPORTANT, and they did not before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: AS the commenter points out below, the first version puts the emphasis on &quot;watched&quot; I feel it's more subtle than the emphasis of &quot;had&quot; in the second version because attention is not called to it in the same way. If you have someone read version one and ask them, &quot;reading this, which word, if any is emphasized?&quot; you might get varying answers. &lt;strong&gt;As for flow--that's going to be largely based on opinion for this sentence. I would base the decision on what subtext you'd like the sentence to have.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19827" LastEditorUserId="19827" LastEditDate="2017-06-22T22:26:20.430" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T22:26:20.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28861" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-22T18:04:28.530" Score="14" ViewCount="2325" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't find a standard, is the most common use to have the abbreviation followed by the defintion? &#xA;Example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NATO: &lt;strong&gt;N&lt;/strong&gt;orth &lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt;tlantic &lt;strong&gt;T&lt;/strong&gt;reaty &lt;strong&gt;O&lt;/strong&gt;rganization&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25513" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-02-27T09:25:08.947" LastActivityDate="2020-03-07T17:18:52.453" Title="Acronyms in Technical Writing" Tags="|style|technical-writing|acronyms|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28861" CreationDate="2017-06-22T18:11:38.227" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have most commonly seen it the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;.... North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO).....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen it as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;.... North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO for short,....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not seen it done in the way you described, but that also does not necessarily make it incorrect.  It depends on context.  When writing it in an article, or essay, it is usually strongly urged to write it out with the full name and then provide the acronym in parentheses afterwards.  This usually designates to the reader that anything with that acronym thereafter represents the full name first mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way you provided is usually provided as an appendix for people to be able to look up as a side to the writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T18:11:38.227" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28861" CreationDate="2017-06-22T18:30:25.630" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether you put the acronym or the name first depends on how everyone refers to it. If it's almost always an acronym, but you have to explain it on first reference, write it as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New drugs to treat HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) are promising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's usually spelled out and you are introducing an acronym, or if it's referenced both ways, use the reverse:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Patrick Stewart starred as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in &lt;em&gt;Star Trek: The Next Generation&lt;/em&gt; (ST:TNG) alongside LeVar Burton, who was arguably better-known at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using integrated marketing communications (IMC) can increase your audience response. This webinar covers IMC methodologies and how to apply them to your brand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T18:30:25.630" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28864" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-22T18:53:52.053" Score="3" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the United States a percentage (numerical - 50%) is always one word.&#xA;I have read two crime novels by a British author who breaks the word up, &quot;...there is 25 per cent chance that serial killers follow a ritulistic pattern.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25513" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T22:23:07.660" Title="Is per cent (two words) standard for British authors?" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28849" CreationDate="2017-06-22T21:37:01.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say, it depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume you live in Greece or Germany, so writing in English might open up a new world for your readers. Your unique perspective might be your winning quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, what language works best for you? That might take some experimentation before you get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might even differ between stories...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've written both in English and Swedish and I've come to the conclusion that I love my Swedish too much to let go of it... even though my current work possibly would work much better in English... at least from a &quot;getting lots of readers&quot; and a business point of view... but hey! business schmishness... I am an aaaartist after all... (no lack of irony here ... and still, I can always translate it if no Swede cares for it!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T21:37:01.863" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28858" CreationDate="2017-06-22T21:51:38.677" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I voted for Erin's response, as it echoes my gut feeling regarding the inferred intent of the speaker. Since I can't add comments yet due to rep, I did want to go ahead and add some additional thoughts here regarding the question itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general terms, I'd suggest that the author should consider whether such an emphasis/distinction is actually meaningful to your speaker. That is, ask yourself whether you are trying to convey some additional clues or subtle signals to convey additional meaning to their statements. Why would the speaker deliberately use the contraction in one instance, while using the full form in the another?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your speaker is fairly passive about the acknowledgment that they had never talked with her, then &quot;I had never talked...&quot; is perfectly fine as-is. However, this doesn't really seem to fit, given the other provided context:  &quot;Not even [...] Kiyoshi deserved an angel like Kobayashi.&quot; That seems to imply at least some degree of interest / desire / longing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Together, with the context, using &quot;True, I'd never talked...&quot; (when contrasted with later usage of &quot;But I had watched her.&quot;), would come across as an almost confession-like, throw-away acknowledgment (does the speaker actually regret this, or is it merely a statement of fact?). Then, the speaker would contrast that admission with emphasis on what they &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; do - they watched / observed her. This emphasis can be conveyed by the deliberately inconsistent use of the contraction in one situation, versus fully expanding the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps, among other things, the speaker is attempting to justify their familiarity with Kobayashi, despite having never actually spoken (or interacted) with her? It could at least be possible that the speaker has a natural tendency to minimize (here represented by use of contraction) things they don't like, while emphasizing (via use of the expanded form) what they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, if those ideas matter to the concept you're attempting to convey via the speaker, then I'd absolutely lean towards the &quot;True, I'd never talked [...]. But I had watched [...]&quot; form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this may not strictly relate to the actual flow, I think it can add some nuance and convey subtle clues which reinforce the speaker's underlying motivations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note, related to another answer:&#xA;I'd + past participle* = &quot;I had&quot;, in all situations. It is incorrect to assert that &quot;I'd&quot; only expands to &quot;I would&quot;. When paired with that past participle (&quot;talked&quot;, &quot;watched&quot;), &quot;I'd&quot; should easily be parsed as &quot;I had&quot;. Unfortunately, this is just one of those crazy, context-based English rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;*&lt;/code&gt; -- Garden path only occurs if &quot;I'd&quot; is followed by a single [written] word which can serve as the bare infinitive, as well as the past participle (such as &quot;read&quot; [as in, &quot;I am going to read that book today&quot;; pronounced as reed] versus &quot;read&quot; [as in, &quot;I read that book yesterday&quot;; pronounced as red]).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &quot;I'd read that book.&quot; (&quot;I would read that book [in the future].&quot;, versus &quot;I had read that book [in the past].&quot;) For this, additional context would be needed to narrow down the actual usage of &quot;read&quot; in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14787" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T21:51:38.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28835" CreationDate="2017-06-22T21:54:31.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You basically have two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write the first draft, edit, edit, edit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outline, write the first draft, edit, edit, edit (but possibly a bit less editing than in 1).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, as Lauren Ipsum already has mentioned: allow yourself to suck. Your motto should be: &quot;I'll fix it in editing... moving on!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to your requirements 1-4. In whose opinion? You could possibly benefit from using beta readers and/or a critique partner to figure out how your text stand up to those requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from that, it's a question of your capability and experience... and perhaps what you've read before... There are no shortcuts I've heard of...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10826" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T21:54:31.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28869" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28879" CreationDate="2017-06-23T02:49:37.353" Score="2" ViewCount="3035" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What legitimate websites or methods can I use to contact a few directors about making a movie from my book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How many pitches for movies does a director receive? What percentage of their mail or electronic communications does this represent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you need to send something to a director along with your book, like a query letter for publishers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, I couldn't find a better tag for this.&#xA;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2020-07-05T12:21:28.873" LastActivityDate="2021-02-28T10:30:10.580" Title="How do you contact Hollywood directors?" Tags="|publishing|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28871" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-23T08:09:18.610" Score="0" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone, please provide the following details of the manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Font style&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Font size&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Margins&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of words per page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spacing between lines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; Though this question seems to be a duplicate, I need the updated info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24510" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T02:43:34.337" Title="Manuscript formatting details" Tags="|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28871" CreationDate="2017-06-23T09:00:10.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question probably needs to be more specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your manuscript is to be submitted to an agent or publishing house formatting specifications can usually found in their submission guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Font Style: Times New Roman or Courier.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Font Size: 10 or 12 pt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Margins: 1&quot; to 1.25&quot; or 30mm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of words per page: Redundant question! - Words per page is dictated by Font Style / Font Size / Margin Size / Line Spacing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Line spacing: Double Spaced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most the above information has become moot. The specifications are designed for printed manuscripts. Very few establishments accept printed manuscripts. Large margins and double spaced lines allow for the manual insertion of comments and notes. With the advent of electronic submissions popular software utilises revision tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="24878" LastEditDate="2017-06-23T09:35:17.440" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T09:35:17.440" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28869" CreationDate="2017-06-23T09:09:12.160" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The practical answer is via six degrees of separation. The film industry is well served by a wealth of established script and story writers. Short of stalking or kidnapping, there's virtually no way of getting your script in front of a producer or director.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, they will only at scripts handed to them by 'people they know.' This person could be an agent, a known scriptwriter, an established actor, or their kids' babysitter, as long as it's somebody they know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, it's not better news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="15838" LastEditDate="2020-07-05T12:23:16.957" LastActivityDate="2020-07-05T12:23:16.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28849" CreationDate="2017-06-23T09:34:24.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To write in any language other than your first is extremely difficult. Language is more than words and grammar. It contains a multitude of idioms, phrases, expressions, proverbs, cultural references etc. which make no logical sense and can only be used in certain contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question and first line: &quot;Is writing in a foreign language a brilliant way to &lt;strong&gt;shoot oneself in the foot?&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; . . . &quot;Normally I never write prose. After much world building I now feel the need to. Ever since I resolved to at least &lt;strong&gt;pen down&lt;/strong&gt; a draft, things get &lt;strong&gt;curiouser and curiouser&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To &quot;shoot oneself in the foot&quot; is an idiom. It may make no sense to a Chinaman.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Pen down&quot; is slightly awkward. We &quot;write&quot;, we &quot;write down&quot;, we &quot;pen&quot;. &quot;Pen down&quot; - not so much.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Curiouser and curiouser&quot; a cliché from Alice through the looking glass - Our Chinaman is now scratching his head vigorously.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should also be noted: I write comedy. An out of context or incorrect idiom is a source of humour and a contribution to characterisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favourites: An African immigrant (in the UK) complaining about other immigrants. &quot;I don't know how they can expect to get along in this country if they cannot be bothered to learn the Queen's Mother's language!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course in confused the expressions &quot;The Queen's English&quot; and &quot;Mother tongue&quot; - to invent a new, nonsensical expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T09:34:24.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28875" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-23T09:49:28.320" Score="9" ViewCount="1169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently developing a minor character that will appear as the &quot;shadow&quot; (Hero's Journey slang for an antagonist that has the potential to destroy the hero) of two other characters. In the eyes of pretty much every other character in the story, he's insensitive and, quite frankly, bordering on stupid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I find that I actually like him(*). He's not someone I would be likely to spend much time with, but it's fun working with him, because he's uncomplicated and doesn't mean to hurt anybody. In my experience, this happens to every single one of my characters -- they might start out as obvious, even despicable shadows, but the moment I sit down to explore them a little more in-depth, they start to acquire virtues that I can relate to very well. This usually serves me very well, because it keeps me from introducing annoying, usually shallow and clichéd characters that just bundle up a bunch of negative features that somehow need to be part of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question is:&lt;/strong&gt; Have you had similar experiences? Conversely, have you ever written about a character that you thoroughly despise? What were your experiences with that? Did your story benefit from it? Can you think of a context in which it is absolutely necessary to use a character that is &quot;evil&quot;(**) in an unrelatable way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I apologise if this questions appears too vague. I'm also aware that it is not a question that has a &quot;correct answer&quot;. I'm interested in your thoughts about this subject and a range of different experiences. In a wider sense, I am asking about how your relationships to characters look like.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*) &lt;strong&gt;Just to clear things up a bit here&lt;/strong&gt;: I'm aware that I use the word &quot;like&quot; a little too laxly in this context. So here's a specification of what I mean when I &quot;like&quot; a fictional character, and when I &quot;like&quot; a real person. The fictional character: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The fictional character&lt;/em&gt;: Needs to be complex and, at least in some way, relatable. If my empathy doesn't find a way to connect to the character, I'm not going to like him or her. In this context, I don't distinguish between &quot;good&quot; and &quot;bad&quot; characters. I may very well end up liking the villain of a story much better than the hero, because he's the more interesting character that I'd like to explore in more depth. The character doesn't need to share my values. (A spontaneous example would be Lord Grantham from Downton Abbey. I adore him as a character but doubt very much that we would get along very well if we ever met, due to political believes and what-not.)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The other person&lt;/em&gt;: Well. I just ... want to spend time with that person. That generally requires that I feel comfortable in his or her presence and that we are able to easily communicate with each other. We might not always share the same values, but it definitely helps. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(**) I know, the concept of &quot;evil&quot; depends strongly on your cultural background. But most people would agree, for example, that abusing children is &quot;evil&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastEditorUserId="13192" LastEditDate="2017-06-26T12:11:22.750" LastActivityDate="2018-09-26T19:43:27.153" Title="Is it possible to work with characters that you dislike?" Tags="|fiction|novel|characters|character-development|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28875" CreationDate="2017-06-23T10:14:09.323" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't write fantasy so I don't know how relevant my answer will be. I think the genre is a law unto itself because the writer is unable to rely on social norms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any feelings towards my characters either way. I see them as a product that I have engineered. I am better creating some archetypes than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than 'like' or 'dislike' I must have some empathy for my characters. e.g. I've couple of old racist white men. The first fully reveals himself when his daughter becomes engaged to a black man. Whatever my personal opinion on his views I must understand how a person raised during a certain time in a certain place, and raised in a particular way might think the way he does. Subsequently, whilst writing his part - I fully agree with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T10:14:09.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28875" CreationDate="2017-06-23T15:33:23.850" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose if a writer told me that he's really getting to like this character he's created who kidnaps and tortures small children because he thinks it's funny to hear them beg, how he can just really relate to him, I might find that disturbing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you have no sympathy at all for a character, I suspect it is hard to make him realistic. I've read many stories and watched many movies where there was a character who shared my social, religious, political, whatever views, but the story was clearly written by someone on the opposite side, and they had no concept at all how &quot;people like me&quot; think. That is, the writer needed a villain, so he said, &quot;I really hate people from political party X, those people are stupid and evil, so if I just say that the villain is X, than that instantly explains why he is stupid and evil, and I can make everything he does pointlessly evil and/or mind-bogglingly stupid with no further explanation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a minor character who passes by quickly, that might be okay. But for a major character, I think you have to be able to get inside his head at least somewhat to make him believable. If you can't come up with some basis or justification for his beliefs and actions that sounds at least vaguely plausible, your character is going to be flat. In real life, it is very rare for someone to say, &quot;I will kill my enemies because I love violence and destruction! Those people make me sick with their compassion and intelligence and culture. The world would be much better off if everyone was stupid and irrational like me!&quot; No, it's far more likely that they'll say something more like, &quot;We have no choice but to fight these people because they are trying to destroy us and we must defend ourselves.&quot; Whether there's any truth to that or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to agree with someone to be able to say, &quot;Yes, I understand why he would think that way.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very late follow-up thought: I recent read a book called &quot;Memoirs of a Time Traveller&quot;. The villain goes back in time and is wrecking havoc with history, destroying civilizations. But he does it because life in his own time is intolerable, with poverty and tyranny and so on, and he hopes to change history so that his time will be better. So you don't have to agree that what he is doing is a good thing, or even likely to succeed, to sympathize with him. He is trying to improve his life and the lives of billions of other people, and the question comes down to his methods. I thought he was a believable villain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastEditorUserId="4489" LastEditDate="2018-09-25T20:49:54.507" LastActivityDate="2018-09-25T20:49:54.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28869" CreationDate="2017-06-23T17:52:12.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used a service called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scriptblaster.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;scriptblaster&lt;/a&gt;. For a small fee (less than $100), you can submit a one page &quot;query letter&quot; which they will &quot;blast&quot; to many parties on a weekly basis. I have actually received one inquiry, out of about 600 blasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T17:52:12.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28875" CreationDate="2017-06-23T17:59:36.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. And the reason is fairly simple. You're not out to &quot;promote&quot; the characters you dislike. Instead, the idea is to make your favorite characters more likable by comparison. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your favorite characters need a good reason to dislike someone. The better job you do of making this person genuinely dislikable, the more your audience will relate to your other characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T17:59:36.177" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28869" CreationDate="2017-06-23T18:30:49.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably the most important thing to know is that directors and producers worry about unintentionally using a movie idea which another person owns the copyright for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider two scenarios: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A submitter submits an idea which he ripped off from his neighbor.&#xA;(Or: uses a character from another literary work).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A submitter sends a query letter which the director rejects or&#xA;ignores. Then, the director makes a movie with a similar concept.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these two instances, the director is exposing himself or herself to liability. For that reason, they are careful who they accept ideas from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, agented material is more likely to be vetted -- the agent has probably already verified  copyright status. For that reason, getting the agent to submit it is probably smarter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, so much of moviemaking today is informal. (I say this as somebody who has nothing to do with that industry). It may very well help to distribute your concept or pitch liberally to film producers in nontraditional ways. But doing it through agents protect your interest and the directors' interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; Given that you are the author of the literary work, my suggestion might not be relevant -- especially if you already published the book yourself. A published book is generally good evidence that the author owns the copyright. Nevertheless, I think directors are reluctant to consider film pitches from unfamiliar sources.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7968" LastEditorUserId="7968" LastEditDate="2017-06-23T18:36:25.820" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T18:36:25.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28864" CreationDate="2017-06-23T18:52:52.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm British, and would certainly use the two word &quot;per cent&quot; rather than &quot;percent,&quot; so I would hazard a guess that two words is the way all us Brits spell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25527" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T18:52:52.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28864" CreationDate="2017-06-23T22:23:07.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have checked two dictionaries on my iPad and both explicitly show per cent and percent as British and American spellings respectively. This &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/105295/percent-or-per-cent&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; from English Language StE claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both spellings, percent and per cent, are acceptable, but consistency should be maintained. Percent is more common in US usage; per cent is more common in British usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read that page, you will find ngram data supporting that the English usage is increasingly affected by the American one. This explains Spagirl, who has never used the canonical form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21535" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T22:23:07.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28884" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-23T22:46:35.933" Score="1" ViewCount="888" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the book I have written, one of my characters recites a portion of the Dhammapada. How do I avoid violating copyright laws? The quote is from a translation on a website, but I can't find any contact info to contact either the author of the page, or the translator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25530" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T21:15:36.883" Title="How do I obtain permission to quote a Buddhist teaching in my fiction book?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28767" CreationDate="2017-06-24T04:23:13.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that goes with the feelings you're seeking is optimism. You can demonstrate optimism and confidence by letting the sailor deftly handle some ordinary snags on the way out. Later, you may want to contrast this with little snags becoming big deals, each one dragging Captain Gloomy deeper into funk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12987" LastActivityDate="2017-06-24T04:23:13.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28887" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-24T08:59:33.680" Score="2" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always been interested in Irish mythology, especially Fionn Mac Cumhaill. I also like to write in journals. Is there a way of combining the two? In other words, say, for example, the life of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, but in diary or journal form. I also noticed that there are no dates in mythology. So how can I overcome this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25040" LastEditorUserId="32946" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T15:18:46.720" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T15:18:46.720" Title="How can I write a fictional mythology diary?" Tags="|creative-writing|fiction|mythology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28887" CreationDate="2017-06-24T14:53:30.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ludi's comments are on the button. Every civilisation has it's own calendar. The calendar consists of the time passed since a significant event. 'Time' is measured by the number of occurrences of a recurring event. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your time is measured as the number of times the Earth has revolved around the sun. However, it could be measure using any arbitrary method. Today's date could be stated as 1.800.452 - the number of time Old Faithful has erupted since Independence Day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examine some children's concept of time: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We are going to Disneyland next Thursday.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;How many sleeps is that?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Nine.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So, to answer your question. Create any concept of time you wish. Some fictional civilisations have a concept of time which has no anchor. Events occur in the 'now', in the 'before' or in the 'after'.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-24T14:53:30.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28884" CreationDate="2017-06-24T15:03:30.227" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The logical answer: Copyright is valid for 70 years . . . anything allegedly said by &quot;Buddha&quot; is probably out of copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anybody suing for copyright of Buddha's words is claiming the words were not Buddha's but theirs, the downside of the claim is that they would be admitting their own fraudulent activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In simple terms: if you cannot be sued for using a bible quote, why would the rules be different for another religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-24T15:03:30.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28887" CreationDate="2017-06-24T18:24:20.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most common forms of dating in the pre-Christian era was by regnal dating. That is, events were recorded as occurring in such and such a year in the reign of king X. (For that matter, Christian era dating is actually regnal dating based on the reign of Christ as king.) The use of regnal dating would seem completely appropriate to the material in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-06-24T18:24:20.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28767" CreationDate="2017-06-24T18:36:36.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You use the full narrative pallet that the novel form makes available to you. Different emotions manifest themselves in different ways. Some are very overt, some and entirely hidden from external view. Don't worry about doctrinaire interpretation of show vs tell; Use whatever techniques are useful in conveying to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a brilliant example of how to show that a character is feeling amazing, I can think of none better than the description of Mole at the beginning of Wind in the Willows: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gutenberg.org/files/289/289-h/289-h.htm#link2H_4_0001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.gutenberg.org/files/289/289-h/289-h.htm#link2H_4_0001&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-06-24T18:36:36.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28884" CreationDate="2017-06-24T21:39:08.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few basic copyright rules, but it is a significant grey area when it comes to fiction. In the US, information in the &quot;public domain&quot; is always legal to draw from. This begins 90 years after print publication (1927). However, this does not take into account retranslations coming after 1927.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Facts are always allowed for reproduction as long as they're verifiable facts. Names, places, dates, etc., are always ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reporting actions are ok, but attributing those actions to a particular motive begins to open you up to risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Song lyrics are particularly tricky, or so I've been told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, commercial publishing companies have their own attorneys to deal with such things. You should finish your book, a mammoth task, and then worry about the problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, if your book is fictional, it wouldn't be too hard to alter the exact translation and still get your point across. This may still open you up to some risk, so if it's really a problem, and you expect to make at least a few thousand dollars, you can always talk to an attorney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15736" LastActivityDate="2017-06-24T21:39:08.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28887" CreationDate="2017-06-24T22:35:19.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @Ludi mentions on a comment, the big question is the motivation for writing a journal of one's adventures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correct me if I'm wrong but Fionn Mac Cumhaill is a warrior who leads a group known as the Fianna. Their adventures (for lack of a better word) comprise the Fenian cycle which is supposedly written down by the poet Oisín, who happens to be Fionn's son.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the setting above, it seems to me that the writing of a chronicle would probably be the best way of uniting mythology and 'journal', since some chronicles detail events day by day, just like a journal. Of course that requires eventful days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the writer is Fionn's son (or an assistant commanded by him), the motivation would be to transmit the glory of his father / lineage. Moreover, although some chroniclers were dry and boring, there were also chroniclers that brought events to life almost cynematicaly (I'm thinking of the Portuguese Fernão Lopes, 14th century, whom I know best). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for dates (sorry, I overlooked that question), I'd suggest going with months and days of the week. Avoid mentioning years altogether. It is easy to just reference that it was the time when King X ruled over Xland, or that something happened a decade after King Y's coronation / marriage / etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-06-24T22:35:19.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28894" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-25T00:48:03.520" Score="-1" ViewCount="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;My story &quot;Finding Akita-Sama&quot; and i`m stuck can someone help me get further into the story? What do I put next? How do I show and not tell? I really need help with this fanfic! Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25539" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T02:35:14.610" Title="I need help with this story!" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-06-25T04:04:40.797" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28894" CreationDate="2017-06-25T02:35:14.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To show and not tell, use actions and dialogue between your characters. Make scenes. Basically, don't summarize the story/parts of the story as the narrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T02:35:14.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28871" CreationDate="2017-06-25T02:43:34.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For manuscript: (depends on what editor wants, but this is usually fine)&#xA;Font size: 12 pt&#xA;Font: Times New Roman&#xA;Margins: 1 inch. Just use standard 8.5x11 MS word document.&#xA;Number of words per page: irrelevant&#xA;Spacing: double&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For book:&#xA;Font size: 12 pt&#xA;Font: Times New Roman&#xA;Margins and interior formatting: &lt;a href=&quot;https://forums.createspace.com/en/community/docs/DOC-1482&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://forums.createspace.com/en/community/docs/DOC-1482&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Number of words per page: depends on the size of your book. I suggest going with 6x9. This is the most widely used.&#xA;Spacing: single&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T02:43:34.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28898" CreationDate="2017-06-25T03:48:49.273" Score="3" ViewCount="963" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to redeem a character who is supposed to be good, but does something inexplicably bad? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give you an example so you can further understand where I'm coming from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A and B were exes. In a night of high tension and emotions, they end up sleeping together. It's later revealed that B had a girlfriend they hadn't brought up for numerous reasons. However, the character isn't supposed to be a bad person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for a character to be considered &quot;good&quot; in the eyes of the readers after doing something so universally deemed as morally bankrupt? How much should the character do to come back from something like this? Or is it possible that no matter what, this will stain the character's reputation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22306" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T06:18:22.657" Title="Redeeming a Good Character Who Does a Bad Thing" Tags="|creative-writing|characters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28897" CreationDate="2017-06-25T06:18:22.657" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm surprised at this question. At some point 'redemption' is a feature of the majority of novels in existence. The general format for romance novels is (1) Boy gets girl (2) Boy loses girl (3) Boy gets girl back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At point (2) He usually does something stupid (sleeping with exes is often a theme).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should also be noted that Goldilocks broke into somebody's house and stole their food. Jack Bauer tortures people for fun and Dr Gregory house does something despicable every week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I believe the simple notions of good and bad are juvenile. Stories are best served when the writer advocates for both sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall a situation: Two twins (girls). The boyfriend of twin A sleeps with twin B. The story won a competition and an argument on the publisher's forum ensued - Whose fault was it? Readers were split 50/50.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T06:18:22.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28899" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28919" CreationDate="2017-06-25T07:02:19.577" Score="0" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example from my own writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One time, I sent letters, pretending to be a god.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I spent last week sending letters, pretending to be a god.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The recipient of these letters was Aiko Kobayashi, the girl who sat&#xA;  six rows behind me ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just wrote &lt;em&gt;last week&lt;/em&gt; because I felt that writing: &lt;em&gt;I sent letters, pretending to be a god&lt;/em&gt; was a bit, dunno, just didn't sound right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It this a bad writing practice? If the time frame is irrelevant, should I use &lt;em&gt;One time, I wrote ...&lt;/em&gt; instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22391" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T17:29:44.353" Title="Is it a bad writing practice to open a story with a time frame when the time frame is irrelevant?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24163" CreationDate="2017-06-25T07:08:07.053" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, 'show don't tell' is not a 'rule' to be adamantly adhered to. It is a style of exposition that engages the reader. If you 'tell' the reader information they have nothing to do but listen - they'll get bored and switch off. By showing the reader activity their brain is constantly engaged in making calculations and drawing conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Bob was tired.&quot; - this is telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Bob's eyelids grew heavy.&quot; - this is showing. The reader is required to calculate the reason for Bob's predicament. We'll assume he's tired but there's also the possibility that his wife put arsenic in the pie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the face of it &quot;Show don't tell&quot; can only apply to scenes. As complex or extended internal thoughts cannot be shown, strictly adhering to the style would forbid them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Show don't tell&quot; does not simply apply to character actions. Films and plays cannot tell, only show. Any exposition that requires a voice-over or an on-screen superimposition would be telling. Taken to the extreme: &quot;1 month later, 3 months later&quot; is telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To show: Opening line of CHAPTER FOUR. &quot;The new month has barely begun yet Christmas lights decorate the windows of the flat opposite Jackie’s.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opening line of CHAPTER FIVE. &quot;The trees are bare now. The mid-morning sun barely makes it above the horizon in the cloudless winter sky.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opening line of CHAPTER SIX. &quot;After the dawn chorus, an urban fox takes the shortcut home through the shrubs between the flats, causing the leaves to rustle. The pigeons take flight. A grey squirrel scurries up a fence and leaps onto the garage roofs. The trees are in bloom.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Show don't tell&quot; is an instruction given to new writers. Following the advice cures many symptoms of unrelated problems. New writers want to tell their stories when really they should not be in it. They just get in the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although you're bursting to tell your reader that Bella's pregnant - resist! Better to let Bella call her mother and tell her. That way the reader hears it straight from the horse's mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you fully master the concept of 'Show don't tell' the scope of your writing will improve no end. e.g. There is an unwritten rule (particularly relevant to thrillers) - &quot;the narrator cannot lie&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you TELL the reader information - that information is taken as FACT. If you SHOW the reader information and conclusion derived from that information is the reader's responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. If I tell the reader that Jason is laying in the dirt, his body's cold, and blood is trickling from his mouth. I have relayed a set of observed FACTS. The reader will likely conclude that Jason's dead (but that not what I said). I am at liberty to bring him back to murder everybody at the end of story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="24878" LastEditDate="2017-06-27T14:00:12.927" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T14:00:12.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28899" CreationDate="2017-06-25T07:23:24.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question cannot be answered without reading the entire novel. One sentence does not only link with next sentence but many sentences beyond. It's not about 'good writing practice' it's about voice, rhythm, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot judge a snippet in isolation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opening of CHAPTER ONE - &quot;I spent last week sending letters, pretending to be a god.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opening of CHAPTER TWO - &quot;I spent this week destroying evidence and avoiding the wrath of Aiko Kobayashi.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opening of CHAPTER THREE - &quot;I will spent next week in penance, showing Aiko that I am a mere mortal, and extremely sorry for my behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Narrative must be written in the words of the narrator. The words must be consistent. There must be a pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T07:23:24.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25925" CreationDate="2017-06-25T09:00:14.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although the question may refer to writing, I recall Lara Croft winning a magazine poll of the world's sexiest women. The poll was conducted before the release of the Tomb Raider film so they were not voting for Angelina Jolie. Croft was omitted from the published listing because she wasn't real.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T09:00:14.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28854" CreationDate="2017-06-25T11:31:07.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;SF's answer is more than adequate but your question contributes to the mounting problems of story-telling and media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you write is going to offend somebody. Unfortunately, most people, particularly Americans are unaware of life outside their bubble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take, for example, Hollywood in the 1960's. Films contained virtually no female heroes, African American heroes or Hispanic heroes. Producers didn't realise this continued practice offended 65% of Americans (Women / Blacks / Hispanics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the advent of globalisation Hollywood almost went bust. 50 years they were churning out westerns and war films from a well-oiled production line but had no understanding of the world beyond America. Production costs soared to the extent that they were domestically irrecoverable. At a cost $300,000,000 Titanic would require every regular US movie goer to watch the film more than once to realise a profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hollywood sought global investment to make movies just as the German economy was booming. Almost overnight there were no more War films or Westerns. Most of the planet has no interest in Westerns. And Germans really didn't want to invest in films where they got their asses kicked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing not to offend anybody produces nothing of significance. The best thing you can do is write to your own values but be aware who you may be offending. Hollywood routinely offends the political right - but make a fortune doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have focussed this post on the film industry simply because the financial data is more readily available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T11:31:07.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28905" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-25T16:26:53.587" Score="2" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a novelist my preference is for what I call an 'active narrator'. The terminology confuses most as they think I'm talking about sentence construction and the benefits of 'active' or over 'passive' voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is whether the narrator has a character. Obviously, the technique is common in first person but can also be used in third.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The narrator has no interest in Strunk &amp;amp; White; they simply tell the story using their own words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. &quot;Becky Sue weren't no kind of mother but she did the best she could with what the good Lord gave her. At the age of thirteen she pushed Ryan out of her belly, and proceeded to drop another sprog every year for the next five years. All them kids had different fathers - Becky Sue had bills to pay and mouths to feed. Some say the preacher, Reverend Kelly, caused her predicament. The Reverend was Ryan's father, and it was him who told Becky Sue that contraception was a sin.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is obvious that I (the author) am making no attempt to write using my best words and grammar. I'm using the narrator's words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You guys must have a name for this style of narration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T21:54:24.007" Title="What's it called?" Tags="|voice|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28906" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-25T17:29:00.567" Score="2" ViewCount="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a research paper, I want to include an illustation from a published monograph, however, to obtain permission from a deceased author with no known living relatives seems to be a problem? The publication was published in 1978.&#xA;EB&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25549" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2017-06-25T22:48:22.357" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T02:28:23.143" Title="Research paper: want to reprint an illustration but creator is dead w/no heirs -- how do I get permission?" Tags="|academic-writing|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-25T18:09:27.157" Score="1" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;My character lives in a war torn country. I'm trying to start this short story with him waking up on his way to school (possibly the bus stop). On his way, he sees graffiti, vandalism (basically thrashed cars and windows), bullet shells, etc. lying around everywhere. I'm writing this in first person and have yet to actually figure out how to put everything together. Any help would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25550" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T19:32:36.263" Title="How do I describe this particular scene?" Tags="|fiction|description|narrative|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28907" CreationDate="2017-06-25T19:32:36.263" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You describe very well what the main character sees.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, how do they feel about what they see?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What is new? Old?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What has changed since yesterday/ever? What has not?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Do they wonder Why? Who? When?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;How are they connected to the scenes/environment they experience?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Is there anyone else with them; what do they say?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Do they contrast/agree with what the main character experiences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25239" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T19:32:36.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28905" CreationDate="2017-06-25T21:54:24.007" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The technique you're describing seems very similar to &lt;em&gt;close third person.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, close third person supplies only to third person, but the key variable here is &lt;em&gt;narrative distance.&lt;/em&gt; In first person, the distance is always &quot;close&quot; (though I'm sure someone will now cite a brilliant example of distant first person). In third person, you can choose (and vary) the distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;The Power of Point of View,&lt;/em&gt; Alicia Rasley writes about &lt;em&gt;deep immersion,&lt;/em&gt; in which the narration is deeply in the character's voice, with as little filtering as possible between the character's experience and the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T21:54:24.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28906" CreationDate="2017-06-26T02:28:23.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the publisher of the original article still around? Did the author create the illustration, or someone else? If there's no indication of the copyright holder, I would venture to say you'll be OK using the illustration, with a note fully describing its provenance, your search for someone with rights to it, as well as an invitation for any such person to get in touch. &#xA;Also, checking with the publisher or editor of your current article would be wise. They may have standards that cover this situation.&#xA;Thomas Goldsmith&#xA;Raleigh, N.C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16192" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T02:28:23.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7524" CreationDate="2017-06-26T05:14:13.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do have the same issue as the op. I recently took up freelance writing on a full-time basis and I have issues with clients because my English does not have the feel of a native speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I am doing to help myself is immersion in the American culture so that I can pick up the one or two things about how Americans speak their English. I also frequent American heavy websites such as Reddit, 4chan and 9gag so I can pick up colloquial American English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its a long and brutal process but I am sure that in the coming months, I will begin to see some results: sound and feel more native in all my applications of the language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do listen to NPR, some podcasts, etc., just trying to immerse myself totally in the culture. If I could, I would come over to the USA to live for a while, say one or two years, but at the moment, I cannot afford the visa fees -- maybe in the future when I have made some money from my writing I will make the journey. I have no doubt that total immersion on the ground will take my writing to new heights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hang on my friend... don't lose hope. With some tears, blood and sweat, your goals are achievable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25552" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T05:14:13.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28913" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28920" CreationDate="2017-06-26T06:41:39.010" Score="1" ViewCount="375" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there such a thing as an online repository for rejected novel manuscripts?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would be a useful and educational resource -- especially to finally see examples of the so-called 'mistakes every failing writer makes' -- but I have yet to find whether such a repository even exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24863" LastEditorUserId="24863" LastEditDate="2017-06-26T08:37:48.980" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T11:14:29.003" Title="Resource for rejected novel manuscripts" Tags="|publishing|resources|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28914" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-26T06:41:54.703" Score="3" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read Steven Pinker's Sense of Style, which is a great book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In chapter 4, he talks about how to form lucid coherent sentences, and in chapter 5, called &quot;Arcs of Coherence&quot;, he extends his analysis of coherence to relations between sentences within a paragraph (and also somewhat about coherence between subsequent paragraphs). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think his analysis is truly brilliant, about how a text is not merely tree-like, because there are connections between sentences apart from the tree-like structure of chapter -&gt; paragraph -&gt; Sentence -&gt; words. His analysis of how to make a paragraph coherent by connecting sentences in specific ways is truly very helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also he has a brilliant analysis (more in chapter 4) of how lucid prose is created by taking into account the effect that the order of words has on the memory of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, he does not really extend this analysis to the level of chapters/pages. He does not really address the question of &quot;how do we write entire chapters so as to make them coherent with each other&quot;. &quot;How do we make connections between sentences in different sections/chapters, so as to make them coherent&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So my question is: For people who have read Steven Pinker's chapter on Arcs of Coherence and found it as useful as I did, do you know any other writers who have similar insights, but about how to connect elements of a larger text, to make the larger structure of the text more coherent?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24575" LastActivityDate="2018-04-07T10:15:19.467" Title="Larger structure - followup to Sense of Style by Steven Pinker" Tags="|style|technique|learning|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21845" CreationDate="2017-06-26T06:53:13.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to ask yourself &quot;Is the 'Why' relevant&quot;?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, watching a real life war movie I tend not to be overly concerned with the ballistic trajectory of bullets or the propulsion quality of jets. I assume they are realistic because I have no reason to assume they are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, you may want to show that you did your homework, but the better way to that is to never defy expectations when it comes to physics, rather than devolving into a science lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24863" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T06:53:13.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24163" CreationDate="2017-06-26T07:45:31.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My writing instructor once told me that the difference between showing and telling is much more subtle than verbal telling only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence; 'Showing' focuses on direct actions, and narrating those, while 'Telling' is about the narration of consequences of actions. It changes, among other things, immediacy for the reader or spectator. Showing draws them closer to the relevant events in your story, while Telling removes them from it by a layer of abstraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24863" LastEditorUserId="24863" LastEditDate="2017-07-13T08:27:41.880" LastActivityDate="2017-07-13T08:27:41.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28913" CreationDate="2017-06-26T08:33:44.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is extremely naive to believe the publishing industry is somehow like school and an 'A' will get you published. There is no formula, standard or level to achieve in order to secure publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no rhyme nor reason as to why one publisher accepts a manuscript and another does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is needed is a bit of critical thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at Harry Potter: (1) The manuscript would make it into your repository as was rejected at least nine times. (2) Clearly Rowling was clueless as the manuscript was considered far too long for a Y/A novel. (3) The novel is of poor quality because Rowling 'never met an adverb she didn't like'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.L. James got everything all wrong. &quot;50 Shades of Grey&quot; id not clearly fit into any genre. It was too spicy for romance and too tame for erotica.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another best seller, Peter Benchley's &quot;Jaws&quot; was accepted based on a verbal pitch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At school your teacher will mark up your effort, grade it, and suggest improvements. 'Real' agents and publishers will do no such thing. They will never tell you what's wrong with your novel. They'll use choice phrases like &quot;We didn't feel passionate about it&quot; or state &quot;There isn't currently room on their list.&quot; It would be embarrassing for one publisher to return a manuscript highlighting all its problems and, subsequently, another publisher hit the NYT best-sellers list after publishing the work in its near original form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no 'mistakes every failing writer makes'. The 'How to' industry is worth millions of dollars. But you've been sold a bill of goods. There is no evidence that following a set of instructions will improve your chances of being published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off the record, most agents admit they have no idea what they are looking for - but they'll know it when they see it.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T08:33:44.130" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28913" CreationDate="2017-06-26T09:13:15.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the existing excellent answer by Surtsey, I am sure such a resource, if found, will have to be illegal (as the publisher would have leaked material copyrighted by the author). Otherwise the author must either have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relinquished first electronic rights.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submitted to a publisher not bound by Copyright. It appears from the comments such a bewildering institution may exist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know much about law, but found out &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.copyright.com.au/about-copyright/copyright-myths/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; that in Australia, for instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Copyright is not ‘waived’ when you publish text or images on the internet. You can decide how you would like people to use your online content. Guidelines for using online text and images usually appear on a website’s ‘terms of use’ page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we have to distinguish between copyright and first electronic rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21535" LastEditorUserId="21535" LastEditDate="2017-06-26T09:52:36.550" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T09:52:36.550" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28899" CreationDate="2017-06-26T09:36:48.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your story generally happens at some particular moment, whether you're telling it in the present tense or past tense. There's nothing wrong with describing actions which happened a precise amount of time before your book opens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Separately, adding a time stamp &quot;just to add rhythm to the sentence&quot; &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; poor writing. Don't add detail unless it's necessary to the plot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2017-06-26T17:29:44.353" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T17:29:44.353" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28913" CreationDate="2017-06-26T11:45:21.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While there is no possibility of 'online repository for rejected novel manuscripts' made available by a publisher, you can find online resources for critical analysis of traditionally unpublished work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A plethora of self published books can give you the idea of 'reasons it got rejected by a publisher' rather than 'mistakes every failing writer makes'. Nonetheless, it is a valuable resource to study as some of those may have been rejected by a publisher before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Online writing sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wattpad.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Wattpad&quot;&gt;Wattpad&lt;/a&gt; can also prove to be a good resource if you want to study the work of novice writers. Wattpad hosts a plethora of stories posted by amateur to established​ writers, where you can actually come across examples of the so-called 'mistakes every failing writer makes' by chance. However, most of the writeups posted on Wattpad are still in progress, and can hardly be termed as manuscripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25453" LastEditorUserId="25453" LastEditDate="2017-06-26T18:37:36.190" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T18:37:36.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28921" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-26T12:00:05.900" Score="-5" ViewCount="391" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that a prolific readers are better equipped to write than a non-reader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first I'd suggest the answer is a no-brainer but on further speculation - I'm not convinced. I scan the questions on this site and cannot understand how people who frequently read novels appear not to understand basics such as structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also wonder: if your input for a novel comes exclusively from other novels isn't that like . . . inbreeding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inbreeding is never a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I've adopted a couple of techniques that I certainly have not learned from books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers and literary industry in general fail to recognise that more than half the world doesn't read fiction. And whilst readers claim to be intellectually superior to others I received a controversial claim from a non-reader - &quot;The data stream is too slow&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In support of the inbreeding theory we can look at the general behaviour of two groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sports-fans: Root for their heroes. Hope for a positive outcome. Are upset if they are informed of the outcome before the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Novel readers: Root for their heroes. Insist on a positive outcome. And general know the outcome before they start (boy invariably gets girl, good overcomes evil).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there's the politics and marketing. If a non-reader wrote a best-seller and admitted he didn't read it would be commercial suicide. Telling aspiring writers who have spent years polishing and submitting manuscripts that they've been wasting their time would go down like a lead balloon. People don't want to hear 'bad news' they prefer fake news. Ergo, this question will probably be put on hold before being removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="23159" LastEditDate="2018-04-20T08:07:14.953" LastActivityDate="2018-04-20T08:07:14.953" Title="Is read, read, read really the best advice?" Tags="|creative-writing|readers|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28921" CreationDate="2017-06-26T12:34:59.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting question that somewhat relates to &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/28828/how-to-not-steal-characters/28853#28853&quot;&gt;this questions&lt;/a&gt; about stealing characters. (See my answer there for some thoughts on fan fictions, individual style, and &quot;faking it until you make it&quot;.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I translate your question into my own words, I come up with this: Does reading novels relate to creativity? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fron my own experience, I would say: &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;. I've made up stories to better understand my world before I was even able to read. Once I've mastered the craft of reading and writing, I started to tell my stories via the medium of the written word. &lt;em&gt;Because of this&lt;/em&gt; -- because I was curious about stories, about characters, about what makes people and the world in general tick, really -- I started to read. Reading still is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; primary source of information for me, but it didn't inspire me to tell stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, there's a difference between just &quot;reading mindlessly&quot; and actively learning something, at least there is for me. Just because I've read good books doesn't mean I am able to &quot;produce&quot; good books. To pull that off, I need to learn about what makes up a &quot;book&quot; and what turns it into something &quot;good&quot; on a separate, much more abstract level. (Did I say that this is purely subjective and based on my personal experiences?) I learned structure from textbooks, not from novels. It was absolutely necessary that I had read a vast selection of novels before I set out to learn about structure -- how else would I have been able to check my knowledge against existing work? --, but my understanding of structure ultimately does not stem from the raw novels that I read, but from the clever people who analysed stories in general and tried to figure out how they work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I agree that the cliché of the well-read, possibly academic, horribly wise author is exactly that -- a cliché. If storytellers get rejected solely on the grounds that they don't fit the mold of the distinguished, clever guy, that's just sad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;: While I don't doubt that reading and studying help to harnest the fruits of your creativity in the most effective way, I'm still not convinced that the basic core of creativity -- that undirected drive to tell stories -- can be learned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T12:34:59.283" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28921" CreationDate="2017-06-26T13:06:31.303" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, reading is better for a writer than not reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe we should qualify that. &lt;em&gt;Reading like a writer&lt;/em&gt; is better for a writer. I'm not sure what the benefit of plowing through a bunch of books is. But reading the best authors with the eyes of someone who understands a little about how sentences and chapters are put together turns you into someone who understands &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; about how sentences and chapters are put together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writers don't read to collect ideas and steal characters, but to get those &quot;aha&quot; moments where you understand why this bit is so funny or melancholy or how the story handles the passage of time or the development of a character trait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: This too: By paying attention to how you read you learn how other people read. I tend to skip the paragraphs of description. I pay attention to dialog (but not the tags) and actions. I need clarity in time jumps and section breaks. So I write that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastEditorUserId="7986" LastEditDate="2017-06-26T13:24:14.770" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T13:24:14.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24163" CreationDate="2017-06-26T13:26:51.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A teacher once told me, &quot;Show don't tell, except when telling is better.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I notice, in my own reading, that I generally want to skip over the telling parts of a story--the long beautiful lyrical descriptions, the internal musings, etc--so I can get to the scenes where stuff is happening. So, when the author is telling-not-showing I've skipped that information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually write about broody dopes who think about stuff too much, and as I externalize the characters' thoughts in revision the story improves. Even if the externalization is as simple as a dialogue (frequently interrupted by physical actions and interruptions to keep things going).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7986" LastEditorUserId="7986" LastEditDate="2017-06-27T12:45:59.180" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T12:45:59.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28731" CreationDate="2017-06-26T13:44:45.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a believer of brainstorming, talking it out with someone or multiple trusted writers. Nothing to lose by bouncing ideas off others, and sometimes just the process of &quot;thinking out loud&quot; will deliver the answer you are seeking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25513" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T13:44:45.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28921" CreationDate="2017-06-26T15:35:54.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I think it mostly depends on what you think the reading is for. One could assume people read to get more ideas and to learn how to be creative, but in my opinion that is not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a native english speaker, but I do write stories in english. Reading a lot of books (in english) really helps me to get a feeling for the language. By reading lots and lots of books I learn new expressions, words and even ways to phrase my sentences. It is ofcourse different for a native speaker, but I think the same principle applies. You are not born with infinite knowledge of a language, and you have to learn it. While learning english I noticed that reading books made the words come more naturally. I often write down a phrase because it 'feels' good, then read it again and get confused about the wording. But when I look it up online it appears to be a normal english expression. I never actively learned it, but I knew it and used it without thinking about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to be short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does reading a lot help with writing stories?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Maybe. I agree with you there. People will be influenced by reading other peoples ideas. But I don't think you can learn to be creative from reading. Either you are and you have a lot of ideas, or you are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;but, does reading a lot help with writing words?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Most definitely. If you read more words, you learn more words. And if you know more words, you can use more words. The more words you can use, the easier it gets to express a feeling, or a setting, or a person. That is also why reading lots of different things is important. It gives you more examples of how to use words, how to phrase sentences, and more idioms, expressions and metaphors to use. It also helps you get in the head of a certain kind of person, reading lots of books for children will help you write a better child. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Reading can't make you become a writer, but it will help you become a better writer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12847" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T15:35:54.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28731" CreationDate="2017-06-26T15:47:36.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you know how you want it to end, and you know where you are then connect the dots.  In other words... If Frodo just barely got to Mount Doom and the ending is, he destroys the ring there, then write about that.  If where you CURRENTLY are in the story is too far away from your ending that it would seem rushed and an abrupt ending, you may want to consider adding on 1 or 2 more chapters.  The ending should tie together all of your ends.  The final chapter should be where all your visions of the ending are written out.  If you envisioned your ending where the hero comes back just in time to save the day, gets the girl, and rides off into the sunset, then expand on those ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I am an oddball in this, but I personally think the ending is the easiest.  I see the ending as the end goal and objective you have been writing the story towards the whole time.  By time you get to the final chapter, you should have a pretty clear idea of how you want the story to end and what is going to happen.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would go back and look through the story, read it from a customer's point of view.  Let your own story take you on a trip through the world you just created.  Don't think about editing, or trying to change things.  Just read it as you intended.  That should give you a better idea of where you are in the story and it could very well be that you need to add more before you end it, or maybe you realize that the story should have ended a chapter ago instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this doesn't exactly explain how to come up with the right words, but it should at least give you a good start by reading through your own story to see if you find any inspirations or lose ends to write about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T15:47:36.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25925" CreationDate="2017-06-26T16:57:48.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that it is possible to fall in love with female characters.  I have on several occasions including that of shows.  It isn't that I want THAT particular character, it's that I see many traits in the character I really want in a partner.  This manifested with the right given personality makes it easy to fall for.  Just like with everything else, not all personality and traits are appealing to everyone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you stated in OP, some people simply don't because they can't justify why someone can fall in love with something fake.  Just like some people don't like long distance relationships because there is a lack of physical element to it even if the conversations and the person is real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T16:57:48.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28921" CreationDate="2017-06-26T17:38:38.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We can draw a parallel to sports with this as you did with your OP.  Just because I watched Derek Jeter, Michael Jordan, or Payton Manning play every game of their entire career, does not mean I can go out and play just as good as them.  This watching or &quot;reading&quot; is taken in at a different context.  You watch for enjoyment.  Sure you can sit there and play around with the setting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The count is 3-2, bases are loaded, bottom of the 9th and the game is&#xA;  tied.  Pitcher can't go for a strikeout and risk bouncing the ball in&#xA;  the dirt for a wild pitch, and if he throws anything off the plate, he&#xA;  will walk in the winning run... so that means he probably will give&#xA;  him a hard cutter in to jam him and rely on his defense&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's be honest though, not many people get better at baseball simply because they thought through a situation on TV.  Just like practice does not inherently make you better if all you do is practice.  I can sit there and throw a football the wrong way and practice doing that 1000 times.  That doesn't mean I am better at throwing a football, I just reinforced bad habits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to be active in your practice and viewing.  Many athletes study film where they can take a bad pitch, study the film of that 1 throw that gave up a home run.  Slow it down, pause it.  play it real time.  Rewind.  Pause it and blow up the still-frame to zoom in on finger placement of the ball.  This then allows someone to properly analyze what they are seeing and apply what they see to their own practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all is the same for reading and writing.  You can read 100 books a month, but that doesn't mean you are gaining anything from reading.  You need to actively read.  If you read something you find well written, do you pause, write it down, mark it, re-read it, reflect why you liked it and then moved on?  If we all did that, it would take us a month to go through a book that would take the casual reader 3 days to read.  It also takes away from the enjoyment of the actual book because we are not reading the story for what it is, but studying it's literary make up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; I caution the notion that read read read is the best advice to give.  Reading mindlessly for the sake of pounding through books is not going to help someone be a better writer.  They need to be an active reader which, I believe, the &quot;active&quot; part, is where a lot of people fall short on this advice when they see a lack of growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T17:38:38.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28932" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-26T19:33:35.300" Score="4" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written stage drama stuff before. I am sending in comedy scripts to the BBC as part of a competition. I am wondering about cutting a scene down. I remember Stepto and Son where the scenes would be 10 minutes long. How to chop up a scene? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I split a scene by using camera direction between to different areas? Would this work as technically they could re-take that part of the main scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25562" LastEditorUserId="7986" LastEditDate="2017-06-30T13:11:32.410" LastActivityDate="2017-07-03T11:55:26.807" Title="How to chop up long scenes?" Tags="|screenwriting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1742" CreationDate="2017-06-27T09:28:26.333" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been wondering about this too. What I have done is make sure that the reader can deduce the meaning from the surrounding sentence, that's the best way I can think to do it since the different language is relevant to the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25556" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T09:28:26.333" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28936" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-27T10:49:19.470" Score="2" ViewCount="368" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story I'm writing has multiple story threads, which relate to each other subtly at first, while gradually converging over the course of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble is that one particular thread of the story appears (from the reader's perspective) to have nothing at all to do with the rest. It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; relevant, and I believe its relevance will be clear in retrospect, but how do I make this clear to the reader while they're reading it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thread concerns two characters and their relationship, the nature and conclusion of which turns out to be significant to the main story. The trouble is that the only character who understands this significance is dead at the time of the story, and since investigating this character's death is a part of main plot, I think it'd be better if the actual reasons for its relevence were revealed to the reader only when revealed to the (living) characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I need is a way to assure the reader that there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a reason that they're getting to know these characters, without actually revealing what that reason is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22280" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T07:13:33.310" Title="How can I make the relevance of a story thread more apparent?" Tags="|plot|structure|clarity|subplot|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28936" CreationDate="2017-06-27T11:54:24.543" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you think you need to make it seem &lt;em&gt;significantly relevant&lt;/em&gt; early on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you need is to make the thread &lt;em&gt;interesting&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may drop a couple hints. Hang some Chekov guns. Signal the reader the thread is of &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; relevance, no matter how minor. And then make that thread &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt;. Make it a captivating story on its own. As long as the thread is interesting, and in the end it clearly binds with the story, everything is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need a little more effort if the thread can't &quot;stand on its own&quot;. Probably the best is to bind it to the main thread through &quot;key elements&quot;. Items, letters, details that were key points of the side thread pop up in the main thread &lt;em&gt;immediately afterwards&lt;/em&gt; - not immediately in the story time, but immediately, in text - say, a hundred years ago, a betrayed lover drops a ring into the pond behind the house, then turns, to walk away. Section break, back to main thread. Protagonist spots a bright glint of metal on the bottom of the pond. You don't need to point &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; that's important, but you need to keep making references - building the mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T11:54:24.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28938" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28940" CreationDate="2017-06-27T12:34:37.730" Score="1" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very simple (albeit a bit tacky) example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Him: We're not that different from other couples, are we?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Her: Hm... maybe. I mean, you make &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt; sandwiches, for one.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Him: Yeah, because I can do them better!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Her: &lt;strong&gt;laughs&lt;/strong&gt; That's true, I'll give you that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I don't really have a problem with... &lt;em&gt;sexist&lt;/em&gt; dialog like that, since it's obvious (or at least I think so) that the characters are self-aware and just joking about stereotypes. I just wonder if it could come across as childish to a reader, taking them out of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just avoid these types of jokes or should I not worry about it too much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23083" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T19:29:11.883" Title="Is it ok to make fun of gender stereotypes?" Tags="|dialogue|humor|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28938" CreationDate="2017-06-27T13:05:47.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may write any dialogue you please. If there are people in the world who speak it - you may write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dialogue is, perhaps, the most important aspect of storytelling. One line from a character can tell the reader a character's nationality, class, education, world view, and a lot more to boot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T13:05:47.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28938" CreationDate="2017-06-27T13:18:05.730" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Including some light sexist banter is acceptable if it serves your story.  Including some heavier sexist, racist, homophobic or any other hate-derived dialog would also be acceptable as long as it serves your story.  If you are trying to set your story in a world where such things are common, then including them in your character dialog contributes to the authenticity of your writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excluding them is also acceptable, again in service to your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is nice to be sensitive to your readers' feelings but don't let it get in the way of your telling your story, your way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11221" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T13:18:05.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28921" CreationDate="2017-06-27T14:15:40.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No single recipe, as narrow, can make you a good writer. There are many facets of the art, and many ways to improve them. Reading can &lt;em&gt;improve your writing&lt;/em&gt;, but it won't &lt;em&gt;make you a good writer&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was another question - about &lt;a href=&quot;https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6991/how-much-influence-does-blogging-have-on-learning-to-write-better/6994#6994&quot;&gt;blogging&lt;/a&gt;. And the answer was the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write a lot. Read a lot. Study. Train. Gather critique. Criticize. Edit. Try different things. Seek inspiration. Plan, analyze, or just dive into writing on impulse. Diversify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice that monopolizes your occupation is a bad one. You get stuck doing that one thing and lose the edge in others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When reading, you're just feeding your mind with ready-made stories instead of flexing own creativity. Reading teaches you many good things, but it doesn't do the least thing about many others which are just as important, and neglecting them dulls your edge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no. It's definitely not the best advice. It's like you were trying to be a bodybuilder and got the advice of &quot;squats, squats, squats.&quot; Nope, it doesn't work like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T14:15:40.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-27T16:13:28.573" Score="6" ViewCount="60599" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first instinct is to always have a character furrow their eyebrows when confused because that's my personal first instinct, but I feel it's getting overused on my part. What are some other ways to display confusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25570" LastActivityDate="2020-10-29T08:11:17.757" Title="Showing Confusion" Tags="|novel|showing-telling|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28731" CreationDate="2017-06-27T16:23:48.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write question about the story and answer them yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Could David know what was going to happen?&#xA;Yes, because:&#xA;No, because:&#xA;&#xA;Did Sarah really cause the accident?&#xA;If no, why did she not tell?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also a method to discover possible flows or plotholes in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25569" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T16:23:48.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28942" CreationDate="2017-06-27T16:30:31.463" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dialogue is a good way to show confusion if you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Well, I thought, er...I don’t really know,” he admitted.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you need non-verbal ways to show this, here are a few cheap ones I use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;tilted her head quizzically&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;a look of puzzlement/surprise crossed his face&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;she stopped, and peered intently at (something)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;he paused and thought for a moment&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;she stopped, taken aback&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are probably many, many more, but you can riff on these as a starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25500" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T16:30:31.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28942" CreationDate="2017-06-27T16:30:45.107" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few other body languages you can use to replace with furrowing of the eyebrows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can have the character scratch their head&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give them a dazed look of bewilderment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have them shrug their shoulders with their hands up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have them put their hand on their chin like they are thinking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have their inner voice churn through the topic that made them confused in a low murmur rambling about it but not having them make any sense of it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about your daily interactions.  When someone says something that is confusing to you, what do you normally do? Probably some combination of what you said and I said.  When you say something confusing to others, how do they usually react?  Furrowing their eyes is usually a part of it, but generally people tend to use their full bodies in some combination of gestures, facial expressions and verbal words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try going out to a mall and hanging out watching people on a bench.  See how they interact with each other, find some youtube videos of people being confused.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T16:30:45.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28942" CreationDate="2017-06-27T19:56:23.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually think of stammering, blank stare, knitted brow, instantaneous use of Google to look something up, and the like. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25513" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T19:56:23.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28938" CreationDate="2017-06-27T21:19:58.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a human being, you are entitled to have an opinion about everything you encounter in life, and joke or be upset about it–or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a writer, you also have a right express your opinions in writing, and you not only can disclose your own, you can present thoughts and beliefs which are totally opposite. This is why you invent characters, which can carry out their own views on the world you make them inhabit. You can make them prejudiced, sexist, feminist, racist, human rights activists, law-abiding citizens (who can still be racist and sexist), and career criminals. You and only you own the world you are creating, whether it is a high-fantasy imaginary one or a meticulously crafted reflection of the real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what you choose to write about–happines, misery, affluence, hunger, religious fanatism or progressive thinking, sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, etc.–go for it. Do not try to play it safe–it will be instantly noticeable and will come through like a watered-down attempt to play both sides (&lt;em&gt;oh, I want to address a serious and unpleasant issue, or feel like a risky joke will go well with this character, but I do not want to upset my readers&lt;/em&gt;) and will make your writing bland and boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should remember, though, that as human beings, your readers also have a right to have an opinion about what they read and your words will be judged and commented upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Guess what: you cannot please everyone. If your readers are upset by your writing, they are not your readers. If someone flips because you used an &lt;em&gt;(insert-a-letter)-word&lt;/em&gt;, that person should stick to reading newspaper headlines and cereal boxes (milk cartons might be too unsettling).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go ahead with your story and do everything to make it work. Self-censorship is one of the worst methods of self-editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T21:19:58.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28949" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28950" CreationDate="2017-06-27T23:36:32.953" Score="0" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using Google Docs to make my first attempt at writing a novel (aka destroying my soul). I'm using 12pt Times New Roman, double spaced. I'm interested in how many pages in that format would make up a typical chapter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like I'm at a decent stopping point, but I don't know if I have enough. I've got about 5 pages written currently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any input!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25151" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T00:03:07.603" Title="How long is a typical chapter?" Tags="|publishing|formatting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-06-28T00:51:44.733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28949" CreationDate="2017-06-28T00:03:07.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no common length for a chapter. It depends on the formatting and the contents of the chapter. A good stopping point is when your story hits a hook that leaves your reader wanting to read the next chapter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest reading a book or two and notice how the author smoothly transitions from one chapter to the next. You'll notice that the author leaves the reader wanting more, and that &quot;more&quot; can only be found when the reader starts the next chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T00:03:07.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28951" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28957" CreationDate="2017-06-28T00:06:04.403" Score="1" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're submitting your book to a traditional publisher, when is a good time to copyright your book? &#xA;Before you give it to the traditional publisher?&#xA;After they approve?&#xA;Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T08:13:25.310" Title="When is a good time to copyright your book?" Tags="|publishing|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28835" CreationDate="2017-06-28T02:01:37.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best writing advice I ever got was a mix of advice from both a published author as well as my husband; write at random. Write whatever scene from your story pops into your head, beginning, middle, possible ending. Doesn't matter, just get it down before you lose it. It's a lot more fun and easy that way. But I do recommend keeping a log of characters, languages and their translations, and locations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25566" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T02:01:37.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28953" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-28T02:15:59.740" Score="-2" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to begin a slow burn friendship to relationship? I'm no good at these types of things and was wondering what people liked reading so that its not terrible and/or unrealistic. I also realize that my idea of romance is a little &lt;em&gt;a large bit&lt;/em&gt; strange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25566" LastEditorUserId="25566" LastEditDate="2017-06-28T22:06:33.097" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T22:06:33.097" Title="Relationship advice?" Tags="|creative-writing|romance|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-06-28T15:29:30.847" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28953" CreationDate="2017-06-28T05:19:24.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel this question might be a bit opinion based but I will answer it the best I can and as objectively as I can.  Truthfully it depends on what kind of dynamic you want the couple to have.  I suggest reading into relationship dynamics and different ways people are in a relationship.  This can very easily have a BDSMesque style of relationship in terms of personality and power play or it can be very vanilla.  While the style of their relationship may not directly answer the question, it is still something that gives you an idea where to start.  Clearly your MC male is probably not the most romantic man in the world due to his past and profession.  So having him plan out a very romantic first date would be out of character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about your characters, what they would do and not do romantically based on their personalities.  Who is the aggressor? Does one play hard to get? Maybe you want it to spark because he saves her during a combat mission.  It just depends on how you want the story to go and how you want their relationship to mature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T05:19:24.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28951" CreationDate="2017-06-28T06:40:34.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me share a handy hint with you: assuming you live in a country where the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works is in place, you &lt;em&gt;automatically&lt;/em&gt; own a copyright to your novel, assuming that (as stated) it is in a format that is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. The only places which are not covered by this convention are in the middle east and some parts of Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only issue arises when someone has infringed upon your copyright and says that it is their own. The legal procedures behind this are vastly more complex, and subsequently not fit for a writing forum. Go to the legal stack exchange if your are interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24383" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T06:40:34.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28936" CreationDate="2017-06-28T07:13:33.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty much with SF's answer on this one. I'll go even further. The desire to provide instant gratification is what makes a story boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is frequently said that opening paragraphs must hook the reader, I disagree. Your opening must inspire confidence - you know exactly what you're doing and why you're doing it. Anything that seems irrelevant now will become relevant when the time is right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;The Blues Brothers&quot; Carrie Fisher spends the majority of the story trying to kill Jake for no apparent reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating intrigue is a large part of novel writing. Generating questions causes the reader to turn pages. Seemingly unrelated scenes cause the reader to think &quot;WTF is going on?&quot; The answer is: they'll have to turn the page to find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I open with a woman standing on a bridge, crying, naked, looking down into the water below. There are police and press everywhere. A negotiator is shouting at the woman through a megaphone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stick a pin. I'll leave you wondering: Who is she? Why is she there? Will she? Won't she?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next scene shows two girls, besties, in a college dorm. I can spend a few chapters bringing you up to speed with lives, hopes and aspirations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I must now consider the questions you are asking. How do these girls relate to girl in the opening scene? Did these girls bully that girl? Will one of these girls turn out to be the girl on the bridge?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next I'll launch another storyline: A college professor kisses his young wife and child before leaving for work . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a reader you're going speculate as to how I'm going to put all this together. And you're going to read on to see if you're right. As a writer, I'm going to show that I am smarter and more devious than you could ever be - you're going to get the answer wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an intriguing style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T07:13:33.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28951" CreationDate="2017-06-28T08:13:25.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While law says you automatically own the copyright the moment the creation is fixed on a permanent medium (e.g. written), the judge of law is just a human, not omniscient: you need &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; way to show that you're the author. Registering your work in a way that is appropriate for your country (copyright office, notary) is a straightforward and fault-proof way to create such evidence, should it be needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's best done ASAP - when you have the book, but before anyone else got a copy. Leaks or thefts happen, and once your work is &quot;out in the wild&quot; and you don't already have solid proofs in your hands, proving it was yours may become an uphill battle. If the work needs to be edited, or otherwise modified, the result is clearly a direct derivative of the registered work, so you don't need to worry about re-registering it - anyone trying to wrongly claim copyright on that automatically labels themselves as a plagiarist. Only if changes are so deep that new parts could stand on their own as separate works, you should consider re-registering the new edition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T08:13:25.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28835" CreationDate="2017-06-28T08:27:36.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a problem. If you try to &quot;craft&quot; the writing while actively paying attention to every single of these elements, you'll move at glacial pace and even then the whole thing may come out awful. The only way to get that and progress, is to get that all subconsciously. Which is otherwise known as talent. No amount of effort can replace that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But talent is not something purely inborn. It can be built and improved. Thing is, you're approaching this from a wrong direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a driver learns how to win car races, they don't try to drive at speed of the master of the track, and attempt to crash later rather than sooner, each try the car getting a couple meters farther before crashing. Instead, they drive best to their capability making sure they finish the track, finish it reliably, then they improve their speed, learn new tricks to cut time on curves, improve, and slowly approach the mastery &lt;em&gt;without crashing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each unfinished work you write is such a crash. No. Don't try to imitate the masters. Just keep writing, learning new tricks and improving. Instead of trying to get every sentence perfect, aim at making your text better than the previous one. If you have the talent, you'll eventually reach mastery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T08:27:36.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28960" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-28T10:23:17.650" Score="1" ViewCount="543" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is 'creative writing' simply a synonym for 'fiction'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastEditorUserId="24878" LastEditDate="2017-06-28T16:56:00.137" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T17:23:14.130" Title="What is the creative aspect of creative writing?" Tags="|fiction|creative-writing|technique|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2017-06-28T15:42:09.520" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28953" CreationDate="2017-06-28T11:11:47.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was writing a similar story once. Building romance is not the easiest of things, so I feel you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that you have to put yourself in their shoes. Think of the most interesting or probable way of making the relationship happen. Personality, background, social context and situational events all matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on how much their relationship &quot;fits&quot; inside your plot. Does the main story revolve around their relationship, or is it something that happens on the side? The first is more likely, since you mentioned they both are main characters, but still this point holds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's important for the plot (both in terms of story and character developmetn), consider that you will have more &quot;time&quot; to show how their relationship develop - from being simple acquaintances to slowly becoming something more. &#xA;If it's not your main focus, you can probably skip some minor steps for the sake of brevity (carefully thought, since this may leave the reader with that kind of &quot;what-happened&quot; feeling).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personality:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the obvious point here. I'll just add that people tend to behave differently in different contexts, so even your no-nonsense war captain may enjoy hugs in his private sphere - or some other form of showing affection. &#xA;There must be something in your MC behavior that will arouse interest in the other. It doesn't have to be sexual or romantic interest at first - it could be just curiosity, irony, even disdain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being two different species, maybe there are some prejudices on the table. Maybe they both have incorrect or partial information on the other, and they start to understand how those ideas are wrong. Typical sentence: &quot;&lt;em&gt;You're funny/brave/strong/smart for a human/alien race here&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. &#xA;From your alien POV, the human female may be interesting because she seems unpredictable (you mentioned how she plays naive, but can stand her ground fiercely).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another pretty obvious one. There must be reasons why both characters aren't already engaged (with a member of their own kind, also). At least for us humans, our background of romantic interactions weighs on the present, so you may want to take it into account. Maybe one of your character is so fed up with failed relationships that he/she has stopped trying meeting possible partners altogether. Maybe the other MC reminds them of someone they used to know and admire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the story I was writing, my male character had lost his childhood girlfriend in a terrorist attack, and that - of course - changed his way of dealing with people even planets away from Earth. Maybe that's too extreme - you don't have to bring the big guns here, if they are not needed: but you probably already have your MC's backstory sketched out, so look at it for ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL,DR: there may be interesting &quot;hooks&quot; for you to use in your MC's background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Social context:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself: how are perceived human-alien relationships in your setting? Are they common? Are they frowned upon? Are they acceptable for some people (e.g., let's say humans with a given culture and background) and unacceptable for others? &#xA;Those questions won't help you &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; the relationship itself, but may help you understand what your characters will think in the initial stages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say, for example,. that interspecial relationship are not-so common and are frowned upon by the stricter part of the population. From your description, your male protagonist will probably avoid thinking of an human as a possible partner or love interest up until the very last moment. Maybe he will start having feelings for her, but will dismiss them as deranged and stupid, or be uncomfortable with the idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Situational events:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, most thing happen by sheer chance or luck. Moreover, someone said that relationships are based upon event, the concept of event meaning &quot;two people interacting together in some way&quot;. &#xA;Put it straightforwardly, they have to be together for some reason. Forced, if the needs arise. Leave them alone in a room and think of how this two may act, with only the other inside. It could be funny, since being from different races/culture they may have different habits and a different way to look at things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alien race of mine perceived gender-separated toilets as nonsensical, since every adult being &quot;knows&quot; what happen in there and is expected to mantain his/hers composure nonetheless. In the same story, my couple were to shipwreck on an unknown planet and cooperate to survive (again, you don't have to be so extreme).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, put them in situation where they can stick to their &quot;normal&quot; persona and see how things go from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope I've helped you somehow!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25517" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T11:11:47.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28942" CreationDate="2017-06-28T11:27:18.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hand gestures&lt;/strong&gt; (or their absence from a character who usually uses them), &lt;strong&gt;changes in gaze or head position/orientation&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. looking down at their  feet.)  Changes re personal space: invasions thereof or retreats (a literal stepping back) are also common tells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22438" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T11:27:18.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28960" CreationDate="2017-06-28T11:55:29.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think any writing that practises writing as a craft is considered creative writing. An idea, technique, or style doesn’t have to have been born out of a void in order to be creative. As you say, 99% of the time it’s how you employ those techniques that already exist, rather than inventing something entirely new. I think you answered your own question and I agree with you. But I disagree that you’re alone or even in a minority for thinking this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t think many on here are asking for the ONE TRUE WAY to write. I read those “How do you…?” questions more like “How COULD this be done?” rather than “How SHOULD this be done?” In the former case, answering with “whichever way pleases you” is not helpful, because they are stuck at the idea-generating phase, not the “which of my ideas is better” phase. I certainly don’t think it’s uncreative to need a little push sometimes when it comes to creating ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However a “how could this be done?” question can easily fall into the “what-to-write” category, but you can rectify this by asking for examples of where this has been done before, or well-known methods to solve the problem. Then the question becomes more like “How is this usually done?” or “How do you do this?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to write well, not one strict set of rules. Even if there were, that doesn’t mean that any old Joe could follow them and churn out bestseller after bestseller. For example, maths has universal rules, but some people still can’t do maths. Practice helps. Research helps. Asking for advice helps. As far as I understand it, that’s the purpose of this site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24794" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T11:55:29.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28953" CreationDate="2017-06-28T12:15:08.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on the tone and basis of your story. How 'real' or 'sexual' do you want it to go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take something like Star Trek's &quot;pon-far&quot; and trace it back to its obvious foundation you can work forward from there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smitten, she tries all her womanly wiles on him with no response - eventually she gives up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a convoluted set of circumstances he becomes ill or afflicted some way, apparently dying his behaviour changes. Trapped in wherever - she looks after him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Believing he's dying He's nice to her. An 'incident' takes place. (Maybe we'll intimate it was a mercy f**k).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He gets better. They are both embarrassed. They agree never to speak of the incident again. He returns to his stoic ways. She attempts to move on with her life. She transfers ships or whatever. He begins to lose his mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On her new ship she meets another one of his race, and older female. The female explains that the male of her species exhibit weak (nice) behaviour during mating season, and can be physically taxing on young males experiencing their first season. Once mated, her species are bonded for life and suffer when separated from a living partner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broken down: we've that species behave like cats during mating season (gagging for it) and like swans during thereafter (mated for life).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best I can do - short notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24878" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T12:15:08.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28960" CreationDate="2017-06-28T14:25:18.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, the &quot;creative writing&quot; is not a synonym for &quot;fiction&quot;. Any documentary piece of work, such as someone's biography, or the account of the events, which happened aboard Titanic on the night of the crash, or the circumstances surrounding the falling of the Tungus meteorite in 1908, falls under the &quot;creative writing&quot; category by default, and while a section of the technical manual, dealing with troubleshooting of the piece of some farming equipment, probably does not belong there, a blog post, dedicated to a variety of methods of sharpening your katana, most likely does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is my (opinion-laden) answer to the first question. Without descending into a rant, why the opinion-based questions and answers are frowned upon on this site, I will still try to answer (or expose everyone willing to suffer to my opinion on the matter, while &lt;em&gt;upvoting the question&lt;/em&gt;, because I believe that it is relevant to many people and the answers to it, however opinionated they might appear, should shed some light on the subject and be actually of use to more than one person).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(everything below refers to the deleted parts of the initial post)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...it seems the majority of aspiring writers believe there is a perfect way write a story with a perfect arc using perfect language etc, and learning this perfect way will lead to publication and success...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, yes, and the number (percentage?) of people, who are stuck in that corner is nothing short of horrifying. This site is not an exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some members even openly state that (loose quote): &lt;em&gt;I intend to learn all I can about rules of writing before starting any serious piece of work, and this is why I am here&lt;/em&gt;, which to me is an equivalent to a statement, say, &lt;em&gt;I am going to study and perfect my knowledge of musical theory before even touching an instrument of any kind&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The saddest part is that those people believe that to be the only way to a creative (and, &lt;em&gt;sigh&lt;/em&gt;, commercial) success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not, and you are absolutely and entirely right when you answer the question &lt;em&gt;&quot;how do you ...&quot;&lt;/em&gt; with &lt;em&gt;&quot;whichever way pleases you&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, because the only rules a writer should follow (and I stress &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; vs. &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt;) are the rules of grammar and, maybe, &lt;em&gt;common sense&lt;/em&gt;&amp;mdash;the latter, frankly, should be applied to any activity, creative, or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a million questions about the dynamics and styles of exposition . . . what makes one version of a story better than another? ... why I never hear writers discussing these things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions of that type are rear here, unfortunately (for all of us), but it could be explained: it is near impossible to ask such question without requesting a critique on a certain excerpt of your writing, and this is not a critique site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And don't even get me started on the critique sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 3:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case, the samples you present can clearly be labeled &quot;tell&quot; (1) and &quot;show&quot; (2), and there is no one in the world to tell you what is better for your story, but you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19606" LastEditorUserId="19606" LastEditDate="2017-06-28T17:23:14.130" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T17:23:14.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28960" CreationDate="2017-06-28T15:38:48.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's how I understood your question: &lt;strong&gt;Is there a right way to tell a story&lt;/strong&gt;, given that different authors might choose to tell the same story in entirely different ways? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the answer to this question is &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There's a large diversity in how we think and communicate&lt;/strong&gt;. One style might be perfect to a certain set of minds, but incompatible with another. Think of everyday life: Every once in a while, you meet somebody that you simply cannot communicate with. It's not that you dislike that person or that they are unfriendly per se, but simply that you can't seem to understand each other. He says &quot;A&quot;, you understand &quot;B&quot;, Babylonian confusion. A good example from my own experience is a good friend of mine who suffers from a mild form of autism. It took me a long time to figure out why we couldn't properly understand each other, and why, in general, he had so much trouble fitting into standard social situations. The reason is simply that he experiences the world a tiny bit different from me, and that we could not communicate with each other based on the standard that I apply to most of my other encounters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this huge diversity in how we think and communicate, &lt;strong&gt;it is up to you to choose your audience and adapt your style accordingly&lt;/strong&gt;. I know it sounds like a cliché -- but there's some truth to it. You will never reach everybody, and there's always going to be somebody who thinks your style is complete crap, &lt;em&gt;because tastes are different&lt;/em&gt;. (I've heard there's even people out there who hate Harry Potter ...) So, it's up to you to define for whom you write. Once you have answered this question, you can decide which style is most appropriate for your audience, i.e. which way of writing will help yo to get your ideas across. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, my target audience is myself. I appreciate clarity and well-developed characters and am curious about what makes people tick. That's why I focus on exactly that: Character development, lean language, a clear storyline that doesn't distract from the complicated emotional responses of my characters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there's Melville's Moby Dick. Many think this book a masterpiece, but I was nearly bored out of my mind. Why? Not because Moby Dick is a bad book per se, &lt;em&gt;but because Melville tells his story in a way that does not resonate with me&lt;/em&gt;. I was intrigued by Starbucks and Ahab's insanity, but Melville did not deliver a character study about these two characters and hence lost me as an enthusiastic reader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope I got the question right. ;-)   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13192" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T15:38:48.930" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28968" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-28T16:46:46.273" Score="4" ViewCount="650" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know several sites that provide plenty of example sentences for a given word, but they are usually rather colloquial. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have one dictionary that provides example sentences from classic English language literature for many entries, but it can naturally only list one or two examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would there be a resource that allows (by word) queries for sentences from classic English literature? I imagine this would be of considerable help, particularly when trying to emulate the style of an era long past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21535" LastActivityDate="2017-07-03T19:39:16.880" Title="Online resources searchable for example sentences from literature" Tags="|resources|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28969" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28971" CreationDate="2017-06-28T18:20:21.690" Score="6" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a story that I am writing, due to some time travel issues, the protagonists will have to wait a number of years before the next stage of the story happens. Things that happen between then and now might be very boring (settlement building, general life). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if Bob is stranded on an island, and in three years a ship will come to save him (which is the point of the story), how do I &quot;skip&quot; the potential story of him living on the island and surviving, without it seeming like I've cheated the reader out of content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to convey this without it seeming like I'm jumping around and rushing the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24647" LastActivityDate="2017-06-30T08:34:29.773" Title="How do I cover many years with little activity without it feeling rushed?" Tags="|plot|time-depiction|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28970" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-28T18:23:59.607" Score="6" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote what others believe is a killer query letter, but now I have to do a synopsis. There appear to be lots of writer's groups, but I was hoping for a free one that focuses on reading synopses.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://janefriedman.com/find-the-right-critique-group/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://janefriedman.com/find-the-right-critique-group/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.critiquecircle.com/forums.asp?action=viewforum&amp;amp;index=247&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.critiquecircle.com/forums.asp?action=viewforum&amp;amp;index=247&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Critique Circle does a great job with query letters and a few writers do post their synopsis at that site. Are there groups available for submitting synopses for writers to critique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22690" LastActivityDate="2017-09-10T23:25:59.290" Title="Are there any online writing groups dedicated to critiquing synopses?" Tags="|novel|synopsis|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28969" CreationDate="2017-06-28T18:37:06.117" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your example is kind of a bad one for this situation.  If we did this, then, the movie like castaway would only be about 20  minutes long.  Shows him being stranded, skip his surviving on the island, and then he is saved.  You still want to designate time progression and time skipping without killing the important parts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make each chapter an event that happens.  Start out with his struggles to do something basic like make fire, find a shelter, catch/find food.  Next paragraph SHOW that time has progressed.  Have it be him waking up the next morning and he scratches on the rock his next tally of dozens already there.  He walks to the ocean to wash himself off.  He notices he has a full facial beard in the reflection of the water.  things like this designate that time has passed.  Everyone knows a full beard does not grow in a day.  After you do some time prepping like that, make the next event happen.  Maybe this chapter he starts his first attempt to get off the island.  Maybe a storm comes and ruins his last month's worth of foraging.  End chapter, pick up or fast forward again.  There are now hundreds of marks on the wall, he notices his hunting and tracking skills have significantly improved and then lead on to the next event of what ever you want to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T18:37:06.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28835" CreationDate="2017-06-28T18:46:27.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the specific question of developing prose rhythm, independent of the other goals, I would recommend spending some time reading and writing strict-form poetry.  That will help you internalize a poetic cadence, even though you won't actually be writing that way when you switch to prose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to spend some time listening to complex rap music and/or recordings of great speeches.  Those are both examples of writing that is meant to be heard out loud, and thus has a cadence typically missing in prose that is never declaimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, however, you may want to carefully consider why you are doing this.  Rhythmic prose has a &quot;sing-songy&quot; quality that many will find off-putting --the modern style is unadorned, functional prose.  I personally like poetic prose myself, but I try to use it sparingly, for impact.  It isn't to everyone's tastes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T18:46:27.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28969" CreationDate="2017-06-28T19:37:16.140" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If truly nothing happens, then it's natural to elide it --stories do this all the time, and we even do this with our real life memories.  Life is &quot;lumpy,&quot; an hour can feel like a lifetime, a year can pass in a blink of an eye.  Just give it a quick sentence and move on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What with one thing and another, three years passed&quot; -- William Goldman, &lt;em&gt;The Princess Bride&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if this feels rushed, maybe that's a sign that something important to your storyline or characters needs to happen in that blank space.  Often this comes down to &quot;emotional believability.&quot;  If your characters are growing, changing, working out their differences, or gaining new skills, your readers may demand to see at least some evidence of the work taking place --not every moment, perhaps, but one of them.  Readers have a sixth sense for laziness in an author --your own discomfort with quickly skipping over this time elapsed suggests you feel like you're avoiding needed work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10479" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T19:37:16.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28975" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-28T20:00:05.010" Score="2" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;We write the best way, not when trying to perfect every sentence as we write our first draft, but when writing down our thoughts and not revising them till we finish that draft. Now in some books I have read, the authors advises their readers to use free writing to come up with material for their works. But I cannot imagine myself to use free writing, because it is not easy for me to write without stopping. I think I need to write more slowly, setting down only those thoughts that are meaningful, and revising those thoughts that are not what I intended them to be, not to make them clear or graceful, but to make their meaning precise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25421" LastEditorUserId="25421" LastEditDate="2017-06-28T23:17:15.013" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T10:21:05.647" Title="Can I avoid free writing?" Tags="|revision|first-draft|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28975" CreationDate="2017-06-28T20:19:44.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are still missing the point of free writing and many of our suggestions in your previous questions.  The whole point of free writing is not to kill your flow.  Think of it this way... you are watching a movie... someone comes in and talks to you so you pause it.  Play it for another 5 minutes, someone else comes in and talks to you so you pause it.  Then you play again.  Again someone interrupts you and you got to pause the movie again.  You can't enjoy the flow and pacing of the movie if you are having to pause it every 10 minutes.  You also have to spend time trying to remember where even you left off and what just happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand you want to slow yourself down.  This still causes the main issue of stopping yourself after every sentence.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_writing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Free writing&lt;/a&gt; does not necessarily mean  you rush through your writing with every first thought in your head.  It simply means that you allow yourself to turn off the editor/revision mode in your mind and allow thoughts to be put to paper without critique.  You can do this as fast or slow as you want, but the key is to not allow yourself to go back and edit or think if the sentence needs to be changed before writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems to be your biggest struggle because you want to control and force your words a certain way.  It is hard to build rhythm and flow and elegance if you are trying to take your foot and jam it in.  That's what it feels like you are trying to do to me.  You need to let go and relax and stop looking for perfection with your first try.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like, in your situation based on the questions you have asked, you would really benefit from free-writing and it should not be avoided.  Especially if you want to learn how to build rhythm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like playing an instrument.  Just let it flow man, if you make a mistake keep going, you don't see musicians stop if they make a mistake.  Often it is hard to hear mistakes when it is live because they keep the flow going.  Imagine if you were listening to a live concert and every time someone in the band messed up, they would stop and redo the song.  Concerts would be the whole day.  Some times, you need to look past the minor mistakes, the minor issues, to build the overall flow and then go back and change the couple of words you feel are out of place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastEditorUserId="23200" LastEditDate="2017-06-28T20:25:26.887" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T20:25:26.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28978" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28989" CreationDate="2017-06-28T22:00:02.177" Score="4" ViewCount="680" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use a BNF style to convey syntax for SQL statements.  For a (fictitious) example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;CREATE PARSER [schema.]function  &#xA;[WITH [LANGUAGE='language']  &#xA;    [, MODE='[FENCED | UNFENCED]'  &#xA;    [, STUFF='anotherParameter']  &#xA;];&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that you must specify a function name (with optional schema), and you may specify zero, one, two, or three other parameters.  (Some of our statements have ten or more optional parameters.)  This is the style we've been using for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strictly speaking, though, it's incorrect -- if you omitted LANGUAGE but wanted to specify MODE, this would tell you to write something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;CREATE PARSER myFunctionName&#xA;WITH , MODE='FENCED';&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...which isn't correct.  That comma is a syntax error.  Most readers can figure out what's meant, but it's a bit of s stumbling block for some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of our super-precision-minded users have pointed out this problem, but they (and we) have not found a solution that preserves the overall style. Our users like the notation overall; it's just that we don't know what to do when everything in a clause can be optional.  We considered something like this, but it's technically wrong in a different way as well as being ugly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;CREATE PARSER [schema.]function&#xA;[WITH [LANGUAGE='language']&#xA;  [,] [MODE='[FENCED | UNFENCED]'&#xA;  [,] [STUFF='anotherParameter']&#xA;];&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the syntax synopsis we include a table of parameters and arguments (name, description).  We're therefore considering reducing the syntax synopsis to something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;CREATE PARSER [schema.]function&#xA;[WITH parameters];&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We haven't tried that idea out on our users yet.  Before we do, I'd like to find out about other options for presenting syntax information in an &lt;em&gt;informative&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;correct&lt;/em&gt; way.  We're not the first people to use this style of syntax but I haven't found examples of this situation to look at.  What do others do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T11:50:08.773" Title="In a formal syntax notation, how should I indicate many optional elements?" Tags="|style|technical-writing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-28T22:01:31.730" Score="11" ViewCount="1441" Body="&lt;p&gt;I notice in a lot of media there is a strong emphasis on the greatness of evil characters. They can often end up more popular than the good guys in the book or on the show, and overshadow everyone else around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Darth Vader is a good example. He is a despicable human being who has committed genocide and is responsible for the deaths of billions of people. Yet the common talk is of how much of a badass he is. His coolness has made him one of the most popular characters in history. He is on lunchboxes and has action figures, and people dress up as him in costumes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you write an evil character while reminding the reader that he leaves behind real damage? That he causes suffering and pain to flesh and bone people without dwelling on how awesome he is while doing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user24397" LastEditorUserId="19595" LastEditDate="2017-06-29T16:08:37.157" LastActivityDate="2017-07-01T04:11:36.387" Title="How do you write an evil character without making him &quot;sexy&quot; or &quot;cool&quot;?" Tags="|character-development|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28979" CreationDate="2017-06-28T22:18:03.980" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like this question but I don't think you will be able to completely eliminate the &quot;cool&quot; factor.  Look at most horror films.  They all end up commercialized for costumes and certain social groups tend to idolize them.  I believe in Vader's case, his actions were not talked about.  It was not shown in much of a negative light either.  So he was more so made to seem like a bad ass with a demanding attitude rather than someone to be feared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want to try to come up with someone who is BAD but isn't on lunch boxes, I would look to &lt;em&gt;Game of Thrones&lt;/em&gt;.  Many people idolize a lot of the main characters.  Universally though, Joffrey and Ramsay were hated.  You don't see any fan pages, and they are hardly talked about except for wishing they would be killed off already.  This would probably be your closest bet to what you are trying to imitate.  That being said though, I do know some people who still thought Ramsay and Joffrey were cool because of their domineering ways.  Someone is bound to like a character, no matter how evil you make them out to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23200" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T22:18:03.980" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28975" CreationDate="2017-06-28T22:39:59.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For most, that sort of deliberation is best done later, in edits or second drafts. However, if you'd like a way to force yourself to maintain a slower pace and think over words more before the first time you write them down, I've found that writing by hand is very valuable for that. It slows down the pace of your writing so that your mind can think of more different permutations of the words you have yet to write down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25584" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T22:39:59.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28835" CreationDate="2017-06-28T22:46:45.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I agree that most of these things cannot be expected out of a first draft (instead being the valuable fruits of the revision process), reading problematic sentences aloud should be a useful tool when trying to understand the flow of a paragraph you've written. The only other thing that always helps is a fundamental grasp of poetry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the first draft is there for you to get all of the content on paper, rhythm and diction are less important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25584" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T22:46:45.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28978" CreationDate="2017-06-28T23:30:40.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Postgres tackles a similarish problem and uses ', ...' to indicate an expression is to be repeated separated by commas (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.5/static/sql-createfunction.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.5/static/sql-createfunction.html&lt;/a&gt;). So in their syntax you would write something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;CREATE PARSER [*schema*.]*function* [WITH &#xA;  { LANGUAGE='*language*'&#xA;  | MODE='[FENCED|UNFENCED]'&#xA;  | STUFF='*anotherParameter*'&#xA;  } [, ...]&#xA;];&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if the order of those statements is fixed, this solution does not quite work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22522" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T23:30:40.503" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28975" CreationDate="2017-06-29T07:37:39.437" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I shall go against the flow and say that some people do not work well with free-writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ggiaquin does a great job explaining why it is a helpful technique and, especially when trying to get over a writer's block, I'd quickly suggest it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I understand the OP's point. My writing is very much driven by the character's emotional state (whether they're cool headed or in the throes of melodrama). The narrator's voice must always strike the right voice. If, for some reason, the sentences come off slightly out of character or if the emotion conveyed isn't quite right, then that is an equivalent to someone interruptiong me. It kills the flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do, in order to get the right voice in my head so the writing flows quickly and in character and also in order to get the right emotion, is to stop writing and to play the scene in my head a number of times. I go over the emotion, the actions, the words. I become the main character of the scene and repeat it over and over (doing so while doing a completely physical activity, like vacuuming, can help). Then I get inside the other characters and make sure their actions and reactions are also in character. Finally I can sit down and write because the voices and the emotions are just right. I have written over five thousand words in a sitting after doing this preparation. The later editing comes down much more to just spelling and getting a few synonyms, because the events and the emotions usually come out right from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way, it's also a form or free writing in ggiaqin's sense - it allows to write without being interrupted, whether by your inner editor or by a feeling that something is off which kills your progression. Just prepare yourself until you've got the right tone for your thoughts. Or perhaps just go over your thoughts without writing them in order to improve them, to help them evolve into the right idea. Once you feel the right idea booming inside you, you'll be able to write non-stop, fed by that feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T07:37:39.437" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28979" CreationDate="2017-06-29T09:14:55.777" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;As readers we can find an evil character &quot;sexy&quot; or &quot;cool&quot;, because these traits have little to to with the character being morally good or evil. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Darth Vader is cool because he has great magical powers, wears awesome armour and has &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nSpDEFO3tY&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;menacing dialogue&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Joffrey is not cool because he is (regardless of being a sadistic tyrant) a whiny brat without any gravitas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least one way to make an evil character unsympathetic is to give them traits/faults that are unrelated to their moral standing: traits that would make them unlikable whether they were good or bad people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give your character nasty, disgusting habits - make them pick their nose or wet their bed. Make them suck up to their betters. Make them pick pettily on their underlings. Have them make unfunny jokes and then laugh at them with a shrill, undignified voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid giving them &quot;pseudo-faults&quot; such as dramatic scars or tragic pasts. These traits can actually increase the &quot;coolness factor&quot; of the character, even if they make them less powerful at first glance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user23425" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T09:14:55.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28978" CreationDate="2017-06-29T09:57:39.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem here is that you are conflating two separate things: the syntax for parameters in a function expression and the list of available parameters. The syntax itself is straightforward enough:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;CREATE PARSER [schema.]function  &#xA;[WITH [parameter='value' [, parameter='value']+]   &#xA;];&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list of parameters is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;LANGUAGE='language'  &#xA;MODE='[FENCED | UNFENCED]'  &#xA;STUFF='anotherParameter'  &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most API documentation separates these two things, which would seem to solve your problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, you might point out to your developers that since the parameter values are quoted, the comma is syntactically redundant. Removing it would simplify your diagram and even let you continue to conflate parameter syntax with the list of parameters if you really wanted to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastEditorDisplayName="user16226" LastEditDate="2017-06-29T11:50:08.773" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T11:50:08.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28979" CreationDate="2017-06-29T10:09:29.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cowardice. Villains who are bold and brave like Darth Vader have a cool factor because of their boldness and bravery. However evil their deeds, they display characteristics that we admire and would wish to possess. But the cowardly villain, the obsequious sneak like Uriah Heap or Wormtongue has not such attractive qualities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a story (probably apocryphal) about a Harley Davidson executive saying something to the effect &quot;What we sell is the ability for a forty year old accountant to ride into a small town and have people be afraid of him.&quot; It is that ability to awe people, to make them take a step back, that we would all like to have, that would make us feel powerful and respected and safe, that we admire in the cool villain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The uncool villain is simply someone we projects no such similar properties, the villain who works by stealth and lies, but whom children would not be afraid to throw stones at if they met them in the street and knew them for what they were. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T10:09:29.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28975" CreationDate="2017-06-29T10:21:05.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is story development and there is narration. You need to compose a story before you can narrate it. Some people are naturals at story development. For them the story flows so naturally that they can focus on narration from the moment they start writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people struggle with story development. Some address this with planning and outlines. Some do the story development in their heads before they start narrating. And some start scribbling down whatever comes into their heads and hope a story thread will emerge from it. This is what so called free writing is about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people are naturals at narration. For them, the narrative flow emerges more or less intact in the first draft. For others, constructing a working narrative is a laborious process of many revisions. Don't expect your free writing story development to produce a great narrative. And don't confuse that process with the behavior of people who are both naturals at story and naturals at narration and can get a good first draft done first time out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If free writing is your method for story generation, then don't worry about the writing details because this is not you first draft of the narrative, it is merely story generation. Be prepared (indeed, work with the full intention) to throw the entire thing away once you have found your story shape, and then begin the task of narration over from the beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T10:21:05.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28835" CreationDate="2017-06-29T10:40:37.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to dissent from the spin straw into gold argument that others have made. It's not that I don't see merit in it, its just that I think prose rhythm is a heard thing, by which I mean that some people hear it in what they read and some do not, and that some writers hear is in their heads as they compose and some do not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who hear it, it is incomprehensible how someone could write an obviously arrhythmic sentence. Such as sentence would be as painfully and obviously wrong as one with patent grammatical flaws. The rhythmic property of the sentence forms in the mind in the first moment of creation: the sentence does not feel right in the mind and on the tongue until the rhythm is there. To a writer who works like this, there is no such thing as an arrhythmic sentence, just an unfinished sentence that is not ready to write down yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This being the case, though, I am not sure that there is a way for an arrhythmic writer to become a rhythmic writer. If you are hearing the rhythm as you write, you cannot help but write rhythmically. If you are not hearing it as you write, I don't think you could ever achieve the effect in revision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that a rhythmic writer won't improve the rhythm of their prose in revision. But I don't think they would ever think of this as an &quot;add rhythm&quot; step. It would simply be a case of reading a sentence and feeling it was wrong or ugly and of replacing it with something better -- and it being better mostly because it sounded better in their heads, not because they mechanically applied some axiom of rhythm to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T10:40:37.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28969" CreationDate="2017-06-29T10:50:31.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are writing a story, not a history. Were the characters of your story real people (which they are not) many things would happen to them in their day to day lives that are not in any way relevant to the story. Your story is not going to tell us how many times they went to the bathroom or brushed their teeth. It is going to focus on story relevant incidents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just as much true on the large scale as it is on the small scale. Days, months, or years may sometimes pass without a single story relevant incident, and there is no more need to account for those day, months, or years than there is to account for the daily brushing of the teeth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a great deal of time has passed between one story relevant incident and another, you probably need to indicate this somehow, if only so the reader can age the character a little in their mind's eye. So say it and move on to the next story-relevant incident. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T10:50:31.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28913" CreationDate="2017-06-29T11:14:29.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is called Amazon Digital Services. It is where authors publish manuscripts that have been rejected by publishers, or which they have rejected themselves by not bothering to submit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is a craft and publishing is a commercial enterprise. Like other enterprises that depend on appealing to the taste of consumers, such as movies or fashion houses, or cell phone makers, it is not an exact science, but companies in these spaces do know an awful lot about what works and what doesn't. It does not mean they don't make mistakes and produce dreadful duds from time to time, nor does it mean they always know when they have a best seller on their hands, but it does mean that they know a non-starter when they see one, at least 99.99 percent of the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing is a craft and can be studied as a craft. Publishing is a business and can be studied as a business. Both the craft and the business are written about extensively. They are also both reasonably transparent so you can study them for yourself. To be certain, there are charlatans peddling bad advice, as there are in any trade, and sometimes the advice of the charlatans (promising as it does an easy road to riches) can become popular and even be received as gospel. But those who are serious about the craft and the business will not be fooled for long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like all industries that appeal to taste, there is the je ne se quois factor on top of the craft, and that makes some people sneer at the whole idea of craft. But the je ne se quois factor really is the icing on the cake. You may not succeed without it, and you may not be able to learn it if you don't have it, but it can only successfully operate on a sound base of craft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the vast majority of self published works (or join a critique group and read people's submissions) and what you will find in almost all of it is a basic deficit of craft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the craft was remedied, would they become best sellers? Probably not. Even with the craft remedied, most would lack the je ne se quois factor. But in many ways there is nothing that highlights the vital role of craft then reading works where it is so obviously deficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T11:14:29.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28969" CreationDate="2017-06-29T11:43:32.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there's very little going on, just skip - and perform introduction of the changes as a reminiscence, observation, discussion, at the new point of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say, a day before the ship arrives, Bob takes a stroll through his &amp;quot;fort&amp;quot;, making routine repairs of the fence, bringing a few more branches for the huge stack of wood on the hill top, to be lit in case he sees a ship, milks the goat, waters the carrots, checks traps, finding a rabbit, cooks the rabbit in a clay oven... stands for a minute over the grave of his faithful dog on the shore where three years ago they were both washed out with debris of his ship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally show the past as its effects on the &amp;quot;now&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's too little to fill the period normally, but too much to just skip, as above, a good method is a change of the format: A journal, a log, a memoir, a set of newspaper clippings. You can skip between events, show tiny slices of life and write longer stories on major events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Day 342. The bend of the stream is a motherlode of clay, just under a thin layer of sand! Meet Bob the Builder! First project: a furnace, which will be used for firing clay items and double as an oven and stove. Finally end of burning my hands when trying to cook pieces of rabbit stuck on a stick over the fireplace!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Day 348. I'm awesome. My furnace is awesome. And my brick house will be awesome! This morning I was planting tree saplings on the slope of Fort Bob. And the side effect is that I pushed the jungle back another twenty yards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this format you can take great liberties both on time skips and on size of slices of time you show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:43:22.183" LastActivityDate="2017-06-30T08:34:29.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28979" CreationDate="2017-06-29T12:12:56.280" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with ggiaquin answer, but I'd advise against giving the character some overly nasty habits if it isn't necessary just to make them more unsymphatetic, as other users have suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding uncanny traits just for the sake of doing so will create an overly parodistic villain. &#xA;There are a lot of movies where this happen: somehow, the big boss of the world-menacing, all-powered evil organization is a &lt;em&gt;whiny weak man with daddy issues.&lt;/em&gt; It's not very believable and it doesn't really work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Evilness&lt;/em&gt; comes with a measure of coolness, just to be sure. But almost everyone will have a &quot;point of no return&quot;, meaning, an action so evil that will go against that person moral standard. Of course it changes from person to person.&#xA;What you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do is to describe how and why that villain is evil, and show how little regard of human life/ethics/pain/well-being/etc he has. Disgust from the character shouldn't be disgust for his habits (e.g., wetting the bed) but from the moral value of his actions (e.g. eating newborns out of fun).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25517" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T12:12:56.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28979" CreationDate="2017-06-29T12:40:44.177" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me throw a couple keywords to help you get your villain being despicable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cowardly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;backstabbing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;honorless&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lying&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;egomaniac&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;petty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;malicious&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ruthless (no punishment too high for offense too small...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unfair (an act of obvious injustice, for arbitrary reasons makes many people &lt;em&gt;fume&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;disgusting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lazy / slothful&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;narcissistic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;blackmailing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick any number of the above and you have someone very hard to adore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep &lt;em&gt;ruthless&lt;/em&gt;, and add into the mix &lt;em&gt;paranoid&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;competent&lt;/em&gt; and you have a villain both hated and feared, killing whoever has even a potential of becoming a threat, disposing of faithful followers before they could get disillusioned, abusing power for own perverted pleasures, never showing regret or hesitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, &lt;em&gt;no redeeming values&lt;/em&gt; whatsoever. No tragic backstory, no noble motive, no justifiable cause. Just ego. Own sense of entitlement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know, how a smart villain will listen to his faithful first officer when given advice about own weakness, and an arrogant villain will ignore the advice and possibly punish the faithful first officer for the offense? This one will listen to the advice, but before following it he will kill the first officer, because being able to spot the weakness, he became a threat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4291" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T12:40:44.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28932" CreationDate="2017-06-29T14:20:53.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to cut up a scene then you'd first need a clear definition of what constitutes a scene. The most common definition of a scene is that it’s a unit of a story that takes place at a specific location and time. If either the location or time would change, then this would mean that there would be a new scene.  Unfortunately there’s no clear cut answer to your question. How you’d split the scene would depend on several factors. Since I don’t know the specifics I can’t give you a straight answer, but I can offer you a framework to figure out what questions you need to answer. (It will be broad but it might be useful).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, is the comedy you’re writing multi cam or single cam? Multi-cam means it’s like the Big Bang Theory, The Brady Bunch or any other similar sort of sitcom. These shows are often shot on stages. Scenes here are often built in the same way you’d construct a mise en place in the theater, there’s a unity of time and location. Jokes often have quick pay-offs and are contained in one area. This means that you can chain locations easily through the use of your loglines if these stages are connected. So INT. Living Room INT. Kitchen etc. To imply quick cuts you could use O.C and O.S to have characters interact while in connected spaces. Quick hard cuts are not often seen in this format unless for comedic effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to think of your scene as a series of interconnected actions that lead to a singular pay-off that leads into a new series of sequences.&#xA;If you’re writing a single cam comedy, then you can be a bit more liberal with your cuts in general. A single cam would be something like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Just figure out a what the emotional arc is that the characters throughout the sequence you’re creating and you’ll be good to go. You can use CUT TO if you like, or simply use a log line to switch between locations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25583" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T14:20:53.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28714" CreationDate="2017-06-29T14:27:44.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did some googling and found a couple of publishers that are into that sort of thing. I'd just send them a query letter and see what happens. You could always just self publish on Amazon and see how that goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eastwestdiscovery.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://eastwestdiscovery.com/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.schoenhofs.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.schoenhofs.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25583" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T14:27:44.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26837" CreationDate="2017-06-29T14:33:51.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No there's no such thing. It depends on the medium you are writing for. You'd write something very different if it was for the back of a DVD then if it was for film review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general I'd follow the rules that dictate how to write a proper synopsis. So that means that you'd establish a setting, a protagonist, imply an emotional arc, touch on some of the major set-pieces in the film and provide some context on the production of the film itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25583" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T14:33:51.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26837" CreationDate="2017-06-29T15:46:34.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;By their very nature, such templates tend to be specific to individual publications. For example, the general shape of a recipe is universal and well known, but the details like whether to include a picture or a wine match, or substitutes for key ingredients, or a list of nutritional values, are specific to individual publications and to their business model and the market they serve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-fiction should almost always be written for a specific publication. You don't write the piece and then try to sell it. You sell the idea of the piece and then follow the publication's guidelines for how to write it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T15:46:34.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26837" CreationDate="2017-06-29T15:47:01.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may well be such guidelines but they'd probably be publication-specific and situation-dependent. They'd also have to be developed ahead of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, an encyclopedia would have only a certain amount of space available for entries, and might even have guidelines about entry length. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The format of a synopsis in film review would be determined by the reviewer, but  the publication's editor would certainly have feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you writing for a publication that focuses on actors? On special effects? On the design? Does the review talk about, say, the cinematography? The dialogue? If so, then mentioning the cinematographer and the script writer makes sense. Otherwise, perhaps leave them out; but some publications might want to use a capsule summary to give credit to people who otherwise might not be mentioned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T15:47:01.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28714" CreationDate="2017-06-29T15:56:33.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer any &quot;where should I pitch&quot; question, you should ask yourself the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who would want to read this? What is its market niche, and how big is it?. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the other notable works that people in this niche read?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which publishers serve that niche? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publishers build their business around serving specific niche markets because those are the markets they know how to sell to, and they have a way to estimate how many copies they can hope to sell in that market. Publishers will very seldom accept anything outside their niche no matter how good they think it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have answered the second question, the third is pretty easy. You just look at the people publishing the notable works in that niche already. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously in your case the niche is very small, so if there is a publisher that serves that niche, they are likely to be very small as well, and probably subsidized in some way. University presses are one place to look. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet would probably be in a country that prides itself on English/French bilingualism. Canada is one such country, and this project might appeal to publishers here more so than many other places. The catch is, subsidized publishing in Canada almost always requires the the writer be Canadian, so if you are not, this probably won't help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T15:56:33.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29006" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-29T16:51:59.243" Score="-1" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to find a name for a creature in my book. it is a shape-shifter, but usually takes the form of a giant badger. it is a bloodthirsty monster, and destroys everything in it's path. Any ideas? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25594" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T17:36:54.840" Title="I'm writing a book called Wilders" Tags="|fiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-06-29T22:16:26.910" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29006" CreationDate="2017-06-29T17:33:11.460" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Names can be funny things I have found... but for some reason this just popped into my mind:&#xA;Baragar. Perhaps it will at least help your naming ideas kick in if nothing else :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25578" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T17:33:11.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29006" CreationDate="2017-06-29T17:36:54.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to have a particular creature with those attributes, and give it a name of something already existing that is similar, your best bet would be a &lt;strong&gt;Tanuki&lt;/strong&gt; (from the Japanese for badger and similar animals), perhaps changing the spelling slightly to fit your purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wanted something more original and unique, perhaps a name like Chimeles would fit your tastes? (A portmanteu Chimera and Meles, which is Latin for badger.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wanted it to be an already English word, maybe a word like a Static? A Binate? A Twofold? Simply a Doppelganger? A geminate? A Myriad? Something that refers usually to two, to represent the monochromatic nature of badgers, but can also refer to a large number?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23486" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T17:36:54.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29009" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-29T17:44:55.930" Score="1" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;When i see so many generic trash shows like &quot;The Mist&quot; i cant help to wonder, what is the story exactly? Why do they show so much unnecessary info, like history and stories from minor characters that no one cares for, alot of shows nowadays do this, where is the plot? There must be a term for something like this, in &quot;The Mist&quot; situation, its of course about how theres a mist falling over the town. People are trying to survive it i get that, but whats the story? Its like with the walking dead, yeah people are surviving, but whats the actual story and plot? If someone can go into detail upon what im talking about itd be very helpful and appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21988" LastEditorUserId="33442" LastEditDate="2019-06-14T01:23:26.043" LastActivityDate="2019-06-14T01:23:26.043" Title="What is the term for a show or movie that has no actual story?" Tags="|technique|plot|terminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-07-05T16:45:52.087" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29009" CreationDate="2017-06-29T18:03:36.293" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are character driven rather than plot driven. It is the story of the characters they are selling, the plot is simply the situation they are in and a way to show the who the characters are. The advantage of shows with large casts is that if one leaves the show doesn't fall apart, like Seinfeld would have had Jerry Seinfeld left or the original Beauty and the Beast when Linda Hamilton left it lasted one more season. So a large cast, and your supposed to be interested in the characters and there actions more than the story they are living.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25385" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T18:03:36.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28969" CreationDate="2017-06-29T19:22:52.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You use a subtitle: &quot;Three Years Later.&quot; That way, you show that three years of calendar time has passed, even though it is more like three seconds of story time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T19:22:52.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28938" CreationDate="2017-06-29T19:29:11.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing I wonder about is the relevance of those lines to your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if that's a story about a working wife and a stay-at-home husband, the dialog can &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; relevant. To a lesser extent, this could be true about an aggressive, outgoing woman, and a shyer, more introverted man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't use this, or other dialog if not relevant to the story. Unless, perhaps, it is a form of light humor or comic relief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4599" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T19:29:11.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28884" CreationDate="2017-06-29T21:15:36.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have the name of the book and the year and probably also the place of publication (country or city), you can probably find the publisher.&#xA;Wikipedia has a number of sources about the Dhammapada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed the copyright laws last a couple of decades since the last publication or even with music until 75 years after death of the musician when it is not inherited by family or other persons. This depends on the country though. I just gave an example about the copyright law in The Netherlands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What works is to mail the publisher of the book you used the quote from - the website should have mentioned it otherwise they do not mention their source correctly. But as I mentioned: you should mail the publisher if you can have permission to use the quote in your fiction book. You can even suggest to otherwise use their name of source in a footnote or something. You need written permission to not be sued for violation of the copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22031" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T21:15:36.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29014" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29015" CreationDate="2017-06-29T23:23:23.053" Score="2" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In general, how long does it take a traditional publisher to approve/disapprove your manuscript from the time you submit it to them?  The literary work is fiction and is about 330 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, is it a good idea to submit to more than one traditional publisher at a time? Or, should you wait for rejection, then try again somewhere else?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should you have an agent?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-30T12:25:48.003" Title="Time frame of a traditional publisher, submitting to publishers, and need for an agent" Tags="|publishing|agent|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29014" CreationDate="2017-06-29T23:41:01.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number of publishers that will even accept unsolicited fiction manuscripts is very small, so unless you are submitting to some very specific niche market, it is hardly worth talking about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most major publishers will only accept work that is submitted by agents, so basically you need an agent to submit at all. Agents have relationships with editors. They know what editors are looking for and so will save you a lot of unnecessary time lost in submitting to editors that were never going to buy your manuscript in the first place. They will also negotiate a better deal than you would ever be able to get by yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other ways to get directly to an editor, but these basically mean that your manuscript has been solicited by the editor. If you pitch to an editor at a conference and they ask to see your manuscript, it then becomes a solicited manuscript. If you are referred to them by a writer friend they respect or owe a favor to, then it becomes a (reluctantly) solicited manuscript. If you self publish a book that sells a million copies and every publishing house suddenly wants your next book, it becomes a solicited manuscript. If you are a megastar celebrity whose name alone can sell a book, then they will pursue you and it will become an (eagerly) solicited manuscript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in any of these cases, you probably want an agent anyway to negotiate a better deal for you, and to take the business side of things off your hands so you can write more books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any of these scenarios, except the last two, however, you are still looking at months to get a reply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16226" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T23:41:01.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29016" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-30T00:45:16.960" Score="-1" ViewCount="209" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since Divergent, Hunger Games, and Maze runner have come to a close. I'm wondering if the YA genre is resting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I right about YA ending, and what genre is becoming famous right now in its place? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24839" LastEditorUserId="26" LastEditDate="2017-06-30T00:47:34.037" LastActivityDate="2017-06-30T12:22:46.573" Title="Is YA as a genre being supplanted?" Tags="|marketing|genre|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29016" CreationDate="2017-06-30T11:37:27.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;YA isn't a genre, it's an audience (from the story-telling perspective) or a market (from the business perspective).  In that regard, it would surprise a great many of us if it were supplanted, ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is certainly true that the YA market is presently occupied with a few big-name works, but it did not come into existence with these works and it won't be going away when they are concluded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The YA audience/market will be around until kids stop being born, and as long as they're around there will be someone producing (with the hope of selling) works intended for their consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24623" LastActivityDate="2017-06-30T11:37:27.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29016" CreationDate="2017-06-30T12:22:46.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;YA is treated as a genre. It is used in both publishing and libraries. It is books that are intended for a youngish audience. There is violence, there is often sex not quite as sanitized as cozy mysteries are but usually less than urban fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, a few big names do tend to dominate, but there are many more titles and authors in that genre. And like all genres there is a wave effect. You get a lot of books in it for a while, and then the market sort of gets saturated and the number of new titles falls off. Then it comes up again. Cyclical business cycle. Not unexpected, nor new. Currently Sci/Fi which had a major down turn the last few years is heating up again with more new titles and authors. Which I notice a lot of cross over authors from other genre's mainly mystery putting out sci/fi titles.Just wait it out if you want more YA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25385" LastActivityDate="2017-06-30T12:22:46.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="29019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29014" CreationDate="2017-06-30T12:25:48.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check the pu